Margaret Thatcher – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Here’s why I admire Helen Keller, Sir Christopher Wren, Mark Twain and Doctor Who

Peter Cushing starred in *Dr. Who and the Daleks*, a 1965 movie based on the TV series. A British “quad” poster for the film sold for $3,585 at a July 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Doctor Who was a popular sci-fi TV series in Britain that originally ran from 1963-89 on BBC. Myth has it that the first episode was delayed for 80 seconds due to an announcement of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. We had the opportunity to watch a 1996 made-for-TV movie in London that co-starred Eric Roberts (Julia’s older brother). Alas, it failed to generate enough interest to revive the original Doctor Who series (at least until a new version was launched in 2005).

A 1982 episode from the first run of the show is still popular since the story claimed that aliens were responsible for the Great Fire of London of 1666 and mentioned Pudding Lane. Ever curious, I drove to Pudding Lane, a rather small London street, where Thomas Farriner’s bakery started the Great Fire on Sunday, Sept. 2, shortly after midnight, and then proceeded to rain terror down on one of the world’s great cities.

Pudding Lane also holds the distinction of being one of the first one-way streets in the world. Built in 1617 to alleviate congestion, it reminds one just how long Central London has been struggling with this issue that plagues every large city. Across from the bakery site is a famous landmark monument built in memory of the Great Fire. Not surprisingly, it was designed by the remarkable Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723).

Wren is an acclaimed architect (perhaps the finest in history) who helped rebuild London with the help of King Charles II. This was no trivial task since 80 percent of the city was destroyed, including many churches, most public buildings and private homes … up to 80,000 people were rendered homeless. Even more shocking is that this disaster followed closely the Great Plague of 1665, when as many as 100,000 people died. A few experts have suggested that the 1666 fire and massive refurbishment helped the disease-ridden city by eliminating the vermin still infesting parts of London.

One of Wren’s more famous restorations is St. Paul’s Cathedral, perhaps the most famous and recognizable sight in London yet today. Many high-profile events have been held there, including the funerals of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana … among many others.

Even Wren’s tomb is in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is truly a magnificent sight to view Wren’s epitaph:

“Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you. Died 25 Feb. 1723, age 91.”

In addition to Wren’s reputation as an architect, he was renowned for his astounding work as an astronomer, a co-founder of the elite Royal Society, where he discussed anything scientific with Sir Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Robert Hooke and, importantly, Edmond Halley of comet fame. Halley’s Comet is the only known short-period comet that is regularly (75-76 years) visible to the naked eye. It last appeared in our solar system in 1986 and will return in mid-2061.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain) was born shortly after the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835 and predicted he “would go out with it.” He died the day after the comet made its closest approach to earth in 1910 … presumably to pick up another passenger. We all know about Twain, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But far fewer know about his unique relationship with Helen Keller (1880-1968). She was a mere 14 when she met the world-famous Twain in 1894.

They became close friends and he arranged for her to go to Radcliffe College of Harvard University. She graduated in 1904 as the first deaf and blind person in the world to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She learned to read English, French, Latin and German in braille. Her friend Twain called her “one of the two most remarkable people in the 19th century.” Curiously, the other candidate was Napoleon.

I share his admiration for Helen Keller.

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].

Einstein was right: Income taxes are hard to understand

A 1952 Topps trading card for oil industry magnate, industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller sold for $720 at a February 2019 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Next year promises to be another year when a major political party has an unusually large number (perhaps 20) of eager aspirants wanting to become president. Republicans had to contend with a similar problem in 2016. Sixteen hopefuls filled out the requisite forms. Most of them withdrew during the primaries and the last two – Ted Cruz and John Kasich – withdrew when Donald Trump won Indiana. On May 2, Trump became the presumptive nominee for Republicans.

There are advantages to having a broad, diverse group of candidates, but almost as many headaches. One that I suspect will become more prominent is “too many hogs at the trough.” Every candidate is challenged to find a unique angle to woo prospective voters, but it is surprising how many are making promises that will be impractical to keep. Free health care, college debt forgiveness, and free college tuition are fundamentally different than promises of lower taxes or new high-paying jobs.

Generally, populist proposals are “paid for” by taxing the rich with a “billionaire tax” or a radical wealth tax on existing assets. Since 70 percent of federal revenues come from the top 20 percent of taxpayers, the math just doesn’t work. This is especially true with 10,000 people retiring every day and existing entitlement projections squeezing out almost all other spending. One fact is certain: We can’t use the same tax dollar to pay for four different expenditures (unless we really crank up the printing presses … which are now just electronic gizmos).

