The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon.

The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. By Robert D. Johnston. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. (Princeton and Oxford, Eng.: Princeton University Press, c. 2003. Pp. xxiv, 394. $37.50, ISBN 0-691-09668-6.)

Despite this book's focus on a locale far from the South, this journal's readers should find this extraordinarily ambitious work of general interest and related to some particular concerns, such as Populism. Among other contributions, Robert D. Johnston reinforces the recent interpretive revival of the continuity between late-nineteenth-century Populism (Oregon style) and urban Progressive movements for democratic reform and economic justice. More importantly, however, Johnston deconstructs the concepts of populist democracy, the middle class, and capitalism in fresh and provocative ways.

Johnston uses Portland's uniquely independent and egalitarian political culture to argue for a radical middle-class tradition that he believes intellectuals generally have discounted. Although that point seems exaggerated, certainly Portland's Progressive-era "middling class" proved receptive to structural reforms to make government more responsive to the electorate and to anti-corporate measures such as the single tax.

Progressive leadership was rooted in Populism and unionism, and its distinctive characteristic was that it blurred the line between employers and employees. Portland's leading labor leader, Will Daly, was himself a small entrepreneur and employer. Such leaders, Johnston convincingly explains, were anticapitalists in the sense that, while accepting without question a market economy, they preferred to inhibit large wealth accumulations, unchecked corporate power, and gross inequality. They were "Capitalists Against Capitalism" (p. 85). Johnston concludes that Populism's "halfway covenant" with capitalism left open "the Question of Capitalism ... at the turn of our Century" (p. 89).

Oregon became known for having adopted the initiative and referendum, the recall, direct primary, direct election of senators, and a corrupt practices act. The state government rejected unicameralism, proportional representation, radical administrative reorganization, and occupational representation. In Portland a prolonged fight for a single tax ultimately failed. Johnston rescues from oblivion the antivaccination movement, which, while challenging the Progressive values of science and efficiency, nevertheless expressed a "middle-class populism of the body" (p. 178).

Charismatic leaders and complex populist movements make for a fascinating read, not to mention Johnston's frequent and informative excursions into a staggering amount of related literature. His commentary on scholar's saddling of the lower-middle class, European and American, with reactionary or fascist tendencies seems particularly timely. Yet other such sections can be a mixed bag. Johnston offers a critique of various definitions of middle class. His own "antidefinition" makes sense and gives him a license to use several terms interchangeably--middle class, middling class, ordinary folks, petite bourgeoisie (p. 14). After raising the question of whether Portland was typical, Johnston dismisses the issue as "uninteresting" (p. xv).

At times the author's evidence for his claims seems thin, as in the alleged support of some middling folks for workers and strikes. Also, his account of the 1917 mayoral election leaves one wondering why Will Daly, who lost to a pro-business candidate, later praised and endorsed his one-time opponent. The reader simply wants a fuller explanation at such points. Johnston analyzes elections solely in terms of class, with hardly any attempt to consider other variables such as religion, even when, for example, anti-Catholicism was clearly present.

The neglect of cultural analysis especially affects Johnston's treatment of topics in the section entitled "The Uses of Populism after Progressivism," namely the 1922 School Bill and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan (p. 220). Tom Watson's decline into reactionary intolerance comes to mind when readers encounter the Oregon Klan as an offshoot of Progressivism. But one closes this marvelous book without really understanding the Klan's connection to Progressivism. According to Johnston, what followed democratic populism was "liberal populism," embodied in a proposal to require all school children to attend public schools. Whereas some supporters saw it as an Americanization measure, Johnston sees it as watered-down populism, although the measure would have eliminated private schools.

Johnston's reading of recent literature viewing the Klan as a (reactionary) populist movement seems limited. At one point he refers to the "national Klan populism" (p. 224), but most of the revisionist studies analyzing states and localities stress varieties of Klan movements, all primarily sharing an ideology of white Protestant nationalism. This is not to deny Johnston's picture of the Portland Klan as "corporate tools" led by pro-business "unionists" (p. 244). In fact, that dynamic was likely at work in other cities, but Johnston denies any populist content to the Portland Klan, even though it drew from the same middle-class elements as Progressive movements.

Finally, Johnston's optimism regarding the potential for contemporary middle-class radicalism will strike some readers as naive and others as a welcome burst of hope. Regarding the Progressive period itself', Johnston's own evidence suggests that about 25 to 30 percent of Portland's electorate voted for truly radical measures such as the single tax. Characteristically, he sees "the cup as one-quarter full" (p. 176).

Never mind. This is an important and welcome book, written in a mostly attractive if sometimes casual style. If another edition is forthcoming, the editor and author should correct the dissonant sentences and words that are out of place every few pages. In an arresting and sparkling manner Johnston has shown the continuation of the producer tradition into early-twentieth-century America, and for that we are all in his debt. Sure to spark debate, this book is a fine example of the renaissance in political history.

University of Kentucky 

RON FORMISANO