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Governor Henry Horner, Chicago Politics, and the Great Depression. By Charles J. Masters, (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Pp-xviii, 243, $24.95.)
Master's study is a welcome, if brief addition to the small body of literature on one of Illinois' most revered governors. Horner's tenure as governor was complicated by the unprecedented economic crisis of the Depression and his attempt to assert his authority over the Chicago Democratic Party organization that wanted him to act as an agent of their own political agenda.
The volume adds some new information on Horner's family background and his upbringing in the Democratic organization. It also tells us a little more about the friendship between James Aloysius Griffin, the Catholic bishop in Springfield, and Horner, though much is left out. While Griffin could not appear to support any candidate in the primary campaign of 1936, he was not an impartial bystander. He quietly marshalled clergy in his diocese, encompassing a broad swath of the state between Peoria and Alton, to turn out the vote for his friend, and we can be sure he lobbied others in the Catholic hierarchy as well as other church leaders to do the same.
Much...