Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

The Land That I Show You: Three Centuries of Jewish Life in America.

By Stanley Feldstein. (Garden City; Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978. xi + 512 p.;

illustrations, selected bibliography, index. $12.95.)

 

Together with Henry Feingold's Zion in America (Twayne, 1974), there now

exist two full-length histories of the American Jewish experience. While Zion in

America is an exceptionally sophisticated and scholarly survey, wrestling with most

of the enigmas of American Jewish history, Feldstein has produced a popular,

entertaining but generally superficial narrative pastiche of American Jewry from

the mid-seventeenth century New Amsterdam Jews to Goldie Hawn, Barry

Manilow, and Stephen Sondheim.

Despite more than twenty pages of bibliography, which lumps the useful together

with the useless, there are no footnotes; the result is that page after page-except

when Feldstein's relatives are quoted (139-40, 318-19)-one usually seeks in vain

for the source of fascinating quotes. "I guess," said one Jewish TV writer,

"that . . . the powers don't think America is ready yet for a series called

Feinschreiber, Ginsberg or Schlansky." On more than a hundred pages one

searches for the identity of "retired high school principals," "young soldiers from

Brooklyn," or the TV writer. At times, furthermore, there are long quotes from men

and women with names that no reader would recognize (Meyer Goldberg, Stanley

Feldman, etc.) and who receive more print than many American Jews who made

distinctive and significant contributions to Jewish life in America (Judah Magnes,

Solomon Schechter, etc.).

Equally disturbing is Feldstein's strong dislike for various types of Jews and his

penchant for exaggerating certain phenomena in order to present a generally

negative image of the Jewish experience. The only segment of the American

population which rejected Barbara Streisand, Feldstein claims, was Brooklyn

Jewish men who saw her only as a reminder of "pushy little girls" (442), while at the

same time he inflates the Jewish self-hatred and ignores the Jewish affirmations of

Jewish writers such as Muriel Rukeyser (306) and Howard Fast (307).

This is, ultimately, a book filled with generous portions of entertaining but

historically insignificant trivia and sensationalism: Mickey Cohen hustling money

for Jewish philanthropy from the underworld (378); Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and

Max Rubin's conversation before Murder, Inc. shot Rubin in the head (319-20);

Eddie Cantor and George Jessel's Depression dialogue (293-94); and the Jewish

Defense League's threats of "head-knocking" and ass-kicking (453-59). For the

reader seeking a serious introduction to American Jewish history, Zion in America,

not The Land That I Show You, remains the starting place.

 

The Ohio State University                            Marc Lee Raphael

 

 

The National Archives: America's Ministry of Documents, 1934-1968. By Donald

R. McCoy. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978.

ix+437p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $19.50)

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A History of the National Archives should elicit two responses, and this study

brings out both of them. First, why has no such study been written before? The

book makes one keenly aware that there is very little history of the National

Archives, and it demonstrates that the National Archives is a cultural institution of

such significance that a good history should exist. The last history was H.G. Jones,

The Records of a Nation, an excellent study written ten years ago, but one that

needed supplementing especially because it was written to plead the case for

independent status for the Archives. The second point to a degree explains the first.

The book dramatically exposes the newness of the National Archives as an

institution, and the smallness of the Archives when compared to other federal

agencies, even cultural agencies such as the Smithsonian Institution.

McCoy sees his task as dealing with the "significant steps and controversies" in

the development of the Archives from the enactment of the National Archives Act

in 1934 through 1968, the year of Robert Bahmer's retirement as Archivist of the

United States. A first chapter gives the background for the establishment of the

National Archives and the last one largely deals with developments since 1968. In

structure, then, the study is heavily based on administrative development. One of

the strengths of the book is that the author does not focus exclusively on this aspect

of the Archives. He pays heed to and evaluates the role and the contribution of the

men who served as Archivist of the United States and of the circle of people who

joined the staff in the first years of the Archives and devoted a career to the

institution; people who together with the Archivist shaped the institution in its first

thirty-five years, and who retired in the 1960s and early 1970s. Thus the role of

Herbert Angel, Philip Brooks, Oliver H olmes, Theodore Schellenberg, and a dozen

others in creating the institution is well portrayed. But given this emphasis on

administrative leadership, the author does more than one might expect to recognize

and evaluate personnel in operational rather than administrative positions. For

example, on page 81, after commenting that administrative personnel tended to

under-value the operational staff and that the staffs of the division called themselves

"stack rats" partly because they felt it was how they were viewed by the

administrators of the institution, McCoy goes on to say: "Yet increasingly the stack

rats were the ones who made the National Archives a success-the archives

divisions often provided solutions to the problems generated by the agencies false

starts." And McCoy does keep the operational as well as the administrative

function in view through the book, perhaps partly because he was one ofthe"stack

rats" in the early 1950s.

The book explores a number of serious problems: the need to develop a role in

acquiring and administering records from the various agencies; the deluge of paper

much increased by World War II and the need to develop techniques to deal with

this paper; and the issue of administering control and oversight of the Archives are

among the most important. The National Archives also had successes: its early and

continuing leadership in the field of international archives; development of

publication and service roles as in the Federal Register, the National Historical

Publications Commission (now the NHPRC); the Territorial Papers series and

microfilm and film publications; development of techniques and leadership in

records management; development of the Federal Records Centers; and the

development of the Presidential Libraries system, to name a few.

Professor McCoy deals with these problems and successes of the National

Archives effectively. An adequate history of this-the Archives "first generation"-

needs to deal with the group of people who shaped the institution in the way it grew.

McCoy does this well. The book gives an excellent factual account of how the

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National Archives developed from 1934-1968. In doing this, it provides real insight

into the importance of the National Archives to the cultural development of the

nation. It is a first rate treatment of a subject that needed such a study.

 

University of Cincinnati                             W. D. Aeschbacher

 

 

Farmers Without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in Nineteenth-Century Iowa. By

Donald L. Winters. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. xvi + 145p.; tables,

maps, appendices, notes, note on sources, index. $15.95.)

 

Farmers Without Farms is an important contribution to the understanding of

nineteenth century agricultural economics in the Midwest. It lays to rest the thesis

first set forth by Paul W. Gates that federal land policy encouraged large-scale land

speculation, which in turn led to tenancy. Gates and the corpus of monographic

studies his work spawned have been under attack on all flanks for some time,

especially by the current generation of agricultural econometricians. Donald

Winters' work fits into the revisionism which has now become the establishment in

agricultural economic history.

Farm tenancy was not due to federal land policy malfunction, argues Winters.

Why, then, did tenancy grow to significant proportions in Iowa during the last third

of the nineteenth century? The answer, Winters believes, can be found in disproving

yet another major fallacy long accepted by most historians of American agriculture:

tenancy was not a step backwards by farmers who lost farms in hard times, nor was

it simply a recourse for farmers who lacked the capital to begin farming. Rather,

tenancy was a natural economic phenomenon in a period of maturing regional

agricultural economy and a common step on the ladder of upward mobility.

Tenancy allowed for the dispersion of risk essential to rational and steady capital

formation.

