HISTORY 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Sharecropping, Natural Monopoly, Homestead Strike
9 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
Tractors and other farming tools replaced human labor. By the end of the 1800s farming did not provide anymore: these machines dropped the value of crops immensely, therefore dropping their salaries, farmers responded by growing more, therefore contributing to the problem. Americans would move to the city because agriculture did not pay. The value of money was increasing, and the value of farmer"s debt increased as well: farmers had to take on these debts to buy everyday things they could not produce (seeds, tools, etc) Railroads formed natural monopolies, and could essentially charge whatever they wanted because farmers needed to use them. Freed slaves would work on people"s farms and return part of the yield to the crop to their owners as rent. As the price of crops dropped, these freedmen could not pay their rent and it tied them to the land. Farmers aligned politically and socially (agricultural colleges and libraries opened)
