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Philadelphia Libraries. A Survey of Facilities, Needs and Opportunities. A Report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York by The Bibliographical Planning Committee of Philadelphia. (Philadelphia: University of Penn- sylvania Press, 1942. vi, 95 + 46 p. $3.50.) Some explanation is needed of why a technical report of this kind should be reviewed at length in a journal devoted to American history. Two explana- tions can be given: first, this report gives both theoretical and practical consideration to improving the tools of scholarly research; second, it has buried away in its statistical tables and it reveals in its final conclusions a very interesting commentary on the history of Philadelphia and on the history of American culture. Any research worker in almost any field, who has at heart the best interests of scholarship, will find this Report worth reading. The complex relationships that are involved in handling the materials of research are here uncovered, analyzed and their costs estimated. Inefficiencies and inadequacies are studied; suggestions are made; the directions that must be taken if improvements are to be effected are indicated. But it is the historical implications that are the chief interest here. Two sets of facts stand out in a marked way, and I quote in both instances the words of the authors of the Report: (1) "We have in the aggregate a magnificent collection of books in this city. We have the material at hand to encourage a great awakening of its intellectual and cultural life." (2) "It is very distressing that Philadelphia, which was the recognized leader of the American library world a century and a half ago, has slipped back into a relatively obscure place, and that its chief library glories are relics of the past, not creations of the present." The significance of these generalizations lies in the difference between them; and the reasons for the existence of this gap throw considerable light on the history of Philadelphia. It touches also the whole question of institutions, their relation to the cultural backgrounds from which they emerge, and the grounds of their survival. The Philadelphia area happens to provide an excellent case history, because this area has been a scene of continuous institutional development for a longer period than any other American urban center. For example, the range is from the library that James Logan formed in 1699 "for the use of the public in order to prevail on them to acquaint themselves with literature"; to The Commercial Museum, founded in 1894 "to foster the expansion of American foreign trade." 216 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 21"]

Between these dates Philadelphia spawned institutions of all sorts and kinds. It was driven by strong cultural compulsions to do this; compulsions that worked through individuals, through groups of like-minded men and through the needs of social classes. These institutions, singly or taken together, reflect in their annual reports and minutes, a remarkable record of the social forces and the cultural tendencies that operated on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American mind. The drift from the eighteenth-century pattern institution of the discussion group and corresponding society type—as illustrated by the Royal Academy in England and The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia—to the more utilitarian and broadly based nineteenth-century types—as illustrated by The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the popular instruction and lecture societies abroad, is clearly marked. The push and pull of retreat and anticipation in the nineteenth-century temperament is also revealed by the formation, on the one hand, of institutions in which the glories of a vanishing past could be savored under the wing of history; and, on the other, of institutions such as The Apprentices Library, The Free Library, and public museums, through which the mass democratization of American society began to make itself felt. This drift obliged older institutions to make constant readjustments both of organization and intention. Their annual reports provide an intimate picture of human minds struggling with those rapid currents of change that characterized the history of the nineteenth century. One of the most surprising things is the constant evidence of a wish to adjust on the part of all these institutions. The notion that an institution had to be in some clear relation to contemporary needs seems to have been strongly held, even though the reason for holding it was often no more glorious than the necessity of appeal- ing for public support. This wish to adjust curiously dies in the early twentieth century. Some of the causes of this historical phenomenon are uncovered by the Report. Briefly, the pace of social change went beyond the capacity of institutions to alter their characters. The dignified progression of the nineteenth century was no longer adequate. Two major shifts in population were important factors. (1) The movement of long-established social groups to the suburbs. (2) The mass immigration into the urban center of adults from areas that were culturally retarded. And there was also a disproportionate increase in the number of adults with specialized technical training and specialized cultural interests. Such a combination of economic, social and cultural factors resulted in a set of circumstances to which the existing institutions of the area could not be geared with sufficient speed to prevent the formation of an unfortunate gap between the public and those institutions that had been created and been preserved to serve the public. Yet, by virtue of long existence and ample funds, these institutions had become through a process of inevitable accretion the repositories of collections of all kinds and of immense cultural importance. This underlies the statement 2l8 BOOK REVIEWS April in the Report about material being at hand to encourage a great awakening. The apparent incoherence of the twentieth-century handling of these traditional institutions gives the background of the Report, explains the form it inevitably took and provided the impetus that brought it to completion. It will be noticed that the authors, disregarding for a moment their statistics and their technical analyses, are primarily struggling at close quarters with the problem of adjustment. They find the key to the solution of this problem in a term that has become one of the major terms of reference for our thinking —"cooperation." They apply this concept to the problem and, in the implications of this concept, they find their answer. It is not the function of a reviewer to exhort. It is enough that he recom- mend this Report to the attention of students of history, to those who are concerned with the administration of institutions of all kinds and to those members of the general public who want to use but are discontented with their institutions. The detailed suggestions need not always be accepted, but the evidence laid out is instructive. The criticisms of particular institutions may not always be fair, but the general grasp of the problem in its historical and its present form is admirable. And the introduction ends with a very human warning: "But the essence of any cooperative enterprise is cooperation. Without community support, without the whole-hearted assistance of the individual library (institutional) units, we shall never be able to realize . . . any plan for the effective integra- tion of our resouces." The Historical Society of Pennsylvania WILLIAM REITZEL

Letters of Robert Carter, 1J20-1J2J: The Commercial Interests of a Virginia Gentlemen. Edited by Louis B. WRIGHT. (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1940. xiv, 153 p. Illustrations, appendix. $2.50.) Plantation life and economy in Virginia reached its highest development in the eighteenth century, and yet, strangely enough, there has been compara- tively little modern historical writing on this most important era. For the preceding century, we have the works of Thomas J. Wertenbaker and Philip A. Bruce, but conditions were materially changed by 1720. It is true there are numerous biographies of eighteenth-century Virginians, but these volumes deal largely with the part played by statesmen and soldiers in the events leading to the Revolution. Little attempt has been made to depict these men as planter-merchants, with the result that certain popular misconceptions have arisen, one of the most flagrant of which is the notion that the planters consciously sought to avoid all taint of trade. A reading of the Letters of Robert Carter, 1720-172J will remove such misapprehensions. Robert Carter of Corotoman (1663-1732), commonly known as "King," was the wealthiest and probably the most influential man of his day in Virginia. Capable, dominating, assertive, possessed of a genius for acquisition, a tremendous energy and a dominating personality, he quickly achieved distinction. He was appointed, in rapid succession, Justice of the Peace, Burgess, i942 BOOK REVIEWS 219

