Today is Tuesday, and the morning has flown by. Mr. Bruns came back even though he has a swine flu infected child. Apparently he has no problem with killing every one of his students in a mass genecide known as Brunsocide. Oh well. Bruns started the class off talking about ITEDS Testing begins exactly one week from today. The school is trying to entice students to do well on ITEDS by offering extra credit opportunities for those students who do well on the tests. People who score in the percentile range in the 90's get 20 bonus points, 80's get 15, and 70's get 10 or something like that.The school needs kids to do well so that we rank highly in the list of good and profficient schools. Schools that rank badly on the list get a bunch of grant money which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, especially for those kids who couldn't care less about how they to on ITEDS or in life. Mr. Bruns also talked about an extra credit opportunity. There is a speaker/ movie thing going on this Saturday at 10 A.M. For the extra credit, we have to go to the thing, watch the deal, maybe take a couple of pictures, and then write a discriptive blog about what went down. After that, Stephanie began her presentation.Settling on the Great Plains: At first, people did not want to settle on the great plains. The land just seemed to be a huge expanse of barren wastes incapaple of supporting human life. Eventually settlers realized that something could be done to use the land and settle in it. They started by trying to convert 400 million of forests and praries into farmable land. This took 250 years. With the construction of the transcontinental railroad system, the next several hundred million acres of land were converted into usable land in only 30 years. In exchange for building the railroads for the U.S. government, the government granted 170 million acres of land, worth over half a billion dollars then to the railraod company. The railroad was hired to lay rail as fast as physically possible. After building the railroads, the Company sold their land for around 20 dollars an acre to farmers. The railroad also charged extremely high prices to farmers and other settlers who used the railraod. There were no other competing railroads around, and farmers had a hard time making any money. Farmers had to use the railroads to ship out their crops and livestock and to get machinery onto their farm from somewhere else.In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. That act offered 160 acres of land to any single settling person, or any head of a household family. Only 10% of the land given out to people from the Homestead act were given to people who really needed it. The other 90% was given to people who were only pretending to settle and farm the land, and then turn around and sell that land for a huge profit years later. People like Henry D. Washburn and Nathaniel P Langhorn began to encourage congress to pass laws to protect wilderness from damage from settlement.Challenges of the West included being out in the open elements nearly 24/7. There were very few trees, so people could not easily get lumber to build homes. People built sod houses which were literally made from dirt chunks and sod. Steph did a good job.
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