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| Beliavskaia, I. A. "Bortsy Protiv Zakonov 'Dzhunglei' (O Dvizheniia 'Razgrebatelei Griazi' V SSHA V 1900 -E GODY) [They Fought the Laws of the "Jungle" (the "Muckrakers" Movement in the United States at the Beginning of the 1900s) ]." Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia [USSR] 1967 11(4): 72-81. The activities of leading muckrakers and populists were little more than petty bourgeois attacks. But, they did strike a response in the masses and introduced new life into the reform movement. American History and Life, 5:2653 Ceaser, James W. "Political
Parties and Presidential Ambition." Journal of Politics 1978
40(3): 708-739. Both the
authors of The Federalist Papers and the originators of party government
(Martin Van Buren) sought electoral processes that regulated candidate
behavior. The Populist and
Progressive movements, on the other hand, sought a system which would
elevate a dynamic leader above his party.
American History and Life, 17A:493
Clanton, Gene. Populism: The Humane Preference in America, 1890-1900. Social Movements Past and Present. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. 199 pp. Populism was "the last significant expression of an old radical tradition that derived from Enlightenment sources that had been filtered through a political tradition that bore the distinct imprint of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Lincolnian democracy" (xvi). This tradition emphasized human rights over the cash nexus of the Gilded Age's dominant ideology. Emphasized Kansas Populism. Dudley, Harold Merriman. "The
Populist Movement." Ph.D. dissertation, American University, 1928. Ellis, Richard J. "Rival Visions
of Equality in American Political Culture." Review of Politics
1992 54(2): 253-280. American
definitions of equality have ranged from equality of opportunity to
equality of condition. Government
was viewed as an obstacle to equality through the 19th century, the
perception of its ability to enhance equality characterized Populism,
Progressivism, and the New Deal.
America: History and Life, 30:11525 Emerick, C.F. "An Analysis of
Agricultural Discontent in the United States." Political Science
Quarterly. Part 1, 1(3):433-63. September 1896. Part 2, 11(4):601-39.
December 1896. Part 3, 12(1):93-127. March 1897.
Fine, Nathan. Labor and Farmer
Parties in the United States, 1828-1928. 445 p. New York: Rand School
of Social Sciences. 1928. Farmer, Hallie, Part I. "The
Economic Background of Frontier Populism." Part II. "The
Railroads and Frontier Populism." Ph.D. Dissertation (Political
Science), University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1927. Fine, Sidney. Laissez Faire and the
General-Welfare State, A Study of Conflict in American Thought,
1865‑1901. 468 p. U of Michigan Publications, History and
Political Science, 22. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1956. Fite, Gilbert C. "The Agrarian
Tradition and its Meaning for Today." Minnesota History.
40(6):293‑99, notes. Summer 1967.
On the history and continued strength of the agrarian tradition.
_____. The Farmer's Frontier,
1865‑1900. 272 p. New York: Holt, 1966.
Scholarly and important, especially on causes for rural discontent.
Fite, Gilbert C. "Republican
Strategy and the Farm Vote in the Presidential Campaign of 1896." American
Historical Review 1960 65(4): 787-806.
"Republicans argued vigorously that free silver would not help
farmers because it did not address the real problem, surplus output and
lack of demand. They argued
that a higher protective tariff for manufacturers would create more
demand, which would increase demand for agricultural products. Folsom, Burton W., II. "The
Collective Biography as a Research Tool." Mid-America.
54(2):108-22. 1972. Ethnicity,
occupation and age are among significant variables recently applied to
Populist characteristics. Freie, John F. "Minor Parties in
Realigning Eras." American Politics Quarterly 1982 10(1):
47-63. Establishes an
association between the strength of the minor party and the sharpness of
the realignment. The strength
of the Populist Party in 1892 and the Progressive Party in 1924 were
strongly associated with the sharpness of the realignment process. Goebel, Thomas. "The Political
Economy of American Populism from Jackson to the New Deal." Studies
in American Political Development 1997 11(1): 109-148. The movement of
the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the political economic model of
populist republicanism took numerous incarnations, yet shared a common
ideology that political favoritism and abuse of political power caused
wealth and economic power to rest in the hands of a few businesses -
creating an inequality of wealth that eroded American democracy. These
movements (Jacksonian democracy, Greenback Party, Grangers, Populists, and
Progressives) produced a distinctive ideology and language of protest that
crossed class and party lines to champion the absolute sovereignty and
wisdom of the people. By the 1930's, changing economic conditions and New
Deal legislation aimed at dismantling the monopolies and trusts they
fought made populist movements largely irrelevant. America:
History and Life, 35:5077 Goldman, Eric. Rendezvous with
Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform. 372 p.
