all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 20 section 3 farmers revolt in the populist era so during the gilded age in particular farmers faced a unique uh set of circumstances so gilded ages 1870 to 1900 uh and these uh challenges will lead to a significant political change in the country so of the various difficulties that farmers endured including just those that were pretty much basic to the lifestyle for farmers especially those out west this is a picture of a i believe a north dakota farm family living in a sod or mud house which many farmers in the west did they had other problems that were related to politics and the changes in the economy one was the dropping crop prices again for farmers if you're selling crops that is a bad thing because you want to sell at a very high price so dropping crop prices which were for a number of reasons including improved technological development and improved transportation which then dropped the prices of various crops meant that there were lower incomes for farmers tariffs which are taxes on imported goods recall from the last chapter that during the gilded age the united states had the highest tariffs in pretty much all of its history and that tariffs were favored by businesses because it allowed businesses to charge uh extra money when faced with foreign competition so taxes on imported goods really meant more expensive tools right tools and machines so tractors uh shovels everything that was needed for farmers uh uh irrigation uh those things were more expensive thanks to tariffs you couldn't buy cheap foreign goods because they were uh taxed right at this high rate also foreign competition with crops again this just has to do with some of the improvements in transportation so farmers in the us are also competing with farmers around the world banks and railroads especially these were probably the two most difficult things banks essentially could charge farmers high interest rates oops and even though this is you know asked us to recall some of the content that we learned in the previous chapters remember things like the homestead act which made land very cheap and available and sometimes free for farmers is that you still needed to buy all the tools and everything else the seeds the fertilizer that was required and so typically farmers took out loans and those loans were provided by the banks and so banks could charge pretty much farmers whatever they wanted to railroad's the same thing uh railroads price gouged if you're a farmer and you grow your crop you have to pay the railroad in order to transport it and the railroad companies and the banks were the the two biggest or some of the two biggest corporations and industries in the united states and more or less took advantage of the position that farmers were in when it came to the monetary system right monetary farmers favored the silver position of course when it came to the monetary system the debate over gold and silver was should silver be included with gold as backing currency banks and businesses wanted only gold to count farmers wanted silver and gold because what that meant was that there would be more money available banks wouldn't be able to charge as high interest rates if there was more money available so all of these things are problems facing farmers particularly in the gilded age so how do farmers then begin to organize well very much in a similar manner that workers did is that farmers begin to form organizations uh the grange or grangers were like unions for farmers so these were organizations that came together farmers came together and were able to have more strength in numbers in order to get for example things like granger laws passed grainger laws were typically laws which regulated uh in this case railroads right so these were laws really designed oops these were laws that were designed to fix this problem of price gouging that the railroad companies often did they were more often state laws so these were local however the granger laws went before the supreme court in the wabash case so this was you know are the granger laws constitutional what the supreme court ruled was that granger laws were unconstitutional right this is a serious blow or serious negative impact so this was a blow [Music] to farmers essentially the supreme court had ruled that railroads have the right to charge pretty much whatever price they want and any state law that tried to regulate or tell them what they could and could not charge was struck down by the supreme court farmers went on to create a minor political party called the greenback party of course greenback is a reference to the us currency or dollar right and of course this is the idea regarding the monetary system that you should expand you should allow for more money to be in circulation uh greenbacks being paper dollars to have more of these paper dollars in circulation meant that farmers could get their hands on the desperate loans that they that they needed and other organizations called farmers alliances also created that you know certainly by the 1870s 1880s and 1890s there were millions of farmers who belonged to alliances which were pretty much organizations however similar to some of the workers in you know in the industrial cities that we talked about previously one thing that farmers also struggled was with uniting past racial or ethnic barriers in the case of the farmers it was less about ethnicity and language and religion like you saw with the various immigrant groups in the cities it was more about color so for example the colored alliance wasn't all black farmer alliance and similarly you had all white farmers alliances as well so that inability to get past racial differences hindered the movement there are also divisions with north oops and south right north and south still the the wounds of the civil war were still very much felt and northerners and southerners farmers especially refused to work together with one another for that particular reason and so this sort of the way of forming these uh you know grangers and forming these alliances we're getting farmers to work get work together on a more local level however you have the emergence of it you know just simple organizations to a full-blown political party the populist party essentially becomes a farmer's political party the two parties of the day the democrats and republicans were simply not meeting any of the demands of what the farmers wanted and so the populist party a third party forms in the late 1800s as a response to really fight and pass laws on behalf of the farmers the omaha platform or otherwise known as the populist party platform outlined the demands of farmers you know what did they want you know among their demands of course included things like silver they wanted public scroll down here uh public ownership of railroads right right amongst other things right is what the farmers demanded in the omaha platform or the populist party platform it really came to represent what the populace was about or what the populist movement was about and really what they demanded james weaver was the first populist presidential candidate spelled wrong whatever the first populist presidential candidate although he didn't win the presidential election slowly but surely the populist party began electing local representatives members to the house of representatives and it became an increasing political force that eventually the democrats and republicans would have to respond to this new political movement