Building on earlier works by Allan G. Bogue, Robert P. Swierenga, and Steven

N.S. Chueng, Winters uses the federal census manuscripts for twelve selected Iowa

counties to analyze the tenants, leasors, grow rates, crop trends, and real estate

values across the period 1850 to 1900. His theoretical rigor and analytical

sophistication are equal to the tasks he set for himself. Concerning his heavy

reliance on the census data, Winters notes that "Iowa tenants have left a sparse

record from which one might gain an understanding of their attitudes and

aspirations. There are no manuscripts, diaries, or personal accounts" (p. 140) Yet

we need not be concerned because "the kinds of questions this study addresses are

best answered through quantitative analysis . . . Faceless the people may be;

absent they are not." (p.9)

Unfortunately, this is not the only characteristic too commonly found in the

work of those who rely solely on quantitative analysis as Winters does in Farmers

Without Farms. The narrative assaults the reader with numbers in machine gun

fashion. The text is littered with the jargon of the trade-Spearman rho,

Pearsonian correlation coefficient, significance levels, z-scores, multivariate

regression-unexplained for the reader not trained in the method. And there is the

occasional glaring slip from not have read as well in the field as in the data: "Given

the relatively nonscientfic, nontechnical nature of nineteenth-century agriculture,

farmers were no doubt fairly homogeneous in ability" (pp. 66-67). Had Winters

read Leo Rogin's classic Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the

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332                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States in the Nineteenth

Century (Berkley: University of California, 1931), he would have profitted.

Farmers Without Farms should be read by those interested in nineteenth century

American agricultural econometrics; it is not for the general reader. An excellent

alternative for those who would like to read a summary of the findings of Winters

and others researching closely related topics is Robert Higgs, The Transformation

of the American Economy, 1865-1914, (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.,

1971), chapter four, "The Ups and Downs of the Farmer." Higgs, a quantifier of the

first rank, neatly captures the essence of Winters work in a section of chapter four

entitled "Ownership, Tenure, and Efficiency" (pp. 93-96), in lucid and literate prose.

 

Northern Illinois University                     Glen A. Gildenmeister

 

 

The History of American Electoral Behavior. Edited by Joel H. Silbey, Allan G.

Bogue, and William H. Flanigan. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

xv + 384p.; notes, tables, index. $27.50 cloth; $12.50 paper.)

 

The present volume contains the revised papers presented at a conference at

Cornell University in 1973 sponsored by the Mathematic Social Science Board. The

papers focus exclusively upon quantitative research problems in American political

history, and, as the editors note, the essays indicate "quite well, the range and depth

of the work presently being done by historians and other scholars using systematic

quantitative methods.... "(xiv)

The essays vary considerably in terms of subject matter and in geographical and

chronological range. Two of them, "Partisan Realignment: A Systematic

Perspective" by Walter Dean Burnham, Jerome M. Clubb, and William H.

Flanigan and "Party, Competition, and Mass Participation: The Case of the

Democratizing Party System, 1824-1852," by William N. Chambers and Philip C.

Davis, attempt to study broad, national trends across a wide span of American

history. These two essays, because they deal with themes more general than the

others, deserve and will receive special attention. The remaining essays in one way

or another are more highly specialized. One, by Jerrold G. Rusk and John J.

Stucker, focuses upon a single region, the South, in the late nineteenth century to

argue (contrary to V.O. Key, Jr.) that the sharp decline in southern voter turnout in

these years was a direct result of the implementation of poll tax and literacy test

legislation. Four essays are studies of political behavior in individual states: one of

these, by Lee Benson, Joel H. Silbey, and Phyllis F. Field, is a study of voting

patterns in New York state from 1892 to 1970; a second is a study of third-party

alignments in Minnesota from the Populist Era to the Farmer-Labor movement by

Nancy H. Zingale; and a third by David A. Bohmer attempts to demonstrate that in

some parts of Maryland, at least, the first national party system in the Early

National Period was in many ways similar to more modern political systems. The

fourth state study, by Robert R. Dykstra and David R. Reynolds, is an

examination of a large sample of rural Wisconsin precinct data that shows, the

authors conclude, that voting patterns fail to reveal the existence of a "progressive

tradition" in Wisconsin between 1904 and 1952. Two essays are concerned with

urban political themes. One of these is a study of the emergence and ethnic

composition of the "machine vote" for Tammany Hall in late nineteenth century

New York City by Martin Shefter, and the other, by J. Rogers Hollingsworth,

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Book Reviews                                                        333

 

examines the relationship between electoral behavior and public policy in small

American cities in 1900. The final essay in the collection is a methodological piece

by John L. Shover and John J. Kushma that describes an experiment in which

individual behavior is estimated from aggregate data through regression analysis.

The editors' introduction and comments add much to the value of this volume.

The collection is a highly useful representation of the variety of interests and range

of technical skills characteristic of current work in quantitative analysis of

American political history, and it deserves the serious attention of scholars and

teachers.

 

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale               Howard W. Allen

 

 

Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America. Edited by Tamara K.

Hareven and Maris A. Vinovsksis. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

xiv + 250p.; tables, index. $25.00 cloth, $9.75 paper.)

 

Among the rewarding applications of computers to historical research has been

the development of new insights regarding patterns of family life. The family,

although obviously an institution of great significance, has resisted traditional

historical research methodologies. The fragmentary and indirect available sources

provided only a partial view of the constants and changes in family life. Yet until

techniques were developed for handling large data sets (such as the state and federal

census returns, marriage registers, and city directories used in this volume),

historians lacked alternatives. The value of quantitative methods for describing and

analyzing family structure, childbearing, migration, urbanization, and economic

behavior has since been demonstrated repeatedly. This volume, the outgrowth of a

1974 conference sponsored by the Mathematics Social Science Board of the

National Science Foundation, contributes to our rapidly growing knowledge.

The organizer of the conference. Tamara Hareven, has stood in the forefront of

the movement for systematic study of family history during the past decade as a

researcher, essayist, and editor of several collaborative volumes as well as the

Journal of Family History. Hareven has urged quantitative historians to keep sight

of the family life cycle, the significant variations in family structure and function

from its formation through child-rearing to the "empty nest." Together with

frequent collaborator Maris Vinovsksis, she has in this instance brought together

six essays, each with a tight focus and broader implications. Never mind that their

nineteenth century begins in 1855 and lasts in one case until 1940 or that their

America is principally the northeastern quarter of the United States, this is an

imaginative and stimulating collection.

The impact of modernization on the family provides the underlying theme of

these essays. In various ways they challenge conventional notions regarding

urbanization and industrialization as causes for declining fertility and family

fragmentation. In their impressive analysis of over 20,000 farm families in sixteen

northern states in 1860, Richard Easterlin, George Alter, and Gretchen Condran

perceives an inverse relationship between birth rates and land development.

Apparently land scarcity, increasing the cost of establishing children or nearby

farms, led parents to opt for fewer children. Stanley Engerman finds black fertility

declined by half, 1880-1940, paralleling the white decrease, even though blacks

remained far more rural and agricultural than whites. Hareven and Vinovsksis, in

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334                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

their own essay, compares birth rates in five large and small Massachusetts towns.

Though their study lacks the geographical scope and comparative breadth of the

other two, it also discounts the factor of urbanization. These three essays suggest

that the dramatic decline in family size during the nineteenth century resulted more

from economic and educational progress than from the move to the city.

Families did help in coping with city life and difficult stages in the life cycle.

Laurence Glasco's excellent study of native American migrants to Buffalo shows,

among other things, that many came with families or soon established family ties.

Newlyweds in Providence very commonly lived near relatives, Howard Chudacoff

ably demonstrates, suggesting the need to modify the image of the ever-

independent, nuclear, urban family. John Modell comparing the economic

behavior of native and Irish immigrants working-class families, finds that while

their adult males received lower wages, Irish families put more women and children

to work and took in more boarders to maintain equivalent family economic levels.

These essays, far richer than a brief discussion can indicate, illustrate the methods

and intellectual creativity of quantitative family historians. They are, for the most

part, clearly enough written for even the non-specialist to appreciate. Above all,

they raise important questions which can best be answered through more studies,

including-one may hope some which focus on the hitherto little examined

families of the Buckeye state.

 

University of Akron                                     David E. Kyvig

 

 

 

The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire. By R. David Edmunds. (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1978. xii + 367p.; maps, illustrations, notes,

selected bibliography, index. $19.95.)

