Book Reviews
A Covenant with Power: America and
World Orderfrom Wilson to Reagan. By
Lloyd C. Gardner. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984. xv + 251p.;
notes, note on sources and further
reading, index. $22.95.)
Somehow it seems consistent with the
character of this book that the au-
thor tells us his purpose at the end
rather than the beginning: "Each chap-
ter is really an 'essay,' or
think-piece, and together they form a cluster around
the principal themes of the liberal
state, its supporters, and the use of power.
As such, the essays are intended to be
exploratory rather than exhaustive,
provocative more than persuasive"
(p. 235).
For years, Lloyd Gardner has been among
the most respected of those
historians who have applied an economic
"Open Door" interpretation to the
history of American diplomacy. One
approaches this volume anticipating a
mid-career summing-up of years of
diligent scholarship. What one gets is
oddly tentative, weakly conceptualized,
and at times downright murky. The
writing is heavily metaphorical (the
final chapter is entitled "On Board the
Pequod"), and, especially in the last half of the book, the
dominant principle
of organization seems close to
stream-of-consciousness.
The theme-the relationship between the
twentieth-century American
liberal state and the use of
international power-appears especially suited to a
historian of Gardner's interests. Yet
trouble begins at the start when the au-
thor fails to give us even a half-definition
of that troublesome word "liber-
al." He tells us in a fine-print
footnote that the word has many connotations,
ranging from a belief in small
government to advocacy of the interventionist
state, from an embrace of the Cold War
to a revulsion from it. It is not possi-
ble to eliminate all the confusion, he
asserts. "The reader will appreciate the
difficulty, it is hoped, and tolerate
the sometimes unstated nuances neces-
sary in any discourse on the topics
discussed" (p. xiii).
Gardner then begins a discussion of
liberalism and foreign policy that be-
gins with Woodrow Wilson, skips to
Franklin Roosevelt, and includes every
presidential administration thereafter.
This all-encompassing definition is, in
my view, intellectually defensible,
provided the author is using a broad, yet
justifiable, definition of liberalism or
the liberal state, but the reader should
not be left to infer first principles.
The general argument runs something like
this: From Wilson on, the lead-
ers of the twentieth-century American
liberal state have been amenable to
the use of military and economic power
in an effort to spread the precepts of
political and economic liberalism to
increasingly larger areas of the globe. In
the course of doing so, they have
displayed a constantly growing tendency to
feel threatened by different systems and
have set themselves in opposition to
revolutionary movements beyond the
fringe of the liberal ideal. In conse-
quence they have overreached their
capabilities, tilted at imaginary Commu-
nist conspiracies, and endangered the
world they wish to protect.
The Open Door approach to American
diplomatic history has of course al-
ways stressed economic expansionism.
Gardner clearly is most comfortable
when he can rest a point on economics.
Sometimes, one wonders at the pur-
Book Reviews
83
pose; he makes much of continual
Anglo-American trade rivalries and eco-
nomic differences, but it is obvious
that these did not prevent an unusually
close diplomatic relationship between
the United States and Great Britain.
At other times, as when he declares that
"the balance of payments crisis ...
was worse than Tet" (p. 189) for American foreign
policy, he succeeds in be-
ing provocative and forcing a
reexamination of more traditional ways of think-
ing about American diplomacy.
Still, the author does not rely on
economic interpretation to the extent that
one might have expected. The Open Door
seems in fact to loom smaller with
each successive chapter, leading one to the conclusion
that the disjointed,
half-thought-out character of this book
reflects not hasty writing but the au-
thor's own gropings toward a more complex approach to
his field. If so, one
wishes him Godspeed.
Ohio University Alonzo L. Hamby
An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of
Herbert Hoover. By Richard Norton
Smith. (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1984. 488p.; illustrations, appen-
dix, notes and sources, index. $22.95.)
Sir Walter Raleigh once cautioned that
"whosoever in writing a moderne
History, shall follow truth too neare
the heeles, it may haply strike out his
teeth." And it was Sophocles, as
Richard Norton Smith has reminded us,
who observed that "one must wait
until the evening, to see how splendid
the day has been." A half-century
has elapsed since that cold, raw March
day in 1933 when Herbert Hoover turned
over the reins of government to
Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving his
tarnished name and shattered reputation
indelibly linked with this nation's
worst depression. And twenty years have
now gone by since that October day in
1964 when the last mortal remains of
the "wunderkind turned
scapegoate" were committed to the soil of his native
Iowa, finally enabling the opening of
Hoover's presidential and personal ar-
chives to historians and other
researchers.
When Hoover left office in 1933, he was
"the most hated man in Ameri-
ca." The judgments of most
political scientists and historians in the first
years after his departure served only to
reinforce that characterization. Paral-
lels were drawn readily and often
between Hoover and James Buchanan,
suggesting comparable ineptness and
myopic vision in meeting and resolving
the catastrophic crises of their times,
in striking contrast to the bold deci-
siveness and courage of the men who
followed them in office, FDR and Lin-
coln.
But the judgments of history are not
static or immutable. Like the chang-
ing colors and patterns of a
kaleidoscope, they are constantly subject to revi-
sion and fresh interpretation. Recent
analyses of Hoover's career by Joan
Hoff Wilson and David Burner in the
1970s and by George H. Nash, Gary
Dean Best, and now by Richard Norton
Smith in the 1980s have yielded as-
sessments and conclusions in some
variance from those reached by earlier
biographers. The cold, uncaring,
heartless engineer, rejected and despised
by his own countrymen, has begun to
reemerge as a deeply sensitive global
humanitarian.
84 OHIO HISTORY
Clearly Richard Norton Smith's An
Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Her-
bert Hoover is
sympathetically revisionist, though it is anything but uncriti-
cal. Primarily based on hundreds of
interviews comprising the Hoover Oral
History Project as well as the
voluminous personal correspondence and
papers now available at the Herbert
Hoover Presidential Library in West
Branch, Iowa, the book was originally intended
to focus on Hoover's post-
White House career. Subsequently
broadened to cover all of Hoover's life, its
best chapters nonetheless are still
those which concentrate on the post-
presidential years. Smith's extensive
use of oral history sources has enabled
him to get beneath the facade of public
record to probe the private side of
the man who rarely displayed his
emotions in the presence of any but mem-
bers of his own family and close
personal friends. Revealed to the reader is
the portrait of a highly complex public
man whose early hero was Woodrow
Wilson and whose later good friends were
Joseph P. Kennedy and Harry
Truman. How ironic that this Republican
President had so little regard for
Calvin Coolidge, Alfred Landon, and
Thomas E. Dewey and so much con-
tempt for Wendell L. Willkie!
More ironic was the early friendship of
Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt
during the time that both served in the
Wilson administration, with Roose-
velt himself urging the candidacy of
Hoover for president on the Democratic
ticket in 1920. When Hoover declared
himself a Republican that year, the rift
between himself and FDR was established,
a rift that eventually widened
until the two became irreconcilable
adversaries. Much of the book relates to
the ultimate animosity, personal and
public, between these two American
presidents, in full flame from 1929 to
1945 when the two were to all intents
and purposes the titular heads of their
respective parties. No small part of the
"triumph" of Herbert Hoover
was that he lived long enough to head major
commissions on world-wide famine relief
and federal governmental reor-
ganization in the administrations of
Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower
which, combined with his Belgian relief
and food administration assign-
ments under Wilson in World War I years,
enabled him ultimately to influ-
ence history's judgment of his many
positive accomplishments and to erase
much of the pain of the depression
years.
Hoover's struggle to vindicate his own
name and reputation engaged him
to the end of his life in an intended
all-out and unbecoming attack on the
name and reputation of his bete
noire, Franklin D. Roosevelt. As example, ac-
cording to Smith (p. 419): "From
Douglas MacArthur he got broad confirma-
tion of a substantive Japanese peace
feeler seven months before the war actu-
ally ended-on terms almost precisely in
line with the ultimate accord. [Had
FDR responded affirmatively to this
feeler, Hoover believed that World War
II might have ended without the
necessity of dropping the atomic bomb.]
Slowly, in the course of reviewing
350,000 documents, he [Hoover] assem-
bled a vast melange of historical
accusations and personal recollection, a
sprawling tapestry of American foreign
policy that began with Roosevelt's
recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933
and continued up to Mao Tse-tung's
triumph on the Chinese mainland sixteen
years later. There were a dozen dif-
ferent versions of the monumental text,
intended to fill four thick volumes
and convincingly indict his Democratic
successors in the court of histo-
ry.... Today, the manuscript remains
locked up in the Hoover Institution
vaults [at Stanford University]."
Book Reviews
85
Smith's biography of Hoover sheds new
light on a much maligned figure
in a controversial era of our history.
It merits reading by a wide audience.
Miami University Phillip R.
Shriver
Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential
Years, 1933-1964. By Gary Dean Best. 2
vols. (Stanford: Hoover Institution
Press, 1983. xvi + 522p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $75.00.)
For many years, we have needed a major
study of Hoover's life after he left
the White House. This is the time when
the former president became the
elder statesman par
excellence-serving as influential party wheelhorse, un-
dertaking major tasks for President
Truman, and writing voluminously on his
own career. Yet George H. Nash's
definitive and thorough life has only taken
the narrative down to 1914. David
Burner's biography devotes only fourteen
pages to this period, while Joan Hoff
Wilson's account gives sixty. Far more
coverage is obviously in order.
Gary Dean Best, professor of history at
the University of Hawaii (Hilo), is
eminently qualified to fill the gap.
Already the author of one book and sever-
al studies on Hoover, Best has come
forth with a comprehensive study. The
style is clear, the research well
grounded in Hoover's papers. In fact, Best
has drawn from a host of manuscript
collections at the Herbert Hoover Presi-
dential Library (West Branch, Iowa) and
the Hoover Institution on War, Rev-
olution and Peace (Stanford,
California). In addition, he has covered such
papers as Alf M. Landon, Robert A. Taft,
and William Allen White, using
them so thoroughly that students of
those men should examine Best's book.
In many ways, Best gives us a different
Hoover than the one with whom
many of us are so familiar. He notes
that Hoover as president-and before-
was always "something of a
loner" within his own party. Republican stal-
warts could not forget that Hoover was a
key adviser to President Wilson,
had called for the election of a
Democratic Congress in 1918, and wanted the
US to join the League of Nations.
Because of his long years overseas, many
people suspected he was a closet
Englishman.
Best also points out something few know:
for some time after he left Wash-
ington, tensions between the
ex-president and his party remained. Hoover
felt frustrated by the Republicans in
Congress, then by presidential candi-
date Alf Landon, for he did not believe
that they were backing his positions
sufficiently or defending his record
with enough vigor. Landon reciprocated
by ignoring Hoover in most of the 1936
campaign and fought Hoover's post-
election efforts to organize the party
around his leadership.
Turning to foreign policy, Best notes
that Hoover was by no means a rigid
isolationist in the cast of Charles A.
Lindbergh or Colonel Robert R. McCor-
mick. True, he backed Munich in 1938 and
sought to establish himself as the
leader in the fight against intervention.
However, Hoover called for sending
the Allies "defensive"
munitions, sought a loan for invaded Finland, fa-
vored the destroyer-bases deal, and
suggested (in lieu of lend-lease) that
Congress appropriate several billion
dollars to Britain. Particularly interesting
is Hoover's peace proposal to Japan. In
what could well be a historical scoop,
Best finds that shortly before Pearl
Harbor, Hoover called for (1) a six month
86 OHIO HISTORY
standstill on all military action, (2)
America supplying Japan with civilian
goods, and (3) a Five-Power Conference
in Honolulu. Hoover's book The
Problems of Lasting Peace (1942), written with diplomat Hugh Gibson, con-
tained many suggestions for
international organization, and he pursued these
avidly in Republican quarters.
Turning to the postwar era; Best gives a
detailed picture of the much
touted Hoover-Truman friendship, and in
the process notes Hoover's occa-
sional misgivings concerning Truman's
steadfastness. Though Hoover's quali-
fied endorsement of the Marshall Plan
and frequent call for an air and sea de-
fense have long been known, Best notes
Hoover's privately expressed desire
for mutual disengagement of US and
Soviet troops from Europe. Best also de-
votes considerable attention to the
various reports of the Hoover Commis-
sion, something seldom explored, and he
is undoubtedly one of the few his-
torians to see the unpublished version
of Hoover's memoirs.