Speaker of the House, Treasurer, Councilor, President of the Council, and acting Governor. For almost twenty years he was agent for the Fairfax interests, and thus was able to patent out in his name and in that of his sons and grandsons, some 300,000 acres of land. He owned also over 700 slaves and stock in the Bank of England to the extent of £6,OOO. These letters, most of them written in 1720 and 1721, are from copies now in The Huntington Library. Of approximately one hundred letters, more than half are addressed to British factors, about a dozen are addressed to John Carter, eldest son of "King," and the remainder to various persons in England and Virginia. They show clearly that the great planter was more than a landed aristocrat; he was also a business man, anxious for the opportunity to "turn a neat profit." As a man of business, Carter was vitally concerned with the price of tobacco and slaves, land values, freight rates, and the cost of materials required in the operation of the plantation. The letters are valuable also in that they present a picture of the problems involved in the education of young Virginians in England. Although Carter wrote in a style lacking literary distinction, his letters are readable and abound in char- acterizations and comments which illuminate the life and the people of the period. One wonders why the unpublished "King" Carter letter books, covering the period from 1723 to 1729, pencil copies of which are in the Virginia Historical Society at Richmond, were not included in Mr. Wright's book. These letters would have enhanced greatly the value of the volume. It is also to be regretted that the editor did not provide fuller notes so that the reader might have a better understanding of the persons and events about which Carter wrote. It is to be hoped that materials of this nature will continue to be brought to light, so that a much-needed comprehensive study of social and economic conditions in eighteenth-century Virginia may be written in the future. Colonial Williamsburg, Incorporated Louis MORTON

Robert Carter of Nomini Hall: A Virginia Tobacco Planter in the Eighteenth Century. By Louis MORTON. (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg Incorporated, 1941. xvii, 332 p. $3.50.) Robert Carter was a distinguished scion of a distinguished family. His great-grandfather, John Carter, migrating from England to Virginia in 1649, had laid the foundations of the family, and laid them well. The grandfather, Robert Carter of Corotoman, councilor and for a while acting governor, lived during the era of transition to large plantations. Aided in part by his office of agent for Lord Fairfax, he greatly increased the family holdings, which were located principally in the "Northern Neck." His sobriquet, "King Carter," reflects his wealth and influence. The father, the first Robert of Nomini, died while still a young man. The object of the present study, the second Robert Carter of Nomini, "Councillor Carter" as he is often called, was born under fortune's smile in 1728. His grandfather and father 220 BOOK REVIEWS April both died when he was four years of age, and his patrimony was administered during his minority by his three uncles. On coming of age he went to Europe for two years, sowing a few wild oats, but soon returning to assume the responsibilities of a prominent member of the Virginia aristocracy. He did not add materially to his broad acres, devoting himself rather to developing what he had. He married the daughter of a prosperous and well-connected Baltimore merchant. She presented him with seventeen children, twelve of whom lived to maturity. He was appointed to the council in 1758, and three years later moved to Williamsburg where for the next decade he was closely identified with the public life of the colony. In 1771, disturbed by the tensions of the approaching Revolution, he withdrew to Nomini Hall, and was thence- forth not active in politics. When the rupture came, however, Carter definitely cast his lot with the Patriot cause. He outlived the Revolution by more than a quarter of a century, dying in 1804. But Professor Morton's primary concern is neither the Carter family nor Robert Carter as an individual. He seeks rather to use the Councilor to typify the great Virginia planter of the second half of the eighteenth century, some of whose characteristics have been none too well understood. He was less of a specialist in the raising of tobacco than has generally been supposed. Overproduction, soil exhaustion, and the periodic shutting off of markets by war all affected the tobacco industry adversely, and led to a progressive turn- ing to other crops. By the third quarter of the century wheat had become an important export, and although it was local consumption which gave corn its greatest significance it, too, was exported. Oats and barley were also raised, as were cotton, flax, and hemp, though Carter had no more than modest success with these fibre crops. They suggest, however, that his economic activities were by no means confined to agriculture, as indeed they were not. Colonial manufacturers, hindered by the regulations of the Old Colonial System, but even more by the competition of British goods, were greatly stimulated by the Revolution. Carter was interested in textile manufacturing, milling, and baking, not only to satisfy the very considerable demands of his own plantations, but to supply the local market as well. He was deeply concerned in the Baltimore Iron Works, a substantial interest in which he had acquired as part of his wife's inheritance, and which he found highly profitable. Carter, like most of the larger planters, did not sell his tobacco locally, but consigned it to an agent in London. This system also had its disadvantages, but Carter, thanks both to his resources and to his good sense, avoided falling into that debt to British merchants which was crushing so many of his contemporaries. Carter was landlord as well as planter. Some- times he rented his land to tenants who improved it themselves, sometimes he leased already established plantations, with their equipment and slaves. He was careful to specify how the land was to be employed. He was also a financier, loaning substantial sums when he had surplus capital on hand. All this Professor Morton portrays with knowledge of the literature of the subject which enables him to distinguish the unique from the typical. He 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 221

realizes, however, that this field has not been fully worked, and often indicates phases of his problem which call for further investigation. This book is not a biography. It is not intended to be one. At the same time it is no coldly impersonal study of socio-economic phenomena. The author seems ever aware that he is dealing with men and women, and human values are not lost sight of. Not the least interesting topics are Carter's religious evolution and his liberal plan of emancipation for his slaves. The journal of Philip Vickers Fithian, for a time tutor at Nomini Hall, is drawn upon for many an interesting glimpse of that great household. Here is a book which will inform the student and delight the general reader. University of Pennsylvania LEONIDAS DODSON

Letters on the American Revolution in the Library at "Karolfred." Edited by FREDERIC R. KIRKLAND. (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1941. 94 p.) This handsome and valuable miscellany brings together seventy-four holo- graph letters or original documents which Mr. Kirkland has been twenty- five years collecting and which he now, from his house at Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, generously shares with friends and fellow-collectors in a volume printed by Allen, Lane & Scott, Philadelphia, in an issue of two hundred copies. Five of the manuscripts (including a printed note signed by Robert Morris and endorsed by Haym Solomon) are reproduced in photo- graphic facsimile. The earliest piece is a letter from Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, dated at London May 15, 1754, and announcing the appoint- ment of Robert Hunter Morris as governor of Pennsylvania. The latest is a letter from Lafayette dated at Paris May 18, 1830, introducing ex-President Kirkland of Harvard to a Professor Milne in Scotland. All but eighteen of the letters or documents belong to the period from April, 1775, to August, 1783, and most of the others have a definite bearing on the Revolutionary conflict. Mr. Kirkland prints the letters in chronological order, with detailed notes to each of them. A comparison of the facsimiles with the printed versions shows that the transcribing is not always minutely accurate. For instance, in the first eleven lines of No. 6, Benjamin Church to the Selectmen of Boston, the manuscript "You" is printed as "you"; "by Virtue" as "By Virtue"; "till" as "til"; "Sales at Sunsett" as "sales at sunsett" (it must be admitted that Church did not clearly differentiate his capital from his small s) ; "o'Clock" as "o'clock"; "keep in order" as "keep in in order"; "to my hurt" as "to my hurts." In the notes, the date of Church's death is given as 1776, on the authority it seems of the Dictionary of American Biography, though there can be no doubt that Church was still alive in July, 1777 (Allen French, General Gage's Informers, p. 200). Furthermore, Mr. Kirkland says that Church when he wrote this letter, November 10, 1773, "was certainly in communication with the British" to whom—that is, to Gage—Church was two years later to communicate American secrets. But in November, 1773, 222 BOOK REVIEWS April

