I, Dynamo

Better Living Through Chemistry:

The Sixties And Its Drugs

by

R.E. Prindle

If the Sixties had had a motto it would have been the variant of the Dupont slogan:  Better Living Through Chemistry.  It was sincerely believed that a pill could make your life shine.  Amphetamines, LSD, barbiturates, just about anything that could be swallowed, sniffed, or popped.  The Sixties mind was blown and never fully recovered.  If as Fugs’ percussionist Tuli Kupferberg observed: America is insane, it was drugs that pushed it over the edge.

When drugs hit in the Sixties they were relatively new, no immunity to their use had been built up.  Drugs were to American youth what alcohol had been to the American Indian in the nineteenth century and American youth dressed as funny as the Indians had; Youth adopted all sorts of bizarre behavior and clothing.  It seemed funny at the time but I’m not laughing anymore.  By the end of the Sixties from a sort of contact high the older generations tried to look and act just like the youth who by the end of the Sixties were no longer so young.  Both age groups were laughable.  It was something to see.

Of course chemistry had been discovering all kinds of new things from the nineteenth century on; people just couldn’t find an immediate use for the sort of drugs discovered.  Barbiturates were first synthesized in 1864 by the German chemist Adolf von Baeyer.  The formula sat around on the shelf till 1903 when some bored soul found that you could use the formula to put dogs to sleep.  I suppose it wasn’t a great stretch to apply what was learned of dogs to humans.

At any rate new formulations began to appear through the thirties and in 1946 the tranquilizer Miltown was formulated.  By 1955 Miltown was a great hit to be followed by the blockbuster Valium in 1963.  You began to see a lot dopey people walking around, mostly over forty, who said they couldn’t live without the stuff.

Barbiturates were called downers.  At least on the West Coast they seemed to be the preferred chemical.

The East Coast, for reasons I will explain, was powered by amphetamines from the late fifties through the Sixties decade.  Out on the West Coast we thought the stuff was pernicious, Speed Kills was the slogan.  Probably didn’t stop too many people from using it.  I saw enough amphetamine casualties walking about.

Amphetamines were first synthesized by the German chemist Edeleano in 1887; methamphetamine by a Japanese chemist in 1919 and worked with by the Brit-American Gordon Alles who came up with Benzedrine in the thirties.  By the thirties, then, uses were found for the drug.  Refinements followed.

The chemists were also analyzing foodstuffs  so that the various vitamins were being discovered during the twenties and thirties.  So in addition to drugs the pharmacopeia included previously undiscovered nutrients.  The nutrients were more important than the drugs.  For all of previous history there may have been no human not suffering from some vitamin or mineral deficiency.  For the first time beginning in the thirties a human could be fully supplied with all the necessary vitamins, minerals and amino acids.  True health.

It only remained for someone to come up with the bright idea of combining amphetamines and vitamins to appear to create a wonder drug, a veritable fountain of youth, or so it would seem.

As Henry Kaiser proclaimed on his cement trucks:  Find a need and fill it.  He was talking concrete but a Jewish-German doctor by the name of Max Jacobson did the obvious and combined amphetamines and vitamins along with certain other unmentionables, oh well, monkey balls, into what he thought was a healthful rejuvenating cocktail.  As Max got his medical license in 1929 while the Nazis came to power in 1933 his medical career in Germany was short.  Max terminated his German residency in 1932 leaving first for Prague, then Paris and in 1936 for the new Promised Land of the USA.

Max’s chronology seems a little crowded and perhaps askew but between 1929 and 1932 he claims to have invented his cocktail going rapidly from obscurity to apparent fame. According to Max, Lertzman and Birne quoting from his diary, his concoction  was so well known that the Nazis demanded his formula before they would allow him to leave.  Apparently they were incapable of chemically analyzing it.

As Max left in ‘32 and the Nazi’s came to power in ‘33 his chronology is somewhat suspect.  However, if the Nazis had stolen his formula Max proved to be responsible for Hitler’s deteriorization if Hitler’s doctor Theodor Morrell had purloined the formula and injected Hitler, as he did.

Amphetamines gained such acceptance in the thirties that all the combatants of WWII were dispensing amphetamines to their troops to keep them cheerful as the bombs exploded around them rattling their nerves.  Interestingly the Germans realized the danger of the drug ceasing to dispense the pills, probably why they lost the war.

Smith Kline separated dextroamphetamine from Benzedrine in the forties so that the amphetamine pharmacopeia that Max Jacobson could use in his concoctions had grown by 1946 when Max’s post-war career in the US kicked into high gear.

During the fifties while Max was developing his formulas and expanding his clientele geometrically, the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline, French, later Glaxo-Smith-Kline, was developing its own business of Benzedrine inhalers, Benzedrine (Bennies) and Dexedrine (Dexies) into a phenomenally successful enterprise.  Thus the licit and illicit markets were booming.

By 1960 Max Jacobson’s reputation as a miracle doctor had expanded wildly and his fame would soon reach the White House.  He naturally spawned imitators and by the early sixties Robert Freyman, Elois Peter Warren, Jack Cohen and John Bishop were injecting non-stop flooding NYC with speed and vitamins.

One should pay attention to the vitamins.  Beginning in the forties their importance was noted to the extent that Wonder Bread began enriching their product with vitamins.  Thus by the early fifties in my avid reading of cereal boxes I noted that they too were vitamin enriched.  The enrichment eliminated vitamin deficiency diseases like beri beri and pellagra so my generation was perhaps the healthiest the world had yet seen.

Vitamins and minerals are nutrients that build and maintain bodily processes, most prominently in the brain, while drugs consume essential substances without replacing them.  Thus the amphetamine doctors in combining massive doses of vitamins and amphetamines provided some healthful chemicals along with the deleterious chemical drugs.  God only knows what the human placenta and monkey balls Max used did but Max thought they were beneficial.  As a doctor he never conducted any experiments so he was only guessing.

Still, his concoction was fairly dangerous stuff.  Like many experimenters Max tried out his formulas on himself.  As one formula he tried left him with a permanently crippled leg I think it safe to assume there was some permanent brain damage.  Edie Sedgwick of the Warhol gang certainly destroyed her brain from the massive injections she took from Max, Dr. Robert and Dr. Bishop, aka Dr. Roberts, all three.  She really liked the stuff. Max himself was a steady user of his stuff to the extent we are told that he didn’t even sleep for a month or more at a time.

As he had undoubtedly been using from 1932 on, by 1960 he must have been a living psychotic reaction.  While he had never been one for controls by ‘60 he had lost control, padding around his office in a blood stained smock, unwashed, with dirty, stained finger nails.

