Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

First Generations: Women in Colonial America. By Carol Berkin. (New York:

Hill and Wang, 1996. xiv + ²³⁴p.; bibliographical essay, index. $23.00 cloth;

$12.00 paper.)

 

In First Generations, Carol Berkin has written a marvelous synthesis of the ex-

isting literature on women in the colonial era. It will likely become a classroom

standard.

Clearly the area of colonial women's history has been one in need of synthesis.

Imaginative and meticulous scholars have been creating histories out of the

sparest sources for more than a generation now. But the nature of the evidence

from this period has dictated a somewhat more scattershot result than is the case in

many other areas of American history. Women's histories have often consisted of

individual case studies, pieced together out of the scraps of letters or diaries, ac-

count books, demographic records, or court cases that we have extant; sociologi-

cal-type studies that have made statistical generalizations about cohorts of women

but which have been hamstrung in connecting social abstractions to life as expe-

rienced; and what glimpses of women we can glean from institutions in the public

sphere (such as the courts) that habitually invited only the presence of men. Add

to this mix a social milieu that for at least a century was mind-bogglingly diverse,

racially, ethnically, linguistically, politically, and religiously, and it is not sur-

prising that it has taken until now for someone to weave the pieces together into

something of a coherent narrative.

Berkin's is a story elegantly told. In clear and lucid prose, she is able to com-

municate both what historians now think we know about women in the first two

centuries of European settlement and what is probable, possible, or simply a good

guess as to what was the case. In seven well-organized chapters, Berkin carefully

presents us with the stories of women from the Chesapeake, New England, and the

Middle Colonies, African-American and Indian women, genteel and rustic women,

patriot and loyalist. To begin each chapter, she provides us with a portrait of an

individual woman who puts a human face on the topics at hand before going on to

tell us what scholars have come to know about the category of woman her touch-

stone subject was. This is not to say that Berkin homogenizes colonial women

into a few basic types. On the contrary, she is careful to clue us in to whatever

variations on her basic themes she knows of. Moreover, she cautions us periodi-

cally about the kinds of evidence on which she, like other historians, has had to

rely for her information, the limitations of that evidence, and important lacunae

within it.

One of Berkin's outstanding accomplishments in this book is culling informa-

tion from a wide variety of monographic sources-not simply those focused on

women and gender-to address and develop areas where little freestanding informa-

tion exists. Her chapters on enslaved African American women, women of the

Middle Colonies, and Indian women particularly represent challenges well met.

For a variety of reasons, research in these areas has been especially piecemeal, and

Berkin does us a service by pulling together what there is and showing thereby

that there is far more extant than many of us perhaps thought. (An extensive bib-

liographic essay is also helpful in pointing toward both standard secondary

sources in colonial women's history and lesser-known ones, especially in the un-

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Book Reviews                                                              79

 

derdeveloped areas.) Also of note is Berkin's ability to limn her subjects in a way

that seems judicious and balanced. Each of the women she treats is an active agent

within her world, but she is also hemmed in by limitations on her agency that

Berkin describes well. Particularly poignant and memorable in this regard is the

story of Margaret Hardenbroeck, an entrepreneur of New Netherlands whose ability

to control her own personal and economic fate becomes gradually but inexorably

constricted with the imposition of English law and custom in that colony over the

latter third of the seventeenth century.

First Generations is a welcome work of synthesis, a model of its kind. It will be

of enduring value to students of both colonial and American women's history.

 

Miami University                                          Mary Kupiec Cayton

 

 

Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the

Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945.   By Stephen E. Ambrose.

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.       512p.; illustrations, notes, index.

$27.50.)

 

Stephen Ambrose who recently finished that splendid account of the Lewis and

Clark expedition, Undaunted Courage, returns to his primary area of writing, the

European Theater of World War II. This book draws heavily from American and

German soldier's oral histories now in the Eisenhower Center at the University of

New Orleans.

The book follows chronologically from D-Day, June 1944 to the war's end in

May 1945. A few chapters are topically oriented such as medics, prisoners of war,

and the air war. Because soldier's oral histories seldom deal with the big picture,

the author briefly sets the events of a time period, then uses quotes from soldiers

to show the "foxhole view" of the events. The reader hears what was important to

the soldier, and sees how large his war really was, maybe only a field 100x100

yards outside a town you never heard of. The reports give a fresh, interesting per-

spective on war from that usually reported.

Using these narratives the author discusses some interesting questions such as,

"What kept the troops going forward?" The author will decide,

 

Discipline, to be sure, just as it was in the German army, and unit cohesion, and training. But

for many, it was a sense of having no option and a realization that the only way out of combat

was to annihilate the German army.'They instinctively realized that the only way for them to

go home was to keep pushing forward.'

 

One soldier summed it up, for most of the Gls, when he said,

 

We were miserable and cold and exhausted most of the time, we were scared to death.... But

we were young and strong then, possessed of the marvelous resilience of youth, and for all the

misery and fear and the hating every moment of it the war was a great, if always terrifying,

adventure. Not a man among us would want to go through it again, but we are all proud of

having been so severely tested and found adequate. The only regret is for those of our friends

who never returned.

 

There were interesting accounts of how men coped with getting food, staying

warm, deciding what German prisoners would live or die, and many other daily

challenges. There were new or unusual stories. One reported by Andy Rooney is

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80                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

of a ball-turret gunner in a bomber whose only exit was to the outside under the

plane. The plane's wheels would not go down. The gunner, pilot and the tower

talk about the situation. But eventually Rooney wrote, "We all watched in horror

as it happened. We watched as this man's life ended, mashed between the concrete

pavement of the runway and the belly of the bomber."

One I had never heard was when soldiers of the American 83rd Division ap-

proached the Rhine River they devised a ruse they had earlier executed Germans for

trying. The 83rd assembled a task force of German-speaking Gls, put them in

German uniforms, gave them captured vehicles and sent them ahead to talk their

way through the German lines to capture a bridge intact. A firefight broke out and

the task force was not strong enough to fight its way out.  Presumably the

Americans died, and the Germans did destroy the bridge.

Then as the war was well into the fall of 1944 the Germans had to rely on boys,

wounded soldiers, and older men to replenish their ranks. The Americans had put

over 150,000 of her brightest draftees into special college, pilot, and officer pro-

grams. We realized we would not need these graduates, and so transferred them to

the Infantry. At this critical time, then, we had quality replacements, as a matter

of fact our best young men, to match the dregs of the German replacement system.

The book has a good index, excellent maps, and action pictures of GIs at the

front. Their stories run the range of emotions and ruthlessly pull the reader into

the narrative. It is the kind of book one reads in great chunks, as it is intensely

interesting. After finishing it, one probably will wish he had never read it so he

can have the pleasure of reading it again for the first time. Highly recommended.

 

Combined Arms Support Command                               Lynn L. Sims

Fort Lee, Virginia

 

 

The Salmon P. Chase Papers, Volume 3: Correspondence, 1858-1863.  Edited by

John Niven, James P. McClure, and Leigh Johnsen. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State

University Press, 1996. xxxi + 450p.; chronology, illustrations, notes, edito-

rial procedures, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

 

The third volume of the papers of Ohio politician and reformer Salmon P. Chase

consists of correspondence from 1858, when Chase was governor of Ohio,

through March 1863, during Chase's tenure as Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the

Treasury. As with volume two, which begins Chase's correspondence, this vol-

ume is very selective, especially because, as the editors lament, "the quantity of

Chase's correspondence from his forty months as Secretary of the Treasury

matches that of all of the rest of his life" (p. xxvii). Nevertheless, the Ohio reader

may wonder with this reviewer whether this volume might not be a bit too selec-

tive at the beginning since the only correspondence included for 1858 consists of

four letters from March. The next printed letter is dated April 26, 1859. One

might suppose that as governor of Ohio during this period Chase would have re-

ceived or produced more than four letters of significance.

This reviewer has one other quibble with editorial choice: why did the editors

end the volume with March 1863?  There is no obvious reason for the break, as

Chase is still at his treasury post. No doubt the editors had good cause, but this

reader wishes that they had explained their reasons in the introduction.

However, there are many positive features of this volume. Most of the letters

date from the Civil War period and provide good examples of Chase's perspective

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Book Reviews                                                         81

 

on various events as well as give evidence of his sources of information. Several

major topics are discussed. In the early summer of 1861 Chase was very concerned

about keeping Kentucky in the Union, and he corresponded with William Nelson

and others about organizing an army for that purpose. Another very interesting

and valuable section is a series of letters to and from special treasury agent Edward

L. Pierce who was involved in setting up the so-called "Port Royal Experiment,"

attempting to help blacks in the South Carolina sea islands become productive and

self-supporting. The letters discuss getting orders and supplies, conditions on the

plantations, attitude of the supervisors, issues of authority, and the productivity

and accomplishments of the workers.

Later in 1862 and 1863 Chase would get information on the situation in

Louisiana and Texas from  another of his special treasury agents, George S.

Denison in New Orleans, who mourned the removal of Benjamin F. Butler as

commanding general and his replacement by Nathaniel P. Banks. Since Chase fa-

vored the recruitment and use of black troops, a number of his letters to Denison

and others also encourage such projects.

Early in the war Chase seems to have had some influence on the course of the

conflict. In May 1862 he traveled with Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M.

Stanton to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to investigate the military situation there.

In fact, Chase even helped to accept the surrender of Norfolk,Virginia, as re-

counted in several letters to his daughter Nellie. He also gave procedural sugges-

tions to generals with whom he was acquainted, such as Irvin McDowell and

Benjamin F. Butler. He apparently gave advice to Lincoln as well. But as 1862

progressed Chase's influence decreased, a situation about which he complained to

many correspondents, lamenting that he knew little beyond what he read in the

newspapers, and that it was his responsibility to figure out how to finance a war

over which he had no influence.

In late 1862 and early 1863 Chase was very much concerned about financing the

war. The editors have explicitly omitted most of Chase's correspondence about

financial matters since it is both complex and, for most readers, dull. But the

amount printed for this period increases as Chase consulted several New York fi-

nanciers, trying to determine the best ways to finance the war while keeping the

debt and inflation as low as possible.

The editors have done their usual good job of briefly identifying persons and

events mentioned in the documents. Students of the period will anxiously await

the continuation of Chase's wartime experience in volume 4.

 

University of Tennessee, Knoxville               Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein

 

 

The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, Volume 3; 3 November 1810-

4 November 1811.   Edited by J.C.A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, and Susan

Holbrook Perdue. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996. xlii +

548p.; editorial method, Madison chronology, notes, index. $55.00.)

 

Although overshadowed by later events, the twelve-month period covered by

this volume proved to be a critical one for James Madison's presidency. After

more than a year of waffling, Madison at last moved to resolve the domestic and

diplomatic troubles that had hobbled his administration since 1809. By the clos-

ing date of this volume, Madison had taken decisive action on both fronts, quiet-

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82                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

ing the discord in his own cabinet and pointing the nation clearly down the road

towards war with Great Britain.

While students of Madison's foreign policy will not find any major revelations

here, the contents still afford some useful insight into his views on both Britain

and France. His private correspondence for the months of April through June

1811 is particularly enlightening, demonstrating that Madison saw little hope of

reaching a settlement with London even before Britain's new diplomatic envoy ar-

rived to resume negotiations in July. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin's memo-

randum on the address Madison planned to deliver to Congress in early November

1811 also furnishes some important clues about his intentions towards Britain.

From the substance of the memorandum, it is clear that, while Gallatin still coun-

seled peace, Madison approached the new session of Congress leaning towards, if

not already committed to, going to war if necessary. The President's correspon-

dence concerning France, on the other hand, reveals not so much pessimism as

simple perplexity. Madison and his advisors fully realized that Napoleon could

not be trusted. But what they could not comprehend was why Napoleon continued

to obstruct a trade with the United States that plainly benefited France as well.

Foreign affairs were of prime concern to Madison during these twelve months,

but problems closer to home also commanded his attention. Chief among these

was the duplicity of his own Secretary of State, Robert Smith, whom Madison fi-

nally dismissed in March. Madison recorded the details of his final tense and

stormy meeting with Smith in a lengthy memorandum that, for sheer dramatic con-

tent, ranks as one of the highlights of the collection. The confrontation with

Smith is also significant because it produced one of the most succinct and impor-

tant statements Madison ever issued as President on his theory of executive-leg-

islative relations. After reproving Smith for not working more closely with

Congress, Madison asserted that, providing "the intention was honest & the ob-

ject useful," it was entirely permissible for members of the executive to "furnish

hints & lights for the Legislature" (p. 259). Madison has often been faulted for

his extreme reluctance to infringe upon congressional prerogatives. But as this

statement suggests-and as recent scholarship on his conduct during the war de-

bates in the Twelfth Congress has borne out-the Virginian was not quite the doc-

trinaire that some historians have made him out to be.

Weighty matters of state aside, the bulk of this volume consists of the more rou-

tine papers that crossed the President's desk on a day-to-day basis. Letters from

job seekers and from those seeking to promote (or, in some cases, block) the ap-

pointment of other candidates for government office constitute probably the

largest category of correspondence. Much of this material is fairly mundane, but a

few items stand out. The regular reports filed by Mississippi territorial magistrate

Harry Toulmin bear vivid witness to the confusion and disorder that prevailed in

West Florida following the collapse of Spanish authority in 1810. Letters from

various informants warning Madison of the intrigues brewing within his own

party also attest to the persistent factionalism that plagued Republican politics

during his first administration. Finally, his personal correspondence, with its fre-

quent talk of sheep breeds, wheat crops, and similar subjects, shows that the im-

mense responsibilities of office in no way dulled Madison's keen interest in farm-

ing and agriculture.

