328 OHIO HISTORY
Book Reviews
A Cartoon History of United States
Foreign Policy: 1776-1976. By the
Editors of the Foreign Policy
Association. (New York: William Morrow
and Company, 1975. xi + 210p.;
illustrations, guide to sources, index.
Cloth, $7.95; paper, $3.95.)
The word "cartoon" in a title
immediately creates an impression that a
work is light, is designed to entertain,
and is not meant to be taken seriously,
which is certainly the case with this
book. It is not a complete history of
American foreign policy by any means.
Although the first cartoon dates back
to 1754, the early years of the republic
are glossed over very quickly. More
than half of the book is devoted to the
post-World War II era.
The cartoons themselves are entertaining
and informative, not only of the
history of the period, but of taste in
satire and of technique. A reader with an
intellectual interest in art will find
the collection worthy of study. Works of
such men as Thomas Nast, Rollin Kirby,
Daniel Fitzpatrick, Herbert
"Herblock" Block, Jay N.
"Ding" Darling (whose drawings I used to see in
the old New York Herald Tribune, but
which are attributed here to the Des
Moines Register), Bill Mauldin, and Pat Oliphant are represented. Even
cartoon strips such as "Pogo,"
"B.C.," "Small Society," and the "Wizard
of Id" put in brief and very funny
appearances. Unfortunately, a brief
running text is provided. It is so
unsatisfactory that I cannot believe that the
Foreign Policy Association could have
had anything to do with it. To say the
least, it is sloppily written. Whoever
was responsible commits most of the
errors that I do not permit my own
students to make in term papers, such as
referring to newly introduced
individuals merely by their last names without
any other introduction. I dislike such
contractions as "can't," "didn't," or
"wouldn't." What is done in
ordinary conversation is not necessarily proper
in written exposition. Also very annoying
is the use of such slangy expres-
sions as "name of the game"
(p.40), or "piece of the action" (p.43). This is
the kind of writing that puts freshmen
into remedial composition classes, or
ought to.
The book does not seem to have been
proofread with much care. At least
one line is omitted after line three on
page seventy-five, which renders the
passage gibberish. Such a mistake should
have been caught. On page one we
read a reference to the eight British
colonies rather than the customary
thirteen. On page seventy-three the
Sudetenland is placed in eastern
Czechoslovakia.
Much more serious is a statement on page
eighty to the effect that Franklin
Roosevelt was considering asking
Congress for a declaration of war before
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In
all the books I have read on the
subject, I have never seen such a charge
made. I am willing to acknowledge
that the distinguished editors of the
Foreign Policy Association undoubtedly
have a greater command of the sources
than I, but in the absence of any
references I could not check that
statement. Until the allegation is substan-
tiated I, for one, cannot accept it at
its face value.
The Foreign Policy Association has not
done itself credit to have allowed
this work to appear under its auspices.
Kent State University Harold Schwartz
Book Reviews
329
The Wealth of the American People: A
History of American Affluence. By
Oscar and Mary F. Handlin. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1975. vii + 266p.;
bibliography, index. $10.00.)
The Handlins' new work is best
summarized by their subtitle: "A History
of American Affluence." Or perhaps
"a short, selective history of American
affluence" would be more
appropriate. The authors devote twenty pages to
the colonial period, one hundred and
fifty to the nineteenth century, and
approximately seventy to the twentieth
century. The middle section,
unquestionably the best part of the
book, touches on most of the subjects
found in traditional accounts of the
nineteenth century economy-the role of
the state in the industrial revolution,
the emergence of the factory system, the
growth of the cotton kingdom, the farm
protest movement, and the rise of big
business. Though the Handlins introduce
little or no new information, their
style has the lyrical, almost poetic
quality that so impressed readers of
Boston's Immigrants and The Uprooted.
Unfortunately little else about the
volume is noteworthy. I searched in vain
for a thesis; if it exists the authors
have effectively disguised it. An
interpretation seems to emerge in the
chapters on the North and South before
the Civil War. According to the Handlins
the northern farmer was dynamic
and adventurous, the stereotype of
Turner's frontier hero; the southern
planter was backward, even reactionary,
because of his attachment to
slavery. "The whole context of
Southern life was uncongenial to enterprise
.... (p. 115)" Several chapters
later they imply support for the progressive
position in describing the iniquities of
big business and the problems of
society at the turn of the twentieth
century. However, no broader generaliza-
tions about the American economy or
American history emerge. At first I
suspected their purpose was to criticize
contemporary society, but their dis-
cussion of the twentieth century economy
is both brief and benign.
In short, neither the authors' purpose
nor their intended audience is clear.
The book is too short and sketchy to be
a textbook, yet it is not a work of
interpretation or synthesis either. The
Handlins and McGraw-Hill may have
some group of potential readers in mind,
but it probably does not include
professional historians or even informed
laymen. The scholar can safely
disregard their short history of
American affluence.
University of Akron Daniel
Nelson
Ships Beneath the Sea: A History of
Subs and Submersibles. By Robert F.
Burgess. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. x
+ 260p.; illustrations, bibliog-
raphy, appendix, index. $12.50.)
