better drowned than duffers

I've been reading books meant for young readers since the late 1980s. Back then, I began managing a cataloging operation which included something called the Children's Literature Team. The leader of that group would go to professional meetings and bring back reading lists. Starting with some books by Diana Wynne Jones it didn't take me long to get hooked. All the same, somehow, 'til now, I've missed out on the Swallows and Amazon books by Arthur Ransome. I've just finished the first of them.

It's well loved and has been discussed at length by admirers and some detractors. A review on Amazon by an eleven year old reader pins down one of the books main attributes: Its story is set in place that feels real and its characters feel just as true. Their adventures involve great amounts of imagination but everything they do might easily be done by any other children in their situation. The eleven year old writes: "What's best about their adventures is that all of them are possible! They don't do impossible things like ride on dragons or become invisible. Their adventures really could happen! I loved this book from the start, and have read it again and again. I would also recommend the other books in this series. They are all super, and will become treasures to pass on to later generations. Thank you, Mr. Ransome, for writing such a wonderful book!"

The defects found by detractors also bring out interesting attributes of the book: It contains lots of lore — particularly lore related to some leisurely summer weeks on a large, well-situated lake. The children (and occasional grown-ups as well) swim, row, fish, and most of all sail. With exception of a pair of fascinating charcoal burners there's little information about doings on the shores of the lake. But there's much about its islands and about what it takes to sail upon it. With so much description of managing a sailboat and so much plot devoted to the imagination-sprung adventures of sub-teen children, the book disappoints readers whose taste bends more toward dragon-riding coming-of-age stories.[1] Here are excerpts from reviews by two such disappointed readers: (1) "The vocabulary is VERY sophisticated, quaint, and old-fashioned. Also, it's hard to understand all the sailing terminology. It has sentences like this: 'Is there a cleat under the thwart where the mast is stepped?' Who talks like that???" (2) "The real problem is in the lack of plot. The kids just go and do their thing. There isn't any problem or climax."

The author's passion for things-on-the-lake-as-they-are shows in a short description of a bird as observed by one of the children:


The eldest of the children is 12, the youngest 7. They are distinctly their own selves, different from one another, yet each, for his or her age, is admirably competent and well informed. In the passage quoted above Tilly, who is barely 9, knows her pirate literature well and it is she who recognizes that a lookout point above the lake must be their Darien. Ransome writes so skillfully that the reader (this reader anyway) does not question her extensive though apparently narrowly focused book learning.

His skill also keeps you from wondering why the children do not bicker; there's no whining, pouting, name calling, tale telling, or similar behavior and this is one of the reasons reviewers overwork the word "idyllic" in discussing the story. The idyllism is there, but it's not idyllic pleasures in the normal sense that concern the children (not picturesque nor redolent with pastoral simplicity). For them, the story of this brief part of their lives is one of self-directed adventure, of invented games, of a childish freedom that gives full rein to their separate imaginations. It's idyllic largely because the responsible adults — two mothers, an absent father, and some neighbors who inhabit the lake's shore — all watch over the children's doings from a distance; they provide care and nurturing while keeping themselves apart.

The only adult exception is Uncle Jim, alias Captain Flint. He's a responsible adult who has not lost the ability to join in childish imaginings with a wholehearted enthusiasm. As an adult he takes offense at a prank and a later burglary which he assumes (based on reasonable evidence) to have been committed by the eldest, John, and the other Swallow children. This adult side of him is too quick to condemn and, he soon finds out, is wholly wrong to do so. He handsomely apologizes and, in making amends, plays host to the children in a climax to their summer adventures. Ransome handles this character so deftly that it doesn't seem odd that this one adult is so different from the others.

In the passage shown just below Uncle Jim has just come back on board his house boat having been overcome by two gangs of pirates and made to walk the plank. Before the attack he had had the foresight to obtain materials for a feast which he and the children now sit down to enjoy. (Rio is their name for the nearest village and Mate Susan is second in age rank among the four Swallows.)


After Titty has observed the dipper her mother rows across to the island where the Swallows are camping. She, Titty, has been left behind as lookout while her brothers and sister are off adventuring in the little sailboat. Mother is a "native" in the children's way of seeing the world, that is to say an adult who's not part of their game of exploration and pirating. Left all alone on the island Titty imagines herself to be Robinson Crusoe and her mother instantly realizes that she herself must be Man Friday. (The Blackett children are a pair of sisters, both tomboys, says their mother. They are the Amazons of the title and it is they for whom Titty has been on watch.)


In her conversation with Titty, Mother talks about her own childhood in Australia and, in doing so, reminds Titty (and the reader too) that life is not all summer holidays. The ocean, as first seen from Darien, might seem pacific, but it is not always so peaceful. Here's the brief chat between the two. Note the snake, an adder kept by a charcoal burner for good luck, and the drought in the Australian sheep ranches.


All this interested and pleased me while reading the book, but what I paid most attention to was the children's self-assurance. They know what they're doing. They know how to set up and maintain camp, to make fires and cook out, to swim, to fish, to row, to sail. They know how best to treat one another, the elders among them watching out for the youngers and the youngers pulling their weight and respecting the older ones. When one of them does something well the others give credit and praise.

They do not just observe middle-class conventions, they honor them. Twelve-year-old John behaves much like his Navy Commander father, providing his siblings with an easy and unquestioned leadership. Eleven-year-old Susan is like her mother, tending to the needs of the Youngest (Roger) by (for example) sewing on his loose buttons, as well as organizing food, preparing meals, and keeping the campsite tidy.

I'm sure the children's confidence comes from the ascendancy of families like theirs (the English middle class of the time) and its shared values.

All 6 children, the 4 Swallows and the 2 tomboy Amazons, are well-spoken, considerate even when in mock-fierce competition with each other, and share a set of values that need not be expressed to be evident. The two sets — the 4 and the 2 — meet for the first time at the beginning of the story, but they have no trouble recognizing themselves as social equals: by upbringing and education they share with each other much more than they do with other children who inhabit the lake. These other children must be present, but they are never mentioned. The only local whom they encounter who has a child-like personality is a local policeman, entirely grown up but still easily cowed by the elder of the two Amazons.

In the exchange shown here, Ruth is the elder Amazon (though called Nancy while adventuring on the lake) and she's berating Sammy, the policeman, for interviewing John about a burglary that John is wrongly supposed to have committed (it's this false accusation that Uncle Jim has to answer for later in the book). There's no difficulty in seeing that Ruth and Sammy are social unequals. Sammy, in fact, is the son of the woman who was nurse both to Ruth's mother and to herself. I infer from this conversation that it's almost unthinkable that local children have any common ground with the 6 children whose story is being told.


This passage is not typical of the book. It jars in the same way Uncle Jim's hasty accusation jars and, since Ruth/Nancy is stepping in to right that wrong, her outburst is the mirror her uncle's. And it shows the divide between the Ruths and Sammys of 1929 England. This divide was the subject of my last blog post. The families of the Swallows and the Amazons are not literally "gently born" as I use the term in that post, but they possess the same social qualities. They are well spoken, sure of themselves, and well-versed in a shared set of social conventions which they do not question. There's a gulf between them and those of "mean birth," like Sammy and his mother, and like the somewhat exotic yet kindly charcoal burners.[2] You can see this in the contrast between the forthright and articulate apologies that Uncle Jim makes and Sammy's stammered ones. Although he has done no more than follow orders, Sammy is abject and cringing.[3]

Sammy is a descendant of Bottom and Shakespeare's other clowns. He is a large, ungainly fellow. Like Uncle Jim he is an adult who's retained childhood habits, but in him the adult does not seem to be in control of the child. He is awkward and clumsy and retains a childhood fear of his mother's anger. It's this last trait that enables Ruth to command him. Ransome shows the great distance between this large adult creature and the bright, agile, adventurous young Swallows and Amazons.

