The Effects of Technology, Government Policy, and Economic Conditions on American Agriculture during 1865-1900.
From the expanding of railroads country wide, to limiting laws on the merchandise farmers sold and transportation of the goods, to starvation of the economy, agriculture began to take its own shape from 1865 through to 1900 in the United States.
Farmers began to cultivate vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. With men on the earliest of tractors and over 20-30 horses pulling the tractor along the long and wide fields of wheat. As farmers started to accumulate their goods, they needed to be able to transfer the goods across states, maybe from Cali to Montana, or Wirt to Calhoun!
Some farmers chose to use cattle trails to transport their goods. Although cattle trails weren't used in 1890. So, farmers began to transport their goods by railroads, which were publicly used in Germany by 1550 and migrated to the United States with the help of Colonel John Stevens in 1826. In 1890, railroads expanded not only from California, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, but up along to Washington, Montana, Michigan, down to
New Mexico and Arizona as well. Eastern States such as New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and many others were filled with existing railroads prior to 1870, as Colonel John Stevens started out his railroad revolutionizing movement in New Jersey in 1815.
While farmers sold millions of bushels, and bales of wheat, cotton and corn, state legislatures began to see a need to enforce laws upon these farmers and to gain control of their states and its people. They carried a law through the Illinois legislature, which provides for the limiting of freight rates by a board of officials appointed for this purpose. Angered by these types of laws, farmers who used these railroads went against the laws in court. The railroads of course, opposed this measure, and it was carried to the United States Supreme Court to test its...