Ohio History Journal

328                                                  OHIO HISTORY

Book Reviews

 

 

A Cartoon History of United States Foreign Policy: 1776-1976. By the

Editors of the Foreign Policy Association. (New York: William Morrow

and Company, 1975. xi + 210p.; illustrations, guide to sources, index.

Cloth, $7.95; paper, $3.95.)

The word "cartoon" in a title immediately creates an impression that a

work is light, is designed to entertain, and is not meant to be taken seriously,

which is certainly the case with this book. It is not a complete history of

American foreign policy by any means. Although the first cartoon dates back

to 1754, the early years of the republic are glossed over very quickly. More

than half of the book is devoted to the post-World War II era.

The cartoons themselves are entertaining and informative, not only of the

history of the period, but of taste in satire and of technique. A reader with an

intellectual interest in art will find the collection worthy of study. Works of

such men as Thomas Nast, Rollin Kirby, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Herbert

"Herblock" Block, Jay N. "Ding" Darling (whose drawings I used to see in

the old New York Herald Tribune, but which are attributed here to the Des

Moines Register), Bill Mauldin, and Pat Oliphant are represented. Even

cartoon strips such as "Pogo," "B.C.," "Small Society," and the "Wizard

of Id" put in brief and very funny appearances. Unfortunately, a brief

running text is provided. It is so unsatisfactory that I cannot believe that the

Foreign Policy Association could have had anything to do with it. To say the

least, it is sloppily written. Whoever was responsible commits most of the

errors that I do not permit my own students to make in term papers, such as

referring to newly introduced individuals merely by their last names without

any other introduction. I dislike such contractions as "can't," "didn't," or

"wouldn't." What is done in ordinary conversation is not necessarily proper

in written exposition. Also very annoying is the use of such slangy expres-

sions as "name of the game" (p.40), or "piece of the action" (p.43). This is

the kind of writing that puts freshmen into remedial composition classes, or

ought to.

The book does not seem to have been proofread with much care. At least

one line is omitted after line three on page seventy-five, which renders the

passage gibberish. Such a mistake should have been caught. On page one we

read a reference to the eight British colonies rather than the customary

thirteen. On page seventy-three the Sudetenland is placed in eastern

Czechoslovakia.

Much more serious is a statement on page eighty to the effect that Franklin

Roosevelt was considering asking Congress for a declaration of war before

the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In all the books I have read on the

subject, I have never seen such a charge made. I am willing to acknowledge

that the distinguished editors of the Foreign Policy Association undoubtedly

have a greater command of the sources than I, but in the absence of any

references I could not check that statement. Until the allegation is substan-

tiated I, for one, cannot accept it at its face value.

The Foreign Policy Association has not done itself credit to have allowed

this work to appear under its auspices.

 

Kent State University                             Harold Schwartz

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Book Reviews                                                  329

 

The Wealth of the American People: A History of American Affluence. By

Oscar and Mary F. Handlin. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. vii + 266p.;

bibliography, index. $10.00.)

 

The Handlins' new work is best summarized by their subtitle: "A History

of American Affluence." Or perhaps "a short, selective history of American

affluence" would be more appropriate. The authors devote twenty pages to

the colonial period, one hundred and fifty to the nineteenth century, and

approximately seventy to the twentieth century. The middle section,

unquestionably the best part of the book, touches on most of the subjects

found in traditional accounts of the nineteenth century economy-the role of

the state in the industrial revolution, the emergence of the factory system, the

growth of the cotton kingdom, the farm protest movement, and the rise of big

business. Though the Handlins introduce little or no new information, their

style has the lyrical, almost poetic quality that so impressed readers of

Boston's Immigrants and The Uprooted.

Unfortunately little else about the volume is noteworthy. I searched in vain

for a thesis; if it exists the authors have effectively disguised it. An

interpretation seems to emerge in the chapters on the North and South before

the Civil War. According to the Handlins the northern farmer was dynamic

and adventurous, the stereotype of Turner's frontier hero; the southern

planter was backward, even reactionary, because of his attachment to

slavery. "The whole context of Southern life was uncongenial to enterprise

.... (p. 115)" Several chapters later they imply support for the progressive

position in describing the iniquities of big business and the problems of

society at the turn of the twentieth century. However, no broader generaliza-

tions about the American economy or American history emerge. At first I

suspected their purpose was to criticize contemporary society, but their dis-

cussion of the twentieth century economy is both brief and benign.

In short, neither the authors' purpose nor their intended audience is clear.

The book is too short and sketchy to be a textbook, yet it is not a work of

interpretation or synthesis either. The Handlins and McGraw-Hill may have

some group of potential readers in mind, but it probably does not include

professional historians or even informed laymen. The scholar can safely

disregard their short history of American affluence.

 

University of Akron                                  Daniel Nelson

 

 

 

Ships Beneath the Sea: A History of Subs and Submersibles. By Robert F.

Burgess. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. x + 260p.; illustrations, bibliog-

raphy, appendix, index. $12.50.)

