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Far Western Populism: The Case of Utah, 1893-1900
Far Western Populism:The Case of Utah, 1893-1900
BY DAVID B. GRIFFITHS
For about two decades a debate over the true nature of America's Populist third party movement of the 1890's has raged among historians and social scientists. Some scholars have argued that the Populists were nativistic agrarians, threatened by the new industrial society and obsessed with the idea of free silver as a political panacea. Other scholars have interpreted the Populist movement as a liberal precursor of progressive and New Deal reforms or as a form of demacratic socialism. Evidence used in the debate has been drawn mainly from midwestern and southern Populist sources and has not done justice to the Populist movements in the Far West. This is particularly true of Utah where the Populists had at one time three newspapers, a brass band (in Millville, Cache County), a freethinker Peoples church, and held "parlor pop meetings with recitations, music, and speeches," in Salt Lake City. The following essay offers an account of this reform movement in Utah and presents evidence that Utah Populists were radical liberals committed to ending economic inequality and political injustice and were not agrarian reactionaries.
In the South and Midwest, the backbone of the Populist movement was supplied by farmers protesting against debt, currency deflation, and political corruption. But the theocratic framework of Utah society inhibited the growth of the secular Farmers' Alliances which might have provided an organizational vehicle for this protest. Because the Utah farmer produced mainly for a local market he was less insecure than farmers of other regions who were often in debt to eastern finance firms because of their dependence upon eastern markets. In view of these conditions, it was not surprising that Utah Populist strength was centered in the larger more urban communities with the Salt Lake City and Ogden Populists having the strongest organizations in the territory and state.
In the early 1890's Utah was experiencing deep religious, economic, and political change. The social philosophy of Mormon leaders was changing from a cooperative paternalism to a "rugged individualism" that stressed capitalist enterprise. The few early trade unions had been led by church leaders, but with the transcontinental railroad and the development of mining the growth of independent unions was hastened. These unions however were badly hurt by the panic of 1893. The Populists, organizing a territorial party in the fall of 1893 in Salt Lake City, responded to the economic distress by creating pro-labor pressure groups. Hampered by the competition of the Mormon church, the Populist efforts to further the cause of organized labor and the unemployed, continued throughout the 1890's.
From 1893 to 1895 the Salt Lake City Populists organized a Board of Labor, with a free lending library and free employment office, and worker clubs which pressured the city government for new municipal work projects and better payment procedures. It is necessary, a Utah Populist wrote, for "the workman [to] elect men from his own ranks to govern him." The party issued a statement in September of 1895 on the plight of the worker in which social Darwinism was rejected and a positive concept of government advocated:
In the November election of 1894, the Populist candidate for Congress, H. L. Gaut, finished a weak third, with the bulk of his votes coming from Salt Lake and Ogden. In the winter of 1894-95, the Populists organized clubs on the precinct level in Salt Lake and in the spring issued a call for assistance in "rescuing the country from the power of the money and other monopolies that control both of the old parties." James Hogan of Ogden, a national organizer of the American Railway Union and friend of Eugene Debs, was the lead speaker at the Salt Lake County Populist convention in September 1895 and later received their nomination for Congress. Henry W. Lawrence, their nominee for governor, spoke out strongly for the eight-hour day reasoning that the "invention of machinery and the modern appliances" should lessen manual labor and create leisure "for the improvement of the mental faculties of men and women."
Throughout 1895 and 1896 the money question held an important place in party ideology and campaign strategy. In Utah, which produced approximately thirteen per cent of the nation's total silver, the advocacy of free silver cut across party lines. But the Utah Populists insisted that the Populist party was the only national party unequivocally committed to free silver, and as fiat money advocates they criticized the old parties for being silent on "the issuing of legal tender paper by the Government to relieve the people's necessities. . . ." They also argued that the old party men were inconsistent in advocating free silver in their state platforms when they knew it would "not be granted by their national parties, the enemies of silver money."