Sammy lacks their poise and it cannot be pleasant for him to contemplate his second-class status. While he is not in the same crowd as a pair of outsiders who drink at the pub and provoke themselves into burglarizing Uncle Jim's houseboat, you can nonetheless imagine him — at some point in his life — becoming outraged at the attitudes of his "betters" (sorry for the scare quotes) and striking back.

Ransome's Sammy is an individual, not a type. But if you take him as representative of a class, it's easy to see a main source of the massive grudge held in common by that class during the 1920s. This grudge famously exploded in the general strike of UK trades unions of 1926. The book makes no reference to the strike but since it was published only a few years later and since it presumably takes place at about that time, many readers would easily be able to recall it.

The families of the Swallows and Amazons do not exploit workers as the great industrialists exploit them, but they are found together on one side of the social divide I'm trying to describe. The members of these families have an unassuming grace of manner, are cultivated, live comfortably, and of course speak well. The exploited ones either do not have these traits or are not thought to have them. The family of the Swallows has a nurse who minds the youngest child, infant Vicki. Unlike Sammy's mother, who is given a name, this servant is simply called "nurse." She is generous and kindly. Her interactions with Mother are cordial, but it's pretty clear they are employer and employee and just as clear that there's no point in referring to her by name.[4]

The presence of this nurse does not mean the family of the Swallows are well to do. You can tell they just comfortably sufficient because they live on a naval officer's salary and because they do not have their own holiday villa but rather rent rooms in a lake-side farmhouse. The family of the Amazons are better off. The mother, who is a widow, owns the villa in which they spend their summers and they have been coming to the lake for long enough that they are treated as rather high-placed residents by locals. But it's obvious the two families have much more in common with each other than with any locals. They share a familiarity with each other which they do not offer to people not so privileged as they.

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You might think Arthur Ransome to have been something of a snob, or at least ridden by unconscious assumptions of place and class. There may be some truth in this, but it is also true that he approved of the Russian Revolution and supported the Bolshevik regime.[5]

{Arthur Ransome; source: drgodine.blogspot.com}

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When I was studying British History in the 1960s a professor, G. Peter Browne, told me two anecdotes that touch on this subject. First, he said when Oxford began admintting more than a token number of lower class students the upper class ones would sneer at them in a cultivated sort of way. The example he gave was a request by one of the uppers in the dining hall. Glancing at one of the lowers nearby he said "Do please pass the vege..., oh excuse me, please pass the greens." It sounds innocuous but was vicious all the same.

Brown also told me, however, that on going to an American dentist's office for the first time, he was surprised when the assistant said "Hi, I'm Jennifer and I'll be cleaning your teeth today." He told me it would never occur to him to address her by any other name but "nurse."

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LibraryThing.com is a good place to learn about the setting, protagonists, and plot. It contains a short description and some extended reviews.[6]

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{Film still (1974) of John, Susan, Titty, and Roger in the Swallow; source: dare.co.uk/cinema}

{Endpaper map from the first edition; source: stellabooks.com}

    

{Dustjacket of the first edition (wikipedia) and cover of the Puffin edition of 1974 (childrensbookshop.com)}

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About the title of this post:

In Swallows and Amazons, the Swallows all write letters to Daddy at Malta (but under orders for Hong Kong), asking for his permission to sail Swallow to Wild Cat Island and camp there.

Daddy replies in the famous Duffers telegram:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WON'T DROWN

Susan says that he added the won't drown to comfort Mother.

John says that Daddy thinks we shall none of us get drowned, and that if any of us do get drowned it’s a good riddance. He is particularly keen not to let Daddy down. Hugh Brogan comments: John’s father’s telegram is famous. John’s comment is enormously significant: ‘Daddy knows we aren’t duffers’. It was something that the boy Arthur could never have said to himself with any confidence; yet how much he wanted to! Now, in fiction, all could be arranged.

-- Arthur Ransome Wiki

Duffer (OED)

A person who proves to be without practical ability or capacity; one who is incapable, inefficient, or useless in his business or occupation; the reverse of an adept or competent person. Also more generally, a stupid or foolish person.
1889 J. K. Jerome Three Men in Boat 171 ‘Is it all right?’..‘Lovely..You are duffers not to come in’.
1891 A. Lang Angling Sketches 8 Next to being an expert, it is well to be a contented duffer.

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Some sources:

manners unfaulted

Swallows and Amazons, 45 editions First published in 1930, on Open Library

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (London, Random House, 1930) on WorldCat

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, work description on LibraryThing

Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome (reprint Godine Publisher, 1986) on Google Books

Swallows and Amazons series on wikipedia

Arthur Ransome wiki, a wiki maintained by fans

Nancy Blackett on wikipedia

"'Which One's the Mockingbird?' Children's Literature from the 1920s to the Present" by Sheila Egoff in Theory into Practice, Vol. 21, No. 4, Children's Literature (Autumn, 1982), pp. 239-246 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1476345.
Excerpt:

I was working at the Toronto Public Library during the 1940s and I can still remember the excitement engendered in the children by the appearance of a new Ransome book. In the Ransome books we have the between-the-wars and post-war children healthy, happy, sane, self-reliant, friendly-and yet they aren't prigs in any conceivable way. These children are allowed to go off adventuring without adult supervision, the youngest being only seven years of age. Yet Ransome does not strain our credulity. First of all, the children have been trained in various skills and what they don't know, they soon find out. They pore over maps, charts, plans, books; they can cook over an open fire, mend a net and tickle trout ("Tickle trout?" said a friend of mine. "You made that up." "It's in a Ransome book," I said, "therefore it must be true."). Above all, the children can sail. It has been pointed out to me that you could actually learn to sail a boat by reading the Ransome books. It is quickly noticeable, I think, that the children fall into adult patterns as do the children in the Narnia books when they become kings and queens, which was what the society of the time expected from children. Susan, for example, takes on the mother's role. But the point of reality here is that without adult supervision, would anyone allow their children weeks of sailing and camping alone? Susan is an anchor in a world of high adventure that helps the reader believe it really could happen-independence from adult supervision-if Susan will supervise toothbrushing.

Small-boat sailing; an explanation of the management of small yachts, half-decked and open sailing-boats of various rigs; sailing on sea and on river; cruising, etc by Edward Frederick Knight (New York, E. P. Dutton & co., 1902) was Ransome's bible

Arthur Ransome on schoolnet

Arthur Ransome and Communism

Swallows, Amazons and Bolsheviks ‘The Last Englishman,’ by Roland Chambers a review by Ken Kalfus, NYT, May 25, 2012

Arthur Ransome Russia in 1919

V. I. Lenin Interview With Arthur Ransome Manchester Guardian Correspondent, October 27 - November 5, 1922

Arthur Ransome 1884-1967 on marxists.org

These two Marxist (and critical) reviews are both by the same author:

The Family as an Ideological Construct in the Fiction of Arthur Ransome by Ian Wojcik-Andrews in The Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 14, Number 2, December 1990, pp. 7-15
Excerpt: "As Marx and Engels note in The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." Familiar family hierarchies set up in the opening scenes establish the Walker parents in traditional work and sex-related roles which they (and the children) maintain as the novel comes full circle—it opens and closes with the same characters in the same place bound by the same parental/child hierarchy. ... In short, Ransome uses the Walker family to paint a powerful portrait of middle-class family life, one that foregrounds conventional work and heterosexist ideologies."

Introduction: Notes Toward a Theory of Class in Children's Literature by Ian Wojcik-Andrews in The Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 17, Number 2, December 1993, pp. 113-123
Excerpt: "Arthur Ransome wrote the quintessentially middle-class Swallows and Amazons. Complete with nurse, the Walker family (actually the mother and children) are on holiday in the idyllic Lake District whilst Navy Commander Mr. Walker sails the high seas, symbolically defending the British Empire."

Behind the scenes at Radio 4 by Clarissa Maycock 10:30, Monday, 23 April 2012
Excerpt: "Crawford Logan has voiced a new 5-part recording of Swallows and Amazons for BBC Radio 4 Extra. He writes:

Look at the comments for 'Swallows and Amazons' on Amazon(!), and you'll find very polarised opinions, almost all either five stars or one. For the fives it's a vivid childhood memory with characters they loved, a picture of a world which has disappeared, if indeed it ever really existed at all. But for the ones, Swallows and Amazons is an easy target for every modern brickbat--it's old-fashioned, dull, middle-class, sexist (Susan does all the cooking), slow and in serious need of editing. Worst of all: "nothing happens".

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (London, J.M. Dent and sons, 1889)

Diana Wynne Jones on wikipedia.

Diana Wynne Jones, the web page of British fantasy and science fiction writer Diana Wynne Jones.

The Many Worlds of Diana Wynne Jones

Accessible Adventure in 'Swallows and Amazons' by Nicholas Thomas in Anthropology Today, Vol. 3, No. 5 (Oct., 1987), pp. 8-11 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032888 .

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Notes:

[1] I don't mean to imply that readers can't like both dragons and swallows (I'm one) but some do like a great deal more tension in their narratives than this book provides.

[2] I put "mean birth" in quotes because it's a term used in the seventeenth century. People of Ransome's generation might have said "lower classes." I think "mean birth" to be a little more expressive, particularly in contrast to "gently borm."

[3] Lovers of his novels have made an Arthur Ransome wiki for us. Its entry on Sammy's mother, Mrs Lewthwaite says: Mrs Lewthwaite used to be Mrs Blackett's nurse, and that of the Amazons when they were young. ... Sammy, her eldest son is a policeman. He is afraid of Nancy.

[4] I expect Sammy's mother is named because she belongs to the lake-side community, the way the charcoal burners (who are also named) belong to it. The nurse of the Swallow family, being of no special community, can be treated a bit like an appliance.

[5] Ransome was a journalist in Russia during the Communist Revolution. While there he was was recruited by the British espionage office, MI6, as a spy. However, he showed such great sympathy for the Communists that when he returned to England in 1919 he was arrested by the police under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act. He convinced the police that though he was sympathic to Communism he was not himself a revolutionary.

[6] Here are brief extracts from LibraryThing reviews:

"Swallows and Amazons, a paean to children’s make-believe play and exploring their surrounding world, is a very pleasant story that involves the great outdoors, boats, fishing, and camping, with rich characterization, vivid descriptions, wholesome reading, and old-fashioned ideals. It includes a good deal of everyday Lakeland life in the early twentieth century, from the local farmers to charcoal burners working in the woods. Seldom have I ever come to the end of a book and felt sorry that it was over."

"One thing that the book does really well is to explore the imaginative life of children, taking the everyday world around them and turning it into something much more exciting and exotic."

"The Walker and Blackett children are given an amazing amount of freedom and use that gift to its fullest. They are adventuresome, curious, imaginative, and mischievous. Oh to be able to spend weeks on end sailing and camping and exploring. Even though Ransome was writing in the 1930s, the girls and women he created are strong and capable: good swimmers, good sailors, smart, fearless, and reliable. It's no wonder that this series was among my favorite childhood books. Here is a quote that has stayed with me since I was in fourth grade: "Her real name isn't Nancy," said Peggy. "Her name is Ruth, but Uncle Jim said that Amazons were ruthless . . . [so] we had to change her name." (p. 119)

Walter Benjamin, a quote

I found a nice quotation on one of my favorite tumblr pages this morning. The blog is Chimin faisant by the artist, Catherine Willis, and one of its excellences is the author's insistence on providing descriptive captions and source data for her entries. Here's this morning's post with its caption and source:

Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.

— Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings (via mythologyofblue)

After reading a gazillion quotations over years of internet appreciation I've noticed that many (possibly most) have been subjected to substantial rewriting; others are entirely made up. It goes without saying perhaps that very many appear innumerable times on quotations pages, odd blogs, and the social sites.

This one does appear all over the place, mostly without citation, but, blessedly, its text is close to the original. Benjamin wrote: "Arbeit an einer guten Prosa hat drei Stufen: eine musikalische, auf der sie komponiert, eine architektonische, auf der sie gebaut, endlich eine textile, auf der sie gewoben wird." A more exact translation than the one that circulates webwise is Edmund Jephcott and Kinsley Shorter's: "Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven."* The statement (in original or translation) sounds more self-consciously aphoristic that most of Benjamin's writings. It's too pat. He wrote staccato sentences which did not flow into smooth-reading paragraphs and is thus considered to have had an aphoristic style, but he wasn't at all a sound-bite writer and most of his writing is more muscular than pretty. It does not generally have the musical, architectural, and textile qualities which he pronounces to be the mark of good prose. He wrote, in the words of a publisher, "in a disconcertingly concrete language."

Here's an example.

{From "Antiques" in One-Way Street, in One-way street, and other writings by Walter Benjamin, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London, Verso, 1997)}

Benjamin's ticket of admission to the Bibliothèque nationale.

{Walter Benjamin’s library card, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1940; source: a piece of monologue}

I've written about Walter Benjamin on another occasion: Walter, Hannah

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Note:

* From "Caution: Steps," One-Way Street, in One-way street, and other writings by Walter Benjamin, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London, Verso, 1997)

men holding rules

Shakespeare puts words in Cleopatra's mouth that tell more about class attitudes in his time than in hers:

                                      Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded.
And forc'd to drink their vapor.
              (AC. V. ii. 209-13)

She's telling an attendant how she feels about the prospect of being acclaimed by plebeian Romans. Though less pungently, Coriolanus said much the same. So did Puck, quoted in my last post.[1]

It's not easy to generalize with any confidence about the attitudes of any class toward another. The attempt to locate the boundaries that separate the "us" of one class from the "them" of another can likewise be a daunting one. To Cleopatra the odiferous mass were all one. To themselves, they were many distinct groups.[2]

I'm interested in the mechanic who's holding a rule. One can imagine him as a carpenter or builder, maybe a shipwright or gunner, or he might have been a surveyor, navigator, or excise officer. Or he might have been a man who made rules — a person who made tools for a living. Or, still, he might have been one who taught others how to make and use the instruments of the trade.

In Shakespeare's time, to many of those who were gently born, these mechanic slaves holding rules would have been men who were presumed not to amount to much simply because they worked with their hands. But although many surely did, as apprentices and journeymen whose daily drudge was limited to performing tasks the master assigned, approximate this description, other men — the masters themselves — also held rules in their hands. They were builders, architects, land surveyors, gunnery officers, and others who used mathematical tools — rules — in their work. This, for example, shows a gentlemanly-looking surveyor (at right) and equally-well-decked-out helper (left) with an early version of the theodolite (described as a "Semy Circle set upon a perfeck square"), some levels (one of them using water boxes), and a target stick.

