Any man who has served in the armed forces for ninety days can attend for a year any approved school or college, and if he was less than twenty-five years of age at induction he is entitled to these benefits for a period equal to his military service after September 16, 1940, for a maximum of four years. The Government pays all bills for tuition and fees up to $500 a year.

It is a splendid bill, a wonderful bill, with only one conspicuous drawback. The guys aren’t buying it. They say “education” means “books,” any way you slice it, and that’s for somebody else.    [“The G.I.’s Reject Education,” Stanley Frank, August 18, 1945]

He was right—partially, and only briefly.

As of February 1, 1945, only 12,844 discharged veterans throughout the country, in a total of 1,500,000, were attending schools under the G. I. Bill. Less than 1 per cent.

Frank had interviewed G.I.s at two veterans hospitals and found them anxious to get home and back to work as quickly as possible. Only 10% showed interest in further education. Most of these soon dropped out of the program.

Boiling down the figures, about 2 per cent of the amputees and neurosurgical cases—those who need it most—indicate an intention of having a go at serious, brain-building learning.

"Although painfully reminiscent of the military barracks they so recently occupied, these double-decker beds in Illinois' Old Gymnasium Annex increased by 300 the number of unmarried ex-servicement the university could accommodate. Beds of any sort are rare than gold at most schools."

We are, perhaps expecting too much of the tired, bewildered, embittered soldier, disassociated as he has been from civilian life, in asking him to plan his career. In normal times, most people have modest ambitions and are content to drift with the tide, evading responsibility if they can.

Though the college-benefit program had been in effect for a short time, some Post editor already saw the education benefit as a giant waste of taxpayer’s money.

Yet, by early the next year, there were signs of a general shift in Americans’ attitude toward education. Civilian adults, like the returning veterans, wanted to make up for the opportunities they’d lost during the war, and the Depression before it. Early in 1946, the Post reported “facilities of the country’s adult-education program are creaking under the load as [Americans] enroll by the hundreds of thousands.”

If, citizens have reasoned, a university can help practicing physicians, engineers, and so on, keep up to date, why can’t it tackle things that have ordinary folks stopped in their tracks?

A Gallup poll last spring indicated that 34 per cent of the adult population—25,000,000 folks—had the impulse to take advantage of part-time educational facilities after the war.   [“Look Who’s Going To School Now!” Harold Titus, Feb. 9, 1946]

And just one year after the Post reported G.I.’s rejected education, it ran “Crisis at the Colleges.”

"'Illiniville,' where these scarce prefabricated houses take care of 275 student veterans with their families. A total of 1200 applied."

Heads of American colleges … are confronted with a reality that has always been a democratic dream: the opportunity to raise the educational attainments of a solid chunk of a whole generation. Because of the Government subsidy to servicemen, the opportunity is here; men who could never come to college under ordinary circumstances are enrolling or knocking at the doors.

[However] the colleges do not have the facilities, the housing, the instructors, or classrooms to handle [the opportunity]. The primary, the immediate, the all-important, problem is housing.

Thousands of eligible veterans were turned away last September because the colleges had no place to quarter them; thousands more were turned away in February at the beginning of the second semester. And yet the enrollment of veterans rose immensely because the colleges did find some place, some way, to house some of them.

Here was the situation at Illinois during the second half of the school year. Total undergraduate enrollment at Urbana … was 12,780. This is more students than ever attended there before. … Total veteran undergraduate enrollment was 5509.

There were veterans living in basements, veterans in garrets, veterans in made-over garages and abandoned filling stations. There were 300 sleeping in double-decker beds in the gaunt building known as the Old Gymnasium Annex.

Gone is the campus where every prospect pleases… Cruelest blows to academic serenity are the clotheslines behind the trailers and prefabricated houses. Along with the leaves of the traditional whispering maples there are, diapers and children’s underpants blowing in the wind.

By the time the program ended in 1956, it had helped 2.2 million Americans attend college and another 6.6 million receive training.

It would be hard to over-estimate the effect on this country made by this wave of America’s college-educated G.I.s. It enabled these men to lead the changing industries of the post-war world. It also produced a higher expectation for education in the American public; a 10th-grade education became less socially acceptable in the growing middle class.

The G.I.-Bill generation passed its faith in education on to the next generation, which passed on to their children. It is still an article of faith to many Americans today despite the low employment rate of college graduates.

A Hasty Prediction For the G.I. Bill The Saturday Evening Post

Women, the company reasoned, were tactful, helpful, dedicated, attentive to details—and they could work harder than most men thought possible. They could deftly handle the callers who became furious when told the number they were calling was busy.

In those days, the job of a telephone operator—also called a “Hello Girl” or “Central”— was far from easy. First, she had to take all responsibility for electric shocks she received from her “operating board.” She also had to memorize the position of 300 phone numbers on the board directly in front of her.

She was expected to use only the language approved by the company. Numbers could be read only one way. (The number 2000 could only be spoken as “two oh, double-oh.” 4001 was “four, double-oh, one.”) The company also directed them to give the time in “railroad style”: not “twelve minutes to nine” but “eight forty-eight.” The rest of her speech was limited to a handful of approved expressions:

“Number?”

“They don’t answer.”

“Line busy.”

“Line out of order.”

“I have no such number; please refer to your directory.”

“Telephone has been taken out.”

“I will give you Information.”

“I will give you Chief Operator.”

Lastly, an operator had to be fast.

Central … takes care of six or seven customers a minute. During the rush hour she supplies 360 connections in 60 minutes; under stress of intense public excitement she has a record of answering 15 calls per minute. [“‘Hello’ Girls” by Harris Dickson, Sept 26, 1908]

There was one small compensation to all the drawbacks of being a “Hello Girl,” according to Dickson:

In her spare time, she dearly loves to listen to telephone chatter—by way of novelty and recreation.

Officially, the Bell Systems didn’t allow operators to listen in to conversations, Dickson reported. (In France, he added, privacy was enforced by the Government.) Operators were prohibited to marry anyone on a long list of forbidden bridegrooms: police employees, detectives, government officials, foreigners, etc. so they wouldn’t be tempted to divulge any secrets they overheard.

The anonymous author of “The Diary of a Telephone Girl: The Work of a Human Spider in a Web of Talking Wires” readily admitted eavesdropping.

There are sometimes long enough intervals … for me to be able to read or write letters. They put on a bell attachment that rings for every call, so I can’t fail to answer.

Of course I had plenty of time for listening, and it was so exciting sometimes that I hated to stop long enough to answer another call.

The other night I switched a friend of mine on to the line, opened his listening key and others in turn, so that for an hour he could overhear all sorts of private conversations, one after the other.

It’s so queer to press down the row of “listening keys” one after another and get bits of the different conversations!  Different voices, different dialects, different emotions, tempers, subjects! All sliced off like Neapolitan ice cream—little bits of pulsing human lives.  The girls do awfully mean things when they’re exasperated by angry subscribers. You can, for instance, switch three or four couples together—a pair of lovers, maybe, two business men and one woman gossiping to another—and then sit and hear them rage at each other.

