The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 5

Progressives and Prohibitionists:
Texas Democratic Politics, 1911-1921
LEWIS L. GOULD*
D URING THE PAST DECADE, STUDENTS OF AMERICAN POLITICS HAVE
devoted much attention to the turbulent history of the Demo-
cratic party in the 192o's. The struggles between the prohibitionist,
old-stock, southern, and western wing of the party, and the urban, wet,
new-stock, northeastern portion of the Democrats have been effectively
explored in state and national contexts. Perceptive local studies, in-
cisive articles on voting behavior, and comprehensive monographs
have traced the emergence of the New Deal coalition. In the process,
the fortunes of the northern and urban faction of the party, and espe-
cially key leaders like Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt, have received
particular emphasis.-
The ultimate success of the policies that the northeastern Demo-
crats championed has more than warranted this historical concentra-
tion. No clear understanding of twentieth-century politics would be
possible without a grasp of the attraction of a figure like Smith for
the city voter in 1928, or the way in which Roosevelt created a ma-
jority coalition after 1932. But it is also true that these Democrats
have enjoyed an intrinsic appeal to liberal academicians. They stood
for cultural pluralism and a tolerant view of alcohol, and opposed
organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. To those who assert that the
party harbored competing provincialisms in the 1920's, other scholars
respond that the northeastern version of this phenomenon does not
*Lewis L. Gould, associate professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin, is
the author of Wyoming: A Political History and a forthcoming book on Texas Democrats
in the Woodrow Wilson era.
-J. Joseph Huthmacher, "Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Francis Murphy: The
Metamorphosis of Progressivism," New York History, XLVI (January, 1965), 25-40; David
Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, z918-1932
(New York, 1968); John D. Buenker, "Cleveland's New Stock Lawmakers and Progressive
Reform," Ohio History, LXXVIII (Spring, 1969), 116-137; Buenker, "The Urban Political
Machine and the Seventeenth Amendment," The Journal of American History, LVI
(September, 1969), 305-322; Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, "The Cities and
the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?" American Historical Review, LXXIV (April,
1969), 1205-1220.