ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF THE NEW ERA
With the close of Grant's administration, the main immediate problems
connected with political reconstruction came to an end. During the war,
however, important economic and social developments had been taking
place throughout the United States which were destined to take on
greater and greater significance. The reconstruction problem looked
backward to the war; the new developments looked forward to a new
America. Reconstruction affected fewer and fewer people as time went
on; the later changes ultimately transformed the daily life of every
individual in the nation. Not only did they determine the means by
which he earned his livelihood, but the comforts which he enjoyed, the
conditions of rural or urban life which surrounded him, the ease with
which he visited other portions of the country or obtained information
concerning them, the number and variety of the foreign products that
could be brought to him, the political problems upon which he thought
and voted, and the attitude of the government toward his class in
society. Most of these changes were distinguishable during the
twenty-five years following the war and could be stated in brief and
definite terms.
From the standpoint of population, the growth of the country before
1890, although not so rapid as it had been before the war, was both
constant and important. Between 1870 and 1890 the numbers of people
increased from nearly thirty-nine millions to nearly sixty-three
millions, the rate each decade being not far from twenty-five per cent.
Six states added more than a million each to their population--New York
and Pennsylvania in the Northeast; Ohio, Illinois and Kansas in the
Middle West; and Texas in the South. No fewer than seventeen others
expanded by half a million or more--ten of the seventeen being in the
valley drained by the Mississippi River system.
Detailed study of particular sections of the country discloses a
continuous shifting of population which indicates changes in the
economic life of the people. In northern New England, the numbers
increased slowly. Both Maine and New Hampshire lost from 1860 to 1870;
nearly half of Maine's counties and nearly two-thirds of Vermont's lost
population between 1880 and 1890; the people were abandoning the rural
districts to flock to the cities or migrate to the West. Shipbuilding
fell off in Maine; the dairy interests languished in Vermont, less
wheat was being planted and the farmers, no longer growing wool, were
selling their flocks. Most of the growth was to be found in the
industrial counties. The traditional New England thrift, however, was
not lost with the migration of the people, for savings bank deposits
were increasing, and the state of Vermont was free from debt in 1880,
and all its counties in 1890. The South, between 1870 and 1890,
increased in numbers a little less rapidly than the country as a whole.
On the Atlantic Coast the greatest relative expansion was in Florida;
in the western South, in Texas. The increase was almost wholly native,
as immigration did not flow into that section.
The great expansion of the Middle West, from Ohio to Kansas, was based
upon the public land policy of the federal government. Substantially
all this region had once been in the possession of the United States,
which had early adopted the system of laying out townships six miles
on a side, with subdivisions one mile square, (containing 640 acres),
called sections. An important feature of the policy had been the
encouragement of education and of transportation through the gift
of large grants of the public land. Moreover, settlement had been
stimulated by the disposal of land to purchasers at extremely liberal
figures. In 1862 the famous Homestead Act had inaugurated a still
more generous policy. Under this law the citizen might settle upon a
quarter-section and receive a title after five years of actual
occupation, with no charge other than a slight fee. Millions of acres
were taken up in this way both by natives and by immigrants. 1,300,000
people poured into Illinois between 1870 and 1890; over 1,000,000 into
Kansas, and nearly that number into Nebraska; in the Dakotas a young
man of college age in 1890 might have remembered almost the entire
significant portion of the history of his state and have been one of
the oldest inhabitants. The frontier of settlement advanced from the
western edge of Missouri into mid-Kansas, and almost met the growing
population of the Far West, whose economic possibilities had already
attracted attention.
The discovery of gold-dust in a mill-race in California had drawn the
"Forty-niners" to
... lands of gold
That lay toward the sun.
For a few years fabulous sums of the precious metal had been extracted
from the ground by the hordes of treasure-seekers who had come from
all over the world by boat, pack-animal or "prairie schooner," around
Cape Horn, across the Isthmus of Panama or over the western mountains.
