During the years from 1880 to 1896 several incongruous groups in and around Boston joined together in a delicate coalition within the structure of the Democratic party to common problems and opportunities for conservative, or "gentle," reform: old-line Yankee Democrats with deep roots in the party; Irish Democrats who had made the party their refuge since the 1850's; righteously independent Mugwumps who entered the party in the presidential campaign of 1884; and a cluster of young lawyer-politicians attracted by the national leadership of Grover Cleveland.

In this incisive and exceptionally readable study of nearly a quarter of a century in the history of the Democratic party in Massachusetts, Mr. Blodgett focuses on the articulate leadership of these "gentle" reformers, re-creating their responses to a broad array of city, state, and national issues. Often distrustful of each other's motives, baffled and dismayed by the demands of a sprawling, urban, industrialized society, they entered into a welter of conflict and compromise over the meaning of reform until the advent of Bryanism finished the party of Cleveland and forced the disintegration of their coalition.

Framed against the background of local ethnic tension and a rising tide of national political crisis, this case study in political failure portrays a group of energetic but bewildered men who became the casualties, not the heralds, of reform.