100% found this document useful (1 vote)

17 views

(Ebook) The US vs China: Asia's New Cold War? by Jude Woodward ISBN 9781526121998, 9781784993429, 1526121999, 1784993425 pdf download

The document is an overview of the ebook 'The US vs China: Asia's New Cold War?' by Jude Woodward, published in 2017. It discusses the geopolitical economy and the dynamics of capitalism in the context of US-China relations. The document also includes various links to other ebooks and resources related to the topic.

Uploaded by

jaaschrone

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

100% found this document useful (1 vote)

17 views

(Ebook) The US vs China: Asia's New Cold War? by Jude Woodward ISBN 9781526121998, 9781784993429, 1526121999, 1784993425 pdf download

Uploaded by

jaaschrone

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 50

(Ebook) The US vs China: Asia's New Cold War?

by
Jude Woodward ISBN 9781526121998, 9781784993429,
1526121999, 1784993425 download

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-us-vs-china-asia-s-new-cold-
war-42921740

Explore and download more ebooks at ebooknice.com

We have selected some products that you may be interested in
Click the link to download now or visit ebooknice.com
for more options!.

(Ebook) Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook by Loucas, Jason; Viles,

James ISBN 9781459699816, 9781743365571, 9781925268492,
1459699815, 1743365578, 1925268497

https://ebooknice.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-6661374

(Ebook) Matematik 5000+ Kurs 2c Lärobok by Lena Alfredsson, Hans

Heikne, Sanna Bodemyr ISBN 9789127456600, 9127456609

https://ebooknice.com/product/matematik-5000-kurs-2c-larobok-23848312

(Ebook) SAT II Success MATH 1C and 2C 2002 (Peterson's SAT II

Success) by Peterson's ISBN 9780768906677, 0768906679

https://ebooknice.com/product/sat-ii-success-math-1c-and-2c-2002-peterson-
s-sat-ii-success-1722018

(Ebook) Master SAT II Math 1c and 2c 4th ed (Arco Master the SAT
Subject Test: Math Levels 1 & 2) by Arco ISBN 9780768923049,
0768923042

https://ebooknice.com/product/master-sat-ii-math-1c-and-2c-4th-ed-arco-
master-the-sat-subject-test-math-levels-1-2-2326094
(Ebook) Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth
Study: the United States, 1919-41 2nd Edition by Benjamin
Harrison ISBN 9781398375147, 9781398375048, 1398375144,
1398375047
https://ebooknice.com/product/cambridge-igcse-and-o-level-history-
workbook-2c-depth-study-the-united-states-1919-41-2nd-edition-53538044

(Ebook) Mao's China and the Cold War (The New Cold War History)
by Chen Jian ISBN 9780807826171, 9780807849323, 0807826170,
0807849324

https://ebooknice.com/product/mao-s-china-and-the-cold-war-the-new-cold-
war-history-1883114

(Ebook) China in India's Post-Cold War Engagement with Southeast

Asia by Chietigj Bajpaee ISBN 9780367464066, 0367464063

https://ebooknice.com/product/china-in-india-s-post-cold-war-engagement-
with-southeast-asia-37369126

(Ebook) The New Cold War, China, And The Caribbean: Economic
Statecraft, China And Strategic Realignments by Scott B.
MacDonald ISBN 9783031061486, 9783031061493, 3031061489,
3031061497
https://ebooknice.com/product/the-new-cold-war-china-and-the-caribbean-
economic-statecraft-china-and-strategic-realignments-44168506

(Ebook) The EU and China: Avoiding a New Cold War by Thomas

Meyer, José Luís de Sales Marques ISBN 9781032677644, 1032677643

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-eu-and-china-avoiding-a-new-cold-
war-55260316
Title Pages

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

Title Pages
Jude Woodward

(p.i) The US vs China

(p.ii) Geopolitical Economy

(p.iii) The US vs China

Geopolitical Economy promotes fresh inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the most
pressing new realities of the twenty-first century: the multipolar world and the renewed
economic centrality of states in it. From a range of disciplines, works in the series account for
these new realities historically. They explore the problems and contradictions, domestic and
international, of capitalism. They reconstruct the struggles of classes and nations, and state
actions in response to them, which have shaped capitalism, and track the growth of the public
and de-commodified spheres these dialectical interactions have given rise to. Finally, they map
the new terrain on which political forces must now act to orient national and international
economies in equitable and ecological, cultural and creative directions.

Manchester University Press

(p.iv) Copyright © Jude Woodward 2017

The right of Jude Woodward to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Page 1 of 2
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Title Pages

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 2199 8 hardback

ISBN 978 1 7849 9342 9 paperback

First published 2017

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or
third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on
such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Gill Sans by

Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Printed in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

Access brought to you by:

Page 2 of 2
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Title Pages

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

Title Pages
Jude Woodward

(p.v) To

Always missed, especially when writing this book (p.vi)

Access brought to you by:

Page 1 of 1
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Figures

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.ix) Figures
Jude Woodward

1.1 China and US GDP in the long run 4

1.2 5
1.3 US financing of net fixed investment 7
2.1 GDP per capita and life expectancy in 2011 30
2.2 Number living on expenditure of $1.25 a day or less 32
2.3 Percentage of world population living in countries with GDP per capita above and
33
2.4 Change in GDP since 2007 (US, China, Japan, Germany) 39
2.5 40
6.1 Increase in the exchange rate of the yen vs the US $ 106

Access brought to you by:

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.x) Maps
Jude Woodward

1 China and its neighbours xvi

2 The Malacca Strait and South China Sea routes 74
3 Russia, Sea of Okhotsk, Japan and Kuril islands 93
4 The Japanese archipelago and Diaoyu/Senkaku islands 113
5 126
6 Korean peninsula, China, Russia, Japan and location of disputed Dokdo islands 139
7 175
8 The Mekong peninsula 187
9 India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Xinjiang and the Central Asian republics 227

All the maps that appear in this book were created by James David Smith, who retains the
copyright on their use in any other context.

Access brought to you by:

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.xi) Tables
Jude Woodward

1.1 US GDP as percentage of world GDP 6

2.1 Comparison of world rank in life expectancy and GDP per capita for G7 and BRIC
economies in 2011 31
2.2
dollars) 37

Access brought to you by:

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.xii) Acknowledgements
Jude Woodward

There are many to whom I am indebted in one way or another in the writing of this book and I
apologise for anyone missed.

reasoning that flowed from them, formed my views and way of thinking more than anything else

impression on all who met him, and I was privileged to know him so well and share so much with
him.

I owe particular thanks to John Ross, senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial
Studies at Renmin University, Beijing, whose work on the Chinese economy provided the
backbone for the economic material in this book, especially in Chapters 1 and 2, and who
originated the figures and tables.

I am also hugely grateful to Keith Bennett who, often over a good Chinese meal, has been a
source of ideas, facts and critiques that were invaluable to the process of writing this book.
Keith read the manuscript in exemplary detail and pointed out many weaknesses, which I have
tried to correct.

I would like to particularly thank my editor, Radhika Desai, who subjected every page of the
manuscript to rigorous criticism, challenged every argument, pointed out many extraneous and
unnecessary diversions and altogether made this a much better book than it was when I started
out. It was sometimes painful, but in the end entirely worthwhile. I would also thank Alan
Freeman, who had faith in this book, relentlessly pursued helping me find a publisher, and, with
Radhika, spent generous amounts of time helping to refine my original proposal and thereby the
content of this book.

