The Populist Party: The Knights Of Labor In America

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The Knights of Labor was a nationally recognized labor organization in America during the 1880’s who sought to achieve things like an eight hour work day, better pay, and ending child labor. These working condition reforms would definitely be things that could help expand the opportunity for people in the working class to gain more self definition or rather gain a higher standpoint in American society where they would no longer be looked at as cogs who have to work terrible hours for terrible pay in terrible working conditions. One reason why the Knight of Labor were so popular was due to their inclusive nature which stood out for many in a time where America was basically dominated by white male supremacy. Another reason that they stood out …show more content…
Populist Party: The Populist, also known as the People's party, started out as farmers particularly in the West, who teamed up with the labor movement time discuss their concern about the economic, political and social corruption at the time in America. These farmers were facing problems with unfair railroad prices, problems with the banks. The specific goals that the Populist party wanted that were mentioned in the Omaha convention of 1892 were the Sub-Treasury Plan, government ownership of railroads, graduated income tax, government control of the currency, rights of laborers to form unions, and free coinage of silver. achieve was Things such as unfair railroad rates, tried applying to a broad group of people, they thought that the corruption in the government controlled the ballot boxes, industrial workers never joined in large numbers because they would be hurt by the inflation resulting from the free coinage of silver. Racism also kept the populist group from ever truly uniting as a group because the populists in the north and the south had different ideas about segregation which is a pattern we've seen all throughout where the north and the south are disagreeing which is the main source of all the chaos and corruption. In the 1896 election, the Populist presidential candidate was William Jennings Bryan who lost to Republican candidate William McKinley through money and political campaigning. This put an end to the Populist party because they were never really able to pick themselves up after that election and the other parties were too strong in numbers and political power. One of Bryan’s themes for his campaign was the free coinage of silver which many began to see as a burden because it would cause inflation and economic uncertainty throughout the nation. Yes, some of these goals that the Populist party wanted to achieve did come true in the future such as the ….. . It would be false for me to state that the Populist party was fully unsuccessful because

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