Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Journey Through My Years. An Autobiography. By James

M. Cox. (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1946. xi + ⁴⁶3p.

$4.50.)

When the youthful James M. Cox left his job with the Cin-

cinnati Enquirer to become the private secretary of a Congress-

man, his initiation into public life had begun. Cleveland was one

of his first heroes, and the debates of the Fifty-third Congress,

which he followed closely, were his "equivalent for a university

course." At 28 Cox acquired his first newspaper. In Taft's ad-

ministration he represented the Third Ohio District in his own

right; by 1912 he was nominated by acclamation for the governor-

ship of Ohio. He became the first governor in the history of his

native State to serve three terms. In 1920 he was the national leader

of his party, and gallantly fought Wilson's losing fight for the

League of Nations. Thereafter he retired from public duties to

manage his rapidly growing newspaper holdings in Ohio, Florida,

and Georgia. He declined opportunities to head the Federal Re-

serve System and to go to Europe as an ambassador, but he con-

sented to represent the United States at the London Economic

Conference of 1933.

Two great causes seem to have dominated Cox's career. One

was his deep concern for greater social justice. The other was the

struggle for an international order which would bring peace and

happiness to the world.

Cox came into the governorship on the progressive tide that

produced the new Ohio Constitution of 1912. With remarkable

talent for leadership and a genuine faith in the processes of dem-

ocracy, he implemented the new constitutional amendments by

securing the enactment of a legislative program during his first

 

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two years in the State House which constitutes one of the most

remarkable examples of executive leadership in the history of

Ohio. His program included workmen's compensation, mothers'

pensions, a new school code, good roads, and long overdue penal

reforms. Cox has every reason to point with pride to his guber-

natorial record, which includes, in addition, his efficient handling

of the flood disaster of 1913, the creation of the Miami Conserv-

ancy District, and his services as war governor, which he per-

formed with as little hysteria as could be expected in those over-

heated years. Even his temporary defeat in 1914 is a credit entry

in the record, for it was brought about by a combination of the

forces of the Anti-Saloon League, anti-Catholic bigotry, and the

vested interests whose special privileges had been impaired by

his program of reform.

Cox reveals that he was responsible for the selection of

Franklin D. Roosevelt as his running mate in 1920. He recom-

mended him sight unseen because of his political and geographical

availability. The two men became warm friends, as a number of

their letters, here published for the first time, clearly show. We

get Cox's version of his famous visit to the stricken Wilson in

1920, and it becomes clear that the two men had had many personal

and official relations throughout Wilson's presidency and that Cox

had convictions of his own concerning the imperative need for an

international organization to enforce peace even before he dis-

cussed the League at that memorable conference in the White

House. Cox believes that in 1920 he and the country were the vic-

tims of the "Great Conspiracy," and that the "peace effort of a war-

weary world was sacrificed on the altar of partisan politics." He

blames Lodge, in large measure, for the disaster, and deals all

too gently with Elihu Root in that connection. Any Democrat

would probably have lost in 1920, in a campaign in which the peo-

ple expressed all the grudges they had accumulated during our

short experiment with knight errantry for democracy in Europe.

Cox fought a valiant and honest battle against great odds, and

nothing so became the man as the dignity and good sportsmanship

with which he accepted the results of that election.

In the furtherance of the internationalism which he had come

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to espouse with deep passion, Cox made a tour of Europe, talked

with the leading statesmen, including those of the German Re-

public, and as early as 1922 proposed to Harding that something

drastic be done to solve the reparations problem, lest the German

Republic, and all of Central Europe, go down again into chaos

and war. But the Harding administration found it inexpedient

to take action.

In 1933 Cox was one of the American delegation to the

World Monetary and Economic Conference in London. In spite

of his charitable appraisal, there can be little doubt that President

Roosevelt torpedoed the Conference. But Cox is right in arguing

that it was too late in 1933 for such a conference (he does not men-

tion the Hoover Moratorium); that its inglorious end was inevit-

able, and that its objectives were basically in conflict with the

domestic program on which Roosevelt now based all his hopes

for American recovery. Cox takes sharp issue with Raymond

Moley's account, and points out that Secretary Hull, on one occa-

sion, was ready to resign because of a complete lack of under-

standing between himself and his chief in Washington. One of

the most amusing sidelights on the Conference is Ramsay Mac-

Donald's suggestion that the date not interfere with the grouse-

shooting season, and another is Nancy Astor's remark that "the

way to make Russia a part of the world would be to put a five-

and-ten-cent store in every town over there."