 

R. David Edmunds, already well known for historical articles on the Potawatomi

Indians, has drawn together his extensive research in this substantial account of the

tribe from earliest days of white contact until 1840, by which time the various

Potawatomi bands were concentrated in Kansas. It is a story of a formidable tribe

that played a significant role chiefly as an ally of the French in the interplay of

forces by which the Old Northwest passed from aboriginal control to that of white

nations. It is a tragic story, too, for the Potawatomis in the end became seriously

fragmented and dispirited, existing somewhere between their traditional ways and

assimilation to white society.

Edmunds writes as a historian, not as an anthropologist, and there is little in the

book about the cultural patterns and developments of the Potawatomis. The book

is not intended to be an internal history of the tribe; it is, as the author admits, "a

study of Potawatomi-white relations." This was a decision largely forced upon the

author, no doubt, by the historical documents available-the papers of white

military and governmental figures, the reports of white traders, and the government

records in the National Archives and in official publications. The vast array of such

sources listed in the bibliography attests to the author's remarkable diligence. From

them he has extracted what must amount to every conceivable reference to the

Potawatomis. To keep the story straight has been no small achievement, and the

thoroughness of the documentation will benefit all future searchers after

Potawatomi data.

The history of the Potawatomis is complex and not easy to follow because they

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Book Reviews                                                         335

 

were not a single unit. Some of them lived near Detroit, some on the St. Joseph

River in what is now the southwestern section of Michigan, and others at various

locations in present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. And the policies of

the disparate bands were seldom coordinated. Moreover, the Potawatomis were

not the primary agents in the events narrated in the first four-fifths of the book.

They were always acting as the allies of some other group with whom the initiative

lay. Thus they supported the French in their imperial struggle with the British,

Pontiac against the British advance, the British against the colonists in the

Revolution, Tecumseh against the onrushing white American settlers, and the

British again in the War of 1812. It is difficult to keep one's attention on groups

which do not furnish the main actors in a story.

The last fifth of the book deals with the period after the War of 1812, in which the

Potawatomis dealt only with the United States. It is the story of the removal of the

Potawatomi bands from east of the Mississippi to Iowa, Missouri, and then to

Kansas, and of the increasing political fragmentation of the tribe. In the quarter

century after the War of 1812, there were twenty-eight treaties between the

Potawatomis and the United States. In earlier land cessions the tribe had given up

claims to territory occupied by other Indians; now they began to cede lands

surrounding their own villages. The United States dealt with the separate bands,

each of them trying to gain a larger share in the promised annuities. "The

Potawatomis," Edmunds notes, "would bargain away their birthright, selling their

lands piecemeal for the Americans' trade good, money, and promises" (p. 219).

While the Indians accepted the products of American technology, they did not

accept the American ideal of the small yeoman farmer. Their goal of acculturation

continued to be the French trader, not the Anglo farmer.

The interrelated activities of government officials, self-interested traders, mixed-

blood spokesmen for the tribe, Christian missionaries, and the Indians themselves

are skillfully handled. Edmunds has produced a valuable book, which furnishes

insight into Indian-white relations beyond the single tribe he treats.

 

Marquette University                                 Francis Paul Prucha

 

 

 

Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate 1954-1960. By Robert A.

Divine. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ix + 393p.; appendix, notes,

essay on sources, bibliography, index. $14.95.)

 

On March 1, 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a nuclear device at

the Bikini atoll. Radioactivity released from the subsequent series of test caused

injuries to nearby Marshall Islanders and to Japanese tuna fisherman aboard their

boat, the Lucky Dragon. The health hazard of nuclear blasts 1000 times more

powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, weighed against United States cold war

security needs, became the central issue of a controversy involving President

Eisenhower, his top administrative advisors, important congressmen, noted

scientists and other intellectuals. Robert A. Divine's Blowing on the Wind: The

Nuclear Test Ban Debate 1954-1960 is a cogent and balanced study of the major

issues and actors in this epic diplomatic conflict.

The author, a noted diplomatic historian and professor of history at the

University of Texas, Austin, imaginatively creates high drama as he unfolds the

debate. Advocates and opponents of testing grapple for a chance to influence the

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336                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

President. Divine describes the key matchups: Special Assistant on Disarmament

Harold Stassen vs. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Arthur Radford,

Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff; Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis

Strauss and John McCone vs. Scientific Advisors James Killians and George

Kistiakowsky; politicians Nixon and Churchill vs. Humphrey, Stevenson, and

Nehru; and scientists Edward Teller and Willard Libby vs. Hans Bethe, Ralph

Lapp, and Linus Pauling.

On a more general level, the nuclear test ban debate posed several questions of

national priorities. Should the United States continue to test nuclear bombs in the

belief that American nuclear superiority would deter a Soviet attack? Or should the

United States curtail testing so as not to risk harm to the health and genetic well-

being of the world's people? As might be expected, the national security priority was

pushed by the State Department, the Pentagon, and by politicians motivated

primarily by hatred and fear of the Soviet Union. Moral and health considerations

against testing were argued by many distinguished scientists and politicians,

renowned humanitarians, pacifists, and others.

The intense debate over bomb tests rendered an educational service to an

American public that, Divine claims, desperately tried to circumvent the

frightening issue of nuclear annihilation. However, the controversey extracted a

heavy cost. Time and again Divine demonstrates how an indecisive President

Eisenhower allowed competing factions to paralyze negotiations with the Soviet

Union. The President tried to avoid choosing between the two main priorities. He

held out for a negotiated, step-by-step, monitored agreement that would not only

allow the United States to maintain nuclear superiority, but also would decrease the

number and potential danger from bomb tests. The tragedy is that America's

indecision prevented any full probing of Soviet intentions.

In Divine's lucid narration and critical, but sympathetic, analysis of the dilemma,

we are reminded once again of important tensions in American diplomacy-the

danger in scientists becoming advocates, the need for competent and unbiased

presidential advisors, the advantages of a national leader who can evalute evidence

and act with authority, and the inadequacy of technical data and scientific

knowledge for making certain types of policy decisions. An important question that

is raised in the debate, but not adequately discussed by the author, is the difficulty in

the public gaining access and influence in policy decisions. Indeed Divine's work

neglects to convey the passion of the popular protest against bomb tests even

though he, and other scholars he cites, believes this protest failed to substantially

affect government behavior.

Divine's important book includes a valuable appendix containing a chronology

of the debate and an essay on sources which discusses his use of newspapers,

periodicals, government archives, oral histories, memoirs, and previous books. The

author's exhaustive scholarship and highly readable style are worthy of praise.

However, this reviewer finished the work on a note of sadness. Once again we see

how distrust and fear influences well-intentioned people to make decisions that hurt

the survival prospects of the human race. A quarter century after the beginning of

the test bomb debate, technical expertise still overshadows human wisdom in our

defense policy, and the orgy of weapon development continues unabated.

 

Syracuse University                                      Neil H. Katz

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Book Reviews                                                      337

 

American Law and the Constitutional Order: Historical Perspectives. Edited by

Lawrence M. Friedman and Harry N. Scheiber. (Cambridge; Harvard

University Press, 1978. xiii + 521p.; notes, contributors. $22.50.)

 

Those of us who are actively involved in the teaching of constitutional and legal

history eagerly welcome worthwhile, needed additions to our library holdings.

Messrs. Friedman and Scheiber have edited a highly useful study of thirteen parts

by thirty-one contributors, a work in which the writers ably treat the history of legal

institutions and constitutional law. Among those whose work is included are well-

known, prominent specialists in the fields of history, law, and political science.

