Question

Read the question and materials for the document-based essay on the beliefs of the Populist party. One step of writing document-based essays is analyzing the documents provided, many of which are primary sources. This activity will help you with that step. Using your knowledge and the documents provided for the question—political cartons, charts, and other documents—make two lists. One list should contain at least four reasons that farmers were discontent with the situations they faced at this time, and the other list should contain at least four evaluations of the validity of their complaints.

Answer 1

Reasons for farmers' discontent

In the 1870s, farmers suffered from the lack of money circulating in the economy with which they could invest in land and supplies to do their work.

Many farmers were getting foreclosed on by Eastern bankers.

Farmers had to sell their crops on a market that was driven by the whims of international production cycles.

Railroads charged more to ship farmers' crops to market than they charged big businesses to ship goods.

Evaluation of the validity of farmers' complaints

This is a valid complaint because the nation was trying to recover economically from the Civil War and was unable to balance the farmers' need for "easy money" and the need to control inflation. Farmers were stuck in the middle of this controversy.

Farmers certainly suffered from the greater concentration of wealth in the East, so it was hard for them to go about their business and invest in what they needed; however, it is also not clear that the bankers should extend their credit if that would pose even further risk of loss of capital.

As Laughlin says in his 1896 Atlantic Monthly article, farmers had no way to know how to plant their crops—which means how to invest in land and supplies—in ways that would not result in surpluses and falling prices, so, if they could not get more "soft capital," they should at least have access to information about worldwide production patterns to protect their investments, and the investments of the Eastern bankers. Because Americans, then and now, depend on farmers for the food we eat and the economic exchanges we engage in, we are responsible for their survival, at least in general.ts.

Farmers certainly have a legitimate complaint that they had to pay more for shipping their crops on trains to market than they would earn, although the railroads had the right in a market system to charge what they could and charge big business less if they could ship their goods in bulk with less expense. But if the railroads had not been so financially aggressive and ruthless, it would be easier to sympathize with them and believe they were just being reasonable capitalists.

Step-by-step explanation:

PLATO ANSWER!

Answer 2

Transit from traditional to commercial agriculture, the tax burden that derives from the greater requirement of bank credit, dependence on transportation and immigration.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the last four decades of the nineteenth century they constituted a period of great economic and social transformation for the United States. Suffice it to consider that from 1860 to 1900 the total population increased from 31 to 75 million inhabitants. In these years the economy of the country fell to the agricultural sector, characterized in that the population was rural.

The displacement that was given to the agricultural sector has economic and social implications. For example, the transition from traditional to commercial agriculture was observed, from traditional production to mechanization of production, and from the self-financing of the farmer to its integration into bank and financial credits.

In addition to this, immigration contributed more to the uncomfortable and frightened farmer, who saw in these an unfair competition, since immigrants were incorporated into the worst economic and wage conditions, further depressing the already worse agricultural prices.

Incorporating agriculture into national and international trade meant a tax burden for the farmer, a greater bank credit requirement and a dependence on the means of transport. For the impoverished farmer, his problems came largely from the corrupt government and the government, from the banks in the east, and from the hungry railway companies that raised transportation rates uncontrollably.

This perception was not without foundation. An example, the execution of more than 100,000 mortgages between 1889 and 1892, and until 1890 the government had granted railway companies approximately more than 73 million hectares, more than double what they had given to farmers who they were beneficiaries of the Homestead Law.

After the hegemony of the Republicans, and their clear preference for business interests, irritated farmers could not see in the existing parties but a machinery of political control outside their problems. Thanks to social unrest, what became known as the People's Party, called the populist, began to take shape, which came to the political scene by actively participating in national elections.

The populists expressed their dissatisfaction with those who felt they were victims of the banking and railway corporations, the political parties and the federal government. In this way, they could have no other appreciation of the origin of all their problems except as the product of a conspiracy against them, in which all these subjects participated.