When we think of the history of
submarines, we often think immediately of
Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea and regard that early
work of science fiction as the harbinger
of the functional submarine. Yet, as
early as 333 B.C., according to legend,
Alexander the Great descended into
the sea in a barrel. In the sixteenth
century many diving bell experiments
were conducted, culminating in 1620 with
the successful operation of a
submarine boat on the Thames River near
London. From that time until the
publication of Verne's famous work in
1870, more than two dozen innovators
330 OHIO HISTORY
constructed submarines. Those built in
the nineteenth century of iron and
steel replaced those constructed of wood
and leather; likewise, during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries steam
engines, internal combustion
engines, and nuclear power plants
replaced the earlier use of the
human-powered crank. Twenty Thousand
Leagues under the Sea was not
based on a completely novel idea, then,
but drew upon imagination steeped in
contemporary technology. Nonetheless,
Verne's popular work fostered those
enthusiastic efforts which applied new
materials and power technologies to
submarine development and increased
modern man's ability to satisfy his
desire to explore the depths of the
undersea world.
Robert F. Burgess, a veteran journalist
of nautical literature, has written in
cliche-ridden prose a highly dramatic
and anecdotal series of chapters about
the adventures of some of these
well-known and not so well-known undersea
explorers. Beginning with Cornelius Van
Drebbel, a Dutch inventor who built
for King James I of England a small
underwater craft that plied the Thames,
Burgess selects a series of exciting and
mysterious undersea adventures and
portrays vividly the possible danger,
frustration, death, and triumphs which
faced the early pioneers. As he
approaches the mid-twentieth century, he
deals cursorily with Admiral Rickover's
determination to develop
nuclear-powered submarines and then
focuses on the deep sea explorations of
Jacques Piccard and Jacques-Yves
Cousteau and the cliff-hanging search for
the H-bomb lost off the southern coast
of Spain in 1966.
For the reader only casually interested
in the history of submarines and
looking for a series of easily
understood and exciting vignettes, this book is a
good introduction. The one hundred
plates and illustrations are well-selected
to heighten understanding and interest.
For the more serious reader,
however, the work does not address any
significant historical questions, nor
does it have any focus aside from
exciting adventure and drama. Without
compromising its popular approach, this
knowledgeable author could have
treated technical, social, political,
and military forces which fostered the
development of the submarine, and he
could have evaluated the impact of the
submarine on modern society, paying
particular attention to its military and
scientific significance. Unfortunately,
despite its factual accuracy, good
illustrations, and respectable index,
this book remains a derivative and
undocumented collection of popular
undersea adventure stories rather than a
substantive contribution to the history
of submarines.
Case Western Reserve University Reese V. Jenkins
Witness to Power. By Marquis Childs. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. x +
278p.; $9.95.)
In Witness to Power, the
distinguished journalist Marquis Childs reminisces
about his forty-year career that brought
him into close contact with many of
the world's politically powerful men. To
some degree, the memoir deals with
Childs' thoughts on the pursuit and
exercise of power and on the relationship
between the press and government
officials. But these important matters, on
which Childs is well qualified to speak,
are presented at a superficial level.
While his evaluations of various
political leaders are conventional, Childs has
provided scholars with many inside
stories, some never before revealed, that
add to our understanding of the
personalities, ambitions, and
Book Reviews
331
"off-the-record" thoughts of
the men who have shaped the destiny of
America and the world. He remains
skeptical of the ability of the press to
play an objective role; the journalist's
dependence upon politicians for
information and the link between social
events and business compromise the
position of the press.
In 1934, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch assigned
Childs to its Washington
bureau, where he quickly learned the
inherent problems of the
press-government relationship and the
journalist's opportunity to influence
political decisions. During the
controversy over Franklin Roosevelt's
"court-packing" proposal,
Childs served as an unofficial, trusted liaison
between Justice Louis Brandeis,
presumably acting on behalf of the entire
Court, and Senator Burton Wheeler, and
helped serve their mutual interest in
defeating the plan. As a result of his
relationship with Justice Harlan Stone,
Childs also wrote articles in 1937
quoting "sources close to the Court" as
opposed to Roosevelt's appointment of
Hugo Black on grounds of insufficient
judicial experience. While Roosevelt's
supporters roundly criticized Childs,
the reporter's rapport with Stone was
grievously impaired when another
reporter, in whom Childs had confided,
revealed that Stone had been the
source of Childs' article.
Childs seldom leaves doubts about his
impressions of political leaders. He
brings to life the politics of the
1930s, especially the Roosevelt rhetoric and
political acumen of the 1936 campaign,
which inspired Childs' famous
Harper's article "They Hate Roosevelt." While the
conservatives failed to
understand him, Roosevelt, the
traditionalist in mind and in action, sought
modest change to reduce economic
inequities. Discussing postwar leaders,
Childs regrets the failure of Adlai
Stevenson to gain the Presidency, but this
resulted, in part from his lacking the
"instinct for the jugular, the ultimate test
of the drive for power." The
Kennedy administration is seen as largely a
well-managed effort in public relations,
led by a President who had profound
doubt whether the promises of the New
Frontier could be translated into
political action. Childs is most
critical of the Johnson administration, in which
"ego betrayed intellect," and
of the Washington press of that era which gave
Johnson almost uniformly favorable
coverage-a prime example of the ability
of the imperial Presidency to manipulate
and deceive the press. Reviewing
the sorry state of more recent American
politics, Childs finds Gerald Ford
lacking in essential Presidential
qualities: "the times called for a Machiavelli,
a Franklin Roosevelt, a Keynes, and Ford
was none of these" (p. 260).
A longtime skeptic of the Cold War
diplomacy of the United States, Childs
reflects on the futility of
anti-communism as a sufficient basis of policy in
Europe and Asia. Cynical about the way
that modern communications have
rendered ambassadors ineffective as
policymakers, Childs finds in the
experience and outlook of three American
ambassadors to Moscow-Chip
Bohlen, Llewellyn Thompson, and Averell
Harriman-the tough realism,
wary of Russian motives but willing to
take steps toward accommodation, that
is essential to preserving American
interests while reducing tensions.