It was interesting, too, to notice how the character of the talk changed as the hour grew late. The conversations seemed to grow more familiar and confidential and affectionate toward eleven o’clock.

There are several distinct types that I can recognize immediately and I almost know what they’re going to say.

First, at 7 o’clock, there are scattered calls, usually important, for doctors, perhaps; and you have to ring and ring, because the subscribers hate so to get up and answer the ‘phone.

At 8 o’clock, the nice, early-morning women come on to market with patient, affable butchers. They always want a tender joint and fresh vegetables. “Yes, ma’am!” say the butchers.

At 9, the business man in a hurry, in a loud, violent tone, impatient and cross, bullying the operator, and then, when he gets his number, lowering his voice to an amiable growl.

At 10, interminable conversation between women over the “flat-rate” ‘phones with infinite details as to clothes. There’s no five-minute limit to talks with this company and you can’t cut them off. I’ve known them to keep it up for three-quarters of an hour. [Imagine: talking on the phone for 45 minutes!—ed.]

At 11 to half-past there’s a lull, punctuated, perhaps, by nippy ladies calling up employment agencies [looking to replace a servant], or stupid servant girls replying.

At 11:30 till 12:30 there’s a wild rush, everybody trying to catch everybody else for lunch.

From then till 3 or so there are characteristic calls of all sorts: peevish, hurried females who use the nickel ‘phones in the downtown drug stores, and who have just got to have their numbers; silly schoolgirls mischievously calling up men they don’t know; sporting men [placing bets] in an unintelligible racing jargon, and so on.

From 3 to 4 it slows down again. Then there’s likely to be a flurry of women trying to call up stores before they close, or in time to catch the last deliveries.

At 5, wives begin to call up to know if husbands are coming home, and if not, why not? Apologetic replies from offices as business men attempt to explain. Or, if he’s coming, “Be sure to bring home a steak or a lobster.” He (in disgust): “Why couldn’t you have ordered them this morning?”

From 6 till 7 everybody seems to be too busy to call up, except the younger people, girls and youths, who joke and [plan to meet later]. This is a good hour, too, for the obsequious underling, the club hallboy or the clerk of a garage, who has taken orders and been respectful all day, to talk down to the telephone operator. Now, along toward 8, comes the nervous maiden, calling up her men, too uncertain of their reception to bully Central as she usually does.

From 9 on not many calls.

After 10:30 come the calls [for taxis and chauffeurs] and the hotel private exchanges begin to get busy.

Then, at 11 and on through till 2, the reporters with strange tales.

I hate the reporters. They always have the most thrillingly interesting conversations, but if I listen on the line they always know it and get mad. “ Get off the line, Central,” they say, “or I’ll stop talking!” No matter how softly I press back my listening key, they seem to know I’m listening, and then they talk so horridly that I simply have to shut the key.

With automation replacing most phone operators, there are far fewer people to eavesdrop on your conversation. Besides, the whole idea of private phone conversations seem quaint in an age of cell phones. You don’t need to become an eavesdropping operator when callers walk through airports and stores handing out free samples of their private lives.

What The Operators Overheard in 1907 The Saturday Evening Post

But Ill-fated words from his 1928 campaign speech, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land,” the subsequent stock market crash, and what some view as bad economic policies have branded him as one of the worst presidents in our nation’s history.

Herbert Hoover was a long-time contributor to the Post. His article, “Some Notes on Industrial Readjustment,” published 10 years before the Great Depression, may provide some insight into Hoover’s conservative approach to problems during the Great Depression. The following excerpts are taken from this article:

…[T]he attempt to solve great human and economic problems by governmental use of the courts instead of seeking solution from the legislatures is indeed further evidence of need for careful thinking.

When all is said and done, labor, whether with hand or mind, is the only excuse for membership in the community.

No scheme based on political appointment has yet developed the ability to replace competition in its selection of ability and character in management, and no government under the pressure of local political influences can properly conduct the risks of initiating extension and improvement.

In any event, until our Government abandons its method of war finance by way of gigantic inflation of credit and consequent stimulus to speculation there will be little relief from profiteering and its bitter interpolation into the cost of living.

You can read “Some Notes on Industrial Readjustment” in its entirety below:

Famous Contributors: Herbert Hoover The Saturday Evening Post

It seemed everybody needed them back in the Depression when Dale Carnegie published How To Win Friends and Influence People.  The book appeared in bookstores in November, 1936, and was reprinted 16 times in a few months. By the time the Post ran a story on Dale Carnegie the following August, he had made $125,000 on the book—the equivalent of $2 million today.

Carnegie was as surprised by this success as much as anyone. One person who wasn’t surprised, though, was Margaret Case Harriman, author of “He Sells Hope,” the Post article. As she saw it:

The secret of the book’s success seems fairly simple. Every man or woman who buys it is instantly handed, for the sum of $1.96, the information that he, or she, is potentially as powerful, brilliant, rich and successful as anybody in the world, and perhaps a good deal more so than most. Like the beauty doctors and the professors of charm, Dale Carnegie sells people what most of them desperately need. He sells them hope.

But hope didn’t just sell itself, Harriman conceded. She chronicled Carnegie’s long, hard, wandering route to success.

He was born in 1888, in Maryville, Missouri, the second son of a worthy family pursued, to a fantastic degree, by hard luck. His father was a farmer—that is, he would have liked to be a farmer if the One Hundred and Two River had not overflowed every spring and ruined his crops.

Mrs. Carnegie, Dale’s mother, was a devout Methodist who sang hymns at her work, undismayed by the things that happened around her, and who wanted her two sons, Dale and Cliff, to become missionaries.

Young Carnegie proved to be that uniquely American type, the ambitious dreamer. He threw himself into debate and dramatics, seeking any opportunity to get up before an audience and win their attention and admiration. After college and several attempts to become a salesman he developed his own course in public speaking, then wrote a book on the subject. By 1916, Harriman wrote,

"Dictation with one hand; how to influence plant life with the other.""He Sells Hope," Aug. 14, 1937

Dale Carnegie was doing well. He had conducted courses in public speaking at YMCAs throughout the country with such success that he was able to open his own office, and to hire halls around town where ambitious young men were nightly exhorted to “Speak Out,” to “Go In There and Fight,” to “Wham it Across,” and to “Keep Their Hands Out of Their Pockets.”

The book [on public speaking] lacked the bang-up approach, the sly flattery of the reader, that was later to send the sales of How to Win Friends and Influence People up into the hundreds of thousands.

Eventually, Carnegie came to see that Americans had a greater desire than just an ability to speak in public. They wanted to be liked. They wanted to matter to others. His book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, addressed this need.

