Book Reviews
Saving the Waifs: Reformers and
Dependent Children, 1890-1917. By
LeRoy
Ashby. (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1984. xiii + 336p.; notes,
bibliographical notes, index. $37.95.)
This fine book reflects the current
interest in dependent children, private
philanthropy, and public policy and
shares the hypothesis of other recent
works that since child welfare is
somehow at the heart of Progressive reform-
ism, understanding the "child
savers" is key to understanding Progressiv-
ism.
In these respects, Saving the Waifs resembles
Susan Tiffin, In Whose Best
Interest: Child Welfare Reform in the
Progressive Era; Steven Schlossman,
Love and the American Delinquent: The
Theory and Practice of "Progressive"
Juvenile Justice; Ellen Ryerson, The Best Laid Plans: America's Juvenile
Court Experiment; and David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience:
The
Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America. Although all of these
other historians concede the genuine
humanitarianism of the "child savers,
in general they agree with Rothman that
conscience often took a back seat to
convenience, as that was determined by
the middle-class and socially con-
servative perspectives of the reformers.
Ashby offers us a more intimate, more
sympathetic, and more complex
portrait of the men and women who sought
to save the waifs, based on five
case studies of the agencies and
institutions which they founded and admin-
istered. According to Ashby, the
complexity of their motives and the uncer-
tainties of their goals and strategies
stemmed from their being caught be-
tween the village values of voluntarism,
family, and religion of the nineteenth
century and the modernization of the
twentieth, with its attendant profes-
sionalization, impersonality, and
commercialization. Child-saving became a
way, although an uncertain one, of
managing the present.
Each case study illustrates this
conflict and ambiguity. For example, the
directors of the Children's Home Society
of Minnesota, a child-placing agen-
cy, found themselves torn between the
desire to punish or control the illicit
sexuality of unwed mothers and the
humanitarian impulse to shelter their il-
legitimate children. The women who
established the orphanages of the Na-
tional Benevolent Association of the
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
were in conflict not only with the
personalist theology of the Church itself
(and its male hierarchy) but with the
anti-institutional trends in child care of
the early-twentieth century. The success
of the Ford Republic, an institution
for homeless and delinquent boys, owed
much of its success to the period's
confusion of dependency and delinquency.
John Gunckel and his Toledo Newsboys'
Association were praised for en-
couraging industry and self-reliance
among the "newsies," on the one hand,
and criticized for perpetuating child
labor, on the other. G. W. Hinckley,
founder of Good Will Farm, a home for
dependent children, best personi-
fied the difficulties of teaching his
charges "the values of an older, idealized
America that emphasized the work ethic,
moral restraint, love, religious
faith, and service to others" in an
organizational, commercial world.
Book Reviews
193
In sum, Ashby portrays men who were
driven by "volatile combinations
of fear and hope, of powerlessness and
the desire to make a turbulent world
orderly; of self-sacrifice and the quest
for fame and attention; of humanitari-
an instincts and the urge to impose
personal values on other individuals."
Ashby concedes that the record of the
"child savers" was mixed, and he
does not conceal or apologize for the
human failings of his subjects: alleged
misuse of funds, adultery, nervous
breakdowns. He concludes, however,
that "in many respects they
represented some of [the Progressive] era's finest
achievements."
This rich and sensitive portrait of
Progressive child savers, which inter-
weaves both historical and
historiographical issues, leaves relatively unde-
veloped only the significant role of
women. They are given credit here as
founders and matrons of the orphanages
of the National Benevolent Associa-
tion but surely deserve mention
elsewhere as fund raisers, administrators,
and proselytizers for the cause of child
welfare.
Ashby concedes that his is a study of
the child "savers" rather than the
"saved." When it becomes
possible to write that history, I hope that Ash-
by will turn his skills and compassion
to it.
John Carroll University Marian J. Morton
The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The
Covenant Chain Confederation of Indi-
an Tribes with English Colonies from
its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty
of 1744. By Francis Jennings. (New York: W. W. Norton and
Company,
1984. xxv + 438p.; maps, illustrations,
appendices, notes, bibliography, in-
dex. $24.95.)
This book, the author notes, is part of
the history of how the Eurameri-
cans and Amerindians shared in the
creation of the United States of Ameri-
ca. His earlier and much acclaimed book,
The Invasion of America: Indians,
Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest,
examined the methods Euramericans
of New England used to conquer the
Amerindians. In that excellent volume
he concluded that the strategy the
Puritans used was armed conquest. How-
ever, in his present work, Jennings
describes the colonial strategy of the Eng-
lish and Dutch invaders of the
"middle colonies" of New Netherland-New
York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and
Delaware.
The result of two decades of research,
this book explores the role played
by the Convenant Chain in relations
between native Amerindians and Euro-
pean colonists. Noting that the
Convenant Chain played no role in frontier
histories devoted to demonstrating
hostility between Europeans and native
Americans, Jennings attempts to explain
that these earlier works neglected a
significant portion of the history. The
complex Covenant Chain system, diffi-
cult to define throughout its more than
a century of existence, fills this void.
Jennings contends it has often been discounted,
overlooked, or has been
given erroneous simplistic answers to
the sophisticated questions concerning
the role of the Covenant Chain.
Although Iroquois relationships with the
Europeans are the most impor-
tant within the theme of this book, his
scholarship also penetrates the rela-
tions between non-Iroquois tribes and
Iroquois within the Convenant Chain
194 OHIO HISTORY
system. We soon become aware as we read
this thoughtful complex work
that Jennings is carefully developing
his theme with the skill of an experi-
enced scholar. We learn that he will
explore every aspect of each emerging
question to his satisfaction before
making his conclusion. But anyone who
reads this book will learn that Jennings
is willing to challenge unproven state-
ments of other scholars, provided that
he has evidence to support his case.
Jennings believes that the Covenant
Chain was an expedient to be main-
tained until the English grew strong
enough to realize the crown's pretentions
to sovereignty. Until then the Covenant
Chain was an institution created by a
contract between Indians and Europeans
which eliminated much violence
and reduced conflict within specified
bounds. It worked well enough so that
neither Europeans or Amerindians were
completely satisfied with the accom-
modations of the Covenant Chain for over
a century, but it was retained.
Jennings points out that even Frederic
Jackson Turner missed the complexity
of the system when he stated that the
Albany Congress of 1754 was the be-
ginning of a new system of cooperation,
when in fact it marked the end of the
old system of accommodation. It was
replaced by direct crown intervention
in the relationships between the English
colonists and the Indians.
It is refreshing to learn of the
complexities of Covenant Chain accommoda-
tion in this book. Many earlier
histories of European-American Indian rela-
tionships have taken the easier, but
perhaps erroneous, polarized position of
presenting each side, and inevitably
there are winners and losers. Although
the story of Covenant Chain
accommodation presented here is admittedly
not an ideal model, and has obvious
defects, Jennings has made a splendid
effort to expand our knowledge of this
complex system. He is to be congratu-
lated for a superb book. Fortunately, we
learn that in a future book he will
continue the fascinating history of the
role of the Covenant Chain during the
Seven Years War.
Missouri Southern State College Robert E. Smith
History of the Militia and National
Guard. By John K. Mahon. (New York:
Macmillan, 1983. viii + 374p.;
illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $20.95.)
The history of the militia and National
Guard must rank as one of the most
controversial and complex topics in
American military history. Institutions of
manifold responsibilities and multiple
forms, the militia and National Guard
have been the subject of both fervent
praise and harsh criticism by politi-
cians, military men, and historians for
over 200 years. Several good special-
ized studies of the Guard have appeared
in the last few decades (those by
Derthick, Riker, and Higham), but apart
from an unpublished study by
Elbridge Colby, no satisfactory general
history of the militia and National
Guard has yet been produced. There was
thus cause for welcome with the
publication of John K. Mahon's History
of the Militia and National Guard.
Written under the aegis of the respected
Macmillan Wars of the United States
series, this book aimed to present a
scholarly, analytical account of the mili-
tia and National Guard and thus fill a
large gap in the historiography of these
institutions.
Book Reviews
195
History of the Militia and National
Guard recounts the experience of the
citizen-soldier-based fighting force in
American history, from colonial times
to the 1980s. It includes a chapter on
the English origins of the American mi-
litia and traces its development in all
this nation's major wars. In general, His-
tory of the Militia and National
Guard is well researched. The book is
amply
documented (there are over 50 pages of
endnotes) and possesses a lengthy
and balanced bibliography. Professor
Mahon has consulted many obscure
primary sources and almost every
important secondary work on this subject.
In particular, the book's early
chapters, covering the colonial and early na-
tional period, are well footnoted.
Unfortunately, the positive features of
this work are outweighed by three
problems. The first of these concerns
the book's organizational structure.
Professor Mahon has chosen to present
his material along strictly chronolog-
ical lines, dividing his account into a
total of seventeen time periods. In each
chapter, the author describes both the
militia's (or the National Guard's)
actions in a federal role and its purely
state connected duties. Mahon jumps
back and forth between state and federal
duties in an uneven and inconsis-
tent manner. As a result, the reader is
left confused as to the significance of
and relative amount of time devoted to
state vs. federal actions. The book's
organizational scheme makes it difficult
to obtain any coherent picture of
how the militia or National Guard
developed or what exactly they accom-
plished in a given period of American
history. An alternate approach would
be to segregate accounts of the militia
as a state force and as federal reserve
and analyze each role separately. This
method of organization would, in the
opinion of this reviewer, have produced
a clearer and more readable ac-
count.
History of the Militia and National
Guard also contains a good deal of in-
consistent and superficial analysis. For
example, the chapter on the colonial
period gives a good account of the basic
structure and main activities of the
early militia, but it fails to analyze
the process by which the English politico-
military heritage and New World military
conditions combined to produce a
distinctively American version of the
Old English train bands. Also, the
book makes frequent references to the
militia or National Guard's activities as
a state military force but does not
consider the special constitutional, legal,
political, or economic problems
associated with the use of part-time civilian
soldiers in aid of civilian authority.
Finally, the concluding chapter offers
nothing more than a straightforward
summary of the book's first seventeen
chapters. It fails to place the history
of the militia and National Guard in the
larger perspective of American military
history, something one would expect
in a work of this type.
The weakness of the book's concluding
chapter hints at the most serious
defect in History of the Militia and
National Guard: the work as a whole is es-
sentially of distinct
"snapshot" accounts of the various stages of develop-
ment of the militia and Guard. It gives
the reader a good picture of what
these organizations were like in 1776,
1812, 1846 and so on, but relays little or
no information on the dynamics of the
development of the American citizen-
soldier and related institutional forms.
Unfortunately, this book fails to tell us
how and why the militia and Guard
changed over the course of 300 years.
Plagued also by an idiosyncratic, almost
folksy writing style and numerous
proofreading errors, History of the
Militia and National Guard may serve as a
196 OHIO HISTORY
useful reference work, but it fails to
fill the need for a comprehensive, analyt-
ical history of our oldest military
institutions.
The Ohio State University George W. Sinks
The 25-Year War: America's Military
Role in Vietnam. By General Bruce
Palmer, Jr. (Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1984. ix + 236p.;
illustrations, notes, selected bibliography,
index. $24.00.)
This excellent study of the Vietnam War
goes well beyond the scope of a
campaign survey to address why that
traumatic conflict turned out as it did.
Written by a senior Army officer who
served in important leadership posi-
tions in Vietnam and as Army Vice Chief
of Staff, The 25-Year War is part
memoir and part analytical history; it
really comes to grips with what went
right, what went wrong, and why.
