Y ALE’S New Englander, 2 grand old quarterly that it was, was much too heavy with theology to compete in the forum of the 1890’s. An attempt to popularize it had been made in 1885, when it had been changed to a monthly, and had added a regular discussion of “University Topics” to its table of contents, as well as the words and Yale Review to its title. But the new devices had not brightened its fortunes; and when its long-time editor, the Rev. William L. Kingsley, fell ill early in 1892, 3 he decided to discontinue his periodical to make room for another of different character. The newcomer was the quarterly Yale Review, a journal of
1 Titles: (1) The Yale Review, 1892-1911, 1915-current; (2) Yale Review, 1911-15. Subtitles: A Journal of History and Political Science, 1892-96; A Quarterly Journal for the Scientific Discussion of Economic, Political and Social Questions, 1896-1911.
First issue: May 1892. Current.
Periodicity: Quarterly. First Series, May 1892—Feb. 1911 (vols. 1-19; each vol., May, Aug., Nov., Feb.) ; New Series, Oct. 1911-current (v. 1-current; each vol., Oct., Jan., April, July, until 1928 when they changed to Sept., Dec., March, June, and covers bore names of seasons, i.e., Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer).
Publishers: Ginn & Company, Boston, 1892-93; Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, New Haven, 1893-1907; Yale Publishing Association, New Haven, 1907- 26; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1926-current.
Editors: Henry Walcott Farnam, 1892-1911; George Park Fisher, 1892-96; George Burton Adams, 1892-96; Arthur Twining Hadley, 1892-1900; John Christopher Schwab (managing editor), 1892-94; William Fremont Blackman, 1896-1902; Edward Gaylord Bourne, 1896-1908; Irving Fisher, 1896-1911; Clive Day, 1902-11; Albert Calloway Keller, 1902-11; Henry Crosby Emery, 1908-11; Wilbur Lucius Cross, 1911-40 (editor emeritus, 1940-48) ; Helen Mac- Afee, managing editor, 1925-49 (editor emeritus, 1950-56) ; William Clyde DeVane, Edgar S. Furniss, Arnold Wolfers, associate editors, 1940-54; David Morris Potter, associate editor, 1949-54; Paul Pickrel, managing editor, 1949-66; John James Ellis Palmer, 1954-current.
Indexes: Yale Review Index, 1892-1911 (New Haven, 1911) ; Poole’s Index, Readers’ Guide, International, Dramatic, Jones, Cumulative.
2 See F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, v. 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), pp. 312-15.
3 Wilbur L. Cross, Connecticut Yankee: An Autobiography (New Haven, 1943), p. 187; also Cross, “Our Historical Antecedents,” Yale Review, N.S., v. 31 (Spring 1942), pp. 645-48.
116 pages in light green cover, devoted to the discussion of national and international politics, economics, history, and literature. It was edited by Kingsley’s son-in-law, Henry Walcott Farnam, professor of economics at Yale.
From the first the Review contained many articles about foreign affairs. The lead-off article in the first number was an analysis of “German Tariff Policy, Past and Present” by Henry Villard and Farnam. Edward Porritt, an English journalist and student of politics and economics who had settled in Connecticut, wrote many articles for the journal.
Contributors were drawn chiefly from the home university. William G. Sumner contributed a notable article, “The Mores of the Present and the Future” to the number for November 1909; this was just before his death, and after that event the Yale Review carried a symposium on his career and his contribution to American ideas (May 1910). Theodore S. Wool- sey was an occasional contributor; and so were Farnam’s coeditors, George P. Fisher, Arthur T. Hadley, George B. Adams, Edward G. Bourne, and Irving Fisher. Francis A. Walker (ex-Yale-man) had a strong article advocating the restriction of immigration in the second number. But there were also many from outside the charmed circle. E.R.A. Seligman, of Columbia, was a frequent contributor; and so was H. T. Newcomb, famous railroad lawyer and editor.
The Yale Review’s own political and economic position may be described as conservative. In an editorial opposing government in industry, printed in its fourth number, it nailed down one plank of its platform with an epigram: “Our strongest means of keeping money out of politics is to keep politics out of money.” 4 It opposed government regulation of railroad rates; but its editors were by no means blind to the trends in the relation of government to business, and it gave both sides in the two articles in its issue for November 1905, following this the next year with an editorial advocating putting our house in order by a constitutional amendment “acknowledging” the phases of government control that had grown up. 5
The Review consistently opposed American imperialism. At
4 Yale Review, v. 1, Feb. 1893, p. 341.
5 Ibid., v. IS, Nov. 1906, pp. 227-29.
the very beginning of the war with Spain, it observed that one way to prove the English critics of our attitude to be wrong was to abstain from any annexation of territory following the war. 6
The journal’s positions on these matters were made plain in a section called “Comment” in the fore part of each number. With Volume V, it began a department of “Notes,” in which current events were interpreted, with much emphasis on foreign affairs. Book reviews were important in the journal; they occasionally ran to three or four pages in length, and they occupied from a sixth to a third of the total space.
