January 2011

As T. H. Watkins reported in his “A Heritage Preserved” column for the December, 1980, issue, the Photo Arts Club of Toledo, Ohio, and the Landmarks Committee of the Maumee Valley Historical Society teamed up in 1979 to launch a remarkable project: the compilation of a photographic record of the architectural and decorative features of the region’s historic buildings so that there would at least be something left should disaster or the wrecker’s ball strike them down. The first building chosen was Toledo’s St. Patrick’s church.

In “The Residue of Assassination,” a Postscripts item in our April/May, 1980, issue, we reported that a top hat auctioned off by the firm of Sotheby Parke Bernet in November, 1979, was the one Lincoln had worn on the night of his death. Not necessarily so, says Richard Sloan, editor of The Lincoln Log newsletter: “I read with interest the article which stated that the beaver top hat worn by Lincoln to Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, eventually wound up in the collection of Roy P. Crocker, then was sold for $10,000. However, it is certainly not the one Lincoln wore on the night of the assassination. There is, in fact, insufficient provenance that the hat was ever Lincoln’s. According to a spokesman for Parke Bernet, the auction house which sold it, the only evidence that it was Lincoln’s was some notes in Mr. Crocker’s file from the dealer who sold it to him. These related only that it had ‘traditionally been associated with Lincoln through the years.’

A number of readers have written in to point out that in our “Postscripts” department for the August/September, 1980, issue, we identified Bruce and William Catton as the authors of The Glory and the Dream . William Manchester, of course, was the author of that book. The Catton book is The Bold and Magnificent Dream . As well, in the “for further reading” note that followed “God Pity a One-Dream Man” in our June/July, 1980, issue, we neglected to mention the fact that The Papers of Robert H. Goddard were co-edited by G. Edward Pendray—himself a pioneer in rocket research and a founder of the American Rocket Society, now the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Our apologies to all concerned.

The Department of Labor first began publishing a Cost of Living Index in 1919. Since then this measurement of the prices of the goods and services used by ordinary people in their day-to-day lives has been many times modified and refined. During World War II its title was changed to Consumer Price Index. Attempts also have been made to project the index back through the nineteenth century by collecting data from newspapers, business records, and other sources. Experts sometimes question the accuracy of even the current figures, and everyone agrees that the earlier estimates, especially those for the period before the Civil War, are far from precise. Nevertheless, this graph records with reasonable accuracy the general trend of prices paid by consumers over the years (the base line of 100 represents the 1957—59 price average).

Sometime in 1799 a luckless British-born artisan “boldly undertook,” in the words of the portraitist Rembrandt Peale, “to be an artist, although he did not know how to draw.” The result of this unprovoked commitment is a delightful series of portraits of the seedtime of a great city.

Crisis at Central High

by Elizabeth Huckaby

Louisiana State University Press

14 pages of photographs

222 pages, $12.95

Today at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, half the students and one-third of the faculty are black, and the school is proud of its record of high academic achievement.

In June of 1900 a long-brewing storm burst over the cluster of foreign legations in Peking. Frightened by the increasing agitation of the antiforeign Boxers, the diplomats had called for legation guards to be sent up from Tientsin; their arrival helped bring on the crisis. Soon a tiny force was under siege in the British legation.

The response was an example of the kind of international cooperation that would not extend very far into the new century: a relief force of British, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Russian, American, and Austrian soldiers set out from Tientsin together to lift the siege.

MAIL CRAWL MAIL CRAWL A FORD IN THE PAST ST. PATRICK’S IMPERILED THE TOP HAT CONTROVERSY CORRECTIONS

During an age in which nearly everyone has a horror story to tell regarding mail service, it is refreshing to look hack upon the problems, and solutions, of an earlier time—namely, the summer of 1896, when Eugene V. Debs ordered workers of his American Railway Union off the job. Ron Genini tells the story:

“Although Debs had warned his followers not to interfere with the U.S. Mails, a few mail trains were inevitably delayed—among them the Southern Pacific s run between California s San Joaquin Valley and San Francisco. On July 6, Arthur Banta of Fresrio proposed an eighteen-hour mail-delivery service to the Bay Area via bicycle. The route, in eight relays, left Fresno and went west 11 miles to Kerman before turning north to the town of Firebaugh, a 28-mile run; it continued 31 miles northwest to Los Banos, then 10 miles due west to Pacheco Pass, 14 miles over the mountains to Bell’s Station, 25 miles north to Madrone, 33 miles to Menlo Park, and the final 29 miles into San Francisco.

General John J. Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, took the matter of censorship seriously. “It was impressed upon our forces,” he wrote in his memoirs of the war, “that every person who, either willfully or inadvertently, disclosed facts of military value thus gave the enemy an advantage, and … might actually be responsible for the unnecessary sacrifice of his own comrades.”

The degree of Pershing’s concern was recently brought to our attention by reader Donald B. Robinson of St. Petersburg, Florida. After reading Elton Mackin’s ”… Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die” (February/March, 1980), an account of the battle for Belleau Wood, Mr. Robinson was moved to pass along a postcard sent by his brother-in-law during the war “from somewhere in France.” The postcard, which was standard issue for the Allied Forces, is shown here—a masterpiece of tight-lipped communication in which the soldier had only to cross out what he didn’t want to say. “Not much information,” Mr. Robinson notes, “but very welcome.”