Table of Contents

 

-55-

FOR BETTER OR WORSE:

The Agrarian Revolt

     Between 1875 and 1877, hundreds of mortgage companies were established in the Eastern states. Their purpose was to find western borrowers of Eastern capital, and their energy was spent in convincing farmers to borrow “money." Mr. Billington states, "Agents roamed the prairie states in horse and buggy, pleading with westerners to accept a loan” (732).

     The frontiersman has been described as "materialistic, mobile, versatile, inventive, wasteful, optimistic, and nationalistic” (Billington, 752), and as such he fell a-lusting as agents declared improved implements would increase profits. Every town saw itself as a future blazing metropolis and borrowed huge sums to build waterworks, schools, courthouses etc. While the Word of God warned, "The borrower is servant to the lender,” (Proverbs 22:7), fifteen town in Kansas installed street cars as agents counseled,

Don't be afraid to go into debt. Spend money for the city's betterment as free as water (and) let the increase of population and wealth take care of taxes (Billington, 733).

     Then came the day of reckoning. The winter of 1886-1887 was so severe, many cattlemen were ruined. The summer of 1887 was so hot crops dried up. Those that did survive were devoured by chinch bugs. For 10 years, the plains states failed to reach the 20 inches rainfall needed to sustain crops (Billington, 733).

Farm Foreclosures

     In Kansas and North Dakota there existed a mortgage for every 2 persons. In Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, there was one for every 3 persons. One mortgage company head confessed, "My desk was piled high each morning with hundreds of letters each enclosing a draft and asking me to send a farm mortgage from Kansas or Nebraska (Billington, 732). Between 1888 and 1892, half the population of Kansas moved out, while 30,000 left South Dakota during the same period of time. In 1891 alone 18,000 prairie schooners entered Iowa from Nebraska (Billington, 733-34).

     In Kansas, 11,000 farms were foreclosed between 1889-1893. By 1890, 25 percent of Kansas farmers were tenants or sharecroppers. In Nebraska, 17 percent were such tenants. While in South Dakota, they numbered 11 percent (Billington, 734).

     Known as the "Agrarian Revolt," westerners formed their own political parties. The People's Party, the Independent Party, the Industrial Party, and the Alliance Party were formed, in what has been described as "a religious revival, a crusade, a Pentecost of politics in which a tongue of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Billington, 738). It was the birth of the "Gospel of Populism" (Billington, 739), and of the Populist Party.

      Shakespeare counseled, "Neither borrower, nor lender be!" Oh, the suffering men could spare themselves if they would remember the words of Scripture, "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender." (Proverbs 22:7)

______________________________________________

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 

Allen, Gary. "The Banker Conspiracy." Published in The American Opinion. February 1985.

Billington, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion. Third Edition. Copyright 1967. New York: The Macmillan

Company.

Chicago Democrat, The. September 27, 1857.

Foster, Rodgers, Bagin,. Nadler. Money and Banking. 4th Edition. Copyright 1950. Prentiss-Hall, Inc.

Gilman, Theodore. The Banker's Magazine. February 1895.

Gouge, William. A Short History, of Paper Money and Banking in the United States. Copyright 1835. New

York.

Griffin, Des. Fourth Reich of The Rich. Copyright 1983. South Pasadena, California: Emissary Publications.

Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. Copyright 1957.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hammond, Jabez. The History of Political Practice in the State of New York: The Ratification of the Federal

Constitution to December 1840. Vol. II. Copyright 1843. Albany.

Hepburn, A. Barton. A History, of Currency in the United States. Revised Edition. Copyright 1915. New

York: Macmillan Company.

Johnson, Roger T. Historical Beginnings -- The Federal Reserve. Edited by Mary Jane Coyle. Reprinted 1981

by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Klise, Eugene. Money and Banking. Copyright 1955. Cincinnati: Southwestern Publishing Company.

McCulloch, Hugh. Men and Measures of Half a Century. Copyright 1889.

Root, L. Carroll. "New York Bank Currency," published as a Tract by the Sound Currency Committee of the

Reform Club. Copyright 1895. New York.

Scroggs, Willlam O. A Century of Banking Progress. First Edition. Copyright 1924. Garden City: Doubleday,

Page and Company.

White, Horace. Money and Banking. Copyright 1895. Boston: Ginn and Company.

 

Back  Next