Book Reviews
Cities of the American West: A
History of Frontier Urban Planning.
By John W. Reps. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979.
xii+827p.; maps, illustrations, notes,
selected bibliography, index.
$75.00.)
For John Reps the West begins in the
Ohio and Mississippi valleys
(including the Great Lakes) and reaches
to the Pacific. It, or parts of
it, existed as a frontier as early as
the sixteenth century and as late as
the 1880s (in Oklahoma). This definition
of the region, of course,
rests not on physiographic but on what
one might call cultural grounds.
For Reps, the story of urban planning in
the West is also a story of
urban growth conceived as a process by
which planned urban com-
munities spearheaded the settlement of
the western periphery and
finally in the middle and latter
nineteenth century penetrated its in-
terior. By 1890, moreover, the era of
the urban frontier had ended,
and the urban West essentially looked
and behaved like the urban East,
creating an urban-rural division as a
major fault-line in American
social, political, and cultural life. On
the whole, Reps thinks the plan-
ning was shoddy and that we have not
improved much on it since 1890,
leaving for Americans in the latter
twentieth century "a new frontier
in urban development whose challenge is
not to found new towns in a
wilderness but to replan those that
exist in forms and patterns worthy
of man as he approaches the twenty-first
century" (p. 694).
That, I think, accurately summarizes the
organization, argument,
and moral of this book, and places it in
an interpretive tradition
familiar to readers of the work of Carl
Bridenbaugh. Blake McKelvey,
and Richard C. Wade. This volume differs
from their work, however,
in its concentration on plans, in the
variety of planners with which it
deals, and in the amount of illustrative
materials it reproduces. The
plans, according to Reps, were
astonishingly uniform, although the
planners, sites, and types of places
planned for were not, for his dis-
cussion covers pueblos, presidios,
villas, speculative towns, communal
utopias, mining camps and towns,
railroad towns, river towns, cow-
towns, desert towns, mountain towns,
plains towns, instant cities,
cities of Zion, cities of the Saints,
and the overnight cities of Oklahoma.
And the book is packed with
illustrations (more than one on each page
of text), including maps, sketches, and
photographic views in black
and white and in color. It is, in
addition, liberally footnoted, embellished
with a bibliography on both the
literature and the illustrations, and
comes boxed in a handsome slip-case
bearing on its front a view (draw-
ing) of Leadville, Colorado, and on its
back a birds-eye view (also a
drawing) of San Francisco, both of which
are dated 1878.
Cities of the American West, in short, is an impressive piece of book-
making. Conceived, Reps tells us, by
Mitchell A. Wilder, Director of the
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in
Fort Worth, Texas, it took
eight years to research and write. The
prose is clear, heavily descrip-
244 OHIO HISTORY
tive, spiced with descriptive quotations
from past observers of western
towns and cities, and the interpretation
is forthrightly stated in the
introduction and explicated briefly in
the conclusion. This volume
stands, moreover, as another example of
the burgeoning recent interest
in the urban West and the role and
nature of sunbelt cities. It will be of
interest to both amateur and
professional historians, as well as to
planners, geographers, cartographers,
western buffs, lovers of cities,
books, old maps, drawings, and
photographs, and to students of latter
twentieth century American civilization.
University of Cincinnati Zane L. Miller
A Russian Looks at America: The
Journey of Aleksandr Borisovich
Lakier in 1857. Translated from the Russian and edited by Arnold
Schrier and Joyce Story. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
1979. xli+272p.; illustrations, notes,
index. $15.95.)
This represents something of a find. A
host of mid-nineteenth cen-
tury British and European travellers
recorded their impressions of the
United States, but Aleksandr Lakier
seems to have been the only
Russian to have done so. His
observations, however, were confined to
his native language and apparently had
no impact on American studies.
Now discovered, translated, condensed
and unobtrusively edited by
Arnold Schrier and Joyce Story of the
University of Cincinnati, they
are at last available in a useful and
attractive volume.
Despite his exotic provenance, Lakier
adds little to the impressions
left by better-known European travellers
such as Harriet Martineau
or Alexis de Tocqueville, but he does
reenforce their general conclu-
sions: Americans chewed too much
tobacco, were obsessed with money-
making, and were characterized by
self-reliance and equalitarianism.
It is said that nineteenth-century
Americans used to pester every
foreign visitor with the same question:
"What do you think of our in-
stitutions?" They must have been
pleased with Lakier's response, for
he seems to have been captivated by
almost everything he found here
and indulgently made excuses for
American shortcomings (except for
slavery, "the true ulcer of
America"). "One may not love certain par-
ticulars in America," he concluded,
"but one cannot help loving America
as a whole or being amazed at what it
has that Europe cannot measure
up to-a people who know how to govern
themselves and institutions
that, unaided, give a person as much
happiness and well-being as he can
accomodate."
Coming from the slothful, bureaucratic
society of Tsarist Russia,
Lakier was delighted with American
bustle-"one feels oneself among
a commercial and enterprising people
that knows no fatigue and needs
no rest"-and was puzzled by the
absence of visible social distinctions:
"where are the common people? Where
are the rich and powerful .. .?"
he wondered. He was amazed to be able to
wander about without a
pass and to enter, without prior
permission, all public buildings (in-
cluding the White House, which he
thought barely "sufficient for a
Book Reviews
245
private family"). He was
particularly struck by "the fantastic freedom
of women.... If there is any kind of
aristocracy in America it con-
sists exclusively of ladies....
"
Lakier's travels took him to Ohio. He
had heard much of Cincinnati
as "a model of the true American
western city" and he eagerly an-
ticipated visiting that "realm of
pure equality." With such high ex-
pectations he was bound to be
disappointed to find it a bustling,
smoky city much like Pittsburgh,
distinguished chiefly by its unusual
number of pigs and Germans. Lakier
dutifully admired all of the
Queen City's sights and even tried to
find something polite to say
about Ohio Catawba wine, but the marvel
which made the greatest
impression was the new-fangled
steam-powered water pump developed
to fight Cincinnati fires.
In Cincinnati Lakier discovered the
optimistic Westerner for whom
all things were new and nothing was
impossible. Yet, in this same
self-confident spirit Lakier discerned a
subtle danger. "Nowhere per-
haps are people generally so well and
widely informed about what is
new and current than in the United
States, but the past, which pro-
vides no direct and essential benefit,
seems to be of no concern to
them. There will come a time," he
predicted, "when even for a young
nation the past will be important and
they will turn to their history...."
He would surely be pleased to know that
that day has arrived and
that his charming, unpretentious
narrative can finally be read by the
people he so admired.
Cleveland State University Allan Peskin
Emancipation and Equal Rights:
Politics and Constitutionalism in the
Civil War Era. By Herman Belz. (New York: W. W. Norton & Com-
pany, 1978. xviii+171p.; notes,
bibliographical review, index. $10.95
cloth, $3.95 paper.)
In this contribution to the impressive
Norton Essays in American
History series, University of Maryland
History Professor Herman Belz
offers an incisive assessment of how
Americans' commitment to con-
stitutional government affected the
effort to secure basic rights to
black Americans after the Civil War, and
how in turn their commitment
to securing those rights altered the constitutional
system. Republicans,
who enacted the post-war civil rights
legislation, were committed to
maintaining the federal system, Belz
writes, and they tried to protect
ex-slaves' rights within its framework.
The import of their legislation
was to leave the obligation for
protecting persons with the states, where
it had always lain, but to give the
national government a superintending
power to make certain that such
protection was available equally to
persons of all races. That included
power to intervene if states failed
to offer protection, Belz concludes, as
well as the power traditionally
conceded by lawyers and historians to
remedy outright legal dis-
crimination.
The determination to guarantee citizens'
rights in this way developed
246 OHIO HISTORY
slowly and in response to specific
circumstances, Belz finds. Therefore
he generally eschews the effort to
determine exactly what constitu-
tional enactments meant at a particular time in favor
of a description
of how progressively more expansive
interpretations germinated in the
hot-house of Civil War and
Reconstruction conflict. The crucial decision,
he writes, was to reject the notion of
treating ex-slaves as a special class
and to endeavor instead to integrate
them into the citizenry as a whole,
so far as the law was concerned. Thus
equality before the law, rather
than special help and protection, became
the Republican policy. Belz
is impressed with the radicalism of that
decision and is critical of those
historians who have complained that
Reconstruction was a failure be-
cause it did not go further in securing
the freedmen an economic foun-
dation for their legal rights.
Concise and readable, this is the best
interpretive synthesis available
of the insights developed over the past
fifteen years into the relation-
ship between the Constitution and the
issues of Reconstruction.
The Ohio State University Michael Les Benedict
A History of Social Welfare and
Social Work in the United States. By
James Leiby. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1978. vii+
426p.; notes, bibliography, index.
$15.00.)
Walter Trattner remarked in the
introduction to his history of social
welfare in America that most of the
studies in this field provide little
more than information about American
social welfare activities. These
studies, Trattner observed, fail to
place the history of social welfare
in the United States from colonial days
to the present within an in-
terpretive framework. James Leiby's
recent book, A History of Social
Welfare and Social Work in the United
States, purports to do just that.
Leiby argues that the development and
institutionalization of American
social welfare programs and work are the
result of certain "assumptions
of a quasi-religious character in
historic liberalism" (p. 356). These
assumptions, characterized by
"rational self-interest" and a "feeling
of sympathy and helpfulness,"
represent the merger of seventeenth-
century liberalism and the
"communal responsibility" of Christianity.
Leiby begins his examination of American
social welfare and work
in 1815-a time, according to him, when
American society was "more
homogeneous than ever before or would be
until 1950" (p. 2). This
assertion, like many in the book, lacks
supporting data. He then pro-
ceeds to present in an orderly fashion
general information on the poor
law, the treatment of "dependent,
defective, and delinquent" groups,
the emergence of "scientific"
charity, the professionalization of social
work, and programs designed to provide a
minimal level of income
maintenance and accommodation to the
existing structure of society.
