Neither party survived the result of this election.
In December, 1889, committees representing the Knights of Labor
and the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis to come to some
agreement on political policies. Owing to the single tax
predilection of the Knights, the two organizations were unable to
enter into a close union, but they nevertheless did agree that
"the legislative committees of both organizations [would] act in
concert before Congress for the purpose of securing the enactment
of laws in harmony with their demands." This cooperation was a
forerunner of the People's party or, as it was commonly called,
the Populist party, the largest third party that had taken the
field since the Civil War. Throughout the West and the South
political conditions now were feverish. Old party majorities were
overturned, and a new type of Congressman invaded Washington.
When the first national convention of the People's party met in
Omaha on July 2, 1892, the outlook was bright. General Weaver was
nominated for President and James G. Field of Virginia for
Vice-President. The platform rehabilitated Greenbackism in cogent
phrases, demanded government control of railroads and telegraph
and telephone systems, the reclamation of land held by
corporations, an income tax, the free coinage of silver and gold
"at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one," and postal
savings banks. In a series of resolutions which were not a part
of the platform but were nevertheless "expressive of the
sentiment of this convention," the party declared itself in
sympathy "with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the
hours of labor"; it condemned "the fallacy of protecting American
labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the
pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our
wage-earners"; and it opposed the Pinkerton system of
capitalistic espionage as "a menace to our liberties.
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