five New Yorkers

I've become interested in four men who participated in the 1848 Revolutions in Germany and Austria and who later, in New York, became associates of my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller. Windmuller and the four were reformers, philanthropists, and promoters of cultural advancement. Acting in various combinations with each other and with other German-Americans, their efforts were, all in all, more successful than not.

The four were Carl Schurz, Oswald Ottendorfer, Henry Villard, and Abraham Jacobi.[1] They and Windmuller had much in common. Four of them had been born in Germany and one in Austria, all had been involved in the 1848 Revolutions, and all had migrated to the U.S. They had achieved different levels of education, but all were given the best education their parents could afford and none suffered in later life from effects of an inadequate education.

They were articulate in both speech and writing. They had contacts within the publishing community and a couple of them were publishers or editors as well as authors. Though they were all, in varying degrees, rebels before they emigrated, they had faith in American democracy and, as American citizens, did not advocate force as a means to achieve political reform.

None were prigs. They mixed with compatriots in beer halls and singing clubs, they attended banquets, and were members of clubs where they dined and socialized as well as participating in committees formed to pursue civic improvements.

Four of the five were proud to be political independents. They were Mugwumps and refused to align themselves with a single political party. Windmuller was the only merchant among them, but they all were associated with enterprises, such as banks and insurance companies, that aimed to benefit the public as well as return profits. Most of their efforts, whether commercial, philanthropic, or a combination of the two, began as German-American concerns and evolved into organizations which served all comers.

They all supported improvement in the lot of women and all but Windmuller had wives who became well known in their own right, not as their husbands' adjuncts.

Carl Shurz was an Army general in the U.S. Civil War, an accomplished journalist and editor, a popular politician and the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate. Henry Villard was a journalist who covered battles in the Civil War and later owned and published the New York Evening Post newspaper; he was also a financier and an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway. Schurz was a reporter and editor of Villard's Evening Post for a few years in the 1880s. Abraham Jacobi was a scientist and pioneer of pediatrics, opening the first children's clinic in the United States; he became and remains the only foreign born president of the American Medical Association. Oswald Ottendorfer was editor and publisher of a widely-read German-language daily, the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. I've written frequently about Windmuller. He was a commission-merchant, both founder and officer of banks, insurance companies, and other businesses, and treasurer of non-profits as diverse as the Reform Club and the Legal Aid Society. He spoke out and wrote about issues that concerned him, particularly corruption in government, national policies affecting the economy, and aid to those in need.

Here's a smattering of articles in which some of the five appear together.

• "With Carl Schurz, Oswald Ottendorfer, Henry Villard and G. H. Schwab [Windmuller] formed, in 1892, the German American Cleveland Union, which proved itself a powerful element in the Presidential Campaign. Mr. Windmuller acted as treasurer, and contributed a pamphlet showing how the prosperity of the country had suffered under the Republican administration. It was published in German and English by the National Democratic Committee, and had a large circulation." -- The University Magazine p. 547.
• AN APPEAL TO GERMAN CITIZENS; STRONG REASONS WHY THEY SHOULD SUPPORT GROVER CLEVELAND, New York Times, August 22, 1892. First paragraph: "The following important address, signed by some of the most prominent German-Americans in the United States, has been issued through the German-American Cleveland Union, and is being circulated among the German voters or the country. Signed: CARL SCHURZ, OSWALD OTTENDORFER, WILLIAM STEINWAY, HENRY VILLARD, LOUIS WINDMULLER, GUSTAV H. SCHWAB."
• The Reform Club: The officers for 1892 were — President, E. Ellery Anderson; Vice-Presidents, Oswald Ottendorfer, Charles S. Fairchild, Carl Schurz, Anson Phelps Stokes, Everett P. Wheeler, George Tucker Harrison, George Foster Peabody, Horace E. Deining, Henry B. B. Stapler; Secretary, Henry de Forest Baldwin; Treasurer, Louis Windmuller. -- Club men of New York: their occupations, and business and home addresses: sketches of each of the organizations: college alumni associations (Republic Press, 1893)
• FOR A GOETHE MONUMENT, article by Louis Windmuller in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 24, 1909: "The time seems opportune for the initiative of a similar movement in New York, where sculptor and poet have numerous friends, who are well known as patrons of art and literature. I refer to men like Jacob H. Schiff, Dr. A. Jacobi, Carl Schurz, Oswald Ottendorfer, and A. P. Fitch. I mention these few on account of their well-known influence and public spirit. The hosts who admire a genius who as poet ranks with Homer, as thinker with Voltaire, as playwright with Shakespeare, are numberless."
• TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MARRIED LIFE, New York Times, November 24, 1884: First paragraph: "Mr. and Mrs. Louis Windmuller celebrated their silver wedding last evening at their residence, No. 19 West Forty-sixth-street. Among the guests were Mr. Carl Schurz, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Guidet, Mr. Bernard Roelker, Mr. William A. Hardt, the Misses Hardt..."

Carl Schurz was widely known in his own time and somewhat less today. Windmuller and the other three were not so widely known when living and quite a bit less today. The relative levels of interest in the five can be seen in hits on their names in some specialized search engines. For example, JSTOR, the journal archive and search engine gives 2,870 hits for Carl Schurz from the nineteenth century up to this year, while Henry Villard receives 654, Abraham Jacobi 242, Oswald Ottendorfer 53, and Louis Windmuller 20.[2] That levels of interest have fallen off in recent times can be seen in JSTOR hits for the period from 1990 to date. For those three decades, Carl Schurz receives 236 hits, while Henry Villard receives 90, Abraham Jacobi 37, Oswald Ottendorfer 4, and Louis Windmuller 1.

Searching the New York Times archive (via ProQuest) gives similar results. In the list that follows the first quantity is the number of hits from the mid-19th century to today and the one following gives hits from 1990 forward.[3]

Schurz, 14,296 all-time hits and 1,028 since 1990
Villard, 955 all-time hits and 13 since 1990
Ottendorfer 640 all-time hits and 1 since 1990
Jacobi, 360 all-time hits and 0 since 1990
Windmuller, 338, all-time hits and 0 since 1990

The following Ngrams from the Google Books database convey the same general results. The top one shows relative instances in which the names appear in the Ngram data set between 1850 and 2000. The bottom one shows the same from 1950 to 2000.[4]





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Some sources:

Beiträge von Literaten und Künstlern zum Deutschen Hospital Bazaar

Banquet to the Honorable Carl Schurz

Tammany Hall vs. the People's Municipal League by Carl Schurz

Banquet to the Honorable Carl Schurz, Speech of Doctor A. Jacobi

History of German immigration in the United States and successful German-Americans and their descendants, Georg von Skal, 1908

Abraham Jacobi in wikipedia

Dr. Abram Jacobi toast by Carl Schurz, 1900

Geschichte des deutschthums von New York von 1848 bis auf die gegenwart By Theodor Lemke

Schurz, Carl 1829 - 1906 in the Dictionary of Wisconsin History

CARL SCHURZ, PILOT by Mark Twain, in Harper's Weekly, May 26, 1906.

Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 vols., Boston, 1904): Vol. 1, Vol. 2

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: Villard, Henry

The New International Encyclopædia: Villard, Henry

The Encyclopedia Americana (1920): Villard, Henry

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921): Villard, Henry

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Villard, Henry

Henry Villard Is Dead—Capitalist and promoter expires at his country home, New York Times, November 13, 1900


Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer

The New International Encyclopædia: Ottendorfer, Oswald

The Encyclopedia Americana (1920): Ottendorfer, Oswald

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography: Ottendorfer, Oswald

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography: Jacobi, Abraham

FELLOW-PHYSICIANS HONOR DR. JACOBI, Banquet to Mark Seventieth Anniversary of His Birth

Jacobi, Abraham in Men of 1914: An Accurate Biographical Record of Prominent Men in All Walks of Life Who Have Achieved Success in Their Chosen Vocations in the Various Civil, Industrial, and Commercial Lines of Activity (Chicago, American Publishers' Association, 1915)

Great sound money parade in New York edited by Edward A. Drake (Republic Press, 1897)


The German element in the United States by Albert Bernhardt Faust, Vol. 1 (New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1909)

The German element in the United States by Albert Bernhardt Faust, Vol. 2 (New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1909)

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Notes:

[1] My recent blog post, Secondat: forty-eighters tells of their experiences during the 1848 Revolutions and gives some portraits.

