A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars by D. L. LeMahieu

Abstract

170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE is that a restricted economic market and lack of financial support, not unfavorable laws or the lack of ingenuity, handicapped the British electrical industry in the late 19th century. The weak British economy thus constrained Ferranti’s inventive drive, which would have thrived in Germany or the United States. Paradoxically, Wilson also argues that much of the success which the Ferranti firm enjoyed before World War I was due to its executives’ reining in Ferranti’s inventive­ ness (e.g., persuading him to stop improving machines so they could be shipped out the door). Wilson admires Ferranti’s technical achieve­ ments and credits his technically led strategy for the firm’s success after World War I. But the real heroes of the book—published in a business history series—are the professional managers of the Ferranti company who introduced modern business methods that saved the firm—during its checkered history of fires and commercial failures— from the inept business decisions of its founder. Although better than the biography published by Ferranti’s daugh­ ter in the 1930s and more comprehensive than the booklet published by the London Science Museum, Wilson’s book is disappointing in many ways. Technical matters are described poorly, an unfortunate quality in a book that criticizes Hughes and others for their appraisal of Ferranti’s technical achievements. Wilson is not convincing on this score or in his attempt to explain the “failure” of British entrepre­ neurship in this period. Although based on research in the Ferranti Archives, the book does not cite this material, referring readers, instead, to the author’s 1980 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Manchester. Wilson uses the archives to good advantage to chart the business affairs of the company over fifty years, but he glosses over important, controversial matters—like Ferranti’s resignation as chief engineer of Deptford in 1891, his removal from the Ferranti firm in 1903, and his “rehabilitation” in 1914. A better analysis of these key events would have given us a clearer understanding of the obstacles that innovative engineer-entrepreneurs faced in the British electrical industry prior to World War I. Ronald R. Kline Dr. Kline is assistant professor of history of technology in the School of Electrical Engineering and the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technol­ ogy at Cornell University. A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars. By D. L. LeMahieu. New York: Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press), 1988. Pp. xi + 396; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $68.00. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the rapid development of new communications technologies—radio, audio recording, cinema, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 171 and new printing techniques—gave rise to novel forms of mass culture. In A Culture for Democracy, D. L. LeMahieu examines the process of this development from 1890 to 1940. He suggests that the period was characterized by the opposition of “elites” (his term) to a culture shaped by the dictates of the marketplace. This tension was eventually resolved in the convergence of agendas and the diminish­ ing importance of elite influence on the media. In keeping with the thesis, the book is divided into two parts. The first section, “The Rise of Modern Commercial Culture, 1890-1930,” examines two themes. First, the relationship between supply and demand in commercialized mass media is explored. Using the exam­ ple of the BBC, LeMahieu details the tension between popular demand and the sense on the part of the BBC’s directors of their responsibility to uphold cultural standards and to give listeners what was perceived to be “good for them.” Second, LeMahieu endeavors to show how new technologies adapted to and were adapted by an evolving culture. In one of the few sections that endeavors to treat technology as other than a “black box,” it is suggested that the limited length of early gramophone records gave rise to the three-minute popular song while concurrently restricting the successful recording of symphonies and other longer works. The second part of the book begins with a review of some of the critiques of commercial culture by intellectuals during...