 All is well here at Think Tech. I'm Jerry Feidell. This is Think Tech, and more specifically, this is History Lens. If it's History Lens, what do you think? John David Anisey, a professor John David Anisey in History, H.P.A. Thank you for joining us yet again. You're welcome to see it, Jay. Yes, absolutely. So we're talking about populism today. Populism is very important in understanding the evolution of American society. But I want to propose an issue to you first before we get into the populism of the 1890s or the 1930s. You know the problem with history people? They tend to put labels on things. When in fact, if you look at the populism of 1896 versus the populism of 1930, it wasn't the same. Yet we all insist on putting labels on things like that. Right, right. And in fact, we don't even really call the 1930s an era of populism, although there are populists there. The thing is, as a movement in the 1930s, of course, populism is not nearly as successful as it was in the 1890s. When in the South it took over several legislatures and you had presidential candidates running. In the 1930s probably the best hope for populism is Huey Long. And Huey Long, you know, he gets it. He was assassinated? Yeah, he was assassinated. So he gets shot. And so if Huey had lived you might have seen a more robust populist movement. But we'll come back and we'll talk about that. Okay, well here, so let's look at the 1890s for a moment. So the Civil War is about 30 years old or so. You know, we have reconstruction, we have all kinds of unrest about that, about sort of reorganizing the South, in fact reorganizing the country. And at the same time we're doing manifest destiny out to the West and picking up states and territories left and right. And we have lots of action in Europe where things are consolidating in Italy and Germany. There's lots of action, lots of things going on. It's the run up to World War I, a lot of militarism and all that. And in this country, populism. Why populism? Populism assumes that there was something wrong with the status quo, right? And there was something. I mean, there was lots of things wrong. But two main things, of course, the rise of industrialism, the second industrial revolution in the United States created tremendous wealth. The robber barons. Yes, and huge enterprises with hundreds of thousands of employees, but railroads. But these great armies of workers were really, they were poorly paid. Pullman City. Pullman City, right. Although Pullman was, this is the weird thing about the Pullman strike and the, so this is, let's go to that first, shall we? Okay, because that's right in the middle of this populist uprising. What happens in 1893 is the economy goes into the tank. Okay. And so you've got, you've got these big, huge enterprises that employ all of these people. And in, in Chicago, you have a company called the, the George Pullman Company, which makes Pullman cars for on railroads, right? These are sleeping cars and sitting cars and the rest. And, and Pullman has been so successful. And Pullman was kind of a socialist. He believed in the collective. And so, I mean, he was a capitalist. He owned this very profitable company. But what he did is he built a town around his factory. And it became that was actually incorporated as Pullman, Illinois. And so, and, and he built housing for his workers. He built grocery stores, libraries, lecture halls, and, and he was in some ways, yeah, I mean, this kind of capitalist corporatism that Pullman represented was, he believed in it. He thought this would solve the problems of the division between capital and labor. And his, his employees had to pay a little bit for housing, you know, and they, of course, they had to pay for their groceries. But, but it was a kind of corporate welfare system that Pullman created. So, but it had a flaw. Well, he charged them too much. Well, and they were, they were, they were serfs when it was all over. He didn't charge them too much until his enterprise went bust. So in 1893, you have a financial panic followed by a very serious depression with the president. This is Grover Cleveland is the president. And, you know, he's trying to solve the problem of the depression of 1893. But there it is in 1894. So spring 1894, Pullman is in big trouble. Because almost all of his contracts with the railroads have been canceled. He doesn't have any, any contracts to build Pullman's. And so the, so what's he going to do with all these workers? And so, so first of all, he raises the rent. Exactly. As you said, he raises the rent quite a lot in the housing that his workers are staying. Survival is first. Yeah. And so, and they become unhappy about this. And then he has to begin to lay people off. And these people, they don't have anywhere to go because their housing was provided by Pullman. So, and so they better organized, they have a union and they get really angry. And in June 19, pardon me, 1894, there's a confrontation between striking, so they go out on strike is essentially what happens. And, and there's this confrontation between striking Pullman workers and the governor of