The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America

by Lawrence Goodwyn

This condensed version of Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise , the highly-acclaimed study on American Populism which the Civil Liberties Review called "a brilliant, comprehensive study," offers new political language designed to provide a fresh means of assessing both democracy and authoritarianism today.

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Nonfiction, Agriculture, 19th Century, American

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Populism was not just an agrarian movement but the “rural aspect” has not been as deeply probed as its urban side. In emphasizing this, Lawrence Goodwyn has helped us see why it originated in the aftermath of the Civil War and why it failed to succeed in the elections of the 1890s.

America had been and still was in 1870 a rural rather than an urban nation, though the stature of the farmer had fallen. Farmers were no longer what Thomas Jefferson had seen: “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds….I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.”

Technology in the form of the mechanized “reaper” and other later developments had allowed each farmer to cultivate at least five times the acreage in the same amount of time. This led to millions of farmers facing the problem of overproduction. The government was giving away Western land which led to a massive expansion of acreage under cultivation. By the laws of supply and demand, the result of this enormous expansion of supply was falling prices with each bumper crop. Farmers (and particularly both white and black sharecroppers) were finding it increasingly difficult to pay with production for what they had borrowed. Transportation of harvests to market was also subject to progressively higher chargers by the railroad monopolies which often charged more for short distance transportation (where they had no competition) than for longer distances. In a significant number of instances, this meant that the farmer’s costs exceeded what the crop was worth. Farmers began to organize, and one of the early results was the Grange. It was followed by others both agricultural and industrial.

This period, Goodwyn notes, was a very unusual one where there was a successful effort to unite the “have-nots” – white and black; urban and rural; into a political force. Their chance came in the 1890s and they fell short. Part of this is because, according to Goodwyn, most of us fail to see the world as it really is: there is a history of dominance of minority interests under the guise of personal and economic freedom that, in far too many cases, does not really exist. If we, according to Goodwyn, buy into this, we have severely handicapped any social progress.

Goodwyn has a bend toward a more direct form of democracy that comes through his historical analysis, but his efforts to make this critical period in American history more comprehensible should be recognized.


3.5* bumped to 4 because of that.

[Katie Hanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a word: No.

(sorry, fellas, that's all I got time for today)

EDIT:

I've been asked to elaborate more on why I didn't like this book. It's been a while since I've read it, but after looking over my grad school papers from last year, I've concluded I didn't like it because I felt Lawrence Goodwyn unfairly idealized the Populists as the "last true American grassroots radicals," when they . . . weren't necessarily all that radical.

To quote from my paper comparing this book to Charles Postel's The Populist Vision:

"In Postel’s analysis, as we see here, the "people" of Populist ideology is a somewhat narrow construct, comprising only certain segments of the actual population of the United States. In Goodwyn’s thesis, on the other hand, Populism’s "plain people" is a radically broad and inclusive concept, one which encompasses all races, ethnic groups, and religions within the bounds of the producing class. However, even without reading Postel’s account, we have some reason to question the truth of Goodwyn’s picture: for example, while continually asserting that Populists envisioned a utopia where all workers would be united, regardless of race or culture, he quotes (but never explains) a speech by Ignatius Donnelly which sets up a clear dichotomy between “urban workers” and “imported pauperized labor,” the latter being the economic foes of the former. (Goodwyn, 168) Immigrant workers, in other words, are the enemy in Donnelly’s mind; and with such an attitude, it cannot be any wonder that the Populists never built up a large following among the urban ethnic population, even setting all other factors aside."

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In hierarchical societies, genuine democratic politics, when it appears, is hard to understand.

A fascinating look at an overlooked moment of American history.

Things I underlined on my kindle:

The sequential process of democratic movement-building will be seen to involve four stages: (1) the creation of an autonomous institution where new interpretations can materialize that run counter to those of prevailing authority — a development which for the sake of simplicity, we may describe as “the movement forming”; (2) the creation of a tactical means to attract masses of people — “the movement recruiting”; (3) the achievement of a heretofore culturally unsanctioned level of social analysis — “the movement educating”; and (4) the creation of an institutional means whereby the new ideas, shared now by the rank and file of the mass movement, can be expressed in an autonomous political way — “the movement politicized.”

Hierarchical human societies organize themselves in ways that render their victims less visible; for a variety of reasons, including pride, the poor cooperate in this process. But the very duties of an Alliance lecturer exposed him to the grim realities of agricultural poverty with a directness that drove home the manifest need to “do something.” Repeated often enough, the experience had an inexorable political effect: slowly, one by one — and in many instances unknown as yet to each other — local lecturers came to form a nucleus of radicalism inside the movement. As one new rebel defined matters, “we have an overproduction of poverty, barefooted women, political thieves and many liars. There is no difference between legalized robbery and highway robbery.... If you listen to other classes, you will have only three rights... to work, to starve, and to die.”

But as Simpson clearly failed to grasp, the organizing hazard did not revolve simply around economic conditions. Indeed, coherent reform politics never does. Insurgent movements are not the product of “hard times”; they are the product of insurgent cultures. “Hard times” demoralize people, making coherent politics even more difficult than normal. A generation on the crop lien had taught millions the power of this political fact. Effective insurgent cultures, on the other hand, offer people hope. And from this starting point, political movements are possible — especially if times are hard.

Furnishing men had so many farms, and so many tenants to work them, that it became psychologically convenient to depersonalize the language of agricultural production. Advancing merchants spoke to one another about “running 100 plows this year,” a crisp phrase that not only referred to thousands of acres of land but also to hundreds of men, women, and children who lived in peonage.

“There is a limit, even to the submissiveness of farmers.”
Just how high the stakes were, and how far from “submissiveness” the farmers had to carry themselves, was brought to light by the cooperative movement in Alabama. After Alliancemen in Dothan had cooperatively erected a warehouse and had begun to demonstrate its utility by instituting cooperative purchasing and marketing arrangements, merchants, bankers, and warehousemen succeeded in inducing the town council to levy a $50 tax on the warehouse. The farmers responded by moving their building outside the city limits, whereupon the council attempted to make them pay for draying their cotton into and out of town. Attempts to enforce the ordinance led to a gunfight in which two men were killed and another wounded. Alabama farmers thought these events over for awhile, and it was not long before the Alliance began to explore ways to start a cooperative bank. Though the means to carry out their proposal were never found, it was clear that the cooperative experience provided remarkable lessons in how power worked in America.

