Chapter Nineteen: From Stalemate to Crisis

Where Historians Disagree - Populism

The scholarly debates over the nature of Populism have tended to reflect a larger debate over the nature of popular mass movements. To some historians, mass uprisings seem dangerous and potentially antidemocratic; and to them, the Populist movement has usually appeared ominous. To others, such insurgency is evidence of a healthy democratic resistance to oppression; and to them, Populism has generally seemed more appealing.

The latter view shaped the first, and for many years the only, general history of Populism: John D. Hicks's The Populist Revolt (1931). Hicks portrayed Populism as an expression of the healthy, democratic sentiments of the West. Populists were reacting rationally and constructively to the harsh impact of eastern industrial growth on agrarian society, and they were proposing potentially valuable reforms to restrict the power of the new financial titans. Populism was, he wrote, "the last phase of a long and perhaps a losing struggle--the struggle to save agricultural America from the devouring jaws of industrial America."

In the early 1950s, scholars sensitive to the nature of European fascism and contemporary communism took a more suspicious view of the mass popular politics and a more hostile view of Populism. The leading figure in this reinterpretation was Richard Hofstadter. In The Age of Reform (1955), he conceded that the Populists had genuine grievances and advanced some sensible reforms. But he concentrated on revealing what he called the "soft" and "dark" sides of the movement. Populism, Hofstadter claimed, rested on a romanticized and obsolete vision of the role of farmers in American society. And it was permeated with bigotry and ignorance.

Hofstadter's harsh portrait inspired a series of spirited challenges. Norman Pollack, beginning in 1962, argued that the agrarian revolt rested not on nostalgic and romantic concepts but on a sophisticated and even radical vision of reform. A year later, Walter T.K. Nugent attempted to show that Populists were not bigoted, that they not only tolerated but welcomed Jews and other minorities into their party. And in 1976, Lawrence Goodwyn published Democratic Promise, which described Populism as a "cooperative crusade" battling against the "coercive potential of the emerging corporate state."

At the same time that historians were debating the meaning of Populism, they were also arguing over who the Populists were. Hicks, Hofstadter, and Goodwyn, for all their many disagreements, shared a belief that Populists were victims of economic distress--usually one-crop farmers in economically marginal regions victimized by drought and debt. Others, however, have suggested that this description is, if not wrong, at least inadequate. Sheldon Hackney maintained in 1969 that Populists in Alabama were not only economically troubled but socially rootless, "only tenuously connected to society by economic function, by personal relationships, by stable community membership, by political participation, or by psychological identification with the South's distinctive myths." Peter Argersinger, Stanley Parsons, James Turner, and others have similarly suggested that Populists tended to be people who were socially and even geographically isolated. Steven Hahn's 1983 study The Roots of Southern Populism described the poor farmers of "upcountry" Georgia who became Populists as people almost entirely unconnected to the modern capitalist economy. They were reacting to a real economic threat to their way of life: the intrusion into their world of a new commercial order of which they were not a part and from which they were unlikely to benefit.

There has, finally, been continuing debate over the legacy of Populism. Michael Kazin, in The Populist Persuasion (1994), is one of a number of scholars who have argued that a Populist tradition has survived throughout much of the twentieth century, influencing movements as different as those led by Huey Long in the 1930s, George Wallace in the 1960s, and Ross Perot in the 1990s.

http://history.missouristate.edu/wrmiller/Populism/texts/historiography.htm - Worth Robert Miller, "A Centennial Historiography of American Populism"

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/bibs/populism.html - Rebecca Edwards, "Recent Literature on American Populism"

1			After examining these two historiographies above, summarize the conclusions of Worth Robert Miller's overview of the populism literature. What have been the major disagreements among historians of populism, and why do you think the issue of populism has continued to be so contentious in the academy?

http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/uhs/APUSH/2nd%20Sem/Articles%20Semester%202/1%20Hofstadter.htm - Richard Hofstadter, "The Farmer and the Realities"

2			As the textbook notes, the "Hofstadter thesis" has been among the most controversial (and influential) interpretations of populism. Read this excerpt by Richard Hofstadter and summarize its argument. What does Hofstadter mean by "the agrarian myth," and what is its role in the formation of populism?

http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm - Henry Littlefield, "The Wizard of Oz, Parable on Populism"

http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm - David Parker, "The Rise and Fall of the Wizard of Oz as a Parable on Populism"

3			Read these two articles and trace the role, rise and fall of The Wizard of Oz in populist historiography. What arguments does Littlefield make to suggest that the book is a Populist tract? What, according to Parker, accounted for its ready acceptance as such by the historical community? How was this interpretation ultimately disproved?