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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




The "roaring eighties," with all their superficial appearance of
prosperity, had apparently not brought equal cheer to all. And
then came the "heart-breaking nineties." In February, 1893, the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company failed, a break in the
stock market followed, and an old-fashioned panic seized the
country in its grasp. A period of hitherto unparalleled
speculative frenzy came thus to an end, and sober years followed
in which the American people had ample opportunity to contemplate
the evils arising from their economic debauch.

Prices of agricultural products continued their downward trend.
Wheat touched bottom in 1894 with an average price of forty-nine
cents; corn, two years later, reached twenty-one cents. All the
other grains were likewise affected. Middling cotton which had
sold at eight and a half cents a pound in 1893, dropped below
seven cents the following year, recovered until it reached nearly
eight cents in 1896, and was at its lowest in 1898 at just under
six cents. Of all the marketable products of the farm, cattle,
hay, and hogs alone maintained the price level of the decade
prior to 1892. Average prices, moreover, do not fully indicate
the small return which many farmers received. In December, 1891,
for instance, the average value of a bushel of corn was about
forty cents, but in Nebraska, on January 1, 1892, corn brought
only twenty-six cents. When, a few years later, corn was worth,
according to the statistics, just over twenty-one cents, it was
literally cheaper to burn it in Kansas or Nebraska than to cart
it to town, sell it, and buy coal with the money received; and
this is just what hundreds of despairing farmers did. Even crop
shortage did little to increase the price of the grain that was
raised. When a drought seriously diminished the returns in Ohio,
Indiana, and Michigan in 1895, the importation from States
farther west prevented any rise in price.

Prices dropped, but the interest on mortgages remained the same.
One hundred and seventy-four bushels of wheat would pay the
interest at 8 per cent on a $2000 mortgage in 1888, when the
price of wheat was higher than it had been for ten years and
higher than it was to be again for a dozen years. In 1894 or 1895
when the price was hovering around fifty cents, it took 320
bushels to pay the same interest. Frequently the interest was
higher than 8 per cent, and outrageous commissions on renewals
increased the burden of the farmer. The result was one
foreclosure after another. The mortgage shark was identified as
the servant of the "Wall Street Octopus," and between them there
was little hope for the farmer. In Kansas, according to a
contemporary investigator,* "the whole western third of the State
was settled by a boom in farm lands. Multitudes of settlers took
claims without means of their own, expecting to pay for the land
from the immediate profits of farming. Multitudes of them
mortgaged the land for improvements, and multitudes more expended
the proceeds of mortgages in living. When it was found that the
proceeds of farming in that part of the State were very
uncertain, at best, the mortgages became due. And in many
instances those who had been nominally owners remained upon the
farms as tenants after foreclosure. These are but the natural
effects in reaction from a tremendous boom." In eastern Kansas,
where settlement was older, the pressure of hard times was
withstood with less difficulty. It was in western Kansas, by the
way, that Populism had its strongest following; and, after the
election of 1892, a movement to separate the State into two
commonwealths received serious consideration.

* G. T. Fairchild, Pol. Se. Q., vol. 11, p. 614.


Even more inexorable than the holder of the mortgage or his agent
was the tax collector. It was easy to demonstrate that the
farmer, with little or nothing but his land, his stock, and a
meager outfit of implements and furniture, all readily to be seen
and assessed, paid taxes higher in proportion to his ability to
pay than did the business man or the corporation. Although his
equity in the land he owned might be much less than its assessed
value, he was not allowed to make any deduction for mortgages.
The revenue of the Federal Government was raised wholly by
indirect taxes levied principally upon articles of common
consumption; and the farmer and other people of small means paid
an undue share of the burden in the form of higher prices
demanded for commodities.

