People's Party (United States)
(
Populist Parties
)
The Populist Party's roots lay in the Farmers' Alliance, an agrarian movement that promoted economic action during the Gilded Age, as well as the Greenback Party, an earlier third party that had advocated fiat money. The success of Farmers' Alliance candidates in the 1890 elections, along with the conservatism of both major parties, encouraged Farmers' Alliance leaders to establish a full-fledged third party before the 1892 elections. The Ocala Demands laid out the Populist platform: collective bargaining, federal regulation of railroad rates, an expansionary monetary policy, and a Sub-Treasury Plan that required the establishment of federally controlled warehouses to aid farmers. Other Populist-endorsed measures included bimetallism, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, and the establishment of a postal savings system. These measures were collectively designed to curb the influence of monopolistic corporate and financial interests and empower small businesses, farmers and laborers.
In the 1892 presidential election, the Populist ticket of James B. Weaver and James G. Field won 8.5% of the popular vote and carried four Western states, becoming the first third party since the end of the American Civil War to win electoral votes. Despite the support of labor organizers such as Eugene V. Debs and Terence V. Powderly, the party largely failed to win the vote of urban laborers in the Midwest and the Northeast. Over the next four years, the party continued to run state and federal candidates, building up powerful organizations in several Southern and Western states. Before the 1896 presidential election, the Populists became increasingly polarized between "fusionists," who wanted to nominate a joint presidential ticket with the Democratic Party, and "mid-roaders," such as Mary Elizabeth Lease, who favored the continuation of the Populists as an independent third party. After the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated William Jennings Bryan, a prominent bimetallist, the Populists also nominated Bryan but rejected the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in favor of party leader Thomas E. Watson. In the 1896 election, Bryan swept the South and West but lost to Republican William McKinley by a decisive margin.
After the 1896 presidential election, the Populist Party suffered a nationwide collapse. The party nominated presidential candidates in the three presidential elections after 1896, but none came close to matching Weaver's performance in 1892. Former Populists became inactive or joined other parties. Other than Debs and Bryan, few politicians associated with the Populists retained national prominence.
Historians see the Populists as a reaction to the power of corporate interests in the Gilded Age, but they debate the degree to which the Populists were anti-modern and nativist. Scholars also continue to debate the magnitude of influence the Populists exerted on later organizations and movements, such as the progressives of the early 20th century. Most of the Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, were bitter enemies of the Populists. In American political rhetoric, "populist" was originally associated with the Populist Party and related to left-wing movements, but beginning in the 1950s it began to take on a more generic meaning, describing any anti-establishment movement regardless of its position on the left–right political spectrum.
Origins
Third party antecedents
Angered by these developments, some farmers and other groups began calling for the government to permanently adopt fiat currency. These advocates of "soft money" were influenced by economist Edward Kellogg and Alexander Campbell, both of whom advocated for fiat money issued by a central bank.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 13–14 Despite fierce partisan rivalries, the two major parties were both closely allied with business interests and supported largely similar economic policies, including the gold standard. The Democratic Party's 1868 platform endorsed the continued use of greenbacks, but the party embraced hard money policies after the 1868 election.
Though soft money forces were able to win some support in the West, launching a third party proved difficult in the rest of the country. The United States was deeply polarized by the sectional politics of the post-Civil War era; most Northerners remained firmly attached to the Republican Party, while most Southerners identified with the Democratic Party. In the 1870s, advocates of soft money formed the Greenback Party, which called for the continued use of paper money as well as the restoration of bimetallism.Reichley (2000), pp. 133–134 Greenback nominee James B. Weaver won over three percent of the vote in the 1880 presidential election, but the Greenback Party was unable to build a durable base of support, and it collapsed in the 1880s.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 18–19 Many former Greenback Party supporters joined the Union Labor Party, but it also failed to win widespread support.