There are many people who have contributed to my thinking on the subject of this book. I have
had many discussions on developments in world politics and the economy with Barry Gray,
Michael Burke, and other friends and colleagues, which are reflected in these pages. These

others particularly include Kate Hudson, general secretary of CND, with whom I have not only
discussed these issues over years, but whose love, friendship and support helped in many other
ways.

(p.xiii) I am extremely grateful to James Smith who produced all the maps that appear in this
book. And to everyone at Manchester University Press who helped me through the editing and
publishing process.

I strongly believe that it is necessary to spend time in China to understand how Chinese people
and their government see the world and to appreciate how strongly this contrasts with how

result of that I had responsibility for setting up and organising the London promotional offices in
Beijing and Shanghai. In 2008 I oversaw the Beijing Olympic torch relay in London, where I
learned from Fu Ying, ambassador to London at that time, how China saw the Olympics as an

China had received Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood from the West, but without

object lesson in the capacity of powerful lobbies to whip up such extreme hostility to China that
it completely obscured what China was trying to say.

The links I made through this period led to my time teaching at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
and lecturing elsewhere in China after 2008. In this context I must thank my friends, Liu Tongbo
and Zhao Bingbing, neither of whom have any responsibility for the contents of this book, but
the many discussions I had with each of them taught me so much about China, how it sees itself
and the rest of the world.

To conclude, I want to thank my friend Helen Shaw for her wisdom and affection. And the

surgery during the writing of this book.

Patrick, and sister, Laura, and much-missed dad; and my own little family. Particularly love and
thanks to my husband, Rod Robertson, especially for putting up with my bad temper when the

the love, laughs and good times together that make any endeavour possible.

Access brought to you by:

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.xiv) Abbreviations
Jude Woodward

A2/AD

ACFTA

ADB

ADIZ

AIIB

APEC summit

APT

ASEAN

BCIM

BCP

BJP

BRIC/BRICs

BRICS

CELAC

CFR

CIA

Page 1 of 4
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Abbreviations

CPC

CPEC

CPKI

CPPCC

CRS

CSTO

DPJ

DPP

DPRK

ECFA

EEZ

FDI

GATT

GDP

GFCF

GMD

(p.xv) IMF

IMF WEO

IPP

ISDS

ISIS

JETRO

LDP

MLPA

Page 2 of 4
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Abbreviations

MNDAA

NATO

NED

NLD

NLF

NPC

NPT

OECD

OPEC

PLA

PPPs

PRC

RAAF

RCEP

RMB

ROC

ROK

SCO

SEATO

SIPRI

TAR

THAAD

TPP

UAE

UMNO

Page 3 of 4
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Abbreviations

UNCLOS

UNGA

UNITA

USSR

VCP

WHO

WMDs

WTO

Access brought to you by:

Page 4 of 4
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Abbreviations

The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?

Jude Woodward

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

(p.xiv) Abbreviations
Jude Woodward

(p.xvi)

Map 1 China and its neighbours

Access brought to you by:

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9781526121998
Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2018
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.001.0001

Jude Woodward

DOI:10.7228/manchester/9781526121998.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

This introductory chapter outlines the US shift in foreign policy to focus on Asia and China and
the reasons for it. It considers the degree and speed with which China is catching up with the
US economically and militarily and how this is working through into increased political and
diplomatic influence. It considers how this is accelerating the long-term decline in US global
preeminence, by giving additional leverage to countries that do not want to go along with the
behests of the US, whether economically or politically. It summarises the initiatives that the US
has begun to put in place to respond to this challenge - from its shift in military focus from the

parameters of these global shifts, the chapter explains the structure of the book, and the
questions it will address.

Keywords: Pivot, China, US, Clinton, Obama, Crisis, Decline

The US has engaged upon a mighty attempt to carry through an axial strategic reorientation of
its foreign policy to confront the challenges presented by the rise of China. This has meant

Map 1

policy to focus on China. Although Obama claimed benign motives for this shift, in fact, as this
book demonstrates, its real aim was to contain and constrain China through policies echoing
those of the Cold War against the USSR. Trump has deepened this orientation.

diplomatic and economic. On the military front the majority of US naval resources were shifted
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, its bases expanded in size and number and its allies, particularly
Japan, encouraged to rearm. Diplomatically it meant an offensive to reinvigorate its Pacific

Page 1 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
US market as an alternative to trade with China. While Trump immediately abandoned this

continued. On the election stump Trump repeatedly accused China of currency manipulation,
cheating on trade, stealing jobs and threatened to impose a 45 per cent tax on Chinese imports.

Within days of his election, Trump sharpened the US stance on China by accepting a
congratulatory phone call from president Tsai of Taiwan, thereby, in terms of protocol, treating

1
This was followed by a series of hardline anti-

whose books include: ; Death by

; and The coming China wars: where they
will be fought and how they can be won.2 Dan DiMicco, (p.2) another key Trump trade advisor

woes and that it had been waging a two-decade-long trade war with the US.3 Others in the

Republican congressman Randy Forbes, an outspoken China critic, and Mike Pillsbury, author of
The hundred year marathon, which argues that China is gearing up for world domination.4 Rex

might install a naval blockade in the South China Sea to bar China from its islands in the

announced a major naval build-up in East Asia, including proposals to base a second aircraft
carrier in the South China Sea, deploy more destroyers and submarines and expand or add new

confrontation with China inaugurated by Obama. Any concerns that this could prove risky or

lacking under Obama.

However, while Trump deployed a more pugnacious tone on China, his policy confronted the

China. Trump claimed he could overcome such checks through more bullish steps than Obama
was prepared for, but that would mean embarking on a trade war with China in a situation

taking steps that risk escalation to armed confrontation with China, an outcome that neither US
elites nor the mass of its population are currently prepared for. A more aggressive policy
towards China is undoubtedly more dangerous for the world, but for any US administration to
actually prove more successful than Obama would mean surmounting the multiple obstacles to
such an outcome that are outlined in this book.

The origins of the US turn to confrontation with China, intensified by Trump and launched by
Obama, were clearly set out in a landmark article published in autumn 2011 by then US

Page 2 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
global strategic priorities.6

commitment to building a comprehensive and lasting transatlantic network of institutions and

reprioritising the allocation of its resources to the Asia-Pacific region. This policy became known

(p.3)

shift,

determining question in US long-term strategies. US engagement with China had begun in the
nineteenth century when, after the defeat of the Qing dynasty in the Opium Wars, it extracted
extraterritorial privileges for US merchants in the 1844 Treaty of Wangxia, which the Chinese

European powers, vied with Russia and Japan for influence in China. After the overthrow of the
Qing dynasty it sought favour with rising nationalist forces by supporting the Guomindang

the Truman administration was split between those who wanted to throw US weight behind the
GMD and those who believed it was already a lost cause. It backed the GMD, but had little effect

victory in 1949.

later, when the US was de facto at war with China on the Korean peninsula, its policy-makers
debated extending the war to China itself. In the Cold War decades that followed, as discussed in
Chapter 5
China and the USSR amid the widening Sino-Soviet split, initially allying with Moscow to contain
China and, from 1972, decisively locking China into its global strategies against the USSR.8 In

Beijing, but instead the protests in Tiananmen Square were crushed. But although the Bush
administration imposed sanctions most were subsequently lifted by the Clinton administration in
the face of a powerful business lobby in favour of trade with China.9 But through all these ups
and downs, at no point in this chequered history could it be claimed that the US considered
China its number-one, global strategic problem.10

foreign policy concerns.

