what impact did the movement to form farmer cooperatives have?

This article is about a specific 19th-century movement in the U.s.. For other movements, see peasant motility.

The farmers' movement was, in American political history, the general name for a movement between 1867 and 1896. In this movement, there were 3 periods, popularly known as the Grange, Alliance and Populist movements.

The Grange [edit]

The Grange, or Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (the latter official name of the national organization, while the quondam was the name of local chapters, including a supervisory National Grange at Washington), was a surreptitious order founded in 1867 to advance the social needs and combat the economic backwardness of farm life. It was founded by Oliver H. Kelley, at that time an official working in Washington DC for the Dept. of Agronomics. He had been sent to Virginia to assess Southern agricultural resources and practices. He found them to exist generally poor, and became determined to found an system of farmers for the dissemination of data. Equally a Government official from the North, he must have received a generally hostile reception, but he was a Bricklayer, and concluded by founding his organization on the structure of that social club.^{[ citation needed ]} In addition to farming practices, information technology was to provide insurance and chivalrous aid to members. He was in correspondence with his niece during the early on period and both promoted the equal status of women and the principle of equal pay for equal piece of work. The Grange grew remarkably during the early years: at its peak, its membership rose to approximately 1.v million. The causes of its growth were much broader than just the financial crunch of 1873; a high tariff, railway freight rates and other grievances were mingled with agricultural troubles like the autumn of wheat prices and the increase of mortgages.

The condition of the farmer seemed desperate. The original objects of the Grange were primarily educational, but these were soon overborne by an anti-middleman, co-operative motility. Grange agents bought everything from subcontract machinery to women's dresses; hundreds of grain elevators and cotton and tobacco warehouses were bought, and even steamboat lines; common insurance companies were formed and joint-stock stores. Nor was co-operation limited to distributive processes; crop reports were circulated, co-operative dairies multiplied, flour mills were operated, and patents were purchased, that the Grange might manufacture farm machinery.

The event in some states was ruin^{[ how? ]}, and the proper noun, Grange, became a reproach^{[ why? ]}. Still, these efforts in co-operation were exceedingly important both for the results obtained and for their wider significance. Nor could politics exist excluded, though officially taboo, for economics must be considered past social idealists, and economics everywhere ran into politics. Thus information technology was with the railway question.

Railways had been extended into frontier states; there were heavy crops in sparsely settled regions where freight-rates were loftier, then that given the existing distributive system there were over product and waste matter; at that place was notorious stock manipulation and bigotry in rates; and the farmers regarded absentee ownership of railways by New York capitalists much equally absentee ownership of state has been regarded in Republic of ireland. The Grange officially disclaimed enmity to railways: Though the organization did not set on them, the Grangers, through political farmers clubs and the like, did. In 1867, the Grange began efforts to plant regulation of the railways as common-carriers, by the states. Such laws were known as Granger Laws, and their full general principles, endorsed in 1876 by the Supreme Court of the United States, have go an important chapter in the laws of the land.

In a declaration of principles in 1874 Grangers were declared not to be enemies of railroads, and their cause to represent no communism nor agrarianism. To conservatives, however, cooperation seemed communism, and Grange laws agrarianism; thus, in 1873-1874, the growth of the movement aroused extraordinary interest and much uneasiness. In 1874, the social club was reorganized, membership being limited to persons direct interested in the farmers' cause (there had been a millionaire manufacturers Grange on Broadway), and after this at that place were constant quarrels in the guild; moreover, in 1875, the National Grange largely lost control of the country Granges, which discredited the organisation by their disastrous co-operation ventures. Thus, by 1876, it had already ceased to be of national political importance.

About 1880, a renaissance began, especially in the Eye States and New England; this revival was marked by a recurrence to the original social and educational objects. The national Grange and land Granges (in all, or nearly all, of the states) were still active in 1909, especially in the one-time cultural motion and in such economic movements, notably the comeback of highways as well-nigh directly concern the farmers. The initiative and referendum, and other proposals of reform politics in the direction of a democratic advance, too enter in a measure into their propaganda.

