Riassunto esame United States in the 20th and 21 century, prof. Fiorentino, libro consigliato Age of Reform, Hofstadter

Age of reform summary

Main key episodes of the book

• Agrarian uprising linked to Populism 1900 and Bryan campaign 1896
• Progressive movement 1900-1914
• New Deal 1930

Populism

They were against: corruption, capital greed (capitalists start investing in the West); unresponsive government; inadequate monetary supply (crop lien = it all depends on the crops, on the production of the lands).

They were for: free coinage of silver (inflationary policy); graduate income tax; 8 hrs workday; nationalization of railroads and telegraph (1892 the constitution of the Socialist Party).

Key Concept

"The agrarian myth,": The American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and rural life as the agrarian myth. The hero of this myth was the yeoman farmer, the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen. The yeoman, who owned a small farm and worked it with the aid of his family, was the incarnation of the simple, honest, independent, and happy human being. Because he lived in close communion with the beneficent nature. The myth became a stereotype since agriculture became more commercial and industrial, and yeoman-like spirit has been replaced by the spirit of businessman and land speculator. American farmers were tempted to buy more land than they could properly cultivate.

Populism's main cause for formation was the alleged loss of "free land." Many Populist leaders believed that industry and government had a plan to destroy the agricultural business. The dominant themes in Populist ideology were: the idea of a golden age; the concept of natural harmonies; the dualistic version of social struggles; the conspiracy theory of history; and the doctrine of the primacy of money.

The key points of the failure in the Populist revolt: Its local appeal, rather than national. The Populists had shown strength enough to influence the local character of the major parties in several states or to form a small bloc in the Senate, but little more. These limitations upon the appeal of the People’s Party are not hard to understand. As a third-party movement, it was confined to the areas of the most acute agricultural discontent. It was feeble everywhere else, except in the populated mountain states. The Populist leaders, moreover, had been confronted with a huge problem: lack of funds. Farmers, it should be remembered, were often generous with enthusiasm but could rarely afford to be generous with cash. However, the single most destructive weakness was lack of silver. The original Populist program had embraced a number of reforms aimed to meet the central problems of land, transportation, and finance; those who stood for this balanced platform felt that free silver was a dangerous obsession that threatened to distract attention from the full scope of the reform movement. By joining with the Democratic campaign of 1896 on silver, Populists lost political ground.

Despite their dissolution, Populists were successful because criticism they voiced caused the passage of new laws years later: railroad regulation, the income tax, direct election of Senators, the initiative and referendum, postal savings banks. The People’s Party seems to have fulfilled its third-party function.

The People’s Party, also known as the Populist Party, was an agrarian-populist political party in the United States. In 1892–96, it played a major role as a left-wing force in American politics. It emerged into the Democratic Party in 1896 a small independent remnant survived until 1908. It drew support from angry farmers in the West and South and operated on the left-wing of American politics. It was highly critical of capitalism, especially banks and railroads, and allied itself with the labor movement.

Established in 1891, as a result of the Populist movement, the People's Party reached its zenith in the 1892 presidential election and in the 1894 with House of Representatives elections. The Populists represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to elites, cities, banks, railroads, and gold. The party sometimes allied with labor unions in the North and Republicans in the South. In the 1896 presidential elections, the Populists endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, adding their own vice-presidential nominee. By joining with the Democrats, the People's Party lost its independent identity and rapidly withered away.

After the defeat of Populism and Bryanism, the “hard” side of the farmers’ movements, based upon the commercial realities of agriculture, developed more prosperously than ever. The attempt to make agrarianism into a mass movement based upon third-party ideological politics also had to be supplanted by the modern methods of pressure politics and lobbying within the framework of the existing party system. Far from being the final defeat of the farmer, it was the first uncertain step in the development of effective agrarian organization.

The terms "populism" and "populist" have been used in the 20th and 21st centuries to describe anti-elitist appeals against established interests or mainstream parties, referring to both the political left and right.

Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. He discounted third-party links to Progressivism and argued that Populists were provincial, conspiracy-minded, and had a tendency toward scapegoatism that manifested itself as nativism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, and Anglophobia. One feature of the Populists' conspiracy theory that has been generally overlooked is its frequent link with a kind of rhetorical anti-Semitism. The slight current of anti-Semitism that existed in the United States before the 1890s had been associated with problems of money and credit.

The antithesis of anti-modern Populism was modernizing Progressivism according to Hofstadter's model, with such leading progressives as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, George Norris, and Woodrow Wilson pointed as having been vehement enemies of Populism, though William Jennings Bryan did cooperate with them and accepted the Populist nomination in 1896.

Progressivism

The two groups of Populism and Progressivism shared many philosophies, yet the latter was w