The road goes ever on and on – J.R.R. Tolkien

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet And whither then? I cannot say.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

BBC NEWS | People may be able to taste words

By Victoria Gill

Science reporter, BBC News

It may be that everyone can taste language to a certain degree

We are all capable of “hearing” shapes and sizes and perhaps even “tasting” sounds, according to researchers.

This blending of sensory experiences, or synaesthesia, they say, influences our perception and helps us make sense of a jumble of simultaneous sensations.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | People may be able to taste words.

On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired – WSJ.com

Mr. Pitts Lacks a Mailing Address But Hes Got a Computer and a Web Forum

 By PHRED DVORAK

SAN FRANCISCO — Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge

via On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired – WSJ.com.

Margaret Bourke White, Photo Journalist – A Photo Essay Part 3

When a new conservative government in South Africa imposed harsh restrictions on the native population, LIFE assigned Bourke-White to the story. Visiting a mine workers’ compound on a Sunday, she happened upon their weekly dance exhibition where two especially spirited and photogenic dancers caught her eye. The next day, she asked the mine superintendent if she could photograph them at work. At first he resisted since the two worked in a dangerous area two miles underground, but Bourke-White prevailed.

What she found down there, however, shocked her and fueled a desire to create a portrait of racial injustice. The men moved in slow motion, weighed down by the over 100 degree heat, humidity and fetid air. At one point during the shooting session, Bourke-White nearly passed out and had to be taken to the edge of the shaft to be revived.

“I left the mine realizing that I had spent only four hours underground, and I would not have to return if my pictures were all right,” she wrote in her autobiography, Portrait of Myself (1963). “But these men, who danced so gaily and happily in the upper air, were destined to spend the better part of their waking hours underground with no hope of escaping the endless routine.”

The miners’ portrait became the signature image of the story and one of the photographer’s favorites. Of it, Bourke-White biographer and photography critic Vicki Goldberg has written “…on some symbolic level these men represent the downtrodden who suffer but endure. The beauty of faces, bodies, light and texture and the composition of powerful forms testify to the photographer’s firm belief in the power of art and humanity.”

-Sean Callahan,
Former LIFE reporter and editor.

 

Cologne 1945

 

Nuremberg 1945

 

 

 

Buchenwald 1945

The Red Scare In Nevada, 1919-1920: The Nevada Experience, Chapter 2 – By Ted DeCorte

The Nevada Experience

The Red Scare contagion which plagued American society in 1919 also infected Nevada. Nevadans had experienced the emotional trauma of World War I and responded with nationalistic fervor and increased intolerance. Reading daily reports of Bolshevik atrocities, Nevadans also came to fear a Communist revolution. High inflation, labor unrest and widespread unemployment disrupted the local economy and intensified the social dislocations and growing public apprehensions. Finally, the press heightened local fears and frustrations by warning of a pervasive “spirit of lawlessness” and devoting extensive coverage to labor problems, radical bombings, and mob violence at the national level.

A fear of Bolshevism mingled with the war’s leftover emotions to dominate the minds of most Nevadans during the Red Scare. The state’s “yellow press” reported extensively on the advance of this “menace of the world,” and devoted considerable space to the growing hysteria at home. Even though the U.S. Justice Department reported in January 1919 that Bolshevism showed “no promise of reaching a stage of open disorder” in the United States, many Nevadans remained terrified. Newspapapers utilized scare tactics in an effort to arouse citizens and prevent “anarchy” frm destroying Nevada’s “free institutions.” Publication of the so-called “Cardinal Principles of Bolshevism” further reinforced everyone’s worst fears that Bolshevism advocated high wages, no work, no punishment, no taxation and the confiscation of personal property.

The editor of the Battle Mountain Scout, Mrs. Alice L. Haworth, reduced the sources of the Bolshevik danger in America to “the over-educated collge theorist and the under-educated toiler who takes his ideas form the soapboxer.” “Neither of then,” Haworth continued, “is a taxpayer.” Her solution to the Bolshevik problem was to make these people go “out into the open and (do) some real work.”

