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Although the eras, to be sure, were decidedly different, history was delivered in exactly the same way. The west is an idea that has always fascinated the American people. Buffalo Bill was the first to understand the salability of this concept with his endearing, albeit distorted road show of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Wild West Show was an attempt by Buffalo Bill, or William Frederick Cody, to capitalize on his reputation as someone that conquered the “savages” and freed the West for American expansion and the continuation of its supposed manifest destiny. The themes of his show were simple, straightforward, and easy for Americans of the era to remember: The west was won with necessary violence; that the tool of the frontier hero was the rifle; that Americans were the victims who ultimately prevailed in a violent struggle; that the moral truth of the frontier, indeed America, was that violence was good for the U.S. and necessary to tame a savage frontier. In general, the history explored in the Wild West Shows was romantic, glamorous, and whitewashed. This message resonated with a population largely isolated from frontier life. As a group, America was becoming increasingly urban and connected by rail, telegraph, and canals—but, ironically, confused over the west and what it all meant. Whether it was the story of the Pony Express, the recreation of the Deadwood stagecoach, the spectacles such as Custer’s Last Fight, or battle scenes like the Battle of Summit Springs, an eager nation was engrossed with The Wild West Show from 1883 until it ended in 1916. In one year alone, 1899, the show covered 11,000 miles in two hundred days, giving 341 performances in 132 cities. The show was enormously successful and profoundly powerful as a shaping force in the way America saw the west. The problem, of course, is that the show did more than entertain—it also became a sort of travelling museum and the definitive word on a vital period of America’s past. What lessons, exactly, did the show teach and whose values did the Buffalo Bill show endorse? The program of the show, a website notes, “presented itself as a source of knowledge, authority, and authenticity about the west.” (http://xroads.virginia.edu) This mixing of fantasy with reality, of myth and history, belied the official sounding nature of the show and its program, not to mention the visual nature of the presentation, which must have seemed real. The blending of fact and fiction, not surprisingly, carried over to Cody himself, as many became confused with him and the character of Buffalo Bill. More important to history, though, the stereotype of the American Indian was reinforced, night after night, as Buffalo Bill and his cast of nearly 500 actors played out scene after scene where the Indian was nothing more than a mounted warrior destined to lose to the American individual, taming the frontier, as it were, in a justifiable conquest. While some historians have pointed out that the Indian cast members were paid good wages and generally treated well, the stereotype has prevailed of the savage Indian and the American individual. This, to put it mildly, has been damaging to the historical consciousness of America. These myths have continued to be played out, once again nightly, on television and in the movies. The myth of frontier values and “raw independence” has continued to this day. Buffalo Bill, sadly, was as influential as any other in defining the American frontier experience. If the commercialization of American history can be traced to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, it can also be said that it was perfected by Walt Disney and his 1955 masterpiece called Disneyland. Once again blending fact and fiction and relying on simple, thematic presentations that were easily digestible to a similarly eager crowd, Disneyland was the continuation of the history of the west started by Cody in 1883. The history taught by Disney was multifaceted and is easy to misinterpret. It seems, to me at least, that Disney as history, at least in the 50’s and 60’s before they were forced to accept the changing face of America in general, and L.A. in particular, was really a Turner-esque creation of a new society after the frontier had been conquered. Disney offered a society that was clean and safe and free of the racial, social, and economic strife that so dominated the eastern cities like New York, or the cities of the Old World, like London or Rome, where many Americans had their roots. Just as Turner saw the frontier as the slow process of rebuilding civilization, so did Walt Disney see Disneyland as the creation of a better society. If Buffalo Bill embodied the values of individualism and a romance with the wilderness, Disney offered a civilization based on western progress, as an alternative to the east. Buoyed by the interstate highway system, Disney sought to create a destination point where people would be entertained and spend vast amounts of money. This was not going to be a melting pot, salad bowl, or any other mixing of classes and races. His plan, simply put, was to bring middle class America together, feed them middle class values and dummied-down history, and then, as they cheer how great it is that history is explained just how they see it, separate them from their