The editors preface each of the thirteen parts with brief, informative

introductions, which are accompanied by relevant lists of scholarly works for

further reading. While space limitation precludes comment on the complete

contents of this study, a listing of the thirteen parts should prove highly useful for

the prospective reader: (1) American Legal Culture; (2) Studies in Colonial Law; (3)

The Revolution and the New Constitutional Order; (4) Law and the Economy in

Ante-bellum America; (5) Crime, Criminal Justice, and Violence; (6) Slavery and

the Civil War; (7) The New Legal Order: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age; (8)

Progressivism and the Law; (9) Crime and Social Control in the Twentieth Century;

(10) Race Relations and the Law; (11) The Bar and the New Jurisprudence; (12) The

Regulatory and Welfare State; and (13) The Contemporary Legal Order. It should

be stated that the notes, placed at the end of this work, are quite copious, extending

from pages 435 through 520.

The subject of law during the colonial period of American history has been well

covered largely because of the abundance of records that are available to the

research scholar. While many think that early American law was solely adopted

from the courts of London, Julius Goebel, Jr. points out that an important source

was local legal custom. Much can be learned about this significant subject, as

George L. Haskins indicates, by examining the constitutional experience of

Plymouth colony, whose importance is frequently overlooked or underestimated

by historians. David Flaherty adds to our legal understanding by demonstrating

that" . . the moral law and the criminal law were all closely intertwined" (p. 53).

The editors themselves cite "How crime, morals, and law interrelate . . . [as] a

recurrent theme in American legal historiography . . ." (p. 28), a theme which is

developed in several of the essays in this work.

Mob violence, or popular uprisings, is a topic which is extremely well presented

in this study by Pauline Maier. She points out that uprisings on this side of the

Atlantic were not unlike those that had occurred in England and France. While

Americans tended to view popular acts of force as lawful during the colonial period,

this attitude of acceptance changed after the Revolution because of" . . . fun-

damental transformations in the political perspective of Americans after 1776" (p.

83). Adding to the study of the revolutionary era, Harry N. Scheiber engages in an

effort, as he puts it, to reconstruct the original understanding of federalism and the

Constitution. He maintains that the Great Compromise was of utmost importance,

for "In a sense, every succeeding decision of the convention flowed from this

decision on representation" (p. 88). Discussing original purposes of the First

Amendment, Leonard W. Levy contends that this Amendment was intended to

prevent restraints by Congress prior to publication. He also states that "The

framers meant Congress to be totally without power to enact legislation respecting

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338                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

the press" (p. 102). As Congress was not authorized to legislate on speech and press,

an original purpose of the First Amendment was to reserve such legislative

authority for the states.

As mentioned earlier, the relationship between law and morality is a recurring

theme in this work. William E. Nelson points out that the criminal of the colonial

era was probably not viewed as an outcast, as would later be the case, but was one

who had sinned. However, a transition in attitude and the source of criminal law

took place from about 1760 to 1810. By the latter date, the view of a criminal had

evolved from a sinner to an outcast, and theft and the security of property, rather

than immorality, prompted the enactment of criminal law.

The subject of violence is also treated by Richard Maxwell Brown who deals with

vigilantism and Roger Lane who is concerned with criminal violence in the urban

areas of Massachusetts during the nineteenth century. Brown points out that

vigilantism existed as early as 1767. Moreover, this form of violence which is

generally associated with the American West has occurred on occasion throughout

this nation. Brown includes in his essay an informative discussion of vigilante

purposes, participants, and characteristics. Lane advances a thesis in his essay that

will probably prove to be provocative among urban specialists: he maintains that

urbanization in the last century led to an improvement in personal behavior with a

corresponding decline in the crime rate. This position should lead to an interesting

debate at a time when we are experiencing rampant crime in our major cities.

This study includes several essays that treat recent constitutional and legal

developments of considerable consequence. As limited space arbitrarily prevents

the mentioning of all contributors, this reviewer reluctantly excludes several and

concludes with Charles A. Reich's "The New Property" and John P. Frank's

"Judicial Review and Basic Liberties." The editors state that "Since 1933 the

dramatic shift in real power within the federal system has allowed the central

government decisively to displace the states as the locus for major policy decisions"

(p. 375). Reich indicates that this significant transition has transpired, in part,

because vast wealth dispensed by the central government has increasingly replaced

" . . traditional forms of wealth . . . private property" (p. 377). Writing in

1954, Frank found the High Court's record to be wanting in the exercise of judicial

review in opinions affecting civil liberties. However, in view of post-1954 holdings

of the Warren Court, the editors think that "No doubt, after the passage of twenty

years, he [Frank] would now want to revise his opinion. But this does not alter the

basic finding that the Court has, in fact, not been zealous in defense of civil liberties

to the extent that a convinced civil libertarian would have wanted it to be" (p. 395).

The editors indicate that the history of law is attracting a growing number of

students who are discovering that this vital field has much to offer. Although

traditional legal language and technicalities have tended to hamper understanding,

the editors sought to offer readings devoid of these "hurdles of language" (p. viii).

They have accomplished this task admirably, for it is obvious that the thirty-four

essays in this work were chosen only after careful deliberation. The result is a book

which merits wide usage in libraries and classrooms. It is almost certain that this

work, as well as others on legal and constitutional history, will be in much demand

as we approach the bicentennial of our Constitution.

 

Fairmont State College                                     H. Dean Peters

• 10
 

Book Reviews                                                      339

 

Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900; Politics and the Appalachian

Community. By Gordon B. McKinney. (Chapel Hill: The University of North

Carolina Press, 1978. xiv + ²⁷⁷p.; appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $18.00.)

 

With so much of the current writing on the Appalachian region of a pseudo-

historical or sociological nature, it is refreshing to find a solid study on southern

Appalachian Republicans that resists the temptation to approach the period

between 1865 and 1900 by concentrating upon events that help to explain the

present situation, the effect of which is to "seriously distort the contemporary

mountain people's view of their own times and . . . obscure some important

developments" (p. xi). Based also upon the premise that "the study of the history of

the people of the Appalachian mountains must be written with great care" (p. xi),

this work by Gordon McKinney is a perceptive analysis of the origins and growth of

Republicanism in 154 counties of northwestern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky,

southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

In tracing the origins of the Republican Party in the southern Appalachians,

McKinney notes the importance of the Unconditional Unionists in West Virginia,

Kentucky, and Tennessee and of the Heroes of America in Virginia and North

Carolina. He emphasizes, however, the role of Congress in creating and fostering

the growth of Republicanism in the mountainous sections of the five states. Because

of congressional support, the party was forced to concentrate on national issues at

the expense of local interests and to carry the burden of such unpopular acts as the

emancipation of the slaves, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of

1875, all of which made the task of organizing and maintaining Republicanism

more difficult. The party therefore had a slow growth during Reconstruction, and

by 1870 the Democrats had returned to power in Tennessee and West Virginia.

The Republican Party was forced to make major adjustments to meet the needs

and demands of the mountain people. While continuing to glorify the Civil War, it

began to stress issues attuned to local interests, such as property damage claims

arising from the war, veterans' benefits, and patronage, and to ignore racial issues.

With this strategy, the party gained adherents between 1876 and 1888. Part of its

success also derived from the organization of party-armies, which made use of the

military discipline and even the terminology of war times. These party-armies, the

author maintains, insured the survival of mountain Republicanism. With the

election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency, the increasing appeal of the

party to local issues, and an amelioration of its rigid racial policies, Republicanism

experienced considerable growth under party-army leaders such as Leonidas C.

Houk in Tennessee, Nathan Goff in West Virginia, John D. White in Kentucky, and

William Mahone in Virginia.

