HIS 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: William Jennings Bryan, Sharecropping, White Privilege
Document Summary
Populist movement (aka: and bunch of pissed off farmers) 1880-1900"s- farmers were herding: big corporations were hurting the small local farmers. Farmers alliance: created in the 1880"s, essentially a lobbying group, tried to convince politicians to pass certain laws and help out farmers. Regulation of railroad rates (limit what they would charge-price ceiling) Lower the tariff (so they could purchase new machinery and tools) Take the united states off of the gold standard. Every dollar produced was worth a certain amount of gold. Surprise: the politicians lied just to get elected: formed their own political party so that they weren"t crossed between the two main parties and no one could lie to them to get to office. Populist political party was created in 1892. Constitution states that senators should be elected by state government officials: ideally wanted nationalization of transportation and communication systems. In theory the government would keep the rates down: sub-treasurery.
