by the 1880s, what had happened to most southern farmers

"Agricultural Problems and Gilded Age Politics"

In the years from the end of the Ceremonious War in 1865 and the turn of the century some thirty-five years afterward, Americans witnessed the death of a rural and agronomical America dominated by farmers and the birth of an urban and industrial America dominated by bankers, industrialists, and city dwellers. This transformation of the United States made the country richer and more powerful than it had always been before. It was accomplished, however, merely with tremendous difficulty, especially for those in the American agricultural customs. Farmers, large and small, witnessed numerous problems and dislocations during the era with which they found themselves unable to cope successfully. Equally the transformation of America took place, distressed farmers became angrier and angrier and would eventually participate in the most influential third party motion ever.

I. Issues of the American Farmer during the Gilded Historic period

• OVERPRODUCTION

Without question the most vexing problem and the one that surpassed all others in both its negative effect and its difficulty to adjust to successfully was the problem of agricultural overproduction. In short, the American farmer produced far too much for his own skillful. In the years following the Civil War, agronomical production levels skyrocketed. The opening upwardly of the Great Plains to the plow, the use of farm machinery which immune the individual farmer to grow more, new farming techniques, and the spreading of the railroads (which made areas remote from rivers agriculturally viable past reducing transportation costs) all led to the flooding of the American market with agronomical produce.

As more and more crops were dumped onto the American market, it depressed the prices farmers could demand for their produce. Farmers were growing more and more and making less and less. If one looks at cotton production and prices during the Gilded Age, ane can see the problem facing the farmer quite clearly. Betwixt 1873 and 1894 cotton production doubled while the price of cotton fell from about fifteen cents a pound to less than vi cents a pound. The aforementioned phenomenon occurred in all other sectors of the agronomical economic system.

Of all the problems facing the farmer, I believe that overproduction was the gravest because information technology caused and so many other difficulties. Not making enough to compensate expenses because of depressed crop values, farmers attempted to compensate by growing more and more. This simply made the problem worse. Furthermore, inadequate income drove farmers into ever-deepening debt and exacerbated issues in other areas.

• Tariff Policies

Farmers fell victim as well to the tariff policy of the United states of america during the Gilded Age. They were forced to buy all the manufactured goods they needed for survival on a marketplace protected by tariff legislation at artificially high prices while selling what they produced on a largely unprotected and highly competitive market place at depressed prices because of oversupply and foreign competition. Thus, the tariff policy of the country often worked a double hardship on agricultural interests.

The aim of American protective tariffs during the Gilded Age was to try to guarantee the American market to the American manufacturer of finished products at a profit. The federal authorities consciously sought to achieve this aim as a means of encouraging the industrial revolution after the Civil War. By putting an import revenue enhancement or duty on manufactured goods being imported into the Usa by strange manufacturers , the authorities hoped to make them more than expensive than the similar American manufactured goods. This nigh guaranteed that American consumers, seeking to maximize their disposable income, would buy American goods. Protective tariffs were one of the many reasons why American industry grew and so speedily during the terminal third of the nineteenth century.

Industrial manufacturers and the people who invested in American industry as well as some of their employees were the strongest supporters of this protectionist tariff policy. They argued that protective tariffs were temporarily necessary to encourage investment in industrial concerns by making them less risky. They too claimed that infant industries in the U.s. needed this form of protection from more powerful and well established European competitors. They conceded that such a policy would raise costs to consumers in the curt run. Only with tariff protection, however, could the United states of america be rapidly industrialized. In the long run, America�south dependence on foreign manufacturers would be ended, American dollars would be kept in America, consumers would benefit from newer and amend products, and more than jobs would exist created for laborers.

Opponents of the land�south tariff policy included consumers, farmers, small businessmen, etc. They argued that tariffs were but rip-offs of the consumer by greedy robber barons and the bankers who supported them. They laughed at the thought that American big businesses were fledgling, infantile operations that needed protection. Farmers felt doubly discriminated against because they felt the tariffs were practical primarily to manufactured goods while agrestal interests were left to fend for themselves.

• Budgetary Policy

During the Gilded Historic period, the federal government pursued a monetary policy that contracted the corporeality of money in circulation, making money scarcer and thus driving up its purchasing power and worth over time. This was done past limiting currency to gilt rather than gold and silver or golden, silver, and greenbacks or paper money.

When the corporeality of coin in apportionment is contracted (such as occurred post-obit the Ceremonious War when argent was demonitized), purchasing power goes up. When the amount of money in circulation is expanded, purchasing power goes down. The first is referred to as "difficult money" while the second is known as "soft money". Contraction or hard coin equals deflation while expansion or soft money equals aggrandizement.