Farmer's Alliance
President Grover Cleveland's veto of a Texas seed bill in early 1887 outraged many farmers, encouraging the growth of a northern Farmer's Alliance in states like Kansas and Nebraska.Brands (2010), pp. 433–434 That same year, a prolonged drought began in the West, contributing to the bankruptcy of many farmers.Reichley (2000), pp. 134–135 In 1887, the Farmer's Alliance merged with the Louisiana Farmers Union and expanded into the South and the Great Plains.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 57–59, 63 In 1889, Charles Macune launched the National Economist, which became the national paper of the Farmer's Alliance.Goodwyn (1978), p. 90
Macune and other Farmer's Alliance leaders helped organize a December 1889 convention in St. Louis; the convention met with the goal of forming a confederation of the major farm and labor organizations.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 91–92 Though a full merger was not achieved, the Farmer's Alliance and the Knights of Labor jointly endorsed the St. Louis Platform, which included many of the long-standing demands of the Farmer's Alliance. The Platform added a call for Macune's "Sub-Treasury Plan," under which the federal government would establish warehouses in agricultural counties; farmers would be allowed to store their crops in these warehouses and borrow up to 80 percent of the value of their crops.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 107–110, 113 The movement began to expand into the Northeast and the Great Lakes region, while Macune led the establishment of the National Reform Press Association, a network of newspapers sympathetic to the Farmer's Alliance.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 116–117
Formation
In December 1890, a Farmer's Alliance convention re-stated the organization's platform with the Ocala Demands; Farmer's Alliance leaders also agreed to hold another convention in early 1892 to discuss the possibility of establishing a third party if Democrats failed to adopt their policy goals.Goodwyn (1978), p. 151 Among those who favored the establishment of a third party were Farmer's Alliance president Leonidas L. Polk, Georgia newspaper editor Thomas E. Watson, and former Congressman Ignatius L. Donnelly of Minnesota.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 163–165
The February 1892 Farmer's Alliance convention was attended by supporters of Edward Bellamy and Henry George,Brands (2010), p. 439 as well as current and former members of the Greenback Party, Prohibition Party, Anti-Monopoly Party, Labor Reform Party, Union Labor Party, United Labor Party, Workingmen Party, and dozens of other minor parties. Delivering the final speech of the convention, Ignatius L. Donnelly, stated, "We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. ... We seek to restore the government of the republic to the hands of the 'plain people' with whom it originated. Our doors are open to all points of the compass. ... The interests of rural and urban labor are the same; their enemies are identical."Kazin (1995), pp. 27–29 Following Donnelly's speech, delegates agreed to establish the People's Party and hold a presidential nominating convention on July 4 in Omaha, Nebraska.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 167–168, 171 Journalists covering the fledgling party began referring to it as the "Populist Party," and that term quickly became widely popular.
1892 election
The Populists appealed most strongly to voters in the South, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountains.Holmes (1990), p. 37 In the Rocky Mountains, Populist voters were motivated by support for free silver (bimetallism), opposition to the power of railroads, and clashes with large landowners over water rights.Holmes (1990), pp. 30–31 In the South and the Great Plains, Populists had a broad appeal among farmers, but relatively little support in cities and towns. Businessmen and, to a lesser extent, skilled craftsmen were appalled by the perceived radicalism of Populist proposals. Even in rural areas, many voters resisted casting aside their long-standing partisan allegiances.Holmes (1990), pp. 35–38, 46 Turner concludes that Populism appealed most strongly to economically distressed farmers who were isolated from urban centers.Turner (1980), pp. 358, 364–367 Linda Slaughter, a prominent women's rights advocate from the Dakota Territory, also participated in the convention, making her the first American woman to vote for a presidential candidate at a national convention.
