Western Railroad Building 447creeks, where they found enough timber for home
building, fuel, and fencing. Later arrivals had to build
houses of the tough prairie sod and depend on hay,
sunflower stalks, and buffalo dung for fuel.
Frontier farm families had always had to work
hard and endure the hazards of storm, drought, and
insect plagues, along with isolation and loneliness.
But all these burdens were magnified on the prairies
and the High Plains. Life was particularly hard for
farm women, who, in addition to childcare and
housework, performed endless farm chores—milking
cows, feeding livestock, raising vegetables, and so on.
“I... am set and running every morning at half-past
four o’clock, and run all day, often until half-past
elevenP.M.,” one farm woman explained. “Is it any
wonder I have become slightly demoralized?”
Farming as Big Business
Immediately after the Civil War, Congress reserved
47.7 million acres of public land in the South for
homesteaders, stopping all cash sales in the region.
But in 1876 this policy was reversed and the land
thrown open. Speculators flocked to the feast in such
numbers that the Illinois Central Railroad ran special
trains from Chicago to Mississippi and Louisiana.
Between 1877 and 1888 over 5.6 million acres were
sold; much of the land was covered with valuable
pine and cypress.
The flat immensity of the land, combined with
newly available farm machinery and the development of
rail connections with the East, encouraged the growth
of enormous corporation-controlled “bonanza” farms.
One such organization was the railroad-owned empire
managed by Oliver Dalrymple in the Dakota Territory,
which cultivated 25,000 acres of wheat in 1880.
Dalrymple employed 200 pairs of harrows to prepare
his soil, 125 seeders to sow his seed, and 155 binders to
harvest his crop.
Bonanza farmers could buy supplies wholesale
and obtain concessions from railroads and processors,
but even the biggest organizations could not cope
with prolonged drought, and most of the bonanza
outfits failed in the dry years of the late 1880s. Those
wise farmers who diversified their crops and cultivated
their land intensively fared better in the long run,
although even they could not hope to earn a profit in
really dry years.
Despite the hazards of plains agriculture, the
region became the breadbasket of America in the
decades following the Civil War. By 1889 Minnesota
topped the nation in wheat production, and ten
years later four of the five leading wheat states lay
west of the Mississippi. The plains also accounted
for heavy percentages of the nation’s other cereal
crops, together with immense quantities of beef,
pork, and mutton.
Like other exploiters of the nation’s resources,
farmers took whatever they could from the soil with
little heed for preserving its fertility and preventing
erosion. The consequent national loss was less appar-
ent because it was diffuse and slow to assume drastic
proportions, but it was nonetheless real.Western Railroad Building
Further exploitation of land resources by private
interests resulted from the government’s policy of
subsidizing western railroads. Here was a clear illus-
tration of the conflict between the idea of the West
as a national heritage to be disposed of to deserving
citizens and the concept of the region as a cornu-
copia pouring forth riches to be gathered up and
carted off by anyone powerful and determined
enough to take them. When it came to a choice
between giving a particular tract to railroads or to
homesteaders, the homesteaders nearly always lost
out. On the other hand, the swift development of
western railroads was essential if farmers, miners,
and cattle ranchers were to prosper.
Unless the government had been willing to
build the transcontinental lines itself—and this was
unthinkable in an age dominated by belief in indi-
vidual exploitation—some system of subsidy was
essential. Private investors would not hazard the
huge sums needed to lay tracks across hundreds of
miles of rugged, empty country when traffic over
the road could not possibly profit for many years. It
might appear that subsidizing construction by
direct outlays of public funds would have been
adopted, but that idea had few supporters. Most
voters were wary of entrusting the dispensing of
large sums to politicians. Grants of land seemed a
sensible way of financing construction. The method
avoided direct outlays of public funds, for the com-
panies could pledge the land as security for bond
issues or sell it directly for cash.
In many cases the value of the land granted might
be recovered by the government when it sold other
lands in the vicinity, for such properties would cer-
tainly be worth more after transportation facilities to
eastern markets had been constructed. “Why,” the
governor of one eastern state asked in 1867, “should
private individuals be called upon to make a useless
sacrifice of their means, when railroads can be con-
structed by the unity of public and private interests,
and made profitable to all?”
Federal land grants to railroads began in 1850
with those allotted to the Illinois Central. Over the
next two decades about 49 million acres were given to