Book Reviews
Collection, Use, and Care of
Historical Photographs. By Robert A.
Weinstein
and Larry Booth. (Nashville: American
Association for State and Local
History, 1977. xiv + 222p.;
illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index.
$16.00.)
The authors of this work share a
passionate interest in the preservation of
the photographic past. Their concerns
are many, their experience is wide,
and their enthusiasm is contagious. For
some time there has been a pressing
need for a concise introduction to the
benefits and problems of photographic
collection and preservation. It is the
intent of this volume to begin to meet
that need. In most important respects,
the authors have admirably succeeded.
The problem with most of the previous
literature in the area of historic
photography is that it usually deals
with only one small aspect of the field.
The serious amateur collector, the
administrator of the smaller historical
society, and the professional librarian
should find this book most interesting
because it attempts to discuss briefly
the entire range of concerns in the
discovery, arrangement, description, and
preservation of historical photo-
graphs. There is really something here
for everyone. The authors are anxious
to share their practical field
experience as well as their theories of photo-
graphic curatorship. This is always most
useful since the real world of collecting
and care is often affected more by
chance, luck, and perseverance than would
seem to be implied in the simplicity of
textbook illustration.
More to their credit, the authors in
many cases have taken controversial
positions unhesitatingly. As they
frankly point out, some experts will dis-
agree with their conclusions and
proposals. But it is one of their hopes that
the present work will stimulate a debate
and discussion which will lead to
constructive revision with the passage
of time.
I do have some reservations about the
book. The style is often uneven and
the authors do not at all times make it
fully clear what alternative options
exist to the ideal methods they are
recommending. In general, the use of
photographs in the work is judicious and
pertinent. But while the additional
portfolios of nineteenth-century
photographs which appear at various points in
the book are interesting, they are not
directly related by the authors to the
totality of the book. Finally, in a book
which stresses methods for the un-
initiated, it is surprising that little
mention is made of the time and monetary
costs of the various techniques
proposed.
Each reader of this book will come away
with different impressions, but it is
to be hoped that a few salient points
will be self-evident to all. This work
will help in acquainting all serious
collectors with the explosive dangers of
nitrate-based film and the extraordinary
fragility of many types of photography.
The point that the authors make
concerning the inevitable deterioration and
loss of so much of our photographic
legacy with every passing day is perhaps
one of the most important parts of the
book.
212 OHIO
HISTORY
In sum, this is a timely and useful
volume on a subject of popular interest
and continuing professional importance.
The Ohio Historical Society Edward R. Lentz
The Late Prehistory of the Lake Erie
Drainage Basin: A 1972 Symposium
Revised. Edited by David S. Brose. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum
of Nat-
ural History, 1976. 355p.;
illustrations, tables, bibliography. $5.75.)
A collection of thirteen papers by
archaeologists active in the states and
province bordering Lake Erie, this book
presents recent data on the nucleated
prehistoric agricultural communities
that typified the area at the time of Eur-
american contact. These communities
appear in most cases approximately
1000 AD and the papers focus on sites
and traditions dating after 1000.
However, most of the authors look at
cultures and events of the preceding
centuries in order to gain some
perspective on the cultural and ecological
origins of the late period societies.
Regional cultural variation also is of inter-
est, and probably the most important
contribution of the book is the definition
of a Western Lake Erie Tradition.
Including sites from Cleveland to Detroit,
this tradition has a time depth of
approximately 700 years and shows strong-
est resemblance to the Ontario Iroquois.
The term Western Lake Erie Tradition is
coined by Douglas McKenzie and
John Blank in a paper describing the
Eiden Site, a village and cemetery set-
tlement located near the mouth of the
Black River in central Ohio. Eiden
Site burial patterns and artifact
styles, particularly pottery, have close coun-
terparts in Younge Tradition sites in
southeastern Michigan. McKenzie and
Blank regard the Younge Tradition as a
regional variant of their more inclu-
sive concept. Olaf Prufer and Orrin
Shane, discussing the Lidden Site and
other sites in the
Portage-Sandusky-Vermillion River region of Ohio, come to
a similar conclusion, as do Earl Prahl,
David Brose, and David Stothers for
sites in the Toledo area. New
information on the Younge Tradition is pro-
vided by James Fitting and Richard Zurel
in a paper which concludes that
"the Younge Tradition could be
viewed as another branch of the Ontario
Iroquois Tradition which, in the pattern
of the Historic War of the Iroquois,
was defeated, dispersed and assimilated
in the 15th century" (p.248).
The Iroquoian archaeology of Ontario is
covered in four papers. Dave
Stothers describes three regional foci
of the Princess Point Complex, which
dates between 500 and 900 AD and is
transitional between the Middle Wood-
land and the Iroquoian Glen Meyer
traditions in central and western Ontario.
A change from seasonally occupied sites
with evidence of fishing and limited
agriculture early in the sequence to
palisaded agricultural villages with later
dates is seen in data from the complex's
36 components. David Keenleyside
gives added detail on sites from the
Point Pelee Foci of the Princess Point
Complex, William Fox describes the
palisaded Glen Meyer Tradition Dewaele
Site, and Marian White summarizes recent
work in the Niagara Penninsula.
Unlike the western basin, where the
Michigan-Ontario border is the boun-
dary between the Younge Tradition and
the Glen Meyer Branch of the Iro-
Book Reviews 213
quois, the prehistoric sites of eastern
Ontario and northwestern New York are
culturally homogeneous. Organized in
terms of a reconstruction of the pattern
of village relocation for distinct
"ethnic" groups, White outlines the change in
this area from emphasis on fishing in
the late Middle Woodland to farming
in the Late Woodland as Iroquois emerges
out of the preceding Owasco Tra-
dition. White's treatment of site
movement makes Jack Schock's basically
descriptive study of the Chautauqua
Phase understandable. Located in south-
western New York, this is one of several
local traditions which participated
minimally but recognizably in the
Iroquoian sphere of interaction. The Mc-
Fate Tradition described by William
Johnson is another of these isolated
groups. Johnson finds a cohesiveness in
sites in the Upper Allegheny River
Valley which he sees as similarly
isolated. A paper by Don Dragoo is devoted
exclusively to this group of sites,
particularly the Kinzua and Onoville sites.
Owasco-Iroquoian influence stops in the
Whittlesey Phase of northeastern
Ohio. Dave Brose describes recent
excavation of the South Park Site, the
most completely known Whittlesey
settlement, and gives a cultural-historical
synthesis of subsistence and settlement
patterns based on numerous testing
and survey programs in the area.
From beginning to end, the book shows a
vitality that characterizes the
early stages of synthesis in science.
Unanswered questions, controversies,
and disputes abound. How should Iroquois
be defined archaeologically? Was
Iroquois an in situ development
or did it derive from the Ohio area? What is
the direction and timing of Iroquois
expansion? Was the expansion a process
of conquest? What were the cultural
roots of the Younge Tradition and why
are the southern and eastern borders of
the Western Lake Erie Tradition so
pronounced? As Brose points out in an
introductory chapter that outlines the
background and history of the symposium,
the collection of papers is but a
first approximation of Erie Basin
prehistory.
The quality of the papers generally is
high, and the volume is recommended
to everyone interested in the prehistory
of this important region. As the
frontier of the Iroquois Nation, this
area displays the complex and develop-
mentally revealing events that typify
the margins of dynamic regional civili-
zations. Unfortunately, production and
editing features probably will restrict
usage to all but professional and
pre-professional archaeologists. Front matter
consists solely of a table of contents,
although a list of the many tables and
figures scattered throughout the volume
clearly is demanded. Squinting is re-
quired to read the chronological chart
at the front and the site map at the end.
Absence of labels for rivers and
geographical areas on the map make it dif-
ficult to follow many of the papers
without consulting an atlas. An alpha-
betical listing of the 235 sites shown
on the map would have eased map use.
Editorial oversights hinder reading in a
number of places. For example,
Brose refers to several appendices which
apparently were omitted from the
book and to a reference that does not
appear in the bibliography. Pages 72
and 73 are out of order and a site map
referred to in Schock's article did
not get in the final version. The most
lamentable omission is a synthesis by
the editor, in spite of the preliminary
nature of the research. A concluding
chapter that attempts to make some
unified sense out of the truly impressive
amount of data and the often confusing
contradictions of dates, terms, and
explanations would have been a welcome
addition. Without it, the dedicated
reader will have to construct such a
synthesis personally and the general
reader may well put the volume aside
unread. In spite of these criticisms,
214 OHIO HISTORY
the book is well done and is an
important contribution to the archaeology
and prehistory of the Midwest and
Northeast.
The Ohio State University William S. Dancey
The Prairie People: Continuity and
Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture
1665-1965. By James A. Clifton. (Lawrence: The Regents Press of
Kansas,
1977. xx + 529p.; illustrations, appendices,
notes, bibliography, index.
$22.50.)
In The Prairie People, James A.
Clifton takes an ethnohistoric approach to
the Potawatomi Indians, tracing their
migrations and cultural developments
from prehistoric beginnings to 1965. The
Potawatomis serve as an excellent
example of a Native American group who
experienced each phase of Euro-
pean exploration and colonization and
all variations of American Indian
policy. Originally inhabiting the Great
Lakes area, the Potawatomis es-
tablished friendly alliances with the
French, a working relationship with the
British as they came to power, and
eventually submitted to domination by
the United States government and its
people. Violent actions of the Potawa-
tomis against American settlers subsided
during the first half of the nine-
teenth century but the Indians largely
continued to resist acculturation and
assimilation. By 1837 the tribe split
into clear factions and as a result of treaty
agreements spread themselves throughout
the old Northwest, Canada, Iowa
and into Kansas. Subjected to the Dawes
Allotment Act, their communal
holdings diminished and the tribe
continued to fragment as the twentieth
century approached. The conservative
Prairie Band living in Kansas fought
to retain their autonomy and strongly
opposed all services extended by the
United States government. During the
1960s more progressive Potawatomis
gained power in tribal affairs, yet the
Indians failed to take advantage of op-
portunities offered to them during this
period of civil rights consciousness.
Clifton includes three appendices
describing the Potawatomi language, a
glossary of terms and the text of the
Baldwin Constitution of 1932 which re-
organized the tribal power structure.
The explanation of language is espe-
cially necessary because Clifton uses a
linguistic interpretation of individual
names, thereby often spelling them
differently than they appear on historical
documents. Throughout most of the book,
Clifton relates a series of events and
follows with a lengthy interpretation of
their effect upon the tribal culture.
For example, through careful
documentation he delineates the tribe's in-
creasing dependence on trade goods and
government annuity payments. A
leading theme, and one which deserves
further attention in studies of Ameri-
can Indians, is the role outsiders and
mixed-bloods assumed in relations
between the Potawatomis and the United
States government. As Clifton re-
lates, the Potawatomis traditionally
rejected authoritarian figures and avoided
appointing one man to represent the
entire tribe; the concept of a chief was a
by-product of the European intrusions.
Still, these "foreign powers" needed
one spokesperson and certain ambitious
Potawatomis appointed themselves
to such positions. Clifton refers to
these men, many of whom were mixed-
Book Reviews 215
bloods, as "intercultural
brokers" and includes excellent discussion and ex-
amples of their personalities and
lifestyles.
Clifton also emphasizes the effects of
intertribal factionalism. Over time
the Potawatomis became increasingly
heterogeneous from intermarriage and
exposure to white society. Clifton
explores this phenomenon as a major factor
in cultural breakdown and the loss of
traditions. As he correctly states, much
of what happened and continues to happen
to the Potawatomis is a result of
irreconcilable differences and
conflicting perspectives between the tribesmen
themselves. Clifton refuses to place all
of the blame for tribal disintegration
on the American government. The only
participants in this story to which
Clifton is overly critical are the
Jesuits. He insists that the Potawatomis
avoided involvement with the Roman
Catholic Church, but this conclusion is
contradicted by impressions registered
in church records and reports of
agencies governing the tribe. Clifton
made few comparisons of the Indians'
attitudes toward Catholic as opposed to
Protestant missionaries, a compari-
son which would reveal more about their
true feelings.
James Clifton has spent considerable
time among the Potawatomis in Kansas,
Wisconsin and Michigan and has acted as
a witness for tribal claims. He is
then personally interested in their
well-being and historical image. Although
concerned, he remains objective in
writing of their history and problems.
His conclusions are always to the point
and there is no question as to his
meaning. The decisiveness of his
approach is a rare and desirable quality
worth emulating.
Adams State College Jeanne P. Leader
Fremont: Explorer for a Restless
Nation. By Ferol Egan. (New York:
Double-
day & Co., Inc., 1977. xv + 582p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographic essay,
index. $14.95.)
