The Populist Movement In the late 1880s, there was a crisis for plains farmers when a drought damaged their crops. Meanwhile, farmers in the South began to face new competition from cotton grown in India and Egypt. In addition, the sharecropping model of farming that grew up in the South led to overproduction, since it was only by planting huge crops that sharecroppers could conceive to get out of debt. These two new forces lowered …showed first 75 words of 2520 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2520 total…s forces landed near Ponce and marched to San Juan with virtually no opposition. Representatives of Spain and the United States signed a peace treaty in Paris on December 10, 1898 established the independence of Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and allowed the victorious power to purchase the Philippines Islands from Spain for $20 million. The war had cost the United States $250 million and 3,000 lives, of which 90% had perished from infectious diseases.