A Maverick American

I. The Drums of the Mavericks - Approximately a Preface

2007-03-21T23:24:00.023-04:00

I

THE DRUMS OF THE MAVERICKS

Approximately a Preface

In a regular book, this chapter would probably be called the Preface. But nobody reads a preface, and I swore when I started writing that I would have none. So this is Chapter I.

Anyone who writes a book should take the reader into his confidence and tell what he is talking about. There are some authors who write five or six hundred pages of erudite circumlocution [footnote: Should you not understand the meaning of the above word, you thereby get my meaning exactly.], and by the time you wade through it you have forgotten what it's all about—and by whom.

My purpose is to tell an ordinary story of an ordinary man with ordinary ideas, hoping to solve at least a few elementary problems. I want to write a story not so much of myself as of us, of the various emotions and longings that are common to us all. Some of us have lived in poverty, some of us have gotten too fat, some too thin. We are all in the same boat. We all want to reach the shore. We all want to live with some liberty, in ordinary comfort in a world free of war and violence.

I have had some spectacular experiences, and if I were a novelist I could paint them up a little and make a dramatic story. But we all have adventures, and your adventures have no doubt been quite as spectacular as mine. So I will not consciously attempt to tell anything spectacular or bold; at least, there will be no varnish or fancy paint.

In this book there will be no breath-taking suspense; in fact, I will try to inform you in advance of what I am talking about. Although all that I write about is deeply personal and authentic, it is not an autobiography. If it is, it is the autobiography of America, and I hope a story of America to come. Or a story of any individual who wants to be free, and wants others to be free, too.

Sticking closely to one form or another, with treatises, dissertations, statistics, bores me. It bores you, too. A great American who died last year wrote a book which everyone says is one of the finest ever written. But he starts out with being born, tells all about his father's store in California, about his pet horse, and the last time I knew anything about him he was about fifteen years of age. I just stopped reading. I never got to the part about political battles and municipal corruption. I never heard of him again until just before his death, when he wrote me a letter asking me to sign a petition to get McNamara, the dynamiter, out of the penitentiary in California, which I did.

In this nation we have wasted and destroyed; we have been physically brave, quite often intellectually cowardly, and have done foolish things which we as a nation must stop doing. Though I shall talk about my experiences as a Congressman in Washington, as a speaker, soldier, an amateur and very inefficient hobo, a lumberman, a worker, politician, a school boy—yet it will be of the land, our country, and the blood and bones that make it.

As I told you, I expect to give you advance warning of what I am talking about; then I will explain it, and then I will explain what I have said over again. That's no reflection on your intelligence, but it's my way.

And yes, I got help in writing this book. But I wrote every word of it, lived it, and experienced what I am saying. Pretty nearly every department in the Government and many individuals have helped me no end. The employees of the Library of Congress have all worked like Trojans.

Take the Congressional Library. I had thought I could write a book without too much research, since it is not to be a professorial volume. I thought, for instance, that I would never forget a single character of Alice in Wonderland; thinking vaguely of the Cheshire Cat and all those strange characters, I 'phone Mr. Slade, and bellow at this shy soul: "Who were the main characters in Alice and Wonderland, and what was the story of Tweedledee and Tweedledum?"

Mr. Slade, reference librarian, who ought to have a head as big as the Capitol to hold all the information he has in it, hesitates. But it is all a philosopher's fake, for reference librarian that he is, he knows the answers in the first place.

But I shout: "Come on, Mr. Slade, what the hell are you stalling about?"

And Mr. Slade, who knows I am not insulting him, loves this rough treatment as he hides in his stacks and corners, and reels off the answers as though he had swallowed any book you name the day before. For indeed, it is a happy friendship I have with this fellow; he knows that my bellowing, like his pretense of ignorance, are kindly shams and frauds that bind us together.

Then over there is Dr. Schulz, who can correctly state just what the Supreme Court of Babylon did in the year of 2000, or possibly 4500 B.C., whenever it was. Or he can tell you what the Legislature of Maine said about the Dred Scott decision. So, I freely admit, I got everybody's help, ranging from policemen and gas station operators up to—I almost said the Supreme Court. Yes, everybody helped me, man, woman, and child, except the other Nine Human Beings who sit upon the High Bench.

My main brain-truster is Leon Pearson, who works for his brother Drew of the Washington Merry-Go-Round. Leon is a Quaker, and is supposed to have a peaceful disposition. Sometimes he has—but he reads proof, tells me that such and such a paragraph is vague, and a terrible bore. Then I must go back and re-write it.

There is another Leon, too. Leon Henderson, who was chief economist in the NRA, and who knows more about that, and Hugh Johnson, than any man on earth. He should write a book, and I am sure you would like it. But he has done a lot of work for me, and here's his pay, in ink.

This book has me in it, but it mostly has others. Traveling over the face of this Republic, I have lived with the CCC boys, have visited down in the bottom of greasy and black engine rooms—have even attended Chamber of Commerce affairs. I have gotten myself stuck in the wintry mud of soil-conservation projects. H. H. Bennett, chief of the Soil Conservation Service, who has all the earmarks of a modern Savonarola, and who battles to save the soil with an additional touch of Don Quixote and the efficiency and cold-bloodedness of a Henry Ford, has turned his nation-wide department loose to help me, and his people have done it. Out in the New Mexico-Arizona country his Bill McGinnies, formerly Dr. William Albert McGinnies, A.B., A.M., Ph.D., came along with me and Cy Fryer, Big White Chief of all the far-flung empire of the Navajos, and showed me the tragedy of a broken race and a land dead and bleeding; from them I received information to write a chapter, which you will come to if you read long enough, entitled "Fifty Thousand Redskins Bite the Dust." Dr. W. W. Alexander, head of the Resettlement Administration, who knows more about poor white Southerners and poor black Southerners than anybody who lives and breathes, has shown me things of my own South I should long ago have known. He has loaded me down with statistics that would break the back of a horse made of steel. His Mr. Mercey and Mr. Dreir have worked with me like brothers. I have been in Resettlement's Green Belt Towns, here, there, and everywhere. Barnes, Hall, Brown, of the Soil Conservation Service, have shown me this and that, and have helped along.

Another young fellow, Dave Lloyd, Jr., who is bright as a dollar, and who is now doing good work with the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee, has helped a lot. I mention him as a new type of young American working faithfully day and night for his government. There are many like him in Washington, and in government service all over the nation.

So, after all, this is a preface, with all these names. But I had not intended it to be; I only wanted to mention a few friends.

But the drums are rolling, and it is time to start. It is time for the mavericks of America to assemble on the steps of the Capitol.

II. Prejudices—North, South, East and West - A Southern Congressman

2007-03-21T23:22:00.000-04:00

With Korean Leader Dr. Syngman Rhee in Seoul

II

PREJUDICES—NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST

A Southern Congressman

I get elected to Congress.

Now, I stand for certain elementary principles such as Liberty of Speech and Liberty of Religion, and people seem to be surprised about it. I see nothing strange about a Texan and a Southerner standing for simple rights, and being what is called a "liberal" or a "progressive." Especially when the New Yorker who expresses surprise generally does not even know the name of his own congressman or assemblyman.

All this perplexes me.

Then I have people tell me that I am broadminded. I am not. I am wondering by whom these mental qualifications should be judged—by me, by certain set rules, or by the people of New York City, San Francisco, or Memphis. What is broadmindedness?

Which makes me wander again. If anybody writes a book, he ought to be writing about something. So let us get our minds straight before we go on.

I think the most important thing for us to possess as a people is liberty, which later on I hope to define. So, since this is the most important, we will talk of it right here, and then in other chapters I will expand upon liberty in all its phases, get myself born and tell you some stories.

I am a Southerner, because I live in that portion of the United States. More than likely I am possessed of all the prejudices that a "gentleman and a Southerner" is supposed to have. I do not hate colored people; neither do I claim greater knowledge of them than Yankees, nor sentimental love for them. I do not despise people on account of race; but in order that my brethren in New York may be satisfied, let us say that I hate Negroes, which I do not, and that negroes should be shot, lynched, and deprived of their economic and civil rights.

At the national Capitol one day a large delegation came down from New York, representing the League Against War and Fascism. I finally left the House floor and went out to see them, because it happened that although the delegation was from New York City, there was but one Congressman from their whole state who might have come out and spoken to them, and he was away.

I hove on the scene with my Nordic blonde curls [footnote: Since the above was written, I am told that my hair is dark brown, and a Greek tells me my ancestors were Hellenes—well, I had always thought I was a Nordic blonde.], and Southern prejudices. I saw dark hair, some Semitic features—and something I had never seen before—a mixed delegation—Whites and Negroes.

I was asked to make a speech, right out on the Capitol steps. I started, but was not allowed to talk for over a minute or two.

Someone heckled me and demanded, in a sarcastic voice, to know something about "Southern Justice," hissing out the "S" like a stage villain.

I was sore. So I shot, "Where were Sacco and Vanzetti tried? In Alabama? In what prison do we find Tom Mooney? The Texas Penitentiary?" I gave tongue to a long list of civil liberty violations all over America, for I am a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and happened to have just read the list of violations.

As I looked over my crowd of Manhattanites, I realized that when they spoke of "Southern Justice" they were quite certain that the most terrible place on earth was the South. Like most New Yorkers, they did not see the forest for the trees. They were unaware of the multitude of abuses in their own insignificant island. I knew also that when they spoke of "Southern Justice" they meant the Scottsboro Case. Now, this case is neither better nor worse than other persecutions, mistrials, or violations of civil liberties in other parts of the country. The fact that the boys are black is no excuse, but certainly the legal conduct of the case has been fairer than that of Sacco and Vanzetti. One is racial, the other was industrial prejudice; no doubt the background of both is economic.

I now lectured my New Yorkers. I told them that in the South people were neither more nor less narrow-minded than they were in the East or West or in the North. I told them that I was sick of this business of New York City pretending to have all the intelligence and wisdom in the country; it was bad for us down South, and bad for those up North. The pacifists and anti-Fascists seemed very subdued and they listened quietly.

This gave me courage. So I proceeded to a point. I told them that the Bill of Rights was for all the people of the United States; that civil, religious and other liberties were supposed to be for everybody in the United States but that they were not being maintained anywhere in the Union. As I enlarged on my subject, I realized that I was developing an important truth, and unfolding a story which was as dear to my heart as it was true.

And there I came, by conversation back and forth, in contact with the Manhattan mind. Book-words were used, but they had no substance or sense. I was later to realize this more fully in attending meetings in New York, where words, sentences, whole paragraphs were thrown at audiences which meant nothing to the listeners, nor to the speaker himself . . . "proletarian ideology" . . . "economic determinism" . . . "crisis symptomology" . . . "the class struggle" . . . "fronts" (of all kinds) . . . these, I tell you, American people do not understand, and do not like. This kind of talk is a stumbling block in the path of anything progressive or sensible.

I told them, and I think I told them the truth, that one of the narrowest places on earth is New York. At least, I said, the South is no worse, and no better. You talk of share-croppers in Arkansas. What about your starving industrial piece-workers of New York? You worry about the Negroes of the South. What about the Negroes of Harlem, and the poor whites of the whole island?

There is likely more sectional prejudice in Manhattan than there is in the South.

The whole country is about the same; the exploiting groups teach us to hate and distrust each other, so that this exploitation may continue. South: dog-eat-dog, share-cropper kick "nigger," so the top dog can skim the lickins around the edge of the dollar-pot. North: Union against Union; farmers' organization against farmers' organization; fight the foreigner—all for the benefit of the dear old industrialist.

What are we to do? Obviously, our democratic liberties must be preserved, not just in New York or Arkansas, but in the Imperial Valley, Georgia, New Jersey, Colorado. . . .

I was thinking the other day: "When we had prohibition, we had the Volstead Act, with a horde of officers to enforce an un-right. Why not have an act to enforce and protect the fundamental liberties, civil and religious? Why not protect the constitutional rights of travel, speech, press, assemblage, freedom from unreasonable search?"

Let us take the various proposed anti-lynching laws. They are always approached in the slip-shod manner of degraded politics—catering to the Negro vote; chief advocates are the sentimentalists, and the few who are left in the East who are still marching on Harper's Ferry, book-singing their inhibitions away, evading their local duties and fighting a foe they will never have to meet. And since the approach is made that way, their defeat is encompassed the same way; by the opposite emotions: magnolia blossoms, the virtue of womanhood, economic prejudice, Jackson was a great general, and a lot of bunk about state's rights. . . .

It is apparent that an act must be made to cover the whole subject of constitutional civil liberties. It should guarantee that no man, White or Negro, shall be lynched, or beaten to death by rangers, local police, sheriffs or "special officers." And we must have not merely a regional or state interpretation of the Constitution, but a national one. A right is a right, whether that citizen is blue, green, lavender, or even yellow.

In the history of constitutions, rights have been stated affirmatively. The 18th Amendment was the first constitutional change which took away a right and made a negative statement. In any event, it was part of the Constitution, and a law was passed in pursuance of it, to enforce this single part of the Constitution. Hundreds of other rights are not covered by statutes, but the courts are supposed to protect them under the Constitution.

Hence it would appear that a statute should be enacted, setting up the machinery to enforce ordinary civil rights; such as travel, life, liberty, free speech, religion, assembly and press. Naturally, since all these rights proceed from the Federal Constitution, the set-up should be Federal and would be for the benefit of the Negro likely to be lynched in the South or the lettuce worker likely to be lynched in California—or to protect anybody who wants to preach, pray, talk, write, or move anywhere in the United States of America.

The grave necessity for all this is so deep that we can hardly realize it. I shall not use the old cliche that we are at the crossroads—but it is certain that with our ideas on government still wearing the frock coats of 1880, while our scientific achievements are ten thousand years ahead, there is every danger that civilization may crack completely.

Which means that we must hold back violence long enough to talk things out; possibly we can then make some fair solutions. If we do not, we fight each other to the death.

I want to make it plain that freedom of the intellect is essential to any civilization. In this I am not talking about the freedom to starve, or the freedom to be unemployed—all that is in the realm of economics. I am talking about the mind and the soul.

III. The Stork Tells a Story - Liberty—Revolution—War

2007-03-21T23:21:00.000-04:00

III

THE STORK TELLS A STORY

Liberty—Revolution—War

Well, I might as well get myself born. The stork brought me into the world. I remember it exactly. I can recall the first thing I saw in my flight was the Alamo when I sat bolt upright in the diaper which was in the stork's bill. Even though the stork had to hold his mouth tightly shut, he was telling me about the heroes of the Alamo. He told me that the 181 men who went into the Alamo had died for liberty, and I can remember that I had a very clear idea of what liberty meant up until about five or six years ago. (Since then it has involved all kinds of economic theories, which worry me.)

He told me about Travis and Bowie and Bonham; about the tyrant Santa Anna, who came into the great State of Texas to take away the liberties of my forefathers, and how these brave Texans had willingly gone into the Alamo and died for the cause of liberty. The stork spoke of "Rivers of Blood," and he made such a good word-picture of General Santa Anna that I can see him today standing by the San Antonio River with his cannon, and again, ordering the burning of bodies of the Texas heroes who had died for liberty. As I passed, I remember that he had a cruel countenance and was a villain and a tyrant.

The stork told just about all that a young gentleman ought to know. He spoke in a somewhat declamatory fashion, and assured me that all my ancestors on both sides of the house had always fought for justice and liberty. In France, as Huguenots, they had suffered in the cause of religious liberty; to America they came, fought Indians and Frenchmen, and, starting with the Revolution, had fought in all the wars. Some preached the word of God, exactly as it should be preached, on behalf of the King of England; later, as ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church, they preached on behalf of law and order, and for the Confederate States of America.

Most of the stork's declamation was devoted, however, to my grandfather, Samuel A. Maverick. "There," he said, pointing to the Plaza des Armas, "your grandfather was captured by a Mexican Army. He was marched barefooted over deserts of cactus and freezing mountains. He wore the chains of slavery for ten months [sic]; he was in the military prison of Perote, to which he marched, 1600 miles from San Antonio. What did he say when the villain and tyrant, Santa Anna, offered him freedom if he would not bear arms against Mexico? He said, 'However galling are the chains of slavery, I regard a lie as dishonorable. To say that I would lay down the arms of my country would be a lie.'"

And just two or three years ago, I visited this Mexican prison under the guidance of a friendly Mexican officer. There it stands today, beautiful, austere, one of the greatest beauties of architecture in the world.

As for the stork, he failed to mention that war is cruel and unnecessary; in fact, as I remember it, he spoke rather well of it. Neither did he say anything about my grandfather's land titles; in fact, I am afraid the stork was a conservative; certainly he was neither a pacifist nor a radical. As for public ownership of natural resources, he said not a word. Apparently, he was a pioneer stork, a bird of the genus status quo. But on liberty, justice, freedom, education, he was a thousand percent. So he gave me a good start, anyway.

He also told me of the greatest hill that ever was known on the face of the earth, barring none, including all the Seven Hills of Rome put together. It was Vinegar Hill, and it is still Vinegar Hill, and it is in Charlottesville, Virginia. There another stork, four years before the guns rumbled at Fort Sumter, brought Jane Lewis Maury, my mother, who, I am now sure, was bossing the stork long before he arrived at Piedmont, where he carefully laid her by the side of my grandmother.

Vinegar Hill is beyond the University of Virginia, built by Thomas Jefferson, and in the business district of Charlottesville. And I can remember two incidents: one of the wooden-legged mule, and the other of The President's Club.

For as surely as there is any history—and this is as true as a great many historical things which are accepted—there was a Confederate who was very poor. He came back from Appomattox and he found that the Yankees had stolen all his horses as well as his cows; his house, even, was burned. He had nothing. Industrious, courageous, he built a cabin at the foot hills of the Blue Ridge. And he finally got a cow from somebody and an old sick mule. Then the mule one day, while he was pulling a plow, got his leg hurt. So they sawed off the mule's leg and gave him a wooden one.

Twice a week, as regularly as clock-work, this Confederate soldier came to town and up Vinegar Hill with his wooden-legged mule. I can see the mule jogging up the hill as plain as day. It happened thirty years before I was born, but no matter. The mule was a happy fellow, and always smiled at me when I went by. Usually, the Confederate had on the back of his small wagon one or two barrels of water, and I saw the water slosh over the edge. The mule was an example of fortitude, and he showed that, like a human being subjected to suffering, he could take it and smile.

At a much earlier date, so the stork said, and long before the Civil War, there existed in the County of Albemarle, an organization known as The President's Club. The members of this club were none other than Thomas Jefferson, then very old and weak; my grandfather Maverick's kinsman, James Madison; and James Monroe. Often, close by Vinegar Hill, these three men stood and conversed. Came one day a youth, my mother's good father, Jesse Lewis Maury, grandson of a preacher, and a cousin of Meriwether Lewis, whom Jefferson had sent far to the west to claim great lands for the new and rising empire. Seeing the three presidents standing together on Vinegar Hill, he solemnly protested that he, too, was eligible for membership in The President's Club.

Jefferson smiled. He asked the young man how it all happened.

The young man answered: "I am president of the Albemarle Possum Club."

Since I am a Member of Congress, it is my earnest desire that everything must be authentic. I have looked all this up, and it is true. [The Albemarle of Other Days, Rawings, Michie. Jesse L. Maury was born in 1811, Jefferson died in 1826, Madison in 1836, Monroe in 1831.] But I have not yet obtained documentary proof of the mule. In fact, people tell me in Albemarle County that it must be a fairy tale. The people of Albemarle County, however, do not know everything, and my mother still maintains it's true, though I am sure I detect a smile.

Still borne by the stork, I saw, around 1825, Matthew Fontaine Maury, a young boy later to be the great Commodore who should find the pathways of the seas, to have a great statue erected to him in Richmond, and be decorated by Kings and Emperors—which decorations he could not accept. He, too, rode a horse by Vinegar Hill and stayed at the House at Piedmont. He had been appointed as midshipman in the Navy by Congressman Samuel Houston, whose star of destiny rose somewhat later in Texas. To Vinegar Hill, in coaches and on horses, came British officers who were held in prison close by, presidents, generals, explorers, visitors to see the sage of Monticello, Lafayette, Custer with long yellow curls falling over his blue Yankee uniform, always marching troops—and students. They came from the North, the South, the East and the West.

Finally, there came one other, to study at the University, the best of them all. He was my father, the handsomest young man who ever did travel the route of the Great Vinegar Hill, Albert Maverick. He was a good dancer, and a gentleman of parts. He met a young lady, pretty, named Jane Lewis Maury, and he swore he would marry her. Somewhat after, during student days, his most heralded accomplishment was when he climbed the high beautiful columns that one sees at the University now, and which were built by Thomas Jefferson.

It is said that no other person in the history of Virginia has ever climbed those columns, and that he did it in the dead of the night. Whether it is true or not, I do not know; old-timers around the University say they saw him, and that they had been with him at an inn just before the feat. I hope that my father had not been imbibing any Monticello wine, for Uncle Reuben Maury told me that one who drinks it may find his feet indecisive and is likely to walk to the top of the old stile entering Piedmont and fall from the very top of it. Whatever the power of Monticello wine, history records that several students had been in town during the night, and, leaving Vinegar Hill, they went to the University and saw this mighty feat performed.

A few days later my father bade farewell to Vinegar Hill and to Piedmont. He went to Paris, where he completed his education. When he returned, my mother and he were married. My father had come to the University from the wild frontier country of Texas, riding much of the way on horses and in coaches. Directly after that a railroad was built into San Antonio, and he and my mother came into the city on the first rails laid into it.

These were all stories told me by the stork, for all children until quite recently were brought into the world that way.

After all these great events, or stories of events, the stork brought me to the great bay-window in front of the room where history records I was born, a stone's throw off the Alamo and just across from the Post Office. Then I got out of the diaper and noticed I was in a dress-suit, with stovepipe hat, and a cane in my hand. I can remember very distinctly that I was looking for my mother, whom I loved very much. I can also remember that the casement was a long way from the floor, and that I put my hands on the edge, and dropped to the floor. Then I walked directly to my mother's side. I took off all of my evening clothes, put them on the floor, and I lay by the side of my mother. I fell asleep.

So be it, I did enter upon the said scene, and October 23rd, 1895, aforesaid (as I later learned to say at the law school). It was three-thirty A.M. Central Standard Time, and the time is correct, for my father had been sitting up and heard the clock strike three, and then the half-hour; looking at his big gold watch, on which were engraved the letters, "A.M.," he confirmed the exact time. And at the moment, Dr. Herff, who had left Germany in the Revolution of 1847 because of socialistic leanings, cried out the fact. My father was glad, for he is a punctual man, and likes punctual children.

Now my mother says that the story I tell is not true. She also says that she never told me any such things in all my life and that it's all my imagination. However, my psychoanalyst tells me that my mother must have told me the story which made an indelible impression upon my childish mind, and that it is quite proper for me to believe it is true.

At any rate, I was born a well-dressed gentleman (though they tell me since that I look as if I sleep in my clothes); and this birth had some connection with the defeat of tyrants, for I plainly heard a bugle calling Texans to fight for Justice and Liberty, even though it meant Death.

My father then slept briefly, rose and ate breakfast. There was no particular excitement. I was number eleven. He walked to his office—the old Maverick Land Office, the foundations of which were the cannon of the Alamo, used by the patriots of Texas to fire at the Mexican soldiers. And my father got there on time, as he had always done before and has always done since. In the afternoon, the leaders of the town assembled at the San Antonio Club, across the plaza from the Alamo, where my father bought champagne. Uncle George, who was always full of theories and was regarded by some as a Radical, reminded my father that I was number eleven. To make it plain, he then and there ordered a silver napkin ring, made like a Venetian boat, with the ring sitting on the boat, and put for my name the word "Zed," which, if you do not know, was then, as it is now, the very last letter in the alphabet. As for Uncle Willie, he said nothing, only grunted. He was playing cards with Army officers from Fort Sam Houston. Albert Steves, the best fellow in town, owner of a lumber yard, arrived and started buying champagne too. My mother indignantly denies that my father or the gentlemen of the city celebrated too much, even though father got home very late. I never doubt my mother's word.

The next morning, however, my father rose, and taking out the family Bible, wrote these words:

No. 11. Fontaine Maury, October 23, 1895, boy, 3:30 a.m., 9⅔ lbs.

They had decided to name me after my cousin, the Commodore. How I lost the heavy load of Fontaine must be taken up in another chapter.

After the stork brought me, life was a blank for three or four years, for I remember little. But I do remember as though it were yesterday the assembling of Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. I was nearly four, and it is historically correct that the regiment left near our home, and by the Alamo, for the front. That may be a story of my mother's, but it seems I stood there, both my mother and father holding my hands, as the troops left for Cuba. Cousin Lewis, a corporal named after my Confederate uncle, Major Lewis Maverick, waved good-bye.

Later, I really remember the boys coming back from the Spanish War, from Cuba and the Philippines—telling tall tales of battles with natives of all kinds, for by then we were involved in taking away the liberty which we had just gotten for those people. My first memories as a boy were of bugles, guns, drums and marching feet.

I can remember also that about 1905 and 1910 there was a great deal of talk about foreign trade, and about incidents in Morocco. In San Antonio our bankers and business men were selling cotton to China; there was a heavy trade through San Antonio with Mexico. There was prosperity.

It was at this time that the United States of America budded into a great nation, and the expression "Dollar Diplomacy" was born.

In about 1910, when I was fifteen years old, I think I began to feel and to understand somewhat the stirring of revolution which was then coming over the world. I was attending grammar school in 1909. I could look across the way from the second story where I sat, and see strange looking Mexican men gesticulating with each other through the windows. I saw a little man with a spiked beard walk in with the rest, and there were constant conversations. The little man was Francisco I. Madero, soon to be president of the United States of Mexico.

One of my companions in school was a Mexican, and he said that he had heard one of the Mexicans say in the Spanish language that "they would soon take the field for the liberty of their people." We asked our teacher what that meant and he told us that it meant that they were going to have a revolution over in Mexico and that people would be killed.

One of my brothers had just been in college with one of the Madero boys, so one day I spoke to Mr. Madero, who was very cordial. Suddenly the newspapers began to tell of the revolution that had broken out in Mexico. It was not long before the great and mighty Porfirio Diaz, who ruled for more than thirty years in Mexico, had taken ship for Switzerland. Madero became the president.

From that time on the world has been crowded with war, revolution, hunger and death. We started to intervene in Mexico a half-dozen times. We would have, if we had listened to the money-bags. (We may still, if we listen.)

All this revolution and war and military life seemed natural to me, for San Antonio has been a military center always; it was the battle-ground of Indians for centuries. Since 1880, and to this date, it has been the greatest military district on either American continent, and probably the world.

And here in San Antonio we live—wife, two children, mother and father, and relatives by the score. Here in all this military and pomp and guns I live with the first-class hatred of war, and one that will last, I hope, until I am dead.

Our cottage in town stands on the edge of the city. On the west side of our house is the Zoo, on the south is old Fort Sam Houston, and thank God, towards the rising sun is the open country and the mesquite brush, which comes close to the house. And, so that the district shall not be without true refinement and culture, the Country Club is close by on the north.

In the night we hear lions roar from the Zoo; the caged wolves yelp and howl and are answered by the wild coyotes from the open country. The Country Club affords a retreat for our gentlemen who can praise the Supreme Court, curse Congress, drink sixteen-year-old Scotch, solemnly shaking their wise heads at the impudence of the common people: from these same bastions of golf at night comes music, drowning out my wolves, both domestic and foreign. For a dead moral certainty a great rumble of a cannon is heard at 6:15—the morning cannon—then a sound of trumpets and drums, for at old Fort Sam Houston the soldiers are rising for another day.

IV. Fiddles and Violins, Honky-Tonk - Art and Pioneer Psychology

2007-03-21T23:20:00.001-04:00

IV

FIDDLES AND VIOLINS, HONKY-TONK

Art and Pioneer Psychology

When I was a boy, any young man who took the trouble to learn how to play the violin was considered a sissy, if not a pervert. Over Southwest Texas it was not so bad to play fiddle, but the violin—Good Lord! In the early part of the century one of the strange things was the aversion of all classes of people to any form of sentimentality, music, art, or culture.

I have never found the difference between a fiddle and a violin, except that you are supposed to play classical music on the violin, to have long hair and either be a foreigner or act like one. But if you play a fiddle, you have short hair, wear boots with very high heels, sit cocked back in a buckskin chair. Also, with your fiddle, you make screechy sounds and play such things as "Turkey in de Straw."

Playing a piano in those days, especially a grand piano, was considered an outright sin. It was not so bad to play an upright piano and a sort of honky-tonk music, but should anybody be caught with a roll of Beethoven, he was ruined forever. A piano player was tolerated, but a pianist was not.

I personally know numerous men who have been hounded almost to death because they had a desire to paint or to be artistic in some way.

There was a reason for all this. The average pioneer, in the first place, had no artistic training. If he made money, he could hire and buy his art easier than he could do it himself, or let his children or relatives do it. Our pioneer had to be rough and ready. He had to talk big, act big, and swagger around. He certainly couldn't swagger with a violin.

Having been over most of the states of the Union and having soldiered from every part of the United States in the Army, I have an idea that this has been, and probably still is, true of the whole country. We are outwardly a hard-boiled people; we don't know how to be sincerely sentimental or sincerely artistic.

So if we do get to be artistic at all, we have to make a big noise about it, a big pioneer noise and snort about it. If we go at art, we go at it like digging an oil well, or digging for gold in the Klondike.

We, as Americans, or as individuals, have roughly three adult stages in life: first, the college stage, where we get to be either agnostics or atheists, argue about religion, and decide that we don't believe in the Divinity of Christ; second, the superficially religious and artistic period when we join a noonday luncheon club and try to be jolly with all the boys; then third, we come to the period when all of such argumentation is nonsense and we have some respect for God Almighty and humanity and the country and can appreciate art without bellowing like a bull, and can listen to an orchestra, or a band, or to someone playing the violin, without gasping how "wonderful" it is.

I cannot tell exactly what stage most of us are in. There is so much discordant opinion, so much variability of thought, that no one can tell. However, there is definite evidence that the pioneer intolerance is moderating. And though Liberty Leaguers will choke with rage when I say this, one of the greatest factors in bringing about some decent concept of life in America is the Works Progress Administration.

America must learn to use its leisure time.

For years real artists have been starved and abused. There have been literally thousands of them, free-born, blue-eyed Americans, and not born either in Greenwich Village or Russia. They have come from the small town, the farms, from the land of the corn and the cattle.

Now, these artists have been discovered, or given a break, by the Works Progress Administration. The American public never before knew there was art in a gas station, a delicatessen shop or a city street. These new pictures are of modern life, of drugstores, elevated trains, houses, hideous share-croppers' shacks, beautiful hillsides, pretty girls, sick and starving mothers, snappy kids going to school—pictures of America, and not of fat burghers drinking beer four hundred years ago.

In times past, there were "patrons of art"—the De Medicis, and a string of others. It is likely the rich people had enough both of power and wealth, and could not invest in the stock market, or probably they could not push world trade further. So they underwrote such great artists and rascals as Benvenuto Cellini, and brought into service such brilliant minds as Leonardo Da Vinci. Of course the artists did not ride the pie-car free and easy. They got red-lighted and kicked off the train enough to know it was no easy life at that.

