Governor William E. Glasscock and Progressive Politics in West Virginia (review)

Gary Jackson Tucker has researched the life of West Virginia's thirteenth governor and his role as the state's leading progressive reformer. Not only did William E. Glasscock serve as the midwife who birthed numerous reform policies, but he also hastened the Republican political realignment that transpired following the demise of the Elkins political machine. Tucker grounds progressive-era politics in West Virginia within the larger national context, clearly demonstrating how national issues such as prohibition, income tax reform, and the direct election of senators played out in the Mountain State. By the turn of the twentieth century, the office of chief executive was becoming increasingly more progressive under the direction of Glasscock's Republican predecessors. Even with Tucker's emphasis upon continuity, it was under Glasscock when West Virginia's progressive movement came of age.

In assessing Glasscock's performance as a reformer and his institutional legacy, Tucker stresses the complicated and changing political context in which the governor functioned and the obstacles he encountered. Tucker rightly makes clear that business was the central concern of both major political parties as best represented by Fairmont Coal Company's A. B. Fleming and Republican party boss Senator Stephen B. Elkins. Both men opposed any reforms that threatened West Virginia's investment potential or altered the relationship between government and business. The state's reform movement also spawned an intense struggle between conservatives and reformers within the Republican party. Intra-party strife contributed to the disastrous election of 1910, and the death of Stephen Elkins one year later afforded reformers the opportunity to gain control of the party just before the Great War halted the national reform movement.

The chapters on the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strikes are perhaps the most interesting, and certainly of greatest interest to labor historians and students of West Virginia history. In 1912, when operators refused to renew the United Mine Workers' contract, a general strike followed. Some mine operators hired the notorious Baldwin Felts agents to protect private property, while the governor dispatched the West Virginia National Guard to maintain order. Glasscock demonstrated his timidity throughout the strike, and tried to placate all parties involved by searching for a compromise solution to the labor-management conflict. The author relegates the governor to the status of a victim, since credit for ending the conflict was bestowed by contemporaries upon his successor, Governor Henry Hatfield.

However, serious historians will quickly detect the weaknesses in this biography. Tucker's research is primarily limited to those sources that were available when his dissertation, upon which this work is based, was completed in the early 1970s. For example, a careful examination of the author's bibliography identified only four secondary sources that were published this decade. As such, Tucker failed to incorporate a number of recent dissertations and secondary works that one would expect to find when a dissertation undergoes revision for a university press. In short, Tucker's failure to consult all the resources at his disposal results in a dated publication, and one that will be of limited use to the academic community.

Indeed, Governor William E. Glasscock was a fairly effective chief executive and a committed proponent of progressive reform. Readers will learn a great deal about state politics, and the relationships between Glasscock's ideas and the broader currents in American political thought during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As one of the state's most important governors, Glasscock was a reformer, blazing a path that was followed by many of his political successors.