The Populists
I.
-The Agrarian Movement
A. The Problems of Farmers: 1870-1900
1. Agricultural Overproduction
2. High Costs
3. Farmer in Debt
4. Periodic Natural Disasters
B.
The Grange Movement
1.
2.
Granger Cooperatives
The Granger Laws
3.
Munn v Illinois
4.
The Wabash Case and the Interstate Commerce Act (1886-7)
A series of laws passed in several states, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, in the late 1860s and early
1870s. The Granger Laws were promoted primarily by a group of farmers known as the Grange. The main goal of
the Grange was to regulate rising fare prices of railroad and grain elevator companies after the American Civil War.
This case involved the right of the Illinois legislature to prescribe maximum charges for the storage of grain. Its
implications, however, were far more sweeping, because it directly affected the constitutionality of state railroad
regulation as well. The case arose because nine business firms acting together were able to fix the prices of storage
and handling in Chicago grain elevators and warehouses, through which the produce of a vast middle-western
farming area had to pass on its way to market. The Illinois legislature passed a law regulating warehouse storage
charges. When the Illinois law was tested in the Supreme Court, the problem before the Court was to find a legal
basis for regulating such property as grain elevators and railroads without setting a precedent for the regulation of all
private property. For precedent, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite went back to Sir Matthew Hale, a seventeenthcastury English jurist, whe had laid down the principle that property "affected with a public interest" ceases to be an
object of private law alone and becomes liable to public regulation. Having applied this doctrine to elevators, Chief
Justice Waite in other cases applied it to railroads as well. The Munn decision set a legal foundation for regulation,
but its value was whittled down by later decisions which took their cue from Justice Field`s dissent in this case.
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois, narrowed Munn v. Illinois. The court declared invalid an
Illinois law prohibiting long- and short-haul clauses in transportation contracts as an infringement on the exclusive
powers of Congress granted by the commerce clause of the Constitution. The result of the case was denial of state
power to regulate interstate rates for railroads, and the decision led to creation of the Interstate Commerce
Commission.
C.
The Farmers Alliance
D.
The Populist Party
1. The Populist Platform
a. Unlimited Coinage of Silver
b. Term Limits for President
c. Direct Election of Senators
d. Secret Ballot
e. Government Ownership of railroads
f.
Graduated Income Tax
g. Immigration Restrictions
h. 8-hour work day
2.
Populists Election Campaigns
a. Election of 1892
i.
Benjamin Harrison
ii. Grover Cleveland
iii. James Weaver
b.
Election of 1896
i.
William Jennings Bryan
ii.
“Cross of Gold” Speech
iii.
William McKinley
j.
Election of 1900
i.
Legacy of Populism
ii. Role of Third Parties