Handicapped by lack of funds, the Populists still ran a spirited campaign in the territorial election of 1895. Warren Foster, editor of the Inter-Mountain Advocate, insisted that "only the political office-seeker and professional political bum" refused to recognize the justness of the Populists' cause. The party received at least a token vote in twenty-four of Utah's twenty-seven counties and
the late 1860's he was excommunicated from the church (with W. S. Godbe and E. Harrison, proprietors of the Utah Magazine, predecessor of the Salt Lake Tribune) for his role in the Godbeite movement that challenged the political power of Brigham Young. In 1870 Lawrence helped form the Liberal party and was their first candidate for mayor of Salt Lake City. He was elected to the territorial legislature in the early 1880's and in the early 1890's was the receiver of church property escheated under the Edmunds-Tucker Act. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of Utah, 1540-1886 (San Francisco, 1889), 649-52; Dimter, "Populism in Utah," 39-40. 9 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Census of the United States: 1890. Report on elected a mayor of Sandy, Utah, but Lawrence and Hogan ran far behind their rivals.
In Utah, as throughout the Far West, the question of free silver and fusion of party tickets continued as the major issue and challenge in the presidential campaign of 1896. Norman B. Dresser, a veteran Utah Populist and single-tax advocate, urged a "union of all the reform forces" around the silver issue and to attain that end was ready
This strategy, pushed by several national Populist leaders, was viewed with apprehension by Warren Foster who warned of the danger of trimming the Populist platform down to a free silver plank and insisted on the need for nominating a "thorough populist. ... A single plank, free silver man MUST NOT be nominated — that would not bring the Populist party into power." Foster was not opposed to unity with free silver men if the Populists defined the terms of the relationship. But Foster, like other middle-of-the-road far western Populists, argued that it was the whole money question and not free silver alone that must be focused upon.
The discussion of free silver and fusion continued throughout the spring of 1896. The Populists in their state convention in Ogden in June called attention to other reforms that they considered basic. On the land question they urged the protection of "each family in the possession of a home to the value of $1,500, free from execution and taxation." They also recommended adoption of Jacob Coxey's non-interest bearing bonds and good roads measures. Their statement that labor, the creator of wealth, had become degraded under modern capitalism resembled the classic critique of Karl Marx. They stated that:
On the fundamental Populist demand for direct government by the people — participatory democracy — they urged that the President and U.S. senators be elected by "popular vote" and advocated the initiative, referendum, recall, and "proportionate representation."
On the church-state issue, of crucial significance in Utah politics, the Populist position was that:
The discussion of fusion among Utah Populists took a new turn in early July after the Democrats nominated the free silverite, William Jennings Bryan. Warren Foster expressed the new attitude in his statement that "with the adoption of the Chicago [Democratic] platform and the nomination of Mr. Bryan we believe that the proper thing to do is to vote for Mr. Bryan."
When the Populists at their national convention endorsed Bryan for president, R. A. Hasbrouck, state chairman, and other Utah party leaders resigned in protest. Warren Foster, however, expressed the majority sentiment in stating that the Populist convention "did the best thing it could under the circumstances" and fusion arrangements were worked out with the Populists taking one presidential elector (H. W. Lawrence), four elective offices, and one appointive office.
The peak of Populist strength in Utah was reached in the presidential election of 1896 with the massive victory won by Bryan and the fusion ticket. Warren Foster was defeated in his bid for Congress, but a Populist county attorney and county surveyor were elected in Uintah County and four Populists were elected to the state legislature.
With the opening of the state legislature the politics of the churchstate issue erupted. The Populist legislators were pledged to a Populist senatorial candidate but their second choice was Moses Thatcher, an apostle deposed by the Mormon church because of his assertion of the right of political independence. The Populists switched to Thatcher on the eighth ballot, with Dresser declaring, "I cast my vote for that apostle of civil and religious liberty [Thatcher]." In the Inter-Mountain Advocate Foster argued that the chief opposition to Thatcher was "confined to a few, but a most potent few, heads of the church" and urged his election to "silence the threatening storms" between the church and state in Utah. Thatcher's defeat, he continued, would mean that the "church is in the saddle" with its leaders still holding sway over its members.
