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This book is an abridged edition of DEMOCRATIC PROMISE:
The POPUli5t Moment in America (Oxford University Press, 1976)
Copyright 1978 by Lawrence Goodwyn
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Goodwyn, Lawrence.
The Populist moment.
Abridged ed. of Democratic promise.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1 . Populism-United States-Hi story.
2. United States-Politics and government-
1 865- 1 900. I. Title.
E669. G672 1978 239
'
88
'
009 78- 1 349
ISBN 0-19-502416-8
ISBN 0- 1 9-50241 7-6 pbk.
Printed in the United States of America
First published by Oxfrd University Press, 1978
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1978

To Nel
Introduction
This book is about the flowering of the largest democratic mass
movement in American history. I t i s also necessarily a book
about democracy i tself. Fi nally i t is about why Americans have
far less democracy than they l i ke to think and what would have
to happen to alter that si tuati on.
The passionate events that are the subject of this book had
their origins in the social ci rcumstances of a hundred years ago
when the American population contained huge masses of farm
ers. A large number of people in the Uni ted States discovered
that the economic premises of thei r society were working agai nst
them. These premises were reputed to be democratic-America
after all was a democratic society in the eyes of most of i ts own
ci ti zens and i n the eyes of the world-but farmers by the millions
found that this claim was not supported by the events governi ng
thei r l i ves.
The nation
'
s agricul turalists had worried and grumbled about
"the new rules of commerce" ever si nce the prosperity that
accompanied the Civil War had turned into wi despread di stress
soon after the war ended. Duri ng the 1 870
'
s they did the ki nds
of things that concerned people generally do i n an efort to
cope wi th "hard ti mes. " I n an occupation noted for hard work
they worked even harder. When this failed to change things
milli ons of fami l ies mi grated westward i n an eff ort to l:nlisl
nature's help. They were dri ven by the thought that through
VIII
INTRODUCTION
sheer physical labor they mi ght wri ng more production from
the new vi rgi n lands of the West than they had been able to do
in their native states of Ohio and Vi rgi ni a and Alabama. But,
though rai l road land agents created begui l i ng stories of Wester
prosperity, the men and women who l i stened, and went, found
that the laws of commerce worked against them just as much i n
Kansas and Texas as they had back home on the eastern si de of
the Missi ssi ppi Ri ver.
So i n the 1 870's, the farmers i ncreasi ngly talked t each other
about thei r troubles and read books on economics in an effort
to di scover what had gone wrong. Some of them formed
organizations of economic sel f-help like the Grange and others
assi sted in pioneeri ng new i nsti tutions of political self-help l i ke
the Greenback Party. But as the hard ti mes of the 1 87(/s turned
i nto the even harder ti mes of the 1 880'S, it was clear that these
efforts were not really goi ng anywhere. Indeed, by 1 888 it was
evident that thi ngs were worse than they had been i n 1878 or
1 868. More and more people saw their farm mortgages fore
closed. As everyone i n rural America knew, this statistic i nex
orably yielded another, more omi nous one: the number of
landless tenant farmers in America rose steadi l y year after year.
Meanwhile, mi l l ions of smal l landowners hung on gri mly, their
unpaid debts thrusti ng them dangerously close to the bri nk of
tenantry and peonage. Hard work availed nothi ng. Everywhere
the explanation of events was the same: "Ti mes were hard. "
Then gradually, i n certai n specific ways and for certain speci fc
reasons, American farmers developed new methods that enabled
them to try to regai n a measure of control over their own l i ves.
Their efforts, halti ng and disjointed at frst, gathered form and
force unti l they grew i nto a coordi nated mass movement that
stretched across the American conti nent from the Atlantic coast
to the Paci f ic. Mil l i ons of people came to believe ferventy that
a wholesale overhaul i ng of their society was goi ng to happen i n
their l i feti mes. A democratic "new day" was comi ng t o America.
This whi rlwi nd of effort, and the massi ve upsurge of democratic
hopes that accompanied i t, has come to be known as the Populi st
Revolt. Thi s book i s about that moment of historical ti me. I t
seeks to trace the planting, growth, and death of the mass
democratic movement known as Populism.
INTRODUCTION
IX
For a number of reasons, all of them rather fundamental to
historical

nalysi s, the Popul i st moment has proved very dificul t

for Amencans to understand. Under the ci rcumstances i t i s
probably just as well to take these reasons up one at a ti e at
the very outset i n an efort to clear away as much underbrush
as possible before turni ng our attention to the protesti ng farmers
of the 1 890' S.
The

e are three pri nci pal areas of i nterpretive confusion that

bear dlr

ctly O
?
the Popul i st experience. Fi rst, very li ttle un
derstandllg eXists as to j ust what mass democratic movements
are, and h

w they happen. Second, there are serious problems

embedded the very language of description moder Ameri
cans routi nely employ to characterize political events. These
problems

articularl y af fect commonly held presumptions about

how certa1l1 "classes" of people are supposed to "act" on the
stage of history. Fi nal l y, and by all odds most i mportantly, our
greatest problem i n understandi ng protest i s grounded i n
co
.
ntemporary American cul ture. In addition to bei ng central,
thiS
.
cul tural difculty i s also the most resi stant to clear expla
nation: we are not only cul turally confused, our confusion makes
i t di ficult for us even to i magine our confusion. Obviousl y, i t i s
prudent, then, to start here.
The rei gni ng American presumption about the American
experience i s grounded i n the idea of progress, the convi ction
that the present i s "bett. er" than the past and the future wi l l
bri ng si l l
.
more betterment. Thi s reassuring belief rests securely
?
n statlstlc

l charts and tables certi fyi ng the steady upward ti lt

I

econ

mlC

oduction. Admi ttedly, social problems have per

slst

d-1 I1eqult1es of i ncome and opportuni ty have plagued the

sOCIety-but these,

oo, have steadily been addressed through

the sheer growth of the economy. For all of its shortcomi ngs,
the system works.
This i s a
.
powerful assumption. I t may be tested by reflect i ng
upon

he f act that, despi te American progress, the society has

be

n f orced to endure sundry movements of protest. I n ollr

eH

)rt to address the i nconvenient topi c of protest, our need 10

be 1Itel
.
lectually consistent-while thi nki ng wi thin the framework
of cont1l1UOUs progress-has produced a number of explallal ions
about the nature of dissent . i n America. Closely followed, these
7 INTRODUCTION
arguments are not really explanations at all, but rather the
assertion of more presumpti ons that have the efect of defendi ng
the basic i ntuition about progress itself. The most common of
these explanations rests upon what i s perceived to be a temporary
malfunction of the economic order: people protest when "times
are hard. " When ti mes stop bei ng "hard," people stop protesti ng
and thi ngs return to "normal"-that i s to say, progress i s
resumed.*
Unfortunately, history does not support the notion that mass
protest movements develop because of hard ti mes. Depressed
economies or exploitive arrangements of power and pri vi lege
may produce lean years or even lean l ifeti mes for milli ons of
people, but the historical evidence is conclusi ve that they do not
produce mass political i nsurgency. The s i mple fact of the matter
i s that, in ways that aff ect mi nd and body, times have been
"hard" for most humans throughout human history and for
most of that period people have not been in rebel lion. Indeed,
traditional ists in a number of societies have often pointed i n
glee to this passivity, choosi ng to call i t "apathy" and citi ng i t as
a justifcation for mai ntai ni ng things as they are.
This apparent absence of popular vi gor i s traceable, however,
not to apathy but to the very raw materials of history-that
complex of rules, manners, power relationships, and memories
that collectively comprise what i s called culture. "The masses"
do not rebel in i nsti nctive response to hard times and exploitation
because they have been culturally organi zed by their societies
not to rebel. They have, i nstead, been i nstructed in deference.
Needless to say, this i s the ki nd of social ci rcumstance that i s not
readi ly apparent to the mi lli ons who l i ve within it.
The lack of vi sible mass political activity on the part of modern
* Of course protest is not invariably an economi c expression; it can also
emerge from unsanctioned conceptions of civil liberty, as illustrated by the
movements of Anti-Federalists. suffragettes. feminists. and blacks. While de
monstrably i mportant in their own terms. such movements historically have not
mounted broad challenges to the underlying economic structures of inherited
power and privilege that fundamentally shape the parameters of American
society. Even the one movement that most nearly approached this level of
insurgency-aboli tionism-actually challenged. in slavery. only a deviance wilhin
the economi c order rather than the underlying structure of the order itself.
INTRODUCTION
XI
i ndustrial populations i s a function of how these societies have
been shaped by the vari ous economi c or political elites who
fashioned them. I n fundamental ways, this shapi ng process
(which i s now quite mature in America) bears di rectly not only
upon our abi l ity t grasp the meani ng of American Popul ism,
but our ability to understand protest generally and, most i m
portant of al l , on our abil ity to comprehend the prerequi sites
for democracy itself. This shapi ng process, therefore, merits
some attention.
Upon the consolidation of power, the frst duty of revol ution
aries (whether of the "bourgeois" or "proletarian" variety) is
obviously to try to deflect any further revol utions that necessarily
would be di rected agai nst them. Though a strong central pol ice
or army has sometimes proved essential to this stabi l izi ng process,
revolutionaries, li ke other humans, do not yearn to spend their
l i ves fighti ng down counterrevoluti ons. A far more permanent
and thus far more desirable solution to the task of achi evi ng
domestic t ranqui l l ity i s cultural-the creation of mass modes of
thought that literally make the need for major additional social
changes difcult for the mass of the populat ion to i magine.
When and if achieved, these conformi ng modes of thought and
conduct constitute the new cul ture itself. The ulti mate victory
i s nai led i nto place, t herefore, only when the population has
been persuaded to define all conceivable political activity within
the l i mits of existi ng custom. Such a society can genui nely be
descri bed as "stable." Thenceforth, protest wi l l pose no ulti mate
threat because the protesters wi ll necessarily conceive of their
opti ons as bei ng so l i mited that even should they be successful,
the resulti ng " reforms" will not alter si gni ficantly the i nherited
modes of power and pri vi lege. Protest under such conditi ons of
cultural narrowness is, therefore, not only permi ssi ble in the
eyes of those who rule, but is, from ti me to ti me, positi vely
desirable because it forti f i es the popular understandi ng that the
society is functioni ng "democratically. " Though for mi l lions of
Americans the fact i s beyond i magi ni ng, such cultural dynamics
describe politics in contemporary America. It is one of the
purposes of this book to trace how this happened.
It can be said, i n advance of the evidence, that thi s condition
XII INTRODUCTION
of social constrai nt is by no means solely an American one; i t is
worl dwi de and traceable to a common source: the I ndustrial
Revolution. Over the last eight generati ons, i ncreasingly sophis
ticated systems of economic organi zation have developed
throughout the wester world, spawni ng factories and factory
towns and new forms of corporate centralization and corporate
poli tics. Through these generations of the moder era, milli ons
have been levered off the land and i nto ci ti es to provide the
human components of the age of machi nery. Meanwhile, own
ership of both i ndustrial and agricultural land has been i ncreas
i ngly centrali zed. Yet, though these events have caused massive
dislocations of fami l y, habitat, and work, creati ng mass sufri ng
i n many societies and anxiety i n all of them, mass movements
of protest have rarely materi ali zed. Thi s historical constant
poi nts to a deeper real i ty of the modern world: i ndustrial
societies have not only become centralized, they have devi sed
rules of conduct that are i nt i midati ng to their populati ons as a
whole. Though varyi ng i n i ntensity i n i mportant ways from
nation to nati on, this has now happened everywhere-whether
a particular society regards itself as "socialist" or "capitali st. "
When people di scover that thei r i ntellect ual autonomy has
become severely ci rcumscribed and their creati vi ty forcibly
channeied i nto acceptable non-pol itical modes of expression (a
not unfrequent ci rcumstance in social i st systems of economic
organization) , they are told that their autonomous hungers are
"decadent," "i ndividualistic," and, if obstinately pursued, wi l l
be seen as "revisioni st" and "counterrevolutionary" i n i ntent. On
the other hand, when people di scover they have far fewer
opportuni ti es than others of thei r countrymen (a not i nfrequent
circumstance i n capitalist systems of economi c organi zati on),
they are told-as Populists were told i n the 1890'S and as blacks,
Appalachian whi tes, and mi grant laborers are told today i n
America-that they are "i mprovi dent, " "lazy," i nherentl y "de
prived," or in some si mi l ar fashion cul turally handicapped and
at faul t. These sti gmas (which i n earlier ti mes were al so vi sited
upon I rish, Jewish, I tali an, and other i mmi grants to America)
generate fears; people are dri ven to undergo considerable
i ndigni ty to earn sufici ent status to avoid them. Accordi ngl y,
they try to do those thi ngs necessary to "get ahead." The result
I NTRODUCTION XIII
i s vi si ble i n the obsequious day-to-day l ives of white-collar
corporate employees in America-and in the even more obse
quious l i ves of Communist Party functionaries in the Soviet
Uni on. Though l i fe clearly contai ns far more options in America
than in Russi a, the persistence of these varyi ng modes of mass
deference in both countries i l l umi nate the social l i mits of dem
ocratic forms i n modern i ndustri al societies generall y. I t i s
i nteresti ng to observe that each of the aforementioned adjectives,
from "counterrevolutionary" to "lazy," i s ofered in the name of
preservi ng corporate or state cul tures self-described as "demo
cratic." I t i s clear that the varied methods of social control
fashioned in i ndustrial societies have, over ti me, become suf
ci ently pervasive and subtle that a gradual erosion of democratic
aspirations among whole populations has taken place. Accord
i ngly, it i s evi dent that the precise meani ng of the word
"democracy" has become i ncreasi ngly obscure as i ndustrializa
tion has proceeded. I t i s appropriate to attempt to pursue the
matter-for problems i nherent in defi ni ng democracy under
score the cul tural crisis of modern l i fe around the globe.
I n America, an i mportant juncture in the pol i tical consolida
tion of the i ndustrial cul ture came some four generations ago,
at the cul mi nation of the Popul i st moment in the 1890's. Because
the decl i ne i n popular democratic aspiration s ince then has
i nvolved an absence of somethi ng rather than a visible presence,
i t has materialized in ways that are largely unseen. Pol iti cally,
the form exists today pri mari ly as a mass fol kway of resignation,
one that has become i ncreasingly vi sible si nce the end of World
War I I . People do not bel ieve they can do much "in poli tics" to
afct substanti vely eithe
r
their own dai ly l ives or the i nherited
patterns of power and pri vilege wi thi n their society. Nothi ng
i l lustrates the general truth of this phenomenon more than the
most recent exception to i t, namely the conduct of the student
radi cals of the 1 960'S. Whi le the students themselves clearly felt
they coul d substanti vely afect "i nherited patterns of power and
privilege," the prevail i ng judgment of the 1 970' S, shared by both
the radicals and thei r conservative critics, i s that the student s
were naive to have had such sweepi ng hopes. Today, political
l i fe i n America has once more returned to normal levels or
resignation.
XIV INTRODUCTION
Again, the folkway is scarcely an American monopoly. In
diverse forms, popular resignation is visible from I llinois to the
Ukraine. I t does more than measure a sense of impotence
among masses of people; it has engendered escapist modes of
private conduct that focus upon material acquisition. The young
of both societies seek to "plug in" to the system, the beter to
reap private rewards. Public life is much lower on the scale of
priorities. I ndeed, the disappearance of a visible public ethic
and sense of commonweal has become the subject of hand
wringing editorials in publications as diverse as the Chicago
Tribune in the United States and Izvestia in the Soviet Union.
The retreat of the Russian populace represents a simple ac
knowledgment of ruthless state power. Deference is an essential
ingredient of personal survival. In America, on the other hand,
mass resignation represents a public manifestation of a private
loss, a decline in what people think they have a political right to
aspire to-in essence, a decline of individual political self-respect
on the part of millions of people.
The principal hazard to a clear understanding of the meaning
of American Populism exists in this central anomaly of contem
porary American cul ture. Reform movements such as Populism
necessarily call into question the underlying values of the larger
society. But if that society is perceived by its members t be
progressive and democratic-and yet is also known t have
resisted the movement of democratic reform-the reigning
cultural presumption necessarily induces people to place the
"blame" for the failure of protest upon the protesters themselves.
Accordingly, in the case of the Populists, the mainstream pre
sumption is both simple and largely unconscious: one studies
Populism to learn where the Populists went wrong. The con
descension toward the past that is implicit in the idea of progress
merely reinforces such complacent premises.
Further, if the population is politically resigned (believing the
dogma of "democracy" on a superficial public level but not
believing it privately) it becomes quite difcul t for people to
grasp the scope of popular hopes that were alive in an earlier
time when democratic expectations were larger than those
people permit themselves to have today. By conjoining these
INTRODUCTION XV
. two contradictory features of modern culture-the assumption
of economic progress with massive political resignation-it is at
once evident that modern people are culturally programmed,
as it were, to conclude that past American egalitarians such as
the Populists were "foolish" to have had such large democratic
hopes. Again, our "progressive" impul se to condescend to the
past merely reinforces such a presumption. In a society in which
sophisticated deference masks private resignation, the demo
cratic dreams of the Populists have been difcult for twentieth
century people to imagine. Contemporary American cul ture
itself therefore operates t obscure the Populist experience.
A second obstacle to a clear perception of Populism is embed
ded in the language of description through which contemporary
Americans attempt to characterize "politics. " A central interpre
tive tool, derived from Marx but almost universal ly employed
today by Marxists and non-Marxists alike, is based upon concepts
of class: that is, that the intricate nature of social interaction in
history can be rendered more intelligible by an understanding
of the mode and extent of class conAict that was or was not at
work during a given period. Needless to say, many psychological,
social, and economic ingredients are embedded in concepts of
class, and, when handled with care, they can, indeed, bring
considerable clarity to historical events of great complexity.
Nevertheless, as an interpretive device, "class" is a treacherous
tool if handled casually and routinely-as it frequently is. For
example, offhand "class analysis;" when applied to the agrarian
revolt in America, will merely succeed in rendering the Populist
experience invisible. While classes in agricul tural societies contain
various shadings of "property-consciousness" on the part of rich
landowners, smal lholders, and landless laborers ("gentry,"
"farmers," and "tenants, " in American terminology), these dis
tinctions create more problems than they solve when applied t
the agrarian revolt. I t is a long-standing assumption-not so
thoroughly tested in America by sustained historical investigation
as some might believe-that "landowners" must perforce behave
in politically reactionary ways. The political aspirations of 1 he
l andless are seen to deserve intense scrutiny, but the polil ics of
"the landed" cannot be expected to contain serious progressive
XVI INTRODUCTION
ideas. The power of this theoretical assumption can scarcely b
understated. It permits the political eforts of millions of human
bings to b dismissed with the casual fourish of an abstract
category of interpretation. One can only assert the conviction
that a thoroughgoing history of, for example, the Soialist Party
of te United Sttes, including the history of the recruitment of
its agrarian following in early twentieth-century America, will
not b fully pieced together until this category of political
analysis is successfully transended. The condtiion of bing
"landed" or "landless" does not, a por, predetermine one's
potential for "progressive" political action: circumstances sur
rounding the ownership or non-ownership of land:are centrally
relevant, too. The Populist experience in any case puts this,
proposition to a direct and precise test, for the agrarian move
ment was created by landed an landless people. The platform
of the movement argued in behalf of the landless bcause that
platform was seen as bing progressive for small landowners,
to. Indeed, from beginning to end, the chief Populist theore
ticians-"landowners" all-stoo in economic terms with the
propertyless rural and urban people of America.
In consequence, neither the human experiences within the
mass institutions generated by the agrarian revolt nor the
ideology of Populism itself can b expected to become readily
discernible to anyone, capitalist or Marxist, who is easily consoled
by the presumed analytical clarity of categories of class. The
interior life of the agrarian revolt makes this clear enough.*
While the economic and political threads of populism did not
always mesh in easy harmony (any more than the cultural
threads did), the evolution of the political ideology of the
movement proceeded from a common center' and a common
. Though Europan and Asian conceptions of agricultural "classes" can b
applied to Amrica only if one is willing to accept a considerable distortion of
realiy, Populism can with a stretch of the imagination b seen as a product of
the organizing eforts of middle pasnts engaged in recruiting bth their own
"kind" and lower pasnts. But one must immediately addthat such intereting.
examples of agrarian "unity" can b more swiftly explained through recours
either to the labr theory of value or to simple historical observation rather than
to class ctegories.
INTRODUCTION XVII
experience and thus possessed an i nstructive degree of sequential
consi stency. t
The use of the word "sequential" provides an appropriate
i ntroduction to the final hazard confronti ng the student of the
agrarian revolt-the rather elementary problem of defni ng just
what "mass movements" are and how they happen. The sober
fact is that movements of mass democratic protest-that is to
say, coordi nated i nsurgent actions by hundreds of thousands or
milli ons of people-represent a political, an organizational, and
above all, a cultural achievement of the frst magni tude. Beyond
thi s, mass protest requires a high order not only of cultural
education and tactical achievement, it requires a high order of
sequential achievement. These evolvi ng stages of achievement are
essential if large numbers of i nt i midated people are to generate
both the psychological autonomy and the practical means to
challenge culturally sanctioned authority. A failure at any stage
of the sequential process aborts or at the very least sharply li mi ts
the growth of the popular movement . Unfortunately, the over
whelmi ng nature of the i mpediments to these stages of sequential
achievement are rarely taken i nto account. The si mple fact of
the matter i s that so difcult has the process of movement
buildi ng proven to be si nce the onset of i ndustrialization in the
western world that all democratic protest movements have been
aborted ! li mi ted in this manner prior to the recrui tment of
their full natural consti tuency. The underlyi ng social reality i s,
therefore, one that i s not generally kept frmly i n mi nd as an
operative dynami c of modern society-namely, that mass dem
ocratic movements are overarchingly dificult for human beings
to generate.
How does mass protest happen at all, then-to the extent that
it does happen?
The Populist revolt-the most elaborate example of mass
i nsurgency we have in American history-provides an abun
dance of evidence that can be applied in answering this questiol1.
t For example, five sequentially related stages of this ideological prccss, all
contradicting conclusions i mplicit in perfunctory class analysis, are trcal"d I!
pp. 75-76, 7H-Ho, H4-H7, 91-93 and l oH- 1 3.
.
J
XVIII INTRODUCTION
The sequential process of democratic movement-buil di ng will
be seen to i nvolve four stages: (I) the creation of an autonomous
i nsti tution where new i nterpretations can materialize that run
counter to those of prevai li ng authori ty-a development which,
for the sake of si mplicity, we may describe as "the movement
forming"; (2) the creation of a tactical means to att ract masses
of people-"the movement recrui ti ng"; (3) the achievement of
a heretofore cul turally unsanctioned level of social analysis
"the movement educati ng"; and (4) the creation of an i nstitu
tional means whereby the new ideas, shared now by the rank
and file of the mass movement, can be expressed in an auton
omous political way-"the movement politicized. "
Imposing cultural roadblocks stand i n the way of a democratic
movement at every stage of this sequential process, causing
losses in the potential constituencies that are to be i ncorporatcd
i nto the movement. Many people may not be successfully
"recruited," many who are recrui ted may not become adequately
"educated," and many who are educated may fail the final test
of moving i nto autnomous political acti on. The forces of
orthodoxy, occupying the most cul turally sanctioned command
posts in the society, can be counted upon, out of self-interest,
to oppose each stage of the sequential process-particular:ly the
latter stages, when the threat posed by the movement has become
clear to al l . In the aggregate, the struggle to create a mass
democratic movement i nvolves intense cul tural conAict with
many built-in advantages accrui ng to the partisans of the estab
lished order.
Off ered here in broad outl i ne, then, is a conceptual framework
through which to vi ew the bui ldi ng process of mass democratic
movements in modern industrial societies. The recruiting, ed
ucating, and pol iticizi ng methods will naturally vary from move
ment to movement and from nation to nation, and the relative
success i n each stage will obviously vary also. * The acti ons of
* American factory workers, for example, were unable for generations l
successfully complete step one of the process because their i nitial strikes for
recognition were lost and their fragile new unions destroyed. They thus were
unable to create autonomous instituti ons of their own. See pp. 41-42, 1 1 7- 1 8,
and 174-76.
INTRODUCTION XIX
both the i nsurgents and the defenders of the received cul ture
can also be counted upon to i nAuence events dramatical l y.
Within this broad framework, i t seems helpful to specify
certai n subsidiary components. Democratic movements are ini
tiated by people who have indi vi dually managed to attai n a hi gh
level of personal political self-respect. They are not resigned;
they are not intimidated. To put it another way, they are not
cul turally organized t conform to established hierarchical
forms. Their sense of autonomy permi ts them to dare to try to
change things by seeki ng to infl uence others. The subsequent
stages of recruitment and of i nternal economic and poli tical
education (steps two, three, and four) turn on the ability of the
democratic organizers to develop wi despread methods of i nter
nal communication wi thi n the mass movement. Such democratic
facilities provide the only way the movement can defend itself
to its own adherents in the face of the adverse i nterpretations
certain to emanate from the received cul ture. If the movement
i s able to achieve this level of internal communication and
democracy, and the ranks accordingly grow in numbers and i n
political consciousness, a new plateau of social possibility comes
within reach of all partici pants. In intellectual terms, the gen
erati ng force of this new mass mode of behavior may be rather
imply described as "a new way oflooking at things. " It consti tutes
O new and heretofore un sanctioned mass fol kway of autonomy.
In psychological terms, its appearance reflects the development /,
wi thin the movement of a new ki nd of collective self-confidence.
"Indi vidual self-respect" and "collective self-confidence" consti-
tute, then, the cul tural building blocks of mass democratic
politics. Their development permits people to conceive of the
~
idea of acti ng in self-generated democratic ways-as distinct
from passively participating in various hierarchical modes be
queathed by the received cul ture. I n this study of Popul i sm, I
have given a name to thi s plateau of cooperative and democrat ic
conduct. I have called it "the movement culture. " Once attai ned,
it opens up new vi stas of social possibility, vi stas that are less
clouded by inherited assumptions. I suggest that all significant
mass democratic movements in human history have generated
this autonomous capacity. Indeed, had they not done so, l111
x x INTRODUCTION
cannot vi suali ze how they could have developed i nto si gni fcant
mass democratic movemen ts. *
Democratic politics hi nge fundamentally on these sequential
relati onshi ps. Yet, quite obviously the process i s extremely
di fi cul t for human bei ngs to set i n motion and even more
di fi cul t to mai ntai n-a fact that hel ps explai n why genui nely
democratic cul tures have not yet been developed by manki nd.
Sel f-evi dently, mass democratic societies cannot be created unti l
the components of the creati ng process have been theoretically
del i neated and have subsequently come to be understood i n
practical ways by masses of people. Thi s level of political analysi s
has not yet been reached, despi te the theoretical labors of Adam
Smi th, Karl Marx, and thei r sundry disciples and cri ti cs. As a
necessary consequence, twenti eth-century people, i nstead of
partici pati ng i n democratic cul tures, l i ve in hierarchical cul tu res,
"capitalist" and "soci ali st, " that merely call themselves demo
cratic.
Al l of the foregoi ng constitutes an attempt to clear enough
cul tural and i deological landscape to permi t an unhampered
view of American Popul ism. The'devel opment of the democratic
movement was sequenti al . The organi zational base of the agrar
ian revolt was an i nsti tution called the Nat ional Farmers Al l i ance
and I ndustrial Uni on. Created by men of discerible self-pos
session and political self-respect, the Al l iance experi mented in
new methods of economi c self-hel p. After ni ne years of tri al
and error, the people of the Al li ance developed a powerful
mechani sm of mass recrui tment-the world's frst large-scale
worki ng class cooperative. Farmers by the hundreds of thousands
* The political termi nology oft'ered i n thi s study is meant lbe inclusive rather
than exclusive. The terms "movement forming," "movement recruiting," "move
ment educating," and "movement politicized," plus the sub-categories of "i n
di vi dual self-respect," "collective self-confidence," and "i nteral communica
tions," together wi th the summary phrase, "movement culture," all embrace a
certain measure of abstraction. More precise terminology would be helpful and
clearly needs to be developed. On the other hand, the spacious Marxist
abstraction, "class consciousness," is si mply too grand to have precise meaning.
Though the term was pathbreaki ng when f i rst developed, i t is too unwieldy to
describe human actions with the kind of specifi city needed to make sense of t he
hierarchical hazards and democratic opport uni ties existing within complex
twent ieth-century social systems.
INTRODUCTION XXI
flocked i nto the Al l iance. I n its recrui ti ng phase, the movement
swept t hrough whole states "l i ke a cyclone" because, easily
enough, the farmers joi ned the All iance i n order to joi n the
Al l i ance cooperative. The subsequent experiences of mi l li ons of
farmers wi thi n thei r cooperati ves proceeded to "educate" them
about the prevai l i ng forms of economi c power and privi lege i n
America. Thi s process of education was further elaborated
t hrough a far-fl ung agency of i nteral communicati on, the
40,000 lecturers of the Alli ance lecturi ng system. Fi nal l y, after
t he effort of the Al l iance at economi c self-hel p had been defeated
by the fi nancial and political i nsti tuti ons of i ndustrial America,
the people of the movement turned to i ndependent political
action by creati ng thei r own i nsti tution, the People's Party. Al l
of these experiences, stretchi ng over a ffteen-year period from
t 877 to 1 892, may be seen as an evoluti onary pattern of
democratic organi zi ng acti vi ty that generated, and i n tur was
generated by, an i ncreasi ng self-awareness on the part of the
partici pants. In consequence, a mass democratic movement was
fashioned. *
Once establi shed i n 1 8
9
2, t he People's Party challenged the
corporate state and the creed of progress i t put forward. I t
challenged, i n sum, the world we li ve i n today. Though our
loyal ty t o our own world makes t he agrari an revolt cul turally
di fi cul t to grasp, Popul i sm may nevertheless be seen as a ti me
of economically coherent democratic stri vi ng. Havi ng said thi s,
it i s also necessary to add that Popul ists were not supernatural
beings. As theoreticians concerned with certai n forms of capitalist
exploitati on, they were creative and, in a number of ways,
presci ent. As economi sts, t hey were considerably more thought
ful and practical than thei r contemporary political rivals in both
m<0or parties. As organi zers of a huge democratic movement,
Populi sts learned a great deal about both the power of the
* * Since Populism was a mass movement (and one that attempted to be evel l
more "massive" than i t was), the sequential stages i n the recrui ti ng and polit ici /i l l g
of i ts mass constituency are the core of thi s study. The stages of this seljucl l l i , , 1
devel opment may be "lund on pp. 26-3S, 39-41, 49, SR-59, 64-66, 73, 7,.-H7.
91-93, l oR- I S, 1 25-36, 14H-64. and 1 72-R2. The mass movement reached its
practical range of politicization i n I Rg2 '(pp. 17S-82). The summary i nt npre
tation of t hese sequential democratic stages is on pp. 293-3 I and 3 I R-I 9.
XXII INTRODUCTION
received hierarchy and the demands imposed on themselves by
independent political action. As third party tacticians, they had
their moments, though most of their successes came earlier in
the political phase of their movement than later. And, final l y,
as participants in the democratic creed, they were, on the
evidence, far more advanced than most Americans, then or
SInce.
But American Populists did not parachute i n from Mars. They
grew up in American cul ture and felt the pull of its teachings.
Though they knew they were pioneers, and earnesty endeavored
to persuade others of the merit of what they had leared along
their own path of democratic innovat ion, they did not always do
so free of inherited cul tural baracles. They had earlier learned
a number of things taught by the dominant cul tu re; and more
than a few people stumbled into the movement with many of
their traditional inheritances almost wholly intact. The tension
between these modes of conduct persisted within the agrarian
movement throughout its l i fe. Populists also encountered more
specifi c hazards. They sought to enlist the urban working class
without understanding the needs, nor the barriers to autono
mous political expression, that informed life in the metropolitan
ghettos of the nineteenth-century factory worker. Popul ists
sought to enlist landless black sharecroppers (and in so doing
explored new modes of interracial political coalition) without
ul timately shaking oif the more subtle forms of white supremacy
that fundamentally undermine the civility of American society
in our own time. And Populists tried through democratic politics
to bring the corporate state under popular control without fully
anticipating the counter-tactics available to the nation's f i nancial
and industrial spokesmen. I n summary, though Populists gen
erated a vibrant democratic movement, they were not unfailingly
guided by geni us. Their shortcomings as well as t heir achieve
ment s contain much that is useful to all those who st udy history
because they continue t o nurse aspirations for an industrial
society in which generous social relations among masses of
people might prevail as a cul tural norm.
A fi nal prefatory comment. I t is helpful to bear in mi nd that
the Popul ist moment in America came before the global twen-
INTRODUCTION XXIII
tieth-century struggle bet ween the East and the West. It came,
therefore, at a time when t he range of cul turally sanctioned
political traditions was broader than two. As children of the two
spreading cul tures of intellectual conformity that are a product
of that conflict, moder people live in a time of extreme
politicization of knowledge throughout the world. Rigid modes
of thought and terminology dominate the schools and colleges
of both traditions. The young of both can i mbibe the particular
received wisdom of their theoretical tradition (however distorted
by the events of history that theoretical tradition has become)
or, if they are somehow unconvinced and can cope with the
ostracism involved, they can adopt the rival mode. Within the
perceived limits of this most ideologically confned of recent
centuries, one is surely right: man is either a competitive being
or a cooperative being. However all those who are not persuaded
by this speculation-or fai th-soon discover how di ffcul t it is to
express their disbelief in terminology that the confi ned partici
pants in twentieth-century culture can understand. Capitalist
" modernization theory" and Marxist "democratic centralism,"
tgether with supporting linguistic accoutrements, have left
mankind in our time with few conceptual options through which
to assert believable political aspirations to the mass of the world's
peoples. In both traditions, one "believes" or one does not, but
in terms of sanctioned categories of political language, the option
for the unconvinced is an option of one. So be it. The Populists
did not know that the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revo
l ution, and the ascendancy of the mul ti-national corporation
were to be the coercive and competitive products of the industrial
age. Spared the ideological apologetics and narrowness of a later
time, Populists thought of man as being both competitive and
cooperative. They tilted strongly toward the latter, but they also
confronted the enduring qualities of the former. They accepted
this complexity about mankind, and they tried to conceive of
a society that would be generous-and would also house t his
complexity. With all of their shortcomings, including theoret ic; ! 1
shortcomings, the Populists speak to the anxieties of the t wenl iel I I
century with their own unique brand of rustic relevance.
Out of their cooperative struggle came a new demonal ic
XXIV INTRODUCTION
community. It engendered within millions of people what Martin
Luther King would later call a "sense of somebodiness. " This
"sense" was a new way of thinking about oneself and about
democracy. Thus armed, the Populists attempted to insulate
themselves against being intimidated by the enormous political ,
economic, and social pressures that accompanied the emergence
of corporate America.
To describe that attempt is to describe their movement.
Durham, N. C.
May 1, 1 978
L. G.
Acknowledgments
To the various acknowledgments specifi cally pertaining to Pop
ulist research that I noted in the unabridged edition of thi
book, I wish to take this opportunity to add two of a less specifc
nature. Both relate to those sundry and elusive intellectual
influences that shape one's personal perspective.
I doubt that one can overstate the i mpact that Origins oj the
New South by C. Vann Woodward had on those students of
American history who reached maturity in the 1 950' s. Sur
rounded as we were by historical tomes of limp apology for the
Bourbon past, Origins opened up new ways of thinking about
both the Souther and the national heritage. All historians
whose work touches on post-Reconstruction America have ever
since stood on Woodward's shoulders. This work is no exception.
The most creative democratic theorist that I have been
privileged to know on a long and intimate basis is my good
friend Harry Boyte. Alert to the ways people can fashion a
politics supportive of mass democratic aspirations, he has been
alert also to the ways the agrarian crusade encouraged i mpov
erished people to "see themselves" experimenting in democratic
forms. The sentence to that efct that . forms part of the
frontispiece of this study grew out of conversations between us
over this manuscri pt and refl ects our mutual respect for another
historian, E. P. Thompson. In less specific but even more helpful
ways , Harry Boyte has deepened my understanding of the
democratic impulse as an embattled but central component of
the human experience.
L. ( ; .
Contents
I . Creating a Democratic Politics 1
! . Prelude to Populism: Discovering the Limi ts
of American Politics 3
"The people are near-sighted . . .
< . The Al l iance Develops a Movement Culture
"I he moring sunlight oflabor's freedom . . .
1
20
3. The Cooperative Vi sion: Bui lding a Democratic
Economy 55
"the foundation that underlies the whole superstructure . . .
I I . The People' s Movement
Encounters the Received Culture
95
4. The National Al liance: Organizing Northern Farmers,
Souther Blacks, and Urban Workers 97
" . . . the one most essential thing . . .
5. Reform and I ts Shadow: The Core Cultural Struggle 1 2!
The Alliance calls "the convention of the people"
XXVIII CONTENTS
6. Reform Politicians, Reform Editors, and Plain People:
The Language of American Populism 1 74
"Welcome honorable allies and go forth to victory. "
I I I . The Triumph of the Corporate
State 2 1 3
7 . The Shadow Movement Acquires a Purpose 2 1 5
"A political party has no charms for me. "
8. The Last Agrarian Crusade: The Movement vs.
The Silver Lobby 230
"We propose 10 stand by the demands of the industrial people!"
g. The I rony of Populism 264
"The People" vs. "The Progressive Society"
Afterword 323
A Critical Essay on Authorities 333
I ndex 343
I hope we shall crush in i ts birth the aristocracy of our monied
corporations which dare already to challenge our government
a trial of strength, and bid defance to the laws of our
country.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, I RI 6
The people need "see themselves" experi menti ng i n dem
ocratic forms.
1
Creating a Democratic Politics
He was the largest landholder . . . in one county and Justice
of the Peace in the next and election commissioner in both,
and hence the fountainhead i f not of law at least of advice and
suggestion. . . . He was a farmer, a usurer, a veterinarian;
Judge Benbow of Jeferson once said of him that a milder
mannered man never bled a mule or stufed a ballot box. He
owned most of the good land in the county and held mortgages
on most of the rest. He owned the store and the cotton gin
and the combined grist mill and blacksmith shop i n the village
proper and it was considered, to put it mildly, bad luck for a
man of the neighborhood to do his trading or gin his cotton
or grind his meal or shoe his stock anywhere else.
The furnishing merchant in The Hamlet, by William Faulkner
The suballiance is a schoolroom.
Al l i ance lecturer
1
Prelude to Populism
Discovering the Limits of American Politics
"The people are near-sighted . . . .
People understood that the war-the Civil War-had changed
everything i n America. For four bloody years, the war itself had
dominated the life of the nation, and when peace came, the
memory of the war shaped the way people acted. Almost a
generation after the guns had fallen silent, the nation's new poet
of democracy, Walt Whitman, was saying that the essence of
history, philosophy, art, poetry, and even personal character
"for all future America" would trace its sources back to the war.
The fl amboyant poet left one thing out. The war also revo
lutionized the way Americans thought about politics. After
Appomattox, the nation's party system had become so funda
mentally altered that the change indeed seemed to be "for all
future time. " The war, not political ideas, dominated the new
American party system.
To a number of thoughtful Americans, the crucial postwar
topic for the nation-as important in the long run as the future
status of the freedman-oncerned the need to reorganize the
country's exploitive banking system to bring a measure of
economic fairness to the "plain people," white as well as black.

However this idea-like almost any economic idea in post-Civil

War America-onfronted national political constituencies seem
ingly i mpervious to new concepts of any kind. This state of
afairs was traceable to a party system which had been so
massively altered by the war that the new situation seemed to
4 CREATI NG A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
make Whitman' s sweeping description appear t be an under
statement.
The old Jacksonian resonances of Whig-Democratic confiict,
containing as they did still older rhythms of the Jeffersonian
Federalist struggle, were all but obliterated by the massive
realignment of party constituencies that had accompanied the
war and its aftermath. The memories and even some of the
slogans of ancestral debates still persisted in the postwar Amer
ican ethos, but they no longer possessed a secure political home.
;
" Sectional, religious, and racial loyalties and prejudices were used
to organize the nation's two major parties into vast coalitions
that ignored the economic i nterests of mi l lions.
The post-Civil War nation contained three basic occupational
groups. Ranked in order of numbers, they were farmers, urban
workers, and the commercial classes. The war had divided the
three groups into six constituencies-Northern farmers, work
ers, and men of commerce, and their counterparts in the South.
Two additional groups were defined less by occupation than by
caste-free Negroes in the North and ex-slaves in the South
making a total of eight broad classifications. It was a striking
feature of post-Civil War politics that a substantial majority of
persons within seven of these eight constituencies followed their
wartime sympathies, "voting as they shot," into the 1 890' s.
The sole exception was the urban working class of the North,
which fought for the Union but voted in heavy majorities for
the rebel-tainted Democratic Party. For the voters in this class,
sectional loyalty had given way before religious and racial
loyalties as the prime determinants of political afiliation. Uneas
ily adrift in a sea of Yankee Protestant Republicanism, the
largely i mmigrant and overwhel mingly Catholic urban workers
clustered defensively in makeshift political l ifeboats fashioned
after the Tammany model. Generally run by I rish bosses, these
scattered municipal vessels essentially conveyed patronage and
protection. Though nominally Democratic, little in their design
reflected Jeffersonian patters; their chief function, aside from
afording their captains a measure of income and status, was t
provide the i mmigrant masses wi th local security in an alien
world. The Catholic Democratic tendency, defensive though it
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
5
was, encouraged a reaction among Protestants that they them
selves considered defensive. By inescapable, if circular logic, it
provided many thousands of Protestants one more reason to
vote Republican-to protect themselves against "i mmigrant
h
?
r
.
des" who voted Democratic. A quarter of a century after the
CIVIl war, the organization of party constituencies along l ines
of sectIOnal, racial, and religious loyalty had been confrmed by
the remarkable stability and relative balance of the multi-state
network of local political institutions each major party came to
possess.
2
A review of the allegiances of these Republican and Democratic
constituencies reveals the extent and depth of their war-related
commi tments. By 1 868 the white farmers of the North who had
fl led the ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic found a
settled home in the army' s political auxiliary, the Grand Old
Party. The decision had been made simpler by the convenient
fact that both party and army possessed the same commander
in chief, Ulysses S. Grant. Throughout the North the politics of
a

my pensions, orchestrated by loyal Republican leagues, con

tn
.
buted additional political adhesive. From New England to
Mmnesota, hundreds of small towns, as well as broad swaths of
rural America, became virtual rotten boroughs of Republican
ism. The original prewar coalition of free soilers, abolitionists,
and Whigs which had carried Lincoln to the White House thus
found in postwar sectionalism a common ground that proved
far more serviceable than the controversial issue of Negro rights.
Northern blacks voted Republican for war-related reasons

lso, though they preferred to see the G. O. P. as an egalitarian

Idea

the
p
arty of emancipation-rather than as the political
mal1lfestatIOn of a sectional army. But the passing of radical
abolitionism proved rapid. The bankers, manufacturers, ship
pers, and merchants who had provided much of the direction
for te G. O. P. from its inception soon wearied of their attempl
to buI l d a postwar party i n the South based on black sufrage. As
election victories in the 1 860' S and 1 870' s proved that t he G. O. P.
could rule with a basically Northern constituency, Negroes, t hei
6 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
morale declining and white radical abolitionists, their numbers
thinning, lost the intra-party debate over Southern policy. For
most white Republicans, the choice was not hard; party profes
sionals, more enamored of election results than theories found
the politics of sectionalism-"waving the bloody shirt," i n the
contemporary expression-to be far more persuasive to voters
than the elaborate defenses of black rights that were necessary
to justify Reconstruction policy i n the South. As early as 1 868
the Freedman' s Bureau was, i n efect, allowed to lapse, and the
G. O. P. thereafter gradually abandoned both the cause of the
freedman and the commitment to a "reconstructed" South that
it implied. Given the known prejudice toward blacks of a large
portion of the party's white adherents in the North, the supe
riority of the bloody shirt as a campaign appeal was unassailable.
As Negro spokesmen grimly noted, blacks were steadily losing
their political infuence-though their votes were still counted
by the reoriented Republican Party.
The orientation, i t soon became apparent, belonged to busi
ness. I ndeed, the decline in abolitionist zeal was more than
balanced by the triumphant spirit of business enterprise that
sufused the remodeled Northern G. O. P. Though all participants
in the world of commerce did not habitually march in perfect
political lockstep, particularly on monetary policy, a workable
hegemony within commercial ranks was fashioned i n the 1 870' s
and 1 880' S as a precursor to its near total ascendancy i n the
1 890' s. Thus, the many-faceted Republican coalition that had
come to power in 1 861 became i n the postwar years a much
narrower business party, closely tied to the politics of sectional
division. Only faint echoes of the multi-sectional impulses of
prewar business Whiggery remained.
If Northern blacks faced a di'l emma as the party of emanci
pation became an engine of enthusiastic enterprise, Southern
white farmers encountered a similar problem of identifi cation
in the restructured politics of the shattered Southland. Li ke
blacks, Southern whites had an emotional basis for party loyalty
though, of course, it was to the party of the Confederacy rather
than to the party of the Union. But when federal troops marched
away at the end of Reconstruction and conservative white rule
PRELUDE TO POPULISM 7
returned, the reconstituted Democratic Party ceased to be
recognizable as an institution of "the plain people." Though
Southern farmers from Virginia to Texas looked upon their
political home as "the party of the fathers," the postwar De
mocracy no longer responded to such agrarian rhythms as had
existed i n the times of Jeferson and Jackson. Rather, the
Southern Democratic Party responded to the needs of " New
South" entrepreneurs--ven as the farmers who had fought in
the Confederate Army continued to provide their dazed alle
giance. Conceived in white supremacy and clothed with the
symbolic garments of the Lost Cause, the postwar institution of
business was able to attract the allegiance of white Southerners
of all classes, including the small number of urban workers in
the region. I ndeed, i n the maturing system of nostalgic "Solid
South" Democratic politics, tributes to the fallen and the gallant
of the Lost Cause became such ritualistic features of public
speaking that almost all orations, including those at funerals,
were inherently political i n form-though they remained essen
tially nonideological i n content.
These developments, of course, left Southern blacks as isolated
as their counterparts in the North were. I mmediately after
Appomattox the war legacies that shaped the voting habits of
the ex-slaves had the distinction of merging emotional loyalties
with visible self-interest. The black Republican Party of the South
might have been a product of the war, but i t was also a logical
expression of the political presence and needs of Negro people.
However, by the late 1 880' S, with the steady deterioration of
Northern Republican commitment to the civil and economic
rights of freedmen, the clear political purpose underlying black
allegiance to the party of Lincoln made no more sense i n terms
of self-interest than did the other residual war loyalties operating
i n the land.
3
Everywhere-North and South, among Republicans and Dem
ocrats-business and fi nancial entrepreneurs had achieved ef
fective control of a restructured American party system. To
8
CREATI NG A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
innovative monetary theorists, the fact was central : sectional
prejudices in the 1 880'S and 1 890' S persisted as an
'
enormous
political barrier to anyone bent on creating a multi-sectional
party of reform. I ndeed, the mature relationship between
sectionalism, issueless politics, and the business direction of both
major parties not only became the animating political cause of
the emergence of Populism, but the almost wholly nonideological
climate created by sectional politics was also to prove the third
party's principal obstacle.
By the time Benjamin Harrison moved into the White House
in 1 888, the postwar restructuring of the American party system
had seemingly become quite settled. Though each party re
mained dominant in its own section and possessed lesser or
greater pockets of strength in the other's bailiwick-largely for
reasons of sectional, racial, or religious loyalty-both responded
primarily to the needs of businessmen. Of course, neither always
found it convenient to stress the matter with relentless precision.
Not political ideas but war-related emotions that had intrinsic
political meaning became the central element of post-Recon
struction politics in America. While practical politicians might
employ ritualistic references to the high or low tarif to dress up
their party's principles, they also maintained an inventory of
oratorial fre to rekindle the embers of the sectional and racial
patriotism that had famed during the war. The politics of
sectionalism contained a reserve of partisan frepower that could
be used against any candidate or any party attempting, through
an innovative appeal to "issues," to rearrange the nation's basic
postwar alignment.
Prior to the outbreak of Populism, the basic constituencies of
both major parties thus remained substantially unaffected by the
social and economic changes occurring in industrial America.
The pervasiveness of this reality testifed to the marginal impact
of political theorizing.
4
It was in such a non-ideological milieu that the nation frst
encountered the political issue that was to transform public
dialogue i n the 1 890' s-the "fnancial question. " The importance
PRELUDE TO POPULISM 9
of the issue can scarcely be exaggerated. How money was
created, and on what basis it circulated, defned in critical ways
the relationships of farmers, urban workers, and commercial
participants in the emerging industrial state. The answers would
go a long way toward determining who controlled the rules of
credit and commerce, who shared i n the fruits of increasing
American production, and, ultimately, how many Americans
obtained that minimum of income necessary to ensure that they
lived lives of some dignity. With the stakes so high, all questions
about the currency were clearly not of equal weight. One of the
weightiest concerned the origin of money. Whether the govern
ment issued money, or whether private bankers did, shaped the
precise forms of fnance capitalism to a telling degree. The
resolution of this issue might well determine which occupational
groups had a measure of infuence over their own economic
future and which did not. How much money circulated also was
important-in terms of price and income levels, interest rates,
and the relations of creditor and debtor classes. Central to the
whole issue, of course, was a clear defnition of money itself.
Was it gold? Gold exclusively? Silver and gold? Did currency
include paper money?
These matters tended to be discussed by monetary conserv
atives in rigid, moral terms. Their answers were short and clear,
if often inane. It was an article of faith for them that a proper
monetary system had to be based on the gold standard. Yet
simple faith was not enough to win the day for hard money; the
debate never seemed to go away. The currency question erupted
in each decade and often reached levels that soared beyond
simple morality into new and surprising realms of social, eco
nomic, and political philosophy. The stakes were high because
ultimate answers, if ever obtained, would defne the basic
economic ground rules for American society. But i f the "fnancial
question" seemed somehow organic, it stumbled upon the stage
of national politics. The origin of the issue, however, was
appropriate enough: money arguments stemmed from the war,
too. I n fact, the controversy over "greenbacks" ftted easi l y
within Walt Whitman's perception of the Civil War as a gui de
to the American future.
1 0 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
5
I n the frst year of the war the government had contracted with
commercial banks for a number of war loans that had the efect
of substantially increasing the currency and thus the pressure
on gold reserves. Long before McClellan's army embarked for
the frst great Richmond campaign, the nation had quietly left
the gold standard. I n technical language that millions of Amer
icans would try to comprehend over the next two generations,
"specie payments" had been "suspended. " Two months after the
Treasury ceased paying coin for its obligations, Congress, under
relentless wartime spending pressure, authorized the issuance
of "legal tender treasury notes" to cover obligations. Because of
the color of their i nk, the notes soon became known as "green
backs. " By the end of the war some $450 million of these
treasury notes were in circulation, having contributed to wartime
infation, greater commercial liquidity, and prosperity.
In orthodox fnancial circles favoring "gold monometallism"
the postwar problem was one of ending "suspension" and
achieving "resumption" by retiring the greenbacks and returning
to a redeemable currency of hard money. The currency "con
traction" that necessarily would follow might be painful for
various members of the society, especially debtors, but only as
the painful cleaning of a wound was essential to ultimate health.
At the heart of the banker's approach was an understanding of
gold and silver money not as a medium of exchange, but as a
commodity that had "intrinsic value. " I n the language of ortho
dox "gold bugs," money "was only as good as the gold which is
in it." Gold was orderly and civilized; money not backed by hard
metal was "fat money," which failed the measure of intrinsic
value. It was money only because legislators, by arbitrary fat,
said it was. Such currency was essentially corrupt, and its
continued use constituted a morally corrupt method of running
a society.
However, bankers and other creditor-bondholders had a more
specific motive for specie resumption. The currency had depre
ciated steadily during the war, and, having purchased govern
ment bonds then, they, understandably, looked forward to the
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
wi ndfall profits to be made from redeeming their holdings in
gold valued at the prewar level. A governmental decision to
begin paying coin for its obligations would mean that, though
the Civil War had been fought with ffty-cent dollars, the cost
would be paid in one-hundred-cent dollars. The nation's tax
payers would pay the diference to the banking community
holding the bonds. Bankers marshalled a number of moral
i mperatives to support their case. They argued that they had
supported the war efort-albeit with depreciated money-by
buying government securities on the assumption that the postwar
dollar would be returned to "par. " For the government to take
any action to render this assumption invalid would be unethical.
Bondholders and the Eastern fnancial community-the two
terms were more or less interchangeable-further argued that
resumption would encourage saving, investment, and economic
growth by assuring holders of capital that the dollar would have
"long-term stability. " The country would be placed on a "sound"
footing. Finally, the banker's case was patriotic: the nation's
honor was at stake.
Some practical difculties intruded, however. A return to hard
money could only be accomplished in one of two ways-both
quite harmful to a great number of Americans. The frst was to
raise taxes and then employ the proceeds to redeem wartime
bonds and to retire greenbacks from circulation. This, of course,
would contract the currency abruptly, driving prices down, but
also depressing business severely and increasing unemployment,
perhaps to socially dangerous levels. Such a contraction was not
immediately attainable i n any case, because United States prices
were so high compared to world prices that it would have been
quite proftable for Americans to redeem dollars in gold and
then buy products overseas. Any immediate attempt to "resume
specie payments" would have quickly exhausted the nation's
gold supply through an unfavorable balance of trade.
The second method of contracting the currency spread the
resulting economic pain over a longer period of time. The
government could merely hold the supply of money at existi ng
levels while the population and the economy of the nat i ol l
expanded, thus forcing general price levels down to a poi nt
1 2 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
where it was no longer proftable to redeem paper dollars in
gold to fnance imports. In due course, this is what happened.
To the nation's farmers, contraction was a mass tragedy which
eventually led to the Populist revolt. Although the economic
relationships sound quite complex, they can be spelled out in
fairly simple terms through an arbitrary numerical example.
Letting ten farmers symbolize the entire population, and ten
dollars the entire money supply, and ten bushels of wheat the
entire production of the economy, i t is at once evident that a
bushel of wheat would sell for one dollar. Should the population,
production, and money supply increase to twenty over a period
of, say, two generations, the farmers' return would still be one
dollar per bushel. But should population and production double
to twenw while the money supply was held at ten-urrency
contraction-the price of wheat would drop to fifty cents. The
farmers of the nation would get no more for twenty bushels of
wheat than they had previously received for ten. Moreover,
money being more scarce, interest rates would have risen
considerably. A person who borrowed $ 1 000 to buy a farm in
1 868 would not only have to grow twice as much wheat in 1 888
to earn the same mortgage payment he made earlier, he would
be repaying his loan i n dollars that had twice as much purchasing
power as the depreciated currency he had originally borrowed.
Thus, while contraction was a blessing to banker-creditors, i t
placed a cruel and exploitive burden on the nation's producer
debtors.
The debtor philosophy ofered another way of stabilizing
prices. By reducing the content of the dollar to one-half its
prewar fi gure, the nation could have simply accepted the fact
that the currency had lost one-half of its purchasing power,
frankly and rather painlessly acknowledging that currency de
valuation had taken place during the war. Granted that such a
solution would remove the windfall profi ts that bondholders
anticipated from the return of the gold standard, i t also avoided
the multiple hazards to the rest of the society implicit in the
objectives of "sound money" bankers.
To greenbackers, the case for a fi at currency was completely
persuasive because the nation needed an expanding monetary
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
system to keep up with population growth and commercial
expansion. Greenbacks were "the people's currency, elastic,
cheap and inexportable, based on the entire wealth of the
country. " As this study of American Populism reveals, the
greenback cause was a many-faceted phenomenon, sometimes
put forward in arguments which were opportunist and ephem
eral , but more frequently presented in a coherent analysis that
attained a level of advanced social criticism.
Whatever the short-run economic equities, the greenback
critique of American fi nance capitalism-should it ever gain a
mass popular following-constituted a political issue of the fi rst
magnitude. I n fact, at one time or another in the decade
following the war, portions of every sector of the American
population fel t defrauded by bankers. Soft-money theory is most
easily grasped as a political ideology grounded in a desire of
non-bankers to cope with changing commercial power relation
ships within an industrializing society. As such, the proper place
to begin is with the developing ideology itself and then pass to
the movement's i mmediate political phases-the National Labor
Union ( 1 87 1 ) , the Greenback Party ( 1 876-84) , and the Union
Labor Party ( 1 888). It is pertinent to do so because the fi nal and
most powerful assertion of the greenback critique of the Amer
ican monetary system came through the mobilization of the
multisectional political coalition known as the People's Party.
6
The postwar doctrines of greenbackers went back to the 1 840' s,
to the writings of Edward Kellogg, a self-made merchant who
devoted hi mself to a study of international fi nance after being
ruined by the Panic of 1 837. To Kellogg, currency was solely a
creature of law. Far from viewing money as a commodity of
"intrinsic value," Kellogg and his disciples held that "pebbles or
any other material would answer the same purpose as gold and
silver, i f law could make them a tender for debt, and control the
quantity. " Since government-issue paper promised to be more
manageable than stones, he advocated a fiat currency issued by
a central bank. Kellogg's first full-scale work, published in 84)
'
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
outlined i n its title most of the dimensions of future nineteenth
century monetary struggles: Labor and Other Capital: The Rights
OfEach Secured and the Wrongs ofBoth Eradicated. Or, an exposition
of the cause why few are wealthy and many poor, and the delineation
ofa system, which, without infringing the rights ofproperty, will give
to labor its just reward.
The i mpact of Kellogg's book multiplied as new editions were
published in the second half of the century. Kellogg's ideas,
elaborated by Alexander Campbell following the war, became
the conceptual basis of the labor-greenback cause in the late
1 860'S. Pennsylvania economist Henry Carey, also building upon
Kellogg, developed a romantic and ill-conceived philosophy of
"producerism, " which was designed to deliver the soft-money
message with equal force both to entrepreneurial capitalists and
to labor. Reduced to its political essentials, Carey attempted to
oppose usurious moneylenders and foresaw a "harmony of
interest" between labor and productive entrepreneurs against
a common and parasitic foe, the fnance capitalist.
These business green backers developed a measurable follow
ing among western Pennsylvania iron and steel men and others
who fel t gouged by Eastern commercial bankers. Yet hard
money ideas eventually prevailed i n business circles even among
men who had little to gain and much to lose by the ascendancy
of the gold dollar. I ndeed, the transformation of soft-money
iron masters into submissive, fi nancially orthodox Republicans
casts an interesting light on the social pressure for political
conformity operating within afuent Northern society. The
failure of the greenback cause among urban workers was more
readily predictable, i f only because of the fragile condition of
the existing labor movement. The scarcity of labor newspapers
or other organizatonal methods of communication within the
ranks of labor deprived labor greenbackers of the means of
presenting their case. Either because urban workers accepted
the moral criticism of greenbacks, or because the entire matter
seemed too difcult to grasp, or because they simply never heard
of it, or because they developed other priorities, the soft-money
creed proved easy for laboring people to resist.
Beyond its ideological difculties, the political failure of the
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
greenback cause is even easier to explain. The doctrine of a fi at
currency fel l victim, simply and forcefully, to sectionalism. The
soft-money creed had nothing to ofer in the way of sectional
appeal; it ofered instead an idea about economic relationships
and then tried to prevail by explaining the idea to major party
constituencies that still had emotional and cultural needs related
to war-rooted loyalties. Against the sectional politics of the
bloody shirt and the Lost Cause, the politics of a fat currency
recruited comparatively few regiments. I deologically i nnovative,
culturally embattled, and irrelevant in terms of sectional loyalties,
the soft-money creed endured a fragile political l ife within a
national party system geared to non-economic memories.
Rather efortlessly, then, Congress was able to defend the
nation's honor, resuming the payments of gold for wartime
bonds and gradually contracting the currency by consciously
declining to increase volume i n step with population growth and
commercial expansion. After a measure of government hesitancy
traceable to agitation by business and labor greenbackers, the
amount of currency in circulation was held at a stable level
through the decade of the 1 870' S while expanded population
and production reduced price levels and spread severe economic
hardship throughout the nation's agricultural districts. Hard-hit
farmers were brusquely told they were guilty of "overproduc
tion. " The economic depression was both protracted and severe.
Business was badly hurt and unemployment rose, but by the
end of the decade the goal was reached: the United States went
back on the gold standard on January 2, 1 879.
7
As if these developments were not enough, still a fi nal irony
awaited the nation's currency reformers-and it was one that
would cast a shadow forward, all the way into the Populist
period. The greenback cause was not only defeated politically
by sectionalism in the popular mind, and by "intrinsic value"
homilies of sound money moralists, but even the intellectual
arguments i n behalf of a fat currency became obscured by
another "fnancial question" that intruded into the nat ion' s
1 6 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
politics in the 1 870' s. That development, which centered around
a bizarre topic popularly known as "the Crime of ' 73, " almost
destroyed what little public understanding had materialized on
American banking practices. To the undying distress of green
backers, the "Crime of ' 73" focused popular attention on an
extraneous issue-the fancied need for a "remonetization of
silver. " The silver episode merits brief attention because, as
refurbished in the 1 890' s by silver mi neowners, i t provided the
rationale for the shadow movement of Populism known as
"silver-fusion. "
I n the early 1 870' s, a currency bill had been introduced that,
in one of its less debated features, quietly dropped the silver
dollar from the nation's coinage. By the time the bill had
proceeded toward enactment late in 1 872 , new mining methods
had vastly increased the production of silver, depressing prices
at a rate that indicated to all those who were aware of the
meaning of such developments that silver would soon fall below
par with gol d. Now specie resumption threatened to become a
hollow victory for the cause of sound money because the more
valuable gold dollars would soon disappear from circulation and
silver would necessarily be employed to redeem the wartime
bonds: depreciated silver would remove some of the anticipated
windfall for wartime bondholders. To knowledgeable advocates
of the gold dollar, the new coinage bill to drive silver out of
circulation became not merely attractive, but absolutely neces
sary. Actually, however, the i mportance of the silver provisions
i n the mul ti-purpose bill were not widely grasped, even in
Congress, and certainly not in the country at large. Partly as a
result of disingenuous explanations by its congressional sponsors,
the bill attained fnal passage i n January 1 873 without even a
roll call vote in the Senate. Though specie payments were not
resumed at once, silver was "demonetized" and the country
placed on a gold standard. Thus occurred what a generation of
Americans would come to know as "The Crime of ' 73, "
I t took some time for the crime t o be discovered. A gradually
deepening economic depression provided the necessary aware
ness. The unexpected collapse of the famed investment banking
house of Jay Cooke i n the autumn of the year ignited panic in
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
an already nervous Eastern fi nancial community. Unemploy
ment rose, demand softened, and wage cuts followed. As the
depression worsened, prices fel l , though neither as swiftly nor
as far as wages did. Commodity income for farmers slumped
badl y. What all this meant was beyond the ken of orthodox
fi nancial thinkers of the day, but the facts seemed to be relatively
simple: silver suddenly was not worth much and the country
was gripped by a depression. I t was at this point that the alarms
sounded on the "Crime of ' 73. " Once its congressional origins
were understood, the perpetrators of the coinage bill were
condemned by the public in creative legends that exposed any
number of conspiracies. Counter legends, hurriedly promul
gated by goldbugs, soon earned acceptance among creditors.
But both views came well after the fact : the "Crime of ' 73" went
undiscovered for almost three years before the depression had
deepened sufciently to stir inquiries and reappraisals across the
land. The outcry for silver that materialized emanated from
debtors, farmers, laborers, and others most vulnerable to the
hardships of the depression. Yet the grounds well for silver
derived less from broad public understanding of currency than
from moral outrage at the apparently surreptitious means by
which the biIl had achieved congressional approval.
To greenback apostles, the entire controversy bordered on
madness. The cry for silver was an utter delusion. To fat-money
men i t was elementary that silver, l i ke gold, was but another
prop i n a hard-money currency. As such, it contri buted to a
relatively rigid money supply that hurt the economy and, among
other maladies, fostered high interest rates that benefted only
moneylenders. While a measure of inHation could be achieved
by coining silver on the proper terms, such terms were not being
debated, were not widely understood, and were not l i kely to be
as long as bankers continued to convince Americans that money
had to have "intrinsic val ue. "
Such greenback arguments, bafling and therefore suspect t o
many, drove the curious t o look for corroboration i n the nat i ol l ' s
press, universities, and pul pits. With a few exceptions, t i l l "
representatives of all three were rigidly orthodox 01 1 t he 1 I l 01 H' Y
issue, their attitudes grounded i n a deferential accept al l ct ' or
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
the bankers' argument that currency had to have a metallic base.
Though greenbackers themselves looked upon "silver Republi
cans" and "silver Democrats" with equal disdain, the soft-money
cause had to swim upstream against the cultural presumptions
of the era. As soft-money advocates looked on helplessly, the
nation returned to specie payments on terms that brought deep
satisfaction to goldbugs and a modest measure of "sound money
infation" to silverites.
8
Given such a remarkable range of intellectual, political, and
cultural constraints, it is understandable that the political insti
tutions created by greenbackers in the 1 870'S and 1 880'S fared
rather badl y. Soft-money doctrines enjoyed a brief period of
prominence as a centerpiece of the politics of the National Labor
Union in the early 1 870' S before they acquired something of the
dimension of a national political presence when the Greenback
Party was formed in 1 876. From that point to its efective demise
i n 1 884, the Greenback Party drew little more than ridicule from
respectable society. Luhman Weller, Iowa's greenback Congress
man, became widely known as "Calamity" Weller, and Texas'
George Washington Jones was reduced to " Wash" Jones. "Sound
money" seemed a fxture i n American culture. By 1 886 virtually
the only legacy of a generation of soft-money agitation and
party-building was a network of agrarian radicals scattered along
the Western frontier from Dakota Territory to Texas. The older
generation among these radicals, with memories that dated back
to the frst debates on the wartime greenbacks i n the 1 860' S,
were disillusioned. A goodly portion of the incoming mail to ex
Congressman Weller refected the desperation of men who had
spent years trying to employ economic arguments to overcome
the sectional loyalties of the nation's voters. I n overwhelmingly
Republican Kansas and Iowa the farmers preferred the bloody
shirt. In overwhelmingly Democratic Arkansas and Texas they
preferred the "party of the fathers. " When a fnal, desperate
efort to reconstitute a third party structure collapsed in the
abortive bid of the Union Labor Party in 1 888, a number of
PRELUDE TO POPULISM
greenbackers simply gave up. They were not of a mood to blame
themselves. "The people are near-sighted, " an embittered re
former wrote Weller. "The collapse of the Greenback Party and
the poor showing made by the Union Labor Party has in my
opinion destroyed all hope for a new party during the next
decade, i f not during a generation. " That cryptic judgment (and
a singularly misplaced one, considering what was about to
happen) merely reinforced the deepening gloom of currency
reformers. The money question might be central to the ongoing
problem of economic inequity and corporate concentration in
America, but the nation's political culture, reduced to a primitive
level by the emotions of sectionalism, seemed thoroughly i n
harmony with the needs of "sound-money" bankers. "Calamity"
Weller's mailbox flled with the complaints of earnest but battered
reformers.
But though reformers tended to blame the "apathy" and
"near-sightedness" of the people, their problem essentially was
one of simple organization: they needed to fnd an efective
instrument of recruitment. Stump speeches based on complicated
greenback monetary arguments were simply not enough to
afect the way people acted politically.
Help was coming, however. Even as oldtime greenbackers
wrung their hands in despair, an organization new to rural
America, slowly, painfully, began to shape a powerful method
of mass recruitment. I ndeed, in the very years of greenback
decline, the new democratic vision inspired by the young or
ganization began to afect mi l lions of Americans. "Calamity"
Weller's mailbox was merely not the place to look for it.
<
The Alliance Develops
a Movement Culture
"the morning sunlight oflabor's freedom . . . .
The agrarian revolt frst stirred on the Southern frontier, then
swept eastward across Texas and the other states of the Old
Confederacy and thence to the Western Plains. The gathering
of democratic momentum required almost fifteen years-seven
within a tier of counties along the Texas farming frontier, three
more to cover the rest of the state, and another fve to envelop
the South and West. Yet the best way to view this process of mass
radicalization of farmers is not by focusing on the farming
frontier from which the doctrines of insurgency emanated, but
rather by discovering the humiliating conditions of life which
penetrated into every farm and hamlet of the South. These
conditions really illuminated the potential support for the
agrarian revolt because they caused thousands to fl ee to the
frontier and armed those who remained with a fervent desir,
to join the movement when i t eventually swept through thei,'
region. Further, these conditions were so pervasive in their
i mpact, shaping in demeaning detail the daily options of mill ions
of Southerners, that they constituted a system that ordered life
itself.
2
The "system" was the crop lien system. I t defned with brutalizing
fnality not only the day-to-day existence of most Southerners
who worked the land, but also the narrowed possibilities of their
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 2 1
entire lives. Both the literal meaning and the ultimate dimension
of the crop lien were visible in simple scenes occurring daily,
year after year, decade after decade, in every village of every
Southern state. Acted out at a thousand merchant counters in
the South after the Civil War, these scenes were so ubiquitous
that to describe one is to convey a sense of them all. The farmer,
his eyes downcast, and his hat sometimes literally i n his hand,
approached the merchant with a list of his needs. The man
behind the counter consulted a ledger, and after a mumbled
exchange, moved to his shelves to select the goods that would
satisfy at least a part of his customer's wants. Rarely did the
farmer receive the range of items or even the quantity of one
item he had requested. No money changed hands; the merchant
merel y made brief notations in his ledger. Two weeks or a
month later, the farmer would return, the consultation would
recur, the mumbled exchange and the careful selection of goods
would ensue, and new additions would be noted in the ledger.
From early spring to late fal l the ritual woul d be enacted until,
at "settlin' -up" time, the farmer and the merchant would meet
at the local cotton gin, where the fruits of a year's toil would be
ginned, bagged, tied, weighed, and sol d. At that moment, the
farmer would learn what his cotton had brought. The merchant,
who had possessed title to the crop even before the farmer had
planted it, then consulted his ledger for a fnal time. The
accumulated debt for the year, he informed the farmer, exceeded
the income received from the cotton crop. The farmer had
failed in his efort to "pay out"-he still owed the merchant a
remaining balance for the supplies "furnished" on credit during
the year. The "furnishing merchant" would then announce his
intention to carry the farmer through the winter on a new
account, the latter merely having to sign a note mortgaging to
the merchant the next year's crop. The lien signed, the farmer,
empty-handed, climbed i n his wagon and drove home, knowing
that for the second or ffth or ffteenth year he had not paid out.
Such was the crop lien system. It constituted a new and
debasing method of economic organization that took its specific
form from the devastation of the Civil War and from the collapse
of the economic structure of Southern society which had resul t ed
from the war. In the aftermath of Appomattox, the people of
22
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
t
he South had very little capital or the institutions dealing i n it
banks. Emancipation had erased the slave system' s massive
investment in human capital, and surrender had not only
invalidated all Confederacy currency, it had also engendered a
wave of Southern bank failures. Massachusetts alone had five
times as much national bank circulation as the entire South, while
Bridgeport, Connecticut, had more than the states of Texas,
Alabama, and North and South Carolina combined. The per
capita fi gure for Rhode I sland was $77 . 1 6; it was 1
3
cents for
Arkansas .. One hundred and twenty-three counties in the state
of Georgia had no banking facilities of any kind. The South had
become, i n the words of one historian, a "giant pawn shop. "
The furnishing merchants, able to get most of their goods on
consignment from competing Northern mercantile houses,
bought supplies and "furnished" them on credit to farmers,
taking a lien on the farmer' s crop for security. Farmers learned
that the i nterest they were paying on everything they consumed
l i mi ted their lives i n a new and terrible way; the rates i mposed
were frequently well in excess of 1 00 per cent annually, some
times over 200 per cent. The system had subtle ramifcations
which made this mountain of interest possible. At the heart of
the process was a simple two-price system for all items-one
price for cash customers and a second and higher price for
credit customers. Interest of 25 to 50 per cent would then be
charged on this i nfated base. An item carrying a "cash price"
of 1 0 cents would be sold on credit for 1 4 cents and at the end
of the year woul d bring the merchant, after the addition of, say,
33 per cent interest, a total of 1 9 cents-almost double the
standard purchasing price. Once a farmer had signed his fi rst
crop lien he was i n bondage to his merchant as long as he failed
to pay out, because "no competitor would sell the farmer so
. much as a side of fat back, except for cash, since the only
acceptable security, his crop, had been forfeited. " The farmer
rarely was even aware of the disparity between cash and credit
prices, for he usually had no basis for comparison; "many of the
merchants did a credit business so exclusively they set no cash
prices. " The farmer soon learned that the prudent judgment
or whim-of his furnishing merchant was the towering reality
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
of his life. Did his wife want some calico for her single "Sunday
dress," or did his famil y need a slab of bacon? Whether he got
them or not depended on the invisible scales on which the
merchant across the counter weighed the central question
would the farmer' s crop yield enough money to pay of the
accumulating furnishing debt?
In ways people outside the South had difculty perceiving, the
crop lien system became for mi l lions of Southerners, white and
black, little more than slavery. " When one of these mortgages
has been recorded against the Southern farmer," wrote a con
temporary, "he had usually passed into a state of helpless
peonage . . . . From this time unti l he has paid the last dollar of
his indebtedness, he is subject to the constant oversight and
direction of the merchant. " The man with the ledger became
the farmer' s sole signifcant contact with the outside world.
Across the South he was known as "the furnishing man" or "the
advancing man. " To black farmers he became "the Man. "
The account books of Southern furnishing merchants present
grim evidence not only of the gradations of privation between
blacks and whites, but the near universality of privation. In South
Carolina low farm prices forced a mi ddle-class white farmer,
S. R. Simonton, to open a credit account with the furnishing
house ofT. G. Patrick. While Simonton's frst year's expenditures
were $9 1 6. 63, declining prices helped reduce his after-sale
"credits" to only $307. 3 1 , leaving an unpaid balance of over
$600, which he settled by note. The subsequent annual credit
extended to him by the furnishing merchant did not exceed
$400 per year, showing that he had sufered a drop of well over
1 00 per cent in his standard of living. Still, he was never able to
"pay out. " After seven years the debt was settled by a transfer
of land to the furnishing merchant. Simonton had become a
landless tenant.
Detailed records of the account of a Mississippi Negro farmer
over seventeen years reveal an even grimmer degradation. Matt
Brown purchased his supplies from the Jones Store at Black
Hawk, Mississippi, from 1 884 to 1 90 1 . Brown was not free of
debt at any time i n those years. He began the year 1 892 with an
indebtedness of $226. 84 held over from previous years. At fnal
24 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
settlement on January 3, 1 893, hi s obligation had increased to
$452 -4 1 . Though his credits during the year from selling cotton,
cutting wood, clearing land, and hauling for the store amounted
to $ 1 7 1 , his expenditures for the year were $353 for household
and farm supplies. By 1 895 his credit standing had diminished
to the point that his twelve-month expenditure for food totaled
$8. 42. I n that year he spent $27. 25 on clothing, $38. 30 on farm
and household supplies, 95 cents on drugs, $2. 35 for a cash
advance, and $ 1 2 . 08 on miscellaneous supplies. Matt Brown' s
account, i t appears, was ultimately settled by a mortgage. A 1 905
entry is for a cofn and burial supplies. The record was
permanently closed by "marking it of."
For mi llions of farmers of both races throughout the South,
those were the realities of l ife i n the last half of the nineteenth
century. Southern metropolitan newspapers told farmers they
"bought too much and sold too little," but farmers who spent
$ 1 0. 00 to $50. 00 a year for food knew better. They could have
cited another statistic: the Southern cotton crop of 8. 6 mi llion
bales in 1 890 brought $429. 7 mi llion to the farmers; the next
year' s crop, 9. 0 mi llion bales, brought only $391 . 5 mi llion-a
decrease of $38. 2 mi llion despite an increase in production.
New South editorialists said that the Southern farmer should
diversify and grow perishable food supplies as well as cotton,
but both the farmer and the furnishing merchant knew better.
The compelling fact was that an acre of corn produced even less
fnancial return than an acre of cotton di d. Conservatives who
advised the farmer assumed he possessed a degree of autonomy
that he si mpl y did not have. Furnishing merchants demanded
that their debtors plant the one certain cash crop, cotton. One
phrase defned the options: "No cotton, no credit. " Moreover,
gold bug newspaper editors rarely focused on the reality that
the government' s reliance on the gold standard meant defation,
which translated into the long postwar fal l of farm prices.
Farmers, caught between high interest rates and low commodity
prices, lost almost all hope of ever being able to pay out. Every
year more and more of them lost their land to their furnishing
merchant and became his tenants. Merchants began to consider
a "run" of ffty to one hundred tenants on their lands as normal .
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
They gradually acquired title to steadily increasing portions of
the lands of the country. As thousands, then mi llions descended
into the world of landless tenantry, the annual output expanded,
but both the soil and those who worked it gradually became
exhausted as a result of the desperate cycle of crop l ien, furnish,
cotton harvest, failure to pay out, and new crop l ien.
3
I t is not surprising that men were l ured or driven west. Yet even
the great migration that began in the 1 870' S did not alter the
guiding principles of the new system. One Southern historian
described the bitter logic which had made cotton a new king of
poverty: "Let . . . the soil be worn out, let the people move to
Texas . . . let almost anything happen provided all possible
cotton is produced each year. "
For simpl e, geographical reasons, "Going West" for most
Southerners meant, i n the fami l iar phrase of the time, "Gone to
Texas. " The phrase became so common that often only the
initials "G. T. T." scrawled across a nailed-shut door were
needed to convey the message. White and Negro farmers by the
thousands drove down the plank roads and rutted trails of the
rural South, westward across the Mississippi River to the Sabine
and into the pine forests of East Texas. The quest for new land
and a new start drove lengthening caravans of the poor-almost
1 00,000 every year of the 1 870's-ever deeper into Texas,
through and beyond the "piney woods" and on into the hill
country and prairie Cross Timbers. There the men and women
of the South stepped out into the world of the Great Plai ns. I t
was there that the culture of a new people's politics took form
in nineteenth-century America.
In September 1 877 a group of farmers gathered at the
Lampasas County farm of J. R. Allen and banded together as
the "Knights of Reliance." In the words of one of the founders,
they were all "comparatively poor" and the farm organization
was the "frst enterprise of much importance undertaken. " The
overriding purpose, he later said, was to organize to

