HYDROGENATING THE HUMAN HEART

Perhaps the most enduring problem in the food and drug industry has been the issue of “adulteration” — the cheapening of products through the addition of impure or inferior ingredients. This isn’t merely the situation that Thoreau detected –the addition of water to milk– but includes also the addition of chalk, alum, or kaolin (a type of edible clay), to flour. It was clear to Professor Adam Smith (kindly refer to WEALTH OF NATIONS) and should be clear to us all, that in order to make capitalism work we must guide and supplement it by rules and regulations imposed through law.

But that isn’t what this “Hydrogenating the Human Heart” file is about. Not at all! Adulteration is a mere economic crime. The issue here will be the crime of manslaughter, committed by corporations that fail to adequately assure themselves that their food products are healthful rather than medically harmful. Our case in point will be unhealthful partly-hydrogenated vegetable oils, as cheapo substitutes for healthful butter.

Procter & Gamble couldn’t have known? –Give me a break.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oleomargarine HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1202

Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa’s LIBER ABACI recommend a Hindu number notation system the first digit of which, in Latin by way of Arabic, was designated the zephyrum. In Italian lingo this initial number would become known as the zeuero or zepiro (Fibonacci had learned of this notational system while studying in Algeria and was hoping it would prove useful to European surveyors).

From this year into 1204, the 4th Crusade.

Foundation of the Order of Swordbrethren (Ensiferi).

King John of England proclaimed the initial English food law, the Assize of Bread, which prohibited the adulteration of flour for bread with such ingredients as ground peas or beans. HDT WHAT? INDEX

BETTER THAN BUTTER OLEOMARGARINE

1625

The bubonic plague in London, called the Black Death.

The 1st description of hydrogen, by Jan Baptist van Helmont (not called by such a name — however, this would be the initial deployment of a term such as “gas”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1669

December 1, Wednesday (Old Style): The Reverend Joseph Emerson was installed as minister at Mendon, his father- in-law the Reverend Peter Bulkeley of Concord negotiating his contract. That contract stipulated that a part of his pay was to be received by him “at some shop in Boston,” as well as that he was to have two pounds of butter for every cow in the town. The Reverend Emerson would continue in the ministry at that town until retiring to Concord upon the outbreak of the race war; as he would die a few years afterward, it is unlikely that he again held a pastorate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

BETTER THAN BUTTER OLEOMARGARINE

1766

May 29, Thursday: Henry Cavendish read the 1st of 3 papers before the Royal Society in London, describing experiments in which metals, in contact with acid, produced a substance he was terming “Inflammable Air” (we now term this a “gas,” designated as “Hydrogen”).

Fall: As “Senior Sophister,” during his senior year at Harvard College while Holyoke was president, Asa Dunbar headed a revolt against the bad food, especially the rancid butter,1 and against the chronic misuse of special privilege by privileged students — and was threatened with expulsion. DUNBAR FAMILY

THOREAU GENEALOGY

Asa then wrote up the incident in scriptural language as a burlesque narrative:

The Book of Asa the Scribe Chapter I. 1. There was a man of pontiquinum whose name was Asa: the same also, whenas he had none inheritance in pontiquinum, went down into Mistick to sojourn there. 2. Moreover Asa was a wise man, and skilled in all the learning of the harvardites. 3. And it came to pass, when the mistickites saw Asa, that he was a wise man and skilled in all the learning of the Harvardites, that they spake one to another, saying, 4. Do not our children and our servants suffer for lack of instruction? and we ourselves have no time to instruct them, for the labour that is upon our hands. 5. And behold we have victuals and lodging, and mony in our purses, and our young men be very numerous. 6. Go to now therefore, let us entreat Asa, & give him mony, even sixty shekles of silver, & make Asa ruler of the pedagogue to instruct our sons & our servants. 7. And the mistickites did so, & entreated Asa, & offered him sixty shekles of silver, & Asa consented to their entreaties. 8. So Asa instructed the children & the servants of the mistickites, three months, for sixty shekles of silver. 9. And Asa lodged at the house of one Joseph a bricklayer, which standeth 1. The rallying cry among the students was “Behold, our butter stinketh!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

over against the pedagogue, as thou passest thro the gate, towards the north, by the house of Ebenezer the priest. 10. And it was so, that when Asa entered in thro. the door into the pedagogue, he uncovered his head & bowed himself unto the youngmen of the mistickites. 11. Then also the children and the servants of the mistickites, & all the young men rose up & bowed themselves unto Asa & did obeysance. Chapter 2. 1. Now it came to pass in process of time, when Asa went to execute his office in the pedagogue, that he bowed himself as heretofore, & all the young men rose up and bowed themselves & made obeysance. 2. But Andrew the son of Benjamin rose not up nor made obeysance, neither regarded he him at all. 3. Then Asa when he saw that Andrew rose not up neither regarded him at all, went unto his own place, & sat down & called Andrew unto him & spake, saying, 4. Wherefore do I behold this thing in thee? & why hast thou done thus? to set an evil example before the young men. 5. Now therefore I will punish thee with stripes that the young men may see & be afraid, lest peradventure they also be disobedient. 6. Then Andrew fell on his knees & wept bitterly, with many tears, & said unto Asa, forgive, O Sir, I pray thee, & let thine anger be turned away from me, & surely thy servant will do no more so foolishly. 7. Then Asa had compassion on Andrew, & raised him up, & spake to comfortably to him & forgave him, & laid no stripes upon him. 8. Moreover it came to pass after many days, when the fear of Asa had ceased to make Andrew afraid, that behold he again rose not up, nor made obeysance, neither regarded him at all. 9. Then the anger of Asa was kindled a second time against Andrew, more than at the first, & Asa reproved Andrew, saying, 10. Is not this the second time that thou hast delt thus impudently with me? And surely the first time I forgave thee, because of thy tears, & thy promises, & thine entreaties. 11. Now therefore why hast thou done thus impudently again, to set an evil example before the young men? 12. And Andrew was silent, neither opened he his mouth to answer any thing to all the words which Asa had spoken unto him: for he stood guilty. 13. And when Asa saw that he answer’d not a word, neither humbled himself as at the first time, then was Asa exceeding wroth & his anger burned against Andrew. 14. Moreover Asa smote Andrew on his ear, with the palm of his hand, insomuch that he fell down at his feet, as one having no strength. 15. And when the children & the servants of the mistickites saw what was done, they were sore afraid; & all the young men did excedingly [sic] quake HDT WHAT? INDEX

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& tremble for fear of Asa, for his fear fell on them all. 16. Therefore none of the young men did after the example of Andrew, but rose up & bowed themselves, & made obeysance lest the wrath of Asa should fall on them as it had done on Andrew their brother, before their eyes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1783

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian’s romantic tale GALATÉE, an imitation of the GALATEA of Cervantes.

Antoine Lavoisier assigned a new name which in Greek meant “generated from water” — “hydrogen.”

French aeronauts were going aloft in hot-air and hydrogen gas balloons (two years later Jean-Pierre Blanchard would venture across the English Channel in one of these devices).2

December 26, Friday: At a Philosophical Society event in Derby (Soho House of the Lunar Society in Birmingham no longer being available to him due to distance),

Dr. Erasmus Darwin released a 5-foot balloon of hydrogen gas and it traveled 30 miles.

This was a first in England. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM

2. By encouraging Europeans and North Americans to credit that technology could create a future markedly different from the past, these aeronauts would participate in the generation of the 19th-Century cult of human progress! By innovating an industrial process of hydrogenation of cheap oils to render them digestible, these scientists would participate in the generation of the 20th-Century epidemic of heart attacks and strokes due to atherosclerosis! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1784

January 15, Thursday: When Henry Cavendish had burned some hydrogen gas, he noted that water was condensing on the cooler parts of his container. On this day he alerted the Royal Society of London to the hypothesis that water consisted of a combination of hydrogen gas with oxygen gas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1799

The Island of St. John was renamed “Prince Edward’s Island.” Prices of provisions at Halifax, Nova Scotia: beef, by the quarter, 5d. per lb.; mutton 8 d. per lb.; pork 6 d. per lb.; veal 9 d. per lb.; fowls 4 s. each; butter 1 s. 6 d. per lb.; oats 3 s. per bushel. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1800

May 2, Friday: William Nicholson built one of the 1st batteries, based on the work of Alessandro Volta. He was the 1st to attach wires to the battery’s poles and place the wires in water, and demonstrate that electricity could initiate a chemical reaction. He saw bubbles of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas being released — “electrolysis.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1803

The 1st icebox, by Thomas Moore, as described in AN ESSAY ON THE MOST ELIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION OF ICE- HOUSES; ALSO, A DESCRIPTION OF THE NEWLY INVENTED MACHINE CALLED THE REFRIGERATOR. This Thomas Moore was a Maryland farmer and his “refrigerator” apparatus consisted of a tin tub inside a cedar tub, with the space in between the boards packed with charcoal or ashes, and additionally insulated with rabbit skins. Winter ice from his pond was kept in a tin box at the top of the inner box. Moore’s goal was to be able to bring butter from his farm to the town market fresh, firm, and chilled. This device would be in general use until 1938 (we were so poor that my mom had to use one during my childhood in Lincolnville, Indiana in 1948, and I remember that there had to be the most strict rules about opening the icebox because every time you opened it, it lost some of its coolness — and that one chunk of ice needed to last out the whole week before the iceman came again with his enormous tongs and his dripping canvas-backed shirt). Here is the icebox as of 1853 — its presentation somewhat improved in two human generations but its technology substantially unaltered: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1807

January 28, Wednesday: Publication of the Piano Sonata op.20, the Piano Trio op.22, Twelve Dances for piano op.24 and the Twelve Dances for piano op.25 by Johann Nepomuk Hummel was announced in the Wiener Zeitung.

An experimental installation of some gas street lighting, on Pall Mall in London. The usefulness of carbureted hydrogen gas as a fuel for street lighting would be amply demonstrated.

FIRE

(The resultant of this 1807 improvement, after almost a couple or centuries, can be viewed below.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1813

Professor Augustin Pyramus de Candolle’s THÉORIE ÉLÉMENTAIRE DE LA BOTANIQUE, in which he coins the term “taxonomy.” BOTANIZING

Michel Eugène Chevreul discovered margaric acid (the “g” was hard as in “glycemic index” for this was after the Greek μαργαρίτης or μάργαρον on account of the material’s pearly appearance).

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Oleomargarine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1819

July 6, Tuesday: Realizing that the Viceregal capital of Bogota on the far side of the Andes less than 300 miles away was virtually undefended by the Spanish, Simón Bolívar had directed his 2,400 followers over the Páramo de Pisba pass and on this day the some 400 survivors of the trek arrived at the New Granadan village of Socha. Recruiting new soldiers from the population, he would set out for Bogota and on August 7th take its defenders entirely by surprise.

Above the Tivoli Gardens of Paris (where the Saint-Lazare train station is now located), Marie Madeleine- Sophie Armant Blanchard was launching fireworks from her balloon when its hydrogen gas ignited and the craft lost altitude (she releasing the ballast as quickly as she could) and plunged onto a rooftop of the Rue de Provence, with her become entangled in the netting that surrounded the balloon and falling to the street. She might possibly have still been alive for some ten minutes afterward. She was 41.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 6th of 7th M 1819 / The bustle of yesterday over, our streets again look dull, & how much better so than our bustling be indebted to drunken men & vain show. — The poor man committed to jail yesterday for murder, is much on my mind, reports of his conduct are much against him. I fear it must cost him his life. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1820

The New-York Mirror asserted that the ice box for preserving milk, butter, vegetables, and fresh meat during the summer heat was just as much an “article of necessity” as having a carpet on the floor of one’s parlor. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1823

March 19, Wednesday: Mexican Emperor Augustin de Iturbide was forced to abdicate.

The New England Farmer, which began publication in 1822, regularly published the prices of country produce. First quality butter was 15 or 16 cents per pound this week, while eggs were 14 to 16 cents per dozen and a barrel of cider (which might be quite alcoholic at this time of year) was 1 dollar 50 cents. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

Thomas Drummond of the Royal Engineers managed to produce a steady, powerful beam of light which could be mounted in light-houses by applying a method, originated by Goldsworthy Gurney at the Royal Institution, of burning small balls of lime in a mixture of oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. Once this “Drummond Light” was in operation for navigation on the seacoasts, it didn’t take genius to imagine its usefulness in the theater, where it came to be referred to as “the limelight.” By thus replacing the Argand lamp, it was possible to use projected transparencies to illustrate lectures even when they were attended by upwards of 2,000 people. So now, Earth itself is a beacon in space: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1834

July 31, Thursday: An ecclesiastical reform commission was set up by the liberal government of Portugal, to judge the actions of the clergy during the recent civil war.

