The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics
- Pages
- about 166
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
Rapid growth accompanied by a somewhat painful readjustment has been one
of the leading characteristics of the history of the United States
during the last half century. In the West the change has been so swift
and spectacular as to approach a complete metamorphosis. With the
passing of the frontier has gone something of the old freedom and the
old opportunity; and the inevitable change has brought forth inevitable
protest, particularly from the agricultural class. Simple farming
communities have wakened to find themselves complex industrial regions
in which the farmers have frequently lost their former preferred
position. The result has been a series of radical agitations on the part
of farmers determined to better their lot. These movements have
manifested different degrees of coherence and intelligence, but all have
had something of the same purpose and spirit, and all may justly be
considered as stages of the still unfinished agrarian crusade. This book
is an attempt to sketch the course and to reproduce the spirit of that
crusade from its inception with the Granger movement, through the
Greenback and Populist phases, to a climax in the battle for free
silver.
In the preparation of the chapters dealing with Populism I received
invaluable assistance from my colleague, Professor Lester B. Shippee of
the University of Minnesota; and I am indebted to my wife for aid at
every stage of the work, especially in the revision of the manuscript.
The decade of the seventies witnessed the subsidence, if not the
solution, of a problem which had vexed American history for half a
century--the reconciliation of two incompatible social and economic
systems, the North and the South. It witnessed at the same time the rise
of another great problem, even yet unsolved--the preservation of
equality of opportunity, of democracy, economic as well as political, in
the face of the rising power and influence of great accumulations and
combinations of wealth.
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