America has a long tradition of middle-class radicalism, albeit one that intellectual orthodoxy has tended to obscure. The Radical Middle Class seeks to uncover the democratic, populist, and even anticapitalist legacy of the middle class. By examining in particular the independent small business sector or petite bourgeoisie, using Progressive Era Portland, Oregon, as a case study, Robert Johnston shows that class still matters in America. But it matters only if the politics and culture of the leading player in affairs of class, the middle class, is dramatically reconceived.


This book is a powerful combination of intellectual, business, labor, medical, and, above all, political history. Its author also humanizes the middle class by describing the lives of four small business owners: Harry Lane, Will Daly, William U'Ren, and Lora Little. Lane was Portland's reform mayor before becoming one of only six senators to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. Daly was Oregon's most prominent labor leader and a onetime Socialist. U'Ren was the national architect of the direct democracy movement. Little was a leading antivaccinationist.



The Radical Middle Class further explores the Portland Ku Klux Klan and concludes with a national overview of the American middle class from the Progressive Era to the present. With its engaging narrative, conceptual richness, and daring argumentation, it will be welcomed by all who understand that reexamining the middle class can yield not only better scholarship but firmer grounds for democratic hope.

Robert D. Johnston is Director of the Teaching of History Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

List of Illustrations and Maps ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
PART I: REHABILITATING THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS 1
One: Rethinking the Middle Class: Politics, History, and Theory 3
Two: Curt Muller and the Capitalist Middle Class: Social Misconstructions of Reality 18
Three: Harry Lane and the Radicalism of Middle-Class Reform 29
PART II: THE POPULIST POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PROGRESSIVE ERA PORTLAND 47
Four: The Contours of Class in Portland 51
Five: Capitalism, Anticapitalism, and the Solidarity of Middle Class and Working Class 74
Six: Petit Bourgeois Politics in Portland and World History 90
Seven: Will Daly: The Petit Bourgeois Hero of Labor 99
PART III: "THE MOST COMPLETE DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD": THE POPULIST RADICALISM OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY 115
Eight: Direct Democracy as Antidemocracy? The Evolution of the Oregon System, 1884-1908 119
Nine: Direct Democracy's Mechanic: William S. U'Ren 127
Ten: From the Grand Reorganization to a Syndicalism of Housewives: Feminist Populism and the Other Spirit of '76 138
Eleven: The Political Economy of Populist Democracy: The Single Tax Movement in Portland, 1908-1916 159
PART IV: A POPULISM OF THE BODY: THE RATIONALITY AND RADICALISM OF ANTIVACCINATIONISM 177
Twelve: A Deluded Mob of Ignorant Fools? The Historiography of Antivaccination, and the Risks of Vaccination 179
Thirteen: Shutting Down the Schools: Parents and Protest in Mt. Scott 191
Fourteen: From the Death of a Child to Sedition against the State: The Life and Ideology of Lora C. Little 197
Fifteen: Direct Democracy and Antivaccination 207
Sixteen: The Success and Radicalism of Antivaccination 218
PART V. THE USES OF POPULISM AFTER PROGRESSIVISM: THE 1922 SCHOOL BILL AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE KU KLUX KLAN 221
Seventeen: School Boards and Strikes: Petite Bourgeoisie against Elite 223
Eighteen: Liberal Populism: The Compulsory Public School Bill 227
Nineteen: Corporate Tools: The Middling World of the Portland Klan 234
Twenty: The Producer's Call and the Portland Housewives' Council: The Tenuous Survival of Petit Bourgeois Radicalism 248
PART VI: CONCLUSION: POPULISM, CAPITALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS 255
Twenty-One: The Lower Middle Class in the American Century 257
Twenty-Two: The Fate of Populism: Moral Economy and the Resurgence of Middle-Class Politics 266
Appendix 1: Tables 279
Appendix 2: Map, Voter Registration Density by Precinct, 1916 291
Abbreviations 293
Notes 295
Index 381