Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928. By Allan

J. Lichtman. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979.

xii - 366p.; charts, tables appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $20.00.)

The 1928 race between Alfred E. Smith and Herbert Hoover is probably

the most studied presidential election of this century. Believing that a fus-

ion of traditional and quantitative methods is necessary to explain the out-

come, Allan J. Lichtman offers a sophisticated analysis that affirms the

central role of religion in determining voter choice in 1928 and contradicts

the view that the contest represented a watershed in American electoral

history. Lichtman is highly skeptical of the favorable revisionism on

Herbert Hoover and he is even more suspicious of the validity of pluralist

politics for American society. What emerges from this book is an explicit of-

fering of much fresh data about how politics worked in the 1920s along with

an implicit thesis that somehow the real answers to the nation's problems

lay outside the two-party system. Students of American politics can use the

new information; they may be more cautious about Lichtman's less ar-

ticulate assumptions.

The quantitative material presented provides a rich portrait of how

Americans responded to Smith and Hoover. Black leaders moved away

from the Republicans in 1928; black voters did not follow them in signifi-

cant numbers. More women voted in mid-decade, and they went strongly

for Hoover over Smith. Lichtman gives less weight to economic prosperity,

urban and rural tensions, prohibition, and Smith's appeal to immigrants,

and concludes that religion best explains "the distinctive political align-

ment of 1928" (p. 231). The election reduced anti-Catholicism because

Smith lost, not because the campaign promoted ideas of religious tolera-

tion.

No brief summary can do justice to the subtleties of Lichtman's

arguments, but he may claim too much for the novelty of his findings.

Stressing the importance of Smith's religion brings scholarship back, as so

often happens, to ideas that participants themselves offered to account for

the result. The assertion that Hoover ran his own campaign, especially on

the race issue, parallels what David Burner also says in his 1978 biography

of Hoover, and Lichtman does not range as deeply into the primary sources

on this point as Burner did. In his eagerness to indict Hoover as an oppor-

tunist, Lichtman invokes some vague and thin evidence about connections

between the GOP and bootleggers.

The analysis of Al Smith's candidacy brings together the now familiar in-

formation about the Happy Warrior's economic conservatism, his inability

to reconcile anxieties about the policy implications of his religion, and his

general insensitivity to the lifestyles of Americans outside the Northeast.

Lichtman clearly wishes that Smith had attacked the Republicans more

vigorously on economic problems and had offered more of a progressive

alternative to Hoover. Yet the evidence of general voter satisfaction with

Book Reviews                                                 349

their employment and financial status, however misguided in the long run,

indicates the difficulty such a strategy would have faced.

Few historians would contend that Americans had an inspiring presiden-

tial choice in 1928, or that the programs that Smith and Hoover proposed

had much relevance to the economic disaster that lay just ahead. In this

sense, Lichtman points out the limitations of pluralism with great skill, and

is particularly harsh toward elites who use the methods of popular persua-

sion to maintain their own ascendancy, as he believes the Republicans did

in electing Hoover. The view that the better nature of the voter is liberal

and reformist and the darker side ethnocentric, bigoted, and conservative

may be correct. It may also be that the conservative elites are not so much

persuading the ambivalent as preaching to a populace comfortable with

"the extent of" the elite's "influence and authority" (p. 245). Amid the ex-

tensive literature on the presidential election of 1928, Lichtman's book now

becomes an essential starting point for all future researchers into the com-

plexities of this fascinating race for the Oval Office.

University of Texas at Austin                      Lewis L. Gould

American Made: Men Who Shaped the American Economy. By Harold C.

Livesay. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. 310p.; illustrations,

a note on sources, index. $11.95.)

Inspired by Richard Hofstadter's Age of Reform and Robert Heilbroner's

Worldly Philosophers, Harold Livesay has tried to utilize a series of

biographical sketches to elucidate an aspect of American economic develop-

ment. In a light and appealing style, he recounts the tales of Eli Whitney,

Cyrus Hall McCormick, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,

Pierre S. du Pont, Alfred P. Sloan, Henry Ford II, and Edwin Land. Unfor-

tunately, Livesay's essays fail to attain the brilliance of Hofstadter and

Heilbroner's or even the thoroughness of Jonathan Hughes's The Vital

Few, a similiar approach to entrepreneurial history. Like the plots in his un-

published novels that he tells us about, the themes in Livesay's essays

"wander from the pedestrian to the wildly improbable" (p. 269). On the one

hand, his sketches of Carnegie, Ford, Sloan and others mostly rehash well-

worn points made in earlier biographies and autobiographies, while on the

other hand his glorification of Henry Ford II, inheritor of a corporate em-

pire, as proof that "one man could still make his mark and be measured by

it" (p. 265), strikes this reviewer as absolutely bizarre.

Despite its subtitle, American Made does not provide a viable picture of

the shaping of the economy. Livesay focuses only on manufacturers, whom

he hails as the kingpins in the nation's economic growth. Other types, such

as financiers and labor leaders, were excluded, he argues, "because while I

can conceive of the Carnegies without the Morgans and the Fords without

the Reuthers, the reverse seems to me inconceivable" (p. 15). Such a stance

is far too simplistic, of course, for the historical reality is that the American

economy developed out of the complex interplay of the forces represented

by the Carnegies, Morgans, Fords, and Reuthers, and efforts to acclaim one

group or individual to the exclusion of others distorts understanding.

What ties Livesay's sketches together academically is that each in-

350                                                  OHIO HISTORY

dividual made some contribution to the organization of American industry:

Whitney through promoting interchangeable parts, McCormick through

developing sales and distribution networks, Carnegie for cost analysis,

Edison through applied science, Ford with mass production, du Pont with

market forecasting and diversification, Sloan with professional manage-

ment, Ford II for worldwide manufacturing and marketing, and Land for

product innovation. One could argue that other individuals better represent

certain of these trends and that some important developments, such as

scientific management, have been ignored. My guess is, however, that

Livesay settled on these figures because they came closest to representing

his academic themes while also enabling him to proclaim the survival of in-

dividualism in a corporate society. Moreover, these are all men Livesay ad-

mires. Throughout the book there is a sparcity of critical analysis. Henry

Ford is the only one to have significant disparaging comments directed at

him, as much for his poor business decisions in his later years as for his

anti-semitism. The unadmirable aspects of American economic develop-

ment are glossed over quickly. And like most business history now being

written, labor policy is only cursorially treated. Despite a chapter on

Carnegie, for instance, the Homestead strike is mentioned only in a fleeting

clause.

Indeed, future historiographers, looking back on the late 1970s, might

well earmark Livesay's American Made as a work manifesting the two

themes of neo-conservatism and narcissism which came to the fore during

that period. The neo-conservatism is suggested by Livesay's apparent anti-

intellectualism, hostility toward government regulations, condemnation of

bureaucracy, and elitism under the philosophical cover of individualism.

The narcissistic component emerges in the author's extensive projection of

himself, in the first person, onto his pages. What began for me as a

delightful introduction to the subject through the author's personal

reminiscences became by the end of the volume a tiring interaction with a

glib, self-centered, patronizing personality. Professor Livesay, of course,

may not be these things, but that is how he portrayed himself to me in his

book.

The Ohio State University                          Warren Van Tine

Alcohol, Reform and Society: The Liquor Issue in Social Context. Edited by

Jack S. Blocker, Jr. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979.x

+ 289p.; figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $23.95.)

With the publication in 1976 of Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition

Movement in the United States, 1890-1913, Jack S. Blocker, Jr., established

himself as a preeminent student of post-Civil War temperance reform. In

his latest work, Alcohol, Reform and Society, Blocker gives further

evidence of talent and insight. He has drawn together a superb collection of

nine original essays, each of which illumines an important-yet previously

overlooked-facet of the antiliquor crusade. His inclusion of a selection by

sociologists B. Gail Frankel and Paul C. Whitehead is particularly apt.

Their article illustrates the wisdom of his contention that historians must

work closely with social and medical researchers to determine precisely

Book Reviews                                                 351

what groups or individuals comprised the drinking population at various

times in American history. This, Blocker suggests, persists as "by far the

major unanswered question in historical temperance studies" (p. 5).

The remaining essays are equally revealing. In his study of college com-

munities in antebellum New England, for example, David R. Huehner

probes the quite different motives which compelled students and faculties

alike to unite in commitment to temperance reform. Those interested in

Ohio history will appreciate especially Charles A. Isetts' social profile of the

Women's Crusaders at Hillsboro in 1873-74, and George G. Wittet's quan-

titative analysis of the unsuccessful effort in 1883 by Ohio drys to secure a

statewide prohibitory amendment. Blocker himself contributes an intrigu-

ing assessment of the "modernity" of prohibitionist leadership.

Another merit of this book is the space it accords the critical period

following ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. Larry Engelmann's

"Organized Thirst: The Story of Repeal in Michigan" offers a valuable case

study of the nature of the wet opposition to prohibition in one bellwether

state of the midwest. Another student of repeal, David E. Kyvig of the

University of Akron, argues convincingly that a direct relationship existed

between opponents of prohibition during the 1920s and later critics of the

early New Deal. In a concluding essay, Jay L. Rubin contrasts the restric-

tive federal liquor laws of World War I with the lenient control legislation of

World War II.

