Ohio History Journal

BOOK

REVIEWS

260                               OHIO HISTORY

Use of the above sources, plus an under-

standing on the part of Miss Glad that

there can be a mixture of realism and

idealism, would have resulted in a more

balanced treatment of Hughes as Secretary

of State.

EUGENE P. TRANI

Southern Illinois University

RICKENBACKER. By Edward V. Rick-

enbacker. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-

Hall, Inc., 1967. ⁴58p.; illustrations, ap-

pendix, and index. $7.95.)

Rickenbacker's apprenticeship in tech-

nics began in 1904 at the age of ten, when

his father died in a construction accident

and the young boy supported the family

through a series of jobs in light industries

around Columbus, Ohio. His career even-

tually straddled both of the major trans-

portation developments of the twentieth

century: automotive and aeronautical. Ric-

kenbacker's captivation with cars began at

the stage when they were devotedly ma-

chined and fitted by hand. Later, amidst

the aura of dash and glamour surrounding

race drivers, his approach had the assured,

systematic technique of the professional.

He drove his cars with a technician's appre-

ciation of their capabilities and kept them

running with the aid of a well rehearsed

pit crew buoyed up by sprightly march

tunes played from a portable phonograph.

These traits of proficiency and ingenuity

carried Rickenbacker into new fame as

America's "Ace of Aces" in the aerial duels

of World War I. As an attentive novice,

he absorbed the lessons of survival by

example from the astute Raoul Lufbery

and, with a mechanic's aptitude to remedy

balky machine guns, outlived many con-

temporaries.

In the postwar years, Rickenbacker at-

tempted a number of enterprises including

the Rickenbacker Motor Company, which

floundered, and the Indianapolis Speed-

way, which flourished. In the meantime,

his fascination with flying persisted. After

joining Eastern Air Lines in 1934 as

general manager, he became its owner and

president in 1938, crystallizing his future

in the field of aviation. As air line com-

panies reached maturity in the late thirties,

Rickenbacker successfuly juggled the com-

plex challenges of financial, corporate, and

operational procedures. Faster, more com-

plicated aircraft led to route extensions,

higher costs, and new problems: reacting

to the pressures of piloting the new genera-

tion of modern transports, Eastern became

one of the leaders in aviation medicine.

Although Rickenbacker did not accept

an active commission in World War II, he

served as a technical advisor and special

aide for the wartime administration. As a

roving envoy of Secretary of War Henry

Stimson, Rickenbacker's various wartime

missions, including visits to China and

Russia, comprise some of the most fascinat-

ing episodes of his autobiography. He was

critical of Chiang Kai-shek and the inept

Nationalist regime, but was generally im-

pressed by the Russian military apparatus,

especially its air force.

Rickenbacker stresses the corporate and

financial factors of the years after 1945,

a period of extremely rapid transition in

air transport design and equipment. A

more thorough analysis of the era's tech-

nological developments would have added

to the value of the account. Since parts

of two chapters closely repeat his earlier

books about World War I and the ordeal

afloat on a raft in the Pacific in World

War II, it is regrettable that he did not

expand his coverage by using fresher ma-

terial. Rickenbacker's narrative, like his

life, is vigorous and blunt. Because of his

position as a well known figure in the

air line industry, this popular autobiogra-

phy will also interest historians.

ROGER E. BILSTEIN

Wisconsin State University,

Whitewater

THE POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF

ROBERT A. TAFT. By Russell Kirk

and James McClellan. (New York:

Fleet Press Corporation, 1967. x??²¹³p.;

chronology and index. $6.95.)

This short volume, written at the request

of the Robert A. Taft Institute of Govern-

ment and co-authored by Russell Kirk,

famous Conservative, is not a "propaganda

piece." On the contrary, the authors, using

not only the Taft family papers, but also

BOOK REVIEWS                              261

books, monographs, popular articles and

newspapers of divergent views, precisely

define the political ideology of Robert Taft

and suggest his influence on his times.

The accurately drawn description of

Taft's political ideology and the sharp

delineation of his character are the best

features in the book. The Senator is

depicted as no "terrible simplifier" but a

perceptive thinker who insisted that lib-

erty is neither license nor laissez-faire.

