Fine & Decorative Arts – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

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].

How to explain why Americans remain so divided?

An oil-on-canvas portrait of George Washington by Philadelphia artist Robert Street (1796-1865) sold for $41,250 at a May 2019 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The date was April 30, 1789, and the highly respected commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War was ready to take the oath as the first president of the United States. The election had taken place much earlier in January, but electoral votes had not been counted until April 5.

General George Washington, who also had served as the presiding officer at the Continental Convention of 1787, was unanimously elected to the highest office in the new nation. He had to travel from his home in Virginia to New York City for the formal inauguration.

Robert Livingston, chancellor of New York, administered the presidential oath of office at Federal Hall across from the New York Stock Exchange. This site was home to the first Congress, the Supreme Court and executive offices. President Washington then retired to the Senate Chamber where he delivered the first inaugural address to a joint session of Congress. Observers commented he was mildly embarrassed and noticed an almost imperceptible tremble; possibly due to the significant historic relevance of the occasion.

Two blocks away at 75 Wall Street now stands a 42-story modern structure of marble, glass and steel. This luxurious condominium was converted from office space in 2008. It sits at the water’s edge of the Hudson River, atop an old slave market, where people were bought and sold for over 50 years (1711-62).

For Dutch and Spanish slave-traders, who controlled the transatlantic trade at the time, there were far superior markets for the sale of slaves. For one, the sugar plantations in both Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil required hundreds of thousands of slaves.

Given the insatiable European demand for sugar, it made little sense for slave-traders to undertake the additional time to travel up the North American coast to service what was considered a small speculative market. A slave ship could make a round trip between West Africa and Brazil in the same time it would take just to reach Virginia one-way. Compounding the cost were the death rates a longer journey would impose on their human cargo. This was a thriving business and decisions were made based on profitability.

Another factor was that England’s American Colonies were not willing to pay a premium since there was an adequate supply of Europeans willing to serve as indentured servants. As a result, the transatlantic perimeter of the booming slave market essentially ended at the sugar-growing islands of the Caribbean.

In 1788, the year before Washington’s inauguration, the founders recognized that they would have to include language protecting slavery in order to get the necessary state votes to gain approval of the proposed U.S. Constitution. Perhaps James Madison – “The Father of the Constitution” – was the one who accomplished this without using either the words “slaves” or “slavery” (they do not appear until later with the 13th and 15th Amendments). Instead, the reference was to a person “held to service” or “bound to service.”

In a compromise, the Constitution ordered Congress to pass a regulation to abolish it by 1800. A special committee extended the deadline to 1808 to allow a gradual 20-year phase out. They assumed (wrongfully) that slavery would become uneconomic and just naturally die out. In fact, it continued to grow. The 1790 census reported a U.S. population of 4 million, including 700,000 slaves.

Then, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which fueled a massive increase in cotton production. Slave plantations were America’s first big business, not the railroad, as some believe. Ten of the first 12 presidents were slaveholders, and two of the earliest Chief Justices.

The slave trade was one of Great Britain’s most profitable businesses. From 1791 to 1800, British ships made 1,300 trips across the Atlantic with 400,000 slaves. And then from 1801 to 1807 another 266,000. During the whole of the 18th century, the slave trade accounted for 6 million Africans. Britain was the worst transgressor, responsible for 2.5 million of the total.

In 1807, the U.S. Congress passed the slave act to “prohibit the transportation of slaves into any port … from any foreign place” (starting in 1808, as directed by the Constitution). However, it did not ban the trading of slaves within the United States. With an estimated 4 million slaves in the country (plus children born into slavery), this resulted in a self-sustaining model that did not require importation, which was now abolished.

The nation continued to evolve with a Southern agrarian society heavily dependent on slave labor while the North pursued industrialization. The constant debates over abolition simply shifted to how new territories and states would enter the Union … as free or slavers. This delicate balance was not sustainable and virtually everyone knew how it might end. It was almost inevitable that no permanent agreement was possible.

