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The Vernacular History of A. M. Simons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Kent Kreuter  and
Gretchen Kreuter
Kent Kreuter
Affiliation:
Hamline University, Minnesota
Gretchen Kreuter
Affiliation:
College of St Catherine, Minnesota
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Extract

No recent student of American historiography has failed to acquire a passing acquaintance with some of the historical writing of the American Socialist A. M. Simons. No treatment of economic determinism in American thought omits at least a footnote of credit to Social Forces in American History, published in 1911, in which the irascible radical touched upon ideas and interpretations that Charles Beard and others were to develop with less heat and less haste. Simons's treatment of the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, of the Jacksonian era, and of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, sounded themes that became staples of debate within the historical profession. In fact, however, Simons's history has a distinction that goes beyond its role as the first Marxist interpretation of the American past, or as an expression of ‘progressive history’. It is part of a much older, larger and many-sided body of thought that made up an attack upon the genteel tradition in American intellectual and cultural experience. In literature, that attack developed a set of responses that recent scholars have termed the ‘vernacular tradition’. By examining Simons's historical writing in the context of the vernacular tradition, one can see that his history is much more than a Marxist curiosity. His history was shaped both by experience and ideology, and it was intended to be a cultural critique as well as an economic one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 65 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

page 65 note 1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered before the Northern Great Plains History Conference, 13 October 1966, and profited from critical readings by Professors Marcus Franda and David Stern of Colgate University. The authors are indebted to the Colgate Research Council of Colgate University for its generous support of our research.

page 65 note 2 See, for example, Sellers, Charles Grier, ‘Andrew Jackson vs. the historians’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (03 1958), 628–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pressly, Thomas, Americans Interpret Their Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1962), pp. 251–4Google Scholar; Wish, Harvey, The American Historian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 266–7Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, ‘Charles Beard and the Constitution’, in Charles A. Beard, ed. Beale, Howard (University of Kentucky Press, 1954), p. 82Google Scholar.

page 65 note 3 Goldman, Eric, in Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1952)Google Scholar, discusses Simons, along with J. Allen Smith and Charles Beard, as part of the ‘reform Darwinist’ impulse in historical writing. Crowe, Charles, ‘The emergence of progressive history’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 27, (01–03 1966), 109–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, attempts to categorize the major ideas shared by the ‘Progressive historians’ from Beard's predecessors to the present day. See also Higharn, John et al. , History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), PP. 171–97Google Scholar.

page 66 note 1 Smith, Henry Nash, Mark Twain, The Development of a Writer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Marx, Leo, ‘The Vernacular Tradition in American Literature’, in Studies in American Culture, ed. Kwiat, J. J. and Turpie, Mary C., (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1960), pp. 109–122Google Scholar. Other aspects of the vernacular tradition are examined by Kouwenhoven, John, Made in America; The Arts in Modern Civilisation (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1948)Google Scholar, and Flexner, James Thomas, That Wilder Image (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962)Google Scholar.

page 66 note 2 Lynn, Kenneth, Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), pp. 3–72Google Scholar.

page 66 note 3 Ibid. p. 146.

page 66 note 4 Smith, op. cit. p. viii.

page 67 note 1 Simons's abhorrence of violent revolution is most characteristically revealed in his discussions of anarchism. See ‘Anarchy vs. Socialism’, International Socialist Review, vol. ii (10 1901), pp. 241–50Google Scholar.

page 67 note 2 Elson, Ruth Miller, Guardians of Tradition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), pp. 292–3Google Scholar. Mrs Elson's book is an extensive study of nineteenth-century American schoolbooks and of the social, economic, political and cultural attitudes contained in them.

page 68 note 1 Elson, Ruth Miller, Guardians of Tradition, pp. 292–3Google Scholar quote several examples.

page 68 note 2 Interview, John Harmon with A. M. Simons, quoted in Harmon, , ‘Algie Martin Simons’, unpublished senior thesis (Princeton University, 1947), p. 3Google Scholar.

page 68 note 3 A. M. Simons, typescript biography for Civil Service Examination, 1916, Simons Papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin; University of Wisconsin Transcript of Grades, 1891–1895, Simons Papers; Harmon, op. cit. pp. 5, 8. Simons was one of Ely's assistants in 1892–3, and Ely acknowledged his help in Socialism and Social Reform (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1894), p. xGoogle Scholar.

page 68 note 4 The first evidence of these ideas appeared in Simons's arguments in the Wisconsin Joint Debate of 1894. See The Aegis, 2 February 1894, and his commencement oration, ‘The church as a social factor’, quoted in the Baraboo (Wisconsin) Republic, 26 June 1895.

page 68 note 5 These positions were obtained with Ely's help. See Philip W. Ayres to Ely, 14 January, 10 March 1895; and C. M. Hubbard to Ely, in Richard T. Ely Papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society. Simons's changing evaluations of the worth of social work are revealed in Simons to Ely, 6 December 1895, and ibid., 13 March 1897, Ely Papers. See also, ‘How I became a socialist’, Comrade, 1 (08 1902), 254–255Google Scholar.

