What is Populism? From the Farmers' Alliance to Trump

Summary

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American History Hit – "What is Populism? From the Farmers' Alliance to Trump"

Host: Don Wildman
Guest: Steve Babson (Labor educator, union activist, and author of "Forgotten: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy")
Date: July 4, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the true origins and evolution of American populism, tracing its roots in the late 19th century Farmers’ Alliance, the rise of the People’s Party, and the movement’s enduring influence on U.S. politics. Host Don Wildman is joined by historian Steve Babson, who challenges present-day uses of "populism" and draws clear distinctions between its historic meaning and modern political rhetoric. The discussion covers economic inequality, grassroots activism by farmers and workers, progressive reforms, the transformation of political parties, and how the language and legacy of populism continue to shape debates today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining "Populism" in Historical Context

[04:21]

• Babson: Populism is often misused today as mere anti-elitism or ascribed to modern politicians like Donald Trump. Historically, it was "a big tent reform movement" rooted in the 1890s, aimed at empowering working people and reforming democracy.
• Quote:

  “The real populists of American history would reject Trump on precisely those grounds. They were about something very unique back in the 1890s... a reform movement that brought together farmers and railroad workers, coal miners, a wide range of reformers.” — Steve Babson [04:39]

2. Origins and Early Movements

[06:26]

• The Farmers’ Alliance and the Knights of Labor laid the groundwork in the 1870s-1880s, promoting cooperative economics and criticizing corporate power.
• Apprehension grew around government favoring “robber barons” like Carnegie and Vanderbilt post-Civil War.
• The movement was characterized by demands for "an alternative to corporate capitalism"—not socialism, but economic democracy.

3. Communication and Organizing Without Modern Media

[08:21]

• Farmers learned firsthand about monopolies through their dealings with railroads and grain storage; this tangible frustration catalyzed organization.
• Despite limited media, populists found success with their own communication networks, newspapers, meetings, and cooperative societies.

4. Populists’ Economic Program: More Democracy, New Government Role

[10:32] – [13:25]

• Central demand: Government should regulate monopolies or even nationalize crucial infrastructure (e.g., railroads), since public money had financed them.
• Populists proposed public lending and credit at low rates, and public storage for crops.
• Quote:

  "How about the post office lending people money at 2% interest. Or let’s have public warehouses where farmers can store their grain at harvest and instead of having to sell it in a panic..." — Steve Babson [12:30]

• In 1890, about 45% of the workforce were farmers; by contrast, today it is around 2–3%.

5. Shifting Political Landscape and Party Formation

[14:13]

• Populists formed the People’s Party because Democrats and Republicans both served big business; back then, primaries did not exist, so party insiders controlled nominations.
• The Populist Party rapidly achieved modest national success:
  • Elected 50 members of Congress, 6 governors, and many local officials (early 1890s).
• Their pressure prompted the Democrats (under William Jennings Bryan) and even "progressive Republicans" to adopt parts of the populist platform.

6. The Money Question: Gold, Silver, Greenbacks

[16:35]

• At issue: Should currency be pegged to gold? Populists opposed the gold standard, advocating a flexible money supply (greenbacks, free coinage of silver) to relieve farm debt and lower borrowing costs.
• Quote:

  "Print greenbacks to augment the money supply so that people aren’t paying outrageous levels of interest, particularly in the South..." — Steve Babson [18:37]

7. Meritocracy, Monopoly, and Social Darwinism

[21:14] – [22:47]

• The era’s elites justified inequality via “meritocracy” and Social Darwinism; Babson debunks this, citing collusion, not just ability, as the source of much elite wealth (e.g., Rockefeller’s secret railroad deals).
• Quote:

  "It had nothing to do with individual merit. We’re talking about people who simply were cunning." — Steve Babson [22:43]

8. Strikes, Unrest, and Coxey’s Army

[23:33]

• The Knights of Labor and union activists connected with populism, emphasizing the dangers of unregulated capitalism, labor abuses, and lack of a safety net.
• The 1893 depression saw 20% unemployment; Jacob Coxey led the first mass march on Washington, demanding public works—a precursor to New Deal programs.

9. Long-term Impact: Political Realignment and the Rise of the New Deal

[26:20]

• Both parties were influenced by populist pressure:
  • Republican progressives (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt) sought to break up monopolies.
  • Democratic Party moved left, culminating in FDR’s New Deal—“something that would look very familiar to any populist of the 1890s.”
• After the 1930s, liberal/progressive Republicans shifted their allegiance to the New Deal coalition.

