Essay Database

Agrarian Discontent in the Late 1800's "Why the Farmers Were Wrong" The period between 1880 and 1900 was a boom time for American politics. The country was for once free of the threat of war, and many of its citizens were living comfortably. However, as these two decades went by, the American farmer found it harder and harder to live comfortably. Crops such as cotton and wheat, once the bulwark of agriculture, were selling at prices so …

…unfair and unreasonable price increases, happened in very few occasions; in fact, prices went down in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Finally, history has proven that their view of silver as a way to end deflation and the decrease in crop values was inaccurate. The farmers of the period, though, used these issues to change the shape of American politics and bring it face to face with the problems the country was facing.