[2] JSTOR's coverage is more oriented toward high-brow journals than popular magazines. The articles that turn up via its searches are both about the five men and by them. It's important to remember that a search like "Carl Schurz" will not all be about the man and his works; some, for example, concern the park that bears his name. The names of the five are unique to them, so far as I know, so there is likely no "noise" introduced by false hits on other people having their names. The names were not always spelled the same way however. So, for example, the hits on "Abraham Jacobi" do not include hits on the variant, "Abraham Jacoby."

[3] Note number 2 applies with respect to NYT searches as well as JSTOR ones.

[4] For information on Ngrams, see Books Ngram Viewer. Culturomics says "The browser is designed to enable you to examine the frequency of words (banana) or phrases ('United States of America') in books over time. You'll be searching through over 5.2 million books: ~4% of all books ever published!"

America's best citizens

On coming to America, my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, transformed himself. He landed in 1853, an 18-year old with no money and few contacts. Within a few years he had turned his back on all but one of the relatives whose names he had been given and set himself on course to become a "thorough American in every respect," as one account would later put it.[1] Born a Jew, he became a sterling Episcopalian and left his descendants no evidence of his religious heritage.[2] His heritage as a German was another matter. Although completely acclimated to American ways, he established and nurtured ties with Germans in Europe and his fellow German-Americans in the U.S.[3]

Late in life he was a frequent contributor to periodicals and newspapers and in a few of these writings he alluded to his experience as a German immigrant. In the following extract he is not writing directly of his own experience (he came from Westphalia, not Mecklenburg) but he did serve as a grocery clerk at one point during the first couple of years after he immigrated and very likely did sometimes sleep under the counter.[4] It's also a fact that it didn't take him long before he, like the Mecklenbergers he describes, was able to establish himself on his own account. He wrote: "Of immigrants who came in the early part of the nineteenth century, the sturdy North Germans, from Mecklenburg, became our best citizens. Their language ... readily assimilated American English. These boys hardly realized that any difference existed between their mother tongue and our own. They adapted themselves to many other American ways. A great many became grocers; of some 5000 who followed this vocation in Manhattan in 1852-3, more than half were Bismarck's countrymen. Beginning as clerks sleeping under the counter, they devoted themselves assiduously to the details of the business, so that many were soon able to establish themselves on their own account."[4]

Later in this article he describes the social life of German-Americans in the 1850s and '60s and it seems likely he includes himself among the "educated Germans" of whom he writes. Here's an extract: "Germans congregated on the East Side [of Manhattan] as far north as Second Street, which was known as 'Klein Deutschland.' The writer has watched long processions of them, go down through the Bowery, Chatham Square, and Nassau Street to their respective workshops, and has seen them return home evenings by the same route. Automobiles were unknown, but pedestrians encountered reckless butcher boys who delivered, in two-wheel gigs, breakfast in the early morning, and at all hours firemen who raced down Chatham Hill, as they preferred sidewalks to the prevailing cobblestones. Educated Germans comprised the best element of our population. Conscientious in the performance of their duties during the day, they knew how to enjoy their nights. They sang in the 'Liederkranz,' danced in assembly rooms, and drank in 'gemuthliche Kneipen,' where good beer was available. Besides teaching us harmless pleasures, they spread their taste for art and literature. Amongst their foremost citizens were Carl Schurz, Oswald Ottendorfer, and Charles Hauselt."[6]

In 1892 Windmuller wrote a letter to the New York Times countering efforts to curtail immigration. He points out that America has always been a nation of immigrants and that some of America's best citizens are foreign born. He says it's understandable why some Americans would want to keep their homeland to themselves, but, he says, "we will have to repress" this natural instinct or the country will fail to prosper for want of men and women to work in its fields and factories. And he refutes the claim that "foreign influence degrades the American character." Immigrants, he writes, "generally represent the best elements of the nations from which they separated to cast their lot among us." Although he's writing as if he's native born ("cast their lot among us"), I think he's thinking of his own experience in the middle of the nineteenth century when he says "the Germans were the young men who wanted to escape from military duty; the Irish were tired of the tyrannical exactions of the lords of their realm. All came to better their fortunes by their own exertions, without the fetters of tyrannical laws or feudal prejudices. The energy of these ambitious men has developed our own. We have inherited their thrift, and we owe as much to them as they owe to us."[7] Here is an extract from the letter to the editor:

{Why Immigration Ought Not to be Restricted, letter to the editor of the New York Times, December 30, 1892}

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Anti-immigrant cartoons

1882

{Uncle Sam's Lodging House, Puck, June 7, 1882; source: hsp.org}

1890

{Judge, March 28, 1890; source: fineartamerica.com}

1896

{"The Immigrant: The Stranger at Our Gate" by Frank Beard in The Ram's Horn (Chicago), 25 April 1896; source: faculty.umf.maine.edu}

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Some sources:

A history of the New York Swamp by Frank Wayland Norcross (New York, Chiswick Press, 1901)

WHY IMMIGRATION OUGHT NOT TO BE RESTRICTED. - Letter - NYTimes.com

The History of the Legal Aid Society

"The Commercial Progress of Gotham," by Louis Windmuller, in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913)

Immigration: Era of Restriction Timeline

American Protective Association

Industrialization, Urbanization, Immigration, Jim Crow

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Notes:

[1] The quote comes from The book of New York; forty years' recollections of the American metropolis by Julius Chambers (New York City, The Book of New York company, 1912)

[2] I didn't learn of Louis Windmuller's Jewish heritage until distant relatives and the biographer of Windmuller's cousin, Adolph Sutro, contacted me by email. They had located my Windmuller family history web page with accompanying genealogy and gave me information which vastly expanded my knowledge of his ancestry in Germany and relations in New York. No one in my family ever talked about his Jewish heritage and, surprisingly, some thorough research done by my aunt turned up no information on it.

[3] So, for example, Windmuller took a leading role in the German-American Reform Union, was a founder of the German-American Fire Insurance Co. and German Alliance Insurance Co., headed a fund-raising campaign for the German Hospital, and agitated for public monuments to be erected to Goethe and Heine in New York City. All the same, most of businesses, reform movements, and charitable organizations with which he was associated did not have any particular German emphasis. It's notable that the German Legal Aid Society, which he helped to bring into existence, evolved into the Legal Aid Society in which for many years he served as treasurer. Julius Chambers, cited above, continued his short account of Windmuller's achievements by saying: "An Independent in politics, he has voted according to his convictions, heading strong German movements in the metropolis first for Cleveland and then for McKinley. He has been a constant writer for magazines and newspapers, producing copy with equal facility in German and English. On occasions of financial crisis, especially when American credit was assailed in Europe, Mr. Windmuller has been prompt to send letters to the principal newspapers of Germany, explaining our financial situation." -- "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," by Louis Windmuller, in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913).

[4] In 1906 Windmuller was interviewed for an article which strains to be humorous about his childhood and early experiences in New York. Part of it concerns the theft of a tomato:

"I was only a boy," he faltered.
"Go ahead now, make a clean breast of everything," said the inquisitor, still not unkindly.
"I was only a boy. I had just come to this country. I was a clerk in a grocery store on Vesey street. It was a bright, sunny day. I was trying to be good and forget what had happened in Munster. But at the fatal moment a cart full of tomatoes stopped in front of the door. The old appetite came back and overpowered me. [This refers to theft of cherries in Munster.] It was then that I stole the tomato. Must I say more?
-- Herr Windmuller Confesses, New York Sun, June 30, 1906.