Prepared under the direction of J.C.A. Stagg, this volume conforms in every re-

spect to the high editorial standards that distinguished the first two entries in the

Presidential Series. The footnotes, while confined largely to matters of fact rather

than interpretation, are encyclopedic in scope and do a superb job of illuminating

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Book Reviews                                                         83

 

the historical context of the individual documents. The introductory essay also

gets high marks for its incisive analysis of the issues and events that confronted

Madison during this twelve-month cycle of the calendar. Besides serving as an

important resource for scholars, this volume stands as a fine piece of scholarship

in its own right.

 

The Ohio State University                                     Jeff Seiken

 

 

The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Volume 13: September 1867-March 1868. Edited

by Paul H. Bergeron. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1996.

xxix + ²³⁴p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, index. $49.50.)

 

This volume of Andrew Johnson's papers covers the seven months prior to the

President's trial before the Senate starting on March 30, 1868.  Apparently,

Johnson never noticed that his actions were cementing a fractured Republican

party. Instead, he believed that several Democratic election victories in the fall

were a prelude to his receiving a general mandate from the voters. Among other

things during this period, Johnson expanded amnesty for ex-Confederates, ordered

all military and civil officers to obey the Constitution and the laws, replaced most

of his original military district commanders, warned Congress not to try to get rid

of him short of the impeachment process, and openly questioned whether the

black race could ever learn to govern competently.  More importantly, the

President decided to test the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act by dis-

charging Radical Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War, and fought a bitter and pro-

tracted warof words with Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had opted to resign as acting

Secretary of War in favor of Stanton as the Senate ordered. Failing to entice

General William T. Sherman to take the position, Johnson finally appointed

General Lorenzo Thomas, who was quickly arrested. Late in February 1868, the

House approved eleven impeachment articles that dwelled on the President's viola-

tion of the Tenure of Office Act. As his trial approached, the Supreme Court de-

layed any involvement in the crisis, but Johnson's friends rallied to his side.

Some, including an ex-Confederate general and a member of the G. A. R., offered

him military aid, while others inundated him with both clever and contradictory

legal strategies. As he assembled his legal team, this President seemed genuinely

serene and confident about the trial's outcome.

Impeachment was, of course, the dominant issue at this time, but this volume

also includes other matters, both serious and humorous. There is a series of letters

promising to expose Johnson for an illicit sexual encounter unless he paid money

in exchange for silence.  In addition, someone calling himself the "Avenger"

wrote "let me inform you Tyrant Usurper TRAITOR that your end is near .... Mark

me A. Johnson Tailor. . ." (p. 275). There are, on the other hand, documents that

tend to evoke laughter. Those seeking patronage remained persistent, one of

whom assured Johnson that he was "not smart enough to make money out of a po-

sition" beyond his salary (p. 136). Another touted his grandson as "trust worthey

and well quillified" to handle any job "after a little practice" (p. 95). From St.

Louis. Sherman telegraphed the President at the request of a young soldier named

James Johnson. He claimed to be Johnson's son and had asked for two hundred

dollars. Johnson immediately informed Sherman that he had no son named James.

And again, George Bancroft wrote the President from Prussia offering an insight

into the difference between our two nations' political perspectives.  A teacher

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84                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

asked a young student to name the world's largest mammal and he answered, "the

King" (p. 488).

Paul Bergeron and his staff have selected a wide-ranging and compelling array of

documents from an immense supply at their disposal.  Bergeron's introduction

gives the reader an excellent perspective on these crucial months; the index is ex-

ceptionally thorough, and the appendices are very helpful. Moreover, as was evi-

dent in past volumes in this series. the footnotes provide wonderful information

and reflect difficult and meticulous research. For example, for a twenty-two page

letter from Jonathan Worth, the editors provide ninety-nine notes and only eight

individuals appearing in the document are not identified (pp. 402-28). How ob-

scure are some of these individuals? Note 99 tells us that Thomas K. Feagan "a

former coach painter was a jailer, from 1840 to 1870. . ." (p. 428). When these

scholars finally complete this project, one hopes that they will decide to work on

yet another important collection.

 

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology              Gerald W. Wolff

 

 

Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation. By Willard Carl Klunder. (Kent, Ohio:

The Kent State University Press, 1996. xiv + 416p.: illustrations, notes, bibli-

ography, index. $39.00.)

 

Earlier studies of Lewis Cass relied on selected letters, or stressed certain phases

of his career. Willard Klunder's biography scrutinizes all of Cass' life and corre-

spondence. Which helps explain why it is the best.

After moving to Ohio young Cass rejected his father's Federalism for

Jefferson's ideals-majority rule, and (excepting minorities) individual rights. He

kept that faith most of his life.

Klunder details Cass's early talents as a vigorous Governor of Michigan, and

Jackson's Secretary of War, as well as diplomat (Ambassador to France). He had

not the oratorical skills of Clay and Webster, but by the 1840s was ready for larger

things. Cass supporters liked him for his biases: his Anglophobia, western in-

terests, and rampant expansionism. These did not suffice for his attempt at the

Presidency in 1844, poorly handled anyway. But Cass learned. More impor-

tantly, by 1848 he had something else: the ideal of popular sovereignty that

thereafter defined his career. If not original with Cass, it became central to his

thinking.  Klunder is persuaded that for Cass popular sovereignty was no

sophistry for winning Southern votes. Though sensible that it could unite party

moderates, Cass believed deeply in the concept that sovereignty rested not in

Congress but the people-and the sooner a territory exercised it the better.

Morally blind to the ethics of slavery. Cass thought majoritarianism could solve

questions raised by the Mexican War. Whether the voters of 1848 made the better

or worse of a bad choice (probably the worse), party feuds helped deny Cass a vic-

tory. Only the ambitions of Buchanan and Douglas kept the nomination from him

in 1852.

Unluckily for Cass, popular sovereignty grew less a means of compromising

sectionalism, and more a cover for Southern hopes. Gradually he saw it not as a

solution to controversy, but a technique for preserving the Democratic Party

("essential" to the Union's survival). Acquiescing to Southern pressure, Cass

even abandoned true majority rule in Kansas for legalities (though Douglas balked

at the frauds). But by then all of Cass's ideals had given way to the Union's sur-

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Book Reviews                                                           85

 

vival-by whatever means. The compromiser faced an issue which brooked no

compromise.

Klunder avoids overly admiring his subject, aware of Cass's flaws: a timorous

dislike of personal confrontation, and an eagerness to compromise even most

principles. He also details the Secretary of War's role in the cruel Cherokee re-

moval. Still, he is sympathetic. When Jackson removed the Deposits, Cass and

Louis McLane (who opposed) threatened to resign from the Cabinet. But once

Jackson promised to say it was not his advisors' idea, Cass agreed to remain-and

even removed military pension funds! Klunder suggests "the Bank War demon-

strated that Cass would remain true to his principles . .[as] he had been prepared

to resign rather than compromise his conservative fiscal views." To some, an al-

ternative explanation might easily suggest itself.

Klunder undercuts one myth, Cass's pervasive "lethargy" of the 1850s.

Advancing years and his size indeed required Cass to divest himself of much pa-

perwork. But his intelligence and political interests remained. As Buchanan's

Secretary of State, Cass served a President experienced in diplomacy.  But their

policies matched so well Buchanan often left negotiations to Cass. It was Cass's

particular pride to finally settle long-standing differences with Britain over

searches on the high seas.

Klunder's biography will be compared to Frank Woodward's, which is better in

one respect: it is written with more verve than Klunder's, whose style reflects the

dissertation underlying it. But Klunder's research, judicious assessments and de-

tails of Cass's post 1852 career make it the superior in all else. This is now the

standard biography of Cass. It deserves to be on the shelves of major public and

all academic libraries.

 

Midwestern State University                              Everett W. Kindig

 

 

Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800. By

Eric Hinderaker. (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1997.  xv +

299p.: maps, notes, bibliography, index, $49.95)

 

Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800 by

Eric Hinderaker, assistant professor of history at the University of Utah, repre-

sents a major contribution to our understanding of the cultural and political devel-

opment of Ohio during the early frontier and territorial periods. The book focuses

on the attempt by France, Great Britain, and the United States to extend political

hegemony over the Ohio Valley. According to Hinderaker, three distinct models

of empire accompanied this process.  Two of these models, empires of com-

merce-based upon the creation and expansion of trade and commercial activity-

and empires of land based upon the acquisition of territory and the importation

of european populations-were used by both England and France throughout the

colonial era. Though differing in their particulars, both models shared the convic-

tion that colonies existed solely for the benefit of the mother country and, as a re-

sult, governmental authorities were obligated to control or limit the activities of

imperial subjects living within these areas to a considerable degree.

The American Revolution sparked the creation of a third model of empire, an

empire of liberty. This third model was uniquely American in character and differed

fundamentally from the models used previously within the region. Rather than be-

ing a constraining force, government in the new empire of liberty became an

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86                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

agent of liberation. Settlers took land whenever, wherever, and however they

could get it, all with the overt encouragement of national authorities. Ironically,

as this empire of liberty facilitated white settlement, it also degraded the status of

Indians who, as a result, were eventually subjugated and dispossessed.  "The

Revolution," claims Hinderaker, "invented a powerful new engine of imperial ex-

pansion: the liberty of its people, freed to act outside older constraints of public

authority." But while the war established a "dynamic national empire in the Ohio

Valley," it also left "an indelible legacy of violence and conquest that shaped the

development of the region and the nation for generations to come" (xiv).

Hinderaker divides his book into three parts dealing with commercial expan-

sion, territorial acquisition, and the causes, course, and consequences of the

Revolution in the Ohio Valley, respectively. Throughout the text, Hinderaker

makes use of an impressive array of primary and secondary materials. Further, his

three-empire paradigm is a compelling organizational and explanatory thesis.

Capacious in scope and erudite in expression, Elusive Empires stands with the

works of Clarence Alvord, Jack Sosin, and the more recent efforts of Richard

White and Michael McConnell as an important reinterpretation of the Ohio fron-

tier. All students of the era will find something of interest here.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                   Larry L. Nelson

 

 

The Life and Careers of William Henry Gorrill, 1841-1874. By R. Bruce Way.

(Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1996. x + 233p.; illus-

trations, notes, bibliography, index. $42.00.)

 

In 1874 William Henry Gorrill died in Oakland, California, at age 33. He left

behind a young widow, three very small children, and an extensive body of ac-

count ledgers, diaries and correspondence. With this latter material, the bulk of

which is housed at Bowling Green State University's Center for Archival

Collections, Bruce Way has expertly crafted an engaging and informative biogra-

phy of Gorrill's brief, yet far-reaching, life and career.

Gorrill was the son of English immigrants who came to a Wood County farm in

the early 1830s. After a public school education and a brief stint as a teacher in

the Troy school system, he entered law school at the University of Michigan.

Moving to Toledo in 1862, he was soon prospering in a sizable legal firm and, af-

ter establishing himself in a variety of social and literary clubs, was well on his

way to a successful middle class career among the city's young elite, Gorrill was

comfortable enough in his new-found success to propose marriage to Addie

Walker, the twin daughter of a St. Clair, Michigan, judge in December 1868.

But intruding upon his well-laid plans were a recurring cough and side pain that

were the early symptoms of the great scourge of the second half of the nineteenth

century: the "great white plague of consumption" or tuberculosis. An acknowl-

edged workaholic, Gorrill at first attempted to will himself over the affliction with

hard work and an occasional trip out of doors. Finally admitting to the serious-

ness of his disease, he left on an extended steamer trip through the upper Great

Lakes, a less-expensive version of one of the more typical medical treatments for

the disease at the time: a long sea voyage. As the disease continued its steady

progression, Gorrill came to the reluctant conclusion that he must seek a new

home, far away from the damp springs and hot, humid summers of Toledo. If he

would not slow down and rest, his doctor insisted that he at least begin what was

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Book Reviews                                                         87

 

known at the time as a more "healthful respiration" of "pure air." The dry air and

sunny skies of the far West beckoned.

So in the summer of 1869, Henry Gorrill left his midwestern legal career and fi-

ancee behind for a trip with an uncertain destination and duration to restore his

health and possibly acquire a new and, for him, healthier profession. For a time

the trip was open-ended as he wandered from Minnesota to Utah to Montana to

Idaho to Oregon. Once Gorrill made it to the Pacific coastline, however, he never

left, eventually settling in the San Francisco Bay area, although the improvement

of that particular environment over northwest Ohio was questionable.

In hopes that an outdoor job might improve his health, Gorrill agreed to be-

come the west coast agent for fellow Buckeye Robert Smith's patent truss bridge.

Gorrill and Smith had shared the same office building in downtown Toledo and

Smith was steadily gaining a national reputation for his distinctive wooden

bridges. After creating the Pacific Bridge Company and suffering through a long

dry period, Gorrill landed his first contract in Oakland in the summer of 1870. One

of the firm's bridges, a 168-foot Smith truss covered bridge near Santa Cruz, still

survives. Two of his brothers soon joined him in the neophyte bridge-building

operation. With success in his new profession seemingly in hand, he consented

to Addie Walker's joining him in California. They were married the day she ar-

rived. But the Gorrills' marriage did not even last three years before Henry sud-

denly succumbed to typhoid fever, the bane of urban water supplies.

