ABSTRACT

The Disappearance of the Farm Union from Georgia

by Carole E. Scott and Richard D. Guynn

The past has lessons for the future. The aspect of the past examined in this article is the Farm Union's initial success in organizing Georgia farmers and its subsequent disappearance from the State.

From the end of the Civil War to the early decades of the 1900s, the nation's agriculture sector was in constant turmoil. There existed a substantial amount of instability in regard to prices of agricultural commodities. In order to stabilize prices, farmers began to look for a way to end the depressed state that seemed to perpetually exist in the farm sector. Large groups of farmers began to search for a solution to their plight. To raise and stabilize their incomes they turned to agricultural cooperatives and farmers' alliances. Some success was achieved, but many farmers' alliances (unions) were short lived.

The Farmers Union began in the South and, initially, grew there very rapidly. For over twenty years it was led by a Georgian. Today it does not exist in any Southern state East of the Mississippi River.