Throughout his work Leiby assures the
reader that he is unimpressed
with "schemes to reorganize
society." He supports only those indi-
viduals who display a "pragmatic
temper" and who dispense benefits
Book Reviews
247
and services that ameliorate without
eradicating structural causes of
social, economic, or psychic distress.
Despite Leiby's insistence that he has
written a cogently argued in-
terpretive study, he fails to provide a
convincing explication of the
interaction between the institutions,
movements, individuals, and events
that comprise the "stuff" of
social welfare history. But even if he had
presented such a study, his work would
still be seriously flawed. Leiby
fails to understand the dynamic quality
of liberalism. For Leiby,
liberalism is static; it does not mean
anything different in 1979 than
it did in 1679. But this we know not to
be the case. The meaning of
liberalism has changed dramatically
between the seventeenth century
and the twentieth century. Sidney Fine's
Laissez-faire and the General
Welfare State, as well as numerous other works, traces the evolution
of liberalism from a negative to a
positive expression of economic and
political philosophy. Without such an
evolution the general welfare
state of the twentieth century, which
Leiby clearly accepts, would have
been impossible. Needless to say, it is
important to recognize the re-
definition of liberalism in order to
understand the development of both
social welfare policies and social work
in America. As a result, Leiby's
study not only suffers from a poorly
developed argument; it is dis-
turbingly ahistorical as well.
Regretably, despite his discussion of
various social welfare programs
and his description of the world of the
social worker, Leiby has failed
to increase our understanding of social
welfare and work in the United
States. We will continue to await an
interpretive history of American
social welfare and work from colonial
times to the present.
The College of Wooster Patricia Mooney Melvin
Dixie's Forgotten People: The South's
Poor Whites. By J. Wayne Flynt.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1979. xvii+206p.; illus-
trations, bibliography, notes, index.
$12.95.)
This slender volume was written by a
scholar who has a thorough
grasp of his subject. The author is
chairman of the Auburn University
History Department, and offers this
volume as one of a series en-
titled "Minorities in Modern
America." In general, Professor Flynt has
taken a comprehensive knowledge of
Southern history and used it as
the canvas on which to portray the
immensely important role of the
South's poor whites. He is a native
Southerner, as is this reviewer. The
book is tightly knit, admirably written
in an almost conversational
style, and contains a superb
bibliography.
Some may doubt that Southern poor
whites, who are White, Anglo-
Saxon Protestants (WASPS), qualify as an
"ethnic group." Flynt as-
sures us that they do, since they are
"racially and historically related
people who share [and preserved] a
common culture ... (xv). Although
they had the same ancestry as wealthy
neighbors, Flynt maintains
that a complex interplay of land distribution and use,
technology,
slavery, history, sloth, and ignorance
produced the poor white. Before
long a lasting stereotype was applied to
these hard-to-define people-
thus the inane adage: "All whites
who are poor are not poor whites" (9).
248 OHIO HISTORY
Before the Civil War these poor people
were already being exploited
by demagogues who, although helpful in
small ways, deserted them in
major battles which might have won
homestead legislation and common
schools.
The author pointedly observes that most
Americans have made a
critical error in judgment by concluding that the
material indigence
of these people found its equivalent in
poverty of spirit. If there is one
theme uniting this book, it is one
revealing time and again the spirit
of these downtrodden Southerners in
spite of heavy odds and extremely
harmful stereotypes. We are shown how
they have lived in remarkable
harmony with their environment,
constructed ingenious buildings,
aesthetically pleasing tools and
textiles, contributed, with blacks, to the
only really native-born music, and who
made positive contributions to
religious life instead of the old bawl
and stomp stuff so often seen in
stereotypes of these folks. In short, we
are made aware that they have a
genuine culture of their own.
A second theme reveals how politicians,
such as Congressman Frank-
lin Plummer before the Civil War, the
Populists afterwards, or Presi-
dent Lyndon Johnson of Great Society
days, have almost invariably
failed to realize that throwing money at
the poverty problem, while
ignoring the genuine cultural roots of
the poor whites, is to invite
failure. Flynt, like Harry Caudill,
believes that change must come at
the grass roots: "Southern poor
whites will have to change many tra-
ditional attitudes, especially the false
racial pride . . ., [and] put aside
their individualism at least enough to
organize at the community level.
.... Perhaps no solution can end white
poverty in the South. American
society invariably attaches conditions
to its offers of assistance. ...
As paradoxical as it must seem to most
Americans, poor white culture
demonstrates a relatedness and sense of
meaning that they may not
choose to risk for the alleged
advantages of affluence" (166).
This book fills a need and fills it
well. For years I have watched well-
intentioned city-bred students of a
university club go to my Appalachian
homeland to "improve" the folk
there; they invariably return much less
naive, and with the astounding admission
that they have brought back
more cultural understanding and love
than they brought in. But unlike
Professor Flynt, I have lived here in
the Midwestern "holy-land" for
nigh on to two decades, and I know how
flinty hard it is to break even
the minor "moonshine"
stereotypes about any folk living south of the
Ohio! But here is a good shot at it, and
I highly recommend it as good
reading for anyone, but especially for
use in college courses on the
South and as a necessary volume in
America's libraries.
University of Dayton Frank F. Mathias
Ohio's Natural Heritage. Michael B. Lafferty, Editor-in-Chief. (Colum-
bus: The Ohio Academy of Science, 1979.
324p.; illustrations, maps,
charts, index. $17.95.)
Book Reviews
249
Every state should have a book like
this: a survey, richly illus-
trated and sensibly arranged, of the
principal physical and biological
features of the state, both as they
exist today and as we can deduce
them to have existed at various times in
the past. To any one with
the slightest curiosity about the
environment in which his life is
grounded, this book should make living
in Ohio more interesting. It
gives a clear picture of what Ohio is,
of the kinds of rock and soil and
water on which we have built our
culture, and of the kinds of trees and
grasses and wildlife that have survived
our building. If, as the pub-
lishers and their philanthropic
underwriters promise, this book is
widely distributed in schools and
libraries, Ohioans may cease to be a
people strikingly ignorant about the
place in which they live.
The format of the book-a collaboration
by twenty-eight authors,
each an expert on a particular region of
the state or a particular
branch of natural history-gives the book
a thoroughness and ac-
curacy few single authors could have
managed. The first chapters deal
with the features of the whole state;
later ones deal with the major
geological regions. This arrangement
makes for some duplication (one
begins to feel that esker has
been over-defined, for example), but it
also permits the reader to use the
volume as a guide to a particular
locale. The maps are handsome, plentiful
and useful for this kind of
reference, although it would have been
helpful if more of the places
mentioned in the text were located on
the maps. The photographs are
absolutely first-rate.
At the same time, this division of labor
seems to have made it im-
possible to impose a central thesis on
the project. The last section,
several rather sketchy chapters on human
impact, concludes with an
eloquent, if predictable, plea for
hanging on to the few bogs, tall-
grass prairies, and virgin beech-sugar
maple forests we have left. But
why do we have so few left, or for that
matter, any at all? Why do we
have vast urban sprawl in some parts of
the state and none in others?
How has it happened that, as one
contributor points out, Ohio has be-
come a society that not only threatens
to exhaust many of its own
resources but has been able to persuade
places as far away as Bolivia
and Kuwait to exploit theirs in our
behalf.
Ohio's "natural heritage" has
helped to make possible a certain kind
of culture, just as the kind of culture
that has arisen here has dictated
to some extent the uses we have made of
that heritage. When Sherman
Frost points out that township lines, a
cultural pattern if there ever
was one, have affected watershed
patterns because roads were fre-
quently built on the survey lines, he is
pointing to one tangible example
of the interpenetration of culture and
environment. But this and other
hints of the relationship do not add up
to a thesis about just what we
have "inherited" with our heritage.
Understanding that relationship between
environment and culture
is crucial if we are to leave to our
descendants a "heritage" even remotely
as generous as the one we have received.
It is not at all clear that a
culture that has learned to be
profligate of lumber, limestone, and water
can adjust to shortages. More
profoundly, is there not some connection
between our traditions of freedom and
mobility and the "heritage," just
250 OHIO HISTORY
as there is demonstrably some connection
between the kinds of trees
and stones available and the design of our courthouses
and furniture?
I wish these authors, so knowledgeable
about those trees and stones, had
given themselves more freedom to
speculate about the connections. We
still need the kind of effort here that
W. G. Hoskins makes in The
Making of the English Landscape to understand just what our heritage
amounts to.
Nevertheless, this is a handsome,
readable book. If nothing else, it
should counteract the notion that many
Ohioans and most of their
neighbors seem to share, that the most
striking feature of our landscape
is its excellent highways leading
elsewhere.
Otterbein College William T.
Hamilton
Landscapes and Gardens for Historic
Buildings: A handbook for re-
producing and creating authentic
landscape settings. By Rudy J.
Favretti and Joy Putman Favretti.
(Nashville: The American Asso-
ciation for State and Local History,
1978. 202p.; illustrations, dia-
grams, appendix, bibliography, index.
$10.00 paper.)
The Favretti handbook is divided into
four sections, each one ad-
dressing a major issue pertinent to the
preservation/restoration of
historic landscapes.
Section 1 (American Landscape Design)
defines the problem by suc-
cinctly describing the characteristic
landscape forms produced by the
culture of their times. The colonial
period (up to the end of the
American revolution) is followed by the
romanticism of the first half
of the nineteenth century. The authors
describe the latter half of the
century in terms of Victorianism,
followed in the early decades (to
about 1930) of this century by a return
to classic forms derived from
European sources. The descriptive text,
copiously illustrated, provides
character analysis of residential
gardens and touches briefly on the
historic design of public and
semi-public open spaces.