We know the implications of the great Civil War that was required to permanently stop slavery in the United States and the difficulties during the post-war reconstruction era. We can wonder about the progress in civil rights during the 20th century. But how do we explain why we are still so divided racially?

I was eager to hear the recent presidential debates, expecting discussions about climate change, health care, immigration, inequality and impeachment. Instead, issues like reparations, asylum, abortion and even forced busing in the 1970s took center stage. Had I dialed 2020 and ended up in 1820 in a Twilight Zone episode?

Maybe Pogo was right after all: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Floridians seem too busy enjoying the sun to worry about sea levels

Hermann Ottomar Herzog’s oil on canvas *Fishing on the Gulf Coast, Florida*, sold for $150,000 at a May 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Many people typically think of American colonization in terms of English exploration and the establishment of eastern settlements like Jamestown, Va. (1607), the first permanent colony. Or perhaps even the slightly more renowned Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628-91) and Plymouth Colony (just south), which was founded by Separatist Pilgrims seeking freedom from the edicts of the Church of England.

However, the fact is Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León (1457-1521) was the first European to touch what is now the mainland of the United States. He accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World in 1493 as one of several hundred “gentlemen explorers.” This voyage landed in Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti) as Columbus never actually set foot in North America.

Ponce de León leveraged his military prowess to win an appointment from King Ferdinand of Spain to become the first governor of Puerto Rico. This was followed by his maiden voyage to the mainland, where he discovered La Florida (Land of Flowers) in 1513. He would die eight years later, after a battle with native Calusa people, without establishing a permanent settlement. The mythical tale of his search for a magical “Fountain of Youth” began circulating after his death. He was interred in Puerto Rico and his tomb is in the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista. Some speculate that more than 30 percent of Puerto Ricans are in his lineage.

The arrival of Europeans, primarily from Spain and England, has been described as the “most astounding clash of civilizations in history.” Scottish philosopher Adam Smith called it the “greatest and most important event in the history of mankind.” Spain dominated world exploration from the 15th to 17th centuries and was the first to own the description of an “empire on which the sun never sets.” This title shifted to the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries as the British Navy became the world’s most powerful force.

The devastation these incursions into the Western Hemisphere had on native populations almost defies comprehension. In 1492, Hispaniola had 1 million inhabitants; 20 years later, it had dwindled to 46,000. America’s native population was estimated at up to 100 million. An average of 1 million perished annually for most of the 16th century. It has been labeled “the greatest genocide in human history.”

The first official voyage to Florida is a microcosm of the relentless force of conquest. Spain traded it to Great Britain in 1763 for control of Cuba. The United States claimed ownership after the Louisiana Purchase (1803), and it gained statehood (no. 27) on March 3, 1845, after the Indian Removal Act and Andrew Jackson defeated the Seminole. Florida became a slave state, seceded from the Union and became part of the Confederacy.

During the next century, Florida would suffer through killer hurricanes, tornadoes and severe freezes. Then came the Great Land Boom of the 1920s when the city of Miami turned itself into a real estate cornucopia; 100,000 people were getting rich selling lots to each other. Some land was sold 10 times a day and the bubble was getting bigger every hour. One cabdriver drove a couple down from New York, took the $1,300 fare and invested it. Within three days, he was a millionaire. Another man sold his place in an auction line, went to another location and parlayed his money into $5 million.

One day, the merry-go-round stopped and those still holding tickets were broke!

Today, Florida has recovered from the 2008 real estate bubble, has a $1 trillion economy (fourth in the U.S.), a population of over 20 million (third largest), and is home to more than 451,000 millionaires (a fact) … and property is hot again.

