American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898 (American Century Series) [Hardcover]

Robert C. McMath Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Series: American Century Series | Publication Date: December 1, 1992

The grass-roots Populist movement that swept rural America a century ago millions of farmers and clusters of non-farmers into a powerful crusade to reshape the nation's political economy by ushering in a "cooperative commonwealth" to reverse the growth of America's monopoly capitalism. McMath crisply interprets the development of the Populist crusade from its early beginnings in the turbulent 1870s to its ultimate demise, and places it in a larger context as he compares it to later, parallel movements in the Great Plains and Canada.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This compact book delivers what it promises, a summary of the current understanding of populism, the rural social and political reform movement of the last quarter of the 19th century. The subtitle at first seems misleading, for populism by its very nature was a political movement. However, by emphasizing populism's social roots, the author conveys the idea that populism was much more than the political party. Instead of studying populism from the top down or analyzing it from the viewpoint of the 1890s, when it seemed to be at high tide, McMath turns to its historical roots in rural communities, before it became a powerful national political movement. The result is a clear synthesis of the latest research, valuable for general readers interested in the nature of grass-roots politics as well as for professional historians. with an interest in a major American protest movement.
- Charles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A balanced and comprehensive political history that manages to convey the magic of the Populist appeal within a shrewd assessment of its electoral and cultural limits."--Leon Fink, University of North Carolina

"American Populism was one of the most frustratingly complex movements of political insurgency in American history. McMath skillfully guides his readers through its many side roads and contradictions. he has succeeded in pulling together the social, economic, and intellectual threads that linked the struggles of dissidents from the Great Plains to the Deep South, presenting his story in vigorous and readable prose. We have badly needed a brief but insightful overview of American Populism. Now we have it."--Dan Carter, Emory University

"A masterful concise survey, easily the best now available. McMath is thorough and balanced, yet he manges at the same time to tell a good old-fashioned story."--Gavin Wright, Stanford University

"A substantial achievement, ably synthesizing the expansive scholarship and contributing to it in significant ways. Well organized and deftly argued, it constitutes the best modern general history of this important subject."--Peter Argersinger, University of Maryland

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1 edition (December 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809077965
• ISBN-13: 978-0809077960
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview of Populism, December 25, 2003

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898 (American Century Series) (Paperback)

The author identifies "producerism" and "antimonopolism" as the core aspects of Populist (agrarian) thought. These themes extolled the virtues of the independent working man, fully able to produce his own and society's well-being without being dependent upon or under the control of others. It is doubtful that this idyllic state has ever been achieved in America, but there is no doubt that in the 1870s and 80s small farmers in the Plains states and in the South suffered from the vicissitudes of both natural and economic forces undermining any sense of being in control of their economic destinies.

This book explores the actions of besieged rural Americans, first through cooperative efforts based on dense community ties, and then through political efforts, to counter the forces of industrialization. It is a complex story involving a variety of agrarian and labor organizations, though dominated by the National Farmers' Alliance with its beginnings in western Texas in 1878 and to some extent the Knights of Labor, ranging from the far West, through the Plains and the Midwest, and through the entire southern belt. Agrarian reformers were forever in a contest with the forces of orthodoxy from community values to the agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties; a contest that they would eventually lose.

The author admits to drawing upon the vast work of historians concerning Populism or agrarianism. The book is somewhat complementary to the work of Lawrence Goodwyn, author of the "Democratic Promise. He finds little agreement with those who view Populists as reactionaries, unwilling to accept the demands of progress.

While Goodwyn finds the core of Populism to be located in the southern Farmers' Alliance and is somewhat dismissive of agrarian movements in other regions, McMath is more generous in his estimation of the forces of reform in the western and northern plains. In addition, he pays more attention to organizations and movements that were forerunners to the agrarian movement. They both agree that the demise of the Alliance and the Knights of Labor eroded a base of activism and undermined the chances that the Populist Party could succeed.

Despite its relative brevity, this book is a highly readable and insightful overview of the Populist movement. It is an excellent introduction to Populism. And it contains an extensive bibliographical essay for further reading.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The "state-of-the-art" introduction to the subject, July 11, 2000

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E. Martin "scalawagg" (US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898 (American Century Series) (Paperback)

As has been said of the role of "Hamlet," every era gets its version of Populist history. To Hicks, they were the forerunners of the New Deal. To Woodward, they possessed a fleeting opportunity at biracial coalition. To Hofstatder, they were proto-fascists. To Larry Goodwyn, they possessed a vision of a just society. To Michael Schwarz, they were radicals whose strength lay in direct action, not electioneering. The last word on the movement is far from being written and this book can only keep the reader current on the history and present state of research and interpretation. This it does wonderfully well, as well as presents a clear account of the emergence, rise and decline of the movement which synthesizes and recapitulates virtually all available histories on different aspects of the movement. I have to dissent from the reviewer below and say that I found McMath a clear and brisk writer--not in C. Vann Woodward's league, perhaps, but then...who is?--who brings the movement alive and elucidates its dynamic masterfully.