!1l
speedily educate ourselves" i n preparation for the day "when all
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
the balance of labor's products become concentrated into the
hands of a few, there to constitute a power that would enslave
posterity. " I n his view, the farmers needed to organize a new
institution for America, a "grand social and political palace
where liberty may dwell and justice be safely domiciled. " How
to achieve such a useful "palace" was, of course, the problem.
The new organization soon changed its name to "The Farmers
Al liance," borrowed freel y from the rituals of older farm
organizations, and spread to surrounding counties. In the
summer of 1 878, a "Grand State Farmers Al l iance" was formed.
The growing county and state structure was to be a rural
organization of self-help, but workable models were in short
supply. How to cope with the lien system? Some of the farmers
decided politics was the answer and they tried to lead the order
into the Greenback Party. But the Lampasas-based Alliance
collapsed in 1 880, sundered by the sectional loyalties of many
members to "the party of the fathers."
The Alliance experience thus yielded its frst lesson: immediate
political insurgency was not the answer; too many of the poor
had strong cultural memories that yoked them to traditional
modes of political thought and behavior. Some means would
have to be found to cut such ties before any kind of genuine
people's politics was possible.
In the next two years, the organizational sprouts i n frontier
regions north of Lampasas, unhampered by internal political
divisions, slowly took root as 1 20 alliances came into being in
twelve counties. But the crop lien system, supported as it was by
the entire structure of American commerce, proved an over
whelming obstacle. Though Alliancemen wanted to do some
thing to solve the underlying problems of agricultural credit,
their fedgling cooperative eforts at buying and selling were
treated with contempt by merchants. I n 1 883, the Alliance lost
what momentum it had achieved-onl y thirty suballiances were
represented at the state meeting.
I nto this situation stepped the frst Populist, S. O. Daws. A
thirty-six-year-old Mississippian, Daws had developed an inter
esting kind of personal political self-respect. Raised in the
humiliating school of the crop lien system, he did not believe
the inherited economic folkways were fair, and he though

he
. 1\\ "
r
( THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
', had the right to say so. I ndeed, Daws, a compelling speaker, was
dedicated to instilling a similar kind of political self-respect in
his fellow farmers. Late in 1 883 the Alliance named Daws to a
newly created position, that of "Traveling Lecturer," and en
dowed the new chief organizer with broad executive powers to
appoint suborganizers and sub lecturers for every county in the
state of Texas.
It proved a decisive step. Within a month, Daws had energized
ffty dormant suballiances i nto sending delegates to a state
meeting where the entire cooperative efort was put under
review. If merchants practiced monopolistic techniques by re
fusing to deal with the Al l iance, perhaps Alliance members
could reply in kind. A "trade store" system was agreed upon
wherein Alliance members woul d contract to trade exclusively
with one merchant. The range of discussion was broad: it
extended to the role of Al l iance county business agents and
Alliance joint stock companies, to the opposition of cotton buyers
and the resistance of manufacturers who refused to sell to the
Alliance except through middlemen, and even to the refusal of
townsmen to sell farmers land for Alliance-owned cotton yards
where they might store their crops while awaiting higher prices.
Determined to test the trade store system, Alliance delegates
dispersed from the February meeting with new hope. Daws's
eforts had been so impressive that his ofce and his appointment
powers were confrmed by the convention.
The spring of 1 884 saw a rebirth of the Alliance. Daws
traveled far and wide, denouncing credit merchants, railroads,
trusts, the money power, and capitalists. The work-worn men
and barefooted women who gathered to hear the Alliance
lecturer were not impressive advertisements for the blessings of
the crop lien or the gold standard. Such audiences did not
require detailed proof of the evils of the two-price credit system
and the other sins of the furnishing merchants. They had known
"hard times" all their lives. But Daws could climax his recitation
of exploitation with a call for a specifc act: join the Al l iance and
form trade stores. Were monopolistic trusts charging exorbitant
prices for fertilizers and farm implements? Join the Al l iance
and form cooperative buying committees. Did buyers under
weigh the cotton, overcharge for sampling, inspecting, c1assify-
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
ing, and handling? Join the Alliance and form your own cotton
yard. The new urgency was evidenced not only by a steady
increase i n suballiances to over 200, but also i n the style of the
men who materialized as presidents and lecturers of the recently
organized county structures-men like Daws: articulate, i ndig
nant, and capable of speaking a language the farmers under
stood.
4
Foremost among them was a thirty-four-year-old farmer named
William Lamb. Beyond his red hair and ruggedly handsome
appearance, there was at fi rst glance little to distinguish Lamb
from scores of other men who had come west to escape the
post-Civil War blight of the South. A Tennessean, Lamb had
arrived on the frontier at the age of sixteen, settling frst near
what was to become the town of Bowie i n Montague County.
Like most rural Southern youths, Lamb had had almost no
formal education-a total of twenty-five days. After working as
a hired man, he married, rented l and, and began farming in
Denton County. In 1 876 he "preempted" a farmstead in Mon
tague County, living alone part of the time i n a rude log hut
until he coul d cl ear the land and buil d a homestead. He farmed
by day and read by night, acquiring the strengths and weaknesses
of self-taught men. When he spoke publicly, his sentences were
overly formal, the syntax sometimes losing its way; in the early
days, when he began to write in behalf of political causes, the
strength of his ideas had to overcome impediments of grammar
and spelling. To Daws, who was seeking other men of energy,
those faul ts were no liability; the younger man had strength of
mi nd, and Daws realized it when the two men met in 1 884.
Lamb knew the extent of the agrarian disaster in the Sout h, and
he had an urge to do something about it. He was ripe for the
missions Daws was ready to give him. By the time of the 1 884
state meeting, Lamb's work in organizing suballiances in his own
county had attracted enough attention that a new statewide
ofce was created specifi cally for him. He was made "state
lecturer" while Daws continued in the role of traveling lecturer.
William Lamb emerged in 1 884-85 as a man of enormous
energy and tenacity. As president of the Montague County
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
Alliance he had organized over 1 00 suballiances by October
1 885, a record that eclipsed even Daws's performance in his
own county. Lamb soon surpassed his mentor i n other ways. As
a spokesman for farmers, the red-haired organizer thought i n
the broadest tactical terms. He early saw the value of a coalition
between the Al l iance and the Knights of Labor, which was then
beginning to organize railroad workers in North Texas. Lamb
also pushed cooperative buying and selling, eventually becoming
the Alliance's most aggressive advocate of this program. And,
after the business community had shown i ts hostility to Alliance
cooperatives, he was the frst of the Alliance leaders to react
politically-and i n the most sweeping terms. Encouraged by his
association with Daws and the Alliance, Lamb demonstrated that
he, too, had developed a new kind of personal political self
respect.
The increasing momentum of the idea of the Alliance coop
erative inexorably shaped the lives of Daws and Lamb as they,
in turn, shaped the lives of other men. They spent their lives in
political reform, and in so doing became allies, exhorted their
comrades, crowded them, sometimes challenged them, and
performed the various acts that men i n the grip of a moral idea
are wont to perform. They infl uenced each other steadily, the
i mpetus initially coming from Daws, as he introduced Lamb into
an environment where the younger man' s political horizons
could be broadened, then from Lamb, as he pressed his views
to the point of crisis and carried Daws along with him unti l the
older man could use his infl uence and creativity to resolve the
crisis and preserve the forward momentum of the organization.
In the personal relationship between William Lamb and S. O.
Daws a rhythm was discernible: along the course they set toward
independent political action, Daws was always a step or two
behind; at the moment of triumph, when the third party was
formed i n the South, Lamb, not Daws, held the gavel.
5
The young organizer learned in 1 884-85 that cooperative buying
and selling was easier to plan at country meetings than to carry
out. Town merchants opposed cooperative schemes, as did
:
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
manufacturers and cotton buyers. I ndeed, the entire commercial
world was hostile to the concept. Cooperation was not the
American way; competition was.
But i f the new movement did not invariably achieve immediate
economic gains, the cooperative idea spurred organizing work.
The 1 88 S state meeting of the Alliance was the largest gathering
of farmers ever held in Texas to that time. The order adopted
a program calling on all members "to act together as a uni t in
the sale of their product" and to that end moved to have each
county alliance set apart a special day for selling. Thus, Alli
ancemen began what they called "bulking. " These mass cotton
sales were widely advertised and cotton buyers contacted in
advance, for the Alliance sought a representative turnout of
a
.
g
.
ents who mi ght themselves engage in a modicum of compe
tItIOn.
The cooperative movement clearly stirred a new kind of
collective self-confi dence among Alliance farmers : county trade
committees amassed soo, 1 000, and in some instances as many
as l S00 bales of cotton at Al l iance warehouses. Because of the
convenience of bul king, particularly to foreign buyers, the trade
committees asked for premium prices, S to 1 0 cents per 1 00
pounds above prevailing levels. Though results were mixed, the
successful sales gave the farmers a sense of accomplishment.
After one mass sale at Fort Worth had brought S cents per 1 00
above what individual farmers had received, Alliancemen were
ecstatic. As one metropolitan daily reported it, their "empty
wagons returned homeward bearing blue fags and other evi
dence of rejoicing. " It did not take long for such stories to
spread through the farming districts, and each success brought
the Alliance thousands of new members. Cooperation worked
in more ways than one.
But though bul king helped, and was a marvelous boon to the
self-respect of individual farmers and to the growing collective
self-confdence represented by the Alliance movement, it did
not eliminate the furnishing merchant, nor did it fundamentally
alter the two-price credit system. Al l iancemen slowly discovered
they needed to establish an internal method of communication
which would arm the Alliance purchasing agent with hard facts
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
so that he could i nform manufacturers of the size and value of
the Alliance market for their products. Late in 1 88S the Al l iance
moved to centralize its cooperative procurement efort by naming
its own purchasing agent. The Alliance state president appointed
William Lamb as the ofcial "Traveling Agent" to represent the
order "for sale of farm implements and machinery through the
state where the Alliance is organized. "
Though the long-term efects of that decision were to change
the whole direction of the Farmers Alliance, the results in the
short run were disappointing. Despite zealous eforts, Lamb
failed in his attempts to establish direct purchasing arrangements
with commercial America. It was the credit problem again. "I
can furnish wagons in car-load lots cheap for cash, but as yet I
have no ofer on time," Lamb reported to his Al l iance brethren.
The young lecturer pondered the implications of the dilemma
and decided the ultimate answer had to lie in cooperative
manufacturing eforts by the Alliance itself! His plan, based on
his loss of faith in the good will of merchants, scarcely constituted
a serious threat to the commercial world, but it represented the
fi rst public hint that his political perspective was shifting.
And he was not alone. The "Erath County Al l iance Lumber
Company, " with 2800 Al liance members, announced "we stand
united . . . . We can purchase anything we want through our
agent, dry goods, and groceries, farm implements and machin
ery. We have a market for all of our wheat, oats and corn. "
Meanwhile, the Tarrant County Alliance announced the orga
nization of its forty-sixth suballiance and claimed a total of 2000
members throughout the county.
"The Farmers Al liance is making its power felt in this state
now," a country newspaper reported approvingly. And, indeed,
by October 1 88S, the order reported that the total number of
suballiances stood at 8 1 S. Each suballiance had its lecturer; each
county had its county Alliance and county lecturer. The message
of agrarian sel f-help now sounded from hundreds of platforms.
Yet the outside world knew almost nothing of the growing
energy of the Alliance cooperative movement. Few in the power
centers of Texas or the nation were remotely aware of the
gathering impatience among the members of a rural organization
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
calling itself the Farmers Alliance. I ronically, it was the con
servatives of the Patrons of Husbandry-better known as the
Grange-who became the fi rst to sense the new mood in the
rural districts of the state. The route to this perception was a
painful one. I nitially, Grangers had watched with equanimity
the early stirrings of the Farmers Al l iance and, courteously, if
condescendingly, had rebufed suggestions for cooperation. But
soon complacency within the Grange leadership gave way to
alarm, then to anger, and fnally to helpless, private denuncia
tion. Nothing availed. Within thirty-six months the Grange was
all but obliterated in Texas.
The order probably deserved a less ignominious fate. The
Grange had ideas about cooperation too, though they were very
cautious ideas. It had spread across the Midwestern plains in
the early 1 870' s, but when the new form of agrarian assertion
manifested itself in political action, the order suffered internal
divisions and lost its organizing momentum. The basic problem
was that the Grange system of cash-only cooperative stores,
based on the English Rochdale plan, simply failed to address
the real ills of farmers. Because of the appreciating value of the
currency-and attendant lower farm prices-most farmers sim
ply could not participate in cash-only cooperatives. They did
not have the cash. The unpleasant truth was that a cash store
was of little help if one had no money and had to deal with
credit merchants. By failing to alleviate the farmers' distress,
the Grange soon lost the bulk of its membership. The Farmers
Alliance, in contrast, had begun to grow: its membership total
of 1 0, 000 in the summer of 1 884 had soared to 50,000 by the
end of 1 885.
6
I t is appropriate, at the moment of Al l iance ascendency, to
explore the process that had produced an emerging mass
movement of farmers. Tactically, the rise of the Al liance was a
result of its determination to go beyond the cash stores of the
Grange and make pioneering eforts i n cooperative marketing
as well as purchasing. The cooperative efort was helpful because
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 33
it recruited farmers by the thousands. But in a deeper political
sense the Al liance organization was experimenting in a new kind
of mass autonomy. As such, i t was engaged in a cultural struggle
to redefne the form and meaning of l i fe and politics in America.
Out of the individual sense of self of leaders like S. O. Daws and
William Lamb the Alliance had begun to develop a collective
sense of purpose symbolized by the ambitious strivings of scores
of groups who were anxious to show the world why they
i ntended to "stand united. " Inexorably, the mutually supportive
dynamics inherent in these individual and collective modes of
behavior began to produce something new among the huge
mass that Alliancemen called "the plain people. " This consisted
of a new way of looking at society, a way of thinking that
represented a shaking of of inherited forms of deference. The
achievement was not an easy one. The farmers of the Alliance
had spent much of their lives in humiliating circumstances;
repeated dealings with Southern merchants had inculcated in
security in generations of farming people. They were ridiculed
for their poverty, and they knew it. They were called "hayseeds"
and they knew that, too. But they had also known for decades
that they could do nothing about their plight because they were
locked i nto the fabric of the lien system and crushed by the
mountain of interest they had been forced to pay. But now, in
their Alliance, they had found something new. That something
may be described as individual self-respect and collective self
confdence, or what some would call "class-consciousness. " Al l
are useful i f imprecise terms to describe a growing political
sensibility, one free of deference and ridicule. Such an intuition
shared by enough people is, of course, a potentially powerful
force. I n , whatever terminology this intuition is described, it
clearly represents a seminal kind of democratic instinct; and it
was this instinct that emerged in the Alliance in 1 884-85'
I n the succeeding eighteen months their new way of looking
at things flowered into a mass expression of a new political
vision. We may call it (for that is what it was) the movement
culture of Populism. This culture involved more than just t he
bulking of cotton. I t extended to frequent Alliance meetings t o
plan the mass sales-meetings where the whole family t!,
34 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
where the twilight suppers were, i n the early days; laid out for
ten or twenty members of the suballiance, or for hundreds at
a county Al l iance meeting, but which soon grew into vast
spectacles; long trains of wagons, emblazoned with suballiance
banners, stretching literally for miles, trekking to enormous
encampments where fi ve, ten, and twenty thousand men and
women listened intently to the plans of their Alliance and talked
among themselves about those plans. At those encampments
speakers, with growing confdence, pioneered a new political
language to describe the "money trust," the gold standard, and
the private national banking system that underlay all of their
troubles i n the lien system.
How is a democratic culture created? Apparently i n such
prosaic, powerful ways. When a farm family's wagon crested a
hill en route to a Fourth of Jul y "Al l iance Day" encampment
and the occupants looked back to see thousands of other fami l ies
trailed out behind them i n wagon trains, the thought that "the
Alliance is the people and the people are together" took on
transformi ng possibilities. Such a moment-and the Alliance
experience was to yield hundreds of them-instilled hope in
hundreds of thousands of people who had been without it. The
successes of the cooperative efort gave substance to the hope,
but i t was the hope itself, the sense of autonomy i t encouraged
and the sense of possibility i t stimulated, that lay at the heart of
Populism. I f "the Alliance was the people and the people were
together," who could not see that the people had created the
means to change the circumstances of their lives? This was the
soul of the Populist faith. The cooperative movement of the
Alliance was its source.
In 1 884-85, the Al liance began developing its own rhythm of
internal "education" and its own broadening political conscious
ness among leaders and followers. The movement culture would
develop its own mechanism of recruitment (the large-scale credit
cooperative), its own theoretical analysis (the greenback i nter
pretation of the American version of fnance capitalism), its own
solution (the sub-treasury l and and loan system), its own symbols
of politics (the Al l iance "Demands" and the Omaha Platform) ,
and its own political institution (the People's Party). Grounded
i n a common experience, nurtured by years of experimentation
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
35
and self-education, it produced a party, a platform, a specifc
new democratic ideology, and a pathbreaking political agenda
for the American nation. But none of these things were the
essence of Populism. At bottom, Populism was, quite simply, an
expression of self-respect. I t was not an individual trait, but a
collective one, surfacing as the shared hope of mil l ions organized
by the Alliance into its cooperative crusade. This individual and
collective striving generated the movement culture that was
Populism.
7
The frst spectacular fowering of this culture came in 1 886
against the backdrop of a bitter labor controversy that has come
down i n history as the "Great Southwest Strike." A bold new
assertiveness on the part of emerging Alliance spokesmen was
essential to this fl owering, but less so than the new cooperative
experiences within the membership that had the efect of
sanctioning radical ism. These dynamics afected conservative
agrarians, an embattled labor organization, a unilaterally called
and richly controversial boycott, the actions of one of the nation's
most notorious robber barons, the most violent labor struggle
in the history of the frontier South, the reactions of the metro
politan press, and, ul timately, the structure and purpose of the
Farmers Alliance itself. Given its complexity, the emergence of
the mass behavior the nation was later to know as Populism is
perhaps most easily perceived as i t happened-one step at a
time.
For decades as the nation industrialized following the Civil
War, American industrial workers, i n ways not dissimilar from
those of farmers, had groped for ways to defend themselves
against the forms of exploitation associated with the new cor
porate system. The most numerically signifcant of these eforts
developed through an institution known as the Knights of Labor.
I n 1 885, the Knights achieved, or thought they had achieved,
a critical breakthrough. They had forced Jay Goul d, railroad
magnate and guiding spirit of the Missouri-Pacific lines, to honor
a union contract. The cry "we made Jay Gould recognize us"
was compelling, and i n 1 885-86 the Knights used i t to mul tiply
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
their national membership from 1 00,000 to 700,000. But in the
spring of 1 886, Jay Gould, through his general manager, H. M.
Hoxie, moved to crush the union by precipitating a conflict.
The struggle began when Hoxie fired a union spokesman in
Texas for missing work while attending a union meeting-after
the railroad had given him permission t do so. The union' s
members, their very right to existence challenged, rallied to
defend their organization. The strike began in East Texas and
quickly spread across the West. Gould moved to keep his
railroads operating through strikebreakers who had been dep
utized as peace ofcers by numerous cooperating public oficials.
The workers were not of a mood to accept this quietly, for the
very future of their union was at stake.
From beginning to end, the Great Southwest Strike was a series
of minor and major battles between armed strikers and armed
deputies and militiamen, i nterspersed wi th commando-like raids
on company equipment by bands of workers. Thousands were
indicted, hundreds were jailed, and many died. Workers " killed"
railroad engines by displacing various connections-in the words
of one indictment, "in such a manner as to unft said engine for
use by said company. " Major newspapers denounced the strikers,
suggested that their grievances were i maginary, praised Hoxie's
"magnanimity," and repeatedl y predicted the i mminent return
of the men to their jobs. It was within those shifting emotional
currents that Al l iance radicalism emerged.
I t turned out that William Lamb' s experiences as the Al l iance's
first purchasing agent had brought him to a new plateau of
analysis concerning the farmer's place i n industrial society. As
constituted, cooperatives could not work because the commercial
world possessed a monopoly of the money supply and efectively
withheld credit. Unless farmers did something truly bold, they
were locked into the lien system forever. For Lamb, the solution
was a national farmer-labor coalition to restructure American
politics. The Al l iance had to get into politics, but frst it had to
cement its relations with the workers of the Knights of Labor.
The "plain people" needed to be united. To that end, Lamb, as
president of the Montague County Al liance, issued a boycott
proclamation in support of the Knights of Labor. The Alliance
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 37
state president, Andrew Dunlap, i mmediately replied that Lamb
had no authority to order a statewide boycott and the Alliance
state secretary followed with an oficial denial that the Alliance
had "anything to do with the boycott. " A battle was on to defne
the meaning and purpose of the farmers movement.
Lamb's boycott was only a piece of a larger question that tested
the political orientation and sophistication of the entire mem
bership. Arrayed on one si de were the Al liance's top ofcialdom,
including the editor of its state journal, J . N. Rogers of the
Jacksboro Rural Citizen. Rogers possessed some traditional
American cultural presumptions. He wrote that advocates of
boycotts were "busy bodies i n other men's business. When
inexperienced men take the management of commerce i nto
their hands, then woe to the commerce and business i nterests
of our land . . . continue the strikes and we will continue the
hard times. " To Rogers, as to President Dunlap, i t was unthink
able that the farmers of the Alliance woul d place their promising
organization i n jeopardy by allying it with the controversial
Knights of Labor, an organization that was daily being pilloried
i n the metropolitan press. But, as often happens i n mass
institutions, titular leaders can gradually drift a good distance
from the sentiments of their members. The cooperative crusade
had taught many farmers to think i n a new way about credit
merchants, bankers-and railroad impresarios l i ke Jay Goul d.
And William Lamb, as state lecturer and principal purchasing
ofcer of the Al l iance, was i n touch with those sentiments in the
suballiances much more intimately than either the state president
or the editor of its ofcial journal. Lamb accepted battle.
In an open letter to the Alliance membership, Lamb set out
to clarify Rogers's thinking on the issues at stake. In the process,
he directly challenged Alliance President Andrew Dunlap and
brought all the issues confronting the Al l iance i nto as sharp a
focus as his skill as a writer permitted hi m. These issues included
the failure of the cooperative buying program, the resulting
need for political action, the advisability of political coalition
with the Knights of Labor, and the relationship of the Alliance
rank and fle to its leadership. His letter was nothing less than
a review of the purpose of the farmers movement.
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
He began with a blunt appraisal of the politics of the Citizen:
"We did not expect to please al l members of the Al l iance and
especially the Ed. of our ofcial journal, as we have never yet
seen where he has come out and shown his true colors editorially
on the labor question." And he redefned the relationship
between members of the order and the state president:
we think al l members should show the world which side they
are on . . . and if our State President don't wish to do so, we
know that it will not kill him to say so, and do it in a kind
manner, and not tell us that we are unwise or fools . . . . We
also know that i t is the duty of the President to preside with
impartiality . . . .
Then Lamb analyzed the i mmediate policy question. His
experience as the order's central purchasing agent shaped his
attitude. "The writer of this article has many letters from
factories today, to the efect that they will not trade with the
Farmers Alliance except through their [own] agents." He was
anxious for Alliancemen to ponder the implications of this
reality and to set a new course i n response. I n one long,
breathless sentence he indicated that he had made his own
decision.
Knowing that the day is not far distant when the Farmers
Alliance will have to use Boycott on manufacturers in order
to get goods direct, we think it is a good time to help the
Knights of Labor in order to secure their help in the near
future, knowing as we do that the Farmers Alliance can't get
a plow today except it come through two or three agents, and
feeling assured that the only way we can break this chain is to
let them alone, and let them make their plows and wear them
out themselves.
Having explained the situation as he saw it, Lamb addressed
what he regarded as the leadership's inadequate response.
I feel satisfed that I know more about what is going 011 against
us than the State President of the Alliance or our Ed. , either.
. . . Would say that one Sub-Alliance in our CUllly killed a
weekly paper sometime ago, and we are looking forward for
men that will advocate our interests, those who arc working
against us are no good for us.
'
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 39
Lamb's cutting criticism was grounded in moral outrage, and
in closing he made his underlying attitude explicit:
we know of a certainty that manufacturers have organized
against us, and that is to say if we don't do as they say, we can't
get the
i
r goods . . . . Then for i t to be said that we are unwise
to let them alone, we can't hold our pens still until we have
exposed the matter and let it be known what it is we are
working for.
[Signed] W. R. Lamb.
Alliance radicalism-Populism-began with this letter. The
phrases, directed at so many di ferent yet related targets, formed
a manifesto of insurgent thought, summarized in the conclusion
that "those who are working against us are no good for us." The
obstacles that had to be overcome were clearly, if not always
grammatically, delineated: editors who failed to show their "true
colors on the labor question," presidents who did not know
"what is going on against us," and people who failed to realize
that it was "a good time to help the Knights of Labor in order
to secure their help i n the near future. "
But Lamb' s open letter to the Al l iance journal was more than
a political statement. His argument refected a new conception
about the farmers' place i n American society. The farmer as
producer-entrepreneur and small capitalist-the "hardy yeo
man" of a thousand pastoral descriptions-is nowhere visible i n
Lamb's view. This traditional portrait, dating from a simpler
Jefersonian era and still lingering in the social tradition of the
Grange, was patently out of place to a man who saw society
dominated by manufacturers and their "agents." To Lamb, the
farmer of the new industrial age was a worker, and the "labor
question" was the central issue on which editors, presidents, and
others were expected to show their "true colors. " It was a simple
matter of self-respect. Once such a perspective was attained, it
was axiomatic that the organized farmers of the Alliance should
join forces with the organized workers of the Knights of Labor.
I n the new era of business centralization, farmers who continued
to aspire to friendship and parity with the commercial world
were simply failing to comprehend "what is going on agail l st
us. " Alliancemen had to put aside such naIvete: "all merbns
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
should show the world which side they are on. " Lamb was asking
the farmers of Texas to achieve a new evaluation of what they
were so that they might manage a fresh assessment of their
relationship with other participants i n industrial American so
ciety. Did the Al l iance have the collective self-confi dence to stand
against the established order? Lamb' s sense of moral authority
"we can't hold our pens still"-ensured that he would carry the
struggle over Alliance tactics to a conclusion.
Once joined, the battle was fought with considerable vigor.
Alliancemen defi ned themselves politically, were defned by
others, and began to ponder the diferences between the two.
In the process, what was still a regional organization of farmers
developed a new sense of mission. Various alliances passed
resolutions favoring the boycott, while Rogers asserted i n the
Citizen that i t "was striking at the fundamental principles of
American liberty. It is putting burdens on the farmers that they
are not able to bear. I t is tyranny. " Late i n March Al l iance
President Dunlap assembled part of his correspondence with
Lamb into one long account and dispatched his own summary
to the Citizen and t other papers i n North Texas. He "individ
ually and ofcially" declared the boycott order by "this man,
W. R. Lamb" to be nul l and voi d. He called Lamb's unauthorized
proclamation of the boycott an act of "unblushing impudence. "
But support for the workers was growing in dozens of Al l iances
and went beyond boycotting to include joint political meetings
with Knights of Labor assemblies and direct aid to strikers.
Al l iances i n an East Texas county contributed farm produce
and even money to strikers, and the practice soon spread to
other Alliances along the trackage of the railroad. While outside
observers pondered the i mpl ications of organized farmers bring
ing food to organized strikers, Alliancemen and Knights joined
in a "Laboring Men's Convention" i n President Dunlap' s home
county, where they laid the groundwork for an independent
political. ticket.
The state's press drew various conclusions from these evi
dences of Alliance solidarity with the strikers. The Waco Examiner
blamed the Alliance for the strike's continuation: "But for the
aid strikers are receiving from farmers alliances in the state and
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 4
'
contributions outside, the Knights would have gone back to
work long ago. " The Dallas Mercur, strongly pro-labor, was
pleased: "The Farmers Alliances of Texas are generally regard

d
as the spinal column of this great railroad war. " The Austm
Statesman worried about the political i mplications. "Unless some
eruption occurs between the Knights of Labor and the Farmers
Alliance, " reasoned the paper, "the afairs of Texas stand a good
chance of falling into the hands of those organizations at the
state elections next fall . "
But Alliance lecturers were not heeding city journalists. Said
one: "Thanks to Providence for sending us so many good
lawyers, honest bankers, and unsophisticated editors who are so
good and kind to bestow their eforts to guide and direct us n
the ways of prosperity. " He added in anger, "Show us wherem
either of the great political parties refect any of the features of
the honest face of toil . . . Shame on your boasted institutions of
liberty. " A new way of looking at things, clearly.
But the Knights, despite all they could do, found no way to
stop Jay Gould from hiring strikebreakers. I t was a problem
that was to defeat the American labor movement for another
half-century. As railroad trafc, protected by armed guards,
returned to normal and defeat loomed before the Knights of
Labor, a North Texas Alliance attacked Rogers for trying "to
arouse the Farmers Alliance against the Knights of Labor. " I n
a resolution that expressed the mid-strike mood of the order's
emerging left wing, the farmers concluded: "We know if the
Knights of Labor could receive all they deserve [of the supp
.
ort
of all the laboring classes, they would in the near future bnng
down the great monopolists and capitalists and emancipate the
toilers of the earth from the heavy burdens which they now
have to bear on account of organized capital . "
8
As tempers worsened, Alliancemen could agree on one thing
the order was growing. I n February, state ofcials placed the
membership at "about 55,000," and in March, as controversy
over the boycott heightened, the Citizen reported that Allianccs
42 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
were "on the increase very fast in the whole state. " But the
growing membership of the Alliance was balanced by the losses
i n the ranks of the Knights of Labor. I n May, the Great Southwest
Strike came to an end. No formal settlement was necessary. The
members of the union were utterly destitute, and the union itsel f
had been crushed. Most of t he leaders and hundreds of members
were i n jail. Those of the survivors who were acceptable to the
Gould management went back to work on company terms. The
Knights of Labor never recovered from its defeat at the hands
of Jay Gould and H. M. Hoxie. I n four years its 700, 000 national
membership dwindled to 1 LLLLL.
Within the Alliance, however, the organizing of farmers
accelerated. New leaders emerged, some of them possessed of
an activism that should have given Editor Rogers pause. On the
old farming frontier, the Alliance movement was led by Evan
Jones, an articulate farmer destined for national fame i n the
agrarian revolt. One resolution, written by Jones and passed
unanimously, fairly bristl ed:
Whereas combined capital by their unjust oppression of labor
are casting a gloom over our country and . . . Whereas we see
the unjust encroachments that the capitalists are making upon
the diferent departments of labor . . . we extend to the Knights
of Labor our hearty sympathies i n their manly struggle against
monopolistic oppression and . . . we propose to stand by the
Knights.
Throughout May the impulse toward political independence
spread through the North Texas Alliances as the order's top
leadership tried various experiments i n an efort to cope with
the restless energy. President Dunlap was fnally reduced to
issuing public pleas to the Alliance membership to abandon the
boycott he had tried to halt since January. He got nowhere.
The organizational father of the movement, S. O. Daws, took
an entirely diferent approach. At the height of the Dunlap
Lamb imbroglio, Daws attempted to serve as moderator: "Capital
is thoroughly organized, but when the laboring class begins to
organize, they call it communism and other hard names, which
is unjust. I am proud the morning sunlight of labor's freedom
is shining i n the political horizon of the east. " But as the "Al l iance
i n politics" issue reached the boili ng point, Daws decided the
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 43
order's activists had to have greater freedom of action i f the
Alliance was not to tear itself to pieces. His solution was suf
fciently conservative in its appearance and sufciently radical
i n its specifi c uses that it became the tactical foundation upon
which third-party advocates always thereafter rested their case.
Daws presented his political redefnition i n two sentences: "There
is a way to take part in politics without having i t in the order.
Call each neighborhood together and organize anti-monopoly
leagues . . . and nominate candidates for ofce. " The economy
of the message did not lessen the heavy ideological load it
carried. At frst glance the advice seemed not unlike the tradi
tional "nonpartisan" position which, since Lampasas, had con
sisted of instructing Al l iancemen to vote as they pleased as
individuals but to keep the order out of politics. But the phrase
"anti-monopoly leagues" i mparted a distinct ideological defni
tion to the kind of political efort Alliancemen should fashion
in their "neighborhoods. " Democratic conservatives would
hardly fl ock to anti-monopoly leagues. Presumably, the farmers
had learned something about the politics of Democrats in the
Great Southwest Strike. I f, during that struggle, the strikers had
been able to discover any comradeship with the state police
who were Democrats all, of course-any testimony of such
afection had been hard to hear above the gunfre. Democrats
could not be the friends of railroad workers because the old
party was dominated by railroad corporations.
The practical political efect of the three phrases-"call each
neighborhood together . . . organize anti-monopoly leagues
. . . and nominate candidates for ofce"-added up to a one
sentence mandate for insurgent political action. But S. O. Daws
was not merely a radical activist, he was an organizational leader.
I n summarizing his interpretation of what the order's stance
should be, Daws provided additional protection for the newly
defi ned momentum, once again using familiar Alliance termi
nology.
We believe in the farmer voting himself, and not being voted
by demogogues. . . . Beware of men who are trying to get
politics into this non-political organization, instead of trying
to devise means by which the farmers may have the opportunity
to emancipate themselves from the grasp of political tricksters.
44
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
This interpretation radically redefned the evils threatening the
order. The Alliance was to avoid demagogic politicians-but not
farmers who were "trying to devise means . . . to emancipate
themselves. " "Political tricksters" were to be feared-but farmers
who voted their own minds were not. His analysis turned on the
same perception of the role of farmers in an industrial society
that William Lamb had articulated in his defense of his boycott
proclamation. Daws was recommending to the farmers a course
of political action that corresponded with the new definition of
their class position and their growing self-respect. In 1 886,
Daw's ideological achievement was internally consistent, politi
cally artful , and highly germane to the immediate demands of
the agrarian movement. With a directness and a diplomacy no
Grange leader was ever able to achieve, he had confronted the
central dilemma of a "reform" organization saddled with a
"nonpolitical" tradition. In so doing, he redefned politics in a
way that provided necessary breathing room for the rival factions
at a time when the order was begi nning its greatest period of
growth. The speed with which the Alliance moved to exploit
this opportunity was dramatic: less than three months later the
Alliance, in convention assembled, promulgated an aggressive
seventeen-point political program that soon became famous in
the agrarian movement as the "Cleburne Demands. "
The ideological momentum toward the explosion at Cleburne
came from two events: William Lamb's boycott of January, which
threatened the unity of the Alliance, and S. O. Daw' s political
redefnition of May, which preserved i t on new grounds. Yet
the most signifcant development within the Alliance in the
spring of 1 886 was not that Lamb initiated certain events or that
Daws responded to them, but rather that thousands of farmers
began to express their hopes for themselves through tangible
political acts.
9
The emergence of William Lamb's radical leadership and the
development of the Daws formula for political action gave
direction to the organizational consolidation by the Alliance of
its farmer constituency in Texas in 1 886. I n the bitter aftermath
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 45
of the Great Southwest Strike, in the face of growing newspaper
awareness and concern, the order's growing corps of lecturers
combed rural Texas and recruited farmers by the tens of
thousands. After nine years of trial and error, the Alliance
organizers had a story to tell. Their organizational framework
had evolved since the founding days of 1 877. Their message of
economic cooperation drew from experiences dating back to the
early 1 880' S. The order's relationship to politics had become
increasingly focused since 1 884. By 1 886, Alliance lecturers were
speaking in behalf of a maturing idea. As the summer began,
the order counted 2000 suballiances and over 1 00,000 members.
As the Alliance came to envelop whole regions of the state, its
leaders reacted in new ways to the new facts of organizational
maturity. The top leadership-the president, state secretary,
and state treasurer-acquired the coloration of centrists. They
no longer engaged in harsh personal attacks on Alliance radicals.
But the order's county and local leaders changed, too. Closest
of all to the economic anguish at the bottom of Texas society,
they became increasingly activist. Day after day, the local lec
turers traveled through the poverty-stained backwaters of rural
Texas and met with farmers in country churches or crossroads
schoolhouses. The small stories of personal tragedy they heard
at such meetings were repeated at the next gathering, where, in
an atmosphere of genuine shared experience, they drew nods
of understanding. The most astute organizers soon learned that
farmers were more likely to l ink their own cause to another,
larger one whose spokesmen knew and understood their griev
ances. The difculty was the the lecturers themselves were
altered by these experiences. They were, in efect, seeing too
much. Hierarchical human societies organize themselves in ways
that render their victims less visible; for a variety of reasons,
including pride, the poor cooperate i n this process. But the very
duties of an Alliance lecturer exposed him to the grim realities
of agricultural poverty with a directness that drove home the
manifest need to "do something. " Repeated often enough, the
experience had an inexorable political efect: slowly, one by
one-and in many instances unknown as yet to each other
local lecturers came to form a nucleus of radicalism inside the
movement. As one new rebel defned matters, "we have an
CREATI NG A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
overproduction of poverty, barefooted women, political thieves
and many liars. There is no diference between legalized robbery
and highway robbery . . . . I you listen to other classes, you will
have only three rights . . . to work, to starve, and to die. "
In county after county, Alliance meetings begun in prayer
and ritual ended in political speeches, many of them delivered
by the suballiance chaplain, who frequently doubled as lecturer
and organizer in spreading the new social gospel. Voices re
peating the familiar doctrine of nonpartisanship became difcult
to hear above the mounting din of insurgent political language.
To the dismay of the order's old guard, Alliancemen by the
thousands had gone "in politics" on the eve of the Alliance state
convention in Cleburne. Whatever the majority of organized
farmers now thought, the state would soon know, for the years
of Alliance anonymity were over.
1 0
I n August 1 886 metropolitan reporters descended on the little
farming community of Cleburne, near Dallas, to learn what they
could of the large and strangely aggressive organization that
called itself the Farmers Alliance. Newsmen quickly discovered
that the order had little to ofer in sartorial elegance. Alliance
men, they reported, looked "grangy. " The appearance of the
delegates, however, did not diminish their obvious seriousness.
The fashioning of a proposed political program became the
work of the general "ways and means" committee, traditionally
known in Alliance circles as "The Committee for the Good of
the Order." The committee fi rst announced that it had changed
its name to the "Committee for the Good of the Order and
Demands. " The meaning of the additional two words was lodged
in the committee's report itself. The proposals were not like the
"petitions" which had historically characterized Grange resolu
tions touching on legislative matters. Rather, each of the com
mittee's proposals was preceded by two words: " We Demand. "
The committee presented its report to the convention, and a
long debate followed. I t was intermittently interrupted for other
business, including the election of ofcers. The order's activists,
perhaps aware that they had put enough before their colleagues
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE 47
for one convention, did not contest the ofcial slate, with its nice
balance of centrists and radicals. Andrew Dunlap was quietly
reelected in the midst of the very internal debate over politics
he had tried unsuccessfully to forestall.
But though the schism did not extend to personalities, the
Alliance made a fundamental shift on another matter more
directly related to the political question. The delegates, in
executive session, voted to dispense with J. N. Rogers and to
reject his Rural Citizen as their journal. They then placed the
imprimatur of the Alliance on the most outspoken anti-monopoly
newspaper in Texas, the Dallas Mercu
r.
With these matters decided, the delegates focused on the
committee's seventeen "demands" addressed to the governments
of Texas, the Uni ted States, and to President Dunlap himself.
The farmers sought "such legislation as shall secure to our
people freedom from the onerous and shameful abuses that the
industrial classes are now sufering at the hands of arrogant
capitalists and powerful corporations. " Five of them dealt with
labor issues, three with the power of railroads, and two with the
fi nancial problem. Of six demands relating to agricultural
matters, fve focused on land policy and the sixth on commodity
dealings i n agricultural futures. The fnal demand, directed to
Dunlap, could be classifi ed as "educational. "
The committee placed fi rst on its list a demand for the
recognition of trade unions and cooperative stores. Other labor
planks called for the establishment of a national bureau of labor
statistics "that we may arrive at a correct knowledge of t Ill'
educational, moral and fnancial condition of the labor masses, "
the passage of an improved mechanics l i en l aw "to compel
corporations to pay their employees according to contract , i l l
lawful money," and the abolition of the practice of leasing st at e
convicts t o private employers. The fi nal labor plank rC(" ( 1 I 1 1
mended a national conference of all labor organizatiol l s " t ( l
discuss such measures as may be of interest t o the l abol " i l l K
classes. "
The railroad planks betrayed agrarian anxiety over the P( l WI " I
of railroad lobbyists to manipulate state legislatures l i d I : i Y
enforcement agencies, as well as the ability of railroad fi l 1 e l l i l ' l
to proft from watered stock. Railroad property should I II "
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
assessed at "full nominal value of the stock on which the railroad
seeks to declare dividends. " The farmers also demanded an
interstate commerce law "to secure the same rates of freight to
all persons for te same kind of commodities" and to prevent
rebates and poolmg arrangements designed "to shut off com
petition. "
The fi ve land planks addressed agrarian grievances that
stemmed from the activities, state and national, of Scottish and
English cattle syndicates and domestic railroad land syndicates.
By i
.
886 bot
.
h grops had seriously di minished the remaining
pubhc domam avatlable for settlers. The committee demanded
hat all land held for speculative purposes should be taxed and,
m a brusque reference to usurious interest rates, urged that
they should be taxed "at such rates as they are ofered to
prchasers. " Also recommended were measures to prevent
ahens from speculating in American land and "to force titles
already acquired to be relinquished by sale to actual settlers. "
The commi ttee also demanded that forfeited railroad lands
"immediately revert to the government and be declared open
for p

rchase by actual settlers" and that fences be removed, "by

force i f necessary," from public school lands unlawfully fenced
by "cattle companies, syndicates, and every other form or name
of corpration. " The I

ne agricultural demand not relating to

land pohcy was one designed to end a capitalist activity that had
never found favor with American farmers-"the dealing in
futures of all agricultural products. "
The most explosive portion of the committee report concerned
the fnancial question. It revealed the extent to which Alliance
farmers were being radicalized by the Texas fnancial commu
nity's opposition to the Alliance cooperative movement. The
proposal callefor a fe+erally administered national banking
system ebacmg a feXible currency, to be achieved through
the s

bstltutlO
.
n of legal tender treasury notes for existing issues
of prIvate natIOnal banks. The sums involved should be issued
y the feera
.
1 treas

ry and regulated by the Congress to provide

pe
:
capia orculatlOn that shall increase as the population and
busmess mterests of the country expand. " In shon, the plank
advanced the doctrines of the Greenback Party. To address the
immediate problem of a severely contracted money suppl y, the
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
4
9
committee proposed, as a consciously infationist measure, the
"rapid extinguishment of the public debt through immediate
unl imited coinage of gold and silver" and "the tendering of
same without discrimination to t he public credi tors of the
nation. "
Though most Texas Alliancemen were Democrats, the ex
perience of their cooperative movement had persuaded a num
ber of them to make a fundamental shift in thei r political
out look. The greenback critique of American fnance capitalism
was not a doctrine one leared in "the party of the fathers. " For
the farmers, the plank was, in fact, a direct product of their new
awareness of the power of the commercial world t hat opposed
the cooperatives of the Alliance.
The seventeenth and final plank was a resolution rather than
a demand, but its wording refl ected the same concept of the
power relationships existing between Alliance members and
their state president as had characterized William Lamb's uni
lateral boycott proclamation six months earl ier: the president of
the Al liance was "directed" t o appoint a committee of three to
press the demands on the legislators of the state and nation and
"report progress" at the next meeting.
The committee report was the frst major document of thu
agrarian revolt. I ts presentation was both electrifying and divi
sive, and the resulting debate consumed the fnal two days of
the convention. Proceeding behind closed doors, the discussion
grew acrimonious as it became clear that a majority of tht'
delegates su pported all eventeen demands and were determined
to press the committee report to a formal vote. The fi nal tally
was 92 delegates in favor of the demands and 75 opposed. By
this margin the Alliance had launched a program of politial
"education"-the necessary foundation for eventual agrarial l
insurgency. William Lamb's radicalism of January had becoll l e,
by a narrow margin, the radicalism of the Alliance in Augusl .
1 1
The "Cleburne Demands" were front page news across Tn; "
on August 8, 1 886. The first newspaper reports were rest ri cI l ' d
to lengthy and precise descriptions of the demands, bUI ,N I I . . .
50 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
implications of the Alliance action became clear, newspaper
reactions turned hostile. "The Democratic Party is in perilous
position, " warned the Galveston News. The Dallas News decided
the Alliance had become "dominated by the spirit of class
legislation, class aggrandizement, class exclusiveness, and class
proscription. " The News told Democrats that i t was "scarcely less
than treason to be indiferent to such a danger. "
Alliance conservatives also were profoundly disturbed by the
Cleburne Demands. Their attitude marked the fi rst surfacing
of d