 

When we think of the history of submarines, we often think immediately of

Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and regard that early

work of science fiction as the harbinger of the functional submarine. Yet, as

early as 333 B.C., according to legend, Alexander the Great descended into

the sea in a barrel. In the sixteenth century many diving bell experiments

were conducted, culminating in 1620 with the successful operation of a

submarine boat on the Thames River near London. From that time until the

publication of Verne's famous work in 1870, more than two dozen innovators

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330                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

constructed submarines. Those built in the nineteenth century of iron and

steel replaced those constructed of wood and leather; likewise, during the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries steam engines, internal combustion

engines, and nuclear power plants replaced the earlier use of the

human-powered crank. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea was not

based on a completely novel idea, then, but drew upon imagination steeped in

contemporary technology. Nonetheless, Verne's popular work fostered those

enthusiastic efforts which applied new materials and power technologies to

submarine development and increased modern man's ability to satisfy his

desire to explore the depths of the undersea world.

Robert F. Burgess, a veteran journalist of nautical literature, has written in

cliche-ridden prose a highly dramatic and anecdotal series of chapters about

the adventures of some of these well-known and not so well-known undersea

explorers. Beginning with Cornelius Van Drebbel, a Dutch inventor who built

for King James I of England a small underwater craft that plied the Thames,

Burgess selects a series of exciting and mysterious undersea adventures and

portrays vividly the possible danger, frustration, death, and triumphs which

faced the early pioneers. As he approaches the mid-twentieth century, he

deals cursorily with Admiral Rickover's determination to develop

nuclear-powered submarines and then focuses on the deep sea explorations of

Jacques Piccard and Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the cliff-hanging search for

the H-bomb lost off the southern coast of Spain in 1966.

For the reader only casually interested in the history of submarines and

looking for a series of easily understood and exciting vignettes, this book is a

good introduction. The one hundred plates and illustrations are well-selected

to heighten understanding and interest. For the more serious reader,

however, the work does not address any significant historical questions, nor

does it have any focus aside from exciting adventure and drama. Without

compromising its popular approach, this knowledgeable author could have

treated technical, social, political, and military forces which fostered the

development of the submarine, and he could have evaluated the impact of the

submarine on modern society, paying particular attention to its military and

scientific significance. Unfortunately, despite its factual accuracy, good

illustrations, and respectable index, this book remains a derivative and

undocumented collection of popular undersea adventure stories rather than a

substantive contribution to the history of submarines.

 

Case Western Reserve University                    Reese V. Jenkins

 

 

Witness to Power. By Marquis Childs. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. x +

278p.; $9.95.)

 

In Witness to Power, the distinguished journalist Marquis Childs reminisces

about his forty-year career that brought him into close contact with many of

the world's politically powerful men. To some degree, the memoir deals with

Childs' thoughts on the pursuit and exercise of power and on the relationship

between the press and government officials. But these important matters, on

which Childs is well qualified to speak, are presented at a superficial level.

While his evaluations of various political leaders are conventional, Childs has

provided scholars with many inside stories, some never before revealed, that

add to our understanding of the personalities, ambitions, and

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Book Reviews                                                  331

 

"off-the-record" thoughts of the men who have shaped the destiny of

America and the world. He remains skeptical of the ability of the press to

play an objective role; the journalist's dependence upon politicians for

information and the link between social events and business compromise the

position of the press.

In 1934, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch assigned Childs to its Washington

bureau, where he quickly learned the inherent problems of the

press-government relationship and the journalist's opportunity to influence

political decisions. During the controversy over Franklin Roosevelt's

"court-packing" proposal, Childs served as an unofficial, trusted liaison

between Justice Louis Brandeis, presumably acting on behalf of the entire

Court, and Senator Burton Wheeler, and helped serve their mutual interest in

defeating the plan. As a result of his relationship with Justice Harlan Stone,

Childs also wrote articles in 1937 quoting "sources close to the Court" as

opposed to Roosevelt's appointment of Hugo Black on grounds of insufficient

judicial experience. While Roosevelt's supporters roundly criticized Childs,

the reporter's rapport with Stone was grievously impaired when another

reporter, in whom Childs had confided, revealed that Stone had been the

source of Childs' article.

Childs seldom leaves doubts about his impressions of political leaders. He

brings to life the politics of the 1930s, especially the Roosevelt rhetoric and

political acumen of the 1936 campaign, which inspired Childs' famous

Harper's article "They Hate Roosevelt." While the conservatives failed to

understand him, Roosevelt, the traditionalist in mind and in action, sought

modest change to reduce economic inequities. Discussing postwar leaders,

Childs regrets the failure of Adlai Stevenson to gain the Presidency, but this

resulted, in part from his lacking the "instinct for the jugular, the ultimate test

of the drive for power." The Kennedy administration is seen as largely a

well-managed effort in public relations, led by a President who had profound

doubt whether the promises of the New Frontier could be translated into

political action. Childs is most critical of the Johnson administration, in which

"ego betrayed intellect," and of the Washington press of that era which gave

Johnson almost uniformly favorable coverage-a prime example of the ability

of the imperial Presidency to manipulate and deceive the press. Reviewing

the sorry state of more recent American politics, Childs finds Gerald Ford

lacking in essential Presidential qualities: "the times called for a Machiavelli,

a Franklin Roosevelt, a Keynes, and Ford was none of these" (p. 260).

A longtime skeptic of the Cold War diplomacy of the United States, Childs

reflects on the futility of anti-communism as a sufficient basis of policy in

Europe and Asia. Cynical about the way that modern communications have

rendered ambassadors ineffective as policymakers, Childs finds in the

experience and outlook of three American ambassadors to Moscow-Chip

Bohlen, Llewellyn Thompson, and Averell Harriman-the tough realism,

wary of Russian motives but willing to take steps toward accommodation, that

is essential to preserving American interests while reducing tensions.

