S2E4 Capital and Labor Part 2 - Populism and the People's Party
Episode 4: Capital and Labor Part 2 - Populism and the People's Party
The episode delves into the intricate tapestry of the People's Party and the burgeoning populism that emerged during the Gilded Age, a period marked by stark economic disparity and social upheaval. We explore the profound grievances of American farmers, who felt increasingly beleaguered by monopolistic practices and a deflationary currency tethered to the gold standard, thus igniting a grassroots movement aimed at restoring their economic autonomy. Central to our discussion is the formidable William Jennings Bryan, whose impassioned oratory, particularly his iconic "Cross of Gold" speech, galvanized the masses and crystallized the populist vision of a government that actively champions the interests of the common folk against the encroaching tide of corporate power. As we navigate through the historical complexities, we also examine how the populist movement's demands—ranging from the direct election of senators to the nationalization of railroads—echo through time, influencing future reforms during the Progressive Era. Join us as we traverse this pivotal epoch, where the clash of agrarian ideals and industrial capitalism not only shaped the political landscape of the time but continues to resonate in contemporary discourses on economic justice and democracy.
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Takeaways:
- The rise of the People's Party epitomized a grassroots response to the overwhelming economic pressures faced by farmers during the Gilded Age, illustrating a profound discontent with the prevailing capitalist structure.
- William Jennings Bryan's fervent advocacy for free silver emerged as a pivotal moment in American political discourse, encapsulating the struggle between agrarian interests and industrial financial elites.
- The Omaha Platform articulated a revolutionary vision for American democracy, demanding significant reforms such as direct election of senators and a graduated income tax, which resonated with a populace disillusioned by rampant economic inequality.
- The Populist movement represented not merely a reaction to economic hardship but a broader critique of industrial capitalism, seeking to reclaim political agency and economic autonomy for the working class and farmers alike.
- The tensions between the gold standard and bimetallism highlighted the deepening class divide in America, with agrarian debtors advocating for inflationary measures to alleviate their economic burdens, thus framing a critical political battleground.
- Despite the temporary setbacks faced by the Populist movement, its enduring legacy is evident in the subsequent reforms of the Progressive Era, as many of its demands were eventually realized, underscoring the persistent struggle for equity and justice in American society.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Hello, y' all, it's me.
Speaker A:It's me.
Speaker A:It's Dr.
Speaker A:G.
Speaker A:And welcome back to Star Spangled Studies.
Speaker A:This is part two of our Capital and Labor episodes.
Speaker A:And this time we're going to talk about the People's Party, the rise of populism.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about William Jennings Bryan, the gold standard, the rise of socialism, and.
Speaker A:And how the Gilded Age played out overall.
Speaker A:But that is what we're going to get into next.
Speaker A:So let's go.
Speaker A:While industrial workers battled violently to the death, in some cases for their rights in cities and factories, another great wave of discontent was rising from the nation's farmlands.
Speaker A:Farmers still constituted a majority of the American population through the first decade of the 20th century, but now they had found themselves becoming increasingly squeezed by the economic forces of this new industrialized order.
Speaker A:So the grievances of the American farmers of the late 19th century were.
Speaker A:Were numerous, and they were deeply felt.
Speaker A:They felt powerless against what they perceived as the monopolistic practices of the railroads.
Speaker A:Railroads charged freight rates that were super high, and to transport their crops to market was very expensive.
Speaker A:The farmers were also at the mercy of banks and loan sharks, and they struggled under the weight of mortgages and high interest rates, particularly as crop prices continued to fall due to international competition and increased production, not to mention the depressions that were happening as well.
Speaker A:Manufacturers of farm equipment, often protected by tariffs, sold their machinery at even higher prices.
Speaker A:A significant source of their woes was the deflationary currency, largely tied to the gold standard, which meant that the money they had borrowed had to be repaid with dollars that were worth more than increasing their debt burden.
Speaker A:In the south, the crop lean system trapped countless farmers, both black and white, into a cycle of perpetual debt to merchants and landowners.
