The Granger Movement, The Farmers Association, And The People's Party

The politics helped bring about the Agrarian revolt. Times were really tough for the farmers and ranchers. The economy before the war was good for them especially in the South. Then after the Civil War the farmers and ranchers had to deal with debt, worsening social and economic conditions, high costs of freight from the railroads, high tariffs on imported goods, deterred international competition because of those tariffs, blizzards that killed off most of the rancher’s hogs and cattle in Mississippi, and all the acres of corn, oats, and wheat lost in the two year drought. Several groups came along to try and improve the situations for the farmers and ranchers and they were: The Granger Movement, the Farmers Association, and the People’s Party also known by the Populist Party.
With Oliver H. Kelley’s help the Granger Movements membership skyrocketed up to around 1.5 million by 1874 which was made up of mainly the wealthier farmers. The Granger Movement started out to improve the social isolation and education of the farmers, it grew to include the promotion of “farmer owned” cooperatives for selling and buying of crops. It got indirectly involved in politics trying to regulate the prices charged by the warehouses and railroads with the

It also focused on political actions. Farmers in the Midwest and south that were struggling the most rushed to join. They were eventually waned around 1890 by the “tyrannical” forces, as they were known to the farmers, (the banks, creditors, Wall Street financiers, railroads, and the corporate giants) that controlled the political process and the commodities market. The bankers refused to accept the Alliance members’ paper moneys. After Congress nixed a proposal that helped farmers, the farmers realized that they needed more farmer leaders in political