One Achilles’ heel is that the state is a long peninsula and 75 percent of its people live within 10 miles of the coastline. The state is very flat. The highest point is 345 feet above sea level, which is the lowest high point in any state. It is easy to visualize rising sea levels endangering a state already known for its swamps. But Floridians seem relaxed about the risk. They are too busy flipping houses and enjoying the sun, sand and nightlife.

Cheers!

There were no winners or losers in the War of 1812

Portraits of James and Dolley Madison by Lawrence Williams went to auction in October 2007.

By Jim O’Neal

The White House was burned to a shell. The previous evening, British soldiers had found the president’s house abandoned and they feasted on the dinner and wine left there untouched due to the hasty exit of Dolley Madison and the entire staff. The date was Aug. 24, 1814, and the War of 1812 came directly to the young country’s capital. There was little doubt about the enemy’s intentions. Public buildings would be destroyed in retribution for the burning of both the legislature and governor’s residence in York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada.

Someone (other than the First Lady) had rescued the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington by trimming it from its heavy frame. Executive papers and personal effects, along with silverware, were hurriedly spirited away by carriage for safekeeping. A torrential rain had mercifully helped minimize the damage.

Three days after the British departed, the Madisons returned to the ruins. The torching of the president’s house had mortified the populace, and political enemies accused Madison of cowardice for fleeing days before the incident. Even the press piled on, asserting that Dolley could have saved more, or worse, that the president could have prevented the entire affair. There was malicious gossip that this might finally reduce the excessive social entertaining of the First Lady.

Fortuitously, refuse from the fire had fallen gracefully within the stone walls of the White House and virtually no debris was scattered on the surrounding grounds. The city superintendent commissioned an assessment of all public buildings and the consensus was the White House was damaged more than the Capitol or other executive buildings. Since the blackened shells were shameful symbols of defeat, a debate arose over whether the federal city should be rebuilt. New buildings in a different location could provide an opportunity for a fresh start.

Cincinnati was mentioned as a perfect candidate since it was more central to the country’s westward expansion; the Ohio River and new steamboat connections to St. Louis and New Orleans would facilitate commerce. It would also minimize the need to contend with crossing the mountains, and the re-centering rationale was similar to the arguments used to support the earlier move from Philadelphia to Virginia. Fate intervened just in time with news of victory and the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Congress hastily ratified an appropriation of $500,000 to fund the restoration of all damaged buildings. Jubilant backers of the city implied promises of more money as needed, knowing that once construction was under way, Congress would have no other option than to continue with the restoration. The capital had been saved and that was all that was important.

A few months earlier in September, the formidable British Navy attacked Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The fort’s soldiers were able to withstand 25 hours of bombardment. The next day, they hoisted an enormous American flag, which provided the inspiration of a poem by Francis Scott Key – The Star-Spangled Banner, which became an instant hit and in 1931 became the national anthem of the United States. British forces withdrew from Chesapeake Bay and organized their forces for a campaign against New Orleans. This strategic location would provide access to the Mississippi River and the entire western part of the United States. They still hadn’t abandoned their ambition of establishing a British North America.

Colonel Andrew Jackson was 45 years old when the War of 1812 started – semiretired on his 640-acre plantation the Hermitage – and still with a burning ambition to get involved. His prayers were answered with the assignment to assume command of New Orleans. His ragtag group of free blacks, pirates (including Jean Lafitte) and loyal Tennessee Volunteers cleverly defeated the British. General Jackson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and would become a two-term president in 1828.

In a slight twist, the victory at New Orleans occurred a few weeks after the British had already signed the Treaty of Ghent. However, Jackson’s role in the war was absolutely critical to the future expansion of the country. Not only did he spare an almost certain loss of territory in the Southwest, but he also cleared the air over the status of the Gulf Coast. Great Britain did not recognize any American claims about lands included in the Louisiana Purchase. They disputed – correctly – the legality of the treaty. France had no legal right to sell it to the United States since the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso between Spain and France specifically stated that France would not sell without offering to return it to Spain. This meant that none of the lower Mississippi or any of the Gulf Coast belonged to the United States.

