“Progressive-Populists' Revolt Led to Control of
Both Democratic and GOP Parties 1885-1920”
In 1885, Democrat Grover Cleveland took office over a deep Bank caused deflation. Wheat was driven down to 50 cents a bushel. Corn descended so low, it was burned for fuel more often than food. It sat rotting in mammoth Midwest warehouses. Yet in America's great cities, hundreds of thousands of unemployed black and white working families were starving. Railroad barons never got rich shipping food for free. President Cleveland founded the Interstate Commerce Commission in an attempt to gain some control over the Railroad barons. Many foreclosed farmers committed suicide. Most revolted. They organized the popular Grange movement, and launched Farmers' Alliances, town by town, and state by state. African American farmers organized separately. They were excluded from the Farmers' Alliance and Grange movements.
Mine workers in the mountainous West were also starving from falling prices. They joined the Western Federation of Miners, led by Big Bill Haywood, songs by Joe Hill.
Between 1881-1900, Progressive-Populist workers conducted over 23,000 Strikes
In May 1891, at Cincinnati, Ohio, the Populist Party was founded, by white farmers, miners, and the highest skilled craft unions from the AFL. Their demands:
1. A new “Income Tax” would include wealthy Trust owners at a progressive rate
2. Public (Government) ownership of monopoly Railroads, Telephone, and Telegraph
3. Very popular Initiative, Referendum, and (corrupt politician) Recall were introduced
4. 8-hour day (1890's average, 12 hours, 6-7 day week)
In July 1892, hungry steel workers struck the huge Homestead Works owned by steel and coal baron, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie hired Pinkerton detectives to sail barges down a River, surround and attack the Union picket line. When they reached the Works, the Pinkerton detectives opened fire on defenseless picketers. Fellow Union brothers heard the gunfire, and descended on the Carnegie Works from the high in the hills.
An explosive battle erupted. Oil was poured into the River. One of the Pinkerton barges caught fire. They screamed to surrender. The Union arrested hundreds of trigger-happy detectives. The local District Attorney charged them with Murder. In the end however, steel baron Andrew Carnegie called in the State Militia, and broke the bloody strike.
Populism was demonized in the day's Faux-scare Media as “Treason,” and/or “Socialist.”
But in 1892, so wildly popular was the Populist Party, they received 30% as a third Party. In 1893, Banks failed, causing 15,000 businesses to close, and wide unemployment.
By 1896, Populists took control of the Democratic Party. The Populist-Democrat candidate, William Jennings Bryan was a charismatic lightening rod who traveled 18,000 miles. He visited every township and village in the country. At each stop, the charming Populist champion delivered electrifying speeches, such as his famous “Cross of Gold”.
Unfortunately, his Wall St.-bankrolled Republican opponent, William McKinley used banksters to threaten farmers with cancellation of their mortgages. Industrial workers were paid off, and told not to return, if Bryan won the Election. These bare knuckle tactics proved decisive. McKinley won. He joined 'yellow journalist' Randolph Hearst
to launch the disastrous, imperialist Spanish American War 1898-1900. Luckily, an anarchist's bullet ended President McKinley's Empire yearnings in January 1901.
By 1901, the U.S. Congress was the personal property of 5-7 billionaire Baron families. The Railroad monopoly was dominated by two men. The coal mines and steel mills were owned by Carnegie. The Oil monopoly and silver mines belonged to John D. Rockefeller. The Banks to J.P. Morgan, Chase, Mellon and their Trusts. These billionaire Barons wined, dined, and bought every Congressman, and each Republican and Democratic President. (Compare with Citibank, GE, Wallmart, Exxon, Fox Empire, AT$T today)
Against this Corporate domination arose the brave Knights of Labor (1896), the American Federation of Labor (AFL-1896), Western Federation of Miners, the Populist Party (1891), and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW in 1905). Of these labor heroes, only the Knights of Labor and the IWW recruited African Americans.
BOTH PARTIES FALL to PROGRESSIVE-POPULIST SWEEP
After gaining control of the Democratic Party, Progressive-Populists took leadership of the Republican Party as well (Pres. Roosevelt and Taft). Progressive-Populists also captured Governorships in Wisconsin (Bob La Follette, Populist GOP), and California (Hiram Johnson, Democrat-Populist).
This was the result of Progressive ideas, dreams, policies and platforms, but mostly
2 decades of 23,000 labor strikes.
Nick-named 'Trust-buster Teddy,' Roosevelt (1901-1909) filed over 40 law suits to break up mammoth Monopolies dominating American life. However, the Railroad Trusts and Banksters did not surrender easily. Standard Oil and American Tobacco Trusts would only dissolve years later, via the Supreme Court, under Pres. William H. Taft (1909-1913)
In 1902, thousands of Pennsylvania coal miners struck after a series of mine disasters. They asked for a 9 hour day. The arrogant mine Barons refused to even negotiate.
A violent battle between mine families and Pinkerton Detectives left hundreds of women and children injured. Teddy Roosevelt intervened, and settled the strike in the miners' favor. He also passed several ground-breaking mine safety laws.
