Men of Power (review)

BOOK REVIEWS109 ability, hardly ever taking a vacation, quietly serving his country in a most important capacity. He did not have the dashing qualities of a Robert Morris which were so essential during the critical period of the Revolution and which unfortunately brought their possessor into distressing circumstances during the era of land speculation following the war. However, Thomas Willing did possess those solid qualities which were most necessary in the man who was to head successively the two most important financial institutions of the new republic, and who was to earn the friendly nickname of "Old Regulator" of its financial system. In the words of Thomas Willing Balch, a descendant writing in 1922 in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, he was "one of the potent but not spectacular figures in the development of the colonies and the United States."M Albert LlNT0N. Men of Power. By Fred Eastman. Cokesbury Press, Nashville. Vol. iii, 1939. 200 pp. ; $1.50. TTHE jacket of this book calls it "Another Cokesbury Good Book"; it is one of a series of five volumes, each containing four sixty-minute biographies; the only illustrations are four pen-and-ink drawings of the subjects of its four sketches—Franklin, Emerson, George Fox, and Darwin. A brief bibliography at the end names about half a dozen books on each subject; though for Fox it lists only the Journal and three books by Rufus Jones. The author's purpose, stated in the Foreword, is to explain these men. Perhaps the biography of George Fox will be of greatest interest to Quaker readers; and the author reverts to this purpose of explaining (p. 161) with the statement that Fox defies full explanation. So do they all; but Eastman tells enough of Fox's background and life and message to make him seem real and present to us, and therefore understandable. There are obvious limitations to a sixty-minute biography; but this is an admirable presentation within the limitations, and a welcome addition to the literature on Quakerism. Franklin, through his contact with early Pennsylvania Friends, has also much of Friendly interest; Emerson's preoccupation with Fox's Journal, and his spiritual kinship with Friends, is brought out; and Darwin is perhaps included by contrast—Darwin himself said, in reference to his loss of religious faith and of interest in the artistic and emotional side of life : "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." Earlier volumes covered Jefferson, Dickens, Arnold, Pasteur, Saint Francis, Leonardo, Milton, Cromwell ; later volumes, which on the promise 110 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION of the present may be looked forward to with pleasure, may include Lincoln, Graham Taylor, Burroughs, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Lenin, E. L. Trudeau, and Stevenson.T. K. B. BRIEFER NOTICES By Henry J. Cadbury FEW QUAKER communities in New England have had their history collected as is done for Worcester, Massachusetts, by Charles H. Lincoln in an article on "The Antecedents of the Worcester Society of Friends." Though published in 1928 in the Worcester Historical Society Publications, New Series [vol. 1], No. 1, pp. 24-39, it is worth recording here because it gives so much detail not only of local meetings and their history but of the Quaker families (e.g. Earle). Friends were the first religious body after the Congregationalists to organize in Worcester (1732). The story continues to 1911. /~\N A SOMEWHAT smaller scale than the corresponding volumes ^"' for the eastern parts of Quakerism, yet quite fully, Ethel Hittle McDaniel has studied The Contributions of the Society of Friends to Education in Indiana (Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 1939; 113 pp.). After a preliminary general survey the history of schools both elementary and secondary in each quarter is briefly recorded. 'THE Diary of John Milward, Esq., Member of Parliament for...