The Spirit of Revolt
During all this time while I had been living so busily and happily in Boston, writing stories, discussing Ibsen and arguing the cause of Impressionism, a portentous and widespread change of sentiment was taking place among the farmers of the Middle Border. The discouragement which I had discovered in old friends and neighbors in Dakota was finding collective expression. A vast and non-sectional union of the corn-growers, wheat-raisers, and cotton-growers had been effected and the old time politicians were uneasy.
As ten cent corn and ten per cent interest were troubling Kansas so six-cent cotton was inflaming Georgia—and both were frankly sympathetic with Montana and Colorado whose miners were suffering from a drop in the price of silver. To express the meaning of this revolt a flying squadron of radical orators had been commissioned and were in the field. Mary Ellen Lease with Cassandra voice, and Jerry Simpson with shrewd humor were voicing the demands of the plainsman, while "Coin" Harvey as champion of the Free Silver theory had stirred the Mountaineer almost to a frenzy. It was an era of fervent meetings and fulminating resolutions. The Grange had been social, or at most commercially co-operative in its activities, but The Farmers' Alliance came as a revolt.
The People's Party which was the natural outcome of this unrest involved my father. He wrote me that he had joined "the Populists," and was one of their County officers. I was not surprised at this action on his part, for I had known how high in honor he held General Weaver who was the chief advocate of a third party.
Naturally Flower sympathized with this movement, and kept the pages of his magazine filled with impassioned defenses of it. One day, early in '91, as I was calling upon him in his office, he suddenly said, "Garland, why can't you write a serial story for us? One that shall deal with this revolt of the farmers? It's perfectly legitimate material for a novel, as picturesque in its way as The Rise of the Vendée—Can't you make use of it?"
To this I replied, with some excitement—"Why yes, I think I can. I have in my desk at this moment, several chapters of an unfinished story which uses the early phases of the Grange movement as a background. If it pleases you I can easily bring it down to date. It might be necessary for me to go into the field, and make some fresh studies, but I believe I can treat the two movements in the same story. Anyhow I should like to try."
"Bring the manuscript in at once," replied Flower. "It may be just what we are looking for. If it is we will print it as a serial this summer, and bring it out in book form next winter."
In high excitement I hurried home to dig up and re-read the fragment which I called at this time Bradley Talcott. It contained about thirty thousand words and its hero was a hired man on an Iowa farm. Of course I saw possibilities in this manuscript—I was in the mood to do that—and sent it in.
Flower read it and reported almost by return mail.
"We'll take it," he said. "And as soon as you can get away, I think that you'd better go out to Kansas and Nebraska and make the studies necessary to complete the story. We'll pay all your expenses and pay you for the serial besides."