A measure of the value of these selections may be seen in Ian R. Tyrrell's

"Temperance and Economic Change in the Antebellum North," which pro-

vides an important corrective to the famous thesis of the late Richard

Hofstadter that prohibition constituted a backward-looking, intolerant

movement of evangelical rural folk to impose their morality on the cities.

Such an interpretation, Tyrrell emphasizes, fails to consider that

temperance agitation in the early nineteenth century originated "not in the

most rural sections of the country but rather in the urban, industrial areas

of the Northeast" (p. 46). His careful investigation of Worcester,

Massachusetts, in the 1830s indicates that the appeal of temperance

transcended class lines. The reform drew support not only from employers

eager to promote efficiency among their workers, but also from large

segments of the laboring classes, who looked upon temperance as a means

of demonstrating self-respect and inculcating frugality. Rejecting any

assertion that temperance represented a "hopelessly reactionary" or "irra-

tional" effort to maintain an agrarian America, Tyrrell concludes per-

suasively: "If the experience of the antebellum period gives any guide, the

prohibition movement was not an 'historical detour' away from the

'development of the great economic issues,' as Professor Hofstadter would

have us believe, but a critical episode in the emergence of an industrial

society" (p. 63).

Most of these essays are well written. Regrettably, however, several of

the contributors do little to dispel the notion that those who quantify can-

not write. Their frequent reference in the text to such jargon as chi-squares,

coefficients of determination, and linear regression equations becomes

rather tedious. Nevertheless, Greenwood Press is to be commended for its

publication of this and other studies of the liquor issue. Anyone interested

in temperance should find this book uncommonly provocative.

Kentucky Historical Society                Thomas H. Appleton, Jr.

352                                               OHIO HISTORY

Merging Traditions-Jewish Life in Cleveland. A Contemporary Narrative

1945-1975. A Pictorial Record 1839-1975. By Sidney Z. Vincent and Judah

Rubinstein. (Cleveland: The Western Reserve Historical Society and The

Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1978. ix + 283p.; illustra-

tions, notes, note on photography. $10.00.)

Merging Traditions-Jewish Life in Cleveland combines the talents of

Sidney Vincent, who provided the "contemporary narrative" and Judah

Rubenstein, who gathered, organized, and captioned the rich and evocative

photographic collection which the book features. Vincent's analysis of the

Cleveland Jewish community since 1945 suggests that not only its expan-

sive economic growth but its impressive organizational structure, an in-

creasing involvement in communal, national, and international affairs, and

a strong commitment to Israel explain its success in terms of growing uni-

ty, social mobility, and the frequent placement of its members in leadership

roles.

The institutions of the community, all under the umbrella of the central

philanthropic organization, the Jewish Community Federation, flourished

as a result of the Federation's continued support, made possible by the

combined efforts of community members to raise and contribute funds and

allocate them to many and varied places of service. Descriptions of their

development, augmented by photographs, leads to a review of the Heights

Jewish Center, Montefiore Home for the Aged, the Jewish Family Service,

Mt. Sinai Hospital, various synagogues, and many other branches of this

vibrant community as they responded to changing societal demands. For

example: small landsmannschaft orthodox synagogues merged to form

larger, more viable ones, blurring the distinctions between various national

groups; congregations moved to new locations, reflecting the suburban

spread of Cleveland Jews, and emphasizing in their grand edifices the grow-

ing affluence and concern with the community status of their memberships.

Furthermore, Euclid Avenue Temple's victory in a fight to build in

Beachwood led to not only an influx of Jews into an area previously

restricted to them, but to the "most concentrated Jewish settlement of the

suburbs" (p. 18).

Cleveland Jews actively sought to form relationships with other religious

groups, to support Jewish education, to bring Jewish Studies courses to

local universities, to support cultural enterprises, and to help facilitate

racial integration of neighborhoods, particularly in Cleveland Heights. Vin-

cent summarizes the innovative and notable efforts of the Jewish Com-

munity Federation through its Cleveland Heights Project, begun in 1969.

Representatives of almost all Jewish institutions in the area, declaring that

they would not move out of Cleveland Heights as Blacks moved in, created

"an unprecedented event in communal history" (p. 22). Eventually, the

Cleveland Heights Congress, composed of a variety of racial, civic, and

religious groups, and dedicated to stabilization and integration, developed

from this project. This campaign not only benefitted Cleveland Heights,

but also served as a model for other communities throughout the nation,

Vincent asserts. However, the author also describes the ambiguous and

sometimes hostile relations between Cleveland Jews and Blacks, thus

avoiding a one-sided picture and giving insight into a complex issue.

Involvement in national and international concerns often overlapped, as

Book Reviews                                                 353

the Cleveland Jewish community expressed much concern for how the

United States responded to Israel and to Soviet Jewry. Leading figures in

Zionism, such as Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, who played a role in the

establishment of the State of Israel, Irving Kane, who served as chairman

of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Isabel Brown, elected to

the presidency of the International Council of Jewish Women, and many

others linked Cleveland Jews to world Jewry. Moreover, Vincent points out

that in working for common goals, Jews of the community ceased to divide

into denominational groups and often forgot class divisions, especially

since in recent years some of the most affluent leaders have been im-

migrants from Eastern Europe or grew up in the Jewish Orphan Home.

The community's monetary contributions to the State of Israel suggest

how powerful the concern this far-away nation has been in actualizing the

potentialities of the Jewish community. In 1974, following the Yom Kippur

War of October, 1973, the Cleveland Jewish Community Federation raised

$23,000,000. Many wealthy individuals established institutions in Israel,

and others headed and participated in groups actively working for the

welfare of Israel. Vincent cites the changing attitude toward the teaching of

Hebrew in public schools as one positive effect of Zionism. Also, concern for

Israel consistently typified Jewish youth (Cleveland and American) during

the past two decades. While it is not possible to judge to what extent the

unification of the community might have differed or what alternate roles

Jewish leaders active in Zionist activities might have chosen, Vincent

demonstrates that its existence brought together the ideas, concerns,

energies, and monies of many people.

Vincent and Rubinstein not only delineate the efforts and achievements

of individual Cleveland Jewish personalities, and assert that the stability of

the leadership has accounted in a large part for the success of the communi-

ty but also provide an overall picture of the total community. However,

when referring to these personalities and to events in Cleveland's history,

the reader misses having an index. Also, as oral interviews often lend a feel-

ing of "being there" as well as provide information otherwise unobtainable,

the authors might have included a few.

Nevertheless, the value of Vincent and Rubenstein's work is immense.

Like other communal studies, it offers the opportunity to see history

refracted through a particular group, perhaps leading to new insights and

perspectives. In addition, ways of studying the history of other Jewish

communities either emerge or are underscored by this work.

The Ohio State University                        Linda S. Raphael

The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party. By

John Allen Gable. (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978.

ix + 302; illustrations, notes and bibliographical references, index.

$15.00.)

John Allen Gable has filled a gap in the literature of the Progressive Era

with his history of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party. Years

ago George Mowry, in the preface to Theodore Roosevelt and the Pro-

354                                               OHIO HISTORY

gressive Movement, said he intended to write such a history, but it re-

mained for Gable to write the complementary study to Mowry's earlier

work and fulfill the intent with distinction. Whereas Mowry concentrated

on the events and persons which led to the formation of the party from 1909

to 1912, Gable concentrates on the fortunes of Theodore Roosevelt and the

men and women who joined him in the Progressive Party he inspired and

led from 1912 to 1916.

The book is an expanded version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation writ-

ten at Brown University. Presently Gable teaches at C.W. Post College of

Long Island University and is Executive Director of the Theodore

Roosevelt Association. However, this is in no sense an "official" study. To

be sure, he writes sympathetically but not uncritically, examining the ac-

tions of Roosevelt and his party according to their own stated values. For

example, Gable writes with candor about the decision to form a lily-white

party in the South. He examines the reasons for the decision and for its

failure both in terms of practical politics and ideology. He evaluates the

several explanations for the mix-up over the "lost anti-trust plank" in the

1912 platform and concludes that the resolution committee did approve the

plank with an anti-trust paragraph. He has incisively summarized the state

by state support for Roosevelt in 1911-1912, and he has analyzed in depth

the 1912 election returns. Gable presents a fresh account of the party's

organization after the 1912 election to provide for its continuation as a par-

tisan force, including the novel Progressive Service division dedicated to

educating the public on reform issues and assisting legislators and party

leaders in research and legislation. The Progressive Service, however,

became a source of schism by 1914 between those who favored social educa-

tion (Jane Addams, Donald Richberg) and those who stressed political

education (George Perkins and others). Faced with the practical necessities

of the party, Roosevelt favored Perkins and continued to support him as

chairman of the executive committee, despite the liability of his director-

ships in United States Steel and International Harvester. This split was

one of several issues to fracture the party and render it impotent in the

1914 elections. Gable points to the differences over prohibition, tariffs,

trusts, government ownership, and war and peace. He covers the 1914 cam-

paign and election not only in detail but also in the broad perspective of the

party's and Roosevelt's underlying assumptions and beliefs. More and

more after 1914, as is well known, Roosevelt turned his attention to

preparedness and the issues of the World War and won the party to the

cause of preparedness. The demise of the Progressive Party in 1916 with

Roosevelt's refusal to head the ticket is a familiar tale which Gable retells

well without any significant new detail.

