January 2011

I read with great interest the mention of the passing of Tristan Jones in “Letter From the Editor” (July/August). His account in Heart of Oak of the sinking of HMS Hood is truly memorable. I must note, however, that the Hood was a battle cruiser and the newer Bismarck was a battle ship . The difference between the two types lay in gun power, armor protection, and speed. Three British battle cruisers blew up and sank at Jutland in 1916. The Hood shared their fate twenty-five years later.

On the evening of October 7, Chicago firemen were summoned to the Lull and Holmes planing mill just west of downtown. There they encountered the latest and biggest in a series of fires the city had seen during an unusually dry summer and fall. Before the blaze was extinguished, fifteen hours later, more than half the 185-man department had been dispatched to the site. With twenty acres destroyed and damages estimated at a million dollars, it was the worst fire in Chicago’s history. That record held up for less than a day.

At ten o’clock on the morning of October 16, a collection of eminent surgeons assembled in the operating room at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Such gatherings were not rare; it often took half a dozen men to hold down a writhing, screaming patient long enough to get the job done. But this operation was different. Instead of gulping a shot of whiskey and being strapped into place, the patient, a twenty-one-year-old printer named Edward Gilbert Abbott, inhaled ether for about three minutes and lapsed into unconsciousness. Dr. John C. Warren, one of the country’s most distinguished surgeons, stepped forward, made a three-inch incision, and calmly removed a tumor from Abbott’s neck as his colleagues looked on. Abbott muttered and wiggled a bit during the operation but said afterward that he had felt no pain. Just like that, anesthesia, long derided by surgeons, had been proved safe and effective. With tears in his eyes Warren exclaimed, “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.”

On October 29 the Otter , out of Boston, dropped anchor at Monterey, becoming the first American ship to visit California. Trade with foreign vessels was forbidden by the Spanish authorities, but Gov. Don Diego de Borica was happy to supply water and wood for cooking after the Otter ’s captain, Ebenezer Dorr, Jr., showed his passport from President Washington. Dorr also asked permission to drop off eleven stowaways from the British penal colony at Botany Bay, Australia. When it was refused, Dorr landed them secretly under cover of night before departing on November 6. Borica was put out at having his hospitality abused, but Dorr had no choice; his ship carried a crew of only twenty-six, and the extra passengers would have overtaxed her resources. Things worked out for the best, however. Borica put the stowaways to work as carpenters and blacksmiths, and they did such a good job that he was sorry to see them deported to Cádiz by official edict the following autumn.

Thank you for printing Karl S. Puffe’s journal of his Atlantic crossing a century ago (April). As you can see from my last name, my ancestors made the same crossing. In fact, my father’s grandfather Herman Stuehrmann, a native of Bremerhaven, made the crossing about the same time as Mr. Puffe. On my mother’s side the crossing has been almost legendary. We grew up with the story of how her grandfather Henry Schweer learned to walk crossing the Atlantic in the early 184Os. (My mother’s parents were a full generation older than my father’s parents.)

I often think of the difficulty of my forebears’ journey to this country, especially when my wife, our children, and I visit my wife’s family in the Philippines. We gripe about the narrow seats, the airline food, and the length of the trip—even though we’re not seasick, the food is at least edible, and we’ll be at our destination in less than a day. Thinking of Elizabeth Schweer and her children at sea long enough for young Henry to learn to walk puts some perspective on the “rigors” of air travel.

As a devotee of windjamming in Maine, I wish to compliment you on Frederick Alien’s most interesting “History Happened Here” article in the May/June issue of American Heritage . Even though I have never had the pleasure of sailing on the Lewis R. French with Captain Pease, I am sufficiently familiar with the windjamming operations in Maine to appreciate and thoroughly enjoy the article.

I read the article on American taxation with interest because of my own involvement with Georgist tax reform. I must set the record straight, however. Henry George, contrary to what was written in the article, was never elected to Congress. He did run twice for mayor of New York, the first time coming in second (ahead of Theodore Roosevelt) in 1886 and the second time in 1897. He died during the latter campaign. His son, Henry George, Jr., also a supporter of land-value taxation, was indeed elected to Congress. Perhaps Mr. Gordon confused him with his father.

We were delighted to see the excellent article “American Taxation” by John Steele Gordon in the May/June issue. In particular we applaud his accurate recounting of how tax-rate reduction in the twenties, sixties, and eighties led to higher tax revenues and higher relative tax payments by the rich.

Like him, we think that the flat tax would move huge sums out of tax shelters and unproductive assets into highly productive activities, free billions of currently wasted man-hours needed to comply with the current tax code, and produce powerful incentives for savings, investment, work, and entrepreneurship.

FEW CRIMINAL TRIALS IN AMERICAN HISTORY have been so carefully studied as Leo Frank’s, and with all the principals of the case now deceased and the written record generally available, it may come as a surprise that there is something new to be said about the case. But there is.

About three months after the murder of Leo Frank, a case was tried in the Fulton County Superior Court, of which Atlanta is the county seat. Unfortunately the record of this trial is not available; the case was appealed, however, and papers associated with that appeal provide an accurate, if less than full, account of the trial’s proceedings, a trial that reveals much about the one that doomed Frank.