THE FARMERS' CAUSE

The Republican protective policy had its strongest supporters among the industrial communities of the East where the profits of manufacture were distributed. In the West, where the agricultural staples had produced a simplicity of interests somewhat resembling those of the Old South in its cotton crop, the advantage of protection was questioned even in Republican communities. The Granger States and the Prairie States were normally Republican, but they had experienced falling prices for their corn and wheat, as the South had for its cotton, in the eighties, and had listened encouragingly to the advocates of tariff reform. Cleveland's Message of 1887 had affected them strongly. Through 1888 and 1889 country papers shifted to the support of revision, while farmers' clubs and agricultural journals began to denounce protection. The Republican leaders felt the discontent, and brought forward the agricultural schedules of the McKinley Bill to appease it, but dissatisfaction increased in 1889 and 1890 through most of the farming sections.

The farmer in the South was directly affected by the falling price of cotton, and retained his hereditary aversion to the protective tariff. He could not believe that either party was working in his interests. The dominant issues of the eighties did not touch his problems. He was not interested in civil service reform, which was a product of a differentiated society, in which professional expertness was recognized and valued. He knew and cared little about administration, and being used to a multitude of different tasks himself saw no reason why the offices should not be passed around. In this view American farmers generally concurred.

The Southern farmer was without interest in the pension system and was prone to criticize it. The Fourteenth Amendment had forced the repudiation of the whole Confederate debt, leaving the Southern veterans compelled to pay taxes that were disbursed for the benefit of Union veterans and debarred from enjoying similar rewards. They could not turn Republican, yet in their own party they saw men who failed to represent them.

In the North agriculture was depressed and the farmers were discontented. In many regions the farms were worn out. Scientific farming was beginning to be talked about to some extent, but was little practiced. The improvements in transportation had brought the younger and more fertile lands of the West into competition with the East for the city markets. Cattle, raised on the plains and slaughtered at Kansas City or Chicago, were offered for sale in New York and Philadelphia. Western fruits of superior quality were competing with the common varieties of the Eastern orchards. Here, as in the South, the farmers saw the parties quarreling over issues that touched the manufacturing classes, but disregarding those of agriculture.

It was in the West, however, that agricultural discontent was keenest. In no other region were uniform conditions to be found over so large an area. The Granger States had shown how uniformity in discontent may bring forth political readjustments. The new region of the late eighties lay west of Missouri and Iowa, where the railroads had stimulated settlement along the farther edge of the arable prairies. Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and the Dakotas had passed into a boom period about 1885, and had pushed new farms into regions that could not in ordinary years produce a crop. Only blinded enthusiasts believed that the climate of the sub-humid plains was changing. In good years crops will grow as far west as the Rockies: in bad, they dry up in eastern Kansas.

It served the interest of the railroads to promote new settlements, and speculation got the better of prudence. The rainfall coÖperated for a few years, enabling the newcomers to break the sod and set up their dwellings and barns. The quality of the settlers increased the dangers attendant upon the community.

Under earlier conditions in the westward migration each frontier had been settled, chiefly, by occupants of the preceding frontier, who knew the climate and understood the conditions of successful farming. The greater distances in the farther West, and the ease of access which the railroads gave, brought a less capable class of farmers into the plains settlements. Some were amateurs; others knew a different type of agriculture. The population which had to deal with this new region was less likely to succeed than that of any previous frontier.

The frontier of the eighties presented new obstacles in its doubtful rainfall and its experimental farmers. It contained as well the conditions that had always prevailed along the edge of settlement. Transportation was vital to its life,—as vital as it had been in the Granger States,—yet was nearly as unregulated. The Interstate Commerce Law of 1887 had little noticeable immediate effect. Discrimination, unreasonable rates, and overcapitalization were still grievances that affected the West. The new activity of organized labor, shown in the Western strikes of 1885 and 1886, added another obstacle to the easy prosperity of farmers who needed uninterrupted train service. The germs of an anti-railroad movement were well distributed.

An anti-corporation movement, too, might reasonably be expected in this new frontier. Producing only the raw products of agriculture, its inhabitants bought most of the commodities in use from distant sections. They were impressed with the cost of what they had to buy and the low price of what they sold. They were ready listeners to agitators against the trusts.