Ohio Progressives did not contribute in a major way to the party,

although James R. Garfield, Roosevelt's one-time Secretary of the Interior,

was very active and ran for governor of Ohio in 1914 on the party ticket;

and Walter F. Brown, a prominent ex-Republican from Toledo, was a

member of the executive committee. The mix in Ohio, however, did not in-

clude leaders who had been in the forefront of reform causes. The attention

the Ohio Progressives receive from Gable is commensurate with these

facts.

The author has an easy, flowing style; he is analytical and does not refrain

from making his own judgments; he adds color to the narrative by lively

Book Reviews                                                 355

quotations and by inserting throughout the text political cartoons drawn in

an era rich in this form of art/commentary. There are photographs of the

principal Progressives. This is the best treatment of the subject and is

highly recommended to laymen and scholars alike

Kenyon College                                Hoyt Landon Warner

State of War: Michigan in World War II. By Alan Clive. (Ann Arbor: The

University of Michigan Press, 1979. xiii + 301p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliography, index. $15.00.)

A strong case can be made that Michigan was the single most significant

state to the successes of the United States and its allies in the Second

World War. Although New York got more in the way of total military con-

tract dollars, Michigan was the hub of the national production effort in

tanks, long-range bombers, heavy machinery, and much else. Containing

only 4 percent of the national population, Michigan received more than 10

percent of the $200 billion in military contracts let from 1940 to 1945. At

the end of 1944, one in every five persons living in the state worked in war

production. One of the hardest hit states in the Great Depression, Michigan

was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the war-borne industrial and

agricultural boom.

Accompanying that boom, though, were severe social dislocation, violent

racial conflict, and bitter labor-management disputes. If the war gave

Michiganders and Americans in general an experience of "cooperation

toward a common goal that made life seem more intense and purposeful" (p.

244), it also heightened old antagonisms and encouraged the growth of new

ones. As Clive says, Michigan encompassed everything characteristic of

mid-twentieth century America. By studying what the war meant for that

one state, Clive is able to illuminate the homefront way of life for the great

majority of Americans and also contribute much to an understanding of the

years since 1945.

Impressively researched, Clive's book is based mainly on local newspaper

coverage; on materials in the Michigan Historical Collections, the Detroit

Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, and record-group holdings in

the National Archives for federal agencies like the War Production Board

and the War Manpower Commission; on numerous published state and

federal reports and investigations; and on a large number of unpublished

master's theses and doctoral dissertations done especially at Wayne State

University and the University of Michigan. Besides offering chapters on

production mobilization, the industrial work force, the war's demographic

impact on Michigan's cities and towns, and the troubled reconversion to

peacetime production, Clive includes a strong treatment of race relations,

climaxing with the bloody Detroit riot in the summer of 1943. He also has a

poignant, all-too-short chapter on Appalachian migrant war workers and a

weak, routine chapter on women and youth. Together with a spirit of unity

and sacrifice, he repeatedly shows, the war brought strife and division,

greed and avarice. The change most Michiganders were willing to accept

was "necessitarian," tied to the immediate goal of winning the war, and had

little to do with far-reaching social reform.

356                                                 OHIO HISTORY

State of War is the first book of its kind: a full account of what the Second

World War did for and to a populous, economically critical, and socially

volatile state. In the thoroughness of his research, the sharpness of his

observations, and the crispness of his writing, Clive has established a model

for other scholars studying the war experience in other states. Ohio needs

the same kind of treatment of its wartime history.

Ohio University                                Charles C. Alexander

The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon: American Defense Policies in the 1970s.

By Lawrence J. Korb. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979,

xvii + 129p.; tables, illustrations, notes, bibliography, glossary, index.

$19.95.)

For most Americans, national defense policy remains essentially a vast

terra incognita, full of shadowy chimeras-MIRVs, Foxbats, and Tridents.

As detente becomes a memory, the intelligent layman needs a succinct

guide to the current military balance.

This brief volume, written essentially from secondary sources, fails to fill

the bill. True, Korb, a Professor of Management at the Naval War College

and the author of numerous works on defense issues, does reasonably well

at describing America's nuclear deterrent. For the most part also, Korb's

style is devoid of the jargon endemic to strategic studies.

But there are so many problems with this book. Some merely nag: the

misuse of such words as "series" (p. 123) and "unique" (p. 108). Some

sentences are puzzling: "Even Brown's severest detractors considered him

an 'anachronism.... ' " (p. 124). After giving high marks to Pentagon

leaders of the 1970s, Korb adds, "Doubtless, other men could have pro-

vided leadership that was as good or better" (p. 81). Who? How? Some

material, such as extensive biographical detail on James Forrestal and

Arthur Radford, seems out of place in a work supposedly devoted to the

1970s.

Significant items are missing altogether. Korb overlooks the neutron

bomb or the proposal for an inexpensive Great Lakes missile submarine as

an alternative to the MX boondoggle. He pays virtually no attention to the

forces wielded by America's allies; NATO is not even indexed. He con-

cludes that a Trident submarine costs 443 percent more than the Polaris

boat it replaces, but fails to note either the effects of inflation or the vast

differences in capability between the two craft. Similarly, Korb points to

the reduction in Air Force fighter interceptor squadrons from 1964 to 1974

without mentioning the concurrent decline in the Soviet bomber force.

Some of Korb's generalizations are seriously open to question. Did the

Pentagon "respond with Vietnamization" in 1969, or did Nixon? (p. 78.) Did

the murder of the Kent State students really "outrage the nation"? (p. 15.)

What is one to deduce from the statement: "Although it is difficult to make

a direct connection between the urban and campus violence and the war in

Vietnam, there is little doubt that they are related." (p. 15.) Was William

Westmoreland "the worst American battlefield leader since George

McLellan [sic]"? (p. 8.) How about Ambrose Burnside? Mark Clark? The

Book Reviews                                                 357

opening sentence in the first chapter is a gross oversimplification: "The

Allied military victory over the Axis powers . . . was made possible by

material and men furnished by the United States" (p. 3).

Indeed, Korb is at his worst when he draws on history. Errors abound.

Surigao Strait was by no means "the largest naval surface battle in

history" (p. 128); the 101st Division is neither "Air Cavalry" nor is it called

"Big Red One" (p. 11). MacArthur was not "dispatched" to Korea in 1950

(p. 3); he stayed in Japan as United Nations commander. The violence at

Watts and Berkeley took place in 1965, not in 1963, thus rendering invalid

Kolb's argument that the two prompted Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty

and Great Society (pp. 14-16). The Joint Chiefs did not force LBJ "to let

McNamara go"; the Texan was glad to be rid of a Doubting Thomas (p.

115).

Most distressing are errors on military strategy. Korb states that Rus-

sian aircraft could have attacked the Sixth Fleet in 1973 from Yugoslavia

(p. 149) and that Melvin Laird allowed the Air Force to build "a small

number" of replacements for the B-52 (p. 91). Korb implies that the primary

mission of the Navy's carriers is to strike at the Soviet Union (p. 11); their

job is sea control.

Korb concludes that the turnabout in the fortunes of the Pentagon in the

mid-1970s was primarily due to the leaders of the Defense Department,

"although the domestic and international environment played a significant

part" (p. xv). I contend he has it backward. In looking ahead, he forecasts

the main problems for the Defense Department in the 1980s as "meeting

the Soviet challenge, restraining the Congress, and straightening out the

military pay system" (p. 168). The third is so far removed in magnitude

from the first as to be a non sequitur; the second would call for a radical

restructuring of the American government.

Greenwood publishes an extensive list of military works. The press has

not added to its laurels here.

Austin Peay State University                     Malcolm Muir, Jr.

The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity. By Arthur

Mann. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979. xiii + 209p.;

notes, index. $12.95.)

In this compact and clearly-written essay, historian Arthur Mann grap-

ples with one of the most basic, yet elusive, subjects in American history -

the relationship between ethnic diversity and national unity.

Demonstrating a firm grasp of the literature on immigration and national

character, Mann argues that the way in which America achieved unity

amidst diversity made it unique among the nations of the world. He further

argues that the delicate balance between ethnic identities and national uni-

ty which has developed over two hundred years is worth maintaining.

Mann's essay is in part a response to the white-ethnic revival and the so-

called new pluralism that emerged during the social upheaval of the late

1960s and early 1970s. Revival leaders, like Michael Novak, portrayed

American society, past and present, as little more than a collection of dif-

358                                                 OHIO HISTORY

ferent and conflicting ethnic groups. According to Mann, ethnic revival

leaders and their spokesmen in the social sciences misread the American

past. They failed to take into account the ways in which Americans recon-

ciled ethnic diversity and national unity.

The Revolutionary generation of the eighteenth century did it by defining

the national identity in ideological terms. America, they said, was a new na-

tion composed of individuals of diverse backgrounds and nationalities who

shared a commitment to democracy, liberty, and the institutions of a free

society. Thus, almost anyone could become an American by simply embrac-

ing republican values. In conformity with its self-image, the United States

"became the first nation to decide, as a matter of national policy, that it

would be an immigrant-receiving country."

