Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists
Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South
MATTHEW HILD
Copyright Date: 2007
Published by: University of Georgia Press
Pages: 344
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nh5k
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Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists
Book Description:

Historians have widely studied the late-nineteenth-century southern agrarian revolts led by such groups as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's (or Populist) Party. Much work has also been done on southern labor insurgencies of the same period, as kindled by the Knights of Labor and others. However, says Matthew Hild, historians have given only minimal consideration to the convergence of these movements. Hild shows that the Populist (or People's) Party, the most important third party of the 1890s, established itself most solidly in Texas, Alabama, and, under the guise of the earlier Union Labor Party, Arkansas, where farmer-labor political coalitions from the 1870s to mid-1880s had laid the groundwork for populism's expansion. Third-party movements fared progressively worse in Georgia and North Carolina, where little such coalition building had occurred, and in places like Tennessee and South Carolina, where almost no history of farmer-labor solidarity existed. Hild warns against drawing any direct correlations between a strong Populist presence in a given place and a background of farmer-laborer insurgency. Yet such a background could only help Populists and was a necessary precondition for the initially farmer-oriented Populist Party to attract significant labor support. Other studies have found a lack of labor support to be a major reason for the failure of Populism, but Hild demonstrates that the Populists failed despite significant labor support in many parts of the South. Even strong farmer-labor coalitions could not carry the Populists to power in a region in which racism and violent and fraudulent elections were, tragically, central features of politics.

eISBN: 978-0-8203-3656-5
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. vii-viii)
  4. Maps
    Maps (pp. ix-xvi)
  5. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-8)

    In December 1890 a worried lawyer in Greensboro, North Carolina, wrote in his diary, “The Knights of Labor, Farmers[’] Alliance, Trades Unions and other laboring classes are combining to form a national political party to overthrow everything in their way[,] and the end is not yet.” Of course, the dire prediction of this excitable observer that these groups might “bring about a bloody Revolution in the country” never came to pass, but the mere fact that this educated professional harbored such fears suggests that the challenge posed by united farmers and laborers as a force in southern politics during the...

  6. CHAPTER ONE Agrarian Discontent and Political Dissent in the South, 1872–1882
    CHAPTER ONE Agrarian Discontent and Political Dissent in the South, 1872–1882 (pp. 9-44)

    In June 1873 the Macon Telegraph and Messenger, a Black Belt Georgia newspaper, reported that a new farmers’ organization, the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (or the Grange), was rapidly establishing local chapters throughout the state. By the Fourth of July, the newspaper noted, “as many as one hundred granges” would “be in successful operation.” The Telegraph and Messenger approved of this development. “The cash system, combined credit, special rates of transportation, dealing by wholesale at headquarters with pork-packers and produce dealers, and a reduction in the ruinous rates of interest,” the newspaper reported, “are the grand results which...

  7. CHAPTER TWO Building the Southern Farmer and Labor Movements, 1878–1886
    CHAPTER TWO Building the Southern Farmer and Labor Movements, 1878–1886 (pp. 45-78)

    On New Year’s Day, 1878, thirty-three men assembled at Crouse’s Hall in Reading, Pennsylvania. They came from Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, and, of course, Pennsylvania for the first General Assembly of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. All of the men represented local or district assemblies of this obscure, secret labor organization, which had been founded in Philadelphia just over eight years earlier. They met in order to establish a national organization, with a constitution, general office and officers, and organizers who could form assemblies in states and territories across the nation.

    The...

  8. CHAPTER THREE The Knights of Labor and Southern Farmer-Labor Insurgency, 1885–1888
    CHAPTER THREE The Knights of Labor and Southern Farmer-Labor Insurgency, 1885–1888 (pp. 79-121)

    On 15 August 1885 a group of workingmen met at the Odd Fellows’ Hall in Athens, Georgia, a town of about seven to eight thousand residents, to organize themselves for “self-protection.”¹ Seven days later they met again at the Good Templars’ Hall, where Henry Jennings, a “life member” of the defunct Clarke County Grange and recently defeated candidate for the state legislature from nearby Oconee County, organized them into LA 4141 of the Knights of Labor. This mixed local consisted primarily of mechanics. In September 1885 the Knights chartered another mixed local of mechanics (LA 4273) and a local of...

  9. CHAPTER FOUR Toward a Third Party in the South and Nation, 1889–1892
    CHAPTER FOUR Toward a Third Party in the South and Nation, 1889–1892 (pp. 122-149)

    In December 1888 the National Agricultural Wheel and the Southern Farmers’ Alliance held a joint meeting at Meridian, Mississippi, at which “a consolidation of the two Orders [was] effected, subject to ratification by the organized States.” The merger agreement gave the organization a new name, the Farmers’ and Laborers’ Union of America, and installed Texas State Alliance President Evan Jones as president and National Wheel President Isaac McCracken as vice president.¹ Ratification from the necessary number of state bodies had occurred by September 1889, although antagonism between “conservative” Alliancemen and “radical” or “political” Wheelers in Texas and Arkansas delayed the...

  10. CHAPTER FIVE Southern Labor and Southern Populism, 1892–1896
    CHAPTER FIVE Southern Labor and Southern Populism, 1892–1896 (pp. 150-200)

    Despite some apparent tensions between Southern Farmers’ Alliance and Knights of Labor delegates at the St. Louis conference of industrial organizations in February 1892, Tom Watson’s People’s Party Paper of Atlanta assured its readers weeks later that “the Knights of Labor will vote the People’s Party ticket almost to a man, and their influence will bring thousands of other laboring men to the polls to vote the People’s Party ticket also.”¹ The latter half of this sanguine prediction was especially important, since the Knights of Labor only had about 125,000 dues-paying members across the nation by this time, contrary to...

  11. CHAPTER SIX Southern Farmer and Labor Movements after the Populist Defeat of 1896
    CHAPTER SIX Southern Farmer and Labor Movements after the Populist Defeat of 1896 (pp. 201-222)

    After his defeat by questionable means in the Texas gubernatorial election of 1896, Populist candidate Jerome C. Kearby lamented that the opportunity for reform had been “lost.” “I trust it may appear again; I fear not,” predicted the veteran reformer as he announced his retirement from politics.¹ In Georgia, defeated Populist vice presidential candidate Tom Watson declared, “Our party . . . does not exist any more.”²

    The pessimistic views of Kearby and Watson proved essentially correct. The elections of 1896 destroyed the People’s Party for all intents and purposes, and the last remaining vestiges of the National Farmers’ Alliance...

  12. Appendix 1
    Appendix 1 (pp. 223-223)
  13. Appendix 2
    Appendix 2 (pp. 224-224)
  14. Appendix 3
    Appendix 3 (pp. 225-226)
  15. Notes
    Notes (pp. 227-292)
  16. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 293-318)
  17. Index
    Index (pp. 319-327)
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