I was sitting at dinner with my family the other night and the I overheard a discussion about the flat tax at the next table. My mind drifted back to another era, the Gilded Age and the contentious issue of the tariff.
In the presidential election of 1880, the Democratic candidate, General Winfield Scott Hancock, uttered a gaffe when he called the tariff a local issue. Republican opponents seized on this statement as an example of the General's obvious ignorance in economic policies. How, they asked, could the the trade policy that drove the national economy, contributed so much to the federal coffers, and protected the jobs of millions of workers be remotely considered local? Well Hancock might not have been clear in his meaning, but the historian can see much accuracy in his statement. The tariff was the sum of many rates on thousands of items, which was the product of political deals to that often had the goal of satisfying local constituencies. In other words, no matter how much the Democrats of Louisiana supported a tariff on principle - as sound Democrats were expected to do - they inevitably opposed lowering the rates on sugar imports from the Caribbean or the Philippines out of fear it would damage their local economies. In other words, local political considerations trumped ideals.
The tariff, however, did not exist in a vacuum. As American industry grew in the late 1880s and early 1890s a new economic concern developed. Instead of fearing competition from cheap markets, American industries had so dominated the home market, that they became troubled by the idea that would build up an excess of product they could not sell. They not only feared the loss of revenue and economic decline from a shut down, but also the attendant social unrest, especially after the Haymarket Square riot of 1886. Moreover, they were concerned about another type of surplus, too much money in the federal treasury. In a deflationary period, having money collecting dust in a federal vault was a net loss to the economy.
To deal with this the Republicans came up with one novel idea and one not so new one. The novel idea was to reform the tariff to include a reciprocity agreement clause. This would allow the president to negotiate trade deals outside the normal tariff rules. It was you scratch my back and I will scratch yours kind of arrangement. I always considered this a really clever way of dealing with a real policy conundrum. How to keep a protectionist tariff (increasingly sold as a jobs saving measure) and lower the rates at the same time? Reciprocity provided the answer. At the same time, the McKinley Tariff of 1890 (named after then Congressman and future president William McKinley) lowered or eliminated rates on consumer items to reduce the surplus. Exports significantly increased as President Benjamin Harrison negotiated agreements with other countries to exchange specific items at lower rates. The less novel approach was the old fashion idea of lets eliminate the surplus by spending it. In this case, increasing payments to Civil War pensioners and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act that had the United States government purchasing nearly all the silver mined in the country. How is that for a subsidy! Such lavish spending earned the 51st Congress the sobriquet, the Billion Dollar Congress.
After having let the Republicans take a whack at the problem of surplus, the public turned to the Democrats. Grover Cleveland, elected in 1892, then entered one of the most miserable terms of office experienced by any president, as the economy crashed within months of his having taken office. Cleveland lowered spending, by eliminating the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and attempted a tariff reform. His proposal called for replacing revenue lost from general rate reductions with an income tax. Congress, however, proved incapable of producing the reform he demanded. Instead, it was a case of each member of Congress protecting the interest of their district. Cleveland was disgusted, but there was little he could do. In the end the Wilson-Gorman Tariff became law without the president's signature.
Why did a nearby discussion on the flat tax make me think of the tariff as an issue over one hundred and twenty years prior? I think it is because of the one striking similarity between today's tax code and the tariff of those days. It is no coincidence that as the tariff faded away the income tax replaced it. Not only as the government's source of revenue, but also as one of the chief means in which lawmakers can encourage local businesses. Instead of raising the rates on their foreign competitors, we give them a tax break as an incentive. I am little bit more of a loss to explain how the tariff was used to encourage people to engage in certain behaviors, in the way that the current tax code promotes home ownership and higher education, and, for whatever reason, corporate jets, but I might think of one if I was not so tired at the moment :-)
Monday, August 15, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Wild Horses
A few notes about horses in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era I learned in J. Edward De Steiguer's Wild Horses of the West: History and Politics of America's Mustangs (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011).