10. Populism’s Demise and Legacy

[36:19] – [40:03]

• The People’s Party fractured after Bryan’s 1896 campaign, with reform momentum absorbed into the Democratic Party.
• The term "populism" faded from mainstream use by the early 20th century, as both parties struggled internally between progressive and conservative factions.
• Quote:

  “Kind of a victim of their own success, aren’t they? They set out to make this a new world as far as a new consciousness about workers rights. And they get there at least halfway.” — Don Wildman [40:03]

11. Advances in Democracy: The Populists’ Lasting Achievements

[40:55]

• Populists pioneered demands for women’s suffrage and multiracial alliances (e.g., black and white farmers in the South).
• The first states to grant women’s suffrage, Colorado and Idaho, did so under populist leadership.
• Their failure in the South was tied to violent backlash, voter suppression, and the entrenchment of Jim Crow laws.

12. The Modern Misuse of "Populism"

[35:21]

• Babson argues that today’s politicians misuse populism, focusing on anti-elitist rhetoric while pursuing policies at odds with historic populist aims.
  • Historic populists sought to tax the rich, expand democracy, and regulate big business—opposite to modern anti-elitism that enriches elites.
• Quote:

  "Populism is a rational response to the disadvantages that workers and farmers saw in the 1890s and afterwards... The real populists of American history would reject Trump, who seeks to cut taxes for the rich." — Steve Babson [35:21]

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• Debunking Trumpian "Populism"

  “The real populists of American history would reject Trump on precisely those grounds. They were about something very unique back in the 1890s.” — Babson [04:39]

• On Collusion and Monopoly:

  “It had nothing to do with individual merit. We’re talking about people who simply were cunning.” — Babson [22:43]

• On Public Lending and Economic Justice:

  “How about the post office lending people money at 2% interest... public warehouses where farmers can store their grain at harvest and instead of having to sell it in a panic...” — Babson [12:30]

• On the Roots of the New Deal:

  “The New Deal is in many respects something that would look very familiar to any populist of the 1890s.” — Babson [16:21]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Populism Defined & Misused — [04:21] to [06:03]
• Early Farmers’ Alliance & Knights of Labor — [06:26] to [08:21]
• Populists’ Economic Demands and Railroads — [10:32] to [13:25]
• Formation and Impact of Populist Party — [14:13] to [16:21]
• Money, Gold Standard, and Silver — [16:35] to [19:16]
• Social Darwinism and the 'Meritocracy' — [21:14] to [22:47]
• Labor Struggles and Coxey’s Army — [23:33] to [26:02]
• Progressive Republicans & Political Shifts — [26:20] to [27:40]
• Voting Rights and Civil Rights Roots — [40:55] to [42:36]
• Populism’s Legacy and Misuse Today — [35:21] to [36:19]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The original American populist movement emerged from economic desperation in the late 1800s, seeking not only better incomes for farmers and workers but systematic reforms to democratize politics and the economy.
• Their influence fundamentally altered both major parties and paved the way for the progressive era and New Deal reforms.
• Modern uses of "populism" as anti-elitist rhetoric often obscure or contradict the movement’s radical, egalitarian roots.
• Key populist values included expanding democracy (e.g., women’s suffrage, direct election of senators), regulation of corporate power, progressive taxation, and government responsibility for public welfare.

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For further exploration:
Check out Steve Babson’s "Forgotten: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy" for a detailed account of these transformative decades and their continuing impact on American life.

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Transcript

[Don Wildman]

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[Don Wildman]

Farming out west sure seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. Vast tracts of land up for grabs and railroads expanding cheap labor available but over the last decade, the lands have proven anything but fertile. Scant rains have fallen as prices have dropped. The only thing thriving are the debts we carry. Change is blowing like milkweed across the fields. Why are loans so expensive? How are interest rates through the roof? Shouldn't our government protect us? What we need is a new approach. We need to fight for our survival, stand our ground. But how? How do we come together? In 1890 in the dry, barren earth, a new populist solution has sprouted and taken root. It's called the Farmers alliance, and it's ready to. Hello, you're listening to another episode of American History hit Greetings. I'm Don Wildman. The great value of historical study is the ability to understand human events in context, gain clarity, perspective on how our society has developed. The United States has been around for 250 years, and it is always remarkable, refreshing to me to see how ideas we live with on a daily basis have their specific origins in the past, such as our talk today about the term populist, a label often misunderstood and misused with roots in a political movement of the 1890s that spread like ivy throughout American politics. Still with us today. And it is vital we understand why. Good thing we have the author of Forgotten When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy, published in 2023. I devoured this book on a plane trip this week. Labor educator, union activist Steve Babson is the author. Nice to have you on the podcast, Steve.

