Learning Objectives
- Examine how the economic and political climate of the Gilded Age promoted the formation of the farmers’ protest movement
- Explain how the farmers’ revolt moved from protest to the creation of the Populist party
Challenges in Farming
The challenges that many American farmers faced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were significant. They contended with economic hardships born out of rapidly declining farm prices, prohibitively high tariffs on items they needed to purchase, and foreign competition. One of the largest challenges they faced was overproduction, where the glut of their products in the marketplace drove the price lower and lower.
Figure 1. This North Dakota sod hut, built by a homesteading farmer for his family, was photographed in 1898, two years after it was built. While the country was quickly industrializing, many farmers still lived in rough, rural conditions.
Overproduction of crops occurred in part due to the westward expansion of homestead farms and in part because industrialization led to new farm tools that dramatically increased crop yields. As farmers fell deeper into debt, whether it be to the local stores where they bought supplies or to the railroads that shipped their produce, their response was to increase crop production each year in the hope of earning more money with which to pay back their debt. The more they produced, the lower prices dropped. To a hard-working farmer, the notion that their own overproduction was the greatest contributing factor to their debt was a completely foreign concept.
Farmers had always been dependent on the whims of the weather and local markets. But now they staked their financial security on a national economic system subject to rapid price swings, rampant speculation, and limited regulation. Frustrated American farmers attempted to reshape the fundamental structures of the nation’s political and economic systems, systems they believed enriched parasitic bankers and industrial monopolists at the expense of the many laboring farmers who fed the nation by producing its many crops and farm goods. Their dissatisfaction with an erratic and impersonal system put many of them at the forefront of what would become perhaps the most serious challenge to the established political economy of Gilded Age America.
Few issues roused farmers’ anger more than the high tariff rates that seemed to exclusively benefit Eastern industry. Rising tariffs on industrial products made purchased items more expensive, yet tariffs were not being used to keep farm prices artificially high as well. Therefore, farmers were paying inflated prices but not benefiting from them. Even worse, reciprocal tariffs in other countries made it more difficult to sell their crops overseas. Finally, the issue of gold versus silver as the basis of U.S. currency was a very real problem for many farmers. Farmers needed more money in circulation, whether it was paper or silver, in order to create inflationary pressure. Inflationary pressure would allow farm prices to increase, thus allowing them to earn more money that they could then spend on the higher-priced goods in stores. However, in 1878, federal law set the amount of paper money in circulation, and, as mentioned before, Harrison’s Sherman Silver Act, intended to increase the amount of silver coinage, was too modest to do any real good, especially in light of the unintended consequence of depleting the nation’s gold reserve. In short, farmers had a big stack of bills and wanted a big stack of money—be it paper or silver—to pay them. Neither was forthcoming from a government that seemed to care more about issues of patronage and how to stay in the White House for more than four years at a time.
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Farmers Begin to Organize
Figure 2. This print from the early 1870s, with scenes of farm life, was a promotional poster for the Grangers, one of the earliest farmer reform groups.
The initial response by increasingly frustrated and angry farmers was to organize into groups that were similar to early labor unions. Taking note of how the industrial labor movement had unfolded in the last quarter of the century, farmers began to understand that a collective voice could create significant pressure among political leaders and produce substantive change. While farmers had their own challenges, including geography and diverse needs among different types of farmers, they believed this model to be useful to their cause.
One of the first efforts to organize farmers came in 1867 with Oliver Hudson Kelly’s creation of the Patrons of Husbandry, more popularly known as the Grange. In the wake of the Civil War, the Grangers quickly grew to over 1.5 million members in less than a decade. Kelly believed that farmers could best help themselves by creating farmers’ cooperatives in which they could pool resources and obtain better shipping rates, as well as prices on seeds, fertilizer, machinery, and other necessary inputs. These cooperatives, he believed, would let them self-regulate production as well as collectively obtain better rates from railroad companies and other businesses.
At the state level, specifically in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, the Patrons of Husbandry did briefly succeed in urging the passage of Granger Laws, which regulated some railroad rates along with the prices charged by grain elevator operators. The movement also created a political party—the Greenback Party, so named for its support of print currency (or “greenbacks”) not based upon a gold standard—which saw brief success with the election of fifteen congressmen. However, such successes were short-lived and had little impact on the lives of everyday farmers. In the Wabash case of 1886, brought by the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the State of Illinois for passing Granger Laws controlling railroad rates; the court found such laws to be unconstitutional. Their argument held that states did not have the authority to control interstate commerce; only the federal government could do that. As for the Greenback Party, when only seven delegates appeared at an 1888 national convention of the group, the party faded from existence.
Link to Learning
Explore Rural Life in the Late Nineteenth Century to study photographs, firsthand reports, and other information about how farmers lived and struggled at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Farmers’ Alliance
Figure 3. The Farmers’ Alliance flag displays the motto: “The most good for the most PEOPLE,” clearly a sentiment they hoped that others would believe.
The next attempt by farmers to organize on a regional level took the form of the Farmers’ Alliance. Texas agrarians met in Lampasas, Texas, in 1877 and organized the first Farmers’ Alliance to restore some economic power to farmers as they dealt with railroads, merchants, and bankers. If big business relied on its numerical strength to exert its economic will, why shouldn’t farmers unite to counter that power? They could share machinery, bargain from wholesalers, and negotiate higher prices for their crops. Over the following years, organizers spread from town to town across the former Confederacy, the Midwest, and the Great Plains, holding evangelical-style camp meetings, distributing pamphlets, and establishing over one thousand alliance newspapers. As the alliance spread, so too did its near-religious vision of the nation’s future as a “cooperative commonwealth” that would protect the interests of the many from the predatory greed of the few.
