20. Dissent, Depression, and War, 1890

Introduction to Chapter 20

557

Dissent, Depression, and War

1890–1900

PEOPLE’S PARTY BANER This 1892 Populist convention banner promises to elect “Honest Men.” The bison mascot was a poor choice for the new party, for just as the great herds were decimated, the People’s Party was defeated in 1896.

Nebraska State Historical Society, no. 7294-32, copy and reuse restrictions apply.

CONTENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

Identify the economic and social ills American farmers and laborers faced at the turn of the century and how Farmers’ Alliances and the Populist movement aimed to address some of these problems.
Explain the factors that led to the labor wars of the 1890s.
Characterize the political activism of American women during the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Describe the political climate during the depression of 1893 and identify the defining issues of the election of 1896.
Explain American expansionism in the late nineteenth century, how the United States emerged as a world power, and the resulting debate over American imperialism.

FRANCES WILLARD TRAVELED TO ST. LOUIS IN FEBRUARY 1892 WITH high hopes. Political change was in the air, and Willard was there to help fashion a new reform party. As head of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), an organization with members in every state and territory in the nation, Willard wielded considerable clout. At her invitation, twenty-eight of the country’s leading reformers met in Chicago to draft a set of principles to bring to St. Louis. No American woman before her had played such a central role in a political movement. At the height of her power, Willard took her place among the leaders onstage in St. Louis.

Exposition Music Hall presented a colorful spectacle. “The banners of the different states rose above the delegates throughout the hall, fluttering like the flags over an army encamped,” wrote one reporter. The fiery orator Ignatius Donnelly attacked the money kings of Wall Street. Terence V. Powderly, head of the Knights of Labor, called on workers to join hands with farmers against the “nonproducing classes.” And Frances Willard took the podium, urging the crowd to outlaw liquor and give women the vote.

558

Frances Willard Frances Willard, the forward-thinking leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, learned to ride a bicycle at age fifty-three. Willard brought her progressive ideas to the 1892 People’s Party convention, where she shared a place on the platform with the new party’s leaders.

Courtesy of the Frances E. Willard Memorial Library and Archives.

Delegates hammered out a series of demands, breathtaking in their scope. They tackled the tough questions of the day—the regulation of business, the need for banking and currency reform, the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively, and the role of the federal government in regulating business, curbing monopoly, and giving the people greater voice. But the new party was determined to stick to economic issues and resisted endorsing either temperance or woman suffrage. As a member of the platform committee, Willard fought for both and complained of the “crooked methods . . . employed to scuttle these planks.”

The convention ended its work amid a chorus of cheers. According to one eyewitness, “Hats, paper, handkerchiefs, etc., were thrown into the air; . . . cheer after cheer thundered and reverberated through the vast hall reaching the outside of the building where thousands who had been waiting the outcome joined in the applause till for blocks in every direction the exultation made the din indescribable.”

What was all the shouting about? The crowd, fed up with the Democrats and the Republicans, celebrated the birth of a new political party, officially named the People’s Party. The St. Louis gathering marked an early milestone in one of the most turbulent decades in U.S. history. An agrarian revolt, labor strikes, a severe depression, and a war shook the 1890s. As the decade opened, Americans flocked to organizations including the Farmers’ Alliance, the American Federation of Labor, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. Their political alliance gave birth to the People’s (or Populist) Party. In a decade of unrest and uncertainty, the Populists countered laissez-faire economics by insisting that the federal government play a more active role to ensure economic fairness in industrial America.

This challenge to the status quo culminated in 1896 in one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in the nation’s history. At the close of the tumultuous decade, the Spanish-American War brought the country together, with Americans rallying to support the troops. American imperialism and overseas expansion raised questions about the nation’s role on the world stage as the United States stood poised to enter the twentieth century.

CHRONOLOGY

1884	Frances Willard calls for woman suffrage.
1890	National American Woman Suffrage Association formed. Wyoming only state allowing women to vote in national elections. Southern Farmers’ Alliance numbers three million members.
1892	People’s (Populist) Party founded. Homestead lockout ends in violence.
1893	Stock market crash touches off economic depression. President Grover Cleveland nixes attempt to annex Hawai’i.
1894	Miners strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Coxey’s army marches to Washington, D.C. Pullman boycott crushed.
1895	Cleveland enforces Monroe Doctrine in border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela.
1896	Democrats and Populists support William Jennings Bryan for president. William McKinley elected president.
1898	USS Maine explodes in Havana harbor. Congress declares war on Spain. Admiral George Dewey destroys Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. U.S. troops defeat Spanish forces in Cuba. Treaty of Paris ends war with Spain. United States annexes Hawai’i.
1899–1900	Secretary of State John Hay enunciates Open Door policy. Boxer uprising takes place in China.
1901	Boxer Protocol imposed on Chinese government.