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The Farmers' Alliances hardworking had some success during the 1880s and 1890s in having supporters elected to local and state offices.

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In 1889, Charles W. Macune organized the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. The organization had three million members by 1890. This organization only permitted whites to join. At the same time, the National Colored Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union formed for African Americans. Both of these organizations began in the South, but they quickly moved to the North and the West as well. Regional Farmers' Alliances had existed before the advent of the two national organizations. Hoping to bring more pressure to bear on politicians and business owners, the regional alliances united together in the national groups. The Farmers' Alliances grew out of the Patrons of Husbandry. While the Grange was a more social organization, Farmers' Alliances were much more politically active.

The Farmers' Alliances called for a graduated income tax, state ownership of the railroads, lower tariffs, and "free silver." The Farmers' Alliances had some success during the 1880s and 1890s in having supporters elected to local and state offices. In Nebraska, Farmers' Alliances supporters had gained control of the state legislature by 1890.

In Ohio, the Farmers' Alliances existed but did not meet with much success in recruiting members. While conditions were difficult for farmers across the United States, Ohio farmers faced fewer problems than their counterparts in the South and the West. By the early 1890s, the Framers' Alliances had given way to the Populist Party. In Ohio's gubernatorial election of 1891, the Populist candidate received less than one percent of the votes that were cast.

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In 1889, Charles W. Macune organized the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. The organization had three million members by 1890. This organization only permitted whites to join. At the same time, the National Colored Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union formed for African Americans.

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They set up their own cooperative stores, which bought directly from wholesalers and sold their goods to farmers at a lower rate, at times 20 to 30 percent below the regular retail price.
Also the Allience established its own mills for flour, cotton seed oil, and corn, as well as its own cotton gin. Such facilities allowed debt-laden farmers, who often had little cash to pay third-party mills, to bring their goods to markets at a lower cost.

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The Farmers Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished in 1875.

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Overproduction and high tariffs left the country's farmers in increasingly desperate straits, and the federal government's inability to help them left them disillusioned. In response to inconsistent responses from state governments, many farmers sought alternative solutions which was the main purpose of ther revolt

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Politics in the Gilded Age, 1870-1900

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Understand how the economic and political climate of the day promoted the formation of the farmers' protest movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century

Explain how the farmers' revolt moved from protest to politics

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.

Overproduction of crops occurred in part due to the westward expansion of homestead farms and in part because industrialization led to new farm tools that dramatically increased crop yields. As farmers fell deeper into debt, whether it be to the local stores where they bought supplies or to the railroads that shipped their produce, their response was to increase crop production each year in the hope of earning more money with which to pay back their debt. The more they produced, the lower prices dropped. To a hard-working farmer, the notion that their own overproduction was the greatest contributing factor to their debt was a completely foreign concept ([link]).

In addition to the cycle of overproduction, tariffs were a serious problem for farmers. Rising tariffs on industrial products made purchased items more expensive, yet tariffs were not being used to keep farm prices artificially high as well. Therefore, farmers were paying inflated prices but not receiving them. Finally, the issue of gold versus silver as the basis of U.S. currency was a very real problem to many farmers. Farmers needed more money in circulation, whether it was paper or silver, in order to create inflationary pressure. Inflationary pressure would allow farm prices to increase, thus allowing them to earn more money that they could then spend on the higher-priced goods in stores. However, in 1878, federal law set the amount of paper money in circulation, and, as mentioned above, Harrison's Sherman Silver Act, intended to increase the amount of silver coinage, was too modest to do any real good, especially in light of the unintended consequence of depleting the nation's gold reserve. In short, farmers had a big stack of bills and wanted a big stack of money-be it paper or silver-to pay them. Neither was forthcoming from a government that cared more about issues of patronage and how to stay in the White House for more than four years at a time.

