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Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893. By Douglas Steeples and David 0. Whitten - Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998, x + 261 pp. Bibliography, index, notes, and tables, Paper, $59.95. ISBN 031327 9438.
In 1950 Henry Steele Commager declared the 1890s "the watershed of American histon@- In the half century since, historians, political scientists, economists, and sociologists have intensively analyzed those crucial years. What is remarkable given its acknowledged importance is that no single monograph has sought to examine full), the terrible economic depression that lay at the core of the decade and gave the era its transformative role.
In this ambitious work, Douglas Steeples and David Whitten attempt that daunting task, first describing the depression and then analyzing its effects on economic, political, and social developments. There is much of value in this book. The authors look at the depression's impact on subjects as familiar as Populism, the Pullman strike, Jacob Coxey's industrial army, and the election of 1896, and also on topics as unfamiliar as poetry, popular music, sporting goods, and national marriage rates.
This book is most successful in tracing the depression itself, although sometimes the forest becomes obscured by the trees, as the authors include tables of statistics on bond issues, crop...