HIST 3554 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Commodification, Multiple Choice, Racialization
Document Summary
Easy in, easy out: development of public lands was uneven. Large industrial firms were given tracts to build railroads: railroad companies already had funding by federal government, made lands more accessible. Looked like a jeffersonian ideal: with small individual plots, but didn"t pan out for most because it proved very difficult. Land as commodity because of the free-hold system, value lost if not improved. 2 trends: corporate consolidation, demand for cheap (flexible) migrant labor. Immense gender imbalance for settlement west of the mississippi river. Cultural norms were less important and less policed. Most common occupation for women west of the mississippi = prostitution. Immigrants going to the west were mostly men, individual or in groups: commodification of women"s bodies in the male market, economic value of heterosexual sex, sex ratio in settle population, more males. Undisciplined space: incredibly violent, lack of institutions led to settlers of the frontier expressing themselves in new ways.
