Vintage Posters – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Behind the Scenes of Opening Disneyland and the Discovery of Doritos

Disney Poster — “Enchanted Tiki Room” Disneyland Park Entrance Poster (Walt Disney, 1967). “At the Gateway to Adventureland”. This poster sold for $19,200 in a 2018 HA.com auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On Sunday, July 17, 1955 the first Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA. The $17 million theme park fit nicely on 160 acres of orange groves, and the 13 attractions were designed with the whole family in mind. Opening day was intended for special guests and a crowd size of 15,000. However, the $1 admission tickets were heavily counterfeited and over 28,000 people overwhelmed the Park.

Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter, and Bob Cummings co-hosted the ABC TV coverage of the event and 70 million people tuned in from home. It was an unusually hot day and Harbor Blvd. had a line of cars seven miles long, filled with parents and kids yelling the usual questions and in need of a rest stop. Later, the Park inevitably ran out of food and water (the plumbing wasn’t finished). Pepsi Cola was readily available, and the publicity was not good (some even implied it was a conspiracy). The day grew in notoriety and soon became known inside Disney as “Black Sunday”. But, within a matter of weeks all the start-up kinks were resolved, and it has been a crowd pleaser ever since.

Although the details are sketchy, 33 local companies (e.g. Carnation, Bank of America, Frito-Lay, etc.) were charter members which helped Disney with the financing and infrastructure involved. Eventually, this evolved into a “Club 33” which included access to an exclusive fine-dining restaurant that serves alcoholic beverages (the only place in the Park). Today there’s a 5-10 year waiting list for companies or individuals eager to pony up $25,000 to have the privilege of paying 6-figure annual dues. There are several versions of the origin of the Club 33 name. One is rather obvious and another involves the California Alcohol Beverage Control regulations that requires a real address in order to have alcohol delivered. Go figure!

Irrespective of the fuzzy facts, when I joined Frito-Lay in 1966, F-L operated Casa de Fritos, a delightful open-air Mexican food restaurant. Visitors could enjoy a family friendly sit-down lunch/dinner or get a Taco Cup to go. The Cup served as a one-handed snack and was easily portable while strolling around the park. Casa de Fritos was managed by a pleasant man named Joe Nugent, who had only one obvious weakness. Casa de Fritos was too profitable!

Let me briefly explain.

Once a year the Flying Circus from Dallas came out to the Western Zone to review our Profit Plan for the next year. President Harold Lilley – who was very direct with few words – would publicly berate poor Joe. ”Dammit, Joe, I told you we didn’t want to make any money at that Mexican joint. We want to promote Fritos corn chips so people will buy them at their local supermarket!”. When I asked Joe about it, he said he had tried increasing the portion sizes and also lowering the menu prices. But, whenever he did even more people would line up to get it. This man may have invented volume price leverage and never had a clue what he was doing!

Soon the VP/GM for SoCal – George Ghesquire – finally convinced the wise men in Dallas to let us test market restaurant style tortilla chips (RSTC). He had grown weary of seeing bags of Fritos over in the Mexican food section. It was proof that someone had initially purchased Fritos, then changed their mind and swapped it for a bag of restaurant style tortilla chips. Dallas had previously been concerned that RSTC would cannibalize sales of Fritos and they were absolutely right. However, the delicious irony was that it was being done by our direct competition!

So our version of RSTC was finally being authorized and would have a brand name of Doritos (you may have seen it). It was to be a 39 cent 6 oz. bag and everyone was eager to get started. To ensure a fast start we loaned some money to Alex Morales the owner of Alex Foods – the supplier of the Taco Cup – and a contract to co-pack. It started with one truckload a week, but they were soon running around the clock. The product was so popular in the West/Southwest that a line had to be added to a plant in Tulsa and the new plant in San Jose. The world of Frito-Lay would never be the same.

To compensate for the lack of salsa, we made a quick trip to a local Vons supermarket and bought some bags of Lawry’s taco seasoning (used in homes to season the meat while preparing homemade tacos for dinner)…voila Doritos Taco flavored chips. Roy Boyd “Mr. Fritos” from Dallas helped us equip Alex Foods with 2 cement mixers from Sears and a handheld oil sprayer to keep the taco powder adhering to the chips.