Like all frontiers, this one was financed on borrowed money. The pioneer was dependent on credit, was hopeful and speculative in his borrowings, built more towns and railroads than he needed, and loaded himself with a mountain of debt that could be met only after a long series of prosperous years.

By necessity he was readily converted by the arguments of inflation. Greenback inflation had run its course, and after the resumption of specie payments in 1879 had been only a political threat without foundation or many followers. A Greenback party, affiliating with labor and anti-monopoly interests, had nominated Weaver in 1880 and Butler in 1884, but even inflationists had not voted for the ticket in large number. A new phase of inflation had become more interesting than the greenbacks, and had led to the demand for the free coinage of silver.

Among the demands of the Western farmer, whose greatest problem was the payment of his debts, none was more often heard than that for more and cheaper money. The Eastern farmer, though less burdened with debt, knew that more money would make higher prices, and believed it would bring larger profits. The Southern farmer, heavily in debt, not so much for purposes of development and permanent improvements, as because he regularly mortgaged his crop in advance and allowed the rural storekeeper to finance him, was also interested in inflation as a common remedy. Together the farmers of all sections kept pressing on the parties for free silver after the passage of the Bland-Allison Bill in 1878. As the price of silver declined the gain which silver inflation would bring them increased, and they were joined by another class of producers whose profits came from mining the silver bullion.

The silver mines furnished important industries in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California, and were highly valued in most of the Western communities. As their output declined in value after 1873, their owners turned to the United States Government for aid and protection, not differing much from the manufacturers of the East in their hope for aid. The restoration of silver coinage was the method by which they desired their protection, and they asserted that Congress could coin all the silver and yet maintain it at a parity with gold. They were allies with the farmer inflationists so far as means of relief were concerned, and both failed to see how incompatible were their real aims. The miners wanted free silver in order to increase the price of silver and their profits; the farmers wanted it to increase the volume of money and reduce its value. If either was correct in his prophecy as to the result of free coinage, the other was doomed to disappointment. But the combined demand was reiterated through the eighties. While times were good it was not serious, but any shock to the prosperity or credit of the West was likely to stimulate the one movement in which all the discontented concurred.

The crisis which precipitated Western discontent into politics came in 1889 when rainfall declined and crops failed. In the Arkansas Valley, with an average fall of eighteen inches, the total for this year was only thirteen inches. General Miles, who had chased hostile Indians across the plains for more than twenty years, and who had seen the new villages push in, mile by mile, saw the terrible results of drought. First suffering, then mortgage, then foreclosure and eviction, he prophesied. "And should this impending evil continue for a series of years," he wrote, "no one can anticipate what may follow." The glowing promises of the early eighties were falsified, whole towns and counties were deserted, and the farmers turned to the Government for aid.

The Western upheaval followed a period in which both great parties had been attacked as misrepresentative. There was a widely spread belief that politicians were dishonest and that the Government was conducted for the favored classes. It was natural that the discontented should take up one of the agricultural organizations already existing, as the Grangers had done, and convert it to their political purpose.

Since the high day of the Granger movement there had always been associations among the farmers and organizations striving to get their votes. The Grange had itself continued as a social and economic bond after its attack upon the railroads. There had been a Farmers' Union and an Agricultural Wheel. The great success of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor had had imitators who were less successful because farming had been too profitable to give much room for organized discontent, while in times of prosperity the farmer was an individualist. A new activity among the farmers' papers was now an evidence of a growing desire to get the advantage of coÖperation.

The greatest farmer organization of the eighties was the Farmers' Alliance, a loose federation of agricultural clubs that reflected local conditions, West and South. In the South, it was noted in 1888 as "growing rapidly," but "only incidentally of political importance." In Dakota, it had been active since 1885, conducting for its members fire and hail insurance, a purchasing department, and an elevator company. In Texas it was building cotton and woolen mills. The machinery of this organization was used by the farmers in stating their common cause, and as their aims broadened it merged, during 1890, into a People's Party. In Kansas, during the summer of this year, the movement broke over the lines of both old parties and had such success that its promoters thought a new political party had been born.