The author's epilogue expertly assesses Gorrill's life in the context of the late

nineteenth century value system that "equated material progress with moral

progress." A solid Republican in the post-Civil War days of radicalism, Gorrill

firmly believed in self-improvement through hard work. But his interests in wom-

en's rights placed him ahead of his fellow radicals. Gorrill's long struggle with

the tuberculosis bacterium, seen as the century's greatest killer, is even more rep-

resentative of the era. It is ironic therefore, but no less descriptive of his time,

that his ultimate demise should come from contaminated water. It was, of course,

for his health that Gorrill became a part of the great American westward move-

ment, but his irresistible attraction to an urban environment undermined his own

well-being. In the process, nonetheless, he created what became one of the west

coast's largest construction firms, Pacific Bridge Company.

The transformation of Way's doctoral dissertation into this slender volume is

done reasonably well by University Press with one major exception: no chapter

headings were used and the citations were placed at the end of each chapter, making

them a challenge for all but the most persistent to find. If one's tolerance for that

kind of irritation is high, I would recommend the volume as an interesting and en-

lightening biographical study.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                David A. Simmons

 

 

Grand Eccentrics. Turning the Century: Dayton and the Inventing of America. By

Mark Bernstein. (Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, 1996, 271p.; notes,

bibliography, illustrations, index. $29.95.)

 

Collective biography should be a tapestry, the separate patterns-though indi-

vidually splendid-woven into a spectacular historical display.  Perhaps Ray

Ginger's chestnut, Altgeld's America, best exemplifies this genre, as the lives of

Louis Sullivan, Jane Addams, Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, John Dewey, and

• 10
 

88                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld all unfold against the backdrop of Chicago at

the turn of the 20th century. The result is a gripping analysis of America trying to

hold onto its agrarian past while moving into an industrial future. In Altgeld's

America, the individual lives are subsumed within an interpretation that cannot

easily be explored through simple biography or chronological narrative.

Presumably Mark Bernstein is attempting a similar objective  in Grand

Eccentrics; his subtitle certainly implies as much. The context is Dayton, Ohio,

the first third of the 20th century, home at various times to such a diverse crew as

Orville and Wilbur Wright, John H. Patterson, James M.  Cox, Charles H.

Kettering, and Arthur Morgan. The well-known story of the Wright brothers and

the less-familiar accounts of the other figures provide fascinating glimpses of cre-

ative, persistent, and-sometimes-peripatetic eccentricity. John H. Patterson

built National Cash Register into a multinational corporation but lacked the fore-

sight to prepare it for competition in today's computerized business climate.

(Indeed, he once fired Thomas Watson, founder of IBM.) James Cox, former gov-

ernor and Presidential candidate, became wealthy in the newspaper business.

Charles Kettering, who once worked for Patterson at NCR, became a pioneer in au-

tomotive and industrial research, producing electrical ignition and discovering the

chemical process to take the knock out of gasoline. In the aftermath of Dayton's

1913 flood, engineer Arthur Morgan built a system of dams that protected the city

from future floods, then went on to become president of Antioch College, trying

and failing to build it into a utopian community.

However interesting these people are, Bernstein fails to place them in either an

historical or a geographical context. As for geography, Dayton is a bit player in

this narrative, mentioned only when events such as the 1913 flood force its pres-

ence into the story, and it is never clear how Dayton shaped and was shaped by the

lives under discussion.  For instance, in 1914 and in response to local

government's ineptitude in coping with the flood, the city changed its charter to a

city manager system. Yet Bernstein gives only superficial attention to the

politics surrounding this monumental reform, the "Dayton Plan," which was

copied by hundreds of cities throughout the country.

Clearly, the lives of Bernstein's eccentrics signal an America in transition. For

one thing, the state itself was becoming a greater force in people's lives. It is

hard to imagine but Wilbur Wright struggled to convince the American govern-

ment to buy his airplane. Yet 40 years later, the technocratic state would emerge

to foment a diverse array of technologies, ranging from atomic weapons to inter-

galactic spacecraft to the internet. But Bernstein does not take the opportunity to

explore how historical forces shaped the lives of eccentrics such as the Wrights,

nor does he discuss how their respective contributions assisted the transition, for

example, to a more energetic state apparatus. Individual lives are revealed but not

in the contextual swirl of history.

Nor are the lives explored in relation to each other. Kettering, Patterson, Cox,

and the others bump into one another, to be sure, but Bernstein never clearly es-

tablishes substantive relationships among them, never explains how they may

have affected each other, aside from occasionally jousting over political turf or

sitting together on a variety of boards and clubs. Yes, Bernstein reveals their in-

dividual lives, but as a collective biography his effort resembles less a tapestry

and more a box of brightly colored marbles.

 

The Ohio State University, Lima                            William Angel

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                         89

 

The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the

Western Railroads. By Saul Engelbourg and Leonard Bushkoff. (East Lansing:

Michigan State University Press, 1996. xiv + ²⁵⁷p.; illustrations, notes, bib-

liography, index. $34.95.)

 

Among the numerous titles devoted to railroad history, only a few address the

complicated, often secretive, but always crucial aspect of finance. This book fo-

cuses on the career of a significant 19th century entrepreneur who became a lead-

ing banker for James Jerome Hill and who amassed a large personal fortune as

well.

Kennedy was born in Blantyre, Scotland, in 1830, the sixth of nine children.

The family soon moved to Glasgow, where Kennedy grew up, receiving an excel-

lent education, and where he began work as a clerk at age thirteen. Rising rapidly,

he became a traveling sales agent in 1850 for an iron manufacturer, which sent

him to the United States, where he became acquainted with the booming railroad

industry. He also gained experience with private bankers and commission mer-

chants, one of whom was Morris Jesup. In 1856, he became a junior partner in

Jesup's firm and in the following year he emigrated to the United States and be-

came a citizen, and settled in New York City. He married Emma Baker, of a promi-

nent family, which gave him access to the city's financial elite.

M. K. Jesup & Company became involved in financing midwestern railroads,

and Kennedy added to his knowledge and expertise during the Civil War era. By

1867, he had a net worth of $600,000. The following year Kennedy established

his own firm, J. S. Kennedy and Co., which combined commission merchantry

with private banking, with an increasing stress on the latter function. He became

involved in the management of several roads and in 1873 he became the American

agent of the Scottish-American Investment Company, which proved to be an im-

portant link between the railroad builders of America and the capital surpluses of

the old country. Kennedy remained a key member of its advisory board for the rest

of his active life, increasing his personal wealth and becoming a major player in

the New York financial world.

By the 1870s, Kennedy developed further skills by helping to reorganize trou-

bled lines such as the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the St. Paul & Pacific,

soon renamed the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba in 1879. Kennedy estab-

lished close relationships with George Stephen and Donald Smith of Canada and

Norman Kittson and James J. Hill of Minnesota. By 1883, with his net worth

topping two million dollars, Kennedy dissolved his firm, which was succeeded by

one headed by his nephew, and became vice president and financial manager of his

expanding Manitoba, later to be renamed the Great Northern. He not only helped

secure capital but advised on the purchase of locomotives and rails. Hill's original

aim of tapping the trade of western Canada was thwarted by the construction of the

Canadian Pacific, so he turned west, to Montana and beyond. Kennedy, under con-

stant pressure to raise money, began to withdraw from an active role by 1890. He

traveled extensively and was active in many charities and philanthropies, dying in

October 1909 at the age of 79. He left an estate of S67 million, much of which

went to charity.

The authors are competent and sure-footed guides to the complex world of high

finance. They describe in extensive detail the involved transactions necessary to

meet the insatiable needs of the railroad builders. In this small arena, experience,

skill, personal contacts, business acumen, hard work and, above all, integrity

• 12
 

90                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

contributed to success. Kennedy had these attributes, supplying the needed funds

and benefiting himself as well.

The research behind this book is impressive; the authors have mastered their

topic and written the definitive study of Kennedy, the financier. Although it is not

quite a biography, because of source limitations, they have nonetheless added to

our knowledge of high finance and of one of the key figures who helped to make

possible the growth of modern America.

 

East Stroudsburg University                          James N. J. Henwood

 

 

Organizing the Unemployed: Conmmunity and Union Activists in the Industrial

Heartland. By James J. Lorence. (Albany: State University of New York Press,

1996. xx + ⁴07p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.95 paper.)

 

Professor James J. Lorence's study of unionism among Michigan's unemployed

during the Great Depression will be of interest to a varied audience of readers. Of

course, labor and working class historians and regionalists will find the work to

be valuable as well. The book looks at the unemployed as a group with organiza-

tions, plans, deliberations, and factions rather than as a mass of angry individuals

who periodically formed together and rose up to challenge the status quo during the

Great Depression. Lorence places a piece in a historical puzzle by providing an

examination of the unemployed and their organizations.

By taking a regional approach, Lorence makes the study digestible.

Examinations of such complex subjects on a national level seldom allow a look at

the intricacy of organizations and politics as does this book. The professor draws

an understandable picture of the regional ethnic and sectional influences that often

determine history. While Lorence's approach provides an example of the dynam-

ics at work among the unemployed that could be transposed to many regions of the

country, he fails to make the leap in comparison, however. For example, in his

discussion of the relationship of the upper peninsula of Michigan and its rural and

extra active industrial economy with the automobile producing areas of the state,

Lorence could draw comparisons with similar relationships in other states.

Downturns in the economy of the upper peninsula led to the relocation of workers

in that region to Detroit and other manufacturing areas of Michigan. This exacer-

bated the unemployment problems in the urban areas when the depression hit.

When some reverse migration occurred, it did nothing to help the cities' problems

but only added to the plight of the upper peninsula. A similar situation existed in

Ohio, for instance, where unemployment in the extractive industries of nearby

Appalachia led to migration to Ohio's industrial belt and caused greater unem-

ployment problems after the onset of depression in Ohio. Again, reverse migra-

tion produced similar results.

While one certainly can infer from Organizing the Unemployed that events in

Michigan corresponded with those in the rest of the country in many ways, the

book could have been more useful if direct correlations were made not just to other

regions but to the nation as a whole. Fleeting mentions are made of unemployed

movements in other parts of the United States, but solid connections between de-

velopments in Michigan and the rest of the nation are absent. This is especially

curious considering Professor Lorence's lengthy discussion of activism among

displaced workers within the Works Progress Administration.

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                         91

 

Overall, however, the book is an important addition to the scholarship of the

era, the region, and labor and social activism. Lorence ably tracks Michigan's un-

employed through the early Great Depression years when Communist and Socialist

groups courted the unemployed through relief programs sponsored through unem-

ployed Councils and the Workers Alliance. In these early depression years, such

movements had the face of social activism. Factional rivalries added to the inabil-

ity of these political groups to attract the true allegiance of many of the unem-

ployed, who were largely interested in the relief efforts. With the advent of the

WPA in 1935, the Workers Alliance, mostly controlled by Socialists after their

battle with the Communists for influence over the unemployed, took advantage of

the organization of the government agency to give more structure to its own ef-

forts. The WPA helped to bring unemployed workers under a ready-made umbrella

organization. However, the WPA also forestalled the radical activism of some fac-

tions of the unemployed groups. Workers in the WPA no longer were truly unem-

ployed, and drastic social change made less sense. When the United Auto Workers

was legitimized in 1937, many of the unemployed enjoyed the brotherhood of that

union as out-of-work auto workers. The UAW reached out to the unemployed, and

the resulting sense of belonging in a labor organization weakened the usefulness

of the leftist political movements, which preyed upon the unemployed workers'

sense of exclusion from society.

No historian of these times and of the labor movement can afford to pass over

this book. It gives a new perspective to the Great Depression and organized labor

through a refreshing regional approach and use of an impressive body of primary

materials.

 

Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor     Randall S. Gooden

 

 

James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest. By Michael P. Malone. (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. xiv + 306p; illustrations, bibliographic

essay, index. $14.95 paper.)

 

The Oklahoma Western Biographies series seeks to illuminate the lives of no-

table westerners and explicate trends in the development of the American west.

Malone's interpretive study of James J. Hill fulfills both objectives. Relying

primarily on secondary sources, Malone strives to depict objectively Hill's many

interests and activities.

Lucidly telling the story of Hill's rise from humble small-town Canadian ori-

gins to international prominence and wealth as a railroad builder and investor,

Malone demonstrates how Hill rationally integrated functions first in riverboat

commerce and then in railroads. He credits Hill's determination, hard work, inno-

vativeness and talented subordinates for his success. Hill's genius lay in his abil-

ity to master details while fashioning a broad vision and strategy to achieve that

vision. Early on he found powerful mentors and later skillfully built alliances

with people of mutual interests. To tell a balanced story, Malone does not short-

change those aspects of Hill's character which led him to engage in unethical ac-

tivities and to behave in a ruthless and domineering manner.

Hill built his railroads and spearheaded the development of the trans-

Mississippi northwest with a trunk and branch system. As circumstances allowed,

Hill recognized the potential for wheat fields and extended his railroad into the up-

per great plains while simultaneously recruiting immigrants into areas served by

• 14
 

92                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

his various railroads. A similar process unfolded in mining and timber areas. He

built his railroads efficiently with low grades and minimal curvature over the most

direct routes, even as this process initially meant higher up-front costs. Over the

long haul, it lowered operating costs on lines carrying heavier loads at lower rates

than his competition. Promoting a theme of community of interest and mutual de-

pendence between his railroads and the regions they served, Hill offered special

services to his customers and extracted special treatment from local and state gov-

ernments.