It was in this state in September of 1960 that he was enlisted to shoot up John F. Kennedy just before the first Nixon debate.  Kennedy soon became an amphetamine freak.

Before we go on with amphetamines let’s take a look at the second great drug development of the Sixties, LSD.

II

The active ingredient in LSD occurs naturally in a rye ergot from which it was isolated by Dr. Albert Hofmann in Switzerland in 1938.  Finding no use for it he shelved the substance until 1943 when he re-examined it.  He accidentally imbibed some thusly experiencing its disorganizing mental effect.  This was not necessarily a use for it but at the time the wartime predecessor of the CIA, the OSS, was searching for a reliable truth serum.  LSD wasn’t reliable or even a truth serum but the CIA decided to give it a few test trials anyway.  Thus research programs were begun at such universities as Harvard, UC-Berkeley and Stanford University.  At the same time psychologists thought that LSD might be a perfect drug for psycho-analytic uses.  They believed, at least, that with a great deal of experimentation they had achieved some success and could have achieved more if the substance hadn’t been outlawed in 1966.

So with both amphetamines and LSD we are talking about legal chemicals until 1966.

LSD received some notoriety in the fifties as I even wrote a high school essay concerning it in 1956.  Aldous Huxley and many of the Hollywood crowd were quite familiar with LSD in the late fifties.  Cary Grant was a proponent of the substance while samples began leaking from the labs at UC Berkeley and Stanford, or gushing might be a more appropriate word.

LSD along with mescaline, peyote buttons, mushrooms and whatever were revered as  mind or consciousness expanders.  People in the Sixties really believed that they had penetrated the secrets of the cosmos when all they were looking at was their own mind, in most cases fairly empty.  The early users, an interesting group, actually thought of themselves as supra-human.  They could barely deign to talk to the inexperienced while avoiding any physical contact.  They were fairly awesome in their belief that they were in contact with something out there.

So, while Dr. Timothy Leary of Harvard may have given LSD its first real national exposure with the substantial aid of the Luce’s and their Time and Life magazines, LSD was around the Bay Area long before Timmy brought it to the fore.  I first actually saw tabs in late 1963 when I took a job with a mortgage banking firm called Lowell, Smith and Evers.  My indoctrinator lived near campus of UC Berkeley.  The first time out I met him at his house where he had a bowl of what looked like aspirin on his living room table.  ‘Lotta headaches?’  I asked.  ‘Well, no,’ he said smiling mysteriously, ‘go ahead and have one.’  I declined but as it turned out he took a tab before work.  He enjoyed a most leisurely work pace as we got very little done on that first day.

So, by then the West Coast acid guru, Ken Kesey, who as it would turn out I would know slightly, was distributing sunshine down in La Honda preparing the way for the acid paradise of Haight-Ashbury.

Leary back at Harvard violated protocol and was expelled from his post.  He then ended up at Billy Hitchcock’s vast estate at Millbrook New York where Tim began his vastly misguided career.  Timmy was on a religious trip so he thought he was finding not only the secrets of the cosmos but shaking hands with God himself or, maybe, himself.

Thus Tim became a drug guru describing LSD as the Greater Sacrament and marijuana as the Lesser Sacrament.  Well, you know, why not?  Thus Tim legitimized their use for a whole generation turning the Sixties into a mess.  In his acid delusions Tim decided that the recently introduced Aramis aftershave was God’s own scent.  Rather extraordinary claim I thought but I bought a bottle.  Out of production for a few decades it has been recently reintroduced.  I bought another pint so as to maintain traditions.  It is a damn fine scent although whether God uses it or not I can’t say.

Tim was associated with some colorful characters in his attempt to turn on the world including the reprehensible Allen Ginsberg the so-called poet and the remarkable Michael Hollingshead who billed himself and titled his autobiography The Man Who Turned On The World.  The autobiography is free on the internet.

From about 1963 to 1965 then Kesey and his Merry Pranksters and Leary and his Millbrook crowd turned the country on its head.  If America was insane as Tuli Kupferberg said, it was the result of the LSD and amphetamine infestations.

III

To return to Max Jacobson, New York City and its amphetamine plague from 1960 to 1965.  As I say, by 1960 Max Jacobson, the original amphetamine pusher, was booming.  He naturally engendered imitators.  Thus a Dr. Robert Freyman, who after the busts wrote a book called What’s So Bad About Feeling Good,  established himself uptown near Max.  He was immortalized by the Beatles in their song Dr. Robert.  In midtown Dr. John Bishop aka Dr. Roberts with an s established himself.  He is well described by Cherry Vanilla in her memoir, Lick Me, and his association with Edie Sedgwick and the film Ciao, Manhattan.

In addition there were Dr. Jack Cohen and Dr. Alois Peter Warren.  Haven’t located much as these two yet although a record of Warren’s appeal to his 1970 conviction for trafficking in amphetamines is available on the internet.

Of some significance to the early sixties NY scene is a connection to Andy Warhol with Jacobson.  Warhol whose atelier The Factory of ‘64-’65 and ‘66 was fueled by amphetamines was at least a one time patron of Max.  This may have been sometime in ‘62 or ‘63.  If as Andy would have been deeply impressed by the celebrity clientele crowding the waiting room where they apparently waited for hours he may have transferred the idea of mind control through amphetamines to his own celebrity location at the Factory which he successfully had by 1965.  Andy yearned for celebrity status as much as Max did.  Max’s bizarre persona may also have made a significant impression on Andy who was no stranger to bizarre personas.

Andy, himself, during the First Factory years was said to have limited himself to a quarter tab of Obetrol, I believe a Dextroamphetamine formula.  He would also have understood the controlling power of the drug.  If you’ve got celebrities standing around for hours, believe me, you have control of them.

Now, in 1962 Anthony Burgess published his novel A Clockwork Orange.  The English fashion photographer David Bailey immediately seized on the book’s potential to further the Yobbo revolution.  Bailey became attracted to Mick Jagger of the emerging rock group The Rolling Stones so that gathering up Mick in 1963 they hopped a big 707 to cross over to NYC to visit Andy.  Bailey may have met Andy in 1961 in an earlier visit.  The idea was to star Jagger probably in a Warhol movie in a glorification of the novel’s Droog lifestyle.

Bailey, Warhol and Jagger bought the film rights to the novel from Burgess.  Andy actually made an adaptation of the novel in 1965 titled Vinyl, available on the internet, although not starring Jagger.  Jagger went on in his post 1967 stage persona to imitate the Droog style.  Thus one may believe that the culture of the First Factory was based on the Droog’s while the culture was fueled by speed.

But, back to Max.  As I said Max was approached to medicate JFK before the first Nixon debate.  Kennedy was a very sick man who was nearly exhausted by the demands of the 1960 campaign while he was fearful of losing his voice for the debate.  Max shot him directly into the larynx.  A spry speed rapping Kennedy shot down Nixon to essentially win the election that night.