During the mid-19th century the wild horse population numbered about 2.5 million animals. They descended from Spanish horses that escaped the missions in the 17th and 18th Century either on their own or with the aid of Native Americans. Combined with millions of buffalo and cattle, the hoofed animals did significant damage to the fragile ecosystem. During the Gilded Age their range shrunk as cattle ranches and farms moved further west. One of the forces protecting the wild horses was the great open breeding programs. Cowboys preferred to send their horses out to the wild herds to breed. But a series of disasters decreased the demand for new horses. Although De Steiguer does not mention it, I think the Blizzards of 1886-88 had to have had some effect on the horse population. Not so much from the snow itself, but the effect it had on the cattle industry and thus the need for mounts. De Steiguer does attribute a decline in horse demand to the depression of 1893 and the automobile, which seem reasonable enough. What remained of the wild horses were sold off in several large shipments, mainly to the British Army during the Boer War and later during World War I. Those animals not shipped off to war, fared no better. Although the total horse population in American reached its zenith in 1920 at 20 million head, the wild percentage of the total would shrink even more dramatically. As prosperity spread, people purchased homes and pets, wild horses were round up and slaughtered for pet food and glue, made into baseball covers, and canned for food to be sold in overseas markets. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 with its fencing provisions vastly compounded the ill fortunes of the wild horse. By channelling horses off of farm land and funneling them into an increasingly narrow area, they became easier prey for the slaughterers. By 1940 they were about gone.
During the mid-19th century the wild horse population numbered about 2.5 million animals. They descended from Spanish horses that escaped the missions in the 17th and 18th Century either on their own or with the aid of Native Americans. Combined with millions of buffalo and cattle, the hoofed animals did significant damage to the fragile ecosystem. During the Gilded Age their range shrunk as cattle ranches and farms moved further west. One of the forces protecting the wild horses was the great open breeding programs. Cowboys preferred to send their horses out to the wild herds to breed. But a series of disasters decreased the demand for new horses. Although De Steiguer does not mention it, I think the Blizzards of 1886-88 had to have had some effect on the horse population. Not so much from the snow itself, but the effect it had on the cattle industry and thus the need for mounts. De Steiguer does attribute a decline in horse demand to the depression of 1893 and the automobile, which seem reasonable enough. What remained of the wild horses were sold off in several large shipments, mainly to the British Army during the Boer War and later during World War I. Those animals not shipped off to war, fared no better. Although the total horse population in American reached its zenith in 1920 at 20 million head, the wild percentage of the total would shrink even more dramatically. As prosperity spread, people purchased homes and pets, wild horses were round up and slaughtered for pet food and glue, made into baseball covers, and canned for food to be sold in overseas markets. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 with its fencing provisions vastly compounded the ill fortunes of the wild horse. By channelling horses off of farm land and funneling them into an increasingly narrow area, they became easier prey for the slaughterers. By 1940 they were about gone.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
William T. Hornaday and the Uses of Personal Papers
Just getting back from a week in Washington spent in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress's Madison Building. Unlike the absolutely stunning (and distracting, I would argue) main reading room in the Jefferson building, the manuscript room in the Madison building is 
functional and plain. The staff was very helpful and knowledgable. I worked my way through two collections. First, the William T. Hornaday Papers, and, second, a much smaller piece of the Irving Brant Papers. Although remembered mostly for his authoratative biography of James Madison, Brant began his writing career as a free lance journalist. While researching an article on the Audubon Society he met Hornaday, fell under the older man's sway, and served as his lobbyist in Washington for several years in the early 1930s. Brant also wrote pamphlets for the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC), an organization directed by Rosalie Edge specializing in radical conservation pamphlets. The ECC echoed Hornaday's philosophy and he provided advice, moral support, and money. He also gave them information, something they as relative newcomers desperately needed.
