Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Post-Populist Politics: Lobbying, Third Parties, and the Victories and Defeats of the New Repertoire, 1900–1932

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Bygone Utopias and Farm Protest in the Rural Midwest

  • 65 Accesses

Abstract

After the failed Populist movement, Midwestern farmers adopted the repertoire of the broader business community. Though third-party movements such as Socialism and Communism remained popular in the Midwest, lobbying’s success in creating change and the changing identity of farmers helped make that form of collective action dominant. The farm crisis of the 1920s illustrated the limitations of this change. The government treated suffering farmers and their communities like any other business, which focused not on providing relief but on improving farmers’ business methods. Farmers learned that the benefits of their transformation came with large costs, prompting a moment of reflection about whether the change in the economy, political system, and their political actions were worth the simultaneous change in the morals of the social system.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7–8 for a brief discussion on the distinction between transgressive and contained forms of collective protest for social movement theory more broadly.

  2. 2.

    Mimesis is one of the most prominent theories for the adoption and distribution of new and/or effective protest strategies ; in other words, activists often of learn new ways of protesting, or adopt tactics that are more successful, through the observation of other activist groups. See: Kenneth T. Andrews and Michael Biggs, “The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (2006): 752–777; Ruud Koopmans and Susan Olzak, “Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 1 (2004): 198–230; Sarah A. Soule, “The Diffusion of an Unsuccessful Innovation,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 556, (1999): 120–131. Interestingly, this isn’t just applied to protest tactics : this principle also applies to ways of understanding society, which in turn make novel forms of protest more acceptable. See: Michael Biggs, “How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the Twentieth Century,” Mobilization 18, no. 4 (2013): 407–428.

  3. 3.

    William H. Sewell, Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 124–151.

  4. 4.

    James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 237.

  5. 5.

    Commodore B. Fisher, The Farmers’ Union (University of Kentucky Studies in Economics and Sociology, Vol 1, No. 2. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1920), 52.

  6. 6.

    Charles S. Barrett, The Mission, History, and Times of the Farmers’ Union (Nashville, TN: Marshall & Bruce Co., 1909), 21–22, 103–106.

  7. 7.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 6.

  8. 8.

    Barrett, Mission, 103–105.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 157.

  10. 10.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 6–8.

  11. 11.

    Barrett, Mission, 157.

  12. 12.

    William P. Tucker, “Populism Up-to-Date: The Story of the Farmers’ Union,” Agricultural History 21, no. 4 (1947): 201–203.

  13. 13.

    John A. Crampton, The National Farmers Union: Ideology of a Pressure Group (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 7.

  14. 14.

    Barrett, Mission, 42.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 89–90.

  16. 16.

    Tucker, “Populism,” 199.

  17. 17.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 39.

  18. 18.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 33–44; Dennis S. Nordin, Rich Harvest: A History of the Grange, 1867–1900 (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1974), 141–149.

  19. 19.

    Barrett, Mission, 119.

  20. 20.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 9; Tucker, “Populism,” 199.

  21. 21.

    Fisher, Farmers’ Union, 53–65; Tucker, “Populism,” 202.

  22. 22.

    W. Rodney Cline, “Seaman Asahel Knapp, 1833–1911,” Louisiana History 11, no. 4 (1970), 334–338. Orville M. Kile, The Farm Bureau through Three Decades (Baltimore, MD: The Waverly Press, 1948), 27–32.

  23. 23.

    Nancy K. Berlage, “Organizing the Farm Bureau: Family, Community, and Professionals, 1914–1928,” Agricultural History 75, no. 4 (2001): 409.

  24. 24.

    Berlage, “Organizing,” 410; Kile, Farm Bureau, 32–45; Grant McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (New York: Atheneum, 1969[1953]), 46–53.

  25. 25.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 35–36.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 43–44.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 45–46.

  28. 28.

    Berlage, “Organizing,” 414; Kile, Farm Bureau, 64.

  29. 29.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 47–55.

  30. 30.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 27–45; McConnell, Decline, 51.

  31. 31.

    Berlage, “Organizing,” 415–418.

  32. 32.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 83–92; McConnell, Decline, 60.

  33. 33.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 92–99.

  34. 34.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 99–123; McConnell, Decline, 57, 64.