By the early decades of the twentieth century, however, the Revolu-

tionary generation's creed had come under attack. Mann summarizes the

history of the three most important theories that challenged that creed: the

melting pot concept and the idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy, both of which

sought a uniform American type and culture; and cultural pluralism, which

called for the creation of a commonwealth of ethnic groups. Mann also pro-

vides revealing biographical sketches of the leading proponents of these

theories, including Israel Zangwill, who coined the phrase "melting pot,"

and Horace Kallen, the father of cultural pluralism.

None of these theories, Mann concludes, accurately described the ethnic

experience in the United States. Advocates of the melting pot

underestimated the ethnic pull, while cultural pluralists overestimated it.

Rather, Mann argues, fluidity has characterized the ethnic experience in

America. Unlike other multiethnic nations, the United States allowed im-

migrants and their descendants to decide the extent to which they wanted

to identify with their ethnic backgrounds. And this is as it should be, Mann

contends. If the United States were either to institutionalize ethnic dif-

ferences, as cultural pluralists advocated, or to attempt to erase ethnic dif-

ferences, as proponents of the melting pot desired, America would cease to

be what it has become. Mann bolsters his argument by a revealing com-

parison between the United States and other multiethnic nations.

Mann takes issue with writers and historians who have equated the

history of immigration with intolerance. In doing so, however, he does not

minimize the hardships experienced by immigrants in America. Nor does he

ignore the numerous instances of racism, intolerance, and violence that

have scarred the past. But he does maintain that there is more to the story:

"Despite explosive tensions and immense difficulties and the nastiness of

human nature, America took in more people, and more different kinds of

people, than any other country."

Part history, part social criticism, and part prescription for the future,

The One and the Many is an important essay which illuminates various

facets of the American character. Historians and laymen will find it reward-

ing reading.

Madison, Wisconsin                                 Patrick J. Maney

Tending the Talking Wire: A Buck Soldier's View of Indian Country,

1863-1866. Edited by William E. Unrau. (Salt Lake City: University of

Book Reviews                                                  359

Utah Press, 1979. xiv + ³⁸²p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, indexes.

$20.00.)

The editor of Tending the Talking Wire has provided the reader with an

extensive illustration of one ordinary soldier's view of the army and the

west during the Civil War. Certainly for those who tend to perceive the

period only in terms of the internecine struggles in the eastern United

States, the volume offers a complete change.

The writer of the letters, Hervey Johnson, was a native of Highland coun-

ty, Ohio, who enlisted in the 11th regiment of Ohio Volunteer Cavalry on 11

July 1863. Fortunately for Johnson, this unit was recruited and led by per-

sons whom he knew, which would render the military service somewhat

more palatable to a young man of Quaker background. Since his regiment's

mission was guarding the transcontinental telegraph line against interrup-

tion either by Indians or Confederate raiders, such duty was likely to be

more attractive than the possibility of conscription into service as cannon

fodder for the eastern campaigns.

From a camp near Cincinnati, Johnson's unit marched westward to St.

Louis and thence to the Indian country. During fourteen months of

Johnson's time in the west, he was assigned to Fort Laramie. The other

twenty-one months were spent at three "stations" organized to guard the

telegraph - Deer Creek Station, Sweetwater Station, and Platte Bridge.

Throughout the nearly three years of his enlistment, Hervey Johnson wrote

home with regularity. Since he was a tenderfoot in a strange country, he

tended to note even the unlovely, such as a dead wolverine, since it was an

animal with which he was unfamiliar. Most of Johnson's letters detailed the

everyday incidents of camp life, with only occasional references to events

on a larger scale. Indeed when Johnson reported events elsewhere he was

often the victim of misinformation, a practice which the editor was careful

to correct in a number of explanatory footnotes. If one wishes to isolate an

overall theme, it may be found in the dreary monotony of camp life and the

routine of military duty during the day to day responsibilities of what was

little more than sentry duty extended over a period of time.

Some readers may be disappointed in Johnson's letters as a source for

viewing the Civil War army in the West "from the bottom up." Hervey

Johnson was a recorder of events which interested him, not a keen observer

of human nature. As the editor has maintained, however, the letters do pro-

vide insight into the viewpoint of an enlisted man as distinguished from

that of an officer or a more famous western traveler. Whether these letters

were sufficiently unique to justify a volume of 382 pages with a retail price

of $20.00 remains an unanswered question. The editor's careful work would

have been equally welcome in a representative selection of the letters

published in an appropriate scholarly journal. Those familiar with

manuscript depositories or published excerpts of soldier's letters from the

same period will doubtless find Johnson's comments quite similar to

enlistees in the eastern trenches. Certainly the writer's opinion of "shoulder

strap" men was not unique; enlisted men in both armies fighting east of the

Mississippi held an identical opinion. Whether the recruit was from North

or South, whether serving in the East or the West, he often concluded that

he was involved in a struggle best described as a rich man's war and a poor

man's fight.

360                                                   OHIO HISTORY

In sum, we have been provided a well-edited volume enhanced by ap-

propriate illustrations and the contemporary sketches of a soldier-artist

who belonged to Johnson's regiment. Hervey Johnson's messages to his

dear ones at home serve to underscore the commonalties of feelings shared

by young men at war, whatever the time or place.

Marietta College                              James H. O'Donnell III

Insurance Reform: Consumer Action in the Progressive Era By H. Roger

Grant. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1979. xi + 202p.; illustra-

tions, notes on sources, notes, index. $9.50 paper, $14.95 cloth.)

Anxious to delineate the nature of producer-oriented struggles, recent

historians of the Progressive era emphasize the rise of interest-group com-

binations in search of "the organizational society." H. Roger Grant,

Associate Professor of History at the University of Akron, hastens to re-

mind us that the roots of consumer advocacy in the areas of life and fire in-

surance reform sprang forth on the state level in the years 1885-1915.

Challenging Gabriel Kolko's concept of "political capitalism" and modify-

ing Robert Wiebe's theme of a modernizing "search for order," Grant

argues that "Insurance reformers ... blocked the life and fire enterprises

from replacing local reforms with less stringent federal ones" (pp. 165-166).

To document his thesis, Grant examines reforms in the leading states of

New York, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. He finds that after an

initial period of marketplace reforms in life and fire insurance from the mid-

nineteenth century to the early 1890s, consumers pressured for more fun-

damental reforms regarding such issues as policyholder abuses, corporate

financing, and insurance-industry lobbying. While life insurance reform oc-

curred earlier in time, fire insurance reform followed roughly the same

course. Reforms took place in two stages according to Grant. In the early

period, private carriers, consumers, and politicians combined to correct

marketplace abuses stemming from intense competition. In the later

period, a "new breed" of "insurgent" state insurance commissioners

(Chapter 6) led discontented consumers and sometimes private stock com-

panies within each state to bring about varying degrees of state govern-

mental regulation through pragmatic response to state conditions. Grant

details the snowballing of life insurance reforms after the revelations of

muckrakers and the New York State Armstrong investigation of

1905-1906. Fire insurance reform took more winding paths toward diverse

forms of state-made rating contingent upon consumer dissatisfaction with

earlier antitrust efforts.

Effectively employing as sources records of insurance companies, in-

surance trade journals, papers of state insurance departments, and selected

papers of state commissioners, Grant fends his way through the reform

politics of his five-state focus. The narrative manifests a strong grounding

in the vagaries of state politics especially in the consumer-oriented period of

reform as seen in the discussions of the Armstrong investigation and the

state-made rating reforms in fire insurance. Throughout the narrative,

Grant evinces a good balance between apt use of quotations blended with

stylish prose and a historical sense of dramatic situations.

Book Reviews                                                   361

Grant turns to the role of the state insurance department commissioners

in a key conceptual section to modify the work of the organizational

historians:

While it is true that certain consumer advocates, including these commissioners,

had by World War I sought a "bureaucratic" solution to the nagging problem of

soaring and frequently unfair fire costs (that is, having a department official or

board control rate practices), they were not attempting to establish order out of

chaos so much as they were seeking to obtain justice for policyholders (p. 133).

In fleshing out his thesis to encompass both life and fire insurance reform

movements, Grant argues in Chapter 6 that "old breed" commissioners

were often "highly political" as opposed to a "new breed" of "modernizers"

and "insurgents" (pp. 134-136). Modernizing commissioners "placed a

premium on economy, efficiency, and professionalism." Significantly for

Grant, the insurgents represented "the advanced brand of consumer-

sensitive crusaders." To reinforce this otherwise questionable interpretive

framework - which is not woven into the rest of the work - Grant provides

case studies of the distinctly new breed Kansas Superintendent of In-

surance, Webb McNall (1897-1899), and the more politically-interested head

of the Missouri Insurance Department, W.D. Vandiver (1905-1909).

In extending David P. Thelen's insights into the origins of reform in

Wisconsin in The New Citizenship (1972), Grant discovers cross-class sup-

port for consumer action. Like any historian of consumer reform, Grant

faces the problem of defining the consumer constituency. He never quite

solves this problem except through reference to policyholders' cost con-

sciousness or reform commissioners' concept of "the public interest." In his

discussion of life insurance reform, for example, Grant sets the mold for

consumer advocacy in much the way older historians interpreted municipal

reform - public exposure by muckrakers, public investigation, and passage

of reform legislation.