[5] Here's the paragraph in full:

Of immigrants who came in the early part of the nineteenth century, the sturdy North Germans, from Mecklenburg, became our best citizens. Their language, an idiom Fritz Reuter has perpetuated by his Olle Camellen, readily assimilated American English. These boys hardly realized that any difference existed between their mother tongue and our own. They adapted themselves to many other American ways. A great many became grocers; of some 5000 who followed this vocation in Manhattan in 1852-3, more than half were Bismarck's countrymen. Beginning as clerks sleeping under the counter, they devoted themselves assiduously to the details of the business, so that many were soon able to establish themselves on their own account. Their advantage over American grocers — like Acker & Merrall on Chambers Street, Abram Binninger & Co., 26 Liberty Street, William S. Corwin, 639 Broadway, John Duncan, 407 Broadway, and the "Albros" on the Bowery — consisted of the privilege of selling liquor at retail, free of license, an advantage disdained by Americans, who catered more to the family trade. But our ladies could not always find it convenient to go to them and left their daily orders at the neighboring corner grocery. They were careful not to approach the partition which divided the store from the rear bar, so as to escape odors of rum and tobacco which emanated thence. In former years the writer had business relations with some of these grocers, and he remembers an occasion when he was obliged personally to present a draft. Following the established custom, he first invited the drawee to a social drink. While he was absorbed in a mint julep, the proprietor slipped out of the side door, leaving the bartender to explain his unceremonious disappearance. On a subsequent occasion we were careful to explain the object of our visit before the drinks were mixed. -- same source.

[6] This paragraph comes from the same source. In it Liederkranz were singing clubs. The word is literally a "wreath of song" and figuratively song circles. Gemuthliche Kneipen were a sort of beer hall; "cozy pubs" might be a reasonable translation. Carl Schurz remains a highly-regarded German-American of the time. Oswald Ottendorfer, as wikipedia tells us, participated in the 1848 revolutions in Germany, and, like Schurz, came to New York to escape persecution after they failed. He subsequently became a prominent New Yorker as publisher of the Staats-Zeitung newspaper. Charles Hauselt is more obscure. He was a "merchant prince in the New York leather trade" and long-time president of the German Society, which provided aid to immigrant Germans.

[7] The nativist movement of the early 1890s was specifically aimed at Roman Catholics. Centered on an organization called the American Protective Association, it was a reaction to the shift in immigration source countries from the northern European Germans, Irish, Scots, and English to Italians and other southern Europeans. It made no real headway at the time, but was followed by the more successful Immigration Restriction League and that in turn led to restrictions on immigration imposed in the 1920s. My belief that Windmuller included himself among the Germans who emigrated to escape mandatory military service and who wanted to leave tyrannical feudalism behind them is based on an exit permit he had to obtain before leaving the country and also on his reports of his joining the revolutionaries of 1848 in attacking the old order in Germany. I've written somewhat more on this subject here.

Spinoza on peace and good government

Occasionally I see an interesting quote and occasionally I try to find its source. On a blog post this morning I happened to see this: “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” Reading it, and giving it some thought, I found myself to be curious about its context.

The first phrase, a sentence to itself, has to be meant figuratively since it's literally untrue. Peace is not simply and by itself an absence of war, but it is the state which exists when war is not present. The rest of the sentence — also a complete thought — gives three attributes of peace. Virtue is an interesting aspect to claim for peace since virtue is traditionally associated with manliness, performance of duty, and valor but has come more generally to connote moral behavior and observance of social rules. Peace as a state of mind suggests something very different: contemplation, attainment of bliss by means of meditation or prayer, and — by extension — a self-confidence bred of habitual right thought and action. Benevolence, confidence, and justice seem not to be components of a definition of the word peace but rather by-products, that is benefits that societies can attain during times of peace.

Seeking the source to learn its context, I was pleased to see that the blog post where I found it gives an unusually complete citation.* Most of the time you get no more than the name of the person to whom the statement is attributed.

Before searching the source, however, I did a G-search of the exact phrase. This long text string surprisingly yields over 9,000 hits**

Paging rapidly through some of the 9,000, I thought it odd that I couldn't find any that led back to the book that is the reported source of the quote: Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise. The exact phrase does not show up at all in some of the obvious book searches,*** but it does occur in 53 books located via Google Book Search. I found it odd, again, that none of these hits are from Spinoza's book (they're all books of quotations, inspirational readings, memoirs, political studies, and the like).

A bit of further searching in Google Book Search turned up some sources that were reasonably close to the quote. Of the half-dozen that I found, all turned out to be translations from Spinoza's original Latin by only two writers, Robert Harvey Monro Elwes and William Maccall.****

Here's Elwes's version:

Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience (Chap. II. Sec. 19) is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done. Besides that commonwealth, whose peace depends on the sluggishness of its subjects, that are led about like sheep, to learn but slavery, may more properly be called a desert than a commonwealth.
-- The chief works of Benedict de Spinoza, Volume 1 The chief works of Benedict de Spinoza, Volume 1, translated by Robert Harvey Monro Elwes (G. Bell, 1887)

And here is Maccall's:

But on the other hand experience seems to teach that in the interest of peace and concord, all power should be entrusted to one. For no government has remained so long without any notable change as that of the Turks, and on the other hand none is less enduring than the popular or democratic, none disturbed by so many seditions. But if slavery, barbarism, and solitude are to be called peace, nothing is more miserable for men than peace. More numerous, and more bitter contentions indeed usually arise between parents and children, than between masters and slaves and yet it would not be for the interest of the family as an institution, that the paternal power should be changed into despotism, and the children be treated, as slaves. It is therefore in the interest of slavery, not in that of peace that all power should be transferred to one person: for peace, as we have already said consists, not in the absence of war, but in the union or concord of minds.
-- A treatise on politics by Benedictus de Spinoza, translated by William Maccall (Holyoake, 1854).

If nothing else, these two excerpts and the original quote, taken together, show how much freedom is taken in translating Spinoza. They all have the same gist, but very different development of the common theme.

Here is Spinoza's Latin:

Civitas, cuius subditi metu territi arma non capiunt, potius dicenda est, quod sine bello sit, quam quod pacem habeat. Pax enim non belli privatio, sed virtus est, quae ex animi fortitudine oritur; est namque obsequium (per art. 19. cap. 2.) constans voluntas id exsequendi, quod ex communi civitatis decreto fieri debet. Illa praeterea civitas, cuius pax a subditorum inertia pendet, qui scilicet veluti pecora ducuntur, ut tantum servire discant, rectius solitudo, quam civitas dici potest.
-- Opera quae supersunt omnia: De intellectus emendatione. Tractatus politicus. Epistolae, Volume 2 of Opera quae supersunt omnia: Ex editionibus principibus denuo, edidit et praefatus est Carolus Hermannus Bruder, Benedictus de Spinoza (B. Tauchnitz jun., 1844)

This reads more like Elwes than Maccall and not much like the original quote. It does state that peace is not the absence of war and it does contain the sense that peace is a virtue (virtus est). Only by implication does it extend the concept of peace to benevolence, confidence, and justice. Basically it says, as do Elwes and Maccall, that governments should govern by the consent of the governed and the coercion they use to enforce peaceful conduct should be legitimated by general agreement of the population.

It may be a shame that the full, eloquent thought that makes up the original quote is not exactly what Spinoza had in mind, but what he did say is no less interesting. If it has less impact that's only because we now accept that the democratic commonwealth is one of the best, many would say the absolute best forms of government. As the Baruch Spinoza article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, "Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth-century, perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza [and] it is hard to imagine a more passionate and reasoned defense of freedom and toleration than that offered by [him]." His achievement is the more remarkable for the courage and pertinacity which he showed in challenging the accepted wisdom of his time.****

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{a drawing of the young Spinoza from a nice site of Spinoza caricatures, drawings, and cartoons; source: spinoza.blogse.nl}

{This is a work by Jean Hélion (April 21, 1904 - 1987): “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” —Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, 1670. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man., 1963 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian); source: Ordinary Finds}

{source: wikipedia}

{The Spinoza house in Rijnsburg, near Leiden; source: Leiden Institute of Physics }

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Notes:

*The cite is: "Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, 1670"

**I don't know why, but if you go to the last page of a set of Google hits you'll usually find you've been given quite a lot fewer than the number of hits listed on the first page. In this instance the last page of hits (screen 32) says: "Results 311 - 313 of 313." When I accept the option of having all results displayed, including duplicates, I'm told on the last page (screen 77): "Results 761 - 770 of about 9,190." Where are the rest of the hits and why doesn't Google offer them up to me?

