history 102 dbq #3: the farmer’s revolt · washington gladden was a prominent clergyman in the...

History 102 DBQ #3: The Farmer’s Revolt

Historical Context: Farmers, farming, and country life have always held a special place in the hearts of

Americans. Years ago, Thomas Jefferson expressed this when he said: Those who labor in the earth are the

chosen people of God. If ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for

substantial and genuine virtue

Even today, poets, politicians, artists, movies and advertisers romanticize the “simple joys and virtues”

of country living. During our early history, and well into the nineteenth century, America remained largely a

land of farms and small country towns. In many ways, the idealized myth of the “happy and independent

farmer” proved true. But in the late nineteenth century farm life for many American became harsh and

frustrating—far different than the happy myth. Farm income dropped as new farm lands were opened and new

machines and methods increased crop yields. Those with smaller farms, poorer lands, or limited resources could

no longer compete against the larger and more mechanized farms. Farmers by the thousands went broke and

fled to the cities in search of factory jobs.

For the farmers who failed, and for those who struggled and barely succeeded, these were difficult

times. Working day after day, from dawn to dusk, and having little or nothing to show for their efforts;

watching their wives work and worry themselves to early deaths; seeing their children abandon the farm for the

cities—these were the personal agonies shared by thousands across America’s agricultural South and West.

The farm crisis came to a head in the 1890’s with the organization of the Populist Party. This was a

political party, made up mainly of Southern and Western farmers, that hoped to wrench political control of the

country from the Democratic and Republican Parties and try to solve the problems that were plaguing rural

America. In the presidential election of 1896, the Populists almost succeeded in winning the White House. But,

in the end, they failed. Today, fewer than 3% of Americans live and work on farms.

Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying documents in Part A. As you analyze the

documents, take into account both the source of the document and the author’s point of view.

Be sure to:

• Carefully read the document based question.

o Consider what you already know about the topic

o How would you answer the question if you had no documents to examine?

• Now, read each document carefully, underlining key phrases and words that address the document based

question.

o You may also wish to use the margin of your paper for notes

o Answer the questions that follow each document

• Based on your knowledge of the topic and on the information found in the documents, formulate a

thesis that directly answers the question.

• Organize supportive and relevant information using the attached 5 paragraph outline worksheet.

o Completely write out your thesis statement in the appropriate place

o Completely write out each paragraph topic sentence

o The outline should be able to prove your thesis

o The information in the outline should be logically presented

o The outline should include both information from the documents and from your outside

knowledge of the subject

Essay Question: What caused the farmers’ plight in the late nineteenth century (both in their view and in the

view of non-farmers), and how did farmers propose to resolve these problems?

DBQ #3: The Farmer’s Revolt

Essay Question: What caused the farmers’ plight in the late nineteenth century (both in their view and in the

view of non-farmers), and how did farmers propose to resolve these problems?

Organize your evidence: Which documents have the evidence?

Document Numbers Cause of the farmer’s plight

Document Numbers Solutions

Develop your Main Points: Group your reasons for the farmer’s revolt or their solutions together based on

common factors.

Document 1

The National Grange is the oldest national agricultural organization in the United States. Its members

provide service to agricultural rural areas on such issues as economic development, education, family

endeavors, and legislation. The National Grange set forth its beliefs and principles in this 1874 document.

For our business interests, we desire to bring producers and consumers, farmers and manufacturers into

the most direct and friendly relations possible. Hence we must dispense with a surplus of middlemen, not that

we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions diminish our profits.

What type of source is this? (Primary or secondary and WHAT is it?)

What is the bias of the author, as it relates to the essay question? What might account for this bias?

What is the major goal of the Grange movement? What do they see as an obstacle to that goal?

Document 2

The Union Labor Party adopted this platform in 1888. For the 1888 election, the party nominated Alson

Jenness Streeter of Illinois as its presidential candidate and William H. T. Wakefield of Kansas as its vice-

presidential candidate. Streeter and Wakefield won 1.3% of the popular vote, over 8,500 votes.

