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BOOK REVIEWS |
INDEPENDENT HISTORICAL SOCIETIES: AN ENQUIRY INTO THEIR RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION FUNCTIONS AND THEIR FI- NANCIAL FUTURE. By Walter Muir Whitehill. (Boston: The Boston Athe- naeum, 1962. Distributed by Harvard University Press. xviii??593p.; index. $12.50.) "For some years now historical-society journals, one after another, have been undergoing a transformation of format, style, and content into imitation popular magazines," declared the New-York His- torical Society annual report for 1961. Ohioans concerned with state and local history will be interested, if not embar- rassed, in a further quotation from the report: "This phenomenon was punctu- ated in 1961 by an abrupt termination of the vigorous 70-year-old Ohio Historical Quarterly to provide for another incre- ment of periodical quasi-history--and this despite the unanimous protests of the Ohio Academy of History and published regrets. . . in sister quarterlies. Such sacrifice of scholarship to a supposed popular predilection for costume-ball his- tory reverses the long process by which historical-society journals, including our own, achieved their proper sphere of use- fulness and influence" (p. 547). The excerpt quoted above and, indeed, the entire tone of Mr. Whitehill's ad- mirably frank volume will, no doubt, cause his book to be debated vigorously in historical circles. The author quite properly raises the core question as to the essential nature of the historical so- ciety--should it pander to a capricious |
public, or should it devote itself to a solid, scholarly career? The independent society, Mr. Whitehill points out, is pri- marily concerned with the advancement of learning. The society supported in whole or in part by public funds is con- cerned not only with scholarship but also with its wide dissemination. In short, the latter, at times, must attempt to "sell" its wares by a variety of techniques, which may run the gamut from dainty teas to public dinners at which buffalo stew is served. This emphasis on "togetherness" is beautifully illustrated in Chapter Twenty-Three and its appropriate verse from Zechariah: "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver." The State Historical Society of Iowa makes much of steamboat excursions on the Missis- sippi, but its Iowa Journal of History, a once distinguished periodical, has not been printed for months. Throughout the nation there is a belief held by some that historical societies are facing critical times. It is not uncommon to hear that institutions are headed up by individuals not trained as historians, that journals are edited by persons lacking professional, academic experience, that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being wasted literally on and by weak and inadequate societies, especially on the local level, but also on the state level, and that societies are making no contribu- tions to their communities. Mr. White- hill's chapter, "The Organization Men," is provocative. One must not forget, how- |
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ever, that some societies are performing a magnificent task and that the research historian is deeply indebted to them. They deserve the highest praise. Even if one deleted the controversial passages scattered throughout the volume, the book would stand as a clearly written and incisive history of independent his- torical societies. The author visited many. He himself has long been connected, in one capacity or another, with research institutions. His delightful sketches of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New-York Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society (the three giants) are followed by chapters devoted to other distinguished institutions, such as the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Virginia Historical Society. Regional societies, state-supported socie- ties, local societies, state archival agen- cies, and historical associations are de- scribed and characterized. Museums, reconstruction projects, and monuments are discussed with soundness and, at times, vigorous humor. A particularly fine chapter deals with Lyman Draper and his labors in Wisconsin. Ohioans will find the six-page discus- sion of their society most interesting, not only as a brief historical account but also as an impressive summary of activities. The state may well be proud of Mr. Whitehill's statement: "The society's list [of publications] offers a rich variety of works of high quality on all phases of the State's history" (p. 287). There is some gratification to be found in his comments on the Ohio Historical Quarterly: "Hap- pily the quality of the articles remains unchanged. It appears, as one reviewer put it, that the new 'Ohio History is the same old vehicle, but with "fins" added' (p. 286). Unfortunately, however, foot- notes in Ohio History are relegated to the back of the journal, a device that, to say the least, is offensive. Yet Ohio deserves great credit for preserving as much as it did of its scholarly reputation as mani- fested in its journal. |
