populist party definition us history

populist party definition us history

The Rise and Impact of Populist Parties in U.S. History

1. Introduction to Populist Parties

The term “populism” has been used to describe charismatic leaders, found across the ideological spectrum, who are said to speak for “the people.” Lack of attention, however, has been paid to parties that consistently push “the interests of the people” and incorporate a deep sense of economic fairness into long-term party objectives. These, we suggest, constitute populist parties. Although several parties in U.S. history have pushed for the populist vote, they have been surprisingly understudied by Americanists. We use an extensive original data set of party objectives to find that 15 of 23 mainstream political parties (from which American presidents have come) in the history of the United States were populist parties in the sense that the term is used here. Further, we demonstrate that substantial economic policy change appears to have been much more common during periods when one of these populist parties was in power. These changes thus possibly highlight the potential impact of these free-spending parties, though not necessarily the overall impact of populists in general.

2. Historical Context and Origins of Populist Parties in the U.S.

Behind modern U.S. populist parties is a charismatic, often well-financed candidate. Populist parties have won seats in both houses of U.S. Congress and are traditionally strong in Midwestern U.S. states where the original populists found many supporters. Many modern populists have ignited and held on to similar passions in their voters by voicing similar fears and claiming to represent an average working-class farmer and his extended family. Many of their adherents fear the loss of jobs and quality of life due to economic restructuring and immigration, but like many past populists, modern U.S. populists also organize because they feel that neither establishment party represents their interests. Like earlier counterparts, modern populists aim to convert their support into tangible goods and interests and weaken any establishment opposition.

To explain the present rise of populist parties in the U.S., it may be incredible to some that some populist parties existed in the mid-19th century U.S. after the height of the original Populist Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first populist party, representing agrarian interests, organized in opposition to the pro-business interests found within both the Democratic and Republican Parties. Populist parties organized because of economic powerlessness, a growing class consciousness that cut across the lines of ethnicity and regionalism, and a sense of manifest destiny and national identity. Although modern U.S. populist parties do not necessarily champion the interests of any one social class, the creation and popularity of modern U.S. populist parties do reflect many of the same populist themes that have led people to form or vote for populist parties in the past.

3. Key Figures and Movements in Populist Party History

The Farmer’s Alliance, which began in the South and West before the major political surge of the 1880s, was first and foremost an educational movement. It organized in secret, seeking to address immediate economic problems while also trying to persuade non-alliance people to see the cause of those problems and work together to produce political change. Their long-term goal was obviously a political one: an alliance party. But they were also interested in changing mentalities more than government. They sought to educate the rank and file about the realities of their economic position: borrowing against crops, selling work at low wages, consumer powerlessness in the face of elastic prices, the price structure of cotton versus improved farming technology, and most important, the causes of such problems. No organization in the whole of the producer movement had a more effective and efficient educational system. The Grange died away, the Knights of Labor divided along non-agricultural lines, but the Farmers Alliance, despite the frequently bitter internal divisions of the early 1890s, spawned a new political party. The Panic of 1893 and the depression which ensued brought together the disjointed remnants of the various late-nineteenth-century producer organizations and former agricultural and labor leaders, and their consolidation produced a new and formidable prairie fire. The 1894 Democratic electoral disaster, despite or rather because of the largest Democratic Congressional majority in twenty-five years, transformed a long-standing one-party system into a competition between what we would call special-interest politics. The conservative sources of special-interest conflict included the Civil War pension demands of the great-grandparent conservatives of the 1990s and the cross-class conflict of the 1890s. The rural-urban split was increasingly decisive: the city had belatedly joined the industrial minority; the New South had belatedly discovered that it had an incomplete industrial democracy. City had united against backward capitalist agriculture, seeking expansionist foreign policies which the South feared would be monopolized by the North to permit it to keep world peace. The election of 1896 was partially an urban-based capitalist response to external fears and sectional loyalties, responses that money couldn’t handle. The rural South had episodically shown its political power between (as well as before and following) these two elections, particularly through its ability to swing critical votes in key debates in the Senate, for only they truly represented their region’s fears. The Populist Party passed into political history less at the hands of prosperous conservatives than short-term Democratic conservative political manipulation. Internal division also hurt it. The party that followed, and which took over the populists’ definition of the national interest vs. particular urban local interests, were the northern farmers and the labor progressives. Large, well-organized reactionary industrial capitalists and wealthy turn-of-the-century stock ownership groups selected for very large governmental authority, especially when they directed it. Their emerging kind of large-government progressivism benefited the few at the expense of the many constituents. Both parties in 1896 selected for imperialism, ignoring the inconvenient majority that believed the issues were definition and sectional political interest.

4. Impact and Legacy of Populist Parties on American Politics

The Progressive Movement, plus its up and down paths, including eight-year periods it exclusively led the federal general government, followed the Populist political phenomenon during a very fast-paced period of American history. Many of the Populists’ proposed income and tax ideas were effectively addressed regularly during subsequent slower-paced decades. Preconditions were in place with the state and national Populist Labor Party conventions correctly first extending direct primary rights to all Democrats and Republicans. Some of the Populists’ other goals and deficit side effects avoided almost daily through Congressional amendments immediately before it stabilized in 1916 during the final minutes and seconds of the 52-year McCumber Act era.

It is important to take some time to trace the lasting impact and legacy of the Populist parties on American politics outside of their party organizations. First, the adoption of virtually all of the Populist Party platform goals in 1898 and later on farms with the Hatch Act, the Granger Act, and the Cooperative Extension Act were direct market basket benefits. Surely no one would really want to be caught dead with the federal general government and Congress placing good ideas, as ideally as possible, into productive places and engines without anyone, either human or corporate, looking or complaining.