I've written this to make people more familiar with the time Progressive Populism arose and succeeded in many places, especially Nebraska. We need to learn from their success.
The Panic of 1873 had deflated agricultural prices and the farmers had been hurting for well over a decade. Desperation followed as economic ruin and Depression ravaged the U.S. economy. Believing that increasing the amount of currency available would help the economy and raise prices, farmers started the Greenback Party and actually sent 14 Congressmen to Washington.
Farmers want more greenbacks, more paper dollars in circulation, for since the Civil War the U.S. government had withdrawn greenbacks from circulation, and their value in gold was only half of their face value. Despite early success, the Greenback Party soon collapsed when new movements took its place.
Some farmers were radical Socialist immigrants from Europe and their input--plus common economic sense--revealed a new progressive path. Farmers' Alliances formed in the North and in the South, and the black farmers, not allowed to join the Southern Alliance because of their skin color, formed their own Colored Farmers Alliance, led by the white minister Richard Humphrey. Both black and white, however, soon united politically--shocking the two major parties.
On Election Day in November 1890, the new People's Independent Party, the Populists, won clear control of the Nebraska Senate, with 18 seats--compared to the combined total of 15 for the Republicans and the Democrats. They also won complete control of the House, by 54 Populists ]to the combined Republican/Democrat total of 46 seats. Yet the Democrat took the Governor's race by a mere 1,144 votes over the People's Independent candidate. The Republican came in third. William Jennings Bryan, on the Populist and Democrat ticket, was meanwhile elected to Congress, along with Populist Omer Kem.
In the first state government of its kind, the Populists and Democratic Governor Boyd quickly passed a set of laws specified in the People's Party platform. These included:
- Free public education for every Nebraskan child
- Free Textbooks
- Public Fund Deposit Law
- The 8-hour day as a legal day's work, except farm labor
The main Populist goal, however--the regulation of the railroad freight rates--was vetoed by the Democratic Governor. That proved to be the undoing of the uneasy alliance between Democrat and Populist. At the same time all this was going on, a wave of Populism was sweeping through farming communities North, South and West, and more State governments were soon taken over by the rural radicals. The preamble for the 1892 Populist platform for the Presidential Election read:
The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. ..The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their labor; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly disintegrating to European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes, unprecedented in the history of the world, while their possessors despise the republic and endanger liberty.
And that's just the beginning of the preamble!
The People's Party nominated George Weaver for President, who took a million votes and 22 Electoral College votes in the '92 election. Those million votes got noticed, injecting the goals of populism firmly into the political debate. In the very next Presidential election cycle, a young orator, the editor of a Democratic newspaper, captured the spotlight with hot populist rhetoric, pledging to throw the Republicans out.
It was William Jennings Bryan, one of the most exciting speakers in all American history. At the 1894 Nebraska convention, William Jennings Bryan and Silas Holcomb brought together the Populists and Democrats, with Bryan on the ticket for U.S. Senate and for every other major post a Populist--including Holcomb for Governor. The Republicans were looking at a losing proposition if they stuck to the usual issues.
So they exploited religious sentiment and took up a new issue: Prohibition. Due to local splits and the extremly nasty and clever Prohibition campaign, however, the Republicans ended up controlling the Nebraska Legislature for much of the decade. The last Populist Nebraska Governor was William Poynter in 1898.