Charles W. Eagles

Congressional Voting in the 1920s: A Test of Urban-Rural Conflict

In the 1950s, historians explained many phenomena of the 1920s as products of conflicts between urban and rural areas. The Ku Klux Klan, Fundamentalism, Prohibition, immigration restriction, and Al Smiths defeat in the presidential election of 1928 were understood as examples of urban-rural tensions. More recent scholars have found evidence to challenge the urban-rural thesis by examining election results, state legislative voting, Klan membership, and support for Prohibition and Fundamentalism.1 Before scholars reject the urban-rural interpretation, however, it can be tested in a new way: analysis of roll-call voting in the House of Representatives in the 1920s. Such an analysis assumes that the intrinsic and symbolic importance of certain issues to urban or rural legislators outweighs other factors (friendship, partisanship, and pressures from House leaders, the president, and special interests) in determining voting patterns. For a more precise refinement of the urban and rural classifications, congressional voting of representatives from metropolitan districts and extremely rural ones will be compared. The urban-rural (and metro-most rural) divisions cannot be perfect and complete, but differences in voting should be observable if the urban-rural thesis is valid. Not all issues of the 1920s can be examined through roll calls; many did not come before Congress for a vote. On two questions central to the urban-rural interpretation, howeverProhibition and immigration restriction Congress did act. Four votes on each will be considered. Two roll-call votes on immigration restriction involved voting first to approve an amendment to a bill to reduce the suspension of all immigration from two years to just fourteen months, and second, to pass the bill. Four years later the House accepted an amendment to another bill to limit the burden of proof required of aliens to stay in the country, and then it approved the bill itself that restricted immigration to 2 percent of the 1890 population. In both 1920 and 1924, opponents of immigration restriction would have supported

The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968 (review)

be frustrated that they must visit a website (TheAgeofLincoln.com) for Burton’s extensive footnotes. This will not likely trouble students, and The Age of Lincoln seems ideally suited for classroom use, as Burton raises many topics for discussion, writes clearly, provides a wealth of information, and includes many effective vignettes to illustrate his points. Burton’s work further demonstrates Robert Penn Warren’s observation that “in the American mind, the Civil War itself never truly ended.” By the conclusion of the book one is able to see how it was possible for a conflict of such magnitude to become “transmuted to a romantic memory” where people participate in re-enactments or visit battlefields without ever addressing the true causes and consequences of the war (p. 369).