American History Homework Assignment

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IG NAT 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 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.

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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.

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.

PLATFORM

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

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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.

* * *

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.

EXPRESSION OF 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.

 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

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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?