The rich amount of data contained in
Best's two volumes lead the reader
to a series of intriguing questions.
What was the nature of Hoover's critique
of Wall Street? What material did editor
Chester Rowell possess that, in
Rowell's eyes, would have made Landon's
nomination impossible? What
did Hoover mean when he said in May 1942
that the US should submit to
economic fascism during the war?
We need more evidence for some of Best's
claims, such as the statement
that Hoover contributed to "a
bipartisan approach to a postwar policy" (p.
272), that his "proposals for peace
were largely followed" (p. 437), and that
his military strategy "heavily
influenced the American defense posture un-
der Eisenhower" (p. 437).
Manuscripts of the major policy-makers might
shed some light as to the degree to
which actual influence was involved.
Best's able account serves as a
springboard to additional topics, some not
covered in this book. The same Herbert
Hoover who in 1938 publicly ac-
cused the Japanese of waging war in the
manner of Genghis Khan opposed
applying pressure on them. After
visiting Germany in 1938, Hoover praised
the material achievements of the Reich
while condemning the brutality of
Nazi totalitarianism. In the same year,
he endorsed Secretary Hull's denunci-
ation of international lawlessness and
saw an economic conference as the in-
strument to alleviate the world's ills.
In 1939, however, he called Britain and
France "imperialistic
democracies" and said that the issues in Europe were
basically struggles between "the
haves" and "the have-nots." He was par-
ticularly critical of France's behavior
in the interwar period. In September
1940, Hoover envisioned most of Europe
under totalitarian control at the end
of World War II; he saw a necessity for
Latin America to continue its trade
with this continent.
There are more topics to be pursued. The
years 1950 and 1951 show him
assuming a variety of positions, some of
which-at first glance-appear to be
contradictory. In April 1950, he called
for reorganizing the United Nations
without the Communist nations. Yet, once
the Korean War broke out, he
said that UN forces should move above
the 38th parallel, doing so two
months before his Gibraltar speech, in
which Korea would be abandoned.
Yet when General MacArthur (who called
for far more intensive US commit-
ment on the Asian mainland) was fired,
Hoover found him "a reincarnation
of St. Paul."
But any scholar working in the same
material can point to things that might
Book Reviews
87
be covered. Best's book remains an
important one that has long needed to
be written. Transcending the given
subject, Herbert Hoover, it is essential as
well for understanding many of the
controversies surrounding such move-
ments as "conservatism" and
"isolationism."
New College of the University of South
Florida Justus D. Doenecke
The Heyday of American Communism: The
Depression Decade. By Harvey
Klehr. (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
1984. xiv + 511p.; notes, index.
$26.50.)
In The Heyday of American Communism:
the Depression Decade, Harvey
Klehr gathers an enormous amount of
detailed material as he traces the
Communist Party's ideology and its
successes and failures in organizing.
Relying on such varied sources as Party
publications, FBI files, interviews
with former Communists, and published
memoirs, Klehr's double frame-
work takes into account American
political and economic change and the
Party's relation with the Soviet Union
and the Communist International.
Klehr argues that the Party failed.
He begins with an analysis of the
sectarian politics of the Third Period,
1928-1935, when the Comintern believed
that capitalism was on the brink of
collapse. The Party devoted much energy
to battling its rivals for hegemony
within the left and the labor movement.
The rivals, labeled "social fas-
cists," ranged from the Socialist
Party to the AFL to A.J. Muste to the
NAACP's Crisis, edited by W.E.B.
DuBois. Preoccupied with revolution,
Party leaders scorned immediate demands
and were unable to organize or
form meaningful coalitions.
The Party became more successful and
influential, however, when it
dropped its rigid adherence to
revolutionary theory and began to work in
"popular fronts" for the
defeat of fascism. Threatened by the rise of Nazi
Germany, the Soviet Union desperately
needed alliances, so the Comintern
ceased to castigate liberals and
non-Party leftists and the Party changed its
position on Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Klehr praises the accomplishments
of the democratic front, especially the
CIO, in which the Party led organiza-
tions with large numbers of
non-Communists. Klehr attributes this pinnacle
of influence, activity, and numerical
strength to the Party's belated discovery
that revolutionary rhetoric and goals
hindered larger coalitions. In other
words, fighting fascism and struggling
for liberal reforms was a surer method
of success than revolution. As William
Z. Foster claimed in 1938, "Commu-
nism is twentieth-century
Americanism."
This brief success, however, was marred
by the signing of the Nazi-Soviet
non-aggression pact in 1939. During the
popular front, the Party character-
ized the imminent war as between fascism
and democracy. Communists sup-
ported collective security in order to
defeat fascism. When the Pact declared
that the war was imperialist, the Party
changed its line and argued for the
US to stay out of the war. This abrupt
about-face did not drive the Party
back to its earlier isolation, but it
did result in a drop in membership and an
end to some coalitions. The Party never
regained its power despite its patriot-
ism and the wartime alliance between the
US and the USSR.
88 OHIO HISTORY
As an historian of the Depression and as
a leftist activist, I anticipated this
book eagerly. I was disappointed. Klehr lacks the
historian's passion for un-
derstanding an experience as it was
lived. He analyzes structure and institu-
tions, focusing on leadership, internal
power struggles, and relations with the
USSR. While he includes chapters on
organizing efforts among Black people,
intellectuals, youth, the unemployed,
and labor, his pages lack the heart-
beat of life or the fire of passion. The
Communist conspiracy with the Soviet
Union, the staple of my (and his)
cold-war childhood, has been reduced to
dull, tedious debates. This
unimaginativeness is partly a result of his top-
down focus; most leaders were Party
functionaries, not active organizers.
Klehr's emphasis on leaders downplays
the mass political activity which he
himself sees as the Party's greatest
success. Generally, his book offers little
new analysis.
While Klehr's choice of sources
determines his emphasis, he fails to eval-
uate these sources adequately. He
neglects major conflicts within the Party
during the 1930s and later. The
investigations and prosecutions of the Dies
Committee, McCarthy, HUAC, and the Smith
Act; Krushchev's revelation
and denunciation of Stalin's mass murder
during the 1930s; and the Soviet
invasion of Hungary in 1956 all divided
the Party. The Popular Front which
Klehr praises so highly was later
denounced by the Party as revisionist, and
its primary architect, Earl Browder, was
expelled. Klehr never summarizes
the positions of his informants on these
controversial issues. Do they repre-
sent a single or a variety of
interpretations? Klehr also seems unfamiliar with
recent secondary literature on the
Party's work among women and among
Mexican agricultural workers in
California.
Recent works in many genres illuminate
the liveliness of the Party: films like
Reds and With Babies and Banners; autobiographies by
Al Richmond, Vera
Weisbord, and Hosea Hudson; popular
journalistic accounts, such as Vivian
Gornick, The Romance of American
Communism; scholarly histories, such as
Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem
during the Depression and Paul Lyons,
Philadelphia Communists, 1936-1956. These works provide a sense of the
conflict, excitement, commitment, and
belief in the possibility of social trans-
formation which sparked the Party during
the 1930s. I urge readers to con-
sult Paul Lyons' bibliographic essay in Philadelphia
Communists which eval-
uates numerous works. Many of them are
far more readable and interesting.
Oberlin College Lois Rita
Helmbold
The Goodyear Story. By Maurice O'Reilly. (Elmsford, New York: The Benja-
min Company, Inc., 1983. 223p.;
illustrations, bibliography, index. $19.95
cloth; $12.95 paper.)
In the epilogue of The Goodyear
Story, Maurice O'Reilly states that his pur-
pose in writing this account of the
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was
to capture the spirit pervading the firm
throughout its history. Previously
a public relations director at Goodyear
International Corporation, O'Reilly
firmly believes that the complete story
of the company can be related in
terms of its spirit. This work, an
updated, yet condensed version of Hugh
Allen's The House of Goodyear (1949),
is therefore based only on materials
Book Reviews
89
housed in the Goodyear archives and on
"what veteran members of the
(Goodyear) clan have said" (p.
217).
O'Reilly begins his chronicle with the
founding of the Goodyear Tire &
Rubber Company in 1898 and ends it in
1982. From the beginning, O'Reilly
emphasizes the characteristics of the
firm that made it a leader in the Ameri-
can tire industry by 1916 and the
American rubber industry by 1926. He de-
scribes how aggressive managers used
technological research and develop-
ment to build manufacturing supremacy in
periods of rapid economic growth,
a policy that has been repeated by
Goodyear throughout the twentieth cen-
tury. The company's officers have been
willing to take risks on the promise of
future, as well as short-term, gains in
the marketplace. This has meant keep-
ing the firm on the leading edge of
invention and innovation, and at the same
time working within the confines of
market limitations. A primary example of
this was the introduction, in the late 1960s,
of the Polyglas tire in the United
States to prepare Americans for the
steel-belted radial.
O'Reilly relates how the two world wars
influenced Goodyear's diversifi-
cation into products other than
automotive tires and mechanical goods. In
World War I, the company entered the
aviation field through the manufac-
ture of blimps and airplane tires.
During World War II, the scope of the firm's
production expanded to include more
sophisticated aircraft and war materi-
als. After 1945, the company continued
manufacturing some of those prod-
ucts that were usable in a peacetime
economy. By the 1960s, Goodyear had
become a diversified, multinational
corporation that relied on international
demand for its products as well as for
supply of its raw materials.
According to O'Reilly, Goodyear's
management and labor force have for
the most part worked together for the
good of the company. During the first
three decades of the firm's history,
enlightened managers generated in-
creased worker productivity by adopting
policies based on corporate welfar-
ism. At the same time, employees were
indoctrinated to "protect our good
name" (p. 34). In the 1930s, the
company fell prey to the labor strife prevalent
in American mass production industries.
The intrusion of an independent la-
bor union that bargained for wages and
benefits that had previously been
determined according to the health of
the economy altered, but did not de-
stroy, the family orientation at
Goodyear.
The Goodyear Story is a useful overview of the history of the Goodyear
corporation. O'Reilly discusses the
important accomplishments of manage-
ment and labor and outlines some of
their strengths and weaknesses. He in-
cludes a substantial number of
photographs to enhance the text. However,
the rapidity with which the author
covers Goodyear's history forces him to
lapse into a narrative of upper-level
management succession as a means of
describing company progress. He also
lists, periodically, technological ad-
vances and products developed or
manufactured by the company in order to
"show off" its
accomplishments. Only on rare occasions does O'Reilly try to
relate the experiences of the company to
its broader economic and political
environment. For the most part, he
simply moves from one event to another
without providing sufficient depth or
insight into the workings of the firm.
Therefore, The Goodyear Story will
be of interest to the popular reader, but
less valuable to the scholar studying
the business firm.
The Ohio State University Glen E. Avery
90 OHIO HISTORY
The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio
Politics, 1844-1856.
By Stephen E. Maizlish. (Kent: The Kent
State University Press, 1983. xiv
+ 310p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, bibliography, index. $25.00.)
Maizlish revised and abridged his 1978
doctoral dissertation, "The Tri-
umph of Sectionalism: The Transformation
of Politics in the Antebellum
North, Ohio 1844-1860" done at the
University of California, Berkeley, into
this readable, thorough, case study of
the Ohio political scene. He contends
that an understandinng of national
politics at the time of the Civil War can
make sense if one can see how the
"political values and practices of the Jack-
sonian age were transformed into a new
system of political organization and
belief." He uses Ohio "as a
case study, since demographically the state con-
tained a number of 'elements common to
much of the North.' "
He holds that political parties
reflected the "concerns and convictions" of
American society, were the devices that
reconciled many different interests
and beliefs, and by examining their
successes and failures, "the shifting val-
ues" of the Civil War generation
can be revealed. The premise is clear, and
not unlike that of Michael F. Holt in The
Political Crisis of the 1850s (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978).
Maizlish provides the case study of the sort
Holt might have found useful, but unlike
Holt, finds the issue of slavery con-
siderably more important.
Essentially, the Jacksonian party system
broke down, national politics went
through a period of internal turmoil,
and a new, but sectional party system
emerged, which, for the nation, boded
ill. Was it the Kansas-Nebraska Act
in 1854 that ended the Jacksonian
system, or was it ethnocultural issues a few
years earlier? Neither, in Ohio,
Maizlish finds. The system crumbled before
either, as economic issues appeared less
important and the fear of slavery
expansion grew. In fact, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act proved instrumental in
ending political turmoil and voter
apathy by providing a focus for Ohio's
electorate. Maizlish painstakingly
carries the reader through the sometimes
confusing labyrinth of Buckeye state
political alliances, not especially uncov-
ering anything new, but giving solid
proof to his thesis.
His rhetoric is clear, if not exciting;
his research is substantial. He used
over ninety manuscript collections, some
twenty Ohio newspapers, plus a vari-
ety of pamphlets and government
documents, as well as published sources.
Appendix D is an "Historiographic
Note" that might better have accompa-
nied the bibliography, as it gives the
reader an excellent clue to the secon-
dary literature-not included in the
bibliography-that influenced his
thinking. The other appendices include
Ohio Presidential and Gubernatorial
Elections, 1840-60, a listing of Ohio
Senators for the same period, and a com-
puter analysis of Ohio voter patterns
from 1848 to 1856, done by a fellow
graduate student at Berkeley, providing
further evidence to support his argu-
ments. As is so common, the notes
unfortunately appear at the end of the
volume rather than more conveniently at
the foot of the page.
This is an important work, not only for
Ohio history, but for national politi-
cal history as well. It is a useful
companion for Holt, and students would do
well to read carefully the bibliographic
essays of each.
The University of Akron Robert H. Jones
Book Reviews
91
A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of
Joe McCarthy: By David M. Oshin-
sky. (New York: The Free Press, 1983. x
+ 597p.; photographs, notes, bib-
liography, index. $19.95.)
In November 1946, Wisconsin voters
elected Joseph R. McCarthy to the
United States Senate on the Republican
ticket. McCarthy won a seat in the
Senate by conducting a campaign based on
innuendoes, half-truths, and
lies, and by refusing to abide by the
wishes of party bosses. With a victory
at the polls behind him, McCarthy
descended on the nation's capital and
immediately gained national attention by
calling a press conference to suggest
the army draft striking coal miners and
force them back to work. As an op-
portunist rather than an ideologue,
McCarthy craved and needed public at-
tention.
Quickly, McCarthy won the reputation of
a maverick who arrogantly and
unpredictably violated the norms of the
Senate. He attacked Democrats and
Republicans alike, posed as an expert on
any issue, and twisted the facts be-
yond anyone's ability to make them
sensible. At the very least he was reck-
less, unsophisticated, and
disrespectful. As a result, the Senate tried to con-
trol McCarthy by stripping his major
committee assignments from him in
1949. That effort failed because of his
own personal drive and because of the
times in which he lived.
In February 1950, McCarthy began to
expound his belief that Communism
threatened America from within. Before
several whistle-stop audiences he
accused the Department of State of
knowingly employing members of the
Communist party in policy-making
positions. The Communist threat to Ameri-
can security and democratic institutions
was clear to McCarthy, and as the
days and weeks passed, many Americans
began to believe him. Thereafter,
for the next five years McCarthy accused
hundreds of people of being securi-
ty risks, because they were members of
the Communist party. Without proof
for his accusations, McCarthy dominated
the headlines and destroyed ca-
reers. As a United States Senator, he
made news whenever he spoke. Al-
though his colleagues despised his
techniques, they tolerated him because
the Cold War caused many Americans to believe
the threats of Communist
expansion and subversion were real and
because McCarthy had great voter
support. Consequently, few Senators
chose to challenge him. Moreover, Mc-
Carthy made so many charges that it was
difficult to prove him wrong on any
one issue before he made still more.
By 1954, however, McCarthy had
overextended his witch-hunt. Increas-
ingly, politicians and voters alike
realized that he did not have evidence for
his charges. Indeed, he had not
uncovered a single, bona fide Communist in
government. In the autumn of 1954, the
Senate, afraid and unwilling to con-
front McCarthy about his disrespect for
the dignity, loyalty, and honesty of
others, chose to censure him for
transgressing the gentlemanly rules of Amer-
ica's most elite club. He was censured,
that is, because his conduct was un-
becoming of a member of the United
States Senate. Although McCarthy
remained in office for three more years,
censure ended his influence. There-
after, his colleagues, the press, and
most Americans ignored him. He was an
embarassment for all, and he spent the
remainder of his life drinking himself
to death. When he died on May 2, 1957,
he left a legacy of fear that only the
misuse of power can bring.
92 OHIO HISTORY
David M. Oshinsky, Associate Professor
of History at Rutgers University
and the author of Senator Joseph
McCarthy and the American Labor Move-
ment (1975), has written an excellent narrative of the
political life of Joseph R.
McCarthy. Based on thorough research,
Oshinsky portrays McCarthy as a
man who was publicly unscrupulous,
cruel, and destructive, and who pri-
vately was generous and kind even to his
enemies. Oshinsky, however, does
not quite come to terms with the
psychological reasons for McCarthy's be-
havior other than to attribute them to
his need for attention. Although he
insinuates, for example, that McCarthy
was a pathological liar, he does not
clearly say so. Still, Oshinsky is fair
in his analysis. He does not portray
McCarthy as a demon, even though that
would be easy for anyone to do
who champions the constitutional right
to remain innocent until proven guil-
ty. This is a fascinating, well-written
book. It will be of value to anyone inter-
ested in post-World War II American
history. It will help both scholars and
laymen to better understand the America
in which McCarthy lived as well
as this most enigmatic man.
Ohio Historical Society R. Douglas Hurt
Steel Valley University: The Origin
of Youngstown State. By Alvin W. Skar-
don. (Youngstown: Youngstown State
University, 1983. xi + 288p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliographical essay,
bibliography. $6.95.)
Undeniably, Ohio has figured prominently
in higher education. Since the
establishment of Ohio University in
1808, an amazing number of colleges and
universities have arisen in the Buckeye
State. A large number, such as vener-
able Franklin College of New Athens,
have not survived. One that has
weathered many problems is present
Youngstown State University.
Dr. Skardon, Professor of Urban History
at Youngstown State, has mar-
shalled his expertise to present that
institution's history from its origin to en-
trance into the state system in 1967.
Skillfully he has woven together the Uni-
versity's story and urban higher
education in general. The very readable
narrative is supported by exhaustive
research.
Despite name changes Youngstown State
has clung to the author's defini-
tion of an urban university-" . ..
a university that is located in a city whose
life is integrated with the life of that
city" (p. V). This is understandable be-
cause of the institution's original
identity with the Young Men's Christian As-
sociation. In the Mahoning-Shenago River
system there appeared by 1888
"Steel Valley," the Youngstown
urban-industrial community which was pre-
dominantly evangelical Protestant. For
this environment the YMCA insti-
tuted classes in 1888, the so-called
"University of the Clerk and the Me-
chanic." As "Steel
Valley" expanded, so did these night classes; and in
1900 the YMCA incorporated them as
Youngstown Association School, the
elite branch eventually being the School
of Law (founded in 1910). Then
with the prosperity of the Roaring
Twenties and the granting of degrees in
law, commercial science, and liberal
arts, the institution became Youngstown
Institute of Technology in 1920. It was
the first YMCA school in the U.S.A. to
be allowed by a state department to
confer the A.B. However, the faculties
were part-time, those in the liberal
arts coming from nearby colleges.
Book Reviews
93
Professor Skardon next deftly carries
the story into the depression and
World War II. In 1931 the Institute
became Youngstown College, and Ho-
ward Jones took the helm which he held
for thirty-six years. Still YMCA
controlled, the college survived, being
debtless and rentless, having many
part-time teachers, and paying low
salaries to its faculty members who had
large classes and heavy teaching loads.
Also described are the problems of
the library and building space, type of
student body, social and religious ac-
tivities, student publications,
athletics, and the question of the college mas-
cot, the Penguin. The largely apolitical
atmosphere dominated, but speakers
on national and international events
appeared. A prominent event occurred in
1941: the forming of Dana School of
Music by the merger of Dana Musical In-
stitute of Warren, Ohio, with the
college's Department of Music.
The year 1944 proved decisive. Through
the sole action of its Board of
Governors, Youngstown College severed
its connection with the YMCA. It
was the first institution to do so and
served as a model for others. The action
resulted from the North Central
Association's refusal to accredit the college
"as long as the YMCA Trustees owned
its buildings, kept its books, and
controlled its funds" (p. 160). The
all important accreditation came in 1945.
The ending of World War II saw the
institution, which became Youngstown
University in 1955, enter "the
Affluent Society." However, in 1957 low enroll-
ment and accreditating demands caused
the Law School's demise.
In 1967 this private institution became
Youngstown State University. Inade-
quate private donations, need for costly
equipment and highly trained facul-
ty, and the burden on Youngstown
taxpayers, who were paying taxes to sup-
port the expanded state university
system while trying privately to maintain
Youngstown University, caused the
momentous action.
The author claims that in the period
1925 to 1967 "there can be identified
only three cases where there was an
apparent infringement of academic free-
dom" (p. 265).
Excellent print, nine illustrations,
bibliographical essay, and bibliography
are noteworthy, but there is no index.
University of Dayton Erving E.
Beauregard
Portable Utopia: Glasgow and the
United States 1820-1920. By Bernard
As-
pinwall. (Aberdeen, Scotland: The
Aberdeen University Press, 1984. xviii
+ 363p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, bibliography, biographical list.
£18.50.)
As we know, eighteenth-century Scottish
philosophers greatly influenced
American statesmen and educators and, in
the nineteenth, Scottish immi-
grants thrived in the United States. Now
Bernard Aspinwall, an English his-
torian at Glasgow, enlarges upon the
"common transatlantic culture in which
Glasgow played an important, even at
times," he argues, "a decisive role" (p.
xi). Preeminently "the American
city of Europe" (p. 164), Glasgow seemed
more American than any actual American
city, as though the better halves of
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia had been
spliced together: evidently a model
worth emulating.
So thought many of the visitors between
Scotland and America whose
94 OHIO HISTORY
comings and goings Aspinwall catalogues.
They were particularly concerned
with educational reform, feminism and
abolitionism, temperance on the
American model, and finally municipal
government, as Americans of the Pro-
gressive era marveled at the Glasgow
tramway system. The people and places
covered by the book's transatlantic,
twenty-state bibliography and sixty
close-set pages of notes apparently
overwhelmed any attempt to provide an
index; the thousand-odd individuals in
the seventy-five page biographical
list are only a fraction of those
mentioned in the text. The latter struggles up-
stream through a torrent of personal
detail, much of it tangential and yet repe-
titious, chronologically jumbled, and
occasionally inconsistent.
Simplistic generalizations along the way
divert rather than channel the
flood. Much the same conditions that
Aspinwall says made Glasgow "a
utopia, . . fluid and dynamic, . .
democratic, mercantile and mobile"
(p. xv), somehow presented American
cities with critical problems. Or, cas-
ually turned around, American
"wealth, self-improvement and sobriety,"
though no less characteristic of
Glasgow, put to shame "the general poverty,
squalor and drunkenness" (p. 8) of
what an American lady called "the most
dismal place I ever saw" (p. 100).
Some Scots did speculate on how Kansas-
style prohibition might improve Glasgow,
though they also suspected that
"Americans keep their evils more
out of sight than we do" (p. 133). Ameri-
cans who admired Glasgow for the
Protestant Anglo-Saxon homogeneity
that they managed to see there were
wearing the same blinders that enabled
them, at home, either to disregard or to
reject their own Irish Catholics.
Only so could they pronounce Glasgow an
"inspiration," "a guide to the fu-
ture," even "the New
Jerusalem" (pp. 151-52).
Superficial impressions predominate.
Many Americans only glanced at
Glasgow en route to the romantic
Trossachs. Jane Addams did come to
Britain expressly to inspect the Glasgow
"cleansing department, the family
home, the municipal lodging houses, the
civic improvement trust houses,
the settlements and the Peoples Palace
.... Unfortunately the visit fell
through...." No bother:
"Glasgow-at least in a secondhand way-was
part of that experience [which] guided
her" (p. 176). The gaps between in-
consequential evidence and sweeping
conclusions Aspinwall bridges by such
offhand phrases as "it is perhaps
significant that" (p. 74), "can hardly have
been unaware of" (p. 139), and
"whatever it was" (p. 50). When, by 1920,
Glasgow rejected American prohibition,
while private enterprise steered
American cities away from Glaswegian
municipal trams, it was not so much
the end of a hundred-year era as
confirmation that the reciprocal influences
had always been weak. Any parallels
between Glasgow and Cleveland or
Toledo (mayors Tom Johnson, Samuel
Jones, and Brand Whitlock all came
over) were mainly due to comparable
causes that deserve more intensive
study than Aspinwall gives them; few of
the transatlantic similarities, as per-
ceived by would-be reformers, can have
decisively caused each other.
The new technology of publishing may be
to blame for the subminimal
punctuation and proofreading, though not
for the syntax: a bishop who
"built a model school and taught
himself" (p. 28); women who were "voted
down from speaking" (p. 91); "endemic
epidemics" (p. 113). Odder yet,
Robert Bruce becomes Robert Burns (p.
166); Will Fyffe's "I Belong to
Glasgow" is attributed to Harry Lauder (p. 165n.);
a poet named Felix Mark-
ham writes "The Man With The
Rake" (p. 25).
Book Reviews
95
The title of the book reminds one that
there are two traditional ways of
vocalizing bagpipe music: canntaireachd,
in which particular syllables pre-
cisely represent each note on the scale,
and, far looser, meaningless "mouth
music" or puirt-a-beul. "Portable
utopia" echoes the latter.
Washington University Rowland Berthoff
The Banana Wars: An Inner History of
American Empire 1900-1934. By Lester
D. Langley. (Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1983. viii +
255p.; illustrations, maps, notes,
bibliographic note, index. $26.00.)
This volume offers a general survey of
United States military interventions
in the Caribbean-Central American
Region, stretching from the administra-
tion of Theodore Roosevelt, when the
United States first entered the World
stage and assumed the role of a regional
power, to the administration of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the United
States adopted a "Good Neighbor
Policy" which included a pledge to
avoid the use of military force through-
out Latin America. The account broadly
describes the military actions in-
volved in Yankee interventions in
Mexico, Cuba (twice), the Dominican Re-
public, Haiti, and Nicaragua (twice).
Relying on published materials regarding
the administrations involved
and the diplomacy of the era, the author
focuses strongly on the military as-
pects of the interventions, providing
only a broad overview of the diplomacy
involved. The documentary sources
employed to augment the secondary
works which constitute the volume's
principal foundation are almost entirely
from U.S. War and Navy Department records and the
private papers of mili-
tary officers involved in these
campaigns. The volume views the era through
the eyes of the military officers on the
scene, describing their decisions and
actions.
Throughout the narrative, the emphasis
is placed on the degree to which
military commanders were allowed to
exercise control in the occupied na-
tions. Paradoxically, the Yankee view
that such interventions were temporary
left the military men to act
independently, as there was no Ministry of the
Colonies to provide supervision or
policy guidelines, and no bureaucracy to
replace the military commanders. Hence
officers sent into nations without
any training or preparation, and with
limited forces, were left on their own. In
this situation, the attitudes and
prejudices of the officers involved proved
highly important. Their racism, lack of
appreciation of and respect for the lo-
cal culture, and ignorance of the local
political situation, often affected the
course of events. The military men
focused on peace and order and engaged
largely in physical projects, such as
sanitation and infrastructure develop-
ment. In this sense, the military men
left their mark in the region. Yet be-
cause these actions ignored the local
culture and practices the projects were
seldom continued after the troops were
withdrawn, and the Yankees invaria-
bly inspired a negative local reaction
in spite of the undeniable benefits of
their health and developmental efforts.
The author notes that decisions to land
troops were often based on factors
such as concern for the safety of
Americans or Europeans rather than on
broad policy. Indeed, each intervention
proceeded almost independently,
96 OHIO HISTORY
with little coordinated effort to
dominate the region. Investment did not al-
ways follow the flag, for in some
instances there was little Yankee capital in
the nations involved both before and
during the occupation. Yet the United
States did act to replace Great Britain
as chief lender to the region, and the
landing of troops was often designed to
forestall similar action by the Europe-
ans.
While the focus on the military officers
adds a valuable dimension to the
study of United States actions in this
region, the diplomatic aspects receive
little attention. Although the volume
demonstrates the differences among
the officers and the effect of
intraservice rivalries, there is little discussion of
the strong rivalries between the
military commanders and the diplomats on
the scene who often struggled
unsuccessfully to assert control over the inter-
ventions. There is no mention of the
important transition during the adminis-
tration of Warren G. Harding who
instituted the practice of detaching mili-
tary commanders from their respective
services and placing them under the
jurisdiction of the State Department,
thereby assuring the supremacy of dip-
lomatic considerations rather than
military ones. Harding's decision facili-
tated negotiations to arrange for troop
withdrawals.
This study will be useful to the general
reader and for use as a supplemen-
tal reading in courses desiring to
provide a broad overview of U.S. interven-
tions in the Caribbean region and the
role of the military in these incidents,
when used in conjunction with existing
studies which examine the diplomat-
ic negotiations that accompanied the use
of military force.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Kenneth J. Grieb
Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big
Bill Haywood. By Peter Carlson. (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983.
352p.; illustrations, notes on sources,
index. $17.50.)
Peter Carlson's Roughneck: The Life
and Times of Big Bill Haywood is a
sprightly journalistic account of the
acknowledged tactician of the Industrial
Workers of the World. It is written to
catch the attention of the reader and to
make Haywood "come alive," as
it were. To this extent it is successful. As
Carlson notes, "Haywood was the
kind of colorful character the American
press thrives upon" (p. 16). The
author tries to develop Haywood as a person
more complex than his past popular,
stereotyped caricature. Yet it is here
that Carlson does not quite probe with
the depth of understanding requisite
for an approach rich in texture.
Carlson's attempt to describe Haywood is suc-
cessful, but the biography is less
successful in coming to grips with a richer,
fuller understanding of Haywood as an
IWW radical and with the workers
he tried-unsuccessfully-to influence.
The biography is anecdotal, lively,
and colorful but somehow lacks the
dimension to place Haywood concep-
tually and analytically within the
context of the tensions and contradictions
of the American labor radicalism of the
eclectic Industrial Workers of the
World and the working classes it wanted
to represent.
Carlson gives an interesting, detailed
account of Haywood's youth and
marriage, and vividly conveys the drama
of the tumultuous courtroom trials
which highlighted and propelled Haywood
into public light. It is here
Book Reviews
97
where the author gives his strongest
account of the personal, private side of
Haywood. Yet somewhere, Haywood is not
quite fully accounted for. Admit-
tedly, Carlson's task is a tough one. Even though
Carlson tries to touch the
heart of the matter on pages 195 and
196, dealing with Haywood's inconsis-
tencies and his sometimes contradictory
positions-and here Carlson is per-
haps at his best-the author gives the
impression that Haywood was the
IWW and that the IWW was Haywood. It is
here that the biography falls
short. The complex history of the IWW
transcends the personal charisma,
dynamism and, indeed, romantic impulses
of Haywood. The IWW stood for
more than Bill Haywood. If we are to
take the book for its purpose, it deals
with the life and times of
Haywood. For all his description of "the rough
and tumble" existence of Haywood
and his America, Carlson minimizes the
existence of the IWW within the context
of an America which was changing
into a bureaucratized, ordered,
structured, society. At the same time, Carl-
son also seems to have missed the
tactics of the IWW at the local, grass-roots
level.
While his descriptions of the strikes at
Akron, Lawrence, and Patterson,
among others, are vivid, they lack the
precision and historical insight neces-
sary for a fuller understanding of the
working people Haywood wanted to in-
fluence. The IWW was not inextricably
bound with Bill Haywood. It was, in
part, bound with working classes in the
United States who were growing, de-
veloping, and changing and with their
responses which varied within the
cultural, ethnic, and class specifics of
time, geographical locale, workplace,
and industry. The author succeeds in his
goal of "attempting to tell Bill
Haywood's story in an accessible and
popular style" (p. 331), and to this end
will assist in conveying aspects of
American labor to the general reading pub-
lic. But greater depth of understanding
is still needed for the IWW and for
those who were its members. Joseph
Conlin's Big Bill Haywood and the Radi-
cal Union Movement (1969) still remains the best work on the topic. Yet
odd-
ly, neither this study nor the anthology
At the Point of Production: The Local
History of the IWW (1981) were mentioned by Carlson in his note on
sources.
Perhaps an examination of these sources
might have assisted the author.
Still, Carlson is to be commended for
taking on an ambitious and elusive
topic and for doing so with verve and spirit.
Kenyon College Roy Wortman
Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian
Leadership. By R. David Edmunds. (Bos-
ton: Little, Brown and Company, 1984.
viii + 246p.; note on sources, illus-
trations, maps, index. $14.95.)
R. David Edmunds has provided the first
modern and thoroughly objec-
tive biography of the Shawnee chief
Tecumseh. For too long Tecumseh had
been pictured as the greatest of all
Indians who, virtually without flaws,
personified everything Americans always
wanted an Indian to be. Edmunds
effectively shows how even during his
lifetime Tecumseh achieved almost
legendary status. As a result, the folk
hero has overshadowed the real
Tecumseh ever since. Edmunds
conclusively dismisses many of the legends
about Tecumseh that have added to the
noble savage stereotype. Tecum-
98 OHIO HISTORY
seh, according to most accounts, was
always brave, honest, strong, and ded-
icated. It was said he was of mixed
blood and fell in love with a white girl,
tragically giving her up when forced to
choose between white and Indian so-
ciety. Neither of these stories can be
supported by hard evidence. Yet the
nineteenth century romantic view of
Tecumseh has persisted among twenti-
eth century writers and receives even
greater creditability with the impres-
sive outdoor drama presented each summer
in Chillicothe, Ohio.
The Tecumseh that Edmunds describes was
equally great, but from an In-
dian rather than a non-Indian
perspective. An orator and warrior who skill-
fully negotiated with and made war
against William Henry Harrison, Tecum-
seh is no less the hero in Edmunds'
interpretation. But he was not the only
important Shawnee leader of his time. He
shared leadership with his broth-
er Tenskawatawa, the Prophet, who
actually initiated the Indian movement
among the Shawnee and neighboring
tribes. In fact, Edmunds shows clearly
that the Prophet was also a forceful
orator who dominated the Indian move-
ment from 1805 until 1809. Only after
the Treaty of Fort Wayne did Tecumseh
become more prominent and even then he
used his brother's religious move-
ment for his own political and military
purposes. But the Prophet has always
been the villain in the romantic
interpretation, an unattractive charlatan who
was never a warrior and, even worse, was
flawed by alcoholism. Unlike
Tecumseh who died the way Indians are
supposed to die-in battle, Tenska-
watawa died quietly and without glory
many years later. It was Tecumseh,
the magnetic leader, who commanded the
loyalty of thousands, the fearless,
dedicated, yet humane patriot chief who
achieved legendary status while
the Prophet was dismissed as a pathetic,
misguided misfit. In pointing out
the Prophet's importance, Edmunds in no
way diminishes Tecumseh's
achievement and significance. The
biography does a masterful job of placing
the brothers in proper perspective.
Edmunds also succeeds in writing a
biography which is in large part
Indian-centered history. His first
chapter effectively summarizes the most
important aspects of Shawnee culture
before the coming of Euro-Americans.
Throughout the remaining pages, Edmunds
keeps the Indian perspective in
the forefront. As a part of the Little
Brown series, The Library of American
Biography, the study is kept relatively
brief, a factor that makes it highly ap-
propriate as supplementary reading in
undergraduate courses in American
history. Although not documented, it
does include a useful essay on the
most significant primary and secondary
sources. Unfortunately, it will take
more than the superb effort of R. David
Edmunds to undo close to two cen-
turies of distortion. Nonetheless, he
has provided a truly significant interpre-
tation of the best known of all Indian
leaders.
