Jason Winchester, Irada Vilaysane, Hunter, Kailee Apush Per. 3 2/16/15 Six Degrees of Separation Group 2 Homestead Act Signed 1862 The Homestead Act was a law signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 that said that any adult 21 years or older, that are men, freed slaves and women that never took arms against the U.S. government, could file an application for a land grant in the midwest. The land grant was 160 acres big and was $1.25 per acre. The theme is overexpansion of farming, this starts the point of where the great depression would occur with the over production and small prices and how the land would be unusable for a time in the dust bowl. The Transcontinental Railroad 1863­1869(completion) With more people expanding westward, the railroad corporations decided it could connect its railroads all the to California, it would be able to transport people through the United States faster and help people move faster. With the cheap price of farmland and a railroad to transport your family easier, it was an easy decision to expand westward and develop in the midwest. The railroad allowed more jobs as well, in the mining and railroad building industry. The Homestead Act caused many people to start migrating into the western frontier and the effect is the response of the railroad companies that created a transcontinental railroad to transport them. Sioux Wars 1854 ­ 1891 With many more Americans poaching into Native American reserves, the lose of buffalo to the Americans, and the attempts to integrate Native Americans into the white culture, it was inevitable that another war would break out between them. The Sioux people and the United States Army fought in the great plains, where Americans were expanding and mining and the U.S. Army wanted to protect those Americans. This was a brutal United States victory, when even both sides lost so much in it and the United States put the remaining Sioux people in their own reserves. This connects to the theme by that Americans want land to expand and farm, including mining, they don’t care for the Indians and their rights at the time. Dawes Act Signed by Congress 1887 Allowed the President of the United States of America to survey Native American land and divide it into allotments for the individual indians. This act was to clear up the excess Native American reservations for the land to be purchased by non­Native Americans for the purpose of selling land on the market. This is a direct cause from both the Homestead Act, that allowed Americans to travel into where Native Americans were untouched and settle, and the transcontinental railroad that transported the Americans to the midwest lands. The goal of this act was to allow more land for Americans to purchase from the government and create more farmland and take care of the Indian problem in America at the time. The Deflation of Farm Products circa. 1930 Due to the large amount of farms in the midwest region of America, the production of farm products grew immensely causing a huge surplus of those products on the market. When there is a surplus in the market, the general prices deflate to cause more of those products to sell more, but there weren't that many people buying enough products so the prices kept decreasing to a point where farms were being foreclosed. This was the beginning of the Great Depression before anyone knew it. There wasn’t any reason to invest in capital to purchase farming equipment if you knew you couldn’t get any profit from it in the long run, so farm investment went down and farmers wouldn't be able to pay off debts. The government also gave out way too many subsidies to farmers to produce more products before this occurred. The theme of overexpansion of farming is heightened here where too much farming caused a depression. The Dust Bowl Throughout The 1930s In the 1930s, farmers were already in a depression where their products were being sold at a price so low that they already couldn't afford their lands and were being foreclosed. But what hit them worst were severe dust storms that greatly damaged the farm lands of the midwest causing people to migrate into California for farming and other jobs. This severe drought damaged a lot of the agriculture and environment of the midwest destroying the lives of many American farmers that once settled there for opportunity due to the Homestead Act long ago. The theme of overexpansion of farming is why Americans were hit so hard by this, because of the amount of farms that were affected in the midwest where this event occurred.