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Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 19041920. By Jim Bissett. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. xviii, 249 pp. $33.95, ISBN 0-8061-3148-9.)
Was American socialism a contradiction in terms, an alien ideology tended by Lower East Side immigrants? The most notable leaders of the Socialist Party of America (sPA) grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Marion, Ohio. Its national newspaper was published in Kansas, its greatest electoral success achieved in Milwaukee. Historians know there was a moment of tender promise just before World War I and a raft of prominent adherents. Specialists know about Oklahoma: there were proportionately more sPA members and greater voting strength there than anywhere else in the country before the war. In 1914, the sPA candidate for governor received 20 percent of the vote. Sooner socialists were blamed for the green...