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The Republican & Democratic National Conventions and the War  in Europe, 1940

5/22/2015

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        Source: Lynne Olson. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and
                     America's Fight Over World War II, 1939 - 1941 (2013)
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      Wendell Willkie's rise to political prominence in 1940 was swift and largely unexpected. He was an Internationalist, which meant that he strongly favored direct U.S. assistance to a beleaguered Great Britain. In essence, the Fall of France increased the likelihood that Willkie could be nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate.
     At the dawn of the Great Depression, Willkie was not a politician, he was in charge of the largest Southern Electric Utility, Commonwealth & Southern; and the Tennessee Valley Authority entered his landscape. Commonwealth & Southern was "crowded out" of the utility marketplace by the federal government, and Willkie went on the attack against the New Deal, and FDR (despite being "crowded out", Willkie came out a winner, in that the government purchased Commonwealth & Southern for $78.6m). Like Lincoln in 1858, Willkie became a nationally known-and-respected political figure as a result of a high-profile debate. He became a voice for moderate middle class Americans, especially businessmen that believed the federal government had become too involved in their affairs.

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     Willkie, a native from Indiana, was a Democrat until 1939. Willkie changed his political party affiliation in part to falling in love with NYC (and with Irita Van Doren, a prominent book editor for the New York Herald Tribune; although he was married), but mostly due to events that unfolded in the War in Europe. The Herald formally endorsed Willkie for the Republican nomination over Thomas Dewey, who most everyone believed had already secured the nomination. 
    Willkie's NYC connections insured that he was introduced to many more East Coast Elites that could help him in his quest for the nomination. Magazine articles in Fortune magazine that profiled Willkie, as well as the nightmarish War in Europe, led to petition drives on Willkie's behalf. Those petition drives increased Willkie's profile and popularity in the rest of the nation. When Henry Luce (pictured), the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, committed to Willkie, those magazines shifted to flat-out advocacy for his nomination. Willkie had become so popular in the Midwest that he embarked on a public speaking tour; despite the increased popularity and support, Willkie was still a long shot to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in June, 1940.

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     The gavel opened the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia on 24 June, 1940, one week after the Fall of France. Willkie had called for immediate U.S. aid to Britain, oftentimes publicly stating that he was in full agreement with FDR. To Republican "Old Guard" Isolationists, Willkie was a vision from political hell. And since the "Old Guard" ran the party machinery, the battle for the nomination appeared to be between the Isolationist candidates Thomas Dewey (NY) or Robert A. Taft (OH; President Taft's oldest son).
     Willkie was formally nominated on 26 June, 1940; the chants from the delegates on the floor of "We Want Willkie" became deafening. The convention became a showdown between Isolationists and Internationalists as to the role the U.S. should play in the War in Europe. The results of the first ballot were: Dewey 360, Taft 189, and Willkie 105; Dewey didn't have the necessary majority. As successive ballots were conducted, Willkie gained more-and-more delegates. After eight hours of balloting, the "Miracle in Philadelphia" occurred at 1:15 am when Willkie secured the nomination over the efforts of the party's "Old Guard" to block his victory. The Republican platform illustrated the ideological divide, in that it was an uneasy compromise between Isolationist and Internationalist points-of-view concerning America's role in European War.
     The British Ambassador to the U.S., Phillip Kerr (a.k.a. Lord Lothian; who was VERY popular in America), cabled Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Britain was guaranteed to have a "friendly" U.S. President, no matter the result in November. 

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     Hitler's invasion of Western Europe helped the Democrats far more than the Republicans. FDR had been losing serious political momentum during his disastrous second term in office, but Hitler brought FDR back to popularity within the party (the desire for a Commander-in-Chief became paramount). To be even more clear, FDR was politically dead-in-the-water before Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, 1939: Democratic Party leaders were not even planning on nominating the two-term President at the following year's convention . . . Hitler's actions on Europe saved FDR's political fortunes.
     FDR made up his mind to pursue a third term just before France fell to the Nazis in June, 1940. FDR (in a maneuver that would have made Jefferson proud), refused to promote himself for the Democratic nomination; others would have to do so. 
     The Democratic National Convention started on 15 July, 1940, in Chicago . . . and it started out in listless fashion - there wasn't any "We Want FDR" chants from the floor. FDR's powerful supporters started the chant in support of FDR after the nominations were made with the infamous "Sewer Call" (the man in charge of building maintenance was below the floor, with a microphone and a deep sonorous voice; he started the "We Want FDR" chant). FDR wanted to be nominated by acclamation, but a roll call vote took place; FDR easily won the nomination. The delegates felt that they had been manipulated, but they believed that at least they would be able to select FDR's Vice-Presidential candidate; little did they know that FDR was all-in on his SecAg, Henry Wallace (to FDR's right).

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      FDR absolutely insisted that his Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, be the Vice-Presidential nominee (he wanted a VP 100% loyal to the New Deal); to the vast majority of delegates, Wallace was viewed as not only far too liberal, but also not qualified. FDR told his most trusted advisor, Harry Hopkins, that if the convention didn't select Wallace as the VP candidate, he would not run for President. 
     The convention was in an uproar over what delegates considered to be flat-out tyrannical behavior by FDR. The only reason why Wallace was selected as the VP candidate was that Eleanor Roosevelt agreed to speak, not only on behalf of Wallace, but also on behalf of party unity. Wallace narrowly won the VP nomination, but was not allowed to give his acceptance speech, due to fears of a convention revolt. The Democratic National Convention wasn't a coronation for FDR, it was a complete debacle. Polls showed that the Republicans were even with the Democrats by August, 1940.
     After the Democratic Convention, Willkie was approached by FDR's representatives, asking him to not attack the pending "Destroyers for Bases" deal with Britain, and Willkie agreed. The deal was the largest and most significant decision yet to aid Great Britain against the Nazis. On 3 September, 1940, FDR announced the "Destroyers for Bases" deal on one of his "Fireside Chats"; as often occurred after a major decision, FDR expected to face defeat. The reality was that the "Destroyers for Bases" deal increased FDR's popularity a great deal, and cost Willkie, who had promised to stay silent.

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     The Good News: Britain received 50 destroyers from the U.S. The Bad News: those destroyers were in terrible condition. Despite their poor condition, they proved to be invaluable to Britain's naval strategies of securing their home island. Another result of the deal with Britain was that a shift had occurred in US public opinion: a majority favored overt, direct military assistance to Great Britain.
     FDR would now be able to push for much more, especially with what would be known as the Lend-Lease Act. During the Battle for Britain 
in 1940, U.S. Internationalist media focused on the courage and resilience of the British people to heavy Nazi bombing raids. Life magazine chronicled that experience: the Life magazine cover to the left (an injured British child in a hospital with a stuffed animal) touched the hearts of millions of Americans.

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     After the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the journalist that did the most to influence public opinion to provide more direct assistance to Britain was  Edward R. Murrow (pictured in CBS HQ in London). His broadcasts from London ("This is London" was his trademark sign-in) was required listening for millions. Morrow was unapologetic in his support for Britain, and in his belief that the Nazis were a threat to not only Europe, but to the U.S. 
     Adolf Hitler gave America someone to hate, and Britain provided something for Americans to love. By October, during the heat of the general campaign in the Election of 1940, most wanted FDR and the Government to provide direct military support for Britain. But even after defeating Wendell Willkie in November, FDR remained unwilling to provide leadership in that direction . . .
    (Below: newsreel footage chronicling Willkie's upset win in Philadelphia in 1940)

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Charles Lindbergh Goes to Europe (1935 - 1939)

5/22/2015

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         Source: Lynne Olson. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and
                    America's Fight Over World War II, 1939 - 1941 (2013)
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     13 June, 1927: 75% of New York City's population
(four million) showed up for the ticker-tape parade honoring Charles Lindbergh for his miraculous solo flight across the Atlantic. Time Magazine also honored Lindbergh, naming him their first "Man of the Year". Lindbergh toured all 48 states in his beloved "Spirit of St. Louis"; 30 million people were able to see the "Lone Eagle". Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh became a technology advisor to Pan Am and TWA; he was instrumental in creating the first modern airports.
     Try as he might, Lindbergh was unable to reclaim his treasured privacy, and restore equilibrium to his life. Wherever he went, he was besieged by the press and adoring citizens. A loner all his life, Lindbergh was unprepared for the trappings of immense fame. As he kept his distance, the public became more hysterical, demanding to see and know more about "Lucky Lindy". After the kidnapping/murder of his first-born son, 2 year-old Charles Jr., a "Paparazzi Attack" occurred on his 2nd-born; it was not too much to state that those events psychologically scarred Lindbergh. As a result, Lindbergh decided to take his family to Europe in December, 1935, in order to escape the insanity that was their life in America. 

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     From 1936 to 1938, Charles Lindbergh, and his almost-as-famous wife, Anne Morrow, lived in England in a secluded estate called "Long Barn" (a friend of the Morrow family owned the estate). There, they were left alone by British citizens and the media. Then, in 1938, the Lindberghs moved to the tiny island of Illiec, off the coast of Brittany (France). That location was even more remote, which suited Lindbergh just fine.

    (Below: the British estate nicknamed "Long Barn")

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    Though very thankful for their hospitality, he was exasperated by what he perceived to be British mediocrity and complacency. However, Lindbergh had formed his conclusions about Britain (and eventually Nazi Germany) without any connection with common citizens; in effect, he was clueless about what was really going on in England. Most of the British upper-class with which the Lindberghs interacted were pro-Nazi and pro-Appeasement. Lindbergh refused to socialize / associate with Winston Churchill, who was the leading anti-Nazi political figure in Britain. 
 (Below: Hermann Goering giving the Lindberghs a tour of a Nazi government building)
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      In Europe, Lindbergh was asked by the British and French, governments to inspect their aircraft factories and aviation facilities. In 1936, Lindbergh was invited to inspect the German Luftwaffe (Air Force), and to Hermann Goering's great delight, Lindbergh accepted. Lindbergh was shown the latest planes and factories, and witnessed demonstrations of precision bombing. He concluded that Nazi Germany was far ahead of Britain and France in every significant aviation category. Goering used Lindbergh to promote Nazi airpower, and to try and delay any resistance to Nazi expansion in Europe. 
A major result of his visit to Nazi Germany in 1936 was that Lindbergh became convinced that America was on its descent, and that Germany was in its ascendency.
     Lindbergh publicly stated that in quantity and quality, no nation(s) could challenge Nazi airpower. But Lindbergh's conclusion was flawed, in that the vaunted Luftwaffe, at that point, was only designed to lead/support troops, not for long-range bombing raids.
Lindbergh's omission of that fact meant that Britain, especially London, was very fearful of bombing runs by Nazi Germany. By publicly bragging about Nazi airpower, Lindbergh was partially responsible for the Appeasement in Munich in 1938. 
               (Below: Lindbergh at a party in Berlin hosted by the Nazis)
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     Lindbergh was (willingly?) used as a tool by the Nazi Government, of whom he had developed a personal & political affinity. Lindbergh preferred the spirit and attitude of Germany far more than that of Britain (or France). And, the Nazis protected his privacy to a far greater extent than the British or French, but ironically, Lindbergh's freedom in Germany came at the expense of the freedom of German citizens . . . who in their right mind would crash the estate of an official guest of Hitler and Goering?
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        In Germany, the Lindberghs only saw what the Nazis wanted them to see; all their interactions were with government or military men, and neither Charles or Anne spoke German. They were also shielded from the horrors of the pogroms against Jews; when informed of Kristallnacht, Lindbergh wondered why the Nazis could be so "silly". Lindbergh
was so far removed from the reality of life in Nazi Germany, that he wasn't outraged by the excesses and brutality of the Nazi regime. 
     In the U.S., news of Lindbergh's visits to Nazi Germany had started to erode his popularity. Erosion of popularity transformed to outright attacks against Lindbergh in the U.S. media when Goering presented Lindbergh with a medal on behalf of the Nazi Government. It was a surprise medal ceremony, and while Lindbergh was flabbergasted (his words), he took the honor in stride. Anne saw the medal much differently, referring to it as "The Albatross", which it would definitely become. The medal ceremony occurred just days before Kristallnacht, and that incidental timing increased the level of outrage in America; not since WW I had there been such anti-German fervor in America. After Kristallnacht, FDR actually recalled the US Ambassador from Berlin.

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      After the Nazi medal ceremony, Lindbergh's open contempt of the U.S. media came back to haunt him. The media felt totally entitled to go after his character and reputation, inventing "facts" to suit their allegations. An example: the media claimed that Lindbergh wore the medal all evening after Goering awarding it to him (Lindbergh never once wore the medal). Lindbergh refused to give his side of the story, despite being advised to do so by his wife and friends. 
     Lindbergh's political myopia explained why he didn't think the thunderstorm that was centered around him was very intense. From 1938-on, the "Medal Incident" was the instrument the media used to bludgeon Lindbergh. And then the federal government started to publicly attack Lindbergh, with FDR's blessing and encouragement. The government figure that ran point attacking Lindbergh was Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (pictured); in effect, he was FDR's pit bull against Lindbergh. Ickes was already on the warpath against Hitler, so it wasn't too much of a leap at all, politically or personally, for him to start savaging Lindbergh. 
     The Lindberghs were informed by friends and acquaintances that he was being booed in American theaters when he appeared in newsreels. Anne was greatly shaken by the attacks on her husband; she believed that the media and the government were being beyond-unfair.

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     Lindbergh seemed to be totally unperturbed by the "scurrilous hoo-haw" that surrounded him. In 1939, just a few months after the "Medal Incident", he decided to go back to the U.S., giving up their privacy in exchange for the maelstrom of celebrity and political controversy in America. His decision to return to the U.S. occurred immediately after Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia on 15 March, 1939. 
     As a result, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the "Line in the Sand": if Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Britain would declare war (France was in agreement). Europe was on the brink of another major war when Lindbergh came back to America. Upon his return, Lindbergh pressed for American neutrality in case of a European War; he believed that America should be the protector of Western Civilization, and the best way to accomplish that goal (in his opinion) was to avoid involvement in the upcoming War in Europe. Not long after Lindbergh's return to the U.S., President Franklin Roosevelt set his sights on trying to destroy the influence and reputation of the most prominent Isolationist in the nation . . . In less than four years, Charles Lindbergh went from the most famous man in America, to the most famous-and-controversial man in America . . . by 1938, that was a title that he shared with FDR . . . 

     Here is a Boston Globe Book Review of Lynne Olson's Those Angry Days
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     An Overview of the Most Divisive Years of the 20th Century

5/20/2015

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     Source: Lynne Olson. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and
               America's Fight Over World War II, 1939 - 1941 (2013)
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     President Franklin Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh were alike not only in terms of popularity; they were also very strong-willed and stubborn . . . both viewed themselves as the "Lord of All They Surveyed". Both felt endowed with a special purpose, and were slow (sometimes unable) to acknowledge mistakes, and they both hated criticism. FDR and Lindbergh were both self-absorbed and emotionally detached . . . and they were absolute control freaks. In short, two competing egomaniacs were leading actors in the American conflict over the degree of U.S. involvement in the war in Europe between 1 September, 1939, and 7 December, 1941 . . . it proved to be the most divisive years in American History during the 20th Century.

     The first clash between FDR and Lindbergh was in 1934, over the government scandal over Air Mail. FDR ordered the US Army Air Corps to deliver the mail instead of the airlines, and Lindbergh publicly "called him out" in the media. FDR was more than embarrassed when Lindbergh was proven right about the inability of the Air Corps to reliably deliver air mail; they didn't have the necessary training or the instruments to fly in bad weather . . . there were 12 deaths and 66 crashes. For the first time, FDR found himself bested in the court of public opinion; it proved to be his only political mistake during his 1st term in office . . . from that point on, FDR viewed Lindbergh as a personal and political enemy.
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      After the trial / conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in "The Crime of the Century" (the kidnapping and murder of Charles, Jr.), Lindbergh moved his family to England, and then France during 1935 - 1938. He made several highly-publicized trips to Nazi Germany (pictured: Hermann Goering presenting a ceremonial sword to Lindbergh in 1936), and was invited to inspect the Luftwaffe. Lindbergh stated that the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) was invincible, and that Britain and France should, in essence, appease Hitler in Europe. On his return to the U.S., Lindbergh's job was to help General "Hap" Arnold build up the Army Air Corps; both viewed the role of the Air Corps as a defensive strategy for "Fortress America".
     FDR invited Lindbergh to the White House in April, 1939, to "get his measure" of the only other American that equalled him in fame, and also to try and find out how much of a problem Lindbergh would be in the upcoming trouble-filled months. Lindbergh thought the meeting went well, and the Air Corps Mail controversy was in the past, but he knew that whatever "Honeymoon" that existed between him and President Roosevelt would probably not last very long.

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     On 1 September, 1939, Hitler invaded western Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany; that date was the "Lightning Rod" that started the most divisive period in US History during the 20th Century. By early-1940, Lindbergh had become the most famous spokesman for the "America First Committee" (pictured), and at that point, he became FDR's #1 adversary . . . what followed for 2+ years was a brutal, no-holds barred battle for the soul of the nation in terms of the level of American involvement in the War in Europe.
     The shock of the Nazi blitzkrieg convinced many citizens that American military involvement in the war was very near. The national debate centered on this question: Should the U.S. aid Britain, and should the U.S. go further and enter the War in Europe? For the next 2+ years, that debate raged across America: should the U.S. be an Isolationist "Fortress" Nation, with a strong navy & air corps to defend itself (the Treaty of Versailles buttressed that perspective). Or, should the U.S. be an Internationalist Nation; that point of view held that the times were far too dire in Europe for the U.S. to avoid getting directly involved. To an Internationalist, Britain's existence was vital for America's security, and the U.S. had a moral obligation to stop the evil of Adolf Hitler; that view was challenged to the "nth degree" by the Isolationists. 