Section 2 (Research and Plan
Development) becomes more technical,
as it describes data gathering
techniques which help to define existing
characteristics of sites to be
developed, methods well known to his-
torians and archeologists, but here
applied specifically to the landscape.
This section includes a kind of
checklist which should make planning
decisions easier. It addresses the
knotty problem of how to select the
specific period to be preserved or
restored, as well as how to fit the
forms characteristic of that period into
today's world.
Section 3 (Authentic Plant Lists) gives
the preservationist/restorer
specific, detailed lists of plants
available to landscape gardeners within
given time periods, and, further, lists
sources for plants otherwise hard
to find.
Section 4 (Maintenance) covers a matter
too often forgotten in the
enthusiasm of recreating a bit of the
past for the delight of present
company; that is, maintenance. In these
pages, one will find numerous
practical suggestions for resolving
conflicts between today's lifestyles
and those of another century.
Book Reviews
251
All in all, although this work cannot be
classified as scholarly in
any sense, it has the merit of being a
pragmatic guide to historic
preservation/restoration of landscapes.
The alternative is to consult
a landscape architect trained in
conservation of historical resources.
Unfortunately there are few landscape
architects with the skills to
handle such problems efficiently.
The Ohio State University George B. Tobey
Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work
and Family Life in the United
States, 1900-1930. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979. 266p.; notes,
tables, bibliography, index,
$14.95.)
In this perceptive monograph, Leslie
Tentler concludes "that paid
work often afforded working-class women
more persuasive lessons
about the inevitability of a
circumscribed female role than did the
typical experiences of home, school, or
neighborhood social life" (p. 2).
Tentler's working class consists of
those who labor in factories or blue
collar services in the major Northern
industrial cities. Evidence about
their values, behavior, and expectations
is drawn from the host of
middle-class investigations of urban
life. In spite of the inherent bias
of such materials, the author has
produced a sensitive, insightful, and
ultimately speculative description of
working-class women. Imbedded in
this study may lie the explanation for
working-class apathy with regard
to both women's rights and economic
opportunity.
The "persuasive lessons" came
from a variety of sources. Low wages
and job ceilings combined to render
women economically dependent
first upon their families and later upon
their husbands. Inadequate
economic returns did not encourage
remedial action either in the form
of unions or governmental legislation,
nor did it deter working-class
women from seeking employment. Passivity
or even acceptance stemmed
from the fact that most were between the
ages of sixteen and twenty-
four and saw their futures determined by
marriage. These young adults
sought jobs willingly to escape
overcrowded and unsympathetic schools,
to express familial loyalty by
contributing to its meager income, and
to join a like-minded peer group. In the
youthful, sex-segregated world
of work, conversation normally focused
upon marriage and the social
life that facilitated it.
Dissatisfaction was directed toward parents, for
they circumscribed these adolescents'
social lives. Moreover, since the
women normally turned over their entire
paycheck to their parents,
they-not employers-established how much
these women had to spend.
Parents and their wage-earning daughters
invested little in job searches;
most sought employment in neighborhood
industries where friends also
worked. Friendships discouraged
investigations of alternative oppor-
tunities and dampened desires for
self-promotion on the job itself.
Preoccupation with marriage rather than
economic advancement
probably reflected a realistic appraisal
of working-class options. The
author succinctly sketches the life of
the women "adrift," the single
252 OHIO HISTORY
female bereft of kin, who struggles
without emotional or financial se-
curity. For mothers without employed
husbands, life became almost
unbearable as they struggled in extreme
poverty to balance their chil-
dren's needs with their own work
schedules. If the older working
woman was an object of pathos, the
successfully married women enjoyed
societal homage as she dominated the
family circle.
Subsequent research should support this
emphasis upon employment
as a conservative rather than liberating
force in most working-women's
lives. As further research elaborates
upon this theme, it may also alter
some of the broad generalizations. The
same reports from which Tentler
constructs her narrative offer a variety
of quantitative data that will
test her assumptions about family
strategies, the determinants of fe-
male labor force participation, and
variations in male-female life-cycles.
The first three decades of the twentieth
century witnessed the end
of an era in working women's history.
From the 1880s forward, the
proportion of women who worked in the
market place climbed sharply,
as the demand for unskilled or
semi-skilled labor rose. Single women
responded to the opportunity, in part
because native-born were de-
laying the age of marriage or foregoing
marital bliss altogether and
in part because the rising tide of
immigration supplied large numbers
of women who traditionally had high
participation rates. Beginning
in the 1920s, the labor market changed.
Rising incomes and educational
aspirations delayed entrance into the
world of work, while the de-
clining age of marriage pulled them out.
Moreover, continued structural
change in the economy, particularly the
rise of white collar services, at-
tracted middle-class women workers. And
after 1930, the share of
married women in the labor force would
begin its long ascent. To under-
stand this earlier era, indeed to
confront the realities of the wage-
earning woman's experience, one can do
no better than to read this
outstanding book.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Diane Lindstrom
Slave and Freeman: The Autobiography
of George L. Knox. Edited by
Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. (Lexington: The
University Press of Ken-
tucky, 1979. vii+247p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index.
$15.50.)
Professor Gatewood has edited an
excellent and scholarly account of
the autobiography of George L. Knox,
barber and editor of the Indian-
apolis Freeman. Gatewood's
reconstruction is even more remarkable
since Knox's "success story"
appeared in fifty-four installment chapters
in The Freeman between 1894 and
1895. Because the chapters were
published as soon as Knox had written
them, many events often ap-
peared in The Freeman out of
chronological sequence. Gatewood's
edited version has abandoned the
numerous and often meaningless seg-
ments and has inserted other events when
it was chronologically appro-
prite. Simultaneously, whenever there
was a need, Gatewood explained
and documented certain segments of the
serialization which Knox had
left unclear.
Significantly, the life and career of
Knox mirror tremendous similar-
Book Reviews
253
ities to his close friend, Booker T.
Washington. Washington's Up From
Slavery is a classic autobiography which described the triumph
and
tragedy of one of the few men to be
honored in American history by
having a period named after him. It
should be noted that while Knox
and Washington were former slaves, Knox
was born in Tennessee in
1841, seventeen years before Washington.
Despite a difference in age,
education, religious and political
involvement, both men embraced
identical economic and racial
philosophy. They "exuded optimism even
in the face of devastating adversity and
persisted in the belief that self
help, personal morality, industry, the
acquisition of property, and ad-
justment to a segregated society
constituted the only feasible means for
black Americans to advance." The
theme which dominated both men
was that blacks could surmount racial
prejudice through virtuous liv-
ing and productivity.
In addition to the above theme, one is
treated to the experiences of
Knox as a slave, Civil War soldier, his
freedom through the Thirteenth
Amendment, citizenship through the
Fourteenth, and the right to vote
as implied in the Fifteenth Amendment.
As a self-educated man, Knox
overcame many racial, economic, and
social barriers in the predomi-
nantly white town of Greenfield,
Indiana, where he had settled after
the war with his wife Aurilla Harvey,
daughter of a prosperous black
Indiana farmer. Despite a strong hostile
racial atmosphere, Knox be-
came a successful barber with a
prominent white clientele which in-
cluded the poet James Whitcomb Riley.
When Knox moved to Indianapolis eighteen
years later, he expanded
his segregated barber shop, invested in
real estate, and became editor
and publisher of the Indianapolis Freeman.
Knox helped to transform
The Freeman into one of America's most influential black newspapers
and a voice for Republican politics.
Like George Meyers in Ohio, Knox
was an astute leader in Indiana
politics; but he never held public office.
Knox was also very active in civic, religious, and
racial organizations.
He used The Freeman to promote
Washington's policy of accommoda-
tion and industrial education. Knox was
just as convinced as Washington
that the South was the best place for the progress and
future of Blacks.
Consequently, he opposed any mass exodus
of southern Blacks to the
North or West and condemned the back to Africa
movements of Henry
M. Turner during the 1890s and Marcus
Garvey in the 1920s. Knox
editorialized frequently about lawlessness and vagrancy
among Blacks
which only "added immeasurably to
the existing burdens of the whole
race."
Simultaneously, he praised highly Blacks
in business which "extolled
the virtues of work, the acquisition of
wealth and clean living." Despite
the strictures imposed upon him by a
segregated society and the criti-
cism from Blacks who disagreed with his
philosophy of racial accom-
modation, Knox never succumbed to
bitterness or despair. He remained
committed to his convictions until his
death in 1927 that a brighter
future awaited black Americans. Although
he does not make known
the value of Knox's estate or if there
is a manuscript collection, Pro-
fessor Gatewood has made a significant
contribution to a missing chap-
ter in our American heritage.
Miami University W. Sherman Jackson
254 OHIO HISTORY
The Resisted Revolution: Urban
America and the Industrialization of
Agriculture, 1900-1930. By David B. Danbom. (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa
State University Press, 1979. ix+195p.;
illustrations, notes, biblio-
graphical essay, index. $10.95.)
Appropriately titled and expertly
written, The Resisted Revolution
is a worthy addition to the constantly
expanding work of scholars in re-
cent American agricultural and economic
history. The revolution which
the author refers to was the dramatic
change which took place in
rural America during the first thirty
years of the twentieth century.
As the century began farmers, averse to
urban ways, adhered fiercely
to the old customs and methods of
traditional farming handed down
through generations. Yet the
technological revolution that swept the
country during that era jeopardized
those traditional ways as well as
the entire structure of rural America.