Now flash forward to 1973 and I was entering my office on the 4th floor of the Frito-Lay Tower near Love Field in Dallas. I noticed a large plastic bag filled with tortilla chips. When I asked Roy, he explained it was a new flavor being evaluated for test market. After tasting 2-3 chips I remember saying “Naw…too dry”. Soon it would become Doritos Nacho flavored tortilla chips, one of the most successful new food products in the later quarter of the 20th century!

Looking back, I now realize that’s probably when I became one of the wise men in Dallas.

The next year (1974) Harry Chapin would sing about the “Cat’s in the cradle” which would earn him a Grammy nomination and eventually a place in the Hall of Fame (2011). I’d nominate the obscure, long forgotten, George Ghesquire for the Frito-Lay Hall of Fame, but I don’t think we have one. So until we do, maybe just “Father of Doritos “. The Crown that now rests with Arch West who absconded with it when he left the Company in 1968.

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].

Buffalo Bill and troupe created Wild West myth that remains with us today

A rare matched pair of A. Hoen & Co. posters promoting Buffalo Bill’s Wild West sold for $31,070 at a June 2012 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1601, William Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

In Shakespearean times, greatness was often equated with fame. But, as the Bard pointed out, although people may become famous in a myriad of ways, fame (per se) was predicated most often on the idea of “greatness.” People were famous because they were important in some way.

For most of human history, few individuals in each generation actually achieved great fame. And that fame was usually derived from actions of consequence in politics, war, religion, science or other ways that deeply affected society. However, being famous is not the same as being a celebrity. Many celebrities will never do anything important at all, unless entertainment is loosely interpreted.

Modern celebrity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the 20th century, few people were famous without accomplishment. That changed with the advent of national magazines, followed by radio, movies, television and, most recently, the internet and social media. Yet even as the 20th century debuted, many Americans began to look back with a lingering nostalgia for the past. People in the new industrial cities of the Midwest and East began yearning for the fading vision of the Old West. It enveloped even those who had never ventured West of the Mississippi, perhaps as a wistful item to see before it disappeared.

Right on cue was a ready-made version of that romanticized history by one of the 20th century’s first celebrities. William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917) was intimately familiar with the often brutal reality of the 19th century. As a boy in Kansas, he witnessed firsthand his father being attacked and stabbed for his vocal anti-slavery views. At 15, he was one of the short-lived Pony Express riders, followed by stints as a fur trapper, bullwhacker, “Fifty-Niner” (in Colorado), Army scout and, of course, buffalo hunter.

After the Civil War, Cody worked for the Army, sometimes helping to track, fight and even kill American Indians. He worked as a buffalo hunter (technically American bison) on the Great Plains, slaughtering the great beasts to help feed the troops. But he also had a keen eye on fame and a flair for self-promotion. In his late 20s, this led to working as an actor in travelling Wild West road shows.

This new form of entertainment was a live, open-air variety show where crowds were awed by noisy displays of skill involving trick riding, sharp shooting and rope tricks. But the primary crowd-pleasers were large-scale dramatizations of daring Western stories. These were typically battles between “Americans” and Indians in full war paint with galloping horses.

While promoters made wild claims about the authenticity of the battle stories, in general they were greatly fictionalized or, at a minimum, highly exaggerated. Audiences were enthralled by these largely false, heroic re-enactments of the cruel, brutal conquest of American Indians as the United States “tamed” the West. They inspired Cody, then a youngish 33, to publish his memoir, The Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill.

It provided a handy springboard for his own road show in 1883: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Earlier, his life and adventures had been sensationalized in a series of dime novels by E.Z.C. Judson (alias Ned Buntline) and his fame gained an international flair as just “Buffalo Bill.” Cody then spent the better part of three decades touring the United States with a large company of entertainers. Among them were American Indian people from the West, which resulted in a somewhat complicated relationship. However, the shows provided them with decent wages and a welcome escape from the grinding poverty of the reservations they eschewed.

Meanwhile, white performers like “Wild Bill” Hickok and Annie Oakley were developing their own celebrity status. Annie regarded Buffalo Bill as “the kindest, simplest, most loyal man I ever knew.” He called her the “Champion Shot of the World.” Unlike much of the highly fictionalized show, Oakley was the real deal. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860, she learned to shoot as a child to help feed the family. Years later, while competing in a shooting contest, she met her future husband, traveling-show sharpshooter Frank E. Butler (whom she defeated when he missed the last of 25 balls and Annie hit all 25). When the couple joined Buffalo Bill’s extravaganza, Annie took the spotlight and Frank became her manager. They were married for 50 years and he died three weeks before her death.