The means of communication and transportation shall be owned by the people, as is the United States

postal system.

The establishment of a national monetary system in the interest of the producer, instead of the speculator

and usurer, by which the circulating medium, in necessary quantity and full legal tender, shall be issued directly

to the people without the intervention of banks and loaned to citizens upon land security at a low rate of interest

so as to relieve them from the extortion of usury and enable them to control the money supply.

A graduated income tax is the most equitable system of taxation, placing the burden of government on

those who can best afford to pay, instead of laying it on the farmers and producers, and exempting millionaires,

bond-holders and corporations.

We demand a constitutional amendment making United States senators elective by a direct vote of the

people.

The paramount issues to be solved in the interests of humanity are the abolition of usury, monopoly, and

trusts, and we denounce the Democratic and Republican parties for creating and perpetuating these monstrous

evils.



What are the basic planks of the Union labor Party platform?

What do these demands reveal about what the farmers believed was the reason for their economic plight?

Document 3

From a Populist Party newsletter, c. 1890



Describe the conflict portrayed in this cartoon

Document 4

Washington Gladden was a prominent clergyman in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who

believed in applying Christian principles to the social problems of the day. This is an excerpt from an article

Gladden wrote in 1890. (From “The Embattled Farmers”, published in the Forum, November 1890)

The American farmer is steadily losing ground. His burdens are heavier every year and his gains are

more meager; he is beginning to fear that he may be sinking into a servile condition…. The causes of this

lamentable state of things are many…. protective tariffs, trusts….speculation in farm products, over-greedy

middlemen, and exorbitant transportation rates…..The enormous tribute (payment) which the farmers of the

West are paying to the money-lenders of the East, is one source of their poverty. Scarcely a week passes that

does not bring to me circulars from banking firms and investment agencies all over the West begging for money

to be loaned on farms at eight or nine per cent…..



According to this author, what are the major problems facing farmers in 1890?

Who does he blame for these problems?

Document 5

These are excerpts from the 1892 Populist Party platform. In 1892, the Populist Party met in Omaha, Nebraska,

where its leaders nominated James Weaver for President. Here are some important statements and demands

from the platform.

Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and even touches the ermine of the

bench. The people are demoralized…. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion

silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in

the hands of the capitalists.

A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking

possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible convulsions, the destruction of

civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the

people must own the railroads; and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all

railroads, we should favor an amendment to the constitution by which all persons engaged in the government

service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase

of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employees.

We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one.

We demand a graduated income tax.

Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and

operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph and telephone, like the post-office system, being

a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the

people.

The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be

monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by

railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be

reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.



Who or what do the authors blame for the plight of the farmers?

Describe the basic demands of the Authors. What do you think caused the farmers to make these demands?

Document 6

This syndicated cartoon appeared in 1894 in several eastern newspapers. It portrays Populist Party candidate

William Jennings Bryan giving a campaign speech from the back of a railroad car. The bellows-like device

Bryan holds is actually a “smoker” used in bee keeping. It was believed that smoke could keep the bees

sedated long enough to extract the honey from their hive.



Explain the imagery in this source. Is it sympathetic or critical of the farmer’s argument? Explain.

Document 7

This is from the Acceptance speech of William McKinley at the Republican National Convention, Canton, Ohio

(August 26, 1896)

It is proposed by one wing of the Democratic party and its allies, the People’s and Silver parties, to

inaugurate action on the part of the United States at a ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold….

We must not be misled by phrases, nor deluded by false theories. Free silver would not mean that silver

dollars were to be freely had without cost or labor…It would not make labor easier, the hours shorter, or the pay

better. It would not make farming less laborious or more profitable….

Debasement of the currency means destruction of values. No one suffers so much from cheap money as

the farmers and laborers. They are the first to feel its bad effects and the last to recover from them….



