Summary

As the country entered the Progressive Era, people increasingly lived in urban rather than rural areas, and President Teddy Roosevelt began to curb the power of monopolies, including the railroads. Women also increasingly gained power, including the right to vote. In a paper Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote for a 1911 farm conference (though she did not deliver it herself), she continued to extol the virtues of a country life and of farming, though in reality her farm could never support her.

Rose Wilder Lane and her husband worked in California for a company that soiled land to country rubes, but she was unhappy in her marriage. Her husband was hapless in his endeavors. Trying to save up money to visit her daughter in San Francisco, Laura began to write newspaper articles, encouraged by Rose. As land sales stalled when World...