1.11 The Populist Movement and Politics of Gold

Despite industrialization, farmers remained the majority in the United States into the 20th century. They were hit hard by industrialization. Industrialization had created efficiencies that demanded more and more raw materials. The more materials on the market, the lower the price, and so farmers were being forced to produce more simply to earn the same or less money. Added to this, industrialization had commercialized agriculture. Small farmers and homesteaders couldn’t afford the new technology, so they found themselves forced to sell or mortgage their farms putting agriculture into the hands of others and putting themselves into debt. The expansion of railroads and new innovations such as refrigeration connected the countryside to the cities, but this came at a price.

Vast swings in the economic market in terms of the price of goods, their comparable incomes, and inflated interest rates made farmers very vulnerable. They became very angry at the government and its lack of regulation of big business. Their reaction was to put themselves into the government equation through the creation first of the Farmers’ Alliance and then through the creation of the People’s Party, also known as the Populist Party. The Alliance began in 1877 in Texas and quickly spread throughout the South, the Midwest and the Great Plains. At its high point, the cooperatives created through the Alliance had more than a million members. Most of the cooperatives failed financially, but they showed farmers that cooperation could spread the Alliance message.

By 1890 it was apparent that the two political parties couldn’t or didn’t represent the interests of farmers, so they organized a political party. Officially the People’s Party, they became known as the Populists, and attracted supporters across the country “by appealing to those convinced that there were deep flaws in the political economy of Gilded Age America. . ..”¹The People’s Party held their first national convention in Omaha, Nebraska in 1892. At that convention they declared the party platform and proposed a great expansion of federal power to address the needs of the people. Among the proposals: nationalization of the railroad and telegraph systems; creation of regulated banks that would protect deposits and extend credit; the establishment of federally controlled warehouses which would store crops until markets evened out and protect the price of goods; direct election of Senators; the secret ballot; and a graduated income tax. While these ideas seemed radical to the establishment, when the Panic of 1893 sparked the worst economic depression the country had seen, the Populist message gained in popularity. The 1894 election saw several Populist Party candidates elected to federal office.

In the South, the Populist Party struggled to make any gains because they simply couldn’t reconcile their message of creating a unified production class with American racial attitudes. As the American Yawp authors tell us:

Populists opposed Democratic corruption, but this did not necessarily make them champions of interracial democracy. As [Populist Senator Marion] Butler explained to an audience . . ., “We are in favor of white supremacy, but we are not in favor of cheating and fraud to get it.” In fact, across much of the South, Populists and Farmers’ Alliance members were often at the forefront of the movement for disenfranchisement and segregation.²

While Populism exploded in popularity, it also faltered in actual action. The Omaha Platform was too radical and the two mainstream political parties were too strong.

While the Populist’s message stalled, a Democratic candidate took up a one of their messages – that the gold standard (the coinage of gold only) inflated American currency and thus inflated farmers’ debts – and brought it to national attention. William Jennings Bryan was a congressman from Nebraska, a three-time presidential candidate, and a lawyer famous for his opposition to the theory of evolution (see Scopes Monkey Trial). In 1896, at the Democratic National Convention, he delivered a speech called the “Cross of Gold” speech. In this speech, Bryan advocated for the bimetallic standard and the free coinage of silver as a way to assist all laborers. In a grand flourish, he finished his speech by declaring, “Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”³ With this declaration, Bryan won the Democratic nomination and the People’s Party nomination, though he lost the election to William McKinley. He would go on to be nominated two more times, in 1900 and in 1908, but he would lose both elections. The fusing of the Democratic Party and the People’s Party behind one candidate with one message undermined the viability of the People’s Party in the long term.

[A]lthough at first glance the Populist movement appears to have been a failure – its minor electoral gains were short-lived, it did little to dislodge the entrenched two-party system, and the Populist dream of a cooperative commonwealth never took shape – in terms of lasting impact, the Populist Party proved the most significant third-party movement in American history. The agrarian revolt established the roots of later reform, and the majority of policies outlined in the Omaha Platform would eventually be put into law over the following decades under the management of middle-class reformers. In large measure, the Populist vision laid the intellectual groundwork for the coming progressive movement.⁴

The march of capital transformed patterns of American life. While some enjoyed unprecedented levels of wealth, and an ever-growing slice of middle-class workers won an ever more comfortable standard of living, vast numbers of farmers lost their land and a growing industrial working class struggled to earn wages sufficient to support themselves and their families. Industrial capitalism brought wealth and it brought poverty; it created owners and investors and it created employees. But whether winners or losers in the new economy, all Americans reckoned in some way with their new industrial world.

Notes

1. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 16,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), V. The Populist Movement, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/16-capital-and-labor/.
2. Ibid., “Chapter 16,” V. The Populist Movement.
3. William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold Speech,” July 1896, at History Matters, George Mason University, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5354/.
4. Locke, “Chapter 16,” VI. William Jennings Bryan and the Politics of Gold.