A MAGAZINE OF THE MIDDLE WEST
The First Person Plural . 1
From The Midland Monthly to
The Midland ..3
Johnson Brigham
The Masterpiece, a Poem. ...... 6
Arthur Davison Ficke
Silent Battle, a Story . 8
Keene Abbott
The Authors' Homecoming of
1914 ....* • * 22
James B. Weaver
The Midland Library .26
The Midland Chronicle ..30
Editorial Note . ,32
PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT IOWA CITY, IOWA
$1.50 a Tear 15 cents a Copy
Application for entry as second class matter at the post office at Iowa City, Iowa, pending.
VOL. I, NO. 1 OF THE MIDLAND
The date: January 1915. Covers of the Midland remained essentially the same in style (and tan in color) through most of its life. In 1930, with a change in subtitle to “A National Literary Magazine,” a drawing indicative of the national aspect was added to a bright cover-page.
181
educated at a small-town high school and at the state university. He grew up sensitive to beauty as he saw it in the Iowa countryside, in literature, and in art. His master’s thesis was on William Morris, with emphasis on the fine printing at the Kelmscott Press. At the university he found a strong interest in the sincere interpretation of human life and environment in good prose and verse; this soon developed into a passionate desire to furnish a medium for the literature of his own Midwest which would be quite untouched by the all too obvious commercialism of the big-circulation magazines. What he was after, and what the entire eighteen-volume file of the Midland represents, was literature “strictly in the amateur spirit.” 4 And he meant the word “amateur” in its etymological sense of what is done for love, not gain.
A survey of the first few volumes shows that not even at the beginning was the Midland wholly devoted to the depiction and interpretation of the Midwest. Several pieces are about the Far West, some stories are set even in the East, and much of the poetry is universal. Some articles and verse deal with foreign lands. As the country came closer to the verge of World War I, and finally entered the world conflict, no little poetry and fiction reflected army life and the war mood. Kate Buss’s touching story of the war in France was in the number for May 1917, and Raymond Weeks’ “Two Sketches of the War” in that for July 1921; but perhaps the most distinguished war contribution appeared some years later (Nov.- Dee. 1930)—a series of sketches by William March entitled “Fifteen From Company K,” later elaborated in the author’s novel, Company K. But the emphasis was always on the Great Valley, its people and its life.
The Midland soon won a reputation for its good short stories. In the same year in which it was founded, Edward J. O’Brien began the compilation of his annual Best Short Stories series. O’Brien shared with Frederick a dislike of formula stories and a respect for the sincere and indigenous. In the introduction to his first volume O’Brien wrote:
One new periodical . . . claim [s] unique attention this year for . . . recent achievement and abundant future promise. A year ago a
4 Midland, v. 1, Jan. 1915, p. 2.
slender little monthly magazine entitled the Midland was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention, and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of letters, no such white hope has proclaimed itself with such assurance and modesty. 5
O’Brien went on to rate every story the new magazine had printed as “distinctive”—an honor bestowed on only one other magazine. Walter J. Muilenburg’s “Heart of Youth” (November 1915) was reprinted. In succeeding volumes O’Brien continued to deal kindly with the Midland, sometimes reprinting as many as three of its stories from a single year’s output. This was very helpful to the magazine. Writers were attracted to a medium with a superlative O’Brien rating; even though they knew it paid nothing in cash for contributions, they often sent in their manuscripts with dreams of a three-star O’Brien accolade. It was a great period for the short story, and O’Brien was its prophet; his annual combination anthology and yearbook was widely respected and eagerly awaited.
A list of the men and women who wrote short stories for the Midland would show that most of them were then and now unknown to fame. Frederick never collected big names, and he rejected many a manuscript with a by-line illustrious in the magazinedom of the twenties because it did not seem to him to meet the Midland’s ideal of the sincere representation of life.