The initial response by increasingly frustrated and angry farmers was to organize into groups that were similar to early labor unions. Taking note of how the industrial labor movement had unfolded in the last quarter of the century, farmers began to understand that a collective voice could create significant pressure among political leaders and produce substantive change. While farmers had their own challenges, including that of geography and diverse needs among different types of famers, they believed this model to be useful to their cause.

One of the first efforts to organize farmers came in 1867 with Oliver Hudson Kelly's creation of the Patrons of Husbandry, more popularly known as the Grange. In the wake of the Civil War, the Grangers quickly grew to over 1.5 million members in less than a decade ([link]). Kelly believed that farmers could best help themselves by creating farmers' cooperatives in which they could pool resources and obtain better shipping rates, as well as prices on seeds, fertilizer, machinery, and other necessary inputs. These cooperatives, he believed, would let them self-regulate production as well as collectively obtain better rates from railroad companies and other businesses.

At the state level, specifically in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, the Patrons of Husbandry did briefly succeed in urging the passage of Granger Laws, which regulated some railroad rates along with the prices charged by grain elevator operators. The movement also created a political party-the Greenback Party, so named for its support of print currency (or "greenbacks") not based upon a gold standard-which saw brief success with the election of fifteen congressmen. However, such successes were short-lived and had little impact on the lives of everyday farmers. In the Wabash case of 1886, brought by the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the State of Illinois for passing Granger Laws controlling railroad rates; the court found such laws to be unconstitutional. Their argument held that states did not have the authority to control interstate commerce. As for the Greenback Party, when only seven delegates appeared at an 1888 national convention of the group, the party faded from existence.

The Farmers' Alliance, a conglomeration of three regional alliances formed in the mid-1880s, took root in the wake of the Grange movement. In 1890, Dr. Charles Macune, who led the Southern Alliance, which was based in Texas and had over 100,000 members by 1886, urged the creation of a national alliance between his organization, the Northwest Alliance, and the Colored Alliance, the largest African American organization in the United States. Led by Tom Watson, the Colored Alliance, which was founded in Texas but quickly spread throughout the Old South, counted over one million members. Although they originally advocated for self-help, African Americans in the group soon understood the benefits of political organization and a unified voice to improve their plight, regardless of race. While racism kept the alliance splintered among the three component branches, they still managed to craft a national agenda that appealed to their large membership. All told, the Farmers' Alliance brought together over 2.5 million members, 1.5 million white and 1 million black ([link]).

The alliance movement, and the subsequent political party that emerged from it, also featured prominent roles for women. Nearly 250,000 women joined the movement due to their shared interest in the farmers' worsening situation as well as the promise of being a full partner with political rights within the group, which they saw as an important step towards advocacy for women's suffrage on a national level. The ability to vote and stand for office within the organization encouraged many women who sought similar rights on the larger American political scene. Prominent alliance spokeswoman, Mary Elizabeth Lease of Kansas, often spoke of membership in the Farmers' Alliance as an opportunity to "raise less corn and more hell!"

The alliance movement had several goals similar to those of the original Grange, including greater regulation of railroad prices and the creation of an inflationary national monetary policy. However, most creative among the solutions promoted by the Farmers' Alliance was the call for a subtreasury plan. Under this plan, the federal government would store farmers' crops in government warehouses for a brief period of time, during which the government would provide loans to farmers worth 80 percent of the current crop prices. Thus, farmers would have immediate cash on hand with which to settle debts and purchase goods, while their crops sat in warehouses and farm prices increased due to this control over supply at the market. When market prices rose sufficiently high enough, the farmer could withdraw his crops, sell at the higher price, repay the government loan, and still have profit remaining.

Economists of the day thought the plan had some merit; in fact, a greatly altered version would subsequently be adopted during the Great Depression of the 1930s, in the form of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. However, the federal government never seriously considered the plan, as congressmen questioned the propriety of the government serving as a rural creditor making loans to farmers with no assurance that production controls would result in higher commodity prices. The government's refusal to act on the proposal left many farmers wondering what it would take to find solutions to their growing indebtedness.