Page 3 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
incomparable speed, according to data (p.4)

industrial production went from 61 per cent

of the US level in 2007 to 125 per cent by
2013.11
that is, excluding mining, electricity

manufacturing output was 62 per cent of

$2.7 trillion compared to $2 trillion in the

production Figure 1.1 China and US GDP in the long
rum
industrial output was 335 per cent of Source: Maddison, World Population, GDP
and Per Capita GDP. 1-2008 AD © John Ross

The long-term trends in the growth of the

Chinese and US economies are presented in Figure 1.1
been steadily gaining on the US since the 1980s.

domestic product (GDP) would have overtaken the US within a couple of decades, but following
2008 and the further slowing of growth in the US and the West, this accelerated. Between 2007
and 2015 the Chinese economy more than tripled in size, while the US economy grew by only
about 20 per cent.12
overtook that of the US in 2014 in terms of purchasing power parities (PPP).13 China does not
accept the PPP measure, but it would require a dramatic turnaround for its GDP not to overtake
1.2).14

Of course, even if PPP estimates were accurate and the Chinese economy is already larger than
the US economy, this would not mean that China had the same fundamental economic strength

($54,597).15 If expected growth rates were maintained in both economies it would be at least
2050 before China catches up on this measure. Moreover, the US enjoys other advantages, at
least for the time being: the (p.5)

Page 4 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
the US has far more advanced
infrastructure and technology; and it is

lists 39 US companies in the top 100 largest

Nonetheless the dynamic growth of the

Chinese economy is already a challenge to
US global economic supremacy.

A US-led unipolar world is already

Figure 1.2 US and China - percentage of
challenged
world GDP(at current dollar prices and
While the Chinese economy is not large or World Bank PPPs)
advanced enough to offer a comprehensive Source: Calculated from World Bank World
economic alternative to relations the major Development Indicators © John Ross
advanced economies have with the US, it
already makes a significant difference in
less developed regions of Asia or Latin America and a decisive difference in even less developed
regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. This has already begun to radically change economic
choices for developing countries.

The result was rather neatly summarised by South African Trade Minister Rob Davies during a
2010 trade mission to China; he told the Financial Times

17
The significance of this for the US is hard to overestimate.

The relative decline of the US economy meant that it has less capacity to use economic leverage
alone to bind countries across the developing world to its strategic priorities. For example, in
the first 15 years of this century Latin America saw pro-US neoliberal governments replaced by
governments that refused to toe the US line on (p.6) foreign and regional policy. At the UN
they overwhelmingly opposed the 2003 war against Iraq, blocked support for the assault on
Syria in 2013, voted to recognise a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and abstained on
or voted against condemning Russian absorption of the Crimea in 2014. While the right was able
to reclaim the offensive electorally from 2015, primarily as a result of economic problems linked
to the fall in global commodity prices, South America is far from returning to a state of supine
subordination to the US. And with fewer regional acolytes willing to give it cover and act as

The Pax Americana begins to buckle

largest war machine ever assembled in human history.18 But indeed it was the size of the US
economy, the role of the US dollar and its de facto and de jure domination of the post-1945
financial institutions agreed at Bretton Woods that were the chief instruments of US power. This
was backed by military capacity not imposed by it.

Page 5 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
never actually great enough for the scale of its ambitions.19 Very rapidly its attempts to apply its
strength, while refusing to see the limits of its capabilities, began to demonstrate fundamental
weaknesses (see Table 1.1

competiveness were increasingly reflected in growing trade and budget deficits. From 1986 it
became a net importer (p.7)

Table 1.1 US GDP as percentage of world GDP

1990 international Geary-Khamis World Bank $ World Bank Current $ Exchange
dollars1 PPPs2 Rates2
1870 8.90%
1900 15.80%
1913 18.90%
1940 20.60%
1951 27.70%
1960 24.30% 38.60%
1980 21.10% 22.50% 25.10%
2008 18.60% 19.80% 23.20%
2012 18.30% 21.90%
1.
( ) Calculated from Maddison World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP

of capital (see Figure 1.3) However, as the

US increasingly needed to suck in resources
to maintain a level of military and other
expenditures that were outstripping its

currency ensured that cash flowed in,

through persuading allies such as Japan and
the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) members to buy up US
Treasury debt.20 While this could not halt

ensured an extension of US leadership.

Figure 1.3 US financing of net fixed
investment (percentage of GDP)
promise a new lease of life for this US Source: Calculated from Bureau of Economic
leadership and for the neoliberal Analysis NIPA Tables 1.5.5 & 5.1 © John
Ross
implemented by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. But in

Page 6 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
reality the US economy remained in the doldrums and what it could offer the rest of the world
was already insufficient to buy compliance with US strategic objectives in some areas,

force from the 1990s. But force is a costly option with often unstable results, as the quagmires
born of US interventions in Iraq and Libya have shown.

partners and Japan are added into the global equation, it is no longer simply paramount and
even its most sycophantic supporters question how long the US can remain the unchallenged
leader of the capitalist world. Even its closest allies have begun to hedge against that
21

arrives at the end of US global pre-eminence, a fact of which the US is deeply aware.

(p.8) Putting an economic squeeze on China

China had been moving up the US agenda for a decade, but its arrival at the centre of attention

resources and attention of US army personnel, security advisors, diplomatic staff and foreign

has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive
22

of trade in goods surplus with the US hit an historic high of $268 billion, the issue became
unavoidable.23 On the 2008 presidential campaign trail, the Alliance of American Manufacturers,

adopted by Congress this designation opens the door to punitive tariffs on imports. Obama, like

on manipulating your currency, we are going to start shutting off access to some of our
24

But under Obama nothing came of it. On the one hand, China allowed the exchange rate of the
RMB to appreciate by around 4 per cent a year between 2005 and 2012. But chiefly, there was
no stomach for a trade war with China, which would hurt US exports to China at least as much

the type Trump promised, that wall off the US from cheap Chinese commodities would not aid
uncompetitive American companies; the space vacated would be rapidly occupied by cheap
imports from Mexico, Vietnam and elsewhere.

However, while no comprehensive punitive measures were implemented, a whole series of

piecemeal steps had been taken against China over the previous two decades. The arms
embargo imposed after Tiananmen Square in 1989 continues to restrict a whole range of high-
technology exports to China, ranging from computer components to farm equipment. Despite a

25
Similarly the 1988 Exon-Florio Amendment, which

to veto takeovers and acquisitions by Chinese companies. The major Chinese

Page 7 of 22
PRINTED FROM MANCHESTER SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.manchester.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Manchester
University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MSO for
personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 September 2020
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
chatting with him for an hour upon the science, expressed
astonishment later upon being told that Lewis was not an
astronomer by profession; the mistake was natural, for Lewis—who
had taught both the classics and mathematics at Union College—was
really proficient in mathematical astronomy. His chief practical
success was in the insurance field, where he became one of the
greatest authorities upon both the legal and mathematical aspects of
insurance; while he is now remembered principally for his almost
life-long attention to the problems of charities and corrections. When
managing editor of the Post in the early seventies, be induced E. C.
Wines to write a series of articles upon prison reform in the various
States. Later he became interested in the movement for probation
and parole, and for years was president of both the National Prison
Association and Prison Association of New York. He made an able
managing editor, though he was not wholly liked or trusted by some
members of the staff. Mr. Towse writes:

He did not, as I remember, interfere much, if at all, with

the general organization, confining himself mainly to the
supervision of the editorial page, for which he wrote with his
usual fluency, cogency, and eloquence. He produced copy
with extraordinary rapidity and neatness, seldom making
corrections of any kind. The natural alertness of his intellect
was reinforced by an immense amount of varied and precise
knowledge, and he impressed every one with a sense of his
solid and brilliant competency.