Others, such as William W. Booth, editor of the Tonopah Daily Bonanza had more “effective” remedies: “The proper punishment for every fellow who says he’s a bolshevik, (should be) to make him go and live right among ‘em.” By the Fall of 1919 many Nevadans agreed with Booth that “there is no place in the United States for . . . enemies of the government.” Hence, the only practical solution became, in the popular expression of the day, “ship or shoot.”

Like most Americans, Nevadans became caught up in the emotional rhetoric and they clamored for the deportation of “Red.” They believed as the Nevada State Journal put it, that “if Boshevism is as good as it is cracked up to be,” why not deport the American Bolsheviks to Russia? This irrational and narrow-minded rhetoric typified the mood of Nevadans during the Red Scare. They assumed that everyone with non-conforming or nontraditonal political beliefs was “un-American” and therefore a “menace.” Consequently, they felt the sooner “Bolsheviks” and “traitors” could be either imprisoned or deported, the sooner the welfare of the United States would be ensured.

Some Nevadans expressed concern that Communist Russia would unite with Germany and rise against the world. Nevadans wanted to preserve and protect their investment in the war effort; almost five thousand Nevada boys had served in the armed forces and 120 had been killed. (NOTE: an epidemic of Spanish influenza swept across the United States during the winter of 1918-1919. By February over 125 thousand Americans perished from the disease, more lives lost in the war. The flu killed over 600 Nevadans. Certainly, these deaths along with the casualties of war further aggravated the emotional instability of postwar Nevada.) The weekly casualty lists in the newspapers and perennial Victory Bond drives only fanned the flames of hatred toward the Germans and prolonged the sadness and tragedy of the war. While stories of the stalled peace negotiations and the German atrocities filled Nevada’s newspapers, advertisements and posters urged Nevadans: “Don’t Be A Slacker – - Buy Victory Bonds.” Editorials depicted the German “Hun” as subhuman, militaristic and cunning. A typical column described the “Hun” as “the world’s real yellow peril.” As in other states, hostility toward the German “Beast” turned inward and Nevadans directed their bigotry toward the alien immigrants and “slackers” who refused to support America’s crusade against Germany. Indeed, citizens branded anyone criticizing the U.S. as “German” or “un-American.” Patriotic groups appealed to all loyal Americans and “hun killers” to prevent “slackers” from spreading anti-American propaganda.

The case of Tony Denati of Dayton provides an excellent example of the prevailing intolerance toward “slackers.” Federal officials has arrested Denati in June 1918 on the charge of “obstructing the sale of war stamps,” a direct violation of the Espionage Act of 1918. Witnesses at the trial in March 1919 testified that Denati believed “Germany did right in sinking the Lusitania.” Furthermore, Denati had declared that the war was a “rich man’s war.” Given the intolerant postwar mood in Nevada, certainly Denati’s statements as much as his actions led to his conviction, although he had posed no threat to Ameica’s war effort in Europe.

Nevada’s irregular postwar economy and soaring inflation prompted citizens to search for scapegoats to hold responsible for the high cost of living. The editors of the Reno Evening Gazette and the Battle Mountain Scout blamed “profiteers” and “hoarders” for the economic woes, and labeled them as “Judas,” although one editor did note that “Judas had the grace to hang himself.” To combat rising prices, citizens appointed committees to investigate profiteering by local merchants, and wore home-made overalls, the “common rainment for the common people,” at work and social events.

Nevada’s rampant inflation had actually resulted from the war. The conflict had brought an artificial prosperity to the state by increasing the demand for copper, silver and other metals. By 1918 Nevada’s annual mineral production had reached $48 million, nearly two million dollars more than the heyday of Virginia City’s Comstock lode during the 1870s. World War I had also stimulated agriculture in Nevada. Sugar and honey production, for instance, became increasingly profitable, as Nevada farmers shipped more overseas. The state’s ranchers sent meat and horses to American soldiers and European allies, while sheepherders supplied wool for uniforms and clothing. Although the war had greatly increased the demand for Nevada’s agricultural and mining products, this ceased with the armistice in 1918.