Although giving credit to Nixon for his
efforts to promote understanding with
China, Childs recalls his conversations
of the 1950s with Indian prime
minister Jawaharlal Nehru who spoke of
the growing Asian disenchantment
with the United States, a development
which would not be comprehended by
American leaders until the Vietnam
debacle.
332 OHIO HISTORY
Childs' memoir, filled with anecdotes if
somewhat thin in analysis, provides
some significant and provocative
glimpses into the recent past.
Bowling Green State University Gary R. Hess
John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat. By Kenton J. Clymer. (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1975.
ix + 314p.; notes, bibliography,
index. $15.00.)
John Clymer has produced a solid work of
respectable scholarship in which
he carefully analyzes the diplomatic
career and intellectual contributions of a
significant late nineteenth-century
political figure. John Hay was a man of
national prominence in several diverse
careers. He was born on the Indiana
frontier in 1838. His working-class
family arranged to provide their talented
son with an education at Brown
University that enabled him to become a man
of letters. During the Civil War he
served as an assistant secretary to Presi-
dent Lincoln. Hay utilized his wartime
experiences and contacts throughout
the next four decades, as a journalist
with the New York Tribune, Republican
Party spokesman, diplomat, writer and
businessman. His education and liter-
ary skill, combined with a marriage to
the daughter of the wealthy Cleveland
industrialist Amosa Stone, made it
possible for Hay to move in leading circles
where he could pursue his varied
interests.
The focus of Clymer's study in the early
chapters is the development of
Hay's thinking and his relationship with
contemporary intellectuals. Clymer
correctly portrays Hay as an unabashed
social and intellectual snob who al-
lied himself with the powerful and
successful forces of his era and de-
monstrated complete contempt for the
unwashed masses from which he had
managed to escape as a youth. Particular
attention is given to The Bread
Winners, Hay's bad but widely read novel which ridiculed the
working clas-
ses, immigrants and labor organizers.
Clymer demonstrates how Hay's social
views carried over to his foreign
policy, where he found himself in agreement
with those who believed in an
Anglo-Saxon concept of world mission.
As there is little background or introductory
material provided for the gen-
eral reader, a familiarity with the
diplomacy of the era is essential to ap-
preciate Clymer's treatment of Hay's
diplomatic policies. By detailing Hay's
involvement and activities in such
important affairs as the Boxer Rebellion,
Open Door Notes, Philippine rebellion,
Hay-Pauncefoot Treaty, and the
Alaskan Boundary Question, Clymer's
study should prove to be especially
useful for the student of American
foreign policy. There is also a sophisti-
cated chapter on the relationship
between Hay and Theodore Roosevelt
which adds considerably to the
assessment presented in Tyler Dennett's biog-
raphy John Hay: From Poetry to
Politics (1933), which mistakenly pro-
claimed Hay a mere figurehead during his
final years in the State Department.
Overall, Clymer's evaluation of his
subject is responsible and well
documented; however, he appears to
underestimate the poetic and genteel
Hay's capacity for a political fight, at
one point describing him as a Secretary
of State whose "backbone resembled
a chocolate eclair" (p.131).
Those interested in Ohio history will be
disappointed that the author fails to
give significant attention to Hay's long
residence in Cleveland where he and
his bride, Clara Louise Stone, lived in
a stylish mansion on Euclid Avenue.
Book Reviews
333
No new information is provided on Hay's
entrepreneural and civic en-
deavors, which included assumption of
the presidency of the Lake Shore
Line upon his father-in-law's suicide,
membership on the Board of Trustees
of Western Reserve University, and
varied associations with leading Republi-
can political figures in Ohio from the
presidencies of Hayes to McKinley.
Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Michael J. Devine
Advisory Commission
William Howard Taft and United States
Foreign Policy: The Apprenticeship
Years, 1900-1908. By Ralph Eldin Minger. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1975. xii + 241p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $9.50.)
In the early 1960s Ralph Eldin Minger
published five articles, drawn from
his 1958 dissertation, on William Howard
Taft's apprenticeship in foreign pol-
icy and diplomatic adventures before he
became President. A decade later
Minger added an essay on Taft's
appointment to head the Second Philippine
Commission in 1900. Now these six
pieces, with the addition of a chapter on
Taft and China, and a chapter of summary
and conclusions, have been
brought together in a compact volume. To
the already-published portions,
Minger has added some connecting
material, but the bulk of these essays
simply reprint what has earlier
appeared. While it is convenient to have
Minger's work available in book form,
the resulting study adds very little to
what he has already disclosed about
Taft's contributions to the foreign policy
of the McKinley and Roosevelt
administrations.
Using the Taft papers and a few other
manuscript collections, Minger out-
lines McKinley's selection of Taft to go
to the Philippines, discusses Taft's
creditable performance in the islands,
and then reviews his subject's work in
Panama, Cuba, and the Far East for
Theodore Roosevelt. "To the Presidency
of the United States," Minger
concludes, Taft brought "a coherent set of
ideas" on foreign relations, and
"was unusually well-prepared for the prob-
lems which would face him" (vii).
Like other recent students of Taft, Minger
finds his man to be a more competent and complex figure
than the literature
on his White House years has suggested.
In administrative positions with
clear policies to implement, Taft's
ability to sort out relevant details and to
pursue agreed-upon goals made him a
valuable Cabinet officer. Minger does
not speculate on why so solid a record
and so thorough a preparation did not
bring more success to Taft's presidency,
but there is surely some insight in
Roosevelt's admittedly biased opinion
that his hand-picked choice was only
"a good first lieutenant."
