LAD #23 Populist Party Platform

This Populist Party platform was important because the emergence of this party was relatively new. The Populist Party was now developing as the third major party and as a result they needed to state and explain their main beliefs, or platforms. One of the main points of this platform was to help strengthen the common person because big business had gained so much power in the years before that the economy was struggling and became stagnated. The way the populist party proposed to solve these problems was to focus on land, transportation, and economic stimulation. To go along with the transportation aspect, they wanted the railroads to be in control of the National Government. Also the improvement of coinage was a basic platform they held, and they planned to do this through implementing free distribution silver to a 16:1 ratio of gold. Overall this party brought new ideas that combined platforms of both parties, but also some new, never proposed ideas for fixing the problems in the United States.