Gage was not in Boston, and there were, strictly speaking, no American rebels for Church to betray. An order (No. 48) from William Moore, vice-president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, to James Claypoole, high sheriff of the City and County of Philadelphia, has in facsimile the place of honor as frontispiece of the volume, and in the body of the book more extensive annota- tion than any other letter. Claypoole was here instructed to "Seize all the Papers in the house of General Arnold & detain them till further Orders." Dating the order, "In Council," Moore first wrote "Sept. 26th. 1780," then put a heavy 7 over the 6. Whether this was a slip corrected, or a deliberate change of date, it marks the time when the Pennsylvania authorities, having learned of Arnold's treason, took their first step toward looking for proofs of his guilt. If, as seems possible, the news reached Philadelphia before midnight of Tuesday the twenty-sixth, it had traveled fast, for Washington at West Point had not known it till well after noon on Monday the twenty-fifth. Mr. Kirkland makes some interesting conjectures as to the transmission of the message. Assuming that a messenger may have been dispatched from West Point "around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, he could not have arrived before 5 o'clock the next day, having ridden all night. Of course relays of post horses would have been arranged. In any event, it is unlikely that the news reached the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania in time for action on the twenty-sixth. This is borne out by the change of dates on the Council's order to the sheriff." But these conjectures do not take into account all the facts that are known about how the news got to Philadelphia. Normally Washington would have sent word to Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress, but in fact he did not write to Hunt- ington till Tuesday. Nor did he write to Nathanael Greene, in command at Tappan, till 7 130 Monday evening, probably after Alexander Hamilton came back from Verplanck's Point with Arnold's letter from the Vulture. When Washington did write to Greene, ordering him to hurry a division to King's Ferry and hold all troops in readiness to move on short notice, he told him only that "transactions of a most interesting nature and such as will astonish you have been discovered." No mention of Arnold's name. This was not necessary. For Hamilton, at Verplanck's that afternoon, had sent Greene a note about Arnold's escape to the enemy, and this must have reached Greene some hours before Washington's note. It was Greene, apparently on his own initiative, who dispatched the messenger to Huntington, from Tappan. "I have thought it advisable," Greene wrote, "to forward you this intelligence [Hamilton's letter] that you may take measures to search for his [Arnold's] papers in Philadelphia, and those of the family with whom he is connected. Perhaps some discovery may be made which will lead to further scenes of villainy." Greene's letter, written at eleven Monday night and now among the Papers of the Continental Congress, was not read to the Congress till the session of Wednesday, but it may have reached Huntington Tuesday night and been i942 BOOK REVIEWS 223 turned over to the Pennsylvania Council. It is at least a reasonable guess that Moore, having dated his order the twenty-sixth, then perceived that it was past midnight and changed the date. And it is almost certain that the date on the order fixes the day on which the papers were seized. The larger part of Mr. Kirkland's annotations on Moore's order is concerned with whether the "house of General Arnold" which was to be searched was Mount Pleasant, and whether indeed Arnold and his family ever lived there. Though Mr. Kirkland acutely surveys all the arguments on both sides, and concludes that Arnold did live at Mount Pleasant, the matter is not yet closed—as it may be some day by the discovery of some single docu- ment worth a thousand arguments. There is one point Mr. Kirkland does not make. This is that on October 6, 1779, Arnold wrote to Congress com- plaining that a "Mob of Lawless Ruffians have Attacked me in the Streets and threaten my life now I am in my Own House." If Arnold was here referring literally to his own house, he can have meant only Mount Pleasant, since any other house he lived in must have been rented. In Mr. Kirkland's notes on his letter No. 27, from Benjamin Franklin to Jonathan Williams on November 30, 1777, there are two errors that might easily have been avoided. One concerns an order for £55 which Franklin said he had sent from Paris to Margaret Stevenson, formerly his landlady in London. "It is impossible," Mr. Kirkland says, "to know definitely to what Franklin alludes." But in the Calendar of the Franklin Papers in The Amer- ican Philosophical Society there is listed (IV, 4) a letter to William Temple Franklin, dated June 17 of that year, in which Williams said he owed Mrs. Stevenson £55 and asked Temple to attend to it. The order for this amount seems to have gone to England in a letter from Franklin to his old friend. Referring to Le Ray de Chaumont, Franklin's landlord in Passy, Mr. Kirk- land repeats the traditional story that Chaumont "would not accept any rent." It has been lately shown that, for the last quarter of 1782 and there- after while Franklin lived in France, he paid Chaumont rent at an annual rate of 6000 livres (Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin, p. 636). Mr. Kirkland is too seasoned in Revolutionary scholarship not to expect that his colleagues in the field will ransack his work for errata in the texts, mistakes in the multitude of facts in the notes. These are the compliments rivals pay, perhaps in amiable envy of a man whose collection is so fine, whose erudition so various. A review of a miscellany has to be a miscellaneous review, and any reviewer who is at all a specialist is sure to pick out the topics in this book that have to do with his own specialism. Probably no review can or will communicate the total effect of a volume so rich as to contain a letter— "most private, to be burnt when read"—from Lord North to John Robinson, announcing that the king would send for North to form that strange Cabinet which would include Charles James Fox; a penitent letter from John Laurens, then a student in the Middle Temple, apologizing because he had "mixed so much in the Carolina Set, against which I had been forewarned" that he had exceeded his allowance; and the magnificent anti-slavery letter 224 BOOK REVIEWS April

from Henry Laurens which a Boston political club bought to present to Abraham Lincoln, who died before it could be suitably mounted by Riviere and delivered to him. "I purchased it," Mr. Kirkland notes, "in 1922—it was my first important acquisition." New York CARL VAN DOREN