Their claims were blithely ignored and the Treaty of Ghent was silent on the entire issue. It has been said that there were no winners or losers in the little War of 1812 … except for American Indians. The United States signed 15 different treaties guaranteeing their lands and then proceeded to break every one of them.

Harriet Tubman was a ‘Moses’ to America’s slaves

Charles Wilbert White’s 1949 ink and pencil on board titled *Harriet Tubman* sold for $25,000 at a May 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In the 1830s, word started spreading about an Underground Railroad. A train with no tracks, no locomotive and no tickets needed to ride. From one plantation to the next, rumors spread about a “railroad to freedom” with no timetables and a crew that consisted of good citizens in the finest traditions of a young nation’s civil disobedience. In addition to helping fugitive slaves elude slave-hunters working for owners, Quakers, Protestants, Catholics and even American Indians were bound by their determination to see slavery abolished everywhere. It was a broad constituency of black and white abolitionists from the major cities in the North, including those in the border states.

It inevitably grew into a direct challenge to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which specifically required the return of runaway slaves, even after they had safely reached non-slave states.

This law was possibly the most controversial aspect of the more comprehensive “Compromise of 1850,” and it quickly became nicknamed the “Bloodhound Law” for obvious reasons. Black newspapers went a step further by labeling it “manstealing,” from the Bible’s Exodus 21:16: “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.” The law also included a proviso to discourage anyone from obstructing the return of a slave by imposing a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment up to six months.

Naturally, many slaves who made the decision to escape merely walked away without any elaborate escape plans. Traveling at night and hoping to find strangers en route to assist them was more risky, but they were determined to follow their North Star. Others planned their escapes carefully by surreptitiously building up a supply of food and money and, if lucky, using a “conductor” who knew safe routes and people who would help. There also were slaves who decided not to risk escape, but were more than willing to aid and abet along the way.

Once a slave crossed the border into the North, there was a network of Underground Railroad people to assist. In addition to food, water and basic nursing, it was also possible to get “papers” that identified them as freedmen – then get directions to the next station. Churches, stables and even attics (a la Anne Frank) became good hiding places until they could get far enough north. Canada became a safe spot, just as it would be the next century during the Vietnam War.

Among the Underground Railroad’s more heroic engineers was the ex-slave Harriet Tubman (c.1822-1913), a native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore who escaped to Philadelphia in 1849. Once free, she wrote: “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything … and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Her own escape made Tubman determined to rescue as many slaves from bondage as she could. Her trips were made during the winter months when nights were long. Escapes began on Saturday nights; the slaves would not be missed until Monday. When “wanted” posters went up, she paid black men to tear them down. She kept a supply of paregoric to put babies to sleep so their cries would not raise suspicion.

She carried a gun, not simply for protection, but as inspiration – to threaten anyone in her group feigning fatigue. For her, the welfare of the entire group was paramount. If pursuers got too close, she would hustle her people on a southbound train, a ruse that worked because authorities never expected fugitives to flee in that direction. In addition to slaves, she helped John Brown recruit men for the infamous Raid on Harpers Ferry and worked as a cook, nurse and an armed scout for the U.S. Army after the war started.

Prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison compared her to “Moses,” who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt, but this Moses never lost a man. The Moses in Exodus spent 40 years wandering in the desert and then put the future Israelites in the only place in the Middle East with no oil!

Harriet “Moses” Tubman was asked why she was not afraid. She answered: “I can’t die but once.”

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].

Efforts Under Way (Again) to Divide the Golden State

Albert Bierstadt’s 1872 oil on canvas *Mount Brewer from King’s River Canyon, California*, sold for $602,500 at a November 2012 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On June 4, 1965, the California State Senate voted 27-12 to divide California into two separate states. To make the proposal effective, it required approval by the State Assembly, followed by both California voters and the U.S. Congress. The plan failed to generate enough support in the State Assembly and did not proceed. In 1992, the State Assembly passed a proposal to allow a referendum vote in each county to partition California into three states: North, South and Central California. In a twist, this time the proposal died in the Senate.