Palmer provides a good, brief overview
of the fighting taking place in
Southeast Asia, from the end of World
War II through the defeat of the
French by the Viet Minh in 1954. During
that period the American people
and government came to view Communism as
an evil monolythic force that
had to be checked; this influenced U.S.
policy and helped lead to direct
American involvement in Vietnam in an
attempt to prevent the Communist
North Vietnamese from conquering South
Vietnam. The author points out
that our national leaders followed this
course without realistically evaluating
the situation during those critical early years.
By late 1964 North Vietnamese regular
forces were taking an active part in
the struggle, escalating the conflict in
their quest for a decisive military victo-
ry. It was clear by early 1965 that if
U.S. troops did not intervene in ground
operations, South Vietnam would not
survive. Palmer traces American com-
bat involvement from 1965 to 1973, and
explains how U.S. forces were em-
ployed to preserve the independence of
South Vietnam.
He has harsh words for the U.S. military
strategy used during the war,
and his criticism makes good sense.
Because political constraints prevented
American ground forces from attacking
enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia and
Laos, the initiative in military operations
was left to the North Vietnamese
and their Viet Cong subordinates. They
could attack whenever they chose
and then retreat back to the
sanctuaries. U.S. units were forced "to react
and dance to the enemy's tune." The
American strategy was thus one of
defense and attrition. U.S. "search
and destroy" operations within South
Vietnam were designed to destroy enemy
main force units, thereby hurting
the Communists so severely that they
would cease hostilities. But as Palmer
points out: "Hanoi's available manpower
resources were clearly adequate to
sustain the war indefinitely." With
President Johnson keeping tight limits on
the bombing operations directed against
North Vietnam-and halting them
completely in 1968-and with the
continued cross-border restrictions im-
posed on U.S. ground forces, the
American military goal was virtually impos-
sible to attain. The author proposes an
alternative strategy that may have
promised better results than the
defensive, attritional approach the U.S. em-
ployed. At the very least, it is
thought-provoking.
The 25-Year War provides a good overview of the limited role the Joint
Book Reviews
197
Chiefs of Staff played in directing the
American war effort. Likewise, it in-
cludes excellent personality sketches of
the Chiefs, other senior military
leaders, and the nation's civilian
leadership. This enables the reader to bet-
ter understand the decision-making
environment.
The 25-Year War also recounts some of the military errors made by
Ameri-
can forces in Vietnam. These include the
lack of centralized control over
combat operations, an over-reliance on
fire power, the misuse of helicopters
as observation platforms for commanders,
and the failure to adequately train
U.S. troops for unconventional warfare.
Palmer shows no reluctance to dis-
cuss the more controversial issues that
emerged during the war, such as the
My Lai affair, the secret bombing of
Cambodia, and the inequities of the
draft. He provides evidence that
American servicemen maintained good
morale, discipline, and combat
effectiveness until a growing number of the
people back home turned against the war.
New troops coming into the com-
bat zone, from 1968 onward, increasingly reflected the
anti-war attitude.
The 25-Year War is a well-written, balanced study that will be of value
to
anyone seeking to understand the war,
its lessons, and their implications for
the future.
Office of Air Force History John F. Shiner
Nineteen Sixty-Eight. By Clark Dougan and Stephen Weiss. Vol. 6 of The
Vietnam Experience. Edited by Robert Manning. (Boston: Boston Pub-
lishing Company, 1983. 192p.;
illustrations, glossary of terms, maps, picture
essays. $16.95.)
This powerfully written and
well-illustrated book blends the best of both
worlds. It is written for a popular
audience, yet it does not pander or dimin-
ish itself in quality. It blends solid
scholarship from a plethora of sources to
re-create and analyze the events of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam in 1968. This
is a well-crafted, high-quality history.
At first glance the book appears to be
disjointed and written in an almost
fragmented form of organization. Yet
this in fact is not the case for this excel-
lent book, but rather for the year 1968,
a chaotic year of internal and military
chaos. Divided topically into eight
chapters, the book holds the reader's
attention in its beginning with a tense
description of a battle describing indi-
vidual American participants, their
actions and thoughts, and then broad-
ens into North Vietnamese
decision-making strategy behind the Tet offen-
sive. Both guerrilla and conventional
modes of warfare are analyzed from
both sides in an attempt to better
understand U.S. military decisions and
North Vietnamese actions.
Domestically, Lyndon Johnson is treated
as a politician whose show of
strength (and huge personal ego) refused
to allow a reenactment of the
French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Neither
the Johnson administration nor
American military strategists could
successfully cope with what appeared to
be an enigmatic communist strategy which
benefitted from time and pa-
tience. Thus while the Johnson
administration could claim a dubious "vic-
tory" in 1968, the fact remained
that the Tet offensive caused "a down-
ward spiral of doubt, disenchantment,
and disapproval that had begun in
1966." Tet changed the "terms
of the public debate over the war." By
198 OHIO HISTORY
mid-February of 1968 "the validity
of the President's entire Vietnam policy
was questioned by large segments of the
public."
It is at this point that the book makes
an excellent transition to the suspi-
cion and distrust of the Johnson
administration by some portions of the pub-
lic. The book then goes on to analyze
the internal war-the debate within
America-in a rich chapter entitled
"America Divided." Because of the
draft and the nature of enlistments and
deferments, the authors significantly
point to social and class cleavages in
the debate over the war and in military
personnel. Portraits of racial
antagonism, dissenters, the counter-culture,
George Wallace, and Robert Kennedy make
this chapter one of the most in-
cisive for an analysis of the war within
the U.S. What this section implies is a
subtle "class war" in filling
the ranks of the military. The year 1968 was a
troubled one both domestically and in
foreign policy. This book-which
despite its size is not a "coffee
table" book-ought to be read by any person
with a sense of civic obligation and
respect for a lawful, peaceful international
and national order.
The book is clear, precise, poignant,
and painfully powerful. Its conclusion
is sobering and jolting. In the last
section of the book the authors, in a sec-
tion entitled "Only the Dead,"
offer the following assessment: "On a day
just before Christmas, the 30,000th name
was added to the mounting toll of a
war that seemed to go on forever. In
South Vietnam, at the end of 1968, only
the dead were at peace." This
sobering book is didactic in telling the tragic
and powerful story. The book is highly
recommended to prevent the dan-
gers of social and historical amnesia.
Kenyon College Roy Wortman
A Time of Passion: America 1960-1980.
By Charles R. Morris. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1984. xii + 271p.;
chapter bibliographies, index. $17.50.)
I spent the day before writing this
review with a college friend I had not
seen for nearly twenty years. Both of
us, we discovered, had matured a good
deal since our fraternity days at UCLA.
We now drank less and jogged more.
While our families had grown, our
hairlines had receded. We had both
come through military service during the
Vietnam War with our bodies and
minds intact. We recalled the Tet
Offensive (in which he had nearly been
killed) and the Washington ghetto riots
of 1968 and the University of Wis-
consin bombing of 1970 (both of which I
had witnessed "up close and per-
sonal"). For us it was a
fascinating afternoon, and our wives may even have
enjoyed some of our reminiscing. I doubt
that many historians would have
found it particularly enlightening.
Their reaction to Charles R. Morris's A
Time of Passion is likely to be similar, for it too is basically the
reflections of a
man in his forties on what has happened
during the last two decades.
Indeed, Morris himself characterizes his
book as "primarily a personal ex-
ploration" and admits "the
events I have chosen to emphasize are the ones I
most wanted to learn about" (p.
ix). His reason for concentrating on civil
rights, Keynesian economics, and the
background of the Vietnam War is
that "I felt I needed to know more
about them in order to understand the
period" (p. ix). That is fine, for
all of those were matters of importance during
Book Reviews
199
the years 1960-1980. Pragmatism may have
had some significance then too,
but clearly not as much as the Ford and
Carter presidencies. Yet, Morris de-
votes more space to the former (which
interests him) than to the latter
(which apparently do not).
Besides being unbalanced, his book is
inadequately researched. Morris
has held a number of interesting jobs
that have provided him with first-
hand knowledge of the War on Poverty,
ghetto rioting, and the American
welfare and corrections systems, so some
of the personal anecdotes he in-
cludes are interesting, and a few even
provide valuable insights. These are,
however, not adequate substitutes for
manuscript and oral history research.
Morris has done none of either. A
Time of Passion is based entirely on sec-
ondary and published primary sources,
supplemented by its author's recol-
lections.
Morris's failure to footnote a book
obviously intended for popular con-
sumption is forgivable, but the factual
errors which mar A Time of Passion
are not. For example, he confuses
Virginia Congressman Howard Smith with
Nevada Senator Howard Cannon (p. 57) and
in what appears to be a refer-
ence to former California Senator
William Knowland, calls him "Knowles"
(p. 18). When I read Morris's account of
violent attacks on the civil rights
movement in the South, I happened to be
going through Justice Department,
SNCC, and CORE documents on the incidents
he was discussing. The num-
ber of instances in which his version of
events differed from what the pri-
mary sources revealed was striking.
Although plagued by inaccuracies, A
Time of Passion is not without merit.
Those with only a layman's knowledge of
economic theory will find Morris's
explanations of it and of recent
economic trends quite enlightening. What he
has to say about the significance of
twentieth century demographic trends is
also thoughtful and persuasive. His
contention that America did not undergo
major change between 1960 and 1980 is
provocative. It may even be correct,
but proving this will require far more
research than Morris has done. A Time
of Passion is, unfortunately, not the product of serious
historical scholarship,
and serious historians should not rely
on it.
University of Georgia Michal R. Belknap
The Rise of the Right. By William A. Rusher. (New York: William Morrow
and Company, Inc., 1984. 336p.; notes,
index. $15.95.)
I was suspicious when invited to review
this book, and my concern in-
creased after it arrived in the office
mail. The dust jacket bills it as "An eye-
opening, behind-the-scenes history of
the conservative movement by one of
its leading and most outspoken
founders." With this billing on the front of
the jacket and the back filled with
praises for the author and his work from
a host of elected and nonelected
conservative luminaries, I could not but
wonder as to what I had let myself in
for.
I was soon to find out. Mr. Rusher has
provided us with a well-written
even articulate story about the American
conservative movement after World
War II. We have chatty gossip and catty
comments about big name politi-
cians and their various campaigns and
conservative thinkers and their vari-
200 OHIO HISTORY
ous thoughts to keep one turning the
pages, but as they turn a feeling that
something is missing begins to arise.
It arises because this is not a work of
history. It brings us to no new level of
understanding of a period, problem, or
phenomenon. It lacks learning; it
lacks understanding; it lacks an empathy
with all those not white, male,
middle-class, and middle-aged. It deals
in stereotypes honestly taken to be
real and gives us a good idea about how
some very powerful people in this
country can write off college kids as
radicals, blacks as welfare cheats, and
Russians as evil empire builders.
The steadfast refusal to admit to any
kind of social or cultural relativity out-
side the borders of a mythical Dixon,
Illinois, or Landonian Kansas is exact-
ly what makes Mr. Rusher's conservative
view so easy for the electorate to
swallow, while at the same time insuring
that those elected by the glottal
public take into the management of our
domestic and foreign affairs danger-
ous blinders.
Stereotypes and a fervent embracing of
rightish programs and platforms
with a smooth pitch to mom and apple pie
are not enough for fair govern-
ment. What is needed is the ability to
relate to all kinds of people and their
various political and social values.
That is what Mr. Rusher and his conser-
vative cohorts cannot provide and why
their current governmental revolution
in Washington will collapse and be
judged a failure.
