14. Blacklisting Trump officials: See the petition and the “Open Letter to America’s CEOs” circulated by the anti-Trump group Restore Public Trust (https://trumpadminseparation.restorepublictrust.org ), and Michelle Goldberg’s column approving of the operation in the New York Times for April 9, 2019, “Cancel Kirstjen Nielsen.” DCCC blacklist: See Akela Lacy, “House Democratic Leadership Warns It Will Cut Off Any Firms That Challenge Incumbents,” Intercept , March 22, 2019.
15. See Elizabeth Logan, “Lena Dunham Called Out American Airlines after Hearing Transphobic Talk from Two Employees,” Teen Vogue , August 3, 2017.
16. See the thoughtful article on a closely related subject by German Lopez, “Research Says There Are Ways to Reduce Racial Bias. Calling People Racist Isn’t One of Them,” Vox , July 30, 2018.
17. A 2018 study of European and American voters by political scientist David Adler showed that centrists, rather than partisans of the left or right, were “the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions and the most supportive of authoritarianism.” This fascinating challenge to the working-class authoritarianism thesis might seem counterintuitive, but it fits perfectly with what I am describing in this chapter as well as with the much-noted anti-democratic centrism of the European Union. See Adler, “Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists,” New York Times , May 23, 2018.
18. William Galston, Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale University Press, 2018), p. 22. Galston does not specifically endorse any of these “viable alternatives.”
19. See the literature on the “Anthropocene.”
CONCLUSION: THE QUESTION
1. Martin Luther King, “Foreword” in A “Freedom Budget” for All Americans: A Summary (A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1967), n.p. One place the Freedom Budget can be found online is https://www.crmvet.org/docs/6701_freedombudget.pdf .
2. “Democracy of literature”: Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, The First Hundred Million (Simon & Schuster, 1928), p. 2. Statistics on H-J’s lifetime achievement are from R. Alton Lee, Publisher for the Masses: Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), p. 202.
3. “Same level”: Haldeman-Julius, First Hundred Million , p. 2. “The door to learning and culture”: Haldeman-Julius advertisement quoted in Jonathan Freedman, The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in Literary Anglo-America (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 171. I am indebted to Freedman’s book for the interpretation that follows. “They are not intended to decorate shelves”: 1922 Haldeman-Julius advertisement quoted on www.haldeman-julius.org/haldeman-julius-resources/university-in-print.html .
4. E. Haldeman-Julius, My First 25 Years: Instead of a Footnote: An Autobiography (Haldeman-Julius, 1949), p. 6.
5. KKK: The Kreed of the Klansmen: A Symposium , 1924. Marcet Haldeman-Julius, The Story of a Lynching: An Exploration of Southern Psychology (1927). The story in question was the mob murder of John Carter, a savage incident that shocked the nation in May 1927. Two years later, Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius co-wrote Violence (Simon & Schuster, 1929), a novel describing a fictionalized version of the same horrible event.
6. This Tyranny of Bunk was the title of a Big Blue Book from 1927. The Dumbness of the Great: A Survey of the Nonsense, Absurdities, Inconsistencies, Illogicalities, Inaccuracies, and Idiocies of the World’s Outstanding Leaders was a brutal attack on religiosity through history that was written by Joseph McCabe (one of H-J’s favorite writers) and published by Haldeman-Julius in 1948 as Big Blue Book number 700.
The other quotations are from H-J’s The Outline of Bunk (Stratford, 1929), pp. 343, 448. Of the many secularist pamphlets published by Haldeman-Julius, probably the most famous are Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Clarence Darrow’s Why I Am an Agnostic (both 1929).
7. Haldeman-Julius’s greatest hero seems to have been the Populist/Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs, whom he describes in his autobiography as a kind of secular saint: “Debs was great. Debs was beautiful. Debs was noble. Debs was a son of the Socialist movement—a self-made, self-educated worker who, with the aid of his Socialist comrades, had disciplined himself as speaker, writer and leader.” (Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, My Second 25 Years: Instead of a Footnote: An Autobiography [Haldeman-Julius, 1949], p. 59.)
The former Populist Clarence Darrow was also a hero of the Haldeman-Julius publications because of his well-known religious skepticism. Ironically, one of the hoariest set pieces of the anti-populist literature is the 1925 Scopes Trial over the teaching of evolution in the public schools, in which the by-then fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan clashed with the agnostic Darrow, thus supposedly revealing the ignorant fundamentalism of the Populist mind. But, as the historian Charles Postel points out, this cozy cliché only works when you omit the fact that Darrow had been an actual Populist leader while Bryan never stopped being a Democrat.