page 69 note 1 See, for example, Simons, A. M., ‘After-election work’, International Socialist Review, 5 (11 1904), 306Google Scholar; and ‘School strikes in Chicago’, ibid.6 (June 1905), 749.

page 69 note 2 Simons, A. M., Class Struggles in America (Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1903), p. 7Google Scholar.

page 69 note 3 Ibid. p. 16.

page 69 note 4 Ibid. p. 25.

page 70 note 1 Simons, A. M., Class Struggles in America, p. 66Google Scholar.

page 70 note 2 Ibid. p. 81.

page 70 note 3 Ibid. p. 45.

page 70 note 4 Ruskin College of Glen Ellyn and Ruskin College, Oxford, had a common intellectual parent, Walter Vrooman, an American Christian Socialist who had founded the first Ruskin College in Trenton, Missouri, in 1897. Vacationing in England in 1899, Vrooman met Charles Beard, helped convince Beard of the importance of worker education, and generously supported Ruskin Hall in its early days. Vrooman seems not to have given financial aid to the American Ruskin after its removal from Trenton to Glen Ellyn. Phillips, Harlan B., ‘Charles Beard, Walter Vrooman and the founding of Ruskin Hall’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 5 (05 1951), 186–91Google Scholar; and Kerr, Charles, ‘The real facts about Ruskin University’, International Socialist Review, 4 (09 1903), 192Google Scholar.

page 71 note 1 Kerr, Charles, ‘The real facts about Ruskin University’, International Socialist Review, 4 (09 1903), 192Google Scholar. Diary of May Wood Simons, 1903, Simons Papers.

page 71 note 2 Simons to Turner, 1 April 1903; Turner to Simons, 24 April 1903; Simons to Turner, 29 April 1903; Simons to Turner, 21 October 1905; all in Turner Collection, University of Wisconsin Archives. Turner's essay appeared in the International Socialist Review of December 1905. Shannon, David, in The Socialist Party of America (New York, 1955), pp. 18–19Google Scholar, suggests this act of Simons as an illustration of how out of touch the editor was with his audience, without apparently being aware that Simons used the Review as an ingenious way of providing low-cost texts for his students—and perhaps also increasing the circulation of the magazine.

page 71 note 3 This was true, for example, of Simons's view of the Jacksonian period. In Class Struggles he described Jackson's victory as the triumph of frontier over Eastern capital. Ten years later, in Social Forces, he developed his own version of the entrepreneurial thesis that Richard Hofstadter and others have elaborated in recent years and called Jacksonianism ‘the democracy of expectant capitalists’. Charles Grier Sellers discusses Simons in ‘Andrew Jackson vs. the historians’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 44 (03 1958), 628–31Google Scholar.

page 72 note 1 Simons to Turner, 3 December 1906, Turner Papers, Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California.

page 72 note 2 Turner to Simons, 30 March 1903, Turner Collection, University of Wisconsin Archives.

page 72 note 3 ‘The Appeal Study Club’, 8 12 1906, Appeal to ReasonGoogle Scholar.

page 72 note 4 In April 1906 a circulation of 175,000 was announced (‘March of the Appeal’, Appeal to Reason, 5 December 1906). On 2 February 1907 the circulation was put at 275,000 (‘March of the Appeal’, ibid., 2 February 1907). The actual circulation must remain a matter of conjecture, however, for the Appeal reported quite a different set of figures to Ayer's Newspaper Annual: in 1906 Ayer's put the Appeal's circulation at 276,000; in 1907 at 380,674.

page 73 note 1 ‘Appeal Study Club’, 22 12 1906, Appeal to ReasonGoogle Scholar.

page 73 note 2 Ibid. 8 Dec 1906.

page 73 note 3 Simons to Turner, 3 December 1906, Turner Papers, Huntington Library.

page 73 note 4 ‘Appeal Study Club’, 27 04 1907, Appeal to ReasonGoogle Scholar.

page 74 note 1 ‘Appeal Study Club’, 2 03, 1907, Appeal to ReasonGoogle Scholar.

page 74 note 2 Ibid., 23 February 1907.

page 74 note 3 Ibid., 27 April 1907.

page 74 note 4 Ibid. 13 April 1907.

page 75 note 1 Simons, A. M., ‘A new interpretation of American history, first article, conditions leading to discovery’, Progressive Journal to Education, 1 (12 1908), 17Google Scholar.

page 75 note 2 Social Forces in American History (New York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 316Google Scholar.

