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Over a million families took advantage of the Homestead Acts, which granted 160 acres to settlers. That much land was certainly enough to make a living on. When
by floren 4y ago
Over a million families took advantage of the Homestead Acts, which granted 160 acres to settlers. That much land was certainly enough to make a living on. When I looked up my grandparents in the 1950 census, every house on the page was marked as being half a mile down the road from the previous one--because 160 acres, a quarter section, is 1/2 mile on a side.
Bad luck, family tragedy, and other factors played into the failure of the Wilders to succeed, but make no mistake: many did succeed on that land.
- drewcoo 4y agoSome succeeded. Many more failed. Maybe when gambling against nature, the odds are with the house.
- colechristensen 4y agoLikewise, I was the fifth generation born on a farm that started with a homestead act grant.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoThe books present "Pa" as a hero, but if you look at him with a critical eye (as Fraser's book does), it's pretty clear the family's woes were largely due to him. Their original farm was by all accounts the best of the lot, and if they had stayed at the second one in Kansas they might have done OK. But he abandoned that one too based on (incorrect) rumors that the land would be confiscated, and every move they made afterwards drove them further and further into penury.
- analog31 4y agoLikewise the impression I formed was that Pa was impulsive and a bad businessman. Now, we don't know if he kept on the move because of something like bad debts, which would not be shocking or even necessarily incriminating.
- moistly 4y ago> it's pretty clear the family's woes were largely due to him I mean, FFS, the family ended up living in a dirt hole dug into a damn riverbank! Not a nice hobbit home, either: we’re talking a raw dirt hole. Pa was bug-fuck crazy and anyone who reads the books as an adult can see it writ large. Edit: whoa! No offense intended, fans of the myth, but again: dirt hole. That ain’t the behaviour of a fully rational adult.
- mistrial9 4y agocounterpoint - previously ruined land-owners in West Texas after the dust bowl, apparently turned enthusiastically to the small-rig Oil business, poisoned many a water table, and now have some of the most active fracking in the world. Lots of big trucks in that part of Texas showing the "success"