As long as we’re on the subject, here is one last fun Populist detail: Mary Elizabeth Lease, the uber-Populist orator who coined the exhortation “less corn and more hell,” was also a confirmed believer in the theory of evolution. In 1931 she told the Kansas City Star that “the Bible teaches birth control. And the Bible teaches evolution. I am a believer in inspired religion and I am a believer in scientific research.” She went on to refer to Bryan as “a paid advocate of darkness” for his role in the Scopes Trial and to name her three “greatest teachers” as Moses, Jesus, and Albert Einstein, who “proved that the soul of man, co-operating with the mind of man, can understand everything.”
8. Gilbert Seldes, Mainland (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), p. 151.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the 1980s I was passionate about Populism but gave up on the subject a few years into graduate school: going over a forgotten third party with a microscope somehow lost its appeal for me, and I moved on to other things. But the political panic of 2017 brought me back, as did the encouragement of my publisher, Sara Bershtel.
It’s a challenge to return to a subject after neglecting it for so long, but the changes in research technology made it easier than one might expect. So did the people who helped me with the digging on this project: Zachary Davis, Charlie Goetzman, Grace Menninger, and Amelia Sorenson. Most of all I am indebted to Steve Richmond, who sank countless hours into this project in the late stages, unearthing many of this book’s great finds, and without whom it would probably never have been completed.
The works of Michael Kazin served as models for this study; his 1995 book The Populist Persuasion had enormous significance for me when it first appeared. Another model was Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven , a work and an author that will probably never get the serious attention they deserve.
For this project I interviewed the Reverend William Barber, Fred Harris, and Jim Hightower, three men who were enormously helpful in explaining the reform tradition and the power of mass movements. There are moments with all of them that I will never forget, but the one I am truly sorry I could not work into the text was when Hightower showed me a framed Texas poll tax receipt from 1964, a memento of a thankfully bygone era.
At Pittsburg State University in Kansas, a mandatory stop on the itinerary of anyone writing about the Little Blue Books, Steve Cox and Randy Roberts were especially helpful. The one who is most responsible for my fascination with this subject, however, is Bridget Cain, who picked up some Blue Books for me at a junk shop in Lawrence way back when.
Wesley Hogan helped me find my way through the civil rights journalism of Lawrence Goodwyn. Joe Vaccaro instructed me in the history of Minnesota radicalism. Matt Stoller furnished me with one of the best anecdotes in this entire enterprise. Liz and Matt Bruenig steered me toward probably a dozen more. Barry Lynn, who is as close to a populist as Washington, D.C., will allow, encouraged me throughout.
Thanks al
so to all the people who answered the seemingly random queries I posed: Lance Bennett, Joel Bleifuss, Taylor Branch, Fred Gardaphe, Jay Harris, Michael Honey, Michael Kazin (again), Steven Klein, Bob McChesney, Christopher Parker, Charles Postel, Gabriel Zucman, and the helpful staff at the Kansas State Historical Society.
Jim McNeill read the manuscript, as he has read all of my manuscripts over the last twenty years. Chris Lehmann took a crack at it, too, just like in the old days. Eric Klinenberg set me straight on a few things, and Kate Zaloom made valuable suggestions on a few others. Johann Hari’s advice was consistently excellent. Rick Perlstein proved himself, once again, a man of remarkable insight both historical and contemporary.
Old Town Editions of Alexandria, Virginia, took pictures of cartoons from my 1896 copies of Judge magazine. The Newberry Library provided me with photographs of Chicago Tribune cartoons from 1936. Meg Handler helped me secure permission to reprint all the pictures I assembled.
Sara Bershtel and Riva Hocherman of Metropolitan Books steered this whole project brilliantly from start to finish. My agent, Joe Spieler, provided his usual shrewd counsel.
The mistakes and the blunders and the screwups are mine. I claim them all.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
ACT UP
Adamic, Louis
Adams, Henry
AFL-CIO
AFSCME Local 1733
Against Democracy (Brennan)
Agee, James
Age of Reform, The (Hofstadter)
“Agricultural Unrest” (Laughlin)
Alabama
All Labor Has Dignity (King)
Altgeld, John P.
America First
American Bar Association
American Enterprise Institute
American Journalism (Mott)
American Liberty League
American Nonconformist and Kansas Industrial Liberator
American Prospect
American Protective Association
American Railway Union
“America Was Promises” (MacLeish)
anarchism
Animal Farm (Orwell)
Anti-Pluralism (Galston)
anti-Semitism
antitrust laws
Appeal to Reason
Arizona
Arnold, Thurman
Aspen Ideas Festival
AT&T
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad
Atlantic Monthly
Atwater, Lee
Australian Labour Party
Austria
authoritarianism
“Ballad for Americans”
“Ballad of Hollis Brown, The”
Balzac, Honoré de
banks
Bannon, Steve
Barber, William, II
Bardo, Clinton
Batman films 6
“Battle Hymn of the Republic”
Beck, Glenn
Bell, Daniel
Bell, Jeffrey
Bellamy, Edward
Benton, Thomas Hart
Bentsen, Lloyd
Bilbo, Theodore
Birmingham, Alabama
Black Lives Matter
Black Populism
blacks
“Blacks and the Unions, The” (Rustin)
Blair, Tony
Blow, Charles
Bonus Army
Boston Globe
Bouie, Jamelle
Bourbon Democrats
Bourke-White, Margaret
Boxer Rebellion
Brain Trust
Brennan, Jason
Bretton Woods Conference
Brexit
Brigham Young University, Team Populism
Brinkley, Alan
British Labour Party. See also United Kingdom
Brookings Institution
Brooks, David
Bryan, William Jennings
Buchanan, Patrick J.
