Populist Moment

* Book: The Populist Moment: A Short History of Agrarian Revolt in America. By Lawrence Goodwyn

Review

BY HAYDEN CHILDS:

"Goodwyn’s theory of social movements is based on his observations of SNCC in their prime, as well as and his common-sense arguments: 1) In order to communicate, people must have the freedom to express ideas as equals (Goodwyn describes this as creating a “democratic space”); 2) for ideas to flourish, this democratic space must be extended to others through an education and recruitment program (or, as Goodwyn names it, a “movement culture”; and 3) to successfully challenge the hegemony of received culture, the movement must become political while continuing to be led from the bottom up, so that the voice of the movement is truly democratic.

These may seem like simple guidelines, but democratic movements are surprisingly rare in history, since the vast level of organization and open lines of communication that must be built for real democratic action to occur are daunting. There must be one clear issue to catalyze the participants and inspire them to throw their differences aside. In his books The Populist Moment and Breaking the Barrier, Goodwyn has documented two notable movements in recent history that share these traits of democratic action, despite the differences in time, culture and catalyzing issue.

In The Populist Moment, Goodwyn finds the roots and raison d’être for what became one of the largest third parties of the Industrial Age in a farmers’ revolt against the crop lien system. The United States had abandoned the gold standard during the Civil War, and the banking interests that pushed the nation’s monetary policy back to the gold standard after the war devalued the worth of land and crops to the point that, by the end of the 1880s, farmers throughout the South, whether rich or poor, black or white, teetered on the edge of financial collapse.

Enter the local merchant, the sole resident of most farming communities who could actually get a loan from the bank. Farmers would take a lien from the merchants to acquire the necessities of living and working, which the merchants would provide at some undisclosed interest. At the end of the harvest season, the farmer and the merchant would meet to discuss the farmer’s debt, and somehow the farmer would always owe more. After a few years of this, the farmer’s debt to the merchant was so great that he eventually had to sell his property to cover his debt and would wind up a tenant farmer on what had been his own farm. Thus did more than half of all farmers in the South go from landowners to tenants or sharecroppers between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century.

Goodwyn gives us perspective on the issue, reminding us of the various near-movements based around monetary policy after the Civil War such as the Greenback Party and the Grange. In the late 1870s, a few Hill Country Texas farmers decided to band together as the Farmers Alliance to fight the crop lien system using the idea of cooperative strength. The Alliance intended to get credit en masse and form their own cooperative-owned stores, but it found no banks willing to extend credit, and instead floundered for a few years until it attracted a visionary Mississippian, S.O. Daws — one of the greatest and most unsung movement organizers ever. The Alliance gave Daws the title of “Traveling Lecturer” and sent him off to organize Alliances within other counties and states. By 1885, the Alliance was 50,000 strong.

Goodwyn documents the growth of the Farmers Alliance, the early successes of the cooperative movement, and the emergence of some of the leaders of the party. He describes how the Alliance sent lecturers across the South and into Kansas and the Midwest; and he tells how everywhere the lecturers went, the allure of the cooperative store brought together massive state Alliances and suballiances, (as in Texas, January 1887, with 200,000 members out of a population of 1.6 million). Eventually, one of the emergent leaders of the Farmers Alliance, Charles Macune, hit upon the endgame idea that would liberate all Alliancemen from the crop lien system: the sub-treasury. Across the nation, the Alliance was finding its sources for credit disappearing, and the Alliance lecturers spread the word about the sub-treasury plan far and wide.

The sub-treasury was a simple plan: all Alliancemen, whether landowner or tenant, black or white, would donate their assets to a central state Alliance bank. Each state would buy supplies collectively for all members and would market their crops collectively. The landowners would provide collateral, and the tenant farmers would mortgage a portion of their crops. As Goodwyn puts it, “The farmers would sink or swim together; the landless would escape the crop lien, too, or none of them would.” Dramatic stuff.

However, there were laws against this type of action. The Farmers Alliance had to become explicitly political, which led to the formation of the Populist Party. Goodwyn’s narrative carries the story in a near-breathless way as the burgeoning hope of the Populists inevitably goes sour. Eventually, in-fighting between the true believers and the politically opportunistic resulted in a betrayal of the ideals of the party; but it is a testament to Goodwyn’s strengths as a writer and a philosopher that you hope, as you read their tale, these plucky, smart farmers will buck the system and their movement will succeed. But, of course, history tells us otherwise. The farmers were doomed, their movement stolen by opportunistic and powerful men without a connection to the grassroots, men who didn’t understand the need for a sub-treasury. The Party leadership eventually endorsed William Jennings Bryan (the Democratic Party nominee in 1896, a bearer of the silver monetary standard) for President, an endorsement Bryan himself disdained. The Populist moment passed and left shattered hopes in its wake." (http://www.thehighhat.com/Marginalia/004/goodwyn.html)