The Mysteries of G.W.M. Reynolds
March 19, 2019
The Mysteries of G.W.M. Reynolds
by
R.E. Prindle
Part I
It is now over two hundred years past since Walter Scott ended his great series of novels. Closing in on two hundred years since G.W.M. Reynolds began his truly amazing career that puts him in the pantheon of great novelists. Not exactly the household word of his contemporary, Charles Dickens, but after a century of neglect he is now making a belated reappearance. With the rise of on demand publishing his whole extensive catalog is now available although it requires some searching. The British Library is leader in the field.
Unfortunately the BL is reprinting the Dick’s English Library editions that use diamond point for print. At least the books aren’t heavy. For anyone beginning reading Reynolds, Valancourt Press of the US has a beautiful paperback edition of what may be Reynolds’ most popular work, the 2400 page Mysteries Of London. That book was inspired by the French writer Eugene Sue’s great work The Mysteries of Paris.
If your mind is attuned to the period Eugene Sue who was as prolific, if not more so, than Reynolds, is just as readable especially his two great masterpieces Mysteries of Paris and the Wandering Jew. The latter book has nothing to do with Jews, rather the Jesuits, but Sue uses the medieval legend of the Wandering Jew as a framing device.
Sue inspired Reynolds for numerous titles. Reynolds was accused of plagiarizing frequently and this may be true in the sense that he often used their structures. Dumas had Auguste Maquet who researched material and provided a story outline that allowed Dumas to put his entire effort into composition without having to invent the story line so he could clothe the skeleton of the story. In that sense Sue’s Mysteries of Paris provided the format for what was already in Reynolds’ mind.
Sue and Reynolds were part of that crop of novelists born from 1800 to 1816 and either died or petered out about 1860. Their brains were exhausted, worn out by their prodigious output. His contemporaries are the key to understanding Reynolds’ work. They were all essentially sociologists and psychologists. It might be advisable here to note that Reynolds born in 1814 left England at the age of sixteen on his own arriving in France in the turmoil succeeding the French Revolution of 1830 then returning to England in 1837.
Those seven years were the most formative years of his life. Not unlike the end of the century’s George Du Maurier who spent his childhood as a Frenchman then going to England with his French heritage. Reynolds developed an Anglo-French style of writing. His is not the pure English style of the period. It is much richer and fuller. He digs deeper.
As in his 1840 novel Master Timothy’s Bookcase he explains that his joy in life is exploring and explaining mysteries, getting behind the effects and seeking causes. He is not satisfied with surface appearances. He does so with spectacular results. Unfortunately he began his career by plagiarizing the characters and basic plot, such as it was, of Charles Dickens, (born 1812) Pickwick Papers, not to mention parodying Dickens’ title: Master Humphrey’s Clock with Master Timothy’s Bookcase. The loss of credibility cost Reynolds as he was shunned by the literary establishment while opening a feud that lasted their lives through.
Reynolds shows his rue in the 1864 reissue of Pickwick Abroad. To justify himself, in a preface he quotes from ‘a small sample of the favorable reviews which the greater portion of the press bestowed upon “Pickwick Abroad.”
‘From the Sunday Times: “Mr. Reynolds proceeds in his striking imitation of Boz (Charles Dickens). Would it were not so. The writer has powers that may be more worthily employed to working out an original story (which to a certain degree, this is) in an original manner.”’
And then from the Sun: ‘”In Pickwick Abroad” were not the work built upon another man’s foundation we should say it was one of the cleverest and most original productions of the modern British Press. We rise from the first Number with the only regret that Charles Dickens himself had not written it.’
In such a manner Reynolds tries to justify himself. As the work was published serially over twenty numbers and the second quote refers only to the first Number, by the twentieth part Reynolds himself seeks to exculpate his plagiarism, or perhaps, borrowing might be a kinder word. Afterall, Chretian de Troyes work The Holy Grail had four different continuators. Perhaps Reynolds should have described his Pickwick Abroad as a ‘continuation.’ But no, as we will see, he tried to appropriate Dickens characters.
Nevertheless, in his last part p. 607 of the 1864 reissue he writes:
“We must now think of bidding adieu to our friends” said Mr. Pickwick, “and of shortening the hour of departure as much as possible. One of the most important periods of my life has been passed in Paris; and though I have occasionally met with disagreeable adventures, still the reminiscences of them are almost entirely effaced from my mind by the many – many happy hours that I have spent in this great city since the day I left England. The numerous songs, tales, and anecdotes that I have heard or read are carefully entered in my memorandum book; and on my return to England I shall place the whole in the hands of some gentleman connected with the press, and who at the same time is conversant with France, and acquainted with the character of her inhabitants, for the purpose of laying them before the public in proper form.”