One of the Populist Party's central goals was to create a coalition between farmers in the South and West and urban laborers in the Midwest and Northeast. In the latter regions, the Populists received the support of trade union officials like Knights of Labor leader Terrence Powderly and railroad organizer Eugene V. Debs, as well as author Edward Bellamy's Nationalist Clubs. But the Populists lacked compelling campaign planks that appealed specifically to urban laborers, and were largely unable to mobilize support in urban areas. Corporate leaders had largely been successful in preventing labor from organizing politically and economically, and union membership did not rival that of the Farmer's Alliance. Some unions, including the fledgling American Federation of Labor, refused to endorse any political party.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 174–179 Populists were also largely unable to win the support of farmers in the Northeast and the more developed parts of the Midwest.Holmes (1990), pp. 38–39
In the 1892 presidential election, Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland, a strong supporter of the gold standard, defeated incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 200–201 Weaver won over one million votes, carried Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, and Nevada, and received electoral votes from Oregon and North Dakota. He was the first third-party candidate since the Civil War to win electoral votes, while Field was the first Southern candidate to win electoral votes since the 1872 election. The Populists performed strongly in the West, but many party leaders were disappointed by the results in parts of the South and the entire Great Lakes Region.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 186–187, 199–200 Weaver failed to win more than 5% of the vote in any state east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason–Dixon line.Reichley (2000), p. 138
Between presidential elections, 1893–1895
The Populists faced challenges from both the established major parties and the "Silverites," who generally disregarded the Omaha Platform in favor of bimetallism. These Silverites, who formed groups like the Silver Party and the Silver Republican Party, became particularly strong in Western mining states like Nevada and Colorado. In Colorado, Populists elected Davis Hanson Waite as governor, but the party divided over the Waite's refusal to break the Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894.Holmes (1990), p. 50 Silverites were also strong in Nebraska, where Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan continued to enjoy the support of many Nebraska Populists. A coalition of Democrats and Populists elected Populist William V. Allen to the Senate.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 215–218, 221–222
The 1894 elections were a massive defeat for the Democratic Party throughout the country, and a mixed result for the Populists. Populists performed poorly in the West and Midwest, where Republicans dominated, but won elections in Alabama and other states. In the aftermath, some party leaders, particularly those outside the South, became convinced of the need to fuse with Democrats and adopt bimetallism as the party's key issue. Party chairman Herman Taubeneck declared that the party should abandon the Omaha Platform and "unite the reform forces of the nation" behind bimetallism.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 227–229 Meanwhile, leading Democrats increasingly distanced themselves from Cleveland's gold standard policies in the aftermath of their performance in the 1894 elections.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 238–239
The Populists became increasingly polarized between moderate "fusionists" like Taubeneck and radical "mid-roaders" (named for their desire to take a middle road between Democrats and Republicans) like Tom Watson.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 230–231 Fusionists believed the perceived radicalism of the Omaha Platform limited the party's appeal, whereas a platform based on free silver would resonate with a wide array of groups.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 233–234 The mid-roaders believed that free silver did not represent serious economic reform, and continued to call for government ownership of railroads, major changes to the financial system, and resistance to the influence of large corporations.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 234–235 One Texas Populist wrote that free silver would "leave undisturbed all the conditions which give rise to the undue concentration of wealth. The so-called silver party may prove a veritable Trojan Horse if we are not careful."Goodwyn (1978), pp. 249–250 In an attempt to get the party to repudiate the Omaha Platform in favor of free silver, Taubeneck called a party convention in December 1894. Rather than repudiating the Omaha Platform, the convention expanded it to include a call for the municipal ownership of public utilities.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 241–242
Populist-Republican fusion in North Carolina
Women and African Americans
Some southern Populists, including Watson, openly spoke of the need for poor blacks and poor whites to set aside their racial differences in the name of shared economic interests. The Omaha Platform, appealed 'to reason and not to prejudice'. The motto of the Alliance was: 'Equal rights to all and special privileges to none'. Tom Watson, one of the key founders of the People's Party in the state of Georgia in early 1892, was the first white Southern leader to acknowledge black farmers' aspirations, appealing for justice. He believed that blacks and whites had been conditioned to hate each other, assuming that upon that hatred the keystone of the arch of financial exploitation is rested. Moreover, the Populists followed the Prohibition Party in actively including women in their affairs. But regardless of these appeals, racism did evade the People's Party. Prominent Populist Party leaders such as Marion Butler at least partially demonstrated a dedication to the cause of white supremacy, and there appears to have been some support for this viewpoint in the party's rank-and-file membership.Hunt (2003), pp. 3–7 After 1900 Watson himself became an outspoken white supremacist.
