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The Agrarian Crusade, A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics

S >> Solon J. Buck >> The Agrarian Crusade, A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics




There was a strong movement in the convention for the nomination
of David Davis for the presidency, but this seems to have met
with opposition from Eastern delegates who remembered his
desertion of the National Labor Reform party in 1872. Peter
Cooper of New York was finally selected as the candidate. He was
a philanthropist rather than a politician and was now eighty-five
years old. Having made a large fortune as a pioneer in the
manufacture of iron, he left his business cares to other members
of his family and devoted himself to the education and elevation
of the working classes. His principal contribution to this cause
was the endowment of the famous Cooper Union in New York, where
several thousand persons, mostly mechanics, attended classes in a
variety of technical and educational subjects and enjoyed the
privileges of a free library and reading room. When notified of
his nomination, Cooper at first expressed the hope that one or
both of the old parties might adopt such currency planks as would
make the new movement unnecessary. Later he accepted
unconditionally but took no active part in the campaign.

The Greenback movement at first made but slow progress in the
various States. In Indiana and Illinois the existing independent
organizations became component parts of the new party, although
in Illinois, at least, quite a number of the former leaders
returned to the old parties. In the other Western States,
however, the third parties of the Granger period had gone to
pieces or had been absorbed by means of fusion, and new
organizations had to be created. In Indiana the Independent party
developed sufficient strength to scare the Republican leaders and
to cause one of them to write to Hayes: "A bloody-shirt campaign,
with money, and Indiana is safe; a financial campaign and no
money and we are beaten."

The Independents do not appear to have made a very vigorous
campaign in 1876. The coffers of the party were as empty as the
pockets of the farmers who were soon to swell its ranks; and this
made a campaign of the usual sort impossible. One big meeting was
held in Chicago in August, with Samuel F. Cary, the nominee for
Vice-President, as the principal attraction; and this was
followed by a torchlight procession. A number of papers published
by men who were active in the movement, such as Buchanan's
Indianapolis Star, Noonan's Industrial Age of Chicago, and
Donnelly's Anti-Monopolist of St. Paul, labored not without avail
to spread the gospel among their readers. The most effective
means of propaganda, however, was probably the Greenback Club. At
a conference in Detroit in August, 1875, "the organization of
Greenback Clubs in every State in the Union" was recommended, and
the work was carried on under the leadership of Marcus M.
Pomeroy. "Brick" Pomeroy was a journalist, whose sobriquet
resulted from a series of Brickdust Sketches of prominent
Wisconsin men which he published in one of his papers. As the
editor of Brick Pomeroy's Democrat, a sensational paper published
in New York, he had gained considerable notoriety. In 1875, after
the failure of this enterprise he undertook to retrieve his
broken fortunes by editing a Greenback paper in Chicago and by
organizing Greenback clubs for which this paper served as an
organ. Pomeroy also wrote and circulated a series of tracts with
such alluring titles as Hot Drops and Meat for Men. Several
thousand clubs were organized in the Northwest during the next
few years, principally in the rural regions, and the secrecy of
their proceedings aroused the fear that they were advocating
communism. The members of the clubs and their leaders
constituted, as a matter of fact, the more radical of the
Greenbackers. They usually opposed fusion with the Democrats and
often refused to follow the regular leaders of the party.

In the election the Greenback ticket polled only about eighty
thousand votes, or less than one per cent of the total. In spite
of the activity of former members of the Labor Reform party in
the movement, Pennsylvania was the only Eastern State in which
the new party made any considerable showing. In the West over
6000 votes were cast in each of the five States--Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas. The agrarian aspect of the
movement was now uppermost, but the vote of 17,000 polled in
Illinois, though the largest of the group, was less than a
quarter of the votes cast by the state Independent Reform party
in 1874 when railroad regulation had been the dominant issue.
Clearly many farmers were not yet convinced of the necessity of a
Greenback party. The only tangible achievement of the party in
1876 was the election of a few members of the Illinois
Legislature who held the balance between the old parties and were
instrumental in sending David Davis to the United States Senate.
This vote, it is interesting to note, kept Davis from serving on
the electoral commission and thus probably prevented Tilden from
becoming President.