Regardless of what one thinks of Mr. Whitehill's personal views concerning the nature and functions of independent his- torical societies, his book cannot be dis- missed lightly. It should cause consider- able hard thinking in several quarters. Whether or not one agrees with the author, the volume is a contribution; is, at points, convincing; and, most certainly, says things that should have been brought into the open much earlier. PHILIP D. JORDAN University of Minnesota AMERICAN INDIAN POLICY IN THE FORMA- TIVE YEARS: THE INDIAN TRADE AND INTERCOURSE ACTS, 1790-1834. By Francis Paul Prucha. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. viii ?? 303p.; bibliographical note and index. $6.75.) Francis Paul Prucha, Society of Jesus, has written a thorough, scholarly study of American Indian policy, 1790-1834, and he has, appropriately, dedicated his work to Frederick Merk, his mentor at Har- vard, rather than to any other being. The volume reflects the grim pursuit of fact, careful organization, passionless analysis, and humorless prose of the Harvard mas- ter. The discussion of the efforts of the federal government to regulate the fur trade, to prevent the debauching of the Indians by the sale of whiskey, to remove the white intruders from Indian lands, to punish crimes committed in the Indian country, and, finally, to "civilize" and to remove the Indians, demonstrates a thorough command of the sources, both manuscript and printed, and of the perti- nent secondary works. The book is topically organized except for the first three chapters--which give a brief chronological picture of colonial and imperial Indian policy, Indian policy under the Continental Congress and the articles of confederation, and Indian pol- icy in the first years under the constitu- tion--and for a final chapter which dis- cusses the passage of the Indian acts of |
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1834. The chapter concerning colonial and imperial precedents, drawn almost entirely from eighteenth-century evidence, is perhaps an appropriate introduction to the subject of Indian policy in the period 1790-1834. but it should not be read as a proper guide to the whole course of American Indian policy from 1607 to the present. Prucha's study contains no revealing new insights into Indian policy, but he does painstakingly document and analyze the making and execution of that policy. Whatever the place, whenever the time, the story is basically the same: the fed- eral government proved unable to regu- late the trade in furs, prevent the sale of whiskey, remove the intruders on Indian land, or protect the Indians from crimes committed against them by individuals or local governments; it was unwilling to use severe measures against the whites but was willing to constrain the Indians to accommodate themselves to the result- ing situations. Individual leaders, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Knox, to mention only three, tried to see that the honor of the country was supported by its power. They failed, as did everyone else who tried to safe- guard the rights of an "alien" minority increasingly subject to the power of an aggressive majority. The failure of all attempts to protect the Indian, Prucha cheerfully concedes. When he makes a value judgment, it is not to condemn the policy of the govern- ment but to praise it, ineffective though it was, for preventing the Indian from being dispossessed more rapidly and brutally than he was. One wonders whether Prucha's alleged commitment to "calm investigation" and his eschewal of dogmatism are realized. Prucha's choice of language may be a minor flaw in this regard, though the value judgments implicit in terms such as "zealous" Indian agents, "martinet" soldiers, the "wisdom" of the intercourse laws of 1834, the "savagery" of the |
Indians, and the "unfair" attitude of those who charge the Jackson administra- tion with "cynical expediency and com- plete disregard for Indian rights and feelings" are not to be overlooked. But what are we to make of Prucha's willing- ness to judge the Indian policy of the individual colonies before the "imperiali- zation" of the late eighteenth century? Prucha does not hesitate to assert that "there was no question that in fact the colonial management had failed. The trade was not adequately controlled; the English colonists steadily encroached upon the lands of the Indians; the Indians were resentful and showed their ill humor by incessant attacks upon the settle- ments." Would not federal Indian policy fit the same description and deserve the same judgment? One has a gnawing fear that the inevitability of what is is here worshipped, and that the success or fail- ure of policies is measured in terms of how they facilitated the emergence of the future, not by whether they accomplished what they were designed to do. In a final paragraph, Prucha notes: Weaknesses and inadequacies are easy to catalog. Harder to judge is the over- all effect of the intercourse acts in these early years. That they prevented much open conflict between the races and al- lowed the inevitable westward advance of white settlement to proceed with a certain orderliness is perhaps judgment enough. By accepting the preordained inevitability of the "westward advance of white settle- ment" Prucha adopts a moral framework for his history within which individual acts have only apparent moral signifi- cance since they are all subsumed under the higher purpose of God's will. It is not surprising, then, that Prucha's moral judgments--judgments no historian can avoid--tend to support his idea of what had to
happen and to ignore the fact of what did happen. WILCOMB E. WASHBURN Smithsonian Institution |
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OUR AMISH NEIGHBORS. By William I. Schreiber; drawings by Sybil Gould. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. xii ?? 227p.; illustrations, bibli- ography, and index. $5.95.) In a sophisticated world the simple life of such sectarians as the Amish and Mennonites has a peculiar fascination for Americans and has even been used as a theme for the New York theater. Profes- sor Schreiber is especially fitted for a sympathetic but objective approach to an accurate appraisal of the place of these people in American life. As a native of the Old World he has been personally acquainted with the customs, religious traditions, and folklore of European peas- ants whose background bears a resem- blance to that of these rural-oriented Americans. He, moreover, has a scholarly appreciation of their historic problems, being the author of The Fate of the Prus- sian Mennonites (Goettingen, 1955). In addition, as Gingrich Professor of Ger- man at the College of Wooster at Wooster, Ohio, he lives on the edge of one of the largest centers of Amish and Mennonite settlement in the New World. His per- sonal knowledge of the vernacular spoken by these people, furthermore, has enabled him to move among them and even wor- ship with them in unobtrusive fashion. He presents the historic background of these simple folk and discusses their home life, their farm-based economic life, their community organization and activities, their customs, and their interests as por- trayed in the columns of the Sugarcreek Budget. This
