Mr. Hirshfield’s appraisal is not unlike that of all other critics who allege that pro-British agencies are in control of the writing of American history. “A determined purpose to disregard the Declaration of Independence, breed disrespect for the Constitution of the United States and American institutions and belittle the great men and women responsible for the establishing of the United States of America” is seen in the writings of many educators who are charged with a willingness “to be subsidized into sympathy with the Carnegie design of ‘the reunited states, the British-American Union.’”[870]

In addition to the grievances urged against the historians in their treatment of Anglo-American relations, Mr. Hirshfield objected to the characterization accorded such “great leaders” as Jackson, Monroe and Clay by McLaughlin and Van Tyne, who with “other history revisionists show a peculiar fondness for this unfair method of estimating the characters of American leaders.”[871] Among other criticisms directed against Muzzey’s history was that of inaccuracy,[872] and West’s textbook was condemned because it was written by an “outright propagandist endeavoring zealously to promote the British design of an Anglo-American union.”[873]

In the discussion allotted by the Report to Guitteau’s Our United States and the Barnes histories, Mr. Hirshfield pointed out changes made by these authors in revisions which have appeared since these books were first criticized. These changes led Mr. Hirshfield to remark that “the promptness with which ‘modern historical scholarship’ may shift itself to any attitude required is truly amazing.”[874] Mr. Barnes, especially, he charged with “mobility” of judgment, but declared that Barnes “is only a Brooklyn school principal and is not considered in scholastic circles of colleges and historical associations, like some of the other complained-of historians, who have been seduced into a sycophantic acceptance of English authority on all things American.”[875]

The statements in the Hirshfield Report regarding school histories bear a striking similarity to those of Charles Grant Miller. Indeed, with but insignificant exceptions the Hirshfield attacks on McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s A History of the United States for Schools, Guitteau’s Our United States, Barnes’ Short American History by Grades and his American History for Grammar Grades are couched in the same language as that employed by Charles Grant Miller in his articles in the Hearst newspapers. Furthermore, the section of the Report devoted to “British Propaganda Agencies are Active in America” is substantially a verbatim re-publication of an article which appeared October 15, 1922, in the Chicago Herald and Examiner.[876] A comparison of the statements under the name of David Hirshfield and those under that of Charles Grant Miller tends to verify a statement in the New York Tribune which ascribes the authorship of the Hirshfield Report to Charles Grant Miller.[877] Indeed, the Tribune in a series of articles beginning November 5, 1923, discussed in detail the Hirshfield Report and asserted that it is “a substitute paper for a document turned in by a reputable scholar and expert who had been expressly commissioned at considerable expense to the city to make a thorough survey of the books in question.”[878] According to the Tribune, “coincident with holding some public hearings” the Commissioner of Accounts “employed Joseph Devlin, a recognized lecturer and writer on historical and educational subjects, to examine the complained-of histories.”[879] Mr. Devlin, “a staunch supporter of Tammany” and of Mayor Hylan, is said to have included in his report on history textbooks an exoneration of the “Briticized” historians, characterizing them as one hundred per cent American whose loyalty to the United States could not be questioned.[880] Although better compilations of American history could be imagined by Mr. Devlin, he asserted that the historians were not guilty of the charges made,—charges designed “to help keep bigotry, dissension and distrust between this country and England.”[881]

Besides the books which the Hirshfield Report condemned as lacking in Americanism, Mr. Devlin examined A History of the United States by John P. O’Hara, A History of the United States of America by Charles Morris, American Government by Frank A. Magruder, Builders of Democracy by Edwin Greenlaw, History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, and The Making of Our Country by Smith Burnham.[882] The Magruder and Greenlaw textbooks, Mr. Devlin pointed out, were not histories, and the only cause for complaint which he could find against the latter was the inclusion of “Hymn of Love for England.” The former was described as a “plain work on civics and government, not dealing with history at all and free from one-sided opinion.” Regarding the Morris and Burnham histories, Mr. Devlin found no objection. The authors of the Beard textbook, however, he felt should be asked to “cut out all apologies for the conduct of England,” and the O’Hara volume, although “very well compiled,” was open to charges of bias and a pro-Catholic viewpoint.[883]