While his philosophy stressed the need for

restraints on power to be accomplished by

constitutionalism, responsible party opposi-

tion and a strong congressional role in

American government, Taft balanced this

conviction with the beliefs that security

and justice for all were vital -- justifying

such methods of achieving them as federal

aid to education, voluntary medical care,

and public housing. In shorter compass but

with the same articulation, the authors

present the contours of the Senator's views

on foreign policy. At times isolationist, on

other occasions internationalist, Taft's en-

during fundamentals were the overriding

importance of the national interest: a

"prejudice for peace" and a detestation of

empire. The "man of the Great Tradition"

in ideology, the Ohioan is said to have

been a retiring, non-eloquent, sober person

whose industry, honesty, courage and in-

tegrity made his character truly great.

While commendable for its explanation

of Taft's political principles, the book has

limitations. The appearance rather than

the reality of critical analysis is evident.

Widely known criticisms of Taft are too

often regarded as "strawmen" to be demol-

ished. "Criticisms" become tributes. For

example, the too-honest-for-his-own-politi-

cal-advancement defect is represented as

a virtue. The authors' decision not to go

extensively into Taft's isolationism prior

to the Second World War because he was

not then a dominating figure opposes the

more accurate estimation of historians that

the Senator was a leader -- perhaps the

leader -- of American isolationists. Prob-

ably the most severe indictment of the

Kirk-McClellan book was written by the

indexer who found no need to include

either McCarthy or McCarthyism in the

index. This omission of Taft's support of

McCarthyism is serious because this sup-

port denied his political credo and belied

the authors' claim that "Taft's honesty and

intelligence transcended the controversies

of the hour."

This reviewer believes that the authors

felt a need to be advocates as well as

historians. This weakening of the study's

objectivity was unnecessary. William S.

White in The Taft Story was kindly to his

subject, but unlike Kirk and McClellan

was as severely critical as sympathetic.

The same Taft emerged from both books --

a man of political depth and high char-

acter. The irony, however, is that profes-

sional historians and "impartial readers"

will be more inclined to recognize the

Senator's deserved place among great

Americans after reading The Taft Story

than after ending this less critical and

more pro-Taft account.

DAVID JENNINGS

Ohio Wesleyan University

PENNSYLVANIA POLITICS, 1872-1877:

A STUDY IN POLITICAL LEADER-

SHIP. By Frank B. Evans. (Harris-

burg: The Pennsylvania Historical and

Museum Commission, 1966. vii??360p.;

illustrations, bibliography, and index.

$5.00.)

It is quite appropriate that Frank Evans'

Pennsylvania Politics, 1872-1877 should be

brought to the attention of readers of Ohio

History. Not only were two Ohioans, Grant

and Hayes, elected in the presidential

elections covered by the study, but also

there was a close relationship between

Ohio and Pennsylvania political issues and

leaders during the intervening years. Evans

reveals that at their 1873 state convention

Pennsylvania Democrats adopted virtually

the same platform as that of the Ohio

Democracy. In 1874 Democratic news-

papers in Ohio joined their Pennsylvania

counterparts in supporting Jeremiah S.

Black as United States senator from the

Keystone State. Similarly, in 1874 the

"Women's Crusade," a prohibitionist move-

ment originating in Ohio, moved into

Pennsylvania and sparked a political battle

over local option. In 1874 Democrats in

both states won decisive victories, and in

1875 Pennsylvania Republicans, using tac-

tics and issues similar to those used by

Ohio Republicans and heartened by the

262                               OHIO HISTORY

election of Hayes as governor of Ohio, went

on to crush their Democratic opponents.

Evans indicates a number of areas of

cooperation and mutual concern which

may prove to be fruitful subjects of investi-

gation for future historians. In his numer-

ous references to the two states, he also

presents strong evidence for the theory

that Ohio provided leadership in national

politics following the Civil War.

The main purpose of Dr. Evans' study,

however, is not to point up the political

relationships between Ohio and Pennsyl-

vania. Instead, he has written a well-

documented and rapidly-moving account of

bitter partisan battles during a critical

period of Pennsylvania's tumultuous polit-

ical history. Beginning with the Liberal

Republican revolt of 1872 and ending with

Senator Simon Cameron's retirement from

public life in 1877, Evans, in examining

the factors which created a strong Repub-

lican majority and a weak Democratic

minority, finds that the Republicans had

strong leadership, an efficient party organi-

zation, a unifying political program, and

a remarkable degree of party loyalty. The

Democracy, on the other hand, suffered

not only from its minority position in

national politics but also from poor leader-

ship and lack of ability to create a positive

program.

