The Age of Reform
by Richard Hofstadter

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Book Reviews of The Age of Reform

Book Review: An indispensable and enduring work
Summary: 5 Stars

Hofstadter is at his best in revealing that the populist movement played -- and preyed -- on the longing of Americans for a pastoral, agrarian past that was ironically little more than myth by the end of Reconstruction. In an increasingly industrial, urban America, the populists were able to set themselves up as downtrodden victims of various villians, chief among them the railroads and the banks.

Yet Hofstadter convincingly argues that the farmers of the West were eager to become businessmen in the boom years following the Civil War, when land and capital were cheap. It was not until they were battered by the economic slumps that are an inevitable part of a market economy that the agrarian movement began demanding government intervention to reign in capital and portraying agriculture as especially worthy of special attention.

The populist's appeal to the little man, dwarfed by powers beyond his control, played well in some segments of the U.S., but Hofstadter portrays a darker side of populism, exposing its anti-foreign and anti-Semitic leanings. Reading about the populist's railings against foreigners and their dark hints of conspiracy by vast economic and political powers, I heard echoes of the speeches of Pat Buchanan.

As for the progressives, the urban reformers who overlapped to some extent with the populists, Hofstadter cogently points out that this middle class movement was in large part a reaction to the growing influence of immigrants in large American cities. The middle class, he argues, was feeling squeezed between the waves of immigrants, who were increasingly catered to by machine politicians, and the new and enormously rich industrial class. The progressive movement was an attempt to wrest back some measure of political strength by undercutting the power of the bosses with "good government" and to reign in the economic clout of the industrialists through reform.

This is required reading for the student of American history. We have produced few historians who match the stature and achievement of Hofstadter, and this book is one of his best.

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