The Rise of Agrarian Radicalism after the Civil War After the Civil war agriculture began to decline while the cities and factories surged forward. Farmers knew they were being left behind, and they suspected government indifference and hostility to their interests. American farmers did not understand that they were caught up in an international crisis that afflicted agriculture in many parts of the world. The crisis for farmers of export staple crops (e.g. wheat & cotton) resulted from the communication and transportation revolution that created a worldwide market for agricultural products. Ships first steamed through the Suez Canal in 1869, the year locomotives first steamed across the North American continent. In addition, vast new tracts of land were brought under cultivation in South America, Australia, and Canada, as well as the trans-Mississippi West, and simultaneously a new technology of mechanized cultivation increased productivity enormously. The invention of the mechanical reaper in 1831 increased grain production six-fold. Farmers were forced to compete in a world market without protection against their competitors or control over world output. Thus, prices of agricultural products declined as productivity mounted. The gap between income and expenses forced many farmers to mortgage their land or borrow money. Nearly a third of the U.S. farms were mortgaged by the end of the 1890s. Fewer and fewer farmers owned the land they worked. The number of tenant farms increased from 25.8 percent of all the farms in 1880 to 35.3 percent by 1900. As the most rural section of the nation, the South was especially hard hit by the decline in agriculture. In 1860, the income of the average free Southerner was about 72% of the national average, by 1900 it had declined to 51%. Since the farmers did not really understand the new world market that they were competing in, they tended to blame others for their problems. The railroads were singled out as the archenemy. Most southern and western farmers could only get their crops to market on the railroad. Thus, railroads charged what ever the traffic would bear. It took one bushel of wheat or corn to pay the freight on another bushel. Rates in the South and West were frequently two or three times what they were between Chicago and New York. Railroads favored large over small shippers. Since the large shippers often had the choice of more than one railroad line, they often forced the railroads to give them rebates. In addition, the railroads often controlled the State legislatures. The national banks were also a target for agrarian abuse since they were located and run for the convenience of city people, not countryfolk. Farmers believed that they manipulated banknote currency against agricultural interests and were indifferent to the seasonal needs of farmers. In addition, many western farmers had borrowed from banks to buy land when farm prices had been high and they could not pay back their loans--thus they tended to resent the banks when they foreclosed on their mortgages. The farmer bore the brunt of the tax burden. Stocks, bonds, and business profits could easily be concealed from the view of the tax collector, but not livestock and land. Railroads and corporations could pass the taxes on to the consumer, but the farmer could not pass on his taxes. The Granger Movement Granger movement, American agrarian movement taking its name from the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, an organization founded in 1867 by Oliver H. Kelley and six associates. Its local units were called granges and its members grangers. The movement grew slowly until after the Panic of 1873, when it expanded rapidly, reaching its membership peak in 1875. Although established originally for social and educational purposes, the local grangesbecame political forums and increased in number as channels of farmer protest against economic abuses of the day. The granges sought to correct these abuses through cooperative enterprise. They were in part successful with the establishment of stores, grain elevators, and mills, but they met disaster in their attempt to manufacture farm machinery. Through political activity the grangers captured several state legislatures in the Middle West and secured the passage in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa of the so-called Granger laws, setting or authorizing maximum railroad rates and establishing state railroad commissions for administering the new legislation. There was also legislation covering warehouses and elevators. Railroads and other interested parties challenged the constitutionality of these laws in the Granger Cases. But the U.S. Supreme Court, in Munn v. Illinois (1876), established as constitutional the principle of public regulation of private utilities devoted to public use. The Granger movement thus revealed the farmer as a political power and forced the older parties to give more attention to his demands. Inadequacy of state regulation, plus the weakening of the Munn v. Illinois ruling by the Wabash Case (1886), led to demands for national legislation. After 1876 the Greenback party, the Farmers' Alliance, and, finally, the Populist party expressed much of the agrarian protest, and the granges reverted to their original role, as purely social organizations. They continued to exist in the East, especially in New England, where they had been least active politically. Southern Farmers’ Alliance During the 1870s, farmers in the West and South were afflicted by falling prices, mounting debt and climbing interest rates. A response to these conditions was found in 1877 with the creation of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (formally the national Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union). The SFA grew when the Grange movement was declining as a force for reform. During the 1880s, the SFA claimed more than three million members, many of them involved in cotton production. Only whites were accepted for membership; the blacks would form a similar, but separate group. The primary concerns of the Southern Farmers’ alliance were twofold: Purchasing Issues. Southern farmers attempted to band together to purchase equipment and supplies in bulk for price breaks. 1. Marketing Issues. Farm prices had been declining since the early 1870s, which provoked farmers' increasing resentment of middlemen's fees. Impetus grew to discover ways to bypass them. The Alliance addressed these concerns by fashioning