Factory Farms

Farms established with up to 100,000 acres with the majority of farms 5,000-10,000 acres were originally called "factory farms."  Good weather, high wheat prices and the availability of cheap labor resulted in record profits in the late 1870s.  The huge capital outlay necessary to start up and maintain these farms made the financial risks ever more riskier.

If the weather had a bad year or the wheat prices fell, the results were disastrous.  The average cost to start up a "factory farm" in the late 1870s was $60,000 including $17,000 for plowing and $9,000 for farm machinery.   A modest 10,000 acre farm needed 60 plows, 60 mechanical seeders, 150 wagons, 50 self binders, 10 steam engines, 10 threshing machines...you get the picture.  If a profit was to be made everything had to come off like clockwork.

Unfortunately, mother nature is never precise.  In the late 1880s and early 1890s, nature showed them who was boss.  Droughts in the summer and blizzards in the winter brought grief to these failing farms.  Wheat prices fell, yield per acre fell and the over planted land was tired.  The Age of the Dakota Farming Bonanza was over.

The Northern Pacific Railroad, who started this whole bonanza, however, was flourishing,  and had sold off their land to small farmers.  Even though brief, the bonanza farms had a huge impact on the Plains agriculture.  Not only did it foreshadow corporate farming of the 20th century, but they encouraged the development of advances in science and technology that would shape the whole future of farming.  The northern and western plains were now covered by new rail lines to the remotest corners of the nation.

And no one ever heard of Mr. Oliver Darlrymple!

Next time...The Great Oklahoma Land Runs
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 1, 1924, William Tilghman is murdered by a corrupt prohibition agent who resented Tilghman’s refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Tilghman, one of the famous marshals who brought law and order to the Wild West, was 71 years old