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4. Burnham, Walter Dean, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970) 30–32Google Scholar; Argersinger, Peter H., Populism and Politics: William Alfred Peffer and the People's Party (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974)Google Scholar; Bensel, Richard Franklin, Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880–1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984)Google Scholar and Yankee Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Silbey, Joel H., The American Political Nation, 1838–1893 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) 139–149.Google Scholar

5. Bensel, , Yankee Leviathan.Google Scholar

6. While the specific features of postal savings varied among countries, most systems typically paid interest on deposits and set minimum and maximum account limits. The deposited funds were used by the particular nations for various governmental purposes. See United States Congress, “Postal Savings Depositories: Report of Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads to Accompany S5876,” (House of Representatives, 61st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Rep. 1445): 1910Google Scholar, for brief descriptions of postal saving systems in other countries.

7. Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Knopf, 1985)Google Scholar; Bicha, Karel D., Western Populism: Studies in an Ambivalent Conservatism (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1976).Google Scholar

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9. Skowronek, , Building a New American State.Google Scholar

10. Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1963)Google Scholar; Wiebe, , A Search for Order;Google ScholarSklar, Martin J., “Periodization and Historiography: Studying American Political Development in the Progressive Era, 1890s–1916,” Studies in American Political Development 5 (1991): 173–213.Google Scholar

11. Cf. Bensel, , Sectionalism and American Political DevelopmentGoogle Scholar, who examines sectionalism and Congress from 1880 to 1980, and Noble, Charles, “Wilson's Choice: The Political Origins of the Modern American State,” Comparative Politics 17 (1985): 313–336Google Scholar, who explores “the relationship between presidential strategies and protest movements during the progressive period.”

12. Sanders, Elizabeth, “State Theory and American Political Development,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 10 (1990): 93–99Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

13. Skowronek, , Building a New American StateGoogle Scholar, uses these terms to describe, respectively, periods of major socioeconomic change that strained the capacity of the early American state, and of the transformation of the American state into one based on administration and bureaucracy.

14. Radical agrarian historiography is plentiful. Movement histories include classics such as Hicks, , The Populist Revolt;Google ScholarNye, , Midwestern Progressive Politics;Google Scholar and Goodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Sectional analyses include Argersinger, , Populism and Politics;Google ScholarBicha, , Western Populism;Google ScholarMcMath, Robert C., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Palmer, Bruce, “Man Over Money”: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Larson, Robert W., “Populism in the Mountain West: A Mainstream Movement,” Western Historical Quarterly 12 (1982): 143–164Google Scholar, and Populism in the Mountain West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Barnes, Donna A., Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For an update on the state of the field, see Holmes, William F., “Populism: In Search of Context,” Agricultural History 64 (1990): 26–58.Google Scholar

15. The preamble to the 1892 People's party platform reads in part: “We believe that the power of government – in other words, of the people – should be expanded … as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience should justify.” (See Johnson, Donald Bruce and Porter, Kirk H., National Party Platforms 1840–1968 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973)Google Scholar. A core element of agrarian philosophy was the need to impose order, control, and equity through the intervention of the federal government.

16. Clanton, Gene, “‘Hayseed Socialism’ on the Hill: Congressional Populism, 1891–1895,” Western Historical Quarterly 15 (1984): 139–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Sanders, Elizabeth, “Farmers and the State in the Progressive Era,” in Greenberg, Edward S. and Mayer, Thomas F., eds., Changes in the Stute (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), 183–205.Google Scholar

18. While partisan majorities changed and Republican votes were occasionally unpredictable after 1910, banking reform and anti-trust measures were passed. See Hechler, Kenneth W., Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 220–226Google Scholar. As the Democrats gained control of the presidency and Congress, the logjam broke, and a number of bills that expanded the role of the state were passed. (See, e.g., Sanders, , “Farmers and the State.”)Google Scholar

19. Jones, Charles O., “Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives,” Journal of Politics 30 (1968): 617–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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22. Brady, and Stewart, , “Congressional Party Realignment.”Google Scholar

23. Peters, Ronald M. Jr., The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 86Google Scholar; Sundquist, James L., Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United Sates (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983 [rev. ed.]), 175.Google Scholar

24. See Brady, and Althoff, , “Party Voting in the U.S. House.”Google ScholarBaker, John D., “The Character of the Congressional Revolution of 1910,” Journal of American History 60 (1973): 679–691Google Scholar, found that the Insurgents were sometimes divided on substantive roll calls, indicating a less-than-perfect correlation between Progressivism and Insurgency. However, he defines Progressivism formally and narrowly, including only members who ran as Progressive party candidates in 1912 or who joined the national Progressive Republican League in 1911. The implication that only self-proclaimed Progressives were reform-minded, or that they were ideologically programmatic, is dubious. See, for example, Sundquist, , Dynamics of the Party System, 171–173.Google Scholar

25. Brady, David, Brody, Richard, and Epstein, David, “Heterogeneous Parties and Political Organization: The U.S. Senate, 1880–1920,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 14 (1989): 205–224Google Scholar; Shade, William G., Hopper, Stanley D., Jacobson, David, and Moiles, Stephen E., “Partisanship in the United States Senate: 1869–1901,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (1973): 185–205.Google Scholar

26. Hechler, , Insurgency.Google Scholar

27. Brody, Brady, and Epstein, , “Heterogeneous Parties and Political Organization.”Google Scholar

28. In 1869, there were twenty-six national bank branches in the South and 829 in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio alone (Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, 27). Over twenty years later, the sectional disparity in the distribution of savings banks was even greater. See Wanamaker, John, Postal Savings Banks: An Argument in Their Favor (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1891), 9.Google Scholar

29. Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise, 26–31.Google Scholar