President Wilson’s chaotic national demobilization abruptly cut mining activity in Nevada and also brought sharp declines imn livestock and farm prices. Because the economies of the state’s small towns relied heavily on these industries, many people suffered. Nevadans felt betrayed. They had fought and sacrificed to make the “world safe for Democracy,” only to see their own well-being seemingly threatened. One returning doughboy in New York City remarked, “We fought for democracy, and what we got was prohibition and influenza.” In his message to the 1919 Nevada legislature, Governor Emmett Boyle warned that postwar economic readjustments would be necessary if Nevadans wished to preserve their way of life, and he pointed out the the “greatest immediate problem” of the postwar period would be unemployment.

While falling prices and unemployment helped create a wave of intolerance in the state, the enactment of prohibition laws contributed to the rising social problem of “lawless and disorderly defense of law and order.” Prohibition measures were passed primarily to conserve grain during the war, but with the patriotic necessity eliminated these statutes became difficult to enforce. Many Nevadans refused to obey them, thereby creating a postwar atmosphere of disobedience in the the state. The war’s end had also produced a significant transient population which contributed to the climate of restlessness and turmoil. Thousands of unemployed workers and ex-soldiers wandered from town to town, some searching for jobs, others seeking excitement. Tonopah represented a typical postwar Nevada mining community. Many of the drifters, vagrants and con-artists who took up temporary residence committed burglary, vandalism, petty larceny and other crimes.

Opposition to prohibition and the general social dislocation produced a clamor for social control in the state. The threat of Bolshevism and the occurrence of national strikes, riots and bombings, made people increasingly intolerant of criminal behavior in Nevada. In response to the rising crime and “anarchy,” Nevadans demanded law and order, and organized vigilante committees and “law and order” campaigns. They urged public officials to declare war on bootleggers, gamblers and prostitutes. Looking for scapegoats, Nevadans blamed criminal activity on the IWWs, agitators and other “troublemakers.” Reno police escorted employed drifters out of town while Elko citizens called for an “anti-loafing” law similar to New York’s. In an effort to reduce fatal accidents and crime, a small minority of Nevadans supported legislation to stop the private sale of guns.

In Tonopah, one newspaper launched a law and order campaign, reporting all unsolved crimes and urging citizens’ hel to combat the crime wave. This action provoked a violent response, not from Tonopah’s “lawless” element, but ironically from the police force. Indeed, Police Chief Jack Grant assaulted the paper’s editor after ordering him to “cut it out.” During Grant’s trial, defense witnesses asserted that he was right to assail the editor, especially since the newspaper had called Tonopah’s police force “slackers.” Sympathizing with Grant’s indignation, the jury acquitted him. Despite the verdict, Tonopah’s law and order crusade continued. Eventually, the town’s business community intervened and organized the Tonopah Law Enforcement League to crack down on bootleggers and illegal gamblers. The “law and order” frenzy became a key political issue throughout the 1920s.

The Nevada press’ coverage of national events contributed significantly to the state’s heightened fear and apprehension during the postwar period. Accounts of mob violence and labor unrest expressed in highly emotional rhetoric convinced many Nevadans that “radicalism” would soon spread to their state.

In early 1919 the state’s newspapers alerted citizens to what looked like a revolutionary takeover by radical labor in Seattle, Washington. On February 6, sixty thousand Seattle workers paralyzed the city by calling a general strike. Although the laborers had struck for higher wages, shorter hours, and the right to bargain collectively, Nevada’s press labeled Seattle’s walkout “an experiment in Russian Bolshevism,” declared it “without much merit,” and believed it had “no place in the history of the American people.” After Seattle mayor Ole Hanson mobilized the national guard to “crush the reds,” Nevada’s newspapers praised his “courageous” efforts to protect the city from the “enemies of society” and prevent it from becoming “a battlefied for IWWs or Bolshevists.”

Nevadans were further warned of the danger of radical domination in the West by reports of the Centralia, Washington episode in November 1919. Centralia’s Armistice Day parade erupted into a clash between American Legionnaires and members of the IWW when the marching veterans ahd rerouted their parade to purposely pass the IWW headquarters. Anticipating this move Wobbly leaders had stationed armed members inside the hall and on rooftops overlooking the street. When paraders arrived, a group of Legionnaires rushed the hall door. They were met with a flurry of bullets leaving four Legionnaires and several Wobblies dead. After the bloody melee, officials arrested the IWWs. That night an enraged mob hauled one Wobbly agitator, a veteran himself, out of jail ad castrated him. They then dragged him behind a car, hanged him from a bridge, and shot him full of holes. Later, the coroner determined that cause of death to be “suicide.”

