| Documents |
 | A trip through Southwest Knox Co., MO 1880
"From Novelty we went to Locust Hill, stopping for supper at Uncle Rufus Botts', is clever an old gentleman as there is in Salt River Township. There we listened to as fine a Greenback lecture as we ever heard, given by Prof. E. C. Kimman. A good audience was in attendance. and the strictest attention was given to the speaker."
Greenback lecture refers to the Greenback Party that fielded presidential candidates in the 1876, 1880 and 1884 US presidential elections. The Greenback Party (known successively as the Independent Party, the National Independent Party and the Greenback Labor Party) grew from the organization and policies of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, a social and political organization that encouraged farm families to band together to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture. Granges grew popular in the Midwest in the late 1880s and some still exist today. The Greenback party's name referred to the non-gold backed paper money, commonly known as "greenbacks", that had been issued by the North during the American Civil War and shortly afterward. The party opposed the deflationary lowering of prices paid to producers that was entailed by a return to a bullion-based monetary system, the policy favored by the Republican and Democratic parties. Continued use of unbacked currency, it was believed, would better foster business and assist farmers by raising prices and making debts easier to pay. In additional to supporting the use of "greenbacks," the party attempted to forge a farmer–labor alliance by adding industrial reforms to its agenda, such as support of the 8-hour day and opposition to the use of state or private force to suppress union strikes. with an anti-monopoly ideology which was active between 1874 and 1889. The part faded away in the mid-1880s, but its ideals would continue to argued by "populist" and "progressive" parties into the 1900s. |
Fisher Family Genealogy