“A great democracy will be
neither great nor a democracy
if it is not progressive.”
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, circa 1910
AGRARIAN DISTRESS AND
Midwestern farmers were in-
THE RISE OF POPULISM
creasingly restive over what they
I
considered excessive railroad
n spite of their remarkable prog- freight rates to move their goods
ress, late-19th century American to market . They believed that the
farmers experienced recurring pe- protective tariff, a subsidy to big
riods of hardship . Mechanical im- business, drove up the price of their
provements greatly increased yield increasingly expensive equipment .
per hectare . The amount of land un- Squeezed by low market prices
der cultivation grew rapidly through- and high costs, they resented ever-
out the second half of the century, heavier debt loads and the banks
as the railroads and the gradual that held their mortgages . Even the
displacement of the Plains Indians weather was hostile . During the late
opened up new areas for western 1880s droughts devastated the west-
settlement . A similar expansion of ern Great Plains and bankrupted
agricultural lands in countries such thousands of settlers .
as Canada, Argentina, and Australia
In the South, the end of slavery
compounded these problems in the brought major changes . Much ag-
international market, where much ricultural land was now worked by
of U .S . agricultural production was sharecroppers, tenants who gave
now sold . Everywhere, heavy sup- up to half of their crop to a land-
ply pushed the price of agricultural owner for rent, seed, and essential
commodities downward .
supplies . An estimated 80 percent
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OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
of the South’s African-American Colored Farmers National Al iance,
farmers and 40 percent of its white claimed over a million members .
ones lived under this debilitating Federating into two large North-
system . Most were locked in a cycle ern and Southern blocs, the alli-
of debt, from which the only hope of ances promoted elaborate economic
escape was increased planting . This programs to “unite the farmers of
led to the over-production of cotton America for their protection against
and tobacco, and thus to declining class legislation and the encroach-
prices and the further exhaustion ments of concentrated capital .”
of the soil .
By 1890 the level of agrarian dis-
The first organized effort to ad- tress, fueled by years of hardship and
dress general agricultural problems hostility toward the McKinley tar-
was by the Patrons of Husbandry, iff, was at an all-time high . Working
a farmer’s group popularly known with sympathetic Democrats in the
as the Grange Movement . Launched South or small third parties in the
in 1867 by employees of the U .S . West, the Farmers’ Alliances made
Department of Agriculture, the a push for political power . A third
Granges focused initially on social political party, the People’s (or Pop-
activities to counter the isolation ulist) Party, emerged . Never before
most farm families encountered . in American politics had there been
Women’s participation was actively anything like the Populist fervor
encouraged . Spurred by the Panic that swept the prairies and cotton
of 1873, the Grange soon grew to lands . The elections of 1890 brought
20,000 chapters and one-and-a-half the new party into power in a dozen
million members .
Southern and Western states, and
The Granges set up their own sent a score of Populist senators and
marketing systems, stores, process- representatives to Congress .
ing plants, factories, and coopera-
The first Populist convention
tives, but most ultimately failed . The was in 1892 . Delegates from farm,
movement also enjoyed some politi- labor, and reform organizations met
cal success . During the 1870s, a few in Omaha, Nebraska, determined to
states passed “Granger laws,” limit- overturn a U .S . political system they
ing railroad and warehouse fees .
viewed as hopelessly corrupted by
By 1880 the Grange was in decline the industrial and financial trusts .
and being replaced by the Farmers’ Their platform stated:
Al iances, which were similar in
We are met, in the midst of a
many respects but more overtly po-
nation brought to the verge of
litical . By 1890 the al iances, initial y
moral, political, and material ruin.
autonomous state organizations,
Corruption dominates the ballot-
had about 1 .5 mil ion members
box, the legislatures, the Congress,
from New York to California . A par-
and touches even the ermine of the
allel African-American group, the
bench [courts]. ... From the same
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