Democracy Delayed: Congressional Reapportionment and Urban-Rural Conflict in the 1920s

Historians have customarily explained the 1920s in terms of urban-rural conflict, arguing that cultural, ethnic, and economic differences between urban and rural Americans erupted to intensify and influence political conflict in the decade. In Democracy Delayed, Charles W. Eagles uses the issue of congressional reapportionment to examine politics in the 1920s, in particular to test the urban-rural thesis.

After the 1920 census, the United States Congress for the first time failed to reapport...