ABSTRACT
It was in the prairies of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa that westward-moving pioneers found it necessary to adapt their techniques to conditions materially differing from those prevailing in the originally forested areas from which they had come. Prairie farming was to be the work of men of capital rather than that of the ordinary pioneer with little resources save brawn. Immigration, settlement, farm development, and railroad construction were all dependent upon each other. Railroads opened the prairies to settlement, but it was the immigration and farm development, actual and prospective, which assured capital for construction and, indeed, which indirectly provided much capital. Farmers and speculative landholders in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin contributed to railroad construction by exchanging mortgages on their lands for stock in the transportation companies. Greatest of the bonanza farm makers on the prairies was Michael Sullivant. Capitalist farm makers and livestock breeders were getting large operations under way in Iowa and Missouri in the fifties.
