The Populists

After mild periods of prosperity in the late 1880s, economic activity experienced another downturn, and the hardships of the farmer and the laborer again became severe. In 1891, elements of the Alliances met in Cincinnati with the Knights of Labor to form the People’s Party. At the party convention of 1892, held in Omaha, famed agrarian and formidable orator General James Weaver was nominated for the presidency. Weaver, an old Greenbacker, won 22 electoral votes in the election of 1892. Two years later, the party won a number of congressional seats, and it appeared that greater success might be on the way. Populism thus emerged from 30 years of unrest—an unrest that was chiefly agricultural but that had urban connections. To its supporters, populism was something more than an agitation for economic betterment: It was a faith. The overtones of political and social reform were part of the faith because they would help to further economic aims. The agitation against monopoly control—against oppression by corporations, banks, and capitalists—had come to a head. Along with the key principle of antimonopolism ran a strongly collectivist doctrine. Populists felt that only through government control of the monetary system and through government ownership of banks, railroads, and the means of communication could the evils of monopoly be put down. In fact, some Populists advocated operation of government-owned firms in basic industries so that the government would have the information to determine whether or not monopolistic prices were being charged. The government-owned firm would, in other words, provide a “yardstick” by which to measure the performance of private firms.

In older parts of the country, the radicalism of the People’s Party alienated established farmers. Had the leaders of the 1896 coalition of Populists and Democrats not chosen to stand or fall on the issue of inflation, there is no telling what the future of the coalition might have been. But inflation was anathema to property owners with little or no debt, and when the chips were down, rural as well as urban property owners supported “sound” money.