O Pioneer Hardships

Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.

Year by year the farmers who lived on soil, whose returns were diminished by unrotated crops were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture.

A major drought, over-cultivation, and a country suffering from one of the greatest depressions in history are all it took to displace hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners and send them, and everything they had, out west. The Dust Bowl ruined crops all across the Great Plains region, crops that people depended on for survival. When no food could be grown and no money could be made, entire families, sometimes up to 8 people or more, packed up everything they had and began the journey to California, where it was rumored that jobs were in full supply. Without even closing the door behind them in some cases, these families left farms that had been with them for generations, only to end up in a foreign place where they were neither welcomed

Alexandra dealt with criticism not only from other farmers but even from her own brother’s. Lou turned to his brother. "This is what comes of letting a woman meddle in business," he said bitterly. We ought to have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her” (Cather). She only wanted the best for their family and to respect her father’s wishes but her own brother’s doubted her time and time again. Even though she did not have full support of her family she knew that she was going to stay on their land and that they would eventually begin to prosper again.

Despite the flushed predictions of prosperity that had lured new settlers to the plains, the reality was more difficult. The farmers claimed that they did not have enough land, money, and transportation (Doc C). The farmers went into in a never ending cycle if they did not have a good harvest. As Booker Washington explains the farmers had no money so they had to borrow money from the banks which charged 12 to 30 percent interest. The interest the farmers were hit with was nearly impossible to repay so they had to mortgage everything and if the mortgage wasn’t paid the land was foreclosure which led the yeomen to become tenant farmers (Doc B). With periods of drought growing good crops was hard. Leading Economic Sectors shows how the farmers predicament of not being able to make a very

The Oregon Trail was a very important aspect in the history of our country’s development. When Marcus and Narcissa Whitman made the first trip along the Oregon Trail, many Americans saw a window of opportunity. The Oregon Trail was the only practical way to pass through the Rockies. Pioneers crammed themselves into small wagons to try to make it to the unsettled land; however, 10% of these pioneers died on the way due to disease and accidents.

Life is full of challenges. In the stories, “Breaking Through Uncertainty-Welcoming Adversity” and “Neighbours,” written by Jim McCormick and Lien Chao, the main characters illustrate benefits derived from taking risks. Even though both people in these texts undergo personal challenges, in “Neighbours” the character, Sally, receives greater benefits from taking risks than McCormick in “Breaking Through Uncertainty-Welcoming Adversity”.

After the Civil War there were many factors that contributed the changes that occurred in farming in America. Among them was the drive for the South to renew and regain what had been lost due to the war. Leaders saw it as a time to diversify and turn towards industrialization. The Industrial revolution was underway and with it brought many new inventions that would lead to growth in the farming industry. The wide open space between the East and the West called “The Frontier” was open for homesteading. New immigrants with their farming knowledge and ability were flooding the East and West gates of the U.S. This was a time in American history when Americans

The weather for this family living in Kansas was not great at all. Due to the drought in the south lead to dust storms that destroyed crops. Crops then turned to dust which meant that there was no food to be sent out. Because of the Dust Bowl, homes were buried, there was no food to be served, not many jobs and most people were either sick because of bad air quality, or unemployed. Since the crops that farmers had were ruined by the drought and the dust bowl, they had no food for themselves or to exchange for other food or supplies they needed. Soup kitchens and breadlines offered free or low cost food for people. Many farmers migrated to California and other Pacific coast states because of being in a bad state of living where they were at.

The land around us provides us with food, water, shelter, and nutrients, but we cannot live in an untouched environment. We must mold the land to meet our physical needs, yet we cannot be too ruthless and overwork the land. In O Pioneers! the farmers settle on the Divide, farming and forcing the land to produce the food they needed to survive, but the majority of the farmers have no luck. After a full twenty years, the tables finally turn and Alexandra explains to Carl how she has become rich from doing almost nothing at all: “We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor

Farmers needed strong animals such as oxen and horses to pull the plows on the ground to make the land farmable. As a result to the wet and dry temperatures, grasshoppers would feast on the limited amount of crops grown on the farms. “This year we had another very dry season resulting in the light crops on which the grasshoppers came down by multiplied millions…the grasshoppers came I such swarms that they looked in the distance like fast-gathering rain clouds flying through the air... the grain was completely hid from sight… the grasshoppers would take meat, bread and other things from the table” (13). The houses on the farms that were made of sod were not very stable and attracted bugs. The bugs lived in the sod walls and roof. “In moving into all kinds of houses we find that all kinds of insects that prey upon human blood. One house we found… the bugs sailed out upon us by the hundreds… we killed more the two hundred besides the many we had deprived of life before beginning to count” (13). The living conditions of the newly relocated families were unimaginable. The limited food they were able to grow due to the inclement weather was eaten by grasshoppers, and the unstable sod houses were infested with bugs. The farmer’s lives were made easier by the extreme investment by the United States government in the railroad industry. This way their crops could be shipped to different parts of the

Social classes created issues in both political and social ways during the first half of the nineteenth century. Majority of people who moved west were seeking new opportunities or a new chance to make a name for themselves. Those who decided to venture to the land of opportunities often packed all their belongings into a wagon and spent months living in a cramped area with all their family members (Document G). This lifestyle was hard, and if they did not stay on schedule, some got caught in the mountains for the winter and ended up like the Donner party. Once they made it through the mountains and to the land in the west, they were often characterized as happy by historians. Enos Christman stated in his journal entries that “Happy valley seems to derive its name from the merry character of its citizens who all live in tents, doing their own cooking and washing, and sleeping on the ground” (Document I). On the downside of the westward movement, the venture was often deadly and miserable. Many believed a

W.E.B Du Bois once stated “to be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships” (qtd. in Rodgers 1). The Native American culture is often overlooked by many people in the United States today. What many people do not realize is that about twenty-five percent of Native Americans are living in poverty (Rodgers 1). A majority of the poverty among Native Americans is due to the United States breaking treaties that promised funds for their tribes. When non-Native Americans first began migrating to North America, the Indians were slowly having their land stripped away from them, and being pushed to live on small, poorly kept reservations. As well as taking

The development of sharecropping was associated with the endless debt cycles that afflicted the entire South well into the twentieth century. The freedmen endured an economic status likened to peonage, (Bowles, 2011) in addition to having their hopes for political and social equality dashed. The entire South suffered, it was the freedmen who paid the highest price. Ignorant and impoverished, they were easy targets for exploitation by landlords (Bowles, 2011) and merchants alike; moreover, their options were limited by the overt racism in the South, legal restrictions and partiality. Sharecropping resulted from the intense explicit or implicit desire of white Southerners to keep blacks subservient to them. African Americans possessed few skills, and those they did possess related almost exclusively to agricultural production; they owned no property but the clothes on their backs; (Bowles, 2011) Many dreamed of "forty acres and a mule" with which to begin life anew as an integrated part of American society and the proprietor of one's own land. Inside of a year, however, a different reality became obvious to most. By 1868, land confiscation and redistribution was not in the realm of American political possibility. Desperation, familiarity with people and surroundings at the old places coupled with reunion of many lost loved ones, as well as the urgings of

O Pioneers!(1993) by Willa Cather begins on a blustery winter day, in the town of Hanover, Nebraska, sometime between 1883 and 1890. The narrator introduces four main character: the very young Emil Bergson; his older sister, Alexandra; her friend Carl Linstrum; and a little girl, Marie Shabata. Alexandra's father, John Bergson, is dying. He tells his two oldest sons, Lou and Oscar, that he is leaving the farmland, and all of what he has accomplished, to their sister.