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Why Did People In The 1800's Pack Up and Move West When electricity/phones/etc. existed?
- Thread starter TaterTots
- Start date
There's something wrong with the state of education if homesteading and the genocide of Native Americans isn't at the top of the list of reasons assuming the OP is from the US.
"Existing" is.... not like you are imagining it. Electricity wasn't even widely available on the east coast. It took decades before it was even established if it was going to be provided through AC or DC, let alone expanding the eventual winner out to entire cities and over decades later rural areas.
While the first telephone exchange was established in the 1870s, similarly it was decades before exchanges covered any significant portion of the population, and before they could actually talk to each other (long distance)
This is like someone 100 years from now saying "why didn't everyone just move to Mars in the early 2000s?" "Existing" is not the same as "common and widely used by the majority of the population".
While the first telephone exchange was established in the 1870s, similarly it was decades before exchanges covered any significant portion of the population, and before they could actually talk to each other (long distance)
This is like someone 100 years from now saying "why didn't everyone just move to Mars in the early 2000s?" "Existing" is not the same as "common and widely used by the majority of the population".
we literally just moved from a prime location in South Philly to up near the Northeast Kingdoms of Vermont for land and farming. power outages, not fantastic internet or cell phone reception (taking a spin down the mountain road, which is, like, every road? hope you don't drive into a ditch during a snowstorm at night because you're fuckin' walking for at least an hour before you can make a call or someone finds you), at least a half-hour minimum drive anywhere of substance, medical service (hospital or clinic) as far or farther, wild animals all over the place. shit still happens today.
that conception of "giving up amenities" in the context of the late 1800s is wild because 1) they were BARELY amenities and city living was fucking disgusting tbqh and 2) yes, the pros vastly outweighed the cons, paramount among which being FREE LAND. even today, depending on your personal tastes, the qualities of "civilization" aren't necessarily more desirable to "roughing it".
that conception of "giving up amenities" in the context of the late 1800s is wild because 1) they were BARELY amenities and city living was fucking disgusting tbqh and 2) yes, the pros vastly outweighed the cons, paramount among which being FREE LAND. even today, depending on your personal tastes, the qualities of "civilization" aren't necessarily more desirable to "roughing it".
The Northeast was fairly industrialized by the mid to late 1800's. The rest of the country was not though (with the exception of a few places like Chicago), you're right about that.
Enough of the country was still without electricity that the Rural Electrification Act was enacted as late as 1936.
Your average frontiersman in the 1880s wasn't leaving modern conveniences behind.
Your average frontiersman in the 1880s wasn't leaving modern conveniences behind.
The North East was not fairly industrialized in the first and second thirds of the 19th century which is when people started moving in large numbers and thus a period which requires any answer to the OP's questions to address. By the very end of this period it becomes a third rate industrial region where manufacturing was still not an overwhelming part of the economy. 1860s upstate New York is closer to 1750s Lancashire than 1830s.
The dating is important because many people's answers here simply don't make chronological sense.
I'd rather someone ask a question than posit random guesses based on vauge "history books" as clear and obvious answers.
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And US was actually ahead of curve even with those numbers. My fathers house in rural Finland got electricity in 1965 when he was 8.
You're right, people weren't moving west to escape US industrialization. That is not what happened at all.
That said the Northeastern US is where industrialization took root. It was one of the major advantages that lead to the southern states being defeated in the Civil War.
I'm quite aware that the North East was the first industrial centre in the country, but the US was also a late industrializer. The seeds of industralization were just beginning to take root during the Civil War, though it had already been a manufacturing, which is different than industrial, region.
Again the Industrial Revolution is dated from 1820 or 30 to 1850s, and America was a third wave industrializer. Germany was only industrializing in the 60s. America was obviously further behind.
This has been mainstream historiography since the mid 80s/since Craft's revisions.
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much like everything we're talking about here, the industrial revolution DID begin in the northeast.. but yeah it still took decades (1890s-1910s) to become pervasive in the US. However yeah... even with its limited rollout in the northeast, it put the north at such a tremendous advantage over the south, which furthered the south's view of the north not really giving a shit about the south aside from freeing all of their slave labor. (i.e. implementing the Industrial Age in the north, while attempting to severely cripple the south's ability to produce)
OP.. now that you have context.. read more. I do agree with others that people shouldn't just respond with "you need to read more books bud".. because there's a lot of bad information out there. but now that you know the state of then scientific advancements and their lack of impact, I suggest you go out and read WHY people were moving out west, AND more importantly... why it was a terrible and disingenuous fucking move on the part of the US. Essentially the US making sure that US citizens had claim to that land, as opposed to the indigenous people who were currently inhabiting it.
yeah this is sort of where I Was getting at. It's well conceded that the industrial revolution didn't full on hit the US until after the Civil War.. mostly between the 1890s and 1910s.One only has to look at Benz putting out the first cars in the late 1880s to see how far behind the US was (relatively, for a first world power)
The idea of people not moving for new opportunity is a very new phenomenon. For nearly all of human history, people would migrate to where opportunity was, and for an agrarian society, that opportunity was usually where land was. The American government wanted to settle the areas that it had expanded into, purchased, won, or declared by fiat that they owned. So it made land ownership incredibly cheap, basically free. Mind you, most people who were migrating west were immigrants or first generation Americans. Their ancestors had fled Europe only one generation (or the same generation) prior, taking a ship across the Atlantic which cost most of their life savings to afford, so the idea of moving west by rail or by caravan for a fraction of the cost of transatlantic journey where you could still keep most of your important possessions was a pittance compared to the generation prior.