Carnegie’s success, according to Harriman, was his discovery of some fundamental truths.

(a) “Deep in every man lies the Desire to be Im­portant,” (b) “A man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language,” (c) “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it,” and (d)—not disclosed in Mr. Carnegie’s works—there is no better way to attract the attention of a care-ridden public than by a wholesale application of comfortable generalities.

She didn’t consider Carnegie to be purposely deceptive, but a well intentioned promoter who stumbled on a concept that was highly marketable, particularly in the challenging Depression years. Carnegie believed that friends and influence were essential to everyday life, which he viewed as—

"A man's name is to him the sweetest sound in the English language."

a grim battle … with people eternally struggling against fearful odds, groping in a vast darkness haunted by specters.

Once he asked a pupil if he was completely happy. The man thought about it briefly, and then said, “Yes.” The answer left Carnegie speechless for half a minute before he unleashed a flood of incredulity upon the happy pupil. Although one of his most frequent counsels to his followers is “Don’t Argue,” Carnegie is a tenacious arguer—always avoiding any appearance of arrogance, however, by adding, “Of course I may be wrong.” The pupil stuck to his statement, and Carnegie, giving in, looked puzzled all evening. He had found one of the few things he couldn’t explain—a contented man. There may have occurred to him the disturbing thought that, if all men were happy, there would be no Dale Carnegie.

It’s hard to say why Harriman took such a cynical view of Carnegie. Thousands of people reported that their lives had been significantly improved by Carnegie’s book and course, and they have remained popular for decades in a country that is continually using up and discarding ideas.

This year, for the book’s 75th anniversary, Dale Carnegie and Associates has produced an updated version, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age.

As the New York Times notes, this version may be new but not improved. Carnegie’s plainspoken prose has been updated with terms like “relational longevity” and “faith persuasion,” which sounds like an oxymoron.

Carnegie’s basic message survived the skepticism of Ms. Harriman. It will probably survive this revision for the digital age.

Hope or Hype? The Post Critiques Carnegie’s Bestseller The Saturday Evening Post

Partly it was his roles. Wayne always played heroes who showed integrity, fairness, and courage—virtues prized by a generation that had confronted a depression, a world war, and a cold war. But it was also his talent for giving these roles credibility. His gestures, his walk, his speech—whether on- or off-screen—all seemed to intensify his heroic charisma.

No less a writer than Joan Didion (renowned “new journalist” and author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem) felt this charisma. She and Wayne had first met in 1943 when he was a cowboy in a black-and-white two-reeler and she was a nine-year-old kid on a sun-baked air base where movies were the only entertainment. She described their meeting for the Post in “John Wayne: A Love Song.”

In the darkened Quonset hut which served as a theater… while the hot wind blew outside… I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, “at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.”

I tell you this neither in a spirit of self-revelation nor as an exercise in total recall, but simply to demonstrate that when John Wayne rode through my childhood, and very probably through yours, he determined forever the shape of certain of our dreams.

In John Wayne’s world, John Wayne was supposed to give the orders. “Let’s ride,” he said, and “Saddle up.” “Forward ho,” and “A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” “Hello, there,” he said when he first saw the girl, in a construction camp or on a train or just standing around on the front porch waiting for somebody to ride up through the tall grass.

Didion wrote those words in 1965 after visiting Wayne on a movie set. In person, he seemed larger than life while giving the impression of a decent, unassuming guy.

There was Wayne, in his 33-year-old spurs, his dusty neckerchief, his blue shirt.”You don’t have too many worries about what to wear in these things,” he said. “You can wear a blue shirt, or, if you’re down in Monument Valley, you can wear a yellow shirt.”

There was Wayne, in a relatively new hat, a hat which made him look curiously like William S. Hart. “I had this old cavalry hat I loved, but I lent it to Sammy Davis. I got it back, it was unwearable. I think they all pushed it down on his head and said, “O.K. John Wayne. You know, a joke…”

(That hat, and several others, went up for auction this past week in Los Angeles, as Wayne’s family finally acceded to fan’s request to purchase some of their father’s movie memorabilia.)

Didion also noted several moments of pure, unrehearsed “Duke.” For example, when Michael Anderson, a young member of the cast, was given his own chair with his name on the back, he hurriedly brought it to Wayne’s attention.

“You see that?” Anderson asked Wayne, suddenly too shy to look him in the eye. Wayne gave him the smile, the nod, the final accolade. “I saw it, kid.”

There was also the moment when the crew, during a lunchtime break, discussed what they’d do to anyone who threatened their lives.

[Director Henry] Hathaway removed the cigar from his mouth. “Some guy just tried to kill me he wouldn’t end up in jail. How about you. Duke?”

Very slowly, the object of Hathaway’s query wiped his mouth, pushed back his chair, and stood up. It was the real thing, the authentic article, the move which had climaxed 1,000 scenes on 165 flickering frontiers and battlefields, and it was about to climax this one, in the commissary at Estudio Churubusco outside Mexico City.

“Right,” John Wayne drawled. “I’d kill him.”

Later, when Didion and her husband had dinner with Wayne and his family, she felt how his charm could fill an entire restaurant.

For a while it was only a nice evening, an evening anywhere. We had a lot of drinks, and I lost the sense that the face across the table was in certain ways more familiar than my husband’s.

John Wayne, photographed in 1978, shortly before his death.

And then something happened. Suddenly the room seemed suffused with the dream, and I could not think why. Three men appeared out of nowhere, playing guitars. I watched Pilar Wayne lean slightly forward, and John Wayne lift his glass almost imperceptibly toward her… We all smiled, and drank… and all the while the men with the guitars kept playing, until finally I realized what they had been playing all along: “Red River Valley” and the theme from The High and the Mighty. They did not quite get the beat right, but even now I can hear them, in another country and a long time later, even as I tell you this…

In a world we understand early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities, he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed ever, but in any case existed no more—a place where a man could move free, could make his own code and live by it; a world in which, if a man did what he had to do, he could one day take the girl and go riding through the draw and find himself there at the bend in the bright river, the cottonwoods shimmering in the sun.

The Cowboy and the Columnist, or Joan Didion ♥ John Wayne The Saturday Evening Post

But with his Model T, things would be different. Ford would introduce a new design and business plan with the assumption that all Americans, not just the rich, wanted their own automobiles. He was ready to give them—

a 4-cylinder, 20 horsepower, five-passenger family car—powerful, speedy and enduring,—a car that looks good, and is as good as it looks.

His gamble paid off generously; in the first year, Ford sold 10,000 Model Ts—ten thousand new cars for a nation that previously had only 100,000 registered vehicles!

The Model T’s success was due, in part, to its superior engineering, including its use of Vanadium steel, a tough, lightweight alloy that kept the weight of the vehicle down to 1200 pounds.

Not an ounce of necessary weight sacrificed, not an ounce of dead weight in the car.

