Critical Issues in History and Their Implications for Today
The Dawn of 20th Century America:
Freedom, Conflict, and Expanding Conquest
By: Richard Donald
A decade of domestic strife ended amid the blare of martial music and the waving of flags. The Spanish-American War drowned out the calls for social reform that fueled the Populist politics of the 1890s. During that decade, angry farmers facing hard times looked to Farmer’s Alliances to fight for their vision of economic democracy, workers staged bloody battles across the country to assert their rights, and women like Frances Willard preached temperance and suffrage (Roark, 2017, p. 533).
The final decade of the 19th century proved to be one of America’s most tumultuous eras. Indeed, the 1890s were characterized by continuous social-political contention between wealthy capitalists and working-class citizens. These points of contention involved Civil liberties for women, Fair labor mandates for industrial workers, and economic equality for farmers. The struggles that ensued because of these issues gave rise to a new “. . . People’s Party” whose mission was to affect socio-economic equality for the underprivileged majority of American citizens (Roark, 2017, p. 512). This was to be accomplished through calling for government intervention to curb capitalists’ power (Roark, 2017, p. 514). However, although the movement did achieve some success, it inevitably fell short of its desired objectives (Roark, 2017, p. 533). Thus, the specter of unbridled corporate power, driven by ideals of lazier-fair, American expansionism, and war propaganda overshadowed the torch of domestic liberty (Roark, 2017, p. 531).
Although American women proved to be hard working citizens either at home, in factories, or both, they were paid less, and denied the right to vote. Furthermore, many women believed that drunkenness was alienating them from the men on whom they depended for support and companionship. Consequently, the struggle for both women’s domestic liberties, and social equality became quite vigorous during the 1890s. This was chiefly due to the efforts of Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Indeed, under Willard’s leadership WCTU replaced prayer with activism as its primary agency of change (Roark, 2017, p. 520). Although temperance and Suffrage were important, Willard and the WCTU also campaigned against employment disparities such as the “. . . dreadful. . .” working conditions in textile mills where many young women were employed (Roark, 2017, p. 520). Because Willard spoke convincingly against the so-called “. . . Cult of domesticity. . .” and its negative impact on women, children, and men alike, her rhetoric resonated favorably with reformers such as the Prohibition Party, the Knights of Labor, and the People’s Party; in this way; she contributed significantly to a “. . . broad reform coalition. . .” (Roark, 2017, p. 521). Thus, many American women rejected their statuses as second-class citizens, and adopted roles as leaders of social reform.
The Social-Darwinist ideals of capitalists, and lazier-fair politics of 19th century government constituted wide-spread inequality for most American industrial workers; for their work-day hours were far too many, and their earnings were proportionately far too few. This inevitably led to the “. . . ‘labor wars’. . .” of the 1890s (Roark, 2017, p. 515). One such war has been dubbed the Cripple Creek miner’s Strike of 1894 in Colorado. In response to mine owner’s intent to lengthen work-days to ten hours, the workers collaborated with the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) “. . . to strike all mines running more than eight hour shifts” (Roark, 2017, p. 517). This movement received support from local small business and grocery store owners who provided credit to miners during long-standing strikes. The movement’s most crucial support, however, had come from the recently elected Populist, Governor Davis H. Waite. Because of Waite’s arbitration, and perhaps more significantly his refusal to use the State’s military against striking miners, the mine’s owners reluctantly conceded to the notion of eight hour work-days for their employees. Unfortunately, after Waite left office in 1904, mine owners were allowed to employ government and military intervention to defeat the WFM Union, and reassert their own rules concerning mine labor (Roark, 2017, p. 517). Thus, so-called lazier-fair politics permitted social-Darwin-Capitalism to triumph over workers’ equality in places such as Cripple Creek Colorado during the immediate post-19th century.
Agrarian revolt set the precedence for 19th century social protest against capitalists’ economic monopolies; for Farmers’ Alliances had been fighting for equality since the 1870s. By the 1880s, these local alliances had evolved into two coalitions: The Northwestern Farmers’ Alliance, and the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. Both Western, and Southern farmers had been victimized by railroad owners’ high shipping rates for local produce ‘. . . and rampant land speculation that drove up the price of land” (Roark, 2017, p. 513). In an effort to garner social support, traveling farmers’ spokesmen pleaded their cause to sympathetic working-class citizens across the nation. Furthermore, during a strike against Jay Gould’s Texas and Pacific Railroad, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance “. . . vocally sided with the workers and rushed food and supplies to the strikers” (Roark, 2017, p. 514). This encouraged industrial workers and prohibitionists alike to unite under the Farmers’ Alliance banner. The alliances, however, “. . . faced insurmountable difficulties in running successful cooperatives. . .”; for bankers, manufacturers, merchants, and wholesalers barred their access to credit (Roark, 2017, p. 514). Therefore, even as their movement began to fail socially, farmer’s and their allies tuned their attention to politics for support.
During 1892, the farmers’ alliances created a new political movement; and from this movement was born the People’s Party, also known as the Populists (Roark, 2017, p. 514). Unlike most Republicans and Democrats of that era, Populists did not support the status-quo of lazier-fair politics. Instead, they valued the ideals of equal socio-political-economic imperatives for all citizens regardless of class. Thus, most farmers, suffragettes, prohibitionists, and industrial workers, at least initially, supported this highly liberal platform. The objectives of this platform included a reclamation of excessive land that had been granted to railroads, a federal credit subsidy for farmers, and “. . . government ownership of the railroads. . . to put an end to discriminatory [shipping] rates” (Roark, 2017, p. 515). In spite of their lofty intentions, however, Populists were sometimes perceived as radical agents of revolution. These fearful sentiments were capitalized upon by many newspaper editors who branded Populists with villainous titles such as “. . . ‘calamity howlers’. . .” (Roark, 2017, p. 523). This sort of negative slander contributed, in part, to the Populist Party’s demise during the Democratic National Convention of 1896 at which the Democrats managed a political coup against them. Therefore, although the People’s Party did, indeed, effect the socio-political dynamics of the 1890s, the lazier-fair status-quo norms, fueled by social-Darwinist ideals, reasserted their dominance of the American homeland; and this dominance soon began to expand across the waters of the known world during the Spanish-American War.
In retrospect, nobody can know for certain what sort of long-term impact the People’s Party would have affected in American society. The Populists had promised to foster true socio-economic democracy; and they were probably quite sincere in their intent to honor this promise. However, because the events of our history have denied them the chance to prove themselves, the following question remains unanswered: Given the chance, would the Populists have succeeded in curbing the corruption of unbridled capitalism, and the apathy of lazier-fair politics—or would their intervention have inadvertently, yet inevitably, led to a government-sanctioned Socialist Amerika.
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