In one example of her dazzling act, Butler would swing a glass ball at the end of a string, and Annie, with her back turned, sited the moving target and shot it with her gun slung over her shoulder. She was universally admired and Chief Sitting Bull (another star of the show) called her “Miss Sure Shot.”

Buffalo Bill sensed there was a big opportunity in Europe and in 1887 his troupe sailed off to London with 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 97 American Indians and a full-size Western stagecoach. The show was an exceptional success in England, where enormous crowds had gathered for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The queen even attended a performance and reportedly called Annie “a very clever little girl.”

A second trip to Paris in 1889 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution was even more successful. Millions attended the Paris Exposition with Cody’s “Buffalodrum” the clear favorite. The tour was extended to include the Pope and then on to Berlin, where Kaiser Wilhelm reportedly had Annie shoot a cigar out of his mouth. Annie later quipped a fatal miss could have prevented World War I (the young Kaiser played a major role in launching the war). She was such a success that the King of Senegal wanted to buy her for 100,000 Francs.

By 1900, Buffalo Bill was one of the most famous Americans in the world. He had achieved his celebrity by offering people an idealized version of the complicated and tumultuous 19th century American West. Perhaps more than anyone else, Bill, Annie and their troupe of cowboys and Indians created the myth of the Wild West that remains with us today.

Tornadoes, cash registers, indictments and pardons

One of the most famous tornadoes appeared in 1939’s *The Wizard of Oz*. This original half sheet promotional poster for the movie sold for $108,000 at a March 2019 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On Easter Sunday 1913, a great tornado ripped through Omaha, Neb. As people scrambled for cover, a naked man was blown through a dining-room window. He grabbed the tablecloth to use as a toga and politely asked the startled family for a pair of trousers. The local newspaper dubbed him the “human meteorite” and went on to report how the twister sucked two babies out the window of the town orphanage. Another man reported the body of a 4-year-old girl dropped out of the sky into his arms, while cows were impaled on fence posts and chickens were plucked clean. That night, another dozen clouds raced across Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan and Indiana.

After the storms’ initial volley, heavy rains began to fall, swelling the Ohio River until its levees could no longer stem the angry waters and they were breached. The submerged cities included Fort Wayne, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. However, Dayton, Ohio, was hardest hit as the Miami River rushed downtown, washing away homes and stranding residents on roofs, buildings and even telephone poles.

Dayton-based businessman John Patterson (1844-1922) immediately seized command and converted a factory assembly line to turn out rowboats for use in rescuing trapped inhabitants. A large plant cafeteria started baking bread and other foodstuffs. Most of Dayton’s provisions were either underwater or ruined by floodwaters. Many of the town’s residents owed their lives to Patterson’s quick actions. Still, over 300 people perished and damages topped $2 billion.

Patterson had launched his business career in December 1884 when he purchased the rights for “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier” for $6,500. James Ritty (1836-1918) was an Ohio bar owner who discovered what all bar/restaurant owners eventually learn: Employees inevitably start pilfering cash, booze or food. Many a chef has walked out with a ham or turkey under their coat on the way home. Or perhaps served friends and relatives drinks without keeping tabs.

Ritty’s invention was a machine positioned atop an adding machine that kept track of orders or controlled the cash. Patterson improved the design by adding the now familiar pop-up number, a cash drawer and a bell that rang when employees used it. He quickly recognized the potential profit in selling the machine to various retail merchants. All were potential customers. Thus, the National Cash Register Company was formed and Patterson went to work developing a skilled sales organization. Trainees were enrolled in a “Hall of Industrial Education” and after graduating, received their own exclusive territory to sell the new invention.

It was an immediate success and the company gained a reputation for generous commissions. A new factory was built with glass walls so the sun could shine through. This was the era when most factories were called “sweatshops” for good reason. In addition, Patterson included free medical clinics, a swimming pool and an employee cafeteria serving healthy food. The grounds were sculptured landscapes designed by architect John Charles Olmsted.

Patterson was a demanding boss and the list of future prominent businessmen he fired was a long one. One was Thomas Watson Sr. (1874-1956), who owned a butcher shop with a shiny NCR cash register. After the business failed, Watson went to work at NCR until Patterson fired him. Watson would go on the build International Business Machines (IBM) into a world-class institution. Another was Charles Kettering (1876-1958), a near genius engineer who went to work for General Motors after he was fired several times. He would head up GM’s engineering research department for 30 years. In addition to inventing the automobile electric self-starter, he recorded 186 patents and became a towering member of the Inventor Hall of Fame.

Patterson was a ruthless competitor and built a “gloom room” filled with cash registers from all the competing companies he ruined. In 1912, the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act after acquiring over 80 direct competitors and ending up with a 95 percent market share. Patterson and 26 of his executives were headed to jail for a year after President Wilson refused to pardon them.

But fate intervened and an appeal overturned the conviction, partially because of Patterson’s good deeds during the Great Flood of 1913. Dayton welcomed them with a giant parade.

Pardons can be tricky for presidents, but all have used the power. Franklin Roosevelt holds the record with more than 3,600 acts of clemency! Since they were spread over four terms, there was not much political criticism. President Clinton was not so fortunate. On Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, he granted 140 pardons. One was to Marc Rich, an international commodities trader indicted by U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani in 1983 on 65 criminal counts involving income tax evasion, wire fraud and racketeering. Rich fled the United States.

When it was revealed he was still a fugitive and the pardon had been handled by Jack Quinn, it caused an uproar from both prominent Democrats and Republicans (Quinn had been Clinton’s White House Counsel). Then things escalated when it was discovered his ex-wife made donations to the DNC, the Clinton library, and Hillary’s Senate race. Attorney General John Ashcroft asked federal prosecutor Mary Jo White to investigate, but James Comey took the lead when White left the government. The probe was closed down after federal investigators ultimately found no evidence of criminal activity.

Hmmn. Giuliani, Clinton, Comey. Small town.

Hollywood Westerns Embody Essential History of the United States

This original movie poster for 1953’s *Shane* sold for $5,676.25 at a November 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Inexplicably, there was a 60-year gap between the first Western to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and the next one. Cimarron (1931), starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, was based on the 1929 novel by Edna Ferber that told the tales of the Oklahoma land rushes of 1889 and 1893. The next winner was Dances With Wolves, the 1990 Kevin Costner film that won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

This was despite the fact that there were a number of notable Western films in the intervening decades: High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), to name a few. My favorite remains Red River (1948), directed by Howard Hawks and introducing Montgomery Clift, the brilliant actor who was Elizabeth Taylor’s close friend and who died too young after a car accident led him to too many pain-killers (that did as advertised).

These were laconic men with a code to live by: Don’t run, stand up and don’t rely on anyone but yourself. Men who liked simple stories that seemed almost incidental to the action. In 1966, Hawks called Robert Mitchum for a role in El Dorado.

“You available, Bob?”

“Sure, Howard. Uh, what’s the story?”

“Oh, you know, Bob. There’s no story.”

Peter Bogdanovich, the director and writer, has six personal favorites and all were directed by either John Ford or Howard Hawks. His nucleus of favorites underscores the Western’s focus: clarity between right and wrong. “Certainly,” Bogdanovich wrote, “the Western is one of the most pervasive icons of Americana; a symbol of frontiers challenged and tamed; a series of morality tales of good and evil that contain within them the essential history of the United States.”

Director John Ford was reputedly prickly and fearless. From his early efforts until his last Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), his films helped hype the myth of the West and the men and women who belonged there. “When the legend becomes fact, sir, print the legend,” a young reporter tells Jimmy Stewart, playing a U.S. Senator in Liberty Valance. That is advice Ford gave and followed.

The mythic Western theme is pervasive, thanks in part to the movies and television. It was how the rest of the world saw us for a long time. We’re all cowboys, gunslingers operating under some unwritten rules way out in the open spaces. Ford’s stories were simply about the individual as the last line of defense. A man takes a stand, no matter what the price, refusing to ask for help. (He had no regard for High Noon, because “No real Western sheriff would ever ask for help.”)