From a special enclosure constructed at the foot of Boston Common, at 5:50PM Charles Ferson Durant loosed retaining cords and soared out over the bay in the general direction of Nahant beneath his lighter-than-air balloon filled with hydrogen gas. Long before reaching Cape Ann, he lost altitude and his basket began to skip over the waves. Fortunately the aeronaut was attired in his gum-elastic life jacket, and fortunately, the schooner Minor was in the vicinity under the command of a kindhearted Captain Spaulding. The middleaged Louis Lauriat may have witnessed this adolescent derring-do and the reaction of the masses. However, there was more going on that day than merely some venturesome individual rising into the air underneath a silly balloon:3

3. “Emancipation in the West Indies: a Six Months Tour in Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, in the year 1837. By James A. Thome and J.H. Kimball. New York, 1838.” — pp. 146, 147. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“EMANCIPATION IN THE ... INDIES....” : After much debate, the bill passed by large majorities. The apprenticeship system is understood to have proceeded from Lord Brougham, and was by him urged on his colleagues, who, it is said, were inclined to the policy of immediate emancipation. The colonial legislatures received the act of Parliament with various degrees of displeasure, and, of course, every provision of the bill was criticised with severity. The new relation between the master and the apprentice, it was feared, would be mischievous; for the bill required the appointment of magistrates, who should hear every complaint of the apprentice, and see that justice was done him. It was feared that the interest of the master and servant would now produce perpetual discord between them. In the island of Antigua, containing 37,000 people, 30,000 being negroes, these objections had such weight, that the legislature rejected the apprenticeship system, and adopted absolute emancipation. In the other islands the system of the ministry was accepted. The reception of it by the negro population was equal in nobleness to the deed. The negroes were called together by the missionaries and by the planters, and the news explained to them. On the night of the 31st July, they met everywhere at their churches and chapels, and at midnight, when the clock struck twelve, on their knees, the silent, weeping assembly became men; they rose and embraced each other; they cried, they sung, they prayed, they were wild with joy, but there was no riot, no feasting. I have never read anything in history more touching than the moderation of the negroes. Some American captains left the shore and put to sea, anticipating insurrection and general murder. With far different thoughts, the negroes spent the hour in their huts and chapels.... The first of August came on Friday, and a release was proclaimed from all work until the neat Monday. The day was chiefly spent by the great mass of the negroes in the churches and chapels. The clergy and missionaries throughout the island were actively engaged, seizing the opportunity to enlighten the people on all the duties and responsibilities of their new relation, and urging them to the attainment of that higher liberty with which Christ maketh his children free. In every quarter, we were assured, the day was like a sabbath. Work had ceased. The hum of business was still: tranquillity pervaded the towns and country. The planters informed us, that they went to the chapels where their own people were assembled, greeted them, shook hands with them, and exchanged the most hearty good wishes. At Grace Hill, there were at least a thousand persons around the Moravian Chapel who could not get in. For once the house of God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed in white, formed a procession, and walked arm in arm into the chapel. We were told that the dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and modest. There was not the least disposition to gaiety. Throughout the island, there was not a single dance known of, either day or night, nor so much as a fiddle played.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1855

January: Lucretia Bradley of Easton, Pennsylvania inflated an old, weathered silk balloon she had purchased from John Wise for $100.00 with hydrogen gas, and carried herself far above the snowy surface of the earth. At that point the old balloon was rising so fast and the hydrogen expanding so rapidly, that the safety valve even at full open was unable to let enough out. Pressure buildup caused the old bag to rip. Fortunately, the tear was small enough, or the remains of the bag functioned as enough of a streamer, that during her 2-mile fall Miss Bradley did not build up to full descent velocity. She was able to clamber out of the remains of the basket and walk into new episodes in her life.

“The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P. Taylor

From this month into April, General John Garland’s troops would be searching for Utes, with no success whatever. They might as well have been searching for unicorns.

Chief Sealth (or “Seattle”) of the Suquamish tribe of Washington delivered an oration on the beach of the Pacific Ocean and signed a treaty with Superintendent of Indian Affairs Isaac I. Stevens that relocated the Washington tribes to reservations. (His oration was, in part, copied down and translated into English by a white listener, and part of this man’s version, journalistically exaggerated into nativist fantasy, has become an unchallenged Testament of the environmental movement.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

June 1, Monday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway, to the great relief of his congregation, married Ellen Dana. (The couple had been mawkishly and shamelessly making eyes at one another for some time.)

After their ceremony under a bower of white roses, the bridal party, which included the Reverend William Henry Furness who had officiated, went off on a steamboat excursion down the Ohio River to explore Mammoth Cave, for which the bride and bridesmaids doffed their wedding dresses in favor of “indescribable bloomers.” And then they went even further. They visited the Conway home in the Old South. But there Mrs. Ellen Dana Conway made the mistake, while she was being introduced to a 4-year-old girl, Evelyn, by the girl’s uncle in a front yard, of embracing and kissing her. Evelyn was black and a slave! Word of this incident spread rapidly through the county. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Per the 1904 AUTOBIOGRAPHY / MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES OF MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY: We were married by the Rev. Dr. Furness, who travelled from Philadelphia to unite us.... When I offered him payment he said he would accept nothing for himself, but would give what I offered to a working-man of ability near Philadelphia who for some time had preached for the Methodists. He had become unorthodox, and would preach in the Unitarian pulpit on the Sunday of Furness’s absence. The man was Robert Collyer. His appearance in an unorthodox pulpit on that day caused scandal in the Philadelphia Methodist Conference, which had licensed him as a “local preacher.” He gave up his license, and rapidly reached distinction as a Unitarian. When Collyer had become a preacher in Chicago, our friendship was formed in working together to place the Western Unitarian Conference in an anti- slavery attitude. That friendship has continue unbroken. It was always a satisfaction to us that the first honorarium ever given Robert Collyer for a sermon was our marriage fee. The first copy of my “Tracts for To-day” was presented to my betrothed, and in it I find written: “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee.” The words were more strictly true than most of our friends could imagine. My wife’s father, through an unfortunate endorsement of a friend’s notes, had lost nearly everything. I had managed to save nearly $2,000, which was deposited with the Life and Trust Company in Cincinnati. The failure of that company began the “crisis” of 1857. I got only ten cents on the dollar. I had to ask an advance on my salary in order to buy furniture. But my bride and I regarded the poverty attending our first steps as a sort of joke. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake: Concord Tuesday 4 Pm June 1st 1858

Mr Blake— It looks as if it might rain tomorrow; therefore this is to inform you, — if you have not left Worcester on account of rain, — that if the weather prevents my starting to-morrow I intend to start on Thursday morning — i.e. if it is not decidedly HDT WHAT? INDEX

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rainy — or some thing more than a shower, and I trust that I shall meet you at Troy as agreed on. H.D.T.

Page 2 [the concluding segment of this note wh. I have & sent propose to send put into cut out from this note to-day for E.H. the post office [Sharenon], Box 194 P.O. New York City, as an auth autograph. Oct. 19, 1885. H.G.O. Blake]

and I trust that I shall meet you at Troy as agreed on. H.D.T. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The New York Times reported a controversy in New-York over the manufacture and use of “swill-milk”: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Are we not reminded of Thoreau’s humorous remark about evidence of 19th-Century commercial food adulteration, to wit “finding a trout in the milk”? Fast forward if you will, to our latest reports out of mainland China. It would seem that the abuse Chinese nurslings are being forced to endure, being reported in the New York Times in this year of Beijing Olympic triumphalism and Chinese astronaut spacewalks, is eerily similar to the local abuse the Times had been recording during Thoreau’s lifetime! FAST FORWARD TO NOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

We know from Stanley Lebergott’s MANPOWER IN ECONOMIC GROWTH (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964) what monthly farm wages typically amounted to in Massachusetts during this period, over and above of course one’s room and board:

1818 $13.50 1826 $13.50 1830 $12.00 1850 $13.55 1860 $15.34

Incidentally, although such wages were ordinarily significantly higher in Massachusetts than elsewhere, during this period the wage was higher in Rhode Island.

Martin Johnson Heade was still maintaining his studios in New-York City, at the Tenth Street Studio Building. His “Sunset on the Meadows” and “Approaching Thunder Storm” were on exhibit at the National Academy of Design in New-York. During this year he would visit Burlington, Vermont and the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River, and then reside at 25 Waterman Street in Providence, Rhode Island. It was during this year, or possibly the next, that he prepared his intriguing oil on canvas, “Two Owls at Sunset,” with its exceedingly Thoreauvian perspective of the two tiny owls silhouetted against the sky above the barren dark landscape: “Nature ... invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.”4

Within the Providence city limits were the Providence Steam Mill that had been established by Samuel Slater and others in 1827, the Oriental Mills at the corner of Admiral and Whipple Streets, the Elmwood Cotton Mills on Mawney Street, the factories of B.B. & R. Knight at Carpenter Street and Broad Street, and the factories of the Fletcher Manufacturing Company on Charles Street. In addition, 77 cotton-mills located outside the city had their business offices there.

Witnessing a torchlit parade in the political canvass of this year, Thomas Allen Jenckes remarked that it would “not take much to turn those men into soldiers.” By this point the rising price of cotton had utterly revolutionized the American South. In cotton gins, the seeds from the cotton bolls were being simply discarded as garbage. They were a useless bother. But the cotton fiber itself had become King — and this King was demanding field slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The history of slavery and the slave- trade after 1820 must be read in the light of the industrial revolution through which the civilized world passed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between the years 1775 and 1825 occurred economic events and changes of the highest importance 4. It has been suggested that this painting might be the perfect illustration to accompany Walden’s “I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and widest influence. Though all branches of industry felt the impulse of this new industrial life, yet, “if we consider single industries, cotton manufacture has, during the nineteenth century, made the most magnificent and gigantic advances.”5 This fact is easily explained by the remarkable series of inventions that revolutionized this industry between 1738 and 1830, including Arkwright’s, Watt’s, Compton’s, and Cartwright’s epoch-making contrivances.6 The effect which these inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to 572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830, and to 3,366,000 in 1860.7 Very early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney’s cotton-gin, soon answered this question: a new economic future was opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into this one staple. Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor large farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom, recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an industrial system. The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world’s cotton market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic wars, when the industry of cotton

5. Beer, GESCHICHTE DES WELTHANDELS IM 19TEN JAHRHUNDERT, II. 67. 6. A list of these inventions most graphically illustrates this advance: — 1738, John Jay, fly-shuttle. John Wyatt, spinning by rollers. 1748, Lewis Paul, carding-machine. 1760, Robert Kay, drop-box. 1769, Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle. James Watt, steam-engine. 1772, James Lees, improvements on carding-machine. 1775, Richard Arkwright, series of combinations. 1779, Samuel Compton, mule. 1785, Edmund Cartwright, power-loom. 1803-4, Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine. 1817, Roberts, fly-frame. 1818, William Eaton, self-acting frame. 1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule. Cf. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, pages 116-231; ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, 9th ed., article “Cotton.” 7. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, page 215. A bale weighed from 375 lbs. to 400 lbs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

manufacture had begun its modern development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound, 8½d. From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the latter year it reached 4d.; the only exception to this fall was in the years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to “corner” the market, sent the price up as high as 11d. The demand for cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough had pronounced “prodigious,” and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which, except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and the Crimean War, continued until 1860.8 The steady increase in the production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822 the crop was a half- million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the world’s consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that, in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856, and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.9 Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in 1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton “corner;” by the end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy. The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave régime in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years 1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of the cotton market, risked all on a political coup-d’état, which failed in the war of 1861-1865.10

8. The prices cited are from Newmarch and Tooke, and refer to the London market. The average price in 1855-60 was about 7d. 9. From United States census reports. 10. Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, THE COTTON KINGDOM. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1869

A decade after the opening of the fossil oil fields of Pennsylvania, the last whaler sailed from Nantucket Island.

The astronomer Maria Mitchell from Nantucket Island was made a member of the American Philosophical Society.

When the Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize for a cheap alternative to butter that would not so readily turn rancid, to more adequately nourish “the working class and incidentally the Navy,” Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès created a concoction out of beef tallow and skimmed milk that he termed “oleomargarine” (he starved some cows and noticed that the milk they produced for their calves contained the same amounts of butter — this made him realize that they were producing the butter not directly out of their food but from the fatty tissues of their bodies). Adding annotto to give the stuff some color, he was able to vend it in Paris at from 80 centimes to a franc per half a kilogramme.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oleomargarine HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1870

Cannabis was listed in the US PHARMOCOPOEIA as a medicine for various ailments.

By this point a use had been found for the piles and piles of cotton seed discarded from cotton gins: to get rid of them, they were being spread as a cheapo fertilizer on the fields. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1871

Cowpokes herded 700,000 longhorns 700 miles from the vicinity of San Antonio in Texas, where they weren’t worth much if anything, to Abilene in Kansas, where they would fetch a few dollars each — because there they could be fattened up in stockyards and then conveyed by rail to slaughterhouses outside Chicago (all tickets one way).

