Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 16: September 1,

1780-February 28, 1781. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and

Ronald M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989. xxix +

804p.; editorial method and apparatus, acknowledgments, chronology of

Congress, list of delegates to Congress, illustrations, notes, index, $38.00.)

In commenting upon several of the other volumes in this series, this reviewer

has made a number of points that could well be repeated here. These volumes

are superbly edited, they are highly usable as reference works, and they are

destined to be of enduring value long after the Bicentennial Era is over.

Moreover, there is much in this volume, as in the previous ones, that could

be used to humanize our colorful cast of characters and the pageant in which

they played their important roles. Indeed, should the widely acclaimed Ken

Burns decide at some future point to do a PBS video on the American

Revolution, perhaps something comparable to his often gripping and haunting-

ly beautiful 1990 miniseries on the Civil War, he would encounter a wealth of

material here that is suitable for transformation into a fine, fine script.

Admittedly, in many cases, the dramatis personae of Volume 16 continue to be

reluctant delegates, flesh-and-blood human beings who are understandably

torn between a compelling sense of obligation to serve the public on the one

hand and an unquenchable desire to be back home with their own families and

friends on the other. Most of them try hard to function effectively in these often

distressing times, but as mere mortals they themselves are hardly immune from

such common foibles as vanity, jealousy, and backbiting. The infant nation's

life may be hanging in the balance; but still these men who will one day be

lauded as peerless Founding Fathers now display a certain very human

tendency to be caught up in gossip, speculation, and intrigue. To make matters

even worse, on many occasions they are enveloped in a misty and profound

ignorance as to what is really going on out there in the field of battle-or

anywhere in the world beyond the confines of Philadelphia, for that matter.

And the money problems, both of the men themselves and of the republic they

seek to serve, are seemingly endless and are nearly always threatening to

overwhelm.

Money is an especially important theme in this particular volume. From one

end of this book to the other, there is a veritable chorus of voices singing the

same song: "The Situation of our Finnances yet remains distressing, and

seems the true Cause to which every other Difficulty & Embarrassment may be

traced" (p. 16). So wrote the president of Congress, Samuel Huntington of

Connecticut, in early September, 1780. So echoed James Lovell of Massachu-

setts in February of the following year: "Our Prospects as to Money do not

brighten" (p. 688). It must have been somewhat difficult for a generation

brought up on the old notion that "The love of money is the root of all evil" to

find itself now subscribing so thorough goingly to a form of economic deter-

minism that would explain either their nation's very survival or its destruction.

But their words make it clear that Ezekiel Cornell, John Hanson, John

Sullivan, Theodorick Bland, Jr., Whitmell Hill, James Duane, and company

are now learning some hard lessons about what might be termed the economic

basis of politics. For his part, James Madison of Virginia chimes in: "The want

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158                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

of this article [i.e., money] is the source of all our public difficulties &

misfortunes" (p. 305). And even Madison's former teacher at Princeton, that

eminent clergyman and professor of moral philosophy John Witherspoon, is

forced to agree: "The Distress of our Finances is the most important &

alarming Circumstance in our Situation" (p. 452).

To read and to contemplate the contents of this volume-and of this entire

series thus far--is also to have new and increasingly more serious reservations

regarding many of the theses about the Revolutionary period that have been

proposed by our leading scholars over the years. From the days of George

Bancroft all the way up to the time of Bernard Bailyn, countless historians

have looked for the cause and have sought to elucidate the nature of America's

Revolutionary enterprise, but no interpretation yet posited seems to be

particularly well-documented by these letters of delegates to Congress. To be

sure, these letters, as voluminous and important as they are, hardly constitute

the only form of evidence that is admissable at Clio's judgment bar. But surely

it could be argued that delegates to Congress were at least close to the nerve

center of the Revolutionary period; and, therefore, it is hard to see how any

view of that era that aspires to comprehensiveness could possibly slight the

delegates' letters and remain true to historical fact. In the aftermath of the

completion of this series, in short, some old interpretations are going to seem

considerably less persuasive, and some new ones are certain to be proposed.

By furnishing historians with the kind of evidence they will need for a more

artful and more accurate re-creation of the Revolutionary past than we have

ever had hitherto, these editors, these volumes, and the Library of Congress

itself have all done-and continue to do-yeoman service.

 

Marquette University                                  Robert P. Hay

 

Steel Valley Klan: The Ku Klux Klan in Ohio's Mahoning Valley. By William

D. Jenkins. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1990. xii + ²²²p.;

illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)

How did the Ku Klux Klan, infamous for its racism, bigotry, and violence,

gain such influence and political power in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio during

the 1920s where the presence of Afro-Americans was not great and the

majority white population appeared not to see blacks as a major threat? That,

in part, is the question that William Jenkins' study of the Klan's experience in

Mahoning Valley Ohio endeavors to answer. The answer, for Jenkins, is that

the Klan's popularity derived from its ability to tap into already existing

anxieties and social tensions that in the Mahoning Valley were represented by

a number of Protestant faiths frightened by certain changes produced by

increased industrialization, ethnic migrations, and shifting social and moral

values and beliefs. In short, the Klan's success, Jenkins concludes, resulted

from a "too rapid infusion of other cultures into a fast-changing industrial

society" (p. 160). What was at stake for many Mahoning Valley white

Protestants was the very integrity of the "American way of life" itself.

Believing that local political and community leaders failed to enforce laws of

decency and decorum (especially regarding alcohol), that governmental cor-

ruption and crime were rampant, and that a public educational system,

responsible for inculcating traditional family values and national patriotism,

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Book Reviews                                                  159

 

was being challenged by separatist parochial schools, many came to see the

Klan as a responsive-and responsible-ally in the cause of moral redemption

of society.

Thus, a strong pietistic Protestant reform impulse, emanating not from

religious fundamentalism but out of mainstream faiths such as the Methodists,

Baptists, Presbyterians, and Disciples of Christ, joined forces with a KKK

willing to shape its appeal and define its goals consistent with the underlying

fears felt by many Mahoning Valley citizens. For a time, such an alliance

brought the Klan and its supporters considerable political power, especially in

cities like Youngstown. In the long run, as was true elsewhere in America,

personal differences, the moral and ethical failings of Klan leaders and their

supporters, and increased opposition from some of the ethnic and religious

groups who had been singled out for "moral reform" led to the Klan's demise.

