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American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker
From the day in 1892 that saw the beginning of Ray Stannard Baker's career as a journalist, which begins this autobiography, to the death of Woodrow Wilson in 1924, with which it closes, every page of this truly "American chronicle" is packed with interest. Here is an autobiography that is truly great -- not only because of the things it tells, but because Mr. Baker in American Chronicle DOES write about the things that have gone deepest into his life and that mean most to him -- which make his life-story, his book, unsurpassed reading.
531 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1945
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About the author
Ray Stannard Baker
177 books5 followersAlso known by his pen name David Grayson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Stan...
see also David Grayson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Stan...
see also David Grayson
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August 17, 2020
If you ever saw some episodes of the made for TV series -- "Young Indiana Jones" -- then you would better appreciate Ray Stannard Baker's charmed life, since he seems to have known all of the major "players" -- journalists, politicians, world leaders -- of his day and, moreover, to have had the opportunity to make significant contributions of his own.
A prolific and extremely able writer -- his prose is clear and compellingly intimate, conveying a "you are there" feeling to each page -- he began his career in 1893 as a young journalist working for a now defunct Chicago, Illinois newspaper, The Chicago Record. Almost immediately, he fell into a dream assignment when an editor told him to “look into” a strange fellow called Coxey in neighboring Ohio.
Coxed was something of a rogue businessman as he actually cared for unemployed people — the 1870s through the 1890s was a period in the US when repeated severe recessions wrought havoc for farmers and urban workers alike — and he was trying to organize a huge march on Washington for aid, something heretofore unheard of. So, Baker traveled to Ohio, met Coxey, became engrossed in his efforts, and found himself accompanying him and hundreds — then thousands — of unemployed men marching from Ohio to the capital. The group became known as “Coxey’s Army” and all along the way they were met in each town and village by local citizens who brought them food items, clothing, and other supplies that sustained them in their several hundred-mile march. An incredible story.
He had no sooner returned to Chicago than he was assigned to covering the Pullman strike in downstate Illinois. Pullman was one of those millionaire “builders” of the Gilded Age who had cornered the market on railroad cars, and he even built an “ideal” village for his workmen in which there was ample green space, churches, town squares, and decent — if small — living quarters for each person. All of this was paid for by deductions from the worker’s wages.
Well, things had been going well until the 1893 depression and, faced with falling demand for railroad cars, Pullman began cutting back on production without reducing the cost of housing or food goods for his workers. Nor surprisingly, a strike was called and as it became larger and more contentious one of the labor leaders who came to investigate conditions was Eugene Debs, a man who later converted to the socialist cause and ran as a Socialist candidate for the presidency several times.
Of course Baker not only met Debs — beginning a friendship that lasted decades — but also witnessed several key events in the Pullman strike, including an intervention by federal agents that led to several people being killed. One of the most dramatic moments in his narrative is when the man standing next to him was shot by one of those agents (he lingered briefly, then died). He had not been a striker, but a local citizen drawn by curiosity.
Overall, this is it is a beautifully written, personal narrative of some of the most significant events and personages of American history from the 1890s into the early 1920s (although Baker lived until the 1940s, this autobiography ends with the death of Woodrow Wilson in 1924).
He became acquainted with, and even a friend of, many notable people, including Teddy Roosevelt, with whom he met several times at his private home before his election to the presidency and then later at the White House. Baker must have been as charming and interesting a person as his book indicates because a host of people quickly came to like and admire him.
During the latter ‘90s and first decade of the 20th century he also became one of the notorious “muckrakers” of the day, journalists who were determined to expose the corruption widespread through local, state, and national governments. Their reports formed the basis for what became the national movement known as “Progressivism” which had the dual focus of:
i. Cleaning up monopolies and commercial abuses — such as revealing the horrific processes by which slaughterhouses operated and the very unsanitary conditions under which workers labored, calling for reforms of creamed rooming houses where poor laborers worked, and demanding legislation requiring better pay, reduced maximum hours, and limitations on child and female labor; and,
ii. Enhancing democratic processes to help ward off both the corrupting power of money and the machine bosses so predominate at all levels of government in the decades after the Civil War. The West Coast turned out to be among the most receptive of states in implementing such things as the initiative (by which citizens could propose measures for the ballot), referendum (in which citizens could demand that certain issues being debated by the legislature be placed on the ballot so that they would have the final say, and recall (in which citizens could circulate petitions calling for the removal of an elected official from office which, if a sufficient number of signatures were achieved, would place that question on the ballot).