Thatcher, however, was defeated along with the majority of the bills the Populists introduced in the legislature. In the Senate, B. A. Harbour's bill to give tax exempt status to the property of householders up to a $1,500 assessment, a bill for a miners' hospital, and a bill calling for the initiative and referendum were all defeated. Harbour was successful, however, in a measure creating a mechanics' lien law and one providing for a state board of public works that would hire day labor.
In the lower chamber Populist bills were either defeated or weakened by amendments. House Bill Number 119 enabling city residents to vote on the granting of franchises by municipal governments was defeated as well as an employee safety measure, an act making taxes payable biannually, and bills to protect workers from steam boiler explosions and elevator accidents. A bill providing for direct legislation in municipal government was passed but without its enabling clause.
The Populists also worked for legislation eliminating the poll tax, providing for an income tax, and outlawing capital punishment. Far western Populists differed on capital punishment but Warren Foster, Norman Dresser, and other Utah Populists were strongly opposed to a practice Foster characterized as inhuman, unnecessary, and degrading.
As the above account demonstrates, the Utah Populist legislators were primarily concerned with labor and political reform issues, not with farmer or agricultural needs. This fact reflects the predominantly urban composition of Utah Populism and the conviction among Populists that Utah agriculture was basically healthy.
In the fall of 1897, Utah's Populists were actively organizing for municipal elections in Salt Lake and other cities. On October 16 Salt Lake City Populists nominated H. W. Lawrence as mayor and head of their ticket and adopted a platform that revealed the single-tax ideas of Foster, Dresser, and others in its proposal to increase the taxation of vacant property held for speculative purposes. The Populists also took libertarian and humanitarian positions on questions of due process and civil liberties, in denouncing use of police courts over trial by jury, and in condemning the "barbarous and inhuman" treatment of unemployed vagrants by the police and courts.
This attitude was forceably expressed in Foster's newspaper; on other social issues Foster's ideas, not mirrored in party platforms, revealed a humanist equalitarianism. He opposed a double standard for sexual morality, thought a punitive approach to prostitution was hypocritical, argued that "prison should be a reformatory rather than a place of punishment" and that prisoners should be given productive work at fair wages, and opposed the anti-Chinese sentiment that was widespread in Populist and labor circles in the Far West.
In his concept of religion and society, Foster was a skeptical rationalist who thought the Christian church was the enemy of progress and a source of superstitution and bigotry. He and other Salt Lake City Populists organized a freethinker Peoples church that was to further "rational religion, ethical culture and social progress." He criticized the Mormons for interference in politics but thought that the Mormon people were more kind and liberal than the "swarthy, dyspeptic bigots" of the Protestant churches. He praised the "practical sense" of Brigham Young's teachings that had made the Utahpeople the most prosperous and happy in the nation.
When the municipal election returns came in, the Salt Lake Populists were disappointed with the poor showing of Lawrence who polled only about a thousand votes out of a total of over twelve thousand. But in the Ogden mayoralty contest, J. A. Boyle, the fusionist candidate, defeated his Republican rival by some eighteen votes, and the fusionists won nearly all the other seats in Ogden if only by close margins. In Vernal, Uintah County, a Populist candidate for city commissioner was elected, but generally the Populists who ran without the formal support of the Democrats were defeated and thus the controversy over fusion emerged again.
Henry W. Lawrence, along with Foster the leading party ideologue, dominated the September 1898 state convention at Salt Lake City. In an address, which was endorsed by the party, Lawrence attacked the old parties for allowing the wealth of the nation to become concentrated in the hands of "less than five percent of the people." Lawrence declared "labor and the necessities of life are controlled by monopolies; money and property — the product of man — is made to degrade and enslave humanity." Lawrence argued that fiat money was a required remedy for this situation. All money is a creation of law and "the only redemption that money needs, is in the payment of debts, taxes and the products of labor." Other necessary reforms were the initiative and referendum and a guarantee that the homes of people would be exempt from taxation and foreclosure.