The New Deal was in line with Cox's perpetual concern for

greater social justice; so it had his support, in general terms. He

points out, however, that much of it was not really new, and that

its "Achilles heel" was the method of dealing with labor problems,

and "the very unwise conduct of the FEPC." In connection with

the racial problem, he makes the observation that the Negro "must

not be held down by prejudice"; "neither can he be elevated by

fanaticism."

Cox's reminiscences will be weighed and compared by the

historians of the period with the accounts of other participants in

these events. They will find them the straightforward observa-

tions of a straightforward man, with surprisingly few slips either

of fact or of interpretation with which a critic could take issue.

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208 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Cox's word will not be the last word on some of these events, but

it is one to which no historian can fail to give great weight.

The style is that of a practised journalist. Personal judgments

more frequently than not err on the side of generosity, evidence

of the author's friendliness, and of the good sportsmanship of a

veteran politician. Only Harry M. Daugherty is severely casti-

gated as a product of the "political underworld." Cox is a pro-

gressive with the brakes on, a reformer of good intentions and

common sense. Over the years he has not lost his faith in the ulti-

mate good of mankind, and he is more convinced than ever that

"the future is wrapped up in the question of world peace."

Every Ohioan will read this book with pleasure and profit.

To the general reader, many of its sidelights will be as interesting

as the major events, for it contains illuminating comments on the

Wright brothers and John H. Patterson of the National Cash

Register Company; on the deepening rift between Bryan and

Champ Clark; and on such giants of the newspaper fraternity as

Walter Locke and James W. Faulkner. It comes as something of

a surprise to have Cox bracket John Sharp Williams and John

Quincy Adams as "the two most scholarly men in the history of

the United States Congress." Herbert Hoover he characterizes

as a man of "high purpose" and "by disposition a liberal," but

caught in a party that was under reactionary control and-in a re-

actionary mood. Cox throws some light on the break between Al

Smith and Roosevelt in 1932, and on the activities of many other

men like Tumulty and Borah who always were close to the center

of things. Historians will be interested to learn that Cox was

instrumental in getting Claude Bowers to write his Jefferson and

Hamilton as an antidote for Beveridge's Life of John Marshall.

Carl Wittke, Dean

Oberlin College

 

Land of Promise: The Story of the Northwest Territory.

By Walter Havighurst. (New York, Macmillan Company, 1946.

384p., index. Cloth, $3.)

On July 13, 1787, Congress organized the vast region between

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the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Upper Mississippi rivers into

the Northwest Territory. It was a momentous day in the history

of the Republic and a major act of statesmanship on the part of the

Congress. The action amalgamated into a national colonial empire

territory formerly claimed by separate states on the Atlantic sea-

board. It charted the course of development by which the colony

should become a part of the Union on an equality with the original

states. It provided as an instrument of government--the cele-

brated Ordinance of 1787 -- a document second in importance only

to the Declaration of Independence. It affirmed for citizens of the

territory complete political and religious independence; it provided

for a free public school system; it banished slavery from the

domain; and it provided for the creation of states to be carved out

of the region as the population justified.

Eventually five states and a portion of a sixth were created

within the Northwest Territory: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,

Wisconsin, and a segment of Minnesota. As an agricultural, manu-

facturing, and distributing center, this region was destined to be-

come the heart-land of the Republic. Without it, the Nation would

certainly have become great, but it would not have attained the

supremacy which it today enjoys among the nations of the world.

Walter Havighurst has chosen this region as the subject of

his new book, Land of Promise: The Story of the Northwest

Territory. The subject and the author are admirably suited to each

other. Mr. Havighurst was born at Appleton, Wisconsin, he lived

as a boy in Illinois, and he studied at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Since 1928 he has been a professor of English at Miami Univer-

sity, Oxford, Ohio. He has already written brilliantly about

portions of the Territory in his Upper Mississippi: A Wilderness

Saga, in The Long Ships Passing, a book on the Great Lakes, and

in his sensitive and understanding novel, The Winds of Spring,

dealing with pioneering life in the Wisconsin region. He writes of

this region in a distinguished style with a mature scholarship and

a natural feeling for the subject.