Youngstown State University Frederick J. Blue
The Rise of Industrial America: A
People's History of the Post-Reconstruction
Era. Volume Six. By Page Smith: (New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Company,
1984. xvi + 965p.; illustrations, index.
$29.95.)
In the sixth volume of his People's
History, Page Smith presents the reader
with a much broader treatment of his
subject than the title suggests. Al-
Book Reviews
99
though many of the book's forty-three
chapters deal with some aspect of
"the war between capital and
labor," this is a social rather than an economic
history of the United States between
roughly 1876 and 1901. Smith's work is
a peoples' history both in the audience
he is writing for and the approach he
takes to his subject. The general
reading public is the audience Smith is ad-
dressing and he illustrates his
narrative primarily with the words of the peo-
ple, both famous and obscure, who
observed and often helped shape the
events of their day. While this book
does provides a fairly good analysis of
the period, its real strength lies in
Smith's ability to impart to the reader a
vicarious feeling for the times through
his skillful use of such intimate pri-
mary materials as letters and diaries.
Overall, the book is loosely organized
around two themes: the war be-
tween capital and labor, and the
popularization of science in general and Dar-
winism in particular. Since one of
Smith's goals is to " 'untidy' our past, to re-
veal it as the strange, crude, and often
violent event or congeries of events it in
fact was" (p. 908), he makes no
attempt to overstate the importance of his
general themes to the subjects he
raises. Each chapter is a more or less inde-
pendent essay dealing with a particular
movement, event, family or personali-
ty of the late-nineteenth century. An
extremely detailed index is included as
are five pages of illustrations which
appear at the end of Chapter Seventeen
for no apparent reason.
The first five chapters deal with
"the Indian problem" and cover such di-
verse topics as the Sand Creek Massacre,
the government's attempts to de-
velop a workable Indian policy and the
fate of a number of aborigine tribes.
Roughly fifteen of the remaining
chapters deal primarily with the war be-
tween capital and labor. As with the
other topics covered, Smith's treatment
is well-balanced and wide-ranging, with
an effective combination of generali-
zations and detailed description of
segments of such events as the Great
Strikes of 1877, the importance of
technological changes, the development of
big business and the changing conditions
of labor. The chapters on reform,
the New Journalism, and the free thought
and anarchist movements are well
connected to both the book's major
themes. The remainder of the essays
are evenly divided between descriptions
of the importance of "science" on
areas such as religion, education and
elite thought and miscellaneous sub-
jects of interest or importance, including sports, the
free love movement and
American literature.
Although scholars specializing in a few
of the areas covered by Smith will
find some of his interpretations dated
or his generalizations questionable, he
has nonetheless collected a remarkable
variety of primary sources which tell
an always compelling and often insightful
tale. The greatest failing of this
book is the lack of either footnotes or
bibliography. Serious scholars would
have benefited from Smith's meticulous
research as would general readers
interested in further reading in this
area. The necessarily brief treatment af-
forded each topic because of the wide
scope of this book makes this prob-
lem even more serious. Despite these few
flaws, Smith's book is one of the
most informative and useful general
histories that has been produced recent-
ly. Readers interested in any area of
this period should not be dissuaded
from reading this book because of its
considerable length. Smith has man-
aged to produce a book that continually
holds the reader's interest.
The Ohio State University Thomas S. Dicke
100 OHIO HISTORY
Joseph Brant, 1743-1807: Man of Two
Worlds. By Isabel Thompson Kelsay.
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1984. xii + 775p.; illustrations, notes,
selected bibliography, index. $35.00.)
When Joseph Brant, the Iroquois warrior,
leader and statesman was born
in 1743, his people were the dominant
Indians in eastern America. They held
western New York as their own and the
shadow of their power spread south-
ward and well beyond the Ohio. By 1807,
the Six Nations were a spent force,
their fabled unity smashed and their
homelands and influence largely gone.
Brant himself would die that year in
Canadian exile. Brant's story is the
poignant one of a man who fought most of
his life for failed dreams; it, too, is
the story of the Iroquois' collapse. The
career of Joseph Brant also has an im-
portant place in the larger history of
white-Indian relations. Isabel Thomp-
son Kelsay in her exhaustively
researched biography deals masterfully with
all these dimensions of Brant's life.
Brant belonged to the Mohawk Nation, the
most pro-English of the Iro-
quois, and Kelsay details how Joseph
became one of the most anglicized of
his people. Virtually adopted by the
legendary Sir William Johnson, Brit-
ain's Superintendent of Indian Affairs,
Brant obtained a smattering of white
culture, a usuable command of English,
and became one of Johnson's
trusted supporters in his relations with
the Iroquois. Joseph saw the English
as the Iroquois' friends and protectors
and their religion and way of life as
having some value for the Indians. With
the American Revolution, Brant
helped win over most Iroquois to the
British cause and he, himself, fought
continuously, most notably leading a
band of Iroquois and Loyalists in a
series of guerrilla raids that kept the
New York frontier in turmoil throughout
the war. Profoundly shocked and
disillusioned when the British not only
lost but made no provisions for
protection of Indian lands in the peace treaty,
Brant came to believe that the Indians
would have to work out their own sal-
vation. He now tried to create a large,
truly unified Indian confederation,
comprised especially of the Iroquois and
the Ohio Indians. Brant no longer
wished to fight, but believed such a
confederation could impress the Ameri-
cans sufficiently to agree to an
effective border between Indian land and the
United States. In one of the most
interesting parts of the book, Kelsay de-
scribes how Brant labored hard but
futilely for his dream of unity. After
Fallen Timbers, Brant turned most of his
attention to caring for some of his
own Mohawks with whom he had found
refuge in Canada, trying to con-
vince them to assimilate enough white
culture to survive as Indians in a
changed world and attempting to obtain
enough money from the Canadian
authorities and from judicious land
sales to stay alive economically.
The main outline of Brant's career has
been related before and Kelsay's
account is not significantly different
in general form, although she does pre-
sent the fullest, most complete picture
yet of the Mohawk leader. The book
is clearly written, moves the reader
easily through its 658 pages of text and is
securely anchored in an awe-inspiring
amount of resource material. Occasion-
ally, the reader would appreciate more
analysis, especially in connection with
Brant's Revolutionary War military
activities and in his attempts to accultur-
ate his people in Canada. Kelsay might
also do more with Brant's personali-
ty; he does not quite come to life,
although one must quickly add that her
characterization is still sharply
etched. She dismisses the noble savage im-
Book Reviews
101
age that has often obscured Brant and
portrays him as a recognizable human
being with strengths and weaknesses, a
man who was and who would
remain a Mohawk and yet would be
different because of his exposure to
white society. Kelsay also skillfully
presents the larger world in which Brant
moved, delineating the political and
social complexities of the Iroquois and
other Indian peoples as well as lucidly
following the tangled Indian policies
of the British. So well does she treat
these topics that the book could stand
on them alone. But it does not have to
stand so because of the depth,
breadth and sensitivity of her portrayal
of Joseph Brant.
Denison University Clarke
Wilhelm
Drink and Disorder: Temperance Reform
in Cincinnati from the Washingtoni-
an Revival to the WCTU. By Jed Dannenbaum.(Champaign: The Universi-
ty of Illinois Press, 1984. xii + 245p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $22.50.)
Recently, after decades of neglect, the
temperance movement of the nine-
teenth century has attracted the
attention of historians and has enjoyed at
least a partial rehabilitation of its
reputation. Several works have presented
the temperance crusade not as elitist
repression but as a sincere effort by
those associated with American
modernization to eliminate King Alcohol's
regressive dragging power. Dannenbaum's
book is part of this historiographi-
cal trend. Indeed, for its background it
draws heavily on the new studies of
temperance and other aspects of American
society. While providing some-
thing of a synthesis of the current
literature, this book's heart is a case study
of the temperance movement in
Cincinnati, a city important as a center for
both alcohol and its foes. The study's
foundation is laid firmly on research
in the original sources, including
newspapers, periodicals, tracts and a more
limited array of manuscripts. Directly
supporting the text is a generous num-
ber of unusually apt contemporary
illustrations.
Dannenbaum begins with a brief survey of
a hard-drinking America prior
to the start of the temperance movement.
Here and throughout he often
deals with conditions and events outside
Cincinnati to such an extent as to
weaken his focus on the subject of his
case study. Moreover, he might be
more skeptical of statistics and
anecdotes on alcohol consumption whose ulti-
mate sources were often opponents of
strong drink. Nonetheless, he gives a
convincing explanation of how
urbanization caused a relocation of both work
and play from the family and the small
community to a more anonymous set-
ting in which alcohol seemed to many to
present a threat to order. In reaction
to this danger arose a movement whose
central theme Dannenbaum sees as
having been "that of order and
control-the control of the behavior of oth-
ers and the control of oneself" (p.
10). While the author rather stresses the
latter aspect, his evidence also
indicates considerable interest in social con-
trol; perhaps more than he is willing to
acknowledge.
After a brief discussion of the origin
of the anti-spirits movement among
the elite of New England, Dannenbaum
turns to what he considers to be the
crusade's first major phase. He argues
that in the 1830s journeyman artisans
and young entrepreneurs began to take
control of the movement and use it for
their own self-improvement. These men
insisted on proscribing the wine of
102 OHIO HISTORY
the rich as well as the spirits of the
poor. In the 1840s they turned to
Washingtonianism, which Dannenbaum
acutely analyzes as a secularization
of the techniques of religious
revivalism. First informally and later through
such lodges as the Sons of Temperance
and the Good Templars, the Wash-
ingtonians sought to persuade drinkers
to cease and others not to start and
thus soon made a distinct change in the
habits of many middle-class Ameri-
cans. The discussion of this social
temperance movement is generally con-
vincing and yet a caveat should be
entered. Cincinnati's leading Washingto-
nian differed in several respects from
Dannenbaum's pattern. Samuel F. Cary
was seemingly a member of the elite,
having been a lawyer long interested in
reform and a man of inherited wealth. As
the only Cincinnati temperance fig-
ure of truly national status (with the
possible exception of Abby Leavitt), he
might well have been examined more
closely and completely.
In the 1850s, the movement turned to the
political phase of prohibitionism.
While understating earlier interest in
legal measures, Dannenbaum skillfully
demonstrates the relationship between
the intensified support for prohibi-
tion and the fears of disorder aroused
by the heavy influx of Irish and Ger-
man immigrants. In Cincinnati and
elsewhere in Ohio, political realignment
based on temperance, anti-Catholicism
and nativism helped to undermine
the Second American Party System. Out of
the turmoil came eventually the
Republican party which deemphasized
prohibition in an attempt to appeal
at least to the non-Catholic Germans.
The chapters on these complicated
events, with much specific evidence on
Cincinnati, are the book's best.
The third phase of the temperance
movement, according to Dannenbaum,
was female-dominated. Women had early
become involved in the move-
ment; its shift in the 1850s to
prohibition and politics induced some of the
voteless women to turn to direct action,
including attacks on saloons. Espe-
cially revealing is the author's
demonstration of numerous links between
earlier female confrontations with
liquor-sellers and the origins of the Wom-
an's Crusade of 1873-74 against saloons.
While Cincinnati was not at the Cru-
sade's forefront, the city's press
helped to encourage its spread by reporting
its victories in Ohio's smaller towns.
More use of information from the Cru-
sade's opponents, including the German
press, would have been helpful.
Out of the Crusade grew the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union. As
Dannenbaum shows, the WCTU professed to
protect the home, woman's
traditional shrine, while simultaneously
facilitating her increasing involve-
ment in politics and other public
activities. In discussing the opposition of a
minority of WCTU members to political
activity, the author might have given
more consideration to some opponents'
interest in defending the Republican
party from defections to third party
prohibitionism, showing that the women
opposing a political stand were also
becoming politically active. All criticisms
aside, this book is valuable to students
of temperance, politics, women and
general social history.
Kent State University Frank L. Byrne.
Little Flower: The Life and Times of
Fiorello LaGuardia. By Lawrence
Elliot.
(New York: William Morrow and Company,
Inc., 1983. 265p.; bibliogra-
phy, index. $13.95.)
Book Reviews
103
Lawrence Elliot, author of Little
Flower: The Life and Times of Fiorello
LaGuardia, accurately
notes that this subject, the fascinating reform mayor
of New York City, has "received
only spotty biographical attention" (p. 243).
Unfortunately, Little Flower offers
little to fill this gap. There are simply too
many problems with this attempt at
popular biography.
Despite a scholarly apparatus, which
includes a bibliography and numer-
ous references to leading LaGuardia
scholars, such as August Heckscher,
Arthur Mann, and Howard Zinn, the lack
of footnotes, even for direct
quotes, is puzzling. A simplified
end-of-book form would have sufficed.
More importantly, the scholarly
literature has not been sufficiently integrated
into Elliot's work. Rather than an
analytical biography, even one based on
secondary sources, Little Flower is
chattingly anecdotal and intensely person-
al.
Excepting the introductory chapter,
which concentrates on LaGuardia's
last day in office, the book has a
chronological organization, following our
most famous Italo-American politician
from cradle to grave. Yet, there is an
imbalance to the narrative, with the
mayoral period, that which interests
readers most, being restricted to the
last one-sixth of the volume. And again,
much of the discussion of city
government in the thirties concentrates on
LaGuardia's stormy relationships with
those within his official family (such
as Robert Moses), as well as those
outside (such as the Roosevelts), instead
of developing our understanding of
LaGuardia's unique contributions.
One of the difficulties with the
biography is its press-agent prose, at least
in reference to LaGuardia. His
stewardship of the city is termed "twelve
years of the best reform government in
American municipal history" (p. 11);
of his cabinet, Elliot writes,
"Never before had such strikingly qualified ad-
ministrators been chosen to govern a
major American city" (p. 210). So much
for Tom Johnson and "Golden
Rule" Jones! Yet, these paeans of praise are
never really documented or supported.
Furthermore, with LaGuardia on the
side of the angels, his opposition is
depicted in various shades of ineptitude:
inept, more inept and most inept. In a
way that is reminiscent of his subject,
but not appropriate for a historian,
Elliot has turned LaGuardia's career and
life into a morality play, pitting the
fiery and moral "Little Flower" against
the forces of evil, principally
Republican establishment types and Tammany
hacks.
Finally, the book is not without some
merit or interest. The writing is lively
and often engaging, and the point of
view is clear. Most of all, the subject is
genuinely fascinating. Fiorello
LaGuardia had an unusual ability to see issues
clearly and when he chose his words
carefully, they were telling. In response
to the violence of the Bonus March of
1932, for example, when the Hoover
administration unleashed the Army under
the command of General Douglas
MacArthur against the thousands of
impoverished World War I veterans,
LaGuardia sent the following telegram to
the White House: "Beans are bet-
ter than bullets and soup is better than
gas." The man who wrote those
words deserves a better biography than
the one at hand.
State University College at
Brockport Kenneth O'Brien
104 OHIO HISTORY
Henry Kissinger: Perceptions of
International Politics. By Harvey
Starr. (Lex-
ington: The University of Kentucky
Press, 1984. xiv + 206p.; illustrations,
tables, notes, appendix, index. $23.00.)
How do you enter Henry Kissinger's head?
If you are Marvin or Bernard
Kalb you do this by poring over press
clippings, talking with the host him-
self, examining such artifacts
(artifices?) as he is good enough to share with
you, and then distilling it all into
something called Kissinger. If you are
Seymour Hersh you must interview around
the host who will not see you,
but you pore and talk and distill just
the same. But where you arrive is some-
where else again. The Kalbs'
super-statesman of noble purpose is now a
pathetic power monger of malevolence
seldom surpassed, the destroyer of
Cambodia and killer of Allende (by what
Richard Barnet calls "bureaucrat-
ic homocide"), the man who brought
war (not peace) to the Middle East
and dollar-a-gallon gasoline to the
United States.
The difference derives of course as much
from the distilling as from the
matter distilled. The Kalbs are not
Hersh and neither is or would dare be
Kissinger. Only idealists in the mold of
R.G. Collingwood would dare be
Kissinger. So it reduces to the Kalbs'
idea of Kissinger and Hersh's idea of
Kissinger. Or call it White House
Years and it is Kissinger's choice idea of
Kissinger.
All of which reducing is as old as
Charles Beard but to the point. For if
you are Harvey Starr you deliver us of
this relativists' conundrum by comfort
of some theory and method on which Ole
Holsti long ago delivered unto us
the head of John Foster Dulles. To
begin, decision makers "can act only in
terms of their image of the world"
(p 44). From this it arrives that decision
makers' "willingness" to
address such "opportunities" as their "environ-
ments" (p. 15) present relates
functionally to their image. Which means that
in order to build an understanding of,
say, Nixon/Ford foreign policy (and,
on replication, a theory of
international politics) it is necessary (by hypothe-
sis) to know the image or "belief
system" held by the chief architect of the
policy. And to know that, confident that
it will not change much if you are
Hersh or the brothers Kalb instead of
Starr, you use "systematic methods of
collecting and analyzing data about
Henry Kissinger" (p. 6).
Starr executes these well. In Part I (of
II), a rich and profitably read collec-
tion of chapters partly in summary of
the biographical and psychobiographi-
cal literature on Kissinger and partly
in analysis (operational code) of Kissin-
ger's academic writings, Starr
identifies the belief system Kissinger brought
with him to the Nixon White House. From
this, in Part II, Starr generates
eleven hypotheses which he tests using
evaluative assertion analysis (the
technique of content analysis Holsti
directed at Dulles). Five of these hy-
potheses describe perceptions alone,
culled from Kissinger's public state-
ments while a senior foreign-policy
decision maker. The other six add be-
havior, from the COPDAB events data
sets. Of the first five, four stand
confirmed: so that Kissinger's belief
system was more open and his evalua-
tion of the Soviet Union more positive
than Dulles'; so that Russia, by virtue
of its power and reach, was the salient object in
Kissinger's system; and so
that China was perceived as an "informal
'coalition partner' " (p. 120). How-
ever, none of the latter six hypotheses
is confirmed, so that it is "apparent
Book Reviews
105
that Kissinger's images are not congruent
with American foreign-policy be-
havior" (pp. 141-142).
These are the bones alone, where the
flesh is handsome and vital. Starr's
Kissinger is indeed first-rate scholarship. But to where does it
deliver us?
Were I to submit, say, that the four
hypotheses confirmed describe relation-
ships already known, I suppose I would
be chided for confusing a measure-
ment with a guess. Very well. But
"fair's fair," my six year old counsels. And
a guess is a guess. And it is
necessarily Starr's guess that Kissinger's public
statements reveal consistently his
"image of the opponent" (p. 77) and not,
from this, an image he was busy
cultivating. And if Robert Jervis is correct
that statements (even memoranda) are
inadequate guides to beliefs, then
Starr's is not a very good guess. We are
back at the start.
Wescosville, PA John V.
Garrett
The Unheralded Triumph: City
Government in America, 1870-1900. By
Jon C.
Teaford. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1984. xiv + 370p.;
notes, index. $14.95 paper; $28.50
cloth.)
Teaford's book is at once both
impressive and disappointing. It goes into
stunning detail explaining the political
figures, governmental structures, and
technological advancements associated
with American city government be-
tween 1870 and 1900. Disappointingly,
however, the book's organization
obscures the central dynamic of urban
government-the political process
itself-and, unfortunately as well,
Teaford does not fully appreciate the impli-
cations of the unheralded triumph
emphasized in his analysis.
Teaford's thesis is interesting, though
hardly original. He contends that
late-19th century American cities have
received an undeserved reputation for
being despotically governed,
inadequately serviced, and corruptly adminis-
tered. On the contrary, by the beginning
of the 20th century, the American
city was a triumph in engineering
achievement and governmental organ-
ization. Thus, its alleged failure has
been more a failure of image than of
substance. During the 1870-1900 period,
the American city made extensive
public improvements, embraced
professionals and businessmen into its gov-
ernment, developed sound fiscal and
financial management, created modern
governmental structures, and opened up
the political process to a variety of
groups. Thus, the image of the city as a
morally bankrupt center of political
corruption and governmental
mismanagement is largely undeserved.
Urban scholars have long recognized this
theme, but none have so skill-
fully assembled such an intricate array
of evidence to support it, at least not
until now. Teaford goes into
considerable detail compiling the demographic
characteristics of city aldermen,
mayors, and civil servants, comparing and
contrasting their respective class
backgrounds, as well as the paths the vari-
ous office holders took to their
positions. He is similarly precise in chroni-
cling the essential features of
state-city relationships, interpreting the duties
and responsibilities of a variety of
city office holders, or chartering the rise of
municipal regulatory organizations.
Teaford perhaps is at his best in the last
third of the book, where he exhaustively
compares American and European
cities in terms of their engineering
feats, social services, and municipal fi-
nances.
106 OHIO HISTORY
Along the way Teaford quashes some
popular misconceptions about turn-
of-the-century city government. For instance, urban
"bosses" were not des-
pots but brokers, who had to contend with competitors
for their positions.
Or, cities were not malleable creations
of the state governments; instead, leg-
islators acceded to the suggestions of a
city's delegation in the writing of laws
affecting that city. Or, American cities
actually were superior to European
ones in terms of the availability of parks,
transportation networks, and sewer-
age and water services.
Despite the brilliant detail Teaford
brings to his subject, one element is
missing, or at least treated in a
lackluster, subdued manner: the political
process itself. The book's encyclopedic
organization probably is at fault, ob-
structing one's vision into the vitality
of urban politics at the turn of the centu-
ry. Teaford describes aldermen, mayors,
urban professionals, businessmen-
reformers, ward bosses, technological
developments, social services, and
municipal finance, but all in separate
chapters, which in turn he divides into
equally separate subsections.
Unfortunately, he fails to draw the proper con-
nections among the chapters and
subsections. For instance, the chapters on
urban infrastructure and social services
clearly reflect on the work of various
professionals: public engineers, public
health officials, park superintendents,
public librarians, and other civil
servants. Yet 92 pages separate the chapter
on professionals from the chapters
describing the policies they fomented.
Consequently, the reader fails to obtain
a clear grasp of the relationship be-
tween those individuals who produced
change and the change itself. Or, to
put it differently, Teaford does not
adequately explain the dynamics of the
process that spawned the technologically
competent and ably administered
city he reveres.
More importantly, however, Teaford fails
to address a larger question: If
the late-19th century city was a triumph
in engineering and governance, in
what sense was it a triumph? Or, whose
interests did the triumph serve? The
American city, above all, has been a
center of profit, designed to serve the
private interests of insurance
underwriters, financiers, merchants, and indus-
trialists who have used the city as
their economic base. At the turn of the
20th century-a time of immense social,
economic and technological change
-political structures altered, public
policies changed, new technologies
emerged. Such achievements could be
considered triumphal, but scholars
need to recognize that these changes occurred
largely to maintain the city's
usefulness as a center of profit. Thus,
for instance, as Teaford relates, insur-
ance underwriters urged reforms that
produced fire codes and professionally
staffed and administered fire
departments. Such policies were in the interest
of insurance companies. Similarly,
businessmen-reformers fought the ward
bosses because the ward politicians were
overly concerned about maintain-
ing themselves in power and protecting
neighborhood interests; they were
inadequately prepared to oversee city
government as an entity. Businessmen-
reformers battled the bosses-with whom
they had previously cooperated
-because the bosses were not
sufficiently competent to run the city efficient-
ly, that is to protect the city as a
center of profit.
The relevance of the profit motive is
vital to demonstrating the interests at
stake in late-19th century cities.
Profit compelled the unheralded triumph
which Teaford suggests, a triumph
insofar as it protected the interests of an
urban bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, he
misses this argument, even though the
facts are on hand. Instead he
concentrates on listing and describing various
Book Reviews
107
atoms in the urban milieu and fails to
analyze the energetic force-the capi-
talistic impulse-that bound these
particles together.
