Review of the Book

American Political and Social History
by Harold Underwood Faulkner

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June 1938]

Joseph Dana Miller was during this period Editor of Land and Freedom. Many of the editorials published were unsigned. This review is signed by Mr. Miller.

Here is a work we can commend without qualification. It is a great panorama of the birth and progress of a nation that is unfolded, an with excellent effect.

The author maintains the democratic outlook from the start the narrative, which begins with our colonial history and is brought down to the World War and the Roosevelt New Deal. Always is sure-footed, as when he says, tracing the early history of our trade:

"Of all civilizing influences none is more potent than commerce. Or when seeking for an explanation of the growth of Great Britain and her success in her colonial enterprises, he says, "Not the least of the advantages of England was that the development of nationalism and the growth in strength of her national government were not accompanied, as in France and Spain, by the loss of popular representative agencies."

The book is history, not theory, so we are prepared for a recital of events and only incidentally for controversial points. The reader accompanies the author on the migrations which resulted in the establishment of flourishing communities in the New World. But he says it is to be observed and the author never loses sight of it that the governing impulse was the quest for greater freedom. We catch revealing glimpses of the leaders of these empire builders, and we read many familiar and unfamiliar names. William Penn stands out for his magnificent toleration, for unlike some of these early leaders among the colonists he demanded the same freedom for others that he claimed for himself and his followers. The like-minded Roger Williams comes in for a word of commendation.

It does not appear to Prof. Faulkner that the "great cavalier [unreadable]" to Virginia, stressed by John Fiske, ever took place, and he says the emigration to Virginia as elsewhere came from the middle classes of society.

With keen insight our author points out that vagrancy, theft and homicide were infrequent in colonial times and says, "the population was too sparse, the people too dependent upon one another, and the economic opportunities too great (the italics are ours) to foster this type of crime."

He touches on the industrial panics of the nineteenth century and as they were due primarily to over-expansion in the development of transportation facilities, and the mania for canal building which commenced in the early twenties and reached its climax in the thirties and with which had gone a corresponding speculation in land, which meant an inevitable economic collapse." (Again the italics are ours.) The panic of 1837 Prof. Faulkner calls "America's great major economic depression."

He quotes Prof. Turner as follows: "Up to our own day, American history has been to a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous cession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explains American development."

On page 254 Prof. Faulkner says once more: "Although panics have been chiefly due to over-expansion in transportation facilities and over-speculation in public lands, other factors, particularly the creation in currency and banking, have contributed." We may point out that these are secondary and proximate causes, and are greatly intensified by the primary cause. Without further recommendation we select Professor Faulkner to write a much needed work - "The Cause of Panics." He refers to the panic of 1857 as due to the same cause. The reader will remember that there was a speedy recovery from this panic. On page 669, speaking of the land boom preceding the depression which we are now living, Prof. Faulkner says, "Every panic has been characterized by large scale land speculation." Inevitably followed, we may add, by recurring collapse.

When Prof. Faulkner gets down to the New Deal he has some interesting things to say. He keeps his judicial pose, but he does say on page 687:

"No part of the New Deal programme aroused more criticism than that pertaining to agriculture. The destruction and curtailment of food stuffs at a time when millions lacked sufficient food were difficult to justify."

Reverting to the purely political aspects of our history treated in this well considered work, it is well to remember that the birth of the nation was fraught with the conflict of different theories. The [unreadable] of the president were a subject of controversy, and Prof. Faulkner quotes an historian who says (and our author seems to endorse the statement): "An attempt to define the powers of the presidency as Roosevelt has defined it would have been considered tyranny in 1788." This period and the bitter conflicts in Washington's official family are recited with intelligence and discernment.

It is impossible to review so large and fine a book within the limits permitted us. So we shall content ourselves with saying that the work is a task superlatively well done.

Henry George is mentioned four times and quoted rather significantly in one part of the work. There is a fine tribute to Jefferson on page 162, and there is a splendid bibliography included as an appendix. J. D. M.