Get Farmers And Populism Part 2

At that same convention during the spring of 1890 The Alliance accomplished something even more important — they called for the organization of a new political party at a meeting in July. That convention produced the Populist Party.

Farmers demanded free and unlimited coinage of silver to inflate the currency and raise farm prices, government ownership of the railroads, taxation of income, abolition of national banks, prohibition of alien land ownership, and other reforms.

It advocated a federal farm-credit and marketing scheme called the subtreasury plan. When these efforts failed, the Alliance played a leading role in establishing a national third party, the People's or Populist Party, in the early 1890s.

They primarily zeroed in on two villains – banks and railroads. In their view banks charged outrageous interest rates, and monopolistic railroads not only charged outrageous rates but their rates were unfair and arbitrary in that the railroads charged farmers higher rates than they charged fellow industrialists.

By 1890, many members of the Alliance felt they could only attain their goals through politics, but many distrusted the Republican and Democratic Parties, believing they both served the interests of industry and banks over the interests of farmers. This lead to the formation of the People's Party.

Leaders of the Farmers' Alliance therefore in 1892 founded a political party, the People's, or Populist, Party, to pursue these goals and nominated James B. Weaver as their candidate in the 1892 presidential election.

Factors such as overproduction and high tariffs left the country's farmers in increasingly desperate straits, and the federal government's inability to address their concerns left them disillusioned and worried.