Secret History of the American Revolution. By CARL VAN DOREN. (New York: The Viking Press, 1941. xv, 534 p. Illustrated. $3.75.) Mr. Van Doren has written an important book on the American Revolu- tion. His Secret History tells in full the involved story of espionage, con- spiracy, treachery, and treason, and of enemy efforts to bribe or intimidate the patriots, to spread defeatism and apathy among them, and to create dissension within their ranks. Making available for the first time the confidential information contained in the Clinton papers, Mr. Van Doren has been able to free many patriot leaders from suspicion of disloyalty and in other cases to prove guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. The book includes a valuable appendix consisting of a narrative of the Andre-Arnold case (which Sir Henry Clinton sent to Germain, October 11, 1780), and a group of sixty-eight letters relating to the plot, which have been transcribed "and collated from the original manuscripts in the Clinton Papers by Howard Peckham, Curator of Manuscripts, William L. Clements Library." This material (pp. 439-495) is an important addition to the easily accessible knowledge of the Revolution. Had Mr. Van Doren wished, he might have prepared an exciting narrative of the Andre-Arnold case, in the manner of a best seller. Or he might have written a tract for the times, subordinating history to current issues by using his material to illustrate the perils of present-day appeasement, disaffection, and treachery. Any such temptation, if it ever arose, has been overcome. Mr. Van Doren has written a solid, comprehensive history which discusses many minor cases of disaffection—cases which will not interest the seeker for sensational entertainment. The stones of Benjamin Church, Lord Dunmore and his agents, Charles Lee, Philip Skene, William Franklin, Joseph Galloway and the Carlisle Commission will not be diverting to the lay reader. Yet such stories are needed for a complete picture of the times. The Andre-Arnold case is presented in a maze of technical detail, and with a full critical analysis of the evidence involved. The book is a work to be labored over with maps, calendar, and charts. It is an enduring analysis of the undercover techniques of war, worthy of close study by anyone who is interested in the origin and character of the republic and by anyone who is responsible for the conduct of national affairs. Despite Mr. Van Doren's devotion to detail of a diverse and minute character, he has given to the work qualities of unity and vitality which eventually sweep the reader onward to the climax of Arnold's treachery. The study is one of the most complete and devastating exposures of villainy ever written. It shows how Arnold, attacked by patriots for questionable conduct, resigned his army command in a fit of self-righteous irritation. Having decided i942 BOOK REVIEWS 225

to betray the American cause, he then sought to regain his command and to secure control at West Point, in order to sell the post and its garrison to the enemy. Arnold's character gradually becomes distinct as the evidence unfolds. One sees a man who kept copies of the love letters which he wrote to one young lady and who later sent the same tender passages to another object of his attentions. One sees a man of "enterprising greed," of brazen effrontery, who made specious professions of honor while plotting treachery against those to whom he sent lofty expressions of loyalty—a man of selfish nature, petulant, insolent toward inferiors, and callous in his disregard of others. After he had embraced a career of double-dealing, his undoubted bravery made him bold and impudent in falsehood and deceit. On September 20, 1780, Major Andre set out on the warship Vulture, bound up the Hudson River for a secret interview with Arnold. The meeting took place after midnight, on the river bank. Andre remained in hiding the next day. Frustrated in his plan to return to New York by way of the Vulture, he was forced to assume a disguise and to proceed by land. He got safely beyond the American lines, only to be taken by three patriot militiamen, whom he fatally mistook for loyalists. The news of Andre's arrest was sent at once to Arnold and the documents which Arnold had sold to Andre were sent to Washington, who was then on his way from Hartford to West Point. Would Washington learn of the plot before Arnold could get news of the disaster which had befallen him and make his escape? Fortune favored Arnold, and he fled to the Vulture a few minutes before Washington arrived at Arnold's headquarters. Mrs. Arnold's hysterics (probably affected) persuaded Washington's aides of her innocence, despite her full complicity in the plot. The trial and hanging of Andre followed. Arnold, safely in New York, bar- gained with Clinton over the price of treachery. The Secret History speaks well for the alertness and perception of the patriots. No serious case of treachery escaped their eyes. Nor did they persecute any genuinely innocent person. People who were staunchly loyal to the American cause, and especially people in ordinary circumstances, were not suspected of disloyalty, nor were they easily deceived by apologists for the enemy who hid treachery behind professions of patriotism or who insinuated disloyalty by means of subtle arguments or sly suggestions. Intended secret manoeuvres did not remain secret. Except for details, the facts disclosed by Mr. Van Doren became known at the time. If the Revolution was the common man's cause, there is a bit of poetic justice in the way the Arnold plot failed. An elaborate intrigue, prepared with infinite cleverness, cunning, and caution, over a period of sixteen months, collapsed in a few hours because three obscure militiamen who seized Andre were not duped and, apparently, could not be bribed. The difficulties encountered by the enemy's secret manoeuvres denote a certain strength in the American cause. Reversely, the disposition of the British to resort to bribery suggests, not only their failure to understand the temper of patriot America, but also their disinclination toward, or incapacity for, decisive action in the military sphere. 226 BOOK REVIEWS April

Mr. Van Doren does not belong to the school of writers who consider themselves objective because they refuse to determine and to describe the nature of an object under study. His judgments are expressed in a manner which does not leave room for doubt about the meaning of what he says. Referring to one British technique of persuasion, he remarks: "Such talk about possible and virtuous men being influenced by improper motives went hand-in-hand with talk about honours and emoluments and the favours to be bestowed by grateful nations." "Respect for titles was the mark of loyalists." Considering Mrs. Arnold as a possible Lady Macbeth, Van Doren concludes that "the final responsibility must lie with the mature and ex- perienced Arnold. . . ." "Unable to be patient, Arnold had to be violent. In a fury of irritation, he felt he could not wait. . . . But it will be seen that, once started on his treacherous career, he developed the cold, sly patience of conspirators." At the end of one of Arnold's inflated professions of high purpose, Van Doren remarks: "No mention here of his first demanding £20,000 for the surrender of West Point and of his taking no final steps till his price had been accepted." After Arnold's desertion, a British officer remarked that he was "to raise a regiment of as great scoundrels as himself, if he can find them." A recruiting campaign for loyalists netted Arnold "4 captains, 2 lieutenants, 2 ensigns, 3 sergeants, and 1 drummer to take with him on his raid to Virginia, but only 28 rank and file." "Badly paid and fed and clothed and equipped as the Continental soldiers were, few of them thought they would be better off under a general who, during months when they admired and trusted him, had been ready to sell them to the enemy." In reply to Clinton's claim that Andre was not a spy, Van Doren says: "But Clinton must have known that Andre could not go on shore under his own name, since Arnold would not dare to mention it in any pass he could send; and ought to have known that a flag of truce misused by Arnold with treacherous inten- tions would not protect Andre if he were discovered by the Americans." "Andre was on a secret mission and must pay the price of secrecy." Mr. Van Doren's final conclusion is worthy of consideration. "The patriots, this history at last reveals, had to hold out against a whole set of secret tempta- tions which sought them out when they were tired or poor or resentful or despairing, and offered them ease or comfort or satisfaction or hope. The wonder is—as Washington understood—not that some of them were false but that most of them were true to the ragged colours of a perilous cause." University of Wisconsin CURTIS NETTELS

The Continental Congress. By EDMUND CODY BURNETT. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941. xiv, 757 p. $6.00.) This book is a unique achievement, in the sense that it could have been written only by the man who has chosen to do it. Mr. E. C. Burnett's meticulous editing of the personal records of the members of the Continental 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 227