In November 1887, the Texas Exchange advanced its program. It was called the “joint-note plan.” The quiet phrase concealed a breathtaking extention of the cooperative concept: landowning farmers in the Alliance were asked to place their entire individual holdings at the disposal of the group — to stake their own futures on the ultimate success of the Alliance cooperative. The gamble was an unusual one: landowners and tenants alike would collectively purchase their supplies for the year through the state exchange on credit, the landowners signing the joint note. For collateral, they would put up their land and endeavor to protect themselves against loss by taking mortgages on the crops of the tenants. They would market their cotton collectively through the exchange and then pay off the joint notes at year’s end. The farmers would sink or swim together; the landless would escape the crop lien, too, or none of them would. As they had in the past, the brotherhood of the Alliance would “stand united.” In one dramatic season of cooperative marketing and purchasing, they would collectively overcome all of the furnishing merchants of Texas and free every farmer in the state from the clutches of the lien system!

As amended, the sub-treasury appealed to a multi-sectional coalition of farmers, but it clearly faced stout opposition from other quarters. It was soon estimated by opponents that the plan, if implemented, would inject several billion dollars in sub-treasury greenbacks into the nation’s economy at harvest time. In the America of the Gilded Age, neither politicians nor businessmen had yet become used to thinking on such a scale. After all, only $400 million or so in greenbacks had been printed in the course of the entire Civil War. Also, the sub-treasury seemed to be “class legislation,” and thus could be opposed as unconstitutional. Such an argument conveniently overlooked an array of government subsidies to business, from whiskey warehouses to transcontinental railroads, but it was a viewpoint that was to be expressed repeatedly as the sub-treasury came to be discussed nationally.

Though it had not gained the status of doctrinal authority in any significant American institution, the concept of a radical farmer-labor coalition embodied visions of attainable human societies that had transforming impact on those who fell under its sway. It does not require an excessive leap of the imagination to conclude that Alliance national presidents literally meant what they said when they spoke of “centralized capital, allied to irresponsible corporate power” and pronounced it a “menace to individual rights and popular government.” State Alliance presidents described causes and effects in ways that cast the American idea of progress in new and ominous terms. “While railroad corporations are penetrating almost every locality with their iron rails, they are binding the people in iron chains.” Ostensibly, these corporations were “creatures of law,” but in fact they were “unrestrained save by their own sense of shame,” and shame was “a virtue rarely if ever found among the attributes of monopolistic corporations.” From where these men viewed the nation’s economic system, the American population did consist of “the masses” and “the classes.” The latter were already in harmony with themselves, manipulating both of the old parties and constantly “downing the people.” They were, in short, “organized capital.”


To Polk, the “masses” and the “classes” were separated by a fundamental difference of economic philosophy, one which measured the selective vision of the wealthy. Sobered by the arguments advanced in Washington against the sub-treasury plan, he shared with Kansas farmers his sense of indignation at the inability of Congressmen to see the conditions of life around them.
When I went up to Washington City and showed them statistics from all over the country, they said it was overproduction that had caused our trouble.... If [they] had come out onto the streets of Washington on a cold November morning [they] would have seen the children picking bits of coal out of the ash piles to warm themselves by, and morsels of food out of the heaps of garbage to satisfy their hunger.... As long as a single cry for bread is heard, it is underproduction and underconsumption.... There is something besides over-production that has caused it. Congress could give us a bill in forty-eight hours that would relieve us, but Wall Street says nay.... I believe that both of the parties are afraid of Wall Street. They are not afraid of the people.

Beginning with its founding meeting, which brought together members of both the white and the black Alliances, the Louisiana third party had developed a most un-Southern proclivity for interracial cooperation; after the 1894 campaign, alarmed Democrats concocted an elaborate “election reform” law to disfranchise thousands of impoverished farmers of both races. Populist resistance to this proposal, led by Brian, was of a character that inevitably prepared the way for a Populist-Republican coalition in 1895-96. This combination, though somewhat vague and sometimes even contradictory in the economic principles enunciated by its variegated spokesmen, posed a clear threat to the state’s ruling oligarchy for the first time since Reconstruction. The conservative press promptly christened it the “Populist-negro social equality ticket.” The Shreveport Evening Judge announced that “it is the religious duty of Democrats to rob Populists and Republicans of their votes whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself and any failure to do so will be a violation of true Louisiana Democratic teaching. The Populists and Republicans are our legitimate political prey. Rob them! You bet! What are we here for?”
The gubernatorial candidate of the coalition, John Pharr, might best be described in modern terms as a liberal Republican planter. He had a habit of ignoring prevailing mores. The antilynching plank in his platform convinced the New Orleans Daily States that he “inferentially approved” of white women being raped. Similarly, the Baton Rouge Daily Advocate characterized the eminently respectable candidate as an “ignorant and low bred boor” who “proceeds from place to place scattering his fire-brands among the rabble and inciting the baser passions of the populace.” Another Democratic newspaper tried to bring Negro political activity to a halt by printing the names of all black leaders who were “brewing up trouble,” but the next issue of the paper revealed that the effort had been unsuccessful. “You might as well talk to a brick wall as to try to make the nigger believe who his best friend is,” the paper complained. The “baser passions” that the Baton Rouge paper had warned against did, indeed, surface in Louisiana in 1896, though the source of these emotions seems to have been more readily fixed among the paper’s subscribers than its political opponents. A multifaceted terrorism prevailed. Twenty-one lynchings occurred in Louisiana that year, one-fifth of the total for the entire nation.
Physical intimidation having failed to achieve the desired end completely, Democrats were forced to steal the governorship through massive and transparent ballot-box frauds. The victorious Democratic governor was pleased to have retained “control of affairs” in the hands of what he described as “the intelligence and virtue of the State” over “the force of brute numbers.” The legislature, narrowly Democratic, certified the “official” returns, and the campaign of 1896 became history.

