Postmaster (1889-1893) General John Wanamaker believed that young people would be more inclined to keep family farms going if they were more connected to other parts of the country.
“I think the growth of the Farmers’ Alliance movement and the other farmers’ movements in the past few years has been due to this hunger for something social as much as to anything else,” Wanamaker wrote in 1891. He proposed that rural customers receive free mail delivery, which was already being provided in many cities.
According to this article, the Populist movement grew out of Farmers Alliances.