Populist Movement Essay

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The populist movement is a variety of reform initiatives associated with popular sentiment. The Populists dreamed of creating a broad political coalition. Populism however, appealed to small farmers in particular with economic security. Out in the Midwest, Populists were typically family farmers who wanted their land back or tried to keep it in the first place. In the South, there were many modest landowners as well as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Throughout all the differences most Populist had one thing in common: there were associated with a type of farming.
Populists tended to be not only economically but also culturally marginal. The Populist movement appealed to all isolated farmers who felt cut off from the world. It gave everyone a way back; it also gave them a social life, the need to be there for the community. The Populists did not attract many groups. They gave energetic efforts to try an include labor within the coalition.
In 1890 Populists won control of the Kansas state legislature, and Kansan William Peffer became the party’s first U.S. Senator. Peffer, a saw little evidence of Populism in their states and often treated the party as a joke. However, Southern and Western Populists gained support rapidly. In 1892 the national party was officially founded through a merger of the Knights of Labor and Farmers’ Alliance.
The Panic of 1893 brought up the most severe depression the nation and YET experienced. In March 1893 when a company was unable to meet payments on loans, declared bankruptcy. After a few more months, another company failed too. This triggered a collapse of the stock market. A wave of bank failures soon began. It caused a contraction of credit, which meant that many of the new, aggressive, and ...

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...o Bryans 176 and received 51.1 percent of the popular vote to Bryans 47.7. Bryan carried the areas of the South and West where miners or struggling staple farmers predominated. The Democratic program, like that of the Populists, had been too narrow to win the national election. For the Populists, the election was a disaster they had gambled everything on their “fusion” with the Democratic Party and lost. Within months of the election, the People’s party began to dissolve. American farmers would never again unite so to demand economic reform.
The election of 1896 overall was no good and a complete waste of time to the Populists. With the Democratic Party’s last they lost all momentum. After the depression started everything for the populists started to go downhill from there. The last of their strength and wit was placed into the election with the opposite effect.

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