March 2018 – Page 2 – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Yes, George C. Marshall Earned Title of ‘Greatest Living American’

A photograph of General George C. Marshall, signed, went to auction in October 2007.

By Jim O’Neal

In Harvard Yard, a venue carefully chosen as dignified and non-controversial, Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s 15-minute speech on June 5, 1947, painted a grim picture for the graduates. With words crafted and refined by the most brilliant minds in the State Department, Marshall outlined the “continuing hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos” in a Europe still devastated after the end of World War II.

Marshall, one of the greatest Secretaries of State the United States has ever produced, asserted unequivocally that it was time for a comprehensive recovery plan. The only caveat was that “the initiation must come from Europe.” His words were much more than typical boilerplate commencement rhetoric and Great Britain’s wily Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin heard the message loud and clear. By July 3, he and his French counterpart, Georges Bidault, had invited 22 nations to Paris to develop a European Recovery Program (ERP). Bevin had been alerted to the importance by Dean Acheson, Marshall’s Under Secretary of State. Acheson was point man for the old Eastern establishment and had already done a masterful job of laying the groundwork for Marshall’s speech. He made the public aware that European cities still looked like bombs had just started falling, ports were still blocked, and farmers were hoarding crops because they couldn’t get a decent price. Furthur, Communist parties of France and Italy (upon direct orders from the Kremlin) had launched waves of strikes, destabilizing already shaky governments.

President Harry S. Truman was adamant that any assistance plan be called the Marshall Plan, honoring the man he believed to be the “greatest living American.” Yet much of Congress still viewed it as “Operation Rat Hole,” pouring money into an untrustworthy socialist blueprint.

The Soviets and their Eastern European satellites refused an invitation to participate and in February 1948, Joseph Stalin’s vicious coup in Prague crumpled Czechoslovakia’s coalition, which inspired speedy passage of the ERP. This dramatic action marked a significant step away from the FDR-era policy of non-commitment in European matters, especially expensive aid programs. The Truman administration had pragmatically accepted a stark fact – the United States was the only Western country with any money after WWII.

Shocked by reports of starvation in most of Europe and desperate to bolster friendly governments, the administration offered huge sums of money to any democratic country in Europe able to develop a plausible recovery scheme – even those in the Soviet sphere of influence – despite the near-maniacal resistance of the powerful and increasingly paranoid Stalin.

With no trepidation, on April 14, the freighter John H. Quick steamed out of Texas’ Galveston Harbor, bound for Bordeaux with 9,000 tons of American wheat. Soon, 150 ships were busy shuttling across the Atlantic carrying food, fuel, industrial equipment and construction materials – essential to rebuilding entire countries. The Marshall Plan’s most impressive achievement was its inherent magnanimity, for its very success returned Europe to a competitive position with the United States!

Winston Churchill wrote, “Many nations have arrived at the summit of the world, but none, before the United States, on this occasion, has chosen that moment of triumph, not for aggrandizement, but for further self-sacrifices.”

Truman may have been right about this greatest living American and his brief speech that altered a ravaged world and changed history for millions of people – who may have long forgotten the debt they owe him. Scholars are still studying the brilliant tactics involved.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

For a While, the Tiny Mosquito was Destroying Armies

A key to the success of the Panama Canal was Colonel William P. Gorgas’ mosquito-eradication program, which saved thousands of workers’ lives. This example of a U.S. gold coin commemorating the construction of the Panama Canal and the rebuilding of the City of San Francisco sold for $152,750 at a January 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The French were no strangers to the Stegomyia fasciata. It was, after all, that tiny mosquito that wiped out the French troops Napoleon had dispatched to squash a slave uprising in Haiti and then the French-controlled colony of Saint-Domingue. From 1802 to 1803, yellow fever ravaged 50,000 troops, including their commanding officer General Emmanuel Leclerc. His replacement, General Rochambeau, retreated with a mere 3,000 soldier-survivors.

Experts estimate that twice as many soldiers were lost in Haiti than were killed in the world famous Battle of Waterloo!

Napoleon finally conceded that they were no match for this mysterious, silent killer and abandoned the ambitious plans to expand the empire into the Louisiana Territory, selling it for $15 million, which doubled the size of the young United States. It was an epic bargain for the United States and dramatically reduced the risk of future wars with France, which were almost inevitable.

Later in 1889, another Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, led a decade-long and terminally troubled attempt to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama that crumbled after 20,000 workers (one-third of his force) died from yellow fever – a highly contagious, usually fatal disease contracted from a single mosquito bite.

Au revoir, monsieurs.