New York: Knopf, 1952. See
pp. 24-65. Goldman, Eric F. "Just Plain
Folks." American Heritage 1972 23(4): 4-8, 90-91.
A short history of the influence of Populism and the political
campaigns in which it figured. Goodwyn, Lawrence C. Democratic
Promise: The Populist Moment in America. New York, Oxford U P, 1976.
Abridged as The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian
Revolt in America. 349 p. Derived from Goodwyn's Ph.D. dissertation,
"The Origin and Development of American Populism. 510 p. Ph.D.
dissertation, U of Texas at Austin, 1971. Dissertation Abstracts,
33:3538‑A. The
Alliance's unsuccessful experiments in cooperative buying and selling
produced a mass-based "movement culture" that turned to politics
in order to obtain government cooperatives with the subtreasury plan.
The subtreasury plan, not the free silver issue, thus, was the
essence of Populism. Granjon, Marie-Christine.
"Contestation et Democratie Dans l'Amerique de 20e Siecle."
Transl/Info: [Conflict and Democracy in 20th-century America]. Vingtičme
Sičcle [France] 1988 (18): 43-54.
The distance between the American dream and the reality of social
inequalities has fed political and social protest in the United States
since the 19th century in the form of populism, Progressivism, socialism,
and radicalism. Grantham, Dewey W., Jr. "Southern
Congressional Leaders and the New Freedom, 1913-1917." Journal of
Southern History. 13(4):439-59. November 1947. Some former Populists, now Democrats, during the first
Democratic controlled US House since the Civil War. 1913. Greer, Thomas H. American Social
Reform Movements: Their Pattern Since 1865. 313 p. New York: Prentice,
1949. Chapter 3, pp. 61-91,
"Farmers in Revolt." Hadwiger, Don F. "Farmers in
Politics." Agricultural History. 50(1): 156-70. 1976.
Also see Lowell K. Dyson's comments, pp. 170-74. Hicks, John D. The Populist Revolt:
A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1931; Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1961. The
Progressive historian's magnum opus on Populism. Hicks emphasized economic pragmatism over ideals, presenting
Populism as interest group politics, with have‑nots demanding their
fair share of the nation's bounty. He
argued that financial manipulations, deflation, high interest rates,
mortgage foreclosures, unfair railroad practices, and a high protective
tariff unjustly impoverished farmers.
Corruption accounted for such outrages and Populists presented
popular control of government as the solution. Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR. 328 p. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1955. The most significant revisionist work on Populism. See "The folklore of Populism," pp. 60‑93. Hofstadter discounted third party links to other reform movements and argued that Populists were nostalgic, backward‑looking petty capitalists. They were provincial, conspiracy-minded, and had a tendency toward scapegoatism that manifested itself as nativism, anti-semitism, anti-intellectualism, and Anglophobia. _____. "Parrington and the
Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas. 2,
no. 4 (October, 1941): 391-400. Agrarian
opposition to industrial capitalism was "theoretically
impotent." Kazin, Michael. The Populist
Persuasion: An American History. Basic Books, 1995. Populists and
allegedly Populistic movements since the 1890s. Kleppner, Paul. Continuity and
Change in Electoral Politics, 1893-1928. 288 p. Contributions in
American History No. 120. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986. Koch, William E. "Campaign and
Protest Singing During the Populist Era." Journal of the West
1983 22(3): 47-57. Singing
added drama and emotional appeal to political gatherings staged by such
groups as the Grangers, the Farmers' Alliance, and the Populist Party.
Samples of campaign and protest songs. Kramer, Dale. The Wild Jackasses:
The American Farmer in Revolt. 260 p. New York: Hastings, 1956.
A popular account of the Grange, Populists, Nonpartisan League, and
Farmers' Union. 1867-1933. Kuropiatnik, G.P. Fermerskoe
dvizhenie v SShA: Ot Greindzherovk Narodnoi partii, 1867-1896 (The
Farmers' Movement in the USA: From the Granges to the Populists, 1867-1896).
