Czytaj książkę: «The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921», strona 34

BOOK REVIEWS

The Life of Charles T. Walker. By Silas Xavier Floyd. National Baptist Publishing Board, Nashville, Tennessee, 1902. Pp. 193.

This is a brief biography of a distinguished Negro churchman who for more than forty years rendered valuable service in the church in the United States. It begins with the usual account of the parentage, birth, and early childhood of the man and his preparation for his task, as is customary in biographical treatment. This part of the book brings out nothing particularly striking, except an appreciation of the valuable experiences of the subject of the sketch in his struggles to acquire an education and to establish himself in his chosen field. The more interesting part of the work is found in chapter V devoted to a discussion of his call to the Central Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia. Here we read of a busy life devoted to the settlement of church troubles, the raising of funds for a new edifice, and the expansion of the work under more favorable conditions. Some of the most interesting efforts mentioned here are the management of the Augusta Sentinel and the establishment of the Walker Baptist Institute. His work was immediately productive of great good and his influence became a force throughout the State.

The author shows how Dr. Walker, emerging as a more useful man, served as a chaplain of the United States volunteers during the Spanish-American War. He is then presented as an important figure cooperating with the National Baptist Convention and the International Sunday School Convention. As an evangelist, he showed unusual power with an influence so great that he was asked to accept the pastorate of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in New York City, where he served five years in spite of the persistent efforts of his former church in Augusta to have him return to that field. In New York, as in Augusta, according to this account, he was interested in all matters pertaining to the social uplift of Negroes and, therefore, started the movement to establish for young men of his own race a branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, a plan which was finally adopted and supported by the city management.

Called back to Augusta so urgently, at the expiration of five years' service in New York, he resumed his work in that city, preaching with more power than ever. The press gave him favorable comment and persons of distinction like John D. Rockefeller, William Howard Taft, Lyman B. Goff, and General Rush C. Hawkins came to hear him expound the gospel, so great was his power of analysis and his ability to impress the thought of his discourses upon the minds of his hearers. The book, therefore, as whole, is a eulogistic treatment; but, on the other hand, it is an interesting account of the career of a man both useful and popular, a worker who connected with so many social forces in our life and engaged in so many different enterprises for the advancement of humanity that every one having an intelligent interest in the Negro may profitably read this volume.

A Short History of the American Labor Movement. By Mary Beard. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York, 1920. Pp. 174.

This book is intended as a brief and simple story of the labor movement in the United States in a single comprehensive volume of moderate size for the busy citizen. It undertakes to emphasize the nature and significance of the labor movement and the rise of trade unions. There follows a discussion of the old tactics of labor, its first political experience, and its final return to direct industrial action. Some attention is given to the industrial panics, political utopias, trade unionism, politics, schemes, and plans, which have engaged the attention of the labor element during and since the Civil War.

Discussing the situation during the Civil War, the author brings out valuable information bearing on the history of the Negro in the United States. According to the author, labor was forced to take a stand against slavery because of the advanced opposition taken by the South. Up to that time there had been no uniformity but a necessity for such thereafter existed. This was especially true of the mill workers in Massachusetts, among whom there were many abolitionists, while the molders of Kentucky and Pennsylvania struggled for a compromise to avoid bloodshed between the two sections by limiting slavery to the area it then occupied. When manifesting opposition to the extension of slavery into new territory however, the labor leaders were generally opposed to the aggressive policy of the anti-slavery groups. They, therefore, endeavored to take the question out of Congress. The war finally became inevitable; but some of the labor leaders refused even then to grow excited about slavery, believing that many of the bondmen were better off than the starving wage workers of the free States. Thus, indirectly they supported the institution in that they were advancing the argument set forth by slaveholders during that great crisis. The slave had his food, clothing, and shelter provided by his master who took care of him in his old age, while under the factory system workers earned hardly enough sometimes to eke out an existence. In the end, however, organized labor abandoned its opposition or neutral position and gave its support to save the Union.

The United States and Latin America. By John Holladay Latané, Ph.D., Professor of American History and Dean of the College Faculty in the Johns Hopkins University. Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, 1920. Pp. 346.

This book is a study in modern diplomacy based upon the former work of the author entitled The Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America. In response to the demand for this work which is out of print, the author has herein set forth the same facts in a revised and an enlarged volume. There is added to this work much new matter relating to the events of the last twenty years.

The book begins with a discussion of the revolt of the Spanish-American colonies, followed by an account of the recognition of the Spanish-American republics by the leading nations of the world. It becomes more interesting in that portion dealing with the diplomacy of the United States in regard to Cuba, although the author does not frankly state the case from an impartial point of view. He does not bluntly express the truth that the diplomacy centering around the relations between Cuba and the United States resulted from a systematic effort at the expansion of slavery on the part of the slaveholding class controlling this country from 1800 to 1860. The discussion of the history of the Panama Canal is interesting in view of its subsequent development as is also the chapters on French intervention in Mexico. The two Venezuelan episodes, the difficulties of the United States in the Caribbean, tendencies toward Pan-Americanism and the Monroe Doctrine are extensively treated.

The work as a whole, moreover, does not give important facts with regard to Cuba and Haiti. There is no effort on the part of the author to show the imperialistic tendencies of the United States in extending its authority over weak republics at the time that it is professing to be laboring in the interest of the self-determination of smaller nations. The inside cover of the foreign policy of the United States toward Cuba, therefore, cannot be seen in reading this book. There does not appear in this work sufficient treatment of our relations with the Spanish American Republics to show that because of serious tilts in our diplomacy, the relations between the United States and Latin America have become strained.

No better example of the shortcomings of this book can be cited than the very meager reference to the Haitian Republic, which, contrary to international law and the principles of government which we profess to foster in the United States, has been occupied by United States marines, who according to official reports have instituted a regime of murder supported by the Wilson and Harding administrations. Professor Latané should have treated this phase of the question with the same detail with which he treated other aspects of it and his failure to do so identifies his book with that of many others written in the interest of a special class or to promote a special cause.

Creole Families of New Orleans. By Grace King. Macmillan Company, New York, 1921. Pp. 465.

This book, according to the author, "comes in response to a long-felt wish of an humble student of Louisiana history to know more about the early actors in it, to go back of the printed names in the pages of Gayarré and Martin, and peep, if possible, into the personality of the men who followed Bienville to found a city upon the Mississippi, and who, remaining on the spot, continued their good work by founding families that have carried on their work and their good names." The families chosen are such as Marigny de Mandeville, the Dreux family, De Pontalba, Rouer De Villeray, De la Chaise, Lafrénière, Labedoyère, Huchet de Kernion and a score or more of others. The work is well illustrated with scenes bearing on the life of the pioneer aristocracy of that commonwealth. The aim of the author evidently is to publish those records bearing witness to their good blood, their "maintenances de noblesse," which they considered as much a family necessity as a house and furniture. From the records of their baptisms, marriages and deaths, from bits of old furniture, jewelry, glass, old miniatures, portraits, scraps of silk and brocade, flimsy fragments and the like, the author has made an interesting story and well illustrated it. There is a regret that some of these achievements of the past are so deeply hidden for the lack of records to throw light thereupon that a definitive account of some of these families cannot be obtained.

There is evidence, however, that certain records of families equally as noble and aristocratic as some of those recorded in this work were not mentioned therein for the reason that they had mingled too freely with the blacks during the early period and had, therefore, been classed as persons of color. One does not find, therefore, in this work so much about these distinguished families of color as may be discovered in the author's earlier work entitled New Orleans, the Place and People (pages 346 to 349). Referring therein to this gens de couleur, she mentions in the former work a number of musicians, merchants, money and real estate brokers, as the ambitious element of this class, which monopolized the trade of shoemakers, barbers, tailors, carpenters, and upholsterers. Some of these in the course of time attained positions of distinction in the commercial world, acquiring large fortunes in the form of shares of stock in business enterprises and large landed estates like the plantations of Louisiana. One of these families, we know, had a large plantation of about 4,000 acres and owned hundreds of slaves. The head of the family lived in luxurious style in keeping with that of the planters of the South.

In other cases in which the color of the quadroon or octoroon did not brand him as far removed from the white race, the social distinctions existing between whites and such Negroes were not observed. If they were enforced against some of these aristocratic persons of color fortunate in having sufficient of the world's goods to secure the comforts of this life in spite of their social position, they usually sent their children to northern institutions and even to Paris where they were well educated. Thousands of these on their return to this country easily passed to the other race and mingled their blood with some of the most aristocratic families mentioned in this recent treatise of Grace King.

NOTES

On the first of October Mr. Victor R. Daly, who has recently been the Industrial Secretary of the New York Urban League, became the Business Manager of the Journal of Negro History. For some time his work will be largely in the field in an effort to extend the circulation of this publication and to find friends for this cause. It is earnestly hoped that the public will receive him as a coworker and give him the most hearty support.

The Association for the Study of Negro life and History will hold its next annual meeting at Lynchburg, Virginia, on the 14th and 15th of November. The morning sessions will be held at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College and the evening sessions at the Eighth street Baptist Church and at the Court street Baptist Church.

Men of national prominence will address this meeting. President R. C. Woods, of Virginia Theological Seminary and College, will deliver the welcome address, to which Professor John R. Hawkins will respond. Other addresses will be made by Dr. I. E. McDougle, Dr. W. H. Stokes, Professor Bernard W. Tyrrell, Professor Charles H. Wesley, and Dr. C. G. Woodson.

The April number of the Monthly Labor Review contains a discussion of various features of the labor situation of interest to all students of social sciences. It embraces among other things the treatment of the trend of child labor in the United States from 1913 to 1920, the average union scale of wage rates during the same period, Federal labor legislation, and Negro labor during and after the war. The treatment of the last topic centers around the work of Dr. George E. Haynes, who during the World War and for some time thereafter was the head of the Bureau of Negro Economics in the Department of Labor.

The article briefly discusses the formation of the division of Negro economics, showing the difficulties of finding a person competent to do the work and the handicap preventing the Department from carrying out its chief objective, that of bringing the two races together. The article shows, moreover, how the beginning was made in North Carolina among citizens of both, races, how they directed their attention seriously to the economic problems, and how many of the obstacles which at first were encountered were finally removed by hearty cooperation. There is a discussion of the industrial employment of Negroes during the scarcity of labor and the depression which followed after the war. In this case valuable statistics are given to set forth the writer's point of view. The article finally closes with a discussion of Negro women in industry. Here are given valuable facts as to how these workers were employed, the problems which they faced, and what this Department did to meet the exigencies of the situation. This short but valuable article may be read with interest and profit.