Congress is one of the important chapters of American historical scholarship of our time. It qualifies him to see the fifteen-year history of the Congress as a whole, with the richness of detail which gives that whole meaning and sub- stance. Most important of all it enables him to discern interrelationships and connective tissues in the Revolutionary story which have not been so clear before. Looking backward through a period it is possible to isolate first one issue and then another, treating them separately and pursuing each to its end; but to the men who lived in the period all problems were intermixed and commingled. Judgment concerning one was likely to be affected by judgment concerning another; each must be understood in terms of all the others. This is easy to forget: it has often been forgotten in dealing with the Congress. The biographical approach emphasizes the complexity of issues and the wholeness of a man; in that respect this book is a biography of the Congress. It presents the year-by-year history of an organic constituent assembly growing ever more conscious of its institutional character and responsibilities, grappling with many separate problems as part of the whole exacting administrative task of winning a war and building a nation. Many individual members are mentioned, a goodly number stands out conspicuously above the rest, but the character they lend to Congress rather than their individual idiosyncracies is the constant theme. Congress is not an easy subject. Generals cursed it, citizens ridiculed it, subsequent novelists and historians have emphasized its failures and its foibles. But the extended view of Mr. Burnett perceives that it was in the long run successful, that it held together quarreling, indifferent states in at least the semblance of a sovereign commonwealth, that though it would not delegate enough powers to promote efficiency, it prevented thereby the con- centration of too much power in one office or one man, which would have threatened the republican basis of the government; that it accumulated ex- periences in government which entered into our national history and became permanent features of our constitution; that in spite of all difficulties it preserved a certain dignity, some poise and an eloquence of expression which comported well with the sovereignty of a nation based on revolutionary principles of human relationships. The truth is, that while much of the criticism of the Congress was just, it probably represented pretty accurately the opinion of the whole of the country. It had its radicals and its conservatives, it had also its large share of "the doubting and the hesitant, long the dominant element in the body politic . . ." If it moved slowly, it probably reflected an equally slow movement among the majority of the people. The character Congress presented in the midst of all its difficulties was a sturdy, optimistic one. That "ever-buoyant assembly" was always ready, even in the darkest hour, to voice confident expectations of victory; "even at moments most critical, [the delegates] did not lose their sense of humor, held fast to their sense of proportion." 22% BOOK REVIEWS April

That members of Congress, that patriots everywhere, did not despair, is scarcely short of marvellous. From the beginning of the struggle, members of Congress, with probably few exceptions, had year after year deluded themselves with the belief that one more campaign would bring the contest to a fortunate conclusion, and the spring of 1781, despite the general gloom that enveloped them, was no exception. Somehow hope persisted, and whatever the difficulties, however grievous the failures, there were always a few members of Congress who never threw up their hands in despair, but strove to find a way out of the morass, of defective methods, of state negligence, of popular indifference.

If this buoyant spirit was most conspicuous, wisdom was not always absent. The majority of Congress never lost sight of what the fight was for. Two elements in the Revolution depended solely upon it. The first was an effective organization of the national government which would implement the enlight- ened spirit and stir the flagging. The long struggle toward this goal, marked by the Articles of Confederation as well as by two major and several minor efforts to reform the committee system, culminated in the Constitution of 1787, which while it ended the career of the Congress itself, achieved what the more vigorous thinkers had long been contending for. The second was a sound program of finance for the nation, on which Congress' record was not good, but which at least did not end in bankruptcy. Mr. Burnett's style is pleasant and gracious. He has a difficult problem of organization, which he has solved by chronological presentation, a solution that sometimes requires the reader to flip pages back and forth, but which has the virtue of presenting the problems in much the same juxtaposition they must originally have had for the members. Knollenberg's Washington and the Revolution, which appeared too late to be used in this work, would have modified somewhat the treatment of the Conway Cabal. Burnett is distinguished from some other critics of the period by his refusal to think of statesmen in confusing and inaccurate terms of conservative, radical, whig, liberal, and so on. No names are called. For the lay reader this book offers an attractive and substantial account of the administration of the Revolutionary War and the politics of peace that will enrich his understanding not only of that, but of some problems common to the administration of all wars and treaties. The professional historian will note the absence of footnotes, with the reflection that this is probably the last serious study of the period which will lack constant references to Burnett, Letters of the Members. Ames, Iowa J. H. POWELL

The Swiss in the United States. Edited by JOHN PAUL VON GREUNINGEN. (Madison, Wisconsin: Swiss-American Historical Society, 1940. 153P.) According to Albert Bartholdi (cf. below), the Swiss were among the first to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the discovery of the New World. As early as 1525, a group of Swiss citizens applied to their govern- 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 229 ment for a permit to emigrate to our continent. Whether or not that first plan was carried out has not been ascertained. The earliest unquestioned evidence of a Swiss in the territory now known as the United States, dates back to 1562, when Diebold von Erlach died in Florida in the service of Spain. Several of the earliest settlers of Jamestown have Swiss names, as has been pointed out by Albert Bartholdi. In 1663 Peter Fabian from Bern accompanied as a scientific expert an expedition of the English Carolina Company to the southern colonies. Charleston is reported to have had in its neighborhood the first distinctly Swiss settlement, established in 1670 by Carteret from Geneva, and thirteen years later the name of George Wertmuller appears among the first arrivals at Germantown near Philadelphia. Swiss immigration on a larger scale in more or less organized form started at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1710 the first settlement of Swiss Mennonites is recorded in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and in the same year Christopher de Graffenried founded New Bern, North Carolina. During the nineteenth century numerous settlements were organized, e.g., New Switzerland (later changed to Highland), Illinois in 1831-32, New Glarus, Wisconsin, in 1845, Tell City and Berne (both in Indiana) in the fifties, Tell, Alma, and Fountain City (all three in Buffalo County, Wiscon- sin) in the fifties, Neu-Engelberg (Mount Angel), a settlement of Benedic- tine monks in Oregon, in 1885. In the period from 1850 to 1900, the middle-western states of Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan continuously attracted Swiss farmers. Many of the newcomers, especially before 1890, preferred to settle in rural communities of their own. Up to 1880 Ohio had a larger Swiss population than any other state in the Union. Since then both New York and California have surpassed it. With the start of the great industrial development and the expansion of large cities in all parts of the country, considerable Swiss colonies grew up in the urban and industrial centers. Thus, in the decade following 1880 several thousand Swiss, mostly from Appenzell and St. Gallen, settled in Hudson County, New Jersey, opposite New York, where they found employment in the silk and embroidery industries previously introduced there by Swiss manufacturers. As a whole, the number of Swiss immigrants increased steadily until 1910. In 1920 a decrease had set in and continued in 1930. But many of the early settlements still remain entirely or partly Swiss in their language, customs, and habits. In other areas a decidedly Swiss substratum is easily recognizable despite apparently total assimilation. Thus, recent investigations conducted under the direction of Professor Hans Kurath of Brown University in the Pennsylvania Dutch language area have brought to light morphological characteristics of the language spoken around Lancaster which must be attributed to the original Alamannic element. A first attempt to write a history of the Swiss in the United States was made by Dr. Adelrich Steinach in his book Geschichte und Leben der Schweizer in den Vereinigten Staaten (New York, 1889). Soon after 1920 Bruno Buchmann of Chicago and August Ruedy of Cleveland started to pub- 23O BOOK REVIEWS April lish biographical sketches of outstanding Americans of Swiss origin. These articles, written in German or English, appeared in various periodicals, e.g., Der Schweizer, official monthly organ of the North American Swiss Alliance, Green County Herald', and the weekly Amerikanische Schweizer Zeitung. Upon the initiative of Bruno Buchmann, the Swiss-American Historical Society was founded in Chicago on July 4, 1927, for the purpose of "collecting, preserving, and disseminating historical and biographical information about Swiss settlers in the United States." This society published a volume entitled Prominent Americans of Swiss Origin in New York in 1932 under the editorship of Albert Bartholdi. In 1940 the second volume appeared. This new publication is quite different in character and presentation from its predecessor. While in the first volume the interest was focused on individual biographies, the present one, expertly edited by Professor J. P. von Grueningen, formerly of the University of Wisconsin, contains mostly material of the survey type. It is divided into six chapters: I. "A Statistical Survey of Swiss Immigration," based on government census reports, originally prepared by August Ruedy and later extended and thoroughly checked by the editor (PP- 15-70); II. "An Early Migration to New Helvetia" (pp. 71-87), selected passages from the up to that time untranslated diary of early California by the Swiss Heinrich Lienhard, a pioneer at Sutter's Fort, the translation having been made in part by Captain C. Theo. Schwegler of Oakland, Cali- fornia, in part by the editor; III. "Kyburz of Kyburz" (pp. 88-92) by Captain C. Theo. Schwegler, a biography of Samuel Kyburz (1810-1898), a pioneer of Eldorado County, California, and close collaborator of Captain Sutter; IV. "The Italian Swiss in California" (pp. 93-101) by Clay Pedrazzini, publisher of the Italian-Swiss journal, La Colonia Svizzera; V. "Steinach's List of Swiss Settlers in New York and New Jersey" (pp. 102-128) by the editor, a source of rich information; VI. "Swiss Spiritual Leadership" (pp. 129-137) by the editor, pointing out Swiss missionary work (both Catholic and Protestant) among American Indian tribes. The volume is provided with a good index (pp. 139-153), eleven full-page illustrations, and fifteen maps. Professor von Grueningen's share in the preparation of this excellent volume far surpasses the work normally done by an "editor." Not only did he write his own articles for it, select the illustrations, draw the maps (except one made by Captain C. Theo. Schwegler), but he also rewrote each chapter, checking all the data with painstaking care and making the book a valuable piece of reliable research. The reviewer considers chapters I, IV, and VI as especially significant, superior scholarly contributions. University of Pennsylvania ALFRED SENN