eply held cultural presumptions that stood as forbidding

barners to the long-term goals of the People's Party. While
Alliance conservatives shared the radicals' concern over the
plight of the farmer, they felt, or at least hoped, that they would
not have to break with their received political heritage to express
that concern efectively. But the eleventh demand of the Cle
burne document, the greenback pl ank, was unacceptable to the
Democratic Party, and that fact created an agonizing dilemma
for conservative farmers. For some among them, loyalty to the
Democrats was a matter of habit and social conformity; for
others, it was a pragmatic evaluation of what they took to be the
invulnerability of the "party of the fathers" to efective attack
from without; for still others, the stance of "nonpartisanship"
was simple evidence that their commitment to reform was a step
lower on their personal scale of political priorities than an
emotional dedication to white supremacy and to its institutional
expression in the South, the Democratic Party. Some farmers,
fnally, simply could not conceive ofa Southern farm organization
prospering outside the Democratic Party; their loyalty to the
party was a function of thei r loyalty to the Alliance. Whatever
the individual variants, the Cleburne conservatives expressed
. habits of thought that challenged Alliance activists and Populists
throughout the years of the agrarian revolt.
After midnight on the evening of the fi nal vote on the
Cleburne Demands, a group of conservative "nonpartisans" led
by Dunlap met and drafted a public statement of dissociation.
Supporters of the demands thereupon drafted a counter-state
ment, providing details of the tactical maneuvering and up
braiding the minority for publicly revealing divisions within the
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
order. The conservatives then formed a rival "Grand State
Farmers Alliance" of an avowedly nonpartisan character. Among
other assets, Dunlap's group held all the funds of the regular
Alliance, which were safely i n the possession of the decamping
treasurer. The destructive Lampasas experience of 1 879-80
seemed to be repeating itself.
1 2
I nto this sensJtlve situation stepped one of the most talented
and enigmatic men brought forward by the agrarian revolt. I n
August 1 886 Dr. Charles W. Macune was on the verge of an
extraordinary career. Born i n Wisconsin, and orphaned at ten,
he had roamed the West and arrived on the Texas frontier in
1 870 at the age of nineteen. He "read" for the professions and
in time came to practice both medicine and law. But Macune
also possessed untapped talents as an organizer. A strikingly
handsome man, he was both a lucid writer and a sonorous,
authoritative public speaker. Above all, he was a creative eco
nomic theorist. He had joined the order in the winter of 1 885-86
and had risen quickly to local prominence in the Milam County
Alliance, which elected him as one of its three delegates to the
Cleburne convention. Though the 1 886 meeting marked Ma
cune's fi rst statewide convention, his farmer associates, im
pressed with his diplomatic performance during the tense debate
over the demands, elected him chairman of the executive
committee. He stepped quickly into the vacuum left by Dunlap's
resignation and immediately sought to placate the disgruntled
conservatives while not incurring the displeasure of the radicals.
Aware of the delicacy of the situation, Macune called the order's
leadership together and concentrated on two men-Dunlap,
spokesman for the "nonpartisan" position, and Evan Jones,
spokesman for the radicals. Jones had come into prominence at
Cleburne. He was typical of the new brand of local leadership
that had emerged in the Alliance since 1 883. A "political
Allianceman"-that is to say, a greenbacker-he led Erath
County farmers into independent political action with a full
county ticket against the Democrats i n 1 886. A vigorous pro-
52 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
ponent of the Cleburne Demands, jones, like Macune, had been
elected by the Cleburne convention to the state executive
committee. Dunlap on the "nonpartisan" right and jones on the
"political" left represented the divergent tendencies in the
order-with Macune trying to fnd tenable ground in between.
Neatly balancing his words, Macune persuaded Dunlap of the
"i mportance and danger" of the conservatives' action. For the
moment, the very demonstration of such concern by Macune
seemed enough to immobilize Dunlap. He acquiesced in a
passive course. To jones, the advocate of aggressive action,
Macune talked of the need for the Texas Alliance to broaden
its base by seeking mergers with whatever progressive farm
organizations could be found in other states. As Macune doubt
less expected, jones was quite responsive to the suggestion. Only
after getting both sides to agree to a special statewide meeting
at Waco did Macune fi nally accept the resignations of Dunlap
and the conservative executive committeemen that had been
tendered at Cleburne. It can be safely assumed that Macune was
able to keep the non partisans-and the order's treasury-within
the Alliance "family" while shearing them of their power pri
marily because of the remarkable response of Texas farmers to
the Cleburne Demands. The tactical position and the self
confdence of the conservatives had been eroded by. the sheer
fame of the Clebure document.
The two Alliance factions were talking to Macune, if not yet
to each other. Temporarily, at least, the Alliance was i ntact
and under leadership that now excluded the order's older
traditionalists. An i mpulse toward aggressive action, greenback
in i mplication but as yet not wholly internalized, had come to
power within the Texas Alliance.
As Macune labored behind the scenes, the Al liance grew
spectacularly. Farmers by the thousands heard about the Cle
burne Demands and decided that the Alliance meant what it
said about helping "the industrial classes. " Hundreds of charters
for new suballiances were issued, and older local groups took on
new members until whole farming areas were enrolled. New
members were added at a rate of up to 20,000 per month
through the autumn and winter of 1 886. Alliance lecturers were
THE ALLIANCE DEVELOPS A MOVEMENT CULTURE
53
"sweeping everything before them. " By the time Macune con
vened the special Alliance meeting at Waco in january 1 887, the
statistics were overwhelming: the Grange numbered less than
9000, while the Alliance claimed 200,000 members in over 3000
chartered suballiances.
1 3
But the nation had not yet discovered that Alli.ncemen had
more than numbers-that they had, in fact, learned from their
experiences a new way of thinking about American economic
customs. Alliancemen proclai med, indignantly, "Shame on your
boasted i nstitutions of liberty." They told each other that unless
America changed, "you will have only three rights . . . to work,
to starve, and to die." Since the American Revolution, the "plain
people" of the country had i mbibed the cultural teachings
generated by the respectable elements of society. Until now, they
had, with few exceptions, demonstrated that they had learned
good manners and had remained properly deferential to their
betters. Where would this new language of politics lead? To a
new and more generous democratic community? Or perhaps to
revolution and anarchy?
I f, by 1 886, the nation had not yet learned enough about the
Farmers Alliance to worry, Texas conservatives had. The Dallas
News labored to describe the new Alliance vision:
The discontented classes are told, and are only too ready for
the most part to believe, that the remedy is more class
legislation, more government, more paternalism, more State
socialism. The current gospel of discontent as a rule is sordid
and groveling. Its talk is too much about regulating capital
and labor . . . and too little about freeing capital and industry
from all needless restraints and so promoting the development
and difusion of a high order of hardy manhood.
In a corporate culture increasingly responsive to the new
creed of progress, the Dallas News was scarcely alone in its
formula for hardy manhood. But the Alliance was exploring
another path, one steeped in a new language of cooperation. To
those who understood what was being said, the two views of
54
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
deocracy coul not easily coexist. If the Alliance grew to
national proportIOns, the country might well have to make a
permnent choice .
.
r, among some of the "plain people," a
new VISIOn of possibility had come alive in the land.
And-self-evidentl y-it was not grounded in deference.
3
The Cooperative Vision
Building a Democratic Economy
"the foundation that underlies the whole superstructure . . . .
To all appearances, the agrarian revolt developed in the South
and West i n a fashion that merged separate currents of reforming
energy. The National Farmers Alliance seemed a powerful
tributary of insurgency that conveyed sluggish Southerners
toward the People's Party. There the mobilized reform energies
of the South fl owed into a raging Western torrent. That torrent
had no apparent source; it seemed to have materialized from an
unknown well-spring concealed somewhere in the Great Plains.
The revolt i n the West had simply "happened"-times were
hard. So the movement of the farmers appeared to the puzzled
nation i n 1 892. Appearances, however, were misleading. The
"tributaries" of the People's Party were not divergent; indeed,
they were not even tributaries; the radical currents merely
needed to be traced to their common headwaters.
The ideological course to the 1 892 Omaha Platform of the
People's Party ran back through the Ocala Demands of 1 890,
the St. Louis Platform of 1 889, the Dallas Demands of 1 888,
and the Cleburne Demands of August 1 886. For i n 1 886 the
organizational impulses of hope and self-respect generated by
farmer cooperatives, impulses that were to lead to the People's
Party, identifed themselves. Shaped by the tensions of organizing
and expanding across the nation, the new culture of a people's
politics that had materialized in Texas i n 1 886 became known
to the nation i n 1 892 as "Populism. "
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
The spectacle of earnest farmer-lecturers setting off on con
tinent-spanning journeys in the late 1 880' S to organize the folk,
and, furthermore, doing it, appears now to have had a kind of
ru

tic grandeur. I t was, i n fact, the most massive organizing

dnve by any citizen institution of nineteenth-century America.
The broader outlines had a similar sweep: the Alliance' s five
year campaign carried lecturers i nto forty-three states and
territories and touched two mil lion American farm families; it
brought a program and a sense of purpose to Souther farmers
who had neither, and provided an organizational medium for
Westerners who had radical goals but lacked a mass constituency.
Despit

the ultimate long-term efects, the massive recruiting
campaign of 1 887-9 1 nevertheless also dramatized the i mpend
ing tension within the ranks of the new movement that was
beginning to form. The immediate results were far too divisive
to produce any portrait of grandeur, however rustic.
As matters developed late in 1 886, the remarkable growth of
the
.
)exas Alliance was a direct product of the accelerating.
polltlcal momentum within the order. Earnest radicals soon
discovered, however, that this very momentum had produced
a

a

ute internal crisis. After some anxious months the orga

I1JZatlOn preserved its cohesion, but only by a new burst of
creativity keyed to further expansion. More than anything else,
the surge of the Farmers Al liance across the South and then the
West developed out of the order's attempt to save itself from
fratricidal destruction in Texas. This ideological tension had its
origin in a tense internal struggle that took place on the eve of
the campaign to organize the South.
2
Many of the delegates who gathered for Charles Macune' s
specially called conference in Waco in January 1 887 carried
militant instructions from their home Alliances. The continued
growth of the order since Cleburne had confrmed for the
activists the practicality of aggressive advocacy. Balancing this
thrust was the psychological hold the Democratic Party had on
Southerners. Those who opposed the Cleburne Demands did so
THE COOPERATIVE VISION 57
not so much because of their specifi c content-which faithfully
expressed grievances most farmers regarded as legitimate-but
because of their impl icit repudiation of the Democractic Party
of the South.
Amid such contradictory infuences, the Waco conference was
threatened with partisan discord unti l , on the second day,
Charles Macune offered a transformi ng proposal . Ignoring the

interal divisions, he oriented the del egates toward a more basic
purpose-combating the farmer's traditional problem of credit.
As Alliancemen of all factions listened attentively, Macune
proposed a central statewide " Farmers Alliance Exchange" as a
giant cooperative to oversee the marketing of the cotton crops
of Alliance members and to serve as the central purchasing
medium for Texas farmers. A statewide cooperative was truly
a breathtaking vision. But Macunc had another challengi ng
proposal as wel l . He told the delegates that the men who had
developed the Alliance cooperative and had organized Texas
could "organize the cotton belt of the nation. " He outlined his
recently conceived plans for projected merger of the Alliance
with a small Lousiana farm organization and offered an inspiring
vision of a South wide monopoly of organized agriculture to
combat the marketing and fnancial monopolies of the nation.
The delegates were, to say the least, responsive. Macune
brought an individual capacity to act, and a specifc plan, at the
precise moment when the Al liance had completed its basic
organizing job in Texas and was ready-structurally and psy
chologically-to move to larger tasks. Macune's proposal to
organize the nation's cotton belt was a step toward a national
presence that every Alliancemen could appreciate, regardless of
his political inclinations. Conservative objections to the Cleburne
Demands receded in i mportance in the face of this larger
objective. Partisan wrangling was put aside. All seemed relieved
that the Alliance, so obviously healthy in other respects, had not
been shattered. In a wave of good feeling, the Cleburne Demands
were reafrmed-this time without dissent-and the merger
with the Louisiana Farmers Union was approved. A new orga
nization, "The National Farmers Alliance and Cooperative
Union, " was established. C. W. Macune was unanimousl y elected
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
president, and the Louisiana representative who was present
was elected vice-president. Travel funds were allocated, organ
izers were selected and briefed at a specially called statewide
meeting of lecturers, and the cam paign was launched-all within
five weeks of Macune's Waco speech.
3
Six lecturers were initially dispatched to Mississippi, six to
Alabama, seven to Tennessee, fve to the border state of Missouri,
and three to Arkansas. Others moved into the Carolinas, Georgia,
Florida, Kentucky, and Kansas. Tested in the process of organ
izi ng 200,000 farmers in Texas, they took with them detailed
plans for state characters, county organizations, and suballiances,
and the aggressive anti-monopoly oratory of the Alliance move
ment. The Macune formula for a centralized buying and selling
cooperative was outlined to gatherings at hl.mdreds of Southern
crossroads from the Gulf to the Ohio River. Farmers were told
how to establish the trade store system on a county level and
members of suballiances were instructed in the advantages of
electing one of their own number as a business agent. All of the
experiences of the founders were drawn upon, as organizers
also explained the value of Alliance cotton yards, Alliance trade
committees, and Alliance county warehouses.
The results were spectacular. Alliances sprouted not only in
every state, but i n almost every county of the Old Confederacy.
Dazzled by his success, lecturer J. B. Barry sent in a rhapsodic
report from North Carolina. "I n spite of all opposing infl uences
that could be brought to bear in Wake County, I met the farmers
in public meetings twenty-seven times, and twenty-seven times
they organized . . . . The farmers seem like unto ripe fruit-you
can gather them by a gentle shake of the bush. "
The frst organizer to leave Texas for the Deep South was the
order's Traveling Lecturer, S. O. Daws. He departed in February
and organized the frst Mississippi Alliance on March 3, 1 887.
Within six months, thirty Mississippi counties had been organized
and a State Alliance created. Throughout the South, Texas
organizers followed the precedent set by Daws in his 1 884 Texas
campaign: the most aggressive local farmers were named as
THE COOPERATIVE VISION 59
organizers and briefed in the techniques of conveying the
Alliance doctrine. According to a Mississippi historian, "deputies
swept to every part of the state, " and one even took to announcing
his itinerary i n the public press! By the end of 1 887, twenty-one
North Carolinians were at work as Alliance organizers, and the
new state leader, L. L. Pol k, declared he needed "fve times that
number" to meet the demand. Alliances had multiplied at such
a rate in one North Carolina county that there was "hardly an
interval of fve miles . . . that does not have an organization. "
The pattern was much the same everywhere. The word
spread, as it had earlier in Texas, that the Alliance meant what
it said about "doing something for the dirt farmer. " One Texan
organized over 1 300 farmers in a single Alabama county.
Another stayed an entire year and later claimed to have orga
nized 1 500 suballiances in Alabama and Tennessee. But not all
farmers were like "ripe fruit. " J. M. Perdue, the author of the
Cleburne Demands, wrote back from Opelika, Alabama, that
many farmers were "so crushed under the crop mortgage system
that they have lost almost all hope of bettering their condition. "
I n a comment that reveals t he depth of agrarian animosity
toward furnishing merchants and the crop lien system, Perdue
added that "the threats of the grab-all family have been given
out, and many of the poor are afraid to join the Alliance, fearing
the major or the colonel will quit issuing rations to them at 50
percent over cash price. " In spite of all hazards, however, the
organizing momentum of the Alliance gradually conquered
whole farming districts, the hesitant tenants joining a bit late,
but joining. The demand for lecturers became so great that not
enough could be supplied. In more than one county the farmers
organized themselves at mass meetings and formally requested
organizers to visit them and show them how to establish an
Alliance. To bafed Southern Grangers, only metaphors drawn
from nature could explain the organizational phenomenon that
had engulfed them. The Alliance had "swept across Mississippi
like a cyclone. " A North Carolinian added that "a great move
ment, called the Farmers Alliance, has about ruined the Grange."
By the time the National Farmers Alliance and Cooperation
Union of America held its inaugural convention at Shreveport,
Louisiana, i n October 1 887, the cooperative campaign had
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
That young man was to prove one of the most energetic Populists
of them all.
Henry Vi ncent was one of fi ve sons of James Vincent, a rather
unusual man in his own right. A radical egalitarian, abolitionist,
and free thinker, the senior Vincent put himself through Oberlin
College as a youth, married, and moved to a farm near Tabor,
Iowa. He became western correspondent for Greeley's New-York
Tribune and Garrison's Liberator, worked for the American Anti
Slavery Society, and operated an underground railroad and
school at Tabor. He seems to have rather thoroughly transmitted
his humanist views and a measure of his tenacity to all of his
children-especially to young Henry. At the age of seventeen,
Henry began a journal called the American Nonconformist, which
he printed on a thirty-fve-dollar hand press i n Tabor. Seven
years later, he, along with two of his brothers, thirty-year-old
Cuthbert and twenty-three-year-old Leopol d, migrated to Cow
ley County in Kansas. The brothers selected Wi nfeld for the
site of their journalistic efort after a careful inspection of other
locales in what seems to have been a search for a climate
conducive to social change. Grandly entitling the venture The
American Nonconformist and Kansas Industrial Liberator, Henry and
his brothers unleashed among their boom-conscious Kansas
neighbors a startling brand of journalism. The inaugural issue
of October 7, 1 886, declared:
This journal will aim to publish such matter as will tend to the
education of the laboring classes, the farmers and the producer,
and in every struggle it will endeavor to take the side of the
oppressed as against the oppressor, provided the "underdog"
has concern for his own hide to defend himself when he is
given the opportunity, and not turn and bite the hand of him
who has labored for his freedom, by voting both i nto a worse
condition than before.
The Vincents established a far-fung system of exchanges with
other agrarian and labor newspapers and kept a careful nation
wide watch on political activities in behalf of the "underdog."
They soon became well-informed on the activities of both the
Knights of Labor, then at its national peak of i nfuence, and the
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
Farmers Al liance, then still confned to its Texas origins. The
Nonconformit praised the racial liberalism demonstrated by the
Knights at their integrated 1 886 convention in Richmond,
Virginia, and similarly applauded the aggressive spirit of the
Cleburne Demands, which emerged from the little-known farm
order in Texas in the same year. I t duly noted the spread of the
Alliance across the South, and when the Texas organizers ranged
over Missouri and edged into neighboring Kansas in the summer '
of 1 887, they quite naturally found a welcome frst and foremost
in Cowley County. One Texan organized a number of suballi
ances in the county and a second arrived later in the year to
extend the Alliance message to surrounding counties. The
Vincents meanwhile were busy applauding the eforts of Western
radicals to reconstitute a new national third party as a home for
displaced greenbackers. I n the course of these third party eforts,
the Vincents established relations with the radicals in the Texas
Alliance who had engendered the Cleburne Demands.
By the time the third party men were ready to hold a
nominating convention for the new national Union Labor Party
in Cincinnati in the spri ng of 1 888, a coterie of politically
insurgent Westerners had established contact and had begun
working together. The network, which was primarily composed
of Kansans and Texans, also included greenback veterans from
Iowa, Alabama, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, and the Dakotas.
While the subsequent poor showing of the Union Labor Party
in the fal l elections of 1 888 helped pl unge radical politicians
such as Jerry Simpson into despair, there was a more germane
development-the spread of the Kansas Farmers Al l iance from
its base in Cowley County. The enormous growth of the order
in Texas in 1 885-86 came only after the founders had earlier
consolidated a strong geographical base in a nucleus of counties,
in the process perfecting their organizational doctrines and an
accompanying rhetoric of recruitment. In 1 888, the Kansas
Al liance consolidated a similar base i n south-central Kansas.
Henry Vincent' s efort to familiarize Kansas farmers with Al li
ance doctrines was not simply one of journalistic "education. "
Vi ncent understood that movements need organization and
organizations need internal lines of communication. Latc in
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
1 888, following the disastrous third party showing in the N 0-
vember elections, Vincent led a group of Kansas radicals on a
pilgrimage to Dallas for further briefings on the structure of the
Alliance movement at the organization's national ofices. Addi
tional l y, W. P. Brush, in the course of his ofcial duties as state
organizer for the Kansas Alliance, attended the 1 888 convention
of the National Farmers Alliance at Meridian, Mississippi. There
he acquired further details of the cooperative movement and
was appointed one of twelve "national lecturers" designated by
the Macune-led Southerers.
In December 1 888 the Farmers State Alliance of Kansas was
organized. Lecturers armed with charters and equi pped with
the new lecturing methods spread over the state. They met with
an i mmediate response, just as their counterparts in the South
had earlier. Kansas farmers listened to the outline of the
cooperative program and promptly joined the Alliance in droves.
Suballiances elected business agents and county Al l iances formed
trade committees. As evidence of the success of the organizing
campaign mounted, the Nonconformist interviewed Ben Clover,
the new Kansas Alliance president on the progress of the order.
He announced that "extensive movements are on foot." It was
not an idle remark. The new culture of politics was being born.
As the cooperative banner went up in central and eastern
Kansas, a new and surprisingly democratic energy began to
surface in ways that newspapers, friendly and otherwise, could
scarcely ignore. I n February 1 889, the Harper County Alliance
.
began bombarding the state legislature with appeals for stricter
usury laws, and two months later Brown County farmers staged
a mass protest against what they called "the extortions of the
binding twine trust. " The farmers decided to "proceed at once
to the erection of a cooperative manufactory for binding twine. "
Elsewhere throughout Kansas, Alliance country trade commit
tees met with merchants, wholesalers, and manufacturers. Where
the farmers were rewarded with small successes, their respect
for their own eforts and for their Alliance grew. When they
encountered rebufs, they tal ked about i t together and debated
the meaning of existing commercial relationships in American
society. They also learned that the voting records of their
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
politicians indicated a surprising responsiveness to the needs of
banks, railroads, and other corporations. These discoveries did
not fi t with the description of the Republican Party of Kansas
that they had been taught since infancy to believe. Some of the
farmers began to get more angry the more they leared, and all
of them wanted to do something about it. The suballiance in
Kansas, l i ke its predecessors in Texas and the South, became a
schoolroom of self-education.
This process took time. Political results frst became visible in
the handful of "old" Alliance counties near the Kansas-Oklahoma
border that had frst heard the message of the Al liance in 1 887.
The 1 889 elections i n Henry Vincent's Cowley County brought
a hint of storms soon to come. Area farmers, already organized
as an Alliance cooperative, further organized themselves in a
mass meeting and nominated a complete independent ticket
against the Republican incumbents. * Afiliating with neither
major party, the ticket was elected by a surprisingly large margin.
The political culture of the agrarian movement had literally
reached a majority of the people in the county.
I n steadfastly Republican Kansas, this result was a bit startling
in itself. A glance behind the returns, however, yielded even
more instructive insights. Whatever had happened in Cowley
County over the preceding twelve months, it had clearly not
happened count ywide. For example, the townsfol k of Winfield
had voted Republican in 1 888 by a comfortable eight to fve
margin and had even added slightly to the party's plurality the
following year. But a phenomenal change had come over the
rural districts of the county. The farmers who voted at Rock
Creek preci

ct were typical. In 1 888 they had cast 96 votes for

* Whi le the inleral dynamics guiding the development of insurgenl demo
cratic movements are not generally wel l understood, the greatest confusion
concers not the buil ding of movements, but rather the process of their
politicization. Insurgent economic movemenls, for example, do not "inexorably"
move inlo insurgent politics. The reason is e1emenlary: the great mass of
panicipants have older cultural memories whi ch shape political conduct along
traditional l i nes and make insurgenl politics di fcul t for the average citizcn I n
i magine. For political insurgency l occur on a mass scale, movemcnl S, or UT
recruited, need to be politicized, which is a complex process. The pol i l i ci zal i nl l
of t he mass of Alliance farmers-a development t hat defined t he extenl al ld I h .
limits of American Populism-is traced on pp. 84-87, 91-93, and l !-H.
66 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
the Republican Party, 23 for the Union Labor Party, and 60 for
the Democrats. I n the following year, however, the Republican
vote plummeted to 45 while the new independent ticket swept
the precinct with 1 1 7 votes. Clearly, something was happening
at the forks of the creek.
What had happened, of course, was the cooperative crusade.
The cornerstone of the independent political movement in
Cowley County was a new enterprise created by the Alliance
and known as "The Winfeld Co-operative Mercantile and
Manufacturing Association. " Virtually every farmer in the
county was a member. A founding trustee of the Alliance
cooperative-the frst in Kansas-was the editor of the Noncon
formit , Henry Vincent.
6
What was true for Kansas and Texas was true everywhere;
indeed, the agrarian revolt cannot be understood outside the
framework of the cooperative crusade that was its source. Amidst
a national political system in which the mass constituencies of
both major parties were fashioned out of the sectional loyalties
of the Civil War, the cooperative movement became the recruit
ing vehicle through which huge numbers of farmers in the South
and West learned to think about a new kind of democratic
possibility in America. The central educational tool of the
Farmers Alliance was the cooperative experiment itsel f. The
massive efort at agrarian self-help, and the opposition it stim
ulated from furnishing merchants, wholesale houses, cotton
buyers, and bankers in the South and from grain elevator
companies, railroads, land companies, livestock commission
agencies, and bankers in the West, brought home to hundreds
of thousands of American farmers new insights into their
relationship with the commercial el ements of American society.
Reduced to its essentials, the cooperative movement recruited
the farmers to the Alliance in the period 1 887-9 1 , and the
resulting cooperative experience educated enough of them to
make independent political action a potential reality. In the
process, the Al liance created the world' s frst large-scale working
class cooperative and proposed a comprehensive democratic
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
monetary system for America, the world's emerging industrial
leader. That the chief theorist of both the cooperative and the
monetary system, Charles Macune, consistently opposed Alliance
political activism and feared the emergence of the third party
added a curious dimension to the internal politics of the agrarian
revolt.
7
I rony dogged Charles Macune throughout his years as national
spokesman of the Farmers Al liance. The scores of Alliance
organizers who fanned out across the South and Midwest in
1 887-89 and who sallied north of the Ohio River and across
both the Rockies and the Appalachians in 1 890-9 1 had been
defned by their previous experience not only as "lecturers," but
also as incipient political radicals. Their duties as lecturers
carried them to the remotest backwaters of the rural countryside
and into the very maw of the crop lien system of the South.
Upon the lecturers fel l the burden of explaining the function
of the suballiance business agent, the county trade committee,
and the visionary state exchange that, in the South, might free
them all from the furnishing merchant. Upon the same lecturers
also fel l the burden of explaining the delays, the opposition of
merchants, bankers, commission agents, and sundry other func
tionaries who came to represent "the town clique. " Whether in
Alabama or South Dakota, a cooperative encountering difculty
constituted an i mplied rebuke to the Alliance leaders who had
praised the idea in the frst place. At such a time of difculty
and it came, eventually, to every Alliance cooperative in every
state, from Florida to Oregon-the farmers, so recently brought
to a new level of hope by the promise of their movement, looked
to the messengers of cooperation both for explanation and
guidance. The latter responded in one of two ways. They could
blame the difculties on the farmers, assert that rank and fl e
members did not understand cooperation well enough, and
insist that they expected too much, too soon. In the course of
this response they could counsel patience and devote much time
to thorough explanations of the theory and practice of coop
eration. Many Al l iance leaders followed such a course, 1 ! t`
68 CREATING z DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
with more grace than Macune himsel f. But the mass program
of agrarian cooperation that Macune had visualized also set in
motion another and rather different response. In this view,
cooperative dificulties were not inherentl y the fault of the idea
i tself, nor were they traceable to defi ciencies in farmers generally;
rather, cooperatives encountered trouble because of the im
placable hostility of the financial and commercial world. Alliance
leaders holding such views could explain that town merchants
selectively cut prices to make the Al l iance trade store look bad
and that bankers refused to take the notes of the Al liance state
exchange because the bank's mercantile clients wanted the
exchange to go under. They could add that the Alliance store
or warehouse often performed i t s duty even if it sold not a dollar
of goods-if, simply by its prese!ce, it introduced genuine
wholesale and retail competition into rural America. Macune
was also capable of this analysis, and sometimes with a passion
that rivaled the anti-monopoly intensity of spokesmen for the
Alliance's left wing.
But however individual leaders responded initially, the co
operative crusade and the experiences i t generated set in motion
an intense dialogue within the Al liance, one that reached real ms
of radical political analysis that Macune had not foreseen and
from which he i nstinctively recoiled. Yet the cooperative expe
rience increasingly set the terms of the debate in ways neither
the order's moderates nor its radicals could conveniently ignore.
The mass of farmers themselves saw to this. They wanted .
freedom from what they regarded as intolerable conditions, and
the delays t hey experienced in their local and state cooperative
ctforts brought forth quest ions to which lecturers had to respond,
whatever their poli t ics. I ndeed, a raw irritant persisted at the
core of this interal Al l iance dialogue between the farmers and
their spokesmen, a criticism by the rank and file that. however
respectfully i mplied, ate at the very heart of the lect urers' sense
of justice. It was not the lecturers' fault! They fel t, more tellingly
than some of them could explain, the totality of banker and
merchant opposition, the calumny of news stories about the
Al liance in the metropolitan press, the deceptive style of tradi
tional politicians who voted for the commercial classes while
THE COOPERATIVE VISION 69
pretending to be friends of the people. In ways that Macune
both understood and resisted, Alliance leaders came to have
such thoughts in the late 1 880' S, and their knowledge constituted
an organizational i mperative for a new political party free of the
control of bankers and their allies. The men who believed in
cooperation the most, the Al liancemen who became trustees of
local trade stores, county warehouses, and state exchanges, who
counseled against politics as a divisive infuence at a time when
the cooperative needed the support of a united farming class,
who then saw the cooperatives stagger under fnancial burdens
born of lack of credit-it was some of these very men, Macune's
lecturers, who eventually carried the Farmers Alliance to the
People's Party. The interior logic of the cooperative crusade,
both in the hopeful early days of recruitment and in the more
difcult days of implementation, drove Alliance leaders toward
such ultimate political choices because, quite simply, the structure
of American society i mpelled it.
8
The reality that explained the remarkable organizing potential
of the Alliance cooperative rested in the substance of the daily
lives of millions of farmers. In the late nineteenth century a
national pattern of emerging banker-debtor relationships and
corporation-citizen relationships began to shape the lives of
millions of Americans. Throughout the Western granary the
increasing centralization of economic life fastened upon prairie
farmers new modes of degradation that, i f not as abjectly
humiliating as Southern forms, were scarcely less pervasive.
Of the many ingredients in the new way of life, most easily
understood is the simple fact that farm prices continued to fal l
year after year, decade after decade. The dollar-a-bushel wheat
of 1 870 brought 80 cents in 1 885 and 60 cents in the 1 890' s.
These were ofcial government fgures, computed at year's end
when prices were measurably higher than those received by the
farmer at harvest. Actually, most Dakota farmers received closer
to 35 cents a bushel for their wheat in the days of Populism.
Similarly, the 1 870 corn crop averaged 45 cents a bushel ;
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
thereafter i t fel l steadily, plunging below 30 cents in the 1 890' s,
according to ofcial fi gures. But as early as 1 889 cor in Kansas
sold at 1 0 cents a bushel, the U. S. Agriculture Department' s
figures to the contrary notwithstanding.
Moreover, the grain that made the nation's bread was a
demanding crop; it had to be harvested at breakneck speed each
fal l before it became too dry and brittle to bind well. The
Midwestern farmer went into debt to buy the needed equipment.
He made chattel mortgage payments on such machines at rates
of annual interest that ranged from 1 8 to 36 per cent and in
currency that appreciated in value every year. Under these
circumstances, the steady decline of commodity prices further
reduced his margin of economic maneuver.
But this was only a part of the problem facing Western
agriculturalists. Like most nineteenth-century Americans, farm
ers were enthusiastic about the arrival of each new railroad that
promised to further "open up the country" to new towns and
new markets. But the farmers' euphoria at the appearance of
a new rail line inevitably turned to bitter resentment. The farmer
in the West fel t that something was wrong with a system that
made him pay a bushel of cor in freight costs for every bushel
he shipped-especially since the system somehow also made it
possible for large elevator companies to transport grain from
Chicago all the way to England for less money than it cost a
Dakota farmer to send his wheat to the grain mills in near-by
Minneapolis. A number of railroads also forced shippers-grain
dealers as well as individual farmers-to pay freight costs equal
to the rail line' s most distant terminal, even should they wish to
ship only over a lesser portion of the line. (The extra fee was
called "transit. ") In many locales, the farmer had the option of
paying or seeing his crop rot.
Underlying the entire new structure of commerce was the
national banking system, rooted in the gold standard and
dominated by Eastern commercial banks, most prominently the
House of Morgan. Though bankers profted from the high
interest rates that accompanied tight money, the gold-based
currency was so constricted that virtually every year the calls on
the Eastern money market by Western banks at harvest brought
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
the nation dangerously close to fnancial panics. The sheer
burden of providing the necessary short-term credit to fnance
the purchasing and shipping of the nation's annual agricultural
production was more than the monetary structure could stand.
The prevailing system, however, did have the efect of admin
istering a strong downward pressure upon commodity prices at
harvest time.
On the "sod-house frontier" of the West, the human costs
were enormous. Poverty was a "badge of honor which decorated
all . " Men and children "habitually" went barefoot in summer
and in winter wore rags wrapped around their feet. A sod house
was a home literally constructed out of prairie sod that
was cut, sun-dried, and used as a kind of brick. Out of such
materials, the very "civic cul ture" of the agrarian revolt was
constructed. The farmers knew where their probl ems were. A
social historian reports that farmers in the 1 870's and 1 880'S
reserved their "deepest enmity" for grain and stock buyers and
for the railroads that served farmers and middlemen alike.
Everywhere the farmer turned he seemed to be the victim of
rules that somehow always worked to the advantage of the
biggest business and financial concerns that touched his world.
To be efcient, the farmer had to have tools and livestock that
cost him forbidding rates of interest. When he sold, he got the
price ofered by terminal grain elevator companies. To get his
produce there, he paid high rates of freight. If he tried to sell
to diferent grain dealers, or elevator companies, or l ivestock
commission agents, he often encountered the practical evidence
of secret agreements between agricultural middlemen and trunk
line railroads. The Northern Pacifc named specifc grain ter
minals to which farmers should ship, the trunk line si mpl y
refusing to provide railroad cars for the uncooperative.
Among the large new business combinations that were engaged
in creating trusts in virtually every major branch of American
commerce, the watering of stock became so routine that it is not
too much to say that the custom provided the operating basis
for the entire industrial system that was energing. To pay even
nominal dividends on watered stock, companies needed high
rates of proft-in efect, they converted their customers i nlO
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
real sources of direct capital. Railroad networks that cost
$25,000 in public money to build were owned by companies
that capitalized themselves at $500, 000 and then sold construc
tion bonds on $500, 000 more. Agrarian spokesmen wondered
out loud why the citizenry should be paying interest on public
indebtedness of one mi llion dollars, 75 per cent of which was
watered stock. Railroad magnates rarely bothered to reply to
such critics beyond ofering an occasional opinion that popular
concern about the i nterior affairs of business corporations was
"oficious. '
9
But widespread as sufering was throughout the West, nowhere
in America did the burdens of poverty fall more heavily than
upon the farm families of the rural South. The crop lien system
had driven millions west in the 1 870' S; by the late 1 880'S the
system had graduated to new plateaus of exploitation: as every
passing year forced additional thousands of Southern farmers
into foreclosure and thence into the world of landless tenantry,
the furnishing merchants came to acquire title to increasing
portions of the Southern countryside. Furnishing men had so
many farms, and so many tenants to work them, that it became
psychologically convenient to depersonalize the language of
agricultural production. Advancing merchants spoke to one
another about "running 1 00 plows this year, " a crisp phrase that
not only referred to thousands of acres of land but also to
hundreds of men, women, and children who lived in peonage.
Through a 1 50o-mile swath of the Southland, from Virginia to
Texas, such absence of choices came to characterize the monot
onous lives of millions, tenants and "landowners" alike. It was
i nto this vast domain of silent sufering that the lecturers of the
Farmers Alliance deployed in 1 887-88. The results were di fi cult
t describe, though a South Carolina Granger made an efort by
reporting to his national ofces that the Alliance had "swept
over our state like a wave. "
The message of the lecturers was persuasive because the
goal-to change the way most Southerners lived-was one the
Grange had never dared to attempt. The larger dream contained
THE COOPERATIVE VISION 73
i n the new and untested Texas pl an for a central state exchange
added the fnal galvanizing ingredient to the formula of hope
that was the Farmers Alliance.
But the new recruits did not wait idly for the arrival of a
statewide marketing system. Hope was everywhere and across
the South, farmers in a dozen states competed with one another
in pioneering new varieties of purchasing cooperatives that
could be constructed to defeat money-lenders and wholesale
and retail merchants. The leader of a local Georgia Alliance
wrote the order's national journal in Texas that "we are going
to get out of debt and be free and independent people once
more. Mr. Editor, we Georgia people are i n earnest about this
thing. " The efort "to be a free and independent people" was
emphasized by North Carolina Alliance leader L. L. Polk, who
explained: "There is a limit, even to the submissiveness of
farmers. "
Just how high the stakes were, and how far from "submis
siveness" the farmers had to carry themselves, was brought to
light by the cooperative movement in Alabama. After Alliance
men in Dothan had cooperatively erected a warehouse and had
begun to demonstrate its utility by instituting cooperative pur
chasing and marketing arrangements, merchants, bankers, and
warehousemen succeeded in inducing the town council to levy
a $50 tax on the warehouse. The farmers responded by moving
their building outside the city limits, whereupon the council
attempted to make them pay for draying their cotton into and
out of town. Attempts to enforce the ordinance l ed to a gunfght
in which two men were killed and another wounded. Alabama
farmers thought these events over for awhile, and i t was not
long before the Alliance began to explore ways to start a
cooperative bank. Though the means to carry out their proposal
were never found, it was clear that the cooperative experience
provided remarkable lessons in how power worked in America.
Yet for all the hope that it stirred, the Alliance movement
remained just that-a hope. Though the farmers came by the
thousands, the Alliance found it difcul t to i mplement an
effective cooperative program. While local arrangements might
produce marginal improvements, a statewide undertaking was
needed to cope with the lien system. As Southern Al l iances grew,
74 CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
and as both farmers and their spokesmen learned more about
the intricacies of cooperation, they increasingly tended to keep
one eye cocked on Macune's Texas Exchange, where the mass
marketing concept was undergoing its fi rst major test in the
South. In 1 887-88 the Texas effort entered its crucial stage
and Alliance leaders throughout the nation watched in hope
and apprehension as the idea of a cooperative commonwealth
endeavored to coexist with banker-centered American capital
ism.
1 0
The original plan of a central state exchange which Macune had
outlined in January 1 887 had been consummated in stages.
Macune learned that a central exchange in Texas could sell
directly to Eastern factories i f it possessed sufcient capital to
underwrite its contracts properly. He reported this to his Texas
colleagues, and the Alliance, after taking competing bids from
several cities, selected Dallas as the site for the exchange,
receiving a bonus of $350o. On this shred of capital the " Farmers
Alliance Exchange of Texas" opened for business in Dallas in
September 1 887. Macune used the internal organizational struc
ture of the Alliance to bring the individual farmer closer to the
prevailing prices being paid on the world cotton market. Each
county business agent, working through the Alliance cotton yard
established by each county trade committee, was instructed to
weigh, sample, and number the bales of cotton in his local yard.
The local agents wrapped samples from each bale, placed tickets
on them giving weight, grade of cotton, and yard number, then
expressed them in sacks to the Dallas exchange. There they were
placed on display in a sample room where cotton buyers could
examine them. Export buyers were i mpressed, and they came
to the Texas Exchange. In one massive transaction, 1 500 bales
of cotton were selected from samples in Dallas and sold for
shipment to England, France, and Germany. The cotton was
shipped from twenty-two diferent stations i n Texas.
I mpressive as all this activity was as a demonstration of
agrarian self-help, the Texas Exchange leadership soon realized
it was not nearly enough, for it did not free the small farmer or
THE COOPERATIVE VISION 75
the tenant farmer from al l the personal and fi nancial indignities
involved in the crop lien. The directors soon found themselves
awash in petitions from suballiances calling for the i mplemen
tation of some plan so they could "make a crop independent of
the merchant. "
Late in 1 887 the directors of the Texas Exchange faced the
challenge squarely. The plan they embarked upon was one of
the most creative in the annals of American farm organizations,
and it led directly to the one pathbreaking political concept of
the agrarian revolt, the sub-treasury system. In November 1 887,
the Texas Exchange advanced i ts program. I t was called the
"joint-note plan. " The quiet phrase concealed a breathtaking
extention of the cooperative concept: landowning farmers in
the Alliance were asked to place their entire individual holdings
at the disposal of the group-to stake their own futures on the
ultimate success of the Alliance cooperative. The gamble was an
unusual one: landowners and tenants alike would collectively
purchase their supplies for the year through the state exchange
on credit, the landowners signing the joint note. For collateral,
they would put up their land and endeavor to protect themselves
against loss by taking mortgages on the crops of the tenants.
They would market their cotton collectively through the ex
change and then pay of the joint notes at year's end. The
farmers would sink or swim together; the landless would escape
t he crop l ien, too, or none of them would. As they had in the
past, the brotherhood of the Al liance would "stand united. " I n
one dramatic season of cooperative marketing and purchasing,
they would collectively overcome all of the furnishing merchants
of Texas and free every farmer in the state from the clutches
of the lien system!
The planning behind the joint-note cooperative mobilized the
entire infrastructure of self-help that the order had created
through the years. Each Alliance county business agent was to
acquire from each suballiance member who wanted supplies on
credit a schedule of his probable individual needs for the coming
year, together with a showing of "full fnancial responsibility"
and a pledge of cotton worth at least three ti mes as much as the
amount of credit requested. The farmers of each suballiance
were then to execute a collective joint note for the estimated
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
amount of supplies for all of them. The note was t draw interest
after May 3 1 and was to be paid November I S, after the 1 888
crop had been harvested. Each signer of the joi nt note was
required to specify the number of acres of land he owned, its
val ue, outstanding indebtedness, the number of acres cultivated
both in cotton and grain, and the value of his livestock. He also
agreed to allow his cosigners to harvest his crop in the event he
became incapacitated. Such joint notes from suballiances were
then to be screened by the county business agent and the county
trade committee before being passed on-along with the collec
tive supply order of all participating suballiance members-to
the "commi ttee of acceptance" in the state exchange in Dallas.
The third part of the plan was, of course, that the exchange
would use the notes as collateral to borrow money to purchase
the supplies. The supplies were to be shipped on a monthly
basis, one-sixth of the order for each of the months between
May and November. The notes would draw I per cent per
month from date of shipment until the individual farmer repaid
his debt. In addition to making substantial savings in credit costs,
(S Y% compared to So to 200% charged by furnishing merchants)
farmers might expect much cheaper prices on supplies as a
result of the exchange's bulk purchasing power.
To explain this elaborate plan the Texas Al liance mobilized
its lecturing system once again, utilizing many of the men who
had been seasoned in the organizing campaign in the South the
year before. The procedure and all its complicated components
were outlined to every county Alliance in Texas and eventually
to every suballiance. The farmers marshalled all of their re
sources in a gigantic efort "to become a free and independent
people. "
As the joint notes flooded into the Dallas nerve center, efforts
to induce the membership to pay the $2. 00 per capita assessed
for the capital stock of the exchange were intensifed. When the
exchange directors met in March 1 888 to review the situation
they found that, while paid-up stock had climbed from its
September value-virtually nothing-to $ 1 7,000, this "blood
money" from the farmers of Texas had to be balanced against
the steadily rising amounts contained i n the joint notes approved
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
77
by the committee of acceptance. The committee, anticipating
brokering the joint notes through bank loans, began buying
supplies to ful fl l the orders from the suballiances. By April,
when the paid-in capital stock had climbed above $20,000, the
joint notes approved by the exchange totaled no less than
$200, 974. 88 on local collateral of over $600,000 in the land and
stock of Texas farmers. On this foundation, the exchange had
ordered goods in the amount of $ 108, 37 1 . 06.
Macune had meanwhile begun the quest for outside banking
capital i n March, using the joint notes as collateral. After
repeated conferences in Dallas, bankers there refused to advance
loans. Macune then went to Houston, Fort Worth, Galveston
and New Orleans. In Houston he acquired one loan of $6000
by pledging $20, 000 in joint notes as collateral, and some
mercantile houses advanced supplies, taking the notes as security,
but with few exceptions the answer elsewhere was "no. " Macune's
regular report to the exchange directors sounded an ominous
note:
The business manager spent the whole of the month of March
in trying to negotiate banking arrangements whereby a loan
could be afected at a reasonable rate of interest . . . but all the
eforts made were unsuccessful, and tended to produce the
conviction that those who controlled the moneyed institutions
of the state either did not choose to do business with us, or
they feared the ill will of a certain class of business men who
considered their interests antagonistic to those of our order
and corporation. At any rate, be the causes what they may, the
efort to borrow money in a sufcient quantity failed.
The Texas exchange was suddenly in serious trouble. Obli
gations assumed by the exchange for supplies shipped to sub
al liances fel l due in May, and the agency was unable to meet
them. The Alliance leadership rallied to the exchange. Evan
Jones, the Erath County radical now elevated to state president,
presided over a joint meeting of the order's executive committee
and the exchange'S directors. Finding the exchange'S books in
order, Jones confrmed to his members their hope that "the
entire business is and has been conducted upon sound, con-
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
s
:
rvative, practical business principles. " He added gri ml y: " I t is
time for each brother to realize that faltering now means
unconditional surrender." Jones and the exchange directors
then announced that "grave and important issues confront us.
. . . Unjust combinations seek to throttle our lawful and legitimate
eforts. " I n order that "proof of the existence of this combination"
could be submitted to the membership, the Alliance leaders
"most earnestly recommended" that a mass meeting be held at
he courthouse i n each county of the state on the second Saturday
In June. At these meetings documentary evidence "disclosing
facts of vast i mportance" would be submitted along with a plan
to meet the crisis.
1 1
"The day to save the exchange . . .
That "second Saturday in June" fel l on June 9. I t was a day men
remembered for the rest of their l i ves. The response to the call
made one fact dramatically clear: the central reality in the lives
of most Southern farmers i n the late nineteenth century was the
desire to escape the crop lien.
The farmers came by the thousands to almost 200 Texas
courthouses on June 9, 1 888. Townspeople in the far reaches
of the state who were not privy to the Alliance internal com
munication network of circulars, lecturers, or the col umns of
the Souther Mercury knew little of the " Farmers Exchange" and
its fnancial troubles i n Dallas. They watched with puzzlement
the masses "of rugged honest faces" that materialized out of the
countryside and appeared at the courthouses of the state. I n
scores of county seats, the crush of farm wagons extended for
blocks in every direction, some beyond the town l i mits. Reporters
remarked about the "earnestness" of the efort to save the
exchange and the "grim determined farmers" who were making
pledges of support to some far-of mercantile house. The
correspondent of the Austin Weekly Statesman recorded that
observers were "completely astonished by the mammoth pro
portions" of the turnout. In the far north of Texas, 2000 farmers
from over 1 00 suballiances in Fannin County marched i mpas-
THE COOPERATIVE VI SI ON 79
sively down the mai n street of Bonham behind banners that
proclaimed "The Southern Exchange Shall Stand. " A brass band
led the procession to the meeting place where Al l iancemen stood
for hours in the summer heat to learn about the plight of their
exchange.
Little in the farmers' experience l ed them to doubt the
interpretation of recent events made by their state ofcers, for
they had been exploited for years. They reported soberly in
their county Al liance journals that "we found the trouble was
that a number i f not all of the banks and wholesale merchants
i n Texas had turned against the exchange." In farmhouses all
over Texas women dug into domestic hideaways for the coins
that represented a family'S investment i n the hope of escaping
the crop lien. At a mass meeting in southeast Texas frugal
German farmers collected $637. 70 and one of their number
respectful l y tendered a fve-year lease on some property to the
state exchange for use as it saw fi t. In Parker County in northwest
Texas the crowd of farmers was so large the hall could not
accommodate it and the mass meeting moved i n a body to
another location. In the county seat of Rockwall, near Dallas, a
"large and enthusiastic mass meeting" lasted from 9: 00 a. m. to
6: 00 p. m. , and, though the reporter was hazy about the specifcs,
i t was clear, he sai d, that they "intend to stand by the exchange. "
The Hays County Alliance wired that it "loves Dr. Macune for
the enemies he has made, " and Lamar Alliance men paid their
respects to newspaper rumors about Macune's malfeasance by
tending their "thanks and appreciation to the manager of the
state exchange. " County presidents sent wires to each other as
i f the sense of solidarity thus engendered might produce greater
contributions from a membership notoriously low in capital
assets. An East Texas Alliance received telegrams from seven
County Al liances, some halfway across the state. A North Texas
County contributed $4000 to the exchange, while Gulf Coast
Alliancemen pledged several thousand more before adjourning
to a joint meeting with the Knights of Labor to plan a local
political ticket. On the old frontier, other gatherings, including
a well-attended mass meeting in drought-wracked You ng
County, pledged smaller amounts, and in the center of the stat e
80
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
Bell County farmers announced that their pledges constituted
"a success in every respect."
Following this remarkable demonstration from the grass roots,
Macune announced that results "had exceeded expectations"
and that the exchange was on solid footing. But though pledges
seemed to have totaled well over $200,000, the central truth of
he
.
Texas Alliance was that it represented precisely those it said
It did-the great mass of the agricultural poor. A letter to the
Southwest Mercury earlier in the year portended the outcome of
the June 9 efort : " We voted the $2. 00 assessment for the
exchange, and as soon as we are able, will pay it, [but] we are
not able to do so at present. " The dignity with which the
admission was made, and the willi ngness of the Mercur to
eschew proper "promotional" techniques by printing i t without
com

nt, is indicative of the commonplace recognition of

prevaIl i ng poverty among great numbers of those i ntimately
associated with the Al liance movement, landowners and tenants
alike.
.
I n
.
the l i ght of existi ng economic conditions i n the farming
distrIcts, June 9 was indeed a success, but not in the scale of six
figures. The Texas Exchange eventually received something
over $80, 000 f

om its feverish effort. The farmers' pledges

.represented theIr hope for the exchange; their actual contri
butions measured the reality of their means.
1 2
The exchange survived the season, though manifestly i t was not
well. Credit-the farmer's age-old problem-was the exchange'S
problem too. In Dallas, during the summer of 1 888, Macune
put his fertile mind to work on this old truth that had been so
forcibl

reafrmed to him. Somehow, the farmer' s crop that the
advanc1g merchants took as collateral had to be utilized by the
farmer to obtain credit directly. Precisely how this could be done
obviously required something less ephemeral than joint notes
that bankers would not honor. But what?
The ugust 1 888 convention of the Texas Al l iance provided
a tent

uve ans

er
:
Though the Texans were now at the peak
of their organIzatIOnal strength and political infuence in the
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
national agrarian movement, the delegates, representing some
250,000 Texas Alliancemen, were
a
bsorbed in onl y one issue,
the future of their cooperative exchange. Macune faced an
anxious gathering of Al l iance county presidents and lecturers
on the convention's frst day. His exhaustive report, running to
sixt y-six typewritten pages, presented in mi nutest detai l the
record of his stewardship. The stakes were high and all knew
it. "Not a few there were," said the Dallas News, "who had come
many a mile to hear this report and who believed that on t his
document depended in a large degree the rise or fal l , t he success
or destruction of this experi ment . " Macune needed all his
persuasive wiles, [or his address went beyond a mere defense of
his direction of the exchange. It included an entirely new
approach to the central management of agricul t ural credit. Hi s
months of i mensive brooding about t he causes of hi s own and
the exchange'S crisis had produced a bold new stratagem: he
i nt ended to escape the need for bank credit by generating the
necessary liquid capital from the fanners themselves .
Macune proposed the creation of a treasury within the ex
change to issue its own currency-exchange treasury notes-in
payment of up to 90 per cent of the current market value of
commodities. Farmers would circulate these notes wi thin the
order by using them to purchase their supplies at the Alliance
stores. The latter were to be strengthened by having each county
Alliance charter a store of $ l 0, 000 capital , half paid in by the
local farmers and the other half by the central exchange. As
outlined by Macune, the plan actlally cost the central exchange
nothing in capital, for i t acquired the use of the $ 0, 000 capital
of each of the county Alliances for half that amount-in efect,
using the credit of the local stores. The plan, while certainly
strengthening the local operation, had as its principal intent the
strengthening of the central exchange; indeed, each county
Alliance was to be coerced into subscribing for its proportionate
per-capita share-on pain of being excluded from the benefts
of the treasury-note plan. The practical efct of establishing a
treasury department in the state exchange, one empowered to
issue its own currency to Al liance members upon deposit of
warehouse receipts of their commodities, was to expand the
money supply circulating wi thin the order in a way that st rength-
I '
I
I
I '
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITI CS
ened the capitalization of both the central exchange and its local
branches.
Macun
.
e a
.
rged for his treasury-note idea with customary
sweep, dismissing the "cash-only" Rochdale inheritance of the
Grange as wholly inadequate to the task at hand:
We have been talking co-operation for twenty years. Now we
have made an aggressive movement. I t has thrown the whole
community into the wildest confusion . . . . It saved us last year
from one to fve million dollars on our cotton; i t saved us forty
ercent on our plows; thirty percent on our engines and gins;
sixty percent on sewing machines; thirty percent on wagons.
. . . In spite of all this the question today is: shall we endorse
the aggressive movement, or shall we go back home and say
t the people, we stirred up the bees in the bee tree and made
them make the biggest fuss you ever heard . . . but we declined
the fight and have come back home to starve and let our
hildren grow up to be slaves. I n a nut-shell then, the question
5. Will you cease an aggressive efort that promises certain
relief, simply because the opposition howl and curse?
.
Mcune's words underscored the fact that he was fi ghting for
his
.
life as exchange manager and national spokesman for the
Alliance. But the experience had shaken the farmers. Alliance
me stood loyally by Macune, their "past, present, and future
business manager," but they clearly felt they did not have the
immediate means to implement the treasury-note plan. I n
essence, both Macune and the farmers were forced to acknowl
edge that the treasury-note plan, however ingenious, was beyond
the means of the penniless farmers of Texas. The exchange
drew up new by-laws relinquishing, at least for the present, the
basic struggle against the credit system: "all purchases made
fom branch exchanges must be for cash, and notice is hereby
given that he books of the exchange are closed against any
further debit entries. " This was a bitter retreat; it refl ected the
belief that i f the cooperative efort were ever to make a second
attempt, the exchange had to be placed on a sound footing. The
oficers betry
.
ed their anxiety by exhorting the membership to
pay up the JOint notes: "settlements are at once required, and
must be made as soon as possible. "
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
Yet neither Macune nor his principal advisers in the Texas
leadership appeared to be intimidated by the experience or
inclined to shrink from the complexity of managing large-scale
farmer cooperatives. At the Alliance's second national conven
tion in Meridian, Mississippi, late in 1 888, Macune and another
cooperative theorist from Texas, Harry Tracy, argued earnestly
with state Alliance leaders that the Rochdale system helped only
the thin layer of the agricultural mi ddle class in the South, that
it ignored the crushing needs of the great mass of tenant farmers
and the hundreds of thousands of landowners caught in the
cycle of debt to merchants. Macune insisted
.
aMeridian that the
Alliance cooperative had to go beyond the JOint-stock Rochdale
plans of the past. The central state exchange, he said, "is
calculated to benefi t the whole class, and not simply those who
have surplus money to invest in cap tal stock; i t doe
.
s n
.
ot asire
to, and is not calculated to be a business for proft In ItSelf.
I nstead of encouraging a number of independent stores
scattered over the country, each in turn to fall a prey to the
opposition, whenever they shall think it of sufcient i mportance
to concentrate a few forces against it, this plan prOVides for a
strong central State head, and places sufcient capital stock
there to make that the feld for concentrating the fght of the
opposition, and a bulwark of strength and refuge for the local
store eforts.
.
Alliance delegates could not with consistency argue against an
attempt "to beneft the whole class, " as the Alli
.
ance itself was
predicated upon that approach. And they dId not. Tracy,
Macune's colleague, elaborately spelled out the central state
exchange concept and informed North Carolina's L. L. Polk tat
cooperative stores in every Southern hamlet would accomplsh
little in the way of "fnancial liberty" as long as "they buy, Ship,
and sell independent of each other. " In terms of the mass
.
of
Alliance farmers, Tracy saw no "utility" i n lesser cooperative
attempts. Such ideas were i nherently radical, of course, though
men like Tracy who were allied with Macune still voted Demo
cratic and did not regard themselves as political insurgents.
, I
I

CREATI NG A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

But the searing educational experience of the cooperative
struggle of 1 888 had by no means been restricted to Charles
Macune and the top Alliance leaders. Al l Texas Al liancemen
had gone to this school. I t had conveyed some unique lessons
about American banking practices. I ndeed, to farmer advocates
who sought to benefit "the whole class," the dynamics of the
cooperative movement had also brought a new perspect ive on
the larger American society. The discovered truth was a simple
one, but its political i mport was radical : the Alliance cooperative
stod little chance of working unless fundamental changes were
made in the American monet ary system. This understanding
was the foundation of the Omaha Platform of the People' s Party.
I n August 1 888 it materialized i n the organization that would
carry it to millions of Americans.
At the 1 888 convention of the Texas Al liance, the i ntense
intell ectual discussion of the future of the exchange-and the
cooperative crusade that had generated the climate for such
discussions-brought the agrarian movement to a critical ideo
logical threshol d. I i the very months that Macune and the
Al liance leadership labored frantically t o anchor in place the
cornerstone of the cooperative commonwealth-indeed, in' the
very weeks the dirt farmers of the Al liance met, marched, and
contributed i n an efort to save their exchange-Al l iance radicals
quiet l y and almost i mperceptibly achieved a decisive ideological
breakthrough: they conveyed the greenback political heritage
to the spreading agrarian movement as the centerpiece of
All iance doctrine.
This semi nal development , one that hammered i nt o place the
ideological framework of the famed Omaha Platform of the
People's Party, was an achievement riddl ed with irony, for it was
accomplished over the objections of the most inventive green
backer among them-Charles Macune. That i t happened at all
conclusively verifed the ascendency of radicalism within the
ranks of the Alliance founders.
In April 1 888, as Macune searched in vain for bankers who
wo,ld honor the collateral of the Alliance Exchange, H. S. P.
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
Ashby, one of S. O. Daws's original radica
.
l organiz

rs,
,
ssued a
"waking up circular" calling for a statewide meetmg for te
purpose of considering what steps, if any, shold
.
be taken
the approaching campaign. " A leader of the earlier mdependent
political movement which had elected a radi

al mayor
.
of Fort
Worth in the midst of the Great Southwest Stnke of 886, Ashby
had become a key participant in a loose coalition of like-minded
farmer spokesmen that included Evan Jones, president of the
Texas Alliance; J. R. Bennett, editor of the South

r

Mercu?,
.
the
order's national journal ; and, perhaps not surpnsmgly, William
Lamb. Along with other radicals in the nat
.
i

n i

1 88,
.
these
men wanted to construct a third-party political mstltutlOn to
replace the defunct Greenback Party. Ashby's meeting, convened
in Waco i n May 1 888 as the "Convention of Farmers, Laborers,
and Stock Raisers," promul gated a six-point platform that fea
tured the abolition of the national banking system, the replace
ment of national bank notes with legal tender treasury notes
issued on land security, prohibition of alien land ownership, and
"government ownership or control of the means of transpor
tation and communication. "
Macune took time out from hi s Exchange wars to write a
lengthy letter to the Southern Mercury warning t

250,
?
00
Alliance members in Texas against independent political action.
But while Ashby and others held their Waco meeting, Lamwas
in Cincinnati assisting in the formal creation of the new national
" Union Labor Party. " Back in Fort Worth on July 3, 1 888, Lamb
chaired a statewide " Non-Partisan Convention" which accepted
Ashby's Waco platform and added additional planks calling for
a federal income tax, free coinage of silver, and the enactment
of compulsory arbitration laws. With respect to the railroads,
the phrase "government ownership or control" was altered to
read "government ownership and control . " No sooner had
Lamb's "non-partisans" fnished their work i n Fort Worth on
Jul y 4 than the "Texas Union Labor Part, held its i
.
naugural
convention in the same city on July 5. Amid an amusmg-and
revealing-overlapping of delegates from the two conventions,
the new Union Labor Party adopted-without so much as
changing a comma-the platform of the "non-partisans" written
86 CREATI NG A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
two days earlier. The new third party' s nominee for the gov
ernorship of Texas was no less than Evan Jones, president of
the Texas Alliance. As the struggle to save the Exchange reached
its climax in the summer of 888, Jones reluctantly decided that
a divisive poli tical campaign would weaken the Alliance at the
moment it needed maxi mum solidarity to preserve the forward
thrust of the cooperative movement. Therefore, shortly before
the annual convention of the Texas Alliance at Dallas in August
1 888, he declined the nomination "of this noble body of men. "
But at the convention itself-even as Macune made his lengthy
report on the exchange to the attentive delegates-J. M. Perdue
chaired an Alliance committee that delivered a radical "report
on the industrial depression" that placed greenback monetary
theory at the heart of Alliance politics. This document, which
concluded with the "Dallas Demands, " conveyed to the agrarian
movement the radical greenback heritage; the three documents
written at Waco, Fort Worth, and Dallas between May and
August 1 888 provided the entire substance of the St. Louis
Platform adopted by the National Alliance the following year.
With the exception of one monetary proposal which Macune
hi mself was to provide, the Omaha Platform of the People's
Party was in place.
These developments revealed clearly the dynamics that pro
duced the mul ti-sectional People's Party: the cooperative crusade
not only recruited the farmers to the Alliance; opposition to the
cooperatives by bankers, wholesalers, and manufacturers gen
erated a climate that was sufciently radical to permit the
acceptance by farmers of the greenback interpretation of the
prevailing forms of American fnance capitalism. Greenback
doctrines thus provided the ideology and the cooperative crusade
provided the mass dynamics for the creation of the People's
Party. Both reached their peak of i ntensity in the Texas Alliance
in the tumul tuous summer of 1 888, and the emotional heat
from that experience welded radical greenbackism onto the
farmers' movement. After 1 888, only one step, * a rather sizable
* This step-the fi nal one involving the political education of the mass
movement-is the process of politicization described on pp. 91 -9
3
and 1 25-82 .
See also Goodwyn, Democrtic Promise, pp. 649-52 . fns.
3
4 and
3
9.
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
one, remained to bring to fruition the creation of a

ulti
sectional radical party-the conversion of the bul
.
k of the

atlOnal
Alliance membership to the greenback doctnnes which had
become the central political statement of the agrarian

ovement.
Two men, Charles Macune and William Lam, workmg toward
opposite purposes, were to provide the tactics that produced
the mass conversion.
1 4
But in 1 888 radical politics was not yet the uppermost thoug|t
in the minds of the growing army of farmers who met m
thousands of suballiances scattered from Florida to Kansas. The
attention of the Alliance was focused on the cooperative cr

sade.
The Texans ofered the agrarian movement a bold l uepnnt
.
of
large-scale cooperation, and the very promise of thiS bluepnnt
recruited farmers by the hundreds of thousands .
.
Large-scale
cooperatives were dangerous, it seemed, but me

hke Macune
and Tracy, as well as the more radical leadership among
.
the
Alliance founders, argued that only broadly gauged cooperatives
could acquire the capital strength to combat the array of weapons
available to forces of monopoly. Indeed, the more one learned
of the options open to commercial opponents of farmer coop
eratives, the more imperative centralized exchanges seemed.
One new state Alliance that agreed was Kansas. As the order
moved into its greatest period of growth i n 1 889, the " Kasas
Alliance Exchange Company" was chartered as a centrhz

d
marketing and purchasing agency. I t later began to pubhsh Its
own newspaper, the Kansas Farmers Alliance and Industrzal cnlO

.
The National Alliance spread across the Western plams m
1 889, through Missouri as well as Kansa

, and
.
moved across the
Ohio River into Indiana. Al l iance orgamzers mvaded Kentucky
and established enclaves in Oklahoma Territory and Colorado
i n the West and Maryland i n the East.
. ,
As a decade of organizing came to an end, one of the Alhance s
most striking achievements involved victory over ts announce+
enemy, a bona fde national "trust. " Cotton baggmg
.
had tr

dl
tionally been made from jute, and in 1 888 a combme of Jute
I ,
I I
88
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLTICS
manufacturers suddenly announced that henceforth jute bag
ging would be raised from seven cents a yard to eleven, twelve
and, in some regions, fourteen cents a yard. The action laid a
"tribute of some $2,000,000" on the nation's cotton farmers.
Alliance leaders i n Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina,
Louisiana, and Florida reacted with vigor. The Al liance convened
a South-wide convention in Birmi ngham in the spring of , 889
to fashion fi nal plans for a boycott throughout the cotton belt.
The state Alliances agreed on common plans for action and
entered i nto arrangements with scores of mills across the South
for the manufacture of cotton bagging. Some buyers, particularly
in England, complained about the inferior cotton baggi ng, a
problem Florida farmers ingeniously solved by arranging to
i mport cheaper jute bagging from Europe and paying for it
with farm produce consigned to the Florida Alliance Exchange.
In Georgia, a rising agrarian advocate, Tom Watson, helped
fortify Alliancemen for the struggle by delineating the larger
i mplications: " I t is useless to ask Congress to help us, just as it
was folly for our forefathers to ask for relief from the tea tax;
and they revolted . . . so should we. " He added, wi th an eye to
future struggles, "The Standard of Revolt is up. Let us keep it
up and speed it on. " Georgia Alliancemen took him at his word.
When North Carolina's Pol k appeared at a Georgia Alliance
convention i n the mi ddle of the jute war, he encountered an
up-country farmer dressed out in cotton bagging who told him
that 360 Alliancemen in his county had uniform suits of it and
"they are literally the cotton bagging brigade. " A double wedding
at an Alliance Exposition in Atlanta found 20,000 Alliancemen
looking on approvingly as "both brides and both grooms were
attired in cotton bagging costumes. " Such innovations testifi ed
to the fervor with which state and local Alliances threw them
selves into the battle with the jute trust, but its ul timate outcome
depended on less colorful but more demanding organizational
arrangements to substitute cotton bagging for jute at thousands
of local suballiances across half a continent. The farmers of the
Al liance met this test in 888-89, and the manufacturing
combine, suddenly awash i n its own jute, conceded that the
price-rigging scheme had collapsed. In 1 890, Souther farmers
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
89
were buying fourteen-cent jute bagging for as little as fi ve cents
a yard.
This triumph for cooperative purchasing was matched in
quality, if not in scope, by innovations in cooperative mareting
that emanated from Kansas. At the local level, county allIances
formed a variety of marketing and purchasing cooperatives with
an elan born of their new sense of collective power. But
cooperation i n Kansas soon moved beyond the stage of local
efforts. In 1 889, the Kansas Alliance entered into joint agree
ments with the Kansas Grange and the Missouri Al liance and,
in 1 890, with the Nebraska Al liance, to establish the American
Livestock Commission Company. The experiment in multi-state
marketing of livestock opened in May 1 889 with paid-up capital
from farmer members totaling $25, 000. The effort proved
successful from the start. Within six months the commission
company had over $40,000 in profi ts to distribute to it

n:embers.
The animosity toward the cooperative among commiSSIon com
panies scarcely promised a serene future, however.
These successes were balanced by a crucial failure. In the late
summer of , 889, after twenty mo

ths of operation, the Texas

Exchange, unable to market its joint notes in banking circles
and therefore unable to respond to insistent demands from Its
creditors, went under. The Texas effort, the fi rst to be chartered,
was thus the fi rst to fil. The news sent a wave of anxiety
through the entire South: was the Alliance dr
.
eam unattainabl

