Isaac meets his cousins

James Werner, Photo credit:  Larry Fenwick

When my husband and I packed for a Willa Cather Conference at Smith College in Massachusetts, we had no intention of doing any more than attending the conference and visiting some of the places we remembered from the time my husband was stationed at the air base nearby.  However, rather than returning straight home, we began to travel down the east coast, making spontaneous stops at historic locations.  Our wandering took us as far as Gettysburg, and that was probably when I began to suggest that we travel to Wernersville, Pennsylvania.  

I had already transcribed Isaac Werner's journal and had done quite a bit of  my research, but we had left for the Cather Conference with no intention of its being anything other than a holiday.  The spontaneous side trips had not taken us too far out of our way, but they had delayed our return home.  My suggestion to visit Wernersville would add both miles and more days away from home to our trip.  Yet, it seemed a shame to be so close to the town Isaac's father had founded and not visit it.  I had brought none of my research with me, but at least I could see the present-day town and perhaps visit the cemetery where members of Isaac's family were buried.  I convinced my husband to go out of our way to visit Wernersville. 

My lack of professional preparation for doing research was embarrassing when we reached Wernersville with only the research I had in my memory, but I was rewarded with far more information than I deserved, and one of those rewards was meeting James Werner, to whom I was introduced because we wandered into Hains Church after visiting the church cemetery.  I had asked if any Werners were members of the church, and that is how I was introduced to James, who interrupted his day to come to the church to share much of his family history as a descendant of Isaac Werner's favorite uncle.

In my files I have a letter dated July 5, 2012, in which I tell James "The manuscript is completed, and I am at the point of preparing submissions to publishers."  My expectations for quickly finding a publisher were overly optimistic!  My previous books had been published quickly, but as most of you reading this blog know, Prairie Bachelor was finally released in late December of 2020, twelve years after I first saw the journal and began my work toward telling Isaac's story!  I was determined to write history accurately but in a style that would read like a novel.  Academics already know about the Populist Movement, but most Americans do not know about the most successful Third Party in our history, and I wanted to share that important past with general readers through Isaac Werner and his community.  Finding a publisher willing to do that proved challenging.  I am proud that Prairie Bachelor, The Story of a Kansas Homesteader & the Populist Movement was honored as a 2021 Kansas Notable Book.      

I stayed in touch with James off and on during those years, and when FHSU hosted a virtual book launch in December 2020, the James Werner family was well represented among the many supporters who attended. Many of those who attended the book launch had never attempted virtual gatherings, although many of us learned during the covid pandemic.  Yet, people across America, and even from as far as Ukraine, learned the technology in order to attend.  The picture at left is of James and his wife Emily gifting Prairie Bachelor to the Hains Church.  They also gifted the book to the town library, the school library, and the Heidelberg Heritage Society.  Tentative invitations for me to speak have been postponed by covid.

James and Emily do not look their age, but they have begun to limit distant travel, and it is a long drive  from Pennsylvania to Kansas.  However, for younger members of the family, such a trip was not out of the question.  This past weekend we hosted David & his wife Deann Werner, as well as Cynthia Cruz and LaRita McNeely, whose ancestors were brothers of Isaac's father, making them first cousins to Isaac, three times removed.

The truth is that Isaac Werner was a forgotten man, but he is forgotten no more.  It was surprisingly emotional for all of us to visit Isaac's grave in Neelands Cemetery, not only to see Isaac's stone but also many of the other early settlers buried there, several of whom are mentioned in Prairie Bachelor.  I open Prairie Bachelor by quoting Walt Whitman's poem and close the book with a reference back to that poem, asking,  "Will someone when I am dead and gone write my life?" I conclude by answering Whitman's question with, "Someone has."  

By using Isaac's life to tell the true story of the Populist Movement--the struggles that led farmers, ranchers, miners, and small town merchants to form a political party, the successful achievements of the People's Party, and the eventual decline of the party--a pattern very much like Isaac's own life--my book has brought awareness of this historic movement to so many people, a political movement that changed the two older parties and continues to influence politics today. Now, not only Isaac's relatives know who he is, but also people across the nation--and even beyond.  Isaac's story attracted readers who would never have read a scholarly book about political history, but today they recognize the significance of Populists and Progressives that began with farmers like Isaac and that continues to impact politics today. 