These patrons of art have bobbed up when commercial families have enjoyed all they wanted of the physical conveniences of wealth, and the result was the building of culture. But in pioneer commercial periods, art and culture have always been set back by the contempt of the "successful."

The rising tide of the pioneer period in America is an example. Hack down the forest! Gold! Up the trail to Abilene! Railroads, across deserts and mountains!

There was a place, in pioneer days, to hang a saddle if you would work and were not a bandit or a cow-thief. But there was no place to hang a painting or to hold classes in art. Neither was there any place for bowing and scraping for the schottische and the minuet; the place for ladies was scrubbing children, giving birth to more children, feeding the hands, and practicing thrift.

And the time came—roughly, I suppose, around the turn of the century, a few years after the Spanish War—when two things happened. We became a great nation; our bankers, merchants, cotton brokers and munition makers spider-webbed the world. But the jig of the pioneer was up: he had to learn a new dance. And these bankers and merchants and cotton brokers, our amateur spiders, pioneered in the great web of war, and the people of America, with the same spirit, joined in. They were for making a bigger and better web. They only trouble was, we got caught in our own web. We went to war.

We did not face the facts then, and do not face them now. We have needled ourselves into "prosperity" a couple of times, and now the needle hurts and does no good; it makes us angry.

In the minds of our stuffed shirts it is still a disgrace to be caught boon-doggling, and it is much more honorable to be dirty, sweaty and hungry (for someone else). But sensible people know that America has time on her hands, and that she might as well spend it on painting pictures and playing music and singing songs, and teaching all this not only to the kids, but to those of us who never knew any relaxation when we were young.

We simply cannot work long hours as we did before—the machines will not let us. So let man use his machines for relief from soul-breaking toil. Then let us use our time to build soul and enjoy life.

We must all live. Some of us live poorly in old street cars, some in mansions like kings. But I do both, for I live like a king in a street car, and it is my mansion. More, it is upon royal lands. Let us clang forth.

V. His Catholic Majesty, King of Spain - Industrial-Agricultural Life

2007-03-21T23:17:00.000-04:00

V

HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY, KING OF SPAIN

Industrial-Agricultural Life

It is out in the country that we have another home, and there is no use in arguing, it is the greatest place in the United States of America, Alaska, or the insular possessions. In fact, it is the greatest place in the world.

We call this place "The Maverick," a piece of vanity and egotism that we believe warranted. For it is built, as far as possible, without the rules of the Lords and Masters of creation—independently, haphazardly—but scientifically for the benefit of the cool air in the summer, the warmth in the winter. Another great benefit is that we can look at the city of San Antonio at a distance, in its beautiful outline. This allows us to forget the poverty, disease and suffering that is in it. We can rest.

It is only three and a third acres in size—but after all this is twenty times as big as the average fair-sized city lot—and for density of population, about one four-hundredth of New York City or Philadelphia. It is isolated on the highest hill around the city, and since the place was considered worthless land, no one thought to cut the trees. So it still has fine oaks and mesquites, a blanket of bluebonnets in the summer, wild Texas cherries, and persimmons, and virgin soil.

It has never been "owned" by anybody but the King of Spain, the City of San Antonio, and the Maverick family. Carlos the Fifth, His Catholic Majesty, King of Spain and Navarre, Prince of the Asturias, took title unto himself and gave it to the then mythical city of San Antonio.

A hundred or so years later, came this man Maverick, made revolution with others by violence and blood against the Mexicans, who had done the same fifteen years earlier to their King, signed a "Declaration of Independence," and set up a nation. Then, from this city of San Antonio he bought part of this Spanish grant. In due order, and by the rules of inheritance, gift, devise, and descent, my own family has a tiny portion of this—a place to live in privacy, in some seclusion.

The house that stands upon this tract was once a street car. Its reconstruction is the symbol of a passing age. Two or three years ago, the Public Service Company abandoned street cars for busses. And they sold their derelict street cars for $25 apiece; we bought one and placed it on the side of a hill. Lengthwise, it faces the town; we took an acetylene torch and burned out a door. Then we brought rock and laid it to make the car look as though it grew naturally out of the earth. There is an apron roof, protruding out about five feet all around. The final touch was a great flag-stone porch at the front.

My street car is forty-two feet long. In one cabin is a modern electrified kitchen (I wish I could get electricity as cheap as in the Tennessee Valley), and in the other end a modern shower-bath, toilet and clothes closet. We sit high on a hill, open to the Gulf breezes that come rolling through. Besides, no horrible pavements and brick buildings are near to catch up the heat during the day, and keep us hot all night. So in the summer time it is fifteen degrees cooler than in the city. For the winter time, we sit just under the summit of the hill, and this protects us from Texas northers.

Wild doves have their nests within forty feet. Mockingbirds sing at the top of their voices. All kinds of birds make themselves at home. Agarita bushes, looking like little stunted holly trees, are filled with bright red berries, which make the prettiest and finest jelly in America. The little bushes stand quite still while we pick the berries.

On the other side of the hill is the house of Santos. His full name is Santos del Rio Vaca, which means Saints of the Cow River, or the River Cow; however, he does not know I have translated his name and, therefore, it has never occurred to him. Santos was born in Mexico, is twenty-eight, has a wife, two [Three as we go to press.] children, as many relatives as I have, and being a Mexican, he probably has as many generals in the family as I have; he also has a garden and nearly as many dogs as relatives. I put no gutter on his house, so he has made one of tin cans which we throw out of the street car. He has built himself a rock porch, and has decorated his house after robbing me of various colored paints which I have used here and there. He is artistic, but does not know it. Moreover, being my servant, he makes me feel like a baron, and I walk about the place and tell him what to do in quite a baronial manner.

Above me on the hill is a small cottage, which we call "The Winant Mansion." Cost, one hundred dollars. It, too, has modern conveniences. It is our guest house. I got it from Governor Winant, former head of the Social Security Board. He has property nearby, where the cottage formerly stood. Boys were throwing rocks and breaking it down, so I moved it over for forty dollars and had it painted and repaired for sixty more. So there is a fine little house all for a hundred dollars.

South of the street car is a separate garage, sleeping porch and room; this we use any time of the year. All over the place we have benches and cedar chairs, hidden under the shady trees. It is all fixed up so anyone who lives there, or visits the place, can hide according to his temperament.

With all these wonders, the whole place has only cost us around three thousand dollars, and yet it is as fine a country home as there is in America. The land was given to us, supposed to be worth a thousand dollars an acre, although not worth over thirty-five dollars an acre.

Such homes should be available to every family in America. But land all about me is being "held" for sale at exorbitant prices; now and then a real estate man frames an addition and raises prices artificially; in any event, this character of home is not available to the American people, because they owe a mortgage on the town home in the first place, and because land is too high-priced in the country.

All this fits into the idea of modern American life. With machines men will necessarily work fewer hours, and certainly people will have more "spare time." Our life will essentially become industrial-agricultural, or urban-country. One will work at a speed-up lathe twenty hours a week—three days of work, and four days to spend in his country place. There he can paint, climb trees, tat rugs, make whiskey, study philosophy, or be plain lazy.

All this is possible if we provide for certain necessary things. These will include removing worry by a system of social security and old age pensions; that is, the accumulation by the Federal Government of sufficient assets to care for certain classes of people—which means spending and working in the early years to keep our economic and financial machine going at full speed. Other things necessary shall be the conservation of natural resources, which shall be largely nationalized, or controlled and regulated by our various governments—and other economic measures which will keep us going. All these we will talk about.

But to get back to my street car. The land around here, as I have already told you, is not worth more than thirty-five dollars an acre. It is held at from five hundred to three thousand dollars. Generally speaking, water, heat, light, utilities, are either not available at all, or only at unreasonable prices. Had not my family made all these available to me, and given me the land, this home would be impossible because of the original outlay of cash required.

The American people should have a right to buy land at reasonable prices. If this means the regulating of the price of land, although it shocks our free-born American sensibilities, I'm afraid it must be done. Or, to put it differently, American families through their government have a right to live like human beings, and a way must be found, even though some family claims go back to the King of England—or even of Spain!

It means more. In the old days if you wanted water, you could find a river or creek and plunk yourself down on it. Unfortunately, however, people kept on being born and the latecomers found the river, the fertile field, and the forest all fenced off, with a sign "No Trespassing." It certainly does not mean that they must go without.

Co-operative endeavor is then forced upon us. Only by such endeavor can we have the things we severally lack.

For certainly, all this talk about how a man should have self-reliance and initiative and be a good American like our sturdy forefathers, when a man has to grow corn on a pavement, is sheer cruelty. To tell the man in the country who is without a supply of water and has a farm hopelessly eroded anyway, with taxes he cannot pay, that he must be a strong individual—and refuse co-operation, aid, or benefit from his own government, is to ask him to be a fool, and to commit suicide.

America must pull off its blind-folds, and pull out its ear-plugs. Though she may blink a while, and have rumbling in the ears, she will finally see that the whole pioneer philosophy has changed from the idea of individual isolation, to co-operative endeavor with proximity of individuals. Only in this way can individuality be saved.

VI. A Razorback, 2 A.M. - Planned Rural Life

2007-03-21T23:16:00.000-04:00

VI

A RAZORBACK, 2 A.M.

Planned Rural Life

When I was a soldier in France, I saw something of village life over there. There was a church—generally only one, or at most two. The churches were rather pretty, constructed of stone, with color inside, and trees outside. A few wine shops and a public square or two. I saw many communities engaged in semi-agricultural, semi-industrial life. People had trades, and worked in the fields. The village was the center, and the fields lay all around. Even through the dreadful destruction and disorganization of the war, most of these little villages had their orchestra and band.

Possibly what I say is too pretty a picture. It seems a long time ago. But I am sure there was something of color, of a center, and music.

But village life, rural life, seems haphazard and vague in Texas, and in America generally. I have lived out in the mesquite and chapparal brush of Southwest Texas. Sometimes I have worked range cattle or dairy cattle, or have just visited around. But no matter where you are the heat literally burns you up all day long.

You can see this heat rolling around in the light of day, and it sometimes stays with you until midnight. Just as you fall asleep, a razorback hog scrapes his back on the floor joists. You curse the razorback's ancestors for certain animal lineage, nor do you attribute to him the ancestry of a cat. If you fall asleep again, a coyote yelps and howls down in the pasture and the cur dogs in the yard set up a noise and clamor that puts an end to sleep.

I can travel from San Antonio to the Mexican border, a hundred and fifty miles, and see thousands of houses standing alone on the plains with not a tree near the house. Neither are there flowers, or beauty of any kind. The house sits in the middle of a field, with crops growing close to the house and up against the very walls. Some farmers have little screechy windmills, but many are forced to haul water in old whiskey barrels.

This is a realist's picture, and an accurate one not only for Texas but for many parts of the nation. It is different from the romantic versions. The pictures of the big farm house and the percheron horses and fat cows and beautiful fences look good, but they are not often to be found. The true house is a tumble-down shack, known as a "box house." It is built without anything but boards, single walls, no insulation, flimsy, hot as hell in the summer and cold as Iceland in the winter.

There is a belief in many of these places, especially the Southwest, that trees attract lightning. This idea was built up by the lightning-rod salesman a generation ago, and by the landlord, too, who wants all the trees out so more land can be put in cotton. In any event, a house is built, generally with a corrugated iron roof. The prevailing heat outdoors is from 95 to 110 degrees; the corrugated iron generates more. In the absence of trees, the sun strikes directly on the roof.

In this dreadful shack the wife and little children must stay all day long. The bigger children can stay in an equally hot schoolhouse, or in a blistering field. Just as in the rest of America, people live on separate farms, isolated, and with little or no social life.

It is all simply unbearable. No wonder the people are willing to go to town, run hamburger and coca-cola stands, work in dreary factories, or stand with their hands out in the relief line. Somehow the "religious" life is not "cold" as it must have been in early New England; the word does not fit, for everything is dusty, sweaty, hot. It is something other than has ever been told in books, but it is ugly and unattractive. In a "community" which is indefinable and vague anyhow, we have anywhere from one to five or six churches. The pastors are all hungry and starving to death.

The school districts are not quite so bad, because they are kept up by taxation. But the schools themselves are usually out in some flat country in a location apparently picked because of the absence of trees. Usually there is no water or sanitation. The churches are literally falling to pieces. I do not know whether these churches ever stood straight up and were well painted, or whether there were any flowers planted around or any color inside. It seems to me ever since I was born that they have been about to topple over. I can remember one church which has not been painted in thirty-one years.

Rural American life is plan-less, heed-less, and hope-less. Obviously, if we are to have conditions even reasonably decent, there must be a change in mode of life.

What then, should we do? I cannot answer with an exact pattern of existence. Naturally there will be large, middle-sized, and small cities; communities, farming districts, ranching districts and straggling villages. But there must be some general pattern, or "plan," whether the "Liberty" Leaguers like the word or not. For a plant is simply necessary if we are to exist and save the land.

The life, then, of the farmer in America is dull not only because of his poverty, but because of his isolation. In France, as every schoolgirl knows, the people originally lived in villages for defense; in America the people spread out widely, took good lands, killed out the Indians, and continued to live in isolation from each other. This isolated living has continued, and as we know, it continues because of the large amount of cheap land.

But the cheap land is either worthless now or rapidly becoming so.

The isolated living on rapidly depreciating land, with no advantages of community action, causes an ever decreasing standard of living. So our Americans must learn to preserve their own existence through the common preservation of their resources, and by other methods of community endeavor.

Suppose then we talk of a model village. "Model Village" sounds bad to the "practical" man, downright sinister to some, and the press doesn't like the idea. Take a five to twenty thousand acre rural area, with a scattered population of a few hundred families.

What would these people do if they could rearrange their lives to have a central village, with facilities otherwise impossible? Most of them, I think, would prefer it. Others would find it necessary to reside on their ranch or farm; with the development of a higher standard of living, it will often be possible to live part time in the village, and part time in the rural district, necessitating two houses or homes.

If there is running water, it could be hitched up to a small hydro-electric plant. If there is none, it is probable that electricity could be obtained from some big dam near there or by installation of Diesel engines in the village. Electricity must be furnished, in any event, from a single system, and used cooperatively. In many Texas towns and other parts of the United States where natural gas is available, there can be a centralized gas system. Houses could be planned with roads radiating to the various farmsteads, which would be near, and in this way there could be some village or city life where people could get together and not go crazy from isolation out on the burning prarie.

Living in town, in my opinion, will prove not only more human, but less expensive. Even on churches money could be saved, but more important, a few community churches could be built where people could get religion and some joy out of life; and the preacher could be decently paid. A library would be possible, either an independent one, or a branch of a county system. There could be a town hall, and either in the village or nearby, a movie. This centralized location should provide adequate facilities for intelligent and unintelligent conversation, gossip, instruction in agriculture and science; transportation on good roads to the bigger units of cities or towns, a store or two, adequate water for all purposes; heat, light and power—possibly a central washing and drying system, a central system of cold storage, and marketing facilities.

No such village will be established in America without fierce opposition. The very idea that houses must be moved—or torn down and new ones built—land re-allocated, titles swapped and changed, all this does violence to our ideas of liberty. Courts will grant writs, newspapers will howl, lawyers will perorate, some of the ministry will speak of Sodom and Gomorrah. For indeed, our concepts of title, our belief in precedents, instead of causing our insitutions to conform more and more to nature, are forcing our institutions further away from nature, and endangering free democratic government and civil and religious liberties.

For instance, I have seen during my life thousands of farms—and all of them in America are the same—that have been marked off and plotted by artificial lines which have no relation to nature, or drainage. A misplaced fence on one farm, cutting across a slope, is likely to destroy hundreds of other farms. No one has adequately understood these processes until the last few years.

The Soil Conservation Service of the United States Government has mastered this problem from the physical viewpoint. I had thought until a year ago that they could never get any farmer to co-operate because of the inhibitions and ideas of "pussonal proppity." But the Soil Conservation Service has changed fence lines to conform to drainage problems, and has re-allocated pastures and fields. Strangely enough, this has often been accomplished among the bitterest of enemies, but eventually titles have been adjusted, some lands exchanged and other lands held in common—and the old time haters have turned into friends.

Farmers see the vital necessity of collective (or co-operative, if the word sounds better) endeavor. They now know, through actual experiences of an intelligent branch of government, that natural forces can only be utilized or preserved by the collective method. No socialist lecturer taught them that.

All these measures of co-operative endeavor, this common endeavor, may, as Rex Tugwell says, involve the necessity of "making America over,"—or "even of rolling up our shirt sleeves." But if I know the American people, they will refuse to live as they are now living. Telling them that it is unconstitutional to live decently, will not keep them from wanting to live decently. They know.

And if farm life is not made more bearable, the people will be forced to pile into the cities. This will cause a further waste of our natural resources from the lands which are abandoned, and further increase our slum problems, and the problems of modern industry. The net effect is an ever decreasing standard of living for the nation as a whole.

The basically important thing is not the particular plan, but the idea—the idea that our haphazard life, under any form of government whatever, cannot go on. Co-ordinated action is just an ordinary essential of any kind of government, whether you give it the label of communism, fascism, or a democracy.

This unbearable farm life I saw when I was a boy in Texas, but it didn't trouble me. There was enough for a boy to think about in the excitement on the other side of the Rio Grande.

VII. Mayflower Descendants and the Silver King - Machines Whirl to New Era

2007-03-21T23:14:00.000-04:00

VII

MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS AND THE SILVER KING

Machines Whirl to New Era

There were revolutions across the border in the high-school days of 1910 through 1913. During those years, under Taft and Wilson, and up to the outbreak of the World War, we had concentrations of the American troops in San Antonio and on the Mexican border. It was during this period that America, knowingly or unknowingly, girded for the World War. San Antonio was once again a great military city, and at its posts were thousands of tents filled with National Guardsmen from nearly every state in America. The saloons, the street cars, the gambling houses, the jitneys, the houses of prostitution, the drugstores, the business houses, the importers and exporters were doing a big business.

The sisters of the high-school boys married engineers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, and most of us went to college or else got good jobs if we were not too lazy to work.

Some of our leading businessmen and politicians, very conservative and respectable, had been dynamiters back in the street car strike in 1905. I can remember one dynamiter especially who denounced the McNamaras for using the same methods he had used. He had become a respectable merchant. He disapproved of the Mexican revolution. He made money out of both sides of each new conflict.

The street car strike had set the pace for anti-union ideas. During that time the utility owners began to learn how to use propaganda; they learned how to split the workers, and make them fight against themselves.

In that strike leading businessmen and young men of the town acted as strike-breakers—to do their bit in preventing a living wage. These same anti-union ideas prevailed for many years afterward, and a man with a union card who was impudent enough to want his family to have a decent living standard was not considered a very good citizen. The Chamber of Commerce, direct representatives of the railroads, and taking on the electric and other utilities as fast as they could, lured factories to the city by advertising the "cheapest and most docile labor in the world." This type of advertising is still widespread over the South, and I shall have more to say about this in later chapters.

But San Antonio was just a normal American town, still expanding. Its Chamber of Commerce was no worse than others, but typical. True, because of God-given scenery, its Mexican population, and its proximity to the border, San Antonio was a colorful place.

We Mavericks lived like average people. On the farm we milked the cows; our father had a job, and everybody who wanted a job could get one. We moved to the farm because brother Reuben had contracted tuberculosis from working in the basement of a bank. It was not considered disreputable to work young men in basements in those days, and if people died of disease now and then from bad conditions in factories or banks, the employers could get somebody else. People still die of disease from bad conditions in factories, and probably even in some business houses, but it is no longer considered respectable.

It was around 1910 I lost my first name, Fontaine.

My mother and father were proud of it, because, as I have already told you, it came from Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, our cousin, and besides, the Fontaines had come from France, and were Huguenots. But this did not impress me very much, and the boys would call me Benedict Belle Fontaine, The Farmer of Grand Pre, and the "F" looked funny in front of Maury.

One hot day I was out working bees for my cousin Lewis. The old man driving the wagon had loaded it with the fruits of our robberies. It was a heavy load.

It was sweltering. The horses could not make the grade.

The old man turned around and said: "What is your full name, boy?"

I answered: "Fontaine Maury Maverick."

He looked at me angrily: "You'll have to drop part of that name or these horses will never make it up this hill. Make up your mind, son, which you are willing to drop."

"I'll drop the Fontaine," I said.

He cracked the whip, and the horses went up the hill as though the load was nothing. And to this very day, I choose to believe that we would never have reached the top of the hill with the load of honey had I not dropped that Fontaine.

In those days life in San Antonio was free and easy. The band played on the square in front of the Alamo, and San Antonians came out on the public square and walked around in circles, just as they do in Mexico. In front of the Alamo there were chili stands, and there was a popular idea of the "Chili Queen." She was supposed to be a very beautiful young Senorita, somewhere between sixteen and twenty-one, a charming girl, who had a voice like a nightingale and dressed in fine Spanish costumes, with mantillas and castanets, always on the verge of rendering a graceful dance.

The truth of the matter is that the chili stands were insanitary places and were ordinarily run by poor old women, who had little charcoal stoves in back of their stands. Why we didn't all die of ptomaine poisoning, no one knows. Every Saturday night, before we moved to the country, Papa would give us what he called "tamale money"—a big nickel each, and with this nickel we would go to the tamale stands where we would all get six tamales and chili-con-carne. And the time came when our father doubled our tamale money and gave us ten cents each, and so with the dime we could get what we had been getting before, and also a great big cup of chocolate, or some pecan candy. With the chocolate was served some "pan dulce"—that is to say, sweet bread or Mexican cake. Then we would go over and hear the band play, or walk around the town and have a big time.

We moved to the country and built the big house on Sunshine Ranch. All the boys got jobs in the summer. Brother Jim, who went to the University of Wisconsin, traveled the summertime in North Dakota. Georged worked for the Water Company reading meters, and even made enough money to buy a motorcycle and to go off to Massachusetts Institute of Technology—but not on the motorcycle. I worked on a county road as a road superintendent.

Bryan Callaghan was Mayor of San Antonio, and was a machine politician. There were periodic but fruitless efforts to reform the city. Streets were not paved. There were few sewers. About forty percent of the population were immigrants from Mexico, and they had the lowest standard of living in the United States. That was considered to be proper by the citizens of the community, if they considered it at all; besides, the Mexicans were then satisfied. The ranching and business interests, eager to get cheap labor, encouraged Mexican emigration to Texas.

Mayor Callaghan was a delightful fellow, and always got re-elected. He was descended from a good Spanish family, and was Irish on one side of the house. He was a graduate of the University of Virginia, which he attended with my father, and was a cultured gentleman. But he was a real oldtime boss.

He only got beat once in all his career, and he died in office. There was one thing he hated, and that was the descendants of the Mayflower. No one knew why, and there were no descendants of the Mayflower in town, as far as anyone knew. One night, shortly before an election—and it is said that he had been celebrating a little bit too much—he made a speech, when his election was apparently in the bag. He denounced the Mayflower, all it brought over, and all the descendants. He said that they were a bunch of Puritans, and that he was sorry the boat had not sunk with all hands, for that would have saved us from Prohibitionists, Puritans, reformers, and busybodies.

The next day you would have thought there was going to be a real lynching; at least, everyone was outraged. Veins began to pulse with Mayflower blood. San Antonio got Mayflower-conscious, and if the Grand Secretary General of the Society of Mayflower-Descendants had come to town, he could have gotten thousands of members, though I doubt if even one was eligible.

Mr. Callaghan got the beating of his life. He never denounced the descendants of the Mayflower again. By the next election, the citizenry had forgotten that their ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, and so he was again overwhelmingly elected, because in the meantime some fellow who either called himself a progressive or a reformer, or something, had edged in. We went back to the good old days, and the good old ways.

San Antonio and every other city in America grew on, irrespective of machine politics. City government had little responsibility; and economic empires, much more powerful, were growing. Lincoln Steffens and a few others kicked up a little fuss, but time rolled on, heedless of the accumulating waste, and no one knew of the breakdown that was ahead.

Young John Tobin was Sheriff. He was descended from one of the old families who emigrated to San Antonio a couple of hundred years before from the Canary Islands. John Tobin was also the grandson of John W. Smith, who welcomed my grandfather to San Antonio when he came there just before the Battle of San Antonio in 1835. Sheriff Tobin had all the good manners of a pleasant Irishman.

The town was what they called wild. I can remember when I would walk along the side of the street and look into the old Silver King Saloon where gambling was done quite openly. There didn't seem to be any objection to it from anybody, and it was taken as a matter of course. In the saloons, men played cards and checkers, and they had round tables with little shelves underneath to hold the checkers and cards, or whatever you cared to put there. No one dreamed that there would ever be Prohibition or War or Depression. If a young citizen happened to drink too much and get fired for his bad habits, he sobered up and got another job. If he went broke, he shifted to another business. If he was ambitious, he quit his job and went into business for himself.

In those high-school days the grocery stores had big barrels of sauerkraut, beans, and sugar. The day of packaged goods, and national advertising, and sex appeal on the billboards had not yet arrived. You rolled your own cigarettes, although once or twice a year you bought a package of Turkish cigarettes with cork tips.

The Luccheses and Mr. Hackelberger had shoe-shops, where they made shoes and boots. The cowboys came in from all over West Texas and bought from the Luccheses, and there were no better boots in the whole United States. If there was anything the matter with your shoe, you either went to the Luccheses or Mr. Hackelberger, and they did a good job; of course, there were shoe stores, but it was long before the modern shoe factories were developed on the grand mass scale.

Machines and centralized finance had not yet gotten control—it was thrift, accumulation of capital goods, growth and inflation. People could not make enough or produce enough.

Shoe salesmen and clothing salesmen used San Antonio as their headquarters, and the jokes of the drummers were rich and racy and they generally told stories of the "traveling man and the girl." There were big signs all over town of the Edgewood Whiskey fat man, and these words were inscribed: "I drink Edgewood Whiskey." In all the barber shops the Police Gazette was there to read. The pictures showed ladies in tights who looked as though they weighed 175 pounds, but they were risque and beautiful.

Scholz Brothers' Bar and Beer Garden, Harnisch of Baer Restaurant, were running in full glory. You ate a big meal, for which you never paid over seventy-five cents, and at the most a dollar if you got wine and extras; you tipped the waiter anywhere from ten to fifteen cents, but never over a quarter. At the natatorium there was regular swimming, and the ladies wore swimming suits made of heavy cloth which made them look like girls from the orphans' home, dressed in their sombre uniforms, including stockings and shoes.

There was no doubt petty graft here and there; there was a nice brisk rate of murder, ordinary crimes and robberies, and the jails had plenty of boarders. It was good old natural crime: fighting, drinking, stealing—the kind of crime that is usually called sin. When a man robbed anybody in those days, he never got over a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars—and five years, if he got caught. But there was no such thing as modern racketeering.

We saw real money spent during the Cattlemen's Conventions. The cattlemen would come to town and get drunk, and then they would throw nickels, dimes and quarters out in the streets, and the newsboys would fight over the money. Every now and then a cattleman would give somebody a tip of a dollar or five dollars when he was drunk enough. This would furnish talk for weeks. Rich Mexicans would come into town and buy at Joske Brothers' Store—a store locally owned, and using its wealth for the building of the town.

Out on our farm, and every other farm in Texas, we plowed downhill and uphill in straight lines, and let the rain wash away the fertility of the soil. Advances were being made by certain experiment stations, but on the whole agriculture was primitive. The pigs died of cholera, the cows had abortions, and the milk stock was infected with tuberculosis. There were droughts, which hurt agriculture, but whenever you had a drought, everybody simply went without. There were dozens of little dairies around the town. Some of them were even in the city limits. Great dairy and creamery corporations had not yet come into existence. All stores were making money and putting it back in the business.

From the viewpoint of natural resources, America was digging her own grave. From a business viewpoint, she was riding to a fall. From a civic viewpoint she was growing haphazardly, becoming unsanitary, ugly, unhealthful—and as the economic empires built up huge surpluses, so the cities and the state governments were building up huge deficits in human and natural waste.

It was about 1912, as I remember, that the people began to get big ideas. There was business and speculation in the country. We still had the street car company, and the old gas company, but they were separate corporations. Finally, the utility corporations—gas, electricity, and transportation—organized into one company. The two phone companies merged. Later on in Texas natural gas was discovered. But in the beginning, even with these mergers, our utility company was really a small affair. The small towns had very small electric plants, or none at all. In San Antonio everybody knew Mr. Tuttle, the head of the utilities, as well as the other officials. These officials lived in San Antonio, and the capital was largely borrowed and spent in San Antonio and Southwest Texas. The utility officials who came to town bought homes and land in Texas, and lived and spent their money here. The gigantic holding companies of today were beyond human conception.

People began to dig oil wells in Texas, but not so many as later. That was a year or two before the war. The cattlemen over Southwest Texas would come into the big towns, like San Antonio, where they would finance their operations. Then they would take their cattle to the market and make a profit, and come back and pay the banker and spend their profit at home for possibly more land and more equipment, more ranch houses, more improvements and more labor. The bankers in those days were more or less human and took an interest in civic affairs, and they, too, were making money.

But the foundation was being laid for the big mergers and the giant superstructure of holding companies, the great captive balloons filled with the paper gas of the promoters, the strings being tightly held by the financiers, not the owners. They were getting their balloons ready for ascension and the big ride, unaware of the big bust that was to come.

In 1912 I went off to the Virginia Military Institute. My father had an idea that it would be well for me to have good military training, because we might get into a war.

VIII. Squads Rights and Swallow Tail Coats - Resource Waste, Old Bob LaFollette

2007-03-21T23:13:00.000-04:00

VIII

SQUADS RIGHT AND SWALLOW TAIL COATS

Resource Waste, Old Bob LaFollette

In 1912 and 1913 the United States was having its growing pains, and so was I. It was time to go to college. So in July of 1912 I went down to Galveston, where I got on a big steamship and went to New York. It seemed strange to go to the dining-room and be waited on by men in swallow-tailed coats. Being sixteen, and all by myself, I nearly died of loneliness. For the first time in my life, I was a real maverick—a stray, lost yearling calf.

After I had been out a day or two I went to the bow of the ship and then down into the steerage. At home I had read books in a wide range, from the causes of the Crimean War to books by dead philosophers—and dead books by living ones. I had subscribed to the Appeal To Reason, a socialist publication from Girard, Kansas, and had read every issue of it. I had met old Gene Debs. I thought then that he was a great man, and I think so now. I had seen plenty of poor people in Texas, and also in Virginia, where we spent the summers with the Maurys. Yet the plight of "poor people" I did not really know or understand. But here in the steerage of this surging, stirring boat, I met and talked to another social class, and this was reality.

There were not eighty people in the steerage itself, but the conversation was lively. About half were Americans and the other half were immigrants. In the crowd were eight or ten socialists expounding their credo. There was a Single Taxer who proved everthing by the single tax, and said Henry George was a great man; two others nominated Karl Marx as the man of the age, and three stood out for Debs.