During the 1890s a new business leadership replaced the party-armies of the

previous decades. The rise of industry created a new element, made up of

professional and middle classes, that once again emphasized the importance of

national issues. Despite the unpopularity of the Lodge Elections Bill of 1890, the

economic difficulties of the decade and their positions on tariff and money

questions enabled the new business leaders to wrest control of the mountain parties

from the party-army leaders. The machine of Stephen B. Elkins replaced that of

Goff in West Virginia; the Houk organization in Tennessee and the David G.

Colson organization in Kentucky fell into decline; and the forces of Jeter C.

Pritchard in North Carolina and Mahone in Virginia sought fusion with the

Populists in order to gain control of the party in their respective states.

• 11
 

340                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

The political machines found in the mountains differed little from others

throughout the country. McKinney maintains that no mountain political leader or

organization of the period, with the possible exception of the relationship of

mountain Republicans with Mahone and the Readjusters in Virginia, introduced

any new idea or program. He indicts the middle class and business leaders of the

Republicans for doing nothing to prevent the destruction of the mountain land,

which had such disastrous effects in the twentieth century. On the other hand, in its

response to the challenges and problems of the period, he gives the Republican

Party better marks than the Democrats, whom he accuses of retreating "behind the

breastworks of racism" and running up "the flag of white supremacy" (p. 203).

Between 1876 and 1890 the Republican Party earned the loyalty of Appalachian

voters and retained it until the Great Depression of the 1930s.

McKinney's volume is thoroughly researched, effectively organized, and well

written. It provides a useful context for analyzing and evaluating the achievements

and failures of the Republican Party in a significant section of the Appalachian

states and illuminates its growth in each of the five states with which the volume

deals.

 

West Virginia Institute of Technology                      Otis K. Rice

 

 

A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue: The

Depression Decade. By Harvard Sitkoff. (New York: Oxford University Press,

1978. xiii + 397p.; notes, index. $14.95.)

 

This important book fills a major gap in New Deal historiography. In this first

volume of a projected three-volume study on the emergence of civil rights as a

national issue, Harvard Sitkoff examines the factors which focused attention on

civil rights during the depression. After briefly sketching the plight of blacks from

the end of the Civil War to 1929, the author deals with such topics as: the start of

the New Deal; the Negro vote; the left and civil rights; labor and civil rights; the

intellectual vanguard for changing racial attitudes; and civil rights and the

Roosevelt Court.

The author underscores vividly the depression's devastating impact on blacks,

and how bad conditions worsened as menial jobs were erased as whites flocked to

seize them. Furthermore, the southern black migration northward only com-

pounded suffering, because northern cities were unable to provide relief. Yet,

because of Roosevelt's catering to southern Democrats, blacks voted for Hoover in

1932, and as New Deal programs were initiated, they had difficulty in getting any

public aid. In other words, Sitkoff concludes, there was no New Deal for blacks.

Nevertheless, the author contends that the foundations for the "Second

Reconstruction" were laid in the New Deal. He traces with great skill how the New

Deal changed in response to black problems. These changes were wrought because

of outside pressures; because people close to Roosevelt were committed to racial

equality; and because of presidential concern for the downtrodden. Sitkoffargues

that Eleanor Roosevelt more than any other single individual was responsible for

the change by: becoming the Negro's "unofficial ombudsman"; influencing FDR;

and associating herself with Negro leaders and organizations. Thus, Roosevelt

allowed himself to be photographed with blacks; Harold Ickes ended segregation in

the Interior Department; Harry Hopkins insisted upon equality in the WPA; and

• 12
 

Book Reviews                                                      341

 

more equal treatment appeared in the National Youth Administration, the Civilian

Conservation Corps, and the Farm Security Administration. Moreover, the New

Deal programs, according to the author, meant relatively more to blacks than

whites, and the growth in government resulted in more jobs for blacks under civil

service. With black appointments to cabinet departments, blacks began to believe

that their government really cared.

Sitkoff focuses much attention on the New Deal's impact on changing the

public's attitude towards blacks. More attention was paid to Negro voters as they

started migrating to the Democratic Party in 1934 with slogans like, "Let Jesus lead

you, and Roosevelt feed you" (94). By 1936 politicians stood convinced that blacks

controlled the balance of power. Therefore, as New Deal Democrats courted the

black vote, estranged southern Democrats joined with Republicans to form the

conservative coalition to halt the New Deal. In addition, this New Deal threat to the

southern power structure created a rift in the Roosevelt coalition, and it helped

place civil rights on the agenda of a new majority coalition. Furthermore, the CIO

and many AFL unions battled against Jim Crowism, and A. Philip Randolph's

union work spurred on black militancy. Also, the Roosevelt Supreme Court agreed

to hear violations of the Fourteenth Amendment-a move which allowed the

NAACP with a team of qualified black lawyers to challenge the legal vestages of

racism in a series of civil rights cases. With a few legal victories in these well-

publicized cases under their belts, blacks began to feel the law was on their side.

Importantly, Sitkoff sees the anti-lynching movement as a vehicle for awakening

the national conscience to the need for "federally sponsored interracial reform"

(297).

This clearly-written book is based upon extensive primary and secondary sources

and is logically organized. In his conclusion, the author points out that by 1940 both

Republicans and Democrats vied for the black vote, and that civil rights had

emerged as a Democratic issue. Significantly, the New Deal resulted in a rise in

black expectations; a decline in black powerlessness; and a diminution in white

hostilities. Sitkoff's work documents convincingly his contention that during the

New Deal civil rights began to emerge as a national issue. This study is must

reading.

 

Marshall University                            Robert Franklin Maddox

 

 

Which Side Are You On? The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39. By John W.

Hevener. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. xiv + 216p.; notes,

illustrations, bibliography, index. $10.95.)

 

Which Side are You On? tells the story of the Harlan County Coal miner from

1931-1939. Despised by mine operators, ignored by the Red Cross, and sacrificed by

the United Mine Workers, Harlan coal miners waged a decade-long battle for

recognition of their basic right to a decent life. Why was the Harlan miner despised,

ignored, and sacrificed? Because, says Hevener, the miners lacked political and

economic power. Mine operators ran Harlan County in the same authoritarian

manner as they ran their mines. The miners' struggle became a battle to curb the

operators political, economic, and social control of Harlan County.

Hevener's analysis of Harlan labor violence is the strength of his study. He

destroys the myth that Harlan became "Bloody Harlan" because of labor violence.

• 13
 

342                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Although there was labor violence, it comprised only a small percentage of Harlan's

overall violence. Drawing upon international studies of industrializing com-

munities, Hevener attributes Harlan's violence to stresses created by rapid

industrialization. These stresses were reflected by high murder rates even during

years of industrial peace. Any labor-management conflict occuring during this

transition could not escape the violence of the community in general. Hevener also

shows that Harlan's labor violence was a political response on the part of the miners

to the operators' use of armed guards. These guards, deputy sheriffs paid by the

operators, were ordered to prevent unionism. The guards' criminal backgrounds,

coupled with their occupational need to exercise authority, generated and sustained

labor violence in Harlan. Hevener endorses the Taft and Ross thesis that the

existence of armed guards causes violence. Not until their wholesale dismissal in

1937 did the UMWA make substantial progress in unionizing Harlan.

Hevener's analysis of New Deal influence on Harlan's politics and labor-

management relations is less persuasive than his analysis of labor violence. He

credits New Deal labor policies with creating a new balance of political and

economic power in Harlan, but fails to recognize the importance of public opinion.

The NRA helped the UMWA, yet operator intransigence and the mine-guard

system slowed progress. The NLRB sought to enforce the Wagner Act, but

operators continued to hold off political and economic change. It was public

opinion, not New Deal labor policy, which accounted for the major shift in Harlan's

balance of political and economical power. The LaFollett Civil Liberties

Commission and criminal trials of mine guards exposed the brutality of the

operator's anti-union behavior. Operators, already held partially responsible for

the Depression, wilted in the face of widespread public criticism. The public would

not, for instance, accept the murder of a teen-aged boy by mine guards during one

of their shooting sprees.

