Review: Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, by Thomas Alter II

Abstract

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, by Thomas Alter II Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas. By Thomas Alter II. (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2022. 298 pp.) Thomas F. Jorsch Thomas F. Jorsch Oklahoma State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2023) 92 (2): 300–301. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2023.92.2.300 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Thomas F. Jorsch; Review: Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, by Thomas Alter II. Pacific Historical Review 1 May 2023; 92 (2): 300–301. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2023.92.2.300 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search In this thoroughly researched and clearly written study of radical politics and ideas, historian Thomas Alter II argues that German transplants to rural Texas contributed to building a farmer-labor bloc that significantly shaped American politics from Reconstruction to the 1920s. The author emphasizes the transnational character of the movement—both across the Atlantic Ocean and south of the Rio Grande River—and land reform as an important issue. Alter uses three generations of the Meitzen family in central Texas to demonstrate the continuity of transnational producerist ideology that shaped their quest for the cooperative commonwealth. This ideological commitment began in Silesia and was transplanted to Texas in the wake of the failed Revolutions of 1848. Once in Texas, these German-speaking Forty-Eighters employed skills from their days organizing farmers and workers in Europe to shape political organizations in the United States including the Grange, Farmers’ Alliance, Greenback Labor Party, Populists, Socialist Party, and... You do not currently have access to this content.