John Charles Fremont was one of the most
complex and influential
figures of mid-nineteenth-century
America. Ferol Egan has cast him in the
role of an Alger-like opportunist whose
natural talent, egoism, and good luck
raise him from bastard son of common parents
to national hero. The portrait
is detailed, well-documented, and
fascinating in most places, but it is also
flawed by a too heavy concentration on
certain periods of the explorer's life
at the expense of others, and it lapses
into some obnoxious purple prose at
times.
Egan's major interest, as his sub-title
says, is in Fremont's five exploring
expeditions to the American west and
southwest. Thus, he skims over the man's
early years, painting an idylic picture
of spring and romance in a few pages.
He also gives little space to the later
presidential campaign and the explorer's
final years. Even the chapter on
Fremont's apprenticeship as explorer gives
little detail of his education in
survival, tracking, and the ways of nature,
preferring instead to give a detailed
description of Washington City and a very
general account of the early survey
trip.
When he recounts the first expedition in
1842, Egan, like Fremont, is in his
216 OHIO HISTORY
element, and the book picks up
considerably in pace and interest. The prepara-
tions, the other members of the party
and Fremont's reasons for selecting
them, relations with the Indians, the
designing and building of special equip-
ment, all are described in sufficient
detail. Here Egan's considerable knowledge
of Fremont's journals and letters and of
the notes and narratives of other early
overland travellers is much in evidence.
For example, the endpaper map is too
unspecific to be of much help in
following the expeditions, but Egan's de-
scriptions of location, landmark, and
scene are excellent. The writer's prefer-
ence for the expeditions is evidenced by
the fact that although they cover a
period of only twelve years, they take
up nearly half of the book. The remainder
skims over the complicated battles for
California, the explorer's court-martial
on charges of mutiny and
insubordination, and his last twenty years of grasp-
ing for political and personal power and
honor.
As a portrait of Fremont the explorer,
woodsman, scientist, and leader of
men like Kit Carson, Alexis Godey,
Thomas (Broken Hand) Fitzpatrick, and
numerous other mountain men, trappers,
cartographers, artists, and guides,
the biography succeeds admirably. But
Egan also interjects his own opinions
of nineteenth-century problems and
individuals, and that along with the im-
balance in the biography make it an
interesting and worthwhile popular life,
though hardly a definitive one.
The Ohio State University Richard M. Weatherford
The Old Northwest in the American
Revolution: An Anthology. Edited by
David Curtis Skaggs. (Madison: The State
Historical Society of Wiscon-
sin, 1977. vii + 497p.; maps,
bibliography. $21.50.)
This is an interesting and valuable
effort, a product of the American
Revolution bicentennial, to provide a
single-volume history of the role of the
early West in the war for independence.
Professor Skaggs, of Bowling Green
State University, canvassed articles in
numerous journals and many books
to select twenty-one "concise,
readable, and accurate descriptions and
analyses" pertaining to what he
considers the "three basic areas of inquiry":
the West as a cause of the Revolution;
warfare in the West, and the result-
ing peace negotiations that attached the
section to the new country; and the
West's problems for the fledgling
nation.
Two chapters on British policy before
the Revolution reveal imperial com-
mitment to the French-settled North and
West, while three chapters concen-
trate on the colonial invasion of the
interior and conflicting claims.
The war period is the subject of eight
of the chapters, including the
Kentucky and Ohio campaigns, George
Rogers Clark's advance into the lower
Ohio Valley and to the Mississippi
towns, the British attack on St. Louis in
1780, and the Spanish campaign against
Fort St. Joseph the next year. This
section ends with an excellent chapter
on the West and the Paris negotia-
tions. Its author, Richard B. Morris,
agrees with Professor Skaggs that Clark's
campaigns had no influence on the peace
negotiations. While the official
record supports this position, I would
tend to agree with Jeffrey Kimball,
Book Reviews 217
who, in more recent remarks, suggests
that Clark's military campaigns inter-
fered with plans for concerted action by
the British and Indians. At least,
as a new biography of Clark by Lowell H.
Harrison recognizes, the British
could hardly support claims to
possession of the lands below the lakes.
Eight chapters are devoted to the
western land cessions by the states to the
new nation and the creation of a public
domain, the development of the national
land policy and its first application,
and the creation of governmental ad-
ministration for the territory, with its
provisions for popular representation
and ultimate statehood.
As it turned out, the same British
problems in governing the West which
produced irritations for the colonials
that contributed to the revolu-
tion-establishing Indian policy,
controlling the fur trade, restraining would-be
settlers and land speculators, but
making some provisions for settlement-were
also faced by the new United States and
caused serious contention among the
states and between them and the
frontier. In both cases-British and
American-the administrations were weak
and unsure, though, in its last gasp,
the Confederation delivered land and
governance legislation that assured
development of the Old Northwest and the
Union.
Striking disagreements between
historians are revealed in the book. For ex-
ample, Clarence Alvord finds it
significant to deny the secrecy of Clark's
campaign against Kaskaskia, while Dale
Van Every insists that secrecy was
important to prevent Hamilton from
moving from Detroit. Alvord holds
Clark's campaign in Illinois was of
little importance, while Skaggs claims it
stopped the construction of garrisons
which could supply Indians for attacks
on Kentucky. Jack Sosin insists that
British policy after 1760 was an honest
attempt to attain security and
stability, while other authors emphasize the colo-
nial descent upon the West and the conflicts
and other troubles that ensued.
Professor Skaggs presents introductions
to the three main sections of the
book. I would have liked him to give
more attention to the differing points
of view. On the whole, I admired his
selections. While the story by Allan W.
Eckert is good reading, I was disturbed
by the intrusion of the fictional as-
pect. James O'Donnell's treatment of
Anglo-American attitudes towards the In-
dians seemed too limited and simplistic,
and Charles R. Ritcheson's "Frontier
Diplomacy" seemed too heavily
weighted with British documentation, which
suggests that I missed the footnotes,
which had been removed.
Miami University James H.
Rodabaugh
The Papers of Thirteen Early Ohio
Political Leaders: An Inventory to the
1976-77 Microfilm Editions. By Linda Elise Kalette. (Columbus: Ohio His-
torical Society, 1977. 240p.;
illustrations, indices. $15.00.)
Collectively, through the papers of some
of its political leaders, this inven-
tory represents much of the history of
the Northwest Territory and of the
first half century of Ohio statehood.
The papers of Arthur St. Clair, Winthrop
Sargent, Edward Tiffin, Thomas Kirker,
Samuel Huntington, Return Jonathan
218 OHIO HISTORY
Meigs, Jr., Othniel Looker, Thomas
Worthington, Ethan Allen Brown, Allen
Trimble, Jeremiah Morrow, Charles
Hammond, and Micajah T. Williams, the
1789-1795 executive journal of the
Northwest Territory, and 1814-1830 execu-
tive letterbooks were assembled from the
State Library of Ohio and the
Ohio Historical Society. They contain a
wide variety of documents, including
correspondence, land records, maps,
resolutions, military records, and financial
papers.
This "inventory" is a guide to
the sixty-eight rolls of microfilm and a des-
criptive analysis of the documents. The
subject index and the correspondence
index make it possible to integrate the
materials in these collections in what-
ever ways it is desired by the
researcher.
Several other features make this more
than just the inventory the title
suggests. A portrait, a biographical
sketch, and a brief bibliography introduce
the description of the collection of
each leader. A notes-to-researchers section
contains much valuable information: the
provenance of the collection is docu-
mented. Accessibility and restrictions
on usage are explained. Indices,
guides, calendars, and other finding
aids are listed. Examples illustrate
proper footnote citation of and
bibliographic reference to the documents.
Property rights and literary rights are
carefully stated, and purchase infor-
mation concerning the microfilm edition
is given.
A scope-and-content statement describes
the shelf-space size of the collec-
tion, its physical condition, the number
of each of the several types of docu-
ments it contains, the principal
correspondents, and the subject matter con-
cerns. Related materials or collections
held by the Ohio Historical Society
are also indicated. Notes-to-researchers
and roll descriptions are furnished
for the executive journal and the
executive letterbooks.
There are some basic difficulties in
trying to use this volume. The provenance
statement for the Worthington
collection, for example, refers to the James
Kilbourne letters which it includes. The
index should give precise reference
to the Kilbourne material in the some
twenty-five pages of content description
of the Worthington microfilm.
"Reverend James Kilbourne" in the index lists
four dates of letters, but the microfilm
descriptions covering these dates say
nothing about Kilbourne. "James
Kilbourne" in the index lists "RJM-1812,"
which apparently refers to the Meigs
collection. The thirteen descriptive
paragraphs of the Meigs papers for 1812,
however, do not mention Kilbourne.
Unfortunately, therefore, the utility of
the index has to be questioned.
There is also a physical problem with
the index. Entries are dates, or
dates and correspondents. They are
virtually run together, separated only by
semicolons or virgules. The twelve
inches of entries under Winthrop Sargent,
for example, are intimidating to all but
the most persistent user who has good
eyes and plenty of time to comb through
them. Simple columns of entries
would require a few more pages, but the
results would be much more satis-
factory.
One other detraction needs to be
mentioned. In the text somewhat, and
in the indices especially, there is a
penchant for using acronyms and initials.
Most users of this guide will not have
an in-house familiarity with these and
will have to patiently seek out their
meaning before VFM, MTW, EOPL,
RJM, OSAHS, and dozens of others come to
life for them. If these cannot
be expanded, a simple table of
abbreviations would improve things immensely.
These unsatisfactory features aside, The
Papers of Thirteen Early Ohio
Political Leaders is a welcome reference guide. Kalette has ferreted out
much
Book Reviews 219
vital information
about the collections that will serve scholars well. It is a
must for research in
Old Northwest and early Ohio history.
Miami University Dwight
L. Smith
Religious
Newspapers in the Old Northwest to 1861: A History,
Bib-
liography, and
Record of Opinion. By Wesley Norton.
(Athens: Ohio
University Press,
1977. xi + 196p.; notes, bibliography, index. $12.50.)
Wesley Norton's Religious
Newspapers in the Old Northwest, is a wel-
come contribution to
our knowledge of frontier religion. A model of brevity
and concision, the
study includes a lengthy bibliography that lists the extant
runs of religious
papers as well as their archival location. Even if the text
were not of interest,
the bibliographical appendix makes the slim volume
a convenient
scholarly aid. Every library in the Northwest should hold a copy
for easy reference.
The author sketches
the problems, controversies, and tenor of the frontier
religious press.
Journalistic history always faces the problem of how much of
the contents of a
paper ought to be chronicled, since, after all, the editors did
not make the news but
only reported it. Norton, I think, is careful to choose
only those issues
that seemed to involve editorial choices. He might have
given us, however, a
more critical and penetrating understanding of the edi-
tors themselves.
Some, like Thomas Kidwell of the Star in the West, a Cin-
cinnati Universalist
sheet, were genuine characters with rather eccentric no-
tions; others like
John Mason Peck were more orthodox in tone and theology,
but strong
personalities nonetheless. Somehow the author fails to convey the
richness and
diversity of these souls and bring alive the arcane theological
battles that so
aroused them to the mystification of later generations. Never-
theless Norton
effectively outlines the reasons why so many papers failed.
Aside from
fratricidal sectarianism, the chief problem was the casual failure
of denominational
subscribers to meet obligations. Editors had to beg for
firewood or produce
in lieu of cash payments. By 1860, though, 200,000
churchmen received a
religious paper, no mean accomplishment for an un-
dercapitalized
industry.
Among the issues to
stir editorial comment, the slavery question was the
most important.
Norton treats the matter with good sense, observing that
most editors were
partial to colonization and disagreeable about abolition.
Yet, on the whole
these journalists disapproved the annexation of Texas,
the Mexican War, the
Fugitive Slave and the Kansas-Nebraska acts. In
fact, one could argue
that the Protestant newsmen of the Old Northwest
had much to do with
the strength of the Republican party in that region,
despite pious claims
for a separation of church and state. Dr. Norton does
not cite Eric Foner's
brilliant study of Republican ideology, but his findings
conform to those of
Professor Foner. Increasingly, clergymen and clerical
journalists perceived
the South as an affront to the Christian community,
a position arrived at
with much hesitation and reluctance. Yet, as Norton
hastens to add quite
appropriately, hostility to slavery and slaveholders
220 OHIO
HISTORY
cannot be confused with a Northwest
sympathy for negritude. Instead, these
editors- an unsophisticated but
well-meaning group-worried much about
racial "promiscuity" in
northern pews even as they lambasted planter li-
centiousness and cruelty in distant
slave quarters. To ask them to be racial
egalitarians would be to demand the
historically impossible. In a short but
useful epilogue, Norton notes the irony
that the same spirit of prohibitory
narrowness that discountenanced dancing
and other simple pleasures was
also the spirit that made antislavery
libertarianism possible. It is not a new
idea, but Dr. Norton puts the matter
well, concluding that the denomina-
tional editors "contributed, and
probably in no small way, to make moral
outrage a national institution"
(p.136). Indeed, for better or worse, that
contribution of religious journalism
seems to have found its way into the con-
temporary secular press.
