The People's Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism by Gregg Cantrell

Abstract

Reviewed by: The People's Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism by Gregg Cantrell Matthew Hild The People's Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism. By Gregg Cantrell. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. 592. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) The Populist movement of the 1890s played an important role in the history of Texas, and Texas played an important role in the history of that movement. Two previous books, The People's Party in Texas: A Study in Third Party Politics by Roscoe C. Martin (University of Texas Press, 1933), and Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers' Alliance and People's Party in Texas (University of Texas Press, 1984) by Donna A. Barnes, have examined Texas Populism, and broader studies by historians such as Lawrence Goodwyn and Robert C. McMath have paid close attention to Texas. Significantly, McMath argued that the Southern Farmers' Alliance, which farmers formed in Lampasas County, Texas, in or around 1877, served as the "Populist vanguard" that gave birth to the People's (or Populist) Party during 1891–92. In an era that some observers have dubbed the "new" or "second" Gilded Age, the Populists remain relevant. Gregg Cantrell has written about various aspects of Texas Populism as well as the African American Populist leader John B. Rayner of Robertson County in previous journal articles and books, and he brings decades of research to this magisterial new study. In addition to providing a fresh perspective on the topic, this book serves as an almost encyclopedic examination of Texas Populism. Cantrell has utilized resources made available on the Internet as well as those only available in archives and courthouses to compile a massive trove of primary sources. The bibliography lists 123 newspapers, most from Texas but others from across the United States. Goodwyn found much of the impetus for the Populist movement in the rise and fall of the cooperative enterprises that the Farmers' Alliance established as a means of eliminating middlemen from its members' financial transactions. The People's Revolt contains an appendix that lists all the Texas Farmers' Alliance cooperatives that Cantrell "was able to identify with a reasonable degree of confidence" (445). This list is seventeen pages long and provides detailed information about each of some 320 cooperatives. Specific chapter topics include, but are not limited to, the roots of Texas Populism, of which [End Page 354] Cantrell presents a more nuanced interpretation than did Goodwyn; the birth of the Texas People's Party; the state elections of 1892, 1894, and 1896; the Texas Populists' ideological beliefs, policy positions, and efforts at crafting and passing legislation; how the Texas Populists grappled with issues of race, ethnicity, and gender; and how and why the Texas People's Party collapsed as the 1890s drew to a close. Cantrell also puts forth an informative analysis of the differences between "Populism" (upper-case "P") and the "populism" (lower-case "p") that followed. The thesis of The People's Revolt is revealed in the book's subtitle. Cantrell posits that the Populists, in Texas and elsewhere, were "the progenitors of modern liberalism" (12). Recalling some of the important proclamations of liberal icons such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Barack Obama, Cantrell contends that "these leaders were invoking a political ideology first enunciated by Populists, and particularly by those in Texas" (22). Earlier historians of American or southern Populism, such as John D. Hicks and C. Vann Woodward, drew links between Populism and early twentieth-century Progressivism, and as Cantrell shows and other scholars have previously shown, in Texas some Populists of the 1890s later became progressive Democrats. Making a connection between Texas Populists and LBJ and Obama is more tenuous (even though, as Cantrell explains, LBJ's grandfather was a Texas Populist himself). We have no way of knowing what an 1890s Populist would have thought of the Great Society or "Obamacare." Nevertheless, Cantrell makes a compelling argument, and he certainly shows that the Populists were at the forefront of liberal thought on pressing issues of their own era that are still relevant today. The People's Revolt is an important book, then...