Of those histories which the Hirshfield Report had condemned, Mr. Devlin found only one which justified the charge of a pro-British point of view. This textbook—The History of the American People by Willis Mason West—had been banned from the New York City schools. The McLaughlin and Van Tyne history, the Devlin Report declared, should be revised in such a way that it would arouse more “pride in American breasts for the part the forefathers of our country played in freeing it from England,” but it was not found culpable in many of the respects commonly alleged.

The employment of Mr. Devlin for the purpose of investigating history textbooks was denied by Mr. Hirshfield. The only connection which Mr. Devlin had with the history inquiry, according to Mr. Hirshfield, was to “list all the textbooks, particularly as to authorship and the number of textbooks by different authors used in the same grade of work.” Later when “Mr. Devlin took it upon himself to write a history report and had the audacity to submit same to me, I dismissed him at once,” declared the Commissioner of Accounts.[884]

In refutation of Mr. Hirshfield’s denial regarding his part in the history inquiry, Mr. Devlin asserted that he began his investigation of history textbooks on December 21, 1921, as “an expert” through the direction of Mr. James McGinley, Hirshfield’s “chief of staff,” and continued the work for seven months when “the investigation was brought to a close” due to lack of funds.[885] “Nearly a year after these opinions had been submitted by Mr. Devlin and shelved,” stated the Tribune, “the Hirshfield-Miller version appeared....”[886]

The Devlin Report “being the opposite of what his employers wanted,” remarked The New York Times, “... the job was turned over to one Charles Grant Miller, who joyously and promptly turned out, and in, a report of just the right—meaning the desired—kind, and that is the one, says the Tribune, which Mr. Hirshfield signed and published, greatly horrifying a part of the metropolitan population and as much amusing the rest of it.”[887]

The Hirshfield Report stimulated much discussion throughout the country. In New York, Superintendent of Schools William L. Ettinger declared “that the very idea of the Commissioner of Accounts investigating such a subject as the teaching of history in the public schools was highly amusing,” and that the Report was “belated and unnecessary inasmuch as the school authorities had already condemned seven of the eight histories condemned by Hirshfield.”[888]

The press in all sections of the United States devoted their columns to the Report and to the teaching and writing of history. The Atlanta Journal, under the caption of “Politician vs. Historian,” remarked that “Mr. Hirshfield’s views ... are of no consequence. But the general reaction to his ganderish expression of them is highly interesting and altogether wholesome.” The New York World, according to the Journal, suggested that “‘the standing of the historians whom he attacks is better than his own’; while the Buffalo News comments: ‘Instead of leaving history to educators who are reputed to know something about it, the politicians are arrogating to themselves the right to determine what texts shall, and what texts shall not, be used.’”[889]

“The New England view is well reflected by the Hartford Times,” declared The Journal, in saying that “‘if we are teaching history and not mythology we want our children to acquire a critical capacity which shall enable them to appraise the world they live in by an intelligent application of the knowledge of the past ... if a child has been trained to believe that between the years 1776 and 1885 all Americans were supermen, the appearance of a Hirshfield must come with something of a shock.’”[890] Similar sentiment was expressed by the Baltimore Sun which asserted that Mr. Hirshfield’s “jazzy little turn on the public stage would hardly deserve notice at all if it were not for the lamentable tendency of a few excitable citizens whom it represents.”[891]

To the [Fort Wayne, Indiana] News Sentinel “there is something in that name Hirshfield that sounds significant,”[892] and to the Milwaukee Journal “the very intemperance” of Mr. Hirshfield’s charges suggested that he was “not without his own prejudices.”[893] The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald ascribed Mr. Hirshfield’s fears to “an over-stimulated imagination” or to “the close connection of his chief, Mr. Hylan, with William Randolph Hearst,” who “is doing his best to stir up ill-feeling between the United States and Great Britain.”[894]

