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FIRST QUESTION: HAVE INTEREST AND knowledge about the Populists declined? My impression is that they have, since (say) 1980. A quick and dirty check of textbooks now advertised for the American history survey course in the programs of the most recent American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians meetings reveals a reduced attention to Populism and to agricultural history in general compared to textbooks of the 1950s to 1970s.42
A few examples: James Davidson's Nation of Nations: Concise includes a chapter called "The Political System under Strain (1877-1900)" among thirty-three chapters. Another McGraw-Hill text, Alan Brinkley's American History: A Survey also has one chapter, "From Stalemate to Crisis," among thirty-four. The Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People: Concise Edition has two subheads, "Farmers' Movements" and "The Rise and Fall of the People's Party" within a single chapter (among thirty-one) on "Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s." W. W. Norton's three leading texts-Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty!, the Maier et al., Inventing America, and the very popular Tindall and Shi, America: A Narrative History provide, respectively, one subhead, "The Populist Challenge," in one of twenty-eight chapters (Foner); no explicit mention though possibly coverage in a chapter on Gilded Age politics (Maier); and a chapter called "Gilded-Age Politics and Agrarian Revolt" among thirtyseven in Tindall/Shi. The Kennedy et al., American Pageant from Houghton Mifflin has a chapter on "The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896." In the Henretta et al., America's History, summaries of the chapters on politics (1877-1893) and Progressivism give no indication that Populism is mentioned at all.43
More encouragingly, the new text from David Harrell "that takes religion seriously" and bears the title Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People, devotes space to "New Settlers in the West," "Farming the West," and "The Populist Challenge." Leon Fink's Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, which combines primary sources and reflective essays, includes the Cross of Gold speech, the Omaha Platform, and an excerpt from Bruce Palmer's "Man over Money" on southern Populism. Charles W. Calhoun's The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America includes, among its sixteen essays, one on "Farmers and Third-Party Politics" by Worth...