Illinois has called in the National Guard. And there's a in, in the streets of Pullman, there's a face off between these workers and in the National Guard. Violence. And mayhem results. Six workers are killed. Pullman, the city of Pullman is basically pulverized by, you know, by fires and by, I mean, there's so much that's destroyed there. So, I mean, in 1894 is a summer of strikes and very deep distress among working folk. And so, this was, this was the intersection of big capital, of robber barons, and of people who were being abused at the other end of that big capital. That's exactly right. And it had to get resolved somehow. Yes, well, so in the case of the Pullman strike, I mean, the National Guard eventually prevails in this actually, there's a gun battle that accompanies this standoff and, and the workers have to back down and they disappear from Pullman. They, I think many of them go into Chicago and they're just wandering the streets. They're unemployed and they're, you know, they're impoverished now. So, so that doesn't end very well. But, but of course, you know, capital capitalism with the force of arms behind it. And this is very typical of the populist period in the 1890s is that capitalists put the force of firearms behind them in to try to achieve their goals. Pinkerton comes to mind. That's right. The other major event of the labor event of the 1890s is in is in 1892, I believe it is. So, so you have Carnegie Steel, right? Carnegie. This is in Pennsylvania. This is in, this is in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Carnegie buys a plant from another company in Homestead, Pennsylvania, right on the Monagahela River. And the plant is, it's you know, it needs to be refitted and everything. And so, and so he's going to have to cut the wages of the workers who are there, who become, become Carnegie employees. He wants to cut the wages and there's a union there that pre-exists and he wants to get rid of the union. So, so he does, he tries to do this in the summer of 1892. And this is before the National Labor Relations Act. That's correct. So, you could, you could do terrible things to a union. Exactly. There's no inherent right to organize and to collectively bargain with your employer. So that's, that's what happens later. So, so Carnegie sails to Europe. He doesn't want to have anything to do with the mayhem that's going to result. Oh boy. And he knew. He leaves his second in command, Henry Frick, who is a steel-handed hard man who. The Frick Museum in New York. That's correct. That's got to be the family, yeah? That's the same, yeah. It's the Frick family. Papa Baron. They use some of their money in a good way. Okay. So, so Frick hires the Pinkerton's. So what happens is the workers, they refuse to get rid of the union, they refuse to pay cuts, and they sh, they lock the doors of the plant and they, they stay just sitting. And so you have wives bringing food, you know, handing food in over, over the window and everything, and they're armed. They have weapons inside. So Frick hires the Pinkerton agency to take care of this. And the Pinkerton's, these are detectives, but they're also really kind of mercenaries for hire. They're, they're thugs. They're kind of, yeah, they're capitalist thugs really in this case. So the Pinkerton's hire a raft and they sail a raft down the Monagahela River. They're going to attack from the back. Oh my god. Well, the union folks, they find out about this beforehand. I don't know how, but they did, they set up a line of defense using some of the big pieces of machinery that are sitting in the backyard. And so they're, they've got their weapons. Yeah, they've got their weapons aimed at the war aimed at the Pinkerton's. They've got a small cannon that they actually fire at the Pinkerton's on the raft. So they're firing at the Pinkerton's. Now the Pinkerton's are not prepared for this. So the Pinkerton's have to land the raft. And they have to put their hands up and give up. And so the, this squad of Pinkerton's has to run through two lines of these union members who are bopping them on the head as they run through the line. Bless you, it's for the union. A short lift. So what happens then is the governor of Pennsylvania calls out the National Guard. The National Guard takes over the plant. The union members, the workers are, you know, they're expelled from the plant and they have, they also have to wander somewhere and to find employment somewhere else because obviously they're going to be unemployed. So see, that's one leg of the populist revolt. And then of course, the other leg is the leg that we talked about last time. And that's the farmer revolt, where the farmers were getting a bad deal from elevators, from bankers, from railroads, and then in the south from the big plantation owners where they were sharecroppers and not not being able to keep a decent share of their crop. These are major instabilities in the country. They are, you know, it's a time period of huge amounts of wealth being created, and then huge amounts of disturbance and unease unrest in the country. And I suppose in some ways it