Naturally, opponents are quickly stigmatizing all creative spending proposals as merely different variants of socialism. As “The Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher wisely observed, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

There may have been a time 150 years ago during the Gilded Age when some of these things made sense. America’s industrial success produced an era of financial magnificence when many basked in dynastic wealth of inexhaustible dimensions. John D. Rockefeller made the equivalent of $1 billion and paid no income tax. No one else did either since income tax didn’t exist in the United States at the time. Congress passed a 2 percent tax on earnings over $4,000, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Twenty years later in 1914, a modest income tax was finally approved. Albert Einstein said: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” I agree.

The wealthy in the 19^th and 20^th centuries found that spending all of their money became a full-time job. After emptying all of Europe’s fine art and artifacts, they built houses on a truly grand scale. The grandest of all were said to be the Vanderbilts. Ten mansions on 5th Avenue (one with 137 rooms). Next was Newport, R.I., where magnificent homes were quaintly called “cottages.” Then came George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862-1914), who, with successful and influential landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, built the Biltmore House – an estate outside Ashville, N.C. The house is believed to be the largest domestic dwelling in the United States, with 250 rooms nestled on 125,000 acres.

Olmsted and his senior partner, Calvert Vaux, designed America’s most famous park: New York City’s Central Park. The list of Olmsted’s projects is too extensive to list here even by category. The most fitting description of his work comes from the words of Daniel Burnham – the great American architect and urban designer: “An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills, with mountainsides and ocean views.”

Worthy of a great man’s epitaph!

As a ‘champion’ of the working man, Marx lived the high life

A second edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s *Das Kapital* (Hamburg: Otto Meissner, 1872) sold for $3,500 at a March 2018 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When Ho Chi Minh lived in London, training as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlson House, he used it as a pillow. Fidel Castro claimed he read 370 pages (about half) in 1953 while he was in prison after a failed revolutionary attack of the barracks of Moncada in Santiago de Cuba. President Xi Jinping of China hailed its author as “the greatest thinker of modern times.”

It’s been 200 years since Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany. His book Das Kapital was published in 1867, or at least that was when Volume 1 made its way into print. His friend and benefactor Friedrich Engels edited Volumes 2 and 3 after Marx’s death.

Engels (1820-1895) was born in Prussia, dropped out of high school and finally made it to England to help run his father’s textile factory in Manchester. On his trip, he met Marx for the first time, but it would be later before their friendship blossomed. Perhaps it was due to Engels’ 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England.

He had observed the slums of Manchester, the horrors of child labor, and the utter impoverishment of laborers in general and the environmental squalor that was so pervasive. This was not a new indictment since Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) had written, albeit anonymously, about these abysmal conditions. However, he had blamed the poor for their plight and opposed the concept of relief “since it simply increases their tendency to idleness.” He was particularly harsh on the Irish, writing that a “great part of the population should be swept from the soil.”

Not surprisingly, mortality rates soared, especially for the poor, and the average life expectancy fell to an astonishing 18.5 years. These lifespan levels had not existed since the Bronze Age and even in the healthiest areas, life expectancy was in the mid-20s, and nowhere in Britain exceeded 30 years.

Life expectancy had largely been uncertain until Edmond (the Comet) Halley obtained a cache of records from an area in Poland in 1693. Ever the tireless investigator of any and all scientific data, he suddenly realized he could calculate the life expectancy of any person still alive. From these unusually complete data charts, he created the very first actuarial tables. In addition to all the many other uses, this is what enabled the creation of the life insurance industry as a viable service.

One of the few who sympathized with the poor was the aforementioned Friedrich Engels, who spent his time embezzling funds from the family business to support his collaborator Karl Marx. They both passionately blamed the industrial revolution and capitalism for the miserable conditions of the working class. While diligently writing about the evils of capitalism, both men lived comfortably from the benefits it provided them personally. To label them as hypocrites would be far too mild a rebuke.

There was a stable of fine horses, weekends spent fox hunting, slurping the finest wines, a handy mistress, and membership in the elite Albert Club. Marx was an unabashed fraud, denouncing the bourgeoisie while living in excess with his aristocratic wife and his two daughters in private schools. In a supreme act of deception, he accepted a job in 1851 as a foreign correspondent for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune. Due to his poor English, he had Engles write the articles and he cashed the checks.

