Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch (review)

Book Reviews55 activities in that city, and Pennsylvanians in the possible influence of the Ephrata Community. Professor Wisbey's main contributions are as follows: First, the Publick Universal Friend was never a conscious fraud but was completely sincere in her belief in having a religious mission as a result of hallucinations during a youthful illness which she interpreted as divine visions. Her movement was not influenced by Mother Ann Lee and the Shakers, but instead emerged simultaneously but independently as part of the American Revolutionary upheaval. There was nothing very original or striking about her teachings, and actually celibacy was not an important aspect of her group. Her converts were usually of a higher economic status than the Shakers, and she did not form a genuinely communist society. She was not as covetous of her followers' possessions as she has been accused of being, and the stories of her claiming miraculous powers have been greatly exaggerated (among such anecdotes that apparently have to be given up is, alas, the famous one about her offering to walk on water). Too much of all this has derived from the only previous biography, almost contemporary, which was both hostile and inaccurate. Quite properly, Professor Wisbey includes a valuable chapter on the folk image of Jemima Wilkinson as distinct from the reality. On the whole, the volume tends to be narrative and descriptive rather than analytical; the annotation to the source material Professor Wisbey says he examined is seldom as precise as one would wish; and the style is lamentably pedestrian; certainly he has not yielded to any temptation to write lively journalism . But he does suggest why Jemima Wilkinson did not leave as permanent a movement as her contemporary religious innovators, John Murray, who scarcely seems comparable and is therefore largely dropped, once mentioned, and Mother Ann Lee, who does seem very comparable. She never really had any distinctive doctrine, she was unwise in her choice of assistants, and she was unfortunate in the location of her upstate New York community, which was in the midst of such desirable land that it soon lost the seclusion which might have preserved the group's identity. What this all seems to come down to is that Jemima Wilkinson was in many ways an early Aimee Semple McPherson rather than a creative religious leader, and, once the direct personal memory of her disappeared, there was no longer any basis for a continuing organization. University of PennsylvaniaWallace Evan Davies Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch. By Mercedes M. Randall. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1964. 475 pages. $6.00. This biography creates a sensitive, intimate, and absorbing portrait of Emily Greene Balch, one of the two United States women Nobel Peace Prize laureates. The author, Mrs. Mercedes M. Randall, was unusually fortunate in being appointed by Emily Balch as her literary executor, and has developed the mass of material in her possession into a living document. She has also used other source material, much of it in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, with great effectiveness. Drawing on the personal papers of Jane Addams, Hannah Clothier Hull, and other leaders associated with Emily Balch in the peace and civil liberties movements, Mrs. Randall cites incidents and statements of importance for a deeper understanding of these groups. 56Quaker History The three distinct phases of Emily Balch's career are carefully treated in the book. The first period of preparation and early service includes the three years at Bryn Mawr College, where she won the award for highest academic rank, known as the European Fellowship. This gave her a year's study of social questions in Paris, and was followed by work in a Boston settlement house. Her interest in organized labor and civil liberties began at this time. From these years dated her intimate friendship with Jane Addams, with whom she worked closely on problems of peace and human justice. After a year's study in sociology at the University of Berlin, Emily Balch entered the second period of her career. For the next twenty-one years she was instructor and professor of economics at Wellesley College. This congenial work ended when her contract was not renewed in 1919 by...