Kennedy who was always in a lot of pain found significant relief from Max’s shots.  Max immediately became a regular visitor to the White House after Kennedy’s inauguration.   Thus by April and the Bay of Pigs Jack was dependent on Max Jacobson and his amphetamine shots.  Jacks dependence on amphetamines probably affected his judgment during that fiasco.

In June of 1961, a couple months later,  Max accompanied JFK to the Vienna Summit with Nikita Khruschev.  Kennedy’s behavior around the Bay Of Pigs fiasco was erratic while at the Summit where he received at least three shot before the interview Khrushchev walked all over him.

It is known that Max gave Kennedy at least three shots before the Khruschev meeting.  Kennedy was clearly out of it.  It seems possible then, if not probable, that Max was able to exercise considerable control over Kennedy.  Max knew a little something about hypnotic suggestion while the rush or flash of the amphetamine coming on would leave the patient open to a well placed suggestion.

Thus as Kennedy was undoubtedly shot up once or twice before or during the Bay of Pigs Max might easily have planted a suggestion in Kennedy’s mind to botch the operation while in shooting up JFK at least three times before the Khruschev meeting it seems certain that he at least rendered Kennedy ineffective.

There is no reason to not believe that Max was following his own agenda or that of some organization.  He was Jewish.

Max continued to minister to Jack.  Brother Bobby Kennedy, Jack’s Attorney General, looked askance at Max.  He had a number of vials analyzed and at least realized that his brother the President was being drugged with amphetamines.

Jack didn’t care but Bobby did.  Max had an entrée to the White House.  As he was entering Bobby intercepted him and told him to get the hell out, not to bother his brother again.  Jack was totally dependent if not addicted so that he dropped affairs of State to fly to New York to beg Max to forgive the situation and give him another shot.  Imagine that!  The President of the United States flying to a quack doctor to beg him for treatment.  There is a real transfer of power there.  Was it Mind Control the CIA was looking for?

Max had been deeply offended by Bobby.  Remember that Max himself had been self medicating for maybe twenty years.  He must have had but a tenuous grip on whatever passed for reality in his own mind.  In other words his subconscious ruled his conscious mind; subjectivity overruled objectivity.  Max was not the forgiving kind.  Jack had to pay.  As Max was experimenting continually he is sure to have had different formulations that produced different effects.  He is described by one client as taking a little from one vial, a little more from another and so on and then shooting it in.  One client described himself as going blind for three days after a shot.

In this case Max gave Jack a formulation of such potency that Jack ripped off his clothes and began streaking naked through the corridors of the Carlton Hotel where he was staying.  Fortunately he was restrained before he could make the lobby and possibly go streaking down the street.  Another doctor had a heck of a time bringing Jack under control with yet other drugs.

Yes, indeed!  Now, Jack was President of the United States and he had freaked out.  He was in control of the nuclear armament of the United States.  As Commander in Chief he was entrusted with the little red button.  What would happen if he had a psychotic reaction to one of Max’s shots and freaked out with all those nuclear weapons at his command; Dr. Strangelove for real.

He was dependent.  He was addicted.  He was out of control.  The only possible solution was evident.  On 11/22/63 they pulled the trigger.

I don’t know how Max survived when Kennedy didn’t but he did.

As the fact of Kennedy’s addiction has been only slowly surfacing in the last few years one can only assume that Max’s boasting of being Kennedy’s doctor at the time brought society patients to him even after 11/22/63.  Indeed he was affectionately known as Dr. Jake and apparently, as document maker Martin Kasindorf titled his film, Everyone Went To Max is close to the truth.

Yet, even as ‘Doctor Jake’s’ reputation spread the casualties of his practice surfaced.  While it would seem that Max should have taken notice he seems to have been in denial.  He did believe that some chemical reaction took place between the vitamins, speed and monkey balls that converted the speed more or less into an actual nutrient that negated its deleterious effects.

Still, as in the case of Bob Cummings the beloved 50s movie and TV star when his reaction began to show and develop Max just laid on more drugs until Cummings was a wreck.  One would think that at that point Max would have sent his concoction to a chemical lab to determine whether the baleful effects of the amphetamines were moderated or not.  But, then, Max himself was zonked and making a lot of money.

At any rate, by 1966 and ‘67 the casualties were piling up.  One of the most tragic was Edie Sedgwick who was associated with Andy Warhol.  She was frequenting not only Max but John Bishop aka Dr. Roberts and Robert Freymann aka Dr. Robert.  The greatest crime committed against her was when Bishop dosed her continuously during the filming of Ciao! Manhattan.

Other members of Andy’s group began having negative reactions also, as the amphetamine craze in NYC was coming apart.

As the 70s began a crackdown on the doctors began.  As noted Warren was set up, busted and sent away for five years.  Dr. Jake, Max Jacobson, began to be investigated by the medical board in ‘72 and his license was taken away in ‘75.  I have found nothing on the fate of Jack Cohen while Kasindorf notes that Bishop quietly slithered off to nether Long Island.

The medical use of amphetamines was also reviewed and prescriptions fell off notably after 1970.  However there was Ritalin….

Also it should be noted that the use of amphetamines in Viet Nam was endemic and huge.  If the Nazis gave up dosing their troops because of negative reactions US troops in Viet Nam were not responsible for their actions.

It should be noted also that US Air Force regulations today require pilots to be dosed so that they stay alert during missions.  If they refuse they can be grounded.

IV

The important thing to remember is that behind amphetamine and LSD pot and barbiturates were constants as well as alcohol although for a while alcohol was disparaged and some totally rejected it.  Many people were running on as many stimulants as they could cram in.  Some people had an astonishing capacity while still being able to function, after a fashion of course.

The generation from 1938 to 1943 went buggy for some reason.  I still haven’t been able to put my finger on it.  Probably a combination of absurd indoctrination in school and bizarre television programming.  Some stuff people consciously remember some they don’t.  Dave Garroway’s ridiculous TV show for instance had a profound effect on my class although the guy always repelled me.  A lot of inane nonsense entered our minds through those sources.  It’s all suggestion.

As important as anything was the emergence of rock and roll.  This was combined with the Negro influence entering the main stream.  Fats Domino and Little Richard, Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte.  Everybody loved records and wanted to record.  During the fifties as today the emphasis was on single songs or 45s not LPs.  The change to LPs probably came about through Folk Music.  It was easier to put together thematic LPs around what were considered folk songs.  Harry Belafonte did well and, of course, the greatest of the Folk groups, The Kingston Trio, outshone and outsold everyone.

