Memo to Elizabeth and Bernie: You’ve been scooped by roughly 130 years

A collection of First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland’s family and personally owned artifacts went to auction in September 2020.

By Jim O’Neal

March 4, 1893, marked the second time Stephen Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as president of the United States. He was greeted at the Executive Mansion by President Benjamin Harrison, the Republican he had defeated three months earlier. It was a mildly awkward meeting, the only time in history the transfer of presidential power involved outgoing and incoming presidents who had run against each other twice (each one winning once and losing once).

Benjamin “Little Ben” Harrison (he was 5-feet-6) was notoriously cold and aloof and President-elect Cleveland was stubbornly independent, with an aura of self-righteousness. Historian Henry Adams observed that “one of them had no friends and the other only enemies.” Robert G. Ingersoll, nicknamed “The Great Agnostic,” went a step further: “Each side would have been glad to defeat the other, if it could do so without electing its own candidate.” Strangely, I felt the same way in both 2016 and 2020.

Inauguration Day was bitterly cold and many recalled that Harrison’s grandfather, William Henry Harrison (the ninth president) had died 31 days after his inauguration. Following a very long acceptance speech, he caught pneumonia and it was fatal. He was 68 and at the time the oldest person to assume the presidency, a distinction he held until 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn in at age 69.

In 1893, President-elect Cleveland’s vice president, Adlai E. Stevenson, took the oath of office first. Sixty years later, his grandson (and namesake) would make two futile runs for the presidency (1952 and 1956). He had the bad luck of having one of America’s greatest heroes, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as an opponent. War heroes are difficult to defeat and, in this case, it’s generally acknowledged that Ike could have beaten anyone and run on either party’s ticket. Outgoing President Harry Truman had even tried to broker such a deal in 1948 when he offered to step down to vice president.

Sadly, the 1892 election was vexed by Harrison’s wife contracting tuberculosis and dying two weeks before the election of Cleveland. But, after the inauguration and traditional transition, the ex-president seemed more than ready to return to his home in Indianapolis. Surprisingly, four years later, some of Harrison’s friends tried to convince him to seek the presidency again. He declined, but did agree to travel extensively making speeches in support of William McKinley’s successful candidacy. Little Ben died in February 1901 from pneumonia and a short six months later, President McKinley would become the third president to be assassinated.

But today belonged to President Cleveland and his wife Frances. They had been married during the first term in office on June 2, 1886, in the Blue Room at the White House. Cleveland was 49 years old at the time, Frances a mere 21. Frances Folsom Cleveland was the youngest First Lady in history and became very popular, primarily due to her youthful personality. They would have five children with the first one named Ruth. No, she was definitely not associated with Baby Ruth. That candy bar was renamed 30 years after her birth and 17 years after her death. After a warm welcome at the White House, President Cleveland’s troubles started almost right away.

In May, barely two months back in the White House, Cleveland discovered a growth on his palate, the soft tissue in the roof of the mouth that separates the oral and nasal cavities. It turned out to be a malignant tumor that required surgical removal. Fearful of panic in the already shaky financial markets, a clever plan was devised to perform a secret operation on a yacht in the East River. The surgery was successful and the president recuperated while sailing innocently on Long Island. The press was surprisingly gullible and accepted a story about two teeth that needed removal.

However, on dry land, economic forces were forming a dark storm that would usher in the worst financial crisis in the nation’s history. The pending depression would become known as the Panic of ’93. The 19th century had weathered many boom-bust economic cycles, but this powerful downturn would persist until the 20th century. Even as the president was organizing his cabinet, banks, factories and farms were tumbling into bankruptcy. Virtually everywhere, workers were struggling with layoffs and payouts as companies were swept away.

In his inaugural speech, Cleveland had warned about the dangers of business monopolies and inflation, however, his response to the economic chaos was austere in the extreme. He did not believe government should intervene for fear of eroding self-reliance and over-reliance on government. This was a common belief and it would take another generation for a new consensus to shape American politics. To fully grasp the significant schism that was silently evolving, one only has to read Thomas Sherman’s 1889 essay titled “The Owners of the United States.”

Using census data and promises of anonymity, he developed the thesis that 1/30th of the people in England owned 2/3 of the wealth. In America, he listed 70 individuals worth $2.7 billion and asserted no other country had such a concentration of millionaires. By contrast, 80% of Americans earned less than $500 annually, and 50,000 families owned half of the nation’s wealth. Further, wealthy men and corporations escaped taxation, with the burden falling “exclusively upon the working class.”

Memo to Elizabeth and Bernie: You’ve been scooped by roughly 130 years. Somehow, we managed to have a decent 20th century, save the world several times and develop a technological cornucopia for 330 million people vs. any other time in the history of the world. Go Bezos, Jobs/Allen, the Google guys, Walmart, Henry Ford, FDR and my man T.R.!

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].

