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TEXTBOOK EDITION

THE YALE CHRONICLES
OF AMERICA SERIES
ALLEN JOHNSON
EDITOR
GERHARD R. LOMER

CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
ASSISTANT EDITORS

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THE
AGRARIAN CRUSADE

A CHRONICLE OF
THE FARMER IN POLITICS
BY SOLON J. BUCK

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TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO.
NEW YORK: UNITED STATES PUBLISHERS
ASSOCIATION, INC.

Copyright, 1920, by Yale University Press

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

Rapin growth accompanied by a somewhat painful
readjustment has been one of the leading charac-
teristics of the history of the United States during
the Jast half century. In the West the change has
been so swift and spectacular as to apprsach a com-
plete metamorphosis. With the passing of the
frontier has gone something of the old frsedom and
the old opportunity; and the inevitabie change has
brought forth inevitable protest, particularly f:om
the agricultural class. Simple farming communi-
ties have wakened to find themselves complex in-
dustrial segions in which the farmers have fre-
quently lost their former preferred position. The
result has been a series of radical agitations on
the part of farmers determined to better their lot.
These movements have manifested different de-
grees of coherence and intelligence, but all have had
something of the same purpose and spirit, and all
may justly be considered as stages of the still

PREFACE

unfinished agrarian crusade. This book is an at-
tempt to sketch the course and to reproduce the
spirit of that crusade from its inception with the
Granger movement, through the Greenback and
Populist phases, to a climax in the battle for free
silver.

In the preparation of the chapters dealing with
Populism I received invaluable assistance from my
colleague, Professor Lester B. Shippee of the Uni-
versity of Minnesota; and I am indebted to my
wife for aid at every stage of the work, especially
in the revision of the manuscript.

Soton J. Buck.

Minnesota Historical Society,
St. Pao

I.

VIII.

XII.

‘III.

CONTENTS

THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE
THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST

THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD
TIDE

CURBING THE RAILROADS

THE COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVE-
MENT

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE
THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER
THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE

THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED
THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892
THE SILVER ISSUE

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS
THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX

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THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

CHAPTER [
THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE

WHEN President Johnson authorized the Commis-
sioner of Agriculture, in 1866, to send a clerk in his
bureau on a trip through the Southern States to
procure “statistical and other information from
those States,”’ he could scarcely have foreseen that
this trip would lead to a movement among the
farmers, which, in varying forms, would affect the
political and economic life of the nation for half a
century. The clerk selected for this mission, one
Oliver Hudson Kelley, was something more than a
mere collector of data and compiler of statistics: he
was a keen observer and a thinker. Kelley was
born in Boston of a good Yankee family that could
boast kinship with Oliver Wendell Holmes and

Judge Samuel Sewall. At the age of twenty-three
1

2 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

he journeyed to Iowa, where he married. Then
with his wife he went on to Minnesota, settled in
Elk River Township, and acquired some first-hand
familiarity with agriculture. At the time of Kel-
ley’s service in the agricultural bureau he was forty
years old, a man of dignified presence, with a full
beard already turning white, the high broad fore-
head of a philosopher, and the eager eyes of an en-
thusiast. “An engine with too much steam on all
the time” — so one of his friends characterized
him; and the abnormal energy which he displayed
on the trip through the South justifies the figure.

Kelley had had enough practical experience in
agriculture to be sympathetically aware of the
difficulties of farm life in the period immediately
following the Civil War. Looking at the Southern
farmers not as a hostile Northerner would but as a
fellow agriculturist, he was struck with the distress-
ing conditions which prevailed. It was not merely
the farmers’ economic difficulties which he noticed,
for such difficulties were to be expected in the South
in the adjustment after the great conflict; it was
rather their blind disposition to do as their grand-
fathers had done, their antiquated methods of agri-
culture, and, most of all, their apathy. Pondering
on this attitude, Kelley decided that it was fostered

THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 3

if not caused by the lack of social opportunities
which made the existence of the farmer such a
drear monotony that he became practically incapa-
ble of changing his outlook on life or his attitude
toward his work.

Being essentially a man of action, Kelley did not
stop with the mere observation of these evils but
cast about to find a remedy. In doing so, he came
to the conclusion that a national secret order of
farmers resembling the Masonic order, of which he
was a member, might serve to bind the farmers to-
gether for purposes of social and intellectual ad-
vancement.. After he returned from the South,
Kelley discussed the plan in Boston with his niece,
Miss Carrie Hall, who argued quite sensibly that
women should be admitted to full membership in
the order, if it was to accomplish the desired ends.
Kelley accepted her suggestion and went West to
spend the summer in farming and dreaming of his
project. The next year found him again in Wash-
ington, but this time as a clerk in the Post Office
Department.

During the summer and fall of 1867 Kelley in-
terested some of his associates in his scheme. As
a result seven men — “one fruit grower and six
government clerks, equally distributed among the

+ THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Post Office, Treasury, and Agricultural Depart-
ments ’’ — are usually recognized as the founders of
the Patrons of Husbandry, or, as the order is more
commonly called, the Grange. These men, all of
whom but one had been born on farms, were O. H.
Kelley and W. M. Ireland of the Post Office De-
partment, William Saunders and the Reverend A.
B. Grosh of the Agricultural Bureau, the Reverend
John Trimble and J. R. Thompson of the Treasury
Department, and F. M. McDowell, a pomologist of
Wayne, New York. Kelley and Ireland planned a
ritual for the society; Saunders interested a few
farmers at a meeting of the United States Pomo-
logical Society in St. Louis in August, and secured
the codperation of McDowell; the other men helped
these four in corresponding with interested farmers
and in perfecting the ritual. On December 4, 1867,
having framed a constitution and adopted the motto
Esto perpetua, they met and constituted themselves
the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry.
Saunders was to be Master; Thompson, Lecturer;
Ireland, Treasurer; and Kelley, Secretary.

It is interesting to note, in view of the subse-
quent political activity in which the movement for
agricultural organization became inevitably in-
volved, that the founders of the Grange looked for

THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 5

advantages to come to the farmer through intel-
lectual and social intercourse, not through political
action. Their purpose was “the advancement of
agriculture,’ but they expected that advancement
to be an educative rather than a legislative process.
It was to that end, for instance, that they provided
for a Grange “‘Lecturer,”’ a man whose business it
was to prepare for each meeting a program apart
from the prescribed ritual — perhaps a paper read
by one of the members or an address by a visiting
speaker. With this plan for social and intellectual
advancement, then, the founders of the Grange set
out to gain members.

During the first four years the order grew slow-
ly, partly because of the mistakes of the founders,
partly because of the innate conservatism and sus-
picion of the average farmer. The first local Grange
was organized in Washington. It was made up
largely of government clerks and their wives and
served less to advance the cause of agriculture than
to test the ritual. In February, 1868, Kelley re-
signed his clerkship in the Post Office Department
and turned his whole attention to the organization
of the new order. His colleagues, in optimism or
irony, voted him a salary of two thousand dollars a
year and traveling expenses, to be paid from the

6 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

receipts of any subordinate Granges he should es-
tablish. Thus authorized, Kelley bought a ticket
for Harrisburg, and with two dollars and a half in
his pocket, started out to work his way to Minne-
sota by organizing Granges. Cn his way out he
sold four dispensations for the establishment of
branch organizations — three for Granges in Har-
risburg, Columbus, and Chicago, which came to
nothing, and one for a Grange in Fredonia, New
York, which was the first regular, active, and per-
manent locai organization. This, it is important
to note, was established as a result of correspond-
ence with a farmer of that place, and in by far the
smallest town of the four. Kelley seems at first to
have made the mistake of attempting to establish
the order in the large cities, where it had no native
soil in which to grow.

When Kelley revised his plan and began to work
from his farm in Minnesota and among neighbors
whose main interest was in agriculture, he was
more successful. His progress was not, however,
so marked as to insure his salary and expenses; in
fact, the whole history of these early years repre-
sents the hardest kind of struggle against financial
difficulties. Later, Kelley wrote of this difficult
period: “Ifall great enterprises, to be permanent,

THE, INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 7

must necessarily ‘start from small beginnings, our
Order is all right. | Its foundation was laid on solid
nothing — the rock of poverty — and there:is no
harder material.”” At times the persistent secre-
tary found himself unable even to buy postage for
his circular letters. His friends at Washington be-
gan. to lose interest in the work of an order with
a treasury “‘so empty that a five-cent stamp would
need an introduction before it would feel at home
init.” Their only letters to Kelley during this try-
ing time were written to remind him of bills owed
by the order. The total debt was not more than
$150, yet neither the Washington members nor
Kelley could find funds to liquidate it. “‘My dear
brother,’’ wrote Kelley to Ireland, “you must not
swear when the printer comesin. . . . When they
come in to ‘dun’ ask them to take a seat; light your
pipe; lean back in a chair, and suggest to them that
some plan be adopted to bring in ten or twenty
members, and thus furnish funds to pay their bills.”
A note of $39, in the hands of one Mr. Bean, caused
the members in Washington further embarrass-
ment at this time and occasioned a gleam of humor
in one of Kelley’s letters. Bean’s calling on the
men at Washington, he wrote, at least reminded
them of the absentee, and to be cursed by an old

8 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

friend was better than to be forgotten. “I sug-
gest,”’ he continued, “‘that Granges use black and
white Beans for ballots.”

In spite of all his difficulties, Kelley stubbornly
continued his endeavor and kept up the fiction of a
powerful central order at the capital by circulai-
ing photographs of the founders and letters which
spoke in glowing terms of the great national organi-
zation of the Patrons of Husbandry. ‘It must be
advertised as vigorously as if it were a patent medi-
cine,”’ he said; and to that end he wrote articles for
leading agricultural papers, persuaded them to pub-
lish the constitution of the Grange, and inserted
from time to time press notices which kept the or-
ganization before the public eye. In May, 1868,
came the first fruits of all this correspondence and
advertisement — the establishment of a Grange at
Newton, Iowa. In September, the first permanent
Grange in Minnesota, the North Star Grange, was
established at St. Paul with the assistance of Colonel
D. A. Robertson. This gentleman and his associ-
ates interested themselves in spreading the order.
They revised the Grange circulars to appeal to the
farmer’s pocketbook, emphasizing the fact that the
order offered a means of protection against corpora-
tions and opportunities for codperative buying and

THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 9

selling. This practical appeal was more effective
than the previous idealistic propaganda: two addi-
tional Granges were established before the end of
the year; a state Grange was constituted early in
the next year; and by the end of 1869 there were in
Minnesota thirty-seven active Granges. In the
spring of 1869 Kelley went East and, after visiting
the thriving Grange in Fredonia, he made his report
at Washington to the members of the National
Grange, who listened perfunctorily, passed a few
laws, and relapsed into indifference after this first
regular annual session.

But however indifferent the members of the Na-
tional Grange might be as to the fate of the organi-
zation they had so irresponsibly fathered, Kelley
was zealous and untiring in its behalf. That the
founders did not deny their parenthood was enough
for him; he returned to his home with high hopes
for the future. With the aid of his niece he carried
on an indefatigible correspondence which soon
brought tangible returns. In October, 1870, Kel-
ley moved his headquarters to Washington. By
the end of the year the Order had penetrated nine
States of the Union, and correspondence looking to
its establishment in seven more States was well
under way. Though Granges had been planted as

10 _ THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

far east as Vermont and New Jersey and as far
south as Mississippi and South Carolina, the life of
the order as yet centered in Minnesota, Iowa, Wis-
consin, Illinois, and Indiana... These were the only
States in which, in its four years of activity the
Grange had really taken root; in other States only
sporadic local Granges sprang up. The method of
organization, however, had been found and tested.
When a few active subordinate Granges had been
established in a State, they convened as a tempor-
ary state Grange, the master of which appointed
deputies to organize other subordinate Granges
throughout the State. The initiation fees, gener-
ally three dollars for men and fifty cents for women,
paid the expenses of organization — fifteen dollars
to the deputy, and not infrequently a small sum to
the state Grange. What was left went into the
treasury of the local Grange. Thus by the end of
1871 the ways and means of spreading the Grange
had been devised. All that was now needed was
some impelling motive which should urge the
farmers to enter and support the organization. —

CHAPTER II
THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST

Tue decade of the seventies witnessed the subsid-
ence, if not the solution, of a problem which had
vexed American history for half a century — the
reconciliation of two incompatible social and eco-
nomic systems, the North and the South. It wit-
nessed at the same time the rise of another great
problem, even yet unsolved — the preservation of
equality of opportunity, of democracy, economic as
well as political, in the face of the rising power and
influence of great accumulations and combinations
of wealth. Almost before the battle smoke of the
Civil War had rolled away, dissatisfaction with
prevailing conditions both political and economic
began to show itself.

The close of the war naturally found the Repub-
lican or Union party in control throughout the
North. Branded with the opprobrium of having

opposed the conduct of the war, the Democratic
ae ae

12 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

party remained impotent for a number of years;
and Ulysses S. Grant, the nation’s greatest military
hero, was easily elected to the presidency on the
Republican ticket in 1868. In the latter part of
Grant’s first term, however, hostility began to mani-
fest itself among the Republicans themselves to-
ward the politicians in control at Washington.
Several causes tended to alienate from the Presi-
dent and his advisers the sympathies of many of
the less partisan and less prejudiced Republicans
throughout the North. Charges of corruption and
maladministration were rife and had much founda-
tion in truth. Even if Grant himself was not con-
sciously dishonest in his application of the spoils
system and in his willingness to receive reward in
return for political favors, he certainly can be
justly charged with the disposition to trust too
blindly in his friends and to choose men for public
office rather because of his personal preferences
than because of their qualifications for positions
of trust.

Grant’s enemies declared, moreover, with con-
siderable truth that the man was a military auto-
crat, unfit for the highest civil position in a democ-
racy. His high-handed policy in respect to Recon-
struction in the South evoked opposition from those

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 13

Northern Republicans whose critical sense was not
entirely blinded by sectional prejudice and passion.
The keener-sighted of the Northerners began to
suspect that Reconstruction in the South often
amounted to little more than the looting of the
governments of the Southern States by the greedy
freedmen and the unscrupulous carpetbaggers, with
the troops of the United States standing by to
protect the looters. In 1871, under color of neces-
sity arising from the intimidation of voters in a few
sections of the South, Congress passed a stringent
act, empowering the President to suspend the writ
of habeas corpus and to use the military at any time
to suppress disturbances or attempts to intimidate
voters. This act, in the hands of radicals, gave
the carpetbag governments of the Southern States
practically unlimited powers. Any citizens who
worked against the existing administrations, how-
ever peacefully, might be charged with intimida-
tion of voters and prosecuted under the new act.
Thus these radical governments were made practi-
cally self-perpetuating. When their corruption,
wastefulness, and inefficiency became evident,
many people in the North frankly condemned them
and the Federal Government which continued to
support them.

14 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

This dissatisfaction with the Administration on
the part of Republicans and independents came to
a head in 1872 in the Liberal-Republican move-
ment. As early as 1870 a group of Republicans in
Missouri, disgusted by the excesses of the radicals
in that State in the proscription of former Con-
federate sympathizers, had led a bolt from the
party, had nominated B. Gratz Brown for governor,
and, with the assistance of the Democrats, had won
the election. The real leader of this movement
was Senator Carl Schurz, under whose influence
the new party in Missouri declared not only for the
removal of political disabilities but also for tariff
revision and civil service reform and manifested
opposition to the alienation of the public domain
to private corporations and to all schemes for the
repudiation of any part of the national debt. Simi-
lar splits in the Republican party took place soon
afterwards in other States, and in 1872 the Missouri
Liberals called a convention to meet at Cincinnati
for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the
presidency.

The new party was a coalition of rather diverse
elements. Prominent tariff reformers, members of
the Free Trade League, such as David A. Wells and
Edward L. Godkin of the Nation, advocates of civil

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 15

service reform, of whom Carl Schurz was a leading
representative, and especially opponents of the re-
construction measures of the Administration, such
as Judge David Davis and Horace Greeley, saw
an opportunity to promote their favorite policies
through this new party organization. To these
sincere reformers were soon added such disgruntled
politicians as A. G. Curtin of Pennsylvania and
R. E. Fenton of New York, who sought revenge for
the support which the Administration had given
to their personal rivals.. The principal bond of
union was the common desire to prevent the reélec-
tion of Grant. The platform adopted by the Cin-
cinnati convention reflected the composition of the
party. Opening with a bitter denunciation of the
President, it declared in no uncertain terms for civil
service reform and the immediate and complete re-
moval of political disabilities. On the tariff, how-
ever, the party could come to no agreement; the
free traders were unable to overcome the opposi-
tion of Horace Greeley and his protectionist foi-
lowers; and the outcome was the reference of the
question “to the people in their congressional
districts and the decision of Congress.”

The leading candidates for nomination for the
presidency were Charles Francis Adams, David

16 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE |

Davis, Horace Greeley, Lyman Trumbull, and B.
Gratz Brown. From these men, as a result of
manipulation, the convention unhappily selected
the one least suited to lead the party to victory —
Horace Greeley. The only hope of success for the
movement was in coéperation with that very Demo-
cratic party whose principles, policies, and leaders,
Greeley in his editorials had unsparingly condemned
for years. His extreme protectionism repelled not
only the Democrats but the tariff reformers who
had played an important part in the organization
of the Liberal Republican party. Conservatives
of both parties distrusted him as a man with a dan-
gerous propensity to advocate “isms,” a theoreti-
cal politician more objectionable than the practical
man of machine politics, and far more likely to dis-
turb the existing state of affairs and to overturn the
business of the country in his efforts at reform. As
the Nation expressed it, “Greeley appears to be
‘boiled crow’ to more of his fellow citizens than any
other candidate for office in this or any other age of
which we have record.”

The regular Republican convention renominated
Grant, and the Democrats, as the only chance of
victory, swallowed the candidate and the platform
of the Liberals. Doubtless Greeley’s opposition to

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 17

the radical reconstruction measures and the fact
that he had signed Jefferson Davis’s bail-bond
made the “‘crow”’ more palatable to the Southern
Democrats. In the campaign Greeley’s brilliant
speeches were listened to with great respect. His
tour was a personal triumph; but the very voters
who hung eagerly on his speeches felt him to be too
impulsive and opinionated to be trusted with presi-
dential powers. They knew the worst which might
be expected of Grant; they could not guess the ruin
which Greeley’s dynamic powers might bring on
the country if he used them unwisely. In the end
many of the original leaders of the Liberal move-
ment supported Grant as the lesser of two evils.
The Liberal defection from the Republican ranks
was more than offset by the refusal of Democrats
to vote for Greeley, and Grant was triumphantly
reélected.

The Liberal Republican party was undoubtedly
weakened by the unfortunate selection of its can-
didate, but it scarcely could have been victorious
with another candidate. The movement was dis-
tinctly one of leaders rather than of the masses, and
the things for which it stood most specifically —
the removal of political disabilities in the South and
civil service reform — awakened little enthusiasm

2

18 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

among the farmers of the West. These farmers on
the other hand were beginning to be very much in-
terested in a number of economic reforms which
would vitally affect their welfare, such as the reduc-
tion and readjustment of the burden of taxation,
the control of corporations in the interests of the
people, the reduction and regulation of the cost

of transporation, and an increase in the currency
| supply. Some of these propositions occasionally
received recognition in Liberal speeches and plat-
forms, but several of them were anathema to many
of the Eastern leaders of that movement. Had
these leaders been gifted with vision broad enough
to enable them to appreciate the vital economic and
social problems of the West, the Liberal Republi-
can movement might perhaps have caught the
ground swell of agrarian discontent, and the out-
come might then have been the formation of an en-
during national party of liberal tendencies broader
and more progressive than the Liberal Republican
party yet less likely to be swept into the vagaries
of extreme radicalism than were the Anti-Mo-
nopoly and Greenback parties of after years. A
number of western Liberals such as A. Scott Sloan
in Wisconsin and Ignatius Donnelly in Minnesota
championed the farmers’ cause, it is true, and in

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 19

some States there was a fusion of party organiza-
tions; but men like Schurz and Trumbull held aloof
from these radical movements, while Easterners
like Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule
and invective.

The period from 1870 to 1873 has been character-
ized as one of rampant prosperity, and such it was
for the commercial, the manufacturing, and especi-
ally the speculative interests of the country. For
the farmers, however, it was a period of bitter de-
pression. The years immediately following the
close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous ex-
pansion of production, particularly of the staple
crops. The demobilization of the armies, the clos-
ing of war industries, increased immigration, the
homestead law, the introduction of improved
machinery, and the rapid advance of the railroads
had all combined to drive the agricultural frontier
westward by leaps and bounds until it had almost
reached the limit of successful cultivation under
conditions which then prevailed. As crop acreage
and production increased, prices went down in ac-
cordance with the law of supply and demand, and
farmers all over the country found it difficult to
make a living.

In the West and South -— the great agricultural

20 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

districts of the country — the farmers commonly
bought their supplies and implements on credit or
mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits
at best were so slight that one bad season might put
them thereafter entirely in the power of their credi-
tors and force them to sell their crops on their credi-
tors’ terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged,
too, at rates of interest that ate up the farmers’
profits. During and after the Civil War the fluc-
tuation of the currency and the high tariff worked
especial hardship on the farmers as producers of
staples which must be sold abroad in competition
with European products and as consumers of manu-
factured articles which must be bought at home
at prices made arbitrarily high by the protective
tariff. In earlier times, farmers thus harassed
would have struck their tents and moved farther
west, taking up desirable land on the frontier and
starting out in a fresh field of opportunity. It was
still possible for farmers to go west, and many did
so but only to find that the opportunity for eco-
nomic independence on the edge of settlement had
largely disappeared. The era of the self-sufficing
ploneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer
on the frontie:, forced by natural conditions over
which he had no control to engage in the production

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 21

of staples, was iully as dependent on the market and
on transportation facilities as was his competitor in
the East.

In the fall of 1873 came the greatest panic in the
history of the nation, and a period of financial de-
pression began which lasted thrcughout the decade,
_restricting industry, commerce, and even immigra-
tion. On the farmers the blow fell with special
severity. At the very time when they found it
most difficult to realize profit on their sales of prod-
uce, creditors who had hitherto carried their debts
from year to year became insistent for payment.
When mortgages fell due, it was well-nigh im-
possible to renew them; and many a farmer saw
years of labor go for nothing in a heart-breaking
foreclosure sale. It was difficult to get even short-
term loans, running from seed-time to harvest.
This important function of lending money to pay
for labor and thus secure a larger crop, which has
only recently been assumed by the Government in
its establishment of farm loan banks, had been per-
formed by private capitalists who asked usurious
rates of interest. The farmers’ protests against
these rates had been loud; and now, wlien they
found themselves unable to get loans at any rate
whatever, their complaints naturally in¢reased.

22 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Looking around for one cause to which to attribute
all their misfortunes, they pitched upon the corpo-
rations or monopolies, as they chose to call them,
and especially upon the railroads.

At first the farmers had looked upon the coming
of the railroads as an unmixed blessing. The rail-
road had meant the opening up of new territory,
the establishment of channels of transportation
by which they could send their crops to market.
Without the railroad, the farmer who did not live
- Near a navigable stream must remain a backwoods-
man; he must make his own farm or his immediate
community a self-sufficing unit; he must get from
his own land bread and meat and clothing for his
family; he must be stock-raiser, grain-grower, far-
rier, tinker, soap-maker, tanner, chandler — Jack-
of-all-trades and master of none. With the rail-
road he gained access to markets and the opportu-
nity to specialize in one kind of farming; he could
now sell his produce and buy in exchange many of
the articles he had previously made for himself at
the expense of much time and labor. Many farm-
ers and farming communities bought railroad bonds
in the endeavor to increase transportation facili-
ties; all were heartily in sympathy with the policy
of the Government in granting to corporations land

THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 23

along the route of the railways which they were
to construct. |

_ By 1873, however, the Government had actually
given to the railroads about thirty-five million
acres, and was pledged to give to the Pacific roads
alone about one hundred and forty-five million
acres more. Land was now not so plentiful as it
had been in 1850, when this policy had been in-
augurated, and the farmers were naturally aggrieved
that the railroads should own so much desirable
land and should either hold it for speculative pur-
poses or demand for it prices much higher than the
Government had asked for land adjacent to it
and no less valuable. Moreover, when railroads
were merged and reorganized or passed into the
hands of receivers the shares held by farmers were
frequently wiped out or were greatly decreased in
value. Often railroad stock had been “watered”
to such an extent that high freight charges were
necessary in order to permit the payment of divi-
dends. Thus the farmer might find himself with-
out his railroad stock, with a mortgage on his land
which he had incurred in order to buy the stock,
with an increased burden of taxation because
his township had also been gullible enough to
buy stock, and with a railroad whose excessive

24 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

rates allowed him but a narrow margin of profit:

on his produce.

When the farmers sought political remedies for.
their economic ills, they discovered that, as a class,
they had little representation or influence either in
Congress or in the state legislatures. Before the
Civil War the Southern planter had represented
agricultural interests in Congress fairly well; after
the War the dominance of Northern interests left
the Western farmer without his traditional ally
in the South. Political power was concentrated in
the East and in the urban sections of the West.
Members of Congress were increasingly likely to be
from the manufacturing classes or from the legal
profession, which sympathized with these classes
rather than with the agriculturists. Only about
seven per cent of the members of Congress were
farmers; yet in 1870 forty-seven per cent of the
population was engaged in agriculture. The only
remedy for the farmers was to organize themselves
as a class in order to promote their common welfare.

CHAPTER Iil
THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE

Wits these real or fancied grievances crying for re-
dress, the farmers soon turned to the Grange as the
weapon ready at hand to combat the forces which
they believed were conspiring to crush them. In
_ 1872 began the real spread of the order. Where
the Grange had previously reckoned in terms of
hundreds of new lodges, it now began to speak
of thousands. State Granges were established in
States where the year before the organization had
obtained but a precarious foothold; pioneer local
Granges invaded regions which hitherto had been
impenetrable. Although the only States which
were thoroughly organized were Iowa, Minnesota,
South Carolina, and Mississippi, the rapid spread
of the order into other States and its intensive
growth in regions so far apart gave promise of its
ultimate development into a national movement.

This development was, to be sure, not without
25

26 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

opposition. When the Grangers began to speak of
their function in terms of business and political co-
operation, the forces against which they were unit-
ing took alarm. ‘The commission men and local
merchants of the South were especially apprehen-
sive and, it is said, sometimes foreclosed the mort-
gages of planters who were so independent as to join
the order. But here, as elsewhere, persecution de-
feated its own end; the opposition of their enemies
convinced the farmers of the merits of the Grange.

In the East, several circumstances retarded the
movement. In the first place, the Eastern farmer
had for some time felt the Western farmer to be his
serious rival. The Westerner had larger acreage
and larger yields from his virgin soil than the
Easterner from his smaller tracts of well-nigh ex-
hausted land. What crops the latter did produce
he must sell in competition with the Western crops,
and he was not eager to lower freight charges for
his competitor. A second deterrent to the growth
of the order in the East was the organization of two
Granges among the commission men and the grain
dealers of Boston and New York, under the egis of
that clause of the constitution which declared any
person interested in agriculture to be eligible to
membership in the order. Though the storm of

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 27

protest which arose all over the country against
this betrayal to the enemy resulted in the revok-
ing of the charters for these Granges, the Eastern
farmer did not soon forget the incident.

The year 1873 is important in the annals of the
Grange because it marks the retirement of the
*‘founders”’ from power. In January of that year,
at the sixth session of the National Grange, the
temporary organization of government clerks was
replaced by a permanent corporation, officered by
farmers. Kelley was reélected Secretary; Dudley
W. Adams of Iowa was made Master; and William
Saunders, erstwhile Master of the National Grange,
D. Wyatt Aiken of South Carolina, and E. R.Shank-
land of Iowa were elected to the executive commit-
tee. The substitution of alert and eager workers,
already experienced in organizing Granges, for the
dead wood of the Washington bureaucrats gave the
order a fresh impetus to growth. From the spring
of 1873 to the following spring the number of
Zranges more than quadrupled, and the increase
again centered mainly in the Middle West.

By the end of 1873 the Grange had penetrated
ali but four States — Connecticut, Rhode Isiand,
Delaware, and Nevada — and there were thirty-
two state Granges In existence. The movement

28 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

was now well defined and national in scope, so that
the seventh annual session of the National Grange,
which took place in St. Louis in February, 1874, at-
tracted much interest and comment. Thirty-three
men and twelve women attended the meetings, rep-
resenting thirty-two state and territorial Granges
and about half a million members. Their most
important act was the adoption of the “Declara-
* sub-
scribed to then and now as the platform of the

Patrons and copied with minor modifications by

tion of Purposes of the National Grange,’

many later agricultural organizations in the United
States. The general purpose of the Patrons was
“to labor for the good of our Order, our Country,
and Mankind.” This altruistic ideal was to find
practical application in efforts to enhance the com-
fort and attractions of homes, to maintain the laws,
to advance agricultural and industrial education,
to diversify crops, to systematize farm work, to
establish codperative buying and selling, to suppress
personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices,
and to discountenance “the credit system, the
fashion system, and every other system tending to
prodigality and bankruptcy.” As to business, the —
Patrons declared themselves enemies not of capital
but of the tyranny of monopolies, not of railroads

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 29

but of their high freight tariffs and monopoly
of transportation. In politics, too, they main-
tained a rather nice balance: the Grange was not
to be a political or party organization, but its
members were to perform their political duties as
individual citizens.
_ It could hardly be expected that the program
of the Grange would satisfy all farmers. For the
agricultural discontent, as for any other dissatis-
faction, numerous panaceas were proposed, the ad-
vocates of each of which scorned all the others and
insisted on their particular remedy. Some farmers
objected to the Grange because it was a secret
organization; others, because it was nonpartisan.
For some the organization was too conservative;
for others, too radical. Yet all these objectors felt
the need of some sort of organization among the
farmers, very much as the trade-unionist and the
socialist, though widely divergent in program,
agree that the workers must unite in order to better
their condition. Hence during these years of activ-
ity on the part of the Grange many other agricul-
tural societies were formed, differing from the
Patrons of Husbandry in specific program rather
than in general purpose.

The most important of these societies were the

30 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

farmers’ clubs, at first more or less independent of
each other but later banded together in state asso-
ciations. The most striking differences of these
clubs from the Granges were their lack of secrecy
and their avowed political purposes. Their estab-
lishment marks the definite entrance of the farmers
as a class into politics. During the years 1872 to
1875 the independent farmers’ organizations multi-
plied much as the Granges did and for the same
reasons. The Middle West again was the scene
of their greatest power. In Illinois this movement
began even: before the Grange appeared in -the
State, and its growth during the early seventies
paralleled that of the secret order. In other States
also, notably in Kansas, there sprang up at this
time agricultural clubs of political complexion, and
where they existed in considerable numbers they
generally took the lead in the political activities of
the farmers’ movement. Where the Grange had
the field practically to itself, as in Iowa and Minne-
sota, the restriction in the constitution of the order
as to political or partisan activity was evaded by
the simple expedient of holding meetings “outside
the gate,” at which platforms were adopted, can-
didates nominated, and plans made for county,
district, and state conventions.

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 31

In some cases the farmers hoped, by a show of
strength, to achieve the desired results through one
or both of the old parties, but they soon decided
that they could enter politics effectively only by
way of a third party. The professional politicians
were not inclined to espouse new and radical issues
which might lead to the disruption of party lines.
The outcome, therefore, was the establishment of
new parties in eleven of the Western States during
1873 and 1874. Known variously as Independent,
Reform, Anti-Monopoly, or Farmers’ parties, these
organizations were all parts of the same general
movement, and their platforms were quite similar.
The paramount demands were: first, the subjection
of corporations, and especially of railroad corpora-
tions, to the control of the State; and second, re-
form and economy in government. After the new
parties were well under way, the Democrats in
most of the States, being in a hopeless minority,
made common cause with them in the hope of thus
compassing the defeat of their hereditary rivals, the
old-line Republicans. In Missouri, however, where
the Democracy had been restored to power by
the Liberal-Republican movement, the new party
received the support of the Republicans.

Illinois, where the farmers were first thoroughly

32 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

organized into clubs and Granges, was naturally the
first State in which they took effective political ac-
tion. The agitation for railroad regulation, which
began in Illinois in the sixties, had caused the new
state constitution of 1870 to include mandatory
provisions directing the legislature to pass laws to
prevent extortion and unjust discrimination in rail-
way charges. One of the acts passed by the Legis-
lature of 1871 in an attempt to carry out these in-
structions was declared unconstitutional by the
state supreme court in January, 1873. This was
the spark to the tinder. In the following April the
farmers flocked to a convention at the state capital
and so impressed the legislators that they passed
more stringent and effective laws for the regulation
of railroads. But the politicians had a still greater
surprise in store for them. In the elections of
judges in June, the farmers retired from office the
judge who had declared their railroad law uncon-
stitutional and elected their own candidates for the
two vacancies in the supreme court and for many
of the vacancies in the circuit courts.

Now began a vigorous campaign for the election
of farmers’ candidates in the county elections in the
fall. So many political meetings were held on In-
dependence Day in 1873 that it was referred to as

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 33

the “ Farmers’ Fourth of July.” This had always
been the greatest day of the farmer’s year, for it
meant opportunity for social and intellectual en-
joyment in the picnics and celebrations which
brought neighbors together in hilarious good-fel-
lowship. In 1873, however, the gatherings took
on unwonted seriousness. The accustomed spread-
eagle oratory gave place to impassioned denuncia-
tion of corporations and to the solemn reading of a
Farmers’ Declaration of Independence. “‘ When, in
the course of human events,” this document begins
in words familiar to every schoolboy orator, “‘it
becomes necessary for a class of the people, suffer-
ing from long continued systems of oppression and
abuse, to rouse themselves from an apathetic in-
difference to their own interests, which has become
habitual . . . a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the
causes that impel them to a course so necessary to
their own protection.” Then comes a statement
of “self-evident truths,” a catalogue of the sins of
the railroads, a denunciation of railroads and Con-
gress for not having redressed these wrongs, and
finally the conclusion:

We, therefore, the producers of the state in our

several counties assembled . . . do solemnly declare
3

34 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

that we will use all lawful and peaceable means to free
ourselves from the tyranny of monopoly, and that we
will never cease our efforts for reform until every de-
partment of our Government gives token that the
reign of licentious extravagance is over, and something
of the purity, honesty, and frugality with which our
fathers inaugurated it, has taken its place.

That to this end we hereby declare ourselves abso-
lutely free and independent of all past political connec-
tions, and that we will give our suffrage only to such
men for office, as we have good reason to believe will
use their best endeavors to the promotion of these ends;
and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reli-
ance on divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

This fall campaign of 1873 in Illinois broke up
old party lines in remarkable fashion. In some
counties the Republicans and in other counties the
Democrats either openly joined the “‘Reformers”’
or refrained from making separate nominations.
Of the sixty-six counties which the new party con-
tested, it was victorious in fifty-three. This first
election resulted in the best showing which the Re-
formers made in Illinois. In state elections,. the
new party was less successful; the farmers who
voted for their neighbors running on an Anti-
Monopoly ticket for lesser offices hesitated to vote
for strangers for state office.

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 35

Other Middle Western States at this time also
felt the uneasy stirring of radical political thought
and saw the birth of third parties, short-lived, most
of them, but throughout their brief existence cry-
ing loudly and persistently for reforms of all de-
scription. The tariff, the civil service system, and
the currency, all came in for their share of criticism
and of suggestions for revision, but the dominant
note was a strident demand for railroad regulation.
Heirs of the Liberal Republicans and precursors of
the Greenbackers and Populists, these independent
parties were as voices crying in the wilderness, pre-
paring the way for national parties of reform. The
notable achievement of the independent parties in
the domain of legislation was the enactment of
laws to regulate railroads in five States of the upper
Mississippi Valley. When these laws were passed,
the parties had done their work. By 1876 they
had disappeared or, in a few instances, had merged
with the Greenbackers. Their temporary suc-
cesses had demonstrated, however, to both farmers
and professional politicians that if once solidarity
could be obtained among the agricultural class, that
class would become the controlling element in the
politics of the Middle Western States. It is not

*See Chapter IV.

36 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

surprising, therefore, that wave after wave of re-
form swept over the West in the succeeding decades.

The independent parties of the middle seventies
were distinctly spontaneous uprisings of the people
and especially of the farmers, rather than move-
ments instigated by politicians for personal ends or
by professional reformers. This circumstance was
a source both of strength and weakness. As the
movements began to develop unexpected power,
politicians often attempted to take control but,
where they succeeded, the movement was checked
by the farmers’ distrust of these self-appointed
leaders. On the other hand, the new parties suf-
fered from the lack of skillful and experienced
leaders. The men who managed their campaigns
and headed their tickets were usually well-to-do
farmers drafted from the ranks, with no more po-
litical experience than perhaps a term or two in
the state legislature. Such were Willard C. Flagg,
president of the Illinois State Farmers’ Associa-
tion, Jacob G. Vale, candidate for governor in Iowa.
and William R. Taylor, the Granger governor of
Wisconsin.

Taylor is typical of the picturesque and force-
ful figures which frontier life so often developed.
He was born in Connecticut, of parents recently

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 37

emigrated from Scotland. Three weeks after his
birth his mother died, and six years later his father,
a sea captain, was drowned. The orphan boy,
brought up by strangers in Jefferson County, New
York, experienced the hardships of frontier life and
developed that passion for knowledge which so fre-
quently is found in those to whom education is
denied. When he was sixteen, he had enough of
the rudiments to take charge of a country school,
and by teaching in the winter and working in the
summer he earned enough to enter Union College.
He was unable to complete the course, however,
and turned to teaching in Ohio, where he restored
to decent order a school notorious for bullying
its luckless teachers. But teaching was not to be
his career; indeed, Taylor’s versatility for a time
threatened to make him the proverbial Jack-of-all-
trades: he was employed successively in a grist mill,
a saw mill, and an iron foundry; he dabbled in the
study of medicine; and finally, in the year which
saw Wisconsin admitted to the Union, he bought a
farm in that State. Ownership of property steadied
his interests and at the same time afforded an ade-
quate outlet for his energies. He soon made his
farm a model for the neighborhood and managed it
so efficiently that he had time to interest himself

38 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

in farmers’ organizations and to hold positions of
trust in his township and county.

By 1873 Taylor had acquired considerable local
political experience and had even held a seat in the
state senate. As president of the State Agricultural
Society, he was quite naturally chosen to head the
ticket of the new Liberal Reform party. The brew-
ing interests of the State, angered at a drastic tem-
perance law enacted by the preceding legislature,
swung their support to Taylor. Thus reénforced, he
won the election. As governor he made vigorous
and tireless attempts to enforce the Granger: rail-
road laws, and on one occasion he scandalized the
conventional citizens of the State by celebrating
a favorable court decision in one of the Granger
cases with a salvo of artillery from the capitol.

Yet in spite of this prominence, Taylor, after his
defeat for reélection in 1875, retired to his farm and
to obscurity. His vivid personality was not again
to assert itself in public affairs. It is difficult to
account for the fact that so few of the leaders dur-
ing the Granger period played prominent parts in
later phases of the agrarian crusade. The rank
and file of the successive parties must have been
much the same, but each wave of the movement
swept new leaders to the surface.

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 39

The one outstanding exception among the leaders
of the Anti-Monopolists was Ignatius Donnelly of
Minnesota — “the sage of Nininger’’ — who re-
mained a captain of the radical cohorts in every
agrarian movement until his deathin 1901. A red-
headed aggressive Irishman, with a magnetic per-
sonality and a remarkable intellect, Donnelly went
to Minnesota from Pennsylvania in 1856 and spec-
ulated in town sites on a large scale. When he was
left stranded by the panic of 1857, acting upon his
own principle that “to hide one’s light under a
bushel is to extinguish it,”’ he entered the political
arena. In Pennsylvania Donnelly had been a
Democrat, but his genuine sympathy for the op-
pressed made him an opponent of slavery and con-
sequently a Republican. In 1857 and 1858 he ran
for the state senate in Minnesota on the Republi-
can ticket in a hopelessly Democratic county. In
1859 he was nominated for lieutenant governor on
the ticket headed by Alexander Ramsey; and his
caustic wit, his keenness in debate, and his elo-
quence made him a valuable asset in the battle-
royal between Republicans and Democrats for the
possession of Minnesota. As lieutenant governor,
Donnelly early showed his sympathy with the
farmers by championing laws which lowered the

40 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

legal rate of interest and which made more humane
the process of foreclosure on mortgages. The out-
break of the Civil War gave him an opportunity to
demonstrate his executive ability as acting gover-
nor during Ramsey’s frequent trips to Washington.
In this capacity he issued the first proclamation for
the raising of Minnesota troops in response to the
call of President Lincoln. Elected to Congress in
1862, he served three terms and usually supported
progressive legislation.

Donnelly’s growing popularity and his ambition
for promotion to the Senate soon became a mat-
ter of alarm to the friends of Senator Ramsey,
who controlled the Republican party in the State.
They determined to prevent Donnelly’s renomi-
nation in 1868 and selected William D. Washburn
of Minneapolis to make the race against him. In
the spring of this year Donnelly engaged in a con-
troversy with Representative E. B. Washburn of
Tlinois, a brother of W. D. Washburn, in the
course of which the Illinois congressman published
a letter in a St. Paul paper attacking Donnelly’s
personal character. Believing this to be part of the
campaign against him, the choleric Minnesotan re-
plied in the house with a remarkable rhetorical
display which greatly entertained the members but

GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 41

did not increase their respect for him. His oppo-
nents at home made effective use of this affair, and
the outcome of the contest was a divided conven-
tion, the nomination of two Republicans, each
claiming to be the regular candidate of the party,
and the ultimate election of a Democrat.
Donnelly was soon ready to break with the oid
guard of the Republican party in national as well
as in state politics. In 1870 he ran for Congress as
an independent Republican on a low tariff plat-
form but was defeated in spite of the fact that he
received the endorsement of the Democratic con-
vention. Two years later he joined the Liberal
Republicans in supporting Greeley against Grant.
When the farmers’ Granges began to spring up like
mushrooms in 1873, Donnelly was quick to see the
political possibilities of the movement. He con-
ducted an extensive correspondence with farm-
ers, editors, and politicians of radical tendencies
all over the State and played a leading part in the
organization of the Anti-Monopoly party. He was
elected to the state senate.in 1873, and in the fol-
lowing year he started a newspaper, the Anti-
Monopolist, to serve as the organ of the movement.
Although Donnelly was technically still a farmer,
he was quite content to leave the management of his

42 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

farm to his capable wife, while he made politics his
profession, with literature and lecturing as avoca-
tions. His frequent and brilliant lectures no less
than his voluminous writings’ attest his amazing
industry. Democrat, Republican, Liberal-Repub-
lican, and Anti-Monopolist; speculator, lawyer,
farmer, lecturer, stump-speaker, editor, and author;
preacher of morals and practicer of shrewd political
evasions; and always a radical — he was for many
years a force to be reckoned with in the politics of
his State and of the nation.

1 The Great Cryptogram, for instance, devotes a thousand pages to
proving a Bacon cipher in the plays of Shakespeare!

a

CHAPTER IV
CURBING THE RAILROADS

TuouaGu the society of the Patrons of Husbandry
was avowedly non-political in character, there is
ample justification for the use of the term “‘Grang-
er’ in connection with the radical railroad legisla-
tion enacted in the Northwestern States during the
seventies. The fact that the Grange did not take
direct political action is immaterial: certainly the
order made political action on the part of the
farmers possible by establishing among them a feel-
ing of mutual confidence and trust whereby they
could organize to work harmoniously for their com-
mon cause. Before the advent of the Patrons of
Husbandry the farmers were so isolated from each
other that codperation was impossible. It is hard
for us to imagine, familiar as we are with the rural
free delivery of mail, with the country telephone
line, with the automobile, how completely the aver-

age farmer of 1865 was cut off from communication
43

44 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

with the outside world. His dissociation from any
but his nearest neighbors made him unsocial, nar-
row-minded, bigoted, and suspicious. He believed
that every man’s hand was against him, and he was
therefore often led to turn his hand against every
man. Not until he was convinced that he might
at least trust the Grangers did he lay aside his
suspicions and join with other farmers in the at-
tempt to obtain what they considered just railroad
legislation.

Certain it is, moreover, that the Grangers madeé
use of the popular hostility to the railroads in secur-
ing membership for the order. ‘“‘Coéperation”’
and ‘“‘Down with Monopoly”’ were two of the slo-
gans most commonly used by the Grange between
1870 and 1875 and were in large part responsi-
ble for its great expansion. Widely circulated re-
prints of articles exposing graft and corruption
made excellent fuel for the flames of agitation.

How much of the farmers’ bitterness against the
railroads was justified it is difficult to determine.
Some of it was undoubtedly due to prejudice, to
the hostility of the “producer” for the “nonpro-
ducer,” and to the suspicion which the Western
farmer felt for the Eastern magnate. But much
of the suspicion was not without foundation. In

CURBING THE RAILROADS 45

some cases manipulation of railway stock had ab-
solutely cheated farmers and agricultural towns
and counties out of theirinvestments. It is a well-
known fact that the corporations were not averse
to creating among legislators a disposition to favor
their interests. Passes were commonly given by
the railroads to all public officials, from the local
supervisors to the judges of the Supreme Court,
and opportunities were offered to legislators to buy
stock far below the market price. In such subtle
ways the railroads insinuated themselves into favor
among the makers and interpreters of law. Then,
too, the farmers felt that the railway companies
made rates unnecessarily high and frequently
practised unfair discrimination against certain sec-
tions and individuals. When the Iowa farmer was
obliged to burn corn for fuel, because at fifteen cents
a bushel it was cheaper than coal, though at the
same time it was selling for a dollar in the East, he
felt that there was something wrong, and quite
naturally accused the railroads of extortion.

The fundamental issue’ involved in Illinois,
Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, where the battle
was begun and fought to a finish, was whether or
not a State had power to regulate the tariffs of
railway companies incorporated under its laws.

46 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Railway companies, many jurists argued, were pri-
vate concerns transacting business according to the
laws of the State and no more to be controlled in
making rates than dry goods companies in fixing
the price of spools of thread; rates, like the price of
merchandise, were determined by the volume of
trade and the amount of competition, and for a
State to interfere with them was nothing less than
tyranny. On the other hand, those who advocated
regulation argued that railroads, though private
corporations, were from the nature of their busi-
ness public servants and, as such, should be subject
to state regulation and control.

Some States, foreseeing difficulties which might
arise later from the doctrine that a charter is a con-
tract, as set forth by the United States Supreme
Court in the famous Dartmouth College case,* had
quite early in their history attempted to safeguard
their right to legislate concerning corporations. A
clause had been inserted in the state constitution
of Wisconsin which declared that all laws creating
corporations might at any time be altered or re-
pealed by the legislatures. The constitution of
Minnesota asserted specifically that the railroads,

* See John Marshall and the Constitution, by Edward S. Corwin (in
The Chronicles of America), p. 154 ff.

CURBING THE RAILROADS AT

as common carriers enjoying right of way, were
bound to carry freight on equal and reasonable
terms. When the Legislature of Iowa turned over
to the railroad companies lands granted by the
Federal Government, it did so with the reservation
that the companies should be subject to the rules
and regulations of the General Assembly. Thus
these States were fortified not only by arguments
from general governmental theory but also by
written articles, more or less specifically phrased,
on which they relied to establish their right to
control the railroads.

The first gun in this fight for railroad regulation
was fired in Illinois. As early as 1869, after several
years of agitation, the legislature passed an act de-
claring that railroads should be limited to “‘just,
reasonable, and uniform rates,” but, as no provi-
sion was made for determining what such rates
were, the act was a mere encumbrance on the
statute books. In the new state constitution of
1870, however, the framers, influenced by a grow-
ing demand on the part of the farmers which mani-
fested itself in a Producers’ Convention, inserted a
section directing the legislature to “‘pass laws to
correct abuses and to prevent unjust discrimina-
tion and extortion in the rates of freight and

48 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

passenger tariffs on the different railroads in this
State.’ The legislature at its next session appears
to have made an honest attempt to obey these in-
structions. One act established maximum passen-
ger fares varying from two and one-half to five and
one-half cents a mile for the different classes into
which the roads were divided. Another provided,
in effect, that freight charges should be based en-
tirely upon distance traversed and prohibited any
increases over ratesin 1870. This amounted to an
attempt to force all rates to the level of the lowest
competitive rates of that year. Finally, a third
act established a board of railroad and warehouse
commissioners charged with the enforcement of
these and other laws and with the collection of
information.

The railroad companies, denying the right of the
State to regulate their business, flatly refused to
obey the laws; and the state supreme court de-
clared the act regulating freight rates unconstitu-
tional on the ground that it attempted to prevent
not only unjust discrimination but any discrimi-
nation at all. The legislature then passed the Act
of 1873, which avoided the constitutional pitfall
by providing that discriminatory rates should be
considered as prima facie but not absolute evidence

CURBING THE RAILROADS 49

of unjust discrimination. The railroads were thus
permitted to adduce evidence to show that the dis-
crimination was justified, but the act expressly
stated that the existence of competition at some
points and its nonexistence at others should not be
deemed a sufficient justification of discrimination.
In order to prevent the roads from raising all rates
‘to the level of the highest instead of lowering them
to the level of the lowest, the commissioners were
directed to establish a schedule of maximum rates;
and the charging of rates higher than these by any
company after January 15, 1874, was to be con-
sidered prima facie evidence of extortion. Other
provisions increased the penalties for violations
and strengthened the enforcing powers of the com-
mission in other ways. This act was roundly de-
nounced at the time, especially in the East, as an
attempt at confiscation, and the railroad companies
refused to obey it for several years; but ultimately
it stood the test of the courts and became the per-
manent basis of railroad regulation in Illinois and
the model for the solution of this problem in many
other States.

The first Granger law of Minnesota, enacted in
1871, established fixed schedules for both passen-
gers and freight, while another act of the same year

a

50 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

provided for a railroad commissioner. In this
instance also the companies denied the validity of
the law, and when the state supreme court upheld it
in 1873, they appealed to the Supreme Court of the
United States. In the meantime there was no
way of enforcing the law, and the antagonism to-
ward the roads fostered by the Grange and the
Anti-Monopoly party became more and more in-
tense. In 1874 the legislature replaced the Act of
1871 with one modeled on the Illinois law of 1873;
but it soon discovered that no workable set of uni-
form rates could be made for the State because of
the wide variation of conditions in the different
sections. Rates and fares which would be just to
the companies in the frontier regions of the State
would be extortionate in the thickly populated
areas. This difficulty could have been avoided by
giving the commission power to establish varying
schedules for different sections of the same road;
but the anti-railroad sentiment was beginning to
die down, and the Legislature of 1875, instead of
trying to improve the law, abandoned the attempt
at state regulation.

The Granger laws of Iowa and Wisconsin, both
enacted in 1874, attempted to establish maxi-
mum rates by direct legislative action, although

CURBING THE RAILROADS 51

commissions were also created to collect informa-
tion and assist in enforcing the laws. The Iowa law
was very carefully drawn and appears to have been
observed, in form at least, by most of the com-
panies while it remained in force. In 1878, how-
ever, a systematic campaign on the part of the rail-
oad forces resulted in the repeal of the act. In
Wisconsin, a majority of the members of the Senate
favored the railroads and, fearing to show their
hands, attempted to defeat the proposed legisla-
tion by substituting the extremely radical Potter
Bill for the moderate measure adopted by the
Assembly. The senators found themselves hoist
with their own petard, however, for the lower
house, made up largely of Grangers, accepted this
bill rather than let the matter of railroad legisla-
tion go by default. The rates fixed by the Potter
Law for many commodities were certainly un-
reasonably low, although the assertion of a rail-
road official that the enforcement of the law would
cut off twenty-five per cent of the gross earnings of
the companies was a decided exaggeration. Rely-
ing upon the advice of such eminent Eastern lawyers
as William M. Evarts, Charles O’Conor, E. Rock-
wood Hoar, and Benjamin R. Curtis that the law
was invalid, the roads refused to obey it until it was

52 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

upheld by the state supreme court late in 1874,
They then began a campaign for its repeal. Though
they obtained only some modification in 1875, they
succeeded completely in 1876.

The contest between the railroads and the farm-
ers was intense while it lasted. The farmers had
votes; the railroads had money; and the legislators
were sometimes between the devil and the deep sea
in the fear of offending one side or the other. The
farmers’ methods of campaign were simple. Often
questionnaires were distributed to all candidates for
office, and only those who went on record as favor-
ing railroad restriction were endorsed by the farm-
ers’ clubs and committees. An agricultural con-
vention, sometimes even a meeting of the state
Grange, would be held at the capital of the State
while the legislature was in session, and it was a
bold legislator who, in the presence of his farmer
constituents, would vote against the measures they
approved. When the railroads in Illinois refused
to lower their passenger rates to conform to the law,
adventurous farmers often attempted to “ride for
legal fares,’ giving the trainmen the alternative
of accepting the low fares or throwing the hardy
passengers from the train.

The methods of the railroads in dealing with the

CURBING THE RAILROADS 53

legislators were more subtle. Whether or not the
numerous charges of bribery were true, railroad
favors were undoubtedly distributed among well
disposed legislators. In Iowa passes were not given
to the senators who voted against the railroads, and
those sent to the men who voted in the railroads’
interest were accompanied by notes announcing
that free passes were no longer to be given gener-
ally but only to the friends of the railroads. At
the session of the Iowa Legislature in 1872, four
lawyers who posed as farmers and Grange members
were well known as lobbyists for the railroads. The
senate paid its respects to these men at the close of
its session by adopting the following resolution:

Wuereas, There have been constantly in attendance
on the Senate and House of this General Assembly,
from the commencement of the session to the present
time, four gentlemen professing to represent the great
agricultural interest of the State of lowa, known as the
Grange; and —

WueErEAS, These gentlemen appear entirely destitute
of any visible means of support; therefore be it —

ReEso.tvepD, By the Senate, the House concurring,
that the janitors permit aforesaid gentlemen to gather
up all the waste paper, old newspapers, &c., from under
the desks of the members, and they be allowed one
postage stamp each, The American Agriculturist, What
Greeley Knows about Farming, and that they be per-

54 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

mitted to take with them to their homes, if they have
any, all the rejected railroad tariff bills, Beardsley’s
speech on female suffrage, Claussen’s reply, Kasson’s
speech on barnacles, Blakeley’s dog bill, Teale’s liquor
bill, and be given a pass over the Des Moines Valley
Railroad, with the earnest hope that they will never
return to Des Moines.

Once the Granger laws were enacted, the rail-
roads either fought the laws in court or obeyed
them in such a way as to make them appear most
obnoxious to the people, or else they employed both
tactics. The lawsuits, which began as soon as the
laws had been passed, dragged on, in appeal after
appeal, until finally they were settled in the Su-
preme Court of the United States. These suits
were not so numerous as might be expected, because
in most of the States they had to be brought on the
initiative of the injured shipper, and many shippers
feared to incur the animosity of the railroad. A
farmer was afraid that, if he angered the railroad,
misfortunes would befall him: his grain might be
delivered to the wrong elevators or left to stand and
spoil in damp freight cars; there might be no cars
available for grain just when his shipment was
ready; and machinery destined for him might be
delayed at a time when lack of it would mean the
loss of his crops. The railroads for their part

CURBING THE RAILROADS 55

whenever they found an opportunity to make the
new laws appear obnoxious in the eyes of the people,
were not slow to seize it. That section of the Illi-
nois law of 1873 which prohibited unjust discrimi-
nation went into effect in July, but the maximum
freight rates were not fixed until January of 1874.
As a result of this situation, the railroads in July
made all their freight rates uniform, according to
the law, but accomplished this uniformity by rais-
ing the low rates instead of lowering the high. In
Minnesota, similarly, the St. Paul and Pacific road,
in its zeal to establish uniform passenger rates,
raised the fare between St. Paul and Minneapolis
from. three to five cents a mile, in order to make it
conform to the rates elsewhere in the State. The
St. Paul and Sioux City road declared that the
Granger law made its operation unprofitable, and
it so reduced its train service that the people peti-
tioned the commission to restore the former rate.
In Wisconsin, when the state supreme court af-
firmed the constitutionality of the radical Potter
-_ Jaw, the railroads retaliated in some cases by carry-
ing out their threat to give the public “ Potter cars,
Potter rails, and Potter time.” As a result the
public soon demanded the repeal of the law.

In all the States but Illinois the Granger laws were

56 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

repealed before they had been given a fair trial.
The commissions remained in existence, however,
although with merely advisory functions; and they
sometimes did good service in the arbitration of dis-
putes between shippers and railroads. Interest in
the railroad problem died down for the time, but
every one of the Granger States subsequently enact-
ed for the regulation of railroad rates statutes which,
although more scientific than the laws of the seven-
ties, are the same in principle. The Granger laws
thus paved the way not only for future and more en-
during legislation in these States but also for similar
legislation in most of the other States of the Union
and even for the national regulation of railroads
through the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The Supreme Court of the United States was the
theater for the final stage of this conflict between
the railroads and the farmers. In October, 1876,
decisions were handed down together in eight cases
which had been appealed from federal circuit and
state courts in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Min- —
nesota, and which involved the validity of the
Granger laws. The fundamental issue was the
same in all these cases — the right of a State to
regulate a business that is public in nature though
privately owned and managed.

CURBING THE RAILROADS 57

The first of the “‘Granger cases,” as they were
termed by Justice Field in a dissenting opinion, was
not a railroad case primarily but grew out of ware-
house legislation which the farmers of Illinois se-
cured in 1871. This act established maximum
charges for grain storage and required all ware-
housemen to publish their rates for each year dur-
ing the first week in January and to refrain from
increasing these rates during the year and from dis-
criminating between customers. In an endeavor
to enforce this law the railroad and warehouse
commission brought suit against Munn and Scott, a
warehouse firm in Chicago, for failure to take out
the license required by the act. The suit, known
as Mum vs. Illinois, finally came to the United
States Supreme Court and was decided in favor of
the State, two of the justices dissenting.t The
opinion of the court in this case, delivered by Chief
Justice Waite, laid down the principles which were
followed in the railroad cases. The attorneys for
the warehousemen had argued that the act in ques-
tion, by assuming to limit charges, amounted to a
deprivation of property without due process of law
and was thus repugnant to the Fourteenth Amend-
ment to the Constitution of the United States.

£94 United States Reports, 118.

58 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

But the court declared that it had long been cus-
tomary both in England and America to regulate
by law any business in which the public has an in-
terest, such as ferries, common carriers, bakers, or
millers, and that the warehouse business in ques-
tion was undoubtedly clothed with such a public
interest. Further, it was asserted that this right
to regulate implied the right to fix maximum
charges, and that what those charges should be was
a legislative and not a judicial question.

In deciding the railroad cases the courts applied
the same general principles, the public nature of the
railroad business having already been established
by a decision in 1872.‘ Another point was in-
volved, however, because of the contention of the
attorneys for the companies that the railway char-
ters were contracts and that the enforcement of the
laws would amount to an impairment of contracts,
which was forbidden by the Constitution. The
court admitted that the charters were contracts
but denied that state regulation could be considered
an impairment of contracts unless the terms of the
charter were specific. Moreover, it was pointed
out that contracts must be interpreted in the light
of rights reserved to the State in its constitution

* Olcott vs. The Supervisors, 16 Wallace, 678.

CURBING THE RAILROADS 59

and in the light of its general laws of incorporation
under which the charters were granted.

These court decisions established principles which
even now are of vital concern to business and poli-
tics. From that time to this no one has denied the
right of States to fix maximum charges for any
business which is public in its nature or which has
been clothed with a public interest; nor has the in-
clusion of the railroad and warehouse businesses in
that class been questioned. The opinion, however,
that this right of the States is unlimited, and there-
fore not subject to judicial review, has been practi-
cally reversed. In 1890 the Supreme Court de-
clared a Minnesota law invalid because it denied a
judicial hearing as to the reasonableness of rates’;
and the courts now assume it to be their right and
duty to determine whether or not rates fixed by
legislation are so low as to amount to a deprivation
of property without due process of law. In spite
of this later limitation upon the power of the
States, the Granger decisions have furnished the
legal basis for state regulation of railroads down
to the present day. They are the most significant
achievements of the anti-monopoly movement of
the seventies.

™ 134 United States Reports, 418.

CHAPTER V
THE COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT

Tue first phase of the agrarian crusade, which cen-
tered around and took its distinctive name from
the Grange, reached its highwater mark in 1874.
Early in the next year the tide began toebb. The
number of Granges decreased rapidly during the re-
mainder of the decade, and of over twenty thou-
sand in 1874 only about four thousand were alive
in 1880.

Several causes contributed to this sudden decline.
Any organization which grows so rapidly is prone
to decay with equal rapidity; the slower growths
are better rooted and are more likely to reach frui--
tion. So with the Grange. Many farmers had
joined the order, attracted by its novelty and vogue;
others joined the organization in the hope that it
would prove a panacea for all the ills that agricul-
ture is heir to and then left it in disgust when they

found its success neither immediate nor universal.
6

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 61

Its methods of organization, too, while admirably
adapted to arousing enthusiasm and to securing
new chapters quickly, did not make for stability
and permanence. The Grange deputy, as the or-
ganizer was termed, did not do enough of what the
salesman calls “follow-up work.” He went into a
town, persuaded an influential farmer to go about
_with him in a house-to-house canvass, talked to the
other farmers of the vicinity, stirred them up to
interest and excitement, organized a Grange, and
then left the town. If he happened to choose the
right material, the chapter became an active and
flourishing organization; if he did not choose wisely,
it might drag along in a perfunctory existence or
even lapse entirely. Then, too, the deputy’s ig-
rorance of local conditions sometimes led him to
open the door to the farmers’ enemies. There can
be little doubt that insidious harm was worked
through the admission into the Grange of men who
were farmers only incidentally and whose “‘inter-
est in agriculture” was limited te making profits
from the farmer rather than from the farm. As
D. Wyatt Aiken, deputy for the Grange in the
Southern States and later member of the executive
committee of the National Grange, shrewdly com-
mented, “‘Everybody wanted to join the Grange

62 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

then; lawyers, to get clients; doctors, to get cus-
tomers; Shylocks, to get their pound of flesh; and
sharpers, to catch the babes in the woods.’’

Not only the members who managed thus to in-
sinuate themselves into the order but also the le-
gitimate members proved hard to control. With
that hostility to concentrated authority which so
often and so lamentably manifests itself in a demo-
cratic body, the rank and file looked with suspicion
upon the few men who constituted the National
Grange. The average farmer was interested main-
ly in local issues, conditions, and problems, and
looked upon the National Grange not as a means
of helping him in local affairs, but as a combination
of monopolists who had taken out a patent on
the local grange and forced him to pay a royalty
in order to enjoy its privileges. The demand for
reduction in the power of the National Grange led
to frequent attempts to revise the constitution in
the direction of decentralization; and the revisions
were such as merely to impair the power of the Na-
tional Grange without satisfying the discontented
members.

Of all the causes of the rapid collapse of the
Granger movement, the unfortunate experience
which the farmers had in their attempts at business

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 63

codperaticn was probably chief. Their hatred of
the middleman and of the manufacturer was almost
as intense as their hostility to the railroad magnate;
quite naturally, therefore, the farmers attempted
to use their new organizations as a means of elimi-
nating the one and controlling the other. As in the
parallel case of the railroads, the farmers’ ani-
. mosity, though it was probably greater than the
provocation warranted, was not without grounds.

The middlemen — the commission merchants
to whom the farmer sold his produce and the retail
dealers from whom he bought his supplies -— did
undoubtedly make use of their opportunities to
drive hard bargains. The commission merchant
had such facilities for storage and such knowledge
of market conditions that he frequently could take
advantage of market fluctuations to increase his
profits. The farmer who sold his produce at a
low price and then saw it dispesed of as a much
higher figure was naturally enraged, but he could
devise no adequate remedy. Attempts to regu-
late market conditions by creating an artificial
shortage seldom met with success. The slogan
“Hold your hogs” was more effective as a catch-
word than as an economic weapon. The retail
dealers, no less than the commission men, seemed

64 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

to the farmer to be unjust in their dealings with
him. In the small agricultural communities there
was practically no competition. Even where there
were several merchants in one town these could,
and frequently did, combine to fix prices which the
farmer had no alternative but to pay. What irked
the farmer most in connection with these “‘extor-
tions” was that the middleman seemed to be a non-
producer, a parasite who lived by draining the agri-
cultural classes of the wealth which they produced.
Even those farmers who recognized the middleman
as a necessity had little conception of the intricacy
and value of his service.

Against the manufacturer, too, the farmer had
his grievances. He felt that the system of patent
rights for farm machinery resulted in unfair prices
—for was not this same machinery shipped to
Europe and there sold for less than the retail price
in the United States? Any one.could see that the
manufacturer must have been making more than
reasonable profit on domestic sales. Moreover,
there were at this time many abuses of patent
rights. Patents about to expire were often ex-
tended through political influence or renewed by
means of slight changes which were claimed to
be improvements. A more serious defect in the

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 65

patent system was that new patents were not thor-
oughly investigated, so that occasionally one was
issued on an article which had long been in common
use. That a man should take out a patent for the
manufacture of a sliding gate which farmers had
for years crudely constructed for themselves and
should then collect royalty from those who were
using the gates they had made, naturally enough
~ aroused the wrath of his victims.

It was but natural, then, that the Granges should
be drawn into all sorts of schemes to divert into the
pockets of their members the streams of wealth
which had previously flowed to the greedy middle-
men. The members of the National Grange, think-
ing that these early schemes for codperation were
premature, did not at first take them up and stand-
ardize them but left them entirely in the hands of
local, county, and state Granges. These there-
upon proceeded to “gang their ain gait” through
the unfamiliar paths of business operations and too
frequently brought up in a quagmire. “This pur-
chasing business,” said Kelley in 1867, “com-
menced with buying jackasses; the prospects are
that many will be sold.”” But the Grangers went
on with their plans for business codperation with

ardor undampened by such forebodings. Sometimes
‘ 7

66 _ THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

a local Grange would make a bargain with a cer-
tain dealer of the vicinity, whereby members were
allowed special rates if they bought with cash
and traded only with that dealer. More often the
local grange would establish an agency, with either
a paid or a voluntary agent who would forward the
orders of the members in large lots to the manu-
facturers or wholesalers and would thus be able to
purchase supplies for cash at terms considerably
lower than the retail prices. Frequently, realizing
that they could get still more advantageous terms
for larger orders, the Granges established a county
agency which took over the work of several local
agents. Sometimes the Patrons even embarked
upon the more ambitious enterprise of codperative
stores.

The most common type of coéperative store was
. that in which the capital was provided by a stock
company of Grange members and which sold goods
to Patrons at very low prices. The profits, when
there were any, were divided among the stock-
holders in proportion to the amount of stock they
held, just as in any stock company. This type of
store was rarely successful for any length of time.
The low prices at which.it sold goods were likely to
involve it in competition with other merchants.

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 67

Frequently these men would combine to lower their
prices and, by a process familiar in the history of
business competition, “freeze out”’ the codperative
store, after which they might restore their prices to
the old levels. The farmers seldom had sufficient
spirit to buy at the Grange store if they found better
bargains elsewhere; so the store was assured of its
clientéle only so long as it sold at the lowest pos-
sible prices. Farmers’ agencies for the disposal of
produce met with greater success. Codperative
creameries and elevators in several States are said
to have saved Grange members thousands of dol-
lars. Sometimes the state Grange, instead of set-
ting up in the business of selling produce, chose
certain firms as Grange agents and advised Patrons
to sell through these firms. Where the choice was
wisely made, this system seems to have saved the
farmers about as much money without involving
them in the risks of business.

By 1876 the members of the National Grange
had begun to study the problem of coéperation
in retailing goods and had come to the conclu-
sion that the so-called ‘Rochdale plan,” a system
worked out by an English association, was the most
practicable for the codperative store. The Nation-
al Grange therefore recommended this type of

68 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

organization. The stock of these stores wa: sold
only to Patrons, at five dollars a share and in
limited amounts; thus the stores were owned by
a large number of stockholders, all of whom had
equal voice in the management of the company.
The stores sold goods at ordinary rates, and then at
the end of the year, after paying a small dividend
on the stock, divided their profits among the pur-
chasers, according to the amounts purchased.
This plan eliminated the violent competition which
occurred when a store attempted to sell goods at
cost, and at the same time saved the purchaser
quite as much. Unfortunately the Rochdale plan
found little favor among farmers in the Middle
West because of their unfortunate experience
with other codperative ventures. In the East and
South, however, it was adopted more generally and
met with sufficient success to testify to the wis-
dom of the National Grange in recommending it.

In its attitude toward manufacturing, the Na-
tional Grange was less sane. Not content with the
elimination of the middlemen, the farmers were
determined to control the manufacture of their
implements. With the small manufacturer they
managed to deal fairly well, for they could usually
find some one who would supply the Grange with

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 69

implements at less than the retail price. In Iowa,
where the state Grange early established an agency
for codperative buying, the agent managed to per-
suade a manufacturer of plows to give a discount
to Grangers. Asa result, this manufacturer’s plows
are reported to have left the factory with the paint
scarcely dry, while his competitors, who had refused
to make special terms, had difficulty in disposing of
their stock. But the manufacturers of harvesters
persistently refused to sell at wholesale rates. The
Iowa Grange thereupon determined to do its own
manufacturing and succeeded in buying a patent
for a harvester which it could make and ‘sell for
about half what other harvesters cost. In 1874
some 250 of these machines were manufactured,
and the prospects looked bright.

Deceived by the apparent success of grange
manufacturing in Iowa, officers of the order at once
planned to embark in manufacturing on a large
scale. The National Grange was rich in funds
at this time; it had within a year received well
over $250,000 in dispensation fees from seventeen
thousand new Granges. Angered at what was felt
to be the tyranny of monopoly, the officers of the
National Grange decided to use this capital in man-
ufacturing agricultural implements which were to

70 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

be sold to Patrons at very low prices. They went
about the country buying patents for all sorts of
farm implements, but not always making sure of
the worth of the machinery or the validity of the
patents. In Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, they planned fac-
tories to make harvesters, plows, wagons, sewing-
machines, threshing-machines, and all sorts of farm
implements. Then came the crash. The Iowa
harvester factory failed in 1875 and bankrupted the
state Grange. Other failures followed; suits for
patent infringements were brought against some of
the factories; local Granges disbanded for fear they
might be held responsible for the debts incurred;
and in the Northwest, where the activity had been
the greatest, the order almost disappeared.
Although the Grange had a mushroom growth,
it nevertheless exerted a real ard enduring influ-
ence upon farmers both as individuals and as mem-
bers of a class. Even the experiments in codpera-
tion, disastrous though they were in the end, were
not without useful results. While they lasted they
undoubtedly effected a considerable saving for the
farmers. As Grange agents or as stockholders in
coéperative stores or Grange factories, many farm-
ers gained valuable business experience which

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 71 >

helped to prevent them from being victimized
thereafter. ‘The farmers learned, moreover, the
wisdom of working through the accepted channels
of business. Those who had scoffed at the Roch-
dale plan of codperation, in the homely belief that
any scheme made in America must necessarily be
better than an English importation, came to see
that self-confidence and independence must be
tempered by willingness to learn from the expe-
rience of others. Most important of all, these ex-
periments in business taught the farmers that the
middlemen and manufacturers performed services
essential to the agriculturalist and that the produc-
tion and distribution of manufactured articles and
the distribution of crops are far more complex affairs
than the farmers had imagined and perhaps worthy
of more compensation than they had been accus-
tomed to think just. On their side, the manufac-
turers and dealers learned that the farmers were
not entirely helpless and that to gain their good-
will by fair prices was on the whole wiser than to
iorce them into competition. Thus these ventures
resulted in the development of a new tolerance
and a new respect between the two traditionally
antagonistic classes.

The social and intellectual stimulus which the

72 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

farmers received from the movement was probably
even more important than any direct political or
economic results. It is difficult for the present
generation to form any conception of the dreari-
ness and dullness of farm life half a century ago.
Especially in the West, where farms were large, op-
portunities for social intercourse were few, and
weeks might pass without the farmer seeing any
but his nearest neighbors. For his wife existence
was even more drear. She went to the market
town less often than he and the routine of her life
on the farm kept her close to the farmhouse and
prevented visits even to her neighbors’ dwellings.
The difficulty of getting domestic servants made
the work of the farmer’s wife extremely laborious;
and at that time there were none of the modern
conveniences which lighten work such as power
churns, cream separators, and washing-machines.
Even more than the husband, the wife was likely to
degenerate into a drudge without the hope — and
eventually without the desire — of anything better.
The church formed, to be sure, a means of social
intercourse; but according to prevailing religious
notions the churchyard was not the place nor the
Sabbath the time for that healthy but unrestrained
hilarity which is essential to the well-being cf man.

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 73

Into lives thus circumscribed the Grange came as
a liberalizing and uplifting influence. Its admis-
sion of women into the order on the same terms
as men made it a real community servant and gave
both women and men a new sense of the dignity of
woman. More important perhaps than any change
in theories concerning womankind, it afforded an
- opportunity for men and women to work and play
together, apparently much to the satisfaction and
enjoyment of both sexes. Not only in Grange
meetings, which came at least once a month and
often more frequently, but also in Grange picnics
and festivals the farmers and their wives and chil-
dren came together for joyous human intercourse.
Such. frequent meetings were bound to work a
change of heart. Much of man’s self-respect arises
from the esteem of others, and the desire to keep
that esteem is certainly a powerful agent in social
welfare. It was reported that in many communi-
ties the advent of the Grange created a marked im-
provement in the dress and manners of the mem-
bers. Crabbed men came out of their shells and
grew genial; disheartened women became cheerful;
repressed children delighted in the chance to play
with other boys and girls of their own age.

The ritual of the Grange, inculcating lessons of

74 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

orderliness, industry, thrift, and temperance, ex-
pressed the members’ ideals in more dignified and
pleasing language than they themselves could have
invented. The songs of the Grange gave an op-
portunity for the exercise of the musical sense of
people not too critical of literary quality, when
with “spontaneous trills on every tongue,” as one
of the songs has it, the members varied the ritual
with music.

One of the virtues especially enjoined on Grange
members was charity. Ceres, Pomona, and Flora,
offices of the Grange to be filled only by women,
were made to represent Faith, Hope, and Charity,
respectively; and in the ceremony of dedicating
the Grange hall these three stood always beside the
altar while the chaplain read the thirteenth chap-
ter of First Corinthians. Not only in theory but
in practice did the order proclaim its devotion to
charitable work. It was not uncommon for mem-
bers of a local Grange to foregather and harvest the
crops for a sick brother or help rebuild a house de-
stroyed by fire or tornado. In times of drought or
plague both state and national Granges were gener-
ous in donations for the sufferers; in 1874, when
the Mississippi River overflowed its banks in its
lower reaches, money and supplies were sent to the

COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 75

farmers of Louisiana and Alabama; again in the
same year relief was sent to those Patrons who.
suffered from the grasshopper plague west of the
Mississippi; and in 1876 money was sent to South
Carolina to aid sufferers from a prolonged drought
in that State. These charitable deeds, endearing
giver and receiver to each other, resulted in a bet-
_ter understanding and a greater tolerance between
people of different parts of the country.

The meetings of the local Granges were forums
in which the members trained themselves in pub-
lic speaking and parliamentary practice. Pro-
grams were arranged, sometimes with the help of
suggestions from officers of the state Grange; and
the discussion of a wide variety of topics, mostly
economic and usually concerned especially with the
interests of the farmer, could not help being stimu-
lating, even if conclusions were sometimes reached
which were at variance with orthodox political
economy. The Grange was responsible, too, for a
great increase in the number and circulation of agri-
cultural journals. Many of these papers were rec-
ognized as official organs ofthe order and, by pub-
lishing news of the Granges and discussing the
political and economic phases of the farmers’ move-
ment, they built up an extensive circulation. Rural

76 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

postmasters everywhere reported a great increase
in their mails after the establishment of a Grange
in the vicinity. One said that after the advent of
the order there were thirty newspapers taken at his
office where previously there had been but one.
Papers for which members or local Granges sub-
scribed were read, passed from hand to hand, and
thoroughly discussed. This is good evidence that
farmers were forming the habit of reading. All
the Granger laws might have been repealed; all
the schemes for codperation might have come to
naught; all the moral and religious teachings of the
Grange might have been left to the church; but
if the Granger movement had created nothing
else than this desire to read, it would have been
worth while. For after the farmer began to read,
he was no longer like deadwood floating in the
backwaters of the current; he became more like
a propelled vessel in midstream — sometimes, to
be sure, driven into turbulent waters, sometimes
tossed about by conflicting currents, but at least
making progress.

CHAPTER VI
THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE

WHATEVER may have been the causes of the col-
lapse of the Granger movement in 1875 and 1876,
returning prosperity for the Western farmer was
certainly not one of them, for the general agricul-
tural depression showed no signs of lifting until
nearly the end of the decade. During the Granger
period the farmer attempted to increase his narrow
margin of protit or to turn a deficit into a profit by
decreasing the cost of transportation and eliminat-
ing the middleman. Failing in this attempt, he
decided that the remedy for the situation was to be
found in increasing the prices for his products and
checking the appreciation of his debts by increas-
ing the amount of money in circulation.

This demand for currericy inflation was by no
means new when it was taken up by the West-
ern farmers. It had played a prominent part in

American history from colonial days, especially in
77

78 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

periods of depression and in the less prosperous
sections of the ever advancing frontier. During
the Civil War, inflation was actually accomplished
through the issue of over $400,000,000 in legal-ten-
der notes known as “‘greenbacks.”’ No definite
time for the redemption of these notes was speci-
fied, and they quickly declined in value as com-
pared with gold. At the close of the war a paper
dollar was worth only about half its face value in
gold. An attempt was made to raise the relative
value of the greenbacks and to prepare for the re-
sumption of specie payments by retiring the paper
money from circulation as rapidly as_ possible.
This policy meant, of course, a contraction of the
volume of currency and consequently met with
immediate opposition. In February, 1868, Con-
gress prohibited the further retirement of green-
backs and left to the discretion of the Secretary of
the Treasury the reissue of the $44,000,000 which
had been retired. Only small amounts were reis-
sued, however, until after the panic of 1873; and
when Congress attempted, in April, 1874, to force a
permanent increase of the currency to $400,000,000,
President Grant vetoed the bill.

Closely related to the currency problem was that
of the medium to be used in the payment of the

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 79

principal of bonds issued during the Civil War.
When the bonds were sold, it was generally under-
stood that they would be redeemed in gold or its
equivalent. Some of the issues, however, were
covered by no specific declaration to that effect,
and a considerable sentiment arose in favor of re-
deeming them with currency, or lawful money, as
it was called.

These questions were not party issues at first,
and there was no clear-cut division upon them be-
tween the two old parties throughout the period.
The alinement was by class and section rather than
by party; and inflationists and advocates of the re-
demption of the bonds in currency were to be found
not only among the rank and file but also among
the leaders of both parties. The failure of either
the Democrats or the Republicans to take a de-
cided stand on these questions resulted, as so often
before, in the development of third parties which
made them the main planks in the new platform.

The first attempts at organized political activity
in behalf of greenbackism came not from the farm-
ers of the West but from the laboring men of the
East, whose growing class consciousness resulted
in the organization of the National Labor Union in
1868. Accompanying, if not resulting from the

80 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Government’s policy of contraction, came a fall of
prices and widespread unemployment. It is not
strange, therefore, that this body at once declared
itself in favor of inflation. The plan proposed was
what was known as the “American System of Fi-
nance”: money was to be issued only by the Gov-
ernment and in the form of legal-tender paper re-
deemable only with bonds bearing a low rate of
interest, these bonds in turn to be convertible into
greenbacks at the option of the holder. The Na-
tional Labor Union recommended the nomination
of workingmen’s candidates for offices and made
arrangements for the organization of a National
Labor party. This convened in Columbus in Feb-
ruary, 1872, adopted a Greenback platform, and
nominated David Davis of Illinois as its candidate
for the presidency. After the nomination of Hor-
ace Greeley by the Liberal Republicans, Davis
declined this nomination, and the executive com-
mittee of his party then decided that it was too late
to name another candidate.

This early period of inflation propaganda has
been described as “the social reform period, or
the wage-earners’ period of greenbackism, as dis-
tinguished from the inflationist, or farmers’ period
that followed.” The primary objects of the labor

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 81

reformers were, it appears, to lower the rate of inter-
est on money and to reduce taxation by the trans-
formation of the war debt into interconvertible
bonds. The farmers, on the other hand, were inter-
ested primarily in the expansion of the currency in
the hope that this would result in higher prices for
their products. It was not until the panic of 1873
_ had intensified the agricultural depression and the
Granger movement had failed to relieve the situa-
tion that the farmers of the West took hold of
greenbackism and made it a major political issue.
The independent parties of the Granger period,
as a rule, were not in favor of inflation. Their
platforms in some cases demanded a speedy return
to specie payment. In 1873 Ignatius Donnelly,
in a pamphlet entitled Facts for the Granges, de-
clared: ‘“‘There is too much paper money. The
currency is diluted — watered — weakened. . .
We have no interest in an inflated money market.
As we have to sell our wheat at the world’s
price, it is our interest that everything we buy
should be at the world’s price. Specie payments
would practically add eighteen cents to the price
of every bushel of wheat we have to sell!” In
Indiana and Illinois, however, the independent

parties were captured by the Greenbackers, and
6

82 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the Indiana party issued the call for the confer-
ence at Indianapolis in November, 1874, which led
to the ‘organization of the National Greenback
party.

This conference was attended by representatives
from seven States and included several who had
been prominent in the Labor Reform movement.
“The political Moses of the ‘New Party,’”’ accord-
ing to the Chicago Tribune, was James Buchanan
of Indianapolis, a lawyer “with an ability and
shrewdness that compel respect, however much his
theories may be ridiculed and abused.” He was
also the editor of the Sun, a weekly paper which
supported the farmers’ movement. The platform
committee of the conference reported in favor of
“a new political organization of the people, by the
people, and for the people, to restrain the aggres-
sions of combined capital upon the rights and in-
terests of the masses, to reduce taxation, correct
abuses, and to purify all departments of the Gov-
ernment.” The most important issue before the
people was declared to be “the proper solution of
the money question,’’ meaning thereby the issue
of greenbacks interconvertible with bonds. A na-
tional convention of the party was called to meet at
Cleveland on March 11, 1875.

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 83

The Cleveland convention, attended by repre-
sentatives of twelve States, completed the organiza-
tion of the Independent party, as it was officially
named, and made arrangements for the nominat-
ing convention. This was held at Indianapolis
on May 17, 1876, with 240 delegates representing
eighteen States. Ignatius Donnelly, who had ap-
_ parently changed his mind on the currency ques-
tion since 1873, was the temporary president. The
platform contained the usual endorsement of a
circulating medium composed of legal-tender notes
interconvertible with bonds but gave first place to
a demand for “‘the immediate and unconditional
repeal of the specie-resumption act.” This meas-
ure, passed by Congress in January, 1875, had
fixed January 1, 1879, as the date when the Gov-
ernment would redeem greenbacks at their face
value in coin. Although the act made provision
for the permanent retirement of only a part of the
greenbacks from circulation, the new party de-
nounced it as a “suicidal and destructive policy of
contraction.” Another plank in the platform, and
one of special interest in view of the later free silver
agitation, was a protest against the sale of bonds
for the purpose of purchasing silver to be. sub-
stituted for the fractional currency of war times.

B4 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

This measure, it was asserted, “although well
calculated to enrich owners of silver mines .

will still further oppress, in taxation, an already
overburdened people.”’

There was a strong movement in the convention
for the nomination of David Davis for the presi-
dency, but this seems to have met with opposition
from Eastern delegates who remembered his deser-
tion of the National Labor Reform party in 1872.
Peter Cooper of New York was finally selected
as the candidate. He was a philanthropist rather
than a politician and was now eighty-five years old.
Having made a large fortune as a pioneer in the
manufacture of iron, he left his business cares to
other members of his family and devoted himself
to the education and elevation of the working
classes. His principal contribution to this cause
was the endowment of the famous Cooper Union
in New York, where several thousand persons,
mostly mechanics, attended classes in a variety
of technical and educational subjects and enjoyed
the privileges of a free library and reading room.
When notified of his nomination, Cooper at first
expressed the hope that one or both of the old
parties might adopt such currency planks as would
make the new movement unnecessary. Later he

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 85

accepted unconditionally but took no active part
in the campaign.

The Greenback movement at first made but slow
progress in the various States. In Indiana and
Illinois the existing independent organizations be-
came component parts of the new party, although
in Illinois, at least, quite a number of the former
_leaders returned to the old parties. In the other
Western States, however, the third parties of the
Granger period had gone to pieces or had been ab-
sorbed by means of fusion, and new organizations
had to be created. In Indiana the Independent
party developed sufficient strength to scare the
Republican leaders and to cause one of them to
write to Hayes: “A bloody-shirt campaign, with
money, and Indiana is safe; a financial campaign
and no money and we are beaten.”

The Independents do not appear to have made
a very vigorous campaign in 1876. The coffers of
the party were as empty as the pockets of the farm-
ers who were soon to swell its ranks; and this made
a campaign of the usual sort impossible. One big
meeting was held in Chicago in August, with Sam-
uel F. Cary, the nominee for Vice-President, as
the principal attraction; and this was followed
by a torchlight procession. A number of papers

86 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

published by men who were active in the movement,
such as Buchanan’s indianapolis Star, Noonan’s
Industrial Age of Chicago, and Donnelly’s Anti-
Monopolist of St. Paul, labored not without avail to
spread the gospel among their readers. The most
effective means of propaganda, however, was prob-
ably the Greenback Club. At a conference in
Detroit in August, 1875, “the organization of
Greenback Clubs in every State in the Union” was
recommended, and the work was carried on under
the leadership of Marcus M. Pomeroy. “‘Brick”’
Pomeroy was a journalist, whose sobriquet resulted
from a series of Brickdust Sketches of prominert
Wisconsin men which he published in one of his
papers. As the editor of Brick Pomeroy’s Demo-
crat, a sensational paper published in New York,
he had gained considerable notoriety. In 1875,
after the failure of this enterprise he undertook to
retrieve his broken fortunes by editing a Greenback
paper in Chicago and by organizing Greenback
clubs for which this paper served as an organ.
Pomeroy also wrote and circulated a series of tracts
with such alluring titles as Hot Drops and Meat for
Men. Several thousand clubs were organized in
the Northwest during the next few years, princi-
pally in the rural regions, and the secrecy of their

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 87

proceedings aroused the fear that they were ad-
vocating communism. The members of the clubs
and their leaders constituted, as a matter. of fact,
the more radical of the Greenbackers. They usu-
ally opposed fusion with the Democrats and often
refused to follow the regular leaders of the party.
In the election the Greenback ticket polled only
about eighty thousand votes, or less than one per
~ cent of the total. In spite of the activity of former
members of the Labor Reform party in the move-
ment, Pennsylvania was the only Eastern State in
which the new party made any considerable show-
ing. In the West over 6000 votes were cast in
each of the five States — Indiana, Illinois, Michi-
gan, Iowa, and Kansas. The agrarian aspect of the
movement was now uppermost, but the vote of
17,000 polled in Illinois, though the largest of the
group, was less than a quarter of the votes cast by
the state Independent Reform party in 1874 when
railroad regulation had been the dominant issue.
Clearly many farmers were not yet convinced ot
the necessity of a Greenback party. The only
tangible achievement of the party in 1876 was the
election of afew members of the Illinois Legislature
who held the balance between the old parties and
were instrumental in sending David Davis to the

88 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

United States Senate. This vote, it is interesting
to note, kept Davis from serving on the electoral
commission and thus probably prevented Tilden
from becoming President.

But the Greenback movement was to find fresh
impetus in 1877, a year of exceptional unrest and
discontent throughout the Union. The agricul-
tural depression was even greater than in preced-
ing years, while the great railroad strikes were evi-
dence of the distress of the workingmen. This situ-
ation was reflected in politics by the rapid growth
of the Greenback party and the reappearance of
labor parties with Greenback planks.*

In the following year the new party had an ex-
cellent opportunity to demonstrate its strength
wherever it existed. In February, 1878, a confer-
ence was held at Toledo for the purpose of welding
the various political organizations of workingmen

1 In state elections from Massachusetts to Kansas the Greenback
and labor candidates polled from 5 to 15 per cent of the total vote, and
in most cases the Greenback vote would probably have been much
greater had not one or the other, and in some cases both, of the old
parties incorporated part of the Greenback demands in their platforms.
In Wisconsin, for example, there was little difference between Demo-
crats and Greenbackers on the currency question, and even the Re-
publicans in their platform leaned toward inflation, although the
candidates declared against it. No general elections were held in

3877 in some of the States where the Greenback sentiment was most
pronounced.

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 89

and advocates of inflation into an effective weapon
as a single united party. This conference, which
was attended by several hundred delegates from
twenty-eight States, adopted “‘National’’ as the
name of the party, but it was usually known from
this time on as the Greenback Labor party. The
Toledo platform, as the resolutions adopted by this
conference came to be designated, first denounced
' the limiting of the legal-tender quality of green-
backs, the changing of currency-bonds into coin-
bonds, the demonetization of the silver dollar, the
excepting of bonds from taxation, the contraction
of the circulating medium, the proposed forced re-
sumption of specie payments, and the prodigal
waste of the public lands.” The resolutions which
followed demanded the suppression of bank notes
and the issue of all money by the Government, such
money to be full legal-tender at its stamped value
and to be provided in sufficient quantity to insure
the full employment of labor and to establish a rate
of interest which would secure to labor its just re-
ward. Other planks called for the coinage of silver
on the same basis as that of gold, reservation of the
public lands for actual settlers, legislative reduction
of the hours of labor, establishment of labor bu-
reaus, abolition of the contract system of employing

90 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

prison labor, and suppression of Chinese immigra-
tion. It is clear that in this platform the interests
of labor received full consideration. Just before
the conference adjourned it adopted two additional
resolutions. One of these, adopted in response to
a telegram from General B. F. Butler, denounced
the silver bill just passed by Congress because it
had been so modified as to limit the amount oi
silver to be coined. The other, which was offered
by “Brick”? Pomeroy, declared: ‘“‘We will noi
affiliate in any degree with any of the old parties,
but in all cases and localities will organize anew
.. . and. . . vote only for men who entirely
abandon old party lines and organizations.” This
attempt to forestall fusion was to be of no avail,
as the sequel will show, but Pomeroy and his fol-
lowers in the Greenback clubs adhered throughout
to their declaration.

In the elections of 1878, the high-water mark of
the movement, about a million votes were cast for
Greenback candidates. Approximately two-thirds
of the strength of the party was in the Middle West
and one-third in the East. That the movement,
even in the East, was largely agrarian, is indicated
by the famous argument of Solon Chase, chairman
of the party convention in Maine. “Inflate the

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 91

currency, and you raise the price of my steers and
at the same time pay the public debt.”” “‘Them
steers”’ gave Chase a prominent place in politics for
half a decade. The most important achievement
of the movement at this time was the election to
Congress of fifteen members who were classified as
Nationals — six from the East, six from the Middle
West, and three from the South. In most cases
these men secured their election through fusion
or through the failure of one of the old parties to
make nominations.

Easily first among the Greenbackers elected to
Congress in 1878 was General James B. Weaver of
Towa. When ten years of age, Weaver had been
taken by his parents to Iowa from Ohio, his native
State. In 1854, he graduated from a law school in
Cincinnati, and for some years thereafter practiced
his profession and edited a paper at Bloomfield in
Davis County, Iowa. He enlisted in the army as
a private in 1861, displayed great bravery at the
battles of Donelson and Shiloh, and received rapid
promotion to the rank of colonel. At the close of
the war he received a commission as brigadier gen-
arai by brevet. Weaver ran his first tilt in state
politics 1 an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the
Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in

92 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

1865. Although an ardent advocate of prohibition
and of state regulation of railroads, Weaver re-
mained loyal to the Republican party during the
Granger period and in 1875 was a formidable
candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. It is
said that a majority of the delegates to the conven-
tion had been instructed in his favor, but the rail-
road and liquor interests succeeded in stampeding
the convention to Samuel J. Kirkwood, the popu-
lar war governor. In the following year Weaver
took part in the organization of the Independent or
Greenback party in Iowa and accepted a position
on its state committee. Though resentment at the
treatment which he had received from the Repub-
licans may have influenced him to break the oid
ties, he was doubtless sincerely convinced that the
Republican party was beyond redemption and
that the only hope for reform lay in the new party
movement.

Weaver was gifted with remarkable talent as an
orator. His fine face and soldierly bearing, his rich
sympathetic voice and vivid imagination, made
him a favorite speaker at soldiers’ reunions and in
political campaigns. Lacking the eccentricities of
so many of his third party associates and never
inclined to go to extremes in his radicalism, he was

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 93

one of the ablest and, from the standpoint of the
Republicans, the most dangerous of the Greenback
leaders. In Congress Weaver won the respect of
his colleagues. Always ready to promote what he
believed to be the interests of the common people
and especially of the farmers, he espoused the cause
of the Oklahoma “‘boomers,”’ who were opposed by
a powerful lobby representing the interests of the
“cattle barons.”” He declared that, in a choice
between bullocks and babies, he would stand for
babies, and he staged a successful! filibuster at the
close of a session in order to force the consideration
of a bill for the opening of part of Oklahoma to
settlement.

The preliminaries of the campaign of 1880 were
vexed by dissension within the ranks of the Green-
backers. In March the radical faction led by
Pomeroy held a convention in St. Louis which
claimed to speak for ten thousand Greenback clubs
and two million voters. After Stephen D. Dil-
laye of New York had refused the presidential
nomination at the hands of this convention, it ad-
journed to meet in Chicago on the 9th of June —
the place and time already selected for the regular
convention of the National party. One reason for
the attitude of this faction appears to have been

O4 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the fear of fusion with the Democrats. The Chi-
cago convention finally succeeded in absorbing
these malcontents, as well as a group of socialist
delegates and representatives of various labor or-
ganizations who asked to be admitted. Dennis
Kearney, the notorious sand-lot agitator of Cali-
fornia was made chief sergeant at arms, and Susan
B. Anthony was allowed to give a suffrage speech.
The platform differed from earlier Greenback docu-
ments in that it contained no denunciation of the
Resumption Act. That was now a dead issue, for
on January 1, 1879, resumption became an accom-
plished fact, and the paper currency was worth its
face value in gold. Apart from this the platform
was much the same as that adopted at Toledo in
1878, with the addition of planks favoring women’s
suffrage, a graduated income tax, and congressional
regulation of interstate commerce. On the first
ballot, General Weaver received a majority of the
votes for presidential nominee; and B. J. Chambers
of Texas was nominated for Vice-President.
General Weaver in his letter of acceptance de-
clared it to be his intention “‘to visit the various sec~
tions of the Union and talk to the people.” This he
did, covering the country from Arkansas to Maine
and from Lake Michigan to the Gulf, speaking

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 95

in Faneuil Hall at Boston and in the Cooper
Union at New York, but spending the greater
part of his time in the Southern States. He de-
clared that he traveled twenty thousand miles,
made fully one hundred speeches, shook the hands
of thirty thousand people, and was heard by half a
million. Weaver was the first presidential candi-
_date to conduct a campaign of this sort, and the
results were not commensurate with his efforts. The
Greenback vote was only 308,578, about three per
cent of the total. One explanation of the small
vote would seem to be the usual disinclination of
people to vote for a man who has no chance of elec-
tion, however much they may approve of him and
his principles, when they have the opportunity to
make their votes count in deciding between two
other candidates. Then, too, the sun of prosperity
was beginning at last to dissipate the clouds of
depression. The crops of corn, wheat, and oats
raised in 1880 were the largest the country had ever
known; and the price of corn for once failed to de-
cline as production rose, so that the crop was worth
half as much again as that of 1878. When the
farmer had large crops to dispose of at remunera-
tive prices, he lost interest in the inflation of the
currency.

96 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

After 1880 the Greenback party rapidly disin-
tegrated. There was no longer any hope of its be-
coming a major party, in the near future at least,
and the more conservative leaders began to drift
back into the old parties or to make plans for fusion
with one of them in coming elections. But fusion
could at best only defer the end. The congression-
al election of 1882 clearly demonstrated that the
party was moribund. Ten of the Congressmen
elected in 1880 had been classified as Nationals;
of these only ene was reélected in 1882, and no new
names appear in the list. It is probable, however,
that a number of Congressmen classified as Demo-
crats owed their election in part to fusion between
the Democratic and Greenback parties.

The last appearance of the Greenbackers in
national politics was in the presidential election of
1884. In May of that year a convention of “The
Anti-Monopoly Organization of the United States,”
held in Chicago, adopted a platform voicing a de-
mand for legislative control of corporations and
monopolies in the interests of the people and nom-
inated General Benjamin F. Butler for President.
The convention of the Greenback or National
party met in Indianapolis, and selected Builer as
its candidate also. General Weaver presided over

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 97

the convention. The platform contained the usual
demands of the party with the exception of the res-
olution for the “free and unlimited coinage of gold
and silver,” which was rejected by a vote of 218 to
164. It would appear that the majority of the
delegates preferred to rely upon legal-tender paper
to furnish the ample supply of money desired.
General Butler was at this time acting with the
‘ Democrats in Massachusetts, and his first response
was noncommittal. Although he subsequently ac-
cepted both nominations, he did not make an ac-
tive campaign, and his total popular vote was only
175,370. Butler’s personal popularity and his la-
bor affiliations brought increased votes in some of
the Eastern States and in Michigan, but in those
Western States where the party had been strong-
est in 1880 and where it had been distinctly a farm-
ers’ movement there was a great falling off in the
Greenback vote.

Though the forces of agrarian discontent at-
tained national political organization for the first
time in the Greenback party, its leaders were never
able to obtain the support of more than a minority
of the farmers. The habit of voting the Republi-
ean or the Democratic ticket, firmly established
by the Civil War and by Reconstruction, was too

7

98 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

strong to be lightly broken; and many who favored
inflation could not yet bring themselves to the
point of supporting the Greenback party. On the
other hand there were undoubtedly many farmers
and others who felt that the old parties were hope-
lessly subservient to capitalistic interests, who were
ready to join in radical movements for reform and
for the advancement of the welfare of the industrial
classes, but who were not convinced that the struc-
ture of permanent prosperity for farmer and work-
ingman could be built on a foundation of fiat
money. Although the platforms of the Green-
backers contained many demands which were
soundly progressive, inflation was the paramount
issue in them; and with this issue the party was
unable to obtain the support of all the forces of dis-
content, radicalism, and reform which had been
engendered by the economic and political condi-
tions of the times. The Greenback movement was
ephemeral. Failing to solve the problem of agri-
cultural depression, it passed away as had the
Granger movement before it; but the greater farm-
ers’ movement of which both were a part went on.

CHAPTER VII
THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER

An English observer of agricultural conditions in
1893 finds that agricultural unrest was not peculiar
to the United States in the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century, but existed in all the more advanced
countries of the world:

Almost everywhere, certainly in England, France,
Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the United States,
the agriculturists, formerly so instinctively conserva-
tive, are becoming fiercely discontented, declare they
gained less by civilization than the rest of the com-
munity, and are looking about for remedies of a drastic
nature. In England they are hoping for aid from
councils of all kinds; in France they have put on pro-
tective duties which have been increased in vain twice
over; in Germany they put on and relaxed similar
duties and are screaming for them again; in Scandi-
navia — Denmark more particularly — they limit the
aggregation of land; and in the United States they
create organizations like the Grangers, the Farmers’
Leagues, and the Populists.'

t The Spectator, vol. LXX, p. 247.
29

100 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

It is to general causes, indeed, that one must turn
before trying to find the local circumstances which
aggravated the unrest in the United States, or at
least appeared todo so. The application of power
— first steam, then electricity — to machinery had
not only vastly increased the productivity of man-
kind but had stimulated invention to still wider
activity and lengthened the distance between mau
and that gaunt specter of famine which had dogged
his footsteps from the beginning. With a con-
stantly growing supply of the things necessary for
the maintenance of life, population increased tre-
mendously: England, which a few centuries be-
fore had been overcrowded with fewer than four
million people, was now more bountifully feeding
and clothing forty millions. Perhaps, all in all,
mankind was better off than it had ever been before;
yet different groups maintained unequal progress.
The tillers of the soil as a whole remained more
nearly in their primitive condition than did the
dwellers of the city. The farmer, it is true, pro-
duced a greater yield of crops, was surrounded by
more comforts, and was able to enjoy greater lei-
sure than his kind had ever done before. The
scythe and cradle had been supplanted by the
mower and reaper; horse harrows, cultivators, and

THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 101

rakes had transferred much of the physical exertion
of farming to the draft animals. But, after all, the
farmer owed less to steam and electricity than the
craftsman and the artisan of the cities.

The American farmer, if he read the census re-
ports, might learn that rural wealth had increased
from nearly $4,000,000,000 in 1850 to not quite
$16,000,000,000 in 1890; but he would also discover
‘ that in the same period urban wealth had advanced
from a little over $3,000,000,000 to more than
$49,000,000,000. Forty years before the capital of
rural districts comprised more than half that of the
whole country, now it formed only twenty-five per
cent. The rural population had shown a steady
proportionate decrease: when the first census was
taken in 1790, the dwellers of the country num-
bered more than ten times those of the city, but at
the end of the nineteenth century they formed only
about one-third of the total. Of course the intelli-
gent farmer might have observed that food for the
consumption of all could be produced by the work
of fewer hands, and vastly more bountifully as well,
and so he might have explained the relative decline
of rural population and wealth; but when the aver-
age farmer saw his sons and his neighbors’ sons
more and more inclined to seek work in town and

102 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

leave the farm, he put two and two together and
came to the conclusion that farming was in a peril-
ous state. He heard the boy who had gone to the
city boast that his hours were shorter, his toil less
severe, and his return in money much greater than
had been the case on the farm; and he knew that
this was true. Perhaps the farmer did not realize
that he had some compensations: greater security
of position and a reasonable expectation that old
age would find him enjoying some sort of home,
untroubled by the worry which might attend the
artisan or shopkeeper.

Whether or not the American farmer realized
that the nineteenth century had seen a total change
in the economic relations of the world, he did per-
ceive clearly that something was wrong in his own
case. The first and most impressive evidence of
this was te be found in the prices he received for
what he had to sell. From 1883 to 1889 inclusive
the average price of wheat was seventy-three cents
=. bushel, of corn thirty-six cents, of oats twenty-
eight cents. In 1890 crops were poor in most of
the grain areas, while prosperous times continued
to keep the consuming public of the manufactur-
ing regions able to buy; consequently corn and oats
nearly doubled in price, and wheat advanced 20

THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 103°

percent. Nevertheless, such was the shortage, ex-
cept in the case of corn, that the total return was
smaller than it had been for a year or two before.
In 1891 bumper crops of wheat, corn, oats, rye, and
barley drove the price down on all except wheat
and rye, but not to the level of 1889. Despite a
much smaller harvest in 1892 the decline continued,
_ to the intense disgust of the farmers of Nebraska
and Minnesota who failed to note that the entire
production of wheat in the world was normal in
that year, that considerable stores of the previous
crop had been held over and that more than a third
of the yield in the United States was sent forth to
compete everywhere with the crops of Argentine,
Russia, and the other grain producing countries.
No wonder the average farmer of the Mississippi
basin was ready to give ear to any one who could
suggest a remedy for his ills.

Cotton, which averaged nearly eleven cents a
pound for the decade ending in 1890, dropped to
less than nine cents in 1891 and to less than eight
in 1892. Cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and mules
brought more in the late than in the early eighties,
yet these, too, showed a decline about 1890. The
abnormal war-time price of wool which was more
than one dollar a pound in October, 1864, dropped

104 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

precipitately with peace, rose a little just before the
panic of 1873, and then declined with almost no re-
action until it reached thirty-three cents for the
highest grade in 1892.

The “roaring eighties,’ with all their superficial
appearance of prosperity, had apparently not
brought equal cheer to all. And then came the
“heart-breaking nineties.”” In February, 1893,
the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company
failed, a break in the stock market followed, and an
old-fashioned panic seized the country in its grasp.
A period of hitherto unparalleled speculative fren-
zy came thus to an end, and sober years followed
in which the American people had ample opportu-
nity to contemplate the evils arising from their
economic debauch.

Prices of agricultural products continued their
downward trend. Wheat touched bottom in 1894
with an average price of forty-nine cents; corn, two
years later, reached twenty-one cents. All the
other grains were likewise affected. Middling cot-
ton which had sold at eight and a half cents a
pound in 1893, dropped below seven cents the fol-
lowing year, recovered until it reached nearly eight
cents in 1896, and was at its lowest in 1898 at just
under six cents. Of all the marketable products of

THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 105

the farm, cattle, hay, and hogs alone maintained
the price level of the decade prior to 1892. Aver-
age prices, moreover, do not fully indicate the
small return which many farmers received. In De-
cember, 1891, for instance, the average value of a
bushel of corn was about forty cents, but in Ne-
braska, on January 1, 1892, corn brought only
_ twenty-six cents. When, a few years later, corn
was worth, according to the statistics, just over
twenty-one cents, it was literally cheaper to burn it
in Kansas or Nebraska than to cart it to town, sell
it, and buy coal with the money received; and this
is just what hundreds of despairing farmers did.
Even crop shortage did little to increase the price of
the grain that was raised. When a drought seri-
ously diminished the returns in Ohio, Indiana, and
Michigan in 1895, the importation from States
farther west prevented any rise in price.

Prices dropped, but the interest on mortgages re-
mained the same. One hundred and seventy-four
bushels of wheat would pay the interest at 8 per
cent on a $2000 mortgage in 1888, when the price of
wheat was higher than it had been for ten years and
higher than it was to be again for a dozen years. In
1894 or 1895 when the price was hovering around
fifty cents, it took 320 bushels to pay the same

106 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

interest. Frequently the interest was higher than $
per cent, and outrageous commissions on renewals
increased the burden of the farmer. The result
was one foreclosure after another. The mortgage
shark was identified as the servant of the “Wali
Street Octopus,”’ and between them there was little
hope for the farmer. In Kansas, according to a
contemporary investigator,’ “the whole western
third of the State was settled by a boom in farm
lands. Multitudes of settlers took claims without
means of their own, expecting to pay for the land
from the immediate profits of farming. Multitudes
of them mortgaged the land for improvements, and
multitudes more expended the proceeds of mort-
gages In living. When it was found that the pro-
ceeds of farming in that part of the State were very
uncertain, at best, the mortgages became due. And
in many instances those who had been nominally
owners remained upon the farms as tenants after
foreclosure. These are but the natural effects in
reaction from a tremendous boom.” In eastern
Kansas, where settlement was older, the pressure of
hard times was withstood with less difficulty. It
was in western Kansas, by the way, that Populism
had its strongest following; and, after the election
*G. T. Fairchild, Pol. Se. Q., vol. 11, p. 614.

t

THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 107

of 1892, a movement to separate the State into two
commonwealths received serious consideration.

Even more inexorable than the holder of the
mortgage or his agent was the tax collector. It
was easy to demonstrate that the farmer, with little
or nothing but his land, his stock, and a meager out-
fit of implements and furniture, all readily to be
seen and assessed, paid taxes higher in proportion
to his ability to pay than did the business man or
the corporation. Although his equity in the land
he owned might be much less than its assessed val-
ue, he was not allowed to make any deduction for
mortgages. The revenue of the Federal Govern-
ment was raised wholly by indirect taxes levied
principally upon articles of common consumption;
and the farmer and other people of small means
paid an undue share of the burden in the form of
higher prices demanded for commodities.

Low prices for his produce, further depressed by
the rapacity of the railroads and the other inter-
mediaries between the producer and the consumer,
mortgages with high interest rates, and an inequit-
able system of taxation formed the burden of the
farmer’s complaint during the last two decades of
the nineteenth century. These grievances and all
sorts of remedies proposed for them were discussed

108 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

in farmers’ gatherings, in agricultural weeklies,
even in city dailies, and ultimately in legislative
chambers. Investigations demonstrated that, even
when reduced toa minimum, the legitimate grounds
for complaint were extensive; and the resultant re-
ports suggested a variety of remedies. Generally,
however, popular sentiment swung around again to
the tack it had taken in the late seventies: the real
cure for all the evils was more money. Wall Street
and the national banks could suck the blood from
the western community because of their monopoly
of.the money supply. According to one irate edi-
tor, “Few people are aware of the boundless ad-
vantages that the national banks have under our
present accursed system. They have usurped the
credit of the people and are fattening a thousand-
fold annually from the unlimited resources at their
command.’ Another editor wrote:

We find the following printed card on our desk:
“The last report of the Secretary of the Treasury
shows the banks as loaning $1,970,022,687"! Four
times the amount of money there is toloan. Four in-
terests in every dollar! They are drawing from the
people enough to run the National Government. How
long will it take them to gather in all the money of the
nation? ‘This does not include the amounts loaned by
state, private. and savings banks. Add to this the

THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 109

billions of dollars of other loans and think if it is any
wonder times are hard. Will the American people
never wake up to the fact that they are being pauper-
ized? Four people are paying interest upon each dol-
lar you have in your pocket — if you have any. Wake
up! Wake up!

Whatever the ultimate effects of an inflated and
consequently depreciated currency might be, the
debtor class, to which a large portion of the West-
ern farmers belonged, would obviously benefit im-
mediately by the injection of large quantities of
money into the circulating medium. The pur-
chasing power of money would be lower; hence the
farmer would receive more in dollars and cents and
would be in a better position to pay his standing
debts. Whether or not the rise in the prices of his
products would be offset or more than offset by the
increased prices which he would have to pay for the
things he purchased would depend upon the rela-
tive rate at which different commodities adjusted
themselves to the new scale of money value. In
the end, of course, other things being equal, there
would be a return of old conditions; but the farmers
did not look so far ahead. Hence it was that less
attention was paid to taxation, to railroad rates
and discriminations, to elevator companies, to

110 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

grain gamblers, or to corporations as such; and the
main force of the agrarian movements from 1875
onward was exerted, first for an increased paper
currency and then for free silver.

CHAPTER VIii
THE FARMERS ALLIANCE

Tue hope of welding the farmers into an organiza-
tion which would enable them to present a united
front to their enemies and to work together for the
_ promotion of their interests — social, economic,
and political — was too alluring to be allowed to
die out with the decline of the Patrons of Husband-
ry. Farmers who had experienced the benefits of
the Grange, even though they had deserted it in its
hour of trial, were easily induced to join another or-
ganization embodying all its essential features but
proposing to avoid its mistakes. The conditions
which brought about the rapid spread of the Grange
in the seventies still prevailed; and as soon as the
reaction from the Granger movement was spent,
orders of farmers began to appear in various places
and to spread rapidly throughout the South and
West. This second movement for agricultural or-

ganization differed from the first in that it sprang
111

112 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

from the soil, as it were, and, like Topsy, “‘just
growed” instead of being deliberately planned and
put into operation by a group of founders.

A local farmers’ club or alliance was organized in
1874 or 1875 in the frontier county of Lampasas,
Texas, for mutual protection against horse thieves
and land sharks and for coéperation in the round-
ing up of strayed stock and in the purchase of sup-
plies. ‘That it might accomplish its purposes more
effectively, the club adopted a secret ritual of three
degrees; and it is said that at first this contained
a formula for catching horse thieves. Affiliated
lodges were soon established in neighboring com-
munities, and in 1878 a Grand State Alliance was
organized. Some one connected with this move-
ment must have been familiar with the Grange, for
the Declaration of Purposes adopted by the State
Alliance in 1880 is but a crude paraphrase of the
declaration adopted by the earlier order at St. Louis
in 1874. These promising beginnings were quickly
wrecked by political dissension, particularly in con-
nection with the Greenback movement, and the
first State Alliance held its last meeting in 1879.
In that year, however, a member of the order wha
removed to Poolville in Parker County, Texas, or-
ganized there a distinctly non-partisan alliance.

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 113

From this new center the movement spread more
rapidly; a second Grand State Alliance was organ-
ized; and the order grew with such rapidity that
by 1886 there were nearly three thousand local
lodges in the State. The social aspect was prom-
inent in the Alliance movement in Texas fpom the
beginning. Women were admitted to full mem-
_ bership, and negroes were excluded. In 1882 the
three degrees of the ritual were combined into one
so that all members might be on the same footing.

The early minutes of the State Alliance indicate
that the rounding up of estrays was the most im-
portant practical feature of the order at that time,
but in a few years this was overshadowed by co-
operation. Trade agreements were made with
dealers, joint stock stores and Alliance cotton-
yards were established, and finally a state exchange
was organized with a nominal capital of half a mil-
lion dollars to handle the business of the members.
All the difficulties which the Grange had encoun-
tered in its attempts at codperation beset the Alli-
ance ventures: dissension was spread by merchants
and commission men fighting for their livelihood;
mistakes were made by agents and directors; too
much was attempted at once; and in a few years

the house of cards tumbled to the ground.
8

T14 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

While its business ventures were still promising,
the Texas Alliance came near being wrecked once
more on the shoals of politics. The state meeting
in August, 1886, adopted an elaborate set of ‘‘ De-
mands,” which included higher taxation of lands
held for speculative purposes, prohibition of alien
land ownership, laws to “prevent the dealing in
futures of all agricultural products,” full taxation
of railroad property, “the rapid extinguishment of
the public debt of the United States, by operating
the mints to their fullest capacity in coining silver
and gold, and the tendering of the same without
discrimination to the public creditors,” the issue of
legal tender notes on a per capita basis and their
substitution for bank notes, a national bureau of
labor statistics, an interstate commerce law, and
the abolition of the contract system of employing
convicts. Provision was made for a committee of
three to press these demands upon Congress and
the State Legislature. At the close of the meeting,
some of the members, fearing that the adoption of
this report would lead to an attempt to establish
a new political party, held another meeting and
organized a rival State Alliance.

Considerable confusion prevailed for a few
months; the president and vice-president of the

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 115

regular State Alliance resigned, and the whole order
seemed on the verge of disruption. At this point
there appeared on the stage the man who was des-
tined not only to save the Alliance in Texas but also
to take the lead in making it a national organiza-
tion — C. W. Macune, the chairman of the execu-
tive committee. Assuming the position of acting
president, Macune called a special session of the
' State Alliance to meet in January, 1887. At this
meeting the constitution was amended to include
a declaration that it was the purpose of the order
“to labor for the education of the agricultural
classes in the science of economical government, in
a strictly nonpartisan spirit’”’; and attention was
then directed to a plan for “the organization of the
cotton belt of America.” The first step in this
direction was taken in the same month when
the Texas Alliance joined with the Farmers’ Union
of Louisiana and formed the National Farmers’
Alliance and Coéperative Union of America. '
Macune, who was elected president of the

* The Farmers’ Union was the outgrowth of an open farmers’ club
organized in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, in 1880. In 1885 this was
transformed into a secret society with a ritual modeled after that of
the Grange and with a constitution adapted from the constitution
used by the Texas alliances. Before the year was over the order
spread into the adjoining parishes and a state union was established.

116 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

national body, at once sent organizers into most of
the Southern States; and local alliances, followed
rapidly by state organization, appeared in State
after State. When the next meeting was held in
October, 1887, delegates were present from nine
Southern States.‘ The “Demands” adopted at
this meeting were very like those which had split
the Texas Alliance in the preceding year, with the
addition of sections calling for the reduction of the
tariff to a revenue basis, a graduated income tax,
promotion of industrial and agricultural education,
restriction of immigration, and popular election of
United States senators.

As the Alliance spread into Arkansas and some of
the adjoining States, it encountered another farm-
ers’ association of a very similar character and pur-
pose. The Agricultural Wheel, as it was known,
originated in a local club in Prairie County, Arkan-
sas, in 1882, and soon expanded into a state-wide
organization. After amalgamating with another
agricultural order, known as the Brothers of Free-
dom, the Wheel began to roll into the adjoining
States. In 1886 delegates from Tennessee and

x By December, 1888, it was claimed that there were 10,000 alli-
ances in 16 States with a total membership of about 400,000. It was
evident that the organization of the farmers of the cotton belt was
rapidly being consummated,

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 117

Kentucky attended the meeting of the Arkansas
State Wheel and took part in the organization of
the National Agricultural Wheel.t When the Na-
tional Wheel held its first annual meeting in No-
vember, 1887, eight state organizations had been
established, all in the Southwest, with a total mem-
bership of half a million.

With two great orders of farmers expanding in
much the same territory and having practically
identical objects, the desirability of union was ob-
vious. The subject was discussed at meetings of
both bodies, and committees of conference were
appointed. Both organizations finally convened
in December, 1888, at Meridian, Mississippi, and
appointed a joint committee to work out the de-
tails of amalgamation. The outcome was a new con-
stitution, which was accepted by each body acting
separately and was finally ratified by the state or-
ganizations. ‘The combined order was to be known
as the Farmers’ and Laborers’ Union of America.

While this development had been going on in the
South, another movement, somewhat different in
character and quite independent in origin, had been

t Some difficulty was occasioned at this meeting by the question of
admitting negroes to the order, but this was finally settled by making
provision for separate lodges for colored members.

{18 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

launched by the farmers of the Northwest. The
founder of the National Farmers’ Alliance, or the
Northwestern Alliance, as it was called to distin-
guish it from the Southern organization, was Mil-
ton George, editor of the Western Rural of Chicago,
who had been instrumental in organizing a local
alliance in Cook County. This Alliance began issu-
ing charters to other locals, and in October, 1880, at
the close of a convention in Chicago, attended by
“five hundred, representing alliances, granges,
farmers’ clubs, ete.,” a national organization was
formed. The constitution adopted at this time de-
clared the object of the order to be “‘to unite the
farmers of the United States for their protection
against class legislation, and the encroachments of
concentrated capital and the tyranny of monopoly;

. to oppose, in our respective political parties,
the election of any candidate to office, state or na-
tional, who is not thoroughly in sympathy with the
farmers’ interests; to demand that the existing po-
litical parties shall nominate farmers, or those who
are in sympathy with them, for all offices within
the gift of the people, and to do everything in a
legitimate manner that may serve to benefit the
producer.” The specific measures for which the
promoters of the Northwestern Alliance intended

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 119

to work were set forth in a platform adopted at the
second annual meeting in Chicago, October 5, 1881,
which demanded: equal taxation of all property,
including deduction of the amount of mortgages
from assessments of mortgaged property; “‘a just
income tax’’; reduction of salaries of officials and
their election instead of appointment, so far as
practicable; regulation of interstate commerce; re-
‘form of the patent laws; and prevention of the
adulteration of food. “The combination and con-
solidation of railroad capital . . . in the main-
tenance of an oppressive and tyrannical transpor-
tation system” was particularly denounced, and
the farmers of the country were called upon to or-
ganize “‘for systematic and persistent action” for
‘the emancipation of the people from this terrible
oppression.”

The Northwestern Alliance did not attempt co-
operation in business so extensively as did its
Southern contemporaries, but a number of Alliance
grain elevators were established in Minnesota and
Dakota, codperative creameries flourished in IIli-
nois, and many of the alliances appointed agents to
handle produce and purchase supplies for the mem-
bers. It was in the field of politics, however, that
the activity of the order was most notable. The

120 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

methods by which the farmers of the Northwest at-
tempted to use their organizations for political ends
are well illustrated by the resolutions adopted at
the annual meeting of the Minnesota State Alliance
in 1886 which declared that “‘the Alliance, while
not a partisan association, is political in the sense
that it seeks to correct the evils of misgovernment
through the ballot-box,”’ and called upon all the
producers of the State “to unite with us at the
ballot-box next November to secure a legislature
that will work in the interests of the many against

b

the exactions of the few.” The specific demands
included state regulation of railroads, free coinage
of silver, reduction of the tariff to a revenue basis,
revision of the patent laws, high taxation of olev-
margarine, and reduction of the legal rate of inter-
est from 10 to 8 per cent. The secretary was di-
rected to forward copies of these resolutions to fed-
eral and state officers and to the delegation of the
State in Congress; and the members of local al-
liances were “urged to submit this platform of
principles to every candidate for the legislature in
their respective districts, and to vote as a unit
against every man who refuses to publicly sub-
scribe his name to the same and pledge himself, if
elected, to live up to it.”

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 121

The resolutions adopted by the National Alli-
ance in 1887 show that the political purposes of the
order had become considerably more comprehen-
sive than they were when it was getting under way
in 1881. First place was now given to a plank
favoring the free coinage of silver and the issuance
of “‘all paper money direct to the people.” The
demand for railroad regulation was accompanied
‘by a statement that “‘the ultimate solution of the
transportation problem may be found in the owner-
ship and operation py the Government of one or
more transcontinental lines”; and the immediate
acquisition of the Union Pacific, then in finan-
cial difficulties, was suggested. Other resolutions
called for government ownership and operation of
the telegraph, improvement of waterways, restric-
tion of the liquor traffic, industrial education in the
public schools, restoration of agricultural colieges
“to the high purpose of their creation,’ and popu-
lar election of Senators. The national body does
not appear to have attempted, at this time, to force
its platform upon candidates for office; but it urged
“farmers throughout the country to aid in the work
of immediate organization, that we may act in con-
cert for our own and the common good.”

The culmination of this general movement for

122 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the organization of the farmers of the country came
in 1889 and 1890. The Farmers’ and Laborers’
Union and the Northwestern Alliance met at St.
Louis on December 3, 1889. The meeting of the
Southern organization, which was renamed the
National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union,
was attended by about a hundred delegates repre-
senting Indiana, Kansas, and every Southern State
from Maryland to Texas, with the exception of
West Virginia. The purpose of the two orders in
holding their meetings at the same time and piace
was obviously to effect some sort of union, and
committees of conference were at once appointed.
Difficulties soon confronted these committees: the
Southern Alliance wanted to effect a complete
merger but insisted upon retention of the secret
features and the exclusion of negroes, at least from
the national body; the Northwestern Alliance
preferred a federation in which each organiza-
tion might retain its identity. Arrangements were
finally made for future conferences to effect federa-
tion but nothing came of them. The real obstacles
seem to have been differences of policy with refer-
ence to political activity and a survival of sectional
feeling.

With the failure of the movement for union, the

THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE 123

Southern Alliance began active work in the North-
ern States; and when the Supreme Council, as the
national body was now called, held its next meeting
at Ocala, Florida, in December, 1890, delegates
were present from state alliances of seven Northern
and Western States, in addition to those repre-
sented at the St. Louis meeting. The Farmers’
Mutual Benefit Association, a secret order with
about two hundred thousand members, had a com-
mittee in attendance at this meeting, and the Col-
ored Farmers’ Alliance, which had been founded in
Texas in 1886 and claimed a membership of over a
million, held its national meeting at the same time
and place. Plans were formulated for a federation
of these three bodies, and of such other farmers’
and laborers’ associations as might join with them,
to the end that all might work unitedly for legisla-
tion in the interests of the industrial classes.

Signs of approaching dissolution of the Alliance
movement were already apparent at the Ocala
meeting. The finances of the Southern Alliance
had been so badly managed that there was a deficit
of about $6000 in the treasury of the Supreme
Council. This was due in part to reckless expendi-
ture and in part to difficulties in collecting dues
from the state organizations. Discord had arisen,

124 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

moreover, from the political campaign of 1890, and
an investigating committee expressed its disap-
proval of the actions of the officers in connection
with a senatorial contest in Georgia. The decline
of the Southern Alliance after 1890 was even more
rapid than that of the Grange had been. The
failure of many of the coéperative ventures con-
tributed to this decline; but complications and dis-
sensions resulting from the establishment of a new
political party which teok over the Alliance plat-
form, were principally responsible. The North-
western Alliance continued for a few years, prac-
tically as an adjunct to the new party but it, too,
lost rapidly in membership and influence. With
the year 1890 interest shifts from social to political
organization, from Alliances to Populism.

CHAPTER IX
THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED

ALLIANCES, wheels, leagues — all the agrarian or-
ganizations which multiplied during the eighties —
gave tangible form to the underlying unrest created
by the economic conditions of that superficially
prosperous decade. Only slowly, however, did
there develop a feeling that a new political par-
ty was necessary in order to apply the remedies
which, it was believed, would cure some if not
all the ills of the agricultural class. Old party
ties were still strong. Only with reluctance could
the Republican or Democrat of long standing
bring himself to depart from the familiar fold.
Then, too, the recent ignominious failures of the
Greenback party might well cool the ardor of all
but the most sanguine advocates of a third par-
ty movement. Among the leaders of the agra-
rian organizations were many, moreover, who fore-

saw that to become involved in partisan politics
125

126 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

could mean nothing less than the defeat of all
their original purposes.

One disappointment after another, however,
made it apparent that little was to be expected
from the Republican or the Democratic party.
Trust in individual politicians proved equally vain,
since promises easily made during a hot campaign
were as easily forgotten after the battle was over.
One speaker before a state convention of the North-
west Alliance put into words what many were
thinking: “There may be some contingencies
when you may have to act politically. If other
parties will not nominate men friendly to your in-
terest, then your influence will have to be felt in
some way or you may as well disband. If all par-
ties nominate your enemies, then put some of your
own friends into the race and then stand by them
as a Christian stands by his religion.”’ In other
words, if nothing was to be gained by scattering
votes among the candidates of the old parties, in-
dependent action remained the only course. Hence
it was that the late eighties saw the beginnings of
another party of protest, dominated by the farm-
ers and so formidable as to cause the machine poli-
ticians to realize that a new force was abroad in

the land.

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED 127

After the Greenback party lost the place it had
for a fleeting moment obtained, labor once more
essayed the réle of a third party. In 1886, for in-
stance, the Knights of Labor and the trades unions,
for once codperating harmoniously, joined forces
locally with the moribund Greenbackers and with
farmers’ organizations and won notable successes
_at the polls in various parts of the Union, particu-
larly in the Middle Atlantic and Western States.
Emboldened by such victories, the discontented
farmers were induced to cast in their lot with labor;
and for the next few years, the nation saw the man-
ifestoes of a party which combined the demands of
labor and agriculture in platforms constructed not
unlike a crazy-quilt, with Henry George, James
Buchanan, and Alson J. Streeter presiding at the
sewing-bee and attempting to fit into the patch-
work the diverse and frequently clashing shades of
opinion represented in the party. In 1888, Street-
er, ex-president of the Northwestern Alliance, was
nominated for President on the Union Labor ticket
and received 146,935 votes in 27 of the 38 States.
Despite its name and some support from the East-
ern workers, the new party was predominantly
Western: more than half of its total vote was polled
in Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas. In the

128 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

local elections of 1889 and 1890 the party still ap-
peared but was obviously passing off the stage to
make way for a greater attraction.

The meager vote for Streeter in 1888 demon-
strated that the organized farmers were yet far
from accepting the idea of separate political action.
President Macune of the Southern Alliance prob-
ably voiced the sentiments of most of that order
when he said in his address to the delegates at
Shreveport in 1887: “‘ Let the Alliance be a business
organization for business purposes, and as such,
necessarily secret, and as secret, necessarily non-
political.”* Even the Northwestern Alliance had
given no sign of official approval to the political
party in which so many of its own members played
a conspicuous part.

But after the election of 1888, those who had
continued to put their trust in non-political organ-
izations gradually awoke to the fact that neither
fulminations against transportation abuses, mo-
nopolies, and the protective tariff, nor the lobbying
of the Southern Alliance in Washington had pro-
duced reforms. Even Macune was moved to say at

At the next annual meeting, in December, 1888, no change in
policy was enunciated: the plan for a national organ, unanimously
adopted by the Alliance, provided that it should be “strictly non-par-
tisan in politics and non-sectarian in religion.”

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED _ 129

the St. Louis session in December, 1889: ““We have
reached a period in the history of our Government
when confidence in our political leaders and great
political organizations is almost destroyed, and es-
trangement between them and the people is becom-
ing more manifest every day.’’ Yet the formation of
a new party under the auspices of the Alliance was
probably not contemplated at this time, except
' possibly as a last resort, for the Alliance agreed to
“support for office only such men as can be de-
pended upon to enact these principles into statute
laws, uninfluenced by party caucus.’ Althouga
the demands framed at this St. Louis convention
read like a party platform and, indeed, became the
basis of the platform of the People’s Party in 1892,
they were little more than a restatement of earli-
er programs put forth by the Alliance and the
Wheel. They called for the substitution of green-
backs for national bank notes, laws to “prevent the
dealing in futures of all agricultural and mechanical!
productions,” free and unlimited coinage of silver,
prohibition of alien ownership of land, reclamation
from the railroads of lands held by them in excess
of actual needs, reduction and equalization of taxa-
tion, the issue of fractional paper currency for use

in the mails, and, finally, government ownership
9

130 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

and operation of the means of communication and
transportation.

The real contribution which this meeting made
to the agrarian movement was contained in the re-
port of the committee on the monetary system, of
which C. W. Macune was chairman. This was the
famous sub-treasury scheme, soon to become the
paramount issue with the Alliance and the Popu-
lists in the South and in some parts of the West,
The committee proposed “that the system of using
certain banks as United States depositories be abol-
ished, and in place of said system, establish in every
county in each of the States that offers for sale dur-
ing the one year $500,000 worth of farm products
— including wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, rice,
tobacco, cotton, wool, and sugar, all together —

9°

a sub-treasury office.’ In connection with this
office there were to be warehouses or elevators in
which the farmers might deposit their crops, receiv-
ing a certificate of the deposit showing the amount
and quality, anda loan of United States legal tender
paper equal to eighty per cent of the local current
value of the products deposited. The interest on
this loan was to be at the rate of one per cent per
annum; and the farmer, or the person to whom he

might sell his certificate, was to be allowed one year

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED 131

in which to redeem the property; otherwise it
would be sold at public auction for the satisfaction
of the debt. This project was expected to benefit
the farmers in two ways: it would increase and
make flexible the volume of currency in circulation;
and it would enable them to hold their crops in
anticipation of a rise in price.

The Northwestern Alliance also hesitated to
_ play the réle of a third party, but it adopted a pro-
gram which was virtually a party platform. In
place of the sub-treasury scheme as a means of in-
creasing the volume of currency in circulation and
at the same time enabling the farmer to borrow
money at low rates of interest, this organization
favored the establishment of a land loan bureau
operated by the Government. Legal tender curren-
cy to the amount of $100,000,000 or more if neces-
sary, was to be placed at the disposal of this bureau
for loans upon the security of agricultural land in
amounts not to exceed one-half the value of the land
and at an interest rate of two per cent per annum.
These loans might run for twenty years but were to
be payable at any time at the option of the borrower.

With two strong organizations assuming all the
functions of political parties, except the nomina-
tion of candidates, the stage was set in 1890 for a

132 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

drama of unusual interest. One scene was laid in
Washington, where in the House and Senate and in
the lobbies the sub-treasury scheme was aired and
argued. Lending their strength to the men from
the mining States, the Alliance men aided the pas-
sage of the Silver Purchase Act, the nearest ap-
proach to free silver which Congress could be in-
duced to make. By the familiar practice of “‘log-
rolling,” the silverites prevented the passage of the
McKinley tariff bill until the manufacturers of the
East were willing to yield in part their objections
to silver legislation. But both the tariff and the
silver bill seemed to the angry farmers of the West
mere bones thrown to the dog under the table.
They had demanded free silver and had secured a
mere increase in the amount to be purchased; they
had called for a downward revision of the duties
upon manufactured products and had been given
more or less meaningless “protection ”’ of their farm
produce; they had insisted upon adequate control
of the trusts and had been presented with the Sher-
man Act, a law which might or might not curb the
monopolies under which they believed themselves
crushed. All the unrest which had been gathering
during the previous decade, all the venom which
had been distilled by fourteen cent corn and ten

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED _ 133

per cent interest, all the blind striving to frustrate
the industrial consolidation which the farmer did
not understand but feared and hated, found expres-
sion in the political campaign of 1890.

The Alliance suited its pelitical activities to local
necessities. In many of the Southern States, no-
tably Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, Alliance
_ men took possession of the Democratic conventions
and forced both the incorporation of their demands
into the platforms and the nomination of candi-
dates who agreed to support those demands. The
result was the control of the legislatures of five
Southern States by members or supporters of the
order and the election of three governors, one
United States Senator, and forty-four Congress-
men who championed the principles of the Alliance.
In the West the Alliance worked by itself and, in-
stead of dominating an old party, created a new
one. It is true that the order did not formally be-
come a political party; but its officers took the lead
in organizing People’s, Independent, or Industrial
parties in the different States, the membership of
which was nearly identical with that of the Alli-
ance. Nor was the farmer alone in his efforts.
Throughout the whole country the prices of manu-
factured articles had suddenly risen, and popular

134 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

opinion, fastening upon the McKinley tariff as the
cause, manifested itself in a widespread desire to
punish the Republican party.

The events of 1890 constituted not only a politi-
cal revolt but a social upheaval in the West. No-
where was the overturn more complete than in
Kansas. If the West in general was uneasy, Kan-
sas was in the throes of a mighty convulsion; it was
swept as by the combination of a tornado and a
prairie fire. As a sympathetic commentator of
later days puts it, “It was a religious revival, a
crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue
of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the
spirit gave him utterance.”’* All over the State,
meetings were held in schoolhouses, churches, and
public halls. Alliance picnics were all-day exposi-
tions of the doctrines of the People’s Party. Up
and down. the State, and from Kansas City to
Sharon Springs, Mary Elizabeth Lease, “Sockless”’
Jerry Simpson, Anna L. Diggs, William A. Peffer,
Cyrus Corning, and twice a score more, were ix
constant demand for lectures, while lesser lights il-
lumined the dark places when the stars of the first
magnitude were scintillating elsewhere.

t Elizabeth N. Barr, The Populist Uprising, in William E. Con-
nelly’s Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, vol. 11, p. 1148.

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED © 135

Mrs. Lease, who is reported to have made 160
speeches in the summer and autumn of 1890, was a
curiosity in American politics. Of Irish birth and
New York upbringing, she went to Kansas and, be-
fore she was twenty years old, married Charles L.
Lease. Twelve years later she was admitted to the
bar. At the time of the campaign of 1890 she was
a tall, mannish-looking, but not unattractive wom-
an of thirty-seven years, the mother of four chil-
dren. She was characterized by her friends as re-
fined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the
Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The
hostile press made the most of popular prejudice
against a woman stump speaker and attempted by
ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage.
But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. Sheit was who
told the Kansas farmers that what they needed was
to “‘raise less corn and more HELL!”

Wall Street owns the country [she proclaimed]. It
is no longer a government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by
Wall Street, and for Wall Street. . . . Money rules,
and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws
are the output of a system that clothes rascals in robes
and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us, and the
political speakers mislead us. We were told two years
ago to go to work and raise a big crop and that was all

136 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted;
the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we
raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came
of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef,
and no price at all for butter and eggs — that’s what
came of it. ... The main question is the money
question. . . . We want money, land, and transpor-
tation. We want the abolition of the National Banks,
and we want the power to make loans directly from the
Government. We want the accursed foreclosure sys-
tem wiped out. Land equal to a tract 30 miles wide
and 90 miles long has been foreclosed and bought in by
loan companies of Kansasina year. ... The people
are at bay, and the blood-hounds of money who have
dogged us thus far beware!

A typical feature of this campaign in Kansas was
the contest between Jerry Simpson and Colonel
James R. Hallowell for a seat in Congress. Simp-
son nicknamed his fastidious opponent “Prince
Hal”’ and pointed to his silk stockings as an evi-
dence of aristocracy. Young Victor Murdock,
then a cub reporter, promptly wrote a story to the
effect that Simpson himself wore no socks at all.
*“Sockless Jerry,’’ “‘Sockless Simpson,” and then
*“Sockless Socrates’? were sobriquets then and
thereafter applied to the stalwart Populist. Simp-
son was at this time forty-eight years old, a mar
with a long, square-jawed face, his skin tanned hy

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED | 137

exposure on shipboard, in the army, and on the
farm, and his mustache cut in a straight line over a
large straight mouth. He wore clerical eyeglasses
and unclerical clothes. His opponents called him
clownish; his friends declared him Lincolnesque.
Failing to make headway against him by ridicule,
the Republicans arranged a series of joint debates
between the candidates; but the audience at the
first meeting was so obviously partial to Simpson
that Hallowell refused to meet him again. The sup-
porters of the “‘sockless” statesman, though less
influential and less prosperous than those of Hallo-
well, proved more numerous and triumphantly elect-
ed him to Congress. In Washington he acquitted
himself creditably and was perhaps disappointingly
conventional in speech and attire.

The outcome of this misery, disgust, anger, and
hatred on the part of the people of Kansas focused
by shrewd common sense and rank demagogism,
was the election of five Populist Congressmen and
a large Populist majority in the lower house of
the state legislature; the Republican state off-
cers were elected by greatly reduced majorities.
In Nebraska, the People’s Independent party ob-
tained a majority of the members of the legislature
and reduced the Republican party to third place in

138 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the vote for governor, the victory going to the
Democrats by a very small plurality. The South
Dakota Independent party, with the president of
the state Alliance as its standard bearer, was un-
able to defeat the Republican candidates for state
offices but obtained the balance of power in the
legislature. In Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota,
the new party movement manifested considerable
strength, but, with the exception of one Alliance
Congressman from Minnesota and a number of
legislators, the fruits of its activity were gathered
by the Democrats.

Among the results of the new party movements
in the Western States in 1890 should be included
the election of two United States Senators, neither
of whom was a farmer, although both were ardent
advocates of the farmers’ cause. In South Da-
kota, where no one of the three parties had a major-
ity in the legislature, the Reverend James H. Kyle,
the Independent candidate, was elected to the
United State Senate, when, after thirty-nine bal-
lots, the Democrats gave him their votes. Kyle,
who was only thirty-seven years old at this time,
was a Congregational minister, a graduate of Ober-
lin College and of Alleghany Theological Seminary.
He had held pastorates in Colorado and South

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED _ 139

Dakota, and at the time of his election was finan-
cial agent for Yankton College. A radical Fourth
of July oration which he delivered at Aberdeen
brought him into favor with the Alliance, and he
was elected to the state senate on the Independent
ticket in 1890. Prior to this election Kyle had
been a Republican.

_. The other senatorial victory was gained in Kan-
sas, where the choice fell on William A. Peffer,
whose long whiskers made him a favorite object of
ridicule and caricature in Eastern papers. He was
born in Pennsylvania in 1831, and as a young man
had gone to California during the gold boom. Re-
turning after two years with a considerable sum of
money, he engaged in farming first in Indiana and
then in Missouri. When the Civil War began, his
avowed Unionist sentiments got him into trouble;
and in 1862 he moved to Illinois, where after a few
months he enlisted in the army. At the close of
the war he settled in Tennessee and began the
practice of law, which he had been studying at in-
tervals for a number of years. He removed in
1870 to Kansas, where he played some part in poli-
tics as a Republican, was elected to the state sen-
ate, and served as a delegate to the national con-
vention of 1880. After a number of newspaper

140 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

ventures he became the editor of the Kansas Farm-
er of Topeka in 1880 and continued in that position
until he was elected to the United States Senate.
He was a member of the Knights of Labor and was
an ardent prohibitionist and, above all, an advocate
of currency inflation.

After the elections of November, 1890, came
definite action in the direction of forming a new
national party. The Citizens’ Alliance, a secret
political organization of members of the Southern
Alliance, held a convention with the Knights of La-
bor at Cincinnati on May 19, 1891. By that time
the tide of sentiment in favor of a new party was
running strong. Some fourteen hundred delegates,
a majority of whom were from the five States of
Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Nebraska, at-
tended the convention and provided for a commit-
tee to make arrangements, in conjunction with
other reform organizations if possible, for a con-
vention of the party to nominate candidates for the
presidential election of 1892. To those who were
anxious to have something done immediately the
process of preparing the ground for a new third
party seemed long and laborious. Seen in its
proper perspective the movement now appears to
have been as swift as it was inevitable. Once

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY LAUNCHED 141

more, and with greater unanimity than ever before,
the farmers, especially in the West, threw aside
their old party allegiance to fight for the things
which they deemed not only essential to their own
welfare but beneficial to the whole country. Some
aid, it is true, was brought by labor, some by the
mining communities of the mountain region, some
by various reform organizations; but the movement
as a whole was distinctly and essentially agrarian.

CHAPTER X

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892

‘Tue advent of the Populists as a full-fledged party
in the domain of national politics took place at

Omaha in July, 1892. Nearly thirteen hundred
delegates from all parts of the Union flocked to
the convention to take part in the selection of
candidates for President and Vice-President and
to adopt a platform for the new party. The “De-
mands” of the Alliances supplied the material
from which was constructed a platform character-
ized by one unsympathetic observer as “that fu-
rious and hysterical arraignment of the present
times, that incoherent intermingling of Jeremiah
The document opened with a gen-

39

and Bellamy.
eral condemnation of national conditions and a bit-
ter denunciation of the old parties for permitting
“the existing dreadful conditions to develop with-
out serious effort to prevent or restrain them.”

Then followed three declarations: “that the union
142

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 143

of the labor forces of the United States this day
consummated shall be permanent and perpetual”’;
that “wealth belongs to him who creates it, and
every dollar taken from industry without an equiv-
alent is robbery”’’; and “that the time has come
when the railroad corporations will either own
the people or the people must own the railroads.”
Next came the demands. Heading these were the
monetary planks: “a national currency, safe, sound,
and flexible, issued by the general Government
only, a full legal tender for all debts,” with the sub-
treasury system of loans ‘‘or a better system; free
and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the pres-
ent legal ratio of sixteen to one”’; and an increase
in the circulating medium until there should be
not less than $50 per capita. With demands fora
graduated income tax, for honesty and economy in
governmental expenditures, and for postal savings
banks, the financial part of the platform was com-
plete. The usual plank declaring for government
ownership and control of railroads and telegraphs
now included the telephone systems as well, and the
land plank opposed alien ownership and demanded
the return of lands held by corporations in excess of
their actual needs. Other resolutions, adopted but
not included in the platform, expressed sympathy

144 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

with labor’s demands for shorter hours, condemned
the use of Pinkerton detectives in labor strife, and
favored greater restriction of immigration, the in-
itiative and referendum, direct election of United
States senators, and one term for the President and
Vice-President.

The platform, according to a news dispatch of

the time, was “‘received with tremendous enthusi-
asm . . . and was read and adopted almost be-
fore the people knew it was read. Instantly there
was enacted the mightiest scene ever witnessed by
the human race. Fifteen thousand people yelled,
shrieked, threw papers, hats, fans, and parasols,
gathered up banners, mounted shoulders. Mrs.
Lease’s little girl was mounted on Dr. Fish’s
shoulders — he on a table on the high platform.
The two bands were swamped with noise.
Five minutes passed, ten minutes, twenty, still the
noise and hurrahs poured from hoarse throats.”
After forty minutes the demonstration died out
and the convention was ready to proceed with the
nomination of a presidential candidate.

No such unanimity marked this further proce-
dure, however. Just before the convention the
leaders of the People’s Party had thrown ‘the old
parties into consternation by announcing that

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 145

Judge Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, would be
offered the nomination. Judge Gresham, a Re-
publican with a long and honorable public record,
had been urged upon the Republican party in 1884
and 1888, and “ Anti-Monopolists” had considered
him with favor on account of his opinions and de-
cisions regarding the operation and control of rail-
roads. Just after the adoption of the platform a
telegram from the judge announced that he would
accept a unanimous nomination. Since unanimity
was unobtainable, however, his name was with-
drawn later in the day.

This left the field to General James B. Weaver of
Jowa and Senator James H. Kyle of South Dakota.
Weaver represented the more conservative of the
Populists, the old Alliance men. His rival had the
support of the most radical element as well as that
of the silver men from the mountain States. The
silverites were not inclined to insist upon their man,
however, declaring that, if the platform contained
the silver plank, they would carry their States for
whatever candidate might be chosen. The old
campaigner proved the stronger, and he was nom-
inated with General James G. Field of Virginia
for Vice-President. Unprejudiced observers viewed
Weavei’s nomination as a tactical error on the part

to

146 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

of the Populist leaders: “Mr. Weaver has be-
longed to the group of third-party ‘come-outers’
for so many years that his name is not one to
conjure with in either of the old camps; . . . his
name suggests too strongly the abortive third-
party movements of the past to excite much hope
or enthusiasm. He is not exactly the sort of a
Moses who can frighten Pharaoh into fits or bring
convincing plagues upon the monopolistic oppres-
sors of Israel. The wicked politicians of the Re-
publican and Democratic parties breathed easier
and ate with better appetites when the Gresham
bogie disappeared and they found their familiar
old enemy, General Weaver, in the lead of the
People’s. movement.”

It may be suspected, however, that even with
Weaver at its head this party, which claimed to
control from two to three million votes, and which
expected to draw heavily from the discontented
ranks of the old-line organizations, was not viewed
with absolute equanimity by the campaign man-
agers of Cleveland and of Harrison. Some little evi-
dence of the perturbation appeared in the equivo-
cal attitude of both the old parties with respect
to the silver question. Said the Democratic plat-
form: “We hold to the use of both gold and silver

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 147

as the standard money of the country, and to the
coinage of Loth gold and silver without discrimi-
nation against either metal or charge for mintage.”’
The rival Republican platform declared that “‘the
American people, from tradition and interest, favor
bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the
use of both gold and silver as standard money.”
Each party declared for steps to obtain an interna-
‘tional agreement on the question. The Republi-
cans attempted to throw a sop to the labor vote by
favoring restriction of immigration and laws for the
protection of employees in dangerous occupations,
and to the farmer by pronouncements against
trusts, for extended postal service — particularly
in rural districts — and for the reclamation and
sale of arid lands to settlers. The Democrats
went even further and demanded the return of
“nearly one hundred million acres of valuableland”
then held by “corporations and syndicates, alien
and domestic.”’

The directors of the Populist campaign proved te
be no mean political strategists. General Weaver
himself toured the country, accompanied by Gen-
eral Field when he was in the South and by Mrs.
Lease when he went to the Pacific coast. Numer-
ous other men and women addressed the thousands

148 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

who attended the meetings, great and small, all
over the country. One unique feature of the
Populist campaign on the Pacific coast was the sing-
ing of James G. Clark’s People’s Battle-Hymn, and
other songs expressing the hope and fears of labor
in the field and factory. Everywhere it was the
policy of the new party to enlist the assistance of
the weaker of the old parties. In the South, the
Populists, as a rule, arrayed themselves with the
Republicans against the old Democracy. This pro-
voked every device of ridicule, class prejudice, and
scorn, which the dominant party could bring to:
bear to dissuade former Democrats from voting
the People’s ticket. One Louisiana paper uttered
this warning:

Oily-tongued orators, in many cases the paid agents
of the Republican party, have for months been circu-
lating among the unsophisticated and more credulous
classes, preaching their heresies and teaching the peo-
ple that if Weaver is elected president, money may be
had for the asking, transportation on the railroad
trains will be practically free, the laboring man will be
transferred from his present position and placed upon a
throne of power, while lakes filled with molasses, whose
shores are fringed with buckwheat cakes, and islands of
Jersey butter rising here and there above the surface,

willbe a concomitant of every farm. The “‘forty-acres-
and-a-mule” promises of the reconstruction era pale

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 149

into insignificance beside the glowing pictures of pros-
perity promised by the average Populist orator to
those who support Weaver.

The Pensacola Address of the Populist nominees
on September 17, 1892, which served as a joint let-
ter of acceptance, was evidently issued at that
place and time partly for the purpose of influencing

such voters as might be won over by emphasizing
the unquestioned economic distress of most South-
ern farmers. If the new party could substantiate
the charges that both old parties were the tools of
monopoly and Wall Street, it might insert the
wedge which would eventually split the “solid
South.” Even before the Pensacola Address, the
state elections in Alabama and Arkansas demon-
strated that codperation of Republicans with Popu-
lists was not an idle dream. But, although fusion
was effected on state tickets in several States in the
November elections, the outcome was the choice of
Cleveland electors throughout the South.

As the Populists tried in the South to win over
the Republicans, so in the North and more espe-
cially the West they sought to control the Demo-
cratic vote either by fusion or absorption. The
effort was so successful that in Colorado, Idaho,
Kansas, Nevada, and North Dakota, the new party

150 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

swept the field with the assistance of the Demo-
crats. In South Dakota and Nebraska, where
there was no fusion, the Democratic vote was
negligible and the Populists ran a close second to
the Republicans.

That the tide of agrarianism was gradually flow-
ing westward as the frontier advanced is apparent
from the election returns in the States bordering on
the upper Mississippi. Iowa and Missouri, where
the Alliance had been strong, experienced none of
the landslide which swept out the Republicans in
States further west. In Minnesota the Populists,
with a ticket headed by the veteran Donnelly, ran
a poor third in the state election, and the entire
Harrison electoral ticket was victorious in spite
of the endorsement of four Populist candidates by
the Democrats. In the northwestern part of the
State, however, the new party was strong enough
to elect a Congressman over candidates of both
the old parties. In no Northern State east of
the Mississippi were the Populists able to make a
strong showing; but in Illinois, the success of John
P. Altgeld, the Democratic candidate for governor,
was due largely to his advocacy of many of the
measures demanded by the People’s party, particu-
larly those relating to labor, and to the support

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 151

which he received from the elements which might
have been expected to aline themselves with the
Populists. On the Pacific coast, despite the musi-
cal campaign of Clark, Mrs. Lease, and Weaver,
California proved deaf to the People’s cause; but in
Oregon the party stood second in the lists and in
Washington it ran a strong third.

More than a million votes, nearly nine per cent
of the total, were cast for the Populist candidates
in this election — a record for a third party the
year after its birth, and one exceeded only by that
of the Republican party when it appeared for the
first time in the national arena in 1856. Twenty-
two electoral votes added point to the showing, for
hitherto, since 1860, third-party votes had been so
scattered that they had affected the choice of Presi-
dent only as a makeweight between other parties
in closely contested States.

A week after the elections General Weaver an-
nounced that the Populists had succeeded far be-
yond their expectations. “'The Republican party,”
he asserted, “is as dead as the Whig party was after
the Scott campaign of 1852, and from this time for-
ward will diminish in every State of the Union and
cannot make another campaign. . . . The Pop-
ust will now commence a vigorous campaign and

152 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

will push the work of organization and education
in every county in the Union.”’ ‘There were those,
however, who believed that the new party had
made a great mistake in having anything to do
with either of the old parties, that fusion, particu-
larly of the sort which resulted in combination tick-
ets, was a compromise with the enemy, and that
more votes had been lost than won by the process.
This feeling found characteristic expression in an
editorial in a Minnesota paper:

Take an audience of republican voters in a school-
house where a county fusion has taken place — or the
press is full of the electoral deal — and the audience
will applaud the sentiments of the speaker — but they
wont vote a mongrel or democratic ticket! A wet
blanket has been thrown!

““Oh,” says someone, “but the democratic party is
a party of reform!” Well, my friend, you better go
down south and talk that to the peoples party where
they have been robbed of their franchises by fraud
and outrage!

Ah, and there the peoples party fused the republi-
cans!!!

Oh whitewash! Where is thy lime-kiln, that we may
swab off thedark blemishes of thehour!! Aye,and onthe
whited wall, draw thee a picture of power and beauty
~— Cleveland, for instance, thanking the peoples party
for all the favors gratuitously granted by our mongrel
saints in speckled linen and green surtouts.

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 153

As time gave perspective, however, the opinion
grew that 1892 had yielded all that could possibly
have been hoped. The lessons of the campaign may
have been hard, but they had been learned, and,
withal, a stinging barb had been thrust into the side
of the Republican party, the organization which,
in the minds of most crusaders, was principally re-
sponsible for the creation and nurture of their ills.
It was generally determined that in the next cam-
paign Populism should stand upon its own feet;
Democratic and Republican votes should be won
by conversion of individuals to the cause rather
than by hybrid amalgamation of parties and pre-
election agreements for dividing the spoils. But it
was just this fusion which blinded the eyes of the
old party leaders to the significance of the Populist
returns. Democrats, with a clear majority of elec-
toral votes, were not inclined to worry about local
losses or to \ alue incidental gains; and Republicans
felt that the menace of the third party was much
less portentous than it might have been as an
independent movement.

CHAPTER XI
THE SILVER ISSUE

A REMARKABLE manifesto, dated February 22,
1895, summarized the grievances of the Populists
in these words:

As early as 1865-66 a conspiracy was entered into
between the gold gamblers of Europe and America to
accomplish the following purposes: to fasten upon the
people of the United States the burdens of perpetual
debt; to destroy the greenbacks which had safely
brought us through the perils of war; to strike down
silver as a money metal; to deny to the people the use
of Federal paper and silver — the two independent
sources of money guaranteed by the Constitution; to
fasten upon the country the single gold standard of
Britain, and to delegate to thousands of banking cor-
porations, organized for private gain, the sovereign
control, for all time, over the issue and volume of all
supplemental paper currency.

Declaring that the “international gold ring” was

summoning all its powers to strike at the prosperity

of the country, the authors of this address called
154

THE SILVER ISSUE 155

upon Populists to take up the gauntlet and meet
‘the enemy upon his chosen field of battle,” with
the “aid and codperation of all persons who favor
the immediate free coinage of silver at a ratio of
16-1, the issue of all paper money by the Govern-
ment without the intervention of banks of issue, and
who are opposed to the issue of interest-bearing
government bonds in the time of peace.”

There was nothing new in this declaration of hos-
tility to bank issues and interest-bearing bonds,
nor in this demand for government paper money,
for these prejudices and this predilection had given
rise to the “Ohio idea,” by force of which George
H. Pendleton had hoped to achieve the presidency
in 1868. These same notions had been the essence
of the platforms of the Greenback party in the !ate
seventies; and they had jostled government owner-
ship of railroads for first place in pronunciamentos
of labor and agricultural organizations and of third
parties all during the eighties. Free silver, on the
other hand, although not ignored in the earlier
period, did not attain foremost rank among the
demands of the dissatisfied classes until the last
decade of the century and more particularly after
the panic of 1893.

Prior to 1874 or 1875 the “silver question” did

156 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

not exist. In 1873 Congress, moved by the report
of a commission it had authorized, had demone-
tized silver; that is, it had provided that the gold
dollar should be the standard of value, and omitted
the standard silver dollar from the list of silver
coins.* In this consisted the “Crime of 773.” At
the time when this law was enacted it had not for
many years been profitable to coin silver bullion
into dollars because silver was undervalued at the
established ratio of sixteen to one. In 1867 the
International Monetary Conference of Paris had
pronounced itself in favor of a single gold standard
of currency, and the principal countries of Europe
had preceded the United States in demonetizing
silver or in limiting its coinage. In 1874 as a re-
sult of a revision of the statutes of the United
States, the existing silver dollars were reduced to
the basis of subsidiary coins with only limited legal
tender value.

The Act of 1873 was before Congress for four
sessions; every section, including that which made
gold the sole standard of value, was discussed
even by those who later claimed that the Act had
been passed surreptitiously. Whatever opposition

t The only reference to the dollar was to “the trade dollar” of
heavier weight, for use in the Orient.

THE SILVER ISSUE 157

developed at this time was not directed against the
omission of the silver dollar from the list of coins
nor against the establishment of a single standard
of value. The situation was quickly changed, how-
ever, by the rapid decline in the market price of sil-
ver. The bimetallists claimed that this decline was
a result of the monetary changes; the advocates of
the gold standard asserted that it was due to the
great increase in the production of silver. What-
ever the cause, the result was that, shortly after
silver had been demonetized, its value in propor-
tion to gold fell below that expressed by the ratio
of sixteen to one. Under these circumstances the
producers could have made a profit by taking their
bullion to the mint and having it coined into dol-
lars, if it had not been for the Act of 1873. It is
not strange, therefore, that the people of those
Western States whose prosperity depended largely
on the silver mining industry demanded the re-
monetization of this metal. At the same time the
stringency in the money market and the low prices
following the panic of 1873 added weight to the ar-
guments of those who favored an increase in the
quantity of currency in circulation and who saw in
the free and unlimited coinage of silver one means
of accomplishing this end. So powerful was the

158 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

demand, especially from the West, that in 1878 the
Bland-Allison Act, passed over the veto of Presi-
dent Hayes, provided for the restoration of the sil-
ver dollar to the list of coins, with full legal tender
quality, and required the Treasury to purchase in
the open market from two to four million dollars’
worth of bullion each month. This compromise,
however, was unsatisfactory to those who desired
the free coinage of silver, and it failed to please the
champions of the single standard.

For ten years the question of a choice between a
single standard or bimetallism, between free coin-
age or limited coinage of silver, was one of the prin-
cipal economic problems of the world. Interna-
tional conferences, destined to have no positive re-
sults, met in 1878 and again in 1881; in the United
States Congress read reports and debated measures
on coinage in the intervals between tariff debates.
Political parties were split on sectional lines: West-
ern Republicans and Democrats alike were largely
in favor of free silver, but their Eastern associates
as generally took the other side. Party platforms
in the different States diverged widely on this is-
sue; and monetary planks in national platforms, if
included at all, were so framed as to commit
the party to neither side. Both parties, however,

THE SILVER ISSUE 159

could safely pronounce for bimetallism under inter-
national agreement, since there was little real pros-
pect of procuring such an agreement. The minor
parties as a rule frankly advocated free silver.

In 1890, the subject of silver coinage assumed
new importance. ‘The silverites in Congress were
reénforced by representatives from new States in
the far West, the admission of which had not been
unconnected with political exigencies on the part
of the Republican party. The advocates of the
change were not strong enough to force through a
free-silver bill, but they were able by skillful log-
rolling to bring about the passage of the Silver Pur-
chase Act. This measure, frequently called the
Sherman Law,’ directed the Secretary of the Treas-
ury to purchase, with legal tender Treasury notes
issued for the purpose, 4,500,000 ounces of pure sil-
ver each month at the market price. As the metal
was worth at that time about a dollar an ounce, this
represented an increase, for the time being, over the
maximum allowed under the Bland-Allison Act and
more than double the minimum required by that
measure, which was all the Treasury had ever

t John Sherman, then Secretary of Treasury, had a large share in
giving final form to the bill, which he favored only for fear of a still
more objectionable measure. See Sherman’s Recollections, pp. 1069,
1188.

160 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

purchased. But the Silver Purchase Act failed to
check the downward trend in the value of the metal.
The bullion in a silver dollar, which had been worth
$1.02 in 1872, had declined to seventy-two cents in
1889. It rose to seventy-six in 1891 but then de-
clined rapidly to sixty in 1893, and during the next
three years the intrinsic value of a “cartwheel”
was just about half its legal tender value.

Even under the Bland-Allison Act the Treasury
Department had experienced great difficulty in
keeping in circulation a reasonable proportion of
the silver dollars and the silver certificates which
were issued in lieu of part of them, and in maintain-
ing a sufficient gold reserve to insure the stability
of the currency. When the Silver Purchase Act
went into operation, therefore, the monetary situa-
tion contributed its share to conditions which pro-
duced the panic of 1893. Thereupon the silver is-
sue became more than ever a matter of nation-wide
discussion.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific the country was
flooded with controversial writing, much of it cast
in a form to make an appeal to classes which had
neither the leisure nor the training to master this
very intricate economic problem. W.H. Harvey’s
Coin’s Financial School was the most widely read

THE SILVER ISSUE 161

campaign document, although hundreds of similar
pamphlets and books had an enormous circulation.
The pithy and plausible arguments of “Coin” and
his ready answers to questions supposedly put by
prominent editors, bankers, and university profes-
sors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman
of the Knights of Labor, tickled the fancy of thou-
_ sands of farmers who saw their own plight depicted
in the crude but telling woodcuts which sprinkled
the pages of the book. In his mythical school “‘the
smooth little financier” converted to silver many
who had been arguing for gold; but — what is more
to the point — he also convinced hundreds of vot-
ers that gold was the weapon with which the bank-
ers of England and America had slain silver in order
to maintain high interest rates while reducing
prices, and that it was the tool with which they
were everywhere welding the shackles upon labor.
“Coin” harped upon a string to which, down to the
time of the Spanish War, most Americans were ever
responsive — the conflict of interests between Eng-
land and the United States. “If itis claimed,” he
said, “we must adopt for our money the metal Eng-
land selects, and can have no independent choice in
the matter, let us make the test and find out if it is
true.”’ He pointed to the nations of the earth where

Ir

162 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

a silver standard ruled: “The farmer in Mexico sells
his bushel of wheat for one dollar. The farmer
in the United States sells his bushel of wheat for
fifty cents. The former is proven by the history of
the world to be an equitable price. The latter is
writing its history, in letters of blood, on the ap-
palling cloud of debt that is sweeping with ruin and
desolation over the farmers of this country.”

When many men of sound reputation believed
the maintenance of a gold standard impossible
what wonder that millions of farmers shouted with
“Com”: “Give the people back their favored
primary money! Give us two arms with which to
transact business! Silver the right arm and gold
the left arm! Silver the money of the people, and
gold the money of the rich. Stop this legalized
robbery that is transferring the property of the
debtors to the possession of the creditors. .
Drive these money-changers from our temples.
Let them discover your aspect, their masters — the
people.”

The relations of the Populist party to silver were
at once the result of conviction and expediency;
cheap money had been one, frequently the most
prominent, of the demands of the farming class,

not only from the inception of the Greenback

THE SILVER ISSUE 163

movement, as we have seen, but from the very be-
ginning of American history. Indeed, the pioneer
everywhere has needed capital and has believed
that it could be obtained only through money. The
cheaper the money, the better it served his needs.
The Western farmer preferred, other things being
equal, that the supply of currency should be in-
_ creased by direct issue of paper by the Government.
Things, however, were not equal. In the Moun-
tain States were many interested in silver as a com-
modity whose assistance could be counted on in a
campaign to increase the amount of the metal in
circulation. There were, moreover, many other
voters who, while regarding Greenbackism as an
economic heresy, were convinced that bimetallism
offered a safe and sound solution of the currency
problem. For the sake of added votes the infla-
tionists were ready to waive any preference as to
the form in which the cheap money should be
issued. Before the actual formation of the People’s
Party, the farmers’ organizations had set out to
capture votes by advocating free silver. After the
election of 1892 free silver captured the Populist.
organization.

Heartened by the large vote of 1892 the Populist
leaders prepared to drive the wedge further into the

164 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

old parties and even hoped to send their candidates
through the breach to Congress and the presidency.
A secret organization, known as the Industrial
League of the United States, in which the leaders
were for the most part the prominent officials ot the
People’s Party, afforded for a time through its
lodges the machinery with which to control and
. organize the silverites of the West and the South.

The most notable triumph of 1893 was the selec-
tion of Judge William V. Allen, by the Democrats
and Independents of Nebraska, to represent that
State in the United States Senate. Born in Ohio,
in a house which had been a station on the “under-
ground railroad”’ to assist escaping negroes, Allen
atten years of age had gone with his family to Iowa.
After one unsuccessful attempt, he enlisted in the
Union Army at the age of fifteen and served from
1862 to the end of the War. When peace came, he
resumed his schooling, attended college, studied
law, and in 1869 was admitted tothe bar. In 1884
he went to Madison County, Nebraska, where
seven years later he was elected district judge by
the Populists. Reared in a family which had been
Republican, he himself had supported this party
until the campaign of 1890. “I have always,”
said he, “looked upon a political party .

THE SILVER ISSUE 165

simply as a means to an end. I think a party
should be held no more sacred than a man’s shoes
or garments, and that whenever it fails to subserve
the purposes of good government a man should
abandon it as cheerfully as he dispenses with his
wornout clothes.’’ As Senator, Allen attracted
attention not only by his powers of physical en-
_ durance as attested by a fifteen-hour speech in op-
position to the bill for the repeal of the Silver Pur-
chase Act, but also by his integrity of character.
“If Populism can produce men of Senator Allen’s
mold,” was the comment of one Eastern review,
“and then lift them into positions of the highest
responsibility, one might be tempted to suggest
that an epidemic of this Western malady would
prove beneficial to some Eastern communities and
have salutary results for the nation at large.”

In this same year (1893) Kansas became a storm-
center in national politics once more by reason of a
contest between parties for control of the lower
house of the legislature. The returns had given
the Republicans a majority in the assembly, but
several Republican seats had been contested on sus-
picion of fraud. If the holders of these seats were
debarred from voting, the Populists could outvote
the Republicans. The situation itself was fraught

166 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

with comedy; and the actions of the contestants
made it nothing less than farce. The assembly
convened on the 10th of January, and both Repub-
lican and Populist speakers were declared duly
elected by their respective factions. Loftily ignor-
ing each other, the two speakers went to the desk
and attempted to conduct the business of the
house. Neither party left the assembly chamber
that night; the members slept on the benches; the
speakers called a truce at two in the morning, and
lay down, gavels in hand, facing each other behind
the desk, to get what rest they could. For over
two weeks the two houses continued in tumultuous
session. Meanwhile men were crowding into To:
peka from all over the State: grim-faced Populist
farmers, determined that Republican chicanery
should not wrest from them the fruits of the elec-
tion; equally determined Republicans, resolved
that the Populists should not, by charges of elec-
tion fraud, rob them of their hard-won majority.
Both sides came armed but apparently hoping to
avoid bloodshed.

Finally, on the 15th of February, the Populist
house retreated from the chamber, leaving the Re-
publicans in possession, and proceeded to transact
business of state in the corridor of the Capitol.

THE SILVER ISSUE 167

Populist sympathizers now besieged the assembly
chamber, immuring the luckless Republicans and
incidentally a few women who had come in as mem-
bers of the suffrage lobby and were now getting
more of political equality than they had antici-
pated. Food had to be sent through the Populist
lines in baskets, or drawn up to the windows of
_the chamber while the Populist mob sat on the
main stairway within. ‘Towards evening, the Pop-
ulist janitor turned off the heat; and the Republi-
cans shivered until oil stoves were fetched by their
followers outside and hoisted through the windows.
The Republican sheriff swore in men of his party as
special deputies; the Populist governor called out
the.militia.

The situation was at once too absurd and too
grave to be permitted to continue. “Sockless”
Jerry Simpson now counseled the Populists to let
the decision go to the courts. The judges, to be
sure, were Republican; but Simpson, ever resource-
ful, argued that if they decided against the Popu-
lists, the house and senate could then impeach
them. Mrs. Lease, however, was sure that the
Populists would not have the courage to take up
impeachment proceedings, and the event proved
her judgment correct. When the struggle was

168 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

finally brought to an end with the assistance of the
judicial machinery, the Republicans were left in
control of the house of representatives, while the
Populists retained the senate. In joint session
the Republicans could be outvoted; hence a silver
Democrat, John Martin, was sent to Washington
to work with Peffer in the Senate for the commen
cause of silver.

The congressional and state elections of 1894 re-
vealed the unstable equilibrium of parties, and at
the same time the total Populist vote of nearly a
million and a half reflected the increasing popular
unrest. In the West, however, the new party was
not so successful in winning elections as it had been
in 1892 because the hostile attitude, sometimes of
the Populists and sometimes of the Democrats,
made fusion impossible in most cases. A few vic-
tories were won, to be sure: Nebraska elected a
free-silver Democrat-Populist governor, while Ne-
vada was carried by the silver party; but Colorado,
Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and North Dakota re-
turned to the Republican fold. In the South, the
fusion between Populists and Republicans against
the dominant Democrats was more successful.
From several States, Congressmen were elected,
who, whether under the name of Populist or

THE SILVER ISSUE 169

Republican, represented the radical element. In
South Carolina the Democratic party adopted the
Farmers’ Alliance platform, swept the State in the
elections, and sent “Pitchfork” Tillman to the
United States Senate as an anti-administration
Democrat. Tillman admitted that he was not one
of those infatuated persons who believed that “all
the financial wisdom in the country is monopolized
by the East,” and who said, ““‘ Me, too,’ every time
Cleveland grunts.” ‘“‘Send me to Washington,”
was his advice to cheering crowds, “‘and I'll stick
my pitchfork into his old ribs!”

Every political move in 1895 was calculated with
reference to the presidential election of 1896. Both
old parties were inoculated with the free-silver
virus; silver men could have passed a free coinage
bill in both houses of Congress at any moment but
were restrained chiefly by the knowledge that such
a measure would be vetoed by President Cleveland.
The free coinage of silver, which was the chief de-
mand of Populism, was also the ardent desire of a
majority of the people west of the Alleghanies, ir-
respective of their political affiliations. Nothing
seemed more logical, then, than the union of
all silver men to enforce the adoption of their
program. There was great diversity of opinion,

i0 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

aowever, as to the best means of accomplishing
this union. General Weaver started a movement
to add the forces of the American Bimetallic
League and the silver Democrats to the ranks of
the People’s Party. But the silver Democrats, be-
lieving that they comprised a majority of the
party, proceeded to organize themselves for the
purpose of controlling that party at its coming na-
tional conventions; and most of the Populist lead-
ers felt that, should this movement be victorious,
the greatest prospect of success for their program
lay in a fusion of the two parties. Some there were,
indeed, who opposed fusion under any conditions,
foreseeing that it would mean the eventual extinc-
tion of the People’s Party. Prominent among
these were Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, “Gen-
eral” J. S. Coxey of Ohio, and Senator Peffer of
Kansas. In the South the “middle-of-the-road”
element, as the opponents of fusion were called, was
especially strong, for there the Populists had been
codperating with the Republicans since 1892, and
not even agreement on the silver issue could break
down the barrier of antagonism between them and
the old-line Democrats.

It remained, then, for the political events of 1896
to decide which way the current of Populism would

THE SILVER ISSUE 171

flow — whether it would maintain an independent
course, receiving tributaries from every political
source, eventually becoming a mighty river, and,
like the Republican party of 1856 and 1860, sweep-
ing away an older party; or whether it would turn
aside and mingle with the stream of Democracy,
there to lose its identity forever.

CHAPTER XIii
THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS

WHEN the Republicans met in convention at St.
Louis in the middle of June, 1896, the monetary
issue had already dwarfed all other political ques-
tions. It was indeed the rock on which the party
might have crashed in utter shipwreck but for the
precautions of one man who had charted the angry
waters and the dangerous shoals and who now had
a firm grasp on the helm. Marcus A. Hanna, or
“Uncle Mark,” was the genial owner of more mines,
oil wells, street railways, aldermen, and legislators
than any other man in Ohio. Hanna was an al-
most perfect example of what the Populists de-
nounced as the capitalist in politics. Cynically
declaring that “‘no man in public life owes the pub-
lic anything,’’ he had gone his unscrupulous way,
getting control of the political machine of Cleve-
land, acquiring influence in the state legislature,

and now even assuming dictatorship over the
172

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 173

national Republican party. Because he had found
that political power was helpful in the prosecution
of his vast business enterprises, he went forth to
accumulate political power, just as frankly as he
would have gone to buy the machinery for pump-
ing oil from one of his wells. Hanna was a stanch
friend of the gold standard, but he was too clever to
_ alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites
by supporting the nomination of a man known to
be an uncompromising advocate of gold. He chose
a safer candidate, a man whose character he sin-
cerely admired and whose opinions he might re-
sonably expect to sway — his personal friend, Ma:
jor William McKinley. This was a clever choice:
McKinley was known to the public largely as the
author of the McKinley tariff bill; his protec-
tionism pleased the East; and what was known
of his attitude on the currency question did not
offend the West. In Congress he had voted for
the Bland-Allison bill and had advocated the freer
use of silver. McKinley was, indeed, an ideally
“safe”? candidate, an upright, affable gentleman
whose aquiline features conferred on him the sem-
blance of commanding power and masked the es-
sential weakness and indecision which would make
him, from Mark Hanna’s point of view, a desirable

174 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

President. McKinley would always swim with
the tide.

In his friend’s behalf Hanna carried on a shrewd
campaign in the newspapers, keeping the question
of currency in the background as far as possible,
playing up McKinley’s sound tariff policy, and re-
peating often the slogan — welcome after the recent
lean years — ‘‘McKinley and the full dinner pail.”
McKinley prudently refused to take any stand on
the currency question, protesting that he could not
anticipate the party platform and that he would be
bound by whatever declarations the party might
see fit to make. Even after the convention had
opened, McKinley and Hanna were reticent on the
silver question. Finally, fearing that some kind of
compromise would be made, the advocates of the
gold standard went to Mr. Hanna and demanded
that a gold plank be incorporated in the platform.
Hanna gracefully acceded to their demands and
thus put them under obligation to repay him by
supporting McKinley for the nomination. The
platform which was forthwith reported to the con-
vention contained the unequivocal gold plank,
as Hanna had long before planned. Immediately
thereafter a minority of thirty-four delegates, led
by Senator Teller of Colorado, left the convention,

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 175

later to send out an address advising all Republi-
cans who believed in free coinage of silver to sup-
port the Democratic ticket. The nomination of
William McKinley and Garret A. Hobart followed
with very little opposition.

There was nothing cut and dried about the
Democratic convention which assembled three
_ weeks later in Chicago. The Northeastern States
and a few others sent delegations in favor of the
gold standard, but free silver and the West were in
the saddle. This was demonstrated when, in the
face of all precedent, the nominee of the national
committee for temporary chairman was rejected
in favor of Senator John W. Daniel of Virginia, a
strong silverman. The second day of the conven-
tion saw the advantage pushed further: each Terri-
tory had its representation increased threefold;
of contesting delegations those who represented
the gold element in their respective States were
unseated to make way for silverites; and Stephen
M. White, one of the California senators, was made
permanent chairman.

On the third day of the convention the platform,
devoted largely to the money question, was the
subject of bitter debate. “We are unalterably
opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast

176 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the prosperity of an industrial people in the pa-
ralysis of hard times,” proclaimed the report of the
committee on resolutions. ‘Gold monometallism
is a British policy, and its adoption has brought
other nations into financial servitude to London.
. . . We demand the free and unlimited coinage of
both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of
sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or con-
sent of any other nation.” A minority of the com-
mittee on resolutions proposed two amendments
to the report, one pronouncing in favor of a gold
standard, and the other commending the record of
Grover Cleveland, a courtesy always extended to a
presidential incumbent of the same party. At the
name of Cleveland, Senator Tillman leaped to his
feet and delivered himself of characteristic in-
vective against the President, the “‘tool of Wall
Street,” the abject slave of gold. Senator David
B. Hill of New York, who had been rejected for
temporary chairman, defended the gold plank in
a logical analysis of monetary principles. But
logical analysis could not prevail against emotion;
that clamorous mass of men was past reasoning
now, borne they hardly knew whither on the cur-
rent of their own excitement. He might as well
have tried te dam Niagara.

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 177

Others tried to stem the onrushing tide but with
no better success. It seemed to be impossible for
any one to command the attention and respect of
that tumultuous gathering. Even Senator James
K. Jones of Arkansas, a member of the major-
ity group of the committee on resolutions, failed
equally with Tillman to give satisfactory expres-
_ sion to the sentiments of that convention, which
felt inchoately what it desired but which still needed
a leader to voice its aspirations. This spokesman
the convention now found in William Jennings
Bryan, to whom after a few sentences Senator
Jones yielded the floor.

Bryan appeared in Chicago as a member of
the contesting silver delegation from Nebraska. A
young man, barely thirty-six years old, he had
already become a well-known figure in the West,
where for years he had been expounding the doc-
trine of free silver. A native of Illinois, whither his
father had come from Culpeper County, Virginia,
Bryan had grown up on a farm. His father’s
means had been ample to afford him a good educa-
tion, which he completed,:so far as schooling was
concerned, at Illinois College, Jacksonville, and at
the Union College of Law in Chicago. While in
Chicago Bryan was employed in the law office of

7a

178 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Lyman Trumbull, one of the stanchest represent-
atives of independence in politics — an independ-
ence which had caused him to break with the Demo-
cratic party over the slavery issue, and which, as
expressed in his vote against the impeachment of
President Johnson, had resulted in his retirement
to private life. To the young law student Trum-
bull took a particular fancy, and his dominating
personality exerted an abiding influence over the
character and career of his protégé.

After a brief period of law practice in Jackson-
ville, Illinois, Bryan removed with his family to
Lincoln, Nebraska. The legal profession never
held great attraction for him, despite the encour-
agement and assistance of his wife, who herself took
up the study of law after her marriage and was ad-
mitted to the bar. Public questions and politics
held greater interest for the young man, who had
already, in his college career, shown his ability as
an orator. Nebraska offered the opportunity he
craved. At the Democratic state convention in
Omaha in 1888 he made a speech on the tariff
which gave him immediately a state-wide reputa-
tion as an orator and expounder of public issues.
He took an active part in the campaign of that
year, and in 1889 was offered, but declined, the

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 179

nomination for lieutenant governor on the Demo-
cratic ticket. In 1890 he won election to Congress
by a majority of seven thousand in a district which
two years before had returned a Republican, and this
he accomplished in spite of the neglect of party
managers who regarded the district as hopeless.
In Congress he became a member of the Committee
_ on Waysand Means. On the floor of the House his
formal speeches on the tariff, a topic to which noth-
ing new could be brought, commanded the atten-
tion of one of the most critical and blasé audiences
of the world. The silver question, which was the
principal topic before Congress at the following
session, afforded a fresher field for his oratory; in-
deed, Bryan was the principal aid to Bland both
as speaker and parliamentarian in the old lead-
er’s monetary campaign. When Bryan sat down
after a three-hour speech in which he attacked
the gold standard, a colleague remarked, “‘It ex-
hausts the subject.”’ In 1894 a tidal wave of Re-
publicanism destroyed Bryan’s chances of being
elected United States Senator, a consummation for
which he had been laboring on the stump and, for a
brief period, as editor of the Omaha World-Herald.
He continued, however, to urge the silver cause in
preparation for the presidential campaign of 1896.

180 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Talier and broader than most men and of more
commanding presence, Bryan was a striking figure
in the convention hall. He wore the inevitable
black suit of the professional man of the nineties,
but his dress did not seem conventional: his black
tie sat at too careless an angle; his black hair was a
little too long. These eccentricities the cartoonists
seized on and exaggerated so that most people who
have not seen the man picture Bryan, not as a de-
termined looking man with a piercing eye and tight-
set mouth, but as a grotesque frock-coated figure
with the sombrero of a cow-puncher and the hair
ofapoet. Ifthedelegates at the convention noticed
any of these peculiarities as Bryan arose to speak,
they soon forgot them. His undoubted power
to carry an audience with him was never better
demonstrated than on that sweltering July day in
Chicago when he stilled the tumult of a seething
mass of 15,000 people with his announcement that
he came to speak “‘in defense of a cause as holy as
the cause of liberty — the cause of humanity,” and
when he stirred the same audience to frenzy with
his closing defiance of the opponents of free silver:
If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have

it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of
having a gold standard because England has, we will

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 181

restore bimetallism, and then Jet England have bimetal-
lism because the United States hasit. If they dare to
come out in the open field and defend the gold stand-
ard as a good thing, we will fight them to the utter-
most. Having behind us the producing masses of this
nation and the world, supported by the commercial
interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers every-
where, we will answer their demand for a gold standard
by saying to them: You shall not press down upon
_ the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not
crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

Meeting Senator Hill’s careful arguments with
a clever retort, blunting the keenness of his logic
with a well-turned period, polished to perfection
by numerous repetitions before all sorts of audi-
ences during the previous three or four years, Bry-
an held the convention in the hollow of his hand.
The leadership which had hitherto been lacking
was now found. The platform as reported by the
committee was adopted by a vote of more than
two to one; and the convention, but for the opposi-
tion of Bryan himself, would have nominated him
on the spot. The next day it took but five ballots
to set aside all the favorite sons, including the
‘Father of Free Silver” himself, Richard P. Bland,
and to make Bryan the standard bearer of theparty.

Far different in character and appearance from

182 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

the Republican group which had assembled in the
same building a few weeks before, was the Populist
convention which met in St. Louis late in July.
Many of the 1300 delegates were white-haired and
had grown old in the service of reform in the various
independent movements of preceding years; some
of them had walked long distances to save railroad
fare, while others were so poor that, having ex-
hausted their small store of money before the long-
drawn-out convention adjourned, they suffered
from want of regular sleeping places and adequate
food. All were impressed with the significance of
the decision they must make.

Gone were the hopes of the past months; the
Populist party would not sweep into its ranks all
anti-monopolists and all silverites — for one of the
old parties had stolen its loudest thunder! It was
an error of political strategy to place the conven-
tion after those of the two great parties in the
expectation that both would stand on a gold plat-
form. Now it was for these delegates to decide
whether they would put their organization behind
the Democratic nominee with a substantial pros-
pect of victory, or preserve intact the identity of the
Populist party, split the silver vote, and deliver
over the election to a gold Republican.

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS _ 183

The majority of the delegates, believing that the
Democratic party had been inoculated with the
serum of reform, were ready for the sake of a prin-
ciple to risk the destruction of the party they had
labored so hard to build. Senator William V. Allen
of Nebraska summed up the situation when he said:

If by putting a third ticket in the field you would de-
' feat free coinage; defeat a withdrawal of the issue
power of national banks; defeat Government owner-
ship of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; defeat
an income tax and foist gold monometallism and high
taxation upon the people for a generation to come,
which would you do? ... When I shall go back to
the splendid commonwealth that has so signally
honored me beyond my merits, I want to be able to say
to the people that all the great doctrines we have advo-
cated for years, have been made possible by your action.
I do not want them to say that the Populists have been
advocates of reforms when they could not’be accom-
plished, but when the first ray of light appeared and
the people were looking with expectancy and with
anxiety for relief, the party was not equal to the oc-
casion; that it was stupid; it was blind; it kept “the
middle of the road,” and missed the golden opportunity.

Although most of the members of the convention
were ready to codperate with the Democrats, there
was a very strong feeling that something should be
done, if possible, to preserve the identity of the

184 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

Populist party and to safeguard its future. An
active minority, moreover, was opposed to any
sort of fusion or codperation. This “middle-of-the-
road”’ group included some Western leaders of
prominence, such as Peffer and Donnelly, but its
main support came from the Southern delegates.
To them an alliance with the Democratic party
meant a surrender to the enemy, to an enemy with
whom they had been struggling for four years for
the control of their state and local governments.
Passionately they pleaded with the convention to
save them from such a calamity. Well they knew
that small consideration would be given to those
who had dared stand up and oppose the ruling
aristocracy of the South, who had even shaken the
Democratic grip upon the governments of some of
the States. Further, a negro delegate from Georgia
portrayed the disaster which would overwhelm the
political aspirations of his people if the Populist
party, which alone had given them full fellowship,
should surrender to the Democrats.

The advocates of fusion won their first victory in
the election of Senator Allen as permanent chair-
man, by a vote of 758 to 564. As the nomina-
tion of Bryan for President was practically a fore-
gone conclusion, the “ middle-of-the-road”’ element

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 185

concentrated its energies on preventing the nomi-
nation of Arthur Sewall of Maine, the choice of the
Democracy, for Vice-President. The convention
was persuaded, by a narrow margin, to take the
unusual step of selecting the candidate for Vice-
President before the head of the ticket was chosen.
On the first ballot Sewall received only 257 votes,
_ while 469 were cast for Thomas Watson of Georgia.
Watson, who was then nominated by acclamation,
was a country editor who had made himself a force
in the politics of his own State and had served the
Populist cause conspicuously in Congress. Two
motives influenced the convention in this proce-
dure. Asa bank president, a railroad director, and
an employer of labor on a large scale, Sewall was
felt to be utterly unsuited to carry the standard
of the People’s Party. More effective than this
feeling, however, was the desire to do something to
preserve the identity of the party, to show that it
had not wholly surrendered to the Democrats. It
was a compromise, moreover, which was probably
necessary to prevent a bolt of the “‘middle-of-the-
road”’ element and the nomination of an entirely
independent ticket.

Even with this concession the Southern delegates
continued their opposition to fusion. Bryan was

186 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

placed in nomination, quite appropriately, by Gen-
eral Weaver, who again expressed the sense of the
convention: “After due consideration, in which
I have fully canvassed every possible phase of
the subject, I have failed to find a single good
reason to justify us in placing a third ticket in the
field. . . . I would not endorse the distinguished
gentleman named at Chicago. I would nominate
him outright, and make him our own, and then
share justly and rightfully in his election.” The
irreconcilables, nearly all from the South and in-
cluding a hundred delegates from Texas, voted for
S. F. Norton of Chicago, who received 321 votes as
against 1042 for Bryan.

Because of the electoral system, the agreement
of two parties to support the same candidate for
President could have no effect, unless arrangements
were made for fusion within the States. An ad-
dress issued by the executive committee of the na-
tional committee of the People’s Party during the
course of the campaign outlined the method of
uniting “the voters of the country against Mc-
Kinley,” and of overcoming the “obstacles and
embarrassments which, if the Democratic party
had put the cause first and party second,” would
not have been encountered: “This could be

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS _ 187

accomplished only by arranging for a division of the
electoral votes in every State possible, securing so
many electors for Bryan and Watson and conced-
ing so many to Bryan and Sewall. At the opening
of the campaign this, under the circumstances,
seemed the wisest course for your committee, and
it is clearer today than ever that it was the only
.safe and wise course if your votes were to be cast
and made effective for the relief of an oppressed
and outraged people. Following this line of policy
your committee has arranged electoral tickets iv
three-fourths of the States and will do all in its
power to make the same arrangements in all of
the States.”

The committee felt it necessary to warn the
people of the danger of “a certain portion of the
rank and file of the People’s Party being misled by
so-called leaders, who, for reasons best known to
themselves, or for want of reason, are advising
voters to rebel against the joint electoral tickets
and put up separate electoral tickets, or to with-
hold their support from the joint electoral tickets.”
Such so-called leaders were said to be aided and
abetted by “Democrats of the revenue stripe, who
are not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt,”
and by Republican “goldbugs” who in desperation

188 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

were seizing upon every straw to prevent fusion
and so to promote their own chances of success.

In the North and West, where the Populist had
been fusing with the Democrats off and on for
several years, the combinations were arranged with
little difficulty. In apportioning the places on the
electoral tickets the strength of the respective
parties was roughly represented by the number of
places assigned to each. Usually it was under-
stood that all the electors, if victorious, would vote
for Bryan, while the Democrats would cast their
second place ballots for Sewall and the Populists
for Watson.

In the South much more difficulty was experi-
enced in arranging fusion tickets, and the spectacle
of Populists cobperating with Republicans in state
elections and with Democrats in the national elec-
tion illustrated the truth of the adage that “‘poli-
tics makes strange bedfellows.” Only in Arkan-
sas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and North
Carolina, of the Southern States, were joint electo-
ral tickets finally agreed upon. In Tennessee the
Populists offered to support the Democratic elec-
tors if they would all promise to vote for Watson, a
proposal which was naturally declined. In Florida
the chairman of the state committee of the People’s

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 189

Party, went so far on the eve of the election as to
advise all members of the party to vote for Mc-
Kinley; and in Texas there was an organized bolt
of a large part of the Populists to the Republican
party, notwithstanding its gold standard and pro-
tective tariff platform.

No campaign since that of 1860 was so hotly and
- bitterly contested as the “Battle of the Standards”
in 1896. The Republicans broke all previous
records in the amount of printed matter which they
scattered broadcast over the country. Money was
freely spent. McKinley remained at his home in
Canton, Ohio, and received, day after day, delega-
tions of pilgrims come to harken to his words of
wisdom, which were then, through the medium
of the press, presented to similar groups from
Maine to California. For weeks, ten to twenty-
five thousand people a day sought “‘the shrine of
the golden calf.”

In the meantime Bryan, as the Democrat-Popu-
list candidate, toured the country, traveling over
thirteen thousand miles, reaching twenty-nine
States, and addressing millions of voters. It was
estimated, for instance, that in the course of his
tour of West Virginia at least half the electorate
must have heard his voice. Most of the influential

190 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

newspapers were opposed to Bryan, but his tours
and meetings and speeches had so much news value
that they received the widest publicity. As the
campaign drew to a close, it tended more and more
to become a class contest. That it was so con-
ceived by the Populist executive committee is
apparent from one of its manifestoes:

There are but two sides in the conflict that is being
waged in this country today. On the one side are the
allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great
trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enact-
ment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people.
On the other side are the farmers, laborers, merchants,
and all others who produce wealth and bear the bur-
dens of taxation. The one represents the wealthy and
powerful classes who want the control of the Govern-
ment to plunder the people. The other represents the
people, contending for equality before the law, and the
rights of man. Between these two there is no middle
ground.

When the smoke of battle cleared away the elec-
tion returns of 1896 showed that McKinley had
received 600,000 more popular votes than Bryan
and would have 271 electoral votes to 176 for the
Democrat-Populist candidate. West of the Mis-
sissippi River the cohorts of Bryan captured the
electoral vote in every State except California,

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 191

Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, and Oregon. The
South continued its Democratic solidity, except
that West Virginia and Kentucky went to McKin-
ley. All the electoral votes of the region east of
the Mississippi and north of Mason’s and Dixon’s
line were Republican. The old Northwest, to-
gether with Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota,
. aregion which had been the principal theater of the
Granger movement a generation before, now joined
forces with the conservative and industrial East to
defeat a combination of the South with the newer
agrarian and mining frontiers of the West.

The People’s Party had staked all on a throw of
the dice and had lost. It had given its life as a
political organization to further the election of
Bryan, and he had not been elected. Its hope for
independent existence was now gone; its strength
was considerably less in 1896 than it had been in
1892 and 1894.‘ The explanation would seem to

Of the 6,509,000 votes which Bryan received, about 4,669,000 were
cast for the fusion electoral tickets. In only seven of the fusicn States
is it possible to distinguish between Democrat and Populist votes; the
totals here are 1,499,000 and 93,000 respectively. The fusion Popu-
list vote of 45,000 was essential for the success of the Bryan electors in
Kansas; and in California the similar vote of 22,000, added to that of
the Democrats, gave Bryan one of the electors. In no other State in
this group did the Populist vote have any effect upon the result. The
part played by the People’s party in the other twenty-two of the fusion

192 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

be, in part at least, that the People’s Party was
*‘bivertebrate as well as bimetallic.” It was com-
posed of men who not long since had other political
affiliations, who had left one party for the sake of
the cause, and who consequently did not find it
difficult to leave another for the same reason. In

States is difficult to determine; in some cases, however, the situation is
revealed in the results of state elections. ‘The best example of this is
North Carolina, where the Democrat-Populist electors had a major-
ity of 19,000, while at the same election fusion between Republicans
and Populists for all state officers except governor and lieutenant
governor was victorious. The Populist candidate for governor re-
ceived about 31,000 votes and the Republican was elected. It is
evident that the third party held the balance of power in North Caro-
lina. The Populist votes were probably essential for the fusion vic-
tories in Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and Washington; but, as there
was fusion on state tickets also, it is impossible to estimate the part
played by the respective parties. The total Populist vote in the ten
States in which there were independent Democratic and Populist
electoral tickets was 122,000 (of which 80,000 were cast in Texas and
24,000 in Alabama) and as none of the ten were close States the failure
to agree on electoral tickets had no effect on the result. The “‘middle-
of-the-road”’ Populist votes, in States where there were also fusion
tickets amounted to only 8000 — of which 6000 were cast in Pennsyl-
vania and 1000 each in Illinois and Kansas.

The Populist vote as a whole was much larger than 223,000 — the
total usually given in the tables — for this figure does not include the
vote in the twenty-two fusion States in which the ballots were not
separately counted. This is apparent from the fact that the twenty-
seven electoral votes from ten States which were cast for Watson came,
with one exception, from States in which no separate Populist vote
was recorded. It is evident, nevertheless, from the figures in States
where comparisons are possible, that the party had lost ground.

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS _ 193

the West large numbers of former Populists un-
doubtedly went over completely to the Democracy,
even when they had the opportunity of voting for
the same Bryan electors under a Populist label.
In the South many members of the party, disgusted
at the predicament in which they found themselves,
threw in their lot with the Republicans. The cap-
. ture of the Democracy by the forces ot free silver
gave the death blow to Populism.

13

CHAPTER XII
THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM

THE People’s Party was mortally stricken by the
events of 1896. Most of the cohorts which had
been led into the camp of Democracy were there-
after beyond the control of their leaders; and even
the remnant that still called itself Populist was
divided into two factions. In 1900 the radical
group refused to endorse the Fusionists’ nomina-
tion of Bryan and ran an independent ticket headed
by Wharton Barker of Pennsylvania and that in-
veterate rebel, Ignatius Donnelly. This ticket,
however, received only 50,000 votes, nearly one-half
of which came from Texas. When the Democrats
nominated Judge Alton B. Parker of New York in
1904, the Populists formally dissolved the alliance
with the Democracy and nominated Thomas E.
Watson of Georgia for President. By this defec-
tion the Democrats may have lost something; but

the Populists gained little. Most of the radicals
194

THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 195

who deserted the Democracy at this time went over
to Roosevelt, the Republican candidate. In 1908
the Populist vote fell to 29,000; in 1912 the party
gave up the ghost in a thinly-attended convention
which neither made nominations of its own nor
endorsed any other candidate. In Congress the
forces of Populism dwindled rapidly, from the 27
members of 1897 to but 10 in 1899, and none at all
in 1903.

The men who had been leaders in the heyday of
Populism retired from national prominence to mere
local celebrity. Donnelly died in 1901, leaving a
picturesque legacy of friendships and animosities, of
literary controversy and radical political theory.
Weaver remained with the fusion Populists through
the campaign of 1900; but by 1904 he had gone over
to the Democratic party. The erstwhile candidate
for the presidency was content to serve as mayor
of the small town of Colfax, Iowa, where he made
his home until his death in 1912, respected by his
neighbors and forgotten by the world. Peffer, at
the expiration of his term in the Senate, ran an
unsuccessful tilt for the governorship of Kansas on
the Prohibition ticket. In 1900 he returned to
the comfort of the Republican fold, to become an
ardent supporter of McKinley and Roosevelt.

196 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

But the defection and death of Populist leaders,
the collapse of the party, and the disintegration of
the alliances could not stay the farmers’ move-
ment. It ebbed fora time, just as at the end of the
Granger period, but it was destined to rise again.
The unprecedented prosperity, especially among
the farmers, which began with the closing years of
the nineteenth century and has continued with
little reaction down to the present has removed
many causes for agrarian discontent; but some of
the old evils are left, and fresh grievances have
come to the front. Experience taught the farmer
one lesson which he has never forgotten: that
whether prosperous or not, he can and must pro-
mote his welfare by organization. So it is that, as
one association or group of associations declines,
others arise. In some States, where the Grange
has survived or has been reintroduced, it is once
more the leading organ of the agricultural class.
Elsewhere other organizations, sometimes confined
to a single State, sometimes transcending state
lines, hold the farmers’ allegiance more or less
firmly; and an attempt is now being made to unite
all of these associations in an American Federation
of Farmers.

Until recently these orders have devoted their

THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 197

energies principally to promoting the social and
intellectual welfare of the farmer and to business
codperation, sometimes on a large scale. But, as
soon as an organization has drawn into its ranks a
considerable proportion of the farmers of a State,
especially in the West, the temptation to use its
power in the field of politics is almost irresistible.
' At first, political activity is usually confined to
declarations in favor of measures believed to be in
the interests of the farmers as a class; but from
this it is only a short step to the support of candi-
dates for office who are expected to work for those
measures; and thence the gradation is easy to actual
nominations by the order or by a farmers’ conven-
tion which it has called into being. With direct
primaries in operation in most of the Western
States, these movements no longer culminate in the
formation of the third party but in ambitious efforts
to capture the dominant party in the State. Thus
in Wisconsin the president of the state union of the
American Society of Equity, a farmers’ organiza-
tion which has heretofore been mainly interested in
cobperative buying and selling, was recently put
forward by a “Farmers and Laborers Conference”
as candidate for the nomination for governor on
the Republican ticket and had the active support

198 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

of the official organ of the society. In North
Dakota, the Non-Partisan League, a farmers’ or-
ganization avowedly political in its purposes, cap-
tured the Republican party a few years ago and
now has complete control of the state government.
The attempt of the League to seize the reins in
Minnesota has been unsuccessful as yet, but Demo-
cratic and Republican managers are very much
alarmed at its growing power. The organized
farmers are once more a power in Western politics.

It is not, however, by votes cast and elections
won or by the permanence of parties and organiza-
tions that the political results of the agrarian cru-
sade are to bemeasured. The People’s Party and its
predecessors, with the farmers’ organizations which
supported them, professed to put measures before
men and promulgated definite programs of legisla-
tion. Many of the proposals in these programs
which were ridiculed at the time have long since
passed beyond the stage of speculation and discus-
sion. Regulation of railroad charges by national and
state government, graduated income taxes, popular
election of United States Senators, a parcels post,
postal savings banks, and rural free delivery of mail
are a few of these once visionary demands which
havebeen satisfied by Federal law and constitutional

THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 199

amendment. Anti-trust legislation has been en-
acted to meet the demand for the curbing of mo-
nopolies; and the Federal land bank system which
has recently gone into operation is practically the
proposal of the Northwestern Alliance for govern-
ment loans to farmers, with the greenback feature
eliminated. Even the demand for greater volume
and flexibility of currency has been met, though in
ways quite different from those proposed by the
farmers. *

In general it may be said that the farmers’ or-
ganizations and parties stood for increased govern-
mental activity; they scorned the economic and
political doctrine of laissez faire; they believed that
the people’s governments could and should be used
in many ways for promoting the welfare of the
people, for assuring social justice, and for restoring

tIn July, 1894, when the People’s Party was growing rapidly, the
editor of the Review of Reviews declared: ‘‘Whether the Populist
party is to prove itself capable of amalgamating a great national
political organization or whether its work is to be done through a
leavening of the old parties to a more or less extent with its doctrines
and ideas, remains to be seen. At present its influence evidently is
that of a leavening ingredient.” The inclusion of the income tax in
the revenue bill put through by the Democratic majority in Congress
was described as “‘a mighty manifestation of the working of the Popu-
list leaven”’; and it was pointed out that “the Populist leaven in the
direction of free siiver at the ratio of 16 to 1 is working yet more deeply
and ominously.”” The truth of the last assertion was demonstrated
two years later.

200 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE

or preserving economic as well as political equality.
They were pioneers in this field of social politics,
but they did not work alone. Independent re-
formers, either singly or in groups, labor organiza-
tions and parties, and radicals everywhere codper-
ated with them. Both the old parties were split
into factions by this progressive movement; and in
1912 a Progressive party appeared on the scene and
leaped to second place in its first election, only to
vanish from the stage in 1916 when both the old
parties were believed to have become progressive.
The two most hopeful developments in American
politics during recent years have been the progres-
sive movement, with its program of social justice,
and the growth of independent voting — both
developments made possible in large part by the
agrarian crusade. Perhaps the most significant
contribution of the farmers’ movement to American
politics has been the training of the agricultural
population to independent thought and action. No
longer can a political party, regardless of its plat-
form and candidates, count on the farmer vote as a
certainty. The resolution of the Farmers’ Alliance
of Kansas “‘that we will no longer divide on party
lines and will only cast our votes for candidates of
the people, by the people, and for the people,” was

THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 201

a declaration of a political independence which the
farmers throughout the West have maintained and
strengthened. Each successive revolt took addi-
tional voters from the ranks of the old parties; and,
once these ties were severed, even though the wan-
derers might return, their allegiance could be re-
tained only by a due regard for their interests and
desires.

uae ‘2 lonessp all tadielaaaogearenpi
Sil AR pemntiRe ee ics ORIN bois
LU}2 n Progresivc perighappdaetl ee
lev ewt diab en OoyTeat bh aes 4) The hrstee only a
viish From the stege ta 20@ aie both the! ahd
irHea were beliewed to have become p ‘
tthe t piel hapefal divelopmenta in. whe
palitien during recent. yor have bape ihe p oar
S1Ve tenVverenie iinet ite Pregrniin akigor. il ,
aod Ue greieth of ipdedenieunt stig ‘ ibe
volopunente anade paembie da hapa te t na
nwrnties etasade. Palape the: Bed St ve
vontribetion af the favmiiepe’ 20oW
patties bas fen thw tesheiue es nthe
crops jon to thdgupndent. theug
longer: iesial sl sais! ieee ial oe

facts Aaa Rte

‘ ,

ire
Y

Re 4,
4

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a +
“ “i
/-

ra
~

Pe

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Tue sources for the history of the agrarian crusade
are to be found largely in contemporary newspapers,
periodical articles, and the pamphlet proceedings of
national and state organizations, which are too numer-
ous to permit of their being listed here. The issues of
such publications as the Tribune Almanac, the Annual
Cyclopedia (1862-1903), and Edward McPherson’s
Handbook of Politics (1868-1894) contain platforms,
election returns, and other useful material; and some
of the important documents for the Granger period are
in volume x of the Documentary History of American
Industrial Society (1911), edited by John R. Commons.

