RE-FORMING REFORM: AS HISTORY, METHOD, AND PHILOSOPHY

REFORMINAMERICA IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK, ON AN IMPORTANT TOPIC, BY AN IMportant scholar. Like most significant studies it is a multidimensional work that deserves a multiple evaluation, in this case from three perspectives: as a history of reform movements in America; as a statement and demonstration of a methodology for identifying and analyzing reform; and as a cluster of explicit and implied attitudes reflecting a philosophy of historiography-a stance denoting how and why we should study American history and culture. As a descriptive history, the primary contribution of Reform in America and its recently reprinted companion piece, an anthology entitled The Reform Spirit in America, 1 is a considerable expansion and revision of the familiar portrait of reform in the United States since the Revolutionary War. Walker's concept of reform "directed social change" (vii), especially change related to increasing equality and democracy-is conventional, but the three broad "modes" of reform he describes enlarge conventional notions of the variety and continuity of American reform. He begins with the "largest element within American reform" (20), politicoeconomic reform in "mainstream" culture. The "money question" is his focus: "from 1832 when the national bank was effectively terminated to 1913 when a national banking system was again established" (24). Using a narrative overview, analyses, and a chronological listing (Appendix, 237-57), Walker guides readers through a complex and continuous network of antinational bank, subtreasury, greenback, and other reforms that affected, and still affects, every community in America. In Part Two, he examines reforms relating to groups "separated from the mainstream and denied a measure of participation in social, political, and economic life" (66). He places special emphasis on two interrelated cycles of reform aimed first at abolishing slavery and then at allowing blacks full participation in American society; he also devotes separate sections to civil liberties and women's rights movements. Part Three is Walker's most original contribution to a descriptive history of reform. He presents the "establishment or depiction of an alternative order" (119) as the third major variety of American reform. Included within this mode are: establishing experimental communities; writing both literary utopias and science fiction; drawing plans for visionary buildings, communities, and regions; and advocating modes for world governments.