Malone nicely debunks the old saw that Hill built his railroad empire without

subsidy. He points out that the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad had a 2.46 million

acre land grant from the Minnesota territorial legislature and that Hill successfully

lobbied to get legislation which allowed him to keep the land grant when he took

control of the bankrupt line. Hill also lobbied successfully to get the Army Corps

of Engineers to improve the port facilities at Duluth. The northern terminus of the

Saint Paul and Pacific which he came to control, Duluth also became the home port

for Hill's Northern Steamship Line. The Federal government also helped the

"Empire Builder" build the Great Northern Railroad when Congress passed and

President Cleveland signed legislation giving Hill a right-of-way through the

Highline reservation lands and three military reserves in Montana. To win gov-

ernmental support for his various projects, Hill regularly financially supported

politicians who served his interests. After the Democrats fused with the Populists

he openly joined forces with Mark Hanna in raising huge sums of money for the

new McKinley Republican party.

Malone's work admirably gets beyond the Captain of Industry-Robber Baron

debate. He follows the business history model developed by Alfred D. Chandler

but also extends that model to show how the state interacted with business inter-

ests to develop public policy. In the area of international business history he ex-

plores  transportation  and  financial connections  between  Americans  and

Canadians. He also examines Hill's prescient efforts to establish commercial

links with Japanese shipping interests and tells the story of Hill's failed efforts to

get government support for his Pacific merchant fleet.

One weakness of this otherwise fine work is the scant attention paid to the bur-

geoning fields of labor and personnel policy history. This is especially glaring

given the role played by the Federal government in the wake of the Pullman strike.

Also, unfortunately the book lacks notes and a bibliography.

 

University of Cincinnati, Raymond Walters College          James E. Cebula

 

 

For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War. By James M.

McPherson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.    237p.; notes, ap-

pendix, notes on sources, index. $25.00.)

 

In For Cause & Comrades Professor James McPherson explores the combat mo-

tivation of Civil War soldiers, a subject which has attracted historians since Bell

I. Wiley's pioneering volumes, The Life of Johnny Reb (1943) and The Life of

Billy Yank (1952). Researchers who have struggled to puzzle out the handwriting

of some the veterans of the 1860s will readily appreciate McPherson's achieve-

ment. His work draws on an impressive number of letters and diaries, representing

more than 1,000 soldiers, 647 Federals and 429 Confederates. The author of

Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson brings an unsurpassed understanding of the

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                           93

 

fundamental issues of the Civil War to the analysis of these primary sources. He

also shows his command of the secondary literature on combat motivation during

the War Between the States, and other conflicts. His text, essay on sources, and

endnotes guide the reader to important works by John Keegan, Reid Mitchell,

Gerald Linderman, S.L.A. Marshall, and others.

For Cause & Comrades concludes that "duty, honor, patriotism, and ideology

functioned as the principal sustaining motivations of Civil War soldiers" (p.

131). During the 1860s, McPherson argues, "patriotism was not the last refuge of

the scoundrel; it was the credo of the fighting soldier" (p. 103). He realizes that

since the Vietnam War-indeed, since World War I--Americans have had difficulty

believing that troops could be motivated by ideals. Having acknowledged this,

McPherson counsels against transferring our twentieth century assumptions to the

values of Civil War volunteers. "Our cynicism about the genuineness of such sen-

timents is more our problem than theirs," he contends, "a temporal/cultural barrier

we must transcend if we are to understand why they fought...  And how smugly

can we sneer at their expressions of a willingness to die for those beliefs when we

know that they did precisely that?" (p. 100).

McPherson's assertion that patriotism helped Civil War soldiers sustain their

ordeal runs counter to other recent works, in particular Gerald Linderman's

Embattled Courage; The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (1987).

Linderman concluded that the volunteers of 1861 carried romantic notions into

their first combats, but as the bloody conflict dragged on, they became disillu-

sioned and abandoned their initial ideals. McPherson concedes that the late war

letters of some soldiers have a negative tone, but believes that these writings usu-

ally come from conscripts, substitutes, and bounty men. He argues that, in con-

trast to these reluctant warriors, the reliable members of the regiments which saw

the hardest service were sustained by their patriotism until the decision was ren-

dered in the spring of 1865. "For the fighting soldiers who enlisted in 1861 and

1862," McPherson insists, "the values of duty and honor remained a crucial com-

ponent of their sustaining motivation to the end" (p. 168). He emphasizes that

both sides withstood unrelenting hardships during the campaigns of 1864 and that

the morale of the beleaguered South collapsed only at the painful conclusion of the

war.

Readers of this journal will be interested in McPherson's treatment of Ohio sol-

diers. He estimates that the state provided about 11.8 percent of the Union ranks,

and Ohioans represent roughly the same percentage in his sample of Federal sol-

diers. Among the Buckeyes quoted in For Cause & Comrades are members of one

cavalry, one heavy artillery, and at least twenty infantry regiments. The book

closes with a quotation from a letter written by a captain of the Forty-seventh

Ohio.

 

Air Force History Support Office                         Perry D. Jamieson

 

 

Making Peace with the 60s. By David Burner. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1996. 295p.; illustrations, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

 

While David Burner's title is clever, it hardly reflects the actual tone of the

book. Burner is anything but at peace with the '60s. Rather he depicts an era that

began with the promise of an inclusive society based on New Deal liberalism and

ended with social segmentation, incivility, and the decline of liberalism. In ex-

• 16
 

94                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

plaining such declension, Burner, a student of Richard Hofstadter, seeks to provide

the same kind of provocative interpretation of the 1960s as his mentor did in the

Age of Reform.

The topics covered by Burner are familiar: the civil rights movement, black

power, the cold war under Kennedy, the counter culture, the student rebellion, the

war on poverty, and Vietnam. Yet through the book runs a common motif. By

1960 New Deal liberalism, with its confidence in social science and technology

and its commitment to legal formalities, had lost vitality and needed repair. The

early movements of the 1960s-civil rights under King, campus protest under

Mario Savio, and even SDS at the time of the Port Huron Statement-had the po-

tential of providing that revitalization through injections of moral action and par-

ticipatory democracy. Instead, each spewed forth an antagonist to New Deal liber-

alism-black separatism and its culture of victimization, student incivility and

anti-intellectualism, and leftist political correctness and self-indulgence. These

forces undermined New Deal liberalism and produced much of the social pathology

Burner sees in the nation today.

Making Peace with the 60s would be a hard volume to review no matter how

many words allotted. It contains many insights the two chapters on the civil

rights movement and black power are among the best short treatments on the sub-

ject that I have read (even if Burner must passionately entitle the latter chapter

"Killers of the Dream"). But it also contains much silliness and many faults. It is

plain silliness to write: "Had the New Left supported Humphrey, he might have

been the victor" in 1968 (p. 214). How many votes did the New Left amount to?

What of Nixon's highly successful southern strategy (not discussed)? Had not the

die already been cast before the Democratic National Convention? Burner fails to

provide a rich context for understanding the sixties. For all his eloquence, Burner

does not go much beyond Kris Kristoferson's "Marvin Middleclass" who, dis-

traught over social developments, could only "blame it on the Stones." Burner's

villains are ideological New Leftists, male-hating feminists, and black power ad-

vocates. He provides no meaningful analysis of racism, consumerism, or conser-

vatism in the 1960. (Remember, for instance, that in Ohio in 1962 James

Rhodes, who ran on the slogan that profit was not a dirty word, trounced incum-

bent liberal governor Mike DiSalle and started his legendary reign.) Burner like-

wise leaves unexamined changes in family structure, divorce, and employment.

Nor is there any attempt to understand what "played" outside of elitist circles.

Clearly the residents of Springfield, Ohio (at the time the demographic center of

the nation), knew little and perhaps cared less about the goings-on at Berkeley or

Columbia or that Jerry Rubin predicted that the Pentagon would levitate. And fi-

nally, Burner fails to explain how New Left vices became commonplace within the

larger culture. If political correctness was born of the marriage of bra-burning

feminists and unshaven radicals, how is it that it got incorporated into mainstream

society and institutions? Are school principals who expel seven-year old boys for

kissing seven-year old girls aged New Leftists? Are all college presidents who

create Black Student Unions closet radicals from the late 60s? Burner needs to dig

deeper and explain more.

Let me end by noting that if the above review seems discombobulated, try the

book. But try it! It's a trip!

 

The Ohio State University                              Warren R. Van Tine

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                         95

 

Labor Market Politics and the Great War: The Department of Labor, the States, and

the First U.S. Employment Service, 1907-1933. By William J. Breen. (Kent,

Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1997. xix + ²³³p.; notes, essay on

sources, index. $35.00.)

 

Exploring how World War I shaped the evolution of the United States

Employment Service (USES), Breen focuses on the Department of Labor's efforts

to establish control over the placement of unskilled workers in the national labor

market and the resistance to centralized control by the states and various interest

groups. Examining the role of the government in state building, he concludes that

in labor market regulation, it was public officials confronting the wartime crisis

rather than interest groups who took the lead.

With the Department of Labor's mandate to promote the welfare of wage earners

and advance their opportunities for profitable employment, in 1914 Secretary of

Labor William B. Wilson transformed the Bureau of Immigration's Division of

Information into the USES. In late 1917 President Wilson provided additional

emergency funding. Once the war ended, the Department of Labor lacked the polit-

ical support for statutory existence and permanent funding.

They failed because of the nature of federalism, the administrative struggles in

wartime Washington, and the lack of administrative capacity in the Department of

Labor. Without detailed statistical information about labor markets, wartime pol-

icy decisions forced the USES to turn to experts from the American Association of

Public Employment Offices, state employment programs, and various advisory

boards for information to implement policies. Breen shows how the success of

the Ohio employment program developed in 1917 by Fred Croxton led to a federal-

ist system of employment offices during the labor emergency of the Summer and

Fall of 1918.

Bureaucratic opposition, led by Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, pre-

vented legislation that would have permanently federalized the USES and bring it

under the oversight of an advisory committee with representatives from employ-

ers, employees, and the public. Breen is unclear if the opposition to the advisory

committee was to protect the Department of Labor's control of the program, or if

it was a fundamental policy disagreement over the role of the USES during strikes.

The Seattle experiment, in which the USES provided labor for the Emergency

Fleet Corporation in conjunction with the metal trade unions, brought charges

that the USES was controlled by unionists.  Labor Department administrators

countered that the labor market effectively created a union shop environment, pro-

ductivity increased, and contracts were being met. Charges that the agency was

not neutral raised questions about the Department's capacity to administer a na-

tional employment program. This was no small issue. The war revitalized the

American labor movement and the policies of the National War Labor Board facili-

tated unionization. Between 1917 and 1920 union membership grew by almost 70

percent and strike activity during the postwar reconstruction was at its highest in

American history.

Secretary Wilson did not believe the USES should supply labor during a strike

and he rejected oversight committees. The state employment services usually ad-

vised job applicants that a strike was in progress. By not compromising on these

issues, in Breen's view, Wilson missed an opportunity to get legislation estab-

lishing the USES along federalist lines. Instead, the USES muddled through the

war and failed to get adequate funding during the postwar reconstruction.

• 18
 

96                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Lacking statutory existence, the USES remained a minor organization until

1933. The Wagner-Peyser Act gave it a clear mission to establish and maintain a

system of public employment offices in the states, set minimum standards, pro-

mote uniform statistical procedures, and maintain a labor clearing house between

the states.

Breen tells "a tale of an attempt at state building . . . that failed" (p. xviii). This

is bureaucratic history with close attention to bureaucratic politics, but social is-

sues are hardly touched upon. This is troubling. As Melvyn Dubofsky observes in

The State and Labor in Modern America (1994), p.236, "no sharp line ever sepa-

rated state from society...."  A more realistic explanation of why the USES

limped along until the Great Depression is that the elections of 1918 and 1920

brought to power elected officials and administrators who rejected an activist fed-

eral government in general, and Department of Labor in particular.

 

University of Cincinnati                                 James E. Cebula

Raymond Walters College

 

 

Lyndon Johnson's War: America's Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968. By

Michael H. Hunt. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996. ix + 146p.; maps, notes,

recommended reading, index. $18.00.)

 

In this short work, Michael H. Hunt writes to exorcise the "ghost" of Vietnam

that has haunted him and the nation since 1975 (p. ix). Hunt poses the question

that has persisted from the late 1960s to this day: why did the United States wage

war in Vietnam? As his title suggests, Hunt contends that "Lyndon Johnson must

bear the primary responsibility for the Vietnam war" (p. 106).

Before taking up the issue of Johnson's culpability, Hunt reviews American in-

volvement in Indochina from 1945 through the assassination of John F.

Kennedy. Ignorance and paternalism shaped the Indochinese policy of Harry S

Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as both presidents all too easily responded to

turmoil in Vietnam by interpreting conflict there as part of the Cold War. The

American response, although limited, sought to stem the tide of expansive com-

munism. So began our commitment to the Republic of Vietnam. Hunt then as-

sesses Ho Chi Minh's efforts to unite the country under the Democratic Republic

of Vietnam (DRV). Ho's reliance on a Leninist-style Communist party, innate

Vietnamese nationalism, and a populist program of rural reform gave the DRV a

capacity to wage a struggle the southern republic could not counter.

Hunt then returns to the United States to evaluate the Kennedy administration.

The avid, can-do Cold War whiz kids under the dynamic JFK receive yet another

telling. All were eager to turn back Communist aggression, but Kennedy, if not

his national security advisors, displayed a reluctance to commit fully in Vietnam.

Hunt does not maintain that JFK was on the verge of leaving Indochina when he

died but does assert that he "seems to have developed second thoughts" late in

1963 (p. 68).

It is at this juncture, halfway through the book, that Lyndon Johnson appears.

