The Palmer Effect Lives on a Century Later

Mitchell Palmer was very much the Josh Hawley or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of his day. We should not forget the lessons of his rise and fall.

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Mitchell Palmer would be worth knowing about even if his role in America’s past wasn’t so relevant to our present. Political history seldom affords us such a rank villain, and it is always the right time to remember the cautionary tale of a sanctimonious prig who becomes a thug with a badge.

Palmer hailed from Luzerne County, Pa., a place that in his lifetime (1872-1936) went from Quaker backcountry settled by families like his own to an industrial powerhouse thronged by immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. After Swarthmore and law school, Palmer climbed the ladder in the local Democratic Party, which was growing in power thanks to the immigrant boom. When he won a seat in Congress in 1908, Palmer was one of four Democrats in the Pennsylvania delegation. When he left the House six years later, he was one of 11.

Palmer was very much the Josh Hawley or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of his day. The young upstart elbowed his way into the 1912 Democratic convention and then used his post to help deliver the commonwealth’s delegates to progressive heartthrob Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson won in November, Palmer’s stock went through the roof. But he passed on Wilson’s offer to lead the War Department, instead opting for a Senate run. It proved a miscalculation. Palmer got trounced and found himself out of office and angling for various posts to maintain his clout.

By the time Wilson was re-elected in 1916 and managed to get the U.S. into the European war, Wilson had the perfect job for Palmer: to head the “Office of the Alien Property Custodian.” The job was to seize and either utilize for the war effort or liquidate not only any property of citizens of Germany or the other Central Powers but also Americans who fell under the administration’s suspicions. In some cases he installed his cronies in top positions at targeted firms, other times he just wiped out the businesses. Palmer got to lay siege to the Republican-leaning German-American community and got extra progressive brownie points because his crackdown on businessmen often meant busting breweries—a scourge of the left on the eve of Prohibition.

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  1. Danny Grizzle

    Enjoyed the history lesson, I've heard the story that the bomber tripped on the way up and to Palmer's door and that the explosion shocked and worried some if Palmer's neighbors by the name of Roosevelt.

    Not sure why AOC is in your headline but for click bait however. Poor form that.

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    BrettH

    Nice piece, enjoyed the history lesson. Thanks Chris.

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  3. Boatbody

    What people haven't looked at closely during this Wilson-Palmer era is the absolute mess that Wilson made of the first flu pandemic. In the guise of keeping up fighting morale, no criticism was allowed of the government. Then criticism for lack of leadership fighting the pandemic was met with the same government response.

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    1. Scott N.

      The Great Influenza by John Barry is a classic on the period, and it details the political dynamics you've described quite well, and the truly terrible consequences for the country.

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  4. JohnO

    NY'ers are perhaps more likely, though not guaranteed, to be aware there was a real violent extremist threat in the wake of WWI: you can still see the pockmarks in the exterior wall at 23 Wall St. from the September 1920 anarchist bomb which killed 39.

    But as Chris said, the key is to be able to simultaneously understand that an extremist threat can be real and cynical exploitation of it by 'mainstream' politicians also real. That's even besides the relatively more benign phenomenon of overreacting to a threat because you as politician in power don't want to be part of the government that gets caught napping twice. I believe the continued militarization of the Capitol now has crossed into the first more condemnable category: a political statement by the Democrats they hope to use against the Republicans (not that the latter are above doing the same, but in this case that's the direction).

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    Mr. "B"

    Great stuff, and I am sure Jonah enjoys another taking up the cause re: Wilson and Palmer.

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  6. Harry

    What is a good book to read about Wilson? Jonah has made me curious about his place in history.

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    1. Jim L

      Woodrow Wilson by A Scott Berg. The book is a little infuriating in that Berg doesn’t shy away from Wilson’s racist action, but he does tend to write them off IMO. Otherwise, very good book.

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      1. Harry

        Thank you.

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  7. Raincheck

    Even more dastardly was The Palmer Method for teaching handwriting, viciously enforced by schoolteachers across the country.

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    1. KIttye

      Lol!

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    BWG

    Chris, thanks for the history lesson- very interesting and very important that we remember. I recall thinking after the OK city bombing “Wow, we’ve never had an act of terrorism in the US before!”, when in fact I was just not aware of all the previous stuff. And it was not labeled that way back then.

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  9. KIttye

    Thank you! I vaguely remember the term “Palmer RaIds” but didn’t know the details.We need to beware of these scoundrels no matter the party.

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  10. Erick

    Good read. Had no idea he was born near White Haven. Only fifteen minutes from my hometown in Luzerne County.

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