Low prices for his produce, further depressed by the rapacity of
the railroads and the other intermediaries between the producer
and the consumer, mortgages with high interest rates, and an
inequitable system of taxation formed the burden of the farmer's
complaint during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
These grievances and all sorts of remedies proposed for them were
discussed in farmers' gatherings, in agricultural weeklies, even
in city dailies, and ultimately in legislative chambers.
Investigations demonstrated that, even when reduced to a minimum,
the legitimate grounds for complaint were extensive; and the
resultant reports suggested a variety of remedies. Generally,
however, popular sentiment swung around again to the tack it had
taken in the late seventies: the real cure for all the evils was
more money. Wall Street and the national banks could suck the
blood from the western community because of their monopoly of the
money supply. According to one irate editor, "Few people are
aware of the boundless advantages that the national banks have
under our present accursed system. They have usurped the credit
of the people and are fattening a thousand-fold annually from the
unlimited resources at their command." Another editor wrote:

We find the following printed card on our desk: "The last report
of the Secretary of the Treasury shows the banks as loaning
$1,970,022,687"! Four times the amount of money there is to loan.
Four interests in every dollar! They are drawing from the people
enough to run the National Government. How long will it take them
to gather in all the money of the nation? This does not include
the amounts loaned by state, private, and savings banks. Add to
this the billions of dollars of other loans and think if it is
any wonder times are hard. Will the American people never wake up
to the fact that they are being pauperized? Four people are
paying interest upon each dollar you have in your pocket--if you
have any. Wake up! Wake up!


Whatever the ultimate effects of an inflated and consequently
depreciated currency might be, the debtor class, to which a large
portion of the Western farmers belonged, would obviously benefit
immediately by the injection of large quantities of money into
the circulating medium. The purchasing power of money would be
lower; hence the farmer would receive more in dollars and cents
and would be in a better position to pay his standing debts.
Whether or not the rise in the prices of his products would be
offset or more than offset by the increased prices which he would
have to pay for the things he purchased would depend upon the
relative rate at which different commodities adjusted themselves
to the new scale of money value. In the end, of course, other
things being equal, there would be a return of old conditions;
but the farmers did not look so far ahead. Hence it was that less
attention was paid to taxation, to railroad rates and
discriminations, to elevator companies, to grain gamblers, or to
corporations as such; and the main force of the agrarian
movements from 1875 onward was exerted, first for an increased
paper currency and then for free silver.



CHAPTER VIII. THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE

The hope of welding the farmers into an organization which would
enable them to present a united front to their enemies and to
work together for the promotion of their interests--social,
economic, and political--was too alluring to be allowed to die
out with the decline of the Patrons of Husbandry. Farmers who had
experienced the benefits of the Grange, even though they had
deserted it in its hour of trial, were easily induced to join
another organization embodying all its essential features but
proposing to avoid its mistakes. The conditions which brought
about the rapid spread of the Grange in the seventies still
prevailed; and as soon as the reaction from the Granger movement
was spent, orders of farmers began to appear in various places
and to spread rapidly throughout the South and West. This second
movement for agricultural organization differed from the first in
that it sprang from the soil, as it were, and, like Topsy, "just
grooved" instead of being deliberately planned and put into
operation by a group of founders.

A local farmers' club or alliance was organized in 1874 or 1875
in the frontier county of Lampasas, Texas, for mutual protection
against horse thieves and land sharks and for cooperation in the
rounding up of strayed stock and in the purchase of supplies.
That it might accomplish its purposes more effectively, the club
adopted a secret ritual of three degrees; and it is said that at
first this contained a formula for catching horse thieves.
Affiliated lodges were soon established in neighboring
communities, and in 1878 a Grand State Alliance was organized.
Some one connected with this movement must have been familiar
with the Grange, for the Declaration of Purposes adopted by the
State Alliance in 1880 is but a crude paraphrase of the
declaration adopted by the earlier order at St. Louis in 1874.
These promising beginnings were quickly wrecked by political
dissension, particularly in connection with the Greenback
movement, and the first State Alliance held its last meeting in
1879. In that year, however, a member of the order who removed to
Poolville in Parker County, Texas, organized there a distinctly
non-partisan alliance. From this new center the movement spread
more rapidly; a second Grand State Alliance was organized; and
the order grew with such rapidity that by 1886 there were nearly
three thousand local lodges in the State. The social aspect was
prominent in the Alliance movement in Texas from the beginning.
Women were admitted to full membership, and negroes were
excluded. In 1882 the three degrees of the ritual were combined
into one so that all members might be on the same footing.

