VI - Populism

Summary

“A reappraisal of the causes of farm protest in the United States, 1870–1900”

by Anne Mayhew

The last third of the nineteenth century has long been seen as a period of agricultural distress and unrest, the “age of agrarian discontent.” Farmers argued that they were discriminated against by the monopoly power of railroads, milling companies, commodity buyers, meat packers, and money lenders. They maintained that the monopoly power exercised by these groups depressed farm prices and reduced farm profits. Many farmers attempted to change their economic situation by direct political action through groups like the Grange, the Greenback Party, the Farmers Alliance, and especially the Populist Party.

For decades, historians accepted the complaints of the farmers at face value. Then in 1966, Douglass North provided empirical evidence that rejected the farmers' complaints about prices, freight costs, and interest rates. Others have corroborated and extended these findings, showing that the real income per capita of farmers rose consistently throughout this period. Anne Mayhew's “A Reappraisal of the Causes of Farm Protest in the United States, 1870–1900” examines the agrarian unrest in light of this new evidence. She argues that much of the protest by farmers can be explained as a response to commercialization. They were not objecting to the prices they faced per se, but “to the increasing importance of prices.”

This essay differs from many of the others in that it relies on secondary sources (articles, books, etc.) rather than primary sources (records from the nineteenth century).