Little Mack: Joseph B. McCullagh of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (review)

book reviews185 a by-product of his apolitical orientation as well as his religious beliefs. As an upper South man he was tied to both sections and dreaded the division between the Christian churches which would accompany war. Treatment of his war-time activities is disappointingly brief and this reviewer must take exception to the author's off-hand statement that Fanning "was convicted of treason" (219) after Union occupation of Nashville . True, he was classed as disloyal for refusing the oath of allegiance, but had there been a treason trial the author could not have avoided discussing it. Started as a Master's thesis at Abilene Christian College, this book reads better than that. Some historians will look askance at the author's adulatory tone which may be rooted in his conviction that, "Because one finds the Christ in history in the life of Fanning, though imperfectly, his life should be saved from obscurity" (viii). This book will be of more interest to members of the Christian churches than to general historians. Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. University of Florida Little Mack: Joseph B. McCulfogh of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. By Charles C. Clayton. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Pp. 266. $8.95.) There has long been a need for a biography of Joseph B. McCuIlagh— affectionately dubbed "Little Mack" by Eugene Field—the editor who made the St Louis Globe-Democrat one of the great newspapers of Middle America in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The present study goes partway towards filling the need. One of the most inventive editors of his time, McCuIlagh was a key figure in bringing what Frank Luther Mott called the "new journalism" to the Middle West. The measure of his success may best be seen in the fact that he made the Globe-Democrat, incurably Republican on the editorial page, the most widely read and respected journal in a region largely Democratic. The reason was obvious: McCuIlagh made it a reliable , lively and innovative neuwpaper. Not only was the news reported in a strictly nonpartisan fashion, but the Globe-Democrat spent more money to obtain it than almost any journal outside New York. McCuIlagh organized a wide-flung network of correspondents which covered the entire region from Tennessee and Indiana to Nebraska and Texas, and introduced all sorts of imaginative approaches to the news from the mass interview to news features dealing with running controversies in religion. Allthis Professor Clayton makes abundantly clear. The author also paints McCuIlagh in vivid colors; he makes his subject come alive. Clayton is quite right, incidentally, in criticizing historians for crediting publishers with all the advances in modem journalism . This was true in the antebellum period when men like Bennett and Greeley were proprietors; staffs were small and newspapers literally the 186CIVIL war history creation of their originators. But in the postbellum period, when newspapers evolved into large enterprises with large staffs, the editor emerged into a command position and became the fount of many new developments. It is an open question, for example, whether Pulitzer and Hearst deserve all the credit they are often given for fashioning the modern newspaper. Another point: Clayton is also correct in pointing out that Pulitzer owed much to McCuIlagh; he borrowed much of his journalistic formula from the Globe-Democrat in the early years. Indeed , McCullagh's paper was a fertile school of journalism, training a host of the best reporters and editors and thereby making St. Louis one of the nation's centers for newspaper growth between the 70s and '90s. In discussing these matters Professor Clayton's biography is excellent. But there are disappointing weaknesses. Too often one has the feeling he is reading an uncritical paean to an admittedly unusual man. Beyond that, now and then Clayton's research seems thin. For instance, for the early part of McCullagh's career the author depends largely on secondary material instead of examining himself the files of such papers as the Cincinnati Commercial and Cincinnati Enquirer. Clayton relies perhaps unduly on the many articles on McCuIlagh written by Walter Stevens, an uncritical if not worshipful admirer of the great editor. Stevens rarely saw...