 

We’ve come a long way since a sick George Washington had 40% of his blood drained

A Republic gold proof commemorating the 150th anniversary Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’ birth,1968-BP PR63 Ultra Cameo NGC, Budapest mint, sold for $4,920 at a May 2021 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The results from my 2001 annual physical indicated one area of concern: an elevated PSA. These three letters represent an enzyme (prostate-specific antigen) and, with a digital rectum exam, can indicate three possibilities. One is prostate cancer. Early detection – as with most diseases – can dramatically improve the odds for a cure. So my next logical step was a visit to a local urologist.

An eight-needle biopsy (they used to take six) confirmed the presence of cancer. Pathologists use a grading score derived by peering through a microscope at images to assess cell-differentiation on the left and right of the prostate. Each are ranked 1 to 5 and then added together. My Gleason was 3/4, which is higher than the 3/3 of an average prostate cancer. But, it did not reveal how fast the cancer was growing or if it had managed to escape from the prostate. Prostate cancer seems compelled to get in the main blood stream and then find a safe place to hide and grow. As you can appreciate, this is not a good thing, so the objective is to get it out permanently asap.

Prostate cancer is a diabolical opponent and in 2000, 180,000 American men were positively diagnosed and 32,000 died. It can be caused by hereditary and African-Americans have a higher incidence. However, the Western diet … lots of fat, red meat, pizza and even Cheetos … is, in my view, the real scoundrel when compared to Asia. Curing it is highly dependent on several variables, but the two most important are the skill of the surgeon and having the cancer still contained in the organ.

I was able to get an appointment with Dr. Patrick Walsh at Johns-Hopkins and Nancy and I flew to Baltimore on June 3. Dr. Walsh is a quiet, serious man, but with a great sense of humor and compassion. He is unlike most surgeons who tend to have a swagger, in my opinion, and invariably a sense of urgency (possibly because they’re on a mission to save the world) and prefer talking. Dr. Walsh quietly listened and then whisked my slides away to evaluate two things. First, he confirmed I had cancer and second, he thought I’d be a good candidate for a radical (his specialty and the only reason we were there).

One small detail was his availability. The first opening wasn’t until Sept. 5 (after a governor, two senators and the King of Spain, among others). It was a long summer.

After a successful operation, I was recuperating in Baltimore and watching CNN when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. My physical situation seemed trivial compared to the 9/11 chaos in NYC and the future implications. We were at war.

I had a lot of time to read and the words “the skill of the surgeon,” which guided me to the history of this noble profession. In 1536, during one of the perpetual wars between France and Spain, French soldiers invaded the Italian city of Turin after a bloody battle. The conventional wisdom was that bullet wounds should be cauterized with boiling oil. A French surgeon ran out oil and substituted a milder concoction of egg yolks, oil of roses and turpentine. The next day, the men treated with boiling oil were in great agony, while the others with bland dressings were resting comfortably. It seems modern surgery began with a great unlearning of quackery, some of it dating back 2,000 years. Western medicine was based on the teaching of Hippocrates and it was sadly out of date as the boiling oil example typifies.

Alas, other examples abound: Critically ill and dehydrated patients were given noxious potions to provoke vomiting and diarrhea. Other patients died regularly after being bled by leeches and lancets. George Washington went to bed with a severe sore throat and died eight hours later after four doctors drained 40% of his blood. One historian wrote, “If Hippocrates is the Father of Medicine, it is a dubious paternity.”

Operations were once compared to commando raids. Surgeons get in and out with maximum haste, while cutting off as few of their assistants’ fingers as possible. Then there was the enormous, rather obvious, but unrecognized significance of sterility. Most surgeons never stopped to change their gowns, wearing the blood-soaked garments as a badge of endurance while operating on a conveyor of multiple patients. Hospitals developed a well-earned reputation as houses of death.

Another startling example occurred in the middle of the 17th century when new mothers (in hospitals) started dying in droves all over Europe. The mysterious disease was dubbed puerperal (Latin for child) fever. Doctors attributed it to bad air or lax morals. In fact, it was due to germ-laden hands transferring microbes from one uterus to another. A doctor in Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis, realized that if hospital staff washed their hands in mildly chlorinated water, deaths of all kinds declined sharply. It took 250 years for the medical profession to recognize the influence of hygiene on patient mortality. It seems morbidly ironic that we’re still preaching about hand washing in the middle of a pandemic or arguing if face masks are some secret Constitutional right.

I was blessed. Before the 1980s, 100% of men who had prostate surgery were impotent and probably severely incontinent. Dr. Walsh told me that many men felt the cure was worse than the disease. Then, he (personally) discovered a remarkable fact. The nerves were outside the prostate and potency could be preserved if a highly skilled surgeon performed the delicate surgery. He perfected the “nerve-sparing” technique that has permitted millions of men to maintain a normal family life. Pass the pizza. We’ve removed another barrier to dietary freedom!

I hope it’s not too long before another writer looks back at the present time and explains why 100% of Americans didn’t get a simple vaccination that would have prevented some of us from joining the nearly 600,000 people who have died or the 32 million that got COVID-19. Herd immunity seems like such an easy objective, but if the African variant mutates and we need a new vaccine … well you get the drift.

I’m honestly embarrassed by the utter stupidity.

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].