Agriculture And Gender Inequality In The United States

By the late 1800s, America was transitioning from an economy based on agriculture to one based on industry. Although this transformation made the United Stated richer and more powerful than it had ever been before, it caused farmers to face numerous problems to which they found themselves unable to successfully overcome. Even though many farmers moved into the industrial workforce, the ones who wished to continue agricultural work faced problems such as overproduction and tariff policies. Also, the farmers lost their political power due to the decreased focus on agriculture.

If people didn’t have farming and agricultural production they wouldn’t have all the different sorts of food products they do, nor would they be as abundant. Life would be like it was before the Industrial Revolution came about and most of us would still be growing our own food and barely scraping by in life.

Technology greatly transformed American agriculture from just plain farming to commercial farming. The mechanization of farming made farming easier and more profitable. As shown in Document D technology was helping farmers, making farming more easier and they were able to do many jobs quicker. But, Farmers couldn’t afford to send crops to other places At the beginning of the 1840s the railroad began to transform American agriculture, by the 1860’s all states east of the Mississippi had rail service. As shown in Document B there were multiple railroads all around the country. The farmers were ecstatic about this new technology because they could send their crops to other areas, when before they didn’t have the money to be able to do so. Other new technologies were arriving such as the mechanical reaper and the steel plow.

Other than overproduction, another economic issue that drastically effected farmers was the Panic of 1893 that left millions of Americans unemployed, hungry, and homeless. In Susan Orcutt’s leter to Lorenzo D. Lewelling, she states, “I had the prettiest garden that you ever seen and the hail ruined it and I have nothing to look at my husband went a way to find work and came home last night and told me that would have to Starve he has bin in ten countys and did not get no work.” (Document H). Economic conditions such as overproduction, the Panic of 1893, and sharecropping systems that developed from it only led to the downfall of farmers.

Following the Civil War, a second industrial revolution in America brought many changes to the nation’s agriculture sector. The new technologies that were created transformed how farmers worked and the way in which the sector functioned. Agriculture expanded and became more industrial. Meanwhile government policies, or lack of them for a while, and hard economic conditions put difficult strains on farmers and their occupation. These changes in technology, economic conditions, and government policy from 1865 to 1900 transformed and improved agriculture while leaving farmers in hardship.

From 1880-1906, western farmers were affected by multiple issues that they saw as threats to their way of life. The main threats to the farmers were railroads, trusts, and the government, because these institutions all had the power to drastically affect the ability of the farmers to make profits. Therefore, the farmers were not wrong to feel frustration toward those institutions when the institutions caused the farmers to live lives of increasingly extreme poverty.

During the Industrial era, the government practiced a laissez-faire policy towards businesses, free land grants to railroads and a high tariff as well were established. All of these did not help the farmers at all because of their need to support themselves and their families. Life was hard in the west for the average farmer, most of which were barely making any money. Mary E. Lease states, “We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop they told us to; and what came of it?” (Doc. 3). Lease continues by listing many different crops farmers grew but with very little money in return. For a group of people to put so much effort into one harvest but make virtually nothing from it is very disturbing. That is when many people realized their situation and after a year or so, gave up and went to work in a factory. Nowadays, almost everyone would agree with how dire the economic status was and that a change was needed. Moreover, farmers who used the railroads were affected economically. The distance between an eastern market and a mid-western farm is about one thousand miles or more. Before the introduction of the railroads, it was very expensive and very difficult to ship food at those great lengths. However, all that changed during the Industrial era. Farmers now had to only move their product to the closest train to bring it eastward, but that

After the end of the Civil War, the farmers who were in the South and plains states had suffered economic and social conditions. The main source of problems were from a decrease in the prices caused from overproduction and growing competition for world markets. Farmers believed the system was becoming

During the time period of 1865-1900 American agriculture changed greatly. Several components such as technology, government policy, and economic conditions caused agriculture to transform in the way it did. The main advancements in technology were new farming machinery and the growth in the railroad, both benefited the farmers grow and move crops. The government policies seemed to never favor the farmers, they passed laws making it harder for farmers to make a living. The economic conditions for farmers became rough due to the price of crops dropping from overproduction.

They were paid not to produce crops on as much land. This was supposed to lower the supply of crops and increase prices, which would help farmers. This decision came with consequences. America had to become “a major food- importing nation” (67) because farmers were not producing enough crops. Also since the farmers were gaining that meant that the consumer was losing. The prices of things like clothing and food greatly increased. This meant that many Americans were forced to wear old clothes and go hungry because they could not afford to pay the high prices. Since less merchandise was being sold, a lot of people who were employed in places like mills and textile companies lost their jobs. Also tenants of cotton plantations were left unemployed due to farms not using as much land.

Brilliant farming ideas came out of the Agricultural Revolution, but there were also negative effects. One negative effect would have to be that farmers would need larger amounts of raw goods in order to maintain their increasing outputs.

Before industrialization, we depended heavily on farmers; they would grow crops so we could survive and live peacefully, but because of industrialization we faced other problems, the Gilded Age. This age has the farmers facing many problems: tariffs, taxes, shelter, money, etc. Farmers are unable to survive in this situation. Based on the article, Overview of the Gilded Age, “Many farmers blamed railroad owners, grain elevator operators, land monopolists, commodity futures

Agriculture, having the many advantages of growing populations and specializations also brought disadvantages like sexual inequality and social inequality

This left the American farmers over-producing, because they were not seling any of their produce. Many farmers ended up being deeply in debt, and they were not making any money. In the end many farmers could not afford to keep their farms, so the were taken away. But the farmers did not have the skills required to get another job. Another big problem in America was prohibition.

By studying the societies before the Agricultural Revolution, it is clear that the corruption of the man and the lack of an egalitarian view of people, happened gradually and the reason for that is power. And for that, the Europeans were hungry