Burke, Kenneth
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, George W.
Caldwell, Erskine
California
Calloway, Cab
Capra, Frank
Carmichael, Stokely
Carrel, Alexis
Carter, Jimmy
Carver, Thomas Nixon
Cavalcade of America, The (radio show)
Center for American Progress
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
“Century of Protest, A” (video)
Chamber of Commerce
Cherokees
Chicago
protests of 1968
steel strike of 1937
“Chicago” (Sandburg)
Chicago Tribune
China
Choate, Joseph H.
Choctaw
Churchwell, Sarah
Citizen Kane (film)
Civilian Conservation Corps
Civil Rights Act (1964)
civil rights movement
Civil War
Clanton, O. Gene
Cleveland, Grover
Clinton, Bill
Clinton, Hillary
Coin’s Financial School (Harvey)
Colby, Bainbridge
Colored Farmers’ Alliance
Columbia University
Commentary
Congressional Research Service
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)
conservatism
Cooke, Jay, IV
Cooperative Commonwealth
Cornell University
corporations
Coughlin, Charles
counterculture
Cowie, Jefferson
Coxey, Jacob
Coxey’s Army
Creek tribe
Crowd, The (Le Bon)
currency reform, 128n-29n
Daily Kos
“Dangerous Rise of Populism, The” (Human Rights Watch)
Darrow, Clarence
Debs, Eugene
Declaration of Independence
“Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic” (Sullivan)
Democracy Scare
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Democratic Leadership Council
Democratic National Convention
of 1896
of 1932
of 1936
of 1976
of 2016
Democratic Promise (Goodwyn)
Denning, Michael
Depression
Diggs, Annie L.
Dole, Bob
Dos Passos, John
Dow Jones Industrial Average
DuBois, W.E.B.
Dukakis, Michael
Duke University
Dumbness of the Great, The (Big Blue Book)
Dunham, Lena
DuPont Company
Eastwood, Clint
Easy Rider (film)
Eichengreen, Barry
Eisenhower, Dwight
elections
of 1892
of 1896, 37n-38n
of 1928
of 1932
of 1936
of 1940
of 1948
of 1968
of 1976
of 1980
of 1988
of 1996
of 2000
of 2008
of 2016
Electoral College
Eliot, Charles William
Emerging Republican Majority, The (Phillips)
End of Ideology, The (Bell)
End Poverty in California
Englebrecht, H. C.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
European Union
Evans, Walker
Farm Bureau
farmers
Farmers’ Allian
ce
Farmers Holiday Association
Farmers Union
Farm Holiday strike
Farm Security Administration
Federal Communications Commission
Federalist Society
Ferguson, Niall
Field, Stephen J.
financial crisis of 2008
First Battle, The (Bryan)
Flint sit-down strike
Fonda, Henry
Fonda, Peter
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Policy
Forerunners of American Fascism (Swing)
Fox News
France
Revolution
Freedom Budget
Freedom Rides
Friedrich Naumann Foundation
From Many Lands (Adamic)
Fusionists
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Galston, William
Garland, Hamlin
General Electric
General Motors
George, Henry
George III, King of England
Georgia State Bar Association
Gerstle, Gary
Gilder, George
Gingrich, Newt
Godkin, E .L.
Goering, Hermann
Goethe, J. W. von
Goldman Sachs
gold standard
Good Neighbor League
Goodwyn, Lawrence
granger movement
Grapes of Wrath, The (film)
Great Society
Green, Josh
Greening of America, The
Guardian
Haider, Jö rg
Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel
Haldeman-Julius, Marcet
Hamilton, Alexander
Hanna, Mark
Harrington, Michael
Harris, Fred
Harvard University
Harvey, William “Coin”
Hay, John
Hayden, Tom
Haymarket anarchists
Hearst, William Randolph
Hightower, Jim
Hillman, Sidney
Hitler, Adolf
Hofstadter, Richard
Honey, Michael
Hoover, Herbert
Hoover Institution
Hour of Decision, The (Spengler)
The People, No Page 28
