Another important factor in bringing about this transformation was the coming of the rail road. In 1830 there were no railroads in the United States. In 1860 there were 30,000 miles in operation and they had penetrated every State east of the Missouri River. They brought the markets of the world near to the Western fields and furnished an outlet to all that could be produced by means of the new farm ma chines. Through the repeal of the English corn laws, English markets were opened to American farm products in 1849. New England factory towns were growing at the same time, so that the factory populations of both Old and New England began to be fed with food grown in our great West.
The joint result of all these changes was an agricultural revolution, not only in this coun try, but in Europe as well. A flood of agricul tural products began to pour into the Eastern markets and later into the European markets. The Eastern farmers and the European farmers began to feel the pressure of the new competi tion. On the more broken and stony farms of New England the farmers were unable to stand the pressure and public attention began to be called to the abandoned farms. This pressure, which began during the period we are now studying, continued and increased during the next period.
The Period of the Settlement of the Far The period from 1860 to begins with the use of horse-drawn machinery well established. Many improvements were made, particularly in reaping and threshing machinery, during this period. The Marsh harvester, the wire binder and the twine binder followed in quick succession. The roller process of manu facturing flour made it possible to manufacture excellent flour out of Northern spring wheat, a thing which had previously been considered impossible. This, together with the improved harvesting and threshing machinery, made it possible to cultivate the vast prairies of the Northwest, making Minneapolis the centre of the flour manufacturing industry. The building of the transcontinental railway lines, most of them projected in advance of settlement through subsidies of government land, still fur ther hastened the settlement of the far West. More important, possibly, than any of these were the homestead laws of 1862 and 1864, al ready referred to, which gave the land free of charge to actual settlers. The tide of settle ment literally swept across the prairies during the seventies, the eighties and the early nineties, all but exterminating the buffalo and crowding the Indians into reservations where they could be protected against the competition of the white man. The settlers were mainly people
from the Eastern and middle Western States, but their numbers were greatly increased by the immigrants from northern Europe who began coming to the United States in unprecedented numbers after the close of the Civil War. Dur ing the decade from 1860 to 1870 there arrived more than 2,000,000 immigrants, nearly 3,000,000 during the decade from 1870 to 1880, and 5,250,000 from 1880 to 1890. During the decade from 1870 to 1880 more than 297,000 re miles were added to the cultivated area of the United States. This is a territory equal to that of Great Britain and France combined.* One result of this rapid expansion of our agricultural area was the disorganization of agriculture in the older States and in Europe. Wheat began to be exported in enormous quan tities, and its price, in consequence, fell to unremunerative levels. While this, and a sim ilar fall in the price of other products, tended to discourage the farmers of the older sections, it did not deter the western settler from the work of extending the agricultural frontier far ther and farther west. Many of the settlers, in fact, had no intention of remaining in the farming business, planning rather to get a piece of government land, hold it for a few years and then sell it at a price which would remunerate them for the time spent. Crops were grown and sold, meanwhile, in order to live until a buyer with a satisfactory price arrived. They lived literally by mining the soil and selling it, rather than by farming. Against this kind of competition the recent buyers of farms found it hard to strive. The result was a vast amount of agricultural discontent. Shameless dema gogues flourished and fattened on this discon tent, telling the farmers that it was the fault of the monetary system, or that it was due to some other more or less occult force rather than to the over-supply of agricultural products. The seventies, the eighties and the early nine ties witnessed several political movements among the farmers of the South and the West, none of which, however, succeeded in seriously modifying the financial system.