Although Religious Newspapers has
no major theme, no interpretive mes-
sage to startle or confound us, it is a
modest, well organized, and pleasantly
thoughtful study. Its utility will
linger beyond the usual span for such efforts.
Case Western Reserve University Bertram Wyatt-Brown
The Feminization of American Culture.
By Ann Douglas. (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1977. x + 403p.; appendices,
notes, index. $15.00.)
The cloying and suffocating quality of
nineteenth-century American senti-
mentalism and its particular association
with women have been the subject of
numerous studies and much critical
lamentation during the past half century.
In The Feminization of American
Culture, Ann Douglas attempts to broaden
and sharpen this historical impression
by emphasizing the importance of sex
roles, Protestant liberalism, and
cultural commercialization in the creation
of a sentimental society.
The principal figures in this study are
a group of sixty non-evangelical
ministers and literary women whose lives
and works, Douglas suggests, pro-
vided the basic materials for the growth
of this sensibility from 1820 to
1875. Both groups in her sample, she
argues, reflected in very different ways
the relative
"disestablishment" of ministers and middle-class women in the
Northeast during the early nineteenth
century, and both responded by pro-
moting values which somewhat covertly
protested but largely rationalized these
changes in their position in society.
The substance of these responses, as
expressed in their fictional and
non-fictional writings, constituted the core of
the sentimental culture and reflected
its primary themes-that spiritual values
are "feminine," or passive and
unworldly, and that ministers, women, and
others of a like nature, because of
their independence of entrepreneurial
activity and major institutional power,
are most capable of expressing or
embodying these values. While Douglas'
use of the social status concept is
in places either a bit speculative or
too derivative, her evidence for a dramatic
convergence of the two subcultures is
compelling. Also persuasive is her argu-
ment that this pattern of personality
similarities and mutual emulation, flattery,
Book Reviews 221
and exchanging of roles worked partly to
the social advantage of the literary
women while it tended to reinforce the
ministers' loss of public authority.
This social difference, she suggests,
plus a certain residual commitment of
many ministers to their traditional
intellectual and religious values, injected
a degree of fear and rivalry into this
otherwise rather narcissistic relationship.
The real center of Douglas's interest,
however, is less on motives or social
status and more on their interacting and
largely unhealthy cultural effects.
Her discussion of Protestant liberalism,
for example, while a little overly
analogical, points out the special
though uneasy affinity of the non-evangelical
clergy (particularly Unitarians and
liberal Congregationalists) for sentimental
ideas and female literary associations
as well as the manner in which this
feminine accent accelerated the decline
of intellectual vigor and emotional
intensity in liberal theology. In a
similar but more original vein, Douglas
attributes the static, insubstantial,
and pseudobiological quality of the local
histories and biographies written by
women and ministers to the writers'
obsession with portraying their subjects
(usually women and ministers) in an
excessively domestic and enfeebled
spirit. In general, Douglas's intellectual
sympathies are more with the ministers
and male magazinists than with the
literary women, in part because she
detects a certain degree of ambivalence
and involuntary adjustment in the male
sentimentalists' relation to their
feminine identity and to their largely
female-dominated reading public. Both
the Beecher-Tilton scandal and the
post-Civil War fiction of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, however, are cast by Douglas in
equally lurid colors, effectively illumi-
nating what she believes to be the
"incestuous" and mutually exploitative
image of male-female relations in lives
and literature submerged in the sen-
timental. This second section (on creed
and culture) also includes an extremely
engaging discussion of the American
Victorian fascination with death, mourn-
ing, and materialistic fantasies of
afterlife, in which Douglas finds expressed
in extreme the essential meaning of
American sentimentalism a divine con-
firmation of the power and value of
passivity and weakness and a heavenly
image of a domesticated, standardized
and consumer-oriented bourgeois
society.
Douglas concludes her book with essays
on Margaret Fuller and Herman
Melville, two "case studies"
in the romanticism which she contends was the
vigorous, experiential alternative to
the sentimental culture. These last chap-
ters, however, despite many intelligent
insights (especially on the social critical
themes in Melville), are somewhat marred
by Douglas' comparative neglect
of Fuller's published works and by her
tendency to make Fuller's life and
Melville's fiction appear as
"protests" or conscious manifestations of her
disestablishment thesis. More
fundamentally, one wishes she had defined less
casually what she means by romanticism
(a more many-sided movement than
she allows) and had indicated why she
chose these particular American
romantics rather than any number of
others.
This problem of scope and definition is
unfortunately not, however, limited
to the discussion of romantic protest.
Douglas is never really very clear, for
example, about her method in determining
her sample of sixty ministers and
literary women. In some places she
implies that she is comparing her groups
with others (not clearly defined) to
establish conclusions about the causes of
the feminization process, while
elsewhere she disavows any attempt at com-
parison. Most importantly, even for a
study only of sentimentalists drawn from
her liberal and literary catagories,
Douglas fails to use her individuals in a
222 OHIO HISTORY
consistent manner and does not seem to
be fully aware of the implications
of this fact. Thus, quite a number in
her sample are hardly analyzed at all,
and many of these are individuals whose
works and careers were in large
part devoted to intellectual romanticism
or social reform, movements which
Douglas herself counterposes to
Victorian sentimentalism. She partly acknowl-
edges this apparent paradox with regard
to feminism and female status, but
elsewhere seems to deny it and, in
general, concedes that she has downplayed
the reform aspect of liberal
Protestantism (the religious basis of sentimentalism
in her study) because she does not
regard it as that movement's central legacy,
though she does not indicate her
reasoning on the matter.
Yet many of the "feminine"
themes which Douglas emphasizes were, for
better or worse, reflected in a broader
and more vital range of activity than
would be apparent from reading Douglas's
book, including, for example, some
of William Lloyd Garrison's most radical
speeches, many of Nathaniel Haw-
thorne's most sexually charged stories,
and much of the popular anti-slavery
literature of the 1850s. The
absence of any real discussion of the Civil War,
crucial to an understanding of the
transformation of mid-nineteenth-century
northern sentimentalism, also
contributes to the somewhat ahistorical tone of
her work. Throughout, Douglas strains
too much for an apocalyptic image, a
twentieth-century mass culture analogy,
or a stark pre-nineteenth-century
Calvinist contrast, and, while this
style contributes to the urgency and excite-
ment of the book, it also obscures much
of what was alive and ambiguous in
pre-Civil War sentimental culture. Even
from a contemporary perspective, it
was certainly not the last time in
American history when social reform and
cultural sentimentalism supported one
another.
The Feminization of American Culture,
while somewhat one-sided and not
always clearly defined, is often
insightful, sometimes brilliant, and a delightful
antidote to the sentimental neopopulism
which mars many recent discussions
of submerged social classes. Moreover,
Douglas has demonstrated that
women's history need not be ghettoized
and that a lively sensitivity to the
interaction of women's themes and
"other" cultures can illuminate both and
enlarge our understanding of the whole
of American history.
San Francisco State University Charles Capper
Black Culture and Black
Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From
Slavery to Freedom. By Lawrence W. Levine. (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1977. xx + 522p.; notes,
index. $15.95.)
The author's thesis is that by
reconstructing the development of black folk
thought we can understand black
American's group cohesion, pride and his-
tory, and the mechanisms they have
erected to guard their values, maintain
their sense of worth and retain their
sanity. Although the writer has made a
significant contribution to black folk
thought in this work, this work still has a
number of shortcomings.
Professor Levine attempts to cover too
much material in one volume. He
discusses the whole of black folk
thought from Africa to America, during and
Book Reviews 223
after slavery, through gospel songs,
blues and jazz, World Wars I and II, and
briefly the 1950s. Obviously justice
cannot be done to the black experience
covering all of those periods in 522
pages. In fact, full-length studies have
been written on most of the areas that
he only discusses at random-black
slave songs, work songs, spirituals,
folktales, humor, folk songs, music, the
blues, jazz and of course black slavery.
Secondly, the author relied too heavily
on the various Federal Writers' Progress
Administration (WPA) Slave Nar-
ratives. These collections have to be
used with a very perceptive eye. It has
been found that some of the slave
narratives need to be reexamined and as-
sessed as to their overall accuracy.
Third, the writer uses a number of ex-
amples of black humor and black jokes
out of context, thereby leaving the
reader with a distorted supposition and
incorrect understanding of the signif-
icance of the jokes. Fourth, Professor
Levine does not show the role or influ-
ence of the family and other forces
within the community and society that
contributed to black folk thought, humor
and laughter. Those dynamics con-
tributed to the need and support of
black culture.
It is nearly impossible to separate the
interplay of the black family, a racist
society and a struggling and oppressed
people from the total composition of
the black experience in the United
States. Although Professor Levine attempts
to show the mechanisms blacks used to
maintain their sense of worth he falls
short of his goal. Many have aclaimed Black
Culture and Black Consciousness
as a groundbreaking and landmark
contribution to black culture, however, it
should be noted that Dr. Levine relied
on a number of significant works by
writers such as James Weldon Johnson,
Miles Mark Fisher, Sterling Brown,
James Mason Brewer and others who did
pioneer work in the field of "Negro
Culture" and "Negro
Consciousness" and its significance and meaning to the
"Negro Experience."
The strength of this book is that it
collects in one volume a number of facets
of the black experience that will enable
the reader to better understand
black culture in the United States. This
work continues to confirm what is
becoming an accepted fact-that black
people maintained a subculture during
and after slavery, and that is has
developed and deepened since emancipa-
tion. The author further documents a
fact that is well known-that black peo-
ple have possessed and still possess a
vibrant oral culture which has been
handed down from one generation to the
next. The value of this work lies in
the author's own words: he
"attempted to inaugurate not end discussion, to
open up not seal off new avenues of
research and understanding." The seri-
ous reader should keep that in mind when
using this book.
University of Delaware Lenwood G.
Davis
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume VI: September 1-December 8, 1862.
Edited by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press,
1977. xxiv + 492p.;
illustrations, map, chronology, calendar, index. $17.50.)
Autumn 1862 was an eventful season for
nothern and southern armies in
the West, trying times for generals
denied clear-cut victories in hard fighting
224 OHIO HISTORY
in a theater far removed from the
political centers of command. In the ap-
proach of the war's second winter, the
troops in Tennessee and Mississippi
watched the romance of war fade in dull
field maneuvers and office routine,
in hunger and sickness and in the new
guerrilla-like fighting that marked
much of the action. High ranking
officers, too abruptly thrust into command,
failed in moments of crisis and
decision-except, perhaps, for Ulysses S.
Grant, the commander of Union troops in
Mississippi.
Volume 6 of The Papers of Ulysses S.
Grant details the general's military
and personal actions in the West from
September 1 to December 8, 1862, in his
own words and those of the officers with
whom he associated during this
important season. It is obvious that
Grant's fortunes were on the rise, the
careful observer begins to see the
genius that will take him to the successes
of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Appomattox,
but there are still days of
apprenticeship ahead.
Grant's writings are those of a
sensitive man. His concerns are the human
ones: the needs of his troops, the
demands of the freedmen, the ineffective-
ness of some of his own generals, the
plight of the defeated enemy civilians.
Piqued by the generals who refused to
obey his orders, angered by sutlers
and speculators who harangued his
advancing army, troubled by personal
problems within his own family circle,
Grant sometimes made mistakes.
His contempt for camp followers led to
an unfortunate indictment of the
Jews. Besieged by criticism from
Washington, he advanced his lines too deep
into Mississippi for proper control of
his supply and communication lines.
Impatient for a decisive victory, he
ordered William T. Sherman into a pre-
mature attack on a strong Confederate
position north of Vicksburg and
suffered defeat. Irritated by
indecisiveness in his own command, he issued
personal vendetta against some of them
including the field commander at
the luka and Corinth victories, General
William S. Rosecrans.
