The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard Hostadter is a wonderful historian who paints with broad yet nimble strokes. He knows the details but does not suffocate the reader with them. His forte is grasping the fundamental beliefs and conditions that guide American political and social movements. Here he shows how "liberal" and "conservative" impulses interwined in the reform movements of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. I was especially intrigued with his argument about the myth of the idealized past, and how that myth becomes increasingly stronger even as it moves further away from the reality (take, for example, the image of 1950s small-town America in today's culture). If you believe, as I do, that the era in which we live has strong similarities to the American situation at the last turn of the century, then you will no doubt find this book valuable.

This book deserves its status as a classic: written more than 55 years ago, it remains highly relevant to today, not just in his critique of the left-leaning from 1890s to the end of the New Deal, but in his analysis of the dynamics of popular movements regardless of their beliefs. Though the book is written is a somewhat staid academic style, the content is utterly fascinating, original, and hard-edged. It is a dazzling synthesis that examines the vanishing yeoman farmer, womens' rights, industrialization and urbanization, and the adaptation of the political parties to the volcanic upheavals that these forces unleashed.

Hofstadter begins with a definition of populism: it originated with a romanticised notion of the independent semi-autarkic farm, which was disappearing as businessmen in the distant growing cities commoditized their produce, pushing wages down to the point that they could barely make a living. The farmers were isolated, bound to small communities, and almost all protestant fundamentalists living by unforgiving moral codes. As Hofstadter demonstrates, their ideas were unrealistic, even utopian, to the point that the scorn of city dwellers doomed their movement to the sidelines. He also points out the contradictions between their beliefs and actions: not only were most farmers becoming businessmen themselves, but their christianity reinforced (rather than mitigated) their racism, xenophobia, and narrowness of mind. It is a devastating critique, in particular because they later became the seedbed of the Ku Klux Clan (which Hofstadter examines at length). With a large part of their purpose seeking to hold back modernism, these men were a far cry from the spontaneous democratic uprising that some liberals like to portray in popular books. Hofstadter argues that Bryant embodies many of these aspects - the good and the bad.

Nonetheless, many of the populist ideals were adopted by the progressives, who were essentially urban-based, better educated, and operated in a booming economy. The business men farmers began to make a very good living as the economy - to feed the massive cities that were welcoming impoverished, though ambitious foreigners - and they made common cause with the muckrakers and others. Though the two parties resisted them - big business of the GOP, the old-elitist "mugwumps" of the dems - the movement became so strong that both adopted many of their positions into their platforms. The nouveau riche (with smaller businesses) also allied themselves with the progressives, fighting entrenched interests of landowners and financial fat cats. The exemplars of this period are Teddy Rooseveldt and Woodrow Wilson, who in fact enacted very little beyond legislative gestures that were unenforceable, if rhetorically flamboyant. Underneath the rhetoric, urban political machines flourished, big business was allowed to brutally "discipline" industrial laborers in accordance with the efficiency mantras of taylorism, and the opening of the electoral process to popular-vote primaries strengthened existing elites rather than forced them out.

In a wonderful analysis of the birth of the Jazz Age conservatism, Hofstadter argues that the tieing of progressive rhetoric to WWI by Wilson led to the undoing of the progressive movement: once the public mood turned against the war, voters associated it with the progressive rhetoric. At that point, the rural population won disproportionate political power (largely through the election of 2 senators per state regardless of population size) and split from the urban progressives. This is the root and institutionalization, he asserts, of the stalled political process of our legislature.

It was only with the Great Depression that a new progressive coalition was formed under FDR. Though this chapter is too short, Hofstadter proved, at least to me, that the New Deal was the culmination of many of the original progressive ideals, enacting more effective legislation that regulated business, introduced a far stronger role for government in both economy and society, and led a war effort that became a patriotic success, opening the way to the development of modern liberalism. Of course, conservatives see this (or Wilson) as the beginning of the end of "freedom" in the US.

In spite of the density of ideas in the book, it is a tough read. The book assumes a high level of knowledge, about at the graduate level, and does little to enlighten the reader about the substance of some pretty obscure controversies. For example, there is a long section on the "silver question" - I had absolutely no idea what this meant and that occurred repeatedly on a variety of topics and minor movements. His writing style can also be a bit pedantic, with all sorts of hemming and hawing that should have been edited out.

But it astonished me how relevant to today these ideas were, in particular on the behavior of politicians, who de-fanged popular movements by adapting their ideas to the way they preferred to wield power - and they stayed in power for the most part. Recommend with enthusiasm. He is one of the greatest American intellectuals of the 20C.