Cleveland State University Michael V. Wells
The Winged Gospel: America's Romance
With Aviation, 1900-1950. By Joseph
J. Corn. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983. x + 177p.; illustrations,
notes, index. $17.95.)
Readers who turn to this thin volume,
whose text occupies less than 140
pages, expecting of its author a serious
discussion of the important effects the
airplane had on American life in the
first half of the twentieth century will
be, for the most part, disappointed.
Despite his impressive scholarly back-
ground and his research into an equally
impressive and varied body of mate-
rials, Corn, like the popular writers on
airplanes and such other means of
transportation as automobiles and
railroads, devotes far too much space to
the trivial developments, rather than
emphasizing what would seem to be
the truly important aspects of this
subject. "The Winged Gospel" is a happy
choice for a title if it is intended
simply to portray the kind of enthusiasm
that the ardent advocates of aviation
projected. The author, however, goes
beyond such symbolism and attempts to
show that the term symbolizes
some actual religious undertones present
in the enthusiasm for airplanes. The
imagery of Henry Ward Beecher, who, of
course, died long before any air-
planes flew, urging his parishioners to
"rise" into the heavens and cast off
their petty earthbound worries is cited
as evidence that Americans had
been preconditioned to thinking that
airplanes would bring them closer to
God's heavenly realms. When the T.V.
evangelist Jimmy Swaggert in 1979
asked his viewers, "Will your
landing lights be on when you touch down in
heaven?" Corn is there, noting how
"the airplane still could serve the cause
of faith." He finds the aviation
enthusiasts' observance of the anniversary of
Book Reviews
201
Kitty Hawk similar to Christianity's
observance of Christmas, a relationship
that most, if not all, such enthusiasts
would probably regard as blasphe-
mous.
The space given to a discussion of
Lawsonomy, the weird semi-religious
doctrines propounded by Alfred W.
Lawson, an early aviation enthusiast,
and to such trivia as Lt. Belvin M.
Maynard, the "flying pastor," delivering
an Easter sermon from his airplane cockpit,
or Harold McMahan, whoever
he was, taking off on December 25, 1929,
with "a fully-decorated Christmas
tree" in his plane's cabin would
seem better left to Believe-it-or-Not Ripley
and the Guinness Book of Records. A
chapter devoted to the model airplane
fad of the 1930s and the push for
"Air Age Education" in the forties is an in-
teresting commentary on the tendency of
educators to overreact to develop-
ments they do not understand, while the
chapter "Women Pilots and the
Selling of Aviation" would be the
best part of the book if the author had not
earlier related many of the exploits of
the women pilots, including three ac-
counts in the first 73 pages of the
death in 1912 of the pioneer pilot, Harriet
Quimby.
The period covered by the book ends with
1950 because by that date the
idea that airplanes would become as
common as the family car was generally
seen as unattainable. But how many
Americans seriously thought it would
become a reality? Corn seems to think it
was almost a universal article of faith
in those days, but in the working-class
neighborhood in which I grew up in
the 1930s and 1940s I do not think any
of us seriously thought we would see
the day when the rosy forecasts of Popular
Mechanics, which we read,
would come true. Yet airplanes were an
exciting thing to all of us. In good
weather, when we heard a plane we still
ran out to try to spot it as it passed
over. Until the war, few if any of us
had ever ridden in a plane, but by mid-
century not only those who came through
service in the air corps had flown
but one immigrant family down the street
had been able to fly back to the
old country for a visit, something that
had been virtually unheard of in previ-
ous decades with the means of
transportation then available. One would
hope, therefore, that Joseph Corn would
now go beyond the courtship stage
of America's romance with aviation and
get down to the tangible ways in
which American life has been altered in
the mature phase of that romance in
the years since 1950.
Eastern Michigan University George S. May
Cotton Fields No More: Southern
Agriculture 1865-1900. By Gilbert C.
Fite.
(Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1984. xiv + 273p.; illustrations,
appendix, notes, bibliographical essay,
index. $28.00 cloth; $10.00 paper.)
When the Civil War ended, southern
agriculture was in shambles. During
the war, northern troops had burned farm
buildings, destroyed livestock,
and removed fences. With southern
farmers in the military instead of in the
fields, weeds soon overtook productive
lands. Although small-scale white
farmers quickly reestablished themselves when the
fighting ceased, the
large-scale farmers particularly needed
to develop an economic structure that
would bring land, labor, and capital
together and thereby make their fields
202 OHIO HISTORY
productive once again. In time, they did
so by fostering the sharecropping,
tenant, and furnishing merchant systems.
By renting land for crop shares or
for cash, or by supplying needed credit, however,
landowners and mer-
chants kept poor farmers in perpetual
debt. In addition, land rental and
credit policies tied the sharecroppers
and tenants to a soil-depleting, price-
depressing, one-crop economy. Moreover,
inadequate transportation, lim-
ited urban markets, and small-scale
farms prevented mechanization and
diversification-both of which helped
northern farmers expand production
and increase efficiency. A surplus farm
population also plagued the rural
South. Indeed, from the end of the Civil
War until about 1940, most south-
erners remained on the land, because
they did not have viable alternatives
for employment elsewhere. As a result,
the farms remained small, the rural
population large, and the cotton crop
dominant.
During the New Deal years, however, the
federal government paid farmers
to curtail production. As a result, many
large-scale landowners released their
sharecroppers and tenants, and used
their government subsidies to consoli-
date lands, buy equipment, and diversify
production. During the 1940s, the
first commercially successful cotton picker also
reached the market. By the
1950s, cotton pickers eliminated
thousands of farm jobs and freed the large-
scale producers from their dependence
upon wage laborers. In addition, the
Second World War provided industrial
opportunities for many rural south-
erners, and the military took others
from the fields. After the war, southern
farmers continued to make adjustments by
producing more soybeans, live-
stock, fruits, dairy products, and hay
than ever before. They also gave in-
creased attention to the application of
new forms of science and technology
and to better farm management practices,
largely with the aid of the state ag-
ricultural colleges, extension and
experiment station services and the United
States Department of Agriculture. By
1960, southern farmers were little differ-
ent from agriculturists in other parts
of the nation.
Gilbert C. Fite, Richard B. Russell
Professor of History at the University of
Georgia, has written an important book
about southern agriculture. Fite
traces the major agricultural
developments in the eleven Confederate states
from the decline of farming following
the Civil War until its revolutionary
emergence as a strong sector in the
nation's economy after World War II. Be-
sides analyzing the economic,
scientific, technological, and educational
changes in southern agriculture, Fite
shows the relationship of the agricultur-
al economy to southern rural life.
Although he evaluates the development of
the Grange and Farmer's Alliance, he
does not, however, discuss the activi-
ties of the People's party, which
maneuvered for Democratic votes in an effort
to change the nature of southern
agriculture. A chapter on that aspect of the
agrarian revolt would have contributed
nicely to this fine synthesis. Even so,
Fite's study provides a welcome addition
to the growing literature on south-
ern agriculture. This book will be
indispensable for anyone interested in agri-
cultural or southern history.
Ohio Historical Society R. Douglas Hurt
The New Eden: James Kilbourne and the
Development of Ohio. By Goodwin
Berquist and Paul C. Bowers, Jr.
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of Amer-
Book Reviews
203
ica, 1983. xvi + 298p.; map,
illustrations, notes, bibliographic note, index.
$27.75 cloth; $13.75 paper.)
Many men were attracted to frontier Ohio
by the chance to pursue enter-
prises they hoped would simultaneously
increase their personal fortunes and
build their communities and adopted
state. James Kilbourne of Connecticut,
one of these ambitious early-nineteenth
century entrepreneurs, was the
founder of Worthington and Sandusky, a
manufacturer, ordained Episcopal
minister, newspaper publisher, canal and
railroad booster, state representa-
tive, and U.S. Congressman. This
readable biography by Goodwin Berquist
and Paul C. Bowers, Jr., bolsters the
enduring myth of frontier opportunity,
liberalism, and success, as it
celebrates the vision and energy of one of the
early leaders of Ohio. More
interestingly, it suggests the tensions and contra-
dictions inherent in the attempt to
balance personal ambition and civic re-
sponsibilities. Berquist and Bowers
argue that Kilbourne's entrepreneurial
achievements, despite setbacks sustained
during the panic of 1819, both
support the American frontier success
story and Kilbourne's claim as a com-
munity builder. The details of
Kilbourne's life suggest that the relationship
was perhaps more complicated.
Kilbourne was born and raised on a
Connecticut farm during the Revolu-
tionary Era. Illiterate and penniless,
the sixteen-year-old Kilbourne set out
from his father's home determined to
make something of his life. Through
sheer determination and hard work,
Kilbourne had become well estab-
lished in Granby, Connecticut, by the
time he was twenty-one. He owned a
general store and several farms, had
married into a prominent family, joined
the Masons, and became a lay minister in
the Episcopal church. In spite of
his accomplishments, Federalist and
Congregational Connecticut offered a
limited field for Kilbourne and his
liberal Episcopal neighbors. In 1802, he
organized the Scioto Company to plan and
finance the settlement of Wor-
thington, Ohio, which Kilbourne promised
would be a "virtuous society" in
which all hard-working folk could make a
better life. The stock company
provided a ready-made framework for the
forty Granby families that moved
to the 16,000-acre tract on the
Olentangy River. The Episcopal Church, offi-
cially supported by terms of the
company's charter, various charities, an
academy, and a Masonic lodge,
contributed to regulating community behav-
ior. An equitable distribution of lots
and access to town-owned mills and
stills further added to a sense of
community.
At the same time Kilbourne was busy
guiding the town in his dual role as
company president and Episcopal minister, he founded
the Worthington
Manufacturing Company as a private
enterprise to produce woolen goods, op-
erate general stores, and issue
circulating notes. Kilbourne's interests quickly
expanded beyond his base in Worthington.
He laid out Sandusky, promoted
connecting roads and canals, and became involved in a
railroad from San-
dusky to Dayton. The panic of 1819
ruined Kilbourne's businesses and con-
siderably slowed down his promotion of
the port of Sandusky, but Berquist
and Bowers see no connection between the expansive
activities of men like
Kilbourne and the speculative collapse.
Kilbourne, according to the authors,
was simply a victim of fate.
The same cannot be argued so easily for
Kilbourne's censure by Philander
Chase, the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio. Kilbourne was
aware of the potential
204 OHIO HISTORY
conflict of interest between his duty to
his community, especially the
church, and his business interests, but he did little
to resolve the apparent
dilemma. In 1817, Chase accused Kilbourne of behavior
unbecoming a min-
ister and stripped him of his church
office. Berquist and Bowers excuse
Kilbourne on the ground that his
"heterodoxical religion, his rather free
and easy attitude toward ethics and morality, geared to
the get-ahead,
booster atmosphere of frontier
Ohio" enabled him to be a successful entre-
preneur, but Kilbourne's free and easy
attitude also called into question his
commitment to community well-being.
Although Berquist and Bowers provide a
sympathetic and thorough por-
trait of a significant early Ohio
figure, the tensions that existed between the
ideals of community, with its implied
quest for unity, common moral stan-
dards, and cooperative social and
material goals, and the role of the individ-
ual persuing personal gain, deserve
further investigation.
University of Georgia Emil Pocock
Oberlin Architecture, College and
Town: A Guide to its Social History. By
Geoffrey Blodgett. (Oberlin: Oberlin
College and Kent State University
Press, 1985. xxiii + 239p.;
illustrations, map, index. $9.95 paper.)
