Talk:American Protective Association

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While this article claims the APA never had any political success, I've seen several sources that claim the APA inspired anti-German language instruction laws in Wisconsin and Illinois in the 1880's.

not true. see the article on Bennett Law. Rjensen (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Jewish element

How in the world is this organization in any way Jewish if the article itself states that it was composed in large part of Irish Protestants? Ykerzner (talk) 02:12, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

the APA was not anti-semitic and so the link gets dropped.Rjensen (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to bed

Rjensen—

Obviously, cleaning up this mess is going to take a bunch of time and is going to have to work around some "ownership" issues. You will accept "nativist" and "nationalist," I presume, or do I need to dig up expert sourcing for those similar statements of the patently obvious? Also, it is an absurdity to claim that this is a Canadian organization transported to America, as you intimate.

Books first, writing later, obviously. To be continued... Also, please list a city for the self-published source you use. Thanks, —tim /// Carrite (talk) 06:42, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

The APA was anti-Catholic and exaggerated it membership by a huge factor (like 1000%) but it's a stretch to call it nativist when it appealed so strongly to immigrants. Many --perhaps most-- members were immigrants esp from Ireland and Scandinavia. Was it "nationalist"? not in the sense of America first for it was active in Canada & also Mexico, Britain and elsewhere. As for "conservative" that is not in the article-- it included a wide range of protestants, including Populists on the left and APA avoided issues that conservatives always stressed in 1896, especially gold. in politics it was helped Bryan by attacking McKinley in 1896. Rjensen (talk) 07:15, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Here's part of the oath of the APA, per the New York Times, June 15, 1894, pg. 9: "You will not vote or give your influence for any man for any office in the gift of the people unless he be an American-born citizen, in favor of Americans ruling America, nor if he be a Roman Catholic." — The organization was the continuation of the Know Nothing movement and the precursor of the Second Ku Klux Klan — nativist and nationalistic. Whether one accepts the additional, fairly obvious, appellation "conservative" is less important, I suppose, although in defending traditional "Americanism" (a term they used), they were exactly that.

The problem with intimating that the Democratic Party stamped out the APA is this: the Democratic Party was by this time effectively the one-party regime throughout the South. The Democrats did indeed include a significant Catholic contingent in the urban centers of the North, but in the South it was an entirely different animal, one which aligned with the APA and its conservative nativist and nationalist ideology. I'll stack books for a few weeks before I resume on the piece. Carrite (talk) 20:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC) ping Rjensen

Date of demise

Britannica's extremely crappy piece has date of the APA's final extinction as 1911. LINK Carrite (talk) 21:26, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

JAH review article of the Kinzer book (en route) has the greatly dissipated organization "virtually disappearing" in 1911 with the death of Bowers. LINK. Carrite (talk) 21:35, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Review of the Kinzer book in Indiana Journal of History (LINK) has two APAs — a federative group of independent patriotic organizations (1894-1895) and a core Bowers dominated organization, 1887-1908. Both of these indicate it was their lack of influence in the 1896 election that dealt the real blow to the organization, rather than any sort of "attack" by the Democrats (or the Populists). Carrite (talk) 21:41, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Historian Jo Ann Manfra argues that, "in 1893, Henry Bowers lost personal control of the APA to a vastly expanded national membership that replaced him with Michigan's William Traynor as supreme president. When Bowers regained its leadership in 1898, the organization was only a shadow of its former self, and what remained of the APA died with its founder in 1911." [Jo A. Manfra, "Hometown Politics and the American Protective Association, 1887-1890." The Annals of Iowa 55 (1996), 138-166.

Let's talk about sources

According to Manfra (1996) "no monograph on the APA has appeared since Kinzer's" (1964) [See: pg. 139, fn. 2]. I've found reference to Les Wallace, The Rhetoric of Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association, 1887-1911. (Garland: 1990) in 100+ libraries (LINK), but none in my state, no copies on the market — new or used, and no look at a single page from Google Books. So she seems to have missed that one. I don't think there is any monograph since that. The key pioneering efforts seem to be Bliss (ed.), The Cyclopedia of Social Reform (1897) and Desmond, The APA Movement (1912). I have not scanned for dissertations yet... Carrite (talk) 01:54, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

The only two dissertations I see are Kinzer at U of W (1954) and Wallace at U of Oregon (1973) — right down the road, although they don't own the book treatment of the same. Carrite (talk) 02:15, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Gracias for access to the Wallace. It's pretty clearly a lower grade academic source than Kinzer's book. Carrite (talk) 18:45, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Dates

This is an American organization, therefore (Month Day, Year) dates should be used per consensus and Manual of Style, not Euro-style (Day Month Year). Any objection to this change, and if so, by what rationale? Carrite (talk) 18:43, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Other American Protective Associations

There seems to have been a Fourierist group by the name circa 1844 and another organization, probably advocates of protective tariffs, during the 1870s. Carrite (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Not Sure How to Reconcile This

The section titled "Legacy" refers to a separate group with the same name and the same anti-Catholic thrust, which "contributed anti-Catholicism to the defeats of Democratic candidate Timothy S. Hogan and incumbent Democratic Governor James M. Cox". However James Cox was a Protestant so this seems at the least misleading.