Although giving credit to Nixon for his efforts to promote understanding with

China, Childs recalls his conversations of the 1950s with Indian prime

minister Jawaharlal Nehru who spoke of the growing Asian disenchantment

with the United States, a development which would not be comprehended by

American leaders until the Vietnam debacle.

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332                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Childs' memoir, filled with anecdotes if somewhat thin in analysis, provides

some significant and provocative glimpses into the recent past.

 

Bowling Green State University                        Gary R. Hess

 

 

 

John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat. By Kenton J. Clymer. (Ann Arbor:

The University of Michigan Press, 1975. ix + 314p.; notes, bibliography,

index. $15.00.)

 

John Clymer has produced a solid work of respectable scholarship in which

he carefully analyzes the diplomatic career and intellectual contributions of a

significant late nineteenth-century political figure. John Hay was a man of

national prominence in several diverse careers. He was born on the Indiana

frontier in 1838. His working-class family arranged to provide their talented

son with an education at Brown University that enabled him to become a man

of letters. During the Civil War he served as an assistant secretary to Presi-

dent Lincoln. Hay utilized his wartime experiences and contacts throughout

the next four decades, as a journalist with the New York Tribune, Republican

Party spokesman, diplomat, writer and businessman. His education and liter-

ary skill, combined with a marriage to the daughter of the wealthy Cleveland

industrialist Amosa Stone, made it possible for Hay to move in leading circles

where he could pursue his varied interests.

The focus of Clymer's study in the early chapters is the development of

Hay's thinking and his relationship with contemporary intellectuals. Clymer

correctly portrays Hay as an unabashed social and intellectual snob who al-

lied himself with the powerful and successful forces of his era and de-

monstrated complete contempt for the unwashed masses from which he had

managed to escape as a youth. Particular attention is given to The Bread

Winners, Hay's bad but widely read novel which ridiculed the working clas-

ses, immigrants and labor organizers. Clymer demonstrates how Hay's social

views carried over to his foreign policy, where he found himself in agreement

with those who believed in an Anglo-Saxon concept of world mission.

As there is little background or introductory material provided for the gen-

eral reader, a familiarity with the diplomacy of the era is essential to ap-

preciate Clymer's treatment of Hay's diplomatic policies. By detailing Hay's

involvement and activities in such important affairs as the Boxer Rebellion,

Open Door Notes, Philippine rebellion, Hay-Pauncefoot Treaty, and the

Alaskan Boundary Question, Clymer's study should prove to be especially

useful for the student of American foreign policy. There is also a sophisti-

cated chapter on the relationship between Hay and Theodore Roosevelt

which adds considerably to the assessment presented in Tyler Dennett's biog-

raphy John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (1933), which mistakenly pro-

claimed Hay a mere figurehead during his final years in the State Department.

Overall, Clymer's evaluation of his subject is responsible and well

documented; however, he appears to underestimate the poetic and genteel

Hay's capacity for a political fight, at one point describing him as a Secretary

of State whose "backbone resembled a chocolate eclair" (p.131).

Those interested in Ohio history will be disappointed that the author fails to

give significant attention to Hay's long residence in Cleveland where he and

his bride, Clara Louise Stone, lived in a stylish mansion on Euclid Avenue.

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Book Reviews                                                  333

 

No new information is provided on Hay's entrepreneural and civic en-

deavors, which included assumption of the presidency of the Lake Shore

Line upon his father-in-law's suicide, membership on the Board of Trustees

of Western Reserve University, and varied associations with leading Republi-

can political figures in Ohio from the presidencies of Hayes to McKinley.

 

Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial             Michael J. Devine

Advisory Commission

 

 

William Howard Taft and United States Foreign Policy: The Apprenticeship

Years, 1900-1908. By Ralph Eldin Minger. (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1975. xii + 241p.; notes, bibliography, index. $9.50.)

 

In the early 1960s Ralph Eldin Minger published five articles, drawn from

his 1958 dissertation, on William Howard Taft's apprenticeship in foreign pol-

icy and diplomatic adventures before he became President. A decade later

Minger added an essay on Taft's appointment to head the Second Philippine

Commission in 1900. Now these six pieces, with the addition of a chapter on

Taft and China, and a chapter of summary and conclusions, have been

brought together in a compact volume. To the already-published portions,

Minger has added some connecting material, but the bulk of these essays

simply reprint what has earlier appeared. While it is convenient to have

Minger's work available in book form, the resulting study adds very little to

what he has already disclosed about Taft's contributions to the foreign policy

of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations.

Using the Taft papers and a few other manuscript collections, Minger out-

lines McKinley's selection of Taft to go to the Philippines, discusses Taft's

creditable performance in the islands, and then reviews his subject's work in

Panama, Cuba, and the Far East for Theodore Roosevelt. "To the Presidency

of the United States," Minger concludes, Taft brought "a coherent set of

ideas" on foreign relations, and "was unusually well-prepared for the prob-

lems which would face him" (vii). Like other recent students of Taft, Minger

finds his man to be a more competent and complex figure than the literature

on his White House years has suggested. In administrative positions with

clear policies to implement, Taft's ability to sort out relevant details and to

pursue agreed-upon goals made him a valuable Cabinet officer. Minger does

not speculate on why so solid a record and so thorough a preparation did not

bring more success to Taft's presidency, but there is surely some insight in

Roosevelt's admittedly biased opinion that his hand-picked choice was only

"a good first lieutenant."

