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Why Did People In The 1800's Pack Up and Move West When electricity/phones/etc. existed?

TaterTots

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,963
My fiance and I were reading up about the "old west" and having a discussion and I came to a loss. Why in the world would someone pack up and move out to a land with absolutely nothing and no law? Electricity existed along with telephones etc. along the east, but people dropped that shit to go out west to start a new? Why? I can't imagine anyone doing something like that today.

I can't find the reasoning and I hope someone more educated on the matter can teach me something because Google isn't helping lol.
 
Pokiehl

Pokiehl

Member
Oct 29, 2017
553
For the most part electricity didn't exist in most homes until the early 20th century. Which is after the "Old West" period.

Read the "Rise and Fall of America Growth" by Robert Gordon.
 
ShadowSwordmaster

ShadowSwordmaster

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Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,476
What did you exactly read? I feel like you are missing some information about the migration west from your source.
 
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TaterTots

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,963
Pokiehl said:
For the most part electricity didn't exist in most homes until the early 20th century. Which is after the "Old West" period.
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The way I'm looking at it is electricity didn't exist until 1879 and the "old west" didn't end until 1895-ish. To me, that means that portion of the country got it a little later?
 

nitewulf

Member
Nov 29, 2017
7,193
Lot of people were extremely poor and had nothing. They didn't have the amenities or couldn't afford them. On the other hand, the government incentivized them to move west and claim land for farming, ranching, agriculture etc. Many built the roads and railroads that led West. You are basically thinking why they left civilization...think of it this way, go to the poorest slum in the world, and offer a family to go to a rural area where they will have their own land to farm on, and live off of. Plenty would do it.
 
VeePs

VeePs

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,358
It was there best chance at a good life probably. Land was a huge deal because if you owned land you could profit from it and live off it. Not only would you be set, but your children, grandchildren, etc.
 
danm999

danm999

Member
Oct 29, 2017
17,096
Sydney
200w.gif


Mahonay said:
They had FAITH
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SON
 

Deleted member 17092

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
20,360
Basically free land is why. You can go stake hundreds of acres of arable land that's pretty fucking enticing.
 
Pokiehl

Pokiehl

Member
Oct 29, 2017
553
TaterTots said:
The way I'm looking at it is electricity didn't exist until 1879 and the "old west" didn't end until 1895-ish. To me, that means that portion of the country got it a little later?
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Electricity/light as a useable thing was beginnng to be implemented during the period. But it wasn't like BOOM everyone who wants it can get it. It took years for it to spread through the populated east and even longer in the south. Other things also had to be invented to make it serve functional purposes as well. And of course the rich got it first, and the rich aren't the migrants you are talking about. The poor had little reason to stay.
 
ShadowSwordmaster

ShadowSwordmaster

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Oct 25, 2017
12,476
TaterTots said:
I definitely am, which is part of my question. I'm missing something and thus far it seems as though land is part of it.
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Land was indeed a part of it and again, what did you read to make this assumption. The history of Western migration happen before the 1870s for various reasons but mostly dealt with getting land and of course the railroads heading out there too.
 

VectorPrime

Banned
Apr 4, 2018
11,781
Free farmland where you have a chance to be your own man or some hellish factory during the Industrial Revolution. What would you choose?
 
Daitokuji

Daitokuji

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,602
What could you do with electricity at the time? Lights? ...and uh a record player maybe? I don't think they were really missing out on too much.
 
Hassel

Hassel

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Oct 25, 2017
1,363
Your assumptions about widespread use of modern convinces is not accurate.

Have you considered searching parts of the Internet dedicated to the subject ?
 
PeskyToaster

PeskyToaster

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,312
because instead of working in a factory in terrible conditions you could get your own land and your own house. Even though life was still hard it was more about the potential for a better life than the guarantee of terrible one.
 
samoyed

samoyed

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
15,191
Living all your life plugged into electrical sockets is a pretty recent social development. Your mistake is thinking people lived like us in the 19th century.
 
kswiston

kswiston

Member
Oct 24, 2017
3,693
The push west happened long before 1895. Ever wonder why Ohio and Michigan are considered part of the midwest, even though they are nowhere near the western half of the country? That was the western frontier at one point.

Anyhow, as others have pointed out, the US had cheap land deals in the west for many decades, and back before the industrial revolution (and even some time after), most Americans were in the agricultural sector. If you could afford to buy land, you could have a farm and hopefully a better life. This especially appealed to European immigrants coming from places were land was expensive.
 
Ocean Bones

Ocean Bones

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
4,725
Tell folks there's a shit ton of free land, gold and a fresh start on some frozen moon today and they'll give up their smartphones, movies, heat and plumbing by the tens of millions to go get at it.

And what good is all that shit if they couldn't afford to have it or never had it at all?
 
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TaterTots

TaterTots

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Oct 27, 2017
12,963
Out of curiosity, lets say there was a huge part of the U.S. nearly untouched. Would ya'll drop everything and move there to own land?

EDIT; Person above me gave their belief lol.
 

Deleted member 8257

Oct 26, 2017
24,586
Manifest Destiny.

It was about becoming a landowner and leading a nice comfortable live living on a prairie with your own crops and cattle instead of working in grimey factories with no labor laws. Of course it came with risks. Native Tribes of course took them as invaders.
 

Deleted member 17092

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Oct 27, 2017
20,360
Even today if someone said hey you can have a fuck ton of arable land on the condition you can't use any electricity on it or even sell it I'd say fuck yeah and go make an attempt at just living off it. If you know what you're doing and you have enough land that's arable and is big enough to hunt game and keep some livestock going, you're set. I actually think it's interesting more farmers with the land to do it don't just basically go off the grid. Fuck commercial farming and all that it entails if you literally don't have to do it. A lot of these farmers kids don't want to do it though and go to college and everybody starts thinking they need 50 thousand dollar pick up trucks and giant ass houses, etc, start taking out loans for giant equipment to make more money from commercial farming etc.

They would be better off just trying to self sustain for the most part imo if you have the land to do it. That's why farming subsidies are huge though I suppose. You're basically bribing people to not do that because if enough people with huge swaths of land start doing that then everyone else suffers.

Free market capitalism fails quite easily if you have hundreds of acres of land. You can pretty easily say why the fuck should I farm all this land for thousands of other people instead of just my family unless y'all fucking pay up well beyond what the market price is for the crop.
 
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sphagnum

sphagnum

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Oct 25, 2017
16,058
Why would you want to be in some dirty, smelly, rat infested, crime filled, disease ridden, cramped city with horse poop and bedbugs all over the place working a dead end non-union factory job that paid a pittance and had no protections when you could own land and work for yourself?
 

Deleted member 35077

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Dude, are you forgetting about the free land? I would absolutely leave back in the 1800s to uncharted territory if it guarantee me a big pasture of land.
 
Goda

Goda

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Oct 26, 2017
2,430
Toronto
They were basically promised land and a new start where they could make a great living. The east was becoming increasingly occupied and land was getting scarce and expensive.

If you want to read an incredible story based on a caravan moving west during this time. Read about the Donner party.
 
Vinnk

Vinnk

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Oct 26, 2017
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Japan
Most of the people moving West were also the ones who could not afford electricity and phones. They moved West for the chance at a better life.
 

Deleted member 19533

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Man, if I was offered free land but had to give up electricity and phones for a while, I'd take that deal today. lol
 
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TaterTots

TaterTots

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Oct 27, 2017
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Rad Bandolar

Rad Bandolar

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Oct 25, 2017
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Just imagining some factory owner standing at the outskirts of the city and yelling at departing wagon trains, "Where are you going? We have telephones!"
 
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