And this leads me, by way of lengthy preamble, to the main point of this posting. As much as anyone possibly could, Hornaday consciously constructed a personal archive with the intent of influencing future generations. He genuinely believed that by 1950 only the English sparrow would survive and he wanted to record his efforts at trying to save wildlife, while, at the same time, finger the short sighted conservationists who refused to heed his warnings. Along the way he constructed many scrapbooks of letters, newspaper clippings (he hired a service to send him clippings from all over the country, an early version of RSS), magazine articles, congressional hearings and bills, etc. The most telling portions of the scrapbooks, are his hand written comments in the margins and along the tops of pages to inform intended readers of important developments. He found use of them in his own lifetime, such as when the young journalist Irving Brant needed information on the Audubon Society for an article he was writing. Hornaday essentially said, "You want information. I have plenty." All of it, of course, was damning evidence of how the Audubon Society betrayed the conservation movement in 1911 by accepting money from gun makers (see my posting here) and throughout the 1920s by supporting a migratory bird refuge bill that contained a provision for adding public shooting grounds to the refuges. Brant read the scrapbooks and became a lifelong convert to conservation. A couple of years later, in 1929, Horndaday shared his scrapbooks with Rosalie Edge, who, too, became an instant ally, fellow traveler, and critic of the Audubon Society. Hornaday shared his scrapbooks and documents with others, and his papers served as the archives for a militant, radical, and anti-establishment brand of conservation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As he approached dotage and failing health, he made provision to send this archive of scrapbooks and personal letter books to the archives of the New York Zoological Park. Currently, it is the Wild Life Conservation Society, and that is where you will find his choicest conservation writings.
What about his private papers, the 39,000 other documents, now in the Library of Congress (LOC)? Here, too, one sees conscious effort to shape a view of the past. He annotated some letters with block lettering with messages for others. Other materials have notes relating on how he wanted to incorporate information into his autobiography. The LOC contains the total mess known as Eighty Fascinating Years, his unpublished autobiography, where several drafts are thrown together with different chapter headings, pagination, etc. Then there is lots of stuff he probably never wanted any historian to see. Amid the superfluous items (old car repair bills, heating bills, and thousands of pages of petty and routine correspondence) there were some real gems for the biographer. He gave advice to his daughter, some of which goes a great way to explaining his paradoxical behaviors. For example, how was some one so gregarious and friendly also so prickly and quick to cast off friends? There were many letters to his wife (some of them surprisingly bawdy) that shed light on his marriage. His personal letterbooks say a lot about his family relations, friendships, and commitments outside of work and conservation. I have always been impressed with Hornaday's appetite for work, but now I am even more impressed given his social commitments. Most heartbreaking of all is a letter from his mother, sick and dying in Indiana, writing to say she could actually brush her hair that day, even though someone had to write the letter for her. It was probably the last one he received from his mother and he kept it his entire life.
The Brant Papers were also interesting, and helped me explode one lie, but you will have to wait for the book to hear about that one!
functional and plain. The staff was very helpful and knowledgable. I worked my way through two collections. First, the William T. Hornaday Papers, and, second, a much smaller piece of the Irving Brant Papers. Although remembered mostly for his authoratative biography of James Madison, Brant began his writing career as a free lance journalist. While researching an article on the Audubon Society he met Hornaday, fell under the older man's sway, and served as his lobbyist in Washington for several years in the early 1930s. Brant also wrote pamphlets for the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC), an organization directed by Rosalie Edge specializing in radical conservation pamphlets. The ECC echoed Hornaday's philosophy and he provided advice, moral support, and money. He also gave them information, something they as relative newcomers desperately needed.
And this leads me, by way of lengthy preamble, to the main point of this posting. As much as anyone possibly could, Hornaday consciously constructed a personal archive with the intent of influencing future generations. He genuinely believed that by 1950 only the English sparrow would survive and he wanted to record his efforts at trying to save wildlife, while, at the same time, finger the short sighted conservationists who refused to heed his warnings. Along the way he constructed many scrapbooks of letters, newspaper clippings (he hired a service to send him clippings from all over the country, an early version of RSS), magazine articles, congressional hearings and bills, etc. The most telling portions of the scrapbooks, are his hand written comments in the margins and along the tops of pages to inform intended readers of important developments. He found use of them in his own lifetime, such as when the young journalist Irving Brant needed information on the Audubon Society for an article he was writing. Hornaday essentially said, "You want information. I have plenty." All of it, of course, was damning evidence of how the Audubon Society betrayed the conservation movement in 1911 by accepting money from gun makers (see my posting here) and throughout the 1920s by supporting a migratory bird refuge bill that contained a provision for adding public shooting grounds to the refuges. Brant read the scrapbooks and became a lifelong convert to conservation. A couple of years later, in 1929, Horndaday shared his scrapbooks with Rosalie Edge, who, too, became an instant ally, fellow traveler, and critic of the Audubon Society. Hornaday shared his scrapbooks and documents with others, and his papers served as the archives for a militant, radical, and anti-establishment brand of conservation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As he approached dotage and failing health, he made provision to send this archive of scrapbooks and personal letter books to the archives of the New York Zoological Park. Currently, it is the Wild Life Conservation Society, and that is where you will find his choicest conservation writings.