These were not new or even unique legislative actions. Since California became the 31st state to join the United States in 1850, there have been more than 220 similar attempts, obviously none successful. Even while California was under Spanish rule, the province was divided into Alta California (upper) and Baja California (lower). Alta California was the portion that entered the Union, while Baja remained a territory under Mexico rule. It is now one of Mexico’s 31 states … an extremely nice place for turistas to enjoy the sun, sand, fishing and golf.

After Lewis and Clark finished their historic expedition to map out exactly what we actually acquired from France via the Louisiana Purchase, President Jefferson envisioned the Northwest area eventually becoming an independent country … the “Pacific Empire.” He thought it might include a good chunk of Canada, along with what is now Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The war with Mexico trumped that idea when we ended up with the United States expanding into the western Pacific area from San Diego to the Canadian border, followed by the discovery of gold, which ensured dramatic migration from east to west.

One of the more interesting episodes in carving up California in the 20th century is worth re-telling. In October 1941, the mayor of a small town in Oregon announced that four counties in Oregon planned to unite with three counties in Northern California to form the new state of Jefferson, in honor of the late president. On Nov. 27, 1941, a group of armed men stopped all traffic on U.S. Route 99 and handed out copies of their Proclamation of Independence for the State of Jefferson, along with their intent to secede from the Union. On Dec. 4, 1941, they selected local district attorney John Childs to be the governor of Jefferson. Alas, their efforts were foiled by Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor three days later.

My friend Stan Delaplane won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on the State of Jefferson that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. However, Stan’s bigger claim to fame was convincing the owner of the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco to introduce Irish coffee (after he had it at an airport in Ireland). The café is now one of the “must do” destinations in San Francisco, near the wharf area where the cable cars turn around. The BV claims they sell more Irish whiskey than anywhere in the world: 100 bottles a day, equal to 2,000 special recipes of Irish coffee. It is also a great people-watching place. Everyone you know will end up in the BV (if you are patient).

Stan worked for the Chronicle for 53 years and one of his favorite lines was, “Years ago, someone tilted the United States and all the loose nuts and bolts rolled to California.” What a terrific place for a writer, with new stuff happening every day!

Currently, there is another effort to create a New California as authorized and certified in Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. (The last time it was invoked was on June 20, 1863, when West Virginia detached from Virginia). The current proposal envisions New California (population 15 million) and California (population 25 million), and on Jan. 15, 2018, issued a Declaration of Independence with the intent to form a 51st state. These plans have been revamped to include an “autonomous Native American Nation.” The Calexit proposal (modeled after Brexit) establishes a non-reservation nation for American Indians through retrocession, primarily using federal land.

This form of reparation will see the state sliced down the middle, from Oregon to Mexico, with the coastal half remaining the home for two-thirds of the existing population. All that’s left to get the proposal on the 2021 ballot is 365,000+ signatories.

Let’s hope that what happens in California stays in California!

New York Times Reflects One of Our Greatest Freedoms

Bruce Braithwaite’s oil on canvas *The New York Times*, 2014, went to auction in November 2016.

By Jim O’Neal

Ah, freedom of speech, of religion, of assembly – things we all associate with the centrality of our democracy. For me, freedom of the press is the key to an open mind and an open market, the twin foundations of a truly free society. In political philosophical terms and in government, it has been a distinctly American idea since the founding of our great nation.

Others have made claims of a similar nature, but rarely endure. The classic example is the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (the Stalin Constitution), which stressed the inclusion of “freedom of the press,” but the words were cheap imitations since the press was the handmaiden of the ruling Communist Party and merely echoed the party line with absolute fidelity. It was hailed at the time as a paragon of virtue unequalled in history but, ironically, on the very eve of the reign of brutality that started the following year.