The early minutes of the State Alliance indicate that the
rounding up of estrays was the most important practical feature
of the order at that time, but in a few years this was
overshadowed by cooperation. Trade agreements were made with
dealers, joint stock stores and Alliance cotton-yards were
established, and finally a state exchange was organized with a
nominal capital of half a million dollars to handle the business
of the members. All the difficulties which the Grange had
encountered in its attempts at cooperation beset the Alliance
ventures: dissension was spread by merchants and commission men
fighting for their livelihood; mistakes were made by agents and
directors; too much was attempted at once; and in a few years the
house of cards tumbled to the ground.

While its business ventures were still promising, the Texas
Alliance came near being wrecked once more on the shoals of
politics. The state meeting in August, 1886, adopted an elaborate
set of "Demands," which included higher taxation of lands held
for speculative purposes, prohibition of alien land ownership,
laws to "prevent the dealing in futures of all agricultural
products," full taxation of railroad property, "the rapid
extinguishment of the public debt of the United States, by
operating the mints to their fullest capacity in coining silver
and gold, and the tendering of the same without discrimination to
the public creditors," the issue of legal tender notes on a per
capita basis and their substitution for bank notes, a national
bureau of labor statistics, an interstate commerce law, and the
abolition of the contract system of employing convicts. Provision
was made for a committee of three to press these demands upon
Congress and the State Legislature. At the close of the meeting,
some of the members, fearing that the adoption of this report
would lead to an attempt to establish a new political party, held
another meeting and organized a rival State Alliance.

Considerable confusion prevailed for a few months; the president
and vice-president of the regular State Alliance resigned, and
the whole order seemed on the verge of disruption. At this point
there appeared on the stage the man who was destined not only to
save the Alliance in Texas but also to take the lead in making it
a national organization--C. W. Macune, the chairman of the
executive committee. Assuming the position of acting president,
Macune called a special session of the State Alliance to meet in
January, 1887. At this meeting the constitution was amended to
include a declaration that it was the purpose of the order "to
labor for the education of the agricultural classes in the
science of economical government, in a strictly nonpartisan
spirit"; and attention was then directed to a plan for "the
organization of the cotton belt of America." The first step in
this direction was taken in the same month when the Texas
Alliance joined with the Farmers' Union of Louisiana and formed
the National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America.*

* The Farmers' Union was the outgrowth of an open farmers' club
organized in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, in 1880. In 1885 this was
transformed into a secret society with a ritual modeled after
that of the Grange and with a constitution adapted from the
constitution used by the Texas alliances. Before the year was
over the order spread into the adjoining parishes and a state
union was established.

Macune, who was elected president of the national body, at once
sent organizers into most of the Southern States; and local
alliances, followed rapidly by state organization, appeared in
State after State. When the next meeting was held in October,
1887, delegates were present from nine Southern States.* The
"Demands" adopted at this meeting were very like those which had
split the Texas Alliance in the preceding year, with the addition
of sections calling for the reduction of the tariff to a revenue
basis, a graduated income tax, promotion of industrial and
agricultural education, restriction of immigration, and popular
election of United States senators.

* By December, 1888, it was claimed that there were 10,000
alliances in 16 States with a total membership of about 400,000.
It was evident that the organization of the farmers of the cotton
belt was rapidly being consummated.


As the Alliance spread into Arkansas and some of the adjoining
States, it encountered another farmers' association of a very
similar character and purpose. The Agricultural Wheel, as it was
known, originated in a local club in Prairie County, Arkansas, in
1882, and soon expanded into a state-wide organization. After
amalgamating with another agricultural order, known as the
Brothers of Freedom, the Wheel began to roll into the adjoining
States. In 1886 delegates from Tennessee and Kentucky attended
the meeting of the Arkansas State Wheel and took part in the
organization of the National Agricultural Wheel.* When the
National Wheel held its first annual meeting in November, 1887,
eight state organizations had been established, all in the
Southwest, with a total membership of half a million.