The Midland published the first magazine contribution of Ruth Suckow—a slight but charming quatrain—and it shared with the Smart Set the introduction of her short fiction. It printed three of her best short stories—“Uprooted” (February 1921), “Retired” (April 1921), and “A Rural Community” (July 1922). Another important short story writer for the magazine was Raymond Weeks, poet, scholar, humorist, whose “Arkansas” (June 1923) and other sketches and stories did much to enliven its pages. Still another notable short story writer was Leo L. Ward, whose “The Threshing Ring” (July
5 Edward J. O’Brien, ed., The Best Short Stories of 1915 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story (Boston, 1916), p. 9.
1930) and other contributions were vivid in representation, strong in mood, and sensitive to beauty. Father Ward later became head of the English Department of Notre Dame University.
Not less memorable were such stories as Agnes Mary Brownell’s “Doc Greer’s Practice” (January 1921), Raymond Knister’s “Mist-Green Oats” (August 1922), Leonard Cline’s “If There’s Men There’s Mermaids” (February 1926), Harry Hartwick’s “Light” (April 1927), Paul F. Corey’s “Onlookers” (May 1930), and Dudley Schnabel’s “Load” (May
1931) . During its whole career, the Midland published over 250 stories, most of which stand well the test of re-reading. It would be wrong not to mention, in addition to those writers already listed, such contributors as Jeannette Marks, Grant Showerman, Albert Halper, James T. Farrell, Nelia Gardner White, Thomas W. Duncan, and August W. Derleth.
In poetry, the magazine was strong also. William Stanley Braithwaite, who made a survey of American magazine verse every year for the Boston Transcript, and published an annual anthology 1913-1929, always placed the Midland high; in some years, as 1918, it topped the list. Among favorite Midland poets were Edwin Ford Piper, an associate editor who wrote much for the magazine and whose “Barbed Wire Poems” appeared in the first four numbers of 1917; Leland Huckfield, whose Canadian poems were features of some of the early volumes; Jay G. Sigmund, whose verses and prose pieces about Iowa country people were often memorable; and James Hearst, another Iowa poet, who wrote simply and satis- fyingly of farm life. Other poets frequently found in the earlier volumes of the Midland were Arthur Davison Ficke, Hazel Hall, William Ellery Leonard, Hartley Burr Alexander, and Howard Mumford Jones.
The Midland’s taste in verse was inclined to the conservative, but its Catholicism was often shown. Piper and Sigmund wrote a rugged kind of blank verse suitable to their themes. Haniel Long’s “Notes for a New Mythology” in rhythmic prose comprised the number for January 15, 1925. In the twenties also appeared the work of Plelen Hoyt and Glenn Ward Dresbach. Throughout the file are sprinkled verses by
many of the better known poets—John G. Neihardt, Witter Bynner, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Mary Carolyn Davies, Mark Van Doren, Clement Wood, and so on.
From time to time, the Midland carried some editorial notes in the back of the book; these observations by Frederick on literary matters, on his farm life at Glennie, Michigan, and on politics and art and life were always worth reading. Throughout most of its file, the magazine published short book reviews by the editor, which tended to be pleasant, personalized little essays. 6 7 Off and on there was a “Sketch Book” department, to which Midland writers contributed personal essays, sketches, and short short stories.
A word should be said about humor in the Midland. Frederick himself had a ready laughter. Once he wrote in an editorial :
I hope the Midland is not thought to take itself too seriously. I do not want it to seem to assume the air of the Elect. Nor do I desire that its editor be thought of as a pale and serious Martyr to a Cause. I can say truthfully that of many amusing objects in the world, I have yet to find one so laughable as myself; and my sense of the ridiculous in my doings and person extends to my activities in connection with The Midland J
The learned Raymond Weeks, of Columbia University, turned out to be one of the magazine’s leading humorists; his “The Hound-Tuner of Callaway” (December 1926) became a minor classic, and his “Fat Women of Boone and Other Dialect Sketches” occupied the whole of the Midland’s number for January 1, 1925. A delightful satire on university administration was Howard Mumford Jones’ “Drigsby’s Universal Regulator” (November 1920). Then there were the hilarious “Turtle” (December 1924) by Mary Wolfe Thompson, and Father Ward’s “Balaam in Burrville” (July 1929).
