Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Ohio: Its People and Culture. By George C. Crout and W. E. Rosenfelt. (Minnea-

polis: T. S. Denison & Co., 1977. ²81p.; illustrations, maps, index. $6.95.)

 

I optimistically launched my reading of Ohio: Its People and Culture with the

hope that the book would help to meet the need of junior high school teachers for a

fresh and lively treatment of Ohio history. Unfortunately, my optimism was

misplaced. In a word, the book is sloppy. It appears to lack clarity in conceptualiza-

tion, is permeated with typographical flaws and errors in punctuation, is inclined to

oversimplification, and, for the most part, is written in cumbersome style.

The book opens with a brief chapter dealing with the geography of Ohio,

covering such traditional topics as location, boundaries, and landforms. It then

moves on to a chapter entitled "Ohio's Past," which traces the history of the state

from the prehistoric period to the passing of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The

remainder of the book is organized topically, with chapters devoted to such themes

as "Ohio's People," "Transportation and Communication," and "Work and

Careers in Ohio."

No justification is presented for the book's being organized as it is, and one is left

with the uneasy feeling that the format of the book was clumsily conceived from the

beginning. It is unclear whether the authors intend the book to be used primarily as

a serious work of history, as a book of collected folklore, or as a cataloging of

people, places, and events. In rather awkward fashion, it seems to aspire to all three

goals, and the result for young readers may well be confusion. At some points, for

example, the authors imply that the reader should approach the study of Ohio as a

social scientist. In fact, one of the final chapters is entitled "Looking Back: How the

Social Scientist Would Look at Ohio." Yet, the authors' work is virtually undocu-

mented, and the reader is seldom challenged to address questions dealing with

analysis and interpretation. Myth and fact frequently are blended and tend to be

presented on equal footing, and sweeping generalizations are common. Statements

such as the following, for example, would make any serious student of history

cringe:

"The real plans of Burr will never be known, but all citizens of the nation now

accepted the idea that any new territories settled by Americans would eventually

become new states in the Union." (p. 79)

"As years went by, no one knew or cared from which country they (sic) had

emigrated." (p. 85)

".    the influence of the life (sic) of both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther

King became greater after their assassination (sic)." (p. 233)

The few attempts to engage the reader in an active analysis of the topics under

consideration are sporadic and tend to be rather superficial. They appear unpredic-

tably, almost as if they were included as an afterthought. In the midst of a section

dealing with transportation in Ohio, for example, the reader is rather weakly asked

to trace with his finger on a map (which is not included) the major interstate

highways in the state. At another point, in a section titled "C rowth of I ndustry," the

following suddenly appears: "There are many job families. Study the one which

interests you the most. Find out how a person prepares for a special field of work."

In other words, although the book was written as a potential junior high school

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92                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

textbook, it does not appear to have been developed on a clearly conceptualized

instructional base. One wonders how much more effective the book would be had

the reader been invited throughout to join the authors in an active inquiry into the

history and culture of the people of Ohio.

In support of the book it should be pointed out that, in spite of its overall

cumbersome style, some sections may well prove appealing to junior high school

students. The description of LaSalle's explorations along the Ohio River, for

example, is interesting and engaging. Likewise, stories tracing the founding of early

Ohio settlements should appeal to the curiosity of young readers. To the authors'

credit, they attempt to present a balanced treatment of minority groups (particular-

ly blacks) and women.

In summary, I have a feeling that the book was published prematurely. Had it

been subjected to serious critical review and much needed editing prior to

publication, it might have become the exciting Ohio history book so many junior

high school social studies teachers are seeking.

 

The Ohio State University                           M. Eugene Gilliom

 

 

 

Jefferson and the Presidency: Leadership in the Young Republic. By Robert M.

Johnstone, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. 332p.; notes, biblio-

graphy, index. $15.00.)

 

In a book addressed more to political scientists than to students of the early

national period, Robert M. Johnstone has written a leadership study of Thomas

Jefferson as president. Rather than a chronological account of the administrations

of the third president, Johnstone's work is a study of individual leadership based on

role analysis and the bargaining model of Richard Neustadt. Formulated for the

modern presidency, the Neustadt model holds that the effectiveness of a chief

executive is determined by his ability to maximize his personal power through

persuasion and the bargaining process. While some have criticized this model for its

overemphasis on bargaining at the expense of the president's command decisions,

others will wonder whether it has any applicability at all to the early nineteenth

century when the president had far fewer means of persuasion at hand.

Johnstone demonstrates that Jefferson effectively employed bargaining tech-

niques and in fact was the first president to do so. While twentieth century

presidents utilize the press conference, the mass media and other modern means of

communications to improve their images and present their programs, Jefferson

skillfully used equally effective techniques. Although he lacked some skills usually

assumed necessary for a successful politician, such as public speaking ability, he did

develop some highly useful tools of persuasion. Among the better known means of

exerting leadership were: effective although not vindictive use of patronage, party

lieutenants in Congress to guide his legislation, party as a base to bridge the

separation of powers between executive and legislative branches, and party press.

Jefferson's approach was to seek harmony and conciliation rather than confronta-

tion, to use persuasion rather than force. His own reputation for wise disinterested

statemanship, along with his symbolic and charismatic appeal, enabled him to

succeed where others might have failed. Unlike Washington and Adams, he saw the

president as directly responsible to the people rather than above them. Thus he

stripped the office of much of its formality and replaced elitism with popular will.

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Book Reviews                                                         93

 

Johnstone makes no effort to cover all of the issues of the Jefferson presidency

but rather analyzes only those which reveal aspects of his leadership abilities. Thus

we see Jefferson at his best in the Louisiana issue, in a stalemate in the court

questions, and at his worst in the embargo fiasco. The Louisiana government bill

temporarily denied the territorial residents an elected legislature, yet private

meetings, several of his famous dinner parties, and skilled lieutenants in Congress

assured total Republican loyalty and the bill's passage. In the struggle with the

Federalist-dominated courts, the impeachment process failed and Aaron Burr was

acquitted. Yet, in the end the justices, while becoming by no means Jeffersonian,

were less blatantly partisan. Because the Federalists had little to gain through

bargaining, conciliation and persuasion became inoperable. When private letters

failed, a frontal attack was necessary, with the end result according to Johnstone

being stalemate.

The embargo crisis revealed Jefferson at his worst. Presidential authority was still

strong in attaining the necessary votes for passage. But when enforcement of the

unpopular embargo proved impossible, the president in late 1808 virtually abdicat-

ed control and failed to utilize some of the resources of leadership he had so

effectively used earlier. Thus the embargo damaged the credibility of executive

leadership and weakened the already strained unity of the Republican party.

Despite these Jeffersonian shortcomings, Johnstone's conclusions are basically

positive. In dramatizing the linkage between the president and the people, he helped

to reverse Federalist elitism. More important in terms of leadership were his

pioneering efforts in the creation and use of resources of persuasion available to the

president.

Johnstone's approach to the Jeffersonian presidency is thus a novel one and does

succeed in providing some fresh insight. The issues he discusses have of course been

thoroughly researched by Malone, Peterson, Levy, Sears, Young and others, yet

never fully from the leadership angle. While the conclusions of this book are not

startling or totally original, they nevertheless do provide a new perspective on the

complex presidency and personality of Thomas Jefferson.

 

Youngstown State University                              Frederick J. Blue

 

 

 

A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society 1814-1824.

Volume II, 1820-1824. Compiled and edited by Karl J. R. Arndt. (Indianapolis:

Indiana Historical Society, 1978. xiii + ⁹⁷⁸p.; illustrations, notes, index. $17.50

cloth; $8.00 paper.)

 

Professor Arndt here continues his labor of love and scholarship in completing

the record of the Rappite community in Indiana before its sale to Robert Owen. As

in Volume 1, the documents cover business, social concerns, and an endless parade

of names and negotiations, all painstakingly footnoted and explained.

The record recounts troubles in law, notices of riots and skullduggery, and a

world of discussion of goods, purchases, sales, and commercial arrangements of

every kind, one involving William Henry Harrison as a businessman rather than

hero or politico. Considering the hard work which was the daily lot of the Society's

members, and the distances which had to be traversed by boat and on foot, it

astonishes a modern at what length they maintained communication with the world

and with each other, and in what detail of personality and enterprise they couched

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94                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

their messages. People far and near were awed by the successes of the Rappite

community. Robert Owen as early as 1820 inquired of them concerning their work

and methods. Always worth notice is the superior success of Owen's ill-destined

New Harmony venture in terms of posterity's attention. Why failure and ineptness

should attract regard merits thought.

A reader a century and a half following the Rappite saga is impressed by the

Society's firm and continuous negotiations and legal papers which cut down the

possibilities of bad dealings, bad debts, and generally poor business and other

relations. And yet business was not the end purpose of the community. It early

illustrated John Humphrey Noyes's later contention, in his History of American

Socialisms, that communes succeeded to the extent that they were religiously

motivated. There can be no doubt that it was religious fervor and conviction which

gave inspiration to Rapp and his followers, and made them able not only to create a

peaceful and triumphant life in the wilderness, but to leave it in 1824 and return to

yet another and successful home in Pennsylvania.

This documentary volume, like its predecessor, will prove invaluable to a wide

range of students and historians. It generously includes illustrations of principals

and reproductions of maps and artifacts, as well as a large inserted map of the

community, its houses and enterprises.

 

Antioch University                                          Louis Filler

 

 

The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long: The Journals of 1817 and 1823 and

Related Documents. Edited by Lucile M. Kane, June D. Holmquist, and

Carolyn Gilman. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1978. xii +

408p.; illustrations, index, appendices, notes. $17.50.)

 

In the annals of North American exploration the name Stephen H. Long is most

often associated with the ill-fated Yellowstone expedition of 1819-1820. Textbooks

invariably link Major Long to Zebulon Pike and the concept of the "Great

American Desert." What has been forgotten are Long's other and perhaps more

important expeditions. Even more significant, Long's role in the development of

scientific exploration has been overlooked. These distortions in our understanding

of Long and the course of American exploration are largely remedied now by the

welcome publication of his journals for expeditions undertaken in 1817 and 1823.

It is not the purpose of this review to give a condensed narrative of Long's 1817

and 1823 ventures. The 1817 trip up the Mississippi to present-day Minneapolis and

the epic 1823 journey from Philadelphia to the Red River settlements and a tour of

the Great Lakes make compelling reading. For the reader willing to make the

passage with Long, the narrative of the 1823 adventure is every bit as interesting and

rewarding as following the tracks of Lewis and Clark through theirjournals. From

Long's daily entries there emerges the portrait of a special kind of explorer-a

portrait worth our careful attention. By understanding the kind of explorer Long

was, we can move from the romanic "pathfinder" stereotype that pervades so much

of the writing of exploration history to a more honest evaluation of the exploration

process in American life. More than anything else, Stephen H. Long was by training

and temperament a professional engineer and scientist. It was from that perspective

that he viewed exploration. As one of the earliest members of the Corps of

Topographical Engineers, Long was committed to the exploring process as a

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Book Reviews                                                       95

 

rational exercise, not a romantic adventure. His journals reflect the precision of a

trained mind. whether observing landforms, climate, or native peoples. Concern

with detail and a desire to avoid the sort of "local color" so common in travel

accounts are the characteristics of the Longjournals. The vivid events are recorded,

but one knows that Long the scientist and engineer was really interested in other

things. The entries in the journals reveal a central type in the history of American

exploration-the scientist/ engineer as explorer. That type may be less colorful and

dramatic than the "mountain man" mythology, but men like Long made a lasting

contribution to the physical growth of the United States.

