Date:    Fri, 13 Feb 1998 12:43:18 -0500
<br>From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: Yellow dog Democrats
<br>
<br>At 12:07 PM 2/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
<br> This may have been discussed previously here, but either I missed it or
<br> wasn't on the list yet. Can anyone tell me (& a colleague in the political
<br> science dept.) the origin and meaning of the term "yellow dog Democrat"?
<br>      I know a little about "yellow dog contracts" -- as basically being
<br> anti-union documents, but I'm not clear on how that got connected to
<br> Democrats (who, generally, have been pro-union).
<br> 
<br> Jerry Miller
<br> 
<br>
<br>OED2 "yellow dog" attests (meaning 2a) "person or thing of no account or of
<br>a low type," first cite 1881. The union sense of anti-union and therefore
<br>no-good is similar to the use of a lot of more general negative terms by
<br>pro-union folks in more narrow application to non- or anti-union people or
<br>things, cf. scab. On the union sense of yellow dog = anti-union, see meaning
<br>2b, first cite 1894.
<br>
<br>"Yellow dog democrat" I have no cites handy on, but some time in the 80s I
<br>read something that asserted it came from the idea of someone (especially in
<br>the South, when the South was pretty overwhelmingly Democrat, i.e., 1860s to
<br>1940s) who was so strictly a Democrat voter that s/he'd vote Democrat if the
<br>party ran a yellow dog for office. I.e., a very loyal and/or very partisan
<br>Democrat, esp. in the South.
<br>
<br>So, yellow dog = anti-union, and yellow dog Democrat = extremely loyal
<br>Democrat both grow out of "yellow dog" = something no good. They are
<br>collateral descendants of the same phrase, not parent-and-child to each
<br>other, which is what you are wondering about above.
<br>
<br>I'm sure someone out there has early cites for yellow-dog Democrat. I'd
<br>imagine they would be from the late 19th cent or first half of 20th cent.
<br>
<br>Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu
<br>