n 1893 America plunged into a severe economic depression. The narrow organization of capital markets that derived from the doctrines of an inflexible gold currency precipitated the panic, which occurred during the annual financial squeeze caused by the autumn agricultural harvest; the panic in turn placed intense pressure on what all orthodox goldbugs regarded as the nation’s “essential monetary reserves.” To the utter dismay of greenbackers, the sins of goldbugs seemed to multiply even as the reform movement gathered momentum. Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of the Treasury was forced to sell massive gold bond issues through a syndicate organized by the J. P. Morgan Company, The effort unnecessarily saddled the country with a debt of over a quarter of a billion dollars, from which only bankers profited. Indeed, the government gained nothing from its frantic efforts, since bankers paid for the bonds with gold they had withdrawn from the Treasury! As one historian later put it, the Morgan syndicate “measured the emergency of the government with little mercy.”
The depression inflicted great hardship. Millions knew genuine and prolonged privation. In the South and West there were increasing reports of starvation, both on the farms and in the cities. Industrial unemployment was so widespread that “tramps” became a familiar sight in every section of the nation. Marches on Washington by the unemployed gained increasing notoriety, especially since some of them originated in the mountain states and on the West Coast and involved “borrowed” freight trains as a primary source of transportation. The multitude became known as “Coxey’s Army,” after Ohio currency reformer and Populist spokesman General Jacob Coxey, who organized the first such demonstration. The peripatetic Henry Vincent of the American Nonconformist wrote a brooding account of this epic of industrial despair; he turned it into a book-length assertion of the need for the immediate rise to power of the People’s Party. He called his book The Story of the Commonweal.
But, in the midst of the depression, the substance of the Populist message went not only from reform editors to their readers, but emanated from the poor themselves. The Populist farmers wrote both to their papers and to their spokesmen. Ignatius Donnelly received this letter:
I am... one of those which have settled upon the socalled Indemnity Land... now the great Northern. I settled on this land in good Faith Built House and Barn Broken up Part of the Land. Spent years of hard Labor in grubing fencing and Improving are they going to drive us out like tresspassers wife and children and give us away to the Corporations how can we support them. When we are robed of our means. they will shurely not stand this we must Decay and Die from Woe and Sorow We are Loyal Citicens and do Not Intend to Intrude on any R. R. Corporation we Beleived and still do Believe that the R. R. Co. has got No Legal title to this Land in question. We Love our wife and children just as Dearly as any of you But how can we protect them give them education as they should wen we are driven from sea to sea.
An Alliance leader explained to a Southern reform paper why his members could not pay dues: “Hundreds of good, hardworking men, true to the Alliance... are staying at home, depriving themselves and their households of attending church, for want of decent clothing to appear in public. These people paid all they made to their merchant on their indebtedness, and are now, and have been, practically without a dollar. How can they pay dues?” In a letter edged with desperation, a farm woman living near Mendota, Kansas, wrote to Populist Governor Lewelling in 1894: “I take my pen in hand to let you know we are starving.... My husband went away to find work and came home last night and told me that he would have to starve. He has been in 10 counties and did not get no work.... I haven’t had nothing to eat today and it is 3 o’clock.” The sometimes angry, sometimes despairing dialogue between farm families and their Populist spokesmen provided the interior language of the agrarian revolt.

As John D. Rockefeller had conclusively demonstrated in the course of creating the Standard Oil Trust, railroad networks were a central ingredient both in the combination movement itself and in the political corruption that grew out of monopoly. Silver coinage utterly sidestepped the whole matter of government ownership of the railroads. What were silverites proposing — that railroad lobbyists begin buying state legislatures with silver coin instead of gold? Would that noticeably improve the level of ethics in the United States Senate? Mid-roaders could summarize all their arguments by asserting that the ultimate monopoly was the “money trust,” a banking system of private plunder anchored in a metallic currency and assured of power because it owned both “sound-money” parties. “Free silver” was irrelevant to all of these realities; it did not address corporate concentration.

The process of extending credit, first to the nation’s most affluent large-scale farming interests, and then in the 1920’S to sectors of the agricultural middle class — while at the same time denying it to the “whole class” of Americans who worked the land — had the effect of assisting large-unit farming interests to acquire title to still more land at the expense of smallholders. Purely in terms of land-ownership patterns, “agri-business” began to emerge in rural America as early as the 1920’s, not, as some have suggested, because large-scale corporate farming proved its “efficiency” in the period 1940 to 1970. In essence, “agri-business” came into existence before it even had the opportunity to prove or disprove its “efficiency.” In many ways, land centralization in American agriculture was a decades-long product of farm credit policies acceptable to the American banking community.

The sense of personal participation that Evan Jones had felt in 1888 when he summoned 250,000 Alliancemen to meet in more than 175 separate courthouses — without notifying anyone in the courthouses — pointed to a kind of intimacy between ordinary citizens and their government that became less evident in twentieth-century America. To Alliancemen, it was their courthouse and their government.

Third party advocates understood politics as a cultural struggle to describe the nature of man and to create humane models for his social relations. In the context of the American ethos, Populists therefore instinctively and habitually resisted all opposition attempts, through the demagogic expedient of labeling new ideas as “radical,” to deflect those ideas from serious discussion. As Populists countered this ploy, they defended the third party platform as “manly and conservative.”

[Brett Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 3.6 star book is informative for our current populist movement. With just a little history external to this text it becomes ever clearer that a sizable fraction of governance is an unending exercise in damping realignments of passion and grievance, sometimes valid, sometimes not. Consider the author’s example: “The old Jacksonian resonances…containing as they did the Jeffersonian vs. Federalist struggle, were all but obliterated by the massive realignment [of Civil War]. The memories and even some of the slogans of ancestral debates still persisted in the postwar American ethos, but they no longer possessed a secure political home. Sectional, religious, and racial loyalties and prejudices were used to organize the two major parties…that ignored the economic interests of millions.” Sound familiar? Fast forward 120 years to American Democrats today, once champions of our working class against descendants of robber barons of this earlier 1880-1900 agrarian revolt, a Democratic party now obsessed with identity politics of race, gender, minorities and victims real or invented. Compared to Republicans, onetime promoters of fiscal responsibility, Constitutional government, and Christian morality, now violators of it all, despite they still parrot the old slogans.

