276
PARTISAN REVIEW
the individualistic myth of the past and their concrete successes when–
ever they adapted their goals to the new economy, and interprets the
New Deal not as a continuation of Progressivism but as a more realistic
movement guided by concern for practical results; during the Roosevelt
period it was not the reformers but their opponents who appealed to
moralistic slogans. Mr. Hofstadter's central thesis is by no means new,
but it is worked out with the aid of a vast quantity of detailed research,
and it enables him to explore aspects of the Populist and Progressive
movements which naive liberals have always found baffling and embar–
rassing and have often preferred to ignore. Brilliantly written, and dis–
playing a refreshing intellectual sophistication,
The Age of Reform
is
undoubtedly the best analysis of the subject yet written.
As
a protest against the special privileges of big business, Populism
has usually received the approval of liberal historians (and for the
past generation almost all American historiography has been liberal).
Actually it was deeply infected with nativism, xenophobia and anti–
Semitism and with rural suspicion of the city and of foreign countries,
and its leading spokesmen showed a strong tendency to interpret all
recent history as a conspiracy of the money power (usually English or
Jewish, or both) to enslave honest citizens. Such sinister attitudes are
characteristic of classes who feel insecure and have lost status, and as
Mr. Hofstadter shows, they were also displayed at the same time by
another group who had only contempt for the Populists: namely, by
members of old New England families like the Adamses and the Lodges.
Underlying the whole reform movement was a strong element of re–
sistance to the whole historic trend which was both destroying the old
economic individualism and at the same time ending American isola–
tion, and this resistance could assume either liberal or reactionary forms
according to how it was channeled by the quality of its leadership and
the course of events. In terms of Mr. Hofstadter's approach, it
is
no
longer puzzling that Southern Populism so easily degenerated into a
crusade for white supremacy, that the age of reform was also an age
of a militantly nationalistic foreign policy, that so many farm-belt Pro–
gressives were America-Firsters, and that the state that produced the
La Follette dynasty is now represented by Senator McCarthy.
The same alignment of forces appears in Mr. Higham's book, which
traces xenophobic thinking and activity from the Civil War until the
adoption of immigration restrictions in the 1920's. Whereas big business–
men usually favored unlimited immigration, fear of the foreigner .was
propagated partly by members of old Eastern families (the New Yorker
Madison Grant being a characteristic representative of the species) and
