Week 8:  Populists and Progressives

1: The Farm Crisis and the Populist Movement:   

1) Farm income depressed by mechanization and overproduction; farmers lack leverage with banks, railroads, processors and “middlemen”.

2) Beginnings of farm activism in the Grange and the Farmers’ Alliances (including many women).

3) Emergence of the Populist movement: People’s Party candidate James Weaver carries six states and receives a million votes in 1892.

4) Populists endorse free coinage of silver, popular election of senators, graduated income tax and federal regulation or control of railroads and public utilities.

5) William Jennings Bryan captures Democratic nomination in 1896 and endorsed by Populists; fails to overcome racial divisions in southern Populism or to win support of urban workers, immigrants or eastern liberal reformers.

6) McKinley shatters the Gilded Age political stalemate; GOP becomes majority party until Great Depression.

2: The Progressive Impulse:

1) The Progressive response to the new urban-industrial society: social and political problems solved by rational and scientific management by trained and educated leaders.

2) Organized interest groups impact local, state and national politics; the Social Gospel continues religious reform tradition.

3) Struggle for women’s suffrage and equality continues; the “New Woman” and leadership in campaigns for family planning, prohibition and laws to protect children.

4) Booker T. Washington and the “Atlanta Compromise”; The Niagara Movement and the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

5) Racism the “Achilles heel” of Progressivism (especially in the South); upsurge in lynching and anti-black urban riots; Wilson segregates federal departments in D.C.

6) Municipal and state reforms (city planning and management; direct primary, initiative, referendum and recall) set tone for national progressivism.

7) Roosevelt and Wilson: anti-trust laws, regulation of railroads, conservation, consumer protection; direct election senators, regulation of working conditions and graduated income tax.

8) Progressive education: socialization, practical and industrial training for the poor, immigrants and minorities; rejection of academic tradition and content.