Unit 1.4 Populism Notes

Unit 1.4 Populism Notes

I. Declining Profits

Thanks to new technologies, farmers had opened up the Great Plains and were producing a much larger supply of grain

Grain supply ↑ = Grain prices ↓

Farmers were earning ______

II. Rising Costs

High tariffs + unionized factory workers = ______on manufactured goods

Banks were charging high ______on loans

Railroads were charging higher fees for shipping grain to eastern markets

Farmers were paying ______

III. The Money Supply

To fund the Civil War, the government had flooded the market with paper money (“______”)

Supply of $↑ = Value of $↓ (______)

3 Types of Money

After the Civil War, the government had three types of currency in circulation:

______

______

______(essentially paper money issued by banks) backed by government bonds (loans taken out by the government); the bank notes could be cashed in at a future date for “real” government issued gold and silver

IV. Government Fights Inflation

In 1873, the US ______stopped printing greenbacks AND stopped minting silver coins to reduce the money supply and stop inflation

The government also started paying off its bonds to reduce the number of bank notes in circulation

The response was ______and reduced the money supply ______

Supply of $↓ = Value of $↑ = Prices ↓ (______)

Deflation Hurts Farmers

Decrease in the money supply meant that loans were harder to get and interest rates on loans became higher

Farmers were getting ______money for their crops (because of the increase in money’s buying power) but paying ______money for mortgages & other loans (because of higher interest rates)

“The Crime of ’73”

Farmers believed that greedy ______had conspired to pressure the government into reducing the money supply (what they called “the Crime of ‘73)

Farmers began to organize and campaign for government to resume printing greenbacks and/or minting silver coins

V. The ______

To organize the poor farmers of the South and Midwest and give them a more powerful political voice, U.S. Department of Agriculture official Oliver Kelley organized “The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry” in 1867

By 1874, the “______,” as the group had come to be nicknamed, had over 1 million members

The Grange Takes Action

As farmers’ conditions worsened, the Grange pressured state legislatures to ______railroad & warehouse rates

Grangers also joined the Independent National Party (also called the ______Party) a new political party aimed at getting the government to print more paper money

Farmers’ ______

Grangers also created farming cooperatives where they pooled farmers’ crops and kept them off the market in order to limit supply and drive up prices

By working together, farmers could also negotiate better shipping and warehousing rates

The Grange Fails

The Greenback Party failed to win ______support – average Americans simply didn’t trust paper money

The Farmer’s Cooperatives never grew large enough to be effective

Many states did pass laws regulating rates for railroads, but ….

______v. Illinois

In 1886, the Supreme Court ruled that states ______regulate railroads because the railroads were involved in interstate commerce and interstate commerce can only be regulated by federal law

VI. The Sherman ______Purchase Act

In 1890, Congress did authorize the US Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month to be used to ______into circulation

Still, this wasn’t enough to ease deflation, so it didn’t actually help farmers

VII. The People’s Party

Founded in 1890, more commonly called the ______Party

Western farmers decided that the changes needed to help farmers required a new pro-farmer political party

Southern farmers opposed this third-party because it might weaken their beloved Democratic Party (which was supporting ______laws across the South)

The Omaha Platform

The Populist Party presented their political platform at a rally in Omaha Nebraska in 1892

The Platform called for the ______coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 oz. of silver to equal 1 oz. of gold (this idea of circulating both gold and silver coinage was known as ______)

It also called for federal takeover of ______, a graduated income ____, and tighter government regulation of banking and other industries relied on by farmers

A Populist Candidate for President

At the Omaha Convention, the Populists nominated James B. ______to run for President of the United States

Weaver came in a distant 3rd place in the election with only 22 electoral votes, but it was still a strong showing for a 3rd party candidate and was particularly worrisome for the Democratic Party

VIII. The Panic of 1893

When two large railroad companies were forced into ______in 1893, it triggered a collapse of the banks who had loaned those railroads money

The ensuing Panic of 1893 was the ______the US had experienced to that point, resulting in 18% unemployment

Treasury Crisis

The Panic of 1893 also caused investors to cash in their government bonds for gold, draining the US gold reserve

Congress responded to the run on gold by repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, effectively stopping people from trading in their lower-value silver for gold

Goldbugs vs. ______

The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act split the Democratic Party into two factions:

______believed that US currency should be backed exclusively with gold

Silverites believed that coining unlimited silver would ease the economic crisis

IX. Election of 1896

For the 1896 presidential election, Populists wanted to nominate a candidate who supported ______, but Democrats beat them to the punch

Faced with either supporting the Democratic candidate and giving up their 3rd party status or nominating their own candidate and splitting the pro-silver vote, the Populists chose to support the Democrats

William Jennings ______

Only 36 when both the Democrats & Populists nominated him for president

Powerful speaker who won his nomination with his pro-silver “Cross of Gold” speech

The “______” Speech

“Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

Bryan’s Campaign

Bryan toured the country for weeks, giving hundreds of speeches

Bryan won strong support in the West and South, but not from city-dwellers (who didn’t care about the silver issue) or from ______immigrants (who didn’t like his Protestant minister style speeches)

In the end, Bryan could not win enough support to win the election and the hopes of farmers were again dashed

Gold in ______

The discovery of gold in Alaska (which had been purchased by the US from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million) in 1898 massively boosted the nation’s gold reserves and effectively ended the silver debate, leading to the decline and collapse of the Populist Party