Factors contributed to the rise of populism in the late 1800s?

The Populist movement was a revolt by farmers in the South and Midwest against the Democratic and Republican Parties for ignoring their interests and difficulties. For over a decade, farmers were suffering from crop failures, falling prices, poor marketing, and lack of credit facilities.

The rise of the Populist movement in the late 1800s had series of factors, the main ones were the falling prices, the cost of doing business rose which caused more farmers to go into debt at the same time that railroads charged higher rates to farmers than too big companies. In the end, Farmers felt they were being ignored by the government and the rest of the country.

This unhappiness caused the rise of a series of Populist movements that were initially tied to the Farmers, the Grange, for example, provided education on new farming techniques and called for the regulation of railroads so the companies could not charge more from farmers. In 1892 the Populist Party was created and it had a series of promises such as to put the government on the ownership of railroads, graduate income tax, to make the election of senators direct and others.

Many of the promises of the Populist Party became part of the Progressive movement.