Thats the Beauty of America- Freedom of Choice
1991 1991-10Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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that sentiment and proceeded to purge both Blacks and poor whites from the voters' rolls. Literacy tests and poll taxes cut participation in Southern elections from 57 percent in 1896 to 19 percent in 1924.
In the North, less-obvious ploys to disenfranchise workers had to be used. It was made harder to register. Election offices were seldom open. Documents had to be notarized. Voters had to register again for each election. Not every state set up such roadblocks to the poor, but enough did to cut Northern participation in elections from 86 percent in 1896 to 57 percent in 1924.
Sentiment for third parties This meant unchallenged political domination by big business and big agriculture. They could safely ignore labor, sharecroppers, and other distressed Americans. The poor, in turn, looked to third parties and mass movements of protest when life became unbearable.
In 1912 and 1920, the Socialist Party and its presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, won six percent of the vote. Later, Middle Western farmers formed the Farmer-Labor Party and elected two senators, two congressmen, and a governor in Minnesota.
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Roosevelt's "New Deal" attracted many new voters. But much of this was a "lesser evil" vote.
In New York, for example, the sentiment for independent political action was so strong the unions were compelled to form the American Labor Party there to steer class-conscious votes to Roosevelt.
The Communist and Socialist parties, in an historical betrayal of the American working class, also urged workers to vote for the Democrats.
Workers exerted more influence through the mass movements that devel oped in the streets and factories outside the Democratic party. The unemployed movement demanded relief and welfare while occupying legislative halls.
On mass picket lines and factory sit-ins, workers turned the heat on Roosevelt to pass the Wagner Act to sanction unions.
Then Roosevelt co-opted the new labor leaders into the Democratic Party machine to tame and use them. Roosevelt made no effort to enfranchise the millions of potential Black voters in the South. He preferred to maintain good SOCIALIST ACTI