“The talented editor of your travels and adventures in England would be the most fitting for such a work,” observed Mr. Chitty. “He is the most popular writer of the day, and from the manner he executed the important task you formerly entrusted to his care and abilities certainly deserves your confidence in this instance.”
“No, –” returned Mr. Pickwick: “I am sorry to say that he declines the labour, and it therefore remains for me to find one who will be bold enough to take it, with the fear of being called imitator and plagiarist before his eyes. I am perfectly aware that there will be much hypercriticism to contend with – that many journalists will be severe, if not actually overwhelming, in their remarks on the new undertaking.”
‘Severe and overwhelming.’ Reynolds must have been bold indeed to continue through twenty parts, reach a conclusion and be off and running in a career that would span twenty-three years and involve from 20 to 35 million words. This guy, Reynolds turned out enormous works one right after the other, without pause and sometimes working on two or three at a time. Just amazing.
His masterwork, The Mysteries of the Court of London ran to ten volumes and about 5000 pages and took him eight years to finish while writing other novels. Marcel Proust is still blushing.
The Court of London is too staggering. There is no let up over the course of the work.
He was fortunate in his choice of wife in that she wrote for herself while also being the first editor who transcribed what must have been scurrilous penmanship as Reynolds must have been turning out thirty to fifty pages a day. The mere editorship must have been a consuming task. In addition, Reynolds kept a close eye on French literature as is evident by who he borrowed from. Sue (born 1804) was a constant source after his Mysteries of Paris published in parts 1841-43. Reynolds must have been reading the parts when issued. Paul Favel (born 1816) who wrote his own Mysteries of London beginning in 1843 which very probably was an influence on Reynolds who was keeping a close eye on literature from France. Favel is quite worthy too.
At least Reynolds implies as much in his 1840 novel Master Timothy’s Bookcase in which his apparent alter ego is the hero Edmund Mortimer. As a foundation for his later work Bookcase is essential reading. A stunning work in itself it is as nothing to Mysteries of London and The Court of London. Reynolds had a very powerful mind. He was capable of extraordinary mental gymnastics discussing the most complicated subjects in readily understandable terms.
Bookcase borrows the title and in a nearly unrecognizable form the method of Dickens’ Master Humphrey’s Clock. There was no need for Reynolds to make reference to Dickens work, or as roughly as Reynolds says he was treated for Pickwick Abroad, it was not enough to make him stop. Indeed the feud or assault continued to Dickens’ death which came before Reynolds’.
In Humphrey’s Clock, a number of old stories, were stored in the clock case from which members of Humphrey’s club extracted stories to read. Reynolds took the notion to a level that was impossible for Dicken to match.
The premise of the Bookcase concerns seven members of the Mortimer family as told through the life of the last Mortimer, Edmund. The genius of the family appears before each generation in turn and offers to give them through life the quality they think will make them happy.
The first Mortimer chose glory, the next literary fame, then love, success in all enterprises, Health, Wealth and finally Edmund the hero of our story chose Universal Understanding. Of course, for each quality there was an upside and a downside; in all cases the downside prevailed eroding happiness and becoming a curse.
Reynolds very cleverly shows the downside of universal understanding. The Genius of the family named Timothy provides Edmund with a magical bookcase that solves all mysteries for him. Like his subconscious the bookcase is always with him providing a written scroll to answer whatever mystery Edmund asks.
If one remembers the US radio commentator Paul Harvey, his shtick was : You’ve heard the story, now, here’s the backstory. Harvey explains the mystery much as Timothy’s magical bookcase does.
One is also reminded of The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus, tr. 1650. In it the scholar explains how Poemander helped him solve mysteries. Reynolds was very well read so there is no reason to believe he hadn’t read the book. The scholar explains the situation thus:
My thoughts being once seriously busied about the things that are, and my Understanding lifted up, all my bodily Senses being exceedingly holden back, as it is with them that are heavy of sleep, by reason either of fulness of meat, or of bodily labour; Methought I saw one of an exceeding great stature, and of an infinite greatness, call me by my name, and say unto me, ‘What wouldst thou hear and see: Or what wouldst thou understand to learn and know?
Then I said, Who art thou? I am, quoth he, Poemander, the mind of the great Lord, the most mighty and absolute Emperor: I know what thou wouldst have, and I am always present with thee.
Then I said, I would learn the things that are, and understand the nature of them, and know God, How? Said he. I answered that I would gladly hear. Then said he, Have me again in mind, and whatsoever thou wouldst learn, I will teach thee.
