The
Populist Party (originally the People's Party) was established in
1891 when the Knights
of Labor and
Farmers' Alliance joined forces. The party advocated the public ownership
of the railroads, steamship lines and telephone and telegraph systems.
It also supported the free and unlimited coinage of silver, the abolition
of national banks, a system of graduated income tax and the direct
election of United States Senators.
William
Peffer of Kansas and Tom Watson
of Georgia became the party's first Senators in 1891. The following
year, the party's presidential candidate, James
Weaver, received 1,041,028 votes and won four states. In the mid-term
elections of 1894 the party received 1,400,000 votes and elected six
Senators and seven Representatives.
In the 1896 presidential election the leaders of the Populist Party
entered into talks with William J. Bryan,
the proposed Democratic Party candidate.
They thought they had an agreement that Tom
Watson would become Bryan's running mate. After giving their support
to Bryan he announced that Arthur Sewall, a conservative politician
with a record of hostility towards trade unions, would be his vice
presidential choice. This created a split in the Populist Party, some
refused to support Bryan whereas others, such as Mary
Lease, reluctantly campaigned for him.
The
defeat of William J. Bryan severely damaged
the Populist Party. While Populists continued to hold power in a few
Western states, the party ceased to be a factor in national politics.
Under
the leadership of Tom Watson the party
moved to the right. He denounced socialism
and called for the reorganization of the Ku Klux
Klan. He was the party's presidential candidate in 1904 but won
only 117,183 votes. The party's fortunes continued to decline and
in the 1908 presidential campaign, attracted only 29,100 votes.
(1)
Ignatius Donnelly, The Representative (10th June, 1896)
Mrs. Lease,
on June 3, made a grand speech of two and a half hours, before an
immense crowd at Dodge Center. The next night she addressed an extemproized
meeting at Kasson. Steps should be taken to keep her in Minnesota
until election day, if it is possible. She makes hundreds of votes
wherever she speaks. The only danger is of break-down. She is over-zealous
and forgets herself in her earnestness. Our friends must not let her
work herself to death. See that she is well entertained and has plenty
of rest between speeches.
(2)
Annie Diggs, Arena
Magazine (July, 1892)
Mrs. Lease
was educated a Catholic, but thought herself out of that communion,
and is now not over-weighted with reverence for the clergy of any
sect. She not infrequently rouses their ire by her stinging taunts
as to their divergence from the path marked out by their professed
Master, whose first concern was for the poor and needy.
In the campaign of 1890
she made speeches so full of fiery eloquence, of righteous wrath,
and fierce denunciation of the oppressors, that she became the delight
of the people of the new party and the detestation of the followers
of the old. Seldom, if ever, was a woman so vilified and so misrepresented
by malignant newspaper attacks. A woman of other quality would have
sunk under the avalanche. She was quite competent to cope with all
that was visited upon her. Indeed, the abuse did her much service.
The people but loved her the more for the enemies she made.
Her chiefest distinguishing
gift is her powerful voice; deep and resonant, its effect is startling
and controlling. Her speeches are philippics. She hurls sentences
as Jove hurled thunderbolts.
(3)
Mary
Lease, speech at Cooper Union Hall
(12th August, 1896)
I accept this splendid
greeting from this splendid audience in evidence that there is no
Mason and Dixon's line between the East and the West. I accept it
as an evidence of the fact that the people of the East and West are
battling for a common cause against a common foe. Not since the bleeding
years of the war have party lines been so nearly obliterated, and
the obedience to party leaders so refused as at the present time.
The heart of the nation is aroused, and Principle and not Self is
the watchword. The great heart of the nation beats response to patriotism,
and the nation is safe.
We stand today at the beginning
of one of those revolutionary periods that mark an advance of the
race. We stand at a period that marks a reformation. All history is
illustrated by the fact that new liberties cannot exist with old tyrannies.
New ideals ever seek new manifestations. The ideals of Christ could
not live under the tyrannies of the Roman government. The ideals of
the founders of this Government could not exist under the tyrannies
of royal rule.
The grand principles of
Socialism and the brotherhood of man cannot live under old forms of
tyranny - neither under the forms of Old-World tyranny nor of British
gold.
