This thesis deals with a middle-class right-wing body formed in Adelaide in response to the crises of the Great Depression: public indebtedness, party factionalism and social divisiveness. The Citizens' League of South Australia (CL) created in October 1930 was committed to economic orthodoxy, non-party government and a revived spirit of citizenship as solutions to these crises. My main purpose has been to investigate the origins of the CL, as seen in its particular perception of the crises of the Depression, the ideology it exhibited and the policies which it developed. (From preface)