Kettering Foundation
TO:
Civic Renewal Stock-Taking Group
FROM:
Alex Lovit
DATE:
June 11, 2013
SUBJECT:
Civic Renewal in the Populist Movement
CC:
The Populist Movement as Civic Renewal
As a broad historical term, “populism” refers to an economic and political reform movement of
American farmers in the late 19th century, who sought to protect their own economic position
through collective action and political organizing. Many scholars have interpreted the populist
movement as a robust democratic crusade, as rural reformers united to fight against market
forces that they found exploitative (including monopolistic railroad corporations and capricious
commodity markets) and political traditions they perceived as undemocratic (such as the
entrenchment of the two major parties and systems of political patronage). Historians have
often imbued their accounts of populist communities with a certain degree of romance. “How is
a democratic culture created?” Lawrence Goodwyn asked. “Apparently in . . . prosaic, powerful
ways. When a farm family’s wagon crested a hill en route to a [Farmers’ Alliance] encampment
and the occupants looked back to see thousands of other families trailed out behind them in
wagon trains, the thought that ‘the Alliance is the people and the people are together’ took on
transforming possibilities. Such a moment . . . instilled hope in hundreds of thousands of people
who had been without it.”1
On a more practical level, populism operated through a series of agrarian organizations. The
most prominent of these were the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, which
peaked in the 1870s, and the Farmers’ Alliance, whose membership rolls expanded rapidly
during the 1890s. The Grange and the Alliance were both complex and somewhat decentralized
organizations, and provided a variety of services to their constituents: a venue for socializing;
educative programs on farming techniques, and on economic principles; and cooperative
economic ventures, including both cooperative stores and collective marketing efforts. Some of
these programs proved to be unstable (cooperative store and collective marketing campaigns
were often particularly short-lived), but the Grange and the Alliance did provide the opportunity
for hundreds of thousands of farmers to collectively consider their shared interests, and the
measures they might take to solve their shared problems. During the 1890s, populism
increasingly turned toward governmental solutions to these problems; the platform of the
People’s Party called for radical reforms, including federalization of railroad companies, the
introduction of a progressive income tax, and a federal program to provide low-cost crop
storage and low-interest loans to farmers. But like the Grange and Alliance that had preceded it,
the People’s Party also proved short-lived; after 1896, the party rarely nominated independent
1
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978), 34.
candidates, instead promoting “fusion” candidates with the Democratic Party. By the turn of
the 20th century, both the collective and political efforts of the populist movement had declined
precipitously.
The Rise and Fall of Populism
As this brief history demonstrates, the populist movement was unstable even during the height
of its national power. Within a single generation, populism had swelled into a national
movement, cycled through the rise and fall of three distinct organizations (the Grange, the
Farmers’ Alliance, and the People’s Party), and then declined altogether. In some ways, the
fortunes of the populist movement were bound up in the industrializing economic trends of the
period, during which the portion of the American labor force working in agriculture fell into the
minority for the first time in the nation’s history—declining from 53% in 1870 to 31% in 1910.2
Certainly these demographic shifts might explain the failure of the agrarian People’s Party to
capture national majorities, but this is an incomplete explanation of why the movement failed
to maintain its cooperative economic and educative programs. How did the populist movement
so quickly organize the collective efforts of hundreds of thousands of farmers across the nation,
and just as quickly devolve into inactivity?
Historians provide various explanations for populism’s decline. Some suggest that the wealthier
leadership class of populist organizations pursued interests at odds with the goals of rank-andfile members. For example, the Indiana state Grange shut down its cooperative purchasing
agency in 1876, despite the agency’s successes in providing Grange members with supplies and
groceries at discounted prices. The agency was shuttered apparently out of concern that this
statewide wholesale operation harmed local town economies, in which many elite Grange
leaders were deeply invested.3 Some historians argue that the movement’s increasingly political
nature similarly reflected a misalignment between the goals of leaders and of members: “A
political elite tried to use the [Southern Farmer’s Alliance] as a vehicle for political
advancement. But political lobbying did not offer any promise [to address] . . . the issues that
concerned members.”4
Lawrence Goodwyn argues that populism’s downfall was its turn toward Populist/Democratic
fusionist campaigns, which set a precedent for “narrowed boundaries of modern politics . . .
encircl[ing] . . . the relationship of corporate power to citizen power [and] the political language
legitimized to define and settle public issues.”5 In other words, as the populists abandoned
citizen-centered methods to pursue a more traditional electoral approach, they accepted the
basic legitimacy of nation’s current economic system, and limited individual citizens’
involvement to the act of voting. Indeed, as the Populist Party became the dominant populist
organization in the 1890s, the Farmers’ Alliance shrunk, and discontinued previous educational
programs. Theodore Mitchell points to one telling detail from the Populist Party’s 1892
campaign, when the Southern Farmers’ Alliance’s official organ, The National Economist,
replaced its recurring “Educational Exercises” feature with political reporting. “Perhaps no other
2
Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part I (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), 139.