Grant focuses his research on the leading reform states which possibly

precludes elements of continuity implied in Wiebe's "search for order." In

the context of the later failure of insurance companies to gain federal

regulation, Grant justifiably disputes Kolko's findings in the insurance

field to point up the significance of the state-level reforms, but he goes too

far in proclaiming such reform "radical" (p. 165). In limiting his study to

the cutoff date of 1915, Grant overlooks the limited nature of consumer ac-

tion within the liberal reform tradition. This same period saw the rise of in-

terest on the state level in even more "radical" social insurance proposals

such as the model bills for workmen's compensation and state health in-

surance by the reformist American Association for Labor Legislation. In

placing his faith in the insurgent commissioners' representations of "the

public interest," Grant perhaps falls prey to the catechisms of the very

reformers under study.

For the most part, historians have overlooked Progressive reform in the

life and fire insurance fields. Insurance Reform presents a sophisticated

and challenging interpretation of this aspect of reform. In a stimulating

and well-researched work, Grant disputes Kolko's thesis, suggests that

some state commissioners entertained reform sympathies that were

consumer-oriented in nature, and gives second thoughts to reach beyond

362                                                OHIO HISTORY

Wiebe's bureaucratic ordering theme. We might benefit from further study

of the interaction of this variety of reform with the rising social insurance

movement in the states to further enliven the ongoing debate over the

nature of the Progressive crusade.

The Ohio State University                        Patrick D. Reagan

The United States and the Global Struggle for Minerals. By Alfred E.

Eckes, Jr. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. xi + 353p.; appen-

dices, notes, bibliography, index. $18.95.)

This carefully written survey of the role minerals have played in

American foreign policy since World War I calls our attention to the fact

that there are more dimensions to international affairs than the political

and ideological which have received so much attention over the past two

decades. One is reminded of the three blind men feeling and reporting upon

different parts of the same elephant. Eckes does not deny the other dimen-

sions; he simply focuses on the "uneven natural distribution of high quality

ore deposits and the inherent drive for power among nation-states," and

argues that "national competition for mineral resources underlay (more of)

twentieth century international relations than has heretofore been

acknowledged" (p. 258).

Eckes' research is impressive, with extensive work in governmental ar-

chives, collections of personal papers, and a host of official documents and

secondary works. But the value of his book lies more in the perspective that

he brings to bear than in dramatic revelations of heretofore unknown facts.

He argues, for example, that "had nature endowed Germany and Japan, the

two latecomers to industrialization and empire, an ample, diversified

resources base, it is doubtful that these two nations would have challenged

the Anglo-American global system so recklessly and desperately." The

point is particularly well taken in the case of Japan, whose drive for the

mineral resources of the Dutch East Indies was the final catalyst leading to

war with the United States.

Eckes also notes that public concern in America over impending short-

tages has tended to coincide with price fluctuations rather than real world

resource exhaustion, and this has created surges of interest in expanding

American access to foreign sources of supply. But taking the long view, he

points out that, at least until the 1970s, advanced technology and explora-

tion had continued to expand the world resource base, and in constant

dollars there had been "a continuous decline in resource prices for the entire

century" (p. 261). The change in the 1970s was increasing dependence on

supplies from former colonies of the West who demanded a larger share of

the return and, in many cases, suffered from chronic political instability.

This time, public concern may have more solid grounds, because "soaring

world demand, depletion of known deposits, a new militance among less

developed nations possessing rich materials resources, and the waning of

American influence all (have) eroded the old order. "So . . (has) . . the rise

of Soviet power, and its apparent aspirations to use materials as a pawn in

Book Reviews                                                 363

the struggle for world influence (in the Middle East and Africa) ... (The)

competition for raw materials (may be) more intense in the 1980s" (p. 265).

Of particular interest to this reviewer is Eckes' chapter on the 1952 study

of Truman's Materials Policy Commission, chaired by C.B.S. president

William S. Paley. The Paley Report foresaw scarcity, rising prices, and

dependency on foreign sources, and urged managed world inter-dependency

rather than unrealistic attempts to achieve national self-sufficiency. It

came under heavy attack from domestic mining interests,laizzez-faire en-

thusiasts, and ardent nationalists, and Congress chose not to act on its

recommendations. The arguments advanced on both sides, however, read

like prologue to the national debate of the late 1970s, and Eckes' thorough

documentation makes interesting material.

The one regret about this book is the fact that Eckes chose not to deal ex-

tensively with agricultural commodities and energy sources-including

petroleum and atomic power-because a "number of historians have probed

these themes, and several other books are in preparation." My own research

on petroleum policy suggests that its inclusion would have strongly rein-

forced rather than contradicted the themes which Eckes develops. Overall,

however, the book is a solid piece of work and a welcome addition to the

literature on American foreign policy.

University of Cincinnati                       Irvine H. Anderson

Kentucky: Decades of Discord 1865-1900. By Hambleton Tapp and James

C. Klotter. (Frankfort: The Kentucky Historical Society, 1977.

xvi + 553p.; illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, bibliographical

essay, index. $17.50.)

Several months ago, this reviewer had occasion to write a Kentucky

historian about that state's development during the early years of this cen-

tury. His reply, simply put, was: "Kentucky has no history after 1865." In

one sense, he is quite correct; pitifully little has been written about the

postbellum Commonwealth. This volume was prepared, in part, to correct

this void in Kentuckiana.

Kentucky: Decades of Discord is to be the third volume in a planned four-

volume history of the state sponsored by the Kentucky Historical Society.

Although primarily a political history, sandwiched throughout the volume

are several interesting and readable chapters on "The People," "Society

and Its Diversions," "Educating the People," "Agriculture and Industrial

Development" and "Literature and the Arts." The latter chapter on Ken-

tucky's numerous novelists, historians, journalists and artists is especially

informative and includes black and white reproductions of Frank

Daveneck's painting "Whistling Boy" and Paul Sawyier's "Old Capitol

Hotel."

It is Kentucky's political history which provides both the organizational

framework and the subtitle for this volume. The authors offer a wealth of in-

formation on each of the gubernatorial campaigns between 1865 and 1900.

For each election they summarize the events of the nominating conventions

and the major planks of parties' platforms. They also capsulize the

speeches of major campaign orators and report the issues discussed on the

364                                               OHIO HISTORY

stump. This provides a useful outline of the state's political history, but it

poses many more questions than it answers. For example, the authors

observe that, although Kentuckians were deeply divided over the issues of

the Civil War, the vast majority adhered to the Union. Indeed, the number

of volunteers enlisting in the Union Army was more than two and a half

times the number of those joining the Confederate forces (p. 11). Yet these

"more numerous and prominent Union men" failed to develop a strong

political party and the Rebel of Southern Rights faction of the Democratic

party dominated state politics. The authors report this phenomenon of im-

mediate postwar politics and describe it as "surprising" (p. 28) and even

"bizarre" (p. 11) but never attempt either analysis or explanation.

The Cincinnati Southern Railroad controversy is described as "one of the

most heated political and commercial controversies in Kentucky history"

(p. 54), but the narration is isolated from discussion of the elections of 1868

and 1870 and there is no analysis of the ways in which this issue altered or

modified the voting behavior of Bluegrass area Democrats. As Tapp and

Klotter move from election to election, there is a noticeable increase in

Republican support, culminating in the 1890s with the election of

Republican governors William Bradley (1895-1899) and William Taylor

(1899-1900). Although Taylor was forced to resign after the assassination of

his opponent, William Goebel, a gubernatorial two-party system had been

established for the twentieth century. Yet no effort is made to explain this

gradual growth of gubernatorial Republicanism during the Decades of

Discord

This critical weakness of the volume stems generally from two sources.

First, the authors view politics as events (platforms, candidates, speeches)

rather than as patterns of voting behavior. Second, and more importantly,

as a synthesis of already published studies and of newspaper sources, this

history can only mirror in many ways the lamentable lack of interest

displayed by scholars toward this most significant period in Kentucky's

past. Whatever may be the weaknesses of this volume, however, it at least

provides a framework for further study and an interim effort to fill a void in

historical knowledge.

Bowling Green State University                    David C. Roller

Urban Survival: The World of Working-Class Women. By Ruth Slidel.

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. vii + 180p.; notes, bibliography. $9.95.)

During the decade of the 1960s historians began to move beyond more

traditional concerns, such as the growth of institutions, the conduct of war

and diplomacy and the passage of laws, and focused on the less well-known

experiences of the poor, the working class, ethnic groups and women. By

extending the boundaries of historical research and by redefining the way

in which they viewed history, scholars uncovered fascinating material

about important but neglected aspects of the American experience. This

material has provided an entry into the lives of those who have left few

records of the type traditionally studied by historians. An important source

of this new information is oral history interviews.

Book Reviews                                                 365

Oral history has been a helpful tool in the search for information about

women's past. Ruth Sidel's Urban Survival, a collection of oral history in-

terviews, is one result of the search to learn more about women's ex-

periences in America. An empathetic listener, Sidel has collected eight in-

terviews-narratives marked by a unique mix of informant and inter-

viewer-that focus on the world of working class women in New York City.

Her interviewees, all of varied backgrounds, ages and occupations, share

with her, and us, information about their childhood, marriages and families,

their self-images, their view of the women's movement, their attitudes

toward work, and their struggle to survive in the inner-city environment.

