MARGINALIA, MAGICAL …

“Explosion in the Magic Valley,” our picture story in the April/May 1981 issue, brought forth two unusual items in response. The story had to do with the birth of Twin Falls, Idaho, as an adjunct to a private irrigation project in 1905 and featured the pictures of the pioneer photographer Clarence Bisbee.

The first reaction came from Tom Parkinson, president of the Circus Historical Society in Savoy, Illinois: “In regard to the photograph on pages 34–35 depicting a ‘1904’ circus parade, the correct date was 1909. The posters on the wall behind the elephants might lead one to believe that this was the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. Wrong. It was the Sells Floto Circus, which came to Twin Falls on July 3, 1909; Hagenbeck-Wallace, which did come to Twin Falls on July 23 of that year, had more elephants than those shown in the photograph.

“Sells Floto was owned by the operators of the Denver Post, Harry Tammen and Fred Bonfils, who ran their circus the same boisterous way they handled their brand of journalism. From Twin Falls, the show’s route took it into the big cities of the East for the first time, where it was met with poster wars by such well-established circuses as John Robinson, Hagenbeck-Wallace, the Gentry Bros., Barnum & Bailey, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. But perhaps the best fight was in court. Tammen and Bonfils had begun their operation with something called the Floto Dog and Pony Show. To make it sound bigger, they hired Willie Sells, adopted son of one of the founders of the Sells Bros. Circus. Ringling Bros, owned that old show name and sued when Sells Floto not only used the name but posters showing the likenesses of the original Sells brothers. But they sued in Denver, and while the federal court there prohibited the use of the posters, it allowed Bonfils and Tammen to keep the name.

“They had less trouble with the other half of their show name. Otto Floto was sports editor of the Denver Post. His employers were so entranced with his name that they borrowed it for their circus. Later, Floto would bring his protégé, Jack Dempsey, into the show as a feature.”

Paul Ward, of Hollywood, California, provided us with a similarly informed comment on another of the pictures: “The photograph on pages 36-37 shows two of the ‘new electric cars of the Twin Falls Railway,’ sitting outside the light and power building. The cars were electric, all right, but were not the kind that used trolley poles and overhead wires. They were storage battery cars that were designed to be used on a suburban line out of Twin Falls. The line lasted from 1913 to 1918. Such cars were intended as selfpropelled, inexpensive vehicles that could be used by city and interurban railways that planned eventually to string wire overhead and truly electrify. They came into use around 1897 with an Edison-designed storage battery. But they were slow, and the smallest amount of ice on the rails stopped them. The ones in the photograph are four-wheel cars of very light construction, good for a distance of about thirty miles at speeds of up to thirty or thirty-five miles per hour. Then they had to be recharged, or the batteries transferred at a battery station along the line. Very cumbersome, altogether. While some battery cars lasted into the early 1930’s on a couple of crosstown New York City lines, they were an unsuccessful experiment.”

… AND MISSOURIAN

Professor Robert H. Ferrell, who discovered Harry S. Truman’s previously unpublished Potsdam diary (June/July 1980), has uncovered further evidence of the President’s spiky character:

“Rummaging through some notes here in the office, I found some of Truman’s marginalia on letters sent to him after he left the Presidency. The comments were made to his secretary, Rose Conway, and a selection vividly recalls the man:

‘File it. Looks like crackpots.

‘File it. No ans. I told him the facts and he has garbled them!

‘Thank him & tell him the Louisville Courier-Journal has always been after circulation and not facts & morals.

‘File it. No interest. The figure is 100% wrong but as Coolidge said, don’t argue with skunks. HST

‘Thank him and tell him Winchell never tells the truth.

‘This person stood at the front gate at the house and pressed the bell button until Mrs. T. asked what he wanted. He said he must see me. She told him to visit the library and he’d find me. He did with a guard in tow. Just an expert in nothing who wanted something he thought he couldn’t get but did.

‘This is a humdinger! File it. It answers itself.

‘Since it wasn’t true, it made no difference in the history of the period.

‘Thank him. The facts are history & Monday morning quarterbacks can’t change them.

‘Tell him to come over in 3 weeks. I won’t be here [the] last week!!