Angry at the federal government's continued unwillingness to substantively address the plight of the average farmer, Charles Macune and the Farmers' Alliance chose to create a political party whose representatives-if elected-could enact real change. Put simply, if the government would not address the problem, then it was time to change those elected to power.

In 1891, the alliance formed the Populist Party, or People's Party, as it was more widely known. Beginning with nonpresidential-year elections, the Populist Party had modest success, particularly in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, where they succeeded in electing several state legislators, one governor, and a handful of congressmen. As the 1892 presidential election approached, the Populists chose to model themselves after the Democratic and Republican Parties in the hope that they could shock the country with a "third-party" victory.

At their national convention that summer in Omaha, Nebraska, they wrote the Omaha Platform to more fully explain to all Americans the goals of the new party ([link]). Written by Ignatius Donnelly, the platform statement vilified railroad owners, bankers, and big businessmen as all being part of a widespread conspiracy to control farmers. As for policy changes, the platform called for adoption of the subtreasury plan, government control over railroads, an end to the national bank system, the creation of a federal income tax, the direct election of U.S. senators, and several other measures, all of which aimed at a more proactive federal government that would support the economic and social welfare of all Americans. At the close of the convention, the party nominated James B. Weaver as its presidential candidate.

In a rematch of the 1888 election, the Democrats again nominated Grover Cleveland, while Republicans went with Benjamin Harrison. Despite the presence of a third-party challenger, Cleveland won another close popular vote to become the first U.S. president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms. Although he finished a distant third, Populist candidate Weaver polled a respectable one million votes. Rather than being disappointed, several Populists applauded their showing-especially for a third party with barely two years of national political experience under its belt. They anxiously awaited the 1896 election, believing that if the rest of the country, in particular industrial workers, experienced hardships similar to those that farmers already faced, a powerful alliance among the two groups could carry the Populists to victory.

Factors such as overproduction and high tariffs left the country's farmers in increasingly desperate straits, and the federal government's inability to address their concerns left them disillusioned and worried. Uneven responses from state governments had many farmers seeking an alternative solution to their problems. Taking note of the labor movements growing in industrial cities around the country, farmers began to organize into alliances similar to workers' unions; these were models of cooperation where larger numbers could offer more bargaining power with major players such as railroads. Ultimately, the alliances were unable to initiate widespread change for their benefit. Still, drawing from the cohesion of purpose, farmers sought to create change from the inside: through politics. They hoped the creation of the Populist Party in 1891 would lead to a president who put the people-and in particular the farmers-first.

Which of the following was not a vehicle for the farmers' protest?

1. the Mugwumps

2. the Grange

3. the Farmers' Alliance

4. the People's Party

Which of the following contributed directly to the plight of farmers?

1. machine politics

2. labor unions

3. overproduction

4. inadequate supply

What were women's roles within the Farmer's Alliance?

Women were able to play key roles in the alliance movement. The alliance provided them with political rights, including the ability to vote and hold office within the organization, which many women hoped would be a positive step in their struggle for national women's rights and suffrage. In the end, nearly 250,000 women joined the movement.

Glossary

Farmers' Alliance

a national conglomeration of different regional farmers' alliances that joined together in 1890 with the goal of furthering farmers' concerns in politics

Grange

a farmers' organization, launched in 1867, which grew to over 1.5 million members in less than a decade

Populist Party

a political party formed in 1890 that sought to represent the rights of primarily farmers but eventually all workers in regional and federal elections

subtreasury plan

a plan that called for storing crops in government warehouses for a brief period of time, during which the federal government would provide loans to farmers worth 80 percent of the current crop prices, releasing the crops for sale when prices rose

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Politics in the Gilded Age, 1870-1900 OpenStaxCollege [latexpage] By the end of this section, you will be able to: Understand how the economic and political climate of the day promoted the formation of the farmers' protest movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century Explain how the farmers' revolt moved from protest to politics The challenges that many American farmers faced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were significant.