Hunt devotes his longest chapter to explaining  why Vietnam  was Lyndon

Johnson's War. Simply put, unlike his predecessors, Johnson proclaimed his in-

tent to win in Vietnam, then committed American air power and ground combat

troops in an escalating effort to win through force of arms.  Vietnam  was

Johnson's war because LBJ was willing to go for victory. However, the long train

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                         97

 

of American ignorance of Vietnam, our cultural arrogance, paternalism, and Cold

War simple-mindedness led the usually shrewd Johnson to overreach himself and

engage in a disastrous war.

There is little to quibble with in Hunt's basic argument. It is particularly strong

on the cultural arrogance and ignorance of American policy makers. Strength ap-

pears as well in the chapter examining Ho Chi Minh's mobilization of the

Democratic Republic of Vietnam. However, one wonders what audience Hunt and

his publisher aimed to serve with this book. It is too generalized, drawing almost

wholly on published documents and a few secondary works, to offer something

new to scholars or well-read lay persons. Conversely, the book is too brief to

serve an undergraduate audience. The book offers a conventional treatment, offer-

ing no new information or interpretive insights.

In the end, Hunt even weakens his central thesis that the war belonged to

Lyndon Johnson. He describes Johnson's personal traits, beliefs, and leadership

style, depicting a man eager to make hard decisions. Yet after this long explica-

tion, Hunt backtracks and contends that as a prisoner of American culture, Cold

War thinking, and his own macho values, Johnson could not have done otherwise.

Vietnam, the author suddenly argues, "was also America's war, a national crusade

whose sources transcended one man" (p. 107). The reader is left wondering, which

should Hunt's title be, Lyndon Johnson's War or American Culture's War?

 

University of Missouri-St. Louis                            Jerry Cooper

 

 

The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872.  By Lou Falkner

Williams. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. xiii + 197p.; illus-

trations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

 

If the Civil War was about the enslavement of African Americans,

Reconstruction defined how far they might stray from that status. White southern-

ers, insulted by the dilemma of having to deal politically with former slaves and

desirous of restoring control to white men of property and education, resisted

northern efforts to uplift the freedmen. When Republicans passed the Thirteenth,

Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, white Southerners reacted violently.  In

nine northern counties in South Carolina the Ku Klux Klan responded by intimi-

dating and terrorizing black men and women. Although the Republican majority

in Congress passed Enforcement Acts to halt such activities in all parts of the

South and successfully prosecuted a range of participants, Lou Falkner Williams

offers us a tale of how white southerners shaped the legal interpretations of these

laws and blunted federal power to create a full citizenship for the African American

male.

In The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872, Williams exam-

ines the arguments of both prosecution and defense and the constitutional question

of what impact the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments might have

on federal-state relations. She portrays these cases as an opportunity for prosecu-

tors to use the recently passed federal amendments to guarantee the application of

the Bill of Rights to African Americans, and to assert federal power to protect any

citizen, in any state, from the violation of that protection. Defense lawyers, on

the other hand, countered with the traditional view that the Bill of Rights pro-

tected citizens against federal, not state, actions, and that the new amendments, as

well as the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, did not apply to the lack of state

• 20
 

98                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

action against private citizens who deprived blacks of their rights. They also ar-

gued that the states defined who could vote, and, thereby, that the Fifteenth

Amendment applied only to deliberate state actions to deny suffrage on a basis of

race, not to the actions of private individuals. The outcome of these cases, as well

as the limited review given them by the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court,

rested on a narrow interpretation that the federal government could outlaw con-

spiracies to deprive people of their right to vote on a basis of their race only.

This interpretation provided northern Republicans with face-saving convictions

that temporarily ended the violence, and southern lawyers and their supporters

with decisions that restricted the power of the federal government to provide the

full rights of citizenship for the freedmen.

Williams has offered a textured interpretation of this southern victory. It was

not merely southern intransigence, but also practical problems, such as the depar-

ture of the leaders of these atrocities to other countries, the plea bargaining neces-

sary to obtain witnesses, the idiosyncrasies of the cases available to prosecute,

and the large number of potential prosecutions, that circumscribed the federal

prosecutors. Williams also adeptly analyzes the assortment of federal officials

involved, their backgrounds, and the differentiated approaches that they took to-

ward prosecution of these crimes based on legal strategy and political considera-

tions. In the final analysis, though, it was the replacement of the Attorney

General Amos T. Ackerman with George H. Williams, a Grant appointee much in

sympathy with Southern attitudes, that stymied efforts to present legal arguments

for the expansion of federal power. Even had Ackerman remained in office, how-

ever, the Slaughterhouse and Cruikshank cases of 1873 and 1874 indicated that he

could not have won the argument.

This well-written and well-organized book is intended for the specialized reader

in legal history. It successfully places the numerous constitutional questions and

arguments within the intolerant social and political context of the post-emancipa-

tion South. Its basic theme is available, however, in several shorter articles pub-

lished in Civil War History and the Georgia Journal of Southern Legal History.

 

Youngstown State University                           William D. Jenkins

 

 

Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Culture. Edited by Richard

Aquila. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1996. x + 313p.; illustra-

tions, notes, suggestions for further reading, contributors, index. $29.95.)

 

No region has been more prominent in American mass culture than the West. In

Wanted Dead or Alive, ten historians explore western imagery in American fic-

tion, performance, film, television, music, painting and advertising.

Each of the authors offers intelligent chronologies; some rely heavily on sec-

ondary accounts, some provide much more. Ray White's fascinating exploration

of the B Western, the cheap theatrical films of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, is one

of the few scholarly studies of what was a Hollywood staple. The B Western,

White argues, engaged in racial and gender stereotyping, though Native Americans

fared comparatively well. At the same time, the B Western showed little regard for

the rule of law. Indeed, the typical B Western hero often had to circumvent the le-

gal system to achieve justice. Richard Aquila's essay on the image of the West in

popular music is especially effective at conveying one of the collection's main

themes. Once celebratory of Western history and the West as a place, songwriters

• 21
 

Book Reviews                                                         99

 

beginning in the 1960s engaged in a revisionism  that anticipated "the new

Western history" two decades later while treating the region as paradise lost.

Similarly impressive is Elliott West's review of Western imagery in advertising,

from the earliest tourist promotions by the region's railroads to the western look

of Ralph Lauren. "The Lauren Man is a buckaroo with eastern savvy," West writes,

"Jay Gatsby in Marlboro Country" (p. 286). Most deserving of praise is Joni L.

Kinsey's analysis of popular Western visual treatments. Kinsey brilliantly recon-

structs the sources-both governmental and commercial-of nineteenth century

paintings and prints of the West. At the end of the century, Frederic Remington

led a movement that affected to realism but in truth brokered in myth making.

Throughout Wanted Dead or Alive, one theme emerges. The western image has

hardly been static, but constituted an ever changing series of representations of

dominant mores regarding gender, race and authority. As Christine Bold notes, a

woman, Ann S. Stephens, wrote one of the first dime novels about the west,

Malaeska (1860). Stephens sympathetically described the tragic plight of a

Native American woman. Very quickly, however, dime novel publishers hired

males to write stories celebrating the exploits of white men out West. "The story

of male heroism became entrenched as the dominant dime novel formula," Bold

writes (p. 23).

The collection's only serious weakness comes when some authors infer too

much from their subjects. Not content to describe mass cultural images, they must

transform them into mirrors. Although identifying popular trends in mass culture

seems fair enough, the historian must do so cautiously. A mass cultural product,

like the recent CBS TV series, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," may say more

about the creators' politics than the audience's enthusiasm for ethnic diversity and

the environment. Many viewers may watch the program not because they accept

the program's chronic political correctness, but because of its overall superiority

to the lame competition elsewhere on the dial (or remote). At the same time, the

audiences for some mass cultural enterprises may not have been representative of

the national population. Followers may have shared distinct demographic charac-

teristics. Instead of acknowledging this possibility, White declares that the B

Westerns "reflected the events, attitudes, and thinking in the 1930s and 1940s,"

Whose thinking? Whose attitudes? Were the B Westerns popular with all movie-

goers, or largely with young men and boys, often in smaller towns? In his essay,

Kenneth Bindas acknowledges that country music has appealed to lower-middle-

class whites. But he then argues that country performers "used the music to com-

ment on the tensions, fears and values of American society and culture" (p. 235).

Again, can he be so sure? Or are country musicians speaking to a subgroup?

Bindas has to have it both ways-regard part of the audience as the entire audience.

The contributors take enormous pains to discuss the latest work in Western his-

tory. Some should have taken the same care in discussing the audiences for

Western mass culture.

 

University of Wisconsin-Madison                       James L. Baughman

 

 

Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience. Edited by Robert M. Taylor, Jr., and

Connie A. McBirney. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996. xiii +

703p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, index. $39.95.)

• 22
 

100                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

"To give an accounting of the peopling" of Indiana "in all its ethnic and na-

tional variegation," the Indiana Historical Society launched projects in 1989 such

as a concert, photography contest, traveling exhibits, collecting materials for its

library, and observance of the Columbus quincentennial, all with ethnic themes.

This program culminated with the publication of Peopling Indiana, which includes

distinguished historian John Bodnar's introductory essay on "Ethnic History in

America and Indiana" and thirty historical essays by thirty-three authors address-

ing either individual ethnic groups or several closely related ones. Under this

format some fifty nationalities present in the state are profiled. The volume con-

cludes with Gregory Rose's essay on Indiana's ethnic distribution in 1850 as well

as tables and maps revealing the state's past demographic data. Enriched with his-

toric photographs and maps throughout, the volume magnificently addresses an

overlooked dimension of Indiana's past. In doing so, it should lay to rest any re-

maining assumptions-long held in Indiana-concerning the state's presumed

homogeneity within a culture of farms and small towns marked by minimal ethnic

diversity.

For this ambitious undertaking, editors Taylor and McBirney adopted They

Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups (1981) as a model and

recruited mostly Indiana-based authors to write the thirty essays on ethnic groups.

Over half the authors are trained historians with the rest drawn from other disci-

plines. Many have previously published studies on their topics, though some

contributors belong to the ethnic group but had not previously studied it. For

some ethnic groups recently arrived in the state, a capable member of that group

was recruited though not a professional scholar. The resulting essays are emi-

nently readable and informative, thereby achieving the editors' goal of avoiding

the "antiquarian or filiopietistic" as well as "esoteric and narrow scholastic" ap-

proaches.

Given the nature of a multi-authored volume and the historiographical problems

of some ethnic groups, not all essays have the same depth of interpretation or in-

sight. Scholars who have previously written on their subject's Indiana experience

produced the most valuable essays: the late Emma Lou Thornbrough on African-

Americans, James J. Divita with separate pieces on Italians and Slovenes, Giles

Hoyt on Germans-the book's longest essay-and Carl Cafouros on Greeks.

Robert Swierenga's essay on the Low Countries reflects its author's expertise with

general studies of Dutch immigrants. Other fine essays address nineteenth-century

immigrant groups such as the French, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles,

Scandinavians, Slovaks, Bulgarians/Macedonians, Serbs, and Swiss. Despite the

substantial nineteenth-century immigration from the British Isles, the essays on

English and Welsh, Scots, and Irish are groundbreaking efforts to deal with groups

whose influence was diffused across the state. In the latter essays, endnotes reveal

the creative use of biographical data from local histories in coming to terms with

ethnic experiences. Perhaps these essays may stimulate further historical writing

about these major groups. The Native Americans essay of Elizabeth Glenn and

Stewart Rafert draws from a wide range of sources on scattered peoples from pre-

historic times to the present. Another of the volume's strengths is the attention

given to groups arriving in substantial numbers only in the past half-century or

so. In this category are essays on Asian Indians, Baltic Peoples, Canadians,

Chinese, Hispanics, Japanese, Koreans, Middle Easterners, Peoples of the Pacific,

and Southeast Asians.

Peopling Indiana is a milestone in the historiography of the Hoosier state. In

addition to the breadth of its coverage and the vast amount of new information it

• 23
 

Book Reviews                                                        101

 

holds, it should serve as an impetus to further investigation of the state's ethnic

history. It joins L.C. Rudolph's encyclopedic Hoosier Faiths: A History of

Indiana's Churches and Religious Groups (1995) in revealing the great diversity of

a state once thought to have so little.

 

Indianapolis, Indiana                                   Joseph M. White

 

 

Horse Trails to Regional Rails: The Story of Public Transit in Greater Cleveland.

By James A. Toman and Blaine S.    Hays.  (Kent, Ohio:  The Kent State

University Press, 1996. xiii + 352p.; illustrations, appendix, bibliography, in-

dex. $49.00.)

 

More than any other technological advancement, public transit shaped the

physical and social landscape of modern cities. As urban America experienced

rapid and massive expansion in the mid-nineteen century, public transportation,

from horse-drawn streetcars to modern rapid-rail systems, buses, and automobiles,

became a crucial infrastructure, a necessity of daily urban life. In this respect,

Horse Trails to Regional Rails by James A. Toman and Blaine S. Hays tells the

dynamic story of public transit development in metropolitan Cleveland. The

book begins with the story of Cleveland's founding in 1796 and ends in 1995. In

between those dates, with an emphasis on rail systems, Toman and Hays present a

comprehensive history of the physical and technological development of public

transportation in Cleveland.

