Ohio History Journal

B O O K R E V I E W S

PROGRESSIVISM IN OHIO, 1897-1917. By Hoyt Landon Warner. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press for the Ohio Historical Society, 1964. xiii+ 556p.; bibliography and index. $10.00.) In 1914, Ohio cities, under-represented in the state legislature by design and care- ful calculation, were under the control and sway of what Newton D. Baker called the "rustic garland that makes a member from Pike County our sovereign." A half century later Ohio cities in 1964 are still under-represented--but conservatives from Pike County (and elsewhere) are noticeably concerned by the United States Supreme Court's reapportionment decision that would bring to an end the long period of tory and rural sovereignty over more progressive urban areas. The background for this perennial struggle is covered definitively in Landon Warner's meticulously researched study of the progressive movement during the two decades ending in 1917. The basic material in this volume is necessarily solid with corroborative detail, but the narrative is enlivened by Professor Warner's percep- tive commentary on many exciting person- alities--among them Tom Johnson and Mark "Stand-pat" Hanna in Cleveland, George "Old Boy" Cox and Herbert Bige- low in Cincinnati, "Golden Rule" Jones in Toledo, and Washington Gladden in Co- lumbus. The author does not hesitate to draw conclusions based on the evidence before him; for example, Harry L. Davis is characterized as a politician of "small calibre," and James M. Cox is compared favorably with both John Peter Altgeld and Robert Marion La Follette. One of Professor Warner's purposes is to test Richard Hofstadter's thesis that

the progressive movement was an upper- middle-class "status revolution" that over- emphasized mechanical governmental re- forms and undervalued or neglected genu- ine economic and labor issues. Warner agrees that most of the progressive re- forms in this period placed too much stress on change in the machinery of government, but he documents economic achievement (particularly in the public- utility field by "gas and water" socialists like Johnson), and he proves that the progressives at least did more for labor than any previous group had done before. He also cites the humanitarian endeavors of warm-hearted reformers--Jones and Whitlock in Toledo, Johnson and Cooley in Cleveland, Cox and Leonard in the state administration--men who developed a new and empathic spirit toward society's wards and delinquents. He concludes on the hopeful and positive note that perhaps the most significant contri- butions of Ohio's progressives have been the identification of privilege as the foremost enemy of democracy, the restoration of faith in an in- formed public as democracy's best hope, and the recognition that success- ful leadership in reform demands a keen intellect and a warm heart. This was a noble achievement fifty years ago; it remains a challenging goal for the progressives of 1964. The Ohio State University Press and the Ohio Historical Society deserve con- gratulations for a volume attractive in format and impressive by reason of its careful editing. Professor Warner merits full praise for a definitive monograph

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which is invaluable for reference and at the same time provides ample shares of good reading. C. H. CRAMER Western Reserve University     THE ORIGINS OF TEAPOT DOME: PROGRESSIVES, PARTIES, AND PETROLEUM, 1909-1921. By J. Leon- ard Bates. (Urbana: University of Illi- nois Press, 1963. ix + 278p.; illustra- tions, bibliography, and index. $7.50.) So far as direct pertinence to Ohio his- tory is concerned, this study makes little contribution. It could involve Ohio's War- ren G. Harding only in respect to the years 1920-21, that is, the campaign of 1920 and the first months of the Harding administration. It makes no such involve- ment. The Harding Papers, accessible only since April 25, 1964, were not, and could not be, consulted. The nearest approach to involvement is a series of references to the contest for Harding's pliable mind by both "progressives" and "conservatives." In this contest optimists like Gifford Pin- chot and Henry A. Slattery expressed hopes of converting the Ohioan to some semblance of conservationism, while skep- tics like William Allen White despaired of any such thing. If the Harding Papers had been studied, the greater deference of the Republican candidate of 1920 to business- men, anti-conservationists, and the oil- hungry Californians would have been more apparent. In a larger sense Bates's book involves Ohioans because they are part of the na- tion that was concerned with the govern- ment's oil policy. They, therefore, will find a refreshing block of new knowledge about the background and implications of Tea- pot Dome. The episode is no longer devel- oped within the framework of mere poli- tics but with benefit of what was happen- ing to oil-control policies as oil became an essential ingredient in the nation's econ- omy. Thus there appears a full display of the mighty conflict between the Pacific and Rocky Mountain West, with its depend- ence on oil, and the eastern conservation- ists, who suspected the predatory interests of all exploiters of nature's resources. Out- standing is the portrayal of the willing-