Bankers, businessmen, investors and lenders supported hard money, arguing that information technology was a prerequisite to industrialization. Unless coin retained its worth, people with coin would not invest in risky industrial ventures and bankers wouldn�t lend.

Farmers and debtors were the strongest advocates of soft money. They felt information technology was insane to limit currency to gilt while Western silver mines were turning out tons of equally acceptable metal for currency. By coining both gilt and silver, Americans who lived in areas where banks and money were deficient would accept a meliorate hazard of obtaining currency. Farmers and debtors argued that soft money or inflation would provide desperately-needed debtor relief. It would hateful that those constantly in debt could repay in dollars that were easier to come up by and worth less than in dollars, as was soon the case, that were harder to obtain and worth more than.

The hard coin policy the government pursued during the Gold Historic period worked a existent hardship on debtors such as farmers. Not only did they accept to repay principal and involvement on debt but had to practice so with dollars that were increasingly harder to come by and that had greater purchasing ability than those they had originally borrowed. Farmers, who were constantly in debt considering of the nature of agriculture and its problems during this era, plant themselves caught in this double bind twelvemonth afterward yr.

• Tax and Bank Policies

The government, once again to encourage rapid industrialization, gave meaning tax break to industries that were not given to farmers. As industry became more and more profitable and agriculture less and so, banks were increasingly reticent to lend money to agrarians. When they did, information technology was at a higher rate of interest. Farmers also suffered from the fact that almost of the banks were located in the urban, industrial Northeast while at that place were fewer in rural agricultural areas. Thus farmers were driven to the credit merchant in the crop-lien system.

• Differential Freight Rates

The urban, industrial Northeast was the recipient too of low railroad rates because it was the most overbuilt expanse of the country. Since the roads were losing coin because of excessive competition in that region, owners often tried to make it upwards in less competitive areas such as the farming areas of the Due south and the Midwest by charging more than for runway service. Thus, farmers felt that the higher transportation costs they were forced to pay and which made agronomics less rewarding were in social club to subsidize the industrial interests they increasingly detested.

• Tenant Farming, Sharecropping, and the Ingather-lien Organisation

As agriculture became less rewarding, more and more subcontract owners lost their farms when they could non repay banking concern loans and their mortgages were foreclosed on or they could non pay their tax liabilities and their farms were auctioned off as a consequence. During the Gold Age, more and more farmers lost their country and slipped down the agricultural ladder into tenant farming, sharecropping, and the crop-lien system.

Tenant farmers rented the correct to farm someone else�s state for a cash payment. Since money was so scarce (especially in the South following the loss of the Ceremonious War), landless farmers would subcontract someone else�s land and at the end of the growing season would surrender a predetermined share of whatsoever they grew as the rental payment - i/3 of any cotton wool crop and one/4 of any grain ingather.

Since food and habiliment were necessary during the growing season and because of poverty and a scarcity of money in rural areas, the ingather-lien organisation emerged and spread during the Gold Historic period and beyond. A sharecropper could obtain food, clothing, and other necessities of life on credit from either the landowner or a credit merchant during the growing flavour in return for a contractual lien against whatever share of the crop in the field was sufficient to meet the credit they were extended plus involvement. The landowner or credit merchant charged a credit purchase toll that was approximately threescore% higher than the cash purchase price. Interest rates were mostly unspecified until the terminate of the growing season merely averaged virtually 25% annually.

By the time the crop came in, it was all gone to the landowner for the right to farm the land and to the credit merchant for nutrient and clothing. Indeed, most sharecroppers under the crop-lien system ended the twelvemonth in debt to the credit merchant and were thus legally obligated to go on the relationship the next year to pay off the debt. Year after yr, the landless farmer roughshod deeper in debt. Many were trapped for life.

The system hurt all the more because the credit merchant could dictate the crop that would exist grown by croppers he extended credit to. In the South, that meant cotton because it was not-perishable and could e'er be sold somewhere at some price. This, however, exacerbated the problem of overproduction and depressed the toll of cotton even further. It was an endless cycle.