In the early nineteenth century, Cleveland began to grow into one of America's

great industrial cities and soon realized the need for public transportation. Along

with New York City, it was one of the first cities to experiment with street rail-

ways in the 1830s. Real public transit began when two lines established regular

street railway service in 1860: the East Cleveland Street Railway and the Kinsman

Street Railway. For the remainder of the century, horse-drawn street cars, then

electric trolleys, transported an ever-increasing number of citizens to work, home,

and play. By 1909, Cleveland had an extensive street railway network, but where

10 transit companies existed in 1884, only one was left: the Cleveland Railway

Company, locally known as "Con Con."

The portrait of public transit in the twentieth century is complicated and turbu-

lent. Competition in the form of automobiles, bus service, expressways, and the

Cleveland Hopkins Airport emerged as street railways peaked, then disappeared.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority was established in 1974 and re-

mains in control of the city's current transit network. Toman and Hays sort out

the myriad of franchises, technological improvements, administrative decisions,

economic contingencies, and transit plans that occurred during this era, and pre-

sent the key political events and technological developments.

This book possesses a number of strengths. The authors deliver a clearly-writ-

ten, solid history of the physical and technological development of public transit.

They also interweave demographic, economic, political, and architectural bench-

marks into the narrative, thereby placing transit development within the larger

context of the city's urban history. Gathered from a variety of sources, the selec-

tion of photographs is superb. To their immense credit, the 332 images displayed

show the history of Cleveland's urban life and architectural achievements, as well

as its streetcars and buses. This book was written by railway enthusiasts for rail-

• 24
 

102                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

way enthusiasts, and readers with a general interest in the history of Cleveland. In

this context, the work admirably meets its goals.

Scholars will find this book useful, but limited. Decision makers and the poli-

tics of transit operations are addressed throughout the narrative; however, the nar-

rative could be greatly enhanced with full discussions of the roles of transit em-

ployees, union development, and workforce evolution. The bibliography is mod-

est, and thin research sometimes shows itself. For example, Tom Johnson, one of

the leading characters in American urban history, as well as the political history

of Cleveland, is credited with an extra term as a congressman and establishing the

"viability" of the three-cent fare in Detroit. Regarding the latter point, while he

controlled the Detroit Citizens Street Railway in the early 1890s, Johnson fought

tenaciously against lowering the standard five-cent fare, engaging in an epic

struggle with Detroit Mayor Hazen Pingree over this issue.

Nevertheless, Horse Trails to Regional Rails provides a good history and an

outstanding visual panorama of public transportation development and urban

growth in Cleveland. Readers interested in transit, Cleveland, or urban history in

general will find this book appealing and informative.

 

Wayne State University                                  Michael 0. Smith

 

 

"We Are All Leaders": The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s. Edited by

Staughton Lynd. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. 343 p.; notes,

notes on contributors, index. $44.95 cloth; $17.95 paper.)

 

In this volume, Staughton Lynd, coeditor with Alice Lynd of the classic oral

history collection, Rank and File:  Personal Histories by  Working-Class

Organizers (1973), brings together case studies by younger scholars, scholar ac-

tivists, and relatives of former unionists and one first-person narrative memoir.

Contributors argue that community-oriented unionism growing out of working-

class social life rather than the shop floor or the union meeting hall set the stage

in the early 1930s for unions that might have provided an alternative to both job-

conscious business unionism of the American Federation of Labor and the top-

down bureaucracies of later CIO unions.

In a brief introduction, longtime labor activist Lynd defines alternative union-

ism, notes its similarity to the Industrial Workers of the World, criticizes the CIO

model, and suggests that these examples of community-based or solidarity union-

ism hold lessons for the present and the future. Rosemary Feurer traces the racial

and gender complexities of the "nutpickers" union in St. Louis which laid the

groundwork for later CIO and civil rights actions. Peter Rachleff rediscovers the

role of political radicals in the Independent Union of All Workers in Austin,

Minnesota. Janet Irons presents the general strike of 1934 as stemming from ear-

lier textile community activism and leading to national union and government

leaders' betrayal of operatives. Mark Naison suggests that the Southern Tenant

Farmers Union erred in allying with CIO radicals, thus betraying poverty-stricken

cotton farmers. Eric Davin develops a stunning picture of independent labor polit-

ical action between 1934 and 1936   in Akron, Ohio, and New Bedford,

Massachusetts, as a once-viable alternative to labor's alliance with the New Deal

Democrats. Elizabeth Faue summarizes her earlier work on how bureaucratic

unionism displaced community activism and working women's autonomy in the

Minneapolis labor movement. Michael Kozura details the rise of bootleg mining

• 25
 

Book Reviews                                                        103

 

in eastern Pennsylvania, one of the few examples of worker expropriation of

property in U.S. history, to argue that family and community concerns led unem-

ployed anthracite miners to engage in radical class action. In perhaps the best-re-

searched, written, and argued essay, John Borsos clarifies the role of local mili-

tants in Barberton, Ohio, in building federal local unions within the American

Federation of Labor into local solidarity unions. Stan Weir provides a first-person

memoir of a 1943 job action aboard the freighter S.S. Hanapepe inspired by two

veterans of the 1934 maritime general strike on the West Coast.

As historical interpretation, these essays make a good start for modifying exist-

ing interpretations of working-class activism prior to the CIO industrial union

drives of the 1936-1937 and 1941 periods. In the best essays Feurer, Rachleff,

Davin, Kozura, and Borsos build on careful research to suggest that the relation-

ships among worker discontent, rank and file militancy and leadership, the inter-

play of ideological radicals and pragmatic activists long rooted in their communi-

ties, and the key place of federal labor unions as transition institutions between

the old and the new unionism need much more examination. Yet the element of

presentism implicit in the introduction and in several of the essays by scholar ac-

tivists seems as thoroughly based in a contemporary secular faith in the transfor-

mative power of community class consciousness regardless of race, ethnicity, re-

ligion, gender, age, and employer power as the older labor history's focus on

pragmatic, job consciousness. Perhaps most importantly, these essays suggest a

contingency to working people's lives in the 1930s which may spark a renewed

interest in how ordinary Americans survived hard times with dignity, respect, and

a sense of their own agency as family members, citizens, and participants in a

democratic republican society.

 

Tennessee Technological University                      Patrick D. Reagan

 

 

George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy. By James A. Bill. (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. ix + 274p; illustrations, notes, bibliogra-

phy, index. $30.00.)

 

James A. Bill's study of George Wildman Ball has the apt subtitle Behind the

Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy. Given Ball's long service in a variety of subcabi-

net positions and his backstage involvement in numerous important national and

international causes, such a descriptive phrase is indeed fitting. Bill makes clear

at the outset that this is not a conventional biography; it does not pretend to

comprehensive coverage of every aspect of Ball's life. Rather, Bill provides in-

troductory chapters on Ball's personal and professional roots and devotes the bulk

of the book to a series of case studies that focus on Ball's work in foreign policy-

making. The book concludes with an interesting and provocative essay that

makes the case for what Bill calls phronesis, "a practical wisdom that involves the

selection of the proper means to achieve a good or moral end" (p. 203). Much of

this material will be familiar to students and scholars of American foreign policy.

Ball's opposition to American involvement in Vietnam while undersecretary of

state during the Johnson administration is well known, as is his support for

European integration and his membership in the transatlantic Bilderberg Group.

Ball's career as a lawyer with Lehman Brothers, his longtime friendship with Adlai

Stevenson (he was deeply involved in the Illinoisan's 1952 and 1956 presidential

campaigns), and his disdain for Richard Nixon have also received coverage in the

• 26
 

104                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

literature. Nevertheless, Bill manages to add new insights regarding these aspects

of Ball's life, particularly insofar as they illustrate the latter's overall view of for-

eign policymaking and public life in general.

Bill also introduces the reader to several not-so-familiar episodes that took

place on the sidelines and out of the limelight but that illustrate the kind of

"sensitive, courageous, prescient, and prudent leadership" that Ball represented (p.

xvii).  One such episode was Ball's defense of Henry Wallace before the

McCarthyite McCarran Committee in 1951, a task that Ball accepted after "every

[other] competent lawyer in [Washington]" refused to become involved. Bill de-

scribes Ball's willingness to defend Wallace as "courageous" and reports the sin-

cere appreciation it netted Ball from Joseph Alsop and others in the liberal com-

munity (p. 43). Another little-known but highly significant episode in Ball's life

was his quiet, behind-the-scenes intervention to rescue Harper's magazine during

the early 1980s. As was his wont, Ball kept his involvement in saving Harper's a

secret, even from his family and close associates. He took up the cause because it

was the right thing to do, not because of any personal accolades he might receive.

The steadfast devotion to doing the right thing regardless of the personal cost or

lack of recognition that both of these episodes reveal lies at the heart of the

phronesis that Bill ascribes to Ball.

Bill's conclusion, in which he compares Ball's phronesis style of statecraft to

the realpolitik practiced by Henry Kissinger, is the most original portion of the

book. It lays out Bill's generally favorable assessment of Ball's more than four

decades in public life and offers prescriptive guidelines for present and future poli-

cymakers based on Ball's example. Bill does not commit the common mistake of

biographers who idolize their subjects. His Ball does have faults, most notably

Eurocentrism, elitism, a tendency toward dogmatism and stubbornness, and an

ability to be manipulative within the bureaucratic context. That Bill can recog-

nize Ball's shortcomings and still pronounce him "a leader of prudence and wis-

dom" (p. 232) is a mark of how well this book succeeds as a balanced look at one

of this century's most influential shapers of American foreign policy. Specialists

as well as general readers would do well to give it a reading.

 

Kent State University                                   Mary Ann Heiss

 

 

Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940.  By Brian

McAllister Linn. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

xvi + ³⁴³p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $39.95.)

 

In Guardians of Empire, Brian Linn focuses on the U.S. Army's efforts to defend

Hawaii and the Philippines from both internal and external threats. Linn also

provides a fascinating social history of the Pacific Army, reminiscent of Edward

Coffman's fine work on the Old Army of the nineteenth century. Viewing the

army that James Jones depicted in From Here to Eternity through scholarly eyes,

Linn presents an engaging survey of polo playing officers and their enlisted sub-

ordinates in an army that devoted much of its time to sports, sex, and the spit and

polish of the parade ground.

The book begins with a superb summary of the 1899-1902 Philippine War,

blending the latest in secondary scholarship with a vast body of primary material.

In describing the relationship between the war and the Army's postwar pacifica-

tion efforts, Linn notes both the long period of transition to stability and the wide

• 27
 

Book Reviews                                                        105

 

variety of the Army's work in the islands. Internal security concerns in the

Philippines and Hawaii that led to the rejection of proposals for creating a

"native" colonial army exacerbated the problems of insular defense for decades.

Although Army officers recognized the dangers inherent in the growth of

Japanese power and Philippine vulnerability, disagreements between the Army

and the Navy, as well as within the Army, made defense planning difficult. The

exposed nature of the Philippine position made the problem insoluble. The Army

could never create adequate defenses because it lacked the manpower, resources, and

support required.

With only limited coordination between Washington and Pacific commanders,

the latter often went their own way in planning despite the absence of the support

needed to bring their defense plans to fruition. The supposed advantages of air

power led some Americans to be overly optimistic about the chances of defending

their insular possessions, and when plans to abandon the Philippines were over-

turned in 1941, the stage for disaster was set.

Although the Japanese attack on the Philippines was foreshadowed in Army as-

sessments in the 1920s and 30s, work to defeat it never moved far beyond the the-

oretical. While the Army focused in the 1930s on Hawaiian defense, confusion

reigned in the Philippines, where the Army remained "a hollow deterrent" (p.

245).

Linn makes an excellent case that more could have been done to defend the

Pacific empire, but one wonders if the problems noted actually needed solving be-

fore the 1930s. Earlier threats seem more imagined than real, and from 1902 to

the mid-1930s the Pacific Army provided colonial security at a very low cost. The

case for better planning, greater manpower, and more financial support for insular

defense is convincing only for the last decade preceding the Japanese attack.

Linn's extensive research is impressive, and his conclusions are thoroughly

documented by references to a wide variety of sources, ranging from recent inter-

views and correspondence to archival and manuscript materials in libraries

throughout the U.S. and in the Philippines. One may question the value of remi-

niscences some fifty or more years after the fact, but such sources represent only a

small fraction of the material supporting Linn's argument.

Individuals desiring to understand the disasters that befell the United States in

the Pacific at the start of World War II will find this very readable book a good

place to begin. Veterans of the Pacific Army should enjoy Linn's engaging com-

mentary on that force's "distinct social milieu" (p. 51), and Ohio readers can take

some pride in the fact that Professor Linn is a product of Ohio State's excellent

graduate program in military history.

 

The College of Wooster                                     John M. Gates

 

 

Medical Histories of Union Generals. By Jack D. Welsh, M.D. (Kent, Ohio: The

Kent State University Press, 1996. xx + 422p.; appendix, glossary, bibliogra-

phy, index. $35.00.)

 

Over 350,000 Union soldiers lost their lives during the Civil War, but only

one-third of these deaths were combat related. The remaining 225,000 soldier

deaths resulted from six million cases of illness from disease and accidents. What

conditions prevailed among the leaders of the Union troops during the Civil War?

In the general literature of the Civil War, medical events are usually mentioned

• 28
 

106                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

only because they forced an officer to leave the field or prompted a change in

command. Since the author of this book is a retired physician, he wanted to know

more about the conditions of the general officers and the details of their medical

problems and the outcome of their conditions.

Dr. Welsh probed a number of primary sources of health conditions for the 583

Union generals included in this book. He found that his best sources were reports

of Civil War service, the registers of the Cadet Hospital at the U. S. Military

Academy, and requests for retirement and pension applications. In some cases the

only sources of information were autobiographies, letters and diaries. The author

did not limit the medical histories of Union generals to the period of the Civil

War. Rather, he attempted to trace a complete, life-long medical history for each

general officer, but successfully located prewar health conditions for less than half

of the generals.

