Strikes By Farmers In The 1930

To begin, the farmers were fighting for their rights. According to Document C, “what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” (Jefferson). Thomas Jefferson explained that it is normal for people to protest if they think something is wrong. In this case, the farmers didn’t like that they were being punished because they couldn’t afford to pay the high taxes, so they started speaking up. But instead of pacifying the farmers, they were being

Why did farmers express discontent during 1870-1900 and what impact did their attitudes and actions have on national politics. Manufacturing hit a huge growth rate during this period which cause agriculture to decline, and cause farmers to struggle to make a living. The farmers were now being abused by the railroad companies and banks. The documents in DBQ 8 show rationality for the farmer’s protests, exclusively on bank mortgage tariffs and the gold standard. Two particular groups became popular during this period and that would be the Grangers and the Populist Party. Farmers fought against the Gold Standard, railroads, and industrialist during this period causing lots of confrontation.

     Many different things attributed to the plight in the late nineteenth century of the farmers. The American farmer faced many problems from the protective tariffs which caused great overproduction of foods such as corn, wheat, and cotton (docs 3,5), speculation in farm products, over-greedy middlemen, and exorbitant transportation rates. The farmers in the west were also losing money to banks in the east. The banks were giving the farmers a high interest rate which they could not easily pay. (doc 2) The transportation rates put the farmers in debt greatly. To find new markets to sell their goods, farmers needed to ship their food else where and find new customers. To do this, farmers needed to transport their food, usually by train. When they would do this the railroad companies would charge much more for the farmer than the big businessman because the businessmen would give donations to the railroad companies while the small farmers would not. To make up

Nearly all of the reasons for agrarian discontent in the late 19th century stem from three areas: land, transportation, and money. The farmers were fighting the perceived threats posed by monopolies and trusts, railroads, and the demonetization of silver. The American farmer during this period already had his fair share of problems which, compared to the success of the industrialized businessmen, resulted in much of the animosity between the two groups. The fact of the matter was farmers had entered a viscous cycle. Wheat and cotton, once the staples of American agriculture were selling at such low prices that it was almost impossible

     High prices forced farmers to concentrate on one crop. The large-scale farmers bought expensive machines, increasing their crop yield. This caused the smaller farmers to be left behind. The small farmers could no longer compete and were forced give up their farms and look for jobs in the cities. The smaller farmers

Other than overproduction, another economic issue that drastically effected farmers was the Panic of 1893 that left millions of Americans unemployed, hungry, and homeless. In Susan Orcutt’s leter to Lorenzo D. Lewelling, she states, “I had the prettiest garden that you ever seen and the hail ruined it and I have nothing to look at my husband went a way to find work and came home last night and told me that would have to Starve he has bin in ten countys and did not get no work.” (Document H). Economic conditions such as overproduction, the Panic of 1893, and sharecropping systems that developed from it only led to the downfall of farmers.

According to the Great Plain Drought Area Committee Report (Doc. D), in 1879, 10 million acres of crop were harvested. 20 years later, in 1899, 50 million acres of crops were harvested, 5 times more crops than in 1879. In 1929, that number more than doubled to a 105 million acres of crops that were harvested. How did happen? Farming technology advanced rapidly from 1879 to 1929. In “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan (Doc. C), Egan wrote, “A tractor did the work of ten horses. With his new combine, Folkers could cut and thresh the grain in one swoop, using just a fraction of the labor.” The new farming technology made farming faster and it required less labor. Farmers had this new technology and used it to plow more land. Millions of acres were being plowed and farmed on and with the dry soil and no grass to keep it on the ground the dust became airborne and started grouping together and creating terrible storms.

When the mechanization of agriculture was in effect farmers began to invest in technology so that they can increase the farm worker productivity, and essentially grow more crops. Growing more crops meant that they would be selling more crops, resulting in the increase of profit, but the problem with this is that the machinery necessary to do so is expensive. Since this machinery is a necessity and is expensive that meant that not everyone could begin farming. This means that there were less farmers, but the farmers who who still farming were producing more crops. Farmers thought that the more crops they produced, the more profit they would make, but the overproduction of agriculture was a direct link to economic insecurity of

Following the Civil War, a second industrial revolution in America brought many changes to the nation’s agriculture sector. The new technologies that were created transformed how farmers worked and the way in which the sector functioned. Agriculture expanded and became more industrial. Meanwhile government policies, or lack of them for a while, and hard economic conditions put difficult strains on farmers and their occupation. These changes in technology, economic conditions, and government policy from 1865 to 1900 transformed and improved agriculture while leaving farmers in hardship.

Farmers where Some of the main people who were affected by not only the great depression , but the dust bowl as well. Farmers were getting paid by AAA to reduce the land used to raise livestock and to produce products such as corn, wheat, tobacco, etc,these were just some of the problems that farmers suffered. Another reason why this event affected the farmers is because of the fact that farmers over farmed their land trying to get it to grow which made it worse and all these dried up crops turned to dust layering their houses so they had to abonden their lifes to head west. Companies paid farmers to plant clover and alfalpha instead of cotton and wheat to reduce not only land usage, but under priced products. Last but not least one of

After the end of the Civil War, the farmers who were in the South and plains states had suffered economic and social conditions. The main source of problems were from a decrease in the prices caused from overproduction and growing competition for world markets. Farmers believed the system was becoming

The Gilded Age made the United Sates shift from an agricultural society to more of an industrial society. Since, many southerners from down South moved out of the rural cities to the urban cities to find a better life and employment, it caused the death of the agricultural domination. The transformation caused tremendous difficulty to the farmers. Farmers faced a lot of problems such as the overproduction of crops, currencies policies and high tariffs. The overproduction of crops caused the farmers to dramatically lower down their prices, cotton was the major crop that went down dramatically , it went from 15 cents per pound to 6 cents per pound. Most farmers mostly made their profits by selling cotton. Farmers operated from borrowing deflated money with high tariffs and hard money rather than soft money, which made it harder for them to pay back loans. Farmers were the main victims upon the tariffs policy. They were forced to buy manufactured goods on high prices while selling their product at low prices. The issue with the hard money policy was that the government had a monetary policy that contracted on the money circulation. The hard money equal the deflation while the soft money equal to the inflation, the policies only benefited the industrialized industry but not the farming

Farmers were in debt because of the rise of the industry era. Most farmers could not keep up with the debt they wanted some kind of change in order to survive in the industry era. Farmers started to form Alliances. These alliances were like unions addressing the needs of the farmers and finding ways to survive in the market. Like unions the struggle in the beginning because bankers did not want to cooperate with them. The had to seek help from the political parties. Farmers united and became stronger together in numbers by working together. The Alliances helped lower interest rates in banks, lower cost in transporting good in the railroad, and the regulation of money supply. Because the issues were being resolve the populist party was