I Was a Revolutionary (15 page)

“Who?”

She says nothing. We were never particularly close, but we've never felt as far apart as we do now. There is a moment where we meet eyes and she puts a hand to my face and it seems like she might say something important, but when she finally does speak, she says only, “Good work on that package,” and pauses a moment. “Now forget you ever saw it or me and whoever gave it to you. Get the fuck out of here and keep your head down.” She turns and leaves and I'm standing in front of Stoughton's appliance store, where my father once worked, and still the bells toll.

A
s instructed, the Assistant arrives at the campus library early on Friday. This despite not being what one would call a morning person. He needs coffee ASAP, which makes his location convenient. Among undergrads, the library is more commonly and aptly referred to as “the place where Starbucks is.” He shivers in November's autumnal chill as he waits for the Historian, a professor in the department where he is pursuing his Ph.D., the one who has beckoned him here at this early hour, the attractive older woman upon whom he has the most innocuous of crushes and whom he hopes will guide his own studies when he's ready to dissertate in a couple of years. Still finishing his coursework, the Assistant was appointed to help her with research this semester, a post that until now has mostly entailed tracking down a few articles for her book project on the People's Party.

“Populists,” she said when they met in her office back in early September to discuss her research. “Radical agrarians. You're familiar?”

The Assistant learned quickly that in this environment there is nothing worse than showing intellectual uncertainty, and nodded with a confidence that wouldn't, on pain of death, betray the fact that he had no idea what she was talking about. Afterward, waiting in the interminable line at the bookstore to purchase texts for his classes, he took out his smartphone.

 

The
People's Party
, later erroneously also known as the
Populist Party
(derived from “Populist” which is the adjective which describes the members of this party) was a short-lived political party in the United States in the late 19th century. It flourished particularly among western farmers, based largely on its opposition to the gold standard. The party did not remain a lasting feature most probably because it had been so closely identified with the free silver movement which did not resonate with urban voters and ceased to become a major issue as the U.S. came out of the recession of the 1890s. The very term “populist” has since become a generic term in the U.S. for politics which appeals to the common in opposition to established interests.

—
WIKIPEDIA ENTRY
, 2010

The research has been interesting and his duties minimal, but yesterday he received an e-mail from the Historian asking
if he was going to be around this weekend and whether he might be able to help with her research at the library. There was urgency in her tone, a faint allusion to an imminent deadline of sorts. He'd planned to drive the two hours home to spend a long weekend with his parents. His mother is sick and has been undergoing treatment throughout the summer and fall, something he's avoided facing since school started up, and the Historian's request gave his continued avoidance an air of legitimacy. “Of course we understand your school obligations,” his dad said, clearly bummed, when the Assistant called to cancel. “I'll give Mom your love.”

When the Historian arrives, they enter the building through the slow-sliding automatic doors, purchase coffees, and take the elevator to the fifth floor, where they find an empty conference room. The Historian is slim and fit, an obsessive user of a personal home Elliptical, the Assistant would wager. Her hair is red, cut short, textured, and styled messy, and her face has an angularity that gives her a hint of masculinity that makes her seem both sexy and fierce. If she made a pop album, it would be called
Sexy/Fierce
. Instead of a backpack or briefcase, she tows behind her a roller bag too large for overhead stowage in an airplane. It makes her seem older than she is—mid-forties, he'd guess, but clearly passes for late thirties. He helps her lift her luggage onto the large, rectangular table. “This is my war room for the weekend,” she says, unzipping the bag to reveal stacks of yellow legal pads tattooed with blue ink, as well as books from her home and office.

Properly caffeinated, the Historian lays out the game plane. Her book proposal on the Populists is due on Monday. She has three days to figure out her angle on these radical farmers and work up a pitch. She wants him to focus on primary sources today, to see if he can't find something interesting, something she's overlooked. “Take notes on anything that seems relevant,”
she says, tossing him a clean legal pad.
Relevant to what?
he wonders. He takes it and puts it in his messenger bag. “Transcribe, make photocopies if necessary.” He stares at her, faintly nodding, waiting for more direction. He's unsure where to begin, but too embarrassed to say he's unsure where to begin. “This is good training for your own research,” she tells him, ushering him out of the room with a powerful little nod toward the door. “I'll be in here if you need me.” As he makes his way down the hall, he hears the Historian call out, “Thank you!”

The time has come when it is necessary in our own defense that the working people of this country, the farmers, mechanics, day laborers and all men and women who earn their living by hands or brains, organize against usurpation. . . . This is not a movement against the merchant, the lawyer, the beggar or anyone else, but a great uprising of the people. They say we want to destroy capital. But we want to restore the supremacy of the people, and we propose to do it.

