ABSTRACT
The agricultural colleges and experiment stations slowly made impressions on the farmers. The cities along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan and on the middle stretches of the Mississippi River, particularly in Illinois, were excellently located for serving the demands of farmers farther west, and their supremacy in machine output was not the only feature of their trade. The troubles recorded were all in the Prairies, and before the Great Plains were invaded by farmers. Capitalists bought up the depreciated railroad bonds to trade for land, and independent farmers swarmed in to get what they could of the rest, and of the unmonopolized parts of the government land, in the same region. The railroad company then took the leadership in the establishment of bonanza farms. The bonanza farms exemplify the magnetic attraction of the cheaper and more fertile frontier soils for wheat growers.
