RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION: Religion and the Populist Revolution

3. The Alliance Vorzeit

3. The Alliance Vorzeit Even though certain intellectual and religious components shaped the Populist movement, it was also tied to specific social, economic, and political developments of the late nineteenth century. Leaving political developments for the next section, this chapter examines the social and economic factors that helped determine the shape and timing of Populism or, more specifically, the Farmers’Alliance. The most important of these factors were a growing urban/rural divide in the South and nation, the marginalization of agriculture in the national culture, political sphere, and economy, and national debates over the nature of money and the role of the federal and state governments in regulating the nation’s economy. Perhaps most important ,from the late 1870s into the 1890s,the national economy was marked by high interest rates, scarce currency, and low commodity prices—an economy devastating for farmers, especially those in the war-ravaged and cashstarved South. Farmers in North Carolina responded to this economic nightmare with cooperative action first through the Grange and then through L. L. Polk’s North Carolina Farmers’ Association and Progressive Farmer. * * * No one doubted that times were hard for North Carolina farmers after the Civil War, but, then, most farmers in North Carolina had never known the plantation wealth of other states like Virginia and South Carolina. Because North Carolina’s seventeenth-century proprietors had doled out land in 640- to 660-acre parcels, the state never really developed a plantation system , though some eastern counties boasted a few large plantations. 030 s2c3 (41-67) 2/7/06 9:18 AM Page 51 Rooted in the ideals of self-sufficiency, most antebellum white yeomen could claim roughly the same independence that just about any farmers in the country could—they usually owned a small farm, planted enough food to eat, made their own clothing, and established a small cash crop of corn, tobacco, or cotton. But that is not to say that antebellum North Carolina was a Jeffersonian paradise. Except for the commerce in a few bustling towns along the Cape Fear River like Fayetteville and Wilmington, North Carolina was probably the most commercially isolated antebellum state. Navigable rivers were few, roads were abysmal, there were few banks or even towns, and wages were about the lowest in the country. After the Civil War the state lay prostrate, with inadequate transportation , a labor shortage, virtually no banking or currency, and the fewest financial assets in the South. Once the political situation was redeemed by the Democrats in 1876, the state’s boosters saw economic salvation in a “New South”where progressive, market-oriented cotton and tobacco farmers could join hands with textile, furniture, and other manufacturers in the Piedmont.1 Such growth, however, was slow to start because of a general economic depression in the 1870s. Compounding the problems of this general depression were the scarcity of capital, currency, banks, and credit in the state, along with high interest rates and low commodities prices brought on by banking and currency regulations that restricted the volume of currency in circulation. Farmers, who were falling further into debt and making less on their crops, felt the brunt of these economic problems most severely. Debate surrounding these economic problems and, more specifically, the banking and currency regulations that controlled the volume of U.S. currency ,evolved into one of the most contentious political issues of the Gilded Age: “the money question.” On one side of the money question were “soft money” advocates who wanted to lower interest rates and raise commodities prices first by expanding the money supply with greenbacks or silver and, second, by terminating the national banking system. These soft money advocates were most often debtors (including farmers) or those who felt discriminated against by eastern financial and banking circles. On the other side of the money question were “hard money” advocates—financial conservatives such as bankers, creditors, and those with overseas trade interests —who advocated a small, tightly controlled money supply that would keep inflation down and interest rates high. Most taking the hard money side also advocated the gold standard, which likewise helped keep the money supply in check and facilitated trade with gold-standard Britain. Those involved in the money question also debated the nation’s protective 52 voice of god in the alliance whirlwind 030 s2c3 (41-67) 2/7/06 9:18 AM Page 52 tariff, but this issue acted more as an...