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       Nothing in the 20th Century, not even the late-1960s, divided America more than the Isolationist / Internationalist Debate from 1939 - 1941. This "Great Debate" has been lost in history; that was mostly due to shock to the system that was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December, 1941. Even the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, didn't want the U.S. military directly involved (until after Pearl, of course).
      FDR convinced himself that Lindbergh and the "Firsters" posed a major threat to the U.S.; FDR embarked on a dirty, nasty campaign to destroy the influence / reputation of the America First Committee, and especially  the reputation of Lindbergh. FDR authorized FBI investigations on Lindbergh and many other "Firsters", as well as publicly labeling Lindbergh (& the "Firsters") as subversives, or even Nazis. Lindbergh and America First portrayed FDR as a dictator who had destroyed free speech in his "Rush to War". . . Lindbergh went so far to say that Democracy no longer existed in America. (Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, was not only an author of children's books, but also a political cartoonist for PM, a New York City Internationalist newspaper. His political cartoons skewered Axis leaders and American Isolationists before Pearl Harbor)

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     Despite FDR's efforts to support Britain (who by 1940 was standing alone in Europe against the Nazis), he wanted to avoid sending U.S. troops to Europe. FDR was loathe to challenge Isolationists in Congress during his 2nd Term, which was the main obstacle in any meaningful progress towards helping an increasingly desperate Britain. FDR's 2nd Term would be marred by serious mistakes, as well as a lack of leadership in framing America's involvement in the War in Europe; most Americans were waiting for their President to lead them out of the contentious and divisive debate, but FDR placed far too much credence on the influence and power that Congressional Isolationists actually possessed. General Marshall (pictured) actually doubted FDR's ability to lead the U.S. in a major war; that would change after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor
       (Below: Lynne Olson comments on FDR and Lindbergh before Pearl Harbor)


     For the Stout-of-Heart, here is Lynne Olson in a lecture promoting her book; it's a great detailed synopsis if you don't have time to read the book!
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President Woodrow Wilson Goes to Paris in 1919

5/2/2015

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                           Source: Margaret MacMillan. Paris 1919: 
                         Six Months That Changed the World (2007)
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      On 4 December, 1918, the SS George Washington set sail for Europe. Among those on board were President Woodrow Wilson, his (second) wife Edith, and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Also on board were selected "experts" from universities and government, as well as prominent diplomats. On board the former German passenger ship were mountains of research/reference material for the President and his massive entourage to use in Paris.
     No United States President had ever gone to Europe while in office (Theodore Roosevelt attended the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910 as an official representative of the U.S., but by then he was an ex-President); Wilson's opponents accused him of flat-out violating the Constitution by making the trip, while his supporters saw going to Paris as a very unwise decision. To Wilson, making the peace was as important as winning the war, and he felt that he owed it to all concerned that he head to Paris. A British diplomat compared Wilson's trip to Paris to that of a debutante entranced by the prospect of attending her first ball.
     Wilson told his most trusted advisor, Colonel Edward House
(pictured; who was already in Paris) that he would focus on his "Big Picture" Ideals; he didn't want to remain too long in Paris, and get bogged down in any details . . . or to talk to German representatives. The "Preliminary Conference" actually became the main attraction, and Wilson wound up staying in Paris for six months. Other than a quick return to the U.S. from mid-February to mid-March, Wilson was in Paris from January through June in 1919.
   (Below: The SS George Washington heads towards Europe in December, 1918)

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     President Wilson had a long list of enemies, many of which were former friends; his enemies viewed him as an ingrate and a liar. Wilson never forgave those that disagreed with him - he was a "Great Hater", in the mold of Robert Kennedy before JFK was assassinated.
According to Edward House, Wilson was only receptive to other perspectives when he was in the process of making a decision. Once Wilson had made a decision, it was inviolate, no longer open to discussion by anyone; some admired that trait, while others viewed it as egotism of the most dangerous magnitude. A French diplomat stated that Wilson would have been a great tyrant, in that he had no concept at all that he could ever be wrong.
     Wilson was so sure he knew what he was going to do in Paris (and that he would succeed) that he only had four others with him in his "Circle of Trust" (five, if one counts Edith). One was his most trusted advisor, Edward House. Another was SecState Lansing (pictured); the only reason Wilson brought Lansing along was that it would have been very awkward to explain why the SecState wasn't with the President (also, Lansing had committed the Cardinal Sin of publicly disagreeing with Wilson). The other two were General Tinker Bliss (the military representative; Wilson only talked with him five times in Paris) and Henry White, a retired diplomat whose function was to help Edith Wilson on matters of French etiquette.
     Wilson had deliberately slighted the Republicans, despite the fact that many (especially the moderates) at least shared some of Wilson's Post-World War I goals. By December of 1919, Wilson's hatred and distrust of the Republicans had reached a crescendo; this omission, plus Wilson's absolute refusal to compromise after he returned from Paris, led to the narrow defeat in the Senate of not only the Treaty of Versailles, but also American participation in the League of Nations.
  (Below: The SS George Washington of the coast of France in December 1918)

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       President Wilson stated that he loved Democracy, but he absolutely hated most of his fellow politicians, regardless of party. Wilson wanted to serve humanity, but he had so few personal relationships. Wilson was an Idealist, and he was also someone that wanted as much power as possible in order to accomplish his great works and vision. Therefore, he was intolerant of perspectives of others that differed with his, and blind to legitimate concerns. Those that opposed Wilson weren't just wrong, they were wicked . . . like the Germans.
     By December of 1919, Wilson had convinced himself that he spoke for the global masses, despite clear evidence to the contrary (that would be evident in Paris, but it wouldn't become in any way manifest to Wilson). Adding to the future problems he would face in Paris, Wilson often ignored established facts if they didn't fit with his Idealism.
     During The Great War, America had become a huge provider of food for the Allies; more significantly, the US had supplanted Britain to become the world's financial power, due to the massive loans to the Allies. European allies owed $7 billion to the US Government, and $4 billion to US banks - Wilson believed that the financial debts alone would force Great Britain and France to see the Post-WW I world his way, and to follow his lead in Paris. 

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      Wilson's well-publicized-in-advance proclamation of "Self-Determination" was controversial and opaque; it was kind of like trying to explain the Electoral College to the uninformed (or worse yet, the Bowl Championship Series before 2014). Many requests reached Wilson even before he arrived in Paris wanting him to define what he meant by "Self-Determination", but he never answered the queries, and never defined his flagship term while in Paris. It was left to others to interpret what he meant (historians aren't even sure that Wilson was able to define his own term): did Wilson mean a type of Democracy, or true "Self-Determination" in its literal sense, or even acceptable versions of autocracy . . . no one knew.
     Complicating the landscape of "Self-Determination" was that Wilson had no sympathy for Irish Nationalists trying to free themselves from Britain, or for those asking for decolonization in Africa or Southeast Asia
(the person who would eventually call himself
Ho Chi Minh was in Paris, pictured at the right). SecState Lansing thought that Wilson had raised hopes in the world that would never be realized, and that the President was bound be be discredited. Lansing further wrote that a clear definition of what constituted a nation ("Self-Determination") would have gone a long way in Paris. 

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     Wilson eventually stated that "Well-Defined" national aspirations would be satisfactory; but he never clarified that term either. It was beyond-difficult to categorize "Well-Defined" Nationalism in any case - a Poland for the Poles? A Slovakia for the Slovaks? A Ukraine for the Ukrainians? An Ireland for the Irish? In every case, there were other ethnicities and nationalities that were prominent minorities . . . when imposed borders are created, war is a likely result. Wilson's job in Paris would prove to be an "Impossible Dream". The possibilities of dividing people across yet-to-be-determined boundaries was unending, in particular in Central Europe. In short (according to MacMillan), an arrogant, inflexible, idealistic President Woodrow Wilson went to Europe, and basically made a very difficult situation worse. Basically, Wilson brought a Bible to a poker game.  
     American Idealism by 1919 featured two sides. One was an eagerness to set the world straight, assuming that American values were global and universal. The other was ready to turn its back with contempt if its message to the world was ignored. This has lead to a certain "obtuseness" from not only Wilson, but in the decades that followed - a tendency to preach to others, rather than listen. It has also led to a point-of-view that American principles are pure, while all others are suspect, even wicked or evil. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George summed up this American Idealism by sarcastically stating that Wilson came to Europe ready to rescue the heathen Europeans from themselves. (Pictured above, from Left-to-Right: French Premier Georges Clemenceau, President Woodrow Wilson, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George)

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     It was easy to mock President Wilson, and many did, but SO MANY believed in him and his 14 Points as the year 1919 began. Wilson represented a brighter future; after The Great War, much of the world was ready to listen, and believe, in the American President. So many disparate populations took Wilson's 14 Points to heart; to these populations, his principles became a sort of sacred tract. 
     Wilson commented to George Creel, who was also on board the SS George Washington (his "Propaganda Chief"), that he may have done too good a job in spreading the 14 Points across the globe, especially in Europe. Wilson thought that Creel may have unconsciously spun a web from which there was no escape. On 13 December, 1918, the SS George Washington reached the French port of Brest; World War I had been over for a 
little over a month - Wilson's reception in France was beyond-"Beatle-esque". Wilson, at a private dinner, expressed his pleasure at his reception: the French, in his words, were "most friendly." 
     Soon, Wilson would have to deal with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and their very different visions of Post-WW I Europe. And, added to that, Wilson would be expected to wave his "magic wand" and satisfy a myriad of impossible-to-satisfy requests and demands from people in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

   Here is the New York Times book review of Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan

         Below: A preview of a documentary based on MacMillan's Paris 1919  
For the Stout-of-Heart, here are Parts 1 and 2 of Paris 1919, the full documentary
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The Origins of the Dust Bowl

4/19/2015

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               Source: Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns. The Dust Bowl: 
                                       An Illustrated History (2012)
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     The Dust Bowl was the largest disaster caused by man in U.S. History . . . proof was from the 1890s. During that decade in the Southern Plains, there was a six-year drought, and there were some dust storms (none which came close to reaching the frequency & intensity of the 1930s), but the soil stayed on the ground since most of the land was untouched grassland. 
     In the late-1800s, the region that became known as the Dust Bowl (Western Oklahoma, North Texas, Northeastern New Mexico, Eastern Colorado, and the Western-half of Kansas), was the location of the last great area of public land opened up to Homesteaders. By 1907, 32,000 new settlers had arrived in the region, with 16,000 of them in the Oklahoma Panhandle. 
     During World War I, the Southern Plains entered a relatively wet period, and settlement increased even further. Settlers were lured to the region by predictions of increased rain and less wind . . . in other words, they were promised positive climate change. Those promises were so overblown that some promoters were actually convicted of real estate fraud.

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      Growing wheat was very profitable in the five-state region during The Great War, since the government increased the price of wheat to double the market price. As a result, 11 million virgin acres of grassland in the Plains were plowed up to plant more wheat. After WW I, the price of wheat decreased, but production and acreage grew due to excessive optimism, since 
mechanized agriculture made one dollar a bushel for wheat profitable. Gasoline-powered tractors pulled disc plows, almost entirely replacing the lister plow. The lister split the soil in two directions, and created deep furrows, which caught and held blowing soil. The disc plow pulverized the soil, and didn't create nearly deep-enough furrows. But the disc plow made it faster and cheaper to plow; labor time was reduced by 75%. 
  Winter wheat was especially profitable: it was planted in the fall, and harvested in the early summer. Assuming that there was enough moisture during those months, one winter wheat crop equaled ten years of raising livestock on the same land. So, the more land that farmers in the five-state region dedicated to growing wheat, more potential profit could be gained (One farmer in the Southern Plains in the 1920s earned $75,000 with one wheat crop, earning more than the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge).
         Below: A farmer in North Texas pulls six disc plows in one of his fields

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      Soon, "Suitcase Farmers" appeared in the five-state region: they were city folks that bought or leased land to make a profit growing wheat, hiring tenant farmers for the labor in the fall and then in the early summer for harvest. These absentee farmers were viewed with contempt by the year-long residents, since it seemed that the "Suitcase Farmers" profited from the region, but didn't add much to the communities (it would be the land from these city-folk farmers that would blow soil the longest in the region, since no one was there on a permanent basis).
     Cattlemen were very suspicious of the resident farmers in the region, since so much grassland was plowed up to grow wheat. To the cattlemen, grassland should NEVER be plowed under any circumstances, but with adequate rainfall leading to an average of 13 bushels an acre, these doubters were easily ignored.
(Pictured: A wheat harvest in the Southern Plains) 
     But the cattlemen were right: a complex ecosystem that had developed over thousands of years was being destroyed in less than a generation. The federal government acted as a cheerleader, encouraging more plowing in the region; they too were caught up in the "Spell of Transformation" in the Southern Plains. As far as the region's farmers were concerned (and the government as well), soil was an indestructible natural resource. 

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      Even after the Stock Market Crash of October, 1929, the farmers in the five-state region saw a bright future. However, by 1930, the price of wheat fell to .70 cents per bushel, and 500,000 more plains acres had been plowed. In the Winter of 1931, it had snowed and rained, and the spring brought good moisture as well. The winter wheat was shoulder-high in the early-summer, and a bumper crop was in the offing . . . an astounding 17.7 bushels/acre were harvested in the region. 
     The good news was that there was a large crop of winter wheat, but the bad news was that there was no one to buy it; only 40% of the winter wheat crop reached the market. The market price for wheat fell to .25 cents/bushel, half what it cost to raise the crop. Farmers that were in debt were hit the hardest in 1931, and would suffer the most. But optimism was still in the air: the "Next Year People" (a nickname of they're own choosing) believed that everything would return to normal in 1932. So, even more land was plowed, from North Dakota all the way to Texas . . . all this land was plowed up, despite the general knowledge that grassland held down the soil during a drought.

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      The farmers in the five-state region had every reason to view themselves as the "Masters and Commanders of the Realm" given their success in the last two-plus decades, plus the fact that they weren't in a drought as many other farmers in the US were experiencing . . . these hard-working Americans in the region were unaware of the long-term climate cycles of the Southern Great Plains - another drought was due, this time, with pulverized soil ready to blow in the winds.
     On 21 January, 1932, a dust cloud appeared outside of Amarillo, Texas (it was the only city in the Dust Bowl, with a population of 50,000); it rose 10,000 feet in the air with winds reaching 60 mph as it moved through the Texas Panhandle; the region's Old-Timers had never seen anything like it in their lives. 
    (The most famous photograph from the Dust Bowl taken by Arthur Rothstein)
     The Winter of 1931-1932 was uncommonly dry, as was the Spring of 1932, but the winds were normal. Those winds moved the disc-plowed soil across the region's landscape. A double-disaster occurred in the Spring of 1932, in that the winter wheat harvest was less-than-stellar, and the market price for wheat had plunged to .17 cents/bushel. By then, unemployment in the U.S. had reached 25% (that was the official gov't figure; some historians suspect the actual percentage was closer to 33%, or more), and 25% of US farmers had lost their land and their homes.

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     There were 14 large-and-awful dust storms in the region in 1932; in 1933, there were 38; 
all the way through 1938, the frequency and intensity of the dust storms increased with each year. Those that lived in the five-state region started to call it "No Man's Land" (It wasn't given the name "The Dust Bowl" until an Eastern journalist used the phrase in a 1936 article). In terms of loss-of-life, livestock was by far hit the hardest by the dust storms; most died due to suffocation. With the coyote mostly gone from the area, rabbits were far-more prevalent, and they were also very hungry. Thousands of rabbits would descend on a garden, eating everything, even the cedar posts.
     Community "Rabbit Drives" were organized, and the citizens of "No Man's Land" would use "Attila the Hun" encirclement tactics to herd thousands of rabbits into some kind of enclosure, where they were killed mostly with baseball bats and clubs. 
     The "Next Year People" would endure years in which the following year was worse than the previous year, all the way to 1938, when the rain finally started to fall. And then, when it seemed they had reached the end of disaster, the grasshoppers came, destroying what had been grown with the rainfall and improved soil conservation techniques.

(Below: Part of a grasshopper swarm in Kansas, 1938. Grasshopper swarms can occur fairly often in the Plains, especially in during a drought. Grasshopper swarms occurred in the Plains in 1874, and in the beginning of the Dust Bowl in 1931, and to varying degrees of intensity during the 1930s)

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What if You Had Lived in the Dust Bowl: An Interactive Online Venture From Ken Burns & PBS

              Video Segments from the Ken Burns documentary: "The Dust Bowl"
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Germany, France, Britain, & Russia: Planning for Mobilization

4/5/2015

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                     Source: Barbara Tuchman. The Guns of August: 
                              The Outbreak 
of World War I (1962)
     What follows, according to Barbara Tuchman, is an historical account of why Germany, France, Great Britain, and Russia, prepared for a large European War before 1914 . . . 
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                                                           Germany
      In 1839, Belgium became a separate, independent nation, and was "off-limits" to any incursion. The signatories of this agreement were Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
However, by the early-1900s, Count Alfred von Schlieffen believed that guaranteed Belgian neutrality was only a mere suggestion. Kaiser Wilhelm II, and virtually all in the German government structure thought the agreement was null-and-void, since Britain had initiated the whole process (Britain had indeed wanted to make the very easily traversed Belgium off-limits to all . . . to Britain, Belgium was like Puerto Rico to the U.S.). To Schlieffen, the key to defeating France was to go through Belgium. Germany longed to wrap up unfinished business with France, in that France had not been truly crushed as a result of the Franco-Prussian War that ended in 1870.
     By 1892, the major alliances were basically set, which meant that if Germany went to war, it would be a war on two fronts. To Schlieffen, then, it was imperative to swiftly defeat France, and to him the best pathway to do so was to go through Belgium. He finalized his plan by 1906, budgeting 7/8ths of the German military to defeat France (in 6 weeks), and keeping 1/8th of the army in Eastern Prussia to deal w/ Russia, since he believed that Russia would take much longer to mobilize (in that, he was mostly correct). 
     Time was the most important thing, and cutting through Belgium would not only hasten Germany's advance to Paris, but it would also allow Germany to hit the French army hard on its flank. Schlieffen's true goal was to achieve a double-envelopment on the enemy, like Hannibal had done centuries earlier at Cannae. It was safe to say that by the early-1900s, Germany suffered from accumulated egoism; it deemed itself beyond-awesome.

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     Yet, there were some Germans of import that forecast what war would really mean for their nation. They were among the few that realized that a single, decisive battle would no longer win a war; it would be a war of ultimate attrition. A short war, centered around an initial, overwhelmingly decisive battle could be planned, resourced, and public opinion would be stout. These voices in the German wilderness claimed that a prolonged war of attrition could not be planned in advance in terms of strategy, and public support, like Germany's resources to fight, would vanish. But the vast majority of the German government believed that any European war would have to be short, in that no nation would want the interconnected economy to be disrupted for long. 
     Schlieffen (pictured) assumed that Belgium would roll-over when invaded; at most, they would only mildly protest. An added bonus of "skirting" the English Channel through Belgium, would be that Germany could dispatch any British forces as they quickly advanced towards France. Schlieffen died in 1913, and his successor, 
General Helmuth von Moltke, wasn't as strong a tactician. Moltke didn't believe in putting as much strength in the German Right Wing that would go through Belgium; he "borrowed" from the Right Wing in order to reinforce the German Center and Left. Nonetheless, Moltke thought that France would fall in just 39 days after German Mobilization (M-39). Moltke also assumed that Russia wouldn't be ready for war until 1916, due to their overall lack of a railroad systems network (in that, he would be mostly incorrect).
    Two events in 1914 sharpened Germany's military readiness to a fine point. In April, England began naval negotiations with Russia, and in June, Germany completed the Kiel Canal, which connected the North Sea to the Baltic (through Schleswig-Holstein in northernmost Germany) for the Germany navy. 

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                                                 France      
     The overall French strategy towards the German Right Wing was to exploit the German Center and Left. The strategy was born from the Treaty of Versailles in 1871, where France had lost territory and national pride to Germany, as well paying reparations. The strategy was to break through the German Center and Left, and sprint to Berlin in order to get payback for the humiliation experienced in 1871 at the hands of Germany (among France's goals was to take back Alsace-Lorraine). Despite the crippling Dreyfus Affair, the desire for payback burned most brilliantly in the French army. 
     What gnawed at Kaiser Wilhelm II was that Paris was still the center of Europe, not Berlin. Germany was still envious of France, a nation they thought they had conquered and crushed in 1871. Feeling superior in every way to France, Germany wanted to finish off France for good; meanwhile, France became extremely weary of forever needing to be "on guard" against Germany. What France needed was a weapon that was so powerful that it would guarantee victory over Germany . . . a weapon so powerful that it would lead them through the German Center and Left, and take them to Berlin . . . that weapon was "Spirit". French willpower, "Spirit", would be manifest in the huge offensive that was planned to break through the German Center/Left, and as an added bonus, that path would also be the shortest and easiest route to Berlin. In charge of this overall strategy was General Ferdinand Foch (in effect, at that point-in-time, he was France's Schlieffen); Foch believed in flexibility, not absolute rigid planning. Foch warned that "Spirit" alone was ineffective; he emphasized that military tactics and analysis was essential for a French triumph over Germany. Foch's overall strategy became the impetus for France's "Plan 17" (pictured), a massive offensive that would end the war with Germany before the German Right Wing could do any real damage in France.

