Lesson 4

Politics in the Age of Enterprise

The adjectives sterile and dreary are often applied to the nations political history
between 1877 and 1892. As your textbook indicates, the 1880s heralded no Lincolns,
no great national debates (p. 584). This was an era when minimalist government on the
national level was championed in all three branches of the federal government, but
especially in the courts. Consequently, in my US history lectures, I devote little attention
to national elections, political parties, or Congressional debates in this era, just as your
textbook devotes little attention to them. In my Utah history course, on the other hand, I
devote considerable attention to the 1880s as the nightmare decade for Mormons.
Mormons never felt the oppressive hand of the federal government more heavily than in
the 1880s, when Congress stripped them of their civil rights and disincorporated their
church as part of its anti-polygamy crusade, but the experiences of Mormons vis-a-vis
the federal government in this decade were unusual.

The 1890s, on the other hand, were a vibrant, engaging era in American political history,
witnessing the emergence of one of the most influential third parties in the nations
historythe Peoples Partyand the watershed election of 1896, which sharply
demarcated the Democratic and Republican parties. How did the nation move from the
sterile politics of the 1870s and 1880s to the vibrant political atmosphere of the 1890s?
That is one of the key issues that this chapter explores.

As the Mormon experience in the 1880s suggests, the three branches of the federal
government were more interventionist late in the nineteenth century than is sometimes
assumed. But it was at the state and local levels in the 1870s and 1880s that we find
the most evidence of a rich political culture characterized by exceptionally high voter
turnout and intense party loyalty rooted in ethnic, cultural, and religious identity. Moral
issues including liquor and Sabbath observance along with debates over the meaning of
citizenship for women and African Americans were hotly debated in this era. These
developments, combined with the worst economic depression of the nineteenth century,
set the stage for the vibrant political renaissance of the 1890s. In that decade, the
Peoples Party advocated a larger and more activist federal government capable of
regulating the economy and promoting social justice.
 Learning Outcomes
1. Explain how the minimalist government of the 1870s and 1880s (pp. 58485)
reflected the ideology of individualism and conservatism of the Supreme Court as
described in your text (pp. 587-88).

2. Describe the impact of religion, ethnicity, gender, and race upon American politics
from the 1870s to the 1890s.

3. Account for the rise of Populism, discuss Populist ideology and explain the
impact of Populism upon Southern and national politicsin the 1890s.

Reading Assignment
Read chapter 19 of your textbook, "Politics in the Age of Enterprise," along with the
discussion material in this manual.

4.1: Government
As you read your textbooks discussion of national politics between 1877 and 1893 on
pp. 58386, you will learn that the federal government was small, that presidents
viewed themselves largely as managers rather than agenda setters, and that Congress
was inefficient. This type of minimalist government promoted the economic interests of
the nations businessmen, industrialists, and railroad executives as they pursued wealth
largely free of taxation and regulation. It offered little protection, however, for consumers
and laborers.

On pp. 58995, your text demonstrates that the issues that mattered most to voters in
the 1870s and 1880s often involved morals and were intensely emotional. The old party
of abolitionism and reform, the Republican Party, attracted most Protestants and native-
born Americans, and developed a reputation for favoring restrictive, morally based
legislation. On the other hand, the Democratic Party, with its championing of individual
liberty from moral restraint, attracted the vast majority of immigrant Catholics. Mormons,
too, were put off by the Republicans uncompromising attack on polygamy and
overwhelmingly favored the Democrats. Moral issues, most notably the temperance
movement and the fight against prostitution, engaged women and drew them into the
political arena as well.
In the South, no issue mattered as much as race. Your textbook describes the racist
arguments and developments that led to the emergence of an essentially one-party,
solidly Democratic South. Pay particular attention to the ways in which the Populist
Partys attempt to forge a bi-racial, non-elite political coalition in the South (described on
pp. 59697) galvanized a wave of racist campaign rhetoric and violence. When the
Populists argued that black and white farmers and laborers had the same economic
interests, they discovered that race counted for more than class in Southern politics.

