In 1889, Charles W. Macune organized the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. The organization had three million members by 1890. This organization only permitted whites to join. At the same time, the National Colored Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union formed for African Americans. Both of these organizations began in the South, but they quickly moved to the North and the West as well. Regional Farmers' Alliances had existed before the advent of the two national organizations. Hoping to bring more pressure to bear on politicians and business owners, the regional alliances united together in the national groups. The Farmers' Alliances grew out of the Patrons of Husbandry. While the Grange was a more social organization, Farmers' Alliances were much more politically active. Show
The Farmers' Alliances called for a graduated income tax, state ownership of the railroads, lower tariffs, and "free silver." The Farmers' Alliances had some success during the 1880s and 1890s in having supporters elected to local and state offices. In Nebraska, Farmers' Alliances supporters had gained control of the state legislature by 1890. In Ohio, the Farmers' Alliances existed but did not meet with much success in recruiting members. While conditions were difficult for farmers across the United States, Ohio farmers faced fewer problems than their counterparts in the South and the West. By the early 1890s, the Framers' Alliances had given way to the Populist Party. In Ohio's gubernatorial election of 1891, the Populist candidate received less than one percent of the votes that were cast. The inequities of the southern agricultural system gave rise to the first rumblings of a mass democratic movement that was to shake American society in the late nineteenth century. The agrarian movement spread across the Cotton Belt and the Great Plains in the 1880s. The trend caught on in areas where farm tenancy, crop liens, merchants, railroads, banks, weather, and nature threatened the ambitions of hopeful farmers. Once underway, it inspired visions of a truly cooperative, democratic society. Farmers Alliance: HistoryAgricultural expansion in the West and South exposed millions of people to the hardships of rural life. Uncertainties might have been more bearable if the rewards had been more promising, but that was hardly the case. As farmers put more land under cultivation, mechanization boosted productivity, and foreign competition increased, supplies exceeded national and international demand for agricultural products. Farmers Alliance: An American political and social movement in agricultural and rural regions during the late 1800s that looked to better farmers' economic and social conditions through the creation of cooperatives and eventual political involvement Consequently, prices for staple crops dropped steadily between the end of the Civil War and 1900. Meanwhile, transportation, storage, and commission fees rose. Costly seed, fertilizer, manufactured goods, taxes, and mortgage rates increased, combined with the social isolation to trap many farm families in disadvantageous and sometimes desperate conditions. To buy essential goods and pay their rents and mortgages, farmers had to grow more. But the cycle wound more tightly since the more farmers produced, the lower the prices dropped. The Grange MovementEven before the full impact of these developments was felt, farmers had begun to organize to relieve their mounting distress. With aid from government officials, farmers founded a network of local organizations called Granges in almost every state during the late 1860s and 1870s. By 1875, the Grange had nearly twenty thousand local branches and over one million members. Granges served chiefly as social organizations, sponsoring meetings and educational programs to help relieve the loneliness of farm life, especially in the Great Plains. Local Granges made explicit provisions for women’s participation and are family-oriented and open to all.  With their peak in the 1870s, Granges enacted programs to help rural life, such as:
By the end of the 1870s, Granges declined because their essentially conservative tactics did not fully meet the needs of their members. In addition, to function, the Granges needed cash from their members, who rarely had enough money, to begin with. Also, their political efforts towards regulation came up against powerful and well-funded special interests, which influenced the major political parties to position themselves against the Grange interests. Farmers Alliance: OverviewRural activism then shifted to Farmers Alliances, two networks of organizations - one in the Great Plains and one in the South - that by 1890 constituted a genuine movement. The first alliances sprang up in Texas, where hard-pressed farmers rallied against crop liens, furnishing merchants, railroads, and money power. Adopting an effective system of traveling lecturers to recruit members, alliance leaders extended the movement into other southern states, and by 1889 the Southern Alliance boasted over three million members. A similar movement flourished in the Great Plains, whereby the late 1880s, two million members were organized in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Motivated by outrage, alliance members pushed the Grange concept of cooperation to new limits by sponsoring organizational rallies, mass educational meetings, and cooperative buying and selling agreements. Seeing themselves as laborers battling capitalists in a new age rather than Jeffersonian farmers, some alliance members advocated uniting with other labor movements of the day, such as the Knights of Labor and other worker's groups. The Subtreasury Plan Beyond urging democratic cooperation, the alliance movement proposed a scheme to alleviate the most severe rural problems: lack of cash and credit. The subtreasury plan called for the federal government to construct warehouses in every significant agricultural county. Farmers could store their crops in these sub-treasuries at harvest time while waiting for higher prices, and the government would loan them treasury notes amounting to a percentage of the market price of the stored produce. Farmers could use the subtreasury notes currency to pay debts and buy goods. Once the stored crops were sold, farmers would pay back the loans plus a slight interest in storage fees. The Subtreasury scheme was meant to replace the crop-lien system and give farmers more significant control over their finances. No longer would merchants be able to take advantage of farmers at harvest time when the increase of crops in the market depressed prices. No longer would farmers have to mortgage crops - through crop liens- at high-interest rates. And no longer would they lack the cash to buy supplies. Moreover, by issuing subtreasury notes, the government would inject more money into the economy and encourage inflation that benefitted farmers: inflation that raised the prices of crops but not the cost of supplies and rent. Farmers Alliance: SignificanceImplementation of their plans and programs confronted alliance members with questions of political participation. Could farmers work within the two established parties, or should they form a third party directly responsive to their interests? If all the various alliance groups had united under one banner, they would have made a formidable political force. But attempts at a merger in the 1880s were thwarted by sectional differences and personality clashes. However, by the 1890s, growing membership and confidence drew the alliance groups more deeply into politics. Farmers had elected several politicians sympathetic to their programs- especially in the South, where alliance members controlled four governorships, eight state legislatures, forty-four seats in the House of Representatives, and three in the Senate. During the summer of 1890, the Kansas Farmers Alliance held a convention and nominated members for political office. The formation of this People’s Party, whose members called themselves Populists, gave a name to the American Populism movement that grew out of alliance political activism and would go on to influence the early years of the twentieth century. When did the farmers alliances form the Populist Party?The following year, 1891, the People's (or Populist) Party was formed, absorbing many of the agrarian interests of the Farmers' Alliances in its platform. The third party supported its own political candidate, the former Greenback candidate James B. Weaver (1833–1912), for president in the election of 1892.
Why did farmers create the Populist movement what were their goals?The Populist Party consisted primarily of farmers unhappy with the Democratic and Republican Parties. The Populists believed that the federal government needed to play a more active role in the American economy by regulating various businesses, especially the railroads.
What was the Farmers Alliance and what was its relationship to the Populist Party?The Populists were an agrarian-based political movement aimed at improving conditions for the country's farmers and agrarian workers. The Populist movement was preceded by the Farmer's Alliance and the Grange. The People's Party was a political party founded in 1891 by leaders of the Populist movement.
Why would farmers support the Populist Party belief in 1896?In the late 19th century, the Populist Party increased in popularity among western farmers, largely because they were in opposition to the gold standard. They had not faired well financially under industrialization, and they mounted a campaign against corrupt government and economic power.
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