People's Party Officially Forms in Texas, Launching Populist Movement

The People’s Party formally organizes in Dallas on August 18, 1891, following years of escalating frustration among Farmers’ Alliance members who conclude that traditional parties are too attached to corporate interests and political office perks to be effective agents of reform. The Texas formation follows industrial conferences held in Cincinnati, Ohio (May 1891) and precedes the national convention in St. Louis (February 1892), marking a pivotal moment when agrarian and labor movements abandon efforts to work within the two-party system and launch an independent political organization. The party emerges from an unlikely alliance of rural farmers and urban industrial laborers united by opposition to railroad monopolies, banking interests, and the gold standard—representing the most significant challenge to corporate capture of American democracy since the Civil War.

Movement toward establishing a third party in Texas begins in the late 1880s as the Farmers’ Alliance—an agrarian movement promoting economic action during the Gilded Age—grows increasingly frustrated with both major parties’ subservience to corporate power. The Alliance, along with the earlier Greenback Party that advocated fiat money and labor groups like the Knights of Labor, provides organizational infrastructure for the new party. By the early 1890s, Alliance members become convinced that Democrats and Republicans are too beholden to railroad corporations, banking interests, and manufacturing trusts to address farmers’ economic distress. The 1890 elections see Farmers’ Alliance-backed candidates win dozens of races for the U.S. House of Representatives and gain majorities in several state legislatures, demonstrating significant popular support for anti-corporate politics.

The People’s Party in Kansas officially forms in 1891, comprised of mostly unhappy farmers who own small to middle-sized farms and face crushing debt burdens, declining commodity prices, and exploitation by railroad shipping monopolies and grain elevator trusts. The national People’s Party convention in July 1892 in Omaha, Nebraska produces the Omaha Platform—celebrated by Populists as “The Second Declaration of Independence”—which proposes implementation of the Sub-Treasury system and other longtime Farmer’s Alliance goals. The platform calls for a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, restrictions on immigration, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines. These demands represent a fundamental challenge to the Gilded Age economic order, attacking both the concentration of wealth and the corporate control of essential infrastructure.

In the 1892 presidential election, the People’s Party nominates James B. Weaver, who finishes a distant third but captures 8 percent of the vote and wins five states in the Electoral College, solidifying the party as a legitimate third force. Beginning with non-presidential elections, the Populist Party achieves modest success, particularly in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, where they succeed in electing several state legislators, one governor, and a handful of congressmen. The party’s rapid growth demonstrates widespread recognition that the two-party system has been captured by corporate interests, but also reveals the structural difficulties of building a viable third party in America’s winner-take-all electoral system. The People’s Party formation represents the high-water mark of 19th century resistance to corporate plutocracy, creating a political vehicle for farmers and workers to challenge concentrated capital directly—an insurgency that both major parties will work systematically to destroy, co-opt, or render irrelevant over the coming decade.