The octavo-size Midland was printed throughout by the Economy Advertising Company, of Iowa City, whose president, Willis Mercer, took a personal interest in the magazine
and was liberal in his dealings with it. John Springer, master printer, was responsible for its pleasant simple design. Printing was done at what now seems the incredibly low price of fifty dollars an issue for the first few years, though that figure doubled by the end of the twenties. Even with liberal printing arrangements, however, Frederick and his backers nearly always had a sizable deficit to make up during the Midland’s first decade. 8 Before the move to Chicago it never had a circulation exceeding five hundred. Its subscription price began at $1.50 a year, increased to $2.00 in 1920, and to $3.00 in 1924. For several years the magazine had the help of a small group of “guarantors,” but receipts from this source never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars in any single year.
When Frederick left his instructorship in English at Iowa to join his friend Durboraw at Minnesota Teachers’ College at Moorhead, he took the editorial and publication offices with him, though he kept the same Iowa City printers. Two years later he and his father bought a tract of land in the “cut-over” region of northeastern Michigan, near Lake Huron, and set about carving a farm out of it. By this time the Midland was the alter ego of John Frederick; and he and his wife Esther took it along with them to the wilds and gave it houseroom in their farm home. In 1921 the Fredericks came back to the State University of Iowa for a year, and later he spent a year as professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, before returning once more to Iowa. In these changes the Midland followed him, adapting itself to the gypsy life. The printing base was always the Mercer plant at Iowa City; and the farm near Glennie was always a haven of refuge for the Fredericks in the summers and at other times when they could escape for a while from university life. To Glennie, also, many a writer of the Midland circle made a pilgrimage from time to time, some staying to live and work a while in the visitors’ cottage. Walter Muilenburg took up a farm nearby.
Frederick maintained a close liaison with his contributors. An industrious letter writer, he criticized unacceptable work at length and with sympathy; and the kindliness of his per-
8 A small circular issued in 1917 gave a balance sheet for the first three years. See also Allen, “Advance Guard,” pp. 77-78.
sonality robbed his “I regret” letters of their sting. Thus those who could not visit him at Iowa City or Glennie came to know him through his extensive, handwritten correspondence.
Not only did the magazine change offices frequently during the first half of its existence, but it also shifted back and forth from monthly to bimonthly to semimonthly publication. When it was a semimonthly (1925) it often devoted all its pages to the presentation of the work of a single writer.
One of the conditions of Frederick’s returning to Iowa City in 1923 was that the university should furnish modest office room and the part-time services of a graduate assistant for clerical work on the Midland . A procession of ambitious and talented young writers occupied this assistantship—Ruth Lechlitner, Harry Hartwick, Percy Wood, Charles Brown Nelson, and others.
In 1924 Frederick invited Frank Luther Mott, who had been an Iowa country journalist and was now a member of the English faculty at the university, to join him as co-editor of the magazine. Mott had already contributed fiction and criticism to the Midland, and the new partnership was a happy one; the two men agreed fundamentally in literary theory and taste, and differed enough to make them checks upon each other. After a year as co-editor Mott became also joint publisher, sharing equally not only in the editorial management but in the business responsibilities and the profits and losses. In this period of inflation in the latter twenties, the Midland for the first time managed to break about even by the end of each year.
In the optimistic climate of the late twenties, ideas and plans for the cultural development of the Midwest developed profusely. The region was prosperous industrially; why not artistically? Why should not Chicago be the cultural center of the nation, with pre-eminent art galleries, symphony orchestras and operas, book publishers, and magazines? In 1930 Edward J. O’Brien made this suggestion:
The true remedy for this lagging behind of the better monthlies is probably the establishment of a new national monthly in the Middle West, which is nearer the present centre of population. If I may venture a suggestion, I think the time is now ripe for The Midland
to pool its interests with The Prairie Schooner, The Frontier, and perhaps one or two other regional periodicals such as The Southwest Review, and to issue a full-grown national monthly of belles-lettres in which short stories, poems, and essays should be given pride of place. . . .
If The Midland chooses to take the lead in this matter, I am convinced, after many years’ reflection, that it has the same opportunity to crystallize the best expression of contemporary national life that The Atlantic Monthly was able to seize upon its foundation, and that Harper’s Magazine enjoyed a generation ago. Two generations ago, Boston was the geographical centre of American literary life, one generation ago, New York could claim pride of place, and I trust that the idea will not seem too unfamiliar if I suggest that the geographical centre today is Iowa City. 9
Months before this appeared, Frederick had been thinking along the same lines. He was not especially interested in mergers, however; and he was convinced that Chicago, which had supported Poetry so loyally, and which had recently developed an influential literary group, was a better center for a new experiment than Iowa City. In his editorial telling of his change of base, he concluded:
Finally, there is the immediate attractiveness of Chicago itself, with its vigor and turbulence, with the typical American contrasts and American problems intensified to their utmost dramatic concreteness and meaning. The Midland has been edited on real frontiers in Minnesota and Michigan, at the gateway between east and middle west at Pittsburgh, and in the relative quiet of a small university city in Iowa. Perhaps it needs Chicago in order to round out its reflection of the American scene. 10
And so, ignoring the echoes of the crash of stocks in Wall Street and the tightening of credits, relying on the promises of Chicago friends of letters, Frederick in 1930 moved the Midland to Chicago. The next year the magazine, still printed by the Mercers in Iowa City, was given a quarto page. Typographically, and perhaps in content as well, it was livelier and more attractive than ever before. Esther Paulus Frederick became co-editor. But inexorably the Great Depression advanced, mowing down all struggling ventures in its path. Chi-
9 O’Brien, Best Short Stories of 1930, pp. x-xi.
10 Midland, v. 16, Nov.-Dee. 1930, p. 371.
JOHN TOWNER FREDERICK (TAKEN IN 1967)
Frederick was editor and publisher of the Midland from its beginning in 1915 to its demise in 1933. Photograph by Fred Kent.
cago friends who had pledged their generosity to the Midland if it would move to their city suddenly found they had nothing to be generous with. “The fourth year of the depression proves to be one year too many for The Midland,” wrote Frederick in the last number of the magazine, issued in June, 1933. “I shall miss The Midland for its own sake,” he confessed, and then continued ruefully: “For nearly twenty years I have given to it money taken from my income as teacher and farmer, time taken from my work, as teacher and farmer, from my reading, from my family life; and though the money and time have been alike sometimes needed and hard to spare, my personal rewards have been great.” 11
Henry L. Mencken once wrote to Editor Frederick, in an enthusiastic moment, that the Midland was “probably the most important literary magazine ever established in America.” “May I quote you?” Frederick wrote back. “Go ahead,” replied Mencken. So those words of the Sage of Baltimore adorned the magazine’s promotional leaflets for years. It was Menckenian hyperbole, of course; but it can scarcely be denied that the Midland had a very real importance in the en- couragment of sincere authorship and good writing during almost two decades. This influence was doubtless strongest in the Midwest, but it was far from negligible in the nation at large.
11 Midland, v. 20, March-April, May-June 1933, p. 56.
15
THE NEW REPUBLIC 1
W ILLARD STRAIGHT represented that combination of idealism and success in practical affairs that has occasionally produced such remarkable characters in American life. Although educated as an architect, he never followed that profession. He was a talented illustrator, 2 but he
1 Title: The New Republic: A Journal of Opinion.
First issue: Nov. 7, 1914. Current.
Periodicity: Weekly. Vols. 1-100, 13 nos. each, 1-1300 (Nov. 7, 1914— Nov. 1, 1939) ; 101, 8 nos., 1301-8 (Nov. 8-Dec. 27, 1939) ; 102-27, semiannual vols., 1309-1987 (1940-52) ; 128, 30 nos. 1988-2017 (Jan. 5-July 27, 1953) ; 129, 22 nos., 2019-40 (Aug. 3-Dec. 28, 1953) ; 130-current, semiannual vols. Suspended Oct. 15-Nov. 5, 1919; 2018 omitted in numbering.