Henry W. Bradley was awarded a US patent for creating oleomargarine out of animal fats mixed with vegetable oils, primarily cheap cottonseed oil. A one-way ticket to Heart Attack City. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1877

When the Texas and Pacific Railroad built a track through Grayson County, Texas, it created a depot at a central location along the line with loading pens in which the cowboys of the large ranches of western Grayson County could aggregate their cattle to be shipped to the slaughterhouses of Fort Worth. Since these cattle pens were located on what was marked on the maps with the name Daniel Starr Southmayd, the depot was given that name.

The sovereign state of New York required retailers of oleomargarine to provide written notice to their customers, that this stuff was not butter. Consumer protection at its finest. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1880

At about this point cigarettes commercially hand-rolled by factory girls were becoming popular in the United States. Moralists who chewed tobacco were of course outraged by such behavior, going “Begin smoking at 10, mind shattered by 14!” When 21-year-old Virginian James Albert Bonsack was granted a patent for a cigarette- rolling machine, his invention would be disregarded by established cigarette manufacturers because the product was being consumed by gentlemen well able to pay for cigarettes individually hand-rolled by girls, who enjoyed the conceit that they had girls performing personal services for them (clearly, these manufacturers didn’t perceive a downscale growth market). By 1883, however, 27-year-old James Buchanan “Buck” Duke would be leasing Bonsack’s device on a favored contract, and by 1887, once Duke’s and Bonsack’s mechanics had finished tinkering with its mechanism, each instance of this apparatus would be capable of reliably rolling as many cigarettes as a work crew of 120 of these girls. The advertising pressures created by the invention of the Bonsack machine would lead not only to the widespread use of cigarettes as America’s favored form of tobacco, but to the modern era of mass-market advertising and promotion. During the 1880s, in the USA, the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement would be distributing a “Leaflet for Mothers’ Meetings” by Lida B. Ingalls titled NARCOTICS, treating of the evils of the tobacco habit and claiming that cigarettes were “doing more to-day to undermine the constitution of our young men and boys than any other one evil.” In London during this period, Messrs. Richard Benson and William Hedges would be starting up a competing tobacconist shop near the Philip Morris one. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Although wood remained the major source of energy in the US, the use of firewood had begun to decline.

Tenant farmers were working a quarter of US farms.

Cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail had reached their peak. At the feedlots on the rail head, they were beginning to fatten the cows up by feeding them waste cotton seed from the cotton gins. “Please, kind sir, may I have some moo?”

According to Harper’s Weekly “Affrighted epicures are informed that they are eating their old candle-ends and tallow-dip remnants in the guise of butter.”

After investigating the adulteration of foodstuffs the chief chemist at the US Department of Agriculture, Peter Collier, recommended enactment of a national food and drug law (the bill was defeated). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1883

According to Mary Helen Dunlop’s SIXTY MILES FROM CONTENTMENT: TRAVELING THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY AMERICAN INTERIOR (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995, pages 113-7), In a search for pleasant and understandable Indian material to distract them from contemporary conditions too painful to dwell on, numerous travelers turned to retailing legends — not tribal legends but white-concocted legends about Indians, sentimental European- style legends about thwarted romance and star-crossed lovers and death leaps. Because so much of the fakelore is about death, it can be read as a series of approaches to a culture under siege; furthermore, the legends are most unstable whenever they concern those matters of Indian life that travelers least comprehended — family structure, authority, and the position of women. The travel writer’s favorite among made-up legends was the story of Winona, which had a conveniently visible geographic location –a high bluff on the upper Mississippi– that travelers could easily view from a comfortable position aboard a steamboat or train.

She has captured and described a series of nine such mythifications, of which this pleasantry by Samuel HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

Langhorn Clemens is, and hopefully will remain at least for the time being, the last:11 In 1883, in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Mark Twain burlesqued the Winona story by putting it in the mouth of an old gentleman who had once traveled the interior with a panorama and a lectern but who was, when he met Twain, employed in “helping to work up the materials for a Tourists’ Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company are going to issue this summer for the benefit of travelers.” Twain represented himself to the man as a collector of Indian tales and to his readers as egging on the man until the old fellow moved into “his lecture gait” and offered the going commercial version of the legend: in it, the Sioux are no longer residents of southern Minnesota but merely in the area on a fishing trip. Winona has engaged herself to one lover while her “stern parents” have promised her to “a famous warrior.” At this point in the tale, however, the old gentleman encountered pronoun trouble. According to him, Winona, perching on the very edge of the bluff, began to “upbraid her parents, who were below, for their cruelty, and then, singing a death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed them in pieces on the rock below.” Twain was eminently satisfied that it was indeed the cruel parents who had been, in this version, dashed to pieces when their daughter fell on them; he remarked that of the fifty lover’s leap stories he had collected, this was “the only jump in the lot that turned out in the right and satisfactory way.” Winona, though “a good deal jarred up and jolted ... got herself together and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot; and ’tis said she sought and married her true love, and wandered with him to some distant clime, where she lived happy ever after, her gentle spirit mellow and chastened by the romantic incident which had so early deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother’s love and a father’s protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold charity of a censorious world.” Twain’s legendary version of the legendary old gentleman’s version he characterized as “an admirable story”; it is certainly more inspired nonsense than the solemn and didactic versions, also nonsense, that preceded it and that functioned as tools in a continuing and covert white effort to frame Indian culture and society in some way pleasing and comfortable to the teller.

Twain also recorded a conversation between commercial “drummers” on the Cincinnati riverboat in his LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI: “‘Now as to this article,’ said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, ‘it’s from our house; look at it –smell of it –taste it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time –no hurry –make it thorough. There now — what do you say? butter, ain’t it. Not by a thundering sight — it’s oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that’s what it is — oleomargarine. You can’t tell it from butter; by George, an expert can’t. It’s from our house. We supply most of the boats in the West; there’s hardly a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along — jumping right along is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can’t find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine now by the thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has got to take it — can’t get around it you see. Butter don’t stand any show — there ain’t any chance for competition. Butter’s had its day — and from this out, butter goes to the wall. There’s more money in oleomargarine than — why, you can’t imagine the business we do. I’ve HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

stopped in every town from Cincinnati to Natchez; and I’ve sent home big orders from every one of them.’”

11.The previous versions awarded this deep reading by Dunlop in her 1995 monograph are: the Schoolcraft 1821 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in NARRATIVE JOURNAL OF TRAVELS FROM DETROIT NORTHWEST THROUGH THE GREAT CHAIN OF AMERICAN LAKES TO THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER IN THE YEAR 1820, the Fredrika Bremer 1848 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in volume 2 of 1853’s THE HOMES OF THE NEW WORLD, the Mary Eastman 1853 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in 1849’S DAKOTAH: OR, LIFE AND LEGENDS OF THE SIOUX, the Ida Pfeiffer mid-1850s construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in 1855’s A LADY’S SECOND JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD, the Laurence Oliphant 1855 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in MINNESOTA AND THE FAR WEST, the Harriet Bishop 1857 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in FLORAL HOME: OR, FIRST YEARS OF MINNESOTA, the Aleksandr Lakier 1859 construction of this Winona fakelore, and, finally, the Mark Twain 1883 demolition of this Winona fakelore, as contained in his LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1884

Quaker Oats became the 1st bulk food to be packaged: the cardboard canisters of rolled oats of today.

The best cottonseed oil was made from Southern upland cotton because the seed from the seaboard varieties produced a darker color in the oil. The substance was chiefly being exported through the ports of New-York and New Orleans, the bulk of it being destined for France, Italy, and the Netherlands (due to differences within the cotton species, European and Egyptian cottonseed oils were inferior to the American). There had been a constant increase of exports between 1871 and 1884 but by this point the US’s exports of cotton seed oil was rapidly declining — because domestic demand was increasing. Nine tenths of the American oil was going into such products as salad and cooking oils, and in the thinning of lard so that its stiffening point would be several degrees lower. The new lard/oil mix was being considered to be quite as healthful as the older pure hog lard. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1886

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s LADIES’ GUIDE ON HEALTH AND DISEASE: We read the other day in a newspaper of a young woman who actually broke a rib in the attempt to gain another half-inch on her corset string. This source has it that the corset is “a cause for consumption” — due not only to an insufficient supply of oxygen to the blood but also to friction of the lungs against the rib cage. The ribs are fastened to the sternum by “flexible cartilages” which constantly bend with the movement of the lungs [b]ut when the chest is imprisoned in a corset, this constant movement becomes impossible; and the consequence is that a process of stiffening is set up, and after a time the once flexible, yielding cartilages become as rigid as the rest of the ribs. The inevitable result of this change is a permanent limitation of the movements of the lungs. The following evidence seems to be based on clinical examination: The chest ought to be capable of expansion from two to five inches, — even greater expansion is attainable. But if you put a tape-line around one of these corset-stiffened chests you will be unable to obtain more than a scant quarter-inch of difference in measurement between the chest when empty and when filled to its utmost capacity. We have often tried the experiment when making physical examinations of the chest, and though the patient is almost always anxious to do her best, in order to demonstrate if possible what every lady will eagerly contend for, that her corset never did her any harm because it was worn so loose, and so draws up her shoulders to her utmost and makes a desperate attempt to swallow more air than there is room for, we have often found that the expansion of the sides of the chest was so slight as to be imperceptible. In sections about heart disease and dyspepsia, this source refers to animal studies rather than to studies of human subjects, but the doctor does make the claim to have examined a woman at Bellevue Hospital in New- York whose liver was nearly bisected by tight lacing, and he provides anecdotal post mortem evidence that the internal organs migrate or change shape under the influence of the sort of tight lacing that is necessary to support heavy skirts: A physician of eminence, upon making a post mortem examination of a woman who had worn heavy skirts suspended from her wait for many years, beginning the practice in early childhood, found the liver dragged down into the pelvis and entirely cut in two, the separate portions being only held together by a fibrous cord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

The Dutch government began a study of beri-beri, which was devastating the native Indonesian population. Christian Eijkman was assigned the task of studying the “germ” held to be responsible. When his laboratory chickens developed symptoms, Eijkman observed that a temporary diet of pure white rice had coincided with the disease. Studies led to the culprit –the truncated-cone rice mill– which was so thoroughly “polishing” the bran from rice as to remove some vital quality, a vital quality later determined by R. Williams to be thiamine, or Vitamin B1.

Oleomargarine was costing only about half as much as butter. The federal Margarine Act required that participants in the oleomargarine trade purchase licenses annually from the government — manufacturers $600, wholesalers $480, retailers $48. The sales tax was ten cents per pound if the product was faux-butter yellow, but only half a cent per pound if the product was stark white in color (eventually this faux-yellow oleomargarine was entirely banned).12 New Hampshire, Vermont, and South Dakota would enact laws that required margarine to be dyed pink so that it would be in appearance very different from butter.13

12. Butter isn’t naturally yellow, as everything depends on what the cows are fed. Sometimes dairies do need to add dye to their butter to provide it with the consumer appeal of an expected standard golden appearance. Oleomargarine produced from hydrogenated cottonseed oil is, however, “naturally” of a stark whitish color. Interestingly, no law was ever enacted to forbid dairies from this practice of adding yellow dye to butter. 13. It is not clear to me that any manufacturer actually attempted to produce and distribute any of this pink margarine, and in any event, the Supreme Court would rule in 1898 that this legal requirement for a pink adulteration had been unconstitutional under the commerce clause. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1889

The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE / BY WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER appeared in its 14th edition, with a new supplementary chapter (Boston: Roberts).

The 1st hints that high cholesterol levels might cause atherosclerosis in humans.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Oleomargarine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1890

Vermont legislated that oleomargarine could be sold in that state only if it was colored pink.

At this point 26 states and territories had outlawed the sale of cigarettes to minors (the age of majority in any particular state was varying between 14 and 24). During the 1890s the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement would be distributing E.B. Ingalls’s NARCOTIC, a pamphlet discussing the evils of numerous drugs including tobacco as well as cocaine, ginger, hashish, and headache medications. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1891

The creation, in Newton, Massachusetts, of the Fig Newton.