Grant balances his record, however, in
his management of a large army
in enemy territory; his improving
logistics; his sensitive selection of new
subordinate officers and his increasing
support of two of the war's finest officers,
Generals Sherman and James B. McPherson;
his improvement of troop
morale; and his success in keeping the
enemy on edge and his own troops on
the alert by his continuing advance. His
letters before luka and Corinth re-
veal the intricacy and quality of his
battle planning, his letters after the
battles are a careful analysis of
success and failure, obviously part of his
continuing education toward successful
leadership.
luka and Corinth were important
milestones in Grant's career. After these
battles his Federal army took the
permanent offensive while the Confederates
began the agonizing defense of their
"Heartland." Even more important was
the recognition that he received from
President Lincoln, now alerted to the
fact that the north had an aggressive
commander in the field. Criticism
changed to support and encouragement.
This volume is more than a story of
Grant, however. It tells of a vast
region reluctant to be conquered, the
frustrations within a strong army un-
able to deal the final blow; it speaks
of prisoners of war, the pathos of the new
freedmen, the difficulties of
maintaining railroad and telegraph lines deep in
enemy territory. It describes pettiness
among commanders charged with
heavy responsibility, the quibbles over
promotion and changes of assignment,
and the routine field duty that marks so
much of war's calendar.
Still, it is Grant that dominates these
pages, his tenacity of spirit before a
Book Reviews 225
determined army, his displeasure with
Rosecrans, his criticism of the tele-
graph department, his enthusiasm for
those who carried out his orders
properly, his belief in his troops, his
concerns for his family. He is the spirit
behind Union successes, the voice of
decision in the planning of new cam-
paigns, the innovator of new Union
strategy. There is also tenderness in his
letters to his wife, humor in a note to
dour Henry W. Halleck with instruc-
tions to pass on certain
"unmentionables" he had requisitioned from a Con-
federate home to one of the Washington
staff to whom "they might be of
service to," firmness in the way he
kept a meddling father out of his personal
affairs.
This volume does, however, leave
unresolved several of the mysteries of
the general's life. Was his business
trip to St. Louis just the occasion for a
big drunk? Probably not, but the reader
must decide. Why did he take such
vindictive action against the Jews in
his theater of action? Bruce Catton
passed off the actions that eventually
led to General Orders Number 11 as
part of the times. This is hardly
satisfactory to the modern student. Why did
Grant extend his lines into unknown
enemy territory? What prompted the
Sherman advance on Vicksburg? Was Grant
still learning how to fight?
Autumn 1862 was Grant's season in the
West. His successes and failures
marked the course of war in that region.
In a letter to the Senate he praised
that body's confirmation of General
McPherson to higher rank with the
statement: "He belongs to a class
of men that we have to [sic] few of." In
spite of some of the shadows in his life
in late 1862, Grant was rapidly
proving himself to be of this class of
men.
Wittenberg University Robert
Hartje
Class and Community: The Industrial
Revolution in Lynn. By Alan Dawley.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1976. viii + 301p.; tables appendices,
bibliography, notes, index. $17.50.)
Class and Community is a modest "community" study disguised as a
history
of the industrial revolution in Lynn,
Massachusetts. Modest is perhaps too
generous; the substantive sections are
so brief and the documentation so thin
that the reader learns very little about
class or community, much less the
industrial revolution in Lynn. In part
these deficiencies reflect the disap-
pearance of essential institutional
records, particularly the records of Lynn
manufacturing firms. But they are also
products of Dawley's effort to use
bits and pieces of the Lynn experience
to introduce other, supposedly larger,
issues.
In those sections where he discusses
Lynn and its workers Dawley makes
several useful contributions. His
analysis of the manuscript censuses for
1860-1880 suggests that Lynn workers
raised their living standards during the
decades when factory production became
dominant. The improvement was
hardly spectacular; a rise from rags to
riches was no more common in Lynn
than in other industrial cities. But
Dawley's data suggests a pattern of gradual
improvement, similar to that reported in
other community studies. Dawley
226 OHIO HISTORY
also attacks the venerable
Commons-Lescohier thesis that the Knights of St.
Crispin were pre-industrial artisans.
Comparing a list of Crispins with the
1870 census tally, he concludes that
most organized shoe workers were factory
employees. Finally, he documents the
continuity between the Knights of St.
Crispin, the Knights of Labor, and
subsequent organizations, and the enormous
power of the unions in local politics.
The most striking feature of this material
is the contrast between the unions'
numerical strength and their meager
influence on Lynn institutions. Despite
large memberships the unions ap-
parently operated as little more than
social clubs during most of their usually
brief histories. They organized
successful third party political campaigns, but
elected conventional, usually
conservative politicians. Dawley attributes this
paradox to their leaders, who were
uniformly timid and ineffectual. In this
respect his data seems to substantiate
the conclusions of Irwin Yellowitz's
recent Industrialization and the
American Labor Movement.
Unfortunately, Dawley appears to have
been only marginally interested in
Lynn, its industry, and workers. He does
not discuss any of the topics noted
above in adequate detail or with
sufficient documentation. His treatment of
the social mobility issue is cursory and
ambiguous. His examination of the
Crispins is limited to the observation
that they were factory operatives.
And his study of the union movement is
at best fragmentary. Predictably,
perhaps, he is no more thorough when he
turns to the larger setting-the
industrial revolution. Dawley's subtitle
promises an analysis of industrial and
technological change, at least as it
affected Lynn, but his account is unsatis-
factory on nearly every count. He is
unfamiliar with most relevant work in
economic history and the history of
technology. His knowledge of the boot
and shoe industry is rudimentary;
prospective readers would be well advised
to start with the standard work, Blanche
Evans Hazard's The Organization
of the Boot and Shoe Industry in
Massachusetts Before 1875 (1921).
Though
the factory is the bete noire of
Dawley's study, he includes only the most
superficial description of the Lynn
factories, their operations, machinery, or-
ganization, or evolution.
In short, Dawley's account has only
limited usefulness as a study of Lynn
(the "community") or the
transformation of shoe manufacturing (the "in-
dustrial revolution"). That leaves
"class," which is his real interest. Dawley
believes that the rise of the factory in
Lynn degraded the worker and created
a sense of class consciousness and
solidarity. He may be right; the affinity
of Lynn workers for organized labor
despite the unions' consistent record of
failure and incompetence suggests that
he is at least partly correct. But the
book provides no basis for affirming or
rejecting his thesis. If Dawley knew
more about his subject, if he had done
his homework, or even if he had
systematically analyzed the data he
collected he might have presented a chal-
lenging argument for his viewpoint. But
he has devoted his efforts instead
to a series of superfluous commentaries
on class consciousness, Marxian
theory, "industrial
capitalism," and the exploitation of workers, written in the
breathless prose of undergraduate
radical journalism. If any cliche of 1930s
"old" left or 1960s
"new" left polemical writing is omitted, I have been
remiss in my copy editing. But, then, I
became numb after the first fifty
pages. That the editors of the Harvard
University Press would permit this
nonsense to appear under their imprint
is the most remarkable feature of the
book.
The industrial revolution in the boot
and shoe industry is an important
Book Reviews
227
and potentially rewarding topic. It has
commanded the efforts of major scholars
in the past and deserves renewed
attention. The late appearance of the fac-
tory, the persistence of the small
plant, the high proportion of native employees,
and the unions' success in attracting
workers made it different from tex-
tiles, iron and steel, and machinery,
the archetypal nineteenth-century
factory industries, as well as tobacco
and clothing manufacture, the "sweated"
trades. The documents for a new and more
comprehensive history of the in-
dustry are available. (A detailed study
of labor migration and recruitment
practices is possible because of the
predominance of New England-born
operatives. That would be a major
achievement, a breakthrough, but Dawley
found it too time consuming and costly
for his taste.) Such a history probably
could not be based on the experiences of
a single town, though it could be
based on the New England towns that were
the center of the industry for
more than a century. Such a history
would have to blend economic analysis,
a systematic study of technological
change, and labor history. It might be
in part a community study. It might be a
commentary on class consciousness
in nineteenth-century America. But it is
unlikely that it would bear more than
a superficial resemblance to this flawed
treatment of Lynn.
University of Akron Daniel Nelson
The Drive to Industrial Maturity: The
U.S. Economy, 1860-1914. By Harold
G. Vatter. (Westport: Greenwood Press,
1975. viii + 368p.; tables, notes,
bibliography, index. $15.00.)
Traditional historians have long
recognized dramatic changes in late nine-
teenth-century economy, but economic
historians have been reluctant to offer
an in-depth analysis of the period.
Relying heavily upon National Bureau of
Economic Research studies and their
offshoots, Harold Vatter fills this void with
a remarkably complete description of
American economic performance. He
examines the era from 1860 to 1914 from
the perspective of regions, sectors,
money and prices, foreign economic
policy and the social response to change.
Only income distribution receives short
shrift in this volume.
As the author states in his preface
"the accumulation of capital, and the
social and political domination of the
business stratum, I consider to be central
to the development process"
(p.viii). He highlights the rising share of capital
formation in the GNP and searches for
the policies which encouraged such
a phenomenon. Particular attention is
given to laissez-faire: "it involves a
policy of central government aid to the
development of the business sector
at home and abroad associated with
minimum increase in government regula-
tion, a decentralized hard money policy
and a classical fiscal policy" (pp.57-58).
While the federal government does not
deserve all the credit, its "development
policy . . . was rather to facilitate
industrialization and urbanization through
restricting aggregate consumption and
maximizing saving and investment"
(p.308).
The virtues of this volume go beyond this
perceptive central theme. Vatter
provides particularly useful analyses of
money, prices, productivity, sectoral
228 OHIO HISTORY
performance and the interrelationships
among capital, labor and output. Indeed,
we get a three-sided approach to each of
the fundamental issues; a table
representing quantitative record,
elementary economic theory to explain its
significance and a brief description of
existing (although occasionally outdated)
bibliography.
The author does not wish merely to write
the "more analytical and quan-
titative" history; he desires to
integrate it with the old "narrative" form.
Here he is less successful. While
interest group politics are introduced with
regard to a host of economic issues, the
author avoids firm conclusions.
Many historians would challenge his broad
definition of what constitutes an
interest group and most would find
assertions such as Progressive middle-
class sympathy for organized labor
unacceptable. Actually this book contains
almost no narrative. It is very tightly
written and the prose could best be
described as prolix. The use of
economics terminology and complex sentence
structure makes The Drive to
Industrial Maturity a very demanding mental
exercise. I longed for a few simple
sentences with sparklingly clear conclusions.
The inexcusable number of typographical
errors and widespread use of
exclamation points merely added to my
frustration.
Vatter has produced a solid volume in
spite of its flaws. For those of us
who do not have our statistical series
together and who wish to comprehend
the whys and wherefores of economic
development narrowly defined, this is
a very rewarding book.
University of Wisconsin, Madison Diane Lindstrom
Knights of the Golden Rule: The
Intellectual as Christian Social Reformer
in the 1890s. By Peter J. Frederick. (Lexington: The University Press
of
Kentucky, 1976. xvi + 323p.;
notes, bibliography, index. $18.75.)
Peter J. Frederick's biographical
analysis of ten Christian social reformers
at the turn of the century raises a
number of questions about the writing
of history not usually so apparent in
comparable historical studies. The bio-
graphical subjects include: William Dean
Howells, Henry Demarest Lloyd,
W. D. P. Bliss, B. O. Flower, Vida
Scudder, Walter Rauschenbusch, George
Herron, Edwin Markham, Ernest Crosby,
and Samuel M. Jones. Except for the
final chapter on Golden Rule Jones,
these are nine stories of failure: well-
intentioned and noble knights stripped
of their armor because of their inability
to resolve the dilemma between
idealistic ends and practical means. In
addition to being ineffective and
impractical, the nine ethical reformers suf-
fered the pain of personal psychic
crises. Frederick argues that only the Toledo
mayor could translate the golden rule
into action and escape the paralyzing
effects of the guilt that affected the
others. He contends that all ten were
reformers not radicals; that
Christianity, insofar as it meant the golden rule,
the Sermon on the Mount, and a
post-millenial vision of the Kingdom, was
critical to their thought; that all were
intellectuals; and that all were heavily
indebted to Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Mazzini
for their social awakening.
The most disturbing question raised by
Frederick's study is his expressed
Book Reviews 229
motive in writing the book: as a
participant in radical causes in the Sixties
he admits to "overidentifying"
with his subjects and unabashedly acknowledges
that ". . . in a very real sense
this is a book not just about the 1880's
and some historical personalities but
about the present and about me.
Otherwise, there would have been no
reason to write it." Frederick's reluctance
to establish more of an emotional
distance between his subject and himself
accounts for some serious problems.
