Also during this period the export of breadstuffs was very significant of the agricultural advance, and by 1880 the United States had become the greatest exporter of wheat in the world.
The "Homestead" Law of 1862 was a great factor in the Westward expansion and the growth of agricultural enterprise. Practically free land encouraged the settlement of the public domain. The ease with which ex-soldiers could get land helped to prevent a glut of the labor market. The sale of army horses and mules to farmers helped to expand agriculture and it may be said that the close of the war marks the time when the ox, as a draft animal, was finally displaced by the horse.
This rapid settlement and cultivation of the land (very often on a purely speculative basis), brought a glut of agricultural commodities on the market. (Note the almost doubling of the cereal crops between 1869 and 1879.) Foreign countries were not able to take up the surplus, which resulted in an era of very low prices and the panic of 1877.
The rural discontent generated by this period of dislocation gave rise to the Grange and other farmer movements, which sought to readjust the environment by means of rural co-operation of all kinds.
A great expansion of the railway systems occurred in this period. Steel rails were substituted for iron rails; trunk line systems were organized; feeder lines or "Granger roads" were built in all directions, and the transcontinental lines were pushed through