Your textbook first mentions Populism in the context of Southern politics on p. 596, but it
does not define Populism adequately until pp. 602603. As your text points out,
Populism as a political movement, also known as the Peoples Party, grew out of the
social and economic organizations known as alliances that arose on the Plains and in
the South in the latter part of the 1870s and in the 1880s. While the Southern Alliance
by 1890 claimed 3 million white members and its affiliate, the National Colored Farmers
Alliance, claimed an additional 1.2 million members, the Farmers Alliance of the
Northwest, headquartered in Omaha and confined to the Great Plains, registered well
under 1 million members: 130,000 in Kansas and smaller numbers in Nebraska,
Minnesota, and the Dakotas. In some states, alliance representatives fielded candidates
for political office. Despite the numerical superiority of the Southern Alliances, they were
less successful in state politics than the Northwestern Alliance. By 1890, the
Northwestern Alliance wielded decisive political power in the Nebraska, Minnesota, and
South Dakota legislatures. Southern populists did field candidates in state and local
elections in 1892, but support for those candidates among white alliance members was
weak because they feared that voting for a third political party could tip the balance of
power in favor of the Republicans, empowering blacks at the expense of whites.

Your texts authors describe Populist ideology as class-based, noting its explicit class
appeal (603). This characterization reflects revisionist scholarship of the 1970s and
1980s, which celebrated the economically subversive elements of the economic
cooperatives organized by the alliances. Historians in the 1950s and 1960s had
denigrated the Populists as rubes who irrationally lashed out against the railroads and
trusts rather than rationally tracing their economic plight to swings in the international
market. The revisionists argued that the members of the alliances had developed a
sophisticated critique of capitalism and accurately characterized its injustices. Populists
were not class-based revolutionaries in the Marxist sense, though; they sought to unite
small business owners, employers, farmers, and workers as a producing class, whereas
Marxism pitted wage laborers against all business owners.
The Populist Platform of 1892, known as the Omaha Platform because it was embraced
at the partys convention in that city, was a path-breaking document in American political
history because it advocated a greatly expanded role for the federal government,
something that came to fruition in the twentieth century. The platform called for a
coalition of urban and rural workers and producers, or the plain people of America. A
vast conspiracy of government, bankers, and big business had brought the nation to
the verge of moral, political, and material ruin, the document declared. The fruits of the
toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up the fortunes for a few. In its call for an
expanded government that would fight oppression, injustice, and poverty, the
platform anticipated the direction of twentieth-century reform movements, including the
Progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelts
New Deal, and Lyndon Johnsons Great Society. Your textbook summarizes the reforms
called for in the Omaha Platform itself, but the Populist convention also endorsed ten
additional resolutions, including the adoption of the secret ballot (p. 594), immigration
restriction, the eight-hour day for industrial workers, the initiative and the referendum
reforms that would enable the electorate to enact and repeal laws directly, term limits for
the president and vice president, and direct election of senators by the people (at the
time the state legislatures selected the US Senators from their states). While Populists
rightly took credit for promoting these reforms, all of the reform ideas, aside from the
subtreasury system (see p. 602), had originated with other groups.

The map on p. 602 in your textbook shows the strength of the Populist vote in the 1892
presidential election in the West. Voting in Texas was typical of the southern states,
where the Populist showing was much poorer than might have been expected given the
large number of Alliance members in the South. Note that the Populists enjoyed their
greatest victories in Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado, key mining states where the
Populists support for free silver resonated nicely with the electorate. While the Populists
fared quite well in some states, nationwide their candidate for President secured only
8.5 percent of the popular vote.

