AS A POLITICAL FORCE 97 



The various local farmers' and Reform parties were also 

 drawn together into state parties in Missouri, Kansas, and 

 Nebraska in 1874. In Missouri the new party was one of 

 opposition to the Democrats who were then in control and 

 received the support of the Republicans ; 1 in Kansas, on the 

 other hand, all the elements of opposition to the dominant 

 Republican party were joined under the " Independent Reform " 

 banner ; 2 and in Nebraska candidates were put in the field by 

 all three of the parties. 3 The new party movement does not 

 seem to have made much of an impression upon the political 

 situation in these states, for the Democrats won in Missouri 

 with nearly forty thousand majority, and the Republicans in 

 Kansas with about twenty thousand, while in Nebraska the 

 vote cast by the third party was inconsiderable. 



In Oregon an Independent party made its appearance in 

 the spring of 1874 with candidates for the June election and 

 an anti-monopoly platform. The two old parties were very 

 closely balanced in this state, and are said to have formed a 

 coalition in some districts to defeat the new movement. The 

 Independents had the support of a considerable portion of the 

 press and probably of most of the Grangers, who at this time 

 numbered nearly all the farmers of the state in their ranks, 

 and they displayed considerable strength in the election, the 

 votes on state officers and congressman being about ninety- 

 seven hundred for the Democrats, ninety- two hundred for the 

 Republicans, and sixty-five hundred for the Independents. 

 In the legislative elections the new party fared even better, 

 securing twenty-nine members of the lower house to twenty- 

 eight Republicans and twenty Democrats, while in the Senate 

 six Independents held the balance of power between the two 



1 Chicago Tribune, 1874, January 10, p. 2, January 12, p. 8, February 21, p. 8, 

 June ii, p. i; Industrial Age, 1874, May 16, p. 5, May 30, p. 5, June 13, p. 4, July 

 25, p. 6, September 5, p. 4; Prairie Farmer, xlv. 75 (March 7, 1874); American 

 Annual Cyclopedia, 1874, pp. 576-579. 



2 Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1874, p. 8; Industrial Age, 1874, July 25, p. 5, 

 September 26, p. 4; American Annual Cyclopedia, 1874, pp. 435-437; D. W. 

 Wilder, Annals of Kansas, 643-646, 655, 658; Andreas, Kansas, 218, 264. 



8 American Annual Cyclopedia, 1874, p. 586. 



