Legacy
Many Greenback activists, including 1880 Presidential nominee James B. Weaver, later participated in the Populist Party. By the middle of the 1880s, Greenback Labor nationally was losing its labor-based support, in part as a result of craft union voluntarism and in part as a result of Irish defections back to the Democratic Party.
Historian Paul Kleppner has observed that one of the traditional functions of third parties in the American political system has been the raising of new issues, the testing of their viability amongst the electorate, and the pressuring of established political parties to appropriate these issues as part of their own electoral agenda. In this the Greenback Party and the People's Party which followed it were ultimately successful, moving the Democratic Party to espouse looser monetary policy and an ultimate abandonment of the gold standard.
Read more about this topic: Greenback Party, Organizational History
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 14661536)