Oberlin Architecture is an interesting attempt at combining the
traditionally
separate disciplines of social and architectural
history in a field guide for a
general audience. Unlike a standard
architectural guidebook, which ap-
proaches buildings as objects worthy of
study from an artistic or technical
point of view, this work focuses on the
structures of Oberlin as settings for
collegiate and village social life. This
is done in a style readily understood by
readers without training in either
history or architecture.
The guide begins with a brief historical
overview of the town and its
college. As befitting a citizenry
concerned with educational and social re-
forms at the expense of material gain,
the town presented an austere architec-
tural visage during most of the
nineteenth century. This attitude continued
into the twentieth century, leading the
author to hold that ". . . it was the
destiny of Oberlin itself to remain as
it began, a plain and thrifty village. .. ."
The same utilitarian attitude
characterized the first decades of the college as
well, and buildings of the mid-nineteenth
century were short-lived modest
affairs. A concern for monumentality
developed by the late 1800s, but the
school's casual attitude toward planning
prevented it from shaping itself into
a unified ensemble. The most radical
departure in design came after World
War II, when the administration
commissioned a number of buildings from
architects of national repute.
Part One examines the college. Beginning
with Tappan Square, the site of
the original school buildings and now
the principal green space, Professor
Blodgett presents photos and word
sketches of major structures in chrono-
logical order. Of particular interest is
the effort of New York architect Cass
Gilbert to provide the campus with a
degree of architectural unity with his
similar designs for four buildings in
the early decades of the twentieth centu-
ry. Notable among postwar structures is
the controversial 1976 addition to
Gilbert's Allen Art Museum by Venturi
and Rauch of Philadelphia. With
Book Reviews
205
this commission the college fulfilled in
an architectural sense its reputation
for radical innovation.
Part Two looks at the buildings in town
not related to the college. This sec-
tion documents the austerity of much of
the village's architecture. Only in
rare instances did the flamboyance of
late nineteenth-century design else-
where in the Midwest show itself in
Oberlin homes or institutions. In the ear-
ly twentieth century, though, more
elaborate buildings became common, re-
flecting styles popular in nearby urban settings, and
by the 1930s the town
saw another kind of urban impulse in the
form of Modern architecture. This
occurred first in housing-including a
work by Frank Lloyd Wright-and by
the 1950s in commercial and
institutional architecture as well. Yet even these
Modernist works retained a modesty in
scale and detailing that placed them
within the Oberlin context.
Oberlin Architecture succeeds quite well as a popular guide and as a collec-
tion of social vignettes. It is clearly
organized, convenient in size for field use,
and written in a breezy colloquial
style. The guide is not intended as a defini-
tive work in a scholarly sense, and
specialists in social and architectural his-
tory should see it as an introduction to
topics for further investigation.
Ohio Historical Society Daniel J. Prosser
Petroglyphs of Ohio. By James L. Swauger. (Athens: Ohio University Press,
1984. xxi + 340p.; illustrations,
photographs, diagrams, maps, figures, ap-
pendices, notes, index. $44.95.)
A petroglyph, as defined by James L.
Swauger, author of Petroglyphs of
Ohio, is a rock decorated with figures of various kinds.
Decorations are exe-
cuted by sculpturing, carving, pecking,
rubbing, or a combination of these
techniques (p. 1). These artifacts are
not only of native American origin, but
also include rock carvings of
Euro-American or unknown origin. While petro-
glyphs have sporadically been reported
in literature, a comprehensive work
dealing specifically with Ohio has never
been published. For this reason
Petroglyphs of Ohio is destined to become a standard reference work for
stu-
dents and researchers of Ohio
archaeology.
As a reference book it is particularly
user friendly. Petroglyphs are grouped
according to probable origins and are
subsequently listed alphabetically by
county. Under each individual petroglyph
heading the reader is provided
information regarding general location,
physiographic setting and a descrip-
tion of the stone material type,
content, size and character. This is followed
by a detailed examination of each
individual design motif and possible clas-
sification such as bird, footprint, and
human form. Particularly helpful is the
bibliographic inventory at the end of
each listing providing the reader with
additional references.
Each entry is also accompanied by a map
showing the general location of
the site and, if available, a black and
white photograph. Drawings of total
and individual designs are frequently
included indicating orientation and
layout of design association.
The first sections of the book are
basically descriptive in nature. Inferences
are limited to interpretation of
difficult to identify design motifs. However,
206 OHIO HISTORY
the final summary and conclusions are,
as the author admits, somewhat
more subjective.
The temporal origin of the petroglyphs
is difficult to assign, given the un-
usual nature of the artifacts
themselves. Petroglyphs are not found strati-
graphically sandwiched between
identifiable cultural horizons, and are nev-
er found in direct association with
temporally diagnostic artifacts. Therefore,
the author is forced to depend upon
other factors such as rate of deteriora-
tion and elements of design for clues.
Swauger's conclusion that the petro-
glyphs were made during the Late
Prehistoric period (A.D. 900-A.D. 1750) is
well developed and supported.
Further discussion is directed to the
assignment of cultural affiliation.
Swauger examines elements of design and
concludes that they have a
"northeastern" character (p.
269). This statement forms the foundation of
what then becomes an elaborate argument
which terminates with the idea
that the petroglyphs were made by
proto-Shawnee groups speaking an Al-
gonquian tongue. This is an extension of
similar conclusions reached in Swau-
ger's more expansive book Rock Art of
the Upper Ohio Valley which suggests
that the petroglyphs were affiliated
with Monongahela Man, a prehistoric
group occupying the eastern boundaries
of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and
West Virginia. However, during this Late
Prehistoric period central and
southern Ohio were occupied by Fort
Ancient groups whose cultural remains
exhibited influences from the south and
immediate west rather than the
northeast.
In essence, the archaeological record
does not as yet indicate that proto-
Shawnee groups occupied the territory
defined by the distribution of the
petroglyphs. After a discussion of the
religious concepts of the petroglyph
"carvers," Swauger concludes
that ".. .as an archaeologist I would be im-
mensely more comfortable if I could
present physical evidence to support my
theory . . ." (p. 272). Until this
physical (archaeological) evidence is availa-
ble, these conclusions, while possibly
worthy of consideration, should be
viewed with caution.
Despite the subjective nature of the
conclusions, Petroglyphs of Ohio is a
valuable addition to archaeological
literature because it provides a summary
of a great deal of data in a
comprehensive and concise form. James L. Swau-
ger should be highly commended for his
effort.
Ohio Historical Society Shaune M. Skinner
The Corn Belt Route: A History of the
Chicago Great Western Railroad Com-
pany. By H. Roger Grant. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press,
1984. xi + 231p.; illustrations, maps,
appendix, notes, bibliography, index.
$29.00.)
In this handsomely produced volume,
Professor Grant attempts to show
how a relatively small Class I railroad
(1500 miles at its peak) survived the
competitive late-nineteenth century and
the regulated but still competitive
twentieth century. Although he used a variety of
sources (local newspapers,
company reports, ICC docket cases, and
oral history), Grant does not always
overcome his admitted passion for trains when he
analyzes the importance of
Book Reviews
207
this road's history to the evolution of
railroading. The professional historian
will find some problems in the analyses;
the railroad buff will revel in the de-
tail; and both will enjoy the numerous
photographs that present a splendid
visual history of the Chicago Great
Western.
Grant always tries to relate the story
of the CGW to the larger story of rail-
roading in the United States in order to
prove his thesis that small-scale
firms often pioneer innovations that are
eventually taken up by the entire in-
dustry. To support his thesis, Grant
cites the independent nature of the
road's founder, A. B. Stickney,
challenges prevailing scholarship on the na-
ture of competition in the 1880s, and
notes several innovations the CGW alleg-
edly passed on to the industry. In most
of these cases, Grant strains the evi-
dence to fit the thesis. For example, he
finds it difficult to criticize the "lone
wolf" Stickney, despite Stickney's
questionable use of a dummy corporation
to build the railway (a common form of
chicanery in the Gilded Age), de-
spite Stickney's reputation as a
speculator (as opposed to an owner and man-
ager dedicated to providing service for
profit), and despite Stickney's pen-
chant for using outside immigrant labor
to lay the tracks (rather than local
Midwest inhabitants). Curiously, Grant
presents more balanced judgements
of the railroad's succeeding eight
presidents. And he cogently describes
Stickney's progressive (albeit
self-serving) view toward federal regulation of
rail rates (he supported the idea) and
the founder's bold reorganization plan
in the 1890s, which followed an English
practice that made the road a
mortgage-free property with the lien on
the income.
Grant challenges the prevailing
interpretation that says the decade of the
1880s witnessed an immense amount of
irrational railway building. In fact,
more railroad mileage was laid in the
1880s in the U.S. (75,000 miles) than in
any decade before or since anywhere in
the world. In the 1890s the railroad
industry suffered under the weight of
the most receiverships ever in the his-
tory of the U.S. Grant's challenge
therefore is interesting but not persuasive.
He supports his contention by noting
that townspeople called for more rail-
ways (shippers desired competition to
force down prices) and that the CGW
was successful. These points are not
enough to sustain his broader thesis
about available demand. Grant would have
been on firmer ground had he
simply stated that Stickney and his
managers, and their successors, had
been more effective businessmen than
others in a period swelled with ill-
considered schemes and bankruptcies.
Indeed, the CGW management em-
phasized trunk line operations over the
less profitable branch lines, which
was a strategy the more successful
railroads followed. Grant's evidence,
moreover, undercuts his broader thesis.
In the only sections that bog down
in detail, the author describes the
numerous weak roads that succumbed to
under-capitalization, poor management,
and lack of demand, only to eventu-
ally become part of the Corn Belt Route.
That townspeople built some of
these roads that limped along
underscores the lack of sustained demand
available in the 1880s and 1890s.
Once in the twentieth century, Grant
moves the story along, noting the fi-
nancial setbacks (two receiverships),
the road's labor relations (a "family"
atmosphere several times shattered by
strikes), and the strengths and weak-
nesses of the CGW's presidents. Yet, as
he did in analyzing the road's
Gilded Age infancy, Grant strains his
evidence to fit his thesis. He maintains
that the CGW's use of multiple
locomotives to pull long freight trains (150 or
208 OHIO HISTORY
more cars) and its use of
"piggy-back" service (loaded truck trailers hauled
on rail flat cars) were two innovations
that others in railroading copied. The
utilization of long freight trains seems
a simple attempt to fully utilize scale
economies in railroading. As for the
piggy-back service, Grant dates this "in-
novation" in 1935-36. Yet he
acknowledges that electric interurbans used the
concept before the mid-1930s. And there
is evidence, presented in the trans-
portation journal The Traffic World on
December 19 and 26, 1931, that the St.
Louis-Southwestern (the Cotton Belt) had
developed an extensive use of
trucks, including piggy-back service,
between 1928 and 1931. In reality, the
CGW appears to have followed an industry
trend rather than have led one,
for most railroads in the 1920s and
1930s did not do the obvious and inte-
grate the new motor trucks into their
operations (in part because the motor
truck appeared so quickly and in part
because of fears of antitrust action).
This book, then, should be read
carefully, for while it presents a rather ex-
citing story of a long-overlooked and
important railroad, it tends to overstate
the road's impact on the industry at
large.
The Ohio State University William R. Childs
Railroads, Reconstruction, and the
Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radi-
cal Republicans, 1865-1877. By Mark W. Summers. (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1984. xiii +
361p.; notes, bibliography, index.
