Forgotten Populists: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy

Steve Babson’s engagingly written and splendidly illustrated history of the late 19th century Populist movement recalls for us their remarkable commitment to democracy and racial justice, and their hostility to corporate power. This movement of farmers—and workers!—came to define and advance much that constituted 20th century liberalism. Babson thereby rescues the populist idea from the racist and authoritarian connotations with which it has been saddled in recent decades.
—Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California / Santa Barbara

“Forgotten Populists couldn’t be appearing at a more timely—actually urgent—moment. It’s a superb short book that looks at the Populist challenge to corporate greed and monied interests in the politics of 1890s America. The term ‘populist’ has been distorted and misused for decades and Babson shows why. He writes clearly, sharply, and passionately, and the book is especially timely for understanding the present and the future.”
—Harley Shaiken, Professor Emeritus, University of California / Berkeley

“Pundits may say that the misguided populism of America’s rural poor explains the rise of Trump and his hijacking of our democracy, but Steve Babson’s deeply engaging and powerful rescuing of the movement’s real history makes it clear that Populism was a radical challenge to oligarchy and corporate greed. It was a movement that must be remembered— along with the possibility of its reawakening.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy


The Populists of the 1890s transformed the nation’s political terrain, and this book tells the story of the hard-pressed farmers who launched that movement. Their call for a widening democracy to counter corporate monopoly and profiteering tapped into a growing resentment of the rich, a resentment that grew as the economy alternated between rapid growth, producing more millionaires, and severe economic depressions, producing more poverty. The Populist challenge to unbridled capitalism would finally force Republicans and especially Democrats to recognize the growing support for progressive change within their own ranks. These historical Populists are now forgotten as today’s pundits would have us believe that “populists” of the left — no less so than the right — are uniquely drawn to authoritarian politics. Often enough, the term serves as a sly pejorative, hinting at the unreliable behavior and hidden agendas of anyone who challenges established authority.
You won’t find that in this book. The historical Populists are presented here as champions of democracy and forward-looking reforms. Recovering the historical meaning of their challenge to corporate absolutism is a first step in linking that past to current struggles against the corporate behemoths of our time.

Steve Babson is a retired labor educator and union activist living in Detroit with his wife, Nancy Brigham. He received his doctorate in U.S. History in 1989 from Wayne State University, where he worked from 1983 to 2006 as an instructor and extension program coordinator in the Labor Studies Center. During most of these years, Steve was an officer of Local 6075, AAUP/AFT, representing faculty and academic staff at Wayne State. He has published six books, including Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town; Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry; and The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights in Detroit.