  35. 35.

    Berlage, “Organizing,” 414–430.

  36. 36.

    William C. Pratt, “Radicals, Farmers, and Historians: Some Recent Scholarship about Agrarian Radicalism in the Upper Midwest,” North Dakota History 52, (1985): 12–24.

  37. 37.

    Jim Bisset, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 16–19; Garin Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 7–8.

  38. 38.

    Bisset, Agrarian Socialism, 4–7, 60–84.

  39. 39.

    Bisset, Agrarian Socialism, 85–104; Burbank, When Farmers, 15–40.

  40. 40.

    Bisset, Agrarian Socialism, 122–141.

  41. 41.

    Bisset, Agrarian Socialism, 131–173; Burbank, When Farmers, 116–118, 133–148.

  42. 42.

    Lowell K. Dyson, Red Harvest (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 3–4, 67; William C. Pratt, “Rural Radicalism on the Northern Plains, 1912–1950,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42, no. 1 (1992): 44–45, 54.

  43. 43.

    Gerald Zahavi, “‘Who’s Going to Dance with Somebody Who Calls You a Mainstreeter?’: Communism, Culture, and Community in Sheridan County, Montana, 1918–1934,” Great Plains Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1996): 251–286.

  44. 44.

    Robert L. Morlan, Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915–1922 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), 24–25. Despite its age, Morlan’s book continues to be the standard citation for a general history of the Nonpartisan League.

  45. 45.

    Lowell K. Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), 259–260; Morlan, Political, 24–26.

  46. 46.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 260; Pratt, “Radicals,” 19–20; Morlan, Political, 24–26.

  47. 47.

    For a broader argument on the role that the direct primary system played in revolutionizing American politics, see Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  48. 48.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 260–262; Morlan, Political, 31–34.

  49. 49.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 261–262; Morlan, Political, 49, 54–55, 87–91.

  50. 50.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 262; Morlan, Political, 96–108.

  51. 51.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 265; Kile, Farm Bureau, 62; Morlan, Political, 123–126, 202–203, 212–213; Pratt, “Rural Radicalism,” 45; Richard M. Valelly, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 22–23.

  52. 52.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 265; Morlan, Political, 156–177.

  53. 53.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 265–266; Morlan, Political, 229–233.

  54. 54.

    Dyson, Farmers’ Organizations, 267–268; Morlan, Political, 301–346; Pratt, “Rural Radicals,” 46–48; Valelly, Radicalism, 17–52.

  55. 55.

    Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 160–164.

  56. 56.

    Clemens, People’s, 181.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 1–13.

  58. 58.

    In addition to the aforementioned books by Elisabeth Clemens (The People’s Lobby) and Elizabeth Sanders (Roots of Reform) that focus on the political ramifications of these mobilization efforts, Monica Prasad has argued that American farmers had major effects on not only the American welfare state, but also European welfare states. See: Monica Prasad, The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).

  59. 59.

    Prasad, Land, xii–xiii.

  60. 60.

    Sanders, Roots, 228–232; 282–289.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 236–261.

  62. 62.

    Clemens, People’s, 303–304.

  63. 63.

    Kile, Farm Bureau, 99–101; McConnell, Decline, 57.

  64. 64.

    Patrick O’Brien, “A Reexamination of the Senate Farm Bloc 1921–1933,” Agricultural History 47, no. 3 (1973): 248–263; Theodor Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), 321–341.

  65. 65.

    Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural, 278–281; Valelly, Radicalism, 75–77

  66. 66.

    David B. Danbom, Born in the country: A history of rural America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006[1995]), 190; Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural, 372–403; Valelly, Radicalism, 75–77

  67. 67.

    John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association (The University of Illinois Press: Urbana, IL, 1965), 12.

  68. 68.

    Carrie Meyer, Days on the Family Farm: From the Golden Age through the Great Depression (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 114.

  69. 69.

    Lee J. Alston, “Farm Foreclosures in the United States during the Interwar Period,” The Journal of Economic History 43, no. 4 (1983): 887–891; Meyer, Days, 152

  70. 70.

    Alston, “Farm Foreclosures,” 889–891.

  71. 71.

    Alston, “Farm Foreclosures,” 889–891.

  72. 72.

