WHERE TOWN HALLS ORIGINATED BUT WERE THEY REALLY DEMOCRATIC?
Coleman, Mcalister
Where Town Halls Originated But Were They Really Democratic? TOWN MEETING COUNTRY, by Clarence Webster. Duell, Sloan & Pearce. $3. l Revieived by AAcAlister Coleman EVERY now and then some good...
...Incidentally, it is astonishing to find no reference in the historical section to the most significant of all town meetings, that of Boston for the 10 years preceding the Revolution, under the brilliant leadership of Sam Adams, "The Man of the Town Meeting...
...l Revieived by AAcAlister Coleman EVERY now and then some good soul expresses the nostalgic wish for the return of the good old days of the New England town meeting...
...HOWEVER, the book is written with fondness and gusto and there are few dull pages in it...
...Webster's contention that the small town is the core of democracy and that the town meeting has given strength and cohesion to the small town...
...It is Mr...
...The author is at pains to prove how shrewd, pragmatic, and altogether commonsensical his people are and always have been...
...For real democracy, I would swap any meeting of the old Non-Partisan League of North Dakota or the Progressives when Bob La Follette was coming up, for a dozen of Mr...
...Parts of Mr...
...Webster's valuable contribution to Americana will prove highly disillusioning...
...They have no time for reformers or other "romantics...
...Webster tells us, the town meeting has served to hold the little communities together, but for what ends...
...His town meeting country is arbitrarily set in Connecticut and Rhode Island, centering around New London...
...It is not the author's fault that the Connecticut small towns which he describes, with their baseless prides and silly prejudices, play so small a part in the national scene today, nor that the latter-day town meeting bears about as much relationship to genuine democracy as a gathering of the local Lions Club to hear the Treasurer's report...
...In those days, it is presumed, American democracy functioned most realistically...
...It may be that, as Mr...
...Webster's dreary, penny-pinching debates over whether or not the Alworth Hill road should be surfaced before a bridge is built over the Muddy River, which is about what the New England town meeting has petered down to today...
...The doing in of the Summer residents, the propping up of corrupt politicians, the shifting of tax burdens and other local responsibilities to larger units of government...
...Quite often his evidence goes to show that his people are miserly, small-minded, and as lacking in any imagination or fire as the Man with the Hoe...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 25