The reaction of historians was reflected by James Truslow Adams in his article “History and the Lower Criticism” in The Atlantic Monthly for September, 1923, in which he described the advance made in historical scholarship during the generation before the War. “Since then, however,” he declared, “the forces of reaction and obscurantism seem to have been let loose and to have gathered fresh strength.... Partly because it [history] uses the language of the common man, the common man constitutes himself a judge of its truth, and we have the spectacle of a municipal commissioner of accounts attacking the validity of the scholar’s work while a town chamber of commerce defends it.”

“What then of the future?” queried Mr. Adams. “Is the writing of popular history to be an effort to discover and to disseminate among the people the true story of mankind in the past, or is it to be written as an ethical or political tract, to further the passionate conflicts of the present?” The desire of the historian to portray the truth and to be just in his estimates, is to Mr. Adams a surety that “the patriot need fear no danger to the ideals and inspiration to be derived from an ever more painstaking scrutiny of the history of the colonies and of the nation. The historian who most loves truth is most likely to love his country.”[895]

Other cities have passed through experiences similar to that of New York, but less publicity has attended the investigations. On October 23, 1922, the City Council of Boston “unanimously passed an order requesting the School Committee to give a hearing for the consideration of certain objections made to the use in the public schools ... of ‘School History of the United States,’ revised 1920, by Albert Bushnell Hart; Burke’s ‘Speech on Conciliation,’ edited by C. H. Ward 1919, and ‘American History,’ by D. S. Muzzey.”[896]

In compliance with this request the School Committee “personally examined the books under discussion with considerable care....” They also had prepared “a careful and dispassionate review under the direction of all of the Board of Superintendents of all or substantially all of the criticisms made against these books and brought to their attention, and a refutation of these criticisms which, in the opinion of the Committee, justice to the authors demands.”[897]

Although the Committee were not “in entire sympathy and agreement with all the statements which the books contain,” nor in complete accord regarding the emphasis placed upon “certain events in our national history,” yet they felt that “such differences” were not “sufficient to warrant the condemnation of the books nor the impeachment of the sincerity and good faith of the authors.”[898]

A “hearing” regarding the textbooks under examination was arranged for and held by the School Committee and the City Council on November 15, the latter being represented by one member. “In the course of the hearing,” stated the Report, “irrelevant and extraneous matters were brought to the attention of the School Committee to which it listened with scant patience.” What the School Committee regarded as “unwarranted and ill-founded attacks were made upon the authors of these books,” whereas to the Committee “the real and only question at issue” was whether their [Muzzey’s and Hart’s] histories contain material to which reasonable and proper objection may be made.[899] In the opinion of the Committee “no historian had ever succeeded in writing a book which met satisfactorily every point of view, nor does any history place an equal amount of emphasis upon all the topics which it discusses.” Besides, “it is clearly impossible that one brief volume should give adequate treatment to all the steps incident to the origin and growth of a great nation.”[900]

The Committee also deplored “the course pursued by the critics of these books in tearing from their context detached sentences and omitting explanations and summaries which are essential to a grasp of the authors’ real meaning.” Such a procedure, they believed, would permit a critic to find an “opportunity for criticism of any book that ever has been written on the subject of history, and indeed on many other subjects as well.”[901]

After having given “due consideration to the matter,” the School Committee therefore were of the opinion “that the criticisms against these two books” did not justify “their exclusion from the Authorized List.”[902] A dissenting opinion, however, was issued, which, “while in agreement” with the Report, nevertheless set forth the view that the Board of Superintendents should ask for certain changes in the books when they were revised.[903]

In the comprehensive reviews of Hart’s School History of the United States and Muzzey’s An American History, the Committee pointed out that the chief sources of the criticisms were taken from “Mr. Charles Grant Miller,—Treason to American Tradition; Mr. Wallace McCamant,—Review of Muzzey’s American History; Mr. James A. Watson,—Speech before the Boston City Council and interview reported in the Boston Globe of October 24, 1922, ... and from the ‘Report on History Text Books used in public schools of the City of New York, 1922.’”

