Populist Platform of 1892

Week 3:

1. Describe the Populist platform of 1892 and the future it envisioned for America. How did the Populists hope to achieve their goals?

Populists tired of freight rate charged by railroad companies, excessive interest rates by banks, and the fiscal policies of govt that reduced the supply of money and pushed down farm prices. Sick of a nation that seemed you where destine for success and freedom or failure and servitude.

Spoke for all producing classes farmers, miners and industrial workers, but major base was in the cotton and wheat belts of the south and west. Last great political expression as America as a commonwealth of small producers whose freedom rested on the ownership of private property and the respect and dignity of labor. Spoke of an imagined past where everyone had a chance to make a living, and free labor.

Viewed Banks and railroads as obstacles of freedom. Called for a graduated income tax, public ownership of the railroads, increased money supply to help pay off debts, and ultimately a larger role of the federal government. Wanted government to eliminate injustice, oppression, and poverty. Called for direct election of senators, and joining a union was a right.

2. What was the "New South" supposed to look like, and in what ways did it look pretty much like the Old South?

The vision of the New south was suppose to be a land where blacks and whites had equal rights, and was suppose to break waay form rual and agrarian life to look more like the north , and catch up to inudstrilazation

Hoever, over time meaning of civil war was lost, viwed as two borthers ifghting for boel cause, North to preserve the union, and the south to protect there rights. Reconstrution viewed as a regrtable time of negro rule had power thrust up them by the vincidicative north

Feeling that although slavey was gone, there was still a sense the wage slavery was worse than the 1st. Redeemers in the south tried to undo as much of reconstruction as possible and redeem the region from the horrors and misgovernment of black rule. Blacks still viewed as inferior race, and where intimitaded and threatened, by lybching.

South didn't really care for hospitals and schools that where established and contoined to just foucs on farming, while being dependaent on the north for capital and manufacutred goods.

Blackmen where exlcuded from supervisory roles, and couldn't migrate north because jobs where already take by new wave of white foreign immigrants, who still where preferred over blacks.

Those that where stuck in the south werent really given the freeedom that the the new south was suppose have for them. Got around amenedments with the jim crow laws, by providing separate but equal facilities. However, in reality they really werent that equal.

3. Booker T. Washington and Samuel Gompers carried on the work of men like Frederick Douglass and Terence Powderly, but with important differences. Choose one and describe how his goals and tactics reflected