Summary: The Benefits Of American Expansion

Imagine that you wake up in a tiny bedroom. You have to be very quiet because there are millions of people sleeping in the same building as you. Your apartment is so small that your room barely fits your bed in it and you have to get dressed while standing on your bed. Outside of your apartment you have to squeeze through halls till you get to the elevator. Since your apartment is on the 2067th floor you have to wait crammed in there with 15 other people until you get off of the elevator and walk onto the busiest street there is. The flow of people takes you right past the place you need to go because you couldn’t fight against the current. You keep walking trying to get back to that building, but it’s a lost cause. You no longer panic, because this has happened to you almost every day since you were born, and would likely happen the rest of your life too. This may

seem like a crazy, never-could-of-happened moment, but if we had not expanded west it might have been reality. The benefits of American Expansion outweighed the costs because we spread out our population and got more fertile farming land.

The benefits of American Expansion outweighed the costs because we spread out our rapidly growing population.

The population of the US is ever increasing. Every minute of every day of every week our population grows. Our population right now is about 326 million, and if we had not expanded west our population would be stuck in the same area as the 13 original states. Without spreading out we would be living on top of each other with little space for much else, and that is unhealthy. According to Population Education, “Diseases spread more quickly among people who live in close proximity to each other … With more people living in dense conditions, there is more frequent contact between more individuals, allowing disease transmission to easily occur.” When we have such a big population in a little area, it becomes unhealthy to the people living there. This is just one thing that goes wrong with that many people in one place. If we hadn’t expanded west then our millions of people would be in more danger because of simply how and where they lived. If we did have so many people, how would we feed them

all?

The benefits of American Expansion outweighed the costs because we got more fertile land for farming. With millions of people living in such a small area there would be no space for us to farm food. The West had fertile land that could be used to feed the ever growing population. Without that land we would have had to import all our food from other countries. This would be unhealthy and an unnecessary pain, because the food would cost more due to shipping. According to Discovery Education “To many pioneers, moving to the frontier in the West meant the opportunity to own larger, more fertile farms.” Since there was more land in the West they were able to own larger quantities of land. There were also less people with claims on the land so it was not as expensive. This land was more fertile because it had been used less for crops and was not as depleted of nutrients. So we were able to grow more food and have the surplus needed to survive.

Expanding America west allowed our population to even out and not live on top of each other, literally. It also allowed us to grow the surplus of food needed for a country to do well. This kept the country healthy and helped america prosper. Once again the benefits of American Expansion outweighed the costs because we spread out our population and got more fertile farming land. So the next time you wake up in your own room with all of its space remeber what would have happened if we had not expanded America west.