Homestead Act Research Paper

The Homestead Strike was a very violent, but important event to the people of the American Business Industry. The violent act of a desperate businessman, in attempt to retain peace, killed many men. The infamous story of the Pinkertons changed the ways of American business agreements. The Homestead Strike changed the traditional American business environment by creating new laws and the awareness of the need for peace in business world.

In a bid to encourage people onto the Plains advertisements told success stories of those who had claimed land under the terms of the Homestead Act and had become successful. It divided 2.5 million acres of Plains land into sections or homesteads of 160 acres. People could now claim 160 acres of land. The only requirement on their part was that they paid a small charge and built a house or added something to the land such as a house or a well and lived on the land for at least 5 years.

The two housewives have a passionate love for gardening and bestow their love and appreciation towards their gardens. In the twentieth century, gardening was advocated as beneficial to one’s life and family. In the New England Quarterly, the journal, “Gardening as ‘Women’s Culture’ in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s Short Fiction,” states,“The time women spent in

However, there were many positive economic aspects for American citizens who were moving westward. The Homestead Act of 1862 was an incentive for people to move

Farmers came to the Great Plains is great abundance, as this was heavily encouraged by government land policies and cheap land that was readily available. One of these policies was The Homestead Act, which would provide free or inexpensive land to farmers. The ever-growing railroad industry also offered attractive deals to those wishing to move onto the plains. All of these incentives were very enticing at first for farmers, but when they arrived in their new land they were met with a few problems. This new environment was difficult and dry. The animal and plant life was strange to the farmers. Not only that, but the native inhabitants of this land were warlike. However, farmers soon adapted to their new environment by implementing a few solutions. Lack of wood was solved by sod houses and barbed wire. Windmills and dry farming techniques were used to overcome the lack of water, and new machinery was used for farming. But expensive machinery soon led to debt and this debt led to bankruptcy. Farmers were faced with the same issue as the cattleman and many had to sell out to corporate

Any American including freed slaves could claim a land up to 160 acres for free if they worked on the land for 5 years (Doc. B). What this meant for the Native Americans was that they now have less land to hunt on so they are resorted to the reservations. Forty-eight million acres were given away. In 1872 there was an advertisement on the Homestead Act showing millions of acres in Iowa and Nebraska (Doc. E). Also in 1862, the Morrill Land-Grant Act was created to allow the creation of land-grant colleges in the US (Doc. C). It was a huge uplift to higher education in

On May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act was passed (Homestead Act). This act stated that any adult citizen who had never borne arms against the United States government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land (Homestead Act). The government

Cotton still played a big part in the growth of farming in the south. There was a high demand for textiles and cotton mills increased production of cotton bales up to 1,479,000 bales per year. While these changes were occurring in the South, many changes in farming were also taking place in other parts of the nation. The government wanted to encourage settlement in the vast areas of the country not yet populated. The Homestead Act helped shape the western landscape. This act allowed farmers to claim up to 160 acres of land. Farmers would stake a claim to a parcel of land and by living on it for five years would be free and clear to take title of the land. Or the farmer could buy

The westward expansion had a huge impact on the role of women in society. Around the time of the Westward Expansion women did not have as many of the rights that they do now. Women’s role helped show that they could do anything that a man could do, they showed that they were not as helpless as many thought they were and it helped themselves gain rights. Before this women and men roles were very separated. Women's roles were specifically private and home based and the men did all the “hard” work. The women had to step up their game from just everyday work around the house to loads of things. They had to cook a lot for their hard working husbands. They also had to wash all their clothes. That alone was a lot of work because most of them

Ann Marie Low’s diary opens in 1927 when she is a teenager living with her family on a stock farm in southeastern North Dakota. Low’s diary tells the story of her family's struggle to maintain a way of life, keeping their farm, and educate their children. She discusses her family and friends, descendants of homesteaders, through the next ten years, a time when entire communities lost their homes to mortgages and to government recovery programs. Low’s faces economic hardship, unfortunate family circumstances, and the restrictions that society had placed on women. Low's diary is about life in during the Dust Bowl, and Great Depression.

* Republicans sought to bring families to the West by offering 160 acres of land through the Homestead

It was originally opposed by Northern manufacturers, who feared the loss of inexpensive labor; and Southern slaveholders, who feared the development of free soil. It was intended to branch Western immigration, but numerous frontiersmen would fail and arrive home. The Homestead Act provided settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land. By living on the property for five years and improving it, a small fee would grant the settler the land. This served as a way to encourage the development of the family farm and fill in the normally unoccupied region in the Great Plains in which railroads facilitated this growth. Because of the severe environmental circumstances of the Great Plain region, the Homestead Act turned out to be less effective than anticipated.

In the late eighteen hundreds, my family wasn’t doing so well. They lived in Bohemia, a state in the small east european country Czechoslovakia. At the time, Czechoslovakia had a poor economy and was struggling with poverty. To add, there was a dramatic increase in population in rural areas of the country. The 1870s brought devastating crop failures which led to a agricultural depression in the 1880s. Around this time, the Homestead Acts came into effect, and glowing advertisements flooded the Czech papers. They described a promised land of endless fields and bountiful crops. What better a place to move? Over 50,000 czechs (including my great grandparents) had the same idea and emigrated to America in search of a better life. My family settled

As hardworking women living of the prairie, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters can relate to Mrs. Wright’s situation. They know personally that long days of doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning can become very tiresome (Hedges 91). They realize that living on the prairie can force a woman to be confined to her own house for weeks at a time, and because Mrs. Wright never had children, the grueling loneliness that she suffered must have been excruciating. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both experience the constant patronization and sexual discrimination that most women in the early twentieth century lived with. They empathize with the difficulties of Mrs. Wright’s life and almost immediately a bond is formed with a woman they do not even know.

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