ness of the oil-conversionist navy men to play politics with the conservationists. In contrast with this is the disgust of Albert B. Fall with such fiddle-faddle, when the only "right" thing to do was to get the oil of the naval reserves into use for the navy in the forthright way that only practical businessmen and their engineering ex- perts could do. Bates is even willing to raise the ques- tion as to which was "really" progressive: the professional conservationists or the professional oil men with their "grand achievements" in the field of free enter- prise. Indeed it is actually suggested that the tempest in a teapot over the few acres of oil reserves remaining under United States government ownership and lease were quite peripheral in relation to the national and world-wide development of a mighty industry which created its own policies, techniques, and morality. A great service that Bates has perform- ed in this study, which really smells of oil, is to require moralists to relate their judg- ments to more than the mere bribery of Fall. The history of the entire oil industry must be known--far more thoroughly than Bates could be expected to know--so that judgment may include the possibility that the development of private oil exploitation might be found to be a phase of the de- velopment of conservation, even as the exploitation of forests, water power, and the land itself might be. RANDOLPH C. DOWNES University of Toledo     THE ECOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA. By Victor E. Shelford. (Urbana: Uni- versity of Illinois Press, 1963. xxii + 610p.; illustrations, maps, charts, bibli- ography, and indices. $10.00.) North America is a very large and va- ried continent, and ecology--the study of the interrelationships between organisms and their environments--is a science whose breadth and depth are yet unmeasured. Thus it is not surprising that I was skep- tical upon first hearing the title of this work. Upon reflection, I doubt that any- one less than a Shelford would have even envisioned or attempted such a volume-- much less brought it into being.

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Shelford's purpose in writing this book was to describe the plant and animal as- sociations and their relationships in each of the North American biomes, or habitat regions, as they were between 1500 and 1600 A.D. His was the task of compiling and integrating a virtually endless array of facts from many sources. In order to accomplish this herculean task he sought information not only from his own obser- vations made during a long lifetime of ecological study in field and laboratory but also from the published and unpub- lished accounts of early travelers; studies made by his colleagues, students, and other scholars; and data filed at various colleges, universities, and governmental and private agencies scattered across the length and breadth of the North American continent. That this book will receive a generous amount of adverse criticism seems certain. Not only is such a mass of information difficult to organize, but much of our evolv- ing natural history has gone unrecorded, even in recent times. Such gaps can only be filled by the rather hazardous proce- dure of interpolating between two points of knowledge sometimes widely separated in time. Shelford, dealing with the flora and fauna of a period observed by few scholars and recorded by fewer still, was also forced to extrapolate backward in time to achieve his goal. If few other workers can support with additional evi- dence the accuracy of his inferences, few- er yet have the data to refute them. A chapter considering the scope and meaning of the subject of ecology in gen- eral terms, with numerous examples from North America, is followed by a series of chapters each dealing with a major biome and its principle subdivisions. It is doubtful that this book will be much used either as a text for course work or as leisure reading by those having a casual interest in the subject. Its greatest value undoubtedly will be as a reference work at the elbow of the serious student of ecology or one of its many related studies. As such, it is certain to enjoy a great deal of use both now and long into the future.   DAVID H. STANSBERY Ohio Historical Society

THE WESTERN JOURNALS OF DR. GEORGE HUNTER, 1796-1805. Edited by John Francis McDermott. Transac- tions of the American Philosophical So- ciety, New Series, Volume LIII, Part 4. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1963. 133p.; maps, illustrations, appendix, bibliography, and index. Paper, $3.00.) THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN BADOLLET AND ALBERT GALLA- TIN, 1804-1836. Edited by Gayle Thorn- brough. Indiana Historical Society Pub- lications, Volume XXII. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1963. 372p.; illustrations, appendix, and index. Paper, $3.00.) Although he is hardly known today, George Hunter was declared by Thomas Jefferson to be without equal as a chemist. And before the exploits of Pike, Lewis, and Clark captured the imagination of the American people, Hunter's accounts of Louisiana, "the first authentic and reli- able information," were widely publicized by Jefferson. Trained and experienced as a druggist, chemist, surgeon, and mineralogist, Scot- tish-born Hunter journeyed to the West in 1796 from his home in Philadelphia. This four-month trip across Pennsylvania, down the Ohio, into Kentucky, and through the Old Northwest to St. Louis was ap- parently to search out promising land for investment. In 1802 he returned to Ken- tucky for a shorter visit on a family mat- ter, but at the same time he investigated salt licks, ore deposits, and other enter- prises. With the acquisition of Louisiana, Jef- ferson was anxious to learn the extent and content of this new American terri- tory. In his characteristic and systematic way he sought out the best brains to make extensive surveys and reports. In mid- 1804 he sent Hunter to Natchez, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to join William Dunbar as the co-leader of an exploring expedition. Their 1804-5 win- ter venture took them up the Ouachita River as far as present Hot Springs, Ar- kansas. Four rather extensive journals detail these journeys of Hunter into the West. They are rich in their perceptive obser- vations of the Ohio and Mississippi val- leys of this early American period. It is