Minnesota, West Virginia, and New Hampshire legislated that oleomargarine could be sold in their states only if it were colored pink. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1894

May: Frederic G. Mather’s “Waste Products: Cotton-Seed Oil” (Popular Science Monthly, Volume 45). It has been stated that if the waste products of the world had been saved they would sustain the present population for more than a hundred years. Foreign countries give more attention than America to saving the waste. But as the population of the United States increases, and as processes of manufacture are developed, discoveries are made which turn the waste of former products into useful articles of commerce. Glycerin, wood acid, crude petroleum, and even the fine dust from anthracite coal have an importance to-day that they did not have formerly. Cotton-seed oil is a most conspicuous instance of an article once thrown aside as a nuisance. Originally it was only a byproduct in the manufacture of meal from the seed; and even after it was discovered that meal could be made, it was a question what should be done with the oil. That question has been answered in various ways. What was garbage in 1860 was a fertilizer in 1870, cattle food in 1880, and table food and many things else, in 1890. A small quantity of the oil is made in England, but it is inferior to the American article because the seed comes from Egypt or India. The American cotton parts with its fiber more readily. The best oil is made from seed belonging to the Southern upland cotton, that from the seaboard having a darker color. The exports are chiefly from New York and New Orleans, and the greater part goes to France, Italy, and the Netherlands. There was a constant increase of exports between 1871 and 1884, when over 6,000,000 gallons, valued at $3,000,000, were exported. Since 1884 the export has rapidly declined, only 2,000,000 gallons, worth $1,300,000, being exported of late years, because the demand in the United States has increased. Nine tenths of the American product enters into the composition of foods, chiefly for salad and cooking oils and for the making of refined lard. The latter use is the most important of all. Nearly forty years ago the oil was mixed with lard for use in cold climates so that the stiffening point would be several degrees lower. Lard was also prepared with this oil for the Israelites, whose religion does not permit the use of any product of the hog. The refined lard of to-day is made of refined packer's lard, pure dressed-beef fat, and pure refined cotton- seed oil. The consistence of the beef fat is overcome by the oil. Three fourths of the lard in use to-day contains from ten to twenty-five per cent of the oil, and nearly all of it is sold as oil-lard. It has been attacked by producers of hog lard, but investigations have shown that the new lard is quite as wholesome as the old. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1897

Above decks Britain’s Royal Navy was experimenting with ship-to-shore radio. Below decks it finally bowed to Victorian sensibilities and allowed enlisted men to eat with forks in addition to knives and fingers.

Paul Sabatier facilitated the use of hydrogenation through the discovery of the Sabatier reaction.

Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling’s had sold his machine gun patent to Colt in 1870 but had remained the president of his company. In this year the company was fully absorbed into the Colt organization. GATLING’S MACHINE GUN HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1898

Campbell’s soup cans appeared for the first time in their red and white labels, colors suggested by the football uniforms of Cornell University. Taken to a football game, the elderly Susan B. Anthony commented “It’s silly, but not brutal.”

The US Supreme Court ruled that the state legal requirement that oleomargarine be adulterated to a pink color was unconstitutional under the commerce clause, because it was a burdensome interference with interstate commerce. While they were at it the Supremes also pointed out that for a state to require oleomargarine to be died blue or red or black or provided with an “offensive smell” would likewise be unconstitutional, for the same reason.14

14. It is not clear that any manufacturer had actually attempted to produce and distribute this spread that resembled the Cornell football uniform. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1899

September 21, Thursday: English painter Mark Henry Barraud sold a painting of his dog Nipper (listening to a gramophone) to the Gramophone Company of London. This would become their trademark in Great Britain.

James Dewar announced in Nature that he had achieved solid hydrogen, at 16° K.

Two works for voice and piano by Jean Sibelius were performed for the initial time: Svarta rosor (Black Roses) op.36/1 to words of Josephson, and Men min fågel märks dock icke (But My Bird is Long in Homing) op.36/ 2 to words of Runeberg. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1901

February 27, Wednesday: Wilhelm Normann, head of a chemistry laboratory at a machine fat and oil factory known as Leprince & Siveke, learned how to transform cheap fats into fats that could be sold into the processed-foods industry at a considerably higher price, through an inexpensive industrial process known as “catalytic hydrogenation with dispersed nickel.” He termed his process “fat hardening.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1902

The federal Congress revised the Margarine Act of 1886, raising the tax on oleomargarine by a factor of five.

The Quaker Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island, in the process of transforming itself into the sports school that it is today, went into debt in order to erect Hawes Gymnasium at a cost of more than $30,000 (the debt would be retired later when a bequest would be received from Sarah J. Hall).

Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates was offered a cocoa plantation on San Thome (a West African island) but saw an advertisement on which its workers had been listed as assets, at so much a head, so Cadbury instead looked to the Gold Coast (Ghana) where the quality of cocoa was at the time perceived as poor.

At the Cadbury facility in England, Men’s and Women’s Suggestions Committees were set up, formalizing a process that had already begun (in 1893 women had voted in favour of starting work later than 6AM and working later each day).

August 14, Thursday: The German Imperial Patent Office granted to Leprince & Siveke Company its Patent #141,029 for Wilhelm Normann’s process of “fat hardening.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1903

January 21, Wednesday: Continuing to demand reparation payments, German warships shelled the Venezuelan fort of San Carlos.

British patent #GB190301515 “Process for Converting Unsaturated Fatty Acids or their Glycerides into Saturated Compounds” was granted to Wilhelm Normann. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1904

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Margarine Act of 1902 that had increased the tax on oleomargarine by a factor of five.

The smaller Elm bark beetle Scolytus multistriatus arrived in Boston port, possibly in a shipment of elm logs from the Carpatho-Ukraine destined for use as furniture veneer. America already had elm bark beetles, but ours were (of course) larger. It wouldn’t have been a bad thing at all, this shipment of logs, had the beetles been traveling alone, but they brought with them spores of the Ceratocystis ulmi, or Dutch elm disease. In many an American town such as Concord, “Elm Street” was on its way to becoming a misnomer.15

15. The year in which this would really start to get serious in Concord would be 1942, the year in which its “Whipping Post Elm” on Monument Square needed to be chainsawed into firewood. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1906

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Theodore Roosevelt, a swashbuckler had never hid the swash of his buckle. In THE ROUGH RIDERS in 1899, his account of the aggression which led to the establishment of the permanent US naval facility on Cuban soil at Guantanamo Bay, he had described an engagement with the enemy: “By this time we were all in the spirit of the thing and greatly excited by the charge, the men cheering and running forward between shots, while the delighted faces of the foremost officers, like Captain C.J. Stevens, of the Ninth, as they ran at the head of their troops, will always stay in my mind.” How such a man could be considered suitable for a peace prize is, of course, beyond comprehension — unless the sort of peace they had in mind was the peace of the grave. Ersatz peace.

This year’s Food and Drugs Act was aimed not so much at protecting the consumer’s health as at protecting the honest manufacturer from cheaters — firms that cause a product to appear as if it were something that it is not (for instance, whittling nutmegs out of wood).

Joseph Crossfield and Sons, which had come to own Wilhelm Normann’s British patent for hydrogenation of oils, was awarded its own British patent for the technology of partial oil hydrogenation. –Ersatz lard, not at all like wooden nutmegs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1907

Dr. Alois Alzheimer wrote of a disease of senile dementia. At the time, General Paul von Hindenberg was still in full command of his nation’s armies and of his personal faculties. (Later, the general would still be in full command of his nation’s armies but would have begun to wander around unable to recognize people — and would appoint Adolf Hitler to be the new leader of the German people.)

The Lane process for the production of hydrogen gas.

German chemist Edwin Cuno Kayser, had worked for British soap manufacturer Joseph Crossfield and Sons, immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, and soon cut a deal with Procter & Gamble there to help create techniques that would process cotton seed, a cheap waste material of the cloth industry previously useful only for the sterilization of prisoners, by hydrogenation of their expressed oil, into CRISCO stuff (this nifty initialism stood for CRIStalized Cottonseed Oil) usable as soap. Procter & Gamble engineers quickly noticed that this soap ingredient they were processing looked a whole lot like cooking lard — and cooking lard was something then being made from the wholesome rendered fat of hog carcasses and was therefore not exactly cheap. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1909

When the English chocolate firm of Cadbury had been offered an estate on the West African island of San Thome, they had discovered to their horror that the local plantations were using slave labor. William Cadbury published LABOR IN PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA and persuaded two other Quaker cocoa and chocolate firms, those of Fry and Rowntree, to boycott Portuguese cocoa. Cadbury began looking instead along the Gold Coast of Africa, in particular at Ghana. There, however, the quality of the cocoa had been considered to be poor. At this point he visited Odumassi and was encouraged to learn that the chief there was personally supervising the cocoa production. “Well, OK then!”

London records indicate a significant increase in mortality in this year and the following one, due to coronary artery disease. The records of the coroner’s court for the Liberty of Ripon and Kirkby Malzeard in Yorkshire for 1855-1926, versus those of 1981-1983, reveal that although relatively few people had been dying of acute coronary artery disease during Victorian times, this sort of mortality suddenly increased during the years 1906- 1910 (and would then become very high during 1981-1983). The number of postmortems for myocardial infarction carried out in London hospitals was very low for 1907-1914, but would be greatly risen in 1917 and 1923. Coronary heart disease would come to be recognized the most prominent cause for premature deaths in the United States of America. “Uh, do you suppose we doing something wrong? –Maybe the problem is that we’re consuming too much expensive butter and lard packed with saturated fat and cholesterol, and ought to encourage consumption of this new cheapo health food known as partly-hydrogenated cottonseed oil that contains less-saturated fats and lower amounts of that evil chemical cholesterol.” (We weren’t yet aware that there are different kinds of cholesterol: LDL that is undesirable because it transports fat molecules into artery walls and attracts macrophages, creating atherosclerosis, versus HDL that is actually desirable because it strips these fat molecules out of macrophages in the wall of arteries, thus reducing atherosclerosis — and also we weren’t yet aware that these two chemicals actively destroy one another so that the more oil from coldwater fish one adds to one’s diet, the lower the risk of dying from atherosclerosis.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1910

Fritz Haber patented the Haber process.

A Paris fashion for imitation sable and sealskin led amateur hunters to trap Manchurian marmots, many of which were infected with the bubonic plague. The disease would be transmitted to humans and in the following nine years in China and India an epidemic would kill 1,500,000.

At about this point 20% of a sample of United States Army soldiers stationed in the Panama Canal Zone admitted to smoking more than 5 marijuana cigarettes per day. (The use of Cannabiss Indica would not be stigmatized in the United States until the 1930s, when American petrochemical manufacturers would become interested in eliminating hemp as a competitor for their new synthetic fibers. Soldiers stationed along the Mexican border, however, were preferring to consume Cactus Wine, a drink which combined homemade tequila with peyote tea. Alcohol consumption was high — surviving bar bills show that a consumption rate of 30 shots of whiskey a day was not uncommon among those who could afford it, and Dr. B.J. Kendall’s blackberry balsam, “a remedy for diarrhea, dysentery, cholera morbus, biliousness, and costive liver,” amounted to a 122-proof whiskey reinforced with opium. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1911

June: The resident physician at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Men in Concord, Massachusetts, Dr. Guy G. Fernald, began to experiment with Dr. Paul Ehrlich’s new Salvarsan or “606” in the treatment of syphilis among the prisoners.

(Documents describing these experiments don’t mention the informed consent of the convicts — perhaps because that goes without saying?)

Procter & Gamble began to vend cheap hydrogenated cottonseed oil as a vegetable fat for cooking purposes, terming the stuff “CRISCO” (this initialism stood for “CRIStalized Cottonseed Oil”). They could make ample profits this way, because lard rendered from the fat of hog carcasses was quite a bit more expensive to manufacture (and all P&G needed to do was make their retail price only a bit less than that — no matter how cheaply they actually could manufacture the stuff out of a waste product that the cloth industry was at the time, basically, paying people to cart away). This stuff was so biologically inert that, as “vegetable shortening” (imagine that — cotton seeds are indeed to be classified as vegetables — eat your vegetables, Larry), it didn’t even need to be refrigerated (note that as of 1911 not very many kitchens as yet sported fancy devices like refrigerators). And, of course, P&G was, as always, a genius at motivation through advertising — they could sell refrigerators to Eskimos and toothpaste to people with dentures. The American federal government loved this because P&G was helping dispose of the vast surpluses of cottonseed oil, corn oil, and soy beans that were being generated by government aid-to-the-voting-farmer politics. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1912

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Paul Sabatier for partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils in the presence of metals and Victor Grignard for preparing organic compounds from smaller precursor molecules.

The GooGoo Cluster, a chocolate, caramel, & peanut candy, was created in Nashville, Tennessee. PLANTS

By this point perhaps 35% of the US male population was being circumcised. The practice was on its way to becoming routine. In a text on the philosophy, application, and technique of “orificial surgery,” the beneficial effect of the emerging standard was duly noted: The little sufferer lay in his mother's lap. The dropsy ... had taken the form of hydrocephalus ... I then circumcised the child ... The head [of the child’s penis] diminished in size and in two weeks the condition of hydrocephalus had disappeared and the child was once more dismissed as cured.

In a text dating to this year, on sex hygiene for the male, we find: Circumcision promotes cleanliness, prevents disease, and by reducing oversensitiveness of the parts tends to relieve sexual irritability, thus correcting any tendency which may exist to improper manipulations of the genital organs and the consequent acquirement of evil sexual habits, such as masturbation.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Oleomargarine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

August 7, Wednesday: Austrian physicist Victor Hess ascended above Prague in a balloon filled with hydrogen gas, carrying an electroscope. Landing in Berlin 6 hours later, he had discovered plentiful gamma rays several kilometers into the atmosphere. He would be roundly ridiculed.

