Outline of US History by U.S. Department of State - HTML preview

CHAPTER 9: DISCONTENT AND REFORM

“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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