Farmers Movement

(noun)

The Farmers Movement was, in American political history, the general name for a movement between 1867 and 1896. This movement was remarkable because it involved radical socio-economic propaganda from what was considered the most conservative class of American society. In this movement, there were three periods, popularly known as the Grange, Alliance, and Populist movements.

Related Terms

Examples of Farmers Movement in the following topics:

  • The Farmer's Alliance

    • The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s.
    • The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished in 1875.
    • The movement included several parallel but independent political organizations: the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, comprised of white farmers of the South; the National Farmers' Alliance, comprised of white and black farmers of the Midwest and High Plains (where the Granger movement had been strong); and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, comprised of African-American farmers of the South.
    • Political activists in the movement also made attempts to unite the two alliance organizations, along with the Knights of Labor and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, into a common movement.
    • As the focus of the farmers' movement shifted into politics, the Farmers' Alliance faded away.

  • The Agrarian and Populist Movements

    • Founded in 1867, the Farmers Movement sought to advance the economic and political status of poor, rural people, especially farmers.
    • The Farmers Movement was, in American political history, the general name for a movement between 1867 and 1896.
    • There were three periods of the Farmers Movement, popularly known as the Grange, Alliance, and Populist Movements.
    • The Farmers Movement was often misunderstood, abused, and ridiculed by the societal forces it challenged.
    • In short, the movement lessened rural isolation and created many opportunities for farmers.

  • Economic Conditions

    • Farmers struggled due to debt and falling prices.
    • This was detrimental to American farmers, as it drove up the prices of farm equipment.
    • This high level of agricultural distress led to the birth of several farmer movements, including the Grange movement and Farmers' Alliances.
    • The remaining Populists also endorsed Bryan, hoping to retain some influence by having a voice inside the Bryan movement.
    • If the movement was dead, however, its ideas were not.

  • The Farm Problem and Agrarian Protest Movements

    • The Farmers' Alliance was an 1880s agrarian movement with the goals of ending the crop-lien system and promoting higher commodity prices.
    • By 1880, the Granger movement began to decline and was replaced by the Farmers Alliances.
    • This was detrimental to American farmers, as it drove up the prices of farm equipment.
    • In response, the Farmer's Alliance made a push for political power.
    • If the movement was dead, however, its ideas were not.

  • The Populist Movement

    • The Populist Party arose after the Granger movement and Farmers' Alliances began to decline.
    • The Populist Party, also known as the "People's Party," was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891 during the Populist movement.
    • Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South (especially in North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas) and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plains states (especially in Kansas and Nebraska), the party represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites in general.
    • The party flourished most among farmers in the Southwest and Great Plains, and made significant gains in the South, where it faced an uphill battle given the firmly entrenched monopoly of the Democratic Party.
    • The drive to create a new political party out of the movement arose from the belief that the two major parties, Democrats and Republicans, were controlled by bankers, landowners, and elites hostile to the needs of the small farmer.

  • Inadequate Currency

    • The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s.
    • The movement was strongest in the South, and was widely popular before it was destroyed by the power of commodity brokers.
    • After the American Civil War, farmers in the South had little cash.
    • When the cotton crop was harvested, farmers turned it over to the merchant to pay back their loan.
    • The credit system was used by land owners, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers.

  • Interest Groups vs. Political Parties

    • Social movements are a type of group action.
    • Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements.
    • For example, some research in political science highlights the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics.
    • By contrast, lobbyists representing farmers and rural interests seek to maintain or reinforce existing tariffs.
    • If tariffs are reduced or eliminated, then American farmers are forced to compete with farmers from other trading countries.

  • The Granger Movement

    • The Granger movement was founded in 1867 to advance the social and economic interests of rural farmers.
    • The original objectives of the Grange were primarily educational, but these were soon overborne by an anti-middleman, cooperative movement.
    • In the South, poor farmers bore the brunt of the Civil War and were suspicious of Northerners such as Kelley.
    • In the middle of the 1870s, the Granger movement succeeded in regulating the railroads and grain warehouses.
    • Consequently, local Granger movements focused more on community service, although the state and national Granges remain a political force.

  • Commercial Farmers

    • Small landowning family farmers, the yeomen ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, were prevalent at the turn of the nineteenth century in both the North and South.
    • Landowning yeomen were typically subsistence farmers, but some also grew crops for market.
    • John Deere's horse-drawn steel plow also led to more efficient farming practices, replacing the difficult oxen-driven wooden plows that farmers had employed for centuries.
    • At the same time, U.S. industrialization and urbanization in the North opened up lucrative domestic markets for American farmers.
    • Farmers in the West were producing more wheat than the West could consume, and crop surpluses were sold to the manufacturing Northeast.

  • Chesapeake Slavery

    • As a result, many Chesapeake farmers turned toward imported African slaves to fulfill their desire for cheap labor.
    • Replacing indentured servitude with black slavery diminished these risks, alleviating the reliance on white indentured servants, who were often dissatisfied and troublesome, and creating a caste of racially defined laborers whose movements were strictly controlled.
    • With the importation of African slaves, most social and economic divisions between wealthy and poor farmers in the Chesapeake increased.
    • However, small farmers composed the largest social class in the Chesapeake.
    • The class division between wealthy planters and small farmers continued well into the 19th century, until the Civil War united these factions against the Northern states.