Nowhere can one see more clearly Long's dedication to professional science in

exploration than in the planning and personnel for the 1823journey. As the editors

note, Long sought out the best available Philadelphia scientists. Among those

selected were Thomas Say, a noted botanist, Samuel Seymour, a Philadelphia

artist, and William H. Keating, a professor of mineralogy and chemistry at the

University of Pennsylvania.

Previous volumes in the Minnesota Historical Society's "Explorer Series" have

set a high standard for thorough research, careful editing, and illuminating

annotation. Kane, Holmquist, and Gilman surely meet that standard. Their

thoughtful introduction puts Long's Northern expeditions in the context of both

his career and the larger history of exploration. Special comment should be made

about the notes to the journal text. At a time when so much annotation is done

quickly and inadequately, it is a pleasure to read notes that are informative, reliable,

and a genuine addition to the text. The editors have traveled the Long routes and

their sense of the landscape is plain in the notes. They have also printed a number of

important documents that enhance our understanding of the Long expeditions.

Most significant is the 1823 journal of James E. Colhoun, brother-in-law of

Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long

is a book with value far beyond the history and geography of those states through

which the Major passed. Kane, Holmquist, and Gilman have given us a central

document for the continuing re-evaluation of North American exploration history.

 

Youngstown State University                             James P. Ronda

 

 

A History of Muskingum College. By William L. Fisk. (New Concord: Muskingum

College, 1978. xi + 276p.; illustrations, notes, index. $12.00.)

 

Most institutional leaders, sooner or later, sense the need for a history of their

institution. Colleges and universities have proved no exception, and if the institu-

tion has survived for several generations, its history is duly recorded. So it is with

this history of Muskingum College, written by William L. Fisk, long-time professor

and administrator of this small Presbyterian liberal arts college located in New

Concord, Ohio.

In this authorized history, the author records in chronological fashion the hap-

penings of the college since its founding in 1837 by descendents of Scotch-Irish

immigrants. Through successive periods the repetitive nature of the problems the

college encounters are faithfully related. The most serious are continuing financial

crises, low enrollments (aggravated by high tuitions), sectarian disagreements

among the numerous splinter groups in the Presbyterian Church, and the morale

problems of underpaid, overworked faculty and administrators. Conservatism,

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96                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

provincialism, religious, and moral emphases make up the main ingredients that

students encounter at Muskingum, regardless of the era in which they attended.

No better and no worse than most histories of institutions of higher learning, the

book is well written, its style lucid and sophisticated. Nevertheless, it is a disap-

pointment. The fact that the author recognized most of the book's limitations in the

forward does not ameliorate the imbalances in the volume or its faulty organization

and surprising lack of depth. Almost twice as many pages, for example, are devoted

to the nineteenth century than to the period 1945-1970, even though in this later

period the material is said to be multitudinous and problems of selection and

interpretation almost prohibitive. We learn far too much of the presidents, usually

Presbyterian clergymen, the frequently asserted merits of a Christian education, the

activities of the YMCA and YWCA, but little that is unique or enduring or

meritorious about higher education in small private church colleges in America in

the last century and a half. The one audience which might be pleased with such an

approach, so narrowly construed, are the faculty, staff and alumni who have been a

part of the college. Sadly here, hardly more than a dozen faculty are noted in the

book, and tributes to their accomplishments read like resolutions from trustee

meetings on the occasion of their retirements. And, if over the years Muskingum

has graduated students who have made their mark on society, we do not learn about

them from this account. Since these personal tributes, as well as even the anecdoctal

occurrences which characterize every college have been largely eschewed, and since

"no attempt is made to develop any continuous theme portraying the college as a

microcosm of the history of American education . . . [because] Muskingum was

only sporadically involved in new currents of educational thought," (p. ix) then one

might well question the contribution of this volume.

Even so the book lays the groundwork for the future historian who may wish to

include Muskingum in a more broadly conceived study. The layout and illustra-

tions are attractive and the index is adequate.

 

University of Cincinnati                                 Gene D. Lewis

 

 

 

A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868.

By Joel H. Silbey. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977. xviii + 267p.: tables,

notes, bibliographic note, index. $12.95 hardcover; $3.95 paper.)

 

During the last three decades an outpouring of scholarship using fresh quantative

tools has reshaped the traditional story of northern politics, both on the national

and grassroots levels, during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Even so, this new

political history is old-fashioned in one major sense: it concentrates almost entirely

on the Republicans. Accordingly, Silbey's book fills an important need.

When war began. Democrats faced unprecedented problems. Forced after

decades of dominance into minority status because of significant voting shifts that

occurred during the 1850s, and bereft of their southern wing, Democrats were

unprepared for the surge of patriotism which equated criticism of the Administra-

tion with disloyalty and Republican-inspired Unionism with national unity. After

initially succumbing to uncertainty, the Democracy proved its resiliency by

drawing upon its long-time organization, social composition, ideology, and sheer

evisceral partisanship to regroup. Moreover, the party probed for issues, or a

combination of issues, to lure conservative Republicans and thereby widen

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Book Reviews                                                       97

 

opposition factionalism. Although unable to stem the War Democrats' defection to

the Union party, by !862 the Democracy generally formulated its support for the

war based on ingrained values and practices it was determined to protect from the

Administration's growing centralism.

In the process, Democrats split among themselves into two groups, the Legitim-

ists and Purists, over strategy, leadership, and decision-making. The Legitimists

sought to defend the U nion while carrying out customary partisanship and felt their

ideology was flexible enough to withstand the shock of war with its concomitant

erosion of traditional constitutional liberties. The Purists, equally conservative,

were less pragmatic and more rigid ideologically to the extent that their real or

imagined fears of wartime revolutionary social, constitutional, and racial changes

made their devotion to the Union appear often ambiguous. Despite such disagree-

ments, Democrats usually closed ranks and functioned throughout the war as the

legitimate opposition.

U sing a combination of qualitative and quantative methods, Silbey demonstrates

that the Democracy did not collapse during the war, nor did the party lapse into

sullen negativism. Rather, the war intensified Democratic ties. In doing so,

Democrats established the essential continuity between the prewar and postwar

party, not its disruption or fragmentation. Yet the Democracy remained a distinct

minority. Bound by ideological and organizational constraints, and limited by the

public's perception of their roles, Democrats remained mired in the voting patterns

of the 1850s, unable to create a popular majority.

Similar problems persisted throughout Reconstruction. Still sundered internal-

ly, the party could not lure new voters, its principles and commitments hardened

Republican loyalties, particularly among the conservatives Democrats hoped to

lure, and the Democracy failed to shake stubborn voting habits. By 1868 Demo-

crats firmly established the continuity in their behavior, but could not escape their

position as a "respectable minority." Very little subsequently changed. The same

tactical splits, voting customs, ideological and partisan imperatives, and public

perceptions haunted the Democracy well into the 1890s.

Taken as a whole, Silbey must be commended for a long-overdue reassessment.

While it might be unreasonable to ask too much from such a promising work, the

book suffers from a major conceptual drawback: the author devotes nearly two-

thirds of his presentation to the wartime Democracy. As a result, the section on

Reconstruction and beyond is sketchy and overgeneralized. Nonetheless, Silbey

has written an admirable book, one that should stimulate further studies.

 

The University of Akron                                Jerome Mushkat

 

 

Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics. By David A. Nichols.

(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978. vii + 223p.; notes, bibliography,

index. $16.00.)

 

This book challenges the view that Indian issues were marginal to government

policymakers of 1861-65. David A. Nichols focuses on Lincoln and his subordi-

nates, rather than on Indians, but he does not take a one-sided approach from

Lincoln's perspective. Conversely, Nichols presents a critical interpretation of

Lincoln's handling of Indian issues. Though Lincoln was somewhat more humane

toward Indians than many Americans, he administered policies which resulted in

extreme suffering among various tribes.

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98                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Probably the best part of the book is Nichols'excellent description ofthe"Indian

System," which was supposedly to aid Indians, but in fact was more of a

boondoggle for ambitious whites. The large amount of money in Indian appropria-

tions was a basis for personal gain by patronage office holders and by frontier

whites claiming damages by Indians. This money was paid from funds promised to

Indians in their treaties, without investigation by the government or without the

consent of the Indians. The other part of this system involved private contractors

and traders who often used inflated prices and corrupt bookkeeping practices to

fleece Indians out of payment for their lands. With kickbacks to the local

government agent, it was simple to amass huge profits at the expense of the natives.

Lincoln's initial action in Indian affairs was to use the appointments as political

spoils rewards, and he took no action to curtail corruption.

The first crisis relating to Native Americans was with the Indian Territory, and

Nichols concludes that Lincoln mishandled that problem at every stage. In

violation of treaties guaranteeing protection to the Five Civilized Tribes, the

president withdrew U.S. troops and left the Indians at the mercy of Confederates.

Loyal Indians fled to Kansas, where many died of starvation and exposure because

of the indecisive administration response.

The next crisis occurred with the Santee Sioux in Minnesota. Despite being

informed of excessive corruption in that agency, Lincoln did nothing to make

changes. By August 1862 the Santee were starving, and one of the biggest Indian

wars of the century resulted. Nichols argues that Lincoln's move to enlist black

troops in the Union army was partly due to the Santee outbreak. Rumors circulated

that a coordinated Indian war was developing along the entire frontier in a

conspiracy with the Confederacy to destroy the Union. Although the President

resisted execution plans for most of the captured Santee men, he subsequently

approved of forced removal of the Santee and the peaceful Winnebago Indians

from their Minnesota homelands.

The Santee war caused Lincoln to become interested in reforming the Indian

Office in late 1862. Yet he never committed himself to changing the spoils system,

and his idea of reform was to "civilize" Indians by making them wards of the

government. By 1863 the President had abandoned his flirtation with reform, and

left Indian policy to subordinates who emphasized removal and forced accultura-

tion. Lincoln gave highest priority to western expansion, and he never faced the fact

that this development would be harmful to Native Americans. Like the majority of

Americans, Lincoln believed that "civilization" was inevitably destined to wipe out

"savagism." Nichols argues that Lincoln's attraction to Indian removal was similar

to his interest in colonization for black Americans; that is, get rid of racial prob-

lems without solving them.

While Nichols presents a balanced interpretation in explaining presidential

attitudes, perhaps he places too much emphasis on Lincoln. The President held

typical reactions toward Indians: to treat them "humanely," but only in the context

of taking their lands. The book would have been stronger if it had analyzed the

federal government as a whole. Considerable data is presented on individual

Congressmen, yet there is no systematic analysis of Congressional voting clusters or

debates. Nichols presents too much detail on power games and personality conflicts

between leaders (especially in Chapter 3), while Indian reactions are relatively

ignored. He asserts that Indians suffered greatly, but there is not enough evidence to

demonstrate the actual results of these governmental policies. Nichols has a

distressing habit of re-using quotes in different chapters, but otherwise his writing

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Book Reviews                                                          99

 

style is clear. His analysis of Lincoln's attitudes is convincing, and he makes a

needed contribution to Civil War and Indian history.

 

University of Cincinnati                                Walter L. Williams

 

 

The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. By Philip S. Foner. (New York: Monad Press,

1977. 288p.; appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $14.00 cloth; $3.95 paper.)

 

The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 represents one of the first attempts to re-

synthesize labor and political history following the intense local social historical

research of recent years. Professor Foner's credentials for this ambitious task are of

course manifest in the nearly forty volumes he has written or edited on oppressed

peoples, their thought, and their struggles. Ot this prodigious output, however,

none (in this reviewer's opinion) is more suggestive than this little book (230 pages

of text).

Drawing on the pioneering effort of Robert V. Bruce (1877: Year of Violence) in

1959, Foner has substantially enhanced our knowledge of what might be labeled

America's first national working-class rebellion. The spontaneous strike-spreading

from the Baltimore and Ohio junctions in Maryland and West Virginia throughout

the nation's four major trunk lines and scores of lesser roads from coast-to-coast

and drawing in other industries and even the unemployed as it spread-is a most

difficult event to follow, let alone to explain. Foner wisely organizes his narrative by

locale and railroad line, a formula which several times repeats the chronology but in

a way (unlike Bruce's single national chronology) which gives the reader a sense of

the logic of events, while also highlighting the differences in, say, St. Louis, scene of

the world's first general strike in a major industrial city; Pittsburgh, where the level

of confrontation reached armed insurrection; or Terre Haute, where the workers

sought to make common cause with the local railroad owner. Also helping to rescue

the event from classification with phenomena like plagues or fever (metaphors

applied at the time and since) is Foner's emphasis on the strikers' self-explanations

and on the strike's direction. To the latter subject he brings a careful study of the

role of the Workingmen's Party of the United States (WPUS) in the 1877 uprising.

While the reader may still doubt whether this tiny revolutionary socialist party

(containing at most 3000 members when established during the international

convergence of Marxist and Lassallean socialist factions of the mid-seventies)

deserves quite the spotlight it receives in four chapters of the book, Foner makes a

strong case for the party's influence on strike leadership, at once rescuing the party

from obscurity (although not from criticism for both conciliationist and white

supremacist leanings) and the strikes themselves from scenarios of romantic

insurrectionism.

If Foner's masterful narrative vastly increases our understanding of the Great

Strike, it also opens lines of social inquiry which overwhelm his analytical

framework. His understanding of the strikers' temperament, for example, seems

confined to the unbending categories of"class consciousness" and "class harmony,"

political reformism and revolutionary unionism, etc.; as such, tnc ultimate failing of

the Marxist W PUS (later the Socialist Labor Party) seems mainly a matter ot talse

consciousness. His own evidence, however, suggests that a specific popular political

critique of the Gilded Age industrialists underlay much of the action and response

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100                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

to the strikes. The swaggering behavior of the railroad barons, for example-with

their "big salaries, wine suppers, free passes and presents to Congressmen"-effec-

tively galvanized working-class communities behind the Strike, communities

otherwise rent by race, ethnic, and craft hostilities. Indeed, in many cases the

strikers clearly attracted cross-class (including farmer) support. Thus it was that the

Strike, by serving to express and consolidate antagonism to concentrated corporate

power, soon eventuated neither in a new unionism nor a mass socialist movement

but in the flowering of the anti-monopoly Greenback Labor Party.

There are other cases, too, where Foner seems to let drop a promising line of

analysis. For example, he offers fascinating examples regarding familial discipline

(and also familial divisions) during the strikes, but he does not pursue the juncture

between working-class culture and politics. The Great Strike, as Foner quotes

Chicago socialist George Schilling, "was the calcium light which illumined the skies

of our social and industrial life." Foner has picked up that torch, but it will be up to

others to reach a broader enlightenment.

 

University of North Carolina                                    Leon Fink

 

The Golden Age of Black Nationalism 1850-1925. By Wilson Jeremiah Moses.

(Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1978. ³⁴⁵p.; notes, bibliography, index. $17.50.)

 

This book is rather like a new pair of shoes: it looks so good at first, but starts to

pinch severely once you get into it.

Professor Moses argues that black nationalism was basically a conservative

ideology designed to uplift black people through nineteenth-century, Victorian,

Christian morality. Such nationalism relied upon mystical visions of an African,

and especially an Ethiopian, redemptive destiny. That mission, in turn, necessitated

collective or communal efforts headed by an enlightened elite and required either

physical separation of the races or at least institutional autonomy among blacks.

This thesis will hardly startle most readers, even if they disagree. The problem is

that Moses fails to define, defend, develop, and utilize his terms with sufficient rigor,

consistency, or stylistic grace.

To be sure, there are valuable lessons in the volume. Moses demonstrates that the

mystical visions involved not only a revival of African greatness, but also a decline

in European strength and influence. The chapter on Alexander Crummell is

particularly helpful in explaining the origins of his black nationalist thought and in

tracing the outlets of that thought through a lifetime of activism in both the United

States and Africa. Of real service is the chapter on black nationalists' responses to

World War I, especially W.E.B. Du Bois's determination to use that unprecedented

threat to white dominance as an opportunity to challenge imperialism abroad and

Jim Crow practices at home. The author's reminder of how the war and urbaniza-

tion laid the foundations for a new, secularized appreciation of black culture and

racial consciousness closes the book on a solid theme-one that Moses might have

exploited more fully.

Therein lies the chief defect of this study: the failure to explore in a thorough and

sophisticated manner the implications of ideas and trends introduced. Moses does

not reach bevond tne obvious impact of nineteenth century white values on

nineteenth century black minds to uncover the elements of nationalism rooted in

black cultural soil as well. He wisely admonishes readers to perceive the similarities

between such prototype figures as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington,

• 10
 

Book Reviews                                                        101

 

but his apparent eagerness to demonstrate the parallels masks the genuins differ-

ences that did exist.

There are other problems. The chapter entitled "Black Bourgeois Feminism

versus Peasant Values" provides exciting insights into the work of black women

activists at the turn of the century. However, Moses never bothers to establish

working definitions of "bourgeois," "feminism," or "peasant values," and the

chapter loses touch with the book's central themes. Both this and the chapter on

Pan-Africanism are far too episodic. The section on Sutton Griggs is downright

tedious, and discussions of his novels, Du Bois's Ethiopian imagery, and other

black nationalist writings suffer from an excessive use of lengthy extracts that prove

more distracting than instructive. And it seems almost a slander on Du Bois to

announce blithely that he and Garvey "were not dismayed by the rebirth of the Ku

Klux Klan in the South nor by the suppression of radicals in the urban North" (p.

267).

At times there are organizational problems that a few well-placed transitional

sentences or paragraphs might have eased. This raises a final point. However

anxious to get into print, historians must appreciate and demand more editorial

assistance from their publishers. We can do without "the spectacle of Negro

minstrelry" (sic; p. 184), such neologisms as "Ethiopianistic" (p. 200) and "civiliza-

tionistic" (p. 249), and the awkward assurance that "[Garvey] was one of those

ungainly figures who stood with one foot planted firmly in the past while with the

other hailing the dawn of a new day" (p. 262). Furthermore, there were 76 recorded

lynchings of blacks in 1919, not 76 "between December and June" of that year (p.

255).

 

University of Akron                                  Robert L. Zangrando

 

 

An American Crusade: The Life of Charles Waddell Chesnutt. By Frances

Richardson Keller. (Provo: Bringham Young University Press, 1978. xvi +

³⁰⁴p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographical note, index. $12.95.)

 

A man of many talents, Charles Waddell Chesnutt never reached the pinnacles of

recognition which he deserved. Skilled in shorthand recording, he built a profitable

business which gave him decades of financial security; but his short stories and

novels fell short of wide acceptance, his strong convictions about integration

reached but a narrow audience, his influence in black organizations was strangely

circumscribed, and his life in Cleveland apparently poised precariously between

black and white friends and associates.

Early in his career, Chesnutt decided not to pass, although his fair skin and blue

eyes easily put that temptation within his grasp. Instead he dedicated himself to the

task of exposing the burdens of being black in a white world, burdens which he

revealed as frustrating, complex and weighty. His novels, published and unpub-

lished, were woven around this theme; one of them, The Marrow of Tradition, was

drawn from the 1898 riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, and still serves as a prism

through which to view the reality. His best-known novel, The House Behind the

Cedars, focuses on the fatal tragedy of a beautiful near white woman. She is rejected

as a wife but invited to be a mistress by a white suitor, exploited by a black suitor

and, finally, left to die by a black man who is forced by racial restrictions to stand by

helplessly.

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102                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

Chesnutt's short stories won him initial fame and resist the test of time better than

his longer works. Published in the prominent magazines of the day, like the Atlantic

and Century, and in collections, the stories centered primarily on the South and the

ways in which Southern blacks struggled to survive, spiritually as well as physically.

Using folk myth, as in the "Conjure" stories, the pressures of color gradations inside

black society, as in "The Wife of His Youth," and similar themes, Chesnutt wrote

with a moral. His essays were more direct but equally purposeful; they spoke to

eventual amalgamation of the races, a position for which Chesnutt was to argue

forcefully during the last third of his life.

Some of Chesnutt's most provocative writing appears in his letters. He carried on

a large correspondence, among blacks and whites. He and his editor, Walter Hines

Page. wrote on a wide variety of subjects, and Chesnutt maintained a running

debate with Booker T. Washington, a man whom he admired, even though he

disagreed with the Tuskegeean's policies on education and political activism. He

supported DuBois' Niagara Movement and the growing National Association for

the Advancement of Colored People.

This biography is clear and sustained when it examines Chesnutt's published

works and his relationship with Booker T. Washington. It is tangential and

repetitive about other aspects of Chesnutt's life, particularly his North Carolina

days, his life in Cleveland, and in tracing the real life antecedents of Chesnutt's

favorite character, the heroine of The House Behind the Cedars. There is no doubt

about the depth and rationality of Chesnutt's convictions, but the book does not

capture the intricate and contradictory nuances of Chesnutt's social, racial and

literary position. Using a prose style which lacks the verve and clarity of its subject,

the book does not demonstrate that the man and his life were, indeed, an American

crusade.

 

Heidelberg College                                  Leslie H. Fishel, jr.

 

 

Schooling For The New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1898-1915. By Donald

Spivey. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978 xii + 162p.; notes, appendix,

bibliography, index, $14.95.)

 

Donald Spivey says that he was prompted to write this book because "our

understanding of the role of industrial schooling has only slightly advanced beyond

the criticism launched against it by W.E.B. Du Bois at the beginning of the century"

(p. ix). His study of industrial education at black schools seeks to remedy that

deficiency. Beginning with a discussion of Samuel Chapman Armstrong's racial

and pedagogical beliefs about the freedmen and their education, Spivey traces the

evolution of the industrial education model and its impact upon blacks: from the

American South to Africa. A respectable amount of research went into this book,

not only into the secondary literature, but also into documents, especially the

Booker T. Washington Papers and the Rockefeller Archives. Nevertheless, the

product of this scholarly effort is disappointing.

In his attempt to elucidate the whys of black industrial education, its complexi-

ties and goals, Spivey's unsystematic approach poses a persistent problem. He sees

the movement for industrial schooling as the major component of a strategy by

northern industrialists and proponents of the New South creed to exploit black

labor. As to the extent of the influence of their ideas on black education or their

• 12
 

Book Reviews                                                        103

 

success in creating a docile and efficient black work-force, however, we are offered

only unsubstantiated opinion. Nor does he provide any explanation for the appeal

of industrial schooling among certain segments of black American and African

leadership, save for the simplistic claim that they were "fooled by the Tuskegee

image of self-help." (p. 110)

Second, Spivey's constricted definition of industrial education, which limits it to

nothing more than a pedagogical technique to teach blacks how to behave, omits

any appreciation for the elusive, ambiguous nature both of the concept itself and of

its application. To educators seeking an alternative to the rigid and sterile 19th

century liberal arts curriculum, industrial education represented learning by doing;

to poor black youths it was a way of paying for a college education; to administra-

tors at financially strapped black colleges, it permitted the employment of cheap

student labor for campus upkeep, laundry and dining services, and food produc-

tion; to northern capitalists, it promised the development of efficient and obedient

workers; and to southern racists it signified indoctrination to discourage black

demands for full political, social and economic equality.

It is his discussion and analysis of industrial education's effect on black students,

though, that is the least satisfying portion of the book. Spivey's over-reliance on

official documents-to the almost total neglect of materials such as student

publications, letters, diaries, and autobiographies-results in a distorted picture of

student attitudes and behavior. "The favorite hymns of Hampton students," we are

told, "indicate that [General Armstrong's] religious philosophy was accepted by

them," and that they "looked forward to the hereafter." (pp. 28, 29) Yet except for

the few songs that Spivey presents from the Hampton Quartette songbook, he

offers no evidence to support such bold statements. The same deficiency limits the

effectiveness of his discussion of Tuskegee students. The reader is thereby prevented

from advancing his understanding of black students much beyond the gross

caricatures of this group that predominate in the historical and sociological

literature.

As Spivey's work so clearly demonstrates, the organization and evaluation of

historical data can be a more difficult problem than the unearthing of facts. This has

been particularly true of studies of black education; little progress has been made in

the field toward developing a framework for the detailed historical study of

industrial education at black schools. Unfortunately, that need is not satisfied by

Mr. Spivey's book.

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology                   Monroe H. Little

 

 

When Workers Fight: The Politics of Industrial Relations in the Progressive Era,

1898-1916. By Bruno Ramirez. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. viii + ²⁴1p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $17.50.)

 

Building upon the work of Robert Wiebe, Gabriel Kolko, James Weinstein,

Alfred Chandler and other observers of the Progressive era, Bruno Ramirez

describes the development of industrial relations during this important period of

United States history. Ramirez divides his study into three sections. He claims that

from 1898 to 1905 industrial relations entered the "golden age of the trade

agreement" as industrialists and union leaders sought to reduce the conflict between

capital and labor. In his second section Ramirez contends, however, that many

• 13
 

104                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

capitalists refused to accept a philosophy which explicitly recognized a place for

trade unions. When they pursued anti-union policies, these employers found that a

divided labor movement could not adequately respond to their assaults. Finally,

Ramirez argues that between 1907 and 1916 the principle of collective bargaining

lost additional ground as scientific management and welfare capitalism became

favorite tools of employers.

Many historians have examined the movement for rationalization, compromise,

and peaceful industrial relations, and Ramirez adds to this literature by describing

the search for order in the coal industry and explaining the role of the UMWA

president, John Mitchell. He also reviews the familiar role of the National Civic

Federation, an organization which worked to minimize class conflict and sought to

create a stable, non-socialist corporate order. More interestingly, Ramirez notes

that many American businessmen refused to accept the trade agreement formula

because they feared that trade unions, once recognized, would lesson employers'

prerogatives and limit industrial production. These businessmen, led by the NAM,

launched an offensive against unionism by supporting increased immigration and

the creation of a surplus army of labor. Ramirez illustrates how such attacks

necessitated a unified response from organized labor, but the claims that labor's

divisions prevented such a response. Instead, craft unions resisted the drive for

industrial unionism because they feared attacks upon their jurisdiction and wished

to retain their "privileged status" within the ranks of labor.

Emboldened by the divisions in organized labor, employers found it relatively

easy to impose welfarism on an unorganized work force. By devising welfare

techniques both inside and outside the work place, employers hoped to "instill in

workers the virtues and values that would promote in them an attachment to work

and a sense of loyalty to the enterprise." Such practices brought increased

productivity, stabilized the work force, and imposed a form of company unionism

on employees. Welfarism represented the antithesis of collective bargaining

because employers used it to counter the growth of labor unions. Ramirez argued

that labor organizations consented, at least tacitly, to the growth of welfare

capitalism, although he gives little evidence to support his position. Frustrated by

the impotence of organized labor and angered by the intransigence of craft unions,

the Industrial Workers of the World rejected the very tenets of the trade agreement

philosophy.

Some problems arise in Ramirez' study. He suggests that the trade agreement

reached its heights within the AFL and among craft unions, but his supporting

evidence focuses on the United Mine Workers, one of the few industrial unions

within that organization. Ramirez also maintains that when the trade agreement

waned as an effective technique, Samuel Gompers and other labor leaders success-

fully resisted an employer-led drive for compulsory government arbitration. One

wonders whether the success of voluntarism was much of a victory, given the

evidence of the erosion of collective bargaining and the subjugation of unions.

Finally, one might question whether the book should be entitled, "When Workers

Fight". Ramirez' evidence would suggest that a more appropriate title would be,

"When Industrial Relations Are Rationalized And Workers Are Controlled."

In many ways this book sheds little new light on the subject, but Ramirez has

performed a valuable service by synthesizing some of the trends of this era.

 

 

 

The Ohio State University                         Michael R. McCormick

• 14
 

Book Reviews                                                       105

 

The Making of Urban History: Historiography Through Oral History. Edited by

Bruce M. Stave. (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc., 1977. viii4- 336 p.; notes,

bibliography, index. $17.50.)

 

Ten years ago the Yale Conference on Nineteenth-Century Cities rather immod-

estly, somewhat presumptuously, and perhaps prematurely announced the "birth"

of the "new" urban history. Its practitioners decried earlier ("old") urban biography

for its allegedly purely descriptive nature and absence of developmental analysis,

conceptualization, and methodological rigor. Borrowing heavily from the social

and behavioral sciences, scholars began applying the techniques of computer

technology to such new historical sources as census manuscript schedules, tax

records, marriage certificates, and building permits. While scholarly results have

been mixed and uneven, recent studies of ethnocultural, neighborhood, migratory,

and mobility patterns have helped develop a better understanding of the impact of

industrialization on the lives of people once considered historically inarticulate.

Bruce M. Stave's The Making of Urban History reveals, however, that urban

history has reached a crossroad just one decade after its putative renaissance.

Today's scholars are less confident and less optimistic about the omnipotence of

new methodologies; nor are they as sure of having created something "new." "I

don't know what the new urban history is," observes Richard Wade, "and I don't

know what the old urban history is. The only thing I can see that is new is the

interest in quantification which is, after all, not history but methodology" (p. 175).

"The only thing that makes you a historian," suggests Sam Bass Warner facetiously,

"is a long time scale and bad data" (p. 204). "To me," notes Samuel P. Hays,

"history is always a kind of jigsaw puzzle. You get a sense of what the whole picture

is and you have only a few pieces . . . then you fill in the gaps to create the whole

picture. Often those gaps, in among the 'hard data,' can be dealt with only through

intuitions and speculations" (p. 321). Even Eric E. Lampard, a scholar who

persistently emphasizes the need for methodology and conceptualization, con-

cludes that "theorizing without . . . testing can be . . . a vain exercise, while the

numbers without the theory can be as deceptive . . . as any other kind of

empiricism" (p. 266).

Although these "conversations" originally appeared between 1974 and 1976 in

the Journal of Urban History (itself a product of the discipline's growth), their

impact is augmented significantly in this collective presentation. Professor Stave,

an articulate and unusually competent oral and urban historian, has done his

homework admirably. The interviews are witty, sprightly, and genuinely informa-

tive. The book provides a coherent overview of five decades of historiography

through an examination of the careers of Blake McKelvey, Bayrd Still, the late

Constance McLaughlin Green, Oscar Handlin, Richard Wade, Sam Bass Warner,

Jr., Stephan Thernstrom, Eric Lampard, and Sam Hays. Stave's excellent intro-

ductory essay offers a number of insights into the diverse nature of current

scholarship and his questions constantly keep the human dimension before the

reader. The end result is a pleasant combination of the whimsical and serious

moments which characterize most scholarly lives.

Responding to well-known criticism of his work, Blake McKelvey, Rochester's

retired city historian and a founder of the Urban History Group, observed: "I have

not been trying to prove a thesis .... I have been content . . . to write the

history of one city . . . for those who want to know its traditions and something of

their origins" (pp. 45, 58). On the lighter side, mobility buffs may be interested to

know that Stephan Thernstrom, one of the field's modern founders, comes from an

• 15
 

106                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

unusually well-rooted family of "long-time persisters in a small town" (p. 221).

Ironically, one of the most interesting observations to emerge from this essentially

historiographic volume is Richard Wade's plea that students rid themselves of"this

fascination with historiography. . . . History is a good deal richer than anything

any of us will ever say about it, and I think that's what people ought to know" (p.

184). In the meantime, an occasional volume of historiography suggests how far

we have come and helps point toward new directions for future study.

 

Miami University                                     Eugene M. Tobin

 

 

The Iron Barons: A Social Anal vsis of an American Urban Elite, 1874-1965. By

John N. Ingham. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. xix + 242p.; notes, tables,

appendix, bibliographic note, index. $19.95.)

 

The role and power of economic elites in the United States are topics that have

received increasing attention over the past decade. As Ingham correctly notes in his

introduction, historians have slighted the social context in which businessmen

moved in favor of the economic and the political. Hence this study concentrates on

the social cement that held together the men and families who dominated the iron

and steel industry in six cities: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. Bethlehem, Cleveland,

Youngstown and Wheeling. Taking as his sample the officers of all iron and steel

plants in the selected cities listed in the volumes of the Directory of Iron and Steel

Manufacturing Plants in the United States and Canada between 1874 and 1901,

Ingham attempts to trace the ancestry, social relationships, and descendents of all

907 men.

Ingham finds that in each city the post-Civil War iron and steel elite came from

pre-Civil War upper- and middle-class urban families, with only a smattering

from blue-collar or non-urban origins. These elite families typically claimed colo-

nial ancestors who had emigrated from England before 1750, and they attended

Episcopal or Presbyterian churches. Except in Pittsburgh, where the Scotch-Irish

came to prominence in large numbers, and in Wheeling, where an exceptional

number of skilled workers entered the entrepreneurial ranks, the pattern prevailed

in each of the cities under consideration. The technological explosion that created

the modern iron and steel industry after 1874 did not bring opportunity to "new

men"-Andrew Carnegie was quite alone in this regard-but instead brought

opportunities to men and families already established.

After reviewing the occupational, ethnic, and religious backgrounds of the "iron

barons" who ruled between 1874 and 1901, Ingham traces the social network that

bound them together into something that can be called a social class. Using

neighborhood of residence, religion, schools, social clubs, and marriage patterns,

he analyzes the relationships-or "interlocks" between individuals and families

and attempts to trace the continuity of relationships over the next two generations.

Ingham concentrates primarily on Pittsburgh and concludes that urban elites, as

represented by his sample, tended to live in finely-graded homogeneous

neighborhoods; belonged to, or sought to belong to, similarly graded social clubs;

and, especially among those families labeled "core" families in the upper-class

structure, tended to marry endogamously. Thus the upper-class used its own

institutional structure both to maintain exclusivity and to recruit in each generation

a small number of families that resembled itself.

• 16
 

Book Reviews                                                       107

 

Ingham's analysis becomes increasingly tenuous as he moves from Pittsburgh to

those cities in which the iron and steel elite constituted a smaller proportion of the

entire urban upper-class. In Youngstown and Wheeling, for example, he finds that

the iron and steel elite left the cities as their companies passed from family hands;

he does not tell us who took their places. Similarly, in cities such as Philadelphia

and Cleveland it is difficult to place the iron and steel families in the context of a

much larger urban elite.

These problems are related to a larger problem: while the social relationships of

the sample are explored in detail, these associations are not then tied to economic or

political relationships. Thus the manner in which self-consciously articulated social

networks affected the ability of urban elites to influence the course of economic,

social, and political development is left largely unexplored. The content and

meaning of relationships receive little stress.

Although the integration of statistical material into the flow of prose is often

awkward and repetitious, the author does present a convincing argument for the

continuity of urban elites. The production of the book suffers from several editorial

lapses ("reverted back," p. 224; "the businessmen himself," p. 225) and numerous

typographical errors.

 

The University of Akron                                   Douglas Shaw

 

 

First Generation: In the Words of Twentieth Century American Immigrants. By

June Namias. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978. xviii + 234p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliography. $12.95.)

 

You will not find the poetics of Oscar Handlin in June Namias' book, but you will

find the pioneering. Like The Uprooted, First Generation breaks ground in

American immigration history. It will be the first of many books to approach

immigration from a multi-ethnic perspective, using the techniques of oral history.

Although Namias is not Handlin, she is a patient and perceptive listener, a solid,

terse writer, and a careful editor with the eye of a short story writer. The book she

has fashioned is compassionate and useful.

A Boston-area school teacher, Namias began with what she describes as a

personal quest to understand her own first generation when she interviewed her

only surviving grandparent, Minnie Needle, a spicy Jewish grandmother who

gambled on the side, and borrowed to "make" her daughter a nice wedding. When

M innie died less than a year after the interview sessions, Namias felt an urgent need

to talk to other members of that rapidly passing immigrant generation.

Her book is a compilation of those talks. Included are the life stories of thirty-one

immigrants from twenty countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin

America, and the Caribbean. Her choice of interviewees is neither random nor

systematic. Some were chance encounters, one with a young Italian she had as a

student, another with the Portuguese waiter who served her table. Others she

selected to represent particular ethnic groups who emigrated during specific time

periods, individuals whose experiences included that of mill and field hands,

domestics and physicists, union activists and political refugees of the right and left.

The interviews are arranged chronologically into periods defined by changes in

national immigration policy. In her introductions to each section and each

interview, Namias concisely and insightfully summarizes the laws, the impact of

• 17
 

108                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

their enforcement, and the social, economic, and political conditions prevalent for

each ethnic group in old country and new. The "New Beginnings, 1900-1929"

includes representatives of the then "new immigration"-southern and eastern

Europeans, Italians, Poles, and Rusian Jews, as well as the fresh voices of Chinese.

Japanese, and Filipino immigrants. The second section starkly chronicles "Survi-

vors, 1930-1945." Here Namias lets speak Armenian, Spanish Loyalist, and Jewish

refugees, and tellingly concludes the chapter with the account of a Japanese-

American interned during World War II. Interviews in the final section, "New

Generations: 1946 through the 1970s," characterize postwar immigration and raise

questions concerning the "brain drain" and undocumented alien workers.

Namias does not present her narrators as being stereotypical of any nation or

background. Each interview represents a complex human being, and sug-

gests the wide range of immigrant experience in this century. First Generation is

not a heavily analytical book, but from her admittedly small sample Namias does

argue that the postwar immigrant generation differs from its predecessors in its

predilection from intermarriage and in its ambivalence about being American;

modern immigrants, she believes, are less willing to give up vital aspects of their

identity than those who came a half-century earlier.

Above all, the interviews stand on their own, descriptive, sometimes epic, in their

dimensions. As Robert Coles asserts in his moving introduction, First Generation

gives the reader a chance to rid himself of "various abstract political or social

pieties, and in exchange gain a sense of what this country has offered, has received,

and not least, has through these lives, and countless others, managed to become."

 

Ohio Historical Society                              Debra E. Bernhardt

 

 

An Italian Passage: Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-1930. By John W.

Briggs. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. xiv + 348p.; tables, notes,

bibliographical notes, index. $20.00.)

 

During the past fifteen years a number of scholarly assaults have been launched

against generalized views of immigration to and ethnicity in America. The

historical profession has gained much new insight in these areas through detailed

examinations of specific ethnic communities and also by taking a broader, two-

sided view of the immigrant on both sides of the Atlantic.

John W. Briggs' An Italian Passage, Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-

1930, is a fine example of this new breed of scholarship. Briggs focuses upon the

Italians in Utica and Rochester, New York and Kansas City, Missouri, analyzing

their experiences in these cities against their background in Italy.

In particular, Briggs sets out to examine the Italians' attitudes toward education

and their propensity, or lack thereof, for forming voluntary organizations and, in

general, to describe the nature of the immigrant. In doing so he effectively

challenges the common view that southern Italian immigrants were uneducated-

indeed, disinterested in education-driven from their homes by economic crisis,

and atomistically divided by loyalty to town, province or family.

Intensive research in Italian archives allows Briggs to show that most Italians

who chose to immigrate were already upwardly mobile, interested in education,

and experienced in forming formal organizations in the old country. In fact, many

of the organizations discovered and detailed by Briggs had educational or cultural

goals written into their charters.

• 18
 

Book Reviews                                                     109

 

In examining the immigrant experience in America, Briggs depicts a similar

striving for mobility, education and association. In the process he assails some time-

honored concepts, most notably that of companilismo, or loyalty to village or

province. By showing that inter-provincial marriages were far more common in the

American Italian colonies than those involving couples from the same region,

Briggs makes a strong case for the abandonment of regional ties at an earlier point

in time than had previously been recognized.

Of particular interest to many scholars are Briggs' findings concerning accultura-

tion. His view follows a middle road between those of Humbert Nelli and Rudolph

Vecoli in that he portrays his Italians as eager to take on American attributes

(particularly those which would engender upward mobility), but also anxious to

retain their language and a sense of Italianata. His examination of public and

parochial education in the cities studied brings home this point most vividly.

Most of Briggs' theses are well-stated and equally well-supported by a myriad of

statistics. The forty-nine tables scattered through the text are easy to read and

understand. Though statistics are the primary buttress for many of Briggs'

arguments, good use of narrative sources aids in making the text readable, thereby

avoiding a common fault of many cliometric studies. There is, however, roughness

about the text, some of which seems to have been lifted verbatim from an early draft

of the work. Particularly pervasive and annoying is the use of the first person

singular in many portions of the work, thereby making some sections more akin to

an informal conference paper than historical narrative.

Despite these minor literary faults, Briggs has produced a stimulating and well-

researched book that, along with Josef Barton's Peasants and Strangers, should be

considered as one of the hallmarks in the new view of ethnicity.

 

Western Reserve Historical Society                   John J. Grabowski

 

 

The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle-Class Reform,

Chicago, 1880-1930. By Thomas Lee Philpott (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1978. Pp. xii - 428. Maps, notes, appendices and index. $17.95)

 

Ever since the black revolt of the 1960s, white ethnic Americans, skeptical of

black demands, have posed the question, "if we did it, why couldn't they?" On a

more scholarly level, historians and social scientists such as Oscar Handlin, Daniel

P. Moynihan, Nathan Glazer and Philip Hauser have made much the same point.

"It is a serious mistake," Hauser wrote in a 1965 issue of Daedalus, "to assume that

the 'color stigma' is different in kind or even in degree from the stigma which

accompanied many of our foreign-white immigrant groups." Most historians of

black urban life have disagreed sharply, arguing that a rigid pattern of discrimina-

tion in housing and employment deprived blacks of the basic opportunities for

advancement that were open to European immigrants and their children. But until

now there has been no systematic comparative treatment of white immigrant and

black communities in an American urban setting. Thomas Philpott fills that gap

and his book should finally set to rest the notion that blacks are just another

immigrant group with similar status and similar problems. As Philpott puts it, the

familiar question ought to be turned around, "if we didn't have to do it, why should

they?" (p.xvii)

The Slum and the Ghetto has two major themes. First, and most important, it is

an examination of the differences between Chicago's black ghetto and its immigrant

• 19
 

110                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

enclaves. Philpott focuses on neighborhood development, residential succession

and housing conditions. He does not attempt to compare job opportunities for

blacks and white ethnics or to explore differences in family structure or organiza-

tional life. At times one misses the broader context which a full community study

could have provided. Yet within the limits he sets for himself, Philpott demon-

strates convincingly that the barriers confronting blacks were different in kind from

those confronting white ethnics.

Contrary to popular conception, Chicago was not a mosaic of foreign colonies

-Little Italy, Polonia, Pilsen and the rest. Immigrant districts were mixtures of

many nationalities and, while in some areas one nationality set the tone, there were

no ethnically homogeneous white neighborhoods. Moreover, as the immigrants

prospered they moved out of the slums into white middle class neighborhoods,

living wherever they could afford, among natives as well as foreigners. Hence, the

Near West Side, Packingtown, Back a' the Yards and Chicago's other white slums

were grim, miserable places-but they were only temporary waystations. They

offered cheap housing close to jobs and the opportunity to move up the economic

scale and out to better neighborhoods.

The black ghetto was a completely different entity. It was, in Philpott's words,

"Chicago's only real ghetto." (p. 141) Even earlier than previous histories have

suggested, Chicago's black population was rigidly segregated and barred from

working class neighborhoods convenient to mills and plants and from more

desirable middle class neighborhoods. Black districts were not informal concentra-

tions of recent arrivals. "Unlike the ethnic clusters," Philpott writes, the black

ghetto "was a place where segregation was practically total, essentially involuntary,

and also perpetual." (p. xvi) White immigrants, who had a choice, "opted for a

combination of mild clustering and wide dispersion" and did so without surrender-

ing ethnic identity. (p. 145) Blacks had no choice; whites decided for them that they

could live only in a rigidly delineated black belt. Not only were economic

opportunities far more circumscribed for blacks than for white minorities, but even

those blacks who achieved economic success could not find housing outside the

black belt.