Yet today our splendid
theory of government is confronted by a great peril. We have become
blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with glutted markets
and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible for a few
men to become landlords of a proud city like this while God's poor
are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a menace to
Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It makes it possible, too,
for an American to pay $10,000,000 for the cast-off, disreputable
rags of old world royalty, for the scion of a house that boasts the
blood of a Jeffreys and a Marlborough. It is a disgrace to our nation.
A condition by which the
wealth accumulated by the common people is poured into lard tubs and
oil wells, to enable Mr. Rockefeller to found a college and Mr. Whitney
to buy a diamond tiara for his daughter is a disgrace to the country.
Once we made it our boast
that this nation was not founded upon any class distinction. But now
we are not only buying diamonds for their wives and daughters and
selling our children to titled debauchees, but we are setting aside
our Constitution and establishing a gold standard to help the fortunes
of our hereditary foe.
Today, a determined and
systematic effort is being made by our financiers to perpetuate a
gold standard. Every influence that moulds public opinion has been
bought up, and the great dailies in the employ of the gold syndicate
have fallen into line. The whole power of the government administration
is being used to deceive the people. We hear sound money and honest
dollar applied to the most dishonest money that ever cursed a nation
or enslaved a people. What right has McKinley or Whitney to delegate
our constitutional right to coin money to England or any other nation?"
An organized effort is
making to deceive the people. There are two great enemies of thought
and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold.
Long ago, the aristocracy of royalty came to a common plane with the
common people by the discovery of gunpowder, and the two met on a
common field. Where is the respect of old for royalty? Even the English
speak of their sovereign, Queen Victoria as being made not of common
clay, but of common mud. The aristocracy of royalty is dying out.
But here in this country
we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy of wealth.
Far more dangerous to the race is it than the aristocracy of royalty.
It is the aristocracy of gold that disintegrates society, destroys
individuals and has ruined the proudest nations. It has called Rothschild's
agent here to make the platform of the Republican party.
(4)
Henry
Demarest Lloyd, Review of Reviews
(September, 1896)
The Populist gathering of this year lacked the drill and distinction
and wealth of the Republican convention held the month before in the
same building. It had not the ebullient aggressiveness of the revolutionary
Democratic assembly at Chicago, nor the brilliant drivers who rode
the storm there. Every one commented on the number of gray heads -
heads many of them grown white in previous independent party movements.
The delegates were poor men. Cases are well known of delegates who
walked because too poor to pay their railroad fare. It was one day
discovered that certain members of one of the most important delegations
were actually suffering for food. They had no regular sleeping place,
having had to save what money they had for their nickel meals at the
lunch counter.
(5)
Theodore
Roosevelt, Review of Reviews (September,
1896)
Mr. Watson
really ought to be the first man on the ticket, with Mr. Bryan second;
for he is much the superior in boldness, in thorough-going acceptance
of his principles according to their logical conclusions, and in sincerity
of faith. Mr. Watson belongs to that school of southern Populists
who honestly believe that the respectable and commonplace people who
own banks, railroads, dry goods stores, factories, and the like, are
persons of mental and social attributes that unpleasantly distinguish
Heliogabalus, Nero, Caligula, and other worthies of later Rome. If
he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions,
while Bryan would be content with the torture or ordinary thongs.
(6)
Rocky Mountain News (25th July, 1896)
The nomination of Thomas E. Watson for the vice presidency by the
Populists complicates the situation in an unfortunate degree. It may
be believed that the middle-of-the-road division, which has been opposed
to Bryan, is highly pleased at the turn of affairs. At this writing
it is impossible to tell what turn matters may take.
(7)
Tom
Watson,
quoted in the New
York World (28th September, 1896)
The menace which endangers Mr. Bryan's success today is the profound
dissatisfaction which exists among the humble, honest, earnest Populists
who have built up the People's party. Through storms of abuse and
ridicule these men have fought the battles of Populism, preached its
gospel, paid its expenses and followed its progress with the hopeful
devotion of the Israelite who followed the pillar of fire through
the nights of dreary trial. Deep down in the hearts of men who want
no office and hunger for no pie, is settling the conviction that they
have been tricked, sold out, betrayed, misled... If McKinley is elected
the responsibility will forever rest upon those managers who had it
in their power to control by fair means 2,000,000 votes and lost them
by violating the terms of the compact.
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