The Piano Concerto no.1 op.10 by Sergei Prokofiev was performed for the initial time, in Sokolniki Park, Moscow, the composer at the keyboard. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1913

Since 1868, 90% of the revenues of the federal government of the United States of America had been coming from taxes on liquor, beer, wine, and tobacco. During the Civil War the Revenue Act of 1861 had included a tax on personal incomes to help pay war expenses, but that war tax had ten years later been repealed. In 1894 the federal Congress had enacted a direct flat-rate Federal income tax, but in the following year this had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because such s direct tax isn’t proportional to the population of each state. The 16th amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress on July 2, 1909 and ratified on February 3d, voided this by permitting the Federal government to directly tax the income of individuals in disregard of state populations.16

Fritz Haber’s synthetic ammonia process, a method of directly synthesizing ammonia from hydrogen gas and nitrogen gas.17

16. This would enable the Prohibition Era ban on recreational alcohol consumption, by reducing the federal government’s reliance on taxes on liquor, beer, and wine. –What, you hadn’t realized that Prohibition became possible only because the federal government was no longer depending for its income on revenues derived from drug consumption? 17. It is an interesting footnote to history that in 1915 during World War I this German chemist, Herr Haber, would personally supervise the 1st chlorine attack upon enemy forces at Ypres in Belgium, that soon afterward his wife Clara Haber, also a chemist, would at a dinner party in tribute to her husband’s involvement in the slaughter shoot herself through the heart with his service weapon, that in 1918 he would be awarded a Nobel prize as a benefactor of humanity for developing in 1913 this technique for the cheap manufacture of fertilizer, that during the 1920s he would develop the Zyklon gas that would be used to poison Jews in German concentration camps, and that in 1934 he would be forced out of Germany because, despite his early conversion to Christianity, and despite his wholehearted service to their cause, the Nazis would consider him to be still “racially” a Jew. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1917

In this year the Ford corporation’s Fordson tractor was introduced at $397.

Knibbs calculated that (exclusive of the Arctic and Antarctic) with a land area of 33 billion acres, Earth could yield 752.4 trillion bushels of corn, which could support a population of 132 billion. PLANTS

(“Golly gee, Clem, how many SUVs is that?”)

The Belgian Colonial Society appointed Wilhelm Normann as technical director of a fat hardening factory in Antwerp for a margarine company operating in India, SAPA, the Societe anonyme des grasses, huiles et produits africaines. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1938

The US Congress passed a Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act providing that a commercial product sold for human food would be considered to be “adulterated” if it contained any “poisonous or deleterious substance” which might render it injurious to health, unless the poisonous substance is inherent or naturally occurring and its quantity in the food does not ordinarily render it injurious to health, or if the poisonous or deleterious substance is unavoidable and is within an established tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level (partly-hydrogenated cottonseed oil sold as oleomargarine was, of course, perfectly OK, as long as the manufacturer wasn’t making it resemble butter).

In Sweden, people began to criticize the Bratt system for high operating costs and for permitting too much consumption of alcohol.

Amphetamine began to be widely advertised in Sweden as a pep pill.

In England, at Cadbury’s Bournville facility alone, 10,000 men and women were employed. CHOCOLATE HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1945

March 10, Saturday: A naval attack group under Rear Admiral F.B. Royal landed Army troops near Zamboanga, Mindanao, Philippine Islands. The landing was supported by naval gunfire and Army aircraft. WORLD WAR II

While the USA was readying its high-tech “atomic” bombs, the Japanese were launching low-tech paper balloons filled with hydrogen gas, with incendiary explosives hanging underneath them. These 10,000 balloons were designed to drift with the jet stream and descend over the American continent. Over the course of the campaign, some 300 of the 10,000 paper balloons completed the trip and descended upon us, starting a few fires in isolated areas, blowing up a shed, etc. One descending balloon managed to kill an American woman and five children who had gathered during a picnic to await its magic descent to the ground. One of the scientists we had assigned to investigate this mode of attack, Lincoln LaPaz, reports that there was a fear that, beginning in about the fall of 1945, the Japanese military were going to be able to substitute canisters containing an aerosol of plague bacteria for the incendiary explosives they were strapping underneath these balloons. On this day of March 10th, 1945, a poetic event took place. One of the paper balloons from Japan descended upon an electric line leading into a factory in Hanford, Washington, temporarily shutting down the electric supply to that defense facility. In that building, temporarily interrupted in this manner, was the reactor which was producing weapons-grade Plutonium239 for use in the atomic bomb which we would be exploding HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

later over the city of Nagasaki. BALLOONING HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

Mary McCarthy, writing in 1946, would term Hiroshima “a hole in human history.” Presumably the hole tore in Nagasaki by the materials interrupted temporarily by this paper balloon was also a hole in human history. There is such a hole in human history, it would seem, at every point at which an atrocity has been committed by some group which then “won.” For instance, the hole in Concord history which resulted from the racial mass murder on the watershed of Walden Pond as of the Massachusetts race war in 1675-1676, and the hole in human history which resulted from the use of the Christian Dakotas as hostages during the race war of 1863. Writing thirty years after the fact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ralph Lapp, who had worked on the A-bomb, would ask “If the memory of things is to deter, where is that memory?” He would add that “Hiroshima has been taken out of the American conscience, eviscerated, extirpated.”

WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1950

When 74 retarded and troubled boys at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts sat down to their morning oatmeal during the 1940s and 1950s, they did not know they were ingesting radioactive materials or that they were being used as guinea pigs in a secret medical experiment devised by Professor of Nutrition Robert S. Harris of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). All the boys knew was that the kind people were offering them gifts, and trips to Red Sox games — if they would eat all their breakfast. (Eventually, after a scandal, MIT and the Quaker Oats Company would pay $1,850,000 in settlements. It is not clear that any of the children were actually harmed by the radiation, and we guess that probably they were not.)

After three generations of strife between the lobbyists representing the dairy industry and the lobbyists representing oleomargarine producers, Congress removed its discriminatory tax against margarine. Also, HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

oleomargarines made out of partly-hydrogenated oils became more prevalent in the US as it became possible to use a dye to color this unappealing stark-white lard-like stuff a pretty dairy yellow, so it looked a little bit more appetizing as you spread it on your sandwich. At first the dairy industry lobbyists were able to prevent the oleo from being sold with the yellow color built in, and so when you purchased a white stick of oleomargarine there was a little plastic capsule of dye, that you needed to squeeze over the stick, and mess with this stuff until it appeared more or less like butter. –Then the dairy industry lobbyists were overcome by the oleomargarine lobbyists and it became possible to purchase oleo that already looked like butter. The 1950s and 1960s would be an era of medical ignorance in which the benefits of monounsaturated fats (such as those found in olive oil) and omega-3 fats (such as those found in cold-water fish, flaxseed, and walnut oils) in preventing heart attacks were simply unrecognized.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Oleomargarine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1951

Margaret Sanger urged development of an oral contraceptive for humans.

The W. E. Dennison Company was awarded Patent #2,553,513 to place a capsule of yellow dye inside a plastic package of stark-white oleomargarine, so that the customer did not need to use a spoon to mix the yellow dye packet with the white product in order to make it resemble butter. The capsule could be broken inside the sealed package, and then the package kneaded to distribute the dye. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1952

Creation of a non-refrigerated Dewar for bulk transport of hydrogen gas.

The York Barbell Company introduced “Hi-Proteen” –which consisted merely of soybean flour mixed with salt and chocolate– as the 1st commercially successful food supplement.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas opinioned, in Zorach v. Clauson 343 U.S. 306, 312-313, that we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. “I’ll pretend if you will.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1955

US cigarette consumption resumed its rise after a 2-year drop as the industry increased expenditures for advertising, especially on network television. The chief brands being promoted were filter-tipped Winstons, Tarytons, Benson & Hedges, Kools, and Raleighs.

As criticism of the Bratt system mounted in Sweden, it was abolished. Liberalization would be followed, however, by increased consumption of alcohol.

Ancel Keys and his wife Margaret Haney Keys, who had developed K-rations as balanced meals for combat soldiers during World War II, developed a lipid hypothesis and began to popularize the “Mediterranean diet.” The American Heart Association began warning about the dangers of saturated fat and its link to heart disease (oleomargarine, of course, was the healthful substitute for butter). The dairy industry lobbyists were overcome by the oleomargarine lobbyists and it became possible to purchase oleo that already appeared yellow like butter. Not only that, but the material could be made hard enough and sufficiently temperature insensitive, that it could be brought to the table in a rectangular shape on a “butter plate” and served out as patty portions with a “butter knife.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1958

The Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment at Porton Down, Britain, developed the binary nerve agent VX. This agent was more stable in storage than Sarin and Soman and would soon become the mainstay of North American and Western European chemical warfare stockpiles. The patents for the agent would be published in 1974. The Soviets, meanwhile, would continue to prefer using thickened forms of the older German agents until the early 1990s, when they would begin replacing their aging Sarin stocks with the vastly more stable (and lethal) Novichok (“Newcomer”) series of binary biotoxins. To date, none of these military agents have proven to be as lethal or persistent as the 4,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange we dumped on Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. GAS WARFARE

The federal Congress brought a “GRAS” rule into effect with a Food Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Henceforward the food industry would not be obligated under sections 201(s) and 409 to spend any money on any safety testing whatever, on a substance “generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.” Under FDA regulations 21 CFR 170.3 and 21 CFR 170.30, all that was needed was to certify that the substance had already as of 1958 commonly been consumed by a significant number of customers — the way ersatz saturated fats had, for instance, been being consumed for very many years by very many people as a perfectly safe but affordable source of necessary nutrition. “Testing for healthfulness? –Let’s not, and say we did.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1961

Kleiber made an enlightening calculation. Assuming that 0.027 percent of Earth mass is carbon, and an average adult male embodies 12 kilograms of carbon, there ought to be sufficient carbon on the planet to allow for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people. But we also have to provide food. If people lived on potatoes alone, and 48,000,000,000 hectares were planted to potatoes (that includes all 13,300,000,000 hectares of land not under ice plus most of Earth’s ocean areas) a population of 800,000,000,000 could be supported.

A theory arose, that the risk of heart attack and stroke could be reduced by avoiding saturated fats in the diet. The response from the American food industry was to send its lobbyists to persuade the federal Congress and the Food and Drug Administration to criminalize the commercial dissemination of this information by the food industry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1967

De Wit calculated the Earth’s potential photosynthetic output. Using a human requirement of 1,000,000 kilocalories per year and allowing for city and recreation space, he calculated Earth’s carrying capacity at 146,000,000,000 people.

High-fructose corn syrup was introduced commercially by Clinton Corn Processing Company of Clinton, Iowa. Manufactured using their patented enzyme Isomerose, the fructose sweetness of corn syrup was raised from 14% to 42%. With rising sugar prices, “Isosweet” became the sweetener for all major soft drinks.18

Although you would never have guessed that there was such a thing as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by watching the year’s movies, which included THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, World War II hero Audie Murphy admitted to suffering recurring war-induced nightmares.19

Wisconsin became the final state to remove its laws discriminating against margarine.20

18. What could go wrong? 19. Had Audie by taking thought added a cubit unto his stature? 20. Were Wisconsinites wiser that the rest of us Americans? Did they sense that the substitution of cheap margarine for expensive butter was causing heart attacks, cutting years off of lives? –No, Wisconsinites were merely the most vulnerable to the dairy lobbyists, coming around with fistfuls of cash to help venial politicians buy the TV spots that would win their re-election campaigns. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1970

A new strain of corn blight evolved, and, because the major portion of the American corn crop in that year had been raised from seed consisting of six well-sold varieties of hybrid, lacking genetic diversity, this blight was able to destroy fully 15% of the US maize harvest. FAMINE

In this decade margarines made with partly-hydrogenated oils would be selling twice as well as butter. The ersatz fats were being sufficiently hydrogenated so that they could be vended as hard sticks, golden sticks that could be brought to the table on an actual “butter plate” and divided into pretty patty portions with an actual “butter knife.”

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oleomargarine HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1980

Gypsy moth caterpillar defoliation topped 5,000,000 acres.

It was learned that there are different sort of cholesterol that act in our veins in opposition, harmful LDL cholesterol versus helpful HDL, and that the cheap trans fats we had been preferring in our national diet actually increased our levels of harmful cholesterol while reducing our levels of helpful cholesterol. (Oops, time to give the order “About Face!” –Attack quickly, soldiers, in the retrograde direction!) HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1981

For the 1st time, spice usage in the US passed the half billion pound mark.

Hundreds of people in Spain became sick and died from consuming cheap olive oil that had been adulterated with French rapeseed oil. The rapeseed oil contained industrial aniline dyes and had been manufactured only for use in steel mills. PLANTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1985

During this year and the following one there would be an outbreak of Salmonella “nima” poisoning in Canada, caused by bad Belgian chocolate coins.21

The medical presumption, that all dietary fats caused not only obesity but also cancer, produced a situation in which any and all dietary fats were being considered equivalently unhealthful. “Just say no.”

21. Salmonella poisonings caused by a new serotype are named after the place in which this new serotype is first isolated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

1990

Microsoft’s Windows 3.0 product eased installation problems and made it less necessary for the user to go into DOS in order to manage files. It featured on-line Help.