We see the mutation of these clans can be remarkably fluid. “The urban working class of the North, which fought for the Union,” writes the author, instead “voted in heavy majorities for the rebel-tainted Democratic Party [of the South].” Why? Because “adrift in a sea of Yankee Protestant Republicanism, the overwhelmingly Catholic urban workers clustered defensively in makeshift political lifeboats.” (Oh, of course.) Which then got a counter response from the Protestants to vote Republican “against the ‘immigrant hordes’ who voted Democratic.” (Ah huh…)

For me the author could have much attenuated his 1970s-style intro which acts as a soapbox from which to preach against representative republican democracy, instead for his favored direct democracy which could never work in a large republic and nobody wants it anyway, least of all work-addicted Americans. I’ve no quarrel with his opposition to the malignancy of growing oligarchy, more now than 43 years ago when he wrote this, but his recipe for and implicit support of revolutions against cultural deference as though it were oppression made me want to gag a little on tired-now-revived post-60s naiveté. Though he does recognize the problem: “Revolutionaries, like other humans, do not yearn to spend their lives fighting down counter revolutionaries.” No kidding. We had a good one already in 1776. Better to fix what we got through return to its founding principles to avoid those of the kind we had in 1861.

[Gary Moreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Populism. The word is used a lot today by political journalists in reference to both President Trump supporters and the Brexit movement. And, historically speaking, it is generally used inaccurately, a fact that I, too, was unaware of until I read another reader’s review of a separate title. That reviewer recommended this book, written by Duke professor of history, Lawrence Goodwyn, and published in 1979.

While the title refers to the book as ‘short’, it is a very thorough review of the populist political movement that rose out of the National Farmers Alliance, which went under a series of different names and platforms that ultimately had everything to do with the coinage of silver and relatively little to do with the original populist reforms.

What is most fascinating to me is not the acquisition of historical accuracy regarding the populist label as it is the revelation of the degree to which the 1896 presidential election, between Republican William McKinley and Democrat (and presumed populist) William Jennings Bryant, ultimately cast the shape of American economics and politics that survives yet today. While that election appeared to turn on gold (McKinley) versus silver (Bryant), the outcome would ultimately define no less than what it means to be an American in the 21st Century.

It all began with the American Civil War, not surprisingly. And, more specifically, who was going to pay the enormous debt incurred to fight it. And that, ultimately, came down to the question of currency. The creation of a hard currency, which is ultimately the position that won out, protected the bankers and other owners of corporate capital, but at the expense of laborers and farmers.

The hard currency ultimately exaggerated the worst abuses of the crop lien system then prevalent in the South, forcing farmers (land-owners and tenants alike) into a cycle of increasing debt and falling commodity prices that they could not escape. It is, in many ways, the same inescapable cycle that entraps the urban and rural poor today.

But that’s where the populist analogy ends, as the populist agrarian movement pursued a political agenda that would be the antithesis of Trump’s MAGA agenda of today. It was, in fact, the antitheses of both the modern conservative and progressive agendas, both of which only appear to offer a real distinction and choice.

Both agendas presume the economic supremacy of capital and the political supremacy of the corporate and banking classes that control it. Among other things, it is the supremacy of capital that has fueled the rapid and unbridled consolidation of both industry and agriculture in the US, permanently planting the corporation at the top of the political food chain. (In 1870, the average US factory had only 8 workers.)

Before the Civil War, about 80% of all free white men owned property. By 1890, however, the richest 9% of all Americans (still white men) owned three-fourths of all wealth and within a decade one in eight Americans were living in abject poverty. With the exception of a historically brief period following World War II, in which unions managed to give laborers a political voice, now lost, it is a trend that continues to this day.

What was most amazing to me, in reading this book, was how little things have really changed. Our political parties are built on regional alliances far more than differences of ideological substance. Both accept the supremacy of corporate consolidation and the benefit of economies of scale, even though there is little actual evidence to support the premise. Consolidation has done nothing quite so effectively as it has promoted political, social, and financial inequality. (Republicans and Democrats both blamed the farmers themselves for their economic plight in the 1890s, much as politicians frequently blame the poor themselves for their plight today.)

The solutions proposed by the populists of the National Agrarian Federation were decidedly collective in nature and built from the success of the cooperative movement that had provided some relief from corporate anarchy. It called for the abolition of private banks, a new dynamic currency, the nationalization of the railroads, and the formation of government cooperatives to handle crop financing, insurance, and post-harvest handling and storage. It was, in other words, quite the ideological opposite of Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-regulatory, pro-corporate agenda.

The author makes two other important contributions to the current political dialogue. The first is to refute the illusion promoted by both political parties that American history is a timeline of uninterrupted progress and advancement. It is, more than we care to admit, a history of exploitation and the dominance of minority interests under the guise of personal and economic freedom that, for most, does not exist.

And because it is a myth that is almost universally accepted, the author notes, real political reform in the US is virtually impossible to achieve, in short because we refuse to see the world the way it really is. We have, as a result, neither the confidence nor the persistence to force the owners of capital, which control the political agenda, to give up the advantages they have enshrined into American politics and business.

In short, this is a fascinating book that everyone should have the courage to read. You may not agree with the author’s conclusions, and there will surely be other historians who will take exception with his interpretation. Each of us, however, should have a commitment to defend that which we believe in the face of inconvenient facts, including those presented in this book.

[Bradford D · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m sure there were some interesting bits of history in the book, but every time I tried to find some, the author’s long-winded, tedious descriptions of events made me nod off. Page after page of agonizing details so mundane that even their mama’s couldn’t enjoy them.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to Lawrence Goodwyn, the Populist movement of the late 1800s is difficult to understand because it was quite complicated. He tries to simplify it here and succeeds to some extent, but, well, it's complicated!

