at, bringing to its cultivation
great machines, white labor, and a modified factory system. South of the
wheat country, corn dominated in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and went to
market either as grain or in the converted form of hogs or stock. In
Texas the cotton-fields pushed into new areas. The farm lands completely
surrounded the Indian Territory, in which a diversified agriculture was
known to be both possible and profitable.

Across the United States, from Canada to Mexico, the advance line of
farms pushed from the well-watered bottoms of the Mississippi Valley
into the plains that rise toward the Rocky Mountains. Near the
ninety-seventh meridian the rainfall of this region becomes insufficient
for general farming in ordinary years. But the solicitations of
land-sellers brought settlers into the sub-humid region, while for a few
years in the eighties the rainfall was greater than the average.
Permanent climatic changes were imagined by the hopeful. A Governor of
Kansas stated, in 1886, "with absolute certainty, that great areas in
the Western third of Kansas are becoming more fertile," while an Eastern
Senator, who was generally well informed, believed in 1888 that "the
whole Territory of Dakota is as capable of sustaining population as
Iowa."

Between the farming frontier and the mountains the cattlemen expanded
the grazing industry, with profits that were enlarged because of the
markets that the railroads brought them. The "long drive" from Texas to
Montana became a familiar idea on the border, while the cowboys in their
lonely watches developed a folk-song literature that is typically
American. Between the cattlemen and the sheepmen there was permanent
war, for the sheep injured the grass they grazed over. Although both
industries were trespassers on the public lands the herders resented the
appearance of the flocks as an intrusion upon their domain.

Kansas City rose suddenly to prominence as the meeting-place of the
railways of the West and Southwest with those of the East. Near to the
line that divided steady agriculture from the nomadic life of the
plains it became a convenient market for both. Here the packers
developed the traffic in fresh beef that the new railways with their
refrigerator cars made possible. The cities of the East, in need of more
fresh meat than the local farmers could provide, found their supply on
the plains of the Far West.

Beyond the plains, the mountain regions changed less fro