If you have the least bit of curiosity about the movement, this is the first book you should read. The one significant criticism I have is that the author cuts off the narrative at 1898. In this manner, he avoids many--but by no means all--of th e more troublesome aspects of the movement and its participants. It would also seem that an additional chapter on populism's legacy through the twentieth century would be in order, encompassing as it does such diverse figures as Wright Patman, Huey Long, and George Wallace.

Finally, to all who are interested in the issues surrounding the new global economy: Read this book! Study the Populists! You will gain much insight into the process of "development" since WWII and the struggles of people throughout the "less-developed world" for their livelihood.

Indeed, I fancy that the ghosts of Tom Watson and Mary Lease were with those in Seattle marching against the WTO last year and in Washington against the World Bank and the IMF this year!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brief, introductory account of Populist reform, February 4, 2002

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Scholar "18th century student" (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898 (American Century Series) (Paperback)

"Who joins [the Populist movement], and why, and, conversely, why do others similarly situated not join?" This is the question, Robert McMath contends in American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898, "that has preoccupied scholars who have studied the movement." (9) While acknowledging the work of previous scholars of the 19th century populist movement (Hicks, Woodward, Hofstadter, and Goodwyn), McMath connects the Populist's story to the "social history of rural America." He relates Populism to the "rhythms of family and community life" of the rural Plains, South and Mountain West, where this movement took root in the "social and economic networks of rural communities, not, as some would have it, among isolated and disoriented individuals." (17) In this unromantic study, McMath insists that the Farmers' Alliance and later the Populist Party grew in areas of hard-pressed agriculturalists, not secluded yeoman far from towns or railheads. Populism sprung from the "movement culture" that gave individuals and agricultural communities an avenue to make history and address their own economic and social needs, and rose from older traditions of rural cooperation and radical republicanism.
Despite this seedbed of support for the rise of cooperative alliances and, later, populist political parties, McMath shows that old allegiances to the Democratic Party in the South and a more recent adherence to the Republican Party elsewhere dissuaded many farmers and laborers from carrying the Populist banner, which prevented the new party from achieving lasting gains. "In the end," he laments, the Populist movement "failed to bend the forces of technology and capitalism toward humane ends." (211) He also concludes that the base of the movement was too limited geographically to carry a presidential election, and suffered from being "caught in the cross fire between" the two major, institutionalized political parties by the late 1890s. (208)
McMath successfully makes his case that Populism was the inheritor of earlier "movement" traditions of anti-monopolism and unionism, part of "cultures of protest." In the New South, for example, "old habits of mutuality, old relations between people on the land, were being transformed into new and more distinctly capitalistic relations...[nevertheless] old times there were not forgotten." (29) He shows that the men and women who supported the Alliance and the Populist party were ardently egalitarian in their republicanism and producersim. McMath lucidly demonstrates, however, that these farmers were never anti-capitalists who sought to return to a romantic "golden age" of Jeffersonian agrarianism. They wanted fairness and opportunity, credit and control of their lives and communities.
McMath effectively depicts the Populist movement as one of protest originating in rural America among people with legitimate economic and social grievances against monopolistic, capitalist forces. His use of a succinct narrative approach to portray this story in a "rise and fall" style shows the change over time between 1877 and the presidential election of 1898 that doomed chances of electoral success for Populists. McMath holds that initially farmers formed cooperatives and alliances for economic advantages, so-called "pecuniary benefits." By the late 1880s, he shows that the consolidation of labor and rural agricultural groups into "a permanent cooperative movement and labor party" was very much a possibility. (83) The great debate that followed was one over the decision to form a new political party or to lobby within and as part of the major parties (fusion). In the end, Populists tried both, and though some elections were won and limited political gains made, failure was the ultimate result. Many Southerners refused to leave their sacred Democratic party, while the Republicans successfully campaigned against incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland, and attracted "populist" votes in the process. McMath shows that after 1892 populism changed its character as the silver issue "crowded out" other reform concerns, and reduced reform politics to the "lowest common denominator." Lamentably for McMath, whose sympathies lie unabashedly with the populists about whom he writes, by the 1890s the populist cause-turned-political party inevitably ran "headlong in to the sobering realities of American politics. (170) Still, he argues, the reformers "fashioned a space within which Americans could begin to imagine alternative futures shaped by the promise of equal rights," a legacy "waiting to be fulfilled." (211)
McMath's straightforward account of the promise of reform and its ultimate political failure is a successful introduction to the study of American populism of the late 19th century.