I Was a Revolutionary (16 page)

A movement against unchecked corporate power in the 1890s? Fittingly, the Assistant ponders that as he waits in line for another coffee at Starbucks. As a twenty-seven-year-old man in 2010, he sometimes feels like they, corporations, are some modern phenomenon unique to his personal life chronology, like MTV or the Internet.

While the Populists lost the national election of 1892, they did garner eight percent of the national vote and won four states outright, the Assistant learns, making their showing kinda phenomenal considering the party was less than a year old. And here in the Kansas state elections the Populists made even bigger gains, electing their entire state ticket.

It is the mission of Kansas to protect and advance the moral and material interests of all its citizens. . . . The grandeur of civilization shall be emphasized by the dawn of a new era, in which the people shall reign; and, if found necessary, they will “expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the times.”

—
KANSAS GOVERNOR LORENZO D. LEWELLING, INAUGURAL ADDRESS
, 1893

We have come today to remove the seat of government of Kansas from the Santa Fe [Railroad] offices, back to the Statehouse where it belongs.

—“
SOCKLESS JERRY
”
SIMPSON, POPULIST CONGRESSMAN FROM KANSAS'S SEVENTH DISTRICT
, 1892

Late in the afternoon, the Assistant comes across the story of an incident he'd never heard of before called “The Legislative War,” one so unbelievable he literally writes
WTF?
in the margins of the book where he found it. According to this account, it was perhaps the only attempt ever made in this country at “social revolution in the classic sense: violent seizure of the apparatus of government accompanied by class warfare in the streets.” The conflict was between the Republicans and Populists over contested election returns that would decide the balance of power in the Kansas statehouse in 1893. Neither side gave ground, and for more than a month the legislature was
a divided body, with Republicans using the chamber in the morning and the Populists in the afternoon. Little was accomplished and frustration grew as threats issued from both sides, until finally the schism led to armed conflict. The Populists locked the Republicans out, and the Republican speaker of the House used a sledgehammer to break down the doors and gain entrance to the chamber. Fistfights broke out on the House floor, while outside members of both parties armed themselves. Populist governor Lorenzo Lewelling sent in the militia to restore order, declaring: “We are here by the will of the people and will disperse only at the point of the bayonet.” The hostilities went on for days.

What is an almost-revolution like?
the Assistant wonders now, looking away from the machine where he examines old newspapers on microfiche. A fleeting vision: he is marching with the disquieted masses, storming the capital in expropriated SWAT gear. There is urgency and anger. Fists are raised. A grappling hook might be involved.

“ANARCHY!”

“ANARCHISTIC!”

“THE JACOBINS!”

“Is the Kansas Trouble the Incipiency
of a National Anarchist Uprising?”

—February headlines from
The Kansas City Mail,
The Wichita Daily Eagle, The Marion Times
,
and
The Kansas City Gazette
, 1893

It appears to be the determination of the opposing factions in the Kansas House to superadd to the stupidity of a senseless deadlock the crime of an open revolution.

—
KANSAS CITY STAR
, 1893

 

When things calmed down, however, the upstart Populists were blamed for the affair. This was the beginning of the end for the party, the Assistant learns. Though they would win state elections in Kansas in 1896, it was the national election of that same year that would prove fatal.

While the party's numbers had increased sharply in a few short years, Populist strength was largely concentrated in regional pockets of the South, Midwest, and West. Without additional support, which meant merging with one of the major parties, it would be impossible for them to have a chance of winning a national election. And so it was that the issue of silver, a minor plank of the Omaha Platform, became the central issue in the debate over fusion. The People's Party advocated bimetallism, the use of gold and silver as currency, to increase the money supply and alleviate the debt farmers and the poor had taken on throughout a decade of economic depression. The pro-gold financial elite in the Northeast, who were also the creditors for most of the country's debt and benefited from staying on the gold standard, supported the Republicans. The Democrats, backed by silver mine owners in the western states, decided to make the free coinage of silver a central issue in the presidential election in an effort to win Populist support. Their young charismatic presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, electrified many with his fiery rhetoric.