But the Greenback movement was to find fresh impetus in 1877, a
year of exceptional unrest and discontent throughout the Union.
The agricultural depression was even greater than in preceding
years, while the great railroad strikes were evidence of the
distress of the workingmen. This situation was reflected in
politics by the rapid growth of the Greenback party and the
reappearance of labor parties with Greenback planks.*

* In state elections from Massachusetts to Kansas the Greenback
and labor candidates polled from 5 to 15 per cent of the total
vote, and in most cases the Greenback vote would probably have
been much greater had not one or the other, and in some cases
both, of the old parties incorporated part of the Greenback
demands in their platforms. In Wisconsin, for example, there was
little difference between Democrats and Greenbackers on the
currency question, and even the Republicans in their platform
leaned toward inflation, although the candidates declared against
it. No general elections were held in 1877 in some of the States
where the Greenback sentiment was most pronounced.


In the following year the new party had an excellent opportunity
to demonstrate its strength wherever it existed. In February,
1878, a conference was held at Toledo for the purpose of welding
the various political organizations of workingmen and advocates
of inflation into an effective weapon as a single united party.
This conference, which was attended by several hundred delegates
from twenty-eight States, adopted "National" as the name of the
party, but it was usually known from this time on as the
Greenback Labor party. The Toledo platform, as the resolutions
adopted by this conference came to be designated, first denounced
"the limiting of the legal-tender quality of greenbacks, the
changing of currency-bonds into coin-bonds, the demonetization of
the silver dollar, the excepting of bonds from taxation, the
contraction of the circulating medium, the proposed forced
resumption of specie payments, and the prodigal waste of the
public lands." The resolutions which followed demanded the
suppression of bank notes and the issue of all money by the
Government, such money to be full legal-tender at its stamped
value and to be provided in sufficient quantity to insure the
full employment of labor and to establish a rate of interest
which would secure to labor its just reward. Other planks called
for the coinage of silver on the same basis as that of gold,
reservation of the public lands for actual settlers, legislative
reduction of the hours of labor, establishment of labor bureaus,
abolition of the contract system of employing prison labor, and
suppression of Chinese immigration. It is clear that in this
platform the interests of labor received full consideration. Just
before the conference adjourned it adopted two additional
resolutions. One of these, adopted in response to a telegram from
General B. F. Butler, denounced the silver bill just passed by
Congress because it had been so modified as to limit the amount
of silver to be coined. The other, which was offered by "Brick"
Pomeroy, declared: "We will not affiliate in any degree with any
of the old parties, but in all cases and localities will organize
anew . . . and . . . vote only for men who entirely abandon old
party lines and organizations." This attempt to forestall fusion
was to be of no avail, as the sequel will show, but Pomeroy and
his followers in the Greenback clubs adhered throughout to their
declaration.

In the elections of 1878, the high-water mark of the movement,
about a million votes were cast for Greenback candidates.
Approximately two-thirds of the strength of the party was in the
Middle West and one-third in the East. That the movement, even in
the East, was largely agrarian, is indicated by the famous
argument of Solon Chase, chairman of the party convention in
Maine. "Inflate the currency, and you raise the price of my
steers and at the same time pay the public debt." "Them steers"
gave Chase a prominent place in politics for half a decade. The
most important achievement of the movement at this time was the
election to Congress of fifteen members who were classified as
Nationals--six from the East, six from the Middle West, and three
from the South. In most cases these men secured their election
through fusion or through the failure of one of the old parties
to make nominations.

