Book excerpt: Father Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1979) was a controversial Roman Catholic priest was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. Early in his career Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and early New Deal proposals, and was considered a Populist. However, Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue anti-Semitic commentary, and later to support some of the Fascist policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During the early 1930s, Coughlin attacked communism, socialism, and American capitalists whose greed, he contended, was providing fertile soil for the spread of leftist ideology.