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DBQ QUESTION

What were new about the goals established by the Farmer's Alliance and the Populists? Why did their ideas so alarm the mainstream political leadership of the United States?

DOCUMENT A

"The People's Party is more than the organized discontent of the people. It is the organized aspiration of the people for a fuller, nobler, richer, and kindlier life for every man, woman, and child in the ranks of humanity....

The People's Party is not a passing cloud on the political sky. It is not a transient gust of popular discontent caused by bad crops or hard times...it is an uprising of principles and the millions who have espoused the principles will not stop until they have become incorporated into the constitution of the government and the frame work of society."

Source: Chicago Times, November 4, 1894.

DOCUMENT B

The plutocracy of today is the logical result of the individual freedom which we have always considered the pride of our system...The theory of our government has been and is the individual should possess the very greatest degree of liberty consistent, not with the greatest good of the greatest number, but with the very least legal restraint compatible with law and order. Individual enterprise was allowed unlimited scope...The community must now absorb the corporation-- must enlarge itself to the breadth of humanity. A stage must be reached in which each will be for all and all for each. The welfare of the individual must be the object and end of all effort.

Source: Farmers' Alliance (Lincoln, Neb.) Oct 22, 1891

DOCUMENT D

....nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency...Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country greatness which tends to a disregard of the rules of national safety, another danger confronts us not less serious. I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of the Government especial and direct individual advantages ...The lesson of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.

Source: Grover Cleveland's Second Inaugural Address, Capitol Steps,
Washington, D.C., 1892

DOCUMENT E

Perhaps in no respect have changes been so healthy as in relations between the [railroad] corporations and their shareholder. The era of "railroad rascals" has gone, and men of integrity are filling the places they have vacated. The American railway has ceased to be chiefly a gambling implement for Wall Street, and properties are no longer wrecked for speculative purposes...

On the whole, then, there has been a great improvement, and which says more, it continues. This has, of course enhanced the value to American securities as investments, and there can be little doubt that this value will rise further still; returns, perhaps, may not advance much, but their safety and regularity surely will.

Source: S.F. Van Oss, American Railroads As Investments, 1893.

DOCUMENT F

I wish I could take this body of men to the heights opposite the city of Lowell, Mass., where, with one glance of the eye sweeping up and the stream would be literally seen miles of cotton mills, perhaps the finest in the world...and filled from basement to roof with a thinking, throbbing army of intelligent and skillful men and women....[S]tanding upon this spot in the early evening as the sun goes down, you would see first from one and then another of the thousands of windows the lights flashing out....Listen, and the bells ring out their peal, the gates fly open, and from them issue thousands of working men and women , well clothed well fed, well housed pleasant to look upon, happy and contented, moving quietly to their homes... the ideal laboring wage-earners of a New England manufacturing city.

Source: Congressman from manufacturing state of Massachusetts, 1888.

DOCUMENT G

Every human being along the railroad lines, irrespective of sex or age was tributary to the rail road corporations. Any increase of revenue to the corporation serving it of nearly $20 per annum to each person of which that increase was made up. Fully appreciating this fact, the various corporation had been for years in the custom of holding out the inducement of special rates to those proposing to settle along their roads.

Source: History of the Old Colony Railroad, 1893.

DOCUMENT H

What is needed in my view is a delegate assembly of all the reform elements to give immediate direction to the acts of the people in the coming election...Such a convention cold make terms for the workingmen with the People's Party and the Socialist Labor Party and the Single Taxers that would be equal to the fruits of ten years of agitation...

If such a convention gave the word as I think it would and as I think it ought to do--for this moment--that all the voters of discontent should unite on the candidates of the People's Party, we would revolutionize the politics of this country.

Source: A letter from Henry Lloyd to Samuel Gompers, 1894.

DOCUMENT I

The men who work for wages must earn their wages and more, that is, a profit for their employers; and if a capitalist stands behind the employer the wage-earner must earn another profit for him.

...has given to the usurer or monopolist class power to buy up land, capital railroads, mines, etc., and to so increase their power to the people's dependence.

The army of destitute unemployed is the source of its power, the misery of the unemployed the club with which it enslaves all workers.

Source: Farmers' Alliance newspaper, Alliance Independent, Jan. 11,1894.

DOCUMENT J

Under the existing monopoly system of industry, capital owns and controls all this labor-saving machinery, and derives all the benefits resulting from its use, while labor is forced into idleness and compelled to beg, steal, starve.

At the same time we are told that state and national governments are powerless to provide employment to these enforced idlers or assist them in any way to supply the necessities of themselves and families, because to do so would be paternalism.

Source: Farmers' Alliance newspaper, Alliance Independent, Apr. 10, 1895

	DOCUMENT REFERENCES
A
B	Pollack, Norman. The Populist Response To Industrial America. Harvard University Press, 1962.
C	"The Omaha Platform." www.nv.cc.va.us/%7Envsageh/hist122/part1/populistplat1892.html September 7th, 1998. (April 2^nd, 2000).
D
E
F	Painter, Nell Irving. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919. Penguin Books, Canada Ltd. 1987.
G
H
I	Pollack, Norman. The Populist Response To Industrial America. Harvard University Press, 1962.
J	Pollack, Norman. The Populist Response To Industrial America. Harvard University Press, 1962.