Welsh was the author of a book entitled Medical Histories of Confederate

Generals which was published in 1995. The medical information about the 425

Confederate general officers is less complete than the information about the

Union generals, since much of the Confederate medical information was destroyed

with the burning of Richmond late in the Civil War. It is interesting to note that

ninety-six [22.6 percent] of the Confederate generals died during the Civil War,

while only sixty-eight [11.5 percent] of the Union generals died during the con-

flict. Seventy-seven [18.1 percent] of the Confederate generals were killed in ac-

tion or died of their wounds, and only forty-eight [8.2 percent] of the Union gen-

erals suffered the same fate.

The pre-Civil War medical data for the Union generals revealed that sixty-eight

had been wounded and ten of these were wounded twice. Forty-six were wounded in

Mexico and fourteen by Indians. Unlike the Confederate generals, twelve of whom

had received wounds from duels or fights, only two future Union generals suffered

such injuries. Nearly half of the Union generals had one or more nonfatal wounds

during the Civil War. About 20 percent of the Union generals had accidents,

which were usually associated with a horse. The horse was frequently shot from

under the rider and fell upon him, or the horse fell in a bad jump. Many of these

accidents resulted in injuries serious enough to cause the general to be away from

the field.

Three quarters of the total group of Union generals had recorded medical ill-

nesses during the Civil War. These illnesses were usually diarrhea, dysentery,

fever, debility, rheumatism, respiratory  complaints, typhoid  and malaria.

Although excessive alcohol consumption was not uncommon among the Union

generals, it was not possible for the author to label any of the generals as alco-

holics on the basis of the available information.

The author feels that medical practice of the Civil War did not provide a signifi-

cant improvement in the general medical care of veterans and civilians. He argues

that there were improvements in military medicine, particularly in logistics and in

the treatment of trauma, while the experience gained in the use of aesthetics al-

lowed more complicated surgery. However, the concept of scientific evaluation of

medical therapy had not been developed.

The author acknowledges that the medical histories of Union generals, as was

the case with their Confederate counterparts, are incomplete, but still present a

picture of dedication to their beliefs, in spite of suffering from illness or wounds.

What is the utility of this book? It provides a quick reference for the medical

conditions of Union generals in the Civil War. It is likely that readers will obtain

new information about the health conditions during the Civil War of most any

• 29
 

Book Reviews                                                          107

 

Union general they find in this reference. In a number of cases, the medical condi-

tions of individuals before and after the war are set forth. While this is strictly a

reference volume, it is a very useful publication for those who have a continuing

interest in the Civil War.

 

The Ohio State University                            Robert W. McCormick

 

 

Whitaker Chambers: A Biography. By Sam Tanenhaus. (New York: Random

House, 1997. xiv + 638p. illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $35.00.)

 

Few Americans in public life have ever experienced the agonies of Whittaker

Chambers. From his youth, it appears, he was never a man at peace. In turn a ro-

mantic poet, political revolutionary, and religious pilgrim, Chambers has aptly

been called by Arthur Koestler "the most misunderstood person of our time." The

major witness in two of the most celebrated spy trials of this century, he achieved

lasting fame as the accuser of Alger Hiss.  Yet he deserves recognition for an

equally significant reason as well. Put quite simply, Chambers was a master of ex-

pository prose, and his Time magazine portraits of Marian Anderson and Reinhold

Niebuhr remain classics of their genre.

Fortunately we have a biographer, Sam Tanenhaus, equal to his subject. A pro-

fessional writer by trade, Tanenhaus shows empathy without internalizing

Chambers's politics or his behavior. The work is one of great sensitivity and ex-

hibits extensive scholarship as well. Indeed the research is awesome: the papers

of Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon, Time magazine, liberal anti-Communist Herbert

Solow, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Soviet intelligence; extensive in-

terviews, including Chambers's son John; courtroom records: government testi-

mony taken in executive session.

Tanenhaus ably conveys the instability of Chambers's background. Chambers

grew up in Lynbrook, a Long Island suburb, of a most unstable family: his father

was a drifting magazine illustrator often absent from home, his mother a failed ac-

tress ever avoiding bill collectors, and his brother a college dropout who killed

himself at age 22.  By age 31 Chambers had laid rails in Washington, D.C.,

dropped out of Columbia University, helped staff the newspaper room of the New

York Public Library, traveled as a hobo in the Far West, and served on the editorial

board of the Communist weekly, New Masses.  In his thirties Chambers left maga-

zine work to serve as a key operative in the Soviet espionage apparatus. His was

the sordid world of clandestine encounters, forged passports, and assumed identi-

ties, and brief homosexual liaisons as well.

In 1938, when he broke with the Communists, he was happily married and the

father of two children. At the time, writes Tanenhaus, his knowledge of Soviet

spy activity was unparalleled. As a top staffer for Henry Luce's Time, Chambers

became influential in determining the news weekly's policy and, as foreign editor,

he did not hesitate to dismiss accounts of correspondents he found too pro-

Communist. Indeed Tanenhaus finds Chambers more correct on world develop-

ments than those field journalists whose dispatches he ignored.

Much of the book centers on the Hiss case, in which Tanenhaus catches the his-

torical actors in one lie after another. Contrary to Nixon's claim in his Six Crises

(1962), it was not Chambers who first introduced the congressman to the name of

Alger Hiss. Chambers later said that in 1948 he had never intended to implicate

• 30
 

108                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Hiss, a patent untruth. Tanenhaus finds Hiss 's lies so blatant that he is surprised

that anyone could ignore such damning evidence.

In the course of his narrative Tanenhaus brings many salient facts to the fore.

To break with Communist espionage in 1938 was no light matter, for Stalin had

ordered the execution of some major defectors. There was little need for many of

the underground precautions, for American counterespionage scarcely existed.

Similarly State Department security procedures were notoriously lax.  Despite

Hiss's polished demeanor, his own background was hardly less marginal than

Chambers's. Chambers's moving autobiography Witness showed how much of a

Bolshevik he remained, not in his objectives but in his entire mind cast. After

briefly supporting Joe McCarthy, Chambers moved to the political center, acqui-

escing in Eisenhower Republicanism.

The biography has some minor factual errors. The Freeman that was founded in

1950 was not the same one founded in 1920 by Albert Jay Nock, and Senator

Millard Tydings (Dem.-Md.) was in political trouble long before Joe McCarthy

began his attack. All in all, however, Tanenhaus offers a first-rate account.

 

New College of the University of South Florida                                                                     Justus D. Doenecke

 

 

Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest 1880-1990.                                                   By Daniel Nelson.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. ix + ²⁵8p.; notes, tables, in-

dex. $29.95.).

 

Anyone interested in learning about the Middle West, or American "Heartland,"

can be assumed to have read certain books about the region's history and culture.

Lists of titles would undoubtedly vary, but would likely include Sherwood

Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Robert and Helen

Lynd's Middletown, and even a more recent regional genre, And Ladies of the

Club, by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Each chronicle themes that give the Midwest

much of its vitality and regional identity:  the struggles of labor, family life,

farms and factories.

Nelson, professor of history at the University of Akron, and one of the coun-

try's leading labor scholars, is the most recent writer to delve extensively into the

topic of workers and organized labor. In his preface Nelson observes that the es-

sential feature of the region's labor history which sets it apart from other

American regions was the sustained, simultaneous growth of agriculture and indus-

try. Implied but not explicitly stated are such key factors as glacial soils, a gentle

topography, access to raw materials, water and an abundant pool of labor, all of

which helped sustain the growth of farm and factory. This is a disciplined and

chronologically presented work that makes two fundamental points: the shift of

labor from Midwest farm to factory did not occur until after World War II; and the

emphasis on manufacturing, especially metals, food processing, machinery and

autos after 1945 thwarted development of an emergent service sector. These basic

tenets constitute the author's point of departure: regional identity was and still is

reflected in the occupations of Midwestern workers.

The topic's breadth permits Nelson to generalize, for he comes well armed with

solid primary and secondary sources. He chronicles how immigrants who had ade-

quate means to buy good land opted for farm work, while poorer immigrants, pri-

marily after 1880, joined the larger movement to urban centers. Industrial work-

ers, having less contact with family members, used tools and machines but unlike

• 31
 

Book Reviews                                                        109

 

farmers did not borrow them. Since machinery required more energy than an indi-

vidual worker could provide, the focus of many factory owners shifted from the

worker to the machine and the relations between machine operations. Farmers re-

sponded with alliance activities while industrial workers were more active in form-

ing collective actions, albeit with mixed results. Still, throughout the Midwest,

socialists during the early 1910s enjoyed greater success than in any other region;

in Dayton 63 percent of socialists were skilled industrial workers. Meanwhile, the

evolving business sector saw rapid expansion in white collar jobs, notably spe-

cialists and professionals, driven by advancing technologies such as typewriters

and mimeograph machines.

The 1910s was a watershed for the Midwest: elites applied new knowledge to

production evidenced by managers in the factory and county agents on the farm.

Large factories became well-organized machines, where mass production tech-

nologies could be applied. With three Midwestern plants employing 6,000 work-

ers in 1900-evidence that mass production had reached new heights-Nelson

points out how improved efficiency alienated factory workers and contributed to

the emergence of the elites. One result was any improvements in employee pro-

ductivity were not matched by the organization. Nonetheless, workers, outside of

open shop laborers, were generally more prosperous and assertive after 1900.

There were dark moments, too. Postwar disillusionment, the unrest of the 1920s

and what Nelson describes as a backlash against the elites fostered a rise in the

KKK, where in the Midwest it achieved its greatest support-in Indiana it over-

shadowed membership in the Methodist Church and the American Legion.

In contrast to other regions during the nineteenth century, there were few mi-

norities and women in Midwestern industry. Most middle class families before

1910 had one live-in servant, typically an unmarried woman, yet Irish domestics

failed to gain favor in the Midwest. World War I ushered in the million man, pre-

dominantly black, southern migration to the cities, finding employment in the

meat packing and other unskilled trades. The twenties saw more women in white

collar jobs, particularly in the retail sector, where customers were disproportion-

ately female, while ethnic shifts witnessed a decline in northern European immi-

gration as the cities attracted more slavic and southern European populations. By

1930, 20 percent of rubber workers were women, while Italians dominated cloth-

ing and textiles and Poles large-scale manufacturing.

The Midwest, like its climate, is a region of extremes, evidenced by workers and

their plight during the Great Depression. From 1930-1939 the farm bankruptcy

rate in Minnesota and Iowa was much higher than national trends, forcing agoniz-

ing foreclosures. Indeed the Midwest experienced the greatest decline and slowest

recovery of any region from 1929-1939. Ohio was especially hard hit-in 1930

three-fourths of black workers in Columbus were unemployed-five years later 1.2

million Ohioans, or 20 percent of the total population, were on assistance. Such

adversity ushered in a revival of labor activism, led by the creation of the UAW

and URW in 1935, and expanded governmental intervention in industrial relations

and mediation. If New Deal relief programs were vital to the Midwest, they were

soon overshadowed by World War II. Wartime labor gains, including black em-

ployment and black membership in the UAW, were followed by postwar advances

in employer financed benefit plans. Unions found a greater following in the heart-

land than in any other region.

While traditional heavy industries and food processing remained the foundation

of the Midwest's postwar manufacturing base, "deindustrialization" was changing

the face of the economy. The decline of traditional agriculture, primarily the small

• 32
 

110                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

family-owned farm corresponded with a rise in industrial growth in the region's

small towns. Quietly, at least to urban observers, Ohio lost 40 percent of its farm

population in the 1950s. By 1970, as Nelson aptly recounts, village life was

more likely to revolve around a factory than an agricultural hinterland. In the old

"magic cities," mass production industries, facing increased competition and un-

dercapitalization, were slow to respond, being largely preoccupied with labor rela-

tions issues. Mine closures, an exodus to smaller, and typically southern non-

union plants, or in the now infamous case of Youngstown, Ohio, which witnessed

total plant closure, contributed to the rust belt image. In 1981 nine of ten cities

with the nation's highest unemployment were in the Midwest. Despite such se-

vere downturns during the dark days of the 1980s, by 1990 farms and factory still

remained important, albeit less so within the region's economic hegemony. Most

workers found employment in offices, stores and other white-collar settings.

Academic, not mechanical skills emerged as the basis of the new service economy.

Nelson's work provides an invaluable if at times slightly ponderous guide to

understanding a critical region where, like much of the nation, in only a few

decades the service economy displaced the century-old twin pillars of farm and

factory. This reviewer has learned a good deal: and as I evaluate the context of his-

toric properties associated with Ohio's farms and factories, I shall reference much

of what Dr. Nelson has provided.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                Stephen C. Gordon

 

 

The Emergence of the Modern Theater 1914-1929.  By Ronald H. Wainscott.

(New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997. 288p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, index. $30.00.)

 

During the 1920s, the American theater saw a pronounced maturation in the ar-

eas of staging and content. The story of this growth has been told often in count-

less books on theater history. What Ronald H. Wainscott accomplishes in The

Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914-1929 is to take this familiar

story and to retell it in such a way that gives the reader a better idea of the context

in which the important changes in the 1920s occurred.

Wainscott's extensive knowledge of the plays produced in New York during the

1920s allows him to move beyond the familiar titles that frequently appear in the-

ater histories. Similarly, it also allows him to place Eugene O'Neill in context.