$37.50.)
No area of U.S. History has come under
closer scrutiny within the last few
years than the Reconstruction era after
the Civil War. And the trend contin-
ues. This study is the first analysis of
the complex state-by-state history of
aid to railroads and the collapse of
these efforts under the Republican re-
gimes.
Drawing upon revisionist, and often
quantitative, state studies, as well as
original and secondary sources,
Professor Summers (University of Georgia)
presents a rather cogent and well stated
case for his topic. As with all general
analyses of Reconstruction, each state
was sui generis. The variables includ-
ed party, black and white participation
in government, the types of aid, paro-
chialism, intra-party dissention, and
reactions to the Conservatives who op-
posed much of what the Republicans tried
to accomplish.
It was obvious that there was a great
need for the rebuilding of the South-
ern railroads after the war; however,
the Republicans became caught up in
what was a national phenomenon, a
veritable "mania" by local, county, and
state governments to get a railroad
constructed into their regions. In these ef-
forts, Summers indicates, again and
again, how the governments and the
companies "reinterpreted" the
law for their own needs. When their new
panacea did not materialize, the
Conservative whites blamed the excesses
on the black and white Republicans,
when, in fact, it was, according to Sum-
mers, mediocre folk, in general, in the
legislatures, and the rapid turnover of
Republican officeholders and their
dependence on corporate advisers.
Republicans in each state, of course,
developed their own railroad aid pro-
grams, and the party factor varied with
different kinds of aid; however, it
Book Reviews
209
was the Republicans who "hitched
their star" to subsidies which were
usually more expensive than the
Conservatives would accept.
There was no general policy of railroad
aid. Parochialism, state pride and
localism undermined any efforts in that
direction. Often, despite the best of
intentions, economic chaos resulted.
There was bribery, as other scholars
have noted, but it was "not a
corruption of ethics, but a [more serious] cor-
ruption of judgment" (p. 117).
Prominent Republicans became involved as in-
vestors in the companies and there was
fraud. Then, when the "Gospel of
Prosperity" did not evolve in the
rural, non-industrial South, the Conserva-
tives were able to make the most of it.
When the Republicans sought aid from
Congress, it was not forthcoming.
Hence, they turned to "outside
financing"; however, bond depreciation,
bad credit, and the contingent debts
made even this, the last resort, a fail-
ure. The unbelievable greed and
political machinations of Northern capital-
ists is outlined in gory detail. As an
example of the collapse of the railroad
"mania," Summers retells the
complex and sordid story of the "Alabama
and Chattanooga [Railroad]
Catastrophe." He also restates how party disu-
nity led to the collapse of these aid
programs by 1872 and how retrenchment
became the watchword. With the Panic of
1873 and the ensuing depression,
the tax revolt led to the reemergence of
the race issue. When combined, the
days of Republican governments were
numbered.
Summers then concludes, in which the
historiography of Reconstruction
has seemed to come full circle, that:
(1) "Republicans deserved to bear the
responsibility for [the] hard
times" (p. 294), and (2) "Judged by the gap be-
tween their promises in 1867 and their
performance over the seven years that
followed, the Republican leaders
deserved to lose power" (p. 295).
Then, in a unique "Appendix,"
he conjectures as to whether the Demo-
crats could have done better. He
concludes that: (1) they could have done
little to "clean up the governing
process" in railroad matters; (2) aid would
not have come to an end; (3) and the
railroads would not have prospered giv-
en the Southern economic problems. The
Democrats might then have been
blamed for mismanagement and the
Republicans might have been given
their chance (if they gave up any
interest in the blacks).
As with most revised dissertations,
there are some minor problems with
this study. First, it is too long.
Repetitiousness abounds. He uses, unfortu-
nately for a study of this nature,
"Negro" and "black" interchangeably as
descriptive terms for Afro-Americans.
Railroad studies need maps; he has
none. Also, the quantitative data could
have been combined, visually, with
the use of charts or tables. The titles
of his divisions (he combines chapters
in "Part One, Two, etc.) take the
biblical "Gospel of Prosperity" allusion to
an ahistorical extreme. Part Two is
"A Covenant of Public Works . .," Part
Three, "The Glory is Departed From
Israel ..." Part Four, "Balm in Gil-
ead?. . .," Part Five, "There
is No Salvation . .," and, prior to the Index, a
two and one-half page "Coda, 'And
Was Jerusalem Builded Here?' " Unfor-
tunately, the notes are at the end of
the narrative.
This study is for the specialist,
although the style is not as turgid as most
economic analyses. The bibliography is excellent with a
few minor excep-
tions. Each student of the period will
have to add this monograph to his/her
bookshelf.
California University of
Pennsylvania John Kent
Folmar
210 OHIO HISTORY
"The Rest of Us": The Rise
of America's Eastern European Jews. By
Stephen
Birmingham. (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1984. xvii + 392p.; il-
lustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
$19.95.)
With "The Rest of Us" Stephen
Birmingham completes his series on suc-
cessful Jewish immigrants that he began
in "Our Crowd" and The Grandees.
Having already covered elite German and
Sephardic Jews, Birmingham tack-
les this time the stories of a number of
prominent East European Jews. Not
surprisingly, the success of
Birmingham's earlier books has already inspired
another author, Jean Baer, to write The
Self-Chosen: "Our Crowd" is Dead;
Long Live Our Crowd (New York, 1982) on the rise of the East European Jews
in America. Undaunted by the possibility
that there is no need for two such
similar books, let alone even one,
Birmingham has completed his trilogy by
cataloging the lives and careers of a
number of rich and famous East Europe-
an Jewish immigrants.
Although he consistently tries to
impress his readers with the net worth of
his subjects, Birmingham claims to have
selected his figures for reasons oth-
er than their wealth. Instead he chose
to write "about the rise of men and
women [who] have intimately affected the
way we live and think and view
and enjoy ourselves-who have, in the
process of their American successes,
left their imprint on our culture in
terms of the news and entertainment media,
the fashion and beauty industries, the
arts and music, who have shaped our
tastes in our lives and even in our
drinking habits" (p. xvii). In chronicling
immigrants who shaped American popular
culture, Birmingham weaves a
patchwork that simultaneously follows
the events in the lives of such diverse
figures as the socialist Rose Pastor
Stokes, gangsters Meyer Lansky and Ben-
ny Siegel, movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn,
RCA president David Sarnoff,
bootlegger and Seagram's chief Samuel
Bronfman, and even Helena Rubin-
stein and Ralph (Lifschitz) Lauren.
This is not interpretative or analytical
history. Birmingham attributes East
European Jewish entrepreneurial success
to instincts and greater honesty,
claiming that these immigrants brought
little from their Old World culture
that was usable in the new. Lacking a
thorough understanding of the forces
propelling the Jews out of Eastern
Europe or of the work of historians of
American Jewish immigration, Birmingham
is unable to explain why these
Jews pioneered new areas of the American economy such
as the movies and
the cosmetics industry. Birmingham makes
no attempt to discern trends and
patterns to set these success stories in
a broader social context.
The book is cliche ridden: "And
America, as we know, is the land of mira-
cles" (p. 161). "Thus the rich
get richer" (pp. 354-55). Moreover, there are a
number of egregious errors. World War I
ends in 1919 (p. 131). And, accord-
ing to Birmingham, it only became clear
in 1947 that the British had no inten-
tion of honoring the Balfour
Declaration. Given that the author relies upon
sources the caliber of People magazine,
this book is clearly not intended for
the historian or serious student of
Jewish history.
Who then is Birmingham's audience? His
earlier books have sold well,
and "The Rest of Us" has
already been featured by a number of book clubs.
Obviously, Birmingham has many fans, and
he should, for he writes marvel-
ously entertaining gossip. Birmingham
delights in recounting the erratic, ex-
otic, and despotic behavior of his
subjects. We learn their favorite curse
Book Reviews
211
words, details about their courtships
and honeymoons, how they laun-
dered their family histories, how they
mistreated their wives, how they
dealt with business partners and
disloyalty, how they changed their names,
and even the number of television sets
(three dozen) in David Sarnoff's
home during the depression.
Fans of the antics of the rich and
famous will delight in this book. Howev-
er, scholars and students of American
Jewish history searching for an under-
standing as to why a remarkable number
of these East European Jews so rap-
idly found the American dream to be all
that it promised, may very well wish
to, and in fact should, skip The Rest
of Us.
American University Pamela S.
Nadell
When the Wicked Rise: American
Opinion-Makers and the Manchurian Crisis
of 1931-1933. By Justus D. Doenecke. (Lewisburg: Bucknell University
Press, 1984. 188p.; notes, essay on
sources, index. $24.50.)
This is a detailed examination of the
Manchurian Crisis from one signifi-
cant perspective. It is not another
analysis of governmental response but, as
the subtitle suggests, it explores the
reaction of prominent newspapers, relig-
ious and peace leaders,
internationalists, and citizens concerned with world
problems. Doenecke also emphasizes that
it says little about China, which
was incidental in the thinking of most
citizens.
In four chapters, Doenecke treats,
respectively, responses to the initial at-
tack, reactions to the nonrecognition
policy, debates over economic coercion,
and the continuing search for a
satisfactory solution. In looking at the various
groups, he finds initial anxiety and outrage
which by late 1932 and early 1933
had faded to a complacent optimism that
the problem would solve itself.
Among Doenecke's findings are (1) a
surprising militancy among peace work-
ers and religious leaders, (2) a less
than expected isolationist attitude except
in Congress, (3) sufficient division of
viewpoint on almost every subject to nul-
lify the effectiveness of the
opinion-makers, and (4) no evidence that admin-
istration leaders paid much attention to
them anyway. In a perceptive obser-
vation, Doenecke notes that perhaps most
of the people and groups were
more interested in exploiting the crisis
to advance their own objectives. This
is most obvious among the pro-League
advocates. Doenecke also observes
that the discussions within the United
States may have served one useful
purpose. They kept the Japanese guessing
just what public attitudes were
and how Hoover and Stimson might
respond.
The 119 pages of text and 53 of notes
provide evidence of highly detailed
research. The examination of opinion is
placed in perspective with brief but
adequate commentary on events,
governmental policies, and international
responses. Thus in many ways this is a
model of scholarship. Yet a reader
can still wonder whether another
approach might have been more satisfy-
ing. The chronological approach
continually breaks up the examination of
groups, and it is also difficult to
follow ideological subjects, including atti-
tudes toward the League of Nations,
sanctions, and even the nonrecognition
principle. The disorganized perspective
was, however, the one Hoover ad-
212 OHIO HISTORY
ministration figures were receiving, and
maybe scholars should see the pic-
ture as they did and be as puzzled about
it as they were.
There is a wealth of information about
peace and religious leaders, interna-
tionalists, business and labor figures,
journalists, international lawyers, and
administration leaders, all of whom,
Doenecke notes, seemed to have their
illusion of peace sustained by the
Manchurian Crisis rather than have it
shattered.
The University of Akron Warren F. Kuehl
The War Against Proslavery Religion:
Abolitionism and the Northern Church-
es, 1830-1865. By John R. McKivigan. (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press,
1984. 327p.; notes, appendix,
bibliography, index. $29.95.)
Can society be morally reformed by
persuasion and eventually legislation?
This is a question that Americans have
struggled with throughout history. Is
our society's abhorence of men owning
other men (slavery) greater than the
economic benefits to be gained by doing
so? Is society's desire to drown its
frustrations in alcohol greater than its
stake in stable family relationships and
its safety in an industrial age? Is
murder as social policy more greatly to be
desired than the control of sexual lust?