He starts his story in Texas where farmers are being overcharged by merchants and railroads, charged exorbitant interest rates by banks, and sometimes forced to sell crops at or below cost. A Farmers Alliance tries to resolve these issues, runs into the same problems and turns to politics to try to aid the farmers.

The 1890s were the period of intense activity - their last hurrah is in 1896. As an indication of internal strife and the difficulty of sustaining the movement, the Populists actually select the Democrat's candidate, William Jennings Bryan, to be their presidential candidate too.

Goodwyn's last chapter paints a bleak picture, seeing the Populists as a lost opportunity and America's best chance for the people to regain power from the corporate interests. He wrote his book in 1978, and it stands the test of time. I don't agree with everything he concludes in his last chapter, but it's good to see his argument.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodwyn walks readers through how the Populist movement developed a level of political, social, and class consciousness among rural Americans who faced the downside of corporate capitalism. This, he calls a democratic culture, full of possibility, collective self-confidence, and inspiration (34). Goodwyn chronicles in great depth the back and forth within the movement and the ways in which it achieved success in some states. Populists employed direct action (see the jute strike), whereas the Grange had been more reluctant. The Populists, working through a network of cooperatives, met farmers where they were, dealing with the terms of day to day life (70). From difficult weather to overpriced implements to the crop lien system, farmers were being failed by major political actors.

While this consciousness was briefly awakened, it soon abated. In many states, the pernicious power of White supremacy and the memory of the Civil War played right into the old party playbook. Across the South, where the Populists had the greatest organizing potential, outright violence, fraud, and fearmongering (as some Populists were more in favor of racial equality than the old Democrats) led them to fall short in election after election. One of the few successes was in North Carolina, where a US Senator was elected and on the state level a Populist-GOP coalition ushered in some major advances.

The movement always succeeded most where the cooperatives of the late 1880s and the Alliance had been strongest. These cooperatives gave people the shared vocabulary to advocate for their issues and provided ready-made communities, serving as its animating reality (309). Thus, where cooperatives failed to take root, as in Minnesota, the political movement also lagged behind. But even where they did, they faced serious problems. For one, capital played dirty, often cutting off funding or the ability to access the markets. When the vaunted Texas exchange failed due to lack of banking access, it "sent a wave of anxiety" through the movement (89).

Additionally, growing pains and divisions within the movement often hampered its success, notwithstanding the abilities of powerful speaking tours and examples like Kansas. These divisions marked the history of the movement, even leading to the turning of Charles Macune, the father of the radical sub-treasury proposal, away from the movement. The fight eventually escalated over whether to go the third party route or fusion. Fusion occurred in places like Nebraska but it simultaneously allowed the Democrats to co-opt Populist backing by adopting some of the party's positions (as in Tennessee where they never took off) or using Free Silver as a cudgel. This was possible because fusionists formed a weak "shadow movement" without an institutional base or distinct identity; thus, it could not challenge the "prevailing corporate culture" (143). Goodwyn's position is that the populists needed to be a "mass party with a mass membership" (308). Only a truly people-driven power could displace the elite, and it could not do so by partnering with them, for that would only expose its flank.

Following this, he curiously portrays William Jennings Bryan (a fusionist as opposed to a middle of the roader who sought a third party) as a relative moderate. This may surprise some readers, but it makes for an interesting work that criticizes free silver posturing as a sop to rich mine-owners more than a real principled stance. In the end, the author laments how "the cause of free silver was intact. The agrarian revolt was over" (263). For him, these were not the same, which is what many students of history are taught. In fact, Goodwyn notes how the Greenbackers and sub-treasury proponents were the ones proposing truly transformative ideas. Thus, he ends with the fusion ticket of 1896 and fails to further explore the rump populist movement in much detail. I also think there was some victory in the trend of the Democrats away from Bourbonism. Instead, Goodwyn rather skimpily argues that the Populist vision was totally lost. However, he fails to look at some of the more interesting New Dealers like Thurman Arnold or Robert Jackson or Henry Wallace or even progressives like Louis Brandeis.

In noting how the Populist vision contrasts with the progressive vision of history, Goodwyn seeks to display the grip of capital over the political field. Populists rejected the "age of progress and forward motion" that served to protect the established status quo (320). The Populist movement was one for dignity and change. However inspiring, and however much it challenged the powers that be, it was crushed by those powers because it proved too weak to change the culture. It wasn't for lack of trying; the Reform Press Association had an impressive reach (206) but it wasn't able to sway majority opinion, controlled by the moneyed (210). Goodwyn's understanding partly resembles Gramsci's; without gaining control of the narrative and political culture, implementing a revolutionary economic project is near impossible; indeed, the "power of an idea" confronted the "power of inherited loyalties", which was always an uphill battle (205). These "deeply ingrained patterns of deference permeating the entire social order" were not going to be easily overturned (300). On that front, the Populists were perhaps always doomed to fail at the hands of the Hanna/McKinley business Republicans and the old Bourbon Democrats. In an era of concentrated corporate power where Goodwyn's admonitions about a shrunken "agenda of possible democratic actions" (317) and hopelessness driven by "mass political alienation" (318), we would do well to study the successes and failures of the Populist movement.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed history of the agrarian revolution that began in the south and spread into federal politics from farm alliances to a viable American political party that challenged the two establishment parties, and the dominance of capital itself.

In explaining the evolution of this movement, Goodwyn has much to teach us about the possibility, and the daunting challenges, of another people's movement.

[Sean Chick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I think the trouble here is that the evidence of a true movement culture is scant, and Goodwyn relies to heavily on Texas and Kansas. Remember, the Populists are the Lost Cause of the New Left, and the election of 1896 is basically Pickett's Charge for the materialist left. Hofstadter may have been wrong about the racism he saw in their movement, but he was right in that these people had no "center" so to speak. Once they were beaten they were beaten for good.

[Donnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, what could have been. This is a great look at the excitement and possibility of one of the most dynamic social movement in American, and how demagoguery and Southern Democratic race-baiting destroyed it.

[lindsonmars · Rating 4 out of 5]

For most of my Indiana adolescence I was in love with that William Jennings Bryan speech, "The Cross of Gold," and I pined hard for the unsettled activist Midwest of the early twentieth century. This book satisfied that part of me.

[Erhardt Graeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must confess. I skipped to the end. Lawrence Goodwyn's history of America's Populist Movement in the late nineteenth century is an important contribution to our knowledge of social movements and American political theory. However, Goodwyn's storytelling fails to live up to contemporary standards of political history from favorites like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Robert A. Caro, or the fast-paced accounts of recent history from Michael Lewis. That's why after two chapters I skipped to the last one.

Goodwyn's concluding essay "The Irony of Populism" is why this book is so important. This is where he lays out his argument for why the movement ultimately failed and why there hasn't been a similar substantive and popular democratic reform movement since. So, what is the irony of populism? Well, in Goodwyn's telling, it boils down to the nature of radical political change. It effectively needs an army—like the red armies of communism—which represent the vanguard of a countervailing power to the entrenched interests of existing governmental systems. These armies and the new political parties behind them necessarily need some sort of centralized committee. Thus it's hard to construct the alternative power structure through nonhierarchical democratic means.

When you are organizing at the size of America, even in the late 1800s, this is an unwieldy project to manage through flat hierarchies and maintain communication channels across its breadth. It's also at its core a cultural change project. And those cultures evolve and coalesce at different speeds across the movement. What made the populist movement work in the first place was a tenuous coalition of farmers from many different states who had a common background as "plain people" and a common need for self-determination in the face of economic elites building a rentier system on tenant farmers. Such a tenuous coalition is rife for capture by special interests or charismatic leaders that ultimately undermine the democratic goals of fighting the hierarchical, corporatist system of liberal capitalism and what would become "progressive" government in the early twentieth century.

Ultimately, and ironically, the populists lost because they lost. They poured the structures built for mutual aid, which first gave the plain people a sense of self-respect and dignity in the face of economic and political oppression, into the People's Party and this third party lost in the election of 1896 even after various contortions and capture by other parties and special interests. This happened because the Republicans backing McKinley had the full weight of corporate America backing them financially but also because (ironically again) the populists didn't have enough people. Their vision was an alliance between the farmers and the emerging class of laborers in industrial America. But labor wasn't ready and wouldn't be ready until the successful sit-ins of the 1930s and by then the defeated farmers were too impoverished economically, politically, and culturally to reignite an effort for radical democratic reform.

The winning movement became progressivism in the United States. Political participation waned as politics became more professionalized and hierarchies became deeper and more unequal in both industry and government. The American dream—a fable of rags to riches—was cemented by government and corporate propaganda and sold to children in public schools. The populists who had seen through this fiction in their own struggles lost the shared platform and ability to influence millions through their homespun civic education which had originally organized these poor farmers into powerful cooperatives.

Goodwyn argues that the socialists who succeeded the populists in making a case for radical democratic reform never understood the importance of developing a positive, genuinely American, cultural vision. And the success of the corporatist state on the back of liberal capitalist policies crowded out ideas of radical democracy and equality from legitimate political debate. And this is where we are at now. Where the latest populist movement again chose to side with a corporatist, charismatic leader. Goodwyn was right that the election of 1896 set the stage for everything to follow in American politics. And that's why it's worth reading his analysis of what happened.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In this manner, the farmers saw their own movement: the Alliance was the people, and the people were together... Fragile as it (Populism) was, it nevertheless opened up possibilities of an autonomous democratic life. Because this happened, the substance of American Populism went beyond the political creed embedded in the People's Party, beyond the evocative images of Alliance lecturers and reform editors, beyond even the idea of freedom itself... it was an assertion of how people can act in the name of the idea of freedom. At root, American Populism was a demonstration of what authentic political life can be in a functioning democracy."

With these evocative yet accurate words and analysis Lawrence Goodwyn ends his wonderfully expressed exposition of the moment that was the Populist explosion in the United States at the tail end of the nineteenth century. Going beyond the standard history book description of this movement as consisting of William Jennings Bryant and the famous "Cross of Gold" speech, "The Populist Moment" instead chooses to go deep into the sources of Populism, in the work of figures like Charles Macune, the conceiver of the idea of the "sub-treasury," and William Lamb, the Western radical responsible for keeping the Populists faithful to the their roots. However, when one reads this brief but informative tome, one is also conscious of the larger canvas on which the Populists made their quixotic foray into a revolution for the "industrial masses": J.P. Morgan, William McKinley, Mark Hanna, and the aforementioned William Jennings Bryant too play a part in the mosaic of late nineteenth century American politics that is presented here. Moreover, the perceptive political analyses of the author are not limited solely to the confines of late nineteenth century America. For Goodwyn extends the issues that propelled the Populists forward, and that eventually crushed them, to later movements in the early and late twentieth century. And, most generously, the author's prose is infused with a passion for the people and their plight that are at the center of his work that bespeaks both a hard-headed realism and a commitment to the values of democracy, both economic and political, that drove agitators like Lamb and Macune. So, while segments of the book could be a "hard" read for those not completely enamored of the minutiae of the period, on the whole, the work edifies and entertains, presenting a vision of a time when democracy seemed to be on the cusp of arriving for millions of Americans. The fact that it didn't, however, is no cause for grief, for the spirit of solidarity, embedded in the Populist movement, in the face of the plutocracy, is still present in our fair republic. It only needs the courage of a new generation to do the work of questioning the assumptions that undergird our inequitable society, and, like the Populists, to carry forth the beacon of democracy and liberty.

[S.L. Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political parties according to Goodwyn quoting William V. Allen, then U.S. Senator from Nebraska “should be held no more sacred than a man’s shoes or garments” and that political parties should exist only as long as they are “conducive to good government.” Goodwyn suggests that the Populist movement’s essence was “an assertion of how people can act in the name of the idea of freedom,” a “demonstration of what authentic political life can be in a functioning democracy.”

