The Populist Party considered themselves to be evolved from the political ideologies of Jacksonian and Jeffersonian Democrats.

Like those parties, they were against the Laissez-faire policies of the administration in office at the time, preferring government intervention in the economy. Further reminiscent of those earlier parties, Populists were supportive of the American farmer, and hailed the coming of farmers as businessmen. However, the Grange Movement, whose members considered the economic and social conditions of farmers in need of improving, laid the road to the Populist Party. The emergence of business-labor relations also lay at the roots of the Populist Party, as farmers disassociated themselves with the man who worked for wages the working man and began to align themselves with the traits of businessmen. The Grange Movement and business-labor relations, whose supported greenback circulation and agrarian reform thus, lay at the origins of the Populist Party. The origins of the Grange Movement are obvious in the appearance of sharecropping, following the Civil War. Sharecropping emerged as millions of black and white workers found themselves in debt. Wealthy landowners offered tenancies to plots of land, a package, which included the implements and grain required to farm such, plots, the produce given back to landowners as payment. Interestingly, sharecropping frequently led to further debt, and thus led to collective farming and the emergence of the Grange Movement. The Grange Movement readily accepted certain policies, including the support of greenback circulation, silver backing of currency, opposition to monopolies and the improvement of economic and social conditions of farmers. The Declaration of purpose of the Grange states, We are opposed to management of any corporation or enterprise as tends to oppress the people and rob them of their just profits. (Document B) The document goes on further to explain the Grangers opposition to excessive salaries and high interest rates and percent profits in trade, highlighting those aspects that would be detrimental to the American farmer. The power that the Grangers came to hold, or what power they thought they held, was made evident in a vignette asserting their importance. A farmer with his horses is surrounded by depictions of men in seemingly high-paying, non-labor-intensive professions such as law or politics. (Document A) Under the farmers image is the caption, I FEED YOU ALL! This is an imposing comment on the fact of the matter the farmer was the source of food for all these highly paid men. The power signified by this vignette however was possibly not as far-reaching as the Grangers thought, as their movement eventually had its downfall, which led to the rise of the Populist Party. Business-labor relations were also at the foundation of the Populist Party. Farmers were beginning to act more like businessmen, as more and more became employers rather than employees. The incentive of money to pay off debts left by the Civil War injected into the farming industry what Degler calls the commercial spirit. Degler wrote further, The deeper the commercial spirit invaded agriculture, the more profoundly the farmer accepted the assumptions of a businessman and alienated himself from the working man who worked for

wages. (Degler, pp363) Supporters of business-labor relations, mainly farmers, held many of the same outlooks as Grangers no doubt as many of them were Grangers. A further notion of Grange philosophy was that of greenback circulation the Grangers were supportive of a silverbacked currency. Silver was in greater abundance than gold, and to the Grangers symbolized the end of privileges to the rich; it would lift the common people out of debt, increase cash in circulation and reduce interest rates. (Norton, pp565) Silver-backed currency would inevitably aid farmers, miners and debtors. Norton writes further that free coinage of silver became the political battle cry of the Grange Movement. In opposition to the silver backing of the American currency were those who supported a gold-backed currency. This would benefit big businesses, bank and creditors exactly the people the Grange Movement and those who supported business-labor relations were fighting against. Their argument against silver was that it would inflate currency, whereas gold would make for a more stable currency. In his letter against a Free Silver policy, Grover Cleveland wrote, If we have developed an unexpected capacity for the assimilation of a largely increased volume of this currency these conditions fall far short of insuring us against disaster if we enter upon the dangerous and reckless experiment of free, unlimited, and independent silver coinage. (Document C) In this passage, Cleveland made it drastically clear that the abundance of silver, although able to make more cash, would not insure America as a whole against economic disaster. A political cartoon from 1896 ridicules supporters of a silver-backed currency, placing Uncle Sam upon a penny-farthing bicycle whose largest wheel is a silver coin, and whose smaller wheel is one of gold. (Document E) In the comic, Uncle Sam is clearly expressing distress at having to pedal such a large wheel, his legs requiring stilts to be able to reach the pedals. An obvious allusion to the struggle that America would face if currency were to be silver-backed, the cartoon is a political attack on the Grange Movement. The Populist Party emerged from the ashes of the Grange Movement, implementing many of the policies that the failed Movement had attempted to instill. While the Grange remained an organisation, with branches nation-wide, the Populists were an actual party, who executed acts such as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The Act stated made illegal every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in the restraint of trade, the consequences of such including fines and gaol time. (Document F) Populists continued Granger ideologies that supported government ownership of assets such as the railway and telegraph lines, but also Agrarian reform, shorter workdays and coinage of silver.