were not inclined to espouse
new and radical issues which might lead to the disruption of party
lines. The outcome, therefore, was the establishment of new parties in
eleven of the Western States during 1873 and 1874. Known variously
as Independent, Reform, Anti-Monopoly, or Farmers' parties, these
organizations were all parts of the same general movement, and their
platforms were quite similar. The paramount demands were: first, the
subjection of corporations, and especially of railroad corporations, to
the control of the State; and second, reform and economy in government.
After the new parties were well under way, the Democrats in most of the
States, being in a hopeless minority, made common cause with them in
the hope of thus compassing the defeat of their hereditary rivals, the
old-line Republicans. In Missouri, however, where the Democracy had
been restored to power by the Liberal-Republican movement, the new party
received the support of the Republicans.

Illinois, where the farmers were first thoroughly organized into clubs
and Granges, was naturally the first State in which they took effective
political action. The agitation for railroad regulation, which began in
Illinois in the sixties, had caused the new state constitution of 1870
to include mandatory provisions directing the legislature to pass laws
to prevent extortion and unjust discrimination in railway charges. One
of the acts passed by the Legislature of 1871 in an attempt to carry out
these instructions was declared unconstitutional by the state supreme
court in January, 1873. This was the spark to the tinder. In the
following April the farmers flocked to a convention at the state capital
and so impressed the legislators that they passed more stringent and
effective laws for the regulation of railroads. But the politicians had
a still greater surprise in store for them. In the elections of judges
in June, the farmers retired from office the judge who had declared
their railroad law unconstitutional and elected their own candidates for
the two vacancies in the supreme court and for many of the vacancies in
the circuit courts.

Now began a vigorous campaign for the election of farmers' candidates in
the county elections in the fall. So many political meetings were held
on Independence Day in 1873 that it was referred to as the "Farmers'
Fourth of July." This had always been the greatest day of the farmer's
year, for it meant opportunity for social and