Chapter 13, sec.2, guided reading

A. As you read this section, note how each of the factors listed below (Causes) helped to settle the West and turned the eastern Great Plains into the nation’s “breadbasket” (Effects).


Cause: 1. Land grants given to the railroads.
Effect: It gave many job opportunities to civil war vets, Irish and Chinese immigrants, African Americans and Mexican Americans. After 15 years there was five transcontinental railroads

Cause: 2. The Homestead Act and related laws passed in the 1870s.
Effect: After the homestead acts happened up to 600,000 families and many African Americans came to take the free land. Government agents and private speculators took advantage of this too. miners claimed natural resources, cattlemen fenced up open land.

Cause: 3. Inventions and improvements in farm technology.
Effect: Because of the steel plow, reaping machine, spring tooth harrow, grain drill, barbed wire and the corn binder harvesting grain and keeping control of cattle and keeping pests away from the farmers grain became a lot easier.

Cause: 4. The Morrill Land Grant Acts and Hatch Act.
Effect: Federal land was given to the states in order to set up schools. Agricultural researchers came up with ways to plant grain for arid soil and better techniques for dry farming, this helped the land retain moisture.

B. What were some hardships faced by frontier farmers?
The farmers had extremely dry land to work on, making it hard for crops. Wood was scarce, they had to use mud and sides of hills to build homes. Also machinery was expensive and farmers had to borrow money to pay for them. Prices were never constant, they would go up and down and the profits from the grain was all the farmers had to rely on. Shipping grain prices were also going up. Lots of farmers went into debt.

C. Explain homesteader, soddy, and bonanza farm.
A bonanza farm is a enormous single crop spread of 15000-50000 acres.
A homesteader was a citizen who took advantage of the free land during the homestead acts
A soddy was a home built from blocks of prairie turf.