Thus, on one level Teaford admirably
presents a factual description of
American city government from 1870 to
1900, presenting it as a triumph of en-
gineering and organizational
achievements. Yet on a different level, he fails to
recognize that the triumph was a victory
for profit and was attributable to po-
litical dynamics deeply rooted in the
city's very nature as a center of capitalis-
tic ventures.
The Ohio State University at Lima William D. Angel, Jr.
History of Agriculture in Ohio to
1880. By Robert Leslie Jones. (Kent:
The
Kent State University Press, 1983. x +
416p.; maps, tables, notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. $15.00.)
For much too long there has been a
shortage of nineteenth century Ameri-
can agricultural regional histories.
Fortunately, this study of Ohio farming
partially remedies the deficiency. By
focusing upon the growth of crop and
livestock production from the initial
settlement around 1790 through the
post-Civil War era, Robert Leslie Jones
successfully illustrates the transition
from a frontier to a more complex
agricultural system.
Jones challenges several commonly
accepted views of frontier life. Contrary
to the general belief that all settlers
immediately became landowners, he
points out that farm tenancy was quite
extensive in Ohio primarily because
many arrived without sufficient capital
to purchase property. Furthermore,
he states that subsistence farming was a
myth, for though most farm opera-
tors produced a substantial portion of
the goods they consumed, none were
totally self-sufficient. Jones also
indicates that much like the present time,
the more ambitious farmers quite
frequently supplemented their incomes by
taking jobs outside of their own
operations.
During the era covered by this volume,
grain-growing became the chief oc-
cupation of Ohio crop producers. Though
oats, rye, barley, and buckwheat
were raised, their production was
overshadowed by corn and wheat. As in
other frontier regions, corn was the
first crop planted. Utilized primarily for
consumption, the gourdseed, flint, and
dent varieties were often marketed in
the form of beef, pork, or whiskey.
However, the extension of the "old
wheat belt" westward from Pennsylvania
caused that cereal grain to emerge
as the primary commercial crop in the
state, particularly after canal and rail-
way systems opened connections with the
Atlantic Coast. Indeed by 1839
Ohio led the nation in wheat production.
This dominance was fleeting, how-
ever, for acreage in the commodity began
to decline during the Civil War as
increases in land values convinced
farmers to shift from an extensive to an in-
tensive agricultural system.
In his discussion of the beef cattle
industry Jones notes the impact of out-
side influences. On the prairies of the
western counties, experienced cattle-
men from Virginia and Kentucky
established a range grazing industry which
ultimately depended upon livestock being
imported from states both to the
west and the south. In the corn-growing
area of the Scioto Valley, feeders
who patterned their operations after
those practiced in the South Branch of
108 OHIO HISTORY
the Potomac River region in Virginia
fattened cattle for consumers in the
urban east. Outside these specialized
areas, the bulk of Ohio cattle which
were grown in a happenstance manner
originated in New York, Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and Kentucky. Improvements in
quality occurred as groups like the
Ohio Company for Importing English
Cattle contributed to the importation of
such breeds as Shorthorn, Hereford,
Devon, and Ayreshire. Furthermore,
from the beginning of the cattle drives
around 1800 through the extension of
the railroads in the 1850s eastern
markets determined the prices producers
received for their livestock. After the
Civil War, competition from western
cattlemen weakened the sales' returns,
thus reflecting the continued effects
of outside influences.
A particularly interesting aspect of
this book is the attention given to spe-
cialty agricultural enterprises. Among
those mentioned is tobacco whose pro-
duction of such types as yellow leaf,
burley, and seed leaf annually exceeded
twenty-five million pounds on the eve of
the Civil War. Also, the apple indus-
try became commercially important
despite the inferior trees distributed by
John Chapman, also known as Johnny
Appleseed. Such other individuals as
Nicholas Longworth, who promoted
strawberries in the Cincinnati area, and
Lorenzo Langstroth, a clergyman at
Oxford, who encouraged beekeeping
through the introduction of an improved
hive and the importation of Italian
bees, added to the diversity of the
agricultural system.
In this meticulously researched and
clearly written book, Jones has taken
a wealth of materials and presented them
in a readable form. Though the
historical continuity suffers because of
the organization by commodities, this
is not a serious defect. Indeed, this
fine work sets a high standard for future
regional agricultural historians to
emulate.
West Texas State University Garry L. Nail
Women Called to Witness: Evangelical
Feminism in the 19th Century. By
Nancy A. Hardesty. (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1984. 176p.; appendix,
index. $11.95.)
This book is not intended for the
professional historian. There are no foot-
notes, and the bibliography lists few
primary sources and many familiar sec-
ondary works. Also familiar is Nancy A.
Hardesty's search for the origins of
nineteenth-century feminism, already
pursued by Barbara Leslie Epstein,
Ruth Bordin, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg,
and Barbara Berg, among others.
Hardesty's thesis is that
"Nineteenth-century American feminism was
rooted in evangelical revivalism,"
especially as this was personified by
Charles Grandison Finney. Finney indeed
is the central and unifying figure in
this book (and the subject of Hardesty's
doctoral dissertation from which
the book springs), and it is Finney who
is supposed to provide the causal
links between evangelicalism and
feminism. The links are sometimes interest-
ing and plausible. For example, Finney's
"common sense" interpretation of
the Bible perhaps facilitated the use of
the Bible by feminists like Antoinette
Brown. Finney's advocacy of a
non-professional ministry perhaps encouraged
the ordination of some women and the
licensing of many others to preach.
Far too often, however, the causal
connections between Finney and femi-
Book Reviews
109
nism are far too casual. As examples,
Finney's presence at Oberlin College
while Lucy Stone was a student there and
his conversion of Henry B. Stan-
ton prove nothing about his impact on
feminism, and Stanton's wife, Eliza-
beth Cady, was in fact repelled, not
converted by Finney, as Hardesty sug-
gests.
Also central to Hardesty's argument is
Frances Willard. Willard's connec-
tions with the Methodist Church and with
evangelist Dwight Moody are in-
controvertible, but it is difficult to
make the leap from this evidence to
Willard's feminism unless we take as the
gospel truth, as Hardesty apparently
does, for the incident is recounted
twice, Willard's claim to have been in-
spired "'while alone on my knees
one Sabbath'" by a voice which de-
clared, "'You are to speak for
woman's ballot as a weapon of protection to
her home and tempted loved ones from the
tyranny of drink.' " We might
also question how accurately Willard's
advocacy of the "home ballot" fits
Hardesty's own definition of
"feminism" as "a belief in and commitment to
the moral and social autonomy of
individuals."
Hardesty also blurs the definition of
"evangelical." Identifying it first with
Finney and Methodism, she also includes
in her descriptions of "evangeli-
cal" feminists, Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Quakers, Unitarians, Uni-
versalists, Free Methodists, and members
of the Evangelical Free Church in
America, the Pentecostal Holiness
Church, the Pilgrim Holiness Church,
the Assemblies of God, and others. At
any rate, simply to identify a suffra-
gist, for example, as a Methodist or a
Congregationalist, says nothing about
the motives behind her politics, since
the middle-class women who made
up nineteenth-century feminism would
very likely be members of one of the
Protestant denominations.
A safer argument, although not a novel
one, would have been simply to
make the connection between evangelical
Protestantism and an expanded
role and consciousness for
nineteenth-century women. An excellent example,
which Hardesty never mentions, is the
Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion, springing directly out of the
urban revivals of 1857-58 and moving from
its original goal of evangelical
missionizing to urban benevolence to full-
fledged and far-ranging reform,
including suffrage.
The book concludes with a brief chapter
about the decline and recent re-
vival of evangelicalism as a force for
reform and feminism, a movement in
which Hardesty herself is active.
John Carroll University Marian J. Morton
The Land Before Her: Fantasy and
Experience of the American Frontier,
1630-1860. By Annette Kolodny. (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1984. xix + 293p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
$28.00 cloth; $9.95 paper.)
There are all too few scholarly books
that break new ground. Annette
Kolodny's The Lay of the Land (rape
as metaphor in the American westward
movement) was one of these rare landmark
books a few years ago. Her latest
work, The Land Before Her, is
another scholarly achievement of special note,
the first volume in an ongoing study of
women's "fantasy and experience of
110 OHIO HISTORY
the American Frontiers." This is
not revisionist history, as Dr. Kolodny cau-
tions us in her Preface, nor is it
intended to be a study in social or literary his-
tory. Instead, she perceives the
"landscape as a symbolic realm" resonant
with meaning which gave rise to a
"sequence of fantasies through which
generations of women came to know and
act upon the westward-moving fron-
tier." Although these fantasies often differed
strikingly from the realities of
the difficult frontier experience, she explains,
"Our actions in the world . . .
are shaped by the paradigms in our
head." The richness and provocative-
ness of this study lies, then, in its
exploration of female paradigms which
serve as a counterpoint to the dominate
male metaphors in American litera-
ture and thought of the New Adam and the
isolate hunter-hero (Daniel
Boone and Leatherstocking, for example).
As Dr. Kolodny points out, the imagery
of the Virgin Land exemplified
male erotic conquest of the feminine
landscape and the compulsion to discov-
er new, still-virgin territory by
pushing the frontier further westward. In stark
contrast to this impulse toward
"erotic mastery" of the land, the intricate
fantasies of women over a lengthy period
of time came to center on the spirit
of renewal, the unbounded generosity of
nature, the domesticated and tran-
quil gardens they would create out of
the wilderness. The cumulative female
fantasy is not to discover a New Eden
uncontaminated by civilization, but to
turn the raw landscape into a home, to
domesticate paradise, to nurture the
best human values transported from
civilization to the frontier, to forge the
ideal human community.
Ironically, the popular male fantasy of
the Adamic lone hunter allowed no
real place for women. But the westward
movement could not, in fact, take
place without the labor and energy of
women who literally carried the roots
of home and human society with them in
the cuttings and seeds from their
eastern gardens. Such domestic concerns,
and their surrounding fantasies,
assured women that the female experience
of the wilderness would not
harden them; as they accommodated to the
frontier by planting their gar-
dens, they would retain their feminine
and "ladylike" qualities. Such fanta-
sies promoted (and were intended to
propagandize) the exemplary model of
the wife who followed her husband into
the wilderness in order to create
the garden and home, to establish the
bastions of morality and stability
which might ultimately draw the isolate,
mythic male back to the morally re-
newed human family and community in the
role of yeoman farmer and towns-
man. (That the lone male myth continued
to dominate popular imagination
speaks volumes about our cultural
preoccupations.)
The idealized female fantasies were far
removed from the drudgery, pov-
erty and terror of the frontier's
reality. Yet these fantasies were essential in
fulfilling several purposes: they gave
women a distinctive place in the west-
ward movement, promoted the settling of
the frontier by reluctant help-
meets, and gave pioneer women an
acceptable paradigm that made familiar
the unfamiliar wilderness. By creating
gardens out of the wild landscape and
taking on the role of domestic
gardeners-by attempting to make the fantasy
real-they made the westward settlement
possible.
The complexities of Dr. Kolodny's
analysis can only be suggested in this
short review. Ranging through three
centuries of fiction, poetry and personal
narratives of the frontier experience,
her study also analyzes the Indian cap-
tivity accounts, tracing parallels
between those and the recurrent captivity
imagery-the log cabins and the dense
woodland as female prisons, for
Book Reviews
111
example-in the other frontier materials.
Such darker and more troubling im-
ages contrast with the fantasies of the
contented female gardener. She por-
trays too the changing social and class
background, the chaos of the Civil
War, the emergence of the industrialized
urban East, and the gradual liter-
ary shift away from romanticism to
realism in fiction. Consequently, this
volume does not simplify female
fantasies or experiences, but is richly sug-
gestive of the contradictions of both.
Carefully and exquisitely, this volume
builds the foundation for more expansive
historical, social and literary stud-
ies of the westward movement as seen
through the eyes of pioneer women.