According to McKinley, what would be the result of the farmer's policy of "free silver"?

Document 8

Here is an excerpt from a magazine article, “Causes of Agricultural Unrest,” written by James

Laurence Laughlin and published in the Atlantic Monthly in November of 1896. Laughlin was a professor of

economics at the University of Chicago as well as a prominent supporter of the gold standard and opponent of

the Populists.

Of course, the farmer who has overtraded, or expanded his operation beyond his means, in a time of

commercial depression is affected just as anyone else is in like conditions.

The simple facts that we produce more wheat than we consume, and that, consequently, the price of the

whole crop is determined, not by markets within this country, but by the world-markets, are sufficient to put

wheat, as regards its price, in a different class from those articles whose markets are local.

The sudden enlargement of the supply without any corresponding increase of demand produced that

alarming fall in the price of wheat which has been made the farmer’s excuse for thinking that silver is the magic

panacea for all his ills….

Feeling the coils of some mysterious power about them, the farmers, in all honesty, have attributed their

misfortunes to the “constriction” in prices, caused, as they think, not by an increased production of wheat

throughout the world, but by the “scarcity of gold.” ……This explanation of low prices as caused by

insufficient gold is so far-fetched that its general use seems inexplicable.



How does Laughlin explain the economic conditions faced by the farmers?

How did industrialization and the new world trade patterns affect the economic plight of American farmers?

Document 9

The poet Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1879 and raised and educated in the

Midwest. Published in 1919, this stanza comes from one of his poems entitled “BRYAN, BRYAN, BRYAN,

BRYAN: The Campaign of 1896, as Viewed at the Time by a Sixteen Year Old, etc.” (Stanza V of VI).

Election night at midnight

Boy Bryan’s defeat

Defeat of western silver

Defeat of the wheat

Victory of letter-files

And plutocrats in miles

With dollar signs on their coats,

Diamond watch-chains on their vests

And spats on their feet.

Victory of custodians of

Plymouth Rock,

All that inbred landlord stock

Victory of the neat

Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,

The blue bells of the Rockies

By the Pittsburgh alleys.

Defeat of alfalfa and the Mariposa lily.

Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi.

Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme

Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.



What is the basic sentiment of this poem?

What is the divide in American society and economics that is illustrated by this poem?

Document 10

Farm Production and Prices: 1860-1900. (ABC-Clio.com American History Subscription Web Site)

Production in Million Bushels/Bales Price per Bushel/Bale



How does this document help explain the economic plight of the farmers?

0

1000

2000

3000

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Corn Production

$0.00

$0.20

$0.40

$0.60

$0.80

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Corn Price

0

200

400

600

800

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Wheat Production

$0.00

$0.50

$1.00

$1.50

$2.00

$2.50

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Wheat Price

0

2

4

6

8

10

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Cotton Production

$0.00

$0.50

$1.00

$1.50

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Cotton Price

How do these sources explain the farmer’s political and emotional frustration?

What is the connection between this source and the overall industrial growth of the US during this period?

Five Paragraph Outline Worksheet

Introduction Paragraph: Background- No more than two sentences. (What was going on at the time and the

historical significance of the period-as it relates to the question)

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Main point #1- No more than one sentence.

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Thesis (must directly answer the question and tie the main points together)

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Body Paragraph #1

Topic sentence (Same as main point #1, limits paragraph to ONE idea and must directly support the thesis)

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Evidence (specific person, law, treaty, development…)

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Transition (Connects to the next paragraph in a complex manner using a connecting sentence)

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Body Paragraph #2


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Body Paragraph #3


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Conclusion paragraph

Very brief review of the essay. Sum it up in no more than two sentences.

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Importance of the topic during its time

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Long term historical importance of the topic

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history 102 dbq #3: the farmer’s revolt · washington gladden was a prominent clergyman in the...

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