Conspiratorial tendencies
- Some Populists believed that Jews made up a class of international financiers whose policies had ruined small family farms, they asserted, owned the banks and promoted the gold standard, the chief sources of their impoverishment. Agrarian radicalism posited the city as antithetical to American values, asserting that Jews were the essence of urban corruption.
Presidential election of 1896
The 1896 Republican National Convention nominated William McKinley, a long-time Republican leader who was best known for leading the passage of 1890 McKinley Tariff. McKinley initially sought to downplay the gold standard in favor of campaigning on higher tariff rates, but he agreed to fully endorse the gold standard at the insistence of Republican donors and party leaders.Reichley (2000), pp. 139–141 Meeting later in the year, the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated William Jennings Bryan for president after Bryan's Cross of Gold speech galvanized the party behind free silver. For vice president, the party nominated conservative shipping magnate Arthur Sewall.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 254–256
When the Populist convention met, fusionists proposed that the Populists nominate the Democratic ticket, while mid-roaders organized to defeat fusionist efforts. As Sewall was objectionable to many within the party, the mid-roaders successfully moved a motion to nominate the vice president first. Despite a telegram from Bryan indicating that he would not accept the Populist nomination if the party did not also nominate Sewall, the convention chose Tom Watson as the party's vice presidential nominee. The convention also reaffirmed the major planks of the 1892 platform and added support for initiatives and referendums.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 256–259 When the convention's presidential ballot began, it was still unclear whether Bryan would be nominated for president and whether Bryan would accept the nomination if offered. Mid-roaders put forward their own candidate, obscure newspaper editor S. F. Norton, but Norton was unable to win the support of many delegates. After a long and contentious series of roll call votes, Bryan won the Populist presidential nomination, taking 1042 votes to Norton's 321 votes.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 259–262
Despite his earlier proclamation, Bryan accepted the Populist nomination. Facing a massive financial and organizational disadvantage,Goodwyn (1978), pp. 279–280 Bryan embarked on a campaign that took him across the country. He largely ignored major cities and the Northeast, instead focusing on the Midwest, which he hoped to win in conjunction with the Great Plains, the Far West, and the South.Reichley (2000), pp. 144–146 Watson, ostensibly Bryan's running mate, campaigned on a platform of "Straight Populism" and frequently attacked Sewall as an agent for "the banks and railroads." He delivered several speeches in Texas and the Midwest before returning to his home in Georgia for the remainder of the election.Goodwyn (1978), pp. 274–278
Ultimately, McKinley won a decisive majority of the electoral vote and became the first presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since the 1876 presidential election. Bryan swept the old Populist strongholds in the West and South, and added the silverite states in the West, but did poorly in the industrial heartland. His strength was largely based on the traditional Democratic vote, but he lost many German Catholics and members of the middle class. Historians believe his defeat was partly attributable to the tactics Bryan used; he had aggressively "run" for president, while traditional candidates would use "front porch campaigns."R. Hal Williams, Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (2010) The united opposition of nearly all business leaders and most religious leaders also hurt his candidacy, as did his poor showing among Catholic groups who were alienated by Bryan's emphasis on Protestant moral values.
