This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.

Up next, another installment of our Story of Us, Story of America series,

with Hillsdale College Professor and author of the terrific book, Land of Hope, Dr. Bill McLeigh.

After America defeated Spain and the rather lopsided Spanish-American War,

questions began to be asked about our place abroad. But questions swirled domestically as well. After all, the Industrial Revolution had brought about tremendous changes.

Some good and some not so good, but tremendous nonetheless.

Let's get into the story. Take it away, Bill.

The two decades after the Spanish-American War are best known for the reform movements that occurred in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.

The urbanization that occurred, centralization, immigration, and that great concentration of wealth and power resulting in all of these changes.

But the reformers were not solely concentrated on the many problems that plagued America's

cities. The impetus for reform also sprang from the nation's small towns. For our national farmlands and our farmers, a group of Americans known best for their self-reliance,

though they were under intense pressure, not just from declining and depressed crop prices,

but railroads, bankers, creditors, grain elevator operators,

and a multitude of middlemen who made it ever more complicated

for them to get their crops to market.

In short, farm life itself was not as simple as it used to be,

and it would never be again.

From a growing coalition of farmers, unorganized at first,

was birthed a protest movement of sorts, the People's Party,

or as they were also known, the populists.

...