When the yield of the mines had slackened, some of the population had
filtered off to newer fields, but more had settled down to exploit the
agricultural and lumber resources of California. In Nevada a rich vein
of silver called the "Comstock Lode" had been discovered; in 1873 a
group operating the "Virginia Consolidated" mine struck the great
"bonanza," and the output reached unheard of proportions. The success
of the mines, however, was essential to Nevada, which had few other
resources to develop, and when the yield slowed down the population
growth of the state noticeably slackened. In Colorado during the late
fifties some prospectors had struck gold, and another rush had made
"Pike's Peak or Bust" its slogan. Some had returned, "Busted by
Thunder," but others had better fortune, discovered gold, silver or
lead, and helped lay the foundations of Denver and Leadville. In Idaho
and Montana, in Wyoming and South Dakota and other states, prospectors
found gold, silver, copper and lead, and thus attracted much of the
population that later settled down to occupations which were less
feverish and more reliable than mining. In general, the advance of
population into the Middle West was more or less regular, as wave on
wave made its way into the Mississippi Basin; in the Far West,
however, population extended in long arms up the fertile valleys of
Washington, Oregon and California, or was found in scattered islands
where mineral wealth had been discovered in the Rocky Mountain region.
From the standpoint of absolute growth, the expansion of most of the
far western states was not imposing, but the relative increase was
suggestive of the future. Colorado nearly quadrupled in a decade,
(1870-1880), and Washington equalled the record in the following ten
years. California grew faster from 1870 to 1890 than it had done in
the gold days, indicating that its development was based on something
more lasting than a fickle vein of ore. Meanwhile politicians were
fanning the desire of the growing territories to become states, and in
1889 Montana and Washington were admitted, and in the following year
Idaho and Wyoming. Of these, Washington alone had a population
equivalent to the federal ratio for representation in the House.[1]
Utah was kept outside for a few years longer, until the Mormon Church
gave satisfactory indication that anti-polygamy laws were being
enforced.
The migration westward, which has been a constant factor in American
development since early times, continued unabated after the Civil War;
indeed the restless spirit aroused by the four years of conflict
undoubtedly tended to increase this steady shift toward the West. By
1890 approximately a fifth of the native Americans were to be found in
states other than those in which they had been born. 95,000 natives of
Maine, for example, were to be found in Massachusetts; 17,000 were in
California; and considerable numbers in every state between the two.
The North Carolinians were equally well distributed. 43,000 were in
South Carolina, 18,000 in Texas, and 5,500 in Washington. Every state
had contributed to populate every other, although in general the
migration tended to take place on east and west lines, and
predominantly westward.
Within the westward-moving tide of population were swirling
eddies--cities--which tended to attract to themselves larger and larger
proportions of the surrounding people. In 1870 two men in every ten
lived in cities whose population was 8,000 or more; by 1890 another man
in every ten had forsaken rural life. Large cities like Boston and New
York sucked in surrounding districts, and so constituted metropolitan
centers with problems new to American life. Such cities as Birmingham,
Kansas City, and Seattle were just appearing in 1880, but their growth
was very rapid; Los Angeles increased ten fold and Minneapolis
thirteen, between 1870 and 1890; Denver, having received ten newcomers
between 1860 and 1870, added 102,000 in the following twenty years.
In the country as a whole the concentration in cities was most marked
in the area north of the Potomac and Ohio rivers and east of the
Mississippi; the South remained rural, as before the war. With the
growth of urban population came questions of lighting and water supply,
street railway transportation and municipal government, industry,
education, health and morals.[2]
Immigration, another constant factor in American development,
underwent important changes during the twenty-five years from 1865
to 1890. Greater in prosperous years and smaller during years of
depression, the inward tide reached its climax in 1882, when 789,000
aliens reached the new world. That year, in several respects, was a
turning point in the history of immigration into the United States.