Agricultural discontent, growing with the hard times of 1889, had been noticed, but there had been no means of measuring it until Congress adjourned after the passage of the McKinley Bill and the members came home to conduct the congressional campaign of 1890. They found that the recent law had become the chief issue before them. The so-called popular demand for protection, revealed in the election of 1888, had after all been based upon a minority of the votes cast. The tariff and the way it had been passed were used against them by the Democrats and the Farmers' Alliance.

The act was passed so close to election day that its real influence could not then be seen and its opponents could not be confuted when they told of the evils it would do. Before the election of 1888, as again in 1892, Republican manufacturers frightened their workmen by threats of closing down if free-traders won. This time the tables were turned against them by the recital of prospective high prices.

Corrupt methods in framing the schedules furnished an influential argument throughout the West. Even in the East the tariff reformers asserted that undue favors had been done for greedy interests; that manufacturers who had bought immunity by their contributions to Quay's campaign fund had been rewarded with increased protection. The farmers believed these charges, plausible though unprovable, for they were disposed to believe that both the great parties were interested only in selfish exploitation of the Government to the advantage of politicians.

In every State Republican candidates had to meet this fire as well as the local issues. In Maine, Reed met it and was elected with enlarged majority from a community that wanted protection. In Ohio, McKinley lost his seat, partly from the revulsion of feeling, but more because the Democrats, who controlled the State Legislature, had gerrymandered his district against him. Cannon, of Illinois, who had already served nine terms and was to serve ten more, lost his seat, and LaFollette, of Wisconsin, whom the protectionists had made much of, was checked early in a promising career because of an educational issue in his State. Pennsylvania, protectionist at heart, elected the Democratic ex-governor Pattison again in one of its revulsions against the Quay machine.

The Democrats defeated the Republicans in the East while the Farmers' Alliance undermined them in the West. In Kansas and Nebraska the Alliance controlled the result, sent their own men to Washington, and secured the Kansas Legislature which returned the first Populist Senator. In several States fusion tickets were successful with Democratic and Alliance support. In the South, Democrats found it aided them in winning nomination—for the real Southern election was within this party and not at the polls—to assert that they were and had been farmers.

When the votes were counted the extent of the reaction was realized. The last Congress had contained a safe majority of Republicans in each house. The new Congress, the Fifty-second, chosen in 1890, had lost the high-tariff majority in the lower body. Only 88 Republicans were elected, against 236 Democrats and 8 of the Alliance. The Republicans retained the Senate partly because of the "rotten borough" States, Idaho and Wyoming, which they had just admitted.

The greatest factor in the landslide was the tariff, but this was, largely, only the occasion for an outburst of discontent that had been piling up for a decade. The dominant party was punished because things went wrong, because the trusts throve and labor was uneasy, because prices declined, because there were scandals in the Public Lands and Pension Bureaus, and because the rainfall had diminished on the plains. The new House elected a Georgian, Crisp, as Speaker, and the second half of Harrison's term passed quietly. Among the people, however, there was much conjecture upon the future of the Farmers' Alliance. A convention at Cincinnati, six months after the election, tried to unite the new element and form a third party of importance.

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Union between the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance for political purposes was the aim of the promoters of the People's Party, a party that was to right all the wrongs from which the plain people suffered and restore the Government to their hands. Until the next presidential election they had time to organize for the crusade.

The United States, by 1890, had begun to feel the influence of the agencies of communication in breaking down sectionalism and letting in the light of comparative experience. Men who survived from the generation that flourished before the war found their cherished ideas undermined or shattered. In public life, administration, literature, and religion the old order was being swept away. The United States had become a nation because it could not avoid it. Even the Congregational churches, with whom parish autonomy was vital, had seen fit to erect a National Council. Every important activity of trade had become national, and the only agency that retained its old localism was the law, which must cope with the new order. In many ways the trust problem was the result of an inadequate legal system which left a wide "twilight zone" between the local capacity of the State and the activity of the Nation. Yet the Nation was unfolding and expanding its powers. Railroad control, immigration and labor control, agricultural experiment, irrigation, and reclamation were only samples of the new lines of activity that created new administrative machinery and advanced abreast of the new idea of appointment because of merit and tenure during good behavior. Men who continued to see the center of political gravity in the State Governments were behind the times.

