Henry Horner and his Burden of Tragedy

A new edition of the Horner biography. This is a tragic story of political conflict and social turmoil during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Governor of Illinois during that crisis was a former judge from Chicago - Henry Horner - whose Bohemian Jewish grandfather founded Chicago's first grocery business. A child of financial privilege, Henry was a sentimental but psychologically vulnerable idealist, a Democrat who idolized the example of Lincoln. He advocated unpopular new taxes to provide food and shelter for the unemployed. Confronted by the inevitable sectional cultural divisions between metropolitan Chicago and rural Downstate, Horner sided with the small towns where anti-Semitism was rife. Chicago's corrupt Democratic machine tried to turn him out of office. In the memorable renomination campaign of 1936, the Roosevelt administration in Washington acquiesced in the machine's deployment of New Deal job creation programs against the governor who had painfully forced them through the legislature. He survived by winning over the affection of Downstate voters. Incensed by the betrayal of former associates, Horner became an unnaturally obsessive, vengeful politician determined to destroy the party bosses, only to fall ill and die before the end of his second term.