Covering a period of only five years,

Evans takes the reader through stirring

political crises. In spite of the existence

of city "rings" and state machines, the

voters never seemed to become complacent,

partially because they were conscious of

the relationship of politics both to reform

and depression. In 1873-74, Pennsylvanians

opposed the Republican machine of Simon

Cameron by supporting first a constitu-

tional convention and then by throwing

the "rascals" out of state offices and out

of one seat in the United States Senate.

Adoption of the new constitution and Dem-

ocratic victories in 1874 gave renewed con-

fidence to both reformers and Democrats

and led to the national prominence of such

leaders as Congressman Samuel J. Randall,

Speaker of the House of Representatives

during the disputed election of 1876. But

the Republicans seized control again in

1875 and went on to carry the state for

Hayes in 1876.

Dr. Evans, formerly State Archivist of

Pennsylvania and presently on the staff of

the National Archives, has written a wel-

come sixth addition in a series of studies

of significant periods in Pennsylvania polit-

ical history. His bibliography suggests that

there are bountiful materials about the era

he has studied. While he touches upon the

inter-party conflicts surrounding the con-

stitutional convention of 1873, it is appar-

ent that he did not, and perhaps could not

because of space limitations, delve deeply

enough into the convention itself and the

new constitution. We trust such a study

and others will come later from Dr. Evans'

facile pen.

ALFRED D. SUMBERG

American Association of University

Professors, Washington, D.C.

THE CENTENNIAL YEARS: A PO-

LITICAL AND ECONOMIC HIS-

TORY OF AMERICA FROM THE

LATE 1870's TO THE EARLY 1890's.

By Fred A. Shannon and edited by Rob-

ert Huhn Jones. (New York: Double-

day and Company, Inc., 1967. xx??362p.;

bibliography and index. $6.95.)

This book derives from a manuscript

left by the late Professor Fred Shannon

of Illinois, whose work in nineteenth cen-

tury American history is well known. The

manuscript and notes were rearranged and

edited by one of his former students, Pro-

fessor Jones of Western Reserve University.

The volume covers the turbulent and

changing period from the centennial year

1876 to the early nineties. Because Pro-

fessor Shannon believed that political and

economic history were inseparable and

mutually determinant, he combined the

two types to show their interpenetration.

At the beginning of the book he portrays

a wealthy and exuberant nation starting its

second century with more problems than

it understood and displaying more confi-

dence than its situation would justify. "Let

the new cycle shame the old!" John

Greenleaf Whittier wrote in his Centennial

Hymn, and most Americans believed it

would. The nation, with more factories,

had more rich men but greater poverty,

greater hopes but more powerful hatreds

and bloodier strikes, than ever before.

Professor Shannon played on this paradox

to emphasize his concept of the period as

one of change, of transition.

BOOK REVIEWS                              263

The book proceeds year by year with a

straightforward topical narrative of the

events of the twenty years covered. There

are chapters on Hayes, Garfield, Arthur,

and Cleveland; on financial and agrarian

problems; on the farmer's revolt; the rise

of labor organizations; the great conflict

of labor and management; the innovations

of technology, industry, and communica-

tion. Each chapter is buttressed with

statistical information and a summary of

economic and political trends. Since Pro-

fessor Shannon was never one to repress

his opinions about men and movements,

the book abounds with personal sentiments.

The interpretation of this period of

American history reflects quite accurately

the author's pronounced, personalized

point of view. As Professor Jones points

out, Shannon was a delayed Populist, out

of the unreconstructed Midwest, who saw

history through the eyes of the nineties.

With his Granger outlook, he never thought

much of cities, business leaders, or time-

serving politicians, and he felt that the

United States had at hand all the necessary

elements for a great forward advance, which

was prevented only by entrenched political

machines, mediocre presidents, reactionary

courts, and paleolithic tycoons. Until these

and like impediments were removed from

the path of progress, the United States

simply stood still. The best assessment that

could be given of these years is that they

provided the necessary preliminary for

better things and better men to come. "The

nation found itself," Professor Shannon

wrote, "coming into a young adulthood

that was overshadowed by problems of

business and society, that were not to be

solved simply by the application of salves

and dosing with placebos." The period

served as a kind of transition between an

older and simpler society that believed it

had answers to its questions, and a more

sophisticated twentieth century society

that, recognizing complexity, realized that

the old answers had little relevance to the

new questions.

