Summary Of American Populism

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McMath, Jr., Edward C. American Populism: A Social history 1877-1898. Hill and Wang, 1992, 211 I believe that McMath wrote the book because he wanted the reader to understand the hardships of the lower classes back in the populism era. He gave us key area’s to look at such as New York and Texas. It shows how the workers and farmers were treated unfairly as well as looked down upon by the upper class. He captures the populism of that time from the strikes all the way to the farmer’s debt. It gives you a good look at some of the riots back then such as the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. After reading the book though I found that the book may not have been written so much as to tell us about the past, but try to help us with our political liberalism…show more content…
McMath, Jr. worked at Georgia Tech as a Vice Provost; he oversaw student academic services and improved the teaching as well as the learning environment. As a history professor, he received the George C. Griffin Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Dean James E. Dull Administrator of the Year Award, and in 2004 was named an honorary alumnus. Later on he became the dean of the college. Outside of American Populism, McMath has written Class, Conflict, and Consensus: Antebellum Southern Community Studies, Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance, Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885-1985, Adaptable South: Essays in Honor of George Brown Tindall, Toward a New South: Studies in Post-Civil War Southern Communities, and Is There a Southern Political Tradition?: Essays and…show more content…
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. Political power for the farmer’s alliance did not seem too out of reach. They found a man that seemed extremely promising, by the name of William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a great feel-in for the democratic appeal. Together, Bryan and the farmer’s alliance brought in some good ideas. The farmers were hardly getting any money for all they did so, the Alliance came up with an idea to help with inflation, bring in more crop shares, lower their debt, and income taxes which would help hold down the American economy. The book mentions silver to gold ratio 16:1, for an unlimited amount of coinage and creates more surplus. The silver was their uprising and their downfall. The Alliance hadn’t had much political power, except for the Sherman Silver Act which replaced the gold as the primary coinage in the United States. Their defeat is when his government started to buy the silver, and big business started to make
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