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gratifying that the publishers have per- mitted Professor McDermott to include his extensive introduction and editorial com- ments, which flesh out the journals with context, identification, and amplification. His analytical index further enhances their usability. A segment of the correspondence of two Swiss-born Americans focuses on the fron- tier of the territorial and early statehood days of Indiana. Albert Gallatin, Jeffer- son's secretary of the treasury, was able to secure the appointment of his lifelong friend John Badollet as register of the Vincennes land office. The eighty some letters in Miss Thornbrough's volume are, except for about twenty, Badollet's obser- vations, confidences, and commentaries penned over the years to his death in 1836. Badollet was an ardent Jeffersonian who became disillusioned at the intrigues and petty politics of Indiana Territory Gover- nor William Henry Harrison and the other territorial officials. He neverthless served his adopted country well as a public ser- vant and actively participated in the civic, educational, and cultural affairs of his community. His generally meaty letters--one goes on for over thirty printed pages--which concern land sales and speculation, Indian problems, slavery, Harrison, frontier so- ciety, and a multitude of other topics, in- cluding activities of Gallatin, are a veri- table mine of information. The Badollet-Gallatin correspondence cannot, however, stand by itself, because Badollet's infrequent letters and Gallatin's only occasional replies leave many gaps and do not present a continuous story; and there is much in the territorial and early state history that one needs to know to understand comments in the letters. With meticulous care, Miss Thornbrough sup- plies background, explanatory information and comments, and a model analytical index to make this collection usable, in- telligible, and meaningful. Editors McDermott and Thornbrough make the Hunter and Badollet manuscripts readily accessible and place them in their proper historical setting. They thus be- come significant additions to the growing

body of published source material on the American frontier. DWIGHT L. SMITH Miami University     McKINLEY, BRYAN, AND THE PEO- PLE. By Paul W. Glad. Critical Periods of History Series, Robert D. Cross, gen- eral editor. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin- cott Company, 1964. 222p.; bibliographi- cal essay and index. $3.95.) Here after seventy years is the first book devoted entirely to the story of the presi- dential campaign of 1896, though it ap- pears only a few weeks before the publica- tion of Stanley L. Jones's longer work on the same subject. There is every justifica- tion for including Professor Glad's title in his publisher's "Critical Periods in His- tory" series, for the crisis of that year's political decision is as important to our historical understanding as any American election has ever been. Never has a cam- paign been fought more clearly on eco- nomic issues, or with greater moral pas- sion on both sides, and never has one revealed more clearly the anatomy of our body politic. A good many of the seventy years have been needed just to achieve the scholarly detachment toward the subject this author displays. These two hundred pages have not ex- hausted the story. They do tell most of it, and provide important background and sensible conclusions. They are not foot- noted, but factual inaccuracies are small and rare (e.g., the "Bimetallic Democratic National Committee" is not identified, but must refer to the Democratic National Bi- metallic Committee). This reviewer's major complaint is that the rival policy contentions of the silverites and the gold- bugs never do receive any clear evaluation. One side was presumably less wrong than the other, and some policy would have been the correct one in the light of pres- ent economic knowledge. Economic poli- cies are not simply matters of taste, and the reader's impression that he is watch- ing "ignorant armies clash by night" might have been clarified had the author troubled himself to measure their ignor- ance.