Speaker A:Out of this widespread distress, the Farmers alliance emerged as a powerful grassroots movement.
Speaker A:We are farmers.
Speaker A: nating in Lampasas, Texas, in: Speaker A:Organizers fanned out across the former Confederacy, also into the Midwest and into the Great Plains, establishing a vast network of local sub alliances.
Speaker A:At its peak, the Farmers alliance claimed a membership of 1.5 million people in 40,000 local groups.
Speaker A:They established over 1,000 different newspapers to disseminate their views and coordinate their efforts.
Speaker A:A key strategy was the formation of a farmers cooperative.
Speaker A:So what is a cooperative?
Speaker A:Well, it meant that you could buy supplies and to market your crops, hoping to bypass the exploitative middlemen and to lower your costs.
Speaker A:These cooperatives had over a million members at their high points.
Speaker A:An equally significant organization that came up at the time but had to be paralleled because of the racism at the time was the Colored Farmers Alliance.
Speaker A:And it formed because the dominant Southern farmers alliances were largely segregated.
Speaker A:And so the Colored Farmers alliance organized as many as a quarter of a million black southern farmers.
Speaker A:These farmers faced not only the same economic hardships, the large railway rents, the debt, the expensive equipment and so forth, but they also had to deal with the burdens of intense racial discrimination that we detailed a couple episodes ago and the violence that came with it as the redeemers took back over the southern states.
Speaker A: dispatch from Mississippi in: Speaker A:The sole offense which called for such a terrible lesson was the organization of a colored Farmers alliance and the attempt to put in practice the plan of patronizing an alliance store.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A: he alliance went on strike in: Speaker A:This tragic episode underscored the severe limitations on black economic and political agency in the growing Jim Crow South.
Speaker A:Even within moments aimed at empowering agricultural class as a whole, black people were not allowed to be a part of it.
Speaker A:But we're going to move on right now to the populist movement.
Speaker A:And the populist movement overall represented more than just economic frustration.
Speaker A:It was a profound critique of the industrialized capitalist system.
Speaker A:But this time it was from the agrarian perspective.
Speaker A:Farmers saw themselves as the backbone, the bedrock of American democracy and what it meant to be and live independent.
Speaker A:The old Jacksonian ideal of the yeoman farmer.
Speaker A:They felt that this system that was growing now was, was rigged against them and it was rigged against the producers that made things in this economy, both the farmers and the laborers.
Speaker A:And it was rigged in favor of the non producing, those that don't do any work, the corporate interests, the railroad interests, the financial interests.
Speaker A:Their movement was attempt to reclaim their economic autonomy and political voice in a rapidly changing nation.
Speaker A:And in response to that, they created the people's party.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:It's interchangeable.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:And they adopted a platform, the Omaha Platform that stands as one of the most radical and comprehensive critiques of Gilded Age America, the preamble of the Omaha Platform, penned by the Minnesota populist Ignatius Donnelly, resonated with a sense of crisis and.
Speaker A:And moral outrage.
Speaker A:Listen to Donnelly's words quote, we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin.
Speaker A:Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench.
Speaker A:The Platform painted a bleak picture of a nation, a nation where the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up the colossal fortunes of a few.
Speaker A:From the same prolific womb of government injustice, we breed two great classes, tramps and millionaires.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:The specific demands of the Omaha Platform were far reaching, and for the time, they were revolutionary.
Speaker A:The Omaha Platform and parts of it are in your reader, so definitely go and check that out.
Speaker A:But here are the things that they wanted.
Speaker A:They wanted financial reform.
Speaker A:They wanted a national currency issued by the government only, free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at 16 to 1 and a graduated income tax.
Speaker A:They wanted postal savings in the banks.
Speaker A:They wanted to increase the money supply to aid debtors and stimulate the economy.
Speaker A:They wanted fairer taxation.
Speaker A:They wanted secure deposits for common people.
Speaker A:They wanted an economic reform that helped them and not just the financiers.
Speaker A:In addition to that, they wanted transportation reform.
Speaker A:They wanted the government to own and operate the railroads.