culminates in the election of 1896 with William Jennings Bryan. Now we left off with William Jennings Bryan last time. We're talking about Bryan and Bryan, of course, he's a lawyer, he becomes senator from Nebraska, a tremendous orator, and a guy who is a populist himself. I mean, from a farming state, he understands the applied of farmers. He runs for president in 1890, he had run for president in 1892 actually unsuccessfully, but runs again in 1896. And to the surprise of the Democratic Party, he actually wins the nomination. And so at this point, what happens is the populists have organized themselves into a political party called the People's Party. These are the farmers from the western part of the country and the southern part of the country. And so the populists in 1892, they run their own presidential candidate. In 1896, they decide, you know, if we're really going to have an impact, we should fuse with the Democratic Party and support William Jennings Bryan because Bryan is a friend of the farmer. Okay, so that's what happens. The populists actually fuse with the Democratic Party and they support Bryan. But the problem is that Bryan gets fixated on one issue. And the issue is, it's the silver issue. And so this gets a little complicated. So from the 1870s to the 1890s, the United States was mostly on the gold standard. And this meant that there was relatively scarce amount of currency, the metal currency that was used for transactions, gold, not that much of it, not that much of it because it's fairly scarce. There's not there weren't that many gold mines in the United States at that point. And so you couldn't produce that much. And there was not that much minted. That meant that money was relatively scarce. And that also meant that interest rates were high, because money was dear, because right, it would, you know, it was value of gold was greater than the value was signed to it as a currency. Yeah, yeah. So, so, so you have high interest rates. And this affects farmers a lot because farmers are always borrowing money. You have to have, you know, farmers don't start with any capital. So they have to have money in order to make their, you know, their, their, their enterprise work properly. So, so the farmers don't like this. And they're lobbying for something called the silver standard, or what's sometimes called a bimetallic standard, where you still have gold in circulation, but that would be accompanied by some silver in circulation. Now, in the late 19th century, there are many silver mines in the West, some in Colorado, some elsewhere in the West that are opened up and then are producing quite a lot of silver. And, and the farmers want at least some of this silver to be minted and put into circulation, that would reduce interest rates. Now the concern of economists is that it would also probably cause more inflation, which was a huge concern for it. Yeah, so this huge concern for, for people who, for instance, employees who are on a fixed income right of you, if, if the goods that you need to buy to stay alive cost more, then, then you're, you're essentially you're being paid less, right? So, so, so eastern entrepreneurs, the robber barons, the titans of industry did not like this, the silver standard idea at all. It's the farmers of the West that like, Brian latches on to this, and he becomes so enamored on the silver side of the bimetallic standard, yes, that he gives a speech in accepting his nomination, in which he ends the speech by putting out his hands and saying, do not crucify me on a cross of gold. And he's actually referring to the gold standard. It's a, it's that's pretty sophisticated. And maybe that he should have been on other issues as well. Well, this was, this was one of the problems with the populace is that they latched onto a guy who was a single issue. And the populace movement was very broad based. They were trying to attack a lot of inequities in that time period. When you look at the party platform, for instance, it's kind of got eight, 10 issues that are important to them. And the silver standard is just one of them. So then they merged. So they merged. And Brian, he, he, he travels the entire country. He gives 270 speeches. It's, I mean, he is going, going, going. And his opponent, William McKinley, sits at his house and comes out onto the front porch and occasionally gives a speech through the press. Yes. And, and his surrogates go around the country. And, and this is actually, this is one of the last times you have what's called a front porch campaign. It's McKinley does this because McKinley knows that if the economy improves as it does in 1896, that he really won't have to do much of anything because the problem is Brian has really frightened the entrenched interests in the country. Not just employers, but those who are employed, the great army of workers, they get nervous about this idea of, of a silver standard that might raise the cost of food and other, you know, important items to them. How does this all connect with the Spanish American War, which happened only a year later? Well, it's so, so for one thing, McKinley