The Populists at St. Louis

by Henry Demarest Lloyd  

The People’s Party has “shot the chutes” of fusion and landed in the deep waters of Democracy as the Independent Republican movement of 1872 did.  Nearly all the reform parties of the late generation have had the same fate.  Democracy is that bourne from which no reform party returns--as yet.  The Independent Republicans organized as a protest against corruption in the administration of the national government and to secure tariff reform of free trade lines.  Unlike the People’s Party, theirs began its career under the leadership of some of the most distinguished men in the nation.  Among them were Hon. David A. Wells, who had been United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue; Ex- Governor Hoadley of Ohio; E. L. Godkin, editor of the New York Nation; Horace White, then of the Chicago Tribune; Ex-Governor Randolph of New Jersey; the Hon. J. D. Cox, who had been Secretary of the Interior; Edward Atkinson of Boston, the Hon. Carl Schurz.  It was the expectation of most of these gentlemen and their followers that the Cincinnati convention would nominate Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, our great War Minister at the Court of St. James, for President, and with his election and a Congress pledged to civil service reform and revenue tariff the country would enter upon a new era of purity and prosperity.  The revulsion when their free trade egg hatched out Horace Greeley was comparable only to that of the gold and machine Democrats at Chicago at the nomination of Bryan and the adoption of the anti-Cleveland and pro-silver platform.  The People’s Party had no men of national prestige to give it birth éclat.  It has been from the beginning what its name implies –a party of the people. 

            One of the principal sources was the Farmers’ Alliance.  To President Polk of that body more than to any other single individual it owes its existence.  The agrarian element has been predominant throughout its career.  One if its best representatives in this convention was the temporary chairman--the Hon. Marion Butler, the handsome farmer of North Carolina.  Too young to be a candidate for President or Vice-President, he has worked his way up from his fields through the Farmers’ Alliance into a seat in the United States Senate.  But in addition to the revolting agrarians, nearly every other reform force--except the Socialists--has been swept into it.  Its first national convention of 1892 was attended by veterans of the old Greenback movement like General James B. Weaver, by rotten-egging whom, in the campaign that followed, the Southern Democrats made tens of thousands of Populists; by anti-monopolists like Ignatius Donnelly, whose Shakespeare cryptogram has made him one of the best known writers of his day; by leaders like Powderly.  It was no easy thing to find common ground for men so dissimilar to meet upon.  The delicate work of preparing a platform was accomplished, thanks mainly to the skillful pen of Ignatius Donnelly.  The convention went wild with joy when it became known that the Committee on Platform had succeeded in coming to an agreement and unification was assured.  For over an hour the thousand members of the convention sang, cheered, danced and gave thanks.  It was one of the most thrilling scenes in the panorama of American political conventions.  Singularly enough, it was in the Democratic convention, this year, not that of the People’s Party, that the forces of enthusiasm and revolutionary fervor flamed the brightest. 

            The Populist gathering of this year lacked the drill and distinction and wealth of  the of  the Republican convention held the month before in the same building.  It had not the ebullient aggressiveness of the revolutionary Democratic assembly at Chicago, nor the brilliant drivers who rode the storm there.  Every one commented on the number of gray heads-heads many of them grown white in previous independent party movements.  The delegates were poor men.  One of the “smart” reporters of the cosmopolitan press dilated with the wit of the boulevardier upon finding some of them sitting with their shoes off,--to rest their feet and save their shoes, as they confessed to him.  Perhaps even his merry pen would withheld its shafts if he had realized that these delegates had probably had to walk many weary miles to get to the convention, and that they had done their political duty at such sacrifice only for conscience sake.  Cases are well known of delegates who walked because too poor to pay their railroad fare.  It was one day discovered that certain members of one of the most important delegations were actually suffering for food.  They had had no regular sleeping place, having had to save what money they had for their nickel meals at the lunch counter.  The unexpected length of the proceedings had exhausted their little store of money.  Among these men, who were heroically enduring without complaint such hardships in order to attend political duties which so many of those who laugh at them think beneath their notice, were some of the blacklisted members of the American Railway Union.  They were there in the hope that they might have the opportunity of helping to make their leader, Eugene V. Debs. a candidate for President.  But Mr. Debs, though he had a large following, refused to allow his name to be put before the convention, urging that every one should unite in favor of Bryan, as there seemed a chance of his election, and through him the people might at least hold their ground until ready for a more decisive advance.

