New Technologies

The advances of the Industrial Age benefited homesteaders in the following ways:

• The railroads helped make the transportation of goods to and from homesteaders easier. 
• Rainfall in the Great Plains area was unpredictable. To combat this problem, homesteaders employed a new farming technique known as dry farming, in which farmers gained greater access to water by planting their seeds deep in the ground. 
• New inventions such as the McCormick Reaper and the thresher made harvesting less time-consuming and labor-intensive. The reaper allowed farmers to mechanically cut their grain, rather than cutting it manually with a scythe.   The thresher removed seeds from wheat stalks and husks by beating them until the seed fell out and could be put into sacks for shipment.

These new technologies helped revolutionize farming and enabled farmers to grow, produce, transport, and sell amounts of goods never witnessed before.