?
Were the Texas lecturers wrong? As the AllIance grew, so dId
the burdens of explaining and proving its program of self-help.
With increasing frequency the Al liance founders, driven by the
difculties of cooperation, had to explain to farmers that the
opposition to their movement derived from the self-interest of
gold-standard fi nanciers who administered and p
.
rofted by the
existing national banking system. Greenback doctnnes were thus
increasingly marshalled to defend the Macunite dream of large
scale farmer cooperatives. By this process radical monetary
theory began to be conveyed to the suballiances by growing
numbers of Al liance lecturers. The farmers had joined the
Alliance cooperative to escape the crop l ien in the South and the
chattel mortgage in the W cst, and the fai lure of cooperal ives,
go
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
particularly the huge model experi ment i n Texas, spread deep
concern through the ranks of the Farmers Alliance. Wherever
a c

operative failed for lack of credit, greenbackism surged like

a virus through the organizational structure of the agrarian
movement. Slowly, the Omaha Pl atform of the People' s Party
was germinating.
Charles Macune was not present in Dallas for the death of the
exchange, for the ubiquitous Alliance leader now operated out
of Washington, where he edited the new Alliance national
newspaper. The National Economist, underwritten by Texas
Al liancemen, became, under Macune's tutelage, easily the best
edited journal of agricultural economics i n the nation. Circula

ion soon passed 1 00,000. As the Alliance organization completed

Its second year as a national i nstitution, the enigma that was Dr.
Charles W. Macune rivaled that of the cooperative crusade itsel f
as a case study i n complexity. Macune's belief that cooperation
must serve landless tenants and others bound to the crop lien
system stamped him as an economic radical, yet he remained
frml y traditional on political issues and adamantly opposed to
all talk of a third party. Macune was able to summarize all these
ideas in a single sentence: "The people we seek to relieve from
the oppression of unjust conditions are the largest and most
conservative class of citizens i n this country. "
1 5
Precisely what the Alliance movement was i n the process of
becoming could scarcely have been predicted by the farmers
themselves from the contradictory events of 1 888-8g. Only one
thing was certai n: the Alliance was attempting to construct,
within the framework of American capitalism, some variety of
cooperative commonwealth. Precisely where that would lead was
unclear. More than any other Al lianceman, Charles Macune had
fel t the power of the corporate system arrayed alongside the
power of a self-help farmer cooperative. He had gone to the
bankers and they had replied in the negative. Though his own
farmer associates had said "yes," they could not marshall enough
resources to defeat the crop lien system. Macune knew that an
THE COOPERATIVE VISION g l
exchange of considerably reduced scope could be constructed
on a sound basis within the means available to organized farmers.
One could avoid the credit problem simply by operating cash
stores for afuent farmers.
But while he was an orthodox, even a reactionary social
philosopher, and still a political traditionalist, C. W. Macune was
obsessed with the need to create a democratic monetary system.
The pressure of the mul tiple experiences that had propelled
him to leadership amid the Cleburne schism, to fame as an
organizer and national leader during the Southern expansion,
to crisis and potential loss of political power over the exchange,
and to constant maneuvering against his driving, exasperating,
creative left wing-all, taken together, conjoined to carry Macune
to a conception of the uses of democratic government that was
beyond the reach of orthodox political theorists of the Gilded
Age. Out of his need for personal exoneration, out of his
ambition, and out of his exposure to the realities i n the daily
lives of the nation's farmers, Macune in 1 88g came to the sub
treasury plan. Politically, his proposal was a theoretical and
psychological breakthrough of considerable implication: he pro
posed to mobilize the monetary authority of the nation and put
it to work in behalf of a sector of its poorest citizens through the
creation of a system of currency designed to beneft everyone
i n the "producing classes," including urban workers.
The main outlines of the sub-treasury system gradually un
folded in the pages of the National Economist during the summer
and fal l of 1 88g. There can be no question that Macune saved
his proposal for dramatic use i n achieving, fnally, a national
merger of all the nation's major farm and labor organizations.
He now planned that event for St. Louis i n December 1 88g,
when a great "confederation of labor organizations, " convened
by the Alliance, would attempt to achieve a workable coalition
of the rural and urban working classes, both North and South.
But the sub-treasury was more than a tactical adjunct to
organizational expansion. Macune's concept was the intellectual
cul mination of the cooperative crusade and directly addressed
its most compelling liability-inadequate credit. Through his
sub-treasury system, the federal government would underwrite
CREATING A DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
the cooperatives by issuing greenbacks to provide credit for the
farmer's crops, creating the basis of a more flexible national
currency in the process; the necessary marketing and purchasing
facilities would be achieved through government-owned ware
houses, or "sub-treasuries," and through federal sub-treasury
certificates paid to the farmer for his produce-credit which
would remove furnishing merchants, commercial banks, and
chattel mortgage companies from American agriculture. The
sub-treasury "certificates" would be government-issued green
backs, "full legal tender for all debts, public and private," in the
words of the Al liance platform. As outlined at St. Louis in 1 889,
the sub-treasury system was a slight but decisive modifcation of
the treasury note pl an Macune had presented to the Texas
Al liance the year before. I ntellectually, the plan was profoundly
i nnovative. It was to prove far too much so for Gilded Age
America.
In its own time, the sub-treasury represented the political
equivalent of full-scale grcenbackism for farmers. This was the
plan's i mmediate i mport : it defned the doctrine of fat money
in clear terms of self-interest that had unmistakable appeal t
farmers desperately overburdened with debt. As the cooperative
crusade made abundantly clear, the appeal extended to both
West and South, to Kansas as well as to Georgia. Macune' s
concept went beyond the generalized greenbackism of radicals
such as William Lamb to a specifc practical solution that appealed
directly to farmers in a context they coul d grasp. But more than
this. the sub-treasury plan directly benefted all of the nation's
"producing classes" and the nation' s economy itsel f. For the
greenback dollars for the farmers created a workable basis for
a new and fexible national currency originating outside the
exclusive control of Eastern commercial bankers. Beyond the
benefts to the economy as a whole, Macune' s system provided
broad new options t the United States Treasury in giving private
citizens access to reasonable credit. As Macune fully understood,
the revolutionary i mplications of the sub-treasury system went
far beyond its i mmediate value to farmers.
The line of nineteenth-century theorists of an irredeemable
currency-one that included such businessmen as Kellogg and
THE COOPERATIVE VISION
93
Campbell and extended to such labor partisans as Andrew
Cameron-cul minated in the farmer advocate, Charles Macune.
As Macune argued, the agrarian-greenbackism underlying his
sub-treasury system provided organizational cohesion between
Southern and Western farmers. As he did not foresee, it also
provided political cohesion for a radical third party. The People's
Party was to wage a frantic campaign to wrest efective operating
control of the American monetary system from the nation's
commercial bankers and restore it, "in the name of the whole
people, " to the United States Treasury. It was a campaign that
was never to be waged again.
I i
,
1 1
l
1 1
The People' s Movement
Encounters the Received Culture
"We are emergmg from a period of intense individualism,
supreme selfshness, and ungodly greed to a period of co
operative efort."
Kansas Allianceman
"One of the wildest and most fantastic projects ever seriously
proposed by sober man. "
The New York Times on the sub-treasury system.
"I t is socialism . . . .
Nebraska editor on the founding convention of the People's Party.
4
The National Alliance
Organizing Northern Farmers, Southern Blacks,
and Urban Workers
". . . the one most essential thing . = .
It is one of the enduring ironies of history that established
systems of hierarchy rarely find it necessary to rely on sensible
defenses as an essential means of maintaining power. Police or
other modes of social authority are sometimes necessary, but
logic rarely is. I ndeed, throughout recorded history, the presence
in all human societies of jerry-built modes of thought, behavior,
and racial and religious memories have served to help protect
traditional elites by strewing complicated psychological and
emotional roadblocks in the path of those with unsanctioned
but relatively thoughtful innovations. So pervasive have been
these habits of thought that established hierarchies have tended
to be defended as venerable repositories of good sense when
they are, i n fact, merely powerful and orderly.
A complementary presumption is that insurgent movements
are nonsensical . Indeed, the very thought that an insurgent
movement, in its fundamental tenets, may be more than super
fi cial calls into question the usefulness of the established order
that resists the movement. Participants in the mainstream of
most societies generally fi nd such causal relationships difcult
t accept because to do so would challenge their own individual
modes of thought and behavior. The existence of a coherent
protest movement is, therefore, an awkward fact for any society.
For Americans, Populism proved particularly awkward.
98 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
These circumstances have created for the student of the
agrarian revolt a number of conceptual hazards, securely
grounded in the traditions of our history and culture. Primary
among them is a generalized presumption about "politics" that
proceeds from a deep and largely unconscious complacency
about American democracy. This attitude essentially embraces
three elements. At bottom is a romantic view about the achieve
ments of the American past. The national experience is seen as
both purposeful and generally progressive. The "system, "
though not without faws, works. Lingering fl aws wi l l ul timately
be diminished. Unarguably, this presumption is the conceptual
centerpiece of that vast body of writing known as the literature
of American history. However true or untrue this presumption
may be, it incontestably prevails. I ndeed, it is a central pre
sumption of American culture.
Building upon this belief is another intellectual fol k custom
that contributes to the pervasiveness of American complacency:
since the "system" passes the historical test as being generally
progressive, a progressive evolution of democratic forms over
time is assumed. Complementing this belief (the focus here
remains upon the mainstream cultural presumptions of Amer
ican society) is a generalized intuition concerning the relative
ease with which democratic forms have come to exist and are
maintained in America. Few central ideas about America have
less historical basis of support than this one. Hierarchical
structures and hierarchical modes of thought are endemic to
the societies mankind has created. Democratic ideas are most
l ikely to be regarded, by the cultural elites of such societies, as
insurgent ideas. So regarded, these democratic ideas have, in
fact, become insurgent ideas-even i n societies fancying them
selves as "democratic." Such was the fate of Populism in America.
Yet there is another component of contemporary American
complacency, one that builds upon the fi rst two. Organic to the
mainstream American historical tradition is a mode of analysis
that has grown out of a profound underestimation of the
difculties inherent in the formation of mass democratic move
ments. The point can scarcely be exaggerated. The simple reality
is that the hazards facing the organizers of democratic move-
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE 99
ments such as Populism have been, and remain, awesome. So
difcult have mortals found these hazards to be, in fact, that the
times in human history when a majority of people in any given
society have been able to shake of inherited habits of conduct
and fnd a way to participate i n signifi cant democratic politics
have been rare. Democratic movements may be relatively co
herent and purposeful-and still fail .
Al l of the foregoing is essential to an understanding of
Populism. For aspiring spokesmen of the "pl ain people" i n
nineteenth-century America, the obstacles to the recruitment of
a mass movement were many, varied, subtle, and, in the aggre
gate, overwhelming. It is, for example, a fact that most nine
teenth-century Americans voted for the Democratic or Repub
lican Party because of sectional loyalties generated by the Civil
War. As long as Protestant farmers, North and South, divided
over sectionalism, and farmers and workers i n the North further
divided over religion, the possibility of a mass democratic politics
free of decisive hierarchical business infuence was a remote one.
But the problems facing agrarian organizers were not re
stricted to the intense sectional legacy of the war, or to deeply
held loyalties and prejudices. Alliance lecturers necessarily rested
their case on their analysis of the inequities of the American
economic system. While this appeal , particularly i n the hands of
sophisticated greenback theoreticians, could sometimes take on
a certain attractiveness, the patterns of deference that had been
instilled in working Americans over generations made autono
mous decision-making by the "plain people" something less than
probable. For a farmer in Iowa or Il l inois to leave the Republican
Party in order to become a Populist he had to overcome not
only his memories associated with the "Party-that-saved-the
Union," but the enduring and very visible civic presence of that
same party in his own time and locale. In the towns and hamlets
of the rural North and West in the late nineteenth century, the
Fourth of Jul y was a day of Republican celebration. The
commander of the local unit of the Grand Army of the Republic
could be counted upon not only to rekindle memories of loyal
"boys i n blue," but to lead the Fourth of Jul y parade itsel f. And
this latter was no smal l political gesture-for included i n the
1 00 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
ranks parading the (Republican) Hag were the town's aging
bankers, ministers, and " plain people" who had fought at Shiloh
and Gettysburg; and, year after year, the same civic ritual
ensured the loyalties of the younger bankers, ministers, and
plain people. The past thus blended i nto the present as a political
statement grounded in patriotism and expressed by one's reaf
frmed Republican allegiance. Standi ng up against one's minister,
civic leaders, and economic and cultural models not only tested
a persoo' s range of psychological autonomy but his intellectual
ability to define what authentic patriotism was. The impediments
to political nonconformity were impressive. Sectionalism was not
merely a patriotic memory, it traded on received patterns of
deference in the present.
Almost precisely the same dynamics applied in the South,
where the association of patriotism with the Confederacy was
augmented by the sentimental pathos inherent in the Lost Cause.
"Confederate Day" rallies were also political statements, a re
furbishing of loyalties in which one' s captains, colonels, and
generals led the civic congregation in reverence to the "party of
the fathers. " I n both North and South, Al l iance organizers, as
they themselves well understood, were asking a great deal of the
people i n terms of their own sense of autonomy-even of those
sectors of the plain people they most closely identifed with as
Protestant, white fanners.
For urban Catholics in the cities of the North the cultural
hazards t organizational recruitment were even more imposing.
What could a Protestant agrarian organizer say to an I rish
Catholic factory worker in Boston? What did the cooperative
crusade mean t the Germans of Pennsylvania's cities? How
coul d an Al l iance lecturer even gain access to them? I ndeed,
what could he say to them should he somehow succeed?
Final l y, the American tradition of white supremacy cast a
forbidding shadow over the prospect of uniting black and white
tenants, sharecroppers, and smallholders i nto an enduring
political force across the South. The two races shared a single,
compelling, economic connection-vast numbers of farmers in
both races were shackled to the furnishing merchant. But these
Southerers also shared with each other and with Northern plain
people inherited patters of deference. In the South these
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 0 1
patterns were fortifed each time a farmer approached the
counter of the man with credit. The merchant was more than
a captain or a colonel; he was the man who controlled the
farmer' s life. Under such circumstances, what political options
did i mpoverished farmers possess? To what extent could the
Alliance cooperative encourage a sense of self i n people? How
much could fellowship i n the Alliance be expected to teach?
About economics? About race?
Self-evidently, the dream of William Lamb, Henry Vi ncent,
and other Alliance activists for a "new day for the industrial
millions" through the creation of a national farmer-labor coa
lition was a vision that contradicted the realities of American
life. In this sense, the early coalition of the Alliance and the
Knights of Labor in Texas i n 1 886 was quite misleading, because
few of the reigning cul tural obstacles were present. The Missouri
Pacifc track laborer who belonged to the Knights of Labor lodge
in Parker County, Texas, was largely indistinguishable from the
farmer-member of suballiance No. 87 of the Parker County
Farmers Alliance. The railroad worker was, often quite l iterally,
the brother who had come to town to earn wages to help the
fami l y survive on the crop l ien. In the Western plains-whether
in Weatherford, Texas, or Winfel d, Kansas-the "laborer" in
the Knights and the "farmer" i n the Alliance dressed alike,
attended the same church, read the same newspaper, nursed
similar hopes. If the Alliance, or the Knights, or both of them,
could somehow generate enough i nternal momentum, a
"farmer-labor coalition of the plain people" might indeed be an
attainable objective i n certain homogeneous locales i n the West.
But the same could scarcely be said for the prospects of recruiting
a Slavic steelworker in Pittsburgh, a "patriotic" Republican farmer
i n Michigan, or a bl ack sharecropper in South Carolina. Through
out human history the creation of a new political culture has
always involved far more than the propagation of a platform or
the existence of "hard times, " and the task facing Alliance
organizers i n nineteenth century America was truly a momentous
one.
The manner in which the people of the Alliance, in 1 887-92,
gained enough self-confdence to shoulder this burden is an
interesting story, in some ways a saga of democratic striving.

1 02 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
But it is also necessarily a story that cannot now be completely
rescued from the obscurities of historical causation itself. The
broad tactical outlines are clear-how provincial organizers
developed the means to carry their cooperative message to the
Canadian border and to both coasts, how they attempted to
build political bridges to labor leaders in the North and to black
spokesmen in the South, how the specifc ideology of their
platform came into being, and fnal l y, how, in the face of
sectional ism, they managed to construct a mul ti-sectional political
party. And there is evidence which measures how the Al liance
combated inherited patterns of deference among its members,
as wel l as the process through which the supportive culture of
the movement helped encourage the mass aspirations that made
the Populist efort such a unique moment in American history.
But it is i mpossible at this late date t get into the mind of a
nineteenth-century Alabama Populist, be he black or white, or
to know why some workers in Chicago found a way to join the
vibrant third party efort there and why others did not. While
self-generated or movement-generated political consciousness
can be, and often is, intimately related to specifcs of social and
economic class, it is also a product of elaborate and contradictory
cul tural patterns. We know probably as much as we need to
know about who the Populists were, but we al most certainly will
never know remotely enough about the specifc cultural tensions
generated in the consciousness of mi l l ions of individual Amer
icans by the appeal and the challenge of the Populist moment.
A vailable are many insights into the human and organizational
dynamics of Popul i sm where these dynamics were strongest, as
are a number of other insights about the same components
where they were weakest. But we can only be much less precise
about that broad spectrum of political consciousness where the
two tendencies come together-where "the movement" affected
people, but did not decisively afect them. We can, however, be
certain of one infl uence: everywhere, the power of the received
cul ture was present.
Yet even with these necessary qualifications, the Populist
moment offers a fascinating matrix of aspiration, indignation,
despair, and-always-earest striving. Their dreams were suf-
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 03
fciently grand in scope that, in failing, they left a story of intense
democratic efort.
2
The Al l iance assaul t on the rural bastions of the Northern
Republican Party is a study in persistence. The Kansas move
ment, with its articulate nucleus of veteran greenbackers, efec
tively augmented by the organizing sophistication of the Vincent
brothers, constitutes an untypical case of rapid consolidation.
Elsewhere the ascendancy of the Al l iance was more gradual,
and in some places it did not come at all. In al l instances,
sectionalism constituted a chronic problem that never went away.
Historians long thought that American Populism was largely
a product of the eforts of Wester farmers general l y and of a
specifc organization popularly known as the Northwester
Farmers Alliance. But we now know this was not the case. The
Northwestern Al l iance, a smal l caucus of aspiring spokesmen
formed by a Chicago magazine editor in 1 880, l i mped through
the decade without ever formul ating either an internal program
or an external purpose. I t consequently had great difculty
either attracting or keeping members. As late as the spring of
1 889 it had a constantly shifting membership of less than 1 0,000
i n its entire claimed jurisdiction. As an institution, the North
western group contributed almost nothing to the Populist move
ment; indeed, it opposed the formation of the People's Party.
Prior to the national ascendancy of the Al l iance, substantive
organizational activity in the Great Plains was restricted to two
local eforts in I llinois and Dakota Territory. They shared a
component with the Al liance: both were cooperative movements.
The Il linois example was the resul t of the organizing eforts
of the "Farmers Mutual Beneft Association," which grew slowly
but steadily through a half-dozen counties in the I llinois wheat
belt as farmers attempted to fashion new methods of dealing
with grain commission dealers, railroads, and farm i mplement
wholesalers. By 1 887, the FMBA had 2000 members who mel
i n subordinate lodges. These groups elected representatives t
a county lodge which met quarterly and exercised the kind or
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
direct coordinating guidance over the locals required for co
operative buying and sel ling. The FMBA was structurally sound.
In 1 888 came the founding of a newspaper and a prol iferation
of circulars, instructions, and cooperative planning; growth
became rapid. Having achieved a membership of 40, 000, the
FMA met with leaders of the Al l iance at Meridian, Mississippi,
late In the year and worked out plans for immediate cooperation
and eventual amalgamation.
nother clear indication of agrarian energy in the Western
plains emanated from Dakota Territory. A farmer named Henry
Loucks had begun mobilizing wheat growers into rural cl ubs in
1 884 to protest the monopolistic practices of grain elevator
companies and the high freight rates of railroads. I n the same
mon
.
ths that the early Texas Al l iance began experimenting in
bul king cotto
.
n as part of its cooperative marketing program,
Loucks l ed hi s Dakota farmers into a series of tentative efrts
toward cooperation. Some thirty-fve cooperative warehouses
were erected in the Territory. These attempts had little success,
but Dakota fa
.
rmers earned a great deal , and by 1 888 they had
formed a terntory-wlde cooperative exchange. Essentially ajoint
stock company which employed Rochdale "cash-only" methods,
the Dakota cooperative i mmediatel y encountered resistance
from i mplement dealers. Such roadblocks had a radicalizing
efect on the Dakota leadership, particularly on Loucks himsel f,
and the problems of cooperation heightened Loucks's interest
in the procedures of Macune' s National Farmers Al l iance. The
two orders moved into a close relationship in 1 888.
The most important contribution that the Dakotans made to
the gatheri

agrarian movement was a unique crop insurance
pan. Admi nistered under the leadership of Loucks' close as
sociate, Alonzo Wardal l , the cooperative plan not only saved
farmers something above 200 per cent over previous rates, but
also proved to be an efective organizing tool. The "Alliance
Hail Association" met with determined opposition from insur
ance companies after it announced plans to ofer protection for
2 1 to 25 cents an acre to farmers who were used to paying
anywhere from 50 to 75 cents an acre. The Association insured
2000 farmers and 1 50,000 acres in 1 887 and, as the good news
spread, 8000 farmers and 600, 000 acres in 1 888. Wardall shaped
THE NATIONAL ALLI ANCE
the Dakota insurance plan into a mul ti-state program under the
auspices of the National Al l iance and, for good measure, formally
joined the order in Kansas. He and Loucks readied plans to
have their entire membership follow suit in 1 889 by a formal
merger.
Flushed with success, Loucks and Wardall then personally
exported their cooperative insurance plan to Minnesota, res
urrecting in the process a moribund organization known as the
Minnesota Farmers Al l iance. The feat constitutes one of the
more interesting vignettes of the agrarian revolt, for they
achieved it through the unl i kely organizational auspices of a
writer-lecturer, social critic, and part-time politician-I gnatius
Donnelly.
Though the smal l and loosely formed Minnesota Al l iance
dated from 1 880, it had always been more or less a plaything of
politicians, and the twists and turns in its political maneuvers
had scarcely augmented the legislative infuence of its member
ship, which was less than robust in any case. By 1 888 the
Minnesota Alliance, after eight years of membership in the
Northwester Alliance, had but eighty active chapters, something
less than 2000 members, and no internal program of any kind.
I t was mostly a forum that politicians visited in season. I n the
spring of 1 889, the order, casting about for hel p, asked Donnelly
to become its ofcial state lecturer. Having just completed a
sensational anticlerical, anticapitalist novel entitled Caesar's Col
MHW and doubtless seeking a new outlet for his energies,
Donnelly accepted the ofer. Though he had played little role
in bringing the Loucks-Wardall insurance plan to Minnesota, he
formed a workable partnership with the newcomers, and the
triumvirate of two cooperative advocates from Dakota Territory
and an aging writer-politician gradually generated the makings
of a genuine agrarian movement in Minnesota. Donnelly' s
deputy state lecturer wrote from the field excitedly that the
Al liance was "catching on" because of the appeal of the Loucks
Wardall insurance program. Donnelly i mmediately began a
promotional correspondence with his many personal acquaint
ances in the state and soon had fashioned several platoons of
agricultural insurance salesmen to double as Al liance organizers.
In common with many dissident politicians, Donnelly believed
, "
16 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
that reform politics was grounded in the art of stump oratory,
and his dalliance with organization-building could easily have
ended disastrously. But Loucks and Wardall supervised the
campaign, Loucks taking temporary leave from his Dakota duties
to move in as manager of the Minnesota Al liance business ofice
while Wardall directed the insurance program. In 1 889, through
Donnelly' s ability to recruit agents and Loucks's and Wardall's
experience as agrarian organizers, the Mi nnesota Al l iance be
came a functioning, though embryonic, cooperative. It therefore
acquired new members and, for the frst time, the beginnings
of organizational cohesion. In the last six months of 1 889 the
Minnesota Alliance acquired a somewhat uncertain lecturing
apparatus, a functioning state ofce, an ofcial newspaper (The
Great West ), a bank balance, and nearly 1 5, 000 members. But
Minnesota farmers di d not undertake to form a purchasing or
marketing cooperative, at either the state or local level .
Whil e the evidence from I l linois, Dakota, and Minnesota
seemed to ofer at least some promise for Midwestern farmers,
the evidence from Kansas was even more instructive. The South
might have seemed responsive to the Alliance message, but
Kansas set a new standard in consolidation. The cooperative
movement surged across the state. In nine months between the
spring of 1 889 and the winter of 1 889-90 more than 75, 000
Kansans joined the Farmers Alliance as the order created local,
county, and statewide cooperatives. The new movement quickly
drew the support of a network of radical newspaper editors
whom Henry Vincent had earlier brought together in behalf of
the Union Labor party. john Rogers's Kansas Commoner, Stephen
McLal lin's Advocate, and, after a pause reAecting years of Re
publican orthodoxy, even Wil liam Pefer's Kansas Farmer all
joined the Noncon
f
ormist in defending the cooperative crusade
and exhorting farmers to stand fi rm in trade. By the end of
1 889 the cooperative movement had reached jerry Simpson' s
part of the state, and the gloom that had punctuated his earlier
appraisals began to disappear. When he spoke now as lecturer
of the Barber County Farmers Al liance, new faces appeared in
the crowd-farmers who had joined the cooperative movement
and for the frst time were hearing new, radical political inter
pretations expressed in a setting congenial to their acceptance.
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
3
While the Alliance probed ever deeper i nto the Norther plains
in 1 889, Charles Macune, in Washington, developed his National
Economist into the national journal of the reform movement and
readied some grandiose plans for a national coalition. Macune
hoped to bring under a single institutio

al umbrela all the

major working class institutions in the nation. To this end, he
worked out arrangements with the FMBA, the Northwestern
Alliance, and, most importantly, the Knights of Labor to convene
a "confederation of industrial organizations" in St. Louis in
December 1 889. Quietly, he put the fi nishing touches on the
piece d
e
resistance, his sweeping proposal for a democratic mon
etary system which he had decided to call the "Sub-Treasury
System. "
I n hi s months in Washington, Macune had developed a
personal relationship with Terence Powderly,
.
the Gra
.
nd Master
Workman of the Knights of Labor. A qUiet, cautious man,
Powderly was in no sense Macune's intellectual equal and
.
he
soon fel l almost wholly under the ideological sway of the agrarian
leader. For his part, Macune had been deeply afected by the
Exchange struggle of 1 888 and by the tena
.
city of ba

ker
opposition to his dreams for large-scale crelt coo

eratIves.
While he was as touchy as ever about the obvIOus third party
ambitions of Texas radicals such as William Lamb, Evan jones,
"Stump" Ashby, and J M. Perdue, he wa

not inti

idated by
their greenback interpretation of the American banl

g system.
I ndeed, purely in terms of monetary theory (as dlstI

ct from
third party political tactics) Macune was the most committed and
inventive green backer in the entire movement.
,
I n strictly intellectual terms, therefore, acune s (

utlo

k
permitted him to work quite easily with Al liance
:
adlCals In
fashioning the national Alliance political statement, given to the
country in 1 889 as "The St. Louis Pl atform. " In the cour

e of
complex organizational arrangements worked out at the natIOnal
Alliance meeting in Meridian the year before, the order had
completed the preliminary institutional require

ents necessary
to absorb the Arkansas Agricultural Wheel. Until that step could
be formally ratifed by the Wheel membership in 1 889, Macunc
I II
l
1 08
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CUL TURF.
constructed a three-tiered national institution. The National
Al liance was renamed the Farmers and Laborers Union of
America in a move to pave the way for amalgamation with the
Knights of Labor. Evan Jones, the Texas radical, became pres
ident. As the Arkansas Wheel moved into confederation, its
president, I ssac McCracken, maintained equal status with Jones.
But over both organizations was a new parent institution, headed
by Macune. To that parent Macune afxed the old name: The
National Farmers Alliance and Co
o
perative Union.
Texans then dominated the national agrarian movement, and
an intense radical pressure from the Texas Al l iance leadership
was exerted upon Macune. He deAected it by agreeing with the
radicals on the specifc substance of the new "Al l iance Demands"
at St. Louis. These planks incorporated all of the main features
of the three radical documents written under the aegis of
William Lamb, "Stump" Ashby, and J. M. Perdue duri ng the
height of the Exchange war in Texas the preceding year. The
Omaha Platform of the People's Party thus came into being
without controversy.
4
At St. Louis the Southern Al l iances, possessing as they did a
zealous assortment of cooperators scattered through various
state organizations, acquiesced in these rather profound ideo
logical refnements, which had the effect of commi tting the
entire national movement to the monetary principles of green
backism. Macune also had no difcul ty in inducing Powderly of
the Knights of Labor to subscribe t the same political document.
The rising Kansas movement and the Dakota group under
Henry Loucks al so joined i n easy harmony. The seven-plank
document opened with a ful l restatement of the greenback
heritage that testifed to the "educational" i mpact of the coop
erative movement on the organized farmers.
We demand the abolition of national banks and the substitution
of legal tender treasury notes in lieu of national bank notes,
issued in sufcient volume to do the business of the country
on a cash system; regulating the amount needed on a per
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
capita basis as the business interest of the country expand:
and that all money issued by the Government shall be Ilgal
tender in payment of all debts, both public and private.
1 09
The other six planks called for government ownership of the
means of communication and transportation, prohibition of
alien land ownership, free and unl imited coinage of silver,
equitable taxation between classes, a fractional paper currency,
and gover
.
ment economy. Excepting only the formal addition
of the sub-treasury plan itself, the national agrarian movement
had achieved, on the leadership level at least, the substance of
the Populist vision.
But for Charles Macune, the most i mportant ideological event
at St. Louis was not the platform but the unveiling of his
monetary system. Macune was thoroughly awake to the fact that
his proposal constituted a candid comment on past agrarian
policy, including his own. He gently pointed out the limitations
of the cooperative crusade: "we must realize that there is a l imit
to the power than can be enforced by these methods. " Farmers
had three choices, he asserted. They could put their hopes on
" more efcient farming"-the orthodox view ofered by non
farmers, especially those of the metropolitan press. Or they
could concentrate their total energies on cooperation-the al
ternative then being attempted on a massive scale by the Al l iance.
Or, fi nally, they could adopt a new approach: "by organization,
a united efort can be brought to bear upon the authorities that
will secure such changes in the regulations that govern the
relations between diferent classes of citizens. " In arguing for
changed relations between "di fferent classes," Macune suggested
a conscious raising of the stakes above those being gambled in
the cooperative movement. Macune' s plan called for federal
warehouses to be erected in every county in the nation that
annual l y yielded over $500,000 worth of agricultural produce.
In these "sub-treasuries," farmers could store their crops to
await higher prices before selling. They were to be permitted to
borrow up to 80 per cent of the local market price upon storage,
and coul d sell their sub-treasury "certifcates of deposit" at the
prevailing market price at any time of year. Farmers were to
pay interest at the rate of 2 per cent per annum, plus smal l
1 1 0
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
charges for grading, storage, and insurance. Wheat, corn, oats,
barley, rye, rice, tobacco, cotton, wool , and sugar were included
under the marketing program.
The pl an carried far-reaching ramifcations for the farmer,
the nation' s monetary system, the government, and the citizenry
as a whole. It shattered the existing system of agricultural credit
i n the South, and retured to the crop-mortgaged farmer some
direct control over the sale of his produce, permitting him to
avoid the rock-bottom prices prevailing at harvest on all that he
sold .
.
I als

,
.
for the frst time, gave him fl exibility in the selling
?
f hIS certIficates. In efect, Macune had replaced the high
Interest crop-mortgage of the furnishing merchant with a plan
that mortgaged the crop to the federal government at low
interest. 1 t thus provided the farmer with the means to escape,
at long last, the clutches of the advancing man and recover a
measure of control over his own l ife. For the farmers of the
South, both black and white, the sub-treasury plan was revolu
tionary.
I ts manner of presentation at St. Louis, however, was the frst
sign that, as a national spokesman, Charles Macune possessed
serious provincial l i mitations. Technical l y, the sub-treasury plan
had been placed before the Al l iance delegates at St. Louis in the
form of a report from a "Committee on the Monetary System"
composed entirel y of Southerners. As soon as the Kansans heard
about it-in public session-they quickly pointed out that it was
their farms, not their crops, that were mortgaged. The provision
for low-interest loans on farml ands was easil y incorporated into
the system. Once their cooperatives began encountering strong
banker and merchant opposition-soon after the St. Louis meet
i ng-the Kansas leadership quickly became quite taken with the
potential of the sub-treasury.
As amended, the sub-treasury appealed to a multi-sectional
coalition of farmers, but it clearly faced stout opposition from
other quarters. I t was soon estimated by opponents that the
plan, if i mplemented, would inject several billion dollars in sub
treasury greenbacks i nto the nation's economy at harvest .ti me.
In the America of the Gil ded Age, neither politicians nor
businessmen had yet become used to thinking on such a scale.
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE I I )
After al l , onl y $400 mil l ion or so in greenbacks had been printed
i n the course of the entire Civil War. Also, the sub-treasury
seemed to be "class legislation, " and thus could be opposed as
unconstitutional. Such an argument conveniently overlooked an
array of government subsidies t business, from whiskey ware
houses to transcontinental railroads, but it was a viewpoint that
was to be expressed repeatedl y as the sub-treasury came to be
discussed national l y.
But the most explosive i mpl ication of Macune' s monetary
theory was also an ironic one: he had fatal l y undermined his
own traditional "nonpartisan" position by introducing the fex
ible currency system. How could it become law without agitation,
followed by legislation? How could it be passed without overt
Al l iance political support? And if neither major party supported
the sub-treasury, what could the creative young spokesman say
to third party advocates then? The sub-treasury represented a
clear admission that Macune's dream of a farmer-led nationwide
cooperative commonwealth had failed-it had failed on its own
terms both as an unaided instrument of agrarian self-help and
as a purely economic solution to the farmer' s woes. The farmers
simply lacked the access to low-cost credit necessary to m
.
ake
large-scale cooperatives workable. And large-scale cooperatives
were the onl y kind that could address the needs of the share
cropper, the rent-tenant, the marginal smallholder, and all other
landowners unfortunate enough to be trapped by the crop l ien
system. Similarly, onl y a large-scale cooperative could save W
.
es
ern farmers from either exploitive interest rates or monopohstlc
marketing practices at both the manufacturing and wholesale
levels.
But since the central state exchange was simply beyond the
means of farmers, the sub-treasury had become absol utel y
necessary. Across the South and West in 1 889, neither the leaders
nor the members of the Farmers Al l iance yet perceived this
unpleasant truth. But the Texans had b
:
en forced to
.
l

arn it,
and Macune knew it best of al l . Underlymg the negotiations at
St. Louis was a new and desperate reality that had surfaced in
1 889: the "mother alliance" in Texas had sufered a trauma in
the aftermath of the collapse of the Texas Exchange. The vast

|

1 1 2
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
agrarian army of 250, 000 that had rallied on "the day to save
the exchange" in June of 1 888 had lost many soldiers in the
succeeding months. Though those who persevered in their
loyalty to the Al liance were undoubtedl y wiser i n the ways of
wholesale houses, bankers, and party politicians, the incontest
able fact was that only 1 50, 000 did so persevere through 1 889.
One hundred thousand other Texas farmers had tested the
heralded "big store of the Al liance," had found it wanting, and
had, temporarily at least, crept back into their silent world of
peonage.
Macune' s plan built upon this bitter cooperative experience
and represented a reopening of the exchange conflict on new
and stronger grounds. It was on the sub-treasury, not on third
party agitation, that the Al l iance needed to put its emphasis.
Macune wrote in the Economist that the Al l iance "scattered too
much and tried to cover too much ground" and needed to
concentrate upon the "one most essential thing and force it
through as an entering wedge to secure our rights. " The
goverment' s capital would put a firm foundation underneath
the cooperative crusade-and nothing else coul d.
His emphasis on the sub-treasury was an acknowledgment of
how desperate the farmer's struggle against the financial system
had become. On the eve of the Al l iance's growth to national
status, Macune dedicated himsel f to persuading the order that
the sub-treasury was imperati ve-he saw it to be the only way
the idea of agrarian self-help could be preserved and political
adventures avoided. It would take time, of course; the farmer
leaders of functioning cooperatives would scarcely want to hear
the
.
topic framed in such a forbidding context of desperate
optIons. But as the cooperatives lost their battle with the banking
system, the sub-treasury philosophy promised to become more
comprehensible. I ndeed, to one such as Macune, who had no
faith in a radical third party, his plan was the last real hope for
economic justice for the great mass of American farmers. They
merely needed to understand it.
He turned to the task with considerable energy. In 1 890-9 1
the National Economist became a schoolroom of currency theory.
The details of the plan and the relative i mportance of each of
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 1 3
its features were outlined again and again in the months during
which the National Farmers Alliance transformed itself int the
People's Party.
. .
-
[ mportant as these devel opments were t [he natJonalIzalI
.
on
of the movement culture, Macune and other Alliance st rateglst.s
also encountered disappointment at St . Louis. The int roduction
of the sub-treasury system did not have the galvanizing i mpact
that Macune had hoped, either on the I l l inois FMBA or on the
small leadership caucus known as the Northwester Al l iance.
Alliance st rategists wanted merger, for the order urgently
needed lectrers in the North and West who had unimpeachable
sectional credentials. Though the ' exans had organized the
South and had brought the same cooperative formul a to Kansas,
Texas lecturers had not conducted the swift organizing sweep
of t he Al liance through Kansas; Kansans had. Even so, the
Kansans had had to overcome local crit icism for being pan of
a movement led by "ex-rebel s. " Sectional emotions thus consti
tuted a real organizational barrier, one that the St. Louis meet i ng
was designed t solve.
. -
What the Alliance wanted, and did not get , was permission to
introduce its cooperative st ruct ure and methods of recruit ment
into all of the states of t he Norther plains left organizationally
untended by the Northwester Alliance. I ronicall y, what the
movement did get was another name change, one that would
carry it through the Populist era. In the course of t he frui t l ess
negotiations at St. Louis, the Northwester group proposethat
the new inst i tution be called "The National Farmers Al l Iance
and Industrial Union. " This was readi l y agreed to. But t he
Northwesterners backed away from merger, new name and all .
The evidence seems conclusive that they were simply intimidated
by the sheer size of the Alliance, by its cooperative subsidiary
known as "The Association of State Business Agents, " and by
their own lack of famil iarity with cooperation. ' Rather t han
disappear into that maw, they kept their moribund organiz

tion
and their leadership titles, and went home from St. LoUIS to
historical obscurity. The Al liance itself had to organize Norther
farmers. The Kansans and Dakotans woul d have t lead t he
way.

I '
|
I
I
I
1 1 4 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
5
For the reform movement, an i mportant moment had arrived.
It ,as apparent that two concepts jointly controlled immediate
Alhance
.
policy. One, naturally enough, was the cooperative
crusade Itsel f. I n a n

mber of forms-purchasing, marketi ng,

and een ma

ufactunng cooperatives-the idea of cooperation

consohdated Its grip on farmers throughout the South and West.
I ndeed
.'
the days of highest hopes and most ambitious planning
were stili ahead. From Florida to North Dakota, the cooperative
crusade moved into its most i ntensive period of experimentation.
It became, quite simply, the consuming life of the Alliance. I n
what were now literally thousands of suballiances, farmers
learne from their business agents and ' their county trade
co

mI ttees the nature of the opposition of "the town clique" to

their cooperatives. At earnest lectures on the monetary system,
they learned how the gold standard directly afected their lives.
At oter lectu

es tey le

red about the sub-treasury system

and dlscuss

d I
.
t with their brethren. They became variously
thoughtful, mdlgnant, hopeful , and ready for action. In such
ways-and unseen by the rest of the nation-the movement
culture of Populism came to rural America.
e s

cond concept, one that fit i n neatly with the growing

pol

tIcal Impulse of the cooperative crusade, was the idea of a

national institution of the "producing classes. " This, too, had
g
.
reat potential in t

rms of policy. The goal sprang easily from

elghteenth- and mneteenth-century egalitarian thought and
drew strength from both i ndividualist and socialist traditions.
Thou
.
gh
.
it had not g

ined
.
th

status of doctrinal authority in
any slgmficant Amencan Institution, the concept of a radical
farmer-labor coalition embodied visions of attainable human

ocieties that had transforming i mpact on those who fell under

Its sway. It does not require an excessive leap of the imagination
to concl

de that Alliance national presidents literally meant what

hey said
.
when they spoke of "centralized capital, allied to

rr

onslble corporate power" and pronounced it a "menace to

ndlVIdual r.ghts and popular goverment. " State Alliance pres

dents descnbed causes and efects in ways that cast the American
Idea of progress i n new and ominous terms. " While railroad
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 1 5
corporations are penetrating al most every locality with their iron
rails, they are binding the people i n iron chains. " Ostensibly,
these corporations were "creatures of law, " but i n fact they were
"unrestrained save by their own sense of shame, " and shame
was "a virtue rarely if ever found among the attributes of
monopolistic corporations. " From where these men viewed the
nation' s economic system, the American population did consist
of "the masses" and "the classes. " The latter were already i n
harmony with themselves, manipulating both of the old parties
and constantly "downing the people." They were, i n short,
"organized capital . "
These two short-run concepts, the cooperative crusade and its
accompanying political sensibility, led inevitably to a new dem
ocratic i mperative: to oppose "organized capital," the Al l iance
itself would have to organize the masses. The burden fell on the
Alliance alone since the Knights of Labor, shattered by Jay
Gould and unable to develop any efective new organizing
methods under Powderly, had lost its momentum, and the tiny
Northwestern farm group had never acquired any.
6
The national orgamzmg campaign of the Farmers Alliance
began i n the spring of 1 890. Alliance lecturers moved across the
West to California and up the Pacifc coast to Oregon and
Washington. Whether with confdence or a controlled sense of
trepidation, they moved through West Virginia and across the
Alleghenies into Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New
York. I n mingled Southern and Midwestern accents, they told
the veterans of the Grand Army of the Potomac about their new
vision of cooperative agriculture in the modern state, and about
the sub-treasury plan. The anti-monopoly oratory of the Alliance
movement was sent across the Ohio River into I ndiana, Il l inois,
and Ohio and beyond to Michigan and Wisconsin. In the mining
and cattle regions of the mountain West-Montana, I daho,
Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona

farmers i
.
n
scattered valleys heard traveling lecturers and chnstened their
frst local Alliances. " We are trampling sectionalism under our
feet, " L. L. Polk told Michigan Alliancemen. They gave him
' I

I

1 1 6 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
"cheers for the speaker and the Alliance. " The old radical dream
was happening, they told themselves. The producing classes of
the North and South were no longer going to vote against each
other and keep monopoly in power.
They were heady days, indeed-the organizing months of
1 890-91 . The National Alliance itsel f would be the great coalition
of he masses. The lecturing system expanded, drawing willing
be
.
hevers who set out to convey the Al l iance message to the
mIllIons who needed it. Confdently engaging in well-attended
public debates in town halls and at outdoor rallies across the
nation, they even acquired some nicknames in the process. I n
the course of demolishing an urbane Republican dandy called
"Prince Hal" Hallowell, one Kansas Al l iance orator, somewhat
less regally attired, conceded that "princes wear silk socks" and
confessed that he himself had none. From that day forward he
was 'Sockless Jerry" Simpson-a sobriquet pinned on him by a
hostIle Kansas press, but one that carried him to the United
States Congress. In the fi rst of a well-advertised series of debates
in Kentucky, a rangy Southern apostle mobilized the more radical

peeches of Thomas Jefferson, stirred in selected social gospels

In behal f of the
.
new faith, and overwhelmed a staid city
Democrat. The regIOnal press dubbed the intruder the "Cyclone
f r
.
om Texa
.
s'
.
' and the nation learned that it would have to cope
WIth a polItIcal evangelist known as "Cyclone" Davis. Al l iance
national headquarters sent him travel money, and "Cyclone" was
soon bringing the New Testament, a jacobinized Thomas Jef
ferson, and the sub-treasury plan to farmers from Colorado to
Oregon.
As th lecturing system acquired some stars, Macune pressed
state allIances to establish offcial newspapers as a prelude to
so

ething more fundamental in the way of truth-bringing-an

all

ance of countr

newspaper editors. Macune' s newspaper
allIance met an obVIOUS need, and the structure of the "National
Reform Press Association" was readied for submi ssion to the
Al liance membership at the 1 890 meeting. The idea was destined
to take hol d: the press association, uniting over 1 000 newspapers
across the nation, in due course became the propaganda arm of
the People's Party. The agrarian leaders moved to correct other
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
structural weaknesses uncovered by the scope of their organizing
efort. They would need an "Al liance Lecture Bureau" to
coordinate what had become a national circuit and volumes of
literature to explain and justify the cause. The National Econ
omist Publishing Company in Washington began to pour forth
a torrent of pamphlets, broadsides, and books on "the fnancial
question, " on "concentrated capital , " and on the sub-treasury
system. The movement had many forums. Polk's Progressive
Farmer went to 1 2, 000 farmsteads in North Carolina and the
rest of the Southeast, the Souther Mercur to 30, 000 readers
throughout the South, and the National Economist to over 1 00, 000
throughout the nation. A dozen journals in Kansas, led by the
ofcial Alliance journal, The Advocate, and including The American
Nonconformist, the Kansas Commoner, and the Kansas Fanner,
spread the good news, the i ndignant and sometimes angry news,
that had become the message of the Farmers Alliance. The
Advocate's circulation soared toward an eventual peak of 80, 000.
The teachings of the Alliance, fully grounded in the greenback
heritage, began to reach mil l ions of Americans.
7
But through the spring of 1 890 most of the new listeners were
white, rural, Protestant, and, despite the promising growth in
Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and the Dakotas, most were still
Southern. To cope with these assorted problems, the National
Alliance stretched its resources to the limit. The most efective
FMBA lecturer was recruited and put to work throughout the
Great Lakes region. Prominent Knights leaders, including the
order's national lecturer, Ralph Beaumont, a socialist, were
courted, won, and consulted with. Overtures were made toward
Samuel Gomper's newly arrived American Federation of Labor.
But none of the labor institutions had developed (or, in the
case of the Knights, any longer possessed) an organizing tool
that remotely matched the recruiting and educational power of
the large-scale Alliance cooperative. I ndeed, i t would not be
unti l the concept of the sit-down strike provided the C. I . O. with
a similar self-describing value i n the 1 930' S that an American
working class institution would be able to achieve an emotional

I
' I
I !

I I

I
l
1 1 8
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
drive comparable to the one that animated the Farmers Alliance
during its great organizing sweep of 1 887-92. Not until the
lab
?
r movement developed a tactical solution to the problem of
stnke-reaker, a so
.
lution found only after three generations of
expenmentatlOn, dId efective organization come to a substantial
parof the nation's industrial work force. In the 1 890' S, that
tactIcal breakthrough was still far i n the future. As the People's
Party was to discover, unorganized workers were hard to wean
from inherited political loyalties.
8
One other sector of the "producing classes"-black farmers in
the S
?
uth

had long been a source of Al l iance interest. By 1 890,

defi mte sIgns of organizational progress had surfaced. These
signs centered on an organization known as the Colored Farmers
National Al liance and Cooperative Union. The Colored Al liance
was easily one of the most interesting institutions developed in
the course of the agrarian revolt. But while much of its evolution
was traceable to the actions of black people, its origins were a
result of white radicalism.
The order had its source in the political analysis of committed
greenback radicals among the Alliance founders in Texas.
Though the cooperative struggle to preserve the Texas Exchange
evntually brought al

ost the entire leadership of the founding

AllIance to a frm thIrd party position, so that all Texas Alli
a

cemen tended to appear "radical" to the nation, degrees of

dIference al
,
ays persisted in their ideological participation in
the most radIcal dream of all-a farmer-labor coalition of the
"plain peo

le" that was interracial. A half-dozen years before

the formatIOn of the People's Party, the necessary political
formulas fo

cons
.
tr

cting such a coalition had become fairly

settled doctnne wIthm what might be loosely described as the
"Lamb wing" of the Texas Alliance. The politics of sectionalism
that had defeated the Greenback Party in the South was to be
overcome through the Alliance cooperative; white farmers would
join the cooperatives, learn their radical lessons, and then cross
the Alliance "bridge" from the Democratic "party of the fathers"
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 1 9
to the new "third party of the industrial mil l ions. " But the
politics of sectionalism quite obviously affected blacks as wel l .
Was not a simil ar institutional "bridge" needed to cnvey the
bl ack "pl ain people" from the Republican Party into third party
coalition with the white "plain people"?
The massive organizing drive of the Texas Alliance that
followed the Cleburne Demands in 1 886 generated a self
confi dence and enthusiasm among Al liance lecturers that made
organization of black farmers a distinct possibility. I n the mon
.
ths
fol lowing Cleburne, as Alliance lecturers enrolled whole farmmg
districts in the "Ol d South" part of Texas, several bl ack Alliances
came into being. One, organized at a farm near Lovelady in
Houston County, became the institutional base of the Colored
Farmers' National Alliance. Sixteen participants in the meeting
were black, and one of them, J. J. Shufer, was elected president.
However, the seventeenth person present, the man on whose
farm the meeting took place, was R. M. Humphrey, a white
Baptist mi nister, ex-South Carolinian and ex-Confederate ofcer.
Humphrey was named "general superintendent" of the order
and always thereafter served as its chief national spokesman.
I t seems clear that Humphrey visualized the organization of
black farmers as part of a larger commitment to national radical
politics. But it seems equally clear that he had a short-run
personal objective as wel l-a desire to be elected to Congress
from his East Texas district, which was heavily populated by
blacks. After a measure of organizing success in Texas in 1 887,
the "Colored Alliance" came i nto being as a national organization
in the spring of I 888-in time for Humphrey's congressional
effort. His rather conclusive lack of success in the subsequent
campaign seems to have permanently ended his pursuit fO
.
r
higher ofice. Thereafter, Humphrey's interest in the orgam
zation he headed became al most the entire focus of his subse
quent life as an Allianceman and Popuist. The bl

ck organiz

rs
who deployed through the South carned the basIC cooperatIve
message of the Al liance, and Humphrey later wrote publicly
about the state cooperative exchanges established by the order
in New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Norfolk, and Houston. By
1 890 the minister, who had a decided talent for press relations

I
I I
I

1 20 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
as well as self-promotion, claimed no less than 1 , 200, 000 mem
bers in sixteen states. *
Organizers of the Colored Al liance were both black and white,
the latter tending to serve in the cooperative exchanges. The
black president of the Alliance in Alabama, Frank Davis, was
characterized in an Alabama newspaper as "a solvent and
successful Negro farmer. " Other black Alliancemen who grew
to prominence in the movement included E. S. Richardson and
j. W. Carter of Georgia, j. S. Jackson and j. F. Washington of
Alabama, j . L. Moore of Florida, W. A. Patillo of North Carolina,
William Warwick of Virginia, H. j . Spenser of Texas, Joseph H.
Powell of Mississippi , and L D. Laurent of Louisiana. The
political world in which these men lived was not si mple. To the
extent that black Alliancemen made any moves that suggested
an eventual political coalition with white agrarians, they threat
ened a number of existing political arrangements of both races.
The political problem facing Souther blacks was enormously
complex, even though it contained few genui nely palatable
options. The economic imperatives were quite real-blacks
sufered as much from the ravages of the crop lien and the
furnishing merchant as white farmers, and more. The black
man, too, wanted t fi nd a way to fnance his own crop without
putting his economic life in the hands of the man with credit.
He, too, wanted a more Aexible currency, higher commodity
prices, an end to high freight rates, and all the rest of the
Populist goals. But in an era of transcendent white racism, the
curbing of "vicious corporate monopoly" did not carry for black
farmers the ring of salvation it had for white agrarians. I was
the whiteness of corporate monopoly-and the whiteness of those
who wanted to tri m the power of the monopolists-that worried
Negroes. Both sets of white antagonists lived by the values of
the American caste system. The rare black farmer with enough
capital to stay out of the grip of the crop lien knew quite well
that he was just as vulnerable to the whims of Souther justice,
just as unprotected against lynch law, as the most downtrodden
* Humphrey's claims were quite inflaled. A fgure of 250,000 seems a fair
estimale of the size of the Colored National Al l iance. Even t his figure is
impressive, given the impedi ments l recruitment then exisling. See pp. 1 22-23.
THE NATIONAL ALLI ANCE
1 2 I
tenant farmer
.
I n this fundamental sense, economic i mprove
ment gave him no guarantee of protection. For black Americans
there was no purely "economic" way out. Tho

gh e
.
very bla
.
ck
person in the nation over the age of ten knew th, neither hJte
conservatives who prided themselves on their tolerance n.or
white radicals in the grip of ideological visions of "a new day for
t he plain people" were aware of their

wn p

rticipati

n in a
caste system that lay at the heart of thiS crUCI al quesuo

for
blacks. The self-servi ng capacity of diferent-and competmg
groups of whites to dissociate themselves from "the race prob
lem" was a fact that was abundantly clear to black leaders, both
North and South. Blacks therefore approached the whole issue
of politics from a much more sophisticated-a

d
.
cautious
perspective than either white conserva
.
tives or whi te ll1surgents.
They, unlike the whites on both Sides, did not enJoy
.
he
presumption that elections had to do with economic and pohtlC

1
power. Before the black man coul+ worry about economIC
injustice, he had to worry about survival .
Black community leaders needed to fi nd ways to develop
safeguards both for themselves and for blacks generally. These
leaders knew that no Southern farmer needed t escape from
the crop lien more than the black tenant, but they also knew
that the economic appeal of the Alliance raised a number of
other possibilities, few of them good. First and foremost, bl
.
ack
Alliancemen incurred the wrath of Southern whIte conservatives
who exercised the power of govermental authority, including
the police authority. The staunchly Bourbon Mon"tgome
.
ry :+
vI'rtiser, for example, became ofended by signs of fraterlllzatlOn
between the black and white Alliances and reminded the mem
bers of both that "the white people don' t want any more Negro
i nHuence in their afairs than they have already had, and they
won't have it"
Black Alliance organizers not only had to keep an eye out for
whi te Bourbons; they also had to cope with Negro Republicans.
The reform movement threatened the power bases of both
groups. In Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alab
.
ama,
and Texas, entrenched black Republican leaders systematICally
undercut the efforts of organizers for the Negro Alliance, and,
1 2 2 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
understandably, Negro Republicans had to ponder the long
range gambl e impl icit in public identifcation with the agrarian
cause. I f these black leaders relinquished their power base within
the Republican Party-and it was the sole political base black
men had remaining to them i n the South-only to discover that
t

agrari

n movement failed politically, they faced the proba

bilIty of beIng left with no personal foothold at all in the electoral
process. Many black Republicans decided-correctly, as it turned
out-that the People's Party was going to lose its battle with the
party of white supremacy. Accordingly, they held aloof. The
grarian revolt thus divided both races, whites along economic
hnes and blacks according to decisions based on cold and
necessary calculations of political and physical survival.
Because of the prevailing white racial attitudes, those blacks
who led the Alliance in their states frequently functioned
covertly. Black lecturers who ranged over the South organizing
state and local Alliances did not enter Southern towns behind
fl uttering fags and brass bands. They attempted to organize
slowly and patiently, seeking out the natural leaders in rural
black communities and building from there. For this reason,
even though the Colored Farmers Alliance was an institution of
great ran
?
e and political signifi cance, its development is
shrouded In mystery. Hints of its activities have cropped up in
reports of cooperative eforts around Norfol k, Virginia, and in
South Carolina, and also in such incidents as the one involving
a black newspaper in Vaiden, Mississippi, which was forced to
suspend publication during organizing activities in and near the
Mississippi Delta. Even more evidence appeared in the form of
letters in the Souther Mercu
r
y and the National Economist from
newly appointed business agents, occasional press statements by
R. M. Humphrey, and the public political activities of the Colored
Alliance both at the Ocala convention of 1 890 and at the
founding meeting of the People's Party in St. Lois in February
1 892. All attested to the order's continuing presence across the
South.
Nevertheless, white supremacy hung over the organization
with a brooding presence that ul ti mately proved suffocating.
The reason was simple: white supremacy prevented black farm
ers from performing the kinds of collective public acts essential
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE
1 23
to the creation of an authentic movement culture. Within the
Southern caste system, there could be no vast Colored Alliance
cooperatives and no public demonstrations of suppport for such
cooperatives, no wagon trains stretching for miles, no spectacular
summer encampments-nor any of the other public acts of
solidarity that help individual self-respect and collective self
confi dence take life among i mpoverished people. I n the South
of the 1 890' s, there was almost no public way black Americans
could "see themselves" experimenting i n democratic forms.
Rather, organizing work in the Colored National Alliance pro
ceeded largely in covert ways.
Such constraints are stifl ing for democratic movements. That
the Colored Alliance touched the lives of as many people as it
did was a remarkable political and cultural achievement. But it
was not remotely enough. By 1 890, it was still unclear just how
the mass of black farmers across the South were to be recruited
away from the party of Lincol n.
9
I n general, the arrival of the Alliance as a national force in
American life brought i nto view a paradox at the center of the
agrarian revolt. To the extent the challenge of constructing a
national farmer-labor coalition confronted Alliance organizers
with the intimidating dimensions of the task they faced, it is
difcult now to visualize how they avoided chronic despair. Not
only did election returns from every major campaign since the
Civil War ofer continuing proof of the strength of sectional,
racial, and religious loyalties among the mass of American
voters, but more recent evidence within the reform movement
itself seemed just as forbidding. The travail of the Knights of
Labor, persisting as it did i n the presence of working class
hardship, was one sobering political reality; the penetration of
sectionalism even into the leadership ranks of farm organizations
was another; the racial barrier i n the South still another.
Yet no such pessimism aficted Al l iance spokesmen. On the
contrary, the lecturers and editors of the movement, led by the
new national president elected at St. Louis, L. L. Pol k of North
Carolina, fairly bristled with energy and optimism. I ndeed, an
1 24 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
astonishing percentage of the agrarian leadership-Polk and
Macune in Washington, hundreds of country editors, and
literally tens of thousands of lecturers across the nation-began
to talk movingly about something new on the i mmediate horizon,
something vague but portentous, which they characterized var
iously as "the great contest" and "the coming struggle." They
talked about this looming event in diferent ways because they
had diferent levels of faith in existing American political
institutions. Polk and Macune tal ked of the "sweeping reforms"
that were needed and that were comi ng. Editors l i ke Henry
Vi ncent in Kansas, W. Scott Morgan in Arkansas, Henry Loucks
in South Dakota, Wil liam Lamb in Texas, and spokesmen like
Evan Jones, Jerry Si mpson, and a new ally in Georgia named
Thomas Watson all talked more frequently of "the coming
revolution. "
But each group thought in terms of ballots, not bullets. For
them, "reform" meant change through the two-party system.
" Revolution" meant the overthrow of that system by the creation
of a "third party of the industrial millions. " Perhaps only the
leaders themselves knew the i mportance of these subtle distinc
tions; to the rest of the nation all of the Alliance spokesmen
sounded alarmi ngly radical. To many, Macune, with his startling
theory of the uses of money, sounded wildest of all.
In the spring of 1 890 the National Farmers Alliance and
Industrial Union pushed its organizational tentacles to the
Canadian border and to both coasts. I Alliancemen and their
leaders were asking a bit too much of their farmer organization
with respect to the "coming great contest, " they did not seem to
think so. Grand political dreams are seldom fashioned by
cautious men. To many of the agrarian leaders, in any case,
there was no time for caution. The farmers of the nation were
in trouble, serious and seemingly permanent trouble, and the
Alliance had sprung up out of their needs and given voice and
meaning to their desperation. Together, in the Alliance, then,
they would jointly decide whether to strive for "reform" or for
"revolution. "
In 1 890 the farmers of the Al liance, now well over a mil l ion
strong, tried both.
5
Reform and Its Shadow
The Core Cultural Struggle
The A LlianC calls "the convention ofthe people"
In the summer and fall of 1 890, the National Farmers Al liance
appeared to become a mass political institution. In traditional
terminology, American farmers became reformers. But te
political l anguages of description traditiona l y emplo

ed In
industrial societies are scarcely precise. The Al hance of mIdsum
mer 1 890 was not yet an insurgent institution because most
farmers still thought reform could come through conventional
and unreformed agencies of politics-the hierarchically orga
nized and business-dominated major parties. Despite outward
appearances, the National Alliance was not yet a democratc
political institution; it only seemed so because of the d

mocratlc
ethos and sense of purpose generated by the cooperative strug
gle. But this was precisely the limit of the order's
.
mode as

f
1 890: the Alliance was a democratic institution onl y In economIC
terms.
The movement cul ture, in sum, had yet to "politicize" itself.
As long as the great bulk of the Alliance membership thought
of politics in conventional terms of major party afliatin, the
democratic ethos of the cooperative movement had faded to
fnd a way to express itsel f politically.
Beneath this reality was an underlying problem of language
that has long bedeviled historians and other observers of the
process of politics in industrial societies. Should the farmers ever
devise a democratic political strategy of their own, one they