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     France, like Germany, planned on winning the war with an initial major victory. General Joseph Joffre (pictured) supplanted Foch as the overall strategic planner and major general of the French army, and subsequently abandoned Foch's more balanced approach, placing far more troops and resources on the French offensive at the German Center/Left. Joffre prepared a "Plan of Deployment", not just a "Plan of Operations"; however, he didn't specifically set any goals. His plan was to attack in a huge offensive ("Plan 17"), and then sort out what needed to be done after breaking through the German lines. The main reason why Joffre wanted flexibility after breaking through was that he was uncertain about what kind of success the German Right Wing would have in Belgium. All the while, the French military and government continued to delude themselves in terms of German strength on the Right Wing . . . they would grossly underestimate the number of German troops and artillery in Belgium as the Great War began. 

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                                                      Great Britain
     Britain's alliance with France became a necessity in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. Russia's incompetence and weakness unhinged Europe's equilibrium in that if Britain was to fight a war, it would do so without a strong ally. Britain's military strategists assumed that Germany would attack France by going through Belgium. They also believed that Germany could be stopped if the British arrived in Belgium at the proper time and in the proper strength. In the meantime, the shifting coalitions in the British government made overtures to France for an alliance: the basic idea was that France would bear the brunt of the forces on land, while Britain would do so in terms of seapower. 
     The Liberals were in charge of the British government when Europe was on the brink of war, and they believed that "good intentions" could keep the peace. The Liberal government agreed to continue talks with France for an alliance, but the British General Staff didn't want the army to be subordinate to the French in Belgium (or in France). These British military minds differed as to the role the British army should play on the Continent: should they go 
all-in and protect Antwerp (on the map above, east of London across the Channel) and its vital adjoining coastline, or just let Germany pummel France, and then land in force behind German lines, only 90 miles from Berlin. The collective feeling was that fighting in Belgium and France would be "suicidal idiocy"; the Liberal government kept hoping for the best, while not adequately preparing for the worst.

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      In 1910, General Henry Wilson (pictured), Commander of Britain's Staff College, was named the Director of Military Operations, and he focused his attention mostly on France and Belgium. On 20 July, 1910, Britain agreed to commit a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to Belgium to aid France in case of a German offensive. In addition, Britain agreed to join the "Main Theater" in France, instead of going to Berlin behind Germany's advance. Among those briefed of this plan was Winston Churchill, currently the Home Secretary, but soon to become the First Lord of the Admiralty. While the politicians agreed the "Main Theater" strategy for the BEF, the Antwerp idea did not entirely vanish. 
    The last attempt at any kind of "understanding" between Britain and Germany disappeared in 1912 when naval negotiations failed; after this, even the Liberals acknowledged that an impending war was imminent in Europe. Even so, after a treaty of alliance was formalized with France, some British politicians felt that it absolved Britain of any commitment at all if France was attacked, while others interpreted the treaty that Britain was totally committed to aid France. The treaty was entirely reactive, in that Britain wasn't obligated to do a thing unless Germany attacked Belgium . . . Britain started get down to specifics in terms of the strength and tactics of the BEF, but their General Staff had absolutely no idea of the actual might of the German Right Wing.

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                                                    Russia
     The Russian "Steamroller" cast a spell on Europe. To the Germans, the spectre of Russians and Slavs to their east haunted them; to Great Britain and France, Russia was a boon in that she kept Germany's head on a swivel, constantly switching from east-to-west. Despite losing far more than winning in terms of military engagements over the previous century, the myth of Russian invincibility endured (e.g. everyone was scared of the Cossacks). A seemingly inexhaustible supply of men and its vastness inspired awe in Europe; if the Russians tapped into their reserve units, they could accurately claim an army of 6.5 million.
     France wanted Russia to be ready to engage Germany on the Eastern Front by no later than M-15 (15 days after French Mobilization), but there was no way Russia would be ready in force by then, so it was agreed that Russia would attack with what they had, which was after the "Magic Day" of M-15. The basic strategy was to force Germany, from the onset of war, to fight on two major fronts. Russia was anxious to regain their glory and reputation after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), but their valor was far greater than their sense of reality. Russia fell under the same spell that captivated France, in that "Spirit" will carry the day . . . attack! 
     A main complicating factor in being able to launch a large offensive was that Russian railroad tracks had a different gauge (width) that German tracks. The idea was to make it tough for Germany to advance their troops in Russia, but it also made it equally difficult for Russia to advance in force in East Prussia. In short, it was impossible for Russia to mobilize enough forces in time for M-15, and to cap it off, the Russian General Staff, as well as Czar Nicholas II 
(picture above), were vastly out-of-touch with military reality in terms of what they could do, and what Germany was capable of doing.

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       Czar Nicholas II wasn't the equal of his father, Czar Alexander III (who was assassinated before Nicholas II reached 30 years of age). To cope, Nicholas II surrounded himself with "Yes Men", and remained totally committed to remaining an autocrat. Nicholas II was unimaginative, naive, and quite probably a simpleton . . . he was unable to quickly process and accurately disseminate information. In addition to that crippling shortcoming, Russia's General Staff was incapable of making the necessary decisions in order to prepare for a major war.
     While no European nation was truly ready for what was to come, Russia only had 850 shells per gun ready to go by 1914; Germany, Britain, and France had 2000 - 3000 shells per gun. Russia also had a huge shortage of artillery (and shells) relative to the Western European nations. Russia wanted to attack Austria-Hungary when Germany attacked France. The General Staff calculated that four Russian armies would overwhelm the Austro-Hungarian forces, and that two armies would be enough to crush German resistance, and on to Berlin they would advance. 
(Pictured: Czar Nicholas II and his hemophilic son, Alexei)
     The Problem: Germany had East Prussia (home of the Junkers, the German noble class) very heavily defended. Also, Germany had many railroad lines in East Prussia, so mobilizing on their end to bring more troops to the Eastern Front would not be as problematic, compared to Russia advancing in the same region of Germany. Little did the Russian General Staff realize that Germany's plan was to strike at the first Russian army that came within reach of East Prussia.

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      Tensions among these four European nations approached the breaking-point 
by 1914 in that . . 
               a) Germany wanted to settle accounts with France from a war 40+ years earlier in which they won, but were unable to keep France from quickly recovering. Germany's national pride rested on crushing France once-and-for-all, according to Kaiser Wilhelm II (pictured), and going through Belgium with their massive Right Wing was the recipe for success.
             b) France, despite being at a military disadvantage compared to Germany, also wanted to settle accounts from the Franco-Prussian War. France tired of being on the defensive in the decades that followed, and decided that their national "Spirit" would buoy them to victory on a major offensive through the German Center and Left.
                c) Great Britain, by far the most hesitant of the four nations in terms of its level of military commitment and zeal, still aligned itself with France, mostly due to Russia's inability to contain Germany. However, Britain would only enter the war to aid France if Germany invaded Belgium.
           d) Russia, swept up in the same "Spirit-Fever" that captivated France, ignored all military reality in terms of logistics, and believed that once they got the Russian Colossus moving, they would be in Vienna and Berlin in short order . . . and their tattered reputation as a European power would be restored.

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LBJ & JFK: Before the 1960 Democratic Nat'l Convention, Part 1

3/20/2015

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              Source: Robert A. Caro. The Years of Lyndon Johnson:
                                     The Passage of Power (2012)
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     In the late-1950s, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson didn't think that any U.S. Senator was a serious challenger to his pursuit of the Democratic nomination in 1960, including John F. Kennedy. But, to be fair, most everyone in Washington, D.C. had misread JFK to this point in his political career. While both Senators seethed with Presidential ambition, their backgrounds and how they approached their job in the Senate varied greatly.
     LBJ's experience in World War II was of a "behind the scenes" sort; he spent a total of 13 minutes in action as an observer on a plane in the Pacific. As Senate Majority Leader, LBJ wore a silver star pin on his label, and regaled his colleagues with his WW II "experiences". In reality, this self-proclaimed "Tailgunner" was an intelligence officer who debriefed pilots behind a desk. JFK was a "Millionaire Playboy" Congressman, and then Senator, who lived lavishly, but was a decorated WW II hero. JFK basically phoned-in his duties as a member of Congress; no serious legislation bore his name in his nearly decade-and-a-half as a Congressman/Senator . . . but there were physical & political reasons for doing so.

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      In 1952, JFK shocked everyone when he not only announced that he was running for U.S. Senator against the powerful and popular incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (both candidates pictured bottom-right), but that he actually won (by a very narrow margin). While LBJ was a genius at gathering votes in the Senate as Majority Leader, JFK was very effective as a campaigner gathering votes. When JFK ran for the Senate against Lodge, Jr., he sent out thousands of invitations to women voters to "Meet JFK in Person" at voter rallies. While LBJ had very powerful Texas businessmen and politicians in his corner, JFK had his father, Joseph Kennedy - JFK's father bailed out a Boston newspaper to the tune of $500k, and then made sure the newspaper endorsed his son for the Senate race.
     JFK had very serious health problems, including chronic back trouble, as well as Addison's Disease. Part of the reason why JFK wasn't a constant physical presence in the Senate was that he had two major back surgeries; upon his return to the Senate in 1955 after an almost two-year absence, the views of his colleagues towards him remained unchanged. Despite his relative lack of import in the Senate, JFK almost became Adlai Stevenson's Vice-Presidential candidate in 1956, being narrowly edged out on a floor vote among delegates by fellow Senator Estes Kefauver.
     Below: The 1956 Democratic Convention Vice-President Nomination Ballot

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      LBJ, after Joseph Kennedy's prompting, appointed JFK to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; foreign policy was the one area that JFK embraced as a US Senator. LBJ figured that since JFK's father "owed him one", he had JFK lined up to be HIS Vice-Presidential running mate in 1960. LBJ measured Senators by what they had accomplished, and in his estimation, Senator Kennedy didn't measure up to his standards. To LBJ, "Work Horse" Senators did their job, while "Show Horse" Senators, such as JFK, were merely posers. Had LBJ known JFK's "Back Story", what it took for JFK to even get to Capitol Hill, LBJ may have significantly revised his opinion of JFK. (Pictured: Senators Johnson, Kennedy, and Hubert Humprey (MN) in the center)
Below: JFK, early in his first term as Senator, talks about US involvement in SE Asia 
     

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     JFK overcame crippling health problems en route to Congress; LBJ just assumed that Senator Kennedy was a wealthy and lazy dilettante. In fact, JFK had very few days in his life when he wasn't in pain or sick in some way. He was diagnosed with deteriorating lumbar / discs in 1940, yet he served in the Navy in the Pacific in World War II. JFK wanted to serve on a PT Boat, which was the worst possible posting for a man w/ his back condition. JFK was beyond-heroic after his PT boat (PT-109) was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer (historians are still divided on his activity beforehand): during the six days before their rescue, JFK spent far more time in the water than out, helping his men to shore, and trying to signal for help. Not long after, JFK got command of PT-59, and 5 men from PT-109 followed him as part of his crew. JFK was in command for six weeks, then the degeneration of his discs reached a point in which he could no longer actively serve his nation in the Navy.

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      Once JFK became used to campaigning (in pain) in 1946, he found that he had a talent for making connections with voters. His quick wit, intelligence, people skills, and an ability to speak whether prepared or "off the cuff" resonated with voters . . . that was a side of JFK that LBJ never saw, or bothered to see. But once in elected office, health-related problems kept JFK from doing what his colleagues saw as the bare-minimum to be an effective member of Congress. After years of jaundiced-skin and vomiting with little-or-no appetite, JFK was finally diagnosed with Addison's Disease in the late-1940s. JFK's adrenal glands were failing, and he had lost significant weight, experienced fevers and fatigue - his doctor thought that he only had a year left to live.
     Cortisone injections saved JFK in terms of stopping the immediate effects of Addison's Disease - he gained weight and energy, while his yellow skin was passed off as a nice sun tan. However, those same life-saving injections actually made his back far-worse . . . JFK, before he even pursued the Democratic nomination for President in 1960, was in very bad physical condition. In addition to his physical state being a limiting factor in terms of his workload in the Senate, JFK also saw being an obscure Senator as a drawback to pursuing the Presidency, so he spent as little time in the Senate as possible, choosing to focus on the upcoming Democratic primary elections.

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     JFK recognized the value and potential that TV had for gaining popularity and votes, while LBJ (as well as most other politicians) didn't see TV as an asset in 1956, or even in 1960. One added benefit of the cortisone injections was that JFK was far more telegenic by the late-1950s. Not only did he look very handsome and knowledgeable, but his self-deprecating humor blazed through the TV set as well, which he used to tremendous advantage. 

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     JFK's media appearances drowned out his lackluster performance and attendance in the Senate, much to the chagrin and irritation of his colleagues, especially LBJ. JFK and his campaign advisors (such as Theodore Sorensen) knew that they would have to secure the nomination on the first ballot; in other words, they needed to have a clear majority of undisputed delegates committed to them before the convention opened. If they failed to have that majority heading in, then the nomination would very likely be decided, literally, in a "Back Room", where LBJ would almost certainly be able to maneuver and be able to corral enough delegates for the nomination. JFK knew that LBJ was counting on that outcome, and starting in 1958, JFK and his campaign advisors started to aggressively organize their efforts in the primaries, and JFK started to make many appearances as a candidate for the Democratic nomination. LBJ, on the other hand, decided to spend his hours working in the Senate as Majority Leader, hoping-and-assuming that he could secure the Democratic nomination without campaigning in the primary elections.
  Below: JFK addresses an audience in Wisconsin on the topic of direct primaries

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LBJ & JFK: Before the 1960 Democratic Nat'l Convention, Part II

3/20/2015

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           Source: Robert A. Caro. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: 
                              The Passage of Power (2012)
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      LBJ had a problem for the upcoming Election of 1960: he wanted to run for his US Senate seat from Texas AND for President of the United States. Using his powerful political base in Texas (and no doubt some political shenanigans), he was able to get the Texas state legislature, in 1959, to pass a law authorizing his name to be on the ballot for both the Senate and President (and by extension, Vice-President). (Pictured: Senator Lyndon Johnson at a birthday celebration of former President Harry Truman in 1959)
     On 7 May, 1959, LBJ finally accepted an invitation to speak in Pennsylvania at a political rally supporting his bid to be the Democratic nominee for President. LBJ electrified the crowd that numbered in the thousands; many believed that this experience in a Northern state would convince LBJ to formally enter primary elections in Northern & Western states. LBJ, however, returned to his political shell (he was mortified by a fear of failure and humiliation) once again refusing invitations to speak at rallies organized on his behalf, often at the last minute.

     LBJ needed delegates for the Democratic Convention, and they were there to be had in the Western states (but not in California; JFK had already secured those delegates), which totaled 172 delegates . . . LBJ was a shoe-in to win at least two Western primaries, and he was favored to win most of the others, but he hadn't formally entered any as of yet. Ted Kennedy was his brother's organizational guru out West, and he told JFK that the West (not California) was "Johnson Country". But LBJ would have needed to actually campaign in the West for those delegates; the decision to not campaign in the Western primaries would be the death-knell for LBJ's presidential aspirations in the Democratic National Convention of 1960.

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     While LBJ was equivocating, JFK sent his secret weapon against LBJ to the West: Robert Kennedy. By 1959, RFK had developed a deep hatred for LBJ, and the feeling was reciprocated. The first time they encountered each other was in January, 1953, in the Senate cafeteria, next to Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson's office. RFK was seated at a table with Senator Joseph McCarthy (to whom he was assistant counsel), and as LBJ walked by, everyone but RFK stood and shook LBJ's had, and called him "Leader". 
     RFK stayed seated, and glowered, and only kind of shook LBJ's hand, with no eye contact. RFK had come to hate LBJ since Johnson was with FDR when the President announced that he would remove Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to England. LBJ relished in telling the story of how FDR tricked Joseph Kennedy to come back to the US, give a national radio address as Ambassador, and then forced him to resign . . . RFK was VERY protective of his father. 
(Pictured: RFK as the chief counsel during a McClellan Committee hearing on the Teamsters 
  in 1959)
     LBJ continued to force RFK to shake his hand every day for awhile; it was truly 
"Hate at First Sight" for both of them. LBJ took every chance he could to rub in his dislike for RFK in front of others, such as calling him "Sonny Boy". LBJ disliked RFK, but he didn't take him seriously, since RFK was a staffer, not a Senator.  RFK on the other hand, hated LBJ, and took him very seriously indeed, seeing him as a threat to JFK's path to the Presidency.

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     RFK knew that US Senators couldn't deliver very many delegates at the Convention, but Governors could do so; LBJ either didn't know, or care, about that political reality. More to the point, RFK knew that LBJ had no idea where the real power was located as far as corralling convention delegates. Unlike LBJ, RFK had learned a lot from the 1956 Democratic National Convention, and applied those lessons to the upcoming convention in order to try and secure JFK's nomination on the first ballot. 
     In 1959, RFK resigned as chief counsel from the McClellan Committee (investigating shenanigans with organized labor, including Jimmy Hoffa), and campaigned for JFK full-time. When LBJ finally decided to start campaign organizations in Western states, his people found that JFK had set up organizations months beforehand, and also had a tremendous head start in gathering committed delegates. LBJ fear-of-trying had held him back, and by early-1960, it was far too late to catch up to the JFK primary machine. 
     A young representative from Massachusetts named Tip O'Neill (pictured: he would become Speaker of the House) told LBJ that JFK would win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot, and there was nothing that LBJ could do to alter that outcome. LBJ was unwilling to concede even the most remote possibility that JFK could (or had) outmaneuvered him before the Democratic National Convention.

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      In terms of the 1960 Democratic Primaries, LBJ was confident that the other candidates would "kill off each other". On 10 May, 1960, West Virginia, a predominantly Protestant state, held its Democratic primary election. If JFK could win in WVA, he would show that he was an electable candidate for President; if he didn't win, then in all likelihood, LBJ would get his "Back Room" scenario where he would wheel-and-deal for delegates. JFK took 60% of the popular vote in the WVA primary, in part because he had made the conscious effort to minimize his Catholicism on a state-wide television address. 
  (Pictured: JFK campaigning in West Virginia)
     After West Virginia, when it was far too late, LBJ showed how much he wanted to become President. With only two months before the convention in Los Angeles, he made a desperate lunge for the prize. LBJ worked hard for delegates in Indiana, then finally made his long-delayed trip to campaign in the West. Despite his herculean efforts in the 11th Hour, LBJ was not able to come close to JFK's impressive total of committed convention delegates. 

     Pennsylvania was the final battleground between LBJ and JFK; if LBJ could deny JFK the state's 81 delegates, then he would deny JFK a victory on the first ballot, and his "Back Room" scenario would become a reality.  

