1 ene 1877 año - First Farmers' Alliances form in SOuth and West

Descripción:

A rural movement founded in Texas during the depression of the 1870s that spread across the plains and the South. Advocating cooperative stores to circumvent middlemen, the Alliance also called for greater government aid to farmers and stricter regulation of railroads.

In the aftermath of Haymarket, the Knights’ cooperative vision did not entirely fade. A new rural movement, the Farmers’ Alliance, arose to take up many issues that Grangers and Greenbackers had earlier sought to address. Founded in Texas during the depression of the 1870s, the Farmers’ Alliance spread across the plains states and the South, becoming by the late 1880s the largest farmer-based movement in U.S. history. A separate Colored Farmers’ Alliance arose to represent rural African Americans. The harsh conditions farmers were enduring — including drought in the West and plunging global prices for corn, cotton, and wheat — intensified the movement’s appeal. Traveling Alliance lecturers exhorted farmers to “stand as a great conservative body against … the growing corruption of wealth and power.” They focused particular anger on the railroads, which arranged special deals for their largest customers and generally charged higher rates for small shipments

Alliance leaders pinned their initial hopes on cooperative stores and exchanges that would circumvent middlemen, including railroads. Cooperatives gathered farmers’ orders and bought in bulk at wholesale prices, passing the savings along. Alliance cooperatives achieved notable victories in the late 1880s. The Dakota Alliance, for example, offered members cheap hail insurance and low prices on machinery and farm supplies. The Texas Alliance established a huge cooperative enterprise to market cotton and provide farmers with cheap loans. When cotton prices fell further in 1891, however, the Texas exchange failed. Other cooperatives also suffered from chronic underfunding and lack of credit, and they faced hostility from merchants and lenders they tried to circumvent.

The Texas Farmers’ Alliance thus proposed a federal price-support system for farm products, modeled on the national banks. Under this subtreasury plan, the federal government would hold crops in public warehouses and issue loans on their value until they could be profitably sold. When Democrats — still wary of big-government schemes — declared the idea too radical, Alliances in Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, and elsewhere decided to create a new political party, the Populists (see Chapter 19). In this venture, the Alliance cooperated with the weakened Knights of Labor, seeking to use rural voters’ substantial clout on behalf of urban workers who shared their vision.

By this time, farmer-labor coalitions were making a considerable impact on state-level politics. But state laws and commissions were proving ineffective against corporations of national and even global scope. It was difficult for Wisconsin, for instance, to enforce new laws against a railroad company whose lines might stretch from Chicago to Seattle and whose corporate headquarters might be in Minnesota. Militant farmers and labor advocates demanded federal action.

Añadido al timeline:

fecha: