The Rise of Populism: The Little Man Speaks Out

1. The Rise of Populism:The Little Man Speaks Out The Development of the Populist Party

2. Genesis of the Populist Movement • The agrarian revolt of the 1870s-1880s that consolidated the farmer organizations across the nation attempted to create a better environment and standard of living for farmers through social programs, economic organizations, and political lobbying within the main two parties. • The movement was met with wide opposition, but did have some successes with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, creation of the United State Department of Agriculture and expansion, and the passage of the Hatch Act (farmer education and scientific research), Bland-Allison Act (Silver purchase 16:1 to gold), Sherman Silver Purchase Act

3. Genesis of the Populist Movement • At the end of the 1880s moving into the 1890s the farmer organizations saw that working within the two main political parties did not work and moved toward the creation of a third political party. • The move toward a third party developed out of the Kansas Alliance, because of its Christian, socialistic, militant mindset it became the hotbed of agitation. • The two main leaders that developed out of Kansas were Jeremiah ”Sockless Jerry” Simpson and Mary Elizabeth Lease.

4. Kansas Radicals • Jeremiah “Sockless Jerry” Simpson • Mary E. Lease It is widely believed that L. Frank Baum (Populist) wrote the Wizard of Oz to represent the Populist Movement in the National Election.

5. Kansas People’s Party • In June of 1890 the Kansas Alliance leaders, Knights of labor, Farmer’s Mutual Benefit Association, and Single Tax clubs joined together in Topeka, Kansas to found the “People’s Party” electing Simpson to Congress. • The ides of the Populist party was able to make large gains in the state putting many candidates into office, leading other near by western states to follow suit like Nebraska and South Dakota.

6. NFA&IU • The National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union meet in December of 1890 in Ocala, Florida to found the political principles of the Alliance Platform which became the Ocala demands under the leadership Leonidas Polk • Ocala demands: subtreasury plan, government regulation of RR and telegraphs, direct election of U.S. Senators, unlimited coinage of Silver, end protective tariff, and graduated income tax. • The Alliance tried to work within the Democratic and Republican parties, but quickly found them unwilling to follow through and moved toward a separate national third party.

7. Rise of National Populism • "Our farmers buy everything to raise cotton, and raise cotton to buy everything, and, after going through this treadmill business for years, they lie down and die and leave their families penniless.“ Leonidas Polk

8. The People’s Party • The People’s or Populist (Latin populus) was founded in 1891 in Cincinnati, Ohio with a name and skeletal organization to call for a meeting in St. Louis, Missouri to join all dissatisfied members of the “People”. • Delegates met in Omaha, Nebraska which included Alliancemen of the South and West, the Knights of labor, Single taxers, Bellamyites, prohibitionists, women suffragettes, Silverites, Greenbackers, Socialists of all types, communists, and Anarchists to elect a national candidate for President and create a national platform.

9. The People’s Party • The Populists created the Omaha Platform (copy of Ocala demands) focusing on three main areas: finance, transportation, and land, including demands for labor and other organizations such as: “Australian” secret ballot, regulations of “private” armies (Pinkertons), eight hour day, direct election of senators, initiative, referendum, immigration restriction, and opposition of subsidies to big business. • Due to the death of Leonades Polk, the populists chose James B. Weaver as their Presidential nominee for the Election of 1892.

10. Election of 1892 The green represents counties that voted for Populism • The Populists were able to pull 22 electoral votes from the Western states, but were unable to break the “Solid” South. (the Populists got the most votes out of Alabama)

11. Outspoken Populists • Ignatius Donnelly was the most outspoken orator of the Populist movement, his works Caesar's Columnand The Golden Bottle spoke of taking back American government and society to giving it meaning once again. (He also wrote the preamble of the Populist platform) • William Hope Harvey wrote Coin’s Financial School and Tale to Two Nations discussing the issue of a world gold conspiracy ran by the Jewish Rothschild banking house and the solution through the use of free silver to fix the nation’s financial issues. • Coin’s Financial School was widely read and propelled the ideas of the Silverites and Populists.

12. Outspoken Populists “Hard times are with us; the country is distracted…tens of thousands are out of employment; the jails, penitentiaries…are full; the gold reserve at Washington is sinking; the government is running at a loss with a deficit in every department; a huge debt hangs like an appalling cloud over the country…hungered and half-starved men are banding into armies marching toward Washington; the cry of distress is heard on every hand; business is paralyzed; commerce is at a standstill; riots and strikes prevail throughout the land;” William Hope Harvey, (Coin Harvey)

13. Populist Preamble • The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the states have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their labor; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly disintegrating to European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes, unprecedented in the history of the world, while their possessors despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes--tramps and millionaires. • The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bond-holders; a vast public debt payable in legal-tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people ... • We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver, and the oppression of usurers, may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires. • Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chieftain who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of the "plain people," with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. • We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the people for each other and for the nation' that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the Civil War is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free [men]. ... • We believe that the powers of government--in other words, of the people--should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land. ... Donnelly

14. Issues with the “People” • The Election of 1892 showed that the Populists could field a candidate and cause reactions by the two major parties, but not to win the election. • The election showed that they were a regional party, not a national one with multiple divisions within the separate groups and their regional support base. (issues of Silver and Race most decisive) • One issue that did aid the populists was the Panic of 1893, which led the Democratic party to adopt many of the planks of the Populist party in an attempt to win the election by attracting Populists or Populist sympathizers.

15. Election of 1896 • In the Election of 1896 the Populists chose to endorse the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, but with their own vice presidential nominee, Thomas E. Watson. • Bryan chose to focus heavily on the “Free Silver” issue due to the Panic of 1893, criss-crossing the nation giving speeches on the “evils” of deflationary policies, the most powerful being his Cross of Gold Speech.

16. Decline of Populism • Election of 1896 with the lose of Bryan with the success of William McKinley , his “Front Porch” campaign, and the Republican party, signaled the end of the Populist Movement. • The fusion with the Democratic party left the Populists with a lack of identity and weaker as a party. • The Populists ran a Presidential nominee in the Election 1900, but after a dismal failure disbanded and Populism as a movement faded away with the rise of the age of Imperialism and a focus on foreign affairs.