As the new industrial economy burgeoned, agricultural production also underwent profound changes. American farm output did not decline in the face of industrial growth; in fact, it grew at impressive rates over the last decades of the nineteenth century. New farmlands in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado were linked by railroads and brought under cultivation. At the same time, farmers experienced fundamental, often unsettling, changes as they adapted to new conditions. By the late 1800s farm production was influenced by more impersonal market forces than ever before. Farmers depended heavily on banks for finance, railroads for shipping, and grain elevator operators for selling their crops. As a result, many farmers went into debt in the years after the Civil War. Whenever farm prices dropped, the financial pressures on farmers mounted steadily.

Wheat.

Changes in the way wheat was shipped, stored...