Because he relies so heavily on Taft's own letters and point of view. Ming-

er's book comes across as a more documented and scholarly version of the

foreign policy sections in the first volume of Henry Pringle's standard biog-

raphy. The bibliography is extensive but lists only two books and an article

by Minger written after 1970. The articles of Stanley Solvick on Taft should

have been consulted, and there are manuscripts at the Library of Congress

and other repositories that would have been relevant to the author's research.

At times it appears that Minger was struggling to flesh out his slim manu-

script. Taft's brothers are twice described in identical language (pp. 7-9, 183-

85), and the reader also learns on two occasions of the influence of Thomas

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334                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

F. Millard on Taft's China policy (pp. 168-69, 208-09). There are other repeti-

tions throughout the text and footnotes. William Howard Taft merits a care-

ful, comprehensive biography in the vein of what James T. Patterson did for

the President's son, Robert. To that enterprise, and to students of Taft's

pre-presidential career, Minger's book makes a useful, but modest, contribu-

tion.

 

University of Texas at Austin                       Lewis L. Gould

 

 

 

Downriver: Orrin H. Ingram and The Empire Lumber Company. By Charles

E. Twining. (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1975. ix

+ 309p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography. $17.50.)

 

A young man from the East comes to the West armed with experience and

savings earned from employment in a mill or factory, takes up a venture in

manufacturing, and achieves business and personal success. Such briefly vig-

netted was the course thousands of young men followed in nineteenth-century

America. Among them was Orrin H. Ingram, whose entrepreneurship in the

lumbering industry of Wisconsin is the subject of this excellent book by

Charles E. Twining.

Born in Massachusetts in 1830, Ingram early was successfully operating

and designing sawmills as an employee of firms in New York and Ontario.

Determined to "strike out on his own," he looked to opportunities in lumber-

ing in the West and along with two partners, Alexander Dole and Donald

Kennedy, opened a sawmill in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1857. Eau Claire,

well located for acquiring sawlogs from the pineries of the Chippewa Valley,

became the center of the partners' production of lumber for a widening mar-

ket moving up and down the Mississippi River and west into the prairie.

From the outset, Ingram was the leading partner in dealing with a sequence

of problems confronting the firm: the efficient production of quality lumber in

the 1860s; the development of wholesaling yards in the 1870s; and the pro-

curement of sawlogs in the 1880s. He faced, in the process, depressions,

natural disasters, and changing conditions in technology and transportation.

To a greater or lesser degree, he surmounted these problems. But he could

not sustain sawmilling at Eau Claire through the prolonged depression of the

1890s; and though his company continued operations at other points, he be-

came increasingly less involved in its management after 1898 and more given

to dallying in investments in disparate undertakings-orange groves in Flor-

ida, a rice plantation in Texas, and a copper mine in Arizona.

Ingram did not achieve dominance in his firm and success in the market-

place acting independently of partners and competitors. Out of a complex

web of competition, he worked closely with his partners, for example, in

reorganizing his firm in 1881 as the Empire Lumber Company. That same

year he entered into a pool with Frederick Weyerhaeuser and Mississippi mill

men, with whom he had been contesting for access to sawlogs, for control of

pine lands in the Chippewa Valley. Particularly at such points, Twining effec-

tively details the give-and-take among Ingram and his associates. He portrays

him as an essential entrepreneur, an optimistic risk-taker moving around the

pessimism and obstructionism of his vice president, Colonel Dan Dulaney.

Ironically, in the chapter "Weyerhaeuser," far from writing about

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Book Reviews                                                  335

 

Weyerhaeuser, the author vividly limns Ingram personally overseeing logging

work as a means of protecting his interests against the lumber baron.

Relying on Ingram's business records and correspondence as his fundamen-

tal source, Twining tells the story of Ingram and his work from the viewpoint

of a perceptive "insider." From this vantage point, he gives definition to

Ingram in his business philosophy of "eternal confidence" and reveals his

personality. Twining's economic analysis, usually resting on a straightforward

use of supply and demand factors, is sound. And his writing is good-even

spirited on occasion-though slightly marred by some stylistic oddities in

punctuation.

Perhaps, though, there are a few weaknesses in the study. Twining might

have profitably used the original returns of population and manufacturing for

1860, 1870, and 1880 for following the growth and composition of Ingram's

work force. Moreover, he accords scant attention to the relationship between

the company and its workers. He could also have read the returns of man-

ufacturing (though admittedly they are sometimes quite inaccurate) for con-

structing various indices of production of the company. After taking up the

questions of labor and production, he could have examined the related ques-

tion of the economic meaning of Ingram's firm for Eau Claire: was it a city-

forming firm that by its exports drew generative income to the community?

Did sawmilling give rise to "spin-off " production in Eau Claire? Did it create

new thresholds of local demand that sponsored new local manufacturing? Had

he taken up these or similar questions, obviously Twining might have written a

somewhat different but perhaps stronger study.

Notwithstanding criticisms here, Downriver is a solid contribution to the

relatively sparse fund of literature on the history of lumbering in the United

States. It is at once a scholarly and interesting piece of work; and it de-

monstrates that conventional business history has great merit.

