xxviii 1750 to 1900 President Jefferson, the champion of agrarianism, persuaded Congress to include farm products in his embargo of trade with the warring European powers Since agricultural sales were a major component of U.S trade, this proved to be a disaster Tobacco became almost worthless, while wheat prices fell from two dollars to 10 cents a bushel, setting off a general recession The distribution of western lands mostly seized by the U.S government from Indian tribes was a major issue leading up to the Civil War In 1862 a Homestead Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln at a time when 75 percent of Americans were farmers or lived in rural communities It was a way to reward Union supporters during the war, although former Confederates would later share its benefits The act promised 160 acres of free land in specified areas to families who would spend at least five years improving their new homesteads Some million families claimed free federal lands, while millions more bought surplus land from railroad companies building transcontinental lines with government assistance Persuaded that “rain follows the plow,” many of these homesteaders would eventually give up farming after enduring droughts, blizzards, and insect infestations later in the century After the Civil War much of southern agriculture was based on sharecropping, a system that put landless farmers to work on the large landholdings of others Poor whites and former slaves were most likely to farm under these circumstances Despite promises that they might someday own the land they cultivated, sharecroppers were often exploited by high-priced “company stores” and were prey to the usual disappointments of farming Like Russia’s serfs, emancipated by Czar Alexander II in 1861, sharecroppers often found greater opportunity in urban factories than by continuing to farm lands they might never actually own Farmer disappointment and unrest soon took political form In the United States, the National Grange was founded in 1867 This fraternal organization encouraged rural families to support one another and create cooperative facilities such as grain silos By the 1870s farmers were joining more overtly political farmers’ alliances Millions of farmers in the Midwest, Great Plains, and South were politicized by uncontrolled rail freight charges, high seed costs, and agricultural price instability In 1892 the new People’s Party ran former Iowa general James B Weaver for president This movement, whose members were called Populists, had some regional success and won electoral votes But after their central issues, including currency reform, were embraced by 1896 Democratic Party nominee for president William Jennings Bryan from Nebraska, Populists gradually retreated into political oblivion, and their tentative efforts to build a biracial movement were swept away In 1750 most of the farming population in Europe were either serfs or worked under conditions that had survived from serfdom Political and social changes brought on by the French Revolution in 1789 would result in the emancipation of farmers in France and later across Europe The last and largest group to achieve freedom was the rural population of the Russian Empire, in the 1860s Peasant unrest and revolts characterized Russia throughout this period SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS In the 18th century Europeans, later joined by North Americans, brought about a scientific, technological, and social movement that reshaped work, wealth, and environments around the globe Over this 150-year period, the Industrial Revolution changed power generation, transportation, and communication It also generated important breakthroughs in pure science, as physicists, chemists, and biologists developed theoretical explanations for technologies often already in use On the most basic level, what the Industrial Revolution did was replace ancient energy sources—human and animal labor, wind, fire, and water—with new systems of power, initially the use of coal to run steam engines that were massively more powerful than hundreds of human workers In 1765 Scotsman James Watt, building on the earlier work of Thomas Newcomen and others, developed the first efficient steam engine Among its earliest applications were steam-powered machinery for turning wool, cotton, and flax into finished textiles, a process previously done