Agrarian Protest, 1867-1900
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Introduction-- Free Labor in the Gilded Age
Economic Currents
A.
Transformation of Agriculture
B.
The New Corporate Power
C.
The Weak State
Political Responses
A.
Grange
B.
The Greenback Party
C.
The People’s Party
The Populist Crusade
A.
Proposals
B.
Victories
C.
Disappointments
D.
Evaluation
Old Farming
• Free Land
– Homestead Act, 1862
• Local Market
• Hand Labor
New Farming
Railroad and Grain Elevators
• Central Storage for transport
• Owned by railroads and shippers
• Monopolies
The Grange
• Founded
1869
• 800,000
members
(1875)
• Railroad
regulations
The People’s Prairie
• Tradition of
political radicalism
in Midwest and
Plains farming
regions
– New England
abolitionism
– German
republicanism
– Scandinavian
socialism
Populist Convention, Callaway, Nebraska, 1896
Southern Populism
Tenant farming (“sharecropping”)
Racial Unity
• “You are kept apart
that you may be
separately fleeced of
your earnings. You are
made to hate each
other because upon
that hatred is rested
the keystone of the
arch of financial
despotism which
enslaves you both.”
– Tom Watson, 1892
Western Miners
Idaho Miners in the 1880s with RR financier Jay Gould
• Silver Currency
• Disappointment
Workers
• Panic of 1893
• Coxey’s Army, 1895
• 20 to 25% Unemployment
The Great Commoner and the
People’s Joan of Arc
William Jennings Bryan, 1880
Mary Elizabeth Lease
Gold and Silver
• Concerns:
– Money Supply
– Patchy prosperity
– Concentration of Wealth
Tariffs v. Taxes
• Assessments on Imported Goods
– 1860-- 20%
– 1880-- 40%
– 1890-- 45%
– 1894-- 48%
– 1932-- 59%
– 2001-- 4.6% (MFN); 0% for N. America
Populist Program
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
• Sherman Anti-trust Act (1890)
• Federal Income Tax (1894)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Silver Coinage at 16 to 1 ratio (inflation)
Government ownership of telegraph and RR
Postal Savings Banks
Reclamation of RR land
Secret Ballot
Referendum
Direct Election of Senators
• Anti-Imperialism
A Nation Divided
Pathologies
• Political Anti-Semitism
– Myth of the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy
– Passion Play Metaphor
Changing
• Fusion
– Populists become faction
in Democratic Party
– Lose radical edge
• Turn to demagoguery
– Once an egalitarian,
Watson rages against
blacks, Socialists,
Catholic, and Jews
Statue of Tom Watson, GA state capitol
Evaluation
Cranky, crazy, and reactionary
OR
Idealistic, democratic, egalitarian, and visionary?