American Agriculture In The Late 1800s

During the period 1865-1900, American agriculture changed significantly by many things. However, many technological innovations and government policies that were appearing during the late 1800’s made the agricultural aspect of America change drastically, many technological innovations, such as inventions that limited farmers workload, and government policies, that had farmers riled, had made a wedge in between the stable agricultural economy. Therefore, technology and policies had a bigger impact on the economic conditions farmers had to face, causing many changes to the American agriculture during the 1800’s.

During the years, many technological advances proved to have a negative impact for farmers specializing in agriculture; one being the

The Monetary Policy was issued to reduce the amount of money that was circulating in the America. As many farmers saw that money was hard to come by, and the government’s ongoing discussion to get rid of silver and paper bills and exchange it for gold, limiting the currency in America. A young man named William Jennings Bryan, believed strongly that ‘bimetallism’, or “free-silver” would bring the nation to prosperity, as he expressed during his “Cross of Gold” speech given on July 9th, 1896. He stated that “[people of the government] we ought to declare in favor of international bimetallism and thereby declare that the gold standard is wrong and that the principles of bimetallism are better.” It clearly showed his standpoint on the currency issue that was going on during that time, reassuring that certain actions will be taken to make gold the main currency of America. Many citizens found that the policy was an insurance to make the price of money rise. By doing so, farmers found themselves to be on the negative side, unable to benefit from this sudden increase in money. Farmers were one of the few groups that were affected greatly by the Monetary Policy, as they were the ones who lived in an area where money was limited. When government officials helped big industries become profitable “and agriculture less so, banks became increasingly hesitant to lend money to farmers. When they did, it was at a higher rate of interest, making it even more difficult [for farmers] to profit.” Tariffs came around later in the period, causing many farmers to compete with one another for money. Government passed the tariffs to ensure that industrialists were able to run American