The populist "moment", as Lawrence Goodwyn describes it, was a point at which farmers in the southern US banded together to take control of their destinies. Goodwyn attributes the populist movement to several factors. First, the return to the gold standard meant a shrinking money supply. This was exacerbated by a credit system that was stacked against the farmer in favor of the supply merchant, who would take a lien against future harvest. The result was that it was very difficult for farmers to break even.

The first response was forming Alliance cooperatives, but the hostility of suppliers and bankers meant that credit was nearly impossible to obtain. This made the alliance turn from economics to politics as the only way to protect the interests of its members. Several lists of demands were made across the country for financial reform culminating in the formation of the Populist Party, which nominated William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896, As Bryan was already the Democratic candidate, this effectively submerged the populist movement under party priorities. ( )

In spite of what you may think, the nation’s most successful movement against the forces that came to dominate post-Civil War America arose not from the cities or radical intellectuals but from southern and southwestern farmers. In the last quarter of the 19th century, farmers were painfully aware of how the rules of the Gilded Age economy were rigged for the benefit of Eastern banks and local merchants.

In ‘The Populist Moment,’ Lawrence Goodwyn details how a tight money supply demanded by Wall Street and creditors devalued the price of crops and land and bought the nation’s farming class to its knees. America’s farmers responded to the forces arrayed against them by promoting buying and marketing cooperatives, launching lecturers to spearhead their movement, and (when their organizing proved insufficient) by building their own political party. Goodwyn strength as a writer lies on how he depicts people usually consigned to the dustbin of history as individuals with goals, aspirations, a strategy and a vision the nation’s rulers found too subversive. Although we may seem light years removed from the world of a Texan or Kansan farmer of the late 19th century their predicament still holds important lessons for us. Goodwyn describes how exceedingly difficult it is for a social movement to push for economic reforms and the pitfalls laid before anyone who wishes to form an independent political party. ( )