The Middle Border Rises
I. The Plight of the Farmer 259
I. Democratic Reactions to Plutocracy: The Middle Border suffers. Two moods: Buoyancy, depression--the farmer deflated. The economic problem 259
II. The Farmer Considers Politics: His intellectual equipment--homespun theories derided by the schools. The movement of organization: The Grange, The Alliance, Populism. The flare-up of the nineties--the doctrine of more corn and less hell 263
III. The Greenback Movement: The _laissez-faire_ theory abandoned by English economists. American spokesmen: John Sherman, David A. Wells, Eleazar Lord. Diverse theories of money--the intrinsic-value theory and the quantitative theory. The money question a heritage of the Civil War--a debtor class and an appreciating standard of value 266
IV. Greenbackism and Peter Cooper 276
V. [Bi-metallism: A heritage of Jacksonian democracy: Ignatius Donnelly, “Coin” Harvey]
II. The Democracy of the Age of Innocence 283
I. Capitalistic Encroachments: Due to inadequate democratic machinery. The movement to democratize government. Plutocracy content with the machine which it controlled; hence radical proposals must issue from the discontented. After 1870, with few exceptions, popular democratic thinking done west of the Allegheny Mountains 283
II. Third-party Movements. A summary of democratic proposals of previous movements 285
III. [The Populistic Program: Income tax; the initiative and referendum; the recall; direct primary; Australian ballot; popular election of Senators; sub-treasuries; proportional representation]
IV. [William Jennings Bryan and the Last Battle]
III. Literature and the Middle Border 288
I. [Edward Eggleston and Frontier Realism]
II. [Whitcomb Riley and Folk Romance]
III. Hamlin Garland and the Middle Border. Joseph Kirkland, Harold Frederic 288