homework for American history class

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I G N AT I U S D ON N E L LY

Populist Party Platform (1892)

The rise of industry in the Gilded Age corresponded to deepening agrarian distress as farmers struggled to

survive amidst booming crop yields and declining commodity prices. Farmers naturally cast bankers and

railroads in the role of villains, accusing them of charging extortionate interest and freight rates. And

farmers naturally turned to the political arena for redress, beginning with the founding of the Grange in

the late 1860s and later with the proliferation of the Farmers Alliance through the South and the West in

the 1880s. Grangers and Alliance men often worked within the established major parties to promote their

reform agendas, but when this tactic yielded little, Alliance men launched the People’s or Populist party in

1892.

Populists gathered in Omaha that summer to nominate a presidential ticket headed by James B. Weaver

of Iowa and to adopt a platform. That document’s arresting preamble was written by a Minnesota

firebrand named Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901), a former Republican member of Congress and author of a

well-known book on the supposed lost continent of Atlantis. Read this document for its description of what

ailed the country and its detailed prescriptions for a solution. The Populists would do respectably in 1892

but saw their efforts come undone in the 1896 election when they pursued a fusion strategy with the

Democrats. Nevertheless, later reform movements would bring to fruition many of their proposals.

From “The Omaha Platform: Launching the Populist Party,” in The World Almanac, 1893 (New York:

1893), 83–85.

PREAMBLE

he conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a

nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the

ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench.1 The

people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling

places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or

muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor

impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied

the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a

hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down,2 and they are

rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to

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build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of

those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of

governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

*  *  *

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties

for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We

charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing

dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they

now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign,

every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a

sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered

stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They

propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon,3 to destroy the multitude

in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand

general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the

Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to

be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and

establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general

welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the

whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that

the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and

that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the

world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a

few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars’ worth of commodities consumed in their

production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are

falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We

pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable

legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in

the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the

teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually

cease in the land.

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While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition which will

tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate,4 we nevertheless regard these questions,

important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not

only our individual prosperity but the very existence of free institutions depend; and we ask all men to

first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer before we differ as to the

conditions upon which it is to be administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized

will never cease to move forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges

securely established for all the men and women of this country.

PLATFO RM

We declare, therefore—

First.—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall be

permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the Republic and the

uplifting of mankind.

Second.—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an

equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.”5 The interests of rural and civic labor

are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people

or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning and

managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by which all persons

engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid

character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such

additional government employes.

FINANCE.—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general

government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of

banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, at a

tax not to exceed 2 per cent per annum, to be provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the

Farmers’ Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public

improvements.

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1.

2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per

capita.

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

*  *  *

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TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the

government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph,

telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be

owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

LAND.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should

not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All

land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now

owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

EXPRESSIO N O F SENTIMENTS

Your Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the following:

Whereas, Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the following,

not as a part of the Platform of the People’s Party, but as resolutions expressive of the sentiment of

this Convention.

1. RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and pledge ourselves to

secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of

the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system.

2. RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be applied to the

reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.

3. RESOLVED, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and

sailors.

4. RESOLVED, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system,

which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-

earners; and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor,6 and demand the

further restriction of undesirable emigration.

5. RESOLVED, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the

hours of labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the existing eight-hour law on Government

work, and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.

6. RESOLVED, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as

the Pinkerton system, as a menace to our liberties, and we demand its abolition. . . .

7. RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform press

the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.

8. RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-

President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct

vote of the people.

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9. RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.

10. RESOLVED, That this convention sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and their righteous

contest with the tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of Rochester, and declare it to be a

duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to refuse to purchase the goods made by the said

manufacturers, or to patronize any merchants who sell such goods.

Study Questions

1. According to the Populists, what is fundamentally wrong with the country? How do they propose to

fix it? How is their view of the role of government a departure for a party dominated by farmers?

2. Which of the Populist proposals strike you as being most radical? Why? Which seem most

moderate? Where would the Populists fit on the political spectrum today?

3. What parts of the Populist platform would most appeal to industrial workers? Why would the

Populists adopt a strategy of appealing to urban as well as rural voters?

4. Was Populism’s ultimate failure primarily due to its underlying ideas, or were other factors more

responsible? Explain. What does the experience of the People’s party teach about third parties in

American history?