David Danbom explores the origins and
motives of an urban group
dedicated to improving living standards
throughout what they con-
sidered to be a backward and
impoverished rural America. The Country
Life Movement began during the first
decade of the 1900s as a result
of an investigation conducted by the
Roosevelt administration into the
problems of farm families. This probe
into rural America, undertaken
by sociologists and agrarian
professionals, inspired the Country Life
Movement. Many Country Lifers were
genuinely interested in improv-
ing living standards in rural America,
but according to the author, their
primary goal was that of increased
agricultural production to meet the
needs of the rampantly growing American
cities. This examination
and evaluation of the actions and
motives of Country Lifers and their
impact upon country people is the
central theme of The Resisted Revo-
lution, and the author is careful to point out that this
movement was
urban based and its goals were
urban-oriented.
Also important in Danbom's work is his
evaluation of the mixed
successes and failures of the county
agent as a representative of the
federal government in the years before
American entry into the First
World War. He cites several agent
accounts which reveal their frus-
trations in dealing with the apathy and
belligerence of farmers toward
their aid. Firm in their belief of
laissez faire, many farmers resented
strongly the county agent, who seemed to
be only a meddler in their
affairs. Faarmers and farm wives were
further repulsed by the fact that
the job of the agent was to demonstrate
their mistakes to them in farm-
ing and homemaking. This promoted a
frigid atmosphere between the
agent and the rural family. The woes of
the county agent were also
compounded in those days by an almost
complete absence of organized
government in rural areas. Farmers were
suspicious of and had little
need for strong local government or ties
to the federal government.
Living in isolation far from urban
centers, most farmers had little
interest in government. They wished only
to maintain their ways of
self-sufficiency and independence. For
the agent the possibility of or-
ganizing farmers into efficient
businessmen was greatly diminished by
this absence of local government, and
this situation was reversed only
by American involvement in the war.
Book Reviews
255
The war and postwar periods brought
about the changes in rural
America that Country Lifers had
struggled for but could not achieve
alone. Mechanization, increased
production, and efficiency swept
through the countryside as government
agencies injected labor and
capital to farms in the name of the war
effort. By the early 1920s the
revolution was complete. Agriculture was
a profitable, organized busi-
ness, and, by then, the needs of urban
America were met with a plentiful
and inexpensive food supply from nation's farms. Yet
gone was the
institution which was the foundation the
American nation-the self-
sufficient, family farm. Country Lifers
were obsessed with making
farms more efficient, but in doing so
they hastened the destruction of
a traditional way of life.
While The Resisted Revolution is
well-written, its basic weakness
is its generality. Urban influence upon
rural industrialization during the
first thirty years of this century is a
subject which cannot be dealt with
adequately in 145 pages of text. Thus
the author is forced to select
citations from journals, almanacs, and
personal accounts from across
the country as if to suggest that
agrarian America was homogeneous
around the turn of the century. The
greatest value of the work is the
overview of the Country Life Movement,
although the author may have
overemphasized its impact upon rural
industrialization. The book is
nonetheless worthwhile reading for those
interested in agrarian history.
University of California at Santa
Barbara Gregory R. Graves
Conestoga Crossroads: Lancaster,
Pennsylvania: 1730-1790. By Jerome
H. Wood, Jr. (Harrisburg: Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania, 1979.
ix+305p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliographical essay, index. $8.50.)
Ever since Frederick Jackson Turner
pointed out in 1893 that the
frontier had a very special role in the
development of an American
society and democratic ideals,
historians have struggled to define and
analyze the key elements and factors of
the frontier process. Jerome H.
Wood, Jr., a professor of American
history at Swarthmore College, is
among a group who feel that the
importance of "the hardy, pioneer
farmer" has been overemphasized at
the expense of "the urban com-
munities which appeared before, or
simultaneously with, the husband-
men and which were as vital as the
virgin land they broke." To urban
historians like Wood's Brown University
mentor Carl Bridenbaugh,
and midwesterner Richard Wade, the
cities were the centers of eco-
nomic, governmental, cultural, and
social activities on the frontier.
Wood chronicles what he terms "the
search for community" in the
frontier Pennsylvania city of Lancaster.
His period of study begins with
the town's platting in 1730 and
continues until 1790, a point at which,
according to Wood, the community's
economic function as a distribution
center for western Pennsylvania ceased.
The author relies largely on
some excellent primary sources,
including private correspondence, pub-
lic records, business accounts, and
newspapers to analyze, and in sev-
eral instances to make very astute
observations, on the city's eighteenth
century history.
256 OHIO HISTORY
After a brief discussion of the initial
settlement of Lancaster, the
volume is divided into three major
segments: political and administra-
tive history; the economic perspective;
and the diversity of religious,
cultural, and social activities in the
community.
Some of Wood's best work is done in
examining and evaluating the
governmental framework of Lancaster
during this period. He shows
that by providing for the election of
public officials along with rela-
tively non-restrictive voting rights,
and by requiring that a majority
of all residents approve ordinances, the
original design of Lancaster's
political scene was unusually
democratic. Ironically, as the century
progressed and these popular forms of
government actually failed, more
restrictive, albeit more efficient,
forms were created.
Wood's discussion of the economic life
of Lancaster as "a back-
country emporium" holds no real surprises. He
finds, for example, that
the individual household and family unit
was "at the heart of economic
activity." Furthermore, he
illustrates how the "regularized and reason-
ably efficient system of commercial
intercourse" with Philadelphia
rapidly created a wealthy elite composed
of the larger merchants.
Wood is able, however, to make some
interesting quantitative compari-
sons of the various types of handicrafts
practiced in the community
through the eighteenth century.
According to his figures the em-
phasis shifted from leather processing
during the French and Indian
War to textile processing by the 1790s.
The Lancaster area is, of course, today
renowed as the center of the
"Pennsylvania-Dutch," and the
third part of the volume explains some
of the early manifestations of this modern society.
Wood suggests that
it had its roots in the
"clannishness'" developed by the "Dutchmen" as
a defense against the sometime hostile
environment engendered by the
"Engellander," or English
element in the community. Thus a dis-
tinctive German society developed in the
religious, publishing, and cul-
tural affairs of the community.
Wood wrote his book with two audiences
in mind, what he terms "the
intelligent general reader," and
the professional historian. His ad-
mittedly difficult goal of being both
popular and scholarly is met with
varying degrees of success.
Unfortunately, Wood, at times, seems to fall
into the non-critical antiquarian
approach of including long lists of
items and personages. His treatment of
economic issues, in particular,
seems to suffer from this tendency.
Another fairly serious omission that
should have been easy for the
publisher to correct is the absence of a
good map. Those not familiar
with the Pennsylvania landscape will
need to consult an atlas, since the
small map on the inside cover is poorly
designed and generally in-
adequate.
The urban perspective on Ohio's history
has never received the at-
tention it deserves. Wood indicates that Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, lost
all frontier aspects by 1770, which
coincides with the city's population
passing 2800. Using this simple formula,
Ohio had twenty-one com-
munities with at least this many
inhabitants or more by the 1850
census, a date sometimes used as a
terminus of the frontier period in
the state. Only a few of the largest
Ohio urban centers, however, have
been the focus of any serious published
analyses by urban historians.
Book Reviews
257
Wood has written a volume whose
three-part approach could easily
serve as a model for some much-needed
Ohio urban studies.
Ohio Historical Society David A. Simmons
America Revised: History Schoolbooks
in the Twentieth Century. By
Frances FitzGerald. (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1979.
240p.; notes, bibliography. $9.95.)
Anyone interested in the state of
American history in the schools
should read this book. In a descriptive,
if occasionally breathless style,
the author of the much acclaimed Fire
in the Lake analyzes the per-
mutations of secondary school American
history textbooks from the
days of Jedidiah Morse to the present.
What presumably made her
persevere through the dusty stacks of
soporific prose was the premise
that the textbooks have been for most
American children their prin-
cipal contact with the national past. If
she is correct, the current school
population is being poorly served.
According to FitzGerald,
nineteenth-century texts were frequently
inaccurate, biased, elitist, and
excessively pedantic. Despite their fail-
ings, however, they sometimes possessed
literary merit and usually a
recognizable point of view-a particular
vision of the American ex-
perience. In the Twentieth Century all
that has changed. Since the
Progressive Era the schoolbooks have
come to reflect, as in a fogged
mirror, the social and political
concerns of the moment. Especially
since the 1960s and the decay of a
national consensus textbook pub-
lishers have responded to educationist
fads and special interest group
demands. In the names of prominent
academic historians (some of them
long deceased) committees of non-authors
have simplified vocabulary,
punched-up the visuals, and excised or
neutered controversial state-
ments to mollify the textbook adoption
apparatuses of large public
school districts. The results have
usually been visual feast and literary
famine. The handsome packages of the
texts divert attention away from
their intellectual flaccidity and
efficiently achieved dullness. FitzGerald
seems to attribute this to American
materialism. For the textbook in-
dustry, profit is of course the bottom
line. For those in the public and
in the educational establishment
anti-intellectualism and indifference
to historical truth are second nature.
The theoretical debates about the
purposes and methods of education
among teachers, parents, administrators,
and normal school theorists
also contribute directly to the dismal
state of the textbooks. FitzGerald
defines three broad ideological orientations among
educationists-
Progressives, Mandarins, and
Fundamentalists-who perpetually strug-
gle for pedagogical supremacy. Each
group fires salvos of buzz words
at the others' smoke screens of jargon.
But all, says FitzGerald, share
the belief that education must mold,
manipulate, and adjust the be-
havior of the child, not primarily
inform his mind.