Lewis was followed by Arthur G. Sedgwick, the brother-in-law of

Charles Eliot Norton, a brilliant young writer whose promise had
been early discerned by E. L. Godkin, and who had now been
working for some years with Godkin in the office of the Nation. That
fact alone would be a sufficient evidence of his ability and character.
As W. C. Brownell wrote years later, Sedgwick’s style was “the acme
of well-bred simplicity, argumentative cogency, and as clear as a bell,
because he simply never experienced mental confusion.” The
editorial page could not have been in better hands than his, but his
connection with the Post was—at this time—brief. The fourth
managing editor was Sidney Howard Gay, who wrote an excellent
short life of Madison for the American Statesmen Series, and whose
name is linked with Bryant’s by their nominal co-authorship of a
four-volume history of the United States. As a matter of fact, Bryant
supplied only the introduction and a little early advice, Gay deserving
the whole credit for the work. It is badly proportioned, but in large
part based upon original research, and readable in style. Gay was
not merely an industrious historian, but a capable journalist, who
had been trained on the Tribune in association with Greeley, Ripley,
and Bayard Taylor.
The most notable of the other employees of the Evening Post in
the seventies was Newton F. Whiting, the financial editor, who was
followed and esteemed by the financial community as few journalists
have ever been. It was far more difficult then than now to obtain a
financial editor who could be trusted to abstain rigidly from dabbling
in Wall Street and to hold the scales even between rival commercial
interests. John Bigelow relates that in the fifties he once spoke of
this difficulty at the Press Club to Dana. “Well,” said Dana, “how
could you expect to get a man in that department who wouldn’t
speculate?”—a rejoinder that Bigelow rightly thought a little
shocking. But Whiting filled his position with an integrity that was
not only absolute, but never even questioned; and with a quickness
of intelligence, soundness of judgment, and scrupulous accuracy
that made his death in the fall of 1882 a shock to down-town New
York. Had he lived longer he would have become a figure of national
prominence. The words of a memorial pamphlet issued in his honor
were not a whit exaggerated:

His ability to unravel a difficult situation in Wall Street was

remarkable. In the event of a sudden crisis, the facts bearing
on it were immediately ascertained and lucidly exposed; and
the service thus rendered in the early editorials of the
Evening Post has often proved the means of turning a
morning of panic into an afternoon of confidence. His service
in arresting the progress of distrust on such occasions has
perhaps never been fully estimated. The widespread feeling
of regret in Wall Street on the news of his decease was in no
small degree expressive of the loss of a helmsman in whom
all had been accustomed to trust.

Becoming financial editor in 1868, it was he who condemned the

Federal Government’s interference in the “Black Friday” crisis, when
its sudden sale of $4,000,000 in gold in New York city destroyed the
plans of Jay Gould and James Fisk, jr., for cornering the gold market.
Whiting’s contention was that the importation of gold from Europe
and other points would have crushed the corner anyway, and that it
was not the Treasury’s business to intervene in a battle between rival
gangs of speculators, particularly since it had promised not to sell
gold without due notice. He believed in hard money and wrote many
of the Post’s editorials against the greenback movement. Being
totally opposed to the coinage of silver by the United States so long
as other nations declined to coöperate in establishing the double
standard upon a permanent basis, for years he daily placarded the
depreciation of the standard silver dollar at the head of the Post’s
money column—a device that greatly irritated silver men. His rugged
strength of character was well set off by a rugged body, for he was
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and an expert horseman, boxer,
and wrestler. No man in the office was better liked.
The telegraph editor under Nordhoff was Augustus Maverick,
known to all students of journalism by his volume on “Henry J.
Raymond and the New York Press”; a good newspaper man, but a
swaggering, egotistical fellow, whose Irish hot temper and tendency
to domineer over others marked him for a stormy career. He was
soon dismissed from the Post for insubordination, he made an
unfortunate marriage, and his life had a tragic end. The musical
editor, William F. Williams, was for some time also organist of St.
George’s Church. Those were the days of Mapleson and Italian
opera, when a genuinely critical review would have been thought
cruel, and Williams supplied the perfunctory and kindly notices
wanted by the managers; the distribution of tickets in return was
always generous. He was a burly, genial fellow, a veritable Count
Fosco in physical appearance, and with something of the indolence
which accorded with his flesh. When he found that J. Ranken Towse
was keenly interested in the theater, he gladly permitted Towse to
represent him upon even highly important occasions; and thus was
responsible for the beginnings of dramatic criticism of a high order in
the Post.
From one point of view, Parke Godwin will be seen to have
succeeded to editorial control of an influential organ, ably equipped
and officered, and making from $50,000 to $75,000 a year for its
owners. From another point of view, he succeeded to an
irrepressible conflict, and the Evening Post was only the arena in
which he was to fight to the bitter end with a wary, persistent, and
experienced antagonist. The struggle was between the Bryant and
Henderson families for possession of the Post; between the counting
room and the editorial room for the dictation of its policy. It had
covertly begun while Bryant was alive, and now became open.
Isaac Henderson by 1868 was in a well entrenched position. He
had one-half of the stock of the newspaper, fifty or even fifty-one
shares; he owned the building outright; his son, Isaac, jr., was in
training to succeed him as publisher; and his son-in-law, Watson R.
Sperry, an able and honorable young graduate of Yale, had become
managing editor. It was becoming plain that Henderson wished to
acquire unquestioned control, to install Sperry as editor, and make
the Evening Post a family possession. What was the character of the
man who thus seemed on the point of obtaining “Bryant’s
newspaper”?
It would be easy, from the evidence of his enemies, to take too
harsh a view of Isaac Henderson. We must remember that standards
of political and business morality were low after the Civil War. The
fairest judgment is that Henderson was simply an average product of
the days which, while they produced Peter Cooper, produced also
Jim Fisk, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould. His constant thought was of
dollars and cents. On Sundays he was a prominent member of a
Brooklyn Methodist church; on weekdays he was intent upon driving
the hardest bargain he legitimately could. He built up the Evening
Post from a weak and struggling journal into a great property, which
in one year of the war divided more than $200,000 in profits; from a
$7 a week clerk he became a millionaire. His tastes were mercenary,
and he had the sharpness of a Yankee horse-trader, but there is no
conclusive evidence that he ever did what the business man of his
time would have called a clearly dishonest act. When he undertook
to acquire the site of his building, owned by the Old Dutch Church,
he made an investigation, found that there was a two-inch strip
fronting on Broadway that the church did not own, quietly obtained
title to it, and—if we may believe the Evening Telegram of July 29,
1879—in the subsequent negotiations “profited by his discovery in
the pleasant sum of $125,000, the largest price ever paid for a lot
two inches wide.” At the time many thought such an exploit
creditable, and Henderson fitted his time.
Henderson faced his gravest charge when in January, 1864, he
was dismissed from the office of Navy Agent in New York on the
ground that he had accepted commissions upon contracts let for the
government. Gideon Welles’s Diary for the summer of 1864 contains
many references to this affair. It states that on one occasion Welles
discussed the matter with Lincoln, “who thereupon brought out a
correspondence that had taken place between himself and W. C.
Bryant. The latter averred that H. was innocent, and denounced
Savage, the principal witness against him, because arrested and
under bonds. To this the President replied that the character of
Savage before his arrest was as good as Henderson’s before he was
arrested. He stated that he knew nothing of H.’s alleged malfeasance
until brought to his notice by me, in a letter, already written, for his
removal; that he inquired of me if I was satisfied he was guilty; that
I said he was; and that he then directed, or said to me, ‘Go ahead,
let him be removed.’” It is a fact that Bryant never wavered in his
faith in his partner. The charges had their origin in the malice of
Thurlow Weed, who, angered by persistent attacks made upon him
by the Evening Post, sought out the information which he believed
to justify them, and laid them before Welles. In May, 1865, they
came to a trial in the Federal Circuit Court under Judge Nelson. The
prosecution brought forward a strong array of legal talent, while
Henderson was represented by Judge Pierrepont and Wm. M. Evarts;
the case against him utterly broke down, the judge said as much in
his charge, and without leaving their seats the jury rendered a
verdict of acquittal.
Circumstances, however, inclined many to regard the verdict as
one of “Not Proved” only. It is important to note that Parke Godwin,
then owner of one-third of the Post, stated in a letter to Bryant, July
31, 1865, his reasons for thinking the charges true:

I infer from a remark made by Mrs. Bryant, on Saturday

evening, that she still has confidence in Mr. Henderson, and
as I have not, I will tell you why. I will do so in writing,
because I have found writing less liable to mistake or
misconstruction than what is said by word of mouth.
I. My impressions are quite decided that Mr. H. has been
guilty of the malpractices charged upon him by the
government, for these reasons: (1) His own clerk (Mr. Blood)
admitted the receipt of $70,000 as commissions, and that
these were deposited by Mr. Henderson as his own, in his
own bank; (2) the prosecuting attorneys, Mr. Noyes, Judge
Bosworth, D. S. Dickinson, asserted that over $100,000, as
they are able to prove positively, were paid into his office as
commissions; Mr. Noyes told me that there could be no doubt
of this; (3) other lawyers (Mr. Marbury, for instance) assure
me that clients of theirs know of the habits of the office in
this respect, and would testify if legally called upon; (4) his
private bank account shows very large transactions, which are
said to correspond singularly with the entries in the books of
the contractors implicated with him.
II. Supposing him not guilty, the efforts he made and was
Willing to make to screen himself from prosecution, were to
say the least singular; but they were more than that; they
were of a kind no upright citizen could resort to or sanction.
He tried to tamper with the Grand Jury, he tried to buy up the
District Attorney, he “secured,” as D. D. told me, the petit
jury, and he was negotiating, at the time the trial came on, to
purchase Fox. These are things difficult to reconcile with any
supposition of the man’s integrity or honor.
III. Admitting him, however, to be wholly innocent, his
position before the public has become such that it is a source
of the most serious mortification and embarrassment to the
conductors of the Evening Post. We cannot brand a defaulter,
condemn peculation, urge official economy, or get into any
sort of controversy with other journals, without having the
charges against Henderson, which nine tenths of the public
believe to be true, flung in our faces. Not once, but two
dozen times, I have been shut up by a rejoinder of this sort.
Mr. Nordhoff has felt this, in his private intercourse as well as
in a public way, to such an extent that he has told me
peremptorily and positively that he would not continue in the
paper if Mr. Henderson retained an active part in connection
with it. Now, it seems to me that if there were any feeling of
delicacy in Mr. Henderson, any regard for the sensitiveness of
others, any care for the reputation and independence of the
paper, he would be willing to relieve us of this most injurious
and unpleasant predicament.
IV. I will add, that I am not satisfied with his management
of our business affairs; he gives them very little of his
attention, though he pretends to do so; he is largely and
constantly engaged in outside speculations, in grain,
provisions, etc.; and in one instance, as our books show, he
has given himself a fictitious credit of $7,000, which was
irregular....
Whether commissions were actually taken none can now say;
the essential fact is that the man who was to be editor of the Post
had thus early made up his mind to distrust and detest the tall, florid
publisher of the paper. Godwin actually proposed to Henderson at
this date that the latter sell out to William Dorsheimer, a well-known
lawyer, later lieutenant-governor, who was willing to buy, but
Henderson naturally refused to leave under fire. Godwin ultimately
consented to stay with the Post until Bryant had refreshed himself
from his Civil War labors by a European trip; but in 1868 he sold his
third share to Bryant and Henderson for $200,000, and gladly left
the office for the time being. Nordhoff remained longer, but with
unabated dislike for Henderson, and at the crisis of the Tweed fight,
as we have seen, thought it necessary to resign. Most of the
editorial employees of the Post disliked the publisher. He practiced a
penny-pinching economy. The building superintendent was required
to send up a daily statement of the coal used. Ill-paid workers,
coming into his office to ask for more wages, would state their case
and then note that his eyes were fixed suggestively upon the maxim,
one of many framed on the walls, “Learn to Labor and to Wait.” But
Bryant seems never to have lost his confidence in him. Every one
agrees that one of Henderson’s best traits was an almost boyish
admiration and deference for Bryant, and that he would never do
anything to offend the poet.
By the middle seventies the Civil War charges against Henderson
were largely forgotten. The danger to be apprehended from his
activities and ambition was not that the Evening Post would be
brought under dishonest management, but simply that it would be
brought under a management which thought first and always of
money-making, steered its course for the greatest patronage, and
shrank from such self-sacrificing independence as the paper had
displayed in the Bank war or the early stages of the slavery struggle.
Henderson never thought of it as a sternly impartial guide of public
opinion; he thought of it as a producer of revenue. His whole later
record as a publisher, as Bryant aged, shows this.
The seventies were the hey-day of the “reading notice,” and in
printing veiled advertisements the Post only followed nearly all other
newspapers. Washington Gladden left the Independent, the leading
religious weekly of the day, recently edited by Beecher and Tilton, in
1871, because no fewer than three departments—an Insurance
Department, a Financial Department, and a department of
“Publishers’ Notices”—were so edited and printed that, though pure
advertising at $1 a line, they appeared to a majority of readers as
editorial matter. These advertising items were frequently quoted in
other journals as utterances of the Independent. The Times as late
as 1886 was placed in an embarrassing position by divulgence of the
fact that it had received $1,200 from the Bell Telephone Company
for publishing an advertisement which many readers would take to
be an editorial. No “reading notices” ever appeared in the editorial
columns of the Post, and Whiting would instantly have resigned had
an effort been made to place one in the financial columns; but they
were discreditably frequent in the news pages. Occasionally a string
of them would emerge under the heading, “Shopping Notes”; at
Christmas they were prominently displayed on the front page as
“Holiday Notices”; and sometimes the unwary reader would
commence what looked like a poem and find it ending:
Ye who with languor droop and fade,
Or ye whom fiercer illness thrills;
Call the blest compound to your aid—
Trust to Brandreth’s precious pills.