 

Wright State University                             Carl M. Becker

 

 

 

American Classic. By Laurence Lafore. (Iowa City: Iowa State Historial De-

partment, 1975. 96p.; illustrations. Cloth, $5.95; paperback, $3.95.)

At Home in Early Sandusky. By Helen M. Hansen. (Sandusky: Sandusky

Library Association, 1975. iii + 101p.; illustrations, index. $5.50.)

 

Laurence Lafore and Helen M. Hansen are leaders in local historic preser-

vation work in their respective midwestern communities of Iowa City (pop.

47,744) and Sandusky, Ohio (pop. 32,074). Each of them has produced a

pleasing collection of photographs and commentaries which documents sig-

nificant surviving public and private buildings in a particular town. In each

case the result is a large-format pictorial history of approximately one

hundred pages which will delight local history and architectural enthusiasts

alike.

Lafore, who is chairman of the History Department at the University of

Iowa, is best known for his earlier novels and his studies on the origins of

World Wars I and II. But he is also a gifted professional photographer who

serves as chairman of the Architectural Heritage Committee of Iowa City's

Project Green.

In American Classic he provides readers with an architectural tour of Iowa

• 8
 

336                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

City, the first capital of the state, through the eye of his camera, and gives

interpretive insights. Throughout his work, Lafore insists that the buildings of

a town, as much as any single factor, reveal the community's character and

personality. He sees buildings as culture documents, and relates them to their

era, noting fluctuations in style and taste. He presents the architecture of

Iowa City as a representative album of America, and a reliable index to its

social and intellectual history. Although his text requires some knowledge of

architectural history beforehand, all readers will appreciate his fine style and

the pictorial quality of his work. Following a chronological pattern, he discus-

ses a large number of buildings ranging in style from the Greek and Gothic

Revival to the Victorian and modern functional mode.

Helen Hansen has written quite a different kind of book. Hers is more

family and community history, told in terms of Sandusky's famous residential

and commercial architecture. Initially published by the Sandusky Register in

the 1950s as a series on "Stately Old Homes," her articles are now updated

and reprinted in paperback form. The illustrations are plentiful but quite small

compared to the Lafore book. Hansen's volume is a Bicentennial project as

well as a fund-raising effort in behalf of a historic house museum. Besides the

original thirty-nine articles, the author has appended thirty-one briefer

supplementary sketches compiled during the last twenty years.

While not intended to be an interpretive history, the work is based upon

primary source materials: personal correspondence, interviews, records,

books and old newspapers. It is obviously a labor of love, and a valuable

compendium of factual details and photographs concerning the families and

homes of Old Sandusky. A very good index, listing both persons and build-

ings, is included.

Outstanding among the homes described is the Oran Follett House, a Greek

Revival dwelling constructed of stone, a rather unusual building material for

the Western Reserve area during the 1830s. This is the property the Sandusky

Library Association hopes to establish as a museum. Besides private homes,

the author also discusses important Sandusky churches, hotels, schools, and

row houses.

Professionals will prefer the Lafore volume; amateurs will choose Hansen.

 

Heidelberg College                                 Kenneth Davison

 

 

 

From the Diaries of Felix Frankfurter: With a Biographical Essay and Notes. By

Joseph P. Lash. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1975. xiii + 366p.;

notes, index. $12.50.)

 

Reproducing his remarks at a Supreme Court conference and referring to

his foreign birth, Justice Felix Frankfurter in a diary entry of March 1943

wrote, "It is well known that a convert is more zealous than one born to the

faith. ... As one who has no ties with any formal religion, perhaps the feel-

ings that underlie religious forms for me run into intensification of my feelings

about American citizenship." In his biographical essay which precedes the

Diaries, Joseph Lash tells us that the law professor on the Supreme Court

never "quite . . . reconciled two sets of views" relative to the Court's role

and function. One was Marshall's rubric, "We must never forget that it is a

constitution we are expounding . . . intended to endure for ages to come, and

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Book Reviews                                                  337

 

consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs ..." The

other was the theme of judicial restraint, the need to transcend personal pre-

dilection, lest the Court become a "super-legislature."

Given his sincere but simple patriotism, it may be pertinent to ask whether

Frankfurter was able to neutralize background and biases, or whether-to use

Mr. Lash's phrase in a different context-he "may . . . have found carrying

the doctrine of restraint to Olympian extremes congenial for more than judi-

cial reasons." Certainly patriotism often coincided with restraint, and judicial

abstinence predominated over the primacy of the Bill of Rights. National un-

ity, wrote Frankfurter in Minersville v. Gobitis, was a value "inferior to

none," and in the name of first Country and then God, despite the terrors of

damnation, children could be coerced into saluting the flag. National

emergency in Korematsu v. United States and the presumed nexus between

racial affinity and the threat of sabotage and espionage rationalized the exclu-

sion and subsequent internment of 119,000 Japanese-Americans and resident

aliens in the relocation centers of the Second World War. National security

and restraint combined in the Smith Act case, Dennis v. United States, where

Frankfurter found that Congress had decided that the "danger created by

advocacy of overthrow justifies the ensuing restriction of freedom of

speech." The doctrines of self-abnegation and separation of powers pre-

vented Frankfurter from entering the "political thicket" of Congressional and

state legislative malapportionment, and (despite Lash's claim that he was

sensitized to Fourth Amendment guarantees), he refused in Wolfv. Colorado

to extend the exclusionary rule to the states.

