the Hill Country chipped in their pennies for a telegram which said their Alliance “loves Dr. Macune for the enemies he has made.” Bankers in other states, determined to break the Exchange, joined the Texas bankers in cutting off credit. Alliance leaders proclaimed June 9, 1888, as “the day to save the Exchange,” and asked the farmers to demonstrate their solidarity. Early on that Saturday morning, long caravans of farm wagons—including some from the Hill Country—began to clatter into almost two hundred county seats throughout Texas. The farmers stood for hours in the blazing summer heat. They stood silently. They held banners—lettered by their wives—which said: THE SOUTHERN EXCHANGE SHALL STAND.
The Southern Exchange fell; its members pledged enough for it to survive, but couldn’t pay their pledges. The Alliancemen had tried—through cooperatives and boycotts, and endless wagon treks to distant markets, and contributions that came out of their wives’ butter-and-egg pennies—to help themselves, and had failed, and the lesson they had learned was that they
couldn’t
help themselves. The forces they were fighting were too big for them to fight. They turned to a force that was big enough to fight—and win—on their behalf, if only it could be motivated to do so: their government.
It was only right, the farmers believed, that their government do so. Government was a basic cause of their troubles, they felt, and government must be the means to redress those troubles. Government, through its vast subsidies of land and money and its biased laws, had made it possible forrailroads to become powerful, and now railroads were strangling the farmers; should not government, on their behalf, now regulate railroads? Government had protected manufacturers at their expense by high tariffs; should not government now lower tariffs? Government had, by abrogating much of its effective control over the currency, allowed bankers to regulate it, forcing farmers to pay off their liens and mortgages in dollars worth more than the dollars they had borrowed; should not government now take back control of currency and make repayment easier, not harder, for debtors? Government had, by forcing the country onto the gold standard, caused the constant, unending fall in the price of cotton and all the farmers’ other crops; should not the gold standard be ended in favor of silver? Government had acted against their interests in so many ways (the first platform of the Populist Party seemingly laid
all
wrong to government: “Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress. … From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice, we breed two great classes—tramps and millionaires.”). Should not there be now a broad-scale enactment of laws redressing this imbalance? Government had acted to oppress the farmers in a thousand ways; shouldn’t it now stretch forth its hand to help them—in a thousand ways? (Some of the ways being suggested were new to America: the march of Jacob S. Coxey’s pitiful little “army” of unemployed on Washington in 1894 was an attempt to dramatize his theory that the government should help the unemployed with a system of federal public-works relief.) “The powers of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded,” said the 1892 platform of the People’s Party, “… to the end that oppression, unjustice and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.”
For a while, their hopes were very high. The Alliance lecturers who had brought the word out of Texas had fanned agrarian revolt into flames. In 1890, taking command of the Democratic Party in a dozen states, the Alliancemen won control of their legislatures, elected six Governors and sent to Washington four Senators and more than fifty Congressmen (including Davis H. Waite of Colorado, known as “Bloody Bridles” Waite because he had declared that it was better “that blood flow to the horses’ bridles
The Southern Exchange fell; its members pledged enough for it to survive, but couldn’t pay their pledges. The Alliancemen had tried—through cooperatives and boycotts, and endless wagon treks to distant markets, and contributions that came out of their wives’ butter-and-egg pennies—to help themselves, and had failed, and the lesson they had learned was that they
couldn’t
help themselves. The forces they were fighting were too big for them to fight. They turned to a force that was big enough to fight—and win—on their behalf, if only it could be motivated to do so: their government.
It was only right, the farmers believed, that their government do so. Government was a basic cause of their troubles, they felt, and government must be the means to redress those troubles. Government, through its vast subsidies of land and money and its biased laws, had made it possible forrailroads to become powerful, and now railroads were strangling the farmers; should not government, on their behalf, now regulate railroads? Government had protected manufacturers at their expense by high tariffs; should not government now lower tariffs? Government had, by abrogating much of its effective control over the currency, allowed bankers to regulate it, forcing farmers to pay off their liens and mortgages in dollars worth more than the dollars they had borrowed; should not government now take back control of currency and make repayment easier, not harder, for debtors? Government had, by forcing the country onto the gold standard, caused the constant, unending fall in the price of cotton and all the farmers’ other crops; should not the gold standard be ended in favor of silver? Government had acted against their interests in so many ways (the first platform of the Populist Party seemingly laid
all
wrong to government: “Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress. … From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice, we breed two great classes—tramps and millionaires.”). Should not there be now a broad-scale enactment of laws redressing this imbalance? Government had acted to oppress the farmers in a thousand ways; shouldn’t it now stretch forth its hand to help them—in a thousand ways? (Some of the ways being suggested were new to America: the march of Jacob S. Coxey’s pitiful little “army” of unemployed on Washington in 1894 was an attempt to dramatize his theory that the government should help the unemployed with a system of federal public-works relief.) “The powers of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded,” said the 1892 platform of the People’s Party, “… to the end that oppression, unjustice and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.”
For a while, their hopes were very high. The Alliance lecturers who had brought the word out of Texas had fanned agrarian revolt into flames. In 1890, taking command of the Democratic Party in a dozen states, the Alliancemen won control of their legislatures, elected six Governors and sent to Washington four Senators and more than fifty Congressmen (including Davis H. Waite of Colorado, known as “Bloody Bridles” Waite because he had declared that it was better “that blood flow to the horses’ bridles
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