438 p. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo
"Nauka," 1971. Russian. Láng, Imre. "Tarsadalompolitikai
Wszmék és Mozgalmak Az Egyesült Allamokban a 19. Szazad Masodik Felétol
1917-IG" [Social Policy Concepts and Movements in the United States
from the Second Half of the 19th Century to 1917]. Világtörténet
[Hungary] 1994 (Fall-Wint): 3-23. Before
1850 or so, the small farmer living under very difficult conditions was
the backbone of America. Agrarian
dissatisfaction emerged with industrialization, leading to the Populist
movement.
Lasch,
Christopher. The Agony of the American Left. New York: Knopf, 1969.
See "The Decline of Populism." pp. 3-31. Lerda,
Valeria Gennaro. Il Populismo Americano: Movimenti Radicali di Protesta
Agraria nella Seconda Meta' dell'800. [American populism: radical
movement of agrarian protest in the second half of the 1800s]. Genoa:
Mondini & Siccardi, 1981. 665 pp. (Italian) Lustig, R. Jeffrey. Corporate
Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890-1920.
357 p. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. McMath, Robert C., Jr., American
Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
245 pp. McMath's connects the story of the Populist revolt to the social
history of late nineteenth century rural America.
Populists were not isolated, ignorant hicks unable to cope with the
modern world. Those who
joined the movement were deeply rooted in the social and economic networks
that pervaded the rural communities of late nineteenth century America.
McMath notes certain similarities between conditions in the late
nineteenth century South and West. Populism
was strongest where railroads had been completed after 1877.
Railroads brought both new commercial relationships and exposed
farmers to a labor radicalism that kept alive old cooperative labor
practices. It was grounded in the thought of the Founding Fathers, which
farmers easily modified for their own purposes. Unlike Goodwyn, who argues Populism was something new, McMath
reveals a pre-existing culture of protest had already exhibited itself in
the form of the Granger movement and Greenback party before the vast
expansion of the Farmers Alliances in the 1880s.
The 1892 Populist campaign destroyed the Alliance organization,
which signaled a dangerous erosion of the social movement that undergirded
the party, eventually leading to its demise.
Miller, Worth Robert. "Farmers and
Third-Party Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century America." In The
Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins
of Modern America. pp. 235-60. Edited by Charles W.
Calhoun. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996. Populists
were ideologically committed to the republicanism of earlier generations,
which they applied to current development like the widening gap between
rich and poor. Populism was
the last stand of freeholders and independent workers before being
proletarianized. They
accepted industrialization, but demanded that it be made humane. _____. "The Lost World of
Gilded Age Politics." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive _____. Populism and
the People's Party During the Gilded Age. Alexandria, VA: Alexander _____. Populist Cartoons: An Illustrated History of the Populist Movement in the 1890s. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2011. 198 pp. This book tells the story of the Populist Revolt through 150 cartoons taken from Populist newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s, with an accompanying narrative. _____. "The Populist
Vision: A Roundtable Discussion." Kansas History. 32,
no. 1 (Spring 2009): Mochizuki, Kiyohito. "Amerika
Shakai Kaiyo Shiso Ryakufu" (A Brief Record of American Social Reform
Ideas). Matsuyama Shodai Ronshu. [Japan]. 18(4):1-25. 1967.
Covers utopias, Grange, Populism and Marxism in 19th century. Morgan, H. Wayne. "Populism and
the Decline of Agriculture." in The Gilded Age: Revised and
Enlarged Edition. Syracuse: Syracuse U P, 1970 Nye, Russell B. Midwestern
Progressive Politics, 1870-1950: A Historical Study of its Origins and
Development. 398 p. East Lansing: Michigan State U P, 1951.
Finds Midwestern origins for American reform. Origins of
Progressivism lay in the Populist movement. Osnes, Larry G. "The Birth of a
Party: The Cincinnati Populist Convention of 1891." Great Plains
Journal 1970 10(1): 11-24. An
early organizational convention which led to the Omaha Convention of 1892. Discusses roles of Ignatius Donnelly, William Alfred Peffer,
Jerry "Sockless" Simpson, and James B. Weaver.
While farmers and laborers were united in opposition to the
"money power," differences over railroad rates, the tariff, and
the eight-hour-day made coalition difficult.
The party was doomed from the beginning. Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main
Currents in American Thought: The Beginnings of Critical Realism in
America, 1860-1920. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1930.
Reprint, Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1986.
See particularly, "The Middle Border Rises," pp. 259-87.
