Reconstruction, Expansion, and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism 53co were more profitable than others. But, as with industry, the economy
seemed like a roller-coaster, with years of success followed by recessions and
“panics,” causing farmers to grow more crops simply to stay even. Growing
more crops led to a crisis in overproduction–more crops were being grown
than could be sold in the American market, and so prices dropped. For
example, cotton prices on the world market fell from 11 cents per pound in
1881 to 4.6 cents per pound in 1894. The dropping prices caused an untold
number of farmers to lose their land. Kate Richards O’Hare, who was a
young girl living on a family ranch in Kansas during the 1880s, remembered
how they lost their land, home, and rural way of life due to the economic
depression. After losing everything, her family was forced into the urban wage
labor scene in Kansas City. “The poverty, the misery, the want, the wan-faced
women and hunger pinched children, men trampling the streets by day and
begging for a place in the police stations,” O’Hare recalled her childhood;
“the sordid, grinding, pinching poverty of the workless workers and the
frightful, stinging, piercing cold of that winter in Kansas City will always stay
with me as a picture of inferno such as Dante never painted,” she wrote.
Farmers, like industrial workers, decided to do something about their plight.
As one agricultural agitator, Mary Lease, said, it was time to “raise less crops
and more hell.” And farmers did, ultimately helping form one of the more
meaningful opposition movements to capitalism in American history, Populism.
Farmers, as one Nebraska newspaper editorial said, must fight against "the
wealthy and powerful classes who want the control of government to plunder
the people.” In a vicious cycle of debts, low prices, and overproduction, farmers
had to take collective action, and in 1892 helped form “The People’s Party,”
later to become The Populists. The People’s Party attracted former K of L
members and its strongest base was in the South and West cotton and wheat
belts. The 1892 Populist platform, written by Ignatius Donnelly, described
how the U.S. had been brought to the verge of moral, political, and material
ruin by the exploits of the wealthy. “The fruits of the toil of millions are
boldly stolen to buildup colossal fortunes,” wrote Donnelly in the platform.
To these activists, farmers had several key enemies, especially bankers, monop-
olists, and railroad operators. The banks favored urban and industrial investors
over farmers, offering them better rates on loans and investing heavily in fac-
tories. “Monopolists” like Rockefeller and Carnegie were able to control the
market and demand prices that farmers could not meet on petroleum and