wins. The conservative forces when Brian loses quite badly. And the populace are gone. Well, they're not gone as an identifiable party. No, they stay for, they stay around and in particular states, it's fragmented, they, they never again have a national platform and a national campaign and a national candidate, like they did in 1896. And how does the, the, the bi-metallic standard, how does that work out? Well, it's never, it's never implemented. So what in fact happens is that in the 1890s, there is some so silver in circulation. And Grover Cleveland, the Democratic president, who's a moderate, not a populist, actually begins to withdraw some of that silver currency, because he believes that it's, that it helped to cause the depression of the 1890s. Now, I'm not certain that's true, but he did withdraw the silver. Economics was a young science at the time. It was. Yeah, people didn't really, you know, economists were kind of scary creatures back then. You mean they're not scary now? No, they're just boring now. So anyway, so dismal science. So 1896, that is the, that's the critical thing with what do you think is right? That's the year that could have been transformative for the country, but turns out to not be that. So it sounds like when you say populist in that context, you're really defining populist by how it emerged, by who was involved, by what their positions were, rather than any particular concept. No, I mean, the issues, of course, were populist issues, you know, issues to institute an eight dollar, pardon me, an eight hour work day. It's a working man's party. Yeah, raise the wages of workers, make sure that political corruption is ended, right, because the populists were not just concerned about economic issues, they were concerned about democracy. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, right. Those are good things. And then, of course, the farmer populist had a whole set of their part of the platform was concerned with instituting what they called federal treasury warehouses where you could actually bring your grain, keep your grain away from the privately run elevators who would manipulate your grain scoring, your grain grading, and put the grain in these sub-treasurer warehouses in which then you could borrow money against that from the federal government, your grain would be protected, then you could sell the grain. In that regard, it sounds like if you call the farmer's populist, this was really the farmer's party. This was to protect the interests of the farmers, the smaller farmers. Yeah, I mean the people's party was broader than that, but what was behind the people's party was mainly farmers, it was mainly farmers. Okay, so fast forward, we're fragmented after the 1896 election. So yeah, and that's right. Now you mentioned that 1930. But hang on a second, you asked about the Spanish-American War, so just very quickly, so what happens is the forces of conservatism and really kind of this kind of big power capitalism prevail in 1896 and in 1898 then they go forward with the war against Spain and it's not just a war to increase global markets for capitalism, but that is one of the beneficiaries of the war with Spain. As the United States now becomes an empire in the Philippines and in Hawaii you have places where you can stop for coal and you have new markets, you can sell stuff too, so John E. Rockefeller loves the fact that he can now sell kerosene, standard oil kerosene in the Philippines, which is an American possession. So we got global, we started taking manifest destiny offshore. Yeah, so that's just a very brief summary of it, but that's true that it does strengthen the hand, I think, of capitalists in the late 19th century. Okay, by the way, was there really a main? Oh yeah, there was a main provocation or a real attack on the United States. Well, we think what happened is that... It's just like the Tonkin Gulf, you know? No, nothing really happened. We think that what happened is the main used Petuminous Coal, it was a soft coal. Yeah, that's right, Petuminous Coal and or Lignite, it was one of those too, it was the softer coal and this coal gives off a gas, unlike Anthracite. This coal actually, as it sits there, it gives off gases. Yeah, it become flammable and we think there was an explosion, it was spontaneous combustion from the coal pump. So we say remember the main. Right. It's not because somebody attacked the main. Well, that was the implication though. Okay, got it. That's what the, you know, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper owner, that was his phrase, remember the main and that was because, I mean, he wanted the public, he wanted a war, right? War is sometimes start with no reason to hope. Okay, so fast though, we don't have too much time. Fast though, well, it's a 1930 when populism emerges again, perhaps in a slightly different form. Yeah, well, so of course it's quite different, it's not quite different, it's significantly more serious depression than the 1890s depression. The Great Depression of course is really serious. 