Monroe County: Once a hotbed of liberal politics?

 

An ad from the Wisconsin Greenback

 

By KAREN PARKER

County Line Publisher Emeritus

Two issues of the Wisconsin Greenback recently came my way, both from the 1870s.

Students of Monroe County history are likely not familiar with the publication, which was published in Sparta for only a few years. The four-page broadsheet contained primarily world and national news concentrating on labor and workers’-rights issues. Some local advertising also appeared in the publication.

Yes, indeed, it may be hard to believe now, but Monroe County, which in modern times generally leans conservative and votes Republican, was once a hotbed of “populist” thinking. The Greenback Party characterized itself as “populist” but bore no resemblance to the populism of Donald Trump’s Republican party.

Initially an agrarian organization associated with the policies of the Grange, from 1878 the organization took the name Greenback Labor Party and attempted to forge a farmer–labor alliance, adding industrial reforms to its agenda, such as support of the eight-hour day and opposition to the use of state or private force to suppress union strikes.

The Greenbacks traced their history to the Civil War. The act of Southern secession prompted a brief and severe business panic in the North and a crisis of public confidence in the federal government. Instead of a quick victory, the war dragged on for years. In the wake of Southern victories, the federal government found it increasingly difficult to sell the government bonds necessary to finance the war effort.

After the war, Republicans pushed for a gold-based currency, but this never provided the amount of currency needed for the rapid post-Civil War expansion. Railroad expansion created an economic crisis when railroads were unable to convert the land granted to them by the government into cash to pay for the expansion.

The bubble burst in 1873, just as the Chicago and Northwestern finished its new line through Sparta and was completing the line toward St. Paul.

In response to the Panic of 1873 (now we call it a Depression), the Greenback Party formed in Indiana, meeting in 1875 in Cleveland to form an official national party. In 1880, the Greenback Party broadened its platform to include support for an income tax, an eight-hour day, and allowing women the right to vote.

These were shockingly progressive notions, but despite that, the party was strong enough to run national presidential candidates in 1876, 1880 and 1884.

Long before the age of modern communication, keeping like-minded politicians in touch with one another relied heavily on newsprint. How Dr. Lamborn of Sparta became involved is not clear, but it was his publication that bound together men of the Wisconsin Greenback Party. The newspaper was so influential that they forced a state convention at Portage in 1877. At that event, a committee was chosen that would later represent Wisconsin at a national convention.

Lamborn’s publication was so popular that he began to produce a second edition in Milwaukee. It appears he might have sent his son, Arthur Jr., to manage the Milwaukee edition. It is unclear how long the Milwaukee edition was published, but in 1890, Arthur Jr. fell ill with a fever so severe that during the night, he slipped into a delirium, left his bed and plunged some 20 feet into the garden. The newspaper reported that he had no broken bones, but was badly cut by the glass and died the following day. He was just 32 years old.

His father would die just four years later.

But by then, the Greenback Party had joined many other third-party efforts on the ash heap of history.

In 1879, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Lamborn had announced the final edition of the newspaper, adding that he had never received the financial support of the party as promised.

By then, support of the party had dwindled, and what few ardent supporters remained were urged to join the Republican party. But Lamborn pinned his own disillusionment on “Brick” Pomroy, a man who had taken over the party and whom he considered so dissolute and corrupt that he would destroy what remained of the party.

But clearly much of what troubled the Greenback party sounds familiar to today, as noted in the preamble to the resolutions adopted at the convention in Portage.

“Whereas a money despotism has browned up in our land, which controls the law-making power of our country, dictates judicial decisions, wields an undue influence over the Executive of the Nation in the consideration of the laws passed for the benefit of the people, thus enabling the money power to carry on its schemes of public plunder, under and from which colossal fortunes have been gathered in the hands of the ambitious and unscrupulous men whose interest are at war with the people, hostile to popular government and deaf to the demands of honest toil.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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