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Nonetheless, this is the best book with which to begin. It is written with the in- telligence and vigor that should stimulate the further reading suggested in the author's bibliographical essay. Graduate students, however, may want to go directly to the still more recent Presidential Elec- tion of 1896, which is less the story of that event than Jones's monument to it. THOMAS E. FELT College of Wooster         PORTRAIT OF THE MIDWEST: FROM THE ICE AGE TO THE INDUS- TRIAL ERA. By Douglas Waitley. (New York: Abelard-Schuman Limited, 1963. 288p.; maps, illustrations, and in- dex. $6.00.) This volume is not intended for the scholar, and the alert student of middle- western history will be distressed by the errors and the obvious omissions. The work is the expression of the vibrant enthusi- asm of one who has found much of interest and excitement in visiting the many places of unique significance in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and northern Missouri. More than a third of the book is devoted to a "Vaga- bond Section" with attractive maps of the whole region and of the individual states. Included are extended comments on each of the places of distinct interest. The author in the preface deplores the scarcity of books "written with this re- gion specifically in mind" and the "little lo- cal history" taught in midwestern schools. Yet, many careful studies have been writ- ten about aspects of the area, and Ohio, for example, requires the teaching of its state's history in the public schools. The material presented in the 162 pages of large print text, giving a "Portrait of the Midwest from the Ice Age to the In- dustrial Era" is necessarily highly im- pressionistic and selective. Thus, political figures of great significance such as Thom- as Worthington, Benjamin F. Wade, Cle- ment L. Vallandigham, Mark Hanna, Joseph B. Foraker, James M. Cox, and Robert A. Taft are ignored, as are those who devoted their lives to the fine arts.

Educational centers of such significance as Oberlin, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Michi- gan, are not mentioned. There are many errors of fact. The Land Ordinance of 1785 did not "create the Northwest Territory" (p. 13); Lin- coln's attorney general was Edward Bates, not John M. Bates (p. 127); and the Na- tional Road was begun in 1811, not after the War of 1812 (p. 95). The Harmonists who settled in Indiana did not come di- rectly from Germany (p. 107), but settled first in Pennsylvania, and the Amana Community was not made up of those who came from Europe to Iowa (p. 110), for these Germans had long lived in northern New York. The book may serve a useful purpose in stimulating among American travelers a greater interest in the historic spots of the heartlands of America. FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER Ohio State University     IN RETROSPECT: THE HISTORY OF A HISTORIAN. By Arthur M. Schles- inger. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963. viii + 212p.; index. $4.50.) The historians' craft in the United States suffered its shock of recognition just after the Second World War with the publication of Bulletin 54 of the Social Science Research Council. That widely distributed pamphlet announced in bold terms what James Harvey Robinson, Carl Becker, and Charles Beard had been say- ing to their younger colleagues for a gen- eration, namely, that historians must come to terms with the limitations forced upon them by time and circumstance; that they must learn to face their environment boldly, "aware of the intellectual and moral perils inherent in any decision--in their act of faith." Soon after the publica- tion of Bulletin 54, many graduate schools, egged on by their own students, established new courses or refurbished old ones in the great historians, historiography, and even in the philosophy of history. This intense navel-gazing caused the American historian to become much more consciously self-reflective and self-critical. As a result it gave rise to a great interest in the autobiographical musings of the his-

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torian, as can be witnessed by the popu- larity abroad of Marc Bloch's Historian's Craft, G. M. Trevelyan's An Autobiog- raphy, and E. L. Woodward's Short Jour- ney, and in this country in the more re- flective studies of Becker, Beard, Alvin Johnson, and Jacques Barzun. To this list we can now add Arthur M. Schlesinger's In Retrospect: The History of a Historian. It must be said at once that Schlesinger discards the philosopher's pose for that of the memorialist. As he points out in the preface, he prefers the role of an observer to that of an actor. Schlesinger's life be- gan over seventy-five years ago in Xenia, Ohio, a bustling town of seven or eight thousand, with newly macadamized streets, red brick walks, and picket fences. His mother, born Katherine Feurle, was of Austro-German descent; his father's par- ents were East Prussian Jews, who emi- grated to New Jersey and then to Ohio. Young Schlesinger's days were pleasant enough, although he remembers rather ruefully that when he arrived in the so- phisticated community of Columbus, his Ohio State roommates repeated the old rhyme: Tell me, oh tell me please, Is Xenia a town or a disease? At Ohio State, he enjoyed the tutelage of George Wells Knight, Henry Russell Spencer, Clarence Dykstra, and a fledgling historian from Frederick Jackson Turner's seminar at Wisconsin, Homer Hockett. From Ohio State, Schlesinger journeyed to Columbia, where he completed his oral ex- aminations for the Ph.D. degree in 1912 and the same year returned to Ohio State to begin a decade of teaching. After the war, he left Ohio to head the history de- partment at the State University of Iowa, where among his Ph.D's were such out- standing students as Bessie Louise Pierce and Fred A. Shannon. In 1924 Schlesinger was called to Harvard, first as a visiting professor, then as a full-fledged faculty member. It was the golden age of history on the campus by the Charles, an era bright with the names of Ferguson, faskins, Mcllwain, and Merriman in Euro- pean history, and Channing, Hart, and Turner in American. Schlesinger obviously relished Harvard's challenge and the con- stant excursions it afforded into the realm

