Lawrence Goodwyn argues “insurgent movements are not the product of ‘hard times’; they are the product of insurgent cultures.” (Goodwyn 61) There is one major flaw to this theory. Goodwyn assumes that ‘hard times’ and ‘movement cultures’ are mutually exclusive. Movement cultures create the ideas and the actions that lead to an insurgent movement, but it is hard times that lead people to a movement culture, making both crucial for a movement. If we were to look at the three major radical movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the United States we would see the interaction of movement culture and hard times vary. In the movement that sprung from the Pullman Strike, there was a period of hard times for the workers but a movement culture that had not fully developed. The Ku Klux Klan had a fully developed movement culture, but little ‘hard times’ to push the members deeper into a movement. Finally the Populist movement had both a strong movement culture and was rich with ‘hard times’.

The movement culture of Pullman Strike came many years after the initial movement failed. The strikers and later supporters of the initial strikes displayed outward, symbolic solidarity, but that seems to be the extent of the movement culture until many years later, created by some who had been originally involved were still fighting. Supporters of the movement wore white ribbons, but little else united the movement that differed itself from anything else at the time. The workers didn’t fight for an inherent change in a denigrating system. At the time, it merely called for higher wages and better working conditions. The organizers of the strike didn’t see anything beyond strikes that improved wages for others but were dangerous for some.

It was years later when Eugene Debs, the lead organizer for the Pullman boycott, became a socialist that it was wrapped in a real movement culture. When Debs was learning more about the tenets of socialism, he was able to put a greater ideology of socialism on the strike. The movement culture of the Pullman strike was placed ex post facto by a growing American Socialist movement years later.

The Ku Klux Klan’s second life had a movement culture that permeated all aspects of life. Rich with racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and fierce jingoistic nationalism, the movement culture of the Klan was vast and effective. The movement culture didn’t end with those simple ‘-isms’ though. It included everything from a wholehearted attempt at the economic independence of a specific class of white-males to instructions to mothers on child rearing. The Klan also instituted many different aspects of the movement culture beyond just the ideology that surrounded it. It organized mass rallies that celebrated not just the philosophy but also the members and the history of the organization. These celebrations were then used to organize new members into joining, or at least hoping to join. There was also an elaborate initiation and review process for people who hoped to join the Klan.

The strongest aspects of the movement culture that the Klan created was its connection with two other cultures, militarism and Americanism. It freely used military culture in its theory and practices. The ideology spoke of wars and battles against the enemies that it listed. It also utilized uniforms that would be used both in showcase and in battle. Furthermore it had an elaborate chain of command that included titles that were specific only to its movement, like Imperial Wizard. In this way, the Klan was able to endear itself to potential members that sought a highly disciplined, militaristic community. The Klan also tightly wrapped its culture with the culture of America, claiming ‘true Americanism’. It used the same symbols and histories as many other people that didn’t share the Klan’s views. The most important symbol that the Klan used was the American flag. With the use of the flag and other symbols of America, the Klan attempted to make itself synonymous with patriotism; an attempt that worked for some people.

A comprehensive and comprehensible movement culture came from the Populist movement. The success of the Populist movement’s movement culture comes from the fact that it was able to combine a strong, existing culture with a brand-new, radical philosophy. The agrarian society of the American South had a distinct culture long before the Populist movement was ever dreamed. Populism was able to infuse the yeoman-like culture of the southern farmers with ideology of greater economic independence and stability. The ideas of Farmers Alliances and cooperatives were added to simple, farm life.

When the movement grew it did incorporate vast symbols and traditions to its movement culture. It incorporated newspapers throughout Populist friendly regions and also had a national newspaper. However the most famous symbol of the movement was the wagon train that it would bring into a town. Huge parades of wagon trains would ride through towns that were to host meetings surrounding issues of the movement. The trains would become a gathering point for members of town, and they would be used to help recruit future supporters of the movement.

The workers that participated in the Pullman strike were facing difficult times that looked to grow worse. The Pullman workers were living in a period of great economic depression for the whole nation, when their wages were cut with no reduction in housing costs, which was provided by the company. These were similar complaints as industrial workers all over the country. The times were getting very tough economically, and there was no hope in sight. The rags to riches tales of men like George Pullman no longer seemed possible.

This situation wasn’t just that of the Pullman workers that originated the strike. The workers that participated in the boycott, which caused the real controversy, lived in the same conditions but all over the country. The workers reached the point where it was worth the risk to strike or boycott, because there was little room left until the bottom.

The Ku Klux Klan was filled with middle-class white men that created fear of economic changes and racial upheaval that were not imminent. The threats that the Ku Klux Klan presented to its members were mostly the creation of irrational conservatism or simply racism. Though many Klan members took serious economic hits early in the twentieth century, most were skilled workers or private entrepreneurs that owned their own business, or other individuals that were shielded in some way from the hardest of economic times. Economics didn’t produce the hard times that the movement craved.

Because the economics didn’t produce the hard times, the Klan moved towards societal changes to find hard times. Racism and other forms of hatred proved to be effective resources for movement culture building. They were able to use those tactics to convince some people that other races were destroying their culture. Through these ideas, the Klan was able to produce a certain amount of fear of how bad the times were. The Klan also resorted to a vigilantism based on an increase in juvenile delinquency which showcased how awful things had become. When the white families of Athens, GA saw their daughters smoking and dancing, they said with ferocity, the Klan must stop this. They moved through political steps at first to curb hooliganism, but they were forced to resort to night rides to prevent the minor delinquency into becoming a major problem.

America’s agrarian society was fighting for their lives and their existence when the Populist movement grew. The farmers had seen falling prices for the lucrative crops they were producing year after year. Eventually the farmers were unable to purchase supplies, such as seeds or food, based on the revenues from the previous year, so they had to rely on a crop-lien system. They borrowed money off the projections of the crops for the next year to pay for the supplies. The supplies under the crop-lien system cost more than supplies bought for cash, and the projections made by the store owners were customarily higher than actually production.

This produced not just an immediate situation of hard times; there again was no end in sight. In the eyes of the farmers, crop prices were never going to rise again. They were never going to turn a profit of their land to start paying off their debt. They’re never going to pay off their debt. Finally they’re going to lose their land and have no way of subsistence in the future. The farmers weren’t all at the bottom yet, but the view of the bottom was clear enough to be willing to fight.