[Steve Babson]

Pleasure to be here.

[Don Wildman]

Maybe a few listeners right now have the same vague feeling I had prepping for this interview. Populism. What the heck is that? You hear the term bandied about in the media nowadays referring to this or that politician. Before we really get going here with the 1890s, let's define the term, please.

[Steve Babson]

Okay? For me, it's an historical term, not a sociological one. Unfortunately, it is used today in a way that really represents an evasion and really an historical lie that focuses, for example, on Trump's anti elitist rhetoric. My estimate, and not his real intent, which is to further enrich himself and the billionaire class. And the real populace of American history, would reject Trump on precisely those grounds. They were about something very unique back in the 1890s, and it really changed the course in a lot of important ways of American history. It was a big tent reform movement that brought together farmers and railroad workers, coal miners, a wide range of reformers, and they were launching a new movement in that decade 130 years ago that had the official name of the People's Party. But As a shorthand, they called themselves populists. And what they were angry about was the way that both Democrats and Republicans were favoring the rising class of corporate robber barons, the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould, who would come to power after the Civil War. Civil war ends in 1865. And over the next 25, 30 years, there's a rapid development of an industrial economy in which the mega rich of that era were using violence and bribery and monopoly power to crush opponents of the new class of big businessmen who had come to dominate.

[Don Wildman]

We're really talking about a caste system here. You know, Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age. It's really a caste system of haves and have nots. Like you said, the industrial era robber barons. This is corporate America playing chess. The workers, all the pawns. The populist movement challenges this status quo. How do they go about forming? Where does this begin, about what year, and who's in charge?

[Steve Babson]

Well, it begins really in the 1870s and the 1880s. They weren't calling themselves populists at that time, but there were two major social movements. The Knights of Labor, which was the first nationwide effort to organize workers on behalf of their interests as working people. And it was also the Farmers alliance, which was a massive organization in the 1880s and into the 1890s, over a million members. Some estimate maybe as many as 2 million. And both they and the Knights of Labor were calling for an alternative to corporate capitalism. They wanted a market economy, but they saw far more value in a cooperative organization in which workers and farmers would collectively come together on behalf of their private initiative. But it would be a collective one, where the workers would own the factory collectively, where farmers would come together and augment their market power by combining their crops and seeking the best possible price. So it was an idea of a different kind of private market economy organized on different principles and with the help of the government. That was their problem, that they saw government in the 1880s and early 1890s and as simply operating on behalf of and augmenting the power of the already mega rich. And they had a problem with both the Democrats and the Republicans, who they saw as equally devoted to serving the needs of this new class of extraordinarily powerful corporate executives and investors. And the populace wanted a different approach.

[Don Wildman]

It's an interesting phenomenon because at that time, 19th century, really laissez faire economics is the value of America, right? Hands off. Let the people do what they need to do. The government stays out of the way. How would these people who are now feeling so disaffected and alienated. Be informed even about the situation that so few controlled so much. I mean, we hear about it all the day, all day long these days because of the media. But they didn't have that much.

[Steve Babson]

Well, you know, they had actually their own way of communicating. It was really quite successful. And the schooling that they needed was right in front of them. If they're a farmer and they want to ship their crop to market, they've got to go to the railroad. That is the monopoly that owns the elevators and owns the shipping and the warehousing. And the only way they can get to market is through that monopoly. When there was still the notion of small government and an unfettered laissez faire capitalism, these monopoly corporations were able to basically gouge consumers in any way they chose. And so the populace were saying, we need a different kind of government. We need a government that will actually expand democracy and make it capable of matching the power of big business. They wanted to expand democratic rights. I mean, the populace saw it as important to actually empower African Americans and women to vote. This was the first major movement that actually identified itself with an expansion of voting rights. They wanted to elect senators. Back then, US Senators were not elected by popular vote. They were appointed by bought and sold state legislatures. And so the. What the populists were about was an expansion of democracy so that the government could act on behalf of the majority rather than continuing to favor and subsidize the profiteering of large corporations.

