The Populist Bombshell of 1892
The advent of the Populists as a full-fledged party in the domain of
national politics took place at Omaha in July, 1892. Nearly thirteen
hundred delegates from all parts of the Union flocked to the convention
to take part in the selection of candidates for President and
Vice-President and to adopt a platform for the new party. The "Demands"
of the Alliances supplied the material from which was constructed a
platform characterized by one unsympathetic observer as "that furious
and hysterical arraignment of the present times, that incoherent
intermingling of Jeremiah and Bellamy." The document opened with a
general condemnation of national conditions and a bitter denunciation of
the old parties for permitting "the existing dreadful conditions to
develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them." Then
followed three declarations: "that the union of the labor forces of the
United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual";
that "wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from
industry without an equivalent is robbery"; and "that the time has come
when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people
must own the railroads." Next came the demands. Heading these were the
monetary planks: "a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued
by the general Government only, a full legal tender for all debts," with
the sub-treasury system of loans "or a better system; free and unlimited
coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to
one"; and an increase in the circulating medium until there should be
not less than $50 per capita. With demands for a graduated income tax,
for honesty and economy in governmental expenditures, and for postal
savings banks, the financial part of the platform was complete. The
usual plank declaring for government ownership and control of railroads
and telegraphs now included the telephone systems as well, and the land
plank opposed alien ownership and demanded the return of lands held by
corporations in excess of their actual needs. Other resolutions, adopted
but not included in the platform, expressed sympathy with labor's
demands for shorter hours, condemned the use of Pinkerton detectives in
labor strife, and favored greater restriction of immigration, the
initiative and referendum, direct election of United States senators,
and one term for the President and Vice-President.
The platform, according to a news dispatch of the time, was "received
with tremendous enthusiasm ... and was read and adopted almost before
the people knew it was read. Instantly there was enacted the mightiest
scene ever witnessed by the human race. Fifteen thousand people yelled,
shrieked, threw papers, hats, fans, and parasols, gathered up banners,
mounted shoulders. Mrs. Lease's little girl was mounted on Dr. Fish's
shoulders--he on a table on the high platform. The two bands were
swamped with noise.... Five minutes passed, ten minutes, twenty, still
the noise and hurrahs poured from hoarse throats." After forty minutes
the demonstration died out and the convention was ready to proceed with
the nomination of a presidential candidate.
No such unanimity marked this further procedure, however. Just before
the convention the leaders of the People's Party had thrown the old
parties into consternation by announcing that Judge Walter Q. Gresham,
of Indiana, would be offered the nomination. Judge Gresham, a Republican
with a long and honorable public record, had been urged upon the
Republican party in 1884 and 1888, and "Anti-Monopolists" had considered
him with favor on account of his opinions and decisions regarding the
operation and control of railroads. Just after the adoption of the
platform a telegram from the judge announced that he would accept a
unanimous nomination. Since unanimity was unobtainable, however, his
name was withdrawn later in the day.
This left the field to General James B. Weaver of Iowa and Senator James
H. Kyle of South Dakota. Weaver represented the more conservative of the
Populists, the old Alliance men. His rival had the support of the most
radical element as well as that of the silver men from the mountain
States. The silverites were not inclined to insist upon their man,
however, declaring that, if the platform contained the silver plank,
they would carry their States for whatever candidate might be chosen.
The old campaigner proved the stronger, and he was nominated with
General James G. Field of Virginia for Vice-President. Unprejudiced
observers viewed Weaver's nomination as a tactical error on the part of
the Populist leaders: "Mr. Weaver has belonged to the group of
third-party 'come-outers' for so many years that his name is not one to
conjure with in either of the old camps; ... his name suggests too
strongly the abortive third-party movements of the past to excite much
hope or enthusiasm. He is not exactly the sort of a Moses who can
frighten Pharaoh into fits or bring convincing plagues upon the
monopolistic oppressors of Israel. The wicked politicians of the
Republican and Democratic parties breathed easier and ate with better
appetites when the Gresham bogie disappeared and they found their
familiar old enemy, General Weaver, in the lead of the People's
movement."
It may be suspected, however, that even with Weaver at its head this
party, which claimed to control from two to three million votes, and
which expected to draw heavily from the discontented ranks of the
old-line organizations, was not viewed with absolute equanimity by the
campaign managers of Cleveland and of Harrison. Some little evidence of
the perturbation appeared in the equivocal attitude of both the old
parties with respect to the silver question. Said the Democratic
platform: "We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard
money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without
discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage." The rival
Republican platform declared that "the American people, from tradition
and interest, favor bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the
use of both gold and silver as standard money." Each party declared for
steps to obtain an international agreement on the question. The
Republicans attempted to throw a sop to the labor vote by favoring
restriction of immigration and laws for the protection of employees in
dangerous occupations, and to the farmer by pronouncements against
trusts, for extended postal service--particularly in rural
districts--and for the reclamation and sale of arid lands to settlers.
The Democrats went even further and demanded the return of "nearly one
hundred million acres of valuable land" then held by "corporations and
syndicates, alien and domestic."
The directors of the Populist campaign proved to be no mean political
strategists. General Weaver himself toured the country, accompanied by
General Field when he was in the South and by Mrs. Lease when he went to
the Pacific coast. Numerous other men and women addressed the thousands
who attended the meetings, great and small, all over the country. One
unique feature of the Populist campaign on the Pacific coast was the
singing of James G. Clark's People's Battle-Hymn, and other songs
expressing the hope and fears of labor in the field and factory.
Everywhere it was the policy of the new party to enlist the assistance
of the weaker of the old parties. In the South, the Populists, as a
rule, arrayed themselves with the Republicans against the old Democracy.