The Centralia Massacre triggered a violent reaction from Nevada’s press, which labeled the “wholesale murder of citizens” as a “cowardly plot . . . executed by a lot of fools.” Editors endorsed the “lynch law” and believed that “no regret” could be expressed; the shots fired at Centralia “have been heard over the entire country,” and should “awaken Americans to take steps to end IWWism . . . whenever and wherever it shoves its snaky head above ground.” According to the press, “The spirit of IWWism, of Bolshevism, or anarchy, is in the air,” and they predicted that “blood may flow in our streets.”

After Centralia, the press and patriotic groups in Nevada clamored for the arrest and deportation of all “un-American, disloyal, disturbing, radical, or destructive individuals.” In December 1919 the U.S. Justice Department began to arrest and deport “alien reds.” Newspapers praised the government’s action: “Uncle Sam is doing the right thing in sending undesirable citizens back to Russia”; these radicals “should be deported in a leaky boat with the pumps clogged.” When 249 radicals left on the “Soviet Ark,” Nevadans bid them “Good Riddance.” In a particularly bewildering Christmas message the Sparks Tribune wrote: “The Justice Department is cleaning the Nation of the citizens of other climes who teach and preach against our government and the best ideals of Christianity . . . Let greed, envy, malice, and hatred be cast into the junk pile for the day, at least.”

As Nevada’s press also fueled passions with irrational denunciations of Socialists and other political nonconformists, Nevadans freely denounced all Socialists as “Bolshevists” or “traitors.” One “traitor” who provoked the wrath of citizens was the Socialist, Congressman-elect Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin. In early 1919 Congress refused to seat this duly elected representative from Milwaukee. Although the House’s decision violated the principle of representative government, the vast majority of Nevadans supported the ruling. The press’ attack on Berger’s radical beliefs reveals the imflammatory role of the third estate within Nevada. The Sparks Tribune insisted that Berger “should never be allowed to again participate in the benefits of liberty, let alone be mentioned in the same breath with Congress.” Reno’s Evening Gazette called Berger’s election a “disgrace,” and denounced Berger as one “who speaks English with the gutteral accent of the enemy.” The Gazette urged the federal government to deport Berger along with “all other offensively active alien born citizens.” The paper also declared: “Victor L. Berger, felon, is no more eligible to a seat in Congress than a yellow dog would be.”

In a special election to choose a replacement, Milwaukee voters again selected the controversial Socialist. Nevada’s press was outraged, denouncing the voters as “a menace to the nation.” In fact the Nevada State Journal ’s editor called for the disenfranchisement of Berger’s supporters: “The country should know each man who voted for Berger, then it would be possible to disenfranchise those who deliberately put into jeopardy the welfare of the country by . . . casting a ballot (for) an avowed enemy of American institutions.” After Congress again refused to seat Berger, Wisconsin’s governor declined to call another election. In response, the Yerington Times congratulated the Governor “for refusing to waste money by returning to Congress a man wasteful to that body.” Milwaukee voters went unrepresented in Congress until the 1920 election.

Another Socialist, Eugene V. Debs, also provoked Nevada’s reactionary press. Following his conviction in 1918 for violation of the Espionage Act, Debs and his supporters sought a presidential pardon from President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson refused, forcing Debs to reamin in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Nevada’s Republican newspapers labeled Debs an “avowed revolutionist,” and believed his sympathizers should be forced to join him in prison, so they too could “study the difference between 100 percent Americanism and rotten pretensions.”

