In U.S. history, politically oriented coalition of agrarian reformers in the Middle West and
South that advocated a wide range of economic and political legislation in the late 19th century.
Throughout the 1880s local political action groups known as Farmers' Alliances sprang up
among Middle Westerners and Southerners, who were discontented because of crop failures,
falling prices, and poor marketing and credit facilities. Although it won some significant
regional victories, the alliances generally proved politically ineffective on a national scale. Thus
in 1892 their leaders organized the Populist, or People's, Party, and the Farmers' Alliances
melted away. While trying to broaden their base to include labour and other groups, the
Populists remained almost entirely agrarian-oriented. They demanded an increase in the
circulating currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver), a graduated income tax,
government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of U.S.
English: William Jennings Bryan, Democratic party ...
English: Photograph of William Jennings Bryan as a...
Democratic Donkey - Caricaturesenators, and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give farmers
economic parity with business and industry.
In 1892 the Populist presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, polled 22 electoral votes and
more than 1,000,000 popular votes. By fusing with the Democrats in certain states, the party
elected several members to Congress, three governors, and hundreds of minor officials and
legislators, nearly all in the northern Middle West. In the South, however, most farmers refused
to endanger white supremacy by voting against the Democratic Party. Additional victories were
won in the 1894 midterm election, but in 1896 the Populists allowed themselves to be swept into
the Democratic cause by their mutual preoccupation with the Free Silver Movement. The
subsequent defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan signalled the
collapse of one of the most challenging protest movements in the U.S. since the Civil War.
Some of the...