DBQ 9 The Farmers’ Movement, 1870-1900 Brice Persiani Why did farmers express discontent during 1870-1900 and what impact did their attitudes and actions have on national politics? The farmers expressed discontent because; manufacturing had a huge growth rate during this period causing agriculture to decline, causing farmers to struggle to make a living. The farmers were now being abused by the railroad companies and banks. The documents show reason for the farmer’s protests, mainly focused on banks and the railroad. The farmers fought against the Gold Standard, railroads, and industrialist during this period causing lots of confrontation.
WW1 ends – The ending of WW1 meant that the European countries were able to meet their own demands and therefore did not need any more supplies from America. Farmers suffered from overproduction and could not afford to keep their homes or pay mortgages, some farmers even decided to become sharecroppers. In 1924, 600,000 farmers went bankrupt. Also, there was stiff competition from Canadian, Australian and Argentinean farmers who were selling vast amounts of grain to the world market. Over-production – Fewer products such as cars, consumer good etc were not being sold as factories were making more goods than Americans needed or could afford to buy.
On farms that had become vacant, peasants took ownership and started making more money. In many cities, the wages were rising so rapidly that the government tried putting laws on the amount that wages were to rise since the amounts in which they were going up was so ridiculous. (Zahler, pg. 34) Since people were making so much more money, and since serfdom had been reduced to such a miniscule amount, a new class was created, the working class. It enabled people to work for the money they needed, rather than resting soley on the decisions of landlords.
However, it proved deeply unpopular with the peasants, and although it allowed Stalin and the party to finally gain control over the workers in the countryside, it had devastating effects on this section of the Russian population. The creation of collectives angered many of the of the Russian peasantry. The dekulakisation squads meant that peasants were being forced into collectives, and their crops, livestock, supplies and building were seized as property of the collective. Once again peasants began feeling tied to the land in a similar way to that of serfdome, instead of working for themselves as they did under NEP policies, they were now working for the State, largely losing the independence they had gained. This unhappiness began to manifest itself in violent opposition from large numbers of peasant, particularly in the wealthier agricultural areas, as they had more to lose to the state that the poorer farmers.
However, most of these technological innovations were not within the grasp of the average farmer; only wealthy farmers could afford to own things such as the wheat harvester and the number of horses it took to pull it (Document D). Railroads extended throughout the United States and connected the East and Western markets (Document B), but farmers did not make good profits because of the high railroad rates that were in effect. Even though farmers fought for and were successful in establishing limited freight rates (Document C), they still had to deal with many other problems. Due to overproduction, farmers everywhere suffered from the decrease of their crop prices (Document A). All of these technological advances were made with the intention of helping farmers and improving their working conditions, but instead, they backfired and made things even worse than before.
In Living wage sure beats welfare, they say William Bole reports that Rev. Doug Miles found that many of those lining up for the food pantry were holding down full time jobs. “They just couldn’t live on what they were making.” (Bole) In an effort to fix this the Rev. Doug Miles pushed for a living wage, far more than the current minimum wage at the time. The minimum wage that welfare reform was expecting people to live off of was in fact not enough to even support the buying of food.
The rebuilding of the local areas was a job for the Zemstva, however, none of the peasants ‘knew what was meant by the Zemstvo’ yet ‘the Zemstvo was blamed for everything- for the arrears, and for the oppressions, and for the failure of the crops’. ‘ It affected between fourteen to twenty million people, of which 375,000 to 400,000 died, mostly of disease’. The fact that the Zemstvo had been blamed could present a change in the way they ran their government. Although the source could be affected as it is an extract from Anton Chekhov who was well known for his dramatised descriptions of things and therefore could be indeed exaggerating how bad the situation was and whether or not the Zemstvo were actually being blamed for ‘everything’. However, the Zemstvo failed to make a dramatic
This book foresees shortcomings for farmers and their crops as well economic distress. Populism is defined as people who are the under caste of society making a political movement. The farmers felt like they were beat around by big businesses, and felt like they had no political outreach to help them get an equal share for their work production. To oppose this they pulled together and formed the populist group called the Farmer’s Alliance. This helped the lower classes feel like they had some people.
Landlords often borrowed large sums of money and, when serfs died or demanded higher wages, landlords could not raise money to repay creditors. If the landlord succumbed to the plague, there was no way for creditors to recover lost money. Widespread labor shortages led to a rise in labor prices. This occurred in all aspects of the economy but was especially evident in the agricultural sector. Serfs who for centuries had worked the land for little or not pay, suddenly began to demand higher wages and, increasingly, revolted against a nobility that sought to work them for lower wages of the past.
Third, they improve machines in industries to get more products in less time. This industrial revelation impacted the whole America. Farmer’s in North sell their farms and move in to cities in order to find fix source of income, because they can lose everything in just one bad season. Emigrants were coming to us in order to find jobs. But on the other hand south was just totally opposite.