Because he relies so heavily on Taft's
own letters and point of view. Ming-
er's book comes across as a more
documented and scholarly version of the
foreign policy sections in the first
volume of Henry Pringle's standard biog-
raphy. The bibliography is extensive but
lists only two books and an article
by Minger written after 1970. The
articles of Stanley Solvick on Taft should
have been consulted, and there are
manuscripts at the Library of Congress
and other repositories that would have
been relevant to the author's research.
At times it appears that Minger was
struggling to flesh out his slim manu-
script. Taft's brothers are twice
described in identical language (pp. 7-9, 183-
85), and the reader also learns on two
occasions of the influence of Thomas
334 OHIO HISTORY
F. Millard on Taft's China policy (pp.
168-69, 208-09). There are other repeti-
tions throughout the text and footnotes.
William Howard Taft merits a care-
ful, comprehensive biography in the vein
of what James T. Patterson did for
the President's son, Robert. To that
enterprise, and to students of Taft's
pre-presidential career, Minger's book
makes a useful, but modest, contribu-
tion.
University of Texas at Austin Lewis L. Gould
Downriver: Orrin H. Ingram and The
Empire Lumber Company. By Charles
E. Twining. (Madison: The State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1975. ix
+ 309p.; illustrations, notes, appendix,
bibliography. $17.50.)
A young man from the East comes to the
West armed with experience and
savings earned from employment in a mill
or factory, takes up a venture in
manufacturing, and achieves business and
personal success. Such briefly vig-
netted was the course thousands of young
men followed in nineteenth-century
America. Among them was Orrin H. Ingram,
whose entrepreneurship in the
lumbering industry of Wisconsin is the
subject of this excellent book by
Charles E. Twining.
Born in Massachusetts in 1830, Ingram
early was successfully operating
and designing sawmills as an employee of
firms in New York and Ontario.
Determined to "strike out on his
own," he looked to opportunities in lumber-
ing in the West and along with two
partners, Alexander Dole and Donald
Kennedy, opened a sawmill in Eau Claire,
Wisconsin in 1857. Eau Claire,
well located for acquiring sawlogs from
the pineries of the Chippewa Valley,
became the center of the partners'
production of lumber for a widening mar-
ket moving up and down the Mississippi
River and west into the prairie.
From the outset, Ingram was the leading
partner in dealing with a sequence
of problems confronting the firm: the
efficient production of quality lumber in
the 1860s; the development of
wholesaling yards in the 1870s; and the pro-
curement of sawlogs in the 1880s. He
faced, in the process, depressions,
natural disasters, and changing
conditions in technology and transportation.
To a greater or lesser degree, he
surmounted these problems. But he could
not sustain sawmilling at Eau Claire
through the prolonged depression of the
1890s; and though his company continued
operations at other points, he be-
came increasingly less involved in its
management after 1898 and more given
to dallying in investments in disparate
undertakings-orange groves in Flor-
ida, a rice plantation in Texas, and a
copper mine in Arizona.
Ingram did not achieve dominance in his
firm and success in the market-
place acting independently of partners
and competitors. Out of a complex
web of competition, he worked closely
with his partners, for example, in
reorganizing his firm in 1881 as the
Empire Lumber Company. That same
year he entered into a pool with
Frederick Weyerhaeuser and Mississippi mill
men, with whom he had been contesting
for access to sawlogs, for control of
pine lands in the Chippewa Valley.
Particularly at such points, Twining effec-
tively details the give-and-take among
Ingram and his associates. He portrays
him as an essential entrepreneur, an
optimistic risk-taker moving around the
pessimism and obstructionism of his vice
president, Colonel Dan Dulaney.
Ironically, in the chapter
"Weyerhaeuser," far from writing about
Book Reviews
335
Weyerhaeuser, the author vividly limns
Ingram personally overseeing logging
work as a means of protecting his
interests against the lumber baron.
Relying on Ingram's business records and
correspondence as his fundamen-
tal source, Twining tells the story of
Ingram and his work from the viewpoint
of a perceptive "insider."
From this vantage point, he gives definition to
Ingram in his business philosophy of
"eternal confidence" and reveals his
personality. Twining's economic
analysis, usually resting on a straightforward
use of supply and demand factors, is
sound. And his writing is good-even
spirited on occasion-though slightly
marred by some stylistic oddities in
punctuation.
Perhaps, though, there are a few
weaknesses in the study. Twining might
have profitably used the original
returns of population and manufacturing for
1860, 1870, and 1880 for following the
growth and composition of Ingram's
work force. Moreover, he accords scant
attention to the relationship between
the company and its workers. He could
also have read the returns of man-
ufacturing (though admittedly they are
sometimes quite inaccurate) for con-
structing various indices of production
of the company. After taking up the
questions of labor and production, he
could have examined the related ques-
tion of the economic meaning of Ingram's
firm for Eau Claire: was it a city-
forming firm that by its exports drew
generative income to the community?
Did sawmilling give rise to
"spin-off " production in Eau Claire? Did it create
new thresholds of local demand that
sponsored new local manufacturing? Had
he taken up these or similar questions,
obviously Twining might have written a
somewhat different but perhaps stronger
study.
Notwithstanding criticisms here, Downriver
is a solid contribution to the
relatively sparse fund of literature on
the history of lumbering in the United
States. It is at once a scholarly and
interesting piece of work; and it de-
monstrates that conventional business
history has great merit.