Two additional criticisms of this book remain. First, Hevener largely ignores the

middle class in his social history of the Harlan miners' struggle. Merchants, the

reader is told, supported the miners during the 1931-32 strike. Little else is

mentioned about the merchants and their role during the 1930s. Second, Hevener

states the labor-management dispute of the 1930s was not a class struggle. Yet the

operators and miners certainly perceived each other as members of separate classes.

As Hevener portrays it, this was a struggle by a group of people to gain recognition

of the right to a decent life. That, in a nutshell, is class conflict.

Which Side Are You On? should be read for its analysis of labor violence in

Harlan County. "Bloody Harlan" needs to be understood; this book leads the way.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                 Roger A. Meade

 

 

Population Pressure and Human Fertility Response: Ohio 1810-1860. By Don R.

Leet. (New York: Arno Press, 1978. xxiii + 291p.; notes, maps, bibliography,

tables, figures. $22.00.)

 

What were the factors determining the decline in the birth rate in Ohio from the

time of its inception until 1860? This is the task that M r. Leet sets for himself in this

intriguing book dealing with the demography of Ohio and its counties in the period

of its rapid settlement. Leet's analysis is largely statistical but nevertheless

fascinating as we follow his reasoning in developing measures of human fertility,

• 14
 

Book Reviews                                                       343

 

land scarcity, urbanity, and area of origin of settlers for each of Ohio's counties. The

text has excellent tables of summary measures for each county in selected years, and

anyone writing a history of an Ohio county may very well wish to refer to the

author's tables and charts for general analysis as well as fertility.

The central fact is that the fertility ratio, defined as the number of children 0-9

divided by the number of females 16-44, declined in the following manner:

 

Year       Fertility ratio

in Ohio

 

1810                    2.304

1820                    2.131

1830                    1.872

1840                    1.696

1850                    1.466

1860                    1.360

 

This decline was general throughout the entire state, but with some interesting

exceptions. The rate fell most rapidly in the northeastern and least in the

southeastern parts of the state. The northwest actually had an increase in fertility

from its first recorded census in 1820 to 1830. Classifications for counties reveal

twenty-eight cases of this "inversion phenomenon" from one census to the other;

the author explains them by stating that they occur early in the histories of the

counties when the economies are based on livestock raising and unimproved land.

A county would then undergo a transition from a land-extensive to a grain-

intensive organization which could support a larger population. A more general

argument might be that the original families would have a larger percentage of

people coming from eastern areas with different cultural patterns.

The analysis of the book is essentially only for the two census years 1850 and 1860

because these are the years when the first enumerations were made of agricultural

lands, the improved and unimproved acreage in each county. Ingenious indexes of

land availability and scarcity are constructed for each county, which are then

correlated with the fertility. It is the central hypothesis of the investigator that land

scarcity curtailed the number of children that families had. The father that would

not be able to place his sons or daughters in surrounding farm areas of the county

would be more apt to limit the size of his family. Doctor Leet considers the

cultivable land in each county as reported by present-day inventories made by the

United States Department of Agriculture; from this total he subtracts the improved

acreage of 1850 and develops the number of potential farms that might have arisen

in that year, as determined from the average-sized farms at that time. Consideration

is also made of the number of deaths and the incoming population of males that

would be demanding farms in the decade from 1850-1860. Thus, Columbiana

County in 1850 was in a position to expand the number of its farms by 685 in the

decade; a further 1,012 would become available due to deaths, while, 3,389 would

be potentially demanded by the oncoming population of males in the age group 15-

24. Since there would be a scarcity of farms by 1860, the prediction was that the

county's birth rate would drop dramatically; and this actually did occur. Allen

County, as a contrast, was found in 1850 to be in an excellent position for

expansion, since the potential supply for the decade was greater than the demand.

The investigator's analysis does show respectable correlations between his

indexes of scarcity and fertility ratios, with correlation coefficients of about .6, as we

• 15
 

344                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

might expect. Those who are not economists might remain unconvinced, since they

probably find it diffcult to visualize how the decision to have a child or not would

depend on a concept of having a farm available two decades later. Even one who

believes in economic explanations of having children might feel that the more

immediate concern is to have an adequate labor supply of children until they reach

the age of adulthood. One might feel more comfortable with the analysis if it dealt

with specific families, the number of children everborn to them, and the actual sizes

of their farms. The cultural historian who compiles evidences of decision making

based on availability of land could add much to the plausibility of the hypothesis.

Analyses are also made of county fertility differentials in terms of the urbanity of

the county, with some success as we might expect. Of more interest is the fact the

proportion of estimated New Englanders in each county yielded a correlation

coefficient of minus 0.5 when related to fertility. The theory for this relationship is

only sketched in the text, but it is loosely tied to the religious differences in New

England as opposed to those in other regions. Finally, the investigator finds a

surprisingly high correlation between the illiteracy level in each county and its

degree of fertility. This index may very well be a proxy for many cultural differences

besides those of educational background. The author might at least have

investigated illiteracy and fertility in 1840, since illiteracy figures were first gathered

in that year.

This published Ph.D. thesis of Doctor Leet is a fine first step in quantative

analysis of Ohio's early demographic history. It is a fine beginning model of

procedure that one might use in proceeding to understand our cultural heritage.

 

Ohio University                                             Lee Soltow

 

 

The Midnight War: The American Intervention in Russia, 1918-1920. By Richard

Goldhurst. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1978. xv + 288p.; maps,

notes, illustrations, bibliography, index. $14.95.)

 

The American intervention in Russia at the end of World War I is a puzzling

episode in American history. Despite the fact that a scholar as prominent as George

F. Kennan has gone so far as to suggest that this event would be an apt place to

mark the cold war's beginning, it is often given scant attention when discussing

American diplomacy. To date, the books on this topic speculate on the numerous

reasons for this venture while reaching few satisfactory concrete conclusions.

Richard Goldhurst's The Midnight War is one more of these books. He subtitles

his work "The American Intervention in Russia, 1918-1920." A more apropos

subtitle would be "The Allied Intervention in Russia." For he spends as much time

discussing the plight of the British, Czech legions, and Japanese as he does

discussing the American forces. This is a valid approach, however, since underlying

his account seems to be the view that the United States was influenced more often by

the actions and interests of its allies than its own national purpose and goals.

Goldhurst admits that "the central truth of the American intervention was that it

was not one policy in one place at one time but a variety of policies at a variety of

places at a variety of times." From the beginning, President Wilson seemed to

question the wisdom of committing American troops to this theater of action. His

justifications for involvement were sometimes contradictory. Among possible

motives were the need to help the Czech legions trapped in Siberia (Judging from

• 16
 

Book Reviews                                                        345

 

Goldhurst's account, the Czechs were the group least in need of aid.), the desire to

check Japanese power in the Far East, the obligation to protect supplies in

Murmansk and Archangel, and the intention of setting up a second front to trap

Germany.

But in Goldhurst's opinion, if the reasons for the initial intervention were

unclear, the reasons for the United States remaining until 1920 were quite

apparent-"to see who would govern Russia" at the end of the civil war. The allies

wanted to make sure that the Bolsheviks would not prevail. Using eyewitness

accounts and an occasional colorful anecdote, the author describes how the

Americans and their allies turned their focus from World War I to blatant

interference in Russia's internal affairs, particularly supporting the White Armies

and other opponents of Bolshevism. This whole experience ultimately ended in

failure.