[Don Wildman]

It's so refreshing, as I mentioned in the opening, that these kinds of things that we take for granted these days, these complex ideas, actually have really old antecedents and precedents even before what we're talking about, what occurs in America, starts all this, really, the mercantile period, as people, you know, begin to realize in the first decades of the 1800s that they can make money, that there's a market that's expanding and there are the means to grow this economy that previous generations had not even conceived in the Erie Canal. On to the railroad. Those changes in American society really drive the thinking that there's a different kind of politics here that's not going to be necessarily only advantaging the upper classes. This is new as we come into this period of time. Or is it something that Americans have always thought about?

[Steve Babson]

Well, it's new insofar as we're now talking about a completely different kind of economy from what had prevailed before the Civil War. We're now talking about an emerging industrial economy and farmers really Welcomed that they wanted to be able to sell their crops to distant markets. They were actually in favor of global trade. The problem was that they could not access that wider opportunity without going through the squeeze represented by monopoly corporations, particularly the railroads. And again, the railroads were initially welcomed by farmers and workers. And in fact there was a major effort to subsidize and encourage their construction with massive gifts of free land. The federal government gave corporations that were building the railroads a total of 170 million acres of freedom free land in the 19th century. And they also gave them tax breaks and they gave them subsidies for every mile of railroad built. And the companies then engaged in massive fraud, double billing the US government for construction costs that had simply been inflated by embezzlement and self serving activity. And they then gouged farmers and exercised monopoly rights over the setting of fares, of rates, of freight charges. And so what the populist wanted was either we regulate these corporations and force them to do what the public intended when they subsidized them, or if the corporations refused to do so, and by and large they did, they were in bankruptcy much of the time, very poorly managed and indifferent to the complaints of farmers. And so farmers finally said, well listen, maybe we should nationalize the railroads, maybe we should run them as a public enterprise on behalf of the majority who subsidized their construction in the first place. These are public resources, let's make them work on behalf of the public. So the populace were arguing for a new kind of approach of regulating these monopoly corporations, not just railroads, but also public utilities. They also wanted, by the way, to expand credit to people who were paying in the south to lenders who were lending at rates of interest, rates of 40 to 100%. Think that through 40 to 100% to buy vital supplies and food. And so what the populace wanted was, well, let's have an alternative available to folks. How about the post office lending people money at 2% interest. Or let's have public warehouses where farmers can store their grain at harvest and instead of having to sell it in a panic, they could actually put it in that warehouse, wait for better prices, and in the meantime use that warehouse grain as collateral for getting 2% loans from the federal government.

[Don Wildman]

Communism. It's communism you're talking about, man. You keep mentioning the farmers. They really are, the folks that are behind all of this, aren't. There's an enormous amount of farmers, of course, compared to today, for sure.

[Steve Babson]

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a different economy. In 1890 the census measured roughly about 45% of the workforce was farmers and farm laborers, 45%. Today the comparable statistic is roughly 2 to 3%. So it's obviously a different world altogether. And farmers see themselves as allies of the emerging working class, that is in the railroads, in the coal mines, silver mines, what have you, hard rock mining. They saw themselves as allies. And so there was a combined effort of the Farmers alliance and the Knights of Labor to develop a new politics in which the government would align itself with the majority rather than serving the needs of an already wealthy oligopoly.

[Don Wildman]

What are the levers of power that they can pull on?

[Steve Babson]

They saw the appropriate way of going about this was politics. And the problem was of course, that both the Democratic and the Republican parties were not interested in addressing these kinds of concerns of the majority. So what were their alternatives? It was quite unlike today. Today you can have alternative voices that can struggle over the soul of a party, Democrat or Republican, because they have primaries. That was not the case back then. There were no primaries. And so the conventions that would be convened by both parties were strictly controlled by the incumbent leadership. And that meant the wealthy. And getting an alternative voice and an alternative perspective into either one of those parties was extraordinarily difficult. And so what populists finally said was, we're going to have to organize our own party. An approach which would make less sense today, but made a lot of sense back then when there was no alternative within either of the major parties. So they organized a third party. And actually it takes off in a really spectacular way. In the first several years of the populist existence, in the early 1890s, 1890 to 1894, they elect 50 members of Congress, they elect six governors in the course of the 1890s, six governors. They elect hundreds and hundreds of local officials, mayors, county commissioners and whatnot. And what happens is that the Democratic Party in particular, there are reformers in both parties that see that this is low hanging fruit which the populace are picking. And finally, it's the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan in 1896 who adopts part of the populist program. He's not a populist, he's a Democrat. But he adopts part of the populist program, particularly expanding the money supply by coining silver to bring down the cost of borrowing money. He's the one who changes the Democratic Party, even the Republican Party. By the way, there are reformers within the Republican Party who can see that they're missing the boat in terms of the massive resentment people feel towards the mega rich. And so there's within the Republican Party change there as well. In fact, they call themselves something hard to believe today. They call themselves progressive Republicans.