In all but Gobitis, Frankfurter clashed with one or more of the three breth-

ren he characterized as the "Axis" or with their satellite, Justice Wiley Rut-

ledge. His deep dislike, even hatred for Justices Black and Douglas, his con-

tempt for Justices Murphy and Rutledge, scar the Diaries with a meanness of

spirit. Lash attributes the quarrel to the apostacy of the "Axis" in the flag-

salute controversy and to a lack of deference to Frankfurter's judicial leader-

ship. But mere differences in opinion, temperament or legal doctrines do not

fully explain the calumny of the Diaries. April 19, 1943, Black is at "his

worst, violent, vehement . . . reckless." Presidential ambition animates and

corrupts Justice Douglas: "Except where he knows or suspects that people

are on to him, he is the most systematic exploiter of flattery, I have ever

encountered in my life"; both he and Black not only can be "malignant . . .

but are." Wiley Rutledge has forgotten "that he is not God," and Frank

Murphy "makes a characteristic harangue, full of sophomoric rhetoric tasting

like rancid butter." Murphy's concurring opinion in the Alien Land Law case

of 1948, Oyama v. California, is depicted as a "long winded soap-box attack

against racism . . . practically lifted from two articles . . . in the California

Law Review." That here and in his trenchant dissent in Korematsu, Mur-

phy's "soap-box" oratory revealed the ugly sores of race prejudice did not

seem to have concerned his critical colleague or to have impressed him.

In his biographical essay Joseph Lash is ambivalent about Frankfurter's

judicial record. He generally accepts the self-portrait as confidant and adviser

of such men as Stimson, Roosevelt, and Atcheson. But Frankfurter, according

to Lash, was not the legitimate heir of Holmes and Brandeis; his equation of

civil liberties and property rights "uncoupled him from the locomotive of his-

tory . . . and separated him from the most innovative members of the Court."

At the same time Lash refers to a 1970 survey of law school deans and pro-

fessors which placed Frankfurter among the eleven greatest justices in the

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338                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Supreme Court's history. That verdict, I suspect, may yet be subject to a

rehearing.

 

University of Cincinnati                           David L. Sterling

 

 

Uncle Sam's Farmers: The New Deal Communities in the Lower Mississippi

Valley. By Donald Holley. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. xv +

312p.: notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $14.50.)

 

Professor Holley's manuscript received an award from the Agricultural

History Society in 1970. The reasons for this accolade are amply de-

monstrated in the volume he has produced. It is one of the most important

books on the New Deal's agricultural program, and on the New Deal, in re-

cent years.

The study is focused, as the sub-title indicates, on the New Deal agricul-

tural communities established in the Lower Mississippi Valley. This means

the developments in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. In a table following

page 283 the author lists the projects, sixteen in Arkansas, four in Louisiana

and ten in Mississippi, with some revealing statistics. Almost 200,000 acres

were involved and 2738 families. The cost figures cited, $18,810,872.23 total

and $5,129.24 the average cost to each family, also were substantial, though

they seem less impressive in the inflationary society of the 1970s.

The bulk of the book is devoted to studies of each community: the differ-

ences between or variety of these communities, the social philosophies that

developed the programs, and something about the kind of people who ad-

ministered them, especially at the local or project level. In general outline,

there is little that is new in the book. There were agricultural projects of a

community nature established during the New Deal; there were problems of

finding satisfactory applicants to develop the projects; the projects had uncer-

tain success during the 1930s; they were phased out during World War II.

The results of these New Deal farm programs are interpreted sympathet-

ically. In the last two chapters of the book the author points out the very

considerable accomplishments of the programs. More importantly he mea-

sures them against the criticisms of their time and of the post-New Deal

period, and gives persuasive and effective explanations of the reasons for the

programs and the impact they had both at the time and afterward.

For this reviewer a more extended discussion of the impact of the programs

on the area beyond or after the closing down of the communities during

World War II would make the book even more useful. Also, more discussion

of comparative factors between these social experiments and currently de-

veloping interest in cooperative and communal agricultural communities

would have been appreciated. But these may be other books. The one Profes-

sor Holley has written is a substantial contribution to the history of New Deal

agriculture, and one that anyone interested in the New Deal and the twentieth

century should read. It has applications and value far beyond the interests of

the specialist in agricultural history.

 

University of Cincinnati                         W. D. Aeschbacher

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Book Reviews                                                  339

 

Uncertain Friendship: American-French Relations Through the Cold War. By

Marvin R. Zahniser (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975. xi + 314p.;

notes, bibliography, index. Paper, $7.95; hardcover, $11.95.)

 

In recent times scholars have made so many significant contributions to our

knowledge and understanding of American-French relations that a synthesis

of these studies has become desirable. In his Uncertain Friendship Zahniser

traces these relations from colonial times through the Cold War, devoting one

third of his book to the period up to the end of the era of the French Revolu-

tion, another third up to the outbreak of the First World War, and the final

part to a discussion of diplomatic questions since then.

