The La Follette campaign of 1924 should hold a special attraction for students of recent politics.  At the time at least, that elusive political synthesis—a permanent Farmer-Labor party—was apparently in reach of being achieved.  An intensive study of that amazing coalition of farmers, organized labor, the Committee of Forty-Eight, and the Socialist party should shed much light upon American politics, past, present, and future.  In particular, it should reveal the reasons for the liberal failure of the twenties.  Just as importantly, such a study should illuminate those deep economic and psychological tensions in American life that have made such a coalition so plausible in theory but so difficult to obtain in fact.

Mr. MacKay has made a good start toward these goals in this book, apparently the published product of a doctoral thesis.  The author's distinction between the older progressive movement and the La Follette campaign are interesting and at times extremely apt.  His detailing of the rise and fall of the Conference for Progressive Political Action and the La Follette movement is well done considering the sources used.  A worth-while concluding chapter traces the influence of the 1924 Progressives on subsequent history and examines the role of third parties in American politics.  In preparation of this volume the author was fortunate in being able to use the Morris Hillquit, Oswald G. Villard, Thomas J. Walsh, and Mercer Johnson papers, the last of which contained the official journal and minutes of the C.P.P.A. convention and conference.  But like other students of the 1920s he was unable to use the La Follette manuscripts.  Suprisingly, La Follette's Magazine, although listed in the bibliography, is not cited in the footnotes.

The author is at his best when he discusses organized labor's paradoxical part in the movement. For labor, as Mr. MacKay shows, organized and dominated the campaign only to withhold and perhaps withdraw its support in its last days.  he is least effective when discussing the agrarian side of the movement which supplied most of the votes for the Wisconsin Senator on election day.  Although some twenty farm journals are listed in the bibliography, there is but one lone citation to such a source in the entire book.  Disconcerting also is the use of contemporary popular articles for information on the Nonpartisan League and the Farmer-Labor party to the neglect of some fine studies that have appeared in the more scholarly journals.

Mr. MacKay's dissertation has undertaken to examine in details the climax of the postwar Progressive revival, which is the independent candidacy of Senator Robert M. La Follette in 1924.  The work reaches back to the events of 1912 and forward to 1938 to provide a setting for the election year.  The background from 1912 to 1924 is sketched in competent fashion, proving that the old Progressive movement was not lost forever in the events of the war.  Lacking access to the La Follette papers, Mr. MacKay does not clearly delineate the senator as a particular hero and mainspring of the new Progressive movement.  Unfortunately, the La Follette papers have been carefully guarded by the family for many years.  In his introduction and ibliography, MacKay indicates reliance upon personal interviews although the text does not bear this out.  The Mercer Johnston and Morris Hillquit papers were used to good advantage, but the author did not consult the collection of La Follette-Wheeler campaign papers in the Library of Congress, nor did he gain access to the labor files in the Machinists' uilding in Washington, D.C.  The latter should yield a harvest of information on the political intentions and acts of the railway brotherhoods who were so important to the vitality of the whole Progressive revival.

In examining the "third party" candidacy in 1924 the author has shed valuable light upon an important story of political protest in the twentieth century.  Ever since John Chamberlain's Farewell to Reform was published in 1932, a scholarly examination of Progressivism after 1912 has been needed. This book provides some useful correction and factual background.

Those portions of the book dealing with the preliminaries to La Follette's decision to run for President, the fright over an electoral college deadlock, and the difficulties of an independent candidacy are most praiseworthy.  It is clear that this piece of history needed study and publication.  Mr. MacKay overestimates the influence of the Committee of Forty-Eight as the "right wing" of the C.P.P.A.  The fortyeighters never really recovered from the 1920 Farmer-Labor convention quarrel and thereafter existed as the hobby of wealthy J.A.H. Hopkins, who wanted to be the George Perkins of a new Progressive party.  More attention might have been devoted to the congressional election of 1922 and the resulting Progressive bloc as important sources of strength for the neo-Progressives at a time when the electorate's temper made possible an effective political revolt.  That time had passed away before November, 1924.  The book misses the importance of the Socialist party convention which endorsed the candidacy of La Follette, slights the "Harding Scandals" as a campaign issue, and passes over Burton K. Wheeler's campaign for vice-president. Nor does it treat the damage which the publicity of income tax returns (a contribution of the Progressive bloc to the tax law) did to the Progressive campaign because its legal confusions enhanced the value of the Republican slogan "Coolidge or Chaos."  A very good chapter on Republican strategy in the campaign is balanced by some weakness in describing the personal domination of the Progressive campaign by Senator La Folfette and in explaining why the union labor men lost enthusiasm for the cause before election day. Evidence is lacking for the position that La Follette votes were frightened away by large-scale intimidation as in 1896. Mechanical difficulties standing in the way of Progressive voters are stressed, but not the failure of the Progressives to mobilize the support of a first-rate agricultural group or the enthusiasm of the American Federation of Labor.

The book makes excellent sense in its treatment of the nearly impossible hurdles before a third-parry movement, considering the stability of our two-party system. It is this portion which will receive the most attention at the present time.