About the last third of the book is devoted to his coverage and opinions of Woodrow Wilson.
I first really encountered Wilson — his words in speeches, articles and proposals — in graduate school, and I quickly fell under his spell. The man had a way with words.
Of course he had his flaws, too, just as we all do, and his major ones were linked to his great intelligence and Southern origins: he could be condescending and quick to dismiss those whom he regarded as just “base politicians” who failed to appreciate the significance of his grand ideas (and many of them were grand, indeed!), and he shared the racist views towards Black people common to Southerners (and all too many others) of his time. This latter caused him to re-segregate many agencies that Teddy Roosevelt had just years earlier partially integrated.
Wilson’s decision in 1917 to enter the horrific First World War, together with his efforts at the peace conference following its conclusion in Versailles, are — like the loss of William Jennings Bryan to McKinley in the 1896 presidential election — what I regard as key turning points that could have played out much differently in such ways that could have led to a much more peaceful 20th century.
Baker’s intimate account of his participation as one of the president’s aides at the peace conference makes for riveting reading. It also reminds us that the shortcoming of human beings — both as individuals and in our role as politicians — are deep and very difficult to overcome. Baker identifies the following deeply-ingrained human tendencies which, for me, appear to be both insidious and ongoing:
1) The desire for vengeance and revenge:
Wilson, for all of the occasional simplicity of his idealism, was trying to achieve both a peace settlement the terms of which did not actually contain the seeds of yet another war and create a League of Nations that would allow nations to work collectively to confront rogue states in the future. Yet, his chief confreres — George Lloyd of Great Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France — were wartime leaders driven by their own — and their peoples’ — demands that Germany pay for “starting the war.” (In my view, while the Germans clearly had much to answer for, it was the idiocy of inter-linking alliances and the decisions to massively mobilize quickly on both sides that more accurately explains the disastrous onset of the Great War.). Wilson, had he remained a neutral noncombatant — which the US had been into 1917, might have actually been in a more powerful position to arbitrate a just peace than he was as an ally of France and Britain because of our late entry. As it was, their insistence on “punishing” Germany — especially by levying extremely punishing economic penalties while simultaneously demanding the repayment of very high reparations — were the primary cause behind Germany’s failed struggle to rebuild her war-wracked economy while meeting demanded reparations.
2) Focusing on “now” rather than on the future:
The anger of the people of the allied nations, coupled with the desire of the victors to “grab” some of Germany’s prime assets for themselves, plus the overwhelming demands of the peoples emerging from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and others like China pleading for assistance against predatory Japan, created such tremendous pressure to address current pressing issues that Wilson’s arguments that tried to place all of these in both a larger context with a more distant time-frame had little change to succeed. Yes, all were willing to accept Wilson’s #1 priority of creating a League of Nations, but no work towards that end began. Yet the question What must we do now so that several tomorrows from now we do not see the creation of conditions for future war? was not asked. But it was the most important question.
3) Partisan differences that block thoughts of the “common good”:
While the final treaty was bad enough, the final nail in the coffin was the US Senate’s decision early on to scuttle the treaty. In the elections of 1918, the Republicans had swept control of both the House and Senate, a fact which badly weakened Wilson as he struggled to insert more favorable peace terms in treaty negotiations in 1919. But when Wilson returned from Paris hoping to persuade Congress to go along, he found both chambers — but especially the Senate — not really wishing to find a mutually acceptable compromise but, rather, to so load the treaty down as to make it unacceptable to the other signers or just to reject it outright. Wilson, although exhausted by his long months in France, decided to once again take his case “to the people” in the hopes that he could rally them enough to overcome congressional resistance. Again, tragedy struck while engaging in a frenetic series of “whistle stop” tours throughout the western US he suffered a serious stroke, from which he never fully recovered. Within a few months, the Senate had killed the treaty and, with it, hopes of US participation in the League of Nations. Without the hoped for Atlantic-spanning agreement behind the League, it never attained the consensus nor muscle that it needed to stop renewed acts of aggression, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1930. The League’s effective “non-response” despite China’s call for assistance contributed greatly to Hitler’s confidence that he could get away with violating treaty stipulations in rebuilding Germany’s armed forces.
In a very real sense, we are still living in the world created by the Versailles Treaty of 1919; even worse, the populist nationalism, failed leadership, and self-indulgence of so many politicians and would-be "leaders" are frighteningly reminiscent of those who bumbled through the 1920s and into the 1930s.