And what role are the churches as
keepers of our moral consciences to play
in answering these questions?
Certainly it is not part of the duty of
one who reviews a book to answer
these questions. But a philosopher or an
historian may address them. Mr.
John R. McKivigan addresses the slavery
question posed above in his book
on The War Against Proslavery
Religion. In the process he discovers that
what is today seen as morally right has
not always been clearly and unequiv-
ocally advocated by the nation's
churches. As a matter of fact, he shows
that abolitionists, who were not
infrequently clergymen themselves, found an
enormous and nearly insurmountable
challenge in their efforts to persuade
formal church denominations to accept
the idea that slavery was sin and fel-
lowship with slaveholders was not to be
countenanced. McKivigan quotes
Presbyterian minister Albert Barnes as
saying in 1846, "There is no power out
of the church that could sustain slavery
an hour, if it were not sustained in
it." It was natural, therefore, for
abolitionists to approach denominational
leadership for aid in their cause and to
expect to obtain it. Yet not one major
denomination endorsed their program
before 1860 and the outbreak of the
Civil War.
Mr. McKivigan, therefore, finds that
there had to be a war against proslav-
ery religion in the Northern churches.
He admirably and in detail recounts
that war, lasting from 1830 through
1865, which, with the aid of aroused po-
litical forces and the passage of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitu-
tion in the midst of a great war,
culminated in the conquest of major church
bodies.
Major battles of the war against
proslavery religions were fought within the
churches themselves. These revolved
around control of missionary and
publishing groups (the benevolent
empire), interdenominational conventions,
abolitionist societies and
"comeouter" splinters of major denominations
(Wesleyan Methodists, Freewill Baptists,
Free Presbyterians). And all the
Book Reviews
213
while some churches like the Roman
Catholics and the Episcopalians sat on
the sidelines and maintained that there was no problem
at all! But political
events came to the aid of the abolitionists in the
decade of the fifties. The
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 brought
the conflict into the backyard of the
ordinary citizen and threatened the
ability to "go west" and
remain in free territory. Secession in 1860 and 1861
brought the Civil War. The major
churches during that conflict eventually
called for emancipation, an end to
slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment.
Mr. McKivigan addresses with logic and
documentation the reasons why
church leaderships held back from the
abolitionist movement and why
during the early sixties it was won over
to the abolitionist program. His book
is eminently readable and his research
admirable. The reader is left in
doubt about little except perhaps the
numerical strength of the abolitionists
during the thirties and forties. By
implication one could assume they were far
more numerous than they actually were.
The book, however, is flawed in lit-
tle else: the notes are extensive, the
bibliography quite adequate and the in-
dex useful.
Society in this case was morally
reformed by moral suasion and eventually
by constitutional legislation-but not
without a great Civil War!
Ohio Northern University Boyd M. Sobers
Missionaries and Muckrakers: The
First Hundred Years of Knox College. By
Herman R. Muelder (Champaign: The
University of Illinois Press, 1984.
382p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $19.95.)
Findlay College: The First Hundred
Years. By Richard Kern. (Nappanee, In-
diana: Evangel Press, 1984, xv + 480p.;
illustrations, notes, sources.
$19.95.)
The Congregationalists and Presbyterians
from New York and New Eng-
land who founded Knox College were
influenced by the same evangelical an-
tislavery impulses that were associated
with the early years of Oberlin Col-
lege. Hermann R. Muelder, the College
Historian, ends the narrative with
the one-hundredth anniversary in 1937 in
order to avoid writing about the
period of his long career as a faculty
member.
The establishment of the college
community of Galesburg, Illinois, was
successful. Knox College prospered from
the beginning, compared with oth-
er small denominational colleges. Knox
and Galesburg were conservative
during much of the nineteenth century,
but there was always a liberal tradi-
tion, especially as related to blacks
and women. Knox had the first black
man to receive a college degree in
Illinois and was the site of a Lincoln-
Douglas debate. A boycott of classes
forced the resignation of a president
and the admission of women to regular
college classes. Knox men were offi-
cers of Negro troops during the Civil
War, and they also freed slaves, contra-
ry to Lincoln's wartime policy. After
the war, Knox men and women went
south to teach the freed men.
In academic matters the lead was taken
by literary societies which estab-
lished a system of interstate collegiate
oratorical contests in which Knox won
most of the prizes. The first football
games were played incidentally to ora-
214 OHIO HISTORY
torical contests. The role of athletics
and the maintenance of amateur stan-
dards were strongly debated well into
the 1930s.
More important, however, than student
activities, or even its honorable
history, is the national visibility that
Knox achieved, especially its influence
on American literary history and the
lead taken by its graduates in the social
reforms of the Progressive movement.
Eugene Field, Edgar Lee Master, Carl
Sandburg, John H. Finley, S. S.
McClure and many others were influenced
by Knox. Samuel S. McClure and
other alumni from the staff of the Knox
Student founded and edited Mc-
Clure's Magazine, which was the leading vehicle for articles by the Muck-
rakers. Knox graduates held editorial
positions on several other important
publications early in the century.
George Fitch wrote a series of stories about
the escapades and other aspects of
college life at "Old Siwash," which was
really Knox College. Carl Sandburg, a
student at Lombard College, which
was taken over by Knox in 1930, freely
admitted the influence that Knox had
on his career.
The significant contribution made by
Knox College to the literary history
of the United States is what
distinguishes Muelder's account from other
college histories. There is some
repetition (Cf., pp. 58-59 and 119-20), but it in
no way detracts from what is a
first-rate account of the place of Knox College
in collegiate annals.
Findlay College was established late in
the period that saw the founding
of most of the private denominational
colleges in the United States. Thus,
faculty member Richard Kern deals with
the first hundred years of Findlay
College from 1882 to 1982. The chief
issues treated by the author are the fi-
nancial problems of the College, the
struggles to gain accreditation, and rela-
tionships with the Church of God.
From the time that Findlay College was
established by the Church of
God, with assistance from the town of
Findlay, Ohio, much of its existence
was precarious. There were frequent
periods when survival was at stake and
questions were raised as to whether the
College should be abandoned or
whether it should continue as a two-year
school. As Kern notes, the financial
condition for seventy-five years ranged
from desperate to marginal. With in-
creased success in fund drives,
government grants and loans, the situation
was greatly improved by the 1960s.
The struggle for accreditation was also
a continuous problem. Accredita-
tion by the North Central Association
was not gained until 1933, and was lost
fifteen years later. Accreditation was
restored in 1962, but it was 1969 before
it was finally granted without probation
or reservation.
During most of its history the Church of
God exercised close control over
Findlay College. The examination of the
evolution of this relationship is one
of the most interesting parts of the
story. Conflicts over theology, the teach-
ing of evolution, the increased
liberalism of the faculty and questions of cam-
pus "morality" surfaced,
especially after the middle of the twentieth centu-
ry. Kern notes that diminishing the
denominational character of the College
saved it as a liberal arts school and by
1982 the Church of God connection
was at an all-time low.
Kern's history is a comprehensive
detailed chronicle of various adminis-
trations, student organizations and
activities. Fifty pages of appendices list
nearly everyone, including all faculty
members, who had any official position
with Findlay College.
Book Reviews
215
These two histories show the diversity,
which is the uniqueness of Ameri-
can higher education. These colleges which moved in
different directions
served their respective missions and met
the needs of their constituents.
Kent State University Harris L. Dante
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. By Linda King Newell and Valeen
Tippetts Avery. (New York: Doubleday
& Company, Inc., 1984. xiii +
394p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $19.95.)
This biography of Emma Hale Smith, wife
of Joseph Smith the Mormon
prophet, will be appreciated by
individuals interested in early Mormonism,
women in nineteenth century America, and
many others. It is an often heroic,
often tragic story of a devoted couple
whose lives were punctuated by peri-
ods of sorrow, distrust, and despair.
Emma Hale Smith was both a bene-
ficiary and a victim of her husband's
position as founder of the Mormon
church.
In 1830 Joseph Smith recorded a divine
revelation directed toward Emma.
Known ever after as the "Elect Lady
revelation," it assured her that God
was pleased with her. She was counseled
to be a comfort to her husband, to
lay aside the things of the world, and
to keep the commandments continual-
ly. For fourteen more years Emma Smith
moved within the highest circles of
the Mormon community. She was
instrumental in the establishment of the
Relief Society-a denominational
organization for women-and served as its
first president. But, as the authors
have skillfully chronicled, hers was sel-
dom a happy lot in life.
Emma Smith suffered the loss of several
children in infancy, was repeated-
ly called upon to uproot her family as
the Mormons were driven from Ohio to
Missouri to Illinois, saw her husband
verbally and physically abused and,
finally, murdered by an anti-Mormon mob.
But clearly her greatest trial of all
was Joseph Smith's espousal of plural
marriage as a component of the Mor-
mon gospel. All other trials she had
borne admirably, but this proved to be
beyond her capacity to endure. It is in
relating this aspect of Emma's life that
Newell and Avery have demonstrated
detailed research and objective anal-
ysis.
Only on this controversial doctrine did
Emma Smith show any tendency
to waver in her faith. Joseph knew very
well that his wife would have diffi-
culty in accepting plural marriage, and
consequently she was kept in the dark
about the practice for years following
its introduction. In 1843 she grudgingly
gave her approval to Joseph's plural
marriages-several years after their con-
summation in certain cases-but she never
truly accepted the principle. Ulti-
mately, Emma Smith's open opposition to
the doctrine led her to sever her
ties with the westward-bound Mormon
congregation which followed Brig-
ham Young after Smith's martyrdom.
The period from this parting of the ways
in 1846 until her death thirty-
three years later marked yet another
chapter in Emma Smith's life. Having
chosen to remain in the Midwest rather
than relocate to the Rocky
Mountains-a decision she based primarily
upon her distaste for the contin-
uance of polygamy-Emma eventually
remarried, saw her son, Joseph Smith
216 OHIO HISTORY
III, assume the leadership of the
Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Lat-
ter Day Saints, a group which rejected
plural marriage, and found herself
singled out for persecution by many of
the Utah-based Mormons. Brigham
Young, who actively promoted plural
marriage among the Utah Mormans,
helped to effectively demote Emma from
being the Elect Lady of early Mor-
monism to the shrew of the post-Joseph
Smith period-an unjust rap which
this biography should lay to rest once
and for all.
The book has few weaknesses, and these
must be considered as minor.
Newell and Avery occasionally lapse into
repetition of previously stated
points. For example, the reader is told
twice within four pages that "contrary
to popular belief' (p. 210) and, again,
"contrary to later reports" (p. 214),
William Marks, a prominent
ecclesiastical leader, was never excommunicated
from the Mormon church. Also, in
discussing the development of a unique
system of ritualization which Joseph
Smith instituted in the years prior to his
death, the authors have relied almost
exclusively upon the work of one re-
cent scholar. Consideration of other
available studies may have given this
portion of the book additional breadth.
On the whole, however, Mormon Enigma is
a fine study and a welcome ad-
dition to the history of early
Mormonism. Linda King Newell and Valeen
Tippetts Avery are to be commended for
their excellent work. The puzzle of
Emma Hale Smith is now much clearer.
Los Angeles County Museum M. Guy Bishop
Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography. By Gene Smith. (New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, 1984. xiv + 412p.;
illustrations, bibliography, notes, in-
dex. $17.95.)