Norwegian Migration to America: The American Transition. By THEODORE C. BLEGEN. (Northfield, Minn.: The Norwegian-American Historical Association. 1940. xii, 655 p. $3.50.) In 1931, Dr. Blegen, who is a noted historian, Dean of the Graduate School 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 231 in the University of Minnesota, and editor of the Norwegian-American Studies and Records, published an excellent volume on Norwegian Migration to America, covering the earlier period of such migration, 1825-1860. Now he has brought out a companion volume under the same general title, carrying on the account in point of time but particularly interpreting that migration in terms of the transition of these Norwegians into sturdy Americans. This book is therefore most important as a study of social forces in respect to our Ameri- can scene. Like the earlier volume, it is excellent in every respect, sustaining and enhancing the high reputation the author had already won for outstanding historical scholarship. In this volume Dr. Blegen deals, in eighteen chapters, with such problems confronting the Norwegian immigrant as his adjustment to the frontier; the difficulty of transition from the Norwegian to the English language; the development of the church and the church organizations for a deeply religious people; the problem of schools—common school, higher schools and colleges, and theological seminaries; the launching of an immigrant and Norwegian language press; the relation of these newly arrived people to the Civil War, to the slavery question, and, as time went on, to American politics; and, in general, the problem of their cultural development in a new and different environment. The sweeping character of the book is sufficiently indicated by this enumera- tion of the problems examined; it may be added that the book is literally packed with interesting and significant information and anecdotes about these Norwegian people and the manner in which they met these problems. They were pioneers, who came to a country very different from their own, suffered physical hardship and mental anguish, and the transition was not at all easy. But the transition has been made—by this time almost completely, certainly more completely and whole-heartedly than by certain other of the immigrants, and in such a manner as to preserve much of their past in the living present, and yet so well that the term "Norwegian American" is in no sense a term of reproach but is generally respected as a designation of the finest kind of Americanism. Dr. Blegen most appropriately concludes his study by pointing out that the transition of the Norwegian immigrant to an American citizen has been best interpreted by that master teacher and novelist, Ole Rolvaag, whose thinking "was centered upon the living relationship between past and present." It is this incorporation of their past into the present that the Nor- wegian immigrants somehow accomplished so well, although after many a struggle, religious, political, cultural, among themselves, and the story of which Dr. Blegen tells so fascinatingly and interprets so magnificently. Dr. Blegen's book is a distinguished book, a splendid contribution to American historical writing, and a volume of which the Norwegian American Historical Association, under whose auspices it is published, may well be proud. University of Illinois CLARENCE A. BERDAHL 232 BOOK REVIEWS April

The Organization of Labor in Philadelphia, 1850-1870. By EDGAR BARCLAY CALE. (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1940. vi, 126 p.) Dr. Cale has made good use of the Philadelphia Public Ledger files and miscellaneous other sources. We learn many details about the general trend already familiar—the rise and fall of labor organization in Philadelphia according to the changing fortunes, economic and military, during the years 1850-1870. But whether he has made the best possible use of those sources is another question. For little that is both new and significant is added to the data available in the works of Commons and Ware, aside from the information bearing on the "Anti-Coolie League." Indeed much of the material (in Chapter III particularly) is no more than a listing of meeting notices that ought to have been condensed into an Appendix. There are certain flaws in the discussion as a whole. We are not informed as to the distinctions, if any, between the situation and ideas of the small-shop craftsmen and the increasing groups of mill workers. Perhaps there were none of importance—but the question should at least be introduced. The views and personalities of William Sylvis and Jonathan Fincher are "discussed" with scarcely any illustrative quotations and covered by blanket footnotes. "Leaders in the sixties, especially," the writer asserts without evidence, "saw little connection between the forces of capital and the government at Washington." Such judgments may be quite sound but Dr. Cale certainly does not prove them so. And the same applies to his declaration that "every young man was imbued with the idea that someday he would become his own boss"—especially since there is evidence in his own pages (76 and 78 for instance) to indicate the existence of "class consciousness." Consistent reference to Lassalle as "LaSalle" does not argue firsthand knowledge of the subject. Workingmen of the thirties did not have to fight for the franchise in the Northeastern States other than Rhode Island—they already had it. Cooperation cannot be said to have been advanced as a "major" solution for workers' troubles for the "first" time in the sixties unless the failure of the cooperation propagandists to im- press the Industrial Congresses of the forties and fifties is to be interpreted as a minor attempt. Some valuable background material appears in the last chapter. The trouble is that it ought to have been brought in earlier and integrated with the author's discoveries. Although Commons and Ware are cited occasionally, much better use could have been made of them. Dr. Cale's presentation of the Crispins would have benefited from acquaintance with Lescohier's monograph (not listed anywhere), and the sketch of Sylvis tells the reader less than the D.J.B. One wonders whether there was any exploration of the German sources—Waltershausen and Sorge. The bibliography is so curious as to inspire comment beyond what would normally be called for here. In sections III and IV there are 141 items listed, of which only 21 are mentioned anywhere in the text or footnotes. What then was the principle behind this "Selected Bibliography" ? Inasmuch as the items under III are just as secondary as those under IV, why the distinction? And i942 BOOK REVIEWS 233