During this decade there would be reports of extensive research, indicating that there is a definite increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease associated with high intakes of trans fat.

When Pat Barrett, an Irish wrestler, got himself into a bar fight in Germany, he experimented with a new hold. Thrusting two fingers into his opponent’s mouth, he hooked them behind the bottom teeth while holding with his thumb under the chin — and then twisted his hand. The opponent’s jaws closed like a vise on Barrett’s fingers and he instantly recognized this experiment to have been a mistake. To save his fingers, with his other hand he squeezed and twisted his opponent’s testicles. That worked. “It’s like plucking figs,” he would comment. Barrett’s report of this bar fight offers not fewer than three lessons: First, a bar fight is no place to experiment. Second, many ploys work better in imagination than in practice. Third, you need a Plan B just in case your Plan A is a dud. –And, maybe there is even more to learn here. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

2005

January: When it became publicly known that the George W. Bush administration had slipped $241,000 to columnist Armstrong Williams as advance compensation for the writing of columns in support of its “No Child Left Behind” legislation, the redhanded journalist protested that “This happens all the time.” –He shouldn’t be singled out for criticism, he said, for “there are others” who are taking such bribes. The General Accounting Office would conclude that the executive branch of the federal government in placing such contracts for services to be rendered by news personnel had been engaging in “covert propaganda” within the United States of America, and thus was in violation of existing law.

The United States Department of Agriculture released its 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, advocating minimizing the consumption of trans fat. “Sorry, we can’t be bought anymore.”

August: The body of Nicolas Copernicus was exhumed from its unmarked tomb in Fromberg Cathedral. DIGGING UP THE DEAD

Jack Turner, in “Performing Conscience” in Political Theory (Volume 33 Issue 4, pages 448-471) raised the issue of whether Henry Thoreau had a “positive” politics. Hannah Arendt, he pointed out, had famously portrayed Thoreau’s commitment to the sanctity of individual conscience as distinctly unpolitical. Although more recent commentators have been willing to grant that Thoreau had a politics, they have characterized his politics as profoundly negative in character. This author, however, argues that Thoreau indeed had sponsored a positive politics — and that this positive politics had been one of performing conscience. He bases his reading on Thoreau’s 1859 lecture defending the radical abolitionist John Brown.22 According to his view the performance of conscience before an audience transforms the invocation of conscience from a personally political act into a publicly political one. The aim of such a performance would be to provoke one’s neighbors into a process of individual self-reform that would render them capable of properly vigilant democratic citizenship, and conscientious political agitation.

The New York City health department called for voluntary elimination of trans fats at all Gotham restaurants. “Let’s don’t be evil.”

Outside the gates of the Nevada Test Site about 200 peace activists, including the actor Martin “Mr. President” Sheen, gathered for the perpetration of Thoreauvian civil disobedience. Dozens of them crossed the police line and were given trespassing citations (no-one was taken into custody). Clearly, the participants in this action would come down on the side of performing conscience and –if they have studied the political writings of Thoreau at all– would like Jack Turner tend to accept him as having advocated a more positive rather than an exclusively negative politics.

22. It is not clear whether the author is referring to “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” “The Last Days of John Brown,” or “After the Death of John Brown.” Perhaps any one of these texts would fit well into his argument. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OLEOMARGARINE BETTER THAN BUTTER

2006

January: The US Food and Drug Administration’s labeling law took effect, requiring trans fats to be included on the Nutrient Facts Panel of packaged foods. “Warning: This edible product has cheap stuff in it that may cause you to die early of a heart attack.”

An obituary in Utne Magazine for Thoreau scholar Brad Dean, who just died of a heart attack at the age of 51: Speaking a Word for Success Brad Dean, 1954-2006 By Chris Dodge, Utne.com January 2006 Issue Picture, if you can, a Thoreau scholar riding a motorcycle. In late February 2003, I emailed the editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin addressing him as “Bradley P. Dean,” saying that I was a new member of the Society and had just enjoyed reading the Fall 2002 Bulletin. Telling him that I’d been finding many Thoreauvian references of late, I quoted Thoreau’s journal entry of November 4, 1858 — “We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else” — and then appended a dozen or so bibliographic notes from a variety of contemporary sources. I heard back within minutes: “Hello Chris. Call me Brad.” Dean’s response, thanking me for the notes I’d sent, began a correspondence that grew over time from collegial to friendly, fueled by a shared passion. There are now 476 items in my email folder titled “Brad.” That’s nearly one for every two days since then. The last was sent to him on Friday the 13th, the day before Brad Dean had a heart attack and died at home. He was just 51. When I learned the news I felt shattered. Then a sense of vast personal loss welled up. Brad was not just my closest but my only Thoreauvian correspondent. He encouraged me, gently edited and published my words, and, many times it seemed, was alone in understanding an important part of my world. Brad was generous in sharing his knowledge. Now I’m not sure how to imagine my ecosystem without him. To whom do I go with my questions about Thoreau? Who will continue his work? I always HDT WHAT? INDEX

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thought we’d meet someday. Now he is gone and his important work remains uncompleted. Brad Dean edited two highly acclaimed works from Thoreau’s unpublished manuscripts, Faith in a Seed and Wild Fruits, as well as Letters to a Spiritual Seeker, a collection of Thoreau’s letters to H.G.O. Blake. As a brief obituary in the Bloomington, Indiana, Herald-Times notes, Brad was working on Thoreau’s unpublished “Indian Notebooks” at the time of his death. I’ve looked forward to reading this book some day. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on the death of Thoreau at age 44: “The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task which none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is.” The same words apply now as well.

August: Starbucks eliminated trans fat from all its baked goods.

September: Wendy’s announced that its french fries would henceforward be trans fat-free. The New York City health department proposed elimination of trans fats in Gotham’s restaurants.

A review appeared in [email protected] of a book on colonization as the “peculiar solution” for American slavery, Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION: A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY (Southern Dissent Series. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005). The review, by Eugene VanSickle of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, sparked off an interesting discussion:

What Is to Be Done? During the Early Republic, Americans struggled to address the paradox of slavery and freedom. This dichotomy prompted numerous debates and wild schemes designed to address the existence of slavery in a society based on individual freedom. Among the reform-minded societies that came out of such discussions was the American Colonization Society. This society addressed this paradox through the plan of African colonization. Eric Burin’s study of the American Colonization Society (ACS) is the latest interpretation of the African colonization movement and the actions of that organization at the local level. Part of the Southern Dissent series edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller, its title, as most scholars will note, appears a play on Kenneth Stampp’s THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION (1956). The study focuses on “colonization’s relationship with slavery ... from two vantage points. First, it gauges the movement’s effect on black bondage by providing a panoramic overview of the colonization crusade; second, it scrutinizes ACS activities as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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they played out at the local level” (page 2). The emphasis on ACS activities at the local level in the South is the most important contribution this study makes, as most studies tend to look at the colonization movement from the national perspective. Burin delves into the debate regarding the true purpose of the ACS, suggesting that “colonization tended to undermine slavery” (page 2). Thus, his examination returns the ACS and African colonization to the antislavery interpretation. Such an assertion is problematic, which Burin admits. Historians have attempted to fit the ACS into a particular mold since the 1920s. Nonetheless, his study is probably the first since P.J. Staudenraus’s THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT (1961) to place the society in the antislavery circle.23 The suggestion that colonization was a crusade against slavery is, arguably, an exaggeration. The vast majority of colonizationists supported the movement in hopes of keeping slavery (and the debate over it) from destroying the Union. Many accepted the Jeffersonians’ proposition that slavery was doomed for extinction anyway; colonization would only aid in the eventual outcome. This thought process did not change much until after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, the Virginia Debates of 1832, and the Nullification Crisis. Most white Americans believed that the republic would fall if there were two free races, especially if one of those races was denied political and social rights. Colonization offered a solution to this dilemma. Burin recognizes this fact: “The enterprise’s longevity and salience partly stemmed from its malleability: the venture certainly meant different things to different people” (page 33). It remains difficult to see colonization as a crusade, especially when John Randolph and Henry Clay, both founding members, insisted that the ACS not address the issue of slavery at all.24 Nonetheless, the membership of prominent slaveholders in the ACS, as well as the number of slaves manumitted for colonization, does imply dissent against slavery in the South. Burin further locates the true base of support for colonization in the Upper South and Border States. He also demonstrates the influence of revolutionary ideology in the discussion regarding slavery and colonization. The ideals of the revolution were most important to the post-revolution generation. For example, Burin turned to Charles Fenton Mercer, whom he credits with “laying the groundwork for the establishment of the ACS.” Mercer was a southern modernizer “who wished to replace the slave-based agrarian economy with a free-labor, commercial-industrial one” (page 13). There were, indeed, many men similar to Mercer, and to place the impetus for the ACS’s formation on him ignores prominent northern figures such as the Reverend Robert S. Finley from New Jersey. These men looked to an industrial society based on free labor; they sought also to preserve the Union. Colonization was the means to do both and address the question 23. Staudenraus argued that the ACS was a humanitarian organization. P.J. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, 1816-1865 (Columbia: Columbia UP, 1961). 24. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, pages 28-29; AFRICAN REPOSITORY, 1 (October 1825): 225, and 1 (January 1826): 335. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of their time — the fate of slavery and African descendants in America. One quite interesting question that Burin addresses is why colonizationists thought that they could succeed at settling African Americans outside the United States (pages 20-21). Burin cites historian William Freehling’s explanation that the era under examination provided no evidence that the scheme would not work. In the context of the mass migration then occurring in the Atlantic world, ACS supporters had no reason to think that they could not re-settle African Americans. Burin suggests that the problem with the thesis is that Freehling did not consider the realities of colonization at the local level (page 21). Thus, Burin returns to his study’s real contribution to the scholarship on this topic. Colonization was not a simplistic endeavor that effortlessly moved colonists across the Atlantic. Situations at the local level complicated and slowed emigration, making ACS efforts less tenable in reality. For example, Burin finds that liberated slaves in urban areas generally opposed emigration to Liberia; thus, the ACS targeted rural areas. Colonizationists encountered problems there, however, as slaveholders faced scorn and sometimes worse from neighbors (page 36). Moreover, by the early 1830s a rift emerged “between the Upper South men who dominated the powerful board of managers, and the northerners who filled many important positions in the organization” (page 23), which worked against the ACS. The conflict was primarily over the public image of the ACS and its position on slavery. Burin also points out that a split occurred in the movement because of poor fiscal management, which further slowed the organization’s progress (page 24). Another significant contribution of Burin’s study is his examination of manumissions in the South. Burin notes that the vast majority of individual manumissions in the early colonization period took place in the Upper South (page 36). Of greater interest, however, is his conclusion that the number of manumissions also depended on whether slaveholders lived in urban or rural areas. Manumission was much more difficult, he contends, in rural areas. Burin then proceeds to discuss the factors that influenced slaveholders’ decisions. This is an important part of the study, as no other study (that the reviewer is aware of) has differentiated manumissions specifically for colonization in such a way. That a greater number occurred in the Upper South is not surprising. Northern, free neighboring states had larger immigrant populations, which Burin mentions, specifically the Germans who moved into the western regions of Maryland and later West Virginia. These people had little to tie them to the institution of slavery. In addition, a considerable factor was the industrialization of growing urban centers such as Baltimore. The emergence of the market economy, the transition to mixed agriculture, and the loss of political influence in the Chesapeake region weakened slavery’s hold there. Maryland had the largest (proportionally adjusted) free HDT WHAT? INDEX