{Illustration of surveyors with their equipment from The English Improver Improved or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed by Walter Blith (London, 1652); source: MSU.edu hst425}

This illustration shows a Portuguese navigator using a similar device (a forerunner of the sextant called a cosmolabe) to help draw a nautical chart. His instrument could not be used at sea, but more portable versions might be found on the distant ships, to be used with his charts when landmarks ashore were out of sight.

{A navigator and his instruments from the late sixteenth century; source: Os oitavos na História blog}

Another set of men holding rules were the men who made them. They were self-employed craftsmen or masters of small shops who possessed skill akin to goldsmiths or clock-makers or even, in those times, many plebeian artists, composers, and literary authors.

You can tell something of the skill possessed by one of these craftsmen, Henry Sutton, from this account by John Collins. Notice that Sutton needed no more than a verbal description in order to make a complex mathematical instrument. A mathematician "intimated his desires" and the craftsman, an engraver, "speedily found out the drawing" without further instruction. [3]

{From: The sector on a quadrant, or, a treatise containing the description and use of three several quadrants Accommodated for dyalling, for the resolving of all proportions instrumentally, and for the ready finding the hour and azimuth; with large cuts of each quadrant, printed from the original plates graved by Henry Sutton, by John Collins (printed by J.Macock, to be sold by George Hurlock, William Fisher and Henry Sutton mathematical instrument maker, 1658)}

This is Sutton's quadrant, made from a plate he engraved for Collins' book.

{source: Royal Museums, Greenwich}

Sutton was acclaimed one of the best, but others like him were skillful instrument makers, the technicians of their time. Here's one (quite late) description of their trade.[4]

{This reads: "Of the Mathematical and Optical Instrument, and Spectacle-Maker.

"THE Mathematical-Instrument-Maker makes all kind of Instruments constructed upon Mathematical Principles, and used in Philosophical Experiments: He makes Globes, Orrerys, Scales, Quadrants, Sectors, Sun-Dials of all Sorts and Dimensions, Air-Pumps, and the whole Apparatus belonging to Experimental Philosophy. He ought to have a Mathematically turned Head, and be acquainted with the Theory and Principles Upon which his several Instruments are constructed, as well as with the practical Use of them. He employs several different Hands, who are mere Mechanics, and know no more of the Use or Design of the Work they make, than the Engines with which the greatest Part of them are executed; therefore the Master must be a thorough Judge of Work in general.

"The Optical-Instrument-Maker is employed in making the various sorts of Telescopes, Microscopes of different Structures, Spectacles, and all other Instruments invented for the Help or Preservation of the Sight, and in which Glasses are used. He himself executes very little of the Work, except the grinding the Glasses: He grinds his Convex-Glasses in a Brass Concave Sphere, of a Diameter large in proportion to the Glass intended, and his Concave-Glasses upon a Convex Sphere of the same Metal: His Plane-Glasses he grinds upon a just Plane, in the same Manner as the common Glass-Grinder, mentioned Chap. XXXII. Sect. 4. He grinds them all with Sand and polishes them with Emery and Putty. The Cases and Machinery of his Instruments are made by different Workmen, according to their Nature, and he adjusts the Glasses to them.

"It is a very ingenious and profitable Business, and employs but a few Hands as Masters; The Journeymen earn, a Guinea a Week, and some more, according as they are accurate in their Trade. Such a Tradesman designed for a Master ought to have a pretty good Education, and a penetrating Judgment, to apprehend the Theory of the several Instruments he is obliged to make, and must be a thorough Judge of such Work as he employs others to execute. A Youth may be bound to either of these Trades any time between thirteen and fifteen Years of Age, and does not require, much Strength."}

Yet one more set of men with rules were teachers and authors of instructional texts who demonstrated the use of mathematical instruments.

John Collins himself was one of these. As an example, here is a list of his books on the use of mathematical instruments. It shows up in an "astronomical appendix" to a translation of The Sphere of Marcus Manilius by Sir Edward Sherburne, ca. 1675.

{an Account of John Collins's Mathematical Works Reprinted from the Appendix to Sir E. Sherburne's Translation of Bk. 1 of the Astronomicon of Manilius. Edited by N. Brook (Nathanael Brook: London, 1675?)}

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Some sources:

Navigation: The Mariner's Quadrant

Navigation, Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine

The identity of the mathematical practitioner in 16th-century England by Stephen Johnston in the proceedings of a 1995 conference in Duisburg: Irmgarde Hantsche (ed.), Der “mathematicus”: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer neuen Berufsgruppe in der Zeit Gerhard Mercators, Duisburger Mercator-Studien, vol. 4 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1996), 93-120. It is closely based on material in the introduction to my thesis, and appears here by permission of Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.

De republica anglorum, a discourse on the Commonwealth of England by Thomas Smith, ed. by L. Alston with a preface by F.W. Maitland (Cambridge, the University Press, 1906)

"Christs Teares over Ierusalem" by Thomas Nashe (1593) in Life in Shakespeare's England a book of Elizabethan prose comp. by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge University press, 1913) Extract: "In London, the rich disdain the poor. The courtier the citizen. The citizen the country man. One occupation disdaineth another. The merchant the retailer. The retailer the craftsman. The better sort of craftsmen the baser. The shoemaker the cobbler. The cobbler the carman. One nice dame disdains her next neighbour should have that furniture to her house, or dainty dish or device, which she wants. She will not go to church, because she disdains to mix herself with base company, and cannot have her close pew by herself. She disdains to wear that everyone wears, or hear that preacher which everyone hears. So did Jerusalem disdain God's prophets, because they came in the likeness of poor men. She disdained Amos, because he was a keeper of oxen, as also the rest, for they were of the dregs of the people. But their disdain prospered not with them. Their house, for their disdain, was left desolate unto them."

"Itinerary" by Fynes Moryson (1617) in Life in Shakespeare's England a book of Elizabethan prose comp. by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge University press, 1913)

The London tradesman; Being a compendious view of all the trades, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practised in the cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the information of parents, and instruction of youth in their choice of business by R. Campbell, esq (London, printed by T. Gardner, 1747)

The making of the English middle class; business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730 by Peter Earle (University of California Press, 1989)

Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 29 May 1660

The sphere of Marcus Manilius made an English poem with annotations and an astronomical appendix by Marcus Manilius, translated by Sir Edward Sherburne (London, printed for Nathanael Brooke, 1675)

"A Catalogue of Astronomers" in the work cited just above.

"The Institution of Residential Investment in Seventeenth-Century London" by William C. Baer, The Business History Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 515-551 (Harvard) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4127797

Biographies in John Aubrey's Brief Lives

The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England by E.G.R. Taylor (Cambridge, 1954)

Shakespeare from the margins by Patricia A. Parker (University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain by Keith Wrightson (Yale University Press, 2002)

Manilius and his intellectual background by Katharina Volk (Oxford University Press, 2009)

The English Improver Improved or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed by Walter Blith (London, 1652)

Marcus Manilius on wikipedia

"The Search for the 'Middle Sort of People' in England, 1600-1800" by H. R. French, The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 277-293 (Cambridge University Press) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3021022

Stereographic projection in wikipedia

Hour angle in wikipedia

Azimuth in wikipedia

Solar azimuth angle in wikipedia

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Notes:

[1] Patricia Parker writes well about the disdain of gentles for their lesser bretheren. See Shakespeare from the margins by Patricia A. Parker (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

[2] The making of the English middle class; business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730 by Peter Earle (University of California Press, 1989)

[3] Here is the relevant description: A limb is the outer edge of a sphere, in this case the earth.