Wright State University Carl M. Becker
American Classic. By Laurence Lafore. (Iowa City: Iowa State Historial
De-
partment, 1975. 96p.; illustrations.
Cloth, $5.95; paperback, $3.95.)
At Home in Early Sandusky. By Helen M. Hansen. (Sandusky: Sandusky
Library Association, 1975. iii + 101p.;
illustrations, index. $5.50.)
Laurence Lafore and Helen M. Hansen are
leaders in local historic preser-
vation work in their respective
midwestern communities of Iowa City (pop.
47,744) and Sandusky, Ohio (pop.
32,074). Each of them has produced a
pleasing collection of photographs and
commentaries which documents sig-
nificant surviving public and private
buildings in a particular town. In each
case the result is a large-format
pictorial history of approximately one
hundred pages which will delight local
history and architectural enthusiasts
alike.
Lafore, who is chairman of the History
Department at the University of
Iowa, is best known for his earlier
novels and his studies on the origins of
World Wars I and II. But he is also a
gifted professional photographer who
serves as chairman of the Architectural
Heritage Committee of Iowa City's
Project Green.
In American Classic he provides
readers with an architectural tour of Iowa
336 OHIO HISTORY
City, the first capital of the state,
through the eye of his camera, and gives
interpretive insights. Throughout his
work, Lafore insists that the buildings of
a town, as much as any single factor,
reveal the community's character and
personality. He sees buildings as
culture documents, and relates them to their
era, noting fluctuations in style and
taste. He presents the architecture of
Iowa City as a representative album of
America, and a reliable index to its
social and intellectual history.
Although his text requires some knowledge of
architectural history beforehand, all
readers will appreciate his fine style and
the pictorial quality of his work.
Following a chronological pattern, he discus-
ses a large number of buildings ranging
in style from the Greek and Gothic
Revival to the Victorian and modern
functional mode.
Helen Hansen has written quite a
different kind of book. Hers is more
family and community history, told in
terms of Sandusky's famous residential
and commercial architecture. Initially
published by the Sandusky Register in
the 1950s as a series on "Stately
Old Homes," her articles are now updated
and reprinted in paperback form. The
illustrations are plentiful but quite small
compared to the Lafore book. Hansen's
volume is a Bicentennial project as
well as a fund-raising effort in behalf
of a historic house museum. Besides the
original thirty-nine articles, the
author has appended thirty-one briefer
supplementary sketches compiled during
the last twenty years.
While not intended to be an interpretive
history, the work is based upon
primary source materials: personal
correspondence, interviews, records,
books and old newspapers. It is
obviously a labor of love, and a valuable
compendium of factual details and
photographs concerning the families and
homes of Old Sandusky. A very good
index, listing both persons and build-
ings, is included.
Outstanding among the homes described is
the Oran Follett House, a Greek
Revival dwelling constructed of stone, a
rather unusual building material for
the Western Reserve area during the
1830s. This is the property the Sandusky
Library Association hopes to establish
as a museum. Besides private homes,
the author also discusses important
Sandusky churches, hotels, schools, and
row houses.
Professionals will prefer the Lafore
volume; amateurs will choose Hansen.
Heidelberg College Kenneth
Davison
From the Diaries of Felix
Frankfurter: With a Biographical Essay and Notes. By
Joseph P. Lash. (New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, 1975. xiii + 366p.;
notes, index. $12.50.)
Reproducing his remarks at a Supreme
Court conference and referring to
his foreign birth, Justice Felix
Frankfurter in a diary entry of March 1943
wrote, "It is well known that a
convert is more zealous than one born to the
faith. ... As one who has no ties with
any formal religion, perhaps the feel-
ings that underlie religious forms for
me run into intensification of my feelings
about American citizenship." In his
biographical essay which precedes the
Diaries, Joseph Lash tells us that the law professor on the
Supreme Court
never "quite . . . reconciled two
sets of views" relative to the Court's role
and function. One was Marshall's rubric,
"We must never forget that it is a
constitution we are expounding . . . intended to endure for ages to
come, and
Book Reviews
337
consequently, to be adapted to the
various crises of human affairs ..." The
other was the theme of judicial
restraint, the need to transcend personal pre-
dilection, lest the Court become a
"super-legislature."
Given his sincere but simple patriotism,
it may be pertinent to ask whether
Frankfurter was able to neutralize
background and biases, or whether-to use
Mr. Lash's phrase in a different
context-he "may . . . have found carrying
the doctrine of restraint to Olympian
extremes congenial for more than judi-
cial reasons." Certainly patriotism
often coincided with restraint, and judicial
abstinence predominated over the primacy
of the Bill of Rights. National un-
ity, wrote Frankfurter in Minersville
v. Gobitis, was a value "inferior to
none," and in the name of first
Country and then God, despite the terrors of
damnation, children could be coerced
into saluting the flag. National
emergency in Korematsu v. United
States and the presumed nexus between
racial affinity and the threat of
sabotage and espionage rationalized the exclu-
sion and subsequent internment of
119,000 Japanese-Americans and resident
aliens in the relocation centers of the
Second World War. National security
and restraint combined in the Smith Act
case, Dennis v. United States, where
Frankfurter found that Congress had
decided that the "danger created by
advocacy of overthrow justifies the
ensuing restriction of freedom of
speech." The doctrines of
self-abnegation and separation of powers pre-
vented Frankfurter from entering the
"political thicket" of Congressional and
state legislative malapportionment, and
(despite Lash's claim that he was
sensitized to Fourth Amendment
guarantees), he refused in Wolfv. Colorado
to extend the exclusionary rule to the
states.
