The Journal of John Woolman (review)

56Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Do you want to know what type of haying equipment was in use on Pennsylvania farms in the eighteenth century? or when the Hessian fly first attacked the wheat crop? or what the tax rate on farm property was in 1822? Are you interested in the history of the Conestoga wagon or that noble beast the Conestoga horse? the craze for silk culture or Merino sheep? die complexities of "moon farming"? the grandiose plans set on foot by antislavery Friends for a maple-sugar industry in Pennsylvania? You can be sure that it is all here. In the compilation of this mountain of facts it was inevitable that errors should creep in—that, for example James Logan, Penn's secretary , should be called William (p. 324), diat his son William, the Councillor, should become George (p. 358), and that his son George, the Senator, should be referred to as William (p. 366) . Happily, slips of this sort appear to be relatively few. Nevertheless I feel bound to report with sorrow that the often-exposed "Cotton Mather" hoax concerning William Penn turns up again (pp. 531-32) widi die curious apology that although there is "considerable doubt" as to its validity, it "faithfully portrays" die Puritan attitude towards Quakers. Naturally many Friends appear in these pages; often they are found among the most progressive of Pennsylvania's farmers. Moses Pennock, for example, invented a threshing machine, a grain drill, and a revolving wooden hay rake; one would like to know more about this ingenious Friend. It was not part of the plan of the book, of course, to dwell upon individuals or to isolate the distinctive characteristics of Quaker rural life, although the chapters on the farm home, family life, social life, the rural school, and the rural church offer many revealing hints. Who will undertake to evaluate the Quaker contribution to American agriculture or to paint in full detail an authentic picture of Quaker country life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? A pleasant feature of this book are the delightful vignettes of Pennsylvania farm scenes drawn by Stevenson W. Fletcher, Jr. F. B. T. The Journal of John Woolman. Edited by Janet Whitney. Chicago. Henry Regnery Company. 1950. 233 pages. $2.75. TT MAY well be one of the marks of John Woolman's greatness that his Journal has never been printed exactly as he prepared it for the printer. The various editions of this quietly tremendous classic of religious experience and of English prose have invariably been the fruit of an inter-action between John Woolman and his editors, beginning with a committee of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, continuing dirough John Greenleaf Whittier, and finding expression today in Ianet Whitney. None of die editors, to my knowledge, has misrepresented Book Reviews57 John Woolman or tampered with die core of his expression, but all of them have attempted to present him as effectively as possible to the people of their own times. This attempt has been die consequence, I believe, on die one hand of a stirring sense of the power with which Woolman experienced truth and translated it into action and, on the other, of a personal warmdi toward a man whose humility was as broad as his goodness. Indeed it was John Woolman himself who gave his editors permission to deal with his Journal as they saw fit. In 1922, Amelia Mott Gummere attempted what might be called a scholarly presentation, giving alternate readings at such places as the wording of die first quarto, second quarto, and folio manuscripts differed. This valuable edition, partly because certain materials and certain facts were unavailable at the time, partly because it, too, was a product of the impact of its subject upon its editor, did not entirely achieve its aim of verbal accuracy. It is now out of print. Ianet Whitney's edition is neither a full variant-reading attempt of the Gummere sort nor is it a Whittier-like attempt at rephrasing parts of the original language. Direct and careful resort was had to the manuscripts; there is not a word in the edition that was not written by John Woolman. But it...