But where the influence of the business office was seen in its
most pernicious form was in efforts to muzzle the treatment of the
news and to color editorial opinion. W. G. Boggs, now a tall, thin,
white-haired old man, was the advertising manager, with a wide and
intimate acquaintance among commercial men and politicians, and
with an endless succession of axes to grind. “He was the most
familiar representative of the publication in the editorial rooms,” says
Mr. Towse, “and manifested a special interest in the suppression of
any paragraph, or allusion, that might offend the dispensers of
political advertising, which in those days was an important source of
revenue.” Tammany gave much printing to the Post’s job office until
1871. Henderson himself almost never interfered—Mr. Sperry recalls
only one harmless instance during his managing editorship. But in
1872 a dramatic incident lit up the situation as by a bolt of lightning.
Arthur G. Sedgwick had just become managing editor, giving the
editorial page new strength. At this time there was much talk of
maladministration and graft in the Parks Department. One day
Sedgwick, chatting with J. Ranken Towse upon the subject,
remarked that although the rascality was clear, there appeared no
indication in it of connivance by the Commissioner, Van Nort. Towse
dissented, saying that the man was hand in glove with Tammany,
and must be fully cognizant of all that was going on. He suggested
that Van Nort had escaped suspicion because he was a social
favorite, superior in manners and culture to most politicians, and
because he had used his advertising patronage in a manner to
please all New York papers. To enforce his argument, he directed
Sedgwick’s attention to a number of highly suspicious transactions.
Sedgwick, he states:

saw the points promptly, and bade me write an editorial

paragraph embodying them and demanding explanations. I
told him it would be as much as my place was worth to write
such an article. He replied, somewhat hotly, that he, not I,
was responsible for the editorial page, and peremptorily told
me to write as he had directed. So I furnished the paragraph,
which, to the best of my recollection, was largely an
enumeration of undeniable facts for which Van Nort, as the
head of his department, was officially responsible, and which
he ought to be ready to explain. It was put into type and
printed as an editorial in the first edition. The paper was
scarcely off the press when the expected storm broke. Mr.
Henderson, ordinarily cold and self-restrained, passed
hurriedly through my room in a state of manifest excitement,
with an early copy of the edition in his hand. Entering the
adjoining room of Mr. Sedgwick, he denounced my unlucky
article, and demanded its instant suppression. A brief but
heated altercation followed; Henderson insisting that the
article was scandalous and libelous, and must be withdrawn,
and Sedgwick asserting his sole authority in the matter and
declaring that, so long as he was managing editor, the article
would remain as it stood. Finally Henderson withdrew, but
meanwhile the press had been stopped, and the
objectionable paragraph removed from the form. Before the
afternoon was over Sedgwick handed in his resignation and
returned to the service of the Nation.

As Mr. Towse adds, probably Bryant, now too old to be much in

the office, never knew the precise truth of this affair; and if he did,
may have thought that his interference would be bootless, and
would only intensify the irritation of the episode. But we can see
why men jocularly called Henderson “the wicked partner,” and the
Post a Spenlow and Jorkins establishment.
Parke Godwin maintained his attitude of constant suspicion
toward the paper’s publisher. Two years after the sale of his third
share of the Post, he obtained evidence which convinced him, as he
wrote Bryant, that he had been overreached by Henderson “to the
extent of one hundred thousand dollars at least.” His efforts to
institute an inquiry came to nothing, and he ended them by sending
the poet a solemn note of warning: “I regard Mr. Henderson as a far-
seeing and adroit rogue; his design from the beginning has been
and still is to get exclusive possession of the Evening Post, at much
less than its real value, which I expected to prove was much more
nearly a million than half a million dollars” (July, 1870). Early in the
seventies he took charge of the Post for various short periods, and
what he then observed increased his apprehensions, or, as
Henderson’s defenders would say, his prejudices. At the beginning of
1878 he prevailed upon Bryant to have an investigation of the
newspaper’s finances made by Judge Monell, and the result was the
reorganization already chronicled.
In brief, Judge Monell’s inquiries showed that very large sums
were owed to Bryant by Henderson, and that for a long period
Henderson’s private financial affairs, which had been subjected to a
severe strain by his erection of the new building, had not been
properly separated from those of the Evening Post. Had it not been
for these disclosures, the astute business manager would
undoubtedly have been able to step forward soon after Bryant’s
death and take control. But he could not immediately meet his debts
to the Bryant family, and was forced to consent to an arrangement
which wrecked whatever plans in that direction he may have laid.
Henderson owned fifty shares, Bryant forty-eight, Julia Bryant one,
and Judge Monell one. Under the new arrangement Henderson
pledged thirty of his shares to Bryant as security for his debts, and
twenty to Parke Godwin, who reëntered the company, while Bryant
also pledged twenty shares to Godwin. The Board of Trustees was so
constituted that the position of the Bryant family was made secure.
Henderson intended to move heaven and earth to redeem his
shares; but, wrote Judge Monell in an opinion for the family, even if
he did that “he cannot change the direction nor regain control. This
can only be done by persons holding a majority of the stock.”
Godwin when made editor was regarded as one of the ablest
and most experienced journalists in New York. Far behind him were
the youthful, enthusiastic days of the forties, when he had been an
ardent apostle of Fourierism, had applauded the Brook Farm
experiment, helping edit the organ of that community, the
Harbinger, and had advised his friend Charles A. Dana that it was
possible for a young journalist to cultivate high thinking and high
ambitions in New York on $1,000 a year. He had worked like a Trojan
then on the Post, and had made several unsuccessful ventures into
the magazine field. Far behind him were the pinched years of the
fifties when, having temporarily left the Post, he was associate editor
of the struggling Putnam’s Magazine, and gave it national reputation
by his vigorous assaults upon the slavery forces and President
Pierce. It was with a touch of bitterness that he had complained in
1860, when he rejoined the Evening Post, that the latter had never
paid him more than $50 a week. But, purchasing Bigelow’s share of
the paper at a bargain, its Civil War profits made him rich.
The editorial writing done by Godwin had not the eloquence or
finish of Bryant’s, but it showed an equal grasp of political principles,
and a better understanding of economic problems. He was a real
scholar, the author of many books, able to appeal to cultivated
audiences. His legal, literary, and historical studies gave him a
distinct advantage over the ordinary journalist of the time, not
college bred and too busy for wide reading. Young Henry Watterson
justly wrote of him in 1871, when he had temporarily left his
profession again:

It is a thousand pities that a man of Parke Godwin’s

strength of mind and strength of principle is by any chance or
cause cut off from his proper sphere of usefulness and power,
the press of New York. He has a clearer head and less gush
than Greeley, and he is hardly any lazier than Manton Marble,
though older; he writes with as much dash and point as
Hurlburt, and his knowledge of the practice of journalism is
not inferior to that of Greeley and Nordhoff. No leading writer
of the day makes more impression on the public mind than he
could make, and in losing him along with Hudson the journals
of the great metropolis are real and not apparent sufferers.
Godwin is eminently a leader-writer, and whenever he goes to
work on a newspaper the addition is sure to be felt forthwith.

