ABSTRACT
By 1850, the rising industrial structure was beginning to challenge the supremacy of agriculture, and, before 1900, the farmer had taken a secondary position in the nation's economy. Farmers from farther east took up the Western lands, but they also swarmed to Western cities and towns. In each decade, the Far Western sections were well below the national ratio of agricultural to town and city labor, and to 1890 they were far below. In 1870, outside the West South Central states and Iowa, the figure averaged 44.3 per cent—seventeen Western states thus comparing with 47.4 per cent for the United States. The rise in the South Atlantic states was only 9 cents, and in the Far West 42 cents, and the West had relatively few wage laborers. While the South had the bulk of Negro and female workers, the rest of the country had nearly all the foreign element.