Sidel's work is not heavily analytical. It is a source book rather than a

study. The interviews enrich our knowledge of women's past. For instance,

the interviews provide us with helpful information on the interrelationship

between the worlds of work and home. Traditional sources tend to stress

the separation of home and work as if they were two very different and non-

intersecting parts of life. Although this may be true for men, it certainly is

not for women. Sidel's interviewees eloquently confirm the tangled web of

domestic economy and the workplace.

Anyone interested in women's history will find Sidel's interviews rich

sources. The more "general reader" should find Urban Survival an in-

teresting excursion into one aspect of the American experience. "Neither

heroines nor victims," Sidel's interviewees can add to our understanding of

our past, present, and future.

College of Wooster                          Patricia Mooney Melvin

Gritty Cities: A Second Look at Allentown, Bethlehem, Bridgeport,

Hoboken, Lancaster, Norwich, Paterson, Reading, Trenton, Troy,

Waterbury, Wilmington. By Mary Proctor and Bill Matuszeski.

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978. ix + 276p.; illustrations,

source listing, selected readings. $9.95 paper, $17.50 cloth.)

Gritty Cities describes the built environment-the infrastructure-which

characterizes twelve medium-sized, eastern, industrial cities. After an in-

troductory discussion of the history and land-use patterns generally

displayed by their "gritty cities," authors Proctor and Matuszeski devote

separate chapters to each city, describing with prose and photographs the

historical and contemporary features of each one. Throughout their study,

they stress that while the old industrial functions no longer predominate,

each city can retain some degree of economic vitality by renovating and

reusing its old, industrial infrastructure. Rather than raising blighted

areas, each city should alter its land use patterns while keeping existing

structures intact. Such renewal projects include converting mill districts in-

to parks, historical sites, or shops, as well as refurbishing the downtown,

not to compete with suburban malls, but to appeal to different kinds of

shoppers (e.g., downtown office workers or tourists). Such an approach, the

authors argue, will make the gritty city both more liveable and commercial-

ly attractive.

Their positive approach is perhaps the most favorable quality of the

book. The text and photographs impart a sense that these gritty cities are

366                                                    OHIO HISTORY

much more attractive than the small town, "Do-people-really-live-in-

Hoboken?" jokes may suggest. As such, the authors emphasize visual ap-

peal. For them, infrastructure should be aesthetically interesting and eye-

catching, making the city a pleasurable place in which to live.

Unfortunately, gritty cities originated as centers of profit, not as places

of social well-being, and despite the optimistic tone of the book there is little

evidence to expect that any renovations currently in progress are anything

more than the same wine, poured into different casks. The authors do not

realize this point, in part because they have a naive sense of urban history

and in part because they ignore the relationship between infrastructure and

the urban society.

First of all, the gritty cities grew because local capitalists established cer-

tain infrastructural features to attract industry. Reading, Trenton,

Bethlehem, or Allentown did not merely locate next to a railroad or canal;

each town's businessmen employed boosterism to attract transportation

enterprise. The transportation infrastructure having been provided, each

settlement offered a fine business climate for iron and steel works, cement

factories, or textile mills. Transportation advantages did not happen seren-

dipitously but were imposed and encouraged by urban entrepreneurs who

helped build their city economies.

The point is that infrastructure served to generate profits for the mill

owners and to service the property interests of the local bourgeoisie.

Streets operated as corridors of movement for products and workers. The

row houses, which seem so attractive and quaint to authors, sufficed as

housing for the numerous, low paid mill hands, while profiting landlords

and realtors. The housing served the additional function of enforcing pro-

letarian dependence upon the factory owner, because without his wage, the

worker could not pay the rent and thus house his family.

If gritty city infrastructure served these economic and social functions in

the past, can one expect anything different in the present? The contem-

porary renovations are mainly elite-sponsored and benefit banking, real

estate, and commercial interests. There is little reason to believe that in-

dustrial workers whose jobs have moved elsewhere will have a better life in

a community where the economic base consists of tourism, retailing, and

real estate. Social well-being and aesthetic appeal may exist, as the authors

indicate, but mainly for the affluent, not for the poor and middle-income

workers.

Perhaps the most significant failing of the book is that it provides only a

superficial sense of what a "gritty city" is. It does not summarize the com-

mon architectural styles, land use patterns, transportation features,

economic functions, political characteristics, and historical backgrounds

which these cities share. The piecemeal, city-by-city approach provides in-

teresting details on each city, but it does not pull these various

characterizations together into some statement about the gritty city ex-

perience.

Gritty Cities is worthwhile, however. It explores an area which urban

scholars have too often ignored-the mid-sized, industrial city-and adds

legitimacy to the demand for further study in this territory. As Proctor and

Matuszeski assert, gritty cities have long been part of the American urban

scene, and their role in the United States requires more analysis.

The Ohio State University                        William D. Angel, Jr.

Book Reviews                                                   367

Truth in History. By Oscar Handlin. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of

Harvard University Press, 1979. ix + 437p.; notes, acknowledgements,

index. $17.50.)

The photograph on the dust jacket shows Oscar Handlin in what seems

to be in a cheerful and contented mood. The tone of the book, except for the

acknowledgements, is anything but genial. I would like to believe that the

picture represents Professor Handlin after completion of the book. Having

had his say about matters that concern him deeply, he can look back with a

sense of satisfaction on a career in which he has both demonstrated and

defended the value of history as objective inquiry.

Truth in History is the product of Handlin's reading, teaching, writing,

publishing, and editing over a period of almost half a century. Some of the

chapters have previously been published as essays and the initial draft of

some pages, Handlin tells us, go back to the start of his graduate studies in

1934. Beginning with two personal documents offering Handlin's reflec-

tions on the state of history and the historian's calling, and ending with his

statement of the use of history (" . . . The use of history is to learn from

the study of it and not to carry preconceived notions or external objectives

into it." p. 414), the bulk of the work examines trends, themes, and prob-

lems in the writing of history, particularly the use and misuse of historical

evidence. Some of the chapters, e.g. "Historical Criticism," are useful ex-

pansions of materials summarily presented in the 1954 edition of the Har-

vard Guide to American History. "An Instance of Criticism" recapitulates

Handlin's criticism of William Appleton Williams' Contours of American

History (1961) and examines critical response to Robert J. Maddox's

evaluation of revisionist historians in New Left and The Origins of the Cold

War (1973). In this key chapter Handlin maintains that while the revi-

sionists contempt for and abuse of evidence "put at question the very in-

tegrity of history as a doctrine" (p. 150), the timidity, complacent toleration

of "free-floating interpretations" and indifference to factual accuracy

displayed by non-revisionist historians made them scarcely less culpable.

Because of his deep love and reverence for history as a method of acquir-

ing and communicating "truth about the past," Handlin despises efforts to

make history serve the purpose of restructuring the American economy,

reshaping foreign policy, or any ideal other than factual accuracy. But in-

competence even more than corruption is his complaint about today's prac-

titioners of history. "The true crisis" of the profession, he says, lies not in

lack of jobs, students, or readers but in "erosion of basic skills, atrophy of

familiarity with the essential procedures, dissipation of the core fund of

knowledge .     . " (p. lx). A characteristic passage (occuring in what struck

me as a useful chapter entitled "How to Count a Number") asserts that at

present "the discipline of history is in disarray, . . . much of the work done

in it is shoddy, and . . . almost anything goes."

Ill-trained practioners are so often the victims of ignorance, faulty thinking,

nonsense from the softer social sciences, and propaganda, what difference does

mastery of the numbers make? Can we expect those to read algebraic equations in-

telligently who can scarcely catch the meaning in a page of English prose? (p. 225.)

In the chapter on "Ethnicity and the New History" Handlin dismisses

368                                                OHIO HISTORY

"Most of the vast published outpouring on blacks and slavery after 1965"

as "faulty in research, poor in expression, and, for interpretation, decked

out in the fashionable rags of the moment" (p. 395).

All historians and graduate students in history can learn a lot from the

book, although some readers will be antagonized by the author's irascibility

and contempt for those (nearly everybody) less learned than he. At a time

when it is fashionable to talk about "conceptual framework" and

"theoretical underpinning" and everyone is trying to find "meaning," it is

hard, but still necessary, to try to excite students about matters as prosaic

as getting the facts straight and making sure that evidence supports con-

clusions. Today, as always, humility is a trait historians should cultivate

because it is all too easy to confuse opinion with truth and to combine blind

conviction with sincere belief in the necessity for rigorous objectivity.

One of the authorities Handlin cites frequently and approvingly is

Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce is a good mentor for students of history

because he emphasized the importance of doubt and was a searcher for

rather than an expounder or guardian of truth. Toward the end of his life he

spoke of his "grateful avidity for truth not yet apprehended," and in an

essay saluting the nineteenth century's great men in science he defined

science as "a mode of life; not knowledge, but the devoted, well-considered

life pursuit of knowledge; devotion to truth-not 'devotion to truth as one

sees it,' for that is no devotion to truth at all, but only to party-no, far

from that, devotion to the truth that the man is not yet able to see but is

striving to obtain. ... " ("The Century's Great Men in Science" (1901) in

Values in a Universe of Change, Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce

(1839-1914), ed. by, Philip P. Wiener (Stanford, Calif., 1958), p. 268).

