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Westward Expansion Roles

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The government has many different roles throughout history and today. They had a very different role during westward expansion than today. Capitalism is a mostly non controlling government so you would have a lot of freedom and choice.The proper role of government is support the growing country and to spread capitalism. During westward expansion the government wanted, ( as well as many other Americans did,) to move west. To make capitalism spread west they passed the Homestead Act . “...The Homestead Act encouraged western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land…” (Mr. Lintner September 11th). Then they had to live on that land for 5 years. Naturally, people packed up and headed west to get 160 acres for a small filing fee. …show more content…

He and his men were killed in 1 hour. During the war the government tried to introduce the native americans to capitalism, this was known as assimilation. To try to assimilate them they passed the Dawes act. “They broke up reservations and gave land to individual native americans” (Mr. Lintner September 12th). This, unsurprisingly, did not work. The next issue to settle was actually getting to the west. Every wanted to move west, but they couldn’t get there. The government decided to make railroads. This would drastically decrease the time it took to get there. This also gave opportunities to new businessmen who would become rich off of this. With new settlements rising the economy had to become more stable. The government decided to switch to paper money, but then came a huge debate over what the currency would be backed by- silver and gold or just gold. This was bimetallism vs monometalism.Bimetallism would cause inflation, and monometalism would cause …show more content…

They moved away from expansion into immigration. They had to protect Americans and their jobs while helping immigrants settle in America. In the late 19th century immigration started increasing they all were heading to America. Citizens of America were scared they would lose their job to immigrants because they would work for cheap. In the west wages were declining due to the Chinese immigrants taking jobs. Then the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to protect the American’s jobs. The act stated no Chinese immigrants would be allowed in unless their parents lived in America. After this act was passed the main concern of the government was urbanization. They government helped out with five challenges of urbanization crime, fire, transportation, sanitation and water. They lower crime by making it easier to arrest people in the court of law. Then they government reduced fire risk by replacing wooden houses with non-flammable ones.The fixed transportation in cities wasn't exactly fixed and they got around by foot or horse and buggy, or for the luxurious- an automobile. The government made a trash disposing system to fix the city’s sanitation problems as well as making a sewer network. They made a pipe system for clean drinking water to supply

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