Easily first among the Greenbackers elected to Congress in 1878
was General James B. Weaver of Iowa. When ten years of age,
Weaver had been taken by his parents to Iowa from Ohio, his
native State. In 1854, he graduated from a law school in
Cincinnati, and for some years thereafter practiced his
profession and edited a paper at Bloomfield in Davis County,
Iowa. He enlisted in the army as a private in 1861, displayed
great bravery at the battles of Donelson and Shiloh, and received
rapid promotion to the rank of colonel. At the close of the war
he received a commission as brigadier general by brevet. Weaver
ran his first tilt in state politics in an unsuccessful attempt
to obtain the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in
1865. Although an ardent advocate of prohibition and of state
regulation of railroads, Weaver remained loyal to the Republican
party during the Granger period and in 1875 was a formidable
candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. It is said that a
majority of the delegates to the convention had been instructed
in his favor, but the railroad and liquor interests succeeded in
stampeding the convention to Samuel J. Kirkwood, the popular war
governor. In the following year Weaver took part in the
organization of the Independent or Greenback party in Iowa and
accepted a position on its state committee. Though resentment at
the treatment which he had received from the Republicans may have
influenced him to break the old ties, he was doubtless sincerely
convinced that the Republican party was beyond redemption and
that the only hope for reform lay in the new party movement.

Weaver was gifted with remarkable talent as an orator. His fine
face and soldierly bearing, his rich sympathetic voice and vivid
imagination, made him a favorite speaker at soldiers' reunions
and in political campaigns. Lacking the eccentricities of so many
of his third party associates and never inclined to go to
extremes in his radicalism, he was one of the ablest and, from
the standpoint of the Republicans, the most dangerous of the
Greenback leaders. In Congress Weaver won the respect of his
colleagues. Always ready to promote what he believed to be the
interests of the common people and especially of the farmers, he
espoused the cause of the Oklahoma "boomers," who were opposed by
a powerful lobby representing the interests of the "cattle
barons." He declared that, in a choice between bullocks and
babies, he would stand for babies, and he staged a successful
filibuster at the close of a session in order to force the
consideration of a bill for the opening of part of Oklahoma to
settlement.

The preliminaries of the campaign of 1880 were vexed by
dissension within the ranks of the Greenbackers. In March the
radical faction led by Pomeroy held a convention in St. Louis
which claimed to speak for ten thousand Greenback clubs and two
million voters. After Stephen D. Dillaye of New York had refused
the presidential nomination at the hands of this convention, it
adjourned to meet in Chicago on the 9th of June the place and
time already selected for the regular convention of the National
party. One reason for the attitude of this faction appears to
have been the fear of fusion with the Democrats. The Chicago
convention finally succeeded in absorbing these malcontents, as
well as a group of socialist delegates and representatives of
various labor organizations who asked to be admitted. Dennis
Kearney, the notorious sand-lot agitator of California was made
chief sergeant at arms, and Susan B. Anthony was allowed to give
a suffrage speech. The platform differed from earlier Greenback
documents in that it contained no denunciation of the Resumption
Act. That was now a dead issue, for on January 1, 1879,
resumption became an accomplished fact, and the paper currency
was worth its face value in gold. Apart from this the platform
was much the same as that adopted at Toledo in 1878, with the
addition of planks favoring women's suffrage, a graduated income
tax, and congressional regulation of interstate commerce. On the
first ballot, General Weaver received a majority of the votes for
presidential nominee; and B. J. Chambers of Texas was nominated
for Vice-President.

General Weaver in his letter of acceptance declared it to be his
intention "to visit the various sections of the Union and talk to
the people." This he did, covering the country from Arkansas to
Maine and from Lake Michigan to the Gulf, speaking in Faneuil
Hall at Boston and in the Cooper Union at New York, but spending
the greater part of his time in the Southern States. He declared
that he traveled twenty thousand miles, made fully one hundred
speeches, shook the hands of thirty thousand people, and was
heard by half a million. Weaver was the first presidential
candidate to conduct a campaign of this sort, and the results
were not commensurate with his efforts. The Greenback vote was
only 308,578, about three per cent of the total. One explanation
of the small vote would seem to be the usual disinclination of
people to vote for a man who has no chance of election, however
much they may approve of him and his principles, when they have
the opportunity to make their votes count in deciding between two
other candidates. Then, too, the sun of prosperity was beginning
at last to dissipate the clouds of depression. The crops of corn,
wheat, and oats raised in 1880 were the largest the country had
ever known; and the price of corn for once failed to decline as
production rose, so that the crop was worth half as much again as
that of 1878. When the farmer had large crops to dispose of at
remunerative prices, he lost interest in the inflation of the
currency.