Ohio State University                           Robert H. Bremner

Bringing Up the Rear: A Memoir. By S.L.A. Marshall. Edited by Cate

Marshall. (San Rafael, California: Presidio Press, 1979. xiii + 310p.;

illustrations, index. $12.95.)

His full name was cumbersome so, almost inevitably, Samuel Lyman At-

wood Marshall became SLAM, a superb acronym for one of America's most

prolific military historians. Bringing Up the Rear, completed in manuscript

just before his death in 1977 and polished into publishable form by his

widow, is SLAM's last book. He wrote it because he had "led a more ex-

citing life than any American in my century" (p. xi) and had read no

biographical sketch accurately reflecting his career.

And what a career it was! Just a fraction of its highlights can be given

here. During WWI he was commissioned from the ranks at age seventeen,

the youngest soldier ever commissioned in the army. He was the only

American to have known combat in both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam.

Between wars he worked as a newspaperman for the El Paso Herald and

then The Detroit News. Soldiering and newspaper work alone could not

drain his tremendous energies, so he also wrote a multitude of books and ar-

ticles covering everything from the Indian Wars to Vietnam and from en-

tire global conflicts to small unit tactics.

Book Reviews                                               369

Many of his books emphasized the conduct and nature of the individual

man in battle because he believed victory or defeat invariably hinged on the

actions of a very few individuals on the fighting line. True national

strength, he asserted, resides in the hearts and spirits of men, not just in

material resources and industrial capacity. Consequently, his writings

display a warmly human touch often missing in military histories written

from the perspective of national policy and strategy.

It is not accidental that SLAM wrote with compassion and rare insight

about men in battle. As the army's chief military historian during WWII,

he devised a method of interrogating small units immediately after a battle,

a procedure he subsequently duplicated in Korea and Vietnam. His purpose

was to attain an accurate historical record and to remove the fog of battle at

the tactical level, thereby allowing the army to bolster morale and efficien-

cy. During the process he fell in love with the average American soldier.

His numerous battle books have a repetitive dramatic form which flows

from the very nature of battle, proceeding from a suspenseful buildup, to

the climax of combat, and to a brief anticlimax. But having studied many

battles carefully, by the time he wrote his memoir SLAM had "written too

much about combat and (was) tired of the subject" (p. xiii). Hence, he omit-

ted combat description which, unfortunately, deprives the book of the

dramatic impact which had become his hallmark.

Although his memoir is often rambling, it is always interesting for

several reasons. First, SLAM relates a treasure-trove of anecdotes, some

significant, others only amusing. As just one example, his account of the

liberation of Paris and Hemingway's role in it will force the reader to view

everything Papa wrote about the subject with a jaundiced eye. Secondly,

SLAM knew many great United States military leaders and gives his opin-

ions about them. While his assessments are always bluntly stated, they are

lamentably brief. Historians will regret that SLAM limited himself to only

thumbnail sketches. Finally, he spices the narrative with nuggets of prac-

tical advice and philosophical wisdom. "Resistance to the thing that has

never been tried before is human" (p. 153). "It is not given to mortals to

look east and west without turning" (p. 173). Similar one-liners abound.

SLAM stated that he "would like to be rated not by what I wrote but by

how I lived, for I wrote to live and not the other way around" (p. 303). It is

doubtful this request will be completely honored because he wrote too much

for his writings not to be the yardstick by which he is ultimately measured.

His memoir is particularly useful in demonstrating how the way he lived

shaped the way he wrote. Hopefully, some worthy historian will soon pro-

vide a biography integrating his remarkable life and works.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln               Peter Maslowski

1866: The Critical Year Revisited. By Patrick W. Riddleberger. (Carbon-

dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979. xiii + 287p.; illustrations,

appendix, notes, selected bibliography, index. $18.95.)

Since World War II, Reconstruction in the United States has received a

great deal of attention from revisionist historians. None, however, have

370                                                 OHIO HISTORY

stressed one chronological year as Howard K. Beale did in 1930. Using

Beale's title 1866: The Critical Year as a point of departure, Professor Rid-

dleberger (Southern Illinois: Edwardsville) emphasizes civil rights legisla-

tion in order to write "a clear narrative of national politics during 1866"

regarding reconstruction-restoration by developing "a historical synthesis

of Beale's work and . . . revisionist historians in the late 1950s and the

1960s." These include Eric McKitrick, Lawanda and John Cox, W.R. Brock

and Stanley Coben (p. xii).

A traditionalist, Riddleberger's narrative is to a large extent

historiographically descriptive. That is, he tells the familiar story of the

president's break with the Republicans after his vetoes of the first

Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill, and the passage of the

Fourteenth Amendment with reactions from "leading" Republicans and

Democrats, selected cabinet members, and Northern newspaper editors.

Unlike Beale (and some revisionists), he allocates blame for not developing

a workable policy to "all factions and parties" rather evenly (p. 18).

In a chapter entitled "The Meaning of the Amendment-For Contem-

poraries and Historians," the author refutes Beale's "conspiracy theory"

relative to its use as a bulwark of "big business" in the post-Reconstruction

period. Since the amendment was a compromise, he suggests that it would

not produce its intended results for a century. He also summarizes his

chapter on the two Southern riots with: "The riots in Memphis and New

Orleans demonstrated that debate over reconstruction in 1866 was not con-

fined to Washington" (p. 201). The ill-fated National Union party move-

ment, Johnson's "Swing Around the Circle" tour, and the mid-term election

are delineated.

"How Johnson Lost" is the title of the final chapter. Here Riddleberger

discusses the probability of "what if" (as Beale suggested) Johnson had

made the tariff a viable issue during the campaign. While accepting the fact

that revisionists have largely refuted Beale's "progressive" economic inter-

pretation, the author suggests that the president might have campaigned

on economic issues while, at the same time, advising the South to accept

the Fourteenth Amendment. However, he concludes that this would "have

been asking too much of him. ..." (p. 247).

Riddleberger's summary-type monograph presents little that is not

already known to specialists of the period. It is, in fact, a somewhat dated

example of what another scholar has termed "the new orthodoxy." The

author ignores the scholarship of the 1970s, especially the important works

of M.L. Benedict and J.H. Silbey. It is also surprising, to this reviewer, that

he does not mention D.H. Donald's The Politics of Reconstruction,

1863-1867 which was published in 1965. The political history of Reconstruc-

tion cannot be understood without some notion of the actual votes cast in

Congress and the state legislatures, who made up the factions on each issue

at the congressional and state levels, and what happened internally in all of

the states, both in the North and the South.

There are twenty excellent (but undated) portraits of politicians, editors

and generals. The end-notes constitute fifteen pages. There is a selected

bibliography and an index.

California State College, Pennsylvania            John Kent Folmar

Book Reviews                                               371

The Guns of Lattimer. By Michael Novak (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,

Publishers, 1978. xx + 276p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, index.

$10.95.)

On September 10, 1897, at Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, nineteen

unarmed, Slavic coal miners were murdered and thirty-nine others wounded

when a recently deputized American posse fired into a large, peaceful

demonstration in which the men were participating. The intention of their

demonstration was to call upon fellow miners in that village to join them in

a strike against the intolerable conditions (low pay, subemployment, high-

priced company stores, and dangerous working conditions) which plagued

miners, particularly the recently arrived foreigners, in the northeastern

Pennsylvania anthracite industry. Though most of the marchers on that

day were foreign-born, many were not citizens, and few spoke anything but

very halting English, their faith in American ideals and justice seems to

have been profound enough that they chose to have two large American

flags carried at the head of their procession. Yet justice was denied them in

death as it had been in life: in a trial six months later in which the results

had been pre-assured, a jury of the deputies' (not the miners') peers ex-

onerated all the members of the posse and the sheriff who had deputized

and led them

Though the massacre and the strikes which surrounded it were sensa-

tional national news at the time, and though both formed an important

chapter in the history of one of our oldest industrial unions, the United

Mine Workers, it is doubtful that either are known today outside the ranks

of some American labor historians. To retrieve the massacre from such

obscurity and to explore its varied meanings, Michael Novak, theologian,

social critic, and leading theorist of the "New Ethnicity," has written this

humane and moving, but rather perplexing book, which is intended more

for a popular than a scholarly audience.

The book's strengths and weaknesses are different sides of the same coin

-in both cases, products of its popular goals and the ideology of the "New

Ethnicity," which has been concerned, among other things, with sym-

pathetic evocation of the material suffering and cultural dislocation of

America's white immigrants and with the presumed similarity of white

ethnic and Black historical experience. Novak has chosen to combine, in

alternating chapters, a narrative history of the actual events in and around

Lattimer Mines and fictional sketches of the life of an imagined but not

atypical miner of that time and place, who marches in the procession on

that bloody September afternoon, faceless but fortunate enough to survive.