But no selling point was more important than price; the Model T sold for just $850 (about $20,000 today). As Ford proclaimed:

this big, roomy, powerful five-passenger touring car … possesses at least equal value with any “1909” car announced, and at the same time sells for several hundred dollars less than the lowest of the rest.

Compare … the new Ford car with those of any higher priced car offered and see if you can justify … the additional expenditure that buying any other car involves.*

Ford’s Model T began several revolutions. Of course it changed manufacturing and business

Click to enlarge the image.

methods. But his “car for the multitude,” as he called it, also revolutionized the nature of the American family and society. Middle-income families gained a new mobility and independence as well as new opportunities. Life would no longer center around the family hearthside and the neighborhood. Americans could now explore their country, escape their town or village, drive off to new opportunities, or follow their whim to speed down a country road.

Year after year, Ford compounded his success. His yearly production doubled and doubled again, from 20,000 to 53,000 then 94,000. By 1913, when production reached 225,000 Model Ts, he was turning out a new car every 3 minutes. Meanwhile, the price kept dropping, too; in 1916, he could afford to sell his car for just $360 ($7,000 today).

This productivity was only possible because of Ford’s assembly line, which—according to critics—forced workers into mindless labor at an inhuman pace. Furthermore, critics claimed, this mass-production culture was spreading across the nation along with the Model T. Americans were endlessly racing after dreams and living at a pace of life beyond human endurance.

Nonsense, Ford replied. In 1926, he defended the culture and production methods that the Model T had made possible.

There is [one] criticism that appears when modern industry is mentioned—the charge that machine-production methods, rapidity of operation, is responsible for the so-called killing pace of present-day life. In one breath industry is charged with making men stupid, and in the next with making men too nervously alert. Both statements cannot be correct.

How is one to reconcile the killing pace with the fact that the average of human life is lengthened year by year?

We live on a planet driving at terrific speed through space; is anyone nervously ruined by letting the earth carry him along? We are naturally habituated to the speed of the planet.

In just the same way, no one who is in step with the pace of industry is conscious of it. Irritation does not arise from the pull forward; it is in the pull back. Only those who try to check the pace of progress find our present gait distressful.

Our pace was made by ourselves. We are not forced to keep up with something superhumanly set for us. Man sets his own pace, and he can only do what is within the limit of his power.

The world is on the move and gives every evidence of an intention to keep moving and to hasten its pace. Viewed in the mass, the spectacle may seem feverish to those who are not a part of it. But from the point of view of the individual there is no sensation of being rushed. Rather the alert men and women of today are irritated by what is, to them, the slow gait of progress. Most of them are in a hurry to reach a better goal, and their ideas are becoming more and more definite as to where and why they are going. People are eager for the real education of experience. They are filled with creative curiosity.

The debate continued long afterward, and continues today. Does new technology make our lives both frantic and mind-numbing? Or does it bring into our lives new rewards and new possibilities? As in every revolution, both extremes come true.

(We can make that comparison today because automakers, in those ingenuous times, advertized their prices. So we know that, in 1909, a Franklin cost $3750; an Oldsmobile Roadster, $2750; the Winton Six, $3000; a Cadillac “Thirty,” $1400, and a Chalmers Detroit [which boasted they made only 9% profit on their cars], $1,500.)

Farmers added to the value of their Model T by adapting them to non-transportation uses as exaggerated, only slightly, in this cartoon. Country Gentleman, January 12, 1918 Click to enlarge the image.

The Ad that Launched a Revolution The Saturday Evening Post

To her admirers and her critics, this attention is justified; to them, Jackie has always represented more than herself. She was an ideal, a symbol, or a caricature, but never just another American woman. As far back as 1960, the media put her under the kind of scrutiny from which First Ladies are usually spared (or were, until Hillary Clinton). Even after her husband’s death and her departure from the White House the press continued to report and critique her movements, her clothing, her hairstyle, her work—anything to feed the abiding interest of her supporters and critics.

In 1967, journalist Alan Levy spent a week trying to understand this intense interest and “what it is like for a lively 37-year-old mother to live the life of a tourist attraction.” As he reported in his Post article “Jackie Kennedy: A View From the Crowd,” she was not hard to find. Levy saw her several times without too much effort. He was there when she appeared at an art exhibition:

Jackie Kennedy's Manhattan

There were more than a thousand people … and fully half of them were watching for the one we had come to watch. You could tell by the way they talked in rushed little phrases so that their eyes wouldn’t be diverted from the doorway. Repeated assurances of “She’s expected at nine” gave way to “She was expected at nine” and then, toward 10, to “Well, she didn’t swear she was coming.”

At 10:05 … our bartender declared, “There she is!” So did dozens of others, and the words seemed to hit Jacqueline Kennedy like the wail of an air-raid siren. She didn’t flinch: she froze. For … 30 seconds, she was absolutely rigid.

As [she] advanced into our room, her audience became her entourage. Some preceded her with a harrumphing fanfare of “Make way for Mrs. Kennedy!”

There were small flurries of applause. She acknowledged these with a smile. She could clearly have done without this $35-a-ticket ovation.

A waiter said, “She looks tired. She must have many appointments in a day.”

“She won’t stay long,” said another waiter. “She never stays long.” Both waiters spoke of her with more compassion than I’d heard all evening.

Levy was there at Kennedy airport, along with a crowd of reporters, waiting for Jackie and her children to arrive for a flight. When they appeared outside the terminal—

"By staying behind Jacqueline Kennedy, I was photographed with her numerous times ... and now a long-forgotten boyhood dream of mine came true: In Monday morning's photographic captions I was identified as a Secret Service man." Alan Levy, seen here on Jackie's left.

[John Jr.] waited for his mother, who wore a white coat, black scarf and the same frozen smile I had seen at the Madison Avenue art gallery. Little John, wearing shorts and little-boy bruises, reached for her hand, but one of the photographers barked, “Out of the way, kid!” and he obeyed.

So did his mother when a woman photographer called, “Look this way, Jackie!”

The little boy wandered away from the action [and played] with the treadle that operated the automatic door. Here John F. Kennedy Jr. achieved one moment of triumph. A photographer poised for an arty shot through the doorway, suddenly was hit in the face by the door when little John stepped off the treadle. The man exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, kiddo!”

After two minutes of picture-taking, Mrs. Kennedy switched off her smile and entered the terminal where she assembled the children for the march to the gate.

Little John, however, tarried at a poster advertising a movie. This momentary delay enabled the working press to scurry ahead and board the escalator first.

In case she wanted guidance, however, a loudspeaker on the mezzanine was blaring: “Mrs. K., Mrs. K., arriving Gate Three.” For the airline had more than a dozen employees scattered about the terminal to “protect” Mrs. Kennedy from the press that, in effect, the airline had invited. Thus was my quest coming full circle: I was watching an event become An Event.

But if he was dismayed by the throngs of reporters at the airport, he was reassured by the response of passing New Yorkers when she appeared on the sidewalk outside her apartment.

She was standing … and chatting with her brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy. He was freckled, sparkling and bushier-haired than any man of 41 has a right to be. Alongside Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy sat the blue convertible, motor purring, with the Secret Service man at the wheel.

Levy crossed the street to Central Park where he could study the reaction of other passersby.

The passing parade continued, but the Kennedys did have a silent grandstand of some 25 or 30 benchwarmers. Nothing was said, other than an occasional “That’s her.” A young father hoisted his baby girl onto his shoulders to watch she-knew-not-what. Seeing this, a couple of mothers struggled to afford their children equal opportunity.

More interesting to me were the reactions across the street. In my five minutes of Kennedy-watching, 11 people walked right past Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy. Three didn’t even notice. Two men and two women broke step but didn’t halt. A swarthy maintenance man in uniform came to a dead stop and doffed his cap with a proletarian flourish. Without a pause in his conversation, Senator Kennedy acknowledged him with a nod.

My favorite was a blowzy woman in a nurse’s uniform. She stopped in her tracks. Her face drooped. Her frame sagged. She seemed as limp and lifeless as a badly hung dress. Then her eyes perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was smiling, and her ears perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was cheerful. Slowly, like a sunrise, the woman came back to life. Her mouth unpuckered into a crescent smile. Her face beamed. As she straightened up, her hair seemed to catch the sun. She strode onward, restored and refreshed by what she had witnessed.

No one had mobbed her, or tried to grab her attention. No one sought an autograph or photo.

That much-abused folk ogre, The Typical New York Man-in-the-Street, had acquitted himself handsomely.

This was 1967, however. In June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Jackie had to reassess the risks to which her children were exposed. She became more reclusive, and soon married a billionaire who could give the security she wanted.

Which prompted another wave of Kennedy commentary.

Jacqueline and the young senator from Massachusetts.

Watching the Jackie Watchers The Saturday Evening Post

In the numerous articles and interviews that Bob Hope did for The Saturday Evening Post, he often mentioned Dolores and spoke with pride about their long, happy marriage. In “A Century of Hope” (Mar/Apr 1998) he told how he met his future wife:

One night while I was in Roberta, my pal, George Murphy, who was doing a fine job of specially capering in the show, invited me to the Lambs Club. We downed a couple of beers, and he said. “I want you to hear a girl sing. Her name is Dolores Reade. She sings at the Vogue Club.”

We went over to the Vogue, on 57th Street … and I heard this girl sing. She had a low, husky voice, and she sang somewhat in the style of Marion Harris—soft and sweet, not a shouter. She sang “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” That did it, and I asked if I could take her out.

Once we were alone, she asked. “You’re in Roberta?” “Yes,” I said. “Why don’t you catch me in the matinee tomorrow?”

She did, but when she didn’t come backstage to see me afterward, I couldn’t understand it. A couple of days later I saw her, and I asked, “What happened?”

“I didn’t come back to say hello because I didn’t know you had such a big part in the show,” she said. “I thought you were in the chorus, and I was embarrassed at my stupidity.”

From then on, I was at the Vogue every night, waiting to take Dolores home. I must have given the doorman at her apartment thousands of dollars in tips to let me park in front of the joint and sit there with her. It was our inspiration point, our Flirtation Walk, and moonlight canoe trip all rolled into one—right there in front of the apartment on Ninth Avenue.

It wasn’t long before Dolores’ mother took her to Florida to play a nightclub date in Miami. While she was gone, I lived on long distance from morning till night. I was in love. Dolores said she was, too. She must have meant it, because she broke her Florida contract and came back to New York. We went back to sitting in front of her apartment and making plans to get married. We picked Erie, Pennsylvania, for our wedding. I can’t remember why. I was in a thick, pink fog anyway.

Once we were married. I put Dolores into my vaudeville act. Roberta had closed, so we went around the big-time circuits together. Our act went something like this: I did my regular act; then I introduced her. She came out, dressed in a lovely gown, looking very beautiful, and sang a song. I came back out, and when she started her second number, I didn’t leave the stage. I just stayed there, standing close to her and looking at her. Then I looked at the audience with an expression which asked, “Ain’t she beautiful? Ain’t she something? How about it? Just how about it?”

I stroked her arm, pretending it looked good enough to eat, which wasn’t hard to do. Then I nibbled it gently. This brought a roar from the audience. Then I hugged her; she stopped singing, broke up, and I said. “Don’t let me bother you. Just keep right on.” If she hadn’t been so beautiful and if it hadn’t been so apparent to the onlookers that we were really in love, the act would have fallen flat. As it was, it played well.

In an interview on his 95th birthday, the Post asked Bob, “So many show business marriages end in divorce. To what do you attribute your long, successful marriage to your wife, Dolores?”

Hope: We’ve been married for 63 years, but I’ve only been home three weeks.

Hope often joked about his long absences from home. Beneath the humor, though, was devotion and gratitude for her patience and her work in managing their home and family during his many trips.

It’s been suggested that I am inclined to travel a bit—that I wander from my happy home. This is not true. Just the other evening I said to my wife, “Dolores”— I knew it was Dolores, she introduced herself to me— “I’ve done an awful lot of traveling, but you’ve been very understanding about it—although you did rent out my room.”

Dolores has a wise and loving touch with our children. I’m lost in admiration of the job she has done with them, and with the job she’s done keeping me in line. A lot of children whose fathers are in show business grow up too precocious, too wise, too fresh, too unfunny. That’s not true of our four. Dolores sees to that. She also sees to it that they’re having a devout rearing. One day [a neighbor] overheard our littlest one, Kelly, ask our next youngest, Nora, “Is everybody in the world Catholic?”

“Yes,” Nora said, “everybody but daddy. He’s a comedian.” I was both surprised and pleased when I heard that. I have no trouble convincing them that I’m their daddy, but sometimes I have trouble convincing them that I’m a comedian.

It may surprise those who read this to hear that I’m a strong family man … I’m no angel. For that matter, I’ve known very few angels. My mother and Dolores are two. But I’m still married to the same girl I married twenty years ago, and that’s four or five under par for the Hollywood course. [Bob Hope as told to Pete Martin, "This Is On Me," 1954]

The Woman Who Never Lost Hope: Dolores Hope (1909—2011) The Saturday Evening Post

We can only guess where his imagination would have taken him—and us—in the 21 years we missed. There’s no doubt he would have broken new ground, for Henson was a relentless innovator who was always taking puppetry into new territory.

The iron fist in a lavender glove: Miss Piggy

His long career began far back in 1955, when he created Sam and Friends for a Washington D.C. television station. The programs were just five minutes long and appeared semi-regularly in the no-man’s-land between afternoon and evening programming. Yet the show won an Emmy for best local entertainment program in 1958.

