The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

The crisis which precipitated Western discontent into politics came in 1889 when rainfall declined and crops failed. In the Arkansas Valley, with an average fall of eighteen inches, the total for this year was only thirteen inches. General Miles, who had chased hostile Indians across the plains for more than twenty years, and who had seen the new villages push in, mile by mile, saw the terrible results of drought. First suffering, then mortgage, then foreclosure and eviction, he prophesied. "And should this impending evil continue for a series of years," he wrote, "no one can anticipate what may follow." The glowing promises of the early eighties were falsified, whole towns and counties were deserted, and the farmers turned to the Government for aid.

The Western upheaval followed a period in which both great parties had been attacked as misrepresentative. There was a widely spread belief that politicians were dishonest and that the Government was conducted for the favored classes. It was natural that the discontented should take up one of the agricultural organizations already existing, as the Grangers had done, and convert it to their political purpose.

Since the high day of the Granger movement there had always been associations among the farmers and organizations striving to get their votes. The Grange had itself continued as a social and economic bond after its attack upon the railroads. There had been a Farmers' Union and an Agricultural Wheel. The great success of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor had had imitators who were less successful because farming had been too profitable to give much room for organized discontent, while in times of prosperity the farmer was an individualist. A new activity among the farmers' papers was now an evidence of a growing desire to get the advantage of coöperation.

The greatest farmer organization of the eighties was the Farmers' Alliance, a loose federation of agricultural clubs that reflected local conditions, West and South. In the South, it was noted in 1888 as "growing rapidly," but "only incidentally of political importance." In Dakota, it had been active since 1885, conducting for its members fire and hail insurance, a purchasing department, and an elevator company. In Texas it was building cotton and woolen mills. The machinery of this organization was used by the farmers in stating their common cause, and as their aims broadened it merged, during 1890, into a People's Party. In Kansas, during the summer of this year, the movement broke over the lines of both old parties and had such success that its promoters thought a new political party had been born.

Agricultural discontent, growing with the hard times of 1889, had been noticed, but there had been no means of measuring it until Congress adjourned after the passage of the McKinley Bill and the members came home to conduct the congressional campaign of 1890. They found that the recent law had become the chief issue before them. The so-called popular demand for protection, revealed in the election of 1888, had after all been based upon a minority of the votes cast. The tariff and the way it had been passed were used against them by the Democrats and the Farmers' Alliance.

The act was passed so close to election day that its real influence could not then be seen and its opponents could not be confuted when they told of the evils it would do. Before the election of 1888, as again in 1892, Republican manufacturers frightened their workmen by threats of closing down if free-traders won. This time the tables were turned against them by the recital of prospective high prices.

Corrupt methods in framing the schedules furnished an influential argument throughout the West. Even in the East the tariff reformers asserted that undue favors had been done for greedy interests; that manufacturers who had bought immunity by their contributions to Quay's campaign fund had been rewarded with increased protection. The farmers believed these charges, plausible though unprovable, for they were disposed to believe that both the great parties were interested only in selfish exploitation of the Government to the advantage of politicians.

In every State Republican candidates had to meet this fire as well as the local issues. In Maine, Reed met it and was elected with enlarged majority from a community that wanted protection. In Ohio, McKinley lost his seat, partly from the revulsion of feeling, but more because the Democrats, who controlled the State Legislature, had gerrymandered his district against him. Cannon, of Illinois, who had already served nine terms and was to serve ten more, lost his seat, and LaFollette, of Wisconsin, whom the protectionists had made much of, was checked early in a promising career because of an educational issue in his State. Pennsylvania, protectionist at heart, elected the Democratic ex-governor Pattison again in one of its revulsions against the Quay machine.

The Democrats defeated the Republicans in the East while the Farmers' Alliance undermined them in the West. In Kansas and Nebraska the Alliance controlled the result, sent their own men to Washington, and secured the Kansas Legislature which returned the first Populist Senator. In several States fusion tickets were successful with Democratic and Alliance support. In the South, Democrats found it aided them in winning nomination—for the real Southern election was within this party and not at the polls—to assert that they were and had been farmers.

When the votes were counted the extent of the reaction was realized. The last Congress had contained a safe majority of Republicans in each house. The new Congress, the Fifty-second, chosen in 1890, had lost the high-tariff majority in the lower body. Only 88 Republicans were elected, against 236 Democrats and 8 of the Alliance. The Republicans retained the Senate partly because of the "rotten borough" States, Idaho and Wyoming, which they had just admitted.