A Reappraisal of the Causes of Farm Protest in the United States, 1870–1900

Abstract

Between 1870 and 1900 American farmers organized in the Grange, the Alliances, and the Peoples (Populist) Party and protested against a variety of economic ills. Economic historians have generally explained the farm organizations and the protests in the same way that the farmers themselves explained them—in terms of low agricultural prices and high costs of inputs resulting in part from the monopolistic organization of the suppliers of those inputs. However, there now exists considerable evidence indicating that the economic conditions of the time were not: as the farmers depicted them, thus raising two questions: (1) if the farmers' statements about their economic state cannot be accepted as historical fact, then why were the farmers so angry? and (2) why did they choose to protest the issues which they did?