What about his private papers, the 39,000 other documents, now in the Library of Congress (LOC)? Here, too, one sees conscious effort to shape a view of the past. He annotated some letters with block lettering with messages for others. Other materials have notes relating on how he wanted to incorporate information into his autobiography. The LOC contains the total mess known as Eighty Fascinating Years, his unpublished autobiography, where several drafts are thrown together with different chapter headings, pagination, etc. Then there is lots of stuff he probably never wanted any historian to see. Amid the superfluous items (old car repair bills, heating bills, and thousands of pages of petty and routine correspondence) there were some real gems for the biographer. He gave advice to his daughter, some of which goes a great way to explaining his paradoxical behaviors. For example, how was some one so gregarious and friendly also so prickly and quick to cast off friends? There were many letters to his wife (some of them surprisingly bawdy) that shed light on his marriage. His personal letterbooks say a lot about his family relations, friendships, and commitments outside of work and conservation. I have always been impressed with Hornaday's appetite for work, but now I am even more impressed given his social commitments. Most heartbreaking of all is a letter from his mother, sick and dying in Indiana, writing to say she could actually brush her hair that day, even though someone had to write the letter for her. It was probably the last one he received from his mother and he kept it his entire life.
The Brant Papers were also interesting, and helped me explode one lie, but you will have to wait for the book to hear about that one!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
July 2, pt 2
On July 2, 1881 Charles Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield in the back at a Washington DC 
train station. Guiteau has been described as a disgruntled office seeker who felt he deserved an ambassadorship for his work on behalf of Garfield's presidential campaign of 1880. Classifying Guiteau as a disgruntled officer seeker overstates the case. His "contribution" to Garfield's razor thin victory consisted of written speech he rarely delivered. Guiteau skulked around the Republican campaign headquarters where his disheveled appearance stood in stark contrast to the Garfield's dapper running mate and New York State campaign manager, Chester A. Arthur. Eventually, Arthur dispatched Guiteau to talk to a small group of African American Republicans in Harlem. After the inauguration, Guiteau lobbied for a patronage position, but none was forthcoming and he decided to shoot Garfield. Ostensibly he wanted to empower the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. Presumably, his job prospects would improve with them. After shooting Garfield Guiteau, exclaimed, "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be president!" He told his arresting officer on the way to the police station, "Arthur and all those men are my friends, and I'll have you made Chief of Police." Such talk certainly did not put Arthur in a good light.
Garfield had no police protection as he waited for a train north to meet his wife in New Jersey. He was accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln. Under such conditions it was not at all difficult for Guiteau to walk up and shoot the president. Garfield lay for several minutes before regaining consciousness. As Guiteau was carted off to jail, the wounded president was taken to the White House.
Garfield suffered the treatment of incompetent doctors who did more harm to their patient than Guiteau's bullet had done. They forced painful treatments and unsanitary exploratory surgeries on poor Garfield. The government ground to a halt and the stricken president signed only one official document during his period of prostration. He finally succumbed to death on September 20, 1881.
Guiteau stood trial and was sentenced to death. He was hanged on June 30, 1882, almost one year to the day of having shot President Garfield.
train station. Guiteau has been described as a disgruntled office seeker who felt he deserved an ambassadorship for his work on behalf of Garfield's presidential campaign of 1880. Classifying Guiteau as a disgruntled officer seeker overstates the case. His "contribution" to Garfield's razor thin victory consisted of written speech he rarely delivered. Guiteau skulked around the Republican campaign headquarters where his disheveled appearance stood in stark contrast to the Garfield's dapper running mate and New York State campaign manager, Chester A. Arthur. Eventually, Arthur dispatched Guiteau to talk to a small group of African American Republicans in Harlem. After the inauguration, Guiteau lobbied for a patronage position, but none was forthcoming and he decided to shoot Garfield. Ostensibly he wanted to empower the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. Presumably, his job prospects would improve with them. After shooting Garfield Guiteau, exclaimed, "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be president!" He told his arresting officer on the way to the police station, "Arthur and all those men are my friends, and I'll have you made Chief of Police." Such talk certainly did not put Arthur in a good light.
Garfield had no police protection as he waited for a train north to meet his wife in New Jersey. He was accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln. Under such conditions it was not at all difficult for Guiteau to walk up and shoot the president. Garfield lay for several minutes before regaining consciousness. As Guiteau was carted off to jail, the wounded president was taken to the White House.
Garfield suffered the treatment of incompetent doctors who did more harm to their patient than Guiteau's bullet had done. They forced painful treatments and unsanitary exploratory surgeries on poor Garfield. The government ground to a halt and the stricken president signed only one official document during his period of prostration. He finally succumbed to death on September 20, 1881.
Guiteau stood trial and was sentenced to death. He was hanged on June 30, 1882, almost one year to the day of having shot President Garfield.
Happy Independence Day, July 2
"The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America," John Adams wrote to his wife. "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival." July 2, after all, was the day that the colonies voted for independence. There was plenty of drama that day. Caesar Rodney of Delaware rode 80 miles through the night to arrive in time to vote (this is the depiction on the state quarter). His appearance shocked the hall. John Dickinson, the most forceful voice in opposition to independence, and Robert Morris sat out the day, leaving the Pennsylvania united for a break with England. South Carolina announced it was off the fence and stood firmly for independence. Following a unit rule 12 states voted in favor and 1, New York, abstained. The official declaration, however, caused more discussion, primarily over Thomas Jefferson's language condemning slavery. On July 4, by the same vote, the revised Declaration of Independence received approval and that is the day we celebrate with fireworks and BBQs. Although it is easy to mock Adams for making such an emphatic statement that has proven emphatically wrong, he was a a great patriot and champion for American independence who worked as hard, if not harder, than anyone to produce the glorious results of July 2.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
"J'Accuse"
"J'Accuse"....No, I am not thinking of Emile Zola's famous 1898 newspaper editorial in which he charged an anti-Semetic French government of having railroaded army officer Alfred Dreyfus through a courts martial and to Devil's Island. Instead, I refer to Abel Gance's silent classic, which has nothing to do with the aforementioned, infamous Dreyfus affair. I love silent movies, and like all films, they can provide an excellent window into the time they were made. J'Accuse was filmed in 1919, shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and captures clearly the post-war disillusion and loss felt in France. Everyone's life is changed in some deep way and the image of dancing skeletons constantly reminds viewers of war's deadly choreographed nature. Uttered by one the film's central characters, Jean Diaz, the phrase J'Accuse resonates throughout the film. He uses to allege that the government prolongs the war, grounding down and killing an entire generation, for no real reason. He also uses the phrase to tell those who remained on the home front that while their sons, husbands, and fathers fought, they did not do honor them enough. This comes out vividly in a great and bizarre scene at the end of the movie when the dead rise up from their graves and march into the village where their presence terrorizes their guilty family and friends. This was some great cinematography. Finally, Diaz uses J'Accuse to call the survivors to make the post-war worthy of those who died in the titanic and tragic war by ushering in a new era of peace. Too bad there was a veteran of the German Army who had quite other ideas. One of the best features of the film is that incorporates authentic battlefield footage Gance shot on the front during combat.
I have seen a spate of World War I movies recently and J'Accuse stands out in my mind as the best. Dawn Patrol (1938) was interesting, especially as it was filmed on the eve of the second global conflict. What I found interesting about this film is that each succeeding commanding officer of the high casualty British flying corps squadron depicted in the film did exactly what they criticized the previous commander of doing. So, I wonder if this was just a statement on the nature of command during war, or some comment on a future conflict. Meaning, "Even though we thought, like Jean Diaz, that we could institute a new era of peace, we have to fight a war anyway, just like the previous generation we called butchers." I also recently saw All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) again. Another excellent movie, but I always find the ending depressing. One poingaint similarity to J'Accuse. In both cases soldiers on leave go back to their towns and are surprised by the attitude of the old men who seem to think the front lines have fossilized not from trenches or machine guns, but from a want of courage and determination. Finally, King and Country (1964). A British soldier played by Dirk Bogarde (who I always mix up with Roddy MacDowell for some reason) gets shell shock and just walks away. He is eventually sentenced to death. I found the psychology of the movie intriguing. So much of military training is based on getting the soldier to act without thinking, to obey and to do, to pull the trigger. In this sense, Bogarde's character follows an automatic impulse as soldiers are required to do, but just the wrong one. And he is at a loss to explain it, as he might be at a loss to explain how he can charge a trench through a hail of machine gun bullets.