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black population in the country. Further, soil depletion and the migration of planters’ sons to western territories contributed to the declining numbers of slaves in the state and, of course, higher numbers of manumissions (pages 37-40). Burin further differentiates ACS manumissions by examining programs employed by some larger slaveholders. He emphasizes that programs such as those promoted by John McDonogh, a Louisiana slave owner, actually aided in controlling slave populations. The promise of literacy in preparation for emigration and freedom in Africa, Burin argues, gave slaveholders an added element of control over their slaves. The potential pitfall of using slaveholding emancipators like McDonogh as a model, however, is that they were atypical. Burin relied on other historical collections; nonetheless, he seems to place more emphasis on McDonogh than on other slave owners. McDonogh’s plan was to provide education and training that would allow the soon-to-be-freedmen to carry the gospel to Africa, among other things, while profiting from their labors for additional years (page 41). His slaves, in fact, financed their emigration. He also did not release all of his slaves for colonization by the ACS. Slaves freed in such programs, Burin notes, were also predominantly adult males. This practice arguably increased control over slave populations (page 43). Yet, this example is perhaps not so profound given the preference of all the colonization societies for adult males in their colonies, especially those known to be industrious and obedient. Adult males would not drain social resources; adult males would develop the colonies more quickly, allowing increasing numbers to be sent; finally, adult males were most likely to make the colonies prosperous, which would lure free African Americans whose position in the United States, economically and socially, was tenuous. The numbers of African Americans transported, and little else, measured success for most white Americans supportive of colonization. Adult males were the most needed group in the colonies for these objectives to be met. Burin either ignores this fact or views the social control that manumission programs gave to slaveholders as more important. Another of Burin’s contentions that scholars will certainly debate is that “ACS liberations were not instances of complaisant slaves dutifully working toward freedom, as white colonizationists originally expected. Rather, they were the product of tenacious negotiations that fundamentally recast slaveholders’ manumission plans” (page 58). In short, Burin suggests that slaves weighed offers of manumission on condition of emigration carefully to exploit the offers to their best advantage (page 59). In assessing these offers, Burin’s study explores the types of information slaves considered, as well as the sources of that information. Scrutiny was necessary as colonizationists manipulated accounts from the colony to best serve their purposes (pages 70-73). That such activities occurred is not surprising. Auxiliary societies and ACS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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publications were geared more towards white society because colonizationists relied on white America for the money to cover colonization, place pressure on the government to support the movement, emancipation, and the diffusion of information to African Americans. Burin in fact makes these points (chapter 4) in examining the role of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society in the larger movement the ACS led. The Pennsylvania Colonization Society (PCS), Burin contends, contributed most to the ACS objective by working hard to get funds (pages 79-80). This theme is not given the prominence it deserved in a chapter mostly about the organizational goals of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society and its members’ wishes to help emancipate slaves. While the interpretation fits within the argument that the ACS was an antislavery organization, there was considerable tension between the Pennsylvania society and the ACS — that tension no doubt a factor in the PCS’s joining the New York society in 1838 to promote their own colony in Africa. The chapter also returns to the theme of colonizationists “rationalizing” (page 86) negative reports from Africa for the benefit of the movement. Again, historians need to consider the audience as much as the agenda for this state auxiliary. The PCS appealed to a white audience appalled by the growth in the free black population in Pennsylvania — that is what motivated them to donate money to promote manumission of slaves for emigration. They had to believe that freedom was going to be accompanied by emigration — “a constant theme in discussions of individual manumission and general emancipation” (page ix). The role of the PCS in the context of this study seems overstated. Opinions about the ACS and colonization as well as the success of the organization depended on the “location of the manumission, the magnitude of the emancipating operation, and the observer’s proximity to the enterprise” (page 100). The farther south one went and the greater the slave population, the more the resistance to the movement, especially after 1832. That a full third of the manumissions took place in Virginia (page 101) supports Burin’s assessment that support for colonization was strongest in the Border States. His examination of who was most likely to emancipate slaves for emigration will prove useful as will his analysis of the problems agents had in getting potential colonists to port (pages 105-110). That opposition to colonization increased in the South as the Civil War approached is not a profound observation, however. Colonizationists’ true failure was in containing the debate over slavery at the national level — one of the goals supporters established when the movement began. Burin also addresses the legal questions raised by colonization- driven manumission. The two pressing legal questions dealt with whether the state had the power to circumscribe slaveholders’ property rights (disowning slaves) and if the state would sanction slave agency (bondsmen being able to choose) in ACS operations (page 121). The former was a question HDT WHAT? INDEX

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colonizationists’ founding members recognized in 1816. Part of the reason they did not publicly address the question of slavery was their reluctance to interfere “with the legal rights and obligations of slavery.”25 Burin traces these legal questions throughout the period under review and finds that legal opposition tended to increase as tensions over slavery traversed the national discourse. To no one’s surprise, Upper South judges found in favor of the slaveholders and colonization, while further south, jurists eventually moved to repudiate the notion that slaves could choose between slavery in the United States and freedom in Africa (page 136). The final chapter analyzes the experience of freepersons in Liberia. This subject is very well documented with other studies. That settlers’ experiences varied is clear from their correspondence to the colonization societies or to former masters. Many were disappointed while many others were satisfied with their new homes. Still others preferred a hard existence where they were truly free to a life of degradation in American society. Aside from showing that the settlers’ negative accounts hurt colonizationists’ recruiting efforts, this chapter seemed unrelated to the rest of the study, particularly if the overriding conclusion is that the ACS was an antislavery organization. The conclusion ends the study by suggesting, “Colonization played a vital role in the Civil War” (page 160). That Lincoln was a supporter of colonization is well known. The degree to which he pursued it is probably less so. While tracing the evolution of Lincoln’s notion of colonization, what seems most clear in this portion of the analysis is that the Civil War removed colonization from the national spotlight as a solution to the slavery problem. The vital role of colonization in the war itself is unclear other than the fact that Lincoln clearly went through an evolution of his position on both colonization and slavery as well as what the war would ultimately be about. Certainly, the war and colonization did little to solve the real question — what was to be done with the African American? His strong evidence notwithstanding, historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions of Burin’s work. Likewise, the notion that colonization was a peculiar solution to slavery will spark debate, especially given the prevalence of auxiliary societies that sprang up around the nation after the ACS was created in 1816. That does not mean, however, that THE PECULIAR SOLUTION is without merit. Ultimately, this is a study of how some white Americans struggled to resolve the great American paradox of freedom and slavery while giving finality to the question about the racial future of the United States. Burin makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of colonization and slavery in the era before the Civil War. The true strength of the book is its examination of colonization at the state level. Here he shows the complexities of colonization as well as the problems facing slaveholders who

25. AFRICAN REPOSITORY 1 (January 1826): 335. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dared to free their bondsmen. Yet, if the colonization movement was peculiar for anything, it was probably more so for its longevity. The ACS did, after all, continue to thrive and send African Americans to Liberia long after the peculiar institution’s demise. Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: [email protected].

Reply to Eugene VanSickle, by Eric Burin Many authors have sat bewildered after reading reviews of their books, wondering if the work under consideration was really their own. As Professor Kirsten Wood noted on H-SHEAR last year, “an author’s idea of what her book is ‘really about’ does not necessarily determine how readers perceive it.”26 The likelihood of misinterpretation is particularly high when the work concerns the nineteenth century colonization movement, a subject that has generated heated debate among historians. Scholars who write about colonization may not tread “dark and bloody ground,” but the field has landmines aplenty. For the most part, Dr. VanSickle, in reviewing SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION, has navigated the turf well, ably summarizing the organization and arguments of the book. At the same time, however, VanSickle’s review did not escape unscathed, as I explain below. In a strange way, VanSickle offers SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION high praise. According to VanSickle, the book’s arguments about slaves’ deliberations over emigration are “not surprising.” Its insights regarding local responses to ACS manumissions are not “profound observation[s].” Its analysis of the legal conundrums posed by ACS liberations should come “to no one’s surprise.” So why are these compliments? Because the literature on these subjects is not extensive, and to declare novel arguments banal is to pay the highest of tributes. “No duh” is another way of saying “case closed.” And yet, despite its putatively mundane character, VanSickle concludes that “historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions” of SLAVERY AND THE P ECULIAR S OLUTION. A book both prosaic and problematic? Like the colonization movement, VanSickle’s review is full of contradictions. VanSickle’s review is reminiscent of the colonization movement in other ways. Indeed, there is a curious similarity between nineteenth century colonizationists and the scholars who study them: some scholars, like the colonizationists, often hold convictions so strongly that they remain impervious to evidence

26. Kirsten E. Wood responds to review of MASTERFUL WOMEN: SLAVEHOLDING WIDOWS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR H-SHEAR (May 10, 2005). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and arguments that challenge their preconceived notions. Consider the question of how reports from Liberia influenced the colonization movement in America. Clearly, settler accounts not only shaped the thinking of would-be emancipators and prospective emigrants, they also irked proslavery southerners who protested as scores of Liberian letters, sojourners, recruiters, and refugees circulated through the South. There is abundant evidence on the matter, yet VanSickle opines that the chapter on Liberia is unrelated to the rest of the book, that it does not bear on the question of the ACS’s impact on slavery. Proslavery southerners knew better. As Edmund Ruffin seethed in 1859, when colonizationists urged would-be manumittees to emigrate, bad things happened: “Such lessons, when designed to operate on one individual, and even without having direct effect on that one, may reach hundreds of others, to the injury of their contentment, and their worth as laborers and slaves.”27 Finally, there’s the matter of historiography. I am not, as VanSickle suggests, the first scholar since Philip Staudenraus (1961) to argue that colonization undermined slavery. While many Civil Rights Era historians questioned the ACS’s antislavery credentials, more recent scholars have reconsidered the matter. William Freehling, Douglas Egerton, Peter Onuf, and Elizabeth Varon, among many, many others, have analyzed the ways in which colonization impaired (and aided) slavery. To overlook their important work would be remiss. Put another way, I wrote SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION while standing on the shoulders of giants. And I had a lot of company up there. In the past few years, there has been an outpouring of scholarship on colonization. Since 2000, seven books have been published on the subject, not to mention a host of articles and dissertations. With the hope of abetting work on colonization, I would like to call H-net subscribers’ attention to my ACS Database, which contains information on 560 ACS emancipators, the 6,000 slaves they liberated, the 9,000 free blacks who also moved to Liberia, the counties in which they resided, and the emigrants’ experiences in Africa. Ultimately, I will put this database on the Web. In the meantime, I would be happy to provide data for H-net members who are working on the colonization movement. In conclusion, I would like to thank H-SHEAR, Dr. VanSickle, and all the scholars who have helped me over the years, giant or otherwise. ======From: “Charles Irons” I learned a great deal from Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION and was therefore disappointed to read Professor VanSickle’s clumsy review. Professor VanSickle makes two, related missteps in his comments. First, while he recognizes the importance of Burin’s treatment of “ACS activities at the local level,” he substantially ignores that contribution in his review. Second, he oversimplifies Burin’s characterization of 27. De Bow’s Review 27 (July 1859): 65. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the ACS as an antislavery organization. Burin acknowledges the well-known proslavery convictions of Randolph and Clay but shows that the ACS could be functionally antislavery in its operation no matter how compromised the emancipationist message was from those at the center. Colonization was often functionally antislavery precisely because of those “activities on the local level” which VanSickle ignores. Each manumission, as Burin shows, pulled scores of black and white Southerners into a series of negotiations about the fate of the manumittee. As Burin puts it, “The tug-and-pull between slaves, their owners, and other parties rendered their liberations logistically complex, financially troublesome, legally complicated, and, at times, socially disruptive enterprises. ... Like pebbles dropped in water, ACS manumissions rippled outward, destabilizing slavery in their wake” (5). VanSickle wants to put colonization firmly in the proslavery column. Burin, on the other hand, acknowledges ideological diversity in the movement’s leadership. Moreover, he shows how manumitted men and women so complicated colonization’s operations on the local level that colonization often assumed an antislavery character in spite of itself. Charles Irons Elon University ======From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. African Americans of the time were not simply making general statements about colonization but very thoroughly critiqued the ACS’s positions in detail; these arguments are extant for scholars to study (and there is also secondary literature on the topic). If we are truly to understand the ACS’s effects on slavery and freedom, we must read antebellum blacks’ arguments against it. What emerges from such an examination is clear: the ACS cannot be considered antislavery unless a very narrow (and basically meaningless) definition of “antislavery” is adopted that would not fit with how most antebellum African Americans HDT WHAT? INDEX

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saw slavery or how most scholars of African American history view it. Slavery, black abolitionists stressed, was not just a matter of individual manumissions and terms of bondage — it was a system, an institution. So to say that any organization was antislavery that did not treat slavery as an institution is to adopt a narrow perspective that renders the term “antislavery” meaningless. As most of us know, individual judges in various locales freed some slaves sent into their courts and kept others in bondage. Were these judges “antislavery” when they freed certain slaves? No — they just saw each case individually and supported slaves in some cases, slaveholders in others. So, too, with the ACS manumissions. African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. Nineteenth-century African Americans responded to this argument, which was often made by ACS apologists, clearly and unequivocally: it was misleading and disingenuous. An early contributor to Freedom’s Journal remarked, “Any plan, which implies in our brethren or their descendants, inferiority, or carries with it the idea that they cannot be raised to respectable standing in this country . . . is wholly at war with our best interests, and we cannot view the Advocates of such sentiments, in any other light, than that of enemies, whatever their principles may be.” Because ACS rhetoric continually described African Americans negatively, this contributor said, it was “increasing prejudice” and “retarding the cause of emancipation.” Free blacks did not see themselves or their enslaved brethren as individuals whose bondage or freedom in each case stood alone. They saw themselves as part of a community, slave and free, with the effects on one group impinging on the lives and experiences of the other. African Americans believed fundamentally that even if some individual slaves were freed by the ACS, the overall prejudice and oppression that was at the root of the organization’s philosophy made the situation in the United States worse for all free and enslaved blacks. In addition, the coercive aspect of the organization should not be overlooked; by arguing that only in Africa could American blacks be free, whites apologized for oppression and excused themselves from trying to change the racist institutions of the United HDT WHAT? INDEX

