Goldbugs and Greenbacks

by Gretchen Ritter

In Goldbugs and Greenbacks, Gretchen Ritter considers the great financial debate of the late nineteenth-century in which farmers and workers fought to redirect economic policy. Ritter argues that both groups believed money and banking were key to continued economic opportunity for all. Beyond the discussion about gold and silver was a broader dialogue about sectionalism, race relations, and the changing class structure. The farmer-labor groups that promoted anti-monopolism contended that without a fair financial system, the country would degenerate into a two-class society of the very rich and the very poor in which democracy would wither. The antimonopolist movement failed, but the nature and fate of this distinctive and neglected political tradition, examined in depth in Goldbugs and Greenbacks, tells us a great deal about the possibilities for political change in America.