In America's textile mills, coal mines, wheat or corn farms, steel mills, and industrial factories, African American workers were systematically excluded. When all white coal miners or steel workers struck, the Coal/Steel barons often brought in immigrants, African Americans, or child labor to scab. Only the sea port Longshoremen were integrated. In the New Orleans Port Strike of 1902, African American and white stevedores fought together. Side-by-side, they defeated the Port's divide-and-conquer strategy, so corruptly successful in thousands of coal and steel strikes.
The Lawrence, Mass. Textile mill consisted of 25 different nationalities. In Jan. 1912, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood sent in organizers speaking many different languages. Once their organizers had signed 1000 IWW members, all 25,000 Lawrence ladies walked out for “Bread and Roses.” With the IWW's help, they won a brave strike.
The 1913 Paterson Silk workers strike was also led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood of the IWW. They created a Musical Pageant about the Paterson Strike for a Broadway opening in NYC. It was a huge hit. The dramatic performances, by the silk strikers themselves, won over the influential NYC public, and the strike was successful.
In the 1913 Ludlow Massacre, Colorado state militia was called in by the wealthy Coal and Oil baron, John D. Rockefeller, to smash starving UMW coal miners. The UMW only asked for an 8 hour day. The state militia's intense rifle fire set fire to a Tent. A special Tent. A Tent hiding 11 small children, who burned to death for the greed of Rockefeller.
The 1912 Presidential Election featured 3 Progressive-Populist Presidential Candidates. The Republicans were split between current Pres. Taft, and the new Progressive Party's Teddy Roosevelt. This split allowed the Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win.
He immediately selected “Gold Cross” William Jennings Bryan as his Secretary of State. Between 1913 and 1921, Wilson introduced many pro-labor laws, and Corporate business restrictions. Woodrow Wilson appointed the first Cabinet Secretary in the new Department of Labor. He spearheaded laws ensuring 8 hours pay, for 10 hours work. In 1914, he passed the Clayton Anti-Trust Act to break up Monopolies that crush competitors. Wilson also happily signed the 19th Amendment (Vote for Women).
However, Wilson's Progressive program was sidelined by a growing foreign conflict. A War between the decrepit Kings of Europe. This aristocratic conflict had nothing to do with us. But our weapons lobby, and the Hearst 'yellow journalism' media empire, conspired to drag American working people into the feudal conflict. 1 million dead. WWI (1917 - 1918)
Does Democrat Wilson's dilemma feel familiar? FDR's New deal-WWII; L. Johnson's Civil Rights-Vietnam; Barack Obama's National Healthcare - Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya.
After WWI ended in 1918, Corporations drastically cut hours and canceled overtime. Workers who skimped patriotically for the War effort, now struck for a 'Peace dividend'. There were nearly 4000 strikes in 1919. Wilson was criticized by GOP Congressmen for being soft on Labor. Were not these 'rabble,' the same 'socialist' and 'anarchist' strikers who protested the War effort? To prove his mettle, and stifle the growing strikes, Wilson unleashed Attorney General Palmer. He arrested the anti-war leaders of the IWW, Populist Party and Socialist Party. Big Bill Haywood, Helen Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and hundreds of Progressive-Populists were prosecuted and convicted. Eugene Debs got a 10 year sentence. Their crime – criticizing the Corporate Democrat Party's and war profiteering Republican Party's jingoistic drum beat for War.
By goading Pres. Wilson to arrest and imprison his Progressive-Democratic activist base, the Republicans got Wilson to destroy the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.
Corporate GOP'ers returned to power easily in 1921. The Progressive resistance was in jail.
Democrats were denied political power for the next 12 years.
But the Progressives returned with fire in 1933. The new CIO Labor militancy of John L. Lewis, and the Auto and steel sit down strikes and the bloody coal miner strikes kept Democrats in power from 1933-1950.
https://pdwamerica.blogspot.com
“Progressive-Populists' Revolt Led to Control of Both Democratic and GOP Parties”
8/11/11 by William Floyd
“Cross of Gold” by William Jennings Bryan [ 1896 ]
US was in a terrible Bank recession. Banks and the Gold Standard made
dollars very scarce. Populists wanted to increase the amount of currency
via silver, to jump start employment and prosperity. Republicans insisted
on Gold only.
“Having behind us the producing masses of this nation, and the world,
supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the
Toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard
by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor
this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a Cross of Gold.”
-– William Jennings Bryan
I am the people – the mob - the crowd – the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. -– Carl Sandburg
IWW
If the Workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding Trains.
Every Ship upon the ocean,
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the Creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and Armies of the Nation,
Will, at their command, stand still.
–- Joe Hill
Bibliography
Joyce Kornbluh, Rebel Voices, the IWW in Poems and Songs
H.S. Commager, ed. Documents of American History, Appleton-Century-Crofts
Mary R. Beard, A Short History of the American Labor Movement
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography
Progressive Democratic Workers for (a new) America
https://pdwamerica.blogspot.com
8/11/2011
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