And there you have the magic bookcase, the unconscious of Freud, the auto-suggestion of Emile Coue. The biblical injunction: Seek and ye shall find. In a reasonable sense Edmund took the particulars of a situation worked them through on an unconscious or semi-conscious sense just as Reynolds does in his explications.
Thus, through the first couple hundred pages Reynolds has Edmund living his life, meeting people and involving himself in their problems, the back stories of which are explained by recourse to Timothy’s magic bookcase.
All goes well until Edmund is accused of a murder which he didn’t commit but which circumstantial evidence indicates he did. In trying extricate himself his explanations were so vague and bizarre to his judges, but not to we readers, that he is convicted and sentenced to be hanged but then he is considered to be insane and his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment in the Bicetre Insane Asylum.
He is then sent to the famous French prison for the insane where he is considered to be a mono-maniac. He is imprisoned with three other mono-maniacs. Now, Reynolds wants to introduce a discussion of the circulation blood. I think this really clever the way he leads his story to this point, creating a false ending with the monomaniac interlude and then Edmund will be freed from the life sentence when during the 1830 French revolution the revolutionaries throw open the prison doors and unleash a small army of loonies on Paris.
Edmund’s fellow inmate, a doctor, had contested William Harvey’s right to be called the discoverer of the circulation of blood, contending that Plato had been before him. Reynold’s describes the situation:
‘The first (monomaniac) was an old man of sixty-five, with long grey flowing locks, with long grey hair flowing from the back part of his head, the crown and region of the temples being completely bald. He was short in stature, stooping in his gait, and possessed of a countenance eminently calculated to afford a high opinion of his intellectual powers, he was however a monomaniac of no common description. Bred to the medical profession he had given, when at an early age, the most unequivocal proofs of a fertile and vigorous imagination. He first attracted attention towards the singularity of his conceptions by disputing the right of the Englishman, Dr. Harvey, to the honour of having first discovered the circulation of the blood. He maintained that Harvey merely revived the doctrine, and that it was known to the ancients. This opinion he founded upon the following passage in Plato:–“The heart is the centre of a knot of the blood -vessels, the spring or fountain of the blood, which is carried impetuously around: the blood is the food of the flesh; and for that purpose of nourishment, the body is laid out into canals, like those which we draw through gardens, that the blood may be conveyed as from a fountain, to every part of the previous system.”
The young physician was laughed at for venturing to contradict a popular belief, and was assailed by the English press for attempting to deprive we Englishmen of the initiative honour of the discovery. He was looked upon as an enthusiast, and lost all the patronage he had first obtained by his abilities.
Thus, Reynolds as part of his story introduces an extraneous discussion of the circulation of the blood in which he was interested. And then Reynolds goes on to explain the purposes of what will be his own more than vast body of work.
“Of a surety…there are individuals in his world whose motives are so strange that they escaped human comprehension. Many an action in a man’s life is explained by some little sentiment or feeling, lurking at the bottom of his soul, and buried in the most infallible mystery. The most extraordinary and important deeds are frequently regulated or indeed engendered, by motives so trivial that, if judged by the side of other men’s minds, they would appear totally incapable of exercising so powerful a control over a sensible imagination. We are apt to exclaim against the explanations frequently given by romanticists and novelists, to account for the conduct of the heroes or heroines, as unnatural and being at variance with probability; but, in the great volume of human nature, we trace the motives of character, and eccentricities of disposition, which seem to justify the wildest descriptions of the professed dealers in fiction. No romance, which emanates from the imagination is so romantic as the tales of real life. Oh! If the veil were withdrawn from all eyes—if the whole world could read the mysteries and secrets of the heart—how much villainy would be suddenly exposed—how much how many unjust suspicions explained—and how many supposed motives of applause as rapidly turned into evident causes of blame.
So, there you have the goals towards which Reynolds is striving in all his work with his very powerful mind.
After Edmund escapes from the Bicetre Asylum he immediately returns to England. Here the stories of deep mystery end and there is an interlude before a long story titled The Marriage of Mr. Pickwick. Ends the book. I will deal with the Pickwick story in another part.