Speaker A:They wanted to nationalize the railway system because railroads had become monopolies that were making money at the expense of the farmers by ending the monopolistic freight rates.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And operating the railroads in the public good would be a better public service.
Speaker A:This is what they said.
Speaker A:The railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads.
Speaker A:In terms of communication, the government was to own and operate the telegraph and telephone systems.
Speaker A:This was to ensure public access to essential communication networks, similar to the post office and.
Speaker A:And the post offices control by the government to ensure that the mail was delivered.
Speaker A:In terms of land, land is, as the Omaha Platform states, the heritage of the people.
Speaker A:The prohibition of land ownership by aliens was one of their demands.
Speaker A:They also wanted to reclaim the excess of corporate and alien lands and give it to actual farmers and not to be held in speculation to prevent land monopolization.
Speaker A:And speculation would ensure land access for farmers for generations to come.
Speaker A:And last but not least, in terms of political reforms, they wanted the direct election of U.S.
Speaker A:senators.
Speaker A:Spoiler alert.
Speaker A: lection of senators until the: Speaker A:But they wanted to also institute something that wasn't there and maybe you thought it was all the secret ballot or was known at the time as the Australian ballot.
Speaker A:Before when you casted your vote, people would know what your vote was.
Speaker A:It wasn't a secret and now it should be.
Speaker A:They were also wanted to have the issue of initiative and referendum added to things that people could bring towards the government.
Speaker A:Thereby their idea was to make the government more democratic and more responsive to the will of the people, of which they saw the government as just another corrupted arm of men with money and corporations.
Speaker A: Now, in: Speaker A:Weaver, a former Civil War general.
Speaker A:He garnered over 1 million votes and captured 22 electoral votes.
Speaker A:A significant showing for a brand new third party and a clear indication of the depth of of agrarian discontent in the country.
Speaker A:The populace had achieved notable successes in state and congressional elections as well, mostly seen in the western and southern states.
Speaker A: The Panic of: Speaker A:The Omaha platform was far from a mere catalog of grievances.
Speaker A:It articulated a coherent alternative economic and political philosophy that directly challenged the prevailing laissez faire consensus of the Gilded Age.
Speaker A:It demanded a federal government that was not a passive observer who was there just to protect people's property rights, rather that the federal government be an active agent in ensuring the economic fairness of the system, to regulate corporate power to promote the general welfare for all and not a select rich few.
Speaker A:Many of the proposals, such as the graduated income tax of the direct election of senators, were considered radical at the time, but they would eventually be enacted during the Progressive Era, where we're going to jump to in a few episodes.
Speaker A:So it demonstrates the long term influence of the populous insurgency.
Speaker A:The platform was bold and the government should serve the interests of the people rather than the privileged few is something that we still wrestle with today.
Speaker A: The Panic of: Speaker A:And they found that charismatic leader, William Jennings Bryan.
Speaker A:The debates over the system as well as the nation's currency, the gold standard versus the free coinage of silver, is another interesting facet of the debates going on at the time.
Speaker A:So at its simplest then, the gold standard meant that the value of the US dollar was legally fixed to a specific amount of gold.
Speaker A:Paper money could, in theory, be redeemed for that gold.
Speaker A:This system tended to create a relatively stable currency value over the long term, and that was favored by creditors, bankers and traders, who benefited from predictable exchange rates and the protection against inflation.
Speaker A:However, a strict adherence to the gold standard also tended to be, in effect, deflationary, meaning the money supply grew slower than the economy, causing prices to fall and the real value of debts to increase over time.
Speaker A:Bimetallism, or what they called free silver, or what their advocates called it, proposed that the currency be backed by both gold and silver, typically at a fixed mint ratio of 16 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold.
Speaker A:The free part meant that the US Mint would be obligated to coin all silver presented to it.
Speaker A:This would significantly increase the amount of money in circulation, leading to inflation, or, as proponents of this saw it, reflation.
Speaker A:After the damaging periods of deflation that came with being on the gold standard.