—
WILLIAM PEFFER, POPULIST SENATOR, KANSAS
, 1891

Equal rights for all and special privileges to none.

—
SLOGAN OF THE PEOPLE'S PARTY
, 1891

It's been a little while since he's considered the matter, so the Assistant recounts what he knows. In the decades after the Civil War, farmers were crippled by agricultural debt, and by the 1880s the country was deep in recession. They organized alliances in the South and Midwest to press for economic relief and governmental reform, but the Democrats and Republicans did little to alleviate the situation of the farmers. The grassroots push for an independent third party that would do something
grew rapidly, spurring the formation of state parties that won major electoral victories in 1891, as in Kansas, and within a year the national People's Party was founded. The Assistant wonders how he'd never heard of the Populists before. His entire life spent in the state and it took coming here to Manhattan, Kansas, to the state's agricultural college, to find out about them. How does that happen?

I am the innocent victim of a bloodless revolution—a sort of turnip crusade, as it were.

—
JOHN JAMES INGALLS, REPUBLICAN SENATOR, KANSAS, UPON HIS DEFEAT BY POPULIST WILLIAM PEFFER
, 1891

And I say now to you as my final admonition, not knowing that I shall meet you again, raise less corn and wheat, and more hell.

—
MARY LEASE, KANSAS POPULIST,
ADDRESSING A GATHERING OF FARMERS
, 1891

For nearly five decades the Assistant's grandfather, who considered himself an Eisenhower Republican, was a farmer in
western Kansas. He died when the Assistant was young, but from what he remembers he could never imagine his grandfather raising less wheat and more hell. The Assistant feels drowsy, could use a little break, so he picks up another coffee, exits the library, and calls home to see how his mother is doing. She's in partial remission and there's constant fear and likelihood of recurrence. Throughout the awful summer, he'd driven her to appointments and sat in waiting rooms and worried, while at home he'd read to her from her favorite chapters in the Bible. All the while she grew frailer and frailer but her optimism and fortitude didn't diminish the way the Assistant's had. That was what was tough to face: her equanimity in the face of it all. It was either denial or acceptance, and both were unsettling because they led to the same end.

The Assistant's father answers the phone and tells him that Mom is resting, so the Assistant asks about Grandpa, the farmer. “Dad was a man full of contradictions,” says the Assistant's father. “He hated farming but did it anyway. He lobbied for and relied upon government subsidies that kept his farm afloat, and then voted a straight Republican ticket each election.” The Assistant asks if he's ever heard of the People's Party. “The what?” his father answers. “Is that some new commie outfit on campus?” The Assistant tells him he needs to get back to work.

It's only right that the Conference come at the call of Kansans, for on her plains was shed the first blood in the struggle that freed six million slaves, and on her soil was fought the first battle which is to free sixty-three million industrial slaves.

—
WILLIAM F. RIGHTMIRE'S OPENING REMARKS AT THE CINCINNATI CONFERENCE THAT WAS TO CREATE
THE NATIONAL PEOPLE'S PARTY
, 1891

The Assistant feels a slight preference for the yellow highlighter over the green. He studies a Xerox he's made of the Omaha Platform, the Populists' first unified statement of their policies and beliefs.
Wealth belongs to him who creates it
, he highlights.
The interests of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies identical
. Their platform called for government control of transportation and communication:
The time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads
. They also demanded the direct election of senators, an eight-hour workday, a progressive income tax, and the free coinage of silver to create a more flexible currency that would protect farmers from inflation and debt.
The land, including all natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people and should not be monopolized
.

Just then the Assistant realizes the Historian is looking over his shoulder. “The Omaha Platform,” she says. “My God, isn't it beautiful?” The Assistant opens his mouth and the Historian raises a hand to stop him. He wants to ask what exactly it is he's supposed to be looking for. “Just going to pee,” she whispers, walking away from his table. “Carry on.”

The new movement proposes to take care of the men and women of this country and not the corporations. This movement is a protest against corporate aggression.

—
POPULIST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JAMES BAIRD WEAVER
, 1892

I have no qualms of conscience about commanding the corporations of the country to obey the law, they are the creatures of the law; all that they have the law gives to them; and the people of this country, especially the farmers and the workmen, have been trampled upon by these railway corporations until they are crying out in despair almost.

—
WILLIAM PEFFER, POPULIST SENATOR, KANSAS
, 1893