In his conclusion, Goldhurst places this venture in the context of great power

global responsibility. He admits that there are times when great powers have to

intervene to maintain peace and stability. But the timing of such incursions is

crucial. As in the case of later twentieth century interventions in Korea and Viet

Nam, there was a proper moment when the United States could have withdrawn in

good conscience. The signing of the armistice provided that moment in 1918. But,

as in the case of Korea and Viet Nam, the United States missed the opportunity. The

result was the loss of lives and sowing the seeds of future Soviet distrust of the West.

In this volume, Goldhurst really adds nothing new to the historiography of the

Russian intervention. The book is only 288 pages long, yet it is chopped into

twenty-eight chapters. The documentation in the form of footnotes is very scanty.

Nevertheless, he has produced an interesting and highly readable work.

 

Saint Louis University                                 T. Michael Ruddy

 

 

Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction

in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862-65. By Peter Maslowski. (Millwood, New York:

KTO Press, 1979. xviii + 173p.; notes, bibliography, index. $18.95.)

 

As the author correctly indicates, books on the battles of the Civil War greatly

outnumber studies such as this of life behind the lines. Moreover, it is true that only

a minority of the works on the Reconstruction deal with its start before the end of

the fighting and even fewer concern reconstruction efforts below the national level.

Maslowski intends to help correct the deficiency. By investigating a city occupied by

Union forces during most of the war, he attempts to describe some of the first

experiments at reconstruction which he sees as giving early evidence of the

problems of the postwar period. Maslowski contends that Nashville, with business

links to the North and limited dependence upon slavery, should have been a fair

field for efforts to restore the Union. Hence, he suggests, his analysis of the failures

of reconstruction in this single city should help to explain its difficulties in less

promising parts of the South.

Maslowski succeeds in part in accomplishing his task. He has done a substanital

amount of research in newspapers, personal papers, archival collections, and a

variety of other materials. Unfortunately, the publisher has placed the notes which

set forth his sources at the chapter ends, an arrangement no more convenient to the

reader than segregating them in the ghetto at the back of the book. In his generally

• 17
 

346                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

well-written narrative, the author provides capsule descriptions of Nashville at the

beginning and end of the Civil War. As to the years between, he tells of the city's fall

and traces very well the concurrent formulation of an American theory concerning

the military government of such conquered places. He gives a well-balanced

analysis of Military Governor Andrew Johnson's reconstruction policies, conflicts

with Nashvillians, and power struggles with Union army commanders. Maslowski

also deals with the effects of the Federal military occupation on such specific aspects

of Nashville as the city government, the economy, and the black population.

A basic weakness of the book is the author's attempt to treat both the governor

and the city. Because he is writing about the capital of Tennessee, Maslowski

permits himself to be drawn into a discussion of Johnson's attempts to reconstruct

the state as a whole. The author's comments are mostly perceptive and sometimes

fresh-for example, he demonstrates that several of Johnson's stern measures were

less arbitrary and more successful than they have traditionally been portrayed.

Nonetheless, much of the treatment of Johnson's policies summarizes history

familiar to students of reconstruction in Tennessee. The state history is partly

peripheral to life in Nashville.

Since too much of this brief book is devoted to reconstruction on the state

government level, its handling of the city's three years under military occupation is

perhaps necessarily abridged. Especially disappointing is the rather superficial

discussion of the wartime cotton trade. Often illicit, frequently involving the

corruption of officials, and generally very profitable, it was important in regions

which, like Middle Tennesse, adjoined territory under Confederate control. Yet,

only about as much space is devoted to cotton buying and the rest of the city's

wartime wholesale and retail transactions as is spent on the doubtless more colorful

commerce of liquor sellers and of a streetful of prostitutes, the notorious "Smokey

Row." Insufficient detail on many matters combined with the author's sometimes

topical approach make it difficult for the reader to understand the changing day-by-

day pattern of city life. It is also not easy to see events in the Tennessee capital in a

larger context. Except for a few references to Memphis and New Orleans, there is

no attempt to compare conditions in Nashville with those elsewhere in the South.

While financial constraints may have prevented the inclusion of wartime pictures,

the omission of even one city map is inexplicable. In sum, this book is a helpful

contribution to Civil War and Reconstruction history, but it does not completely

fulfill its author's announced purpose nor its readers' need for a detailed

examination of occupied Nashville.

 

Kent State University                                     Frank L. Byrne

 

Lellal Secor: A Diary in Letters, 1915-1922. Edited by Barbara Moench Florence.

(New York: Burt Franklin & Company, Inc., 1978. xviii + 295p.; illustrations,

notes, appendices, suggested readings, index. $14.95.)

 

While visiting relatives in England in 1975, Barbara Moench Florence discovered

a trunk filled with letters written by her mother-in-law, the late Lella Faye Secor.

These letters, valuable historical documents describing Secor's personal and

political development as journalist, pacifist, feminist, and mother, now comprise

volume one of the American Women's Diary Series, created and edited by Penelope

Franklin.

• 18
 

Book Reviews                                                     347

 

Lella Secor was among the hundreds of young women who organized for peace

during this century, but unlike many of these women, Secor was from the working

class. Having boxed corn flakes in Kellogg's Battle Creek factory while still in high

school, Secor looked for a challenging job as an adult. In her early twenties she

worked as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and as a homesteader in

Washington she single-handedly farmed twenty-five acres of land with horse team

and plow.

The most important influence in Secor's life was the now well-known pacifist,

Rebecca Shelly, but it is not clear how Secor met this Phi Beta Kappa college

graduate at Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Secor did not receive a college education.)

Through Shelly's influence Secor gained passage as a journalist on the Oscar II,

Henry Ford's peace ship, and it was here that the letters home began. Won over to

the pacifist cause aboard ship, Secor wrote articles and made speeches in Europe

calling for a neutral conference to end the war. Her insights into the motives and

ideals of the Ford group stand in refreshing contrast to the treatment of the cause by

other journalists.

Taking up the life of a New York activist with her return home, Secor supported

herself through publications in McCalls, Today, and Every Week (where she

became associate editor), but regarded the peace campaign as her "real work." Her

New York experience raises important questions regarding strategy, tactics, and

priorities for an activist committed to both feminism and peace. Outraged by her

disenfranchisement in New York (the state of Washington had given women full

suffrage in 1910), Secor wrote that she would cast her lot with the suffrage cause if

she were " . . . not so engrossed . . . in stopping the war and working toward

certain international ideals" (p.⁹0). Although Secor saw feminism and pacifism as

compatible goals, she was unable to combine them in her own organization, the

American Neutral Conference Committee (ANCC) which she organized with

Shelley. In the ANCC, she often chose to "play second fiddle" while knowing the

"whole orchestra" depended on her efforts behind the scenes (p. 125). Men of

prominence were persuaded to take executive roles in the organization because they

brought respectability, and money, to the cause. This proved to be a difficult trade

off. Secor and Shelly spent much of their time battling against the "stupidity and

conservatism and fear" of these members (p. 86).

As war approached and conservative members resigned, the ANCC evolved into

the radical Emergency Peace Federation (EPF). Desperate for funds, Secor ran a

full-page ad in the New York Times appealing to women to keep America out of the

war. Her appeal brought the EPF $35,000. Secor must have been convinced of the

wisdom of working with women, for after the war she joined the Women's

International League for Peace and Freedom where she could simultaneously

pursue feminist and pacifist goals.

The second half of the collection, which deals with Secor's marriage, should not

be interpreted as "baby stories for grandma" but rather as testimony for needed

change in the arrangement of our domestic life in America.