The press’ treatment of former Nevadan Louise Bryant, the wife of American Communist leader John Reed, further illustrates Nevada’s hostility toward political nonconformists. Ms. Bryant, after a trip to Bolshevik Russia, wrote a book entitled Six Red Months in Russia . (NOTE: Ms. Bryant was raised in Wadsworth, Nevada and spent her first two college years at the Univesity of Nevada in Reno. In 1919 her stepfather, Sheridan Bryant, was a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Ms. Bryant’s relationship with John Reed was depicted in Warren Beatty’s film “Reds.”) The press immediately branded the former University of Nevada student a “revolutionary.” In response to this criticism, Ms. Bryant, in a letter to the Reno Evening Gazette wrote, “I have never written a revolutionary pamphlet in my life.” Bryant’s opposition to American interventon in Russia and claim that the Bolshevik Revolution was “like the American civil war,” infuriated people. To many Nevadans, radicals like Bryant, Berger, and Debs symbolized the foreign “plot” to overthrow democracy.

Most of the factors that had produced the Red Scare on the national scene were also present in Nevada. Economic and social dislocations combined with pent up wartime emotions to produce anxiety and frustration. Disoriented and apprehensive, Nevadans viewed Bolshevik activities with a wary eye. When the press fanned the flames of this mounting hysteria with sensational accounts of national events, Nevadans began to last out at the “un-American” groups in their midst.

Margaret Bourke-White, Photo Journalist – A Photo Essay Part 2

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole . . . .
You are responsible for what you have done and the people
whom you have influenced.

Usually I object when someone makes overmuch of men’s work versus
women’s work, for I think it is the excellence of the results which counts.

 

 Nazi 1938

 

 

 Stalingrad

 

 

As photographers, we live through things so swiftly. All our experience and training is focused toward snatching off the highlights…That all significant perfect moment, so essential to capture, is often highly perishable. There may be little opportunity to probe deeper. -”Portrait of Myself” by Margaret Bourke-White

We are in a privileged and sometimes happy position. We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others. -Margaret Bourke White, on war and photojournalism.

The very secret of life for me…was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquillity. I had picked a life that dealt with excitement, tragedy, mass calamities, human triumphs and suffering. To throw my whole self into recording and attempting to understand these things, I needed an inner serenity as a kind of balance. -”Portrait of Myself” by Margaret Bourke-White

They [her subjects] believed I would be trying to get the truth of the question, and they trusted me. -Margaret Bourke White

Margaret Bourke White, Photo Journalist – A Photo Essay Part 1

“I feel that utter truth is essential,” Bourke-White said of her work, “and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours.” In practice, this attitude resulted in pictures of starkness and simplicity, but ones that were infused with a sense of humanity.

A kind of golden hour one remembers for a life time… Everything was touched with magic. -Margaret Bourke White

The element of discovery is very important. I don’t repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made…(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned…you would react to something all others might walk by. -”Portrait of Myself” by Margaret Bourke-White

["Life" wanted] faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way. -”Portrait of Myself” by Margaret Bourke-White

Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand. -Margaret Bourke White

 

 

 

 

The Supreme Love and Revolutionary Funk of Dr. Cornel West, Philosopher of the Blues < Killing the Buddha

by Jeff Sharlet

He’s gone from the Black Panthers to the Ivy League to The Matrix, and now he’s determined to be Barack Obama’s conscience.

via The Supreme Love and Revolutionary Funk of Dr. Cornel West, Philosopher of the Blues < Killing the Buddha.

The Red Scare In Nevada, 1919-1920: The Stage Is Set, Chapter 1 – By Ted DeCorte

Immediately following the First World War (1914-1918), the United States experienced a brief yet hysterical “Red Scare,” a fear of a radical communist, or bolshevik takeover of the United States. Fear of a radical takeover in the United States led to suppression and persecution of anyone perceived as “un-American.” This era of intolerance and paranoia engulfed Nevada, and its citizens responded harshly to the “Red Menace.” Nevada’s response was both a part of and a reaction to the volatile national scene during 1919-1920.