University of Maine at Farmington Judith A. Sturnick
A Woman's Place: The Life History of
a Rural Ohio Grandmother. By Rose-
mary O. Joyce. (Columbus: The Ohio State
University Press, 1983. xiii +
294p.; illustrations, charts, notes, appendices, list of
works consulted, in-
dex. $20.00.)
This life history of a fifth generation
resident of rural, southeastern Ohio is
the result of interviews Rosemary Joyce
conducted, beginning in 1972, with a
woman she calls Sarah Flynn Penfield.
The title, A Woman's Place, indicates
the controlling theme of the interviews
with Penfield (and with her sisters,
children, and grandchildren) at the
point when Joyce decided to use them
as the basis for her dissertation. Just
what a woman's place was, and is, is
clearer to researcher/interviewer Joyce,
informed by a feminist conscious-
ness, than to her consultant, Sarah
Penfield. Ironically, that is precisely one
of the appealing features of the book:
the life, the actions, the views of
79-year old Sarah Penfield cannot be
neatly categorized. Her life and her
views reveal an ongoing ambivalence
between the ideal and the real, be-
tween ideology and behavior. Though not
inarticulate, she is a doer, not a
steady reflector.
Sarah Penfield holds very traditional
views regarding the role of women,
especially mothers, as nurturers
responsible for the welfare of children, and
grandchildren. At the same time, she has
been a remarkably energetic,
competent, take-charge woman, as were
her female ancestors. There is less
surprise in this-active independence and
self-sufficiency and devotion to
family-than the author suggests
throughout. Joyce does, correctly, under-
score the seeming duality between thought
and action, the ideal and the
real, often inherent in strong,
independent, dependable women in general.
According to the dialogue included,
Sarah Penfield did not wish to ad-
dress the question of "woman's
role" directly. She was not reluctant, howev-
er, to discuss her family and her work.
Nor did she hesitate to point out that
women worked equally as hard as men,
and, at times, even harder; she and
her sisters had to work outside as well
as inside the home. She insists,
though, that the ideal role of woman is
primarily that of bearer and nurturer
of children. Exhausting as the physical
labor she expended, and continues
to expend, was, it is merely a matter of
course: hard work, within the family,
is woman's place.
The author is indeed sensitive to this,
although she strains at times to
make it otherwise. Joyce admits that she
"imposed form" on the interview
112 OHIO HISTORY
materials. This has both positive and
negative results. Often, there seems too
much forcing of Sarah Penfield's words
into the author's analytical and inter-
pretive framework. Yet, Joyce's analysis
in the last chapter of the "dimen-
sions, turnings, and adaptations"
of Penfield's life is in many ways the most
successful and informative part of the
book.
Joyce's examination of her subject from
a number of perspectives, too, has
positive and negative results. It allows
a fuller view than otherwise, but the
rather lengthy explanations of
methodology and approach seem more appro-
priate for a dissertation or a book
intended solely for an academic audience.
Women's Studies scholars are already
familiar with the necessity for an
interdisciplinary approach in examining
women's experiences. And the gen-
eral public for whom the book may find
its most receptive audience would
find the detailed methodological
explanations cumbersome.
The author's attempt to place Sarah
Penfield in the cultural context of
southeastern Ohio and the larger context
of state and national economic,
technological, and industrial
developments is admirable. One wishes, how-
ever, that the focus were more on Sarah
Penfield and her reading of context.
This is true, also, because Joyce has
included dialogue of Penfield's sisters,
children and grandchildren. However
selective and imperfect Sarah Pen-
field's memory, she is the subject
of the life history; at times there are too
many voices and one wonders which views
are truly hers.
"Does Sarah's life have pertinence
for other women?" the author asks.
Her life documents the important role of
women in rural society, which is a
welcome addition to the growing
scholarship on urban women's lives. The
importance of family is a shared
concern, as is the prevalence of traditional
attitudes in the face of change. Sarah
Penfield's reverence for her mother
and her devotion to her children and
grandchildren underscore the role of
"linking generations" that
women often play and elicit appreciation for that
role in a society characterized today as
rootless. She and the other women in
her family do indeed embody conflicting
views and actions regarding the
value of continuity and the necessity of
change over time. Penfield's words,
and the author's interpretation,
indicate an ambivalence toward the role of
women-ideally and in reality-that
Women's Studies scholars have been
studying and writing about for almost
two decades. A Woman's Place is an
interesting life history of a rural Ohio
grandmother; it has pertinence, too, for
other women, and for men.
Skidmore College Joanna Schneider
Zangrando
Shades of Gray: Old Age, American
Values, and Federal Policies Since 1920.
By W. Andrew Achenbaum. (Boston: Little,
Brown & Company, 1983. xv
+ 216p.; illustrations, notes, index.
$14.95.)
This book, a volume in the Little, Brown
series on Gerontology, is de-
signed as a brief history, "a
synthesis," as the author says, "of the litera-
ture," rather than a work
"based on extensive research into primary sourc-
es." There is nothing wrong with
writing such a book, if it is well done, and
certainly Professor Achenbaum has no
reason to feel apologetic. He has in-
Book Reviews
113
deed produced a useful guide that tells
in brief compass what an intelligent
reader would wish to know about a
complicated subject.
He shows that programs for the aged have
for the most part been impro-
vised. Social Security programs were
influenced by "happenstance" (p. 47).
Conflicting groups affected development.
As Achenbaum points out, "They
used, misused, and abused their power to
different ends with varying de-
grees of efficacy." Looking back
over the past half-century, he says that pub-
lic programs have always been
"inadequate" (p. 64). This reviewer also got
the impression that so-called
"specialists" on aging do not really know very
much. It is as if they were all
undergoing on-the-job training (pp. 66, 88).
The efforts made during the '60s he
finds a failure. Lyndon Johnson in-
sisted on speed. There was no time to
develop programs with "incremental"
effect (p. 89). Nevertheless, Achenbaum
reminds us that Johnson's adminis-
tration was one of the most fruitful
periods of social legislation, ranking with
Wilson's first administration and FDR's
100 days. The aged did benefit.
Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in
1965. In Achenbaum's opinion, the
objectives set forth in Title I of the
Older Americans Act were "potentially
more revolutionary in scope than any
other war-on-poverty measure" (p. 96).
The "Great Society" was not
the New Deal "reshuffled" (p. 97).
Somehow, though, things did not work out
as they were supposed to. In
most cases pensioners did not have the
economic resources to enjoy their lei-
sure. The Great Society's effect on the
elderly, Achenbaum concludes, was
"mixed at best and regrettable at worst"
(p. 105).
Despite this, Achenbaum does not dismiss
the Great Society as a sham.
Americans did benefit from Johnson's
programs. Unfortunately, the pro-
grams could not accomplish what they
were supposed to do. Planners exag-
gerated their ability to solve problems
(p. 109). The Vietnam War drained off
funds that should have been used not
only to deal with problems of the
aged, but of domestic problems in
general, with the resultant social turmoil
during the latter part of the decade. In
general, Achenbaum is rather harsh
on Johnson, however well-intentioned the
President might have been.
Nor is he better disposed toward
Johnson's successors. Towards Ronald
Reagan Achenbaum is thoroughly
disenchanted. He does not object neces-
sarily to the fact that Reagan has
reversed government policy to such an ex-
tent that it is unlikely that anyone
would favor a return to Johnson's policies
(p. 141). His objection lies in the fact
that Reagan's programs for the aged are
not well-conceived either. They are
short-sighted and "designed in a vacu-
um" (p. 166). Just as the liberals'
effort to wage "war on poverty" did not
succeed, so he feels that the
neo-conservatives will also fail (p. 169).
Of the author's learning and scholarship
there is no doubt. Only a man of
such abilities and thoughtfulness can
produce a useful synthesis of research
in a field.
Kent State University Harold Schwartz
Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign
Policy. By Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,
1984. xiii + 367p.; illustrations, in-
dex, $17.95.)
114 OHIO HISTORY
This book is "a personal
memoir" (p. xiii) of Haig's tenure as secretary of
state. Haig observes that when Ronald
Reagan became president, the U.S.
no longer held the economic and military
preponderance it had enjoyed
through the 1960s. Its relative decline
was partly caused by the growth of
the Soviets' military power and their aggressive
expansionism, including
their support of widespread
"Marxist insurgencies" (p. 26). The "Carter ex-
periment in obsequiousness" had
stimulated uncertainty among our allies
and friends (p. 29). Since America is still a
superpower, it must avoid creating
"conditions of the greatest danger
for itself" (p. 26) by doing what we can
"to arrest Soviet imperialism"
(p. 107). The general was certain, before 20
January 1981, that "in a broad
way" (p. 14) he and Reagan shared a similar
view of the world. He was not dismayed
by the fact that the president-elect
"had not revealed to me . . . a
profound knowledge of international issues"
(p. 14).
Their similar view included a putting
together of "the Greek Civil War,
Korea, the Berlin Blockade . . . the
Cuban revolution, Vietnam, Prague,
Afghanistan and .. . El Salvador"
(p. 27) in the tentacles of the Soviet octo-
pus. "To arrest Soviet
imperialism" (p. 107) "Moscow must control its client
Cuba, especially in this
hemisphere" (p. 108), so Reagan and Haig agreed.
Yet the ex-secretary neglects to explain
why, after El Salvador's junta in 1980
"announced a land reform
program" (p. 126), native insurgents kept on fight-
ing.
In seeking, to cope with international
problems, Haig was frustrated by
White House aides Edward Meese, Richard
Allen, Michael Deaver, and
others. They prevented him from
obtaining Reagan's signature to the docu-
ment delineating responsibilities among
those concerned with foreign affairs.
This resulted in confusion and
"scuffles for personal advantage" (p. 355).
With no "single voice on foreign
policy, The Administration was . . . a sort of
Babel" (p. 86). Neither NSC advisor
Richard Allen nor Haig was allowed
"direct, regular access to the
President" (p. 82) to learn what his precise
views were.
The White House aides wielded power by
controlling "who the President
would see," as well as "what
documents he would read and sign and . . .
through manipulation of the press which
policies and servants of the Presi-
dent should be advanced and which defeated"
(p. 150). White House leads
to the press "nearly wrecked"
(p. 285) Haig's secret negotiations with Lon-
don and Buenos Aires over the Falkland
Islands war. Haig laments that
"these men" overruled his (p.
130) recommendation for strong action against
Cuba over El Salvador as they wanted no
action that would alienate voters.
One wonders if they knew of his effort
in 1975 "to persuade President Ford
to resist" (p. 120) when North
Vietnam overran South Vietnam and dis-
trusted his judgement. On the other hand,
the aides and others sometimes
prevented Haig's sounder diplomatic
judgement from prevailing, as when his
recommendation to gradually escalate
sanctions against Russia over Poland
was thrust aside. Instead, as Mrs.
Thatcher told him, by going "the whole
hog at once" (p. 256), the U.S.
left the Soviets with no incentive not to in-
vade.
Haig failed to convince Reagan and his
advisers that all communists were
not the same and that the Chinese fear
of the USSR in Asia meant that
American cooperation with them was in
the national interest. Although Rea-
Book Reviews
115
gan eventually agreed to a compromise
over Taiwan, it was the China ques-
tion, above all, that convinced Haig
"that Reagan's world view was indeed
different from" (p. 195) his own.
The President's advisers, and some
cabinet members, perceived Haig's ef-
fort to obtain written clarification of
his responsibilities as "a novel attempt to
preempt power" (p. 355). He
precipatated his downfall by giving Philip Habit
instructions for negotiations about the
Lebanese war without waiting for pres-
idential approval. At Reagan's request,
he undertook to mediate this war
himself while waiting for his
successor's confirmation. Then, just as the sec-
retary was "on the verge of
achieving peace in Lebanon" (p. 351), the presi-
dent dismissed him.
Haig's book shows that he is sometimes
inconsistent. He concludes it by
urging Reagan to espouse "a policy
that demands a world of peaceful change,
the defense of human values,. . . and
the advancement of social justice" (p.
357). Yet he rejoiced that such friends
as South Korea and Argentina would
hear no more lectures "from the
United States on human rights" (p. 90).
His book, however, proves an
illuminating inside account of his role in of-
fice under the man he still believes
deserves a second term.
Miami University-Hamilton Edward B. Parsons