One-Night Stands with American History

by Richard Shenkman

  “‘My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer—so,’ and as the old man came up: ‘My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we are now in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.’

  “I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: ‘In short’ (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), ‘in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which, in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand but on our right), where are we now in relation to . . .’

  “‘Oh, please,’ I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, ‘do ask him where the King’s Road is.’

  “‘Ah—? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly is?’

  “‘Ye’re in it,’ said the aged face at the window.”

  SOURCE: Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), pp. 242–43. Reprinted by permission of Herbert A. Fierst on behalf of William R. Tyler.

  DEATH BY URINATION

  Pat Garrett was the lawman who killed Billy the Kid in 1881. For that one feat, Garrett’s fame spread throughout the Territory of New Mexico and the nation. In 1908, Garrett died one of the Old West’s most embarrassing deaths. With Carl Adamson, the old lawman was riding in a buggy down a lonely southeastern New Mexico road, while Wayne Brazel, another acquaintance, followed behind. Suddenly, Adamson pulled over to the side of the road and jumped out to urinate. Garrett followed suit, carefully holding his shotgun in his right hand to ensure that it would not accidentally fire. He removed his left glove, unbuttoned his trousers, and began urinating. Before he had finished, a bullet slammed into the back of his head. Garrett died immediately.

  Incredibly, no one was ever convicted of the murder of Pat Garrett. Wayne Brazel, who confessed to the killing as “self-defense,” was halfheartedly tried and found not guilty. Carl Adamson was not even called to court as a witness. Apparently, the reason for all this was that Pat Garrett had few friends in the area after killing Billy the Kid, a popular folk hero in New Mexico. Differing New Mexico legends connect at least five people, Brazel and Adamson included, with the murder.

  SOURCE: Leon C. Metz, Pat Garrett (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), p. 291.

  ONE WAY TO KILL A FILIBUSTER

  Robert M. LaFollette was one of those politicians who made the blood of robber barons boil. He wouldn’t deal, would not sacrifice his independence or his principles. He was that worst kind of politician, the kind that could not be bought.

  On May 29–30, 1908, the Wisconsin senator was leading a filibuster against the Aldrich-Vreeland bill. Aldrich-Vreeland was a perfectly legitimate bill, designed to allow the currency to expand during times of panic. But for some reason LaFollette disliked it.

  He began his filibuster at twenty minutes past twelve on the afternoon of May 29 and kept it up hour after hour. Four o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock. Every so often, to maintain his energy, he would drink a mixture of milk and raw eggs prepared for him by the Senate restaurant. Sometime between ten and eleven o’clock he received one of these mixtures and began drinking it. Suddenly his face twitched and took on a sour expression. He stopped drinking immediately. The thought occurred to him that someone was trying to poison him. Perhaps one of his many enemies had finally decided it was time to be rid of Robert M. LaFollette. Surely he had given them cause. He ordered the mixture taken away and analyzed.

  A little later LaFollette, still leading the filibuster, began to feel queasy. Soon he came down with the painful symptoms of dysentery, but still he would not leave the Senate. Heroically he stayed on, for another half dozen hours. Finally, he gave up, at precisely 7:03 in the morning.

  LaFollette had kept talking for sixteen hours and forty-three minutes—the longest filibuster in history up to that time. But it was not long enough. Later that day Aldrich-Vreeland was passed.

  Sometime afterwards a laboratory reported on the mixture that had made LaFollette sick. According to chemical analysis the mixture was indeed full of poison—ptomaine—enough to kill a man. Big Money or someone had tried to kill a filibuster by murdering the filibusterer. The figurative use of the phrase “kill a filibuster” had taken on a haunting, literal meaning. No one was ever arrested for the attempted murder.

  SOURCE: U.S. Senate Historical Office, notes.

  A ROCKEFELLER TAKES THE FIFTH

  Heard increasingly during investigations of big business in the late nineteenth century was the refrain “I refuse to answer on the advice of counsel.” In a railroad rate case involving William Rockefeller, brother of the founder of Standard Oil, repeated use of the phrase provoked a ludicrous exchange:

  “On the ground that the answer will incriminate you?”

  “I decline to answer on advice of counsel.”

  “Or is it that the answer will subject you to some forfeiture?”

  “I decline to answer on the advice of counsel.”

  “Do you decline on the ground that the answer will disgrace you?”

  “I decline to answer on the advice of counsel.”

  “Did your counsel tell you to stick to that one answer?”

  “I decline to answer on the advice of counsel.”

  With that the whole room burst into laughter, Rockefeller included.

  SOURCE: Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 71–72.

