Getting Partisan

This chapter traces the rise and fall of electoral Populism in southern Dakota. It begins by examining the transformation of the political field in Dakota Territory, where politics was traditionally organized around the fight for patronage. Excluded from power by the dominant faction of the Republican Party, the leaders of the Farmers’ Alliance turned to third-party politics as a means of waging war on their more elite rivals. I show that support for Populist candidates was closely with Alliance strength, though this relationship weakened over time as the People’s Party took on a life of its own. Major victories were hard to come by in the absence of electoral fusion. The free silver question served as a rallying point for pro-fusion forces, which succeeded in taking power. Unable to manage the distribution of patronage, the fusionist coalition quickly collapsed, taking what was left of the Populist movement with it.

Getting Thwarted

This chapter examines the failure of economic regulation in southern Dakota during the late 19th century. It begins by situating the creation of the Dakota Territory Board of Railroad Commissioners within the broader wave of organizational innovation that followed in the wake of the Granger movement. Created in a moment of legal flux when the power to regulate interstate trade was being pushed to the federal level, the Board was limited in what it could do. Further hampered by a legal environment in which private property was consistently favored over public interest, the Board was left to extract voluntary concessions from railroad officials who knew they held the upper hand. Drawing on annual reports provided by Dakota Territory Board of Railroad Commissioners and its South Dakota successor, this chapter describes the process of regulatory failure, focusing in particular on the fights surrounding rate setting and market access.

Introduction

The introduction outlines the book’s central argument, while providing an overview of the historical case. It begins by developing the idea that, like other populist projects, the American Populist movement was defined by the coupling of popular mobilization and populist rhetoric. Drawing on the language of field theory, this chapter develops an elite-centered account of electoral Populism. It argues that the task of explaining where electoral Populism comes from amounts to explaining how a particular configuration of the political field came to be. In the case of the American West, field formation was part and parcel of the settlement process. The rise of electoral Populism was an outgrowth of the transformation of physical space resulting from the simultaneous expansion of both state and market, which together served as the organizing force behind western settlement during the late 19th century.

Getting Organized

This chapter examines the emergence of Populist organizing in southern Dakota Territory, focusing in particular on the origins of the Farmers’ Alliance. It begins by discussing the organizational ecology surrounding the Dakota Alliance movement. Held together by a shifting cadre of movement entrepreneurs, the Populist movement in the Dakota Territory included not only local Alliance organizations, but the newspapers with which they partnered, and the cooperative business ventures that they spawned. The remainder of the chapter examines local Alliance activity in the East River region of southern Dakota. It provides an in-depth look at life in a local Alliance, as well as a statistical analysis of the correlates of Alliance activity, including market building. Following the contours of the railroad network, the Alliance thrived in middling townships that were no longer part of the frontier, but had yet to emerge as central locales.

Making Markets

This chapter examines the process of market-building on the western frontier, focusing in particular on the process through which the expansion of the railroad network in the late 19th century linked towns to the grain buyers who owned and operated the elevators used to load grain on to railcars. It begins by describing western market-building as part of a larger transcontinental project designed to link the agrarian periphery to existing urban centers, leading to the creation of a vast market network. Rail lines played a unique role in this context, serving as a venue for the creation of distinct market communities defined by the relationship between towns and elevator owners. Using formal network analysis, it is shown that market communities differed in terms of not only in terms of their size and geographic structure, but in the centrality of the elevator owners with which the lines partnered.

Divide and Conquer

This chapter examines the process of field formation on the western frontier, focusing in particular on the process through which the physical environment was transformed into territories and states, which served as arenas for political competition. It begins by situating the case of South Dakota within the context of western settlement more generally, documenting the steps through which the land that would eventually become South Dakota came to be organized by the federal government, starting with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The remainder of the chapter traces the process through public land was continually divided into states and territories, eventually leading to the creation of South Dakota in 1889. Boundary disputes played a critical role in shaping patterns of political contention as rival factions of elites fought to secure control over the location of scarce spatial resources such as the capital.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers the legacy and lessons of the Populist moment, with an eye toward contemporary movements on both the left and right. While the Populist movement collapsed in 1896, the experience had a clear impact on economic and political institutions in the United States. In particular, the potential for third-party mobilization has been limited by the introduction anti-fusion laws designed to combat the People’s Party, restricting the organizational vehicles available to would-be reformers. Examining the rise of Populist mobilization provides important theoretical insights into the nature of populism today. By way of comparison, this chapter revisits the argument that populism is a form of political practice bound up with the configuration of competing elites within the political field. To the extent that political identities are anchored in the physical environment, the resulting patterns of contention tend to persist over long periods of time.