Thus when Folk and Rock merged and groups developed ‘sounds’ LPs of all ‘original’  material became de riguer and expressed the psyche of the generation much as novels had in earlier generations.  Instead of one hit song and ten standards comprising ten or twelve minutes a side an LP had to be twenty minutes a side or forty minutes a disc.  That was a very significant difference.

As the LP and group concept developed they did so within a context of social unrest, the civil rights movement and Viet Nam war.  To this was added drugs.  Sound quality improved while bands recorded their music under the influence of speed, acid or whatever so that while the music might sound a little discordant  or strange to a straight listener, the music might take on a much better quality if you, like the musician, were also on speed or acid.  So this furthered the appeal of drugs.

Thus when LSD exploded after 1966- ‘67 so-called acid rock was all the rage.  Perhaps the most total acid record was Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced.  People who had taken LSD were experienced, as the term went, and people who hadn’t weren’t.  The songs on Hendrix’s record directly referred to the LSD experience.  Thus the younger generation’s minds were conditioned to look on drug use as a positive good thing.

The real problem with drugs was that they were inward looking.  They tended to solidify one’s opinions into concrete unshakable truths.  As drugs were believed to be the opposite, that is, mind or consciousness expanding, people actually believed their meager thoughts were cosmic.  As you can see, divorced from reality.

Listening to song lyrics in this hypnoid state the lyrics entered their minds as suggestion which then became programs of action.  As Jimi Hendrix, who had been psychedelicized noted, the band could lay down a hypnotic rhythm and when the desired stage had been achieved zing in the suggestion with a very good chance of it sticking.  Once accepted  it couldn’t be removed.  There was some pretty effective mind control going on.

All the arguments of the Left had little effect compared to the hypnotic suggestions.  The anti-war and anti-racist efforts were effected from the grooves of records and not from inane and insane political activists.  If the Days of Rage at the 1968 Democratic convention failed  it was probably because the command to violence was defeated by the cry for peace and non-violence implanted by musical propagandists.

As the demand for psychedelic drugs grew an amazing ability to supply the demand ran apace or ahead.

V.

By the end of ‘66 then both LSD and amphetamines were declared illegal.  Speed could still be prescribed by doctors for medical use but their success brought them under closer scrutiny that would put them out of business in the seventies.  LSD was supported by fanatical mind expansionists who were convinced that the Greater Sacrament was wiping clean their doors of perception.  The notion was supported by the heroes and demi-gods of the generation, the rock stars.

These rather ordinary boys and girls who really had little going for them but a modicum of musical talent were hailed as infallible gurus.  Their lyrics most of which were inscrutable and/or laughable were ingested as sacred texts.  The musicians were able to keep up the charade during the Sixties but as the seventies got underway they all copped the plea: Hey, I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.  The Great Droog Jagger came up with: It’s only rock and roll, but I like it.

Until Altamont at the end of ‘69 the fans expected miracles and if they didn’t get them from the music they thought they were from LSD.

Where there’s a huge demand you can bet there will be a huge supply.  Whereas speed had been predominantly an NYC phenomenon Acid found its spiritual home on the West Coast.  The Hippie explosion occurred after the ban of LSD in the West Coast city of San Francisco.  Sixty-seven, eight and nine were the big years of that phenomenon until it imploded possibly helped along by the Altamont fiasco which was a big deflator.

The most representational band of the Hippies was The Grateful Dead.  The Dead had been the house band for the Kesey affair.  Kesey had been on the lam  on drug charges but actually for being totally offensive to the more sedate fathers of society.  Besides he had or would graduate from acid as he said.  Connected to both Kesey and the Dead was the fantastic acid head Owsley Stanley, often referred to as Stanley Owsley or most frequently just Owsley.  Owsley was the Hippie chemist par excellence.  If living could be made better through chemistry Owsley was your man.

Strange one too.  In 1969 when I was just getting my record store off the ground The Grateful Dead came to play at Mac Court UofO.  By 1969 communes were big and many, many people had ‘returned to the land’, that is they were living in hovels out on the mountain slopes, perhaps growing some weed instead of vegetables and while professing a peaceable disposition ready to shoot dead anyone who came near their patch.  If you were totally insane or close to it your time had arrived.  If you were merely insane all it required was an aptitude for navigation.  You will note those are the only three available options.  Everyone was flying high with a defective auto-pilot.

So there I am standing in my little tiny 400 sq. ft. record store dreaming big dreams, some might have said impossible dreams, when in walks this guy clutching a gallon jar of what looks like blue and white aspirin although more crumbly, not so firm.  This apparition announces himself as Owsley.  Well, alright.  What’s that you’ve got in the jar?

He had, god only knows, perhaps ten thousand tabs of LSD.  Well, OK, but don’t you think you should have them wrapped in a brown paper bag, a pillow case or something?  I mean, my store is under surveillance.  And what do you want to do with your, uh, stash?

It wasn’t his stash, it was his merchandise and he wanted to me to buy the jar.  To say that my mind was boggled would be to miss the point.  Of course my mind was boggled but as my record store was considered a head shop by everyone Right and Left, while depending on the heads for my clientele I didn’t want to jeopardize my position by an outright no.  Every objection I made was countered until I came up with what I considered the clincher:  I didn’t have the money to buy a jar of 10K tabs.  Owsley stunned me by saying That’s alright, just take it, you can pay me when you sell them.

Well, this was a problem.  Assuming 10K tabs at a dollar each that would be 10K in 1968 dollars,  probably 100K-200K in today’s inflated currency.  Knowing my employees and clientele I could just imagine at least half disappearing, probably the whole jar overnight, while I’d probably be busted before sundown next day if the jar hadn‘t disappeared.  I really, really didn’t want to get involved.  As politely and forcefully as possible I told Owsley I just couldn’t do it.  He looked hurt, disappointed at best, but clutching his jar of LSD to his breast he turned and walked out.  That’s how the LSD business was conducted back in the old Hippie days with Haight-Ashbury still in full flood and the communes filling up.

It couldn’t last.  It was a high markup quick turnover business.  All you needed was a good chemist such as Owsley, the right ingredients, a lab and you could turn out enough LSD to literally turn on the world.

At Leary’s Millbrook compound he had been the guest of a Mellon heir by the name of Billy Hitchcock.  Billy now came West and either set up or organized one of the more spectacular criminal enterprises in the world.

Leary himself was entering the maddest phase of his career.  Because of his immense LSD intake he was probable operating in two different parallel universes at the same time.  Unfortunately the prisons where he was headed were in this universe which actually controlled his body.  He could go anywhere in his mind but, you know, his body stayed in prison.  Only God and Leary knew what was going on in the other universe but Tim seemed to be able to combine the two in one persona.

