FARMERS' ALLIANCES

National organizations of U.S. farmers, the farmers' alliances were founded in the 1870s. The alliances grew out of the increasing unrest in rural areas due to a depressed economy, falling farm prices, and increasing farming costs. Most growers experienced a decline in their standard of living; many were debt-laden while others teetered on the brink of foreclosure. Farmers began meeting to discuss their problems. As the groups became more organized, they established cooperative programs to help bring down costs and secure the highest possible price for farm products. Alliances ran cooperative stores and grain elevators, purchased machinery directly from manufacturers, collectively marketed crops, and eventually (after 1890) offered members reduced-rate insurance plans. But such efforts only managed the impending agricultural crisis; alliance members realized that to effect change they would need to work inside government.

The 1880s began a period of political activism for the alliances. Members protested against banks (for charging high interest rates) and against railroads (for charging high freight rates). Others lobbied politicians or ran for office themselves. In the mid-term elections of 1890, the Farmers' Alliance managed to elect several governors and 30 U.S. Congressmen (all members of the Democratic and Republican parties) to office. In Kansas, "America's breadbasket," the Alliances won control of the state legislature. 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. Though Weaver lost, the Populists remained a strong force. In the next presidential election, of 1896, Populists backed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), a self-proclaimed commoner, who was sympathetic to the causes of the Farmers' Alliances and the National Grange (another reform-minded agricultural organization). Bryan lost to William McKinley (1897–1901), and soon after the Populist Party began to fall apart, disappearing altogether by 1908. Nevertheless, the party's initiatives continued to figure in the nation's political life for the next two decades. (These included free coinage of silver, the government issue of more paper money, a graduated income tax, direct popular election of U.S. Senators, passage of anti-trust laws, and implementation of the eight-hour workday.) Many Populist ideas were eventually made into laws.