Interest in the Civil War era and the
two great protagonists, U. S. Grant
and Robert E. Lee, has continued
unabated decade after decade. In writing
this dual biography, Gene Smith, the
author of works on Woodrow Wilson
and Herbert Hoover, compressed his fast-paced account
within the limits of
an average volume. The work is well
proportioned and balanced in the pages
allotted to the various phases of each
man's career. Alternating chapters
such as those on the postwar presidencies
enable one to compare and con-
trast the personalities and achievements
of the Virginian and the Ohioan.
The book is not without its weaknesses,
however. Smith eschews any sub-
stantial analysis of the societies in
which each youth grew to manhood.
Since he presents them as representative
figures of two distinct social orders,
this omission is significant. The
background of the Mexican War is reduced
to a few sentences. The sectional
controversy of the 1850s and the critical,
federal election of 1864 are seriously neglected. Thus,
Lee's speculation
about a new peace administration coming
from the election is overlooked.
The same is true of Grant's acute
judgment that the civic order which ob-
tained during the campaign was a
testament to Union strength.
Smith asserts that temperament and
character, not intelligence, are the
distinguishing determinants that mark superior military
leaders. He has a
sharp eye for the pithy comment and the
telling vignette. The portrait of Lee
that emerges from these pages is more
finely drawn, more complete than that
Book Reviews
217
of the Ohioan. The commonly known
characteristics and the fierce fighting
streak are well presented. Inadequately
detailed is his relationship with his
wife, his mother and several other
women. As for Grant, the familiar person
is developed but there is not enough of
the reader, the bookman whose
clearly written dispatches helped
subordinates in every campaign. Nor was
he devoid of any military knowledge, for
there is evidence he knew and dis-
cussed critically the specifics of every
Mexican War campaign.
The author is apparently uncomfortable
with military history. First, there
are no maps to aid the non-specialist.
The treatment of the Mexican conflict
and Lee's service in Texas is thin. The
same judgment applies to the Civil
War, except for the discussion of the
Richmond-Petersburg front during
the period from February 1865 to
Appomattox. The important battles of
Ft. Donelson and Shiloh and Grant's
leadership in each are presented in
sketchy two and three-page accounts.
Similarly, Lee's efforts at the Seven
Days and Antietam merit only the most
general description. Vicksburg and
Gettysburg are in somewhat sharper
focus, but the narrative is so broad that
the leadership factor is not well
developed. Although he avers that Grant
compelled Lee to fight his type of
action, Grant's strategic planning for 1864 is
dismissed in one paragraph.
Both Lee and Grant were under great
stress in the face of the enemy chal-
lenge. That each man received praise and
inspired sacrifices is obvious. But
the work fails to demonstrate with
effective analysis how each produced
such a series of battlefield-campaign
victories. In addition, one concludes
that intelligence was a greater factor
than is here admitted.
Attractive for its brisk and interesting
style, this volume of popular history
will have its appeal, but it must be
used with extreme caution in view of its
severe limitations.
Ohio Wesleyan University Richard W. Smith
Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker.
By Kathleen Brady. (New York:
Seaview/Putnam, 1984. 286p.; essay on
sources, notes, bibliography, in-
dex. $17.95.)
Well informed students of the history of
journalism will find the general
outline of this book familiar. Ida
Tarbell fit the profile of the average muck-
raker drawn by Louis Filler some
forty-five years ago with one significant ex-
ception: Tarbell was the only woman
among that remarkable group of writers
who from roughly 1903 through 1910
tugged at the conscience of the Ameri-
can middle class. The fact that Tarbell
suceeded in what was an overwhelm-
ingly man's profession is what prompted
Kathleen Brady, a Time magazine
staff writer, to write this book. On the
issues of the women's movement in the
early twentieth century Tarbell
surprisingly turned out to be a "weather
vane" rather than an innovator.
Brady's portrait of a muckraker is
organized into four parts. The "Begin-
nings" covers Tarbell's childhood,
education and early careers as a teacher
in a one room schoolhouse and as an
editorial assistant for The Chautauquan
magazine. "Exhaltation"
reviews her nearly three years doing research at
the Bibliotheque Nationale, while
earning a living as a free-lance writer for
218 OHIO HISTORY
American newspapers and monthlies. It
was these articles that brought Tar-
bell to the attention of Samuel S.
McClure and led to a job with McClure's
Magazine in 1894. "Success," the heart of the book,
details Tarbell's work at
McClure's and describes her emergence as a muckraker with the
serializa-
tion of her History of the Standard
Oil Company. This section also explains
her decision, along with her disgruntled
colleagues, to break with McClure
and to go off to establish the rival American
Magazine. While at The Ameri-
can she pursued her interest in the plight of the working
class and explored
the intricacies of the tariff question.
At this time she also articulated her con-
servative position on the "woman
question." The final part of the book
"Valor" deals with Tarbell's
twenty-seven year struggle with Parkinson's
disease while continuing to lead an
active life. In the post World War I era
she became an advocate of industrial
cooperation, expressing her views on
the lecture circuit and in her essays
and books about industrialists and in-
dustrial life.
Unstated and tentatively, Brady uses ego
psychology to explain the trans-
formation of her subject. Tarbell's
childhood inquisitiveness, encouraged
by her father, led to her interest in
research. Breaking away from her family
Tarbell went to France to do research
and to write. Establishing her own
identity she returned home triumphantly
to vindicate her father. Franklin S.
Tarbell had been one of the independent
oil producers who unsuccessfully
fought John D. Rockefeller in western
Pennsylvania. He died in 1905, soon
after the publication of his daughter's
history of Standard Oil. Within a
short time Ida left McClure's and
began expressing her antifeminist views.
She would later, because of her close
ties to Ray Stannard Baker, become a
Wilson administration insider, and still
later become an apologist for Elbert
H. Gary, Herbert H. Hoover, Owen D.
Young and even Benito Mussolini.
Though gracefully and sensitively
written and filled with interesting infor-
mation, the book has flaws. Suggesting
that Tarbell betrayed her journalistic
principles to defend Herbert Hoover's
reputation, Brady cites a June 6, 1922,
memorandum to reconstruct a meeting with
Hoover in 1924 about issues relat-
ed to the Teapot Dome scandal (pp.
228-231). Also, historical scholarship
from the past fifteen years, which could
have been used to strengthen this
study, appears not to have been
consulted. In particular the work of Robert
Stinson, whose argument Brady closely
follows on the antifeminist issue, is
not cited.
University of Cincinnati James E. Cebula
Ty Cobb. By Charles C. Alexander. (New York: Oxford University
Press,
1984. 292p.; illustrations, notes,
index. $16.95.)
In late August 1905 a wirey young man
from a small Georgia town made his
first trip North. He had come to play
baseball for the Detroit Tigers. And he
brought with him extraordinary skills as
an outfielder and hitter and, since
first playing ball as a child, a
fiercely competitive spirit. When he retired
twenty-three years later, he had come to
be feared and hated for his rough
play. Setting records for stolen bases
and base hits, he had helped the Ben-
gals to win three pennants. In 1936, he led all other
baseball greats, including
Book Reviews
219
Babe Ruth, in the balloting for
induction into the new Baseball Hall of Fame.
Some of the Georgia Peach's marks stood
until the 1970s and 1980s, nearly a
half century after his departure from
the game.
Virtually all scholars and fans of the
summer game regard him as the
greatest player of the "Silver
Age" (1900-19). Because home runs then
proved dear-nine shots over the fences
could set the season record-a ball
player had to settle for a single or
double and steal bases to score. None bet-
ter played that branch of baseball than
Cobb. Indeed, one rival team's
manager in 1910 called him "the
greatest piece of baseball machinery that
ever stepped on the diamond."
Cobb's preeminence ended abruptly. In
1920, Babe Ruth's sudden and
unprecedented ability to hit the long
ball began to transform the game. The
ball itself had become livelier due to
still unexplained changes in its manu-
facture while the banning of the
spitter, among other factors, made an of-
fense based on power possible. Even
before Cobb's retirement, Ruth, not
Cobb, was the country's most admired
baseball player. In the New Era, the
summer game had become the contest of
big shoulders, not bat control.
And far more began attending games. As
Warren Susman has noted, Ruth's
muscle and hedonism well symbolized the
values and aspirations of many in
the twenties. Cobb hated men easily and
added Ruth to his list. The Bam-
bino's profligate lifestyle and brutish
batmanship appalled Cobb, who, to
the end, remained disciplined in
personal habit and at the plate. Neverthe-
less, later studies by baseball
statistician Bill James confirmed that Ruth cre-
ated more runs than Cobb. In 1969,
baseball writers selected Ruth and not
Cobb as the game's all-time greatest
player.
In the first scholarly treatment of the
Peach, Charles C. Alexander rescues
Cobb from Ruth's fat shadow. Alexander's
task was complicated. Because
the Cobb family refused to cooperate, he
had to rely on miscellaneous man-
uscript collections and-with
care-various newspapers' sports pages and
magazines. Cobb himself was the greatest
obstacle. The son of a school
teacher, Cobb was an unusually shrewd
ballplayer and not the ignorant
cracker of a Ring Lardner story. Off
days were spent at museums and art gal-
leries. Deliberately seeking the Detroit
business establishment's counsel on
investing, he wisely speculated in stock
in companies on the make, notably
General Motors and Coca Cola. He left
baseball a wealthy man. Yet for all his
intelligence, the Peach never learned to
control his temper or prejudices. He
was petty when not simply mean. He
earned the enmity of many of his team-
mates and rivals. Sometimes he slid into
third base with too much zeal.
He was also a racist who frequently
picked fights with "insolent" blacks.
At Cleveland's Hotel Euclid in 1909,
Cobb slapped a black elevator operator
and then came to blows with a black
watchman. Only after prolonged negoti-
ations did local authorities drop their
efforts to prosecute the hot-tempered
Georgian. Until then, Cobb had to travel
East through Canada to avoid ar-
rest in the Buckeye State.
For many biographers, such unpleasantness
proves too burdensome. In
his recent biography of Grant, William
McFeely finds Grant's shortcomings
so removed from his own that the author
ultimately seems scornful when not
dismissive toward the general. That
distaste makes the book a struggle: the
reader is left wondering why the subject
warranted McFeely's attentions in
the first place.
220 OHIO HISTORY
A biographer need not be reverential,
but the sensitive one understands
that attitudes and behavior have a time
and place. Alexander explains
Cobb's violently racist views along with
a host of other personal flaws with-
out obscuring the Peach's importance or
forgetting Cobb's era and origins.
Most Southern and many Northern whites
shared Cobb's racism. More-
over, Cobb could be harsh regardless of
race, national origin, or sex. Base-
ball's second greatest player failed as
a husband and friend and found him-
self dying painfully of cancer with few
with whom to share his last days.
These sad and unbecoming moments in
Cobb's life are treated with more
tragedy than condescension by Alexander.
He does not forget, like some,
why he wrote the book. Cobb was a great
athlete and a complex, eventually
unhappy figure worthy of the historian's
labors. Alexander's Cobb is not
only a masterful biography but a model
to those wrestling with the problems
of an unlikeable protagonist.
Cobb is one of several very able new scholarly treatments of
American ath-
letics. And Alexander, who has written
excellent histories of modern Ameri-
can thought and culture, should continue
his excursion into baseball histo-
ry. Ohio historians can hope that
Alexander will next consider the lives of
Tris Speaker and Rocky Colavito.
University of Wisconsin-Madison James L. Baughman
Andrew Jackson and the Course of
American Democracy, 1833-1845. By Rob-
ert V. Remini. (New York: Harper &
Row, 1984. xxiii + 638p.; notes, maps,
illustrations, photographs, index.