30. A typical, if unusually colorful, argument for low minimum deposits was made in a Senate Post Office Committee Report: “No system of postal savings banks should be established that would not encourage the man to save and deposit his pennies, nickels, and dimes instead of blowing them into dramshops and beer saloons.” See United States Congress, “Postal Savings Banks: Report of Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads to Accompany S4747” (Senate, 55th Cong., 3rd sess., S. Rep. 1504): 1899, 16.Google Scholar

31. During the thirty-eight years that postal savings legislation was on the national political agenda, farm laborers' average monthly wage with board ranged from a low of $11.70 in 1880 to a high of $21.30 in 1909. There were also sharp regional differences with southern farm workers receiving approximately 60 percent of the wage earned by farm laborers in the Northeast. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975): 163.Google Scholar

32. For example, see United States Congress, “To Establish Postal Savings Depositories: Report of Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads to Accompany S6484,” (Senate, 60th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rep. 525): 1899, 4.Google Scholar

33. See Homer, Sidney, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, for a discussion of the difficulties in finding this type of data and the rates paid by the Bowery Savings Bank.

34. United States Congress, Report to Accompany S4747 (1899: 14).Google Scholar

35. Floor debate on S5876 was replete with such ideas. For example, see Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. [hereafter CR 61/2:], 1256–1257, 1282–1283.

36. Hechler, , Insurgency, 158–159.Google Scholar

37. Anderson, Donald F., William Howard Taft: A Conservative's Conception of the Presidency (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 125–126.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., 100.

39. A particularly acerbic comment was made by Senator Thomas P. Gore (Democrat, Oklahoma), who, noting Aldrich's absence during debate, said, “the principal champion of a central bank in the Senate and in the United States [Aldrich] was hostile to this [postal savings] measure one year ago. He is a man of matured judgment and fixed convictions. The reasons which have wrought this change in his convictions or, at least, in his tactics have not been submitted to the Senate…. Did he imagine that his presence would excite, or that his absence would allay, suspicion?” CR 61/2:2772.

40. Chicago Banker, February 5, 1910.

41. U.S. Congress, Hearing Before House Subcommittee No. 2 of Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, 02 25, 1909, 113.Google Scholar

42. Hechler, , Insurgency, 159.Google Scholar

43. Particularly enlightening is the colloquy between Cummins of Iowa and Burton of Ohio on the proper locus of economic power. Dolliver (Republican, Iowa) stated that previous postal savings bills had not succeeded because they failed to insure that deposited funds would remain in local communities. See CR 61/2:2658–2662, 2666–2668.

44. Congress, even at this time, used the mechanism of paired voting to protect its members from taking political heat on unpopular votes. If a senator wanted to “hide” his vote on a particular bill, he could “pair” with another senator on the opposite side without either announcing his position. They would effectively cancel each other's vote but would be listed simply as “Not Voting” despite their actual policy preferences. In analyzing the vote on this and other roll calls on postal savings, we counted paired votes as “Yes” or “No” only when preferences were announced at the time of the roll-call vote itself. In such cases, usually caused by absence from the chamber, the preference was not “hidden.”

45. Smoot by this time had become one of Aldrich's key lieutenants. See Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright, Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1930), 40.Google Scholar Intelligent speculation suggests he was acting at Aldrich's behest.

46. Brody, Brady, and Epstein, , “Heterogeneous Parties and Political Organization,” 206.Google Scholar

47. Hechler, , Insurgency, 159.Google Scholar

48. CR 61/2:1140.

49. Hechler, , Insurgency, 161Google Scholar; CR 61/2:8735, refers to Taft's explicit disagreement with Borah.

50. S5876, section 9, as amended June 7, 1910.

51. A section-by-section analysis of the House version of S5876 is contained in the House Post Office Committee's report on the bill. See United States Congress, Report on S5876, H. Rep. 1445, 1910, 2–5.Google Scholar

52. They took the then-unusual step of attaching “Minority Views” to the Committee Report. In addition to criticism of the Committee (Majority) bill, it included a minority substitute bill. See ibid.: “Views of the Minority.”

53. CR 61/2:7579.

54. Rep. Clement Dickinson (Democrat, Missouri), CR 61/2:7691.

55. Rep. E. Stevens Henry (Republican, Connecticut), CR 61/2:7712.

56. Rep. Edward Taylor (Republican, Colorado), CR 61/2:7736.

57. CR 6/2:8735.

58. See the comments of Cummins, who said the House version “reverses every policy adopted by the Senate after weeks and months save one, namely, the institution of these depositories” (CR 61/2:8534–8539). Senator Augustus Bacon (Democrat, Georgia) noted that Carter had strongly emphasized that in the original bill local communities would benefit by maintaining deposits in local banks; Bacon saw Carter's advocacy of the House plan as hypocritical (ibid., 8629).

59. Ibid., 9073.

60. See CR 61/2:8464, 8733.

61. Cummings was especially forceful on this point. He, as much as any Democrat, led the fight against the House version. For example, see CR 61/2:8633–8642.

62. Kemmerer, E. W., “The United States Postal Savings Bank,” Political Science Quarterly 26 (1911): 462–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Statutes at Large of the United States of America, vol. 36, part 1, 1911.

64. Postal savings was discontinued on June 30, 1967 (public law 89–377, enacted March 28, 1966). Its basic characteristics did not change. Aggregate deposits first topped $1 billion in 1933 and peaked at $3.4 billion in 1947. The number of depositors doubled in one year to over 1.5 million in 1932 and reached a high of almost 4.2 million in 1947. For an annual summary of postal savings business, see United States Congress, “Postmaster General's Annual Report on Operations: Postal Savings System,” House of Representatives, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 260, 1967.Google Scholar