page 75 note 3 One measure of the fact that Social Forces was more temperate than Simons's earlier historical writing is to be found in the response of those who reviewed the book. Many reviewers failed to see that it was written from a radical frame of reference. For example, the Chicago Inter-Ocean described Social Forces as an ‘enlightened interpretation without … political partisanship’ (2 December 1911; clipping in Simons Papers). Scholarly reviewers were more discerning, although their objections to the book centred not upon the author's conclusions but upon his methodology and his less-than-exhaustive research. See for example, Miller, E. T., American Economic Review, 2 (06 1912), 335–6Google Scholar; Bogart, Ernest L., Journal of Political Economy, 22 (10 1912), 461–3Google Scholar; Scroggs, William O., Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1 (06 1914), 687–8Google Scholar.

page 76 note 1 Smith, op. cit. p. 64.

page 76 note 2 This is a central theme of Simons, 's pamphlet on the Chicago stockyards, Packingtown (Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1899)Google Scholar.

page 76 note 3 See, for example, A. M. Simons, ‘Socialism, a philosophy of social development’, Appeal to Reason, 25 March 1899; ‘Socialism and its objcctions’, The People, 10 07 1898Google Scholar; and ‘Ethics of Socialism’, Workers' Call, 29 07 1899Google Scholar.

page 76 note 4 The itineraries of Simons's speaking tours were often published in the Chicago Socialist; see, for example, 6 August 1902, 5 December 1903, 10 September 1904, 7 January 1905, 21 March, 28 April, 22 September 1906.

page 77 note 1 Simons, wrote a whistling-in-the-dark interpretation of the election results of 1908 in the Chicago Daily Socialist, 6 11 1908Google Scholar. In a letter to William English Walling, however, he took a hard-headed look at the party's problems and made several suggestions, among them that some kind of alliance should be established between organized labour and the Socialist Party (Simons to Walling, 19 November 1909, in Socialist Party Collection, Duke University library, Durham, North Carolina). The letter, which Walling circulated to the party members he believed would be most outraged at its contents, was probably responsible for Simons's defeat in the 1910 elections for the National Executive Committee.

page 77 note 2 Simons was a candidate for national political office only once, in 1900, when his campaign for the House of Representatives netted him only 750 votes (Social Democratic Herald, 6 December 1900). In 1908 he was nominated for president at the Socialist Party national convention, but he ran a poor last, and Debs became the party's standard-bearer once more.

page 77 note 3 Simons's work for the Legion and its predecessor, the Wisconsin Defense League, is described in, ‘The Wisconsin Defense League’, and in G. F. Kull, ‘Record of the Work of the Wisconsin Loyalty Legion’, pamphlets in Simons Papers. See also, ‘Minutes of State-Wide Non-Partisan Mass Meeting’, Wisconsin Loyalty Legion, 23 March 1918, in Loyalty Legion Papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society.

page 78 note 1 Announcement in History Teachers' Magazine, September 1917, reprinted in James Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), p. 184. Simons's role in the distribution of such material is revealed in correspondence: Guy Stanton Ford to W. I. Goodland, 25 September 1917, Simons to A. H. Naftzer, 21 November 1917, Loyalty Legion Papers.

page 78 note 2 Simons to Louis Post, 18 September 1919, Simons Papers. See also Simons to George Herron, 10 December 1919, ibid. Simons taught a course in industrial management in the extension division of the University of Wisconsin, became a management ‘expert’ for Leffingwell—Ream, Management Engineers, and wrote several books on personnel management. See May Simons Diary, 28 November 1919, 22 May 1920, and Wisconsin Board of Regents to Simons, 22 January 1920 and 1 March 1920, Simons Papers. His first book on the subject was Personnel Relations in Industry (New York: Ronald Press, 1921)Google Scholar. After Leffingwell–Ream dissolved upon the death of one of the partners, Simons took a position at the American School in Chicago. He also wrote Production Management (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1922), 2 volsGoogle Scholar., and, with McKinney, James, Success Through Vocational Guidance (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1922)Google Scholar.

page 79 note 1 Simons to Miriam and Gerald Leuck, 12 February 1933, Simons Papers.

page 79 note 2 Ibid. 15 January 1933.

page 79 note 3 Simons, A. M., ‘Mistaken claims for socialized medicine’, Christian Science Monitor Magazine, 22 09 1945, p. 9Google Scholar; and ‘Hiatus in sickness insurance’, ibid., 4 January 1947, p. 6.

page 79 note 4 Note by Mirian Simons Leuck appended to her father's papers.

page 80 note 1 Smith, op. cit. p. 3.

page 80 note 2 ‘Space and history’, Agricultural History, 18 (04 1944), 67–8Google Scholar.

page 80 note 3 Boorstin, Daniel, in The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Random House, 1965)Google Scholar, touches on sub-history in his chapter on ‘The search for symbols’, pp. 356–90, and includes a long quotation from a genuinely vernacular view of the American past, Artemus Ward's Fourth of July oration of 1859 (pp. 388–9). Ward's speech included some mild debunking of ‘the erly settlers of the Kolonics…which hung idiotic old wimin for witches and burnt holes in Quakers' tongues’, but had nothing but praise for ‘them brave men who fit, bled and died in the American Revolushun’.