Nobel Peace Prize

ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL My dynamite will sooner lead to peace Than a thousand world conventions As soon as men will find that in one instant Whole armies can be utterly destroyed, They surely will abide by golden peace. 1801 March 24, day: Immanuel Noble was born. ALFRED NOBEL 1805 Karolina Andriette Ahlsell was born. ALFRED NOBEL HDT WHAT? INDEX ALFRED NOBEL ALFRED NOBEL 1827 July 8, Sunday: Immanuel Noble got married with Karolina Andriette Ahlsell. ALFRED NOBEL Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8th of 7 M / In the Morng Meeting our frd Abigail Robinson & Hannah Dennis were engaged in testimony, & in the Afternoon Father Rodman. — With my wife took tea & set the eveng at D Buffums. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 1833 October 21, Monday: Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden. 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ALFRED NOBEL ALFRED NOBEL 1837 Upon his bankruptcy in Sweden, Immanuel Nobel merely relocated to a new engineering workshop he set up in St. Petersburg. ALFRED NOBEL 1847 Giuseppe Mazzini founded the People’s International League. A civil war, the Sonderbundskrieg, began with an attack by troops of Sonderbund upon the Swiss conservative alliance, and would result in the following year in the transformation of Switzerland into a federal state. It would also result in 86 dead soldiers and 500 wounded soldiers, and the exile of the defeated conservative leader to Italy. In a scientific journal called L’Institut, the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero announced the invention of “nitroglycerin,” a powerful but unstable new explosive (on a scale of 1 to 100, top-quality 19th-Century nitroglycerin measured at 73). In 1864 Alfred Nobel would devise a way of mass-producing this chemical, rename it “blasting oil,” and begin aggressively marketing it for use in North American, Australian, and European mines. Improper handling and storage –water vapor makes nitroglycerin horribly explosive– would quickly cause a rash of accidental explosions. While this was not a problem for the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Canadian Pacific Railway who saw no problem with having employees use nitroglycerin to build railroads through the North American West because the employees in question were merely gangs of contract Chinese, the risks –at least 600 Chinese died in British Columbia alone– frightened most non-industrial users. To reduce the risk and increase his sales, Nobel would develop several safer explosives and powders. The first would be the “Dynamite Nr. 1” which he would patent in 1866. Dynamite Number 1 consisted of 75% nitroglycerin and 25% kieselguhr, a clay-like diatomaceous soil often used as a packing material. Its relative power index was 62. While this substance had a tendency to “sweat” out drops of pure nitroglycerin, comparatively it was indeed more stable, and would quickly become the standard chemical explosive for the European construction and mining industries. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX ALFRED NOBEL ALFRED NOBEL 1854 November 14, Tuesday: A great hurricane struck the region of the Black Sea. The Allied supply fleet had been forced to anchor outside the harbor of Sevastopol because the Russians has strewn the harbor with mines. These mines they had decided to contract for with a Swedish inventor name of Alfred B. Nobel who detonated such mines chemically rather than with an American inventor name of Samuel Colt assisted by another inventor name of Samuel F.B. Morse who detonated such mines electrically. On this date a great hurricane arose, devastating this vulnerably anchored supply fleet, sinking the pride of the French navy, the Henri IV, and destroying the winter supplies of the army ashore (in reaction to this the Emperor Napoleon III would call for the initiation of a national weather forecasting service). The Concord River rose slightly over the meadows (it would not subside until December 5th). Henry Thoreau wrote the first draft of his “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” lecture as proposed by Asa Fairbanks. Presumably it was at this time that he added material of this nature: [Paragraph 4] My text this evening is “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” MARK 8:36 So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. [Paragraph 10] But when I come a little nearer to the facts, I find commonly that that relation to Nature which had so attracted me in the farmer’s life, exists only in my imagination, and that she is insignificant to him;—that his boasted independence is merely a certain slight independence on the market, and not a moral independence,—that he is a speculator,—not in the old sense of an observer, or contemplator, but in the modern sense which is yet, for the most part, ashamed to show itself in the dictionary, and his speculum or mirror, is a shining dollar. In short, considering his motives and his methods, his life is coarse and repulsive, and liable to most of the objections which have been urged against trade and commerce. What odds does it make whether you measure tape or measure milk? He thinks that he must live near a market. Just as the publisher, when I complain that his magazine is too worldly, tells me that it must have a large circulation. But I think that the must in the case is that [Paragraph 15] One might sometimes wonder that this class of men do not send up a petition to have five minutes added to the length of human life. [Paragraph 16] This may be enterprising, as we call it, but it is not wise— neither the saints nor the heroes live in such a desperate hurry. [Paragraph 17] It is no better with the old fashioned farmer. I fear that his contentment is commonly stagnation. [Paragraph 26] What are the mechanics about—whose hammers we hear on all sides—building some lofty rhyme?—or only houses, barns, and woodsheds? 4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ALFRED NOBEL ALFRED NOBEL [Paragraph 46] But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New England, bred at her own school and church. [Paragraph 47] America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought. But surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic—the res-publica—has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,—the private state,—to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls, “ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet,” that the private state receive no detriment. [The quotation is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, ORATIONES (Boston, 1831), “Oratio pro Milone,” 26:70. Thoreau altered Cicero’s “respublica” to ‘res-PRIVATA’. Bradley P. Dean has emended what is [Paragraph 57] Somebody has said that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, is a benefactor to mankind.1 But how much greater a benefactor is he who makes a man grow where no man grew before! [Paragraph 58] Of the West I commonly hear only that the corn grows so much higher than the men. When our explorers discover a country where carrots will grow quite through to the other side of the globe, as some report,2 we think it becomes the chief duty of man to go and tax Nature’s carrot- producing power there to the utmost, and never her man-producing power— to draw out the great resources of that country in the shape of monstrous golden carrots, though we mannikins that raise them should tumble into the holes they come out of, and be lost. [Paragraph 59] Where is the government whose policy it is to satisfy, or even recognize, nay, avoid outraging, the higher wants of our nature? It is the ruling policy of our own government, as every-body knows, to convert man directly into a brute, or a piece of property. We are compelled to say that anything that works that way is a mere pretension.3 Perhaps the government is such. The Secretary of State or of the Treasury is a real person enough, but what a shadow is the Chaplain of the House? Under the present circumstances he is the best chaplain who makes the shortest prayers—because any prayer is out of place there. It is only a wooden gun to scare the devil away. But if the truth were known, he was the inventor of it—he himself suggested it to keep up appearances. 1. Jonathan Swift, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, 1726, “Voyage to Brobdingnag,” Chapter 7. 2.This “report” has not been located. 3.This and the following sentence are interlined on the copy-text manuscript in very faint, hastily- written pencil and are therefore difficult to recover. The readings ‘anything’ and ‘works’ in this sentence, and ‘is such’ in the next sentence must remain conjectural. [Paragraph 68] In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion! But how do I know what their religion is—and when I am near to or far from it? “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX ALFRED NOBEL ALFRED NOBEL [Paragraph 100] “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”1 1.MARK 8:36 Bradley P.

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