Sir: May I congratulate AMERICAN HERITAGE on its decision to inaugurate a new department devoted to the conservation of natural resources?
Our social and economic problems are legion, but none will have a solution at all if the resource base which supports us all suffers continued destruction.
(Mrs.) LaVerne H. Ireland Davis, California
CONSERVATION
Sir: I am very pleased to learn that AMERICAN HERITAGE will expand its editorial charter and contents to include a new department devoted to conservation. Of course, as a subscriber for the past ten years, I am also proud to become a charter member of the American Heritage Society.
Your decision to focus attention on the intelligent use of our natural resources is of personal interest to me as Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army. For about a century and a half, the Corps of Engineers has played a significant role in the exploration, conservation, and development of our natural resources. Our libraries and archives have much raw material on this important historical legacy. Topics include the scientific exploration of the West both before and after the Civil War; the development and use of our rivers and canals; the discovery and protection of scenic treasures like Yellowstone Park; the preservation of the beauty of Niagara Falls; early and current surveying of the Great Lakes; and the pinning down of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers—a task which Mark Twain said was second only to that of creating them. More recent subjects include the patient development of ways to preserve salmon and other wildlife resources, the still-new study of coastal oceanography along our beaches and shores, and the broad area of environmental quality.
I pledge the full resources of the Corps of Engineers in developing your new area of interest.
F. J. Clarke Lieutenant General, U.S. Army Washington, D. C.
CONSERVATION
Sir: … In my view, conservation means a maximum utilization of natural resources for the benefit of the greatest number—our natural and historical treasures. In this utilization, every consideration must be given to the prevention of pollution, indiscriminate commercial exploitation, and in certain instances, commercial urban encroachment.
On the other hand, I am diametrically opposed to the Sierra Club view that all of the areas that haven’t suffered from commercial exploitation, as of this date, should be put in isolated preserves and kept for the benefit of a very small minority.
An excellent case in point is their present opposition to the Mineral King development of the Walt Disney organization.
Opposition is based on the assumption that the wild natural beauty of the Mineral King bowl area is to be preserved in its natural state rather than utilized, to any degree, by the twenty million people who populate this state and/or any tourists of the remaining two hundred million people who populate this country.
Switzerland has utilized its snow in a compromise with nature that has not destroyed either its beauty or economic value. The pigheadedncss of the Sierra Club and many similar conservation groups will not concede the need for the existence of this harmony. …
In raising the banner of conservation, the subscribers to the American Heritage Society are entitled to know here and now whether our “Knight in Armor” is to be a Teddy Roosevelt or Don Quixote.
Raymond Niday Lemoore, California
CONSERVATION
Sir: … The article “Lament for a Lost Eden,” by Eliot Porter [October, 1969], affords an excellent example of what I feared in connection with your publication going “conservationist”… In the last paragraph, the author says: “This is the monument men have built —you and I —not to the lost Eden so few knew, but to their engineering ingenuity and ruthless ability to transform the land, to remake it simply for the sake of remaking it, thoughtlessly, improvidently.” This is pure fanaticism and unworthy of publication in AMERICAN HERITAGE. I hate fanatics on either side of a question.
I have not the slightest acquaintance with Lake Powell or its purpose. But I am sure that it was built with a purpose in mind water supply, power, flood control, or what have you. Certainly it was not built solely “to transform the land, to remake it simply for the sake of remaking it, thoughtlessly and improvidently.” Very simply, this is a lie. It may be that its construction was a mistake, but this is a matter of weighing its benefits against the “conservation” losses. Too often the conservationists—and possibly their opponents—are so fanatically convinced that their views outweigh any other considerations that sober consideration of the facts is extremely difficult. To quote an old and distinguished friend in the lower Mississipi Valley, the question often is: “Who is to live on the land? people or ducks?”
… Mr. Porter’s phrase “the Eden so few knew” may betray him. If so few knew it, is much lost?
William P. Jones, Jr. Colonel, U.S. Army Falls Church, Virginia
CONSERVATION
Sir: As for the expansion into the field of conservation, I have my doubts and questions. I am a forester, and in the course of researching the growing controversy between the wilderness-recreation interests and the timber interests, I was appalled at the almost total lack of an objective approach to the issues on the part of the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society spokesmen. Granted, these two organizations are due a debt of gratitude from the American people for fighting a difficult and (formerly) unpopular fight. But my objection is to the ridiculous, carping literature they employ. The innuendo and guilt-by-association tactics are reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, and certainly do nothing to increase their standing in the eyes of professional foresters, biologists, and ecologists.
I am concerned that the American Heritage Society’s officers and editors will be tempted to follow the same path. I hope that the professional attitude so well displayed in the magazine to date will be kept, and that objectivity and scientific procedure will win out over subjectivity and emotionalism.
