Prairie Farmer and WLS: The Burridge D. Butler Years by James F. EvansReview by: Justin E. WalshThe American Historical Review, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Feb., 1970), pp. 942-943Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1854657 .

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942 Reviews of Books At the same time, one wonders if the editors have not been excessive in their in-

clusion of materials. Clearly, what to include and what to exclude constitute delicate matters of judgment. But I question the utility of including fragmentary classroom lectures, which often have little meaning in themselves; Wilson's marginal notes in books; titles of books and articles that Wilson gathered, but may never have read; and portions of books and articles readily available elsewhere.

Despite these quibbles, scholars are indeed fortunate to have these volumes. And if our society has seen fit to finance the publication of dozens of volumes of papers of one American, perhaps it will now provide even larger sums for the collecting of data about the masses of Americans-data that can easily be disseminated to scholars throughout the world in a form that can be read through the use of a machine. Only when we have a much fuller knowledge of the interaction of elites such as Woodrow Wilson with different levels of society will we significantly alter our understanding of American history. These volumes represent a great achievement in improving our understanding of American history at the elite level; it would be well if we could soon make equally significant progress in understanding our society at other levels. University of Wisconsin, Madison J. ROGERS HOLLINGSWORTH

PRAIRIE FARMER AND WLS: THE BURRIDGE D. BUTLER YEARS. By James F. Evans. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press. I969. PP. 329. $8.50.)

ON July I5, I909, Burridge D. Butler bought the faltering Prairie Farmer, Chicago's oldest farm newspaper. Butler, with a vision of a rural weekly "just as keen as the city daily," succeeded by I9I5 in making his property the leading agricultural newspaper in the Middle West. In I928 Butler also became a pioneer of Chicago radio when he added fledgling station WLS to his holdings.

James Evans' thorough biography, a first, explains the techniques Butler used to achieve his success. A firm believer in the agrarian myth about the inherent su- periority of rural over urban life, Butler produced his newspaper for the edification and uplifting of the "just plain folks" who peopled the farms of downstate Illinois. The same philosophy guided WLS in the I930's and I940's and made it the leading station for rural mid-America.

Butler learned the newspaper business with the Scripps-McRae League in the late I890's, when E. W. Scripps was building his empire. Although limited in writing proficiency, Butler had a genius for editorial organization and an ability to seek and find the journalistic and broadcasting talent that could bring his message to rural America both effectively and profitably.

A man of unsophisticated tastes and habits, Butler stressed material that city people would consider "corny." He referred to farmers as "my family," and promoted their interests with the concern of a bucolic patriarch. Since he considered smoking and drinking immoral, his properties refused all advertising for cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Editorial debate once raged over whether farm people should play base- ball on Sunday. Also, under Butler's direction, Prairie Farmer and WLS promoted cornhusking to the number one sport in rural America by I94I.

In the I930'S, the "National Barn Dance," which specialized in Butler's particular brand of country humor, became a Saturday night ritual in millions of homes. Fibber McGee and Molly, George Gobel, Gene Autry, and Lula Belle and Scotty were among the stars the show produced. Female performers on the "Barn Dance" were forbidden

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Americas 943 to wear skirts two or three inches above the knee because Butler felt his people "didn't drive hundreds of miles to see a girlie show."

Evans' study is a useful addition to the history of midwestern journalism. Agri- cultural historians will find the chapters dealing with the work of Clifford V. Gregory, Butler's editor from I9I4 until I936, invaluable in explaining why the farm belt supported the New Deal and Henry A. Wallace. Another contribution of this study is its thorough history of WLS and early Chicago radio.

Wisconsin State University, Oshkosh JUSTIN E. WALSH

HENRY JAMES: THE TREACHEROUS YEARS, I895-I90I. By Leon Edel. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. I969. PP. 38I. $io.oo.)

HENRY James once wrote of a definitive biography of George Sand that it seemed only "a tub of soiled linen which the muse of history, rolling her sleeves well up, has not even yet quite ceased energetically and publicly to wash." Recent biographies of Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, and Ernest Hemingway suggest that the muse of history is still at her thorough work, but Leon Edel's biography of James-now in its fourth of five volumes-cannot be so described. Although its basic scholarship will stand comparison with any of these others, Edel has invoked the muse of psychology to interpret his data and thus presents a single and completely clothed man. Whether it is the real Henry James or not will depend upon the faith that one places in the biographer's basic thesis.

The thesis upon which this volume is constructed, although a part of the theory underlying the work as a whole, has within itself all the form and clarity of the plot of a well-planned novel. Edel has saved for this volume the history of James's un- fortunate attempt to succeed as a playwright in order to provide the background for the traumatic experience of the failure of Guy Domville in I895. When cries of "au- thor" tempted him to appear on the stage at the curtain of the opening night, which he had carefully avoided attending, only to be greeted by the hisses and boos of the gallery, his ego received a nearly mortal wound. During the next five years he returned to fiction and "showed man's capacity to heal himself by a retreat to earlier experience."

One result of this process was the emergence of a new literary form with The Spoils of Poynton, a short story expanded into a novelette by the use of the scenes, dialogue, and action of a drama. Although James also wrote short short stories during these six years (up to The Saicred Fount in I90I), this was his predominant form, and it provided him with the techniques of verbal elaboration and objective presentation that distinguish his later and longer novels from those of the period prior to I890.

But to Edel a more important result was the use by James of children to relive in fiction the emotional crises and stages of development of his childhood and youth and so find his way back to his full vocation as a major literary creator. At this point, psychiatry (no longer mere psychology) takes over, and the average reader may not go the whole way with Edel in seeing a succession of young girls-from early child- hood through adolescence-living perceptively in a morally corrupt world but re- taining their immunity with the aid of the uninvolved wisdom of innocence, as the alter ego of James himself trying to relive the problems of his formative years and so discover the right road which somewhere he had missed. If one can accept his prem- ises and his method, Edel's interpretation is magnificently enlightening and con- vincing. Cooler reason suggests, however, that although this interpretation may be the truth and nothing but the truth, it surely is not the whole truth.

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