Sprung from one prison by the infamous Weathermen Tim found himself in Algeria along with Eldridge Cleaver then by a circuitous route leading through Switzerland and Afghanistan to Folsom Prison outside Sacramento, California, USA.  Tim tells it all in his many books if you want to know the full story.  He’s a good writer too.  As experienced as he was he remained incredibly naïve.

After his eviction from Millbrook at the end of 1967 Tim wended West where he fell in with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.  This was a dope smuggling unit that discovered LSD and through a member named Nick Sand manufactured an enormous amount of the gold standard of the late sixties, Orange Sunshine.  Sand came on the scene as a result of meeting an LSD chemist named Tim Scully.  (Not to be confused with the Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully.)  Tim Scully himself had met Owsley Stanley from whom he learned the process.  After Owsley was arrested at the end of ‘67 Scully joined forces with Sand to manufacture LSD.

The authorities were hot on the tail of the chemists by 1967, only a year after LSD was made illegal, so that the chemists’ activities were disrupted and brought to an end by 1970-71.  Owsley had been out on bail through ‘68 and ‘69 but now went to McNeil penitentiary in Washington State at this time.  I knew several alumni who did time about these years.  Must have been an interesting crowd at McNeil.

By 1970 then the big drug rush of the 60s was brought to if not an end a hiatus.  Amphetamines had been discountenanced officially so prescriptions were way off while its baleful effect led to at least a temporary lack of interest.  With the departure of Owsley, Sand, Scully and the BEL the supply of LSD withered.

Leary served some time at Folsom, was released and spent the rest of his life in one nutty experiment or another.

Thus the great experiment in better living through chemistry and its so-called consciousness expansion concomitant came to an end.  Cocaine, of course, replaced the psychedelics and its baleful influence felt from 1970 to the present.

Hybridization of pot led to ever stronger varieties so you can really knock yourself out if you want.

Regrettably drugs seem to be a permanent part of our culture but one is wise to live the straight life.

Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality

by

R.E. Prindle

Chapter 8

After The Revolution

Eddie’s story in the twenties has proven difficult to write.  There was so much happening in his life that I have finally decided to make the twenties into three sections and two chapters- political and personal.

While I have covered most of the ground in other essays I will try to make this as comprehensive as possible.  The political atmosphere post-Bolshevik Revolution has seldom if ever been interpreted by Ed’s biographers.  In point of fact politics were forced on him will he nil he.  I’m sure he didn’t know what had happened.

His political troubles derived from two sources of about equal importance.  The first was the Bolshevik threat from Communism and the second was the Jewish confrontation forced on him.  It is regrettable to have to bring in the Jews which often has unpleasant consequences but biography and history become impossible if one is required to blot out half of the material as unmentionable; thus I hope I will be forgiven if I record the whole story with all its blemishes.  I will treat of the Reds first and the Jews second.

The quest of Joseph Stalin and the Soviets to control the literature of the West that the discussion of political and social affairs in any other than a pro-Communist context might be prevented seems to have been ignored by all historians.  In fact Stalin did his best to control what was published while discrediting established writers unsympathetic to the Revolution.  On the one hand the Reds either created the P.E.N organization or acted through John Galsworthy the author of the Forsyth Saga or took it over shortly thereafter.

P.E.N. is an acronym for Poets, Essayists, Novelists.  The organization still exists and its current slogan is ‘Promoting Literature, Defending Freedom Of Expression.

In its history on the internet it states:  PEN was one of the world’s first non-governmental organizations and amongst the first international bodies advocating for human rights.

That’s pretty much double speak for Communist writers first and foremost and their version of human rights.  Human rights meant from a pro-Communist point of view.  Today there is a PEN in nearly every country of the world controlling discussion.

But back then by 1930 the President of the organization was the Communist stooge H.G. Wells.  He was a very active hatchet man who did his best to discipline non Communist writers.

H.G. Wells is one of the great names in world literature.  His career began with a bang as his early fantasy sci-fi novels and short stories of the 1890s are among the great classics still avidly read and filmed today especially The War Of The Worlds and The Island Of Dr. Moreau.

He became a little too doctrinaire as the twentieth century’s first decade ended and then became preachy.  While he remained prolific to his death in 1946 his output is pretty much an acquired taste today.  For myself while his novels are often annoying they are redeemed by his talent and quite profound sagacity.

Stalin found him a little too independent, indeed, troublesome.  Their philosophies parted and by Wells’ late thirties’ novel The Holy Terror he was advocating Stalin’s assassination.  Naturally there was a woman involved.

His reasons were personal concerning Stalin’s treatment of him in relation to the State prostitute, Moura Budberg, assigned to him as a minder.

There were a number of State prostitutes assigned to Western writers to guard their orthodoxy.  Stalin was serious.  Strangely he was if not a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, he was a great admirer of his creation Tarzan.  I don’t know that he read the books but he had the movies flown in to him, most likely the MGMs of the thirties and later Sol Lessor’s Tarzans of the forties.

It seems clear that Ed knew he was being targeted by both Wells and Stalin.  I have detailed the literary feud between Wells and Burroughs in other essays but by the end of the decade and the publication of Tarzan The Invincible the battle lines were clearly drawn.

In many ways even though the denouement was certainly painful for Ed, the struggle provided him with the story lines for his truly great series of Tarzans from 1930 to 1935 that recorded the progress of the struggle.

Ed had always been anti-Socialist.  He deplored the Hay Market rioters of May 4, 1886 while his father was actually invited to the hanging of the ‘Commie Martyrs.’  Young Ed clenched his fists in rage as the Reds marched Chicago’s streets beneath their red flags.

One can imagine how he sat up in alarm when the news of the Bolshevik Revolution reached his ears.  Nor was the Bolshevik Revolution confined to Russia.  As the Great War ended in Germany’s defeat opening its eastern borders Soviet cadres flowed West into Central and Western Europe where with more or less success they attempted to foment revolution.  At the very least the Communists established themselves in Western capitols  to influence politics in the various nations including the US.

While historians refuse to acknowledge it there was a Communist revolution attempted in the US from 1918 to 1921.  The Communist assault in the US that includes the bombing of Wall Street and dozens of assassination attempts was foiled initially by the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and subsequently forced well underground by the much maligned but surely great Warren G. Harding shortly after assuming office in 1921.

Thus the Republican Interregnum of 1921-33 frustrated the revolution forcing it into other channels such as stock market manipulations and the movies.

The revolutionary period coincided with the great turmoil in Ed’s life as he shifted his base of operations from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Still he found time to write an anti-Communist tract called Under The Red Flag that not surprisingly was universally rejected.  However if he had been under the Communist radar screen before the tract made him a marked man.  The Communists put him on their list of reactionaries to be destroyed.  Thus, as the twenties began Ed was under assault.