One of my new-found friends, Lawrence, a naturalized Jew from Germany, had just been to Cuba. He said that all the talk of the United States going over to free the Cubans was a lie. His assertions met some disfavor, but he stuck to his story and said all we had done by taking the Spanish possessions was to shift from Spanish military exploitation to Wall Street money exploitation. Lawrence said the people were much worse off under American rule, for the American financiers were much more efficient exploiters.

Preceding the World War, America was following two courses: there was free discussion of economic problems, and at the same time the growth of Dollar Imperialism, big industry and high finance. The one was about to challenge the other and expose it. Then came the war. Thought and progress were blotted out, industry became militarized, labor became reactionary and crooked. War ended, but the jumble of evil forces rode on, and for a decade people did not bother to think—until the crash came.

I was invited to eat in the steerage. They said the food was terrible, and it was. We were discussing what to do about it, when I was discovered by the First Mate, who called me an agitator and ordered me to eat first class.

Those were the days when Reginald Wright Kauffman was writing his plays and books about white slavery. White slavery and the Mann Act were all the rage in conversation. People spoke of "problem plays"—meaning melodramas about white slavery. The Mann Act had been passed just two years before. Having been filled with a ton of sociological knowledge, especially on white slavery, I gravely expounded on its evils at this mature age of sixteen.

One of those in the steerage said that there was very little actual white slavery but that it would tend to encourage blackmail. He said the case of Maury Diggs and Drew Caminetti was to help blackmailing women. Another one spoke up and said that, inasmuch as prostitution was an institution of the leisure class and the product of capitalism, he saw no reason why I should object to the practice of white slavery. I did not know then what he meant by the "leisure class" and had never met a Veblen fanatic. However, I knew he was making a dirty crack and we got into a very hot argument, but he was soon apologetic and we all made friends.

Eight days we had been on the sea. Lawrence and I had become great friends. So had I with others. The sun was rising over Manhattan as our boat came in. Most people were asleep, but I had wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. Finally, on the dock, I took leave of Lawrence and my friends. They all invited me to visit them, but I told them good-bye, for I was going to visit my cousin Robert for a few days, and then to the military school. Lawrence, who had railed against militarism all the way up, kept walking along, and then put me on the elevated. Houses, windows, heads, people down in the streets, heads in windows rushed by.

It seemed that with all these millions there was not a friend in the world for me. I put up my big bellows suit case at Cousin Robert's, and the rest of the day was a sort of haze. That night I felt like weeping, but did not, because I had been told Mavericks never cried. The next morning I still felt like weeping. Somehow, I thought it was worrying my mother, and to show her I was having a swell time, I used some steamboat stationery and wrote her a long letter about my arrival in New York—in glowing terms. I mailed it at Times Square. She returned to me the letter the other day which I wrote her twenty-five years ago. She will not know how I felt until she reads this book.

But I was soon having a good time. Cousin Robert took me to the Knickerbocker Hotel Bar, where a famous painting of a naked lady hung on the wall. This was a very strange sight to me, but I pretended not to notice it, assumed an air of nonchalance, and only glanced at the picture.

Going from place to place, it seemed that all the people knew each other. New York was still young, the grouping of races was in rather disctinct areas, and the people seemed to have both pleasure and plenty of work. But if this is true, it is only a guess, for I was too young to know.

In one club congregated the Central Americans. One of them was the son of a president, and he had plenty of money to throw around. He was about twenty-five years of age; he had attended West Point and was a Colonel in his father's army. Other Latins were refugees. Since I had seen the Mexican revolution cooked up in San Antonio, it was interesting to hear them talking of revolution in South America. The president's son thought it quite natural—for other countries.

Revolutions in those days were instigated by great fruit corporations striving for monopolies. Intrigue for power went on; our businessmen furnished the money and guns. This nation had the big stick, strutting across the stage of the Americas as the "Colossus of the North." The Good Neighbor policy had not been born.

I took a train to Washington. This was twenty-five years ago, but I still remember looking out of the train window and seeing the hideous unsightliness of Baltimore. Long rows of little red brick houses were jammed together; there was no green tree or shrub in sight. The social implications I did not understand, but I said to myself, this is no place to live, where houses look like headstones in a Confederate graveyard. I hated Baltimore at sight.

America is growing. It could not stop until it became grotesquely big, like the giant in the circus.

In Washington I stayed with Uncle Jim Slayden, our congressman, and my aunt, Mrs. Ellen Maury Slayden. Aunt Ellen was a great pacifist and Uncle Slayden always took trips every year to the peace conferences. They delivered to me long lectures on peace, but as I remember it, I was not very much interested.

I do remember that I insisted on being introduced to old Victor Berger, who was the Congressman from Milwaukee, and to Senator Bob LaFollette, Sr. I talked to Mr. Berger and he was a very interesting and intelligent man, as I judge him now. However, he spoke broken English and he was astonished that a sixteen-year-old boy would visit him. Then I went to see old Bob LaFollette, who to my mind was the greatest man in the United States. I thought so then, and I think so now, except that I give George W. Norris place as the greatest living American. At the time I had not heard of Norris.

Old Bob, who had been defeated for Congress by the lumber interests, had gone to Wisconsin, had become Governor, put the lumber interests in their place, and was back in the Capital. He, Berger, and a few others, had no power, and even what little influence they had was soon to be taken from them by war.

I left Washington for Lexington and the Virginia Military Institute. Lexington produces first-class Southern gentlemen and good officers. But Aunt Ellen, the Congressman's wife, kept writing about the horror of war, and although I remember I secretly scoffed at what she said, it probably had some effect. Most of my spare time I spent reading about the national campaign; and when it was over, and Wilson elected, we went to Staunton, the new President's birthplace, and paraded around for his glory. Four months later we became real big shots. We went to Washington to march in the inaugural parade.

Troops went by all the afternoon. All manner of gold braid, different kinds of uniform, horses, artillery. Governor Sulzer of New York was at the head of the New York troops mounted on a prancing black horse. He was not in uniform, but wore a big hat. It looked almost like a Texas hat and I thought that Governor Sulzer made a pretty good-looking man. A little bit later I read that he had been impeached.

And then we got into a long march. There seemed to be no end it it. I never will forget how proud we were as we marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, but strangely enough, I have no memory of the streets at all. The only command that I remember is when we passed the Presidential reviewing stand and were given "eyes right."

At the end of the year I went back to Texas. My scholastic record was average; nothing extra. Then I decided that since my life would be spent in Texas, I might as well go to the University of my home State. But even though I spent only a year at Virginia Military Institute, it took a war and five hospitals to get the drums and guns permanently out of my system.

IX. "Have the Villain Unhand Me" - Rights Under the Constitution

2007-03-21T23:11:00.000-04:00

IX

"HAVE THE VILLAIN UNHAND ME"

Rights Under the Constitution

About the time I arrived at the University, America was having a wave of reform, and was closing red-light districts right and left. Orders had gone out in Austin to close the district by the time the students got there. At the stroke of twelve midnight, on the day of matriculation, with the sheriff and chief of police presiding, the clamps went on.

But we students drank quite openly and brawled up and down Capitol Avenue. The brewery and liquor interests did exactly as they pleased, though it was a penitentiary offense to let students enter saloons.

Almost everybody's son converged on the University that year. The only exceptions were a few bankers' and mortgage holders' sons, who went to Princeton, Harvard and Yale. Rich ranchmen sent their sons to study law—so that when trades were made in Chicago or elsewhere, there would be no crooked work, and so that when the fathers died, their sons would carry on as shrewd fellows. Agriculture, animal husbandry, and genetics were all considered unessential by most of us. The agricultural college was giving students training to really fit men for life, but we didn't care, and went happily on our way.

Journalistic schools were being established in the universitites over the country. But most of the fellows were taking the law course. So I enrolled in journalism. The students had a newspaper, The Daily Texan. It was printed downtown, and, thank the Lord, was free of the censorship of timid professors. The Daily Texan is a big sheet now, and it prints nothing that is not pleasing to Mr. Mellon, the Gulf Sulphur Trust, and the oil, gas, and power companies. The regents are very respectable gentlemen; several are my loving classmates; yea, verily, they fear for the tender minds of the students, and deplore radicalism; they also keep most of the professors scared out of their wits. In the old days the Daily was a lusty publication, denouncing this and that, not depending on advertisements, and taking no orders from the barons of oil and power.

I became a reporter, then a proofreader, finally an "issue" editor. Even though the paper was rather free, some of us thought it a little too tame. So every April Fool's Day we printed the Blunderbuss. It was a first-class publication containing libel, slander and scandal of the highest (or lowest) order. It was an outrageous sheet, with fake names on the masthead. We maintained strict secrecy, and never got caught.

We had all kinds of professors in those days. There was one named Dr. Lewis E. Haney, who now gives sage business advice in the Hearst publications. Dr. Haney was considered to be a radical at the time—so red, it was said, that he ought to be thrown out of the University. And now he writes for Mr. Hearst. My! My! At the same time we had Dr. Leon Green, who was too conservative. Now he is at Northwestern, and they say he is too liberal!

There was Stark Young, who is now one of my bosses on the New Republic, and a distinguished author and dramatic critic. Stark would come around and argue with the boys of the Sigma Chi house, and we all thought he was a great man, and maybe he was. In any event, he was a talented writer and a real Southern gentleman, and wrote very poetically and dramatically, in good literary form—a kind of literature that romanticizes the South—and ruins it.

After a couple of years of journalism, I decided to be a lawyer, and whether it was jumping from the frying pan into the fire, I have never been able to find out. I jammed all my three years of law into one, and at twenty became a member of the bar. The last year studying law was a year of hard work and student fun.

For instance, there was the Scardino incident. A freshman named Scardino came to the University and was announced for president of the freshman class on an elaborate platform of social reform. I was at that time too progressive to suit the faculty. I decided to get into the fight. I was a junior law student, but that didn't matter. I announced my candidacy as freshman president, too. Many of the freshmen did not know the difference—at least my opponent didn't. We started our campaign.

I made my platform as reactionary as possible. I came out for the Constitution and for "the immemorial liberties whence man's mind runneth not to the contrary." I had read that in Blackstone and it sounded very good. Between candidates Scardino and Maverick there began a series of joint debates.

At the University we had what we called a "blanket tax," which covered all our expenses in athletics. I demanded to know how my opponent stood on the subject of "blanket taxes." We had some real old Texas politics. We made accusations and counter-accusations. We didn't know much, but our display of ignorance was no worse than the average adult politics of the time.

I demanded to know if he favored taxing blankets or not taxing blankets. "Will the gentleman be courageous enough to give an answer?" Then and there he came out for the repeal of the blanket tax. Apparently he didn't know the meaning of the word. He said that it was improper that anyone should pay a tax on a blanket, that everyone should have a right to sleep without being worried about the taxes on his blankets. I forgot which side I finally took, but I said something about Rome falling and made up quotations from Gibbon, which everyone cheered.

One day, in front of the Women's Building, the debate got pretty hot. We heckled each other, and I pretended to be very angry. Someone slipped up beside me, handed me a long, shining knife, and suggested that I murder Scardino. It startled me, and I handed the knife back. But the man showed me that it was a rubber dagger. So I hid the knife in my shirt, and the next time Mr. Scardino made a remark, I construed it as an insult and threatened to cut his heart out.

He demanded to know what kind of a savage I was. Making pretext of insult again, I jerked the knife from my shirt, and went at him. The crowd was quite as startled as I had been at first. They thought I had a real knife, and were getting ready to pull me away. However, while Scardino looked the other way, I bent my rubber knife in the view of the crowd.

We rushed across the field and I was making every effort to stab him and we were all fighting and scuffling on the campus. Scardino must have been reading dime novels, because he shouted, "Have the villain unhand me."

Such was the Scardino Affair. It was not my first breach of the peace. I had been canned out of the University for being connected with various disorders, such as rotten-egging professors, painting the water tank, hazing, and being a very poor student. I still indignantly deny the charges, except the last, although I will admit that some very incriminating evidence was produced against me, which, if similar charges should now be produced against my son, would cause me to take the same attitude that my father took: to wit, good money was being wasted on a jackass.

But this time I had made up my mind not to get suspended or expelled, for I knew I could not be reinstated again. I was studying the Constitution with a vengeance, knew the Bill of Rights by heart, attended labor meetings, and listened eagerly to Scott Nearing, who had the impudence to suggest that lynching of Negroes should stop.

One day, after the Scardino affair had died down, I was walking across the campus, really attending to my own business. But my reputation would not let me alone. As I walked along, I heard a great noise. It was a parade, with a very happy crowd, Scardino at the head.

Some upper classmen had posed as freshmen, and with others had induced Scardino to buy a keg of beer. My worthy opponent had entertained the crowd; a stump speech was made on a real stump; and the celebrants, heedless of rules to the contrary, entered the University grounds in triumphal parade, let by "General Pender," an old Negro, driving an express wagon. I saw some professors around, and having been warned to behave, I kept out of the affair completely. I knew there would be trouble. I did nothing more than to cheer.

But the next day I was summoned before the President, Old Doc Battle, and Doctor Benedict, now president, and Charles Shirley Potts, A.B., A.M., LL.D., and for all I know, Ph.D. I was called upon to tell what I had done.

"Please read the charge," I said icily, thinking of the Constitution, "and let my accusers face me." I looked very stern. I was serious.

They answered there was no charge, but that I should be a man, and tell all. I reminded them the Constitution was in effect, and that no man was required to be witness against himself, and had other rights. Also, I said that bringing me in was like picking up a criminal on suspicion, and giving him the third degree.

Dr. Potts got so sore I thought he was going to bite my ears off. He yelled at me:

"Young man, that is a mere constitutional subterfuge."

I knew nothing of the affair, and had no connection with it. I could have told them that. But I considered it a matter of principle, and had made up my mind not to testify.

The argument went on for an hour or two. Finally I was dismissed and told I could have three days in which to make up my mind.

I started things moving. I rushed out to see "my lawyer"—my good friend Judge Robert L. Batts, who had formerly been a professor, then a law partner of U. S. Attorney General Gregory. I asked him to get out an injunction to prevent the faculty from canning me, on the grounds that they were violating my various and sundry constitutional immunities. Though Judge Batts was one of the most distinguished lawyers in America, he let me take his time venting at length my anger over the invasion of these, my immemorial liberties. To this very day I do not know whether he took me seriously or not, but he listened attentively, registered outrage at the proper time, and promised help.

I decided to gamble my chances on being fired, for the satisfaction of proclaiming my constitutional rights. I let everyone know that I had a battery of the best lawyers in the country to back me up.

After postponing the hearing, the officials offered a compromise. I was assured that if I would tell what I had done, there would be no punishment. They apparently did not want to establish a precedent of failing to make a student testify against himself. This argument went on for several days. At the fraternity house and at the Judge's, we held conferences.

I finally decided to testify.

I entered the high-paneled office of the president. The court reporter came in and sat down. He sharpened his pencils. I was cautioned to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I did.

I said: "I know absolutely nothing about the incident, and had no connection with it whatever."

It was a terrible shock. They were all paralyzed with anger.

Dr. Battle looked me straight in the eye. "Mr. Maverick," he said, "will you please leave this room?"

Such incidents have their element of humor. But there is the serious side. Universities today should protect the civil rights of the students, and stop such nonsense as red hunts against young men and women who are doing nothing but learn, and who express themselves as they have a right to do.

We were trouble makers and bum students. I do not approve of that; but in those days the seriousness of the world did not appear to us. It was a good thing, however, that many of us did our own thinking, however slip-shod it was, and sat on the campus to argue philosophy, and read books that we were not supposed to read. In that way, we picked up a little education. We organized the "Campus Buzzards," a most worthy organization. We proclaimed ourselves as carrion philosophers and permitted no reading except that which was prohibited. Thus we learned.

In any event, the University courses in those days were dull. They have improved a great deal since. Students today are far better off.

The University had many members of the legislature who were attending the law school. So we frequently attended the State Legislature. We never missed the inaugural balls, which were always grand and glorious affairs, with plenty of champagne and punch.

While all of us talked of the immemorial liberties handed down to us by our forefathers, the great oil, gas, natural resources and power companies were getting a strangle hold on Texas. Talk of Prohibition and reform was a blind, in order that the Great Steal of Texas' natural resources could go on.

Whatever our state of learning as we left college, we all got jobs, for jobs were easy to get. It was an era of expansion, of selling hand-over-fist every commodity that could be grown or manufactured. The war in Europe was on in full earnest. Corporations needed men. And they paid well. Everything was lovely. We did not hear the rumble of the war drums in Europe.

X. My Father Is a Quiet Man - The Term "Maverick" as Applied to Cattle

2007-03-21T23:07:00.000-04:00

Carl Mydans/Time Life Pictures

X

MY FATHER IS A QUIET MAN

The Term "Maverick" as Applied to Cattle

The one who stretched his philosophy to the breaking point about my vacation at the University was my father, and the one who hoped for the best was my mother. The two are still living, both about eighty. They are living much in the manner of early Americans, and they are the last of their kind.

Millions of American families are now passing from one phase to another. You can travel everywhere in the nation and see the big houses of our fathers and mothers, which were built in an era of prosperity and expansion for big families, and which can't even be maintained by the children. I see them everywhere, being rented as Ye Olde Beauty Shoppes, undertaking parlors, cheap apartment houses, joints. Many are falling to pieces, and some are being torn down and business buildings put in their places.

My parents live on "Sunshine Ranch"—the sunshine part is all right, but it is not a ranch, for it has only about three hundred acres. They live right below the three acres they gave me. My mother has a great house—no, not a great colonial house with high white columns surrounded by magnolias and Old Black Joes with grey wigs and movie uniforms bowing and scraping, but a big frame house, made of lumber, well-built but plain. I can remember when it was put up. I was nine. In 1905, when we came there, lumber was cheap. The forests were being destroyed because of the heedless cutting of the trees, but we were unaware of all that. We built the house on this bald hill, where there was nothing but low mesquite brush and cactus.

There is a custom in Texas, and for all I know, all over the world, that when your house is finished you hang a limb, with all its green leaves, from the very top of the house. We did this, and had kegs of beer. The Germans sang songs. An old German carpenter told us how in 1870 he followed the mighty Bismark, and took Paris.

Soon after the house was completed, my father planted pecan trees, and watered them from the well we dug on the hill. He built terraces to hold water and save the soil. That was thirty years ago, and now every year we have a "pecan picnic" and the relatives all come. I have five brothers and five sisters, and somewhere between sixty-five and seventy nephews and neices, according to the last estimate.

Sentiment attaches us to the large family. But it is already gone. With it, changed ideas, economics, habits. Co-operation of people in general is more likely to increase than to decrease, being necessary under heavier populations with much smaller family units.

Every Sunday my mother invites all the relatives to the old home, and in the dining room, which is as big as a whole apartment in New York or Washington, we all congregate and jabber. My mother sits at the head of the table. In the winter there is a wood stove. My father is the king of all he surveys, and my mother takes the part of Mussolini.

My mother has executive ability, running the place and doing the ordering and talking for both. My father has taken one attitude toward all his children which is a good policy anywhere; he does not try to dictate their thoughts. He has always hoped that they would develop their own opinions. He merely offers information, so that they will not go into the world as a set of nit-wits.

As for our economic or religious opinions, he cares nothing. As for our family tree, all he knows, he says, is that he had "a good mother and father." Talk of ancestors bores him, and if he reads such chapters in this book it will only be as a paternal duty.

I am beginning to suspect, after forty years of observation, that this retiring role of my father, wherein my mother takes the part of an active Prime Minister, is a shrewd one. For really, he has been a sort of Speaker of the House of Maverick, speaking little. Since the family is large, the emotions are turbulent, and the opinions mulivarious, so the slightly Fascist tendencies of my mother have been necessary. But as for the Speaker—when anyone gets out of line, he pounds the gavel, symbolically, by a cough, and a severe look.

The House comes to order.

Anyhow, on these lands where we live, and which we got through the King of Spain, and which the King took away from the Indians without even taking the trouble to leave Madrid—we sit around and talk. My sister Agatha is the genealogist of the family. She knows all about our ancestors. She married a Republican. I was only six at the time and could not prevent it. She speaks of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the ancestors, of heralds and coats-of-arms. She is my special genealogical brain-truster.

I have not cared much about ancestors, thinking that my grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, by signing the Texas Declaration of Independence, had done enough. But he gave the name "maverick" to cattle, and I'm going to tell you the true story once and for all. When I get through with that, I am going to tell some history by ancestors when all of us were Colonials, and when as a nation we were very young.

Oh, about the maverick cattle. We must first know about Jack, for he belongs to the immortals, like Dred Scott and the Austrian Archduke. Because Jack did nothing, he caused the milling and bellowing herds that went up the trail to Abilene to be called mavericks. Dred Scott did nothing—an abolitionist filed suit for him, and millions of white men went to killing each other. The Archduke did nothing—all he did was to get shot, and it started a war ending in the killing of tens of millions.

Now Jack was supposed to take care of my grandfather's cattle, and didn't. He was triflin'. He had a branding iron but he never used it. No one could make him work. He had come as a small child to Texas, with his mother Jinny [Anderson], who was cook. So my grandfather sent him away with his mother, to take care of the cattle. Instead of taking care of the cattle, Jack was constantly sending word as to his health and that of his mother, and inquiring about the health of the Maverick family. But he let the cattle run wild, never branded them, and so people called Maverick's cattle "mavericks." One of the many letters that Jack had sent up to San Antonio by white neighbors is worth reading. In it, Jack tells the story of his life. Here is what he says:

Matagorda, 25th Novr. 1849

S. Maverick, Esq.
  Dear Sir:
  Your servant "Jack" had done me the honor to make me his amanuensis and requests that I inform you as follows, viz:
  In the first place he sends his most dutiful regards to you and your family and says that his mother and self are quite well.
  2nd. He says that he is very anxious to see you as without assistance he finds it quite impossible to pen and brand your cattle on the Peninsula and the stock is consequently becoming more wild and unmanageable daily.
  3rd. He wishes to receive your approval of his marriage, which with your sanction he is anxious to consummate with a girl here called Elizabeth and owned by Miss Ward.
  With best regards to self and family, I remain

Your humble servt.
John C. Graham

Aunt Jinny

Here is the story: During the year 1845, Sam Maverick took in four hundred head of cattle on a debt. He put them on an island or peninsula where the water was so shallow that they could walk ashore and roam and range as they pleased. Jack lived there with his mamma (he did not call her mammy) and must have been good to her, because he never bothered about the cattle.

People would say: "Those are old man Maverick's cattle." And they talked a great deal about "Maverick's cattle that were never branded." The gold rush came in 1849, and people landed on the coast of Texas in little ships, and by wagons traveled through Texas to California. They carried the name "maverick" away with them. Eight years after the cattle had been under the casual care of Jack, who was now married, the cattle were moved up near San Antonio. Then in 1853 they were rounded up, branded with Maverick's brand, and sold.

It was during that period of time that "Maverick's" (cattle) changed to mean mavericks—just unbranded, roaming cattle that anyone could brand if they caught them.

Great myths grew up of "Old Man Maverick." I have had old timers in nearly every part of the country tell me they personally knew, or their fathers knew, my grandfather. They tell me what a cattle baron he was, owning mighty ranches and sending thousands of head of cattle roaring up those tumultuous trails to the markets. I could fill a book with wild legends, but none of them has any basis whatever.

My grandfather never even owned a cattle ranch, except to own land and either sell it or rent it if there was a profit in it. He owned no cattle as a cattleman, and the extent of "mighty herds" was two cows, which he milked in a mediocre manner, until my father learned how. And as for cattlemen, my father is the same kind as my grandfather: I am the same as both—a milk-cow, three-acre ranchman—except that in any milking contest I would put both of them and probably all my ancestors to shame. Such, however, is evolution.

To lay all the mythical ghosts of Maverick forever, I hereby declare to all men by these presents, and to him who hath ears to listen, greetings: nobody in my family ever wore a ten-gallon hat, high-heeled boots, spurs, or packed a gun. Nobody in my family ever yelled yippee! whoopie! or sang a cowboy song—at least, not as cowboys. The only Mavericks ever to wear boots are my daughter, Terrelita Fontaine, age eleven, and my son, Maury Jr., age sixteen, and some of my nephews and nieces, and I think they ought all to be spanked for being drug store cowboys.

Sam Maverick, after whom the cattle were named, because Jack was lazy, was no "rough and ready" fellow, even though he fought in bloody battles, was a plain man, but led a spectacular life. He was quiet, unassuming, to the point of shyness, a graduate of Yale, and a real scholarly fellow.

The interesting part of the Maverick story is that he was not a cattleman. It's a lesson to me, at least, that legends and myths grow from little or nothing.

Well, what else was Sam Maverick? He was a landowner and a land speculator. Land owning by the Mavericks and the American mavericks is a matter bound in with the migrations and Indian fighting and history of our country from the beginning. The lure and the land to the Mavericks—and the profits in it—started around Boston, and, with a whole regiment of ancestors, we will take in early colonial history.

Sam Maverick, my great grandfather, father of the man who named the cattle, was said to be the biggest landowner in the world [History of Pendleton District, Simpson]. I believed this for a long time, but it is probably not true. At any rate, he, and his son who went to Texas, had the land fever, and either together or separately owned vast tracts in Alabama (formerly Mississippi Territory) , South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. Besides this he owned much property in the city of New York, some of which might have been in the family for a hundred years before, and which for all I know may be owned by some of my Van Wyck cousins now.

Many old families have been maintained for generations by land originally purchased for a song. In my great-grandfather's papers I find that he predicted the heavy emigration to Texas, and told my grandfather to buy all the land he could since it would inevitably rise in value. The old land-owning families are similar to many of the old bond-holding families of New England who got their start in buying depreciated American bonds from American soldiers. And some of the bond purchasers were very worthy Tories who hid out during the Revolution.

Now this land holding and bondholding is no longer the sure thing for the old families. Many of them have lost out, especially those of moderate wealth. Now many of what we please to call "the old stock" are up against realities, facing teh necessity of going to work.

Since many of the old American families have only the tradition, but not the income, it might be well for them to realize that the economic order of the day has changed.

Connected with the economic destruction of many of the old American families is the economic rise of the New American families.

Now come the Gianninis, the Rosensteins, the Marcantonios and Hrdlickas, marching on, succeeding to our property by outright purchase or by foreclosure of mortgage, marrying our children, whether we like it or not, attending universities which our very reverend blue-eyed Presbyterian ancestors established, making speeches in our common language, and voting, as they should, for Roosevelt. The tradition of families and racial groups living to themselves, of other "comfortably fixed" or rich families intermarrying and increasing their wealth—this—all this, is dead and gone.

City life, rapid transportation, new inventions, congestion of populations, have ended the old American traditions. We are all in the same pot, the big pot. New American tradition is in the making, with new economics.

There are many similarities, however, between the situation now and the time of our colonization and Revolution. Let us look at these ancestors of ours.

XI. Hi-Jacked to the Land of the Free - Early Colonists in America

2007-03-21T23:03:00.000-04:00

XI

HI-JACKED TO THE LAND OF THE FREE

Early Colonists in America

We all have ancestors, and I think we will agree each of us has exactly the same number per generation. The trouble starts when we shift from the question of quantity, and assert quality, and say our own always knocked home runs, and never cheated.

I am going to take my own ancestors and treat them as human beings. For I have always thought it a low trick to put frills on the ancestral breeches, when they really wore buckskin.

This is a story of early America, the history of struggle and blood. Sometime our ancestors exploited others, and sometime they got exploited. But whatever they were, they were just like us—they sang and prayed and got drunk and wept and went broke, just like us.

This why the flashing of coats of arms arouses a smile, or possibly resentment, in me. In the first place, most of us in America have only questionable claims to noble antecedents; and in the second place, even if the heraldry is bona fide, it doesn't make men out of us.

If we are to judge history correctly, we must do two things: read between the lines, and think what we would have done under the circumstances. Thinking of my own acts as a soldier, I doubt if George Washington folded his arms, set his foot out and posed dramatically in vari-colored uniform as he crossed the Delaware; and knowing cloakroom gossip in the Congress of my own time, I doubt several passages in history.

A general idea of heroic ancestors filled my heart when I was young. It was not of my own, necessarily, but those of America. America had always been right, I thought, except once; this was the Civil War, when all the people on the other side of the Mason and Dixon line were wrong, and we of the South fought for States Rights, Justice and Humanity. Somehow, I did not think of Slavery.

Vaguely back in Revolutionary history was a Sam Maverick, who I felt must have been my ancestor. For indeed he had shed blood for America, and had died at the hands of the British, in the Boston Massacre.

But I have studied the case; Sam was a youngster, and probably a relative, and he died without children. Always I had read the story by old Sam Adams, the greatest revolutionary propagrandist that ever lived. He used deadly language, spoke of "that awefull massacre." It always struck me with horror.

So I got copies of the original proceedings. The true story is that the British troops exercised more restraint than usually exercised by angry soldiers. The governor had been treated with contempt, his house looted. It was a long story, but after being harassed a long time, the infantrymen, having been called "bloody-backed bastards" and well stoned, fired.

Possibly the British captain did not exercise the restraint he might have. But there have been since then hundreds of deeds much more bloody and cruel, commited by our own police and troops in on our own people, and no one has worried very much.

America need not be horrified at the misdeeds of the British. We were then British ourselves. And now we treat our own American population worse than our ancestors were treated by our fellow Britishers.

But many of us blind ourselves to the present, and do not permit the true history of our country to deter us from our fond myths.

One of the big myths is that our ancestors, in one great gust of patriotism and joy, came to America because they loved liberty and freedom.

The truth is that practically all of them came because they were forced to. Those who had profitable businesses, or owned good farms, stayed in the old country. Why should they have taken a dangerous sea voyage, if they were getting along all right at home?

Those who came here with money came to buy cheap land and get richer, and have slaves. As soon as the poor ones were able, they did the same.

And those who came because they were denied religious freedom were soon found to be denying that same freedom to others—even killing people whose religious ideas were different.

Sam Maverick, of Noddle's Island, now East Boston, who lived in New England from 1622 until his death around 1676, said:

"And whereas they went over thither to injoy liberty of Conscience, in how high a measure have they denyed it to others there, wittnesse theire debarring many from the Sacraments spoken of before meerly because they cannot Joyne with them in their Church-ffellowship; nor will they permitt any Lawfull Ministers that are or would come thither to administer to them. Wittnesse also the Banishing so many to leave their habitations there, and seek places abroad elsewhere, meerly for differing in Judgment from them as the Hutchinsons and severall families with them, & that Honble Lady the Lady Deborah Moody and severalls with her meerly for declareing themselfes moderate Anabaptists, Who found more favour and respect amongst the Dutch, then she did amongst the English. Many others also upon the same account needless to be named. And how many for not comeing to theire assemblies have been compelled to pay 5s a peece for every Sabbath day they misse, besides what they are forced to pay towards the maintenance of the Ministers. And very cruelly handled by whipping and imprissonment was Mr Clark, Obadiah Holmes, and others for teaching and praying in a private house on the Lords day. These and many other such like proceedings, which would by them have been judged Cruelty had they been inflicted on them here, have they used towards others there; And for hanging the three Quakers last yeare I think few approved of it." [A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, by Sam Maverick. British Museum.]