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     The Governor of Pennsylvania, "Don't Call Me Boss" David Lawrence, did not support JFK, mostly due to his belief that a Catholic could not be elected President. Lawrence was a supporter of two-time Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson (1952 & 1956, losing to Eisenhower in both elections); in fact, he idolized Stevenson. Lawrence had the same political view towards a Southern Democrat in terms of Presidential "electability", so LBJ also did not receive support from Governor Lawrence. Despite Lawrence's wishes and designs, most of Pennsylvania's delegates were pledged to JFK.
     Adlai Stevenson was non-committal when Lawrence asked him to formally declare his candidacy, which meant that Lawrence did not have a candidate to champion during his state's caucus. JFK left Pennsylvania with 64 committed delegates, Stevenson garnered 7.5, while LBJ only secured 4; those results meant that it was conceivable that JFK could win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot. (Pictured: JFK, Stevenson, and LBJ at the Beverly Hilton during the Democratic National Convention in LA)

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        During the Democratic National Convention,, LBJ and JFK actually debated each other. JFK sent telegrams to all states, stating the he would meet with their delegation of they so desired. LBJ basically "Triple-Dog-Dared" JFK to debate him in front of the Texas delegation, and JFK accepted. JFK got the better of LBJ, in that he was classy and self-deprecating, while LBJ was loud-mouthed and petty. JFK basically won-over the hearts, if not their minds, of the Texas delegation. LBJ finally came to the conclusion that JFK had enough delegates to win the party's nomination.
     In the end, it all came down to Wyoming's 15 delegates, and JFK needed them all to win on the first ballot, and avoid any behind-the-scenes political chicanery. JFK and RFK negotiated with the Wyoming delegation, and secured the 5 uncommitted delegates to their total, as well as the Democratic nomination for President on the first ballot. LBJ could have had the Wyoming delegates, and the other Western states in his delegate total, but he waited far too long to actively campaign, and JFK and RFK took full advantage. The final tally of delegates at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles: JFK 806, LBJ 409 (Senators Hubert Humphrey and Stuart Symington totaled 306 between the two). 
(Pictured: Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, LBJ's #1 supporter, grieves with LBJ when it was confirmed that JFK won on the first ballot)
    Below: A portion of the LBJ/JFK debate in front of the Texas delegation in LA

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LBJ: A "Reader" of Men, and Silent Presidential Candidate (1960)

3/6/2015

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           Source: Robert A. Caro. The Passage of Power (2012).
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     As a boy growing up in rural Texas, hard work, as well as humiliation and fear, were woven into Lyndon Baines Johnson's personality. In his late-teens, he predicted (to anyone that would be in a position to listen) that he would be President. LBJ's path to the Presidency was first, get elected to the House of Representatives, then to the Senate, then using that elected position to ascend to the White House (LBJ was elected to the House in 1936). So focused was LBJ on his "Path to the Presidency" that he turned down an offer from FDR to head the Rural Electrification Administration in 1939. LBJ also turned down an opportunity to run for Governor in Texas (he almost certainly would have won), since being a Governor wasn't part of the "Path". 
     After ten years in the House, he seemed stuck in that position, which was for him was basically torture; not only was he not progressing towards the Presidency, he was also a political non-entity. LBJ entered a Senate race in Texas in 1948 in which it seemed he had no real chance of winning . . . so desperate was LBJ that he (and his powerful patrons) cheated before and after the election in terms of certain precincts and absentee ballots. His margin of victory was so slight, and so controversial, that his detractors referred to him as "Landslide Lyndon."

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      The U.S. Senate was a much better fit for LBJ, for it was in there that he could be a leader of men. Among the many talents that LBJ possessed was that he was able to "read" a man, usually through his eyes; he was also able to wring out as much information as possible from those he questioned. LBJ seemed to "sense" a man's price, and had a gift for using what he learned from others. The Senate was also a perfect place for LBJ to excel in that he thrived in small groups, and even more-so with one-on-one situations, especially with the elder statesmen of the Senate. 




     














​     LBJ rose to power in the Senate with unprecedented speed. The Senate was just the right size for LBJ, in that he could make personal connections with the other 95 Senators. In 1955, LBJ became the youngest Senate Majority Leader in history, and soon after, he brought the Senate into the 20th Century, making it once again a relevant legislative body. LBJ's wife, 
Lady Bird, said that the 12 years that LBJ was in the Senate were the happiest of their lives. While he was very happy as Senate Majority Leader, he hadn't forgotten about his "Path to the Presidency"; in the 1956 Democratic National Convention, he refused to withdraw his name from consideration for the nomination.
        Below: An absolute treat - a portion of Walter Cronkite's CBS coverage 
                                  of the Democratic National Convention

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        Adlai Stevenson was a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination in 1956, but LBJ just couldn't let go, despite knowing that the delegate count was 905 for Stevenson, while he had only garnered 80 delegates. In 1956, there was a major obstacle to LBJ's path to the Presidency: no Southerner had been elected President since Zachary Taylor in 1848. Also, in terms of Civil Rights bills through 1956, LBJ had voted against every single one, which made him at best a suspect Presidential candidate to Liberal Democrats. After the Democratic National Convention in 1956, LBJ decided that the only way that the Senate could be a springboard to the Presidency was that he needed to steer Civil Rights bills through the Senate as Majority Leader.
     Through legislative miracle-making, LBJ was able to get the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 through the Senate (it became law soon after); however, it was mostly symbolic (and toothless), but it was the first such legislation in 82 years. LBJ figured that he would have an automatic Southern bloc of 352 delegates locked-and-loaded for the 1960 Democratic National Convention, which would put him over halfway to the nomination. LBJ didn't see any other formidable opponent in the Democratic Party that could deny him his coveted nomination for President. In LBJ's eyes, he was not only THE Senator, but he was THE Politician; in the late-1950s, he didn't think much of other Senators in terms of challenging him for the nomination, such as Stuart Symington, Hubert Humphrey, or John F. Kennedy.

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     LBJ controlled the Senate, even though the Democrats only had a one-vote majority. There was no lack of confidence in his abilities as Senate Majority Leader, on LBJ's part, or from the other Senators. His run as Majority Leader was similar to FDR's first term as President, in that both had a 100% success rate in passing their priority bills. LBJ's confidence vanished when the topic moved to the nomination for President in 1960. LBJ turned down all requests to speak (even one from Eleanor Roosevelt!), and then would regret doing so after the speaking date had passed. 
     LBJ still believed (it was remotely possible) that the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention in nominating a candidate for President would not produce an outright winner. Therefore, he believed, the Party Leaders would work behind the scenes on his behalf, and he would be nominated on the 2nd, 3rd, or at worst, the 4th ballot. But LBJ, this great "Reader of Men", had read one man entirely wrong . . . John F. Kennedy.

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      If LBJ wanted to be the Democratic nominee for President in 1960, the time to strike was during 1958, except that he did not make his move at that crucial moment, and month-after-month went by, with LBJ doing nothing in terms of campaign organization. Like Hitler at Dunkirk, LBJ had formed his men, but hadn't given them their marching orders. LBJ needed to create campaign organizations in 16 crucial Northern & Eastern states, but he did no such thing, which meant that he wouldn't have any impact in those primaries (and wouldn't add to his delegate total). The end result was that he wasn't able to establish his bona fides at a national level, and remained a regional (and nationally unelectable) Presidential hopeful.
     LBJ did enlist the man behind Truman's 1948 miracle campaign for advice, but he wound up ignoring that sage advice (e.g. organization, primaries, speeches, press conferences). In short, LBJ gambled that he would enter the 1960 Democratic National Convention with a strong plurality of delegates, and that none of the other challengers would even be close to his total. That, in turn, would lead to his mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn (at LBJ's left), and powerful established members of Congress that were loyal to him (or that owed him), working behind the scenes to deliver enough delegates to secure his nomination.
     LBJ had badly miscalculated: Governors, not Representatives or Senators, were the key figures in delivering delegates for nomination at the national convention. Outside of Washington, D.C., most Americans didn't know, and couldn't care less, about Lyndon Johnson's impact as Senate Majority Leader.

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        LBJ was advised by the best political minds that he was waiting too long to campaign for the Democratic nomination; why did he delay, despite a deep desire to be President? It was the old bugaboo, his fear of humiliation and losing; those fears absolutely haunted LBJ. He saw his father, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. (pictured), go from a renown Texas state legislator to someone that became penniless, and was ridiculed by the same people that had shown him immense respect as a state senator (he died in 1937).
     LBJ's ascendency into politics occurred the moment his father's fortunes changed. In 1948, although he ran and won a U.S. Senate seat, LBJ vacillated before deciding to run; the fear of losing and being humiliated (like his father) almost trumped his desire to pursue his "Path to the Presidency." In 1958, with the stakes much greater, LBJ decided to play it close-to-the-vest heading to the 1960 Democratic National Convention; if events went his way, he wouldn't need to face an outright election until 8 November, 1960. 

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How a German Battleship Made World War I a Greater Nightmare

3/1/2015

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                  Source: Barbara Tuchman. The Guns of August: 
                           The Outbreak of World War I (1962)
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     By August of 1914, Turkey had many enemies, and no allies . . . no one in Europe considered Turkey "Alliance-Worthy". The Ottoman Empire was considered the "Sick Man of Europe" by the European powers, but Turkey had started to make a comeback in the early-1900s. Russia, France, and Great Britain had rival ambitions in Turkey's sphere of influence, which increased Germany's determination to become Turkey's patron. Turkey, since the turn-of-the-century, felt the shadow of the upcoming war creep up on them . . . Turkey feared Russia, resented Great Britain, and mistrusted Germany; with whom should Turkey align as the hour of the Great War approached? In early-August, 1914, Turkey formally agreed to an alliance with Germany, which was solidified due to the actions of the Goeben, a German battleship.

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      Turkey had one asset of inestimable value: her geographical position. Russia wanted Constantinople (Istanbul) for centuries, since the Dardanelles were her only year-round exit point to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Great Britain had been Turkey's traditional protector due to her strategic location, but Britain had tired of "propping up" what the government considered a corrupt, decrepit, and broke Turkey. Britain allowed her relations with Turkey to lapse at exactly the worst possible time; Britain turned down Turkey's request of a permanent alliance between the two nations in 1911. Even Winston Churchill (pictured), in charge of the Royal Navy, didn't recognize the value of an alliance with Turkey at that crucial point in history.

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     Great Britain held two state-of-the-art battleships that were made for Turkey in 1914. Turkey had made the initial payments towards the huge total sum of $30 million. Britain wanted to appropriate the ships for her own use, and kept providing excuses why the ships couldn't be turned over to Turkey. Turkey threatened to board and take the ships while in dock; Britain threatened to repel all boarders. 
     The British government didn't understand the deep insult (and expense) experienced by Turkey, in that those two ships had become a national obsession; on the same day that Britain officially notified Turkey that the ships were British property, Turkey formally aligned with Germany. Yet Turkey didn't actively do anything that would have been of assistance to Germany, such as declare war on Russia, or shut down Russia's access to-and-through the Black Sea, or compromise her overall neutrality with other nations . . . the Turkish government wanted to see how Germany performed in the early days of the war before fully committing herself as an ally. 

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      Germany had the 2nd-largest fleet in the world, but only two of those ships were in the Mediterranean Sea; the battle cruiser Goeben (a de facto dreadnought), and the light cruiser Breslau. The Goeben was a concern for Great Britain and France, due to its top speed of 27.8 knots per hour; the Goeben could outflank, outmaneuver, and attack all ships in the Mediterranean. While the Goeben was an impressive ship, the British placed too much stock in how Germany planned to use the Goeben (the British placed far too much stock in the entire German surface fleet, which Kaiser Wilhelm II basically refused to use-and-risk during the entire war).
     On 3 August, 1914, Admiral Souchon, commander of the Goeben (pictured), was ordered to sail to Constantinople, as a show of good faith in the VERY recently agreed-upon alliance. Souchon wanted to restore his supply of coal in Italy, but Italy, still a neutral nation, refused to cooperate. In addition, the Goeben needed mechanical attention, especially with her main boilers. In order to break through to Constantinople past French & British ships, he needed the Goeben to perform at 100% capacity. 
     Souchon found a safe port at Messina in Sicily for repairs and coal. Churchill (the 1st Lord of the Admiralty) knew where the Goeben was located, but as of yet Britain and Germany were not at war (although by 3 August, Germany had declared war on France after entering Luxembourg and Belgium). Therefore, Churchill's orders to his ships in the Mediterranean were that they were not to be "brought into action versus a superior force". To Churchill at that point-in-time, the Austrian navy was that "Superior Force"; to the captains on the British warships, Churchill's orders meant that they could operate on their own discretion. Souchon was also in a position to act on his own discretion, in that his orders to sail to Constantinople were put on hold by Admiral Tirpitz; there was confusion as to whether the German-Turkish treaty had actually been formalized.

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      Souchon,, once the Goeben was ready for departure at Messina, decided to go to North Africa to bombard French locations in Algiers. Churchill's orders to Admiral Milne, the senior Royal Navy admiral in the Mediterranean, was to shadow the Goeben, and be ready to attack when war was declared between the two nations; the problem was that Milne didn't know the location of the Goeben. The French fleet was ordered to intercept and attack the Goeben, and as it turned out, the French fleet and the Goeben were both heading to North Africa independently of each other.
     Souchon had almost reached North Africa, when once again he was ordered to go to Constantinople, but he was unwilling to do so until he bombarded the Algerian coast. When the Goeben shelled French positions in Algiers, Souchon raised the RUSSIAN flag, and his men were in (kind-of) Russian uniforms, in the hope that Germany wouldn't be readily identified for the attack. After that, Souchon headed east, back to Messina to resupply his battleship. 
     The French fleet assumed that the Goeben would continue west, and waited to engage the German warship; they had no idea that the Goeben was heading east on a portentous political mission that would result in intensifying and prolonging the war that had just started.

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     The British ships, the Indomitable and the Indefatigable, encountered the Goeben heading east, but since there wasn't a state of war between the two nations, the ships passed each other without event. However, the two British ships turned around, and reported the Goeben's position, but could do nothing else. Churchill actually believed that the Goeben was heading WEST, and didn't give specific orders to the Indomitable and the Indefatigable. The Goeben (with the Breslau) were able to escape the two British ships, due to its speed, as well as darkness and weather.
     By that time there was a state of war between Germany and Britain, but the British could not attack the Goeben at Messina, since that was in the sphere of (still) neutral Italy. Since the British fleet couldn't enter the Strait of Messina, Admiral Milne ordered ships to patrol both exit points. However, Milne believed that the Goeben was going to head west, and only had one ship patrolling the eastern exit; Britain's best ships were not in the right location to intercept the Goeben.
     Due to continued frustration by Italy's lack of cooperation, Souchon couldn't get enough coal in Messina to reach Constantinople. Then, amazingly, Souchon received orders from Admiral Tirpitz to once again place his mission to Constantinople on hold. Souchon was also informed that the Austrian navy would be of no assistance in the Mediterranean - in essence, Souchon was in command of a fleet of two ships, and it was up to him as what to do next.

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      Admiral Souchon decided to make a run for Constantinople, despite orders to the contrary. He decided that he would force the Turks into formalizing the alliance with Germany to aid his nation in the war. The British ships near the Adriatic Sea decided that the Goeben was a "Superior Force", and decided not to engage. Meanwhile, the Liberals in charge of the British government just didn't like Turkey, and therefore didn't connect any of the dots in terms of the Goeben's trek in the Mediterranean. Souchon evaded the British at the Aegean Sea, and was able to meet up with his German collier (coal ship). The British fleet at the Aegean settled for bottling-up the Goeben, since they were certain of being able to intercept the Goeben as it tried to exit the Aegean; it just didn't register to the British fleet, or the British government, that the Goeben was sailing towards Turkey.
     Once the Goeben reached the Dardanelles, the burden was on the Turkish government whether to let the Goeben and the Breslau enter, and then to sail beyond that point. The military leader of Turkey, Enver Pasha ("The Young Turk", pictured), decided to let the Goeben and the Breslau enter the Dardanelles, and to be escorted to Constantinople. Pasha's next order was to instruct the forts guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles to fire on the British ships if they appeared. Once the Goeben and the Breslau were guided to Constantinople, the war that was just underway was guaranteed to become the nightmare of the Great War, featuring unfathomable slaughter and misery.

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        The Goeben and the Breslau were actually purchased by Turkey in order to bolster their navy, but also as a slap in the face to Great Britain. Renamed the Jawus and Midilli, they flew the Turkish flag, and were reviewed by the Sultan . . . but Admiral Souchon and the German crew was still aboard the Goeben (nee Jawus). Still, for three months, Turkey wavered in terms of being an active wartime ally for Germany in the Black Sea region. Admiral Souchon, for the second time, made a decision that would alter World War I for the worse; he entered the Black Sea with the Goeben, and started firing on Russian targets. Since this act of war was conducted by a ship flying the Turkish flag, Russia declared war on Turkey on 4 November, 1914 . . . Britain and France declared war on Turkey on 5 November, 1914.
     Due to the Goeben reaching Turkey, and forcing Turkey into war, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Italy (reluctantly allied with Germany) were drawn into the war. Since the Black Sea was shut down to Russian ships (Archangel was their only real port left, and it was frozen half of the year), Russia lost 98% of their exports, and 95% of its imports . . . the resulting economic catastrophe was a large factor in causing the Russian Revolution in 1917.
     Also as a result of the Goeben, the ridiculously unnecessary and costly Battle of Gallipoli
occurred. Allied strength was diverted to campaigns in Mesopotamia, Suez, and Palestine, and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire occurred during the Great War . . . . all due to Admiral Souchon's decisions in command of the Goeben from August to November, 1914.

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The Phillips County Massacre (Ark), a.k.a. The Elaine Massacre:                                                   1 - 4 October, 1919

2/13/2015

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        Cameron McWhirter. Red Summer:The Summer of 1919 
                                            and the Awakening of Black America
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     In the immediate aftermath of World War I, most whites, liberal to conservative, viewed African-American self-defense in asserting their Constitutional rights as a threat to the existing social order. During "Red Summer" (1919), there were many race riots, most notably in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Knoxville, and Omaha; the last, and worst, of the race riots that summer occurred in eastern Arkansas in Phillips County (Elaine was the major river town). Whites insisted that the riot was a result of African-American insurrection, but it was the area's white citizens that massacred innocent African-Americans on a scale that shocked the nation.
     Life for African-Americans in Phillips County was better compared to nearby areas. Much like a city, Phillips County attracted a high number of African-Americans in search of a better life. But in the 1890s, "Jim Crow" came to eastern Arkansas (it was the onset of the "Nadir of U.S. History" for African-Americans, 1890-1940), and then the Great War. Cotton prices were up, but African-American sharecroppers didn't receive much of the financial windfall as did white cotton growers. The only reason why African-American sharecroppers received even a sliver of the revenues from cotton was mostly due to the fact that there were fewer African-American sharecroppers in the county; many had migrated to northern states.
     The population of Phillips County during World War I was 45,000, with 75% of that population African-American; African-Americans made up 27% of the total population of Arkansas. While there were many sharecroppers, there was also a thriving African-American middle class. While African-Americans were the clear majority in terms of population, the county's whites controlled the politics, economics, and the law.