It was in this year that the Chinese were excluded; that immigration
from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia became of sufficient size to be
impressive; and that the first inclusive federal immigration act was
passed. The immigration law of 1882 defined, in general, the policy
which the nation has pursued ever since. It placed a tax of fifty
cents on all incomers to be paid by the ship companies; it forbade the
landing of objectionable persons, such as convicts and lunatics; and
it placed on the owners of vessels the expense of returning immigrants
not permitted to land. All these provisions were amended or developed
in later laws, like that of 1885 forbidding persons or corporations to
prepay the transportation of laborers or to encourage immigration
under contract to perform work. The greater part of the foreign
population settled in the manufacturing and urban North. Put into
simplest terms, the census of 1890 showed that of every hundred aliens
who had come to the United States between 1870 and 1890, thirty-seven
were to be found in the states from Maine to Pennsylvania, four from
Delaware to Texas, forty-seven from Ohio to Kansas and twelve in the
Far West (for the most part Chinese).
Of the great economic interests of the United States, the most
widespread was agriculture. In the Northeast, to be sure, the amount
of improved farm land had been growing steadily less since 1850 and
the people had been turning their energies into other activities. In
the South, on the other hand, agriculture formed the main economic
resource and the twenty-five years following the war were, for the
most part, consumed in recovering from that struggle. Although
conditions varied from place to place, the situation in many portions
of the South was little short of pitiable. Not only were factories,
public buildings and railroads, houses and barns, tools and seeds
destroyed, capital and credit gone, mining at a standstill and banks
ruined, but bands of thieves infested many districts, federal officers
were frequently dishonest and defrauded the people, and the entire
labor system was wiped out at a stroke. The negroes had not been ideal
workmen as slaves; now, as freedmen, they found difficulty in
adjusting themselves to the economic obligations of their new status,
and evinced a tendency to rove about restlessly, instead of settling
down to the stern task of helping to rebuild the shattered South.
It was manifest that the first problem was to revive the agricultural
activities of the old days, and that the main resource must be cotton,
the demand for which in the markets of the North and of Europe was
such as to make it the best "money crop." A labor system was
introduced known as share-farming or cropping. Under this system the
plantation owner who had more property than he could cultivate under
the new conditions let parts of his land to tenants, supplying them
with buildings, tools, seed and perhaps credit at the village store
for the supplies necessary for the year. The tenant, who had neither
money nor credit with which to buy land, furnished the labor, and at
the harvest each received a specified share of the product, commonly a
half. The system had its disadvantages; it kept the farmer always in
debt, and since the only valuable security which the plantation owner
had was the crop--the land being almost unsalable--he insisted on
the cultivation of cotton, which was a safe crop, and avoided
experimentation and diversification. On the other hand, the system
enabled the land owner to take advantage of the labor supply and to
supervise the untutored negro,--and it kept the South alive. In
addition to the large plantations, cultivated by several tenant
farmers, the number of small farms tilled by independent owners or
renters increased. Due to this tendency and to the opening of many
small holdings in the Southwest, the size of the average farm
diminished, so that the small farmer began to replace the plantation
owner as the typical southerner.
Owing to the insistence of land owners upon cotton culture, the South
first caught up with its _ante-bellum_ production in the cultivation
of this staple, for shortly before 1880 the crop exceeded that of
1860. The production of tobacco, the second great southern crop,
sharply shifted after the war from the Atlantic Coast states, except
North Carolina, to the Mississippi region, especially to Kentucky.
Maryland, indeed, never again produced much more than half as great a
crop as she did in 1860, while Virginia did not equal her former
record until the opening of the twentieth century, although the South
as a whole recovered in the late eighties. Rice culture, likewise, did
not recover readily for South Carolina alone produced almost as much
in 1860 as the entire South in 1890, and not until the development of
production in Louisiana after 1890 did the crop assume its former
importance. The production of sugar in Louisiana in 1890 was but
little greater than it had been in 1860, and in the production of
cereals the South did not keep pace with the upper Mississippi Valley
before 1890. On the other hand the rapid growth of Texas was one of
the outstanding features of southern development during the period,
for that state improved an amount of farm land between 1870 and 1890,
roughly equivalent to the combined areas of New Hampshire, Vermont,
and Massachusetts. There was observable, moreover, a certain
hopefulness, a certain resiliency of purpose, a pride in the
achievements of the past and in the possibilities of the future. In
these respects the South was a new South by 1890.
