BOOK REVIEWS
The Life of Charles T. Walker. By Silas Xavier Floyd. National Baptist Publishing Board, Nashville, Tennessee, 1902. Pp. 193.
This is a brief biography of a distinguished Negro churchman who for more than forty years rendered valuable service in the church in the United States. It begins with the usual account of the parentage, birth, and early childhood of the man and his preparation for his task, as is customary in biographical treatment. This part of the book brings out nothing particularly striking, except an appreciation of the valuable experiences of the subject of the sketch in his struggles to acquire an education and to establish himself in his chosen field. The more interesting part of the work is found in chapter V devoted to a discussion of his call to the Central Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia. Here we read of a busy life devoted to the settlement of church troubles, the raising of funds for a new edifice, and the expansion of the work under more favorable conditions. Some of the most interesting efforts mentioned here are the management of the Augusta Sentinel and the establishment of the Walker Baptist Institute. His work was immediately productive of great good and his influence became a force throughout the State.
The author shows how Dr. Walker, emerging as a more useful man, served as a chaplain of the United States volunteers during the Spanish-American War. He is then presented as an important figure cooperating with the National Baptist Convention and the International Sunday School Convention. As an evangelist, he showed unusual power with an influence so great that he was asked to accept the pastorate of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in New York City, where he served five years in spite of the persistent efforts of his former church in Augusta to have him return to that field. In New York, as in Augusta, according to this account, he was interested in all matters pertaining to the social uplift of Negroes and, therefore, started the movement to establish for young men of his own race a branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, a plan which was finally adopted and supported by the city management.
Called back to Augusta so urgently, at the expiration of five years' service in New York, he resumed his work in that city, preaching with more power than ever. The press gave him favorable comment and persons of distinction like John D. Rockefeller, William Howard Taft, Lyman B. Goff, and General Rush C. Hawkins came to hear him expound the gospel, so great was his power of analysis and his ability to impress the thought of his discourses upon the minds of his hearers. The book, therefore, as whole, is a eulogistic treatment; but, on the other hand, it is an interesting account of the career of a man both useful and popular, a worker who connected with so many social forces in our life and engaged in so many different enterprises for the advancement of humanity that every one having an intelligent interest in the Negro may profitably read this volume.
A Short History of the American Labor Movement. By Mary Beard. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York, 1920. Pp. 174.
This book is intended as a brief and simple story of the labor movement in the United States in a single comprehensive volume of moderate size for the busy citizen. It undertakes to emphasize the nature and significance of the labor movement and the rise of trade unions. There follows a discussion of the old tactics of labor, its first political experience, and its final return to direct industrial action. Some attention is given to the industrial panics, political utopias, trade unionism, politics, schemes, and plans, which have engaged the attention of the labor element during and since the Civil War.
Discussing the situation during the Civil War, the author brings out valuable information bearing on the history of the Negro in the United States. According to the author, labor was forced to take a stand against slavery because of the advanced opposition taken by the South. Up to that time there had been no uniformity but a necessity for such thereafter existed. This was especially true of the mill workers in Massachusetts, among whom there were many abolitionists, while the molders of Kentucky and Pennsylvania struggled for a compromise to avoid bloodshed between the two sections by limiting slavery to the area it then occupied. When manifesting opposition to the extension of slavery into new territory however, the labor leaders were generally opposed to the aggressive policy of the anti-slavery groups. They, therefore, endeavored to take the question out of Congress. The war finally became inevitable; but some of the labor leaders refused even then to grow excited about slavery, believing that many of the bondmen were better off than the starving wage workers of the free States. Thus, indirectly they supported the institution in that they were advancing the argument set forth by slaveholders during that great crisis. The slave had his food, clothing, and shelter provided by his master who took care of him in his old age, while under the factory system workers earned hardly enough sometimes to eke out an existence. In the end, however, organized labor abandoned its opposition or neutral position and gave its support to save the Union.