Maverick was quite cordially hated by many of the colonists in Massachusetts. Woodrow Wilson says, without authority, that he was expelled from the colony. But Bolton says he was not expelled, because of his social position (he was the son of a minister), and because of his wealth and his genial nature. [The Real Founders of New England, Charles K. Bolton, Clarendon Papers]

But Maverick did get fined for raising a row about the violation of civil and religious liberties, and the fine was 150 pounds. Proceedings were started to take Noddle's Island (now East Boston), his home, away from him. And one time the authorities watched his guests and arrested several as they left, charging them with being drunk. But of one of the guests, Major Edward Gibbons, a witness testified that the major was "no debauchee but of a Jocund Temper, and one of the Merry Mounts Society who chose to Dance about a Maypole, rather than to hear a good sermon."

Maverick was always cooking up schemes. He figured out the plan of taking over New Amsterdam, and the story ought to be told here. I shall tell it, however, in a later chapter about the City of New York, and it is very important in American history.

My people moved to the Barbadoes but returned to the mainland, and a great-great grandfather, Sam Maverick, of South Carolina, soldiered in the Revolution. He was near Manhattan Island, too, but as a prisoner in the notorious British Ship, Jersey, and he died because he was kicked in the mouth by a British sailor, and because of disease contracted on the ship.

Now, I have ridden around in history and have talked confidentially with many others besides the Mavericks, among them Charles Lynch, 4-gt. grandfather, of Ireland. I wanted to know if he really was entitled to a coat-of-arms, if he really did belong to the nobility, because you can buy a Lynch coat-of-arms for $9.50, colored and in pure gold, right here in Washington. But I found, instead of being of the nobility, he was a very poor boy, hi-jacked against his will into this country. He was the father of Charles Lynch, Jr., who originated the term "Lynch Law" in America.

Gen. Lewis's best friend among Cherokees against Shawnees in 1755

Then I talked to another ancestor, a great something grandfather, General Andrew Lewis, of Virginia, and found out just why his father slew someone, and fled Ireland as a fugitive. And in Court Houses over the State of Virginia, I saw documents, some nearly three hundred years old, signed by these ancestors of mine. Some wrote a clear, bold hand, indicating culture and education; others, in the same county, signed with their "mark," being illiterate.

But to consider the Lynches especially, with their coats-of-arms: There is a history all written up, and it costs a dollar and a half. The story is like that of many other families by which we up-start Americans claim noble blood. It tells how some King or Emperor granted the coat-of-arms for "an heroic deed," and "defending a city," which shows genealogists have little imagination, for many of the other "noble" families have the same story.

And for the sake of the Lynches living today, who are of various racial stocks, we are given convenient origin in almost every country in Europe except Russia. I hope too many Russians do not get rich.

But my Lynches were Irish, and Catholics. Lynch, the immigrant, lived in Galway. There were many mayors of Galway named Lynch. [Hardiman, History of Galway] Somewhere there was a Lynch coat-of-arms. But the original Lynch who came to America never claimed one, and it is very likely that he was not even remotely related to the alleged noble Lynches.

The present day noble-izing process generally consists in first getting prosperous. Then we take a Cook's Tour to Europe. We see the old "ancestral castle"—in which our ancestors did not live, and if they did, it wouldn't make us any better, or worse.

But I am telling about my own family now, and their connection with our violent human history. Going back far enough, we see the Fontaines and the Maurys in France as Huguenots, being persecuted by Louis XIV. They did not realize, at least none of their documents indicate it, that what Louis wanted was their land and their wealth. Also, Louis did not like another religion bobbing up, for it gave people ideas about their "rights." History of the time shows Louis regarded his action in revoking the Edict of Nantes as righteous, although he rather frankly regarded it as necessary for consolidation and concentration of power.

The diary of one of my ancestors, Rev. James Fontaine, Huguenot, is amusing, or tragic, whichever you might care to call it. [Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, Fontaine and Maury]

It is a very well written book and quite exciting. But he was forever thanking God when his luck was bad. Once when he had for the third time lost all his property and was attackd by "Ye Irish robbers and Papists," with heavy casualties and a son taken prisoner, he discoursed on the curse of idolatry and then he "did" humbly thank God for deliverance." In France, when the dragoons had come to demand that he recant, he took desparate chances, and escaped. But a worthless brother-in-law—I read this between the lines—who was a fat slob and a good-natured trencherman, recanted, and said he saw no evil in the Catholic religion, for indeed the service was in Latin, of which he understood not a word. My good ancestor was enraged, or full of righteous indignation. For the brother-in-law had been lost to the True Faith! No doubt his descendants, my French cousins, are now walking around with some blight of damnation.

Anyhow, while this was happening in France, and the Huguenots were fleeing from persecution, much as the Jews are fleeing from persecution in Germany today, my other ancestors in Ireland, notably the Lynches, were being persecuted by the British for being Catholics. Still others in England and the Colonies were being made to pay the price for being Quakers, as history shows, and as the document concerning Sam Maverick indicates. And all of them together were persecuting each other, except possibly the Quakers. It is certain, however, that of all of those who came to America, nearly all were so positive that truth existed only in themselves, that they would root out with fire and tong as heretics anyone who disagreed with them.

All of our illusions of heroic ancestors and brave pioneers might make it worth while to study the question from the viewpoint of economic opportunity. For the character, temperament, and personal traits of individuals or families, even whole races, can be conditioned by their nourishment, opportunities, climate, and the type of lands upon which they live.

All this sounds pedantic, of course. But it is important for all of us to know this, in light of economic changes today. The response of the human race to opportunity is told in dozens of essays, reports, investigations and books, and every library is filled to the rafters with them.

In a southern state where I have studied actual families, we see first the immigration from England. The given immigrants were none too vigorous, and of little or no education. Then, within a hundred, even seventy-five years, there arises an aristocratic, cultured, well educated family. Within twenty-five to fifty years after the destruction of the Civil War, the very same families drop out of the picture. They become uneducated, even lacking in common, ordinary education, poverty-stricken, shiftless, and often of the petty, indigent and criminal class.

My point in mentioning these things is to show the necessity of Americans viewing their own history in a personal and realistic way. It is much more interesting, too, for now we hear a tale of treason.

XII. Treason, Gentlemen, and the Vulgar Herd - The Two-Penny Case and the Crown

2007-03-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

XII

TREASON, GENTLEMEN, AND THE VULGAR HERD

The Two-Penny Case and the Crown

"Treason! The gentleman has spoken treason," bellowed a worthy legal gentleman respresenting the Crown and the Reverend James Maury. [Another ancestor, 4-G grandfather. Henry, by W. W. Henry, Vol. I.] He was denouncing young Patrick Henry, generally described as a lazy, trifling, hopeless, briefless, poverty-stricken lawyer of the time. Young Patrick was legally representing the people, the so-called "vulgar herd" and this herd was "not of the class of gentlemen" [Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, Fontaine and Maury.] represented by my reverend pre-progenitor, who, were he alive today, would vote against me, and whom I should boycott by attending somebody else's church.

Here came the first flash of Patrick Henry's genius, and the spark of revolution for the Piedmont region covering all the Southeastern sea-board. And in advance you must know that I shall with great reluctance side against the good Mr. Maury, who was considered by everyone respectable and honest, and learned in the classics, as stated by one of his pupils, Thomas Jefferson.

A tobacco devaluation act, tobacco being the standard of currency, had been enacted by the House of Burgesses of the Colony of Virginia. It cut out about two-thirds of the income of the reverend clergy. Worse, the legislation was impudently phrased, and without any mention of royal assent from His Majesty the King. Mr. Maury took to the law.

And the parallels, economically, politically and financially, are so like today as to be astonishing. The quirk of a distant court, whether in Washington or in far-off London was shown, where language of "Gentlemen" is often used to fool "the vular herd" or, more specifically, where representative government is destroyed by remote courts with still more remote language. Here the "general welfare" words later to be placed in our Constitution, first came into prominence. (Patrick Henry used the words "general utility of the people.") Deflation by the money-groups, and the breakdown of the people because of it, and liberty of speech, which is as vital now as it was then, all these were elements of the long controversy.

Some of our ancestors were already getting conservative and proud. Though many of them had been deported for debt, no sooner had they paid their debts or gotten beyond the debtor's jail of merrie olde England than they put on airs and made lords and ladies of themselves, and set about concentrating wealth in their own hands, and talking loftily about loyalty, the King and the "Constitution"!

It is not necessary to prove this, for the colonial history is sufficiently voluminous and definite to show it. The bankers of London, the tight little Scotch merchants who emigrated to Tidewater Virginia (and from whom many of us are descended), the clergy, the vested interests in general, had no sympathy whatever for the general run of colonists, and used them as oranges from which to squeeze the juice of profit and taxes, and then to throw their worthless skins away.

Tobacco debts were already causing ruinous farming, and erosion and destruction of the land. Even in these early times, over-cropping had begun. The same system was clamped on the colonists as that of agriculture today, and the people in Virginia simply could not pay their advances where they were gypped in the first place and stuck with compound interest after that.

The condition of the colony was intolerable. So the House of Burgesses of Virginia, for the second time in 1758, enacted the law, exactly like the gold devaluation act in purpose, and they called it "An Act to enable the inhabitants of this colony to discharge their tobacco debts for the present year." It was temporary, or emergency; they, like we New Dealers today, were not candid enough to admit that the economic policies were really intended to be, and of a right should be, permanent. The act was good medicine for the Colonials. They could pay their debts at the old rates by, in effect, selling their tobacco for three times as much, and putting two-thirds in their pockets.

Then came a war of pamphlets begun by the clergy. Replies were prepared, each pamphlet denouncing the other side in bitter terms. While Sam Adams was making the use of pamphlets the basis of revolution in the Masachusetts Colony, the devaluation controversy was doing the same thing in the Piedmont region.

Looking at the old pamphlets of the clergy now, we find them much like the stupid, reactionary pamphlets of fake organizations today. Either the Liberty League sent its brain-trusters in to crib on our reactionary ancestors, or else stupidity is natural, and comes in cycles.

The clergy had a direct financial interest, but they were also out in the front for the vested interests of the day, backed by the reactionary Crown, with his "Lords of the Committee for Trade and Plantations," a Committee of the Privy Council—the Supreme Court for the colonies. In the pamphlets the horror of inflation was described, the people were enjoined to be honest and pay their debts in the hard money of tobacco (hard indeed, from the toil of growing it); and the big shots worried themselves to death over the apparent growing dishonesty and laziness of the "common herd."

The people were not fooled, however. Soon a pamphlet was issued in reply to the parsons by Col. Bland and Col. Carter, a work of biting invective. Printers throughout the Colony of Virginia then refused to print anything for the preachers—who thereupon charged violation of "freedom of the press." On this one point the preachers were right. So the preachers had to go to Maryland to print their next one, "The Colonels Dismounted." More was said by the reverend gentlemen about the sanctity of contracts and due process of law, with exhortations to observe the ancient virtues of True Englishmen, and their British Forefathers. But the Wicked People were Deaf, Dumb and Blind.

The original suit filed by the clergy had been won on technicalities and demurrers. Thank goodness most of my people were on the right side, for John Lewis [another relative] represented the people, but lost. He did not like this, but could go no further. The House of Burgesses, elected by the people, had no idea of obeying the Crown, and were furious. So they met and agreed to pay all expenses for fighting the Clergy and the Crown to the limit. It was in this case before the jury that Patrick Henry was the attorney.

This is a little ahead of the story, but the House was becoming impatient of its laws being knocked out by the Lords of the Privy Council. People were talking of the British "Constitution," and were getting sick of the King and his courts overriding the rights of the colonists. Nevertheless, the triumph of the clergy, Wirt says, was complete, and "they sailed before the wind"—as he puts it, not knowing their puffed out sails would be slashed to pieces.

Since the case had been won by the Clergy and the Crown, procedure required it to be sent to a jury under instructed verdict, where the twelve good Englishmen and true should faithfully measure the damages. The farmers and the people were enraged, and feeling against the clergy was scorching hot. It had been hard for the farmers to get a lawyer. All the lawyers were scared. Most of them were Crown conscious, full of Privy Council inhibitions, and, since it concerned their legal pocket-books, regarded the people as striking at the Ark of the Covenant. In desperation the people hired the unknown quantity, the trifling young Mr. Patrick Henry, nephew of Rev. Patrick Henry, who had joined Mr. Maury in the suit as one of the complainants, and son of Col. John Henry, the presiding magistrate of the court before which the case was to be tried.

Patrick lost no time in working up the case. He was dead broke and needed the money. Moreover, he liked the job, and although Mr. Maury says that he took it merely for a fee, and would have represented either side, I have my doubts about it, for this was in Henry's early days, before he turned reactionary.

The case was tried in Hanover Court House, built in 1735. It stands there today, and has been in actual use ever since. Henry did not have to walk far, for across the road was the Hanover Inn, one of the biggest hotels then in the Colonies. It stands there today also, almost as it was two hundred years ago, and is conducted by one of his direct descendents. People thereabouts still talk about Patrick, who married the inn-keeper's daughter, and tended bar for his father-in-law while he studied law.

There were more trees then, the little Court House stood there under great chestnuts and oaks. "The people were in great ferment," but the clergy, who had won on technicalities, "came to look down on the opposition . . . and to enjoy the final triumph." Outside the Court House, the people came noisily on their horses, not yet awed by the King's Clergy and the court. Squinch-eyed Scotch merchants, the clergy, and officers of the Crown, came in their vehicles.

Like courts today, the fat-boys' lawyers jostled, pushed, played dignified, oh'd and ah'd, and acted proud. The clergy, all mounted pompously on the High Bench like a dummy House of Lords, sat smirking and taking sly looks at each other. Mr. Maury looked very righteous, for not only was the Crown on his side, but the British Constitution and God as well. The people were intimidated by all these Crown Worthies. They were embarrassed. As for Henry, he had met his uncle, the Rev. Patrick Henry, as he approached in his carriage, and talked him into leaving, so that there should be no embarrassment. But of the court, Wirt says:

"The array before Mr. Henry's eyes was now most fearful. On the bench sat more than twenty clergymen, the most learned men in the colony, and the most capable, as well as the severest critics before whom it was possible for him to have made his debut."

Mr. Maury objected to the jury, for lo and behold, some were not "gentlemen," others were "dissenters," still others of a strange sect known as Disciples of the New Light, or something. But the Sheriff, who must have been an elected officer, overruled the gentlemen, and allowed persons from the "vulgar herd" to serve on the jury.

With an economic and a constitutional issue almost exactly as today, Henry opened by saying the people were in bondage who could not enact their own laws through their own representatives. He told them not to pay attention to the superficial nonsense of the classes who would despoil them, and not to "rivet the chains of bondage around your necks" by blind obedience to a Privy Council or court far away. He said that an example should be made of my ancestor Mr. Maury and his kind. Although it was one of the most vitriolic and abusive speeches made in American history, but all of it was true, and said with bloody eloquence.

The case was presented to the jury. There were no stop watches then, but it is said the jury was out but "a fleeting moment"; it was one of those cases where the jury simply walked around in a circle and came back to do exactly what Mr. Henry had told them to do: make an example of the clergy and the vested interests and give the people a chance to pay their debts. In addition, they told the high court, the Privy Council, and the King to jump in the lake. To add insult to injury, they followed the technicality of awarding damages in accordance with an instructed verdict, but the damages awarded were two pence!

Henry, borne from the court room on the shoulders of the people, was now famous, the people's lawyer and advocate of Virginia, soon to be known as the greatest orator in the Thirteen Colonies.

The first flare for revolution burned in the hearts of the people. They did not understand economics in the modern sense, but they knew that if they should live on as a free people, they could not dispense with representative government, or allow their laws to be knocked out by kings and Supreme Courts far away.

But the big shots of the times were unconvinced. They egged the clergy on. They did not know the next mandate of the people would be accompanied with arms. Mr. Maury, in a letter to Mr. Camm, another preacher, said:

"After the court adjourned, he (Mr. Henry) apologized to me for what he had said, alleging that his sole view in engaging in the cause, and in saying what he had, was to render himself popular. You see, then, it is clearly a point in this person's opinion that the ready road to popularity here is to trample under foot the interests of religion, the rights of the Church, and the prerogative of the Crown. If this be not pleading for the 'assumption of a power to bind the King's hands,' as is inconsistent with the dignity of the Church of England, and manifestly tends to draw the people of these plantations from their allegiance to the King, tell me, my dear sir, what is so, if you can. Mr. Cootes, merchant on James River, after court, said 'he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket, rather than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime but little, if anything, inferior to that which brought Simon, Lord Lovatt, to the block;' and justly observed that he exceeded the most seditious and inflammatory harangues of the tribunes of old Rome."

Which to me sounds like a lecture on the Supreme Court by Bishop Manning.

And now the story changes to Rev. Camm, who had stirred up the trouble in the first place, and in which way I shall be able to excuse my reverse ancestor, Mr. Maury, as best I can. For Mr. Maury had had enough, though he wrote such a letter, and dropped out of the case. Before he died, he got on the right side and helped fan the Revolution. He wrote extensively and well against the British. But in the Parson's Case, Mr. Camm, a bitter-ender, appealed to the Lords of the Privy Council.

His appeal is one of the most striking examples of judicial mumbo-jumbo in the history of nations. It was to prove even lords and judges can see and learn, and hear from a distance, and are not always like the picture of justice, blind-folded and deaf. For all England had heard the rumble of discontent and revolution in the colonies. The people had affronted the King, and had told the old buzzard to mind his business. So Mr. Camm, learning nothing, with all his wigged John W. Davises and other smirky lawyers, advocates and King's counsellors, duly and pompously came before the Lords of the Privy Council. But the mighty tribunal had already transgressed its authority so much and so often, and having at last realized they could not force the people to do the impossible, in effect affirmed the case of the people back in Virginia, on a technicality. They held some trifling technicality stood in the way, and they refused to hear the case. Thus the high and mighty court of the British Empire reversed itself, without the courage to give its reasons. Still, the court was vindicated, for it used several Latin words, which no one understood even then. It was similar to our own Supreme Court's decision of four-to-four in the New York unemployment insurance case, which holds the Social Security Act suspended in mid-air.

But the colony had established a point.

Thus, nearly two centuries later, history projects the same picture on the screen. Flub-dubs and fat-boys, gentlemen in heavy silk robes that must still be tailored in Europe, walk ponderously with assumed dignity; others ride on new contraptions rolling on four wheels and in great steel birds flying through the sky; all of this show in lieu of our lordly processions and coaches-of-six in days gone by. And they "sail before the wind." Will the storm slash them to pieces?

XIII. Lynch—His Coat of Arms - Lynch—An "Indentured Servant"

2007-03-21T22:54:00.000-04:00

XIII

LYNCH—HIS COAT OF ARMS

Lynch—An "Indentured Servant"

Lynching is 100 per cent American, truly American, and only American. It is part of our soil, our economics, our ancestral history. It came through the Lynch family, established by Charles Lynch, Sr., my 4-gt. grandfather, of Ireland. The exact word came from Charles Lynch, Jr., his son, who was damned to eternal infame thereby.

The story of the senior Lynch is like that of a very large proportion of our ancestors. He came to America against his will, was politely called "an indentured servant," but was really a white slave, hi-jacked or shanghaied away from his native land, and sold. Kidnapping from the British Isles and Ireland was a regular racquet in those days. Some of the American colonists preferred white instead of black slaves, since they used similar language, were more intelligent, and more suitable to the climate. They were bound for a term of years, from four to twenty. Many ship captains had agents to do their dirty work, and of course the split was made over the number of kidnappings, and the victim, usually a boy, was sold for his passage. Girls, also, of the indigent or criminal class, were picked up and brought to the colonies, and since there was such a scarcity of women they soon were married.

The Crown was not handling its subjects any too well. It was constantly in hot water over what to do with hungry, discontented, and undesirable subjects. The colonies were the answer, to which were forced by hook or crook the indigent populations.

The economics of the crown was simple. Use the excess land for colonies! Sell the colonies! Get rid of the people. Sell them manufactured goods. Make money on them! Let them have no currency.

All this, unfortunately, is the psychology of man today. Somehow, we must get rid of our reliefers, our indigents, or "undesirables," and "balance the budget." Our stuffed shirts of today have the same remedy as the stuffed shirts of England in Colonial times.

But since this is the story of Lynch, an indigent, the originator of one of the largest families in America, let's finish him off.

In accordance with the customs of the time, when he arrived in the land of the F.F.V.'s, he was put on the block to be sold as any other merchandise or property, and knocked down to the highest bidder. And of such ancestors come millions of us now living, who call ourselves aristocratic.

Lynch was bought by Clarke, a farmer, who, fortunately for our hero, lived in a Quaker colony where slaves were humanely treated, and where slavery of white men was soon abolished.

But it is important that we be on speaking acquaintance with our ancestors, good Nordics, or Gaels, if the term be more suitable, who were brought here and auctioned off like the chattels they were.

Lynch, the indigent, the apple-cheeked Irish boy, grew up and became as respectable a citizen as you ever saw: he married the landlord's daughter, and became a property owner himself. In comparison with any livelihood that he, a pauper, may have had in Ireland, he bacame fabulously wealthy. He lived among the Quakers quite peaceably, and his relatives were Quakers. But he never was converted, and he died a Catholic. The nearest priest was in Baltimore, which could only be reached by weeks and weeks of arduous travel. In any event, he had tried to visit a priest, and the fact became known, it is possible he would never have gotten there alive. Apparently, he never went to mass after leaving Ireland; but neither did the records show that he ever attended a Quaker meeting.

Charles Lynch's son, Charles, Jr., was the brother of my great-great-great grandmother, who married Robert Adams, Jr. Lynch was a member of the court that originated the name of "lynch law." He was a colonel of militia, a justice of the peace, a colorful and good-humored gentleman, a fair speaker and one of the best regimental commanders of the revolution. I find his modern counterpart in Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New York.

He lived near Bedford, about twenty miles from what is now Lynchburg. Athough this was a most pious Quaker colony, those who persisted in that faith did so at the risk of their lives, as in Massachusetts. Indeed, it was a mortal sin to profess Quakerism, and those who committed that sin were given a warning first, prison second, and finally, if still unrepentant, the penalty was death. I find the Quakers were persecuted severely in Virginia, but I find no record of death penalties being carried out. Massachusetts Colony did a better job, as I have already shown through Sam Maverick of Noddle's Island.

In spite of all this, Charles Lynch was a good Quaker, though his fun-loving disposition was hardly compatible with a religion of drab colors, modest behavior, and peace. As long as it was against the law, Lynch remained a good Quaker. But as the severity of their treatment decreased, he ran for the House of Burgesses, as his father had done, was elected, took the oat of office, and was promptly disowned by the Quakers for "taking solemn oaths."

About this time the jail was found to be insufficient to house the people who did make said ryotes; whereupon the sheriff did "protest against the Insufficiency of the Said House for all Escaips that may be made by Reason thereof." No wonder. Whiskey was five shillings per gallon; New England Rum, four shillings per gallon.

Lynch and his court, serving in the Revolution, never lynched anybody, but they originated the term by greatly exceeding their authority. They were justices of the peace, and assumed whatever powers were necessary to maintain order. Tories were hung up by their thumbs, given thirty-nine lashes, and I suspect a few more for good measure, until they promised to fight the King, and to cry "Liberty Forever." They were fined and put in jail, but none was killed either by mob violence or sentence.

After the war, suits were files against Lynch and Adams; they became an issue in the State of Virginia. The legislature then met, passed an act exonerating them, and here the term "lynch" became a part of the American language.

Lynch, who had a grand sense of humor, must have lobbied the bill through the new legislature. Though history says not a word about it, I believe this must be so. The law says: "whereas, divers evil disposed persons in the year 1780 formed a conspiracy and did actually levy war against the Commonwealth"—the implication being that Virginia was an established Commonwealth, and along came "evil disposed persons," who of course were Tories, and started a Revolution against Virginia! The law goes on:

"And it is represented to the present General Assembly . . . that Charles Lynch, Robert Adams, Jr., and other faithful citizens . . ." took "effectual measures" to suppress this conspiracy, that the Legislature stood them indemnified as exonerated "of and from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages on account thereof, including indictments, etc."

The word lynch was carried on after the Civil War, but its meaning changed. In the West its practice originated from the necessity of frontier justice where there were no officers of the law. In the South it developed through the Ku Klux Klan, which all of us Southerners are taught to think was a swell outfit, but which was not.

Behind the psychology of lynching is the American's idea of individuality the "free and independent" complex he brought with him when driven by persecution from England or other parts of Europe. Lynching now means the illegal murder of an individual by a mob, usually carried out with disgraceful brutality, venting inhibitions of sadism. The cause is now generally supposed to be the rape of a white woman by a negro, although there are all kinds of lynchings.

Whatever the original excuse for lynching, there is none now. It is not only a disgrace to the South, but to the nation.

Killing common people, white or black, by mobs or wars, is common. The killing of a member of the nobility, however, by our common ancestors is different, and much more interesting.

XIV. Scattering Brains With a Shillelagh - No Immigration Laws—Hence Ancestors

2007-03-21T22:52:00.000-04:00

XIV

SCATTERING BRAINS WITH A SHILLELAGH

No Immigration Laws—Hence Ancestors

One time, while telling of my ancestor, General Lewis, whose statue stands by the State Capitol in Richmond, a friend of mine assured me that the only reason I was now in this country was that at the time these ancestors came here there were no immigration laws. This was a good joke, but true, and many of us who get violent and want to deport aliens and also bait them and intimidate them, might look into our family trees a little.

Here again we see an angle of American history that has blinded a lot of us. For the Lewises of Virginia—and there were several families of them—came into the colony fighting, and are still doing it all over the country. The question is, whether or not the American people carrying out the "fight" tradition, may not fight themselves to death.

And the picture of people of small economic income and hard living conditions now dwelling in the memories of history, and being flattered and misled and fooled is a disappointing one. For the time my mind is fixed on Virginia, where this racket is used on the people in grand fashion. Strangely enough, most of these forces who are always exhorting the common people to respect their noble forefathers are stupid and ignorant. I can think of a half dozen in very high places—men who are supposed to be very wise, but who are only crabbed old bores.

But back to General Lewis, my 3-gt. grandfather, an Indian fighter, co-worker and officer with Washington, pioneer and first-class fighting man. What was his history? His people before him were forced out of France like the Maurys and others, by a King who wanted their property. They had stayed in England a short while, had slipped into Wales, were pushed out of there, and then they had gone to Ireland. They could not stay long in Ireland either, and they fled to America.

The general's father, John Lewis, was born in Donegal, and so was the general. I visited there soon after the World War, and I wondered why anyone should leave so beautiful a place. The answer is to be found in the charges of high crimes against my 4-gt. grandfather, which makes me reflect on the comment of my friend about there being no immigration laws. For the said John Lewis did kill (the Crown said "did murder") one Irish Lord; and except for his act this book never would have been written.

But I take the historical report, probably written with a bias in favor of the Lewis Family.

"The immigration of John Lewis to Virginia was the result of one of those bloody affrays" (Lewis had a leasehold estate in addition to the land he owned). . . . "A nobleman of profligate habits and ungoverned passions . . . attempted by the aid of a band of ruffians" to take possession of the property occupied by Lewis. The Lord attacked. A brother of Lewis was killed, his wife wounded. John Lewis rushed out of the house. [Howe, p. 181]

Some accounts say Lewis was armed, and some say not; but all agree up to this point. But let us go on, for the fight is not half over:

"Lewis, who had up to this time acted on the defensive, seeing the blood stream from the hand of his wife, and his expiring brother weltering in his blood, became enraged, furious, and, seizing his shillelagh, he rushed from the cottage, determined to avenge the wrong and to sell his life as dearly as possible. The first person he encountered was the young Lord, whom he despatched at a single blow, cleaving in twain his skull (Sir Mungo Campbell is the Lord whose noble head got clave in twain by my ancestor), and scattered his brains upon himself and the posse. The next person he met was the steward, who shared the fate of his master." [History of Augusta County, Peyton]

All this happened around the year 1728 or 1729; immediately with all his family and thirty retainers—and undoubtedly armed to the teeth, they fought their way to the Irish coast. Lewis seems to have realized, however, that he was endangering his whole family, for the Crown officers were hot after him.

From the Port of Donegal he took the first ship that sailed, hoping to put in at Oporto, Portugal, where he had a brother-in-law. But his ship sailed a long time, probably a year or two, on a long voyage here and there over the world. He arrived in Oporto in the last months of 1729. Here he found his family had gone to Philadelphia. He did not reach them until 1731; he had been a fugitive from justice three years. Not only the Crown, but the powerful families of the Irish nobility had searched high and low for him in all the ports of the world.

When John Lewis arrived in Philadelphia, little Andy was four years of age, a healthy strapping youngster. The family had no money; they were poor, and John Lewis did not know he would be successful in establishing history over a great area of Virginia, nor that his little Andy would become a famous general of the Indian wars and would serve in the Revolution, nor that four other sons would be officers and soldiers against the British King.

Lewis struck for the forest of Virginia, and in 1732, two miles from Staunton, which he later founded, he built "Fort Lewis."

He called his place "Bellefonte" from, as Peyton said, "a bold bright spring issuing from the hillside."

"He was the first to occupy the scene; no axe had ever before rung through the forest; no spade had ever turned up that soil; nature had delivered it into his hands in its untouched virginity."

These facts are mentioned not for the purpose of vilifying our early Americans, but merely to show that even the best of us have ancestors who were not ping-pong players. The early Americans sometime had provocation for their offenses and sometimes they did not. In any event, they were bold, and were looked down upon by those in power. And there are similar John Lewises today, men who are bold, who are cleaving right and left the skulls of modern Lord Sir Mungo Campbells.

You must cleave your Lords and Masters right on the home lot—but you need not kill them. Just use your brains, and theirs will scatter.

But back to the original John Lewis. No doubt he had due provocation, and most of us would have done the same under the circumstances. At any rate, after awhile he was pardoned by the King, the charges and indictments were forgotten, and he was granted many leagues of land. But if he had been caught at first, he would surely have been hanged by his neck until dead.

High on the hill of Bellafonte he is buried. There is a wild cold wind blowing. From this place that once was a virgin forest, one can see the bare lands that have been farmed close to death. The city of Staunton which he founded seems close enough to reach with the hand. A power line runs through the valley, bringing electricity—at a cost three times its value.

His headstone has almost crumbled, and the words once chiseled there are no longer legible. But these words have been transferred to a flat slab over his body, and they are:

Here lies the remains of
John Lewis
Who slew the Irish Lord

and furnished Five Sons to fight the battles of
The American Revolution.

He was a brave man, a true patriot and a firm friend of
liberty—throughout the world.
Just as Lynch is an example of "an indigent person," forced into this country "sold on the block to the highest bidder," who by economic opportunity seemed to become as good a citizen as one might find, so was the Lewis family an example of a group fleeing as fugitives from justice, who turned out to be among the makers of America.

That is the reason that boasting on one hand, or the covering up on the other, of our American forebears, is nonsense. It is equally disgusting to see certain people who consider themselves better by blood today, whose only superiority is economic; and to hear these self-made upper-crusters indulge in a lot of sin-talk about others who have less in money.