Goodwyn's book on the late 19th century (1889-1898) Populist movement that originated from the agrarian revolution in the U.S. that wanted to form “a democratic society founded on mass dignity" could be a primer for third/independent party politics and the social issue movements that bring third parties to fruition. Goodwyn explains how the development of relevant issues, education of the general public (and not just to adherents/activists), formation of an allied wide-ranging press operation and formation of an independent party are and were absolutely necessary but lacking and contributed to the failure of the Populist movement.

Goodwyn argues that as a result the agrarian revolution failed to control the formation and direction of the People’s Party to keep it independent and prevent the party from (essentially) merging into the Democratic Party through fusion of issues and candidates into the Democratic Party. This failure allowed the emerging corporate culture, chiefly the big banking and industrial sectors, to take over the development of cultural and political life in the United States from then on resulting in apathy in politics, the disintegration of civic life and the lack of any significant voice/role of future third parties in American politics.

Goodwin goes into a detailed analysis of what has to occur for effective third party operations including that the focus on the relevant issue(s) must not be derailed/sidetracked by incorporation of other issues, education of the general public as a long-term (possibly permanent) organized effort, and a clear, realistic (and I would argue non-emotional) long-term vision of the leadership so that movement does not die out through inertia or being co-opted by mainstream political parties.

One warning, which can be an annoyance to some readers: Although the book’s subtitle is "A Short History ...," Goodwyn repeats a lot from earlier chapters in in later chapters, particularly in the last chapter.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Journal entry for October 11, 1993

Since I am running out of time, this will be a highly sketchy consideration of Goodwyn, to which I must later return and fill in details. It strikes me that Livingston is right to question that if Lawrence Goodwyn is right (about Populism being the last truly democratic movement in American history), how can we talk about the 20th Century? For Goodwyn, as Livingston observes, the Populists are more than just the "liberals' Lost Cause." The failure of Populism is the end of American democracy and the story of the 20th century must be written as "the unheroic residue of tragedy."*

Building on C. Vann Woodward, Goodwyn's Populists come out of the New South, especially Texas. Understanding the development of the "movement culture" of the Farmers' Alliance is the key to understanding Southern and thus national Populism. The cooperative vision and program of the Alliance's lecturers formed the core of this cultural vision. By educating the masses in economic democracy, the Alliance politicized the masses. Yielding to silverism and to the shadow movement of William Jennings Bryan, Populism yielded on its most fundamental premise, the economic democracy of the sub treasury system. The failure of Populism, as the result of silverism, meant the triumph of the corporatist state and the end of any hope of true democracy.

Goodwyn's history of the 20th century is the exact opposite of Hofstadter's. For Goodwyn, the New Deal "unconsciously reflected the shrunken vistas that remained culturally permissible" (313). Hofstadter's New Deal is free from ideology. Goodwyn's New Deal is a mere shadow of the grand social vision of the Populist moment. One could quite easily see the Hostadtlerian vision as typical of the 1950s and Goodwyn's as typical of the 1960s, but where does that put us now? In the 1990s we are still debating the place of the Populists. We still haven't decided where we will take our stand, or have we?

And here is where class discussion should begin ...

*Walter Nugent underestimates the consequences of accepting Goodwyn's interpretation of the Populists. See his review of Promise; The Populist Movement in America by Lawrence Goodwyn, In Journal of American History 64 (September 1977): .464-5. Like many other reviews in ~-this one is rather bland. With such a controversial book as this, one would expect more.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great history of one of the few times Americans truly tried to regain control of their sovereignty and natural rights. 'left' and 'right' are fake or at least completely incoherent today. Treatments of resistance to the domination of finance, money power or monetarism receive short shrift from our academics, which is no surprise. Finance is the true hidden grammar of world events.

Reading this book, i was shocked, just SHOCKED to learn that none of the usual suspects who supported the civil rights movement, the suffragette movement, the LGBT movement, BLM, Leo Frank, our wars for 'democracy' in the Middle East and our war in Ukraine now, *none* of them were in attendance for this one (read what the talmud says about the other races of men; the talmud rabbi Heschel held aloft while marching arm-in-arm w/ MLK) . In fact these reformers were demonized at every turn by these same people *in the press*, demonized by the money managers credit agents grain silo monopolists and various parasites in society who contribute nothing, preferring to endeavor control some choke point in credit or logistics.

Very curious. Clearly Harvard Professor Noel Ignatiev knew what he was on about when he said "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed—not 'deconstructed' but destroyed."

Figure our what money is, read Ezra Pound's "What is Money For?". Read C.H. Douglas and Charles Macune. Figure out who rules. Figure out what the struggle of our era really is. This book can help.

[Steven Burnap · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting but dense look at the rise and fall of the populist movement in the late eighteenth century. Interesting both for that part of history, and as an example of how political movements can fail. The TL;DR of it is that the populist movement could not both sustain its original principals while simultaneously finding broad appeal.

I'm pretty well read, but before this I'd never clearly understood the what the currency arguments of the period were actually about. Here you get a very clear view about what the different sides wanted, and exactly how their self-interest was pushing them to want those things.

Don't expect a broad survey of the politics of the time. The book lays the groundwork on the overall politics of the nation at the outset, but the bulk of the book is about the needs of poor farmers, and the movement this drove. As such, the politics of the labor movement, and race relations are only peripherally described as they relate to this story.

The number of typos in the Kindle edition was off-putting. It seemed like an OCR job that was not properly proofread.

[Julien Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting look at the agrarian movement in the 1880s-1890s. The author wanted to revive the reputation of the populists from earlier historiography (there's a whole essay about how bad other historians of this period, esp Hofstadter, have been) and he is clearly ideologically motivated, but the history is interesting and Goodwyn is appropriately critical of the movement. I felt like the book did dodge issues of race; though Goodwyn does go into how white supremacy hurt the Populists, he glosses over how the black members of the movement felt about it. There's a very funny section at the end where Goodwyn goes full curmudgeon about how the Populists were the peak democratic movement and about how mediocre 20th century politics is.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In ways people outside the South had difficulty perceiving, the crop lien system became for millions of Southerners, white and black, little more than slavery. ... The man with the ledger became the farmer's sole significant contact with the outside world. Across the South he was know as 'the furnishing man' or 'the advancing man.' To black farmers he became 'the Man.'" (23)

"Populism in America was not the sub-treasury plan, not the greenback heritage, not the Omaha Platform. it was not, at bottom, even the People's Party. The meaning of the agrarian revolt was its cultural assertion as a people's movement of mass democratic aspiration." (294)

[William Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really wish I had read this at the beginning of my research- I found Goodwyn’s argument so persuasive and easy to understand compared to the rest of the stuff I’ve read.

He actually focused on the sentiment of populism itself rather than the mess of rhetoric surrounding it, and raised some really good questions about the effect the 1890s had on twentieth (and twenty first) century democracy.

I finally feel things starting to click for my dissertation, and hopefully that is the last full book I need to read for it. Time to sort through my notes and begin actually writing!

[James Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will warn people, this is a scholarly work and can be very dry. Although if you are like me, and knew nothing about the rise of Populism and the People's Party, please give it a read. There is so much more to the story than the five minutes that your history teacher may or may not have covered in class.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the content, two for the prose. Entirely too much minutiae but such an important historical moment (and, for me at least, awfully relevant today).

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's one of the most important books about American history, but I wish I could have understood it better and want to blame it on the writing instead of myself.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a book on the Populist movement and the Agrarian revolt, this is it.

[John Hively · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most incisive thinkers on American culture and history wrote this book. Meticulously researched and written, the book narrates the rise of the Populist Party of the the 1880s and 1890s.

[Margaret Pinard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The previous reader’s notes stop at Chapter 3, but I made it all the way through! Dense. So wide-ranging I had to have side conversations with government and economist friends to figure out some of the arguments. But I got there! And have tons of ideas for new stories! Anyone else use excessive stickies?
#stickynoteuser #betterthandogearedpages
#storyfodder #gildedage #writersgonnawrite

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a good overview of the Populist movement of the 1880s and 90s in the United States, which was primarily poor farmers across the South and West being radicalized by the experience of unfair debt burdens being placed on them by the financial system. it was perhaps the largest mass movement in US history, yet today most of us barely know it existed.

the movement began through the "cooperative crusade," farmers coming together to try to sell their crops together rather than competitively, and thereby getting a better price, or trying to share expenses for farm equipment, etc. they also supported striking railway workers with the Knights of Labor, and tried to reach out to urban workers as well. this was simple mutual aid, but it was coupled with a "traveling lecturer" system which brought political awareness and spread the movement across the agrarian parts of the country very rapidly. notably, the farmers organized across the "sectional" divide of North vs. South, which dominates party politics in that era. their organization was known as the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union.

the undoing of the movement came through the entering of the electoral system, with the founding of the People's Party in 1891. farmers had been frustrated that the "cooperative crusade" had largely failed, despite the participation of thousands of farmers, because the merchants and banks simply refused to extend them credit. not knowing a better course of action, they formed a political party and began running for office. this actually resulted in significant electoral victories - they got almost a million votes for their presidential candidate in 1892, and also got over two dozen US Senators and Representatives elected, in addition to taking over the State governments in places like Kansas. however, no real reforms came through the government, which maintained its deflationary policies and the gold standard, which benefited the Eastern moneyed elite.

yet the re-direction of energies into the electoral system also resulted in the deflation of grassroots energies. by the time William Jennings Bryan ran for president as a "free silver" Democrat in 1896, the People's Party had been taken over by career politicians and shady opportunists in bed with the silver mining industry. the Populists endorsed Bryan, he lost, and the third party was dead. obvious parallels to the antiwar movement and Obama in 2008 can and should be drawn.

by the time agricultural reform came through the New Deal, some 40 years later, the US farming population had been drastically displaced into urban waged work, and the conglomeration of huge agribusinesses was well underway. the family farm was a thing of the past.

my main critique of the book, aside from its being a bit repetitive, is that it doesn't adequately address the racial division across farmers at the time. we learn a bit about the "Colored Farmer's Alliance," which was apparently headed by a white man, and we hear some about white supremacy in the South being upheld by ballot stuffing and lynching and so forth, but what the book lacks is a consistent discussion of how the Populists succeeded or failed in bridging across the treacherous landscape of American racism.

[Scott Vann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodwyn details the events that lead to the formation and movement known as the Farmer’s Alliance. He examines the origins of the party in the South and how it eventually took a national stage to become the National Farmer’s Alliance. Goodwyn also examines the “system” - the crop lien system and how it started a new method of “economic organization”. The devastation from the Civil War in the South, left farmers with no economic stabilization and left very little capital in the banks (Goodwyn, pp 22). He shows the not only the impact the Civil War had on farmers, but also how it impacted everyone they had business relations with, not only the South.

Goodwyn explains how the populists were against this movement of “organized capital”. After the Civil War, the government was subsidizing everything from railroads, to newspapers and the banks. The populists believed “corporate America” controlled far too much economic and political impact within the country. To battle the movement of “corporate America”, the Farmer’s Alliance decided to create a new political party, A People’s Party. The People’s Party formed out of the agrarian revolt to face the Democrats and Republicans, which populists believed were controlled by the elites and were antagonistic towards the rural farmers.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the last one I have to read for my Progressive and Populist class. HOORAY! Anyway it wasn't terribly interesting but it wasn't horrible either. There was good information. Goodywn really went through the Populist movement from beginning to end and integrated every persons part in its development. I didn't know until I read this what really started this movement but according to Goodwyn it was the end of the Civil War and the crop lien system in the South and the West. This system made it impossible for farmers to make a profit or even stay out of debt. I can't imagine how most of them survived. The Populist movement in the West and South of the U.S. is really what started the whole Progressive movement only the Progressive had pretty clear cut goals while the Populist really only had ideals and thoughts about what they wanted to happen and no real way to implement them.