An indigenous literature was rising in the United States. Dickens had lived long enough to recognize the spirit of a new school in The Luck of Roaring Camp, and The Outcasts of Poker Flat, which appeared in 1868. Before 1890 the fame of their author, Bret Harte, was secure. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), too, had seen the native field and had exploited it. The New England school, Emerson and Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, lived into or through the eighties, but were less robust in their American flavor than their younger contemporaries who picked subjects from the border. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and the Connecticut Yankee were life as well as art. Another writer of the generation, William Dean Howells, gave The Rise of Silas Lapham to the world in 1885, and revealed a different stratum of the new society, while the vogue of Little Lord Fauntleroy tells less of the life therein described than of the outlook of American readers.

Pure literature was in 1890 turning more and more to American subjects; applied literature was searching for causes and explanations. The writings of Henry George, particularly his Progress and Poverty, brought him from obscurity to prominence in six years, and by 1885 had "formed a noteworthy epoch in the history of economic thought." The success of Bellamy's utopian romance proved the avidity of the reading public. Parkman and Bancroft, of the older generation, Henry Adams, McMaster, and Rhodes, of the younger, led the way through history to an understanding of American conditions. Economics, sociology, and government were beginning to have a literature of their own, the last receiving its strongest impulse from the thoughtful American Commonwealth of James Bryce.

In the field of periodical literature the rising American taste was supporting a wider range of magazines. The old and dignified North American Review was still an arena for political discussion. During 1890 it printed an important interchange of views between William E. Gladstone and James G. Blaine, on the merits of a protective tariff. Harper's Monthly and the Atlantic had given employment to the leading men of letters since before the Civil War. Leslie's and Harper's Weeklies had added illustration to news, making their place during the sixties, while the Independent held its own as the leading religious newspaper and the Nation appeared as a journal of criticism. Scribner's and the Century had been added more recently to the list of monthlies, the latter running its great series of reminiscences of the battles and leaders of the Civil War and its life of Lincoln by Nicolay and Hay. Improvements in typography and illustration, combined with greater ease in collecting the news and distributing the product, made all the periodicals more nearly national.

The periodicals, in a measure, took the place as national leaders that the newspapers had before. The newspaper as a personal expression was passing away, as the great editors of Horace Greeley's generation died. The younger editors were making investments rather than journalistic tools out of their papers. Trade and advertisement used this vehicle to approach their customers. News collecting became more prompt and adequate, but the opinion of the papers dwindled. They bought their news from syndicates or associations, as they bought paper or ink. The counting-house was coming to outrank the editorial room in their management.

Through the new literature the changing nature of American life was portrayed, and as the life reshaped itself under nationalizing influences theology lost much of its old narrowness. Among religious novels Robert Elsmere was perhaps most widely read. The struggle between orthodoxy and the new criticism had got out of the control of the professional theologians and had permeated the laity. A revised version of the Old and New Testaments gave new basis for textual discussion. The influence of the scientific generalizations of Darwin and his school had reached the Church and forced upon it a rephrasing of its views. It was becoming less dangerous for men to admit their belief in scientific process. The orthodox churches lost nothing in popularity as the struggle advanced, and outside them new teachers proclaimed new religions as they had ever done in America.

The greatest of the new religions was that of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, in whose teachings may be found a religious parallel to the political revolt of the People's Party. Christian Science was a reaction from the "vertebrate Jehovah" of the Puritans to a more comfortable and responsive Deity. It was the outgrowth of a well-fed and prosperous society, presenting itself to the ordinary mind as "primarily a religion of healing."

Intellectual, spiritual, economic, and political revolt were common in America in 1890, as they must have been after the industrial revolution of the last ten years. The whole nation was once more acting as a unit, for the South had outlived the worst results of war and reorganization and was again developing on independent lines. The immediate problem was the effect of the revolt upon political control.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE