Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

Spirit Fruit: A Gentle Utopia. By H. Roger Grant. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois

University Press, 1988. xiv + 203p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $22.50.)

The Reluctant Radicals: Jacob L. Beilhart and The Spirit Fruit Society. By

James L. Murphy. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1989.

xii + 263p.; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $32.50.)

Each of these books provides a detailed picture of the Spirit Fruit commu-

nity which was founded and led by Jacob Beilhart, a religious seeker who

hoped it would enable him and his followers to live a totally unselfish life.

Before his community was established and incorporated under Ohio law in

1901, Beilhart was influenced by the teachings of the Seventh Day Adventists,

Christian Scientists, Theosophists, and Spiritualists, as well as promoters of

sexual freedom. Though Beilhart rejected the idea that Spirit Fruit was a

religion, many of the community's practices resembled the Christian Perfec-

tionism which John Humphrey Noyes had incorporated into his Oneida

Community. Spirit Fruiters, however, had much more private space than did

the Oneida communitarians. Moreover, they did not agree on all matters, they

kept their own property, and largely chose their own work assignments. The

Spirit Fruit community consisted of an original ten members, and because

there was much coming and going, the total population was never much larger

than that. For a person with such determined ideas and leadership talent, Jacob

Beilhart was amazingly tolerant of dissent. Unlike many other community

founders, he never assumed the role of dictator.

Beilhart envisioned Spirit Fruit, or Universal Life, as an advanced state of

being available only to a select minority. Since its teaching and practices

contradicted much of organized Christianity, Beilhart frequently critized the

clergy and denied that his beliefs constituted a religion. Yet he never denied

spirituality, which was the very heart of his teaching. His was a philosophy of

"live and let live," so long as no one infringed on the rights of others. He also

practiced a kind of nonresistance. When an irate father arrived with law

officers to remove his daughter from the community, Beilhart made no attempt

to stop them. To Spirit Fruiters the individual was paramount. Although he

strongly denied any affinity with the anarchism of Emma Goldman, Beilhart's

philosophy could properly be described as anarchism of the individualist,

nonviolent variety, similar to that of Josiah Warren. Apparently, all the

communitarians thoroughly understood Beilhart's teachings, for when he died

suddenly in 1908-at age 41 of complications of appendicitis-the community

continued without interruption for another twenty years.

Although Beilhart's philosophy is now virtually forgotten, both authors

evaluate Spirit Fruit as a successful venture. Indeed, it was a way of life highly

satisfactory to those who chose it. Members, who were self-chosen, often

brought special skills to the community, all were willing to work hard, and

there were few personality problems. They were all "nice people," said one of

Jacob's followers, and only one really disruptive member joined near the end

of the community's life. Beilhart, who was always referred to as Jacob, often

spoke publicly about his philosophy of life and published two periodicals for

the same purpose. Not surprisingly, Jacob's views, especially those concerning

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Book Reviews                                                   71

 

the rejection of marriage, met anger and rejection from the world at large.

Pulpit and press attacked him, and partly because of such attacks the

community moved several times. Starting in Lisbon, Ohio, Spirit Fruit later

moved to Chicago, then to rural Illinois where Jacob died. Following his death

the group moved to California where members lived according to their Spirit

Fruit ways until 1928, when old age and disease forced them to abandon

community life. It was a remarkable example of an alternative style of living

that lasted for three decades, truly a "gentle utopia."

Although both books cover the same ground, they complement each other.

Roger Grant's Spirit Fruit is a well-researched, highly readable account of the

utopian venture. Grant places Spirit Fruit in the context of other radical and

community movements. Besides discussing Jacob's philosophy, Grant in-

cludes information about each of the Spirit Fruiters and sprinkles his text with

short, appropriate quotations. Most of his material comes from published

sources and from extensive correspondence with two individuals who were

born into the community. His work, in handsome format with a number of

useful photographs, provides an excellent introduction to Spirit Fruit.

Readers whose appetites have been whetted for more information should

then turn to James L. Murphy's The Reluctant Radicals, which includes

extensive details not found in Grant's study, and lengthy quotations from the

sources. While it contains more information, it is not as readable either in style

or format as the Grant volume, and the photographs are poorly reproduced.

Nevertheless, Murphy's book is especially useful for unraveling the connection

between Jacob Beilhart and C.W. Post of cereal fame, who was the biological

father of the two Beilhart children as a result of a love affair unrelated to

community practices. There is also an extended discussion of the Overbrook,

Massachusetts, colony of Frederick Reed, the only spin-off from the original

Spirit Fruit community. Three appendices include material on the Beilhart

genealogy, the constitution and regulations of the Spirit Fruit Society, and the

connection between Beilhart and Post.

Spirit Fruit was a unique way of life providing a handful of Americans with

an environment for creative living which they believed unavailable in the world

at large. It was, however, an introspective approach. Spirit Fruiters had little

knowledge of social injustice and did not concern themselves with such

matters. They believed that eventually all would follow their example, but only

through progress toward an advanced spirituality. Theirs was an important

contribution to the complex heritage of American life and thought, and both

these books bring that contribution to our attention. Reading them and meeting

Jacob and his extended family leaves the reader with a sense of regret that they

have all disappeared from our midst.

 

Wilmington College                                     Larry Gara

 

American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. By Jack S. Blocker Jr.

(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989. xvi + 199p.; illustrations, notes and

references, bibliographic essay. $24.95.)

In many ways the history of America is a history of reform movements, and

Ohioans have often been on the cutting edge. Temperance is no exception. As

a social crusade temperance preceded abolitionism and women's suffrage, and

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72                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

it has outlasted them. Patterns of drinking, the Protestant ethic, immigration,

ethnicity, and the evolution of capitalism have all played a part in the

movement. In turn, temperance has affected many aspects of American life,

and has called into question some of our most basic assumptions about

individual freedom, community, and morality. Blocker, who teaches at Huron

College in Ontario, asserts that campaigns against alcohol are cyclical. They

always begin with righteous indignation, progress through moral suasion and

political organizing, and lead eventually to attempts to enforce prohibition. But

temperance strategies have been highly diverse, ranging from pulpit-pounding

to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. More important, the temperance move-

ment has always been closely tied to other crusades for social change, notably

women's rights. Blocker demonstrates persuasively that those who campaign

against drinking always end up questioning attitudes toward class, race, gender

and the American democratic process.

Ohioans took an early lead in the prohibition battle. Bethiah Yeoman Ogle of

Washington Court House and others like her founded the Woman's Christian

Temperance Union, and the headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League was in

Westerville. The League was a genuine grassroots organization, beginning in

the churches and small towns of Ohio, then linking up with local prohibition

societies in other states. Its Westerville presses turned out countless books,

pamphlets and broadsides that helped convert Americans to the crusade. Still,

Ohio lagged far behind in the effort to outlaw sales of intoxicating liquors.

During the late nineteenth century many counties and states went "dry," but

the prohibition campaign in Ohio was particularly complex and indecisive.

Efforts by the brewing industry and the saloonkeepers to deflect the crusade,

by calling for greater government regulation and self-policing, often began in

Ohio. The state's ethnic and economic diversity may have been partly

responsible for the extended controversy. And as late as 1935, Alcoholics

Anonymous grew out of a chance meeting between two desperate men in

Akron.

Anyone interested in American social history will find a wealth of ideas and

unexpected interconnections in this book. We learn how prohibitionism

enabled a half-dozen major brewers to eliminate the competition, and discover

who bankrolled the campaign for the Eighteenth Amendment. Blocker's

research leaves no doubt that American reform movements are interrelated in

often unexpected ways and that their effects ramify far beyond their original

purposes. In addition, he explores past and present scholarly writing on the

subject, and summarizes his opinions in an informative bibliographic essay.

Perhaps the book does not go far enough in its critique of the movement to

identify alcoholism as a disease, but this might require another full volume.

Blocker's cyclical theory is an original contribution to the field, and may prove

to have application to other reform movements as well. An epilogue covers

major events since 1975, and the notes are comprehensive.

The Twayne Social Movements series also includes studies of civil rights,

feminism, conservatism, and gay/lesbian activism.

 

Sinclair Community College                       Thomas S. Martin

 

Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History. By

Richard M. McMurry. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,

1989. xvi + ²⁰⁴p.; notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.)

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Book Reviews                                                    73

 

In 1982 Professor Richard McMurry published a commendable biography of

General John Bell Hood. Since then McMurry has done a great deal of research

and thinking about the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

In Two Great Rebel Armies, he offers an essay that contrasts these two major

Confederate field forces.

Some of the ideas in this book are little more than suggestions, which call for

more discussion. One example is Professor McMurry's evaluation of Robert E.

Lee. Few will disagree with his assertion that this Virginian "stands as the

colossus of Confederate military history" (p. 139), far and away the most

successful of the South's field commanders. Yet it is also true that Lee

launched vigorous tactical offensives and lost thousands of his men and

officers in 1862 and 1863, both in tragic defeats such as Malvern Hill and

Gettysburg and also in costly victories such as Second Manassas and

Chancellorsville-losses in leadership and manpower that the Army of North-

ern Virginia could not afford. Lee was indisputably a better general than his

counterparts in the Western theater, but the casualties he suffered during two

years of aggressive campaigning left him in May 1864 in much the same straits

as General Joseph E. Johnston in northern Georgia. That spring found both of

these Southerners confronted by forces much larger than their own-armies

led by able, experienced, and determined commanders.

A second example is the discussion in the chapter on the officers and enlisted

men of the Eastern and Western Confederate armies which, in arguing that the

Army of Northern Virginia was better trained than the Army of Tennessee,

blurs the distinction between training and discipline. Training helps give

soldiers the ability to do things "by the book," but it is not discipline, which

is the conduct of operations "by the book"-in camp, on the march, or in

battle. McMurry may well be right that the company officers of the Army of

Northern Virginia were better trained than those of the Army of Tennessee,

but this does not mean that the soldiers of either organization were well

disciplined. He is correct in depicting the Western army as poorly disciplined

but so, too, was the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee himself lamented: "The

great want in our army is firm discipline." Straggling hurt the Army of

Northern Virginia during the crucial campaigns of Sharpsburg and Gettysburg.

General D. H. Hill, who served in both theaters of war, drew no distinction

between the Eastern and Western Confederate infantryman when he wrote:

"Of the shoulder-to-shoulder courage, bred of drill and discipline, [the

Southern soldier] knew nothing and cared less."

This is not to say that Professor McMurry is wrong about these issues, only

that they deserve more examination, and the tone of this work in fact invites

further discussion. Two Great Rebel Armies is a research report, rather than a

definitive book that attempts to "prove" a tightly argued thesis. It is a

stimulating essay, one that improves our knowledge of both the Army of

Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. This book establishes, for

example, how the graduates of the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel

gave Lee's army a sturdy foundation of company and regimental officers, while

the Western Confederacy had no comparable sources of well trained small-unit

leaders. There are valuable insights, too, in McMurry's assessments of the

South's generals. His delineation of the debate between historians Thomas

Connelly and Albert Castel over Lee's generalship will be helpful to two

audiences: it will introduce some readers to this historiography and it will help

more advanced students sort out their ideas about it.

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74                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Two Great Rebel Armies is an appealing book, written in a positive tone.

McMurry generously acknowledges the contributions of others in his field and

he enlivens his prose with some sparkling side-comments. He also exhibits a

sense of humor, defying the notion that serious history has to be dull. About a

quarter of the way into his essay, for example, McMurry speculates that only

a computer could determine whether a Federal force under Grant, Sherman,

Thomas, and Sheridan could have defeated a Confederate one commanded by

Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, and Stuart. He later (p. 132) returns to this idea and

gives it a facetious twist: "Some historian who really wants to melt the

microchips might try asking one of the infernal machines what would have

happened if a Union army led by McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker had

tangled with a band of Rebels under Joseph E. Johnston, Bragg, Hood, and

Pillow." Two Great Rebel Armies is that rare treat, a scholarly book that makes

for enjoyable reading.

 

Office of Air Force History                      Perry D. Jamieson

 

 

Andrew Johnson: A Biography. By Hans L. Trefousse. (New York: W. W.

Norton & Company, 1989, 463p.; illustrations, notes, index. $25.00.)

Anyone expecting this latest biography of Andrew Johnson to revise recent

scholarship on his presidency and impeachment or bring to light new evidence

will be disappointed. Trefousse is the first Johnson biographer to make use of

the entire mass of papers of Andrew Johnson. The work is heavily document-

ed, no doubt as a result of the tremendous store of information obtained by the

author from his earlier works on the era and the biographies of Benjamin Wade

and Ben Butler. This wide-ranging compilation of sources over several decades

has led to several inconsistencies in the citation of repositories for primary

source materials. The institution known today as the Cincinnati Historical

Society (CHS) has been cited by that name as well as the Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio and the Historical Society of Cincinnati. These

latter two names were ones which have been used to describe CHS, but to the

outside researcher may be confusing. Another example is the State Historical

Society of Wisconsin cited by that title and also cited as the Wisconsin

Historical Society. There are a number of misspellings of names of political

figures, which, like the citation problem, point to the need for a closer

inspection of the page proofs.

Despite these problems, this is an interesting work. Perhaps more than any

previous biography of the seventeenth president, we learn of the personal

tragedies affecting Johnson, his family and immediate circle of friends. His

spouse Eliza's near-lifetime invalid status, son Charles' death in a fall from a

horse in 1863, son Robert's alcoholism and suicide, Johnson's own affliction

with painful kidney stones, and the death of several political intimates at

critical points in his career provide ample evidence that his was a complex life.

These complexities also help explain certain behavior patterns exhibited at

crucial times in Johnson's career. In addition, Trefousse pounds home the

darker side of Johnson's basic attitudes, more especially his intense racial

bigotry. Despite protestations of friendship to the freedman, Johnson's public

and private utterances revealed a long-standing racism.

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Book Reviews                                                   75

 

Johnson, Trefousse points out, was an effective stump speaker when

campaigning for local or state office in Tennessee. He thought that this

oratorical style would be successful across the nation and was surprised when,

instead, it backfired. As Johnson sadly discovered, he was a representative of

an era that time and the nation had passed by. Despite the nation's move from

an agrarian to a more urban, industrialized orientation, Johnson held fast to the

Jeffersonian-Jacksonian notions of a nation of small farmers and merchants.

While the biography is especially strong in its coverage of the presidential

years, it provides more coverage than previous biographies of Johnson's early

political career in Greeneville, Tennessee. Trefousse makes good use of local

public records to clarify Johnson's activities and correct previous errors about

the beginnings of his career. The gubernatorial years, however, may have been

more accurately analyzed had greater use been made of published state

documents (annual reports of government agencies) and the public papers of

the governor.

Trefousse's biography will no doubt stand as the best biography on the

subject for some time. While slightly flawed by inaccuracies of citation and

misspellings, these problems are far outweighed by the extensive documenta-

tion used by the author in the preparation of the biography. Trefousse does

present a balanced portrait of Johnson, including both his racism and failure to

read the political times, as well as pointing out the personal tragedies that add

a more human dimension to Andrew Johnson than previous biographers have

shown. The biography is an essential addition to the bookshelf of those desiring

to understand more about the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

 

Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives    Frank R. Levstik

 

 

Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and the Community Development

Strategy in Cincinnati, 1890-1960. By Robert B. Fairbanks. (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1989. xii + 243p.; maps, tables, notes, biblio-

graphic note, index. $24.95.)

Since 1974, when Zane Miller and Henry Shapiro first organized the

University of Cincinnati's Laboratory in American Civilization, Cincinnati has

been the subject of an experiment in "symptomatic" history. Symptomatic

history is based on the belief that local history is of greater than merely local

significance, that it can reveal the way in which Americans generally have

defined their society and its problems in a given period. One of the more

important results of this experiment is Robert Fairbanks's Making Better

Citizens which explores the development of housing reform and city planning

in Cincinnati between 1890 and 1960. As Fairbanks convincingly illustrates, the

Cincinnati story was not only symptomatic of national developments but also

intersected the national planning movement at important points. Several local

planners including Alfred Bettman, an expert on zoning and urban redevelop-

ment legislation, and Ladislas Segoe, research director for the New Deal report

Our Cities: Their Role in the National Economy, were major actors on the

national scene. A series of Cincinnati projects, including the planned commu-

nities of Mariemont and Green Hills, won national attention for breaking new

ground in the planning field. An apparently indefatigable researcher, Fairbanks

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76                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

tells this story in both a thorough and concise manner. His book is an important

contribution to planning history.

Fairbanks's central contention is that between 1890 and 1920 reformers and

planners redefined the housing issue as no longer simply a problem of

inappropriate dwellings but as a larger problem of inadequate community. In

the 1890s tenement reformers focused their attention on the dilapidated and

unhealthful housing of Cincinnati's lower classes and on improving low-income

housing through minimum standards, government regulation, and the construc-

tion of model tenements. In the second decade of the twentieth century,

however, reformers and planners focused less on the poor than on the larger

metropolitan community. Believing in the interdependence of all the city's

parts, Alfred Bettman argued that there was a "close organic relationship

between each city improvement and every other city improvement." A housing

strategy that focused on one part of the city to the exclusion of others was

doomed to failure. Consequently reformers and planners embraced compre-

hensive city and regional planning and such techniques as city-wide housing

codes, zoning, and a master plan as solutions to the housing problem. The

immediate problems of the poor were deferred in the hope that in the general

improvement of city conditions they would ultimately benefit.

Over the next two decades, Fairbanks argues, reformers and planners

developed a community development strategy in an effort to "make better

citizens." Arguing that the housing problem involved not only dwellings but

the environment surrounding those dwellings, they planned housing projects

which included such "amenities" as recreational and community buildings,

schools, and local commercial centers. The creation of "neighborhood units,"

planners and reformers believed, would promote a sense of local community as

well as a civic consciousness and loyalty. With the help of federal New Deal

monies the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority constructed several

public housing projects which, within the limits imposed by financial con-

straints and political controversy, reflected this strategy. In a final section on

the period from 1945-1960 Fairbanks briefly outlines the decline of the

community development strategy and the rise of a new strategy based less on

community services than on individual desires. Planners no longer saw the

metropolis and its constituent neighborhoods as an organic social system but as

an artificial and mechanistic entity. The real and fundamental unit of society,

they believed, was the individual. This period coincided, Fairbanks explains,

with the social fragmentation of the metropolis, the declining fortunes of public

housing, and an increased emphasis on the central business district. In light of

contemporary urban problems, he concludes, the community development

strategy has much to teach us.

Fairbanks has offered an important challenge to historians who have argued

that city planning and housing reform went their separate ways in the 1920s and

after. He provides abundant evidence of the continuing interest in housing

among Cincinnati planners. But he does less to contradict the assertion that

city planning not only failed to solve the low-income housing problem but

probably exacerbated it. Some slums were cleared, but slum-dwellers were

forced to crowd into other neighborhoods which, in turn, deteriorated. Most of

the projects described here, Fairbanks admits, did not provide housing for the

displaced poor, and especially the black poor. While several historians have

traced this failure to the political realm, to the divorce of professional planning

from any popular demand for change, Fairbanks traces it to the intellectual

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Book Reviews                                                    77

 

realm, to the ways in which planners redefined the housing problem. But one

wonders whether these two realms intersected at any point, whether the

constellation of political forces influenced the process of problem definition.

Unfortunately Fairbanks has relatively little to say about the political context

in which the planners worked. Without such an analysis his assertion that the

persistence of inadequate housing "shows the limitations of a movement

dominated by white professionals and businessmen and suggests how power-

less this group was in some circumstances to affect change as they perceived

the need" (p. 177) is somewhat less than convincing.

 

Xavier University                                   John D. Fairfield

 

The Cincinnati Game. By Lonnie Wheeler and John Baskin. (Wilmington,

Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, 1988. 272p.; illustrations, appendix, bibliogra-

phy, index. $29.95.)

In 1948 Lee Allen, baseball's foremost historian and statistician, published

The Cincinnati Reds, a seminal work still regarded by many baseball enthusi-

asts as the prototype of the team-history genre. Wheeler and Baskin's long

awaited The Cincinnati Game, the first monograph on the Reds in forty years,

is an updated and considerably more spirited account that skillfully weaves the

fascinating history of baseball's oldest franchise into that of its host city.

Wheeler, previously a Cincinnati newspaper sportswriter and columnist, and

Baskin, senior editor of Ohio Magazine and author of New Burlington: The

Life and Death of an American Village (1976), have collaborated on what

Baskin describes as an "eccentric history of baseball's influence on Cincinnati

and Cincinnati's influence on the national game." Although Cincinnati Game

is essentially a local history publication, it does manage to provide readers with

good stories as well as good historical research. A veritable treasure trove of

facts, anecdotes, and human interest stories, Cincinnati Game is divided into

twenty-five subject headings that are arranged topically rather than chronolog-

ically.

Decade by decade accounts are given of the best teams, the worst teams, and

most memorable players. There are special features on an impressive roster of

local talent, including Hall of Fame candidates Buddy Bell and Jim Bunning,

managers Jim Frey and Miller Huggins, and, from the great Western Hills high

school teams, players such as Don Zimmer, Eddie Brinkman, and "Charlie

Hustle" himself, Pete Rose. Interspersed throughout the volume are time

lines, players profiles, quotes, and a chronology of all the Reds ballparks,

including such twentieth century confines as Riverfront Stadium, Crosley Field

(Redland Field) and the original "Palace of the Fans."

Significant baseball "firsts" ranging from night baseball, air travel, and color

television broadcasts are chronicled, along with the more trivial such as the

first player with glasses, the first catcher to squat, and the first known use of

the term fanatic. Not content with these superlatives, the authors provide

accounts of the heaviest bats, the best and worst trades, and even the slowest

and the loudest Reds players. We also are informed of the greatest games, the

biggest brawls, legends of the broadcast booth, and the most forgettable

superstar, just to name a few of the more ephemeral topics. More serious

analysis of the franchise's black and Latin heritage is provided, including the

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78                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

stark fact that only nine of the 238 Cincinnatians who have appeared in the

major leagues have been black.

Enthusiasts will be impressed with the attention to detail and analysis in the

volume. Fascinating statistical comparisons are made between the 1927

Yankees and the 1976 Reds, widely acknowledged as two of baseball's

"best-ever" teams. Rankings of the best single seasons for Reds hitters and

pitchers are given, as well as the standard citation of team records. Among

Cincinnati's roster of luminaries who began their careers with the Reds

organization are Hall of Fame announcer Red Barber, who gained his first

broadcasting job with the Reds in 1934, Larry MacPhail, the Reds general

manager from 1933-1940 and pioneer of night baseball, James Reston, the New

York Times columnist who began his career as public relations director for the

Reds during the 1930s, and Ban Johnson, a Cincinnati sportswriter who, along

with Charles Comiskey, conceived the American League in an Over-the-Rhine

saloon. Even the games greatest clown, Nick Altrock, was born and raised in

Cincinnati.

The physical appearance of this clothbound volume is enhanced by hundreds

of illustrations, an attractive type face, timelines, and sidebars in the margins

that are linked to the main text by arrows. Many of the photos, taken from the

archives of the Sporting News, are seen for the first time. Reds highlights,

often done tongue in cheek, have been added throughout the book to the black

and white images. Especially welcome features in Cincinnati Game are the

bibliography and index, both of which are absent in Allen's work. Curiously

absent, however, is an examination of the team logo and uniform and how they

developed through the years.

The historian Milton Plesser noted several years ago in Ohio History

(Winter, 1984) that sports, along with other areas of popular culture, deserve

more serious attention and respect from scholars. With sports playing an

increasingly important role in American culture, the need for player biogra-

phies and franchise histories will continue. Public interest in professional

sports and baseball especially has never been higher, as evidenced by the

dramatic rise in attendance, the increase in television contracts, and the recent

popularity of Hollywood films such as The Natural, Eight Men Out, and Field

of Dreams.

The Cincinnati Game, while perhaps not a historical monograph in the

traditional sense, still provides something for both scholarly and general

readers alike. American sports and baseball in particular will continue to be, as

Lee Allen found four decades ago, a fallow field awaiting the plow of historical

exploration.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                Steve Gordon

 

A History of Noble County, Ohio, 1887-1987. By Roger Pickenpaugh. (Balti-

more: Gateway Press, 1988. 396p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

$35.00.)

A handful of historical societies and historians around Ohio have in recent

years taken on projects to create new or updated local histories. The results of

these efforts fall into a least three general groups. Celebrations and commem-

orations are often excuses for producing "new" histories where collections of

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Book Reviews                                                     79

 

uncaptioned historic photos are interspersed among brief, and generally

incomplete, articles on various aspects of a community's heritage. Necessitat-

ing a greater level of sophistication are those which follow the format of the late

nineteenth century histories where narrative articles are combined with short,

invariably laudatory, family histories. A third and truly rare type are those

written by individuals who invest the time and effort into producing interpre-

tive histories of their county or community.

Roger Pickenpaugh, a school teacher in Caldwell, is among this unique latter

group of individuals. He spent eight years researching, organizing facts, and

writing a history of Noble County, using as his beginning point the year that the

county's late nineteenth century history was published. Newspapers published

in Caldwell, the county seat, were his primary source, and, as could be

expected, the topics covered in the volume and their treatment have a

journalistic flavor. In a yeoman effort, Pickenpaugh gleaned news stories on

the business, industrial, urban, agricultural, social, political, and military

history of the county and carefully organized them into seven chronological

chapters. Over sixty reproductions of historic photographs further enhance the

volume.

There is a wealth of material here and grist for many a future historian's mill.

In that strength of the volume also lies its greatest weakness. The index,

prepared with the assistance of the author's students and friends, unhappily

only includes names. Historians of mining, or religion, or medicine, or any of

the other seemingly innumerable topics that Pickenpaugh touches upon will

have to wade through the entire volume to find the material they need. Not

even the famous crash of the USS Shenandoah rates a reference in the index,

although nearly four full pages were devoted to it. Hopefully genealogists will

not be the only users of this new history of Noble County, but it will require a

dedicated perseverance almost as great as the author's original accomplish-

ment.

 

Ohio Historical Society                           David A. Simmons

 

The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism.

By Joyce Milton. (New York: Harper and Row, 1989. xvii + 412p; notes,

bibliography, index. $22.95.)

Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post.

By Jan Cohn. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1989. x + 325p.; notes,

index. $34.95.)

The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era. By David Sarasohn.

(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. xvii + 265p.; bibliograph-

ical essay, index. $30.00.)

It is generally not notorious that the Progressive era requires a broad cultural

evaluation it has yet to receive. This is possibly because several eras, including

the New Deal era, suffer from the same problem: an historical hiatus caused by

the stormy sixties conflicts, which harmed the continuity required for sound

historical study.

Still, evaluations, if not revaluations, are being attempted, and deserve close

attention. The Yellow Kids is highly relevant because it involves not only a

then-new journalism, but journalists who often aspired to writing beyond

• 10
 

80                                                   OHIO HISTORY

immediate affairs: people like Harold Frederic, who merits consideration

beyond his The Damnation of Theron Ware, and Frank Norris, another staple

of the time's cultural ambitions, among others.

The Yellow Kids is well-researched and written in clear, communicative

prose. It contributes to information about the famous 1890s duel between

William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, and the role of New York

Journal and World writers in fanning the flames of war against the Spanish in

Cuba. Much is made here of Sylvester Scovel, long forgotten, who was in the

forefront of the "Yellows." An interesting contrast could be made with

"investigative journalists" of our own time.

It needs to be asked, however, whether heavy revision is now called for in

writing of the sensationalist press of the 1890s. Of the journalists, only Richard

Harding Davis and Stephen Crane are well-remembered, but Davis mainly as

a period piece. Crane has long been tall in the literary records of the time, with

his journalism no more than rounding out his short, brilliant life at home and

abroad. Key factors influencing the scene are here left untouched. They

include strong immigration into new chaotic cities with populations which

thirsted for understanding and communication. Nor can the impact of the

Darwinian hypotensis be overrated, since it turned ministers's sons like Crane

into atheists. Finally, people, especially in western states, who feared the

mighty trusts of the time-feared that they might become almighty.

The 1890s were clearly a transitional era which would spillover into the new

century. This helps explain why the reckless journalists of the last decade of

the nineteenth century, with their scare headlines and often irresponsible

scoops, Scovel's included, passed from notoriety to oblivion. The nation's

serious readers settled down in the 1900s to coping with their basic human

problems, unfortunately giving too little of their attention to the generals and

military technicians who were brewing World War I.

But to repeat. The Yellow Kids is a well-researched work which should affect

new studies in the field, and may well do so.

Also highly researched, and forming a companion piece to the tale of yellow

journalism is Creating America, for all that its title is more a la mode than

accurate. George Horace Lorimer scarcely "created" America in a time

featuring Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and extending over to the

later Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Saturday Evening Post indeed did reflect the

America of middle-class leaders and would-be leaders, whom Lorimer read

accurately. He forged a program to which he held rigidly. Articles, fiction,

editorials, memories had to avoid the seamier side of life, to be accepted. For

example, there was no place in the SEP for any man's unmarried female

companion. There were poor people, but with dignity and pride, and never in

dire straits. There had to be loyalty to American ideals, and at the very least,

hope.

Although Lorimer was unbending in his faith, he nevertheless was able to

find enough in controversial writers to publish major works by Frank Norris,

Edith Wharton, David Graham Phillips, and numerous others of stature. The

bottom line in such relations was that he was The Boss, who never hesitated to

delete whatever he deemed offensive to Post standards, let it be by Will Rogers

or William Faulkner.

The author is as fair and conscientious as she can be, noting, for example,

Upton Sinclair's bitter denunciation of Lorimer as harming freedom of the

press. However, her research carries her only over the surface. She thinks of

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                     81

 

Phillips, for example, as almost a staff-writer for Lorimer, apparently unaware

that Phillips was the outstanding pro-feminist of his time, as well as author of

the formidable Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. Phillips did accept Lorimer's

early "assignment" of a diary-story, The Social Secretary, one which the

distinguished essayist Charles M. Flandreau, tired of Lorimer's preference for

innocuous themes, had turned down. But Phillips was then working for a living

and reputation as a novelist; and he took pains in what was apprentice writing,

to make of the theme something democratic and womanly.

Lorimer and Phillips were friends, but when Lorimer rejected his essays or

tales, Phillips merely took them elsewhere, until his outlets increased far

beyond the parameters of the Post. Phillips, from the first, was determined to

be his own man.

The author's research has been wide, but too directed to get beyond the

Lorimer facade. She writes knowledgably about Lorimer's own successful

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (1902). But here as elsewhere

the culture factor betrays her. She has no inkling that Phillips, critical of

Lorimer's admiration for self-made brutal exploiters, indirectly, but firmly,

parodied Lorimer in Phillips's own The Master Rogue (1903). Creating

America adds a dimension of fact to earlier SEP studies, but until older

writings are read with a sense of context, our insight and continuity will suffer.

This is true in politics as in literature. Mr. Sarasohn, a frank partisan of

Democrats, in his interesting introduction, summarizes the arguments in

academe intended to demean the Progressives as having done too little too late.

It is striking that ordinary readers, as distinguished from a handful of involved

academics, have scarcely heard of these challenges to historically outstanding

Progressives. A check of recent textbooks indicates that their authors have

avoided puzzling youthful readers with derogatory accounts of such figures as

Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. LaFollette.

The Party of Reform, though with its doubtful title, is absorbing simply

because it necessarily covers two decades of day-in day-out national politics

and public figures; but it must be read as opening debate, rather than closing it.

The author not only denies that Progressivism was biparty, he declares that its

achievements were Theodore Roosevelt-led, true, but Democratic-supported.

To do this, he must provide rationales for obvious Democratic anti-reform

failings. The Democrats in 1904, for example, in opposing T.R., obviously

offered a conservative Presidential slate; but that was only because, the author

claims, they hoped to attract corporate money. Basically, they remained the

"reform" party of low-tariff, pro-labor, and direct election of senators

principles. Yes, he adds, Insurgency was a Republican phenomenon, but

crucially supported by progressive Democrats.

And so it goes, into the elections of 1910, which overthrew the Taft portion

of Republicans and led to the rise of Woodrow Wilson. With nothing said of the

Ballinger-Glavis affair involving the dispensing of Alaskan lands: a wholly

Insurgent achievement.

Unnoted is the fact that Woodrow Wilson began his political career as a

declared conservative Democrat, nominated for governor of New Jersey on

that understanding, and only later the candidate of insurgent New Jersey

leaders, whom he in time disappointed.

Nevertheless, the book is filled with issues and events, and personalities

many of whom have been all but lost to historical study, but who need to be

recalled. The terrible Triangle Fire, for example-a tragedy of New York

• 12
 

82                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

female labor-has its book, but it is separated from the politics of its time. Yes,

there were Democratic reforms, but forced from the party leaders, whose high

concentration continued to be on wheeler-dealer activities. Nor is the tragedy

of William Sulzer adequately recalled for the ruthless destruction of his career

as governor of New York, the Democrats simply massing votes to have him

impeached and flung from office.

Achievements and anti-achievements of the time can be laid to both parties.

The truth is that the greatest hero of the time was Demos, which demanded

reform. Unfortunately, it often also opposed reform, as in Georgia, which

"elected" to lynch Leo Frank, an innocent man, in the face of national

Progressive protest. An overview of reform is complicated, but needs to be

recaptured. The above books help.

 

The Belfry, Ovid, Michigan                              Louis Filler

 

John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-1865. By

William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1989. 478p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) has long merited a detailed, scholarly

study. His life's story is seemingly the biographer's dream. Here is the tragedy

of a priviledged childhood struck down by law, the play of eloquent words and

lofty ideals, the stress and drive of politics; but above all else, here is the

passionate drama of one man's constant achievement in spite of oppression.

Langston's accomplishments in black politics and protest are stunning: the first

black lawyer in the West, the first black to hold elected office, a principal force

in recruiting black troops into the Union Army, an inspector for the Freedmen's

Bureau, the first black to represent Virginia in Congress, as well as, the United

States' minister to Haiti and Santo Domingo. Why then the lack of learned

assessments, heretofore, of Langston's life? The answer lies in a lack of

sources. There is little information on the inner world, or private life of John

Mercer Langston. Although he published an autobiography, it reads like a

heroic resume, and speaks little more than cryptically of his personal life.

Once, the recital of Langston's political accomplishments was the virtual alpha

and omega of his biography. Thankfully, with the publication of John Mercer

Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-1865 that is no longer true.

William and Aimee Lee Cheek, the authors of this successful biography,

developed a method of clearing away the obstacles to telling Langston's life

story. They approach their subject from three separate perspectives: I) con-

text; 2) Langston's association with other figures of the time; 3) an easy use of

psychology to glimpse Langston's motivation. In so pursuing their subject, the

authors' work fits an eclectic range of scholarly categories-political history,

social history, African-American history, and historical biography, to name but

a few. Consequently, John Mercer Langston and the Fightfor Black Freedom,

1829-1865, while ostensibly a biography of one man, is also an effort to address

other gaps in our historical knowledge on a broad front. This is particularly true

in the areas of context, and Langston's associations. The Cheeks have

explored well the world created by free blacks in Ohio, as well as the once

neglected topic of black involvement in western antislavery efforts. The

authors have rightly assumed that to understand Langston the political leader

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                    83

 

in these areas, we must also understand the other black leaders with whom he

worked.

The most fascinating feature of this biography is the emphasis on Langston's

marginality. This is the central, motivating paradox of John Mercer Langston's

life. Born the son of a wealthy, white slaveholder and a free, part-black

bondswoman, Langston spent his early childhood in an environment of

aristocratic, white sensibilities. But because of the death of his father, and the

vicissitudes of law, the young Langston was jerked from a world of priviledge

to the confined world of his black relatives. Thus, according to the psycholog-

ical interpretation offered by the Cheeks, Langston saw himself as redeeming

both black and white-for he understood himself to be a representative of both

races.

This sense of redemption, birthed by the paradox of his position, influenced

every action of Langston's life. He chose Oberlin-a school and a town located

at the far margins of nineteenth century American race relations-as his place

of education. There he developed a secular theology that merged Emerson's

concept of self-reliance with Finney's gospel of moral perfectionism; thus,

slavery was a sin that morally deformed the nation that tolerated it. This

philosophy was Langston's political foundation, the goal of his politics: end

slavery, but give blacks as well the equal rights of any American to succeed or

fail.

The occasional overuse of psychology is the one weakness of this biography.

John Mercer Langston often appears as a seminal figure of one dimension. But

this can be blamed again on a lack of sources regarding the man's inner life.

Regardless of this shortcoming, the appearance of John Mercer Langston

and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-1865 is still heralded a scholarly event.

The authors have made innovative use of their sources, and, as the footnotes

reveal, they have read them with critical attention. Their writing style is clean

and often elegant; they possess a flair for narrative detail. In sum: this

biography is inspiring without bathetic moralizing; instructive without falling to

pedantry; a great story well told. Would that other biographies from scholar's

pens could claim such virtues! The authors tell us this is the first of a

two-volume biography. We eagerly await the next.

 

University of North Carolina                       Peter M. Ostenby

 

 

Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: Stories of Black Pullman Porters. By Jack

Santino. (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1989. x + 160p.;

illustrations, notes, appendix, resources, index. $21.95.)

This is both an oral and narrative study of the lives of black Pullman porters.

It is also a story about race relations, of a lost tradition in railroad history, and

of black social and cultural life. In 1978, author Jack Santino interviewed a

number of retired members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters for the

Festival of American Folklife which became the basis for an award winning

documentary film he produced in 1982. Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle

retains much of its cinematic oral focus as the porters talk about their

remarkable life experiences and the complexities of their work. Pullman porter

history constitutes a transitional phase in Afro-American history linking

• 14
 

84                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

slavery and post-slavery segregation to the civil rights movement of the late

1950s and early 1960s. When George Pullman began his elite sleeping car

service following the Civil War, he consciously recruited former black slaves

as his porters. And by the end of the Pullman and porter eras, certain Pullman

porter leaders had assumed key roles in the contemporary struggle for racial

justice.

But Santino's book is essentially a source in understanding how the Pullman

porter saw their own unique experiences during these years. To be a porter was

to live a "duality" where one's occupation was both a source of status and

honor and a constant challenge to black dignity. A Pullman porter was a black

man's job, created by Pullman to serve the needs of white patrons which

effectively served to reinforce racial stereotypes and images of black people

that were rooted in the slave experience. As in slavery, porters learned how to

survive and even prosper under working conditions in which they had only

limited control until the later formation of their union Brotherhood. Many of

their stories detail, often in a humorous manner, the ways in which they served

their white customers making up beds, shining shoes, catering to numerous

wants, and acting as personal confidants while they held on to their own

self-respect.

What always complicated the porters' attitudes was that the "bad" part of

their occupation also had its "good" side; it offered status and respect within

black communities where few employment opportunities existed for black

males; it paid reasonably well (many porters sent their children to college from

their railroad earnings); it provided freedom of mobility, the opportunity often

to meet important people, and to see interesting parts of the country. And yet

the power of corporate capitalism and societal racism always defined the

boundaries in which porters worked even if they were never able to ultimately

define the porter himself. In discussing the evolution of the porters' Brother-

hood and some of their leaders like A. Philip Randolph, C.L. Dellums, and

Milton Webster, Santino makes clear that occupational pride and honor

became much more of a reality for the porters once the union became

recognized in the mid-1930s. Although not a porter himself, Randolph emerges

from the porters' tales as an authentic black folk hero, one who could not be

"bought" and whose courage and tenacity assured the porters finally a voice

in determining some of the class and racial conditions of their work. In

Randolph and union loyalists like E.D. Nixon, a major force in the 1955-56

Montgomery boycott that elevated Martin Luther King, Jr., to prominence, the

link between black unionism and civil rights, the porter's oral tradition and that

of the rights movement, is firmly established.

Jack Santino does a marvelous job combining porter reflections with a

careful analysis of their oral experience and a narrative account of their lives.

Although there are areas where some observations seem belabored, what

emerges from this significant contribution to black history and the oral

tradition is the wonderful humanness of the porters. Contrary to all that the

Pullman company and a racist society wished to portray the porters as, they

remained men who often knew themselves and the people they served better

than their supposed "superiors" and benefactors. And although the world of

work in which they both labored and loved is no longer part of our collective

experience, in their self-knowledge the porters continue to serve well other

people's lives.

 

Denison University                                   John B. Kirby

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                    85

 

Distribution of Wealth and Income in the United States in 1798. By Lee

Soltow. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. xix + ³28p.;

appendices, notes, index. $49.95.)

Unfortunately, Soltow's table-like title belies his topic's significance: histor-

ic economic inequality in the United States. While recognition of inequality is

not new, Soltow's method of exposing its persistence is. He applies a

mathematical model called the "lognormal frequency curve" to the federal

government's exhaustive assessment of every dwelling in the United States in

1798 and various population censuses. (For example: If one knows the share of

wealth of the top 10 percent of wealth holders, he can then determine the

shares of all other perceptible groups.) These frequencies provide clues to how

wealth was distributed in America in 1798, and, "since housing consumption

can serve as a proxy for income" (p. 3), of income as well.

The author asks several important questions and gives some unconventional

answers, but with uneven success: Did the American experience begin from a

position of high or low inequality? (Low). Did the American Revolution result

in lesser or greater inequality of wealth? (Greater). Would the American people

have accepted the Constitution if the rules had permitted them to vote? (No).

Was the frontier more egalitarian than urban areas? (Yes and no). Did the

Industrial Revolution increase or reduce inequality? (Reduced).

"Extensive" inequality of wealth prevailed in 1798. Then, as in 1850 and

1860, the top 10 percent of adult male wealth holders held about half of

all wealth; the top 5 percent controlled almost a third. The United States was

not a middle-class democracy; a minority of freemen of voting age owned

land. Expanded liberty (the Revolution and Constitution) generated deeper in-

equality.

Some European countries had immensely greater inequality than the United

States. Only 10 to 30 percent of adult males possessed land in England,

Scotland, Sweden, and Denmark, in contrast to 50 percent across the Atlantic.

Moreover, among only free men with positive wealth, the American had three

times as much as the Swede and six times more than the Finn.

The author's treatment of the Turner thesis-which he rejects-and Consti-

tutional ratification are particularly unconvincing. He appears unsure whether

the frontier was more likely than settled areas to foster equality (pp. 236, 248),

and he acknowledges the effect of a frontier "safety valve" (p. 248).

Soltow confesses that his discussion of the ratification process is "specula-

tive" and subject to "substantial measurement error" (p. 215). Again, the

lognormal distribution of housing values of those who empowered their

delegates reveals a "probability" that voters would have defeated the Consti-

tution 2-1 if all free males over 21 had participated; defeated it if half the eligible

population had voted; and easily accepted it if only 1 or 2 percent (the wealthy)

had gone to the polls (p. 221). Thus a positive relationship existed between the

probability of voting and economic well-being. This latter idea holds some

promise, but overall Soltow's analysis is too deterministic. He admits that

ratification is a "very complex subject" (p. 217) and that scholars must

consider other influential variables; he suggests some.

Soltow's strengths lie in his introduction of complex mathematical models

and his boldness in applying them to some economic data, rather than in what

the numbers portend. The book's 288 pages include 94 tables, 20 figures, 13

appendices, and 18 appendix tables. With the exceptions of his references to

• 16
 

86                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

the Turner thesis and the Constitution, Soltow does not comment on the social

and political consequences of his findings. He confesses that inequality played

a "wide role" in the nation's social and cultural activities in the early federal

period and antebellum years, but he leaves it to others to determine its effects.

 

Humboldt State University                           Stephen C. Fox

 

 

The Magic City: Unemployment in a Working-Class Community. By Gregory

Pappas. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. xvii + 204p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, index. $9.95 paper; $29.95 cloth.)

With the dawning of Reagan's America, the specter of factory shutdowns

became an ever-increasing reality for many American communities, particu-

larly those located in the Midwest. The historical literature on this develop-

ment has primarily focused on the larger economic forces which shaped this

new stage of corporate capitalism, Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison's

The Deindustrialization of America (1982) is the most obvious example; or, as

in the case of Staughton Lynd's The Fight Against Shutdown (1984) or Eric

Mann's Taking on General Motors (1987), on those communities which were

able to wage impressive battles to keep their factories open in an attempt to

preserve their communities. In contrast to the work of Lynd and Mann,

Gregory Pappas's The Magic City examines the comparatively tranquil shut-

down of the Seiberling tire factory in Barberton, Ohio. But, though the

Barberton shutdown did not precipitate the dramatic worker protest of a

Youngstown, as Pappas's Magic City shows, the Barberton workers were not

simply passive victims of corporate America.

Pappas, an anthropologist and an M.D., opens his work with an overall

analysis of the economic factors and corporate policies which produced the

Seiberling shutdown in March of 1980. He then provides an ethnographic

analysis of the rubberworkers' lives as they were about to face, unknowingly,

the closure of their factory, a mainstay in the Barberton economy for nearly

sixty years. Describing this post-World War II working-class existence as

"fragile affluence," Pappas details the high degree of workers' personal

indebtedness, especially car loans and mortgage payments, which left them

ill-prepared to face the economic deprivation of a shutdown. With the

deindustrialization of the Midwest well underway, there were few comparable

jobs in the Barberton area to absorb this dislocated industrial workforce, which

numbered well over one thousand.

Pappas offsets this initial foray into working-class life with an historical

overview of Barberton's laborers. Relying primarily on Mike Davis's analysis

of the post-World War II American working-class, Pappas describes the

bureaucratization of the Barberton labor movement that in effect snuffed out

the working-class militance which came to the fore in the turbulent thirties. It

might have been interesting if he had looked more deeply into just exactly how

this process of bureacratization played itself out at the local level, especially

considering Barberton's reputation (based largely on the activity of Seiberling

workers) as the king of the wildcat, particularly in the 1950s. Nevertheless, any

generalization regarding the growing conservatism of the American labor

movement in the modern era is difficult to dispute.

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                     87

 

The final portion, in which Pappas examines the local response in a series of

case studies, is the strongest of the work. Employing Anthony Giddens's

"structurationist" approach, Pappas shows that many workers were unable to

confront the debilitating disruptions of a factory shutdown. The divorce,

murder, suicide, and chemical dependency rates all rose dramatically in the

months that followed. But though some workers were so affected, for others

not all the results were self-destructive. Pappas takes us into the world of

unemployed workers, accompanying them as they answer the newspaper want

ads, fill out yet another job application, and wait in the stretching unemploy-

ment line. Their failure to find a comparable job, Pappas shows us, was not the

result of workers' laziness, bad luck, or lack of qualification. Rather it was a

structural failure of an unresponsive economic system.

Most importantly, however, Pappas makes it clear that these workers were

more than passive victims. Barberton workers did take action, forming

unemployment groups, political action committees, tenant organizations, and,

ultimately, a free medical clinic for the Barberton area. Significantly, these

organizations (consisting of both unemployed Seiberling workers and laborers

still employed in the city's other factories) and Pappas's scholarship should

help to dispel many of the notions surrounding the unemployed's inactivity as

well as the characterization of unions pursuing only vapid economic goals. In

Barberton, workers fought both individually and collectively to preserve the

community that they had created decades before.

 

Indiana University                                      John Borsos

 

 

Great American Bridges and Dams. By Donald C. Jackson. (Washington,

D.C.: The Preservation Press/National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1988,

360p.; illustrations, further reading, information sources, photographic sourc-

es, index. $16.95 paper.)

The vision of what in the man-made environment has value and is worth

fighting to preserve has expanded steadily ever since the birth of the national

preservation movement in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century.

Significantly, that the prestigous National Trust for Historic Preservation, the

private nonprofit organization chartered and, in part, funded by Congress, has

seen fit to publish a guide book on bridges and dams. Both are structures

regarded by many as practical, but on the whole rather mundane and

unspectacular, engineering structures. This guide eloquently serves to demon-

strate the shortsightedness of such thought.

While at first the two structures would seem to represent divergent types of

engineering, they make a logical marriage in a single guidebook since you are

likely to find one while searching for the other. The volume is written for a

general audience and the specialist in technological history will find few new

revelations here. There is, happily, a clear attempt to tie the structures,

especially dams, into the social and political history of localities, an element

too often neglected in historic technological studies.

Concise and informative summary histories of both types of structures are

provided as introductory material. These are followed by a discussion of the

preservation techniques for engineering structures, based on the author's long

• 18
 

88                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

experience as staff engineer for the Historic American Engineering Record of

the National Park Service.

The main body of the text is a state-by-state guide. Structures both small and

large are included. An excellent index allows reseachers searching for the

appropriate historical background or "context" for a favorite structure to

conduct national comparisons. Illustrations from the author's extensive photo

and postcard collection are one of the special treats of the volume.

 

Ohio Historical Society                          David A. Simmons

 

Technology in America: A Brief History. By Alan I Marcus and Howard P.

Segal. (Chicago: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1989. xii + ³⁸0p.;

illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $10.00 paper.)

It has been an entire generation since the 1956 appearance of John W.

Oliver's survey, History of American Technology. Perhaps the failure of that

attempt to deal coherently with the subject has helped discourage subsequent

effort, but in the meantime the history of technology has burgeoned and

become a thriving and established subdiscipline of historical studies. Beginning

with the establishment of the Society for the History of Technology in 1958,

and the publication of its journal Technology and Culture (both founded at the

then-separate Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland), that intervening

generation has produced a rich harvest of scholarly studies of the subject.

Marcus and Segal, drawing upon this now-sizeable literature, have produced

a dense survey, at once more dependable and complex than that attempted by

Oliver. Relying upon a rather conventional periodization of American history,

they concentrate on trying to show "the impact of American society and

culture on technology, rather than vice versa" (p. iv). To do this they

"identified specific, dominant cultural notions and social themes for different

eras in the American past" (p. iv), then related those to various technologies.

Given the vast amount of material that could be logically "covered," some

such strategy was necessary, but of course the authors leave themselves

vulnerable to second-guessing at every turn. It can be argued that while

technology both influences and is influenced by other aspects of life, the

former is at least as important as what they chose to emphasize. Indeed, to the

extent that one emphasizes the impact of technology on society one is led to

question whether received chronological divisions of our history are, in fact,

the best for such a study. The 1870s is the traditional breaking point

(Reconstruction, breakdown of the "presidential synthesis," etc.), but when

our history is looked at from the vantage point of technology rather than

politics, does it still make sense?

Of equal importance, which "cultural notions and social themes" should one

emphasize? The scholarly literature on the subject has largely ignored such

issues as race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion, making these difficult to

deal with in a survey based on secondary literature. It seemed to me, for

example, that the authors spend an inordinate amount of precious space

explaining the British policy of mercantilism, at the cost of other possible

subjects. And finally, which technologies should be dealt with? To mention

them all is clearly impossible, but to make a selection is to run the risk of

leaving out everyone's favorite machine or tool. The authors confess to

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                   89

 

shirking petroleum, but that will hardly save them from the disappointment of

a host of buffs who want to read about other neglected devices as well.

This bare recital of pitfalls underscores the importance of Marcus and

Segal's effort. Their survey is not only long overdue; it is a first-rate beginning.

Their hard choices seem to me to have been largely sensible, and where they

have gone wrong it is easier to see how and why for their having pioneered the

attempt. This is frankly a textbook, but stands alone in a field which is

increasingly in the public's interest.

 

Case Western Reserve University                      Carroll Pursell

 

The Group Bases of Ohio Political Behavior, 1803-1848. By Stephen C. Fox.

(New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. xix + 349p.; tables, notes,

bibliography. $50.00.)

This provocative (and provoking) work is one of the first in the Garland

series of Dissertations in Nineteenth-Century American Political and Social

History, edited by Ronald P. Formisano. The series is welcome, but one hopes

for higher publishing standards in other volumes. Nothing in this volume tells

the reader that this was a University of Cincinnati dissertation produced in

1972; nothing in the preface to this edition reveals that the author's interpre-

tation was discussed at length in this journal in 1979 (Volume 88/Winter

1979/Number 1, pp. 5-36); nothing explains the alterations and omissions that

have been made in the text, though these changes fall well short of updating.

The footnotes have been consolidated and moved to the end-but the endnote

numbers to chapter III now no longer match those in the text! Resetting has

reduced the number of pages, but cross-references in the text are to the original

page numbers-and to maps and charts which are now excluded! This is

shoddy, shabby treatment of both purchaser and author.

The object of the dissertation was to do for Ohio politics what Lee Benson

had done for New York and Formisano for Michigan. Dr. Fox indicts earlier

generations for imposing a single-factor economic analysis on American voting

behavior, and demonstrates that Ohio politics between 1803 and 1848 cannot

be interpreted simply in terms of economic or class conflict. Instead, he argues

eloquently for evangelicalism as the polarizing force in electoral politics: in the

1820s and 1830s revivalized Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists

strove to impose their own moral standards on society, notably supporting

Antimasonry, temperance, abolitionism, and Whiggery, while religious and

liberal groups which opposed this cultural imperialism rallied round the

laisser-faire Democratic party. This critical division was reinforced by cleav-

ages between new immigrants from Britain and those from elsewhere, between

New Englanders and native-born settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia.

These ethnocultural divisions, he claims, explain the deep-rooted party cleav-

age of the years 1836-1848, which came into being because the evangelicals in

New England-dominated "corporate communities" refused to accept the new

partisan ethos and organizational values being introduced by the Jacksonian

Democrats.

In building up his forceful case, Dr. Fox does not present a detailed analysis

of what was actually happening in Ohio elections. He presents instead an

interpretation of Jacksonian politics which is based upon well-known general

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90                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

works and studies of other states, and he relies on secondary works for his

understanding of Ohio developments. No use is made of manuscript collec-

tions, little of published correspondence, and the newspaper record is sampled

more or less at random; the primary record is therefore not the source of his

understanding, and the examples he offers from Ohio primary sources are only

illustrations of points derived from elsewhere. Furthermore, his detailed grasp

is limited and he repeatedly sees novelty in measures and practices which had

a long history in Ohio. For example, here as in his second article in this journal

(Volume 88/Summer 1979/Number 3, pp. 253-76), he makes much of the

introduction of county nominating conventions during the Bank War of

1818-1821, when they had in fact been a common feature of Ohio politics since

statehood. Most worrying of all, he repeatedly uses as his chief example of an

Ohio evangelical the well-known abolitionist Lewis Tappan-who never set

foot in Ohio in his life!

However, at the heart of this work lies a statistical analysis of fifty-one rural

townships and urban wards selected at random from thirty counties, comparing

electoral behavior in 1848 with social, economic, religious, and demographic

data from the 1850 Census. This is a real contribution, though Dr. Fox is surely

mistaken to imagine that this evidence necessarily in itself proves anything

about electoral behavior in earlier decades. Moreover, he obscures the force of

his evidence by lumping the Freesoil and Whig votes together: if the Freesoilers

were allowed to secede as they wished, the remainder of the Whig party would

be seen to depend on many groups besides the evangelicals and morally-

minded New Englanders. It is, indeed, his failure to give room to the

exceptional cases on his tables, to recognize what a small proportion of the

population his thesis actually makes allowance for, which makes his interpre-

tation even more monocausal than those he criticizes.

 

University of Durham                             Donald J. Ratcliffe

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