weekly newspaper, pub- lished at Sugarcreek, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, has become a national clearing house for news of the Amish people. Schreiber analyzes at length the use of "meidung," or shunning, in Amish com- munities to secure conformity to tradi- tional patterns and to arrest tendencies to accept the practices of a machine age with its countless gadgets. He discusses the problems of adjustments to modern life, as Amish people now ride on busses |
and in taxicabs, even though ownership of an automobile is forbidden to them. Interesting indeed are the variations among some of their church organizations as to the extent to which old customs may be modified. The author analyzes their literalistic Biblical faith, but concludes that much of their life is based on the continuance of Old World peasant traditions. He has carefully examined pertinent sources printed in German and in English and on each side of the Atlantic. He might have found additional material of interest in a master's thesis written at Ohio State University under the present reviewer's direction: John L. Nethers, "An Histori- cal Study of the Amish People in the Holmes County Area of Ohio" (1959). This was based in part on numerous inter- views with Amish farmers and their neighbors. Schreiber discusses the custom of the growth of a beard among them and be- lieves that "a scriptural reference com- manding the growth of a beard is indeed hard to find" (p. 62). Some authorities contend that such a reference is found in Leviticus 19:27. All in all, the volume is a successful venture in an attempt to understand, without idealizing, an interesting enclave of Old World peasantry in present-day America. Attractive indeed are the many illustrative drawings by Sybil Gould of the College of Wooster. FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER Ohio State University CLARENCE DARROW AND THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION. By Abe C. Ravitz. (Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1962. xv ?? 163p.; biblio- graphical note and index. $4.50.) Professor Ravitz has devoted himself to a neglected and rewarding subject; and especially in his analysis of Darrow's fic- tion, he informs us freshly of an exciting episode in the history of modern Ameri- |
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can literary sensibility. But it must also be said that his book does not wholly satisfy the very great interest which it arouses, largely because it fails sufficiently to relate Darrow's fiction to his own legal thought, and especially to the naturalistic, muckraking, and psychological fiction of his immediate contemporaries and suc- cessors. In six chapters apart from a prologue and epilogue, Professor Ravitz discusses in order Darrow's general intellectual in- debtedness to social Darwinism and nine- teenth-century American perfectionism; his aesthetic credo and its influence upon his protege Brand Whitlock; his earliest fictional sketches, Easy Lessons in Law, which dramatize the inequities of the law's working upon the lives of the poor and downtrodden; his shift from a Rous- seauistic belief in non-violence to a Dar- winian belief in the impossibility of that ideal, as indicated in his fictional narra- tive An Eye for an Eye; his small-town novel Farmington, which anticipates the work of Sherwood Anderson and Zona Gale; and his later nonfictional writing and oratory on the popular subjects of the twenties and thirties, eugenics, prohibi- tion, and immortality. The central chapters on Darrow's longer fiction whet the reader's appetite to read these nearly forgotten novels, especially for the light they might throw on more famous later works like Wines- burg, Ohio. The
analysis of Farmington suggests, for example, that Darrow's novel might be more complex and rich in conception than Sherwood Anderson's, though surely less powerful in execution, and hence that it may have great signifi- cance for the literary history of its own time. But the American literary tradition to which Professor Ravitz' title refers is regrettably not the tradition in the mak- ing during Darrow's lifetime. It is the "classic" tradition of our literature, from Jonathan Edwards through Cooper, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville, to one or another of whom Darrow is repeatedly |
compared in some facet of his work. These comparisons are distracting; they do not throw light on the classic Ameri- can tradition because Darrow is not part of that; and they do not throw nearly as much light on the tradition Darrow was helping to make as would a specific and detailed comparison of Farmington with Winesburg, Ohio. Similarly, our sense of Darrow's power as a novelist would have been enhanced by a fuller examination than we are given here of the relation between his fiction and his famous legal arguments. As it is, however, we are much indebted to Professor Ravitz for breaking new and fruitful ground, and for the tribute his book justly pays to a great and representative American. JULIAN MARKELS Ohio State University THE EMERGENCE OF A NATIONAL ECONOMY, 1775-1815. By Curtis P. Nettels. THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Volume II.
