Populism

In the mid 1800s a lot of things were starting to take place. There had been failing crop prices. Many farmers were in debt, and farmers complained about tariffs. Greenbackers, Goldbugs, and silverites were taking action.

Deflation was not always a bad thing to everyone, because everything was cheap, but it did hurt many people .Deflation had effected many farmers and debtors. On the other hand, it benefited the bankers and lenders.Farmers would take out mortgages when agricultural prices were high, but then had to pay the money back when crop prices were low.

In 1792 Alexander Hamilton had set the United States on a bimetallic standard. This was a continuous switch from gold standard to silver standard. There was a decision to remove the American dollar from bimetallism in 1873. As a result of the bad decision , the US faced consequences. The dollar was linked to a metal that was getting scarcer and scarcer. Then the demand for gold had rose tremendously. 1873 was an end of the bimetallic standard.

Silverites were mainly miners and westerners. They had wanted to lower the gold standard of the United States to silver, which would have allowed more money to be printed and made available to the public, and cause inflation. They wanted to free silver to put more money in the money supply. The silverites famous slogan was 16: 1. It meant the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver equal in value to one ounce of gold.

The greenbackers had argued for paper money to cause inflation. Many people opposed to that idea, and simply called paper money immoral. The Greenback party had only one 80000 votes in its first year.Greenbackers had tried, but were unsuccessful.