  WHEN SOLAR ENERGY FLOURISHED

  Solar energy is not new to America. Home solar heating began in this country at the start of the twentieth century, when it was introduced in Florida and California. Most of the units were simple devices built by amateurs, and consisted of a single sheet of glass, a metal box, and some copper tubing. But there were a few companies in the field. The Day/Night Company, for example, began selling solar heating units in the first years of the century.

  By the 1930s there were tens of thousands of units operating in the United States, but the prospects for solar energy were dim. As a professor lamented in 1936, few textbooks on home heating even mentioned solar energy. The professor proved solar heating was economical, but most people preferred the ease of the increasingly popular gas heater. A few solar energy firms, including the pioneering Day/Night Company, switched in the 1930s to the manufacture of gas heaters.

  By the 1950s there were still many solar-heated homes—over 50,000 in Miami alone. But by the 1970s there were hardly any—a fact which caused many people to believe that solar energy was the untried alternative to conventional energy.

  SOURCE: Wilson Clark, Energy for Survival (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1975), pp. 370–74.

  HOLLYWOOD’S ASCENDANCY

  Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood’s good weather had little to do with its establishment as the movie capital of the United States. It was chosen not because of its warm climate but primarily because it lay within easy reach of the Mexican border.

  In the 1910s the movie industry was based in New York and was completely dominated by a single trust. The Motion Picture Patents Company controlled through its patents virtually every phase of the business, from production to distribution. No one could legally make a movie without its permission. Anyone who tried faced severe penalties.

  Still, there were people who w
anted to make films on their own. These people did not want to be hampered by the trust’s cautious approach to filmmaking. So they left New York and moved to areas where they could not easily be prosecuted by the trust. Some went to Cuba to escape the law completely, while others went to Florida and Los Angeles. But Cuba was threatened by disease and Florida proved too hot. Within a short time everyone had moved to Hollywood. The new movie capital was everything a producer could want; it had good weather and cheap labor. Most important, it was close enough to the Mexican border to afford quick escapes from the law in times of legal trouble.

  SOURCE: Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), pp. 81–86; lecture by Donald Fleming at Harvard University, Spring 1978.

  A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE’S LAST WORDS

  “Shortly before his death [Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan] became partly conscious and spoke his farewell words to those who were at his bedside, evidently with great difficulty: ‘Good-by, I am sorry to have kept you all waiting so long.’”

  SOURCE: New York Sun, October 15, 1911.

  SIXTY YEARS BEFORE WATERGATE

  In 1912 no one had ever heard of wiretapping; the word wasn’t even invented until after World War I. But the practice itself was known. At the Republican convention in Chicago someone tapped the long-distance phones used to keep Teddy Roosevelt, who was home in Oyster Bay, New York, in touch with his managers. It was the first known case of wiretapping in American politics. When T.R. learned about it, he went to Chicago so that he could direct his managers in secret.

  SOURCE: William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1919), p. 359.

  T.R.’SAVED BY THE SPEECH

  It is not always bad that politicians write long speeches. In 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt was campaigning for the presidency as the candidate of the Bull Moose party, he prepared his speeches on small sheets of paper with extra spacing between the lines for easier delivery. When the Rough Rider was in Milwaukee on October 14, his speech covered fifty heavy, glazed pages. Folded over and carried in his pocket, they numbered one hundred. This was a fortunate length, for as Roosevelt left his hotel for the rally, a would-be assassin fired a shot directly at the Bull Moose’s heart. The bullet traveled through Roosevelt’s coat, vest, eyeglass case, and the hundred-page speech and lodged against his fifth rib, cracking it, but not badly injuring the ex-president. Had the speech not altered the course and speed of the bullet, the missile would have passed directly through Roosevelt’s heart and killed him.

  The old Rough Rider, after realizing that his wound was only superficial, leaped at the chance to turn a near disaster to his political profit. For the past few days Roosevelt had been ill. Several appearances had even been canceled. That night in Milwaukee he had planned to say only a few words to the crowd, while an assistant read the bulk of his speech for him. But now, with a bullet lodged harmlessly in his chest and bloodstains showing on his shirt, he changed his plans.

  “This is my big chance,” he exclaimed to his physician, “and I am going to make that speech if I die doing it.”

  Once onstage, Roosevelt immediately informed the audience of his traumatic experience, boasting, “But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!”

  A deep sigh erupted as the ex-president pulled the speech from his coat pocket, with bullet holes in plain view of all. Later, another gasp filled the air as T.R. unbuttoned his vest and revealed his bloodied shirt. Although suffering, Roosevelt personally delivered all fifty pages of his speech.

  Unfortunately, T.R.’s heroics were not enough. Not only did he fail to carry the national vote in 1912, he did not even carry Wisconsin.