It would appear that the French part of the Bookcase story represents Reynolds’ sojourn in France in fictionalized or perhaps, hypnoid state. In the interlude Reynolds looks back and examines that stay from a more sober point of view. Here in an interesting interchange between Edmund, already an alter ego, with another man who appears to be a different alter ego. The second alter ego gives a different brief history of what might have been a portrait of Reynolds in France seen from a different perspective. It is well to bear in mind that Reynolds arrived in France when he was sixteen with a very ample inheritance of 12,000 pounds. Such a young sport with money must have been seen as easy prey to sharpers. As his stories are replete with such characters and stories, indeed, Pickwick Abroad is a virtual catalog of sharp and indeed, criminal practices, Reynolds must have had the same approximate encounters. It is most likely that at least one or two succeeded and probably more as he went through 12,000 pounds in six years. Here is the passage; Edmund, the sober Reynolds and Mr. Ferguson, the flighty Reynolds.:
As Sir Edmund was returning home…he stopped for a moment to request a light for his cigar at a lonely cottage which stood on the way to his own mansion. A young man with a pale countenance and yet with an ironical and smirking expression thereupon, answered the knock on the door, which stood half open. The individual immediately addressed Sir Edmund by name and claimed acquaintance with him.
“I have seen you before,” said he:–your face is familiar to me.”
“I reside in the neighborhood,” answered the baronet; “and that may be the reason—”
“No.” Interpolated the stranger. “ I have seen you elsewhere. I never stir out of my own house and therefore well aware that I couldn’t have seen you in the vicinity. I was once a man of the world, now I am a misanthrope.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Mortimer; “and yet,” he added glancing around him, “methinks that for a misanthrope you are tolerably comfortable.”
“It was in Paris that I saw you.” Exclaimed the stranger, without heeding the observation, and having reflected for a moment. “Ah, now I remember you well, and who you are—and the strange adventure which befell you there. But, believe me, I am delighted to see you released from that horrid dungeon into which you were cast. I never believed your guilt,–I knew you were innocent,–indeed, I was fully able to judge of the force of a combination of circumstances, all collected against you, from my own experience in a most extraordinary scene of adventures, and yet”, he added with remarkable rapidity of utterance, which was evidently characteristic of him, “mine was rather a laughable than a serious history. Did you know me by name in Paris? Did you ever hear of Mr. Ferguson, who had acquired the honourable distinction to the name of the ‘Man of the world? No! Well—I believe I was as much entitled to the name as the Barber in the ‘Arabian Nights Entertainments’ was to that of Silent…’
Undoubtedly as a sixteen year old in 1830 Reynolds over the next six years flattered himself as being a man of the world, which he was, he ruefully recalls, as much as the obviously talkative Barber in the Arabian Nights had received the sarcastic name of Silent.
Also Reynolds having read the Arabian Nights shows how he must have passed much of his time in France. The work was translated into French from 1702-1713 by Antoine Galland and first in England as late as 1844 by Edward Lane.
Reynolds was exceptionally well read for such a young man. He was only twenty-six in 1840 when this book was written. He was interested in all the Liberal Arts including psychology as being developed by the great Anton Mesmer and his successors and hence the inkling of the sub- or unconscious. And he considered himself a teacher. Quite extraordinary.
As there will be discontinuity between this period and part two and three I will discontinue here and pick up on the continuation shortly.
3477 words
Immigration, Damon Runyon And New York City
February 27, 2019
Immigration, Damon Runyon,
And New York City
by
R.E. Prindle
In the 2019 March-April issue of Foreign Affairs devoted to discussion of the idea of New Nationalism, Jill Lepore a Harvard Professor of History opens the discussion with an article entitled: The New Americanism. No, she isn’t talking about Pres. Donald Trump. Her proposition is this: Why a Nation Needs a National Story.
Apparently Liberals have given up on the idea that there is no such thing as a nation. Even a social construct needs a reason to exist. I quote here first two paragraphs:
In 1986, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bowtie-wearing Stanford historian Carl Degler delivered something other than the usual pipe-smoking, scotch-on-the-rocks, after-dinner disquisition that had plagued the evening program of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association for nearly all of its centurylong history. Instead, Degler, a gentle and quietly heroic man, accused his colleagues of nothing short of dereliction of duty: appalled by nationalism, they had abandoned the study of the nation.
“We can write history that implicitly denies or ignores the nation-state, but it would be a history that flew in the face of what people who live in a nation-state require and demand,” Degler said that night in Chicago. He issued a warning: “If we historians fail to provide a nationally defined history, others less critical and less informed will take over the job for us.”
Unquote.
I empathize with Prof. Degler’s concerns, however ‘nationally defined history’ already exists and has existed for some time, it is called the Immigrant Narrative of American History. According to it ‘Americans’ are good people, indeed, the very best but only because we have opened our hearts, minds and national home to immigrants from wherever and whatever condition provided only that they be colored, POC (People of Color); that is, not White. We know by this narrative that Whites have caused all the ills of the world while not deserving to live.
In the nineteenth century, it’s true that after the country became a nation in 1793 the immigrants, much to our shame today, were White, with the exception of African Negroes who were needed for work that White people wouldn’t do. That immigration would have the direst consequences even though the Negroes are good hearted POC who wouldn’t never do nobody no harm.
The principle port of entry was NYC, first at a facility called Castle Gardens and then the fabled sacred site of the Immigrant Narrative, Ellis Island. It was there that the ‘wretched refuse’ of ‘Europe’s teeming shore’ as Emma Lazarus’ poem quaintly expressed it and she pasted it on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Thus the Immigrant National Narrative was enshrined.
They were coming to America as the Jewish poet Neil Diamond sang in the twentieth century from every country in Europe and a great many of them stuck in New York City giving that town its peculiar character.
Immigration was cut off at the knees by Conservative bigots beginning in the 1920s coinciding with that abominable experiment, Prohibition. This was a license to steal for the immigrants. Whoo, boy howdy, was that a combination- immigration and prohibition. A third ingredient was the introduction of women’s suffrage. The ladies obtained the vote. And somewhen at this time the Hero of our national narrative also arrived in NYC, Damon Runyon. He was the redoubtable historian with the national narrative much longed for by Carl Degler.
Damon Runyon sat in his favorite hangout of Mindy’s Deli in the heart of NYC’s Satan’s Square Mile and surveyed the scene. Of course, his history is fictionalized but no matter it is accurate, playfully accurate.
Some will say his history is too one sided but then so are all national narratives, they’re all fictional too, cut to measure from the whole fabric. It’s something like Einstein’s ‘fabric of space and time’ which no one has ever seen or touched but is still an article of faith.
For those who don’t know Damon Runyon, perhaps America’s least known historian, who wrote about ninety years ago, you may have seen an even more fictional representation of the work in the movie Guys And Dolls starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, two legendary characters that were once flesh and blood, if you follow them, in 1955 nearly seventy years ago if you’re still too young to remember.
So, Damon Runyon sat studying the immigrant type for that is what he portrays. The key nationalities that he describes are the Irish, the Sicilians and the Jews. The main Irish influx arrived in the 1840 and hence were the most assimilated, but only partially so, while the Jews and Sicilians were in the gold rush to America from 1890 to 1914. Those two groups were all only partially assimilated, the Sicilians least of all.
In Runyon’s stories they are all criminals. Like, who else hangs around in Satan’s Square Mile? Runyon really romanticizes these criminal types. Without knowledge of the situation they were all a bunch of lovable guys and dolls. Who could not like the Butch of Butch Mind’s The Baby. The only problem is that Butch is a killer wherein the humor of a thug minding a baby.
I first became acquainted with Runyon’s stories when I was sixteen. Perhaps my attention was called to him by the movie Guys and Dolls that was released at that time. Not being familiar with the context I was entranced by Runyon’s undeniable Flash. I was knocked off my feet and remained so until the last several years. Over time I reread the stories with a fair amount of regularity, each time gaining in worldly experience and a deepening sense of reality as to the deeper meaning of the stories content.
I still read the stories with some regularity having acquired original copies of the collections and a number of collections from a few stories to omnibus comprehensive collections. However when I now read it is with a sickening realization of their underlying brutality. For instance, the story, The Old Doll’s House, that particularly enchanted me, that involves a thug evading a shoot out in the process of which he jumps a wall and seeks refuge in the Old Doll’s house.
The Old Doll, we’re talking Guys and Dolls here and all women are Dolls, is a lady of advanced years. As she is blind she can’t see the thug waving his gun around and pleased to have company invites him to tea. Orienting himself the thug sees a clock that reads 12:30 which is the approximately correct hour. A half hour later it still reads 12:30 and that clues him in to the fact that the Old Doll is blind. Now he won’t have to kill her because she can’t identify him.
The story stops being funny on the third or fourth reading, twenty or thirty years later.
And so with all the stories. Dream Street Rose for instance. On a first reading Dream Street has a figurative meaning but in fact, Dream St. is a couple of blocks in Satan’s Square Mile. When they designate the square mile as Satan’s they aren’t just whistling Dixie either. That square mile was the criminal sink of NYC, the US, the world and without doubt the universe and beyond. The Metropole Hotel was there.
If you start researching Runyon’s characters you find people like the Jewish newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. If you want a fictional portrayal of Walter Winchell view the movie The Sweet Smell Of Success. And then there is the Jewish criminal mastermind called the Brain by Runyon who was Arnold Rothstein. The Brain Goes Home is pretty much a true story. The stories in their own way are real and out of the clothing of ‘poetry’, true.
At this time and experience in my life I find the stories blood curdling, even the Lily of St. Pierre, one of my favorites. You need a little background to understand Lily. St. Pierre is an island in the North Atlantic fishing grounds, back when the cod were plentiful. During Prohibition the Mob moved in and used the island as a way station for booze. St. Pierre et Miquelon was a French administrative unit. So, the world was corrupted by Prohibition and ‘American’ immigrant criminals.
Of course, as ‘Americans’, these partially assimilated Immigrants blackened the eye of native Americans who were tarred with the same brush as these ‘American’ criminals. And in the United States according to the Immigrant National Narrative those natives were styled ‘bigots’ and racists for declining to accept responsibility for what were actually native Europeans activities.
So, Miss Lepore and her hero Carl Degler, the ‘American’ historian may find no national narrative lacking; they’re just not looking in the right place. The national narrative may not be very attractive but then it’s not very American either. Immigration has consequences.
Slavery In America
February 26, 2019
Slavery In America
by
R.E. Prindle
Let’s get something straight about the different forms of slavery that have existed in the United States. In the first place no one has clean hands, just as in Africa, even Negroes had slaves in the US and elsewhere in the New World, even in Haiti. Whites owned chattels in the South, Northern Whites mined Europe to work in their factories as wage slaves to keep labor costs minimal.
Slavery in the US, other than sex slavery that is still tolerated today, had three forms: chattel slavery, indentured slavery and wage slavery.
Indentured slavery was part and parcel of US history from its very beginning. Indentured slavery was White men ‘owning’ White people according to contract. A person for whatever reason indentured himself for a period of years after which he was supposed to be freed. There were many ways for his master to increase the period. During the period of his indenture he was another man’s slave. At the same time adults and children were shanghaied from the streets of London and England for sale in the colonies.
These Whites usually described as indentured ‘servants’ were slaves in fact. Many, many indentured ‘servants’ worked cheek by jowl with the Negro chattel slaves in the fields. In that manner White women bore many Negro children thus diluting the African blood.
Chattel slavery of Negroes was legal in every English colony, there were no exceptions. In certain States such as Massachusetts and Connecticut chattel slavery was not commercially viable and it fell into disuse. After 1812 Chattel slavery was discontinued at varying times by the various States. Chattel slavery existed in Northern States nearly to the beginning of the Civil War. Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation pertain to any chattel slaves in slave holding States that were not in rebellion. Thus, only Negro slaves in the deep South were affected by Emancipation.
Now, just as chattel slavery was not viable in States like Massachusetts and Connecticut it did not suit the manufacturing economy of the North otherwise chattel slavery would have existed North of the Mason-Dixon line.
The basis of slavery was providing the producers with labor. Slavery was a labor problem. In the agricultural South, especially in the cotton belt, slavery was the best labor mode possible because the laborers were tied to the land and couldn’t migrate.
Providing for the slaves was the Producers responsibility, hence food, clothing and shelter was provided as a cost of doing business. There were no Negro chattel slaves that went hungry. Conditions might vary but the slaves had to be cared for. If you read in the Negro slave narratives, available on the Internet, you will be amazed at what you find.
One ex-slave didn’t regret slavery that much because he said the you never went hungry in those days. If wanted food you culled a hog from herd, killed it, roasted it and ate it. Whether that was universal or not the chattel slaves did not go hungry or unclothed.
In the North where producers wanted labor at the lowest possible cost they had to resort to wage slavery. The industrialists worked their wage slavery. The industrialists worked their wage slave harder than any chattel slave. The wage slaves worked in horrible conditions for twelve hour a day seven day a week for a pittance. The wage slavers provided nothing but that pittance. Where possible they resorted to using children, young children, and women and paid them even less than a pittance.
The wage slaves then were on their own lookout for food, clothing and shelter. All those indefensible shanty towns. In all cases they were less well off than the Agricultural slaves. The Negroes definitely had it better.
While the chattel slaves were required by law to a certain level of benevolence, the wage slave had no protections whatever. If in desperation they resisted exploitation by trying to organize they were shot down dead. They were blacklisted and were unemployable. Hence a reason for armies of hoboes roaming the land.
The ‘Saints’ from New England, the Holy Abolitionists whose sea captains bought in Africa and sold in the New World, that is North and South America and the Caribbean were also those who sought cheap White labor from European countries. The principle was to have as many different nationalities and languages as possible in order to make it difficult to combine for better wages and working conditions. Slavery was slavery and conditions were harsher for wage slaves than for chattel slaves.
Thus Negroes have no more to complain about than Whites. Slavery was part of the woof and warp of the fabric of American society.
Lincoln freed certain of the slaves in 1860 and then came Henry Ford to ameliorate the conditions of the wage slaves. Lincoln was murdered for his role in ending chattel slavery and Henry Ford has been a victim of horrible character assassination for his role in ameliorating wage slavery. Most likely the reason that good men are hard to find.
