The election of 1890 stunned and bewildered both old parties. The Republicans lost their control of the Lower House, while the Democrats paid for their victory the price of a partial alliance with a new movement whose weight they could only estimate. Populism was engendered by local troubles in the West and South, but its name now acquired a national usage and its leaders were encouraged to attempt a national organization.
In a series of conventions, held between 1889 and 1892, the People's Party developed into a finished organization with state delegations and a national committee. At St. Louis, in December, 1889, the Farmers' Alliance held a national convention and considered the basis for wider growth. The outcome was an attempt to combine in one party organized labor, organized agriculture, and believers in the single tax. The leaders of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor were not averse to such common action, although the latter preferred their own Federation to any party. The dangers of political action, seen in the decline of the National Labor Union of 1866, did not check the desires of the Knights in 1889, although the leaders found it easier then, as later, to promise the support of organized labor than to deliver it at the polls. After the St. Louis Convention the name Farmers' Alliance merged into the broader name of the People's Party, though the attempt to win the rank and file of the unions failed.
In December, 1890, the farmers met at Ocala, Florida, to rejoice over the congressional victory and to plan for 1892. Since each of the great parties was believed to be indifferent to the people and corrupt, a permanent third party was a matter of conviction, and in May, 1891, this party was formally created in a mass convention at Cincinnati. Miscellaneous reforms were insisted upon here, but were overshadowed by the demands of the inflationists. James B. Weaver, of Iowa, the old presidential candidate of the Greenbackers, was a leading spirit at Cincinnati. His best-known aide was Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, a devotee of the Baconian theory and of the "Lost Atlantis," who was now devoting his active mind to the support of free silver. A national committee was created after another meeting, at St. Louis in February, 1892, and on July 2, 1892, the party met in that city in its first national nominating convention.
The platform of the People's Party was based on calamity. "We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin," it declared. "Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislature, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized.... The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrated; our homes covered with mortgages; labor impoverished; and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists."
The greatest of the evils in sight was "the vast conspiracy against mankind," which had demonetized silver, added to the purchasing power of gold, and abridged the supply of money "to fatten usurers." To correct the financial evils the platform demanded "the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one," and an issue of legal-tender currency until the circulation should reach an average of fifty dollars per capita. Postal savings banks, a graduated income tax, and economy in government were the subsidiary demands.
No demand of the Populists attracted so much attention as this for free silver, but its platform touched reform at every angle. In the field of transportation it asked for government ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and telephones. It asked that land monopolies be prevented, that the public lands be in part regained, and that alien ownership be forbidden. It wanted the Australian ballot, liberal pensions, restriction of immigration, an eight-hour day, a single term for President and Vice-President, direct election of United States Senators, abolition of the Pinkerton detectives, and was curious about the initiative and referendum. It was in many respects a prophecy as to the workings of reform for the next twenty years.
The People's Party entered the campaign of 1892 with this platform and with the support of advanced reformers, with a considerable following in the West and South, and with James B. Weaver and James G. Field as candidates. Few of the workers for its ticket were politicians of known standing, and its voters had a preponderance of youth. In several Western States the Democratic party supported it with fusion tickets. In the South it often coöperated with the Republicans. From the first the third party found it harder to stand alone than to unite with the weaker local party.
The disrupting force of hard times was increased by the acts of the Republican party. Harrison's first Congress had passed a series of laws that provoked opposition and criticism. The Interstate Commerce Law was still new when he took office. In quick succession in 1890 came the new States, and Oklahoma Territory, the Dependent Pensions Bill, the Sherman Anti-Trust Bill, the Silver Purchase Bill, and the McKinley Tariff. The dominant majority had used arbitrary methods to enforce its will and had given to its enemies more than one text. After 1891 the Democratic majority in the House reduced the Administration to the political incompetence that had prevailed from 1883 to 1889.
Benjamin Harrison gained little prestige as the result of the Administration. He had been nominated for his availability, and the campaign songs had said as much of his illustrious grandfather, the hero of Tippecanoe, as of himself. His appointments had pleased neither the politicians nor the reformers, while there was much laughter at the presence in the offices of numerous personal friends and relatives. The most notable of his appointments was the most embarrassing.