Ed seems to have been always well informed.  His anti-Stalin Tarzan The Invincible displays a very profound understanding  of the Communist situation with a positive awareness that he was on Stalin’s hit list.  As incredible as that may seem it is true.  Stalin’s literary agent, H.G. Wells fought a running literary battle with Ed all through the twenties and thirties in conjunction with other elements that ended with Ed’s exile from the movie capitol as the forties began.

As mentioned, Wells’ career had fallen on hard times before the War began as he pursued his social and sexual agenda.  He was loved for his earlier work but his later efforts, what were essentially tracts, failed to find a mass audience.  He wrote all through the War.  These volumes while not popular still have a great deal of merit although running counter to my own understanding of things.  His The Soul Of A Bishop is a quite penetrating examination of the subject.

Nevertheless the War destroyed all Wells’ prognostications for the progress of mankind so that he was a broken man intellectually by War’s end.  The horrors of that war, the destruction of a whole male generation is indescribable.  No use to attempt it.  With a broken mind Wells sought refuge in a return to God that was futile.  But, as a man must believe in something H.G. gave himself body and soul to the Revolution.  He became a part of the Soviet sphere.  While he tried to operate independently as a free man and an equal of Lenin and Stalin, that was impossible.  Thus, as he always maintained his façade of independence he was subordinated to Stalin, watched over by his consort, Moura Budberg.

Always a sort of literary maverick his style changed somewhat in the twenties where as the literary hit man he began to satirize and defame the so-called reactionary politicians and writers of the day.

As a slight digression, while Wells was despairing his loss of faith he undertook to write the most successful book of his career, the fantastically best selling Outline Of History.  This socialist view of history not only sold well off the bat but continued to do so at least into the fifties.  The book established his financial independence putting him beyond the control of Stalin  while establishing him as one of the great savants of the world along with Bertrand Russell  and George Bernard Shaw both now eclipsed reputations.  Wells wrote two further compendiums The Science Of Life and The Work, Wealth and Happiness Of Mankind.  These enhanced his reputation but are now disregarded although an historically valuable depiction of the knowledge of the thirties.  So, Ed was up against Stalin’s heavy hitter and faced him down.

As corroboration of Stalin’s interference and control of Western writers an excellent little book by Nina Berberova titled: Moura: The Dangerous Life Of The Baroness Budberg was published in 1988 translated into English in 2005.  Berberova says: p. 241

Quote:

In the 30s there existed in Parisian literary circles a strange distrust of certain women of Russian origin who had married French celebrities…from the world of letters, music or theatre.  It mattered little whether they were the legitimate wives  of Romain Rolland, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Fernand Leger, or their mistresses.  One always had the feeling on making their acquaintance that they had probably been sent by Moscow to attach themselves to these celebrities, with the principal mission of keeping these men of genius under Stalin’s influence and from preventing them from expressing critical opinions about him or changing their political positions.  Like Moura with Wells there was Elsa Triolet, the wives of Eluard and Leger and many others, including Princess Maria Pavlovna Kudasheva.  These  were energetic, intelligent women who had chose this dangerous profession fully aware of the possible consequences.  Some of them used to go to Moscow and would also entertain Soviet diplomats who happened to be in Paris and were charmed….This is not the place to paint their portraits, but a few words must be said about Maria Kudeshova, who managed to get Rolland to marry her when he was sixty-eight years old (she was a little over thirty) after having gotten rid of his sister who had been living in his house in Switzerland.  She surrounded Rolland with her Soviet friends and finally convinced him to take a trip to Moscow.  According to Georges Duhamel there was no doubt that she was working for Moscow.  Kudasheva admitted to Duhamel’s sons that she had been manipulated by the NKVD….She quickly installed herself in Rolland’s house and threatened suicide several times in order to make him marry her.

Unquote.

And then on pp. 255-56

Quote:

When Galsworthy died in 1933 Wells had become president of the international PEN club, and…Moura…was receiving guests as the lady of the house….From the early 1930s to the early 1950s Moura played a really important  role within the international PEN club, successfully barring Russian émigré writers from membership.  She was supported by left-wing intellectuals in England and Europe, and also by English publishers…

Unquote.

One can imagine then to what lengths the Soviets went to control what was published and what wasn’t.   After the Revolution when the various Socialists, Reds and Parlor Pinks operated more openly it was quite clear that they were in control of publishing and culture in general.

Ed had always had problems with the critics; he was not a respected writer.  However he was a very successful and influential writer.  Before the War he had been more or less an imitation of the successful writers of the earlier generation such as Wells, Haggard and Kipling.  But with the development of the genres and genre writing of which he was he most successful exemplar all the young would be genre writers turned to him as their role model.  In addition under the leadership of publisher Bernarr Macfadden the pulps evolved from general fiction magazines into genre fiction magazines.  Macfadden’s True Romance titles were spectacularly successful although as one might expect reviled.  Nevertheless there they were in their millions of copies sold and sitting on top of the literary heap of pulp writers was Edgar Rice Burroughs.  He was to be a major influence on all pulp writing of the twenties and thirties.

By that time the damage had been done and it was very difficult to destroy his career although this was successfully done through the agency of his secretary, Ralph Rothmund, by the end of WWII until the sixties revival, which was accidental, when publishers discovered that the titles whose copyrights Rothmund had let lapse were in the public domain.  Grosset and Dunlap post-WWII who knew the copyrights were lapsed had been under no obligation to pay Burroughs royalties but did so out of courtesy.

The literary world had always found Ed unpalatable.  He secured his publisher, McClurg’s nearly by default, who mistreated him and in one way or another cheated him of substantial amounts of royalties thus preventing the prosperity and power due his success.

His editors despised him as a writer denigrating him whenever they could.  His last editor at Munsey, Bob Davis, constantly belittled Ed’s efforts.  I have not yet obtained Davis’ autobiography but as the twenties dawned Davis quit his job at Munsey to try his hand at authorship.  His true idol was O. Henry who he tried to imitate in two volumes of short stories, sketches and reminiscences that I have obtained and read.  He was a relatively dull and trite writer, certainly no Edgar Rice Burroughs.

But Ed’s publishing troubles were just beginning.  Stalin’s agents riddled the publishing business.  McClurg’s and Grossett and Dunlap had been working against his interests from the beginning.  The movies had circumvented the publishers swelling his income as he made his move to Los Angeles to a peak of a hundred thousand dollars.  Unfortunately Hollywood was in the hands  of his political enemies.  That and Ed’s misunderstanding that the rules of the game had changed and the rules of the America he had grown up in no longer applied.  There were topics that could only be discussed in a positive Communist manner while any other discussion was sure of instant rejection; in order to succeed you knew which road to take.

