As a veteran public relations man, I can smell a PR campaign a mile away. Your article “Why We Were Right to Like Ike” in the December 1985 issue is a piece of that nationwide move, wittingly or unwittingly, to portray one of our least remarkable Presidents as one of the greatest.
I lived through those days of Eisenhower’s administration. 1 can recall, for example, that in deference to Joseph McCarthy, Ike deleted a paragraph of praise for Gen. George C. Marshall, then under severe attack by McCarthy, in a major speech in Milwaukee.
So much for Steve Neal’s claim that Ike “worked behind the scenes to reduce McCarthy’s influence.” Those of us with longer memories recall quite clearly that it was the famous courtroom speech by the attorney Joseph Welch that burst the McCarthy “anti-Communism” balloon.
And where, anywhere, is a defense of General Marshall, who recommended the obscure Colonel Eisenhower for the top command of U.S. forces, by the recipient of that appointment, Dwight David Eisenhower?
Neal’s statement that Elsenhower’s opposition to the unanimous decision in the school desegregation case was “private” would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. It was hardly private. It was carried in newspapers, and on television and radio everywhere. Most importantly, it gave support and encouragement to anti-desegregation moves and laws everywhere in the country.
Fortunately for Eisenhower, he arrived at the Presidency after the turbulent years of the Depression and war. Our nation was booming with prosperity, buttressed by the Marshall Plan abroad and war-induced domestic shortages at home. All we needed was a sit-tight President, which is what we got. I am sure that Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce would have accomplished as much.
Sydney H. Kasper
Silver Spring, Md.
Who Liked Ike?
To one who lived through the Eisenhower era and worked close to certain large issues in the nation’s capital, Steve Neal’s apologia for this President is pretty weak. He raised more questions than he answered.
Ike—with great power and prestige- controlled a burgeoning defense establishment for eight long years, so why did he wait until the very end to raise his famous warning about the “militaryindustrial complex”?
Why did this man scorn the proposed national health plan as “socialized medicine” when he had lived a whole life under that very system in the U.S. Army? Typical of his unthinking way. Why did he continue to endorse Richard Nixon? Was it not he who brought That Man into high office?
What proof has Neal that Eisenhower “personally approved” Francis Gary Powers’s ill-fated U2 flight? As a member of the team behind it, I doubt Ike knew of the flight beforehand, as he had no more control over the CIA than any other President and displayed a consistent lack of interest in such matters.
I find Neal at his worst trying to defend this President’s record on civil rights. He did nothing—including sending troops to Little Rock—until he was forced to. He flinched before the racist Orval Faubus, and he left a grave situation for Kennedy and Johnson to grappie with. Our nation lost much by his inaction.
Sorry, I can’t believe history will be kind to Ike. I wish it were otherwise.
Joseph A. Stein
Zig Zag, Ore.
Birthday Present
The poster called Comfort on the North Shore Line (“Chicago Transit,” December 1985) prompted me to write. When my mother was twenty-two years old, she landed a teaching job in Highland Park. She would teach until 3:00 P.M. and then hop the North Shore at 3:15 and be home for supper in Milwaukee. She and my father were dating at the time, and the whole business is an important and romantic memory for her. She is now eighty years old, and 1 hope to present her with this poster for her eighty-first birthday in June. It will be a great pleasure for her and for me.
Philip J. Tougher
West AlHs, Wis.
Benchley for GIs
Your excellent article on Robert Benchley (“I’m Fine, Just Hurting Inside,” April/May 1986) reminded me that perhaps thousands of young Americans were first introduced to Benchley rather late in his career. As GIs in World War II, they saw him in a series of short training films, on a variety of subjects, made for the armed services. I remember that the masterful Benchley style and humor made these films not only entertaining but highly effective.
Edmund S. Mills
Mount Kisco, N.Y.
What Liberty, What Statue?
We are getting close to the Statue of Liberty’s one hundredth anniversary, and I read your piece on the Statue of Liberty back in June/July 1984, so when I ran across these comments of Mark Twain’s about the building of the statue, I thought you and your readers might like to see them.
As published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch for December 14, 1883, Twain, obviously in response to some fundraising appeal, wrote an article entitled “Why a Statue of Liberty When We Have Adam?” which said in part:
“What has liberty done for us? Nothing in particular that I know of. What have we done for her? Everything. We’ve given her a home, and a good home, too. And if she knows anything, she knows it’s the first time she ever struck that novelty. She knows that when we took her in she had been a mere tramp for 6,000 years, Biblical measure. Yes, and we not only ended her troubles and made things soft for her permanently, but we made her respectable—and that she hadn’t ever been before. And now, after we’ve poured out these Atlantics of benefits upon this aged outcast, lo! and behold you, we are asked to come forward and set up a monument to her! Go to. Let her set up a monument to us if she wants to do the clean thing.…”
John G. Westover
Tucson, Ariz.