Publishers: Republic Publishing Company, New York, 1914-25 (Herbert Croly, pres.; Robert Hallowell, treas.) ; New Republic Publishing Company, New York, 1925-36 (Herbert Croly, pres., 1925-30; Bruce Bliven, pres., 1930- 36; Daniel Mebane, treas.); Editorial Publications, Inc., New York, 1937-50, and Washington, D.C., 1950-51 (Michael W. Straight, publisher, 1946-51; Daniel Mebane, treas.) ; Westbury Publications, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1951-53 (Daniel Mebane, publisher) ; New Republic, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1953- current (Gilbert A. Harrison, publisher, 1953-63, 1966; Robert B. Luce, 1963- 66 ; Garth Hite, 1966-current.)
Editors: Herbert Croly, 1914-30; Bruce Bliven, 1930-46; Henry Agard Wallace, 1946-47; Michael Whitney Straight, 1948-56; Gilbert A. Harrison, 1956-current. Managing editors: Helen Fuller, 1952-61; Selig S. Harrison, 1961-62; Alexander Campbell, 1963-current. Associate editors: Philip Littell, 1914-23; Walter Edward Weyl, 1914—16, 1918; Walter Lippmann, 1914-17, 1919-21; Francis Hackett, 1914-22; Alvin Saunders Johnson, 1915-26; George Soule, 1917-18, 1925-46; Charles Merz, 1917-20; Signe Toksvig, 1918-21; Robert Morss Lovett, 1921-40; Stark Young, 1922-24, 1929-46; Robert Littell, 1922-28; Bruce Bliven, 1923-30 (editorial director), 1946-52 (chairman editorial board), 1952-54; Edmund Wilson, 1926-31; Malcolm Cowley, 1930-45; M.W. Straight, 1941-46; Helen Fuller (Washington editor), 1946-52; William Harlan Hale, 1946-47; Robert Evett (often books, music, art editor), 1952-current; Selig S. Harrison, 1959-61; Christopher Jencks, 1962-63; Murray Kempton, 1963-64; James Ridgeway, 1963-current; Andrew Kopkind, 1965-67; David Sanford, 1967-current; Joseph Featherstone, 1967-current.
Index: Readers’ Guide.
References: Bruce Bliven, “The First 40 Years,” New Republic, 40th Anniversary Edition, v. 131, Nov. 22, 1954, pp. 6-10; T. S. Matthews, Name and Address: An Autobiography (New York, 1960), pp. 186-215; [Richard Homer Gentry, “Liberalism and the New Republic: 1914-1960,” unpub. diss., University of Illinois, 1960; Robert B. Luce, ed., The Faces of Five Decades: Selections from Fifty Years of the New Republic (New York, 1964)].
2 A number of his sketches are reproduced in Herbert Croly, Willard Straight (New York, 1924).
sketched only for the amusement of himself and his friends. He early felt a strong attraction to the Orient, and he began his career as a customs inspector in Peking. Later he entered the consular service; but he was obsessed by dreams of improving economic and social conditions in China by exploitation of that country’s resources based on American enterprise and capital, and eventually he became an agent of New York bankers and railroad magnates in northern China.
One of a tourist party in the Orient in 1909 was Dorothy Whitney, daughter of William C. and Flora P. Whitney, of New York. Her father had been Secretary of the Navy in Cleveland’s cabinet, a sportsman in the expensive manner, and a traction magnate. The mother had inherited a large fortune from her father, Senator Henry B. Payne, of Ohio, once treasurer of the Standard Oil Company. But Dorothy was unspoiled by wealth and society; she was a humanitarian, with special interest in settlement house work, in crusades against sweatshops, and social reforms generally. 3 She was “a real angel,” wrote one of the editors later associated with her on the New Republic; “not one person ever detected the faintest blot on the white purity of her spirit.” 4
Willard Straight fell in love with Dorothy Whitney when he first met her in Peking, followed her when her party went on to Europe, and continued his courtship amid the excitements of a grand tour; but it was not until two years later that the couple was married in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Straights returned to New York in 1912. While still in China they had read The Promise of American Life, a remarkable book by Herbert Croly. Wealthy, lively minded, anxious to play their part in bringing to pass such an ideal system as this book adumbrated, Willard and Dorothy Straight “hunted up” the author soon after they returned to America and employed him for some social and educational investigations. 5 There was no paradox here: wealth was interested in social reform, all within the capitalistic system; and confirmed imperialists had
THE NEW REPUBLIC 193
strong leanings toward the Progressive movement in contemporary politics. 6
Herbert Croly was the son of David G. Croly, a journalist and a disciple of the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte, and Jane Cunningham (“Jennie June”) Croly, also a journalist, and founder of the women’s club movement. 7 The father’s belief in such Comtian theories as social regeneration, utilitarianism, and the religion of humanity undoubtedly had a strong effect on the son’s thinking. 8 After some years of study, especially in history and philosophy, at the College of the City of New York and Harvard University, Herbert Croly became editor of the Architectural Record in 1900. He had grown up to be a shy person, an introvert and scholar, deeply earnest, a writer who took infinite pains and still did not always make himself clear. 9 Eventually the ideas that were to be set forth in The Promise of American Life had so taken possession of his mind that he retired to an assistant editorship on the Record in order to write the book.