In all but Gobitis, Frankfurter
clashed with one or more of the three breth-
ren he characterized as the
"Axis" or with their satellite, Justice Wiley Rut-
ledge. His deep dislike, even hatred for
Justices Black and Douglas, his con-
tempt for Justices Murphy and Rutledge,
scar the Diaries with a meanness of
spirit. Lash attributes the quarrel to
the apostacy of the "Axis" in the flag-
salute controversy and to a lack of
deference to Frankfurter's judicial leader-
ship. But mere differences in opinion,
temperament or legal doctrines do not
fully explain the calumny of the Diaries.
April 19, 1943, Black is at "his
worst, violent, vehement . . .
reckless." Presidential ambition animates and
corrupts Justice Douglas: "Except
where he knows or suspects that people
are on to him, he is the most systematic
exploiter of flattery, I have ever
encountered in my life"; both he
and Black not only can be "malignant . . .
but are." Wiley Rutledge has
forgotten "that he is not God," and Frank
Murphy "makes a characteristic
harangue, full of sophomoric rhetoric tasting
like rancid butter." Murphy's
concurring opinion in the Alien Land Law case
of 1948, Oyama v. California, is
depicted as a "long winded soap-box attack
against racism . . . practically lifted
from two articles . . . in the California
Law Review." That here and in his trenchant dissent in Korematsu,
Mur-
phy's "soap-box" oratory
revealed the ugly sores of race prejudice did not
seem to have concerned his critical
colleague or to have impressed him.
In his biographical essay Joseph Lash is
ambivalent about Frankfurter's
judicial record. He generally accepts
the self-portrait as confidant and adviser
of such men as Stimson, Roosevelt, and
Atcheson. But Frankfurter, according
to Lash, was not the legitimate heir of
Holmes and Brandeis; his equation of
civil liberties and property rights
"uncoupled him from the locomotive of his-
tory . . . and separated him from the
most innovative members of the Court."
At the same time Lash refers to a 1970
survey of law school deans and pro-
fessors which placed Frankfurter among
the eleven greatest justices in the
338 OHIO HISTORY
Supreme Court's history. That verdict, I
suspect, may yet be subject to a
rehearing.
University of Cincinnati David L. Sterling
Uncle Sam's Farmers: The New Deal
Communities in the Lower Mississippi
Valley. By Donald Holley. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1975. xv +
312p.: notes, appendix, bibliography,
index. $14.50.)
Professor Holley's manuscript received
an award from the Agricultural
History Society in 1970. The reasons for
this accolade are amply de-
monstrated in the volume he has
produced. It is one of the most important
books on the New Deal's agricultural
program, and on the New Deal, in re-
cent years.
The study is focused, as the sub-title
indicates, on the New Deal agricul-
tural communities established in the
Lower Mississippi Valley. This means
the developments in Arkansas, Louisiana
and Mississippi. In a table following
page 283 the author lists the projects,
sixteen in Arkansas, four in Louisiana
and ten in Mississippi, with some
revealing statistics. Almost 200,000 acres
were involved and 2738 families. The
cost figures cited, $18,810,872.23 total
and $5,129.24 the average cost to each
family, also were substantial, though
they seem less impressive in the
inflationary society of the 1970s.
The bulk of the book is devoted to
studies of each community: the differ-
ences between or variety of these
communities, the social philosophies that
developed the programs, and something
about the kind of people who ad-
ministered them, especially at the local
or project level. In general outline,
there is little that is new in the book.
There were agricultural projects of a
community nature established during the
New Deal; there were problems of
finding satisfactory applicants to
develop the projects; the projects had uncer-
tain success during the 1930s; they were
phased out during World War II.
The results of these New Deal farm
programs are interpreted sympathet-
ically. In the last two chapters of the
book the author points out the very
considerable accomplishments of the
programs. More importantly he mea-
sures them against the criticisms of
their time and of the post-New Deal
period, and gives persuasive and
effective explanations of the reasons for the
programs and the impact they had both at
the time and afterward.
For this reviewer a more extended
discussion of the impact of the programs
on the area beyond or after the closing
down of the communities during
World War II would make the book even
more useful. Also, more discussion
of comparative factors between these
social experiments and currently de-
veloping interest in cooperative and
communal agricultural communities
would have been appreciated. But these
may be other books. The one Profes-
sor Holley has written is a substantial
contribution to the history of New Deal
agriculture, and one that anyone
interested in the New Deal and the twentieth
century should read. It has applications
and value far beyond the interests of
the specialist in agricultural history.
University of Cincinnati W. D. Aeschbacher
Book Reviews
339
Uncertain Friendship: American-French
Relations Through the Cold War. By
Marvin R. Zahniser (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1975. xi + 314p.;
notes, bibliography, index. Paper,
$7.95; hardcover, $11.95.)
In recent times scholars have made so
many significant contributions to our
knowledge and understanding of
American-French relations that a synthesis
of these studies has become desirable.
In his Uncertain Friendship Zahniser
traces these relations from colonial
times through the Cold War, devoting one
third of his book to the period up to
the end of the era of the French Revolu-
tion, another third up to the outbreak
of the First World War, and the final
part to a discussion of diplomatic
questions since then.
The author's superb grasp of the
functional aspects of diplomacy enlightens
the reader as much as his basic account
of rather strained political relations
between the two countries. At great
moments in world history, such as the
struggle for American independence and
France's life-and-death struggle in
World War I, the United States and
France cooperated in defense of common
national interests. At other times, when
their interests clashed, as, for exam-
ple, in the course of the French
Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon's Mexican
adventure, or General de Gaulle's
insistence on excessively nationalistic ob-
jectives, the leaders of the two countries went to
disappointing lengths to
assert their freedom of action.
