The 19th Century  (continued)
18. Farm Movements.  The Grange is formed in 1870s for social but also political action, notably to advocate laws to regulate the railroads.  The issue of whether states can regulate railroads in its territory.  The Farmers Alliance of the 1880s has regional branches with regional agendas.  In 1890s the Populist Party is formed as a 3rd political party with an agenda supporting labor, advocating adding silver to gold currency, and the famous "Cross of Gold" speech by the
Democratic candidate, Williams Jennings Bryan.  The Populist Party is defeated and dies out.
19.  The upper classes in the South win control of the one-party Democrats.  The Jim-Crow Era, and the late 1890s is a time of terror for blacks.  Total segregation and the poverty of sharecropping continues for decades. 
20. Legacy of the Populist Movement.  Significant parts of its radical goals later are enacted.

20th Century
21. Progressive Era of reform.  Effect is more urbanized.  Democrat Woodrow Wilson sets up the Federal Reserve System which provides more orderly banking and more structure for farm loans.  22. Farm prosperity.  In World War I American farmers again enjoy peak prosperity supplying the U.S. Army and under a system of parity for farm prices.  After the war prosperity continues by helping Europe recover. 
23. Prosperity ends in the 1920s when the Army demobilizes, Europe recovers, and competition from other countries rises.  National prosperity but not for farmers.  President Coolidge vetoes bill to help farmers. 
24. The 1930s Depression is worse for farmers because of the drought in the Great Plains, causing significant migration to California of the Oakies and the Arkies.  The much earlier migration is from the countryside to the Northern cities and is met with great hostility. 
25. The New Deal and FDR.  Early effort to help the farmer by lessening the food supply to raise prices fails.  Concern for large farmers at the expense of small ones. 
26.  World War II ends the Great Depression, brings new prosperity to farmers.  In California many leave farm to work in city defense plants.  After the war migrant farmers from Mexico migrate to fill in depleted farm labor ranks, working under harsh conditions and are exploited. 
27. International aspects of farming, post-war.  American agricultural subsidies continue favoring the larger agribusinesses.  Seeking city life, children are leaving farm families which date back many generations.  Agribusiness benefits from weak union movement.  Subsidies allow them to compete in foreign countries such as Mexico causing Mexican small farmers to lose their farms forcing them to the cities and to cross the border as migrant farmers. 
28.  Issues of food production, how it is treated, the use of insecticides, preservation chemicals, animal cruelty, farm factories will remain into the future.  The impact of modernity and industrialization in farm history is a key issue in the U.S. and the world.