"IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE" IN OREGON - Southern Oregon Digital ...

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rapidly to the Far Western states, including the mining and
wheat farming areas of the Pacific Northwest.
Southern Oregon, with Jackson County in the lead,
became one hotbed of agrarian discontent during the 1890s.
Three major factors spurred the third party's rise among
southern Oregon farmers: financial distress due to poor
harvests and low prices, resentment of monopoly as
represented by local flour mills and especially the
absentee-owned railroad, and frustration with high taxes and
perceived corruption in local government. 16
16 Two standard works on Western Populism are: Karel D.
Bischa, Western Populism: Studies in an Ambivalent
Conservatism (Lawrence, KA: Coronado Press, 1976) and Robert
W. Larson, Populism in the Mountain West (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1986). Bicha, although
rejecting Hofstadter's interpretation, holds an essentially
negative view of the Populists as narrow, fiscal
conservatives who hid behind a smokescreen of reform
rhetoric. Larson rescues Western Populism from the
"silverite" label given it by Hicks and others; he
demonstrates that Populism in the Far West was indeed within
the mainstream of the agrarian movement. Although dealing
with a silver state, the following work also shows that the
Idaho People's party was far more than simply a silver
"shadow movement": William J. Gaboury, Dissension in the
Rockies: A History of Idaho Populism (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1988). The only comprehensive treatments of the
People's party in Oregon are: Marion Harrington, "The
Populist Movement in Oregon, 1890-1896" (M.A. thesis,
University of Oregon, 1935) and David B. Griffiths,
"Populism in the Far West, 1890-1900" (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Washington, 1967). Both works, however,
concentrate on the state's Portland-area Populist
intelligentsia and give little discussion on southern
Oregon. In addition, both Harrington and Griffiths
erroneously attribute Jackson County's strong Populist
sympathies to its mining industry; however, southern
Oregon's modest mining economy was based on gold, not
silver, and the region's Populist strength clearly derived
from agrarian discontent.