| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jim Bissett. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1999. Pp. xviii, 249. $33.95.

In this book, Jim Bissett tells the story of Oklahoma's highly active Socialist Party. He traces the party from its roots in the Indianhoma Farmer's Union (1904–1907) to its demise in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Bissett characterizes Oklahoma's Socialist Party as one of the most successful in the United States and lauds the innovations in doctrine that made socialism appealing to Oklahoma's largely agricultural population. 1

Bissett follows Oklahoma's Socialist Party from beginning to end. In 1904, the problems of the region's sharecropping cotton farmers led to the development of the Indianhoma Farmer's Union. Although the union was eventually coopted by the large landowners it was designed to overcome, the union gave small farmers invaluable experience in agricultural organization. Members channeled this experience into the creation of Oklahoma's Socialist Party, an organization that chiefly represented small cotton farmers, and sharecroppers in particular. The Socialists made strong inroads into state politics, winning election to more than fifty state and local offices between 1904 and 1913. Twenty-five counties recorded a Socialist vote in excess of twenty-five percent from 1912 to 1914. These achievements were all the more remarkable because of the attempts of the established political parties to disable the Socialists politically. . . .

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