With other historians who have focused on local and regional Klan activities,

Jenkins argues that one can best understand the Klan in the 1920s by exploring

the particular local conditions and circumstances that determined its popularity

rather than relying on generalizations based on the KKK's national image and

notoriety. There is, in effect, little discussion of race in this book since,

according to Jenkins, even though the black population in Youngstown doubled

in the decade prior to the 1920s, and despite black people's understandable fear

of the Klan presence, the Klan made few direct references to Afro-Americans

nor did it support anti-black legislation in the Mahoning Valley region.

Moreover, in contrast again to its national social class image, the majority of

Klan members came not from the "low-achieving, low-status segment of the

population" but from a cross section of professional, business, skilled and

semiskilled labor groups.

In his conclusion, Jenkins links his study with other regional histories and

with an analysis of the Klan as a national movement in the 1920s. It is here

where we are left, I think, with less than one might expect. In the final analysis,

this is as much a story of a reform Protestantism trying to "impose their values

on American society," which they saw as being threatened by particular ethnic

and religious groups, as it is a study of the inner workings and activities of the

Ku Klux Klan. For Jenkins, the KKK becomes little more than an organized

vehicle for venting existing prejudices and fears, a movement ably designed to

meet and respond to whatever intolerance existed at that time and place. In this

respect, even gut-wrenching, old-fashion bigotry and racism come to lack real

authenticity. That may well tell us something about our own time as well.

 

Denison University                                   John B. Kirby

 

Correspondence of James K. Polk. Volume VII: January-August 1844. Edited

by Wayne Cutler and James P. Cooper, Jr. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University

Press, 1989. xxxiv + 561p.; notes, symbols, chronology, calendar, index.

$32.50.)

It has been six years between volumes, but this latest collection of letters to

and from James K. Polk can stand on its own, covering his successful campaign

for a place on the Democratic national ticket in 1844. A careful reading of the

letters makes it clear that Polk was a "dark horse" only to the Whig

opposition, which would try unsuccessfully to convince the voters that Polk

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160                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

was an unknown and unqualified to hold the nation's highest office. Polk, 48,

had served seven terms in the House of Representatives, including two terms

as Speaker, and one term as Governor of Tennessee. He was, in fact, a leading

candidate for the vice presidential nomination and clearly "available" for the

top spot on the ticket.

Political intimate Cave Johnson, who would become Polk's Postmaster

General, offered early indications of the intrigue involved in the presidential

election of 1844. Writing to Polk on March 6, he described a movement to

"supplant" Martin Van Buren, the leading candidate for the presidential nom-

ination, with Lewis Cass. He warned Polk not to accept a position on a

proposed Cass-Polk ticket.

When Polk wrote to Johnson just two weeks later (letters from or to Johnson

account for about 15 per cent of all the correspondence in this volume), Polk

informed his friend that he had been approached about joining the administra-

tion of President John Tyler as Secretary of the Navy. Polk assured Johnson

that he had declined, particularly because his acceptance might have been

viewed as a gesture hostile to Van Buren.

Reading between the lines of both letters, it is clear that Polk and his advisors

would do nothing to alienate Van Buren. While they and many others realized

that Van Buren could not win the nomination in 1844, a Polk candidacy would

need the support of Van Buren's followers in the most crucial state of New

York.

Polk's candor as a presidential aspirant is refreshing. He responded on April

23 to a pointed inquiry from Ohio's Salmon P. Chase, who had informed Polk

about a mass meeting in Cincinnati of those opposed to the annexation of

Texas. Polk emphasized the possibility of British control over Texas and made

it clear that he favored the "immediate re-annexation of Texas" and the

acquisition of Oregon as well.

Two weeks before the Democratic convention opened, Polk assured Johnson

on May 13 that Andrew Jackson favored a candidate from the Southwest who

supported the annexation of Texas. If there was any mystery as to whom that

might be, Polk could only add, "I have never aspired so high."

The bulk of the correspondence in this volume (almost 70 per cent) covers

the period June-August and is filled with the political rhetoric which is typical

of 19th century presidential campaigns. But two letters offer interesting

observations about the nation's future in the pre-Civil War era. William Marcy,

who would become Polk's Secretary of War, wrote to Polk on June 28 to

inform him that abolitionists accounted for nearly 20,000 of the 400,000 votes

in New York. About three weeks later, Polk was warned that he could lose

Ohio if the abolitionists formed a coalition with the Whigs.

Finding presidential candidates who could satisfy the North, the South and

the West on the issues of slavery and the tariff created a mad scramble for the

nation's highest office in the two decades before the Civil War. For instance,

Johnson had advised Polk on March 6 that if new Secretary of State John C.

Calhoun could acquire both Texas and Oregon, he would be determined to win

the presidential nomination in 1848.

Potential candidates such as Calhoun and Cass seemed willing to accept Polk

or some other "interim" president for one term and to wait their turns. The

prestige of the presidency suffered. Unfortunately, Polk upheld his part of the

bargain, announcing when he accepted the nomination on June 12 that he

would not be a candidate for a second term, thereby continuing a tradition of

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Book Reviews                                                  161

 

one-term presidents between Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps the

nation needed more enduring leadership in that critical era.

 

Wright State University                               Allan Spetter

 

Religion and the Radical Republican Movement 1860-1870. By Victor B.

Howard. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1990. ix + 297p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $32.00.)

Victor B. Howard's Religion and the Radical Republican Movement de-

scribes the role of religious radicals in the struggle to achieve abolition and

black suffrage during the Civil War era. Howard's thesis is that radical

Christians considered the war an opportunity to liberate enslaved African-

Americans. They set the moral tone for the age by injecting the righteousness

of God into the war between the states. Anticipating the return of Christ, they

"saw the growth of reform and the progress of antislavery opinion as part of

the program to prepare the nation for the advent of the great millenial age"

(p. 7). Their doctrinal approach to emancipation ultimately made it easier for

them to abandon blacks.