When it ended in 1961, Henson struggled to find work. Through the 1960s and mid ’70s, he could only get brief appearances on other programs like The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live. Only in 1976 did a British producer finally give Henson the green light to launch a full-scale television show. The Muppet Show was produced and aired in Great Britain before finally arriving on prime-time US television. The network continued to identify it as a children’s program, though the program won a wide following of adult viewers.

One reason for its appeal to grown-ups was the obvious skill in capturing the imagination. Henson’s talent was so great that it’s difficult to think of Kermit or Miss Piggy as nothing more than inert piles of cloth when they aren’t being operated. But Henson himself never forgot how much work went into animating his characters. He told a Post interviewer in 1976:

“I treat them with gentility, but I never forget that they are made of a fabric with polyfoam and a little wood. The soft materials are for easy handling. I don’t want to break them because they’re difficult to make, but I’m not at all sentimental about them. I’m fond of them as characters but not necessarily as puppets. My emotional attachment is to the people they’ve become.”

Henson pauses in thought. “They definitely aren’t alive,” he says, “but they do have a life of their own, much like characters in a book. They are fictional characters.” [“Muppets On His Hands,” November, 1976]

Yet fictional characters have the ability to do things we can’t. Puppets, in particular, entertain audiences by teasing human vanity, mocking pretensions, and deflating pompous celebrities—all without getting into a fight. After all, who could win an argument with a hand in a sock?

“With puppets you can deal with subjects in a way that isn’t possible with people. I think of puppetry as expressing oneself through charades.”

Early in his career, Henson chose hand puppets over marionettes and ventriloquist dummies.

“I never did have any interest in being a ventriloquist. I didn’t want to split myself in two, the way a ventriloquist must do—half himself, half the dummy on his knee.”

Yet Henson was proud to be considered a successor to the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

“Edgar,” says Henson, “considered our work as taking up where he left off. Edgar once said something to me that I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Kermit the Frog is Charlie McCarthy’s first cousin.’”

Jim Henson pauses in remembrance. Then he says, wistfully: “Were nicer, warmer words ever spoken?”

The Muppets continue to find work; their new movie with the plain but honest title The Muppets will open during the Christmas season this year. But the artist who brought these creatures to life and made them so entertaining has left a melancholy gap in the creative community. His absence brings to mind a comment made by Lily Tomlin about working with the Muppets.

When asked by Time magazine what it was like attempting a role opposite an inanimate object, Tomlin thought for a while and summed up her feelings. ”When you break the scene, ” she quipped, “you don’t both go out for coffee. It’s sort of sad.”

Way back in his early days, Henson created Kermit the Frog. His body was made from a turquoise coat his mother had discarded and his eyes were two halves of a ping-pong ball. Over the years, his shape became more distinct and more expressive, but his personality was set back in Sam and Friends days. According to Henson:

The Henson Specialty: Kermit the Frog, as prepared by the Swedish Chef

Kermit the Frog is not really a frog… He’s called Kermit the Frog but he’s really just Kermit. He became something of a frog when he did a TV special back in 1967. I changed his body and made him a bit rounder, more froglike. As a parallel, Mickey Mouse looks nothing like a mouse but he fits into that category. I mean, if nobody ever said Mickey Mouse was a mouse, we wouldn’t know what he was, would we?

Kermit the Frog has this function—he’s an Everyman trying to get through life whole. He has a sense of sanity and there he is, surrounded by crazies. Kermit is the character through whose eyes the audience is viewing the show. He is the solid thing in the middle—flip, snarky, which is to say a bit smart-alecky in his own way, but he’s a nice guy. He operates from a point of consideration. There is a lot of warmth in Kermit.”

The words could easily have described Henson himself. Which is why, so long as Kermit remains true to his original character, Jim Henson will live on.

Missing Jim Henson The Saturday Evening Post

Louis J. Horowitz, a developer in the first decades of the 20th Century, embodied the spirit of towering achievement. Arriving in New York in 1892, he came to the States with little more than burning ambition. Beginning as an errand boy earning $3 a week, he would later go on to build New York’s Equitable Building and Waldorf Astoria hotel, and, in 1910, the Woolworth Building. For 20 years, this masterwork would remain the world’s tallest building at 792 feet and a then-astounding 57 stories.  Here is Horowitz’s story, as told in the pages of the Post in 1936:

For a while in that period, I could afford only two meals a day. For breakfast I would get coffee and two doughnuts—these cost only a nickel, but they filled me up. At night I would go to a restaurant where, for fifteen cents, I could get a dish of meat and potatoes and help myself to the bread that was placed on the table. I was always hungry, and I was becoming thinner with each day. I had been delicate for some years, so the wonder is that I lived. As winter came on, time after time, with teeth chattering, I would arise from beneath thin coverings to find that the water in the pitcher on the washstand had turned to ice.

Joseph Pennel's 1908 drawing of the Waldorf-Astoria.(Library of Congress)

By hard work and diligently saving for seven years, Horowitz scraped together $2,000. This, along with a loan for $7,000 enabled him to finance the construction of his first apartment, which he later sold for a profit of $5,000

His success and reputation for ethical work eventually helped him win contracts to build New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel and the Equitable Building (pictured above), which, in an event that would weirdly presage the later attack on the World Trade Center, was  struck by an errant missile in 1942. But his greatest achievement was the construction, in 1910, of the Woolworth Building, which remained the world’s tallest building for 20 years. At 792 feet, its 57 stories stretched so high above Manhattan that its upper floors were lost in clouds.

Its construction posed challenges that Horowitz never faced before.

I remember that the steel members were of such heavy weight that we had to survey the routes over which they were to be hauled to the site. We wanted no cave-ins! Below the surface of New York streets, there is a deep and complex mechanical jungle. Raw power in the form of electricity, steam, and gas, is channeled just under all the city’s [traffic]… likewise, down there is a root-like system of wires, pipes and larger tubes that provide means for the transport of everything from the human voice to the human body. We had to give thought to gigantic water mains, subterranean railroads, vaulted sewers… Some of that sub-surface structure lies almost as deep in the rock under New York as the Woolworth Building rises above it.
What we were going to do was to build into the air a structure of equal complexity. Our water supply was to be a vast fountain; our vertical sewer system as large as that of a small town; our railroads—the elevators—were vertical, too.
Scaffolds and hoisting engines of the kind we needed did not exist; we had to create them. Equipment had to be devised to lift loads which never before had been lifted, and to lift them to unprecedented heights. [We had to hoist] all material halfway and then relay it to a second hoisting machine to lift it higher.

Surprisingly, Horowitz was uncomfortable with the idea of skyscrapers, which he considered monuments to personal egos.