World War I demanded personal sacrifice on the part of Americans. It created immense social and economic strains such as runaway inflaiton, labor unrest and excessive governmental controls. In 1917 Bolshevik “Reds” had overthrown Russia’s repressive Czarist government, and America’ newspapers had kept the public well informed of the revolution’s gruesome events. Americans were also distressed by the influence of two radical organizations on their own home front: a Socialist party advocating drastic change in the existing political and economic system, and the Industrial Workers of the World preaching the destruction of capitalism and the government. Wartime superpatriotism had not only created an overwhelming suspicion and hatred of foreigners, but of domestic radicals as well. This experience of war, plus the fear of a worldwide radical conspiracy, produced a pattern of racism, intolerance and flagrant disregard for human rights which permeated American society throughout the postwar decade. Never before had the nation been so overwhelmed with fear. Economic and social dislocations combined with a series of highly suspicious and spectacular events into a common mass from which emerged the public panic and paranoia known as the Red Scare.

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s “Crusade for Democracy,” received the support of all “loyal” Americans. In an attempt to mobilize the people behind the war effort, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information. Headed by journalist George Creel of Colorado, the Creel Committee utilized the talents of thousands of creative people in the arts, advertising and motion pictures to “sell the war.” Creel’s army of speakers and writers blanketed the country with propaganda, picturing the war as a crusade for freedom and democracy, and the Germans as a bestial people bent on world domination. The committee’s endeavors created a national mood blending sincere idealism, patriotic dedication, nationalistic aggression and xenophobia. The Wilson-Creel propaganda machine made nationalism an American religion. By 1917 the vast majority of Americans found themselves caught up in the patriotic spirit. Most men and women believed this war would be the world’s last; they felt that victory could bring a new universal freedom, and therefore fought the war with an almost evangelical zeal. President Wilson himself demanded absolute loyalty and support for America’s conflict in Europe. His administration urged all “loyal” citizens to report persons who spoke against the war and advocated peace. Quick to sense the new superpatriotic mood, Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, making “disloyal” and seditious talk against the war – - and the Wilson Administration – - illegal.

During the war years Americans encountered severe limitations on freedom of speech and press, as well as outright suppression of dissent. The federal government arrested over fifteen hundred persons for disloyal comments and banned the dissemination of radical publications. Opening and censoring private mail also became an effective tool for monitoring “pro-German” thoughts and deeds. Periodically the Administration seized obviously loyal magazines critical of government policy. In its zeal, the Justice Department, for instance, delayed an edition of The Nation because it carried the caption “Civil Liberties Are Dead,” and confiscated copies of The Public when it suggested that wartime taxes on large incomes were too low. By far the most serious wave of intolerance, of high-handed governmental disregard for individual rights, and of popular hysteria erupted during the second Wilson Administration. The Administration’s forced fanning of the war fever led to a state of passion which made nonconformity and, certainly, dissent dangerous.

The United States Supreme Court contributed to the atmosphere of repression. In Schench v. United States (1919) and Abrams v. United States (1919), the Court ruled that the federal government could suspend constitutional rights when the nation faced “a clear and present danger.” Charles Schenck and his associates had distributed pamphlets denouncing the Selective Service Act and urging young men to resist the draft, while Jacob Abrams and others published leaflets attacking American intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution.

In addition to the federal government, the American people were also guilty of repressive acts during the war. Wartime propaganda indoctrinated the public with “100% Americanism,” a hatred of the “Hun,” and a general prejudice towards foreigners. Uttering ritual phrases of reverence and hate guaranteed protection from fanatical Germanphobes. Throughout the U.S. there arose a wild and fearful hatred of the Hun, the German Beast, and the murderous Kaiser. The passionate and unreasoning hatred of anything German, including literature, language and music, grew into a purge of anything un-American. Equating loyalty with conformity, the 100 Percenters belligerently demanded universal compliance. After 1917, pacificists, socialists and conscientious objectors, as well as “hyphenated-Americans,” such as German-Americans or Italian-Americans, encountered unprecedented persecution and harassment. Citizens often subjected persons who refused to buy war bonds to public contempt and even assault. Local officials jailed those who questioned the draft or criticized Red Cross or Y.M.C.A. activities, while vigilante groups looked for “draft dodgers” and “slackers.”