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962. xvi?? 424p.;
illustrations, tables, appendix, bibliography, and index. $7.50.) Professor Nettels has produced a worthy companion to the eight volumes which have already appeared in this im- portant series on the economic history of the United States. He would have per- formed a valuable service even if he had confined his efforts to listing and sorting the large body of writings which has been produced on the early national period of American history. Here is a convenient storehouse of information in which the reader may acquaint himself with such matters as the wages of Ameri- can sailors in 1790 and the land policies of the states immediately after the Revo- lution. But the book is much more than a catalog of the facts of economic life in the new nation. Nettels has attempted to bring clarity to the inevitable confusion attending an emerging economy, and he has done so with literary grace, particu- larly in his examination of the folkways |
160 OHIO HISTORY |
of the pioneer farmer in the Old North- west. In interpreting the transition of America from a colonial to a national economy his personal views shape his chapters. The reader can have no doubt that the success of the Union demanded the ministrations of a strong federal constitution in 1787, and that the farmer as well as the merchant was in firm sup- port of the new government. Federalist programs receive the major share of credit for the ultimate form of the Ameri- can economy. While Hamilton is under- standably a central figure, the author takes pains to make Washington the pre- eminent leader of federalism, claiming that its essence was the fruit of the first president's years of experience. In light of this emphasis one can understand why there is no chapter specifically devoted to a full exposition of Jeffersonian policies. Jefferson's opposition in the 1790's is treated in a few paragraphs, with Hamil- ton emerging as a more legitimate friend of the farmer than his rival. Jefferson in power appears to good advantage only when he adapted his administration to federalist ideas. In dismissing the Jeffersonian Arcadia as an impossible dream Nettels empha- sizes the importance of the government's role in the economy. Yet, on some critical issues he fails to show the interaction of politics and the economy. For example, the relationship between the embargo and the War of 1812 to the industrial growth of the nation is asserted but not suffi- ciently demonstrated. Such a caveat, however, does not reduce the debt of gratitude scholars owe to Professor Net- tels for filling a major gap in American economic history. LAWRENCE S. KAPLAN Kent State University A SHORT HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. By Larry Gara. (Madison: State Historical So- ciety of Wisconsin, 1962. viii??187p.; |
illustrations, suggested readings, and index. $4.00.) Intended for use in a correspondence course offered by the extension division of the state university, A Short History of Wisconsin is
a brief survey of the subject from the arrival of Jean Nicolet in 1734 to the victory of Richard M. Nixon (in Wisconsin) in 1960. Although a great deal of space is given to politi- cians--James Duane Doty and Henry Dodge during the territorial days and the La Follettes in the twentieth century-- leaders in other fields--Lyman C. Draper, Charles R. Van Hise, Frederick Jackson Turner, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others --are given due consideration. In the final chapter, present-day agriculture and industry are dealt with in some detail. There are numerous illustrations but no map of Wisconsin. At the end of each chapter, suggestions for further reading are listed. Tables showing the terms of governors, presidential votes, and popula- tion growth are printed with the text. An unusual feature is the inclusion of boxed quotations from original sources, some- times a page in length, near the pertinent narrative. The book will be interesting to the general reader who wants a short account of Wisconsin. Professor Gara is a member of the fac- ulty of Wilmington College, Ohio. F. CLEVER BALD University of Michigan A SOLDIER'S LIFE: THE CIVIL WAR EXPERI- ENCES OF BEN C. JOHNSON. (Originally titled SKETCHES OF THE SIXTH REGI- MENT, MICHIGAN INFANTRY.) By Ben- jamin C. Johnson. Edited, with an introduction, by Alan S. Brown. West- ern Michigan University, School of Graduate Studies, Faculty Contribu- tions, Series VI, No. 2. (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1962. 122p.; frontispiece. Paper, $1.00.) |
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Benjamin C. Johnson signed up as a private in the Sixth Michigan Volunteer Infantry shortly after Fort Sumter and served through the entire Civil War. Along the way he occupied New Orleans under Ben Butler, chased Confederate raiders across Louisiana swamps, de- fended Baton Rouge, assaulted Port Hud- son. and fought rebels, mosquitoes, and boredom. "The vicissitudes of war are truly various, and its changes terrible," he reflected. "'Tis not all of the sweet to be a volunteer soldier I assure you." Of course, Ben Johnson's war was not all hell. Released from the fetters and boredom of home, a teen-age boy could find in the army all the freedom and ex- citement he craved, particularly since discipline in his regiment was extremely lax. "We thanked our lucky stars that we did not have West Point men for our officers." His volunteer officers, elected by their men, usually looked the other way while Johnson and his comrades foraged, looted, and stole everything they could carry, and often wantonly destroyed what they could not. Pranks were fre- quent, the most memorable being the time they robbed "the Jew sutler" of all his goods and bounced him out of camp on a blanket. What fun! The feeble discipline which tolerated this sort of thing may well have accounted for the regiment's exceptionally high rate of sickness. Out of 542 deaths suffered by the Sixth Michigan, 476 were from disease. Johnson's memoirs were written twenty years after the war, and first appeared in The Veteran during