Ed’s anti-Communist tract was a definite false step in the new intellectual environment.  Two major faux pas that cost him his credibility in Hollywood were his titles, The Girl From Hollywood and Marcia Of The Doorstep.  The first attacked the immorality of Hollywood while the second had characters offensive to Jewish sensibilities.

Ed complained that there was an effort to suppress Girl even though sales were good while publication of Marcia was completely denied him.

Between the Communists and the Jews then movies starring Tarzan were suppressed from 1922 to 1927 thus denying Ed that important source of revenues.

On the international level his English publisher Methuen’s refused to efficiently distribute his books thus drying up English revenues.  In Germany a brouhaha was created regarding attitudes toward wartime Germany found in Ed titles of that period.  As the wartime propaganda on both sides was brutal I find it difficult to believe there was a grass roots objection to  any wartime hysteria.

As Stalin was virtually micro managing literary concerns in Europe and America it seems more likely that the great noise was fomented by Communist interests that resulted in the withdrawal of his books along with his royalties from the German market.  This also was a serious blow to Ed’s finances.  His expenses were then exceeding his income forcing the serious retrenchment he depicts in 1924’s Marcia Of The Doorstep.

Curiously while his sales dropped in his major European markets they sky rocketed in the Soviet Union itself.  Of course Ed derived no royalties from Soviet sales.  Perhaps Stalin was having his little joke; the retort to which came in Tarzan The Invincible.

Ed’s American publishing woes  continued to increase until he found it necessary to dump McClurg’s.  Even though the Tarzan books were major sellers, with the Mars series less so but good, and while the onus against pulp writing had all but disappeared with major publishers releasing titles written in the pulp or popular style Ed was refused by every major publisher just as he had been in 1914.

Forced into dealing with questionable publishers he threw that in and in 1930 with his Tarzan The Invincible Ed self-published under his own imprint.

So, by the end of the decade the Communists while not yet destroying his career had interrupted his concentration while putting him into a defensive position outside normal publishing methods.  In that sense Ed had his back against the wall fighting for survival.  Next let’s examine his position vis-à-vis the Jews.

2.

Hollywood Boondoggle

This section concerning Ed’s relations with the Jews will be more difficult as the activities of the Jews run counter to the average citizens prejudices concerning them.  Contrary to what all histories tell us the Jews were active participants in all revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while acting in their own interests at all times.

Even if this was misperceived, which it wasn’t, they were still widely perceived and, indeed, at the close of the war accused of having been responsible for the war by many very well informed people.  If Ed didn’t see the situation that way he had his suspicions.

Now, when Ed left Chicago he left ahead of a letter that was forwarded to him in LA from theAmerican Jewish Committee.  This letter was to have a profound effect on the Hollywood phase of his career from 1920 to 1940.  They were to be twenty years of constant harassment.

In order to establish the context of this letter, questionnaire actually, let me summarize the Jewish situation vis-à-vis Europe and America as part of the 1789-2001 Revolutionary period.

As the French Revolution began the Jews everywhere in Europe were under civil disabilities.  The Revolution emancipated them making them equal in citizenship with all Europeans.  Of course the process was effected more rapidly in some areas than others.

At the same time the Scientific Revolution freeing the mind from religious superstitions was well under way.  Science as we all know invalidates and supersedes all religious thought.  This left Christianity and Judaism holding the bag with silly grins on their faces.  In was necessary for them to adjust to Scientific realities in one way or another or go over to Science abandoning religion.  Setting Protestantism and Catholicism aside the Western Jews, England, France and Germany, were devastated while the Eastern Jews of the Pale of Settlement were unaffected until the twentieth century when they arrived in the US.  The Jewish belief system had been invalidated, so much sentimental trash.

They were unable to find a place for themselves in this new environment until  a  hundred years or so after the Revolution the Jews originated the argument of relativism in the attempt to defeat science and regain their status.  While Science was positive that is an attempt to realize the true nature of reality and its results absolute, the Jews attempted to destroy that positiveness by introducing relativity, that is inner wishful thinking.  Thus in 1900 a whole group of Jewish savants in various disciplines introduced relativity.  Freud/Fliess in Psychology, Karl Marx in politics, Einstein in physics, Schoenberg in music, Franz Boas in anthropology, Anatole France in literature, Henri Bergson in evolution, across the whole field of learning.  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity challenged the positiveness of Science making positive results questionable both scientifically and socially.

Politically great organizations were created to advance Jewish interests, The American Jewish Committee, The Fraternal Order of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League.  While influencing American politics heavily up to the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1913, under Wilson’s socialist presidency Jews actually entered government administration in large numbers.  They were especially active during the War years.  Their influence would diminish in 1921 when Warren G. Harding took office.

But as the War ended before Wilson’s socialist policies could be effected their influence was diminishing but still in 1918 the Jews devised something they called the Jewish Bill Of Rights that they wished to attach to the Constitution.  That was the communication forwarded to Ed in LA in 1919.

The survey was sent to every prominent man and woman in the United States to determine their degree of ’anti-Semitism.’  If you returned the questionnaire promptly and in full accord you were considered safe, if not you were placed on the rolls as an anti-Semite. Ed did have some questions that, while he probably didn’t realize it having been reared as a free American boy with rights of free speech guaranteed by the US Bill Of Rights, marked him as an anti-Semite for being in violation of the Jewish Bill Of Rights.  Already targeted by the Bolsheviks he now found himself on, or perhaps didn’t realize he was on, the list of dangerous anti-Semites marked for destruction.  And he was destroyed. Generally speaking, I am unaware of any exceptions, all these people so indicated were destroyed by 1940.

Some were very powerful men such as that greatest of Americans Henry Ford.  Add Warren G. Harding, William Randolph Hearst and many others with whom Ed found himself in the same boat.

Henry Ford, of course, engaged the Jews in a full fledged war.  He established the first national newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, to carry the battle to them.  For several years his paper published articles exposing Jewish machinations including three or four concerning his copy of The Jewish Bill Of Rights.

As the Revolution spread to US shores in 1919, 1920 and 1921 it seemed possible to the Revolutionaries that they would overthrow the US government.  If Wilson had not had his stroke and been able to run for the third term he wanted, instead of Warren G. Harding’s election, they may very well have succeeded.  Say, Wilson had done what his protégé FDR did do, that is serve four terms it is certain that the country would have turned Communist.  Instead Harding assumed the presidency and very energetically put a stop to Communist and Jewish shenanigans.  He would pay with his life two years later but he did save the Republic for twelve years.