money. Inherent in his vision was a level of control not seen in theme parks of the east. Disney sought to abolish the chaos associated with such hallowed places as Coney Island in New York. To achieve this, he used tight security, hired young, energetic white faces, banned hippies, intimidated minorities, and charged exorbitant fees, before stuffing the most sterile Maine St—which people loved—down their collective throats. The 185-acre amusement park was divided into areas like Frontierland, Fantasyland, Adventurland, Tomorrowland and Maine Street, which all offered a wholesome portrayal of America without war, poverty, or any rough edge normally associated with frontier life, or life in general. The motives of Walt Disney are complicated and contradictory, and therefore will not be discussed in this paper. It has been well noted that Walt had a troubling childhood, and as an adult supported authoritarian power. But it is possible that his park used control to support their financial goals more than to advance any agenda by the founder. Nonetheless, the history taught at Disneyland is consistent with the conservative belief that internal disorder is the great threat to American Democracy. Presidential history according to Walt Disney is nothing more than a series of great steps by great men—white men, of course—to restore order. As is evidenced in the Presidents exhibit, or on many of the rides (like the Safari) disorder is to be feared. Internal disorder, to Disney, was the west before people like Cody tamed the savages. This disorder, moreover, had been replaced by the model western society of Disneyland. In this sanitized reality, the corporation was the perfect institution, and capitalism inevitable. Disneyland sold—in its exhibits, planned communities, and media products—a glorified, American lifestyle based on cleanliness, order, and white middle class values. Disneyland, moreover, as a product of its times pushed a history dominated by competition (a value of extreme relevance during cold war) and capitalism; values which glorified the success of its wealthy, white patrons. Walt Disney, it seems, was very astute to the values of his time and gave the people exactly what they wanted to hear. Not only were the employees all white and overly cheerful, but the blacks that were involved, like the infamous “Aunt Jemima Kitchen” sponsored by Quaker Oats, were so pejoratively. Only after CORE protests, in 1963 and again in 1968, did blacks get hired and then actually greet the public. For a nation in turmoil, and for a region happy to be away from the residue left over from a century of massive, rapid urbanization in the east, Disneyland was the perfect tonic for a white, mobile middle class apathetic to the problems of race and class. Disneyland offered a history that glorified the west and the cleanliness of an era long gone, while at the same time neglecting things like collective action like labor movements. The interesting thing about Disney is that they are still influencing the way we see the past, and, dishearteningly, the future. Watching Disney “gentrify” New York is like watching history in real time: the cleaning up of Times Square; the walling off of public space; the removal of benevolent chaos from public life; the creation of another Disneyland; the end of history removed from commerce. After 40 years, Disney has finished what Buffalo Bill started. Fact and fiction have been blended to the point where the truth is not decipherable. History, for the masses, has been reduced to public spectacle for a price. It is almost as if the west was tamed, the millions of innocent Indians killed, so Disney could wall off our neighborhoods, close off public space, and then charge America to hear the story of how he managed to do it. There are indeed many consistent themes in the Buffalo Bill and Disneyland experiences. Buffalo Bill was bankrupt in 1916. Historians can only hope the same fate awaits hegemonic Disney. The question, though, is it too late to rewrite all of this specious history? More than entertainment, to be sure, both Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Walt Disney’s Disneyland permeated American culture in their day and continue to mold collective ideas about America, the west, and the California dream. If one looks at history as a series of economic stages, as Marx did, then the Populists are easy to explain. In the 1890s as the American economy was transformed from an agricultural society to an industrial society, the losers of this transition, the small farmer, fought to stop the clock of history and secure the lifestyle of the past. Like the manufacturer of today who hopelessly fights globalization and the next stage of history, the so-called information-age (or what Toffler, Blair, Clinton and Gingrich call the third wave) the fight is doomed to failure. Nothing can stop the inevitable march of progress into the next stage of history, the argument goes, and the Populist movement was merely the last gasp—like the recent WTO riots of the industrial stage, perhaps—of the agricultural stage. While it is convenient to see history as a series of stages and the Populist in this light, they were far more successful then most third parties in US history, and their legacy is one of both failure and great achievement. The unprecedented demands of the Populist revolt forever changed America