Quaker Organization and Business Meetings (review)

Book Reviewsill during a famine; he favored reform of the barbarous criminal code. Yet, despite the charm of the author's narrative, Fox seems never to have been very much more than a highly successful business man. Willingly, he drove himself to superintend every detail of his business, establishing a regimen which left little energy for other concerns. Fox appears to have held travel, intellectual pursuits, philanthrophy, or reform at arm's length. "His feet firmly on the ground, he enquired of Thomas Clarkson whether the new settlement for freed slaves in Sierra Leone might provide a market for woolen goods." If his Quaker upbringing made him a better business man, it is not clear that his business success contributed heavily to his support of Friends' concerns. Still, the reader will be the richer for reading this pleasant and informative book. Hofstra College Robert Davison Quaker Organization and Business Meetings. By L. Hugh Doncaster. London: Friends Home Service Committee, 1958. 102 pages. $1.00. In spite of its brevity and paper cover this is one of the meatiest pieces of Quaker historical writing to appear for some years. Its concentration on the mechanical side of history has not prevented illuminating comments on the spiritual forces which have led to the many steps in the evolution of the Society of Friends over three centuries. It is divided into five periods. The story is restricted also to the British scene. It traces the early transfer from individual leadership to general meetings, to monthly and quarterly meetings, to yearly and other central meetings, and latterly to the growth of central organization. It traces the development and changes in the discipline, the definition of membership, and many similar questions. The reader is impressed with the naturalness of the changes, and with the capacity of the Society ultimately to adjust intelligently to new conditions. We are grateful to the author not only for much interesting detail but also for his sympathetic understanding of what might otherwise be a rather dull chronicle. The quotations from Friends contemporary with the events are especially revealing. Haverford, Pennsylvania Henry J. Cadbury The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist's Edition. Edited by Francis Harper. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1958. xxxv, 727 pages. Illustrations, maps. $8.50. This sumptuously printed and exhaustively annotated volume is the culmination of a labor of love which has occupied Francis Harper for many years. In 1942 and 1943 the American Philosophical Society published his editions of John Bartram's Diary of a fourney through the Carolinas, ...