Radical Christians early supported emancipation. Howard explains that they

rebuked Lincoln when he revised the field emancipation of generals Fremont

and Hunter. Lincoln's plan of compensated emancipation also brought out the

wrath of Christian reformers. George B. Cheever's remarks in an 1862 sermon

typify the religious ferver among radicals: "The Slaves are Free by virtue of

the Rebellion and the Government is bound to protect Them" (p. 23). The

radicals vowed to elect men to office who would fight for freedom.

Howard considers the Emancipation Proclamation an early victory. The

"war became more than a conflict in which the integrity and unity of the nation

were at stake. The war became a battle for the freedom of mankind" (p. 52).

The Proclamation emboldened radical Christians who urged Lincoln to make

abolition a condition for reconstruction. Lincoln disappointed them when he

introduced a "lenient plan" for reform.

According to Howard, Lincoln's Reconstruction program almost cost him

the election in 1864. Salmon P. Chase, who had supported antislavery reform

since the 1830s, appealed to religious radicals. Chase longed to become

president and seriously considered the campaign. But he recognized that

Lincoln had widespread appeal. "Seeing that a contest to unseat the president

might mean losing the election to the Democrats, Chase asked Ohio state

senator James C. Hall to withdraw his name from the contest" (p. 73).

Nevertheless, radical Christians continued to recoil at Lincoln's Reconstruc-

tion Plan. Some criticized him because the plan ignored blacks. Howard credits

radical Christians for the intervention of Congress. They elected religious

radicals to Congress in 1864. The president's assassination prevented a direct

confrontation. Christian reformers interpreted his death to be the work of

Providence, and they assumed Andrew Johnson would complete the work of

reform. They soon discovered that his presidency represented more continuity

than change.

Consequently, Radical Republicans embarked on an alternative to Presiden-

tial Reconstruction. They considered the campaign of 1866 a referendum on the

Johnson Plan. Republicans won a majority in the states and in Congress. "The

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162                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Country had been given a golden opportunity to rebuild the nation's walls upon

the corner stone of Equal Rights" (p. 143). Radicals in Congress produced the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Howard concludes that radical Christians abandoned blacks. They consid-

ered their work complete by 1868. They assumed that blacks could protect

themselves. It is also reasonable to conclude that religious doctrine had

influenced radical Christians to join the movement for reform. They were never

wholly committed to civil rights! Once they satisfied their conscience, they

adopted new causes.

Religion and the Radical Republican Movement is an important book on

Christian reformers during the Civil War era. Howard identifies church leaders

who were catalysts for antislavery reform. This work is well documented with

over fifty pages of notes. Students of the Civil War era will recognize familiar

themes. A distinctive contribution is the influence of Christians on Union

politics during the Civil War era. This emphasis makes this an important study.

This book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the role of

Christians in the quest for black liberation.

 

North Carolina State University                   Stephen Middleton

 

Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture. Edited by Rich-

ard E. Meyer. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989. xiv + 347p.;

illustration, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95.)

This fascinating look at gravestones and cemeteries is the latest in UMI's

"American Material Culture and Folklife" series. The profusion of "tomb-

stone studies" in the last two decades can be said to have originated with the

classic work of anthropologists Deetz and Dethlefsen, whose studies on New

England tombstone design/inscription have become classics in the literature of

the social sciences. It is therefore fitting that James Deetz wrote the foreword

to this book. What follows the introduction by Richard Meyer-an overview of

approaches taken in studying cemeteries-is an anthology of twelve chapters

or essays treating various aspects of cemetery monuments and cemetery

layout. This book, like the study of cemeteries themselves, is highly interdis-

ciplinary. The works of anthropologists, archaeologists, folklorists, and geog-

raphers are represented.

The individual studies are mostly place-specific, or cover the gravestone

iconography of specific ethnic groups. The book is divided into four sections

(Icon and Epitaph, Origins and Influences, Ethnicity and Regionalism, and

Business and Pleasure). Although Ohio is not the focus of any particular

chapter, several are relevant to Ohio (for example Thomas Hannon's chapter

of Western Pennsylvania cemeteries), or contain Ohio examples; Blanche

Linden-Ward's chapter on tourist and leisure uses of 19th century rural

cemeteries features Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. Overall, however,

this book is meant to shed light on the variety of cemetery design traditions

across the country.

The essays in this book show that cemetery landscapes have regional

character and that they have changed through time. The essays focusing on

specific carvers or traditions, such as those of the upland south folk cemeter-

ies, and grave markers in the American southwest, or southern California,

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Book Reviews                                                    163

 

show a pattern of ethnic identity that help define the regions of the United

States. Others show prevailing patterns of change and assimilation into "main

stream" American culture. In this regard, the essays on Victorian gravestones

and monuments are provocative, for they show how cultural attitudes toward

death are translated into funerary art forms. Ellen Marie Snyder's essay on

Victorian attitudes toward children as "innocents," is noteworthy. Barbara

Rotundo's essay on the commercial development of "white bronze" (actually

zinc) gravestones tells us much about the development and marketing of

standard gravestones in the late 19th century.

Surely, cemeteries are among the most interesting of places because they

reveal so much about the attitudes of the living. The dozen essays in

Cemeteries and Gravemarkers are well-written, and they represent a broad

range of approaches to studying cemeteries and their markers. Students of folk

culture and material culture, landscape architects, and cemetery historians-

not to mention the growing number of "cemetery buffs"-will appreciate this

book.

 

University of Texas at Arlington                Richard Francaviglia

 

 

 

Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the Amer-

ican Political Economy. By Richard M. Valelly. (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1989. xviii + 258p.; tables, notes, bibliography, index.

$29.95.)

There is a surprising contrast between the photograph on the jacket of this

book and the analysis of the Farmer-Labor experience in the 1920s and the

1930s which follows. The author knows Robert L. Morlan's Political Prairie

Fire: The NonPartisan League, 1915-1922 (1955), and rightly calls it a classic.

His aim, too, is of interest: to determine what forces and concerns roused the

workers and farmers of South Dakota, Minnesota, and other states which all

but gave them national impact; and what possible relevance their experiences

can have to ours.

