What are the possibilities for democratic change in the United States? This is the question that led me to write this book. To answer it, I examined efforts to regulate economic existence. I was interested in the political governance of the conditions of production, the distribution of wealth, the availability of economic opportunity, and the rights of workers. In these and other areas of economic life, the range of political options available to a society, and the extent to which those options provide for the autonomy and well-being of the population, are useful measures of democracy.

In the late nineteenth century, a series of farmer-labor parties promoted a political program that would change the governance of economic life. Their interest in economic issues stemmed from the belief that the preservation of economic opportunity was essential for meaningful democracy. These were the antimonopolists, and they included the Greenbackers, the Knights of Labor, and the Populists, among others. When I first became acquainted with the antimonopolists, I was struck by the depth and persistence of this tradition. These groups fielded candidates and participated in national debates on economic issues in every major election during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s.

Other scholars have noted the significance of the farmer-labor tradition in the late nineteenth century, when the United States was undergoing a transition from a primarily agrarian economy to a primarily industrial economy.