The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978 Page: 245

Book Reviews

in developing the social characteristics of the Alliance, the "Sisters"
part of the "Brothers and Sisters" chapter fail to emerge with more
than the lame but intriguing observation that one-fourth of the
Alliancemen were in fact women, a statement that may provoke fresh
inquiry into this neglected aspect of farmer movements. A discussion
of Alliance-evangelical Protestant compatibility is similarly intriguing,
but indecisive. The study also provokes a reminder that an incisive
history of the National Reform Press Association is needed. The
author's allusion to the Alliance movement as encompassing the transi-
tion from subsistence to commercial agriculture invokes the thought
that here lies a fertile field for the methodology of the cliometrician.
The Populist Vanguard fails to successfully explain the demise of the
Alliance, and what distinguished the Alliancemen who became Popu-
lists from the Alliancemen who did not, and on this point much of
the historical Alliance-Populists dialogue hinges.
The work is well-researched and essentially solid. The author pro-
vides a good analysis of subtreasury politics on the state level, and of
the dimensions of the cooperative movement. Texas looms large in
the author's perspective of the Alliance, but that can in part be justi-
fied by the facts, and in part by a Texan's "world view" of what is
important. Overall, Populist Vanguard is an initial and commendable
effort to give a historical synthesis of the southern Alliance movement.
Texas A&M University HENRY C. DETHLOFF
When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma
Countryside, 910o-z924. By Garin Burbank. (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1976. Pp. x+224. Acknowledgments, preface,
appendices, index. $13.95.)
Oklahoma socialism deserves attention, and has received it in Garin
Burbank's book and in several other books which Burbank used. Bur-
bank's primary sources included the approximately two dozen Okla-
homa socialist newspapers of the period, and other local newspapers
(though it was easier to find socialist newspapers than Republican
newspapers). Burbank also made good use of the census, the official
voting returns, and some experiment station studies.
In Burbank's book the explosive country editors have found another
forum, but the author is always in command-selecting the subjects
on which they are to comment, establishing the context, and drawing
the conclusions.

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