One has to question Frederick's
definition and use of the label "intellec-
tual." Because of a much too brief
discussion of the label in the first
chapter and its inconsistent application
throughout the study, the reader is
left with the disturbing impression that
intellectual might mean little more than
one who is hopelessly middle class! In
the course of a short section on Bliss,
for example, Frederick states that
"he was neither a profound nor an original
thinker," yet later on accounts for
his most serious failings as a result of his
having "too much of the Christian
intellectual in him."
There is the problem of Frederick's
undervaluation of individuals' roles
as ministers and the significance of
Christian theology. Especially in the case
of Rauschenbusch, but for Bliss and
Herron as well, one can only question
Frederick's de-emphasis of Christ's
redemptive role in shaping their Christian
Socialism.
A more pervasive problem is the author's
criteria for assessing the "effective-
ness" of the reformer's activities.
Frederick's impatience, if not hostility, to
these "middle-class reformers"
seems too much a projection of his own anxiety
in occupying a similar role. He suggests
that these reformers were "restrained"
from real radicalism as if one would
inevitably be a radical unless limited
by certain compelling factors. Why are
writing books, delivering speeches, and
indefatigably committing one's life to
organizing only "limited" activism?
To even raise the issue of how much
solace Markham's poetry brought to the
workers (Frederick "wonders . . .
how much bread that reading placed on
their table") is a clear indication
of the author's self-imposed myopism.
Hiram College Richard B. Dressner
Culture & the City: Cultural
Philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917.
By Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (Lexington:
The University Press of Kentucky,
1976, xv + 288p.; appendices,
notes, index. $14.95.)
It is not the task of philanthropy to
give people what they want or think
they need. Society should obtain those
things for itself. Philanthropy's function
is to give people what philanthropists
believe is good for them. What Chicago's
cultural philantropists of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century
thought people of their city should have
was exposure to the elevating influences
of art, music, and science.
By the 1880s Chicago possessed numerous
schools, libraries, concert halls,
and galleries. These had been
established by the city government, entre-
preneurs, and native-born and ethnic
groups to meet specific needs of the city
230 OHIO HISTORY
as a whole or special interests of
segments of the community. The most
promiment of the institutions was the
Chicago Public Library, founded after the
Fire of 1871 as a repository for books
donated by England and other nations
and consciously designed to represent
and serve the interests of diverse
elements in the population. Beginning in
the 188Os civic minded businessmen
belonging to Chicago's native-born elite
organized, supported, and supervised
the Art Institute of Chicago, the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the University
of Chicago, the World's Columbian
Exposition, the Field Columbian Museum,
and the Newberry and Crerar libraries.
These institutions, unlike the Public
Library, were founded not so much to
meet a popular need as to create
and shape popular interest in high
culture. This book deals with the proponents,
administrators, critics and
"distinctive configurations" of Chicago's cultural
philanthropy as it developed between the
1880s and 1917.
The story is not without irony. The
cultural philanthropists, men like Charles
L. Hutchinson and Martin A. Ryerson,
businessmen and inheritors of fortunes
derived from business, had lofty
conceptions of art, science, and education
and contempt for entertainment,
popularization, and commercialism. The ad-
ministrators who ran the museums and
libraries were interested in expertise,
utility, efficiency, and ultimately,
service to the public. Leading artists and
architects, sharing the philanthropists'
idealistic view of art, complained that
the donors failed to patronize them.
Writers like Henry Blake Fuller and Robert
Herrick, although friends of the
philanthropists, wrote novels which cast
doubt on the motives of culture-seekers
and expressed reservations about the
social value of art. Jane Addams
objected that the city-wide cultural institu-
tions, located downtown, failed to serve
ethnic groups who seldom ventured
out of their own neighborhoods. Miss
Addams' Hull-House associate, Ellen
Gates Starr, contended that the future
of art lay in the reformation of society
rather than in the extension of culture.
The most interesting chapters are
"The City-Wide Cultural Institutions,"
which comes midway in the book, and
"The Progressive Period," which brings
it to a close. The first examines the
philanthropists' decisions on the ques-
tions: "What forms of art or
scholarship should be supported? What should
a collection or a program contain and
how should it be arranged? Where and
how should it be housed? How should it
be made attractive to the public"
(p.93). The second stresses continuity
of leadership and changes in program
adopted in the prewar years.
Holding the cultural goals of the 1890s
and frequently speaking in the
language of that decade, the
philanthropists were extending their efforts
far beyond the Gallery of Old Masters at
the Art Institute. At the museum
they had gone beyond temporary exhibitions
to bring contemporary Ameri-
can art into the permanent collection.
Both within the museum and outside,
they were establishing an endowment
structure to reward and support work-
ing artists. And they were moving out
from such traditional areas of en-
dowment as museums and libraries to
support a variety of potentially
creative endeavors, including an art
theater, an opera company, a literary
magazine, and even a bookstore (p.205).
This is a well-researched study which
represents a serious effort to come to
terms with important aspects of urban
cultural history.
The Ohio State University Robert H. Bremner
Book Reviews
231
Toward an Urban Ohio. Edited by John Wunder. Volume V of The Ohio
American Revolution Bicentennial
Conference Series. (Columbus: The Ohio
Historical Society, 1977. 44p.;
illustrations, notes. $2.00.)
Books-or in this case, booklets-of
conference papers are always difficult
to evaluate. This is the case
particularly because those papers which are
likely to be most effective before an
audience (with an inevitably limited span
of attention) are not usually as viable
when given a close, critical reading.
Such is often true of the items in this
short, attractively designed collection
of papers delivered at the fifth in a
series of six bicentennial conferences on
Ohio's history held throughout the state
in 1976. Here, however, the problem
of evaluation is complicated further by
the fact that the five papers presented
are only loosely coordinated with one
another. This situation is itself not
helped by the editor's brief
introductory remarks, which are dedicated ex-
clusively to very general
historiographical remarks and to summaries of the
papers, and thus fail to provide us with
some overlying conceptual frame-
work for understanding urbanism and
urbanization.
What similarity there is among the
papers exists in the desire of each of
the authors to explain some facet of the
cycle of growth and decline and of
expectation and deflation which has
characterized the cities and towns of one
of our most urbanized states. This is
done at the expense of other perspec-
tives- for example, the description and
analysis of the experiences of various
groups and classes within those urban
places. At their best and within the
limitations imposed by the conference
format, however, the authors provide
useful discussions, which will be of
interest not only to the scholar, but also
to the general reader looking for the
origins of the contemporary urban "crisis."
The relatively inexpensive booklet
format will no doubt serve to make this item
more accessible to the latter.
The booklet consists of five papers.
Charles Glaab's, which begins the col-
lection, is a revisionist view of the
early nineteenth-century urban promoter,
whom Glaab sees not merely as a
speculator and booster, but as a man with a
vision of the emerging western city as
an essential basis of democracy,
economic development, and social
improvement. Harry N. Scheiber's paper,
which follows, lives up to the high
standards historians have come to expect
from his work. Scheiber writes of the
complex links between transportation
development and urban growth in
antebellum Ohio and analyzes the con-
sequences of both of these processes for
the distribution of power and wealth
among communities and groups. Melvin
Dubofsky, writing of late nineteenth-
century industrial cities in Ohio,
investigates the social and environmental
consequences of industrialization in an
essay which at times seems excessively
concerned with the national
"firsts" that may be credited to Ohio. Zane Miller,
in a witty, clever essay, which is the
only one in the collection deliberately
probing those murky "lessons of the
past," compares the European immigrant
and ethnic experience of the more
distant past with recent black urban life.
Miller, who utilizes a vague concept of
Americanization, advances the rather
reductionist hypothesis that residential
mobility has in the past and can in the
future provide the key to social
acceptance and cultural assimilation for
minority groups. The concluding essay by
James F. Richardson ranks with
Scheiber's in its technical skill,
analytical seriousness, and depth. Richardson
analyzes the growing demand for
municipal services in the twentieth century
in the context of mass migration,
rural-urban rivalries, archaic constitutional,
232 OHIO HISTORY
political, and tax structures, competing
public and corporate interests, and tech-
nological change. If there is an
emotional punch to be had in all of these
essays it lies, as Richardson seems to
suggest, in considering the vast psycho-
logical distance that separates us, with
our contemporary inability to envision
a future of progress and improvement of
our older industrial cities, from Glaab's
urban visionaries.
State University of New York at
Buffalo David A. Gerber
The Culture of Professionalism: The
Middle Class and the Development of
Higher Education in America. By Burton Bledstein. (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1976. xii +
354p.; appendix, index. $12.95.)
This is an audacious book. Professor
Bledstein has combined a study of the
middle class in nineteenth-century
American society with an inquiry into the
"culture of professionalism"
that became increasingly important to the middle
class as the century advanced. Both of
these central concepts-the middle class
and professionalism-are tricky, and
Professor Bledstein is well aware of it.
It is only quite recently that American
historians began to pay much direct
attention to that particular segment of
society that might be called middle
class. Earlier, those who tried to use
the notion of class to understand
American life were often influenced by
Marx's view that there were only two
historically significant classes,
capitalists and workers, and that the middle
class was on its way to extinction
because it was tied to the obsolescent
technique of small scale production and
distribution. One of the accomplish-
ments of the recent historical scholarship
on the Progressive Era was to cast
doubt upon this view. Whatever the fate
of small scale production and dis-
tribution (they seem to show remarkable
durability), the middle class refused
to be snuffed out by the "real
historic forces." Since the beginning of the
twentieth century, important segments of
the middle class established an in-
advertent and informal alliance with
skilled workers and bureaucratic em-
ployees of large scale industry and
gradually transformed American society
into what has come to be called the
welfare state. Moreover, middle-class
social ideals showed prodigious vitality
much beyond the social setting in which
they were bred. The middle class, in
part through its domination of American
education, came to dominate American
culture.
The scholarly interest in the middle
class has engendered a new interest
in the professions. An increasing number
of occupations have styled themselves
professions and in varying degrees have
adopted professional manners and
ideals. Many social scientists, alive to
and appreciative of this development,
have accepted it as a major
characteristic of industrial society. So much so,
that a recent president of the American
Sociological Association has said that
"An industrializing society is a
professionalizing society" (W. J. Goode).
Much, of course, depends upon what is
meant by the term profession. Yet
for all their importance, neither
profession nor middle class are definable
in any simple way. One reason for this
is that these fixed terms cover
rapidly changing social realities.
Professor Bledstein's way of dealing with
Book Reviews 233
these central concepts is to allow them
a loosely organized assemblage of
meaning, permitting different tendencies
to jostle each other, thereby preserv-
ing much diversity and liveliness in his
discussion. This looseness has its
drawbacks; the gain in exuberance and
vividness must be set against the loss
in conceptual clarity and logical rigor.
In an exploratory and conjectural work
like this, however, such a trade-off may
have been a wise one.
The nub of the book is in its last
chapter. There, Professor Bledstein
presents a close reading of the major
public addresses of the leading American
university presidents of the late
nineteenth century. Laurence Veysey has
been over much the same ground and has
described it as a struggle for as-
cendency among the proponents of
conflicting university ideals-liberal cul-
ture, research, and utility. Professor
Bledstein, however, looks at these goings
on from a fresh angle and characterizes
them as the growth of "the culture
of professionalism." That
characterization has a broad suggestiveness. The
book winds back from these addresses of
the university presidents to wider and
more abstract settings. From the
academic life of the late nineteenth century
university and the "old-time"
college out of which the university grew, to
the nineteenth century notion of career,
to what Professor Bledstein sees as
"a new social perception about the
uses of space, time, and work," and
finally to a discussion of the emergence
of the American middle class that
carried all these innovations forward.
Professor Bledstein is most persuasive
when he is closest to the writings
of particular members of this middle
class. However, the only members that
he has studied close-up are the college
presidents. For the rest, he relies
largely upon a vast assortment of
secondary studies, scholarly articles and
monographs. Professor Bledstein's
copious footnotes, in fact, provide an ex-
cellent introduction to the
"new" social history of the past decade. Yet, in
dealing with the middle class, and more
markedly the professionals, at such
a great remove, Professor Bledstein's
descriptions sometimes become tenden-
tious and unconvincing. This is
especially true when he discusses such a
significant issue as the relationship of
professionals to their clients (p.102ff).
Aside from the college presidents,
Professor Bledstein does give Ralph Waldo
Emerson particular, if flitting,
attention. It is unfortunate that Emerson was
not studied more closely. For Emerson,
who began as a critic of American
middle-class culture, became its patron
saint, and such a career can illuminate
that middle-class culture as almost
nothing else can.
