Populism
BY CHARLES Q. DE FRANCESecretary People’s Party National Committee
POPULISM is a term at which many eminently respectable but sadly misinformed persons shy, like the staid old farm horse when he first encounters an automobile on the road to town. They regard it as synonymous with Socialism, anarchy, bomb-throwing, nihilism and half a dozen other real or fancied evils. That it is simply a short expression for progressive, radical or Jeffersonian Democracy has never occurred to them.
Populism is a term which well illustrates the growth of language, the evolution by which circumlocution is avoided and clearness of expression attained. Yet, at the same time, it is an apt illustration of the power of a subsidized press to create an erroneous public opinion.
Back in the early ’90s, when the People’s Party was being organized in a number of Western States, there was considerable discussion as to whether it should be regarded as a political organization on the usual lines, or whether it should be a sort of league of independent voters, free to choose and vote for such candidates, on any ticket, as might seem best fitted to represent the interests of the different organizations of farmers and wage-workers out of which the People’s Party finally evolved.
The Omaha National Convention in 1892 settled the question in favor of regular party organization. It is true that there were intended to be points of difference between the People’s Party machinery and that of either old party; but these points were minor rather than fundamental. The delegate convention was retained—which, to my mind, was the one mistake made at Omaha. Until some system of direct nominations is adopted, whereby every elector may have a vote direct—and not by delegate, who may misrepresent him—I fear that as our party grows in strength we shall more and more be called upon to combat the same influences which dominate both the old parties. However, this is digression.
With the advent of the People’s Party a difficulty was found in describing a member of that party. A member of the Republican Party is, of course, a Republican; and a member of the Democratic Party is called a Democrat—but how designate one affiliated with the People’s Party?
The omnipresent and omniscient newspaper reporter, as usual, solved the difficulty. His agnosticism applies to nothing except the word “fail.” And with him circumlocution and criminality are almost synonymous. It would never do to be ringing the changes on “an adherent to the People’s Party,” or “one affiliated with the People’s Party”; hence, it was not long before we began to see the word “Populist” used in verbal descriptions of what the cartoonist invariably depicted as a “one-gallus” man, armed with fork or rake, and blessed with a hirsute adornment truly Samsonian.
Applied as a term of reproach, yet responding to the inexorable law which compels men to follow along the lines of least resistance, the word“Populist” came to stay. It stuck, just as the term “Methodist” did—or “Christian,” for that matter. From “Populist,” descriptive of the man, to “Populism,” designating his political belief, was an easy step—and now, after fifteen years of abuse, ridicule, vituperation and gross misrepresentation, the great middle class is just beginning to get a clearer view and to discover that Populism is the only logical answer to the question, “What shall we do to be saved from economic ruin?”
Populism is neither Socialism nor anarchism. It is neither idealistic nor materialistic. It is neither collectivistic nor individualistic. It is essentially eclectic. It recognizes the good in all the schools of political and economic thought and attempts to eliminate the weak or bad—but refuses to be bound by any.
Populism recognizes the fact that we must work with the world as it is now—and not as some Utopian dreamer conceives it ought to be. It recognizes the fact that private ownership of productive property is not only the rule all over the world—but also that the people like it. It recognizes the Socialists’ “economic determinism”—that man’s economic needs usually dominate when they clash with his ideals—yet is not unmindful of the fact that all progress is the result of ideals forcing a change in the environment. Were it not so, man would still be an arboreal ape, chattering aloft in some palm tree.
Populism recognizes that man is a social animal, yet combats Socialism for subordinating the individual to the collectivity, and combats anarchy for subordinating the collectivity to the individual. It is the golden mean between these extremes.
Although Populism lays no claim to being either a “science” or a “philosophy,” yet it has the only definite program of any party today before the American people. It has a yard-stick by which all things may be measured, whether they be burlap, fustian, woolen, silk or some new weave of spider-web. This yard-stick is—
EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL, SPECIAL PRIVILEGES TO NONE.
Every fair-minded man is willing to have his economic cloth measured by that yard-stick. Only avaricious rogues object.
The Republican Party is committed to the practice of giving special privileges to a favored few. It is essentially a party of paternalism. The protective tariff is paternalistic. The railroad franchise is paternalistic, and land grants, and bonds, and subsidies. The national banking laws are paternalistic—and so, too, deposits of public revenues, and rentals on public buildings sold but never paid for. The net effect of all Republican legislation is to arm the possessors of great wealth with some sort of taxing power, whereby they may absorb still more wealth without rendering an equivalent. Incidentally, it is true, some measure of prosperity may come to the more humble possessors of property—but the general trend is beyond question plutocratic.
The so-called Democratic Party need not be considered here. It has no fixed policy for more than eight years at a time—except to be “agin’ the government.” It is the party of negation.
The Socialist Party presents the anomaly of a party with an elaborate “scientific” system of societary evolution, an excellent interpretation of history, and forecast of the supposedly final form which society will assume—yet without a program or hint of the specific manner in which industry will be carried on under “the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution, with democratic management by the workers engaged in each industry.” It is admitted that we have no right to ask for prophecies—but we have a right to see a rough draft at least of the new building which is to be erected after the social revolution has torn down the old edifice. It is true that a few so-called Socialist papers pretend to tell us what will be “under Socialism”—vague, Utopian—pardon the term—“pipedreams”; but none of them will give even an outline sketch of how collective industry might be carried on, preferring to hide behind the excuse that “we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it.” Alas! The bridge might happen to be washed out by the floods of social revolution.
Being an extreme on the side of materialism as opposed to idealism, or collectivism as opposed to individualism, Socialism is quite impossible as a scheme of government. Besides, the “materialistic conception of history,” upon which Socialism bases its prediction of the co-operative commonwealth, is not wholly scientific, because it fails to consider what changes may be wrought by invention. In a general way, it may be said that the invention of gunpowder destroyed feudalism, and that the discovery of steam power and its application to manufacturing broke up the guild system of masters, journeymen and apprentices, and ushered in the present wage system. Who has the hardihood to prophesy what an Edison may not do in the years to come, or to foretell what the effect may be?
The program of Populism is at once radical and conservative. It is radical, because it goes to the root of the difficulty and will effect a profound change. It is conservative, because it will enable the great mass of wealth producers to conserve what they now have and what they produce in future, by exempting them from the legalized robberies committed by railroads, banks, trusts and other forms of predatory wealth.
Populism, recognizing the institution of private property, and the people’s veneration and love for it, looks back over history’s pages and sees two things which, up to the recent past, have always been regarded as prerogatives of the state. One is the coinage, issue and control of money; the other, the ownership and control of highways.
Under the term “money” we may properly include all those modern makeshifts which are armed with partial legal-tender power, or even those without such power, if they generally perform the offices of money. Without discussing it in detail—because thousands of volumes have been written upon the subject without exhausting it—it seems quite certain that if Congress is to really exercise its right—and undoubted duty—“to coin money and regulate the value thereof,” there can be no “free” coinage of either gold or silver; and the Government must go into the banking business.
Under the term “highways” we may properly include railroads, canals, telegraphs, telephones, expresses—in short, all means of transportation and communication.
Most of the trust oppressions grow directly out of private ownership of the means of transportation and transmission of intelligence—the highways—and the private issue of money. Populism asks that these great evils be corrected—and that the individual be allowed to conduct his own private business with the least possible interference by government. There will always be work for the reformer; but wisdom dictates that the greatest evils be first eliminated, so that many of a minor character may be allowed to correct themselves.