Sin. Those who commit social derelictions today are like some of our unfortunate ancestors of yesterday. That is the reason we ought to view crime and violations of our codes as an expression of the effects of environment. Lack of opportunity is the sin-breeder, whether in the poverty of the city slums, or poverty of the eroded hillsides.

The wretched people who live all about us today could be equally transformed and made happy and brave and useful, with the opportunities of a New World. But this inner discovery of a New World will not be the task of navigators.

But fighting, not sin nor navigation, is the job of the Lewises. And as John Lewis left the old, to go to the new, so I left the new to go to the old. But before I left, I had to be trained, although I did not get the actual practical experience that John Lewis of old did, before he fled to America.

XV. "De Draft Board, He Sent Me Here"

2007-03-21T22:49:00.000-04:00

XV

"DE DRAFT BOARD, HE SENT ME HERE"

Training For War

It was a great day when we went to War with the Imperial German Government. The statements of the President and Congress said that we were going to war with the German Government—Imperial Government—and not the people of Germany. It was very consoling, indeed, to know that we were merely fighting Imperialism, and that when we killed a German we were only taking a pot-shot at the Government. Also when we died we could feel that we had not been killed by the German people, but by the Imperial German Government. In that way, we could requiescat in pace—that is, lie easy in our graves.

Good soldiers do not irk themselves with the pain of thinking on such things as right or wrong. For such a Utopian condition would end wars, and no nation cares to take the chance of being the first. It takes mass thinking (or unthinking) to carry out mass killing successfully.

After I had gone through the grind of three months in an officers' training camp, I found myself out in California, serving in the 157th (1st Colorado) Infantry. Many of us arrived with big ideas—that we would reform this "militia regiment," with our superior training. But we received a few jolts ourselves.

The regimental commander was Pat Hamrock—a man of no great education, but I think the best regimental commander in America. The regimental adjutant was Captain Head, who roared at us poor second lieutenants—but he kept us out of trouble. Our lieutenant colonel, Rice W. Means, who had a bunch of medals for heroism in the Spanish War, made speeches about democracy, and kept us feeling very patriotic.

I was a machine gunner. I was thereby entitled to wear boots, so I bought a pair from a profiteer, had them shined, and with the new gold bars to show my rank, went to town. Thus appareled, we lieutenants roistered and brawled in San Diego and Coronado.

My Captain was named Cook; and being of a different political faction from the rest of the regiment, he cooked me a devil of a broth. To make things worse, he had been transferred from the cavalry, which did not recommend him to an infantryman; then as now, I believed that nothing compared to the infantry; and I can sing a song to prove it.

So I hated my Captain. He was a handsome fellow; which did not seem to help any. If you have ever heard a cavalryman give commands, and if you have either conscience or soul, you will be horrified at the mush mouthed manner with which they roar out. For indeed, no one but a horse can understand them. Instead of saying "squads right," they say "fours right." And instead of saying "march" in a military manner, they insult you by bellowing "Ho!" It sounds like a cow mooing for a lost calf.

Captain Cook, green from his horses, and I, hot from infantry training, would march on the field with our men. He would become confused and yell "Fours Right!" Then he would bellow "Ho—o—o," rolling out his o in such a way as to give me and my doughboys the infantry spasms. Being a respectful lieutenant, I did not tell him what I really thought, nor did I repeat our remarks about horses. I offered only mild remonstrance.

But my Captain had other habits which disgusted me. He had a dog that was perpetually barking. The dog was a nuisance. The more I thought of the dog, the more I hated the Captain. The more I thought of the Captain, the more I hated the dog. One day he (the dog) ran out and bit me on the leg. There was no pain because he bit me on a very heavy pigskin legging. But this gave me a chance to tell the dog what I thought of him—I mean the dog's direct ancestors, and this I did in loud and tumultuous tones. I knew that my Captain was in his tent, and would hear. It was no disgrace for the dog to have the kind of ancestors that I mentioned, for they were only natural to him. However, I poured forth abuse in such an arrogant, insulting, and overbearing way, that the Captain popped out of his tent.

I do not use story-book English when I say he was purple with rage. I presume that a brain-teaser would say that the "canine was the focal point of the dispute," but we growled at each other. We had pretended to be friends, but now the feud was on in full fury.

From that day, I became quite military, and formal, and observed only the strictly necessary amenities. But horse commands were burning me up. One day we marched out on the field in a column of squads. I was in command of the front platoon. All of a sudden the Captain yelled: "Fours left"—and then his long "H—o—o." I growled to my platoon, "No command has been given, you are not horses, you are men. Wait for an infantry command." When the "Ho" came out the rest of the Company wheeled into a squads left, and at a company front went off in the direction of ninety degrees from my column—and we proceeded to the other end of the field.

The Captain did not notice it until we were a good distance away and he ran from one to the other using some barrack-room language which I, being a respectable infantryman, shall not repeat. He gave numerous commands. I ordered my men to obey none of them. Finally he yelled at the top of his voice, "Stand fast." I had my men halt—and stood glowering at their head. There followed an unseemly row on this field of Mars, and the Captain dismissed me and sent me into my tent—in disgrace, and "under arrest." I told him that I went to the tent of my own free will, inasmuch as the Colonel was the only person who could put me under arrest. I sulked in my tent; I believe I out-sulked anybody in military history.

The Captain was determined to punish me this time. He was right and I was wrong. But I did not think so. His tent was next to mine, and I heard his typewriter grinding out court martial charges against me. I got sorer with every sound from his keyboard. But I was unrepentant. He left the tent and stalked away.

Just then Colonel Hamrock walked by. The Lord came to my aid, for the Captain's dog rushed out and bit the Colonel on the leg! The Colonel abused the dog as much as I had previously done, but he did not know the owner. The Colonel was especially angry, for he had several times ordered dogs to be "confined or securely tied in the rear of the companies," and here was a free dog, in the front, in violation of orders. I knew my troubles were over.

So I slipped up to regimental headquarters to be there ahead of my Captain and his charges. I told the Adjutant and the Colonel that I had "a little trouble with my Captain." It was about the cavalry commands, I said. Captain Head, the Adjutant, listened with contempt. I decided to shift my ground. I referred to the incident of the dog, and complained of "intolerable abuse." The Colonel pricked up his ears. We had something in common, having "suffered intolerable abuse" together. He demanded that my Captain be sent to headquarters to give an explanation.

The Captain appeared, and there was a hot discussion about disobedience in dog and man. But it was Captain Cook, and not I, who was the object of investigation. I had diverted the scent. No more was said of my derelictions of discipline; the incident was forgotten. But never again did the Captain yell at us as if we were horses; and I always treated his dog with respect. For indeed, the dog had saved me from disgrace.

Captain Cook soon left the company—whether out of dislike for me or not, I do not know. However, he was a good soldier then, and is one now. He is one of the high ranking officers of the army. But to think of him always revives memories of "Ho—o—o" and the dog.

I was soon promoted to first lieutenant, and took command of the company. I was still having my difficulties, nevertheless. I could, with great show, take a machine gun apart, but putting it together was another matter. A few pieces would always be left over, or I simply couldn't get it together. But I knew how to maintain discipline, even if I could not be so respectful myself.

Tons of propaganda rolled in from Washington. I had not then heard of George Creel, but it was George's stuff, and it dripped with nobility of phrase, and fine patriotic sentiments. We were ordered to digest it, and then make flaming speeches to our troops.

One day I was slated to make a speech to the men on "The Causes of the War." One of our troubles was that many of our men were Mexicans and did not know English so well.

I was worried, for if I could not explain it in English to Americans, it would be a hard job to explain it to a Mexican-American. I did not pretend to know the causes of the war myself. In fact, I very well knew that we had no business in the war, and I had no personal interest in it. I was just an egotistical kid in the Army, doing, if one feels like giving it a dignified phrase, my duty.

Wars can only be fought with young men. It is not because they can more easily bear the physical hardship. For indeed, those of us who are old soldiers can still stand the pain of body, the physical stress. But more mature men cannot stand the mental hardship, and the thought of it.

But the speech had to be delivered. So I called in Lieutenant Boley B. Brush, handed him the propoganda, and told him to make the speech. He glared at me. He wanted to know what he was supposed to say.

You are supposed to say, I said, "that we are fighting to make the world safe for democracy, as Colonel Means said."

"That ain't so," said Brush.

"What?" I said, in stentorian tones. "Do you mean to tell me that we are not fighting for democracy and freedom? For liberty?"

Brush had no sense of humor whatever. He was a realist and did not consider what I was saying as humorous in the least.

Finally he said:

"J. P. Morgan caused this War. It's enough that I join the army to fight for my country without me lying to a bunch of Mexicans from New Mexico and my own friends from Colorado. I ain't going to make any speech; I am for my country all right, but I ain't going to lie—we are a bunch of collectors, that's what we are. I won't make the speech. I'll fight for my country, but——"

"Lieutenant Brush," I interrupted in a very dignified manner, "your statements astound me. I cannot understand you. I have only the utmost contempt for such opinions. I shall make the speech myself."

I was about to burst out laughing, but Lieutenant Brush was so sore that he could hardly contain himself. He turned on his heel, and walked away in high dudgeon. He was an earnest, honest fellow.

So I called the company together. I made them such a resounding speech on patriotism as no American ever heard before. I told them about Nathan Hale regretting that he could die only once for his country. I told them of the Stars and Stripes, the Flag, of the Constitution, of the Declaration of Independence, of Democracy and Freedom. I told them of the men who suffered in Valley Forge, and how the blood trickled out of their feet onto the snow. I also told them—for most of my men were from Bernalillo County, New Mexico—that New Mexico was once a part of the great and proud State of Texas, that the great State of Texas had a single star; that in 1836, they, a small nation of only thirty-five thousand people, had fought for liberty against the Republic of Mexico (although I did not emphasize Mexico) and had won against overwhelming odds. That the sons of America had ever taken up their arms for liberty, freedom and democracy. I was proceeding at a great rate and was on the point of weeping at my own oratory.

I had almost forgotten to use the portion of Lieutenant Colonel Rice W. Means' speech, in which he repeated President Wilson's words, that we had gone to war "To make the world safe for democracy." So I repeated that at least twenty times to be sure that my men would remember that we were fighting for democracy. The proper procedure on these occasions was to make a long speech, and then instruct the men to repeat by rote some part of what we had said. So I made them repeat "To make the world safe for democracy" several times. That is the proper military method, and you can always court martial a man unless he thinks exactly right.

The smartest one of my friends in the group was Pedro Salazar, and so I picked him out to answer my catechism. I had worked myself up to a patriotic dither by this time, standing up in the evening sunshine and watching my shadow fall on the ground.

I pointed to Pedro with a dramatic gesture, and said:

"Why are you fighting for your country?"

Pedro rose very timidly, and he thought for a long time. I knew that he was going to give an answer which would inspire all of my men to go forth to battle, and plant the Stars and Stripes on the Kaiser's front yard.

These are the words that Pedro Salazar, my friend, uttered:

"I don't know, Lieutenant, why I are in de war."

He hesitated again:

"But," he said—and then I knew that his patriotic words were coming out—

"But de draft board, he send me here."

I have no wish to insult any of my fellow Americans who joined the army. But as one who has taken the trouble to think things out, I believe that Pedro Salazar knew as much as any average person about the causes of war. Moreover, I believe that Pedro Salazar knew as much as Woodrow Wilson, Vice-President Thomas Marshall and the various Congressmen who voted for the war.

In his simplicity, he gave a very honest answer: "De draft board, he send me here."

About that time a contingent of drafted soldiers, all Mexicans, and none of them knowing a word of English, were transferred to our regiment, also from New Mexico. They were sent to an infantry company. Here was a chance for me to get out of the machine-gun company without anybody knowing my ignorance. I applied for transfer, and got it. Later, however, I wished to be back in the machine-gun company, for Pedro Salazar and his friends were Shakespearean scholars compared with the new contingent.

I knew some Spanish—at least, enough military Spanish borrowed from refugees in San Antonio—to drill my men. So I would bellow: "Esquadras a la derecha!" And I carried on simple conversations in Spanish. This, however, was not approved by headquarters. They issued instruction that all conversations in the future should be in English.

So I started a class in English to be known as the "Teaching of English by Objects." I would teach grammar in this manner: I would have a man point at himself and say, "I am a man." Then I would have him point at someone else and say: "He is a man." Then he would look someone straight in the face, and in conversation, would say: "You are a man." So, my men were pointing all over the place and learning the English with their fingers and their mouths. The only trouble was that they were not the best students in the world at night and would sing their songs, one of which was "Triste, Triste, Triste." As surely as the word trist means sad, they would all get thay way, and I suspect that many of them wished they were back in New Mexico—as I later found out in a big way.

My teaching of English proceeded; my scholars did well. I received a regimental citation of excellence for the work that I was doing as an English instructor.

Then we were notified that there would be an inspection in about two weeks, and that we were supposed to have maneuvers in the trenches. Each man should be placed in proper strategic position, as rifleman, rifle grenadier, and so on. For many days I trained them to answer what they were.

In the trenches, the Inspector General from Washington asked them questions as to their specialty in warfare. The General marched up to one of my men, Juan Pedraza, and asked him what he was. Juan imagined it was a grammar class.

He smiled at the General. He pointed at himself. He said: "I am a man."

The General was furious. He wanted to know what the hell this was all about. He glared at me, and then at Juan, but Juan did not know why he had offended. The worst was yet to come. The General said to Juan, "Who is the Commanding General of this division?" With an expression of childish credulity on his face, Juan pointed to me and said,

"Lieutenant Maverick."

Then I knew or felt I was a complete failure. For it looked as though I was neither officer nor teacher. I was too scared to laugh.

A day or two later, the morning report disclosed that two of my men were missing. We noted their disappearance and it was duly reported at Regimental Headquarters. About ten days later, the Mexican officers across at Tia Juana turned over to the civil authorities the two deserters. They were brought back to our company and placed in the stockade.

I was appointed by my Colonel to represent these two men in the court martial. The court duly convened and I walked in, looking at the various and sundry officers, my good pleasant friends, but whose faces, while on this court, were like the judges of the Inquisition. As I beheld them, I was literally horrified.

I had taken my duty seriously, and without any thought of the consequences of it. I had gone to a law library in town. I studied all about a soldier's constitutional rights—and also got some books on the subject of "natural" rights. At the trial, I quoted the statements of James Otis and Sam Adams on "Natural Rights," made preceding the American Revolution. I delivered such learned discussions as to bore everybody to death. I told the court in essense that these men were ignorant of the English language, and that they did not know the causes of the war. I said they did not know why we were fighting, and moreover, I really didn't either. I said further that they quite naturally had deserted into Mexico, hoping that they could go down through the Northern States of Mexico and slip back into New Mexico. That it was improper to draft a man who had absolutely no knowledge of American customs or the English language. Then I gave them a batch of decisions of the Supreme Court on the Civil War. I believe the Draft Law case of the World War in the Supreme Court had not been rendered at that time. I was questioned very sharply by the court martial but stood my ground and went away feeling sure that I would get my Mexicans off altogether so that they could be bob-tailed out of the army and go back to their farms, or get ninety days and soon be back with me on duty. I left the court.

In about half an hour, Lieutenant Colonel Rice Means came to my quarters and told me that they were getting ready to file charges against me.

"For what?" I said.

"For your remarks," he said.

"What remarks?" I demanded.

It then appeared that my remarks were considered as being seditious, unpatriotic and in violation of the principles of Americanism, or something else, and unless I deleted my statement to the court, I would be forthwith court-martialed. I told Colonel Means that I would under no circumstances make any change. He argued with me awhile, and then I saw an amused look come over his face. He laughed and said he would do what he could for me. I never heard any more about it, and I never knew, until I became a member of Congress that Colonel Means, who later became a Senator from the State of Colorado, and who was in Washington in still another capacity at the time I was elected, had run through the court martial and deleted my remarks.

There is no sense in war. There is no sense in those who engage in it. It is the opposite of reason.

But soon we were merrily moving from California to France. The train clanged up. I sat on the cow-catcher, and had my picture taken. I sent the film to my mother to have it developed, and wrote her some idiotic remarks. I never knew how it all must have pained her until just lately my own boy sent me his own picture, all snappy and pretty, in uniform, from the Texas Military Institute. Corporal Maury Maverick, Jr. A smile on his face. The American Eagle on his cap. Healthy, strong, brave. Marching . . . marching. In the name of God and Country.

XVI. Cowards and Saints - The Battle of St. Mihiel

2007-03-21T22:40:00.001-04:00

XVI

COWARDS AND SAINTS

The Battle of St. Mihiel

Our French train stopped in the village of Boucq, near St. Mihiel. As I jumped to the ground from the side door of a forty-and-eight freight car, there was crashing and booming in the sky. Looking up, we saw German planes, and the Archies—anti-aircraft guns—popping at them. This was the first real sound of war since sailing and traveling these thousands of miles from California.

I was getting into the war in a hurry now, and things were beginning to move. Several of us who were lieutenants had fine headaches, for, passing through England quite hurriedly and into France straight to the front, we had worked day and night, and when we had any leisure, we got good and drunk.

In Liverpool, the first thing I saw was a soldier badly maimed, in blue hospital tunic. Then came a woman pulling a man with neither legs nor arms, in a little children's express wagon. That night, some of us went to town from the Knotty Ash camp. Liverpool was dark. Only shielded lights here and there. People lived in horror of airplane bombardment.

Across England we had traveled. At Oxford we stopped a little while. Several first-class coaches arrived, full of German prisoners; they were officers and entitled to this first-class passage. I walked over to the platform, and spoke to a very pleasant young fellow. Shaking his head, he expressed his opinion about the War—"Foolishness, foolishness, god damn foolishness."

"German propoganda," I said, laughing.

"Lieutenant," he said very earnestly, "I regret that you would believe me so rude as to think I could dissuade you. But . . ." and the train pulled out.

In Winchester we had left camp, and had started our drunken brawling in the Black Swan, nicknamed the Dirty Duck by the British. Here were kids in the air corps, literally not over sixteen or seventeen, lieutenants—pursuit pilots, bombers, observers. Finally, on the good ship Harvard—or the Yale, I forget which—we moved out across the channel, and next morning found ourselves in the port of Cherbourg.

From there we moved rapidly across the middle of France. With an officer detachment I was ordered to the 28th Infantry of the First Division, then in back of St. Mihiel. My arrival was simultaneous with the German planes and the noise of the anti-aircraft guns.

After the cracking of the anti-aircraft guns and the dull roar of the retreating German planes, everything seemed so still. But there would come a burst of machine-gun fire, or artillery, or aeroplane bombing, and then again, stillness. We left the train, marched to headquarters, were assigned, and were in at the front that night, stationed by Rambacourt, near Beaumont and Dead Man's Curve.

I was given the ammunition wagons of my battalion to command, no map, no compass, no orders—and a horse to ride. We moved up in the night, stopping in the village of Seicheprey, the spear-head of the St. Mihiel sector.

We quartered our horses. In a great rock house, converted into a dug-out, I stayed with another lieutenant, who had been there long enough to be sick of it all. At one A.M. of the 12th of September, 1918, a barrage went up.

Outside, a great long line of fire could be seen. The guns were placed together on a line of twenty-seven miles. The guns pounded and rattled. The sky was red.

It was the quickest advance in the World War. The Germans had decided to retire; their morale seemed quite low. So, staying in behind my wagons, I scouted around, looking for better roads, and better places.

Near sundown, troops still moving rapidly, my wagons got blocked once more. It was again necessary to make a detour, and I rode off to find a way. Riding at good speed through some trees, I came to a dead right turn, face-to-face with a band of German soldiers!

I was scared to death, and nearly fell off my horse. My knees banged up against the horse. I think even the horse was scared. I expected to be shot full of holes. My first day of battle would be my last.

To my amazement they all dropped their guns and held up their hands. There were twenty-six of them. They did not run up and say "Kamerad! Kamerad!" as the story books say. What they did do was to move up closer, but at a fairly respectable distance, and beg me, in the worst English I ever heard in Europe, to save their lives. By this time I was getting very brave and very patronizing.

They said they wanted to surrender. I said that was all right with me, and they could go ahead and surrender. I pointed to the Allied lines and said "Beat it!"

But they wanted to be personally escorted. They said that if I turned them loose they would get shot before they could reach the prison camp. They pleaded with me pitifully. Two of the younger lads were crying. My emotions were changing fast. First I had been scared; then I was proud of myself for having twenty-six men begging for their lives; and the latest emotion was brotherly love.

I agreed to take them back. We headed for the main road, where they could join the main line of prisoners going back to prison camp. I rode my horse, and my twenty-six captives trudged along beside me like a pack of hunting dogs with a huntsman. When we parted, one of them offered me a piece of sausage, and they wanted to stop and express their thanks, but I waived them on with a gesture, and "Allez! Allez!" I didn't know any German. Their leader saluted me very stiffly and clumsily in a fond farewell.

I have read stories of heroes, and have met them, but there are many illusions about the hero business.

If I had ridden back on my horse, having him curvet and prance, and had shouted that I had captured twenty-six Germans, I could have gotten a crowd together, made a record of it—and have gotten a batch of medals. Since my uncle was in Congress, there would have been no limit. Or, had there been a newspaper correspondent there, he could have made a hero of me without any further ado. Had this happened, I might even now be living in my illusions, talking of the glory of war, and walking around with my medals, being a citizen of no value to anybody on earth.

The line between coward and hero is sometimes very indistinct. Men are suddenly brave or suddenly cowardly. In one moment of emotion they are likely to be branded for life, one way or the other—and wrongly.

In the next chapter I am going to get into a real first-class battle, but here is my chance, before it starts, to philosophize a little. For instance, I now have the decorations of the Purple Heart, and the Silver Star. Both are very pretty. I got both for the battle in the next chapter and I deserved neither.

The Purple Heart I got because the War Department, under Hoover, conceived the idea of putting out a medal so the ex-soldiers wouldn't demand the Bonus. It was an old decoration of George Washington's, and the War Department decorated everyone who ever got in the way of a bullet or piece of shell.

The Silver Star came from a citation for gallantry in action. The story is simple. In the battle, every single one of my fellow officers in the battalion was killed or wounded. Two or three of us had been recommended for the French Croix de Guerre—but the battalion commander got killed, and finally none of us were left. So, long after the war, probably in 1920, they just cited us all. By blanket order, I got the Silver Star.

Medals are not to reward brave men, but to keep men brave, and make them fight. The ruling classes have always attempted to build up the hero idea. It stops men from thinking.

So, if I am any judge of myself, or of the poor fellows who have followed Wilsons and Hannibals, Caesars and Napoleans, the medals I received are not only the bunk, but badges of mind-slavery to pass on to my descendants. I may be unable to put a stop to them, just as an humble ancestor cannot prevent a descendant from building up a title or qualities that never existed. The badge business, the titles, fancy hats and cordons and ribbons, are to pass on, so that our descendants can keep on killing each other for no reason at all.

As an actual soldier of the late war and as one who got in the way of shells, I may be a very bad judge, indeed, of war. It is difficult to come out of war without your views all personalized. It seems the ones who have suffered it know the least. Actually, War is a complete annihilation of the individual, but to the soldier or to the one who must lose a son or his property, it is a mighty personal thing.

But the soldier has no perspective, can have none, and he does not consider himself a part of a great historical movement, any more than the Arkansas share-cropper thinks of himself as a part of a great economic problem. The soldier in battle must think of his existence; the share-cropper, the under-privileged, must do the same.

The ex-soldier who normally might be the liberal or even radical is thrown into reactionary groups. He lives in an economic system that will not use him, and he faces futility and a blank life. Hence he is forced to think of the big game of life in the terms of his wounds, and pensions.

It is the mass concept of our plans and hopes which we must comprehend. If we do this, the tenant and the soldier—and they represent over ninety per cent of humanity—may have something to say of their own destiny.

No philosophical thoughts came to my mind during this battle of St. Mihiel. It was constant march, fight, eat, sleep a little, move on. Rumble and roar, muddy roads, and once a great air battle in the sky.

In the last week of September we heard the great offensive had started in the Argonne. On the 26th, the American troops attacked. Soon after, our Division was ordered to march. An American Division was retreating at the front. Trucks stopped by our camp, driven by little slit-eyed Orientals, smiling French Indo-Chinese. In the night we climbed into the trucks and moved toward the front lines.

XVII. Bismarck, Pensions—and Death - Battle of the Argonne

2007-03-21T22:30:00.000-04:00

XVII

BISMARCK, PENSIONS—AND DEATH

Battle of the Argonne

The trucks carried us as far as they could go.

Then into the Argonne we marched, in the middle of the night. The American Division was still retreating; they had broken; other soldiers were needed. I was back with the Infantry, and Frank Felbel, a little Jew, was Commander of my company. He was shy. He spoke of art and the opera. I knew little about such subjects and was not very responsive.

War was tearing Frank's nerves. As we marched on, we heard a rattling of equipment. Men were rushing toward us. It was black dark. I yelled at them to stop. They came on, and we threw down two Chau-Chau rifles, little antique French machine guns, and told them we would kill them if they came further, for we thought it was a German trick.

We let one man come up.

"Oh sir, they are killing us," the poor fellow cried. "Out there today I saw six men, crucified upon trees, even as our Lord Jesus was crucified upon the cross. . . ."

"Maverick," said Felbel, interjecting, like a professor, "Did you ever read Le Bon's Psychology of War?

I knew immediately they were Americans and let them rattle by.

"Christ!" I yelled angrily at Frank, "What the hell is this Psychology of War business?"

"War hysteria often causes. . . ."

"Shut. . . ."

A great shrieking noise came, then a dull explosion. Gas! Gas! We put on our gas masks. Soon we marched on, holding hands and marching single file. I stumbled. It was on the body of a dead man. I could see nothing. We were getting lost. I took off my mask. The dead man stunk, and he was soft and rotting and slippery.

We took our position on the line. It was near the village of Exermont. We had orders to attack in the morning. At the last moment the orders were cancelled, because our artillery had failed to move up. It was joyful news, and the sun rose, the rain stopped, and the sky came bright and blue. It was still. Looking out, we saw a clean field. There was no gun fire. A single blade of wheat stood a few feet from me. Zing! A bullet hit it; it broke in the middle, and the stalk fell over. A shell burst close by. It killed one man, and tore a leg and two arms from another. Another shell. I was buried in dirt. It seemed quite funny. I said to myself: "I will not move. I may fall to pieces." But I was not even touched.

Here we stayed, for four days.

October 4, we attacked. Five thirty-five in the morning was the "H" hour. It was thick black dark.

Just before the attack, up and down the lines you could hear the American Lieutenants yelling "God damn it, don't you know we're going over the top at five thirty-five?" On the German side there was an empty silence, a vacuum. We began to think that they had retreated.

Working through some barbed wire, little ditches and mudholes, we were in proper line to advance under our own barrage at the minute of five thirty-five. We started, but the Germans were there. We had reckoned without a German rear-guard action. And no doubt they had heard us telling our men to get ready.

They were soldiers who had trained four years at the front. They had left their lines checkerboarded with machine guns, had left their men in the rear to fight to the death, and had slowly moved out of the heavy masses of troops. Most of us who were young American officers knew little of actual warfare—we had the daring, but not the training of the old officer of the front. The Germans simply waited, and then laid a barrage of steel and fire. And the machine gunners poured it on us.

Our company numbered two hundred men. Within a few minutes, about half of them were either dead or wounded. Felbel was killed outright, and I did not even see his body. A runner came to me and told me he had been killed. I took command of the company. There was not a single sergeant. The last sergeant had been sent back to the officers' training school.

The four platoons were under three corporals and one private, Quinn, whom we had not yet had time to promote, since he had actually deserted from the army—the rear—and had joined us at the front.

At this moment of five thirty-five everything happened that never happens in the story books of war. We literally lost each other. There were no bugles, no flags, no drums, and as far as we knew, no heroes. The great noise was like great stillness, everything seemed blotted out. We hardly knew where the Germans were. We were simply in a big black spot with streaks of screaming red and yellow, with roaring giants in the sky tearing and whirling and roaring.

I have never read in any military history a description of the high explosives that break overhead. There is a great swishing scream, a smash-bang, and it seems to tear everything loose from you. The intensity of it simply enters your heart and brain, and tears every nerve to pieces.

In the darkness we went ahead. I had a walking cane so I could feel ahead of me and avoid the ditches and barbed wire. But it didn't save me. When we came to a ditch, I fell into the water anyway. On the other side, I drew my men up in formation. Then we flanged out, moving slowly, very slowly, in the attack, but it was nothing like what we had been taught in the military schools or in training camps.

Immediately in front, the Germans threw up beautifully colored pyrotechnics. This, with the bursting of the shells, revealed us now and then as in broad daylight.

Although so many men had been killed, there was nothing to do but to keep on going. But the horror of the thing began to appall me. I remember very distinctly that I held my head down a bit, figuring that a bullet would bounce off the steel helmet—which I thought I was wearing.

Then I figured that at that particular angle if one hit on my chin it would tear my chin off and leave me disfigured for the rest of my life. Then holding my head up, I began thinking that it would hit me and knock all of my teeth out, and probably my eyes, and make me blind. Undoubtedly I was a very selfish soldier, and that was no way for a young man to behave who had listened to the bands play back on the parade ground in Texas.

I suddenly realized that I had no steel helmet at all. I had perhaps lost it during the night, in an excursion with Felbel near the German lines. I had been wearing the helmet on top of my overseas cap, and it slipped off without my feeling it. But this was no time to be worrying about hats.

We had to advance. And in front were dense growths of trees, and barbed wire to keep us from going farther. There was a lane down the middle, and no other way to go ahead. Dead men lay along the lane, all Americans. I felt sure that there was a German machine gun on the other side. I did not want to go through that lane. But the men began to waver a little and I figured it would not be right for me to lay down or stop, so I moved ahead.

Suddenly it came to me as a great enormous, world-covering joke. There we were, human beings killing each other by the dozens, by the thousands, by the millions. A shell burst . . . a shell burst . . . something slashed off the top of my finger, and a little blood trickled down. I looked at it. I felt my head, worried about the helmet I had lost.

I said to myself: "This is one of the finest dilemmas I have ever been in. I must go through that lane, call for my men if I don't get killed and get a hat. I need a hat. I need a hat." So I started on through the lane, and reached down and borrowed a hat from a poor fellow who had no further use for it. But it didn't fit. It was much too small.

"I'll find a bigger one," I said to myself. I got through the lane, and my men came through too, without being killed. Then I looked on the battlefield for a hat to fit my seven and five-eights head, and tried several, and found one. So, with a new head-piece, I reformed my lines. On the other side of the open space I found, as I had suspected, a German machine-gun nest. But the Germans were dead; one of them was hanging over his gun.

Here I saw an explanation of the old time war lie of Germans being "chained to their guns." I found one who had fallen dead over his gun. He had placed a chain around his back in order to keep from vibrating the gun, or rather for the purpose of holding the gun in place. I saw one or two other instances of that as I went on, but I have since corroborated the fact that no German was ever chained by his officers to a gun to make him fight.

