Downstate Illinois Politics In The 1930's

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Victor Hicken in 2004. Hicken is Professor Emeritus of History at Western Illinois University. (He's also the author of a great history book entitled, Illinois in the Civil War.)



Before his academic career, Prof. Hicken worked in the mines, an occupation that extended back generations in his family. Like many miners living in Gillespie, Illinois in the early 1930's, Hicken's father split from the United Mine Workers and joined the Progressive Miners of America.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Dr. Hicken on the range of political parties that were active in downstate Illinois.

"In the election of 1920, for instance, there was no Communist Party listed on Illinois ballots, but the Socialist and Socialist-Labor candidates won 1,291 votes in that county. Compared to a non-coal county such as Adams, the difference was remarkable. Larger in population than Macoupin, Adams County gave 404 votes to both of the radical candidates.

Four years later, in 1924, with the Progressive party, Socialist-Labor party, and Workers' Party (Communist) candidates on the ballots, Macoupin County tallied 6,959 votes for the first, thirty-two for the second, and seventy-seven for the last. Once again, this far exceeded the Adams county votes for the candidates of those three parties.

The Communist vote in Macoupin went up by far in 1928, but in 1932 the results were more interesting. Norman Thomas received 1,567 votes, the Socialist-Labor candidate won fifty-one votes, and the Communist candidate received 134 votes. The Lemke-O'Brien Union Party ticket was to affect the 1936 election, drawing 950 votes in Macoupin county, but a study of the Socialist party vote in that election is revealing. There was no Communist candidate, and one may assume that votes ordinarily going in that direction would be cast for the venerable Norman Thomas. Thomas did well in three areas in Macoupin: in Benld, in Gillespie, where he received his largest support, and in one of the Dorchester precincts. Dorchester itself is a little farming village, but it does have one precinct which covers the Wilsonville area, where Superior Mine No. 4 is located. There Thomas got forty votes which, by calculation, amounts to almost three times the number which the candidate received in five precincts of Carlinville, the county seat."

This certainly offers evidence of the broad range of political ideas debated among voters in those days. And a far cry from the narrow options we're offered by the dominant political parties today.