Triangle Fire Memories
The item in “The Time Machine” of your February/March issue about the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire stirred vivid, long-submerged memories. Fortunately no members of my family were victims of that tragic event, but my grandfather, Dr. George M. Price, who had come here from Russia in the 188Os, was directly involved in the immediate and long-term consequences. It must have been well before my teens when my mother first told me about the fire, the young girls trapped by the sealed exits and jumping to their deaths. She went on to describe my grandfather’s work with the state Factory Investigation Commission, where he helped determine the causes of the fire and its aftermath, and studied how to prevent them from recurring. Later, in my second-term high school English course, we were asked to play reporter, interviewing a family member. I chose my grandfather, who filled in details about the crowded aisles and overflowing bins mentioned in your article.
One outcome of the investigation by the state commission was the Fire Drill Law of 1912, which called for the installation of sprinkler systems and required drills in all shops having twenty-five or more workers above the ground floor. To be sure, fires still occurred and do so today, but to the best of my imperfect recollection, nothing since has approached the catastrophe at the Asch Building on March 25, 1911.
A few years later, my grandfather published a work entitled Modern Factory, in which he said: “The problem of eliminating occupational diseases and preventing human waste caused by industrial poisons, gases and fumes is one of the most important tasks of the age, and is closely interwoven with the general subject of the conservation of human resources. The crux of the problem is not whether we shall have industry with disease and poisons, or no industry at all. It is rather whether we shall allow industry to take its annual toll of human life…or whether we shall insist that industry must be free from all dangers, hazards and risks, and subordinate production and output to the weal of the human factor in industry.”
O temporal O mores! Reading news accounts of Three Mile Island, accidents at Kerr-McGee, acid rain, et cetera, one wonders how greatly technology and regulation have improved our lot in the intervening three-quarters of a century.
George W. Cooper
New York, N. Y.
Local History
When I was a boy in Atlanta in the early twenties, my school, Marist College (grades six through twelve), taught history as Charles Eliot Norton and Byron Dobell (“Letter from the Editor,” February/March issue) would have it taught. We learned—interminably—about Atlanta, with major emphasis on the Civil War battles, ours being a military school. We used to collect Minié balls from the battlefield, which included my backyard; then proceeded slowly to Fulton and De Kalb counties, then Georgia; next the Confederacy; finally, shortly before graduation, the rest of the United States, North America, Europe, and remaining continents. Hope Mr. Dobell is reassured.
Robert UhI
Clearwater, FIa.
Local History
Byron Dobell’s remarks about the importance of local history bring to mind a professor I had at Columbia University in the 1920s. I cannot remember his name, but he had the same idea. He went so far as to say that the history of the United States was the accumulated total of all the local histories; he made it very II clear to his class that local history was of the greatest importance.
I was so impressed that 1 wrote my term paper on the history of my home county before 1860. The first settlers did not come into that county in the wilds of northern Pennsylvania until about 1800, but 1 found a bunch of material, enough to fill a lot of pages.
Gilbert H. Robinson
Westlake Village, CaI.
More Great Cars
Like any automobile buff, Brock Yates is entitled to his opinions concerning the ten greatest American automobiles (February/March issue). That he selected the Cord and Packard pleases me, since 1 once owned a 1933 Packard Super Eight Club Sedan and still own a 1936 Cord 810 Beverly.
However, Mr. Yates errs in at least two cases. The Packard Motor Car Company survived the Great Depression because the company started producing lowerpriced cars in 1935, in addition to their slow-selling luxury line of cars. Had the company not made the decision to pro- duce less expensive cars, it would have met the same fate as Fierce-Arrow, Stutz, Franklin, and the other legendary classic automobile manufacturers.
But ironically the decision to manufacture lower-priced cars eventually contributed to Packard’s demise. When just about anyone who wished to own a Packard could do so, the marque lost much of its mystique as America’s près- tige luxury automobile.
Re the Cord: Mr. Yates says the supercharger added two thousand dollars to the price of the car. Actually, the supercharger was offered as an option in late 1936 at an approximate additional cost of four hundred dollars.
David W. Schultz
Massillon, Ohio
Touché
What a blow to find the word hosted in the otherwise wonderful piece on Robert Benchley in your April/May 1986 issue. It would have been so easy to say instead that Benchley “was host for a popular variety show on radio.” And how nice it would have been if an editor had made the change. Oh, I know, I know. The language changes, and the dictionary lists host as a verb, or so I’ve been told. I can’t bear to confirm it.
But if it’s now acceptable to use hosted in American Heritage, of all places, can gifting people and additional writing horrors be too far down the road?