    Stock, James H. “Real Estate Mortgages, Foreclosures, and Midwestern Agrarian Unrest, 1865–1920.” The Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 93–95.

  73. 73.

    Alston, “Farm Foreclosures,” 888–889.

  74. 74.

    This dynamic is particularly salient in Herbert Hoover’s attempt to create a Farm Board to help farmers form cooperative enterprises; this government institution was woefully underfunded and completely inadequate in helping farmers. See Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural, 404–434.

References

  • Alston, Lee J. “Farm Foreclosures in the United States during the Interwar Period.” The Journal of Economic History 43, no. 4 (1983): 885–903.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andrews, Kenneth T. and Michael Biggs, “The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins.” American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (2006): 752–777.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, Charles S. The Mission, History, and Times of the Farmers’ Union. Nashville, TN: Marshall & Bruce Co, 1909.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, Patrick B. “Farm Mortgagor Relief Legislation in Iowa During the Great Depression.” The Annals of Iowa 50 (1989): 23–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlage, Nancy K. “Organizing the Farm Bureau: Family, Community, and Professionals, 1914–1928.” Agricultural History 75, no. 4 (2001): 406–437.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biggs, Michael. “How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the Twentieth Century.” Mobilization 18, no. 4 (2013): 407–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bisset, Jim. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burbank, Garin. When Farmers Voted Red. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clemens, Elisabeth S. The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cline, W. Rodney. “Seaman Asahel Knapp, 1833–1911.” Louisiana History 11, no. 4 (1970): 333–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crampton, John A. The National Farmers Union: Ideology of a Pressure Group. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006[1995].

    Google Scholar 

  • Dodd, James W. “The Farmer Takes a Holiday.” Master’s Thesis, Department of Social Science, North Dakota Agricultural College, 1960.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyson, Lowell K. Red Harvest. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyson, Lowell K. Farmers’ Organizations. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, Commodore B. The Farmers’ Union. University of Kentucky Studies in Economics and Sociology, Vol 1, No. 2. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1920.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kile, Orville M. The Farm Bureau through Three Decades. Baltimore, MD: The Waverly Press, 1948.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koopmans, Ruud and Susan Olzak, “Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany.” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 1 (2004): 198–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McConnell, Grant. The Decline of Agrarian Democracy. New York: Atheneum, 1969[1953].

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, Carrie. Days on the Family Farm: From the Golden Age through the Great Depression. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morlan, Robert L. Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915–1922. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1955.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nordin, Dennis S. Rich Harvest: A History of the Grange, 1867–1900. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1974.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, Patrick G. “A Reexamination of the Senate Farm Bloc 1921–1933.” Agricultural History 47, no. 3 (1973): 248–263.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prasad, Monica. The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pratt, William C. “Radicals, Farmers, and Historians: Some Recent Scholarship about Agrarian Radicalism in the Upper Midwest.” North Dakota History 52 (1985): 12–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pratt, William C. “Rural Radicalism on the Northern Plains, 1912–1950.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42, no. 1 (1992): 42–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saloutos, Theodor, and John D. Hicks. Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanders, Elizabeth. Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sewell, Jr., William H. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shover, John L. Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association. The University of Illinois Press: Urbana, IL, 1965.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soule, Sarah A. “The Diffusion of an Unsuccessful Innovation.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 556, (1999): 120–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stock, James H. “Real Estate Mortgages, Foreclosures, and Midwestern Agrarian Unrest, 1865–1920.” The Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 89–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tucker, William P. “Populism Up-to-Date: The Story of the Farmers’ Union.” Agricultural History 21, no. 4 (1947): 198–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valelly, Richard M. Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, Gerald. ““Who’s Going to Dance with Somebody Who Calls You a Mainstreeter?”: Communism, Culture, and Community in Sheridan County, Montana, 1918–1934.” Great Plains Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1996): 251–286.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Science and Business Division, Eureka College, Eureka, IL, USA

    Daniel Jaster

Authors
  1. Daniel Jaster
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Jaster .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Jaster, D. (2021). Post-Populist Politics: Lobbying, Third Parties, and the Victories and Defeats of the New Repertoire, 1900–1932. In: Bygone Utopias and Farm Protest in the Rural Midwest. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71013-2_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71013-2_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71012-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71013-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation