Farmers and National Agricultural Alliances in the United States of America 1865-1890

Abstract

After the Civil War, the United States witnessed rapid economic growth that included various industrial and agricultural sectors. While early American society was an agricultural society, it very quickly became linked to business and foreign markets. Because of its productive importance and being a major tributary to the developing American economy, the agricultural sector was supposed to receive special attention and protection from the US government. However, the fruits of this economic growth were not distributed equally among all economic sectors. The topic of this research, entitled “Farmers and National Agricultural Alliances in the United States of America, 1865–1890,” was chosen to attempt to reach the main difficulties that American farmers suffered during that period and the solutions they proposed to address them, and to reveal the causes of the public agitation caused by the farmers and remove it. Economic and political. The most important finding of the researcher is that the lack of organization and the greed and exploitation of some American railway companies burdened the farmers to a point where the cost of transporting their crops to the markets cost more than half the price at which the farmer sells his goods, and there was a problem of credit, the high interest rates imposed on them, and the lack of flexibility. The currency, the rate of decline in the prices of agricultural commodities, and the economic recession have turned the majority of farmers into an indebted and poor class.