Origins

• labor violence - Pullman 1894 - E. Debs - socialism
• Depression 1893 - 20% unemployed - Jacob Coxey and 17 "armies"
• Simon Pingree "potato patches" in Detroit
• League for Protection of the Family - against child labor and for compulsory education
• Oliver Kelly and Grange 1867, then patrons of Husbandry 1873
• Granger laws against railroad - Munn vs. IL upheld state laws that set max. grain storage fees
• C.W. Macune and Farmers Alliance in Texas - 1875 Exchange
• Alliance won KA, NE, SD 1890, elected 44 to Congress

People's Party

• 1st national movement ag. laissez faire
• 1890 Ocala Platform - subtreasury, income tax, direct election
• Mary Lease of KA - 160 speeches in 1890 - raise "less corn and more hell"
• Sockless Jerry Simpson elected to Congress - only "princes wear silk socks"
• Ignatius Donnelly's novel Caesar's Column - anti-semitic - ignored urban industrial workers and immigrants
• Coin Harvey 1894 after Cleveland repealed Sherman Silver Purchase Act
• 1894 elections - 13 states went for silver, beginning of party realignment

Sources:

• Goodwyn, Lawrence. Democratic Promise: the Populist Movement in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. 718 p. described the Populists as a "cooperative crusade" that was part of a truly radical "movement culture" against the "coercive potential of the emerging corporate state."
• Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: an American History. New York: BasicBooks, 1995. 381 p. described the survival of Populism in movements led by Huey Long, Henry Wallace, George Wallace, and Ross Perot.