I was just looking into a few things and came across this, which turns out to be kind of fascinating if you want to understand Indiana politics in the 1920’s. Of course, you probably couldn’t care less about Indiana politics in the 1920’s. But that’s your mistake. Because we’re back there again.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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It’s difficult to read in that format. Do you have any choice excerpts?
The site gives you the option of text or .pdf preview or both together.
Do you not have Adobe Reader? If you don’t, you can download it for free. With Adobe, a photocopy of the original typescript, large type and very readable, should appear on the black window. You can then download it onto your own .pdf file by clicking the middle icon (the one with a downward-pointing arrow), in the ipper right-hand corner of the black window.
If you don’t want to bother with Adobe (not that there’s anything complicated about it), you can press the text tab and read it that way.
I’d read pages 6-36.
I suspect almost all of us could profit from reading more 1920s and 1850s US history (also: the late 19th century Southern redemption, but that’s another story).
Both decades feature immigrant-fueled and reformist popular majorities running up against a mostly white, mostly Protestant, heavily rural, nativist and racist ruling infrastructure held in power by anti-democratic measures.
And both were major political realignments. The 1850’s also featured the death of a major political party that had succumbed to corruption.
I haven’t read it all yet, but thanks for posting, it’s fascinating. I love reading things like this.
You know how Mr. Feightner says that the men who joined the Klan were probably grandchildren of the Know Nothings? Well, the people who are falling into similar patterns today, no doubt many are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people that joined the Klan in the 1920s. I’m talking about in the North.
In other words, it’s not just a similarity, it’s a cultural persistence. But actually, the 1920s was a time of prosperity, but also an age of rapid social change. The “jazz age” “roaring twenties” was a reaction to the Volstead Act (Prohibition), pushed by the Anti-Saloon League and other Protestant organizations. The psychedelic age (at least in this country), along with political activism, was a reaction to the assassinations and Vietnam War of the 60s and 70s. If the age of Trump is anything like those two periods, there will be a huge resistance. Americans, or at least an awful lot of Americans, don’t like being pushed around.
Women gained the right to vote in the 20’s. They bobbed their hair and wore more practical clothing.
Makes me miss Molly Ivins. She knew the Texas lege like that.
My Missouri grandmother was very religious and a total anti-Catholic.
I’ll have to come back to it later but the tale of the Klan reminds me that Indiana has been called the northern most southern state.
The Indiana version of the Ku Klux Klan reminds one of the Taliban as presented here — the religious and moral police.
The secret society formation allows it to operate under the radar, especially in a society where everyone else is seeking publicity.
A little different in character from the Klan in the South and especially from the first Klan and the “redemptionist” movements in the 1870s. Appropriations of post-Civil War traditions for a different social and political movement.
Also the tendency to behave like an apolitical gang shaking down businesses and individuals.
Also, much more anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic in emphasis.
“Indiana politics”…”we’re back there again.”
Since we will now have a Hoosier Republican as Vice President again, I’m going to ask, who is dumber, Quayle or Pence?