‘No chance. He should have voted right when he had a chance. Just file it!”

MOMENT OF RECOGNITION

When Harvey L. Morris of La Palrna, California, opened the February/March issue, he was astonished to find himself looking at his mother. She is the Red Cross nurse on page 87, bathing the eyes of a gassed soldier.

“Her name was then Ida Marie Lichtsinn of Indianapolis, Indiana. She took nurse’s training at Fort Wayne Lutheran Hospital, graduating in the class of 1912.

“She enlisted as a nurse at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Before going overseas she was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, where she met my father, a patient of hers and a private in the 91st Division. (Years later they met again, and one thing led to another, et cetera, and they were married in 1928.)

“The years 1917–18 found her serving in France and Belgium. Toward the end of the war she was wounded in action during a shelling, suffering a severe leg injury for which she received veterans compensation until her death in 1975. Many times during the Depression, it was all we had to go on.

“Incidentally, she never received the Purple Heart, as technically nurses were not in the armed forces. How about that for an injustice?”

THE PEOPLE, MAYBE

Politicians, on the whole, sadly lack a sense of history. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York is a rare exception: he not only has made history, he has written it, and in his sprightly newsletter he often draws important lessons from the past. In a recent issue he warned of the perils we face when we seek to tamper too quickly with the laws under which we govern ourselves.

“Those of retentive memory,” he writes, ”… will recall that on March 3, 1858, The New York Times reported from Albany that eighty-six state senators presented a petition: ‘The undersigned, citizens of the State, would respectfully represent: That owing to the great falling off of the Canal revenue, as well as the increasing drafts upon the State Treasury, and the large expenses of carrying on the several departments of the State Government, thereby swelling up the taxes … your petitioners respectfully ask that your Honorable body pass an act for calling a Convention to so alter the Constitution as to abolish both the Executive and Legislative Departments … and to vest the powers and duties thereof on the President, Vice President, and Directors of the New York Central Railroad. …’

“The Times correspondent went on to explain that the proposal was ‘intended as a joke’ but ‘conveys a bitter satire, a satire which is deserved and just.’ There followed a discourse on the villainy of the railroads … and a prediction that a time would come when ‘after long suffering’ the people would rise and ‘retaliate.’

“They almost did. The state legislature passed the proposition, and it went on the ballot that fall. It failed by only 6,360 votes.”

THE GREAT AMERICAN THEODORE ROOSEVELT PUZZLE

John Waldsmith, who is curator/librarian of the National Stereoscopic Association’s Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library at the Canton (Ohio) Art Institute, was understandably taken with the “blizzard” of images we presented in “Theodore Roosevelt, President” by Edmund Morris (June/July 1981):

“On pages ten and eleven you have a montage of Theodore Roosevelt. I have one of the original prints in my collection. The print measures 13 by 20½ inches and was given to readers of the Farm and Fireside of Springfield, Ohio, in 1908. The montage was created and patented by Underwood & Underwood of New York City. Here is how Farm and Fireside described the print:

“‘This is the most remarkable photograph ever made. It is composed of five hundred different pictures of President Roosevelt taken at all years of his public career, and showing five hundred of his different attitudes and expressions. Two, and only two, of the pictures in this photograph are similar. They show the President in exactly the same position and dressed exactly the same. One is a little darker and larger than the other, but they are the same picture. See if you can find these “Mysterious Mr. Roosevelt” pictures. After you find them, it is a puzzle that will keep your friends busy for quite a while.

“‘This is probably the most expensive single photograph ever made. Its price was $1,000. No other photograph like it can ever be produced, and we have absolute control over its reproduction. Several men worked for months on the preparation of it. The pictures in it were taken in almost every state and territory in the Union, and at some of the most notable events that have taken place in American history. This great composite photograph will be an ornament to any home in America—a priceless ornament. Five years from now a reproduction of this great picture will be worth many dollars, and later on, when President Roosevelt has retired from public life, it will be a treasure to your children and grandchildren which will command a very high price.’”

Our own staff has gone over the photograph (shown below) and has been unable to pin down the duplicate Roosevelts. The first reader diligent enough to come up with the elusive twins will be awarded a free gift subscription to AMERICAN HERITAGE for one year. Void where prohibited.