***There are no hits in either Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive.

**** Both men don't seems to be known for anything other than their translations of Spinoza.

*****Einstein said his world view was influenced by Spinoza more than any other thinker. This concerns a poem he wrote on the subject in 1920.

Ben Thorn
Oct16-07, 10:48 PM
So it is. The translation is mine, so beware:

To Spinoza’s Ethic

Wie lieb ich diesen edlen Mann
Mehr als ich mit Worten sagen kann.
Doch fuercht’ ich, dass er bleibt allein
Mit seinem strahlenden Heiligenschein.

So einem armen kleinen Wicht
Den fuehrst Du zu der Freiheit nicht[.]
Der amor dei laesst ihn kalt
Das Leben zieht ihn mit Gewalt[.]

Die Hoehe bringt ihm nichts als Frost
Vernunft ist fuer ihn schale Kost[.]
Besitz und Weib und Ehr’ und Haus
Das fuellt ihn vom oben bis unten aus[.]

Du musst schon guetig mir verzeihn
Wenn hier mir fellt Muenchhausen ein,
Dem als Einzigen das Kunststueck gediehn
Sich am eigenen Zopf aus dem Sumpf zu zieh’n.

Du denkst sein [replaces crossed out: ‘Spinozas’] Beispiel zeigt uns eben
Was diese Lehre den Menschen kann geben[.]
[crossed out original conclusion:
Mein lieben Sohn, was faellt dir ein?
Zum Nachtigall muss man geboren sein!]
Vertraue nicht dem troestlichen Schein:
Zum Erhabenen muss man geboren sein.


To Spinoza’s Ethic

How I love that noble man
More than I can say with words.
Though I’m afraid he’ll have to stay all alone
Him with his shining halo.

Thus a poor little dwarf
Whom you do not lead to Freedom.
Your ‘love of god’ leaves him cold
Life drags him around by force.

The high altitude brings him nothing but frostbite
Reason is stale bread to him.
Wealth & Women and Fame & Family
That’s what fills him up between dawn and dusk.

You must be good enough to forgive me
For I can’t help thinking of Munchhausen just now,
The only one ever to pull off the trick
Of hoisting himself out of the cesspool by his own hair.

You think his [Spinoza’s] example shows us
What human teaching has to give.
[My dear son, what’s gotten into you?
You have to be born a Nightingale!]
Don’t trust the comforting mirage:
You have to be born to the heights.

That's it. I was a bit, well, stunned by it at first.

Ben

Fourteenth of April, not done yet

Philip Gentry, in his blog, 2'23", adds to the list of unfortunate events* for which my birthdate, April 14, can be remembered. He says:

April 14th is often given by periodizing historians as the end of Reconstruction, and the beginning of the resurgence of white supremacy in the south. On this day in 1873, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the so-called "Slaughterhouse Cases", holding that the Federal government had no right to protect the voting rights of African Americans. And that same day, down in Louisiana, a group of white militia slaughtered over a hundred black citizens in the Colfax Massacre, burning down a courthouse in which a large group had taken refugee, and shooting all those who tried to escape the flames. It's a bit much to claim that this single day sent our country down the path of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan, but it was certainly the beginning.

Happy April 14th.

A good post, worth a few moments of your time it includes, and discusses the significance of, this image:


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*The list contains many battles and other violent doings, including —

- 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.

- 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.

But, be it remembered, also:

- 1775, the first abolition society in North America is established. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

what we think and what we feel

I recently read a blog post that got me thinking a bit more than most of them manage to do. It's The Alice Swanson Ghost Bike: What really happened by Dave Stroup on his why.i.hate.dc blog. Stroup investigated an incident which stirred a bit of local interest lately. In brief, a bicyclist was struck by a truck and killed at a busy intersection near Dupont Circle in DC. A ghost bike was placed to commemorate the death, warn both motorists and bicyclists to be careful, and keep transportation planners mindful of pedestrian and cycling needs. Here's one of many photos of the bike.

{Ghost bike for Alice Swanson; source: Prince Of Petworth}

The DC government has a policy covering unofficial memorials such as this and another policy covering bicycles that appear to be abandoned. Stroup undertook his investigation because they didn't follow either one of them in this case. When they abruptly removed the Swanson ghost bike, a whole lot others suddenly appeared in the same area. These too the government removed. Apparently (as Strop found out) both removals resulted from merchants' pressure on local officials).

It's easy to track down information on all this activity. For example you could do Google searches on the phrase "alice swanson" ghost. Limit this search to blogs only and you'll get a feel for the extent of community concern about the city's actions. Limit the search to news sources and you'll get a feel for the extent of local buzz the story generated.

Stroup's investigation found that the Mayor's Office became nervous about the negative publicity being generated. It began to distance itself from actions of its transportation department tho it seems apparent that it had something to do with the aggressiveness of those actions.

This whole event as it plays out is emotionally charged: Swanson's family and friends are deeply concerned about her death, its commemoration, and the City's response. Bloggers and news media see an instance of callousness on the part of bureaucrats, politicians, and local merchants. And there's extra emotional import because the locale is known to be more than usually full of pedestrians and cyclists and there is high tension between those people, on the one hand, and motorists on the other. The emotional component is the more readily conveyed by the visual imagry associated with this piece of news: all those ghost bikes and mourners.

A few weeks ago an article by Andrew Beaujon in the local City Paper gave a photo gallery of the bunch of bikes that appeared after the first was removed — 22 of them, one for each year of Swanson's short life — and profiled the young man who acquired them (by dumster diving "as well as wailing on Freecycle and Craigslist"): Ghost Bikes Return to Dupont Circle: Alice Swanson Rides Again.

{This is the guy, Legba Carrefour, who put up lots of bikes after the one was taken away; source: washingtoncitypaper.com}

My first thoughts on this ghost bike incident and Stroup's research were pretty straightforward: I noted the rapid collection and dissemination of news and photos about an emotionally-charged event where ethical values of decency and fair play seem to be violated by impersonal forces. I noted the outrage generated by this, particularly in comments made in response to blog posts. I thought about the power of bloggers and local journalists who cover local news. And I thought about the importance of in-depth investigative reporting, in this case by a local blogger.

The next day I came across an image which shares some qualities with the ghost bike photos. Here it is:

A little searching showed me that this pair of photos with their captions appeared as a composite image within hours that AP and AFP put out the individual shots and very quickly gained widespread internet penetration. It also showed that almost everyone reacted as I did. The composite image made me feel that the mainstream news media were showing (yet another) instance of racism in the way the two shots were captioned.

Not surprisingly there was some probing into the circumstances in which the photos were made and captioned. As with the investigative reporting in the ghost bike case, this took place quickly, but in this instance the work was done mainly by journalists. And in this instance, the investigation showed that the immediate conclusion formed by people like myself on seeing the photos and captions was not accurate, or not entirely accurate.

The day following first appearance of the composite image Aaron Kinney wrote an article in Salon — "Looting" or "finding"? — which discussed the rapid dissemination of the composite and said the two captions might not be the product of simple racial bias. A few days later, Tania Ralli of the New York Times wrote up the issue in an article called HURRICANE KATRINA: THE PHOTOGRAPHS; Who's a Looter? In Storm's Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest. It's worth while reading this short article in full. The author describes the AP definition of looting and explains that what its photographer had observed met this definition: "He had seen the man in his photograph wade into a grocery store and come out with the sodas and bag." She also quotes the person who gave the caption to the second photo:

The photographer for Getty Images, Mr. Graythen, said in an e-mail message that he had also stuck to what he had seen to write his caption, and had actually given the wording a great deal of thought. Mr. Graythen described seeing the couple near a corner store from an elevated expressway. The door to the shop was open, and things had floated out to the street. He was not able to talk to the couple, "so I had to draw my own conclusions," he said.