While history does not "repeat itself," it certainly does follow certain patterns. Stupidity, selfishness, short-range thinking, nationalist claptrap, and escalating international tensions inevitably lead to worsening conditions that, unless persons possessing remarkable qualities of insight, temperance, and humility come to the fore, will always lead to violence.
If you don't believe me, read Baker's work.
A true "must read" for all who want to better understand the late 19th and early 20th centuries and, as important, how the seeds of our world today were planted.
A remarkable book!
A prolific and extremely able writer -- his prose is clear and compellingly intimate, conveying a "you are there" feeling to each page -- he began his career in 1893 as a young journalist working for a now defunct Chicago, Illinois newspaper, The Chicago Record. Almost immediately, he fell into a dream assignment when an editor told him to “look into” a strange fellow called Coxey in neighboring Ohio.
Coxed was something of a rogue businessman as he actually cared for unemployed people — the 1870s through the 1890s was a period in the US when repeated severe recessions wrought havoc for farmers and urban workers alike — and he was trying to organize a huge march on Washington for aid, something heretofore unheard of. So, Baker traveled to Ohio, met Coxey, became engrossed in his efforts, and found himself accompanying him and hundreds — then thousands — of unemployed men marching from Ohio to the capital. The group became known as “Coxey’s Army” and all along the way they were met in each town and village by local citizens who brought them food items, clothing, and other supplies that sustained them in their several hundred-mile march. An incredible story.
He had no sooner returned to Chicago than he was assigned to covering the Pullman strike in downstate Illinois. Pullman was one of those millionaire “builders” of the Gilded Age who had cornered the market on railroad cars, and he even built an “ideal” village for his workmen in which there was ample green space, churches, town squares, and decent — if small — living quarters for each person. All of this was paid for by deductions from the worker’s wages.
Well, things had been going well until the 1893 depression and, faced with falling demand for railroad cars, Pullman began cutting back on production without reducing the cost of housing or food goods for his workers. Nor surprisingly, a strike was called and as it became larger and more contentious one of the labor leaders who came to investigate conditions was Eugene Debs, a man who later converted to the socialist cause and ran as a Socialist candidate for the presidency several times.
Of course Baker not only met Debs — beginning a friendship that lasted decades — but also witnessed several key events in the Pullman strike, including an intervention by federal agents that led to several people being killed. One of the most dramatic moments in his narrative is when the man standing next to him was shot by one of those agents (he lingered briefly, then died). He had not been a striker, but a local citizen drawn by curiosity.
Overall, this is it is a beautifully written, personal narrative of some of the most significant events and personages of American history from the 1890s into the early 1920s (although Baker lived until the 1940s, this autobiography ends with the death of Woodrow Wilson in 1924).
He became acquainted with, and even a friend of, many notable people, including Teddy Roosevelt, with whom he met several times at his private home before his election to the presidency and then later at the White House. Baker must have been as charming and interesting a person as his book indicates because a host of people quickly came to like and admire him.
During the latter ‘90s and first decade of the 20th century he also became one of the notorious “muckrakers” of the day, journalists who were determined to expose the corruption widespread through local, state, and national governments. Their reports formed the basis for what became the national movement known as “Progressivism” which had the dual focus of:
i. Cleaning up monopolies and commercial abuses — such as revealing the horrific processes by which slaughterhouses operated and the very unsanitary conditions under which workers labored, calling for reforms of creamed rooming houses where poor laborers worked, and demanding legislation requiring better pay, reduced maximum hours, and limitations on child and female labor; and,
ii. Enhancing democratic processes to help ward off both the corrupting power of money and the machine bosses so predominate at all levels of government in the decades after the Civil War. The West Coast turned out to be among the most receptive of states in implementing such things as the initiative (by which citizens could propose measures for the ballot), referendum (in which citizens could demand that certain issues being debated by the legislature be placed on the ballot so that they would have the final say, and recall (in which citizens could circulate petitions calling for the removal of an elected official from office which, if a sufficient number of signatures were achieved, would place that question on the ballot).
About the last third of the book is devoted to his coverage and opinions of Woodrow Wilson.
I first really encountered Wilson — his words in speeches, articles and proposals — in graduate school, and I quickly fell under his spell. The man had a way with words.
Of course he had his flaws, too, just as we all do, and his major ones were linked to his great intelligence and Southern origins: he could be condescending and quick to dismiss those whom he regarded as just “base politicians” who failed to appreciate the significance of his grand ideas (and many of them were grand, indeed!), and he shared the racist views towards Black people common to Southerners (and all too many others) of his time. This latter caused him to re-segregate many agencies that Teddy Roosevelt had just years earlier partially integrated.
