THE FARMERS’ FRONTIER
• Homestead Act of 1862
• 160 acres of land by living on it 5 yrs,
improving it, and paying a small fee averaging
about $30 (as low as $10)
• Land given away to
encourage settlement
of West
Cont.
• About 500,000 pioneer families migrated west.
• 2/3 - forced to give up - inadequate plots and
drought, hail, and ravage from insects.
• Railroads played a role in taming the West.
• Improved irrigation techniques
• Flour-milling process by John Pillsbury of
Minneapolis, increased grain demand
THE FAR WEST COMES OF AGE
• 1888-1889: 6 new States
• Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889 Nearly 100, 000 "boomers"
– "Sooners" – land-grabbers who claimed land illegally
before land rush began.
• In 1890, census - first time in U.S. History, a
frontier line no longer existed!
– Once frontier was gone, farmers could not move west
in significant numbers.
THE FADING FRONTIER
• "Safety valve" theory - Americans known for
their mobility – farmers rarely remained in
same place –hard times - moved west.
• Free acreage did lure immigrant farmers who
would otherwise have lived in overcrowded
eastern slums. There was the POSSIBILITY of
westward migration.
• Frederick Jackson Turner - argued closing of
the frontier had ended an era in American
history.
THE FARM BECOMES A FACTORY
• Farmers - single cash-crop
• World’s breadbasket
• Massive migration of white and black
Americans out of Southern Cotton Belt.
• Commercial agriculture run by big businesses
– “Bonanza Farms”
DEFLATION DOOMS THE DEBTOR
• "Crop lien" system - impossible for farmer to get out
of debt.
• Deflated currency, low food prices chief worries
among farmers.
• Natural disasters – bugs, floods, drought
• Government-added woes:
–
–
–
–
Farmers’ land often overvalued – high
Protective tariffs
trusts
Railroads – high rates ignored
taxes
UNHAPPY FARMERS
• Mother Nature unleashed powerful forces
on the farmers:
– Grasshoppers and cotton-boll weevil
– Floods led to erosion in south
– Droughts in west
THE FARMERS TAKE THEIR
STAND
• National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
(The Grange) 1867 - social & educational
activities – Oliver Kelley
• Granger (state) Laws - wanted gov't control over
big business to benefit the people.
• Munn vs. Illinois (1877)
• Wabash case (1886)
• Greenback Labor Party
Rise of Populist Party
• Farmers’ Alliances - like Grangers, sponsored
social events, political action, cooperatives, and
gov't regulation of railroads and manufacturers.
• The People’s Party (Populist Party)
early 1890s through the
Farmer’s Alliances (started in
Topeka, Kansas).
• Ignatius Donnelly
• Mary E. Lease
Populist Party convention held
at Columbus, Nebraska, July 15, 1890
COXEY’S ARMY AND THE PULLMAN
STRIKE
• Coxey’s Army (1894) - unemployed on Washington, DC
– Coxey’s platform included a demand for gov’t to
relieve unemployment by an inflationary public works
program + increase money supply by $500 million
• Pullman Strike, 1894 Eugene V. Debs helped organize
American Railway Union
– First time gov’t used an injunction to break a
strike
GOLDEN MCKINLEY AND
SILVER BRYAN
• Election of 1896
• William McKinley - Republican
• William Jennings Bryan – Democrat
• Democrats refused to endorse Cleveland for his
silver-purchase repeal, Pullman Strike action, and
Morgan bond deal; move suicidal to the party’s
hopes in 96’
-- Cleveland left office an extremely
unpopular man.
Cynical political cartoon of the
speech from the magazine Judge.
• Cross of Gold speech given at
Democratic convention in
Chicago
-- "We will answer their
demands for a gold standard by
saying to them: ‘You shall not
press down upon the brow of
labor this crown of thorns, you
shall not crucify mankind upon a
cross of gold."
• Democratic platform: unlimited
coinage of silver (16 to 1).
Bryan - People’s party
CLASS CONFLICT: PLOWHOLDERS VERSUS
BONDHOLDERS
• Silver issue at the forefront
• McKinley defeated Bryan 271-176
• McKinley won Northeast and North (HOW?????);
Bryan in South & West
• Legacy of Populism - Populism failed as a 3rd Party
• Populist ideas that carried forward during the
Progressive Era (1900-1920): railroad legislation,
graduated income tax, direct election of Senators,
initiative, referendum and recall
REPUBLICAN STAND-PATTISM
ENTHRONED
• Tariff rates – 46.5%
• Gold Standard Act of 1900 - Paper money was
to be redeemed freely in gold; end to prosilver movement