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      Ed Ware, a fairly prosperous African-American farmer in Phillips County, thought whites had tried to cheat him; he refused to sell them his cotton at below-market prices, and he hired a lawyer to assist him. This situation wasn't unusual at all during the "Nadir"; most whites across the nation did everything possible to limit freedom and opportunities for African-Americans. Ware was a member of an African-American lodge (ostensibly a farmer's union), and the county's whites thought the lodge was really a branch of the International Workers of the World (IWW; a.k.a. "The Wobblies").
     Ware was at his lodge meeting at a country church, and there was ample security around the building. Two hours after the meeting started, a car with a white deputy, a white railroad detective, and an African-American passenger stopped. Although all in the church claim that the two whites started firing on the building, that didn't stop the area's whites from assuming that the African-Americans fired their weapons first. During the exchange of fire, the railroad detective was killed, and the deputy was wounded in the knee. The wounded deputy and the African-American passenger ran away from the car.
     Another car driven by a white citizen came by, and it was fired upon; just thirty minutes later, many whites arrived at the scene. They saw that the railroad detective was shot through the stomach, and the car was riddled with bullets. Two days later, a white mob burned down the church, which also eliminated the proof that the church was severely damaged by gunfire. The shooting set off a panic among the whites of Phillips County; to them, a "Negro Plot" was being hatched. They called for help from whites from adjoining counties, as well as the Arkansas militia. As a result, a large number of armed-and-angry whites invaded Phillips County.

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      White mobs roamed the countryside and the town of Elaine, looking to shoot-and-kill any African-American on sight. This went on for three days; some African-Americans were shot despite trying to surrender. The Governor of Arkansas, Charles Hillman Brough, made the situation worse by asking for federal troops to suppress the African-American insurrection. Authorization was given by the Secretary of War, Newton Baker, and federal troops were dispatched from nearby Camp Pike. The commander of the federal troops, Colonel Isaac Jenks, declared martial law, and issued orders to look for African-American "agitators". After a skirmish where a soldier was killed, federal soldiers hunted (and killed) African-Americans for thirty-six hours. First, second, and third-person accounts claim that the federal soldiers killed many helpless African-Americans with machine guns; Colonel Jenks contended that federal troops only killed two African-Americans.
     In the aftermath, forced confessions "revealed" a planned rebellion against the white citizens of Phillips County. Even though the riot was packaged as a Nat Turner-like revolt, there was no evidence at all in support, despite all major U.S. newspapers clamoring otherwise.

     The truth was that a massacre of African-Americans at the hand of whites occurred in Phillips County in early-October, 1919. To this day, nobody truly knows how deadly it was; probably in the hundreds with unspeakable atrocities committed. Federal troops didn't stop a riot, they went on a "Crusade of Death", killing hundreds of African-Americans; Colonel Issac Jenks went to his grave believing that he had stopped a Revolution. Predictably, all white investigators in-and-out of Arkansas fudged the number of deaths to very low numbers.
     Ed Ware escaped to Louisiana, but was extradited back to Arkansas where he was executed. Dozens of African-Americans had their basic Constitutional rights violated when they were convicted in "Show Trials"; maximum sentences were given, including eleven executions. The planned African-American "Insurrection" was a figment of the Phillips County's white citizens. "Show Trials" such as these became the tool for whites to try and contain the freedom of their African-American neighbors.
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     The NAACP used the media as well, claiming that whites started the massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas. The civil rights group also cited whites as the main source of tension, since they kept trying to subjugate African-Americans. 
     At least white politicians in big Northern cities learned a lesson from "Red Summer", June-October, 1919. After early-October, any hint of white mobs trying to incite a riot against African-Americans were put down hard by police and/or state militia. But in the Rural South, nothing changed; the lynching of African-Americans continued unabated. 
     There was one reaction from the federal government to "Red Summer": Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto on the Volstead Act (Prohibition) . . . their conclusion was that if there was less liquor, there would also be less "trouble" from African-Americans . . . 

          Below: a short documentary on the massacre, hosted by Ossie Davis . . . 
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From Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway (Dec 1941 - June 1942)

2/6/2015

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                         Source: Jean Edward Smith. FDR (2008)
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      Before, during, and after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. and Japan grossly underestimated each other. Japan had no concept about our industrial capacity or national spiritualism, and since women in Japan had no civil rights, their government and military thought American women would play no part in the war. Had Japan attacked Singapore or Borneo, Americans would have been divided on war with Japan, and President Franklin Roosevelt would have been in an untenable position as Commander-in-Chief. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December, 1941, unified America like nothing else possibly could, and just days later, Hitler declared war on America. Hitler did not have to declare war on the U.S. based on Germany's Axis Pact with Japan, but he and Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, were more than overjoyed to do so . . . across the board, it seemed underestimation was the norm in the early years of World War II. It was in this atmosphere of underestimation that Japan made its plans for an attack on Midway Island, which they were sure would end America's ability to be a dominant presence in the Pacific.

     On 26 December, 1941, Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, addressed a Joint Session of Congress; he was the first foreigner accorded that privilege since the Marquis de Lafayette's "Farewell Tour" in 1824. Churchill was able to garner a "Germany-First" strategy from FDR and Congress, despite serious misgivings about being unable to focus enough attention in the Pacific. 
     On 6 January, 1942, FDR gave his 10th State of the Union Address to a Joint Session of Congress. Unlike the sweeping rhetoric of Churchill, Hitler, and Mussolini, when FDR addressed an audience, it seemed like an individual conversation. FDR stated production goals, featuring 60,000 planes and 45,000 tanks; FDR just made up the numbers, figuring that those responsible for production would meet those figures . . . quietly, behind the scenes, FDR's production goals were revised in order to meet the necessary military balance and realities.
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      On 19 February, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, ordering over 100,000 Japanese-Americans (and non-resident Japanese aliens) on the West Coast relocated to concentration camps - there was no real military or security need in play (FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover thought the order was unnecessary, since he believed all Japanese spies had already been arrested). Pearl Harbor was not the impetus of the order; a series of serious naval defeats in the Pacific in the weeks after Pearl Harbor caused fear to spread like contagion. As far as the U.S. Government was concerned by early-1942, the only way to explain these defeats was that there was an "Enemy Within", and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were an obvious and convenient target. It was also a culmination of decades of racism against Japanese-Americans, combined with extreme jealousy/coveting of Japanese-American property. For example, in California, Japanese-Americans owned 1% of the cultivated land, yet produced an incredible 40% of the state's crops.

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      One of the results of the Doolittle Raid in April, 1942, was that Japan badly wanted to strike back. The Admiral of Japan's Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto, got greedy, and tried for another surprise attack on Midway Island. Yamamoto believed that whoever controlled Midway controlled the Pacific, and if Japan had the island, Hawaii would be directly threatened (tectonically, Midway is the western-most Hawaiian Island), and maybe the U.S. would believe the West Coast would also be threatened. If Japan had Midway, Yamamoto believed that negotiations would occur, and Japan would once again to be the unchallenged Master of the Pacific. On the other hand, if America had Midway, Yamamoto thought the home islands of Japan would never be truly secure. 
     Yamamoto faced some opposition in the Japanese government, in that the favored political strategy was to focus on an impenetrable naval defense perimeter in the Pacific. As a result of these two different strategies, it was decided to do BOTH: Japan would go for Australia and Midway at about the same time, which would stretch the Japanese military capacity to the limit. On 4 May, 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea occurred, northeast of Australia; the two opposing forces were separated by 175 miles of open ocean. Ships never came into contact; it was an air battle with carrier-based planes. Japan sank the U.S. aircraft carrier Lexington (pictured), and badly destroyed the carrier Yorktown's flight deck. The U.S. sank a Japanese light carrier, one of their large aircraft carriers, and Japan lost twice the number of planes compared to the U.S. As a result, Japan cancelled their planned invasion of Australia.

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     The Battle of Midway began on 4 June, 1942, with Admiral Nagumo in command of four large carriers (he was also in charge of Japan's large carriers during Pearl Harbor). In support of Nagumo's carriers were 11 Japanese battleships, 16 cruisers, and 53 destroyers to crush the remnants of the American fleet. Yamamoto was in personal command of the attack, with his flagship the Yamoto, the world's largest battleship. 
     Yamamoto's strategy was as follows: Nagumo would lead the attack, the U.S. would respond and engage in battle, and then he would quickly advance for the kill, and the decisive victory. However, this time the U.S. knew Japan's plan of attack, having broken their communications code some weeks prior, and the U.S. plan was to destroy all of Nagumo's carriers. As the battle raged over Midway Island, the U.S. sank three Japanese carriers, and the fourth was so badly damaged that it was scuttled (Japan only had two large carriers left in their navy at that time); that meant that the Japanese planes and pilots that had savaged Midway had no place to land on their return. 
     Yamamoto had no choice but to retreat in disgrace with a badly damaged navy; in just six months after Pearl Harbor, as a result of Midway, Japan lost their naval superiority in the Pacific. In the two years after Midway, Japan had six battlefleet (large) carriers (all would be badly damaged or destroyed before the end of 1944), while the U.S. had 17 battlefleet carriers (but not the Yorktown; that carrier was sunk by a Japanese submarine as it was being towed to Pearl Harbor after Midway), as well as 10 medium carriers, and 86 escort carriers.

     Post-Midway: On 8 November, 1942, the Allied invasion of North Africa (Operation Torch) began; Britain landed in the Mediterranean, while the U.S. landed in Morocco - by 12 November, Algiers and Morocco were under Allied control. In January, 1943, FDR and Churchill met at Casablanca (Morocco). It was decided that after the Nazis were defeated in North Africa (and Britain's petroleum reserves in the Middle East secured), that an invasion of Sicily would be next, especially since General Eisenhower said that an invasion on the Western Front would not be possible until 1944 at the earliest. Also at Casablanca, FDR & Churchill announced that only "Unconditional Surrender" would be acceptable from Germany, Italy, and Japan.

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TR & the Pennsylvania Coal Strike of 1902

1/31/2015

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                Source: Edmund Morris. Theodore Rex (2001)
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     Today, huge conglomerates are called corporations, but at the turn of the 20th Century, they were known as Combinations. President Theodore Roosevelt's predecessors paid scant attention to Combinations (e.g. Standard Oil, the Pennsylvania Railroad), but TR knew (as did most US citizens) that Combination led to monopoly (what many called "Dark Power"). Once a Combination was achieved, the predictable economic results were higher prices and lower wages . . . but there were also clear benefits for the consumer.
     To form a "Trust", the companies that were merged into a Combination reorganized their shares in the Stock Market, and created an "Independent" Board that would then operate the colossus. The goal was to crush competition to maximize profits, and few were better at the Combination Game than John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, that controlled 90% of the oil industry by the time TR became President in 1901. 
     Potential profits were so great, and many Combinations were formed in many industries, that Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890. But that law wasn't enforced by Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley, because consumers largely benefited somehow / someway from Combinations. For example, Standard Oil refined and sold the safest (and very affordable) kerosene on the market; there were Combinations for virtually every consumer good, including a Combination for chewing gum. TR was ideologically conservative towards Combinations, believing that the overall benefits outweighed the costs . . . 65% of the overall wealth in the US was attributed to Combinations.


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      It didn't take TR too long, as President, to believe that at some point the federal Government had the right to supervise and regulate Combinations; TR viewed himself as the Director of the greatest Combination of all - the US Government. To TR, the "Labor Question" was the greatest single problem confronting 20th Century America; in his view, the contempt for unskilled workers sowed the seeds for future Revolution. In 1902, the biggest tinderbox in terms of conflict between Capital and Labor was located in the coal mines in the Alleghenies. 
     The resistance by the Coal Combination to the growing United Mine Workers was profound; they did have at least tacit public support since the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago (1886) convinced most of the public that Labor was the main antagonist. TR's support of Labor had severely dimmed as a result of the Haymarket Riot, but on the other hand, he understood more than most that Combinations (especially in transportation and industry) consumed the resources as if they were a swarm of locusts. Conservation, a term that by 1901 had become fashionable and accepted by many Americans, meant not only should natural resources be preserved, but Combinations should be prevented from destroying those resources.

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     Coal mine owners also owned the coal-bearing railroads; by that fact alone, they were among the most powerful of Combinations. The anthracite coal ("hard" coal, that burned much cleaner for heating compared to the "soft" bituminous coal, which was less efficient for heating, and was often used in the production of steel since "coke" could be extracted) produced in these Pennsylvania mines and fields heated all of Northeast America. 
     In situations involving extreme points-of-view, TR always wanted to find the center. TR's speeches on the "Coal Crisis" equivocated, and editorials on both sides of the issue harshly criticized the new President. However, mixed in with the equivocations was TR's desire for the national government to regulate Combinations.
         (Pictured: UMW leader John Mitchell leading miners in a protest during the lockout)
     Demand for coal skyrocketed with the continued Capital v. Labor struggle in Pennsylvania, and the approaching winter. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (MA); one of TR's closest friends and advisors, demanded that TR do something to end the crisis; TR responded that unless the Governor of Pennsylvania asked for assistance, the federal government's hands were tied. TR suspected that the real issue was that the Coal Combination wanted to save face in the public arena, as well as with other Combinations . . . the mine owners didn't want to acquiesce to the government, or even a single politician, in the public arena.

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     The Governor of Massachusetts, W. Murray Crane, gave TR the idea of a Bipolar Conference; that strategy had solved the Teamsters Strike in Boston in less than 24 hours. TR faced murder, sabotage, coal shortages, and thousands of civilian deaths in the upcoming winter if he didn't end the crisis in Pennsylvania. After five months of stalemate, TR had enough; the Coal Combination (and Labor) was threatening the "Public Good". 
     Both sides in the crisis had made it clear in the media that they would not be receptive to any interference from state or federal governments. So TR sent out duplicate telegrams to the Coal Combination owners and Labor in the guise of "Presidential Invitations". which was in reality a polite Presidential Order. Shockingly, both parties agreed to meet in the same room with President Roosevelt. TR met with the leaders of both parties still confined to a wheelchair, since he was still convalescing from a near-fatal car-trolley accident some weeks prior (he was thrown from the car over twenty feet, landing flat on his face, and his right shin needed two operations)

       (Political Cartoon of Labor "Striking" Capital)

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     President Roosevelt, UMW leader John Mitchell, and the Combination representatives met at the "Temporary White House" (22 Jackson Place; the White House was undergoing major renovations), with TR in his wheelchair, and all 14 others arranged around him in a semicircle. TR admitted that he had no legal authority, but he hoped to influence an end to the crisis, and get the coal once again flowing from the mines. TR stated that there were actually THREE involved parties: Capital, Labor, and the General Public, of which he was their representative.
     The representatives of the Coal Combination didn't think that UMW leader Mitchell should be part of the assembled party, since he was part of the bituminous (soft) coal industry, not anthracite (hard) coal. Nonetheless, TR gave all 14 assembled his written views, and adjourned the meeting until 3 pm; the Combination representatives spent the adjournment fuming. 
     The Combination told TR that the 10% wage hike he was suggesting would threaten their profitability (which was true); what they really wanted from TR was protection from the federal government against the striking miners in order to get "scabs" (replacement workers) into the mines. The Anthracite Coal Combination representatives knew that bituminous coal was far more plentiful, and if the flow of anthracite coal continued to be interrupted, they could be out of business. 
     When the meeting resumed at 3 pm, TR asked the Combination reps if Mitchell's (UMW) proposal for a 3rd-Party mediation to the dispute was acceptable - the Combination reps immediately stated that it was unacceptable. The media lauded TR for trying to end the crisis, and excoriated both Capital and Labor for their continued intransigence. 

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     During the impasse of TR's negotiations with Capital and Labor, violence once again descended on Western Pennsylvania; the UMW was openly inciting mobs of striking miners to riot. TR decided to appoint a Commission of Inquiry, then he would find a way to end the crisis. Secretary of War, Elihu Root (one of TR's closest advisors) suggested that J.P. Morgan
 was the perfect choice to find a solution to the Coal Crisis. 
     TR sent Root to see Morgan, after he briefed both Root and Attorney General Philander Knox that he was about ready to use the Army; not since April, 1861, had the U.S. been in such a potential state of affairs. Rumors of a General Strike (workers striking across many industries) were pervasive, and TR gave orders to General Schofield that he only answered to the President, and if he was ordered to go to Pennsylvania, he was to use overwhelming force to quickly end the crisis.
     On 13 October, 1902, SecWar Root and J.P. Morgan met with TR; Morgan stated that Capital tacitly acknowledged the supremacy of the federal government. Morgan also broached the subject of the Coal Combination's wish of who would be a member of the Commission of Inquiry - under no circumstances did they want a member of Labor to be on the commission. Since the Coal Combination expressed support of the inquiry, with one major demand, TR felt that he had quite a bit of latitude in how he could proceed.

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     On 14 October, 1902, TR, Morgan, and Root met on Root's yacht, the "Corsair"; the 
"Corsair Agreement" officially announced the Commission of Inquiry to end the Coal Crisis, but still unresolved was the question of who would be on the commission. Combination reps finally agreed to a Labor representative on the Committee of Inquiry if he wasn't officially identified as a representative of Labor. To TR, this was a case of "Tweedledum v. Tweedledee", but he pounced on the opening. 
     The Combination reps agreed to a Labor leader being on the Committee of Inquiry if he was publicly identified as a SOCIOLOGIST. Soon, all seven members of the Committee of Inquiry were in place, and the flow of anthracite coal once again resumed, ending the crisis. TR was universally lauded as the hero that ended the potential catastrophe (which was to a large extent true), and was portrayed as the first President to stand up to a Combination (which was true). TR's "Litmus Test" for when to challenge a Combination was to determine of the "Public Good" was threatened; even before the Coal Crisis, TR was in the process of challenging J.P. Morgan's "Northern Securities" Railroad Combination proposal. 

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5 Things I Learned From Reading "A Covert Affair" by Jennet Conant (2011)

1/24/2015

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1) The world-famous gourmet Julia Child worked
     in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner 

     of the CIA) during WW II in the Pacific (mostly, what 
     she was tasked with doing was operating an 
     areas's "Registry", keeping track of all the paperwork 
     coming in & going out)

2) Even after V-E Day in August, 1945, Japanese troops were 
    still actually used by the Allies, including America, in such areas
    as Indonesia and Southeast Asia, as de facto "Peacekeepers" in
    order to keep some sort of order until the European powers 
    were able to reclaim their colonies


3) FDR inspired nationalism in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, but
     after his death, Truman's political views tended more towards
     a return to European colonialism.  This paved the way for
     such groups as Ho Chi Minh's resistance (Viet Minh) against
     France to take root and grow in influence and numbers.


4) One OSS operation that was attempted during WW II in the
    Pacific against Japan was based on the supposed fear that
    the typical Japanese citizen had concerning foxes.  An
    operation was actually attempted, dumping dozens upon
    dozens of foxes in to the Pacific by an island held by the
    Japanese military. The foxes, once they hit the water, turned
    tail and actually swam out to sea, never to be seen again


5) Julia, before she met Paul Child during WW II, had culinary 
    tastes that were best described as a "Meat & Potatoes" palette.
    She had minimal cooking skills until after she married Paul in
    1946, and he was reassigned, by the State Dept., to Paris.
    (Even during the peak of her fame, she enjoyed eating at a
    Chinese restaurant in the Boston area, noting that there
    was barely enough time in one lifetime to master French
    cooking, why not enjoy the various Asian foods that had
    changed her attitudes and palette
 for the rest of her life)
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5 Things I Learned From Reading "A Crack in the Edge of the World" (San Francisco Earthquake of 1906)

1/24/2015

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Source: Simon Winchester. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the 
                                               Great California Earthquake of 1906 (2005)
1) San Francisco, from the Gold Rush to the eve of the earthquake, was a gallimaufry (I learned a new word from this book; it basically means "Hodge-Podge") of varying attitudes, morals, building quality, and social status. It was a city that wanted to be the "Paris of the West", but couldn't quite pull it off, despite being the most important city west of St. Louis

2) Before the city was named San Francisco (after St. Francis, of course), it was known as
Yerba Buena (Good Herb).  In the 1770s, Spanish explorers came across an island in the bay that had a minty herb that had a myriad of uses.  The area Natives, as well as the Spaniards, used the herb for virtually any purpose to promote health (e.g. tea, topical uses, food additive). That island in  San Francisco Bay is stilled called Yerba Buena.