of local and national politics. But of all his adventures, the most exciting were the quests after historical knowledge which he shared with his Ph.D. candidates, among whom were numbered Merle Curti, Carl Bridenbaugh, Paul Buck, Oscar Handlin, Richard Leopold, and Donald Fleming. Through them and through the series he edited on the history of American life, he influenced several generations of students by observing in all his own writings and insisting in all the work he supervised and edited on an "impeccable standard of scho- larship." JOHN C. RULE Ohio State University   THE GREENBACK ERA: A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN FINANCE, 1865-1879. By Irwin Unger. (Princeton, N. J.: Prince- ton University Press, 1964. 467p.; ap- pendices, bibliography, and index. $10.00.) The Greenback Era is an important work that significantly revises traditional interpretations of the early post-bellum era. Not an easy book to read, it neverthe- less commands serious attention. It offers massive and convincing evidence that the "social and political history of American finance, 1865-1879," contained infinitely more complex and subtle patterns of con- flict than heretofore imagined. Irwin Unger conclusively and exhaustively docu- ments his major thesis that the traditional "Beardian" dichotomy between "agrarian" and "capitalist" interests was too simple and therefore could not adequately explain the tangled web of financial controversy emerging from the Civil War over such matters as the new banking system, the payment of the war debt, the withdrawal of Greenback currency and the start of specie resumption, financial reform move- ments of several kinds, and finally the start of the "free silver" agitation. Draw- ing extensively from countless manuscript collections, pamphlets, and newspapers (including the labor, business, and relig- ious press), Unger breaks down tradi- tional categories of "hard" and "soft" money men and adds enormously rich and previously unused data to our knowledge of the entire era. He also shows that these controversies and the "attitudes" and "in-

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terests" they drew upon had their roots in the pre-Civil War era, so that for fi- nancial history, at least, the Civil War was not "the great watershed of the na- tion's history." A brief review of the entire book can do little more than thus point to its great importance, indicate some ser- ious misgivings about its main themes and methods, and urge all students of post- Civil War America, including those espec- ially interested in Ohio history, to neglect it at their peril. Those accustomed to simple "forces" shaping significant events may find Unger's display of complexity quite be- wildering and distressing. And the treat- ment of these complexities is not without its shortcomings. Unger's concern with "ideology" and its subtle interaction with "interest" often rests on scanty and incon- clusive evidence. The argument about "agrarian  anti-Semitism" is based on flimsy data. The dismissal of the eight- hour movement as offering "cure," not "diagnosis," is a misreading of Ira Stew- ard. The description of labor and agrarian agitation as reflecting "a strongly chilias- tic movement" is unwarranted. The notion that New England's "genteel reformers" were "political outsiders" and "middle- class dissenters" is unconvincing. Evidence on other matters also is questionable. The analysis of voting behavior in the 1875 Ohio and Pennsylvania elections uses in- adequate data to make improper infer- ences. Sources on southern financial at- titudes before 1877 are neglected. The use

of labor sources is one-sided to gain a particular point. The 1878 Greenback- Labor "movement" is too briefly discussed. Unger argues intelligently that there were "not two massive contending interests; there were many small ones" between 1865 and 1879. But one "small one" is given inadequate attention throughout: the bondholders. Who were they? Were they a cohesive pressure group? What role did they play in politics? Finally, the book jacket describes the study as "not a financial history; rather it is an attempt to locate the source of polit- ical power in the crucial Reconstruction years through a socio-economic study of American financial conflict." That is say- ing too much. Unger rewrites a great deal of Reconstruction financial history, but is it possible to locate "the source of political power" by isolating only one fac- tor and developing its complexities in great detail to the exclusion of other factors that affected political power? We do not yet know the relationship of the conflict over financial policies to other questions of na- tional importance. These criticisms aside, Unger's study is deeply researched, in- telligently organized, and filled with orig- inal insights about the complexities of post-Civil War politics. It answers afresh old questions and raises new ones. This book should provoke much controversy and discussion. HERBERT G. GUTMAN State University of New York at Buffalo

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