Since the manuscript dates from the

fifties, many of its sources are more than

a decade old; Professor Jones has updated

the bibliography, but has wisely not at-

tempted to bring the author's interpreta-

tions into line with more recent scholarship

of the period. It remains his, and so does

the style -- straight narrative with inter-

polated comments -- in which the editor

has kept the author's tone and flavor. The

book is published in behalf of Professor

Shannon's doctoral students, and its pro-

ceeds will help to establish a scholarship

in history at Illinois. It is a fitting memo-

rial to a teacher and historian whose con-

tributions to understanding the American

past were large, and whose influence on his

students will not soon be forgotten.

RUSSEL B. NYE

Michigan State University

THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FRON-

TIER: THE AGE OF FRENCH EX-

PLORATION AND SETTLEMENT.

By John Anthony Caruso. (Indianap-

olis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966.

xii??423p.; maps, bibliography, and in-

dex. $8.50.)

John Anthony Caruso, professor of his-

tory at West Virginia University, with this

book completes the fourth volume of his

American Frontier Series. The present

work on the Mississippi Valley frontier

follows the same format as others in the

series with the footnotes at the end of the

book along with a bibliography listing pri-

mary and secondary publications. The first

portion, a section of some one hundred

pages, concentrates on the Indians of the

Mississippi Valley, mainly the Sioux and

various Algonquian tribes whose aboriginal

societies were invaded by a series of French

explorers and traders during the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries. Then

follow skillfully written narratives of the

wanderings of Jean Nicolet, Radisson and

Groseilliers, Marquette and Jolliet, La Salle

and Father Hennepin. There is further

narration about the Missouri River ex-

plorers, La Verendrye and his sons, and

finally an account of the early history of

Ste. Genevieve, St. Louis and other settle-

ments. The book ends with an interesting

chapter on the emergence of a Creole-

Voyageur society. Here (page 361) the

author does not hesitate to give high praise

to the Creoles, or Frenchmen (he seems to

use the terms interchangeably), especially

in their dealings with the Indians:

In their relations with the Indians

they proved vastly superior to the

Scotch-Irish and the Germans. While

the American Frontiersman was in the

264                              OHIO HISTORY

process of exterminating the Indian

and establishing a uniform type of

civilization from Maine to California,

the Frenchman, eager to win his good-

will, met him more than halfway. He

studied his language, flattered his prej-

udices, and refrained from ruffling his

dignity or insulting his ancient cus-

toms. The Anglo-American thought:

"How shall I make that damned red-

skin respect me?" The Frenchman

thought: "How shall I win the Indian's

heart?"

The passage above is illustrative of the

broad generalizations that are made in this

volume without documentation. Caruso's

work contrasts sharply with the multi-

volumed Histories of the American Fron-

tier series edited by Ray Allen Billington.

Each volume in the Billington series is

written by a specialist in a phase of fron-

tier history; each is based upon a wide

spectrum of sources and represents a

synthesis of scholarship for a particular

aspect of western history.

Although Caruso's work is primarily

addressed to the layman, the academician

may also learn from him. For instance, his

superb description of Indian society calls

attention to the important, but neglected,

role of the Indian in our early history.

Traditional historians, who object to giving

so much space to a discussion of Indians,

might object also to the author's topical

organization that calls for the repetition

in all three volumes of the same material

on the history of the early Mississippi

Valley, or to the fact that he does not

cite all of the recent historical scholarship

bearing upon his subject, or that the

book reflects much of the work of Francis

Parkman. But it is indeed difficult to write

about the early French explorers without

being indebted to Parkman. The fact re-

mains that Caruso has given us another

gracefully written volume which is instruc-

tive for both the layman and the scholar.

WILBUR R. JACOBS

University of California,

Santa Barbara

NAVAL DOCUMENTS OF THE AMER-

ICAN REVOLUTION, Volume II. Ed-

ited by William Bell Clark. (Washing-

ton, D.C.: United States Government

Printing Office, 1966. xlii??1463p.; illus-

trations, appendices, and index. $8.50.)

This, the second in a projected fifteen

volume series depicting the influence of the

sea and of sea power in the American

Revolution, meets the high standards of

scholarship set in the first volume. All

students of the Revolution, whether pri-

marily interested in naval warfare or not,

will find much of interest and value in this

collection. The documents are rich and

varied, covering British and American

strategy and tactics on the seas, the rela-

tionship of naval affairs to other military

and domestic concerns, problems encoun-

tered by both sides, and the impact of

warfare on the lives of the American

people.