The Woolworth Building in 1912.(Library of Congress)

Throughout my career as a builder, I argued… the immorality of uncommonly big buildings. It should be obvious that an extraordinarily large building poaches sunlight and air from smaller neighbors. [Other cities] do not permit the construction of buildings so large that they would hog a disproportionate share of the water supply, sewers, sunlight, air, and transport.
Socially, the gigantic buildings are, to my way of thinking, quite wrong… it would be utterly impossible to cover [even 30%] of Manhattan with tall buildings. The streets could not take care of the traffic of such buildings. The water supply would be inadequate, and the sewers, too. The sidewalks would become a solid mass of suffocating humanity. Such a piece of foolishness is unthinkable, and, anyway, there are not enough people to serve as tenants.
No city was ever meant to contain the buildings of fabulous size—fifty, sixty, seventy stories and more—that have been attached like monstrous parasites to the veins and arteries of New York. Those who create such buildings, in my opinion, are taking an unfair advantage of their neighbors, of their fellow property owners, of their fellow citizens.

Horowitz couldn’t have foreseen how New York, and its population would continue to grow. Just as he couldn’t have imagined that skyscrapers would someday inspire fear and envy among fanatics.

But in the wake of 9/11, he wouldn’t have been surprised by the construction of the new One World Trade Center. When completed in 2013, it will be the world’s tallest office building (and able to withstand the impact of a 747). He probably would have been proud to see the beacon atop its spire, at 1776 feet, flashing out the city’s energy, resolve, and defiance to the world.

Recalling An Earlier ‘Twin Towers’ The Saturday Evening Post

The signs might have been there in 2000, but we were overshadowed by the news of the day. That year, Time magazine named George W. Bush as its person of the year. But how many of its “Newsmakers of 2000″ are still making news: Vojislav Kostunica, Mohammed Al-Durra, Robert Mugabe, Kim John IL, Vincente Fox Quesada, Cathy Freeman, George Speight, or John Roth?

It has always been difficult to spot the newsmakers who will eventually make vast changes. The first Post issue of 1910 is a good example. Its top story covered the British Prime Minister’s battle to curb the legislative power of the House of Lords. There is no mention of the World War that is a mere four years away.

A long, comic poem The World, the Flesh and 1909: A Galloping Epic in Six Canters and a “Whoa!” reviews the important topics of the previous year: President Taft’s first year, William Howard Taft, Turkish slaughter of Armenians, and Wilbur Wright’s record flight, Commodore Peary and the arctic-exploring fraud, Dr. Cook.

If the Post editors of 1910 had our knowledge, they would have devoted much more space to their weekly department, “Who’s Who—And Why.” The article concerns Gifford Pinchot, a forestry expert from North Carolina, who was to make a vast impact on American society.

To be fair to the editors, Pinchot had not yet taken the actions that changed global politics in the 20th Century. Before we describe these actions, we will quote from the Post article, which introduces Pinchot to its readers.

“When Colonel Roosevelt came into our humdrum lives as President, Pinchot, who had been dealing mostly with statesmen who had only one idea about trees, and that was to keep up the tariff on lumber, found a person after his own heart. The Colonel was a sort of tree-sharp himself. He had known Pinchot when he had lived in Washington previously, and had absorbed some of Pinchot’s ideas, as well as contributed a few of his own — a thing he never failed to do as he had a large of stock of idea on almost every subject.

Gifford Pinchot

“Pinchot lived trees, thought trees and talked trees. Beginning with the broad, general preposition that we must conserve our forest if we would continue great as a Nation, he had developed a conservation theory that included all our natural resources. He saw that Colonel Roosevelt was sympathetic … and the way he froze to that eminent gentleman was the wonder of Washington. Every time T. R. turned around he found Pinchot at his elbow, saying, “Well as we have a few minutes, let me explain again to you the necessity of forest reservations, of the conservation of our water power and the safeguard of other resources.

“When they were playing tennis and the Colonel had banged the ball, or all the balls, out of the lot, Pinchot would walk over and begin: “While we are resting let me point out to you the advantages — ” and so on. Any time there was a lull in the conversation at luncheon Pinchot came to bat with a few well-rounded sentences about conservation. He didn’t think about anything else or talk about anything else. He was as single-minded about it as a June bug trying to butt through a window-glass.

“Pinchot was one of the White House Steadies. He counted that day lost when he didn’t produce something new for the Colonel to reserve or conserve. Moreover, being an earnest person, and scrappaghous (sic) withal, he butted in every place he could. He had Jimmie Garfield on his staff, when Jimmie was Secretary of the Interior, and he ran various ends of that department as well as the Forest Service. There was no stopping Pinchot… until R. Achilles Ballinger came along as Mr. Taft’s Secretary of the Interior. Then Mr. Ballinger, being somewhat red-corpuscled himself, organized a clash, which is clashing yet.”

The writer concludes with a few observations of the Forest Service director:

“He is a quiet, effective man, intensely in earnest and on the job every minute of the day. He has a highly specialized intelligence and he is doing a big work for the country. He is an extremist, of course, as every man is who gets great results, and there are those who go further and call him a fanatic.”

Among those applying the “f” word to Pinchot was President Taft.

To pick up the story, we must add a little background on Taft and his mentor, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1904, flushed with victory, Roosevelt promised not to run for re-election in 1908. So in 1907, he personally selected his successor.

William Howard Taft had worked closely with Roosevelt, and had been his Secretary of War. Roosevelt believed Taft would continue his Progressive agenda: punishing the “malefactors of great wealth,” ensuring opportunity, launching social programs, and protecting the country’s natural resources.

President Taft from a Post cartoon. Weighing over 300 pounds, Taft is remembered as a man of great weight but little impact.

Taft won the election of 1908 with Roosevelt’s support. Once in office, though, he proved more cautious, but probably more thorough than Roosevelt in furthering Progressive reforms.

From the first days of his presidency, Taft indicated he would be less abrasive and more deliberate in his approach, which the Post editors applauded. They also praised his support for the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill, which would protect American industry from competition in the world market. On the editorial page, the Post proclaimed “Taft Opens the Door of Hope.”

The Progressive Republicans who had voted for Taft at Roosevelt’s urging were dismayed by this betrayal. The former president could not be reached for a comment; once he had won the election for Taft, Roosevelt set off for an extended African Safari.

Taft had compromised, but not fully betrayed the Progressives. He simply would not be rushed.

Pinchot had retained the Forest Service position that Roosevelt had given him. Taft didn’t like Pinchot’s activism, but he didn’t dare remove this close friend of Teddy. He did, however, remove Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, James Garfield, son of the assassinated president, and replaced him with Richard Ballinger.

Ballinger had earned a reputation as a reformer when he was Seattle’s mayor, but he was never a Progressive. The old-guard Roosevelt Republicans saw replacement as yet another example of Taft betraying the Progressive legacy.

As the Post article hinted, and as Taft probably intended, Interior Secretary Ballinger and Forest-Service Director Pinchot soon came to an impasse, particularly when Ballinger began making public resources available to businesses.

