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A History of Agrarian Activism

Reviewed by Kent Chadwick
The Free Press


Rural Democracy
Family Farmers and Politics in Western Washington, 1890-1925
by Marilyn P. Watkins
Cornell University Press, 1995


In the 1912 presidential election one third of the precincts in south-central Lewis County, Washington gave a plurality of their votes to Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party. Another fifth of the precincts gave pluralities to Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Bull Moose Party. These agricultural communities' support for the socialist and progressive tickets was no aberration. It represented a continuation of two decades of populist activism in which Lewis County farmers allied themselves with urban workers as members of a producers' alliance against what they saw as the moneyed classes. From Washington statehood in 1889 through the adoption of the 19th Amendment for women's suffrage in 1920, Western Washington farmers created an effective network of diverse organizations that helped them achieve many of their social, economic and political goals. "Within their organizations," Seattle historian Marilyn Watkins writes in Rural Democracy: Family Farmers and Politics in Western Washington, 1890-1925, "local people built a culture of participatory democracy that gave them the courage to challenge existing economic and political structures and try to change them in accordance with their values, even in the face of strong local opposition."
Watkins began her research into the rural south-central part of Lewis County (south of Centralia and Chehalis) for her 1991 doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan. Her careful analysis of thirty-five years of agrarian activism in Lewis County reveals the rural underpinnings of the populist and progressive movements.
In the 1870s farmers in the Midwest and South began to organize in reaction to the emerging U.S. industrial economy. The Grange, also known as the Patrons of Husbandry, was initially the most popular national farmers' organization. It combined Masonic-like rituals with economic lobbying, political activism and the inclusion of women as equal members. But Grange membership declined in 1875 as it came under the control of more conservative leaders, and a majority of farmers turned their support to the Farmers' Alliance, which "by combining social activities, economic self-help, community improvement, and political education into a single organization created new vision and energy."
Farmers' Alliance organizers came to Washington in 1888 and had immediate success. The first Lewis County Farmers' Alliance local was formed in June, 1891; by August there were eleven locals, and by January 1893 there were twenty-four. The Alliance's political agenda in Washington state included federal control of the money supply and the railroads, low interest loans for farmers, and increased direct democracy through women's suffrage, the direct election of senators, the secret ballot, and the initiative and referendum processes.

<---- Socialist vote by precinct, 1912 (click for full chart).

One key to the meteoric success of the Farmers' Alliance, and something today's progressive organizations should heed, was their conscious mix of diverse activities and goals. An Alliance picnic would include a talk on political economy; Alliance locals would meet to draft letters of support to urban workers on strike as well as to have social dances.

The national leadership of the Farmers' Alliance joined with other reformers to create the People's Party in 1891. The People's Party 1892 presidential ticket carried 41 percent of the precincts in Watkins' Lewis County study area. In the same year, the Chehalis Farmer's Alliance inaugurated a weekly newspaper called The People's Advocate, which is still publishing today, but as a moderate, independent paper known as the Lewis County Advocate. The People's Advocate served as the editorial voice of both the county's Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party. Across the country Farmers' Alliance locals became partisans of the People's Party, helping the national party directly challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats. In Washington state the People's Party eclipsed the Democrats as the major opposition to the Republicans, and in 1896 its candidate, the populist John R. Rogers, was elected governor.
But nationally, the People's Party had run a joint 1896 campaign with the Democratic Party, both supporting the perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Bryan's loss to the Republican William McKinley precipitated the disintegration of the People's Party. Having tied itself so closely to that party, the Farmers' Alliance also rapidly disappeared in Lewis County and throughout the United States.
Western Washington farmers responded to this political collapse by diversifying their organizations. They formed purchasing, processing and marketing cooperatives, revived the Grange as a strictly non-partisan successor to the Farmers' Alliance, and supported progressive political agendas championed by various third parties and by progressive wings within the Democratic and Republican parties. This proved to be a successful strategy: The diversity of organizations promoting farmers' interests allowed the agrarian movement in Western Washington to effectively adapt to the changing political economy of the early 20th century.
Watkins argues that the racial homogeneity and moderate class divisions in Lewis County were also contributing factors to the longevity and success of its farmers' organizations. Their conscious inclusion of women as equal members fostered a belief in sexual equality and "opened up new possibilities for rural women." Whereas other historians of the populist movement have ignored the role women may have played, Watkins' work points out the need for more research to determine if "the populist spirit may have died more quickly in some parts of the country in part because women were not fully welcomed."
Rural Democracy also shows how the agrarian activism of the 1890s and the 1910s were tied together, a point overlooked in previous histories. Though the national leadership was very different between the two decades, farmers continued to organize for the same goals: that government should represent the interests of all the people, that the powerful trusts should be under government control, that farmers and all other producers should receive a just return on their labor and be able to exercise control over their own affairs, that there should be a shared cultural life in rural America, and that the political system should foster a democratic tolerance.
Although Rural Democracy is a good, academic history based on a comprehensive use of primary sources, it is not an engaging book. It is written more for social scientists than for lay readers. There are too few stories; none of the historical figures come to life. Most unfortunately, Watkins is unable to capture or convey what it might have felt like to have been part of those heady, agitated times down on the farm.

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Contents on this page were published in the July/August, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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