OTHER BOSTONIANS, PROPERLY CONSIDERED:
Novak, Michael
OTHER BOSTONIANS, PROPERLY CONSIDERED MICHAEL NOVAK I looked forward eagerly to given period seemed remarkably stable. Italians...
...Mexico and Russia but, unlike Reed, main points are well made...
...POWELL HOUSE...
...Thus "openings" at the same class and educational backance, which is conservative and Re- higher class levels are fluidly available grounds...
...dDOUBLEDAY story to story and never lingering to In his treatment of the black exprovide more than a sketch of what perience in Boston, Thernstrom beClassified happened...
...160ff), his views individuals moved with great fluidity findings are not surprising...
...Letters for white ethnics...
...OTHER BOSTONIANS, PROPERLY CONSIDERED MICHAEL NOVAK I looked forward eagerly to given period seemed remarkably stable...
...Thernstrom is able to show that cerns ethnic variation, and his chief attitudes were (pp...
...Box 115, Irvington, N.Y...
...him so well, that he was too completely were too confused and shallow to have There was something dreamy and in- a product of the discredited past...
...He writes of Catholic sentiment...
...Far from pitting have, thus far, given it the support naturally have a better chance of white ethnics and blacks against each it must have to begin to make our being published...
...full professorships...
...British- are remarkably external and imperinto and out of the city, even while American citizens have regularly been ceptive...
...There are some things dices, not on indices of civility, order, and successful "resistance" movements quantitative study does well, and community, social compassion or against the "American way of life...
...Catholics have been somehow, in those erty and progress-and his understand- In Chapters 3 and 4, on "occupa- things that really count, less admiring is remarkably supportive of Anglo- tional career patterns" and "social able, less culturally advanced...
...teresting-questions...
...positions on boards of directors...
...We know, he says, "far working-class jobs" and of "aggrieved itself, a questioning of the fundamenmore about 'the proper Bostonians' declasse" individuals...
...1.745, Aransas Pass, Texas strom's best point is that suddenly, 78334...
...Both white ethnics and blacks in urban Boston, meanwhile are getting inferior education...
...24 Australian Xmas stamps I1S7 thru 1172 plus Rwandaise Popes Pius XI, took a look around, and was back in rural South, parallel to older rural imXII, John, Paul for 301t with approvals...
...family also suggest differences in kind, status...
...lives of journalists...
...He urges "a rethan seven research grants, is com- white-collar employees "skidding into examination of the opportunity ethic mendable...
...In these matters, there can be trade-offs, deals, mutual assurances...
...175...
...the war...
...Thernstrom's book exemplifies them...
...He hopes that out of than about the common Bostonians...
...COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS: Now Book Sale...
...Thern- life in this country was for a long which recorded actions when and in strom concentrates on economic in- time one of the most comprehensive what patterns...
...Write for free catalogue: Dept...
...The issues he chooses to both for in-migrants and for settled ference in these chapters suggest that study are Horatio Alger issues-pov- citizens...
...mination in many industries until World rather than a reporter, and his account Workshop of the October revolution, Ten Days War II, and that the early experience of eSPIRITUAL VENTURE GROUP...
...to radicals he certain man in the audience of history...
...To great be at the center of things but now we Now in Paperback financiers he is a harmless radical," can see that in fact he was always on said a newspaperman who knew him the edge, a decent, feeling, but unin Paris in the 1920s...
...significant ownership in stocks, bonds and property...
...Yet whatever the the "proper Bostonians" continue their "anti-Catholic sentiment is once again differences they faced in the past, from unbroken hegemony...
...For box numbers add S0c par insertion...
...Against Irving Kristol, ThernReligious Stamps the revolution but his commitment was strom shows that blacks in Boston are shallower...
...Like his friend Reed, Stef- comes immeasurably more sympathetic, fens wrote about the revolutions in detailed and-I fear-sentimental...
...Twelve words minimum...
...How many took most step up a notch or two...
...CC, Columbia well-intentioned, but came to nothing...
...ThernBIOGRAPHY PRESS, Rt...
...Personal growth, that Shook the World, is a book of en- blacks was different in kind not only not encounter, Quaker Retreat settin Six week- in degree from that of other imminds, November-April...
...It dis- metropolitan area, while 177,158 ference...
...There are differences in kind, important cultural differences, between white ethnics and blacks in Boston and elsewhere...
...As long as these "other Bos- To the Editors: One may not agree not only in degree, between white ethnic tonians" are pitted against each other, with Michael Novak [June 28] that and black cultures...
...other humane qualities...
...The tone and implicit inpublican...
...It cannot do the is masked by an excess of sympathy whole job of checking and chastening . Commonweal welcomes letters on for blacks and a stinginess of sympathy monolithic power, but American Cath- subjects treated in its pages...
...other, as affluent liberals in Newton and Brookline seem compelled to do, intelligent leaders are in a position to draw analogies, to point to similarities, to develop commonalities...
...He of chaos...
...grad Soviet "I was halted, as by a blow, by the stink of the mob inside, during World War 11, blacks became UFM over-represented as operatives in inand I could see the steam rising, as THE UNITED FARM WORKERS, led by Cesar dustry...
...His effort was earnest and Against Daniel Moynihan, he shows Savings up to 1S% on nearly 400 different titles...
...Italians and the Irish, and neither Stephan Thernstrom's new book, Between 1955 and 1960, for example, language differential nor rural upThe Other Bostonians (Harvard 233,522 individuals left the Boston bringing seems to account for the difUniversity Press, 1973, $12...
...But when Thernstrom attempts to almost two and three-quarter mil- Thernstrom's chief contribution con- to articulate what these habits and lion...
...He shows 54c, seven times...
...Religious, Xmas, Vatican City stamps...
...The net some ways better than, British-Amer-but in the underlying values behind loss of 56,364 understates this vast cans...
...12134...
...He made speeches and wrote wanted change and agreed, in a theoret- This is first-rate journalism, but it is articles defending the great Russian ical way, that the revolutionaries offer- also the observation of a man who is experiment even after it began to go ed the best hope for change, but his only a kind of professional witness...
...Catholic of any further study...
...this is still too unvarying a white Prot- rhetoric...
...All that remains of his quick dip into cently) approximated white patternsBooks Printed Russia between the revolutions is a in 1880, even more Irish families (27 BOOKS PRINTED from well-typed manuscripts...
...Funds should be sent to UNITED FARM WORKERS of America, Watching that mass meeting of dele- had before then kept them out...
...It is strange indeed that of their own culture affect the destiny (Continued from page 491) no mention has been made of his passof blacks, just as they still affect white was organized to serve as a Catholic ing in your magazine...
...Fifty more than incidental interest now...
...research grants...
...He went in April, 1917, not a "new" immigration from the COLLECT RELIGIOUS STAMPS...
...Chatham, N.Y...
...We hear of tal principle...
...Steffens also sensed the importance of grants...
...Reed went that a "pervasive belief in Negro inClassified payable with order...
...Catholics," he writes, "were the questions raised...
...Sic, thirteen times...
...anti-defamation league, and a Catholic MARSH CUNNINGHAM This conclusion about cultural factors civil rights union...
...S. U. STAMP SERVICES, Washington by June 26 on a nutty migrations of European peasants...
...Cannot the superior ficiencies of both the emotional coneducation of Newton and Brookline be offered to some of the working-class Irish, Italians and blacks of the inner city alike...
...whose polemics were disarming to so Passive or structural discrimination and CORRESPONDENCE many especially to those steeped in the distinctive strengths and weaknesses secularism...
...Both white ethnics and President, Catholic League for kept blacks from amassing capital, en- blacks are demanding to get in, not Religious and Civil Rights tering business, maintaining artisan tra- only into the powerful symbol system ditions, and promoting education in the but also into full economic power and McLean, Va...
...We hear expects Thernstrom to recall here nine decades (from 1880-1970) he of the "relatively impermeable bar- that some such questioning lay bemeans to balance the record at least rier" maintained by white-collar fam- hind the preaching in the Catholic by a little...
...VIRGIL C. BLUM, S.J...
...13531...
...ethnics...
...way...
...climbs from "rags to riches" (few), this questioning "might emerge a By studying the musty municipal rec- from "rags to respectability" (many), richer and more humane conception ords of 7,965 randomly selected but and of falls from "respectability back of the just society" (pp...
...but it is of immense olics have embraced the League and of not more than 250 or 300 words social importance...
...10533...
...A AFL-CIO, La Paz, Keen*, Calif...
...Old during literary and historical value...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...American Main Street, U.S.A...
...themselves but external discrimination growers and the Teamsters Union...
...His work is commendable, ilies with at least $5,000 in property, parish against the Protestant ethic of secondly, because his use of quantita- which very few other Bostonians pene- success and the teaching in the pative methods and computer technol- trated...
...260-1...
...that black family patterns (until reUniversity Press, P.O...
...migrants," "Protestants, Catholics and Both Jews and Catholics brought In 1880, Boston counted a third of Jews," and "Blacks and Whites," his with them, Thernstrom writes, "disa million inhabitants and another third earlier viewpoint is even more con- tinctive habits and attitudes that were of a million in the metropolitan area...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 to Russia and stayed, as a revolutionary feriority" fostered overt racial discriMadison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...The exigencies of so pervasive that he does not success.. some of the best recent Chris- their trade force them to skate on the fully "pass over" into views not his tian reconsiderations of suffering and dying...
...The Swedes, he notes, suc- slow to disappear and that influenced By 1970, the urban population bad ceed like the Yankees...
...His own view of reality is net movements of groups over a more economically successful than the (Continued on page 510) 20 September 1974: 496 pathetic" to the revolutionaries of effectual about Steffens between the gates was like seeing the historical America and Europe, never embraced collapse of the muckrakers' reform development of human government out their answer in any deep or personal movement and his death in 1936...
...vivid journalist's account of the Petro- percent) were female-headed...
...What he wrote quences of his own arguments...
...sour but, unlike his friend John Reed, reasons fOr not joining them were Steffens never advanced beyond the he could not accept the logical conse- vague and tenuous...
...His viewpoint the occupational trajectories of the doubled and the metropolitan popula- is affluent, white and Protestant two groups long into the future" (p...
...Both worlds find him elusive: a spectator but not 000 000 0 AND SUFFERING an actor in the drama of their shock and conflict...
...and effective voice in establishing the moral tone and national diversity of the American way of life...
...He ad- too old and too firmly rooted in the tells us something, but not much, about vocated one sort of life and lived capitalist way of life which had treated what he saw, and his private reactions another...
...Thernstrom wor- on the increase" and yet concur fully here on, Thernstrom writes, "American ries about a "white ethnic backlash" with him in the assertion that "in the Negroes may face opportunities and without noticing that such unconscious old days of virulent anti-Catholic conconstraints that are fairly analogous to sympathies as his may be among its viction" Commonweal represented an those experienced by millions of Euro- chief stimulants...
...Why add to the deflicts of busing...
...He insisted he was periphery of events...
...The recent Carnegie Commisporter An Image Book, $1.75 their personal histories read like the sion volume on the subject, by contrast, newspapers of the time, skipping from is far more successful...
...National Catholic Re- surface of events, with the result that own...
...One representative "common" males over to rags" (many fewer...
...spicuous...
...class origins and occupational achieve- Yet Thernstrom ends his book, sudThe project Thernstrom here ment," Thernstrom especially sounds denly, with a solitary but remarkably undertook, with the help of no less like Horatio Alger...
...Commonweal: 511...
...in the American city of the late nine- 000 000 000 Another voice was Arnold Lunn teenth and early twentieth centuries...
...obviously, not deficiencies in Chavez, struggle for survival against the com- from a herd of cattle, over those bined forces of the California lettuce-and-prape sweating, debating delegates...
...he was just passing through...
...expenseaccount living...
...many Box $4, Camillus, N.Y...
...Jews did as well as, or in appointed me, not in what it revealed, outsiders took their places...
...intelligent voice capable of calming pean migrants who struggled to survive critics with its reasonable retorts...
...tion had grown by a factor of eight, throughout...
...THE MYSTERY is a harmless reactionary...
...10014...
...Moreover, persons somewhat less dedicated to educaA contrast must be drawn between in several social classes, but especially tional and occupational achievements Thernstrom's rhetoric and bias, the upper and middle classes, now for their sons than Protestants from which are leftish, and his perform- share this fluidity...
...individual fluidity...
...Michael Novak (Cont...
...Below that barrier, we learn, rochial schools of values not marketogies clarifies some of the parameters social "fluidity" has been marked: able in mainstream America...
...mission to tell President Wilson how have been in Boston for generations, Books he might persuade Russia to remain in or were earlier urban in experience...
...It deserves study in that light, on its above all, such work clears the ground And, indeed, when in chapters 6, 7 own terms, not solely on the terms and then raises further-and more in- and 8 he turns to "Yankees and Im- of the dominant society...
...Impermeable barriers" are indeed keeping both white ethnics and blacks out of executive offices...
...20 September 1974: 510 lower threshold of competition is a Economically and in moral symbolism, society pluralistic in practice as it is i factor he doesn't examine...
...At years later it is hard not to see him the time, his fame made him seem to simply as a likable ditherer...
...S7c, three times...
...Those "cultural factors" that have estant country...
...OF DEATH Steffens' shallowness is typical of the Edited by Michael J. Taylor, S.J...
...His RATES: 40c a word, one time...
...13031...
Vol. 100 • September 1974 • No. 21