Back to silent movies. I would also recommend Miss Mend (1926). A Soviet film, it captures their paranoia about being attacked. In this case by evil capitalists (who else would be the villain in a communist movie) who want to test their war making product with terrorist attacks inside the Soviet Union. And last but not least, Metropolis (1928). This film captures the corporatist spirit that resonated in the late 1920s. The workers are mere extensions of machines, slaves living in a dank subterreanen world while the rich elites live in the fresh air with all the amenities and luxuries money, light, and fresh air can provide. A crisis threatens to destroy both worlds which creates the spirit of corporate cooperation. In a sense it is like Gabriel over the White House (1933) -- which is a must see -- in that it recommends a panacea in the form of a governmental and social system strongly resembling fascism. Of course, we know what happens after 1939 to discredit the disasterours systems lauded in these films, but for a time they seemed like the solution to the great problems of the day.
I have seen a spate of World War I movies recently and J'Accuse stands out in my mind as the best. Dawn Patrol (1938) was interesting, especially as it was filmed on the eve of the second global conflict. What I found interesting about this film is that each succeeding commanding officer of the high casualty British flying corps squadron depicted in the film did exactly what they criticized the previous commander of doing. So, I wonder if this was just a statement on the nature of command during war, or some comment on a future conflict. Meaning, "Even though we thought, like Jean Diaz, that we could institute a new era of peace, we have to fight a war anyway, just like the previous generation we called butchers." I also recently saw All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) again. Another excellent movie, but I always find the ending depressing. One poingaint similarity to J'Accuse. In both cases soldiers on leave go back to their towns and are surprised by the attitude of the old men who seem to think the front lines have fossilized not from trenches or machine guns, but from a want of courage and determination. Finally, King and Country (1964). A British soldier played by Dirk Bogarde (who I always mix up with Roddy MacDowell for some reason) gets shell shock and just walks away. He is eventually sentenced to death. I found the psychology of the movie intriguing. So much of military training is based on getting the soldier to act without thinking, to obey and to do, to pull the trigger. In this sense, Bogarde's character follows an automatic impulse as soldiers are required to do, but just the wrong one. And he is at a loss to explain it, as he might be at a loss to explain how he can charge a trench through a hail of machine gun bullets.
Back to silent movies. I would also recommend Miss Mend (1926). A Soviet film, it captures their paranoia about being attacked. In this case by evil capitalists (who else would be the villain in a communist movie) who want to test their war making product with terrorist attacks inside the Soviet Union. And last but not least, Metropolis (1928). This film captures the corporatist spirit that resonated in the late 1920s. The workers are mere extensions of machines, slaves living in a dank subterreanen world while the rich elites live in the fresh air with all the amenities and luxuries money, light, and fresh air can provide. A crisis threatens to destroy both worlds which creates the spirit of corporate cooperation. In a sense it is like Gabriel over the White House (1933) -- which is a must see -- in that it recommends a panacea in the form of a governmental and social system strongly resembling fascism. Of course, we know what happens after 1939 to discredit the disasterours systems lauded in these films, but for a time they seemed like the solution to the great problems of the day.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Audubon Society Crisis of 100 Years Ago this Month
One hundred years ago this month a crisis rocked the headquarters of the National Association of Audubon Societies. On June 2, 1911 the Audubon Board of Directors agreed to accept a $25,000 annual subscription from Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The next day the New York Herald published the story on the front page. William T. Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo, leaked it to the press in order to embarrass Audubon. It was not a gratuitious action on his part, he rejected in principle that a conservation organization should accept such a large sum of money from company that profited from the death of wildlife. Hornaday had his own prior dealings with Winchester. The gun maker approached him in March, but he would only to accept the money on his own terms. Having campaigned vociferously against the use of pump and automatic shotguns for nearly a decade, Hornaday would not take the gun maker's blood money unless they voluntarily limited the capacity of those weapons they manufactured to two rounds, exactly what he was attempting to do through legislation. Winchester could not abide to Hornaday's terms and turned to T. Gilbert Pearson, the Audubon Secretary. Hornaday knew of Winchester's discussions with Audubon, gauged that the Board would accept based on the membership, and waited to pounce. And pounce he did. For the two weeks after the Audubon Board voted to accept the money he kept up an unrelenting public and private attack. He successfully appealed to Gifford Pinchot, the most famous conservationist of the period, who threatened to resign his Audubon membership if the situation was not made right. Under such pressure a stunned Pearson second guessed the wisdom of accepting the money and began to lobby the Audubon Board to reverse itself.