Even then, Marx’s extravagant lifestyle couldn’t be maintained and he convinced Engels to pilfer money from his father’s business. They were partners in crime while denouncing capitalism at every opportunity.

In the 20th century, Eugene Victor Debs ran for U.S. president five consecutive times as the candidate of the Socialist Party of America, the last time (1920) from a prison cell in Atlanta while serving time after being found guilty of 10 counts of sedition. His 1926 obituary told of him having a copy of Das Kapital and “the prisoner Debs read it slowly, eagerly, ravenously.”

In the 21st century, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont ran for president in 2016, despite the overwhelming odds at a Democratic National Convention that used superdelegates to select his Democratic opponent. In a series of televised debates, he predictably promised free healthcare for all, a living wage for underpaid workers, college tuition and other “free stuff.” I suspect he will be back in 2020 due to overwhelming support from Millennials, who seem to like the idea of “free stuff,” but he may have 10 to 20 other presidential hopefuls who’ve noticed that energy and enthusiasm.

One thing: You cannot call Senator Sanders a hypocrite like Karl Marx. In 1979, Sanders produced a documentary about Eugene Debs and hung his portrait in the Burlington, Vt., City Hall, when he became its mayor after running as a Socialist.

As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

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].

Churchill’s Successor Left a Lasting Mark on Great Britain

A gelatin silver print of Winston Churchill, 1941, by photographer Yousuf Karsh sold for $11,352 at a May 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When Clement Attlee was asked if he wanted to comment on the campaign of 1945, his response was a simple “No.” During this election for Prime Minister of Great Britain, he and wife Violet traveled the countryside extensively in their modest (battered) family car, advocating for a totally new, post-war social policy. One of his more effective political slogans was “You Can Trust Mr. Attlee.” It worked surprisingly well as he led the Labour Party to an upset, landslide win over the venerable Winston Churchill.

Attlee became one of the most successful leaders in modern Britain, despite being habitually shy, laconic, self-deprecating and excessively modest. As Churchill once quipped, “Clement Attlee was a modest man who had much to be modest about.”

Churchill respected Attlee for his basic honesty and firm dedication to accountability. They had served together during World War I and Attlee was even part of the British Army during the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign, which Churchill had conceived while the First Lord of the Admiralty. The strategic premise was to knock Turkey out of the war by attacking the Dardanelles. The campaign went so badly that Churchill was demoted, resigned from the Conservative Cabinet, and ended up commanding an infantry battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.

Attlee naively believed that the plan had been sound strategically and had only failed due to poor military execution. In Attlee’s own words, “There was only one brilliant strategic idea in WWI and that was Winston’s ‘the Dardanelles.’” Historians still argue over this yet today, but it was enough to form a bond between the two future prime ministers … one a pure socialist and the other an imperialist of the first order.

During the Second World War (which was just a continuation of the first with a 20-year pause), Attlee served under Churchill in the coalition government of 1940-45 and was the first person to hold the office of Deputy Prime Minister. He somehow held the Labour Party together despite numerous divergent viewpoints and personal ambitions. The colossal egos of Herbert Morrison, Sir Stafford Cripps (reputed to have the finest mind in England), and union strongman Ernest Bevin (dedicated to absolute equality throughout the British Empire) required a rare blend of political leadership – perhaps unique to Attlee.

It is here (in my humble opinion) where we start to witness the real decline of the British Empire. Independence in India, the partition of Pakistan, independence in Burma (Myanmar), Sri Lanka, Palestine and Jordan and exiting Greece. This was followed by the inevitable nationalization of the Bank of England, along with the iron, coal and steel industries. Then, importantly, there was the creation of a comprehensive welfare state. To the United States, the phrase “British socialism” signified economic and political bankruptcy; one of the few things Democrats and Republicans could agree on.

In Attlee’s rationale, these Labour Party policies were merely measures to ensure full employment and welfare based on managed capitalism; “accomplishments” that remained in place until his death in 1962 and beyond. Fortunately, a research chemist-turned-barrister was elected to Parliament in 1959, and 20 years later became the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century. Her name was Margaret “The Iron Lady” Thatcher.

The small island that had once ruled the seas and oceans of the world – along with much of its land – was about to enter an era known now as “Thatcherism.” Many, including me, appreciate strong, enlightened leadership grounded in economic and political freedom. She fit the model perfectly.