Immigration, Al Smith And The 1928 Election
February 24, 2019
Immigration, Al Smith, And The 1928 Election
by
R.E. Prindle
People don’t seem to realize that time and changes pass quickly. What was applicable yesterday will not apply to today or tomorrow. Nothing changes society more rapidly than immigration. While attention is applied to race and religion it might better be applied to manners and mores. Whether you think immigration is good or bad immigration changes reality very quickly while all one’s reactions are predicated on a vanished state of affairs.
The cultural changes, that is manners and mores had been occurring at a rapid rate during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century driven by immigration. By 1921 and 1924 unlimited indiscriminate immigration had been limited to more or less controllable numbers. Nevertheless the damage had been done. While the attempt was made to limit the most different mores and manners by favoring Northern European immigrants it was too late. The two chief groups of immigrants, the Irish and the Jews had acculturated enough to challenge the traditional English and Protestant supremacy.
Thus, led by Al Smith, a Catholic Irishman who surrounded himself with Jews the two nationalities were ready to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority. Note that the Jews are considered a distinct nationality with their own manners and mores acting in their own interests. He, Al, or they chose the inappropriate moment to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority as the country was in a period of roaring prosperity, had two presidents, Harding and Coolidge and were to be followed by Herbert Hoover who in the circumstances there was no chance of defeating. And so it was that Herbert Hoover became the last ‘American’ president. Hoover was followed by Roosevelt to whom the Jews transferred their alliance while the Irish were forgotten. Thus the Liberal and Jewish combination have written all histories and distorted the old American contribution to founding the US.
Now, in the 1928 election the Jewish-Irish faction could not accept their loss on any other grounds than the bigotry of Anglo-American voters. In fact, Al Smith was merely a New York City machine politician who, used to campaigning in New York chose as his theme song ‘The Streets of New York’ and spoke with a heavy New York City accent. His manners and mores were those of his home town. To the rest of the country those manners and mores were humorous.
The New York accent alone would have made him unpalatable to the rest of Americans who thought that NYC had an economic stranglehold on America. And then the to thrust The Streets of New York into their faces was sheer folly.
Being Catholic, of course, didn’t help Al with the Protestants but it surely was a charm for the Catholics who were the largest religious denomination in America. But there appears to have been no block voting along religious lines. The Economy ruled.
Whether Al’s Irish background swung the electorate against him is open to conjecture but I would put more weight behind that than the religion. At that point, 1928, there was still a strong antipathy between the Anglos and the Irish. Even in 1956 in my home town the antipathy was noticeable. Apart from Jack Kennedy’s being a Democrat and offensive because of his father’s criminal background his Catholicism and nationality was a factor in my voting against him in 1960. The Irish came over to what they call the New Island in large numbers during the potato famine in Ireland in the eighteen forties and beyond. There was immediately a huge conflict between them and the Anglos in which bloody battles were fought largely aggravated by the Irish. Thus the Irish-English conflict was carried to American shores.
With the Irish came the notion that immigrants rights were superior to nativist rights. Hence the political organization known as the Know Nothing Party that arose to oppose Irish violence was demonized out of existence for its efforts to protect American manners and mores and some kind of control of their destiny. They lost that control as the Irish formed a sort of competing government called Tammany that seized control of NYC and retained it until Jimmy Walker the last Tammany mayor was booted out of the country in the early thirties. It was as though the Irish had control of London.
The Irish were then replaced by the Jews who seized both NYC and New York State. As an immigrant group, the Jews, although the smallest national supplier of immigrants also came as the highest percentage of their nation and thus had equality of numbers with the other national immigrants. There were more Jews in NYC than in any other city of the world. The only place with a higher number was the Russian Pale of the Settlement that covered millions of square acres.
The vast majority of Jews arrived from 1890 to 1914. Like the Irish the Jews created a national enclave, or colony, in NYC. By 1913 they were able to effect a socialist revolution by electing Woodrow Wilson as presidient. This revolution, for such it was, has been unrecognized by Jewish and Liberal historians but the Wilson Administration, turned out in 1920, after a hiatus of the twelve years of the Republican Interregnum would morph into the fully fledged socialist presidency of Franklin Roosevelt beginning in 1932 and ending only with his death in 1945. Thus Roosevelt was the undeclared president for life.
So, Al Smith represented the end of Irish dominance in the affairs of NY and the hope of national dominance in a Jewish-Irish coalition. If that attempt had succeeded immigrants would have seized control of the United States of America. An entire new set of manners and mores would have replaced those of the original settlers. Immigration has adverse consequences like it or not.