After 1880 the Greenback party rapidly disintegrated. There was
no longer any hope of its becoming a major party, in the near
future at least, and the more conservative leaders began to drift
back into the old parties or to make plans for fusion with one of
them in coming elections. But fusion could at best only defer the
end. The congressional election of 1882 clearly demonstrated that
the party was moribund. Ten of the Congressmen elected in 1880
had been classified as Nationals; of these only one was reelected
in 1882, and no new names appear in the list. It is probable,
however, that a number of Congressmen classified as Democrats
owed their election in part to fusion between the Democratic and
Greenback parties.

The last appearance of the Greenbackers in national politics was
in the presidential election of 1884. In May of that year a
convention of "The Anti-Monopoly Organization of the United
States," held in Chicago, adopted a platform voicing a demand for
legislative control of corporations and monopolies in the
interests of the people and nominated General Benjamin F. Butler
for President. The convention of the Greenback or National party
met in Indianapolis, and selected Butler as its candidate also.
General Weaver presided over the convention. The platform
contained the usual demands of the party with the exception of
the resolution for the "free and unlimited coinage of gold and
silver," which was rejected by a vote of 218 to 164. It would
appear that the majority of the delegates preferred to rely upon
legal-tender paper to furnish the ample supply of money desired.
General Butler was at this time acting with the Democrats in
Massachusetts, and his first response was noncommittal. Although
he subsequently accepted both nominations, he did not make an
active campaign, and his total popular vote was only 175,370.
Butler's personal popularity and his labor affiliations brought
increased votes in some of the Eastern States and in Michigan,
but in those Western States where the party had been strongest in
1880 and where it had been distinctly a farmers' movement there
was a great falling off in the Greenback vote.

Though the forces of agrarian discontent attained national
political organization for the first time in the Greenback party,
its leaders were never able to obtain the support of more than a
minority of the farmers. The habit of voting the Republican or
the Democratic ticket, firmly established by the Civil War and by
Reconstruction, was too strong to be lightly broken; and many who
favored inflation could not yet bring themselves to the point of
supporting the Greenback party. On the other hand there were
undoubtedly many farmers and others who felt that the old parties
were hopelessly subservient to capitalistic interests, who were
ready to join in radical movements for reform and for the
advancement of the welfare of the industrial classes, but who
were not convinced that the structure of permanent prosperity for
farmer and workingman could be built on a foundation of fiat
money. Although the platforms of the Greenbackers contained many
demands which were soundly progressive, inflation was the
paramount issue in them; and with this issue the party was unable
to obtain the support of all the forces of discontent,
radicalism, and reform which had been engendered by the economic
and political conditions of the times. The Greenback movement was
ephemeral. Failing to solve the problem of agricultural
depression, it passed away as had the Granger movement before it;
but the greater farmers' movement of which both were a part went
on.



CHAPTER VII. THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER

An English observer of agricultural conditions in 1893 finds that
agricultural unrest was not peculiar to the United States in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, but existed in all the
more advanced countries of the world:

"Almost everywhere, certainly in England, France, Germany, Italy,
Scandinavia, and the United States, the agriculturists, formerly
so instinctively conservative, are becoming fiercely
discontented, declare they gained less by civilization than the
rest of the community, and are looking about for remedies of a
drastic nature. In England they are hoping for aid from councils
of all kinds; in France they have put on protective duties which
have been increased in vain twice over; in Germany they put on
and relaxed similar duties and are screaming for them again; in
Scandinavia Denmark more particularly--they limit the aggregation
of land; and in the United States they create organizations like
the Grangers, the Farmers' Leagues, and the Populists."*

*The Spectator, Vol. LXX, p. 247.