Greater than the South as a food-producing area, was the belt of
states from Ohio and Michigan to Kansas and the Dakotas:
Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing,
That's where the West begins.
The increased occupation of the public lands, the growth of population,
improvements in transportation and the greater use of agricultural
machinery, which could be employed to advantage on the large and
relatively level farms, led to developments that were destined to have
an important effect on the history of the nation. Agricultural
machinery, such as the reaper, had been known long before the war, but
the reduction of the labor supply from 1861 to 1865 had compelled
farmers to replace men with machines. A reaper that merely cut the
grain and tossed it aside, gave way at last to one which not only cut
the grain, but gathered it into sheaves and bound the sheaves with
twine. So great was the effect of the harvester upon western
agriculture that William H. Seward declared that it "pushed the
frontier westward at the rate of thirty miles a year."
Due to the facts already mentioned, the number of mid-western farms
increased nearly a million from 1870 to 1890, and the acreage in
improved farm land grew by an amount equivalent to the combined areas
of the British Isles, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, with a
generous margin to spare. The production of corn, wheat, oats and other
cereals became so great as to demand an outlet to the East and to the
markets of the world. Elevators for the storage of grain were
constructed with a capacity of 300,000 to 1,000,000 bushels, and
improvements were made in the methods of loading and unloading the
product. Despite the growth of the agricultural interests of the Middle
West, however, the farmer did not reach prosperity. For twenty years
after 1873 prices fell steadily both in the United States and in other
countries of the world, and the agricultural classes found themselves
receiving a smaller and smaller return for their products. Unrest grew
to distress, and distress to acute depression, while the demands of the
farmers for relief frequently determined the trend of mid-western
politics.[3]
[Illustration:
Relative Prices--1865-1890]
Less general than agriculture, but more characteristic of the period
after the war, was the development of manufacturing. The census of 1870
was faulty and inadequate, but it was sufficiently accurate to indicate
that the manufacturing region was preeminently that north of the
Potomac-Ohio river line and east of the Mississippi. By 1890 it was
apparent that the industrial interests were shifting slightly toward
the West; nevertheless the leading states were those of southern New
England, and New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In these states no
fewer than four hundred and forty-seven industries employed more than a
million dollars of capital each. The manufacturing of cotton, woolen
and silk for the rest of the country was done here; foundry products,
iron and steel manufactures, silver and brass goods, refined petroleum,
boots and shoes, paper and books, with a host of other articles, were
sent from this section to every part of the world. All along the line,
from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, capital engaged in manufacturing
doubled between 1880 and 1890, and the number of employees greatly
increased.
Although the industrial life of the South belongs, for the most part,
to the years since 1890, the coal and iron deposits of Alabama were
known and utilized before that year, the number of cotton mill spindles
in North Carolina tripled between 1880 and 1890, and cotton expositions
were held in Atlanta in 1881 and New Orleans in 1884. It was in the
eighties, also, that the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and the Norfolk
and Western led to the exploitation of the coal deposits of Virginia
and West Virginia, especially the famous Pocahontas field.