Adolph Ochs bought the bankrupt New York Times for $75,000 in 1896 when he was 38 years old. The newspaper had $300,000 in unpaid bills and was losing on average a $1,000 a day. Ochs had a humble beginning, starting as a floor sweeper at 14 with the Knoxville Chronicle. He was a typesetter and reporter with the Louisville Courier Journal at age 18 and by 20 became the owner of the declining Chattanooga Times. He had plunked down $250 of the total sale of $5,750.

The New-York Daily Times had been founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond (1820-1869), who was also credited with being the “Godfather of the GOP” after his political actions in the elections of 1856 and 1860.

Moving quickly after his purchase of the NYT, Ochs repeated what he did with the Chattanooga publication – making it into a newspaper and not a gazette of opinion, or a showcase for star writers. He avoided being a champion for the underdog or top dog or a crusader for political or social reform. Ochs had something to sell – news – and he intended to sell it dispassionately and with the guarantee that it was reliable, verifiable and not deviously insipid.

He eliminated installments of romantic fiction that earlier management believed would lure readers and eschewed scandalous stories based on gossip. Instead, he expanded coverage of financial news, business trends, real estate transactions, and the official activities of government that other newspapers had long ignored. He wanted a paper of record, one that each day would publish a record of every fire in NYC, the arrival of every mail ship, the names of every official visitor to the White House, the precise moment the sun set and the moon rose. His unbending objective was to be impartial and complete – and “not soil the breakfast linen.”

Throughout his publishing career, he made brilliant business decisions – his genius had not only been in the type of newspaper he created, but that he had made such a newspaper profitable. And on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1933, he issued an optimistic public statement in the midst of the Great Depression in which he asserted that “we are sobering up and painfully getting our house in order. The tragic experience we are having will result in educating the people that care, caution and conservatism are as necessary in economics as in physical health and that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount cannot be ignored, nor forgotten. They should continue to be our guide to a philosophy of life.”

The New York Times motto of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been reviewed for relevance several times and always decided in the affirmative. It’s proudly printed on the upper left-hand section of the front page every day. I wonder if anyone is still aware of its existence?

Steve Jobs Admired Our Greatest Industrial Designers – and It Shows

A 15-piece “Manhattan” Chrome-Plated Brass Cocktail Set, designed by Norman Bel Geddes and manufactured circa 1937, sold for $9,000 at a December 2008 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, he devotes a chapter (12) to the evolution of Job’s lifelong obsession with design after listening to his father’s habit of describing the styling intricacies of various cars. It includes brief periods of infatuation with Sony, flirting with the aesthetically sublime Zen Buddhism, Porsche (not Ferrari), rectangles with rounded edges (which drove the Apple team crazy), and, finally, the power of sleek (not slick), thin, clean and (above all) SIMPLE.

Jobs bemoaned the fact that there were no towering figures energizing the world of industrial design the way that Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) and Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) – the last living member of Bauhaus – had done. Especially not in Silicon Valley.

This was certainly not true in September 1935, when a New York Times critic wrote about a stage play in New Haven: “Meeting the scenic requirements of the play called for ingenuity, inspiration and a superior sense of the practical.” This stage designer did not foresee that his design sense would have a far more pervasive effect on everyday American life than he ever could have had as a stage designer. What the critic recognized was a “superior sense of the practical” – that would be obvious throughout the rest of this designer’s career.

His name was Henry Dreyfuss (1904-72), one of the pivotal figures in the emergence of industrial design.

Dreyfuss would move to center stage in the comparatively new discipline of industrial design, where participants were energized by the belief that anything could be improved by design … with the possible exception (perhaps) of the common egg. They would bring this supremely confident attitude to improving the design of a typical door handle as they would the interior of Air Force One.

Shape, color, utility, tactility, materials, even whimsy. All could be brought to bear as needed.