'
I
\
I

THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
could regard as straightforward, i ntel l igent, and ful l y within the
American democratic tradition, they would be destined to
discover that the larger society regarded them as political pariahs.
I ndeed, the underlying dynamics of this reasoning process point
to the hierarchical nature of American culture itself. In any case,
this moment of truth was still ahead for most Alliancemen. With
the notable exception of the Kansas Alliance, the only kind of
politics most farmers participated in during the campaigns of
1 890 was a traditional hierarchical politics.
I ndeed, the stormy events of 1 890 reflected no consensus
among Alliance leaders and no coordination within the emerging
national apparatus of state, county and local alliances. The
emerging forms of political activity signaled instead an old reality
suddenly l i nked to a new one-the continuing hardship con
fronting many millions of American farmers and the new
collective means they possessed to assert themselves politically.
What they wished to assert, however, varied considerably. Col
lectivel y, these conficting procedures offered the frst major test
of the fragile new movement culture of the agrarian revolt.
What the reform movement had not yet become in some places
was revealed by what it was already able to achieve in others.
In the Great Plains, the Kansas Al liance ofered a case study
of a freshly minted mass movement mobilizing itsel f for dem
ocratic politics. On the other hand, farmers in neighboring
Nebraska floundered aimlessly and were fnally content with
halting gestures i n hierarchical politics. In a similar fashion,
Southern farmers still employed traditional habits of thought in
the course of their efort to create a climate of mass democracy.
Across the old Confederacy, most members of state and county
Alliances unconsciously worked through the only political insti
tution they had ever known: "the party of the fathers. " Never
theless, late in the year the Alliance founders i n Texas produced
a new tactical weapon conceived by William Lamb and designed
to transcend the sectional preoccupations of Southerners. An
intense cultural struggle i mmediately erupted, and within
months the politics of Populism surfaced i n the Old Confederacy.
In these sundry ways, at diferent speeds, at varied levels of
intensity, and at diverse stages of political consciousness, the
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
farmers brought the People's Party of the Uni ted States i nto
being. I n so doing, they placed on the nation's political stage the
frst multi-sectional democratic mass movement since the Amer
ican Revolution.
2
Most farmers still thought that to change their economic con
dition it was necessary merely to elect good men to public ofce.
But a smaller number of Alliancemen, convinced that the major
parties would never acquiesce in greenback restructuring of the
monitary system, looked upon independent political action as
the only possible remedy. Though the two views were incom
patible, a method was available which gave the appearance of
harmoni zing them, and it was this expedient which ruled
agrarian politics through 1 890. For the moment the nation's
party system was basically l eft untouched and the Alliance
asserted itself politically by endorsing "Al l iance candidates" for
offce. The tactic, though national in scope, evolved as a series
of local decisipns that gave the appearance of consistency.
Yet it is perhaps more instructive to view the workings of the
agrarian revolt from the perspective of those who did not look
upon te politics of 1 890 as a unifed whole, but perceived
instead the deep-seated tensions it really contained. For the
signifcant politics of 1 890 represented a tortured groping
toward a new political institution of "the plain people. " At the
beginning of 1 890 this view was confi ned to Al l iance radicals,
the men who wished to create a new third party in 1 892, and
certainly by 1 896. Though these greenbackers were indeed able
to create their party in 1 892, their viewpoint, while fervently
held, was not a confident one during 1 890. Greenbackers had,
after all, been third party men for a long time; many had
presided over the birth and death of both the Greenback and
the Union Labor parties. More than most Americans they knew
the diffculty of attracting large numbers of voters to the idea
of independent political action or, for that matter, to sustained
thought about basic monetary reform itself. Radicals, viewing
the political task they confronted after twenty-fve years of neo-

I
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
Confederate electioneering i n the South and the politics of the
"bloody shirt" i n the North, considered the American voter to
be culturally incapable of thinking about politics in terms of
ideas that reformers would regard as serious. Too many Amer
icans, including Al l iancemen, were, as Evan Jones put it, "still
wedded to the 'good old party. ' " Though monetary reformers
had taken renewed hope from the huge growth of the Farmers
Alliance and held a more sanguine view i n 1 890 than they had
at any time i n previous years, a number of questions still had to
be addressed. Could the educational program of the Alliance
overcome the inherited political innocence of the American
people? Could the cooperative movement be counted on to spell
out the power relationships between bankers and non-bankers
that were embedded in the American monetary system? Could
a broad enough lecturing apparatus be constructed to support
such a burden of political interpretation? Such questions were
not easily answered, as the Greenback and Union Labor expe
riences had proven.
Beyond such ideological and tactical hazards, a nagging
structural problem persisted. America is a big country. The
i mmediate task in the West centered on fnding some way to
initiate a genuine agrarian movement in I owa, Nebraska, I llinois,
and Wisconsin, one that would complement those incubating in
Kansas, the Dakotas, and Mi nnesota.
South Dakota's Henry Loucks appeared before the still largely
unorganized Nebraska group early i n 1 890 to plead for union,
but he ran afoul of local leaders who were slow to grasp the
essentials of the cooperative movement. At the beginning of
1 890, the nub of the problem remained what i t had always been
i n Nebraska-the relative narrowness of the order' s organiza
tional base. After al most ten years i n the Northwestern group
the Nebraska Alliance still had less than 1 5, 000 members i n the
entire state. The principal difculty was that the Nebraskans
had no program, a fact that did not augur well for holding the
relatively few members who had been attracted.
The most telling infl uence on the Nebraska leadership proved
not to be the prodding of Henry Loucks but rather the force of
the agrarian movement i n Kansas and the Dakotas. This blizzard
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 29
of activities eventually caught the attention of Nebraska farmers,
and the latter, after considerable difculty, fnally caught the
attention of their spokesmen. This revolution from below and
from without added a certain i mpromptu style to the stormy
politics that shook the South and West in 1 890. It created a
shadow movement of Popul ism. A number of Nebraskans
dutifully trailed their neighbors in Kansas to the People's Party,
but they did so with no understanding of the cooperative crusade
of the Al liance !of the greenback doctrines that the cooperative
struggle had raised to preeminence in the agrarian movement.
In essence, the Nebraskans remained outside the movement
culture of Populism. To trace the evolution of the Nebraska
shadow movement, it is necessary to begin where the culture of
Populism UUA developing-in Kansas.
3
For well over a year the Kansas Alliance had experimented with
widespread cooperative programs, and the momentum of the
efort had begun to produce a noticeable increase i n the political
awareness of the state's farmers. The Cowley County cooperative
chartered by Henry Vincent and others in 1 889 had been
followed by the organization of a statewide Kansas State Exchange
and a multi-state cooperative livestock marketing plan. By 1 890,
membership topped 1 25,000. Al l iancemen who had resolved to
establish local trade committees had begun to encounter fi rm
merchant opposition. This first stage of cooperation by farmers
and its predictable response by merchants also had a predictable
educational efct: members of many Alliances became so upset
with their merchants that they began organizing their own
cooperative stores. A dairy farmer named John Otis declared in
January 1 890 that the farmers of western Kansas were "burning
corn for fuel, while coal miners and their families in another
section of our land are famishing for food. " Al l iance President
Ben Clover drew attention to a single law fi rm i n his region of
the state that had a contract to foreclose 1 800 mortgages! An
observant Kansas Republican caught the proliferating signs of
restlessness and decided "the air is full of lightning. " It was a

I ,
I '
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
perceptive observation. The "l ightning" was cultural-public
fashes of new insights that Kansans were gaining in their
suballiances. Examples abounded. On Saturday, the farmers' day
in town, the members of the Douglas County Alliance gathered
at the courthouse at Lawrence early i n 1 890 to consider a
cooperative crop-withholding program designed to achieve bet
ter prices. The farmers elected a committee to pursue the
matter. An Alliance county offi cer then reported gloomily that
prices received by local farmers for corn and cattle had fallen
below the cost of production. This i nformation produced a
series of corroborating stories of personal hardship from the
assembled farmers, and a general discussion of prevailing in
justices followed. It succeeded only i n convincing all present that
something had to be done. They resolved "to fnd out and apply
the remedy. " Three days later, farmers in Shawnee County,
entrapped by the same economic realities, moved beyond res
olutions of inquiry to a discussion of political solutions. The
unanimous decision of the group, according to one writer, "was
that the farmer was being slighted by the legislator, who used
hi m only as a voting tool so that he, the politician, could serve
the interests of other classes." I n such ways, Kansans created in
their suballiances their own environment to thi nk in. In rural
forums of democracy, the farmers discussed the difculties their
cooperatives were encountering and moved to "apply the rem
edy. "
The various examples of political lightning observed by Re
publicans were also fully visible to state Al liance leaders. These
activists clearly fel t that the movement toward independent
political action needed only a small boost. At Topeka, they
convened a "State Reform Association" which advertised itsel f as
being i n search of a "union platform. " The platform dul y
materialized with the ful l panoply of Al l iance reforms, including
the sub-treasury plan. A week later Al l iance state president
Clover convened a statewide meeting of county Al liance presi
dents. They undertook an aggressive move that surprised the
state's political observers. By all odds the most prestigious
Kansan i n Washington and perhaps the best known politician
i n the West was a venerable patriarch named John J. I ngalls,
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
the state's senior United States Senator. The Al l iance county
presidents resolved that after eighteen years of I ngalls "it is a
difcult matter for his constituents to point to a single measure
he has ever championed in the interests of the great agricultural
and laboring element of Kansas; and we will not support by our
votes or infuence any candidate for the legislature who favors
his reelection to the United States Senate. "
Dismayed by this development, the Topeka Daily Capital noted
that most delegates seemed "strongly anti-Republican. " The
paper observed, optimistically, that "a large majority of the
farmers of Kansas are republicans , and while they are ready to
join cooperative organizations for the mutual beneft of pro
ducers, they wil l not consent to being led [by] wild theorists who
expect to cure all the ills of fnancial depression by defeating the
republican party. " The rebuke did not draw the desired re
sponse. An emerging editorial spokesman for the Al liance, Dr.
Stephen McLallin of The Advocate, announced new political
criteria: " We have ends we mean to secure . . . . "To the re
election of John J. I ngalls, for instance, we will never consent.
He has been i n ofce eighteen years, but he has got to go. "
Precisely how t he Alliance i ntended t o elect proper candidates
while "no longer dividing on party lines," as the Topeka meeting
specifed, posed a problem in a statewide organization filled with
farmers of Democratic and Union Laborite backgrounds, as well
as loyal Republicans. It was decided an "Alliance ticket" should
be felded, but lest such an action be construed as placing "the
Alliance i n politics" plans were i mplemented to hold a June
convention inviting all "interested citizens. " It was the old Daws
formula of pre-Cleburne days.
To cope with this unexpected upsurge of democracy, the
business community of Kansas countered with a time-honored
technique. The "bloody shirt" remained the serviceable, all
weather foundation of Republican electioneering. The brunt of
this assult fel l not on state Democrats, who were not a threat,
but on Alliancemen, who were. As the Topeka Daily Capital
pointed out, the Alliance was, after all, a Southern-based insti
tution; l anguage usually reserved for Democrats could therefore
be applied with equal force to the farm organization. Respectable
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
Republican farmers, the Capital charged, were being duped into
doing the work of the Democratic Party at the behest of an
organization "ofcered by rebel brigadiers. " The Weekly Kansas
Chief added that " I n Democratic communities, the Alliance is
flourishing . . . the most nauseating sight is the course of a lot
of Republican papers that are pandering to this organization.
. . . Clover is a shyster, a fraud, and an anarchist. " The Kansas
Alliance thus found
w
hat Southern Alliancemen were soon to
discover in their own part of the nation-that the agrarian
reform program ran headlong i nto the politics of sectionalism.
In this setting, the much-publicized appearance before the
Kansas Alliance convention of the order's national president,
L L. Polk of North Carolina, was watched with anticipation by
the state's Republican press. Leaders of the new political move
ment also watched, but their interest was edged with anxiety. I f
the reform cause were truly to have a mul ti-sectional base, it
would be crucial that their Souther col league prove politically
acceptable in Kansas.
As it happened, no man in the South was better equipped to
cope with this kind of challenge than the ffty-four-year-old
North Caroli nian. Polk's fami l y heritage and personal political
life had instilled in him a driving determination to preach against
sectionalism. He had been a Whig as a young man, and had frst
been elected t the North Carolina legislature as a Unionist in
August 1 860. That circumstance had profound impact on his
life. Opposing secession, he "went with his state" into the
Confederacy, only to sufr from repeated discri mi nation be
cause he was marked as a "U nion man. " Wounded at Gettysburg,
he returned to duty, became an Army candidate for the legis
lature, and was elected in August 1 864. One month fol lowing
his election, Polk was arrested and charged with "misbehavior
before the enemy" and "absence without leave" for having taken
his wounded captain to a hospital during a skirmish. Pol k was
acquitted and serenaded by his regiment before his triumphant
retur home to legislative service. But the affair was grist for
demagogues and it haunted Polk the remainder of his public
life.
I n the postwar years Pol k spoke for agrarian interests in North
Carolina, founded the Progressive Farmer, and led in the for-
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 33
mation of Farmers Clubs and a state agricultural college. When
Alliance organizers came t North Carolina in 1 887 he watched
closely and quietly, and then threw his support to the cooperative
movement. Polk became an immediate Southwide spokesman for
the Alliance, was elected vice president of the National Alliance
in 1 887, and became chairman of the national executive com
mittee in 1 888. By the time of his election to the Alliance
presidency in St. Louis in December 1 88g he had made the
Progressive Farmer the most infuential newspaper in his state and
had established himself as an outspoken reformer. Thus, by
heritage and temperament, as well as through the experiences
of his personal life, the Alliance president was ideally suited to
cope with the sectional imperatives of national agrarian politics.
He roamed the nation from coast to coast in 1 890 and habitually
culminated his declarations for reform by an attack on the
sectionalism that still guided the voting habits of mi l lions of
Americans.
Pol k' s performance in Kansas in the summer of 1 890 dem
onstrates clearly the extent to which the order's leaders were
caught up in a momentum which they themselves had helped
to generate but which seemed to have acquired a life of its own.
To hear the Alliance president, a crowd of 6000 gathered in
Winfeld on the Fourth of Jul y. I t was a new kind of I ndepend
ence Day celebration, one designated as "Alliance Day. " I ndeed,
the farmers treated townsmen to a new spectacle, one that would
grow into a Populist fol kway-the Alliance wagon trai n. ,!,he
caravan of farm wagons entering Winfeld stretched for miles,
bearing men, women, children, and provocative political ban
ners.
L. L. Pol k, too, embodied the movement. His address focused
on the need for economic reform, but his argument was carefully
constructed to attack the received traditions of American politics.
I tell you this afteroon that from New York to the Golden
Gate, the farmers have risen up and have inaugurated a
movement such as the world has never seen. It is a revolution
of thought. A revolution which I pray God may be peaceful
and bloodless . . . . The farmer of North Carolina, Georgia,
Texas, South Carolina is your brother. . . . Some people have
stirred up sectional feeling and have kept us apart for twenty- '
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
fve years . . . and tried to work upon our passions. The man
who has waved the bloody shirt. The man who has taught his
children the poisonous doctrines of hate . . . . They know that
i f we get together and shake hands and look each other i n the
face and feel the touch of kinship, their doom is sealed. I
stand here today, commissioned by hundreds of thousands of
Southern farmers, to bid the farmers of Kansas to stand by
them.
Pol k handled the delicate question of "the Al l iance in politics"
with the poise and confdence that augmented his personal style
of radical is m:
Will you tell me who has a better right i n America t o go into
politics than the farmers? . . . I will tell you what you are going
to see . . . . You will see arrayed on the one side the great
magnates of the country, and Wall Street brokers, and the
plutocratic power; and on the other you will see the people
. . . there shall be no Mason and Dixon line on the Alliance
maps of the future.
To Pol k, the "masses" and the "classes" were separated by a
fundamental diference of economic philosophy, one which
measured the selective vision of the wealthy. Sobered by the
arguments advanced in Washington against the sub-treasury
plan, he shared with Kansas farmers his sense of indignation at
the inability of Congressmen to see the conditions of l ife around
them.
When I went up to Washington City and showed them statistics
from all over the country, they said i t was overproduction that
had caused our trouble . . . . I f [they] had come out onto the
streets of Washington on a cold November morning [they]
would have seen the children picking bits of coal out of the
ash piles to warm themselves by, and morsels of food out of
the heaps of garbage to satisfy their hunger. . . . As long as a
single cry for bread is heard, it is underproduction and
underconsumption . . . . There is something besides over-pro
duction that has caused it. Congress could give us a bill i n
forty-eight hours that would relieve us, but Wall Street says
nay . . . . I believe that both of the parties are afraid of Wall
Street. They are not afraid of the people.
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 35
Reduced to i ts essentials, the language of the Al l iance was the
same, North and South-and it was a l anguage not often heard
in mainstream American politics. On the Western plai ns in 1 890,
L. L. Polk proved "acceptable. " He was invited back for the fall
campaign, and he came. The "bloody shirt" was met with
economic radicalism and Polk was hailed by Jerry Simpson as
"the conductor" of the "through train" of the Alliance that was
"going through to Washington. " Polk' s appearances provided,
in the words of W. F. Rightmire, another Kansas leader, "the
quasi-endorsement of the National Al liance to the political
movement. "
But while indignation and sometimes bristling anger was a
part of the message of reform, there was another and far more
elusive ingredient at work in Kansas i n 1 890. It has been called
a "pentecost of politics," a "religious revival , " a "crusade, " and
it was surely all of those things. But i t was also long parades of
hundreds of farm wagons and Aoats decorated wi th evergreen
to symbolize "the living issues" of the Alliance that contrasted
with dead tarifs and bloody shirts of the old parties. It ofered
brass bands and crowds "so large that much of the time it was
necessary to have four orators i n operation at one time i n order
for all to hear." It was 2000 bushels of wheat being donated by
hard-pressed farmers to help fi nance their political movement.
And it was parades composed simply of the Alliance itsel f. Some
industrious soul counted, or said he counted, 7886 persons and
1 500 vehicles in one six-mile-Iong procession through the city
of Wichita. One wonders how the townsfolk of Wichita regarded
this vast tide of people. Were they intrigued? attracted? fright
ened? With parades, speeches, schoolhouse debates, brass bands,
Alliance picnics, the politics of Populism took form i n Kansas in
the months of 1 890. If Texans had led the farmers to the
Alliance, Kansans led the Alliance to the People's Party.
Yet, in its deepest meaning, Populism was much more than
the tactical contributions of Kansans or Texans. It was, fi rst and
most centrall y, a movement that i mparted a sense of self-worth
to individuals and provided them with the instruments of self
education about the world they lived in. The movement taught
them to believe that they could perform specifc political acts of
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
self-determi
?
ation. The Alliance demands seemed bold to many
other merIcan
.
s who had been intimidated as to their proper
status In the sOCIety, and the same demands sounded downright
p
r

su
.
mp

uous to the cultural elites engaged i n the process of

intimidatIOn. But to the men and women of the agrarian
movement, encouraged by the sheer drama and power of their
massive parades, their huge summer encampments, their far
fung lecturi ng system, their suballiance rituals, their trade
committ

es and warehouses, their dreams of the new day of the

cooperative commonweal th, i t was all possible because America
was a democratic society and people in a democracy had a right
to do whatever they had the ethical courage and self-respect to
try to do. Unveiled in Kansas i n 1 890, then, was the new
democratic cul ture, one created by the cooperative movement
of the Alliance.
4
The August convention to nominate the candidates who would
carry the Alliance banner statewide was called " the convention
of the people. " It was a good description. The men chosen had
come up o

t of the ranks of the Alliance-county lecturers,

county presld

nts, some with a long greenback past, others only

rec

tly recrUited to the Al l iance cooperative and to insurgent

pol
.
Itics. The gubernatorial candidate wasJohn Wil l its, the county
Alliance leader who had pronounced cooperation " the most
i mportant word i n the English language. " The third district's
congressional candidate was the Alliance state president, Ben
Clover. The fourth district's congressional candidate was a
socialist named John Otis who had earlier written Clover an
open letter in which he stated, with appropriate capital letters:
" When the American people shall i ntroduce cooperation into
the fi eld of PRODUCTION as well as into the fi eld of DISTRIBUTION
and shall organize for ' work' as we organize for ' war' ! then shal|
we behold PROSPERITY . . . . " Otis amplifed this theme in the
ensuing campaign: " We are emerging from an age of intense
i ndviduali sm, sup

eme selfi shness, and ungodl y greed to a

perIod of co-operative efort. " Otis provided "perhaps as i ntense
and sober a personality as Kansas Populism counted among its
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 37
leaders. " An abolitionist i n hi s youth, he had attended Williams
College and, later, Harvard Law School . During the Civil War
Otis organized and commanded Negro troops, but after Recon
struction he turned his back on the party of Lincoln and became
a greenbacker. In the western part of the state Wil l iam Baker
brought a diferent style to Alliance doctrines. A fifty-ni ne-year
old ex-Republican, he was the most deadly serious and, perhaps,
the dullest Populist of them all. Yet he also proved to be one of
the third party's most formidable local campaigners.
The pedestrian speeches of Baker and the sustained intensity
of Otis were balanced-perhaps more than balanced-by the
fl amboyant, idiosyncratic, and vividly efective oratory of Jere
miah Simpson. "Sockless Jerry" was an endless source of debate.
There was, fi rst of all, the matter of his i ntelligence. Some years
after the third party threat had been safely repelled, William
Allen White, an arch-enemy of Kansas Populi sm, confessed that
Si mpson had persuaded him to read Carlyle and added, i n
explanation, that Simpson was better read than he. Be that as i t
may, there were others who pointed out that self-taught Jerry
Simpson was easily one of the most atrocious spellers ever to
grace the halls of Congress. I n any case, both his friends and his
enemies agreed that the mere act of placing Si mpson on a
rostrum transformed him-but whether i nto a "good talker" or
i nto "a rabid fiat greenbacker with communistic proclivities"
seems to have depended on the observer. He was also, as events
were to show, a decidedly pragmatic fellow.
When L. L. Polk returned to the Kansas hustings for the
autumn campaign, he found a political tempest that had been
gathering i n intensity for months. The Republican attacks set a
new standard in vituperation. From Jul y through election day
the Topeka Capital kept up a running "bloody shirt" attack on
Polk. He was described as an "ultra-secession Democrat" who
had shot down federal prisoners i n cold blood at Gettysburg
and had practiced barbarous cruelties on Union soldiers while
commandant of Salisbury prison-a post, it might be noted i n
passing, that he had never hel d. The Capital also circulated the
story that the "old soldiers of Wichita" were threatening to tar
and feather "The Escaped Prison-Hel l Keeper. "
The Republicans unlimbered other vintage artillery to counter

_' '
, I
I
I
1 38 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
the

form canonadi
.
n

"living issues. " Simpson was variously

d

scnbed as uat

lOtIC
,
nd a "swindler. " For the religious
mInded
'
"
he was
.
aInfi del and an "atheist. " As a politician, he
was an anarchist, and as a human being he had "
. .
"
.
, simian
charactenstics. Vitup

ration proved to be general. When Ral ph

Beaumont of the Kmgats of Labor traveled with Polk through
Kansas, they were descnbed as "designing wicked mountebanks "
"tramps," "worthless schemers," "enemies of God and man
'
"
and "would-be revolutionists. " Perhaps worst of all they hao
"hellish i nfl uence. "
'
On el
.
ection day, Willits was narrowly defeated for the gov
ernorship,
.
but hardl y any other Al l iance candidate lost. Simpson,
Baker, OtiS, Clover, and a fifth Al l iance candidate, John Davis,
all

ere elected to Congress. The returns carried an especially

oml l1ous portent for John J. I ngal ls. In that era before the
popular election of Senators, his future in the Senate would
depend on a Ka

sas legislature in which 96 of the 1 25 seats

were to be occupied by Al l iance-elected candidates.
.
On the morning after the election it was clear that some sort
of earthquake had

)Cc

rr

d. By any standard, the Republican

Party w

s a shaken Il1stHutlon. The tremors reached all the way

to Washll1gton, where President Harrison was moved t describe
the Republican performance in the West as "our election dis
aster. " ,
,
"I te ,l l iance can pull one-half of our Republican
voters, he s

ld, our
.
fut

re is not cheerful . " It was not necessary,

o course, for agranan Il1surgents actually to win elections to
oIrectly afect Republican fortunes. Every independent vote cast
J the West, whether it helped elect radicals or not, weakened
the G. O. P. The startling news in states other than Kansas was
that the decrease in the Republican vote was enough to send a
Hoo
.
d o
.
f Democrats to Washington. The totals were sobering.
While 1 888 the House of Representatives had had 1 66
Republicans and 1 59 Democrats, the new House would contain
88 Republicans and 235 Democrats.
". et it was precisely th
.
is la

t statistic that sent a wave of anxiety

roilIng over the newly vlctonous Kansas Alliancenien. The efect
of the revo t in Ka

sas had been to give convincing meaning to

the RepublIcan claim that the agrarian movement was a Dem-
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 39
ocratic plot and that Republican farmers were being duped by
the Southern leaders of the Al liance. In the aftermath of victory,
the Kansas reformers suddenly found themselves faced with an
i mmediate crisis: they absolutely had to persuade the Al l iance
in the South to abandon "reform through the Democrats," and
create, with the Western Al l iances, a national third party. In the
West, it was the only defense against the sectional argument
that the Al l iance was a "front" for the Democratic Party. The
convention of the National Al liance, scheduled for Ocala, Flor
ida, in December 1 890, thus became of decisive importance to
the Westerners.
5
The Kansans soon realized, however, that they had precious
few allies in the West to assist them in their earnest interal
discussions with their Southern brethren. The movement toward
independent political action in Nebraska provided stark evidence
of the price the agrarian movement had begun to pay for the
Northwestern Al l iance's years of drifting. For if Kansas had
achieved a revolution, at times flamboyant but politically co
herent, Nebraska had engaged in an ad hoc brand of politics
comprised of about equal portions of indecisive leadership and
organizational anarchy.
It was not that Jay Burrows and his Nebraska associates lacked
significant guideposts. As early as 1 886 farmers in Custer
County, Nebraska, had organized themselves into a local-level
cooperative movement, and in 1 889, Custer farmers moved
boldly into politics in an efort to gain relief. The revolt was
centered in the town of Westerville, where each participant in
a relatively new cooperative store owned a $ 1 0 share and "almost
every man in the community belonged to the organization." The
movement toward cooperative buying and selling generated
outright hostility from Custer County merchants, causing Al l i
ancemen under the leadership of a relatively unknown but
articulate farmer named Omar Kem to put a county ticket in
the field for the fal l elections. When Burrows, the leading
agrarian spokesman in the state, belatedly heard details of this
1 40 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
revolt from below in the name of the Alliance, he asserted in his
newspaper that it was "to say the least, a breach of fai th. "
Awkwardl y enough, in November the Custer independent ticket
nearly swept the feld, all but one of its candidates being elected.
The startling local victory provided one of three infl uences
that were to propel the Nebraskans into independent politics in
1 890. The second was the larger cooperative crusade of which
the Custer County movement was but a local expression. Kansans
had atte

pted to provide the earliest guidance in 1 889, when

He

ry Vincent spelled out some relevant details of the coop

erative movement in Cowley County, Kansas (4,000 members
and a c

sh business of $300 to $ 1 ,400 per day" in the exchange

store. VI
.
n
.
c

nt added, "I t is tee-totally revolutionizing everything

and politiCIans are, as never before, wholly at sea. " But the
Nebraska leaders simply did not grasp the connection between
cooperatives and politics. Nevertheless, an i mportant additional
pressure toward cooperation came from the Kansas and Dakota
Alliances. The mul ti-state Kansas cooperative to market livestock
had reacheoa $2. 5

illion level of business in 1 890, furthering

the eduatlon of Midwestern farmers, including Nebraskans.
Meanwhile, the Dakota Al liance introduced the successful Da
kota crop insurance program into the state. Both innovations
provided something tangible for Alliance lecturers in Nebraska
to tal k about-something upon which they could build a move
ment. Collectively, these outside cooperative infl uences afxed
upon the structureless Nebraska Al liance the appearance of a

rogra

and the reality of a promise. And promise, for the
time bei ng, was enough. As had previously been the case in
Texas, the South, Kansas, and the Dakotas, the farmers in
Nebraska now had a reason to join the Al liance. In the spring
of 1 890, after ten years of sleepy existence, the Nebraska Al l iance
began to stir.
The third a

d final influence on the Nebraska leadership

came from outside the ranks of the Alliance, from a number of
activ
:
R
:
publicans who had become disillusioned by railroad
domInatl

n of the Republican Party in the state. Especially

exasperating was the presence of "oil rooms" in Lincoln when
the state legislature was in session. Run by lawyers and other
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
lobbyists for railroads, these rooms were for the purpose of
"oiling" legislators to vote correctly on pending legislation in
which railroads were interested. Apparently, oil ing at times
extended beyond mere alcoholic lubrication t include matters
of fnance.
In the spring of 1 890, a disenchanted Republican spokesman,
Charles Van Wyck, decided that Nebraska needed to cross the
same political Rubicon that the Kansas Alliance already had.
Three weeks after the county presidents of the Kansas Al l iance
had signaled the movement of the order into i ndependent
political action, Van Wyck decided to show Nebraska leaders
how to lead. In a well-publicized address he announced his
support for the Al liance, demanded "the abolition of party
lines, " and otherwise made it clear that the proper business of
the Alliance was independent political action.
Omar Ker of Custer County added weight to the pressure.
I ndeed, Ker's role was crucial, for while ex-Republican politi
cians might l ure the Nebraska Al liance into insurgency, someone
frst had to recruit the farmers into the Al liance. The Custer
cooperative store provided the inspi rational model, as the long
pent-up grievances of Nebraska farmers at last found a forum
for expression. Through April and May, as Kansas moved in
measured strides toward independent political action, Jay Bur
rows was forced to maneuver frantically to keep control of a
farmer movement suddenly alive after ten years of passivity.
Finally, Burrows acquiesced to a test of popular sentiment
through the circulation of petitions calling for independent
political action-though admittedly, the specifc goals of such a
movement had yet t be fashioned in the state.
Nevertheless, some 5000 signatures were obtained in Custer
County, matching an additional 5000 collected across the re
mainder of the state. Veteran green backers and anti-monopolists
added their voices, and the resultant din forced Burrows to call
an oficial convention. In July an assemblage of delegates from
seventy-nine counties nominated an independent ticket on a
platform that emphasized railroad regulation. I n a move that
Burrows must have found galling, Omar Ker received the
congressional nomination from the third district.
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
During the upsurge from the grass roots that characterized
Nebraska farmer politics from November 1 889 through Jul y
1 890, the Nebraska organization enjoyed all of the growth i t
was ever to attain in the state. Membership lotals peaked
somewhere in the vicinity of 35,000 t 45,000. The addition of
suballiances fell of sharply after mid-summer and-in the
absenc
.
e of organizational structure-membership quickly began
to dWin dle away. Local cooperative eforts, undirected and
uncoordinated by the state organization, either never actually
got
.
started or met some sort of early difculty and quietly
expired even as the political movement gathered momentum
with the addition of radicals who had up to then been bystanders.
Within the Alliance itself, many new members found they had
nothing to do--or nothing anyone showed them how to do-
and they shifted their attention to the political movement. I n
1 890, the Nebraska Al liance thus served primarily as a sort of
revolving door t o some unspecifed kind of insurgent political
activity. The decline in Alliance membership continued through
1 89 1 .
The ulti mate problem in Nebraska was the absence of the
kind of statewide cooperative i nfrastructure that elsewhere
p
rovided the agrarian movement with its vehicle of organization,
Its schoolroom of ideology, and its culture of self-respect.
Cooperation, sometimes merel y the promise of cooperation,
could attract farmers to the Alliance and, under other additional
infuences, could propel them toward an insurgent political
stance; but only the cooperative experience provided the kind
of education that i mparted to the political movement the form
a
.
n
.
d substance of the greenback heritage. It was banker oppo
sitIOn to large-scale cooperatives that made farmers want to do
something about private banki ng control over the nation's
currency. This organic Populist insight into the structure of
American society and American politics simply was not present
in Nebraska i n the years after 1 890 because it had not been part
of the internal organizational program developed in the North
western Al liance i n the years before 1 890. Thus, most of the
state's farmers were trying to achieve political solutions within
a framework of farmer-creditor relationships they had only
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 43
barely begun to analyze. From beginning to end, the agrarian
movement in Nebraska stamped itself as organizationally shallow
and ideologically fragile.
In the short run, the absence of clear defnition seemed to
help the independent political movement, for it induced thou
sands of voters to support its vaguely defned "anti-monopoly"
position in November 1 890. The "independents" elected Omar
Kem to Congress, joined with Democrats to elect a "fusionist"
Congressman, and took consolation in the fact that the state's
other Congressman would be a Democrat rather than a tradi
tional regular Republican. The newly elected Democrat-also a
respecter of the political uses of imprecision-took "the farmer' s
side" on the tarif, and was a crowd-pleasing speaker; in the
vague climate of 1 890 Nebraska politics, the combination proved
sufcient to send him to Washington. In that manner the nation's
politics acquired a new personality-William Jennings Bryan.
The young Congressman was able to work easily with the
Nebraska independents, for they all shared a common political
heritage al most entirely extraneous to the Alliance movement
and the doctrines of greenbackism. The state level independent
ticket lost narrowl y, but in the three-party split the independents
elected a majority to both houses of the state legislature. The
fragility of the Nebraska reform movement quickly became
apparent when the legislature convened in 1 89 1 . Despite their
numerical majorities, the independents were able to advance
only a truncated reform program centered around a weak
railroad regulatory agency. The watered down legislation, known
as the Newberry bil l , fnal l y passed, but it was vetoed by the
Republican governor.
In the fnal analysis, the decade-long legacy of the North
western Alliance proved too much for the cooperative movement
of the Alliance to overcome. The result i n Nebraska was a fragile
shadow movement unrelated to the doctrines of Populism that
elsewhere had materialized within the cooperative movement.
The agrarian cause in Nebraska had no institutional base, no
collective identity, and no movement culture to counter the
constant intimidation of the prevailing corporate culture. It
possessed no mechanisms for self-education, no real lecturing
1 44
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
system, no methods for developing i ndividual self-respect among
i mpoverished peopl e. The farmer movement i n Nebraska had
no purpose. It onl y appeared to have one, because of its external
resemblance to the real movement which did.
Whatever the Popul ist future was to hol d, one thing was clear
i n 1 890: the Nebraskans would not be on hand at the National
Alliance convention i n Florida with the organization credentials
to assist their fel l ow Westerners from Kansas and the Dakotas
in their self-assigned but politically decisive task of persuading
the Southern Al l iances to abandon the party of the Confederacy.
I n breaching the sectional barrier to achieve a mul ti-sectional
third party, the Nebraskans were to prove of no value to the
national reform cause.
6
None of which is to suggest that the high hopes of the spring
had somehow been extinguished. On the contrary, the spectac
ular Kansas victories brought a surge of expectation to old
Alliancemen from Dakota to Forida and to new Alliancemen
from Colorado to Oregon. And, to many, another political event
ofered great promi se-the sweeping Al l iance conquest of the
Democratic Party of the South.
To all appearances, the organized farmers of the All iance
achieved what appeared to be a "party revolution" across the
South in 1 890. In Tennessee the Al l iance state president, John
P. Buchanan, won the Democratic nomination and was elected
goveror. In Georgia the Democratic convention simpl y adopted
the Al l iance platform and nominated Allianceman Wil l iam
Northen for governor. The ensuing elections appeared decisive
.
Besides taking the Georgia governorship, Al l iance-supported
candidates won three-fourths of the seats in the state senate,
four-ffths of the state house of representatives, and six of the
state' s ten congressional seats. "Being Democrats and i n the
majority," explained one Al l ianceman, "we took possession of
the Democratic Party. " Another exclai med, "As i n the day of
Jackson, the people have come to power. "
But there were some disturbing signs. In Al abama, where the
Alliance claimed more than
75
of the 1
33
members of the state
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 45
assembl y, Democratic conservatives were
.
able to prevail in

he
party's gubernatorial nominating conventIOn, narrowly sel

ct1l1g
the Bourbon leader, Thomas Jones, over the Al l ia

ce candidate,
Reuben Kolb. I n Tennessee the order's state president

nd n

w
governor, in order to please what he regared a
.
s hiS entre
All iance and non-Al l iance constituency, deCded
.
It woul
.
d be
politically expedient to remain s
.
ilent aout most of thAl l tance
demands. And apparently whtle agn

ul n

ral povel ty mi ght,

under some conditions, lead to reform, I t might also l ead merely
to personal political machines tha

traded on the language of
reform. I n South Carolina a ranting, one-eyed orator named
Ben Til l man launched a campaign for power based
.
on upla

d
hostility to the tidewater gentry. e
.
re
?
ard

d the Alhance wanl

.
y
at f rst but eventually decided to . 10111 It, ga1 control, and u
.
se It
for his own political ends. Though his hate-fil led
.
o
.
ratory ternfed
conservatives, the Tillman regime proved surpr

s1l1gly a
.
menable
to the established order. Meanwhile in Georgia the
.
VItory of
Governor Northen came to be seen more as a tnu
O
: Ph for
continuity than a breakthrough for the Al l iance. <eorgla news
,

papers regarded the new Governor as "

rogres

lve bUl safe.

Thus a close analysis of the 1 890 elections mi ght wel l ave
given the agrarian reformers reason to pause in thei
.
r exul
.
tatlon.
The arty of the Confederacy had several well-fortified l l l1es of
defese. The party machinery remained i n the hands of
.
nld-
l ine regulars, and almost everywhere the controll
.
ing mechams

s
of the parliamentary process-the chairmanships of powerful
committees-as wel l as the leverage available t hro

gh corporate
lobbyi ng i nfuences, were retained by politicians onented toward
business rather than toward the Al l iance. As of the end of 1 8

0,
however, one devel opment seemed unarguabl e: by educa

ll1g
the farmers, the Al l iance had brought the idea of reform 1to
the dialogue of the Democratic Party of the South for the
.
frst
ti me since the Civil War. Such, at any rate, was the way Al l tance
victories of 1 890 appeared t t he nation.
7
But from the viewpoint of Al l iance radicals-and

ar
:
i
:
ularly
from the viewpoint of the radical Al l iance founders 111 I exas-
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
te cooperative
.
movement had, ironically, accomplished pre
CISely the op
p
osite resul t. Far from being an energizing force,
the cooperative crusade seemed to have sidetracked reform in
Texas in 1 888 and kept it there through the elections of 1 890.
, As th

old Cleburne radicals analyzed matters, the politics of
1 890 m the South was a total sham, suggesting the mere
appearance of reform without the slightest shred of its substance.
This interpretation, of course, difered markedly from that of
other Souther Alliance leaders. Nevertheless, its origins demand
attention, for its subsequent development charted the path that
brought the Southern Alliances to the People's Party. The process
generated something the American labor movement of the
nineteenth century was never able to achieve: the politicization
of masses of people into insurgent democratic politics.
The intellectual and tactical nucleus of Alliance radicalism
consisted of six men who fi rst came to prominence in the year
of th
.
e Cleburne Demands i n 1 886 and who had subsequently
acqUIred a degree of national promi nence in the agrarian
n
:oveme

t . Most visible, of course, was Evan jones, the loqua

CIOUS radIcal who successively served from 1 884 to 1 890 as chief
spokesman for the movement in his home county, in his home
state, and, in 1 889, as president of the National Alliance. He
had
.

oted a third party ticket since 1 884. A second insurgent

tactician was H. S. P. Ashby, a member of the blue-ribbon panel
i n St. Louis that had brought forth the sub-treasury plan. Another
prominent activist was J. M. Perdue, a greenback theoretician
and principal author of the Cleburne Demands. The others
were R. M. Humphrey, white founder of the Colored Farmers
National Al liance; Harry Tracy, a sophisticated greenback ad
vocate of large-scale cooperatives; and fi nally, of course, Wil l iam
Lamb.
In 1 890 these spokesmen were a frustrated group. They were,
perhaps, not as gloomy as jerry Si mpson of Kansas had been in
1 889

fter the Union Labor debacle, but they approached hi s

despair and fo
:
the same

eason: the fai l ure of the third party

efo

t both n

tIonally and m their own state. And the height of

the Irony lay m the fact that the central cause of their difculty
was the cooperative movement itsel f.
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 47
The Texans had made a massive efort in 1 888 to assist in the
creation of a new national third party and to rally the entire
Alliance to its support in Texas but their plans collided with the
desperate struggle of the Texas Alliance to

ve its centr
.
al state
exchange. However necessary, Jones's declSlon to declIne the
third party gubernatorial nomination postpon

d for at least tW
?
years what he and his principal colleagues considered to be telr
central political mission-beginning the
.

roces
.
s of weanmg
rank-and-fi le Alliance farmers from their mhented loyalty to
the "party of the fathers. "
.
I t became apparent in 1 890 that the postponement might be
for four years rather than two. As the emergence of Tillma

in
South Carolina and Northen in Georgia revealed, a new vanety
of Southern politician had materialized in response to the arrival
of the Alliance in politics. In Texas the new aspirant's

ame ws
james Hogg, a 300-pound, railroad-baiting DemocratIC loyalIst
who asserted himself as a man of the people. Hogg had a
colorful platform style that tended to obscure the lack of specifi cs
in his reform program. While campaigning, he often
.
took of
his coat, threw his suspenders from his shoulders, lettmg them
dangle about his knees, and drank "li k
.
a horse" from water
pitcher. Wil l iam Lamb, for one, was not

mpressed, partIcul

rly
after reading the Democratic platform taIlored by the Hoggnes.
But in 1 890 the old Cleburne radical had a weapon to emplo
.
y
that had been unavailable in 1 888. I ronically, he could thank hiS
rival , the "nonpartisan" Charles Macune, for the weapon was
Macune' s sub-treasury plan. The sweeping soft-money proposal
was unli kel y to please Democratic regulars, even when they
displayed the trappings of reform in support of jar
n
es H

gg.
The Hoggites assisted in removing all doubt by resolv

ng aga

nst
the sub-treasury at the Democratic convention. But WIth no rIval
for the support of farmers, Hogg was saely "in"
.
as the next
governor of Texas. For radicals, the meanmg o thIS event was
as clear as it was ominous: the farmers of the Al l Iance may have
become "conscious" of their economic relationship to bankers
and credit merchants, but because of the continuing power of
the received culture, they expressed their new-found sensibility
by voting for old party candidates. They were, i n short, not yet
/
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
"

olitically conscious. " The agrarian movement in the South was

stIli unable to break the bonds of inherited political habits.

?
wever, it was
.
precis

l y at this point-August 1 8go-that

WII I
.
lam Lamset In motIOn the elaborate campaign of demo
cratIc educatIon that was destined to transform the National
Farmers Alliance i llto the People's Party. First, he publicly
defi

ed his opposition t o the Southern Democracy. The Demo

cratIC platform had "sidetracked" the farmers, he said-partic
ularl

by
,
he declaration against banks "without proposing a
substitute. Most
.
outrageous of all, he added, was the pro
nouncement agaInst the sub-treasury system, which was, of
course, th

best avail

ble substitute. In the aftermath of the 1 890

DemocratIc conventIOn, Lamb readied his plan to drive this
home t? the annual Alliance state meeting. The daylight between
the AllIance on the one hand and the Democratic Party on the
other had fi nally appeared in a way that farmers should be able
to see-for the sub-treasury was the one issue that addressed
the

nd
.
uri ng realities i n the lives of most Southern farmers, the
f urmshI ng m

rcha

nd
.
his crop lien. William Lamb proposed
to draw a radIcal dIstInctIOn on the sub-t reasury issue.
The arg

ents easily presented themselves. If t he Alliance

was not
.
wlllIng to take a stand for the sub-treasury, then it
mocked Its own claim that it represented the true interest of
farme

s. Thi

teen years of devoted experimentation with co

operatIve bUIng and selling had failed to alter the basic injustices
of the crop hen. Not only was this reality obvious to men like
L

mb and Macune, it was also apparent to everyone associated

'
Ith the cooperatives. The sub-treasury plan faced this harsh
fac
.
t squarelY'
,
Collectively, these arguments added up to a radical
ultImatum
.
: If the farmers were unwilling to take on all comers
on
.
the basIs of the sub-treasury, they might as well abandon the
Alhance. "Cooperation" having failed to disl odge the furnishing
mercha
.
nt, what other course was left? The Alliance had to stand
on the Issue or concede its own irrelevance.
our months before the Ocala convention of the National
Al lIance Lamb pressed the choice on the Texas Alliance in the
order's state convention at Dallas. Lamb enjoined the Alliance
formally to endorse the issue that the Democratic Party had as
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 49
formally opposed. The pull of confl icting loyalties was evident,
but awkward. Must one choose between the Democratic Party
and the farmers? The supporting arguments for both sides
destined to be heard throughout the South in 1 8g 1 -92-began
to resound through Texas in 1 890. Was not the Alliance strong
enough to insist that the Democrats support the sub-treasury?
The Democrats had already pronounced against it. Was not the
Democratic Party the party of the people? If the party was not
willing to try to cope with the furnishing merchant and the crop
lien, it did not care about the people. What about the Democratic
argument that the sub-treasury was class legislation, or uncon
stitutional, or both? Opposition to the sub-treasury was admission
that the farmers could not be helped.
The arguments were stark and the choice painful. After a
debate extending over two days, the roll call of counties was
ordered. Sixteen counties abstained. Twenty-three voted "no. "
Seventy-fve voted "yes. " On a fundamental issue, the Texas
Alliance had declared itsel f in opposition to the Texas Demo
cratic Part y.
But only on the leadership level. To the thousands of farmers
in the suballiances, the relationship of candidates, political
parties, and the sub-treasury was not nearly so clear as it had
been to the Al liance leaders who debated Lamb's motion in
August. The painful decision thrust on the Alliance leadership
therefore had t be recapitulated at all levels of the order in a
manner that would bring home to hundreds of thousands of
farmers the choices that had to be made. To this course Lamb
persuaded the agrarian leaders i n Texas to dedicate themselves.
Let t he sub-treasury be explained by the lecturers. Let the
farmers in the suballiances debate the plan. Let them see its
i mplications in terms of their daily relationships with the fur
nishing merchant. Let the line be drawn.
Lamb mobilized the Alliance's i nternal organizational machin
ery t address an enormous lecturing task. The job was huge,
for not only did the order' s lecturers have to be increased in
number, but they also had to be thoroughly briefed on the
workings of the sub-treasury system and armed with intell igent
defenses of its provisions. Lamb conceived of a plan to add an
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
aditio

al layer of executive structure to the Alliance organi

zatIn m
.
order to meet the lecturing challenge. With the ful l
cooperatIOn of Evan Jones, a mul ti-county lecturing school on
the sub-treasury was established in each congressional district.
County Alliance presidents, lecturers, and assistant lecturers

ere convc
.
ned and briefed, and speaking assignments were
mtegrated mto a systematic plan to cover the hundreds of
suballiances in each district. In the fall and winter of 1 890, one
congresional distr
.
ict after another organized its "lecturing
school. Lamb presided over the most elaborate one in Novem
ber. By the end of the winter, the sub-treasury test that had
been
p
ut to th
.
e Alliance county leadership in August was being
recapitulated 10 hundreds of suballiances across the state. The
farmers were being asked to choose between the Farmers
Alliance and the Democratic Party. The Alliance had begun the
process of politicizing itself for a mass efort to redefne American
comm
.
erce and the American party system. The politics of
PopulIsm had arrived in the rural districts of Texas.
.
The eort, however, was all uphill. While liberal jouralists
10 Washmgton might be writing optimistic i nterpretive stories
about "The Alliance Wedge in Congress, " the Kansans knew
that wedge could easily be dislodged. The virulent attack on L.
L. Pol k in Kans

s had been an omen of what they mi ght expect:

part that senously hoped to challenge the dominant Repub
lIcans 10 the North simply could not be tainted with the stain of
rebellion. Unfortunately for the activists, however, most Southern
Alliancemen seemed committed to "reform through the Dem
ocrts. " The Southerners' positi0r
'
moreover, was logically un
assaIlable .
.
They had created an "Alliance yardstick" composed
of the national demands formulated in the St. Louis Platform
plus a variety of local issues applicable in each state. They had
done so even before the Western Al l iances had moved into
inde
p
endent political action in the summer and fall of 1 890.
Havmg announced their Alliance yardstick, the Southerners had
then easured candidates by it. So great was the Alliance sweep
that lIterally hundreds of legislators who had "measured up"
had been elected, and six Georgia Congressmen who had not
had been defeated. I ndeed, the order promi sed to be in nu-
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
merical control of a number of "Alliance legislatures." To
abandon the Alliance representatives even before their legisla
tures convened not only would make the order appear irre
sponsible before the world, it also would constitute an abandon
ment of the Al l iance platform. How could the order go back to
the voters as a third party with the same program without having
given the men i t had already elected a chance to act upon it?
The question was unanswerable.
Still, when the National Alliance convened at Ocala, Florida,
in December 1 890, the Kansans pressed hard. Charles Macune
provided a compromise. Though the new "Ocala Platform" was
quite radical (formally adding the sub-treasury system to the list
of "Alliance Demands"), Macune argued that a third party could
service no one, neither the Westerners nor the Southerners, in
1 89 1 . "Reform through the Democrats"-of which there was no
more fervent supporter than Macune-cou,ld be tested i n the
legislatures which would convene across the South in 1 89 1 . If
that solution were found wanting, other alternatives, including
a third party, could be considered early i n 1 892. Let the matter
be postponed, said Macune. Agree at Ocala to reconvene on
Washington's birthday in 1 892. That date, only fourteen months
away, would provide a much better view of the progress of the
reform movement. As Macune put it, "I f the people by delegates
coming direct from them agree that a third party move is
necessary, it need not be feared. " The radicals accepted this
solution-and then promptly went beyond it by calling a general
reform convention at Cincinnati for 1 89 1 in order to erect the
preliminary organizational scaffolding of the new third party.
8
The decisive battleground, as Macune, Lamb, and the Western
radicals all knew, was the South. It was also clear that i f Southern
farmers were to be persuaded to break with the party of the
fathers, the Alliance founders would have to chart the route.
Far more than the Kansans, the Texans possessed the essential
sectional credentials to talk to other Southerners about aban
doning the Democratic Party-credentials that were augmented
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
by the fact the Texas lecturers had conducted the organizing
sweep through the South in the frst place. It seemed self-evident
to the radicals in both regions that if the Souther Alliances were
to join the third party, the Texas Alliance would have to lead
the way.
William Lamb proposed t do just that by making the sub
treasury the fundamental test of Alliance loyalty. Under Lamb's
formula, every farmer in the National Alliance was to be asked
to stand up and be counted on the sub-treasury issue! The speed
with which such a breathtaking assignment could be achieved
depended on the strength of the Alliance organizational struc
ture in each Souther state as well as on the energy and political
flexibility of its leadership. But frst the South needed a model.
In the spring of 1 89 1 , radical Al liancemen in Texas expanded
across the state the district lecturing schools on the sub-treasury
pioneered by Lamb. Additionally, a legislative watchdog com
mi ttee was established in the state capital under the direction of
Harry Tracy. Set up to render careful reports of the promised
reform program of the incoming Hogg regi me, the Tracy
committee achieved surprising results in a matter of weeks. In
a legislative atmosphere that they found to be crowded with
railroad lobbyists, Tracy and the other Al l iance committeemen
soon lost their respect for " Hogg Democrats. " The farmers got
one of their state-level demands, a railroad regulatory commi s
sion, but little else. After almost all of the anticipated reforms
had been bungled, withdrawn, or postponed under relentless
corporate lobbying pressure, Hogg's i nsistence that his legislative
program was succeeding scarcely eased Harry Tracy's doubts
about the governor's reforming zeal. Until that moment a loyal
Democrat, Tracy broke with the party on the ground that Hogg's
reform movement was devoid of substance. The chorus of anti
Hogg voices in the Al liance grew louder.
Governor Hogg, now deeply concerned, moved to discredit
the Farmers Alliance. A "manifesto" attacking the Tracy legis
lative committee as well as the sub-treasury, signed by a half
dozen "Al l iance legislators" allied with Hogg, received wide
circulation in the state press. But Hogg had blundered: the
attack came as the lecturing program on the sub-treasury was
in full swing in suballiances across the state.
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 53
Ami d mounting evidence that Lamb and the Alliance radic

ls
were winning the Texas battlefeld, Macune dropped matters
Washington and went home. He found himself more and more
isolated in the Texas political environment. He had become a
political rarity-a Democrat and a sub-treasury advocate. Th
.
e
contradictions implicit in his stance became more sharply c1an
fi ed for him the longer he stayed in Texas. The crop-mort
.
gaged
farmers in the suballiances were discussing his plan wIth an
intensity given no public question i n the South since secession,
but he could scarcely take comfort in the obviou

meaning of
such discussions. Everywhere he went in Alliance CIrcles the sub
treasury had found increasing favor, but more often han not
in the context of the need for a third party. After all, JI m Hogg
was against the farmers Oi the sub-treasury!
9
Received cultures contain compelling political memories, how
ever. Most Alliancemen in Texas had voted for "the party of the
fathers" all their lives. Nevertheless, the farmers conti

ued t
?
make strides in their pursuit of an authentic democratic envI
ronment of their own; they no longer had to rely on vague
reports in the business press to learn ab
.
oul their le
.
gislatu

e or
the other political institutions of the natlo

. In he 1I1creas1l1gly
democratic world they had created in theIr Al hance, they now
had internal lecturing pipelines and their own watchdog (

m
mittees. I n thi s way, they were pursuing a new kind opohlcal
autonomy. In such a mil ieu-unknown to Amer
.
lca s1l1ce
the Committees of Correspondence of the RevolutlOn-self
described Democratic "reform" governors such as James Hogg
and prestigious Republican Senators such as John ugalls

f
Kansas were seen in a new and much altered perspective. T
.
hls
underlying development was the c

ntral one for the

.
evolutlon
of Popul ism: the people were mak1l1g Judgments denv

d from
their own sources of information rather than accept1l1g the
interpretations of culturally sanctioned "leaders"

s they h

d
always previously done. I n short, t heir new perceptIOns w
.
e
.
re
response to new democratic i mpulses rather than tradItional
hierarchical ones.
1 54 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
Yet it was not enough for "some" or "many" Alliancemen to
attain this new plateau of individual self-respect. Given the hold
the received hierarchical culture had on Americans outside the
Alliance, the order needed to generate the new autonomy among
al l Alliancemen i f democratic ways were to have a real prospect
of prevailing in the larger society. On this fundamental level of
self-determination, all Alliancemen had to see the need to rely
on themselves individually, and on each other, rather than
passively acting out received habits of political conduct. Now,
more even than on "the day to save the exchange" in 1 888, the
farmers needed to tal k to each other and chart a democratic
course for themselves and for the nation. Clearly, in the spring
of 1 89 1 a crucial test of the democratic aspirations of the
Farmers Al l iance was at hand.
The agrarian leadership moved decisively. In order to expand
the already enlarged district lecturing system on the sub-treasury,
Evan Jones issued a proclamation calling the "frst annual
Alliance Conference"-a special four-day statewide "educa
tional" meeting i n Waco on April 2 1 , 1 89 1 -for the express
purpose of "perfecti ng the lecturing system. " Macune could not
oppose such a program, but he had read enough signs to take
precautions. He arranged to have well-known national Alliance
Democrats invited to the conference. Yet the spread of third
party senti ment was evidenced by other guest speakers invited
to Waco, all recruited from the membership rolls of the National
Reform Press Association: Henry Vincent and M. L. Wilkins of
the American Nonconormist and Ralph Beaumont of the National
Citizens Alliance of Washington. The tactical i mportance of the
Texas Alliance was now well understood by both factions of
reformers throughout the nation. As for the sub-treasury, both
were, of course, ful l y committed: on the eve of the Waco
meeting, that was the one certainty accruing from years of
Alliance experience with the oppressive features of the American
monetary system.
This latter circumstance was lost on t he metropolitan press
and on Hogg himself. Both were far removed from the economic
hardship that undergirded the agrarian revolt. From the com
fortable perspective of Democratic politicians and the major
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 55
Texas dailies, a battle was expected at the Allia

ce meeting
but it was presumed to concern Al l iancemen dedicated to Hogg
and Alliancemen loyal to Macune and the sub-treasury pl

n. I n
hierarchical societies, genuine democratic politics, when I t ap-
pears, is hard to understand.
.
I t was with some dismay, then, that reporters discovered
during the fi rst two days of the Wac
?
meetng
"
that the Texas
Alliance was "united" behind its "ofCial famIly. To the eyes of
the press, this included Macune, Evan Jones, amb, Perdue,
Tracy, and Ashby. In general, the Waco meetlg seeme t,
border on a mass celebration. "Stump" Ashby was the favonte,
the "famous agitator and humorist," while Evan Jones, "sadly
needing a patch on his pants," was "b,ods the

,
st poular
leader. " Taken together, the Al l iance ' ofCial family was now
i n the heyday of power and popularity," while the half-dozen
or so Hoggites among the 400 Al l iance county leaders were
"discouraged. "
. .
But this solidarity existed only when the Alliance I

dershlp
was described in terms of personalities rather than poliCies. The
truth was that esteem and policy-making had, in the case of
Charles Macune, ceased to be mutually supporting elements.
Though the "nonpartisan" Economi
.
st editor was th
.
e est

own
Allianceman in America, he publicly revealed hiS mabIlIty to
enunciate a cl ear policy for the order. In the name of the sub
treasury, he stood for legislative political action, th0
.
gh n

t for
the only method through which it cou|d be

btamed

mde
pendent political action. Because botmajor partI
.
es ha
,
rejected
the sub-treasury, the politics of the Issue left Al l iance no

ar
tisans" such as Macune defenseless against the simple
.
political
logic of the order's radicals. This situatio
.
n becam

c|ear m Te

as
in April 1 89 1 , as it was to become clear m Geo

gla m the spnng

of 1 892 and i n other parts of the South later m the sae year.
Macune's words at Waco revealed both the extreme delicacy of
his position and his uncertainty about his own future course.
I remember that fve years ago, the Alliance was afrai of
politics, but the order has got bravely over tat
:
. . and If It
is necessary as a method of accomplishing their alms to enter
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
the ranks of politics and di slodge some of the l eaders herea
bouts, they are equal to the emergency = . = . I have learned a
great deal since joi ni ng the order and expect lear more.
I fel t when I first joined I coul d give a better description of
its objects t han I can today . . . . I am not afraid of politics.
. . . But . . . let us use i t as a method, never as an object.
Those were no longer the words of a man who was leading.
In sudden increments of discovery, the Waco meeting mate
rialized before observing reporters as a series of shocks, each
more startl ing than the last.
The pace of events was rapid. On the fi rst day Lamb attempted
to engender leadership agreement to dispatch a delegation to
Cincinnati; it ran afoul of Macune's contention that the Al l iance,
as an organization, could not commit itself ofcially to a specific
party. On the second day a compromise was reached to permit
the decision to be made by individual caucuses in the congres
sional districts. The shifting center of gravity became still clearer
on the third day of the conference, when the Alliance radicals
narrowly lost a series of indirect test votes on the third party
issue by margins of 85 t 83 and 82 to 8 1 . Debate was not heated,
as the delegates were i ntent on appraising the political pulse of
the order. Another compromise was quietly achieved. The
radicals agreed to confine further third party exhortation to
separate meetings already scheduled in Waco; in exchange, the
Texas Alliance would send delegates to Cincinnati. The same
day, before " large and enthusiastic" crowds of third-party ad
vocates in the Waco courthouse, two new institutions were
created-the Texas Citizens Alliance and the Texas Reform
Press Association. The press association's new president was
William Lamb and its vice president was to be the editor of the
Southern Mercur, the ofcial journal of the State Alliance. The
Texas Citizens Al liance was organized as an afliate of the
overtly third party National Citizens Alliance, and its secretary
treasurer was William Lamb.
Taken together, these events produced a new view of the
meaning of the "frst annual Farmers Alliance conference." The
Waco News confessed it had found the conference truly "edu
cational" and, in reporting on the county presidents and lectur
ers, said that "one is forced to suspect that they have been to
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 57
school before. " " Enough has been learned, " the paper added,
to conclude that the meeting "has a political signifi cance of no
mean importance" and that "the third party is in fact, a
probability. "
.
Lamb had won the tactical war With Macune. I n concelvmg
the political tactics of the sub-treasury, L
.
amb had inte
?
raed the
lecturing system and the reform press mto an efectIve mstru
ment of political democracy. As events were soon t show, the
"politics of the sub-treasury" was the
.
cri
,
ical tactical instrumen
needed in the South to "draw the lme between the farmers
loyalty to their Al l iance and their inherited cultural loyaty t
"the party of the fathers. " It made them conf

nt the re

IIty of
the credit system in ways that had tangible polItIcal mean mg. In
this manner, Lamb provided the South with a model through
which the Alliance could be brought t Populism.
Yet there was a much deeper meaning t the events at Waco.
The "frst annual Alliance Conference" revealed how Wil l iam
Lamb, Charles Macune, and Al l iancemen generally had been
lifted by their collective cooperative eorts to a new plaeau of
democratic possibility. All of the collectIve acts of the Al l Iance
the wagon trains, the encampments, the m

ny modes of coop
erative striving-were practical demonstratIons of gr

up self
confdence. But there was something else: cloth Hags Hymg from
wagons heading home after the successfu
.
1 bulking of
.
one' s crop,
a private celebration. And at the collectIve celebrations, at the
twilight meals for thousands, if, as inevitab
.
ly hap

ene,
.
ther
came speeches about the "new day for the mdustr

al ml lons,
followed by "cheers for the Speaker and for the Al l Iance, these
were also cheers for oneself, for one's new vision of hope that
had come t life in the democratic environment of the Al l iance.
The link that connected the people of the Alliance, that
carried the hopes of the many forward to their elected leaders
and carried the response of the same leaders back to the
brotherhood, was the Alliance lecturing system. Here lay the
essential democratic communications network within the move
ment and it was this ingredient that Lamb mobilized in the
spring of 1 89 1 for yet one more post-Civil War attemto bri ng
a democratic "new day" to America. Through the polItIcs of he
sub-treasury, with its vividly direct connection to the crop l Ien
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
system of the South, Lamb put the movement culture that had
grown up out of the cooperative crusade to its ultimate test
against the received culture of inherited sectional loyalty to "the
party of the fathers. "
I rony sufused the struggle between Lamb and Macune. On
he one
.
hand, their battle over Al liance policy marked the
l tersectlOn of their inAuence i n the agrarian crusade. For the
I me thereafer available to both, Lamb's i mpact on policy
Increased while Macune's declined, as the radicalism Lamb had
engendered at Clebure in 1 886 continued to transform the
national organization Macune had envisioned at Waco in 1 887.
But hough their l ong ideological conAict was not fnally to
cul minate for another nineteen months, their debts to each
other were already plain in April 1 89 1 and could be summarized
in three facts: Lamb's radical ism, splitti ng the Alliance founders
in I 8c, brought Macune to power; Macune's organizational
creatIVity constructed a national constituency of farmers that
made possible amb's dream of a third party of the laboring