Collapse
In North Carolina, the state Democratic Party orchestrated a propaganda campaign in newspapers across the state, and created a brutal and violent white supremacy election campaign to defeat the North Carolina Populists and GOP, the Fusionist revolt in North Carolina collapsed in 1898, and white Democrats returned to power. The gravity of the crisis was underscored by a major race riot in Wilmington in 1898, two days after the election. Knowing they had just retaken control of the state legislature, the Democrats were confident they could not be overcome. They attacked and overcame the Fusionists; mobs roamed the black neighborhoods, shooting, killing, burning buildings, and making a special target of the black newspaper.Andrea Meryl Kirshenbaum, "'The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina': Gender, White Supremacy, and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898," Southern Cultures 4#3 (1998) pp. 6–30 online There were no further insurgencies in any Southern states involving a successful black coalition at the state level. By 1900, the gains of the populist-Republican coalition were reversed, and the Democrats ushered in disfranchisement:Eric Anderson, Race and Politics in North Carolina, 1872–1901 (1981) practically all blacks lost their vote, and the Populist-Republican alliance fell apart.
In 1900, many Populist voters supported Bryan again (though Marion Butler's home county of Sampson swung heavily to Republican McKinley in a backlash against the state Democratic party), but the weakened party nominated a separate ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius L. Donnelly, and disbanded afterward. The prosperity of the first decade of the 1900s helped ensure that the party continued to fade away.Brands (2010), p. 529 Populist activists retired from politics, joined a major party, or followed Debs into the Socialist Party.
In 1904, the party was reorganized, and Watson was its nominee for president in 1904 and 1908, after which the party disbanded again.
In A Preface to Politics, published in 1913, Walter Lippmann wrote, "As I write, a convention of the Populist Party has just taken place. Eight delegates attended the meeting, which was held in a parlor."Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics, New York and London: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913, p. 275. This may record the last gasp of the party organization.
Legacy
Debate by historians
Frederick Jackson Turner and a succession of western historians depicted the Populists as responding to the closure of the frontier. Turner wrote:
- The Farmers' Alliance and the Populist demand for government ownership of the railroad is a phase of the same effort of the pioneer farmer, on his latest frontier. The proposals have taken increasing proportions in each region of Western Advance. Taken as a whole, Populism is a manifestation of the old pioneer ideals of the native American, with the added element of increasing readiness to utilize the national government to effect its ends.Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, (1920) p. 148; online edition
The most influential scholar of Populism was John Donald Hicks, who emphasized economic pragmatism over ideals, presenting Populism as interest group politics, with have-nots demanding their fair share of America's wealth which was being leeched off by nonproductive speculators. Hicks gave attention to the massive drought that ruined so many Kansas farmers in the 1880s, but also pointed to greed, financial manipulations, deflation in prices caused by the gold standard, high interest rates, mortgage foreclosures, and high railroad rates. Corruption accounted for such outrages and Populists presented popular control of government as the solution, a point that later students of republicanism emphasized.Martin Ridge, "Populism Redux: John D. Hicks and The Populist Revolt," Reviews in American History 13 (March 1985): 142–54. In the 1930s, C. Vann Woodward stressed the southern base, seeing the possibility of a black-and-white coalition of poor against the overbearing rich.C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938); Woodward, "Tom Watson and the Negro in Agrarian Politics," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1938), pp. 14–33 in JSTOR
In the 1950s, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Though Hofstadter wrote that the Populists were the "first modern political movement of practical importance in the United States to insist that the federal government had some responsibility for the common weal", he criticized the movement as anti-Semitic, conspiracy-minded, nativist, and grievance-based. According to Hofstadter, the antithesis of anti-modern Populism was the modernizing nature of Progressivism. Hofstadter noted that leading progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette Sr., George Norris and Woodrow Wilson were vehement enemies of Populism, though Bryan cooperated with them and accepted the Populist nomination in 1896.Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (1955) Reichley (1992) sees the Populist Party primarily as a reaction to the decline of the political hegemony of white Protestant farmers; the share of farmers in the workforce had fallen from about 70% in the early 1830s to about 33% in the 1890s. Reichley argues that, while the Populist Party was founded in reaction to economic hardship, by the mid-1890s it was "reacting not simply against the money power but against the whole world of cities and alien customs and loose living they felt was challenging the agrarian way of life."