Without diminishing the great playwright's many accomplishments, Wainscott

continually illustrates that O'Neill was one of many theater artists being influ-

enced by a variety of the same progressive trends.

Wainscott has made some interesting discoveries. The author is able to illus-

trate that, during the 1920s, Broadway playwrights were more prone to question

the prevailing conservative assumptions of the era than might be expected.

Patriotism, assimilation, and capitalism were particularly popular targets for criti-

cism. One of Wainscott's most startling discoveries is that there were virtually no

pro-business plays on the Broadway stage after 1925.  As Wainscott writes,

"Nearly all treatments of the commercial world consider it a place of shark-infested

waters, where the casualties are catastrophic (p. 154)." This hardly reflects the

picture of the era of Coolidge that most people hold. Wainscott effectively argues

that the left-wing, social protest dramas of the American theater in the 1930s were

anticipated by Broadway playwrights in the years before the Crash.

• 33
 

Book Reviews                                                          111

 

In the process, Wainscott frequently and correctly criticizes the smug, self-delu-

sory nature of many American conservatives during the 1920s. Playwrights with

leftist views are generally presented as progressive liberators of content. That

such playwrights, for all their fresh perspectives, could also be smug and self-

delusory is left to the reader to deduce.

Wainscott's chapters on expressionism present less new material because the

expressionistic nature of much of 1920s American theater is already fairly com-

mon knowledge. Still, Wainscott does a good job of illustrating that American

expressionism was a mixture of the ideas of not only the German expressionists,

but also of Gordon Craig, Jacques Copeau, and the Irish Players, all of whom

staged productions in America before 1920.

Three of the most interesting chapters in Wainscott's book involve the popu-

larity of sex farces following the war as well as the ability of theater owners to kill

a proposed increase in federal taxes on theater tickets at the beginning of that

same period. All of these chapters involve good and detailed scholarship on the

important but largely forgotten issues involved, and as such make important con-

tributions. However, the remaining four chapters-really the bulk of the book-

involve, in one form or another, the maturation of American plays during the

1920s in terms of content and staging. Sex farces and ticket prices really do not

fit this. It would have been helpful had the chapters on those topics been more in-

tegrated with the others. As is, they read like separate articles in an otherwise co-

hesive book.

Overall, Wainscott has written a useful book which gives the reader some idea of

the growth in American theater in the 1920s. Wainscott's detailed research fre-

quently moves beyond where most general histories of the theater of the era go and

as such is a useful addition to any theater historian's library.

 

Texas A&M-Kingsville                                        Patrick Faherty

 

 

Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder. By Kevin Lally. (New York: Henry Holt

and Company, 1996. xv + 496p.: illustrations, notes, index. $ 30.00 cloth.)

 

Billy Wilder marked his ninetieth birthday last June, making him the last of the

"legendary" Hollywood directors left alive. Hawks (1896-1977) is dead, as are

Hitchcock (1899-1980) and Ford (1895-1973) and Welles (1915-1985), etc. Such

a state of affairs makes biography-as-adulation an obligatory ritual. Kevin Lally's

Wilder Times, long on Auteurist assumptions, workman-like on matters of

chronology and behind-the-scenes tidbits, manages to be genuinely informative

and lock-step dull at one and the same time. Wilder Times exhibits stylistic and

thematic features common to the genre of serious, celebrity biography, books that

tell you the news in a no-nonsense sort of way, but quite without inflection or a

ranking of particulars. Instead of interpretation, we get a recitation designed to

make the subject look good.

Lally's biography is organized chronologically-early years in Vienna, then

Berlin, then Hollywood. Within chapters, once Wilder's career is in high gear,

there is a formula: describe the film with a plot summary, what actors got snared

(often second or third choices), which ones got away, problems in production,

how the picture did at the box office, and for Wilder's more recent films, what the

critical journalistic establishment (Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, the reporter from

Variety, etc.) thought. Such formulae are positively useful in providing time

• 34
 

112                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

lines, and especially in recording the changing conditions underlying the art of

the deal, now recognized as the essential ingredient for understanding how main-

stream films get made and how they get messed up in the making. A couple of sen-

tences from the backgrounding of Wilder's last film, Buddy, Buddy, a limp flop by

all accounts, will suffice to give the flavor: the new owner of MGM, "Kirk

Kerkorian sought to increase the studio's output and hired David Begelman, a for-

mer Columbia production chief recently at the center of a bizarre forgery-and-em-

bezzlement scandal, to oversee MGM's stepped-up production. Among the first

projects Begelman green-lighted was Buddy, Buddy." Such information is espe-

cially interesting in the case of Wilder because of his undeniable and equally prob-

lematic greatness. The spectacle typical of all the great ones is that their later

films are diminished accomplishments, if not outright failures, compared to the ef-

forts of ardent youth and, sometimes at least, robust middle-age. Hollywood has

always been a country for the young.

For people who consider film as art, as social comment and as a cultural-histori-

cal base of knowledge, biographies such as Lally's make for required, if unsatisfy-

ing, reading. Lally's early chapters, providing lots of raw information, trace

Wilder's career in the Berlin UFA studios, his career as a free-lance journalist, and

his taste for running after the outrageous story likely to make a splash. What

comes through most vividly is Wilder's cultivation of a fast-talking, brash per-

sonal style. Already in Europe, Wilder's "sophisticated" Viennese humor had

more than a little of the Sammy Glick in it. But it was a real style and that is what

he took with him to Hollywood.

The status of Wilder's Double Indemnity as an "American classic" provides a

case in point. Although probably too much has already been written about the

Rise of Film Noir, and while Kevin Lally correctly describes Double Indemnity as

"a seminal film noir," he avoids developing the interesting irony that this most

American of artifacts was produced by a Jewish, mittel Europa refugee from the

Hitlerian calamity. Billy Wilder wore extremely sensitive refugee antennae during

the surprisingly brief period of his strong films and was therefore able to discern

perturbations and dark rumblings on the American scene well ahead of most. The

famously cynical Wilder tone as well the eye for outdoor location shooting owes

much to his apprenticeship work in Berlin in the late twenties, particularly the

street-corner realism of Menschen am Sonntag. That early realism translates di-

rectly to the location shot of Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity at the corner

newsstand in Hollywood looking to see if his crime made the papers yet. The noir

sense of crime-in-everydayness comes with the luggage any refugee from Europe

between the wars might well bring along.

There is one moment of ineffable humor and beauty in this book that is entirely

worth the price of admission: a picture from the set of Some Like it Hot wherein

Wilder teaches Jack Lemmon, in full twenties flapper drag, a tango step. Lemmon

is more or less profile to the camera, pouting, lipsticked mouth pursed in concen-

tration, hand resting, pinkie raised, on Wilder's shoulder. A gardenia wrist cor-

sage tied delicately over an arm-length black, sparkly glove with finger-tips cut

off completes the effect. Wilder, wearing his workaday, short-sleeved white shirt,

in three-quarter profile, gazes up and past his partner (possibly at a camera on a

crane, possibly at the God of imagination).

Wilder was in his early fifties when he worked on Some Like it Hot, but here his

expression is that of a teenager. He looks owlishly studious, like an erotically en-

tranced schoolboy. It is a hugely funny photograph. As Adam Gopnik, in a recent

New Yorker, observes, "What makes drag funny is not how well it works but how

• 35
 

Book Reviews                                                          113

 

poorly. Milton Berle in a bustier and wig always looked like Milton Berle: that

was the joke." Kevin Lally makes much of the theme of masquerade running

through Wilder's movies, but he usually does not quite get the joke that is in-

volved. Fortunately, Wilder's wise-cracking attitude and his genial spirit of tak-

ing life not too seriously, despite the darkness, adds just the right, attractive leav-

ening to Wilder Times.

 

SUNY, Buffalo                                              Stefan Fleischer

 

 

Encyclopedia of the American West. Volume 1: Abbe-Cutt. Edited by Charles

Phillips and Alan Axelrod. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Simon &

Schuster Macmillan, 1996. lxxvii + 428p.; illustrations, maps, list of contribu-

tors, list of entries, list of biographical entries by profession, suggested read-

ings, index. $95.00.)

Encyclopedia of the American West. Volume 2: Dako-Lync. Edited by Charles

Phillips and Alan Axelrod. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Simon &

Schuster Macmillan, 1996. ⁴⁹1p.; illustrations, maps, list of contributors, list

of entries, list of biographical entries by profession, suggested readings, index.

$95.00.)

Encyclopedia of the American West. Volume 3: Mack-San. Edited by Charles

Phillips and Alan Axelrod. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Simon &

Schuster Macmillan, 1996. 507p.; illustrations, maps, list of contributors, list

of entries, list of biographical entries by profession, suggested readings, index.

$95.00.)

Encyclopedia of the American West. Volume 4: Sant-Zuni.  Edited by Charles

Phillips and Alan Axelrod. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Simon &

Schuster Macmillan, 1996. 506p.; illustrations, maps, list of contributors, list

of entries, list of biographical entries by profession, suggested readings, index.

$95.00.)

 

Readers typically evaluate encyclopedias according to the success of an individ-

ual search: Do you find the entry you are looking for? Does it explain what you

need to know? Most readers will find that Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod's

Encyclopedia of the American West satisfies both of these questions, as it leaves

few stones unturned. Amply illustrated and especially rich in biographical entries

and in histories of the western states, the encyclopedia is also a fascinating docu-

ment in and of itself.

Coming a decade after the development of the "new Western history"-a move-

ment which aimed to counter the heroic narratives of mostly white, male enter-

prise in the West-the encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of the

region as studied by scholars today. And in fact it encompasses a range of topics

that cover the spectrum of both the "old" and the "new" western history. Here, you

will find plentiful discussions not only of such tried and true western subjects as

the "Cattle Industry," "Exploration,"  and the "Fur Trade," but also   of

"Childrearing," "Intermarriage," and "Immigration Law." For readers unfamiliar

with the West, the encyclopedia will take them into plenty of uncharted territory;

even those familiar with the field will find many surprises, as it has done an excel-

lent job of including the biographies of extraordinary people who have long been

left out of Western history.

• 36
 

114                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Phillips and Axelrod note in their preface that the editorial board came to a rela-

tively quick consensus over the melange of old and new, and it is a very laudable

goal. However, the results of the work suggest that consensus was built perhaps

too much by accretion. This would not necessarily be a problem, given that ency-

clopedias are not meant to synthesize knowledge but to break it down into discrete

units. But when evaluated as a whole, the encyclopedia sometimes lacks propor-

tion and consistency. Perhaps this is best illustrated by describing the route

through one area of western history: land policy. The search itself highlighted

several of the drawbacks to the text.

Surely, the struggle over private and public property is one of the keystones of

western history, old or new; as Patricia Nelson Limerick has written, "If

Hollywood wanted to capture the emotional center of Western history, its movies

would be about real estate." And at the center of the story of western real estate is

the federal government, which owns almost fifty percent of the land in the inter-

mountain West. So I was first struck by the entry for the Bureau of Land

Management, which receives only three paragraphs, although it administers more

land than any other federal agency in the West. The BLM's roots actually lie in

the General Land Office, established in 1812 to distribute the vast amount of west-

ern property that the United States had acquired. But although it was one of the

more important government agencies during the nineteenth century, the GLO re-

ceives only two paragraphs.

From there I went to "Land Policy," which fortunately was several pages long,

but which is thin, at best. The "historical overview" moves at breakneck speed (it

is a much shorter entry than such entries as "Mormons" or "Colleges and

Universities" or even just the "National Park Service"); it says little about land

policy after the late-nineteenth century; and it refers in only a hit-or-miss way to

related entries, neglecting, for instance, to tell readers to search under "National

Expansion" and "Federal Government," which both have lengthy essays.

Indeed, the lack of consistency in cross-referencing is a problem throughout the

encyclopedia. Much more puzzling, however, is the work's focus "on the trans-

Mississippi West from the early Spanish period through the early twentieth cen-

tury" (p. xi). Why the editors chose not to extend the encyclopedia further is

never explained, which is curious given that this is an encyclopedia "of the

American West," and not simply of a finite historical period. By not doing so, it

surely reinforces a popular notion-and perhaps it is one with which the editors

agree-that the American West as a region ceased to exist after the modern era. As

Phillips and Axelrod freely admit, however, this chronological line-in-the-sand is

often crossed in individual cases, and many entries bare this fact out. Other en-

tries, like that about land policy, suffer greatly from having such a truncated ac-

count.

Finally, the encyclopedia is occasionally heavy with overlapping categories.

For instance, I would be surprised if a reader would know to look up the entry

"West-as-Region School," which goes into a long discussion about the arguments

by some new western historians that the West has had distinctive regional charac-

teristics through its history.  It would be surprising because these arguments

hardly represent a coherent "school"; and it might also seem a bit redundant, given

the other lengthy entries on "Arid Lands Thesis," "Borderlands Theory,"

"Frontier: Frontier Thesis," and "New Western History." These might have con-

ceivably been brought together under one entry on Western historiography-

which, as it turns out, also has its own entry ("Historiography, Western"). All

told, these essays add up to 23 pages.

• 37
 

Book Reviews                                                           115

 

It would seem, then, that the encyclopedia may be all too self-conscious about

its timing in the debates about what is "old" and "new" in western history. Still, it

is an error in the right direction. The encyclopedia is an invaluable source, partic-

ularly for readers who are just beginning their journeys into western history. By

seeking to pull together a very diverse and thriving scholarship, it will certainly

give readers a sense for the current vitality of the field and for the many historical

trails that remain to be explored.

 

Princeton University                                          Karen Merrill

• 38