Colored Farmers Alliance and Populism

Eric Beck rayrena at accesshub.net
Fri Nov 19 08:41:38 PST 1999


Nathan sent along:


>An interesting link on racism and agrarian populism of the late 19th
>century.
>http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/4275/part1.html
>
>Preliminary research for writing a history of the
>Colored Farmers Alliance in the Populist movement: 1886-1896

Thanks for forwarding this complex picture of a complex movement. Indeed the populist movement did contain elements of nationalism, racism, and even antisemitism, but it was a far cry from the bland, oversimplified, ahistorical denunciations of it that we heard last week from Carroll, Yoshie, and Katha. I've appended another section from the piece; since it's clear to me that no one other than Max knows what Populism actually was, perhaps this quick little description will enlighten.

Eric

--------------------------- The Populist

Who were the Populists? Simply stated: Populists were Black and white farmers from the South and Midwest, both owners and tenants, who began by organizing into farmers' associations and ended up forming an independent third party, the People's Party, to advance their economic status. Their families had grown steadily into further debt throughout the latter part of the 19th century while Northeastern bankers, railroad owners, and industrialists steadily reaped enormous profits. This 'Gilded Age,' a term we now use to describe the era, was obviously far from golden for the American farmer.

What were their problems? Their problems read like a litany of grievances. Farmers had tied themselves to the production of single crops, such as cotton in the South and wheat in the Midwest, which was good if the price was high but led to many bankruptcies when the price was too low. There was a lack of currency. The growth of Big Business in the Northeast led to a scramble for available currency. With a short money supply, interest rates as high as 40% were being charged by Eastern loan companies causing as many as one-quarter of the farms in the Midwest to be run by tenants rather than owners. Moreover overvalued land resulted in over-assessed local and state taxes -- which had to be paid in the form of currency.

While Northeastern industry benefitted by the high tariffs of the era this ultimately burdened farmers. Low-priced produce, such as corn or wheat, was sold in a competitive world marketplace while high-priced manufactured goods, such as machinery and building materials, were protected in the home markets. Again, farmers lost out.

Farmers had to pay for the storage of their produce which reduced their profits. At times, railroads charged more in shipping fees than the produce was worth, sometimes making it cheaper to burn the grain as fuel than ship it to market.

Then there were natural disasters: Insect infestation destroyed millions of acres of crops -- grasshoppers in the Midwest, boll weevils in the South; flooding and soil erosion followed by cycles of drought plagued the trans-Mississippi West after 1886 and Western Kansas in 1887. In fact, at least half of Western Kansas migrated back to the East by 1891. Farmers in Kansas returning to the East had a saying: "In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted!"

Finally, while almost half of the population in the United States was engaged in farming by 1890, farmers remained poorly organized -- socially and culturally individualistic and independent.

What did the Populists want? On the most basic level, they wanted to earn a living on land of their own. Their explicit demands however included: an increase in the circulation of currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver); a graduated income tax; government ownership of the railroads; a tariff for revenue only; the direct election of U.S. senators; and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give farmers economic parity with Northeastern businessmen and industry.

Under the dreaded crop-lien system, where creditors took over farms, farmers not only lost their property but as tenants they were often unable to make ends meet. Sharecropping, the other dominant (and oppressive) farming system, further helped to maintain a seemingly permanent Black and white peasantry in the South. Moreover, these two farming systems were marked by the convict lease system. Reminiscent of the days of slavery, scores of Black men were again chained in the fields, however now as leased labor from individual state prisons by plantation owners.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list