We started to advance again. A shell burst above my head. It tore out a piece of my shoulder blade and collar bone and knocked me down. It was a terrific blow, but I was not unconscious. I think it was the bursting of the shell, the air concussion which knocked me down, and not the shell itself. It was not five seconds, it seemed, before a Medical Corps man was dressing my wounds. He cut my coat away from the wound and wrapped up my shoulder in such a way that it would not bleed too much. As he lifted me from the ground, I looked at my four runners, and I saw that the two in the middle had been cut down to a pile of horrid red guts and blood and meat, while the two men on the outside had been cut up somewhat less badly, but no less fatally.

It reminded me of nothing I had ever seen before, except Christmas hog butchering back on the Texas farm. The only difference was that the hog butchering was done methodically, and the liver and lights and hearts were properly saved. In other words, the hog butchering was relatively humane. My orderly, Viateur Baudoin, Maine French-Canadian, was bending over me. Also, I saw a Red Cross on the arm of the Medical Man. Felbel was dead, and there was no officer to take my place. I got up and re-formed the lines again. I collected four more runners, and started out once more.

We kept going for an hour or more. But I was losing so much blood that I was getting weak, and I fell down once in awhile. I could carry on no longer, so I turned the command over to Quinn. He is the private that deserted, and who incidently deserves a book to himself. He was one of the few men I saw who really liked blood-soldiering. Having been a sergeant in the cavalry, he got bored, was busted for drunkness—deserted, and joined us where death was straight in front of him. Behind the lines he had been the army's best crap-shooter. At the front, he was the army's best soldier.

He took command of the company. Leaving the field, I was forced to walk slowly. Suddenly I found I had been walking around in circles. For in clear view ahead, was a German machine-gun nest. I had circled back into the German lines.

I was wearing only my breeches and shoes. My undershirt had been cut off and the torn blouse had been thrown over me like a cape. Because of the wound, my left arm was useless. But I had an automatic in my right hand. I decided to get heroic and kill a couple of Germans. There were six or seven of them.

Their helmets stuck up a little above the smoke on the battlefield. The place where I stood had been thoroughly shelled and was still being shelled. There was no wind, and the smoke lay close to the ground. As I remember it, one of the Germans was standing, but the others were close down, and plugging away. So I thought it would be a swell idea to take a crack at them. I cocked my pistol and got ready.

But I realized that my automatic pistol would not even reach them. They were out of my range. But I was in the range of their machine gun; if I had shot, they would have heard the pistol, turned, and knocked me off. So a spirit of good humour, or good sense, came over me.

It was then I remembered the words of Captain Bill Tobin, Fire Chief of the great city of San Antonio, who came to me as I left for France, and said with a solemn face: "My son, remember this: 'It is better to be a live son-of-a bitch than a dead hero.'" And so I turned around. It was the smartest thing I ever did in the war.

But just as I turned, another shell burst, and I was knocked flat and unconscious. I woke up, and saw American machine gunners coming up with their guns. I called out, and asked for help on my wounds. They were not much interested, but I pointed to several dead soldiers, who had their bandage packets on their belts. They tore them off, and bandaged me. But I was just another bleeding soldier to them and they were irritated at postponing the shooting for nursing, but I demanded attention and got it.

Then with a stick one of them gave me, I started walking over the hill. A sort of woozy, funny feeling come upon me. I kept getting weaker as I went on. The pads which were on me got soppier, and every now and then I could feel a little warm blood trickling down my cold flesh. The weather was cool.

I will never forget the French batteries as I walked up these hills. They were shooting over my head. The Frenchmen ran out and helped me up the hill and they made me sit down by a battery and gave me some red wine and a little shot of cognac. I passed the French batteries. American troops began coming up. Here and there I got along by sliding down one side of a ditch and crawling up the other.

It was then I saw two deserters standing behind a lone tree. I yelled at them, and asked what they were doing. They came out, both with pistols on their belts, and said that a shell had burst and broken the breathing tubes of their gas masks. I saw the holes and apparently they were cut with knives. There was nothing the matter with those two. They were not wounded, and ought to have been at the front. I conceived the idea that they would just as soon kill me as not, and if they had, nobody would have known the difference. They stated very positively that they were not going up to the front to be killed.

I suppose by then that I had the mind of a wolf with no thought but survival. So I thought up the dirtiest, meanest scheme that I ever conceived in my life. I said to them: "I am very weak and I wish you would help me along." If I had ordered them to the front they would probably have killed me, because my first suggestion to that effect had not been taken very warmly.

There was no reason why they should assist me to the road. But they were not going to the front, and I thought I might use them, to save myself from kicking the bucket. I was staggering around, losing more blood, and getting weaker. As for the deserters, I had an idea that some combat unit would pick them up anyway—or I could just turn them over—which I later did, and thought no more of it.

I finally got to the field hospital. I passed out, and don't remember what happened for a time, except in a vague sort of way. But when I did wake up it was to open my eyes in a great tent, an emergency tent. The Germans were shelling the place, and stone from a house nearby would occasionally fall on the tent. Soon I was taken on my stretcher to the courtyard, and transferred to an ambulance.

Roaring out, we came to an ammunition dump which was burning and popping. It was by the side of the road. "Shall I take a chance and rush by the dump?" yelled the driver. "Hell, yes," the four of us in the ambulance yelled back, "take a chance."

When I came to from the operation I was in a ward for the severe cases. I was vomiting something that smelled like ether. There were ten of us, three Germans, seven Americans. A German, quite close to me, had most of his face shot out. He would sip a little milk. But the blood would trickle down into his stomach and he would puke blood and milk. From him I first learned of old age pensions and social insurance. He said they had been started under Bismarck. It was very difficult for him to talk, but he spoke English.

"If I do not die," he said, "I will take a long vacation and get well. The surgeons are now great. They make new faces." I saw a twinkle in his eye.

"I will visit my brother in Milwaukee." He continued: "Will you tell him for me that I shall soon visit?" But within an hour, with horrible paroxysms, he died.

XVIII. Trouble on the High Seas - Sailing to Peace

2007-03-21T22:00:00.000-04:00

XVIII

TROUBLE ON THE HIGH SEAS

Sailing to Peace

The return voyage from France was on the good ship Turrialba. She was a banana boat, usually plying between New Orleans and Colon. By the side of a big modern passenger ship she looked like a rowboat; but she made a good hospital ship during the war.

We embarked at St. Nazaire, and put to sea December 10, 1918. A great storm came, and there must have been some trouble in navigating the ship. When we went on deck, the storm roared and slashed. The little ship sat high on great waves and the rudder seemed broken, for all our flotsaming and jetsoming around. I got sick and lay in my bunk. Three of us were in the cabin, all desperately sea sick.

Then it was that I realized the meaning of the expression "shiver my timbers," for the timbers of the ship shivered and creaked like a hobo's jungle shack in the March wind. We rolled from one side to the other in our bunks. We were banged around and the high seas loosened our bandages. I vomited, but was too sick even to raise my head. This was real misery. As I lay in the blood and vomit, a doctor came to dress my wounds. He saw the blood and looked distressed; he came closer and smelled the vomit, and looked sick himself.

This all seemed very funny. I did not care much whether death came or not. Feigning a very miserable look, but with an urge to burst out laughing, I said to the doctor: "Go away and let me die."

The doctor obliged. He held his nose and left.

Calm came the next day off the coast of Wales. But the "good ship" was so badly torn up, and we had used so much coal floundering around and fighting the storm, that we put into Barry Docks, a little coaling station by Cardiff.

Soon we were on the sea again. There were about a hundred and twenty-five wounded officers on the ship. We were an assorted set of cripples, but all could walk unaided fairly well. We managed to get about and have a little amusement. We had plays and skits in the middle of the ocean and forgot our troubles.

One night, in the dining room, we sat talking about the various armies. The parson, who looked like a baboon, and had less sense, was making a great speech about what awful cowards the Germans were. He made it plain that God was on our side of the killing, and America had entered the war for freedom's sake and that was the reason our soldiers were so brave and pure. This arrant old hypocrite had imposed himself on the whole crowd, always letting everyone know that swearing and such-like was a sin. Another parson who had not been at the front joined in with an oration on war atrocities.

I got pretty well bored with this kind of guff and nonsense. I suggested that if our opponents were mere cowards, then we weren't such brave men for having whipped them.

What courage, I said, did it take to whip cowards? Germans fought as we did, for their country.

I mentioned that the war was over—and that one man was as good a soldier as another, irrespective of nationality. Then the parson, both brave and bold, stood up and pointed his accusing finger at me: "Do you mean to tell me that you admire the German fiends, the despoilers of women, the destroyers of churches, the Huns, the vandals——?" and so on, and so on.

By that time, I was sore. With barrack-room language, I repeated that the Germans were just as good soldiers as we were. I said something else about Christian preachers urging men to kill each other. As for German soldiers, I said that from a military viewpoint, they were bound to be better trained then we were, for they had been at it longer.

The parson got more patriotic and said something about the stars and stripes, and how Patrick Henry had said "Give me Liberty or give me Death." About that time, our doctor, who was technically in command, arrived on the scene. He was double-patriotic, because he was an Englishman, who had settled in Boston and had become an American citizen.

He was horrified, and ordered all of us who had said the Germans were good soldiers to be placed under arrest.

The doctor meant business, as I later found. When we arrived at the hospital on Staten Island, there was a Colonel from the Inspector General's Department waiting to investigate me and others. By radio, we had been charged with making remarks "derogatory to the morale of the American troops," which was a damned lie.

Fortunately, the Colonel had some brains. In about fifteen minutes he dismissed us all and told us to go to town and enjoy ourselves.

New York City turned out en masse, man, woman and child, to give the returning soldiers a good time. As often as we could, we left our hospitals and came to town. Everybody was happy, except the parents of those who were killed. The New Yorkers were satisfied there would never be another war; and going home, I found this true all over the nation. Most of us from the Staten Island Hospital stayed through New Year's, and for a few days in January of 1919. We were being heroed around, and were young enough to enjoy ourselves.

Captain Bill Harrigan, who had been wounded with the lost battalion, and who had been a fellow patient of mine in French hospitals and on the Turrialba, introduced me at the Lamb's Club. All the famous actors of the day congregated there. Old Maclyn (not Fatty) Arbuckle was there. John J. McGraw, manager of the Giants, bought drinks for all the soldiers. Dustin Farnum was a friendly fellow. George M. Cohan came in, got mellow and dramatic and sang to us.

John Barrymore was playing Three Faces East, a lousy play, and he came in every night after the show. I was introduced to him, but he volunteered no pleasantries, either then or later. He looked nervous and irritable. I did not like him.

The best fellow of all of them was Gene Buck. He worked day and night getting passes for us to go to the best shows and musical comedies. He was then producing the Follies. He is still one of the best fellows in New York, and he comes down to Washington quite often representing the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Only one thing was difficult. The relatives of the dead, who had been watching the names of the wounded coming in, found me and entertained me. A sister of a comrade killed in the battle of St. Mihiel took me to a show, and had me talk to the mother. The people were in fair circumstances, but they had sacrificed everything to send their only son to college. The war came just as he got his degree.

I do not even remember his name now. But I well remember going a long way on a subway, and then going to the apartment. I had never been in an apartment before. We sat in the room very stiffly. I was uneasy and embarrassed.

I had promised Felbel, should he be killed, that I would see his father. So I visited Mr. Felbel, who was very nice to me. He took me to a famous doctor, who looked me over.

The New York sojourn was a two weeks mixture of dead men and high old times. When I got my transportation order to the Base Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, which happened to be in my home town, I was glad.

There I was discharged, and put on my civilian clothes. According to the story books life thereafter was to be lived in peace. We shall see.

XIX. Whereas, and the Ku Klux Klan - The Bootleg Decade

2007-03-21T21:00:00.000-04:00

XIX

WHEREAS, AND THE KU KLUX KLAN

The Bootleg Decade

Between 1920 and 1930 the nation grew lop-sided and so did I. Some call this period the "Post-War Era," but I think it should be called the Bootleg Decade. It was ten years of swelling up and busting; a day of "worthy movements," noonday lunch clubs, an Era of Big Talk.

With the war over, people got the jitters and had to crusade about something. I can remember when I first came back, that Fritz Kreisler was scheduled to play in the town. It was considered very unpatriotic to allow such apparently evil music, and so a great many of our "patriotic" organizations raised cain on the other side, and with the help of some liberally inclined friends finally got it fixed so Fritz could play. Fritz played, but not being interested in violin players, I didn't go. Here was a place where a violin got mixed with liberty.

The jittery feeling of the people did not die down. Another "movement" entered the scene—the Ku Klux Klan—and I suppose the reasons for its origin and habits could best be described by a doctor. The members all swore it was for the preservation of the White Race and the Virtue of Womanhood, besides the Flag, and Honor of various kinds.

Being a born Southerner, I had always heard of the Klan. I had always thought it necessary just following the Civil War, because of the sudden freedom gained by the slaves, and the dirty work of carpetbaggers.

But I smelled a rat from the beginning.

One day, walking down the street I met an old friend, whom I knew to be a Klucker. He was and is the town fanatic, was and is the hater of labor. I was back from the war and undoubtedly he knew more than I did, because he had stayed at home studying conditions.

He took me over to the curb and asked me what clubs I belonged to. Then he asked me if I wanted to join a patriotic, Christian organization. I said yes. He leaned over and whispered: "Would you like to become a member of Ku Klux Klan?"

"No!" I answered and gave him an earful on what I thought of it.

"Well, what the hell are you then?" he said. "You are not a Knight of Columbus, and you certainly ought to belong to something!"

That was the prevailing idea in those days. You had to be a Kiwanian, a Rotarian, a knight or lady of some kind or else you didn't amount to anything.

Being a young and budding attorney, I joined the San Antonio Bar Association. One day I was elected vice-president by some of my friends. Out of the three hundred lawyers I think about seven attended this meeting, and none had paid his dues. That was the reason I got elected. I then found out that I was not quite as popular as I had thought. I noticed this when I took an active part in local affairs and got up some excitement at meetings, and published a monthly paper I called The Whereas.

Some of the more conservative members of the Bar did not like my activities. I had reason to suspect that the old tradition of promoting the vice president to the presidency might be broken in my case. Since the conservatives were all great lovers of precedent, I made up my mind that precedent must be preserved for them at all costs. So at the next election I had enough of my friends there—I think they call it "packing" the meeting—to elect me president. Thus at the age of twenty-four, I became the president of the San Antonio Bar Association.

From then on we had big fine meetings, but very few of the things that I wanted were carried out. However, most everybody paid their dues, and we had money in the treasury. I suggested the minimum fee system, and said that we should stop this idea of being such high-toned gentlement, and consider ourselves more or less a labor union. This was absolutely shocking to the older members of the Bar, and, of course, no suggestions of that kind were ever listened to.

One of the most colorful characters in Texas then was Colonel W. S. Simpkins, a real Southern gentleman, a Confederate officer, who had been my professor in the law school. He looked and acted just like the pictures you see of colonels of the old South, including the goatee, gray locks, Southern hat, vest, and he would say, Sir! (pronounce Suh!) in front of each sentence. But he was no Kentucky colonel; he was a real fighting colonel. For years he had delivered lectures on the old Klan, of which he had been a member just after the Civil War.

So I invited him to come over and be the guest of the Bar Association and speak on the modern Klan. He did, and he gave the organization a drubbing they had never gotten before. It helped to cut their influence at the time.

Like most of the soldiers that came back from the war, I had gotten married—and within five years a gentleman and a lady arrived. We are still together. I belonged to the Kiwanis Club and later the Lions Club, made speeches about Progress (of the wrong kind) and Thrift (which also turns out to have been of the wrong kind) and attended church once in awhile.

During that time, when we were all around about twenty-five or twenty-six, we would sit up all night and argue and drink bootleg whiskey, talk "religion," and not attend to business. Besides that we drank tequila, which only a Texan or a Mexican can stand, and he has to be a brave and brawny one at that. It is pure white; it is distilled of cactus, and the next day you feel like the thorns are all coming out on your body. White mule is like pink tea beside it. I do not advocate any such habits, but all these experiences turned out all right.

While in the Bar Association I learned you are never asked to "run for office" unless you are a stuffed shirt. This put me on notice that any idependent thinker has to fight his way, not once but always; I figure on trouble with my undertaker, who will probably try to bury me in a dress suit.

Another thing I learned during this Bootleg Decade was never to argue religion. Only stupid idiots argue the subject, and I think the best thing is to practice it the best that you know how, and keep your mouth shut about it.

Somehow the law business got on my nerves. I prosecuted a criminal one time and helped convict him. I did not like the idea. I always felt sorry for the defendant, even though the plaintiff hired me. So I quit and went into the lumber business.

Finally, I organized a business with my friend Kelley, a good man. Having seen more or less of union and progressive ideas when I was a kid, I forthwith tried to organize my employees. I had previously refused to join the "Open Shop Association"—for which I thank God now. But, in trying to organize our own employees I was a complete failure, since they considered it all nonsense, as they were getting about a dollar or two a week more than other workers.

Also I got the old speculative bug, just like all other Americans who have a dime. With my old friend Reese Jones, a contractor, we started building houses. We built cheap houses for poor people and I was not ashamed of myself when a house would cost about $800.00 or $1000.00, and we would sell it for about twice what we paid for it. It was nothing more than the order of the day. We would sell the house on the installment plan, hock the note, take out some of the profit and pray the Lord that the rest would be paid.

One time I had an auditor make a statement. It looked to me as if I was about to get rich—that is, what poor people call "middlin' rich." But Hoover got it all, and I am sorry it is gone.

The houses that I and others built were a disgrace to this country. This is no confession, but a fact. That is the reason that the government should subsidize housing. Human beings should not have to live in the rotten habitations handed to them by speculators.

During the time my health was cracking, probably from a war wound that I got on the spinal cord. Whether that was the cause or not, it was diagnosed all the way from the top of my head to the bottom of my spinal cord—anything from a spinal cord or brain tumor, to disseminated sclerosis. In 1925 I went to the great cord and brain surgeon, Harvey Cushing, who tried to diagnose it. But he couldn't get definite enough diagnosis to operate. I went to others, including veterans' hospitals.

Anyhow, not at the solicitation of friends, I ran for Tax Collector. It was a big job, and I think I did fairly well. It was from that office that I ran for Congress. I think I am the only Tax Collector who ever was elected to a high parliamentary body. If you don't believe it, go to the museum in New York and you will see stone carvings of the tax collector beating the people, then you will see him getting beat and being run out of town.

Possibly the reason I got elected was that I knew no one was going to ask me to run. Once before I had wanted to run, but I hadn't gotten any encouragement. My friends assured me that it would be too great a loss to the city for me to go away to Washington. I mention this so that all the budding "liberals" and progressives who expect to do something for their country should get out and beat the bushes and take after their opponents. Moreover, no one in public office should ever expect any gratitude or mercy.

By the time of the congressional campaign my health had gotten much worse. I staggered when I walked, and though by then I was on the war wagon, many accused me of being a drunk. It was painful campaigning, a besides being called a wicked red, the charge of being a gentleman of the bottle made it tough.

But I had a scheme in mind. Although I was working on a close margin of life, I figured I would fight it out, win, get operated on, and then enter Congress. I never denied being a drunkard, because to have done so would have necessitated a statement concerning my health. But now that it is over, I can beat myself on the chest and tell of "my operation" and at the same time give advice to younger men never to touch the bottle.

Immediately after the primary I went to Washington to check some affairs so I could go over to Mayo's and take a chance on an operation. I walked over to the Senate, and just as I entered Senator Morris Sheppard's office, I was arrested by the Capitol Police.

I was angry and demanded to know why. The policeman whispered to the Senator.

The Senator, who brought Prohibition to the country, and who is deadly conscientious, and one of the best men in the Senate, said with a smile:

"That's all right, officer, I'll take care of him."

I then realized I was being arrested for being drunk. But I finally convinced the officer, and the Senator. The officer was very sorry. He is still on the force, and now he always asks me about my health every time he sees me. Even the Senator was convinced when I had to have the operation.

Anyhow, after final election, Mrs. Maverick and I went up to Mayo's, where I was operated on. It was a spinal cord tumor—and since every American is proud of his "operation"—I suppose it's all right to mention it. It is what the doctors call a laminectomy. In my case they cut off parts of five vertabrae, and took out the tumor.

It was a cruel and bitter affair. But the doctors pulled me across the line, and it was one of the best jobs in the history of American surgery. When I came to Congress I almost had to be carried around for a while, and I walked with two canes. But in about five or six months I was completely well and I was very proud of the work. But it had taken nearly eighteen years to clear up the wounds and the aftermath of war.

It is a damned outrage that a poor man can't go to a doctor. Mayo's fee was low. Their work was far more than satisfactory. But why can't every man be operated on, when he needs it? Why should poor people watch their children die? Why should a man in moderate circumstances have to die because he hasn't got the money for an operation and hospital expenses?

The fact that doctors as a class do more real charity than those of any other profession is no excuse in a civilized country. To lie down and die, or see one of your children die because you haven't got the money is to me a ghastly thing. Medical service must be available to every human being, some way.

XX. I Become an Amateur Bum - Riding the Freights

2007-03-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

XX

I BECOME AN AMATEUR BUM

Riding the Freights

On the tail end of the Bootleg Decade, before I was in Congress, I saw the depression hit like a cyclone, a real old Texas twister, just as it did in every other part of the country. It was such a sudden, strange affair, that we couldn't realize it.

Here I was, a "professional politician." I had quit the law business because I didn't like it. Then I left the lumber business—and though politics is a pretty cruel affair, I thought I was suited for it.

About the middle of 1932 the effects of the depression began to be terrifying. There is no question that people were starving, and that we were at the lowest ebb in our national history. Prosperity kept coming around the corner, but it never arrived.

As Tax Collector, I received a salary of $12,500 a year, and in business on the side I made five or six thousand a year, which meant that I had $18,000 a year. Proportionally, it was about five times more than a Congressman gets. Here in Texas, anyone who has $5,000 a year is living on double velvet, because it is comparable to $15,000 or $25,000 in New York City. With the five you can afford to have a good town home, an automobile, a servant, and a place in the country. And it's being plenty rich to be making anything around eight or ten thousand dollars a year.

But the times were hard and I was spending my money night and day, lending it here and there, kidding myself that it would be paid back, and knowing very well that it would not. Politicians never save money. I was a "commander" of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and several regiments, divisions and armies of comrades came to me with their troubles. It was all day long and all night long.

Times got plenty hectic. I decided to go out and find what it was all about. During that period, while a commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Bonus Army was gathering to meet in Washington. The South, but especially Texas, was becoming the refuge for every transient in the United States.

We heard a great deal about there being a "revolution"—though we know our country has never been near a real revolution. There was so much talk, however, I thought it worthwhile to read my history books about revolution again and make some comparisons.

Our American Revolution was caused by economic discrimination against the colonists, more than likely because of conditions caused by their isolation. Historically we must view the American Revolution as being only a "separatist" movement in so far as many of its leaders were concerned. That it was such is demonstrated by the fact that immediately after the Revolution the propertied classes got together and wrote a Constitution for the protection of their property, and didn't even so much as want a Bill of Rights or any protection for the liberties of the people.

The new American Tories were worse than the British Lords—and some of them, including the arrogant, swell-headed, lace-collared John Hancock, merely got out of paying their debts. They quickly proceeded to exploit their own people at home.

In our history there have been minor revolutions, or seditious violations of the law, such as the Whiskey Rebellion. But throughout all our bankruptcies, foreclosures on farmers, periods of falling prices and increasing concentration of wealth, the various depressions up through the last (or present) one, there has never been developed any economic philosophy of the people.

We have had populist movements, the rise of Molly Maguires, the Dynamite Period ending with the McNamaras, crack-pots like Coughlin and Townsend, and able erratic geniuses and leaders like Huey. But as for any movement based on any theory of government or economics, there has never been one of any strength. The following of old Bob LaFollette was "progressive" all right, but it was all based on confidence in him personally. Many voted for Gene Debs out of a vague belief in Socialism, but his vote was mainly protest and sentiment.

With a head full of history, I started to scrape around on the bottom and find out if the people really had any idea of "revolution" or just disorder, or change.

So I got to making hobo side-trips around San Antonio, and making my own personal investigations in other parts of the country. It was interesting to change clothes and go out and talk to people without being known. In that way I saw more, and got frank answers. I rode freight trains and visited in hobo, slum, Negro, and poverty areas. Close investigation in "my own home town" showed me conditions I did not believe existed anywhere. I later found such conditions to be ordinary and usual. I had started by considering the transient problem, and getting further and further into it, I found rotten conditions for those who were supposed to be home-owners or regularly established families—people who were either wholly or partially empolyed.

But my real study was of the moving populations. I watched as people came into San Antonio on freight trains; and I talked with them. Trains which came in from New Orleans on the Southern Pacific ordinarily had from fifty to a hundred men, but sometimes as many as two hundred and fifty on big nights. The train coming in from Los Angeles by way of El Paso, through the Western district of Texas, generally had almost as many, although the transients, when leaving Los Angeles, attempted to travel the Northern route, instead of going over the open plains and into West Texas, which can be hot and deserty or cold and blustery, depending on the season.

Literally nothing was being done for the unemployed. Every side trip I took indicated this. So to get some more knowledge, I struck our for a real hobo trip. I slept in jungles, got lousy, and, what was worse, got preached and lectured at by four-flushing racketeers who called themselves preachers, men who were a disgrace to any religion. It was a dreary, but very valuable experience. I had as my companions Pat Jefferson, a friend who was a member of the State Legislature, and Harry Futrel, a veteran from way back, out of the Bonus Army.

The first town we hit was Houston, which I had previously "investigated" in clean clothes. We just walked around the streets and acted the part of freshman hoboes. This was in December of 1932. Mr. Hoover was still in office, but a dead duck.

On the Courthouse square, I walked over to the Salvation Army and played the part of a hobo the best I knew how, although I had been shaved the day before and looked too clean.

It was lunch time. The "Sally," as all hungries call at Salvation Army station, was upstairs. Men were gathering in clumps, shuffling about in an uneasy manner. Finally, some assistants came out in uniforms and began ordering the men into lines, piously insulting us by their condescending manners. The Sally was feeding in relays of about sixty or seventy; there were three or four relays.

We stood there in the cold. It was drizzling, and some sleet came down. A youngster about thirteen years of age stood by me, hatless and coatless. The sleet fell on his hair.

I had an uneasy feeling, because I felt sorry for the kid and the shivering men—and also because I was being eyed suspiciously. The man standing next to me commented on my weight—I am not quite as light as a feather—and wanted to know where I got the shave.

I pretended not to understand, but I was undoubtedly the fattest tramp in the crowd. Pat had already been a hobo over the country and so had Harry. I was jealous of their professional, and I thought supercilious, air. At any rate, we filed in and before we ever sat down we were given free lectures on our manners. Our host of the Sally said grace and thanked God for us, but while his head was bowed, he stole glances at us covertly. I ate a good meal, but I could not help thinking of the insanitary appearance of the kitchen, which was opposite me. The food was really bad. Besides, it was the first hobo meal that I actually had to eat. I had to eat it, in order to prove I was hungry. As soon as I got out I knew I was going to vomit.

However, I felt a high degree of morale. I had learned in the army that if you are sick or scared, you must not communicate it to the other soldiers. To vomit in a public street would have been to cause demoralization similar to a rout in battle; in my case, a chorus of vomiting. Hence, with my compatriots I rushed to the alley. In this secluded spot I fed the fish. I thought of our old college song, which we always sang when drinking:

Theta Nu Ep forever,
Theta Nu Epsilon,
Salvation Army,
Tra, la, la, la lum,
We'll variegate our festive state,
With bibulous buns and fun,
And observe the ancient customs
Of the Theta Nu Epsilion!

Pat jumped up and down and nearly laughed himself to death. Harry, however, as sympathetic soul, looked on and suddenly he joined in. It was a fine duet. I feel sure that Harry must have done this as a gesture of true brotherhood.

Then we went out to the jungle. Out there were camps spotted along the Buffalo Bayou and the tracks. Also moving or temporary groups. Some of the men were by the Bayou, and some on higher land, further off. Some under sheds by the tracks. Others had made dugouts in the banks immediately next to the water, and had put old pieces of tin above. A few had even chiseled blankets. The law of the jungle was that a man should cook his food and leave whatever can or receptacle he had, so that the next jungeleer could cook in it.

In a group under a shed there were about twenty-five men. One seemed to have pneumonia. I came up and insisted that the man go to the hospital, but all said that there was no use, that he had already been refused because he was not a resident of the town. I never found out whether this particular incident was true, but widely, all over the country, "transients" were denied hospitalization even in the gravest emergency cases.

Nearly all in the group were veterans, and most of them were talking about getting their bonus, so they could quit riding freight trains. I sat and listened to them talk, and I figured then, as I did later on after I met hundreds and even thousands of others, that they were not men with the slightest criminal intent, but good fellows and willing to work.

Helpless, broke, and not professional hobos, they had no views; neither had they resentment. They did not know why they were hungry and unemployed, and did not seem to care. They did not even discuss solving their problems; although some had a vague idea "the bonus" might help.

Going from group to group, then and later, I found one thing that was not known in the South, and is probably not known now: all race barriers were completely broken down. There was no more difference between a black Negro, than there was with a white graduate of Harvard, or a blue-eyed New Englander, eligible to be a Grand Sachem in the Sons of the American Revolution. In fact, they called each other sons—but of entirely different kinds. There was no race feeling, very little suspicion, and a considerable amount of good will.

That afternoon I went down by the Bayou and worked myself into the good graces of a group of five, two of whom were white and the other three Negroes. I insisted on having a place to sleep that night, but they said that they were very poor and didn't know what to do about it. I assured them that I was a good panhandler, and that I would go to town and beg anywhere from fifty cents to a dollar and a half. They regarded this as a boast, for the town was full of panhandlers and the police had recently made raids. However, they said that if I returned that night they would try to find a place for me, and possibly for Pat and Harry—should my panhandling turn out to be sufficient for a contribution to the General Fund. I told them that I might be very late. But as I already had plenty of money, I felt assured of a bed for the night—i.e., and hereinafter stated, as we lawyers and congressmen say, of a place on the ground upon which to lay my said body, in a dugout by Buffalo Bayou, being a part and parcel of that body of water and land, though several miles therefrom, where the brave Texans disposed of the Mexican tyrant, Santa Anna, a century before. Historic ground, indeed; once for heroes, now for bums.

So Pat, Harry and I went back to town again and tried to find a place to eat. We did not want to go to the Salvation Army again, so we went to the "Star of Hope" about seven o'clock.

There I saw, and later in many other cities, one of the worst and cruelest rackets that ever has been practiced on men. You enter these "missions," and then you listen to a long bull-dozing sermon and prayer. If you listen long enough, show the "proper attitude," and get converted, you will then get something to eat—ordinarily very little, sometimes only a sandwich and sorry coffee.

In the "Star of Hope" I listened to the most ignorant, brutal cowardly cur that ever delivered a "sermon" to me in my whole life. He bellowed like a bull, about how sin was the cause of it all. He was not quite thirty; a sick youngster yelling that they who sat before him, most of them physically weak from undernourishment and much older than he, were men who had gone back on Jesus, their mothers, and their homes. He assured us that if we were not sinners, we would not be in such shape. Return to Jesus, he said, and everything would work out.

