Reconsideration of the Causes of the Farmers' Movement in the United States, 1880s and 1890s

As to the causes of the farmers' movement in the late 19 th century, we are not in perfect agreement. The interpretation of the progressive historians that the movement was caused by depression in agriculture has been criticized by some historians after the World War II, pointing out that they did not analyze cost and income of the farm management at that time. The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the economic condition of the Mid-Western farmers and to suggest a hypothesis for understanding the causes of the agrarian revolt, by examining the cost data, that is, the report of the expenses of raising wheat and corn in 1893 researched by U.S.D.A. and the materials as to the cost of raising wheat in S. Dakota and Minnesota submitted to the Industrial Commission by the two farmers. With a critical consideration on the data, I came to the conclusion that the ballance sheet of the farm management was not so bad as most historians have suggested, especially in the late 1880s and the early 1890s when the agrarian protest had exalted. Because, in addition that farmers needed not to pay for their own labor, rent of their land and manure, the value of crops per acre began to rise since 1887. Farmers in the region of protest movements, at the same time, showed the intention to expand their acreage of principal cereals. This fact means that the farmers raised their support for the movement when they intended to expand their farm management. If this be ture, we can easily understand why they had claimed the reservation of the public land for actual settlers only, the establishment of the new land credit system and the regulation of railroads, middlemen and etc. They would have wanted to exclude the obstacles to the expansion of their farming. But why were there so many foreclosures and abandontment of the farms in those days ? This problem can be easily explained. First, for example in Kansas, those destruction of farms in consequence of the drought in 1887 had mainly happened in newly settled areas and cities where there were many speculations. Secondly, the people who had abandoned their farms, therefore, were mostly new comers and speculators who had little experience in farming in the western region. On the contrary, when the farmers, in the literal sense of the word, got "independence", they began to search for "success". With the discontent based on the widening gap of accumulation of wealth between farmers and capitalists, "the search for success" was the main cause of the protest movement. But a few years after 1893 their economic condition conspicuously deteriorated. In that circumstance, the main interest of the farmers was turned on the demand for free coinage of silver.