CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOURCES by Dr. Ray Miles, McNeese State University
Historians often have at their disposal in the writing of history a wide of array of source materials. These sources fall broadly into the categories “primary” and “secondary.” Once sources are located, the historian must subject them to critical analysis to determine their accuracy and usefulness.
Why must we do this? British historian Herbert Butterfield (The Whig Interpretation of History) once wrote:
[The historian]…is neither judge nor jury; he is in the position of a man called upon to give evidence; and even so he may abuse his office and he requires the closest cross-examination, for he is one of those >expert witnesses= who persist in offering opinions concealed within their evidence. Perhaps all history books hold a danger for those who do not know a great deal of history already. In any case, it is never safe to forget the truth which really underlies historical research: the truth that all history perpetually requires to be corrected by more history….History is all things to all men. She is at the service of good causes and bad. In other words she is a harlot and a hireling, and for this reason she best serves those who suspect her most.
To minimize the dangers of such pitfalls, historians, and those who Ado history,@ must subject all evidence to critical analysis. There are two types of criticism= external and internal.
External criticism is the process of determining the authenticity of the document. Is it what it is purported to be? Who is the author? Can you identify the genre of the document or writing, i.e., is it a diary, private letter, public letter, speech, business letter, government document, etc.?
Internal criticism is the process of determining the value and accuracy of the information contained in the document. In order to do this, the historian must pose several questions: What was the author’s intent? Why was this written? For whom was it written? What role did the author have in the event? Is this hearsay? If so, how reliable is it? What sorts of bias might the author have? Can the factual evidence be corroborated by other sources?
Depending on the answers to the questions posed above, the historian must then determine to what extent the source is actually useful to the research project at hand. How can this evidence be used? What questions can be asked of the source in pursuing the topic under consideration? Can the evidence be used in some creative way to reach conclusions other than those intended by the author? Does the evidence provide leads that might suggest other lines of inquiry?
A practical exercise in critical analysis:
Many years ago I had the good fortune to engage in a research project that eventually led to my publication of King of the Wildcatters: The Life and Times of Tom Slick, 1883-1930,College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996. One of the difficult aspects of writing this monograph was that the subject, Tom Slick, left few personal materials upon which to learn anything of his early life. He was a shy and taciturn man. Newspapers, oil trade journals, court records, and other sources provided a fair amount of information on his business activities; however, his early life remained largely unknown. As I conducted research I stumbled across a speech that his son, Tom, Jr., delivered in 1952 at the Cushing Petroleum Festival to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the discovery of the Cushing oil field in northeasternOklahoma. Slick’s discovery of this field in 1912 was a pivotal moment in his life and career. The speech was printed as a pamphlet and the copy I found was in the Cushing Public Library. The full title of the pamphlet is “Some Comments on The Life of Tom Slick, Sr. By His Son.” The portion of greatest interest for my research related enticing information on Slick’s childhood and adolescent years.
“My father started life as a poor boy back in 1883 in Clarion,Pennsylvania, right in the region where the oil industry was born. His father [Johnson M. Slick] before him had some connection with the early days of the oil industry as a drilling contractor, but he died in South America when my father was but eleven years old, leaving him as the oldest of three children, and a widowed wife who knew nothing of earning a living.
“My father left school and was able from that age on to support his family by such devices as selling newspapers and stove polish, buying chickens wholesale from the farmers, dressing them and then selling them retail to customers.
“By the time he was eighteen, he went to work as a ‘roustabout’ in the oil fields in West Virginia, and by the time he was twenty, he moved out to the very early days of the oil industry in Oklahoma—having been promoted, by that time, to cable tool dresser.
External criticism: The document was fairly easy to authenticate from newspaper accounts that contained quotes of some of the same information as related in the speech, plus the document was donated by someone who attended the event.
Internal criticism: This proved to be far more problematic….Some cursory genealogical information supplied by the family listed Johnson Slick’s death as 1912. This meant that Tom, born in 1883, could not have been eleven years old; instead he was twenty-nine years old. Also, Tom was the middle child of three, not the oldest. After obtaining an official copy of Johnson Slick’s death certificate I learned that he died on April 16, 1912 inPittsburgh,PA, not inSouth America. Interestingly, Tom Slick provided his father’s personal information contained on the death certificate, and he had signed it!
As for the information in the speech about Slick’s early years as a roustabout (common oilfield laborer) and his promotion to cable tool dresser (someone who prepares drilling tools for use in the well), Tom Slick himself gave the most direct refutation. In 1929, after many years of refusing to provide any personal information to the media, he finally gave an interview to a newspaper reporter.
Excerpt from: “Why Tom Slick, Who ‘Sold Out’ for 35 Million Dollars in Cash, Cannot Retire From Business” by A.B. MacDonald in the Kansas City Star, May 5, 1929.
“’The newspapers have printed many things about me,’ said Slick. ‘They have said that when I was struggling along in the early days I was so poor I was often hungry, and that I was a mule driver and tool dresser and so on. I was poor enough, God knows, but I was never starving. I always had sense enough to rustle a meal,’ and he laughed.
“’I never drove a mule in my life, nor dressed a drill. I would have done those things if I had had to, but I just didn’t. I am not ashamed of work. I’ve done my share of it. My whole life has been work, work, work, the hardest kind of work, but not manual labor, except six months in an oil supply store in Chanute, Kan., just after I came west from Clarion, Pa., where I was born among the oil derricks….’
by Dr. Ray Miles, McNeese State University
Critical analysis of the source, therefore, revealed that with these pieces of evidence in direct contradiction to the personal information related in the speech, it could not be used. As tempting as it may have been to cite its detail about Slick’s youthful entrepreneurial and enterprising spirit, the source was simply too flawed to use.
In the final analysis, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the speech is how it could contain information that was so inaccurate. Did Tom Sr. tell the fanciful story to his son? In the style of Horatio Alger, did Tom Jr. fabricate the story to make his father seem like a rags-to-riches hero? The answers to these questions must remain a mystery.