armers' cause, it is true, and in some States
there was a fusion of party organizations; but men like Schurz and
Trumbull held aloof from these radical movements, while Easterners like
Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule and invective.

The period from 1870 to 1873 has been characterized as one of rampant
prosperity, and such it was for the commercial, the manufacturing, and
especially the speculative interests of the country. For the farmers,
however, it was a period of bitter depression. The years immediately
following the close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous expansion of
production, particularly of the staple crops. The demobilization of
the armies, the closing of war industries, increased immigration, the
homestead law, the introduction of improved machinery, and the rapid
advance of the railroads had all combined to drive the agricultural
frontier westward by leaps and bounds until it had almost reached the
limit of successful cultivation under conditions which then prevailed.
As crop acreage and production increased, prices went down in accordance
with the law of supply and demand, and farmers all over the country
found it difficult to make a living.

In the West and South--the great agricultural districts of the
country--the farmers commonly bought their supplies and implements on
credit or mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits at best
were so slight that one bad season might put them thereafter entirely in
the power of their creditors and force them to sell their crops on their
creditors' terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged, too, at rates of
interest that ate up the farmers' profits. During and after the Civil
War the fluctuation of the currency and the high tariff worked especial
hardship on the farmers as producers of staples which must be sold
abroad in competition with European products and as consumers of
manufactured articles which must be bought at home at prices made
arbitrarily high by the protective tariff. In earlier times, farmers
thus harassed would have struck their tents and moved farther west,
taking up desirable land on the frontier and starting out in a fresh
field of opportunity. It was still possible for farmers to go west,
and many did so but only to find that the opportunity for economic
independence on the edge of settlement had largely disappeared. The era
of the self-sufficing pioneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer on
the frontier, forced by na