1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
Stolb23 [73]
2 years ago
10

1. What was the plight of the farmers?

History
1 answer:
Anni [7]2 years ago
7 0
At the end of the 19th century, about a third of Americans worked in agriculture, compared to only about four percent today. After the Civil War, drought, plagues of grasshoppers, boll weevils, rising costs, falling prices, and high interest rates made it increasingly difficult to make a living as a farmer. In the South, one third of all landholdings were operated by tenants. Approximately 75 percent of African American farmers and 25 percent of white farmers tilled land owned by someone else.
Every year, the prices farmers received for their crops seemed to fall. Corn fell from 41 cents a bushel in 1874 to 30 cents by 1897. Farmers made less money planting 24 million acres of cotton in 1894 than they did planting 9 million acres in 1873. Facing high interests rates of upwards of 10 percent a year, many farmers found it impossible to pay off their debts. Farmers who could afford to mechanize their operations and purchase additional land could successfully compete, but smaller, more poorly financed farmers, working on small plots marginal land, struggled to survive.

Many farmers blamed railroad owners, grain elevator operators, land monopolists, commodity futures dealers, mortgage companies, merchants, bankers, and manufacturers of farm equipment for their plight. Many attributed their problems to discriminatory railroad rates, monopoly prices charged for farm machinery and fertilizer, an oppressively high tariff, an unfair tax structure, an inflexible banking system, political corruption, corporations that bought up huge tracks of land. They considered themselves to be subservient to the industrial Northeast, where three-quarters of the nation's industry was located. They criticized a deflationary monetary policy based on the gold standard that benefited bankers and other creditors.

All of these problems were compounded by the fact that increasing productivity in agriculture led to price declines. In the 1870s, 190 million new acres were put under cultivation. By 1880, settlement was moving into the semi-arid plains. At the same time, transportation improvements meant that American farmers faced competitors from Egypt to Australia in the struggle for markets.

The first major rural protest was the Patrons of Husbandry, which was founded in 1867 and had 1.5 million members by 1875. Known as the Granger Movement, these embattled farmers formed buying and selling cooperatives and demanded state regulation of railroad rates and grain elevator fees.

Early in the 1870s the Greenback Party agitated for the issue of paper money, not backed by gold or silver, with the idea that a depreciating currency would make it easier for debtors to meet their obligations.

Another wave of protest grew out of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union (the Southern Farmers Alliance) formed in Lampedusa County, Texas in 1875, and the Northwestern Farmers' Alliance, founded in Chicago in 1880. By the late 1880s, the cooperative business enterprises set up by the Farmers' Alliances had begun to fail due to inadequate capitalization and mismanagement. By 1890, the Farmers Alliances had begun to enter politics. In 1892 the Alliance formed the Peoples' or Populist Party. Among other things, the Populists financed commodity credit system that would have allowed farmers to store their crop in a federal warehouse to await favorable market prices and meanwhile borrow up to 80 percent of the current market price.
You might be interested in
________ was the independent counsel who investigated president clinton.
melamori03 [73]
<span>Ken Starr kenneth Starr classs
 He investigated Bill clinton dealings in real estate when he was governor of arkansa.
</span>
3 0
3 years ago
What does a system of checks and balances protect against
antiseptic1488 [7]
Iit protects against any branch of the government trying to abuse its power. This way all powers are shared and equal. This goes even for the president, he alone cannot mandate orders. It takes approval of branches (judicial, legislative, executive) to get to a deal. :)

Happy New Year!
3 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
A type of sled consisting of two joined poles dragged by a horse or dog
aivan3 [116]

Answer:

Its called a Dog Travios.

Explanation:

4 0
3 years ago
Read this quotation from Pericles’s Funeral Oration in ancient Athens.
lora16 [44]
Overall, this quotation supports the idea that "<span>both the rich and the poor have the ability to serve", since during this time in Athens political participation was considered to be a great and necessary privilege.</span>
3 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
All of the following were causes of the Reformation EXCEPT
romanna [79]

The item that was NOT a cause of the Reformation:

C. The desire to spread Islam to Western Europe.


Further details:

The Roman Catholic Church failed to provide much hope or comfort to people during the years of the 100 Years War and the devastation of the Black Death.  Corruption within the church only became worse in the years that followed, and people were wanting change.  Coupled with that were new ideas and challenges being posed by the start of the Scientific Revolution.  Martin Luther, whose activity sparked the Reformation, was a contemporary of Nicolaus Copernicus, whose work sparked the Scientific Revolution.

8 0
3 years ago
Other questions:
  • Why did America’s oppose the tea act
    6·1 answer
  • Which of the following statements accurately reflects the impact that industrialization had on the American worker?
    8·1 answer
  • The majority of state court cases begin in what court?
    6·2 answers
  • How did the Catholic Church become weak
    14·2 answers
  • Do you think that the United States should spend billions of dollars on weapons and the military?
    10·1 answer
  • What is the definition of Aryan?
    7·1 answer
  • Based on the photo and report, how did reformers respond to this
    10·1 answer
  • What was Germany's reaction to the Treaty of Paris (explain two reactions that led to WWII)
    15·1 answer
  • In your own words, describe the story of the blind man and the well. How does this story connect to the large global problems we
    10·1 answer
  • What does an archaeologist<br> study?
    12·2 answers
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!