Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America

Populism stands as one of the major protest movements of 19th century America. Born out of the economic crisis faced by many farmers during the Gilded Age, it advocated ideas that shaped politics in the 1890s and defined the country in which we live today. For students of the movement, Lawrence Goodwyn's book has long been one of the seminal studies of Populism. His main contention is that the farmers that comprised the ranks of the movement were driven by a concern that the growing industrialization and urbanization of America was creating a system that eroded the "democratic promise" of America, one based on both individual competition and collective cooperation. Goodwyn argues that the key to understanding the Populists - as well as the post-Civil War period as a whole - is the issue of the prolonged contraction of the monetary supply during the Gilded Age. Because of this, the Greenback movement of the 1870s is a key influence in the development of Populism, in that it shaped the Populists' radical critique of capitalism. The core of the book, however, focuses on the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, a movement better known as the Southern Alliance. Goodwyn sees the Alliance as having a radicalizing effect, creating a movement culture among its millions of disaffected members. Initially seeking to overcome the despised Eastern-dominated financial system by establishing cooperative purchasing and marketing schemes, it never possessed the strength it needed to succeed, and was essentially dead by 1892. The failure of cooperatives had the effect of pushing its members to form the People's Party. The party advanced a broad agenda of reform in transportation, land, and monetary policy, asking for government control or supervision of Eastern businesses. Yet by the time the People's Party was formed, the movement overall was already in decline. To Goodwyn, the issue of the monetization of silver was a Trojan horse that distracted the party, and led them to endorse William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential election rather than offer their own candidate. Bryan's subsequent defeat resulted in a collapse in Populist morale, extinguishing the moment soon afterwards. While Goodwyn's book is an indispensable analysis for understanding the Populist movement, it is not without its flaws. All too often, he assumes that Populism in Texas is the norm for Populism as a whole, which can gloss over the myriad motivations of what was a widespread movement. Nevertheless, this book is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand more about the Populist movement in America, one that offers insights into some of the political problems of today as a consequence.

Based exclusively on original research of the American Populist movement, Goodwyn's book is a masterpiece of historical scholarship. Goodwyn traces the origins of the People's Party to the Farmer's Alliance and shows that the most compelling American challenge to Capitalism came from the conservative agrarian segments of American society. The cooperative principles of the Alliance and the subsequent People's Party formed a uniquely American platform that was neither capitalist nor socialist in nature. This is a powerful account of a great American political movement. Read this book and your understanding of American politics in the 20th Century will be forever changed.

This book is a stunning revisionist look at the received wisdom about the history of populism in the late 19th century. Rooting through old trunks in attics and forgotten county library newspaper archives, Goodwyn discovers the true radicalism of the populist movement, and why so much of what we were taught about the populists is wrong, distorted to cover up their fundamental challenge to the consolidation of industrial capitalism that was sweeping the world. A great book, a tragic story