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They proposed that the national government construct warehouses, or subtreasuries, and issue negotiable notes on crops deposited in the warehouses.

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The Farmers' Alliance, formally known as the North Carolina State Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, was a large and influential organization of farmers and rural citizens that was founded in Texas and spread across the South and Middle West in the late 1880s. Its representatives first appeared in North Carolina in 1887; by 1891 more than 100,000 North Carolinians had joined.

This spectacular growth resulted from several factors. Most important, the increasing commercialization of agriculture thrust various classes of the state's farmers into a complex and often-hostile web of trade relationships. Many North Carolina farmers relied on local merchants for credit, materials, and crop marketing. The monopoly of the local merchant resulted in high credit rates and high prices for goods purchased on credit. Market prices for agricultural products were often depressed by harvesttime gluts. Further, loans from the merchant were protected through the crop lien, a legal device that gave the merchant priority rights to crops to satisfy debts. Farmers were also harmed by government policy, including the federal government's protective tariff on purchased goods.

The Farmers' Alliance was a "secret," all-white organization. It permitted men and women farmers, rural mechanics, teachers, preachers, and physicians to join; it expressly excluded lawyers and merchants. The occupational admissions test revealed a Republican-inspired faith in rule by agricultural producers. The North Carolina Alliance included more landowners than tenants or laborers. In fact, leadership tended to be delegated to wealthier planters, as indicated by the high status of the order's two presidents between 1887 and 1891, Sydenham Alexander of Mecklenburg County and Elias Carr of Edgecombe County.

In 1890 the Farmers' Alliance was strong enough to make political demands that would receive a full hearing in the Democratic Party. Most Alliance members, and particularly most Alliance leaders, were Democrats. The two issues of greatest contention in 1890 were the Alliance's Subtreasury Plan and its demand for a state railroad commission. Given the increasingly obvious inability of the order's cooperative devices to thwart the existing credit and marketing system, the Farmers' Alliance proposed that the national government construct warehouses, or subtreasuries, and issue negotiable notes on crops deposited in the warehouses. Combined with the Alliance's more general plan to increase money volume and have all money issued by the federal government, the warehouses would raise the prices for goods received by farmers and reduce the credit and marketing power of merchants.

The Subtreasury Plan was strongly supported by the North Carolina Farmers' Alliance, and considerable pressure was placed on the state's congressional delegation to support the proposal. The state railroad commission idea, which had been defeated in the 1889 General Assembly, was promoted in order to eliminate high intrastate freight rates and low taxation of railroad property.

Political activity by the Farmers' Alliance resulted in the election of a General Assembly dominated by members of the organization. One source estimated that 110 of the 170 representatives in the 1891 assembly belonged to the order.

After early 1891, controversy about the future of the Farmers' Alliance escalated. Division within the North Carolina order developed on such fundamental issues as the Subtreasury Plan, which perhaps one-third of the membership opposed, and a new demand, adopted by the national organization in early 1892, for federal government ownership of railroads. The latter proposal was criticized by many members, including a former president of the North Carolina Alliance, Elias Carr, who favored public regulation instead of ownership.

These disagreements were related to increasing rancor within the Farmers' Alliance about the appropriate political posture of the organization. In particular, members were divided over the duty of the order in national politics. In the summer of 1892 conflict over this issue climaxed, leaving the organization permanently shattered. The formation of Populist parties in other states contributed to the decline. But more significant were the Democrats' nomination of Grover Cleveland in July for president and the growing opposition by some North Carolina Democrats to the influence of the Farmers' Alliance influence within their party.

After 1892 the close connection between Populist and Farmers' Alliance leadership increasingly alienated Democrats from the Alliance. Although the Alliance continued to hold annual meetings in North Carolina through the 1890s, and remnants of the organization persisted until 1941, the order never recovered from the political and ideological battles of 1892. The national Farmers' Alliance organization ceased to exist after 1897.
References:
Alan B. Bromberg, "'The Worst Muddle Ever Seen in N.C. Politics': The Farmers' Alliance, the Subtreasury, and Zeb Vance," NCHR 56 (January 1979).