3) Chinatown, like every other part of San Francisco, was hit incredibly hard by the earthquake. In a desire to permanently remove the Chinese from San Francisco, city leaders tried to relocate the survivors to a nearby peninsula.  In the end, Chinatown survived and thrived, but a result of the earthquake was the new purpose of Angel Island.  Since the identification papers of resident Chinese immigrants were lost, and many more Chinese were now attempting to enter via San Francisco to take advantage of the "paperless" situation, Angel Island became a de facto detention center for all Chinese that couldn't immediately prove they were in America legally.  Sometimes, several months would pass until the ruling came down, either way, for a Chinese individual at Angel Island

4) City leaders, as well as railroad executives, were scared to death after the earthquake that people would no longer want to relocate to, or visit, San Francisco.  So, in a somewhat organized conspiracy of sorts, the official line of what caused the most destruction of the city was deemed to be the subsequent fire, not the actual earthquake.  These same city leaders ignored warnings about the failing water pipes before the earthquake; there was very little water available to fight the fires, although the scope of the post-earthquake fire was such that it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

5) The theory of plate tectonics is surprisingly recent: Tuzo Wilson, in the late-1960s, published his plate tectonic theory, and faced a surprising level of criticism from fellow geologists and scientists for a few years.  The San Francisco Earthquake was caused by the "Slip-Slide" movement of plates, in which the Pacific Plate slipped a bit against the North American Plate.  San Francisco basically sits astride the San Andreas Fault, whereas Los Angeles (most of it, anyway), is west of the fault

** 5 days after the quake, as the effort to locate survivors / bodies continued, a dog (terrier) emerged from the wreckage, none the worse for wear, wanting to play (and I assume eat).
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Steve McQueen: "A Magnificent Actor"

1/24/2015

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     Source: Marc Eliot. Steve McQueen. 2011 (Steve McQueen's filmography)
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         Screen capture from The Great Escape (1963), my favorite Steve McQueen movie . . .
     Since I was old enough to remember, Steve McQueen was a Hollywood superstar, even though I didn't see any of his movies until after his death from lung cancer in 1980 (at the age of 50).  Among the interesting things I learned from reading Marc Eliot's biography was . . . 

** McQueen had a rough childhood, never really able to experience anything close to a 
     traditional upbringing; basically, he ran away from home, joining a carnival of all things, at      the age of 15, and eventually joined the Marines

** He was a "Method" actor, which basically meant he totally immersed himself with the
     role he was playing (the style was en vogue in the 1950s & 1960s, in particular).  A by-
     product was that he was very difficult to work with on-and-off the set, from the POV's
     of directors, producers, and fellow actors (especially fellow method actors, such as
     Dustin Hoffman in 1973's "Papillion"). It was ironic that he had a life-long antipathy 
     towards authority, but when he had authority, he basically abused it as an actor. He was
     married three times - his second marriage was to the most successful actress of the late-
     1960s/early-1970s, Ali McGraw, and his first marriage lasted over 15 years. 

** McQueen, like most Hollywood superstars, turned down roles in movies that would
     have made him an even bigger star.  A sampling of the roles he turned down for various
     reasons include: Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, 1969 (Robert Redford); Dirty Harry,
     1971 (Clint Eastwood); Play Misty for Me, 1971 (Clint Eastwood); The French 
     Connection, 1972 (Gene Hackman won his first Oscar in this role); Superman, 1978 
     (Marlon Brando); Apocalypse Now, 1979 (Marlon Brando).  To be fair, this kind of 
     thing does happen often enough in Hollywood. Some famous examples include: Tom Cruise
     turned down "Ghost" (1990, Patrick Swayze benefited from that decision), while Julia 
     Roberts turned down both "The Proposal", and "The Blind Side" (2009), to Sandra Bullock's
     great benefit.

** The lung cancer that he died from at the age of 50 was guaranteed to happen, it turns out,
     due to an extended period of time removing asbestos as a Marine, for one of the many
     times he was disciplined in the Corps. The first inkling of that cancer appeared in 1972
     while he was making the movie "The Get Away" w/ Ali McGraw; he made the last few 
     movies of his career, and life, and tremendous pain and discomfort.  The lung cancer
     wasn't diagnosed until he was making the movie "Tom Horn", in 1979.

** He had a chance with 'Bullitt" (1968), to franchise that action "anti-hero" to multiple 

     movies, much like Clint Eastwood did w/ Dirty Harry; no one in Hollywood understood 
     why he didn't take advantage of that role with future sequels, but instead focused on 
     choosing roles that his fans didn't support at the box office (largely through his production 
     company Solar, which was a financial albatross)

** The highest-grossing movie in which he starred was 1974's "The Towering Inferno", in
      which he finally appeared in a movie w/ Paul Newman (McQueen was incredibly jealous
      of Newman's super-stardom).  He chose the role of the chief firefighter, in part, in order
      to literally have the last line in the movie over Newman (Ironically enough, it was Newman
      himself, in 1968, that offered McQueen the role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
      but McQueen apparently didn't want to work w/ Newman at that point)

** McQueen was surprisingly lazy when he wasn't on the set, or racing cars or motorcycles.
     A life-long drug addict, philanderer, and couch potato, he wanted to drift through life
     in his 40s, "letting himself go", never making another movie.  His financial realities kept
     him making movies just to live the life he wanted to live (e.g. his last movie, "The Hunter",
     1980)

** Like Denzel Washington and George Clooney, McQueen was a TV star before he became a
     movie star.  McQueen starred in 94 episodes of "Wanted: Dead or Alive", for CBS in the 
     late-1950s, portraying a bounty hunter, which makes his last movie, "The Hunter", kind of
     an ironic last movie for his career.

** The movies that are considered to be the "Essential McQueen" are:
      - The Magnificent Seven (1960) 
      - The Great Escape (1963)
      - The Cincinnati Kid (1965; a poker-player version of Newman's "The Hustler" in 1961)
      - The Sand Pebbles (1966)
      - The Thomas Crown Affair (1968; a role turned down by Sean Connery)
      - Bullitt (1968; to this day, this movie has what is considered by most movie critics as the 
                  greatest car chase in movie history)
      - Papillion (1973)
      - The Towering Inferno (1974)
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Destiny of the Republic (The Assassination of James Garfield)

1/24/2015

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Source: Candice Millard. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and 
                                           the Murder of a President, 2011
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    During 1st Semester of 2013, I read Destiny of the Republic over a weekend (I borrowed the book from my Mom, who highly recommended it) in order to learn more about the Assassination of President James Garfield (1881). So much has been written, discussed, in addition to founded and unfounded speculation, on the Lincoln and JFK assassinations, but not nearly as much has been written on our second assassinated president.  The book focused on six principal players surrounding this assassination - 


** Dr. Joseph Lister: His antiseptic theory (e.g. sterilizing hands, surgical instruments, germ 

     theory) was mostly accepted in Europe, but not in America in 1881.  The aftermath of the 
     Garfield assassination led to the general acceptance of his theory and practices in American
     medicine

** Dr. Willard Bliss: Garfield's lead doctor was basically a medical dictator; he had total control
     to who could access Garfield after the shooting.  For almost three months, he treated
     Garfield in his way, refusing to listen to other medical opinions.  He desperately wanted to
     enhance his reputation by being the doctor that healed the president, but his treatment,

     even by the standards of 1881, bordered on the cruel and unusual. In the end, his 
     treatment (and that of a few others before him) led to MASSIVE sepsis (infection), that 
     was very disturbing to read about, to say the least. He became convinced that the bullet 
     could only be located on one side of the President's body . . . "Dr. Tunnel-Vision"

** Alexander Graham Bell: Interestingly, the only reason why he became famous for inventing

    the telephone was that he was late registering for an "Inventor's Fair", and was located in 
    an obscure location. About to give up since there had been no foot traffic his way, a group
    of very important men walked by on their way out, but one of them recognized Bell, and 
    the group stopped, and they were amazed by the telephone.  Five years later, he wanted to
    help find the elusive bullet, and he adapted technology related to the telephone which in 
    effect, became a kind of "Bullet Detector".  This invention worked, but he wasn't able to 
    find the bullet due to two reasons: a) Bell wasn't told, and didn't bother to find out, that 
    Garfield was on a metal-spring bed, which was rare in 1881; b) Dr. Bliss absolutely refused 
    to let him use his invention on the other side of Garfield's body.  Had Bell been allowed to 
    do so, he would have quickly found the bullet.

** Charles Guiteau: Garfield's assassin was a certified psychotic; everyone that had any 

     dealings with him experienced his insanity.  Guiteau, in the end, believed he was doing a 
     great service for the future of America by killing Garfield.  He, after at least one failed 
     attempt, succeeded in shooting Garfield in the back at close range as the President was 
     heading on vacation in a train station.  Guiteau was the only of the four presidential 
     assassins to receive a fair trial; in the end, the jury refused to acknowledge any aspect of 
     an insanity defense, and sentenced Guiteau to hang. Guiteau's last words were "Glory, 
     Glory, Hallelujah."

** James Garfield: The President lived for almost three months after he was shot by Guiteau;

    given the medical practices of 1881, and the tyrannical Dr. Bliss, he never had a chance 
    due to the infection that invaded his body.  I was struck by how talented and capable he 
    was politically; it's a shame that we haven't had more presidents with his character, 
    discipline, and acumen. I think he was the perfect president at the perfect time, which
    doesn't happen as much in our history as we would like, or need . . . thanks  so much, 
    CHARLES. During the autopsy, the bullet was found safely encapsulated in scar tissue in 
    the pancreas.  Had nothing been done other than making him comfortable, or had doctors 
    adhered to Dr. Lister's procedures, he would have survived, and finished his term.  The 
    nation mourned his assassination every bit as much as Lincoln's death twenty years earlier.

** Roscoe Conkling: The most powerful man in America in 1881 was a U.S. Senator from New

    York. The Republican Party was torn apart by a battle between the "Stalwarts" (Conkling, 
     et al), which supported the "Spoils System" (Cronyism) and the "Half-Breeds" (Garfield, et 
     al), which supported the "Merit System". According to the "Half-Breeds", it wasn't who you 
     know that mattered, but whether or not you were competent for the appointed job.  This 
     battle was intense, and almost ripped the Republicans apart.  One after-effect of the 
     assassination was that Conkling was politically out-maneuvered, and actually was convinced
     to resign his seat in the Senate.  Then, he found out, the state legislature of New York 
     refused to send him back to Washington; even his right-hand man, Vice-President Chester 
     Arthur, abandoned him, even after he was sworn in as the 21st President.  Garfield must 
     have been a very inspiring figure, given the complete turnaround of Arthur, who supported
     the "Merit System" as president, turning is back on Conkling, the man that politically made
     him.

This book was selected as a "One Book, One City" selection for Lincoln in 2011 - I'm glad I had the chance to read it - I learned so much from reading the book - thanks MOM! (But no thanks to you, 
CHARLES)

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The Economics of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

1/24/2015

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      I had never read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and I decided it was time to do so. I started reading it during our de facto school-wide daily study hall the last week before Christmas Break, and I finished reading this classic novel on the Saturday before Christmas.  At the heart of economics is "Benefit v. Cost"; what made The Grapes of Wrath a very captivating reading experience was that throughout the book, Steinbeck focused on "Benefit v. Cost" from a variety of viewpoints - he didn't limit himself solely to the choices facing the migrants heading towards California. What follows is my analysis of some examples of "Benefit v. Cost" from Steinbeck's most famous novel. BTW, Steven Spielberg recently announced that he was producing a re-make of the movie, "The Grapes of Wrath".  The classic movie that was released in 1940, just one year after the book was published, is loyal to the book for the first half of the film, but not so in the second half - nonetheless, Steinbeck was happy with the movie, especially with Henry Fonda's portrayal of Tom Joad.

1) Why did the Joads leave Oklahoma in the 1930s?
    - Firstly, the practice of straight-plowing must be addressed; farmers on the Great Plains believed in plowing perfectly straight lines (contour plowing was rarely used; there were even straight-plowing contests for prize money in the Great Plains), which was proven to be the worst strategy imaginable when the rain stopped in the early-1930s.  Since the price for crops was incredibly low, the basic strategy for most farmers was to plow-up more land in order to plant more crops, and make money by volume.  The problem was that most every farmer was doing so, and by the mid-1930s, the tractor enters the picture on an epic scale.  The Joads, like thousands of other tenant farmers, were "Tractored-Out", in that the landowners decided to plow up (and harrow) more land with the tractor, and the tenant farmers were in the way (unemployment due to technology . . . and the Dust Bowl). One trick the landowners used to persuade their renters to leave was to use the tractor to knock-off their small house from the foundation, which is what happened to the Joads. With the promise of work and decent wages in California (the infamous orange handbill), the benefit of going West far outweighed the cost of staying in Oklahoma. 

2) Why did Tom Joad decide to violate his parole by leaving the state line?
    - The main character of the book was just released from prison (on parole) for killing a
man in a bar fight.  The main concern of his parents was that if he left Oklahoma, he would violate his parole.  Tom Joad decided to gamble that if he didn't get in any more trouble, the Oklahoma authorities would view trying to track him down as too costly. The clincher for his decision to violate parole, of course, was the idea that he (and his family) would be working in California, and that their standard of living would increase.

3) The Burials of Grandpa and Grandma Joad
    - Grandpa Joad (Tom's grandfather), never really wanted to leave the homestead, and not
long after leaving Oklahoma, died of a stroke in Ivy and Sairy Wilson's tent (the first fellow migrants going West that the Joads came across).  The agony of benefit v. cost in terms of what to do with their loved one's remains was addressed. It was viewed as too costly to involve the nearest coroner, and spend $40 ($630 now) in the cheapest, legal way to resolve the crisis. Instead, Grandpa Joad was buried not far from the highway; it was even decided not to leave a mound of dirt on the grave, just in case his remains were found, and he was somehow traced back to them.  But, why did the Joads decide to spend $40 when Grandma Joad died?  Not long after they crossed the California state line, the Joads were stopped at a check-point to see if they were bringing in any fruits or vegetables.  Mama Joad refused to let the officer search the back of their 1925 Dodge truck (jalopy), but did show him how sick Grandma was, and he let them pass . . . well, Grandma was already dead by that point.  Even though the Joads had been warned by those heading back East that there weren't any decent jobs available, the Joads believed there was still hope - so much so that Mom rode with a dead older relative next to her in the truck (at least she didn't strap Grandma Joad to the roof rack of the Family Truckster), and the family spent $40, most of the rest of their money, for a coroner in Barstow to take care of Grandma, since they almost certainly would be working very soon.  Since they were past the check-point, very close to the orchards, etc., the Joads figured it would be less costly to properly take care of Grandma Joad at that point.

4) The Waitress in the Cafe
    - A strategy Steinbeck used throughout the book was to feature interludes from other points-of-view, in order to provide more context for the struggles of the migrant farmers. One such interlude focused on a cafe on Route 66, in either Texas or New Mexico.  A waitress at the cafe had decided a while ago to only invest her time, focus, and energies on truckers, and no one else.  Truckers, if treated right, would come back, time-and-time again, and tell others about their experience, which meant more truckers as customers, and more tips, of course.  So, when migrant farmers stopped in, trying to, for example, buy a loaf of bread that cost 15 cents for a dime, she had a dilemma. She didn't want to have an unpleasant scene with any migrant farmers that would make the truckers uncomfortable, so she (benefit v. cost) decided to sell the bread for a dime. She even, just to get the migrant family out of the cafe, took a another penny from the migrant farmer so his two kids could have a piece of candy each, even though the candy cost a nickel.

5) Traveling Caravans of "Okies" on Route 66
    - According to Steinbeck, it did not take too long for Westward migrant farmers to group
together, forming mobile communities.  The costs of grouping included rules of conduct, punishment for violating the rules (#1 punishment: being shunned); all for the main benefit of security. Another main cost was that if a family wanted to travel faster, they were unable to do so. In essence, these groupings became a sort of modern Wagon Train - the Joads experienced something of the sort when they decided, with Ivy and Sairy Wilson, to make a two-car caravan, mostly in order to be sure they were able to get through the mountains in New Mexico.

6) Why did Californians (in the book) hate "Okies"?
    - Steinbeck described a strategy that went something like this: In order to keep wages very low, and to maximize profits for the California landowners, a huge surplus of workers was needed - in other words, a situation was created for their great benefit (e.g. issue an orange handbill in the East, in order to bring a surplus of workers to California).  But the cost of this decision led to the hatred of the "Okies" (a term that was used pejoratively by Californians in the book), since now, with all these idle (and angry) unemployed migrant farmers, their property was now obviously at risk. So, another strategy was created, in order to minimize the cost - "Union-Busting" strategies were employed (e.g. harassment, jail, physical attacks, lynching).

7) The Market Experience for the "Okies"
    - A constant source of frustration for the tenant / migrant farmers was that they just could not get a fair price, whether buying or selling. The desire for immediate cash outweighed the luxury of haggling or walking away.  One example from the book illustrates the plight of these farmers when trying to sell an item: A used car salesman purchased a vehicle from a farmer for $10 ($160 now) and the farmer, before he went West, saw his car for sale at the lot for $75 ($1200 now). An example that showed their untenable position when purchasing items occurred when the Joads were picking peaches for five cents a box, and Mama Joad went to the grocery store owned by the landowner.  The cost of driving to the nearest town for cheaper prices would be greater than paying up to 25% more for virtually everything in the store. Expectations for a decent meat & potatoes dinner for the Joad family after their first day of work in California were dashed when very little was purchased on $1 credit.

8) The (Grapes of) Wrath of the Migrant Farmers in California
    - During the Great Depression, there was actually a surplus of food in America, but far too many people were desperate for food.  One of the reasons for this historic reality was analyzed in this book.  Cherries, peaches, oranges, grapes, and potatoes were being grown, but the market prices for those crops were so low, that most California growers couldn't make a profit unless they slashed wages to ridiculously low levels. So, on some farms and orchards, the fruit dropped to the ground and rotted, and potatoes were thrown into a river. But, linked to the distrust and hatred for the "Okies", orchard owners doused these fallen oranges with kerosene, so the "Okies" couldn't have free fruit (and then stay in the area longer) - some potato farmers even paid hired guns to keep "Okies" from "Potato Fishing" in the river. 
    Wages were far too low (kids were actually starving to death in the Hooverville camps, which actually happened during the Great Depression), yet there was a bounty of food available . . . a desire to organize against the California landowners was growing . . . towards the very end of the book, Tom Joad decided to become a labor leader for migrant farmers (he gave his "I'll be there" speech to his Mom, in his hideout,  a dark rabbit hole), deciding that the benefit of working to get higher wages for migrant farmers outweighed the cost of leaving his family, and being arrested or murdered.

9) The "Association of Farmers" in California
    - It's worth noting that the "Association" immediately denounced their portrayal when the book was published (almost 500,000 copies of the book were sold in one year).  That being said, it was accurate that the "Association" colluded in setting wages, and hired some not-very-nice folks to break any attempt to form a union.  The "Association" was even mentioned in a parody of "Roll out the Barrel" called "Roll Out the Pickets", about the California Cotton Strike of 1939. 