Walter L. Cook Syracuse, New York
CONSERVATION
Sir: … More than fifty years ago I was an Adirondack guide and woodsman. What has happened since is enough to scare you. Our magnificent forests were bequeathed to us, but at the present rate of wastefulness and destruction we will have nothing to pass onto those who follow. …
E. Dan Partello Utica, New York
BLACK HISTORY
Sir: … The article on the 1938 hurricane [August, 1969] brought back so many memories to me and my friends that I have let many people borrow this issue. One of these people, a Negro neighbor who had never read the AMERICAN HERITAGE before, enjoyed the article, but he was upset as he returned the copy with the remark, as he looked at the cover, “Is that America’s heritage?” I missed his point at first, so he pointed out the Negro servant, on his knees, while the Rev. William H. H. Murray is standing in “full ambiance.” He is far from a radical, in fact he is the typical “Uncle Tom” to his militant friends. He feels more should be done to get the Negro “off his knees,” and as Mr. Chew’s article on black history pointed out, perhaps the Negro has not made more history or progress because he did spend so much time on his knees. With so many other beautiful illustrations used for the Adirondacks article might not one of these have been in better taste?
James McGillivray Natick, Massachusetts
BLACK HISTORY
Sir: I was alternately sickened and infuriated by Mr. Peter Chew’s high-flown sophistry about the alleged perils of “black mythology” until I realized how devastatingly his argument was demolished by your cover illustration. Was this deadly irony intentional? Or are you, and Mr. Chew, and the rest of us, simply the dumb, unwitting victims of a racism we profess to despise?
Paul H. Hass Madison, Wisconsin
BLACK HISTORY
Sir: The article on black history is timely and addressed to a growing volume of error and indiscriminate injustice based on ignorance, prejudice, and unjustified self-esteem. The blacks in America have done some great things, but they have neither been so ignored or concealed as is hinted. This article will do much to cause reflection on those black and white historians who prefer good myth or bad myth to truth.
Unfortunately, however, I think the author has been somewhat unfair to Crispus Attucks.
The Boston Gazette of Tuesday, October 2, 1750, has the following advertisement:
“Ran away from his master William Bowen of Framingham on the 3Oth of September last, a MULATTO Fellow, about 27 years of age, named CRISPUS, 6 feet and 8 inches high, short curl’d hair, his Knees nearer together than common etc.”
Was not this our Crispus? George Livermore, a distinguished historian of Boston in 1862, thought so. Curled hair does not sound like an Indian. Did Mr. Chew know this reference? I think it significant.
Erich A. O’D. Taylor Newport, Rhode Island
The evidence on the identity of Cnspus Attucks is inconclusive. As our article stated, “the consensus seems to be that he was a middleaged mulatto, ” an assumption not out of keeping with the advertisement in the Boston Gazette that you quote. On the other hand, it would seem likely that if the Cnspus of the Boston Massacre was & 8"—a truly gigantic height for that time—something surely would have been made of this in the trial proceedings that followed.
The essential point—namely, that Attucks does appear, on the evidence, to have been more of a street hooligan than a patriotic hero—still stands, it seems to us. —Ed.
WITH GALBRAITH IN INDIA
Sir: I have just read the extraordinary and marvelous “Plain Tales from the Embassy, or with John Kenneth GaIbraith in India,” in your October issue. …
I have been a subscriber to AMERICAN HERITAGE since your very first issues. I have all of them. None, before, has ever delighted me so much.
James A. Leftwich La Jolla, California
WITH GALBRAITH IN INDIA
Sir: … To say that I was astounded to find an article by Galbraith in your publication is putting it mildly. I have no use for such Extremists, either to the Right or to the Left, and certainly no knowledgeable person would deny that men such as Galbraith and A.D.A. represent the extreme Left just as the Birchers represent the extreme Right. In addition to not wanting my children exposed, and under the guise of the implied approval of a respectable publication to the onesided viewpoint of Extremists, the criticism, actual and suggested, in this article, of respected persons—some living and others unable to defend themselves because of recent deaths—is in the poorest possible taste … and for you to publish a purely propaganda item such as this that has no historical or current value, purely for the aggrandizement of the author, is unforgivable. …
Kyle F. Brooks Cincinnati, Ohio
VANISHING RECORDS
Sir: We were pleased to see that AMERICAN HERITAGE has such active interest in the preservation of historical source materials [“The Case of the Vanishing Records,” August, 1969]. Deterioration is, of course, an archenemy of history—an extremely serious matter that deserves increased public attention, particularly from historians: You performed a valuable public service by publishing the article. At the same time, we should point out a few facts that the article did not adequately reflect.
