The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Railroads and the Economy 339

for many years before 1850, but development had
been slow because it was remote from navigable waters
and had no timber. In 1840 the three counties imme-
diately northeast of Springfield had a population of
about 8,500. They produced about 59,000 bushels of
wheat and 690,000 bushels of corn. In the next
decade the region grew slowly by the standards of that
day: The three counties had about 14,000 people in
1850 and produced 71,000 bushels of wheat and
2.2 million bushels of corn. Then came the railroad
and with it an agricultural revolution. By 1860 the
population of the three counties had soared to over
38,000, wheat production had topped 550,000 bushels,
and corn 5.7 million bushels.
Access to world markets gave the farmers of the
upper Mississippi Valley an incentive to increase output.
Land was plentiful and cheap, but farm labor was scarce;
consequently agricultural wages rose sharply, especially
after 1850. New tools and machines appeared in time to
easethe labor shortage. First came the steel plowshare,
invented by John Deere, a Vermont-born blacksmith
who had moved to Illinois in 1837. The prairie sod was

tough and sticky, but Deere’s smooth metal plows cut

through it easily. In 1839 Deere turned out ten such

plows in his little shop in Moline, Illinois. By 1857 he

was selling 10,000 a year.

Still more important was the perfection of the

mechanical reaper, for wheat production was lim-

ited more by the amount that farmers could handle

during the brief harvest season than by the acreage

they could plant and cultivate. The major figure in

the development of the reaper was Cyrus Hall

McCormick. McCormick’s horse-drawn reaper bent

the grain against the cutting knife and then

deposited it neatly on a platform, whence it could

easily be raked into windrows. With this machine,

two workers could cut fourteen times as much

wheat as with scythes.

McCormick prospered, but despite his patents,

he could not keep other manufacturers out of the

business. Competition led to continual improvement

of the machines and kept prices within the reach of

most farmers. Installment selling added to demand.

By 1860 nearly 80,000 reapers had been sold; their

Railroads

Union States, 1861

TEXAS Confederate States, 1861

CANADA

LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS

MISSOURI

IOWA

WISCONSIN

MINNESOTA

MICHIGAN

INDIANA

OHIO

(West Virginia,

ILLINOIS State 1863)

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMA

FLORIDA

UNORGANIZED

TERRITORY

NEBRASKA

TERRITORY

NEBRASKA

TERRITORY

KANSAS

TERRITORY

KANSAS

TERRITORY

UNORGANIZED

TERRITORY

GEORGIA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NORTH

CAROLINA

VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIA N.J.

CONN.

MASS.

VERMONT

N.H.

MAINE

R.I.

MARYLANDDELAWARE

Gulf of

Mexico

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Milwaukee

Chicago Fort Wayne

Nashville

Railroads, 1860Major trunk lines carrying long-distance traffic crisscrossed the area east of the Mississippi. The

North had a more extensive rail grid than the South; the North and West were linked, while the South was not as

tightly connected to the national economy.