In Progressives at War, Douglas Craig provides a useful and balanced account of two men whose importance to American politics from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression has long deserved more attention. The last major works on William G. McAdoo (1863–1941), Treasury Secretary and son-in-law to Woodrow Wilson, and Newton D. Baker (1871–1937), Wilson's Secretary of War from 1916 and the president's personal and political favorite, appeared in 1973 and 1966.Footnote ¹ Craig's dual biography demonstrates the need to integrate both more deeply into the political-historical narrative. It also extends some recent trends in the historiography of the Progressive Era. Readers interested in liberal resistance to the New Deal, the social history of the legal profession, and relations among American business and reform interests will find Craig's book particularly valuable.

Craig emphasizes five main purposes. The book is “a contribution to our understanding of U.S. wartime policy between 1914 and 1918.” Second, Craig challenges the “presidential synthesis” that “has distorted our perspective on the other political institutions that make up American government,” especially the cabinet (4). Third, he is determined to impress on readers the complex reality of what his subjects called “progressivism.” Craig seeks to reinforce the work of historians such as Nancy Cohen, Robert Kelley, and Daniel Rodgers (6) who emphasize the kaleidescopic character of progressivism. Fourth, Craig joins the ranks of other historians who have “challenged the old and rigid segmentation of the early twentieth century into progressive and ‘normalcy’ eras” (7). Finally, Craig's study focuses “not only on two individuals but on the political and economic institutions they created or served” (8).

Baker comes out the more admirable, if less interesting, character: confident and ambitious but also reflective, loyal, and humble. Never enchanted by wealth or prestige, he nevertheless built a thriving law practice and a record of public service that kept his family well-heeled and his mailbox a target of corporate boards, civic groups, public commissions, and political campaigns. McAdoo, by contrast, had confidence, energy, and charisma matched only by his vanity, shortsightedness, and capacity to repel peers. Craig opens a window onto his remarkable rise from obscurity to financial and then political success and influence—as well as his eventual fall from both heights. McAdoo was both obsessed with maintaining the lifestyle of an aristocrat and fixated on the political evils of plutocracy. In short, he was something of an American type.

Craig advances several of his goals. He does not diminish the centrality of Wilson's presidency to twentieth-century American political development. He does, however, demonstrate the degree to which contemporaries recognized Wilson's cabinet as instrumental to policy and implementation—and rightly so. McAdoo's role in the creation of the Federal Reserve, the most significant initiative of Wilson's first term, was ubiquitous (though Craig devotes too little attention to the significance of McAdoo's contributions to its structure and operation under his Reserve Board chairmanship). Especially after 1914, when Wilson turned his attention to international diplomacy, domestic policy making was left to the cabinet. This pattern continued with the U.S. entry into World War I, when McAdoo assumed control of the nation's railroads and improved both the efficiency of interstate transport and the economic lot of millions of rail workers, though at significant cost to taxpayers. McAdoo exercised his influence despite Wilson's feelings toward the man who became his son-in-law. “Mac” was never close to Wilson, who thought him impulsive and narcissistic and reacted to his resignation after the Armistice with relief.

Among Craig's most impressive achievements is his thorough account of Baker's role in America's economic and military mobilization before and during the war. Long criticized as the naive, vacillating manager of a slow and wasteful operation, Baker emerges in Craig's account as the judicious but effective linchpin of an unprecedentedly complex social, political, economic, military, and diplomatic undertaking. Craig admits Baker “was slow to grasp the full implications of total war,” but notes his willingness to alter course and embrace more radical measures in response to the deficiencies of production and distribution that dogged the early war effort (184). Baker transformed a force of 100,000 career soldiers into a millions-strong army of well-fed, well-equipped recruits who emerged from training healthier and more literate, statistically speaking, than the general population (191). Craig judiciously weighs the logistical inefficiencies of Baker's Council of National Defense, as well as his resistance to the centralizing agenda of Bernard Baruch's War Industries Board, against his principled suspicion of government overreach and the political necessity of securing cooperation from corporations, workers, farmers, and citizens. Finally, Baker's willingness to take the diplomatic heat for loyal generals such as John Pershing and Tasker Bliss, along with his firm responses to the insubordinate behavior of General Leonard Wood, preserved latitude for his top field commanders while maintaining civilian control.

Craig demonstrates the concrete achievements and legacies of Wilson's two most powerful cabinet members. He is also persuasive regarding the existence and persistence of “progressivism.” Despite their differences, both of Craig's subjects viewed themselves as progressives, and were viewed similarly by the public for most of their careers. McAdoo embodied the progressive as corporate consolidator, labor champion, woman-suffrage advocate, strong federalist, racist social engineer, and opportunistic populist. Baker embraced localist, anti-monopolist, immigrant-friendly, and moderately unionist strains of progressivism, while exhibiting the distrust of labor radicalism and apathy toward national problems of race and gender that characterized many reformers. Both adopted the label because they had a habit of viewing government, in McAdoo's words, as “a flexible instrument in the hands of the people” (66, 88). McAdoo's and Baker's commitments to democratic “experiment,” as well as their continuing importance in American public life throughout the 1920s and early 1930s reveal how vibrant the progressive challenge remained despite the national electoral success of conservatives.

Progressives at War will disappoint readers expecting to learn much else new about American political culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Any transformations to the Treasury, the War Department, the cabinet, or the Democratic Party that McAdoo and Baker effected are for the most part implied rather than analyzed. More disappointing is Craig's lack of attention to “political culture” as most conceive it—namely, the political opinions and activities of American citizens. Was McAdoo deluded in thinking that aggressively regulatory and redistributive platforms could attract voters throughout the 1920s and early 1930s? If so, why was he seen by so many Democratic insiders as so obvious a presidential contender? Even more striking is Baker's persistent relevance to national politics. Baker was a leader of the nation's internationalist movement who remained a conspicuous advocate of U.S. cooperation with the League of Nations until his death in 1937. Yet he was among the favorites for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. How did a man who made League membership, cancellation of war debts, and World-Court adhesion his major causes kindle such elite enthusiasm when his ideas were anathema to most Americans?

There are a few other disappointments in this otherwise satisfying book. As research problems, Baker and McAdoo are treated somewhat too similarly. A politician and entrepreneur at heart, one gets the sense that McAdoo's correspondence with constituents, boosters, and investors provide the clear window into his mind. Baker, however, was the more pensive, reflective, intellectual character. More attention to the content of his speeches, policy memoranda, legal briefs—in short, his intellectual history—would have been appreciated. More attention should have been paid to his reading habits and marginalia, especially since (as Craig's notes inform us) much of this work was done decades ago in Willis Thornton's Newton D. Baker and His Books (1954).Footnote ² Additionally, Wilson might have played a bigger role in the chapters devoted to his administration. Spatial and thematic constraints preclude original research on Wilson, but Craig's grasp of the historiography could be better: to reference Freud and Bullitt's Thomas Woodrow Wilson (76) as anything more than a historiographical artifact is beneath the general standard of Craig's scholarship.Footnote ³ There are also several editing lapses that the press should have caught.

Some might struggle with the structure of the book: Craig declined to devote individual chapters to each figure, choosing instead to present chronologically—and thematically—defined essays that, for the most part, deftly interlace their lives. This seems forced at times. Yet Craig's best chapters, on Baker's municipal progressivism versus McAdoo's corporate version, on the complexities of wartime mobilization, and on the contingencies of Franklin Roosevelt's nomination for president in 1932, are crisply paced and informative reads.

Craig has taught this reviewer much of interest and value regarding two giant and unstudied figures in American politics. Perhaps most important, he has shown that his should not be the last word on either.