[Don Wildman]

Think that's true.

[Steve Babson]

Sounds like an oxymoron today. But the Democrats in particular move in that direction. And really in a way by the 1930s, the New Deal is in many respects something that would look very familiar to any populace of the 1890s.

[Don Wildman]

That's the exciting idea that we're talking about that basically what's being laid down by these farmers are the changes that's going to come along later in the 20th century. And we'll get to that in a moment. I want to clarify something really interesting and I don't want people to be scared off like I was when I got to that in your book, the gold standard of money has a lot to do with this. Can we talk about that in the simplest terms, please?

[Steve Babson]

Okay, let's start with the fact that at this time, and particularly, let's go back before the Civil War, there was no government issued currency. Currency was private label banknotes. Every bank, hundreds of banks printed their own currency. And the claim was that you take this paper and its value was somehow guaranteed by the fact that you could walk into that bank and ask for an equivalent amount of gold. So the notion was, is that this paper money would be backed by the eternal value, the God given value, the fetishized value attributed to gold. And that would regulate the supply of money, often by the way, at a very low level of supply of money so that the cost of borrowing was artificially high. And what the, what the populace wanted to do was actually revive what had happened during the American Civil War. Because when the Civil War began, and we're Talking about the 1860s now, early 1860s, a lot of people were panicking about the prospect of a disruption of the economy. They would go to the bank and the bank simply didn't have enough gold to back up the now worthless paper. As panic folks were showing up in large numbers and these banks were failing. And so the US government set up a new national banking system and actually for a time was printing money without any backing in gold. In other words, they were doing something that we now take for granted that is commonplace because the paper money is backed by the power of the government and its capacity to ensure a growing economy. That's the way it really should be done.

[Don Wildman]

Greenbacks.

[Steve Babson]

Greenbacks, that's right. And so the populace said, well let's return to that precedent and that example and print greenbacks to augment the money supply. So that people aren't paying outrageous levels of interest, particularly in the south where literally 40 to 100% interest charge. And so they also wanted, they also wanted, in addition to greenbacks, monetized silver. In other words, if you need to have a precious metal underlying the paper currency, let's expand at least the supply of such precious metal by also monetizing silver and expanding the money supply. And that's what William Jennings Bryan takes on in 1896.

[Don Wildman]

But if you expand the money supply too much then you get inflation. I know that much from 101 Economics. That was what the industrials feared of course, prices going up too high in a way.

[Steve Babson]

Yes. And the farmers would come back and say well you got nothing to worry about right now. Because what's happening really in the decades after the American Civil War is that prices are plummeting, prices of everything are falling because the economy is being artificially restricted by a scarcity of money which bankers like because that meant interest rates were higher, they wanted to be paid back in gold backed dollars and that the bankers were actually happy with that approach. And in the south it's lenders and merchants who were the primary lenders. Really what Williams Jennings Bryan finally says is we need to actually expand the money supply to make that credit available and return to an economy of growth. Now the economy is growing but prices are plummeting and they're plummeting, especially for farm commodities. In other words, oil prices are going down but the price of cotton is falling like a stone. Also wheat and corn falling dramatically. So that even though prices in general are going down for farmers it's a real disadvantage. They're paying a real price for the deflation, not inflation, deflation. And so the farmers were saying, listen, inflation is not a worry right now. Our problem is deflation. That's what's screwing us.

[Don Wildman]

It really is a theme of this time of American society, but also, I mean it dates to today really that a small group of people really see themselves as the responsible ones in the country and therefore they should have all the money essentially or at least all the power I suppose. And this was the norm at this time as far as these guys were concerned, the Carnegie, the Jay Gould, all these people, they were laying down a model of society that was going to carry them forth and all the workers would now work for them. That was kind of their expectation, wasn't it?