Some aspects of the growth of manufacturing in the North are well
illustrated in the development of the mineral resources around Lake
Superior. The presence of copper and iron in this region had long been
known, but they had not been utilized until a decade before the Civil
War, and even then the output had been greatly restricted by
insufficient transportation facilities. By the close of the war,
however, a canal had been constructed which allowed the passage of
barges from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, and railroads had been laid to
a few important mining centers. The Marquette iron range in northern
Michigan, the Gogebic in Wisconsin and Michigan, the Menominee near
Marquette, the Vermilion Lake and Mesabec ore-beds near Duluth,--all
these combined to yield millions of tons of ore, caused the development
of numerous mining towns and laid the foundations of a gigantic
expansion in the production of steel. As the iron and steel industry
with its furnaces, machinery and skilled labor was already established
at points in Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania, it was cheaper to
transport the ore to these places than to transfer the industry to the
mines. Ore vessels were constructed capable of carrying mammoth
cargoes; docks, railroads and canals were built; and the products of
the mines taken to lake and inland cities. Improvements, meanwhile,
were being continually made in the steel industry, such as the Bessemer
process, by which the impurities were burned out of the iron ore, and
exactly enough carbon introduced into the molten metal to transform it
into steel.
Although the steel industry was established in many places, its most
dramatic growth occurred in those parts of eastern Ohio and western
Pennsylvania that center about the city of Pittsburg. Placed
strategically at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers
join to form the Ohio, in the midst of an area rich in coal, petroleum
and natural gas, Pittsburg rapidly became the center of a region in
which the development of manufacturing and the construction of
railroads dwarfed other interests. A large portion of the ore mined in
the Lake Superior fields was carried to the Pittsburg district to be
transformed into steel products of all kinds. Moreover, the fortunes
made by private individuals in the region, and the inflow of alien
laborers to work in the factories and on the railroads raised weighty
social and industrial problems.
Manifestly the extension of agriculture and industry in so large a
country as the United States was dependent upon the corresponding
growth of the means of transportation, both by water and by rail. A
detailed account of the expansion of the railway net, with the
accompanying' implications in the fields of finance and politics, is a
matter for later consideration. Certain of its general features may be
mentioned, however, because they are intimately interwoven with the
economic developments which have just been explained. The concentration
of the population in the cities, of which New York and Chicago were
outstanding examples, was one of these features. From the time of the
first census, the city of New York continued to maintain its position
as the most populous city of the nation. Between 1850 and 1890 it added
a round million to its numbers, containing 1,515,000 persons at the
later date. Moreover it was the center of a thriving and thickly
settled region extending from New Haven on the one side to Philadelphia
on the other--the most densely populated area in America. The
uninterrupted expansion of the city indicated that the reasons for its
growth were constant in their operation. And, in fact, the reasons were
not difficult to find. It was blessed with one of the world's finest
harbors and had access to the interior of the state by way of the
Hudson and Mohawk rivers. These natural advantages had long since been
recognized and had been increased by the construction of the Erie Canal
in 1825 which, with the Great Lakes and the several canals connecting
the Lakes with the Ohio Valley, had given New York an early hold and
almost a monopoly on the trade between the upper Mississippi, the Lakes
and the coast. The city, therefore, became an importing and exporting
center; its shipping interests grew, immigration flowed in, and its
manufacturing establishments soon outstripped those of any other
industrial center; the great printing and publishing, banking and
commercial firms were drawn irresistibly to the most populous city, and
Wall Street became the synonym for the financial center of the nation.
In 1840 Chicago had been an unimportant settlement of 4500 persons, but
by the opening of the war it had grown to twenty-five times that size,
and added 800,000 between 1870 and 1890. It had early become evident
that the city was the natural outlet toward the East for the grain
trade and the slaughtering and meatpacking industry of the upper
Mississippi Valley. Before the late sixties, however, railway
connection was defective, being composed of many short lines rather
than of one continuous road, so that freight had to be loaded and
unloaded many times during its passage to the seaboard. This situation,
which had been merely inconvenient before the war, had become little
short of intolerable during the struggle, because the closing of the
Mississippi had cut off from the Middle West its water outlet toward
the South and had diverted more freight to the railroads. After the
war, Cornelius Vanderbilt, president of the Hudson River Railroad,
combined a number of the shorter roads so as to give uninterrupted
communication between Chicago and New York, to tap the trade of the
Mississippi Valley, and to compete with water traffic by way of the
Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Other railroads saw the possibilities
in the western trade, and the Baltimore and Ohio, the Grand Trunk, and
the Erie followed the lead of Vanderbilt. A similar development,
although on a smaller scale, accompanied the growth of other northern
cities. The retroactive effects of the roads on the distribution of the
population are too detailed for discussion, but a single example may
typify many. In 1870 the Maine farmer supplied much of the meat
consumed in Boston; by 1895, he was getting his own meat from the West.