The Alliance [edit]

The Alliance carried the move further into economics. The National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Marriage, formed in 1889, embraced several originally independent organizations (including The Agricultural Wheel) formed from 1873 onwards; information technology was largely bars to the South and was secret. The National Farmers Alliance, formed in 1880, went back similarly to 1877, was much smaller, Northern and non-secret. The Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union (formed 1888, merged in the above Southern Alliance in 1890) was the second greatest organization. With these 3 were associated many others, state and national, including an annual, non-partisan, deliberative and advisory Farmers National Congress. The Alliance motion reached its greatest power nigh 1890, in which year twelve national farmers organizations were represented in conventions in St Louis, and the six leading ones lone probably had a membership of 5,000,000. Equally with the Grange, and so in the ends and declarations of the whole later motion, concrete remedial legislation for agronomical or economic ills was mingled with principles of vague radical tendency and with lofty idealism. Thus, the Southern Alliance in 1890 (the master platforms were the ane at Ocala, Florida, and that of 1889 at St Louis, Missouri, in conjunction with the Knights of Labor) declared its principles to be:

(1) To labour for the education of the agricultural classes in the science of economic government in a strictly non-partisan way, and to bring about a more perfect union of such classes. (two) To demand equal rights to all, and special privileges to none. (3) To endorse the motto: In things essential, unity; in all things, charity. (4) To develop a improve state, mentally, morally, socially and financially - - - (6) To suppress personal, local, sectional and national prejudices.^[ane]

For the Southern farmer a chief physical evil was the crop-lien arrangement, mortgages on their future crops for furnished supplies by which cotton farmers fell into debt to state merchants. In the North, agricultural labor forces opposed a wide range of capitalistic legislation in solidarity with other industries, notably legislation sought by railway owners.

Practically all the great organizations demanded the abolition of national banks, the complimentary coinage of silver, a sufficient result of government paper money, tariff revision, and a secret ballot (the last was soon realized). Only less commonly demanded were an income tax, taxation of bear witness of debt, and government loans on lands. All of these were principles of the two great Alliances (the Northern and the Southern), equally were also pure nutrient legislation, abolition of landholding by aliens, reclamation of unused or unearned land grants (to railways, e.g.), and either rigid federal regulation of railways and other means of communication or regime buying thereof. The Southern Alliance put in the forefront a subtreasury scheme according to which cheap loans should be made by government from local sub-treasuries on non-perishable subcontract products (such as grain and cotton) stored in government warehouses; while the Northern Brotherhood demanded restriction of the liquor traffic and for (a short fourth dimension) woman suffrage. Withal other issues were a modification of the patent laws (e.g., to preclude the purchase of patents to stifle competition), postal currency exchange, the eight-hr twenty-four hours, inequitable taxation, the single tax on land, trusts, educational qualification for suffrage, direct pop election of federal judges, of senators, and of the president, special-involvement lobbying.^{[ citation needed ]}

The Populists [edit]

In 1889-1890, with the rapid growth in membership, the political (non-partisan) movement developed amazing strength; it captured the Republican stronghold of Kansas, brought the Democratic Party to vassalage in Southward Carolina, revolutionized legislatures even in conservative states like Massachusetts, and seemed probable completely to dominate the South and West. All its work in the South was accomplished within the old-party organizations, merely, in 1890, the demand became strong for an contained 3rd political party, for which various consolidations since 1887 had prepared the way. By 1892, a large part of the strength of the farmers organizations, with that of various industrial and radical orders, was united in the People's Party (perhaps more by and large known as the Populist Party), which had its beginnings in Kansas in 1890, and received national organisation in 1892.