  SOURCE: Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 375–86.

  T.R. LAMENTS PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE

  Teddy Roosevelt was a great many things, but he was not a liberal on race questions. He did risk controversy once by inviting Booker T. Washington to eat dinner with him at the White House, but the President did not believe in racial equality.

  That was made clear by his endorsement of one of the most appallingly racist books ever published, Madison Grant’s Passing of the Great Race. Grant’s theme was a familiar one: that unrestricted immigration into the United States had weakened the fabric of society and undermined the security of whites. But his solutions to the problems immigrants had supposedly caused were novel and extreme. In addition to recommending stiffer laws against miscegenation, he asserted that the inferior races ought to be sterilized and unfit individuals put to death. As he explained at the beginning of the book: “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community of race.”

  Here is how Teddy Roosevelt described Grant’s book in a blurb on the volume’s jacket:

  Revised, with Documentary Supplement

  THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE

  MADISON GRANT

  “The book is a capital book—in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people must need to realize. It shows an extraordinary range of reading and a wide scholarship. It shows a habit of singular serious thought on the subjects of most commanding importance. It shows a fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail. It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman; and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it.”

  —Theodore Roosevelt.

  SOURCE: Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 4th ed., rev. (New York: Scribner’s, 1930), p. 49.

  THE ORIGIN OF FROZEN FOODS

  Clarence Birdseye, the founder of the corporation that bears his name, was the discoverer of the frozen-food process. In 1912 the Massachusetts naturalist, on a fur-trading expedition to Labrador, happened to be fishing through the ice on a day when the temperature had dropped to a blistering twenty degrees below zero. The temperature was so cold that the fish he caught froze solid instantly when removed from the sea. Birdseye took his frozen fish back to camp and casually tossed one of them in a bucket of plain water. Miraculously, before Birdseye’s eyes, the fish revived and began to dart left and right. The naturalist did not know quite what to make of this remarkable resurrection, but he watched intently. After several years of hard thought, he finally concluded that the fish had survived because it had been frozen quickly. Birdseye then reasoned that food could be preserved the same way. And in 1925 he marketed the first frozen food—fish.

  SOURCE: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 330–31.

  BEFORE THE TITANIC

  The sinking of the Titanic on a cold April night in 1912 in the icy waters of the Atlantic stunned the world. Partly the shock was due to the enormous loss of life: 1,500 dead. Partly it was because the British luxury liner was loaded with rich and glamorous passengers. So many, as a matter of fact, that not a few scheduled high-society events were canceled or postponed that spring. But mostly, perhaps, the world was startled because it had had so much faith in the new ship. The largest ship in the world . . . declared unsinkable by experts . . . so safe it carried just a few lifeboats. A ship that symbolized the good and expensive life.

  But the sinking of such a ship had not been unanticipated.

  Fourteen years before, a young American named Morgan Robertson had written a novel about a similar ship, filled with fabulously wealthy passengers, which hit an iceberg in the Atlantic one cold April night and went down—a ship named Titan.

  Robertson’s ship was remarkably like the real one. Both vessels were triple-screw and could reach about twenty-five knots. The real ship was 800 feet long; Robertson’s 882.5 feet. The Titanic w
eighed about 66,000 tons fully loaded; the fictional ship weighed about 70,000 tons fully loaded. Both had a maximum capacity of approximately 3,000 passengers, and neither was equipped with an adequate number of lifeboats. Both ships were reputedly unsinkable; both were the largest ships in the world.

  In the novel the big ship represented the best of modern society, just as the Titanic would fourteen years later. And, of course, the sinking of the Titan shocked the civilized world as much as the sinking of the Titanic.

  The name of Robertson’s novel was Futility.

  SOURCE: Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1955), p. 9.

  WOODROW WILSON, POLICEMAN

  Woodrow Wilson always loved automobile rides. But after his stroke he became greatly disturbed about drivers who speeded—or drivers who seemed to be speeding. The President had ordered that his car never be driven faster than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. But he believed that anyone who passed him had to be going at a dizzying, reckless rate. Finally he decided to do something about such people. He ordered the Secret Service to begin pursuing cars that passed the presidential limousine so that the drivers could be hauled back for questioning. The agents would take off after the offending drivers, but they always returned empty-handed, saying they had been unable to overtake the speeder.

  Wilson, in the meantime, considered what could be done to the speeders if they were caught. He wrote a letter to the attorney general asking whether presidents had the powers of a justice of the peace. Wilson told the Secret Service that if the attorney general answered him affirmatively, the President would begin arresting speeders himself and trying them right on the road. There would be justice on the streets of Washington.