Philpott is at his strongest in describing the calculated and deliberate way in

which white Chicagoans created the ghetto. His conclusions are not strikingly

different from those of other historians of the ghetto, but he provides new detail

culled not only from the usual newspaper sources but from interviews, student

papers at the University of Chicago, and the records of the Chicago Real Estate

Board. The ghetto did not develop in an absence of mind; it was planned. White

property owners, business interests, civic leaders, the newspapers and, above all, the

real estate industry determined that Chicago must be residentially segregated. The

techniques they used to achieve their goal included intimidation, violence, block-

busting and after 1927-restrictive covenants. Even with the rapid growth of

Chicago's black population during and after World War I, the geographical limits

of black settlement expanded only slightly. As a result, blacks of all classes and

income levels were confined permanently to crowded, substandard and overpriced

housing. Not only was this experience different from that of any white minority, but

white ethnics were in fact among those who helped create and maintain the color

line. What really mattered in Chicago was not whether one was native or foreign but

whether one was white or black.

The second theme of Philpott's book is the response of social workers and

middle-class reformers to Chicago's housing problems. The achievements of the

reformers were, in Philpott's analysis, sharply limited by their own world views.

• 20
 

Book Reviews                                                       111

 

Bound by a middle-class business ethic and by generally conventional racial

attitudes, the reformers "produced few visible improvements in the slum districts."

(p. 343) Even in their work with white immigrants, the reformers were hindered by a

paternalism that prevented them from fully understanding the people they wanted

to help. Philpott concedes that settlement workers probably did help some

immigrants get better jobs and escape the slums, but as long as they stayed poor the

immigrants' lives were barely touched by the efforts of the reformers.

Neighborhood workers and housing reformers were wholly incapable of coping

with the problems faced by blacks. Most of them shared the racist views of other

white Chicagoans and approved of and contributed to the city's system of

segregation. Even the progressive minority-such as Jane Addams and Mary

McDowell, who were founders of the NAACP and opponents of racism-never

actually advocated integration. They did not include blacks in the work of their own

settlements. And, along with other reformers, they responded to the housing needs

of blacks by formulating what Philpott calls a "dual program": they recognized that

blacks needed more and better housing but insisted that it be confined to exclusively

black neighborhoods. This program had only modest results-one all-black hous-

ing project that provided decent housing but at rents that only middle-class blacks

could afford. Hence, Philpott concludes, "for all their effort, housing reformers and

neighborhood workers had not been able to unmake the slum, and they had helped

to make the ghetto." (p. 346)

Philpott's two major themes are not always well integrated. They are, of course,

connected and Philpott argues that the indifference and even hostility of Chicago's

most progressive people toward blacks demonstrate the depth of Chicago's racism

and the intensity of the pressure for segregation. Still, the detailed accounts of the

operations of settlement houses and the efforts of housing reform organizations

seem at times quite separate and distinct from the story of neighborhood develop-

ment and ghetto formation. The material is so rich that perhaps Philpott would

have been better advised to have written two books. Nevertheless, this is a major

contribution to urban history and to the history of race relations. Well-researched

and clearly written, it is a powerful indictment of the forces that shaped Chicago's

black ghetto.

 

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities                     Allan H. Spear

 

 

 

 

From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American

Society Since 1830. By James Reed. (New York: Basic Books, 1978. xvi + 456 p.;

notes, bibliographic essay, index. $17.95.)

 

Since the early 1970s, historians have been paying increasing attention to the

history of birth control in the United States. They have examined key figures in the

birth control movement such as Margaret Sanger, as well as issues related to the

intimate lives and sexual behavior of private individuals such as the decline in the

fertility rate in the nineteenth century and prescriptive and actual sexual practices.

Historians are now writing comprehensive histories of birth control, tying together

major themes including feminism, the survival of the nuclear family, medical

professionalism, population control, and the advancement of contraceptive tech-

• 21
 

112                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

nology. James Reed's From Private Vice to Public Virtue is an ambitious and

largely successful examination of the history of the birth control movement in the

United States from 1830 to the present.

Reed's central thesis is that American society's values and culture rather than the

technology of birth control were the major determinants in shaping the course of

the struggle to bring safe, effective contraception to the public. Reed argues that

while there were no major advances in contraceptive technology from the 1830s

until the development of the pill in the 1950s, factors including changes in social

climate, public opinion, and leadership in the birth control movement were the

most instrumental variables in shaping the history of the birth control movement in

the United States.

To support his argument, Reed employs the device of focusing on key individuals

in the birth control movement who stood for the greatest change and innovation at

particular points in time. Margaret Sanger, Robert Dickinson, Clarence Gamble,

and Gregory Pincus receive considerable attention. Reed relies primarily on their

personal and professional papers to highlight a series of complex social issues

related to contraception. Each leader had his or her own agenda. For example,

Reed shows that Sanger's objective was autonomy for women, Dickinson's interest

was in the survival of the stable nuclear family, Gamble's concern was the

preservation of a balanced ratio of native-born Americans to immigrants, while

Pincus' interest was population control in an increasingly crowded world. Reed

effectively weaves these major themes in an informative and enlightening manner.

In addition, he raises some interesting questions about Margaret Sanger's

personality, motives, and interactions with other birth controllers which are worthy

of serious consideration. In particular, he challenges David Kennedy's contention

in Birth Control in America that Sanger obstructed medical research on birth

control. He asserts instead that it was not Sanger alone, but the role of others such

as Dickinson who helped shape the course of the movement.

My major criticisms with Reed's book center around the fact that he ultimately

understands the birth control movement within the context of the problem of world

over-population. This raises two problems. First, from this perspective, Reed

defines the birth control movement as both a revolutionary movement and a

success. I question this conclusion for it ignores a major issue which was central to

the movement from its inception-female autonomy. Secondly, while he disclaims

the importance of technology as the major variable in the birth control movement

and ultimately in the fight against an over-populated world, his evidence indicates

how crucial technology was. While he explains that the development of the IUD

and the pill depended less on technology than on changing public opinion,

nevertheless, they were major technological advances which made possible the

success he claims for the birth control movement, that is, its contribution to the

control of world population.

Despite these problems, Reed's book is, overall, a provocative, insightful,

carefully researched study of the birth control movement in the United States which

goes a long way towards filling a gap in a relatively new and important area of

American History.

 

Tufts University                                 Virginia G. Drachman

 

 

 

Organized Medicine in the Progressive Era: The Move Toward Monopoly. By

• 22
 

Book Reviews                                                       113

 

James G. Burrow. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. ix +

²¹⁸p.; appendices, bibliographical essay, notes, index. $12.95.)

 

Portions of this book will strike even the historian as quaintly antiquarian: for

example, the American Medical Association's 1905 recommendation that its

members charge $3.00 for a "night visit in town" and $15 for an "obstetric case,

uncomplicated, not over 6 hours," or the AMA's Standards of Medical Education

which suggest that "A college education is recognized as a desirable preparation for

limited numbers of men [sic], but it is thought that it is not and never will be

desirable to make such college education a requirement to the study of medicine."

Burrow's study, however, is a serious and scholarly account of the AMA during a

period which laid the groundwork for the profession's current esteem and affluence.

It is the story of a profession whose very existence at the turn of the century was

endangered by homeopaths, osteopaths, pharmacists, midwives, and patent drug

salesmen; by the growth of public medicine, and by private and publicly financed

medical insurance programs. The story is well documented and well narrated, and

when it ends, in the 1920s, the AMA is still struggling heroically, although success is

in sight and the "monopoly" to which the book's title refers is in the offing. Since

many Americans today, however, find themselves victims of that monopoly and the

arrogance it engenders, it is difficult to cheer for the doctors as their victory

approaches.

Burrow's thesis is that the Progressive years were critical for both the profession

and for American health care. Today's physician shortage, according to Burrows,

stems from the restrictive policies developed by the profession during this decade,

which also witnessed a "revolution in medical education that raised medical

standards" from appallingly low levels. Doctors also developed a new professional

"mystique" and a strong political base at the local and national levels. To achieve

these ends, the AMA launched a national public relations campaign to woo the

public and organize doctors, conducted investigations of existing medical schools

and attempted to impose AMA standards on them, and applied pressure on state

legislatures to set up licensing boards manned by "regular" physicians and to

enforce uniform licensing laws.

Burrows attempts to place the professionalization and politicization of doctors

squarely within the historical context of the Progressive period. But it is not clear

which aspect of the period doctors represent. Were they simply businessmen in

white jackets engaged in simply another form of trust- and monopoly-building of

the sort that Woodrow Wilson and his colleagues railed against? Burrows points

out that like the "captains of finance and industry," the AMA attempted to set pric-

es and fought against antitrust legislation directed at doctors by an angry public.

Certainly the AMA curtailed competition by reducing the number of medical

schools (from 166 in 1904 to 95 in 1915) and the number of potential doctors (from

27,615 medical students to 14,891 during the same period), and by eliminating rivals

(homeopathic medical schools dwindled from 20 in 1900 to two in 1922, and

midwives almost disappeared). Or, on the other hand, were doctors public-spirited

reformers? Burrows describes their support of public health and pure food and drug

laws and the advocacy by a few of the far-sighted of compulsory health insurance.

Like Hofstadter's reformers, Burrow's doctors suffer from "status loss," and like

Wiebe's Progressives, these medical practitioners reveal a concern for protecting

and extending their own professionalization. In short, Burrows finds them zealous

on behalf of both reform and self-aggrandizement. From the point of view of the

profession, the two were perhaps not mutually exclusive.

• 23
 

114                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Burrows relies almost exclusively on published rec ords from local, state, and

national organizations of regular and "irregular" practitioners. The result is

perhaps an over-emphasis on the AMA as hero or villain, depending upon one's

viewpoint. How much credit should the profession get for rising health standards?

What other groups were interested in better health for the American public?

(Burrows mentions the American Association for Labor Legislation's support of

health insurance.) What economic, social, and political factors aided the growth of

the medical monopoly? What parallels are there with the other professions? Since

this is an institutional rather than a social history, it is perhaps irrelevant to ask

what kinds of people were prevented from becoming doctors by newly restrictive

medical school policies, or what groups in the population were left uncared for,

despite improved medical training and technology.

Certainly the profession at the beginning of this century needed "reform."

Doctors were apparently helpless against the great scourges of the period, tubercu-

losis, influenza, and pneumonia. Certainly the AMA's investigations of medical

school facilities and curricula were beneficial. Certainly there were many men

practicing medicine who should not have been called "doctor." But Burrow's

implication is that better health for the American public could have been achieved

only at the price of monopolization. If that is so, we have paid dearly for the

professionalization of medicine.

 

John Carroll University                               Marian J. Morton

 

 

American Liberal Disillusionment in the Wake of World War 1. By Stuart I.

Rochester. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977. xii +

172p.; notes, index. $13.50.)

 

This book is long on interest and short on argument. Mindful of the malaise of

modern liberalism. Rochester works to uncover "the dynamics of disillusionment"

(p. 2) that overtook American liberals during and after Washington's first crusade

in Europe. Seeking to recreate an atmosphere of anguish, he surveys the writing and

work of a dozen men whom he certifies as liberal in "the generous intent, the

progressive intellectual outlook, and the expansive vision of a better society which

they shared" (p. 5).

Understandably, Rochester's range of liberal personalities-which stretches

from Nicholas Murray Butler to Max Eastman is quite broad. Disappointingly,

however, his chronological focus is very narrow. Nearly two-thirds of this brief

study centers upon the years 1914-1920. The remainder scans the period 1920-1940

in an extended epilogue.

Rochester is at his best in recreating the liberals' shifting reaction to the War.

Writing knowledgeably and effectively, he well conveys the mix of horrified

uncertainty, uncritical enthusiasm, and profound discouragement with which

liberals responded to the crises of war and peacemaking. In addition, he skillfully

outlines the three main routes that postwar liberals took in coming to terms with the

War's meaning: equanimity, conservative "journeys from conviction," and radical

"journeys toward conviction" (p. 108).

Less compellingly, Rochester attributes the liberals' disillusionment to their

excessive idealism and "boundless capacity for self-delusion" (p. 46). His recon-

struction of "the dynamics of disillusionment" resides, in the end, in little more than

• 24
 

Book Reviews                                                      115

 

the tautology that illusions breed emotional blight. The point may be true, but it

hardly tells us much.

What historians have yet to explain is the relationship not only between liberals

and their ideals, but liberalism and war. (Lately, it should be noted, Michael

Howard's War and the Liberal Conscience offers fresh help in this endeavour.) Is

the modern liberal commitment to governmental activism, national loyalty, and

mass mobilization behind executive leadership necessarily productive of war and

destructive of the liberal faith in human rationality and goodness? Or may the

liberal faith yet work to divert global impulses toward mass violence into more

positive outlets? If this is to be, liberals today must struggle toward that end

equipped- paradoxically enough-with a greater spirit of hope and toughminded-

ness than their progressive predecessors. They could afford disillusionment in the

face of war. We cannot afford war.

 

University of Toledo                                Charles DeBenedetti

 

 

The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. By Paula S. Fass.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. 497p.; tables, notes, index. $15.00.)

 

The "Roaring 1920s" marked the rejection of idealism, and a new Zeitgeist of gay

frivolity permeated the country, buttressed by a frenetic emphasis on youthful

abandon as well as by political conservatism and crass materialism. Whether the

youthful challenge to convention had its roots in the pre-1914 era or in the postwar

epoch, it was clear there was change in the ¹⁹²0s and traditional moral standards

were transformed. Flushed with victory over the saloon and endowed with the vote,

women frequented speakeasies, relaxed dress fashions, and emancipated

themselves from the kitchen. Youth danced to syncopated rhythms, worshipped

movie and sports stars, read scarlet stories in the confession pulps, and lost their

inhibitions in the automobile. The candle burned at both ends!

This traditional but overstated view of youth in the 1920s is not that of Paula

Fass. She places little faith in the romantic interpretation of flaming youth, but

rather stresses the misunderstanding that gave rise to the feeling that youth was

hedonistic. According to Fass, the differences between the 1920s and an earlier time

lies not in flaming youth, the automobile revolution, or the enhanced business

mentality, but in the vigor and quality that accompanied these and other changes.

She feels that historians have largely failed to understand the meaningful behavior

of youth-how this, the first self-conscious youth generation in America, moved

into the modern age as a menace but also with verve.

Fass rejects the idea of smug, indulgent, and rebellious youth as an unfortunate

stereotype. Rather, she emphasizes youth conformity within its own peer group,

and its pragmatic middle-ot-the-road experimentation as they came to rely more

on their own youth culture in college than on their family. The college scene-

fraternities, sororities, athletics, fads, fashion, and more-were the observable

areas of socialization and evidences of youth conformity. Essentially, Fass deals

with three levels of socialization: the family, the time of transitional dependence

between the family and the marketplace, and the latter itself (i.e., adult life), but she

seems to examine only the influence of the family structure and behavior on the

marketplace without explaining how family standards were set.

This conflict between society-orientated and family-orientated socialization

• 25
 

116                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

remains unclear, since family and society seemed to share many of the same values.

Business ideals, marriage, and inherited political beliefs, for example, were not

permanently challenged by youth and remained the benchmarks of their behavior

and that of their elders. Parental values and standards, then, were seldom

completely abandoned by youth. There was no outright break with tradition, but

only a carefully orchestrated intermediate stage where college students expressed a

peer group orthodoxy as preparation for marketplace conformity. College was a

temporary playground (some would say it always was and is), and generational

conflict was non-existent. If this estimate is accurate, youth was not the active re-

creator in a changing social world and the many changes of the 1920s would have

happened anyway.

Fass' analysis of youth is a restricted one the native, white, urban, middle-class

college student. While she admits this fact, she does not adequately discuss how

representative this selective group is. Certainly it is not American youth at large.

Also, one wonders whether there was no anti-peer group formation disrespectful of

the accepted rules of rebellious behavior.

This work is not easy to read, and, no matter how incisive, it is labored and lacks

color and interest. Many will be disenchanted by the vocabulary, which tends to be

vague, repetitive, and "sociological." Fass has done extensive research in uncover-

ing the many activities of campus youth. Her major sources are college newspaper

editorials, but it is a narrow sample and can not be truly representative of college

student opinions. Fass has not ignored government documents and primary source

monographs. A critical bibliography would have been most helpful, but there are

over one-hundred pages of notes.

Possibly Fass' main contribution and it is no small one is to provide a

corrective to the notion that youth is ipsofacto unique. Also, she demonstrates that

the conflict between those establishmentarians who saw youth as damned and those

progressive Americans who were enthused by youth liberation was a vital ingre-

dient in assessing collegians of the 1920s.

 

 

 

 

State University of New York, Buffalo                     Milton Plesur

 

 

 

 

 

The Chains of Protection: The Judicial Response to Women's Labor Legislation.

By Judith A. Baer. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. x + 238p.; notes,

bibliography, indices. $16.95.)

 

Judith Baer explicitly states the dual themes of The Chains of Protection. She

intends to describe and evaluate the judicial reaction to legislation that ostensibly

protects women by regulating the conditions of their employment, and also to

examine the issue of sexual differences that may or may not justify special treatment

for working women. The specific subject of protective legislation, according to the

author, indicates the extent to which public policy reflects, creates, and reinforces

• 26
 

Book Reviews                                                       117

 

assumptions concerning physical distinctions and the allocation of social roles

between men and women.

Baer describes the historical context in which the legislative approach to the

regulation of industrial working conditions arose. She retains the conventional

interpretation that special laws affecting women were proposed by reformers and

subsequently sustained in the courts because legislation protecting both sexes

floundered on the doctrine of freedom of contract. Her attempt to demonstrate that

protective legislation also gained popularity because the working conditions of

women were worse than those of most men is unconvincing, except in the matter of

wages. Heavy reliance on History of Labor in the United States by John Commons

and his colleagues, with its emphasis on male trade unions and their achievements,

and the early twentieth-century U.S. Senate study Women and Child Wage-

Earners, which concentrated on the most onerous conditions, may account for this

dubious interpretation.

When Baer turns to protective legislation for women, describes the constitutional

questions raised and criticizes the court opinions that sustained and provided the

precedents for future statutes, she rests on firmer ground. She carefully examines

the early developments that culminated in Muller v. Oregon, clearly evaluates the

equally famous Brandeis brief and the judicial decision, and removes a great deal of

the mystique that has evolved around that landmark decision. The Muller ruling of

1908 concludes the first of tour periods into which Baer divides her case-by-case

analysis. The second phase describes the extension of hours regulation, the growing

prohibition of night work, the checkered career of minimum wage legislation, and

concludes with the 1937 Parriah case which undermined the constitutional status of

the freedom of contract doctrine and the judicial review of legislation concerned

with economic regulation generally.

Baer's third period, 1937 to the present, presents a mixed bag of cases and

overlaps a chapter dealing specifically with cases that have arisen within the context

of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She

compensates for this organizational confusion by clearly discussing the decisions of

the last decade which have largely overturned protective legislation as restrictive

and discriminatory practices outlawed by statute. But she also demonstrates how

subtle discriminatory policies can result, how immune they can be from legislative

and judicial attack, and, consequently, how precarious the recent, salutary gains

remain. Unfortunately, the historical context in which this reversal of policy has

occurred is missing.

In two final chapters Baer surveys and demolishes the literature of sexual

differences, from the political philosophy of Aristotle to the differential psychology

of Erikson. Her attacks on the assumptions, logic and methodologies of the

arguments that have buttressed protective legislation for women because of

presumed physical attributes, social responsibilities, and emotional characteristics

are cogent. But separating these sections from the historical overview which also

faults the underlying assumptions of the laws and theirjudical supporters results in

a book that reads like two separate monographs.

Aside from difficulties in organizing her material, Baer provides important

information and analysis. Several recent studies of women in the twentieth century

have placed the issue of protective legislation at the core of the internecine dispute

between female reformers and feminists, accounting for the decline of feminism

between the passage of the nineteenth amendment and the rise of the contemporary

women's movement. Baer has broken this chronological vise by tracing the issue

backward and forward in time and by demonstrating that conflict between intended

• 27
 

118                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

protection and actual restriction in employment and disagreement over the

question of sexual equality involves all Americans, their social values and public

policy over the course of the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.

 

John Carroll University                                     Lois Scharf

 

 

Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. By Thomas Cripps.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. xi + 447p.; illustrations, notes,

indices. $19.95 cloth; $5.95 paper.)

 

Thomas Cripps' Slow Fade to Black, though far from a perfect book, is

nevertheless meticulously detailed and for that reason alone will serve for a long

time as the definitive treatment of its subject. Cripps has given us an orderly and

straight-forward year-by-year, decade-by-decade account of blacks in the movie

industry from the turn of the century to that time in 1942 when the NAACP codified

procedures with several studio heads, in which the studios agreed "to abandon

pejoritive racial roles" and to give blacks at least a chance at economic equality in

technical, off camera and behind the camera fields. In his introduction Cripps

says "four themes are interwoven in the text: the survival of black performers within

the motion picture industry; the growth of black protest against the worst

Hollywood racism; the fitful underground movement to create an independent

black cinema; and the movement to make the art of the film to speak forthrightly to

issues generated by the dualistic American racial system."

As he traces film history throughout this long book, Cripps seems to detect a kind

of linear progress-glacially slow to be sure-in which Hollywood does begin to

address "forthrightly" at least some of the issues of American racism. Although he

views 1942 as a "watershed year," it seems to me that Cripps ignores too much in

making his claim, artificially separating events in the film industry from other

aspects of social and cultural and economic history, leaving us with a tidy set of

details, but not much more than that. For example, the 1942 "agreement" between

the NAACP and the Hollywood producers, because it carried no political or

economic muscle, was in effect just so much high-minded PR. This is not enough

for, a watershed; at best it is an arbitrary resting point in the account, a way of

preparing for a second volume, to be called, surely, "Blacks in American Film, 1942

to the Present."

Instead of progress, most of what Cripps reports is a depressing and sordid

chronicle of exploitation and racial abuse, some of it familiar (Stepin Fetchit's

demeaning roles), some of it not so familiar: blacks in the movie industry in the

1920's often lived in Watts and would have to travel by bus to Hollywood to play bit

parts as maids or chauffeurs, and on the days they were not doing that they were

maids or chauffeurs for the stars and producers of the very same films. Talk about

art imitating life.

Despite the flaws in Cripps' theoretical framework, the author's presentation of

much important critical and historical data and his valuable commentary on films

and personalities otherwise doomed to obscurity makes this a book indispensible to

film historians, social historians, and perhaps most importantly, to programmers of

film.

 

State University of New York, Buffalo                   Stefan Fleischer

• 28
 

Book Reviews                                                     119

 

Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945. By

Leila J. Rupp. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. xii + 243p.;

illustrations, graphs, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $12.50.)