It was not so much the Populists victories in a handful of states as it was the worst
depression of the nineteenth century (189397), President Grover Clevelands siding
with big business, and his callous disregard for the unemployed (p. 605) that breathed
new life into the Populist claim of a conspiracy of big business, bankers, and
government against the plain people. During the depression of 189397 the nations
gold reserves dropped by 60 percent, 6 percent of the nations banks failed,
unemployment ranged from 20 to 25 percent, 33 percent of the nations railroads went
bankrupt, and the price of farm products plummeted. Influenced by the appeal of
Populism in his home state of Nebraska, Democrat William Jennings Bryan
expropriated one of the Populists slogans, Equal Rights to All, Special Privilege to
None, and made free silver the core of his quest for the Democratic Presidential
nomination in 1896. In his speech at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1896,
known as the Cross of Gold Speech, Bryan adopted the Populist rhetoric of the toiling
masses arrayed against special interests. He masterfully related it to the gold and silver
standard, blending evangelical Christian rhetoric with the revolutionary tradition of 1776.
(See cartoon on p. 606). Bryan asserted,
It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the
courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their
descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent
than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we
care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism [a monetary system based
upon silver as well as gold] is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we
reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism,
and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come
out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the
uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by
the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, 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, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold (Bryan 1896).

Cross of Gold Speech

Listen to William Jennings Bryans Cross of Gold Speech
here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTkT5-w5RA.

When Populists met following the Democratic convention, they had a difficult time
deciding whether to throw their hat in the ring with Bryan and fuse with the Democrats,
or to field a separate slate of candidates. Politicians who opposed fusion believed that
all the elements of the Omaha platform deserved emphasis. One Populist poet likened
the Democrats overtures to the Populists to the wily maneuvers of a spider.
O, come into my party, said the spider to the fly.
Then he sharpened up his pencil and winked the other eye.
The way into my party is across a single plank.
You can take it from your platform and the rest can go to blank (Hicks 1896).
Unlike the poet, some Populists championed Bryan as a viable candidate who spoke
the language of the Populists and had the common peoples interests at heart.
Ultimately the fusionists carried the day.
As you can see in the map on p. 607 in your text, Bryan carried the South and the West,
aside from California and Oregon, but his well-funded opponent William McKinley, who
opposed free silver, carried the upper Midwest and the Northeast. As your text points
out, the paralyzing equilibrium in American politics ended in 1896 (p. 607). The
Republican Party cemented its image as the party of big business, the sound dollar, and
prosperity, an image it would retain for the next century. The Democratic Party was
reduced temporarily to minority status as the party of the South and West. While the
Democrats would shed the evangelical moral conservatism that characterized Bryan,
they would often in the ensuing century cultivate the image Bryan had attempted of
representing the forgotten common people. For the time being, though, the Republicans
philosophy of live and let live attracted urban workers who rejected Bryans Protestant
moralizing.

As a path-breaking third party that promoted key reforms that were enacted early in the
twentieth century and articulately criticized minimalist government, Populism deserves
to be remembered. It may have also have helped to shape one of the most enduring
artifacts of turn-of-the-century popular culture, Frank Lloyd Baums novel The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz. In 1964, historian Henry Littlefield interpreted the novel as a Populist
parable. Littlefields evidence is largely circumstantial. Baum, who wrote several
explicitly political satires and parables later in life, insisted that he wroteThe Wonderful
Wizard of Oz solely to pleasure children of today. Littlefield admitted that his evidence
was circumstantial, but he argued that the analogies he drew between Populism and
Baums novel were far too consistent to be coincidental (Littlefield 1964). Baum had
lived in South Dakota and edited a newspaper there from 1887 to 1891. He was aware
of Populism and some of his editorials dealt with it. Baums son, who was a child in
1896, recalled years later that his father was caught up in the enthusiasm for Bryan at
the Chicago Democratic convention in 1896, where Baum was working at the time.

