During the Gilded Age, the People’s Party, also known as the Populists, posed a real threat to the American political duopoly, winning 22 electoral votes in 1892, placing dozens of its members in Congress, and forcing the Democrats to endorse many of its demands in the 1896 presidential campaign. The party’s platform was progressive: it called for the public ownership of rail-roads, a graduated income tax, a shortened workweek, and the end of tight monetary policies that fueled deflation, hurting debtors.

To get this message out to its base of Southern and Western farmers, the party founded hundreds of scrappy, low-budget newspapers. New printing technologies enabled Populist editors to cheaply publish political cartoons, the perfect form for reaching the poorly educated and illiterate.