 

Explicit in much of the recent scholarship in women's history is the recognition

that public images do not portray the reality of most women's lives, but rather

reflect a particular society's needs, perhaps fears, in times of marked change. In an

informative, clearly written, well-organized comparative study of mobilization

propaganda in Germany and the United States immediately before and during

World War II, Leila Rupp demonstrates that the public images of women created in

both countries and adapted to changing economic needs manifested attempts to

control women's behavior and, thereby, reveal much more about the attitudes and

values of the image makers in each nation than about the actual behavior of women.

At the very time the role of women was expanding, public image makers in

Germany and the United States, and perhaps in all modern, industrial societies

generally, confined the image of women to the prescribed wife and mother role.

Rupp is well aware that vast differences between Nazi Germany and the United

States make a comparison of the two cultures problematic. But the focus on what

the two nations did share in common-a middle-class, public image of "woman's

place" as wife and mother, and propaganda attempts temporarily to reconcile that

image with the demands of wartime economic necessity-enhances our under-

standing of how war in modern times affects women's status. Rupp convincingly

argues that women's participation in the paid wartime workforce did not create

permanent changes in behavior patterns and attitudes concerning the role of

women in either country. It is the public's perception of women's roles that Rupp is

concerned with, not the reality experienced by the women who were bombarded by

mobilization propaganda calling for self-sacrifice and service, since 1933 in

Germany and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States. The focus on

public image limits an analysis of the effects of that image on women as seen from

their perspective. With the exception of the concluding chapter, which examines the

relationship between propaganda and mobilization and suggests reasons for the

greater success of the United States campaign, the book is more descriptive than

analytical.

Based on an impressive number of official Nazi publications on "mainstream,"

not feminist, women, Rupp documents the public image of women in Nazi

Germany: healthy, strong, athletic mothers who stifled their individual desires to

serve the state. Rupp's examination of popular magazines, movies, advertisements,

and government mobilization propaganda uncovers a public image of American

women in the 1930s and war years that is overwhelmingly dominated by the wife

and mother role. As in Nazi Germany, feminist opponents did not determine this

public image. In such vastly different cultures, during times of stress, those who did

create the image reduced it, primarily, to the biological role of child bearer. Nazi

officials in Germany and federal government officials, assisted by the advertising

industry in the United States, attempted to sell wartime work to wives and mothers

with differing degrees of effort and effect. But, Rupp shows, propagandists in each

country clearly indicated that any change in the image of women essential to their

mobilization would be "for the duration" only. Wartime propaganda did not

challenge the prewar public image of women in either nation.

Rupp argues that in both the United States and in Germany mobilization

propaganda was more important in adapting public images to wartime necessities

than in persuading women to join the war effort. In the United States, for example,

• 29
 

120                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

in an appeal to wives and mothers not yet in the paid workforce, factory work was

portrayed as respectable, interesting, and, importantly, glamorous. The author's

description of this propaganda pitch contributes to an understanding of the

manipulation of women as a reserve labor pool when economic necessity demands.

The direct relationship between propaganda and the success of the actual

mobilization of wives and mothers is less important, in this study, than the fact that

the public image of women as wives and mothers persisted in both nations during

the war. Rupp concludes that "The Nazi woman making munitions for her son, like

Rosie the Riveter, had no permanent impact on women's status in society." What

impact the experience of being Rosie the Riveter or a Nazi munitions maker had on

the thousands of wives and mothers who responded to wartime mobilization

propaganda remains a subject for further, and essential, research in women's

history. Rupp has provided a good study of public images of women, from the

thought-provoking perspective of a comparative approach and within a time period

of tremendous change for Germany and the United States-a time during which

women were not expected to experience any real change in their traditional role of

self-sacrificing wife and mother.

 

Skidmore College                            Joanna Schneider Zangrando

 

In Search of the Silent South. By Morton Sosna. (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1977. xvi + 275p.; notes, bibliography, index. $11.95.

 

Although Morton Sosna admits that he was ignorant of the existence of

Southern liberalism when he undertook this study, he has produced an extremely

useful, sensible, and clearly written survey of those white Southerners, from the

1880s to the 1950s, who perceived that blacks suffered injustices and who tried to do

something about it. He treats both individuals, such as George Washington Cable,

Howard Odum, Aubrey Williams, Virginius Dabney, and Lillian Smith, and

organizations, especially the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the South-

ern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Southern Regional Council. They are

actually a disparate collection of individuals and groups, and Sosna wisely avoids

simplistic categorizations. He accepts them on their own terms and strives to place

them in historical context, though he clearly has preferences among them. Some

liberals hoped to end the most egregious manifestations of injustice such as

lynching. Others sought to promote interracial harmony within the confines of

segregationist doctrine, and a few opposed racism itself.

While challenging the status quo where they resided, Southern liberals typically

took pride in their region and were displeased when outsiders censured it. Sosna

describes the defensiveness of Southern liberals well, though his ruminations on its

causes are not as probing as they might be. Ironically enough, despite the

regionalism and defensiveness, experiences outside the South almost invariably

made Southern liberals more resolute about changing things at home. In the

interesting case of Lillian Smith, observing racism in China encouraged her to

question the racist assumptions of her own upbringing.

As Sosna readily acknowledges, the effects of indigenous liberalism on racial

practices in the South were limited. "The depression, the New Deal, the war, and the

civil rights movement, more than Southern liberals," he writes, "contributed to the

breakdown of Jim Crow." (p. 206) He points to a few possible consequences of

Southern liberalism, but he is essentially studying ideas and intellectuals, not race

relations.

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Book Reviews                                                        121

 

Although the focus is on white Southern liberals' attitudes toward racial

injustice, black people make some of the most perceptive comments in the book.

Referring obliquely to Howard Odum in 1939, W. E. B. DuBois observed: "It does

not reduce Negro ignorance or poverty by calling the plight regional and proceed-

ing to give the whites better schools and higher wages." (p. 115) During World War

II, with race relations changing more rapidly than he could abide, Virginius Dabney

wrote a magazine article condemning racial militants and militancy. It brought a

reproach from Dabney's friend, B. P. Young, a black Richmond editor and no

militant: "It is the same thing that Messrs. Rankin, Talmadge, Bilbo, and others say

with the difference that their language is always coarse and their attitude brutal,

while your language is always cultured and your attitude dignified. The result is the

same."(p. 133)

Such observations by black people, though relatively few in number, raise

questions about the ways in which white Southern liberals and liberalism were

viewed by blacks. How was black consciousness affected, if at all, by white

liberalism? Did white liberalism encourage or impede the development of a civil

rights consciousness among blacks? Sosna also leaves room for further exploration

of how liberal whites were affected by their contact with and perception of black

people. In fact, most of the individuals and organizations which he discusses could

benefit from fuller treatment than he provides. Future students would be wise to

pay closer attention to interracial dynamics than Sosna does. At the same time, they

will be indebted to him for leading the way as well as he does.

 

Harvard University                                        Carl M. Brauer

 

Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged. By Christopher Lasch. (New

York: Basic Books, 1977. xviii + ²³0p.; notes, index. $15.00.)

 

 

While most historians have only recently come to see the family as a major field of

inquiry, social scientists have long focused attention on this basic unit of human

society. Christopher Lasch's Haven in a Heartless World is an historian's examina-

tion of social scientific literature of the family at its level of greatest scholarly impact

and prestige. The degree of acceptance given a particular theory of the family within

the scholarly community of the social sciences is not simply a matter which serves to

make or break professional careers. This is true because the accepted theory of

social scientists in a modern state shapes and alters public policy, popular culture,

and public attitudes. The social scientist has at his command an army of helping

professionals-doctors, social workers, educators, etc.-which translates social

science theory into working policy. In modern America, where religion and

tradition have lost much of their ability to prescribe the terms of social organiza-

tion, the social scientist, through helping profession surrogates, has stepped in and

defined what is appropriate in family organization and relationships.

Lasch is displeased with the theory, practice, and consequence of such social

science dominance over the American family. While examining the historical

development of psychology and sociology particularly, he finds theory that is often

accepted without tangible research results. Frequently, he uncovers research that is

too narrowly based and which lacks either theoretical implications or theoretical

guidance. Lasch's negative critique of modern psychology stems from his unrecon-

structed Freudianism; his assault on sociology primarily takes the form of a wide

ranging attack on ill-devised and poorly executed research.

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122                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

However ill-conceived the theories may have been, the helping professions have

pushed them home vigorously in the twentieth century. The effect has been to

shatter the world of the family as a haven from the heartless world of industrial

capitalism. According to Lasch, bourgeois society of the late nineteenth century set

up two worlds: one a harsh environment in which economic relationships took

precedence over rules of justice, honor, or morality; the other a family haven in

which humanistic values socialized the child and provided solace to adults. This

dual nature of society failed to survive into the late twentieth century because the

family haven was unable to isolate itself sufficiently from the world outside.

The walls of the haven were breached as parents came to accept the advice of

experts on important and even unimportant topics. The professionals, reflecting

social science theory, were essentially hostile to the parent role. Helping profession-

als often excluded child rearing from consideration when evaluating success in

marriage. Social science accepted the destruction of the father role in a modern

industrial state as merely an unavoidable concession to the economic order, and

women were urged to believe that true happiness lay only outside the home.

The result of such a sustained attack on parenthood, fatherhood, and mother-

hood was the surrender of child socialization to society. In modern America,

capitalist society socializes the child and thus sets the limits of the individual's

desires, the scope of his experience, and the breadth of his understanding. Many

Americans may feel that life is becoming less humane, but unfortunately the last

institution which gave focus to those feelings and which might have given them the

self-confidence born of experience and values necessary to compel changes has been

destroyed in the process Lasch calls the "socialization of reproduction." If Lasch is

correct, Americans are not only becoming less and less able to effect changes, they

are becoming increasingly less able to see that anything is wrong.

Lasch is not afraid to make judgments and risk controversy; his conclusions are

anything but timid. He does not hesitate to demonstrate how sociologists have

misinterpreted Parsons or to condemn as largely useless and misdirected the post-

war scholarship on Momism and Adorno's authoritarian personality studies.

Along the way we are given his opinion of such diverse scholars as Durkheim,

Mills, and Moynihan. Almost anyone of note within a broad definition of social

since falls under Lasch's exacting scrutiny. We are also again exposed to the

author's own brilliant analysis of the student movement and the narcissistic

personality. Throughout the work he stoutly defends the nuclear family, and his

comments on feminism are not calculated to flatter the modern women's move-

ment. If the content of his remarks does not provoke, his boldly assertive style

certainly will. Here lies the greatest danger of the work: it may be dismissed as

simply idiosyncratic. That would be unfortunate for there is much of great value

here.

Despite the work's many iconoclastic conclusions, the basic thesis makes sense. It

is now up to scholars to determine if social science theory has had the degree of

influence on the American family that Lasch describes. As for the author, he needs

to provide us with a clear perception of the correct path in social theory. Are we to

believe that the family haven will undermine American capitalism if given the

appropriate support, or will it do so if simply left alone? How do we go about

restoring the family, or should we even try? It is, of course, not the duty of an

historian to chart society's future course, but, if Lasch is correct, it would certainly

be foolish to keep the social scientists at the helm.

 

Emory University                                    Thomas E. Williams

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