1883 and 1884. Resurrected now in pamphlet form with an introduction and unobtrusive foot- notes, they provide an interesting, though certainly not a vital, contribution to Civil War literature--one more drop in the rushing torrent of centennial outpourings. ALLAN PESKIN Fenn College |
SHERIDAN IN THE SHENANDOAH: JUBAL EARLY'S NEMESIS. By Edward J. Stack- pole. (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Company, 1961. xvii??413p.; illustra- tions, maps, bibliography, and index. $5.95.) In the summer of 1864 General Robert E. Lee, hard-pressed before Richmond, sent Jubal Early into the Shenandoah Valley to harass Union forces, threaten Washington, and, hopefully, to compel General Grant to weaken his own forces opposite Lee in order to stop Early. Lee's hopes were partially fulfilled when, after a series of northern reverses, the Union commander sent General Philip H. Sheri- dan into the valley against the Confed- erates. Edward Stackpole, author of sev- eral other Civil War battle histories, has detailed the story of the valley struggle from the command level. He begins with a long summary of the campaign's back- ground and early days (Sheridan doesn't appear as an important figure until p. 103), and carries the story through to the campaign's conclusion several weeks before Appomattox with the Confederates in full retreat and Sheridan's forces in control of the valley. This is a book for neither the scholar nor the casual reader. The scholar will find that Mr. Stackpole has contributed little to our understanding of the war. He is retelling a familiar story. He also includes all sorts of material of doubtful relevancy. (Is it really important that two future presidents of the United States fought at Winchester?) There is a very scanty bibliography (listed as Appendix A), and few footnotes. Furthermore, Mr. Stackpole is given to distracting his reader by his frequently over-vivid writ- ing: "While the authorities at Washing- ton fiddled, and Grant dulled his frus- trated sensibilities with his favorite whis- key, Chambersburg burned!" (p. 89). The popular reader seeking some knowl- edge of the campaign will be better served by the works of Catton and Freeman. Mr. Stackpole cannot resist including every |
162 OHIO HISTORY |
commander present at every incident, often with asides detailing the past careers and military futures of the men named. Nor can he forbear from including ac- counts of entirely unrelated matters. It becomes difficult to follow his narrative in the confusion of names and asides. Sheridan in the Shenandoah is obvi- ously written by one Civil War "buff" for others of the same breed. Stackpole has an enthusiasm for the war shared by many other Americans during these cen- tennial years. And despite embarrassing incidents, the obvious glorification of war, and the suggestions of serious schol- ars that many of these works contribute little to our understanding of the war's issues and complexities, we seem fated to endure a continuous flood of personal, unit, and battle histories for a long time to come. Mr. Stackpole and others might read Paul Angle's recent article on the centennial in the South Atlantic Quar- terly, as a
needed corrective to their enthusiasm. JOEL H. SILBEY San Francisco State College LOW BRIDGE! FOLKLORE AND THE ERIE CANAL. By Lionel D. Wyld. (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1962. xi??212p.; illustrations, bibliographi- cal notes, and index. $5.50.) This little volume by Professor Wyld of the University of Buffalo finds the an- swer to the question of what the Erie Canal was "really like" in the folk tales and the literature relating to life on that famous New York waterway. Professor Wyld identifies canal nomen- clature, shares with us the experiences of canal travelers, and introduces us to the robust canallers who people the folklore of the Erie Canal. Drawing most heavily from fictional literature for his folklore, the author taps the works of Walter D. Edmonds and Samuel Hopkins Adams throughout the book, and the writings of each are evaluated in separate chapters. |
Edmonds is judged the "pioneer" in Erie Canal fiction, but Adams "proved more sustaining." Although Professor Wyld repeatedly describes his work as "a literary history of the Erie Canal," it is in his informality of expression that this volume is most disappointing. We meet "poetizing" trav- elers, find canallers "legendized in tall tales," and learn that "canalism fills the pages" of an Edmonds novel. Parenthet- ical additions abound in the text which belong more properly in the footnotes, and the author does not successfully re- sist the temptation of hyperbole. "Noth- ing in modern history," he writes, equals the influence of the Erie Canal "on the memory of a state, and in capturing the imaginations of the writers who look for inspiration in the state's past" (p. 179). For the serious reader, there remains the problem of folklore presented as au- thentic history. For example, Professor Wyld concedes the "myth" of the fighting canaller and finds him a convention in the Erie novel, but he accepts the myth as adding "to the authenticity of the novel's setting." Actually, reference to fighting on the canal is rare in the newspapers of the day. Foreign travelers seldom re- ported witnessing altercations on the canal and the boatmen themselves hotly denied such charges. Too often, matters of historical fact in this volume rest only on the citation of an "Informant," whose name and address are given. In the author's distinction between the "Old Erie" and "the Erie," the
