Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation / Edition 1

by Paul B. Beers

Overview

A sort of rough justice characterized the Pennsylvania political scene, this book argues, if we define justice in Learned Hand's words as "the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society." According to the Prologue: "Reform always has worked better in Pennsylvania as an issue-based effort, rather than a broad political movement."

According to the Epilogue: "Although 1978 was a year of intense competition, in the end—in revisions so typical of Pennsylvania—both the old and the new politics were refuted, while the comfortable middle-road was chosen." Beers explains the Keystone State's rejection of ideological extremes by reviewing its traditional virtues: tolerance of diversity, independence in thought and action, and patience under adversity. "Pennsylvania is the vest-pocket edition of the world," said Governor Shafer in 1967, "the ethnographic mosaic," said historian Phil Klein in 1976; "kind and mild, sort of non-Puritanical," said novelist John Updilke in 1977. The book's lively narrative begins with Boss Matt Quay forcing his way into the U.S. Senate in 1900, ends with Governor Dick Thornburgh balancing the taxpayers' demand for budge-cutting against his party leaders' itch for patronage. Between 1900 and 1979 the story is told of the rogues (Penrose, the Vares, and Cianfrani), the reformers (Pinchot, Leader, and Duff), and the greater number whose real achievements were dimmed by implications of corruption (Earle, Fine, and Shapp). On balance the author tends toward Henry Adams's assessment of the Pennsylvanian: "In practical matters it was the steadiest of all American types; perhaps the most efficient; certainly the safest."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271002385
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	03/15/1980
Series:	Keystone Books
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Paul B. Beers is the author of four previous books including The Pennsylvania Sampler (1970) and The Republican Years (1971). A newspaperman for three decades, he has been the "Reporter at Large" columnist for The Evening News since 1961 and associate editor of this Harrisburg daily since 1969, He has won awards from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Political Science Association, has been a Pulitzer Prize nominee and a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford. Mr. Beers is a graduate of Wilkes College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction: "Vest-Pocket Edition of the World"	1
	Prologue: Rivalry without Rancor	15
1.	The Rogues	41
	John Wanamaker 1838-1922	59
	The Vares 1859-1934	61
	Edwin A. Van Valkenburg 1864-1932	66
	A. Mitchell Palmer 1872-1936	67
2.	Pinchot Republicanism	71
	Cornelia Bryce Pinchot 1881-1960	101
	James J. Davis 1873-1947	104
	The Mellons 1813-1970	106
	Joseph R. Grundy 1862-1961	112
3.	The Earle Scandals	117
	John J. McClure 1886-1965	137
	Arthur H. James 1883-1973	140
	The Annenbergs 1878-	141
	Charles J. Margiotti 1891-1956	144
	The Guffeys 1870-1970	146
4.	Big Red	151
	Edward Martin 1879-1967	167
	M. Harvey Taylor 1876-	168
5.	Tragic John Fine	173
	The Pews 1848-1971	191
6.	Clark, Dilworth, and Philadelphia Reform	193
7.	Mister Clean	209
	Hugh Scott 1900-	231
8.	The Comeback of David Leo Lawrence	239
	Genevieve Blatt 1913-	267
9.	Golden Bill Scranton	275
	George I. Bloom 1897--	313
10.	Debacle	319
	Martin Patrick Mullen 1921-	357
11.	Citizen Shapp	363
	Robert Patrick Casey 1932-	411
	Herbert Fineman 1920-	415
	Henry J. Cianfrani, Jr. 1923-	421
	K. Leroy Irvis 1919-	427
	Richard Schultz Schweiker 1926- and Henry John Heinz III 1938-	433
	Frank C. Hilton 1909-	440
	Epilogue: Thornburgh Election	445
	Bibliography	457
	Index	461