Roots in the Great Plains: The Applied Psychology of Harry Hollingworth

Introduction

ix Introduction Ludy T. Benjamin Jr. This is the first volume of Harry Hollingworth’s previously unpublished autobiography , which he wrote in 1940 at the age of sixty. The unexpected death of his wife, Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1886–1939), in November 1939, prompted this examination of his life. The Hollingworths had what psychologists today refer to as a companionate marriage, a relationship in which the husband and wife are wholly dedicated to one another. That does not mean that they did not value friendships, of which they had many, or that they did not value their relatives in Nebraska. It means that they had a singular devotion to one another, manifested in a very happy marriage, with professional and leisure activities typically enjoyed together. Thus the loss of his partner was especially devastating. Hollingworth was bitter and angry at the loss of someone so young (she was fifty-three) and so promising in a career that had thus far benefitted so many, especially children. Going forward with his life suddenly became much more difficult. The second volume of his autobiography, entitled From Coca-Cola to Chewing Gum: The Applied Psychology of Harry Hollingworth, also published by the University of Akron Press, details Hollingworth’s applied career, beginning with his graduate study at Columbia University and chronicling his varied and successful career in applying psychology to the world of business. His career began with research on the psychology of advertising and his classic work on the effects of caffeine on behavior and mental processes, which he did under contract with the Coca-Cola Company. This volume of Hollingworth’s autobiography, which he entitled “Born in Nebraska,” is an intimate and fascinating portrait of the first twenty-six years of his life, embedded in the context of his rural Nebraska roots. In 1880, he was born into poverty in DeWitt, Nebraska, a village of approximately five hundred people, founded only about eight years before his birth. The town, located fifty miles south of Lincoln, was a rail station on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad line, which connected Nebraska towns Beatrice and Crete. Hollingworth describes his hometown and its characters in richly-illustrated descriptions that transport the reader to late-nineteenth century Plains life, during a time when European immigrants and Americans from the East established farming-based x roots in the great plains communities on the former hunting grounds of the Plains Indians tribes. Hollingworth’s descriptions are of weather, topography, commerce, revival meetings, small town drifters , social life, and the permanent residents of DeWitt. Hollingworth was curious about the local population–where had they come from? Why were they here? The individual people of our town I used to watch intently, and often wondered about their origins , their lives and destinies. Many of the adults had some mystery connected with them which was never wholly revealed to me but was vaguely sensed from chance remarks or conversations I was not supposed to be in on. As a matter of fact in many cases, particularly in the early days, there was a special reason why the adults had left some other place and come to this obscure town to spend the rest of their lives. In time of course most of the people who lived there had been born there, but this was not the case in my childhood.1 The impact of place is very evident in Hollingworth’s tale. The boundaries defined by small town life are constant themes in his life story. He wrote that in the late 1880s on the Great Plains, a boy’s town was his world. Small towns were scattered over our corner of the state at intervals of seven to ten miles in any direction and many of us grew to adulthood with only the most casual acquaintance with neighboring villages. The farms about us walled in our town and circumscribed our lives in every conceivable way. They prescribed our play, our education, our vocational information, our courtships and helped determine the parentage of later generations.2 Also significant in Hollingworth’s development was the death of his mother at age twenty-three, when he was still an infant. His father soon remarried, creating a feud with the family of his former wife. In the midst of these domestic troubles, the infant Hollingworth was kidnapped by his maternal grandmother. Hollingworth’s father successfully sought redress through the courts to recover his son. But the family lived in fear of another kidnapping and Hollingworth...