Then it almost seems like television was made for the Western and in the 1950s, we had plenty to choose from on every network. Even popular radio Westerns found it easy to make the transition. The best example may be Gunsmoke, which had established itself as a Saturday night special on radio with William Conrad in the venerable role of Marshal Matt Dillon. The rotund Conrad didn’t fit the visual image, so CBS tried to lure an ex-Glendale High School football star who had lost his USC scholarship due to a surfing accident. His name was Marion Morrison.

We know him as John Wayne, who Ford had molded into a superstar in Western movies. Wayne declined the offer, but agreed to introduce the first episode in 1955 with James Arness (the elder brother of Peter Graves) in the Matt Dillon role. Not surprisingly, it became the longest-running American prime-time TV drama – 639 episodes from 1955 to 1975 and still running in syndication today, a mere 63 years later!

Personally, I’m quite happy that Wayne kept making movies, because in my opinion, he was the Western. But why? Maybe no one summed it up better than director Raoul Walsh when he said, “Dammit, the son of a bitch looked like a man.” Perhaps that’s it. He did look and act like a man, and we never read or heard anything to make us doubt it. Journalist and writer Joan Didion in a profile spoke for a lot of us when she said, “When John Wayne rode through my childhood, he determined forever the shape of certain of our dreams.”

I miss John Wayne and all the things he stood for.

Napoleonic-Era Book Explains Evolving Dark Art of War

A title lobby card for the 1927 silent French epic film *Napoléon* sold for $10,157 at a July 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

It is generally accepted dogma that the French Revolution devoured not only its own children. Many of those who fought against it were literally children. Carl von Clausewitz was only 12 when he first saw action against the French.

A true warrior-scholar, Clausewitz (1780-1831) survived the shattering defeat at Jena-Auerstedt (today’s Germany) in 1806, refused to fight with the French against the Russians in 1812 and saw action at Ligny in 1815. As noted in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest, British historian Niall Ferguson says it was Clausewitz who, better than anyone (including Napoleon himself), understood the way the Revolution transformed the dark art of war.

The Prussian general’s posthumously published masterpiece On War (1832) remains the single most important work on the subject produced by a Western author. Though in many ways timeless, Ferguson points out On War is also the indispensable commentary on the Napoleonic era. It explains why war had changed in its scale and the implications for those who chose to wage it.

Clausewitz declared that war is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will … (it is) not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” These are considered his most famous words, and also the most misunderstood and mistranslated (at least from what I have read … which is extensive).

But they were not his most important.

Clausewitz’s brilliant insight was that in the wake of the French Revolution, a new passion had arrived on the field of battle. “Even the most civilized of peoples [ostensibly referring to the French] can be fired with passionate hatred for each other…” After 1793, “war again became the business of the people,” as opposed to the hobby of kings, Ferguson writes. It became a juggernaut, driven by the temper of a nation.

This was new.

Clausewitz did acknowledge Bonaparte’s genius as the driver of this new military juggernaut, yet his exceptional generalship was less significant than the new “popular” spirit that propelled his army. Clausewitz called it a paradoxical trinity of primordial violence, hatred and enmity. If that was true, then it helps explain the many people-wars of the 19th century, but is a perplexer (at least to me) when applied to events a century later.

The Battle of the Somme, started on July 1, 1916, is infamous primarily because of 58,000 British troop casualties (one-third of them killed) – to this day a one-day record. It was the main Allied attack on the Western front in 1916 and lasted until Nov. 18 when terrible weather brought it to a halt. The attack resulted in over 620,000 British and French casualties. German casualties were estimated at 500,000. It is one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The Allies gained a grand total of 12 kilometers of (non-strategic) ground!

It is hard to fit Clausewitz’s thesis into this form of military stupidity. I prefer the rationale offered by the greatest mind of the 20th century: “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die,” said Albert Einstein.

United Airlines, China and Course Corrections

This United Airlines travel poster from the 1950s sold for nearly $900 at a July 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1985, a man by the name of Richard Ferris, CEO of United Airlines, developed an innovative one-stop shopping strategy (Fly-Drive-Sleep) and then bought Hertz and Hilton hotels to add the two legs he needed. The expected synergies did not materialize, but he did manage to alienate his pilots and their powerful union. Rumors circulated that he had to travel incognito – under an assumed name – to avoid “last-minute mechanical failures” if his employees discovered him onboard.

In April 1987, barely two years into the new program, the angry pilots’ union made a hostile takeover bid, which effectively put the entire company “in play” on Wall Street. A compromise was reached for Ferris to resign, sell Hertz and Hilton, and change the company name from Allegis back to United Airlines. Everyone was happy except Ferris and the customers, who had suffered through two years of lousy service due to the squabbling.

The new UAL management aggressively decided to rebuild their frayed customer relations. Nancy and I were invited to go on a multistep goodwill tour to China and back. This was our first (of many) long, international flights to Asia that included a stop in Hong Kong, Guangzhou (Canton), Beijing, Shanghai and back to Hong Kong. Everything was first class-plus and I met some interesting CEOs from several major corporations. There were only 20 people (plus crew) on a specially outfitted 747 with fully reclining seats … a novelty in those days.

The food and beverage service was exceptional. However, what impressed me the most was the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. I could finally grasp what Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) and his crew encountered when they miscalculated, ran out of food and were so desperate they survived on a tasty dish of rat droppings mixed with sawdust. There were also stories of men gnawing on the ropes that lashed the mainsail. Only 18 men survived, and that did not include Captain Magellan.

The Pacific Ocean is the oldest of the world’s seas, a relic of the once all-encompassing Panthalassan Ocean that opened up 750 million years ago. It is by far the world’s biggest body of water – all the continents could fit easily within its borders, with ample room to spare. It is the most biologically diverse and seismically active, and holds the planet’s greatest mountains and deepest trenches. Its chemical influences and weather systems affect the entire orb we call home.

Most think of the Pacific Ocean in parts … a beach here … an atoll there … a long expanse of deep water. Captain James Cook wrote that by exploring the Pacific, he had gone “as far as I think it is possible for man to go.” Cook was not aware that it is 64 million square miles and humans are still exploring it.

Even the highly revered British Admiralty’s chart room bible “Ocean Passages for the World” still cautions sailors embarking on a crossing: “Very large areas are unsurveyed … no sounding at all recorded … only safeguards are a good lookout …”

The Chinese have always had good lookouts and now view the Pacific Ocean as their next area for expansion and dominance. They tell me to consider the past 4,000 years when judging their progress and to view the 20th century as an anomaly. They made a course correction to compensate for Mao Zedong and are now back on track for the next 1,000 years. They studied the flaws in our last financial system meltdown (greed and overleverage) and decided to create their own World Bank. They view our form of democracy with disdain since we appear irreparably divided over every single important strategic issue, with our economy bankrupt and elected officials in Washington, D.C., as the only ones with good health insurance, pensions and job security … hopelessly gridlocked.

They think it is better to have a strong leader and a navy capable of dominating the South China Sea with impunity. The great battle for the 21st century is essentially over. However, what they don’t understand is that we always find a way, then come together as needed. Winston Churchill put it best: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Civil War Saw Train Chase Worthy of a Hollywood Movie

A half sheet movie poster for Buster Keaton’s 1927 film *The General* sold for $16,730 at a March 2013 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On April 12, 1862, “The General,” a small locomotive on the Western & Atlantic Railroad, pulled into Big Shanty, Ga., 25 miles north of Atlanta. The crew and passengers went to have breakfast, but James J. Andrews hung back. He and 22 other Union volunteers had orders to steal a train and burn bridges while General Ormsby Mitchel attacked Huntsville, Ala.

While a dazed sentry looked on, they uncoupled the General and three boxcars and sped north, while the conductor and two others gave chase on foot. Then they borrowed a handcar until it was derailed by a break Andrews men had made in the track. After righting the car, the railroad men then discovered another engine (the Yonah) on a siding and resumed their chase.

Andrews had stopped the General several times to cut telegraph wires and in his haste had failed to disable the Yonah. To try and stay in sync with the railroads regular timetable, he sidetracked the General and let several other trains pass by. He waited a precious 65 minutes before getting the General back in flight, which allowed the railroad men time to close the gap.

Meanwhile, the pursuing Yonah encountered three southbound trains parked on a main line, abandoned their little engine, sprinted to another junction and commandeered the larger William L. Smith engine. However, another broken rail sidelined the Smith, so the men (on foot again) flagged down the Texas. Engineer Peter Bracken quickly backed his cars into the station and resumed the chase, although still in reverse!

Andrews and his speeding raiders cut loose two boxcars and dropped cross ties across the tracks, desperately trying to gain enough time to burn rain-soaked bridges. The Texas simply pushed both boxcars on to a nearby siding and resumed pursuit of the General… at speeds of 65 mph. Up ahead, the little General, unable to stop for wood or water, ran out of steam and came to a complete stop.

The relentless Confederate pursuit, bad weather and just plain bad luck prevented the raiders from doing any lasting damage. James Andrews and seven of his men were captured, tried and hanged. Eight others later escaped from an Atlanta jail. The remaining six raiders were exchanged for prisoners of war and became the first recipients of the U.S. Medal of Honor.

This event was made into a silent movie in 1927 – The General – starring Buster Keaton in “his favorite role.” Initially a box-office failure, film critic Roger Ebert put it in his personal top 10 films of all time and it is routinely listed among the top 100 movies by the AFI and many others.

After Napoleon and Nazi Germany, Russia Lives with Paranoia of Conflict

A 1953 Russian propaganda poster showing Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin sold for $2,629 at a July 2016 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after ruling the Soviet Union for 25 years and leading the country in its transformation into a major world power. Born Iosif Dzhugashvili in 1878, while in his 30s he took the name “Stalin” meaning “Man of Steel.” After studying at a theological seminary, he read the works of revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, which inspired him to join the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

He was a protégé of Vladimir Lenin and after Lenin’s death, Stalin earned a reputation as one of the most ruthless and brutal dictators in world history (“Ideas are more powerful than guns,” he once said. “We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”).

After an extended Cold War with the West, the Soviet Union started to unravel when its eighth and final leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, assumed control in 1988. He seemed eager to “destroy the apparat” – weaken the Stalinist structure of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Only then could he take the bold economic steps to revamp a bankrupt system that was crumbling fast.

The West hailed Gorbachev as the tsar liberator, a political magician, or as Time magazine editorialized in January 1990: “The Copernicus, Darwin and Freud of communism all wrapped into one.” A year earlier, he was Time’s “Man of the Decade.” But in early 1990, Lithuania demanded outright independence and a crowd of 200,000 in the capital of Vilnius demonstrated to get the entire Lithuanian territory returned. This was quickly followed by an Azerbaijani Popular Front rally that escalated into a civil war along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, with both sides clamoring for independence.

In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia declared restoration of full independence, followed by the Ukraine on Dec. 1. On Dec. 25, Christmas Day, Gorbachev resigned and the following day the Supreme Soviet voted itself and the Soviet Union out of existence.

I first met current Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg in 1992 when he was head of the Committee for External Relations, a group in the mayor’s office responsible for promoting international relations and foreign investment. We started shipping Lays potato chips from Warsaw and soon built a Frito-Lay plant near Moscow. I totally underestimated him and thought he was just another thug, a feeling that was reinforced when we started Pizza Hut in Moscow.

According to Henry Kissinger, Putin has always blamed Gorbachev for the dissolution of the Soviet Union due to his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform). “The greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.” It has always been a mystery to me why they gave up so much when the United States and others were willing to negotiate a softer landing. I haven’t read Putin’s autobiography, but I suspect the Russians will never be satisfied until there is an east-west buffer zone along the Ukrainian border.

After Napoleon and then Nazi Germany, there is an inherent paranoia that will only be exacerbated if Poland ever joins NATO. As philosopher George Santayana so wisely observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

No Other Peace-Time Economic Chaos Compares to the Great Depression

Just as the Great Depression began taking hold in 1929, movie-goers were being entertained by films such as *That’s My Wife*, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This 1929 one sheet sold for $11,950 at a July 2011 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Every economist who writes or thinks about the Great Depression inevitably faces the questions of what really caused it and could it happen again? These issues are still (surprisingly) debated yet today.

For me, it is much easier to simply remember the scale of the economic meltdown that occurred in 1929-1933.

During a three-year period, real GDP in the major world economies declined by over 25 percent and one in four adult males lost his job. Commodities prices declined by 50 percent and average wages fell by a third. Here in America, the working class was entering a difficult period and no one had any solutions.