Dreyfuss’ work would influence everything from airplanes to alarm clocks, from locomotives to telephones (personally, I thought his “Princess” phone was a clumsy, unstable pink dud), and thermostats to John Deere tractors. Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) – a stage designer himself and one of the seminal figures of industrial design – was an early lasting influence on Dreyfuss. One of his precepts held that “the value of form lies in its ability to express significance clearly.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means, but others use the Honeywell thermostat as an example. While its presence became invisible because it became basic to our lives, I think the Honeywell-type thermostat’s longevity has more to do with the fact that it plays its role so well.

I’m more familiar with Loewy, another giant of industrial design who made a statement whose truth seems indisputable: “The most difficult things to design are the simplest. To improve the design of a threshing machine is easy, particularly compared to, say, a scalpel or needle.” Perhaps the complexity of redesigning the simplest things derived from these items already being so close to the essence of their purpose.

Industrial design, at its best, sends powerful signals of speed, of desirability, of sleekness, of sensuality. Much of the energy in industrial designs defining decades was directed toward streamlining or, more accurately, to use Dreyfuss’ word, “cleanlining.” Loewy summed it up: “Industrial design amounts to the shaping of everyday life”… the most inspired of those designs shape it for the better.

Steve Jobs must have embraced this to the fullest since all the Apple products I use seem to have a uniquely superior combination of form and function that I find addictive.

Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is Magically Restorative

Paintings by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) are found in museums such as the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. This Bouguereau piece, *Fishing For Frogs*, 1882, realized $1.76 million at a May 2012 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In the opening paragraph of his handwritten letter dated June 22, 1969, to Velma Kimbell, the architect Louis Kahn wrote, “I hope you will find my work beautiful and meaningful.”

Kimbell and her late husband wanted a great museum for the city of Fort Worth, Texas. They were part of that sliver of truly rich willing to give up artistic power to people who knew more. The Kimbells would pay for the entire museum, donate the nucleus of a fine collection, and leave an endowment of such magnitude that the Kimbell Art Museum would be among the handful of museums able to aggressively buy the best.

What they did, to pay them the highest compliment, was equivalent to what the Mellon family did 30 years earlier. Few people in the history of this nation have used their fortune on behalf of the arts as the Mellons, starting with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Andrew Mellon (1855-1937) wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 offering his superb collection and funds for a new museum to house it.

When it opened to the public on March 17, 1941 (Mellon was dead), the world-class collection consisted of 120-plus paintings and 26 sculptures given by his son Paul Mellon, another giant in the world of art philanthropy. Over the ensuing years, Paul and his wife Bunny donated more than 1,000 works of art! Bunny was famous for entertaining and insisted on serving bowls of perfect Lays chips (her secret was to have servants pick out broken chips).

Louis Kahn’s letter to Velma Kimbell, written four days before groundbreaking ceremonies (he could not attend), was polite, but was NOT representative of a deeply held conviction. “Even when serving the dictates of individuals, you still have no client in my sense of the word. The client is human nature.”

No museum has served that usually overlooked client better!

Kahn wanted light to have the luminosity of silver as it reflected off the distinctive cycloidal concrete vaults. The light provides a sense of the time of day (it reminds me of beach light) but avoids the enemy of art: direct sunlight – especially the ferocious light of Texas summers. Instead of inducing fatigue, as most museums do, the Kimbell is restorative. “The feeling of being home and safe,” said Kahn, explaining his own magnificent piece of art the museum represents.

The Kimbell is noted for the wash of silvery natural light across its vaulted gallery ceilings.

A prime, early policy directive was definitive excellence, not size of collection. With a collection size of 350 superb European Old Masters, that goal has been accomplished.

Personally, I prefer the nearby Amon Carter Museum for three small reasons. First, I prefer its Frontier West tone. Second, I am jaded about “Old European Masters” after living in Central London for five years (yawn). Third, it gives me an easy segue into two apocryphal stories about the Carters.

