The Populist Movement

In U.S. history, politically oriented coalition of agrarian reformers in the Middle West and
South that advocated a wide range of economic and political legislation in the late 19th century.
Throughout the 1880s local political action groups known as Farmers' Alliances sprang up
among Middle Westerners and Southerners, who were discontented because of crop failures,
falling prices, and poor marketing and credit facilities. Although it won some significant
regional victories, the alliances generally proved politically ineffective on a national scale. Thus
in 1892 their leaders organized the…