1. CHAPTER 18:
Americans Move West
Section 3:
Farming and Populism

2. VOCABULARY
 Deflation: Overall decrease in prices of goods

3. THE GOVERNMENT WANTS SETTLERS
 Gov. wants settlers on the frontier

4. THE GOVERNMENT WANTS SETTLERS
 Not many went –“Great American Desert”
myth

5. THE GOVERNMENT WANTS SETTLERS
 Homestead Act passed
• Gave 160 nearly
free acres
• Must improve land
• Live on for 5 years

6. THE GOVERNMENT WANTS SETTLERS
 Thousands rushed west to farm

7. HARD LIFE ON THE PLAINS
 Settlers called sodbusters
• Had to break up root filled sod

8. HARD LIFE ON THE PLAINS
 Dry farming –
grow wheat & use
more land
• Need less water

9. Irrigation Canals

10. HARD LIFE ON THE PLAINS
 Lived in sod homes

12. HARD LIFE ON THE PLAINS
 Great Plains became the “Breadbasket of the
world”

13. END OF THE FRONTIER
 Most frontier land was now taken and settled

14. END OF THE FRONTIER
 Oklahoma Land Rush – Last chapter of
westward movement

15. Oklahoma Land Rush
April 22, 1889

16. Oklahoma Land Rush

17. “Sooners”

18. END OF THE FRONTIER
 1890 – Gov. proclaimed the frontier closed

19. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
 More wheat produced = lower prices for
wheat
• Farmers can’t make money

20. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
 Deflation also hurt
• U.S. money was on the Gold Standard
• Money supply grew more slowly than the
population

21. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
 Farmers blamed businessmen, grain buyers,
and railroads

22. FARMERS ORGANIZE
 Farmers organized politically
• National Grange – Social & educational
organization for farmers
• Populist Party – called for:
• Gov. to own RR’s
• Silver to help back dollars