54 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



cropping, contour plowing, and many of the other soil-saving 

 devices we hear so much of today. But they were unheeded. 



Then came the first land boom. Millions of acres of land 

 were cleared in a few years. And some of these millions of 

 acres, advertised as true Gardens of Eden by the speculators 

 who held them, should never have been farmed at all. The 

 climate and other natural characteristics of this land were 

 not understood by the immigrants. As a result they upset the 

 delicate balance which nature maintains. In a generation, this 

 poorer land was added to the growing total of abandoned land 

 in the East. 



Three inventions opened the Great Plains to the land-hungry 

 immigrants. The first was the barbed wire fence, which pro 

 vided a cheap way to keep out roving live stock. The second 

 was the steel plow, the first plow that could turn over the 

 prairie sod. The third, Colt's revolver, gave the plainsmen a 

 weapon with which they could drive out the hard-riding Plains 

 Indian. With these three tools agricultural America began to 

 grow. 



But as agricultural America began to fill out the continent, 

 industrial America began to blacken the skies of the East with 

 the smoke from its factory chimneys. And where the strength 

 of the farmer was in his numbers, the strength of the manu 

 facturer was in his money. In the end money was the stronger. 

 The farmers suffered their first real defeats after the Civil War 

 when the South, politically the strongest agricultural section 

 of the country, was left powerless by its surrender. The Middle 

 West became the stronghold of the farmer. Unlike the South, 

 which had made the Democratic party its political weapon, the 

 West was unable to create a strong party to carry into action its 

 political beliefs. 



The World War boom in agriculture gave the farmers a 

 false hope. The direct result of this hope was that tilled land 

 in the United States jumped from 1,640,625 square miles in 