* Some difficulty was occasioned at this meeting by the question
of admitting negroes to the order, but this was finally settled
by making provision for separate lodges for colored members.


With two great orders of farmers expanding in much the same
territory and having practically identical objects, the
desirability of union was obvious. The subject was discussed at
meetings of both bodies, and committees of conference were
appointed. Both organizations finally convened in December, 1888,
at Meridian, Mississippi, and appointed a joint committee to work
out the details of amalgamation. The outcome was a new
constitution, which was accepted by each body acting separately
and was finally ratified by the state organizations. The combined
order was to be known as the Farmers' and Laborers' Union of
America.

While this development had been going on in the South, another
movement, somewhat different in character and quite independent
in origin, had been launched by the farmers of the Northwest. The
founder of the National Farmers' Alliance, or the Northwestern
Alliance, as it was called to distinguish it from the Southern
organization, was Milton George, editor of the Western Rural of
Chicago, who had been instrumental in organizing a local alliance
in Cook County. This Alliance began issuing charters to other
locals, and in October, at the close of a convention in Chicago
attended by about "five hundred, representing alliances, granges,
farmers' clubs, etc.," a national organization was formed. The
constitution adopted at this time declared the object of the
order to be "to unite the farmers of the United States for their
protection against class legislation, and the encroachments of
concentrated capital and the tyranny of monopoly; . . . to
oppose, in our respective political parties, the election of any
candidate to office, state or national, who is not thoroughly in
sympathy with the farmers' interests; to demand that the existing
political parties shall nominate farmers, or those who are in
sympathy with them, for all offices within the gift of the
people, and to do everything in a legitimate manner that may
serve to benefit the producer." The specific measures for which
the promoters of the Northwestern Alliance intended to work were
set forth in a platform adopted at the second annual meeting in
Chicago, October 5, 1881, which demanded: equal taxation of all
property, including deduction of the amount of mortgages from
assessments of mortgaged property; "a just income tax"; reduction
of salaries of officials and their election instead of
appointment, so far as practicable; regulation of interstate
commerce; reform of the patent laws; and prevention of the
adulteration of food. "The combination and consolidation of
railroad capital . . . in the maintenance of an oppressive and
tyrannical transportation system" was particularly denounced, and
the farmers of the country were called upon to organize "for
systematic and persistent action" for "the emancipation of the
people from this terrible oppression."

The Northwestern Alliance did not attempt cooperation in business
so extensively as did its Southern contemporaries, but a number
of Alliance grain elevators were established in Minnesota and
Dakota, cooperative creameries flourished in Illinois, and many
of the alliances appointed agents to handle produce and purchase
supplies for the members. It was in the field of politics,
however, that the activity of the order was most notable. The
methods by which the farmers of the Northwest attempted to use
their organizations for political ends are well illustrated by
the resolutions adopted at the annual meeting of the Minnesota
State Alliance in 1886 which declared that "the Alliance, while
not a partisan association, is political in the sense that it
seeks to correct the evils of misgovernment through the
ballot-box," and called upon all the producers of the State "to
unite with us at the ballot-box next November to secure a
legislature that will work in the interests of the many against
the exactions of the few." The specific demands included state
regulation of railroads, free coinage of silver, reduction of the
tariff to a revenue basis, revision of the patent laws, high
taxation of oleomargarine, and reduction of the legal rate of
interest from 10 to 8 per cent. The secretary was directed to
forward copies of these resolutions to federal and state officers
and to the delegation of the State in Congress; and the members
of local alliances were "urged to submit this platform of
principles to every candidate for the legislature in their
respective districts, and to vote as a unit against every man who
refuses to publicly subscribe his name to the same and pledge
himself, if elected, to live up to it."