Included in what you call documents are manuscripts and archives. Being the holder of more such material than any other depository in the Western Hemisphere, at least, our primary concern—like that of archivists and curators everywhere—is the preservation of unique documents. Unlike most books, photographs, and motion pictures, documents do not normally exist in multiple copies. Your “case,” then, fails to encompass the entire problem or to direct more than passing attention to what could be considered the most dire aspect of the problem.
For documents, the areas of uncertainty are at least as ominous as those that you identified for books. It is not uncommon to find documents stored in envelopes or boxes whose acid content is hazardous to the contents they “protect.” Documents, too, need to be deacidified; and if that process is somewhat easier for loose documents than for bound books, it is far more complicated by the vastly greater problem of searching out and testing documents that need to be de-acidified.
Moreover, many documents are written with materials whose longevity is less certain than printer’s ink: consider pencil, ball-point pens, and varieties of typewriter ribbons and carbon papers. Everything considered, the archivist and manuscript curator might be excused for looking somewhat enviously at the problems of the librarian.
You will be pleased to know that we are not just wringing our hands about our preservation problems. For some months we have been working with the Society of American Archivists and the U.S. National Bureau of Standards on the definition and funding of research that could result in standards for longlived documents. …
James B. Rhoads Archivist of the United States> Washington, D. C.
VANISHING RECORDS
Sir: I hope that you will shock a good many people into a realization of the problem facing us. …
Edwin Wolf II, Librarian The Library Company of Philadelphia
THE GRA-A-ND PARADE
Sir: A number of your readers have brought to my attention the statement from “The Gra-a-nd Parade” [February, 1969], about the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York, which reads: “A bill was proposed to the City Council by a member with the obviously un-Gaelic name of Woodward Kingman, asking that all parades be moved to a Sunday or a legal holiday.”
This is a serious misstatement of fact. I enclose a copy of my bill along with a copy of the existing ordinance, from which you can clearly see that my amendment would merely prohibit the holding of parades after 9:00 P.M. in residential areas or after 10:00 P.M. in congested areas. Furthermore, my bill would not alter the existing “Grandfather Clause” which (as pointed out in your article) excludes the St. Patrick’s Day Parade from any restrictions of the ordinance.
Besides being untrue, the above-mentioned statement in your article carries the unfortunate implication that I am anti-Irish. For anyone involved in politics in New York City (as I am), this is obviously very damaging. …
Woodward Kingman New York, New York
We regret that our jesting remark was based on an erroneous reading of the legislation; in any case we apologize.—Ed.
ON MAKING HEROES
Sir: I enjoyed mightily “Captain of the Franklin” [Before the Colors Fade, April, 1969]. Perhaps I can partly explain why the Franklin “became the most-decorated ship with the most-decorated crew in naval history.”
It is true history and will add another hero, namely Samuel Wolf. Sam Wolf was a very able if not so young attorney who during the latter years of World War II as a lieutenant commander faithfully performed the duty of permanent defense counsel of the General Court Martial in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. These duties and a small office on the second floor of an ancient sail loft in the yard occupied by the General Court Martial were shared with me. We worked well together at the task of defending an almost endless number of young officers and enlisted men who had fouled up under naval discipline and regulations.
The afternoon the crippled carrier Franklin finally arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard I was surprised to find our small office filled with several junior officers from the ship in serious conference with Sam Wolf. They had come seeking defense counsel. The charges were grave and numerous -centering around an alleged desertion and abandonment of stations at the time when the ship was set afire by kamikaze attack off the coast of Japan. Conviction would blast the future of the officer and brand him as a coward.
Sam Wolf asked me to aid him and briefed me on the facts and his proposed defense. He had a defense as airtight as it was ingenious— perhaps almost too much so. Then he asked me to go over to the bar of the Officers’ Club, to join in on conversations about the Franklin and to drop a few hints of the proposed line of the defense to be adopted for the junior officers under charges. The Franklin was the subject of all conversations. Someone who knew me asked me if any of the officers served with charges had been in to request aid. This gave me a perfect opening. I performed exactly as Sam had asked, and I had an attentive audience. I announced that if the charges were pressed we proposed to base the defense upon the fact that the junior defendants had done nothing but that which most of the senior officers of the fleet had undeniably done. The Franklin was the flagship of Task Force 58, and a staff briefing attended by most of the senior officers of the force had been in session at the time of the kamikaze attack. These senior officers had abandoned not only the briefing session but the Franklin herself. If the junior officers were to be charged with abandoning the flaming, exploding, floating hell, did not they have a lot of good company? Having made the point I left.
It was not long thereafter that the New York morning newspapers carried front page stories about the heroism aboard the Franklin and told how the Navy Department was awarding Navy Crosses and Legions of Merit. As I was reading the story, I felt a hand on my shoulder; it was Sam Wolf. “Finding out how heroes are made?” he asked. …
