AGRARIAN DISTRESS AND THE RISE OF POPULISM
In spite of their remarkable prog- ress, late-19th century American farmers experienced recurring pe- riods of hardship . Mechanical im- provements greatly increased yield per hectare . The amount of land un- der cultivation grew rapidly through- out the second half of the century, as the railroads and the gradual displacement of the Plains Indians opened up new areas for western settlement . A similar expansion of agricultural lands in countries such as Canada, Argentina, and Australia compounded these problems in the international market, where much of U .S . agricultural production was now sold . Everywhere, heavy sup- ply pushed the price of agricultural commodities downward .
Midwestern farmers were in- creasingly restive over what they considered excessive railroad freight rates to move their goods to market . They believed that the protective tariff, a subsidy to big business, drove up the price of their increasingly expensive equipment . Squeezed by low market prices and high costs, they resented ever- heavier debt loads and the banks that held their mortgages . Even the weather was hostile . During the late 1880s droughts devastated the west- ern Great Plains and bankrupted thousands of settlers .
In the South, the end of slavery brought major changes . Much ag- ricultural land was now worked by sharecroppers, tenants who gave up to half of their crop to a land- owner for rent, seed, and essential supplies . An estimated 80 percent
CHAPTER 9: DISCONTENT AND REFORM
“A great democracy will be neither great nor a democracy
if it is not progressive.”
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, circa 1910
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
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of the South’s African-American farmers and 40 percent of its white ones lived under this debilitating system . Most were locked in a cycle of debt, from which the only hope of escape was increased planting . This led to the over-production of cotton and tobacco, and thus to declining prices and the further exhaustion of the soil .
The first organized effort to ad- dress general agricultural problems was by the Patrons of Husbandry, a farmer’s group popularly known as the Grange Movement . Launched in 1867 by employees of the U .S . Department of Agriculture, the Granges focused initially on social activities to counter the isolation most farm families encountered . Women’s participation was actively encouraged . Spurred by the Panic of 1873, the Grange soon grew to 20,000 chapters and one-and-a-half million members .
The Granges set up their own marketing systems, stores, process- ing plants, factories, and coopera- tives, but most ultimately failed . The movement also enjoyed some politi- cal success . During the 1870s, a few states passed “Granger laws,” limit- ing railroad and warehouse fees .
By 1880 the Grange was in decline and being replaced by the Farmers’ Alliances, which were similar in many respects but more overtly po- litical . By 1890 the alliances, initially autonomous state organizations, had about 1 .5 million members from New York to California . A par- allel African-American group, the
Colored Farmers National Alliance, claimed over a million members . Federating into two large North- ern and Southern blocs, the alli- ances promoted elaborate economic programs to “unite the farmers of America for their protection against class legislation and the encroach- ments of concentrated capital .”
By 1890 the level of agrarian dis- tress, fueled by years of hardship and hostility toward the McKinley tar- iff, was at an all-time high . Working with sympathetic Democrats in the South or small third parties in the West, the Farmers’ Alliances made a push for political power . A third political party, the People’s (or Pop- ulist) Party, emerged . Never before in American politics had there been anything like the Populist fervor that swept the prairies and cotton lands . The elections of 1890 brought the new party into power in a dozen Southern and Western states, and sent a score of Populist senators and representatives to Congress .
The first Populist convention was in 1892 . Delegates from farm, labor, and reform organizations met in Omaha, Nebraska, determined to overturn a U .S . political system they viewed as hopelessly corrupted by the industrial and financial trusts . Their platform stated:
We are met, in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot- box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench [courts]. … From the same
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prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes — tramps and millionaires.
The pragmatic portion of their platform called for the national- ization of the railroads; a low tar- iff; loans secured by non-perishable crops stored in government-owned warehouses; and, most explosively, currency inflation through Treasury purchase and the unlimited coin- age of silver at the “traditional” ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold .
The Populists showed impres- sive strength in the West and South, and their candidate for president polled more than a million votes . But the currency question soon over- shadowed all other issues . Agrar- ian spokesmen, convinced that their troubles stemmed from a shortage of money in circulation, argued that increasing the volume of mon- ey would indirectly raise prices for farm products and drive up indus- trial wages, thus allowing debts to be paid with inflated currency . Con- servative groups and the financial classes, on the other hand, respond- ed that the 16:1 price ratio was nearly twice the market price for silver . A policy of unlimited purchase would denude the U .S . Treasury of all its gold holdings, sharply devalue the dollar, and destroy the purchasing power of the working and middle classes . Only the gold standard, they said, offered stability .
The financial panic of 1893 heightened the tension of this de- bate . Bank failures abounded in the South and Midwest; unemployment soared and crop prices fell badly . The crisis and President Grover Cleveland’s defense of the gold stan- dard sharply divided the Democrat- ic Party . Democrats who were silver supporters went over to the Popu- lists as the presidential elections of 1896 neared .
The Democratic convention that year was swayed by one of the most famous speeches in U .S . political history . Pleading with the conven- tion not to “crucify mankind on a cross of gold,” William Jennings Bryan, the young Nebraskan cham- pion of silver, won the Democrats’ presidential nomination . The Popu- lists also endorsed Bryan .
In the epic contest that followed, Bryan carried almost all the South- ern and Western states . But he lost the more populated, industrial North and East — and the election — to Republican candidate William McKinley .
The following year the country’s finances began to improve, in part owing to the discovery of gold in Alaska and the Yukon . This pro- vided a basis for a conservative expansion of the money supply . In 1898 the Spanish-American War drew the nation’s attention further from Populist issues . Populism and the silver issue were dead . Many of the movement’s other reform ideas, however, lived on .