The author's superb grasp of the functional aspects of diplomacy enlightens

the reader as much as his basic account of rather strained political relations

between the two countries. At great moments in world history, such as the

struggle for American independence and France's life-and-death struggle in

World War I, the United States and France cooperated in defense of common

national interests. At other times, when their interests clashed, as, for exam-

ple, in the course of the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon's Mexican

adventure, or General de Gaulle's insistence on excessively nationalistic ob-

jectives, the leaders of the two countries went to disappointing lengths to

assert their freedom of action. Nevertheless, as Zahniser demonstrates, in the

perspective of history both powers avoided wars against each other, evidently

understanding the value of cooperation and balance of power in their common

struggle against British domination in the nineteenth and German aggression

in the twentieth century.

As a Latin country, France resented the attempt of the United States, in

the name of the Monroe Doctrine, to establish its hegemony in Latin Ameri-

ca. And as much as this policy threatened to upset the balance of power in

the western hemisphere, America's republican ambitions were also seen as a

threat that gave French monarchists considerable concern. But while France

frowned upon American expansionism, the United States hardly interfered

with French empire-building in Asia and Africa.

In his scholarly survey the author emphasizes the importance and impact of

trade and financial questions on American-French relations. More than is

usual, furthermore, he makes the reader aware of the key roles played by

individual statesmen of the two countries. They become symbols of personal

and conceptual contrasts as well as official spokesmen: Napoleon and Jeffer-

son, Clemenceau and Wilson, de Gaulle and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this

context, Zahniser realistically illustrates the political interplay between Con-

gress and the Executive in the conduct of American foreign affairs. Finally, in

his discussion of the two World Wars and the Cold War, a rather difficult

task, he develops the arguments and attitudes of French and American

statesmen with remarkable objectivity. In my judgment, he correctly explains

the many reasons why in recent decades France and the United States have

repeatedly accused each other of being uncertain friends: they expected much

more substantial assistance and understanding than either was willing or able

to extend.

Considering the chronological scope and substantive challenges of his un-

dertaking, the author has produced a stimulating and well-balanced book.

• 12
 

340                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Readers of Uncertain Friendship will appreciate Zahniser's clear presentation

and judicious interpretation.

 

Rutgers University                                Henry Blumenthal

 

 

 

Star-Spangled Kitsch: An Astounding and Tastelessly Illustrated Exploration

of the Bawdy, Gaudy, Shoddy Mass-Art Culture in This Grand Land of

Ours. By Curtis F. Brown. (New York: Universe Books, 1975. 204p.; il-

lustrations, bibliography. $15.00.)

 

Star-Spangled Kitsch deserves, I think, the Bicentennial Award for Sheer

Nincompoopery. If that sounds too harsh, let me give an alternative evalua-

tion: the Bicentennial celebration has been-and will be-exploited by the

crasser elements of the book-publishing world, and if you want to contribute

your mite to one of the most egregious of the rip-offs, shell out fifteen dollars

for this volume.

The difficulty in deciding whether the creators of Star-Spangled Kitsch are

cunning or merely inane has to do with how you choose to interpret the

book's aesthetic stance. "Kitsch," a German colloquialism for trashy finery,

"is the daily, everywhere art of our time," Brown tells us, and it is defined

by a few simple rules: form is more important than function to the kitsch-

maker, and the spurious sense of elegance or "class" the object possesses is

important to the kitsch-purchaser. The author warns us not to confuse kitsch

with "schlock" ("simple-minded junk") or camp ("intentionally frivolous").

Having commenced with a clear-eyed definition, the author proceeds to

document the vagaries of the kitsch-world with some 400-odd illustrations.

The standard of selection is anything but clear.

Playboy bunnies, Forest Lawn cemetery, toilet paper in Santa Claus print,

Billy Graham, streaking, the Rayburn Office Building, Little Egypt, a paint-

by-number Mona Lisa, and Horatio Greenough's George Washington are

among the offerings. A few are screamingly funny-I am particularly fond of

the Berlin, Connecticut, restaurant in the shape of an opened ice-cream car-

ton (and why, one wonders, was it razed and the Ponderosa Steakhouses

spared?). Others are shudderingly awful-salt and pepper shakers in the form

of a woman's breasts or a crockery container for false teeth that plays "The

Shadow of Your Smile." Some are simply ordinary, although it must say

something about our jaded sensibilities that gardens of plastic flowers or

imitation-brick fireplaces with electric logs arouse only a faint nausea.

But just what Vergil is it who guides us through this hell? One who feels

our powers to discern kitsch are so feeble that we must be told sternly that

plastic cups imprinted with embroidered eagles are "simulated impossibilities

. . .[demonstrating] the muddle-headedness of kitsch"? Or that a collection

of Nazi curios on a butcher-block table is "painfully unsuitable" for display

in a family room? Certainly our cicerone has a very low opinion of his read-

er's judgment, since he passes off his own personal dislikes as kitsch: Bern-

stein's Mass, I.M. Pei's Hancock Building in Boston, politicians in mufti, and

so forth. Most confusingly of all, Brown adopts an incredibly jocular tone

(chapter headings include "Everything but the Kitschen Sink," "A Set of

Building Blots") and elaborates his photographs with captions that, on the

whole, leave us blinking. The remark appended to the photograph of a seated

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                  341

 

Calvin Coolidge wearing an Indian headdress is an example: "As meaningless

political kitsch, the event was pure sitting bull."

A few of the chapters contain fairly sensitive remarks dealing with the

manner in which kitsch items may confirm racist or sexist attitudes or exploit

our feelings of social inferiority. But instead of continuing to explore the ways

kitsch may impinge upon our daily lives, why Madison Avenue prefers inces-

sant jingles such as "ring-around-the-collar," or how, why, or even if kitsch

as a popular art is related to the fine arts, the author opts for the easy score.

