AGRARIAN PARTIES AND THEIR POLICIES 173 



the presidential candidate of the Greenback Party 

 in 1880. He was an able speaker and made his ap- 

 peal directly to the people. At the general election 

 in 1892 the Populist candidate received over a mil- 

 lion popular votes and twenty-two electoral votes. 

 "For the only time," says Fred E. Haynes, "between 

 1860 and 1912, a third-party candidate had won a 

 place in the electoral college. Of the million popu- 

 lar votes, over 800,000 were cast in the Western and 

 Southern States." 1 The electoral votes for the 

 Populist candidates were cast in the West and far 

 West. Kansas cast ten, Colorado four, Idaho three, 

 Nevada three, and one each was cast in Oregon and 

 North Dakota. 



The large popular vote cast for the People's Party 

 candidates in 1892 made a profound impression on 

 the political leaders of both of the old political par- 

 ties and caused the greatest concern to politicians 

 and especially to congressmen and legislators. The 

 party had been ridiculed at first and the platform 

 was denounced as socialistic. But the time had 

 come when this new expression of agrarianism had 

 to be taken seriously. It became increasingly evi- 

 dent immediately after the general election of 1892 

 that one or the other of the old parties would be- 

 come sufficiently progressive to make an appeal to 

 the voting strength of the Populist Party. The 

 popular vote had been very close between Cleve- 

 land, the successful democratic candidate, and Ben- 



1 Social Politics in the United States (1924), Chap. VII, p. 165. 