There is, however, that moving photograph noted above of workers dressed

in their decent best, in that all but desperate 1937 meeting in a bar to take heart

from each other's presence-drinking beer, yes, but evidently concerned for

their prospects and condition. And there is the prose that follows. It raises

questions about our history, and our ability to learn from it. The writer is a

political scientist, not an historian. But he has read deeply, if narrowly, in the

historical record. He has in hand materials which might well stir analysts, as

well as social descendants.

The author wishes to compare early "radicalism"-defined as opposed to

established "accumulationism," itself defined as wanting to reduce labor costs

to society and industry. Why was this radicalism able to create social sympathy

in midwestern states? Can such radicalism flourish today? I will return to this

question, but, for the moment, consider the example posed for consideration.

Radicalism flourished in Minnesota and adjoining states in the World War I era,

and produced names which are not entirely forgotten. William Lemke, Ernest

Lundeen, and Floyd B. Olson led political crusades which offended bankers,

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164                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

established political figures, and conservative editors who seized on popular

fear of socialists and other "radicals" to rouse vigilantes against them.

Once we were committed to the Allied cause, Minnesota Republican Senator

Frank Kellogg, angered by a statement of Robert M. LaFollette, misquoted in

an AP dispatch, presented a motion in the Senate calling for LaFollette's

expulsion from it for treason. The demagoguery of "patriots" in 1917-1918 is

notorious. Another Republican regular put it that "A Non-Partisan League

lecturer is a traitor every time.... Where we made a mistake was in not

establishing a firing squad in the first days of the war."

Yet the Nonpartisan League reached into the hearts and homes of basically

conservative people and won laws and commissions which forced into law

many equitable processes in civic pursuits. The League influenced politics as

far away as Oklahoma and Montana. Our author is interested in processes

rather than people, and so all but passes over the phenomenon of Arthur

Claude Townley, an inspired organizer of Nonpartisan workers and leaders.

Mr. Valelly appears to think that the dramatic rise of midwestern insurgency

was due to the region's relatively loose and sparse political structure; that it

showed sparkle and effectiveness early in postwar years, but could not

dominate an affluent electorate; that LaFollette's 1924 Presidential challenge

was the voice of a dying cause. Finally, that state insurgency in the 1930s could

not compete with New Deal measures coming out of Washington. Edwin

O'Connor in his novel The Last Hurrah (1956) proposed the same idea as it

affected Boston politicians in the same era.

Wholly missing is any sense of "process" generated out of the national

achievements of Progressivism, which Morlan understood provided the sinews

and ideas and leadership for his political prairie fire. A. C. Townley was a

populist boss who could give preremptory instructions to his Minnesota and

South Dakota followers and make them a political force because they thor-

oughly understood his down-to-earth program for workers and farmers. They

followed his lead without question because it was their program, too. When

they were overwhelmed by an unyielding industrial establishment walking

blindly into the crash of 1929, A. C. Townley faded into anonymity-he was

still alive and totally unknown when Morlan published his saga of nonparti-

sanship.

The author is aware that Progressivism has been denigrated by some

"Marxist" academics as having been no more than a stalking horse for large

capitalists bent on gaining entree into centralized government. But, having

been interested in winning and losing rather than civic goals, he wonders

whether the New Deal achievements have now worn out their welcome;

whether state-radical alliances might better interest dissatisfied elements of our

"counterelites."

I suggest that the current anti-Progressive theses merit a fresh review to

determine whether they, the Progressives, were in fact no more than an

assembly line for capitalists on the make.

Most of us feel, if we do not actually know, that Lincoln Steffens,

LaFollette, Jane Addams, George W. Norris, Ben B. Lindsey, Ida M. Tarbell,

and countless others of the Progressive wave were something more than

servants of large industry. They were people who studied the ways of

American life, labor, and ideals, who sought, often successfully, to keep them

from falling into disrepute. Our author has meant well in urging us to study

"contemporary politics in a structural and historical way." That way is not

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Book Reviews                                                  165

 

easily found, but the challenge of our times may well provide leads and insights

which will aid our quest.

 

The Belfy                                              Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

 

The Queen and The Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati. By

Robert C. Vitz. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1989, xi + 322p.;

illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)

During the decades that the Ohio River served as the commercial link to the

West and South, Cincinnati enjoyed a reputation as the culture center beyond

the Appalachians, proudly hailed as "the Athens of the West," "the Paris of

America," but more frequently "the Queen City of the West." Rarely without

some type of arts school since frontier days, the city for a time appeared to be

maturing into the music center of the nation, with its May Festivals, its College

of Music, and its imposing Music Hall. Theater, on the other hand, was con-

sidered less respectable, condemned by many as the devil's playground, and

faced opposition throughout the nineteenth century. Famous actors came to

Cincinnati, but supporting casts remained weak, and audience behavior was

frequently abominable, as Frances Trollope reported with some of her sharpest

comments. The Ohio city illustrates on a grand scale the conflicts surrounding

culture on the urban frontier, where civic boosterism intersected provincialism

and moral conservatism, and the work ethic persistently battled a yearning for

elegance, social display, and pure entertainment.

By 1819 Cincinnati had its Haydn Society, patterned after the Handel and

Haydn Society of Boston, while a Musical Fund Society a short time later was

the city's answer to a similar organization in Philadelphia. During the early

1840s local audiences experienced their first orchestra, whereas James H.

Caldwell, the prominent New Orleans theater manager, had opened the New

Cincinnati Theatre a decade earlier. Music teachers advertised regularly in

local newspapers, and touring musicians appeared in the city with increasing

regularity, encouraged by the influx of German immigrants who came through-

out much of the century. Painters and sculptors began to concentrate in Cin-

cinnati during the 1830s, although few developed into artists of national

prominence. For cultural leaders commerce was viewed as the handmaiden of

art, while Cincinnatians, like urban frontiersmen elsewhere, trusted the arts to

lift their community above the baser human instincts, serving almost a religious

purpose.

Yet Cincinnati's cultural challenge to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston

quickly faded, as the city's economic growth declined and as Chicago emerged

in size and wealth. The Civil War initiated a period of retrenchment for the

Ohio city, as river trade fell off and no direct rail line to the South proved

forthcoming. Cincinnati's musical life continued to expand, and the opening of

the art museum there in 1886 assured that the city would remain a regional

center for painters, even though increasingly overshadowed by Chicago. While

the 1890s proved a rich decade for Cincinnati's art life, the city's tastes re-

mained basically traditional, its citizens favoring paintings that were realistic

and easily understandable. Not until the 1920s did a new vigor emerge, with the

return of seasonal opera and the establishment of the Taft Museum.

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166                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

The major problem with The Queen and The Arts is that Robert Vitz has

spread himself too thin. He sketches not only developments in music, painting,

sculpture, and theater, but also literary efforts, publishing activities, intellec-

tual currents, and even trends in woodworking, ceramics, and the decorative

arts. The result is a concert of facts badly in need of orchestration. Themes are

introduced and not satisfactorily developed; names are added like grace notes,

which clutter more than they embellish. Vitz includes, for example, an in-

terlude on the Baldwin Piano Company, a significant aspect of his story to be

sure, but his treatment is more of an outline than a meaningful historical

analysis. The author has researched his topic well, yet he has not edited and

shaped his material to full advantage. The Queen and The Arts holds moments

of promise. Vitz's study hints at becoming a significant examination of the arts

in a young democratic society. Like urban frontiersmen, however, the author

has set his sights too high; he meanders over the surface without savoring much

of the richness inside, seemingly unsure about which cultural areas to

emphasize. By attempting to be all inclusive, Vitz showers his pages with

tedium, seriously diminishing his accomplishment both for the specialist and

for the general reader.

 

Southern Methodist University                       Ronald L. Davis

 

Tracing Archaeology's Past: The Historiography of Archaeology. Edited by

Andrew L. Christenson. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,

1989. 252p.; bibliography, index. $32.50.)

Good scholarship, one is occasionally reminded, is issues-driven, problem-

oriented, and addressed to a major disciplinary need. By this or any other

criteria, Tracing Archaeology's Past: The Historiography of Archaeology is

good scholarship-one of those occasional and welcome reminders. It is a

critical assessment of how histories of archaeology are written and how they

are used by archaeologists. Within these contexts, various theoretical and

methodological concerns are examined from the beginnings of professional

archaeology in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Tracing Archaeolo-

gy's Past reflects an increasing awareness among archaeologists of the critical

importance of historical perspective to solving important questions and prob-

lems involved in current research. This importance is shown in relation to

several ongoing concerns of archaeologists working in a variety of different

contexts. The conceptual and methodological components of historical inquiry

and their importance in researching and writing the history of archaeology

loom large in these pages.

Tracing Archaeology's Past is an important work because of its originality

and the substantive issues it raises about interpreting the history of archaeo-

logical research. The book's seventeen chapters were initially given as papers

at the conference held at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale on May 1

and 2, 1987--"Explaining Archaeology's Past: The Method and Theory of the

History of Archaeology." The breadth, depth, and interdisciplinary nature of

these chapters constitute the book's greatest strength. Both prominent and

lesser-known names appear as contributors. These chapters are grouped

according to three separate yet integrated historiographical themes: the uses of

the history of archaeology, the various contexts of that history, and the

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Book Reviews                                                  167

 

processes and problems involved in research, documentation, and interpreta-

tion. Despite the broad range of concerns and interests addressed here, the

book holds together remarkably well due to the editorial skill and broad

perspective of Christenson. His introductions to these groupings or parts make

important connections and provide synthesis to the whole.

This first part of this work, "The Uses of the History of Archaeology," is

composed of 6 chapters that range in subject matter from phenomenology and

archaeology to the place of the history of archaeology in the liberal arts

curriculum. A common denominator, however, is the critical importance of

tracing the origin and development of archaeological ideas and trends in an

historical context. The problems involved in looking for modern ideas in old

places, for example, provide an especially important example of this concern.

But of more immediate interest to working archaeologists are those chapters

that demonstrate the importance of examining the history of archaeological

research at a given site as a tool for solving problems of current archaeology.

The value of this knowledge (as opposed to a familiarity based on a literature

search alone) is based on the assumption that of all factors involved in

archaeological research none are more variable than the idiosyncracies of

individual archaeologists. This approach also points to the ongoing value of

museum collections and archival holdings, such as the private papers of

archaeologists, to solving current research problems at specific sites.

The five chapters in Part II relate to the contexts of the history of

archaeology. From the historian's perspective, this is its most important

section. Concerns for context have received far too little attention in much of

the literature relating to archaeology's past. C.M. Hinsley, for example, argues

for the importance of regional context in revising and revisioning the history of

archaeology. Hinsley shows how the different regional contexts in which

archaeology developed (both in the United States and Europe) often resulted in

distinct intellectual traditions, approaches, and concerns. Daniel Schavelzon

provides an example of changing views of the archaeological past within one of

these distinct regional contexts, the history of Mesoamerican archaeology.

Alice B. Kehoe, by contrast, is concerned with contextualizing archaeology

from a feminist perspective, showing how the histories of archaeology have

been written by the male members of the dominant class who have seen the

origin of the discipline in the researches of men sharing their own views.

Donald McVicker examines critical issues relating to prejudice and context,

specifically the disciplinary prejudices which anthropologically-trained archae-

ologists often bring to the study of archaeology's past, particularly when they

study the work of pre-Boasian figures.

The third and final section of Tracing Archaeology's Past examines several

processes, problems, and issues relating to the construction of historical

interpretations. It also provides additional and eloquent testimony to the many

pitfalls awaiting those who fail to understand the actual or contemporary

context in which texts were written, as opposed to our presumed understand-

ing of them. The arguments presented in nineteenth-century texts, for exam-

ple, have their own internal logic based on a set of shared assumptions and

interpretive paradigms quite different from those developed by their twentieth-

century successors. These assumptions often go undetected, sometimes lead-

ing to misrepresentation in historical assessments of the ideas and arguments

presented in the works in question.

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168                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

There is much sound logic and historiography in this book, which is certain

to find a permanent place on the bookshelves of graduate students and their

mentors. Historians, even those without a particular interest in archaeology's

past, will also find much that is interesting in this volume. It is an excellent

example of how the methodology and first principles of historical inquiry can

be applied to the history of a cognate field with significant results. This work

has met a great need in the history of archaeology, a small but erudite field that

is richer for the observations and shared experience present in this volume.

Tracing Archaeology's Past presents a high standard of scholarship against

which subsequent works in this field will surely be gauged.

 

Ohio Historical Society                            Terry A. Barnhart

 

 

Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse. By

Lawrence B. Goodheart. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1990. xiii +

282p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $27.50.)

Joshua Leavitt: Evangelical Abolitionist. By Hugh Davis. (Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1990. xiv + 328p.; notes, bibliography,

index. $35.00.)

In a revolutionary time like the present, it is reasonable to expect changes in

historical outlook and emphases. However, in a time, also, in which an

established historian holds that slaves emancipated themselves, and another

receives accolades for a well-researched study which has it that the American

North, not the South, was committed to slavery, the condition of the field takes

on particular interest.

Two new studies suggest that the field will require broad and varied studies

before it can be said to be sufficient for modern use. The book on Elizur Wright

is not the first, but it is, as the publisher says, the first scholarly study of this

once important figure in the antislavery crusade. A key question would be why

it has taken more than a century to produce one.

A simplistic answer would be that Wright's turn past middle age to atheism

cooled interest in his earlier career, but this would not fully satisfy the query.

Wright was himself an ardent theist in youth, and even in middle age was,

indeed, taken with the "reform impulse." There have been sound studies of

political abolitionism which did not appeal to the religious-evangelical temper

of 1850s America, and which did not highlight Wright. It would be simplistic,

again, to claim that Wright's life spread into too many fields-antislavery,

insurance, atheism-to call out a broad-based study of concern to historians.

Robert G. Ingersoll stirred interest as a well-grounded Republican party

spokesman as well as an atheist. Frank Parsons is known to students of

vocational education. He is still to be discovered as a meteor of reform in a

broader Progressive context. The fact seems to be that there was some flaw in

the apparently solid achievement of Wright which diminished him even as a

pioneer in insurance, which he certainly was.

William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown are remembered by an unacademic

public despite scholarly studies and sectional opinion which made every effort

to derogate their views and actions. Garrison holding aloft a burning Consti-

tution, and Brown being responsible for pitiful deaths in Kansas and at Harpers

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Book Reviews                                                    169

 

Ferry, do not diminish their images as symbolic figures of substance and

integrity. James G. Birney, Lucretia Mott, William Jay, Elijah P. Lovejoy,

John Greenleaf Whittier as abolitionists, and numerous others vary in visibil-

ity, in both the public and academe.

There was a certain glibness in Wright's changing prose and shifting program

which keep even such of his publications as The Chronotype from drawing the

attention of academics. This is unfortunate and may change, since Wright's

most heroic action was to leave church and faith despite the pain it caused him

from family and friends. His new biography is "modern" in some respects. It

interests itself in fashionable "child rearing" themes, for example, and

criticizes Wright for his "bourgeois liberalism." It is welcome addition to the

growing literature.

Joshua Leavitt provides a different issue in historiography. It was originally

thought that his lack of a solid body of "papers" militated against his

presenting a coherent image in abolition which might have given him a place

beside the strategic figures of his generation. The present writer long ago

suggested that no one who had written so much and for so long as he had-and

whose letters were strewn through those of other abolitonists-could fail to

respond to due research. In any case, he now has his biography. How to define

its uses in a reconstructed antislavery pattern is another matter.

It appears that, after all, Leavitt's career does not grow when systematically

examined. His earliest causes-temperance, seamen's needs and rights, his

and other's efforts to end prostitution in New York, of all places-do not gain

him stature. All his and other moral causes have been researched in depth

before. His entrance into the early antislavery movement had no individual

focus. It simply made him an addition to others of more distinctive quality.

Leavitt himself thought differently. A man of good family and education, he

saw himself as a vital crusader. He was strongly involved in organizing the

Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party, as they moved into broader areas of

transitional national politics. But there was neither eloquence nor creative

imagination that could place him close to such figures as James G. Birney or

Garrison, or the Republicans and Democrats who rose to meet the challenge of

the natioal crisis.

Leavitt suffered from a need to support his family and self: money did not

materialize for him as it did for some others in the antislavery crusade. He

suffered also from his sense of deservedness, for which Lewis Tappan, who

subsidized others, saw no reason. He ended, as he himself said bitterly, as a

"mere employee" on The Independent, once famous, now too little consulted,

which featured such editors and contributors as Henry Ward Beecher,

Leonard Bacon, and others secure in history.

A letter of Leavitt's in the Library of Congress interestingly suggests that

Leavitt might have joined Wright in repudiating religious abolitionism, or

more. It will doubtless surface in due course as new studies better integrate

individual theses.

Leavitt remains the long-lived workhorse of the antislavery saga with which

he was once identified. The main limitation in his biography is a failure to cope

with other writings which have sought credibility by demeaning antislavery. It

even reflects some of their presumptions, as in its apparent judgment that

Leavitt "condescended" to seamen and other minority groups whom he

defended or sought to aid. The book gains, however, from the careful reading

and suggestions of Professor Merton Dillon, himself a student of the late

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170                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Dwight Dumond, whose editorial work on letters by Birney, Weld, and the

Grimkes serves all researchers. Dillon is to be congratulated for having helped

steer this study into safe scholarly harbor.

 

The Belfry                                              Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

 

George Kennan and the American-Russian Relationship 1865-1924. By

Frederick F. Travis. (Ahtens: Ohio University/Swallow Press, 1990. xix +

433p.; illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index. $39.95.)

In the period from the American Civil War to the Russian Revolution, when

Russian-American relations were less prominent than Soviet-American rela-

tions are today, George Kennan emerged as a leading American authority on

Russian society and government. Frederick Travis's exhaustively researched

biography of Kennan traces the origins and the evolution of his lifetime

fascination with that nation. He describes Kennan, a man who had no formal

education in Russian culture or affairs, as an individual imbued in the mid-

nineteenth century vision of a world of immense possibilities. Kennan's

influence, according to the author, was more evident in shaping American

public opinion than in directly influencing foreign policy, although at times he

caught the attention of policy makers such as President Theodore Roosevelt

and Secretary of State Robert Lansing.

