Beginning in 1878, millions of American farmers began banding together to break the post-Civil War, small-farmer enslaving crop-lien system with co-operative economics.
Fired by the efforts of millions of farmers, exposes written by investigative journalists (the famous muckrakers), and correlations between special interests' abuses of farmers and special interests' abuses of urban workers, Progressives formed nationally connected citizen organizations to extend this democracy movement.