Iasse

; and t
.
heJr sared objective, economic parity for farmers
In

n industrial sOCiety, was symbolized in the sub-treasury plan,

whICh Macune conceived as an instrument of economic reform
and Lamb converted into one of political revolt. In the process,
the stakes were substantially raised. The struggle to free the
outhern farmer from the furnishing merchant was subsumed
In the struggle to bring economic redress to "the i ndustrial
millions. " I was a contest Macune fel t could not be won, and
one Lamb fel t had to be waged. The respective successes of
Lamb and Macune and the partisan attacks those successes
inspire?
.
against
:
ach, plus their own actions, eventually used up
the polItical cre
.
dlt of both. A third casualty was the sub-treasury
plan. The achievement was the creation of a mul ti-sectional
nstitutin of reform: the People's Party. Macune' s sub-treasury,
In Lamb s hands, defeated Macune and created Southern Pop
ulism.
1 0
I n the state conventions of the Al l iance across the South i n the
summer and fall of 1 89 1 , Alliance leaders were asked to stand
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 59
up and be counted on the sub-treasury. The political cost to the
Alliance was sometimes substantial, but at whatever cost, the line
was drawn. As Lamb had demonstrated in Texas, it marked out
the starting point for the People's Party in the South. However
painfully-and it soon became quite painful in some states-the
politics of the sub-treasury, fashioned some twenty-six years
after Appomattox, became the sword that cut the ancestral
bonds to the party of the fathers.
Third party partisans got some help from the business interests
of the South. Throughout 1 89 1 , as Southern state legislatures
were put to the test on the "Alliance yardstick" of legislative
reform, the business orientation of the party of the fathers
revealed itself. One by one, the legislatures of the Southern states
did not produce "reform through the Democrats. " Whether
Democratic ofceholders styled themselves as traditional "states'
rights" conservatives or as "Alliance Democrats," the i ntellectual
and political distance between themselves and the farmers
became all too evident.
What happened to the Hogg "reform program" in Texas
happened everywhere: The American political system was not
seen to be democratic, but hierarchical; business lobbies gov
erned the legislative process on the vital issues. In 1 89 1 , as it
had many times before, the Democratic "party of the people"
revealed itself as a business party.
I n general, the Southern situation provided promising soil for
the sub-treasury. Sometimes orchestrated through specially con
stituted lecturing systems organized by congressional districts,
and sometimes not, the politics of the sub-treasury began to
penetrate downward to the thousands of suballiances across the
South in 1 89 1 . Beginning i n the summer and extending into the
following spring, state, county, and local alliances formally
declared for the sub-treasury as the essential element of the "full
Ocala Platform. " The battle for the political allegiance of the
Southern yeomanry was on.
Nowhere did the radical i mperative to break the loyalty of
Souther farmers t "the party of the fathers produce a more
tense and vivid political struggle than in Georgia. The sprawling
Georgia Alliance became a dramatic and bitter battleground as
the state's press and politicians watched anxiously and, wherever
1 60 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
possible, added their infuence on the side of orthodoxy. To
many observers, the struggle for the soul of the Georgia Alliance
appeared to be a war between two rival captains-Lon Livingston,
Al liance state president, and Tom Watson, radical agitator.
Though this assessment has a measure of truth, Livingston and
Watson were symbols of a decision-making process that ul ti
mately had to fnd its resolution through the i ndividual choices
of thousands of Georgia farmers.
Near the end of his life Watson fondl y recalled the "radiant
visions" of the years of struggle in the 1 890' s: "I did not lead the
Al liance; I followed the Al liance, and I am proud that I did
follow it. " Yet the relationship of the movement to the move
ment's spokesman was necessarily mutually supportive. For his
part, Watson knew that the crop lien, and the systems of politics
and justice that supported it, was the source both of the despair
of the Georgia countryside and of the hope represented by the
Alliance. "Here is a tenant-I do not know, or care, whether he
is white or black, I know his story . . . . He knows what an order
to the store means. He knows perfectly well that he cannot get
goods as cheap as for cash. " The system "tears a tenant from his
family and puts him in chains and stripes because he sells cotton
for something to eat and leaves his rent unpaid. " When such a
system could not punish its "railroad kings," it was "weak unto
rottenness. "
Yet beyond the language of reform, Watson early understood
that reform movements require tactics and strategy. Even as
Livingston signaled clearly his intention of staying with "the
party of the fathers," Watson fomented properly radical pre
conditions for the decisive choices yet to be made in 2000
Georgia suballiances. It took a while for such a process to work.
Livingston's position within the Alliance appeared invulnerable.
He knew the rhetoric of revolt and could hurl thunderbolts at
railroad barons with every bit of the fervor of a Till man in South
Carolina or a Hogg in Texas. He could avoid the taint of
conservative party leaders by questioning their actions, as he
did Governor Northen' s, meanwhile following a conservative
strategy of Democratic Party loyalty. The defenders of the
received political culture had many weapons.
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 6 1
I t was from this position of relative isolation that Tom Watson
renewed his struggle. He began to put renewed emphasis on
the sub-treasury plan and got himself a newspaper to carry the
message. Watson's journal f rst appeared on October , 1 89 1 ,
as The People's Party Paper even as the politics of the sub-treasury
became the center of attention in the Georgia suballiances.
Like The People's Party Paper in Georgia, L. L. Pol k' s Progressive
Farmer in North Carolina focused increasingly on the sub
treasury as "the one real living issue," while Alabama reform
editors, supported by the state Alliance president, also flocked
to the sub-treasury standard. "The people are learing that the
sub-treasury means fnal freedom from serfdom, " one editor
put it. A farmer punctuated the judgment: "Hurrah for Ocala,
first, last, and forever! Amen. " In South Carolina, too, embattled
Alliance radicals seized upon the sub-treasury in a desperate
effort to "draw the line" between the South Carolina Al l iance
and Ben Tillman.
To outsiders the ful l implications of these furious controversies
were not always much better understood than when the Texas
Al liance took the same step in the summer of 1 890. But the
same internal dynamics were at work. To all who looked, the
politics of the sub-treasury measured the strength, reform
instinct, and internal cohesion of the Alliance movement in each
of the Southern states. The votes varied from near unanimity
among the county leaders of the Florida and Arkansas Alliances
to an ominous postponement in Tennessee, where the issue
came at an awkward moment in the political life of John
Buchanan, the Al l iance state president. The difculty i n Ten
nessee centered on the fact that Democrat Buchanan also
occupied the gubernatorial chair, a circumstance that made him
pause before launching a tactical campaign to draw a line
between the Alliance on the one hand and the Democratic Party
on the other. After much behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the
Tennessee Alliance trimmed its sails on the Ocala Platform and
postponed any and all tests of sentiment until 1 892. The decision
effectively destroyed the third party movement in the state.
The central role of the sub-treasury debate as the capstone of
political education within the movement culture of the Alliance-
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
and the equally central need for farmers to have enough time
for this process of democratic self-education to take place-was
made dramatically clear in Mississippi. There, the politics of the
sub-treasury erupted amid the 1 89 1 state elections. Alliance
leader Frank Burkitt was forced to throw the sub-treasury into
battle against the state's planter Democrats even as a district
lecturing system was mobilized for i nternal "Alliance education"
on the same issue. The pace of events forced the Mississippi
Al liance to outline the intricacies of the sub-treasury to Missis
sippi farmers as a part of the campaign itsel f. Though stump
oratory was hardly the best medium for dissecting an issue as
unusual and controversial as the sub-treasury, "immense crowds"
took part in the canvass. The farmers of Mississippi, wracked by
racial phobias but wracked also by a generation of the crop l ien,
were plainly in a volatile state.
The press of Mississippi became stridently engaged against
the sub-treasury. Burkitt, the state lecturer of the Mi ssissippi
Alliance, took to the campaign trail and showed the order's
county lecturers how to put the politics of the sub-treasury to
work in the reform cause. In bone-poor Mississippi, Burkitt
clearly scored telling points. By the early fal l observers privately
agreed that the Mississippi electorate, centered in the huge
(60, 00o-member) state Alliance, could not be counted in anyone's
camp. A new kind of Southern politics had come to Mississippi.
In October an older politics reasserted itsel f. Night riders
descended on Frank Burkitt's Choctaw County Messenger. They
set the building afre and destroyed the printing press. The
courthouse at Pontotoc was broken i nto and all the voter
registration books were "stolen or concealed or probably burnt. "
The mood of the campaign altered. The canvass became "one
of the meanest ever conducted in the state," and the audiences
became quieter. Mississippians were thinking things over, but
since they no longer talked as freely one could not be certain of
the situation. On election day, the regular Mississippi Democracy
won a clear-cut victory.
Party regulars, aware that the returns were misleading, pri
vately conceded that the election had been a near thing. The
old order had repelled the frst attack, but the margin of
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
victory-and perhaps even more-had been a product of the
fnal stages of the campaign. Aside from a ramshackle political
apparatus that involved state and county ofceholders, the old
party's hard-core support had come from the furnishing mer
chants, many of whom had become large landowners over the
years. The great mass of Mississippi people remained poor
farmers, a fact the Democracy belately focused upon. The party's
public appearance, so long neglected, defnitely required face
lifting for any future engagements with its impoverished elec
torate-perhaps something along the lines Hogg had followed
in Texas, or something resembling the Tillman regime i n South
Carolina. Such were the post-election i mperatives facing Missis
sippi' s Democratic chieftains. From the perspective of Alliance
leaders, the postmortem conclusion was much simpler: it had all
happened too quickly. They had not had enough time.
In contrast, in Georgia, where matters proceeded at a more
orderly pace, four of every fve suballiances were endorsing the
sub-treasury. Stil l , matters remained uncertain everywhere.
Abandon the party of the fathers? The party of the Confederacy?
The party of the white man? Across the South, indendent
political action represented an agonizing cultural deCISIn. Al
liancemen, made economically conscious by the lessons learned
in their cooperative crusade, were being asked to graduat
.
e to a
new plateau of political consciousness through the contmet
wide debate on the sub-treasury system. Slowl y, then With
accelerating speed, the conversions began through every echelon
of the order. I ndeed, the most notable recruit was the Al l iance
national president.
1 1
L. L. Polk' s pace toward the third party, as indicated by his 1 890
performance in Kansas, had quickened almost from the moment
of his election as president. Though his decision to refrain from
a public endorsement at the time of the Cincinnati meeting in
May 1 89 1 had not been well received by Alliance radicals, he
privately conveyed a message t his son-in-law: "Let ' em rage,
I will come in on the home stretch. " By the time of the annual
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
year-end national Alliance convention, held in I ndianapolis in
1 89 1 , the North Carolinian had found his "home stretch. " He
advised t he farmer leaders "t o be deceived no longer" by
"arrogrant party dictation" and provided a demonstration of
how a united third party might parry the blow of sectional
agitators in both parties.
To the charge that our organization is dominated by Southern
influence, we have only to call the roll of this body to find that
of the thirty-four states comprising it, twenty-three of them
are denomi nated Northern states . . . . Not the war of twenty
five years ago . . . but the gigantic struggle of today between
the classes and the masses . . . is the supreme incentive and
object of this great political revolution.
Polk' s address, which drew "thunderous ovations" from Al l i
ance delegates gathered from across the nation, symbolized
much of what the agrarian revolt had been since the days of the
Cleburne Demands in 1 886-Southern in origin, national in
purpose, radical in ideology. As one newspaper reporter put i t
after Pol k fnished, the election of anyone el se as Al l iance
president for the coming year of struggle "would have been
regarded as a blow to the People' s Party. " Populist representa
tives, led by H. E. Taubeneck, the provisional national chairman
named at Cincinnati in May, were "happy as clams. " So was Tom
Watson. The People's Party Paper declared that "Georgia is ready
for a third party and will sweep the state with the movement. "
In this way, the Al l iance in 1 89 1 -92, through its self-generated
movement culture, politicized itself for democratic acts. *
* The venerable Marxist term, "class consciousness," is simpl y too grand an
abstractIOn to serve coherently as a
.
precise description of the complex process
through which ll1surgent democratIc movements ( I ) form, ( 2) recruit a mass
base, (
3
) achieve a heretofore culturally unsanctioned level of economic analysis,
and (4) find a way to express this new economic understanding through
autonomous po!itical acts. As the industrial tumult of the 1 880'S and 1 890's
ll1dlcated, American workers were increasingly "class conscious" in the traditional
economic meaning of t he phrase. But , as evidenced by continuing working class
support of major party candidates, they found no autonomous means to express
this consciousness in practical political ways.
In terms of the agrarian revolt in America, the four stages cited above were
sequentially attained not merely through "class consciousness," but as a result
of the development of ( I ) individual self-respect, beginning with Daws, Lamb,
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
1 2
Al l across the Northwest in 1 8909 1 , however, the Northwester
Alliance, having never developed a movement culture, slowly
disappeared from the agrarian revolt. t In Mi nnesota, the sheer
momentum of the Loucks- Wardall-Donnelly cooperative cam
paign had seemed t carry the order t new heights of mem
bership, but the departure of Loucks back to South Dakota and
of Wardall to a new role in Macune' s Washington ofce removed
from the Minnesota leadership the only people who understood
the organizational principles of the cooperative movement.
Donnelly continued to believe that "the masses" could be orga
nized by stump speeches and policy formulated by parliamentary
dexterity in the nation's legislatures. Through simple neglect
and organizational innocence, the fragile framework of a mass
movement set loosely in place in Minnesota gradually, al most
graceful l y, fel l apart i n 1 89 1 . Donnelly continued to see politics
from the top down as his role in platform-writing for the
national People's Party brough him a modicum of national
attention. He remained optimistic, unaware that he led a move
ment in his home state that possessed a steadily decreasing
number of followers. "The sky is l uminous with promise," he
said in 1 89 1 . The inevitable electoral shocks of November 1 892
i n Minnesota were to leave him bafed and embittered.
Elsewhere in the territory of the Northwestern group, the
Iowa Alliance, under the conservative direction of loyal Repub
lican state presidents, never developed an internal program of
Vi ncent, Loucks, Watson, 6 at. ; ( 2) collective self-confdence initially attained
through the successful bulking of cotton, the war against the jute trust, et

. ; (
3
)
thc economic lessons learned as a result of banker and merchant oppoSitIOn to
the cooperative movement as a whole; and (4) the creation of a mass-based third
party through the politics of the sub-treasury as dissemi nated by the Al liance's
internal lecturing system.
Though the precise pattern will naturally vary from country to country and
movement to movement, collectively these sequential stages that produce mass
democratic insurgency yield a mode of conduct antithetical to the social,
economic, and political values of the received hierarchical culture. For the
agrarian revolt in America, I have called this sequential development "the
movement culture. " It can correctly go by another name: PopulIsm.
t What follows here, and on pp. 1
7
4-8
3
, is essentially a brief sketch of the
process by which an incipiently insurgent movement fails ( I ) to recruit a mass
base, or (2) to politicize its members, or (
3
) both. See also pp. 1
3
9-44'
1 66 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
i nterest to the state's farmers. "The Farmers Al l iance is in the
worst shape imaginable," wrote one member just before he
decamped to the National Al liance. I n the same months of 1 89 1 ,
Henry Loucks also became disillusioned: " I regret the Alliance
in I owa is so backward in taking hold of our economic measures, "
he wrote. L. L. Pol k, equally dismayed, ordered an organizing
assault by the National Alliance on the I owa territory of the
Northwester group. But simply too little foundation existed
upon which to build a statewide cooperative movement. Though
the farmers of I owa sufered from the same financial and
marketing practices that plagued farmers elsewhere, the doc
trines of cooperative-greenbackism remained alien to them.
Politically, therefore, they did not know what to do about their
plight.
The months of 1 89 1 saw the slow decline of Jay Burrows's
political status in Nebraska and a corresponding rise i n the
i nHuence of John Powers who endeavored to work congenially
with incomi ng third party men. After wholesale membership
losses in the Alliance in 1 89 1 , Powers had fnally grasped the
relationship of the cooperative movement to organizational
continuity. He moved to put some flesh on the ramshackle
Nebraska lecturing system, noting rather sadl y at the state
convention that "there seems to be a disposition in some of our
subordinate Alliances to turn their meetings i nto mere literary
entertainments or debates. " The National Al liance made one
fnal efort to activate the Nebraskans in January 1 892, this time
successful l y. In another sharp departure from preceding years,
Powers also stressed the sub-treasury plan in his presidential
address, and the Nebraskans dutifully tracked the platform of
the National Alliance. But coming as late as they did, these
moves had only marginal impact on the disorganized structure
both of the Alliance and the third party in Nebraska. * They had
even less efect on the organizational residue still clinging to l ife
in other states of the Northwest. The "national" meeting of the
Northwestern Alliance, held in Chicago late in January 1 892,
* I n contrast, t he Al liances of Kansas and t he Dakotas engendered elaborate
lecturing campaigns on the sub-treasury. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, pp.
64952 , fns.
3
4 and
3
9
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW
bared the terminal illness of the order. Though Ignatius Don
nelly and a number of Nebraska delegates arrived to argue in
behalf of independent political action, the Northwesterners Hatly
refused to participate in the 1 892 Populist national conventions
and formally dissociated themselves from any connection with
the third party movement. The Northwester order, its members
sharing a penchant for meeting in congenial rural settings and
little else, numbered fewer than 25,000 i n its entire jurisdiction.
After the Chicago meeting, the Northwestern Farmers Alliance
was almost literally never heard from again.
1 3
By the time of the long-awaited general conference of reformers,
due to convene in St. Louis in February 1 892 under the Macune
formula at Ocala fourteen months earlier, the politics of the
sub-treasury had stripped the plan' s original proponent of all
persuasive arguments against the third party. At St. Louis Macune
maintained a low public silhouette, while L L. Pol k, having
entered the "home stretch" at Indianapolis two months earlier,
drove toward the finish. In an address of welcome at St. Louis
that drew rising ovations, Pol k sai d: "The ti me has arrived for
the great West, the great South, and the great Northwest, to link
their hands and hearts together and march to the ballot box
and take possession of the government, restore it t the principles
of our fathers, and run it in the i nterest of the people. " Polk's
election as the convention's chairman ensured the immediate
formation of the People's Party. But the emotional peak at St.
Louis was provided by Ignatius Donnelly of Mi nnesota. Don
nelly' s famous preamble was an expression of the deepest drives
of the agrarian radicals who flled the hall and who had worked
so many years to gain the allies who joined them there. If
Donnelly' s words seemed harsh and excessive to the comfortable,
the delegates at St. Louis fel t he described the American reality:
We meet 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
1 68
THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized . . . .
The newspapers are subsidized or muzzled; public opinion
silenced; business prostrate, our homes covered with mort
gages, labor i mpoverished, and the land concentrating in the
hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right
of ol'ganization for self-protection; i mported pauperized labor
beats down their wages; a hireling standing army, un recognized
by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are
rapidly disintegrating to European conditions. The fruits of
t he toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal
fortunes, unprecedented in the history of the world, while
their possessors despise the republic and endanger liberty .
. . . We charge that the controlling infuences dominating the
old political parties have allowed the existing dreadful con
ditions to develop without serious effort to restrain or prevent
them. They have agreed together to ignore in the coming
campaign evey issue but one. They propose to drown the cries
of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over
t he tari ff, so that corporations, national banks, rings, trusts,
"watered stocks," the demonetization of silver, and the oppres
sion of usurers, may all be lost sight of. . . .
Men and women surged forward to surround Donnelly on
the platform and grasp his hand. Waves of enthusiasm greeted
the presentation of the Populist platform itsel f, which, being
shorter than Donnelly's preamble, was quickly read. A date for
the party's frst presidential nominati ng convention was set: Jul y
4, 1 892.
As the convention raced toward adj ournment, a defeated but
thoughtful Charles W. Macune silently decided to follow his
National Alliance i nto the third party. He was not one to remain
a follower for long. As the gavel signaling adjournment fel l ,
Macune leaped to the stage and shouted to the delegates to halt
i n place and return to their seats. Startl ed, they obeyed. Carefully,
Macune explained that the Ocala convention had established
machinery to plan the meeting they had just attended, in
conjunction with others of l i ke mind who also desired a grand
amalgamation of the laboring classes. Now that the convention
was ending, new machinery had to be established so that orderly
planning might ensue. With the delegates responding attentively
REFORM AND ITS SHADOW 1 69
to his admonitions from the speaker's podium, Macune had
become once again-for a moment, at least-the presiding
captain of the reform movement. As the ofcials of the People's
Party listened with what can be surmised were mixed emotions
at best-the provisional national committee included, among
others, Wil l iam Lamb-Macune suggested that the convention
reassemble i mmediately as a committee of the whole to establish
its third party administrative apparatus. The delegates agreed
and one of the fifteen named to this committee, in the nick of
time, was Macune. Hi s ambivalence on the third party issue
forfeited any possible claims to popular leadership of the
movement. The new party's presidential nomination would go
to L L. Pol k, not to Macune. Nevertheless Macune was still
editor of the movement' s national journal, and his considerable
organizing talents and diplomatic skills might enable him to
become a successful and, perhaps, honored party chai rman. But
the convention's committee of fifteen soon found itself absorbed
by the national committee and no one in either group rose to
suggest that Macune, rather than the newly appointed Taube
neck, should head the crusade into its political phase. So much
work loomed for everyone, in any case, that questions of
leadership awaited future consideration. These ad hoc arrange
ments were to have large consequences for the future of
Popul ism, for Taubeneck was to become a central character in
the "free silver" controversy in 1 895-96.
The chief anxiety among third-party strategists in the four
months between the two inaugural Populist conventions con
cerned the progress of the campaign by Southern radicals to
wean the Southern Alliances from the party of the fathers. Given
the fate of all third party efforts since the Civil War, the concern
about the South outweighed all other considerations.
As the Southern Alliances continued to employ their i nternal
lecturing systems on the sub-treasury after St. Louis, L. L. Pol k
called a South-wide conference for Bi rmingham in May. But his
purposes were not understood in the West, and Stephen McLallin,
editor of the ofcial Alliance newspaper in Kansas, wrote Pol k
a pleading letter that starkly revealed the continuing i mpact of
sectional politics on radical hopes.
1 70 THE PEOPLE
'
S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
The call for meeting at Birmingham . . . is causing considerable
anxiety here. Your signature to the call alone allays suspicion
with regard to the purpose of the meeting . . . . You know our
people are extremely nervous at this time, and while they are
begi nni ng t o believe that the south is with them, they are
trembling lest something may happen t disappoint them. I
cannot tell you how anxious they are or how they are hoping
almost against hope that this momentous year will show them
"the way out. " You know these things better than I can tell
them to you. I give you the fact that this call is causing much
discussing and anxiety here and you will exercise your own
judgment as to what it is best to say, if anything, in regard to
it.
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THE PEOPLE
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S MOVEMENT VS. THE RECEIVED CULTURE
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Reform Politicians,
Reform Editors,
and Plain People
The Language of American Populism
" Welcome honorble allies and go forth to victor. "
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* For a summary of the t heoretical achievements and shortconiings of Populist
organizers see pp. 2(7-3 I () and pp.
3
I 8-1 ).
.
t For example, farmers in Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas, worklllg ne,er nd
less exhausted l and, were marginally "better of than farmers III South CarolIna,
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Yet Texas, Kansas, Georgia, and Iabama
produced hi ghly visible Populist i nsurgencies, whIle Nebraska, South CarolIna,
and Mississippi did not. Mass protest movements tur
.
on orgalllzatlOnal
components governi ng the presence or absence or mass polItIcal UmSClOusness,
not on mere gradations of "povert y. " The latter IS only secondanly relevant.
I nterestingly, whi le economic determi ni sm is an outgrowth of MarXist thought,
its more sweeping i nterpretive uses have been the speCIal provlllce of capitalIst
historians, i . e. Populism began with "hard times" and ended when "prosperIty
returned." ( For the non-existence of agrarian "prosperIty" alter PopulIsm, see
pp. 268-69 and pp. 297-98. )
.
.
' -`
On the other hand, the ideology of the t hird party did not tur on the class
composition of i ndi vi dual state All iances. A higher ratio of "landless" to "landed"
farmers i n a given state Alliance did not orgalllcally d

termll1e the extent to

whi ch a Populist presence materialized in that state. 1 he determlllng fact
.
or
remained political consciousness of i ndividual farmers as to the unservlCeabiiny
of the i nheri ted two-party system. Where the sub-treasury was not made the test
of Alliance loyalty, as in Tennessee, huge state AllIance orgalllzauons, wi th
ade<uate numbers of landless and l anded far
.
mers, produced onl y a f ractIOnal
Populist presence. In Alabama, where PopulI

m was relauvely strong, ad H

Tennessee, where it was weak, t he pomt of ulllty was the fact that the AllIanc

enrolled the overwhelming majority of aLL farmers, "landed" and "landless
al i ke. The dramatic di ference i n the strength of PopulIst protest II1 these
adjoi ni ng states was not organically related to gradations of class. The movement
culture of shared experience within the Al l Iance I mparted speCial creclIbllIty to
sub-treasury lecturers, maki ng mass i nsurgency pOSSible. But I f thiS culture were
not capitalized upon-if the lecturing campaign on the sub-treasury did not
take place-mass insurgency did not result, whatever the facts of class or poverty
i n a given state. There were no exceptIOns H the s:ates of the South and West.
The subject is further d; scussed on pp. 1 39-44, 164-65, 2 1 5-22, and 304-5.
THE PEOPLE
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REFORM POLITICIANS, REFORM EDITORS, AND PLAI N PEOPLE .,
f those whi ch have settled upon the socalled
I am . , . one l
d h'
I ndemnity Land . . . now the great Northern. 1 settle o
.
n t I S
land i n good Faith Built House and Barn Broken up
.
Pal t of
the Land. Spent years of hard Labor in g
.
rubmg fencll1g ad
I mproving are they going to drive us out hke tresspassers Wife
and children and give us away to the Corporations how can
we support them. When we are robed of our means. they will
shu rely not stand this we must Decay and Die hom Woe and
Sorow We are Loyal Citicens and do Not I ntend to I ntrude on
any R. R. Corporation we Beleived and Sl111 do Beheve hat
the R. R. Co, has got No Legal title t thiS Land m question.
We Love our wife and children just as Dearly as any of you
But how can we protect them give them education as they
should wen we are driven from sea t sea.
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The Triumph of
the Corporate State
My object is not to patronize the radicals by
.
pattin tem on
t he head as "in advance of their t i me"-that tired cl iche of the
h
' . dvance of ours. But
l azy historian. I n some ways t ey are I n a
. . .
h . e what seem to me to
their insights, their poetic lllSlg ts, ar
make them worth studying today.
.
Christopher Hil l , The World Turned Upslde Down
The truth of the matter is Taubeneck has been Rim-Rammed.
Henry Demarest Lloyd
7
The Shadow Movement
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"A political party has no chaTms fOT me. "
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Review ofReviews:
I f my views could be enforced in this country I would purify
state and national legislation. I would not sufer a man to
become a member of either branch of Congress or of any state
lawmaking body who had pecuniary interests which might be
materially afected by legislation. I f he wanted to become a
member of Congress he would have to put aside his own
precuniary interests for the time, so that he might be said to
stand as an impartial judge in the determination of any case
that came before hi m. This is foreshadowed, you see, by the
bill I introduced the other day entitled "A Bill to Preserve the
Purity of National Legislation, and for other Purposes." The
bill is i mperfectly drawn, but I shall hereafter redraft it with
more care. I do not suppose i t will get through this Congress,
and perhaps it will never get through.
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8
The Last Agrarian Crusade
The Movement vs. The Silver Lobby
"We popose to stand by the demands of the industrial people!"
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* The term "mid-road" derived from the 1 892 campaign, i n which Populists
saw their new party as charting a new mul ti-sectional course between the
Republican Party of the North and the Democratic Party of the South. The path
of third party radicalism was thus "in the middle of the road" between the
sectional agitators i n the two old parties. In both the South and West the phrase
was widely used by Populists i n , 892 to describe their intention to "fight it
straight" by opposing both major parties. The term could not, of course, be
used l describe the politics of the shadow movement i n Nebraska-not even
i n , 892.
THE LAST AGRARIAN CRUSADE
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For a discussion of the underlying structural causes of this vulnerability see
pp.
1 3
9-44, 2 1 5-2 2, and 298-
3
1 0.
THE LAST AGRARIAN CRUSADE 233
2
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234 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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THE LAST AGRARIAN CRUSADE 235
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237
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Tribune. n.a....,|ac .cma..ae|c.c.....
We are credibly i nformed that, as a step in this desired change
of front, they will attempt to depose W. S. Morgan
.
from he
editorship of the Reform Press ready-print mat serVice, which
they think in his hands smacks too much of the despised
Omaha Platform and elect Dunning of the National Watchman,
which is their special organ, in his place.
We are getting very tired of these vexatious self-seekers,
these mouthing men at Washington and elsewhere who have
no visible means of support except scheming in questionable
politics, and we would have exposed them by name ad
.
schme
long ago, had we not had a perfect confdence in their mabllIty
do the party any harm . . . . The People's Party is now too
intelligent, too determined, too large and too well self-governed
for self-seeking, would-be bosses either to harm It or control
it.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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Free silver men in the ol d party ranks profess t o be unable t o
understand why t he People's Party do not jump at the chance
to attract their votes and thus possibly assure the new party
immediate success by just dropping the rest of the Omaha
Platform . . . . Their inability to understand the Populist posi
tion is due entirely to their ignorance of the money question.
Thoughtful men . . . not aflicted with the itch for imme-
diate ofce-seeking but . . . actuated mainly by love of co

ntry
+ deem it best . . . that . . . the party do not grow too qUickly,
lest the people come into i t faster than they can be educated
. and the party get out of control of its friends, and reforms
enacted prove in the new hands only superfcial. . . . Henc we
had rather not be overrun at this critical juncture by the SIlver
Goths from the forests of the two ol d parties . . . . When they
can come into the movement understandingly they shall be
welcomed as brothers.
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Everybody who reads the Nonconf ormist knows very well that
it has never swerved an inch from the Omaha Platform or the
principles of the Populist Party. . . . We insist that all the
misunderstanding arose from the chairman's efort to assume
an authority which did not belong to him . . . . [TJhe Populist
newspapers have always done their duty and have never
rendered more substantial service to the party than by refusing
to allow the platform to be emasculated and a side show set
up in its place at the dictation of a small coterie who imagine
they know it all because they have spent a few months in
Washington . . . . If supporting the Omaha platform makes a
man a Socialist, we are all Socialists. I it was not Socialistic to
support the platform for two years up to last December it was
not Socialistic support it after that date.
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* An extended account of the coalition of Populists and Socialists i n Chicago
is available in Chester McArthur Destler, American Radtcalt5n, and a shorter
summary is contained in Goodwyn, Derocratlc Prortse, pp. 41 1 -2 1 .
t See Chapter 1 .
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Why did not the populist national committee invite the Farmers
Alliance to meet with them at St. Louis? Why did they not
invite other i ndustrial organizations? Don't deceive yourselves
gentlemen . . . . The farmers will be on hand at St. Louis to give
their views in no uncertain sound . . . . The laboring people
are tired of modern party politics . . . . Their diagnosis of the
case may seem absurd to modern demagogues, and their
remedies may seem visionary, but they are honest and des
perately in earnest. We propose to stand by the demands of
the industrial people!
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We hold therefore that t restore and preserve these rights
under a republican form of goverment, private monopoly of
public necessities for speculative purposes, whether of the
means of production, dist ribution or exchange, should be
prohibited, and whenever any such public necessity or utility
becomes a monopoly i n private hands, the people of the
municipality, state or nation, as the case may be, shall appro
priate the same by right of eminent domain, paying a j ust
value therefor, and operate them for, and in the interest of,
the whole people.
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THE LAST AGRARIAN CRUSADE
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THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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* Though many i n their ranks bowed l the inevitable at the end, some 200
diehard mid-roaders from other states joined the 1 03 Texans i n voting against
Bryan. The final tally was Bryan 1 042, Norton 32 1 . This result has been
interpreted by some historians as a valid indication of comparative fusion and
mid-road strength i n the People's Party. I ndeed, the presumption that the
shadow movement of free silver was the essence of "Populism" may well have
its origin i n this simple statistic! To achieve this conclusion, however, i t is
necessary l ignore the history of the agrarian revolt from its inception i n 1 877
through t he Democratic convention of 1 8
9
6.
THE LAST AGRARIAN CRUSADE
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9
The Irony of Populism
"The People" vs. "The Progressive Society"
The foundations of modern America were constructed out of
the cultural materials fashioned in the Gilded Age. The eco
nomic, political, and moral authority that "concentrated capital"
was able t mobilize in 1 896 generated a cultural momentum
that gathered in intensity until it created new political guidelines
for the entire society in twentieth-century America. Not only
was previously unconsolidated high ground captured in behalf
of the temporary needs of the election of 1 896, but the cultural
tactics tested and polished during the course of the campaign
for "honest money" set in place patterns of political conduct
that proved to be enduring. After McKinley' s impressive victory
in 1 896, these patters became fully consolidated within the
next generation of the Progressive era and proved adequate
during a brief time of further testing during the New Deal.
They have remained substantially unquestioned since, and
broadly describe the l imits of national politics in the second half
of the twentieth century. The third party movement of the
Populists became, within mainstream politics, the last substantial
effort at structural alteration of hierarchical economic forms in
modern America. Accordingly, twentieth-century American
*The point , here, of course, is that the liberal and socialist alteratives discussed
i n this concluding chapter were, respectively, either not substantive or were
culturally isolated and outside the mainstream of American political dialogue.
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
reform has in a great many ways proven to be tangential to
matters the Populists considered the essence of politics. This
reality points to the continuing cultural power exerted by the
political and economic values which prevailed in the Gilded Age
and which today serve to rationalize contemporary l ife and
politics to modern Americans.
The narrowed boundaries of modern politics that date from
the 1 896 campaign encircle such influential areas of American
life as the relationship of corporate power to citizen power, the
political language legitimized to defi ne and settle public issues
within a mass society yoked to privately owned mass commu
nications and to privately fnanced elections, and even the style
through which the reality of the American experience-the
culture itsel f-is conveyed to each new generation in the public
and private school systems of the nation. In the aggregate, these
boundaries outline a clear retreat from the democratic vistas of
either the eighteenth-century Jefrsonians or the nineteenth
century Populists.
2
Understandably, during such a moment of cultural consolidation
priorities were not quickly isolated or identifi ed; i t took awhile
for the ful l implications of the era to become evident. But the
power of the hegemony achieved in 1 896 was perhaps most
clearly i, Ilustrated through the banishment of the one clear issue
that animated Populism throughout its history-the greenback
critique of American finance capitalism. The "money question"
passed out of American politics essentially through self-censor
ship. This result, quite simply, was a product of cultural intim
idation. In its broader i mplications, however, the silencing of
debate about "concentrated capital" betrayed a fatal loss of nerve
on the part of those Americans who, during Populism, dared to
speak in the name of authentic democracy. Since the i mplications
were so huge, a brief recital of some relevant specifc details
seems in order.
The enormous success of Coin's Financial School induced gold
bugs to counterattack in 1 895-96 through the writings of a
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
University of Chicago economist named J. Laurence Laughl i n.
Laughlin produced not only theoretical works but al so books,
articles, and pamphlets for popular consumption. Hi s widely
syndicated newspaper column i mparted an aura of scholarly
prestige to the sound money cause, though his jouralistic
eforts, like his other writings, were almost as conceptually
fl awed as "Coin" Harvey's efrts. Yet Laughlin' s campaign in
behalf of the gold standard drew no critics outside the ranks of
Populism, for the nation's university faculties were solidl y "gold
bug. " Among respectable elements of American society, green
back doctrines were culturally inadmissible.
However, in 1 896 a young Harvard economist, Willard Fisher,
decided he personally had endured enough of the currency
theories of both "Coin" Harvey and Professor Laughlin. One of
the nation's better-informed students of monetary systems,
Fisher penned a biting attack on the two competing advocates
of metallic-based currencies. Entitled " ' Coin' and His Critics,"
Fisher's article appeared in the Quarterly Journal ofEconomics in
January 1 896. Fisher treated with gentle tolerance "Coin"
Harvey, whose writings, while badly " fawed, " nevertheless pro
duced a number of insights that were "i ntelligent. " He reserved
his harsher adjectives for goldbugs, and particularly for his
academic colleague, Professor Laughlin. The latter, among other
things, was "wrong. " In the aggregate, the sheer momentum of
Fisher's critique of the arguments of goldbugs and silverites
carried him dangerously close to an i nferential endorsement of
the greenback heresy. No academic enfant terrible, Fisher cau
tiously stepped around this pitfall with an oblique reference to
a scholarly alternative to metal l ic-based currencies-one he
euphemistically described as "the familiar tabular system. " The
reference was cordial, but ultimately noncommittal. Beyond
such obscurantism the young professor dared not venture.
Though a metallic currency was not an in

elligent system of
money, Fisher declined to say what was. The \word "greenback"
was avoided throughout his article. Coupled with the routine
orthodoxy that ruled elsewhere in the academic world, the
extreme circumspection of the Harvard economist tellingl y
measured the power of the cultural consolidation at that moment
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
being fashioned in America. Certain ideas ab

ut the e

onon
:
y,
no matter how buttressed with evidence and ll1terpreuve skill,
had become dangerous.
. .
Though the gold standard was formerly legislated mo law I
.
n
1 90 1 over scattered and desultory op
p
osition, the
.
fnanClal pamc
of 1 907 convinced the Eastern bankmg commumty o
.
f the n

ed
for a more flexible currency. J. Laurence Laughlll1, havll1g
proved his mettle in 1 896, received the blessin
.
gs of la
:
ge
commercial bankers and was once again pressed llto serVIce,
this time as the nation's foremost spokesman for "banking
reform. " Laughlin and two associates wrote the Federal Reserve
Act which was enacted into law in 1 9 1 3. The measure not only
cenralized and rationalized the nation' s fnancial system in ways
harmonious with the preferences of the New York banking
community, its method of functioning also removed the bank
.
ers
themselves from the harsh glare of public view. Popular attenlOn
thenceforth was t focus upon "the Fed, " not upon the actIOns
of New York commercial bankers. The creation and subsequent
development of the Federal Reserve System repr
,
,sented the
cul minating political triumph of the "sound money crusade of
the 1 890' S.
.
These developments abounded in irony. Te pa

lc of 1 907
corroborated an essential feature of the analYSIS behll1d Charles
Macune's sub-treasury system, for the crisis partly materialized
out of the inability of a contracted currency to provide adequate
capital markets during the autumn agricultural har

est.
Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century anmto
the twentieth, calls on Eastern banks by Western banks for t

ns
t move the autumn crops had created stringent shortages wlthll1
the entire monetary system. While this condition worked to
depress agricultural prices-and was not witho

t its benef
.
ts to
bankers in the matter of interest rates-the bankll1g system Itself
broke down under these and other burdens in 1 907. The
demand for a more flexible currency that issued from the
banking community following the panic of 1 907 was oriented
not to the needs of agriculture, however, but rather o the
requirements of the banking community itself. Thus, whIl
.
e he
1 9 1 2 report of the blue-ribbon National Monetary CommiSSIOn
II
.
THE TRI UMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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THE IRONY OF POPULISM
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THE TRI UMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
it part of a concerted program of repression. Martial law was
not declared, no dissenting editors were exiled, and no news
papers censored. I t happened to the whole society in much the
same way it happened to young Willard Fisher at Harvard,
silently, through a kind of acquiesence that matured into settled
resignation. This sophisticated despair, grounded in the belief
that hierarchical American society could, perhaps, be marginally
"humanized" but could not be fundamentally democratized,
became the operative premise of twentieth-century reformers.
Their perspective acquired a name and, rather swiftly, a re
spectability always denied Populism. In 1 900-1 930, it was pop
ularly recognized as " progressivism. " Later, it became known as
"l i beral i sm. " In such a way, a seminal feature of the democratic
idea passed out of American culture. This rather fateful process
was inaugurated during the climactic political contest of 1 896.
3
Popularly known as the "Battle of the Standards" between gold
and silver, the presidential campaign between Bryan and
McKinley witnessed the unveiling for the fi rst time in America
of the broad new techniques of corporate politics. Under the
driving supervision of Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna, unprec
edented sums of money were raised and spent in a massive
Republi can campaign of coordinated political salesmanship. The
nation's metropolitan newspapers, themselves i n the midst of
corporate centralization, rallied overwhelmi ngly t the defense
of the gold standard. Their efforts were coordinated through
a "press bureau" established by the Republican leadership. The
power of the church added itsel f to that of the editorial room
and the counting house, and the morality of "sound money"
and the "nation's honor" temporarily replaced more traditional
themes emanating from the nation' s Pltl l pits. Cultural i nt uitions
about respectability, civic order, and te sanctity of commerce,
augmented by large-scale cam paign organizing, coordinated
newspaper and publishing efforts, and refurbished memories of
Civil War loyalties combined t create a kind of electoral politics
never previously demonstrated on so vast a scale. Though
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
individual pieces of this political mosaic had been well tested in
previous elections, the sum of the whole constituted a
.
new
political form: aggressive corporate politics in a mass sOCiety.
The Democrats responded with something new of their own
a national barnstorming tour by the youthful and energetic
Bryan. Though such undignified conduct was conside
.
red by
many partisans to be a disgrace to the ofce of the p
:
eslden

y,
the silver candidate spoke before enormous crowds f rom Mm
neapolis to New York City. The efort seemed merel y to
.
s
p
ur
the Republican hierarchy to ever-higher plateaus of fund-ralsmg,
spending, and organization. The nation had never seen a
political campaign l i ke it, and, for one heady moment at least,
Bryan thought the electorate would react heavily against such
self-evident displays of political propagandizing. But Republi
cans were able to generate such intense feeling against the
"anarchistic" teachings of Wil liam Jennings Bryan that many
modest church-goers as well as industrial captains felt that no
sum of money was too great to ensure the defense of the
Republic from the ravages of the silverites. I ndeed, one of he
striking features of the 1 896 campaign was the depth to whIch
many millions of Americans came to believe that the very
foundations of the capitalist system were being threatened by
the "boy orator of the Platte. " That was hardly the case, of
course-particularly when it came to the nation's currency. A
monetary system responsive to the perspectives of commercial
bankers was not at issue in 1 896; the relationship of the
government to bankers on the matter of currency volume a

d
interest rates was not at issue either. I n view of the shared faIth
of both Bryan and McKinley in a redeemable currency, the
entire monetary debate turned on a modest measure of hard
money infl ation through silver coinage. The narrowness of the
issues involved in the "Battle of the Standards" should have put
strong emotional responses beyond possibility-yet the autumn
air fairly bristled with apocalyptic moral terminology. I

deed,
the fervor of the campaign, for both sides, was authentic: the
true issues at stake went far beyond questions of currency
vofume, to a contest over the underlying cultural values and
symbols that would govern political dialogue in the years to
come.
I I
272 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
4
great testing was in process, centering on the relative political
InAuence of two competing concepts-that of "the people" on
the one hand and of "the progressive society" on the other.
hose phr
.
ases we

e by no means habitually employed in 1 896,

eIther as Informal appeals or i n the capitalized versions of
political sloganeering destined to become common i n the twen
tieth century. But the values underl ying the concepts authenti
cally

uided te campaigns of 1 896 in ways that i mparted

endurIng meanIng to the outcome of their competition.
When he was not tal king specifcally about silver coinage,
Bryan actually used the idea of "the people" as a centerpiece of
many of his political speeches. When in Chicago, he said:
As I look i nt o the faces of t hese people and remember that
our enemies call them a mob, and say they are a menace to
tree goverment, I ask: Who shall save the people hom
themselves? I am proud to have on my side in t his campaign
the support of those who call themselves the common people.
I f I had behll1d me the great trusts and combinations, I know
that I would no sooner take my seat than they would demand
that I use my power to rob the people in their behalf.
To many Americans the idea of "the people" represented the
vey fou

dation of democratic politics, and many thousands

beheve
.
d It had
.
genuine meaning in the context of the Bryan
campaIgn. But In 1 896 the idea was even more specifc, for it
described not just "the people" in the abstract but a specifi c
"peo

le's movement" that had pressed itself upon the national

COnS

I
?
USneSs, energized the silverites, and generated the pre
:
ondItlOnS for reform inAuence i n the Democratic Party. Because
It was not clear to the nation that the people's movement itself
had been destroyed-its cooperatives crushed and its political
party co-opted-Bryan came to symbolize its enduring life. This
explai
.
ned why Clarence Darrow, Eugene Debs, and many other
opuhsts who ha no illusions about the healing powers of the
SIlver crusade ultimatel y came to join the
J
' Great Commoner. "
They hoped he could rally the people to a new sense of their
own prerogative and stimulate them, i n L. L. Polk' s old phrase,
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
273
t o "march t o the ballot box and take possession of the gover
ment. " To the extent that the silver crusade made much sense
at all, it was in this symbolic context. The stirring rhythms of
Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech had energized the delegates at
the Democratic convention-perhaps he could stir the American
people as well. I n the autumn of 1 896, the hope was there, and
this hope gave the Bryan campaign the deepest meaning it
possessed.
Given the ballot box potentiality of "the people" as against
"the great trusts and combinations, " Republicans obviously could
not aford to have the campaign decided on that basis. The
countervailing idea of the "progressive society" materialized
slowly out of the symbolic values embedded in the gold standard.
The "sanctity of contracts" and "the national honor, " it soon
became apparent, were foremost among them. But, gradually,
and with the vast distributional range afforded by the Republican
campaign treasury, broader themes of "peace, progress, patri
otism, and prosperi ty, " came to characterize the campaign for
William McKinley. The "progressive society" advanced by Mark
Hanna in the name of the corporate community was inherently
a well-dressed, churchgoing society. The various slogans em
ployed were not mere expressions of a cynical politics, but rather
the authentic assertions of an emerging American world view.
5
From a Populist perspective, the contest between "the people"
and "the progressive society" was, in a practical sense, wholly
irrelevant t the real purposes of the reform movement. I ndeed,
the narrow controversy over the "intrinsic value" of two com
peting metallic currencies was an affront to greenbackers. Not
that they could do much about it; Populism had ceased to be an
active force in American politics from the moment the third
party had sacrificed its independent presence at the July con
vention.
The People's Party was therefore not a causative agent of
anything signifcant that occurred during the frenzied campaign
between the goldbugs and the silverites. From James Weaver to
I
274 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
Tom Watson, from Nebraska fusionists to Texas mid-roaders
the eople's Party had become a reactive agent, responding a
best It could to the initiatives of others. This being far from the
proper business of an autonomous democratic movement strug
gling to break through a hierarchical party system, Populism
quietly dissolved in the fall of 1 896 as the morale of its two
million followers collapsed. Democratic managers treated their
Populist "allies" with such studied contempt that, for two months
following the summer conventions, Marion Butler, the new
Populist national chairman (replacing the discredited Taube
neck) was afraid to ofcially notify Bryan of his nomination for
fear it would be publicly rejected. On the state level , fusion
obliterated the party across the South where the standard-bearer
of its bitter enemy, the Democratic Party, also graced the top of
the Populist ticket. It is necessary to trace the actions of only one
man-Tom Watson-during the autumn campaign of Populism
to reveal the utter chaos that had descended upon the reform
movement in every corner of the nation.
In hi s inaugural campaign speech in Atlanta early in August,
Watson began actively pressuring the Democratic Party to
remove Sewall from the ticket: "You cannot fght the national
banks with any sincerity with a national banker as your leader. "
Butler reacted negatively to the speech, not because he wanted
Sewall to remain but because he had been intimidated and out
maneuvered by the Democratic national chairman and by the
silver lobby and, as a result, had lost a sense of his own
prerogatives and those of the party he headed. Butler's course
to "do nothing of doubtful propriety while matters are happily
shaping themselves in our favor"-betrayed a fatal lack of
political self-confdence. Watson thereupon took a remarkable
step that revealed the extent of his mistrust of fusion leaders.
In interviews with the New York press, he attacked them
publicly.
If the National Convention at St Louis did not mean that
Messrs. Bryan and Watson should be notifed, why was a
commitee appointed to notify them? W,y does Senator Al l en,
the chairman of the Committee, refuse to do what the con
vention i nstructed him to do? Is he afraid Mr. Bryan wil l
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
repudiate our support? I so, our party has a right to know
that fact. If Mr. Bryan is ashamed of the votes which are
necessary to elect him, we ought to know it.
By the standards of any self-respecting political party, these
observations were eminently reasonable. They also were judged
by the Republican press of the East to be highly newsworthy, as
the intra-party quarrel among Populists had the efect of com
plicating Bryan' s position as well.
Though Marion Butler, understandably, had cooled to the
idea of a highly visible Watsonian presence in the fall campaign,
the Georgian nevertheless embarked on a trip t Texas and
Kansas earl y in September. The political atmosphere Watson
found in Texas was hardly conducive to the kind of "patience
and moderation" for which Butler had labored. A Watson
intimate repor

ted to Butler from Dallas that "Texas we fnd

ripe for revolt. . . . The Pops are solid here against Bryan and
Sewal l . " I ndeed, a substantial number of the Texas third party
leaders regarded the Bryan candidacy as a positive evil. Not
onl y were they concerned that Populist support of Bryan would
destroy the identity of the third party, but they also believed
that the campaign's emphasis on free silver would undermine
the basic monetary reforms of Popul ism. The Texans were so
disturbed that they seriously considered the endorsement of
McKinley as the "least of evils" in the 1 896 campaign. When
black Republican leaders in Texas ofered to support the Populist
state ticket in return for third party support of the Republican
presidential ticket, the Texas mid-roaders took the matter under
close advisement. Rumors of these discussions were in the air
when Watson arrived in the state, and he responded warmly to
the convivial Populist environment. "You must burn the bridges
if you follow me, " he asserted. To wild cheering, he announced
his belief in "Straight PopUl i sm, " for he did "not propose to be
carried t one side of the road or the other. " The campaign, he
added, was "a movement of the masses. Let Bryan speak for the
masses and let Watson speak for the masses and let Sewall tal k
for the banks and the railroads. " Sewall was "a wart on the party.
He is a knot on a log. He is a dead weight on the ticket." For
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
good m

asure, Watson brought Butler and the national fusion

leadership of the third party into his line of fre. The Texans,
wh(? shared most of those opinions and had a few others of
their own, roared their approval.
While the re:erb
:
rations from this speech rattled through the
ranks of the sllveItes, Watson's itinerary took him to Kansas.
Ther the PopulIst vice presidential candidate walked into
Populist tate headquarters under streaming banners that pro
clai med, Bryan and Sewal l . " As if to heighten the insult, Watson
found that t
.
he very front of the Populist campaign ofce was
decorated with huge portraits of the two Democrats whom the
.
Kansas pa
.
rty took to be its national standard-bearers. The action
In St. LOUIS by the politician-led Kansas party--one of full public
support for Bryan and Sewall-was consummated back home
th
.
rough an arrangement with Democrats who exchanged Pop
ulist spport oSewall electors for Democratic support of the
Popu
.
lIst state tICket. In speaking in Kansas, Watson was ad
dre
.
ssIng party leaders who had sacrificed him in the name of
their own local and state campaigns. The atmosphere was to
say the least, tense. As much as any man in America ho
responded to the cal l of reform launched by the Farmers
Al liance, atson had labored tirelessly in the people's movement.
I n Kansas I n 1 896 he gave his answer to the idea of fusion:
Someone else must be asked t o ki l l t hat Party; I wi l l not. I sat
by Its C-adl
.
e; I have fought its battles; I have supported its

rnClpl e
SInce Ol-gal11z

uon . . . and don't ask me after all my

sel vICe wI t h t he People s Party t o ki l l i t now. I am going to
stand by H ull I t dIes, and I want no man to say that I was the
man who stabbed II to the heart. . . . No; Sewall has got to
come down. He brings no votes to Bryan. He drives votes
away from Bryan . . . . My friends, I took my political l i fe in my
ands when I extended the hand of fellowship to your
Slmpsons, your Pefers, your Dvises i n Georgia. The Georgia
Democrats murdered me politically for that act. I stood by
your men l1 Congress when others fail ed. I have some rights
at the hands of Kansas. I have counted on your support. Can
I get I t?
The Populist audience responded with enthusiasm, pressed
around the rostrum, and surrounded his carriage as he prepared
THE IRONY OF POPULISM 277
t leave. Touched, Watson wrote hi s wife, "i t i s quite apparent
that the rank and fle of our party in Kansas are all right and
will vote against their leaders if they get the chance. "
6
The Kansas Populists who swarmed around Watson's carriage,
like Watson himsel f, like the old Texas Alliancemen, had too
many memories t acquiesce comfortably in the fusion politics
of 1 896. The spirit of Populism possessed meaning because of
these memories. I ndeed, collectively, they constituted the essence
of the agrarian revolt: memories of farmers on the crop lien
bringing food to stri king railroad workers; of Alliancemen
wearing suits of cotton bagging during the long war against the
jute trust in the Sout h; of the great lecturing campaigns to
organize the South i n 1 887-89 and the nation in 1 890-9 1 ; of
mile-long Al liance wagon trains and sprigs of evergreen sym
bolizing the "living issues" in Kansas; of the formation of the
"Alliance Aid" association to bring the Dakota plan of self-help
insurance to the full agrarian movement; of Leonidas Pol k, the
Souther Unionist, announcing the end of American sectionalism
t the cheers of Michigan farmers; of a day in Florida, "under
the orange and banana trees, " when the National Reform Press
Association was created; of the time in South Carolina, so brief
in that state, when i mpoverished farmers rebuked Ben Tillman
to his face and tried to set a course different from his; of boys
carrying torches in country parades for Tom Watson and girls
knitting sock' i for "Sockless" Jerry Si mpson; of the sprawling
summer encampments that somehow seemed to give substance
t the strange, inspiring, ethical vision of Tom Nugent; of John
Rayner's lieutenants speaking quietly and earnestly in the houses
of black tenants in the piney woods of East Texas; and, perhaps
most symbolic of all, of men and women "who stood on chairs
and marched back and forth cheering and crying" in response
to the initial public reading of the "Second Declaration of
American Independence" on a summer day in 1 892 in the city
of Omaha. It was this spirit-a collective hope for a better future,
it seems-that animated American Populism, and it was these
vibrant moments of shared effort that provided the evidence of
its vitality, its aspirations, and its defeats.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
And fnding no coherent way to express itsel f in fusion, it was
this spirit that expired in the autumn of 1 896. Following his
fery speeches i n Texas and his confrontations with the Kansans
Tom Watson sojoured brieHy in the citadel of fusion i
Nebraska anothen,
.
utterly demoralized, went home to Georgia
for the

emamder t the campaign. As the sole surviving symbol

of a natIOnal PopulIst presence, he had become an anachronism.
No one knew this more deeply than Watson or understood more
ful l y w
.
hat it meant for the future of the third party. The 1 896
campaIgn had to do with the mobilization of new customs that
were to live much more securely in American politics than the
dreams of the Populists. That many of those customs were
precisely the ones that so deeply disturbed the agrarian reform
ers co

stituted one of the more enduring ironies of the Populist

experIence.
7
The
,
most visible diference in the eforts of the three parties in
1 896 turned on money-not as a function of currency, but
rathe as th

essential ingredient of modern electioneering. The
PopulIst natIOnal treasurer wrote despairingly to Marion Butler
hat he was receiving less than a dozen letters a day containing
t

enty-fve cents to a dollar" from the demoralized Populist

faJthul throughout the nation. The Populist national campaign
was II erall
.
y almo

t penniless, and Butler found it necessary to

esthsh hIs W

shmgton headquarters in a building housing the

polItical a

m of t: slver lobby, the National Silver Party. Only

a belated, I f humll Iatmg, subsidy of $ 1 000 from the Democratic
nati

nal committee enabled the Populists to keep going until

electIon day.
Th Democratic campaign, although elaborately fnanced by
PopulIst standards, was also run on a shoestring. The Republican
press made great capital out of a supposed massive Aow of funds
from Western silver mineowners cascading into Democratic
coffers. But the relatively modest sums that actually materialized
went to the lobbying institutions previously created by the
mineowners. Democrats worked desperately to place speakers
THE IRONY OF POPULISM 279
in the feld, but the shortage of money gradually channeled this
effort toward the recruiting of self-supporting volunteers. The
best educational force for the Democratic cause was Bryan
himself. Through the early part of the campaign Bryan was
forced to travel by commercial carrier, a circumstance that
placed the entire presidential campaign at the mercy of local
railroad timetables and earned the "boy orator" considerable
ridicule in the gold bug press. The Democratic national com
mittee was ul timately able to provide Bryan with a special train
for the closing weeks of the campaign, but the silver crusade
never quite lost the ad hoc character that had marked its
inception.
In contrast, the massive national campaign for "honest money"
engineered by Mark Hanna set a model for twentieth-century
American politics. While the Democrats struggled to fi nd vol
unteer speakers to tour the crucial states of the Midwest, the
Republican campaign placed hundreds of paid speakers in the
fel d. I ndividual contributions from wealthy partisans sometimes
exceeded the entire amount the Democrats raised in their
national subscription drive. Oferings from corporations, espe
cially railroad corporations, reached even larger sums. Receipts
and expenditures soared into the mi llions.
Mark Hanna presided over both the Chicago and New York
campaign operations, coordinating an elaborate system of print
ing and distribution that involved many mi llions of pamphlets,
broadsides, and booklets. So controlled and centralized was the
Republican efort that the Chicago managers also took it upon
themselves to assist the supervision of state and local cam
paigns. To add a certain heft to their admonitions, the Chicago
ofice dispatched almost a mil lion dollars to various state orga
nizations. The New York headquarters, focusing on the safe
Eastern states, reported expenses of an additional $ 1 ,600,000.
The nation's new business combinations headquartered in
New York largely fi nanced the efort. Standard Oil contributed
$250,000, a fgure matched by J. P. Morgan. Hanna and railroad
king James J. Hi l l were seen in a carriage "day after day," going
from Wall Street to the ofce of the New York Central and the
Pennsylvania railroads. Hanna repeatedly importuned the pres-
i
'