Speaker A:This was heavily favored by people in debt, especially farmers, because inflation would decrease the real value of their outstanding loans and mortgages, making it easier for them to repay their debts with cheaper dollars.
Speaker A:As one source explains, farmers wanted inflation because, quote, their existing debts would thus be cheaper.
Speaker A: cause was the coinage act of: Speaker A:Populists and silver advocates later branded this the crime of 73, arguing it was a deliberate move by financial interests to contract the money supply to, to enrich creditors and to harm those with loans.
Speaker A:The fight over monetary policy was in reality a proxy war for the deep class and sectional conflicts we've been talking about in this episode and the last one.
Speaker A:It pitted the agricultural and often debt ridden west and south against the industrial and financially secured Northeast creditors who benefited from a currency that appreciated in value.
Speaker A:Deflation clashed with debtors who sought relief through an expanded inflationary money supply.
Speaker A:Each side believed that their economic survival and their vision for America hung in the balance, making the next election that much more consequential.
Speaker A:And it's into this charged atmosphere then, that we see William Jennings Bryan step in.
Speaker A:He was a young congressman from Nebraska and he possessed extraordinary oratorial gifts, and he had a deep, almost evangelical connection with rural and working class voters.
Speaker A:He was a devout Christian and his speeches often wove together economic arguments with moral and religious appeals.
Speaker A:He quickly became the leading national voice for the free silver cause.
Speaker A:His ambition and self belief were evident.
Speaker A:He once wrote to his wife, quote, last night I found that I Had a power over the audience.
Speaker A:I can move them as I chose.
Speaker A:Go.
Speaker A:God grant that I may use it wisely.
Speaker A: vention in Chicago In July of: Speaker A:And this moment, the party itself was deeply divided over the currency issue with an incumbent gold standard president, Grover Cleveland.
Speaker A:Deeply unpopular with the party's agrarian wing, the populist movement had demonstrated the widespread appeal for free silver.
Speaker A:And Brian seized on the opportunity.
Speaker A:His cross of gold speech was a tour de force of political rhetoric.
Speaker A:It was a defense passionately defensive of the free silver and a plea for the common man against the dominance of financial interests in the country.
Speaker A:He famously said, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.
Speaker A:You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
Speaker A:This electrifying conclusion, equating the gold standard with the suffering of Christ, Galvanized the convention and secured him the democratic presidential nomination at the age of 36.
Speaker A:Other memorable lines from this speech, which you can read in your reader, Articulated his populace and agrarian worldview.
Speaker A:He championed the farmer.
Speaker A:He said, burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic.
Speaker A:But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
Speaker A:He also outlined a contrasting economic philosophy.
Speaker A:There are two ideas of government.
Speaker A:There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well to do prosperous, Their prosperity will leak through on those below.
Speaker A:The democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
Speaker A:Interesting ideas indeed.
Speaker A: The: Speaker A:Brian, nominated by both the democratic and the populace, which chose to call it a fusion strategy, faced The Republican William McKinley, who championed the interests of business and staunchly defended the gold standard.
Speaker A:Brian embarked on an unprecedented national speaking tour, Delivering hundreds of speeches and reaching millions of voters directly, Something more like what we see today.
Speaker A:McKinley, in contrast, conducted what historians have called a front porch campaign, where he basically gave speeches on his front porch in his home from Canton, Ohio.
Speaker A:His campaign was skillfully managed by the wealthy industrialist Mark Hanna, who amassed an enormous war chest campaign fund from business interests who were fearful of Brian and the populist's radicalism and its effects of what it would have on business interests.
Speaker A:The election saw an exceptionally high turnout, with 79% of eligible voters casting a ballot and in some areas supportive of Bryan and the populace.
Speaker A:Turnout averaged 90%.
Speaker A:Despite his passionate appeals and his campaigning, McKinley won a decisive victory.
Speaker A: with the Gold Standard act of: Speaker A: The: Speaker A:The fusion strategy fusing with the Democratic party while uniting silver forces behind Bryan ultimately led to the decline in the absorption of the populist party into the Democratic party itself, and it no longer served to be an independent third party.