enlarge- ment of the Erie Canal which was under way from 1835 to 1862 receives only briefest mention. No reference is made to the near doubling of the dimensions of the canal or to the importance of the enlargement to the generation which labored to achieve it. Still-existing locks at Waterford and Lockport are described as belonging to the "original Erie," which really belong to the enlargement. Low Bridge! is
an informal survey of Erie Canal folklore, but it has not earned |
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its dust-jacket praise as a "scholarly study" unless folklore scholarship rests on different canons than those of more verifiable history. RONALD SHAW Miami University THE STATE UNIVERSITIES AND DEMOCRACY. By Allan Nevins. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962. vii??171p.; appendix and index. $2.95.) The State Universities and Democracy is a precisely accurate title for this middle-sized (170 pages) but tightly or- ganized volume by Allan Nevins. The book is a compilation of the lectures de- livered by Nevins at the University of Illinois in celebration of the centennial of the Morrill act. The timeliness of the Morrill act centennial is recognized by using the land-grant schools as the point of departure in each major subdivision; yet Nevins embraces the entire state uni- versity constellation as he expands each point. The four chapters treat the topic in four stages of development: inception, early growth, coming to flower, and the present position as a challenging but promising future is faced. The theme of democratic purpose by the state universities as treated by Nevins is pervasive but not to the point of cloyed- ness. Nevins names the major element in the seedbed of the new units as "a demand for greater democracy in educa- tion" (p. 2); Americans never forgot their faith that "higher education safe- guarded the social mobility of the nation, and that was the heart of democracy" (p. 71); and, finally, today's big chal- lenge to the state universities is what can they "do for democracy" (p. 139). In Nevins' work we see these new units placed under way against great odds, the legislative squandering of so much of the original land-grants, the enlisting of stu- dents (and trying to upgrade their quality), the encouraging of secondary |
schools and nurturing relations with them, the development of faculties, and the resulting almost fantastic growth. Nevins gives unusually sensitive and read- able presentations of several features sometimes regarded as esoteric, for ex- ample, the crucial struggle to make agri- culture into a science. We note en passant that in its early days the Ohio State Uni- versity Board of Trustees stated that, if the legislature but gave them $50,000, they probably would never again have to ask for state appropriations! Now the entire complex is poised for a new century. According to Nevins these schools should profit from the three ad- vantages of moving from strength, a vastly improved high school system, and the "plasticity" of higher education in the United States. True, they face great chal- lenges, of which Nevins thinks the two most severe are the two-sided one of num- bers of students and standards of
admis- sion, and the development of research and graduate study. Nevins gives some unique interpreta- tions and, in other places, brilliantly clari- fies obscurities. His sense of the person- ality of a state university is powerful indeed. To him the democratic purpose throbs through every corridor of our state uni- versities. So often one is bemused by the large numbers of individual faculty in our state universities who profess a so-called liberal stance in politics or on socio- economic matters but who, on matters of educational policy and purpose, are in a wing which, if in politics, would be akin to that of the John Birch Society. Nevins would never let such forget Longfellow's scholar in "the dark, gray town" or that the state university campus grasps through its students, even though only for their relatively short stays, a living func- tion that invigorates our society. From among current problems facing the state universities, Nevins does not sufficiently sound the alarm for mainte- nance of the low-tuition principle. While |
