agricultural frontier westward by leaps and bounds until it had
almost reached the limit of successful cultivation under
conditions which then prevailed. As crop acreage and production
increased, prices went down in accordance with the law of supply
and demand, and farmers all over the country found it difficult
to make a living.

In the West and South--the great agricultural districts of the
country--the farmers commonly bought their supplies and
implements on credit or mortgaged their crops in advance; and
their profits at best were so slight that one bad season might
put them thereafter entirely in the power of their creditors and
force them to sell their crops on their creditors' terms. Many
farms were heavily mortgaged, too, at rates of interest that ate
up the farmers' profits. During and after the Civil War the
fluctuation of the currency and the high tariff worked especial
hardship on the farmers as producers of staples which must be
sold abroad in competition with European products and as
consumers of manufactured articles which must be bought at home
at prices made arbitrarily high by the protective tariff. In
earlier times, farmers thus harassed would have struck their
tents and moved farther west, taking up desirable land on the
frontier and starting out in a fresh field of opportunity. It was
still possible for farmers to go west, and many did so but only
to find that the opportunity for economic independence on the
edge of settlement had largely disappeared. The era of the
self-sufficing pioneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer on
the frontier, forced by natural conditions over which he had no
control to--engage in the production of staples, was fully as
dependent on the market and on transportation facilities as was