This story of the Northwest Territory is one that needed to be

told. Mr. Havighurst writes, "This is a book which I have long

wished someone else would write. But it seemed that no one else

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210 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

was going to do it, and so I sat down to the job myself." Students

of the region and the general reader interested in the growth of

America will be .grateful to him for assuming the task. He has

discharged it with warmth and, in appropriate sections, with a fine

poetic sense.

The poetic note is sounded in a superb opening chapter in

which Mr. Havighurst summons up a vision of the vast panorama.

Let us, indeed, listen to a paragraph of his prose. "This is a

region, then, comprising many regions and it cannot be sum-

marized. It is the wide green countryside of corn and wheat and

clover. It is the warm summer night in an Illinois town with the

Prairie Flyer racing through. It is the pounding life of Halsted

Street and a dirt road through the hills of Brown County, Indiana.

It is a hundred county-seat towns with the business gathered

about Court House Square and a bandstand under the maple trees.

It is the skyline of Chicago lifting above the Loop's blue haze, and

Cincinnati spreading on her seven hills above the curving Ohio. It

is the stately George Rogers Clark Memorial at Vincennes, the

drab little house where 'Cap' Grant lived in Galena before the

world knew him, and the big bronze Lincoln on the lake shore at

Chicago. It is the square farms that line U.S. 40 for five hundred

miles and the long straight crossroads laid off at one-mile inter-

vals." After adding a few more pertinent pictures, he concludes,

"If these are not symbols of the good life, they are still the signs

of the urgent new world, with its love of things and its passion for

material mastery. So the territory that two hundred years ago was

an outlying land has become the most essential region."

This evocative first chapter is followed in like vein by an

impressionistic survey of the ancient inhabitants of this land and

the mysterious fragments of their life that still lie strewn over the

region in the mounds, forts, effigies, and graves. And by an easy

transition we are led to consider the gradual unfolding of a knowl-

edge of the region from the tales of the first travelers beyond the

Alleghenies. We see Simon Kenton counting "a thousand buffalo

pacing in a single file to the salt licks along the Ohio River." We

hear French inhabitants telling Father Gravier that the mosquitoes

in August swarmed so thick that "a man could not be distinguished

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at ten paces' distance"; and Noah Major reporting that "there

were twenty thousand deer" in Morgan County, Indiana, when he

arrived there in 1820; and fabulous tales of the fertility of the

Illinois prairie lands.

Inevitably men contended for possession of such a rich terri-

tory--Indians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and men of the young

Republic. The contest is the major theme of the second part of

the book. The general scope of thisstudy necessarily restricts this

section to a hundred pages, but Mr. Havighurst has used his space

wisely by centering attention upon a few illuminating episodes.

His retelling of the exploit of George Rogers Clark in taking

Kaskaskia and Vincennes from the British is a little masterpiece

of compressed drama.

Mr. Havighurst has a kind word to say for Simon Girty, the

terror of the early settlements. On that intriguing subject an

author has two choices. He may picture Girty as the settlers saw

him and report the growth of his legend as the notorious and

vicious "renegade" of the frontier--the incarnation of the devil

who struck panic into the hearts of the isolated settlers who, in

turn, frightened the children with his name. Or he may strip away

the popular legend and pry into the historical facts with the

detachment of a modern historian whose emotions and security are

not involved. Mr. Havighurst recognizes the first, but slants his

study toward the second and writes a fine and unbiased chapter on

Girty, the man, and his doings in the Northwest Territory.

The development of the Territory after the West was won

came with such a rush and in such complexity that an author is

inescapably embarassed by the richness of his material and the

harsh necessity of making choices. The reader will have to accept

the fact that some of the things that seem to him important to the

story will be omitted. Mr. Havighurst, confronted with this deci-

sion, has let his interest center quite heavily on Ohio. It is easy to

understand why. It was the capital of the Territory, the center of

its early government, the home of its governor and judges, the

scene of the first settlements, the first to become a state, and in

closest proximity to the East. And many picturesque figures and

episodes occurred within its boundary. Hence we find considerable

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212 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

space given over to a very able retelling of the story of Blenner-

hasset Island and Aaron Burr's conspiracy, of the National Pike

and the canals, of the incomparable Johnny Appleseed, and of the

rise of the cities and port towns along Lake Erie.

By contrast, the rest of the vast and interesting region of the

Northwest Territory seems much less generously treated. Mil-

waukee and its contiguous region, for example, are alive with

significance, but it gets less space than Ashtabula Harbor. Indiana,

Michigan, and Wisconsin do not fare well in the apportionment of

the pages. I should have welcomed a more ample realization of

these regions from the pen of one who knows so much about them.