While there was a conflict then between the Catholic and Protestant religions and between the English and Irish and Jewish nationalities the election itself was determined on the basis of extreme economic prosperity that Republicans could claim as their own and, indeed, it was called the Coolidge Prosperity after the middle Republican president of the Interregnum- Harding, Coolidge, Hoover.
Then came the deluge. Collectivism replaced Individualism and Socialism replaced Laissez-faire, which had been the system of the nineteenth century Gilded Age. A new set of manners and mores appeared based on an immigrant ideal with its symbol of Ellis Island.
A similar transition is occurring today.
Thoughts On Mr. Bezo’s Pecker Problem
February 10, 2019
Thoughts On Mr. Bezos’ Pecker Problem
by
R.E. Prindle
https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f
Let’s keep the ball rolling on this issue that Mr. Bezos has brought to our attention. We have little idea of the behind the senses activity so we can only deal with what is public.
It seems that the Mr. Bezos owned Washington Post has been attacking Mr. David Pecker’s publication the National Enquirer, itself owned by a corporation calling itself AMI.
The sin of the NE as identified by Mr. Bezos is being in contact with Saudi Arabia. This seems strange as the Saudis are publicized as one of our stalwart allies, second only to Israel. It is difficult to see the offence even if it relates somehow to Pres. Trump. Yet this seems to be the basis of Mr. Bezos’ and the WP’s complaint.
There does seem to be some involvement with government investigators between Mr. Bezos, the WP and the Mueller outfit.
Mr. Bezos make this incomprehensible statement:
Quote:
Federal investigators and legitimate media…suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons.
Unquote:
I have always held Mr. Bezos in high regard for his unbelievable commercial success but here he makes the incomprehensible statement that it is wrong that newspapers have political reasons in publishing. Has Mr. Bezos never heard of the Editorial page? Are not stories and their characterizations used for political purposes? Do not newspapers endorse and recommend their favorite candidates? Good Lord, doesn’t Mr. Bezos own the Washington Post and use it for defaming Pres. Trump?
Actually, he does know it. (One wonders if Mr. Bezos doesn’t also own the Medium site, the site on which he chose to expose himself.) Mr. Bezos calls his ownership of the WP a ‘complexifier’. In other words it compromises him.
Quote:
Even though the Post is a complexifier for me, I do not regret my investment. (The Post loses tens of millions of dollars a year; some investment. More a vanity and/or political project.)
The Post is a critical institution with a critical mission. My stewardship (note the word) of the Post and my support of its mission, which will be unswerving (and) remain unswerving…
Unquote.
Very well, but can’t Mr. Pecker say the same about his relationship with the National Enquirer. Is the NE really any less legitimate than the WP? Is Mr. Bezos mouthpiece any less reprehensible in its political ‘mission’ to discredit Pres. Trump?
Mr. Bezos then says:
Quote:
Back to the story: Several days ago, an AMI leader, (Editor I presume Mr. Bezos means) advised us (us being whom?) that Mr. Pecker went “apoplectic” about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to be a particularly sensitive nerve.
Unquote.
Why should it? Didn’t Pres. Obama make an obsequious bow from the hip while placeing his hand in the Saudi king’s hand as a sign of fealty?
There we have the crux of the matter. Mr. Pecker’s counter attack. Apparently fighting back is not kosher to Mr. Bezos.
After having been married to a lovely lady for twenty-five years, and building the most successful gigantic business on the planet Mr. Bezos decided he needs a hot babe and so he went out and bought one (for lack of a better word) not only that he bought a married one.
In this romance Mr. Bezos, who is perhaps one of the top ten tech wizards in the world inexplicably sent and exchanged pornographic photos with his Hot Tamale. These emails and photos were then given or sold to the NE by someone.
Mr. Bezos believes that the Pres. somehow hacked them. Where they came from is beside the point but the NE categorically denies they got them by hacking. Using Occam’s Razor the most obvious suspect is the Hot Tamale. After all if you had bagged a guy worth 150 billion dollars wouldn’t you want the world to know? What Hot Tamale wouldn’t? Anent that we have heard no objections from the husband and no filing for divorce.
In frustration the NE tried to negotiate with Mr. Bezos offering to squelch publications if he gave up his unwarranted persecution of them on the WP.
Mr. Bezos chooses to call this offer extortion and blackmail. Mr. Bezo’s will hopefully pardon a knowing smile on our part.
One wonders at what strategic moment Mr. Bezos will choose to announce his candidacy for President of the United States. I think you just killed your chances, Sir.
I, Dynamo 