The racket in this particular place was that when "enough" men had been converted, the whole crowd would then be taken back and be given something to eat. I was confidentially informed by the hobo next to me that he was only coming there because no other place was available that night. He had been thrown out of the Houston Transient Bureau, also the Salvation Army, and he had to eat this horrible grub and listen to this roaring bull and be converted again, because he couldn't get anything to eat any other way.

Pat and I secretly decided that Harry should be converted. We sat and listened. The big-mouthed fakir who styled himself preacher denounced the Catholics and every religion that he could think of, except the one he claimed as his own, although he had not yet denounced the Christian Scientists.

We then continued to insist that Harry go forth and be converted, but he said that he did not want to and would rather go somewhere else. This was our only chance for a hobo meal and to find out how things were done. We finally pushed Harry out into the aisle and he went up to be converted.

As soon as he got up in front of the rostrum, the preacher made poor Harry kneel down, held his hand on Harry's head, and made a sermon: Oh, God, forgive this poor sinner. Oh, God, forgive this boy for leaving his mother. Oh, God, let this boy go back to his mother. Save him, oh, God, save him.

Then he began to make another long sermon, which I could not see was relevant to Harry, about the evils of Christian Science, which he said "wasn't no religion a tall." However, when he called it the religion of the devil, I understood the relevancy of Christian Science as far as Harry was concerned.

Harry rose, as angry a person as I ever saw. He bellowed: "This here is an insult! My Ma was a Christian Scientist. Don't say nothing about my Ma's religion." It was rather tragic and brave.

About that time Pat and I got to laughing. Harry was enraged at the preacher. The rest of the sinners got to laughing and then someone mentioned the police. We broke for the doors as did several others. We ran through the alleys of Houston.

I was in something of a panic, because I did not want to get caught and written up in the newspapers. I am no shrinking violet in publicity, but I would surely have been accused of seeking it, and besided, it would have given too many people a good time.

My Ford was in a parking lot. We got in, and then beat it. The police had come soon after us, and no doubt if we had not been fleet of food was a car and some money, I might have been put in jail.

XXI. The Fires of Moloch - Jails, Jungles, Panhandlers, Beggars

2007-03-21T19:45:00.000-04:00

XXI

THE FIRES OF MOLOCH

Jails, Jungles, Panhandlers, Beggars

We hit for the edge of town and hid our car from our friends. Then we went out to the jungle, where the three Negroes and the two white men were located. I had to go by and get a couple of dollar bills changed into nickels and dimes so I could make a good pretence of being a panhandler. It wa then about eight-thirty or nine o'clock, and pitch dark.

Our friends were all there, and we had been so frightened by the "Star of Hope" incident that we hadn't gotten anything to eat. However, I informed my brethren that I had been able to chisel one dollar and forty-five cents, and that we would have enough money for breakfast. They all assured me that they had had a hard day, and that no one had any money, and the thing we ought to do was to go out and buy some supper.

I was very much disappointed because I wanted to have the experience of eating jungle chow. But they had been so used to living on jungle chow that they insisted on using my dollar and forty-five for us to go to a restaurant, and we could eat breakfast in camp in the morning. So we went to a cheap chink joint where we sat, separately, the colored men on one side, and the white on the other, eating hamburgers, plenty of onions, pickles, mustard, and coffee.

Undernourishment and malnutrition suffered by the transient population, unemployment and their children, will be indicated in bad health, insanity, and tuberculosis, for generations. It will be like the aftermath of a war, for only a small per cent of the disabled suffer from battle wounds. The depression has marred the race.

Later that night we returned to our dugout. Since I was a neophyte, they made me sleep on the ground. I did not do much sleeping. I do not know whether the Bayou rose or whether it went down, but all night long I trouble-slept with a tough dream every five minutes. The "stove" was made of a huge garbage can, and was in the middle of the dugout. Holes were punched in the side for air so the fire would burn. Hunks of coal picked up on the tracks, and pieces of wood and brush were thrown into it. Everyone else was soon snoring. The fire burned rather furtively, I thought.

I got up and sat close to the garbage can. For a long time I sat there. I kept looking at the embers through the holes in the can.

I dozed.

Suddenly the great god Baal rose screaming in the fire. Yea verily, sayeth the Lord, it is the abomination of Moab. . . . I looked closely at Baal, and he was no longer the bad devil I had seen in my Sunday School books; he was a great monster of steel . . . wheels grinding and roaring . . . and I will set my face against man, and yea verily, I will cut him off from his people; because he hath given his seed unto Moloch, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. . . . Moloch! That was it, civilization burning like the children of Israel in the fires of Moloch . . . rot . . . war . . . and the king commanded that the vessels of Baal be brought forth, and he burned them . . . and he brake down the house of the Sodomites . . . and yea, he brake down the images. . . . Now listen, Baal, you have on your head some dollar marks, too. . . . He clanged a great bell like a train, and blew a whistle. . . . So much like a train. . . . I am Machinery, I am Power unregulated, I am Money uncontrolled, I am War . . . I am Death. Stop! Stop! I yell. . . .

A train in the yards was screeching and clanging.

"Say, whasa matter wid you all? Go to bade. Is you crazy? You all is dreamin'. Go to bade."

I looked at the can, now full awake. I thought, awake.

Yes, the Fires of Moloch. Baal. Power. Machinery. Concentrated finance. Gold. Unemployment. Labor saving devices? Yes, for the banker and industrialist. They save the labor, man goes hungry. Heavy Industry.

War.

So I pulled my blanket closer, and lay down. I dozed again. I woke from my trouble-sleep, the ground was hard. Oh yes, when I was a soldier, I dug a little hole for my hip. Well, that is what I'll do. I fell into jitter-sleep again.

Devils rose from the Bayou, but I dismissed them. General Sam Houston, who had commanded the Armies of Texas—some six or seven hundred men, rose from the sea, and from the field of battle. "I'll tell you," he said, "this is hell. . . . Why. . . ." He spoke more but I could not hear him, a great sea was rising, and civilization was washing away. Red Fascists and Black Communists, white people, black people, all, were washing away. Noah's Ark came by with a smiling Rotarian at the wheel . . . a preacher and a false priest stood arguing, but afraid to preach the truth about conditions. . . . There was a Kiwanian, singing, almost braying a song, happy as he could be. . . . He had eyes, but he did not even know there was a flood. . . . The water lashed at his feet. . . .

Another whistle blew on the tracks, bells clanged.

The next morning I woke up, not liking my new adventure, and with no romantic or happy feeling. I had a real first-class headache. I wanted to go home to my wife and children.

I did not then, nor at any other time, endure any of the real hardships of the transient traveling hundreds of miles without food, sick without doctor's care, shivering in the cold, burning in the heat, begging, being cursed and beaten and kicked by the police. Even at that, it was tough. I came to realize it was not an "interesting" experience in the usual sense. What sickens me is that some men who rode the rods and have gotten jobs are now as reactionary as Du Ponts.

All of the next day we walked around Houston. There were a few cheap joints that we could enter (if we would spend a few nickels), but there were practically none that were low-down enough for hoboes to enter. We were not welcome anywhere. Somewhat horrifying was the fact that in practically no place could a hobo use the toilet. Even isolated gas stations would not let us use their toilets. Let somebody try going without toothbrush, toilet, razor, water or towel for a few days. It is terrible.

That night I turned the Ford over to Harry, telling him to meet us in Hearn, Texas. Pat and I mounted a freight train for the same destination. We arrived at Hearn in the early morning. The town watchman told us with the fake charitable air used by the "law" in addressing tramps that we could sleep at a place on a certain corner. After we got there I had a good mind to resign instantly and go back home to work.

All during the previous night, when I slept on the cold ground next to the Bayou, I had rolled and pitched and had slept only long enough to snatch those ugly dreams. Ahead of us now was the place that meant shelter from the bitter, freezing night. Out of the door as we opened it came a great stench of unclean human bodies. Inside the building were some forty-five fellow tramps, snorting and gasping and choking on the floor.

Some grumbled in their sleep. There were two gas stoves to heat the place, and it was airless and hot. Some one swore at us to shut the door. Although this was not my first venture, I was still an amateur hobo. In spite of my three days of steady employment in my new profession before I came to Hearn, I could stand it no longer, so we went away. We found Harry waiting for us at the gas station. He was asleep in the back of the car, all covered with blankets. We lit out for another town.

We finally arrived in Waco, and went to a tourist camp. It was hard to get a room, because by then we looked our parts. But eventually we got a big room, and about six o'clock in the morning we went to sleep. We slept all day and that night I went forth, determined to be a braver and more courageous hobo than I had been before. With this determination, and with my growing skill in the mysterious art, we left our car in a garage. Thenceforth we traveled the route of roads, freight trains, and whatever conveyance we could get. We slept in all kinds of joints which had inspiring names like the "Star of Hope" where Harry nearly got converted.

It was on this trip I began to accumulate certain facts concerning my own State and the South. For instance, I found that a very large proportion of those riding the freight trains were tenant farmers, share-croppers, and agricultural workers. The old-time tramp constituted only a negligible portion, say ten or fifteen per cent of the whole. People just didn't have any place to go. I traveled with one old man who had with him his two young sons. He lost his farm, became a tenant, then lost out completely. I did not have the heart to ask him if he had a wife and daughters.

In Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana the movement of transients was terrific. In cities like Dallas, or Fort Worth, as many as two thousand would pass in a day. New Orleans and Oklahoma City had more, I thought.

About one-fourth of this moving population were women or boys or girls. Some of the women were wholly unattached, and of the prostitute type; some of them very good mothers, whose husbands had left them and who were going back to the farm or to some distant point with their children; some complete families, with husband, wife and children. A large proportion of this one-fourth that I called women and children were unattached boys, who were as young as eleven or twelve years of age. Most of them, however, were from thirteen to twenty-one. At the time I estimated that there were some ten thousand boys on the loose in Texas, and since then I have found from social workers that the amount was probably much greater.

I made a report to the Governor, Ross Sterling of Texas, and in it I said:

"These boys, between eleven and nineteen, are living without parents or friends to guide them, and are spending their formative years in flophouses, jails, jungles, or any available shelter, begging, panhandling, and, incidentally, starving part of the time, living miserably on a wholly improper diet, with no sanitation, no medical attention, and being chased from place to place by the police in the various cities.

"White women and little girls and boys associate with and live on the same plane with large numbers of Negro men, who intermingle freely with the rest of the population."

There was no ill will between the Negroes and the Whites, men or women. They were thrown together by circumstances. People who did not ride the freight trains could not possibly understand this. Undoubtedly the same thing was happening in other Southern states. Could it be that the Scottsboro boys have been framed? The Supreme court seems to think they didn't get a fair trial. Well, the Court is very likely right.

In these groups were also people from every class: business men, salesmen, lawyers, doctors (most of whom hit the dope), and ex-convicts.

I suppose it is really very tragic, but the aristocrats of the road were the Federal ex-convicts. They knew everything, and they could somehow get something to eat through an organization. They would leave the groups and come back with a full stomach, a dollar or two, and maybe a new shirt or other garment. But they couldn't stay long in one place, for the police would put them in jail, charge or no charge.

I saw enough to make anyone sick for a long time. I saw one mother and father sleeping on wet ground, with a baby in between, wrapped in sacks. There was promiscuity, filth, degradation. In some jungles there would be as many as a hundred people in one group. Men and families slept in jails, hot railroad urinals, cellars, dugouts, tumble-down shacks.

Back in San Antonio, after our return home, I organized the transient relief stations, one in a big fine four-story building, which had been operated by Montgomery Ward. We had relief stations at all the freight depots and when anyone came in we gave him a very cheap meal of hot coffee, bread and beans, and sometimes Mulligan stew. I had freight train schedules made up and gave information as to the best travel routes, and the best place to board trains without getting in trouble.

XXII. Blackie Pulls a Knife - Colonies and Capitalism

2007-03-21T19:40:00.000-04:00

XXII

BLACKIE PULLS A KNIFE

Colonies and Capitalism

Around this time I had organized a colony. The Bonus Army had been run out of Washington, and some of the remnants came to San Antonio. The contingent of veterans and their families camped at the San Antonio Fair Grounds and were starving and sick.

I had a big idea of welding this group together, having them organize agriculturally and industrially, forming an economic unit that would be self-supporting. There were vacant farms and buildings everywhere.

On the edge of San Antonio was an industrial site belonging to the Humble Company, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil. I told them my plans and they leased me thirty-five acres with rail trackage—for a dollar a year. There was a running water well, garden and truck lands, and several buildings.

I also made arrangements with the railroad company to get free feight cars to be used for houses. Great railroad cranes mounted on wheels rolled down the tracks and lifted the freight cars in front like match boxes, and set them in place over on the property. We got forty or more of these freight cars, and by "chiseling" for necessary lumber, doors, and windows, the colony was physically completed. We had a population of 250 to 350.

The reason the colony got such a good start was that there was no such thing as relief at the beginning. No American citizen was then getting either employment, commoditites or money from the government. People by the tens of thousands were floating aimlessly and hopelessly over the country as I had seen with my own eyes on the hobo trips.

Here in the new colony some man, or a whole family, would come into camp and ask for something to eat and a place to stay. Quite often they would be alive with lice, and weak with fever and disease. None of them had good shoes, some were nearly barefooted, few had socks, and some stuffed cardboard in the holes of their soles. On arrival their feet would be cut up and stinking.

We would outfit these fellows, have them take three or four shower-baths, shave them in the community barber shop, tape their feet, and give them warm socks and new shoes. Accomodation would be given the women and children, too. Then we would give them plenty of good warm food. Strangely enough, within a few days they would be asking to help in the work. Most of the men worked hard, helping to put up the freight cars, converting them into houses, and making the colony livable.

Very soon we began to get our freight cars fixed with windows, with ventilation and heat. We put the kids in school. There was a swimming pool. The children began to gain weight. We had a common dining room for all those who were willing to eat in it, a battery of Army stoves, and a kitchen service equal to any in the country.

We had accumulated by that time several automobiles, some of which we got free and some of which cost us ten or fifteen dollars each. The automobiles were operating excellently, because we had very good mechanics. We organized blanket weavers, and they got started—almost—for a blanket was never completed. There was a mechanical repair department which traded its work, and in some instances got money for the work. Going to the farmers and different people on the basis of barter and exchange, we obtained foods, animals and surplus farm machinery.

So, having heard about the League for Industrial Democracy, I organized the group into the "Diga Colony"—Diga being an anagram of letters out of Agricultural and Industrial Democracy. I worked with an old friend, Charles Simmang, an engraver, and we designed a symbol in the shape of a cross. At the top of the cross there was a representation of the world showing the continents of North and South America, expressing a hope that we might have peace. In the middle there was the Alamo, a symbol of sacrifice. There was a cap of liberty, and also a wheel of industry, and a plowshare, on the basis of equality.

We had a clinic and a drug store. I made a deal with the doctors to deliver babies at ten dollars each. We also had a band, an orchestra, a shoe shop, and what-not. It was great stuff.

In the group were very few who had ever had any real responsibilities of citizenship. They had been suffering, hungry, without work, and were still suffering and without work. That seems to have been all they understood. As for any philosophy of government, they never heard of philosophy, and they thought government was something that sent you to war, made you pay taxes, or if it was a good one, paid bonuses and pensions.

Here, however, were a group of people that would starve to death unless they worked together; so I figured that they would eventually cooperate and make a success as a colony. The depression appeared to be endless, so I began to dicker for land, houses and equipment. I boiled over with enthusiasm, and set about to build a model state or colony or co-operative—whatever you cared to call it. Even if the experiment failed, I felt it would surely prove something. People were happier, getting something to eat, and working.

Let a man have plenty to eat, under healthful conditions, and he will work. In dealing intimately with the thousands of people of all races, I have met very few really lazy ones. The old theory of unregenerate masses of people who won't work and "don't want to live in good houses" is a cold-blooded lie.

I set up the organization in agricultural, business, and industrial sections on a collective basis. None had ever heard of socialism—except as some vague thing that was "bad." As for Communism, all they knew was that it was Russian, unpatriotic, and sinful. As for the word "collectivism," it was just a word that had gotten misplaced. In many contacts, I found that their idea of "capitalism" was a state of society in which you can be hungry for a while, but you will finally get a good job, and possibly have others that can either go hungry or work for you.

There were, however, practical considerations, and we had to get commodities and materials. So we continued to "chisel"—a process supposed to be different from begging, because you either take surplus stuff, or offer to work for it, and do the work if you must. By this process we got paint, torn-down buildings, metal lath; we went out to the farmers, did some of their work for them, and got part of their farm products.

"Colonies" were getting a lot of attention in those days. There were several in the United States which proved succesful. Co-operative movements were being established in large numbers, largely on a barter and exchange basis, with a varied assortment of ideas on money. Nearly all of this, however, was due to necessity, and the depression, for people are not going to live in a colony engaging in barter and exchange if they can live where they please and as they please, with money in their pockets.

I did not know it then, but this colony was headed for the rocks when it started. Not a man in the crowd understood co-operation for the common good.

This inability to work for the common good seemed strange to me. They had no idea of planning together, although they were willing to work individually.

With my idea fixed on making the colony a success, I would pounce on some fellow who was a colonist with a fair education. But he would either turn out an eccentric radical, or some brainless weak fellow with an inferiority complex. Usually, if he had any ability, he would stay long enough to get on his feet, and then would leave.

Our situation was definitely at variance with the economic order of the day. We were attempting to exist on barter and exchange, almost wholly without money, while people got money for working literally across the fence.

Money, I told them, was just a snare and a delusion; money, my friends, is merely a medium of exchange. But this made no impression whatever. What they wanted to see was the medium of exchange in the shape of clinking dollars and long green. My barter vaccination didn't take.

All of what I said was true. But money was then, and is now, the basis of American society and thinking. We think of a dollar bill as value, and not the exchange of labor for goods. In the colony there was an immediate clash of the system inside, and the money system outside.

Two economics cannot exist side by side within a given area, especially a money and a non-money one. Such things as "Epics" and the like are bound to be failures because they represent a patchwork economy, intended to be operated side by side with the capitalist economy, which is dominant. It has to be one or the other.

I bought all the books I could get on co-operative movements. Most of them were involved and dull, but I read on. Co-operatives in Denmark seemed successful. There co-operatives were organized for nearly everything—from bacon to banks, electricity, cold storage plants. So I proceeded to talk very loftily on the subject; I am afraid, however, I was about as big a bore as the reverend gentlemen who preached to me when I was an amateur bum. I regret none of this, because I found the experiment was worthwhile as a demonstration of certain failures, if nothing else. Moreover, it demonstrated certain things that must be done, and made a definite story of the development of the American mind, as against the European mind. As I said, the people were bored, and I think not at all interested in what I was saying. But times were hard and, since the people knew they would starve if they left, they stayed with the colony.

The time I nearly lost all caste was when I subscribed to various socialist and liberal papers, including The American Guardian, printed by my good friend, Oscar Ameringer, famous old Socialist. I put the papers out for the colonists to read.

None of them read the papers, but there were murmurings of my being too radical.

Of the colonists, ninety percent were of early American stock; hillbillies, farmers, tenants, average citizens in general. The other ten percent were mainly of Mexican extraction, for this was Texas.

But in spite of all drawbacks, it was a thriving colony. People began to get relatively prosperous. I had made a rule in the beginning that if anybody made any money they had to turn it into the common pot. A mechanic would work in town and make a few dollars, and he would bring it in. A veteran would get ten dollars compensation, and if he cared to stay in the colony he was required to turn that money in. There was no compulsion about staying in the colony, but if one stayed, there had to be a common income. As long as there was hardly any income, this worked well. It looked as though the colony was going to be a success, for we were working together well.

About that time, however, Hoover started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He was forced to make loans to states for relief. Also, the government began to construct certain buildings throughout the country which were supposed to bring "recovery." Congress saw to it that people got prevailing wages.

Our men began to get work on Army projects. One worked thirty hours in a week and got a dollar an hour. He had been the meekest, most respectable and hard-working man in the colony. He drew his thirty dollars. He arrived on the scene tight as a drum, swaggering down the street. He beat his wife, turned capitalist, and left. Tony, an ex-sailor, who was tattooed all over, went to town and made twelve dollars and forty cents. Tony began dressing up, made some more money, finally got a suit, and never turned in a penny. He also turned capitalist, and ran off with somebody's wife and three children, as ambitious a financier as I ever knew.

Castes began to form. Blackie, the head cook, and a good one—a half Indian from Oklahoma, was accused of being "part nigger." Although he did the work, his ancestral pride began to assert itself violently one morning and he ran his assistants out of the kitchen with a butcher knife. The desire for self-expression and the discarding of complexes became the order of the day. The big boss of the group, who had been working like the devil and keeping fairly good discipline, got a little proud himself, and I suspected him of doing a little hoarding. Yes, capitalism had come to the colony. I began to think the best thing to do was to get everybody a Wall Street Journal, and close up.

There were penny castes and dollar castes and race castes. The penny caste was composed of those who had less than a dollar and they were the advanced thinkers. Those who had over a dollar, but under five dollars, were the liberal Democrats, and were a little worried about radicalism. Those having over five dollars were the Tories and reactionaries, and looked with disdain on the others, whom they regarded as a proletarian mob.

The colony began to disintegrate rapidly.

I looked around them, and I thought all about it. Money was the only thing that they had on their minds. They were good people—about as good as any, although hungry and unfortunate, and the first look they had at money blew them as high as the sky.

All basic ideas as to soil, or primitive political or social organizations, are either absent or very faint in the average American mind. So rapid was our rise as a nation, so great our resources, and so illimitable our opportunities to waste and still have more, that no one ever took the trouble to think about social organization, of saving resources instead of dollars. So when the depression hit, the people simply didn't know what it was all about.

The study of colonies and utopias shows that they are predicated upon some special religious faith, or upon a group being so isolated from another society or economy that it is forced to work out its own salvation. During the time the Diga experiement was going on, I had to admit to myself that all colonies similarly situated had failed in the past, and if this one succeeded it would be an exception. The Mormons, who went to Utah, succeeded because they lived in an isolated part of the country, having control of a wide area in which the economy was practically autonomous. Also, there was no clash with the economic views and practices of the rest of the nation, and surplus commodities and products were sold and exchanged through the usual channels of banking and credits. Surviving, the Mormons were eventually absorbed into the life and economy of the whole nation. Then they gave up polygamy, which was the only practical difference. Their original success, however, was based on going into a pioneer country, which nobody else wanted, and being isolated from the rest of the nation. And they had the binding power of a single religion.

Diga colony was to me a great experience, because it involved doing a necessary work—and also was a laboratory that proved to my mind the utter futility of makeshift economics. When a system is dead, it can't be revived, any more than you can revive the whole body by trying to revive the ears, toes, or hands of a corpse. We have grown into a nation, and the condition of a laborer in Northampton, Massachusetts, has a direct effect on a worker in Tucamcari, New Mexico. There may be variations in some trades, professions, and races, but on the whole there must be certain minimum standards, and the economic system cannot be a hodge-podge of conflicting systems and plans.

You cannot save civilization in this country by speeches on thrift, and by having Epics, Townsend Plans, Father Coughlins, and wind-jammers like Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith—nor by listening to pious, or vulgar, or ostentatious "successful men" who accidentally "made" money and who know nothing about economics.

Finally, I had to admit complete failure. But I learned many important things about government and human nature.

All this time I had been collecting taxes and acting as an official of the county and the state. I had my eye a long way off, however. The Bootleg Decade had ended by then, Hoover had retreated to California, but there was talking to do. Some of it was high and some of it was low.

XXIII. Red Russian and Country Club Communists - Politics and the Same Old Stuff

2007-03-21T19:35:00.000-04:00

XXIII

RED RUSSIAN AND COUNTRY CLUB COMMUNISTS

Politics and the Same Old Stuff

Demagoging is nothing new; Demosthenes was a demagogue himself. But some have been cured; and this is the story of my own cure. I have read Hamlet, and remember where the Dane with the morbid Freudian complex says the players should not "split the ears of the groundlings" which will only pain sensible people or make "the judicious grieve." But in my campaign technique I owe no debt either to Hamlet or to Shakespeare. I reformed myself!

Out in Texas I used to be rated a pretty good stump speaker. I drew fair crowds, really good-sized ones, even when I was a raw recruit. But I was no rose-bud. When the man who is now "the gentleman from Texas" took the stump he was hell-bent for election, roaring down the alley, and the devil take the hindmost. I always ascribed evil motives to my opponents and enemies, and I could see a political sin ten miles off without field glasses. I would call an opponent a rascal and a thief, and ascribe to him all the crimes, misdemeanors and felonies in the judicial catalogue. Word would get around that Maury was going to skin somebody alive. In fact, I would see to it that word got around. The crowds would gather. I would take the hide off. Even in local campaigns the crowds would sometimes number two or three thousand; my good friends of the Citizens' League would stomp, roar and pitch.

I don't do that any more. And yet, I get elected. The thing that converted me, more than anything else, was the Steffler affair. Paul Steffler was my political enemy then, and he is my political enemy now, but by the time I had got through calling him names in a certain city campaign in San Antonio, I got religion, though it was only political religion. Ever since then I have left the demagoguery to others—at least I never start it myself.

Steffler was Street Commissioner in San Antonio. He was running for re-election to that office, and I was a speaker on the other side. I suspected that all was not well with the handling of the city's funds, and after a lot of verbal scalping, my colleagues and I forced an audit of the books. Discrepancies were found, and I was absolutely convinced it was a clear case of thievery. In Steffler's department there was a large sum unaccounted for, or not properly receipted—as much as fifty or seventy-five thousand dollars. It concerned a sewer line. That gave me the irresistible opportunity of crying out that there was indeed a bad odor in the city sewer system. Moreover, I had been reading about the sewer scandals of the Borough of Queens in New York, and I became a ruthless zealot for reform.

I was scheduled to give a speech on the evening of the day when that audit came out. I had no time for more than a cursory study of the facts. But with undiminished zeal, I got up before a large crowd and accused Paul of all manner of crookedness. I harangued about the large apartment house he had built—"with the taxpayers' money." I undertook to prove—and didn't fall far short of it—that he was a rascal and a thief.

The crowd ate it up. But Steffler, backed by a strong political machine, won his election just the same.

About two months after this, my statements began to eat on my conscience. I finally came to the conclusion that the procedure of the city was entirely innocent and that it was merely a case of slipshod books. I realized that out of several million dollars of money expended some fifty thousand dollars had not been properly authenticated. But there was no evidence of felony and no proof of graft. Padding the payrolls and stealing the people's money had not been practiced; in other words, I had made a story which though technically true was really false. It kept eating and eating on me, so finally I went to see the man I had blackened.

I told him that I was very sorry, and I aplogized. Then I learned some things that made me suffer in my turn. He told me that his wife had suffered a great deal over it, and that my attack had done his family injury. I had gone there in a mood of penitence, but I went away more troubled than before. I made up my mind then that I was going to abandon tar-brush methods forever.

I went home and sat myself down in a chair. Then I put myself way over in a corner and argued with myself. I indulged in a severe course of critical self-examination. I called myself a good demagogue and a slanderer. After I had given myself a good bawling out, I let the Maury over in the corner have a chance to defend himself. He had no defence. So then and there I agreed I would indulge in no more demagoguery and nor more accusations unless I was sure of my facts.

My campaign methods changed. And the crowds reacted. After I began to make speeches about the tariff, world trade, the Constitution, throwing in a good ballast of facts, crowds dropped off from a thousand or two, to a hundred or two. Everybody said that there was something the matter with me. But the next time I ran for office, although many of my friends were worried about the small crowds at the meetings, there was nothing wrong with the crowds at the polls, and I got a bigger majority than ever before.

Since that time I have never tried to get big crowds. After I came to Congress I saw Huey Long getting huge audiences all over the country, but I was acquainted with Huey and I knew it didn't mean anything. And long before the national election in 1936 I knew that old Doctor Townsend and Father Coughlin really had no substantial influence with the people because they were merely eccentrics or clowns, and though the people would come out and make a great lot of noise listening to them, this kind of emotionalism was only temporary and as unstable as the crazy panaceas that aroused it.

I have found that you can shock the people with the truth, and they can take it. By this I do not mean to tell a lady voter that her baby is pie-faced, and a nuisance. That is neither good manners nor sensible.

But you can tell them that a certain petition is pie-faced and a nuisance, if you give them a rational explanation. And no politician need be frightened by petitions. You can get a wagon load, and upon investigation you can find that thousands signed without reading, or signed just to get rid of the promoter. "Prominent citizens" often sign petitions to get the worst criminals out of jail, and then write you confidentially not to pay any attention to their signatures. The soundest and most conservative citizen will also sign petitions showing the most crack-pot ideas.

For instance, take the Townsend craze. I got thousands and thousands of letters and petitions. When I went back to Texas for the campaign, I made a simple explanation that the plan was suicidal, and I gave my reasons. I lost no votes. Sometimes big corporations rib their employees and friends to write letters against progressive measures such as the Social Security Act, the TVA and the Holding Company bill. This is what the politicians call "inspired stuff," and I don't swallow it.

If you give reasons to your people, they will generally stand by you, though sometimes they do not. Another thing is that our American wants you to talk in plain language. He has a horror of European "isms"—but TVA is all right, because it works.

Nor does he want to take political medicine in one big dose. He will not gulp down the whole of any philosophy. His idea of independence forbids him following any program blindly, and he wants to do as we do in Congress—"reserve the right to object."

Even on the Constitution you can tell the people the truth. For a hundred and fifty years they have been misled on the subject. But if you hammer hard enough, they will kick over all the propaganda and lies that have been told them by the press which is prostitute, and lawyers that are kept.

I would not have anyone believe, however, that the people don't get off the track once in a while. Neither would I have anyone believe that I live in any rarefied atmosphere, and wholly abstain from being a first-class politician when I can. I am not beyond using sarcasm, ridicule, spectacular language, and sometimes working up a little hate. However, I do try to start out as a gentleman, and never use the rough and tumble stuff until my opponent starts something.

One time, running for Congress, I delivered radio talks on the tariff, which is about the most important subject for Texas; I spoke on our trade relations with Mexico, and kept to the field of economics, with language which had a touch of the University. At the same time my opponent was spending all of his time saying that I was a Communist because I belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union. I then delivered a dissertation on freedom of thought, conscience and religion: but the old communist gag went on.

I finally got tired of it. About that time a friend of mine, a gentleman who had two notches on his gun, came to me and told me quite indignantly that he had been insulted by my opponent. He said this opponent of mine had tried to buy his vote by offering him a bottle of beer at a cock fight on Sunday. the Two-Notch Man was horrified.

So I got up on the stump and said my most worthy opponent was two-faced and double-dealing. "Upon Sunday morning," I said, "with reverend tread and pious mug, diked out in whitewash tie and the habiliments of the elder, he pompously enters the church, and sits on the front row. But, sir, what else does he do? That afternoon, in flashy suit and familiar smile, he swaggers (which, my fellow citizens, is unnatural to him, and all a pose) into where? Where, my fellow citizens? (Pause.) Into a cock fight, held in violation of the law, against the peace and dignity of the mighty state of Texas.