Amon Carter Sr. (1879-1955) was so disdainful of Dallas that he would bring a sack lunch so he would not have to spend any money when he visited the city. “Fort Worth is where the West begins – and Dallas is where the East peters out.”

Although I have owned coins and currency that Amon Carter Jr. once owned, I never met him. He died of a heart attack in 1982. But one of his advisers, a Dallas coin dealer, told me they were in a bar in NYC when a loudmouth asked Amon how big his Texas ranch was and scoffed when Amon replied 30 acres.

“Thirty acres? I thought all you Texans had BIG ranches. Where is yours?”

Amon answered softly. “All of downtown Fort Worth.”

Not all acreage is born equally.

Armies Have Been Planning Wars for Centuries

This 19-inch-high bronze of Alexander the Great, inscribed M Amodio Napoli, sold for $5,500 at a September 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The New York Times recently wrote about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, referring to a “secret plan” to deal with the growing North Korean nuclear threat to the world.

Military historians know that armies make plans. Alexander the Great had a plan for invading the Persian Empire to kill or capture Emperor Darius. Hannibal had a plan in the Second Punic War to elude the Roman navy by using war elephants to cross the Alps into Spain. King Phillip II had a plan in 1588 to defeat England using his impressive armada.

Napoleon is occasionally derided for having a “plan of the year” to guide his activities to defeat his European enemies, which included Egypt, Austria, Italy, Prussia and even Russia. But by 1870, Napoleon II had ushered in a new era of military planning, requiring meticulous details that covered every contingency. Earlier in 1810, Prussia had founded a war academy to train officers in staff duties to expand their basic skills.

After the remarkable Prussian victories over Austria (1806) and France (1870), institutions in other countries were hastily modified to conform, most notably the French École de Guerre in 1880. There would be no equivalent in the diplomatic world. As late as 1914, the British Foreign Office was still choosing entrants on the basis of relationships with ambassadors and other cronies. Diplomacy remained an art taught in embassies and despite being dedicated to national interests, there was not a shared belief that their roles were to avoid war with skillful negotiations.

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 had been settled chiefly by diplomacy because the crisis had been isolated to national interests, as opposed to the far trickier national honor or prestige. However, in 1914, the weakest of the European powers, Austria-Hungary, was rocked by the assassination of the heir to the throne by a subversive from Serbia. Franz Ferdinand, nephew to Emperor Franz Joseph, had traveled to Bosnia to observe routine military maneuvers. The next day, he and his wife drove to the principal capital, Sarajevo.

This was an era when heads of state were often in grave danger … a Russian Tsar, an Austrian princess and an American president all felled by fanatics or lunatics. In the case of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it was a group of assassins lying in wait with bombs and a pistol. Someone threw a bomb that bounced off the car, exploding and only wounding an officer. Forty-five minutes later, en route to visit the wounded, the driver made a wrong turn and stopped in front of an assassin with the pistol. Gavrilo Princip stepped forward and killed both Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.

What followed was an astonishing series of interlocking alliances and mutual pacts that fell like a row of dominos and created a world war … France to go to war on Russia’s side and vice versa if either were attacked by Germany; Britain to lend assistance to France if needed; Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (the Triple Alliance) versus the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary).

It was a conflict of unprecedented ferocity that ended the peace and prosperity of the Victorian Era, unleashing demons of mechanized warfare and mass death. An unanswered mystery is how a civilization at the height of its achievements could propel itself into such a ruinous conflict. The answer lays hidden in the negotiations among Europe’s crowned heads (all related by blood) and their doomed efforts to diffuse the crisis. By the end of the senseless war, three great empires – the Austrian-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman – had collapsed. An unthinkable outcome.

Perhaps it is as simple as the often-overused quote by Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan … until they get punched in the mouth.”

Can you hear us Rex?