[Steve Babson]

Yeah, they had a self flattering notion of meritocracy, that they were in power because they had shown particular merit and capability. This is a Period. When social Darwinism is an important ideology. The notion borrowing from Darwin and misusing what he had said about the evolution of species. They're saying that within human society, the rich and the powerful are there because they are especially deserving of the power they have acquired through their enterprise and activity. And the problem with that is that when you look closely at a lot of these fortunes, I mean, how did John D. Rockefeller make his money? The claim is that it was simply a matter of efficiency. But one of the fundamental aspects of his accumulation of wealth and power was that he conspired with the cooperating railroads to deny the discounted rates he was getting secretly from those railroads and for them to raise the prices for his competitors in terms of the shipping of oil. So here we have someone who's basically just involved in collusion. There's other aspects of his success, but that's a part of it. A major part of it was the collusion with cooperating railroads who saw opportunity for them to monopolize the shipping of Standard Oil. Oil. And he in turn is able to their disadvantage his competitors with an artificial improvement in his prospects. It had nothing to do with individual merit. We're talking about people who simply were cunning.

[Don Wildman]

Collusion and cunning. Or is it smart business? That's what they would say.

[Steve Babson]

Right?

[Don Wildman]

You know, that's the. You know, where do you draw the line, basically? And this is a time the emerging corporations in America, you know, we're right on the cusp of this becoming the absolute norm of the way things are organized in business, which is going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. We've got the telegraph growing into the telephone. All that stuff is happening with power and electricity. It really is perfect home for that kind of thinking that, gee, this. This natural evolution is. Is turning out to be pretty good for us. We just need to sort of hold it in one place. Unfortunately, or fortunately for America, there were other ways of living and affecting this in our government. You mentioned politics, of course, the Farmers alliance and all those inflicting their votes upon this. But it was also, you're gonna get into strikes, you're gonna get all kinds of boycotts. There's all gonna be other kinds of things that happen.

[Steve Babson]

Well, right. And then part of the populist movement, as I mentioned, is also the Knights of labor and the emerging effort to say, well, unregulated capitalism can actually be very dangerous for working people. And what's stunning to me, when you go back and look at the railroads, for example, there's massive bureaucracy and manipulation and Basically bankruptcy is the continual state of the railroad industry. But in addition, these railroads are also poorly managed just in terms of actually delivering reliable freight service and actually not harming and killing railroad workers. In 1891, there were 2,500 railroad workers killed in unnecessary accidents on the railroads. 25,000 were injured. So this is a slaughterhouse for working people and they're also objecting to 12 hour days and no labor rights and abuse in a market economy where when it collapsed, there was no social safety net to help people. And one of the things the populace wanted was to build more schools, more bridges and more public improvements to compensate for in 1893, depression that actually produced 20% unemployment. Some people may remember reference to Coxey's army. Well, Jacob Coxey was a populace who led the first mass march on Washington D.C. in 1894, calling for a program to build roads. Roads were notoriously poorly constructed and rarely had the necessary connections from one state to the next. So what Coxie was calling for was that the federal government addressing a circumstance in which millions of people are facing starvation, there's no social safety net, there's no unemployment benefits, there's no Social Security, there's no Medicare, there's no Medicaid, there's nothing to help people who are falling into poverty, who are literally looking for something to eat. And Coxie said we should have a public work program. He was arrested for carrying a sign on the grounds in front of Congress. The president of that time, Grover Cleveland, simply dismisses him as a rabble rouser and his followers are simply described as tramps. But later in the 1930s, the New Deal is going to adopt exactly this approach that we need to have in a market economy, a way of dealing with the extraordinary potential for distress and poverty and starvation when the economy turns south and people get laid off.

[Don Wildman]

This is the beginning of the affiliation of Republicans with big business and Democrats, you know, more for the common man. It's not necessarily, as it turns out in the 20th century, but it's sort of the beginnings of that. I'm confused though, because soon down the road is Theodore Roosevelt and the breaking of the monopolies and he's a Republican. How does that work?

