The Anti-Monopoly Organization of the United States," held in
Chicago, adopted a platform voicing a demand for legislative control of
corporations and monopolies in the interests of the people and nominated
General Benjamin F. Butler for President. The convention of the
Greenback or National party met in Indianapolis, and selected Butler
as its candidate also. General Weaver presided over the convention. The
platform contained the usual demands of the party with the exception of
the resolution for the "free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver,"
which was rejected by a vote of 218 to 164. It would appear that the
majority of the delegates preferred to rely upon legal-tender paper to
furnish the ample supply of money desired. General Butler was at this
time acting with the Democrats in Massachusetts, and his first response
was noncommittal. Although he subsequently accepted both nominations,
he did not make an active campaign, and his total popular vote was only
175,370. Butler's personal popularity and his labor affiliations brought
increased votes in some of the Eastern States and in Michigan, but in
those Western States where the party had been strongest in 1880 and
where it had been distinctly a farmers' movement there was a great
falling off in the Greenback vote.

Though the forces of agrarian discontent attained national political
organization for the first time in the Greenback party, its leaders were
never able to obtain the support of more than a minority of the farmers.
The habit of voting the Republican or the Democratic ticket, firmly
established by the Civil War and by Reconstruction, was too strong to
be lightly broken; and many who favored inflation could not yet bring
themselves to the point of supporting the Greenback party. On the other
hand there were undoubtedly many farmers and others who felt that the
old parties were hopelessly subservient to capitalistic interests,
who were ready to join in radical movements for reform and for the
advancement of the welfare of the industrial classes, but who were not
convinced that the structure of permanent prosperity for farmer and
workingman could be built on a foundation of fiat money. Although the
platforms of the Greenbackers contained many demands which were soundly
progressive, inflation was the paramount issue in them; and with this
issue the party was unable to obtain the support of all the forces of
discontent, radicalism, and reform which had been