The selection of materials is generally

excellent and comprehensive. Included are

documents of the Continental Congress and

provincial bodies, accounts of land assaults

and engagements at sea, public and private

correspondence of British and American

civil and military authorities, journals,

diaries, and a wealth of other information.

Aid for the researcher is present in an

excellent index, a bibliography of printed

sources and newspapers, and a list of

manuscript sources.

Many of the illustrations -- especially

maps of towns and coastal areas in North

America and England -- are useful as well

as ornamental. A well organized pictorial

essay entitled, "American Navigation dur-

ing the Revolution," affords a good survey

of equipment used aboard American ves-

sels of war.

The journal of the American Robert

Barwick written during the Canadian cam-

paign of 1775 and documents such as those

describing the destruction of Falmouth,

Maine, by the British serve to deliver the

Revolution from the realm of abstract com-

mentary to that of struggling, despairing,

and hoping humanity. The broad sweep of

events is tempered by the thoughts and

actions, lives and deaths, of men of high

or low station who were often not sure

what was going on or why. One is im-

pressed also by the sense of responsibility

and the attitude of perseverance on both

sides. Above all, these records are re-

minders of the immense importance of sea

power in this war.

The editorial policy and format follow

closely that of the first volume. The docu-

ments, whether whole or in abstract, are

BOOK REVIEWS                              265

presented with original spelling, punctua-

tions, and abbreviations. The type is clear

and readable. In order to solve the time

lapse problem, documents are divided into

American and European theatres as

follows: American Theatre, September 3,

1775 - October 31, 1775; European Theatre,

August 11, 1775 - October 31, 1775; Ameri-

can Theatre, November 1, 1775 - December

7, 1775. This somewhat artificial arrange-

ment does aid in understanding the rela-

tionship of strategy in the two theatres of

war. Editorial commentary and annotation

are held to a minimum. For the serious

researcher, this is essentially a collection

of primary source materials, organized

chronologically, and with an index. As such

it is well done, valuable, and most welcome.

PAUL C. BOWERS, JR.

The Ohio State University

HEGEL'S FIRST AMERICAN FOL-

LOWERS, THE OHIO HEGELIANS:

JOHN B. STALLO, PETER KAUF-

MANN, MONCURE CONWAY, AND

AUGUST WILLICH, with Key Writ-

ings. By Loyd D. Easton. (Athens: Ohio

University Press, 1966. ix??353p.; ap-

pendix and index. $7.00.)

Readers willing to take their intellectual

history as a series of personal adventure

stories will find much to intrigue them in

the parallel lives of four versatile and

enterprising Ohioans. Three of the subjects

emigrated to Ohio from Germany, and

their sojourns, physical and intellectual,

will be of particular interest to those con-

cerned with the effort of German emigres,

both to leave the Fatherland and to take

the best of it with them.

J. B. Stallo, who arrived in Cincinnati in

1839, devoted the first ten years of his

life in America to teaching and studying

the German language, mathematics, chem-

istry, and physics. Not long after the

publication of his General Principles of the

Philosophy of Nature . . ., he was admitted

to the Cincinnati bar. A successful lawyer

and judge, Stallo was active on behalf of

political reforms -- often in opposition to

puritanical Yankee reformers, who had no

monopoly on status anxiety in Cincinnati.

In his large library and among his beer-

drinking friends, he continued to pursue

his interest in the philosophy of science.

His summa, The Concepts and Theories of

Modern Physics, was published in 1881.

Peter Kaufmann experimented with min-

isterial studies, a labor-for-labor store,

utopian communitarianism, and journalism

before settling down in Canton, Ohio, as a

publisher of almanacs. Kaufmann used his

almanacs to promote the multiple causes

which caught his fancy -- including the

popularization of German philosophy.

August Willich, sometime Prussian army

officer who battled for the Republicans in

1848 joined -- and split -- with Marx's

Communist League, and went to New York

in 1853 to raise a revolutionary emigre

army, was recruited by Stallo to edit a

German language newspaper in Cincinnati.

An advocate of labor reform, cooperatives,

and radical political action, Willich was

an enthusiastic Republican who served as

adjutant of Cincinnati's German regiment

during the Civil War. "On returning to

camp he would put his troops at ease,

address them as 'citizens', and proceed to

lecture on socialism."

Moncure Conway, Virginia-born Uni-

tarian minister, spent five years in Cin-

cinnati. During that time he published a

life of Paine, edited the Dial, and offered

his pulpit to Wendell Phillips. In 1862,

he sought an atmosphere more congenial

to his radical antislavery views, so left

for Boston.