Being in conference with my loving friend M. Thomas Harvie, he told me, that he had often drawn a Quadrant upon Paper pasteboard, &c. derived by himself, and never done by any man before, as to his knowledge, from the Stereographick Projection, which for a particular Latitude, would give the Hour in the equal Limb, and would also perform the Azimuth very well; and but that it was so particular, was very desirous to have one made in Brass for his own use by an Instrument Maker: whereto replying, that with the access of some other Lines to be used with Compasses, it might be rendered general for finding both the Hour and the Azimuth in the equal Limb: He thereupon intimated his desires to M. Sutton, promising within a fortnight after their conference, to draw up full directions for the making thereof. But M. Sutton having very good practise and experience in drawing Projections, speedily found out the drawing of that Projection, either in a Quadrant or a Semicircle, without the assistance of the promised directions, and accordingly, hath drawn the shape of it.
-- The sector on a quadrant, or, a treatise containing the description and use of three several quadrants by John Collins (printed by J.Macock, to be sold by George Hurlock, William Fisher and Henry Sutton mathematical instrument maker, 1658)

[4] This description comes from a book published a century after the period of which I'm writing. I couldn't find anything more closely contemporaneous. Although it does not contradict writers who published in the middle of the seventeenth century and seems to jibe with sources from the period, I can't really say it's as good a description of the one time as of the other. In the preceding chapter the author also describes the watch- and clock-making trades. My source is Chapter 55 in The London tradesman; Being a compendious view of all the trades, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practised in the cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the information of parents, and instruction of youth in their choice of business by R. Campbell, esq (London, printed by T. Gardner, 1747)

Note on reproductions: Where not in the public domain, reproductions made in the blog post appear in accordance with fair use provisions of US copyright law. If you believe I have abused the privilege of fair use, please let me know.

a persistent technology

We're accustomed to see new apps replace old ones. Remember the old browsers now long gone — Lynx, Mosaic, and Netscape Navigator? Or the defunct search engines — Gopher, Lycos, Magellan, and Alta Vista? So it's a surprise to find that some old apps remain in place and continue to attract new users even as the tech revolution advances. Sure we have whole new generations of social networking wonders. Nonetheless a few of the neanderthal apps from the dawn of the internet are not only still around but are widely used. Plain old text-based discussion lists are in this category. For example there's a set of message boards on Giaia Online which have over 22 million users who've posted close on 2 billion discussions.[1] These and other discussion groups are directly descended from the Usenet architecture which debuted in 1979, and it's nice to see they are still going strong.[2]

In 1979 there was no internet. To gain access to the lists we dialed our modems onto local BBS networks. Making our own contributions and reading those of others, we quickly found how desperate some people were to see their names online no matter how excruciatingly banal their writings might be. Just as quickly we discovered how easily a tactless comment might cause offense and, by extension, how easily trollers could stir up trouble by artfully rubbing innocents the wrong way. And finally we found that spammers loved the system's lack of blocking tools. These problems mostly got sorted out as the system and its users matured so that these days the various forms of discussion-list systems are more popular than ever.[3] Undoubtedly the most widely used of all newsgroup sites is craigslist. Although it's no longer based on Usenet software, it started as a discussion list and, even now, retains some of its ancient Usenet character.[4]

Personally, I've found newsgroups best at accomplishing very specific tasks like sharing open source software, buying and selling bikes and bike parts, or finding answers to arcane questions such as the diagnosis of carburation problems in the 1979 Triumph Spitfire.[5] I've also found genealogy lists to be extensive and quite helpful.[6] And lately I've noticed that there's both longevity and considerable success in the running of hyper-local discussion lists — those newsgroups, email lists, and forums that have active moderation, require registration, and confine themselves to a relatively small geographic area as well as (usually) a defined subject-area of coverage. This link, for example, takes you to a set of discussion lists in and around a the section of Washington, DC, called Brookland: Links to listservs in Brookland and beyond. There are many such.[7] Neighborhoods have discussion lists, schools have them, and many, many other local affinity groups have them. I've found, for example that the aging in place movement supports a growing list of discussion groups. I sometimes follow the one in my area called the Chevy Chase At Home Urban Village.[8]

It'll be interesting to see whether the growing popularity of hand-held internet devices dents the continuing expansion of discussion list usage. It's tempting to guess that it will because the discussions are all keyboard generated and the pocketable internet appears mainly to be swipe-and-tap. Still, on the other hand, think how much text messaging there's been among cell phone users and how much more common it's becoming to find screen-based keyboards on tablets and other portables. I'm thinking the three decades of discussion list growth haven't brought this technology to the end of the line; we may find that the service begun when Usenet was born hasn't yet completed its cycle of usefulness.

---------

See also:

Internet: Many-to-Many Communication

Bulletin board system

What Is The Usenet? from the Usenet Learning Center

What is Usenet? from FAQs.org

Usenet: the Global Watering Hole (1991)

Usenet newsgroup

List of newsgroups

How the Usenet News Protocols Work

Google Groups

Forum Software Timeline 1994 - 2010

Internet forum

List of Internet forums

DCist: What's Your Neighborhood Listserv? 2005
----------

Notes:

[1] Data source: Internet forum in wikipedia

[2] As this graphic from altopia (via wikipedia) shows.

An 2009 article in Wired says the Google Usenet Newsgroup archive contains more than 700 million articles. (See also this one.) According to CataList, the official catalog of LISTSERV lists, there are this month 515,217 LISTSERV lists, 2,773 of which have 1,000 users or more and 264 of which have 10,000 users or more

[3] This graph shows traffic on Giganews, a major Usenet platform.

{source: Giganews via afterdawn.com}

[4] Regarding craigslist popularity, examine this comparison of Amazon, eBay, and craigslist traffic over the past few years.

{source: blog.auctionbytes.com}

These days craigslist has well over 815 million page loads a day according to doloop.com. According to wikipedia, craigslist "serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 33rd place overall among web sites worldwide and 7th place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on June 28, 2010), with over 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on January 8, 2010)"

[5] In fact one of the more popular posts on my blog is one that shows the Spitfire's front wishbone suspension.

[6] See for example the lists on rootsweb and the Mailing Lists section of Cyndi's List.

[7] Of the 515,217 current discussion lists only 52,617 are "public." The rest are for defined groups whose members register and are approved by a moderator.

[8] Chevy Chase at Home says it's "a group of residents and friends dedicated to supporting the concept of Aging in Place. It consists of persons living in the Chevy Chase, MD communities of Section Three, Section Five, Martin's Addition, Chevy Chase Village and the Town of Chevy Chase who wish to help each other so they can maintain a quality of life they desire, and continue to live independently in their homes and community, enjoying fulfilling lives as they grow older."

a life that breathes its own breath

Niall Ferguson's The ascent of money: a financial history of the world (2008) is one of my current reads. It's "big history," a broad overview of currency and other (many other) financial instruments. I wish he'd given more than a quick a once-over to the era which fascinates me: the financial revolution (so-called) that evolved from Renaissance Italy, to Reformation Holland, and Restoration England in the early modern period. But I find it interesting and fun to read all the same. The work makes plain that one of my cherished day dreams — a society based on the anarchic principles held dear by George Orwell, Ursula Le Guin, and others — is pretty much an impossible one. So too, the deep-ingrained faith of communists and socialists in the elimination of the cash nexus as a dominant measure of value.