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States. This view did not allow blacks to be seen as free agents or as citizens. As another contributor to Freedom’s Journal argued, there was no need to spend “money in colonizing free people in Africa,” since they are already “free at home” and can, “if not satisfied here,” on their own “go where they may think best.” It is troubling to me that despite the admonitions of prominent scholars such as Nathan Huggins and John Hope Franklin, scholarship about nineteenth-century reform efforts directed at blacks does not fully consider their views. Burin does look at the views of those who did emigrate about their own freedom and their prospects, but an understanding of blacks’ views on the larger issue are necessary if we are to make any generalizations about the organization. The majority of African Americans who opposed colonization addressed the central question we seem to be now focused on with the ACS — was it antislavery in theory, practice, or function? Free blacks did not stand by while the ACS argued about their futures — they argued back, and in their full discussions we can learn about what effect the organization had on them, on prejudice, and on slavery. There is much that is interesting and useful in Burin’s account — particularly the individual stories of manumissions and the focus on local histories. Both of these areas (local histories, narratives of ordinary people) are important to historians and interesting to readers. But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. Jacqueline Bacon, Independent Scholar www.jacquelinebacon.com ======From: Clayton E. Cramer [mailto:[email protected]] >From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. While I understand Jackie’s concern, her point seems to be that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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because the ACS was built on racist assumptions, and served the interests of slaveholders, it could not be an antislavery organization. I am not sure that this is correct. Even among those who strongly opposed slavery there were many (especially in the early Republic period) who held assumptions of black racial inferiority that caused them to back colonization. Today, these ideas seem frighteningly reactionary; at the time, with white racial superiority a rising idea among intellectuals across the Western world, it was not at all difficult for some opponents of slavery to see the prospect of full racial equality as impossible. Even Jefferson, prone to what I would call excessive optimism about the potential for rational behavior by the masses, made that point: that the history of abuse under slavery and the white fear of retribution would preclude a society free and equal. Now, you can ascribe that to a slaveholder trying to justify in his own mind the maintenance of a system that prepared his meals, grew his crops, and kept his bed warm at night, but even among abolitionists with nothing to prevent them from looking in the mirror in the morning, you can see this widespread belief that the races were unequal, and would always be so — and yes, I’m thinking of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, whose most “manly” blacks are those of mixed blood. Here’s a suggestion for another way to consider the ACS: a confederation of Americans who buried their differences about slavery long enough to concentrate on what they perceived as a worthy goal — returning blacks to Africa. This would not be the first time that unlikely allies have come together on such matters. Consider the way in which the 1808 ban on imports came about, with a devil’s brew of abolitionists (who were morally opposed to slavery); slave owners who managed to rationalize HOLDING slaves, and even selling them from state to state — but found international slave trading objectionable; and those slave breeders who expected to make a good bit of money by passing what was effectively protectionist legislation, wiping out the cheap competition of fresh imports. Clayton E. Cramer [email protected] ======>From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if HDT WHAT? INDEX

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most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. [much sensible material cut] >But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. I think Jackie’s argument points to the problem of trying to make the issue “pro” or “anti” slavery. Certainly, African Americans saw the project as relentlessly proslavery, in the specific sense that it strengthened the racial and legal hierarchies necessary to slavery. Meanwhile, however, many defenders of slavery perceived the colonization movement as antithetical to slavery and synonymous with abolitionism. Their argument (when they made one) was that it accepted the premise that slavery was bad. Like most political issues, slavery is not one that is well- captured through any kind of binary opposition. Some scholars have used taxonomies like “anti-slavery,” “anti- anti-slavery,” “proslavery.” Colonization would be in the category of “anti- anti-slavery.” But, I’m not sure that really helps — it’s almost as though one needs a matrix. One axis would be for how bad one thinks slavery is; another axis for how committed one is to a pragmatic policy that might actually end it. So, colonization would be medium in terms of criticism of slavery, but no higher than rabid proslavery rhetors in terms of a realistic policy. (Personally, I like Kenneth Burke’s use of the term “prim irony” (for southerners who bemoaned a racism from which they benefitted and about which they did nothing). In my snarkier moments, I use the term “conscience swot” for colonization because it enabled people to feel better about themselves while not actually having any impact on the institution of slavery. I think colonization bears the same relation to abolition that self-proclaimed “white moderates” had to the Civil Rights movement. They were in its way.) For the authors about whom Jackie is writing, abolition of slavery was necessarily connected to civic inclusion of African Americans; the goal of colonization was explicitly to keep those two policies separated. More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically. It may have been mildly anti-slavery in sentiment (a claim about which I’m dubious), but it was proslavery in consequence. — Trish Roberts-Miller [email protected] ======HDT WHAT? INDEX

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From: Mark E. Dixon [mailto:[email protected]] “More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically.” The problem with upsetting apple carts is that they tend to fall on people. Like most, perhaps, I have some knowledge of historical niches that have caught my interest, but can’t claim comprehensive knowledge of anything. My peculiar little passion is Quaker history, so I know something of how some Quakers were — for a time — involved in colonization and why they later withdrew. Let’s consider a brief outline of their involvement in ACS. Quakers were slaveholders — even slave traders — in the colonial period, but through the 18th Century gradually evolved toward anti-slavery. By the Revolutionary era, the yearly meetings up and down the East Coast were making slaveowning a disownable offense. This was comparatively easy in states like Pennsylvania where the idea that one could be both black and free was well- established and a sizeable community of free blacks existed. It was not so easy in southern states in which it was illegal to free a slave. When North Carolina Quakers began to free their slaves, for instance, the 1777 legislature toughened an earlier (1741) law that manumissions were permissible only for meritorious service and that the slaves thus freed had to leave the state within six months or be seized and resold. The 1777 amendment allowed illegally freed slaves to be picked up and resold immediately. For 50 years, North Carolina Quakers got around this law by making the church itself the blacks’ owner of record while allowing them to live freely — or at least as freely as possible, given the time and place. In 1827, however, a North Carolina Supreme Court decision broke through the subterfuge. Writing for the majority, the chief justice wrote, “When Quakers hold slaves, nothing but the name is wanting to render it at once a complete emancipation.” The court ruled that, since Quakers’ opposition to slavery was well known, neither Quakers as individuals nor their meetings could be slaveowners. In the face of these facts, what were the North Carolina Quakers and their “property” to do in 1827? The Quakers didn’t want to be slaveowners and the blacks didn’t want to be slaves. Should the Quakers have swallowed their qualms to prevent the blacks from being sold to worse masters? Should the blacks have asked the Quakers to take them back for the same reason? Should the blacks have abandoned their family ties and moved to free states (which didn’t want them either)? Given the situation, I think it’s not surprising that North Carolina Quakers threw themselves into alliance with ACS. They sent agents to explain the colonization plan to blacks (who could choose to go, or not) and Quakers across the country helped raise money for it. According to 19th Century historian Stephen Weeks, relations with ACS were so intimate that North Carolina HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Yearly Meeting was practically its “collection agency.” Several Quaker-funded ships left North Carolina ports, including the “Nautilus” which, in 1832, carried 164 emigrants to Liberia from the counties of Perquimans, Pasquotank and Wayne. I have no doubt that black leaders of the era probably frowned on all this. They were focused on upsetting the “apple cart” — specifically on fighting slavery as an institution and creating a place for free blacks in America. Sending blacks out of the country wouldn’t further those goals. That’s what leaders do: Focus on the big picture and discount the effect on individuals. Individuals, however, do what is best for themselves. In the case of many North Carolina blacks “owned” by Quakers, colonization seemed like the best alternative. I can’t fault their decision, or those who helped them. Mark E. Dixon, www.markedixon.com

December: The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously to approve a ban proposed in September, on trans fats in Gotham’s restaurants. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2008

September 29, Monday: Bee Wilson reported on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, in “The Swill is Gone,” on the situation of contaminated milk products as it is now in mainland China and as it once was in New-York. THE milk was marketed as pure and wholesome, and it looked fine to the naked eye. How were the mothers to know they were poisoning their babies? They had paid good money for it on the open market. It would take thousands of sick children before lawmakers did anything to stop it. China in 2008? No, New York City in 1858. Missing from the coverage of the current Chinese baby formula poisoning, in which more than 53,000 babies have been sickened and at least four have died, is how often it has happened before. The disaster unfolding now in China — and spreading inevitably to its trading partners — is eerily similar to the “swill milk” scandal that rumbled on in New York for several decades of the 19th century. In a city growing fast, but lacking refrigeration, it was hard to provide sufficient milk. Fresh milk was brought in from Westchester and Orange Counties, but not enough to meet demand. In 1853, it was found that 90,000 or so quarts of cow’s milk entered the city each day, but that number mysteriously increased to 120,000 quarts at the point of delivery. Some of the increase was due to New York dairymen padding their milk with water, and then restoring its richness with flour — just like their latter-day Chinese counterparts, who increased the protein levels in watered-down milk by adding the noxious chemical melamine. But the greater part was swill milk, a filthy, bluish substance milked from cows tied up in crowded stables adjoining city distilleries and fed the hot alcoholic mash left from making whiskey. This too was doctored — with plaster of Paris to take away the blueness, starch and eggs to thicken it and molasses to give it the buttercup hue of honest Orange County milk. This newspaper attributed the deaths of up to 8,000 children a year to this vile fluid. In China, journalists have known of the poison milk for months, but weren’t allowed to spread the news because of the Olympics. Even worse, it has been only four years since China’s last baby formula scandal, when fraudsters in Anhui Province manufactured fake formula from sugar and starch, killing at least 13 babies. In the case of swill milk, the New York dairymen had been informed for decades that their milk was unsafe. As early as 1842, a temperance crusader named Robert Hartley warned that city milk could be catastrophically tainted. Throughout the 1850s, newspapers published exposés of the distillery dairies and called for the city to close them. Some of the cows were so diseased from their alcoholic diet that their teeth rotted and their tails fell off. Their udders were frequently ulcerated, but they would be milked regardless. Finally, in 1858, Tammany Hall sent Alderman Michael Tuomey to “investigate” a notorious swill milk dairy on West 16th Street. Tuomey sat down with the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dairy owners and drank a glass or two of whiskey. He concluded that swill milk was just as good for children as ordinary milk, and anyone who refused to drink it simply had a “prejudice.” Again, there are echoes with China. The Chinese government had exempted several of the nation’s biggest dairies from inspections, one of the reasons the scare was allowed to spread unchecked from baby formula to yogurt to the whole of the Chinese dairy industry and its exports. (The British candy maker Cadbury announced yesterday, for instance, that it had discovered melamine in some of its Chinese-made milk chocolates.) This isn’t just laissez-faire — it’s an approach to the food supply that is so deliberately hands off that it amounts to an invitation to swindling. Heads are rolling now, but too late for the sick babies. The similarities between China today and New York 150 years ago shouldn’t come as a great surprise. Adulteration on such a scandalous scale occurs in societies with a toxic combination of characteristics: a fast-growing capitalist economy coupled with a government unable or unwilling to regulate the food supply. In such get-rich-quick societies, there is a huge temptation to tamper with food, particularly when margins are low. The rewards are instant, and it’s not always easy for consumers to detect the difference between the pure and the doctored — particularly with a substance like milk, which we have been taught to trust implicitly. Such scandals are not bad luck. They are symptomatic of a deep failure of politics. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s hasty gestures — punishing the dairies, forcing the head of the food quality agency to resign — have done nothing to deal with the underlying regulatory vacuum. In the end, New York milk was cleaned up. It took stronger food laws, better policing, the advent of pasteurization and the passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1906, 50 years after the worst of swill milk. Above all, it took decades, not months or years. China faces many more food scandals — to add to recent alarms like pesticide-laced dumplings and lard made from sewage — before it reaches the point where its citizens can routinely trust what they eat. The American food supply is still flawed, as this year’s panic over salmonella in produce showed. But it’s worth remembering that it has been far worse. China’s present is America’s past.

Are we not reminded of Henry Thoreau’s humorous remark about evidence of 19th-Century commercial food adulteration, to wit “finding a trout in the milk”? It would seem that the abuse Chinese nurslings are being forced to endure, being reported in the New York Times in this year of Beijing Olympic triumphalism and Chinese astronaut spacewalks, is eerily similar to the local abuse the Times had been recording during Thoreau’s lifetime! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2013

November: The US Food and Drug Administration has discovered to its great surprise that partly-hydrogenated vegetable oils –the primary source of trans fats in our diets– are no longer to be GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) and therefore off-limits for safety testing. This ruling by the FDA is of course merely a “preliminary” one — pending one or another District of Columbia lobbyist or hired gun coming around with campaign cash to hand out, who will explain to everyone who will listen that since our cloth industry does generate huge piles of cotton seeds, and since these cotton seeds are directly useful only for the temporary sterilization of prisoners (not much call for that “gossypol” these days, outside of China), we need to have a way to persuade our citizens to pay for and then ingest the “vegetable oils” (what, you didn’t know that the cotton plant classifies as a vegetable?) that can be expressed from such industrial waste products.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oleomargarine HDT WHAT? INDEX

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: February 26, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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