He must, therefore, adapt himself to the new conditions if he could,
move to the manufacturing cities as so many of his neighbors did, or
migrate to the West.
Like the growth of New York and Chicago, the development of California
had an important effect on the history of American railway
transportation. Although it had been agitated for many years, the
project for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast had
not reached the construction stage until the congressional acts of 1862
and 1864 provided for a line to be built from Omaha to San Francisco.
The Union Pacific Railroad had been incorporated to build the eastern
end, while the western end was to be constructed by the Central Pacific
Railroad Company, a California corporation. The latter act, that of
1864, had given the roads substantial financial assistance and half the
public land on a strip forty miles wide along the line of the track.
Many difficulties had stood in the way--lack of funds, problems of
construction and inadequate labor supply. Eventually they had all been
overcome by the energy and skill of such men as Stanford, Crocker and
Huntington. Imported Chinese coolies had met the labor demand and
construction was speeded up. Actual building had begun in 1863 and six
years later the two roads met at Promontory Point near Ogden in Utah,
where the last spike was driven, the engines
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back.
During the four years following the completion of the transcontinental
line, 24,000 miles of new railroad were constructed, much of which was
built into the wilderness ahead of settlement. So great an expansion,
coming at a time when immense stretches of new land were being opened
and industry being developed on a large scale, could hardly fail to
result in over-speculation. The results appeared in 1873. Jay Cooke and
Company, the most important financial concern in the country had been
back of the Northern Pacific Railroad, marketing large quantities of
its bonds and so providing capital for construction, the purchase of
equipment, the payment of wages and so on. Obviously a large amount of
money was thus being put into an enterprise from which returns would
come only after a considerable period; and yet construction had to be
continued, or what was already invested would be lost. What Cooke was
doing for the Northern Pacific was being done for the Chesapeake and
Ohio by Fisk and Hatch, and by other firms for speculative enterprises
in every corner of the land.
The process of putting capital into fixed form could hardly go on
forever, and several events led to a final crash. In 1871 and 1872
great fires in Chicago and Boston destroyed millions of dollars' worth
of property. Early in 1873 the government investigation of the Credit
Mobilier Company led to widespread distrust of the roads and made
investors conservative about buying bonds. On September 18, 1873, Jay
Cooke and Company found itself unable to continue business and closed
its doors. The failure was a thunderbolt to the financial world.
Indeed, so unbelievable was the news that an energetic policeman
arrested a small newsboy who shouted his "Extra--All about the failure
of Jay Cooke."
If Jay Cooke and Company fell, the sky might fall. People rushed to
withdraw their funds from the banks. Fisk and Hatch opened their doors
for fifteen minutes and received calls for $1,500,000. They closed at
once. The smaller financial institutions followed the bigger ones.
Stocks fell, the Exchange was closed, there was a money famine.
Industrial concerns, dependent on the banks, failed by scores.
Industrial paralysis, with railroad receiverships, laborers out of
employment, riots and their accompaniments, showed how deep-seated had
been the trouble. Not until late in the decade did business recover its
former prosperity.
With the return of more stable conditions the construction of railroads
continued unabated. The Northern Pacific ran near the Canadian line and
connected the upper Mississippi Valley with the coast, carrying in its
trail the manners and customs of the East. Two lines in the South were
extended to the Pacific, so that by the middle eighties four great main
avenues gave passage through a region over which, so recently, the
miner and the trapper had forced a dangerous path.
The fact that it was often necessary, in building the railroads across
the plains, to detail half the working force to protect the remainder
against the Indians, calls attention to one unmistakable result of the
conquest of the Far West. The construction of the railroads spelled the
doom of the wild Indian. Far back in 1834 the government had adopted
the policy of setting aside large tracts of land west of the
Mississippi for the use of the Indian tribes. Most of the savages had
been stationed in an immense area between southern Minnesota and Texas,
while other smaller reservations had been scattered over most of the
states west of the river. On the whole, the government had dealt with
the Indians in tribes, not as individuals. The rapid inflow of
population to the fertile lands, together with the rush of prospectors
to newly discovered supplies of gold and silver, caused increasing
demands from the Indians for protection, and from the whites for the
extinguishment of Indian land titles.
The classical illustration of this tendency is found in the case of the
Sioux Indians in South Dakota. The discovery of gold in the region of
the Black Hills, on the Sioux reservation, aroused agitation for the
removal of the tribe to make way for settlers and miners. But the
execution of the scheme was not so simple as its conception. The
removal of the Sioux necessitated the transfer of the Poncas, a
peaceful tribe which lay immediately east. The latter, not unnaturally,
objected, quarrels arose and eventually the Poncas were practically
broken to pieces. The Sioux, not satisfied, attempted to regain the
Black Hills, fought the famous Sioux War of 1876, led by Sitting Bull,
but were crushed and forced to give up the unequal contest.
It would not be worth while to enter into the details of the numerous
Indian conflicts after the Civil War. It is enough to notice that
stirring accounts of them may be read in the memoirs of such soldiers
as Custer, Sheridan and Miles, and that they cost millions of dollars
and hundreds of lives. Finally it became evident that the attempt to
deal with the Indians in tribes was a failure and it was determined to
break up the tribal holdings of land so as to give each individual a
small piece for his private property, and to open the remainder to
settlement by the whites. In pursuance of such a policy, the Dawes Act
of 1887 provided for the allotment of a quarter-section to each head of
a family, with the proviso that the owner should not sell the land
within twenty-five years. This was intended to protect the Indian from
shrewd "land-sharks." Citizenship was given with the ownership of the
land, in the hope that a sort of assimilation might gradually take
place, and earnest attempts were made to provide education for the
red-man. Not all these hopes were realized, however, and the later
Burke Act, 1906, attempted further protection.
While the Indian was being restricted to a small part of the great
region west of the Mississippi, there was being enacted on the plains
one of the most picturesque of all American dramas. Beyond the settled
parts of the states just west of the "Father of Waters," bounded north
and south by Canada and the Rio Grande, and extending west to the Rocky
Mountain foot-hills, lay a huge empire of rolling territory. It was
grass-covered, but lacked sufficient rainfall to make it fertile, so
that it was considered, as part of it had early been called, "the great
American desert."
Cattle turned loose long before by Spanish ranchers down in the
Southwest had multiplied, spread out over the plains, and run
wild--wild as Texas steers. A combination of circumstances disclosed
the fact that these cattle could be improved by breeding, corraled and
driven north over the "Long Trail," to be slaughtered in Omaha, Kansas
City, St. Louis and Chicago for the people of eastern cities. The
round-up, when the cattle were collected; the drive, under command of
the boss and his cow-boys,
loose in the unfenced blue riding the sunset rounds;
the great ranches in the North, where the herds were fattened for the
market;--all this formed the background of an attractive romance.
Obviously, however, the drive was dependent on great stretches of open
country, with free grazing and free access to water, and it is also
manifest that these conditions could not long endure in the face of
constant westward migration. Homesteaders followed the railroads out
across the plains, and the cheapening of wire fence led to the
enclosure of great farms including the best grazing lands and the water
supply. By 1890, therefore, the great drives were a tale that is told.
The less romantic packing business remained, however; ranches supplied
the cattle, the railroads transported them, and improvements in
refrigerating and canning made possible another development in domestic
and foreign trade.
