Age of Reform

[Anonymous No.16802532]

Has anyone else read this? What did you think? I recently finished it based on a recommendation from this website. Very interesting book, but it clearly takes the positions of the liberal establishment in a post New Deal America even while trying to temper the New Deal enthusiasm. I would love to read a more modern Left or Right wing critique of Hofstadter. The whole thing still feels very relevant today.

Also, I will never stop loving William Jennings Bryan.

[Anonymous No.16803312]

[Anonymous No.16803365]

>>16802532
Whats the main thesis?

[Anonymous No.16803614]

>>16803365
Basically analyzes progressive and populist movements at the turn of the century and how they laid the groundwork for the New Deal. He says a great deal, but some of the things I found interesting were:

Third parties in American history have been very successful in getting their policies adopted by major parties.

There was a high-low alliance between agrarian populists and northeastern elites.

Anti-Semitism in America was typically associated with opposition the big banking and dislike of Great Britain.

The Yankee farmer was more or less an individualistic entrepreneur outside of new England. Where European peasants were conservative, American farmers were fairly liberal and progressive.

Big banks essentially used their influence to shut down major muckraking publications.

Populists were baited into supporting the Cuban intervention and free silver, both of which finished them as a movement.

The progressive movement was essentially an elite revolt driven by an American aristocracy afraid of losing social status to the plutocrats.

The whole book still feels very relevant.

[Anonymous No.16803683]

>>16803614
Holy based, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.16804127]

>>16803614
>The Yankee farmer was more or less an individualistic entrepreneur outside of new England. Where European peasants were conservative, American farmers were fairly liberal and progressive.

Are you sure you're understanding this correctly? I'm gonna cop the audiobook tonight cuz this seems comfy af, but I wonder about this summary because inside the US, only people from New England are referred to as "yankees" while people outside of the US might refer to any American as a yankee. Rural people in New England, which is to say the original yankees, are very progressive for example electing Bernie from Vermont or Ed Markey from Massachusetts, but outside of New England things start to get conservative fast even as close as rural Pennsylvania.

[Anonymous No.16804172]

Hofstadter won a ton of awards for that shit, so this can't compare on that level of significance, but if you like comfy looks at American economic history, you might like this. It's free to stream on Audible Plus, if you're into that sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.16804186]

>>16804127
This was in the 1800's, but is still somewhat true today. Rural New Englanders had a strong sense of economic community (village commons ect.) and shared moral values (remnant of the puritan moral landscape.) Farmers in other portions of the country (in the early republic) were far more isolated given the lack of infrastructure or urban settlements.

I use Yankee in the sense of Anglo. There was a phrase Hofstadter quotes to illustrate this principle, "When the Yankee moves out the German moves in." German immigrants tried to buy farms close together so that their sons could settle near the fathers. Anglo-Americans would routinely travel dozens or even hundreds of miles to pioneer new land. They were liberal and progressive in the sense that they were intensely individualistic and that they were eager to adopt new techniques and forms of government. The early American farmer was far more amenable to the ideas of individual rights and democratic government then the European peasant.

[Anonymous No.16804227]

>>16804186
Also, farmers in New England mostly lived in settlements. In other states they mainly lived on isolated farmsteads.

[Anonymous No.16804262]

>>16804186
Oh, I see. Yes, that does seem to be the case. I don't know if you read Albion's Seed yet, but you might find it interesting. See the problem with it just being a case of Anglos being different than Germans doesn't explain why the south would be different than the north during that first expansion of anglos. I remember it talked about how in the south the wealthy people would set up large manor houses like in Europe were poor people and travelers could come and get shelter in a sort of gift economy. I don't think yankees ever went for that kind of thing. When you have all this open land, why submit to some rich dude? But for some reason people did in the south. Gotta be honest, I don't remember many details of Albion's Seed, have to revisit it.

[Anonymous No.16804307]

>>16804262
Hofstadter's says that American democracy developed in large part because Labor was expensive and Land was cheap. This was the inverse of the European social order where control over land meant you could control society. In the north and west farmers almost never had the cash on hand to hire labor and would have large families so that they would have more labor to till their fields.

I'm not sure why the south developed the way it did. Obviously the cash crop plantation economy was a big part, but I'm not sure how much was culture vs geographic accident.

[Anonymous No.16804315]

>>16804262
Oh, as an American, I just see English as English, but the puritans and pilgrims had bourgeois values and were literate, while the northern English had a less sophisticated culture at the time, after a quick skim of the wiki to refresh myself.

[Anonymous No.16804330]

>>16804315
The northern english being the people who ended up in the south

[Anonymous No.16804334]

>>16804262
Its worth pointing out that in South Carolina and Georgia rice could only be cultivated on a small amount of coastal land. Of course this doesn't work for tobacco. I have no idea how indigo is grown.

[Anonymous No.16804342]

>>16804315
Literacy was a major difference. Very much tied to the nonconforming protestant need for everyone to read the bible.

[Anonymous No.16804397]

>>16804334
Tobacco is big in New England. Even when I was a kid you would still see farms with drying tobacco hanging. I read rice from the southern United States has the highest levels of arsenic cuz of some fucked up agricultural practices they had during cotton's high point.

[Anonymous No.16804683]

>>16802532
I've only read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by him and it was phenomenal, one of the best works of nonfiction I can think of. Now I'm eager to read The Age of Reform. Anyway, tangentially related to your request but check out Lasch's The True and Only Heaven.

[Anonymous No.16804690]

I hate to bring up "identity politics" but what does he have to say about jim crow and segregation and shit?

[Anonymous No.16805950]

>>16804690
He doesn't really talk about it at all. He's more interested in examining anti-antisemitism and anti immigrant prejudice. He discusses the Klan of the 1920's but principally as an Anti-Catholic organization which was its primary role in most of the country.

[Anonymous No.16807171]

>>16802532
See "The terrors of ideological politics: Liberal historians in a conservative mood"
https://archive.org/details/terrorsofideolog00mort

>>16803614
Well the northeast elite supported the gold standard and basically everything the populists opposed... it wasn't until Nixon America finally kicked gold. The progressive movement was an urban middle class reaction and not really a continuation of populism.
Also farmers throughout American history have constantly supported expansion and been backers of imperialism which a lot of liberals would rather ignore. Opening foreign markets by force was always the safest way to protect their lifestyle and get higher prices for their products instead of domestic social experimentation.

[Anonymous No.16807335]

>>16807171
Hofstadter addresses all of this. In fact he may be the originator for many of the ideas you put forth.

> the northeast elite supported the gold standard and basically everything the populists opposed.
He asserts that free silver was made into a panacaea by the mine owners and that most serious populists understood that it was of secondary importance at most. On other issues there was in fact a significant amount of convergence between the Mugwumps in the vein of TR and the rural rebels.

> The progressive movement was an urban middle class reaction and not really a continuation of populism.
He is fully aware of the middle class nature of the movement. The two strains did complement each other in many ways and would eventually merge during the New Deal.

>Also farmers throughout American history have constantly supported expansion and been backers of imperialism.
He talks at great length about the conflicting pacifism and jingoism of the populist movement. Also this was not the case throughout American history. Farmers were incapable of forming a coherent lobby to affect policy until fairly recently.