The Promise had become “a political classic” by the time of Croly’s death, wrote Walter Lippmann in a memorial number of the New Republic . 10 Whether or not this was true in a larger sense, it cannot be doubted that Croly’s famous book was highly regarded by the group of writers that made the New Republic; and for that reason a few lines about it are necessary here. It is an essay in historical criticism, founded on the thesis
HERBERT DAVID CROLY, 1869-1930
Croly was editor of the New Republic from its first issue in 1914 until his death in 1930.
that “the latent regeneracy and brotherhood of mankind” 11 will eventuate in a realization of democratic responsibility which, instrumented by heroic and intellectual leadership, will fulfill America’s destiny as a “Land of Promise.” On the issue on which, it seems, all our historians must take sides, Croly aligned himself frankly with Hamilton rather than Jefferson, though he was less a committed partisan than many, alleging that Hamilton “perverted the American national idea almost as much as Jefferson perverted the American democratic idea.” 12 Hamilton’s objective was to provide a stable government for the protection of property; Jefferson’s, to achieve “automatically” the good life through as little government and as much individual freedom as possible; Croly’s, to foster interdependence “between an efficient national organization and a group of radical democratic institutions and ideals.” 13 This last program called for not only a “planned economy,” but a carefully blueprinted social system as well—and all of this based on a rise in general education and a social morality that was essentially religious.
It was a political and social theory built on such a framework as this that drew the Straights and Herbert Croly together. One evening when Croly was a guest at the Straight home on Long Island, conversation touched upon the new status of Harper’s Weekly, of which Norman Hapgood had just become editor. 14 Croly, who had expected much from the change, expressed his disappointment that Hapgood had not taken a bold, liberal stand as soon as he took over. “Why don’t you start a weekly yourself, Herbert?” challenged Dorothy Straight. At least one answer was obvious: no funds. How much would it take? They estimated a hundred thousand dollars for the first
11 This oft-quoted phrase of Croly’s appeared first in a supplement to the issue of Dec. 6, 1922, entitled, “The New Republic Idea.” The supplement was quoted at some length in New Republic, v. 63, July 16, 1930, Part 2, pp. 258-59; Groff Conklin, ed., The New Republic Anthology, 1915-1935 (New York, 1936), pp. xxxv-xl; Doris Ulmann, A Portrait Gallery of American Editors (New York, 1925), p. 30.
12 Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909), p. 29.
