Book Reviews : The Symbolic Uses of Politics. By MURRAY EDELMAN. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. Pp. 201, $5.00.)

• Published date: 01 March 1966
• Date: 01 March 1966
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591296601900122
• Subject Matter: Articles

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financial help. They, and others (like Gardner Jackson) , publicized the plight of
the tenant farmers, reporting the incidents of fraud and violence until the problem
became a national issue. Norman Thomas, writes Conrad, &dquo;spoke with a frankness
foreign to most politicians.&dquo; Wallace, according to Conrad, was a man of deep
conscience who &dquo;characteristically spoke and wrote in terms of high idealism but his
actions were strictly middle of the road.&dquo; With the issue drawn, it could only be
resolved by choosing between the &dquo;agrarians&dquo; and the &dquo;liberals.&dquo; Wallace decided
to purge the liberals. Conrad’s judgment: &dquo;... it is much easier to excuse the liberals
for their brashness, ignorance of agriculture, delay in acting, faulty strategy, and
compassion for suffering tenant farmers than it is to forgive the agrarians for their
close-mindedness, refusal to tolerate interference with their programs, pro-landlord
bias, and hard-heartedness toward tenants.&dquo;
Conrad’s study has deservedly won the Agricultural History Society Award for
1964. The book details the farm problems inherited by the Roosevelt administration,
with special emphasis on cotton culture; the legislative history of the AAA; the prob-
lems of administering the act, and the fierce internal quarrels which developed; its
effects on sharecroppers and their losing efforts to obtain simple justice; the share-
croppers’ trials -
the beatings, arrests, economic intimidations, and even murders
they suffered -
when they attempted to organize; and ends with the Supreme Court
decision which declared the AAA unconstitutional. The AAA may have helped
American agriculture. But because of it many tenants were forced off the land,
eventually, after many privations, to find a better livelihood in other occupations.
&dquo;A great, humanitarian nation as rich as the United States,&dquo; writes Conrad in con-
clusion, &dquo;can find better ways to achieve such...