Ed makes reference to a ship he calls the Harding in The Moon Men that must undoubtedly refer to the President.  Tarzan And The Ant Men is full of political references to the Harding administration so Ed was fully aware of what was happening.  Although the publication of Ed’s 1924 novel Marcia Of The Doorstep was blocked, Ed goes to the assistance of Henry Ford basing his character Marcus Sackett, that is himself, on four articles concerning Jews in show business that appeared in Ford’s Independent.  Ford’s articles were later collected in a four volume set given the unfortunate title of The International Jew.  By that he didn’t mean to include all Jews only those Jews affiliated to the international Jewish government.

In his Marcia novel Ed’s unsavory villain was a wily little Jew and his portrayal of Hollywood was accurately if inadvisably a portrait of the Jews who ran the movie capitol.  Ed balanced the picture with wise upright Jews, one probably based on Louis Brandeis, and generous Jews but that misses the point.  While the novel was never published it was apparently read by the studio heads or whoever landing Ed in hot water.  Thus in his Moon Maid he depicts a lovable, highly respected and honored Jew both by Jew and Gentile but once again, that misses the point and makes up for nothing in Jewish eyes.

But, you know, once you’ve crossed the line you can’t get back over.  Rather than improving his situation versus the Jews the Moon Maid probably worsened it as he had, in effect, apologized and confessed his guilt just as Henry Ford would do in 1927.

The twenties were a time of transition from the pre-war period of small holdings to consolidation in much larger units.  This was no more apparent than in agriculture where the great corporate farms were taking shape along with food processors of comparable size that would form as  such giant corporations as Archer-Daniels-Midlands.  So Ford was right but he lost the suit.  Actually there was no difference between these huge corporate farms and the collectivized farms of the USSR.  It was just done differently.

Ford who initiated perhaps the greatest industrial change or forward movement the world has ever known in the assembly line and then went on to create the first worldwide company was nevertheless conservative otherwise, almost atavistic.  He had hated farm work as a youth so even as he lined up a long row of Ford tractors that plowed the whole field in a matter of minutes, almost seconds, that made large farms possible he objected to the consolidation of small farms. He pointed to a Jewish firm involved in the consolidation which, of course, the Jews denied.  In the ensuing law suit Ford lost and even allowed the Jews to write his apology that he signed.

The law suit came at a time when Ford through neglect in adapting to the evolution of the auto industry and economic pressure from the Jews closed down his entire operation for over a year as he met innovation with the innovation of the V8.  Ed’s son was one of the first to buy one, even though Ed had always detested that poor man’s car, in support of Henry.  But Ford had lost his sales lead slipping into second place behind Chevy where he stayed at least through the fifties.  The entire auto industry was consolidated into the Big Three- G.M., Ford and late arriver Chrysler with a few small survivors.

The same process affected the movie industry which affected Ed’s fortunes greatly when sound was introduced in 1927-28.  The expense new constantly changing equipment and technological expertise or evolution of the industry was too much for the smaller firms to bear.  The consolidation had been going on before as William Fox, previously the most successful of the movie producers, was driven into bankruptcy by the New York money Jews.  Fox’s firm, he himself was Jewish but resisted the consolidation, was joined to Twentieth Century to form Twentieth Century-Fox.

The most successful consolidation that would determine Ed’s fortunes was the Loewe Corporation’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  These three studios as MGM were under the hegemony of Loewe’s in New York City.  Loewe is German or Yiddish for lion so the MGM logo with the words Metro Goldwyn Mayer under the roaring lion represents them as the operating companies of Loewes.  From 1930 to the fifties MGM was the gold standard of the industry.  As children we all cheered at the Saturday movies when the lion roared because then we were guaranteed a good movie.  For the rest of the logos you could never be sure.

So the Jewish machinations against Ed essentially climaxed when Ed surrendered control of his magnificent creation in 1931 as he signed his contract with Loewes, MGM and Louis B. Mayer.

There is one other major issue of the twenties to be considered as it did affect Ed although indirectly.  The issue is the stock market crash of 1929.  The important point here is that the Wilson administration was socialist.  If the Democrats, that if the Wilsonians  Cox and FDR, had won in 1920 the Wilsonian socialist program would have moved forward.  Instead the Republican Warren G. Harding was elected and in his return to ‘normalcy’ he squashed the whole Wilsonian program none of which had had a chance to take effect.  Harding simply suppressed the Revolution.

The Democrats then looking ahead could see no chance of regaining power save through some national disaster through which Republicans could be portrayed as inept.  With the prosperity of the New Era there would be little chance for election for who knew, maybe fifty years or more.  A national disaster, then, had to be created but one which the Democrats thought they could turn around in a snap.

The economist John Maynard Keynes was touting monetary stimulus as the panacea of all economic downturns.  It was true that such a program had never been tried but it sounded logical and a sure fired remedy.  It was only necessary to create an economic downturn such as 1873, 1893 or 1907 by, say, 1930.

The so-called stock market crash was no big thing in itself.  We’ve had bigger since then without any adverse results.  The stock market has always recovered and risen to new heights without a monetary stimulus.

The difference in 1929 was that margin requirements were very low at only 10%.  That means that if you had a hundred dollars you could buy a thousand dollars worth of stock on margin or essentially on credit.  If the stock rose you could sell and pocket the cash.  If he stock dropped there would a margin call to bring your indebtedness back under 10%.  If your stock doubled as stocks did at that time you could use 100.00 of the increase as collateral and buy more stock and so on but with each increase in value your margin call would be greater and as it did exceed your means.  Then, of course, it all came crashing down as it did.

First a buying frenzy had to be created which was done.  The momentum continued forward crazily until the plug was pulled which it was.  Then stocks not only lost value but those who were betting the farm were foreclosed and tens of thousands of people became penniless.  Thus one had the terrible situation of 1929.

Herbert Hoover the Republican president was then called on to solve the problem instantly.  Hoover didn’t have the secret the Democrats thought they had so by the time the country was singing Happy Day Are Here Again FDR was in office.  He reached into his Keynes top hat to pull out the Magic Formula and what to his surprise but that the marvelous Keynesian solution didn’t work.  Well, no matter,  he’d already been elected and that was miracle enough.  Blame the Depression on the Republicans and get on with it.  Thus Wilsonian socialism returned to Washington along with the Jews.

Back in 1928 Ed ever on the lookout for a fast buck business opportunity had invested in an airplane engine called The Apache and what he considered a sure thing, a San Fernando Valley airport.  The Depression stopped both with Ed losing his entire investment.  Oh well, he could still write so he formed his own publishing company and did.  He turned out the best work of his career, but then, that’s for the chapter on the thirties.

In conclusion the twenties had been a political and economic disaster for Ed.  He had been soundly trounced by the Judaeo-Communist forces.  Worse was still to come.