The early pioneers who reached the Great Plains did not believe they could farm the dry, treeless area. In the late 1860s, however, farmers began settling there and planting crops. In a surprisingly short time, much of the Plains changed from “wilderness” to farmland. Several factors brought settlers to the Plains. The railroads made the journey west easier and cheaper. New laws offered free land. Finally, above-average rainfall in the late 1870s made the Plains better suited to farming.

In 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act, which gave 160 free acres of land to a settler who paid a filing fee and lived on the land for five years. This federal land policy brought farmers to the Plains to homestead—earn ownership of land by settling on it. Homesteading lured thousands of new settlers. Some were immigrants who had begun the process of becoming American citizens and were eligible to file for land. Others were women. Although married women could not claim land, single women and widows had the same rights as men—and they used the Homestead Act to acquire property. In Colorado and Wyoming, 12 percent of all those who filed homestead claims were women.

Homesteaders came to the Plains to own land and be independent. They were also swayed by advertising paid for by railroads, steamship companies, land speculators, and western states and territories. Railroad companies wanted to sell the strips of land alongside the rail lines to raise cash. Steamship companies went to great lengths to advertise the American Plains in Scandinavia. By 1880 more than 100,000 Swedes and Norwegians had settled in the northern Plains—Minnesota and the Dakotas. The Scandinavian influence remains strong in this region today.

Thousands of African Americans also migrated from the Southern states into Kansas in the late 1870s. They called themselves “Exodusters,” from the biblical book of Exodus, which describes the Jews’ escape from slavery in Egypt. The end of Reconstruction in 1877 had meant the end of federal protection for African Americans. Fearing for their safety in former slave regions, freed people sought land farther west. By 1881. more than 40,000 African Americans had migrated to Kansas. Some, however, had to return to the South because they lacked the money to start new farms or businesses.

The climate of the Plains presented farmers with their greatest challenge. Generally, there was little rainfall, but in some years, rain came down in torrents, destroying crops and flooding homesteads. The other extreme, drought, also threatened crops and lives. Fire was another enemy. In times of drought, brushfires swept rapidly through a region, destroying crops, livestock, and homes. Summer might bring plagues of grasshoppers. Several times during the 1870s, swarms of the insects swept over the Plains. Thousands of grasshoppers would land on a field of corn. When they left, not a stalk would remain. Winters presented even greater dangers. Winds howled across the open Plains, and deep snow could bury animals and trap families in their homes. Farm families had to plan and store food for the winter.

Farming on the Great Plains was a family affair. Men labored hard in the fields. Women often did the same work, but they also cared for the children. A farm wife sewed clothing, made candles, and cooked and preserved food. In the absence of doctors and teachers, she also tended to the children’s health and education. When her husband was away—taking the harvest to town or buying supplies—she bore all responsibility for keeping the farm running. When children grew old enough, they too worked the farm. Children helped in the fields, tended animals, and did chores around the house. Farm work often kept children from attending school. Although separated by great distances, farm families socialized whenever they could. People took great pleasure in getting together for weddings, church services, picnics, and other occasions. As communities grew, schools and churches began to dot the rural landscape.

The Plains could not be farmed by the usual methods of the 1860s. Most parts of the region had little rainfall and too few streams for irrigation. The Plains farmers, known as sodbusters, needed new methods and tools. One approach, called dry farming, was to plant seeds deep in the ground where there was some moisture. Wooden plows could not penetrate the tough layer of sod, but in the late 1870s farmers could use the newly invented lightweight steel plows to do the job.

The sodbusters had other tools to help them conquer the Plains—windmills to pump water from deep in the ground and a new fencing called barbed wire. With no wood to build fences, farmers used these wire fences to protect their land. Dry farming, however, did not produce large crop yields, and the 160-acre grants were too small to make a living. Most farmers needed at least 300 acres, as well as advanced machinery, to make a Plains farm profitable. Many farmers went into debt. Others lost ownership of their farms and then had to rent the land.

After the Civil War, farming expanded in the West and the South, and more land came under cultivation. The supply of crops grew faster than the demand for them, however, and prices fell steadily. In 1866 a bushel of wheat sold for $1.45. By the mid-1880s the price had dropped to 80 cents and by the mid-1890s to 49 cents. At the same time, farmers’ expenses—for transporting their goods to market, for seed, and for equipment and other manufactured goods—remained high. The farmers’ plight gave rise to bitter feelings.

