ril and May, 1885.

CHAPTER XIII

POPULISM

The election of 1890 stunned and bewildered both old parties. The
Republicans lost their control of the Lower House, while the Democrats
paid for their victory the price of a partial alliance with a new
movement whose weight they could only estimate. Populism was engendered
by local troubles in the West and South, but its name now acquired a
national usage and its leaders were encouraged to attempt a national
organization.

In a series of conventions, held between 1889 and 1892, the People's
Party developed into a finished organization with state delegations and
a national committee. At St. Louis, in December, 1889, the Farmers'
Alliance held a national convention and considered the basis for wider
growth. The outcome was an attempt to combine in one party organized
labor, organized agriculture, and believers in the single tax. The
leaders of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor
were not averse to such common action, although the latter preferred
their own Federation to any party. The dangers of political action, seen
in the decline of the National Labor Union of 1866, did not check the
desires of the Knights in 1889, although the leaders found it easier
then, as later, to promise the support of organized labor than to
deliver it at the polls. After the St. Louis Convention the name
Farmers' Alliance merged into the broader name of the People's Party,
though the attempt to win the rank and file of the unions failed.

In December, 1890, the farmers met at Ocala, Florida, to rejoice over
the congressional victory and to plan for 1892. Since each of the great
parties was believed to be indifferent to the people and corrupt, a
permanent third party was a matter of conviction, and in May, 1891, this
party was formally created in a mass convention at Cincinnati.
Miscellaneous reforms were insisted upon here, but were overshadowed by
the demands of the inflationists. James B. Weaver, of Iowa, the old
presidential candidate of the Greenbackers, was a leading spirit at
Cincinnati. His best-known aide was Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, a
devotee of the Baconian theory and of the "Lost Atlantis," who was now
devoting his active mind to the support of free silver. A national
committee was created after another meeting, at St. Louis in February,
1892, and on July 2, 1892, the party met in that city in its first
national nominating convention.

The pla