In the extreme conditions of New Orleans, Mr. Graythen said, taking necessities like food and water to survive could not be considered stealing. He said that had he seen people coming out of stores with computers and DVD players, he would have considered that looting.

"If you're taking something that runs solely from a wall outlet that requires power from the electric company -- when we are not going to have power for weeks, even months -- that's inexcusable," he said.

Sometime later, a Canadian media issues site, Media Awareness Network, did a page on the matter as a "teachable moment" study guide for classroom instructors in secondary schools: Hurricane Katrina and the "Two-Photo Controversy". It didn't add to information that Kinney and Ralli had given but gave some discussion questions to help people think through the controversy: what do we mean by looting and finding, what difficulties do journalists face in covering dramatic events like Katrina, why do these photos have such impact, how could the captions have been written to help people understand what the photos really show . . . ?

Whereas in the case of the ghost bikes emerging facts supported peoples' immediate conclusions, in this case the investigations contradicted or at least tempered them. This might have led to dissemination of the new facts or a sudden dropping off in dissemination of the composite image but it did not (or not to any perceptible extent).

Despite these three explanations concerning the photos and their captions, the composite image continued to circulate and commenters continued to express outrage at the racism they found in their captions, right up until my sighting this morning. That's a good four years of circulation and comment. You can do a Google search on the terms graythen martin katrina looting to get an idea of this persistence over those years (you could also do phrase searches such as: "Black people loot, white people find" and "looting vs. finding")

What's apparent to me about this isn't at all surprising: people (myself included) tend to follow their emotions and seek reinforcement for beliefs they hold. It's not easy for factually based correctives to counteract (or temper) image-based communications that resonate with the growing numbers of people who see them.

These thoughts led me a step further.

I recently read an article by Michael Bérubé that's been creating quite a stir. Entitled What's the Matter With Cultural Studies?, it contains reflections on the academic subject which he teaches. It's thoughtful and well written, and the controversy it's generating is fun to observe. Nonetheless, what caught my attention is only one aspect of his argument. In discussing a prevalent point of view within cultural studies departments he says there's a tendency among practitioners in the field to jump to conclusions or, put differently, to indiscriminately grab what seems to be evidence which supports one's beliefs. This behavior is a lot like the response to the ghost bike and Katrina "looting vs finding" photos.

Bérubé cites an old essay by Stuart Hall* on the tendency to condemn people who jump to conclusions. Hall wrote that adherents to one political party tend to think the other party is brainwashing voters. It's an arrogant and unjustified point of view, he says. Bérubé quotes him thus:

It is a highly unstable theory about the world which has to assume that vast numbers of ordinary people, mentally equipped in much the same way as you or I, can simply be thoroughly and systematically duped into misrecognizing entirely where their real interests lie. Even less acceptable is the position that, whereas 'they' — the masses — are the dupes of history, 'we' — the privileged — are somehow without a trace of illusion and can see, transitively, right through into the truth, the essence, of a situation.

Bérubé also cites an interesting paper by Ellen Willis** that makes much the same point. He doesn't quote her but I cannot resist. She says:

Reagan did something the left, to its great misfortune, has never understood: with his paean to “morning in America” and call for an “opportunity society” he coopted the yearnings that had been aroused by the `60s movements and stifled by the nonstop pull-up-your-socks lecture of the Carter years. Freedom, as recoded by the Reagan right, meant pursuing unlimited wealth, at least in one’s dreams, and so identifying with the rich, their desire for low taxes, and their aversion to “big government”; it meant embracing America’s mission to make the world safe for democracy; it meant license to express rage. Pleasure in sex might be restricted, but pleasure in aggression was encouraged, including uninhibited bashing of black people, poor people, criminals, deviants, and liberals. The cultural elite, on the other hand, was portrayed as not only immoral and unpatriotic but repressive, what with its guilt-mongering attacks on greed and its allergy to guns and its lectures about bigoted language. Ever since, the right has won elections with some version of this formula. Its success has depended on convincing working-class swing voters not only that liberals are their class enemy, but that their own aspirations for “opportunity” and “ownership” are best expressed by policies that favor the rich.

Like Hall (and Bérubé) Willis says the Democratic left in the US does wrong to 'dismiss as “hallucinatory” people’s embattlement about what moral and cultural norms will govern their everyday lives and intimate relationships.' Writing years before Obama's election campaign, Willis concludes that Democrats should do basically what he subsequently did: adopt a platform based not on perceived practical "interests" but rather on a broad vision of well-being akin to the vision inherent in the Reagan slogans. She says (paraphrasing her), we need a politics that recognizes equality and freedom, class and culture, as ineluctably linked.

As is certainly apparent from what I've written here so far, I reacted as many others have done in response to the emotion charged images of both ghost bikes and "looting vs finding" photos. I did a little searching and found my first reaction to be supported in the one instance but not (very much if at all) in the other. I connected this little exercise with warnings I happened to encounter about jumping to conclusions.

It particularly interested me that these warnings were more about the mistake people (including myself) make in condemning others for what seems to us to be their instances of unwarranted jumping to conclusions. It's pretty much universal to base lots of the decisions we make on our emotional responses, on intangibles and intuitions, and not on our carefully-reasoned practical "best" interests. It's arrogant and self-defeating to dismiss large groups of people — say political opponents — for acting this way. Better to seek to understand the underlying causes of of the emotion, intangibilities, and intuitions.

That's my primary conclusion from this little thought process, but I'm also grateful to citizen journalists like Dave Stroup who take time and expend resources to uncover and report facts. I'm just as grateful to the (dwindling number of) reporters and professional investigators who do the same. And I'm pleased to live in a time when information flows so freely and widely even though much of what's distributed is misleading and correctives take a bit of searching to uncover.

--------------
Notes:
*"The Toad in the Garden: Thatcherism Among the Theorists" by Stuart Hall in Marxism and the interpretation of culture By Cary Nelson, Lawrence Grossberg (University of Illinois Press, 1988)

**ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM by Ellen Willis

socialism

I like this post by Tyrannous Lex aka Alexi Koltowicz on the S&R blog: Town halls gone wild.

It's an open letter to his congressperson, Bart Stupak in Michigan's 1st congressional district. Lex says, in part:

“Socialism” is the watch word. The fear of socialism is enough to turn what should be open communication between constituents and representatives into the political equivalent of professional wrestling. It’s enough to bring out the guns. I suggest that you propose a bill that requires every recipient of Social Security, disability, unemployment, WIC, the Bridge Card, Medicare, Medicaid, and government subsidies of any sort to write a 1500-word essay before the checks are sent. The essay will define socialism; compare and contrast it with other systems; provide current and historical examples; and examine ways in which socialism may (or may not) co-exist with democracy, capitalism and free markets.

And that’s my compromise position. In the world of Tyrannous Lex, such an exercise would be required for even conversational use of the word.

You’re probably not getting many “keep up the good work” letters these days. But this voter completely understands your position on this matter. As they say on the internet, don’t feed the trolls.

Best of luck on your return to the fetid swamp of philosophical depravity that is our nation’s capitol,

Lex

---

As it happens, these days I'm reading Penelope Fitzgerald's interesting book of reviews and essays called The Afterlife.* In her piece on William Morris's attitude toward women, she tells us that Morris treated women as people, though not quite as creative equals, and she tells us that Morris was outraged by the legal status of women which condemned them to the status of slaves.

As it also happens, he was England's first Marxist and — with support from Engels himself — leader of the Socialist League. His was a romantic anti-industrialism that had little place for government strong-arming or proletarian dictatorships.

Fitzgerald ends the piece with a definition Morris gave for socialist religion: "A determination to do nothing shabby...appears to me to be the socialist religion, and if it is not morality I do not know what is." She doesn't give her source for the quote, but instances of it are easy to find. Here's one:

IN WILLIAM MORRIS' FACTORY.