I would not have objected to a chapter on the growth of the great

state universities, the literature and art, and the political force of

these six states. And I wish Mr. Havighurst had done the chapter

which he could do superbly well on the forces at work, and the

atmosphere of the region, which created and nurtured Abraham

Lincoln.

This is merely another way of saying that the Northwest Ter-

ritory is a gigantic portion of the nation, that it resists compression

into 366 pages, and that the reader could accept a good deal more

of this distinguished prose.

Harlan H. Hatcher, Dean

College of Arts and Sciences

Ohio State University

 

Mineral Resources of Ohio (Geological Survey of Ohio,

Fourth Series, Information Circular No. 1), By Wilber Stout.

(Columbus, Geological Survey of Ohio, 1946. 33p.)

This 33-page Information Circular describes the minerals

found in Ohio as sedimentary deposits at or close to the surface

such as coal, clay, shale, limestone, dolomite, sandstone; conglom-

erate, iron ore, marl, peat, gypsum, salt, and flint; and oil, gas, and

the salt brines which are found in the sedimentary rocks at various

depths below the surface. Water, which is a mineral in the broader

sense of the term is also considered. From the above list it is

obvious that Ohio owes its rank as sixth state in the United States

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in the value of its mineral resources to the production of the non-

metals--the industrial minerals and fuels.

Each mineral is defined and treated separately with a histor-

ical background of its first use in Ohio, its present usage, its

known distribution, its quality, annual production, and in some

instances known reserves and normal annual dollar value.

This excellently written circular is not designed to furnish a

detailed and exhaustive account of any of the minerals described.

It gives, rather, a summary treatment of the mineral resources of

Ohio. It serves to acquaint the residents of Ohio with informa-

tion regarding the minerals produced in the State and is of value

to prospective operators in this and other states. More detailed

information on the various minerals described is available in the

publications and files of the Geological Survey of Ohio.

Paul R. Shaffer, Chairman

Department of Geology

Ohio Wesleyan University

 

 

The Long-Horned Beetles of Ohio (Coleoptera: Ceramby-

cidae). By Josef N. Knull. (Ohio Biological Survey, Bulletin

39, Vol. VII, No. 4. Columbus, Ohio State University, 1946.

P. 133-354, illus., index. Paper $1.50.)

The long-horned beetles consist of a group of insects which

are popular with amateur entomologists because of their handsome

coloring and striking form. As a whole, they are characterized,

as the name implies, by a very long antennae which in some species

are twice as long as the entire body of the insect.

The family is also of importance economically, since the

larvae are the notorious "round-headed borers" which cause much

damage to orchard, shade, and forest trees. Other species attack

non-woody plants. Practically all of the injury is caused by the

immature forms. The adults, on the other hand, are sometimes

beneficial in effecting the pollination of flowers. The larvae of a

few species, like the milkweed long-horn, attack weedy plants, and

hence, from man's viewpoint, are beneficial.

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214 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Professor Knull, who is curator of the insect collections at

Ohio State University, has listed 262 species which occur, or are

likely to occur, in Ohio. Under the heading of each species are

given the references in the literature most likely to be helpful to

the student, a concise description of the insect, and, finally, brief

notes on the habits of larvae and adults. In the case of the rarer

species, all the known Ohio specimens are listed with data. There

are full keys for indentifying the species, and handsome, black

and white illustrations of 118 species from the author's own hand

together with two plates of photographs.

In preparing the Bulletin, the author has consulted his own

extensive collection of long-horned beetles, those of Ohio State

University, the Ohio Experiment Station, Ohio University, the

Ohio State Museum, and the private collections of Annette F.

Braun, Claud R. Neiswander, Henry F. Strohecker, and Ralph

Dury. The collections of the Ohio State Museum contain up-

wards of 140 species and 1,000 specimens.

The author has performed a great service in bringing to

gether in one volume the descriptions and references on the long-

horns. The literature is scattered and difficult to obtain. The only

general manual, Blatchley's Coleoptera of Indiana, is now selling

at $40 and more. A great many of the species illustrated have

never before been figured. The Bulletin will prove of inestimable

help to amateurs and students as well as specialists, not only in

Ohio but throughout the eastern United States.

Edward S. Thomas, Curator of

Natural History, Ohio State Museum.

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