Wilson’s decision in 1917 to enter the horrific First World War, together with his efforts at the peace conference following its conclusion in Versailles, are — like the loss of William Jennings Bryan to McKinley in the 1896 presidential election — what I regard as key turning points that could have played out much differently in such ways that could have led to a much more peaceful 20th century.
Baker’s intimate account of his participation as one of the president’s aides at the peace conference makes for riveting reading. It also reminds us that the shortcoming of human beings — both as individuals and in our role as politicians — are deep and very difficult to overcome. Baker identifies the following deeply-ingrained human tendencies which, for me, appear to be both insidious and ongoing:
1) The desire for vengeance and revenge:
Wilson, for all of the occasional simplicity of his idealism, was trying to achieve both a peace settlement the terms of which did not actually contain the seeds of yet another war and create a League of Nations that would allow nations to work collectively to confront rogue states in the future. Yet, his chief confreres — George Lloyd of Great Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France — were wartime leaders driven by their own — and their peoples’ — demands that Germany pay for “starting the war.” (In my view, while the Germans clearly had much to answer for, it was the idiocy of inter-linking alliances and the decisions to massively mobilize quickly on both sides that more accurately explains the disastrous onset of the Great War.). Wilson, had he remained a neutral noncombatant — which the US had been into 1917, might have actually been in a more powerful position to arbitrate a just peace than he was as an ally of France and Britain because of our late entry. As it was, their insistence on “punishing” Germany — especially by levying extremely punishing economic penalties while simultaneously demanding the repayment of very high reparations — were the primary cause behind Germany’s failed struggle to rebuild her war-wracked economy while meeting demanded reparations.
2) Focusing on “now” rather than on the future:
The anger of the people of the allied nations, coupled with the desire of the victors to “grab” some of Germany’s prime assets for themselves, plus the overwhelming demands of the peoples emerging from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and others like China pleading for assistance against predatory Japan, created such tremendous pressure to address current pressing issues that Wilson’s arguments that tried to place all of these in both a larger context with a more distant time-frame had little change to succeed. Yes, all were willing to accept Wilson’s #1 priority of creating a League of Nations, but no work towards that end began. Yet the question What must we do now so that several tomorrows from now we do not see the creation of conditions for future war? was not asked. But it was the most important question.
3) Partisan differences that block thoughts of the “common good”:
While the final treaty was bad enough, the final nail in the coffin was the US Senate’s decision early on to scuttle the treaty. In the elections of 1918, the Republicans had swept control of both the House and Senate, a fact which badly weakened Wilson as he struggled to insert more favorable peace terms in treaty negotiations in 1919. But when Wilson returned from Paris hoping to persuade Congress to go along, he found both chambers — but especially the Senate — not really wishing to find a mutually acceptable compromise but, rather, to so load the treaty down as to make it unacceptable to the other signers or just to reject it outright. Wilson, although exhausted by his long months in France, decided to once again take his case “to the people” in the hopes that he could rally them enough to overcome congressional resistance. Again, tragedy struck while engaging in a frenetic series of “whistle stop” tours throughout the western US he suffered a serious stroke, from which he never fully recovered. Within a few months, the Senate had killed the treaty and, with it, hopes of US participation in the League of Nations. Without the hoped for Atlantic-spanning agreement behind the League, it never attained the consensus nor muscle that it needed to stop renewed acts of aggression, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1930. The League’s effective “non-response” despite China’s call for assistance contributed greatly to Hitler’s confidence that he could get away with violating treaty stipulations in rebuilding Germany’s armed forces.
In a very real sense, we are still living in the world created by the Versailles Treaty of 1919; even worse, the populist nationalism, failed leadership, and self-indulgence of so many politicians and would-be "leaders" are frighteningly reminiscent of those who bumbled through the 1920s and into the 1930s.
While history does not "repeat itself," it certainly does follow certain patterns. Stupidity, selfishness, short-range thinking, nationalist claptrap, and escalating international tensions inevitably lead to worsening conditions that, unless persons possessing remarkable qualities of insight, temperance, and humility come to the fore, will always lead to violence.
If you don't believe me, read Baker's work.
A true "must read" for all who want to better understand the late 19th and early 20th centuries and, as important, how the seeds of our world today were planted.
A remarkable book!
February 12, 2026
i appreciate a book that is so honest. i admired his thoughtful insights as a journalist and learned lots!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews