Photographs – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Even the World’s Architectural Wonders Once Had Their Critics

black and white photograph — Frank Horvat’s ‘Stern, Chaussure, a Shoe and Eiffel Tower, Paris’, 1974, sold for $3,585 in a November 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When we lived in Central London in the 1990s, #10 Walton Street became a convenient place to host our American friends and family. We had plenty of room, one block from the world-famous Harrods department store, and the Walton Street restaurants were some of the finest in London. Our neighbor in #12 owned the superb Osteria San Lorenzo restaurant that Lady Diana claimed was her favorite, perhaps because it was three doors down from her exclusive couturier and go-to designer Bruce Oldfield. Michael Caine shopped at our Italian bakery, and Ringo Starr sightings were frequent.

However, it soon became de rigueur to tack on a side trip to Paris via the new Eurostar high-speed trains that attained 180 mph under the English Channel that connected France and England. Once there, a pleasant lunch awaited visitors to the Eiffel Tower and the elegant Le Jules Verne, a one-star Michelin restaurant on the second level. It had a dedicated lift some 240 feet (thankfully).

The 360-degree view of Paris is wonderful at lunch and spectacular at night. “The City of Light” (La Ville Lumiere) derives from the city’s role in the Age of Enlightenment and the extensive use of gas lights on streets (56,000) and monuments. Located on the Champ de Mars, the Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair. It was named for the man who designed and built it. Gustave Eiffel had started working in a family vinegar factory owned by an uncle. When the business failed he switched to engineering, which proved to be quite rewarding.

He built bridges, viaducts and railway concourses that were awe-inspiring in addition to burnishing his reputation. It worked so well he won the commission to build the interior of the remarkable Statue of Liberty in 1884 that ended up being a gift from the French people to celebrate the founding of the young United States.

Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi generally gets credit for “Liberty Enlightening the World” and, of course, it was his design. However, without the ingenious interior engineering to hold it aloft, it was a hollow structure of beaten copper one-tenth of an inch thick. What Eiffel contributed was the ability of the 150-foot structure to withstand the wind, rain, snow, heat, cold and all the other physical weather assaults 24 hours, seven days a week year after year. These were all engineering challenges that Eiffel solved with a skeleton of trusses and springs that support the copper skin and is worn like a suit of clothes. It marked the invention of curtain wall construction, the most important building technique of the 20th century, but with little credit to the man who conceived it.

This new technique enabled the building of skyscrapers and the design of wings for airplanes. Eiffel’s contributions were about to be recognized for this breakthrough when he received the commission for his big project in Paris that we now call the Eiffel Tower. There were over 100 other proposals submitted, including a 900-foot-high guillotine, presumably as a tribute to France’s contribution to popularizing decapitation during the French Revolution.

Then, predictably, many scoffed at Eiffel’s design since it was so enormous and, on the surface, useless. It appeared to be an oil derrick but without any oil. Many people detested it, and unfortunately that included artists, architects and other high-profile notables. This highly influential group wrote a scathing petition on Feb. 14, 1887, denouncing “the grotesque mercenary invention of a lowly machine builder” and signed it “Artists against the Eiffel Tower.” Today we know just how totally wrong they were as 20 million people actually pay admission to tour what is probably the world’s most recognizable landmark-monument.

A similar controversy was roiling San Francisco in 1969, when we moved to San Jose, over the new Transamerica Pyramid. One critic called it “the most portentous and insidiously bad building in The City.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s architectural critic simply called it an abomination, while the Los Angeles Times called the spire gratuitous and compared it to a dunce cap. Angry mobs demonstrated by Mayor Alioto’s office to protest, but it was all in vain. The building was finished in 1972 and has gradually become a cherished, iconic symbol of the SFO skyline.

I wonder if the pyramids had to suffer through similar periods of rejection or ridicule? Retract that musing — I totally overlooked the presence of the Pharaohs. It is much easier to gain consensus when decision-making doesn’t involve others.

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].

Stop whatever you’re doing, grab the soap and scrub your hands

A group of three framed autographs by famed medical scientists, including Jonas Salk, went to auction in January 2017.

By Jim O’Neal

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) was a handsome, virile young man – 39 years old – when he contracted what was diagnosed as poliomyelitis. Polio is an odd infection whose history traces back to the earliest humans and is generally transmitted by water contaminated with human feces. It primarily affects children under age 5, with only 1 in 200 infections leading to irreversible paralysis.

In FDR’s case, the paralysis overtook all of his extremities, but he eventually regained use of his upper limbs and relied on a wheelchair or crutches for mobility. We know that he had a spectacular political career, culminating in being elected president of the United States four separate times. He is frequently ranked among the top three presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Political commentator George Will observed that some of that steel he relied on must have found its way into his soul and political will.

Some researchers now believe that FDR did not have poliomyelitis, but Guillain-Barré syndrome. If true, it seems to be particularly irrelevant since the treatment/cure was not discovered until this century, just a wee bit late, and it’s still in development.

Importantly, major polio epidemics were not common until the early 1900s, when Europe was plague-ridden. By 1910, frequent epidemics became regular events throughout the modern developed world. It peaked in the summer months and by 1950 was responsible for 500,000 deaths or paralysis every year.

To help fund research for a cure, in 1938 Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, soon to become the March of Dimes. Dr. Jonas Salk was picked to lead search for a cure. Would FDR have made such a dramatic effort if he had something other than polio? Perhaps not, but it’s probably not practical to rely on this ploy to get to priority funding since we’ve learned it’s harder to find good presidents than breakthrough medical cures.

During the war, Salk had pioneered a highly successful influenza vaccine and then taken a position at the University of Pittsburgh … in need of research funding. In danced the March of Dimes and Salk began working on a polio vaccine in 1948. Since polio is a viral disease, humans build up immunities to viruses after direct exposure. Development of mild strains can occur if a viable delivery system is also co-developed (a difficult task).

Salk’s work generated national attention since national panics were occurring every summer and swimming pools, movie theaters and other gathering places were routinely closed.

In the summer of 1952, he injected several dozen mentally handicapped children with an experimental version of his vaccine (try that today!). Also among the first people to be inoculated were his wife, their three children and Dr. Salk himself. Two years later (1954), the vaccine was ready for extensive field trials. In the interim, 100 million Americans had donated money to the March of Dimes (the 1950 census declared that the total U.S. population was only 150 million).

Next, a literal army of 20,000 public health workers, 64,000 school employees and 220,000 volunteers administered the vaccine to 1.8 million schoolchildren. On April 12, 1955, Salk’s polio vaccine was declared safe and effective. This announcement was broadcast nationally on television and around the world on radio. Polio was finally defeated in the United States. Dr. Salk was in a position to make an enormous amount of money. However, when asked in a television interview who owned the patent, he simply answered, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

I realize it is difficult to feel an increased sense of optimism about COVID-19 by retelling the story of polio. But, one source of encouragement is to listen more carefully to what we’ve been told (ad nauseam) about the powerful defenses everyone has access to: simple soap and water! The coronavirus that has changed our lives perhaps forever is enveloped in fatty layers that are easily dissolved by detergents, which expose the core of the virus and cause it to perish.

So stop whatever you’re doing, get to the soap and water and scrub your hands (just like your mother told you before every meal). I do this frequently while I patiently wait for the miracle vaccine.

What do you have to lose?

Throughout U.S. history, a lot of money has been made from tobacco

Peter Stackpole’s gelatin silver print titled *Camel Cigarette Billboard Sign, Times Square*, 1944, went to auction in 2013.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1976, while planning a new Frito-Lay plant for Charlotte, N.C., a small group of us made a trip to Winston-Salem to visit R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. They had spent $1B on a computer-integrated manufacturing plant (C.I.M.) that was recognized as the largest and most modern cigarette plant in the world. We were interested in the latest automation technologies available for possible application in our new plant.

My two most vivid memories include the pervasive odor outside the plant that I (correctly) identified as menthol. This was not too tough since the plant was the major producer of Salem brand cigarettes (I assumed the rest were Winstons, given the town we were in). Second was that every single manager we met was a heavy smoker, with the biggest clue being the distinctive deep-yellow stain between their index and middle fingers. It was like being in a 1940s Bette Davis movie.

We finished up with an enjoyable dinner with David P. Reynolds, chairman emeritus of Reynolds Metals, whom I had known since my days involving aluminum foil and beer cans. He amused the group by telling old company stories, including “Lucky Strike Green Goes to War.” It seems that in 1942, they wanted to change the package design by substituting white ink for the more familiar green. Both copper and chromium were expensive ingredients in the green ink, so it simply “went to war” (and never returned). There was another story involving Camel and Kaiser Wilhelm (the original name favored for the cigarette that debuted in 1913). I don’t remember the details, but the moral of the story was … never name a product after a living person.

Later, I learned about Operation Berkshire, a secret 1976 agreement between all tobacco CEOs to form a collective defense against anti-smoking legislation (anywhere). Each pledged to never concede that smoking had any adverse health effects. We all recall the “Seven Dwarfs” testifying in April 1994 to the U.S. Congress (under oath) that nicotine was not addictive and smoking did not cause cancer. Movie tip: The Insider starring Russell Crowe ranks No. 23 on AFI’s list of the “100 Greatest Performances of All Time.” It tells the tobacco story of today brilliantly.

Lucky Strike was introduced as chewing tobacco in 1871, evolving into a cigarette by the early 1900s.

More than 400 years earlier, in 1604, King James I had written a scathing rebuke to the evils of tobacco in A Counterblaste to Tobacco. He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and ascended to the English throne when Elizabeth I died childless. He wrote of tobacco as “lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, [and] dangerous to the Lungs.” He equated tobacco with “a branche of the sinne of drunkenness, which is the roote of all sinned.”

Tobacco was late to arrive in England. Fifteenth-century European explorers had observed American Indians smoking it for medicinal and religious purposes. By the early 16th century, ships returning to Spain took back tobacco, touting its therapeutic qualities. The Iberian Peninsula eagerly adopted its use.

When English settlers arrived in Jamestown in 1607, they became the first Europeans on the North American mainland to cultivate tobacco. Spotting an opportunity in 1610, John Rolfe (of Pocahontas fame) shipped a cargo to England, but the naturally occurring plant in the Chesapeake region was considered too harsh and bitter. The following year, Rolfe obtained seeds of the milder Nicotiana tabacum from the Spanish West Indies and soon production was rapidly growing and spreading to Maryland. By the middle of the 18th century, Virginia and Maryland were shipping nearly 70 million pounds of tobacco to Britain.

Even as many Colonial leaders in America believed that smoking was evil and hazardous to health, it had little effect on the relentless spread of tobacco farming. By the eve of the Revolutionary War, tobacco was the leading cash crop produced by the Colonies. Exports to Britain rose to over 100 million pounds … 50 percent of all Colonial trade. Never was a marriage of soil and seed more bountiful.

But tobacco cultivation and manufacturing were extremely labor-intensive activities. Initially, white indentured servants were used to harvest the crop and inducements to come to America often came in the form of a formal “indentured servitude” agreement. Typically, in exchange for agreeing to work for seven years, the servant would receive his own land to farm. This system was preferred over slavery; losing a slave was seen as more costly than losing an indentured servant.

Then the economics started shifting as land became scarcer and slaves more plentiful due to King Charles II. He decided to create the Royal African Company of England and grant it a monopoly with exclusive rights to supply slaves to the Colonies. Then, with the explosion of cotton production, there was an enormous demand for more slaves.

A cynic might note that the formation of the United States was first led by men from Virginia and then governed by them. President Washington, followed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and, finally, James Monroe … four of the first five presidents … all from Virginia and all with slave plantations.

Throughout our history, there has been a lot of money made from tobacco. As the plant manager at that C.I.M. plant explained, “We ship about 800 rail cars filled with cigarettes every eight hours and they come back loaded with cash.”

Lewis Cass among most important yet least known 19th century politicians

A rare political campaign daguerreotype of Lewis Cass from 1848 sold for $17,925 at a February 2007 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

By 1848, slavery had inexorably become a national issue. Opinions were slowly but surely being formed, much as wet cement hardens while baking in the sun. Generally, most people agreed that slavery should be “hands off” and left alone in the 15 states where it already existed.

However, they disagreed violently over whether it should be permitted in new regions. Pro-slavers insisted it be allowed to follow the U.S. flag. But anti-slavery backers (primarily Northerners) strongly opposed expansion into federal territories. Their logic was impeccable. Strong containment policies would eventually lead to complete elimination everywhere. This was the same flawed thinking that the framers of the Constitution had tripped over when they permitted a 20-year phase-out period. Except the difference, of course, was that without this clause, there were not enough votes to ratify the Constitution. Deception? Probably, but there was an overarching priority in favor of ratification … kick it down the road … maybe it will just wither away.

Naturally, the political leaders of both the Whigs and Democrats were just as anxious to duck the issue entirely. Both parties relied on support from voters in every section of the country. However, the issue was now much too prominent and the slavery issue ended up playing a major role in the 1848 presidential election.

Meeting in Baltimore in May 1848, the Democrats were the first to select candidates. For president, they went for Michigan Senator Lewis Cass. He had been a territorial governor for years and would be the first Democratic candidate from the area known as the Northwest. Many years later (1861), as James Buchanan’s Secretary of State, he begged the president to send reinforcements to Fort Sumter to keep the South from raiding its guns and supplies. He resigned when Buchanan predictably refused; it was the only option the 79-year-old diplomat had to display his strong objections.

Cass was 6 years old when his mother held him up to the window of their home to watch the bonfires blazing in the streets of Exeter, when New Hampshire became the ninth and final state required to ratify the Constitution. When he resigned, he memorably said, “I saw the Constitution born, and I fear I may see it die.” The Constitution survived, but 620,000 Americans died in the war to preserve the Union.

Cass was solidly known as an advocate for “squatter sovereignty” – the right of settlers in federal territories to decide the slavery issue for themselves. At the Baltimore convention, the New York delegation quickly split over the selection of Cass for president, accompanied by a party platform that declined to take a firm stand on the extension of slavery. They simply walked out and, along with other anti-slavery people, organized the Free Soil Party, which was firmly dedicated to preventing slavery in all federal territories. They chose the hapless ex-President Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams (son of the sixth president) with an unequivocal slogan: “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.”

With the Democrats now divided, the Whigs made their choice at a convention in June in Philadelphia. Sticking to a “War Hero General” formula that proved to be successful, they confidently chose General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, “Old Rough and Ready,” the hero of the recent war with Mexico. Many Whigs (including a young Abraham Lincoln) were appalled by the choice. Not only was he too old (64), but he had never been involved in politics! In fact, he had never even voted and admitted he knew little about national domestic issues.

Daniel Webster called him “an illiterate frontier colonel” and warned that many thousands of Whigs “will not vote for a candidate … simply because of a war record.”

Webster turned out to be terribly wrong and the party backed “Old Zach” just as they had selected “Old Tippecanoe” (William Henry Harrison) in 1840. Taylor easily beat Lewis Cass on Nov. 7, 1848 – the first presidential election that took place on the same day in every state and the first Election Day statutorily on a Tuesday.

Taylor died on July 9 two years later and was the last president elected who was not a Republican or a Democrat … a period of 198 years (yes, I know that Lincoln ran in 1864 for the Union Party after becoming the first Republican president in 1860). Third-party candidates do not do well … just ask Teddy Roosevelt.

Cass remains a good candidate for the most important yet least known of any politician in 19th century America.

Civil War question: What were these men thinking?

This albumen print of a Union encampment, most likely of the 110th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, sold for $2,868 at a November 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The last truly great Civil War book I read was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005). The award-winning book focuses on the 1860 presidential election and how underdog Lincoln was able to secure the Republican nomination against three formidable opponents, and then win the presidency without a single Southern vote (he was not on any Southern ballot).

Then, it deftly explains how President Lincoln was able to recruit all three Republican opponents to serve as key members of his Cabinet: New York Senator William H. Seward (Secretary of State), Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase (Treasury Secretary), and Missouri’s favorite son Edward Bates (Attorney General). Next was the brilliant way he managed to leverage each man’s strength and weakness into a form of political-enemy synergy.

Steven Spielberg secured the film rights before the book was written and his 2012 movie Lincoln was highly acclaimed. Out of 14 Oscar nominations, Daniel-Day Lewis won for Best Actor. But the movie was really only about the last four months of Lincoln’s life when he maneuvered to get the 14th Amendment approved. Neither the book nor film spends much time on the Confederacy or the underlying circumstances that made the Civil War inevitable.

This is not unusual, since books about Lincoln, his Cabinet and the generals of the war pop up with regularity. Relatively little has been written about the Confederacy per se (i.e. the formal government of the South). The primary focus seems confined to biographies of Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson or the famous battles between the North and South (such as Gettysburg).

Sure, people might know that Jefferson Davis was president of the CSA or that Alexander H. Stephens was vice president. But these two men were in office the entire war, from April 1861 to May 1865. Perhaps interest in individuals is limited because, as some historians argue, the Confederate States of America represented an entire people’s effort to cling to their past. They feared after the 1860 election that Lincoln and the now-dominant Republicans would simply force them to abandon the practice of slavery. So they naively decided to secede from the Union and start their own country.

They started with seven secessionist slave-holding states and in February 1861 established a new Confederacy in Montgomery, Ala., before Lincoln even took office. After Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in April, four more states seceded and joined the Confederacy (now based in Richmond, Va.). Missouri and Kentucky were later accepted but did not secede. Two seats in the Confederate Congress were given to Southern California.

Organizationally, the Southern government was much like the North. They had a Constitution and a Cabinet with six departments that composed the executive branch. With few exceptions, they replicated their counterparts in the Union. A prominent exception: the Attorney General was elevated to Cabinet status. It grew in importance since the Confederacy had no Supreme Court; the Department of Justice arbitrated any legislation or constitutional disputes.

However, most departments discovered their limitations once the War started. The Navy began the war without a single major vessel and soon lost easy access to international sea-lanes from Southern ports. The Treasury and War departments did not have the resources of their Union counterparts, little things like enough money or an army and a non-industrial economy. Here, one must ask: Who were these men and what were they thinking?

Some deep thinkers sincerely believe it was an honest attempt to build a New South with 11 individual states forging a future based on prosperity from land and slaves. After all, only 4 percent to 5 percent had direct involvement with the institution of slavery. The majority considered their way of life inviolate enough to defend it by force of arms. However, despite obvious mismatches from virtually every aspect, that did not deter its political leaders. They assured the Southern people that courage and determination could substitute for limited resources, limited manpower and lack of foreign aid.

The South’s goal of independence was as absolute as the North’s determination to maintain the Union. Hence, the objectives of the opposing governments could be neither compromised nor harmonized. The Civil War would have to be a fight to the finish.

For four long years, against impossible odds, the South persevered and suffered. It accepted honorable defeat and then wrapped itself in nostalgia. The South’s postwar vision of “The Lost Cause” – fighting and surrendering with honor – became a soothing balm for the sores of war.

However, President Jefferson Davis would admit much later, “The simple fact was the people had gone to war without considering the cost.”

Case closed.

When American wealth met British nobility

A print by American photographer Slim Aarons, showing Consuelo Vanderbilt (right) in Palm Beach, Fla., circa 1955, went to auction in 2014.

By Jim O’Neal

John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) was the first member of the well-known Astor family to gain prominence in both business and social circles of America. He holds the unique distinction of becoming the first multi-millionaire in the United States. Yet there is little in his early German background that hinted at his ultimate financial accomplishments. He was a baker and dairy salesman before moving to London at age 16. These were primarily family-related activities that expanded to include making flutes and pianos.

It was after relocating to New York City that events smiled on him as his instincts for mercantilism flourished. A fur trader piqued his interest and he began an astonishingly successful business buying raw hides from American Indians and finishing them for resale in London. The trendy English practice of owning fur hats seemed almost insatiable and Astor’s profits were generous. He even opened a thriving retail shop for fur goods in NYC just as the American Revolution ended.

The Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1795 that opened trade between Canada, the Great Lakes region and London provided even more lucrative opportunities for Astor. Later, he would expand further West, all the way to Canton, China, as he added tea and opium to the lucrative fur business that he dominated in broad areas of the Northwest. Despite an interruption during the War of 1812, Astor’s profits enabled him to expand into New York City real estate with exquisite timing. The fashion trends in London were changing and Astor rightfully guessed that New York real estate was on the verge of exploding.

This almost prescient ability to transform his business to meet changing demands allowed him to grow his profits in an unprecedented manner. At the time of his death in 1848, John Jacob Astor was the richest person in North America. The family prospered and proliferated as the Astors naturally married into other wealthy families and would go on to become socially dominant as they had in business, despite the Civil War, which raged through the South for four long years.

Once peace was restored, there was a need to help rebuild vast portions of the ravaged country and it coincided with a number of major advances in economic developments that would fuel yet another, even greater period of prosperity. The Gilded Age is often used for the post-Civil War period from 1870 to 1900 when great fortunes were made in steel, oil, railroads and even the lowly sewing machine. It is also associated with names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon and Vanderbilt. These “Robber Barons” accumulated their great fortunes during a period when antitrust laws were virtually unknown and the personal income tax was decades away from being legislated.

Technically, it was probably a pejorative term, since “Gilding Gold” or “Gilding the Lilies” were considered examples of greed and excess. In the 1920s, Mark Twain co-authored a novel that described the excesses, just as Shakespeare had done, but not as caustic and with less sarcasm.

Across the pond, quite the opposite was happening. A combination of new death taxes and an agricultural depression had left much on the English aristocracy with dwindling incomes and in a paradoxical position of being land rich and cash poor. For the daughters of America’s new millionaires, it provided the ultimate opportunity: marriage to a cash-strapped British aristocrat in return for a title and automatic entry into the elite social circles that were quickly forming.

At no time was this more evident than in 1895, when Consuelo Vanderbilt, the daughter of American Willie Vanderbilt, married Charles “Sunny” Spencer-Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. It was the media event of the year. Three hundred policemen were employed outside the church to hold back thousands of onlookers desperate to catch a glimpse of the glamorous bride in a dress with a five-yard train. Details of the wedding were reported on the front page of The New York Times, and Vogue devoted several pages just to the bride’s trousseau, which had gold clasps studded with diamonds.

Consuelo carried orchids that had been grown in the greenhouse of Blenheim Palace and shipped in a specially refrigerated chamber, because Marlborough brides always carried flowers from Blenheim, irrespective of where the marriage took place. Gifts were displayed for the public – as they are for royal weddings today – and the queue stretched halfway down Fifth Avenue. They included a string of pearls once owned by Catherine the Great. Consuelo was the most famous of the “dollar princesses” – a fabulously rich person looking for the one thing they couldn’t buy at home … a title. Between 1870 and 1914, a total of 454 steamed across the Atlantic and married titled Europeans.

In 1895 (alone), nine American heiresses married English aristocrats and by the end of the century, 25 percent of the House of Lords had a transatlantic connection. The other angle was to simply marry into an elite group, like New York native Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, who in 1853 married William Backhouse Astor Jr. and for several decades was the undisputed queen of American society. She was known as “the Mrs. Astor” (despite the existence of several others). After all, why should one go all the way to England and then live in a stately home that was drafty, isolated and devoid of any creature comforts?

We know the answer, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once told Ernest Hemingway: “You know, the rich are different than you and me” – to which Hemingway replied, “Yes, they have more money.” The “Money Honeys” would simply add, “But, my dear boy, you must also have a title!”

Touché.

For adventurous souls: the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Great Pyramid of Giza, as photographed by Gordon Converse, tops the list of the greatest ancient wonders.

By Jim O’Neal

It is difficult, and bordering on impossible, to construct a list of the “Seven Wonders of the World” since they seem to be moving targets, subject to frequent revisions and disagreements between people who claim to have a personal degree of expertise. However, it is feasible to build a reasonable consensus on the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” … if one starts with the list compiled by Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium in 225 B.C.

It seems mildly comforting that at one time in the distant past, humans created structures that were worthy as works of gods, and ancient travelers could make a “bucket list” if they were inclined to participate in this more modern concept. Here is the list for any intrepid adventurous souls.

The Great Pyramid of Giza: Constructed about 4,600 years ago for the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (known as Cheops to the Greeks). Just outside of modern Cairo, it was the tallest manmade structure on Earth for roughly 4,000 years. It is the only one still standing and I can personally verify it’s still there. Despite centuries of erosion, it’s still about 450 feet high and consists of 2 million blocks weighing 2½ tons each. Somehow, its builders were able to align it in a perfect square with the four cardinal points on the compass. If you ever decide to hunt for signs of extraterrestrial activity, this would be a good place to start!
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Assuming this ancient wonder actually existed, King Nebuchadnezzar II built it nearly 3,000 years ago near the Euphrates River (when Babylon was the capital of a great empire) to appease his wife Amytis, who was homesick for the hills of Persia. Besides the Gardens, Neb II is notorious for capturing and destroying Jerusalem circa 597 B.C.
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia: Zeus was the mightiest Greek god (adopted by the Romans as Jupiter) and this 40-foot statue was carved with Zeus on a cedar throne with ivory and gold skin. Roman Emperor Theodosius had it relocated to Constantinople, where it was destroyed by fire in 475 A.D.
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: Built to honor the daughter of Zeus and sister of the sun god Apollo. By reputation, the most beautiful of the ancient wonders since it was funded by King Croesus of Lydia (modern Turkey). With 127 marble columns, historians have said it “surpassed every structure ever raised by mortal men.” Ephesus is a very delightful ancient port city and on everyone’s itinerary for this area.
The Tomb of King Mausolus at Halicarnassus: Queen Artemisia built this to honor her husband or brother or both (accounts vary). Obviously, the source of the word “mausoleum.” I thought I had been to all the major cities in Turkey, but Bodrum is new to me.
The Colossus of Rhodes: My kind of wonder. The Colossus represents Apollo … towering over the harbor of Rhodes after the war between Rhodes and Macedon (Greek). Some myths compare it to the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor. The great Roman historian Pliny wrote about pieces still there in the first century A.D.
Lighthouse of Alexandria: Also known as the Pharos off the coast of Egypt; for centuries it was one of the tallest manmade structures in the world. It’s long gone (its last stones were apparently used for other projects in the 1400s), but very plausible, since Alexandria was the world’s cultural capital after being founded by Alexander the Great.

Obviously, the Greek writers and historians who recorded these events and wonders could only include what was in their part of the world, thus pre-Christian wonders were excluded. The most prominent, in my view, not included was the Great Wall of China, the longest fortification and possibly the greatest project ever undertaken. Much of the present wall dates from 1420 A.D. when the Ming Dynasty enlarged it. Its origins date back 1,600 years to earlier dynasties to protect the northern frontier; this was a 1,400-mile effort utilizing 300,000 laborers.

Also ignored was the entire city of Persepolis, the capital of Persia, probably intentionally because of their intense dislike by the Greeks. In 1971, the Shah of Iran staged an enormous celebration in the ruins of Persepolis to commemorate its 2,500th anniversary (yes, the same shah who was overthrown in 1979).

We live on a terribly small planet, but we have a marvelous historic record to pore over … facts, myths and fables that tend to become blurred over time. This is one problem our generation won’t have. I suspect 100 percent of the entire world’s sounds and activities will soon be on either a smartphone, bodycam or other device for permanent transfer and storage on YouTube.

Powerful images helped FDR advance his agenda

Dorothea Lange’s 1936 *Migrant Mother* was taken while she was employed by the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration program.

By Jim O’Neal

President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that it was not enough for only him to understand the Great Depression’s grip on the nation. The American people would have to see for themselves the faces of their fellow citizens, their backs against the wall, drained by the struggle to hold families and farms together.

The Depression was in its fourth year. In the neighborhoods and hamlets of a stricken nation, millions of men and women languished in sullen gloom and looked to Washington with guarded hope. Still they struggled to comprehend the nature of the calamity that had engulfed them. At the new Federal Emergency Relief Administration, headed up by Harry Hopkins, rivers of data flowed that measured the Depression’s impact in cold, hard numbers. Shareholders had seen the value of their assets decline by 75 percent since 1929, a colossal financial meltdown affecting the idle rich, struggling neighborhood banks, retirement nest eggs and even university endowments. Five thousand banks failed between the crash and the New Deal’s rescue operations in March 1933, wiping out $7 billion of depositors’ money.

Mortgage loan defaults accelerated – 150,000 homes lost in 1930; 200,000 in 1931; 250,000 in 1932. This stripped millions of people of both shelter and life savings in a single stroke, menacing the balance sheets of thousands of surviving banks. Shrinking real estate prices and tax revenues forced 1,300 municipalities to default, cutting services, payrolls and paychecks. Chicago reduced teacher pay and by 1932-33 cut their pay to zero.

Gross national product fell in 1933 to half of 1929, while capital spending on plant and equipment plummeted to $3 billion from $24 billion. Car production dropped 60 percent and steel was even worse. Mute bands of jobless men drifted through the streets of every American city on the prowl for jobs that didn’t exist.

Hardest hit was the countryside. Income for America’s farmers collapsed from $6 billion to $2 billion in three years. Unemployment and reduced wages were the most obvious and fell hardest on the most vulnerable: the young, the elderly, the least educated, the unskilled, and especially on rural Americans, with large numbers of immigrant workers.

But Hopkins knew that he needed more than sterile economic data to gain the necessary political power to make the structural government changes required. They needed to touch the human face of the catastrophe, taste the metallic smack of the fear and feel the hunger of the unemployed. He convinced Lorena Hickok of the Associated Press in July 1933 to travel the entire nation … talking to a broad swath of Americans and capturing their stories in their own words and in photographs. With FDR’s encouragement, a flood of documentary photographs would be converted into political power on a massive scale. In addition to Hickok, they contracted some of the nation’s finest photographers. Names like Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans and others would help create the consciousness necessary to mobilize the government’s resources. Their photographs helped create the absolute sense of urgency needed so desperately.

The small, nimble government agency that would support and encourage their photographic mission was the Resettlement Administration – later called the Farm Security Administration (FSA) – under the leadership of Rexford Tugwell, an original member of FDR’s brain trust, and still Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. Importantly, neither the Resettlement Administration nor the FSA had any Congressional oversight. These photographers had the freedom to tell the truth as they saw it. Their photographs are now housed in the Library of Congress and bear witness to what people were enduring, refuting what newspapers had been calling “moochers” or “an invading hoard of the idle.”

Looking at these portraits now, we can see the compassion of the photographers and the dignity of real Americans on the edge. They refuted the charges of those who thought the pictures were political propaganda. In discussions of the work of Dorothea Lange and her husband Paul Taylor, the photographer/curator Thomas Heyman summed it up: “They clung to the hope that what they were doing might be part of the solution.”

The strategy worked and FDR was given a mandate to introduce all aspects of the New Deal, the most expansive role of the federal government into America’s daily life. After the 1936 elections, newspaper editor William Allen White said, “He has all but been crowned by the people.” Still, it would take yet another war to get everybody back to work.

100 Years Before Rosa Parks, There was Octavius Catto

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus, sparking the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott.

By Jim O’Neal

Most Americans are familiar with Rosa Parks and recall the heroic story of a weary black woman on her way home after a hard day at work who refused to give up her seat and “move to the back of the bus” to make room for white people. The date was Dec. 1, 1955, and the city was Montgomery, Ala.

Later, she would be arrested during the ensuing Montgomery bus boycott that lasted 381 days. She was fined $10, but ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the segregation law was unconstitutional. After her death, she became the first African-American woman to have her likeness depicted in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.

Parks (1913-2005) earned her way into the pantheon of civil rights leaders, but few remember a remarkable man who preceded her by a century when streetcars were pulled by horses.

His name was Octavius Valentine Catto (1839-1871) and history was slow in recognizing his astonishing accomplishments. Even the epitaph on his tombstone shouts in bold letters “THE FORGOTTEN HERO.” One episode in his far-too-short but inspiring life is eerily similar to the events in Montgomery, only dramatically more so. Catto was a fierce enemy of the entire Philadelphia trolley car system, which banned black passengers. On May 18, 1865, The New York Times ran a story about an incident involving Catto that occurred the previous afternoon in Philadelphia, “The City of Brotherly Love” (at least for some).

Paraphrasing the story, it describes how a colored man (Catto) had refused all attempts to get him to leave a strictly segregated trolley car. Frustrated and in fear of being fined if he physically ejected him, the conductor cleverly side railed the car, detached the horses and left the defiant passenger in the now-empty stationary car. Apparently, the stubborn man was still on-board after spending the night. It caused a neighborhood sensation that led to even more people challenging the rules.

The following year, there was an important meeting with the Urban League to protest the forcible ejection of several black women from Philadelphia streetcars. The intrepid Catto presented a number of resolutions that highlighted the inequities in segregation, principles of freedom, civil liberty and a heavily biased judicial system. He also boldly solicited support from fellow citizens in his quest for fairness and justice.

He got specific help from Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, a leader of the “Radical Republicans” who had a fiery passion for desegregation and abolition of slavery, and who criticized President Lincoln for lack of more forceful action. Stevens is a major character in Steven Spielberg’s 2013 Oscar-nominated film Lincoln, with Tommy Lee Jones gaining an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Stevens. On Feb. 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed suffrage to black men (women of all colors would have to wait another 50 years until 1920 to gain the right to vote in all states). It would also lead to Catto’s death. On Election Day, Oct. 10, 1871, Catto was out encouraging black men to vote for Republicans. He was fatally shot by white Democrats who wanted to suppress the black vote.

Blacks continued to vote heavily for Republicans until the early 20th century and were not even allowed to attend Democratic conventions until 1924. This was primarily due to the fact that Southern states had white governors who mostly discouraged equal rights and supported Jim Crow laws that were unfair to blacks. As comedian Dick Gregory (1932-2017) famously joked, he was at a white lunch counter where he was told, “We don’t serve colored people here,” and Gregory replied, “That’s all right. I don’t eat colored people … just bring me a whole fried chicken!”

Octavius Catto, who broke segregation on trolley cars and was an all-star second basemen long before Jackie Robinson, would have to wait until the 20th century to get the recognition he deserved. I suspect he would be surprised that we are still struggling to “start a national conversation” about race when that’s what he sacrificed his life for.

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].

Muggy Day in 1958 Gave Us One of Coolest Events in Music History

A vintage photograph of jazz vocalist Maxine Sullivan, signed, was offered in an October 2007 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On an otherwise routine day in August 1958 (most claim it was the 12^th – a few are not positive), the epicenter of American jazz was at 126th Street, between 5th and Madison, in New York City. Perhaps 57 or 58 of the greatest and near-greatest jazz musicians were assembled to have their picture taken – Willie “The Lion” Smith may have gotten bored and wandered off. They had been invited by Esquire magazine for a cover story, “The Golden Age of Jazz,” published in January 1959.

Jimmy McPartland was definitely not there since his wife, Marian, could not get him out of bed early enough for the scheduled 10 a.m. event. In fact, Marian was one of only three women there, including vocalist Maxine Sullivan and pianist Mary Lou Williams. Three other luminaries – Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong – were not pictured, but many legends like Gene Krupa, Roy Eldridge and Thelonious Monk were there for the 10 a.m. event and right on time.

One cat said (seriously) he was surprised when he found out there were two 10 o’clocks every day!

The idea was Art Kane’s, an ambitious freelance photographer/art director who also volunteered to take the photograph, in spite of his almost total inexperience. Presumably, no one involved was aware they might be making history; primarily what gets recorded as history – like the very best jazz – can be surprising and unpredictable. Kane’s photograph was a way cool picture taken on a typical muggy New York City day.

To really understand the story behind the picture, watch the 1995 Oscar-nominated documentary A Great Day in Harlem. It was directed by first-time documentary filmmaker Jean Bach, who in her late 70s had more gumption, style and resilience than any of today’s self-proclaimed, oh-so-hip filmmakers could ever muster. She knew and loved jazz and the only city where that historic picture could possibly have been taken. She worked on the film with a great producer, Matthew Seig, and a superb editor, Susan Peehl. They all knew what they were doing and that shows, too, from the opening frame to the final credit. Jazz critic Whitney Balliett wrote in The New Yorker that the film is “about the taking of the picture, and it’s also about mortality, loyalty, talent, musical beauty and the fact that jazz musicians tend to be the least pretentious artists on earth.”

Of the 57 jazz musicians/artists in the photograph, only two are still alive. Walter Theodore “Sonny” Rollins (87). He’s a terrific tenor/soprano saxophonist who has lived a remarkable life that includes music (check out his album Saxophone Colossus, recorded in 1956 and preserved in the Library of Congress for artistic significance); a stint in Rikers Island for armed robbery; and being one of the guinea pigs for using methadone to break a heroin habit. There are way too many honorary awards to list.

The other survivor is Benny Golson (89), a tenor saxophonist, composer and arranger who worked with superstars like Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. Golson also gained a modicum of fame from the 2004 Steven Spielberg movie The Terminal, which stars Tom Hanks as a traveler trapped in JFK airport over a visa issue. Hanks is on a fictional quest to get Golson’s autograph – the only one his jazz enthusiast father needs to have all 57 autographs of the musicians in the original photograph. Trivia spoiler… he gets it!

Man those cats could play!