Goodwyn (1976) and Postel (2007) reject the notion that the Populists were traditionalistic and anti-modern. Rather, they argue, the Populists aggressively sought self-consciously progressive goals. Goodwyn criticizes Hofstadter's reliance on secondary sources to characterize the Populists, working instead with material generated by the Populists themselves. Goodwyn determines that the farmers' cooperatives gave rise to a Populist culture, and their efforts to free farmers from lien merchants revealed to them the political structure of the economy, which propelled them into politics. The Populists sought diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale incorporated businesses, and pressed for an array of state-centered reforms. Hundreds of thousands of women committed to Populism, seeking a more modern life, education, and employment in schools and offices. A large section of the labor movement looked to Populism for answers, forging a political coalition with farmers that gave impetus to the regulatory state. Progress, however, was also menacing and inhumane, Postel notes. White Populists embraced social-Darwinist notions of racial improvement, Chinese exclusion and separate-but-equal.Postel (2007)
Influence on later movements
It is debated whether any Populist ideas made their way into the Democratic Party during the New Deal era. The New Deal farm programs were designed by experts (like Henry A. Wallace) who had nothing to do with Populism; the demand for such programs themselves, however, had been a populist demand. Michael Kazin's The Populist Persuasion (1995) argues that Populism reflected a rhetorical style that manifested itself in spokesmen like Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s and Governor George Wallace in the 1960s. In Where Did the Party Go? William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy (2006) and Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism (2013), Jeff Taylor argues that William Jennings Bryan's liberalism was different from the New Deal liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Thomas Frank points out the continuity between Populism and socialism in the USA, as many populists went on to become socialists and members of the Socialist Party of America, including Eugene Debs, a lot of the populist leadership and the newspaper Appeal to Reason. In addition, a "neo-populist" movement persisted in the form of the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota. In general, many of the demands of Populists were eventually realised by later movements, including leaving the gold standard, a secret ballot, women's suffrage, an income tax, an eight-hour workday, and farm programs.Frank, Thomas. 2024. Populism Belongs to the Left. Jacobin 02.22.2024.
Long after the dissolution of the Populist Party, other third parties, including a People's Party founded in 1971, and a separate People's Party founded in 2017 and a Populist Party founded in 1984, took on similar names. These parties were not directly related to the Populist Party.
The following were Populist members of the U.S. House of Representatives:
52nd United States Congress
53rd United States Congress
54th United States Congress
55th United States Congress
56th United States Congress
57th United States Congress
Party publications and materials
Secondary sources
Populism as a generic term
Electoral history and elected officials
Presidential tickets
1892
James B. Weaver
James G. Field 1,026,595 (8.5%)
22 EVThe ticket won 5 states; its best showing was Nevada where it received 66.8% of the vote. 1896
William Jennings Bryan
Thomas E. Watson 222,583 (1.6%)
27 EVThe Populists nominated Bryan, the Democratic nominee, but nominated Watson for Vice President instead of Democratic nominee Arthur Sewall. Bryan and Sewall received an additional 6,286,469 (45.1%) and 149 electoral votes. Bryan's best showing was Mississippi, where he received 91.0% of the vote. 1900
Wharton Barker
Ignatius L. Donnelly 50,989 (0.4%)
0 EVThe ticket's best result was Texas, where it received 5.0% of the vote. 1904
Thomas E. Watson
Thomas Tibbles 114,070 (0.8%)
0 EVThe ticket's best result was Georgia, where it received 17.3%. 1908
Thomas E. Watson
Samuel Williams 28,862 (0.2%)
0 EVThe ticket's best result was Georgia, where it received 12.6%.
Seats in Congress
+ Seats in Congress
Governors
Members of Congress
See also
Notes
Bibliography
Secondary sources
Contemporary accounts
External links
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