and the role of the Federal Government. It is with irony, then, that many historians now consider the Populists a vital part of the new America, the industrial America, then merely a residue of the past. The plight of the farmer in the post civil war era is somewhat contradictory. Never before had farm production expanded so rapidly, while at the same time the individual farmer suffered so much. For the first time, the American farmer competed in national and international markets where a surplus was sold for market prices. The farmers of the south and west, the backbone of the Populist movement, suffered from a shortage of money and sought to loosen credit to alleviate these woes. Although most of the farms resulting from The Homestead Act were settled after 1890, western expansion was critical in the Populist movement. Western farmers were especially susceptible to large transaction costs that resulted from shipping their product to far away markets. Making matters worse was a drop in prices that strangled all profits. An example of how the changing nature of American markets affected prices, wheat dropped from an 1870 price of $1.06 a bushel to a meager 63 cents in 1897. As farm debt grew and many lost their farms or were threatened with foreclosure, the American farmer began to feel squeezed by the “new economy” and soon felt resentment toward the railroads, the middlemen and the banks. The farmers relied on equipment that was very expensive to pay off at prices bordering on usury. The problem was compounded by the drop in farm prices and the sense, correctly in this case, that other sectors were benefiting from the capital rules of the eastern bankers while the farmer was left to die on the vine. The yeoman farmer of the west, however, would not go down without a fight. Although disenfranchised groups are notorious for the free-rider problems that choke collective action movements, a disparate group of reformers came together to form a powerful coalition. Incorporating both the Grangers and the Greenbacks, the Populist movement, in 1892, met in Omaha to draft a platform that would codify for the nation their demands as a party. The Populist platform of 1892—which met in Omaha on July 4—demanded, among other things, the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16-1; government ownership and operation of railroads and the telephone, telegraph, and postal systems; prohibition of the alien ownership of land; restriction of immigration; and, presciently, a graduated income tax. After nominating James B. Weaver of Iowa for President, the movement generated over one million votes and 22 votes in the unique American system called the Electoral College. Furthermore, the Populists, in 1892, also garnered enough support to send 10 representatives to the House, 5 to the US Senate, and had enough votes at the state level, predominately in the Midwest of course, to elect 3 Governors and 1500 members to state legislatures. But the electoral dreams of the Populists could not be met. As is true throughout American history, third party groups never seem able to reach out successfully to natural partners. The Populists had much in common with their working class brethren stuffed in the eastern factories. They, too, of course, suffered many injustices from the system that the farmers in the west were fighting. But on Election Day, the Omaha Platform did not chisel the laborers from their traditional voting patterns, and another reform party failed to overthrow the system. It is so common in America as to be axiomatic: the nation embraces so thoroughly the myth of a classes society that they fail, we fail, to join together to fight the forces which dominate and subjugate a majority of the people. In 1886, in a sad attempt to join a party that could win, the Populist Party endorsed the Democratic candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. Although the south refused to go along, the western states of the Populist Party—a majority—threw their support to the major candidate who embraced their ideas about currency reform. After a highly emotional campaign centering on the money issue, Bryan lost. The election and the Electoral College were decided by regional biases, with Bryan not winning a single urban, industrial state; the workers of the north could not deliver a single state north of the Potomac and east of the Mississippi. While the western movement stamped the emergence of the west as a political force entering the twentieth century, (Lincoln and Jackson were both from the geographic west but were not really part of movements distinctly western) it was unable to survive into the next century. The movement, trounced in the national elections of 1896, has created a problem of interpretation for historians. Were the Populists co-opted like many third parties? Or, alternatively, did they die an ignominious death, unable to expand their western and southern base to include the numerous workers of the north? History is unlimited in its ability to ask questions, of course, but limited by its complexity and contradictions to come up with answers. The rest of this paper will attempt to answer the riddle that is the Populist movement. It goes to the heart of the change in America that is so much a part of this course and America’s past. As America grew, it turns out, the social, economic, and political