Speaker A:The election, however, represented another critical turning point.
Speaker A:The forces of industrial capitalism and finances had decisively triumphed over the agrarian and populist challenge, setting the course for American policy economically well into the 20th century.
Speaker A:While populism as a political party vanished, the grievances that it articulated and many of its reforms, such as a graduated income tax, the direct election of senators, and greater government regulation of corporations, would resurface in less than 10 years and find new champions during the Progressive Era, attesting to the long term impact.
Speaker A:Even though it was defeated as the 19th century started to give way to the 20th, the critiques of industrial capitalism and its stark inequalities did not dissipate with the decline of populism.
Speaker A:Instead, they found a new and more often radical expression in the American socialist movement, drawing inspiration from the ideals of Karl Marx, who described the new industrial economy as a worldwide class struggle between the proletariat or workers and and the bourgeoisie, the capitalists.
Speaker A:American Socialists advocated for a collective ownership of the means of production, the means of production being factories, mines and railroads as the only way to end exploitation and ensure a fair distribution of wealth.
Speaker A:Now at the forefront of the American socialism movement was Eugene V.
Speaker A:Debs, who we mentioned earlier.
Speaker A:His journey from a labor leader of the American railway union to a committed socialist was forged in the crucible of the Pullman strike we detailed last episode.
Speaker A:His imprisonment for defying the federal injunction led him to study socialist writings and conclude that the entire capitalist system, not just individual employers, was the overall problem.
Speaker A:Debs became the Socialist Party's most prominent voice and its perennial presidential candidate.
Speaker A:He famously declared, I am for socialism because I am for humanity.
Speaker A:I have been cursed with the rain of gold long enough.
Speaker A:For Debs and his fellow socialists, the goal was nothing less than the overthrow of the capitalist system and the emancipation of the working class.
Speaker A:From wage slavery.
Speaker A:Socialism's appeal extended beyond industrial workers.
Speaker A:It attracted farmers still struggling with debt, intellectuals disturbed by the materialism and the inequality of the Gilded Age, and also brought in reformers who saw in socialism a more fundamental solution to societal ills that mainstream political parties did not offer.
Speaker A:Prominent Americans such as author and activist Helen Keller, even The novelist Upton St.
Speaker A:Clair and the adventurer Jack London all embraced socialist ideals.
Speaker A:The socialist impulse manifested in various organizational forms.
Speaker A: rty of America was founded in: Speaker A:Carrying on the American third party tradition, the spa, as it was known, achieved notable but limited electoral successes.
Speaker A:Socialist mayors were elected in 33 cities and towns across the country.
Speaker A:Two socialists, Victor Berger from Wisconsin and Meyer London from New York, actually won congressional seats as a presidential candidate.
Speaker A: nearly a million votes in the: Speaker A:The socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, edited by Julius A.
Speaker A:Whaleand reach a vast audience popularizing socialist ideas.
Speaker A:Whelan captured the optimistic spirit of the movement when he socialism is coming.
Speaker A:It's coming like a prairie fire, and nothing can stop it.
Speaker A:You can feel it in the air.
Speaker A: e known, which was founded in: Speaker A:Led by figures like William D.
Speaker A:Or Big Bill Haywood, as he was called, the IWW advocated for one big union that would unite all workers, skill and unskilled, regardless of race or gender.
Speaker A:Like the Knights of Labor before they rejected the AFL's craft unionism and political graduism.
Speaker A:We talked about last time and instead called for direct action, including massive strikes and, some argued, sabotage, to ultimately overthrow capitalism and establish a worker run industrial democracy.
Speaker A:The Wobblies were particularly active among marginalized workers in industries like logging, mining, and in many parts of agriculture.
Speaker A:And they faced fierce and, as you would expect, often violent opposition from their employers and from the government authorities overall.
Speaker A:Maybe among the most compelling of the radical voices of this era was a woman named Lucy Parsons.
Speaker A:She was born in slavery in Texas, and she married Albert Parsons, a white radical labor organizer.
Speaker A:They moved to Chicago, where they became central figures in the city's anarchist and labor movements.