10) Why were wage-earners referred to as "Reds"?
    - When an "Okie" would ask a landowner "what is a Red", invariably, the answer was that a "Red" was anyone that wanted a wage that was higher than what they wanted to give . . . it was an over-used, collective term for wage-workers wanting a fair wage during the Great Depression.
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Did a Barmaid Start the Civil War?

1/24/2015

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Source: Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, 2008
     The vast majority of high school U.S. History teachers are at least somewhat familiar with the "Peggy Eaton Affair", which occurred during Andrew Jackson's first term as president 
(1829 - 1833).  What immediately follows is a traditional, "Reader's Digest" version of what I was taught in college, what has been featured in the Jackson documentaries that I've seen, and what I have generally taught in my classes concerning the significance of the "Peggy Eaton Affair": Peggy Eaton, the wife of the Secretary of War (who at one point in her life worked as a bar maid), was from Tennessee, not of the Eastern Elite, and was "shunned" by the other Cabinet member's wives (e.g. at dinner parties). The Eatons were personal friends of Jackson, and when the "shunning" did not end, he removed the members of his Cabinet, and replaced them, and yet the "shunning" continued. When Jackson discovered that his Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, had instigated the entire affair, he politically embarrassed Calhoun to the point where he resigned, went back to his native South Carolina, and started the Nullification Crisis.  A Civil War nearly occurred 30 years before the real thing, leading South Carolina to view the threat of secession as a useful strategy . . . therefore, a bar maid helped start the Civil War.  
     As I started reading American Lion, I was curious to find out the true significance of the "Eaton Affair"; about half of Meacham's book features primary documents (especially letters) from the principal figures involved (the last third of the book contain his source notes).  So, from reading Meacham's heavily researched biography on Jackson's Presidency, I formed the following conclusions . . . 

a) The "Peggy Eaton Affair" did not cause the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina.
    South Carolina nullified (cancelled) the Tariff of 1832 seven days AFTER Jackson won 
    re-election over Henry Clay. At most, the "Eaton Affair" was only one of several events that 
    led many Americans to believe that Jackson was concentrating too much power in the
    Executive Branch. Many more Americans, as a result of the Election of 1832, showed that 
    they believed that he was actually representing the interests of the majority over those of 
    the Eastern Elite. (BTW, South Carolina nullified a Supreme Court ruling concerning slavery 
    in 1822; the "tradition" of nullification long predated the Eaton Affair).

b)  The Eaton Affair did not directly lead to Jackson replacing his Cabinet; Martin Van Buren          resigned as SecState for political reasons, and then John Eaton resigned as SecWar on his
     own accord, in order to pursue a U.S. Senate seat back in Tennessee (which he did not 
     get); Jackson then decided to remove the rest of the Cabinet, since his two must trusted 
     members were no longer there (the most significant addition was his new Attorney 

     General, Roger B. Taney, soon to replace John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme 
     Court). In was true that Jackson cleared out his Cabinet, in part, due to the "shunning" of 
     Margaret Eaton - to Jackson, an attack on him was an attack on the nation (in a way, his
     motto could have been that of the Feminist Movement of the late-1960s/early-1970s - 
     "The Personal is the Political"). Jackson's enemies called the removal of the remaining 

     Cabinet members a "purge"; to them, it was just one more example of Jackson 
     consolidating Executive power at the expense of Congress. The Eatons, by 1 January, 
     1833, were "Old News" in Washington D.C. & Nashville society; they didn't matter 
     anymore, because they no longer had power (Margaret Eaton had become quite ill by 
     that point; possible reasons include that she had a hard time adjusting to life after her 
     husband resigned his Cabinet position).

c) While it was true a Calhoun instigated the "Eaton Affair", it wasn't the Vice-President, 
    but his wife, Floride Calhoun.  The "scuttlebutt" among the Eastern Elites was that Margaret
    Eaton, in her past, displayed behavior that was associated with "loose women", and was
    repeatedly ignored and slighted at such social/political functions as dinner parties.  As 
    difficult as Floride Calhoun (and many other women) was, Margaret Eaton was not the
    innocent "Social Martyr" that popular history portrays.  Margaret Eaton was at least as
    culpable as Floride Calhoun for the political firestorm that consumed Washington, D.C., 
    especially President Jackson.  Margaret Eaton, in many ways, was her own worst enemy; 
    she even wrote a letter to Jackson attacking his niece, Emily Donelson, the de facto First
    Lady, who was doing her best to keep her negative views of Margaret Eaton to herself. 
    After John Eaton died, Margaret Eaton married an Italian dance instructor - she was 59,
    he was 19 years old - shortly after their marriage, he ran off w/ Margaret Eaton's
    granddaughter.

d) The "Eaton Affair" did play a major role in continuing the political version of "total war"
     in Washington, D.C. politics.  The tradition of trying to crush anyone that disagreed with
     their politics was an outgrowth of the Constitutional Era. In part due to the "Eaton Affair",
     Martin Van Buren (who was the only major politician other than Jackson to support the
     Eatons) created the first truly national political party in our history - the Democratic Party -        to crush any opposition (The Whig Party was created in 1834, largely by those that 
     believed Jackson had accumulated far too much power as President at the expense of
     Congress). For those that think the current political climate in Washington, D.C. is the
     worst it has ever been, Meacham made a very convincing argument, with plenty of 
     documentary evidence, that the political polarization during Jackson's presidency
     was much, much worse than what we see today.

e) The "Eaton Affair" did do significant damage in one regard: it temporarily split Jackson's
    family in the White House (his niece and her husband were his family in D.C.).  Jackson,
    in 1831, actually banished his niece, Emily Donelson, to Tennessee, over some comments
    that she made about Margaret Eaton in a recent letter (that letter was sent to Jackson
    after he read Margaret Eaton's letter "trashing" Emily).

f) John C. Calhoun did not resign the Vice-Presidency due to the "Eaton Affair"; he waited
    until the South Carolina state legislature selected him to the U.S. Senate. The "Eaton 
    Affair" did not play a role in his decision to resign; his desire to run for President in 
    1832 was his major motivation (he decided not to run when he calculated he would not be
    able to get enough Southern Electoral Votes to force the election to the House of
    Representatives).  He, like many others in South Carolina (and other Southern states), 
    argued that Nullification (in essence a state decides what is Constitutional, and what is
    not) was an extension of Jefferson's "Republican Virtue".  In the end, South Carolina stood 
    alone with its threat to secede from the Union in 1833; the other Southern states had a 
    cost-benefit analysis dilemma - was Nullification, a respectable enough political theory in 
    their eyes, worth Civil War?

     President Andrew Jackson had significant political battles during his first term in 
office, which included the future of the 2nd National Bank, Indian Removal, Nullification, and
the one that consumed him the most during his first term, the "Eaton Affair".  However, the "Eaton Affair", which took so much of his time and focus as President, had the least historical significance relative to the other three events.  When Jackson weakened the 2nd National Bank (Nicholas Biddle, the Bank's president, actually destroyed his own bank), what could have remained a "regular" depression intensified to a severe economic downturn starting in 1837. Jackson's policy towards Natives (it's important to remember Indian Removal was politically very popular in 1830s America) started the tradition of mass-removal to less desirable locations, such as to what is now Oklahoma. The U.S. Government's policy forcing Natives to reservations after the Civil War was an extension of what Jackson started during his first term in office.  The Nullification Crisis with South Carolina planted the seeds for Civil War, in that the only real lesson South Carolina learned from the crisis was that the threat of secession was a useful political tool then, and for the future.  In comparison, the "Eaton Affair" didn't have near the historical impact of the previous three events.  At most, the "Eaton Affair" was a focal point for Washington, D.C. (and Nashville, TN) political society, but when John Eaton left Washington, D.C., the "crisis" was over.  The "Eaton Affair" was only a partial cause for Jackson's Cabinet "Makeover", and was not a factor at all with Calhoun's resignation as Vice-President, or the Nullification Crisis with South Carolina. 
     The "Eaton Affair", to me, was rather similar to the divergent views of Nebraska Cornhusker football fans toward Coach Bo Pelini during the 2013 season - what consumed NU football fans simply did not matter at the national level (reinforcing the historical truism that "All Politics Are Local").  
So, I would argue, based on reading Jon Meacham's American Lion, that a bar maid did not help start the Civil War. 

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Walter Cronkite & JFK in 1960

1/24/2015

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                               Source: Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite. 2012
 Walter Cronkite was the television news anchorman that my parents watched every day on CBS, oftentimes while we ate dinner.  My first memory watching Walter Cronkite on television was during the Apollo 8 mission during Christmas Break, 1968 (at the age of 6), in which NASA (Cronkite was a HUGE supporter of NASA) orbited three astronauts around the moon ten times; I still remember Jim Lovell reading from the book of Genesis during the broadcast from the spacecraft.  
     My wife purchased the audio book for her father, and it is now in my possession - it has been wonderful learning about Cronkite's professional life.  The above video segment features a brief analysis of Cronkite's famous broadcast announcing the death of JFK to the nation - he needed to do the broadcast from the radio room since the large television cameras took at least 15 minutes to warm up, and he needed to broadcast immediately.  Cronkite became a supporter of JFK, in part, due to Kennedy's vision of landing an American on the moon before the end of the 1960s.  Therefore, it was very interesting to listen to Cronkite's first face-to-face interaction with JFK in the Fall of 1960, after Senator Kennedy was nominated by the Democratic Party to run for President against the Republican candidate, Vice-President Richard Nixon.
     Cronkite was conducting a series of 8 political interviews on CBS leading up to the 1960
Presidential Election.  When Cronkite visited Senator Kennedy, and officially invited him to be on the program, JFK not-so-nicely declined.  Cronkite stated that JFK would have to do the interview if he was able to schedule Vice-President Nixon to appear on the program.  According to Cronkite, JFK said that Nixon would never agree to be on the program.  Very soon after that meeting, Cronkite met with Nixon, and the Vice-President enthusiastically agreed to appear on the program; JFK's hand was forced - he too had to appear on the program the following week.
     Nixon's interview (on videotape, to be broadcast soon afterwards) went exceedingly well; Nixon was not only very prepared, but also, contrary to what many may believe, very engaging during his interview with Cronkite, he even cracked a joke about his "5 O'Clock Shadow".  The following week, JFK was interviewed by Cronkite on the same program, but, for some reason, JFK was not prepared, nor very engaging.  Often, JFK's response to a question by Cronkite started with an "Um", or an "Ah"; his lack of preparation and interest in doing the interview
was beyond-evident.  After the last question was answered, and the cameras turned off, JFK told Cronkite that the interview would never air.  JFK even went so far as to go over Cronkite's head to the CBS brass, not only to keep the videotaped interview from being aired, but to actually re-do the interview itself.  
     What occurred next is my favorite part of the audio book so far: Cronkite, when told of JFK's phone call to his superiors, shortly after the interview, actually went upstairs to JFK's bedroom (the interview had been conducted in one of JFK's homes).  Cronkite approached the bedroom, and the door was open - JFK was lying on the bed, undoubtedly resting his back, and Lincoln, Nebraska's own Theodore Sorensen, his main speech-writer, was with him. Basically, a highly agitated Cronkite told JFK that it would be no problem to re-do the interview, but he would have to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the program that unlike Vice-President Nixon, this interview was Senator Kennedy's second go-round.  A furious and frustrated JFK told Cronkite to air the videotaped interview as it was, which Cronkite did. 
     One wonders what impact that interview had on JFK's campaign strategy in running for President in 1960 - JFK was very well prepared for his televised debates with Nixon later on in the campaign (a sample of that first debate is below).  Maybe, Cronkite's journalistic integrity was the jolt JFK needed in order to be more prepared and engaging for his televised debates with Nixon, starting in September, 1960.

Here is Chris Matthews' NY Times Sunday Book Review of Cronkite (6 July, 2012)
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Top Ten Walter Cronkite Television Moments

1/24/2015

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                        Source: Douglas Brinkley. Cronkite. 2012
This "Top 10" list is from the friendly folks at WatchMojo.com; it's hard to argue with the top of their list, in that it includes Cronkite's reports on Watergate, the Tet Offensive, Apollo 11, and the death of JFK.  One event that I thought could have been included in this video was the television report that made Cronkite a "household name": his report on the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, on 20 February, 1962.  While Glenn was sitting in his chair travelling at over 17,000 miles per hour around Earth for orbit-after-orbit, Cronkite was sitting his chair, hour-after-hour, providing a running commentary of the event.  What separated Cronkite from the other (absolutely great) news anchors, such as Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC, was that he had developed a great relationship with NASA since their inception, and he was basically a "Space-Geek".  His love of space exploration (which had its roots in his WW II assignment covering the Army Air Corps in Europe for UPI) and his knowledge of what NASA was doing (he studied, studied, studied) gave his coverage more credibility in the opinion of television viewers at the time.  
     Some perspective as to why his Watergate broadcast (which were actually two PRIME TIME
broadcasts on CBS a week-and-a-half before the 1972 Presidential Election), was controversial - Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America" by 1972, decided that he couldn't compete with Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, so why not have two programs that summarized what the Post reporters had discovered?  Up to then, Watergate hadn't reached "Scandal-Status", but Cronkite's broadcasts made Watergate a visual story for the first time. Also, the Washington Post was out on a journalistic branch on their own, and Cronkite's broadcasts provided a much-needed boost.  As Ben Bradlee, the chief editor of the Washington Post said, it was a "big kiss" from Walter.  It was true that Cronkite was an avowed liberal, especially by 1972 (there was even a grass-roots effort at the Democratic National Convention to convince George McGovern, the presumptive nominee, to have Cronkite run as his Vice-Presidential running mate), but that alone doesn't explain why Nixon absolutely hated Cronkite (and all other members of the media).  Cronkite had become one of top names on Nixon's infamous "hit list" long before his extended Watergate broadcast.  Among the the reasons was that Cronkite was the only member of the media to be able to conduct not one, but two clandestine television interviews with Daniel Ellsberg, the author of "The Pentagon Papers", an expose on the U.S. Government and Vietnam (think Old-School "Wiki-Leaks"). The FBI couldn't find Ellsberg, Nixon's men couldn't find Ellsberg, but Cronkite did, and the Ellsberg interviews meant that Nixon had a political bulls-eye placed on Cronkite's head.  Long before Cronkite's Watergate broadcasts, Nixon and his men tried very hard to isolate and discredit Cronkite as an ultra-liberal with an obvious agenda against the President.
    The impact of Cronkite's Watergate extended broadcasts didn't make any difference on that year's election; Nixon won the largest victory in presidential history in terms of states won 
(49 to 1; McGovern only carried Massachusetts, he didn't even carry his home state of South Dakota). The impact of Cronkite's broadcasts was delayed; it took time for Americans to digest all the information.  Also, since Cronkite attached his name to the Post reports, any new development concerning Watergate in the Washington Post had the implied consent and support of Cronkite as well, which lent even more credibility to Woodward & Bernstein's investigative journalism (it also helped that Cronkite kept echoing the Post reports in his nightly CBS newscasts).  
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1st Term (1953 - 1957)

1/24/2015

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        Source: Jim Newton, Eisenhower: The White House Years, 2011
What follows is a some of the things I learned reading the section of Jim Newton's biography on Ike's first term in office (1953 - 1957) . . . 

*  Starting in 1951, Eisenhower was courted by both major parties, but it became obvious that     his political philosophy matched the Republicans far more than the Democrats at the time. 
    Ike believed in a "Middle Road" approach to politics, which was an outgrowth from his
    many years serving his nation in the military.  When he finally was convinced to confirm
    his candidacy, he actually was not the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 1952.
    The favorite was Robert Taft (President Taft's son, and one of the most respected senators
    in U.S. History), who, by using convention rules that favored him, was almost guaranteed 
    the nomination in terms of delegates.  But Ike's advisers succeeded in removing key rules
    (e.g. settling which contested delegates from certain states would vote) in order to make 
    the process far more equitable.  Eisenhower secured the hard-fought nomination, and then
    faced the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, in the general election.  Eisenhower, 
    unsure about his popularity, campaigned hard, traveling across the nation - this was also 
    the first presidential election to feature campaign commercials on television.  Ike 
    defeated Stevenson by a large margin in 1952; his popularity remained high during both
    terms in office, rarely dipping below 70% in terms of approval from popularity polls.

* Ike had a love affair with covert affairs - successful "regime changes" in Iran and
   Guatemala, spearheaded by the CIA, convinced Ike that covert strategies were a useful
   and necessary tool in order to contain Communism.  In Iran, Eisenhower encouraged
   the efforts to remove Mohammed Mosaddegh from power; he was viewed as not only
   unfriendly to U.S. interests in the Middle East, but also as a leader that just very well may
   hold the door open for the USSR to enter, and dominate the region.  Iran was viewed as
   a strategic lynch-pin for the U.S. in containing the USSR, and as far as Eisenhower &
   his advisers were concerned, Mosaddegh had to be removed.  In effect, the CIA created a
   political atmosphere in Iran that made it impossible for Masaddegh to stay in power, 
   opening the door for a leader that was far-more friendly to U.S. interests, Mohammed Reza      Pahlavi . . . the Shah of Iran. This regime change had a long-term consequence, in that 
   when the U.S. placed the Shah in power, an Islamic religious leader started to view the
   U.S. in an extremely unfavorable light - the Ayatollah Khomeini entered the political
   landscape in Iran.
       In Guatemala, Ike also favored regime change; it was perceived that a Communist was in
   power in that Central American nation, and unlike in Iran, he was much easier to remove
   from power.  The long-term consequence of this regime change featured another person
   that resented U.S. influence in the region, a 26 year-old who became a force to be reckoned
   with soon enough in Latin America - Che Guevera

* Ike labeled his foreign policy in dealing with Communism (especially the USSR), the 
  "New Look".  It featured three parts: a) Containment - continue Truman's foreign policy;
   b) Deterrence - not only stay ahead of the USSR in terms of nuclear weapons, but also be
   very clear that the U.S. intended to use them if sufficiently provoked (Mao Tse-Tung was
   the recipient of more than one of those threats from Eisenhower); c) "Roll-Back" - Ike
   wanted to take back some of Communist Eastern Europe that was in the Soviet Union Bloc;
   he had high hopes that covert operations could build enough resistance in nations such as
   Poland, where the USSR would hopefully tire of the increased political resistance, and leave
   Poland to its own affairs.  

* Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice-President for both terms, but he was never part of
   Ike's inner circle (what Ike, and some in the media called, "The Gang").  Nixon lost quite a
   bit of political capital in Ike's eyes during the investigation of financial shenanigans after 
   he was named Ike's VP candidate (Nixon saved his spot on the ticket, as well as his 
   political future, with his famous televised "Checkers" Speech). Ike never really distrusted
   Nixon; it appeared that he just didn't think Nixon was politically seasoned or talented 
   enough to be an important adviser, or a future President of the United States.  When Ike
   decided to run again in 1956, he left Nixon politically hanging for months, never really
   committing to him as his Vice-President until the eve of the Republican National
   Convention.
 * By 1954, President Eisenhower had enough of Senator Joseph McCarthy's (Wisc.) 
    attempts at exposing loyalty and security risks in the federal government; when McCarthy
    started to claim that the U.S. Army was coddling Communists, it was too much for
    the former general to bear.  What you see above is the U.S. Army's counsel, Joseph
    Welch (one of Ike's favorite people), embarrassing, but more importantly, exposing 
    McCarthy as a bully - no one had really stood up to McCarthy before . . . no one dared.
    Ike had successfully maneuvered McCarthy into not only conducting a Congressional
    hearing concerning the Army, but also to televise those hearings; millions watched the
    "Army-McCarthy Hearings" in lieu of the afternoon soap operas.  Once Welch stood up
    to McCarthy, in a fashion and time encouraged by Ike,  McCarthy's influence immediately 
    waned; no longer was he as feared, and soon enough, McCarthy was even censored 
    in the Senate.  

