The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books)

Populism. The word is used a lot today by political journalists in reference to both President Trump supporters and the Brexit movement. And, historically speaking, it is generally used inaccurately, a fact that I, too, was unaware of until I read another reader’s review of a separate title. That reviewer recommended this book, written by Duke professor of history, Lawrence Goodwyn, and published in 1979.While the title refers to the book as ‘short’, it is a very thorough review of the populist political movement that rose out of the National Farmers Alliance, which went under a series of different names and platforms that ultimately had everything to do with the coinage of silver and relatively little to do with the original populist reforms.What is most fascinating to me is not the acquisition of historical accuracy regarding the populist label as it is the revelation of the degree to which the 1896 presidential election, between Republican William McKinley and Democrat (and presumed populist) William Jennings Bryant, ultimately cast the shape of American economics and politics that survives yet today. While that election appeared to turn on gold (McKinley) versus silver (Bryant), the outcome would ultimately define no less than what it means to be an American in the 21st Century.It all began with the American Civil War, not surprisingly. And, more specifically, who was going to pay the enormous debt incurred to fight it. And that, ultimately, came down to the question of currency. The creation of a hard currency, which is ultimately the position that won out, protected the bankers and other owners of corporate capital, but at the expense of laborers and farmers.The hard currency ultimately exaggerated the worst abuses of the crop lien system then prevalent in the South, forcing farmers (land-owners and tenants alike) into a cycle of increasing debt and falling commodity prices that they could not escape. It is, in many ways, the same inescapable cycle that entraps the urban and rural poor today.But that’s where the populist analogy ends, as the populist agrarian movement pursued a political agenda that would be the antithesis of Trump’s MAGA agenda of today. It was, in fact, the antitheses of both the modern conservative and progressive agendas, both of which only appear to offer a real distinction and choice.Both agendas presume the economic supremacy of capital and the political supremacy of the corporate and banking classes that control it. Among other things, it is the supremacy of capital that has fueled the rapid and unbridled consolidation of both industry and agriculture in the US, permanently planting the corporation at the top of the political food chain. (In 1870, the average US factory had only 8 workers.)Before the Civil War, about 80% of all free white men owned property. By 1890, however, the richest 9% of all Americans (still white men) owned three-fourths of all wealth and within a decade one in eight Americans were living in abject poverty. With the exception of a historically brief period following World War II, in which unions managed to give laborers a political voice, now lost, it is a trend that continues to this day.What was most amazing to me, in reading this book, was how little things have really changed. Our political parties are built on regional alliances far more than differences of ideological substance. Both accept the supremacy of corporate consolidation and the benefit of economies of scale, even though there is little actual evidence to support the premise. Consolidation has done nothing quite so effectively as it has promoted political, social, and financial inequality. (Republicans and Democrats both blamed the farmers themselves for their economic plight in the 1890s, much as politicians frequently blame the poor themselves for their plight today.)The solutions proposed by the populists of the National Agrarian Federation were decidedly collective in nature and built from the success of the cooperative movement that had provided some relief from corporate anarchy. It called for the abolition of private banks, a new dynamic currency, the nationalization of the railroads, and the formation of government cooperatives to handle crop financing, insurance, and post-harvest handling and storage. It was, in other words, quite the ideological opposite of Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-regulatory, pro-corporate agenda.The author makes two other important contributions to the current political dialogue. The first is to refute the illusion promoted by both political parties that American history is a timeline of uninterrupted progress and advancement. It is, more than we care to admit, a history of exploitation and the dominance of minority interests under the guise of personal and economic freedom that, for most, does not exist. And because it is a myth that is almost universally accepted, the author notes, real political reform in the US is virtually impossible to achieve, in short because we refuse to see the world the way it really is. We have, as a result, neither the confidence nor the persistence to force the owners of capital, which control the political agenda, to give up the advantages they have enshrined into American politics and business.In short, this is a fascinating book that everyone should have the courage to read. You may not agree with the author’s conclusions, and there will surely be other historians who will take exception with his interpretation. Each of us, however, should have a commitment to defend that which we believe in the face of inconvenient facts, including those presented in this book.

Most college kids in the 70's were force-fed RICHARD HOFSTADTER's book, The Age of Reform, which ridiculed populism.But having grown up the son of a immigrant farm boy and county agent, my view of the midwestern populism and farm culture was much much different.So Goodwyn's book was a welcome documentation of what I had known all along--that populism was a uniquely American movement, and the spirit of the frontier was never rugged individualism, but community.The Farmer-Laborer Alliances of the late 19th Century, and the People's Party that resulted, always referred to their reform movement as 'cooperation', and quoted Thomas Jefferson, and the founding fathers. In this context, populism was uniquely American. It was a struggle between democratic capitalism vs. speculative and monopoly capitalism.Real populism was about creating cooperative systems to consolidate farmer's economic power in competition with the railroads and the banks. It was the alternative to the disasterous crop-lien system of the rural south that turned so many of Jefferson's yoeman farmers into destitute sharecroppers, that forced them out of their homes to settle the western plains.Goodwyn's book debunks the idea the William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech was the defining highpoint of populism, when in fact it was it's destruction. Goodwyn points out that free silver was never more then a shadow movement of an immensely popular political movement.Goodwyn also debunks the later-day revisionists like Michael Kazin's book, author of The Populist Persuasion, that populism was a style of rhetoric than a coherent set of political ideas or reforms.While the People's Party was co-opted and destroyed by the Democrat Party, most of the reforms advocated by the populists came to pass in the 1930's with the agricultural reforms of the 1930's. Things like the rural electrification, the regulation of the railroads, the Farm Credit Administration, and the federal reserve all grew out the original populist ideas. Because of the populist complaints, eventually government intervention in the grain and other food commodies marketplace was recognized as the means of democraticizing and strengthing the market system, stablizing the food supply, and strengthening the market system.But most importantly, the dignity of the common man against the rich and powerful urban elite entered American political discourse.This is an important book, and a welcome understanding of perhaps the most successful movement by common folks to control their own destiny.

Abruptly missing pages xxi -xxiii in introduction.But, overall worth the read so far.

Usually histories of economics put me to sleep. But Lawrence Goodwyn's "The Populist Movement" is an enthralling gem that will give you numerous "Aha!" moments as it shows how and why populist movements, particularly that of the post-Civil War era (with its inception in Texas), began, grew, and failed in competing with big banks and business. There are many surprises to someone like me, who is not an economist but has been led (or pushed) to care about it from what has happened in and to America these past 30 years. Goodwyn shows clearly why the small farmers of southern and Plains America were driven to do something about the crushing control of big banks, growing commercial interests, and Wall Street. Ultimately, they failed because all power and control was in the hands of men like Gould and Morgan and the other Robber Barons. There is, however, a lesson to be taken from "The Populist Movement," that knowing and anticipating what massive blockages stand in the way of economic and political change can help people work around them. No one who reads Goodwyn's book can claim, "Well, I just didn't know."