The Populist Party: Chapter Analysis

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This chapter concentrates on the limitations of freedom, including that of farmers, immigrants, blacks, women, and colonial subjects. The chapter opens with the Homestead Strike, which demonstrated that neither a powerful union nor public opinion could influence the conduct of the largest corporations. Farmers also illustrated that not everyone benefited from the prosperity of the industrial revolution. The chapter examines how the farmers mobilized into a political force culminating in the 1892 organization of the Populist Party. Attempting to build a broad base, the Populists courted labor, women, and black farmers. Their party dissolved after the defeat of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The chapter then explores the "New South." Blacks

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