Unfortunately, he was now sixty-two, and well beyond his prime,

while the defect of which Watterson speaks, his laziness, had grown
upon him. In the past he had been noted for his editorial
aggressiveness, and the most “radical” of the Post’s utterances in the
Civil War are attributable to him. It was once said that, in the
Evening Post office in the seventies, “he was a lion in a den of
Daniels.” George Cary Eggleston, who worked with him when he was
editor 1878–1881, tells us that “he knew how to say strong things in
a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the
bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilful hand. Sometimes he
brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect.”
Eggleston cites an incident which happened during Sarah
Bernhardt’s first visit to New York in 1880. A sensational clergyman,
who always denounced the theater as the gateway of hell, sent the
Evening Post a vehement protest against the space it was giving
Mme. Bernhardt, whom he characterized as a woman of immoral
character and dissolute conduct. This letter he headed, “Quite
Enough of Sara Bernhardt.” Godwin was enraged. He instantly
penned an editorial answer, which he entitled “Quite Enough of
Blank”—Blank being the clergyman’s name, used in full. Pointing out
that Mme. Bernhardt had asked for American attention solely as an
artist, that the Post had treated her only in that light, and that the
charge that she was immoral was totally without supporting
evidence anyway, he demolished the luckless cleric. But Eggleston
deplores “a certain constitutional indolence” of Godwin’s as depriving
the world of the fruits of his ripest powers, and this fault was now
evident. He went much into society, he sometimes wrote his
editorials in bed in the morning and sent them down by messenger,
and sometimes a promised editorial did not appear.
Upon all the public issues which had importance during Godwin’s
editorship the position of the Post had already been well fixed. It
had been an advocate of civil service reform early in the sixties, at a
time when even well-informed men, like Henry Adams in a
conversation with E. L. Godkin, spoke of it only as “something
Prussian.” It had urged an early resumption of specie payments, had
bitterly opposed the Bland Act of 1878 for the coinage of two to four
million dollars’ worth of silver monthly, saying that it was “a public
disgrace,” and had resisted the greenback party. It was deeply
suspicious of pensions legislation, and had applauded Grant’s veto of
the bounty bill. It had early decided that Blaine was “one of our
superfluous statesmen,” and that the sooner he was discarded, the
better. It had said in 1875 that the Granger movement promised to
leave behind it a valuable legacy of general railway legislation
“which, tested by practice, will afford us a foundation for our future
legislation on questions of transportation.” Year in and year out it
asked for a lower tariff—a tariff for revenue only—and attacked all
other forms of subsidy for private enterprises. Godwin had no
momentous decisions to make.
It was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1880 that the Post
would support the Republican ticket, for in advance of the
Republican Convention it showed itself equally hostile to Grant
(whom the Times was advocating) and to Blaine (the Tribune’s
favorite). But as soon as word came of Garfield’s nomination, it
hailed it as “a grand result,” and “a glorious escape from Grant and
Blaine.” Of Gen. Hancock, the Democratic nominee, the Post
remarked that his only recommendation was his military record, and
that his party proposed to fill the Presidential chair with the uniform
of a major-general, a sword, and a pair of spurs.
During the final months of 1879, and throughout 1880, Godwin
and Henderson met and spoke to each other with grave, cold
courtesy. They even consulted with each other. But beneath the
surface their mutual hostility never slackened, and their associates
knew they were at daggers drawn. The crisis could not long be
delayed.
CHAPTER TWENTY

THE VILLARD PURCHASE: CARL SCHURZ

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Within three years after Bryant’s death his newspaper, still

prosperous and well-edited, was suddenly sold, and placed in the
hands of the ablest triumvirate ever enlisted by an American daily.
The transfer was announced in the issue of May 25, 1881:

The Evening Post has passed under the control of Mr. Carl
Schurz, Mr. Horace White, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, who
yesterday completed the purchase of a large majority of its
stock. To-morrow Mr. Schurz will assume the editorial
direction of the journal.

It was generally known that the real buyer was Henry Villard,
but for several weeks this fact was not only concealed, but for some
reason was explicitly denied both by the Post and Mr. Villard. On July
1 there appeared a supplementary announcement:

Beginning with the next number the Nation will be issued

as the weekly edition of the New York Evening Post.
It will retain the name and have the same editorial
management as heretofore, and an increased staff of
contributors, but its contents will in the main have already
appeared in the Evening Post.
This consolidation will considerably enlarge the field and
raise the character of the Evening Post’s literary criticism and
news. It will also add to its staff of literary contributors the
very remarkable list of writers in every department with which
readers of the Nation have long been familiar.

To few interested in the Post could its sale have been a surprise.
It is true that Parke Godwin had many reasons, sentimental and
practical, for continuing his editorship and maintaining the Bryant
family’s half-ownership. He appreciated the argument which John
Bigelow addressed to him when he talked of giving both up. “Bethink
you,” wrote Bigelow, “that now and for the first time in your long
career of journalism you have absolute control of a paper of
traditional respectability and authority, in which you can say just
what you please on all subjects.” His two sons seemed interested in
making journalism their career. He had an able stall, several of
whom—as the financial editor Whiting, the literary editor Eggleston,
and the dramatic editor Towse—were unexcelled in their
departments, while two valuable additions, Robert Burch and Robert
Bridges (later editor of Scribner’s) had been made to the news room.
But Parke Godwin was sixty-five this year. He had undertaken the
writing of Bryant’s life in two volumes, and the editing of the poet’s
works in four more, while he wished to complete his history of
France, begun before the war. He believed that it would be well for
his family, after his death, to have its money invested in a less
precarious enterprise than a newspaper. Above all, his relations with
Isaac Henderson had now come to a breaking point.
An open quarrel between them in the spring of 1881 ended in a
clear assertion by Godwin of his right to control the editorial policy.
He thought for the moment of bringing Edward H. Clement, a young
Boston journalist, later well known for his editorship and
regeneration of the Transcript, to be his associate. But at this
juncture he accidentally discovered that Henderson was negotiating
for the sale of his half of the Evening Post to some prominent
capitalist, and leaped to the conclusion that the man was Jay Gould.
In this he was doubtless mistaken. But he was deeply alarmed by
the thought that the Bryant family might be associated with a
notorious gambler and manipulator, whose object would have been
to make the Post a disreputable organ of his schemes.
Almost simultaneously he learned from Carl Schurz, then in the
last months of his service as Secretary of the Interior, that he,
Horace White, and Henry Villard were searching for a daily, into
which they were prepared to put a considerable amount of capital,
and that they were negotiating with the owners of the Commercial
Advertiser, but would prefer the Evening Post. Godwin, given a
month to consider, consulted his most judicious friends—Samuel J.
Tilden, Joseph H. Choate, President Garfield, and others—who all
advised him to dispose of the paper. Choate told him that Henderson
had come to his office for legal advice as to the possibility of
somehow destroying Godwin’s control. With great reluctance, the
Bryant heirs concluded to sell. The paper was then earning $50,000
a year, and Horace White finally agreed to the payment of $450,000
for the family’s half, which carried control of the board of trustees.
For a time Henderson was disinclined to sell the other half, but with
the aid of Godwin, to whom Henderson was still in debt, he was
soon brought to yield.
How did Henry Villard come to purchase the Evening Post? He
was at this time midway in his amazing career as a railway builder.
Eight years before, when known only as a young German-American
who had proved himself one of the ablest and most daring of the
Civil War correspondents, he had become the American
representative of a Protective Committee of German bondholders at
Frankfort. This body, and a similar one which he soon joined, had
large holdings in Western railways, which Villard had been asked to
supervise. Thus launched into finance, by his ability, energy, and
determination he had soon made a large fortune. His first extensive
undertakings were in the Pacific Northwest, where another son of
the Palatinate, John Jacob Astor, had carved out a career before
him; and his success with the Oregon & California Railroad, and
Oregon Railway & Navigation Company emboldened him in 1881–83
to undertake and carry through the completion of the Northern
Pacific. His interest in his original profession, and a wish to devote
his money to some large public end, led him while busiest with this
great undertaking to conceive the plan of buying a metropolitan
paper and giving it the ablest editors procurable.
Parke Godwin, Henry Villard,
Editor-in-Chief 1878–1881. Owner 1881–1900.

Horace White, Carl Schurz,

Associate Editor 1881–1899, Editor-in-Chief 1881–1883.
Editor-in-Chief 1900–1903.

