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Congress in Crisis: Changes in Personnel and the Legislative Agenda in the U.S. Congress in the 1890s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Howard W. Allen ,
Robert Slagter ,
Congressional Quarterly ,
ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) ,
ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)  and
U.S. Congress
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Extract

The last decade of the nineteenth century was a time of great national crisis, surpassed in severity only by the depression of the 1930s. Unemployment in manufacturing and transportation rose to nearly 17% in 1894. More banks failed in the 1890s than in any other economic crisis in American history except the one that began in 1929, and over 159 railroads, capitalized at more than $2.5 billion, were forced into receivership. Farm prices plunged, and farm spokesmen bitterly complained about the disastrous effects of the long-term deflation of currency, discrimination by railroad monopolies, and high interest rates (Douglas 1930: 440; Fels 1959: 159–219; Hoffman 1956; Steeples 1965).

Type
Politics
Information
Social Science History , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 401 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1992 

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