What problems did US farmers and workers face in the 1890s and how did they try to solve them?

Answer 1

The Populist Party was a third party movement that developed with major support from the farmers. Crop prices fell as production increased. Credit was hard to get and interest rates were high when they had to buy their new seed for spring planting. They developed a way for the farmers to deposit crops in storage sites and use them as collateral for low-interest government loans. The belief that more participation by regular people in government would end the strangle-hold the Washington bureaucracy and the big banks of Wall Street had. Power to the People was the populists slogan. The workers were helped by the Progressives in terms of working conditions, work site safety, child labor,living wages, and the writers, known as muckrakers, got Theodore Roosevelt's support. Populism and Progressive-ism were late 19th and early 20th century movements to help the regular person.