To my understanding, and from what I have read in the book and throughout the course links, I believe that the intent of the Homestead Act was to defeat land monopoly. Many farmers, however, lacked the economic means to move west and manage a farm. . By this, fewer still understood the new type of agriculture, in which technology was used to farm the land that the Great Plains required. Instead, speculators and corporate interests were able to reap in profits, and fraud and corruption, and often marked the process farmland for transportation (the railroads). The Homestead Act's biggest wea…