THE November magazine number of the Outlook contains an unusally timely sketch of a visit to the late William Morris' factory, by R. F. Zueblin. This writer made for Merton Abbey, the haunt of the Morris artist-artisans, to find what part of the spirit of Morris' religion was there maintained. This religion is expressed in the poet artist-artisan's words, "I am an artist or workman, with a strong inclination to exercise what capacities I may have, and a determination to do nothing shabby, if I can help it; or if I do anything shabby, to admit that I have done so, and be sorry for it. This appears to me to be the socialist religion." Morris' idea of the right kind of living and working is expressed in such texts as this: "It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither wearisome nor very anxious. In a properly ordered state of society every man willing to work should be insured: First, honorable and fitting work; second, a healthy and beautiful house; third, full leisure for rest of mind and body."

It was in 1861 that Morris and Burne-Jones and Rossetti formed an art firm which was to hold up the honor of labor and the glory of thoroughness. How has this ideal been realized at Merton Abbey? The visitor who writes in the Outlook marks a new note in factory existence before leaving the station. The porter directs them to the Morris plant not by way of any gigantic smokestack, sooty clouds or jangling noises, but with the sentence: "You see all those trees? Go right straight in through them, you will find it."...

[The piece concludes:] These craftsmen at Merton Abbey are paid the highest wages known to the trade. They work eight hours each day, and these visitors decided that they were realizing the claims of a decent life as Mr. Morris has stated them: "First, a healthy body; second, an active mind in sympathy with the past, the present and the future; third, occupation fit for a healthy body and an active mind, and, fourthly, a beautiful world to live in."
-- The Review of reviews, Volume 14 (NY, 1896)

As a Social Security recipient, if required to write a 1500-word essay on socialism, I think I'd use this historical footnote as a bit of meaningful context.

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{Penelope Fitzgerald; source: rarebestieletterarie.wordpress.com}

{William Morris by George Frederic Watts, 1870; source: wikipedia}

{William Morris's workshops: upstream at Merton Abbey Mills; source: wandleheritage.org.uk}

{Bart Stupak's district is one of the largest and least-densely populated in the US. One hopes that if our country boasts any place where it is possible to realize Morris's socialist ideal of a decent life it is within this rural landscape. This photo shows a small part of it — Grise Lighthouse on Lake Superior, Upper Peninsula of Michigan; source: files.myopera.com}

---

Note:
* The title alludes to a famous quote by John Milton:

Books ... contain a potency of life in them.... He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
AREOPAGITICA, A SPEECH OF Mr. JOHN MILTON For the Liberty of UNLICENC'D PRINTING, To the PARLAMENT of ENGLAND.

This is true Liberty when free born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a State then this?
-- Euripides, The Suppliants

Summer of Iran

Alan Taylor's photo sets on boston.com are always good, sometimes staggeringly so. His two collections on the disputed election in Iran are magnificent.

• Iran's Disputed Election
• Iran's continued election turmoil

Impossible to pick one as best; so this is a random sample:



While scrolling down these evocative images, I listened to Jeffrey Dean Foster's Summer of the Son of Sam on Youtube.


Summer of the Son of Sam by Jeffrey Dean Foster at The Garage, Winston Salem, NC, May 15, 2009

Lyrics from his web site:

The Summer of the Son of Sam

I was still in school, in the summer of the son of sam
The nights were cool, and nothin’ could have brought us down
The nights were long and the band played on
One long song, just to keep the power on.

All the light that shines on you is from a dying star
The star’s been dead a billion years
Now it’s shining off your car
The city was dark, in the summer of the son of sam
The devil left his mark
And the freebird hit the ground
All the light that shines on you is from a dying star
The stars been dead a billion years
And now it’s shining off your car

Chorus
To light your way, I feel my troubles slipping away
I feel my troubles, I feel your troubles slippin away x2
All the light that shines on you is from a dying star
The stars been dead a billion years
And now it’s shining off your car
now it’s shining off your car
now it’s shining off your car
To light your way, I feel my troubles slipping away
slipping away.

Chartists in London, April 10, 1848

In a letter to his wife on April 10, 1848, Emerson wrote: "A good deal of time is lost here in their politics, as I read the newspapers daily, and the revolution, fixed for the l0th instant, occupied all men's thought until the Chartists petition was actually carried to the Commons."

One of Emerson's American friends in London, Elizabeth Davis Bancroft, wrote somewhat more on the subject (to an unknown recipient called I. P. D.):

April 10.

This is the day of the "Great Chartist Meeting," which has terrified all London to the last degree, I think most needlessly. The city and town is at this moment stiller than I have ever known it, for not a carriage dares to be out. Nothing is to be seen but a "special constable" (every gentleman in London is sworn into that office), occasionally some on foot, some on horseback, scouring the streets. I took a drive early this morning with Mr. Bancroft, and nothing could be less like the eve of a revolution. This evening, when the petition is to be presented, may bring some disturbance, not from the Chartists themselves, but from the disorderly persons who may avail themselves of the occasion. The Queen left town on Saturday for the Isle of Wight, as she had so lately been confined it was feared her health might suffer from any agitation. . . . I passed a long train of artillery on Saturday evening coming into town, which was the most in earnest looking thing I have seen. . . . To-day we were to have dined at Mrs. Mansfield's, but her dinner was postponed from the great alarm about the Chartists. There is not the slightest danger of a revolution in England. The upper middle-class, which on the continent is entirely with the people, the professional and mercantile class, is here entirely conservative, and without that class no great changes can ever be made. The Duc de Montebello said of France, that he "knew there were lava streams below, but he did not know the crust was so thin." Here, on the contrary, the crust is very thick. And yet I can see in the most conservative circles that a feeling is gaining ground that some concessions must be made. An enlargement of the suffrage one hears now often discussed as, perhaps, an approaching necessity.

Emerson's friend, Thomas Carlyle, also wrote at greater length, in a letter to his wife:

. . . How can I tell you of the “revolution,” in these circumstances?^[1] I did go out earlier than usual, to see it; or at least all buttoned up, and decided to walk myself into a glow of heat: but—but the venomous cold wind began unexpectedly, in Cadogan place, to spit rain, and I had no umbrella! At the Burlington Arcade^[2] things had grown so questionable in that respect, I resolved to step in and look at the caricatures for a few minutes; which done, I found the rain had commenced pouring; and I had nothing for it but to hail a Chelsea Omnibus, and come home again, where I still am. Judge whether I can tell you of the “revolution”: my sole knowledge of it is from my eyes in the above short distance, and from a kind of Official individual, a “Paisley Lawyer bodie”^[3] (not known to you, I think) to whom I put three words of question, and got an answer of inordinate length,—indeed longer than I would take, with the rain just beginning to be serious.

Know however, O Goody, that there is no revolution, nor any like to be for some months or years yet; that the City of London is as safe and quiet as the Farm of Addiscombe; and that empty rumour, and “150,000” oaths of special constables, is hitherto the sole amount of this adventure for us. Piccadilly itself, however, told us how frightened the people were; directly at Hyde Park Corner one could see that there was something in the wind. Wellington had his iron blinds all accurately down;^[4] the Green Park was altogether shut, even the footpaths of it; the big Gates of Constitution Hill,^[5] and in the inside of these stood a score of mounted guardsmen, privately drawn up under the arch, — dreadfully cold, I dare say. For the rest not a single fashionable carriage was on the street; not a private vehicle, but I think two surgeons' broughams, all the way to the Egyptian Hall^[6] omnibuses running, a few street cabs, and even a mud-cart or two; but nothing else. The flag-pavements also nearly vacant; not a fifth of their usual population there, and those also of the strictly business kind; not a gentleman to be seen; hardly one or two of the sort called gents.^[7] “Most mysterus!”^[8] Happily, however, the “Paisley bodie” explained it all to me: A meeting, some kind of meeting, had been allowed to take place at Kennington common; but Feargus O'Connor had there warned the said meeting, that there would and should be no “procession,” but that everybody, under pain of broken crown, must now make for home in a detached capacity.^[9] Which, said the Paisley bodie, is at this time, as an orderly has just announced at Hyde Park corner, being peaceably done. And, continued he, the people of these streets are all gone to the New Road,^[10] to &c, in hopes of seeing the “procession” pass. And there is no procession! And — I started off here, waving my adieus, and took shelter in Burlington Arcade. This, Dear, is all I know about the No-revolution we have just sustained; and if you want farther particulars, I have no doubt they are abundant and redundant in the Times, which of course has reached you as soon as this surprising Private Historical Account can. And so may the Lord put an end unto all cruel wars.^[11]

Notes of the editor of the Carlyle letters:

1. Because of the revolutionary fires spreading across the Continent it was widely feared that a spark might ignite in England at any moment. In response to massive unemployment rather than to continental revolutionary fervor, Chartism was revived in early 1848 and a petition was circulated that allegedly received 5,706,000 signatures. On 4 April a convention opened in London and called for a meeting, 10 April, S of the Thames at Kennington Common, followed by a procession to Parliament to present the enormous petition. Fearing insurrection, the govt. stationed army troops, police, enrolled pensioners, and about 85,000 special constables to prevent disorder.

