THE INFLUENCE OF LAND POLICIES 119 



190,080,000 acres, or a territory equal in extent to 

 Great Britain and France combined, were added to 

 the cultivated area of the United States. Again, in 

 the twenty-year period, 1880-1900, there were added 

 to the farm area over 305,000,000 acres. Such a de- 

 velopment was made possible by the extension of the 

 railroad system in the grain region, which opened up 

 new areas for cultivation and made it possible to 

 market the product speedily and economically." 3 



The farmer and ranchman who acquired land 

 under the several land settlement acts became a 

 pioneer. These farm pioneers were widely separ- 

 ated. They were, or became, essentially individ- 

 ualistic. In the middle West, especially, the hard- 

 ships connected with pioneering absorbed their 

 energies. The farmer had no time to think of co- 

 operative effort and, in fact, conditions did not en- 

 courage conscious solidarity. The problems of the 

 pioneer farmer were not essentially economic. The 

 government had been generous and the simplicity 

 of living conditions did not create a feeling of eco- 

 nomic injustice. It is, therefore, not surprising that 

 agrarian protests did not find expression in the un- 

 developed regions of the middle West previous to the 

 Civil War. 



Land Grants to Railroads 



The pioneer farmers of the West were confronted 

 with many handicaps. Not the least of these was in- 



"Bogart's Economic History of American Agriculture, Chap. 

 VII, p. 112. 