[Steve Babson]

Well, as I said, both parties actually can see that the populace are onto something that they need to be paying attention to. And there is within the Republican Party, progressive Republican wing of the party, and they're contesting within the party for a shift in the direction of actually addressing the abuse of power by these monopoly corporations. And for a time, when you look, for example, at the election in 1912. There's four candidates for president. Three of them describe themselves as progressive, and the fourth is Eugene Debs, who says, I'm a socialist. So there's actually an increasing understanding that there's something really wrong with an industrial society that discards workers and farmers as simply a cost of their doing business and during the Depression, just throws them out on the street. And so both parties have within them a contesting over the fate and the soul of that party. What happens is that in the Great depression of the 1930s, the liberal Republicans, the progressive Republicans, finally give up on their party and switch over to the New Deal and the Democratic Party. That's when there's that final realignment where the two parties appear to be representing very different social interests.

[Don Wildman]

I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Steve Babson]

Hey Hei.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic expl, explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Don Wildman]

This is a time when such concerns as worker safety and really everything was turned to the states. The federal government wouldn't be the source of that kind of solution. Farmers alliance and the First Populace as you're calling them, they tip that balance, don't they? They make Americans aware of the power of the federal government to make changes on a sweeping basis. How do they do that? I mean, is it through the threat of political power? Is that what's going on?

[Steve Babson]

Partly that, yes. And they argue for the ballot. The ballot is the appropriate way to bring change in a democratic society. And so they want to basically encourage people to turn to electoral politics. But they also within their movement are the folks like Eugene Debs, who long before he became a socialist, was a leader of the railroad workers and coal miners as well, and hard rock miners. All of those groups are feeling especially beleaguered at disadvantage. When workers went on strike in these years, the usual response was to call out the National Guard, lock and load, live ammunition and open fire. So the strikes of this era are often marked by the number of workers shot dead on picket lines and in demonstrations on behalf of trying to address the unnecessary poverty and suffering that's going on across the board. So they're looking for a combination of things. The populace specifically valued the need for electoral action, but they also supported the rights of workers to form unions. And so part of it is an opposition to the use of court injunctions to break strikes and to basically break unions. So they're looking for a sort of dual strategy focused on electoral politics and gains, but also supporting the rights of workers and farmers who organize collectively on their own behalf.

[Don Wildman]

But William Jennings Bryan loses his election. 1896 you say, right? Yeah, yeah, he loses that election. So how successful was this, you know, or how does it sustain?

[Steve Babson]

Well, he loses the election, but not by much. He gets 47% of the vote and a particular couple states. If the vote had gone just a few thousand in the other direction, he might have actually won the electoral college. And so it remains a plausible alternative into the 20th century. When finally is Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt before him who shift the political center of gravity towards the left, a liberal left, they're still obviously devoted to a capitalist enterprise, but they understand that unfettered monopoly capitalism is a danger to both consumers and workers. And so there's a shift that goes on up until World War I. Then it shifts back to the right during the 1920s. And finally in the 1930s with the Great Depression and unemployment rates of 25% across the economy, people see the need for a social safety net and regulation of big business.

[Don Wildman]

But Steve, am I right when I talk about this with my, my conservative brethren, that what they blame FDR for and all that New Deal response to the, to the Great Depression really has its roots in a farmer's alliance in the 1890s. That's a true line I can draw. Right.

[Steve Babson]

I think, I think absolutely. If you want to look at the shifts and the changes that are going on over time, the populace are immediately frustrated. But they, they have an impact on the two party system that has profound outcomes in the 20th century and especially evident during the 1930s with the new Deal.

[Don Wildman]

I'm so refreshed by the idea that these notions of societal change through legislative, you know, government action, you know, these hateful ideas for so many actually comes out of an economic inequality that is addressed at first, which is attached to social concerns and social safety net ideas which then play forth for 20 or 30 years into what we have today.

[Steve Babson]

Right. You know, populism is a rational response to the disadvantages that workers and farmers saw in the 1890s and afterwards. And my problem with the way populism is thrown around today is that it's basically an evasion and kind of an historical lie because it's focusing, for example, in Trump's case, on his anti elitist rhetoric and not his real intent, which is to further enrich himself and the billionaire class. The real populace of American history would reject Trump, who seeks to cut taxes for the rich. The populace wanted a graduated income tax to shift the burden of taxation off of working people and farmers and onto the mega rich, who were successfully evading taxes in most cases. So they're antithetical to what Trump is actually about and what he favors and does. And yet by simply focusing on his rhetoric, they take seriously a man whose actual intent runs counter to what the populace would have been about.