On the whole, the First Series of the Yale Review was pretty dull. There were too many long articles, occasionally running to thirty or forty pages, and the day of the comprehensive dissertation for magazine fare was past. Moreover, specialized learned journals were closing in on its field, and the Review felt the pressure. When the American Historical Review began in 1896, the Yale Review withdrew from the field of history, and Professors George P. Fisher and George B. Adams, specialists in religious and European history respectively, withdrew from the editorial board. This made Far- nam’s Review mainly a politico-economic journal; and when the American Economic Association announced its intention to found a journal in 1911 which, as Farnam wrote, “will cover practically the field hitherto covered by the Yale Review 7 the end of the road seemed to have been reached.
There was a disinclination to give up, however, and much faculty discussion ensued, with confusion of opinion about what ought to be done under the circumstances. About the only unanimous decision that emerged was that a New Series should be edited by Wilbur Lucius Cross. It is not strange that this choice should have fallen upon Cross. He was an English professor of widely ranging interests in history, politics, economics, society, and the arts, and a strong personality. His brilliant life of Laurence Sterne had recently been published amid general applause. He was in his mid-forties, at the height of his powers. Later he was to become dean of the
6 Ibid., v. 7, May 1898, p. 3.
7 Ibid., v. 19, Feb. 1911, pp. 337-38.
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graduate school, was to be elected governor of Connecticut four times, running on the Democratic ticket in a Republican state, and was to be honored as chancellor of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The decision on an editor was, in fact, enough to start the new magazine. Cross tells how he outlined the policy which was to create a greater Yale Review one rainy day under President Hadley’s large umbrella. The two met by accident when the president, despite the weather, was on his way to his tailor’s to be measured for a suit of clothes; and the meeting afforded Cross the opportunity to submit his ideas for the new journal and obtain Hadley’s hearty approval. 8
It was a new journal indeed. Its attractive blue cover enclosed 224 pages of varied content and wide appeal. The articles were of reasonable length, and there was usually a light essay or sketch and some verse, as well as a section devoted to independent, signed book reviews. Though Yale contributors were prominent (the first article in the New Series, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1911, was an essay entitled “War” by Sumner, published posthumously), the table of contents was spangled with names of writers of nationwide and worldwide reputation. Cross had stipulated that he should pay for contribu- tions. Compared to its forerunners, the New Series of the Yale Review was sprightly; it was certainly stimulating and often challenging. Cross once observed that “generous intellectual hospitality promoted liveliness.” 9
There was no comparable publication in America at the time, unless it was the South Atlantic Quarterly, which was more regional; the Sewanee Review was mainly literary and historical. The new Yale journal was more like the monthly North American Review and Forum.
If the Yale Review under Farnam had been prevailingly conservative, under Cross it showed liberal inclinations. However, it never enlisted under the banner of any cause, firing fusillades in its favor quarter after quarter. Cross was always wary of the special pleading of propaganda. He once wrote: “One of the most important services an editor can render to
8 Cross, Connecticut Yankee, pp. 189-90.
9 Yale Review, N.S., v. 31, Autumn 1941, p. 3.
his readers is to keep the road open for candid statements of different standpoints from writers of exceptional ability and equipment, and to let these writers present their material as their own consciences and minds may direct.” 10 Yet, it seems clear that Cross particularly liked such castigators of old- fogeyism as Walter Lippmann, H. L. Mencken, Norman Hap- good, Alvin Johnson, William Allen White, A. A. Berle, Jr., and so on.
It is interesting to note the articles about candidates in the Presidential campaign years. The Review was for Yale-man Taft in 1912, and it fired a big shot for him in an article in May of that year; but in the fall it carried pieces about the other candidates as well. Taft himself wrote articles in the campaign years of 1916 and 1920 endorsing Hughes and Harding respectively, while Norman Hapgood wrote for Wilson and Cox. In 1924 and 1928 there were likewise pairs of campaign articles; but in 1932 and 1936 there were nonpartisan reviews of all candidates by Walter Millis, a well-known journalist and Yale alumnus. In 1940 there was a series of fairly nonpartisan articles on the issues from various hands, introduced by Cross; and thereafter comprehensive discussion of the issues appeared in the fall number of each campaign year.
It was almost inevitable that an editor so deeply involved in Democratic politics should have made the Yale Review somewhat more than fair to the New Deal. There were certainly “balancing” articles, but they by no means brought the scales even against those in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his policies. For example, Alvin Johnson’s “The Issues of the Coming Election” in the Summer 1944 number had an unpartisan sound, but it did not, in the end, leave much ground for Republicans to stand upon. It was followed, however, by a plea for the postwar encouragement of private enterprise by James J. O’Leary, Wesleyan University economics professor.
Foreign affairs received much attention in Cross’s Review,
10 For general statements of Cross’s editorial policy, see Cross, Connecticut Yankee, chap, xv; Yale Review, v. 19, Feb. 1911, pp. 337-38; Yale Review, N.S., v. 31, Autumn 1941, p. 1; Doris Ulmann, A Portrait Gallery of American Editors (New York, 1925), pp. 34-37. The quotation from Cross given above is in Ulmann, p. 34.
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