When each wave of the movement for agricultural
organization was at its crest, enterprising publishers
seized the opportunity to bring out books dealing with
the troubles of the farmers, the proposed remedies, and
the origin and growth of the orders. These works,
hastily compiled for sale by agents, are partisan and
unreliable, but they contain material not elsewhere
available, and they help the reader to appreciate the
spirit of the movement. Books of this sort for the
Granger period include: Edward W. Martin’s (pseud.
of J. D. McCabe) History of the Grange Movement
(1874), Jonathan Periam’s The Groundswell (1874),
Oliver H. Kelley’s Origin and Progress of the Order of

203

204 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

the Patrons of Husbandry (1875), and Ezra S. Carr’s
The Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast (1875).
Similar works induced by the Alliance movement are:
History of the Farmers’ Alliance, the Agricultural Wheel,
etc., compiled and edited by the St. Louis Journal of
Agriculture (1890), Labor and Capital, Containing an
Account of the Various Organizations of Farmers, Plant-
ers, and Mechanics (1891), edited by Emory A. Allen,
W. Scott Morgan’s History of the Wheel and Alliance
and the Impending Revolution (1891), H. R. Chamber-
lain’s The Farmers’ Alliance (1891), The Farmers’ Alli-
ance History and Agricultural Digest (1891), edited by
N. A. Dunning, and N. B. Ashby’s The Riddle of the
Sphinx (1890). Other contemporary books dealing
with the evils of which the farmers complained are:
D. C. Cloud’s Monopolies and the People (1873), Wil-
liam A. Peffer’s The Farmer’s Side (1891), James B.
Weaver’s A Call to Action (1891), Charles H. Otken’s
The Ills of the South (1894), Henry D. Lloyd’s Wealth
against Commonwealth (1894), and William H. Harvey’s
Coin’s Financial School (1894).

The nearest approach to a comprehensive account
of the farmers’ movement is contained in Fred E.
Haynes’s Third Party Movements Since the Civil War,
with Special Reference to Iowa (1916). The first phase of
the subject is treated by Solon J. Buck in The Granger
Movement (1913), which contains an extensive bibli-
ography. Frank L. McVey’s The Populist Movement
(1896) is valuable principally for its bibliography of
contemporary material, especially newspapers and
magazine articles. For accounts of agrarian activity
in the individual States, the investigator turns to the

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 205

many state histories without much satisfaction. Nor
can he find monographic studies for more than a few
States. A. E. Paine’s The Granger Movement in Illi-
nois (1904 University of Illinois Studies, vol. 1, No.
8) and Ellis B. Usher’s The Greenback Movement of
1875-1884 and Wisconsin’s Part in It (1911) practically
exhaust the list. Elizabeth N. Barr’s The Populist
Uprising, in volume 11 of William E. Connelley’s Stand-
ard History of Kansas (1918), is a vivid and sympa-
thetic but uncritical narrative. Briefer articles have
been written by Melvin J. White, Populism in Lowisi-
ana during the Nineties, in the Mississippi Valley His-
torical Review (June, 1918), and by Ernest D. Stewart,
The Populist Party in Indiana in the Indiana Magazine
of History (December, 1918). Biographical material
on the Populist leaders is also scant. For Donnelly
there is Everett W. Fish’s Donnelliana (1892), a curi-
ous eulogy supplemented by “excerpts from the wit,
wisdom, poetry and eloquence”’ of the versatile hero;
and a life of General Weaver is soon to be issued by the
State Historical Society of Iowa. William J. Bryan’s
The First Battle (1896) and numerous biographies of
“the Commoner” treat of his connection with the
Populists and the campaign of 1896. Herbert Croly’s
Marcus A. Hanna (1912) should also be consulted in
this connection.

Several of the general histories of the United States
since the Civil War devote considerable space to vari-
ous phases of the farmers’ movement. The best in
this respect are Charles A.. Beard’s Contemporary Ameri-
can History (1914) and Frederic L. Paxson’s The
New Nation (1915). Harry Thurston Peck’s Twenty

206 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Years of the Republic, 1885-1905 (1906) contains an
entertaining account of Populism and the campaign of
1896. Pertinent chapters and useful bibliographies will
also be found in the following volumes of the American
Nation: William A. Dunning’s Reconstruction, Political
and Economic, 1865-1877 (1907), Edwin E. Sparks’s
National Development, 1877-1885 (1907), and David
R. Dewey’s National Problems, 1885-1897 (1907).

INDEX

Adams, C. F., candidate for
presidential nomination, 15
Adams, D. W., Master of Na-

* tional Grange, 27

Agricultural Wheel, 116-17;
see also National Agricul-
tural Wheel

Aiken, D.W., on executive com-
mittee of National Grange,
27; quoted, 61-62

Alabama, Grange relief sent to,

75

Allen, Judge W. V., sent to
United States Senate, 164-
165, 184; quoted, 183

Alliance movement, see Farm-
ers’ Alliance

Altgeld, J. P., elected Governor
of Illinois, 150

American Bimetallic League,
170

American Federation of Farm-
ers, 196

American Society of Equity,
197

““American System of Fi-
nance,’” 80

Anthony, Susan B., speaks at
National party convention,
94

Anti-Monopolist, Donnelly
starts publication of, 41;
activity, 86

Anti-Monopoly Organization
of the United States, con-
vention at Chicago (1884),
96; see also Anti-Monopoly
party

Anti-Monopoly party, 81;
Donnelly as leader, 39, 41;
antagonism toward §rail-
roads, 50

Arkansas, Agricultural Wheel
originates in Prairie County,
116; Union Labor party in,
127; fusion tickets (1896),
188

Banks and banking, see Finance
Barker, Wharton, radical Popu-
list candidate (1900), 194
Barr, E. N., The Populist Up-

rising, cited, 134 (note)
**Battle of the Standards,”
campaign of 1896, 189
Bland, R. P., Bryan and, 179;
**Father of Free Silver,’’ 181
Brothers of Freedom, 116
Brown, B. G., elected Governor
of Missouri, 14; candidate
for presidential nomination,
16
Bryan, W. J., at Democratic
convention (1896), 177; life,
177-78; interest in politics,
178; editor Omaha World-
Herald, 179; in Congress,
179; personal appearance,
180; convention speech
quoted, 180-81; nomination,
181, 186; and People’s Party,
186, 191; campaign, 189-90;
defeat, 190, 191
Buchanan, James, and Na-
tional Greenback party, 82,
127

207

208
Butler, General B. F., and

silver question, 90; presiden-
tial nomination, 96-97

California and Populist party,
151

Cary, S. F., Independent nomi-
nee for Vice-President (1876),
85

Chambers, B. J., nominated
for Vice-President, 94

Chase, Solon, on inflation, 90-
91

Chicago, Grange established
in, 6; Independent meeting
(1876), 85; National party
convention (1889), 93-94;
meeting of Northwestern
Alliance (1881), 119; Demo-
cratic convention (1896),
175-77, 180-81

Cincinnati, Liberal-Republi-
can convention (1872), 14,
15; convention of Citizens’
Alliance and Knights of
Labor (1891), 140

Citizens’ Alliance, 140

Civil service, Liberal Repub-
lican platform on, 15; de-
mand for reform of, 35

Civil War, agriculture after, 19

Clark, J. G., 151; People’s
Battle Hymn, 148

Cleveland, Grover, and free
silver, 169; Tillman and,
169, 176

Cleveland, Independent party
convention (1875), 82-83

Colorado, Populist success
(1892), 149; Republican in
1894, 168

Colored Farmers’ Alliance, 123

Columbus (O.), Grange es-
tablished in, 6; National
Labor party convention
(1872), 80

Congress, agricultural repre-
sentation in, 24; specie-
resumption act (1875), 83,

INDEX

94; Silver Purchase Act, 132,
159-60, 165; demonetizes sil-
ver (1873), 156-57; Bland-
Allison act, 158, 159, 160,
173

Cooper, Peter, candidate fo1
Presidency, 84-85

Coéperation, 65 et seq.; co-

operative stores, 66-68,
**Rochdale plan,’’ 67-68,
71; Northwestern Alliance

and, 119

Corning, Cyrus, 134

Corwin, E. S., John Marshall
and the Constitution, cited,
46 (note)

Coxey, J. S., 170

**Crime of ’73,”’ 156

Curtin, A. G., and Liberal
Republican party, 15

Curtis, B. R., 51

Daniel, J. W., at Democratic
convention (1896), 175

Davis, Judge David, and Lib-
eral Republican party, 15;
candidate for presidential
nomination, 15-16; nomi-
nated by National Labor
party (1872), 80; considered
as candidate by National
Greenback party (1876), 84;
Senator, 87-88

Democratic party, after Civil
War, 11-12; and Liberal
Republicans, 16-17: makes
common cause with new
parties, 31; in Illinois (1873),
34; attitude on currency
question, 79; firm establish-
ment of, 97-98, 125; disap-
pointment in, 126; victory
in Nebraska (1890), 138;
platform (1892), 146-47; and
Populist party, 149-50, 153,
and free silver, 158, 175 et
seq.; success in South Caro-
lina (1894), 169; convention
(1896), 175-77, 180-81

INDEX

Detroit, Greenback conference
(1875), 86

Diggs, Anna L., 134

Dillaye, S. D., refuses presi-
dential nomination, 93

Donnelly, Ignatius, 18; Anti-
Monopolist leader, 39, 41;
life and character, 39-42;
Facts for the Grangers, 81; on
inflation, 81-82; temporary
chairman of National Green-
back convention (1876), 83;
heads Populist ticket in
Minnesota (1892), 150; op-
ponent of party fusion, 170,
184, 194; death (1901), 195

East, Grange movement re-
tarded in, 26-27

Elections, State elections
(1877), 88 (note); of 1878,
90; of 1880, 93-95; of 1896,
172-91; of 1900, 194; of
1904, 194-95; of 1908, 195

England, conflicting interests
with United States, 161

Europe, agricultural condi-
tions in 1893, 99

Evarts, W. M., 51

Fairchild, George T., quoted,
106

Farmers’ Alliance, 111 e¢ seq.;
bibliography, 204

Farmers’ Alliance of Kansas,
resolution, 200-01

**Farmers ana Laborers Con-
ference’? makes nomination
for Governor in Wisconsin,
197

Farmers’ and Laborers’ Union

of America, 117, 122

Farmers’ clubs, organization
of, 29-30

Farmers’ Declaration of Inde-
pendence, 33-34

Farmers’ Fourth of July (1873),
33

ta

209

Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Asso-
ciation, 123

Farmers’ party, 31

Farmers’ Union of Louisiana,
115

Fenton, R. E., and Liberal
Republican party, 15

Field, General J.G., candidate
for Vice-President, 145, 147

Finance, panic of 1873, 21, 81;
farm loan banks, 21; demand
for currency reform, 35; cur-
rency inflation and Green-
back movement, 77 et seq.,
110; ‘‘American System of
Finance,”’ 80; panic of 1893,
104; mortgages, 105-07;
press comment on existing
system, 108-09; Southera
Alliance report on mone-
tary system (1889), 130-31;
Northwestern Alliance pro-
posals, 131; monetary planks
in Populist platform (1892),
143; Federal land bank sys-
tem, 199; see also Gold
standard, Prices, Silver

Flagg, W. C., president of
Illinois State Farmers’ Asso-
ciation, 36

Florida, Alliance forms Demo-
cratic platform in (1890),
133; election of 1896, 188-

189

Fredonia (N. Y.), Grange es-
tablished in, 6

Free Trade League, leaders
join Liberal Republicans, 14

George, Henry, 127

George, Milton, founder of
National Farmers’ Alliance,
118

Georgia, Alliance forms Demo-
cratic platform in (1890),
133

Godkin, E. L., 14, 19

Geld standard, party plat-
forms on, 146-47; Congress

210

Gold Standard—Continued
authorizes, 156; in Republi-
can platform (1896), 174-75

Grange movement, inception,
1 et seq.; at flood tide, 25 et
seq.; and railroad regulation,
43 et seq.; collapse, 60 et seq.;
social and intellectual stimu-
lus from, 71-76; ritual, 73-
74; biblicgraphy, 203-04;
see also National Grange of
the Patrons of Husbandry

Grant, U. S., and spoils, 12;
nomination (1872), 16

Greeley, Horace, joins Liberal
Republicans, 15; nomina-
tion for President (1872), 16,
80; campaign, 16-17; Don-
nelly supports, 41

Greenback Clubs, 86, 93

Greenback Labor party, re-
form parties merged with,
35; National party called,
89; decline, 96, 127; finan-

. eial demands, 155; see also
National party, National
Greenback party

Greenback movement, 77 ef
seq.; State elections (1877),
88 (note)

Gresham, Judge W. Q., Popu-
lists consider nomination of,
145

Grosh, Rev.

founder, 4

A. B., Grange

Hall, Carrie, niece of Kelley, 3

Hallowell, Colonel J. R., Simp-
son and, 136, 137

Hanna, M. A., 172-74

Harrisburg (Penn.), Grange es-
tablished at, 6

Harvey, W. H., Coin’s Finan-
cial School, 160-61

Hayes, R. B., vetoes Bland-
Allison bill, 158

Hill, D. B., defends gold plank
at Democratic convention,
176

INDEX

Hoar, E. R., 51
Hobart, G. A., nominated for
Vice-President, 175

Idahc, Populist success in
(1892), 149; Republican in
1894, 168

Illinois, independent farmers’
organizations, 30; political
action of farmers in, 31-32;
campaign of 1873 in, 34;
railroad regulation, 45, 47-
49, 52, 55; Grange plans
implement factory in, 70;
Greenback movement, 81,
85, 87; codperative creamer-
ies, 119; election of 1892, 150

Immigration, restriction fa-
vored by Populist party, 144;
Republicans favor restric-
tion, 147

Independent party, 31, 133;
platform, 83-84; campaign
(1876), 85; see also National
Greenback party

Independent Reform party in
Illinois, 87

Indiana, Grange plans imple-
ment factory, 70; Green-
back movement, 81-82, 85,
87; drought (1895), 105;
election of 1890, 138

Indianapolis, Greenback con-
ference, 82; Independent
party nominating conven-
tion, 83

Indianapolis Star, 86

Industrial Age, Noonan’s, 86

Industrial League of the
United States, 164

Industrial party, 133

International Monetary Con-
ference of Paris, 156

Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, Granger laws pave
way for, 56

Iowa, Kelley in, 2; Grange or-
ganization, 25, 30; railroad
regulation 45, 47, 50-51

INDEX

fowa— Continued
53; senate resolutions re-
garding lobbyists for rail-
roads, 53-54; Grange plans
implement factory in, 70;
Greenback movement in, 87;
Populist party in, 150; elec-
tion of 1896, 191

ireland, W. M., Grange found-
er, 4

Johnson, Andrew, authorizes
investigating trip to South-
ern States, 1

Jones, J. K., at Democratic
convention (1896), 177

Kansas, agricultural clubs of
political complexion, 30;
Grange plans implement fac-
tory, 70; Greenback move-
ment, 87; mortgaged land,
106; Union Labor party,
127; political revolt and
social upheaval (1890), 134—
137, 139; Populist success,
149; storm-center in na-
tional politics (1893), 165-
166; Republican in 1894, 168;
Farmers’ Alliance of, 200-
201

Kansas Farmer, Peffer editor
of, 140

Kearney, Dennis, at National
party convention (1880), 94

Kelley, O. H., investigation
in South, 1, 2; life and char-
acter, 1-3; founds Grange,
3-4; Grange Secretary, 4,
27; organizes Grange, 5-10;
quoted, 65

Kentucky, Grange plans im-
plement factory, 70; dele-
gates attend meeting of
Agricultural Wheel (1886),
117; fusion of parties (1896),
188; McKinley carries, 191

Kirkwood, S. J., 92

Knights of Labor, 127, 140

211

Kyle, Rev. J. H., elected te
Senate, 138-39; presidential
possibility, 145

Lampasas (Tex.), farmers’
alliance organized, 112

Land, alien ownership op-
posed, 143; Democratic de-
mands (1892), 147

Lease, C. L., husband of Mary
E., 135

Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 134,
167; life and character, 135;
quoted, 135-36; in campaign
of 1892, 147, 151

Liberal Reform party, Taylor
and, 38

Liberal Republican party, 14-
18; in Missouri, 31

Louisiana, Grange relief sent
to, 75; Farmers’ Union, 115;
press comment on Populist
campaign, 148-49; fusion of
parties (1896), 188

McDowell,
founder, 4

McKinley, William, candidate
for Presidency (1896), 173-
175; campaign, 189; elec-
tion, 190-91; Peffer sup-
ports, 195

Macune, C. W., and Texas
Alliance, 115; president of
National Farmers’ Alliance,
115-16; quoted, 128-29;
chairman of monetary com-
mittee, 130

Manufacturers, farmers’ rela-
tions with, 64-65, 71

Manufacturing, Grange activi-
ties, 68-70

Martin, John, and silver, 168

Meridian (Miss.), joint confer-
ence of agricultural orders
at, 117

Michigan, Greenback move-
ment in, 87; drought (1895),
105; election of 1890, 138

F. M., Grange

212

Middlemer, farmers’ relations
with, 63-64, 71

Minnesota, Kelley in, 2, 6;
Grange movement in, 8-9,
25, 30; railroad regulation,
45, 46-47, 49-50, 55; Alli-
ance grain elevators in, 119;
election of 1890, 138; Popu-
list party in, 150; press
comment on Populist party,
152; election of 1896, 191;
Non-Partisan League in, 198

Minnesota State Alliance, po-
litical aims, 120

Mississippi, Grange organiza-
tion, 25

Missouri, Democracy in, 31;
Liberal Republican party in,
$1; Grange plans implement
factory, 70; Grange relief
sent to, 75; Union Labor
party in, 127; Populist party
in, 150; fusion of parties
(1896), 188

Murdock, Victor, 136

Nation quoted, 16

National Agricultural Wheel,
117

National Farmers’ Alliance,
118; resolutions (1887), 121;
see also Northwestern Alli-
ance

National Farmers’ Alliance
and Codéperative Union of
America, 115

National Farmers’, Alliance
and Industrial Union, 122

National Grange of the Pa-
trons of Husbandry, organi-
zation, 4; motto, 4; “‘De-
claration of Purposes of the

National Grange,’’ 28; ob-
jections to, 29; farmers’
attitude toward, 62; see

also Grange movement

National Greenback party, 82;
see also Greenback Labor
party

INDEX

National Labor party, 80

National Labor Union, 79, 80

National party, name adopted
at Toledo convention, 89;
campaign of 1880, 93-95;
in later elections, 96-97;
convention at Indianapolis
(1884), 96-97; see also Green-
back Labor party

Nebraska, election of 1890,
137-38; Populist, 150; elec-
tion of 1894, 168

Negroes, excluded from Farm-
ers’ Alliance, 113, 122; sepa-
rate lodges for, 117 (note);
Colored Farmers’ Alliance,
123

Nevada, Populist success in,
149; election of 1894, 168

Newton (Iowa), Grange estab-
lished at, 8

Non-Partisan League, 198

North Carolina, Alliance forms
Democratic platform (1890),
133; fusion of parties (1896),
188

North Dakota, Alliance grain
elevators in, 119; Populist
success in, 149; Republican
in 1894, 168; election of
1896, 191; Non-Partisan
League, 198

Northwestern Alliance, foun-
dation, 118; platform, 119,
131; meets with Southern
Alliance, 122; decline, 124;
quotation from speech at
meeting, 126; see also Na-
tional Farmers’ Alliance

Norton, S. F., at Populist con-
vention (1896), 186

Ocala (Fla.), meeting of South-
ern Alliance at (1890), 123

O’Conor, Charles, 51

Ohio, drought in (1895), 105

**Ohio idea,”’ 155

Oklahoma, Weaver and open-
ing of, 93

INDEX

Omaha, Populist party organ-
ized at, 142; Bryanat Demo-
cratic convention (1888), 178

Oregon, and Populist party,
151; election of 1896, 191

Panics, °ze Finance

Parker, Judge A. B., candidate
for Presidency, 194

Patrons of Husbandry, see
Grange movement, National
Grange of the Patrons of
Husbandry

Peffer, W. A., 134, 184; Sena-
tor from Kansas, 139, 168,
170; life, 139-40; Prohibi-
tion candidate for Governor
of Kansas, 195; becomes Re-
publican, 195

Pendleton, G. H., candidate
for Presidency (1868), 155

Pennsylvania, Greenback party
in, 87

Pensacola Address, 149

People’s Independent party in
Nebraska, 137

People’s Party, 125 et seq.;
adopts Alliance platform,
129; decline of, 191-93; see
also Populist party

Philadeiphia and Reading Rail-
road Company, failure, 104

Politics, agricultural clubs in,
20-31; Alliances in, 119-21,
128, 133-34; see also names
of parties

Pomeroy, M. M., and Green-
back Clubs, 86; Brickdust
Sketches, 86; Brick Pome-
roy’ s Democrat, 86; Hot Drops,

86; Meatfor Men,86; quoted, |

90; radical leader, 93
Poolville (Tex.), non-partisan
alliance organized, 112
Populist party. organized
(1892), 142; platform, 142-
144; manifesto Feb. 22, 1895,
154: relations to silver ques-
tion, 162-63; contest with

213

Republicans in Kansas
Legislature, 165-68; and
Democrats, 188; decline, 195;
bibliography, 204-05; see
also People’s Party

Prices, decline after Civil War,
19; (1883-89), 102; (1891-
92), 103-04; rise as result
of McKinley Tariff, 133-
134; and silver standard, 162

Producers’ Convention in IIli-
nois, 47

Progressive party, 200

Railroads, and the farmer, 22-
23; government aid, 23;
legislative reforms in Middle
West, 32, 35; state regula-
tion, 43 et seq.; distribution
of favors, 53; “‘Granger”
laws repealed, 55-56; Na-
tional Alliance demands
state regulation, 120, 121;
government ownership, 129-
130, 143; regulation accom-
plished, 198

Ramsey, Alexander, governor
of Minnesota, 39, 40

Reconstructionin South, 12-13

Referendum favored by Popu-
list party, 144

Reform party, 31

Republican party, in control in
North, 11-12; dissatisfac-
tion with, 12, 14, 126, 134,
153; Liberal Republican
movement, 14 ef seq.; nomi-
nates Grant (1872), 16;
supports new party in Mis-
souri, 31; in Illinois (1873),
34; attitude on currency
question, 79; well estab-
lished, 97-98, 125; in 1890,
137-38; platform (1892),
147; Populists seek control
in South, 148-49; election of
1892, 150; Weaver on, 151-
152; and free silver, 158;
in Kansas (1893), 165-67;

214

Republican party —Continued
success in West (1894), 168;
convention at St. Louis
(1896), 172-75; Hanna and,
173-74; gold standard, 174;
campaign of 1896, 189

Resumption Act, see Finance

Review of Reviews on Populist
party, 199 (note)

Robertson, Colonel D. A., and
Grange organization, 8

Roosevelt, Theodore, 195

St. Louis, seventh annual
session of National Grange
at, 28; Greenback conven-
tion (1880), 93; joint meet-
ing of agricultural alliances
(1889), 122, 129; Republi-
can convention (1896), 172;
Populist convention (1896),
182

St. Paul, North Star Grange
established at, 8

Saunders, William,
founder, 4, 27

Schurz, Carl, and Liberal-Re-
publican movement, 14; and
civil service reform, 15; and
radical movements, 19

Sewall, Arthur, candidate for
Vice-President, 185, 188

Shankland, E. R., of Iowa, 27

Sherman, John, Secretary of
Treasury, 159 (note)

Silver, platform of National
party on coinage of, 89, 90;
agrarian demand for free,
110, 120, 121, 182; People’s
Party platform and free, 129;
Silver Purchase Act, 132,
159-60, 165; party platforms
on, 146-47; as issue, 154 et
seq.; Bland-Allison act, 158,
159, 160, 173; free coinage
and the parties (1895), 169;
Bryan and, 179, 180-81

Simpson, ‘“‘Sockless” Jerry,
134, 136-37. 167

Grange

INDEX

Sloan, A. S., of Wisconsin, 18

South, Kelley’s trip to, 1, 2-3;
reconstruction, 12-13; op-
position to Grange move-
ment, 26; development of
farmers’ alliances in, 112-
117; Populist campaign in,
147, 148-49; elections of
1894, 168; Populists and Re-
publicans in, 170; Democra-
tic (1896), 191

South Carolina, Grange or-
ganization, 25; Grange relief
sent to, 75; Alliance forms
Democratic platform (1890),
133; Democratic in 1894, 169

South Dakota, election of 1890,
138; Independent party, 138;
Populist party in, 150

Southern Alliance, decline of,
123-24; in politics, 128; see
also Farmers’ and Laborers’
Union of America, National
Farmers’ Alliance and Co-
operative Union of America,
National Farmers’ Alliance
and Industrial Union, Texas
Alliance

Sovereign, J. R., in Coin’s
Financial School, 161

Spectator (London), quotation
from, 99

Streeter, A. J., Union Labor
candidate for President, 127,
128

Supreme Court, Dartmouth
College case, 46; and rail-
road laws, 54; ‘“‘Granger
cases,”’ 56-57; Munn vs.
Illinois, 57; Olcott vs. The
Supervisors, cited, 58 (note);
and Minnesota rate regula-
tion, 59

Tariff, Liberal-Republican
party on, 15; hardship for
farmers, 20; demand for re-
form, 35, 132; McKinley
134

INDEX

Taxation, issue of People’s
Party, 129; graduated in-
come tax, 198

Taylor, W. R., Governor of
Wisconsin, 36-38

Teller, of Colorado, leaves
Republican convention, 174—
175

Tennessee, delegates attend
meeting of Agricultural
Wheel (1886), 116-17; elec-
tion of 1896, 188

Texas, Union Labor party in,
127; election of 1896, 189

Texas Alliance, 112-15

Thompson, J. R.,
founder, 4

Tilden, S. J., 88

Tillman, Benjamin, and Cleve-
land, 169, 176

Trimble, Rev. John, Grange
founder, 4

Trumbull, Lyman, candidate
for Presidential nomination,
16; and radical movements,
19: Bryan and, 178

Toledo (O.), conference organ-
izes National party, 88-90

Tribune, Chicago, on Buchan-
an, 82

Trusts, anti-trust legislation,
199

Grange

Union Labor party, 127

Union Pacific Railroad, Na-
tional Alliance and, 121

United States Pomological
Society, Grange interest
aroused at meeting of, 4

Vale, J. G., of lowa, 36
Waite, Chief Justice M. R.,

215

lays down principles for
railroad cases, 57

Washburn, E. B., 40

Washburn, W. D., 40

Washington, Populist party in,
151

Watson, T. E., Populist candi-
date for Vice-President, 185,
188; nominated for Presi-
dent, 194

Wealth, increase in forty years
(1890), 101

Weaver, General J. B., life and
character, 91-93; Presiden-
tial nomination, 94; presides
over Greenback convention,
96-97; Populist candidate
for President (1892), 145-
146, 147, 151; on Republican
party, 151-52; seeks party
fusion, 170; on nomination
of Bryan, 186; goes over to
Democratic party, 195

Wells, D. A., 14

West Virginia, election of 1896,
191

White, S. M., at Democratic
convention (1896), 175

Wisconsin, railroad regulation,
45, 50-51; Constitution on
corporation laws, 46; Potter
law, 51, 55; Grange plans
implement factory, 70; cur-
rency question in, 88 (note);
political activity of farmers’
organizations, 197-98

Women, admitted to Grange,
8, 73; life on farm, 72;
suffrage favored by National
party, 94; admitted to Alli-
ance, 113

Wyoming, Republican in 1894,
168

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