During the period between 1880 and 1900, agrarian discontent increased as a result of the rise of cities, deflation of the American money, and problems with railroads and freight shipping. Farmers also complained about unfair railroads policies towards shippers. Railroad companies discriminated, by charging bigger businesses lower priced shipping rates and charging individual shippers highly overpriced shipping rates. In the Octopus, by Frank Norris, the con of the practice is displayed as the main character, farmer Dyke, discovers that the shipping rate being charged will put him at a loss rather than profit. Congress believed that farmers were right and passed the Interstate Commerce Act, in order to regulate railroads and ensure fair rates to all people.
Tariffs making goods scarce and heavy taxation meant prices for Russian consumers increased, whilst their wages stayed low. Workers had poor living and working conditions, and their discontent was severely repressed.
Agriculture tended to be inefficient and backward, particularly in the South where the ‘latifondi’ dominated. The industrial development that did occur did so exclusively in the North and this reinforced an existing economic divide between North and South, as the North was developing economically and the south remained backward and deprived of industry. Poor economic conditions resulted in large-scale emigration particularly to North America. Therefore, the basis of the division within Italy was economic failure, and as the economics of a country is fundamental to its success, the north-south divide in relation to economics was a significant attribute to the weaknesses of the
The Old Poor Law of 1834 was reformed because it could not cope due to the large numbers of people claiming poor relief. This was due to population rise, commercialisation of farming which left people with no jobs, decline of agricultural crafts, harvest failures, food shortages due to war, higher food prices and change in attitude to claiming social welfare as there was no stigma attached to being poor anymore. This led to different measures such as the introduction of the Speenhamland system of 1795. Having investigated the reasons for the reformation of the Poor Law, we will now focus on the reasons that led to the reform. There were six main reasons that led to the old Poor Law Reform to easily pass which were: a willing government, Tories were a minority, Climate change, objectors were not listened to, and a Report based on evidence collected by the commission of enquiry.
The lack of usable land in Russia and the subdivison of land between families both resulted in an incredibly low income, especially for larger families. This combined with the illiteracy of the people and refusal of the Tsar to provide basic education meant that there was no way to escape the misfortunes of life as a peasant. The poor harvests of 1900 and 1902 worsened matters even further and fuelled the peasants anger. The famines and starvation that followed provided sufficient evidence that the Tsar was not a born leader, “gifted and sent from God” as they had been taught to believe, but a weak and incompetent leader, incapable of making decisions or change. Another issue was that whilst the Tsar encouraged the industrial growth of Russia, and was keen for the country to become an industrial power, when peasants then left the land to work in the developing enterprises, they discovered that their living conditions did not improve.
Years of frustration is what caused the eventual succession. Since the American Revolution, the topic of slavery was present in the minds of important men in both northern and southern states. The institution of slavery was allowed to continue in the United States, but it was when the Union started to expand that much of the frustration began. The government had passed regulations banning the spread of slavery into these new territories, and many southern states were outraged to the point where South Carolina threatened to succeed from the Union in 1821. Southern states believed that their way of life was being infringed, meaning that slavery was an important institution for their mainly agricultural based economy.
Many things show that this era was incorrectly labeled. Such as, the agriculturalists had hard times, a geographical line had to be drawn to divide the people, and disunion came to play. One of the conflicts, seen during the era of good feelings is that agriculturalists had hard times. You can see this for what John Randolph had mentioned, “The agriculturalists bear the whole brunt of the war and taxation, and remained poor, while the others run in the ring of pleasure, and fatten upon them.” (Document A) By saying this, Randolph meant that the agriculturalists, such as farmers, were taking on most of the effects of the war and taxation. This caused them to sty poor and some to become even more so poor.
He defined relative deprivation as “perceived discrepancy between value expectations and value capabilities”, namely people cannot achieve what they expected in their life. When people are frustrated, they might behave aggressively, and Gurr considered this as providing the “primary source of the human capacity for violence”. He had also stated that the stronger the deprivation is, the more likely that a collective violence might occur. Looking back to the examples of various revolutions, it can be observed that the eve of rebellion usually accompany with economic depression. For instance, in the year before the 1789 French Revolution, an extremely poor harvest stroke France and it affected peasants catastrophically.
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.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the practice of enclosure was denounced by the Church, and legislation was drawn up against it; but the developments in agricultural mechanization during the 18th century required large, enclosed fields so as to be workable. This led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General enclosure Act of 1801, which sanctioned large-scale land reform. While small farmers received compensation for their strips, it was minimal, while the loss of rights for the rural