Horace White, who was connected in New York with Mr. Villard’s
business enterprises, and was ready to re-enter journalism,
undoubtedly shared in this conception. When Godwin’s half of the
Post had been purchased, and Schurz had consented to become
editor-in-chief, E. L. Godkin was approached with the offer of an
editorship and a share of the stock. He wisely refused to consider
the proposal till Henderson’s withdrawal was assured, and then
accepted it, writing Charles Eliot Norton that he did so because he
was weary of the unintermittent work involved in the conduct of the
Nation, because he knew that, being forty-nine, his vivacity and
energy must decline, and the value of the Nation suffer
proportionately, and because he wished to make more money during
the few working years left to him. The Nation, in fact, was a
struggling publication. It was bought by the proprietors of the
Evening Post, its price was reduced to $3 a year, and Wendell Phillips
Garrison, its literary editor, who was Villard’s brother-in-law, went
with it to the Evening Post to take charge of its weekly issuance.
The new owner and three new editors had long regarded the
Evening Post with high respect. Villard in 1857 had applied at its
office for work, being out of employment and almost penniless; and
upon his offering to go to India to report the Sepoy Mutiny, Bigelow
had offered him $20 for every letter he wrote from that country. His
political ideas had been identical with the Post’s—for example, he
had been a Liberal Republican in 1872, but had refused to follow
Greeley. Godkin had contributed to the Evening Post in the fifties
upon such topics as the death of the old East India Company, and
we have seen that he furnished correspondence from Paris in 1862.
Like his friend Norton, he had long acknowledged the paper’s
peculiar elevation. Horace White had contributed in the late
seventies upon the silver question. Schurz had known it as a loyal
ally in his efforts for a civil service law, sound money, and reform
within the Republican party, while it is interesting to note that under
Bryant it had said that he was the strongest man in the Senate.
Each of the three editors had his own title to distinction, and
each had won his special public following. Carl Schurz had been
constantly in the public eye since he lent valuable assistance to
Lincoln in the campaign of 1860. The German-Americans, indeed,
had known of him much earlier, for as a youth in Germany, aflame
with revolutionary zeal, his military services in the uprising of 1848,
and his subsequent romantic rescue of Gottfried Kinkel from the
fortress at Spandau, had made him famous. In 1858, writing Kinkel
from Milwaukee, he wondered a little over his steady rise in
reputation, modestly explaining it as due to American curiosity in “a
German who, as they declare, speaks English better than they do,
and also has the advantage over their native politicians of
possessing a passable knowledge of European conditions.” It was, of
course, really due to appreciation of his eloquence, versatility,
mental power, and enthusiasm for liberal principles. He has admitted
that he was inexpressibly gratified by the salvos of applause with
which he was greeted in the Chicago Convention of 1860. For his
platform advocacy of Lincoln he was rewarded with the post of
Minister to Spain, which he early resigned to buckle on his sword.
Then came his sterling service first as a brigadier-general and later
as major-general, when he fought at Chancellorsville, Chattanooga,
and Gettysburg. His investigative trip through the South in 1865 for
President Johnson, and refusal to suppress his report because it did
not support Johnson’s views, drew national attention to his
aggressive independence. Six years in the Senate, where he was
unrivaled for his discussions of finance, and four years as Secretary
of the Interior, had added to his fame as a man of broad views, high
motives, and unshakable courage. By 1881 he was recognized as,
next to Hamilton and Gallatin, our greatest foreign-born statesman.
Godkin also had a national following—a following of intellectual
liberals, especially strong in university and professional circles,
marshaled by the Nation since he founded it in 1865. He had, as
Lowell said, made himself “a Power.” In the ability with which the
weekly discussed politics and social questions, the trenchancy of its
style, and the soundness of its literary criticism, it was unapproached
by anything else in American—James Bryce thought also in British—
journalism. The masses who knew Schurz well had hardly heard of
it; but no man of cultivation who tried to keep abreast of the times
neglected it, and because it was digested by newspaper editors all
over the Union, Godkin’s influence was deep and wide. James Ford
Rhodes gives an illustration of this influence just after the Nation
became practically the weekly Evening Post. “Passing a part of the
winter of 1886 in a hotel at Thomasville, Ga., it chanced that among
the hundred or more guests there were eight or ten of us who
regularly received the Nation by post. Ordinarily it arrived in the
Friday noon train from Savannah, and when we came from our
midday dinner into the hotel office, there, in our respective boxes,
easily seen, and from their peculiar form recognized by every one,
were our copies of the Nation. Occasionally the papers missed
connections at Savannah, and our Nations did not arrive till after
supper. It used to be said by certain scoffers that if a discussion of
political questions came up in the afternoon of one of those days of
disappointment, we readers were mum; but in the late evening,
after having digested our political pabulum, we were ready to join
issue with any antagonist.”
As for Horace White, he was best known in the Middle West,
where he had entered journalism in 1854 as a reporter for the
Chicago Daily Journal. Four years later, after much activity in behalf
of the free soil movement in Kansas, during which he even removed
to the Territory himself and went through the preliminary form of
taking up a claim, he reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the
Chicago Press and Tribune. His reminiscences of those weeks of
intimate contact with Lincoln fill many pages of Herndon’s life of the
President, and constitute one of its most interesting chapters. During
the war he was Washington correspondent of the Chicago Tribune,
secretary for a time to Stanton, and organizer with A. S. Hill and
Henry Villard of a news agency in competition with the Associated
Press. After it, for nearly a decade, he was editor and one of the
principal proprietors of the Tribune, which under him was far more
liberal than it has ever been since. But he was valuable to the
Evening Post chiefly because he had devoted himself for years to
study of the theory of banking and finance, on which his articles and
pamphlets had already made him a recognized authority.
It was thus an editorship of “all the talents” that was installed in
the Evening Post just before Garfield was shot. Schurz was specially
equipped to discuss politics, the range of problems he had met while
Secretary of the Interior, and German affairs; White was perhaps the
best writer available on the tariff, railways, silver question, and
banking; while Godkin held an unrivaled pen for general social and
political topics. By birth they were German, American, and British,
but Schurz and Godkin were really cosmopolites, citizens of the
world. Their practical experience had covered a surprising range. We
are likely to forget, for example, that Schurz had once made a living
by teaching German in London, and had farmed in Wisconsin, while
Godkin had been a war correspondent in the Crimea, and admitted
to the New York bar. In their fundamental idealism the three men
were wholly alike. Schurz’s political record and Godkin’s Nation were
monuments to it. They were one in wishing to make the Post the
champion of sound money, a low tariff, civil service reform, clean
and independent politics, and international peace. Henry Villard with
rare generosity assumed financial responsibility for the paper, but
made the editors wholly independent by placing it in the hands of
three trustees—Ex-Gov. Bristow, Ex-Commissioner David A. Wells,
and Horace White.

II
The selection of Schurz to be editor-in-chief was more than a
tribute to his station as a public man. Of the three, he had the most
varied journalistic experience. As a young man in Germany he had
helped Kinkel edit the Bonner Zeitung. After the Civil War he became
head of the Washington Bureau of the New York Tribune, and took
an instant liking both to journalism and the men engaged in it—in
his reminiscences he draws a sharp contrast between their high
principles and the low sense of honor among Washington
officeholders. He soon accepted the editorship of the Detroit Post, a
new journal, urged upon him by Senator Zechariah Chandler, and in
1867 became editor and part owner of the St. Louis Westliche Post,
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.