The publicity did not trouble everyone. George Bird Grinnell, an Audubon Board member, considered it a tempest in a teapot created by a mere three people with only two newspapers. Despite his impeccable conservation credentials which included co-founding the Boone and Crockett Club, organizing the original, short-lived Audubon Society, and editing the influential Forest & Stream magazine, Grinnell proved unable to stem the tide against rescinding the vote to accept the money. Perhaps his own history as a sportsman blinded him to how bad the deal smelled to the larger public. Grinnell proved unable to steal Pearson's resolve. Instead, Pearson found a way out of the crisis. Frank Chapman, an influential Audubon member and editor of their journal, Bird-Lore, had been out of the country when the vote was taken on June 2. Despite telling the press that Winchester had offered the money without any strings attached, Pearson told Chapman that there were strings attached and he no longer considered it possible to comply with them. Predictably, Chapman entered the anti-gun money camp. With Chapman, reversals, and absenstions, Pearson obtained the desired result; two weeks after accepting the money, the Audubon Board rejected it.
Hornaday achieved a victory for having embarrassed Audubon, but he failed in his larger purpose of using this publicity to gain passage of pump and automatic shotgun regulations in New York State. Pearson survived the incident and served over 20 more years as the Audubon Secretary. Hornaday never trusted Pearson, and, although the worked together on occasion, he considered the Audubon Secretary to be a weak leader, easily swayed, and wrong on most wildlife protection measures. Having failed with Hornaday and then with Audubon, Winchester decided it was best to form their own organization. In the summer they created the American Game Protection and Propagation Association (AGPPA) and hired John B. Burnham, an associate of Grinnell, as president. Hornaday and Burnham spent the next two decades fighting over every wildlife conservation issue that came up. Theirs was an epic struggle that fractured the progressive wildlife conservation movement in the 1920s over a series of issues.
The publicity did not trouble everyone. George Bird Grinnell, an Audubon Board member, considered it a tempest in a teapot created by a mere three people with only two newspapers. Despite his impeccable conservation credentials which included co-founding the Boone and Crockett Club, organizing the original, short-lived Audubon Society, and editing the influential Forest & Stream magazine, Grinnell proved unable to stem the tide against rescinding the vote to accept the money. Perhaps his own history as a sportsman blinded him to how bad the deal smelled to the larger public. Grinnell proved unable to steal Pearson's resolve. Instead, Pearson found a way out of the crisis. Frank Chapman, an influential Audubon member and editor of their journal, Bird-Lore, had been out of the country when the vote was taken on June 2. Despite telling the press that Winchester had offered the money without any strings attached, Pearson told Chapman that there were strings attached and he no longer considered it possible to comply with them. Predictably, Chapman entered the anti-gun money camp. With Chapman, reversals, and absenstions, Pearson obtained the desired result; two weeks after accepting the money, the Audubon Board rejected it.
Hornaday achieved a victory for having embarrassed Audubon, but he failed in his larger purpose of using this publicity to gain passage of pump and automatic shotgun regulations in New York State. Pearson survived the incident and served over 20 more years as the Audubon Secretary. Hornaday never trusted Pearson, and, although the worked together on occasion, he considered the Audubon Secretary to be a weak leader, easily swayed, and wrong on most wildlife protection measures. Having failed with Hornaday and then with Audubon, Winchester decided it was best to form their own organization. In the summer they created the American Game Protection and Propagation Association (AGPPA) and hired John B. Burnham, an associate of Grinnell, as president. Hornaday and Burnham spent the next two decades fighting over every wildlife conservation issue that came up. Theirs was an epic struggle that fractured the progressive wildlife conservation movement in the 1920s over a series of issues.
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