Parrington was a Kansas Populist in the mid-1890s. Paxson, Frederic L. Recent History
of the United States, 1865 to the Present. 682 p. Boston: Houghton,
1929. Revised and enlarged edition. "Devotes
considerable space to the Populist movement and its consequences."
Hicks, Populist Revolt. _____. History of the American
Frontier, 1763-1893. 594 p. Boston: Houghton, 1924.
Frontier background of Populism. _____. When the West is Gone.
137 p. New York: Holt, 1930. "Concedes fully the significance of the
Populist Revolt." Hicks, Populist Revolt. Peskin, Allan." Were the Populists Prophets?" Hayes Historical Journal 1990 9(2): 5-13. Challenges idea that the People's Party was successful in the long term because its basic party proposals were eventually adopted and institutionalized. Argues that free silver and the subtreasury plan were the key provisions, and were never enacted. Also see Fred A. Shannon "C.W. Macune and the Farmers' Alliance." Current History 1955 28(166): 330-335, for argument that the Warehousing Act of 1916 fulfilled the essence of the subtreasury plan. America: History and Life, 29:5141 Piott, Steven L. The Anti-Monopoly
Persuasion: Popular Resistance to the Rise of Big Business in the Midwest.
194 p. Contributions in Economics and Economic History No. 60.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. Progressivism was a
conservative counter-attack on a genuine, if somewhat nostalgic,
community-based radicalism of farmers, industrial workers small retailers
and consumers. Pollack, Norman. The Populist
Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought. 166 p.
Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1962. Populists
were social levelers seeking to reverse the widening gap between haves and
have-nots that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
Their movement was forward-looking, accepting industrialization,
and class oriented. Ritter, Gretchen. Goldbugs and
Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in
America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19977. Derived from
the author's 1992 MIT Political Science Ph.D. dissertation, "Parties
and the Politics of Money: The Antimonopoly Tradition and American
Political Development, 1865-1896."
Various movements from the National Labor Union to the Populists
were involved in the antimonopoly movement had an alternative political
economy tradition rooted in the republican persuasion of Jeffersonians and
Jacksonians. They sought to
preserve economic opportunity and political participation for all classes
in all regions of the country. Anti-monopolists
were particularly concerned with reforming the monetary and banking
systems, in order to mitigate economic inequality and political
corruption. The author uses
three case studies to consider the impact of geography - North Carolina,
Illinois, and Massachusetts. Anti-monopolism
was a strong, coherent tradition which offered an intellectually
reasonable alternative to corporate liberalism.
They failed because of the combined constraints of the party
system, the political culture, economic institutions, and poor strategic
choices. Rothlisberger, Orland A. "The
Populist National Convention in Sioux Falls." South Dakota History
1971 1(2): 155-165. Discusses the background and political development of
the Populist Party in South Dakota. The successful securing of the
National Convention in Sioux Falls in 1900 was the climax to the party's
influence in the State. The small attendance was the result of internal
tensions within the party. Sanders, Elizabeth. Roots of Reform:
Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1999. Scarrow, Howard A. "Duverger's
Law, Fusion and the Decline of American 'Third' Parties." Western
Political Quarterly 1986 39(4): 634-647.
A major explanation for third-party decline in American politics
has been changes in state election laws which have eliminated what was
once common practice - the nomination of one candidate by two or more
political parties, usually by a major party and a smaller one.
Prior to 1900, fusion candidacies occurred at all levels of
government. Stedman, Murray S., Jr. and Susan W.
Stedman. Discontent at the Polls: A Study of Farmer and Labor Parties,
1827-1948. 190 p. New York: Columbia U P, 1950. Tarbell, Ida M. The Nationalizing of
Business, 1878-1898. 313 p. New York: Macmillan, 1938.
Ch. 8, "The Farmers Organize" and Ch. 11, "The
Controversy over Silver." Tindall, George B. "The People's
Party." in History of United States Political Parties. vol. 2,
ed. Arthur Meier Schlesinger. New York: Chelsea House, 1973. pp. 1701-31. Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The
Problem of the West." Atlantic Monthly. 78:289-297. 1896.
Youngsdale, James M. "Populism,
Democracy and Paradigm Shift." American Studies in Scandinavia
[Norway] 1986 18(1): 37-49. Within
the Populist Movement of 1890s there were a variety of competing ideas,
ranging from the socialists to those who focused on the political process
itself as the remedy for social problems.
They were united more in their sense of displacement than in
agreement about the future. Thus, in the current era, the members of
rightist groups and leftist organizations can claim the Populists as their
heritage. |