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he presents the "absence of robust tui- tion" as an earmark of the state university system, its crucial relationship to democ- racy in higher education and the threats to it today are not highlighted. This book reveals a historian who sees zest and drive in American society. It is a pillar for those seeking sources of strength and guidance, and who want to work with vigor in democracy's higher schools. ROBERT WHITE Kent State University FAREWELL TO THE BLOODY SHIRT: NORTH- ERN REPUBLICANS AND THE SOUTHERN NEGRO. 1877-1893. By Stanley P. Hirshson. Introduction by David Don- ald. (Bloomington: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1962. 334p.; bibliography and index. $6.95.) This book traces the changing attitudes of northern Republicans toward the Negro during the years between Reconstruction and Progressivism. David Donald charac- terized it as (1) "a detailed account of the rivalry between . . . two conflicting schools of Republican thought," (2) "an exemplary case history of the actual workings of American politics," (3) "a contribution to the sociology of American political parties," and (4) "a revelation of the role that irrational forces play in American political life." Dr. Hirshson reciprocated with a customary academic genuflection for "the sage counsel of this truly outstanding scholar," who offered "so many suggestions that it would re- quire another volume of this size merely to list them." Since Dr. Hirshson proves himself to be both a competent writer and thorough researcher, one hopes that his mentor's suggestions will provide the basis for additional research. Today's racial problems become more intelligible in light of the times and conditions de- scribed in this book. Although it is not germane to his topic, the author cannot resist the understandable impulse to con- |
clude his book with a brief, optimistic speculation about the future. The author had the advantage of fol- lowing a partially blazed trail. He refers his readers to Vincent P. De Santis' Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877-1897, which was published after his own manu- script was completed. Dr. Hirshson had access to De Santis' articles and doctoral dissertation on this theme, however, and so there is considerable parallelism in their books. De Santis was interested primarily in southern Republicanism, but, since he traced the numerous shifts in presidential policies toward the South, much of his material was pertinent to Hirshson's theme of northern Republi- canism. For example, he wrote an ex- tensive account of Henry Cabot Lodge's force bill. Northern Republican apathy toward the Negro was shown to be a major factor in its defeat. Such paral- lelism does not detract from the value of Hirshson's book. His extensive use of newspapers and relatively obscure and widely distributed manuscript collections enabled him to capture the slight varia- tions in local public opinion and to bring into sharper focus the contributions of innumerable Republican leaders in shap- ing their party's policies toward the Negro. Dr. Donald came close to the essence of this book when he described it as a "detailed account." The reader will not be surprised to learn that the Republicans, who realized that most Americans voted Democratic, hoped to transform their minority party into a national organiza- tion by winning support in such Demo- cratic strongholds as the South. It will not come as a startling revelation that many practical northern Republicans kept alive the old denunciations of southern whites by "waving the bloody shirt" in an effort to build a party composed of Negro voters. On the other hand, it has long been an accepted thesis that power- ful economic interests in the North and |
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certain northern Republican reformers agreed that there were more profitable and political advantages to be derived from an entente with southern whites. After 1890 the northern Republicans abandoned the Negro; they had new in- terests to champion, and the flow of west- ern expansion was creating a Republican majority without any help from the South. Through his extensive research, Dr. Hirshson has been able to muster much material to provide greater detail in sup- port of these ideas. The northern Repub- licans did not have a continuous or con- sistent policy toward the Negro, and so the author has performed a valuable serv- ice by giving the historian a clearer pic- ture of what that policy was at any moment and the forces that were at work to change it. There is no doubt that by 1877 the Republican party was purged of most of its idealism and humanitarianism. For the Negro there was nothing but the fad- ing image of the Great Emancipator. It would be good to know how the northern Republicans expected to build a southern wing with neither patronage nor other recompense for poor Negro and white constituents. WILLIAM FRANK ZORNOW Kent State University STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE: CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE. By Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press, 1962. xiv??463p.; tables, charts, and index. $10.00.) This book has many virtues, but its chief one is that it provides clothing for several skeletal theories that have long hung in the business historian's closet. Theories of adaptive and innovative re- sponses, of entrepreneurial versus "merely managerial" functions and behavior, and of financial versus industrial capitalist, all are subjected, either implicitly or explic- itly, to the test of holding the weight of |
