The new tariff immediately became an issue in the congressional elections. It failed to halt the downward spiral of farm prices, but there was an almost immediate increase in the cost of many items purchased by the farmers. With discontent already rife in the agricultural regions of the West and South, the McKinley tariff added to the agrarian resentment. The outcome of the elections was a major defeat for the Republicans, whose strength in the House of Representatives was reduced by almost half.
The agrarian revolt
Political disaster befell the Republicans in the trans-Mississippi West, resulting from an economic and psychological depression that enveloped the region after widespread crop failures and the collapse of inflated land prices in the summer of 1887. The Western boom had begun in the late 1870s, when the tide of migration into the unoccupied farmlands beyond the Mississippi quickly led to the settlement of hitherto unoccupied parts of Iowa and Minnesota and to the pushing of the frontier westward across the Plains almost literally to the shadows of the Rocky Mountains.
Westward expansion was encouraged by the railroads that served the region. It was supported by the satisfactory price and encouraging foreign market for wheat, the money crop of the Plains. For 10 years, from 1877 through 1886, the farmers on the Plains had the benefit of an abnormally generous rainfall, leading many to assume that climatic conditions had changed and that the rain belt had moved westward to provide adequate rainfall for the Plains. Confidence was followed by unrestrained optimism that engendered wild speculation and a rise in land prices. Lured on by these illusions, the settlers went into debt to make improvements on their farms while small-town leaders dreamed of prodigious growth and authorized bond issues to construct the public improvements they felt certain would soon be needed.
The collapse of these dreams came in 1887. The year opened ominously when the Plains were swept by a catastrophic blizzard in January that killed thousands of head of cattle and virtually destroyed the cattle industry of the open range. The following summer was dry and hot; crops were poor; and, to compound the woes of the farmers, the price of wheat began to slide downward. The dry summer of 1887 was the beginning of a 10-year cycle of little rainfall and searingly hot summers. By the autumn of 1887 the exodus from the Plains had begun; five years later, areas of western Kansas and Nebraska that had once been thriving agricultural centres were almost depopulated. The agricultural regions east of the Plains were less directly affected, though there the farmers suffered from the general decline in farm prices.
Although the disaster on the Plains bred a sense of distress and frustration, the lure of good land was still strong. When the central portion of the present state of Oklahoma was opened to settlement in April 1889, an army of eager settlers, estimated to have numbered 100,000, rushed into the district to claim homesteads and build homes.
Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, days after the land rush of April 22, 1889.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Populists
The collapse of the boom and the falling prices of agricultural products forced many farmers to seek relief through political action. In 1888 and again in 1890 this discontent was expressed through local political groups, commonly known as Farmers’ Alliances, which quickly spread through parts of the West and in the South, where economic problems had been aggravated by the shift following the Civil War from a plantation system to sharecrop and crop-lien systems. The alliances won some local victories and contributed to the discomfiture of the Republicans in 1890. They were not, however, an effective vehicle for concerted political action; and in 1891 the leaders of the alliances formed the People’s (Populist) Party.
The Populists aspired to become a national party and hoped to attract support from labour and from reform groups generally. In practice, however, they continued through their brief career to be almost wholly a party of Western farmers. (Southern farmers, afraid of splitting the white vote and thereby allowing blacks into power, largely remained loyal to the Democratic Party.) The Populists demanded an increase in the circulating currency, to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of U.S. senators, and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give the farmers economic parity with business and industry. In 1892 the Populists nominated Gen. James B. Weaver of Iowa for president.
Weaver, James B.James B. WeaverCourtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The election of 1892
The nominees of the two major parties for president in 1892 were the same as in the election of 1888: Harrison and Cleveland (see U.S. presidential election of 1892. The unpopularity of the McKinley tariff gave Cleveland an advantage, as did the discontent in the West, which was directed largely against the Republican Party. From the beginning of the campaign it appeared probable that the Democrats would be successful, and Cleveland carried not only the Southern states but also such key Northern states as New York and Illinois. His electoral vote was 277 to 145 for Harrison. Weaver carried only four Western states, three of them states with important silver mines, and received 22 electoral votes.
Cleveland’s second term
When Cleveland was inaugurated for his second term in March 1893, the country hovered on the brink of financial panic. Six years of depression in the trans-Mississippi West, the decline of foreign trade after the enactment of the McKinley tariff, and an abnormally high burden of private debt were disquieting features of the situation. Most attention was centred, however, on the gold reserve in the federal Treasury. It was assumed that a minimum reserve of $100,000,000 was necessary to assure redemption of government obligations in gold. When on April 21, 1893, the reserve fell below that amount, the psychological impact was far-reaching. Investors hastened to convert their holdings into gold; banks and brokerage houses were hard-pressed; and many business houses and financial institutions failed. Prices dropped, employment was curtailed, and the nation entered a period of severe economic depression that continued for more than three years.
Cleveland, GroverGrover Cleveland; undated portrait.© Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com
The causes of this disaster were numerous and complex, but the attention that focused on the gold reserve tended to concentrate concern upon a single factor—the restoration of the Treasury’s supply of gold. It was widely believed that the principal cause of the drain on the Treasury was the obligation to purchase large amounts of silver. To those who held this view, the obvious remedy was the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
The issue was political as well as economic. It divided both major parties, but most of the leading advocates of existing silver policies were Democrats. Cleveland, however, had long been opposed to the silver-purchase policy, and in the crisis he resolved upon repeal as an essential step in protecting the Treasury. He therefore called Congress to meet in special session on August 7, 1893.
The new Congress had Democratic majorities in both houses, and, if it had any mandate, it was to repeal the McKinley tariff. It had no mandate on the silver issue, and more than half of its Democratic members came from constituencies that favoured an increase in the coinage of silver. Cleveland faced a herculean task in forcing repeal through Congress, but, by the use of every power at his command, he gained his objective. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed at the end of October by a bill that made no compensating provision for the coinage of silver. Cleveland had won a personal triumph, but he had irrevocably divided his party; and in some sections of the nation he had become the most unpopular president of his generation.