13 Croly, Promise, pp. 33-34, chap, ii is devoted to the Hamilton-Jefferson controversy.
14 Mott, American Magazines, v. 2 (1938), p. 486.
year, then less each year until it should be paying for itself in five years. “I’ll find the money,” said Mrs. Straight. 15
Thus the New Republic was conceived. It was in gestation throughout a year of conferences and planning. Late in 1913 four prospective members of an editorial board were brought into the council—Walter Lippmann, Walter Weyl, Francis Hackett, and Philip Littell. 16 Lippmann was a brilliant young man of twenty-five. He had been a student assistant of Santayana’s while at Harvard, and later private secretary of George R. Lunn, Socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York. 17 The year before he joined the New Republic, his first book, A Preface to Politics, had been published; it had made a success, and had made it mainly with an insistence on the kind of dynamic government that Croly had advocated in The Promise of American Life. Weyl, primarily an economist, had also recently written a book, The New Democracy; in it he had advocated a greater democratization of government and the socialization of industry. Hackett was an Irish-born critic and liberal who had attracted attention by his brilliant editorship of the Chicago Evening Post Literary Review. He was a wit, with a leaning toward satire, and a clever writer. Littell was a grandson of Eliakim Littell and a son of Robert S. Littell, successive editors for over half a century of Littell’s Living Age. 18 He, too, was a good writer, though most of his contribution to the New Republic was confined to his “Books and Things” page.
Croly was not editor-in-chief by title or by any formal authority, but he was de facto leader of the group because he had organized it and because its members all held him in high respect. Charles B. Forcey, leading student of the early New Republic and its group, concludes that Croly’s control was based on “a tyranny of sensitivity, a tyranny all the more effective for having the appearance of its opposite.” 19 Ostensibly, there was no control, to say nothing of tyranny. Robert Morss Lovett, an editor during the twenties, wrote in his autobiography: “In
15 Johnson, Pioneer’s Progress, p. 233.
16 Walter Lippmann, “Notes,” p. 250.
17 David Elliott Weingast, Walter Lippmann: A Study in Personal Journalism (New Brunswick, N.J., 1949), pp. 5-13.
18 Mott, American Magazines, v. 1 (1930), pp. 747-49.
19 Forcey, “Intellectuals,” p. 8.
Croly’s conception of the journal the editorial board was a soviet. Its decisions were reached in conference and were presumed to be unanimous. Contributions from outside were submitted to all the editors. Each number was issued with the nil obstat of the entire group and carried the unique authority of an elite board. How long this condition endured in its pristine vigor I do not know. When I joined the staff there were rifts in the fabric.” 20
The system of getting things done quickly by unanimous concurrence was bound to break down from time to time even in the most agreeable group. Though there was much homogeneity among the members of the editorial board in education, ideas, and taste, all of them were independent thinkers. The Hamiltonian Croly, the Jeffersonian Weyl and Hackett, and the pragmatic Lippmann might be expected to disagree occasionally, especially when Weyl’s Zionism and Blackett’s Sinn Fein sympathies were mixed into the brew. Lippmann once complained that “Croly has the religious bug very badly and Hackett is simply Sinn Fein.” 21
Then there was Willard Straight, affiliated with the operations of J. P. Morgan and Company, who had one vote, and only one, on the editorial board. 22 Though he sometimes disagreed with New Republic policy (especially over its support of Wilson in the 1916 campaign), there was never any threat of withdrawing the subsidies that he and his wife contributed regularly to the magazine’s support. This relation once led H. L. Mencken to refer to New Republic editors as “kept idealists.” 23
There were several factors that helped maintain that Quaker- like unanimous-consent procedure, or a semblance of it, throughout Croly’s editorship. One was the common respect of his associates for their leader; another was their agreement in many matters, and especially in their disapprovals; and a third was a habit of conference. “Our editorial staff was in practically
20 Lovett, All Our Years, p. 172.
21 Mark DeWolfe Howe, ed., Hohnes-Laski Letters, 1916-1935 (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), v. 1, p. 231, Laski to Holmes, Jan. 4, 1920. These differences are noted in Goldman, Rendezvous, p. 231.
22 Croly, Straight, pp. 473-74.
23 Goldman, Rendezvous, p. 316; Charles Angoff, H.L. Mencken: A Portrait From Memory (New York, 1956), p. 189.
Id fi e New)
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In this issue:
Pacifism vs. Passivism Socialist Degeneration In a Moscow Hospital Tlie Reformer
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THE NEW REPUBLIC IN ITS FIRST YEAR—
Dated December 12, 1914, this was the periodical’s fifth issue. Its black and white cover continued for many years in virtually this same style. In the 1940’s a little color began to be used and an occasional drawing.
How Is Youth to Be Served? Henry Tairlie