LAD #19: The Populist Party Platform
The Populist Movement emerged from the farmersí alliances of the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1890s the Populist Party appeared to represent a viable third party ­ independent of the Democrats and Republicans. A response to the growth of industrialism, the Populists opposed the "concentrated capital" of banks and big businesses and decried the many of the effects that industrialism was having on American society. They seek to restore the government into the hands of the "poor people" and they stated that corruption was beginning to take form in the ballots, and they needed to do something about that.
"We believe that the power of government ­ in other words, of the people ­ should be expanded... to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land." - They believe that if the government is restored back into the hands of the common people, the corruption and the injustice will end.
They demanded many things in the areas of finance, transportation, and land, as well as the government reviving itself and becoming what the writers of the Constitution intended it to be.