This reviewer, with a decade's
experience at a teachers' college,
shares FitzGerald's major conclusions
and hopes her book will have
beneficial effect. Still one must
recognize that her thesis over-
258 OHIO HISTORY
simplifies the difficulties mandated by
the national commitment to
"educate" (whatever that may
mean) an enormously diverse school
population. And she does not seem to
accept obvious historical realities:
that western society is passing from a
literary to a visual-electronic
mode of mass communication; that it is
most difficult to train com-
petent teachers or produce excellent
texts in a fluid and complicated
educational matrix of which schooling is
only a part; and that academic
history is being transformed if not
supplanted by sociology and psy-
chology. Internal evidence in her text
suggests that FitzGerald's knowl-
edge of American historiographical
issues is less sure than her grasp
of the late Richard Hofstadter's theses
on anti-intellectualism and
Progressivism. Finally, her apparent
notion that textbooks should some-
how provide young people with a vision
of the American Dream strikes
this reviewer as too romantic to measure
up to the intellectual standards
she champions. These caveats aside, America
Revised deserves a wide
readership.
Fairmont State College Charles H. McCormick
Roots of Modern Mormonism. By Mark P. Leone. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1979. ix+250p.;
tables, appendix, works cited, in-
dex. $15.00.)
Utilizing the historical records of
Mormon communities along the
Little Colorado River in east central
Arizona in the late nineteenth
century and his own observations of contemporary
Mormonism, Mark
P. Leone, an anthropologist, has
attempted to explain the transforma-
tion of "a nineteenth century
socialist commonwealth predicated on a
radical critique of the American economy
and class structure to a
twentieth century church endorsing an
ideology of acceptance of Amer-
ican society" (p. 27). From
establishing a "theocratic state" in the
nineteenth century, Mormonism has come
to accept the status of a
"colonial religion," much like
other denominations, in the twentieth;
and a persecuted religion of farmers,
recoiling against the effects of
industrialism, has become "a
successful religion of white-collar work-
ers run by businessmen" (p. 1).
Though one chapter highlights the
influence of the United States
government on decisions to end plural
marriage, the Mormon political
party, and the church's control of
economic institutions, Leone's inter-
pretation of this transformation places
substantially more emphasis on
the structure, theology, and
institutions of Mormonism itself than on
external pressures toward accommodation.
Throughout the work, he
points to a "conflict between two
rationalities, sanctity and success,
basic to Mormon history," which
undercut the social ideals of the move-
ment's pioneers (p. 166). Isolated on a
frontier, intentionally rejecting
some features of industrialism, and
technologically backward, Mormons
created a network of institutions and
rituals that invested their struggle
for material survival with sanctity,
which gave assurance of super-
natural power for their endeavors, made
their economic activities re-
Book Reviews
259
ligious experiences, and provided
validation for their faith in their
triumphs over adversity.
However, to oversimplify Leone's complex
analysis, when sanctity
brought material success, this led to
its undoing as a basis for social
order and transformed Mormon society
from within. The desire for
technical improvement increased
dependence on the outside world; a
growth in wealth attracted outside
interest and created social classes;
and preoccupation with practical
matters, rooted in the religion itself
and reinforced by the exigencies of life
in the West, gave rise to a
rational approach to problems that
disregarded historical precedent and
was marked by "a kind of
memorylessness" (p. 148). Moreover, tech-
nological progress encouraged
secularization by providing alternatives
to reliance on supernatural power and
left the rituals of sanctity with-
out their former meaning.
Such general elements of interpretation
run throughout the book, but
the author's comparisons of Mormonism in
the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries rest on discrete scholarly
approaches. The largest-and, to
historians, probably the most
satisfying-section consists of three chap-
ters that examine the tithing system,
irrigation, and church courts in
the communities along the Little
Colorado River. Based on surviving
local records mainly from the 1880s and
1890s, these chapters are a
fascinating source of information on the
means by which Mormons
dealt with ecological problems,
supported joint enterprises, exchanged
and redistributed their products,
provided social welfare, established
definitions of community, maintained
unity, and resolved a host of
local issues. Leone chose tithing,
irrigation, and church courts because
these were "critical aspects of how
the Mormon adaptive strategy
worked" (p. 25). In contrast, his
description of modern Mormonism
rests largely on observations and
impressions of rituals such as talks in
Sacrament Meetings, testimonies, and
Sunday Schools and of the ways
in which Mormons use history. Though
Leone attempts to trace some
contemporary characteristics of Mormon
thought-for example,
"memorylessness," which, by
making them unable to distinguish the
past from the present, renders them
incapable of judging current
society by any body of precedents or
ideals from their own heritage or
even of understanding their own
situation-to the earlier period, the
linkages between the two periods are
weak because the data are so
dissimilar.
Nevertheless, this work should be
thought-provoking, not only to
historians of Mormonism, but also to all
who are interested in how
utopian movements have been
domesticated.
Wright State University Jacob H. Dorn
The Crises of Power: An
Interpretation of United States Foreign Policy
During the Kissinger Years. By Seyom Brown. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1979. xi+170p.; notes, index. $10.95.)
260 OHIO HISTORY
Henry Kissinger has been evaluated as an
imaginative and highly
resourceful foreign policy statesman by
many knowledgeable people,
not the least of whom is Kissinger
himself. Seyom Brown, an establish-
ment scholar currently teaching politics
at Brandeis University, gen-
erally supports this favorable opinion
of Kissinger although keenly
aware of Kissinger's failures.
This modest but useful book focuses on
Kissinger himself and on
Richard M. Nixon to a lesser degree.
Brown discusses Kissinger's per-
ceptions of new world power
relationships flowing from Soviet military
parity with the United States,
Kissinger's and Nixon's maneuvers to
withdraw from the Vietnam War without
disrupting America's internal
order and alliance relationships, the
negotiations to establish a more
stable order in the Middle East, and
Kissinger's belated moves to ac-
commodate Third World interests.
Kissinger and Nixon perceived Russia as
growing in power, danger-
ous to American interests, but possibly
tamable. Strategic arms agree-
ments, "playing the China card" and expanding
trade with the U.S.S.R.
were the primary means Kissinger and
Nixon used to counter Soviet
power or to give Russia a greater stake
in peace. In dealing with Viet-
nam, the negotiations proved completely
frustrating because North
Vietnam was determined to win and to do
so without making significant
compromises. Nixon and Kissinger tried
repeatedly to signal North
Vietnam that the U.S. wanted out as long
as it was not dishonored and
humiliated in the process. Kissinger's
primary concern was not to un-
dermine the value of America's worldwide
commitments even as her
commitments to South Vietnam were
repudiated.
In the Middle East the major policies
pursued were stability and
enhancement of American influence.
Kissinger's negotiating skill and
persistence were in part negated by his
duplicity. However, American
influence was greatly strengthened in
the area by his and Nixon's
policy of evenhanded treatment of
Israeli and Arab interests. Whether
this expanded American influence in the
Middle East was a positive
long-term development is a question
Brown does not address.
In Kissinger's earlier view it was safe
statesmanship to ignore the
weaker nations. Great power diplomacy,
he believed, must preoccupy
statesmen in this dangerous nuclear age.
However, Third World in-
fluence within the United Nations, the
American disaster in Angola, the
increasing interdependence of the world
economy, and the potential
political coalition between OPEC and
Third World nations, alerted
Kissinger that the U.S. must tack to the
demands and needs of the de-
veloping nations. For example, in a
sudden about-face, Kissinger an-
nounced in 1976 that the U.S. now
supported the principle of majority
rule in Africa. It may be argued that
such a policy was long overdue,
but the point Brown makes is that
Kissinger demonstrated flexibility
on a problem of high concern to his
critics.
The overriding theme in the Kissinger
years was the search for
stability and order in a world where
power was increasingly decen-
tralized and authority was under challenge.
Kissinger perceived the
larger changes in international
politics, though as Brown points out
Kissinger never developed a
comprehensive schema by which Amer-
Book Reviews
261
ican policy goals and the need for world
order might best be co-
ordinated. Like most politicians he was
compelled to struggle with
problems of the moment in contexts that
frustrated attempts at re-
flection and judicious evaluation.
Brown's work is fully as useful as
earlier books on Kissinger by John
C. Stoessinger, Roger Morris, Peter
Dickson, Stephen R. Graubard,
and Marvin and Bernard Kalb. As with
these authors, Mr. Brown had
access neither to State Department
records nor to Kissinger's memoirs.
The book is therefore already dated.
Nonetheless Brown's observations
will prove instructive for scholars and
for Kissinger buffs as well.
The Ohio State University Marvin R. Zahniser
A Tissue of Lies: Nixon vs. Hiss. By Morton Levitt and Michael Levitt.
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1979.
xix+353p.; notes, index.
$14.95.)
Thirty years have passed since the
Hiss-Chambers case alarmed a
public already troubled by charges of
subversion and concerned with
loyalty, yet public debate continues
over the guilt or innocence of
Alger Hiss, one of the best and the
brightest of his time. A Tissue of
Lies is the latest of a long list of books and articles on
the subject.
Its thesis is revealed in the title: at
one time or another all of the im-
portant figures in the case, including
Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers,
Richard Nixon, and Prosecutor Thomas
Murphey, lied. Major em-
phasis is given to the HCUA hearings and
the two trials, but the un-
derlying theme is the vendetta Nixon
conducted against his enemies,
real or supposed. The authors make
clear, once again, that throughout
his political career, Nixon used the
same underhanded and illegal
methods-press manipulation, news leaks,
outright lying, faked evi-
dence, and midnight searches.
Morton Levitt, Acting Dean of the School
of Medicine, University of
California-Davis, and his writer son,
Michael, successfully demonstrate,
in addition to the web of lies, that the
FBI helped to prosecute Hiss and
to protect Chambers, and that the
evidence to convict Hiss was con-
trovertible. They also insist, with less
success, that the typewriter in
the courtroom was a forgery and that the
FBI knew it. Unable to
demonstrate the innocence of Alger Hiss,
however, the Levitt's lamely
conclude that he "affects one as a
man who was guilty of something"
(p. 325).
