The challenges that many American farmers faced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were significant. They contended with economic hardships born out of rapidly declining farm prices, prohibitively high tariffs on items they needed to purchase, and foreign competition. One of the largest challenges they faced was overproduction, where the glut of their products in the marketplace drove the price lower and lower
The original purpose of the convention was to search for ways to improve the Articles of Confederation. However the Framers changed the purpose to writing a new constitution because they thought the problems were too serious to try correct.