In America, the fever reached epidemic proportions as well. More than 300,000 cases were reported in the United States between 1793 and 1900; at times with mortality rates of up to 85 percent. The disease attacks the liver, turns the skin yellow, raises body temperatures and causes internal bleeding before the victim lapses into a coma. More U.S. troops were killed in the Spanish-American War by yellow fever than by the enemy. Yellow fever, nicknamed “yellow jack” after the pennants that flew to signal a quarantine, arrived in Central America in mid-16th century aboard slave ships travelling from Africa. Despite countless hypotheses, the cause of the disease and its rapid spread remained a mystery.

Dr. Carlos Finlay of Cuba had long theorized that mosquitos carried and spread yellow fever. The conventional medical establishment criticized Finlay, calling him “mosquito man.” But no one had a better idea. In desperation, U.S. Army Major Walter Reed, his fellow doctors, and a detachment of soldiers traveled to Havana in June 1900 and tested Finlay’s theory by volunteering to let indigenous mosquitos bite them.

On Aug. 27, Dr. James Carroll allowed himself to be bitten, fell ill with the disease, but survived. Reed survived his bout as well. Several other colleagues died and both Reed and Carroll sustained lasting damage to their health. The soldiers refused to accept a $250 bonus, believing it would cheapen their sacrifice. Public opinion was cynical and negative. American newspapers mocked the experiment or simply ignored it. Congress even denied a pension to one soldier, the first one who developed the test even though the experiment left him paralyzed.

Yet the team prevailed and in October 1900, Walter Reed finally declared publicly that “the mosquito served as the intermediate host for the parasite of yellow fever.” The disease’s cycle was soon unraveled. Female mosquitos picked up yellow fever in the first three days of a patient’s infection and became contagious after a 12-day incubation period with the pandemic disease.

Eventually, Maj. William Crawford Gorgas eradicated the disease in Panama and the Canal Zone. He also wiped out another mosquito that spread malaria and rats that carried bubonic plague. Gorgas’ triumph allowed the United States to begin their canal dig and finish it by 1914. Panama’s death rate from yellow jack had dropped to only half that of the United States.

Problem solved.

People Flocked to California in Hopes of Finding Instant Riches

A daguerreotype of a California gold-mining scene by Robert Vance, circa 1850, sold for $83,650 at a May 2011 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When Brigham Young heard that fellow Mormon Sam Brannan had been tithing the gold miners at the Mormon Diggings in California, he sent an envoy to demand the church’s money. In a version of the story circulated by sawmill operator John Sutter, Brannan replied, “You go back and tell Brigham Young that I’ll give up the Lord’s money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord!”

Brannan’s success transcended his dealings with local miners. As the rush to the mines accelerated, his Sacramento store did huge business, as much as $5,000 a day. With the proceeds, the wily entrepreneur opened additional stores throughout gold territory and constructed hotels, warehouses and other commercial buildings. In San Francisco, he organized a consortium that built the city’s first large wharf at a cost of $200,000. By quickly repaying all owner-investors, Brannan’s reputation and wealth continued to grow.

Sam Brannan is widely recognized as the first authentic millionaire in California.

When gold was discovered on the American River above Sutter’s Fort in January 1848, California was a sparsely populated frontier. The gold had been formed over a 200-million-year period with the constant recycling of the earth’s crust as minerals precipitated out in streaks or veins. Gold occurs in the crust of the earth at an average concentration of 5 parts per billion. But, the melting and cooling that produced the Sierra Batholith yielded veins of gold-bearing quartz as high as 100 parts per billion.

Most of this gold was trapped far below the surface of the earth, where it remained for tens of millions of years until the crust crumbled and the glaciers took over. The heat of the earth – which had driven the crystal plates to their collisions with the western edge of North America – then melted the rock and boiled out the precious metal. All that remained was for humans to harvest what the earth had collected. And they did so with enormous zeal.

The astonishing news of “Gold! In California!” prompted hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to flock to California in hopes of finding instant riches. They sailed from Australia and China, from Europe and South America. They ventured across the disease-plagued Isthmus of Panama and through the treacherous waters of Cape Horn. And they traveled by foot, wagon and horseback and over the towering Sierras. They abandoned wives and families, homesteads and farms.

Sacramento and San Francisco popped up overnight as did scores of mining camps. Entrepreneurs such as Leland Stanford, Sam Brannan and merchants like Levi Strauss amassed fortunes simply by supplying miners with picks and shovel, tents, food and other items needed to harvest the gold. By 1850, California had become a state … marking the fastest journey to statehood in United States history.

Sam Brannan hit a bad streak when a divorce forced him to liquidate his entire holdings to pay a court-ordered 50/50 division of assets … in cash. He died penniless and establishing a precedent that would plague future husbands who were divorced in California.