* Eisenhower had health problems, most chronically, Crohn's Disease (severe intestinal
   cramps and pain - it is a very debilitating disease).  The most severe of Ike's medical
   episodes was also the most covered-up - Ike's heart attack late in his first term.  Shortly
   after midnight, Ike awoke, complaining of a variety of ailments (he wasn't himself all day),
   and his wife, Mamie, called for his personal physician, Dr. Howard Snyder (also a personal
   friend).  Why Dr. Snyder didn't immediately diagnose the heart attack is unknown - he
   tried numerous strategies to help his patient, but nothing worked.  Eisenhower, who by
   then was well into his sixties, lied down, with Mamie holding him, trying to keep him
   calm - and Ike went back to sleep for several hours.  It turns out that that period of
   sleep saved his life; upon waking, he was taken to a hospital by ambulance, and properly
   diagnosed as having a heart attack.  Dr. Snyder, as one would expect, did all he could
   to help Ike; he also did all he could to cover up his misdiagnosis, writing many unsolicited
   letters to various parties, claiming that he did indeed immediately diagnose and treat Ike's 
   heart attack. Interestingly, Ike helped with the cover-up, insisting that all was well - Dr. 
   Snyder continued 
in his capacity as the President's doctor.  
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Leisure ("Cheap Amusements") of the Middle and Working Classes During the Progressive Era

1/24/2015

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     The main themes that I will discuss from Cheap Amusements by Cathy Peiss are:
                1) Division of Work/Leisure / 
                2) Respectability/Sexuality
                3) The Rise of Consumerism (Individualism)

     Work and Leisure: For working class immigrant men in "Packingtown" in turn-of-the-century Chicago, the concept of leisure time centered around the saloon. Spending time in "their bar" (e.g. Irish in Irish bars, Germans in German bars . . . heaven help the Jewish immigrant, I guess) was definitely the "highlight" of their day - their guaranteed "down time". As Peiss mentioned, it was interesting that the working class men that worked the most hours and/or earned the least in wages spent the most time in saloons. One of the most

common questions my students ask is how that situation can be possible; and that's the perfect time for a economics lesson in the inelasticity of goods!  Inelasticity, very simplified, means that demand of a good doesn't change when the price increases. Since all motion is relative, if one's wages decrease, and the price remains the same, it is still a price increase. Alcohol consumption is one of the great examples of inelastic goods in American history, and it is a guaranteed item of purchase, especially in poorer neighborhoods to this day (Did you know that in 1991, right before the arrest of Rodney King, that South-Central Los Angeles had more liquor stores than the entire state of Ohio?). 
     I mention working class men in saloons and price inelasticity because, for young, single working class women, the dance halls were their equivalent to the saloon, and it was a guaranteed item of purchase. Like working class men in a saloon, the dance halls were "their time" for working class women, and if they needed to "go without" a necessity in order to afford the price of admission for an evening at the dance hall, so be it. More single, young working class women had leisure time because they were finding employment in factories (e.g. the garment industry), and in low-wage white collar jobs, such as sales or clerical work by the late-19th Century. Despite the long hours, when the shift ended for these young, unmarried working class women, they were on "their own time." These working class women drew a "Line of Demarcation" between work-and-leisure time, and were very willing to make difficult cost-benefit analysis decisions in order to enjoy their time in the leisure sphere. One of those cost-benefit analysis decisions involved the time spent on entertainment, in particular, on the weekend. "Blue Mondays" referred to the significant percentage of working class women that didn't show up for their shift on Monday because they were in "recovery mode." 


      Respectability and Sexuality: It is one thing to have the time to spend in the leisure sphere as a young, single working class woman, but what if there isn't enough money to spend for commercial amusement? True, there were relatively free amusements, such as activities in "The Street", but these young working class women wanted more excitement and adventure, and that meant paying for commercial amusements. Basically, young, single working class women had to negotiate a level of sexuality with a man in order to afford commercial amusements. "Treating" was their ticket to these commercial amusements, and through these amusements, working class women hoped to find a man to marry. So, "Treating" provided 
commercial amusement plus the possibility of finding a husband. "Treating" presented a constant dilemma for young, single working class women in terms of respectability and sexuality, in that what were the expectations of the "beau", and how would they be viewed by their community? In short, the sexual norms of young, single working class women differed from those of the middle class during the Progressive Era, when the Victorian Code was still 

pre-eminent. 
     What Peiss called the "Charity Girls" provide a glimpse of the fine line between respectability and sexuality, in that they were willing to "offer themselves" to some degree in exchange for material gain (e.g. a pair of shoes for work) or attention, but not for money. Young, single working class women in the leisure sphere were constantly approaching, and even crossing, the line of respectability in the opinions of the Victorian middle class. Perhaps the most common example was dancing - in their desire to find adventure and excitement on a regular basis in the leisure sphere, certain dancing styles (e.g. "tough dancing"; basically "suggestive" dancing) were the norm. I'm sure the middle class reactions to that kind of dancing were similar to the reactions in 1960 when kids were dancing-to-the-devil with "The Twist." Interestingly, one common thread between those two "dancing eras" is that the Victorian model in the 1910's, and the "Code of Conformity" in the 1950's / early-1960's for the corresponding middle classes had started to crumble. 


      Rise of Consumerism (Individualism): By the 1910's, entertainment had become 
a commodity in the growing "Consumer Culture" that valued a high degree of individualism (for the middle class, individualism became the "Pursuit of Pleasure"). During the late-19th Century, the young, single working class women's pursuit of sensual pleasure was equated with immorality by the Victorian middle class during the Progressive Era. Preiss pointed out, by the Post-WW I Era, the middle class had largely accepted social freedom, sexuality, and mixed-gender fun in its commercial amusements; self-fulfillment equaled consumerism (individualism). Two of the key developments in commercial amusements that allowed these trends to become at least more acceptable to the middle class were modern amusement parks and movies - if these ventures were going to turn a profit, they needed to have a large number of young, single working class women as patrons, as well as a sizable middle class contingent.  While Luna, on Coney Island, was met with acceptance by both middle-and-working classes with its "Disney World-esque" themes, it was the Steeplechase amusement park that had staying-power. If a young, single working class or middle class woman wanted to have an exciting-and-adventurous excursion to Coney Island, Steeplechase was the destination. This amusement park was designed for "sexual brinksmanship", in that participants could approach "the line", but couldn't cross that line. The intimacy and voyeurism provided by 
Steeplechase was packaged and contained so this "brinksmanship" was the normal experience for its patrons, both from the working and middle classes.
    In other words, the close proximity between the genders (and increasingly between classes) was rendered relatively harmless at Steeplechase. This "Sexual Brinksmanship" became acceptable for the middle class after World War I, which indicates the diminishing influence of the Victorian model and its reformers. Progressive Era Victorian middle class reformers tried to "weave their magic" by influencing the content of movies. These reformers may have won some battles (e.g. screening movies in advance for content) which led to movies reflecting middle class virtues and morals, but there were still many movies being made that appealed to working class women. The middle class reformers may have been able to influence the content of the movies, but they were unable to change the social aspect of the experience for the working class women (In part, that was due to the reality that all working class women could remain "in their sphere" by going to the movies that were being made, in essence, for them). 
     After World War I, the middle class started to adopt some of the working class norms into their own in terms of what was acceptable in the world of commercial amusements. This is 
hardly the only time the middle class has "adopted" something that they didn't start as "their own." Jazz, rock, and hip-hop are all examples of white middle class kids, in particular, adopting a genre of music as their own that was pioneered by others. In a way, amusement parks and movies in the early-1900's were the equivalent of Benny Goodman, Bill Haley and the Comets, and, my blood is curdling . . . Vanilla Ice. The middle class eventually adopted the values and behaviors in these commercial amusements as their own; by the early-1920's, individualism, the constant pursuit of pleasure by the middle class, had largely replaced the Victorian Code - the Progressive Era was over.
      In the introduction of her book, Cathy Preiss argued that young, single working 
class women pioneered new manners and mores; the "true skeptic" in me said "prove 
it." After reading the book, I was convinced with evidence that the statement was true. How interesting: by pursuing fun, these young single working class women helped change attitudes towards work and leisure, not only in their time, but also in American History.


    Out of curiosity, I went to such sites as the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and found
               (scroll down on the above .pdf to page 2, Leisure Activities in 2014)
      - In 2014, for people 15-and-over, total leisure time per day totaled 6 hours
        (2.8 of the 6 hours was involved watching TV)
     - In a 2010 Consumer Expenditure Survey, Americans spent 5.49% of their income
        on entertainment; it was 10.83% if one includes "Food Away from Home
"
                Source: Cathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements (2011)
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Calvin Coolidge and the Boston Police Strike of 1919

1/24/2015

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                  Source: Amity Schlaes, Coolidge. Harper-Collins, 2013
"In college, Coolidge had observed that men succeeded in politics when they got out in front of a movement that other politicians had not yet identified" (Schlaes, e-pages 299-300). 
     In the immediate aftermath of World War I, class conflict increased, much to the dismay of the middle class Progressive reformers.  Coolidge (who was the governor of Massachusetts in 1919) was among the vanguard of politicians that realized that the nation was ready to move on from the seemingly non-stop class conflict (e.g. labor strikes) that had regularly occurred since the end of the Civil War.  
     By 1919, it was widely known and accepted by most everyone in Boston that its police 
force was underpaid and overworked.  Labor strife became more widespread after World War I, in part due to the vast shortage of jobs with about 1 million veterans returning home from Europe (there was no equivalent of a G.I. Bill).  During the war, laborers in city-after-city were promised that once the war ended, wages would increase.  However, city and state governments were unable to do so after the war, since the "velocity of money" (consumer spending) had stalled, leading to a short but brutal post-war recession.  In this post-war landscape in Boston, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, nicknamed the "Wobblies", an aggressive Socialist worker's union) was able to establish a level of influence with a significant number of Boston police.  Their gamble: by walking off the job for higher pay and shorter hours, other laborers in Boston would also go on strike in support (a General Strike, shutting down all services in Boston). In particular, the striking Boston police were hoping that the ladies that operated the city's telephone switchboards would join them, igniting the General Strike: Boston and Massachusetts politicians would then undoubtedly be forced to negotiate.
     The striking workers had reason to believe their strategy would be effective, in that Governor Calvin Coolidge had a history of taking a "Middle of the Road" approach to labor conflicts in the recent past.  In September of 1919, the vast majority of Boston police went on strike - the city's social order collapsed almost immediately.  Similar to the chaos in Los Angeles in 1991, a percentage of Boston's population decided to take full advantage of the absence of law enforcement. Reports of assaults, theft, and even deaths became commonplace, and requests for gun permits skyrocketed. The Boston Police Strike became national news, in that an economic and political precedent may be set - if the Boston Police Strike was effective, then other city's police forces would also go on strike (the Washington, D.C. police force was, in essence, at the starting line, ready to strike at a moment's notice).  
     President Woodrow Wilson was focused on his national speaking tour promoting the League of Nations, trying to put pressure on the U.S. Senate to reconsider its vote rejecting U.S. involvement in the League.  Added to that were his efforts at trying to avert a national steel strike, and, to cap it off, his health was failing fast - he would suffer a very debilitating stroke during his national tour.  Therefore, it was predictable that the President didn't place enough importance on the Boston Police Strike, although while in Montana, he would eventually endorse Coolidge's actions in ending the strike.
     Governor Coolidge was in a tough spot - it seemed the only real choice was to negotiate with the police labor leaders, giving them at least most of what they wanted so the city would be safe once again.  Coolidge's decision stunned most observers - he in essence fired all the striking police men, vowing to never hire them back; he then ordered the entire state's militia (National Guard) into Boston to quell the spreading violence and lawlessness, citing the state constitution's clause that allowed the governor to act as "Commander-in-Chief" in emergency situations.  Coolidge also was lucky - the ladies that operated the telephone switchboards decided not to strike, ensuring that communication was still in place to use the militia as a temporary substitute police force.
     Some historians argue that Coolidge either waited too long, or went too far with his decision, but it seemed to me that Schlaes argued that Coolidge didn't decisively act until he was convinced that a "Middle of the Road" solution would be not only disastrous for Boston, and Massachusetts, but also for the nation.  Coolidge, with plenty of support and some precedence, stated that due to public safety, the police of the city of Boston had no right to strike whatsoever.  Coolidge, showing that he did indeed have sympathy for the striking police, tried to help as many as possible find a job - but he did not allow them to come back to the Boston police force - he made sure that the striking police men were replaced by newly hired candidates.
     Coolidge's political popularity in Boston and Massachusetts increased to even greater heights with his decision to use the militia. With the terms of elected office so short in Massachusetts in those years, Coolidge was up for re-election for governor very soon, but it turned out that he had become such a prominent Republican politician as a result of ending the strike, that he was on the short-list of Republicans for the Vice-Presidential slot in 1920.  Calvin Coolidge, not President Wilson, was the politician that was out in front in dealing with the Boston Police Strike of 1919; Wilson was mostly focused on the past, with his League of Nations tour, while Coolidge realized that America was at the brink of a new era.  Schlaes argued that 1919 was similar to 1787; America was ready to move on from a major war, and Calvin Coolidge was among the first major politicians after World War I to recognize and act on that belief.  
    With the election of the Republican Warren Harding as president in 1920 (w/ Coolidge as his Vice-President), the Progressive Era was officially at an end.  Harding received over 60% of the popular vote, campaigning on the slogan "A Return to Normalcy".  In 1923, Harding died of natural causes, and Calvin Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States, winning election in his own right in 1924.

New York Times article on Amity Schlaes' Coolidge (14 February, 2013)
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President Coolidge's Economic Strategies

1/24/2015

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                    Source: Amity Schlaes, Coolidge. Harper-Collins, 2013
    President Calvin Coolidge was one of the primary reasons for the "Boom" economy in the 1920s, but at the same time, he was at least partially responsible for the "Bust" that was soon to occur, despite doing his best to avoid that economic catastrophe.  
     The Governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, never really planned, or initially wanted, to be Warren Harding's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1920.  During the Republican National Convention, Harding, after ten ballots, became the Republican nominee, and after some maneuvering by Coolidge's key politicos, Coolidge, somewhat reluctantly, accepted the nomination as Vice-President.  When Harding died of what was almost certainly congestive heart failure (although there is a conspiracy theory that his wife poisoned him due to his infidelity) in 1923, Calvin Coolidge was thrust into the presidency. In short order, Coolidge ran for President in his own right, easily defeating the Democratic candidate, John W. Davis in theElection of 1924. 
     After reading Schlaes' biography, I learned that Coolidge focused on two major economic areas during his years as President.  First, Coolidge wanted to trim the federal budget down to $3 billion, which, for all practical purposes, he accomplished.  President Coolidge regularly met with one his most-trusted advisers (General Herbert Lord), and they, for his entire time in office, trimmed government spending at the federal level.  Coolidge believed that the federal government should operate within its means (Coolidge was a living example of a colossally successful person that lived within his means), and he worked tirelessly to trim the budget.
     Secondly, he teamed up with his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon (quite possibly the second-most famous SecTreas behind Hamilton), and started the process of what Mellon called "Scientific Taxation".  The impetus behind this, for lack of a better word, experiment, was the crushing federal government debt after World War I - 75% of the federal government debt was related to the Great War (the worst scandal of Harding's Presidency, in terms of wasted federal spending and embezzlement, was an effort to start a federal system of assistance for U.S. veterans). Mellon believed that if the tax rates were reduced for America's top earners, more money would be spent in the areas of Consumption and Investment.  In other words, Coolidge and Mellon predicted that if taxes were lowered in the upper quintile, more money would be spent in the economy, which would then actually lead to more government revenues; and they were correct in their hypothesis. There was some "lag-time", but it became abundantly clear that reducing those tax rates not only encouraged more spending and hiring, but the government was able to bring in more revenue than even Mellon had predicted.  Of course, Coolidge and Mellon were not able to do this unilaterally; Congress was involved, and Coolidge and Mellon were not able to enact every aspect of "Scientific Taxation".  However, this Congress didn't dilute or eliminate as much as some Progressive Era Congress's may have, so it seemed that Mellon's theory was sound.
     The problem with "Scientific Taxation" was that it produced, what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan many decades later termed, "Irrational Exuberance".  The American economy started to expand at a rapid pace; the Dow Jones Industrial Average skyrocketed to over 300, an incredible figure in those days.  Coolidge wondered (and worried) why the value of stocks became so inflated in such a short period of time.  The federal government was collecting more revenues than had been predicted, and more-and-more politicians in both parties wanted to spend that excess instead of reducing the federal government's debt (There was constant pressure, for example, to provide a "bonus" for WW I veterans, and for veterans of previous wars).  Even the leading Republican not-named-Coolidge, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, was pressuring for government spending for flood control.  In terms of what Hoover wanted, Coolidge was in a tough spot - the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927showed that states were unable to cope with emergencies of that scope, and Hoover was an advocate of greater government spending for relief and dam-building.  Coolidge believed that as horrific as the flood was in terms of the human and financial cost, it was the burden of the states to deal with the disaster - the federal government didn't get involved in the way we are accustomed to seeing (and expecting) today. Coolidge held firm in his stance, even when his beloved home state of Vermont experienced the worst flooding in a century shortly thereafter.  The tradition of the federal government "coming to the rescue" after a natural or economic disaster would not occur until the early-1930s when Herbert Hoover was President.
     During the summer of 1927 in South Dakota (Coolidge accepted an invitation to have the "Summer White House" near Mount Rushmore, which was under construction), Coolidge announced that he would not run for another term as President.  Still incredibly popular, not only within his party, but with most Americans as well, Coolidge decided that he was through. His decision was based partly on his health (he died of a heart attack on 5 January, 1933 - FDR hadn't yet been inaugurated), and also because he felt that he could accomplish no more in terms of trimming the budget, lowering taxes, and expanding the economy.       
     Before I finish, I just want to mention that this author's research was impeccable, but she is an avowed Coolidge fan (of which there is a lot to admire), and I think she lets Coolidge off the hook at least a little bit in terms of his economic decisions that were part of what caused the Great Depression.  That being said, she found primary sources that showed Coolidge, late in his presidency, predicted that if Hoover became president, he would spend too much government money, which would increase the federal government's debt (which Coolidge had worked so hard to reduce to a more manageable level).  She also found documentation that Coolidge predicted that if the Democrats took office during a depression, they would spend far too much government money with very little focus for which that money was spent.  
     Coolidge made those statements, but the "Velocity of Money" in the economy did start to super-heat during his presidency, due in part to his tireless efforts in support of SecTreas Mellon's "Scientific Taxation" strategy. It would have been very interesting, if Coolidge had decided to run for President in the Election of 1928 (he would have easily been re-elected), to see what his decision-making would have been at the onset of the Great Depression.
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