Farmers Discontent Dbq

658 Words2 Pages

Farmer’s discontent during the period 1870 – 1900 had an impact on their attitudes and actions towards politics. During this period manufacturing had a growth spurt and agricultural started to decline. This made it harder for the farmers to make a decent living. For example in document G it shows how much manufacturing increased between the 50 years. America could no longer dream to be a nation of small freehold farms. Manufacturers and people living in big cities depended on farmers to supply everything. Many people didn’t realize how much of an affect farmers had on their lives. If somebody was to take farms away, everything would have completely crashed.

Farmer’s had difficulties making a living because the rates of being a farmer was high. “Nothing has done more to injure the western region than these freight rates.” (Quoted from Document F) The high rates of being a farmer made it very difficult to make payments on the lands. Some farmers couldn’t even sell their produce for a reasonable profit. They worked long, hard hours and the government wasn’t on their side about paying them a decent income. Along with farm prices failing, railroad prices were increasing. Railroads were important very to farmers because they took farmers out to their lands, carried their produce to markets, and brought them the manufactured goods that they needed. Many farm settlements were made around railroads just because of this reason. Railroad managers were forced to charge very high rates and because of it, farmers would have to pay more money to use railroads.

Farming is the main supply for a country back then. The crops that farmers produce basically was the only food supply. That makes famers a very important part of society. Farmers back t...

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... farmers. They was losing land for the production of railroads. To solve this solution the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 was put in place. The Supreme Court would rules that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce and discriminate against out of state business. Also, President Cleveland was forces to give out land to the public.
The election of 1892 was won by Cleveland (D). He had brought new ideas and was an inspiration to all including the opposite parties. Cleveland had the majority of the votes especially the votes that came from the East coast which has major plantations (Document D). Cleveland promised big hope for people. He was said to have solid sense and able to give social stability especially by being accompanied with McKinley (Document I). In the end Cleveland just gave land to farmers because of the complaints of the railroads.

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