Book Reviews the Barber and the Historian: the Correspondence Of

Book Reviews 427 The Barber and the Historian: the Correspondence of George A. Myers and James Ford Rhodes, 1910-1925. Edited by John A. Garraty. (Columbus: The Ohio Historical Society, 1956. Pp. xxiv, 166. Illustrations and index. Paperbound, $3.00.) The correspondence of the Negro barber George A. Myers and the distinguished historian James Ford Rhodes contains some pertinent information about the American scene from 1910 to 1923. The very fact that these two men should become fast friends and through the years exchange hundreds of letters is an interesting sidelight on early twentieth-century America. Besides the personal tie between Myers and Rhodes there were other factors which greatly stimulated their friendship. They were both loyal, conservative Republicans ; both were great admirers of Mar- cus A. Hanna ; they were intelligent, well-informed Ameri- cans interested in the history of their country; and the historian, whenever possible, visited the Hollenden Hotel barber shop in Cleveland, Ohio, to be shaved and trimmed by the barber. The important service that Myers rendered the Repub- lican party is evidenced by the fact that his vote in the Re- publican National Convention in 1892 gave the control of the Ohio delegation to the Hanna-McKinley faction. Four years later Myers was named chairman of the Republican Enter- tainment Committee for colored delegates to the National Convention. In 1898, as the barber later wrote the historian, “I put my head in the door of the Ohio Penitentiary to make him [Hanna] US. Senator” (pp. 117-118). This the Negro did when he purchased a Negro legislator’s vote which enabled Hanna to be elected to the United States Senate by a vote of 72 to 71. By 1920 the barber was informing his historian friend that he had voted the Republican ticket and would continue to do so in every election, even if the Grand Old Party nominated a yellow dog for its candidate. Repeatedly in these letters one finds discussion of the race problem, especially as it applied to the South. Myers was of the opinion that this complex issue could be solved if the Negro were given the white man’s opportunity. As Rhodes was adding volumes to his several volume Histom of the United States, his barber friend urged him to write of the Negro’s role in gaining the Union under Washington 428 Indiana Magazine of History and in preserving the Union under Lincoln. When Rhodes requested Myers to write a history of the American Negro, the latter countered that historians, like gentlemen, were born not manufactured. These two correspondents agreed that the nomination of Justice Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 was a dangerous precedent. They shared the opinion that the G.O.P. hungered after loaves and fishes and that the party bosses believed that Hughes could win. Myers was greatly pleased with the Republican nominee, that is, until he read the Hughes ac- ceptance speech and heard him speak. Then he was sadly dis- appointed. Rhodes thought that Hughes talked over the heads of the common people and made no votes among the better educated class. The barber and the historian agreed that Woodrow Wilson was stronger in the Midwest after Hughes’ tour than before. On some national issues Myers and Rhodes held unlike opinions. Rhodes, for example, in 1913 favored the Under- wood tariff bill and the graduated income tax. On the other hand, Myers understood Rhodes’ position but he was, he con- fessed, a dyed-in-the-wool protectionist. The theory of free trade, Myers wrote, was well-nigh unanswerable, but the theory and the practicability were diametrical. Many of the letters between these two friends have been lost. Those that have remained are valuable and interesting. This reviewer regrets the paper binding of the book. But the introduction, footnotes, and index are ample and the illustrations are well selected. University of Florida George C. Osborn Banners in the Wilderness: Early Years of Washington and Jefferson College. By Helen Turnbull Waite Coleman. (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956. Pp. xiv, 285. Illustrations, appendices, notes, biblio- graphy, and index. $4.00.) Washington College and Jefferson College, established in southwestern Pennsylvania under Presbyterian aus- pices in the first decade of the nineteenth century, were among the numerous church-sponsored colleges and uni- versities which commenced during that century. Many of these institutions equalled and a number of them surpassed .

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