Speaker A:After Albert Parsons was controversially arrested and executed for the conspiracy following the Haymarket riot, Lucy Parsons emerged as a powerful orator, a writer, an organizer in her own right, tirelessly advocating for the rights of workers for African Americans and women.
Speaker A:Parsons critique of capitalism was deeply intertwined with her understanding of gender and racial oppression.
Speaker A:She famously argued that women under capitalism were slaves of the slaves facing the double burden of exploitation.
Speaker A: In her: Speaker A:We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.
Speaker A:Wherever wages are to be reduced in the capitalist class, they will use women to reduce them, end quote.
Speaker A:Her vision for change was revolutionary.
Speaker A:She had little faith in achieving fundamental transformation through the ballot box or legislative reform, viewing both of these as instruments of state capitalist oppression.
Speaker A:Instead, Parsons advocated for direct action by the workers themselves to seize the means of control and the means of production.
Speaker A:She told the iww, I believe that if every man and woman who works should decide in their minds that they shall have that which right belongs to them, then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army.
Speaker A:The emergence of diverse socialist and anarchist thinkers and activists like Eugene Debs and Lucy Parsons reveals that the challenge of industrial capitalism in America was far from monolithic.
Speaker A:It encompassed a spectrum of ideologies, from Deb's commitment to democratic socialism and electoral politics aiming for a gradual transformation of society.
Speaker A:To Parsons more radical anarcho syndicalism, which emphasized direct worker action, self emancipation, and the complete dismantling of both capitalist and state structures.
Speaker A:This ideological diversity reflected differing analysis of the nature of power and oppression, and it showed varying strategies for achieving what was new and more just social order in their eyes.
Speaker A:The presence of these radical voices, though often marginalized and fiercely opposed, underscores the depth of disillusionment with the Gilded Age capitalism and the fervent multifaceted search for alternatives to the system itself.
Speaker A:The late 19th and early 20th centuries in America were a period of breathtaking transformation.
Speaker A:Industrial capitalism, with its towering factories, the sprawling railroads, the skyscraping cities, made the nation's economy and its social fabric change.
Speaker A:It unleashed unprecedented productivity and created immense new wealth for a select few.
Speaker A:Yet this march of capital also caused and carved deep social fissures.
Speaker A:It generated widespread poverty.
Speaker A:It harbored dangerous working conditions.
Speaker A:And there was a chasm of inequality that shocked even contemporary observers of the time, like Henry George, who saw the great enigma of our times in the association of poverty with progress, end quote.
Speaker A:The responses to these seismic shifts was equally dramatic.
Speaker A:Workers pushed to their limits, organized in unions like the Knights of Labor and the afl, engaging in bitter and often bloody strikes.
Speaker A:Farmers caught in the vice of debt and falling prices, rose up in the populist movement demanding radical reforms to curb corporate power and democratize the economy as articulated in the very bold and radical at the time Omaha Platform.
Speaker A:The struggles of this era over fair wages and safe working conditions, the right to organize the distribution of wealth, the role of government in regulating economy, and the very definition of a just and democratic society were not resolved in the era itself, and some would say they haven't been resolved to this day.
Speaker A:The forces of capital, backed by the power of the state, prevailed in the short term.
Speaker A:Yet these conflicts laid the essential groundwork for many of the major reforms of the 20th century, from the Progressive Era to the New Deal and beyond.
Speaker A:All topics that we will cover in later episodes.
Speaker A:As our textbook aptly summarizes, industrial capitalism remade the United States, forcing all Americans, from the wealthiest titans of industry to the most impoverished laborers, to confront a new world of work and labor.
Speaker A:The questions they grappled with, the the battles they fought and the aspirations they voice continue to echo in our own time.
Speaker A:The Gilded Age and the era of capital versus labor was not just a historical period, it was the forging ground of modern America, and its legacy is woven into the ongoing debates about the kind of a nation we are in and the kind of a nation we strive to be.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me today on Star Spangled Studies.
Speaker A:I'll see y' all in the past.