[Don Wildman]

What happens within the populace. I mean, it itself begins to fragment as well. Yeah.

[Steve Babson]

Yes. And it's basically again, Williams Jennings Bryan, because as I mentioned in 1896, the Democrats in nominating him for president, also adopt some of the populist program. And so the populace are confronted with a very hard choice in that year. Do they endorse William Jennings Bryan, who after all, has met them halfway in terms of some of the parts of the populist program, but has not gone as far as many populists wanted to go. And so the party splits.

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[Steve Babson]

Hey, Sal.

[Don Wildman]

Hank.

[Steve Babson]

What's going on?

[Don Wildman]

We haven't worked a case in years.

[Steve Babson]

I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and

[Don Wildman]

it got delivered the next day.

[Steve Babson]

It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right.

[Don Wildman]

Case closed.

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[Steve Babson]

And they do finally narrowly endorse William Jennings Bryan in 1896. And the problem for them is that that then removes their claim to being a unique part of the political landscape. And it's the Democrats who start to accrue the support that had previously been moving in the direction of the populace. The Democrats become the more credible, the more credible prospect for reform along the lines initially proposed by the populace, but now over time, increasingly promoted by the Democrats.

[Don Wildman]

So when does the term die out as a popular idea?

[Steve Babson]

Really by the first decade of the 20th century. The party has no real relevance after 1896 in terms of national politics. There are some states, like North Carolina, continue to have a successful populist movement, but by 1900 it's gone and it's no longer a relevant matter at all. In terms of American politics, both parties are now actually roiled by conflict within them between the progressives in both the Democrats and the Republican party, and the old line conservative small government advocates who continue to battle on behalf of basically privileging the mega rich. So it becomes a battle within both the Republican and Democratic parties. Resolved finally in the Republican party as they align with big business and the progressives switch over to the New Deal.

[Don Wildman]

Kind of a victim of their own success, aren't they? They set out to make this a new world as far as a new consciousness about workers rights. And they get there at least halfway. Right?

[Steve Babson]

Well, they start in motion a train of transformations within the both major parties. So in a way, yeah, they demonstrate the need for this and the social base for it. But it's the Democrats in particular who finally are able to harness that, that

[Don Wildman]

two party system of ours, devouring everything in their paths. You know, Steve, there are so many things that happen in the 20th century in terms of progressive ideas. Of course, civil rights, but you know, some would say prohibition was progressive for, for one aspect of society. But so much of that really has its antecedents or its roots in this progressive movement. At the core of it all really is voters rights. Right. That's basically what this drives.

[Steve Babson]

They wanted an expansion of democracy. And so the populace are actually the first to really call for and successfully implement at the state level, voting rights for women. At this point in the 1890s, women do not have the right to vote. And in fact, they are not invited to participate in either the Democratic or Republican parties. It's the populace who open their ranks up to women as participants in the movement, as leaders of the populist efforts in local and state politics. And they call for votes for women. And the first two states to implement votes for women, Colorado and Idaho, are both states where it's the populace who have taken the lead and are successful politically in pushing for voting rights for women at the state level. Of course, it's into the 20th century when finally that becomes a constitutional movement that changes that and provides votes for women. Likewise, in the south, the populace were calling for a multiracial movement, an alliance of black and white farmers that ran counter to the Jim Crow tendencies that were being increasingly and more violently pushed through the 1890s. And so a lot of what happens in the south is the defeat of populism is carried out through basically a campaign of terror and lynch law that is a contributing feature to how they're defeated in the south. And that's what leads to Jim Crow. The narrowing of voting rights is the further narrowing of voting rights has a lot to do with the anti populist movement of the wealthy in the south looking for ways to narrow voting rights so that irresponsible whites and blacks cannot get together in an alliance that would overthrow their dominance of the political system in the South.

[Don Wildman]

Man, it is all connected. And it's all about the power of the ballot, isn't it? You can trace voter suppression to so much wrongs in our society today. Steve Babson is a labor educator, union activist living in Detroit. The book we're talking about is very readable one. I encourage folks to get it. It's called the Forgotten When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy. Fascinating. He has published seven books, including Working Detroit, the Making of a Union Town, Lean Work, Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry, the Color of Law, Ernie Goodman and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights in Detroit. Steve, the fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for meeting with us. And I feel educated. Thank you.

[Steve Babson]

Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American history hit with me. Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sander fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Steve Babson]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

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