The Paradox of Oregon's Progressive Politics: The Political Career of Walter Marcus Pierce

Abstract

ROBERT R. MCCOY The Paradox of Oregons Progressive Politics The PoliticalCareer of Walter Marcus Pierce IF ASKED TO NAME INFLUENTIAL state politicians, Oregoniansmight mention the names of Harry Lane, Charles McNary, William U'Ren, or Tom McCall. Walter M. Pierce, however, would likely not be on the list.As an undergraduate, I spent many hours at the card catalog and in the book stacks of Eastern Oregon State College's Pierce Library, named afterCorne liaMarvin Pierce and her husband Walter Marcus Pierce. Despite being a history major, I knew little about either Pierce ? only that Walter was the one-time governor of Oregon and, rumor had it,an active Ku Klux Klan member during his lifetime. Later, I learned about Pierce's complex political life and themany legacies leftby this consummate Oregon politician. Walter M. Pierce's political career spanned fifty-six years, from 1886 to 1942.Over those decades, he held numerous elected offices inOregon: county recorder, state legislator, governor, and U.S. congressman. In addition tohis wide-ranging experience as a politician, Pierce participated in some of the most influential political and social movements of his time, ranging from Populism and Progressivism to eugenics and prohibition. Much debate has surrounded Pierce's political career, especially concerning his connections to theKu Klux Klan, because his life and political activities illuminate the contradictions that existed within the liberal-progressive political tradition in theUnited States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 These contradictions aremainly products of late twentieth and twenty-first century interpretive stances, created as we try to understand how people could have supported efforts to democratize the political process and limit the excesses of themarketplace while at the same timeworking to curb the OHQ vol. no, no. 3 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society This portrait of WalterMarcus Pierce was taken inAugust 1926,during his lastyear as Governor ofOregon. At age sixty-five, Pierce was campaigningfor reelection. During his tenureas governor,Pierce had survived recallefforts, unsuccessfully pushed for tax reform, and sufferedthe lossofhiswife tocancer in 1925. McCoy, The Political Career of Walter Marcus Pierce 391 political and economic rights ofAfrican Americans and Japanese and Chi nese immigrants, exerting a paternalistic moral vision of reform through the implementation of prohibition, and seeking to create a racially pure society through eugenics. Governor of Oregon, New Deal Democrat, populist and progressive, advocate of eugenics and birth control, prohibitionist, and ardent racist, Pierce exemplifies a period of political and social movements that sought to reshape theAmerican Republic. Perhaps the best way to understand these contradictions is through the category of populist politics as defined by historians Robert Johnston and Nancy MacLean. Johnston describes one side of the coin, asserting that the middle class during the Progressive Era created a "radical democratic popu lism" that propelled much progressive political change inOregon and the United States.2 Describing the other side of the coin,MacLean uses the term "reactionary populism" tounderstand the enormous middle class attraction to the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s.3 Individuals like Pierce, who was of themiddle class, existed inboth categories, often simultaneously supporting democratization and economic equality alongside limitations on certain groups' access to such enfranchisement. My understanding of Pierce's middle-class radical-democratic popu lism and reactionary populism isbased on Johnston's interpretation of the middle class in early twentieth century Portland. He contends thathistorical scholarship has consistently constructed themiddle class "as a unitary and ahistorical category or entity instead of a product of constant political and cultural struggle." For Johnston, there is "no such entity as theAmerican middle class." Instead, contrary to the portrayal of "middling folks" as con servative and monolithic, Johnston asserts that "people in themiddle have created one of America's most democratic political traditions, a populism that has often represented a radical challenge to the authority of economic, political, and cultural elites and that has called into question many of the fundamental assumptions of a capitalist society."According to Johnston, the middle class (ormiddling classes) is a flexible category,worked out through politics, because "politics alwaysmakes class concepts meaningful in society."4 Johnston'smiddling classes comprised members of thepetit bourgeoisie, the working class, and farmers in varying and shifting coalitions. For...