| The social protest and reform movement led by the Southern and Western farmers of the United States in the late 19 th century was called “Populism”.In the wave of the farmers’ movement of this period,the Southern Farmers’ Alliance was the strongest and most influential force.As a typical representative of Populism ideology,the Alliance’s protests and reform proposals reflect particularly how the farmers,as a social group,responded to the industrial transformation.During the period of 1886-1893,when the Alliance was most active,the focus of its activities changed from economic union to political rebellion,and the Populism Movement mainly based on the Order showed a tendency of increasing radicalization.The shift of the Alliance’s activities,from economic self-help based on mutual cooperation to independent politics based on the actions of a third party,is a logical response from the farmers to the internal and external difficulties in their cause of protest and reform pursuing economic fairness and social justice.The Populist activities of the Alliance brought a series of “Agrarian Questions” caused by the social transformation into the public view and political discussion,and the many reform demands advocated by it left a rich legacy for the agricultural adjustment in the early20 th century.In the process of the Populism Movement,the logical chain that drove its rise and radicalization was largely made up of economic factors.With the strong rise of industrial and commercial capitalism after the Civil War,the American society gradually formed a dual economic structure,under which the Northeastern industrial-core took advantage of its dominance in credit,transportation,market and products to exploit and oppress the Southern and Western agricultural-periphery.The Populism Movement is a concentrated outbreak of a long backlog of contradictions in the process of capitalization of American agriculture.The economic protest of the periphery farmers was mainly due to the imbalance between regional and industrial development caused by the industrial transformation and its corresponding social injustice.A series of reformative efforts conducted by the Alliance to correct these social evils were the American farmers’ first attempt to adjust the unreasonable capitalist economic structure and to break through the limitations of capitalist agriculture.The Alliance initially originated in Texas as a mutual group among communities.Until it transmuted into a business organization,the Alliance had been confined to the Texas state,lacking vitality and not able to get rid of the political controversy.It was once destroyed by the influence of political factors,and then fell into a crisis of secession.In 1886,Charles Macune acquired the leadership of the Alliance,and advocated to imitate the centralized trend of capitalist industry and commerce,to unite agricultural producers for mutual-aid and self-help,and to operate the Alliance as a national commercial organization.The Alliance had been trying to conduct some local cooperative buying and selling programs among Texas farmers since 1884.These small scale economic union injected vitality into the early growth of the organization,but did little to alleviate the economic difficulties of its members.In1887,inspired by the idea of “against monopoly with monopoly,” Macune proposed the “Exchange plan” of establishing a centralized state-level business institution to counter the cotton middlemen.The Texas Alliance Exchange,which was established according to this plan,organized its members to conduct some successful large-scale commercial cooperative activities under the guidance of the “pure and simple cooperation” philosophy,and became a sample for other states to establish such business institutions.At the same time,Macune led the Alliance to expand its organizational network throughout the cotton belt by promoting the dissemination and diffusion of grass-roots lodges as well as absorbing and consolidating the existing kindred organizations.As the main driving force behind the rapid spread of Populism“Gospel”,the business cooperative system that Macune developed from the Texas experience was promoted and improved in various cotton-planting states.In the process,the economic union of the Alliance had been gradually upgraded from local level to state,regional and even national scale.It even went beyond racial lines and included the black cotton farmers,thereby integrating millions of agricultural producers in the cotton belt under the banner of Populism.At the end of 1889,after a failed attempt to consolidate with a kindred organization in the Northwest,the Alliance began to expand beyond the cotton states.Driven by the Alliance’s economic salvation “Gospel”,the Dakota Alliance,which had a strong sense of identity with the Macune business system,broke away from the Northern organization and integrated itself into the cooperative cause of the Southern one.The Kansas Alliance explored a development pattern that incorporated the forces of other farmer organizations and made economic cooperation run parallel with political rebellion.Using this pattern,the Alliance expanded its organizational network to the Northwestern grain-producing states who had a strong tradition of independent politics,and mobilized the wheat farmers there to fight bitterly against the system of railroads and elevators that exploited them.Together with other organizations,the Alliance also used collective economic actions as a weapon to promote a rising tide of cooperative marketing for alleviating the market plight of fruit farmers in the newly-emerging fruit-producing areas along the subtropical coast.However,the Alliance’s economic union actions only made very limited breakthroughs in the economic plight of periphery farmers.The Order’s business cooperation at all levels could not overcome the existing commercial and credit practices at that time.What’s more,the inherent deficiency of its cooperative plan,the serious shortage of its cooperative capitals,the mismanagement of its cooperative enterprises,the dissension and discord among its members,as well as the factors of the prevalence of racism and the counter-attack of the hostile commercial groups,etc.,all hindered the success of farmers’ economic self-help through mutual cooperation.As the economic union faltered and the Western third-party veterans joined in,an emotion of radical rebellion within the Alliance suppressed previously began to upsurge.The fierce confrontation between Southern cotton farmers and the jute bagging trust around 1889 intensified the radicalization trend of Populism.During the long,large-scale jute bagging boycott,the Alliance’s call for reforming the old rules of cotton trading was supported by people from all walks of life in America agriculture,industry,business and politics.But because of the obstruction from overseas economic power,it sunk into oblivion.These frustrating economic activities stimulated the increasing awakening of the periphery farmers’ class consciousness,inspired them to reflect on social injustice from the institutional level,and prompted the Alliance to shift the focus of its activities from economic self-help to seeking financial and legislative help from the government.The Alliance’s legislative efforts of Sub-treasury in 1890 broke the Order’s long-held political taboo,and contributed to the dramatic politicization of the Populism Movement.Using the reform demands extracted by the Alliance in its economic union as the platforms,the periphery farmers actively participated in the political election in the early 1890 s.A national Populist Party was born in the fierce game among the internal forces of the Alliance.Alliance politics in the South and third party action in the West shook the post-Civil War political landscape and accelerated the nationwide realignment of political forces.Nevertheless,the political activities centered on Sub-treasury legislation and the establishment of a third party caused many disputes within the Alliance and created many external enemies for the farmers’ career of reform.With the decline of its economic cooperation and the revealing of chaotic infighting in its leadership,the Alliance’s organizational foundation was rapidly weakened.When farmers’ politics was confronted with sectionalism,partisanship and racial sentiment,the union of farmers established through economic radicalism quickly split.Populist politics,which replaced Alliance politics,peaked in 1896 and then faded,but the spark of Populism reform survived by the integration of Populists with the old parties.Many of the Populists’ reforming demands turned into farm legislation in the early 20 th century,and their attempts at centralized large-scale cooperation,which was once accused of monopoly,were also encouraged by the government later.On the basis of these legacies left by Populism,middle-class reformers launched a new wave of reform,which basically solved those economic problems that troubled farmers in the period of social transformation and preliminarily realized the reasonable adjustment of the capitalist economic structure. |
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