This came to mind when my morning cruise across a small slice of the internet brought up a quotation from Henry David Thoreau: "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

I like to search out the origins of inspirational quotes; they're often not what they seem. This one is pretty much the genuine article. It turns out Thoreau didn't actually write those exact words. If you search the sentence, you will find thousands of repetitions of it in blogs and websites, but close to zero actual references back to the man's works.

What he said, in both his Journal and the book Walden, was this sentence fragment: "the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." It's not so pithy but its meaning is pretty much the same. Analyzing the differences would be an exercise, I believe, in pedantry.

Thoreau's argument in journal and book is much the same. It's the romantic notion that men lead dreary lives of toil which bring them no real satisfaction. They'd be happier if they could cast off the enslaving chains of obligation and live free. This is, of course, what he set out to do in removing himself to Walden Pond, but he never tells us how the world would run if everyone did the same (and he himself doesn't even try to live without receiving more material goods from well-wishers than he's able to exchange for them). I think we all have to agree that his experiment of life in the woods is like my Orwellian day dream: even with the best will in the world you must reluctantly conclude that it's a concept that doesn't scale up.

Here's some of the argument as developed in the Journal:

... Are we not reminded in our better moments that we have been needlessly husbanding somewhat, perchance our little God-derived capital, or title to capital, guarding it by methods we know? But the most diffuse prodigality a better wisdom teaches, — that we hold nothing. We are not what we were. By usurers' craft, by Jewish methods, we strive to retain and increase the divinity in us, when infinitely the greater part of divinity is out of us. ... [You must] roam far, grasp life and conquer it, learn much and live. ... Be unwise and daring. ... Men come home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines and is sickly because it breathes its own breath. Their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. But [so much better to] come home from far, from ventures and perils, from enterprise and discovery and crusading, with faith. ...

And this from Walden:

... [Civilized men] have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. ... While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. ... We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. ... Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins to-day, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But to make haste to my own experiment. ...

{you can find this poster all over the web}

{Thoreau in 1862, artist unknown; source: wikipedia}

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Here is the full context of the quote from the Journal:

Though the race is not so degenerated but a man might possibly live in a cave to-day and keep himself warm by furs, yet, as caves and wild beasts are not plenty enough to accommodate all at the present day, it were certainly better to accept the advantages which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In thickly settled civilized communities, boards and shingles, lime and brick, are cheaper and more easily come by than suitable caves, or the whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantity, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. A tolerable house for a rude and hardy race that lived much out of doors was once made here without any of these last materials. According to the testimony of the first settlers of Boston, an Indian wigwam was as comfortable in winter as an English house with all its wainscotting, and they had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof, which was moved by a string. Such a lodge was, in the first instance, constructed in a day or two and taken down and put up again in a few hours, and every family had one.

Thus, to try our civilization by a fair test, in the ruder states of society every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its ruder and simpler wants; but in modern civilized society, though the birds of the air have their nests, and woodchucks and foxes their holes, though each one is commonly the owner of his coat and hat though never so poor, yet not more than one man in a thousand owns a shelter, but the nine hundred and ninety-nine pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams and contributes to keep them poor as long as they live. But, answers one, by simply paying this annual tax the poorest man secures an abode which is a palace compared to the Indian's. An annual rent of from twenty to sixty or seventy dollars entitles him to the benefit of all the improvements of centuries, — Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, etc., etc. But while civilization has been improving our houses, she has not equally improved the men who should occupy them. She has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night, perchance, to a hut no better than a wigwam. If she claims to have made a real advance in the welfare of man, she must show how she has produced better dwellings without making them more costly. And the cost of a thing, it will be remembered, is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house costs perhaps from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, and to earn — this sum will require from fifteen to twenty years of the day laborer's life, even if he is not incumbered with a family; so that he must spend more than half his life before a wigwam can be earned; and if we suppose he pays a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, for instance, who are at least as well off as the other classes, what are they about? For the most part I find that they have been toiling ten, twenty, or thirty years to pay for their farms, and we may set down one half of that toil to the cost of their houses; and commonly they have not yet paid for them. This is the reason they are poor; and for similar reasons we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries.

But most men do not know what a house is, and the mass are actually poor all their days because they think they must have such an one as their neighbor's. As if one were to wear any sort of coat the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat and cap of woodchuck-skin, should complain of hard times because he could not buy him a crown!

-- The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, ed. by Bradford Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861, Volume 7, edited by Bradford Torrey and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (Houghton Mifflin, 1906)

Here is the full context of the quote from Walden:

In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man, — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages, — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family, — estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less; — so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?

" As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel."

"Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth it shall die."

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money, — and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses, — but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent.

-- The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Walden, Volume 2, edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Bradford Torrey (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906)

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It's irrelevant but (I think) interesting that a Google search of the Thoreau quote turns up a web page called Leatherman's Loop about a 10k trail race held each spring n Cross River, NY. I've previously written about the history of the Leatherman, and this page gives a good short account of the man and his doings: The Legend of The Leatherman.

That's interesting, but it's also interesting that the Thoreau quote does not actually appear on the web page. You have to look at page source to figure out that the person who put together the page used the quote as a meta title at one time (though no longer), why I could not say.

Five Points

A couple of years ago I did a post on a famous photo showing the Italian immigrants of New York's Mulberry Street on a warm day in 1900. Since then I've done a few more posts on the same topic,[1] but not having yet exhausted it or myself, I'll do a few more.

This is about one of the most notorious of the city's noxious slums, called Five Points, which Mulberry bounded on the east.

This 1832 map shows the path of Mulberry St. and the location of Five Points.


I first noticed the existence of the place in a news item from the New York Times, Independence Day, 1853. It said, in full:

An Italian named John Boese, was arrested yesterday by Officer Kelly, of the Tenth District Police, for soliciting alms in Grand-street. He had a card pinned on his breast on which was printed, "The bearer is blind, and also very poor and unable to support his three small children; his wife is dead, and he is now left alone to protect them." The officer searched him, and found safely stowed away in his clothes the sum of $30.04. On being examined, he stated that he was blind only in one eye; that he had no children in this country, but had three in Leghorn, Italy, and that he lived in the Five Points. He was first sent to the Alms-House, and afterward to the Work-House, for 6 months.
-- New-York City. Arrest of a beggar New York Times, July 4, 1853, Wednesday, Page 6

A bit more research showed that John Boese's home base, Five Points, was a favorite topic for nineteenth-century news reporters, editorial writers, and authors of magazine articles and even books. It was home to beggars like himself as well as gamblers, con men, thieves, burglars, gangsters, corrupt politicians, and others out to cadge a quick buck. It was also home to multitudes of the poorest of the poor — rag pickers, seamstresses, scavengers, day servants, and prostitutes.

Although New York had numerous pockets of crime and poverty, Five Points was distinguished for the extravagance with which it put them on view. At a time when mixing different sorts of people together was apt to be considered promiscuous rather than desirable, Five Points was also notorious for its mixtures of people of different race, religion, and national origin. New York had freed its black slaves in 1827 and many came to settle on the swampy and disease-ridden land out of which Five Points evolved. Even before the potato famine beginning in 1845 came those dirt poor Irish peasants who could afford to live nowhere else. Others drifted there from the Italian enclaves around Mulberry St. and still others were attracted by the relative freedom from enforcement of laws.