In addition to the expansion of the several economic interests of the
various sections of the country, inventions and improvements were
taking place which affected the general problems of production and
distribution. Improvements in machinery saved forty to eighty per cent.
of the time and labor demanded in the production of important
manufactured goods. Cheapened steel affected all kinds of industry. The
development of steam-power and the beginnings of the practical use of
electricity for power and light multiplied the effectiveness of human
hands or added to human comfort. Cheaper and quicker transportation
almost revolutionized the distribution of economic goods. The increased
use of the telegraph and cable shortened distances and brought together
producers and consumers that had in earlier times been weeks of travel
apart.
The necessarily statistical character of an account of economic
development should not obscure the meaning of its details. Increased
population, with its horde of incoming aliens, created a demand for
standing room, necessitated westward expansion, and made the West more
than ever a new country with new problems. The growth of agriculture
enlarged a class that had not hitherto been as influential as it was
destined to be, and brought into politics the economic needs of the
farmer. Manufacturing brought great wealth into the hands of a few,
created an increasing demand for protective tariffs and gave rise to
strikes and other industrial problems. The concentration of especial
interests in especial sections made likely the emergence of sectional
antagonisms. Back of tariff and finance, therefore, back of
transportation and labor, of new political parties and revolts in the
old ones, of the great strikes and the increasing importance of some of
the sections, lay the economic foundations of the new era.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
No thorough study of the economic history of the United States after
the Civil War has yet been made. E.L. Bogart, _Economic History of the
United States_ (1907), and various later editions, is the best single
volume; E.E. Sparks, _National Development_ (1907), is useful. On the
South, consult articles by St. G.L. Sioussat, in _History Teachers'
Magazine_ (Sept., Oct., 1916); P.A. Bruce, _Rise of the New South_
(1905); J.C. Ballagh (ed.), _South in the Building of the Nation_
(1909), vol. VI; M.B. Hammond, _Cotton Industry_ (1897). R.P. Porter,
_West from the Census of 1880_ (1882), is a useful compendium. The
Plains in the day of the cowboy are well described in Emerson Hough,
_Passing of the Frontier_ (1918); Emerson Hough, _Story of the Cowboy_
(1898); F.L. Paxson, _Last American Frontier_ (1910); and F.L. Paxson,
"The Cow Country," in _American Historical Review_, Oct., 1916. N.A.
Miles, _Serving the Republic_ (1911), contains reminiscences of Indian
conflicts. On the Far West, in addition to Porter, Hough and Paxson,
Katharine Coman, _Economic Beginnings of the Far West_ (2 vols., 1912);
H.K. White, _Union Pacific Railway_ (1898); L.H. Haney, _Congressional
History of Railways_ (2 vols., 1908-1910); S.E. White, _The
Forty-Niners_ (1918).
There is also an abundance of useful illustrative fiction, such as:
Bret Harte, _Luck of Roaring Camp_, and other stories (Far West);
Edward Eggleston, _Hoosier Schoolmaster_ (Indiana); W.D. Howells,
_Rise of Silas Lapham_ (New England); G.W. Cable, _Old Creole Days_
(New Orleans); C.E. Craddock, _In the Tennessee Mountains_; F.H.
Smith, _Colonel Carter_ (Virginia); Hamlin Garland, _Main Travelled
Roads_ and _Son of the Middle Border_ (Middle West); P.L. Ford, _Hon.
Peter Sterling_ (New York); S.E. White, _Gold_ (California); and
_Riverman_ (Lake Superior lumber); John Hay, _Breadwinners_ (industrial).
For other references to economic aspects of the period, see chapters
IX, XI, XIV.
* * * * *
[1] The ratio was 151,912 but, by a provision of the Constitution,
states are given a representative even if they do not contain the
requisite number.
[2] The most important advances in municipal street railway
transportation were made between 1875 and 1890. In 1876 New York began
the construction of an overhead or elevated railway on which trains
were drawn by small locomotives. The first electric street railways
were operated in Richmond, Va., and in Baltimore. Electric street
lighting was introduced in San Francisco in 1879.
[3] Hamlin Garland, _Main Travelled Roads_, portrays the hardships of
western farm life.