is it proper to include among the "secondary works" books and pamphlets published in the fifties and sixties, at least two of which (as the author's own footnote tells us) come from Commons' Documentary History—rightly listed under "Primary Sources"? Since Henry E. Hoagland's works are not cited anywhere, it is not entirely surprising to find him in this bibliography as "Houghland." Frederick Engels is credited with a book on the American labor movement (again, nowhere quoted) which may have been published but appears in no list known to this reviewer or to the staff of the New York Public Library other than Commons' Bibliography. Is this possibly a confusion with the book by Edward and Eleanor Marx Aveling? Generally speaking, Dr. Cale's efforts have gleaned a moderately helpful harvest of bare facts. But his volume suffers from the above mentioned faults, poor writing, and occasional carelessness in citations. Moreover, he has neglected to provide the book with an index. Mount Vernon, N. Y. SIDNEY L. JACKSON

The Negro in Our History, By CARTER G. WOODSON. (Washington, D. C.: The Associated Publishers, 1941. xxx, 673 p. Illustrated. 7th ed. $4.00.) The most comprehensive history of the Negro in the United States has been written by a Negro author, Carter G. Woodson, doctor of philosophy in history from Harvard University of the class of 1912. Written in 1917 but not published until 1922, the book has gone through seven editions. The original plan of the book, however, has remained the same throughout the various editions, although new chapters have been added, original chapters somewhat revised, and data in some cases brought up to date. The latest edition differs only slightly from the 1931 edition, and the best edition is perhaps the 1928. The author says of the 1941 edition: "Recent data on economic, educational, and religious matters have been inserted in many cases by substitution rather than by expansion. The time is not ripe for the publication of a comprehensive treatment of the American Negro" (p. x). A comparison of the various editions shows the additions and substitutions to have been so slight as to make no appreciable change in the perspective of the work. Chapter XXXII of the recent edition, which is a discussion of educational development, is largely a statement of some aspects of the work done by certain philanthropic agencies in the education of southern Negroes and a denuncia- tion of the policy of "superimposing education." There is no mention of the important Supreme Court decision of 1937 in the Gaines case of Missouri and its effect upon college training for southern Negroes; no over-all picture of public education for Negroes North and South; and only passing mention of the growth and development of Negro colleges. Likewise Chapter XXXIV, "Toward Economic Efficiency," does not take into account the important government research projects on the Negro which have been sponsored by the Roosevelt administrations or such other monographs in the field as Spero and 234 BOOK REVIEWS April

Harris, The Black Worker or Cayton and Mitchell, The Black Workers and the New Unions, In view of this failure to bring the historical data up to date, it must be inferred that the author places chief emphasis upon what is usually termed "historical perspective." The value premises upon which Dr. Woodson founds the basic concepts for this historical perspective may be stated in simple propo- sitions, among the most important of which may be included the following assertions: 1. "The African is the father of civilization" (p. 22). 2. At the time of the forced enslavement of the Negro in the New World, "African culture . . . was in many respects like the culture of Europe" (p. 50). This fact accounts for the "ease with which the Negro thrives in centers of modern civilization, . . ." (p. 22). 3. "The status of a slave was unknown to English law. Slavery gradually evolved in America by custom. . . . the Negroes were gradually debased from indentured servitude to slavery" (pp. 82-83). 4. These white exploiters of the Negro deliberately detribalized the African and sought to vitiate his morals and his family life in order to debase him so completely that he could never rise from the lowly position assigned him (p. 115). 5. The philosophy of the rights of man as expressed in the American Rev- olution marked a new era in the development of the Negro in the United States. "At that time prejudice was one of caste rather than of race. Men were not generally restricted on account of color; . . ." (p. 141). 6. The Civil War was "not an effort to free slaves. . . . The abolitionists themselves were not united on this point" (p. 381). 7. The South deliberately plotted to overthrow political reconstruction by falsifying the record of the Negro. ". . . the Negro was unacceptable merely because he was black, . . ." (p. 409). Prejudice was now a matter of color. 8. Despite the Negro's achievements, most white men are "still reluctant to concede the right of the Negro to enjoy full measure of citizenship. . . . To prevent the Negroes from outstripping" the whites, the blacks "must be further handicapped" (p. 474). 9. "The Negro has more of a spiritual makeup than other races," (p. 610) and will make his own "special contribution of rhythm, of form and color, of thought and feeling" to American culture (p. 620). While almost every point in Dr. Woodson's system of value premises will probably be disputed by historians according to the individual bias of the disputant, there is sufficient historical "fact" in support of the Woodson position to make it worth a careful treatment and exposition. It is to be regretted, therefore, that the author mars the historical narrative with obiter dicta. Had the entire work been written with the objectivity of Chapter XX, the volume would have been a more valuable contribution to scholarship. In a controversial work of this type ample documentation would also have been useful to the i942 BOOK REVIEWS 235 student. It is to be hoped that Dr. Woodson will supply this deficiency in the next edition of his work. Chapel Hill, North Carolina GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON

David Glasgow Farragut, Admiral in the Making. By CHARLES LEE LEWIS. (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1941. 386 p. Illustrated. $3,750 This is Professor Lewis' sixth venture in naval biography, a field in which his daily occupation gives him a special right and perspective. His long connection with the Naval Academy has afforded him many unusual opportunities to examine and use personal and official papers relating to men and matters of the Navy and to become at home in the culture of the sea. In this work he proposes the first really definitive biography of the first full admiral in the United States Navy. The present volume deals with those years which prepared Farragut for the premier role that he played upon the water in 1861* 1865; a second volume is now in writing to show him in that role. Professor Lewis had full access to Farragut's manuscript reminiscences and other private and family papers which had not been available to previous biographers; though Mahan in his Admiral Farragut (1892) acknowledges having been supplied by the admiral's son with "details of interest from the Admiral's journals and correspondence, and from other memoranda." While many incidents are related in common by both biographers, Lewis adds much incidental and explanatory information and throws new lights on Farragut's career and times. Among many things, it is developed that the subject's Chris- tian name was originally James Glasgow, that he was familiarly known in childhood as Glasgow, and that while a midshipman he changed his unused first name from James to David out of admiration for his guardian, bene- factor, and commanding officer, Captain David Porter, Jr. The life of Farragut followed the pattern, pretty much, of all naval officers of his time, though one may see in the way he is shown to have conducted himself and to have met situations beyond the ordinary that he possessed qualities and force which would bring him to the top in an emergency. A spirited display of such qualities before an examining board almost cost him his career in the Navy, while he was still a midshipman. One of the three examiners considered him "a most insubordinate young man," too insubordinate for promotion; and the board reported him deficient, causing him to lose about a year in rank while awaiting an opportunity to appear at the next regular examination. Though Farragut never ceased to feel that he had been unjustly and cruelly dealt with, he learned a lesson that, he afterwards admitted, served him well throughout his life. Nevertheless, his high spirit and his impatience with inefficiency and dullness in higher authority kept him in one swelter after another. On 20 October i860, he turned over his last ante- bellum command; and in consequence of the displeasure of the Secretary of the Navy, was allowed to remain "awaiting orders" until after the commence- 236 BOOK REVIEWS April ment of hostilities more than six months later. This period was spent at his home in Norfolk, Virginia, where on account of the presence of the Gosport Navy Yard a large naval colony existed. Most of the officers on the station were of Southern sympathies, and anticipated following Virginia out of the Union. Farragut was unprepared either to resign or to accept belated orders to duty at the Yard where he might be called upon to resist his Virginia friends. Therefore, when the State seceded, he took his family at once to Baltimore, thence to a retreat at Hastings-on-Hudson, there to continue to wait "for the orders from Washington, which he was to carry out so bril- liantly," says the author, "that his name was to be placed among the greatest naval leaders of history." Professor Lewis has given us an excellent, straightforward, most readable story of Farragut's career from infancy in East Tennessee to captain in the Navy; but to the reviewer the book reveals no adequate explanation of why Farragut, who by blood and marriage was wholly Southern, went Union instead of Confederate when the crisis developed. Perhaps such explanation has been reserved to the second volume. At any rate, one may look forward with interest to the author's second narrative of the battle of Mobile Bay, which he has already described from the vantage point of Farragut's antag- onist, Franklin Buchanan, Admiral, C. S. N. The book is well turned out. The end papers provide maps of the Western Hemisphere. Jacksonville, Florida WILLIAM M. ROBINSON, JR.

Fares, Please! From Horse-Cars to Streamliners, By JOHN ANDERSON MILLER. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. xvii, 204 p. Illustrated. $3.50.) This interesting book is an account of the various means of rapid transit which have existed during the past century and a quarter. Main attention is concentrated on the American scene, although sidelong glances are given to earlier or parallel developments in the larger cities of Europe and South America. The author has drawn his information not only from historical sources, but for the late period has derived much from persons engaged in the operations he describes. The book is copiously illustrated with sixty-four pages of plates, together with numerous pen and ink sketches interspersed throughout the text. The story begins with the replacing of the conventional stage coach with vehicles which, while perhaps no faster, gave more ample accommodations. Essentially it was an urban movement; as a city expanded, so did the need for local transportation facilities become more pressing. To Abraham Brower of New York City goes the honor of operating the first "Accommodation," a two-sectioned stage wagon which he placed on Broadway in 1827. Somewhat later Brower introduced the "Omnibus," a vehicle with the door in the rear; it was named from a word that had just come into use in France and then in England. From New York the idea of omnibus service spread first to Phila- delphia, and then to Boston and Baltimore. Of all the types of local trans- 1942 BOOK REVIEWS 237 portation, the horse-drawn omnibus proved the most hardy; on Fifth Avenue, for example, it did not disappear until 1908. Of the later types, the horsecar, the cable car, the elevated, the electric trolley, the subway, and the modern motorbus and trolleybus, the first four have gone through a definite cycle of growth and decay, while the last three are apparently still in a period of development. Yet so persistent has been each type that even the horsecar and the cable car can easily be recalled by the older generation of today. Probably the cable car was the most thoroughly American of any. Origi- nating in San Francisco because of the steepness of the hills, the cable line was taken up by some fifteen other large cities where the density of traffic warranted high construction costs. The author's chapter on the institution of the cable car, with its details of how the gripman operated the lever to grasp the moving cable, the technique of negotiating curves and downgrades, together with the humorous aspects of general operation, constitutes the most interesting and novel section of his book. Appropriately enough, the last sur- viving cable line in the United States remains in the city of its origin, where parts of the early route are still in use. Mr. Miller writes with a facile style which makes even the technical sections extremely readable. Only a few errors have been noted. It was Herodo- tus, not Richelieu, from whom is derived the New York Post Office's famous inscription: "Not snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Princeton, New Jersey WHEATON J. LANE

Toward a New Order of Sea Power. American Naval Policy and the World Scene, ig 18-1922. By HAROLD and MARGARET SPROUT. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940. xiii, 332 p. Illustrated. $3.75.) By the authors of The Rise of American Naval Policy, this book continues the study of American naval policy undertaken so successfully in that work. The Sprouts are both graduates of the University of Wisconsin. Harold Sprout is now a member of the politics faculty of Princeton University. In this volume a penetrating account is presented of the development of a new order of sea power following the World War of 1914-1918. An exposition of the old order of sea power—the Pax Britannica maintained by the British Navy—based upon the writings of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, is followed by elucidative chapters on sea power from 1890 to 1918. This intro- ductory portion of the book presents the background of the problem which faced the statesmen of 1918, which "was to fashion some new order of sea power along lines which would head off the impending struggle for control of the seas and which would at the same time provide that steadying global influence that British sea power alone had formerly provided, but could no longer provide." Succeeding chapters deal with the solution of this problem from the armistice of 1918, through the Peace Conference of 1919, the struggle over the League of Nations, and the Washington Conference for the 238 BOOK REVIEWS April

Limitation of Armaments. For reasons developed by the Sprouts the British Navy was unable after the World War of 1914-1918 to reestablish that world naval predominance which had been the basis of the Pax Britannica. An inter- national struggle for the control of the seas was prevented by the agreements reached in the Washington Conference, the practical result of which was to establish limited areas in which the leading naval powers were given effective surface command of the seas. The official and public reactions to the Wash- ington Conference, both in the United States and abroad, are the subject of another chapter. The Sprouts have again made a most important contribution to the literature of American naval history. Their study is based on a variety of published and unpublished sources revealed in footnotes, which are made available through their inclusion in an analytical index, and in some Notes on Methods and Materials constituting appendix A. The use of new material, such as Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's diary of the Washington Conference, has en- abled the authors to present new information. Data obtained from interviews with important officials who participated in the Washington Conference are preserved in this book. The Washington treaties, including the "Four Power Pact" and the "Nine-Power Treaty," which are treated in their relations to the naval treaty, are printed in an appendix. The otherwise good work of the printer is marred by the presence of an unusual number of defective letters resulting from the use of bad type. The name R. S. Coontz on p. 295 should be R. E. Coontz. The present volume was originally intended to extend to the present time, but so much material was collected by the authors, that it was concluded at 1922. The work on a third volume, which will carry on the study from that date, is now under way. The National Archives HENRY P. BEERS