Novak's fictional miner is a young Slovak immigrant who hates the mines,

working only for the day he might return home with his savings. But he

witnesses the slaughter and vows to leave mining for the western Penn-

sylvania steel mills, ultimately taking with him the Irish bride he courts

amidst the terrible events of 1897. "Ben," as Novak calls him, is a sym-

pathetic character, often beautifully rendered. But because he actually has

such a small, incidental role in the historical events which form the rest of

the narrative, and is indeed a shy loner who is frightened by labor militance,

his story often appears to divert from, rather than illuminate, analysis of

the miners' political response to their desperate plight. In addition, the

book lacks the scholarly apparatus of footnotes, with their citations and oc-

372                                                 OHIO HISTORY

casional discursive essays on evidence and sources. As a consequence, when

Novak explores the states-of-mind of the actual historical actors, it is dif-

ficult for the reader to know whether Novak is involved in more fictional ex-

ploration or is deriving inferences from documentary or other evidence.

Just as puzzling is Novak's brief, confusing conclusion which states that

"racism" (against white Slavs?) and related cultural bias, both of which

somehow necessitated what he calls "ritual bloodshed," rather than class

exploitation and repression of working-class militance, provide the key for

explaining the events at Lattimer Mines.

These remarks aside, The Guns of Lattimer is a highly readable book,

written with feeling and intelligence. It may especially, I think, be used to

good effect in undergraduate history teaching, where its strengths will be

beneficial in deepening student sensitivities and its weaknesses instructive

of some of the problems of writing history.

State University of New York, Buffalo              David A. Gerber

The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History. By Gerda Lerner.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. xxxii + 217p.; notes, index.

$12.95.)

A new Gerda Lerner book is an event. In this collection of twelve essays

written between 1969 and 1977 (updated by footnotes added in 1979), she

not only justifies the study of Women's History as integral to understand-

ing the experiences of humankind, but she throws out a series of challenges

for seekers of new history: ask new questions, challenge the traditional

sources (search out new ones such as church records and minutes of

organizations), redefine categories and values (why, for instance, is there no

history of housework?), and create a paradigm shift. The latter is the

greatest challenge of all, requiring as it will a complete rejection of andocen-

tric history, a total revision of what history means, and a reordering of reali-

ty. That new reality springs from the recognition that the majority ex-

perience is not male - it is female. Because this is true, Dr. Lerner rejects

the traditional periodization of history; in doing so she makes a significant

and radical contribution to historical theory. She points out, for example,

that both the era of Jacksonian democracy and the Renaissance were times

of great advancement for men, but times of status regression for women.

Clearly, new patterns for organizing Women's History must be envisioned,

such as organization by female life stages, or by other categories such as

sexuality, role indoctrination and female consciousness. Until these new

patterns and redefinitions occur, women are, as she states, in a time of

prehistory.

Such keen analysis is threaded through these essays which range over a

variety of topics from historical theory to corrections in the history of

feminism to the presentation of "new" history. The most effective of the

latter is the essay which traces the political role of Black club women as in-

stitution builders and the excellent essay which explores the impact of the

antislavery women's petition activity on the antislavery movement. Both

of these are examples of history which has been traditionally ignored or

devalued. More than this, these essays have great resource value, for she

Book Reviews                                               373

locates collections of historical data and suggests a wealth of ideas for

future studies in Women's History.

This collection is important not only for theory building and the revela-

tion of new history, but as a record of Lerner's own personal growth as a

scholar and feminist. The book begins with "Autobiographical Notes," and

she uses footnotes throughout the essays to indicate her current thinking,

to modify and to correct earlier assumptions. In this way, she gives the

reader the privilege of viewing many of the landmarks on the journey to in-

tegrating the scholar and feminist sides of herself. "First, discovery -

then, synthesis" applies both to her personal life and to historical theory.

Thus the inclusion of personal experience and reflection adds a dimension of

human relevance to the scholarly theories posited. At the same time, it rein-

forces her perception that the study of Women's History may lead to a

recognition of a separate women's culture.

After writing so many positive comments, I almost hesitate to add some

negative ones. Much as this book offers, it is also to some extent a disap-

pointment. Inevitably, many of the facts are now outdated following the

abundance of new information and new interpretations that have emerged

in the last decade. And although the footnotes do serve to qualify, update

and modify, they are incomplete and the reader is left with many

unanswered questions. Are the materials on women's clubs still being ig-

nored by scholars, as was true seven years ago? Does Lerner still believe, as

she did in 1970, that women's status is not maintained, directly or indirect-

ly, by force? (Battered women and rape victims might suggest otherwise.)

In addition, there is too much overlap of materials and too much repetition

in the first four essays; indeed, the fourth essay is almost superfluous. And,

finally, having read too many of these essays before, I had to struggle with

a nagging sense of theory and philosophy "warmed over." Perhaps these

objections are endemic to collections such as these. Nevertheless, they

must be raised.

Despite these caveats, this is a rich collection of materials. They would

serve as a first-rate introduction to the study of Women's History. And if

there is some chaff remaining amongst the grain, that is a small price to pay

for such a provocative "woman-centered analysis."

Southwest State                                Judith A. Sturnick

Directory of Archives and Manuscripts Repositories in the United States.

Edited by Nancy Sahli. (Washington, D.C.; National Archives and

Records Service, 1978. 905p., index. $25.00.)

The first update to Philip M. Hamer's A Guide to Archives and

Manuscripts in the United States (1961), this latest reference work contains

full entries for 2,675 repositories in all states, the District of Columbia,

Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern

Marianas Trust Territory. These latest entry totals report on over twice as

many institutions as covered in Hamer's volume. Traditional manual

methods of compilation were dropped in the case of this publication in favor

of the computer and a number of information processing packages.

The Directory is the first of a series of publications aimed at providing in-

374                                               OHIO HISTORY

formation on historical source materials. Sponsored by the National

Historical Publications and Records Commission, the publication provides

acquisition statements which will prove of great benefit to archivists and

curators of historical materials. Each entry contains the following informa-

tion: name of institution, address, mailing address, and telephone number,

days and hours of service, user fees, general restrictions on access,

availability of copying facilities, acquisitions policy, volume of total

holdings of historical source materials, inclusive dates, a brief description

of record holdings and bibliographic references to the repository's listing in

various guides. With such basic information, the Directory should prove a

real boon to the academic researcher. Unfortunately, the publication is not

without flaw - for example, there is no entry information for the State Ar-

chives in Indiana, Iowa, Virginia or Georgia. Editors sent questionnaires to

these institutions who simply failed to reply. Perhaps it reflects negatively

upon those states, yet each possesses important source material worthy of

inclusion. The editors might have been more persistent in their acquisition

of data.

The Directory should become a standard reference work in every major

public and college library. It is a veritable first stop for any major research

into archival material in the United States. The vast number of institutions

covered by the publication necessarily limits the description of records

holdings. These very same detailed record holdings are of the greatest in-

terest to the researcher. Fortunately, the data base used in compilation is

capable of expansion to include all collections of record groups held by the

repositories listed.

Ohio Historical Society                          Frank R. Levstik

Guide to the Holdings of the American Jewish Archives. By James W.

Clasper and M. Carolyn Dellenbach. (Cincinnati: American Jewish

Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1979. xi +

211p.; appendix, index. $20.00.) Index to the American Jewish Archives,

Volumes I-XXIV. By Paul F. White. (Cincinnati: American Jewish

Archives, 1979. 435p.; index. $25.00.)

Historians, like other specialists, require tools for their trade, and they

take particular delight in those aids that enable them to locate materials

rapidly and efficiently. In 1979 the American Jewish Archives offered

Judaica scholars two such new tools, a guide to the archival holdings and an

index to the Archives' semi-annual publication.

Founded in 1947 in the wake of American Jewish heightened sensitivity

to its new position of prominence within world Jewry, the American Jewish

Archives has served since then as a repository for all types of information

relating to Jews in the Americas. The Guide to the Holdings of the

American Jewish Archives complements the very valuable, multi-volume

Manuscript Catalog of the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, 1971,

1978.) For, unlike the simply alphabetized Manuscript Catalog, the Guide

presents the holdings of the Archives in a unique organizational format,

subdivided into four areas by types of materials. The first two categories,

Manuscript Collections and Microfilms from Other Repositories, are most

Book Reviews                                                  375

useful, not only for the complete listing of the Archival holdings in these

areas of the Guide's cutoff date of June, 1978, but more importantly for

their internal subdivisions into Personal Papers, Local Organizations'

Records, listed alphabetically by city name, and National Organizations'

Records. The last two broad categories of materials, Theses, Dissertations,

and Essays and Special Files, are somewhat less satisfactory, for, because

of the magnitude of the papers in these areas, only selective lists of these

items appear. Therefore, the scholar seeking documents that might fall here

would still have to turn to the Manuscript Catalog to find out if the

American Jewish Archives has the material. Because of the richness of the

archival holdings and the limitations of presenting them in a single volume,

the Guide serves mostly as an introduction to the American Jewish Ar-

chives. Yet with its singular organizational scheme, rather than simply sup-

plementing the Manuscript Catalog, the Guide more appropriately com-

plements it.

The second publication, the Index to the American Jewish Archives, con-

solidates the individual indices to the journal for the years 1948-1972. This

invaluable work, a detailed index including even the briefest topical

references, certainly benefits the student who until now had to plod

through twenty-five separate indices for this period. I only wish that since

the consolidated Index did not appear until 1979 that more of the 1970s

volumes had been included.

In publishing these two valuable tools, the authors and the American

Jewish Archives have greatly facilitated American Jewish scholarly

research.

The Ohio State University                         Pamela S. Nadell