"Distance and inadequate training in agricultural pursuits closed the frontier to eastern workingmen; instead
America was settled by successive waves of farmers who were already skilled in wresting a living from the
soil. Farming, even before the day of mechanization. was a highly technical profession: frontiering required
a
knowledge of even more specialized techniques. Clearing the land, building a home, fencing fields, solving
the problem of defense, and planting crops on virgin soil all demanded experience few workingmen could
boast
11
trappers and leatherclad 'Mountain Men,'
Romantic characters took part [in frontier migration]:
starry-eyed prospectors and hard-riding cowboys, badmen and vigilantes. But the true hero of the tale was the
hard-working farmer who, ax in hand, marched ever westward until the boundaries of his nation touched the
Pacific."
Ray Allen Billington, historian, Westward Expansion: A History of the
American Frontier. 1949
and the most intensive phase of the exploitation
"The rapid expansion of wagework in the United States
and settlement of the western third of the continent were roughly contemporaneous processes that occurred
during a seventy-year interval [beginning in 1848]. Yet, at first glance, the terms frontier and wagework seem
one such conjunction [of these terms] was the
to describe mutually exclusive conditions
In actuality,
wageworkers' frontier.
..
was foremost a predominantly male community of manual labor
The wageworkers' frontier
dependent upon others for wages in the extractive industries of the sparsely settled Rocky Mountain and
Pacific regions of the United States.
It also represented a zone of extremely rapid transition from
wilderness to industrial, post-frontier society.
The wageworkers' frontier was a fragile entity forever at the
mercy of the outside world's pricing of its basic [export] commodities
All [commodities] were shipped
to constitute a
out of the west because the Rocky Mountain and Pacific regions contained too few people
viable home market. Settlements on the wageworkers' frontier tended to resemble factory towns in
Pennsylvania or Massachusetts."
Carlos A. Schwantes, historian, "The Concept of the Wageworkers' Frontier,"
1987
1. Using the excerpts, respond to parts a. b. and c.
a. Briefly describe one major difference between Billington's and Schwantes' historical interpretations
of the American West.
b. Briefly explain how one historical event or development from 1848 to 1898 that is not explicitly
mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Billington's interpretation.
c. Briefly explain how one historical event or development from 1848 to 1898 that is not explicitly
mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Schwantes' interpretation.