Once more, and with greater unanimity than ever before, the farmers,
especially in the West, threw aside their old party allegiance to fight
for the things which they deemed not only essential to their own welfare
but beneficial to the whole country. Some aid, it is true, was brought
by labor, some by the mining communities of the mountain region, some
'by various reform organizations; but the movement as a whole was
distinctly and essentially agrarian.

CHAPTER X. THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892

The advent of the Populists as a full-fledged party in the domain of
national politics took place at Omaha in July, 1892. Nearly thirteen
hundred delegates from all parts of the Union flocked to the convention
to take part in the selection of candidates for President and
Vice-President and to adopt a platform for the new party. The "Demands"
of the Alliances supplied the material from which was constructed a
platform characterized by one unsympathetic observer as "that furious
and hysterical arraignment of the present times, that incoherent
intermingling of Jeremiah and Bellamy." The document opened with a
general condemnation of national conditions and a bitter denunciation
of the old parties for permitting "the existing dreadful conditions
to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them." Then
followed three declarations: "that the union of the labor forces of the
United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual";
that "wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from
industry without an equivalent is robbery"; and "that the time has come
when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people
must own the railroads." Next came the demands. Heading these were the
monetary planks: "a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued
by the general Government poly, a full legal tender for all debts," with
the subtreasury system of loans "or a better system; free and unlimited
coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to
one"; and an increase in the circulating medium until there should be
not less than $50 per capita. With demands for a graduated income tax,
for honesty and economy in governmental expenditures, and for postal
savings banks, the financial part of the platform was complete. The
usual plank declaring for government ownership and control of railroads
and telegraphs now included the telephone systems as well, and the lan