<P> The party sometimes allied with labor unions in the North and Republicans in the South . In the 1896 presidential elections the Populists endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, adding their own vice presidential nominee . By joining with the Democrats, the People's Party lost its independent identity and rapidly withered away . </P> <P> Later, after the dissolution of the party, the term populist acquired a generic meaning and throughout most of the 20th century and into the 21st, the term means, "a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people ." </P> <P> A People's Party grew out of a large mood of agrarian unrest in response to low agricultural prices in the South and the trans - Mississippi West, as well as thought that the "Eastern Elites" were taking advantage of the farmers by charging higher rates on loans and trains . The Farmers' Alliance, formed in Lampasas, Texas, in 1876, promoted collective economic action by farmers and achieved widespread popularity in the South and Great Plains . The Farmers' Alliance ultimately did not achieve its wider economic goals of collective economic action against brokers, railroads, and merchants, and many in the movement advocated for changes in national policy . By the late 1880s, the Alliance had developed a political agenda that called for regulation and reform in national politics, most notably an opposition to the gold standard to counter the high deflation in agricultural prices in relation to other goods such as farm implements . </P> <P> In 1886, an entirely different "People's Party" elected 6 assemblymen to the Wisconsin State Assembly and 1 senator to the Wisconsin State Senate . However this was a labor party, and by the 1888 elections it was using the Union Labor Party label . </P>

What led to the rise of the populist party in america
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