The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906–1916 by James Wright (review)

Shorter Book Reviews 109 points out, quite rightly, that "several important problems have been omitted" from substantive consideration (5). He then goes on to posit that "the private orientation of American society"was a fundamental characteristic ofAmerica during the Revolutionary years and in subsequent decades (8). If so, then one of the most important questions about Revolutionary America is how the overwhelminglyprivate ethic intersected with the civichumanist tradition that John Murrin argues was central to American Revolutionary ideology. Although many of the volume's contributors deal with expressions of the civic humanist ideology, none force these ideas into confrontation with the values that Greene suggests were quintessentially American. Such confrontations took place of their own accord in local communities and in the states where financial and regulative policies, as well as organized interest groups, met with citizens' conscience and the need for political innovation. Only Calhoon's essay--and that in a merely skeletal way--deals with public or private affairs at the state or local level. Good as the essays in the volume are, they skirt the most important issue in forming contemporary understanding of late-eighteenth-century America, and leave us with little overall sense of the essential character and limits of the Revolutionary experience. Alan Tully Department of History University of British Columbia James Wright. The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906-1916. Hanover: University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1987. xx.iv+ 263pp. Illus. James Wright has written a lively,thorough and insightfulaccount of the rise and fall of the progressive insurgency against the old guard of the New Hampshire Republican party during the first two decades of the twentieth century. For historians seeking an explanation of the progressive upheaval, or politics in general, grounded in social, economic, ethnic or religious relationships, however, this study can onlybe a source of frustration. Wright does not ignore these factors; he simply fails to find any meaningful correlations between them and emerging political patterns. After carefully describing the changing composition of the population and the effects of gradual industrialization and urbanization on New Hampshire society, Wright argues that partisan alignments around the turn 110 Shorter Book Reviews of the century cut across class, ethnic and religious lines, with one notable exception--the overwhelming support of Irish Catholics for the Democratic party. The Republican party consolidated its dominance as a result of two related developments at the national level--the failure of the Democrats under President Grover Cleveland to deal effectively with the depression of the 1890s, and the popular image of William Jennings Bryan as an agrarian radical. The triumph in 1910 of the progressive Republican candidate for governor, Robert Bass, did not involve any measurable realignment. Without mobilizing any new bloc of voters, Bass carried the Republican primary by a two-to-one ratio, and "this margin was repeated in most towns, quite independent of their demographic, economic, or cultural characteristics." In the general election, Bass drew his support "largely from traditional Republican towns and wards" (107). Wright concedes that the progressive Republican politicians did come from an identifiable social group--old stock, native, Protestant New England families, but their rivals in both the Republican and Democratic parties came from the same Yankee background. Almost by process of elimination, Wright has come perilously close to reverting to a "Great Man," or perhaps more accurately a "Not So Great Man," theory of New Hampshire politics. A small group of dedicated activists with varying degrees of political skill and vision briefly seized control of the state government, if not exactly the Republican party, and enacted an impressive array of reforms. Again avoiding sweeping generalizations, Wright stresses change and diversity in his analysis of the views and policies of the Republican reformers. An initial perception of corruption in the relationship between state officials and the Boston and Maine railroad, stirred widespread unrest among a younger, somewhat better-educated generation of Republican politicians, and provided them with effective moral appeals. An electorate schooled in town meetings was sensitive to charges of declining citizens' influence over government. Despite a solid record of achievement, the progressive movement began to fragment as soon as reform-minded legislators had to confront specific...