            In the South, the Democracy represents the classes, the People’s Party, the masses,.  The most eloquent speeches madder were those f whites and blacks explaining to the convention what the rule of the Democrats meant in the South.  A delegate from Georgia, a coal-black Negro, told how the People’s Party alone gave full fellowship to his race, when it had been abandoned by the Republicans and cheated and betrayed the Democrats.  It was to this recognition of the colored men a distinguished political manager referred when he said recently in an interview that the Populists of the South could go where they belonged--“with the negroes.”  With thrilling passion the white Populists of the South pleaded that the convention should not leave them to the tender mercies of the Democrats, by accepting the Democratic nominees without the pledges or conditions which would save the Populists from going under the chariot wheels of southern Democracy.  “Cyclone” Davis, spokesman of the Texas delegation, tall and thin as a southern pine, with eyes kindled with the fire of the prophet, a voice of far reach and pathos, and a vocabulary almost every word of which seemed drawn from the Gospels or the denunciatory Psalms, wrestled and prayed with the convention to save the Populists of Texas from the fate that awaited them if they were sent back, unprotected, to their old enemies.  The Democrats, the “classes,” hate with a hatred like that of the Old Regime of France for the Sans Culottes of St. Antoine the new people who have dared to question the immemorial supremacy of their aristocratic rule, and who have put into actual association, as not even the Republicans have done, political brotherhood with the despised negro.  This is the secret of the bolt of the Texas Populist, just announced.  They have gone over to gold with the sound money men of both the old parties, because more than silver, more than anti-monopoly, the issue with them is the elementary right to political manhood.  The issue in many parts of the South is even more elementary-the right to life itself, so bitter is the feeling of the Old Democracy against these upstarts from the despised masses of the whites.  The line between the old Democracy and Populism in the South is largely a line of bloody graves.  When the convention decided to indorse Bryan without asking for any pledge from the Democrats for the protection of the southern Populists one of its most distinguished members, a member of Congress, well known throughout the country turned to me and said:  “This may cost me my life.  I can return home only at that risk.  The feeling of the Democracy against us is one murderous hate.  I have been shot many times.  Grand juries will not indict our assailants.  Courts give us no protection.”

            The People’s Party convention was dated to follow the conventions of the two other parties by its managers in the pessimistic belief that the Democratic party as well as the Republican would be under the thumb or the trusts and the “gold bugs.”  The People’s Party would then have the easy task of gathering into its ranks the bolting silver and anti-monopolist Republicans and Democrats, and increasing its two millions of votes to the five and millions that would put it in possession of the White House for four years.  It was a simple plan.  That its lead would be taken from it by one of the old parties, least of all that this would be done by the party President Cleveland and Secretary Olney, those in charge of the People’s Party did not dream.  The democracy had not forgotten how they were forced to accept Horace Greeley in 1872, because the independent Republicans had had their convention first.  Its progressive elements with a leader of surpassing shrewdness and dash, Altgeld, who unites a William Lloyd Garrison’s love of justice with the political astuteness of a Zach Chandler or a Samuel J. Tilden, took advantage of the tactical error of the People’s Party managers in postponing its convention.  The delegates as they betook themselves to St. Louis thought they saw a most promising resemblance between the prospects of the People’s party in 1896 and those of the Republican party in 1856.  The by-elections since 1892 showed that its membership was roll was rising and was well on the way to two millions.  It was the party whose position was the most advanced on the question of social control of privileged social power, which, if contemporary literature is any guide, is the question of the times.  But as the end of four years’ work since the young party startled the old politicians in 1892 by showing up over a million votes by not its nomination.  He will be its nominee but not its candidate.  Such are the perplexities of the situation that it is even extremely doubtful whether the nominee will receive an official notification of his nomination or request that he will consent to be a candidate.  It is urged influential members of the party that as a Democrat he would be “embarrassed” by such a notification and request, and that the “crisis” is so grave that they must sacrifice their party to their patriotism, and save their country by voting for the Democratic candidate without his knowledge “officially”-on the sly, as it were.  Until their convention met theses millions had hoped that theirs would be the main body of a victorious army.  This hope ends in their reduction to the position of an irregular force of guerillas fighting outside the regular ranks, the fruit of victory, if won,  to be appropriated by a general who would not recognize them.  Even more interesting is it that this is cheerfully accepted by most of the rank and file of the People’s Party.  No protest of sufficient importance to cause a halt was made at the first, when the shock was greatest, and the noise of dissent has grown fainter as the excitement of the campaign rises.  The party is composed altogether of men who already had the self-discipline of giving up party for the sake of principle.  Every one in it had been originally either a Democrat or a Republican, and had severed all his old political ties to unite with those, who like himself, cared more for reform than old party comforts.  To men who had already made one such sacrifice, another was not difficult.  The People’s Party is bivertebrate as well as bimetallic.  It was built up of the old Greenback and Anti-monopoly elements reinforced by castaways of the Union Labor, National, and other third party enterprises.  Its members had become well acquainted with the adversities of fusion and amalgamation, and used to being “traded” out of existence.