Pinchot urged Taft to investigate the new Interior Secretary, alleging that Ballinger was selling coal and water from national lands to private companies. Taft ordered an investigation, which found no proof of Ballinger’s corruption.

It was at this point in the story that the Post published its profile of Pinchot. What the Post, and the administration, didn’t foresee was Pinchot’s next move.

Shortly after this issue of the Post hit the newsstands, Gifford Pinchot brought his allegations against Ballinger before Congress. He criticized Taft and demanded that Congress conduct its own investigation into the Interior Secretary. Pinchot believed that Taft would have to get rid of Ballinger. The alternative was impossible: Taft could not fire Pinchot. He was too popular with Progressive Republicans and too close to Roosevelt.

But Taft did fire Pinchot and, consequently, lost the last of his support among the Progressive Republicans.

News finally reached Teddy Roosevelt, along with a report of the affair delivered by Pinchot himself. Furious, Roosevelt broke with his successor and formed his own Progressive Party in the 1912 election to pitch Taft out of the White House. The two friends ran against each other — Taft without much enthusiasm and Roosevelt without enough Republicans willing to cross over to his Bull Moose Party.

Pinchot had hoped he could force Taft to choose between his supporters in conservation and commerce. When Taft chose a more moderate, more business-friendly approach, he destroyed the last of his popular base. He also enabled the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, to win the next election.

Had Roosevelt won the Presidency, the history of World War One would have been far different. As it was, Wilson’s approach to global policing led to an unstable Europe, which led to the Second World War, which led to the Cold War, which led to…

You can draw conclusions forever. The longer you draw them, though, the thinner they get, until you can ultimately argue that anything led to anything else.

Yet it’s not too much of a stretch to say that Gifford Pinchot’s dedication to conserving natural resources affected the course of American, and European, politics. We can state, with assurance, that he had a profound effect on the decade beginning in 1910.

All of which raises the question: Is there a government employee, working in a Washington agency, whose principled stand might upset the political establishment? Ultimately a man or woman of conviction will take a stand and, by a surprise move, turn the national power structure on its head.

Cream of Wheat advertisement, 1910

Who Will Shape the New Decade? The Saturday Evening Post

H.L. Mencken, a giant in American literature, held politics and politicians in abysmal regard. His ancient typewriter pounded out carloads of writings, which maddened and delighted Americans from 1904 to 1948.

And how the well-known iconoclast depicted the political process is particularly timely these days.

“A national political campaign,” said Mencken, “is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.” And “a good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

Mencken was a human writing machine. He wrote for and edited newspapers and magazines, as he ranged from political analyst to theatre critic. Among his literary output were: Prejudices (Six Series), Notes on Democracy, In Defense of Women, Treatise on the Gods, and Treatise on Right and Wrong.

His multivolume The American Language may be the best-known of his literary creations. In the fourth edition, published in 1936, the author wrote in his introduction that the “American form of English language was plainly departing from the parent stem.”

Mencken was renowned as a witty sage. When he wrote his column for The Baltimore Sun papers, my father was city editor. Often, he would see Mencken rear back in his chair after he had written a clever turn of phrase and roar with laughter at his own brilliant sense of humor.

I was fortunate to inherit an audio-taped interview with Mencken made when he was about 60 years old. In it, he evinces some of the insights, prejudices and outrageous views that so many Americans found fascinating. An impartial critic of every race or religion, he lived long before “political correctness” became the fashion.

“I believe that all government is evil,” he declared, “in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.”

Henry Louis Mencken was a libertarian before that term came into use. The frequent targets of his writing were New Deal politics, social reformers, “boobs and quacks,” and “gaudy sham.” But he was not all negativity. He loved the music of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach, and the writings of Mark Twain and other famed writers.

On political parties, Mencken wrote: “Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turning the rascals out and letting a new gang in.” And “every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

As for political pandering—if you could have called it that—he said: “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

Mencken was often seen with a cigar jutting from his mouth. His father owned Baltimore’s Mencken Cigar Company, where the young Mencken first worked. He rarely smoked; but he loved to chew on cigars. “The finest chewing tobacco of all,” he termed it.

Among many things, Mencken was famous for his knowledge of beer. As he says proudly on my audiotape, “I drink any known alcoholic drink.” His doctor told him, “As an older man, it is very salubrious for the heart.”

But he offers sound advice to any who imbibe:

“Never drink if you have any work to do.”

“Never drink alone.”

“Never drink while the sun is still shining.”

Mencken grew up in Baltimore at a time when that port city was wracked with smallpox and malaria.

“We had to sleep under mosquito nets at night,” Mencken says (on my audiotape). After graduating from high school at age 15, Mencken went into the newspaper business without further formal education.

On the audiotape, he says that he holds college in low regard, considering it a great waste of time “listening to idiots give lectures.” Undoubtedly some courses offered in well-regarded institutions of higher learning today would only increase his disdain for many universities.

For some years during his career, he was editor of the American Mercury, a then-popular magazine in America.

As a theatre critic, he noted, “I never mixed with the actors, and during long plays, I disliked sitting next to sometimes unpleasant people.”

For years, his daily column for the Baltimore Sun paper brought in bushels of mail. “Most people who write letters to the editor are fools,” sounded his raspy voice on my tape recording. And he said that he would pick out those most insulting to him for publication. “I’d have been ashamed if they praised me,” he added.

Mencken was superstitious—unusual for such an intellectual mind. On my audiotape he revealed that he would never do anything important on Friday because it was “unlucky.”

A recent book, Mencken by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, says it’s time for academia, the arts crowd, and the politically correct, however grudgingly, to face up to what Mencken was: “a towering figure of American literature and political journalism of the 20th Century.”

Mencken’s unvarnished figures of speech remain classics. She quotes from his commentary on the election of Calvin Coolidge in 1924: “The American people, having 35,717,342 native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out the Hon. Mr. Coolidge to be the head of state. It is as if a hungry man set before a banquet prepared by master chefs and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back on the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies.”

Sadly, as Rodgers says in her book, “Too many present-day Americans know Mencken solely through the occasional printed sound-bite which political writers pilfer in an attempt to appear erudite.”

Mencken single-handedly, she notes, “made a national spectacle of the prosecution of a young Tennessee biology teacher—the famed ‘monkey trial’—for teaching Darwin’s ideas on evolution in the classroom.”

As Mencken voiced on my tape, “Work is my relaxation.” In his early days, he worked straight through on one news story without rest from Sunday to Wednesday.

Until suffering a massive stroke in 1948, Mencken remained sharp of mind and tongue. One of his friends wondered “whether there ever will be another one quite as big, quite as brave, quite as mad as Mencken.”

Vintage Mencken

• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
• Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
• When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned.
• It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
• I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
• I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
• It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
• It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism.
• Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
• Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 percent of them are wrong.
• Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable…

The Incomparable H.L. Mencken The Saturday Evening Post