Political Corruption and Third Parties in the Gilded Age

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Political Corruption and Third Parties in the
Gilded Age
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Paradoxical Politics

• Republicans and Democrats differed little on
  issues of the day
• currency, business regulation, farm problems,
  civil service reform, immigration
• Weak presidents
• Big Business
• Patronage

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Parties and the Voters

• Voter turnout during Gilded Age 70-80
• Republicans mainly Protestants of British
  descent (New England, New York, Midwest),
  reformers moralists, anti-Catholic nativists,
  African Americans, and Union Civil War veterans
• Democrats southern whites, immigrants and
  Catholics, Jews, freethinkers, religious
  skeptics, and those repelled by the party of
  morality
• Polarized by immigration and reform issues

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Two-Party System

• Republicans (Democrats) v. Federalists
• Democratic-Republicans v. Whigs
• Democrats v. Republicans
• Third parties rarely make any headway in the
  American political system.
• Few instances where a solid challenge is offered.
• Farmers Alliance and Peoples (Populist) Party
• Labor and Socialist Party
• Reformers and Progressive Party
• Often leaned radical/liberal

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Farmers Plight

• Farmers problems in Gilded Age
• Bankers, middlemen, grain elevator operators
• The world market
• Nature drought, blizzards, insects, erosion.
• Rugged individualists and self-reliant, but
  follow examples set by urban industrial laborers
  organization and strength-in-numbers

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Agrarian Revolt

• Granger Movement (1860s-1870s)
• Social and educational movement farmer-owned
  cooperatives Greenback Party
• Farmers Alliances (1880s)
• Texas leadership cooperatives warehouses and
  sub-treasury railroad regulation paper
  currency political activism against Democrats
• 1.5 million members from N.Y. to Calif. Colored
  Farmers Alliance 1 million in South
• Alliance movement collapses in 1889 replaced by
  Peoples (Populist) Party, 1892

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Raise less corn and more hell.
Mary Elizabeth Lease
C. W. Macune
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Populist Party

• Farmers Alliance transitions into politics,
  forms the Peoples Party, 1892 founded by C. W.
  Macune
• Main platforms
• Advocated creation of sub-treasury
• Land reclamation and nationalization of
  railroads, telephones, and telegraphs
• Currency reform gold standard to free silver
  (161) and greenbacks bimetallism
• Graduated income tax
• Direct election of senators
• 8-hour work day and immigration restrictions

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Populist Successes

• Populists won several elections
• Populists became governors of Kansas and Colorado
• Control of state legislature of Nebraska
• U.S. Senators from Kansas and South Dakota
• U.S. Representative from Kansas and several other
  states
• Attacked Republicans in West and Midwest
  Democrats (Party of the Fathers) in the South
• Unified white and African American farmers
• Main prize Presidency of the United States

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Election of 1892

• Omaha convention of 1892 appointed James B.
  Weaver of Iowa and James Gaven Field (v-p) of
  Virginia
• Weaver v. Cleveland (Dem.) v. Harrison (Rep.)
• Weaver received an astonishing 22 electoral votes
  and 1 million popular votes.
• Republicans and Democrats worried.

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U.S. Presidential election of 1892
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Election of 1896

• Major issue was over currency silverites v.
  goldbugs
• Republican William McKinley advocated gold
  standard
• Democrat William Jennings Bryan advocated
  bimetallism
• Cross of Gold
• Populist platform is stolen by Democrats
  proposed fusion with Tom Watson of Georgia as
  Populist v-p to Bryan

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William Jennings Bryan and his Cross of Gold
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U.S. Presidential election of 1896
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Thomas Watson, last major Populist presidential
candidate.
You are kept apart that you may be separately
fleeced of your earnings.
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Socialist Party

• Social Democratic Party (1900)
• Founded by Eugene V. Debs, 5-time presidential
  candidate
• Middle class and native born nativist
• Emphasized cooperation over competition
• Freedom from private property and wage slavery

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Industrial Workers of the World

• Wobblies Largest supporters of the Socialist
  party
• Founded by Debs and William Dudley Haywood
• Opponents of Gomperss AFL
• Emphasized strikes, sabotage, insurrection.

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Progressive Party

• Founded in 1912 by Theodore Roosevelt, former
  Republican president
• Alternative to traditional conservative parties
• Platform
• Woman suffrage, presidential primaries,
  conservation of natural resources, prohibition of
  child labor, minimum wages for women, workers
  compensation, social security, federal income tax

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