Review of Principle over Party: The Farmers' Alliance and Populism in South Dakota, 1880-1900 by R. Alton Lee

Authors

Francis Moul

Date of this Version

Spring 2012

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 32:2 (Spring 2012).

Comments

Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

"During this era, farmers and workers watched as forces of wealth captured control of both major political parties, promoting the formation of monopolies. . . . In the process, the small capitalist class gained control of the great bulk of the nation's wealth. This monetary disparity exacerbated class divisions in the country, and many worried that it would lead to violence and upheaval." That sounds like contemporary headlines about the Occupy Wall Street movement. It isn't. Those words in this book's introduction describe the era from 1865 to 1894, taking in the conditions that spawned one of the most successful, yet failed, third-party political uprisings in America, the Populists.