Most of the people who moved West were farmers or from farming communities, both from Europe or from the United States, and for a poor family who had tilled hard scrabble soil across continental or northern Europe for generations, the American plains were literally a land of plenty. With the lucrative offer by to own acres and acres of property for free, as long as you planted crops and maintained the land (something that they had done for hundreds of years in much worse conditions), this was a godsend opportunity. Communities set up in rural areas were generally immigrant communities: Entire communities in Pennsylvania or the Plains that spoke Dutch, where it'd be relatively rare to hear anybody speak English. So, if you were a poor Germanic farmer who was being treated like shit in Philadelphia or New York City by the dominant landed American gentry, and hostile other immigrant groups, it only made sense to take your family west, to a community where they spoke the same language, had the same religion, and shared a lot of the same culture.
By geographic/geologic coincidence, the American plains happen to be some of the most fertile soil on earth for growing crops that many European immigrants knew very well how to grow as they had been farming those crops or similar crops for generations, on much smaller plots, typically in much worse conditions. So the opportunity to get free land from the American government, which incidentally happened to be incredible fertile land, near a community of people who were very similar to the community that you emigrated from in Europe, was like a heaven sent.
The telephone and electricity would not have been remotely useful for anybody but the richest socialites for most of the 19th century. Most houses/dwellings wouldn't have been wired either for most of the century. Also, there was no one to call on the phone, and you couldn't really call anyone anyway. Even up into the mid 20th century, most lines were "party lines" that were shared between entire city blocks, entire zip codes. Party lines are like this generation's dial-up modems, something that 2 generations ago were the most common thing to anybody, and now today the youngest generation would think it's the weirdest thing ever... You have to dial a phone number to get access to your Facebook Chats...??? Likewise, you have to ring a secret code and anybody within a city block can pick it up and listen to the conversation you might be having with someone else... 50 households share the same phone line...?? And, mind you, this was the 20th century let alone the 19th. And even if you happened to have a phone line, who would you call? Nobody else had a phone. And, for electricity, there were no products to plug in. Making this dichotomy between food/land/opportunity and electricity would be tantamount to asking why someone would take a high paying job in a city, when you could watch an 8K TV in the suburbs. It's ... like ... two things that aren't comparable ... They're not on the same wavelength of comparison.
Most of the people who moved West were farmers or from farming communities, both from Europe or from the United States, and for a poor family who had tilled hard scrabble soil across continental or northern Europe for generations, the American plains were literally a land of plenty. With the lucrative offer by to own acres and acres of property for free, as long as you planted crops and maintained the land (something that they had done for hundreds of years in much worse conditions), this was a godsend opportunity. Communities set up in rural areas were generally immigrant communities: Entire communities in Pennsylvania or the Plains that spoke Dutch, where it'd be relatively rare to hear anybody speak English. So, if you were a poor Germanic farmer who was being treated like shit in Philadelphia or New York City by the dominant landed American gentry, and hostile other immigrant groups, it only made sense to take your family west, to a community where they spoke the same language, had the same religion, and shared a lot of the same culture.
By geographic/geologic coincidence, the American plains happen to be some of the most fertile soil on earth for growing crops that many European immigrants knew very well how to grow as they had been farming those crops or similar crops for generations, on much smaller plots, typically in much worse conditions. So the opportunity to get free land from the American government, which incidentally happened to be incredible fertile land, near a community of people who were very similar to the community that you emigrated from in Europe, was like a heaven sent.
The telephone and electricity would not have been remotely useful for anybody but the richest socialites for most of the 19th century. Most houses/dwellings wouldn't have been wired either for most of the century. Also, there was no one to call on the phone, and you couldn't really call anyone anyway. Even up into the mid 20th century, most lines were "party lines" that were shared between entire city blocks, entire zip codes. Party lines are like this generation's dial-up modems, something that 2 generations ago were the most common thing to anybody, and now today the youngest generation would think it's the weirdest thing ever... You have to dial a phone number to get access to your Facebook Chats...??? Likewise, you have to ring a secret code and anybody within a city block can pick it up and listen to the conversation you might be having with someone else... 50 households share the same phone line...?? And, mind you, this was the 20th century let alone the 19th. And even if you happened to have a phone line, who would you call? Nobody else had a phone. And, for electricity, there were no products to plug in. Making this dichotomy between food/land/opportunity and electricity would be tantamount to asking why someone would take a high paying job in a city, when you could watch an 8K TV in the suburbs. It's ... like ... two things that aren't comparable ... They're not on the same wavelength of comparison.
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I don't know much about American history, but widespread availability of electricity is an early 20th century thing (like 1910s/1920s), not 19th.
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I'm pretty well off, make a decent living for the work I do. And if our government would pay for me to own a stake of land on a colony on the Moon or Mars(or even a livable planet). I would do that in a heartbeat. You get free land, a new start, a new life.