This provoked every device of ridicule, class prejudice, and scorn,
which the dominant party could bring to bear to dissuade former
Democrats from voting the People's ticket. One Louisiana paper uttered
this warning:
Oily-tongued orators, in many cases the paid agents of the Republican
party, have for months been circulating among the unsophisticated and
more credulous classes, preaching their heresies and teaching the people
that if Weaver is elected president, money may be had for the asking,
transportation on the railroad trains will be practically free, the
laboring man will be transferred from his present position and placed
upon a throne of power, while lakes filled with molasses, whose shores
are fringed with buckwheat cakes, and islands of Jersey butter rising
here and there above the surface, will be a concomitant of every farm.
The 'forty-acres-and-a-mule' promises of the reconstruction era pale
into insignificance beside the glowing pictures of prosperity promised
by the average Populist orator to those who support Weaver.
The Pensacola Address of the Populist nominees on September 17, 1892,
which served as a joint letter of acceptance, was evidently issued at
that place and time partly for the purpose of influencing such voters as
might be won over by emphasizing the unquestioned economic distress of
most Southern farmers. If the new party could substantiate the charges
that both old parties were the tools of monopoly and Wall Street, it
might insert the wedge which would eventually split the "solid South."
Even before the Pensacola Address, the state elections in Alabama and
Arkansas demonstrated that coöperation of Republicans with Populists was
not an idle dream. But, although fusion was effected on state tickets in
several States in the November elections, the outcome was the choice of
Cleveland electors throughout the South.
As the Populists tried in the South to win over the Republicans, so in
the North and more especially the West they sought to control the
Democratic vote either by fusion or absorption. The effort was so
successful that in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, and North Dakota,
the new party swept the field with the assistance of the Democrats. In
South Dakota and Nebraska, where there was no fusion, the Democratic
vote was negligible and the Populists ran a close second to the
Republicans.
That the tide of agrarianism was gradually flowing westward as the
frontier advanced is apparent from the election returns in the States
bordering on the upper Mississippi. Iowa and Missouri, where the
Alliance had been strong, experienced none of the landslide which swept
out the Republicans in States further west. In Minnesota the Populists,
with a ticket headed by the veteran Donnelly, ran a poor third in the
state election, and the entire Harrison electoral ticket was victorious
in spite of the endorsement of four Populist candidates by the
Democrats. In the northwestern part of the State, however, the new party
was strong enough to elect a Congressman over candidates of both the old
parties. In no Northern State east of the Mississippi were the Populists
able to make a strong showing; but in Illinois, the success of John P.
Altgeld, the Democratic candidate for governor, was due largely to his
advocacy of many of the measures demanded by the People's party,
particularly those relating to labor, and to the support which he
received from the elements which might have been expected to aline
themselves with the Populists. On the Pacific coast, despite the musical
campaign of Clark, Mrs. Lease, and Weaver, California proved deaf to the
People's cause; but in Oregon the party stood second in the lists and in
Washington it ran a strong third.
More than a million votes, nearly nine per cent of the total, were cast
for the Populist candidates in this election--a record for a third party
the year after its birth, and one exceeded only by that of the
Republican party when it appeared for the first time in the national
arena in 1856. Twenty-two electoral votes added point to the showing,
for hitherto, since 1860, third-party votes had been so scattered that
they had affected the choice of President only as a makeweight between
other parties in closely contested States.
A week after the elections General Weaver announced that the Populists
had succeeded far beyond their expectations. "The Republican party," he
asserted, "is as dead as the Whig party was after the Scott campaign of
1852, and from this time forward will diminish in every State of the
Union and cannot make another campaign.... The Populist will now
commence a vigorous campaign and will push the work of organization and
education in every county in the Union." There were those, however, who
believed that the new party had made a great mistake in having anything
to do with either of the old parties, that fusion, particularly of the
sort which resulted in combination tickets, was a compromise with the
enemy, and that more votes had been lost than won by the process. This
feeling found characteristic expression in an editorial in a Minnesota
paper:
Take an audience of republican voters in a schoolhouse where a county
fusion has taken place--or the press is full of the electoral deal--and
the audience will applaud the sentiments of the speaker--but they wont
vote a mongrel or democratic ticket! A wet blanket has been thrown!
"Oh," says someone, "but the democratic party is a party of reform!"
Well, my friend, you better go down south and talk that to the peoples
party where they have been robbed of their franchises by fraud and
outrage!
Ah, and there the peoples party fused the republicans!!!
Oh whitewash! Where is thy lime-kiln, that we may swab off the dark
blemishes of the hour!! Aye, and on the whited wall, draw thee a picture
of power and beauty--Cleveland, for instance, thanking the peoples party
for all the favors gratuitously granted by our mongrel saints in
speckled linen and green surtouts.
As time gave perspective, however, the opinion grew that 1892 had
yielded all that could possibly have been hoped. The lessons of the
campaign may have been hard, but they had been learned, and, withal, a
stinging barb had been thrust into the side of the Republican party, the
organization which, in the minds of most crusaders, was principally
responsible for the creation and nurture of their ills. It was generally
determined that in the next campaign Populism should stand upon its own
feet; Democratic and Republican votes should be won by conversion of
individuals to the cause rather than by hybrid amalgamation of parties
and preelection agreements for dividing the spoils. But it was just this
fusion which blinded the eyes of the old party leaders to the
significance of the Populist returns. Democrats, with a clear majority
of electoral votes, were not inclined to worry about local losses or to
value incidental gains; and Republicans felt that the menace of the
third party was much less portentous than it might have been as an
independent movement.