Gifting "Prairie Bachelor" to Heidelberg Heritage Society

  

Corporations and the People's Party

Isaac's journal kept during the Populist Movement

The early years of what became the United States of America consisted almost entirely of a population of farmers, proprietors of small shops, and independent producers, like blacksmiths and farriers.  Gradually, that began to change from self-employed proprietors to large corporations operated by salaried managers.  The agricultural and small merchant society of community businesses and small towns with citizens having fewer economic differences evolved into larger urban areas with greater distinctions in wealth.

At the beginning of the Civil War, there were 400 millionaires in the United States.  By 1892 there were 4,047.  American society had evolved into a wealthy class, a middle class, and a laboring class.  Key to this evolution was the changing view of incorporation.  Many lawmakers saw the interests of the nation as linked to the growth of large corporations.  With this perspective, lawmakers voted for tax cuts and other benefits, and the old way of life changed forever.

It was during this period of rapidly changing social conditions that Isaac Werner kept his daily journal and farmers and other workers formed the People's Party to come together in their greater numbers to politically confront the smaller number of wealthy voters.  However, the wealthy had greater power, and with many politicians seeing corporations as essential to the economic growth of the nation, even those politicians elected by workers often voted with the wealthy once in office.

Power of Wall Street & Railroads political cartoon

Farmers like Isaac saw the incorporation of America as an unfair misappropriation of the nation's wealth.  The original idea had been that the new nation's greatest wealth was in its vast lands, a wealth that seemed inexhaustible.  Thomas Jefferson and others had predicted that it would take a thousand years for the population to spread to the Pacific, and homestead laws were enacted to encourage that spread.  Instead, only three generations had been needed.  Railroads had played a significant role in that expansion, and railroads had also been key to the economic changes in the nation, including the growth of incorporation.

After the Civil War the 14th Amendment was enacted to provide freed slaves "equal protection of the laws."  However, an aggressive lawyer used it for his railroad client's purposes.  Seeking to avoid a California tax on railroad property, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company owned by Leland Stanford argued that his railroad was a person too.  His lawyer cited the intent of those who drafted the amendment as having been meant to embrace 'artificial persons as well as natural persons."  Years later it was found that the lawyer had fabricated that intention.

By then, as the saying goes, the horse was out of the barn.  A series of cases which have led to the more recent Citizens' United case, have expanded the interpretation to see corporations as people too.

In a speech in 2003 by Bill Moyers, he said:  "They [populists and progressives] were a diverse lot, held together by a common admiration of progress--hence the name--and a shared dismay at the paradox of poverty stubbornly persisting in the midst of progress like an unwanted guest at a wedding.  Of course they welcomed, just as we do, the new marvels in the gift-bag of technology...But they saw the underside, too--the slums lurking in the shadows of the glittering cities, the exploited and unprotected workers whose low-paid labor filled the horn of plenty for others, the misery of those whom age, sickness, accident or hard times condemned to servitude and poverty with no hope of comfort or security. ...This is what's hard to believe--hardly a century had passed since 1776 before the still-young revolution was being strangled in the hard grip of a merciless ruling class."

United States Supreme Court

When America was founded, there was a natural suspicion of corporations, based on abuses known from English law.  The evolution of corporations in American was gradual, recognizing the benefits of people coming together to pool assets for businesses larger than the simple independent producers in the original colony but also realizing the potential for abusive power.  Yet, gradually the benefits began to seem more important than the risks.  Black's Law Dictionary defines a corporation as "An artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state or nation... acting as a unit or single individual in matters relating to the common purpose of the association..."

We ordinary humans do not need "the authority of the laws of a state or nation" to define us.  Corporations do.  In the Citizen's United case, the dissent argued that the Founding Fathers disliked corporations and never intended the First Amendment to apply to corporations.  In his concurring opinion with the majority, Justice Scalia wrote that even if that argument were relevant, "the individual person's right to speak includes the right to speak in association with other individual persons."  Scalia seemed to think that because a group of individuals had incorporated to manufacture "something or other," they were entitled to select those to speak for them about their common venture, and those persons, acting within that corporate capacity, are protected under the first amendment. 

For Scalia, the individual shareholder in the corporation has not only his voice but also the voice of the corporation of which he is a part.  One might say such a person has his own tiny voice but also the megaphone volume of his voice amplified by the wealth and influence of the corporation.  Others might see it as unfair for both individual shareholders and the corporation of which they are a part to have the protection of the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech, but the Supreme Court did not.

By analogy, it might be argued that all of those coming together in the People's Party in the late 1800s to exert more influence through the combined power of their votes were using the power of a political party to magnify their individual votes.  Even so, they didn't get to vote twice. 

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