I
I
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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Let us settle once fOl' all that this goverment is one of honor
and of law and that neither t he seeds of repudiation nor
lawlessness can fi nd root in our soi l or live beneath our f l ag.
That represents all our aims, all our policies, al l our purposes.
I is the banner of every patriot, it i s, thank Cod, today the
Rag of every section of our common country. No Hag ever
triumphed over i t. It was never degraded or defeated and will
not now be when more patriotic men are guarding i t than
ever before i n our history.
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THE IRONY OF POPULISM
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THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
who extolled the doctrines of progress through business enter
prise acquired a greater confidence, while those who labored in
behalf of "the people" sufered a profound cultural shock. A
number of the infl uential supporters of William McKinley, newly
secure in their prerogatives after the election, advanced from
confidence to arrogance; not only the nation, but the very forms
of its economic fol kways had become theirs to defne. I n contrast,
a number of the followers of William Jennings Bryan, their idea
of America rebuked by the electorate, became deferential, either
consciously or unconsciously. The idea that serious structural
reform of the democratic process was "inevitable" no longer
seemed persuasive to reasonable reformers. Rather, it was
evident that political innovations had to be advanced cautiously,
i f at all, and be directed toward lesser objectives that did not
directly challenge the basic prerogatives of those who ruled. The
thought became the inherited wisdom of the American reform
tradition, passed from one generation t another. A consensus
thus came to be silently ratifed: reform politics need not concern
itself with structural alteration of the economic customs of the
society. This conclusion, of course, had the efect of removing
from mainstream reform politics the idea of people in an
industrial society gaining signifcant degrees of autonomy in the
structure of their own lives. The reform tradition of the twentieth
century unconsciously defi ned itself within the framework of
inherited power relationships. The range of political possibility
was decisively narrowed-not by repression, or exile, or guns,
but by the simple power of the reigning new culture itself.
In the election aftermath, William Jennings Bryan placed the
blame for his defeat on the weakness of the silver issue. In the
next four years he was to search desperately for a new issue
around which to rall y "the people" against "the pl utocracy. " But
the decisive shift of voters to the Republican Party that had frst
occurred in 1 894 represented considerably more than a tem
porary reaction to the depression of 1 893. Not only had the
new Republican majority been convincingly reafrmed in 1 896,
it was to prove one of the most enduri ng majorities in American
political history. Only the temporary split i n the Republican
Party in 1 9 1 2 was to faw the national dominance that began in
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
1 894 and persisted until the Great Depression of the 1 930's. In
the narrowed political world of the new century, the "Great
Commoner" was never to locate his saving issue.
Meanwhile, the unraveling of the fabric of the People' s Party
between Jul y and November, while fulfi l ling the predictions of
mid-roaders, left little residue other than the bruised feelings
and recriminations that Populists inflicted upon one another.
Though the Kansas fusionists were rewarded for their eforts
by achieving re-election on the joint Democratic-Populist ticket
of 1 896, it was only at the cost of the deterioration of the third
party organization. Even before they could mount another
campaign in 1 898, Populist spokesmen in Kansas were conceding
"the passing of the People's Party" and acknowledging that the
agrarian crusade was over. That crusade, of course, had never
really come t Nebraska. The stance of the Nebraska third party
in 1 896-essentially i ndistinguishable from that of the Nebraska
Democratic Party-made the fnal passing of the vestiges of the
Nebraska movement dificult to fx in ti me. The Nebraska fusion
ticket of both 1 897 and 1 898 was, in any case, dominated by
Democrats. In North Carolina, the election reforms passed by
the Populist-Republican legislature of 1 895 led to the election
of number of black Republicans in 1 896, setting the stage for
a violent Democratic campaign of white supremacy in 1 898.
Al most total black disfranchisement resulted as the Democratic
Party swept triumphantly back into power. In Texas, Populism
polled almost a quarter of a million votes in November 1 896-
in<icating that the third party was still growing at the moment
its ideological and organizational roots were severed. The margin
of Democratic victory was provided through the i nti midation of
Mexican-American voters and the terrorizing of black voters.
Armed horsemen rode through the ranks of Negroes in Populist
John B. RaynEr's home county in East Texas and destroyed with
force the years of organizing work of the black political evan
gelist. Elsewhere in the South, fusion obliterated the third party.
As Watson put it, "Our party, as a party, does not exist any
more. Fusion has well nigh killed it. "
Pressed to its extremities, the Southern Democracy, "Bryan
ized" or not, revealed once again that one of its most enduring
I .
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
tenets was white supremacy. I t was the one unarguable reality
that had existed before, during, and after the Populist revolt.
Whatever their individual styles as dissenters from the Southern
Way, Mann Page i n Virginia, Marion Butler i n North Carolina,
Tom Watson i n Georgia, Reuben Kolb in Alabama, Frank
urkitt i n Mississippi, Hardy Brian in Louisiana, W. Scott Morgan
I n Arkansas, and "Stump" Ashby i n Texas all learned this
lesson-as their "scalawag" predecessors had learned it before
them. But, as black Americans knew, white supremacy was a
national , not j ust a Southern, phenomenon. The progressive
society was to be a l i mited one.
9
North and South, Republican and Democratic, the triumphant
new politics of business had established similar patterns of public
conduct. Central to the new ethos was a profound sense of
prer

gati
:
e, a certainty that i n the progressive society only
certaIn kInds of people had a right to rule. Other kinds of
people, perforce, could be intimidated or manipulated or dis
franchised. Students of the 1 896 campaign have agreed on the
fact of overt employer intimidation of pro-Bryan factory workers
i

t
?
ca
.
sting b

lIots for McKi nley. The pattern was especially

vIsIble I n the pIvotal states of the Midwest. But the fact that the
same customs flourished on an even grander scale in the South,
where they were applied by Democrats to defraud Populists and
Republicans, pointed to some of the more ominous di mensions
of the emerging political exclusiveness. Both major parties were
capable of participating i n the same political fol kways of election
intimidation because they were both infuenced by the same
sense of prerogative at the center of the emerging system of
corporate values.
For increasing numbers of Americans the triumph of the
business credo was matched, i f not exceeded, bv a conscious or
unconscious internalization of white supremacist presumptions.
Coupled with the new sense of prerogative encased in the idea
of progress, the new ethos meant that Republican businessmen
could intimidate Democratic employees in the North, Democratic
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
businessmen could i ntimidate Populists and Republicans in the
South, businessmen everywhere could buy state legislators, and
whites everywhere could intimidate blacks and I ndians. The
picture was not pretty, and i t was one the nation did not reflect
upon. In the shadow it cast over the idea of democracy itsel f,
however, this mode of settling political disputes, or of making
money, embedded within the soul of public l ife new patterns of
contempt for alternative views and alternative ways of life. The
cost of running for ofce, coupled with the available sources of
campaign contributions and the increasing centralization of
news gathering and news reporting, all pointed to the massive
homogenization of business politics.
In addition to the banishment of the "fnancial question" as
a political issue, three other developments soon materialized in
the wake of the 1 896 election to establish enduring patterns for
the twentieth century-the rapid acceleration of the merger
movement in American industry, the decline of public partici
pation i n the democratic process itself, and corporate domination
of mass communications. Corporate America underwent peri
odic waves of heightened consolidation, from 1 897 to 1 903,
1 926 to 1 93 1 , and 1 945 to 1 947. Building upon prior levels of
achievement, the process accelerated once again in the 1 960' s.
The "trusts and combinations" that the Populists believed were
"inherently despotic" rode out the brief popular clamor for
antitrust legislation before World War I . Such largely marginal
reforms as were able to run the lobbying gantlet within the
Uni ted States Congress were vitiated by subsequent Supreme
Court decisions. To the despair of antitrust lawyers i n the
Department of Justice, the combination movement became a
historical constant of twentieth-century American life as a struc
ture of oligopoly was fashioned in every major industry. At the
same time, "bank holding companies" had fashioned networks
of corporate consolidation scarcely i magined by Populist "calam
ity howlers. " Witb;n the narrowed range of political options
available to twentieth-century advocates of reform, however,
this seminal development within the structure of fnance capi
talism was not a matter of sustained public debate.
The passing of the People's Party left the Southern Democracy
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
securely in the hands of conservative traditionalists in every state
of the region. There, "election reform" proved to have as many
di mensions as "banking reform" did nationally. The process
began with the disfranchisement of blacks in Mississippi in 1 890
and accelerated after 1 896 as state after state across the South
legalized disfranchi sement for blacks and made voting more
difcult for poorer whites. The movement for election reform
was accompanied by a marked decline in the relationship of
public issues to the economic realities of Southern agriculture,
a persistent twentieth-century fol kway that contributed to a
sharp drop in popular interest in politics among Southerners. I n
the twentieth century, the voting percentages i n the South
remained far below the peaks of the Populist decade. Within
the narrower permissible limits of public disputation, more and
more Americans fel t increasingly distant from their government
and concluded that there was little they could do to afect
" politics. " The sense of personal participation that Evan Jones
had fel t in 1 888 when he summoned 250,000 Alliancemen to
meet in more than 1 75 separate courthouses-without notifying
anyone i n the courthouses-pointed to a kind of intimacy
between ordinary citizens and their government that became
less evident in twentieth-century America. To Alliancemen, it
was their courthouse and their government.
The demise of the National Reform Press Association, mean
while, ended a journalistic era that dated back to colonial times,
an era that might be characterized as seat-of-the-pants demo
cratic journalism. Volatile, spirited, always opinionated, the one
man journals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America
also provided the nation with a counterforce to any and all
orthodoxies. But as centralization came to all phases of American
industry, i t also came to newspapers. Gradually, inexorably,
journalism became a corporate business, one in which compe
tition i n ideas inevitably diminished. With mergers and "chains, "
the newspaper business gradually became, like other aspects of
commerce, big business.
The political i mplications were large. By the last quarter of
the twentieth century so intimidated " ere the nation's print and
electronic journalists by the world of corporate power they lived
THE I RONY OF POPULISM
i n and worked for that corporate domination of the United
States Congress was not a political fact that "the media" ever
succeeded in making clear to the American public. Though
corporate domination of the legislative process had been the
governing political fol kway of every decade of the twentieth
century, the fact itself seemed beyond the capacity of modern
corporate journalists to report with clarity. Simply stated, the
cultural prerequisites for them to do so had not been fulfilled.
Granted that the psychological needs of participating in a "free
press" were such that owners, editors, and reporters alike
occasionally worked zealously at uncovering various infuence
scandals, the continuing structure of corporate domination was
not something that formed the centerpiece of political journalism
in the United States.
While it required a daily exposure only to one six-month
session of any American legislature, state or national, to discover
the pervasiveness of corporate infuence, few Americans were
in a position to take six months of from their jobs to acquire the
necessary political education. The popular innocence concerning
the real structure of parliamentary democracy that resulted
from these unperceived power relationships became, in fact, the
strongest stabilizing factor supporting the political status quo in
the corporate state. With such innocence routinely governing
popular perceptions of politics and democracy i n America,
* I do not intend here to question the ethics of the nation'sjournalists; indeed,
the point is that their role i n this process is a minor one. The substance of
American political reporting turs less on the ethics of individual reporters than
on the structure of cultural restraints under which they labor. The simple
historical fact is that the political values that reporters might impugn are the
reigning values of the newspaper and television corporations they work for.
These cultural i mperatives, while awkward, are unarguably germane to any
assessment of post-Populist journalism in America. Given the cul tural barriers
to jou'ralistic clarity, the individual tenacity required to perform a professional
investigative job on congressional lobbying would necessarily create the kind of
furor among advertisers that is not conducive to successful ' newspaper or
television careers. The issue is one of power, not ethics. As presently constituted,
"news reporting" in the era of the corporate state is a corporate business
inherently hierarchical in form, inherently undemocratic in product. Few
Americans know these causal relationships more i ntimately than the reporters
themselves.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
"public opinion" became something less than an efective dem
ocratic safeguard.
Collectively, these patterns of public life, buttressed by the
supporting faith in the inevitability of economic progress, en
sured that substantive democratic political ideas in twentieth
century America would have great difculty in gaining access to
the progressive society in a way that approached even the
marginal legitimacy achieved by Populist "calamity howlers. "
The American populace was induced to accept as its enduring
leadership a corporate elite whose influence was to permeate
every state legislature in the land, and the national Congress as
well. A new style of democratic politics had become institution
alized, and its cultural boundaries were so adequately fortifed
that the new forms gradually described the Democratic Party of
opposition as well as the Republican Party of power. A critical
cul tural battle had been lost by those who cherished the dem
ocratic ethos. The departure of a culturally sanctioned tradition
of serious democratic reform thought created self-negating
options: reformers could ignore the need for cultural credentials,
insist on serious analysis, and accept their political irrelevance
as "socialists"; or they could forsake the pursuit of serious
structural reform, and acquire mainstream credentials as "pro
gressives" and "l iberal s. " In either case, they could not hope to
achieve what Populists had dared to pursue-cultural acceptance
of a democratic politics open to serious structural evolution of
the society. The demonstrated efectiveness of the new political
methods of mass advertising meant, in effect, that the cultural
values of the corporate state were politically unassailable in
twentieth-century America.
1 0
The socialists who followed the Populists did not really under
stand this new reality of American culture any more than most
Populists did in the 1 890's. To whatever extent socialists might
speak to the real needs of "the people"-as they intermittently
did for two generations-and h,lwever they might anal yze the
destructive i mpact of the progressive society upon the social
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
relations and self-respect of the Citizenry-as they often did
during the same period-the advocates of popular democracy
who spoke out of the socialist faith were never able to grapple
successfully with the theoretical problem at the heart of their
own creed. While the progressive society was demonstrably
authoritarian beyond those ways that Thomas Jeferson had
originally feared, and while it sheltered a party system that was
i ntellectually in homage to the hierarchical values of the cor
porate state itself-cultural insights that provided an authentic
connecting link between Populism and socialism-the political
power centered in "concentrated capital" could not be efectively
brought under democratic control in the absence of some
correspondingly effective source of non-corporate power. While
the Populists committed themselves t a people's movement of
"the industrial mill ions" as the instrument of reform, the history
of successful socialist accessions to power in the twentieth century
has had a common thread-victory through a red army directed
by a central political committee. No socialist citizenry has been
able to bring the post-revolutionary army or central party
apparatus under democratic control , any more than any non
socialist popular movement has been able to make the corporate
state responsive to the mass aspirations for human dignity that
mock the pretentions of modern culture. Rather, our numerous
progressive societies have created, or are busily creating, over
powering cultural orthodoxies through which the citizenry is
persuaded to accept the system as "democratic"-even as the
private lives of millions become more deferential, anxiety-ridden,
and ( no other phrase will serve) less free.
Increasingly, the modern condition of "the people" is illus
trated by their general acquiescence in their own political inability
to afect their governments in substantive ways. Collective polit
ical resignation is a constant of public life in the technological
societies of the twentieth century. The fol kway knows no national
boundary, though it does, of course, vary in intensity in signif
icant ways from nation to nation. I n the absence of alternatives,
millions have concentrated on trying to fnd private modes of
escape, often through material acquisition. I ndeed, the operative
standard of progress in both ideological worlds of socialism and
I
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
capitalism focuses increasingly upon economic indexes. Older
aspirations-dreams of achieving a civic culture grounded in
generous social relations and in a celebration of the vitality of
human cooperation and the diversity of human aspiration
itself-have come to seem so out of place i n the twentieth
century societies of progress that the mere recitation of such
longings, however authentic they have always been, now consti
tutes a social embarrassment.
But while the doctrines of socialism have not solved the
problem of hierarchical power in advanced industrial society, its
American adherents can scarcely be blamed for having failed to
build a mass popular following in the United States. Though
they never quite achieved either a mass movement or a movement
culture that matched the size, richness, and creativeness of the
agrarian cooperative crusade, they were, in the aftermath of the
cul tural consolidation that accompanied the Populist defeat, far
more politically isolated than their agrarian predecessors had
been. To an extent that was not true of many other societies, the
cultural high ground in America had been successfully consol
idated by the corporate creed a decade before American social
ists, led by Eugene Debs, began their abortive efort to create a
mass popular base. The tri umphant new American orthodoxy
of the Gilded Age, sheltering the two-party system in a dialogue
substantially unrelated to democratic structural reform of the
inherited economic and social system, consigned the advocates
of such ideas to permanent marginality. The Popul ists have thus
been, to date, the last American reformers with authentic cultural
credentials to solicit mass support for the idea of achieving the
democratic organization of an industrialized society.
But while American socialists, for reasons they themselves did
not cause, can be seen in retrospect as never having had a
chance, they can be severely faulted for the dul l dogmatism and
political adolescence of their response to this circumstance.
Though their primary recruiting problem turned on their lack
of domestic cultural credentials-the working poor wanted
justice, but they wanted it as loyal Americans-socialists reacted
to continued cultural isolation by celebrating the purity of their
"radicalism. " Thus, individual righteousness and endless sectar-
THE I RONY OF POPULISM
293
ian warfare over ideol ogy came to characterize the politics of a
creed rigidifi ed in the prose of nineteenth-century prophets. As
a body of political ideas, socialism in America-as in so many
other countries-never developed a capacity for self-generating
creativity. It remained in intellectual servitude to sundry "cor-
, rect" interpretations by sundry theorists-mostly dead theor
ists-even as the unfolding history of the twentieth century
raised compelling new questions about the most dificult political
problem facing mankind: the centralization of power in highly
technological societies. I f it requires an army responsive to a
central political committee to domesticate the corporate state,
socialism has overwhelmingly failed to deal with the question of
who, in the name of democratic values, would domesticate the
party and the army. In the face of such a central i mpasse, it
requires a rather grand failure of imagination t sustain the
traditional socialist faith.
1 1
As a political culture, Populism fared somewhat better during
its brief moment. Third party advocates understood politics as
a cultural struggle to describe the nature of man and to create
humane models for his social relations. In the context of the
American ethos, Populists therefore instinctively and habitually
resisted all opposition attempts, through the demagogic expe
dient of labeling new ideas as "radical," to deflect those ideas
from serious discussion. As Populists countered this ploy, they
defended the third party platform as "manly and conservative. "
This Populist custom extended especially to the movement's
hard core of lecturers and theorists, who understood the Omaha
Platform as a series of threshold demands, to be promptly
augmented upon enactment, as the successful popular move
ment advanced to implement its ultimate goal of a "new day for
the industrial millions. " I n articulating their own social theory,
their cause of "education" could advance i n step with each stage
of democratic implementation, as the "plain people" gained
mor.e self-respect from the supportive cul ture of their own
movement and as they gained confdence in their rights as
I '
294 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
citizens of a demonstratively functioning democracy. They never
found the means to bring the educati'onal power of their
movement cul ture to remotely enough American voters, but i f
one thing may be sai d of the Populists, it is that they tried.
Populism in America was not the sub-treasury plan, not the
greenback heritage, not the Omaha Platform. It was not, at
bottom, even the People's Party. The meaning of the agrarian
revolt was its cultural assertion as a people's movement of mass
democratic aspiration. I ts ani mating essence pulsed at every
level of the ambitious structure of cooperation: in the earnest
probings of people bent on discovering a way to free themsel ves
from the ki l l i ng gri p of the credit system ("The suballiance is a
schoolroom") ; in the joint-notes of the landed, given in the name
of themselves and the landless ("The brotherhood stands
united") ; in the pride of discovery of their own legitimacy ("The
merchants are listening when the County Trade Commi ttee
talks") ; and in the massive and emotional efort to save the
cooperative dream itsel f ("The Southern Exchange Shall Stand") .
The democratic core of Populism was visible in the suballiance
resolutions of inquiry into the patterns of economic exploitation
("fnd out and apply the remedy") ; in the mile-long Alliance
wagon trains ("The Fourth of Jul y is Alliance Day") ; in the
sprawling summer encampments ("A pentecost of politics") ;
and, perhaps most tellingly, in the latent generosity unlocked by
the culture of the movement itself, revealed in the capacity of
those who had little, to empathize with those who had less (" We
extend to the Knights of Labor our hearty sympathy in their
manly struggle against monopolistic oppression, " and "The
Negro people are part of the people and must be treated as
such").
While each of these moments occurred in the 1 890' s, and have
practical and symbolic meaning because they did occur, Populism
in America was not an egalitarian achievement. Rather, it was
an egalitarian attempt, a beginning. I it stimulated human
generosity, i t did not, before the movement itsel f was destroyed,
create a sett led culture of generosity. Though Populists at
tempted to break out of the received heritage of white suprem
acy, they necessarily, as white Americans, did so within the very
THE IRONY OF POPULISM 295
ethos of white supremacy. At both a psychological and political
level, some Populists
w
ere more successful than others in coping
with the pervasive i mpact of the inherited caste system. Many
were not successful at all. This reality extended to a number of
pivotal social and political questions beside race-sectional and
party loyalties, the intricacies of power relationships embedded
In the monetary system, and the ways of achieving a politics
supportive of popular democracy itsel f. In their struggle, Pop
ulists leared a great truth: cul tures are hard to change. Their
attempt to do so, however, provides a measure of the seriousness
of their movement.
Populism thus cannot be seen as a moment of tri umph, but
as a moment of democratic promise. I t was a spirit of egalitarian
hope, expressed in the actions of two million beings-not in the
prose of a platform, however creative, and not, ultimately, even
in the third party, but in a self-generated culture of collective
dignity and individual longing. As a movement of people, it was
expansive, passionate, flawed, creative-above all , enhancing in
its assertion of human striving. That was Populism in the
nineteenth century.
But the agrarian revolt was more than a nineteenth-century
experience. It was a demonstration of how people of a society
containing a number of democratic forms could labor in pursuit
of freedom, of how people could generate their own democratic
culture in order to challenge the received hierarchical culture.
The agrarian revolt demonstrated how intimidated people could
create for themselves the psychological space to dare to aspire
grandly-and to dare to be autonomous in the presence of
powerful new institutions of economic concentration and cultural
regimentation. The Omaha Platform gave political and symbolic
substance to the people's movement, but it was the idea animating
the movement itself that represents the Populist achievement.
That idea-at the very heart of the movement cul ture-was a
profoundly simple one: the Populists believed they could work
together to be free individually. I n their institutions of self-help,
Populists developed and acted upon a crucial democratic insight:
to be encouraged to surmount rigid cultural inheritances and
t act with autonomy and self-confdence, individual people
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
need the psychological support of other people. The people
need t "see themselves" experimenting in new democratic
forms.
In their struggle to build their cooperative commonwealth, in
their ' Joint notes of the brotherhood, " in their mass encamp
ments, their rallies, their wagon trains, their meals for thousands,
the people of Populism saw themselves. In their earnest subal
Iiance meetings-those "unsteepled places of worship"-they
saw themselves. From these places of their own came "the spirit
that permeates this great reform movement. " In the world they
created, they ful flled the democratic promise in the only way
it can be fulfi lled-by people acting in democratic ways in their
daily lives. Temporary victory or defeat was never the central
element, but simple human striving always was, as three epic
moments of Populism vividly demonstrated in the summers of
1 888, 1 889, 1 890. These moments were, respectivel y, the day
to save the exchange in Texas, Alliance Day in Atlanta, when
20,000 farmers massed against the jute trust, and Alliance Day
in Winfeld, Kansas. Though L. L. Polk made a stirring speech
to the Kansans on July 4, 1 890 in Winfeld, what he said was far
less important than what his listeners were seeing. The wagon
trains of farm families entering Cowley County from one
direction alone stretched for miles. In this manner, the farmers
saw their own movement: the Alliance was the people, and the
people were together. As a result, they dared to listen to
themselves individually, and t each other, rather than passively
fol low the teachings of the received hierarchical culture. Their
own movement was their guide. Fragile as it was, it nevertheless
opened up possibilities of an autonomous democratic life. Be
cause this happened, the substance of American Populism went
beyond the political creed embedded in the People' s Party,
beyond the evocative images of Alliance lecturers and reform
editors, beyond even the idea of freedom itself. The Populist
essence was less abstract: it was an assertion of how people can
act in the name of the idea of freedom. At root, American
Populism was a demonstration of what authentic political l ife
can be in a functioning democracy. The "brotherhood of the
Alliance" attempted to address the question of how to live. That
is the Populist legacy \0 the twentieth century.
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
297
1 2
In their own time, the practical shortcoming of the Populist
political efort was one the agrarian reformers did not fully
comprehend: their attempt to construct a national farmer-labor
coalition came before the fledgling American labor movement
was internally prepared for mass insurgent politics. Alliance
lecturers did not know how to reach the laboring masses in the
nation's cities, and, in the 1 890' S, the labor movement could not
efectively reach them either. Though a capacity for germane
economic analysis and a growing sense of self developed in those
years among American workers, their advances had not, by the
time Populism arrived, been translated on a mass scale i nto
practical political consciousness. I n the 1 890' s, growing numbers
of American workers were desperately, sometimes angrily, seek
ing a way out of their degradation, but the great majority of
them carried their emotions with them as they voted for the
major parties-or did not vote at all. By the time American
industrial workers fnally found a successful organizing tactic
the sit-down strike-in the 1 930' S, a sizable proportion of
America's agricultural poor had been levered off the land and
millions more had descended into numbing helplessness after
generations of tenantry. Thus, when the labor movement was
ready, or partly ready, the mass of farmers no longer were.
That fact constitutes perhaps the single greatest irony punc
tuating the history of the American working class.
As for the farmers, their historical moment came in the late
1 880' S. They built their cooperatives, sang their songs, marched,
and dreamed of a day of dignity for the "plain peopl e. "
But their movement was defeated, and the moment passed.
Following the collapse of the People's Party, farm tenantry
increased steadily and consistently, decade after decade, from
25 per cent in 1 880, to 28 per cent in 1 890, to 36 per cent in
1 900, and to 38 per cent in 1 9 10 . The 1 80 counties in the South
where at least half the farms had been tenant-operated in 1 880
increased to 890 by 1 935. Tenantry also spread over the fertile
parts of the corn belt as an increasing amount of Midwestern
farmland came to be held by mortgage companies. Some 49 per
cent of Iowa farms were tenant-operated in 1 935 and the land
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THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
created democratic culture, and if, as the Alliance experience
reveals, progress toward this cul minating climax necessarily
must build upon prior stages of political and organizational
evolution that have the efect of altering the political perspectives
of millions of people, then democratic movements, to be suc
cessful , clearly require a high order of sequential achievement.
Towering over al l other tasks is the need to fi nd a way to
overcome deeply ingrained patterns of deference permeati ng
the

ntire social order. For thi s to happen, individual self-respect

ObvIOusly must take life on a mass scale. At the onset of this
process for the Populists, small battles ( the bulking of cotton)
and larger battles ( the war with the jute trust) needed to be
fought and won so that the farmers attained the begi nnings, at
least, of collective self-confdence. Arrayed against these dem
ocratic dynami cs was the continuing cultural authority embedded
in received habits of thought, and the readily available ways that
he p

ess, the public school, and the church could refortify these
mhented patterns. Against such powerful counter-influences,
the only defense available to a democratic movement such as
the Alliance lay within its own organizational institutions. I nterior
lines of communication were essential to maintain the embryonic
and necessarily fragile new culture of mass self-respect engen
dered by the reform movement itsel f. In the absence of such
continuing and sel f-generated democratic cultural influences,
the organizers of popular movements inevitably face loss of
control over their own destiny. They wi l l be overwhelmed, not
by teir own party's politicians per se, or by passing corporate
lobbies, but, more centrally, by the inherited culture itself. Their
dreams will vanish i nto the maw of memory, as their impover
ished constituencies, battered on all sides by cultural inducements
to conform to received habits, gradually do precisely that. As
the Al liance organizers understood, mass democratic move
ments, to endure, require mass democratic organization. Only
in this way can individual people fi nd the means to encourage
one another through their own channels of communication
channels that are free from the specialized i nfuences of the
hierarchical society they seek to reshape.
In the years in which the National Farmers Alliance and
THE IRONY OF POPULISM 30 1
I ndustrial Union created, through its cooperative crusade, the
movement culture of Populism, this i nterior channel of com
munication was centered in the Alliance lecturing system. I t was
this instrument of self-organization that permitted the hopes of
masses of farmers t be carried forward to their spokesmen and
allowed the response of the same spokesmen to go back to the
"industrial millions. " Democratic pressure from below-from
crop-mortgaged farmers desperate to escape their furnishing
merchants-emboldened the early Alliance leadership to un
dertake the "joint-note" plan within the centralized statewide
cooperative. And tactical democratic strategy from above, in the
form of William Lamb's "politics of the sub-treasury, " helped
raise the political consciousness of many hundreds of thousands
of farmers to a level necessary for them to make the personal
decision to break with their cul tural inheritance and support
the new People's Party. The Alliance lecturing system was
organic t this democratic message-carrying, to and fro.
As the farmers labored t create a workable infrastructure of
mass cooperation in 1 887-92, the opposition of the American
banking and corporate communities gradually brought home to
Al liance leaders, and to masses of farmers, the futility of the
cooperative efort-in the absence of fundamental restructuring
of the monetary system. The Allianceman who was forced by
events to learn these lessons frst-Charles Macune-was the
frst to brood about this dil emma, and the first to formulate a
democratic solution, the sub-treasury land and loan system.
The status that the sub-treasury plan came to have i n reform
ranks is revealing. For, to put the matter as quietly as possible,
Macune's plan was democratic. Or, to put it in archaic political
terminology, it was breathtakingly radical. Under the sub-trea
sury, the power of private moneylenders to decide who "quali
fied" for crop loans and who did not would have been ended.
Similarly, the enormous i nfluence of moneylenders over i nterest
rates would also have been circumscribed. The contracted
currency, the twenty-fve year decline in volume and prices,
would have been ended in one abrupt-and democratic-re
structuring. The prosperity levels of 1 865 would have been
reclaimed in one inflationary-and democratic-swoop. Most
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
i mportant of all, the sub-treasury addressed a problem that has
la
.
rgl y d
.
efeated twentieth-century reformers, namely the mal
dIstrIbutIOn of income
.
ithin American society. By removing
some of the more exploltlve features embedded in the inherited
monetary system, the sub-treasury would have achieved sub
stantive redistribution of income from creditors to debtors. Put
simply, a more democratic monetary system would have pro
duced a more democratic sharing of the nation's total economic
poduction. The "producing classes," no longer quite so system
atIclIy deprived of the fruits of their efforts, would have gotten
a |I
.
t mo:e of te fruits. Hierarchical forms of power and
prIvIlege m AmerIca would have undergone a signifcant meas
ure of rearrangement.
As subsequent history was to reveal, these Popul istic premises
proveoto be beyond te conceptual reach of twentieth-century
AerIcans. RestructurIng of American banking was not some
thmg about which New Dealers or New Frontiersmen could
think with sustained attention. The received culture has proved
to be so powerful that substantive ideas about a democratic
systen of money and credit have become cul turally inadmissible.
SucIdeas (th sub-treasury concept of a treasury-based demo
ratlc bank will do adequately as an example) are, in the
Jdgment of prevailing cultural authority, "unsound. " No one
dIsputes such culturally sanctioned wisdom today, any more
than the gold bug simplicities were disputed in "i nformed" circles
during the Gilded Age.
The shrinking parameters of twentieth-century reform
thou?ht thus help to underscore the Populist achievement. How
was It that so many people in the 1 890's came to associate
themselves with such an inadmissible idea as the sub-treasury
plan? We may be secure in the knowledge that the Populists
ere not "smarter" than modern Americans. Nor did it happen
Just because "times were hard. " It happened because Populists
had const
.
ructe+ within their own movement a specifc kind of
democratic envIronment that is not normal l y present in America.
In the fa
.
ce of all the counterattacks employed by the nation's
metropolItan press, culturally in step as it was with the needs of
"sound-money" bankers, the sub-treasury plan was brought
THE I RONY OF POPULISM
home to mi l lions of Americans as a function of the movement
culture of Popul ism. This culture was comprised of many
ingredients-most visible beig the infastucture of
.
Iocal,
county, state, and national AllIance orgal1lzatlons. But thIs was
surface. More real were all of the shared experiences within the
Alliance-the elaborate encampments, the wagon trains, the
meals for thousands-and more real still were the years of
laboring together in the suballiances to form trade ommi ttees,
to negotiate with merchants, to build
.
the cooertlves to new
heights, to discuss the causes of adversIty, and, In time, to come
to the new movement fol kway, the "Al l iance Demand. " The
Demands took on i ntense practical meaning, frst at Cleburne
in 1 886 and later as the St. Louis Platform of 1 889, the Ocala
Demands of 1 890, and the Omaha Platform of 1 892. Because
these mul tiple methods of i nterior communication existed,
Alliancemen found a way to believe i n their own movement,
rather than to respond to what the larger society said about
their movement. I n sum, they built insulation for themselves
against the received hierarchical culture. ecause
.
they did so,
the farmers of the Alliance overcame, for a time, theIr deference;
they gained, for a time, a new plateau of self-respec
.
t that
permi tted autonomous democratic politis. Beause o thIS evo
lution, which was essentially the evolutIOn of Popul Ism, they
could dare to have signifcant democratic aspirations in ways
that twentieth-century Americans have rarely been able to
emulate-and never on such a scale as Popul ism. Because the
sub-treasury plan promised (efectively, we now undersand) to
save the Al liance cooperative from banker strangulation, the
new monetary system undergirded the cooperative idea: the
Omaha Platform of the People's Party preserved the basic
dreams of the Farmers Alliance.
But while these conclusions are self-evident in a political sense,
and explain how the People's Party happened, they coceal an
underlying organizational fl aw that eventully
.
undermled the
reform movement. For while the cooperative Idea awalted the
enactment of a new and more democratic system of industrial
commerce-the passage by a Populist Congress of the
.
sub
treasury system-the basic cooperative structure of the AllIance
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
gradually disintegrated. The retrenchment of the Texas Ex
chan
.
ge, from a

entralized statewide marketing and purchasing

credit c
<
operatlve to a much smaller cash-only purchasing
cooperatI ve, excluded the bulk of cashless Al l iance farmers from

aricipation. * The Texas setback of 1 889-90 was fol lowed by

simI l ar retrenchments
.
at local and statewide levels throughout
the South and West , 890-93, The underlying cause was
everywhere t
.
he same: lack of access to credit. But i n some places,
where e

peClal l y favorable ci
.
rcumstances temporarily bridged
the
.
credit problem,
.
cooperatIves were destroyed by raw appli
atlOns of commerCIal power. The highly successful multi-state
livestock marketing cooperative, conceived by Kansans and
expo
:
ted t Ms

ouri, Nebra
.
ska, and the Dakotas, was killed by
the SI mple declSl
?
n of the LIvestock Commission in Chicago to
:
ef

se to deal WIth the farmer cooperative. The decision was

JustIfied (

n the grouno th
.
at the cooperative, in distributing
profi ts to Its membership, vIol ated the "anti-rebate" rule of the
commission! That was the end of that. But whether the cause
of cooperative defeat was the tactical infl uence of the American
fin

ncial community, control of access to credit, or simpl e power,

as the case of the Chicago Livestock Commission, the orga-
* That faC! i l l ust rates i n still anot her way the extent to whi ch t raditional class
aalysls helps
,
t o obscure this central dynamic of the Populist movement . I t
mad

hllle chfl erence whet her t he number of t enants i n a given state comprised
' 5 C 30 per cent of all farmers, or whether all, or hal f, of the tenants joined
the AI I
.
,anc .1 e relevant "statistic" was the fact that an overwhel mi ng m"jority
of
.
all
.
fal 1el s, landowners and landless al i ke, were locked i nto the crop l i en, the
d,scnml l1atry f reIght rate and the challel mortgage.
.
Rochdale-type cash cooperatives could not help such farmers, whether they
st"l owned t heIr land, were losing their land, had already lost their l and, or had
never ossessd any. l f capitalist hi storians have mi ssed t he Populist movement
becau

)f rehanc
,
on f agtle economIC determllllsm (the agrarian revolt resulted
f om hrd ttmes ), MarXIst h,stonans have si mi larly deluded themselves by
easy reliance on class categories (Popuhsm could not be "progressive" because
the movement was doml l1ated by "landowners"). One may perhaps be forgiven
101 suggest t ng t hat the mal1llest lack 01 creat t vl t y In t wentieth-century political
thought lIIay be at least partly traceable t c t he remarkable complacency wi th
whI ch categories 0/ pollttcal descnptlOn, sanctioned i n the i ntellectual tradi ti ons
01 SOCIalism and capitalism, are employed as i nt erpretive devices to "explai n"
hlstorlc1 causatIOn. It these categories do not work to reveal t he largest mass
movement 11 nl l1eteenth-century Amenca, It IS possible wonder what el se i n
American hI story t hey do not reveal.
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
nizational structure of the All iance became fatally weakened and
the mass cohesion of the movement was, consequently, fatally
compromised.
All important sectors of commercial America opposed the
cooperative movement, not only banks and commission agenc. es,
but grain elevator companies, railroads, mortgage compames,
and, perhaps needless to add, furnishing merchants. The Na
tional Farmers Al liance itself persisted as an institution, but the
cooperative purpose that sustained the personal day-to-day
dedication of members to their own institution did not persist.
Once the politics of the sub-treasury had been orchestrated
through the lecturing system in order to bring on the new
.
party,
the lecturing system itself withered. The reason was a baSIC one;
the lecturers no longer had anything substantive to lecture
about. The Al liance coul d no longer save the farmers ; only the
new party could bring the needed structural changes in the
American economic system.
" Lecturi ng" thus became a function of the People's Party. The
new lecturers

ho provided the continuing i nteral communi

cations link within the movement culture were the reform
editors. The National Reform Press Association was to the
People's Party what the lecturing system was t the Al liance, the
interior adhesive of the democratic movement. The flaw in all
this was the simple fact that the National Reform Press Associ
ation did not have an organized constituency, as Al l iance lec
turers had earlier possessed, Within the People's Party, as it
organized itself, there could be no continuing democratic
.
dia
logue, no give and take of question and answer, of perceived
problem and attempted solution, between rank-and-fi le mem
bers and elected spokesmen, such as had given genuine demo
cratic meaning to the days of cooperative effort within the
Al liance. Rather, reform editors asserted and defended the
Populist vision, and their subscribers, i n organizational isolatio

,
received these views in a passive state, as it were. Such a dynamIC
undermines the very prospect of sustai ning a democratic culture
grounded-as it must be to be democratic-in individual s
.
elf
respect and mass sel f-confdence. I ndividual self-respect reqUlr

s
self-assertion, the performance of acts, as farmers performed 111
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
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THE IRONY OF POPULISM
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THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
had no interior mass base as its core; it had only individual
adherents who voted for i t on election day.
In democratic terms, the structural weakness of the People' s
Party evolved from the failure of its organizers, i n the founding
convention of 1 892, to understand that the third party, to be
authentically democratic, had to be organized as a mass party
with a
.
mass me
.
mbership. It was organized instead, l i ke all large
Aenan parties before and since, as a representative party,
With elIte cadres of party regulars dominating the organizational
machinery from precinct to national convention. The People's
Party spoke, rather more tellingly than most American parties
have ever done, in the name of the people. But in structural
terms the People's Party was not made up of the people; it was
comprised of party elites. I ts ultimate failure, therefore, was
conceptual-a failure on a theoretical level of democratic anal
ysis. *
Nevertheless, despite these necessary qualifcations t he Peo
ple's P
.
arty was, thanks to the sheer emotional and organizational
Intensity that brought it into being, a political institution of
unique passion and vigor in American history. There were,
however, always signifcant gradations of participation i n the
movement culture. For those who had learned their cooperative
lessons most thoroughly, the original Al liance dream sustained
itself throughout the entire life of the third party crusade. But
upon all those who had participated in these experiences in less
vivid ways the pull of the received culture inexorably worked its
will. And in many new Alliance states where the third party was
numerically small Populism became ideologically fragile as wel l .
I n the state that led the farmers to the Alliance, Texas, and in
the state that led the Alliance to the People's Party, Kansas, the
agrarian dream possessed continuing, though gradually di mi n
ishing, democratic i ntensity. It maintained for a while an i nter
esting thrust in Georgia, Alabama, California, and South Dakota
as wel l . Everywhere else the democratic vision had, by 1 894,
begun to grow noticeably weaker and, in some places, had begun
This failure is shared, of course, by the modern major parties of America
a fact that undergirds the hler;rchlCal corporate structure of contemporary
Amencan sOCiety and politics.
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
to wither with some abruptness. Thus while the People' s Party
was many things, even many democratic things, it was
.
not n
unsteepled chapel of mass democracy-its ow functlonanes
saw to that, conclusively, i n 1 896. Beyond thiS, each stolen
election and act of terrorism in the South and each "practical"
coalition in the West served to chip away the morale and sap the
energy of the movement. It took the strongest kind of paallel
communities and the steadiest kind of movement leadership to
keep the democratic idea alive i n the presence of the sustaied
hierarchical cultural attacks (including vigilante attacks) to whICh
the reform movement was subjected. After the defeat of the
cooperatives, the pressure was too great for the People's Party,
alone, to bear. The movement lost its animating reality and, in
the end, became like its shadow and succumbed to hierarchical
politics.
Long before that moment of self-destruction in 1 896 th
.
e
movement' s organizational source, the National Farmes AllI
ance, having rendered its fnal service to farmers by creatIng the
new party of reform in 1 892, had moved into the wings of the
agrarian revolt. In so doing, the Alliance transfered to the
political arena the broad aims it had faile
.
d to accompl Isthrough
its cooperative crusade. The organizational boundanes f the
People's Party were fxed by the previous l i mits of the Al l Iance.
The greenback doctrines of the Alliance were i mbibed by those
who participated in the cooperative crusade, t by very few
other Americans. Though several Western mInIng states that
were not deeply afected by Alliance organizers achieved
.
a
measure of one-plank silveri sm, and Nebraska produced ItS
uniquely issueless shadow movement, no Americn state not
organized by the Alliance developed a strong PopulIst pr
.
esence.
The fate of the parent institution and its political ofspnng was
inextricably linked.
.
The largest citizen institution of nineteenth-century Amenca,
the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union persisted
through the 1 890' S, defending the core doctrines of greenback
ism within the People's Party and keeping to the fore the dream
of a "new day for the industrial mi llions. " I ts mass roots severed
by the cooperative failure at the very moment its hopes were
3 1 0
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
c

rried forward by the People's Party, the Alliance passed from

view at the end of the century. I ts sole material legacy was the
"Al liance warehouse" weathering in a thousand towns scattered
across the American South and West .. In fol klore, it came to be
remembered that the Al liance had been "a great movement"
and th

t it h

d illed itsel f because it had "gone into politics. "

But at Its zenIth, It reached into forty-three states and territories
and, for a moment, changed the lives and the consciousness of
mil lions 0: Ame
.
rican
.
s . As
.
a mass democratic institution, the saga
of the Al lIance IS UnIque American history.
In cooperative defeat and political defeat, the farmers of the
Al liance and the People's Party lost more than their movement
the
r
lost the community they had created. They lost more tha
their battle on the money question, they lost their chance for a
measure of auton

my. They lost more than their People's Party,

they lost the hopef ul , embryonic culture of generosity that their
party represented. The stakes, as the Alliance founders had
always known, were high, for the agrarian dream was truly a
large one-a democratic society grounded in mass dignity.
1
.
3
What is to be concluded of Populism' s three opponents-the
shadow movement, the Democratic Party, and the Republican
Party?
.
Th

sometimes formless, sometimes silverite expression which
hlsoncally has been regarded as "American Populism" and
whICh has appeared i n these pages as the "shadow movement"
may be judged to be trivial as a political faith. A natural
outgrowth of the intellectual and programmatic aimlessness of
the Northwestern Farmers Alliance, the shadow movement had
historical meaning only in the context of the actual agrarian
movement mounted by the National Farmers Al liance and
I ndustrial Union. Devoid of genuine political substance, the
sh

dow
.
movement was patently less interesting than Populism,
be

ng
.
lIttle more than an i mitative reprise on the superfi cial
agItatIOn over the "Cri me of
'
73
"
that had helped to sidetrack
THE IRONY OF POPULISM 3 1 1
greenback reform a generation earl ier. * The second silver drive
proved no more coherent than the frst. The shadow movem
:
nt,
as it triumphed in 1 896 in Kansas, in 1 894 in North CarolIna,
and in 1 890 in Nebraska, had common characteristics: it was led
by politicians, its tactics were defned by them, and t
.
he usefulness
of such tactics depended upon the successful avoidance of the
intellectual content embedded in the Populist platform. Some
fusionist politicians, like Senator Peffer of Kansas, gave up the
Populist faith reluctantly and onl y temporaril y; oth
:
rs, like lIen
of Nebraska, had never known it. But in embraCIng the sIlver
expedient, they all identifed themselves with a cause
.
tat
originated outside the People's Party and wa

f

anced by mlIng
i nterests whose goals were inimical to the objectives of Popul I sm.
The symbolic spokesman of both the Northwester Farmers
Alliance and the shadow movement was Jay Burrows of Ne
braska. He, having never grasped the meaning of the cooperative
crusade and never having experienced its political lessons, could
write in 1 896 that Wil liam Jennings Bryan was "practically a
Populist except in name. "
Organizationally derivative, intellectuall y withot
.
purpose, he
shadow movement never fashioned its own polItical premIse;
inevitably, its sole criterion became conventional politics itself
the desire of ofce-seekers to prevail at the next election. In
attempting to address their own short-run electoral needs, the
tacticians of fusion adopted as their own the political purpoes
of the silver mineowners. But having no political or cultural
base independent of others, the fusionists had no hope of
surviving on the 'goals of others. Their moment of tactical
triumph, lasting a few hours at the Populist conv

ntion in
.
1 96,
was inherently ironic: in achieving the nominatIOn of WIl l Iam
Jennings Bryan, they not only ensured their own organizational
extinction, they also provided a way for farmers to submerge
themselves in the new two-party corporate politics of modern
America.
The silver crusade nevertheless possessed considerable cul-
* See Chapter \ .
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
tural signifcance for what it revealed of the state of political
consciousness of those millions of Americans who did not
respond to the Omaha Platform but who did embrace the free
coinage panacea. The silver Democratic Party of William Jen
nings Bryan, like the Gold Democracy of Grover Cleveland and
the "sound money" Republican Party of Wil liam McKi nley, was,
intellectually, an anachronism. As negative reactions to the
Omaha Platform, the politics of silver and the politics of gold
illustrated the narrowing political range of the corporate society
that was then emerging. In monetary analysis, Gold Democrats
were neither better nor worse than Silver Democrats, merely
their equals in hyperbole and in their misunderstanding of how
monetary systems worked. Both represented the triumph of
form over substance.
In statesmanship, the Bryanites, not achieving ofce, left no
record; the Cleveland Democracy, however, repeatedly proved
its inability to perceive the world around it and demonstrated
rather forcefully its resulting incapacity to govern. Frozen in a
philosophy of laissez faire, Cleveland was virtually immobilized
by the depression of the 1 890' s, and was unable to respond
either to the needs of the unemployed or to the i mperatives of
the inevitable fnancial crisis. The ultimate efect of his frantic
gold bond issues was to transfer sizable portions of the gover
ment's reserve from the United States Treasury to the Eastern
fi nancial community. All was done in the name of "sound
money. "
On the other hand, the Republican Party, an increasingly
narrow-gauged but powerful engine, made U determined show
of running both the nation and its economy. Thanks to the
energy of the American industrial system, a demanding and
ruthless contrivance, but, relatively speaking, an efcient one,
the Republicans were able to do just that. They l i ked the
contrivance, even celebrated it with a self-serving and narrow
insularity that blinded them to the costs it exacted in both human
and natural resources, in the beauty of the l and itsel f, and in the
vigor and range of the national culture. But they did all these
things with a public display of confi dence and were able to
escape relatively unscathed. The Republicans, it should be noted,
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
did not respond to the depression with any mre verve
.
th

n
Cleveland had managed. But with its newly consolidated maJonty
position, the Republican Party-except for the ilsonian i nt
.
er
lude-ruled the nation for two generations. Dunng that penod
America added to its material wealth because of the absence of
feudal restraints upon the i maginativeness of its people, because
of the energy of both its entrepreneurs and their employees,
and because of the great bounty nature had bestowed upon the
American continent. The political institutions of the nation were
vastly overshadowed i n importance by these deeper rhythms
that propelled an unbalanced and provincial democracy toward
the crises that awaited it i n the twentieth century.
1 4
When those crises came, twentieth-century America found itself
still fi rml y bound to the nineteenth-century orthodoxies against
which the Populists had rebelled-presumptions that o

tlined
the proper limits of democratic debate
:
.
the pre
:
ogatIves of
corporate money in shaping political deClSlOn-makmg, and the
meaning of progress itself. Though the first years of the ne
.
w
era were no longer called the "Age of Excess"-they were,
fact, called the "Progressive era"-the acceptable political bo

d
aries for participants in both parties received t

ir del1ltIon
from the economic values that triumphed polItlcally 1 the
Gilded Age. When the long Republican reign came to an end
in 1 932 , the alteratives envisioned by the Democr

ts
l
of the
New Deal unconsciously refected the shrunken vistas that
remained culturally permissibl e. Aspirations for fnancial reform
on a scale imagined by green backers had expired, even among
those who thought of themselves as reformers. Inevitably, such
reformers had lost the possibility of understanding how the
system worked. Structural reform
?
f America1
:
banking no
longer existed as an issue in Amenca. The ulti mate cultural
victory being not merely to win an argument but to remve he
subject from the agenda of future contention, the consohdatIon
of values that so successful l y submerged the "fi nancial question"
beyond the purview of succeeding generations was self-sustain
ing and largely invisible.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
The complacency of the nation's intellectual elite of the Gilded
Age, it turned out, ranged beyond the dull monometallism of
academc ecoomists such as J. Laurence Laughlin or the
suerfi Clal sa
.
tIre of E. L. Godki n; it enveloped even those
enlIghtened lIterary arbiters who considered themselves in the
vanguard of the new realism. When a sympathetic William Dean
Howells coul unwittingly and patronizingly describe the farm
ers of the AI I I
.
ance as "gri m, sordid, pathetic, ferocious fi gures"
and charactenze the cooperative crusade, about which he al most
certal y kew little or noth
.
ing, as "blind groping for fairer
:ondItlons,
.
the
.
cultural barners to analytical clarity were man
Iestly sttlIg Into hardening concrete. In the new century,
gIfted hlstonans such as Richard Hofstadter not only followed
In the Howells tradition, their interpretations of the American

xperience captured the cultural high ground within the Amer

ICan academy. In the prevailing view, "the system, " beset with
human frailty as it was, "worked. " While i t had faws, more often
than not they materialized from the irrationality and spite of
the gener1 populace rather than from any failings on the part
of the natIOn's commercial and intellectual elite. This thought,
of course, has proved enormously consoling to the elites, and

ccounts for the undimi nished emotional appeal of this reigning

Intellectual tradition. *
It is interesting to observe that one group of Americans, the nation's leading
novelIsts, have consistently resisted both the language of genteel apologia and
the language of celebratIOn that combine to i nform the mai nstream academic
view of te American past. The contrast between the sanguine, culturally
confined lIterature of American history and the brooding chronicle of endurance
and tragedy that characterizes the nation's best fiction is an interesting contem
porary phenomenon. The American historical tradition of conveying the national
experience as a purposeful and gener
.
ally progressive saga, almost divinely
exonerated, as It were, from the
.
vICIssitudes elsewhere affl icting the human
condition, may perhaps account for the remarkably diferent levels of impact
American historians and American novelists have had on non-Americans. While
a number of American novelists, from Melville to Faulkner, are admi red
throughout the world, no Amel'ican historian has remotely achieved similar
standmg.
It

ay be argued that the historical approaches that are traditional within the
American academic mainstream have failed to uncover mass striving and mass
efeat because, on the deepest psychological level, more specifc conceptual and
nalytlcal tols were not thought to be needed to describe social realities i n this
democratic nallon. It was simpler to dismiss moments of unseemly discord as,
THE I RONY OF POPULISM
Grounded in such a view of the national past, the political
sensibility that materialized within the cramped American party
system of the twentieth century found itsel f too rigid and too
dangerously condescending to support truly expansive vistas of
democratic possibility, such as those aforded by the continuing
aspirations of the millions of "the people" who, because of
manners, occupation, or skin color, coul d not gain access to the
benefi ts of the progressive society. Within the confi nes of this
narrowing social outlook, Americans seem to have lost the
capacity to think seriously about the structure of their own
society. Words like "inevitability," "efciency, " and "moderni
zation" are passively accepted as the operative explanations for
the increasingly hierarchical nature of contemporary life.
Three central issues of Populism illustrate the mass resignation
characteristic of modern society and reveal the extent Americans
have lost contact with the democratic premises of earlier eras.
Those issues concern, fi rst, land ownership i n America; second,
the hierarchical nature of the nation's basic fi nancial structure;
and third, the consuming threat that corporate centralization
poses to the democratic heritage itsel f. In much the
;
same way
that centralization of land was characteristic of feudalism, it has
become increasingly characteristic of modern America. The
centralization of land ownership in American agriculture has
for years been fashionably attributed to the competitive "ef
ciency" of "economies of scale" by large-unit corporate farming
i nterests-as compared to the presumed l imitations i n the
operations of family farms. Awaiting agricultural analysis, em-
in Howells's phrase, "blind groping for fairer conditions," or, in Hofstadter's,
as the irrationalities of people who saw themselves as "innocent pastoral victims
of conspiracies hatched in the distance." Whether the general failure to focus
upon the depth and permanence of hierarchical structures of power and
privilege in America is a cause or a result of inherited modes of cultural
narrowness is, perhaps, debatable, but the complacent cast of the historical genre
scarcely is. Though there are noteworthy exceptions, the standard American
history texts used i n high schools and colleges throughout the nation are
impressive examples of scholarly deference to the received culture. As such they
serve to reveal how thoroughly the values of the corporate state sufuse
contemporary intellectual life in the United States. The nation's most renowned
novelists, of course, have taken pains to position themselves securely outside this
narrow and uncreative orthodoxy.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
barrassingly enough, is a considerable amount of evidence
suggesting that the real economies of scale are not technical, but
artifi cial, produced by the monopolistic practices of suppliers
and purchasers and further undergirded by federal subsidy and
tax policies. But while the concept of "economies of scale"
remains debatable, the more germane historical reality is that
centralization of American land was well advanced even before
corporate agriculture could prove or disprove its "efciency. " I t
was
.
simply a matter of capital and the power of those having
capital to prevent remedial democratic legislation. The failure
to provide short-run credit for seventy years would seem to be
the operative ingredient in these dynamics which has been rather
overlooked.
The one agricultural adventure of the New Deal that most
nearly approached Charles Macune' s objective of benefiting "the
whole class" was the resettlement program of the Farm Security
Administration, designed t provide land loans at low interest
to enable black and white tenants to become owners of fami l y .
farms. The program was i nitiated on a small scale in isolated
pockets in the South and West in the 1 930' s. Though the program
was successful , land acquisition was halted in 1 943. In that year
the program, long under attack from large-unit farming interests

ithin th
.
e Department of Agriculture, from large-unit farming
11terests 111 the Farm Bureau Federation, and from congressmen
responsive to the lobbying power of large-unit farming i nterests,
was killed. The process of land centralization across America
has since accelerated, especially affecting black landowners in
the South.
In the absence of signifi cant literature on the subject, land
centralization is a process that remains obscure to most Ameri
cans, but one they may feel no right to inquire intogiven the
fact that land centralization is sanctioned by the culture itsel f.
I ndeed, the remarkable cultural hegemony prevailing mi litates
against serious inquiry into the underlying economic health of
American society, so this information is, fi rst, not available, and,
second, its non-availability i s not a subject of public debate.
Large-scale property ownership in America is a legal secret
secluded in " trusts," " street names," and "nominees" beyond the
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
reach of any democratic institution in the society. * Though
Populists had the self-possession to struggle against land syn
dicates, Americans no longer contest the matter.
Similarl y, the nation's hierarchical banking system dominates
the lives of modern Americans in subtle and pervasive ways. For
millions of Americans one of the central purposes of long years
of striving is the desire to own a home of their own. The pttern
of interest rates, together with federal housing programs tailored
to the self-interest of the banking community, have effectively
placed such home ownership beyond the reach f
.
the m
.
ajo

ity
of working class Americans. As informed political sCIentists
know, and have reported, of all Washington lobbies, the most
powerful is the banking lobby. Even the "Pentagon lobby" m

st
shape its needs to conform t the i mperatives of the commerCIal
bankers. Yet the idea of a democratic monetary system-the
operative dynamic of American Populism-is si
.
mply not

ome
thing that Americans seem any longer to aspire to. I t IS not
"practical" to have such large democratic goals. Tus oes
modern sophistication serve as a defense for modern resignation.
I nexorably, the consolidation of economic power in corpora

e
America has shaped an entirely new politic

l landscape, one 111

which the agenda of possible democratic actions has shr

nk
signifcantl y. The Populist fear that corporate concentration
would undermine the popular autonomy necessary to the pres
ervation of authentic democratic dialogue has been realized.
Modern politics takes place wholly within the narrowed bound
aries of the corporate state. In most circles, it is now considered
bad manners to venture outside these boundaries. While most
Americans do not venture, they also do not celebrate the limits.
They cannot, however, find a culturally sanctioned way to
express their anxiety politically. A heartfelt but unfocused
i nformed research i n thi s area has not yet begun-and cannot be-unti l the
disclosure laws are I-eformed. See U. S. Congress, Senate Committee on Gover
ment Operations, Disciosurr of Corporate Ownership,
.
Staff Report
,
of the Subcom
mittee on Budgeting, Management and Expenditure, 93rd Cong. , 2 nd sess.,
May 4, 1 974 (Washington, D. C. , ' 974); U. S. C

gres
_
s, House CommIttee un
Banki ng and Currency, CO/lmercial Banks and J hnr Trust ActIVitieS, Emergzng
In/lurner on the AmI1({LIl ECOII OIIIY, Staff Report for the SubcommIttee on Domestic
Finance, 90th Cong. , 2nd sess., J uly 8, 1 968 ( Washl 11gton, D. C. , 1 968).
THE TRI UMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
discontent about "politics" has therefore become a centerpiece
of the popular subculture across the nation.
Twenieth-ceury pe
.
ople, reduced to the sobering knowledge
that theIrs, pohtical l y, IS the least creative century of the last
three, take refuge in private modes of escape and expression,
found largely th

ough th pursuit and consumption of products.

The corresondmg dechne i n the vitality of public l ife verifi es
the cons
.
tramts of
.
modern political thought. "The people, "
though f

1 I oanxIety, do not know what to do politically to

make theIr SOCIety less authoritarian. Language is the instrument
of thought, and i t has proven difcult for people to think about
democracy while employing hierarchical terminology. On the
availabl

evide
.
nce, t
,
entieth-century people around the globe
are paymg a hIgh pnce for their submission to the hierarchical
languages of political analysis that have grown out of the visions
)f Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The problem that will doubtless
mter

st f uture historians i s not so much the presence, in the

t,entletcentury
.' .
of mass political alienation, but the passivity
with whICh the CitIzenry accepted that condition. It may well
become known as the century of sophisticated deference.
As objects of study, the Populists themselves were to fal l victim
to the inability of twentieth-century humanists of various ideo
lo
?
ical p

uasions to conceive that authentic political substance

might ongmate outside such acceptable intellectual sources as
te
.
progr

ssive,

apitalist, middle classes or the European so

Clahst herIt

e. Smce both traditions continued to employ en

crusted pohtlcal terms rooted in outdated nineteenth-century
languages
.
of prophecy, the antiquarian nature of moder politics
bec

me dIfcult to overstate. From all quarters, Populists were

denIed authentic historical association with their own movement.
Accordin
?
l y, teir
.
chief legacy-a capacity to have signifi cant
democratic aspIratIOns, a simple matter of scale of thought
faded from American political culture. The reform tradition
that materiali

ed in the twentieth century was intimidated and,

thrfore, unImaginative. Harry Tracy and other Populist theo
retiCIans had called for 300 per cent infl ation through a return
to the per capita circulation of 1 865, on the sole and valid
ground that the sub-treasury system was intelligent and would
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
provide an i mmediate remedy for a central and lon

-negleced
faw at the heart of American capitalism. The capacity t thmk
politically on such a scale was Populistic; it passed from the
mainstream American reform tradition with the defeat of Pop
ul i sm.
By this process, the relatively expansive pre-industrial sensi
bilities that had animated Thomas Jeferson, George Mason,
and the original Anti-Federalists gradually lost that strand of
democratic continuity and legitimacy which, in fact, connected
their time and their possibility to our own through the actions
of Americans who lived in the interi m: the Populist connecting
link was lost to the heritage. * The egalitarian current that was
part of the nation's wellspring became not a constantly active
source of ideas, but a curious backwater, eddying somewhere
outside both the conveyed historical heritage and the mainstream
of modern political thought that necessarily builds upon that
heritage.
Unlike J efferson, of course, Populists were not dedicated to small goverment
because they believed such an entity could not cope with the power of
concentrated capital. Rather, Populists sought democratIC government, as Jef
ferson himself had.
Populist theory poses the central t wentieth-century political question: can
large goverment be democratic? The history of twenllet9-century lIldustnal
societies indicates not-at least not wlthlll the prevailIng conceptual l I mitations
of traditional capitalism and traditional socialism. Unfortunately, the idea that
workable small-unit democracy is possible withlll large-ulllt systems .f economIC
production is alien to the shared presumptions of "progress" that unite capitalIsts
and communists i n a religious brotherhood. So much so that the very thought
tends U give people a headache. I ntellectual short-circuits crackle everywhere.
The topic, therefore, is not one the young are encouraged to speculate about;
such a possibility challenges our settled resignation and puts people III at ease.
It is simpler to sustain one's morale by teachlllg the young not to aspire too
grandly for too much democracy.
. . . .
The conclusion is transparent: the IIltellectual
.
range of modern IIldustnal
societies is quite narrow. One observes that thiS conclusl(

n IS aVOIded by
participants in the mainstream of capitalist and soualIst souetles becau

e, to do
otherwise, i n sophisticated circles, IS not career onented and, H unsophistICated
circles, is unpatriotic. On the historical evidence, it seems poslble to conclude
that Mark Hanna and Henry Vincent (for different reasons, of course, Slllce
Hanna was not a democrat) would have understood these dynamics without too
much psychic strain. On the other hand, it seems probable that William Jennings
Bryan, in his provincial innocence, would not have understood
:
Bryan may be
seen, therefore, to be one of the participants in Gilded Age publIc lIfe who most
nearly resembles "modern" political figures.
320
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
The resul t is self-insulation: the popular aspirations of the
people of the "third world" in the twentieth century have easily
become as threatening to moder Americans as the revolt of
their own farmers was to gold bugs eighty years ago. Though
American foreign policy and American weapons have defended
anachronistic feudal and military hierarchies in South America,
Africa, and Asia, such actions beingjustified at home as necessary
to the defense of "democracy," neither the policy nor the
justification has proved notably persuasive to the non-Americans
who are the mass victims of such hierarchies. The resulting
unpopularity of America puzzles Americans. The policies them
selves, however, are not debatable within the li mits of public
dialogue sanctioned in modern America. Under such constrai nts,
the ul ti mate political price that Americans may be forced to pay
for their narrowed cultural range in the twentieth century has
emerged as a question of sobering di mension.
However they were subsequently characterized, Populists in
their own time derived their most incisive power from the simple
fact that they declined to participate adequately in a central
element of the emerging American faith. In an age of progress
and forward motion, they had come to suspect that Horatio
Alger was not real. I n due course, they came t possess a cultural
faw that armed them with considerable critical power. Heretics
in a land of true believers and recent converts, they saw the
coming society and they did not like it. It was perhaps inevitable
that since they lost their struggle to defl ect that society from its
determined path of corporate celebration, they were among the
last of the heretics. Once defeated, they lost what cultural
autonomy they had amassed and surrendered their progeny to
the training camps of the conquering army. All Americans,
including the children of Populists, were exposed to the new
dogmas of progress confidently conveyed i n the public school
system and in the nation's history texts. As the twentieth-century
recipients of this instruction, we have found it difcult to listen
with sustained attention to the words of those who dissented at
the moment a transcendent cultural norm was being fashioned.
THE IRONY OF POPULISM
I n their own era, the agrarian spokesmen who talked of the
"coming revolution" turned out to be much too hopeful. Though
in the months of Populist collapse and for successive decades
threafter prosperity eluded those the reformers called the
"producing classes," the growing industrial society preserved the
narrowed boundaries of political dialogue substantially intact,
as roughly one-third of America's urban workers moved slowly
into the middle class. The mystique of progress itself helped to
hold in muted resignation the mil lions who continued in poverty
and other millions who, for reasons of the exclusiveness and
white supremacy of the progressive society, were not permitted
to live their lives in dignity.
As the frst benefciary of the cul tural consolidation of the
1 890' S, the new Republican orthodoxy, grounded in the revo
lutionary (and decidedly anti-Jefersonian) political methods of
Mark Hanna, provided the mores for the twentieth century
without ever having to endure a serious debate about the
possibility of structural change in the American forms of fi nance
capitalism. Political conservatives nevertheless endured inter
mittent periods of extreme nervousness-such as was produced
in 1 933 by the nation's sudden and forced departure from the
gold standard. Given the presumed centrality of a metallic
currency, it took a while for cultural traditinalists, including
bankers, t realize that the infl uence of the banking community
had not sufered organic disturbances-J. Laurence Laughlin to
the contrary notwithstanding. Though the patter of interest
rates during and after World War I I continued to transfer
measurable portions of the national income from both business
and labor to bankers-in the process burdening the structure
of prices with an added increment of cost as well as changing
the very structure of industrial capitalism-disputes over the
distribution of income within the whole society did not precipitate
serious social contentions as long as America maintained a
favorable international trade and investment balance. I t re
mained clear, however, that unresolved questions about the
inherited fnancial system might well make a sudden and un
expected reappearance if, at any time in the second half of the
twentieth century, shifts in world trade and the cost of i mported
raw materials placed severe forms of competitive pressure on
322 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
the American economy and on the international monetary
system. At such a moment the cultural consolidation fashioned
in the Gilded Age would undergo its frst sustained re-evaluation,
as the "financial question" once again intruded into the nation's
politics and the issues of Populism again penetrated the Amer
ican consciousness. That time, while pending, has not yet come.
For their part, Gilded Age traditionalists did not view the
c
?
nclusive triumph of the corporate ethos as a foregone conclu
sIOn. Themselves insecure in an era of real and apparent change,
they w

re

nable
.
to distinguish between authentic signs of
economIC dIslocatIOn and the political threat represented by
those who called attention to those signs. On this rather primitive
lev

l the politics of the era resolved itsel f, and the progressive

SOCIety
.
was bo

n
:
s an outgrowth of its insularity and compla
cency, IndustrIalIzIng America wanted uncritical voices of cele
bration. The agrarian radicals instead delivered the waring
that all was not well with the democracy. They were not thanked.
Today, the values and the sheer power of corporate America
pinch in the horizons of mil lions of obsequious corporate
employees, tower over every American legislature, state and
national, determine the modes and style of mass communications
and mass education, fashion American foreign policy around

he globe, anshape the rules of the American political process

Itself. Self-eVIdently, corporate values defne modern American
cul ture.
It was the corporate state that the People's Party attempted
to bring under democratic control.
Afterword
What became of the radicals-the earnest advocates who
spawned the agrarian revolt? The subsequent careers of the
people who have filled these pages merely testifed to the
diversity of American life. Some Populists adjusted to the collapse
of their movement with what others in the ranks regarded as
entirely too much poise and equanimity. Others looked desper
atel y for a new political home, and a few, finding none and
unable to bear the consequences, committed suicide.
In Kansas, Senator William Pefer recoiled from his brief
sojourn i nto fusion in 1 896, publicly described it as a decisive
error, and was defeated for re-election. He dallied briefl y as a
third party Prohibition candidate and

hereafter returned to the

Republican Party. The fusion-minded chairman of the Kansas
party, John Breidenthal , whose political career extended back
through the Union Labor Party to the original Greenback Party,
fl irted with socialism and then grudgingly became a Republican.
One of his mid-road opponents in Kansas, G. C. Clemens,
became the Social Democratic candidate for Governor in 1 900.
At Clemens' s opening campaign meeting, he was introduced by
another convert to socialism, Lorenzo Lewelling, the ex-Gov
ernor and former ardent fusionist. Jerry Si mpson went to New
Mexico, where he became a land agent for the Santa Fe Railroad.
Frank Doster, the socialist judge, became the Populist Chief
Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court after being attacked as a
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
"shabby, wild-eyed, rattle-brained fanatic" by William Allen
White, the Emporia editor. Doster's evenhanded decisions and
eloquent written opinions won the grudging respect and, even
tually, the freely acknowledged admiration of the Kansas bar.
In the new century, the courtly jurist had the satisfaction of
watching the slow evolution of William Allen White into a
Progressive, graceful l y accepted White's public apologies, and
remained an unreconstructed critic of many features of Amer
ican capitalism throughout his long life. Doster worked actively
for woman's sufrage in Kansas, considered the election of
Franklin D. Roosevelt a hopeful sign, and died in I g33 while
drafting agrarian reform legislation to help the increasing
number of tenant farmers in Kansas.
Julius Wayland developed the Appeal to Reason into the nation's
foremost socialist newspaper. One famed special edition of a
million copies required the labor of most of the citizens of
Girard, Kansas, to mail. Though a successful businessman as
well as an ardent socialist, Wayland ul timately lapsed i nto
despondency and committed suicide.
Marion Butler became a greenbacker and Wil l iam Al l en
became a mid-roader-at least feetingly. After Al len' s retire
ment from the Senate, he ul timately decided the policy of fusion
had been a mistake. He attended one of the fi nal, desperate
"reorganizing" meetings of mid-road Populists in Denver in
1 903 and then focused on his law practice. Marion Butler
declared his conversion to a fi at currency in one of his last public
addresses in the United States Senate. At the time, I gO l , Butler
knew he was a lame-duck Senator because Populist-Republican
fusion in North Carolina had fallen victim to Democratic ter
rorism in 1 8g8. In a massive campaign of white supremacy,
punctuated by gunfi re and arson, "the party of the fathers" had
been swept back into ofice that year. During Populism's last
stand in North Carolina in 1 900, two of Butler's old opponents,
Harry Tracy and "Stump" Ashby, came i nto the state in a vain
effort to help him combat the organized politics of white
supremacy. Butler was at that time one of the last surviving
Populist oficeholders in the South, and his conversion to the
greenback cause apparently was the fruit of his belated associ-
AFTERWORD
ation with Tracy, the third party's foremost monetary theorist.
Butler's break with the Democratic Party, which followed hard
on the heels of the lessons he leared in the fusion campaign
of 1 8g6, was permanent. He gradually became more liberal on
the race issue. Butler passed into the Southern Republican Party
in the new century and never thereafter came to terms with the
party of the fathers.
Tom Watson did. The frustration of his Populist years dogged
Watson through a hopeless I go8 campaign in which he served
as the last presidential candidate of the diehard Populist rem
nant. After more than a decade of stolen elections and what he
regarded as fusionist betrayal s, Watson became deeply embit
tered. He eventually blamed blacks, Catholics, and Jews for his
own, and the nation' s, political difculties. He became a violently
outspoken white supremacist, anti-Semite, and defender of the
Republic against the papal menace. In the twilight of a life
steeped in personal tragedy and blunted dreams, and consumed
at its end by the political malice he had developed as a battered
campaigner, Watson in I g20 won a surprisi ng victory and
became United States Senator from Georgia. He died in off ice in
I g2 2 . One other prominent Souther Populist, James "Cyclone"
Davis, had an almost identical political career. Alienated from
most of his fel l ow Populists in Texas because he was not
suff iciently alienated from the Democratic Party, Davis, a covert
Texas fusionist in 1 8g6 and an overt ohe in 1 8g8, made the full
return to "the party of the fathers" as the new century opened.
He became a prohibitionist and white supremacist, worked for
the Ku Klux Klan, and won election for one term as a Con
gressman in I g 1 6, taking the old seat that had been denied him
by " Harrison County methods" in 1 8g4. As late as I g39, the
white-bearded Davis could be heard on the streetcorners of
Dal las, making famboyant speeches on the need to control Wall
Street and the necessity of white supremacy.
Reuben Kolb in Alabama arid James . Weaver in I owa both
remained Bryan Democrats after 1 8g6. Weaver became the
Mayor of Colfax, I owa, and died in that ofce in 1 9 1 2 . Minne
sota; s Ignatius Donnelly enjoyed a minor career as a literary
fgure. Mann Page, the Virginia Populist, became one of the last
THE TRI UMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
presidents of the National Farmers Alliance and gradually and
reluctantly returned to the Democratic Party of Virginia. The
editorial spokesman of Virginia Populism, Charles Pierson, the
Oxfordian who edited the Virginia Sun, became a Debsian
socialist.
Many of the most renowed radical organizers of the Alliance,
relatively young men in the early cooperative days in the 1 880'S,
lived wel l i nto the twentieth century. South Dakota's Henry
Loucks was still writing antimonopoly pamphlets that extolled
the virtues of farmer cooperatives as late as 1 9 1 9. J. F. Wil lits,
leader of the Kansas Al liance, became a socialist. W. Scott Morgan
of Arkansas penned a brooding attack on the racial demagoguery
of the Souther Democracy and saw i t published as a novel in
1 904. ( I t must be said that Morgan's political instincts surpassed
his literary gifts. ) Joseph Manning, Alabama's relentlessly en
ergetic Populist, fought fusion to the bitter end in 1 896 and
then joined the rapidly shrinking Alabama Republican Party in
the midst of the politics of disfranchisement. He eventually
moved to New York, where on one occasion he was honored by
a black organization with whom he shared progressive political
sympathies. Like Morgan of Arkansas, Manning tried to energize
other white Americans to do something about the party of white
supremacy in the South. If Manning' s politics coalesced easily
with Morgan's, his book, The Fadeout of Populism, published in
1 92 2 , unfortunately also confrmed him as Morgan's equal as a
writer.
Henry Vincent spent his life as a printer, editor, and reformer.
I n the 1 920'S he received the support of a number of American
intellectuals and progressives, including John Dewey and Arthur
Garfeld Hays, in a new venture called The Liberal Magazine. His
brother Leopold, whose lyrics found their way into the Alliance
Songster during the hopeful days of the Alliance national organ
izing campaign in 1 890-9 1 , married a young woman of pro
gressive views and settled in Oklahoma. "Stump" Ashby, the
"famous agitator and humorist" and perhaps Populism' s most
eligible bachelor, also migrated to Oklahoma. He married a
daughter of the Comanche I ndian nation, and sired a large
family. Along with his old radical colleague, S. O. Daws, the
AFTERWORD
original "traveling lecturer" of the Al l iance, Ashby hel ped
organize the Oklahoma Farmers Union in the new century. A
rangy patriarch of the left whose oratorical pow

rs

nd hum

)r
brought him friends wherever he went, Ashby died In Octavia,
Oklahoma, in 1 923.
Wil liam Lamb became one of the most prosperous of all the
old radical organizers. Much of the land he acquired for his
Montague County farm became the site of the town of Bowie.
Though the early Montague cooperative gin and

ill
.
that he
and thirteen other Alliancemen helped underWrite In 1 886
collapsed because of lack of access to credit, eventually Lamb
was able to build a similar enterprise out of the proceeds of the
sale of town lots. "Lamb and Hul me, millers and ginners,"
established a modifed "sub-treasury" warehouse of their own
by permitting farmers to store their cotton without charg

while
awaiting higher prices. The fi rm did one of the largest busInesses
in the North Texas farming country unti l it was destroyed by
fre in the middle 1 890' S. In 1 906, Lamb's hybrid fruits won
prizes at the Fort Worth Exposition-though the aging boycotter
did not quite ful fl l the role of a gentleman farmer. Among
other things, he remained politically radical. Many small Amer
ican towns before World War II could claim one old iconoclast
whose political views had been shaped by bygone struggles. I n
Topeka, Kansas, his name was Frank Doster; i n Bowie, Texas,
his name was William Lamb.