Nevertheless, as Zahniser demonstrates, in the
perspective of history both powers
avoided wars against each other, evidently
understanding the value of cooperation
and balance of power in their common
struggle against British domination in
the nineteenth and German aggression
in the twentieth century.
As a Latin country, France resented the
attempt of the United States, in
the name of the Monroe Doctrine, to
establish its hegemony in Latin Ameri-
ca. And as much as this policy
threatened to upset the balance of power in
the western hemisphere, America's
republican ambitions were also seen as a
threat that gave French monarchists
considerable concern. But while France
frowned upon American expansionism, the
United States hardly interfered
with French empire-building in Asia and
Africa.
In his scholarly survey the author
emphasizes the importance and impact of
trade and financial questions on
American-French relations. More than is
usual, furthermore, he makes the reader
aware of the key roles played by
individual statesmen of the two
countries. They become symbols of personal
and conceptual contrasts as well as
official spokesmen: Napoleon and Jeffer-
son, Clemenceau and Wilson, de Gaulle
and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this
context, Zahniser realistically
illustrates the political interplay between Con-
gress and the Executive in the conduct
of American foreign affairs. Finally, in
his discussion of the two World Wars and
the Cold War, a rather difficult
task, he develops the arguments and
attitudes of French and American
statesmen with remarkable objectivity.
In my judgment, he correctly explains
the many reasons why in recent decades
France and the United States have
repeatedly accused each other of being
uncertain friends: they expected much
more substantial assistance and
understanding than either was willing or able
to extend.
Considering the chronological scope and
substantive challenges of his un-
dertaking, the author has produced a
stimulating and well-balanced book.
340 OHIO HISTORY
Readers of Uncertain Friendship will
appreciate Zahniser's clear presentation
and judicious interpretation.
Rutgers University Henry
Blumenthal
Star-Spangled Kitsch: An Astounding
and Tastelessly Illustrated Exploration
of the Bawdy, Gaudy, Shoddy Mass-Art
Culture in This Grand Land of
Ours. By Curtis F. Brown. (New York: Universe Books, 1975.
204p.; il-
lustrations, bibliography. $15.00.)
Star-Spangled Kitsch deserves, I think, the Bicentennial Award for Sheer
Nincompoopery. If that sounds too harsh,
let me give an alternative evalua-
tion: the Bicentennial celebration has
been-and will be-exploited by the
crasser elements of the book-publishing
world, and if you want to contribute
your mite to one of the most egregious
of the rip-offs, shell out fifteen dollars
for this volume.
The difficulty in deciding whether the
creators of Star-Spangled Kitsch are
cunning or merely inane has to do with
how you choose to interpret the
book's aesthetic stance.
"Kitsch," a German colloquialism for trashy finery,
"is the daily, everywhere art of
our time," Brown tells us, and it is defined
by a few simple rules: form is more
important than function to the kitsch-
maker, and the spurious sense of
elegance or "class" the object possesses is
important to the kitsch-purchaser. The
author warns us not to confuse kitsch
with "schlock"
("simple-minded junk") or camp ("intentionally frivolous").
Having commenced with a clear-eyed
definition, the author proceeds to
document the vagaries of the
kitsch-world with some 400-odd illustrations.
The standard of selection is anything
but clear.
Playboy bunnies, Forest Lawn cemetery, toilet paper in Santa
Claus print,
Billy Graham, streaking, the Rayburn
Office Building, Little Egypt, a paint-
by-number Mona Lisa, and Horatio
Greenough's George Washington are
among the offerings. A few are
screamingly funny-I am particularly fond of
the Berlin, Connecticut, restaurant in
the shape of an opened ice-cream car-
ton (and why, one wonders, was it razed
and the Ponderosa Steakhouses
spared?). Others are shudderingly
awful-salt and pepper shakers in the form
of a woman's breasts or a crockery
container for false teeth that plays "The
Shadow of Your Smile." Some are
simply ordinary, although it must say
something about our jaded sensibilities
that gardens of plastic flowers or
imitation-brick fireplaces with electric
logs arouse only a faint nausea.
But just what Vergil is it who guides us
through this hell? One who feels
our powers to discern kitsch are so
feeble that we must be told sternly that
plastic cups imprinted with embroidered
eagles are "simulated impossibilities
. . .[demonstrating] the
muddle-headedness of kitsch"? Or that a collection
of Nazi curios on a butcher-block table
is "painfully unsuitable" for display
in a family room? Certainly our cicerone
has a very low opinion of his read-
er's judgment, since he passes off his
own personal dislikes as kitsch: Bern-
stein's Mass, I.M. Pei's Hancock
Building in Boston, politicians in mufti, and
so forth. Most confusingly of all, Brown
adopts an incredibly jocular tone
(chapter headings include
"Everything but the Kitschen Sink," "A Set of
Building Blots") and elaborates his
photographs with captions that, on the
whole, leave us blinking. The remark
appended to the photograph of a seated
Book Reviews
341
Calvin Coolidge wearing an Indian
headdress is an example: "As meaningless
political kitsch, the event was pure sitting
bull."
A few of the chapters contain fairly
sensitive remarks dealing with the
manner in which kitsch items may confirm
racist or sexist attitudes or exploit
our feelings of social inferiority. But
instead of continuing to explore the ways
kitsch may impinge upon our daily lives,
why Madison Avenue prefers inces-
sant jingles such as
"ring-around-the-collar," or how, why, or even if kitsch
as a popular art is related to the fine arts, the
author opts for the easy score.