2. A covered passage with fashionable shops on Piccadilly, ca. 2 mi. from Cheyne Row.

3. Probably the lawyer A. H. Simpson, whom TC called “a long-winded Paisley writer” in 1840.

4. The duke's home, Apsley House, is at Hyde Pk. Corner, at the W end of Piccadilly.

5. Which leads from Buckingham Palace to Hyde Pk. Corner. Green Pk. is between Constitution Hill and Piccadilly.

6. In Piccadilly, used for shows and public performances.

7. Would-be gentlemen.

8. Coterie speech.

9. Feargus O'Connor (1794–1855; DNB), Irish Chartist leader. The proposed procession was forbidden, and he urged his followers to disperse. The petition was then delivered in three cabs.

10. S of the Thames, in Lambeth.

11. A Carlylean tag

From The Illustrated London News, 15 April 1848:

THE CHARTIST DEMONSTRATION
The long-expected “monster meeting” of the Chartists on Kennington Common, and their procession with a petition to the Legislature in favour of “the people's Charter,” took place on Monday last. Notwithstanding the fineness of the morning, during which a hot and brilliant sun shone forth, the demonstration was in every respect a failure, when measured by the standard of the vauntings and grandiloquent sayings of the delegates at the Convention during the preceding week. . . . [continue reading here]

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{Chartists on Kennington Common, April 10, 1848}

{Cartoon from Punch depicting delivery of the Charter to Commons

---

Some sources:

Journals Of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1820-1872, with Annotations, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes; Vol. VII, 1845-1848 (London, Constable & Co.; Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913)

JJournals Of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1820-1872, with Annotations, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes; Vol. VII, 1845-1848, (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912)

Letters from England, 1846-1849, by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (C. Scribner's Sons, 1904) Internet Archive

Letters from England, 1846-1849, by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (C. Scribner's Sons, 1904) Google

Thomas Carlyle; the Collected Letters, Volume 23, edited by Ian M. Campbell et al (Duke University Press , 2009)

Twenty questions and answers about the Chartist movement

Chartist demonstration What happened on 10 April 1848? From The Illustrated London News, 15 April 1848

Mayor Dave's blog

Today a member of my family made a Facebook link to a blog post by the Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin. The post says the city needs to sustain the professional reporting of its one remaining printed newspaper. Here's an extract:

So, here's a modest proposal. Charge me. Please charge me. Why is it that I should expect to pay for news delivered on paper, but not expect to pay for the same story I read online? It costs something to hire reporters and editors and why shouldn't I, as a consumer of the news, pay for some of that cost?

So first and foremost, charge me. Second, charge me twice. Competition is a good thing. The blending of our two daily newspapers into one is not a healthy thing. When I see a Cap Times byline in the State Journal I wonder what that means. I know who wrote it, but who edited it? And what does it mean for competition between the papers? Are reporters tripping over one another to break a story or are they sleepily cooperating?

I'd rather not have just one daily news outlet. It would be better for democracy if there were a bunch. So, I'll pay to subscribe to both "papers" as long as both are hiring good reporters and competing against each other. I'm betting that for all the scrutiny and tough questions and pure aggravation that professional journalists present me with, in the long-run I'm better off with a well-informed constituency. And whether or not I am personally better off as a mayor, I know democracy itself depends on it.

The post is interesting for a few reasons. First it seems to me to be unusual for a politician to welcome competitive news gathering since it surely results (as the post suggests) in competition to uncover real or supposed dirt in city hall. And then it seems unusual because he's not discussing any government policy; he's giving a personal opinion; no more. Further, the tone is conversational. The post has nothing in common with the self-promoting literature that it seems most politicians send out via mail, press releases, and whatever means they can capture.

The mayor's other posts are similarly informal, but their topics vary greatly. Some record local events in which he's participated, each with what seems to me to be a genuinely self-deprecating charm. For example: a bowling contest between the mayor's office and city council and a fundrasising event called Men Who Cook. Others explain his position on legislative initiatives; for example one on the city's purchase of hybrid buses and another on fast-tracking proposals for federal stimulus money.

I thought it might be interesting to see whether other mayors blogged so effectively and with such a light touch. A Google search reveals that while there are quite a few mayor blogs, almost none are as interesting and personable. Most are stiffly official, written either in passive or third-person voice. Some are blatantly boosterish. One or two are more like wikis than blogs, with the mayor responding to contributions sent by constituents. The only one that seems to approach Mayor Dave's from Madison is Mayor Joe Curtatone's in Somerville, Massachusetts.

My search turned up no mayor blogs at all from my own local jurisdictions; just a couple from county council members (here and here).

Here are links to some of the blogs I came across:

• Youngstown, OH
• Guelph, Ontario
• Phoenix, AZ
• Manchester, NH
• San Clamente, CA
• Valley Center, KS
• San Francisco, CA
• Miami, FL
• Dawson City, Yukon, Canada

Here's a smattering of mayor-blog images. The last one shows Mayor Dave.

a right way of government

In my mind, one of the main reasons for Obama's success -- first in the Democratic primaries and then in the presidential election -- was his rejection of the political process as winner-take-all competition. I believe both the Clinton and McCain campaigns sought to emulate the Karl-Rove tactics of the two Bush campaigns in framing debate. For an instance of these tactics see this 2005 blog post by the prince of framing, George Lakoff. Their essence is a use of emotional sound-bites to distract voters from serious consideration of issues. Those who employ them see politics as no more than a game of winners and losers in which the smart and unscrupulous will always defeat the reflective, well-meaning player. Just writing that sentence I felt the urge to deploy framing as a rhetorical technique by pitting one set of values against another in a simplistic way and I'm not sure I avoided doing so.

To me, the Obama campaign countered the cynical rhetoric of framing with a strong negative statement: the need to abandon the poisonous political climate of the Bush years, and a strong positive one: a politics of inclusion in which winning is not the primary objective but it is rather the testing of competing and conflicting ideas, listening to hostile as well as friendly voices in order to establish effective policies. Writing that, I think how frequently such debate leads to indecisiveness and indecision, but if the early days of the Obama administration make anything clear, it's that this administration does not suffer from these weaknesses.

Tim Burke writes of these things in an interesting post to his blog Easily Distracted: Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood

In it he takes what I've said a step further. He says the new administration has shown itself up to the task and asks whether we are willing to rise to that level ourselves.

The piece begins with comments on his experience in a digital storytelling workshop he's been attending and he tells how his approach to a storytelling assignment differs from that of other participants. This leads to comments on how differing approaches to such an assignment can be seen as choices of modes of discourse and how these choices -- this framing -- can be seen as a zero-sum game of power.

So he says: "At a storytelling workshop, for example, it may be that to insist on the legitimacy of a much more reticient male voice is to suddenly make more emotional and personal stories feel like an exception rather than expectation, to put everyone on their guard. On the other hand, what if that is honestly the way that someone wants to approach the exercise?"