His chapter on advertising, "The Old Sell Game," ends with a discussion of

what must be the nadir of commercialism-the Clark Metal Grave Vault slo-

gan which asks, "Is seepage disturbing your loved one?" Have we, Brown

sunnily concludes, conformed to the ad-man's dream of clean clothes, breath,

and kitchen floors only to "[betray] those in the Great Beyond by consigning

them to leaky coffins?"

It's possible my criticisms may be unduly prissy, since we would all agree

that kitsch is more appropriately discussed with cheeriness than pomposity.

But Brown, both in his illustrations and his commentary, wavers between

severity (of a model in a swimsuit garnished with stars and stripes he intones,

"Indiscriminately using elements of the flag purely as decor, without icono-

graphic content, robs the patriotic symbol of its power and dignity") and

hilarity (the manufacture of a diaper pin with a holy medal was a mistake,

Brown writes, since "failure to foresee the inevitable drenching has resulted

in kitschy-coo"). Throughout an uncomfortably jeering note is struck: "If

you're a snob kitsch is the stuff the neighbors collect, not the lovely things . . .

in your gracious home." Clues to the author's ambivalent tone appear early

in the text-"Camp," he says, "offers incongruities in glorious self-

awareness," "camp generates celebration," and "[camp] is content with the

risibility of recognition." Of course. Brown has written a camp book about

kitsch. But employing a camp style to analyze kitsch assumes the reader is in

on the joke. Unhappily, it is unclear to me what the joke is. Are we laughing

at kitsch? the people who purchase kitsch? or is the book itself kitsch and is

someone laughing at us?

 

The Ohio State University                        Barbara Groseclose

 

 

Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement. By Jean Gould.

(New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1975. xii + 372p.; illustrations, bib-

liography, index. $12.50.)

 

Jean Gould's Amy is unlikely to become the definitive study of either Miss

Lowell or the Imagist movement because Miss Gould has chosen to tell much

but to analyze little in her work. Amy is, however, a fascinating, well-

researched look at the Boston poet and her circle by an author who obviously

champions her subject. As a biography and source book it should be of value

to any reader interested in the period.

Jean Gould has chosen not to footnote her material, which is always unfor-

tunate for the scholar, but has drawn on a wealth of sources including the

Lowell papers at Harvard's Houghton Library and interviews with persons

who knew Amy Lowell. With the pain of every researcher, Miss Gould de-

scribes the scene shortly after Amy Lowell's death when her lifelong compan-

ion, Ada Russell, burns, at Amy's direction, all of her correspondence from

• 14
 

342                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Ada and Amy's other confidant, Carl Engel. Despite that loss, Miss Gould

has found ample resources which, coupled with her skill as a writer, bring

Amy Lowell very much to life for her reader.

The thesis of Gould's biography is that Amy Lowell was not only an ex-

traordinary literary talent but also one of the most powerful forces in Ameri-

can letters, a herculean figure capturing the imagist idea from Ezra Pound and

turning it into a movement to be reckoned with by both the critical and popu-

lar worlds.

Amy, cursed with numerous ailments ranging from recurrent hernias to

high blood pressure and heart disease as accompaniment to her two hundred

and fifty pound girth, emerges as a dedicated scholar, a driving competitor,

and a "show must go on trooper" barnstorming the nation to spread the mes-

sage about modern poetry. Her relationships with Robert Frost, D. H. Law-

rence, Malcolm Cowley and the other literary figures of the period are well

covered. Miss Gould traces the inventive and long-running literary hoax of

the Spectra school of poetry, created and led secretly by Witter Bynner and

Arthur Davidson Ficke as a joke on the imagists.

The book's descriptive brilliance is marred by its near-absence of analysis.

Again and again, Miss Gould dodges the issues of the meaning or the worth of

her material. As an example, Miss Gould spends several pages listing "the

amazing parallels in the lives of Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein." The

catalogue of similarities ranges from their February birth dates with almost

identical family constellations through their early tomboy behavior, their

ponderous physical proportions in later life to "it is curious that the given

names of their respective friends both began with the letter A." Though this

section of the book marks one of the rare appearances of other scholars'

views in the book, Miss Gould takes us nowhere with the parallels. They

stand solely as interesting but untreated facts.

Miss Gould's Amy is a book of interest to any general reader interested in

the period and certainly of value to the scholar who seeks a portrait of Amy

Lowell herself and the movement she led. A lengthy bibliography is included

along with an index.

 

Ashland College                                      John D. Baker

 

 

 

 

Upton Sinclair: American Rebel. By Leon Harris. (New York: Thomas Y.

Crowell Company, 1975. xii + 435p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-

dex. $12.95.)

 

Published only seven years after Upton Sinclair's death at the age of nine-

ty, Leon Harris's book is the first serious effort at a biography of the famous

crusader for social justice since Floyd Dell's 1927 volume. Besides working

his way through the enormous Sinclair collection at Indiana University,

gathering material from forty-six other libraries, and presumably reading all of

Sinclair's ninety books and a good portion of his thousands of articles and

reviews, Harris also solicited opinions about the man from a wide range of

prominent Americans and Europeans. Their sometimes vapid statements

Harris quotes frequently, thereby breaking his narrative in a fashion that is

consistently annoying.

• 15