2
But if the post-Populist careers of Henry Vi ncent, "Stump"
Ashby, Joseph Manning, and Henry Locks,
. .
among

any
others, testify to the endurance of the PopulIst VISIOn, and If the
twentieth-century careers of Tom Watson and "Cyclone" Davis
illustrate the vulnerability of that vision, the post-Populist career
of one other agrarian spokesman points to something else about
the American experience of even broader impl ication-the
extent to which the American ideas of progress and democracy
have been, and remain today, deeply disfgured by the enduring
stain of white supremacy.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
The most famous black orator in all of Populism was the third
party's state executive committeeman from Texas, John Rayner.
A schoolteacher in East Texas, Rayner organized a corps of
assistants to work for Populism i n black districts of the state. As
signs of progress appeared and Rayner's reputation grew among
third party men, he became a leader of the Texas People's Party
and ranked as an orator only behind two nationally known third
party men, James Davis and H. S. P. Ashby.
With the collapse of the third party in 1 896, and the advent
of black disfranchisement after the turn of the century, Rayner
faced long years of humiliation as a well-known public man
whose personal politics had become untenable in the changed
world of the new century. An organizer who had braved sniper
fre as well as physical assaults in the cause of Populism, Rayner
relinquished one by one the goals of the program of interracial
political action he had carried in the 1 890' s. By 1 904, after
repeated rebufs, he had been reduced to one goal, the cause of
private Negro education, which could only be supported by
wealthy white people in Texas. Gradually, desperately, Rayner
learned the language that would open this channel of commu
nication. It was a language of submission that at times neared,
i f it did not breach, the boundaries of personal abasement. With
these credentials, he raised funds for the "Farmers I mprovement
Society" and its agricultural school to keep Negroes down on the
farm. By 1 9 10 Rayner coul d draw what satisfaction was possible
from the knowledge that he represented "the right kind of
Negro thought" i n the opinion of those who shared in power in
Texas.
He returned to the Republican Party, and his old-time fi re
occasionally reappeared in angry letters about the racism of the
"Lily Whites. " In 1 9 1 2 , the ground for a free-thinking black to
stand upon in the South had narrowed to the vanishing point,
and Rayner accepted private humiliation rather than endure
the psychic cost of further ritual servility. He went to work for
John Kirby, a famous Texas l umber king, and spent the re
maining years of his life as a labor agent recruiting Mexican
peasants and transporting them to East Texas to work i n Kirby's
l umber mills. Rayner, a man who had spent his youth learning
AFTERWORD
the art of spoken and written persuasion, employing both in
political radicalism, and who in his middle years had acquired
the new art of spoken and written dissimulation, became in his
old age an instrument of exploitation of those having even
narrower options than himsel f. According to his descendants,
he died "very bitter." Rayner's private papers, which extend
over the period 1 904 to 1 9 1 6, provide a harsh insight into the
years following slavery i n which an aggressive white supremacy
triumphed politically in the United States and gave rise to the
settled caste system of the frst half of the twentieth century.
Before his death in 1 9 1 8, Rayner pronounced a one-sentence
judgment on the political system that had defeated him through
out his life. "The South," he said, "loves the Democratic Party
more than it does God. " However, it was not just the Democratic
Party that defeated him, i t was the culture itsel f.
3
I rony is the handmaiden of American radicalism, and the
sharpest ironies were reserved for Charles W. Macune. As the
Southern Mercury observed at the time, Macune, having no heart
for a radical third party, simply withdrew from the ranks of the
reformers in 1 892. He never returned. He lived i n the East for
a while and eventually went back to Waco, the scene of his frst
great triumph in 1 887 and his tactically decisive defeat at the
hands of Wil l iam Lamb i n 1 89 1 . He lived out his life in Texas
as a Methodist pastor, aided by his son in his fnal endeavor
ministering to the agrarian poor. I n 1 920, Macune deposited
his reminiscences of the Alliance years in the University of Texas
library in Austin. The fty-nine page mnuscript, as enigmatic
as Macune' s own career, raised more questions than i t answered.
He understood the nation's economy better than most Gilded
Age economists, and he understood the l i mits of the cooperative
movement better than other Alliance leaders. But he never
understood the radical political world of which he was a part,
or how he lost infl uence in the organization he had done so
much to build. Yet, more broadly than anyone else, he lived the
entire range of the massive agrarian attempt at self-help and
330 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
experienced in a most personal way the traumatic i mplications
of the political movement that grew out of that efort.
I n his own time, Macune's sub-treasury system was attacked
relentlessly, generally without intelligence, and almost always
without grace. His patient explanations were rarely printed and
almost never given a fai r hearing. Among historians, Macune' s
political traditional ism, his economic radicalism, and his recur
rent opportunism have combined to leave him with few admirers.
His cooperative methods have won a too-easy condemnation
from those who have not confronted the realities of the fnancial
system that both energized and defeated the cooperative move
ment in America.
By 1 889, those who understood the options best-and Macune
certainly more clearly than anyone else-knew that the Alliance
dream of a national federation of regional cooperatives was
untenable, because of the power and hostility of the American
fnancial community. The sub-treasury promised to save the
situation, and it did so as long as it remained merely the source
of economic possibility rather than the inspiration for a radical
third party. The operative life of the National Alliance, on its
own terms, xtended over a period of less than fve years, from
the announcement of the cooperative goal in the spring of 1 887,
through the shift t o reliance upon a government-supported sub
treasury system in 1 890, to the cooperative failures across the
nation in 1 890-92, and to its final service to farmers-as a
tactical aid in the creation of the People's Party. This core
economic experience of the National Alliance was Macune' s
experience more than any other man' s.
Macune' s own political weakness was the general weakness of
the Southern Democracy and reflected the environment i n which
both he and his conservative rivals matured. He had some
narrow horizons. Though his ambition for himself and the
Alliance encouraged him to lofty nationwide organizing strate
gies, he never understood the political drives of urban workers,
Western farmers, or black Americans. The men he gathered
around him in Washington-Terrell, Tracy, Sledge, Till man,
and Turner-were all Southerners, three from Texas, one from
Tennessee, and one from Georgia. Obsessed by the challenge
of freeing the Southern farmer from the crop l ien, Macune
AFTERWORD
33 1
performed with unusual creativity. But he oid not
.
habitu

l l y
thi nk in political terms beyond those of hiS own

mmedIate
environment, nor, as his actions in 1 892 reveal ed, did he have
the political courage of his economic convctions. His sec
.
tional
loyalty to the party of whi te supremacy sta1l1ed the meamng of
much of his work.
Yet, having said this, it is proper to add that Macune' s sub-
treasury system for the "whole class" was one
.
of te boldest and
roost i maginative economic ideas suggested 1 n1leteenth-cen
tury America. More signifcantly for the l
.
ng run, t

e sub
treasury plan rested upon a broad theoretical foundation re
garding the use of the nation's resources for the beneft of the
entire society. Macune' s plan was not a competely fawless
solution to the rigidity of a metallic currency, but I t not ony was
workable with simple modifcations, it was clearly superior to
the rigid doctrines of either goldbugs or silverites.
I n the words of a modern monetary specialist, the sub-treasury
plan was "a very subtle mechanism" which "si m
.
ultaneously
would have contended with the probl ems of fnanc1l1g cooper
atives, the seasonal volatility of basic commodity prices, the
scarcity of banking ofces in rural areas, the lack of a ' le

de

of
. last resort' for agriculture, ineficient storage and cros

-shlppl
.
ng,
the downward stickiness of prices paid by farmers IfUIf prices
received for crops, and the effects of the secular deflation
.
on
farmers' debt burdens, all of which, in a far less comprehenSIve
fashion, were the objects of legislation in the next f

e decades.
. . . I t would have achieved what its supporters claImed-real
income redistribution in favor of 'the producing classes. ' "*
I ndeed, the substance of the plan, beyond its conceptual basis,
was its practical response to the fnancial realities of an indus
trializing state and the new power relatiohships between
.
ba

kers
and non-bankers that those realities enshrined. On this hIghly
relevant topic, Macune was less rigid, or less culturally confn
:
d,
than almost all Gilded Age politicians and an overwhel m1l1g
majority of the nation's academic economists.
.
Whether in behalf of working Americans seek1l1g a home of
See "An Economic Appraisal of the Sub-Treasury Plan," by William P. Yohe.
in Goodwyn. Drlocratic Promise. pp. 57 1 -8 1 .
\
332 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
their own, or in the context of the health and Aexibility of the
national economy itself, the country has never found a way to
confront the enormous i mplications of fi nancial relationships
structurally geared to the self-interest of private, commercial
bankers. I t is only just to concede to Charles Macune the
signifcance of his aims, while detailing his failings. He was the
boldest single theorist of the agrarian revolt. He was also in
economic terms, one of the most creative public men of Gil+ed
Age America. But he was also a self-created victim of an awesome
pol
.
itcal irony: while he was tactically opposed to the political
aCtiVIsts among the Alliance founders led by Lamb, Daws, Jones,
and Ashby, he shared their theoretical interpretation of the ills
of the American version of capitalism. I ndeed, Macune's report
on the monetary system at St. Louis in 1 889 specifi cally and
repeatedly denounced the power that bankers exercised as a
"class. " acun

's ta

tical difculty was that, in the deepest

psychologIcal dImensIOn of his personal autonomy, he could not
bea
.
r where his economic analysis carried him in political and
SOCIal terms. Macune would fi t well, it may be seen, into the
culturally confi ned politics of the twentieth century.
Yet in spite of everything that befell him, including that which
he rought on himsel f, Charles Macune was representative of
an I mportant part of the spirit of the agrarian revolt. He
doubtless agreed with the prophetic warning delivered by S. O.
Daws, the father of the Alliance movement and the earliest
spokesman for the democratic vision that was to Aower into
Populsm. On the ev
.
e of the fi rst great lecturing campaign to
organIze the South m 1 887, Daws wrote: " I f the Alliance is
oestroyed, it will be some time before the people have confi dence
m thmse ves, and
.
o

e another, to revive it, or organize anything

ew. ThiS Popuhstlc prophesy, correct as i t has proven to be,

IS part of the legacy of the agrarian democrats to their descen
dants in the twentieth century.
A Critical Essay
on Authorities
Since the National Farmers Alliance and the People's Party were
sequential expressions of the same popular

ovement and the

same democratic cul ture, the gradual evolution of the cooper
ative crusade that generated both was the central component of
the agrarian revolt. This understanding came largely from
primary sources: early Alliance newspa
f
ers such as the Rural
Citizen Uacksboro), Southern Mercury, Amencan Nonconormzst, Kan
sas Farmer, Progessive Farmer, The Advocate, and the Ntzoal
Economist; later, the journals of the reform press assoCl

on
throughout the South and West, together with the survlvmg
private papers, organizing pamphlets, and books of such agrar
ian spokesmen as L. H. Weller, A. P. Hungate, S. O. Daws,
Henry Vi ncent, Charles Macune, W. Scott Morgan, Nelson
Dunning, L. L. Polk, S. M. Scott, John B. Rayner, Charles Pierson,
Thomas Cater, and Gasper C. Clemens, among others; papers
of key opponents of the agrarian organizing drive: ~J. Rose,
"Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, and James Hogg; manuscript collec
tions bearing on silver lobbying: William J ennings ryan,
.
Wil l iam
Allen, Marion Butler, I gnatius Donnelly, DaVIS Walt
:
,

nd
William Stewart; and, lastly, national, state, and local organIzation
records of the National Farmers Alliance and I ndustrial Union.
The response of the larger society to the farmers' movement
was visible in the nation's metropolitan press. These sources,
along with rural weeklies, unavoidably create a completely
334
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
restru:tured picture of the democratic dynamics of Alliance
Popul I sm. Such a restructuring inevitably leads to a drastic
reappraisal of the secondary literature of the agrarian revolt.
I nasmuch as John Hicks' s description of the movement has
been taken as a general guide to what happened, his pioneering

ork, The opulz

:
t Revolt,
.
has strongly infl uenced all subsequent
I

terpretatlo
.
ns IrreSpeCtive of point of view. Unfortunately,
SInce the AllIance cooperative movement was not seen by Hicks
as the core experience of the agrarian revolt, his lengthy work
?
n the shadow movement of free silver has had a crippling
Infuence on subsequent scholarship.
The idea of the shadow movement as the crux of the agrarian
r

volt governs both the most infuential attack on Popul ism,

Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, and its most ardent
defense, Norman Pollack' s The Populist Response to Industrial
Amerzca. Of the two, Hofstadter's study has been far more
pervasive in
.
it

i mpact.
.
Correctly fi nding the free silver argu
ments

f Wilham JennIngs Bryan and "Coin" Harvey to be

superfi Cial, Hofstadter persuasively indicts what he takes on
Hicksian terms, to be "Populism. " He fortifi es his ana
'
lysis
thr
?
ugh the creation of an elaborately crafted cultural category,
which he st
y
led "The Agrarian Myth. " Through this device,
Hofstadter I mputes to Populists a number of modes of sel f
analysis a

d national
.
political analysis that were wholly alien to
the actual InterpretatIOns American farmers achieved as a result
of thei
.
r cooperative struggle. While Hofstadter's misreading has
a qualIty of grandeur, the source of his difculty is not hard to
locate: he managed to frame his i nterpretation of the intellectual
content of Populism without recourse to a single reference to
the planks of the Omaha Platform of the People's Party or to
any of the economic, political, or cultural experiences that led
to the creation of those goals. I ndeed, there is no indication in
his text that he was aware of these experiences.
Populists are not "intransigents, " as they are to Hicks; to
Hofstadter, they are scarcely present at all. A Populist indictment
of cor

o_ate con

entration, for example, "reads like aJacksonian

plemlc. The dismay of Populists at the practices of American
railroad land syndicates and English and Scottish land companies
A CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
335
reveals the "anti-foreign" proclivities of people who viewed
themselves as "innocent pastoral victi ms of a conspiracy hatched
in the distance. " Given the large-scale centralization of land
ownership i n America in the decades i mmediately following the
agrarian revolt, one is persuaded that the lanp:oblems be

et
ting Populists originated a bit closer to home. Similarly, agrarian
reservations about the practices of "the town c1ique"-douts
arising from banker and merchant hostility to the cooperatlv
,
e
movement-are seen as providing evidence for Hofstadter s
conclusion that Populists sufered from misplaced "

nti-urban"
manias. For venturesome and creative students of Intellectual
history such as Richard Hofstadter,
.
the
.
shadow movem

nt of
free silver provided a shaky perspective, Indeed, from which to
i nterpret Popul ism.
. .
Similarly, Norman Pollack begins from premises laid d

wn by
Hicks and defends the silver crusade as "the last assertion of
Populist radical ism. " Since Populists we

e appalled by this pa

ticular assertion, Pollack cannot convenIently focus upon thlr

understanding of agrarian purposes. And he does not. WhIle
Hofstadter attacks Populism by emphasizing the ephemeral
politics of William Jennings Bryan, Pollack defends the mo

e
ment by defending the same man. Though Hofstadter eaSily
has the best of this discussion, it seems prudent to remember
that Bryan was not a Populist. As well as any other, this fact may
suggest how far afi el d the whole matter has been carried. The
cooperative dynamics that shaped the
.
Omaha Platform
.
and
created the democratic ethos of PopulIsm are not organIc to
either study.
There is, however, a noteworthy diference in the cultural
i mplications each author draws from the agrarian re

olt. On
.
those occasions when Pollack focuses solely on the Ideas of
Populism, as distinct from specifi c p

litical an
.
d cultu
:
al deve
opments presumed to be associated With those Ideas, hl
.
s analYSIS
of the constructive and egalitarian nature of the third party
crusade, including its greenback premise, seems unarguable. At
such times in The Populist Response to Industrial America the shadow
movement recedes into the background and Populism emerges.
I f, on the other hand, in all pertinent i nterpretive passages
THE TRI UMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
concer

ing "Populism" in The Age ofReorm, one substitutes the

wr proP
.
o
.
nents of a metallic currency" for the word "Pop

l I s
.
t, the CItIque drawn by Richard Hofstadter of the provin
CIalIsm

f GIlded Age America becomes much more precise and

persuasIve. Such a substitution, of course, alters the meaning of
the book at the l

vel of its premise, for The Age ofReform then

becomes a sweepIng criti
:
ism the Culture of the corporate
stat

rath
.
er th
.
an a sweepIng crItIcism of Populism. The demo
cratIc ratIOnalIty of bO
.
th major parties would then necessarily
fal l prey to Hofstadtenan skepticism.
Th
:
narrow l i mits of Populism that materialize from the work
of HI Cs,
.
H

fstadter, and Pollack have inevitably exerted a

constraInI ng Infuence on the Scores of studies that have sub
sequently materialized on various aspects of the agrarian crusade.
Because the centralIty of the cooperative movement has not
been understood, historians have found other causes for the
prese

ce or abse

ce of Populism in the various regions of

Amenca. Where strong third parties emerged, the cause has
most requently been seen to have been "hard times. " Where
they oId not,
.
the weakness of reform was traceable to diversifed
armIng leadIn

to "good h
.
arves

s" or, conversely, to temporary

Improvements I n commodIty pnces resulting from "poor har
vests. '
.
' op

lism has simply not been seen as a political movement

contaInIn
.
g Its own evolving democratic organization, capable of
constructIng a mass schoolroom of ideology and a mass cul ture
of self-respect.
Historians of socialist persuasion have encountered similar
problems. The Populist Movement in the United States by Anna
Rochester ( 1 943) broadly follows Hi cks's description of the
events of the a?Tar
.
ian revolt, as does Matthew Josephson, who
analyzed PopulIsm I n the Course of his broad study of the Gilded
Age, he Polztzcos ( 1 938) . In at least one instance, a sophisticated
an
.
d
.
tlghtl

fo
:
used local perspective has largely suceeded in
skI rtIng Hlckslan conceptual limitations: American Radicalism
1 865-1 901 ( 1
.
946) , h
.
ester
.
McArthur Destler's colorful portrai
of the PopUlIst-SoCIalIst allIance in Chicago in 1 894. It is the
fnest local treatment of the movement in all of Populist l i tera
ture.
A CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
337
Like their socialist counterparts, capitalist historians have
tracked the fndings of John Hicks, sometimes emb

llishing

heir
accounts of the shadow movement with Hofstadtenan founshes
and sometimes defending the silver episode in the style of
Pollack. Stanley B. Parsons subjects the Nebr

ska silverites

o
quantifcation techniques in a recent work entlted The Populzst
Context ( 1 973) ' I n From Populism to Progresszvzs

labama
( 1 969), Sheldom Hackney i mposes upon rather ImpreCIse and
sometimes almost opaque legislative documents a heavy burden
of ideological and political interpretation in the course of
reaching conclusions in harmony with
.
Hofstadter's .
.
The Climax
of Populism by Robert F. Durden ( 1 966) IS a
.
sympathetIc trea
.
tment
of Marion Butler's harried tenure as thIrd party custodIan of
the campaign for silver in 1 896. Those of his concl

si
?
ns tat
concerrt the efcacy of the silver drive accordingly cOInCIde
,
Ith
Pollack' s. In Populist Vanguard ( 1 975) , a study that

mphaSlZes
religious infuences more than monetary
.
analysls,
.
obert
McMath fnds a signifcant ingredient of agranan orgamzIng to
be the "congenial social settings" in which the farmers m
:
t. I n
Farmer Movements in the South ( 1 960), Theodore Saloutos mter
mittently observes the cooperative movement of the Alliance but
does not see its defeat as a central event. Rather, the Farmers
Al lianc is "undermined" by the People's Party.
Because the political basis of the national Populist movem
:
nt
has proven such a universal pitfall, several of the most mterestIng
and substantial studies of Populism have been produced by
cultural historians who were not primarily dealing with the third
party's structural and political evolution. In relating what Pop
ulists said to what they did, such writers as O. Eugene Clanton
and Walter T. K. Nugent, for example, have provided a much
clearer picture of the third party movement in Kansas. Clanto
.
n' s
Kansas Populism: Ideas and Men ( 1 969) concl udes that Popuhsts
were broadly progressive. Nugent, in his more sharply focused
study, The Tolerant Populists ( 1 963) , investigates the day-to-day
realities in the life of the third party in Kansas, tests all of
Hofstadter's major fndings, and fnds them inapplicable. Nugent
was doubtless aided in his inquiry by his fami l iarity with monetary
issues. His study of post-Civil War fnancial struggles, Money and
'
I
I
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
A:
n
erican Society, I 865-I 880 ( 1 967), probes a number of the
ddferences b

tween greenbackers, silverites, and gold bugs. Rob

ert Sharkey, IS even more authoritative on fi nancial matters in
Money, Class, and Party ( 1 959), but I rvin Unger's The Greenback
Era ( 1 964), proceeding from Hofstadterian premises, is much
narrower
.
and e

s useful in its description of greenback doctrines.

Allan Wemstem s Prelude to Populism ( 1 970) is a careful study of
the fi rst silver drive of
.
the I 870S, but the author unfortunately
:
elates

oney to late mneteenth-century politics in ways refect-

109 the mfuence of John Hicks.
Five worthy biographies of Populist leaders are now available:
C. Vann Woodward's Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel ( 2nd edition,
1 973) ; Chester McArthur Destler's Henry Demarest Lloyd and the
Empzre of Reorm
,
( I 963) ; Martin Ridge's Ignatius Donnelly: The
Portrazt of a Polztzczan ( 1 962) ; Stuart Noblin's Leonidas Lafayette
Polk:
,
Agranan Crusader ( 1 949), and Michael J. Brodhead's Per
seve
r
:ng Populzst: The Lif e o Frank Doster ( 1 969).
GlIded Age society,

arking as it does the beginnings of

modern corporate Amenca, ofers a fertile fi eld for research on
te struc

ur

.
of power and
.
privil

e in America. Among the

higher pnontles, the economIC, political , and social ramifi cations
of A,
?
erican banki ng practices, in both the nineteenth and

wentl
.
eth
.
centuries, stand as a singularly neglected area of
mvestIgatlon, one afecting hundreds of millions of Americans
past and present. The long-standard works on the origins ano
development of the Federal Reserve System have emanated from
the pens of gold-standard apostles who wrote the Federal
Reserve Act-J. Laurence Laughlin, H. Parker Willis and Paul
Warburg. Similarly, the most comprehensive studies or American
banking in historical literature are by Bray Hammond, an
empl
?
yee of "Th
.
e Fed. " This material can scarcely be said to
constitute a probmg or balanced body of evidence. A Monetary
Hz
story of the Unzted States, 1 867-1 960 by economists Mil ton
Fnedma

and Anna chwartz ( 1 963) approaches the politics of
money with extreme cIrcumspection, leaving many central issues
unto

ched. Money by John Kenneth Galbraith ( 1 975) is urbanely

s
.
keptlCal of a number of sanctioned assumptions and institu
tIOns-from the values and intelligence of American bankers to
A CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
339
the economic utility of the Federal Reserve System-bt the
author makes no sustained efort to formulate broadly a

plIcabe
alternatives. The subjects of money and banking, In th

lr
meaning as social and political realities as well as arcane
.
fi nanCIal
topics, do not seem to be in i m
.
mediate dnger obemg over
worked by American scholars. Smce Popul ism, senous and full
scale appraisals of the monetary system have not been attempted.
A beginning, however, has been made with respect to the
hel pless ness of Congress. The Money Committees by
.
Lester Salamon
( 1 974) probes the adverse i mpact
?
f the bankl

g syst

m
.
and
banker lobbying on, among other thIngs, the housmg aspiratIons
of mi llions of Americans.
. .
One also senses that women played a more promInent role 10
the agrarian revolt than the present st

dy suggests. The evidence

is both tantalizing in i mplication and difcult to gather. Suggeste
.
d
points of entry: the careers of Annie Diggs of Kansas, Soph:oma
Lewelling of Oregon, Bettie Gay of Texas, Luna Kelhe of
Nebraska, Ella Knowles of Montana, Sophia Hare

of outh
Dakota, and of course, the author of the famous mJunctIOn to
farmers to "raise less corn and more hell, " Mary Elizabeth Lease
of Kansas. Luna Kel l ie's epitaph for Populism suggests the depth
of her personal involvement: "I dared not even think of al l the
hopes we used to have and their bitter ending . . . and so I
never vote. "
Of the existing monographic literature, the best
.
single state
study of Populism remains A. M. Arnetts The Poulzst Move",
:
ent
in Georgia ( 1 92 2) , written before later mterpretIve

onstramts
were fashioned. Four recent studies are also of ment. I n
.
ne
Gallused Rebellion: Agrarianism in Alabama, 1 865-1 896, by W
.
I1ham
Warren Rogers ( 1 970), a work based on extensve use of pr

ar
sources, Alliance-Populism emerges as authentIC

man stnvm

,
and in Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest by WII lam Ivy
.
Hair
( 1 969), the third party's checkered
.
s

rugg e aga
.
mst the mher
itance of white supremacy in LOUISIana IS delIeated. Urba

Populism and Free Silver in Montana, b Thomas Clinch ( 1 970), IS
a careful study in a state where Populism was
.
a labor mo

me

t.
The grab-bag nature of the silver crusade IS clearly VISible In
Mary Ellen Glass's Silver and PoliTcs in Nevada: 1 892-1 902 ( 1 969)'
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
An older study by a political scientist, Roscoe Martin's The
People's Party in Texas ( 1 933) , is also useful . Populism and Politics
by Peter H. Argesinger ( 1 974) is excellent on the machination
othe fusio
.
nists
.
in Kansas but less so when the author, basing
hIs work prImarIly on Kansas sources, attempts to interpret the
movement beyond that state's borders.
Over al l , the best guides to the national Populist experience
reman the Populists themselves. Two thoughtful collections of
agrarIan thought are available: The Populist Mind by Norman
Pollack ( I
.
96
y
and A Popult Reader by George Tindall ( 1 966).
Al so useful I S The RhetOrIC of Southern Populists: Metaphor
and I magery in the Language of Reform, " by Bruce Pal mer, a
recently completed and as yet unpublished dissertation. For
those who want more of the Populists in unvarished form the
de

ression year of 1
.
894 brought forth Henry Demarest Llyd' s
antl

monopoly classIc, W

alth Against Commonwealth; Henry Vin

cent s deeply sympathetIc account of the plight of the unem
ployed, The Story oj the Commonweal, and, for those who can take
a combination of ful l-blown Populist rhetoric blended with a
tho

ghtful i

vesti
?

tion of the monetary system, there is James

H. Cyclone DavIs s A Polztzcal Revelation, containing a lengthy
supplement on the Sub-Treasury System by Harry Tracy.
Some xcellent wo

ks by specialists bear directly on the issues

?
f P
.
opullsm. Hans Bl rger Thorelli explores the rise of oligopoly
In hIS monumental study, The Federal Anti-trust Policy: Organization
oj an Amerzcan Tradztzon ( 1 955) . With the essential legal fanks
safe

uarded, the movement toward corporate concentration

contIn

ed uni mpeded into the moder era, as Ralph L. Nelson

shows I n The Merger a0vement in American Industr, 1 895-1 956
( 1
.
957) . WhIle t he JustIce Department was losing i t s battle t o cope
WIth the combination movement, the Interstate Commerce
Commission met a corresponding fate at the hands of American
railroads, a process detailed in Gabriel Kolko's Railroads and
Regulation, 1 877-1 9 1 6 ( 1 965) . Triumph oJ Conservatism ( 1 963) , by
the same author, traces the similar accommodations to large
scale manufacturers,
.

erchandisers, and processors by the

Federal Trade CommIssIOn and to Eastern commercial banks by
the Federal Reserve System. The social impact of the emerging
A CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITI ES
corporate state is brilliantly interpreted in Work, Culture, and
Society in Industrializing Amprica, by Herbert Gutman ( 1 9?5)

.
.
In the presence of consolidating corporate power, the fragility
of the American labor movement is visible in Norman J Ware's
old but still useful study of the Knights of Labor, The Labor
Movement in the United States, 1 860-1 895 ( 1
9
2
9
) . The analogous
plight of Southern farmers under the crop lien system is effec
tively portrayed by Harold Woodman in Kin Cotton and Hzs
Retainers: Financing and Marketzng the Cotton Crop of the South,
1 800-1 9
'
5 ( 1 968). However, in a work that treats the problem
of agricultural credit in the Western granary, v0ney at Interest
( 1 955) , Allan Bogue engages in a somewhat straIned defense of
the policies of mortgage comp
.
anies. Th

matter of ten
.
ancy and
land centralization in the plaInS states I n both the nIneteenth
and twentieth centuries can bear some more attention.A relevant
body of evidence is available in Fred A. Shannon, "The Status of
the Midwestern Farmer in 1 900," Mississippi Valley Hzstorzcal
Review ( December 1 950) , 49 1 -5 1 0. I n a recent study, The Sadow
oj Slaver: Peonage in the South, 1 901 -1 969 ( 1 972) ,
.
Pete Damel has
provided a valuable example of what can be achlev

d on most
relevant and long-neglected subject. The conservatIve ratIonale
for rural poverty-that farmers brought thei
.
troubles on them
selves through "overproduction"-is efectIvel

d

bunked by
two economists, an economic historian and a histOrIan, respec
tively: Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind o,Freedom:
The Economic Consequence oj Emancipation ( 1 977) , whICh reveals
the harshness of the crop lien system; Stephen DeCanio, "Cotto

'Overproduction' in Late Nineteenth Century Southern AgrI
culture, " Journal of Economic History (Sept. 1 973) , 608-33; a

d
Thomas D. Clark, "The Furnishing and Supply System In
Southern Agriculture since 1 865," Journal of Southern
.
Hi
:
tor
( Feb. 1 946) , 24-44' The historical record of t
.
he cooper

tIve Idea
is presented in The Rise of American Cooperatzve Enterprzse ( 1 969)
by Joseph Knapp.
The passing of the People's Party i n Am
.
e
.
rica left the way
clear in the South for the achievement of politIcal hegemony by
businessmen. In The Shaping of Southern Politics ( 1 974), an

ffec
tively documented work that probes the process by whIch a
342 THE TRIUMPH OF THE CORPORATE STATE
white supremacist, business-dominated "Solid South" was con
structed, J. Morgan Kousser traces the near-total disfranchise
ment of blacks and the partial disfranchisement of low income
whites. The new edifice of politics was fully completed by 1 9 1 0.
The same forces were at work nationally, a process that is often
visible in The American Party Systems, edited by William N.
Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham. Should any future his
torian harbor Hofstadterian doubts that the grievances of Pop
ulists and the objectives of the Omaha Platform were real, the
work of these specialists may give him pause.
Finally, the unique contribution of C. Vann Woodward merits
special mention. While concerned with a larger topic, Wood
ward' s classic study of the post-Reconstruction South, Origins of
the New South ( 1 95 1 ) , is laden with insights about the political
evolution and cul tural i mplications of Southern Populism. The
chief l imitation of Woodward's analysis is traceable to the
regional scope that was a product of his larger purpose-which
was not to write about the agrarian revolt in the nation but to
write about the American South in the Gilded Age. Woodward's
essential cultural statement about Southern Popul ism, that it was
demonstrably more humanistic than its political rivals, applies
to American Populism. His essential political statement about
Southern Populists, that they were "mid-roaders," also, of course,
applies to the national movement. Despite a number of i mpe
di ments in the secondary literature relating to the origins of the
cooperative movement and the evolution of Alliance monetary
theory, Woodward, while not locating the centrality of cooper
ation or the movement culture it created, drew attention to the
Al liance lecturing system and the National Reform Press Asso
ciation developed by agrarian strategists as necessary educational
corollaries of their organizing campaign. Accordingly, he had
little difculty in outlining the structure of Populist economic
reform and the corresponding ephemerality of the silver issue.
In short, in economic as well as political terms, Woodward' wrote
about Populism as Populism, rather than as the fusion politics
of free silver. And, of course, Woodward's magnifcent biography
of the tortured life of Tom Watson is one of the enduring
tri umphs of American historical literature and, indeed, of
American letters.
Index
Abolitionists, 5-6
Advocate, The, 1 06, 1 1 7, 206, 21 1
Agricultural Wheel, 1 07-8
Alabama, 58-59, 67, 1 02, 12 I ,
1 44-45, 1 81n, 1 82, 1 87, 1 93

200,
206; cooperative movement m, 73;
campaigns i n, 1 88, 225-27
Allen, William Y
.
, 244, 324;
emergence as silver spokesman,
21 9-22, 239; role i n 1 896
convention, 257-62
American Bi metallic Lea
!
ue:
forme
a, 21 7-1 8; lobbymg
campaign of, 238-39, 245-49;
appraisal of, 3 1 0-1 2
.
American cultural presumptIOnS,
97-103. See also Introduction.
American Federation of Labor, 1 1 7,
1 74
American journalism, 288-90
American Nonconforrmst, 62-63, 1 1 7,
1 54, 1 75, 206-8, 244,
.
250
.

American reform tradItIOn; ongms

of modern parameters, 283-84,
286-90
Appeal To Reason, 206, 324
Appomattox, 3, 7, 21
Arena, 1 7 I
Arizona, 1 1 5
99
Arkansas, 1 8, 58, 107, I 96, 98-
Ashby Harrison Sterling Pnce,
84-85, 1 07-8, 146, 1 55, 1 92, 204,
252, 256, 262, 324-27
Atlanta Constituton, 1 89
Baker, William, 1 37-38
.
Bankers: lobbying actIVIties of,
1 0-12, 267-70, 31 7; removed from
political visibility, 267
Beaumont, Ralph, 1 1 7, 138, 1 54
Bellamy, Edward, 1 76-77
Black Americans, 3-5, 7, 23, 25, 1 01 ,
1 1 8-23, 328-29; organizing
i mpediments faced by,
.
1 22-23;
during politics of 1 890 s, 1 88-89
"Bloody shirt," 6, 1 5, 1 8-1 9, 1 3 1-32,
1 37_38, 21 0, 280-83. See also
Sectionalism.
Breidenthal, John, 1 84, 323
Brian, Hardy, 1 94-9?
Bryan, Wi lliam Jennmgs, 1 83,
221 _22, 244, 247, 3 1 911; elected to
Congress, 143; as mo

etary
theorist, 21 6-1 8; receIves
Democratic nomination, 254-55;
and Populist nomination, 262;
during 1 896 campaign, 269-85
Burkitt, Frank, 1 62-63
Burrows, Jay, 1 39, 1 41 , 3 1 1
Butler, Marion, 1 7 1 , 1 99, 206, 239,
274-75, 324
Byron, Thomas, 237-38, 243-44
j
344
Califoria, 1 82, 1 86, 253, 308
Cameron, Andrew, 93
Campbell, Alexander 1 4, 93
Carey, Henry, 1 4
Chicago, 1 02-3
Choctaw County Messenger, 1 62
Civil War, 3-4, 1 0-1 1
Clebure Demands, 44-53
Clemens, G. C. , 323
Cleveland, Grover: elected i n 1892
200; unpopularity of, 228
'
Clover, Ben, 64, 1 29-30, 1 32, 1 38
Colorado, 1 1 5, 1 82, 1 84-85
Colored Farmers National Alliance,
1 1 8-23
Cooperatives, cooperation. See
movement culture.
Coxey's Army, 208
Credit merchants, practices of,
20-27, 72-73
"Crime of ' 73, " 1 6-1 7, 3 1 0-1 1
Crop lien system, 20-27, 72-87
Currency, currency contraction,
8-1 5, 207-8
Dakota Territory, 1 04-5, 1 1 3
Dallas News, 53, 8 1
Darrow, Clarence, 272
Davis, james H. "Cyclone," 1 1 6, 1 86,
1 92-93, 206, 325
Davis, john, 1 38
Daws, S. 0. , 298, 326; as "first
Populist ," 26-29; as organizational
tactician, 42-43; during Southern
organizing campaign, 58; during
mId-road crusade, 25 1 , 253; his
admonition on democracy, 332
Debs, Eugene, 1 75, 250-5 1 , 256,
262, 272, 292
Delaware, 1 1 5
Democratic Party, 1 8: postwar
composition of, 4-6; business
inAuence in, 7-8; sectional politics
in, 1 00-1 0 I ; decline of, i n West,
224-25, 232; decline of, i n South,
226-27, 232; in 1896 campaign,
278-79; appraisal of, 3 1 2-320
Department of Agriculture: i nAated
INDEX
statistics of, 69-70; corporate
domi nation of, 3 1 6
Dewey, john, 326
Donnelly, I gnatius, 1 65, 1 67, 1 73,
208, 228, 255-56, 262, 325; skeh
of, 105-6
Doster, Frank, 2 1 2, 323-24, 327
Dunlap, Andrew, 37, 40, 42
Farm Bureau Federation, 3 1 6
Farm Security Admi nistration, 3 1 6
Farmers AlIi
'
ance, National Farmers
Alliance and I ndustrial Union
Farmers and Laborers Union f
America, National Farmers
Alliance and Cooperative Union:
formed, 25; early recruiting by,
27-32; early movement appraised,
32-35; interr.al efect of movement
culture upon, 45-46, 53-54;
Southern organizing campaign by,
58-60; cooperative movement,
political i mpact of, 67-69; Wester
organizing campaign by, 63-66,
87-89; merger attempts of,
1 08-1 3; national organizing
campaign by, 1 1 5-24; conventional
politics in, 1 25-26, 1 39-45;
insurgent politics, i n 1 29-39;
politicization of, 1 45-64, 1 67-73;
as defender of Populism, 252-54;
appraisal of, 298-3 1 0
Farmers Mutual Beneft Association
1 03-4, 1 07, 1 1 3, 1 80
'
Federal Reserve Act, 267-69
Field, james G. , 1 72, 2 1 0, 260
Fisher, Willard, 266, 270
Florida, 58, 67, 88, 1 44, 1 6 1 , 1 96-98
Furnishing merchants, advancing
merchants. See credit merchants,
Fusion, fusionists: rationale of,
23 1 -34; campaign of, 237-49,
254-63. See also American
Bi metallic League, William H.
Harvey, Silver Democrats, Silver
Republicans, National Silver Party,
Shadow Movement, Northwestern
Farmers Al l iance.
I NDEX
Gaines, Thomas, 206, 306-7
Georgia, 58, 73, 88, 92, 1 44-45, 1 50
1 55, 1 59-60, 1 63, 1 81 n, 1 82, ' 1 93,
200, 206, 308; campaigns in,
1 88-90; 227-28, 285
Godkin, E. L. , 209-1 0, 3 1 4
Gold, Gold Democrats, Gold
Republicans, 9-1 0, 1 6, 200, 22 1 ;
appraisal of, 3 1 2
Gompers, Samuel, 1 1 7, 1 74, 250
Gould, Jay, 35-36, 4 1-42
Grange (Patrons of Husbandry), 32,
59, 72, 1 98
Great Southwest Strike, 35-36,
4 1 -42, 1 92
Greenbacks, Greenback Party,
greenbackism, fat money, Aexible
monetary system, 9-1 9, 26, 1 07,
1 27-28, 1 79, 201 , 277: i n Clebure
Demands, 48-49; ideological
ascendancy of, in agrarian
movement, 84-8; i n sub-treasury
system, 90-93; as ideological
barrier to fusion, 228-45, 25 1-58;
appraisal of, 301 -2, 33 1 -32
Hanna, Mark, pioneers modern
political methods, 270-7 1 , 278-84,
3 1 9n, 32 1
Harrison, Benjamin, 8, 1 38
Harvey, William H. "Coin": hired as
silver publicist, 2 1 7, 239; strikes
lobbying bonanza, 245-46;
attacked by "gold bugs," 266
Hogg, james, 147, 1 52-55, 1 59, 1 92
Howard, Milford, 260
Humphrey, R. M. , 1 1 9-20, 1 46
Idaho, 1 1 5
I ndiana, 1 1 5, 1 86
Illinois, 99, 1 03-4, 1 06, 1 1 3, 1 28,
1 82, 1 86
Ingalls, John j. , 1 3 1 , 1 38
I nternal communications network
(Alliance lecturing system and
National Reform Press
345
Association): pre-Alliance version
of, 63, 1 06; i n Kansas, 63-64, 1 06,
1 29-3 1 , 1 35-36; i n Texas, 78-87,
1 52-53; in South, 1 58-63; in
nation, 1 66n, 206-1 2; interpreted,
300-308; absence of, in
Northwestern Alliance, 1 65-67
Iowa, 1 8, 99, 1 28, 1 65-66, 1 82,
1 86-87
Jacobin, 306-7
Jeferson, Thomas, 7, 39, 1 9 1 , 3 1 9,
3 1 9n
Jones, Evans, 51 -52, 77-78, 86,
1 07-8, 1 24, 1 28, 1 50, 1 54-55, 1 92,
249
Jones, james K. , 258-59, 261
Kansas ( as organizational model for
West), 1 8, 58, 92, 1 08, 1 1 0, 1 1 3,
1 26, 1 28, 1 32, 1 72, 1 79, 1 81 n, 1 82,
243: early greenbackism in, 1 8;
arrival of Alliance i n, 63; early
"economic consciousness" in, 64;
early "political consciousness" in,
65-66; large-scale cooperation in,
87, 89, 1 06, 1 40, 304-5; political
insurgency in, 1 29-39; sectional
politics in, 1 3 1 -32, 1 37-38;
movement culture in, 1 35-36;
politics of sub-treasury in, 1 66n;
1892 campaign in, 1 83-84; reform
press ir, 206; 1894 campaign in,
223-25; 1 896 campaign in,
276-77, 285; appraisal of. 308,
3 1 0-1 2. See also Movement culture;
Internal communications network.
Kansas Commoner, 1 06, 1 1 7
Kansas Farmer, 1 06, 1 1 7
Kellogg, Edward, 1 3-1 4, 92
Kem, Omar, 1 39, 1 4 1 , 143, 1 83
Kentucky, 58, 1 79
Knights of Labor, 39, 1 07-8, 1 1 5,
1 23, 1 92; Gould recognition as
organizing tool of, 35-36;
strikebreakers as seminal problem
for, 41 -42, 1 1 7-1 8, 1 74-76;
farmer-labor coalitions, cultural
obstacles to, 1 0 1-2, 1 77-79, 297
Knowles, Ella, 1 85
Kolb, Reuben, 1 45, 1 88, 225-27, 325
Land centralization: discussed,
268-69; cultural implications of
3 1 5-1 7
'
Large-scale cooperation: envisioned
by Macune, 57; early eforts in, 74;
major efort i n, 75-83; struggle
agamst Jute trust, 87-89; setback
in, 89; expansion of, 87, 89, 1 06,
1 40,
.
304-5; appraisal of, 303-1 0
Laughhn, J. Laurence, 266-67 3 1 4
321
' ,
Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 1 70, 339
Lenin, V. I. , 306
Lewelling, L. D., 1 83-84, 209, 323
Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 24 1 , 256
Long, Huey, 1 94
"Lost Cause," 6-7, 1 5, 1 88-96,
286-87. See alo Sectionalism.
Loucks, Henry, 1 08, 1 24, 1 28,
1 65-6, 298; experiments in large
scale cooperation, 1 04-5; elected
Alliance president, 202; post
Populist career of, 326
Louisiana, 88, 1 82, 200: campaigns
m, 1 94-96
Macune, Charles, W. , 89, 1 04,
1 48-58, 1 65-67, 1 77, 1 88, 267-68;
sketch of, 5 1 -53; envisions large
scale cooperatIOn, 57; initiates
Southern organizing campaign,
58-{0; resists third party, 67-69,
85; dunng cooperative struggle of
1 888, 74-87; orginates sub
tre

sury system, 90-93; during

natIOnal organizing campaign,
1 07-1 6, 1 24; trapped by politics of
su
.
b-treasury, 1 47-58; swept into
third party, I 68-{9; defects to
Democrats, 201-3; culmination of
INDEX
rivalry with Lamb, 204-5;
appraisal of, 329-32
Manning, Joseph, 244, 253, 326
Marx, Karl, 3 1 8
Mason, George, 3 1 9
McKinley, William, 254, 264; i n 1 896
campaign, 270, 275-82
McLallin, Stephen, 1 06, 1 3 1 , 1 69-70
2 1 1 , 243
'
Michigan, 1 1 5, 1 86, 244
Mid-road Populism, mid-roader:
"mid-road" defned, 23On;
rationale of, 23 1 , 234-37;
campaign of, 249-63
Minnesota, 5, 1 05-6, 128, 1 65, 1 67,
182, 1 86-87
Mississippi, 58, 88, 1 22, 1 61 -62,
1 81n, 200
Missouri, 58, 1 79
Montana, 1 1 5, 185
Morgan, W. Scott, 1 24, 237, 253, 326
Movement culture (Populism):
emerges, as individual political

elf-respect, in Daws, 26-27; and

U Lamb, 28-29; and as collective
self-confdence, in Alliance
members, 30, 32-35; expressed
politically: by Lamb, 38-40; by
Alliance lecturer, 4 1 ; by Evan
Jones, 42; i n Daws formula for
politics, 42-44; impact of, 45-50,
53-54; Macune's consolidation of
57-58; mass appeal of, 58-{0;
,
absence of, in Kansas, 60; arrival
of, in Kansas, 63-66;
organizational tensions within
67-69; economic background
'
of, in
West, 69-72; and in South 72-73'
facilitates large-scale coope
'
ration,
'
74; de

ocratic implications of,

75-80; Ideological culmination of
84-87, 91 -93; Southern and
'
Western manifestations of, 87-89;
Texas setback of, 89; sectional and
cultural resistance to, 99-1 02;
absence of, i n Northwestern
Alliance, 1 03; begi nni ngs of, in
Il hnOls, 1 03-4; growth of, in
Dakota, 1 04-5; and in Minnesota,
1 05-{; national momentum of
1 08-1 2; and resistance to, 1 1 3;
INDEX
analysis of, 1 1 4-1 5; national
growth of, 1 1 5-24; process of
politicization begins, 1 27-39,
144-45; deviance from, 1 39-44;
model for politicization created,
1 45-58; exported to South,
1 58-63; and to National Alliance,
I 64-{5, 1 67-{9; continued absence
of, in Northwestern Alliance,
1 65-67; Southern resistance to,
1 70-7 1 ; national political forms of,
1 74-206; as expressed by reform
editors, 206-1 2; shadow form of,
2 1 5-22; varied assertions of, i n
1894, 223-29; final assertion of,
234-37, 24 1 -45, 245-54; corporate
opposition to: by silver lobby,
238-39, 245-46; by silver
politicians, 239-41 , 246; by
goldbugs, 265-73, 279-83;
deteriorati ng morale within,
274-78; destruction of, 285;
evaluation of, 293-3 10. (Over 1 00
citations of various developments
relating to the evolution of the
movement culture of Populism are
listed on p.
'
7 1 3 of Goocyn,
Democratic Promise. )
National Economist, 90, 1 1 7, 1 22; as
schoolroom of monetary theory,
9 1 -93, 1 1 2-1 3
National Farmers Alliance and
Industrial Union. See Farmers
Alliance.
National Silver Party, 249-50, 278
National Reform Press Association,
1 1 6, 206, 307-8; role in movement
summarized, 206-1 2; rallies to
Omaha Platform, 242-45; collapse
of, 288. See also American
jouralism.
National Watchman, 2 1 8, 237, 24 1 ,
250
Nebraska, 1 28-29, 1 81n, 23 1 ;
creation of shadow movement in,
1 39-44, 1 82; 1892 campaign in,
1 83; further development of
shadow movement in, 2 1 6-22;
1894 campaign in, 222; 1 896
campaign in, 285; appraisal of,
3 1 0-1 2
Nevada, 1 85, 2 1 5-1 6
New Jersey, 1 1 5
New Mexico, 1 1 5
New York, 1 1 5
New York Times, The, 1 73
New-York Tribune, 1 89
347
North Carolina, 58, 73, 128, 132,
1 7 1 , 1 82, 206; campaigns i n, 1 99,
285
North Dakota, 128, 1 40, 1 44, 1 79,
1 82, 1 84
Northern Pacifc Railroad, 7 1
Northwestern Farmers Alliance:
formed, 1 03, resists merger
attempts, 1 1 3, 1 28; agrarian
organizing, adverse efect upon,
139-44, 1 80, 1 82, 1 86-87; terminal
illness of, 1 67; as precursor of
shadow movement, 222; appraisal
of, 3 1 0-1 2
Norton, S. F., 262
Nugent, Thomas, 1 91 -93, 249, 277
Omaha Platform: origins of, 55;
substance of, 86-87; preamble to,
1 67-68; formal creation of, 1 72; as
obstacle to fusion politics, 1 79,
230-45, 25 1-58; defended by
reform editors, 2 1 1 -1 2; and by
Populists, 228-29; role i n
movement culture, 277, 293-3 1 0
Oregon, 67, 1 1 5, 1 82, 1 86
Otis, John, 1 29, 1 36-38
Page, Mann, 325-36
Park, Milton, 252
Patrons of Husbandry. See Grange.
Pefer, William, 1 06, 1 70, 253, 323
Pennsylvania, 1 1 5
People's Party, assessed in context of
agrarian revolt, 293-3 1 0. See also
Movement culture, National
Farmers Alliance and I ndustrial
Union, Omaha Platform, Knights
of Labor, National Reform Press
Association.
People's Party Paper, 1 6 1 , 1 64, 206,
250
Perdue, J. M. , 59, 86, 1 07-8, 1 46,
1 55, 1 92, 249
Pierson, Charles, 326
Pinkerton's, 1 75. See also Knights of
Labor.
"Politics of Sub-treasury," as
instrument of politicization:
development of, 1 45-58; exported
l South, 1 58-63; as employed in
Kansas and West, 1 66n; appraisal
of, 301-7
Polk, L. L. , 59, 73, 83, 88, 1 1 5-1 6,
1 23-24, 1 50, 1 6 1 , 1 63, 1 66-73,
1 99; role in movement culture,
277; sketch of, 1 32-38
Powderly, Terence, 1 07, 1 74
Powers, John, 1 66
Progessive Farer, 1 1 7, 1 32-33, 206,
253
Rayner, John B. : as organizer, 1 93;
role in movement culture, 277;
post-Populist career of, 328-29
Republican Party, 200; postwar
composition of, 4-6; business
influence in, 7-8, 1 4, 1 8; sectional
politics in, 99-1 00, 1 3 1 -32,
1 37-38; agrarian efort against,
1 03-6; in 1896 campaign, 270,
273, 278-84; appraisal of, 3 1 2-20
Rightmire, W. F., 1 35
Rockefeller, John D. , 235
Rogers, John, 1 06 .
Rogers, J. N. , 37, 40-42, 47
St. Louis Platform (of 1 889), 1 07-9
Sectionalism, sectional politics: as
dominant factor in post-Civil War
politics: 4-8, 1 5, 1 8-1 9, 1 1 3, 201 ;
as employed in 1890, 1 31 -32,
1 37-38; in 1892, 1 86-96, 201 , 2 1 0;
superseded by corporate culture i n
1 896, 280-83, 286-90
INDEX
Shadow Movement: pre-conditions
for, 1 28-29, 1 39-44, 1 80, 1 82,
1 87; development of, 2 1 6-22,
23 1 -34, 237-49, 254-63; appraisal
of, 3 1 0-1 2
Shuffer, J. J. , 1 1 9
Silver Democrats, 1 8, 233, 238,
248-49
Silver Republicans, 233, 238
Simpson, Jeremiah, 6 1 , 1 24, 1 37-38,
1 46, 1 70, 1 80: pessimism of, 60,
63; optimism of, 60, 1 06; acquires
nickname, 1 1 6; elected to
Congress, 1 38; defeated in 1894,
224; edges toward pro-silver
position, 228; supports Bryan, 255;
post-Populist career of, 323
Smith, Adam, 3 1 8
Socialists, 290-93
South Carolina, 58, 88, 1 2 1 -22, 145,
1 8 1n, 1 82, 1 96-97
South Dakota, 67, 69, 1 28, 1 40, 1 44,
1 79, 1 82, 1 84, 308
S au/hem Mercury, Dallas Mercury, 4 1 ,
47, 73, 85, 1 1 7, 1 22, 1 56, 1 75, 1 93,
206, 229, 248, 250-5 1
Standard Oil Trust, 235
Sub-Treasury Land and Loan
System: originated by Macune,
90-93; outlined in 1889, 1 09-1 3;
appraisal of, 301 -7, 33 1
Taubeneck, Herman E. , 1 64, 1 69,
1 80: sketch of, 240-41 ;
recommends abandonment of
Omaha Platform, 228-29;
campaigns for silver, 237-49;
wreckage of fusion strategy,
254-55
Tenantry, summarized, 297-98
Tennessee, 58-59, 1 44, 1 6 1 , 1 82,
1 96-98
Texas (as organizational model for
South): early greenbackism in, 1 8;
migration to, 25; origins of
Alliance movement in, 25-32;
emergence of radicalism in, 32-69;
large-scale cooperation in, 74-87;
politicization in, 1 45-57;
I NDEX
movement culture in, 1 57-58,
249-52; campaigns in, 1 90-93,
223, 285; appraisal of, 308-9. See
also Movement culture; I nteral
communications network.
Tillman, Ben, 1 45, 1 60-61 , 1 7 1 , 1 82;
destroys South Carolina Alliance,
1 96-97; becomes silverite, 238
Topeka Daily Capital, 1 3 1 -32
Tracy, Harry, 83, 1 46, 1 52, 1 55, 249,
3 1 8, 324-25
Union Labor Party, 1 3, 1 8-1 9, 63,
85, 1 27-28, 1 3 1
Van Wyck, Charles, 1 4 1
Vincent, Cuthbert, 62, 1 70
Vincent, Henry, 1 0 1 , 1 24, 1 29, 1 54,
1 70, 208, 3 1 9n; sketch of, 61 -66;
coordinates newspaper alliance,
1 06; as cooperative advocate, 66,
1 40; post-Populist career of, 326
Vi ncent, James, 62
Vincent, Leopold, 62, 326
Vi rginia, 1 2 1 -22, 1 82, 1 98
Wade, Melvin, 1 93
Waite, Davis, 1 85, 228, 246
Wardall, Alonzo, 1 04-6, 1 65, 298
Washington (State of, 1 1 5, 1 82,
1 85-86
Watson, Tom, 1 24, 1 60-61 , 1 72,
1 88-90, 227, 245, 253, 257, 262;
supports Alliance in jute war, 88;
struggles with Livingston, 1 59-6 1 ;
campaigns of, 1 88-90, 227;
upholds Omaha Platform, 228;
nominated for Vice President, 259;
during 1896 campaign, 274-78;
role i n movement culture, 277;
post-Populist career of, 325
Warner, A. J. , 239
Wayland, Julius, 324
349
Weaver, James B. , 1 72, 20 I , 325; as
greenbacker, 239; as silver
advocate, 239; as silver st rategist,
244; advocates "synthentic force,"
247; at 1896 Populist convention,
257-59
Weller, Luhman, 1 8-1 9
West Virginia, 1 1 5
Whitman, Walt, 3, 9
Willits, John F. , 1 36, 1 38, 326
Wisconsin, 1 1 5, 1 82, 1 86-87
Working class, 4-5; brief analysis of,
1 74-79
HISTORY
NYPL

3 3333 17513406 9
Lawrence Good\ Ic Promise,
hailed as the defl &A1* -_ < < = &= by scores of
reviewers and described as a sweeping reinterpretation of pol itical
l ife in modern America, is presented here in a condensed version for a
general audience. At the heart of this study is a central issue - the
practical definition of such ideas as "freedom" and "democracy"
when they are confronted with the complicated set of val ues that the
author call s the "received culture" of the Western world. Goodwyn
offers new political language designed to provide a fresh means of
assessing both democracy and authoritarianism today. American
Popul ism provides a perspective for this analysis because the agrarian
revolt was the largest and most intense mass democratic movement in
American history. The defeat of the Populists, coupled with the in
abil ity of twentieth-century Americans to generate an equivalent
wide-ranging democratic movement, has had profound impact i n our
own times.
( th b of the on ina) pditio
.
"For a moment -the 'popul ist moment' Professor Goodwyn refers to
-the nation hel d its breath and tried to fgure out what kind of nation
it would be . . . Lawrence Goodwyn has given us a potential boost
toward col lective self-examination at a time when we need just that."
Robert Col es, The New Yorker
"A comprehensive history . . . bri l l iant. The concluding chapter called
, The Irony of Popul ism ' is a l'cid essay which by itsel f is a major
sttement . . . about modem American society."
Walter T. K. Nugent, journal of American History
"A history of Popul ism that wil l be the new standard against which al l
future efforts must be measured. "
Robert Rosenstone, The Progressive
"There is more to be learned in this book about the Popul ist party than
in any other one volume . . . It distinguishes between a shadow
movement that was a caricature and the reality that deserves respect.
. . . The book makes it more dificult to discredit any mass protest
against existing institutions by label ing it 'Popul ist. ' "
C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books
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