Travis's account describes five journeys Kennan made to Russia between

1865 and 1901. Two of these trips stand out as particularly noteworthy in

forming Kennan's views. The first was his initial trek to Siberia in 1865 as a

member of the Russian-American Telegraph Company's failed effort to con-

struct a telegraph line across the Bering Sea. The expedition may have been a

failure, but the experience piqued the young Kennan's interest in Russia. He

returned enamored with the country and its government. He lectured and

wrote about his experience, often in laudatory terms.

The other pivotal journey came in 1885. Prompted by an interest in the

Russian exile system and charges of its cruelty, Kennan returned to Siberia to

research this system and to meet personally with political exiles. He found

them intelligent and informed individuals. He was moved by the sufferings they

endured for their political views and returned to the United States an avid critic

of the tsarist regime. He wrote a series of exposes on the exile system in the

periodical Century which were compiled and published in 1891 as Siberia and

the Exile System, a work one observer described as the "Uncle Tom's Cabin

of Siberian exiles." Travis asserts that in the following years, Kennan's

advocacy of the cause of tsarist opponents made him "the most implacable

non-Russian opponent of the Russian government in the English-speaking

world, if not the entire world" (p. 144).

Kennan's contacts with the liberal Russian opponents of the tsarist regime

expanded as he continued his writing, lecturing, and lobbying for the liberal

cause through the 1890s. He made his last trip to Russia in 1901 and after that

time relied on second-hand information, most of which came from liberal

tsarist critics, as his source for following the changes as the political situation

deteriorated. As a result of this skewed information, as well as his firm belief

in the liberal cause, Kennan badly miscalculated the events surrounding the

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Book Reviews                                                  171

 

Russian Revolution. He regarded Lenin as a "crank, like all socialists," and an

unwitting agent of the German government. He fully expected the 1917 revolt

to result in a liberal victory. Therefore, when the Bolsheviks seized power, he

wrote to Secretary of State Lansing advocating American intervention, wrong-

ly believing that the majority of Russians supported the cause of the liberal

opposition. As Travis notes, Kennan failed to consider the strength of the

Bolsheviks and the unpredictable dynamics of the revolution.

Although the writing and style of this work is ponderous and often

distracting, the research is admirable. Travis has exhaustively documented

Kennan's views through a close reading of virtually all of his published works,

augmented by material from Kennan's personal papers. This work is well

worth consideration by anyone interested in the Russian-American relations

prior to the Russian Revolution.

 

St. Louis University                              T. Michael Ruddy

 

 

Snowbelt Cities: Metropolitan Politics in the Northeast and Midwest since

World War II. Edited by Richard M. Bernard (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1990. ix + 275p.; notes, appendix, tables, index. $35.00.)

In 1983 Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice edited Sunbelt Cities:

Politics and Growth Since World War II. That book provided some valuable

sketches of twelve "sunbelt" cities as a way of better understanding this

country's newest "region." Seven years later, Bernard has assembled sketches

of twelve of the sixteen largest metropolitan areas in the northeast and midwest

for a companion volume on Snowbelt Cities. Readers of this journal will be

disappointed that the essay commissioned on Columbus was never completed

for the volume, and others will surely note the absence of essays on Detroit and

St. Louis, and question the inclusion of Washington, D.C., but the essays

included in this volume do seem to include a representative selection of cities

in this region. It should also be noted that the essays appearing in this book are

generally of higher quality than the essays in the sunbelt book, in part because

the authors of these sketches have more and better secondary sources from

which to work.

Although all essays deal with urban politics since 1945, they vary greatly on

their emphasis. Thomas F. Campbell provides a neatly executed narrative of

Cleveland's political development, focusing on personalities such as Anthony

J. Celebrezze, Carl B. Stokes, Dennis Kucinich and George V. Voinovich. In

contrast to this approach, Zane L. Miller and Bruce Tucker provide an

imaginative and useful analysis of Cincinnati politics by exploring the city's

response to the changing meaning of pluralism. According to Miller and

Tucker, the key to understanding Cincinnati politics is the transformation from

an emphasis on cultural groups and the city as a whole to an emphasis on what

Miller and Tucker call individual pluralism. This inventive framework allows

the authors to make sense out of what sometimes seems unrelated and

disparate.

Arnold Hirsch's essay on Chicago provides still another approach to urban

politics, emphasizing the inner workings of Chicago politics as well as a

fascinating discussion of the politics of race. Daniel J. Walkowitz emphasizes

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172                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

New York City's dependence on actors outside of New York. Other essays on

cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Kansas City provide new perspectives

to themes familiar to readers of Sunbelt Cities-the neighborhood revolution's

impact, suburban-city conflict and other examples of growing fragmentation in

the political process. The essays on Boston and Milwaukee explore the

persistence of machine politics, while the essay on Indianapolis highlights the

persistence of business dominance in the Hoosier capital. What is most striking

about this volume, however, is not the differences, but the similarities shared

by these cities with those appearing in the sunbelt volume. Bernard is probably

correct in arguing that the power of non-business groups sets snowbelt cities

apart from sunbelt cities, but other patterns seem strikingly familiar.

One other characteristic of this volume is a generally optimistic tone when

discussing politics. Bernard is quick to point out in the introduction that these

cities have suffered severe economic setbacks and will never dominate the

nation as they once did, but very few of the essays suggest that these cities are

doomed to continued decline. The authors who wrote on Cleveland and

Cincinnati while recognizing the hardships placed on these two cities due to

deindustrialization are certainly not ready to pen urban obituaries either. At

least some of the essays, such as Joseph Arnold's examination of Baltimore,

suggest that the economic crisis has helped produce a government more

responsive to neighborhood and quality of life issues than ever before.

The value of this volume, then, is its ability to provide an informative update

to the plight of the snowbelt cities. It reminds us that, amid rapid economic

change, most snowbelt cities are seeing new political actors and hearing a new

political discourse. The lessons and experiences of these cities should not only

be of interest to urban historians, but should be consulted by all students of

contemporary America.