Books like this one cannot help us much.
The point to be established
is not the career-long continuity of
Nixon's tactics, but the guilt or in-
nocence of Alger Hiss. It is clear that
he lied when denying having
known Whittaker Chambers, but the
authors cannot tell us why-nor
do they work hard to do so.
In part, but only in part, the authors'
failures are due to inadequate
research. They have neither worked in
most of the important manu-
script depositories nor examined many
private manuscript collections.
The printed and typescript records are
not fully utilized. They inter-
viewed only Alger Hiss, in person, and
Fred J. Cook (The Unfinished
262 OHIO HISTORY
Story of Alger Hiss, 1958), by telephone. A Tissue of Lies rests
heavily
on secondary sources. The chapter notes
are very brief and give no
page citations. Nor are there chapter
titles to guide readers, and just
as importantly, to help the authors
order their data. Not surprisingly,
the book has a shapeless quality to it.
It is regrettable that the Levitts
disparage the best work available
on the Hiss-Chambers case (Allen Weinstein's Perjury,
1978) without
critically examining its weaknesses. Perjury
is described as "poor his-
tory," a "badly flawed"
analysis using sources of evidence some of
whom have recanted (pp. 282, 285).
Victor Navasky's criticisms are
noted, but Weinstein's response is not (New
Republic, April 29, 1978).
It is true that Karel Kaplan, a Czech
archivist and former communist
party official, now denies saying that
Hiss was involved in communist
espionage in the mid-1930s, but
Weinstein has Kaplan's testimony on
tape. Like several other witnesses,
Kaplan recanted upon seeing that
his testimony only made matters worse
for Hiss.
The Levitts do not agree with
Weinstein's conclusion that "the body
of available evidence proves that he
[Hiss] did in fact perjure himself
when describing his secret dealings with
Chambers, so that the jurors
in the second trial made no mistake in
finding Alger Hiss guilty as
charged" (p. 565). Nor do they
accept John Chabot Smith's contention,
in Alger Hiss: The True Story (1976),
that a "psychopathic" Chambers
victimized Hiss. Instead, they conclude
that everyone lied and render
judgments such as the following that are
naive and embarrassing to
students of history: "Perhaps the
entire McCarthy era, one of the
nation's saddest chapters, might never
have occurred if Chambers had
been indicted" (p. 99). The fact is
that by the time of the two trials
in 1949 and 1950, the search for
scapegoats and the habit of careless
accusation were already in full swing,
even though the name of the
junior senator from Wisconsin had not
yet been appropriated to name
the phenomenon.
The University of Toledo Ronald Lora
With No Apologies: The Personal and
Political Memoirs of Senator
Barry Goldwater. By Senator Barry Goldwater. (New York: William
Morrow and Company, Inc., 1979. 320p.;
illustrations, acknowledge-
ments, index. $12.95.)
In the early 1960s, when novelist John
Dos Passos visited the Prince-
ton campus, he was asked whom he wanted
as president. "Goldwater"
was his reply. The Arizona Senator was
the only candidate with "any
new ideas."
Now, at least fifteen years later, we
can have a firsthand view of
these ideas and of some of the rationale
behind them. For in these
memoirs Goldwater offers a detailed
scenario of recent American his-
tory, one that shows him an unrepentant
rightist. Much of the book
presents standard Goldwater fare, with
focus upon foreign policy. He
suggests Roosevelt's foreknowledge of
Pearl Harbor, opposes the Yalta
Book Reviews
263
and Potsdam settlements (incorrectly
ascribing the latter to FDR), and
sees in the Marshall Plan the seeds of
American bankruptcy. He
blames the fall of the Chiang government
upon the State Department,
the Korean stalemate on a timid Harry S.
Truman. Although he finds
Eisenhower usually maintaining a
militant posture, to him the Ken-
nedy presidency was marked by one
sellout after another. Lyndon
Johnson too lacked the will to win.
Rather than ending the Vietnam
war in twelve weeks, which he could have
done by major use of air
and sea power, LBJ foolishly committed
ground forces and relied
upon covert action. Goldwater's
conclusion reads like a weapons' in-
ventory, as he calls for the adoption of
such hardware as the MX missile,
the cruise missile, and the B-1 bomber.
Occasionally Goldwater, perhaps
realizing that his analysis is some-
what jaded by now, spices it with some
comments of absolute silliness.
Hence he finds Syngman Rhee's South
Korea "a democratic republic
seeking to emulate the Western
nations" (p. 47), John Birch Society
leader Robert Welch one who has
"done much to alert people to the
dangers of communism" (p. 119), and
South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem
"an authentic hero to his
people" (p. 193). He sees Walt W. Rostow as
too dovish in fighting the Soviet
challenge, says Robert McNamara de-
serves punishment for abandoning weapons
superiority, and sees the
Sino-Soviet split a mere quarrel
"over the purity of Marxist doctrine"
(p. 233). The Arizona senator is
obviously fascinated by conspiracies.
From such agents of "international
banking" as Colonel House and
Paul M. Warburg to today's Council on
Foreign Relations, the nation
is governed by "nonelected
rulers." Indeed President James Earl Carter
is the handpicked candidate of
"David Rockefeller's newest inter-
national cabal" (p. 280), the
Trilateral Commission.
Yet we would be wrong to dismiss the
volume as simply another
cranky memoir, for it occasionally
offers revealing material on both
the man and his background. He ably
draws pictures of his ancestors
and his wife Peggy, though he skips
through childhood and adolescence
quickly. Detail begins with his
descriptions of civic reform in Phoenix,
the 1952 Republican convention, and the
Arizona senatorial race of
the same year.
Some material is a bit surprising, such
as his respect for Eisenhower,
admiration for Nelson Rockefeller,
friendship for Hubert Humphrey,
and fondness for Henry Kissinger. He
claims to have evidence of vote-
buying by John F. Kennedy's forces in
the crucial West Virginia pri-
mary of 1960, and he blames Attorney
General William Rogers for not
investigating the matter. Lyndon
Johnson, he believes, only took the
vice-presidential nomination because JFK
threatened to expose Texas
voting frauds and LBJ's intricate
financial empire. In 1964 he originally
considered William Scranton as a running
mate, and in 1972 told Nixon
to replace Spiro Agnew with George Bush.
The book still leaves us with some
questions, particularly concern-
ing the evolution of his thought.
Goldwater has obviously mellowed
considerably since 1960, when he found
the Brown decision unconsti-
tutional and wanted to end the graduated
income tax. He does not,
however, concede to any shift, much less
explain it. In addition, we
learn little of such early backers as
rancher Frank Cullen Brophy. He
264 OHIO HISTORY
does not mention his dismissal of F.
Clifton White, who engineered
his convention triumph at the Cow
Palace. For the historian, this book
is far from being the aid it could have
been.
New College of the University of South
Florida Justus D. Doenecke
Versatile Guardian: Research in Naval
History. Edited by Richard
Von Doenhoff. (Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1979.
xvii+295p.; illustrations, notes,
commentary, appendix, biographical
sketches, selected bibliography, index.
$17.50.)
This volume consists of the papers and
proceedings of the National
Archives Conference on Naval History
held in May, 1974. In a brief
introduction the organizer of the
conference, Richard Von Doenhoff, a
member of the National Archives staff,
writes that the purpose of the
conference was to stimulate ideas for
research and writing in naval
history since "there has seemed to
be a waning of productivity" in this
field since the publication of Rear
Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's
fifteen-volume work on United States
naval operations in World War II.
Although it is questionable that there
has been a decline in the writing
of naval history, the purpose was
commendable.
Versatile Guardian, like most books of this kind, is difficult to re-
view. The unevenness of the papers along
with the book's organization
makes it impracticable to evaluate as a
whole. The book is divided into
introductory comments, five sections,
and a bibliography.
The first section includes two papers,
one by Mabel E. Deutrich on
Navy Department records in the National
Archives, and a second one
by Dean C. Allard on research resources
in the Navy Department's
Historical Center located at the
Washington Navy Yard. Both essays
provide an excellent introduction into
research materials available in
these repositories.
Sections II through V concern selected
topics in naval history. Each
section includes two to three essays and
a commentary.
Section II consists of two excellent
papers and a commentary on
the "United States Navy in
International Relations." Gerald Wheeler's
paper, entitled "Naval Diplomacy in
the Interwar Years," concerns the
period between the two world wars. His
approach is generally bio-
graphical, describing the diplomatic
activities of various naval officers
such as Mark Bristol and William V.
Pratt. The second essay, "Inter-
national Law and Naval History: Changes
and Continuity in the
Juridical Doctrines of Naval Blockade,"
by Sally V. Mallison and W.
Thomas Mallison, Jr., is a general
survey of blockade in history from
the Napoleonic wars through the Vietnam
War and the Egyptian block-
ade of the Bab el Mandeb Straits during
the Yom Kippur war in 1973.
Both papers are well documented.
Section III, "Technology and the
Navy," includes two papers.
"Bradley A. Fiske: Naval
Inventor," by Paolo E. Coletta is based on
the writer's biography of Fiske which
has since been published. The
second paper, "The Role of Archival
Records in the Search and Dis-
Book Reviews
265
covery of the Wreck of the U.S.S.
Monitor," by John G. Newton and
Gordon P. Watts is more of a recount of
the search for the wreck of the
Monitor than
the utilization of archival records in this search. The an-
nounced theme of new ideas in naval
research and writing is only ad-
dressed indirectly in section II,
primarily through brief mention of
manuscript collections and footnote citations. However,
in section IV
the papers do address the theme.