The People's Political party emphasized gratuitous silver, the income tax, eight-hour 24-hour interval, reclamation of land grants, government ownership of railways, telephones and telegraphs, pop ballot of federal senators, and the initiative and plebiscite. In the presidential election of 1892, information technology cast 1,041,021 votes (in a total of 12,036,089), and elected 22 presidential electors, the first chosen by whatever third party since 1856. In 1896, the People's Party fused with the Democratic Party in the presidential campaign, and again in 1900. During this menstruation, the greatest part of the People's Political party was reabsorbed into the ii slap-up parties from which its membership had originally been drawn; in some northern states apparently largely into the Republican ranks, only mainly into the Democratic Party, to which it gave a powerful radical impulse.^{[ citation needed ]}

Influence [edit]

The Farmers' movement was much misunderstood, driveling and ridiculed past the societal forces it challenged. However, it accomplished a vast amount of adept. The movement—and especially the Grange, for on most important points the latter movements only followed where information technology had led—contributed the initial impulse and prepared the way for the establishment of traveling and local rural libraries, reading courses, lyceums, farmers institutes (a steadily increasing influence) and rural free postal service delivery (inaugurated experimentally in 1896 and adopted as function of the permanent postal organization of the country in 1902); for agricultural exhibits and an improved agricultural press; for encouragement to and increased profit from the piece of work of agricultural colleges, the establishment (1885) and great services of the United States Department of Agriculture, -- in short, for an extraordinary lessening of rural isolation and the betterment of the farmers opportunities; for the irrigation of the semi-arid W, adopted every bit a national policy in 1902, the pure-food laws of 1906, the interstate-commerce constabulary of 1887, the railway-rate laws of 1903 and 1906, even the great Bureau of Commerce-and-Labor law of 1903, and the Anti-trust laws of 1903 and after. The Alliance and Populist movements were bottomed on the idea of "ethical gains through legislation."^[1]

In its local manifestations the whole movement was often marked by eccentric ideas, narrow prejudices and weaknesses in economic reasoning. It is not to be forgotten that attributable to the movement of the borderland the United States has ever been "at once a developed country and a archaic 1. The same political questions have been put to a lodge advanced in some regions and undeveloped in others. ... On specific political questions each economic area has reflected its peculiar interests" (Prof. F.J. Turner).^[1] That this idea must not, however, exist over-emphasized, is admirably enforced by observing the great mass of farmer radicalism that has, since nearly 1896, get an accustomed Autonomous and Republican principle over the whole country. The Farmers movement was the starting time of widespread, effective protestation against "the menace of privilege" in the United States.^[ane]

Run across also [edit]

• United Farmers of Ontario
• United Farmers of Alberta

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d} 1 or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Farmers' Movement". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Printing. pp. 181–182.

Further reading [edit]

• Goodwynn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Brusk History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. Oxford Academy Printing, USA (November xxx, 1978). ISBN 0-xix-502417-6.

Encyclopædia Britannica (5.5, p. 182) states that: American periodicals, particularly in 1890-1892, are particularly informing on the growth of the movement:

• F. M. Drew in Political Science Quarterly (1891), 6. p. 282
• C. W. Pierson in Pop Science Monthly (1888), xxxii. pp. 199, 368
• C. S. Walker and F. J. Foster in Register of American Academy (1894); iv. p. 790
• Senator W. A. Peffer in Cosmopolitan (1890), x. p. 694

and on agricultural discontent:

• • Political Science Quarterly, iv. (1889), p. 433, by W. F. Mappin; v. (1890), p. 65, by J. P. Dunn; 11. (1896), pp. 433, 601, xii. (1897), p. 93, and xiv. (1899), p. 444, by C. F. Emerick
• Prof. Eastward. W. Bemis in Journal of Political Economic system (1893), i. p. 193
• A. H. Peters in Quarterly Journal of Economics (1890), four. p. 18
• C. W. Davis in Forum (1890), ix. pp. 231, 291, 348

External links [edit]

• National Grange of the Society of Patrons of Husbandry - Accessed January 14, 2012
• The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry History - Accessed Jan 14, 2012
• total texts of primary sources on the Grange - Accessed Jan 14, 2012
• History of Farmer's Alliance - Accessed January fourteen, 2012
• Text of Ocala Demands at MSU - Accessed January 14, 2012
• The Omaha Platform: Launching the Populist Party - Accessed Jan 14, 2012
• The Ascent and Autumn of Populism in the South - Accessed Jan 14, 2012

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_movement

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