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POPULISM: THE PEOPLE’S PARTY
I. INTRODUCTION:
So much of what happened in the late nineteenth century influenced the trajectory of
American history during the early twentieth century. The corruption of monopolies and
moneyed business interests paved the way for reform in the twentieth century. The problem was
not just business. Politics were as corrupt as ever. Never in American history were politicians
and their parties so dishonest and immoral. By the 1890s, the gaps between rich and poor were
enormous. Impoverished families of immigrants and others filled the cities where they lived in
unsanitary and crowded tenement homes and worked for a pittance just to make ends meet.
Out in rural America, the nation’s farmers scratched into their worn out fields with rusted
tools, hoping to eek some level of decent living out of their eroded and unfertile soils. The
South’s agricultural situation was particularly distressing because of sharecropping and crop
liens by landowners and merchants on cotton produced by tenants and small farmers. The South
was a land in perpetual debt because of cotton. However, farmers across the country suffered in
the Gilded Age. In every corner of America where farmers existed, they constantly battled
monopolies and railroads, even as they struggled against nature’s wrath in the form of floods and
droughts. They could expect no assistance from the state or federal government dominated by a
Social Darwinist philosophy with a “laissez–fair” attitude. Farmers across the United States were
on their own.
By the last decade of the nineteenth century, many financially oppressed groups in
America, like labor and agrarians, were angry and ripe to make their voices heard through some
type of unified political action. Though early labor unions had engaged in a few strikes, the first
group to really shake the foundations of America’s elitist political system were the nation’s
farmers. The political phenomena that they created, called Populism, will be the first wave of a
larger reform movement at the turn of the century referred to as Progressivism. Populism
became “democracy in action” and the Populists became America’s first Progressives.
II. THE GRANGE AND FARMER’S ALLIANCES (FA):
The first farmer organization to appear in the United States was the Grange (Patrons of
Husbandry), which organized in 1867, shortly after the Civil War. Founded by O. H. Kelly, the
Grange was strongest out in the Midwest, although Grange Lodges appeared elsewhere,
including in the Southeast. The Grange was a self-help organization for farmers. They
organized community agrarians to help each other in times of need. The Grange was also one of
the earliest community groups to admit women, some of whom became speakers for the
organization. The Grange published pamphlets to educate farmers on how to be better agrarians.
They also organized local Granger parades and held bar-be-ques in the local community to raise
money and gain support for their cause. By the late 1870s, there were around 800,000 people
claiming Grange membership.
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In the mid-west, the Grange became more radical than in other places in the country. The
mid-western Grangers went after the corrupt railroads who ran roughshod over downtrodden and
impoverished farmers with their outrageously high freight rates. Mid-western Grangers soon
became political and pushed for the passage of Granger Laws, whose goal was to rein in the
railroads and control the businesses that operated the grain elevators where farmers stored their
corn before it went to market.
The Grange had some success and took one of their cases to the Supreme Court where
they won a victory over the railroads. In Munn vs Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court ruled that
states had a legitimate police power to regulate private enterprise (railroads) that adversely affect
public interests (farmers). A second Supreme Court decision, Wabash vs Illinois (1886)
reversed this decision due to pressure by railroad owners on politicians.
Farmer’s Alliances:
In the wake of the Grange movement, Farmer’s Alliances, (or the FA), appeared.
Farmer’s Alliances were just like the Grange. They admitted women, held social functions,
conducted local parades, and had meetings of the members. The Farmer’s Alliances were self–
help organizations where agrarians who suffered from the same issues came together to discuss
their problems with likeminded people who had sympathetic hearts.
The first Farmer’s Alliance appeared in Lampasas County, Texas in 1877 as oppressed
agrarians came together to work out their grievances. From there, the idea spread and by the
mid–1880s, counties throughout the South, Midwest, and Northwest formed Farmers’ Alliances.
Each Alliance had a unique name. One county in Arkansas, for example, named its alliance the
Brothers of the Wheel. The “wheel” in the name was a reference to the wheel on the wagons
that they used to haul their produce.
Though the Farmers’ Alliances were for all agrarians, in the South, segregation banned
African-American farmers from joining white alliances. Therefore, African-Americans formed
their own alliance. In 1886, again in Texas, African-American farmers created the Colored
Farmer’s Alliance and named R. M. Humphrey, a white minister, as the organization’s
president. By 1890, the Colored Farmer’s Alliance had over one million members.
The Alliances had electric speakers that traveled around the country with the goal of
creating more organizations. The most important speaker for the Farmer’s Alliance was Mary
Lease, from the most radicalized state of all, which was Kansas. The farmers in the Midwest
were particularly distressed from a combination of factors, which included not only the
oppressive railroads and grain elevator companies, but also nature. Severe droughts plagued
Midwestern farmers in the 1880s. In the mid-1880s, harsh blizzards pounded the Midwest. The
harsh weather destroyed most of the cattle, who froze to death in the bitter cold. Lease, who was
originally from Pennsylvania, moved to Kansas with her family to try her hand at farming. For
her, it was a great struggle and ultimately, her farm collapsed. She devoted her time after that by
studying law. Her hard work paid off. Lease became the first female attorney in Kansas.
During the late 1880s, she became a spokesperson for the Farmer’s Alliances. She
traveled all over the Midwest and the South organizing local farmers into Alliances. She was a
fiery speaker and she helped to radicalize the farmers into action. Almost everywhere she went,
Lease advised farmers to “raise less corn and more Hell.”
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What did the Farmer’s Alliances want?:
1. Cooperatives (or Co-ops):
Creating cooperatives was a unique innovation of the Alliances. A cooperative
was a place where farmers could store their crops until prices increased. When prices
became better, they could put their crops on the market and then make a profit on their
hard work. The idea of cooperatives began in the Midwest as a way to address the greed
and corruption of the grain elevator operators. However, cotton farmers in the Southeast
also liked the idea as a place to store their cotton until market prices improved.
Individual Alliances ran the Co-ops for their members, but as the farmers became more
political in the 1890s, they wanted state and federal government to oversee them.
2. Control Monopolies:
The Farmer’s Alliances were a direct response to the growing number of
oppressive monopolies in the Gilded Age. By the 1880s, almost everything a farmer
needed or used in their agricultural pursuits came from a monopoly. That included all
sorts of necessities required to operate a farm, like plows, planters, and even hoes.
However, the three major monopolies oppressing farmers all across the country were the
fertilizer monopoly, the railroads, and the jute bagging monopoly.
Fertilizers were necessary to improve the low quality soils that existed in most
fields. Abused for decades, those nutrient-depleted soils needed fertilizer to make them
more productive. The fertilizer that farmers mostly used to improve soil quality in their
fields came from phosphate rock that was actually crushed limestone. Phosphate mines
opened up in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida during the Gilded Age and one
company owned most of them. This company charged ridiculously high prices for their
product, which farmers had to pay if they wanted to have a bountiful crop and make a
profit. The Farmer’s Alliances attacked the phosphate monopoly as a greedy, destructive
force in their lives. Unfortunately, they were dependent on phosphates.
Farmers were also dependent on railroads to get their product out to markets
across the United States. Again, railroad monopolies smothered the farmers with their
excessive freight rates, insurance requirements on shipping, and everything else they
could think of to pick a little more money out of their pockets. The oppression of the
railroads was particularly bad in the Midwest and this explains the rise of the Patrons of
Husbandry to combat them.
One thing that farmers were not dependent upon was jute. Jute was a plant that
produced a material called burlap. Factories wove burlap into thick bags and wrappings
that covered bales of cotton. By the 1880s, a jute monopoly emerged. Working in
tandem with the cotton factors and merchants, the jute monopoly convinced them to
require the burlap wrapping on all bales brought to their stores by farmers. The jute
monopoly bribed politicians to pass laws requiring burlap on every bale of cotton. The
price of jute for bagging was expensive, but farmers had no choice. They had to purchase
jute bagging before any market would accept their cotton bales.
Thus, monopolies hurt the farmers tremendously. The added financial burden of
having to deal with the phosphate, railroad, and jute monopolies only increased their
woes and siphoned away more of their meager income.
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3. Circulation of Silver in Currency:
Farmers across the country believed that part of their suffering was due to a lack of
enough money in the currency supply. In the Gilded Age, America’s government based
its currency on the gold standard. The amount of gold on the market and in government
stores was certainly limited. This became apparent after the Panic of 1873 caused by the
cornering of the gold market by unscrupulous and greedy Jay Gould and his corrupt
partners.
During the 1870s, much silver came into the government treasury due to the opening
up of many mines in the west. It made sense to farmers, that since there was more silver
than gold in the treasury deposits, the country should forsake the gold standard and go to
the silver standard. That would automatically increase the amount of money in
circulation. It would also increase inflation. This is exactly what the farmers wanted.
They demanded the unlimited coinage of silver. With more silver-backed money in
circulation and inflation on prices, they could increase their income and for once, enjoy a
reward for their labors.
This set up the most important political debate between the parties during the 1890s.
The money question was front and center in both the 1892 Presidential Election and the
1896 Presidential Election. Farmers, labor groups, and other oppressed segments in
American society wanted the government to embrace a silver standard. The Democrats
finally endorsed silver in 1896 after a bitter internal struggle over the issue. The