It is to general causes, indeed, that one must turn before trying
to find the local circumstances which aggravated the unrest in
the United States, or at least appeared to do so. The application
of power--first steam, then electricity--to machinery had not
only vastly increased the productivity of mankind but had
stimulated invention to still wider activity and lengthened the
distance between man and that gaunt specter of famine which had
dogged his footsteps from the beginning. With a constantly,
growing supply of the things necessary for the maintenance of
life, population increased tremendously: England, which a few
centuries before had been overcrowded with fewer than four
million' people, was now more bountifully feeding and clothing
forty millions. Perhaps, all in all, mankind was better off than
it had ever been before; yet different groups maintained unequal
progress. The tillers of the soil as a whole remained more nearly
in their primitive condition than did the dwellers of the city.
The farmer, it is true, produced a greater yield of crops, was
surrounded by more comforts, and was able to enjoy greater
leisure than his kind had ever done before. The scythe and cradle
had been supplanted by the mower and reaper; horse harrows,
cultivators, and rakes had transferred much of the physical
exertion of farming to the draft animals. But, after all, the
farmer owed less to steam and electricity than the craftsman and
the artisan of the cities.

The American farmer, if he read the census reports, might learn
that rural wealth had increased from nearly $4,000,000,000 in
1850 to not quite $16,000,000,000 in 1890; but he would also
discover that in the same period urban wealth had advanced from a
little over $3,000,000,000 to more than $49,000,000,000. Forty
years before the capital of rural districts comprised more than
half that of the whole country, now it formed only twenty-five
per cent. The rural population had shown a steady proportionate
decrease: when the first census was taken in 1790, the dwellers
of the country numbered more than ten times those of the city,
but at the end of the nineteenth century they formed only about
one-third of the total. Of course the intelligent farmer might
have observed that food for the consumption of all could be
produced by the work of fewer hands, and vastly more bountifully
as well, and so he might have explained the relative decline of
rural population and wealth; but when the average farmer saw his
sons and his neighbors' sons more and more inclined to seek work
in town and leave the farm, he put two and two together and came
to the conclusion that farming was in a perilous state. He heard
the boy who had gone to the city boast that his hours were
shorter, his toil less severe, and his return in money much
greater than had been the case on the farm; and he knew that this
was true. Perhaps the farmer did not realize that he had some
compensations: greater security of position and a reasonable
expectation that old age would find him enjoying some sort of
home, untroubled by the worry which might attend the artisan or
shopkeeper.

Whether or not the American farmer realized that the nineteenth
century had seen a total change in the economic relations of the
world, he did perceive clearly that something was wrong in his
own case. The first and most impressive evidence of this was to
be found in the prices he received for what he had to sell. From
1883 to 1889 inclusive the average price of wheat was
seventy-three cents a bushel, of corn thirty-six cents, of oats
twenty-eight cents. In 1890 crops were poor in most of the grain
areas, while prosperous times continued to keep the consuming
public of the manufacturing regions able to buy; consequently
corn and oats nearly doubled in price, and wheat advanced 20 per
cent. Nevertheless, such was the shortage, except in the case of
corn, that the total return was smaller than it had been for a
year or two before. In 1891 bumper crops of wheat, corn, oats,
rye, and barley drove the price down on all except wheat and rye,
but not to the level of 1889. Despite a much smaller harvest in
1892 the decline continued, to the intense disgust of the farmers
of Nebraska and Minnesota who failed to note that the entire
production of wheat in the world was normal in that year, that
considerable stores of the previous crop had been held over and
that more than a third of the yield in the United States was sent
forth to compete everywhere with the crops of Argentine, Russia,
and the other grain producing countries. No wonder the average
farmer of the Mississippi basin was ready to give ear to any one
who could suggest a remedy for his ills.

Cotton, which averaged nearly eleven cents a pound for the decade
ending in 1890, dropped to less than nine cents in 1891 and to
less than eight in 1892. Cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and mules
brought more in the late than in the early eighties, yet these,
too, showed a decline about 1890. The abnormal war-time price of
wool which was more than one dollar a pound in October, 1864,
dropped precipitately with peace, rose a little just before the
panic of 1873, and then declined with almost no reaction until it
reached thirty-three cents for the highest grade in 1892.

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