$27.95.)
Few presidents have captivated the
historical imagination more contra-
dictorily than Andrew Jackson. Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr.'s, Age of Jackson
inaugurated the modern era of Jacksonian
scholarship on a positive note.
Writing in the liberal tradition of the
New Deal, Schlesinger portrayed the
seventh President as a principled
advocate of democracy, the emodiment of
the common person's aspirations, and a
charismatic political leader. This ad-
ulatory theme in Jacksonian scholarship
waned in the early 1960s as histori-
ans raised doubts about how fully this
self-made Tennessee oligarch and
slaveholder embraced either the common
man or egalitarian goals. Scholars
wrestled the temperamental Jackson onto
the psychiatrist's couch, loaded
computers with social and economic data
that frequently confounded Schle-
singer's conclusions, and charged Old
Hickory with slipshod governmental
administration. The behavioral
revolution in political history coupled with
the "new" social history of
the 1960s and 1970s paid Jackson the ultimate in-
sult: it ignored him.
Throughout this downward spiral in
Jackson's reputation, Robert Remini
has persisted in his view of Jackson as
the central force in the age that has
come to bear his name. This third and
concluding volume of Jackson's biog-
raphy completes Remini's restoration
efforts. It takes Jackson's life from the
Nullification Crisis to his death in
1845. Remini leaves little doubt that Jack-
son was an extraordinary figure, a
person larger than the times in which he
lived.
Remini argues that Jackson decisively
shaped American politics and the
Book Reviews
221
presidency by securing both to a
foundation of popular will. Much recent
Jacksonian scholarship, especially that
of Edward Pessen, has portrayed
Jackson as an expedient politician who
cynically manipulated popular will.
Remini, however, argues persuasively
that Jackson really meant what he
said; that he was, indeed, the tribune
of the people and that they alone,
through him, could speak to the nation's
greatness. Remini convincingly
demonstrates that on a range of domestic
issues Jackson placed his "total
trust" in the "virtue of the
real people, the great working class . . ." (p. 450).
Indeed, it was this implicit faith in
the people that gave Jackson the power to
challenge both Congress and the Supreme
Court and to pursue in the Nullifi-
cation Crisis a program of forceful
unionism. Remini, to some extent, echoes
the earlier assessments made by
Jackson's first biographer, James Parton,
but his superb grasp of the era and the
evidence gives these conclusions a
new sense of authority.
Remini offers a finely etched analysis
of Jackson the person that makes
these volumes more than political
biography. Old Hickory was temperamen-
tal, aggressive, and often poor in his
judgements about the honesty of others
(the famous defalcation of Samuel
Swartwout, the collector of the custom's
house in New York, was a particular blow
to Jackson's pride). As important,
Remini argues, Jackson possessed an even
more distinctive quality-grit. He
suffered through more than the usual
distractions of life (duels, deaths of
family and friends, broken finances and
busted businesses), yet he perse-
vered through force of will.
Remini makes Jackson's life fascinating
by revealing how personal force
and political necessity blended
harmoniously. Jackson not only preserved
the Union during the fateful
Nullification Crisis, but he strengthened the
presidential office, advanced the spirit
and practice of democratic govern-
ment, and made the two-party system
viable. Only Jackson's retirement,
Remini argues, allowed American politics
to function normally. As a result,
Jackson had the distinction of becoming,
through the notion of Jacksonian
Democracy, a metaphor for his age and a
lesson to our own era in the continu-
ing virtues of open government.
In sum, Remini has given us a biography
of classic proportions, one that es-
tablishes him as the preeminent
authority on Old Hickory and his times.
University of Florida Kermit L. Hall
Dubious Alliance: The Making of
Minnesota's DFL Party. By John Earl
Haynes. (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984. vii + 264p.;
notes, note on sources, index. $35.00
cloth; $14.95 paper.)
Researching and writing the history of
the American left can be an exer-
cise in intellectual frustration. In The
Communist Controversy in Washington
(1966), Earl Latham distinguished
between "the Communist problem"-the
fact of Communist involvement in domestic
American politics-and "the
Communist issue"-political
perceptions of a fundamental conflict of values
used by Republicans to attack New Deal
Democrats in the post-World War II
period. Many scholars have addressed the
issue to provide historical inter-
pretations of McCarthyism. Few
historians have discussed the problem as
222 OHIO HISTORY
faced by American liberals in their
domestic political organizations. In Dubi-
ous Alliance, historian John Earl Haynes, currently Director of Tax
and Cred-
it Analysis for the state of Minnesota,
deals with the problem through a case
study of Minnesota's Farmer-Labor
movement during the years from 1936
through 1948.
Rather than presenting either an
internal study of Minnesota's Communist
Party or an external analysis of liberal
attempts to stem Communist influence,
Haynes focuses on the meeting place of
left-liberal politics in Farmer-Labor
circles. Tracing the origins of the
Farmer-Labor movement from the Non-
Partisan League's activities in 1918, he
shows the movement's domination of
Minnesota state politics by 1936 in the
midst of the New Deal. The bulk of
the work centers on the ongoing tension
between the Communist-led Popular
Front anti-fascist alliance and a
disparate faction of New Deal liberals in local
political bodies, AFL unions, CIO
organizations, and state farm cooperatives.
Dubious Alliance provides a detailed, year-by-year narrative of that
continu-
ous battle from the defeat of the
Farmer-Labor ticket in 1938, through the
rise of factionalism between 1938 and
1943 and the merger of the Farmer-
Labor and Democratic parties as the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL)
in 1944, to the emergence of new liberal
leaders. Chapters 9-11 chronicle the
leadership of Minneapolis Mayor Hubert
H. Humphrey in building an anti-
communist liberal ideology,
organization, and campaign network from 1946
through 1948 which led to the ousting of
the Popular Front faction from the
DFL.
Haynes has conducted an impressive
amount of archival research among
eighty-two manuscript collections in ten
archives. His work benefits from
study of personal and organizational
papers at the Minnesota Historical Soci-
ety, the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, the Roosevelt and Truman
presidential libraries, Catholic
University, and the labor history archives at
Wayne State University. To complement
these sources, Haynes draws on FBI
files obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act and oral interviews
with key activists from both factions.
What emerges is a complicated, fasci-
nating story of internecine domestic
political infighting at a variety of levels-
precincts, wards, counties, AFL craft
unions and city central bodies, CIO in-
dustrial unions and state organizations,
the state DFL, and the Democratic
Party at the county, state, and national
rankings.
Yet in structuring the eleven detailed
narrative chapters around a strict
chronological framework, Haynes slights
critical analysis. In drastically revis-
ing his 1978 University of Minnesota
doctoral dissertation, Haynes chose to
sacrifice stylistic flow, narrative
coherency, and interpretive scope. To but-
tress his involved political narrative,
Haynes relies on minute descriptions of
political action in Minnesota's three
largest and most influential urban areas-
Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. In
the note on sources, Haynes admits to
a "lack of sufficient coverage of
farmers' organizations and rural politics" (p.
250). His clear political sympathies for
the Humphrey faction lead to serious
critical lapses in comparing the
ideological ambiguity, personalities, and or-
ganizational skills of the Popular Front
and anticommunist liberal factions
within the DFL. By leaving his incisive
analysis of the "intellectual kinship"
of the two factions for the concluding
pages, Haynes shortchanges a prodi-
gious research effort.
Dubious Alliance raises important and thought-provoking questions in in-
terpreting the DFL's factional battles
from its New Deal triumph in 1936
Book Reviews
223
through Henry A. Wallace's ill-fated
Progressive Party campaign of 1948 as
"the seminal political experience
of Humphrey's generation of liberals"
(p. 7). Haynes' careful reconstruction
of coalition building from 1946 through
1948 under the inspirational leadership
of Humphrey, the organizational
skills of Orville Freeman as head of the
Minnesota branch of Americans for
Democratic Action, and the farmer-labor
alliance among farm cooperatives,
AFL unions, and CIO factions depicts the
evolution of the postwar liberal
anticommunist consensus. He briefly
notes the emergence of a younger gener-
ation of college-educated liberals which
included Eugene McCarthy and
Walter Mondale.
Haynes provides a superbly researched
chronicle of left-liberal political
factionalism which should serve as a
model for future historians of New Deal
liberalism, the American Communist
Party, the Popular Front, and McCar-
thyism. He persuasively argues that
Communists (admitted and secret) ma-
nipulated the mainstream liberal party
in Minnesota politics throughout this
period. In so doing, Haynes subtly
questions the conclusions of revisionist
studies which argue that anticommunist
liberals brought on McCarthyism
before McCarthy. Through extensive
research, close attention to political
detail, and consideration of the
ideological claims of both factions in Minne-
sota's DFL Party, Haynes has turned what
might have been an exercise in
frustration into a significant piece of
historical scholarship.
Tennessee Technological University Patrick D. Reagan
Book Reviews
Saving the Waifs: Reformers and
Dependent Children, 1890-1917. By
LeRoy
Ashby. (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1984. xiii + 336p.; notes,
bibliographical notes, index. $37.95.)
This fine book reflects the current
interest in dependent children, private
philanthropy, and public policy and
shares the hypothesis of other recent
works that since child welfare is
somehow at the heart of Progressive reform-
ism, understanding the "child
savers" is key to understanding Progressiv-
ism.
In these respects, Saving the Waifs resembles
Susan Tiffin, In Whose Best
Interest: Child Welfare Reform in the
Progressive Era; Steven Schlossman,
Love and the American Delinquent: The
Theory and Practice of "Progressive"
Juvenile Justice; Ellen Ryerson, The Best Laid Plans: America's Juvenile
Court Experiment; and David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience:
The
Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America. Although all of these
other historians concede the genuine
humanitarianism of the "child savers,
in general they agree with Rothman that
conscience often took a back seat to
convenience, as that was determined by
the middle-class and socially con-
servative perspectives of the reformers.
Ashby offers us a more intimate, more
sympathetic, and more complex
portrait of the men and women who sought
to save the waifs, based on five
case studies of the agencies and
institutions which they founded and admin-
istered. According to Ashby, the
complexity of their motives and the uncer-
tainties of their goals and strategies
stemmed from their being caught be-
tween the village values of voluntarism,
family, and religion of the nineteenth
century and the modernization of the
twentieth, with its attendant profes-
sionalization, impersonality, and
commercialization. Child-saving became a
way, although an uncertain one, of
managing the present.
Each case study illustrates this
conflict and ambiguity. For example, the
directors of the Children's Home Society
of Minnesota, a child-placing agen-
cy, found themselves torn between the
desire to punish or control the illicit
sexuality of unwed mothers and the
humanitarian impulse to shelter their il-
legitimate children. The women who
established the orphanages of the Na-
tional Benevolent Association of the
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
were in conflict not only with the
personalist theology of the Church itself
(and its male hierarchy) but with the
anti-institutional trends in child care of
the early-twentieth century. The success
of the Ford Republic, an institution
for homeless and delinquent boys, owed
much of its success to the period's
confusion of dependency and delinquency.
John Gunckel and his Toledo Newsboys'
Association were praised for en-
couraging industry and self-reliance
among the "newsies," on the one hand,
and criticized for perpetuating child
labor, on the other. G. W. Hinckley,
founder of Good Will Farm, a home for
dependent children, best personi-
fied the difficulties of teaching his
charges "the values of an older, idealized
America that emphasized the work ethic,
moral restraint, love, religious
faith, and service to others" in an
organizational, commercial world.