Professor Bledstein has written a book
about the nineteenth century with the
twentieth century very much in mind
perhaps too much in mind for either
the nineteenth or twentieth century to
be well served by it. Moreover, it
is a book written from the vantage point
of the twentieth-century college
campus. Some essential ingredients of
nineteenth-century middle-class life,
that survive only in a much diminished
form on the twentieth-century
campus, hardly appear in this work.
Entrepreneurship and religion are omitted
entirely. Yet Professor Bledstein might
well reply that he is not interested
in the nineteenth century as such, but
in the "historical continuity between
the cultural responses of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries." Clearly
Professor Bledstein has tried to write a
provocative rather than a definitive
work, and in that he has amply
succeeded.
University of California, Berkeley Samuel Haber
234 OHIO HISTORY
A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black
Cleveland, 1870-1930. By Kenneth L.
Kusmer.
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1976. xiv + 305p.; notes, tables,
illustrations, appendices,
bibliographical essay, index. $12.95.)
A Ghetto Takes Shape is an important addition to the literature on the
growth and development of black ghettos
in northern cities as a result of
the Great Migration. It belongs to the
same genus as Allan Spear's Black
Chicago and Gilbert Osofsky's Harlem: The Making of a
Ghetto, but Kus-
mer's book differs from these earlier
works in that it reflects the current
trend in quantitative technique and
comparative studies.
Kusmer traces the history of the black
community in Cleveland through
three successive stages. In the first
phase, prior to 1870, the city was marked
by its "low level of prejudice and
unusual economic opportunities for Blacks."
The second phase between 1870 and 1915
was the transition, characterized
by increased discrimination and
residential segregation, growing black popula-
tion, occupational decline, greater
class differentiation among blacks, and the
emergence of a new black elite based on
businessmen who depended on black
patronage. In the final phase, between
1915 and 1930, the black ghetto was,
to use Kusmer's word,
"consolidated." In these years the black population of
Cleveland leaped from 8,448 in 1910 to
72,000 by 1930. This black influx
into the city quickened the trends begun
in the previous phase and formed
the contours of the ghetto as we now
know it. One significant aspect of
this phase was the relationship between
the new black leadership class and
the rest of the black community. Unlike
the old black elite, the new black
leadership group had no inclination to
associate with whites, and they were
more concerned about the problems of
blacks from the lower classes.
This concern expressed itself in many
vehicles of self-help established during
this period. Kusmer concludes that the
physical isolation of blacks in the ghetto
unified blacks and "provided the
practical basis for the future struggle against
racism in all its forms."
Kusmer also attacks the generally
accepted notion that urban life in the
North had a more deleterious affect on
blacks than life in the rural South.
This is an example of one of the book's
primary assets, the way in which
Kusmer consistently challenges the
conventional wisdom about the black
experience in the urban north. There are
however some weaknesses in the book.
The case for an egalitarian pre-1870
Cleveland tends to be overstated and
perhaps simplisitic. Kusmer's portrayal
of early Cleveland as a racial paradise
is stated so strongly that the racism of
the later periods is puzzling. One
wishes for more detailed discussion of
the racial thinking of white Cleve-
landers so as to get a feel for the
wider range of relationships between
blacks and whites. One line which Kusmer
might have explored was the
paternal relationships which existed
between upper-class whites and the black
elite prior to 1870. Comparative studies
are valuable in black history for the
added insight they can provide into the
dynamics of racism, but Kusmer's
comparisons between Cleveland's European
immigrant groups and blacks do
not deepen or add to our understanding
of why blacks in Cleveland experi-
enced an occupational decline or why they
lacked job security.
Overall, Kusmer's work is sound. There
are no inaccuracies, he avoids
broad generalizations, and he has made
good use of available source material.
His most important contribution may be
his plea that the "enduring ghetto"
concept be challenged and that the
variations in the history of America's
Book Reviews 235
black ghettos be explored. This book
should be worthwhile for anyone in-
terested in urban as well as black
history.
The Ohio State University Tullia Hamilton
The Education of an Urban Minority:
Catholics in Chicago, 1833-1965. By
James W. Sanders. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977. xviii + 278p.;
tables, maps, notes, appendices, index.
$13.95.)
Despite the fact that parochial schools
have educated millions of American
Catholic children, scholars, including
those in the vanguard of the history of
education, have seriously neglected this
important component of the nation's
school system. James W. Sanders' The
Education of an Urban Minority is a
valuable but nonetheless flawed
monograph dealing with the development
of what since the late nineteenth
century has constituted the nation's largest
parochial school network, that in the
Archdiocese of Chicago.
Relying primarily on the Archives of the
Catholic Bishop of Chicago,
the records of the Office of the
Superintendent and the weekly archdiocesan
newspaper, Sanders divides his story
into three chronological periods.
Between 1833 and 1920, which he calls
"A Time of Tribulation," Chicago's
Catholics developed an extensive system
of parish schools because of the
clergy's and the laity's common wish for
the education of children in a
Catholic atmosphere, the insistent
demand of immigrants for schools where
the language and culture of their
homelands would be taught and, especially
important according to Sanders, the
nativism of the city's Protestants who
controlled the public schools. In the
1920s, "A Future Bright with Promise,"
the parochial network broadened to
include high schools, colleges and special
institutions for delinquents and
orphans, and numerous parish schools were
established in the city's burgeoning
suburbs. The forceful George Cardinal
Mundelein brought what had been
heretofore a number of essentially
separate ethnic parish systems under a
centralized administration, and,
anxious to stop the perpetuation of
ethnic differences, he attempted to enforce
a unified, English language curriculum
throughout the archdiocese. He was
quite successful with the Irish and
Germans in this regard, but much less
so with the eastern and southern
Europeans, especially the Poles. The
archdiocese's success in weathering the
Depression and in providing sufficient
schools for the large number of post
World War II suburbanites, described
in Part III, "The Burden of
Success" (1930-1965), masked serious difficul-
ties Samuel Cardinal Stritch's
abandonment in 1945 of Cardinal Munde-
lein's policy of de facto segregation
did not eliminate racial tensions in the
archdiocese and a combination of
financial pressures and changing attitudes
caused many Catholic parents to abandon
parochial education for their
chidren.
Sanders' volume has many strengths. His
discussion of the growth of
the system and its administrative
apparatus is clear and concise; he effec-
tively relates educational developments
to the city's major demographic
trends, such as the growth and
subsequent dispersal of ethnic neighborhoods
236 OHIO HISTORY
and twentieth-century suburbanization.
There are numerous insights. San-
ders points out, for example, that
nineteenth-century Catholics frequently
opposed improvements in the public
schools for fear of creating powerful
competition for their own institutions.
Sanders fails, however, to deal
adequately with some crucial issues, such
as the fundamental reasons for Catholic
support of an expensive, parallel
school system. Many Catholics, and
especially immigrants, favored parochial
schools not simply because they provided
a religious environment and freedom
from Protestant nativism or because they
taught the language and culture of
the European homeland but also, and more
deeply, because they inculcated
an entire world view. As Josef Barton
and John Bodnar, among others,
have pointed out, parochial schools
sought to perpetuate and protect a set
of moral values encompassing the
individual, family, community and society
at large, values which public schools
appeared to threaten. Sanders fails to
probe this important facet of parochial
school support in part because he
has not analyzed school curricula
thoroughly or consulted the ethnic press
sufficiently and imaginatively. In
addition, although Sanders recognizes that
Italians failed to support parish
schools, he does not investigate whether
there were significant differences in
parochial school support and attendance
among other nationalities, as there were
between the Poles and Irish in
Cleveland and Milwaukee, for example.
Was Chicago different? Finally,
Sanders' assertion that Catholic schools
in particular aided the assimilation
of immigrants and their children needs
both further evidence and clarification,
the latter because of the author's vague
definitions of assimilation and Ameri-
can values. Sanders has notably added to
our understanding of American
Catholic schooling, but the surface of a
subject crucial in American religious,
educational and ethnic history still has
only been scratched.
Kent State University Henry B.
Leonard
America's Moment: 1918, American
Diplomacy at the End of World War I.
By Arthur Walworth (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1977. vii + 309p.;
appendices, bibliography, index.
$14.95.)
This study represents several years of
work by the Pulitzer Prize winning
biographer of Woodrow Wilson. Like many
scholars who had to examine the
peacemaking of 1918-1919 as part of
other studies, he found the challenge of
that "period" too inviting to
ignore. This volume is a clear and readable
account covering only a few weeks from
the pre-Armistice negotiations to the
first formal session of the Peace
Conference on January 12.
This was a complex "moment,"
with the elation of victory, the problem of
concluding the Armistice, the
uncertainties of permanent peace terms for the
defeated, and the rivalries and varied
views and concerns of the winning
governments. Walworth brings an
intelligent and understandable order to
these interwoven and complex
relationships. After setting the scene of the
relationship of the United States to the
Allies and providing information on
President Wilson and Colonel House and
their policies and role, he provides
Book Reviews 237
separate and well-organized chapters on
major topics. These include the
Fourteen Points, the Inquiry, the
confusions and even mistrust revealed at
preliminary meetings, Wilson's decision
to become personally involved, the
selection of the peace commission, the
triumphal parades, speeches, and
motivations behind Wilson's arrival in
Europe, Italian irridentism, self-
determination, the problem of Russia,
relief needs and politics, and eco-
nomic concerns. There is no discussion
of Pacific or Far East concerns and
less on the League of Nations, the World
Court, secret treaties, war debts,
and reparations than one would expect.
On all the subjects treated, Walworth
reviews developments covered in
fuller detail in existing monographs,
but he supplements these with extensive
information from manuscript collections
and diaries. Thus he continually
surprises the reader with tidbits of
behind-the-scenes thinking, fears, con-
versations, plans, and hopes, all of
which influenced the decision-making.
Walworth understandably focuses on
individuals in his treatment, with
Wilson, House and European political
leaders in the major roles. There are
no heroes. They emerge as generally
petty, partisan, nationalistic, and vain.
Wilson is revealed as essentially
shallow in his diplomatic abilities, over-
confident, less informed than he should
have been, and insensitive to the
position of others. House fares better
because he had a broad view, but he
too emerges as a manipulator. Readers
who endorse personal diplomacy as a
legitimate tactic in policy-making,
should be enlightened by Walworth's study.
The peacemakers, in their limitations,
personal slights, and attitudes toward
each other emerge as uncomfortably petty
and frail, often willing to ignore
or abandon higher principles for
immediate nationalistic or political goals.
There are a few minor errors, but the
only shortcoming of the study lies
in the absence of a final chapter of
evaluations and conclusions. Some of
these emerge at places, but a composite
analysis by Walworth would have
enriched the study immeasurably. That
may yet appear in his sequel. There
are two appendices, an extensive
bibliography, and a very complete index
with an emphasis on subject-headings.
The University of Akron Warren F.
Kuehl
Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains
Trust: From Depression to New Deal. By
Elliot A. Rosen. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977. x + 446p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $16.95.)
The Origins of the National Recovery
Administration: Business, Government,
and the Trade Association Issue,
1921-1933. By Robert F. Himmelberg.
(New York: Fordham University Press,
1976. 232p.; tables, bibliography,
index. $20.00 cloth; $7.50 paper.)
The search for the sources of the New
Deal's reform and recovery philoso-
phy continues to attract historians.
Most recently, Hoover revisionists have
revived the argument that the Republican
president deserves central credit
for helping to foster the welfare state
in the 1930s. But Elliot Rosen's study,
based to a large extent on the papers of
Raymond Moley, strongly dissents
238 OHIO HISTORY
from the revisionists interpretation.
For Rosen, there is a clear difference
between Herbert Hoover and Franklin
Roosevelt and that difference remains
crucial to understanding many of the debates of our own
time.
Rosen argues that there never was a
First or Second New Deal; the main
outlines of the Roosevelt reform program
were formulated in early 1932 by
FDR's chief intellectual advisors,
Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolph
Berle, Jr. Collaboration between these
three Brain Trusters and the then
New York governor established the
central goals for the New Deal from
1933 to the late 1930s. Rosen further
asserts that ideological divisions within
the Brains Trust which the advisors
themselves have acknowledged, have
been exaggerated. Despite certain
personal and philosophical differences,
Rosen maintains that the three were in
essential agreement as to what was
required by Roosevelt to achieve
recovery and reform in the 1930s. Moley
is seen as occupying a middle position
between the more radical Tugwell,
who sought centralized national economic
planning, and Berle, who repre-
sented the interests of the more
enlightened business and legal communities.
