ISSUES AND OBSERVATIONS IN THE HERALD TRIBUNE BOOK REVIEW
Thurman was firmly on his side and felt “every old-fashioned liberal should read this book” because “we are entering an age when ideas-information, drama, indeed all expressions of ideas or tastes which mold the attitude of the public in every direction—are commodities which can be manufactured and sold on a mass production basis.” Media had become highways created by businessmen and promoters.
The front page of the Herald Tribune book review section was devoted to a review of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COUNTRY by Carey McWilliams. The reviewer was Oscar Lewis an historian who had written several books on California history not the noted anthropologist with the same name who later wrote on the culture of poverty. Lewis called this book a “comprehensive, well-documented and uncommonly able answer to the question that the rest of the nation has been asking for years: What is Southern California and how did it get that way?” Lewis found the sections on the curious habit of the inhabitants of this region of following strange leaders the most instructive.
McWilliams had been a lawyer with a corporate law firm who, like many liberals, grew more radical in the Thirties with the onset of the Depression and the rise of Fascism. He wrote extensively on social conditions in the state and was appointed to a state office. His 1939 book Factories in the Field was considered the non-fiction counterpart of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Before 1946 he also had written works examining racism in America, exposing the treatment of Latinos in Los Angeles and condemning the treatment of Japanese-Americans during the war.
Author McWilliams continues to be regarded as one of the most insightful writers on California. This book inspired Robert Towne to write “Chinatown” and Cesar Chavez in his organizing efforts. It remains in print under the title Southern California: An Island on the Land.
THE FIRST FREEDOM by Morris L. Ernst was reviewed by Thurman Arnold. The book dealt with the danger posed by the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few large companies. It had already made the bestseller lists.
Ernst was concerned that the increased concentration in ownership of the press, radio and motion pictures limited free speech. He urged the government to use existing laws and agencies to break up this concentration.
Although not a Communist, McWilliams was the target of Right Wing attack and an FBI investigation because of his efforts to shine a light on some of the darkest corners in the state. Earl Warren, who had been elected governor of California on a conservative platform, promised during his campaign to dismiss McWilliams from his state post on his first day in office. Warren and McWilliams later grew friendly while Warren served on the Supreme Court and had become a target himself of the Radical Right.
J. Edgar Hoover put McWilliams on the secret list of "subversives" who were to be rounded up in the case of a national emergency. HUAC called him in for questioning. He countered with attacks on anti-Semitism and McCarthyism. He moved to New York in 1951 and served for twenty years as editor of The Nation.
Thurman Arnold was a lawyer who had served as Assistant Attorney General handling anti-trust cases. FDR kicked him upstairs to Associate Justice of the United States Court of Appeals after deciding to downplay anti-trust actions in order to win corporate support for the war effort. An influential legal theorist, Arnold's works included The Folklore of Capitalism, which contrasted the simplistic mythology with the actual complicated workings of mature industrial capitalism, and Democracy and Free Enterprise. Thurman believed that a true free enterprise system required real competition. He was a strong opponent of monopolies and oligopolies that controlled markets and limited competition.
The result, he wrote, was an increasingly synthetic, standardized product. Writers had become skilled laborers working to order to fit someone else’s standards. The end products were not necessarily bad but the free expression of ideas was being muted by commercial pressure. He noted that at this time 14 companies owned 18 newspapers that together accounted for one-quarter of the circulation in the country. Another 20 percent of circulation was in the hands of newspaper chains. Independent dailies and the once influential weeklies were fast disappearing. One-third of all of the radio stations were “interlocked” with a newspaper. According to a pre-war study, the four radio networks had 95 percent of all nighttime broadcast power. About 97 per cent of radio network income was provided by 144 advertisers and 11 advertisers accounted for half of the revenue. Since most radio shows were sponsored by an advertiser, this meant that 11 companies had a big say on what was and what was not broadcast. Five studios controlled 2,800 key movie theaters at this time. Arnold wanted a joint Senate-House inquiry to save the small dailies and weeklies, magazines and radio stations.
THE FAITH OF A LIBERAL by Morris R. Cohen was reviewed by Irwin Edman, head of Columbia's Philosophy Department. As Edman
Morris L. Ernst was co-founder and legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a strong champion of freedom of the press. He was particularly known for his battles against censorship, having won a landmark decision in the case of James Joyce's Ulysses. The Far Left saw him as a traitor and hypocrite because his ardent anti-Communism led him to purge the ACLU of its Communist members. Ernst felt that the situation in the Soviet Union, as well as the insistence of the Party on rigid adherence to party line, demonstrated that the party's supposed concern for civil liberties was superficial and opportunistic and their participation in the ACLU and other liberal organizations was merely a means to advance their political agenda through subversion and manipulation. For instance, the Communists opposed ACLU efforts to support the right of free speech for opponents of Communism and lobbied for the ACLU to give a stamp of approval to Stalin's totalitarianism.
noted, Cohen’s Reason and Nature was well-known in philosophy circles and his thinking “had reached out to circles well beyond them” despite the fact that Cohen was not a prolific writer. Cohen’s latest work was a collection of his writings on philosophy and liberalism. The introductory section was “What I Believe.” Cohen hoped to keep men from the “superstitions” of the Right and Left. Cohen, who died the following January, still is considered one of the most influential American philosophers. He argued that listening to opposing opinions was a necessity and he opposed authoritarianism on either side of the spectrum. He opposed any system of thought that claimed to be infallible and that forbade the questioning of dogma. This book is still in print.Housing was arguably the major domestic issue of the day in April 1946. Herald Tribune editorial writer Harry W. Baehr took on BREAKING THE BUILDING BLOCKADE, written by Robert Lasch, who was an editorial writer for the Chicago Sun at this time. The book was also reviewed this week in The New York Times Book Review
Relatively little residential housing had been built during the Depression or the war years and much of what had been built was concentrated on the upper end of the housing market. The nation had an immediate need for 3,000,000 units of new housing for the many returning veterans who had nowhere to live. Meanwhile some 40 percent of the existing housing stock was substandard and deteriorating, often lacking basic amenities like heat or hot water or even indoor plumbing.
Baehr wrote that most commentators focused on the immediate problem of labor and material shortages. Lasch, however, was thinking in terms of the long run planning required to eliminate blighted areas and reduce housing costs. He argued that the government needed to underwrite housing for low income people. In print.
See here for the Times review and more about this influential book and its author.
Morris R. Cohen was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Russia. They came to New York in 1892 when he was 12 and, like many immigrants of the time. lived in poverty. He was a revered professor at City College until his retirement in 1938.