People’s Party (United States)

People’s Party (United States) or Populist Party, political party active in the United States between 1891 and 1908, supported mainly by farmers in the South and West. A product of the Populist movement (see Populism), the People's party was the successor of the Greenback-Labor party of the 1880s. One of its chief organizers, the journalist and reformer Ignatius Donnelly was a leader of the Populist-oriented Farmers' Alliance.

Founded during two conventions in 1891 and 1892, the party adopted a platform calling for free coinage of silver and the issuance of large amounts of paper currency—inflationary measures that it hoped would ease the financial burdens of the nation's debt-ridden farmers. Its other demands included abolishing the national banking system, nationalizing the railroads, instituting a graduated income tax, electing U.S. senators by direct popular vote, and allowing people to participate directly in government by means of referendum. In 1892 the party nominated James Baird Weaver for the presidency. Weaver lost, but he received more than a million popular votes and 22 electoral ones, and several Populist candidates were elected to Congress. In 1896 the Populists won control of the Democratic convention in St. Louis and secured the nomination of William Jennings Bryan, who favored the Populist program, as candidate for the presidency. After Bryan was defeated, the People's party split over the issue of its continued alliance with the Democrats. In 1900 the pro-Democrats renominated Bryan, and the anti-Democrats nominated the financier Wharton Barker. The party reunited in 1904, but by then its influence was declining, and it ceased to exist after the 1908 election. Some of its ideas were later incorporated in the U.S. system of government.