The "May 19th Memorandum"
which Moley prepared for Roosevelt in 1932
incorporated the major themes of the
Brains Trust and allies like the farm
advocate, M. L. Wilson. As such, the
Memorandum included "most of the
ideas that constituted the domestic New
Deal of the years 1933 through
1937," proposing not only a new
relationship between the federal govern-
ment and the business community but
public works and welfare aid, higher
taxes for the wealthy and corporations,
regulation of utilities, and recogni-
tion of the Soviet Union.
In short, it was acceptance by Roosevelt
and the Brains Trust for an
interventionist federal government which
sharply distinguished the New
Dealers from conservatives like Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt and his sup-
porters were convinced of the need for
an activist role for government in
part because they saw the Depression as
resulting from internal, domestic
factors. Hoover, according to the
author, continued to hold, especially after
1931, that America's economic problems
emanated from international causes.
Maintaining such a view, Hoover, despite
RFC, Farm Board, and other
"liberal" appearing measures,
remained wedded to a program of voluntarism,
individualism, fiscal retrenchment, non-federal
interventionism, and reliance
on local government. Revisionists have
recently praised some of these ideas,
but Rosen considers that praise
mis-directed since Hoover's policies, he
asserts, favored the well off, not the
farmer, laborer, or the poor.
It was not just the opposition of the
conservative Republican president
that threatened in 1932 to abort the
liberal New Deal response but ele-
ments within Roosevelt's own deeply
divided party. Conservatives like Al
Smith, Bernard Baruch, and John J.
Raskob, among others, attempted to
bloc FDR's nomination by giving support
to the candidacy of former Ohio
progressive, Newton Baker. Failing in
these efforts, the Democratic con-
servatives remained a powerful force,
uniting in the late thirties with Re-
publican conservatives to sabotage
further New Deal reforms. To criticize
Roosevelt and his advisors in the early
1930s for not being "radical" enough
in their response to Depression
conditions, misses the point, Rosen believes,
because the "principle alternative
in the days when the New Deal took shape
came not from a minuscule and impotent
Left but from a potent and powerful
Right."
For Rosen then, the New Deal developed
out the interplay of liberal ideas
Book Reviews 239
and programs shaped by the Brains Trust
and Roosevelt in 1932 with op-
position coming from conservative
elements within and outside the Demo-
cratic and Republican parties who
essentially upheld the ideas of the "New
Era." A more centralized,
interventionist federal government opposed by
those like Hoover who espoused
decentralization and limited government
constituted the major ideological division
in the years 1931-1933.
Robert Himmelberg's careful analysis of
the origins of the National Re-
covery Administration provides an
interesting background to Rosen's work.
However one judges the success or
failure of the NRA or its impact on
business-government relations, it did
symbolize a step toward some form of
industrial planning which Rosen held
central to New Deal thinking by late
1932. But Himmelberg's account of the
forces which gave shape to the NRA
suggest that the Brain Trusters were far
less important in its creation than
the business community itself. The
author focuses on the complex and often
complicated movement from 1919 to 1933
in which various business groups
and their political allies sought to
undermine anti-trust laws to achieve
greater business cooperation and
concentration. For some, the ultimate goal
was legalization of the cartels which
had first appeared during World War I
but which were under attack at various
times during the 1920s. Himmelberg's
story is complicated. Not all business
organizations in the twenties or thirties
supported the modification or
elimination of anti-trust legislation; not all
political or corporate spokesmen for
revision were agreed as to what consti-
tuted the correct means or the ultimate
goals of business cooperation. In this
respect, Hoover emerges as an important
figure. Associated throughout his
long tenure as Secretary of Commerce
with the cause of business coopera-
tion through trade associations, Hoover
nevertheless resisted, according to
Himmelberg, efforts of "radical
revisionists" to discard anti-trust altogether
and legalize cartels. Holding that the
"central organizing principle" for
American business was competition,
Hoover's approach, especially during his
presidency, was far too selective and
moderate for the business radicals.
It was the Depression which provided the
radicals with the leverage to
achieve their ultimate objective.
Arguing that business cooperation repre-
sented enlightened planning and the best
means for overcoming the Depres-
sion, certain corporate groups began to
support not only anti-trust revision
but also job expansion, social
insurance, public works, and guarantees to
labor. It is at this point, Himmelberg
asserts, that the "business planners"
and Brain Trusters came together. Though
their assumptions and goals
concerning the economic order were quite
different, the NRA became their
common enterprise. But the author's
analysis indicates why it was inevitable
that the business interests would
control such an enterprise. Clear in their
objectives, unified, and having little
opposition from those business groups
who did not favor legalized cartels, the
business radicals were in an im-
posing position to dominate the
so-called business-government partnership.
Himmelberg concludes that whatever the
final verdict concerning the NRA's
import in shaping government-business
relations or promoting monopolistic
concentration, these business interests
successfully fulfilled a goal sought
since the early 1920s to seize
"state power" and use it to "defend their
position and improve their wealth in
default of their traditionally conceived
role of economic innovation and
expansion under the imperative of the com-
petitive market."
Himmelberg's story of the cartel
movement and its role in shaping the
240 OHIO
HISTORY
NRA complicates Rosen's often simplistic
divisions defining pro- and anti-
New Deal thought as liberal and
conservative, interventionist and non-
interventionist. On the other hand,
Rosen's discussion of the Brains Trust
suggests that Himmelberg is not entirely
correct when he argues that the
New Deal's formulation of the NRA did
not occur until Roosevelt was in
office in March 1933. But what is finally
important about the two studies is
the manner in which they contribute in
their unique ways to our understanding
of the complex economic and political
machinations involved in the creation
of the modern corporate welfare state.
Rosen may be right that the only real
alternative to conservative Hooverism in
1932 was Roosevelt and his Brains
Trust. But Himmelberg's book suggests
that liberal ideas alone are insuffi-
cient to achieve humane ends when a
powerful and highly organized segment
of the community has the ability to
foster its own narrow, self interests
under the guise of "national
interests." National planning remains a chal-
lenge facing contemporary America, but
the pitfalls involved in such an
approach are clearly evident in these
two thoughtful analyses of the 1920s
and 1930s.
Denison University John
B. Kirby
Tomatoes Were Cheaper: Tales from the
Thirties. By Charles A. Jellison.
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1977, ix + 240p.; note on sources.
$10.95.)
The 1930s were years of trial and
turmoil for Americans. The nation strug-
gled to adjust to the effects of the
Depression and to its solutions, govern-
mental and private, offered during the
decade. The majority of books dealing
with this era address themselves to the
overwhelming influence of the eco-
nomic and political problems of the
nation. In Tomatoes Were Cheaper,
Charles Jellison suggests that "there
was more to the '30s than bank failures
and bread lines. Life went on"
(p.viii). Although the presence of the Depres-
sion was always in the background
affecting present and future plans, Amer-
icans continued to live, love, hate,
work, and play. Indicators of people's
lives and attitudes are the things that
interest them. In the 1930s, as before
and after, they were interested in
sports, crime, food prices, government, for-
eign affairs, and sensational news
stories about other Americans.
This book is an attempt to present a
sample of the flavor of American life
during this troubled decade. It is not
purported to be a comprehensive,
analytical history of the times. Its
purpose is to offer assorted segments of
life in a pivotal era bitterly
remembered by many and regrettably unappre-
ciated by others. This purpose is well
served by the author's presentation of
various incidents, headline stories, and
personalities. While these incidents
are seemingly isolated occurrences, when
taken together they form a collage
which embodies the spirit of a troubled
yet hopeful nation.
The segments of life are presented in a
personable, readable style. The
characters and the atmosphere involved
in these vignettes are given vitality
by lucid description and insightful,
sometimes cynical, commentary by the
Book Reviews 241
author. Past causes, present
considerations, and future consequences are
woven artfully into the narrative
without breaking the rhythm and continu-
ity. Tidbits of information accompanied
by relevant quotations give the stories
a contemporary flavor and provoke
reflection about human nature. These
tidbits, portraying numerous and varied
sectors of American society, describe
America at the beginning of the decade.
Following this mood, the reader is
taken on a casual tour, meandering
"nostalgically through the shoals and
narrows of that depression-ravaged
decade . . ." (p.vii). The curious disap-
pearance of Judge Crater, the emotional
march of the Bonus Expeditionary
Force, the "Dizzy" success of
the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, the riotous fervor
of a lynch mob, the arduous trek of a
lost boy-these are but a few of the pic-
tures presented in this parade of events
which caught, however briefly, the
attention and imagination of the
American people.
The book is well organized and
refreshingly readable. A note on general
sources is provided; however, a more
detailed bibliography would be helpful
to readers who will want to pursue
particular topics further. This book will
be a welcome addition to many libraries.
It provides a leisurely stroll down
memory lane for those who remember the
thirties and an insightful look into
the past for those of a later
generation.
Oklahoma State University Michael Everman
Our Appalachia: An Oral History. Edited by Laurel Shackelford and Bill
Weinberg. (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977. ix + 397p.; illustrations, in-
dex. $12.95.)
Perhaps the most colorful pages one can
read these days are those taken
"live" by tape recorders and
transcribed as "oral history." Some eighty hours
of work are necessary for each interview
passing to the publisher. On the
basis of color and patient, hard work, Our
Appalachia: An Oral History
ranks high among the leaders in its
field.
The forty-seven narrators chosen to
appear here live in the southern high-
lands. Their memories cover much of
twentieth-century life in this region,
and the editors have placed each story
chronologically in the volume's three
well-knit sections. The book, however,
grew out of a wider effort: the Ap-
palachian Oral History Project at
eastern Kentucky's small Alice Lloyd Col-
lege. Students gave significant help to
the staff, for "nearly one third of the
interviewees were contacted initially by
student interviewers.... They do
not have to spend hours establishing
rapport with the . . . narrators [their
kinfolk], because most already have
it" (p.8). Anyone familiar with the pit-
falls of taped interviews will recognize
this as a tremendous advantage.
From hundreds of interviews, the editors
artfully chose narrations rich in
human interest and in social content. As
a native of eastern Kentucky, I can
sympathize with young Hester Mullins'
complaint about her city university:
"It shook my world up finding
people down there really don't care anything
about you; all they perceive is . . .
how you treat them" (p.11). Later, as if
to support Hester's sentiment, Alice
Sloane reveals the total involvement of
242 OHIO HISTORY
family life, noting that "you lived
with your children, you didn't sit down and
talk to. Wherever the parent was
the child was, participating in all the ac-
tivities that were going on" (p.67).
Similar interplay among narrators abounds,
with the next example shedding light on
the alleged "economic exploita-
tion" of this region. John Mayo
purchased great blocks of mineral rights
early in the century, paying 50 cents an
acre for much of it. When Harry
Laviers, the son of his associate, was
asked about this, he said, "Mr. Mayo
never exploited any of those
people" (p.145). But Richard Jackson differs re-
garding such speculators: "You've
got an Appalachian sitting here and you've
got a bunch of folks who say, 'Look at
all that timber and minerals, we
can get it for a song.' They come in and
get it because they're one up"
(p.374).
In 1939 the Federal Writers Project
produced a superb book entitled These
Are Our Lives. Personal interviews of southerners were taken in
shorthand,
a method not as "modern" as a
tape recorder, but just as effective. It is there-
fore puzzling to read on page 7 of Our
Appalachia that "this book would not
have been possible twenty-five years
ago." Oral history enthusiasts should
realize that the personal interview
dates back at least to Herodotus; more-
over, "oral history" is made
intelligible only through the previous work of con-
ventional historians whose careful
sifting of various sources provides factual
and contrasting foundations for the
reader's judgement. Indeed, Our Ap-
palachia, although superbly edited and worthy of recommendation
for any-
one's bookshelf, may well find its
lasting value as a collection and preserva-
tion of material for the use of future
historians.
University of Dayton Frank F.
Mathias
John L. Lewis: A Biography. By Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine.
(New York: Quadrangle, 1977. xvii +
619p.; illustrations, notes, index.
$20.00.)
This detailed, carefully-researched, and
lengthy volume deserves high
praise. It goes a long way toward
filling what has been one of the largest,
and most unaccountable, gaps in modern
American labor history, namely a
reliable, authoritative, and readable
biography of the man who became by
far its most influential and
controversial leader. Born in February 1880 in
Lucas, Iowa, to Welsh immigrant parents,
John L. Lewis rose rapidly through
the labor ranks to become American
Federation of Labor organizer, union
statistician, and in 1919, at the
remarkably young age of 39-president of the
United Mine Workers of America, which
was up to that time by far the largest
union in the United States. From then
until his retirement more than forty
years later, as head of the Congress of
Industrial Organization (C.I.O.) in
the 1930s, and as architect of mass,
industrial unionism, Lewis led sit-down
strikes, influenced presidents,
negotiated with the nation's biggest industrial
magnates, and changed the course of
Democratic party politics. Yet each of
Book Reviews 243
the biographies previously attempted, by
Cecil Carnes, C. L. Sulzberger,
James Wechsler, and Saul Alinsky, have
been either works of hagiography
or of unmitigated criticism. Alinsky's
book, in particular, upon whom most
readers have hitherto relied, consisted
very largely of verbatim interviews
with Lewis, without any attempt at
archival research or scholarly objectivity.
