Populist!!!

A third party is an additional political party other than the two major parties participating in state and national elections. These third parties usually do not gather as many votes as the major parties do. Despite the fact that the presidential candidates of these parties have little chance of being elected, these parties are really significant since they may promote important concepts to be incorporated into government.
In the presidential election of 1892, the Democrats, Republicans, and infamous Populist were competing for a place in the presidency. Regardless of the failure to reach presidency and the short period of time it lasted, the populist party promoted fine ideas that would help improve government and social life. This party however could not accomplish much of what they desired. Therefore, the populist were not effective enough politically, but their ideas did help the country later on after their disappearance.
The People's Party, as it was also called, opted for inflation through free and unlimited coinage of silver, therefore the strongly opposed the gold standard. This party centered mainly in rural areas and focused on agrarian issues, such as forming a political alliance between poor whites and Blacks. At the time of elections, its candidate James Weaver received a little more than a million votes as well as 22 popular votes. This was a great achievement for such kind of party. The populist had other objectives as well. Among these was government ownership of major industries, replacement of fixed income tax with graduated income tax, and direct election of U.S. senators. Not everything was achieved, however the direct election of senators and graduated income tax would later become a reality.
The party went on a downfall, a downfall whose causes were many. One was the lack of support from the south to the party and their goal to unite Blacks and poor whites. To make it even harder for the Populist, the Jim Crow laws, Literacy tests, and poll taxes made the task of gaining southern support almost impossible. To make things worst, their leader, Thomas Edward Watson became a voracious racist, creating a racial division among the party.
When 1896 came, the Democrats incorporated into their platform much of the Populist's own platform, and incorporated, with some difficulty, William Jennings Bryan as their candidate. This caused Populist to be done as a National political party, however, their platform was later on well absorbed by Republicans and Democrats.
To conclude, the Populist party was not so effective in concern to their goals, however they could gather enough votes to stand out during elections. The party had good motives for the country, but they found themselves with harsh obstacles that prevented them from gaining total support from the citizens. Nevertheless, the party provided important goals to other parties that later realized that the populist's platform could be useful.