The resolutions adopted by the National Alliance in 1887 show
that the political purposes of the order had become considerably
more comprehensive than they were when it was getting under way
in 1881. First place was now given to a plank favoring the free
coinage of silver and the issuance of "all paper money direct to
the people." The demand for railroad regulation was accompanied
by a statement that "the ultimate solution of the transportation
problem may be found in the ownership and operation by the
Government of one or more transcontinental lines"; and the
immediate acquisition of the Union Pacific, then in financial
difficulties, was suggested. Other resolutions called for
government ownership and operation of the telegraph, improvement
of waterways, restriction of the liquor traffic, industrial
education in the public schools, restoration of agricultural
colleges "to the high purpose of their creation," and popular
election of Senators. The national body does not appear to have
attempted, at this time, to force its platform upon candidates
for office; but it urged "farmers throughout the country to aid
in the work of immediate organization, that we may act in concert
for our own and the common good."

The culmination of this general movement for the organization of
the farmers of the country came in 1889 and 1890. The Farmers'
and Laborers' Union and the Northwestern Alliance met at St.
Louis on December 3, 1889. The meeting of the Southern
organization, which was renamed the National Farmers' Alliance
and Industrial Union, was attended by about a hundred delegates
representing Indiana, Kansas, and every Southern State from
Maryland to Texas, with the exception of West Virginia. The
purpose of the two orders in holding their meetings at the same
time and place was obviously to effect some sort of union, and
committees of conference were at once appointed. Difficulties
soon confronted these committees: the Southern Alliance wanted to
effect a complete merger but insisted upon retention of the
secret features and the exclusion of negroes, at least from the
national body; the Northwestern Alliance preferred a federation
in which each organization might retain its identity.
Arrangements were finally made for future conferences to effect
federation but nothing came of them. The real obstacles seem to
have been differences of policy with reference to political
activity and a survival of sectional feeling.

With the failure of the movement for union, the Southern Alliance
began active work in the Northern States; and when the Supreme
Council, as the national body was now called, held its next
meeting at Ocala, Florida, in December, 1890, delegates were
present from state alliances of seven Northern and Western
States, in addition to those represented at the St. Louis
meeting. The Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association, a secret order
with about two hundred thousand members, had a committee in
attendance at this meeting, and the Colored Farmers' Alliance,
which had been founded in Texas in 1886 and claimed a membership
of over a million, held its national meeting at the same time and
place. Plans were formulated for a federation of these three
bodies, and of such other farmers' and laborers' associations as
might join with them, to the end that all might work unitedly for
legislation in the interests of the industrial classes.

Signs of approaching dissolution of the Alliance movement were
already apparent at the Ocala meeting. The finances of the
Southern Alliance had been so badly managed that there was a
deficit of about $6000 in the treasury of the Supreme Council.
This was due in part to reckless expenditure and in part to
difficulties in collecting dues from the state organizations.
Discord had arisen, moreover, from the political campaign of
1890, and an investigating committee expressed its disapproval of
the actions of the officers in connection with a senatorial
contest in Georgia. The decline of the Southern Alliance after
1890 was even more rapid than that of the Grange had been. The
failure of many of the cooperative ventures contributed to this
decline; but complications and dissensions resulting from the
establishment of a new political party which took over the
Alliance platform, were principally responsible. The Northwestern
Alliance continued for a few years, practically as an adjunct to
the new party but it, too, lost rapidly in membership and
influence. With the year 1890 interest shifts from social to
political organization, from Alliances to Populism.



CHAPTER IX. THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED

Alliances, wheels, leagues--all the agrarian organizations which
multiplied during the eighties gave tangible form to the
underlying unrest created by the economic conditions of that
superficially prosperous decade. Only slowly, however, did there
develop a feeling that a new political party was necessary in
order to apply the remedies which, it was believed, would cure
some if not all the ills of the agricultural class. Old party
ties were still strong. Only with reluctance could the Republican
or Democrat of long standing bring himself to depart from the
familiar fold. Then, too, the recent ignominious failures of the
Greenback party might well cool the ardor of all but the most
sanguine advocates of a third party movement. Among the leaders
of the agrarian organizations were many, moreover, who foresaw
that to become involved in partisan politics could mean nothing
less than the defeat of all their original purposes.

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