Throughout 1898 the party was rent by controversy over the fusion problem. Leading Ogden Populists favored fusion with free silver Republicans and accused Foster of being inconsistent in opposing fusion in 1898 when he had favored it in 1896. Foster replied that unless the Populists put up a straight ticket for at least one of the state offices they would disappear as a distinct organization. "We populists," Foster wrote, "aim to learn a little as we get older," and one thing that we have learned is that W. J. Bryan is the "very cheapest kind of a cheap politician." If it had been "fornication to fuse with the democrats," Foster continued, it would be "harlotry to fuse with the Silver Republicans."
Foster and the anti-fusionists gained their own way and fusion on the state offices was not worked out. The Populists ran on a platform emphasizing direct legislation and municipal ownership. They downgraded the free silver issue and stressed direct legislation and the single tax. The platform demanded a "state textbook school law" to supply free books to students and expressed concern over the political role of the church in Utah politics. The Utah Populists demanded that "personal liberty and the freedom and exercise of individual judgment in all political matters" be upheld. Some far western Populists, who were worried about the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church, had become involved in the anti-Catholic American Protective Association. Foster and the Utah Populists also opposed any type of church influence in politics whether Catholic, Protestant, or Morman, but Foster denounced the A.P.A. as an un-American institution "whose foundation stone is religious bigotry."
But the question of religious bigotry became an important issue in the 1898 campaign for U.S. Congress. Warren Foster, while declaring that he was not anti-Mormon, launched a spirited attack upon B. H. Roberts, his Democratic rival for the U.S. Congress, for living in polygamy and therefore breaking the law. Foster's attacks upon Roberts led to tension within the Populist ranks when Thomas Jessop, chairman of the Populist party in Cache County and a polygamist and close friend of Foster, wrote to the Salt Lake Herald that he would vote for Roberts in protest against the self-righteousness of the Populist candidate. But other Populists insisted that Foster had to be supported because he was the only candidate "who objects to church domination."
Foster won about five hundred more votes than he had in 1896 but was again defeated. Throughout the state the Populist vote declined, and only one candidate, S. S. Smith of Weber County, was elected to the state legislature. Nationally in 1898, the Populists were hopelessly split and losing all political power. Lawrence and a few party faithfuls struggled to keep their organization intact through the election of 1900, but the rapid decline of Populism in Utah was evident. Foster, calling the 1898 election a farce, left the party writing that "the show is over . . . The next attraction will be Socialism. . . . We welcome Socialism as the fruition of our hopes." Populism, he said, "was born; it fused; it died; but its soul has gone to the better land of Socialism." Other Populists thought that the Democratic party was the "better land" but the curtain had now come down on the colorful Populist crusade in Utah.
The Utah Populists called attention to needed reforms in the areas of labor legislation, municipal government, and the political process. They were consistent advocates of extended economic and political democracy. They recognized that the basic problem of the era, not solved sixty years later, was to find
The pervasive theme in Utah Populist thought was the paradox of poverty in the midst of material abundance. They saw homeless people surrounded by vacant land and hills full of coal while people in the cities were cold. The remedy they proposed was simple: in theory the government belonged to the people, the people must then take it into their hands and run it for their own benefit.
Don't suppose for a moment that the platform of the reconstructed democracy, all of which is Populistic, would permanently save the country. It will help no doubt; but nothing short of the restoration of the earth to the people will ever remove the causes that afflict us. Man is born with a natural right to an opportunity to make for himself a living. It has been taken away from him. Free silver, abolition of national banks, greenbacks, or income tax cannot give this right back to him. Give us these, however, until we get the rest. {InterMountain Advocate [Salt Lake City], July 17, 1896.)
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