This leads him to consider first, the difficulty of being honest in self-expression while at the same time being a cooperative participant in a group activity and next, the implications of this small-scale difficulty in politics, leadership, and government.

He says:

The hardest challenge, in many ways, falls in the space in between the titular, symbolic Presidency and its interior deliberative work, in the way that the President and his officers operate within the public sphere, in how they formulate and present and defend policy in front of and in dialogue with the public. This is hard because it requires a very fine distinction between the voices that authentically speak from a habitus or perspective that’s at odds with the worldview of the President and his advisors and much more calculated and cynical bids at “framing” that come from a well-oiled machine that approaches public dialogue as a pure instrument, as a zero-sum exercise which either advances or defeats narrow self-interests.

The distinction between the two is most easily glimpsed if you cultivate a taste for the unlike, force yourself to speak in unfamiliar and uncomfortable tongues, travel across ways of seeing and talking as one might travel across geographies. This commitment is not a safe, happy kind of venture of unity-in-difference, not a boat ride through “It’s a Small World”. Listening to the unlike, speaking the unfamiliar, can be draining, painful, frustrating. And at the end of any journey, you’re perfectly entitled to conclude that you like your established ways of talking best, that there’s something wrong with a stranger’s world and voice. But I think the person with the taste for the unlike can hear better the difference between a public voice that comes from somewhere real and a cynical attempt at framing that comes from some rag-and-bone shop think tank. If there’s anyone in public life whose personal journey has given him an ear for unlikeness, it’s Obama, so I have high hopes that he’ll guide his Administration through the narrow divide that will allow him to ignore tired old constructions, to make real the promise that “the ground has shifted beneath” the cynics, while never losing sight of ways of speaking and thinking that are authentically different from his own. . . .

If all you can praise is work which conforms to your own particular tastes, ideologies, and preferences, you’re not trying to inaugurate the institutional or political future which you ardently demand. It isn’t just Obama that has to go beyond the “stale political arguments”. Anybody who demands or values that kind of commitment in others has to try to live it out in their own practices.

inauguration photos

{Source: The Big Picture on Boston.com, photo by Jason Reed, Reuters; this copyrighted image is reproduced under fair-use provisions of copyright law.}

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama

Alan Taylor and those who work with him on The Big Picture web page at Boston.com have outdone themselves. This is a very good set of photographs.

I particularly like the following ones:

3 - GeoEye Satellite Image. This shows the Capitol west to the Washington Monument.

18 - The Rev. Joseph Lowery gives the benediction

19 - US Army Command Sgt. Maj. Julia Kelley. She weeps as she watches the inauguration of US President Barack Obama at Camp Liberty in Baghdad.

23 - Vertie Hodge. She weeps during an Inauguration Day party near Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in Houston.

25 - President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle stand with former US president George W. Bush and Laura Bush on the steps of the US Capitol

36 - President Barack Obama signs his first act as president. It's a proclamation declaring a national day of renewal and reconciliation and calling on Americans to serve one another.

40 - U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama walk in the inaugural parade

42 - U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta. He's replacing an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly-sworn-in U.S. President Barack Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base January 20, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay.

46 - U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dance their first dance at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball. This is the one I've reproduced at top.

The comments are worth scanning as well. There are many of them and they come from many places throughout the US and the rest of the world. A few are nasty. Some are pessimistic. But most are jubilant and show a cheering hopefulness. Here's a small sample:

Comments on The Big Picture's Inauguration Photos

1. Fantastic photos once again. It's an exciting time for America right now, if not the world. Posted by Jason January 21, 09 12:36 PM

13. He's our hope, too. Federico (from Italy)

23. the world is watching us more then ever now, i really hope we dont letthem down again. Posted by 66577 January 21, 09 12:53 PM

34. What a fantastic perspective these photos give us of our place in the world. They brings tears to my eyes. Welcome back. Posted by Claudia Chang

35. "It's an exciting time for America right now, if not the world." Posted by Oliver - Brasil

41. The collection of photos is down right perfect. Certainly, this is why it's so great to be human. Posted by Kloche

137. Ca c'est vraiment fantastique. Congratulations President OBAMA!!! Je choisis d'ecrire ton nom en lettre d'or. Pour la premiere fois dans l'Histoire du monde, "Un noir elu president des Etats-Unis". Martin Lutherking devrait etre vivant ce jour-la. Posted by Ijchade

158. @21 the wrist band is a KIA (Killed In Action) bracelet. It is a common way for service members and family members to memorialize their fallen brothers and sisters, particularly for OIF and OEF. President Obama wears a bracelet given to him by the mother of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek, who was killed in 2006 by a roadside bomb. Posted by Dan

175. IT NOT A JOKE!!!
Ì.Ñ. Ãîðáà÷åâ: "Ïåðåñòðîéêîé òåïåðü äîëæíà çàíÿòüñÿ Àìåðèêà"

07.11.2008
Gorbachev calls on Obama to carry out ''perestroika'' in the U.S.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said that the Obama administration in the United States needs far-reaching 'perestroika' reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.
The term perestroika, meaning restructuring, was used by Gorbachev in the late 1980s to describe a series of reforms that abolished state planning in the Soviet Union.
In an interview with Italy's La Stampa published on Friday, Gorbachev said President-elect Barack Obama needs to fundamentally change the misguided course followed by President George W. Bush over the past eight years.
Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington, celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in "a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
He said the Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage.
He told the paper that the world is waiting for Obama to act, and that the White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians.
Posted by Snton

187. I didn't sleep nearly all night for watching the live - televised of Obama Inauguration ceremony on Phoenix Satellite TV . The scence was spectacular , President Obama's manner is charming and handsome , his speeches was inspiring and meaningful . Hereby congratulations Obama to be 44th president of the United States and may he lead the America to a prosperous and bright future ! Posted by Yue Guomin

188. We liberated Chinese envy you unliberated American. Posted by lmanpig

318. I did not vote for President Obama. However, yesterday, I could not have been more proud of being an American. I do not care what color one categorizes him to be; call him the color of the rainbow for that is what he demonstrated by the Inauguration speech he gave quite eloquently. All of America should be proud, if only for the unity demonstrated by the crowds on the Washington Mall, even if you voted for John McCain. President Obama had the class and grace to commend Senator McCain for his service to our country, just prior to his swearing into office. President Obama is a class act. Hooray for America. Posted by Julie

327. Todo el mundo esta a la expectativa de que tenga un gran desempeño en su mandato, pero necesitara de la ayuda de Dios y el mundo entero, Felicidades!!! siempre espero las imagenes de este sitio, son vedaderamente increibles. Que dios bendiga a America y a los Americanos. Posted by Fernando

340. I cried like a little baby because I never thought it would happen in my years of living I thought it was going to happen when my children's children children generation. I want to know how do the poor people help. What can we do the low income people us who live in the projects how can we help. Posted by ppjctlouisianahood

369. The US election was held at the same time as our own here in New Zealand. But I was far more interested in what went on in the US, and the effect this would have on the world. Now that President Obama is in power, it's time for him to set to work and achieve everything he has promised. The new President Obama has inspired a nation, and the world, to have hope, to look forward and be a positive force for change. That hope can clearly be seen in these photos. In the face of each and every person. Posted by @rachel_a

381. thank you for these pics.....obama is great and i m a great fan of obama.........
now the change has come to the world........
mandy D
student B.TECH (ECE)
INDIA
PUNJAB,LUDHIANA

394. I congratulate all Americans on a worthy choice. I hope, it will be the continuer of politics of Mikhail Gorbachyov. Posted by Genrietta Kalmarovna Mudakova

432. This is the dawn of a new era in american and world politics. President Obama is the right man to lead the United States and the world at this juncture in an uncertain and troubled time. His humanity shines through and generates good will in the citizens of the world. No, he can't solve all the world's problems, but he has the goodwill of the citizens of the world. That is a healthy starting point. Good Luck Mr President and may you have the wisdom and humility to lead . Posted by Dele, London. UK