History of Georgia (U.S. State) - Agrarian Unrest and Disfranchisement

Agrarian Unrest and Disfranchisement

While Grady and other proponents of the New South insisted on Georgia's urban future, the state's economy remained overwhelmingly dependent on cotton. Much of the industrialization that did occur was as a subsidiary of cotton agriculture; many of the state's new textile factories were devoted to the manufacture of simple cotton bags. The price per pound of cotton plummeted from $1 at the end of the Civil War to an average of 20 cents in the 1870s, nine cents in the 1880s, and seven cents in the 1890s. By 1898, it had fallen to five cents a pound -while costing seven cents to produce. Once-prosperous planters suffered significant hardship.

Thousands of freedmen became tenant farmers or sharecroppers rather than hire out to labor gangs. Through the lien system, small-county merchants assumed a central role in cotton production, monopolizing the supply of equipment, fertilizers, seeds and foodstuffs needed to make sharecropping possible. By the 1890's, as cotton prices plummeted below production costs, 80–90% of cotton growers, whether owner or tenant, were in debt to lien merchants.

Indebted Georgia cotton growers responded by embracing the "agrarian radicalism" manifested, successively, in the 1870s with the Granger movement, in the 1880s with the Farmers' Alliance, and in the 1890s with the Populist Party. In 1892, Congressman Tom Watson joined the Populists, becoming the most visible spokesman for their predominately Western Congressional delegation. Southern Populists denounced the convict lease system, while urging white and black small farmers to unite on the basis of shared economic self-interest. They generally refrained from advocating social equality.

In his essay 'The Negro Question in the South,' Watson framed his appeal for a united front between black and white farmers declaring:

"You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both."

Southern Populists did not share their Western counterparts' emphasis on Free Silver and bitterly opposed their desire for fusion with the Democratic Party. They had faced death threats, mob violence and ballot-box stuffing to challenge the monopoly of their states' Bourbon Democrat political machines. The merger with the Democratic Party in the 1896 Presidential election dealt a fatal blow to Southern Populism. The Populists nominated Watson as William Jennings Bryan's vice-president, but Bryan selected New England industrialist Arthur Sewall as a concession to Democratic leaders.

Watson was not reelected. As the Populist Party disintegrated, through his periodical The Jeffersonian, Watson crusaded as a vigorous anti-Semite, anti-Catholic and white supremacist. He attacked the socialism, which had attracted many former Populists. He campaigned with little success for the party's candidate for President in 1904 and 1908. Watson continued to exert influence in Georgia politics, and provided a key endorsement in the gubernatorial campaign of M. Hoke Smith.