This section is entitled, "The Navy
in Earlier Wars: Sources and
Research Potentials." It includes
three papers: one on documents of
the "American Navies of the
Revolution," by William Morgan; a second
by K. Jack Bauer on "The Navy in an
Age of Manifest Destiny: Some
Suggestions for Sources and
Research," and a third one on research
opportunities in the Spanish American
War by David F. Trask. All
three are excellent papers, not only
describing available manuscript re-
sources for these periods, but Bauer and
Trask also list suggested re-
search topics.
The final section is disappointing.
Three papers are included on the
Second World War. One by Friedrich O.
Ruge on the activities of
German Defensive Offshore Forces is
semi-autobiographical without
documentation. A second paper entitled,
"The Neutrality Patrol and
Other Belligerents," by Henry H.
Adams is based almost entirely upon
secondary sources, and the third one by
Elmer B. Potter on Admiral
Nimitz as CINCPAC is based on his
biography which was subsequently
published. In none of these papers are
new ideas for research suggested.
The commentator, Clark Reynolds, does
try to bridge this gap but with
only limited success.
A useful but "selected"
bibliography is included, although it has no
relation with the various topics taken
up in the volume. It includes
National Archives sources and published
sources on naval history.
In spite of the inclusion of several
papers that have little relation
to the stated purpose, the book is a
valuable tool for students of naval
history. A number of the essays provide
an excellent introduction to
research opportunities and sources in
naval history.
East Carolina University William N. Still, Jr.
The Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Vol. I. From Fort Sumter to
Gettysburg, 1861-1863. By Stephen Z. Starr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1979. xiv+507p.;
illustrations, notes, ap-
pendix, bibliography, index. $27.50.)
With this first of a projected three
volumes, Sephen Starr em-
bellishes an already notable distinction
in Civil War scholarship. He
has produced a thoughtful,
well-researched and highly readable study
of mounted operations in the first two
years of the war. Students of
military history will find that it
compares favorably with the ex-
cellent volumes of the University of
Indiana Press's "Wars of the
United States" series. Few writers
know the Yankee horsemen as in-
266 OHIO HISTORY
timately, and fewer have the skill to
winnow selectively the mass of
primary and secondary materials to shape
such a sprightly yet insightful
narrative as Starr here presents.
Starr begins, interestingly enough, at
the end, with an account of
Wilson's raid on Selma, Alabama, in the
waning days of the war. This
approach allows him to establish
early-on a major thesis: that the im-
portance and effectiveness of the
Union's mounted arm increased as
cavalry tacticians gradually abandoned
the traditional mounted as-
sault in favor of dismounted action by
troopers whose horse-born de-
ployment made them highly mobile. He
then flashes back, after a brief
summation of conventional views on the
uses and value of mounted
troops on the eve of war, to begin the
story of the long and bloody
campaigns in which the tactics used at
Selma evolved.
Readers will find in the early chapters
an able description of those
factors which interdicted the rapid
development of cavalry competence:
the initial reluctance of the government
to accept volunteer cavalry
units; the general ineptitude of those
in high command; the deficiencies
in training and supply which plagued all
branches of the service. Starr
is at his best in describing the
conditions of army life and the process
by which a recruit, often reluctantly,
became a trooper. He generally
became acclimated to a military
existence, but rarely was transformed
into a perfect soldier. He would fight
creditably, if properly led, but
never forsook a careless and neglectful
attitude toward horses and
equipment, and maintained an abiding
disrespect for the niceties of
military discipline. In his defense it
must be said that, both strategically
and tactically, he was badly misused.
Ultimately, despite these handi-
caps, he did his work.
Civil War buffs, and none such should
miss this book, will balk at
swallowing whole some of Starr's
assertions. In fact, a part of the
book's charm for many is likely to be in
the debatability of some of its
implicit and explicit conclusions. How
much of Wilson's success at
Selma was indeed the result of tactical
innovation, rather than simply
a defeat, by well-armed, aggressive
veterans who smelled final victory,
of an ill-supplied and demoralized
defending force containing a large
contingent of militia? Old prejudices
die hard, and the Civil War foot-
soldier's oft-expressed skepticism about the possible
existence of "a
dead cavalryman" still lives among
buffs who will question Starr's
equation of Wilder's Lightning Brigade
as the combat peers of the
Army of Potomac's Iron Brigade. A quick
perusal of Fox's Regimental
Losses . . . shows that each of the three Wisconsin regiments of
the
latter unit sustained greater losses in
killed and mortally wounded dur-
ing their service than the combined
total for the four regiments of
Wilder's Brigade. Comparative
battle-inflicted deaths for the two
brigades were 236 for Wilder's and 1,151
for the Iron Brigade. That
the mounted infantry were tough
campaigners is unquestioned; that
they were a match in a stand-up fight,
or a series of them, for a first-
class infantry outfit is undemonstrated.
These cavils aside, the book is of
exceptional interest and value. It
is a handsome volume, only occasionally
marred by editorial lapses such
as the substitution of
"access" for "excess" on page 12 and in footnote
Book Reviews
267
9, page 49. Starr and the LSU Press may
be proud of this work, and
the reviewer awaits impatiently the
second volume.
Ohio Historical Society James K. Richards
The Paradox of Progressive Education:
The Gary Plan and Urban
Schooling. By Ronald D. Cohen and Raymond A. Mohl. (Port Wash-
ington: National University
Publications, Kennikat Press Corp.,
1979. viii+216p.; appendix, notes,
index. $15.00.)
Historians of education have long
awaited the publication of a
critical, comprehensive assessment of the Gary or
platoon school plan,
one of the more fascinating social
innovations of the twentieth century.
Under the leadership of its nationally
prominent superintendent, Wil-
liam A. Wirt, the Gary school system
combined opportunities for an
enriched and diverse school curriculum
with the economic efficiency
desired by the city's corporate founding
fathers-U.S. Steel. The mar-
riage of these forces was imperfect in
actual practice, but the platoon
plan promised the maximum utilization of
the "school plant" and ap-
pealed to reformers of various political
stripes in the early twentieth
century. Paradoxically, in the opinion
of the authors, both political con-
servatives and radical theorists found
something to embrace in the steel
city's schools. By the 1920s, over two
hundred cities operated at least
some of their public schools on the Gary
platoon plan, including Mid-
western centers like Akron, Toledo,
Cleveland, and Detroit.
The major strength of this volume lies
both in the importance of the
subject matter and in the depth of the
research, which included de-
tailed case studies of Gary and New York
City. The platoon plan was
the subject of literally hundreds of
popular and scholarly articles, books,
and newspaper editorials during its
heyday, and the authors have also
examined voluminous manuscript
collections and other unpublished
materials. The "paradoxical"
acceptance of the plan by political con-
servatives as well as radicals is best
highlighted in an early chapter
which compares the philosophies of the
conservative superintendent,
Wirt, with one of his closest
associates, Alice Barrows. While Wirt and
Barrows severed their close ties in the
1930s, when he assumed a
paranoid attitude toward the New Deal
and she shifted to social re-
constructionism, both selectively
championed specific aspects of the
Gary plan. He generally applauded the
efficient utilization of school
resources, similar to factory routine;
she endorsed the social center ac-
tivities, adult classes, and
individualized programs now available for
children. The platoon plan, therefore, provoked vastly
different images
in the minds of different reformers.
People saw exactly what they chose
to see.
In trying to penetrate social reality
and move beyond the history of
ideas, the authors explore the impact of
Gary innovations in ethnic and
black communities and the maturity of
the system in the 1920s. Through-
out the text parents and ordinary
citizens are seen not as docile
servants of the powerful but as active
forces in history who often lost
the war but still won some important
battles against privileged elites.
268 OHIO HISTORY
Perhaps the strongest chapter in this
area deals with the New York
City school riots, which were primarily
led by Jewish children against
the platoon plan during World War I;
here the motives of individual
participants as well as the city's
highly charged political climate, which
pitted the Tammany victors against
Socialists as well as administrative
reformers, are carefully analyzed.
Readers of this useful volume will
nevertheless criticize several
aspects of its organization and thematic development.
Often previously
published as articles, the individual
chapters have retained much of
their separate qualities and lack sufficient
integration. A fascinating
chapter on Willis Brown, a journeyman
child saver, nevertheless veers
away from a central focus on the Gary
plan. Immigrant-based racism
in Gary is also discounted at
superintendent Wirt's expense without
sufficient documentation. The precise
reason why Wirt permitted free
speech for teachers in the 1930s, when
loyalty oaths across the nation
were common and his ultraconservatism
was unquestioned, is never ex-
plained. Labor unions are rarely
discussed for Gary, though U.S. Steel,
perhaps not surprisingly, always lurks
in the shadows. And, finally, the
authors inappropriately label recent
critical historians of education as
simply "revisionists"; these
individuals, who range from anarchists to
liberals to Marxists, may share a critical
stance on history and public
policy but obviously lack a common
philosophy, research design, or
social vision. Despite these
imperfections, The Paradox of Progressive
Education reflects the new critical perspective which has made
the his-
tory of education a lively subject for
over a decade.
University of Wisconsin-Madison William J. Reese
Alexander Hamilton: A Biography. By Forrest McDonald. (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.
xiii+464p.; notes, index. $17.50.)
One must be a man's friend to understand
him. As Professor
McDonald has read Alexander Hamilton
with the mind of an eighteenth
century man, he understands him very
well. His book is not, however, a
biography as its subtitle claims, for it
says little of Hamilton's early
life and wartime experience and even
less about his last years. His
family activities and connections,
especially with his father-in-law, his
personal habits, religion and law
practice are barely treated; what
McDonald says of them is suggestive, but
more tantalizing than satisfy-
ing.