Dubofsky and Van Tine have put much of
this right by examining meticu-
lously the archival collections of John
Brophy, Jett Lauck, Philip Murray,
and others of Lewis' colleagues in the
labor movement, in particular the re-
cently opened United Mine Workers of
America collection at the State His-
torical Society of Wisconsin. The result
is a scholarly work of the highest stan-
dards, in which the authors weigh
carefully a wide variety of interpretations
of Lewis' motives and behavior as a
labor leader. They lead us lucidly
through his conduct of what were often
highly complex strikes, inter-union dis-
putes, and political negotiations; and,
most useful of all, they anchor Lewis'
life and career firmly in the overall
economic and political history of his time.
This biography, even if it contains no
startling new facts or interpretations,
will henceforth be indispensable for
anyone studying both of these aspects of
modern American history. Dubofsky and
Van Tine take up and elucidate, if
they do not always wholly explain,
numerous crucial episodes in Lewis' ca-
reer which have long intrigued
historians. Among them were his quarrels
with President Roosevelt in the 1940s
(explained by strong personality con-
flicts and by realistic differences
between the two men over the subordination
of the coal miners' interests to the
Second World War productivity effort);
Lewis' willingness to employ Communists
in the C.I.O. organizing drives
despite his personal antipathy to
radicalism (explained by the C.I.O.'s critical
need for skilled and experienced
organizers during the sudden expansion of
the labor movement); and several others.
The only real weakness of the book,
which also helps to explain why no
serious biography of Lewis has been at-
tempted for so long, cannot really be
blamed upon the authors. This is the
lack of almost any revealing, and at the
same time reliable, information
concerning Lewis' personal and home
life, despite their obvious importance.
At times this makes the work little more
than a compendium of the inner work-
ings of trade union negotiations, as
well as somewhat dull. But Lewis was an
intensely private man and much preferred
the telephone to writing letters--a
serious handicap for the would-be
biographer.
Dubofsky and Van Tine make a successful
reconciliation between the out-
ward respectability and uprightness of
Lewis' social views, and the arrogant
and unscrupulous way in which he used
his powers as a labor boss to attack-
and sometimes destroy-his trade union
and political opponents, by describ-
ing "possessive individualism"
(p.291) as the central motivating force in
Lewis' public career. But, unless a
further new biography which may be
forthcoming tells us more, we are
unlikely to learn much that is new about
Lewis' private life beyond what is
recorded in these pages. Within these
limits, however, Dubofsky and Van Tine
have done a truly excellent job.
University of California, Los
Angeles John H. M.
Laslett
244 OHIO HISTORY
Preparing for the Next War: American
Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941-45.
By Michael S. Sherry. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1977. x + 260p.;
notes, bibliography, index. $12.50.)
This volume exemplifies a developing
trend in Cold War historiography in
which middle ground is sought between
traditionalists and revisionists. The
author sets two principal goals for
himself: analyzing the nation's wartime
"planning for postwar defense"
and adding an "ideology of national prepared-
ness" as a third cause for the Cold
War, complementing New Left and more
conventional historians' interpretations
(p.ix). Sherry enriches our knowledge
of military planning, but not the Cold
War.
Based on extensive research and
published volumes on Navy and Army
Air Force planning, the author
concentrates on the Army and provides a
valuable purview of all services. With
the exception of two chapters concern-
ing scientists and the USSR, the author
writes and organizes his material
well.
The planning began with the Army just
before Pearl Harbor, got underway
seriously around mid-1943, and reached
fruition between August and De-
cember 1945. The final outcome involved
plans for the nation to assume the
new responsibility of unilaterally
policing the world in order to guarantee
national security in a restructured
international order with transformed
weaponry. Fulfilling that mission
required policies of "massive deterrence and
retaliation" built around huge and
ready military systems that stressed air
power and nuclear weapons and, if
necessary, preventive and total war
(p.213). Viewed ambiguously throughout
World War II, a caricatured Soviet
Union emerged as the main global threat,
to the neglect of other sources of
conflict. Obsessed with the consequences
of unpreparedness, the military
also buried its own doubts about the
credibility of the plans and the possi-
bility that they might provoke
resistance. Since these plans merely systema-
tized what the War and Navy Departments
had separately devised earlier,
Sherry explains, interservice rivalry
obscured the shared national preparedness
ideology. The author wavers over
assessing self-interest in the military's
formulation of its plans and he cannot
make up his mind as to whether those
plans were "appropriate and
prophetic" or bankrupt, "simplistic," and
"dangerous" (pp.237,
238).
Sherry insists that the military's
preparedness mentality, espoused by
other government officials and powerful
interest groups, was a major cause of
the Cold War. This interpretation,
introduced in the Preface, alluded to in the
text, but never actually developed until
the Epilogue, is not original and has
been most fully explored by Richard J.
Barnet in Roots of War, a work not
cited in the bibliography. More
importantly, other than references to an
"ascendant" military, a
dominant "eastern legal and financial elite," and some
other specifics, the author fails to
examine the decision-making crucial to
substantiating his analysis (pp.24, 60).
Instead, Sherry jumps from 1945 to the
1960s and 1970s to establish that the
preparedness ideologues had their way.
This reasoning is questionable. The
critical years for scrutiny are 1946 to
1950 which preceded both the adoption of
NSC-68 and the full-blown emer-
gence of a national security state.
Whether moved by Open Door imperialism,
a fear of Soviet expansion, or, as
Sherry proposes, mixed motives, American
leaders in the immediate postwar years
appeared to use the military arm in
Book Reviews 245
order to implement their policies,
rather than being trapped by a mili-
taristic ethic.
While Sherry has elucidated wartime
military planning, he has gone beyond
his evidence and the scope of his book
in proposing a complementary inter-
pretation of the Cold War's origins.
California State University,
Northridge Paul A. C.
Koistinen
The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. By Douglas T. Miller and Marion
Nowak. (New York: Doubleday, 1977. viii
+ 444p.; illustrations, chronology,
notes, bibliography, index. $10.95.)
Remember hula hoops, 3-D movies, and
black leather jackets; Levittown,
the Kefauver hearings, and Charles Van
Doren; Bill Haley and the Comets,
and the early Elvis Presley; fallout
shelters and Norman Vincent Peale's reli-
gion of reassurance? The Fifties: The
Way We Really Were takes us back to
those early years of nuclear terror just
before the nation suffered the traumas
of Vietnam, the assassination of Martin
Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the
Kennedy brothers, urban and racial
violence, the Manson case, and Watergate.
The chapters are topical and discuss
such matters as McCarthyism, the con-
servative mood of intellectuals, popular
religion, sexual attitudes, racial preju-
dice, public education, popular music,
television, the influence of automo-
biles and suburban living.
"The Fifties tells the story of [a] complex decade," the
authors promise.
Unfortunately, their book suggests the
opposite, that nothing in the 1950s
was complex or good enough: cinematic
Indians were caricatures, blacks
were one-dimensional, Hollywood was
cynical and decadent; students wor-
ried about finding a parking place,
other youths were daydreaming, society
was sexist, public education overcome
with isms (elitism, sexism, material-
ism, and militarism). Suburbia
("giant nurseries") was the sterile, aseptic
habitat of bland organization types
seeking comfort and social status. His-
torians could find little conflict in
America's past. As The Fifties states it:
"From Puritans to organization men,
log cabins to suburban ranch houses,
nothing much happened" (p.231).
Readers must make what they can out of
such simplicities.
Miller and Nowak criticize the 1950's
nostalgia with distortion, an asser-
tion that is accurate but rather like
criticizing sin for being wrong, especially
when enjoyable. Nostalgia is by
definition a distortion of reality since it is se-
lective for emotional reasons. Newsweek
(October 16, 1972), for example,
which is criticized for presenting a
false image of the decade, was not so
naive as suggested. Beyond its lead
title (which the authors mistake for an inter-
pretation) Newsweek maintains
that "in the grand sweep of American his-
tory, the 1950s were one of the blandest
decades ever," and that the 1950's
revival perplexes many older Americans
because for them the decade evokes
"such grim memories as Korea, Suez,
Hungary, Sputnik and economic re-
cession. It was a time of emotional and
sexual repression, of cold war and
Communist hunting, and for blacks it was
a time of almost total exclusion from
246 OHIO
HISTORY
the white consciousness" (p.78).
Similarly, the authors all too frequently
misread other sources.
Miller and Nowak emphasize the
impressionistic nature of the historical
enterprise, acknowledging that theirs is
a "book of personal judgments"-
apparently as an antidote to those who
"pretend that history is some sort of
science that can be qualified and
computerized" (p.12). Even as personal
history, The Fifties demonstrates
that in analyzing the daily heroics and an-
guish of people moving through life,
one-dimensional criticism is as insensi-
tive as smug, contented interpretations.
Despite these shortcomings, the book is
not without merit. It is revealing
on the pervasive sexism in American
society, especially among Beat writers,
successful women, and Dr. Benjamin
Spock. (To charge the baby doctor with
"subtle totalitarianism" in
child-rearing, however, is to risk losing the reader's
attention.) Blacks in the 1950s were
still "three-fifths of a person," as the
authors point out. Racial progress was
shockingly slow, and became more
glaring after the 1954 Brown decision.
Finally, the discussion of the emer-
gence of rock and roll is a useful
recounting of one cultural force that pricked
our sensibilities and encouraged a
reassessment of long-held ideas on free-
dom, sex, and values.
None of this, however, justifies the
authors' claim that The Fifties "is
the first in-depth study of America's
social and cultural history during that
decade" (p.419). Instead, it is
part entertainment, part criticism, and part
consciousness raiser. Books like this
may not constitute history, but as per-
sonal documents they can be used by
historians.
University of Toledo
Ronald Lora
Book Reviews
Collection, Use, and Care of
Historical Photographs. By Robert A.
Weinstein
and Larry Booth. (Nashville: American
Association for State and Local
History, 1977. xiv + 222p.;
illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index.
$16.00.)
The authors of this work share a
passionate interest in the preservation of
the photographic past. Their concerns
are many, their experience is wide,
and their enthusiasm is contagious. For
some time there has been a pressing
need for a concise introduction to the
benefits and problems of photographic
collection and preservation. It is the
intent of this volume to begin to meet
that need. In most important respects,
the authors have admirably succeeded.
The problem with most of the previous
literature in the area of historic
photography is that it usually deals
with only one small aspect of the field.
The serious amateur collector, the
administrator of the smaller historical
society, and the professional librarian
should find this book most interesting
because it attempts to discuss briefly
the entire range of concerns in the
discovery, arrangement, description, and
preservation of historical photo-
graphs. There is really something here
for everyone. The authors are anxious
to share their practical field
experience as well as their theories of photo-
graphic curatorship. This is always most
useful since the real world of collecting
and care is often affected more by
chance, luck, and perseverance than would
seem to be implied in the simplicity of
textbook illustration.
More to their credit, the authors in
many cases have taken controversial
positions unhesitatingly. As they
frankly point out, some experts will dis-
agree with their conclusions and
proposals. But it is one of their hopes that
the present work will stimulate a debate
and discussion which will lead to
constructive revision with the passage
of time.
I do have some reservations about the
book. The style is often uneven and
the authors do not at all times make it
fully clear what alternative options
exist to the ideal methods they are
recommending. In general, the use of
photographs in the work is judicious and
pertinent. But while the additional
portfolios of nineteenth-century
photographs which appear at various points in
the book are interesting, they are not
directly related by the authors to the
totality of the book. Finally, in a book
which stresses methods for the un-
initiated, it is surprising that little
mention is made of the time and monetary
costs of the various techniques
proposed.
Each reader of this book will come away
with different impressions, but it is
to be hoped that a few salient points
will be self-evident to all. This work
will help in acquainting all serious
collectors with the explosive dangers of
nitrate-based film and the extraordinary
fragility of many types of photography.
The point that the authors make
concerning the inevitable deterioration and
loss of so much of our photographic
legacy with every passing day is perhaps
one of the most important parts of the
book.