"And then he attempts to purchase the vote of a murderer with a bottle of beer!"

The rest of my language was quite lurid and unrestrained. It cannot be said that this was very lofty campaigning. But enough is enough, and no man who goes into politics can sit on Mount Olympus, talking sweet philosophy, and get elected.

The truth is, what I did was not in malice. Everyone enjoyed it. I won, too.

The last time I ran, in 1936, it was the same old stuff, the same old accusations, the same old lies. But it was worse, being so very old, and so very tiresome. My opponent was a very nice fellow and a schoolmate, named Seeligson. He was a first cousin to John Dos Passos. But he and his co-spielers let themselves in for a lot of talk about the flag being torn down, and more stupidity about the Constitution. I was in no danger of losing, but my friends all wanted me to answer, so I gave them what they wanted.

One night I pictured my opponent as a "Country Club Communist." I said that a country club communist was one that sits on the front porch of the country club, speaks loftily of the common people, gets all the advantages of monopoly and communism, and gives people none. Mr. John Dos Passos, his first cousin, was a bona fide, Red Russian Communist, I said, intent on overthrowing capitalism; but there was a difference between the two: Dos Passos had brains.

Then I accused my opponent of being a political Little Lord Fauntleroy, and while speaking I mixed Faunleroy with Little Boy Blue, and pictured him as one dressed in blue silk, ribbon on knee and frills around his lordly collar. I said he would be a society congressman, flying up to Wilmington in his big aeroplane to be entertained by the Du Ponts.

That night my opponent's camp was in consternation. They decided that he should enter the lists as a demagogue. He did. He got personal in what he thought would be a devastating attack on my ownership of property. He accused me of having paid for my house, while he was so poor that he had not been able to pay for his. He went on to accuse me of living in a brick house.

Thus the issue of the campaign came to be whether Maverick lived in a brick house or not. Some of my supporters were worried. They thought I was in a bad hole—convicted of being rich, for to live in a house of brick, or at least a decent one, is admittedly something of a sin. But I told them General Sam Houston never revealed his plans of battle until the last moment, and that night I would make a spectacular speech, destroying my opponent.

Since I have been a Congressman, I have seen many meetings reported. So I shall tell you the story just as it happened, as a respectable court reporter would tell it. Here goes:

Scene: San Pedro Springs.

Platform properly decorated. Flags. Crowd. Children playing under trees. A microphone.

Mr. Maverick.

"Friends and Fellow Americans. . . . My friends, I have had a serious and grave charge made against me. I am accused of being a communist. That is not all. My opponent says I live in a brick house. (Pause.) So what? (Pause by the people, slight laughter.) Who in this crowd would refuse to live in a brick house? (Stony silence.) He who would not live in a brick house, send his children to school, educate them and have a high standard of living, let him stand up. (Pause by Maverick. No one rises.) Do you agree that I can live in a brick house? All those that agree say aye. (Chorus of loud ayes.)

"All right, my fellow citizens, I shall tell you a great secret. It is one of the secrets that Statesmen must tell their people. The issue is, does Maverick live in a brick house? That is the issue red-blooded Americans want to know. Now I shall let you in on a secret. (Long pause.)

"I do not even live in a brick house! My house is of plaster—and plaster is of dirt, or earth, and from earth we come and to earth we go! (Incredulous laughter, shouts of Aw! as!)

"Now, my fellow Americans, let us go into this matter. My statisticians and my great staff of brain-trusters have made a thorough study. My opponent lives three blocks from my house, much nearer the country club of which he is the revered vice-president, and in which great humanitarian institution I hope he will be appointed president, where he can get his promotion, so that I may return to Congress. (Mock interest shown by the audience.) But my statisticians have told me, fellow citizens, that my opponent has passed my house 7,862 times in the ten years he has lived near me. Every day as he passes my house (aside: for indeed it is a house where a sinner lives, since he aspires for office and he lives in a brick house) (laughter) he looks out. He looks at the plaster. He cranes his neck, like this. (Maverick indicates method.) And when he looks at the plaster, he sees brick, red brick, I presume.

"Now, my fellow citizens, I say to you that a man who has no better eyes than that, or that isn't smart enough to tell plaster from brick, hasn't got sense enough to go to Congress. He might do the same in Congress—(Applause in extenseo, or possibly cum laude.) Now he says he didn't pay for his poor humble peasant cottage. But, my fellow citizens, he paid for that airplane of his (boos for my opponent); he has his ranch paid for; his stocks and bonds (groans) (groans in extenso).

"Yes, my fellow citizens, I am criticised because I have a house which I have paid for. Of course I have paid for it. It is the proper thing to do. Every American should have a house and he should pay for it if he can. I also pay my butcher, my baker, and if I had a candle-stick maker I would pay him also. But I do pay my electric light bill in lieu of my candle-stick makers bill, and the light costs twice as much as it should, and yet, like you, I pay for my electricity. That is the reason that I stand well in this community. I pay my bills. Let any of my countryment among you raise his hand who can say I owe any man a dime." (Marked attention by the audience.) (Extended applause.)

Now, my gentle reader, you may say with good reason, and impeccable logic, that all this is undignified, and quite demagogic. For the sake of modern politics, I am going to argue this out.

As to dignity, I wonder if the rumble-mouth politicians of the past, wooly-hatted and frock-coated, perspiring and redundant, were really any more dignified than those of today. In Congress now, not one percent of its members dress as the politicians of old. Most of them are neat-looking fellows and cannot be distinguished from any other citizen walking down the street. Many still have the mental hangover of old-time politics, but these are on the way out.

For politics is now a cold, fast game to the man who is in it. Members of the old "dignified" school used to make the same speech over and over again; a copy was given the newspapers; it was printed in one paper, and possibly copied by others days and weeks later.

But now the press is more alert and the press associations have a nation-wide coverage. You can make a speech or issue a statement at three in the afternoon; it will be in all the night editions within two or three hours. The very next morning's mail seems to indicate that people sat up during the night writing letters, and went to the post office to catch the last train, to be the first to call you a Fascist, Communist, demagogue or statesman, as it touches their prejudices.

Moreover, the modern politician must work. He is tied to his political lathe, being messenger boy and statesman, letter writer and business respresentative, and a jack-of-all-trades. It takes all of his time, energy and intelligence to keep his head above water.

All of our present-day politicians have a better sense of humor; at least they express it more openly. I can remember the windjamming politicians of old roaring to the clouds about absolutely nothing. As to the direct charge that the kind of speech I made is undignified or silly, my only answer is that there is no excuse in boring the public with long and unnecessary denials simply because your opponent is a bore and makes statements which are not true. It is better to jump on him, and let him do the running.

As for being demagogic—and I am still talking about my Little-Lord-Fauntleroy-does-Maverick-live-in-a-brick-house-speech—my attitude might be so interpreted, but it is not laborious, nor the tedious answer of the professors. The politician of today cannot afford to be a bore, and by the same token he cannot afford to affect the incomprehensible jargon of the professor.

Modern politics demands the man who can think on his feet like a prizefighter, and who can give and take hard punches. The old-timer is as definitely out as the old Shakespearean actor. For the audience is no longer half slave and half Rube, and they will accept neither the old-time actor nor the new-time professor.

Modern American politics, however, have a background thrilling and brave. We have probably read too much of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the sayings of some of our politicians. But we do not know enough of the real struggles of our own people, so that we may translate all this into a way of living today. Everybody knows that Patrick Henry said "Give me Liberty or give me Death," but few know he went up and down the State of Virginia, saying "He is the greatest patriot who stops the most gullies."

It is better that we go into the gullies and ground and see what we have there.

XXIV. The Bones of General Anderson - Fur Traders, Cowpens, Textile Factories

2007-03-19T22:11:00.000-04:00

Underwood and Underwood/Time Life Pictures

XXIV

THE BONES OF GENERAL ANDERSON

Fur Traders, Cowpens, Textile Factories

Speaking of gullies, let old General Bob Anderson, great-great-grandfather, tell a tale from his grave in South Carolina. Somewhat lonely lie the bones of this fellow they called "Old Thunder Gusty," who rose from sergeant to general, who fought the Cherokees, served in the House of Burgesses and then the Legislature, and who farmed the land.

The weary old soldier was buried in a field one day, and for all anybody knows, what there is of him has washed down to the sea. The slashing and the tearing of the land thereabouts is terrific. The elements of nature have fought around his grave, and everywhere the hand of man has added to the destruction of the land.

From the time he stole his bride and ran away from the land of the Lewises in Virginia, it was fight, fight, fight, whether it was the Indians, the British, or the raw elements of nature. He had no time to play the demagogue, for life was too hard and fast.

But, buried as a gentleman and prosperous merchant should be, are the bones of Sam Maverick, [footnote: Great-grandfather.] a few short miles away. A fine marble shaft glitters in the sun. His bones lie still and peaceful, though some say not, just before he died in 1852 he wrote to his son Samuel in the far-off and mighty Texas, warning him that no war between the states should be tolerated, saying that if such a war came, "ships would rot at anchor, and grass grow in the streets of Charleston." But he must surely have died in peace, for his death came long before the ships rotted and the grass grew in the streets of Charleston.

On the hill across from the private cemetery of the Mavericks near Pendleton, South Carolina, is their great mansion. It is in rack and ruin. The old driveway leading up to the house from the road, which once had fine trees on both sides, is a great, bare, hideous gully. And no one can travel there, for in rain time raging torrents of blood-red clay pour down it. Over the once fertile lands of the Mavericks are gullies and more gullies, and the land is washed slick and shiny. It is practically all worthless and abandoned.

I have heard much of my ancestors and have kept my head in a history book since I learned to read. But nowhere have I ever read a history as eloquent as the Anderson County gullies. Now the soil is a front fact of our lives—so when I started to write this book I knew that I wanted to write something about the conservation of it. I knew the preservation of our land was essential to any story of civilization.

So, traveling everywhere in our country, reading and studying, I obtained the data for a story of soil conservation. I read all their books, and finally I sat down and wrote my soil chapters.

But they were terrible. They sounded like a series of lectures to school children. I dropped the idea. Then the bones of Robert Anderson, his life, and what has happened over in South Carolina intrigued me. There was my story, the waste of our lands—and in his story I found everything that I had written in my other chapters.

In Anderson County, which is named after old General Bob, is now located one of America's great soil conservation projects.

There also, picking up the strings of a dead civilization, is an increasing industrial slavery in the textile mills, built on a dying agriculture. Attempting to save what is left of this dying agriculture is a project of the Resettlement Administration. There also is Clemson College, established by the son-in-law of John C. Calhoun, the nullifier.

Over these lands I have ridden back and forth and have seen the history of America in old tombstones and wasted hillsides. There I have gone with sentimental thoughts and some historical knowledge of the district. It is a perfect example of the dying South, although it is one of the very best counties in the whole region.

One shivery, drizzly day I drove down the road from the little town of Pendleton, to the Maverick house. The visit to the town had been a little shocking, for in all my grandfather's books and memoirs the story is told of the two fine hotels, the schools, and the beautiful homes in the town. I had forgotten this was a hundred years ago. There was no hotel or restaurant, and no sign of wealth there now. Passing out of the town, I drove along a country road and to the Maverick house.

I could not see it plainly, but it looked fine and austere in the sky. I thought of others—Monticello, the Hermitage, Mount Vernon. I drove up to the natural road leading to the house; but it was a great malicious gully, and impassible. I found sideroads leading to the back of the house.

Slithering up a back road, I reached the house. The picture I had was not this. Gone were the vineyards, the well cultivated fields, the barns, the slave quarters, the gardens.

I knocked at the door. A great good-natured American opened the door and let me in. He had a large family, and they all sat about one big room, with a fire burning.

He showed me the house. The oak and magnolia parquet flooring is gone, but the heavy pine sub-floors are there. I was astonished. What happened? I said. Burned for firewood, he answered. The marble on the mantels, imported from Italy. Stolen. All bare and torn.

Then I saw that all of my ideas of old houses were wrong. I had based my opinions on Mount Vernon and others, and I now realized that they had been "maintained," generally by patriotic societies and agencies of the Government. They are the ones visited by Americans. But there are thousands and thousands that Americans never see, the symbols of a broken country, and a land where conditions have gone from bad to worse. Here I saw, and it knifed into my heart, the True South.

Finally, in the top room I saw a loom, spinning wheel, and the old equipment which once made the people self-sufficient. Like a tourist lost with the hillbillies, I rushed questions at him of old customs.

By asking questions about the spinning wheel, I learned other things. "My wife use that damned spinning wheel? Hell, no! She don't know nothing about it. It was great-grandma or maybe grandma, who last used it regular. We just keep it around."

Indeed, manufacturing came in just before the Civil War. Cotton was sold, but clothing was bought mainly from England and Germany. So, my host blithely informed me, they had forgotten all that foolishness about weaving and spinning and such like. But he did not realize that he and his people had learned nothing else, had lost whatever primitive virtues they had, and were now incapacitated and dependent.

I found that he was a caretaker. Some landlord owned the property. This man had inherited a little farm. He lost it, as did many others. He became a tenant, a share-cropper. He and his family had gone from bad to worse. Here he was living broke and poverty-stricken on the old ancestral estate of the Mavericks.

I talked to him about the soil. "The land is all wore out," he said. "You farm and grow crops and the yield is nothing to what it used to be. But even if you grow something, you can't sell it. There is no market."

He was enthusiastic about the work of the Soil Conservation Service. "But I don't see how I can get started farming; it looks mighty like I can't do it all by myself, and the land is all washing away." He seemed to have no idea as to what he could do to get out of the hole. Which means that agriculture everywhere needs planning and leadership, and needs them badly.

The caretaker of Maverick house was a fair example of the soil itself. For he and his family represented about the limit of poverty. In the beginning, people like him had from ten to forty acres, but were self-sufficing, and got along. They had corn, wheat, and oats. They had hogs and cattle and horses. In addition, there was cotton for the cash crop, although it was of more or less secondary importance until after the Civil War. Now such people have nothing; have lost their independence and know nothing.

Since I was there, I am told, the land with the great house has been sold for less than $2,000. I have no figures; but surely the land and the house were originally worth from ten to fifty times as much. The exact amount does not matter, because of one thing we are certain; it is worth nothing in comparison to what it was. What I saw, and what has happened there, can be duplicated anywhere in the Piedmont county along the Eastern seaboard.

It is a brave story of early colonial pioneers. Here, before the Revolution, came the early English traders. They killed off the fur-bearing animals, and then they took to trading in cattle.

They started little "cowpens" in upper South Carolina where the cattle were rounded up and then shipped to England and other European countries. That is how the Battle of "Cowpens" got its name, and how good old General Bob Anderson, then a captain, by commanding with dash and courage a company against the British, added to his fame.

The change from the fur-traders to the cattle traders had been complete in the economy of the region. Around the cowpens were soon built permanent habitations.

Agriculture—and with it, soil erosion, waste of natural resources, had begun.

This was the land mainly of the Cherokees, but of other tribes as well. It was one great primeval forest. In these uplands were giant oaks, pines and chestnuts. The white man started his relentless march long before the Revolution. Without title or color of title from either the Indians or the King of England, he hacked his way into these lands of the Cherokees. There were some dense forests, but most of the country was open. Between the trees the ground was covered with wild cane and pea vines.

The litter of the forest lay over the land, and the top soil was deep and loamy. There is nowhere any record of the red clay subsoil showing in those days, except along the most traveled trails of the Indians which had been used for centuries. This land was like millions and millions of acres all over America.

Around the cowpens grew little villages. Near these little villages, the people cultivated corn and small grains. More and more settlers came. They took the best level bottom lands first. This was natural, because they were near water, and had the best yield of corn. Later, people were forced to locate their farms on the hillsides. Erosion on these farms began cutting the good soil loose, as well as unproductive silts and grimy gravel. All of this washed down, spilling on the lands below.

But the trouble was, and one can see all this easily now, as plowing increased the washing increased, filling up the bottoms, exhausting the lands above, covering the lands below, and choking the streams. The result was a general destruction.

As evidence of this, in the lands of the Mavericks and the Andersons, the Calhouns, Pickenses and Pickneys, everywhere one sees washing soil, red and gory. Long ago, through the fine forests and down in the bottoms ran clear streams, full of fish. Today the streams resemble sickly dishwater, and most of the fish are dead.

In the middle of this district was the city of Pendleton. Shortly after the Revolution it grew to be a small edition of Charleston. The rich coast planters and shippers of cotton maintained summer homes there, and some of them remained to live permanently. Among those was Sam Maverick. Bob Anderson had moved there with his new bride several years before the Revolution. The region became the center of culture and aristocracy for the up country.

A farmer's society was organized in 1815. Its members knew nothing of the chemistry of the soil, but they knew the land was going to pieces. In order to stop the soil depletion, they urged the raising of livestock, to put the land back into grass and trees so it would not all be destroyed by plowing. Also, they advocated that plowing be done around the hill to prevent erosion—on contours—instead of up and down, a practice which let the soil wash away.

As far back as 1818 the following warning was issued throughout the district:

"This system, if it may be so called, of perpetual exhaustion, has impoverished our lands to an alarming degree, and if pursued for half a century more, would make this interesting portion of the state a perfect desert—exhibiting a naked barren surface, spotted here and there by a few patches of broom-straw, or starved shrubbery, and ruined from future recovery by deep-washed gullies, the permanent and accusing witnesses of our apathy and indolence."

And I saw the havok prophesied in 1818 with my own eyes. I saw the "naked barren surface," cut, as the writer suggested by "deep-washed gullies." Here and there were men doping the land with expensive fertilizer. Here many thousands of acres have been taken back by the Resettlement, of whose boss I shall tell a tale, and whose work I shall describe a little later.

Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin in 1793. With it slavery began to be profitable again. With it came destruction of the land, and the conditions in 1818 just described were a result of it. Slave labor ruined the land, and destroyed fair competition and the small farmer. Farms thus tended to become larger, and the records show that even in the thirties and forties, Sam Maverick owned in that country alone some sixteen thousand acres. The condition of the small white owner, although he still owned from twenty to forty acres, was growing rapidly worse.

So Sam Maverick and the big plantation owners prospered, but the little farmers did not. The big plantation owners continued to use slaves, and the small farmers continued to lose their farms—the sheriffs were selling them right and left. After Sam Maverick departed this life, his estate passed to a daughter. His children moved away, and for a while the land and the home were managed from a distance. Subdivided shortly after the Civil War, the property was sold in pieces. Farming operations had stopped, and the land was growing back into woods. But after the war the land was worked to the limit for cotton.

This process went on until the World War, after which came a new army of boll weevils, the inflation period, the depression, and the economic collapse of the nation.

And now around three-fourths of the surrounding population are share-croppers and tenants. Land ownership and personal land conservation of interested owners is in a bad way, for no share-cropper can do anything but work his land to death for what he can get out of it.

The condition of a majority of these share-croppers, the descendants of the white pioneers who, with evangelical fire, wrested the land from the Cherokees a century and a half ago, is as bad as the condition of the black slaves of seventy-five years ago. I am told by professors of agriculture in the State that many of the share-croppers have less than the slave-owners gave their slaves.

Here around Anderson are twenty-one cotton mills and plants. White labor is, of course, dirt cheap. Negro labor is cheaper, but, as in the rest of the South, it is not used in the mills. There are not so many Negroes, but their condition is as bad as anywhere else.

Some of the cotton mills are around Honea Path. Here, to this beautiful little place, historic and romantic, have come many of these starving people from their little farms on the wasted hillsides. Here their ancestors did battle with the Red Men, and the ground was soaked with the blood of the savages. From all these districts, the Indians were exterminated. And in their little churches the settlers prayed, singing and asking fervently, "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and answering in chorus, "Yes, I am washed, I am washed in the blood of the Lamb."

One Sunday in 1934 the people, singing and praying fervently as their ancestors did, asked and answered the question. But this day the question had additional meaning, for they were uneasy, and a strike was in effect for just a little more money.

Out of the church came the people. A few days later the guns of "The Law" barked; six white textile workers dropped. They had hoped to organize. So they were killed. Someone said they were Reds, God damn'em, and it served them right.

The blood of the Cherokees has washed away. But the blood of the six who were killed will not wash. As the sticky red clay curdles down the eroded gullies of South Carolina, some say it is human blood, blood of white men who were killed by their own white bosses. And still thereabouts, the people pray to a gentle Savior, and they answer that they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Such, then, is Anderson County in the Year of Our Lord, 1937. The people are at the end of their land rope, and know it. They are at the beginning of another industrial era for all men, with their new factories, just as they were in 1793 with Eli Whitney and his cotton gin.

In this old slave country, in which lived John C. Calhoun, who denounced the "Free Soilers" and abolitionists of a century ago, are the new "Free Soldiers" in the sense that they want the land to be saved, and saved for them. Others, also, who have been forced into the little towns let burn in their hearts the Killing of the Six at Honea Path, and say such things must never happen again.

This, indeed, is the land in which Bob Anderson and the white farmers fought that they might have political liberty, written in noble phrases by Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence. The story is a stirring part in the world's history of liberty, and few American's know of one of the tragic omissions concerning it, which, together with the blunder of a judge, led to an awful human catastrophe.

XXV. Po' White Trash and War - Forgotten Clause of Declaration

2007-03-19T22:10:00.002-04:00

XXV

PO' WHITE TRASH AND WAR

Forgotten Clause of Declaration

One day when I was about seven, I visited Monticello with my Maury cousins from Charlottesville. We really wanted to see the home of "Mr. Jefferson," as he was called by all his neighbors in Albermarle Country, Virginia.

When we got back to Piedmont, Grandpa told us about the man that lived there. He said Mr. Jefferson had built the University, and believed everybody ought to have an education if they had any sense, and were willing to work for it. He told us, too, that Mr. Jefferson said people should have any religious belief they chose, or none at all, as suited them best; and that everyone should be allowed to say or write as much as they pleased, even if it was openly against the government. That, my Grandfather said, was why we had a good country.

My feeling for Jefferson had always been personal because he had studied at Reverend Maury's [The Mr. Maury already mentioned in the "Two-Penny" case.] school. Jefferson had been a kind neighbor and friend to the Maurys from the time he was twelve until the day he died. But he was not any special friend to the Maurys; he was a friend to every man.

In Reverend Maury's school, Jefferson was an earnest youngster, already full of ideals. At fourteen, Jefferson had never seen a town or village of over twenty houses. But his imagination was great, and he said he wanted to go to a college, where he could "learn something of mathematics" and "could attain more universal acquaintance." [Life of Jefferson, Parton.]

As years came upon him and he had laid the foundation for making America great, he spent many of his last days writing to his old friends. He never forgot his old friends. He wrote to James Maury in England, whom he had known nearly three-quarters of a century before at the Maury School. Maury had apparently become an English citizen, for Jefferson said:

"Today we are at peace; tomorrow, war. The curtain of separation is drawing between us, and probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not both of us, will be at rest with our fathers. . . . Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful to one another?"

Closing the long letter to James Maury, he said: "The hand of age is upon me. All my old friends are nearly gone."

But his sense of humor, as he and his old friend were ageing, flashed back to him, and he concluded: "I think the old hulk in which you are, is near her wreck, and that like a prudent rat, you should escape in time." [Writings of Jefferson, Volume XIII.]

A few years later, on the Fourth day of a bright July, there in Albermarle, Jefferson was dying. He was old and feeble, his time had come, he knew it, and was ready. Troubled sleep came to him. . . . Slavery! That phrase! If only I could have forced the adoption of my clause condemning it! . . . Ah, well, the nation is great. . . . In the shadows, his old secretary, Merriwether Lewis, was smiling. . . . Mr. Jefferson looked at him. "How would you and Clarke like. . . . ." "Ah, Mr. Jefferson," replied Lewis, "I will go." . . . His friend, Mr. Madison, much younger then, to France . . . the Louisiana Purchase. . . . Mr. Jefferson laughed. The traitors of the Hartford Convention! . . . But Louisiana is ours. . . . Empire, land, for the people! . . . Then through his mind ran the strophic phrases of the Declaration of Independence. . . . Drums! he cried out, for the British were coming: the Committee of Safety, it must be warned! It was still outside. . . . America was free . . . and so Jefferson, kind and brave, joined the immortals.

This was the kind of sentimental fellow who wrote the Declaration of Independence. And I can remember, when a little boy, having an old blind professor from the University tell of the Declaration. So I have regarded it as a personal contract with me, and the rest of the people in the country.

About a dozen years ago I visited Washington, long before I thought of politics or of being a Congressman. I visited the Library of Congress just to see the Declaration of Independence. Millions have seen it. It is in a glass case, on display, and guards watch it. People file by, glancing at it, and walk briskly on.

I made what was a great discovery to me, although scholars already knew it. I looked at the script and it seemed too regular. I thought surely that the one on display was a copy, and not the original. I told the guards, who did not know what I was talking about, and thought I was cracked.

So I kept asking, until I was shown what is really the original; that is, the original sheets of Jefferson. I had asked one librarian after another, and finally got to see the original document. It is held in a safe, and only a few hundred Americans, probably far less than a thousand, have ever seen it.

In the original, Jefferson had denounced the King and British Government concerning slavery and the slave trade.

The eliminated phrase is one of the most important in history. For Jefferson always hated slavery . . . and always said so. The phrase had been knocked out by pressure groups.

I realize it is futile to speak of what might have been. But there is no doubt that our country's whole course would have been different had Jefferson's phrase denouncing the slave trade been allowed to stand.

The tragic cost in blood and money and the aftermath of twisted ideas of the Civil War could have been prevented. Its study is valuable only that we may not commit the same errors today. For the industrialists of today are no more enlightened, apparently, than were the slave owners and slave shippers of yesterday.

And this dirty trick played on the nation I have always suspected was perpetrated by John Adams, the second President, but I have not been able to substantiate this. In fact, the records show that the proposition was struck out at the request of the delegates of South Carolina and Georgia.

But Adams represented the slave-shipping class, the group that were making money out of selling slaves to the South. People from the shipping areas denounced slavery as the National Manufactuers' Association denounces sweat shops—but really did nothing about slavery and miserable conditions as long as there was no money in it. Further, since politics was the same then as now, I have an idea that John Adams at least did not protest too much the removal of the anti-slavery clause.

Later, Adams did protest his virtue too much. In a letter to Timothy Pickering, dated August 6, 1822, speaking of Jefferson's draft, he said: "I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass Congress, I certainly never would oppose."

Then Adams says further, "I do not now remember, that I made or suggested a single alteration."

But Jefferson, after saying the omission was at the "complaisance of South Carolina and Georgia," comments about the representatives of the slave-shipping class in general: "Our Northern friends also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

But this suspicion is probably only a Southern prejudice of mine. In any event, Jefferson attempted then to eliminate slavery, but the special-interest opinion was against it. His declaration generally referred to the trade, but it was sufficient to have led to its abolition.

After slavery was fastened on the South, it became a part of the social and economic system. At the same time, land holdings began to be concentrated more and more, for the process had started even before the Revolution. Here and there, as in the Quaker settlements of Virginia, slavery was reprobated, but the process of concentration of land wealth continued.

Precisely as the industrial classes have built up power as against the substantial will of the people in the past few decades, so did the slave-owning class in the era preceding the Civil War.

The Senators and Congressmen represented the slave-owners. They no more represented the interests of the majority of the white people of the South than did some of the reactionary Congressmen of the past few decades represent the average citizen or worker.

Various competent authorities on the South estimate the white non-slave-owning class as from seventy to eighty-five percent of the white population, just preceding the Civil War. The white non-slave-owners were treated with studied insult and contempt by the slave-owners. The Negroes themselves, though slaves, were allowed to maintain an attitude comtemptuous of free white people who did not own slaves, whom they referred to as "po' white trash."

At the outbreak of the Civil War, in my opinion, the Southern people overwhelmingly opposed entering the war. The white non-slave-owners had nothing to gain and everything to lose. The forward-thinking elements even among the slave owners opposed slavery. But as in all great human movements, the hot-headed ones, and those of entrenched power, prevailed. In the group of leaders were many who wrote lofty tomes on slavery, to show that it was approved by God and the Church. Men who were universally considered intelligent Christians, such as Calhoun, my Grandfather's neighbor, said it was right, and best for the slaves.

But my grandfather, Sam Maverick, is said to have fought a duel because of his hatred of Calhoun. Maverick said very little, but there is every indication that he had a very low opinion of his famous neighbor.

Let us read from the Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick, my grandmother, a Southern woman, whose opinion, I believe, represented the majority:

"The Civil War soon came on and Mr. Maverick and my sons did not shrink from what they conceived to be their duty. Mr. Maverick had always been a Union man in sentiment, he loved the Union of the States, and although he may have believed (before the question was settled) that we had the abstract right to withdraw from the Union, he thought the Union was sacred, and that the idea of a dissolution of the Union ought not to be harbored for a moment. Having such ideas and convictions, he found life to be uncongenial and unpromising for him in South Carolina, where the doctrines of nullification and ultimate secession were aggresively espoused by an overwhelming majority of the ruling class. He came to Texas, but all doctrines and issues of the former time bloomed into life about him when Texas became a member of the Union.

"Creeping beneath the shadow of the manifold blessings of the Union, came the bitter and unceasing strife. At least he came to believe the quarrel was forced upon us, and that there was before us an 'irrepressible conflict' which we could not escape, no matter where we turned.

"The Secession Convention of 1861 met—there was intense excitement and, need I say, deep gloom—the hour came at last when he was compelled to take his choice for or against his kith and kin. The question was no longer whether secession was right or wrong, wise or unwise, the question was no narrowed down to this—Even if you could sever your fate from that of your people, would your heart permit you to do it?

"Thus it appeared to him, and he did a simple, straightforward unselfish act, and an act which nevertheless gave him deep pain, when he cast his vote for secession."

She concludes:

"When the war was ended, the sentiment was unanimous in our family that all the old issues had been settled, and that the result of the conflict was right."

"When a war once starts, the mob mind takes hold. Those who do not fight are "slackers" and "cowards." And from what I have heard directly from the lips of hundreds of intelligent persons, the Civil War was like the World War. Once the drums beat, reason takes a holiday until one side or both are destroyed.

When the South entered the Civil War, it was the second time it got off on the wrong foot. But that is also true of the North—and if both had insisted on their Compromise, the war could have been stopped.

In Tennessee and Kentucky, there were whole regiments which joined the Federal side; there were Northern troops from Texas, and Sam Houston bitterly referred to the war as that "wicked rebellion." Even in parts of Alabama, many joined the Federals.

But the slave-owning class knew they were right. In the case of Dred Scott, which I shall discuss elsewhere as a constitutional question, they had the approval of slavery forever. More, they had the permission of the Court to extend slavery into Western states, and that no person of African blood could ever be a citizen anywhere in the United States. For the slave-owner was intrenched with the Supreme Court. They had God and the Constitution on their side.

Bugles cried out and drum beats entered the heads of men. North, South, East and West, they reasoned no more. Blood relatives took to blade and gun to settle the blind forces. Even little boys, filled with emotions they did not understand, marched away in the Blue and the Gray, to the cadenced Drums of Death.