January 2011

Fred Clarke, seen here in a commemorative print, led the Pittsburgh Pirates to a World Series championship in 1909. Two months later the team’s most faithful fan was born. His memories appear inside.

In 1848 more than fifty revolutionary outbreaks took place in Europe. The vast majority of them were put down easily. But the French actually managed to topple their Bourbon monarch, Louis Philippe—and with little bloodshed. His regime had been relatively prosperous and benign, but the urban workers, the middle class, and the students resented the widespread corruption and lack of broad representation. When the king banned public political meetings of more than twenty people, his opponents turned to what they called the “revolution of contempt”—a phrase that seems apropos in this year of a failed revolution in China. It’s an interesting idea: If enough people adopt such a tactic, can a government stand for long? We’ll see. Contempt can be a weapon of immense power; that’s why totalitarian societies demand not only obedience but strenuous cheering.

Reaching out and touching someone hasn’t always been easy—especially if it was necessary to hand that person something in the process. Yet there have always been Americans who absolutely and positively had to have it the next day, week, month, at any cost, and this in turn has always drawn others with the dollars and determination to make it happen. The history of the race with time to physically transfer documents—business or personal—constitutes a key element in the two-century communications revolution that has drawn together our sprawling nation, tying the two coasts and everything between in a network of rapid communication. The continuing drama of a need that was as powerful and important a century ago as it is today may best be captured by tracing the successive ways an urgently awaited document or package has been raced across the country, from a century and a half ago until the present day.

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John Steele Gordon has done a favor to all who wish to understand economics in a historical sense (“The Problem of Money and Time,” May/June issue). However, he falls into an old trap set by real estate speculators since Og said to Mog, “There aren’t any more caves being built, people keep moving here to hunt the mammoths!” If Peter Minuit had offered the Indians twenty-four of today’s dollars for Manhattan Island in 1626, and they had invested it for a return of only 6 percent, and never touched the principal or interest, they would have nearly thirty-seven billion of today’s deflated dollars!

Too many people think that because land is a fixed-supply item, and because people willing to buy it continue to increase, it will always increase in value. Many of us in Texas made this same error of judgment prior to the oil bust. Have we got a deal for you!

Richard Reinhardt’s article on the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair (May/June) is prefaced with: “New Yorkers recall 1939 as the year of the great World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow. But that’s just more Eastern provincialism.”

I now live in New York but am proud to say that I grew up in San Francisco. I hope that American Heritage realizes that the very listing of the piece on the cover of the magazine reflects the height of Eastern provincialism. No one—absolutely no one —west of the Mississippi calls San Francisco “Frisco.” Native Californians would approve your use of “San Fran,” “S.F.,” almost anything but that terrible “F” word. “Frisco” is a term used by the camera-toting, cigar-chomping, arrogant, thoroughly naive Easterner attending a convention in the Bay area.

You want me to subscribe to your magazine when you call my hometown “Frisco” in big red letters on the cover of the first one 1 see? Frisco is a tiny town in the Colorado Rockies. I live in San Francisco, and that is where the 1939 World’s Fair was. I didn’t know there was one in New York too.

I take exception with Bernard Weisberger’s argument (“In the News,” May/June) that recently retired Presidents are “cashing in” on the Presidency. He highlights President Reagan’s speaking fees and multi-million-dollar book contracts as examples.

I feel it would be more accurate to view such arrangements as a form of deferred compensation. A President’s annual earnings total about two hundred thousand dollars, a paltry amount compared with the sums doled out to top executives in the private sector. In addition a President has no way of knowing what he will earn upon leaving office. An executive’s severance pay is negotiated when he is hired.

As the nation’s chief executive officer, a President does not have his deferred compensation determined by formula. If he is perceived as a successful President, as President Reagan is, he will command top dollar for both speaking fees and book contracts. If, on the other hand, he is seen as unsuccessful, his compensation will be less.

World War II began in Europe on the morning of September 1 when one-and-a-half million German troops stormed into Poland in a high-speed armored wave. The German leader Adolf Hitler, addressing the Reichstag, insisted that the Polish army had started the shooting, and declared himself “determined to eliminate from the German frontier the element of insecurity.…”

Britain and France both declared war on Germany two days later but were unable to do anything to save Poland from the German blitzkrieg. With the Russian army invading from the east at Germany’s invitation, the antiquated Polish military lasted less than a month, and its government was forced to flee the country.