3
See Glenn P. Lauzon, Civic Learning through Agricultural Improvement: Bringing “the Loom and the Anvil
into Proximity with the Plow” (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2011), 123-150.
4
Michael Schwartz, Naomi Rosenthal, and Laura Schwartz, “Leader-Member Conflict in Protest
Organizations: The Case of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance,” Social Problems 29 (1981), 31.
5
Goodwyn, Populist Moment, 265.
2
single act better captures the shifting priorities of the National Alliance than the substitution of
campaign news for the Exercises,” Mitchell writes. “In a stroke, the national leadership moved
political education, long the guiding star of the Southern Alliance, to the background, replaced
by the tactical demands of winning an election.”6
If this was the strategic shift that led to the downfall of the populist movement, it was not an
entirely intentional one. As Robert McMath points out, “The Alliance had always been an
educational institution,” and the leaders pushing the movement into national politics “agreed
on the need for a more organized and sophisticated educational program.”7 The Populist Party
saw its political organizing as an extension, rather than a repudiation, of the Alliance’s
educational programs. But despite these intentions of continuity, political organizing could
never be as open-ended as the collective action supported by the Grange and the Alliance. As
Theodore Mitchell writes, “The more they became focused on partisan politics, on winning
elections, the less the movement’s leaders concerned themselves with the maintenance of the
[movement] and its culture.” In the end, populist supporters were reduced to a more passive
role—“a constituency instead of a movement.”8
What Lessons Can We Learn from Populism?
Some authors have disputed this narrative of populism as lapsing from civic action into political
compromise and inactivity. Charles Postel’s influential account of the movement contends that
populists were quintessentially modern from the start, embracing “centralized direction, rapidly
coordinated communications, bureaucratic organization, and salaried agents and lobbyists,”
and modeling their political activities after the “the bankers, manufacturers, railroad
companies, and cattle dealers, all of whom understood the need to unite their separate and
distinct organizations for their common interest.”9 In this view, the populists represented less a
civic movement than an interest group. But even if the populists were primarily motivated by
self-interest, the movement still represented a broad-based coalition of engaged citizens. As
Postel himself points out, “The demise of Populism constricted the social base of reform.
Instead of farmers, coal miners, and other poorly educated women and men gathering in lodges
and meeting halls for self-education and self-mobilization, the initiative passed to expert
women and men, with professional training and administrative posts.”10
Perhaps Postel’s interpretation should be reason for celebration rather than cynicism; his
account indicates that civic renewal movements can spring from the simple desire to better
one’s own condition and those of one’s neighbors. And if the populists constructed large,
bureaucratic organizations, they also left room for the smaller scale of the classroom and the
camp meeting, where farmers could recognize and discuss their common concerns. In any case,
many of populism’s successes were attributable to these bureaucratic institutions; national
educational programs, cooperative stores, and political campaigns alike require some degree of
centralized direction. If populism had remained entirely local and decentralized, it might not
have had so large an impact, or inspired such a large body of historical literature.
6
Theodore R. Mitchell, Political Education in the Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 1887-1900 (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 169.
7
Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993),
148.
8
Mitchell, Political Education, 16.
9
Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 104, 140.
10
Postel, Populist Vision, 286.
3
The question that remains, and one which populism’s decline does not conclusively answer, is
how to balance these varied demands. When populist organizations functioned best (and
attracted the most members), they provided both space for local discussion and centralized
coordination, and promised both self-improvement and governmental reform. The instability of
populist organizations demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining this balance (and fulfilling
these promises). But over the course of several economically tumultuous decades, populism did
succeed in attracting hundreds of thousands of supporters from across the country, and
engaging them through both collective action and political organizing. And although the
organizations most often identified with populism (the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the
People’s Party) all declined before the turn of the century, many of the populists’ ideas lived on,
finding new supporters during the progressive era. Several of the measures advocated by
populists came to fruition in the early 20th century—including the federal income tax, increased
railroad regulation, restrictions on immigration, the direct election of federal senators, and
agricultural subsidy programs. As Postel puts it, “Populism proved far more successful dead
than alive.”11 If there was a tragedy to populism’s decline, it was not in the failure to achieve
goals, but rather the loss of a broad civic movement.
11
Postel, Populist Vision, 271.
4