His chapter on advertising, "The
Old Sell Game," ends with a discussion of
what must be the nadir of
commercialism-the Clark Metal Grave Vault slo-
gan which asks, "Is seepage
disturbing your loved one?" Have we, Brown
sunnily concludes, conformed to the
ad-man's dream of clean clothes, breath,
and kitchen floors only to
"[betray] those in the Great Beyond by consigning
them to leaky coffins?"
It's possible my criticisms may be
unduly prissy, since we would all agree
that kitsch is more appropriately
discussed with cheeriness than pomposity.
But Brown, both in his illustrations and
his commentary, wavers between
severity (of a model in a swimsuit
garnished with stars and stripes he intones,
"Indiscriminately using elements of
the flag purely as decor, without icono-
graphic content, robs the patriotic
symbol of its power and dignity") and
hilarity (the manufacture of a diaper
pin with a holy medal was a mistake,
Brown writes, since "failure to
foresee the inevitable drenching has resulted
in kitschy-coo"). Throughout an
uncomfortably jeering note is struck: "If
you're a snob kitsch is the stuff the
neighbors collect, not the lovely things . . .
in your gracious home."
Clues to the author's ambivalent tone appear early
in the text-"Camp," he says,
"offers incongruities in glorious self-
awareness," "camp generates
celebration," and "[camp] is content with the
risibility of recognition." Of
course. Brown has written a camp book about
kitsch. But employing a camp style to
analyze kitsch assumes the reader is in
on the joke. Unhappily, it is unclear to
me what the joke is. Are we laughing
at kitsch? the people who purchase
kitsch? or is the book itself kitsch and is
someone laughing at us?
The Ohio State University Barbara Groseclose
Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the
Imagist Movement. By Jean Gould.
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
1975. xii + 372p.; illustrations, bib-
liography, index. $12.50.)
Jean Gould's Amy is unlikely to
become the definitive study of either Miss
Lowell or the Imagist movement because
Miss Gould has chosen to tell much
but to analyze little in her work. Amy
is, however, a fascinating, well-
researched look at the Boston poet and
her circle by an author who obviously
champions her subject. As a biography
and source book it should be of value
to any reader interested in the period.
Jean Gould has chosen not to footnote
her material, which is always unfor-
tunate for the scholar, but has drawn on
a wealth of sources including the
Lowell papers at Harvard's Houghton
Library and interviews with persons
who knew Amy Lowell. With the pain of
every researcher, Miss Gould de-
scribes the scene shortly after Amy
Lowell's death when her lifelong compan-
ion, Ada Russell, burns, at Amy's direction,
all of her correspondence from
342 OHIO HISTORY
Ada and Amy's other confidant, Carl
Engel. Despite that loss, Miss Gould
has found ample resources which, coupled with her skill
as a writer, bring
Amy Lowell very much to life for her
reader.
The thesis of Gould's biography is that
Amy Lowell was not only an ex-
traordinary literary talent but also one
of the most powerful forces in Ameri-
can letters, a herculean figure
capturing the imagist idea from Ezra Pound and
turning it into a movement to be
reckoned with by both the critical and popu-
lar worlds.
Amy, cursed with numerous ailments
ranging from recurrent hernias to
high blood pressure and heart disease as
accompaniment to her two hundred
and fifty pound girth, emerges as a
dedicated scholar, a driving competitor,
and a "show must go on
trooper" barnstorming the nation to spread the mes-
sage about modern poetry. Her
relationships with Robert Frost, D. H. Law-
rence, Malcolm Cowley and the other
literary figures of the period are well
covered. Miss Gould traces the inventive
and long-running literary hoax of
the Spectra school of poetry, created
and led secretly by Witter Bynner and
Arthur Davidson Ficke as a joke on the
imagists.
The book's descriptive brilliance is
marred by its near-absence of analysis.
Again and again, Miss Gould dodges the
issues of the meaning or the worth of
her material. As an example, Miss Gould
spends several pages listing "the
amazing parallels in the lives of Amy
Lowell and Gertrude Stein." The
catalogue of similarities ranges from
their February birth dates with almost
identical family constellations through
their early tomboy behavior, their
ponderous physical proportions in later
life to "it is curious that the given
names of their respective friends both
began with the letter A." Though this
section of the book marks one of the
rare appearances of other scholars'
views in the book, Miss Gould takes us
nowhere with the parallels. They
stand solely as interesting but
untreated facts.
Miss Gould's Amy is a book of
interest to any general reader interested in
the period and certainly of value to the
scholar who seeks a portrait of Amy
Lowell herself and the movement she led.
A lengthy bibliography is included
along with an index.
Ashland College John D.
Baker
Upton Sinclair: American Rebel. By Leon Harris. (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1975. xii + 435p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-
dex. $12.95.)
Published only seven years after Upton
Sinclair's death at the age of nine-
ty, Leon Harris's book is the first
serious effort at a biography of the famous
crusader for social justice since Floyd
Dell's 1927 volume. Besides working
his way through the enormous Sinclair
collection at Indiana University,
gathering material from forty-six other
libraries, and presumably reading all of
Sinclair's ninety books and a good
portion of his thousands of articles and
reviews, Harris also solicited opinions
about the man from a wide range of
prominent Americans and Europeans. Their
sometimes vapid statements
Harris quotes frequently, thereby
breaking his narrative in a fashion that is
consistently annoying.