A conservative Republican presidential candidate committed to the “free market,” a “landslide” victory, the election of many “conservative” Democrats who had strong reservations about organized labour and a willingness to increase defence at the expense of all other federal spending: all suggested that confrontation with unions in both public and private sectors was a real possibility in 1981. A strike in the public sector there certainly was, and it was full of ironies. The union concerned was the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization [PATCO] which, under the abrasive leadership of Robert Poli, had endorsed the Reagan candidacy, offended the AFL–CIO leadership, waged its strike with little union help, and was crushed, to judge by the opinion polls, amidst considerable popular acclaim. Ronald Reagan capped a very successful seven months, spent pushing Congress into rewriting U.S. taxing and spending priorities, by sacking thousands of federal employees all over the U.S.A.

Woody Guthrie managed to capture much of Depression America in his songs. In “This Land Is Your Land” of 1940, he reflected the leftist sentiments of many thirties Americans. Singing that it was the blank side of a “Private Property” sign that “was wrote for you and me,” Guthrie echoed the conclusion that others had reached in the preceding decade — America belongs to the working masses rather than to a few wealthy owners. For all his insight, however, Guthrie missed part of the Depression experience when he set his “Private Property” sign beside a “lonesome highway.” Rather than deserted places, the nation's roadways were virtually teeming with dispossessed people. Millions of foreclosed farmers, evicted renters and unemployed workers crowded the thoroughfares, desperately searching for new lives. Despite what Woody Guthrie had to say, America's Depression highways were far from lonesome.

A certain number of those folks jamming the nation's highways were not homeless drifters. They were instead more like author Erskine Caldwell. Soon after the 1932 publication of his novel, Tobacco Road, Caldwell had taken to travelling. He continued on the road until one day in 1940 when he pulled his car into a Missouri gas station. As had been his habit for the past years, he asked the attendant not for gas or oil, but for an analysis of the state of the nation. The attendant knew Caldwell's type. For years writers had been stopping and asking him “all sorts of fool questions” without purchasing anything. Well prepared, he silently handed Caldwell a neatly printed card describing his life and thoughts, ridiculing with its detail the questions writers asked him.

Interest in the historical phenomenon of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American black nationalism has been inspired by the revival of nationalist modes of thought among blacks since the 1950s. Because the placing of post-Second World War Pan-Africanism or the American Black Power movement within a historical context has been seen as an urgent task, the search for a coherent tradition has carried with it the danger of distortions in the historical treatment of the earlier movements. “Traditional” nineteenth-century black nationalism was essentially a conservative movement advocating racial self-improvement through the “civilizing” influence of Anglo-Saxon values, particularly Christianity. Taking black nationalism to mean the assertion of group identity for political purposes (which need not be separatist), its nature clearly changed during the period 1914–1929 as the nature of the American black community changed. For the first time in American history there existed a sizeable number of black intellectuals and a literate audience for them; the rapid growth in the number of black newspapers and magazines reflected these facts. These intellectuals were responsive to new ideas like socialism, yet the transformation of black nationalist thought during this period did not constitute a complete break with the past. This essay attempts to illustrate continuities with the nineteenth century along with those elements of radicalism that presaged modern black nationalism.

Two discontinuities between modern and “traditional” black nationalism constitute essential reference points for the analysis of black nationalist thought during this period. The first relates to who is perceived as being the principal agent or vanguard of the nationalist movement.

There is no need to compile a list of past criticism to make the case that The Blithedale Romance is a fiction which has given rise to a remarkable number of interpretations and evaluations (even if judged by the strikingly high standards set by over a century of Hawthorne criticism). The text's concern with fluidity and its questionings of authoritative explanation have not made it any easier for a critical consensus to emerge.

The Blithedale Romance, I am going to suggest, may usefully be approached by looking at the ways it foregrounds the question of the difficulties of description and the (inevitably) related problems of interpretation — by beginning from the juxtaposition of two names (Coverdale and Fauntleroy) and a recognition of what those names so contrastingly and problematically signify: translation and forgery. Among the dictionary definitions given for “to translate” are: to interpret, to explain, to change, to transform. Among those for “ to forge ” are: to pretend something to have happened, to make something in fraudulent imitation of something else, to make or devise something spurious.

On 17 February 1777 John Wilkes, the controversial politician, pamphleteer, and propagandist, rose to address the House of Commons. Wilkes, renowned for his opposition to King George III and his followers, was equally regarded by Americans as a long-standing champion of their colonial rights. And it was in both of these contexts that he marshaled his oratorical skills on this occasion. The specific target of his speech was the third reading of a bill, proposed by Lord North's government, which would suspend the habeas corpus act through the remainder of the year for persons accused of high treason for actions within the American colonies, or on the high seas, or for alleged acts of piracy. Wilkes began by declaring emphatically: “I cannot continue silent while so important a Bill is pending before this house.” He then attacked the proposed act as “tyrannical, arbitrary, ambiguous, unconstitutional,” and forecast that it would lead to expansion of the American war that had been raging for almost two years. Wilkes illustrated the oppressive, unwarrantable and alienating effects of the proposed act on Americans by citing the case of a young colonial named Ebenezer Smith Platt, then confined in London's infamous Newgate prison.