McDonald's focus is Hamilton's public
career, especially as secretary
of the treasury, and half the book
covers but six years of Hamilton's
forty-seven. It is here, however, that
McDonald fulfils admirably his
stated aims: to make eighteenth century
economic thought and Hamil-
ton's fiscal policies intelligible to
the general reader; and "to recon-
struct Hamilton's world view by
analyzing his writings in the context
of his personal intellectual
milieu." This success is soundly rooted in
primary sources; the bibliography is
comprehended in the notes of
which there is almost a page for every
four pages of text. The citations
Book Reviews
269
include much meaty commentary that
should be followed as carefully
as the story itself. Unfortunately, the
publishers made this unneces-
sarily difficult for the reader by
employing endnotes instead of
footnotes.
The book clearly shows Hamilton's
intellectual growth. Only one
attitude did not change: championship of
liberty, abhorrence of slavery.
But his romantic conception of warfare
and trust in politicians gave
way to sober pursuit of virtue, and his
imagination was reinforced by
the knowledge of both experience and study. Hamilton's
fusion of Hume
and Vattel led him to a keen awareness
of the distinction between what
is right and what is expedient; he saw
that the best course of action
was always what was both right and
expedient. Vattel taught him to
advocate three ends of government:
promoting commerce, revenue and
agriculture; facilitating domestic
tranquility and happiness; establish-
ing stability and strength to make the
nation respected abroad. Liberty
was not an end of government, but an
indispensable means to attain
desired political ends. Blackstone's
influence on Hamilton was subtler:
a reverent enthusiasm for the law;
qualifications of sovereignty that
led to federalism. Reading Jacques
Necker inspired him to creativity
as a great minister of finance.
McDonald's work is well-constructed and
finely written; its clarity
and lively style are little marred by
jargon, infelicity or inaccuracy. It
is a magnificent exposition of
Hamilton's virtues, principles and ac-
complishments; carefully revising false
and inaccurate history, it is a
persuasive defense of Hamilton against
irresponsible and malicious at-
tackers and the historians who have
consigned individuals "to roles
they did not actually play ..."
Hamilton's passionate efforts to earn
posterity's grateful remembrance and to
acquire fame by reconstituting
American society have given rise to a
mythology which often has dis-
torted the truth instead of conveying
it. In sleuthing for facts amidst
the fictions and setting the record
straight, McDonald is an expert; his
arguments are impressive and mostly
persuasive.
Countering the canard that Hamilton
thought the people a great beast,
McDonald shows that despite a
pessimistic view of man, Hamilton
constantly applied his energy and
talents in appeals to the intelligence
and virtue of the public-more so
"than did any other American in
public life." His legal training
taught him that law was less a matter
of commands and prohibitions than of
procedures, that liberty and
obedience to rules were complementary
and inseparable, not opposites
to be balanced. Freedom and energy could
best be combined in a people
and infused "with industry and love
of country, by establishing the ways
that things be done rather than trying
to order what was to be done."
As Alexander Pope, his favorite poet,
put it, "For Forms of Govern-
ment let fools contest; What'er is best
administered is best." Nowhere
were these principles applied more
clearly than in Hamilton's able ad-
ministration of national fiscal policy.
His imitation of the British sys-
tems of funding, banking and sinking
funds was superficial, for he
used different principles in different
ways to obtain different ends.
The British sought to raise money for
the government; Hamilton em-
ployed financial means to achieve
political, economic, and social ends.
The mention of but a few of McDonald's
corrections of Hamilton's
270 OHIO HISTORY
story should prompt readers to consult
the book, for they will surely
profit from it. Special attention should
be paid to the endnotes, page
references to which here follow in
parentheses. Evidence shows that
Hamilton's influence in the U. S. Senate
and in the Adams cabinet was
far less extensive and powerful than has been thought
(pp. 403, 440).
His role in the compromises of 1790 was
not as Jefferson led many to
believe; it was the Virginian,
"actively interested in all the points at
issue," who was the wily
manipulator, not the passive, innocent or dis-
interested statesman he later claimed to
be (p. 404). McDonald's de-
scription of when and why the
"bogus clash of constitutional inter-
pretations" of the bank was raised
by Madison, and his explanation of
how Washington was cleverly pressured to
sign the charter act may
surprise and should fascinate most
readers. The charges of improper
interference by the Secretary of the
Treasury in State Department
business and of his deceit and duplicity
are at best exaggerations, for
Hamilton did nothing unnecessary or
improper, nor did he act behind
the backs of Washington and Jefferson
(p. 393). Hamilton was not
eager to use force in the Whiskey
Rebellion, nor was he a provocateur
(pp. 430-433). Contrary views are based
on distorted and incomplete
reading of Hamilton's language. The
notion of whiskey as a "cash
crop" of honest frontier yeomen is
totally mistaken. Hamilton's views
on Jay's Treaty were not as extreme as
they usually have been por-
trayed (p. 436). After all, he publicly
defended the treaty, and his
supposedly harsh private criticisms of
it were alleged by Jefferson
who had no way of knowing them. There
was no Hamilton conspiracy
to dump John Adams and elect Thomas
Pinckney in 1796; there is no
evidence for this long-standing
assumption, and McDonald admits the
necessity of having to correct his own
views on this point (pp. 438-439).
Hamilton neither conspired nor angled
for a military command in 1798.
Craving military glory was his youthful
inclination, but it passed. Pre-
ferring not to reenter military service,
he succumbed "out of an intense
sense of public duty" (p. 443). The
campaign split of 1800 does not
reveal a division of Hamiltonian and
Adams Federalists, but of the
supporters of Adams and Pickering (p.
446). Moreover, Hamilton's
first efforts in 1800 in the New York
elections were designed to pro-
mote Adams's reelection; his subsequent
maneuvers were designed to
push C. C. Pinckney ahead of Adams, but
of course to elect both
Federalists instead of Jefferson and Burr.
These few points in McDonald's work are
only suggestive of its im-
portance to all students of our early
national history. With such par-
ticulars the broader theme of
Hamiltonianism is illuminated; why and
how Hamilton established a successful
fiscal policy and so ably ad-
ministered it for the good of all
segments of the nation are amply
demonstrated. It is a happy fortuity
that McDonald's book celebrates
the 1979 completion of publishing
twenty-six volumes of The Papers
of Alexander Hamilton and five volumes of his law practice.
University of Akron Don R.
Gerlach
Book Reviews
271
The Colonel of Chicago: A Biography
of the Chicago Tribune's
Legendary Publisher, Colonel Robert
McCormick. By Joseph Gies.
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979. 261p.;
illustrations, bibliography,
index. $12.95.)
Frank, to the point, impatient, but
"not a demagogue" Joseph Gies
asserts in his description of Robert
Rutherford McCormick, the
legendary publisher of The Chicago
Tribune. Characterized as a do-
mestic fascist in the 1940s, Colonel
McCormick (his World War I
rank) is rehabilitated at every turn in
this friendly study. Ironically,
this revisionist biography of a man whom
contemporaneous pundits
referred to as "one of the finest
minds of the Fourteenth Century" is
written by a self-proclaimed "old
left liberal Democrat."
The grandson of Joseph Medill, the
founder of the Tribune,
McCormick, after graduating from Yale
and Northwestern Univer-
sities, had a brief career in Chicago
politics. Trained as a lawyer, he
took over the family newspaper and
proceeded to run it with business
acumen and journalistic inventiveness.
Thorough coverage of World
War I won widespread readership and
aggressive circulation cam-
paigns, assisted by armed thugs, helped
keep the readers. Recognizing
the importance of maintaining a good
supply of newsprint, he had the
foresight to lease timberlands and build
a pulp processing plant in
Canada. Sparing no costs, he sent his
reporters wherever the big story
appeared to be developing, whether locally
or around the world. Along
with wire service coverage, the Tribune
early established bureau of-
fices around the country and
internationally.
From
1914 until his death in 1955 at age seventy-five, "Col.
McCosmic," as the rival Daily
News satirized him in cartoon, impressed
his personality upon the Tribune. With
the paper's daily banner claim-
ing to be "The World's Greatest
Newspaper," to front-page cartoons,
to phonetic spelling, the Chicago
morning paper embodied his will.
Editorially rational, articulate and
ironic, the Colonel's paper inter-
preted events from a point of view
derived from Frederick Jackson
Turner's concept of democracy.
Romanticizing the midwest as "the
center of the American spirit,"
McCormick meshed his beliefs with a
good business strategy. Such boosterism
fostered loyalty to the paper
among midwestern readers. Neutrality in
1916 and again in the years
before World War II was consistent and
reflected midwestern senti-
ments, at least as well as a
considerable number of congressmen from
the region. Throughout his career
McCormick's opinions and those of
the Tribune, on most political
issues, were generally acceptable to
rational conservatives.
What set him apart was his isolationism
on the eve of World War II.
Reflecting the anti-interventionist
spirit of the 1970s, Gies notes that
McCormick's isolationist views seem less
objectionable now. He at-
tributes the Colonel's persistent
opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
to genuine fears of a possible
dictatorship during an age of dictators.
Charges of treason leveled against
McCormick by fellow journalists,
some of them former employees, arose
because of aggressive journalistic
scoops by the Tribune and because of
overreaction to "mild," after
272 OHIO HISTORY
thirty-seven years of hindsight,
editorial criticism. McCormick was
exercising the right of a free press and
deserved the applause of Oswald
Garrison Villard for "keeping alive
the historic American right of press
dissent even in wartime."
Gies has written an informative and
enjoyable book. Unfortunately,
he failed to gain access to the
Colonel's personal papers; they are re-
served for some future official
biographer. It is also unfortunate that
the book lacks footnotes. The author
seems to have gone to considerable
length to verify many of the anecdotes
commonly associated with
McCormick's career. Another shortcoming
of the work is its failure
to verify the claim on the dust jacket
that the history of the Tribune,
McCormick, and the city of Chicago were
"inextricably intertwined."
They undoubtedly are, but it still
remains to be demonstrated.
University of Cincinnati James E. Cebula