pressure was too much for the agricultural sector in the west and the south. The west in later years like the Dust Bowl of the Depression, would travel even farther west in search of the American dream; the south, likewise, especially the blacks of Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, would venture west later, finally settling in places like Central Avenue in LA, or the banks of the Bay in west Oakland. But before all of that, the Populists drew a line in the proverbial sand and stood up and fought for their beliefs. The Populist agenda was not revolutionary in the traditional sense. Far from desiring the abolition of the compact of 1789, the Populists sought instead to facilitate a more direct democracy at the federal level. They demanded that US senators be selected by the people and not by the once removed method of selection by state legislatures. Furthermore, they demanded a secret ballot to counter balance the northern machines, arguable their natural allies, and supported universal suffrage for women. All of these political concerns were ultimately met, and, to my point, place the Populists squarely in the century they never entered, not in the century that they are thought to have defended. Their political demands, however, were secondary to the movement’s aims and dreams. The true heart and sole of any reform party, contrary to political myths in this country, is fundamentally economic in nature, not political. The economic demands and, by extension, results of the Populists movement is how they should be judged by history. The history of the west is a myth of independence and self-reliance with the only obstacle being the Native American or stifling federal policy. That myth, reinforced from Buffalo Bill on down as mentioned earlier, is the antithesis it turns out to the reality of the west and its dependence on the federal government. The reality, of course, is the western rancher living off federal land, or the miner plundering a nation’s assets under the Mining Act of 1872. The point here is that the Populists movement was consistent with this contradiction and, like many in the west today, demanded help from the federal government. Their demand was nothing less than a call for income redistribution, which was more radical than anything they demanded in the political sphere. In a sense—like union workers today in Flint, Michigan or corn growers in Ames, Iowa—they were belatedly correct in their assessment of subsidies elsewhere: Indeed, as they pointed out, they were expected to compete in the national market in accordance with the free market doctrine of the day while the money to the east, as they saw it, benefited from subsidies. It is another cruel irony that in America the people struggling with survival (like the fisherman today in the east or the family farmer in the Midwest or the union worker in LA) are lectured about the virtues of the free market, while those who preach are frequently rich, subsidized by the government, and club members to the power brokers in Washington and New York. At the same time the Populists fought for government subsidies, industry got the tariff, the railroads got their subsidy and the corporations got their judicial support. The myth of the free market was just that; the Populists exposed the most powerful and fraudulent myth of the US system and for that they are as relevant today as they were in the 1890s. Cheated as they were by a system that preached a free market ethos but practiced a moneyed stake in the railroads, banks, and national markets, the Populists sought an abolition of the banking system, the nationalization of transportation, the prohibition of subsidies to corporations, (while at the same time seeking their own subsidies) and the prohibition of corporate ownership of natural resources. They were undoubtedly concerned with their own economic future. But at the same time, and this I think must be their legacy, they also were ahead of their time when it came to political reform. Not only did they argue for direct democracy, the belated and virtuous destiny of the Declaration of Independence, but they also led the vanguard for campaign reform that is the crux of modern politics. It is a mixed legacy to be sure. But the Populists illuminate many of the problems that reform groups tackle in the United States. Whether co-opted, ignored, isolated, or buried by a Marxian step in American economic history, the Populists were influential far beyond their Electoral College count or the legislation posthumously passed. The Populists of the 1890s may have lost the battle, moreover, but to historians, they paved the way for political and economic reform. If radical reform groups learn from the Populists mistakes and mobilize workers in the north as well as the south and west, they, we, may win the war as well. The Populists embody the contradictions and spirit of the west as we have learned in this class. Their spirit should not be buried in some blind belief in historical destiny. Events would have been different had the Populists reached out successfully to the worker of the north. Perhaps, someday, a group will do this and unify the plethora of splinter groups waiting for their opportunity to voice their opinions like the Populists in the 1890s. Bibliography: none required Word Count: 3733
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