Bank credit in the U.S. shrank by 40 percent and in many countries, the entire banking system collapsed. Almost every major sovereign debtor in Central and Eastern Europe defaulted, including Germany, the third-largest economy in the world. The economic turmoil spread from the prairies of Canada to the teeming cities of Asia, from the heartland of America to the smallest village in India. No other peace-time economic chaos has come close to the breadth and depth of this cataclysm.

Part of the reason for the extent of the economic collapse was that it was not just one crisis, but a sequence of events, ricocheting across the Atlantic, each feeding off the previous. It started with the contraction of the German economy in 1928, then the Great Crash on Wall Street in 1929, the serial bank failures in 1930, and the unraveling of European finances in the summer of 1931.

Most modern economists do not believe it was an act of God or the result of basic flaws in capitalism. It was the cumulative effect of misjudgments by economic policymakers. It was, by any measure, the most dramatic sequence of collective blunders ever made by financial officials, at least to that time.

It probably started with the Paris Peace Conference (1919) that burdened a shaky world economy with a giant overhang of international debt from the First World War. Central bankers then decided to take the world back to a dysfunctional gold standard, holding interest rates low and keeping Germany afloat on borrowed money. By 1927, the Federal Reserve was torn between conflicting objectives of propping up Europe or controlling speculation on Wall Street. It tried to do both and achieved neither.

The stock market bubble created an international credit squeeze on the way up and cratered the U.S. economy on the way down. When the U.S. let the Bank of United States fail (1930), the panic moved into high gear with a wave of dreaded “runs on the bank” – a phenomenon that is a banker’s nightmare. It would take a long time to break the fever, restore confidence and then start the monumental task of rebuilding an international monetary system and reigniting economic growth.

In the end, it took another world war to provide the final ingredient for success. However, in the process, it created a bonanza for factoid geeks who relish unusual and interesting historical situations. (Who, moi?)

Wilson Turned Conscription into Act of Public Patriotism

This World War I recruitment poster for the U.S. Army sold for $13,742.50 at a November 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

One hundred years ago this month – in June 1917 – 10 million men between the ages of 21 and 31 started lining up to register for military service in the United States armed forces. President Woodrow Wilson had decided in 1916 to make one last effort to end World War I and made an offer on Dec. 18 to mediate a peace, pending both sides specifying their acceptance terms.

The Central Powers had no interest since they were confident of victory. The Allies – who had no sincere interest in peace – stipulated that their enemies had to dismantle and disarm.

Wilson’s offer was allowed to lapse, which ensured two things: First, the war would continue, and secondly, the United States would be forced to abandon a policy of neutrality and issue a formal declaration of war on Germany. Congress enacted it on April 6, 1917.

Once committed to hostilities, America’s extraordinary capacity for industrial production and human organization took over. A conscription system was created and the Selective Service Act enacted on May 18, 1917, to build a national army through compulsory enlistment. Aware of the nation’s reluctance to get involved, Wilson cleverly created local civilian registration boards, which decided whether individuals entered active service or stayed on the civilian side to support the badly needed build-up efforts.

Over 24 million men registered in 1917-18 and those deemed most eligible – young, unmarried males without dependents – formed the first contingent of 2.8 million draftees. The public nature of this process transformed the dread of being drafted into a spirit of public patriotism. It was almost magically and remarkably different from the Vietnam situation 50 years later.

Only 10 percent to 11 percent of those eligible tried to evade the mandatory registration and local communities had designated people to track down the “slackers” who were required to carry proof of registration via a draft card. If anyone was nabbed without one, they were put in jail and publicly humiliated.

Families proudly put a Blue Star in their home windows whenever a family joined the military, and let their neighbors know they were “Enrolling in Liberty.” Gold Stars were displayed if a death occurred. Soon, registrants started wearing lapel pins or ribbons to advertise their status since there were five classes for draft deferments. So you could register publicly, but then privately apply for a deferment.

Naturally, there were problems since 20 percent of draftees were foreign-born citizens, but any suspicions were allayed when the bullets started flying. Another major issue was that the Army was strictly segregated and about 90 percent of black men were assigned to non-combatant roles. In a pleasant twist, those sent to France were given special treatment by the French people, who welcomed them into their homes. For those from the Jim Crow South, this became an exciting adventure.

Under current law, all male U.S. citizens between 18 and 25 are required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday. I wonder how many are aware of this law? However, the last prosecution for non-registration was in January 1986, so I guess they are safe.

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 chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].