interests of the people, the reduction and regulation of the cost
of transporation, and an increase in the currency supply. Some of
these propositions occasionally received recognition in Liberal
speeches and platforms, but several of them were anathema to many
of the Eastern leaders of that movement. Had these leaders been
gifted with vision broad enough to enable them to appreciate the
vital economic and social problems of the West, the Liberal
Republican movement might perhaps have caught the ground swell of
agrarian discontent, and the outcome might then have been the
formation of an enduring national party of liberal tendencies
broader and more progressive than the Liberal Republican party
yet less likely to be swept into the vagaries of extreme
radicalism than were the Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties of
after years. A number of western Liberals such as A. Scott Sloan
in Wisconsin and Ignatius Donnelly in Minnesota championed the
farmers' cause, it is true, and in some States there was a fusion
of party organizations; but men like Schurz and Trumbull held
aloof from these radical movements, while Easterners like Godkin
of the Nation met them with ridicule and invective.

The period from 1870 to 1873 has been characterized as one of
rampant prosperity, and such it was for the commercial, the
manufacturing, and especially the speculative interests of the
country. For the farmers, however, it was a period of bitter
depression. The years immediately following the close of the
Civil War had seen a tremendous expansion of production,
particularly of the staple crops. The demobilization of the
armies, the closing of war industries, increased immigration, the
homestead law, the introduction of improved machinery, and the
rapid advance of the railroads had all combined to drive the