What is Populism & where did it all begin? The Story of Populism Pt.1

With French and German elections next up on the European agenda there is much talk of the ‘populist’ candidates and how they will fare.  After the wholly unexpected Brexit vote in last years UK referendum and then the shock of Donald Trump winning the US Presidency it’s fair to say there is more than a modicum of unease at what may be round the corner.

This time last year it’s a reasonable bet that many of us weren’t familiar with the term ‘populism’ or what was implied when the term was used in a political context.  So what do populist politicians stand for and where did populism come from?

The first populist politicians were those associated with the People’s Party back in the early 1890’s in the West of the USA with perhaps the original populist being ‘sockless’ Jerry Simpson!  ‘Sockless’ Simpson was a Kansas farmer and former sailor and possessed of a somewhat transient political pedigree having been a supporter of ol’ Abe before becoming a Greenbacker, a Granger, a Union Labor man and a Single Taxer (in that order chronologically) but nevertheless had an orators leanings and a head for the politics and persuasions of the working man.

‘Sockless’ came to the fore in the West just as the frontier began to disappear and in the wake of the ‘Panic of 1873’ when the bottom first fell out of the cattle market in the Western United States ending the beef boom of the previous decades. It was a time of rapid change when frontier politics was still finding its’ feet and its’ direction.  Democracy was an exciting new word that opened up a whole raft of possibilities to the untamed folk of the West who held few pretentions and even fewer biases, such that on December 10, 1869 women were granted the vote and complete political equality with men in Wyoming Territory, the first decree of its’ kind anywhere in the Americas.

Dee Brown, in his wonderful book ‘The American West,’ tells of a charming incident during the first Wyoming vote and how one Margaret Thompson Hunter came to cast her vote.  “When election day rolled around, Mr. Hellman stopped in and asked me to go and vote for him.  I was busy making pies and hadn’t intended voting, but after all Mr. Hellman was a neighbor and also a very good friend of my husband’s.  So I pushed my pies aside, removed my apron, and tidied myself up a bit.  Then I got into the buggy with Mr. Hellman and he drove me to the polls.  Well, I voted and as we turned to leave we came face to face with my husband.  When I explained to him that I had just voted for Mr. Hellman, I thought he would have a fit.”

“You see, my husband was a staunch Democrat and one of the leaders of his party, and there I had just voted for a Republican.  He was never so humiliated in all his life, he told me.”

Western politicians wanted everybody to vote and even resorted to cajoling vote-less Indians to vote coaching them in the use of the names of Irish immigrants to do so. So there were Cheyenne and Yuma Indians called ‘Mulligan’ and ‘Sullivan’ who voted that year!

But it was after the Panic of 1873 that Western politicians first demonstrated their exceptional organizational abilities with the formation of local units of the Patrons of Husbandry, or National Grange, which were formed as a direct result of the excessive transportation rates that the railroad monopolies charged.  Prices were incessantly raised higher and higher for the things locals needed to buy (from the East), as well as lower and lower for the cattle they needed to sell (in the East), until they sucked all the profit out of the ranchers pockets.  In the end the Grangers decided to cut out the middle-man to keep prices low, a tactic that worked reasonably well throughout the 1870’s but eventually lost favour due to the Government taking no notice of their plight and, despite their best efforts, prices had continued to rise regardless.

But by this time Westerners had a taste for politics and for democracy such that down in Texas the Texas Alliance was born out of the cattle industry largely as a backlash against rustlers, thievery and barbed wire.  Just like the Grange they had secret handshakes, passwords and codes, and they too tried to eliminate the middleman, but unlike the more social Grange, the Alliance had a more political bias to its’ aims and very soon started to attract people of all persuasions from teachers, lawyers and doctors through to farm workers and labourers and in Jerry Simpson, they had a charismatic leader who had the guile and wit to stand up and fight for the common man.

'Sockless' Jerry Simpson

The year was 1890 and it must have been amazing to witness these unreal scenes.  Reading about it now it sounds like it must have been a wonderful and uplifting experience to have been a part of, with the feel of a grainy, early movie from a lost and bygone age, acted out against a backdrop of sprawling picnics, marching bands and powerful speechmaking, all taking place under a hot sun, everywhere alive with vibrancy, optimism and the pioneer spirit which ran thick, like molasses, through the veins of these early Westerners.  It must have been an exciting time to have been alive.

As the summer wore on the Alliance took on the passionate fervour of a political revolt with women beating the democratic drum just as hard as men.  So it was that the legend of Mary Elizabeth Lease came to be.  She was a firebrand orator with a taste for rebellion who made 161 speeches in the summer of 1890. “The people are at bay,” she said, “Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.  What you farmers need is to raise less corn and more hell!”

With her high, black collars and dresses, and a somewhat stern visage, she had the look of someone who had always just come from a funeral!  But her voice, by all accounts, held a sing-songy quality that seemed to hypnotise her audiences and hid a biting edge to her oratory.  “Wall Street owns the country,” she declared. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.”

Mary Elizabeth Lease

Dee Brown cites the Kansas City Times as saying that ‘the campaign of 1890 was a good deal more than a political campaign.  It was a religious revival, a crusade.’  Something which in many ways we saw repeated during the Presidential campaign of 2016 with the Trump rallies having, perhaps, a similar feel to them, even if the message was vastly different.

The Alliance ran out winners in that year, with the so-called farmers revolt winning seats all across the West, sending shock waves through the political establishment and stimulating debate for the admission of a third political party in the United States.  For the next two years the rebellion continued to gather pace, until in December 1891 the leaders of the Alliance presented the first Populist Manifesto which called for a national convention where they would name a presidential candidate for the new People’s Party.

To be continued……..!