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
, 1896

Is the Populist party ready to be dumped into the lap of [the Democrats]? Are the men who have been fighting the battle of humanity in this country for twenty years willing to acknowledge all they wanted was a change in basic money? Are we ready to sacrifice all the demands of the Omaha Platform on the cross of silver?

—
ABE STEINBERGER, KANSAS POPULIST
, 1896

If Populism means nothing more than free coinage of silver, there is no excuse for the existence of such a party.

—
WILLIAM PEFFER
,
POPULIST SENATOR
,
KANSAS
, 1896

The party that was going to pay off all the debts of the people by legislation, that was going to even up the inequalities of life that come from inequalities of the brain, the party that was going to stop the smart man from getting the best of the stupid chump, the party that was going to do what God himself couldn't do—make men equal. . . . And
all that is left of this great nightmare is a roomful of sad visages, seedy citizens and a terrible past.

—
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
,
REPUBLICAN NEWSPAPERMAN FROM EMPORIA
,
KANSAS
, 1895

After Bryan lost to William McKinley in 1896, the People's Party ceased to be relevant at the national level. The Kansas Populists were voted out of office in 1898, and by 1900 most had either given up on politics or become Socialists. In the ensuing decade much of the Populist platform was either enacted or on the way, championed by the very Republicans, rebranding themselves as Progressives, who'd opposed them initially.

We caught the Populists in swimming and stole all their clothing except the frayed underdrawers of free silver.

—
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
,
REPUBLICAN TURNED BULL MOOSER
, 1940

I met some of my old Republican opponents today and they said to me: “Oh, Jerry, you ought to be in Kansas now. Kansas is all Populist now.” Yes, I said to them, you are the conservative businessmen of the state, and doubtless all wisdom is lodged with you, but you are just learning now what the farmers of the state knew fourteen years ago.

—“
SOCKLESS JERRY
”
SIMPSON, FORMER POPULIST CONGRESSMAN
,
KANSAS
, 1905

The Assistant keeps at it all afternoon and into the evening, occasionally catching sight of the Historian walking somewhere with extreme purpose or scribbling furiously on a legal
pad. He's been so wrapped up that he's forgotten to eat lunch, and with the dinner hours nearing he's tired and ravenous. When a voice comes over the PA to tell them the library will be closing in fifteen minutes, the Historian appears.

“What the hell kind of university library closes at six?” she says. “In my day they were open all night—you could bunk up with a transient if you wished.”

“Sounds great.”

“It was! I got so much work done.”

He follows her to the conference room down the hall where she packs up her absurd luggage, and they walk toward the elevator. On the ride down, his stomach makes increasingly loud thundery sounds, which both agree tacitly not to acknowledge.

“How did it go today?” she says as they exit the library.

“Good, I guess, but I don't really know what I'm looking for.”

“You're doing the right thing. I just want a lot of source material to consider once I figure out my argument. It's bound to click soon. Usually it comes out of nowhere. Who knows, maybe it'll hit me on the walk home.”

She turns to leave, saying she'll see him tomorrow. She lives close to campus, the Assistant thinks as the Historian and her bag roll away. He wonders what her house is like and for a brief moment considers following her before deciding that's an absolutely terrible idea. He returns to his apartment to supper on Hot Pockets and Sunny D, the dinner of folks everywhere who don't even compete in the race, but it's been a long day and, well, so what if he likes his Hot Pockets. He plops onto his futon, which is employed permanently in its couch function because it's broken, and turns on the TV, which gets a single, fuzzy channel. Through the garish swirl of bad reception he can just make out a detective show of some sort, which he watches semi-awake, followed by another detective show of some sort—a spin-off of the first perhaps—before the late local news comes on. During his
time in graduate school he's become a lazy citizen, neglectful of affairs local and otherwise. He has a general sense of things, overhearing bits of conversation at school, ignorantly
uh-huh
ing as one of his parents references some incident or other. But mostly, as they say, he's fallen out of the loop. Sometimes on the phone his mother will ask, “Do you live in a cave or something?” and he'll look around his three-hundred-square-foot apartment at the stacks of books and mounds of dirty clothes and consider answering in the affirmative.