 

University of Texas at Arlington               Robert B. Fairbanks

 

 

This Nest of Vipers: McCarthyism and Higher Education in the Mundel Affair,

1951-52. By Charles H. McCormick. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1989. x + 229p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

In This Nest of Vipers, Charles McCormick tells the story of the ouster of

Dr. Luella Raab Mundel as head of the art department at Fairmont State

College in Fairmont, West Virginia. McCormick traces, with great clarity and

detail, Mundel's unsuccessful struggle to retain her job. This effort culminated

in a slander suit brought by Mundel against Thelma Loudin, a member of the

state Board of Education. Mundel charged that Loudin had slandered her by

claiming she was a "security risk" in remarks before a meeting of the board,

and that this had caused the board to not renew her contract. The suit resulted

in two trials, each reminiscent of the famed Scopes trial. Defending Thelma

Loudin was U.S. Senator Matthew M. Neely, a local political legend, while

Mundel was represented by iconoclastic radical lawyer Horace S. Meldahl.

Neely became, according to McCormick, "perhaps the central character in the

Mundel affair" and dominated both trials with his harangues about patriotism,

Christianity, and Mundel's alleged atheism. In the end a jury decided that

Mundel had not been slandered, thus ending the fourteen-month controversy.

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Book Reviews                                                  173

 

McCormick claims that the Mundel affair offers historians "a rare opportu-

nity to observe in painful detail the playing out of an anti-communist episode

in a single community." He argues that McCarthyism-like "witch-hunts" of

earlier times-was a reaction by part of society against unsettling social and

cultural changes. Certain individuals, often those "culturally different from the

majority," come to be seen as "embodiments" of the evils represented by

change and become the victims of a kind of cathartic purge by those in the

community most threatened by change.

The Mundel affair, according to McCormick, was part of a larger conflict

within the community over the transformation of Fairmont State from a

teachers college to a general liberal arts institution. A large part of the Fair-

mont community, and some on the faculty, wanted the institution to remain a

place that trained teachers "to spread genteel middle class values" and that

respected "local interests." They resented the changes made at Fairmont State

by reformist president George H. Hand, who oversaw its change into a

comprehensive liberal arts institution which would prepare students for "world

citizenship." Hand hired Dr. Mundel to head the art department, and to those

opposed to the changes at Fairmont she became the embodiment of all that had

gone wrong at the school. Her liberalism, agnosticism, and lifestyle made her

a convenient target for those, like Thelma Loudin, who wished to weaken

Hand's influence at the school. Mundel also came under attack from jealous

colleagues and those on the faculty who disliked Hand. In addition, the local

American Legion provoked the community against Mundel by creating "an

atmosphere of hostility toward non-conformity" through its anti-communist

activities. Yet, as McCormick also shows, the tragedy of the Mundel affair was

not so much the "few who hounded her" but rather "the many who ignored

her." Almost no Fairmont residents supported her and Mundel received little

help from the national liberal community. Although the ACLU offered advice,

it refused to support Mundel with money or legal briefs. Professional educa-

tional organizations, most notably the AAUP, also did little on her behalf.

In the end one is struck by how little anti-communism had to do with the

whole incident. McCormick shows that in the Mundel affair anti-communism

was only one part of a complex conflict within a community. His excellent

study will be of great value to all those interested in the history of higher

education, and helps fill a need for more studies on the workings of anti-

communism at the local level.

 

Clarke College                                 Michael J. Anderson

 

Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers,

1935-1975. By Nancy F. Gabin. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

xi + 257p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $21.95 cloth; $12.95

paper.)

Recent historians have usually traced the rise of feminism in the 1960s to

upper and middle class roots and rarely examine its working class origins.

Nancy F. Gabin effectively challenges that perspective as incomplete. Through

research on the United Auto Workers Union she uncovered a fertile relation-

ship between unionism and feminism, which developed in the period from 1930

to 1970. Starting her monograph with the creation of the CIO in the auto

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174                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

industry in the 1930s, Gabin reveals how women's membership in a union

gradually transformed their perspective from acceptance of a separate and

segregated role to advocacy of equality. Key events in that development were

World War II, the reconversion of 1946-47 and the recessions of the 1950s.

Because of these events, Gabin argues, UAW women were already bringing

forward issues of gender equality prior to the rise of NOW. And two of these

women, Dorothy Haener and Caroline Davis, used that experience to help in

the founding of NOW.

This book is a groundbreaker. Its examination of how unionism begot

feminism among working class women is noteworthy and represents a deep-

ening of our understanding of how and why women of all classes responded to

the civil rights era. As women were welcomed into a union whose philosophy

encouraged the organization of all workers, situations arose in which women

began to resent differential treatment. World War II is once again presented as

an important goad to these developments. Women worked in war jobs that not

only paid them better, but also gave them a greater sense of fulfillment. When

the war ended, 85.5 percent of the women wanted to continue to work, but the

cancelling of defense contracts and the return of servicemen forced them out.

Whereas historian William Chafe contends that the wartime experience

whetted women's appetites for more work rather than challenged their beliefs

about women, Gabin would see the experience as engendering the glimmerings

of feminism.

Gabin further differentiates her treatment from Chafe's in her examination of

the role that the Women's Bureau played in the fostering of an ideal of equal

treatment among women workers, who temporarily constituted almost 22 per-

cent of the UAW. The Women's Bureau provided an institutional space within

which women could gather and organize opposition, when appropriate, on

issues that affected women. It encouraged collective opposition to the postwar

firings of women, and then expanded to the establishment of regional confer-

ences for women.

The most important development in Gabin's work is the abandonment of

protective legislation by UAW women prior to the formation of NOW. Support

for this type of legislation had long separated working women from business

and professional women, who were more prone to support the ERA. Gabin

reveals how management used protective legislation to undermine the Equal

Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and thereby provoked a

reaction in favor of the ERA among working women.

Gabin has utilized a storehouse of material from the Wayne State University

Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs and places her material convincingly

within the historiographic context. There is a problem, however, with the

depth of her coverage. Her book focuses primarily on the national level and on

institutions, such as the International Executive Board and the Women's

Bureau. Thus, the reader does not get a sense of how widespread the

attitudinal changes were, nor why women in certain locals were more likely to

challenge UAW mores. An examination of the background of those women in

leadership positions might also have provided additional insights into the

process of change. Overall, this is an important, well-written book which

should serve as a building block in the creation of a history of the link between

unionism and feminism.

 

Youngstown State University                     William D. Jenkins

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