Voices of Protest

...It was seemingly a mean -spirited response to his declining prestige...

...The Second World War delivered the mortal blow to an expiring movement...

...Patriotism became the order of the day for rich and poor alike and class dissension was put aside for the duration...

...In the end he was perceived by most Americans as an egomaniac far more concerned with personal power and influence than social issues...

...Father Coughlin's notorious anti-Semitism, for which he is probably better remembered than his demands for a more equitable distribution of wealth, did not emerge until the twilight of his career...

...At the height of their movements, each of the protesters commanded the loyalty of millions of Americans alienated from an economic system whose profits they did not share in, and a progressive government of liberal intellectuals who did not always successfully conceal their dread of mass movements, in truth, of the working class itself...

...The Louisiana politician's "Share Our Wealth Society" and the Michigan priest's "National Union for Social Justice" were manifestations of "the urge to defend the autonomy of the individual and the independence of the community against encroachments from the modern industrial state...

...SEAN CALLERY...

...Alan Brinkley logically links Father Charles E. Coughlin's and Governor (later Senator) Huey Long's movements during the darkest years of the Great Depression of the thirties...

...Voices of Protest is a melancholy reminder that little progress has been made towards a real resolution of the issues addressed by the Coughlin-Long movements and that our society is surely as fragmented today as it was fifty years ago...