• Loss of Status and Power

1 of the factors hardest for farmers to deal with was the recognition that a rural and agronomical America dominated by farmers had given fashion to an urban and industrial American dominated by those interests. Farmers institute the major political parties of the Gold Age unresponsive to their demands that authorities deal with their bug. Farmers no longer controlled the social, economical, or political systems and this was a bitter pill to swallow. II. The Unresponsiveness of the Republican and Democratic Parties to Agrarian Needs

During the Gilded Age from 1877-1896, political contest between the two major parties was incredibly intense and close. Elections were more often than not decided by less than 1% of the popular vote and what happened in a string of central swing states determined which party would command the White House for the next four years. Given these circumstances, it was incumbent on the parties to anger every bit few voters as possible. The Republican and Democratic parties, therefore, refused to accept house public stances on the major problems of the day - currency policy and tariff policy - which were both divisive and polarized. While the government pursued a "difficult" coin policy and protective tariffs in full general, the parties tried to cloud their issue stances by appealing to party loyalty and using "bloody shirt" oratory or nominating favorite son candidates from the primal swing states. While smart politically, it ignored the plight and demands of agrarians.

The Gold Age also witnessed intense population increases from urbanization and immigration in the industrial states of the Northeast. In the American political arrangement, population equals political power. Gaining more and more seats in the House of Representatives and votes in the Balloter Higher, the Northeast had the votes to swing the country, Congress, and the presidency in favor of urban and industrial interests. Farmers therefore found picayune receptivity to their demands either in Congress or from the major political parties.

Iii. The Agrarian Reaction: Self-Help Programs to Political Demands

• The Grange Economic Self-Help Cooperatives

In the 1870s, a farm organization known as the Patrons of Husbandry, but more popularly called the Grange, arose and instituted a cooperative programme to help farmers help themselves. The buying and selling coops founded by the Grange attempted to put more money into farmers� pockets past eliminating middlemen from these economic transactions.

Despite heroic efforts by Grangers, the cooperative movement failed for a variety of reasons. The middlemen - the targets of the motion - fought back by refusing to permit farmers sharecrop country they endemic, denying the farmers credit at mercantile stores they ran, or refused to buy or procedure the farmers� crops at any price whatsoever. The cooperative stores fix up by the Grange also failed because they were underfinanced and could not beget to offer goods for sale on a credit footing. This forced poor farmers into the easily of credit merchants who charged higher prices but made credit available nether the crop-lien system. The selling cooperatives also failed because farmers were unable, given their poverty, to wait for everyone�s crop to be collected, processed, transported, and sold at a higher price. Farmers, desperate to convert their remaining crop into cash to meet debts and live between growing seasons, were forced to sell to a local heir-apparent at whatever price they could get.

• The Farmers Alliance

Because of the failure of the Grange to solve agrarian bug through its self-help programs, farmers began to become more militant. The Farmers Alliance, a much more than politically-oriented organization, began to concenter more and more than support in the 1880s as it demanded a governmental response to the plight of the farmer.

The Farmers Brotherhood chosen upon the federal government to institute a "subtreasury program" to assist farmers avert existence forced to sell their non-perishable crops on a glutted market when they could command the least for their labors. Farmers hoped to expect until the overabundance which occurred at the end of each growing season and temporarily depressed prices to their lowest signal had dissipated and given way to scarcity when prices would ascension. This, even so, would crave financial subsidization from the federal government. Theoretically, when farmers placed their crop on eolith in federal storage facilities, the Treasury Department would loan the farmer up to 80% of the ingather�southward current value and concur on to the crop as collateral. When scarcity drove prices up, the farmer would sell and repay the authorities with a nominal rate of interest. Not surprisingly given the temper of the times, the proposal was considered revolutionary and rejected by Congress and the political parties.

The subtreasury program was far from the merely demand of the Alliance, which realized that agrarian difficulties could never be solved by the farmers themselves. The situation was so grave that the arrangement demanded a complete agenda of programs and laws which would requite justice and perhaps prosperity to the beleaguered farming customs. Amongst these demands were the abolitionism of national banks, the free coinage of argent to inflate the currency organisation and provide debtor relief, the enactment of a progressive income tax to shift the taxation burden to rich industrialists, the lowering of protective tariffs on manufactured goods, the directly ballot of U. S. senators, and governmental regulation or nationalization of the railroad and telegraph industries.

During the heart and tardily 1880s the Farmers Alliance pressured the Republican and Autonomous parties and Congress to deal with the situation by meeting their political demands. When the parties and government refused or passed laws that farmers viewed equally ineffective shams, such as the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Silvery Purchase Act, the members of the Alliance made the decision to abandon traditional politics and grade a third political party of their ain making. That party and the agrarian challenge of the status quo resulted in a political realignment and an end to the Golden Age political organisation.

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Source: https://www.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his1302/agrarian.html

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