A Revisit of the American Populist Movement (Yuan Zujie) The populist movement in the US at the end of the 19th century was a mass protest movement against big banks, big corporations and other monopolistic enterprises and the Federal government which shielded them. Conflicting evaluations of the movement among historians have existed since the 1930s. The focus of division lies in how to view the moral and economic demands of the 19thcentury American farmers and the cultural and social context that produced such demands. In actuality, what faced the agricultural residents was not a fair market economy. Land speculation and price monopoly brought huge losses to the farmers. Therefore, they regarded those big enterprises which represented such economic behavior as “they” in the American society, while regarding the farmers themselves as “we.” The purpose of such division was to seek selfprotection politically and economically.