In 1842 the great Charles Dickens came to observe and write up what he saw:

Let us go on again, and ... plunge into the Five Points ... We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day, but of other kinds of strollers plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife enough where we are going now.

This is the place — these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with, dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lien of going on all-fours? And why they talk instead of grunting?

So far nearly every house is a low tavern, and on the bar-room walls are colored prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of England, and the American eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate-glass and colored paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste for decoration, even here ...

-- American notes for general circulation by Charles Dickens (Harper & Brothers, 1842)

Al Capone got his start there; when he was convicted for tax evasion in 1931, he was quoted in newspapers saying, "I shoulda never left Five Points."

Dickens was not the only tourist to go there. New Yorkers themselves and visitors from other places came to observe with, as one writer puts it, both "moral indignation and prurient fascination."[2] Many, like Dickens, sought the company of a police officer (he brought two with him).

Men also flocked to Five Points by night for the entertainment. There they would find "sporting events," such as gamblers' pit-contests between dogs and rats, taverns and brothels in abundance, and dance halls where Irish and African-American dance would be merged into an entirely new style.

There is much here to interest: extreme poverty and its excruciating results; underworld figures preying on the poor and also doing battle with the forces of the ruling establishment; and, in an atmosphere of freedom and license — a freedom from the oppressive social controls of self-appointed moral guardians — an explosion of creative energy evident in the dance halls.

There is more of interest specifically to me. A number of coincidences connect the history of Five Points to other stories I've been telling. There are connections to the Croton Aqueduct, about which I've written numerous posts, to my family's own history, and even to the family of Diary of Sophia Carteret, Lady Shelburne, whose diary I've reproduced at length.

I'll write about these connections as time permits in coming weeks.

Here are some images of the place:

{New York City - "Doing the slums" - A scene in the Five Points / from a sketch by a staff artist - 1885 - Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 61, (1885 Dec. 5), p. 245. Wood engraving. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division}

{Five Points District, New York City, by George Catlin, 1827. Source: blackpast.org}

{End of the poor Funeral from a tenement house in Baxter Street, Five Points, New York - from a sketch by our artist - 1865 - Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 20 (1865 July 1), p. 225. Wood engraving. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division}

{New York City - Among the poor - 1873 - A Summer evening scene at the Five Points / sketched by Matt Morgan, from Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 36, (1873 August 26), p. 357. Wood engraving. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division }

{Life sketches in the metropolis - Our homeless poor - Early morning in Donovan Lane, near the Five Points - 1872 - Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 34, (1872 March 16), p. 5.. Wood engraving. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division}

{The Old Brewery. Lithograph of Five Points, New York; source: nyhistory.org/}

fit and healthy cities

The web site of a local TV station is bragging that the DC Area Tops Index of Fit and Healthy Cities. The article says the metropolitan area which centers on Washington, DC, ranks number one in a report listing the 50 healthiest cities in America.[1] The account names but does not provide a link to the source of data. That source is a press release from the American College of Sports Medicine, America's 50 Largest Metro Areas Get Their Annual Physical.[2] The release gives a link to the full report (pdf).[3]

In calculating the index and building the ranking data, the authors considered a large number of indicators in two broad groupings: personal health indicators and community/environment indicators. The former include eating habits, incidence of obesity, amount of exercise taken, presence of disease, and the like. The latter include amenities such as availability of health care, farmers markets, rec centers, public swimming pools, ball diamonds, playgrounds, and the like per unit of the population, as well as percentage of people who walk or bike to work or use public transit.[4] The report lists all the variables and gives lots of information on their selection as variables, the collection of data for them, and the scoring process by which the index data were tallied. It does not give (that I can find) a list of the weights assigned to each variable (so you can see whether, for example, the presence of golf courses counted more or less than the likelihood that residents are eating five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day).

Here are the results in rank order. As you can see, the number on the left is the rank, the metro area is then named, and the last bit of info is the score.

Rank Metropolitan Area Score
---------------------------
1 Washington, DC 73.5
2 Boston, MA 72.6
3 Minneapolis, MN 71.7
4 Seattle, WA 70.5
5 Portland, OR 70.4
6 Denver, CO 69.9
7 Sacramento, CA 65.8
8 San Francisco, CA 64.7
9 Hartford, CT 64.4
10 Austin, TX 63.9
11 Richmond, VA 62.7
12 Cincinnati, OH 62.5
13 San Diego, CA 62.0
14 San Jose, CA 61.0
15 Salt Lake City, UT 60.6
16 Atlanta, GA 57.7
17 Virginia Beach, VA 57.2
18 Providence, RI 57.2
19 Orlando, FL 55.5
20 Baltimore, MD 53.5
21 New York, NY 52.9
22 Raleigh, NC 52.4
23 Pittsburgh, PA 52.0
24 Jacksonville, FL 51.2
25 Cleveland, OH 51.0
26 Philadelphia, PA 50.4
27 Milwaukee, WI 49.2
28 Buffalo, NY 48.8
29 Kansas City, MO 47.9
30 Tampa, FL 47.8
31 Nashville, TN 47.8*
32 Phoenix, AZ 47.4
33 Chicago, IL 47.0
34 Charlotte, NC 44.0
35 Columbus, OH 42.8*
36 Riverside, CA 42.8*
37 Saint Louis, MO 42.2
38 Los Angeles, CA 40.5
39 Miami, FL 39.9
40 Dallas, TX 39.5
41 New Orleans, LA 37.7
42 Houston, TX 37.6
43 San Antonio, TX 36.9
44 Indianapolis, IN 35.9
45 Las Vegas, NV 35.3
46 Louisville, KY 32.5
47 Detroit, MI 31.9
48 Memphis, TN 31.6
49 Birmingham, AL 31.2
50 Oklahoma, OK 24.3

Looking at the list, I thought there might be a simple and straight forward correlation between wealth and health. I checked this by comparing the ACSM rankings with a list, in rank order, of the metro areas with the highest median household income. (This something that the Census Bureau keeps track of.) Unfortunately, the only ranking I could find doesn't in every case use the exact same metro area boundaries as ACSM uses, but the results are interesting nonetheless.[5]

Here's what I found. I put the ACSM rank at left. The next number is the median income rank. There are gaps in this sequence because my source gave data for some smaller metro areas which were not covered by the ACSM study. I've indicated where the metro area boundaries differ; they're all instances where the median income data come from a Consolidated metro area and the ACSM data do not.

Metropolitan statistical areas ranked by median household income

Rank Metropolitan Statistical Area
-----------------------------------
8 1 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CMSA, MSA: SF-Oakland-Fremont, CA
1 2 Washington–Baltimore CMSA, MSA: Washington-Arlington-Alexandria,
3 4 Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA
2 5 Boston–Worcester–Lawrence CMSA, MSA: Boston-Cambridge-Quincy
9 6 Hartford, CT MSA
16 7 Atlanta, GA MSA
6 10 Denver–Boulder–Greeley CMSA, MSA: Denver-Aurora
33 11 Chicago–Gary–Kenosha CMSA, MSA: Chicago-Naperville-Joliet
21 12 New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island CMSA MSA: same designation
4 13 Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue CMSA, MSA: same designation
47 16 Detroit–Ann Arbor–Flint CMSA, MSA: Detroit-Warren-Livonia
10 17 Austin–San Marcos, TX MSA
22 18 Raleigh–Durham–Cary, NC MSA
15 20 Salt Lake City–Ogden, UT MSA
26 23 Philadelphia–Wilmington–Atlantic City CMSA, MSA: Phila-Camden-Wilmngtn
40 25 Dallas–Fort Worth CMSA. MSA: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington
13 26 San Diego, CA MSA
29 36 Kansas City, MO–KS MSA
27 37 Milwaukee–Racine CMSA, MSA: Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis,
34 38 Charlotte–Gastonia–Rock Hill, NC–SC MSA
7 40 Sacramento–Yolo CMSA, MSA: Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville
5 41 Portland–Salem CMSA, MSA: Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton
44 47 Indianapolis, IN MSA Metropolitan statistical areas

It strikes me that, generally speaking, health and wealth are indeed closely correlated. Where you see a variance between the two ranks, the cause can often be ascribed to the boundary differences mentioned above.

