One of the central stories of American history has been the

One of the central stories of American history has been the settlement of the West. What push and pull factors led millions of Americans and immigrants to pour into the West in the decades after the Civil War? What impact did western settlement by whites have on Indians in the region? What problems did westerners face once they got there? Why did so many westerners see the People’s/Populist Party as an answer to those problems? How would you rate the Populists’ success?

Solution

The railroads created the first great concentrations of capital, spawned the first massive corporations, made the first of the vast fortunes that would define the “Gilded Age,” unleashed labor demands that united thousands of farmers and immigrants, and linked many towns and cities. National railroad mileage tripled in the twenty years after the outbreak of the Civil War, and tripled again over the four decades that followed. Railroads impelled the creation of uniform time zones across the country, gave industrialists access to remote markets, and opened the American west. Railroad companies were the nation’s largest businesses. Their vast national operations demanded the creation of innovative new corporate organization, advanced management techniques, and vast sums of capital. Their huge expenditures spurred countless industries and attracted droves of laborers. And as they crisscrossed the nation, they created a national market, a truly national economy, and, seemingly, a new national culture.3

The railroads were not natural creations. Their vast capital requirements required the use of incorporation, a legal innovation that protected shareholders from losses. Enormous amounts of government support followed. Federal, state, and local governments offered unrivaled handouts to create the national rail networks.

Lincoln’s Republican Party—which dominated government policy during the Civil War and Reconstruction—passed legislation granting vast subsidies. Hundreds of millions of acres of land and millions of dollars’ worth of government bonds were freely given to build the great transcontinental railroads and the innumerable trunk lines that quickly annihilated the vast geographic barriers that had so long sheltered American cities from one another

As railroad construction drove economic development, new means of production spawned new systems of labor. Many wage earners had traditionally seen factory work as a temporary stepping-stone to attaining their own small businesses or farms. After the war, however, new technology and greater mechanization meant fewer and fewer workers could legitimately aspire to economic independence. Stronger and more organized labor unions formed to fight for a growing, more-permanent working class. At the same time, the growing scale of economic enterprises increasingly disconnected owners from their employees and day-to-day business operations. To handle their vast new operations, owners turned to managers. Educated bureaucrats swelled the ranks of an emerging middle class.

From 1820 to 2001, more than 67 million people entered this country from many lands. Some paid their own way. Some came as indentured servants. Some signed up as contract laborers to work on American railroads, canals, farms, and factories. Others came as refugees or entered the United States illegally. Millions abandoned their homes to become part of the greatest mass migration of people in the history of the world. Why did they do this, and why do they still come?

As in most cases of human migration, there are \"push\" and \"pull\" factors at work. \"Push\" factors are conditions that encourage people to leave their homelands. They include such things as famine, unemployment, and poverty. Also, crippling taxes, wars, the military draft, and religious and political persecution have forced people to abandon their native countries.

Immigrants coming to this country have not only been \"pushed\" from their homelands. They have also been \"pulled\" by the seemingly limitless opportunities of America. There was land to farm. There were forests to cut down and railroads to build. The Gold Rush of 1849 stirred the imaginations of the adventurous. Those trapped in poverty saw a way out by getting jobs as farm laborers or in the industrial cities of America. Still others were drawn by the American ideals of freedom and equality.

Millions of immigrants have pulled up their roots and journeyed to America. Immigrants are still coming. They are coming for the same reason that most immigrants came in the past: for hope and a chance for a better life

Industry pulled ever more Americans into cities. Manufacturing needed the labor pool and the infrastructure. America’s urban population increased seven fold in the half-century after the Civil War. Soon the United States had more large cities than any country in the world. The 1920 U.S. census revealed that, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in urban areas. Much of that urban growth came from the millions of immigrants pouring into the nation. Between 1870 and 1920, over 25 million immigrants arrived in the United States.

By the turn of the twentieth century, new immigrant groups such as Italians, Poles, and Eastern European Jews made up a larger percentages of arrivals than the Irish and Germans. The specific reasons that immigrants left their particular countries and the reasons they came to the United States (what historians call “push” and “pull” factors) varied.

Settlers on their way overland to Oregon and California became targets of Indian threats. Robert L. Munkres read 66 diaries of parties traveling the Oregon Trail between 1834 and 1860 to estimate the actual dangers they faced from Indian attacks in Nebraska and Wyoming. The vast majority of diarists reported no armed attacks at all. However many did report harassment by Indians who begged or demanded tolls, and stole horses and cattle.

American attitudes towards Indians during this period ranged from malevolence to misdirected humanitarianism (Indians live in \"inferior\" societies and by assimilation into white society they can be redeemed) to somewhat realistic (Native Americans and settlers could co-exist in separate but equal societies, dividing up the remaining western land).Dealing with nomadic tribes complicated the reservation strategy and decentralized tribal power made treaty making difficult among the Plains Indians. Conflicts erupted in the 1850s, resulting in various Indian wars.In these times of conflict, Indians become more stringent about white men entering their territory. Such as in the case of Oliver Loving, they would sometimes attack cowboys and their cattle if ever caught crossing in the borders of their land.They would also prey upon livestock if food was scarce during hard times. However, relationship between cowboys and Native Americans were more mutual than they are portrayed, and the former would occasionally pay a fine of 10 cents per cow for the latter to allow them to travel through their land. Indians also preyed upon stagecoaches travelling in the frontier for its horses and valuables.

The People\'s Party (or Populist Party, as it was widely known) was much younger than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which had been founded before the Civil War. Agricultural areas in the West and South had been hit by economic depression years before industrial areas. In the 1880s, as drought hit the wheat-growing areas of the Great Plains and prices for Southern cotton sunk to new lows, many tenant farmers fell into deep debt. This exacerbated long-held grievances against railroads, lenders, grain-elevator owners, and others with whom farmers did business. By the early 1890s, as the depression worsened, some industrial workers shared these farm families\' views on labor and the trusts.

In the national campaign, Populists served mostly as a symbol for Republicans, who warned that the silver Democrats had allied themselves with ignorant \"hayseeds\" and \"anarchists.\" Bryan virtually ignored the People\'s Party, even though he was its nominee. While the nomination of Bryan had destroyed the hopes of mid-roaders, Bryan\'s defeat demoralized the fusionists, leaving the whole party in shambles.

As Watson had predicted, fusion on the \"free silver\" issue de-railed the rest of Populists\' agenda and killed the party\'s hopes for national power. While Populists continued to hold power in a few Western states, the party vanished from the larger electoral map. Nonetheless, Populist ideas survived into the new century.