When, in 1879, the United States returned to the gold standard, the debt the farmers owed was fixed to the steady dollar price of gold. The prices for their produce continued falling, though, in what is known as the Great Deflation between the 1870s and 1890s. The deflation was caused, in part, by the limited availability of gold, which caused everything else to fall in price relative to it (and the dollar). In the words of Populist leader William Jennings Bryan, with fixed payments on debt and falling revenues, farmers had been crucified by the Eastern financial establishment “on a cross of
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