advocated about 1890, practically all the great organizations demanded the abolition of national banks, the free coinage of silver, a “sufficient” issue of government paper money, tariff revision, and a secret ballot (the last was soon realized); only less commonly demanded were an income tax, taxation of evidence of debt, and government loans on lands. All of these were principles of the two great Alliances (the Northern and the Southern), as were also pure food legislation, abolition of landholding by aliens, reclamation of unused or unearned land grants (to railways, e.g.), and either rigid federal regulation of railways and other means of communication or government ownership thereof. The “Southern” Alliance put in the forefront a “sub-treasury” scheme according to which cheap loans should be made by government from local sub-treasuries on non-perishable farm products (such as grain and cotton) stored in government warehouses; while the “Northern” Alliance demanded restriction of the liquor traffic and (for a short time) woman suffrage. Still other issues were a modification of the patent laws (e.g. to prevent the purchase of patents to stifle competition), postal currency exchange, the eight-hour day, inequitable taxation, the single-tax on land, “trusts,” educational qualification for suffrage, direct popular election of federal judges, of senators, and of the president, special-interest lobbying, &c.
In 1889–1890 the political (non-partisan) movement developed astonishing strength; it captured the Republican stronghold of Kansas, brought the Democratic Party to vassalage in South Carolina, revolutionized legislatures even in conservative states like Massachusetts, and seemed likely completely to dominate the South and West. All its work in the South was accomplished within the old-party organizations, but in 1890 the demand became strong for an independent third party, for which various consolidations since 1887 had prepared the way, and by 1892 a large part of the strength of the farmers’ organizations, with that of various industrial and radical orders, was united in the People’s Party (perhaps more generally known as the Populist Party), which had its beginnings in Kansas in 1890, and received national organization in 1892. This party emphasized free silver, the income tax, eight-hour day, reclamation of land grants, government ownership of railways, telephones and telegraphs, popular election of federal senators, and the initiative and referendum. In the presidential election of 1892 it cast 1,041,021 votes (in a total of 12,036,089), and elected 22 presidential electors, the first chosen by any third party since 1856. In 1896 the People’s Party “fused” with the Democratic Party (q.v.) in the presidential campaign, and again in 1900; during this period, indeed, the greatest part of the People’s Party was reabsorbed into the two great parties from which its membership had originally been drawn;—in some northern states apparently largely into the Republican ranks, but mainly into the Democratic Party, to which it gave a powerful radical impulse.
The Farmers’ movement was much misunderstood, abused and ridiculed. It accomplished a vast amount of good. The movement—and especially the Grange, for on most important points the later movements only followed where it had led—contributed the initial impulse and prepared the way for the establishment of travelling and local rural libraries, reading courses, lyceums, farmers’ institutes (a steadily increasing influence) and rural free mail delivery (inaugurated experimentally in 1896 and adopted as part of the permanent postal system of the country in 1902); for agricultural exhibits and an improved agricultural press; for encouragement to and increased profit from the work of agricultural colleges, the establishment (1885) and great services of the United States Department of Agriculture,—in short, for an extraordinary lessening of rural isolation and betterment of the farmers’ opportunities; for the irrigation of the semi-arid West, adopted as a national policy in 1902, the pure-food laws of 1906, the interstate-commerce law of 1887, the railway-rate laws of 1903 and 1906, even the great Bureau of Commerce-and-Labor law of 1903, and the Anti-trust laws of 1903 and later. The Alliance and Populist movements were bottomed on the idea of “ethical gains through legislation.” In its local manifestations the whole movement was often marked by eccentric ideas, narrow prejudices and weaknesses in economic reasoning. It is not to be forgotten that owing to the movement of the frontier the United States has always been “at once a developed country and a primitive one. The same political questions have been put to a society advanced in some regions and undeveloped in others. . . . On specific political questions each economic area has reflected its peculiar interests” (Prof. F. J. Turner). That this idea must not, however, be over-emphasized, is admirably enforced by observing the great mass of farmer radicalism that has, since about 1896, become an accepted Democratic and Republican principle over the whole country. The Farmers’ movement was the beginning of widespread, effective protest against “the menace of privilege” in the United States.
American periodicals, especially in 1890–1892, are particularly informing on the growth of the movement; see F. M. Drew in Political Science Quarterly (1891), vi. p. 282; C. W. Pierson in Popular Science Monthly (1888), xxxii. pp. 199, 368; C. S. Walker and F. J. Foster in Annals of American Academy (1894); iv. p. 790; Senator W. A. Peffer in Cosmopolitan (1890), x. p. 694; and on agricultural discontent, Political Science Quarterly, iv. (1889), p. 433, by W. F. Mappin; v. (1890), p. 65, by J. P. Dunn; xi. (1896), pp. 433, 601, xii. (1897), p. 93, and xiv. (1899), p. 444, by C. F. Emerick; Prof. E. W. Bemis in Journal of Political Economy (1893), i. p. 193; A. H. Peters in Quarterly Journal of Economics (1890), iv. p. 18; C. W. Davis in Forum (1890), ix. pp. 231, 291, 348.
FARNABY (or Farnabie), THOMAS (c. 1575–1647), English grammarian, was the son of a London carpenter; his grandfather, it is said, had been mayor of Truro, his great-grandfather an Italian musician. Between 1590 and 1595 he appears successively as a student of Merton College, Oxford, a pupil in a Jesuit college in Spain, and a follower of Drake and Hawkins. After some military service in the Low Countries “he made shift,” says Wood, “to be set on shore in the western part of England; where, after some wandering to and fro under the name of Tho. Bainrafe, the anagram of his sirname, he settled at Martock, in Somersetshire, and taught the grammar school there for some time with success. After he had gotten some feathers at Martock, he took his flight to London,” and opened a school in Goldsmiths’ Rents, Cripplegate. From this school, which had as many as 300 pupils, there issued, says Wood, “more churchmen and statesmen than from any school taught by one man in England.” In the course of his London career “he was made master of arts of Cambridge, and soon after incorporated at Oxon.” Such was his success that he was enabled to buy an estate at Otford near Sevenoaks, Kent, to which he retired from London in 1636, still, however, carrying on his profession of schoolmaster. In course of time he added to his Otford estate and bought another near Horsham in Sussex. In politics he was a royalist; and, suspected of participation in the rising near Tunbridge, 1643, he was imprisoned in Ely House, Holborn. He died at Sevenoaks on the 12th of June 1647.
The details of his life were derived by Anthony à Wood from Francis, Farnaby’s son by a second marriage (see Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iii. 213). His works chiefly consisted of annotated editions of Latin authors—Juvenal, Persius, Seneca, Martial, Lucan, Virgil, Ovid and Terence, which enjoyed extraordinary popularity. His Systema grammaticum was published in London in 1641. On the 6th of April 1632, Farnaby was presented with a royal patent granting him, for the space of twenty-one years, the sole right of printing and publishing certain of his works.
FARNBOROUGH, THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, Baron (1815–1886), English Constitutional historian, was born in London on the 8th of February 1815 and educated at Bedford grammar school. In 1831 he was nominated by Manners Sutton, speaker of the House of Commons, to the post of assistant librarian, so that his long connexion with parliament began in his youth.