25% unemployment, 50% drop in industrial production. I mean, this is a very serious business. And so what you have is, for the first couple of years of the depression, you have a do nothing president in Hoover and of course he has to exit, he loses the race to Franklin Roosevelt who says we're gonna try everything, we're gonna do everything to try to solve this crisis. And Roosevelt does lots of things in the first two years of his presidency. There's a picture of Franklin Roosevelt there before the microphones. And so Roosevelt, one of the things he says is we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It's a great quote actually and I think it's quite true that we should remember that one. So Roosevelt is doing things, he implements the beginnings of the new deal, lots of legislation has passed, some of it's ruled unconstitutional. But by 1934, 35, you still got millions of people unemployed. Unemployment is still at 20, 22%. And so what happens is people emerge who had supported Roosevelt in 1933, 1932, 33 during the campaign in his early presidency, people begin to emerge who we will call populists. And they begin to oppose Roosevelt. They say, hey, you haven't done enough people are starving in the streets. And in some cases that's actually true. In Detroit in the winter of 1933, people did in fact starve in the streets. 70% unemployment, people were being evicted from their housing, a bitterly cold winter. So it was really serious. I mean, this wasn't just demagogues making this up. But so those who opposed Roosevelt in 1934, 35, let's talk about those folks for a second. So we talked about Huey Long last time, right? So we don't need to say much about him. Except let's bring his picture up there. It's Huey Long. And Huey became quite popular in this time period. As I said, he had a national campaign. He had this plan called the Share the Wealth Plan. He was gonna help the small guy. He was gonna help the small guy. Unfortunately, he was a liar and a demagogue. He was, he was a bit of a demagogue. But still, he puts pressure on Roosevelt. Okay. So again, kind of a conservative, Roosevelt's definitely conservative in many ways, but puts pressure on Roosevelt. And then you have the emergence of Father Couglin, another populist. And here's Father Couglin. That's a great picture of him. That's later on in his life, but there he is. He's raising his fist. He's shouting. And okay, Father Couglin is about the poor guy, the little people, but Father Couglin is also anti-Semitic. He's anti-immigrant and he's pretty racist. In fact, he gets in trouble with the Catholic Church in the late 1930s because he is, his rhetoric is just so distasteful. That's a very interesting connection. I don't think people realize that there were two sides. One is he's appealing as you along did to the little guy. The other is he's a racist and he's got all kinds of negative aspects. No, that's true. And this was true in the 1890s too. Now, William Jennings Bryan was not a racist like that, but they were among the populists. There were those. So there was a shift in the way you look at populists in between the first and second. No, I wouldn't say. No, I mean, there were those who were nativists and racists in the first populist movement and once again they're here in the 1930s. So Couglin is a radio priest. He starts doing radio shows in the late 1920s and by the early 1930s, he's got an audience of millions in the United States. Sunday nights, many families devote their time to turn on the radio and listen to Father Couglin give speeches. So he has got tremendous influence for a short time period. At least he's probably more influential than Huey Long because he's got this radio niche. So if we had another show to continue this discussion, where would it go? Because we're almost out of time, John. Well, so you have Father Couglin, then you have a couple of other characters, but let's leave it at Father Couglin. So what you have is both Couglin and Long and other politically-minded people are pushing Roosevelt. Pushing Roosevelt, Roosevelt is concerned. He believes he might lose the election in 1936 to maybe to Huey Long. And so what Roosevelt does is in 1935, he embraces a leftward move. He embraces social security, and it flies through the Congress, which is controlled by Democrats. He embraces the WPA, which is an unemployment act, which it puts the- Helping the little guy. That's right, put the unemployed to work. And he embraces the Wagner Act, which is what we referred to earlier. This is the National Labor Relations Act, which is going to protect unions and organizing it. So he does that deliberately to really nullify. He pulls the rug out from under the populace. He does, but in doing so, he moves to the left, he becomes more leftist himself, and he sets in place what we know today as the base of the New Deal. Fabulous. Yeah. Fabulous. And we're out of time, but we have to understand this. No, don't, don't, don't. We have to come back and finish the story, John. No. You are in all of history, there's a story. You can quote me on that. John David at HVU Professor. Thank you very much, John. Good to be here, Jay. Aloha.