Here are cities where the boundaries appear to be the same, but the rank is different by 6 or more: Atlanta, Austin, San Diego, and Kansas City. New York and Seattle might be outliers but I suspect not; although they both have have their MSA and CMSA described using the same jurisdictions, I suspect the boundaries are not the same.

It's interesting that Atlanta has high income rank and low fitness rank while the other outliers have the reverse. It's tempting to account for this, at least partly, by presence or absence of a commitment among taxpayers to making their metro areas congenial, as a benefit to all citizens. That is, from a health and fitness point of view (including provision of parks, public transit, pedestrian-friendly transportation policy, and such like), I suspect Atlanta taxpayers are relatively stingy and the other three are relatively generous.[6]

{source: The Hamilton Spectator}

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Notes:

[1] Full citation: DC Area Tops Index of Fit and Healthy Cities, by Pat Lawson Muse, Updated 7:16 PM EDT, Mon, May 24, 2010, on NBCWashington.com.

[2] Full citation: America's 50 Largest Metro Areas Get Their Annual Physical, For immediate release, May 24, 2010; ACSM American Fitness Index™ Provides a Snapshot of the State of Health and Fitness; Washington, D.C., Tops List of Healthiest and Fittest Metro Areas.

[3] ACSM American Fitness Index™ Health and Community Fitness Status of the 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas, 2010 Edition, by Brenda E. Chamness, Walter R. Thompson, Terrell W. Zollinger, Barbara E. Ainsworth, Carolyn M. Muegge, and Jessica M. West, for the American College of Sports Medicine

[4] My niece, Heather, will appreciate that having a relatively high number public dog walks per thousand residents is an indicator of civic fitness and health.

[5] My source for median income data is the wikipedia entry: Highest-income metropolitan statistical areas in the United States

[6] The ACSM overview lists for Atlanta and Austin shows the main categories where they fell short, compared to the average, and where they did well.

ATLANTA

STRENGTHS/ADVANTAGES
• Lower percent with disability
• Lower percent with angina or coronary heart disease
• Lower percent of days when physical health was not good during the past 30 days
• Lower death rate for diabetes
• More park units per capita
• More golf courses per capita
• More swimming pools per capita
• More recreation centers per capita
• Higher park-related expenditures per capita
• More tennis courts per capita

OPPORTUNITIES/CHALLENGES
• Higher percent unemployed
• Lower percent of city land area as parkland
• Fewer acres of parkland per capita
• Fewer farmers’ markets per capita
• Lower percent using public transportation to work
• Lower percent bicycling or walking to work
• Fewer ball diamonds per capita
• Lower number of primary health care providers per capita
• Fewer dog parks per capita
• Lower level of state requirement

AUSTIN

STRENGTHS/ADVANTAGES
• Lower percent unemployed
• Lower percent with disability
• Higher percentage eating 5+ servings of fruits/vegetables per day
• Lower percent obese
• Lower percent with angina or coronary heart disease
• Lower percent with asthma
• Lower percent with diabetes
• Lower death rate for cardiovascular disease
• More acres of parkland per capita
• Higher percent of city land area as parkland
• More swimming pools per capita
• Higher level of state requirement for Physical Education classes
• More dog parks per capita

OPPORTUNITIES/CHALLENGES
• Fewer farmers’ markets per capita
• Lower percent using public transportation to work
• Lower percent bicycling or walking to work
• Fewer ball diamonds per capita
• Fewer golf courses per capita
• Fewer park units per capita
• Fewer recreation centers per capita
• Fewer tennis courts per capita
• Lower number of primary health care providers per capita
• Lower park-related expenditures per capita

social leakage

Social Leakage

Close to a year ago, two scientists reported a serious violation of privacy policies among prominent social networks. They studied Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LiveJournal, LinkedIn and seven other social networks. Contrary to the privacy policies that each of them adopted, they were leaking personal information to third-party servers that specialize in aggregating internet data for commercial purposes.* The researchers' report is unusually clear and succinct. Its conclusions are damning. Yet, at that time, news organizations paid no attention.

The report is On the Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information Via Online Social Networks (pdf), Aug 2009, by Balachander Krishnamurthy and Craig E. Wills. The credentials of the authors are good. One works at AT&T Labs in the Research Dept. and other is from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Mass.

Looking back, now, I can find only one instance in which the report was picked up and disseminated: Social network privacy study finds identity link to cookies (Aug 2009). Nine months have gone by and, I guess it's fortunate for us, a major news outlet has finally taken notice: Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole by Emily Steel and Jessica E. Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal, May 21. 2010. And fortunate also that other news sources have begun to play catch-up. My favorite of these: The billionaire Facebook founder making a fortune from your secrets (though you probably don't know he's doing it).

The original report is worth reading. Do spend ten minutes of your time on it. It gives the social networking sites the benefit of the doubt in guessing that poor coding practice rather than devil-may-care greed was the reason personal data became exposed to third parties. It's really not difficult to mask that data so it's disheartening, but I guess not surprising, that the researchers gave their findings to the social networking sites last August and none then responded. Only now, contacted by the authors of the WSJ article, have they, for the most part, claimed to have fixed or be in the process of fixing the problems.

It also doesn't surprise that, as you've no doubt noticed, the press is now reporting that Facebook is expected soon to announce an abrupt about-face in its privacy policies.

{source: the Masalai blog}

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*Notice that the report says

Although we focus on OSNs [online social networks, like Facebook] in this study, it should be obvious that the manner of leakage could affect users who have accounts and PII [personally identifiable information] on other sites. Sites related to ecommerce, travel, and news services, maintain information about registered users. Some of these sites do use transient session-specific identifiers, which are less prone to identifying an individual compared with persistent identifiers of OSNs. Yet, the sites may embed pieces of PII such as email addresses and location within cookies or Request-URIs. We have carried out a preliminary examination of several popular commercial sites for which we have readily available access. These include books, newspaper, travel, micropayment, and e-commerce sites. We identified a news site that leaks user email addresses to at least three separate thirdparty aggregators. A travel site embeds a user’s first name and default airport in its cookies, which is therefore leaked to any third-party server hiding within the domain name of the travel site. By and large we did not observe leakage of user’s login identifier via the Referer header, the Cookie, or the Request-URI. It should be noted that even if the user’s identifier had leaked, the associated profile information about the user will not be available to the aggregator without the corresponding password. Our preliminary examination should not be taken as the final answer on this issue. A thorough understanding of the scope of the problem along with steps for preventing leakage in general remains a primary concern. Any protection technique must effectively ensure de-identification between a user’s identity prior to any external communication on any site that requires logging in—OSN or otherwise.