empirical data. Professor Chandler's subject is the introduction of multi- divisional, multi-level, decentralized man- agement structure in the American corpo- ration. He has done four intensive case studies, based largely on corporation archives, of Du Pont, General Motors, Standard Oil, and Sears, Roebuck. These firms were selected when preliminary re- search indicated that they were the first to adopt the modern organizational struc- ture. To assess the impact of their inno- vations on American industry as a whole, Mr. Chandler has also studied the fifty largest corporations of 1909 and the seventy largest of 1948. The thesis that emerges from the ex- tremely detailed case studies is that "structure followed strategy." Overcapac- ity (either actual or anticipated), diversi- fication or integration, all produced new administrative problems, and these gave rise in turn to major changes in organiza- tional structure. The role of individual business leaders in shaping these changes, or at times resisting them, is given ample attention, and generalizations are ven- tured about the innovating types. Like the best of recent work in business history, Strategy and Structure clearly re- lates its subject both to national economic development and to what Arthur Cole terms the "social setting of business enter- prise." For the student of business or administrative history, its importance is obvious. For the American historian, it not only offers a closely written study of one aspect of corporation development but also suggests the impact on industry of war, depression, and changing con- sumer habits. For the state and local his- torian, the book suggests indirectly a number of important issues. For example, how did changing management of giant national firms affect the growth of local communities that produced and/or con- sumed the products of these firms? One hopes that an equally important study will be inspired by this one, a study con- cerned rather with lower-level manage- |
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ment in its local setting, adjusting to such changes in corporate structure and strat- egy as Chandler describes. As in any such work, there are points that will be debated. At times Mr. Chan- dler appears to assume too readily that corporate growth and success flowed in- evitably from the structural reforms that preceded such development (see p. 158). Given the striking transfer of entrepre- neurial personnel and skills from the pub- lic field of enterprise to the private, espe- cially in early nineteenth-century United States, it is difficult to accept his flat con- |
tention that problems of administration in the private enterprise are not meaning- fully comparable to those in public under- takings (p. 322). Given the volume of detail, moreover, it is paradoxical that ostensibly important issues should be in- troduced but not explained; for example, analysis of G. M. executives' debate of the copper-cooled engine (pp. 154-155) does not include any assessment on an engi- neering basis of the engine. But such minor criticisms ought not deter any his- torian from a close reading of this im- portant book. HARRY N. SCHEIBER Dartmouth College |
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INDEPENDENT HISTORICAL SOCIETIES: AN ENQUIRY INTO THEIR RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION FUNCTIONS AND THEIR FI- NANCIAL FUTURE. By Walter Muir Whitehill. (Boston: The Boston Athe- naeum, 1962. Distributed by Harvard University Press. xviii??593p.; index. $12.50.) "For some years now historical-society journals, one after another, have been undergoing a transformation of format, style, and content into imitation popular magazines," declared the New-York His- torical Society annual report for 1961. Ohioans concerned with state and local history will be interested, if not embar- rassed, in a further quotation from the report: "This phenomenon was punctu- ated in 1961 by an abrupt termination of the vigorous 70-year-old Ohio Historical Quarterly to provide for another incre- ment of periodical quasi-history--and this despite the unanimous protests of the Ohio Academy of History and published regrets. . . in sister quarterlies. Such sacrifice of scholarship to a supposed popular predilection for costume-ball his- tory reverses the long process by which historical-society journals, including our own, achieved their proper sphere of use- fulness and influence" (p. 547). The excerpt quoted above and, indeed, the entire tone of Mr. Whitehill's ad- mirably frank volume will, no doubt, cause his book to be debated vigorously in historical circles. The author quite properly raises the core question as to the essential nature of the historical so- ciety--should it pander to a capricious |
public, or should it devote itself to a solid, scholarly career? The independent society, Mr. Whitehill points out, is pri- marily concerned with the advancement of learning. The society supported in whole or in part by public funds is con- cerned not only with scholarship but also with its wide dissemination. In short, the latter, at times, must attempt to "sell" its wares by a variety of techniques, which may run the gamut from dainty teas to public dinners at which buffalo stew is served. This emphasis on "togetherness" is beautifully illustrated in Chapter Twenty-Three and its appropriate verse from Zechariah: "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver." The State Historical Society of Iowa makes much of steamboat excursions on the Missis- sippi, but its Iowa Journal of History, a once distinguished periodical, has not been printed for months. Throughout the nation there is a belief held by some that historical societies are facing critical times. It is not uncommon to hear that institutions are headed up by individuals not trained as historians, that journals are edited by persons lacking professional, academic experience, that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being wasted literally on and by weak and inadequate societies, especially on the local level, but also on the state level, and that societies are making no contribu- tions to their communities. Mr. White- hill's chapter, "The Organization Men," is provocative. One must not forget, how- |