The Agrarian Crusade | Page 8

palatable to the
Southern Democrats. In the campaign Greeley's brilliant speeches were
listened to with great respect. His tour was a personal triumph; but the
very voters who hung eagerly on his speeches felt him to be too
impulsive and opinionated to be trusted with presidential powers. They
knew the worst which might be expected of Grant; they could not guess
the ruin which Greeley's dynamic powers might bring on the country if
he used them unwisely. In the end many of the original leaders of the
Liberal movement supported Grant as the lesser of two evils. The
Liberal defection from the Republican ranks was more than offset by
the refusal of Democrats to vote for Greeley, and Grant was
triumphantly reelected.
The Liberal Republican party was undoubtedly weakened by the
unfortunate selection of their candidate, but it scarcely could have been
victorious with another candidate. The movement was distinctly one of
leaders rather than of the masses, and the things for which it stood most
specifically--the removal of political disabilities in the South and civil
service reform--awakened little enthusiasm among the farmers of the
West. These farmers on the other hand were beginning to be very much
interested in a number of economic reforms which would vitally affect
their welfare, such as the reduction and readjustment of the burden of
taxation, the control of corporations in the interests of the people, the
reduction and regulation of the cost of transporation, and an increase in

the currency supply. Some of these propositions occasionally received
recognition in Liberal speeches and platforms, but several of them were
anathema to many of the Eastern leaders of that movement. Had these
leaders been gifted with vision broad enough to enable them to
appreciate the vital economic and social problems of the West, the
Liberal Republican movement might perhaps have caught the ground
swell of agrarian discontent, and the outcome might then have been the
formation of an enduring national party of liberal tendencies broader
and more progressive than the Liberal Republican party yet less likely
to be swept into the vagaries of extreme radicalism than were the
Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties of after years. A number of
western Liberals such as A. Scott Sloan in Wisconsin and Ignatius
Donnelly in Minnesota championed the farmers' cause, it is true, and in
some States there was a fusion of party organizations; but men like
Schurz and Trumbull held aloof from these radical movements, while
Easterners like Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule and
invective.
The period from 1870 to 1873 has been characterized as one of rampant
prosperity, and such it was for the commercial, the manufacturing, and
especially the speculative interests of the country. For the farmers,
however, it was a period of bitter depression. The years immediately
following the close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous expansion
of production, particularly of the staple crops. The demobilization of
the armies, the closing of war industries, increased immigration, the
homestead law, the introduction of improved machinery, and the rapid
advance of the railroads had all combined to drive the agricultural
frontier westward by leaps and bounds until it had almost reached the
limit of successful cultivation under conditions which then prevailed.
As crop acreage and production increased, prices went down in
accordance with the law of supply and demand, and farmers all over the
country found it difficult to make a living.
In the West and South--the great agricultural districts of the
country--the farmers commonly bought their supplies and implements
on credit or mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits at best
were so slight that one bad season might put them thereafter entirely in
the power of their creditors and force them to sell their crops on their
creditors' terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged, too, at rates of

interest that ate up the farmers' profits. During and after the Civil War
the fluctuation of the currency and the high tariff worked especial
hardship on the farmers as producers of staples which must be sold
abroad in competition with European products and as consumers of
manufactured articles which must be bought at home at prices made
arbitrarily high by the protective tariff. In earlier times, farmers thus
harassed would have struck their tents and moved farther west, taking
up desirable land on the frontier and starting out in a fresh field of
opportunity. It was still possible for farmers to go west, and many did
so but only to find that the opportunity for economic independence on
the edge of settlement had largely disappeared. The era of the
self-sufficing pioneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer on the
frontier, forced by natural conditions over which he had no control
to--engage in the production of staples, was fully as dependent on