Prefaced with a thoughtful essay by Eleanor Flexnor and skillfully linked into a

coherent whole by editor Florence, these letters tease us with bits of information on

the history of the women's peace movement, a movement led by many of the women

Secor knew: Tracy Mygatt, Fannie Witherspoon, Chrystal Eastman, and Emily

Green Balch; Zona Gale, Caroline Cumming, and Madaleine Doty Baldwin; Jane

Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Rosika Schwimmer; Carrie Chapman

Catt, and Mary Woolley, among many others. This volume broadens the base of

• 19
 

348                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

information upon which the history of the women's peace movement may

eventually be written.

 

Carnegie-Mellon University                          Rosemary Rainbolt

 

 

 

The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information 1942-1945. By Allan

M. Winkler. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. x + 230p.; notes,

bibliography, index. $11.95.)

 

Wartime propaganda has become a subject of increasing interest on the

international historical scene over the last several years, and Allan M. Winkler has

filled an important gap in our understanding of the American experience in World

War II with the publication of The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War

Information 1942-1945. The author begins with an analysis of the origins of the

OWI in the political jungle of Washington early in the war, and next focuses on the

stormy history of its propaganda directed to the domestic American audience. He

then turns to a discussion of propaganda abroad, tracing the failure of the liberals in

the organization to merge their vision of a postwar social order with American

propaganda. His concluding chapter deals with the final stages of the war, when the

OWI launched a devastating propaganda attack on Nazi occupied Europe in a

felicitous union with the military command.

Winkler's message is clear from the start-there was to be no unified, cohesive

American propaganda for the simple reason that Roosevelt would not allow it. The

President was one of the ablest propagandists in the twentiety century, a man with

great personal charisma who intended to orchestrate his own propaganda. As a

result, he allowed bureaucratic chaos to reign in the propaganda field, and he

created questionable chains of command and allowed overlapping jurisdictions to

develop. He stood ready to adjudicate the most grievous disputes of those fighting

for power in the propaganda realm.

The Office of War Information was created in June 1942 to coordinate the

activities of the several offices dealing with propaganda, and the popular radio

commentator Elmer Davis was named director. Davis was to face serious division

within his own organization, and a devastating, relentless barrage of attacks from

highly stationed government officials both in the cabinet and the military.

Archibald MacLeish, who headed the Policy Development Branch, sought to go

beyond his charge by attempting to influence the formulation of policy instead of

interpreting it for a mass audience, an attitude shared by Robert E. Sherwood who

headed the Overseas Branch, as well as a host of New Dealers in the organization.

Milton Eisenhower and Gardner Cowles, Jr. acted as a counterweight to the

activists, while Davis tried to steer a reasonable course between both groups.

Sensing the weakness of the OWI, wolves in all branches of the government

began their attacks almost immediately. Their target was propaganda for home

consumption, where the lines between support for Roosevelt's embattled domestic

policies and rallying the nation for a unified war effort were blurred. Congressman

John Tabor called the agency a "haven of refuge for the derelicts," while his

colleague Joseph Starnes remarked that it was "a stench to the nostrils of a

democratic people." Secretary of State Cordell Hull moved to counter the OWI as

did Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, "Wild

Bill" Donovan of the Office of Strategic Services, and a host of generals and

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Book Reviews                                                      349

 

admirals. With divisions like this-which climaxed in 1944 when Robert Sherwood

forced a showdown with his nominal superior Elmer Davis in the Oval Office-it is

remarkable that the OWI accomplished as much as it did.

Winkler argues that the greatest victories of the OWI were overseas, far from the

partisan political squabbling on the home front. Operating through the

Psychological Warfare Division, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary

Force, the agency's operatives launched many successful efforts. Not the least of

these was the leaflet campaign which brought many a German soldier over the hill

to surrender, bearing safe conduct passes "signed by General Eisenhower." Some

three billion leaflets were dropped over Germany after D-Day; joined with radio

propaganda of the OWI and the BBC, it played a part in weakening German

morale.

The author has done impressive research for his work, most notably in the files of

the OWI in Washington. He has mastered the secondary literature, and interviewed

many of the surviving members of the organization, including Archibald

MacLeish. Regretfully, the pace of the first half of the book is slow. Whether the

tediousness is due to the subject matter-bureaucratic infighting in Washington-

or the author's sometimes awkward style is open to question. One would have

hoped for a chapter dealing with comparative propaganda offices in both the Axis

and Allied nations. Winkler is at his best describing the major successes of the

Overseas Branch when the OWI had at last brought its house in order. On balance,

he is to be commended for this embodiment of his diligent research.

 

Miami University                                          Jay W. Baird

 

 

 

"City of the Century": A History of Gary, Indiana. By James B. Lane.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. xi + 339p.; illustrations,

bibliography, notes, index. $9.95.)

 

James Lane's purpose in this book is to make available a "general introduction to

Gary's history. .. ." Before the first yawn can emerge, however, it becomes clear

that the book is much more than such a limited, mundane project. Lane eschews a

conventional approach to Gary's development and is interested to reveal a history

that is different from the chronological description of events typical to "city

biographies." He has translated Gary's history into an intricately woven fabric of

personal experiences that explain and illustrate the impact of specific values,

loyalties, decisions, goals and conflicts upon the city's evolution. What emerges

from Lane's study is a double-edged dialogue: between the general development of

Gary and the people who contributed to, as well as lived with the consequences of,

its evolution; between the individuals and groups, themselves, that battled and

negotiated over the priorities to be pursued in making Gary the "City of the

Century."

Essentially, Lane reveals, Gary was never allowed, as well as refused, to mature.

Whether reeling from the exploits and failures of "the boisterous, the unconven-

tional, and the adventurous" in the early nineteenth century, suffering the myopia

of U.S. Steel's city building scheme in the early twentieth century, or challenging

and selectively responsive to the leadership of Richard Hatcher in the 1960's, Gary

never seems to overcome her frontier town character. Dreams of simple solutions

persistently becloud the thinking of leaders and townspeople, alike. The city was an

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350                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

"experiment in industrial urban planning," its boosters vainly proclaimed early in

the twentieth century, and under Hatcher it was an experiment in urban

revitalization." Mired in such a history, Gary is never able to garner the resources-

physical, fiscal and popular-to remedy her numerous ills: "The city never fulfilled

the hopes of its pioneer boosters. Rather, in its travail it came to symbolize the

plight of twentieth-century cities."

The Gary portrayed by Lane is a fluid and contrary place. Debilitating internal

divisions plagued its growth from the first and often embittered relations between

the varied peoples who settled there. The city similarly suffered from a division

between the sources of power that shaped its development. The steel mill, for

example, gave Gary its economy, dominated politics and regulated much of the

city's social life. Yet, the mill's policies were formulated in Pittsburgh and designed

to enhance profits for U.S. Steel. Whether celebrating or opposing company

policies, the community's ability to cope with the mill was minimal. Mostly, Lane

indicates, the city had to concentrate its energies on dealing with the consequences

of the company's decisions. Even Gary's water works was out of its control. The

Gary-Hobart Water Company was owned by a utilities magnet from Flint,

Michigan who enjoyed his"profitable investment" and used his influence to defeat a

local referendum authorizing the condemnation and purchase of the company.

Compelled to wrest whatever local control could be achieved from external power

holders, as well as internally fragmented along racial, class and political lines,

Gary's development was stunted. So engrained were the city's structural problems,

Lane reveals, that the massive federal assistance won by Hatcher and the political

changes he imposed could not break it free from the frontier legacy of conflict,

vulnerability and instability.

The book, however, is not a condemnation. Lane shows empathy for Gary. His

years as a resident there have resulted in understanding, and his many interviews of

long-term residents (several of whom appear in the book) have afforded him special

insights that enrich his telling of the history. James Lane blends the best in recent

local history trends with his obvious expertise in both traditional and the "new"

urban histories. The result is a well-researched and valuable investigation into one

dimension of America's urban growth.

 

San Diego State University                           Daniel E. Weinberg

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