            One of the plainest looks of the face of the St. Louis convention was anxiety-anxiety of the managers who for years had been planning to get by fusion-with Republicans or Democrats-the substance if not the name of victory, and saw in the gathering many reslolute “middle of the road” opponents; anxiety of the mass of the delegates lest they were being sold out; anxiety, most surprising of all, among the radicals, lest by insisting too much upon their own radicalism they might explode a coalescence which, if left to gather headway, might later be invaluable to them.  The predominant anxiety found its most striking expression in the preparation and adoption of the platform.  In the committee room every suggestion for the utterance of any novelty in principle or application was ruthlessly put down.  When the platform was reported to the convention, the previous question was at once moved, and the platform adopted without a word of debate.  Even in the Democratic convention half a day was given to discussion the articles of political faith.  No motion to reconsider this closure and secure discussion of the principles of the movement was made.  Even the radicals sat silent.  In the proceedings of the convention the creed of the party should keep on in its own path or merge for this campaign with the Democracy.  The solicitude to do nothing which should hinder the Rising of the People, it that had really begun, was the motive that led to the endorsement of Bryan.  Most of the three hundred, over one hundred of them from Texas alone, who refused to unite in this, would have joined its one thousand supporters had the protection they prayed for against the old Democracy been given them by the exaction of guarantees from the Democratic candidate and campaign managers.  It was not that they loved Bryan less.  A determination that the People’s Party and that for which it stood should not be lost if this year’s battle was lost by its ally, Democracy, accounts for the nomination of Watson.  The majority which insisted that all the precedents should be violated and the Vice-President nominated before the President, and which rejected Sewall and took Thomas E. Watson of Georgia--a second Alexander H. Stephens in delicacy of physique and robustness of eloquence and loyalty to the people-was composed, as the result showed, mostly of the same men who afterward joined the nomination of Bryan.  It is true there was a strong opposition to Sewall, because he was national bank president, railroad director and corporation man.  But the nomination speeches and the talk of the delegates showed convincingly that the same men who meant to support Bryan were equally well minded that there should not be an absolute surrender to the Democracy.  The Democracy must yield something in return for the must greater concession the People’s Party was to give.