John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (1931).

Robert C. McMath Jr., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (1975).

Lala C. Steelman, The North Carolina Farmers' Alliance: A Political History, 1887-1893 (1985).
Additional Resources:
"N.C. FARMERS' ALLIANCE," North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program. http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?sp=Markers&k=Markers&sv=K-53

Proceedings of the Farmers' State Alliance of North Carolina at Archive.org.
Image Credits:
Proceedings of the First Annual Session of the North Carolina Farmers' State Alliance. Raleigh, N.C.:Edwards & Broughton, 1888. http://archive.org/details/proceedingsofnor1888farm.

Drawing of a Farmers' Alliance badge. Call no. N_85_3_20. Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.

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The Farmers' Alliance, formally known as the North Carolina State Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, was a large and influential organization of farmers and rural citizens that was founded in Texas and spread across the South and Middle West in the late 1880s.

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Farmers' Alliance, an American agrarian movement during the 1870s and '80s that sought to improve the economic conditions for farmers through the creation of cooperatives and political advocacy.

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Farmers' Alliance, an American agrarian movement during the 1870s and '80s that sought to improve the economic conditions for farmers through the creation of cooperatives and political advocacy. The movement was made up of numerous local organizations that coalesced into three large groupings.

In the American Midwest and West, farming in the late 19th century was made difficult by a combination of drought and high fees for the storage and transportation of farm goods to market. In addition, interest rates on loans were high. Farmers subsequently formed various associations to deal with these issues. One such organization was the National Farmers' Alliance (also called the Northern Alliance), which grew out of the Granger movement (a farming coalition that fought monopolistic grain transport practices). There was an attempt in 1877 in New York to start a national organization, but the first effective body was founded in 1880 by farm journalist Milton George in Chicago. Numerous local chapters were formed and organized into state groupings of the National Farmers' Alliance.

In the South, the Civil War and its aftermath caused trouble for farmers, many of whom were sharecroppers, meaning that they did not own the land they farmed and remained mired in debt owed to the landowners. Smallholders also faced difficulty obtaining affordable loans. The alliance movement in the South had its genesis as the Texas Alliance, founded in the mid-1870s in Lampasas county in Texas. As it expanded throughout the state, it became the Texas State Farmers' Alliance. From the mid-1880s, under the leadership of Charles W. Macune, it was known as the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union (also called the Southern Alliance). It spread throughout the South and made inroads into the West and Midwest as well.

African American farmers in the South, banned from membership in the Southern Alliance, formed the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union (also called the Colored Farmers' Alliance). This organization had many of the same goals as its white counterpart.

Many Farmers' Alliance chapters set up cooperative stores that sold goods at lower prices than retail establishments, and they also established cooperative mills and storehouses to help decrease the costs to farmers of bringing goods to market. Many alliance members became impatient with the piecemeal approach and began making political demands as well. They supported government regulation or ownership of railways and telegraph companies, an increase in the supply of money, a graduated income tax and a decrease in tariffs, the abolition of national banks, and the establishment of subtreasuries-government warehouses in which farmers could deposit crops and borrow against the worth of the crop at a low interest rate. In addition, the alliance sought the direct election of members of the U.S. Senate.

Proponents of the political objectives of the Farmers' Alliance organizations found that, while they were able to achieve some victories in local elections, they were unable to effect change on a national scale. Leaders of the Farmers' Alliance therefore in 1892 founded a political party, the People's, or Populist, Party, to pursue these goals and nominated James B. Weaver as their candidate in the 1892 presidential election. In the process the Farmers' Alliance faded away.

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Farmers' Alliance | Description, History, Significance, & Facts

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Farmers' Alliance, an American agrarian movement during the 1870s and '80s that sought to improve the economic conditions for farmers through the creation of cooperatives and political advocacy. The movement consisted of three large regional groupings. Learn more about the movement's history and political goals.