These four men were friends. Apparently

all four read Hegel, or at least approved

of some of his views. Stallo is the only

member of the "group" for whom formal

philosophy was a major concern, and the

only one to give serious attention to the

systematic exposition of specifically

Hegelian ideas. Kaufmann spoke favorably

of Hegel and of the dialectic; to describe

his syncretistic religious views as either

"dialectical" or "Hegelian" involves a more

hospitable definition of both those terms

than this reviewer would accept. Conway

and Willich were more interested in Hegel's

disciples than in Hegel himself, and far

more interested in social action than in

theory. To imply that this group of four

men constituted a group comparable to the

St. Louis Hegelians in the field of formal

philosophy is to exaggerate. Purists in the

study of the history of ideas and their

diffusion will probably not find Easton's

analysis particularly rewarding.

MARY YOUNG

The Ohio State University

266                                 OHIO HISTORY

DANIEL E. MORGAN, 1877-1949: THE

GOOD CITIZEN IN POLITICS. By

Thomas F. Campbell. (Cleveland: Press

of Western Reserve University, 1967.

ix??196p.; illustrations, bibliography, and

index. $5.50.)

If historians of modern American politi-

cal reform are to reduce their disagreement

over the progressive movement, they will

require many more biographical studies.

But the motivation of minor progressive

leaders may prove as difficult to investigate

as that of Daniel E. Morgan. An Oberlin

and Harvard law graduate of Welsh ances-

try who first entered Republican politics

in 1908 in Tom Johnson's Cleveland, Mor-

gan compiled no substantial file of revealing

letters and private papers through four

decades of service as councilman, charter

reviser, state senator, city manager, party

county chairman, and judge. Nor was he

a glamorous figure highlighted in other

men's views and reminiscences. For a

dissertation upon this "good citizen in poli-

tics," Thomas F. Campbell of the depart-

ment of history at The Cleveland State

University had to rely principally upon

newspaper and official records. The result

is a detailed account of chiefly public

efforts at municipal reform in the first

half of this century. The larger questions

are often left unanswered.

The most obvious example of this com-

bination of minute detail and significant

omission is the treatment of the 1911-1913

period. The third chapter traces Morgan's

losing campaign for election as city solicitor

in 1911, the fourth takes up his part in

revising Cleveland's charter in 1913. Along

the way it is noted that Morgan was also

one of the "governing triumvirate" in the

Bull Moose party in Cleveland in 1912, but

of his reasoning in deserting the regular

Republicans, or even of his contribution to

that crucial presidential campaign, virtu-

ally nothing is said. Since he removed

himself from partisan politics for fifteen

years thereafter, the 1912 election was a

decisive point in his career. Despite the

niggardliness of sources, more extended

analysis is called for.

Campbell quite properly subordinates

Morgan's personal life to his political

activities, yet his legal practice poses other

important questions. Who were Morgan's

clients, and what cases did he argue at

the bar? Did his early despair at pursuing

the profession reflect the kind of status

anxiety that Hofstadter has postulated in

The Age of Reform? By what process did

he develop the progressive views of the law

he enunciated as judge on the Eighth Dis-

trict Court of Appeals after May 1939?

Again, the dearth of intimate sources

on this scholarly, dispassionate lawyer

inhibited scrutiny, yet further work in

legal records might have yielded some

fruitful results.

By diligent research Campbell has

gathered enough facts to make a compre-

hensible if sometimes dull story of reform

battles on the urban frontier. In particular,

he has demonstrated how a public-spirited

citizen, who made "a better judge than a

campaigner," preserved his moderately

progressive attitude through the 1920's, to

emerge as a reform Republican responsive

to the challenges of depression and war.

If politics rewarded unassuming leaders for

responsible devotion to the bono publico,

Daniel Morgan would have risen to more

prominent positions following his capable

performance as state senator (1929-30) and

Cleveland city manager (1930-31). But

circumstances combined with temperament

to confine his scope, until appointment to

the Court of Appeals closed out an honor-

able career.

Judicious in interpretation and carefully

composed, this volume evinces the scholarly

approach that its subject always espoused.

It is to be hoped that the author will turn

the same talents to more promising investi-

gations. The Press of Western Reserve

University did an excellent job of publish-

ing, one illustration of which is that the

footnotes are put at the bottom of the page.

G. WALLACE CHESSMAN

Dension University