The novel recounts the adventures of Dorothy, an orphan who lives with her aunt and
uncle in Kansas. Caught in a tornado, Dorothy and her house are carried away to the
magical Land of Oz, where the house falls from the sky and lands on the Wicked Witch
of the East, killing her. The witchs former subjects, little people called Munchkins, had
been in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day (Littlefield
1964). One of the workers under her reign, the Tin Woodman, had once been a human
being but had lost his limbs through work-related accidents. Progressively his original
limbs were substituted for metal prosthetic ones. Eventually the metal rusted and the tin
man came to believe that he was no longer capable of feeling human emotions of the
heart. Littlefield believed this was related to labor, he says, Here is a Populist view of
the evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed (ibid.).
Workers have been maimed and dehumanized by their toil in the factories owned by
eastern capitalists, symbolized by the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy desires to
return to Kansas, and she is advised to visit a powerful wizard in the distant Emerald
City, who can help her.

Watch the Wizard of Oz

Here are some excerpts from the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy arrives in Oz.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP_wx0qrKu0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSiyaqnZYs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leb83bRkXDg&NR=1

www.youtube.com/watch?v=THbY7EL8k5w&feature=relmfu

Before she sets out, though, she steps into the wicked witchs magic silver shoes,
changed in the movie by Hollywood to ruby slippers. Dorothys path follows a Yellow
Brick Road. Littlefield relates this to the silver issue versus the gold standard. He says,
Silver shoes walking on a gold road; henceforth Dorothy becomes the innocent agent
of Baums ironic view of the Silver issue [versus the Gold Standard] (ibid.). Remember,
no one, not Dorothy, the Munchkins, or the good Witch of the North, understands the
power of these shoes. The allegory is abundantly clear. On the next to last page of the
book, Baum has Glinda, Witch of the South, tell Dorothy, Your Silver Shoes will carry
you over the desert . . . If you had known their power you could have gone back to your
Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country (ibid.).

Ignorant of the power of the silver shoes on her feet, Dorothy sets out instead on a
fateful journey following a golden road. Arriving in the Emerald City, which Littlefield
likens to Washington, DC, Dorothy is led to the wizard. Littlefield says, The Wizard, a
little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of papier mach and noise, might be any
President from Grant to McKinley. He comes straight from the fairgrounds in Omaha,
Nebraska, and he symbolizes the American criterion for leadershiphe is able to be
everything to everybody, writes Littlefield (ibid.). The wizard sends Dorothy on a
mission to obtain the broom belonging to the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy
accidentally kills the witch by dumping water on her. Littlefield likens this to the way that
 the curse of the arid West could be cured with irrigation water. Returning to the Emerald
City, Dorothy loses hope when the Wizards balloon leaves without her. Then, the Witch
of the South appears and tells her that the silver shoes she is wearing can take her
anywhere she wants to go. Unfortunately, her silver shoes slip from her feet as she flies
through the sky and are never recovered, just as the silver crusade vanished after 1896.

Some scholars have dismissed Littlefields interpretation as fanciful; others have

creatively proposed alternate allegorical interpretations for Baums novel. I remain
partial to Littlefields interpretation. I agree with Littlefield that the relationships he
identifies are too consistent to be coincidental (Littlefield 1964).

Lesson 4 Self Check

As you prepare for the exam, be sure that you are able to identify each of the following
terms and describe each terms historical significance, furnishing as much relevant
detail as possible within a maximum of four sentences.

Key Terms
Social Darwinism

Political machines

Mugwumps

Doctrine of separate spheres

Women's Christian Temperance Union

Plessy v. Ferguson

Grimes Country

Ida B. Wells

Mary Elizabeth Lease

Omaha Platform

Free silver
 William Jennings Bryan

Cross of Gold Speech

Election of 1896

William McKinley

The Wonderful World of Oz

As you prepare for the exam, prepare to respond to the following question:

In light of your understanding of American society, politics, and government in the

1870s and 1880s, evaluate the accuracy of the following statement: Populism was a
revolutionary ideology.