In examining each statement which had been quoted to prove that these textbooks were Anglicized editions, the Committee showed that the “apologetic attitude toward England” charged by the critics could not be so considered when quotations were taken in their entirety.

In concluding their reviews, the Committee declared, “Both writers have shown a striking sense of proportion, great skill in focusing attention upon what is vital, and commendable courage in calling attention to weaknesses and mistakes in our history, some of which still need to be corrected. The few defects of these books are insignificant as compared with their many excellencies. Both books mark an advance in the writing of history texts for school use. Both are worthy contributions to the study and teaching of American history. Neither of them should be excluded from our schools.”[904]

Because of alleged un-Americanism West’s History of the American People was banned from the approved lists of text books in Alta, Iowa, and Jackson, Minnesota.[905] The McLaughlin and Van Tyne history received like treatment in Battle Creek, Michigan.[906] From the San José (California) Carnegie Library Hart’s Formation of the Union, his National Ideals Historically Traced, and Van Tyne’s American Revolution were removed by orders of the library board, who declared them “un-American and unfit for reading, particularly by school children.”[907] The Study of the Nations by Harriet Tuell was prohibited in the schools of Somerville, Massachusetts, because of alleged pro-British leanings. The attacks against this book culminated in a bill in the Massachusetts Senate, in 1921, forbidding its use in any school of the commonwealth, but the bill died in committee.

PUBLIC OPINION REGARDING THE CENSORSHIP OF HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

These endeavors to censor history textbooks have occasioned much discussion by the press, by educators and others. To The New York Times “however commendable these efforts to find and set forth the historical truth may be, and however honorable and sincere the motive, it must be admitted by all that this is not the way to ‘rewrite history.’”[908]

To the [New York] Evening Globe “the controversy over school histories is largely between defenders of doctrine and defenders of free inquiry, between those who do not believe that children can be trusted with the truth and those who believe that they can. Most of the modern histories have been written by scholars inspired by the scientific spirit and, therefore, no more tender with myths about history than a modern bacteriologist with myths about disease.... A true American history need not rob us of the story of Paul Revere or the reverence for George Washington, but it will teach that personal anecdotes are not the life of a nation, that great men as well as mean men flourish in every generation....”[909]

The reaction of teachers engaged in the public schools is much the same as that of the press. The continued agitation regarding histories carried on in Washington, D. C., led the High School Teachers’ Association to adopt the following resolutions:

Further evidence of a rebellion against the censorship attempted over history textbooks was manifested at the annual meeting of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland in May, 1923, when a series of resolutions was unanimously adopted “deploring an agitation based on either ignorance or malice, or which has for its object the promotion of animosities between classes of nations; ...”[911] In October, 1923, the Washington State Teachers’ Association resolved:

The objection of historical scholars toward present-day censorship of history textbooks voiced itself at a meeting of the American Historical Association in December, 1923, when the following resolutions were adopted:

The sentiment of other educators is much the same as that of writers of history and the history teacher. Professor William C. Bagley has declared that “an official public or governmental censorship over history text-books would be a calamity of the first magnitude.”[914] To Dean Percy R. Boynton “the hue and cry about American histories for schools is a piece of post-war hysteria.”[915] In general, the attitude of educators can be summarized in the words of Dr. Payson Smith of Massachusetts: “The public school does not owe to business interests or to special interests or to labor interests of any kind that there shall be constructed in the minds of the young people attitudes and opinions designed to be definitely and specifically helpful to those interests.... It is not a legitimate part of the public school program to deal in any phase of propaganda. Let the doors of the school-house once be opened to the appeals of those who want ... any subject taught from the special viewpoint of a group of people and they must remain open until the schools will be so crowded with the teachings of the propagandists that there will be no time or opportunity left for doing the work which is the primary responsibility of the schools.”[916]