Farmers blamed their troubles on three groups. They resented the railroad companies, which charged farmers more to ship crops than they charged manufacturers to ship goods. They were angry at the Eastern manufacturers, who charged high prices for their products. They also had problems with bankers. Farmers needed to borrow money to buy seed, equipment, and other goods. After they sold their crops, they had to pay the high interest rates set by bankers. If crops failed and farmers could not repay the loans, they were in danger of losing their farms. Farmers with small and middle-sized holdings struggled to survive.

Farmers began to organize to solve their problems. Within a short time, they had created a mass political movement. The first farmers’ organization of this period was a network of local self-help organizations that eventually came to be called the National Grange. The Grange offered farmers education, fellowship, and support. For inexperienced farmers, the Grange provided a library with books on planting and livestock raising. For lonely farm families, it organized social gatherings.

Above all, the Grange tried to encourage economic self-sufficiency. It set up “cash-only” cooperatives, stores where farmers bought products from each other. The cooperatives charged lower prices than regular stores and provided an outlet for farmers’ crops. The purpose of the “cash-only” policy was to remove the burden of credit buying that threatened farmers. In the 1870s, the Grange tried to cut farmers’ costs by getting state legislatures to limit railroad shipping rates. Many Midwestern states did pass such laws. By 1878, however, the railroads had put so much pressure on state legislatures that these states repealed the rate regulations.

The Grange cooperatives also failed. Farmers were always short of cash and had to borrow money until their next crop was sold. The cash-only cooperative could not work if borrowing was necessary. By the late 1870s, the Grange had declined. Rural reformers then tried to help farmers through the Farmers’ Alliances. These were networks of organizations that sprang up in the West and the South in the 1880s. The Southern Alliance was founded in Texas when farmers rallied against the railroads and against “money power.” Alliance leaders extended the movement to other states. By 1890, the Southern Alliance had more than three million members, and the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance, a separate organization of African American farmers, had one million members. An Alliance movement developed in the Plains states as well.

Like the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliances sponsored education and cooperative buying and selling. The Alliances also proposed a plan in which the federal government would store farmers’ crops in warehouses and lend money to the farmers. When the stored crops were sold, the farmers would pay back the government loans. Such a plan would reduce the power that railroads, banks, and merchants had over farmers and would offer farmers some federal protection. If the Alliances had remained united, they would have been a powerful political force. Regional differences and personality clashes kept the groups apart, however.

In the 1890 election, the Alliances became active in political campaigns. Candidates they supported won 6 governorships, 3 seats in the United States Senate, and 50 seats in the House of Representatives. Pleased with such successes, Alliance leaders worked to turn the movement into a national political party. In February 1890, Alliance members had formed the People’s Party of the U.S.A., also known as the Populist Party. The goals of this new party were rooted in populism, or appeal to the common people. The new party claimed that the government, not private companies, should own the railroads and telegraph lines. The Populists also wanted to replace the country’s gold-based currency system with a flexible currency system that was based on free silver, the unlimited production of silver coins. They believed that putting more silver coins into the economy would give farmers more money to pay their debts.

The Populist Party supported several political and labor reforms. They wanted election reforms such as limiting the president and vice president to a single term, electing senators directly, and introducing the use of secret ballots. They also called for shorter hours for workers and the creation of a national income tax. At a convention in Omaha, Nebraska, in July 1892, the Populist Party nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa to run for president. In the election. Weaver received more than 1 million votes—8.5 percent of the total—and 22 electoral votes. Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, won the election, but the Populists had done well for a third party. The Populists made a strong showing in the state and local elections of 1894 and had high hopes for the presidential election of 1896. The party nominated several energetic candidates, but it lacked money and organization.

To make matters worse, antagonism between the North and the South plagued the Populist Party. In addition, many white Southerners could not bring themselves to join forces with African American Populists. Another blow against populism was struck by the Democratic Party in the South. In the 1890s Democrat-controlled Southern state legislatures placed strict limits on the rights of African Americans to vote. Many freedmen—who might have supported the Populists—were unable to vote.

The Populist crusade for free silver and against the “money power” continued, however. Banking and business interests warned that coining unlimited amounts of new currency would lead to inflation and ruin the economy. Farmers were joined by debtors in supporting free silver, hoping that loans could be repaid more cheaply. Silver-mining companies in the West also supported the cause. If the government coined large quantities of silver, they had a place to sell their metal. In the mid-1890s. Democrats from farm and silver-producing states took up the free silver issue. This created a problem for Populists.