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Review Articles 

Report on Conservatism 
The American Right Wing. By Ralph E. 

Ellsworth and Sarah M. Harris. (Occasional 
Papers, number 59) Urbana: University of 
Illinois Graduate School of Library Sci-
ence, 1960. 50p. $1.00. 

Subtitled "A Report to the Fund for the 
Republic, Inc.," The American Right Wing 
presents a survey, of greater breadth than 
depth, of the literature of conservatism dur-
ing the middle years of the last decade. Ow-
ing to the death of Miss Harris in 1959, the 
study has not been carried beyond 1958. 
Consequently, it does not discuss the sup-
posed revitalization of conservatism which 
followed the reelection in that year of Sena-
tor Goldwater, and which came to light in 
the sharpened conflict within the Republican 
Party, in the widely publicized new wave of 
conservatism among university undergrad-
uates, and in the fuss over the John Birch 
Society. Nor do the authors intend to pro-
vide a history of Right Wing movements or 
a full exposition of Right Wing philosophies. 

T h e authors do provide a high-spirited 
dash through a wilderness of rightist organ-
izations, publications, and spokesmen, and 
enliven some occasionally dreary conserva-
tive strictures with wry observations of their 
own. No semblance of pale neutrality will 
be found in the body of the report, for their 
attitudes, ranging from amusement to con-
tempt, are evident throughout, in spite of 
what seems to be a protestation of impar-
tiality among Mr. Ellsworth's scholarly dis-
claimers in the Preface. 

Rightist groups and publications are 
treated in turn according to certain clusters 
of ideas. These ideas are overwhelmingly 
negative in tone: the Right Wing is anti-
Communist, anti-union, anti-integrationist, 
and sometimes anti-Semitic; it is opposed to 
progressive education, liberalized immigra-
tion, foreign aid, the Supreme Court, and the 
United Nations; and it is especially cogni-
zant of the many threatening features of a 
strong and active federal government. T h e 

Right Wing favors decentralized government, 
individualism, and Chiang Kai-shek. 

Among the diverse bodies mentioned in 
the report may be found such "moderate" 
groups as the medical and bar associations 
which defend the status quo insofar as their 
special interests are affected, together widi 
such extreme examples of the psychotic right 
as the Christian Nationalists and the Anglo-
Israelites. T h e reader is rightly warned, in 
both text and notes, to beware imputing the 
notions of a few groups to all the organiza-
tions cited. 

The American Right Wing is spotted with 
many small errors caused by careless typing. 
It is in large part a bibliographical essay, 
but its utility is diminished by the lack of 
a separate bibliography and an index. With 
an index, the work would be a more useful 
adjunct to the brief listings in the First Na-
tional Directory of "Rightist" Groups, Pub-
lications, and Some Individuals. 

From this lively account of American con-
servatism and Right Wing extremism in 
1958, the reader should gain a fuller under-
standing of the several viewpoints at one end 
of our political spectrum, and a better ac-
quaintance with the voluminous, but often 
little known, literature of these movements. 
T h e authors perform a further service by 
placing in perspective such curious items in 
the rightist canon as the opposition to men-
tal health programs and the campaigns 
against fluoridation of w a t e r . — R i c h a r d Zum-
winkle, University of California, Los Angeles. 

Manuscript Inventory 
American Literary Manuscripts; a Checklist 

of Holdings in Academic, Historical and 
Public Libraries in the United States. Com-
piled and published under the auspices 
of the American Literature Group, Mod-
ern Language Association of America, by 
the Committee on Manuscript Holdings. 
Austin, T e x . : University of Texas, [I960], 
xxviii, 421 p. $5.00. 

Many guides to manuscript collections and 

S E P T E M B E R 1 9 6 1 401 



resources of libraries in the United States 
have been published. T h e r e are the Histori-
cal Records Survey's Guides to Manuscript 
Collections covering the holdings in various 
states; Robert B. Downs's American Library 
Resources, giving the holdings of libraries as 
listed in bibliographies of various kinds; and, 
more recently, the National Historical Pub-
lications Commission's Guide to Archives and 
Manuscripts in the United States, as shown 
in collections, and the National Union Cata-
log of Manuscript Collections being compiled 
on cards by the Library of Congress. There 
have also been many guides of a more spe-
cialized nature to individual library or sub-
ject collections, but there has been little 
until now to cover the manuscript materials 
of American authors in very great detail. 

This situation is alleviated to a large ex-
tent by die work of the Committee on Man-
uscript Holdings, under the chairmanship of 
Joseph Jones of the University of Texas. 

T h e purposes of this publication are: 
". . . to assist scholars, librarians, dealers, and 
collectors in locating primary source ma-
terials relating to American authors . . 
encourage and facilitate the enlargement of 
some fairly extensive but incomplete special 
author collections," and to . . stimulate 
some agency or institution to establish a 
country-wide manuscript inventory and re-
porting service." At least the first of these 
purposes has been accomplished, although 
much remains to be done by way of assist-
ance. T h e manuscript holdings of 287 li-
braries for more than 2350 American au-
thors are represented in this book. 

T h e checklist is an alphabetical listing of 
authors, giving dates when available. For 
each author, holdings of various libraries 
are given in eight categories: manuscripts, 
journals or diaries, letters by an author, let-
ters to an author, documents relating to an 
author, books containing marginalia by an 
author, special collections relating to an 
author, and manuscript material attributed 
to an author but of uncertain authenticity. 
T h e entries are symbolized to indicate the 
nature of the holdings, the extent of the 
collection, and the location of the material. 

T h e limitations of such a work, in spite 
of careful preparation, are readily admitted 
and explained in the introduction. Anyone 
working with manuscript materials soon be-
comes aware of the difficulties in arranging 

and cataloging such collections just to make 
them accessible to the researcher. T h e list-
ing covers only American libraries and has 
not attempted to include the many valuable 
holdings of individuals, dealers, publishing 
houses, literary agents, and foreign libraries. 
Thus, American Literary Manuscripts is only 
a beginning in the constant search for this 
type of material, but a valuable beginning 
for the librarian who wishes to assist the 
scholar in his research.—George M. Bailey, 
Northwestern University Library. 

Tennessee Library 
Lectures 
University of Tennessee Library Lectures; 

Numbers Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. Edited 
by Lanelle Vandiver. Knoxville, T e n n . : 
University of Tennessee, 1961. 50p. On 
request. 

T h e University of Tennessee is to be com-
mended for this lecture series on library 
problems, which reaches the wide world 
every three years in a modest volume. Ten-
nessee is one of the very few institutions 
which invites distinguished librarians to 
speak to a general university audience on 
strictly professional problems of library ad-
ministration and operation. 

Benjamin Powell's lecture (1958), "Sources 
of Support for Libraries in American Uni-
versities" deals principally with support 
other than that from direct university ap-
propriation. Its principal contribution to li-
brary literature is the analysis of types of 
outside aid (gift of money, endowment, 
books) which came to a number of libraries 
during 1 9 5 6 / 5 7 . There is a separate analysis 
of donations to institutions with "Friends of 
Libraries" and those without. T h e latter 
group received much less, but Powell states 
that "one can only speculate about the per-
centage of these differences that should be 
attributed to the presence of organized 
groups of friends." 

T h e lecturer views with concern the gen-

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