SCIENCE, ECONOMICS, AND RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Science, Economics, And Recent American History SCIENCE IN PROGRESS, edited by George A. Baitsell. Yale University Press. $3. THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE; A SOCIAL HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, by...
...The book may be said to combine the economic outlook of the volume by Cochran and Miller, with its stress on finance capitalism and monopoly as the key to recent American economic history, the capacity of Samuel Hopkins Adams to expose corruption, the graphic powers of Frederick Lewis Allen in dealing with colorful episodes and personalities, and the easy and engaging style of Mark Sullivan, even if there is none of Sullivan's naive complacency...
...Stovall gives us a good review of many outstanding phases of American thought and literature from Benjamin Franklin to Hemingway and Steinbeck, in whom he discerns a revival of our idealistic spirit...
...They apparently learned nothing from the lessons of the '20s and early '30s, and their opposition to "taking the cure" led to the downfall of the New Deal in 1937-38, and headed the latter to war as the only mode of survival...
...All in all, it is a readable, inspiring, and stirring book...
...3.50...
...The book by Cochran and Miller is an unusually stimulating, original, and courageous contribution to American social and economic history...
...Harcourt, Brace...
...corporations, trusts, and holding companies were invented by the business moguls to forward this process...
...Macmillan...
...The concentration of industry, monopolistic trends, and the complete dominion over government by business and finance, were all accomplished in the 20th Century under the regime of finance capitalism, dominated by the great industrial bankers...
...Reviewed by Harry Elmer Barnes THE VOLUME on characteristic phases of recent scientific progress is the third in a series of national Sigma Xi lectures edited by George A. Baitsell...
...We may hope that this subject and that of our war economy will provide a companion volume to this extremely useful and illuminating book...
...Henry Morton Robinson's book constitutes a very valuable supplement to the work by Cochran and Miller...
...The author treats of the culminating period of finance capitalism, and its dominion over American politics under the normalcy of Harding and the sleeping-sickness of Coolidge...
...The real theme of the book is the conquest of the United States by American business, culminating in the triumph of finance capitalism and the collapse of the latter in the depression of 1929...
...They expressed themselves mainly in the religion of the 17th Century, in politics in the 18th, and in literature in the 19th and 20th...
...FANTASTIC INTERIM, by Henry Morton Robinson...
...It does not cover all phases of recent scientific progress, but concentrates on certain representative achievements in astrophysics, physics, and chemistry...
...It has been accused by some of being over-indignant but, in view of the period and material with which it deals, it may actually be regarded as extremely restrained in tone...
...All are interesting and important, but those which are most likely to attract the layman are Harlow Shapley's characteristically brilliant essay on galaxies...
...It is just as realistic and courageous and even more animated and vigorous in style...
...Hoover's evasiveness in facing the realities of "the morning after" turned the country over to the New Deal, which made a futile, if for a time sincere, effort to get the "bad boy" economic royalists to play ball in the process of rehabilitating capitalism...
...Stovall gives us a good historical review of American intellectual history as it bears upon the growth of American idealism and democratic sentiment...
...He holds that these had their roots in Puritanism, rationalism, and the spirit of the frontier...
...This group committed suicide by the orgy of the 1920's, which wound up with the great stock market crash of the Autumn of 1929, and the depression which was never lifted until the World War brought us into a different but far more serious crisis...
...During this era, Andrew W. Mellon was both the spearhead of the financial coalition that ruled America and the political czar of the country who quietly handled the reins of government behind his polished desk in the Treasury Building...
...A SOCIAL HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, by Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller...
...3.50...
...The reign of business was established during the railroad age of the '70s and '80s, dominated by the great railroad buccaneers and magnates, who were as much given to stock gambling as to transportation enterprise...
...It covers the period between the two world wars, thus treating the suicide age of finance capitalism, the optimistic evasion of reality by Mr...
...It is made clear how the basis for industrial expansion was provided by the conquest of the continent and the remarkable growth of population, aided by the tremendous wave of immigration after the Civil War...
...Lionel Marks' survey of recent developments in the generation of power, Perrin Long's account of how sulfanilamide works in checking infections, and Herman Mark's analysis of the synthetic rubber problem from a scientific standpoint...
...It is to be regretted that the authors declined to deal with the vain effort of the New Deal to master finance capitalism and rehabilitate the capitalistic system...
...AMERICAN IDEALISM, by Floyd Stovall...
...The volume is impressive not only as evidence of scientific progress, but also as proof of the ever closer relationship between scientific research and industrial progress...
...Three of the lectures are on astronomy, four on physics, and two on chemistry...
...Whatever the scandals and graft in government during this era of which so much has been made, they were mere trivial vulgarities compared to the graft, corruption, and exploitation carried on by big business and finance...
...Business got under way in the first half of the 19th Century but it gained its greatest impetus during the Civil War and Reconstruction period, when it was able to seize the reins of politics and make government subservient to business...
...2.75...
...Hoover, the New Deal compromise and collapse, and its escape into foreign war...
...The inevitable result was the debacle of 1929, and nobody was ever more ill cast for the role of a salvager of the wreckage than Herbert Hoover, who was by training and inclination a promoter, only at home in a bull market period...
...The growth of big business stimulated a trend toward monopoly...
...University of Oklahoma Press...
...While it presents the salient aspects of our economic development, it does not stop with this, but sets forth the dynamics of economic change and shows the impact of economic evolution upon the course of American social development...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 3