In 1890, Dr. Charles Macune, who led the Southern Alliance, which was based in Texas and had over 100,000 members by 1886, urged the creation of a national alliance between his organization, the Northwest Alliance, and the Colored Alliance, the largest African American organization in the United States. Led by Tom Watson, the Colored Alliance, which was founded in Texas but quickly spread throughout the Old South, counted over one million members. Although they originally advocated for self-help, African Americans in the group soon understood the benefits of political organization and a unified voice to improve their plight, regardless of race. While racism kept the alliance splintered among the three component branches, they still managed to craft a national agenda that appealed to their large membership. All told, the Farmers’ Alliance brought together over 2.5 million members, 1.5 million White farmers, and 1 million Black farmers.
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In December 1890, the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, more commonly known as the Southern Farmers’ Alliance, its affiliate the Colored Farmers’ Alliance, and the Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Association met jointly in the Marion Opera House in Ocala, Florida, where they adopted the Ocala Demands. The “Demands” adopted by the Ocala convention called for:
- the abolition of national banks; the establishment of sub-treasuries or depositories in every state, which would make low-interest direct loans to farmers and property owners
- the increase of money in circulation to not less than $50 per capita (as a comparison, that would be just over $1,500 in today’s money, but the money supply per capita today is over $4,000)
- the abolishment of futures of all agricultural and mechanical productions (futures require selling at a predetermined price at a later date)
- the introduction of free silver (unlimited coinage of silver)
- the prohibition of alien ownership of land, the reclamation of all lands held by railroads and other corporations in excess of what was actually used and needed by them, held for actual settlers only
- legislation to ensure that one industry would not be built up at the expense of another
- removal of the tariff tax on necessities of life
- a graduated income tax; the limitation of all national and state revenues to the necessary expenses of the government economically and honestly administered;
- strict regulation or ownership of the means of public communication and transportation;
- and an amendment of the United States Constitution providing for the direct election of United States senators (this eventually happened with the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1912).
Many of these ideas were later incorporated into the new People’s (or Populist) Party Platform.
Women in the Farmer’s Alliance Movement
The alliance movement, and the subsequent political party that emerged from it, also featured prominent roles for women. Nearly 250,000 women joined the movement due to their shared interest in the farmers’ worsening situation as well as the promise of being a full partner with political rights within the group, which they saw as an important step towards women’s suffrage on a national level. The ability to vote and stand for office within the organization encouraged many women who sought similar rights on the larger American political scene. Prominent alliance spokeswoman, Mary Elizabeth Lease of Kansas, often spoke of membership in the Farmers’ Alliance as an opportunity to “raise less corn and more hell!”
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From Organization to Political Party: The Populist Party
Angry at the federal government’s continued unwillingness to substantively address the plight of the average farmer, Charles Macune and the Farmers’ Alliance chose to create a political party whose representatives—if elected—could enact real change. Put simply, if the government would not address the problem, then it was time to change those elected to power.
In 1891, the alliance formed the People’s Party, or the Populists, as they came to be known. At their national convention that summer in Omaha, Nebraska, they wrote the Omaha Platform to more fully explain to all Americans the goals of the new party. The platform statement vilified railroad owners, bankers, and big businessmen as all being part of a widespread conspiracy to control farmers. As for policy changes, the platform called for government control over railroads, an end to the national bank system, the creation of a federal income tax, the direct election of U.S. senators, and several other measures, all of which aimed at a more proactive federal government that would support the economic and social welfare of all Americans. At the close of the convention, the party nominated former Union general James B. Weaver as its presidential candidate.
Figure 4. The People’s Party gathered for its nominating convention in Nebraska, where they wrote the Omaha Platform to state their concerns and goals.
The 1892 Election
In a rematch of the 1888 election, the Democrats again nominated Grover Cleveland in 1892, while Republicans stuck with the incumbent, Benjamin Harrison. Despite the presence of a third-party challenger, Cleveland won another close popular vote to become the first U.S. president to be elected to non-consecutive terms. Although he finished a distant third, Populist candidate Weaver polled a respectable one million votes and won electors in six different states.
The first major political force to tap into the vast discomfort of many Americans with the disruptions wrought by industrial capitalism, the Populist Party seemed poised to capture a political victory. And yet, even as Populism gained national traction, the movement was stumbling. The party’s often divided leadership found it difficult to shepherd what remained a diverse and loosely organized coalition of reformers toward unified political action. The Omaha platform was a radical document, and some state party leaders selectively embraced its reforms. More importantly, the institutionalized parties were still too strong, and the Democrats loomed, ready to swallow Populist frustrations and inaugurate a new era of American politics.
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Watch this video to learn about the Gilded Age and political, social, and economic changes during the years leading up to the 20th century.
You can view the transcript for “Gilded Age Politics: Crash Course US History #26” here (opens in new window).
Review Question
Glossary
Farmers’ Alliance: a national conglomeration of regional farmers’ alliances that joined together in 1890 with the goal of furthering farmers’ concerns in politics
Grange: a farmers’ organization, launched in 1867, which grew to over 1.5 million members in less than a decade
Populists: a political party formed in 1890 that sought to represent the rights of primarily farmers, but eventually all workers, in regional and federal elections