            Contrary to expectation and to the plan by which the two conventions had been brought to St. Louis on the same dates, the silver convention exercised no influence on that of the Populists.  The delegates of the latter listened with unconcealed impatience to every reference to the silver body, and refused to allow its members any rights upon the floor.  The report of the Conference Committee was listened to without interest.  The tumultuous refusal of the convention to allow Senator Stewart of the silver convention an extension of time when he was addressing them, was one of the many signs that the convention card less for silver than did the Democratic convention.   Most of the Democrats really believe free silver is a great reform.  That is as far as they have got.  But it was hard to find among the Populists any who would not privately admit that they knew silver was only the most trifling installment of reform, and many-a great many-did not conceal their belief that it was no reform at all.  The members of the People’s party have had most of their education on the money question from the Greenbackers among them-men like the only candidate who contended with Bryan for the nomination before the convention-Colonel S. F. Norton,⁵ author of the “Ten Men of Money Island,” of which hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold, who for twenty years has been giving his means and his life energy to agitating for an ideal currency.  The People’s Party believes really in a currency redeemable in all the products of human labor, and not in gold alone, nor in gold and silver.  A party which hates Democracy accepted the Democratic nominee, and a party which has no faith in silver as a panacea accepted silver practically as the sole issue of the campaign.  Peter Cooper, the venerable philanthropist, candidate for President on the Green back ticket in 1876-whose never absent air cushion Nast by one of his finest strokes of caricature converted into a crown for General Butler when running as Greenback and Labor candidate for Governor of Massachusetts-presided over the first days of the convention from within the frame of a very poorly painted portrait.  But later, by accident or design, about the time when it thus became plain that the convention would make only a platonic declaration of its paper money doctrines, and would put forward only “Free Silver” for actual campaign use, the face of the old leader disappeared and was seen no more with its homely inspiration above the chairman’s head.

            The solution of the paradoxical action of the convention as to Democracy and money was the craving for a union of reform forces which burned with all the fires of hope and fear in the breasts of the delegates, and overcame all their academic differences of economic doctrine and all their academic differences of economic doctrine and all their old political prejudices.  The radicals had men who were eager to raise the convention against the stultification they thought it was perpetrating.  If the issue had been made there was an even chance, good arithmeticians among the observers thought, that the convention could have been carried by them, and a “stalwart” ticket put into the field on a platform far in advance of that adopted in Omaha in 1892, one demanding, for instance, the public ownership of all monopolies.  This contingent felt that the social question is more than money question, and the silver question more than the candidacy of any one person.  If the money question was to be the issue it wanted it to be the whole money question-the question how an honest dollar can be made instead of being only stumbled on in placers or bonanzas, and how it can be made as elastic as the creative will of the people and as expansive as civilization itself.  Certainly the strongest single body of believers in the convention was this of anti-monopoly in everything including the currency. These men would much rather have declared for the demonetization of gold when the remonetization of silver.  That their strength was formidable-formidable enough to have split the convention near the middle, if not to have split the convention near the middle, if not to have called this force into activity were quiescent, for Col. Norton’s candidacy was unsought, impromptu and without organization.  The leaders did not lead, and their followers did not clamor to be led.  “General” J. S. Coxey of the Commonweal Army, who has left large property interests to suffer while he has devoted himself to educating the people of his “Good Roads” plan of internal improvements, to be paid for by non-interest bearing bonds, was present, and made no resistance outside of the Committee of Resolutions.  Ex-Governor Waite of Colorado, whose name will be cheered in any assembly of labor men or Populists, as the only Governor who has called out the militia to protect the workingmen against violence at the hands of their employers, for the sake of harmony forbore to press his claims at the head of contesting delegation from Colorado.  Senator Peffer, who has shown an ample courage in every emergency at Washington, sat silent, though he was bitterly opposed to the methods of the managers.  The fear ruled that unless the reform forces united this time they would never again have the opportunity to unite.  It was in the air that there must be union.  The footfall of the hour for action was heard approaching.  It was a psychological moment of rapprochement against an appalling danger  which for thirty years had been seen rising in the sky.  If the radicals made a mistake, it was a patriotic mistake.  The delegates knew perfectly well that the silver miners were spending a great deal of money and politics to get them to do just what they were doing.  They knew what the Democratic politicians were doing with the same object.  They knew that with some of their own politicians the anxiety to return to the old political home was not dissociated from visions of possible fatted calf.  But though they knew all this, they went on by an overwhelming majority to do what the mine owners and the Democrats and the traders wanted them to do, and the acquiescence of the mass of the party in their action is now beyond question.  We can comprehend this better when we see men like Edward Bellamy, the head of the Nationalists, and Henry George of the Single Taxers, and the Rev. W. D. P. Bliss of the Christian Socialists also taking the same attitude and for precisely the same reason that the real issue is “between men and money”, in Bellamy’s phrase; and they cannot afford to side with money against men.
 

Source:  Henry Demarest Lloyd, "The Populists at St. Louis," Review of Reviews XIV (September, 1896): 278-83.

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