Eventually America’s loyalty crusade focused on domestic radicals, chiefly the socialists, anarchists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union. A radical was defined as anyone who favored progressive legislation or spoke out against governmental injustice. Nationalistic attacks on radicals gathered strength during 1917-1918 when most Americans identified the IWW and the Socialist party with the pacifist movement. By advocating peace and nonconforming political beliefs, these groups ran afoul of both antiradical nativism and anti-German hysteria. America’s passionate intolerance during the war eventually led to the indictment and conviction of two Socialist party leaders, on the charges of promoting draft evasion. In mid-1918 federal courts sentenced three-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs and U.S. Senatorial candidate Victor L. Berger to ten and twenty years imprisonment respectively. Although Debs and Berger had never posed a serious threat to the country’s ability to wage war, they had violated American society’s notions of patriotism, nationalism and 100% Americanism. Not until 1921, after conservatives so thoroughly cowed the spirit of radicalism in America, were they freed from governmental harassment: Debs by a Presidential pardon from Republican Warren G. Harding and Berger by Supreme Court edict.

Another target of the government’s antiradical campaign, the Industrial Workers of the World, advocated, at least in rhetoric, full-scale revolution. Yet, the majority of the IWW members rarely practiced what they preached, utilizing unethical and, at times, illegal methods to obtain their stated goals of labor reform and social justice, most “Wobblies” wanted only to change the unjust and oppressive conditions of western mining and lumber camps, of which Nevada had a number. IWW propaganda demanded better wages, hours (a six-hour work day) and conditions, the release of all “class-war prisoners” and the overthrow of the capitalistic system. Distraught Americans came to identify members of the radical union as agents of the Kaiser, working for the ruin of western civilization. Senator Henry Ashurst of Arizona dubbed the Wobblies “Imperial Wilhelm’s Warriors.” With the advent of the Russian Revolution in 1917, IWWism became more closely associated in the public mind with Bolshevism.

The disregard for individual freedoms, the increasing intolerance toward aliens, minorities and political dissidents, and the misguided patriotic spirit which flourished during wartime should have diminished after the hostilities ended in Europe. Yet, when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, the nationalistic fervor continued unabated. The termination of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” did not bring the peace and tranquility Americans expected. The transition from war to peace wouldnot come easy. Postwar economic and social problems spoiled the fruits of victory. Business and labor clashed; unemployment and inflation plagued the economy; and labor strikes and race riots erupted in many major cities.

During the war, Big Business had erased much of its tarnished reputation and enhanced its strength and public acceptance. Labor unions also gained increasing support, and enjoyed the benefits of high wartime wages, in addition to achieving a temporary eight-hour work day. Washington’s power expanded too, leaving the government in control of the country’s communication and transportation systems and theoretically regulating every aspect of America’s economy. Organized labor sought to retain its wartime gains. And although the majority of the workers received high wartime wages, pay had not kept pace with the rapid inflation. Thus, unions demanded wage increases, as well as a permanent eight-hour day and better working conditions. Labor leaders also pushed for continued federal regulation of both the economy and Big Business.

In 1919 businessmen wanted a return to normalcy, to a time before Big Labor and government interference. They desired freedom from government’s wartime regulation, from labor union demands, and from public responsibility. Troubled by high taxes, spreading radicalism and government ownership, the business community launched an attack on organized workers and Big Government. Labor responded with a series of strikes beginning in January 1919. The clash between business and labor forced the American public to choose sides, and by 1919 most Americans sided with business.

An ailing postwar economy led by the high cost of living as well as runaway inflation became the immediate cause of social discontent. From 1914 to 1919 the cost of living had doubled. After the armistice the Wilson Administration abruptly cut all government spending and the chaotic demobilization which followed caught Americans by surprise. Cancellation of government contracts forced wartime industries to lay off their workers, creating mass unemployment. American workers faced a serious economic recession by 1919.

With the collapse of Germany in November 1918, Americans continued to need some release for the nationalistic frenzy fostered by the Creel Committee. For most Americans, the Great War had been too brief. Hostilities ended in Europe sooner than expected, leaving many citizens full of unreleased patriotic emotions. The sudden halt of the war can be equated with a state of coitus interruptus. Americans had indulged in the act of intercourse with the “Whore of the World,” and suddenly the war ended and the whore vanished. The aggressive nationalism of wartime could not be turned off as easily as it had been turned on. The armistice did not end the ideological war on the home front.

The defeat of the German Hun cleared by way to concentrate on the “enemies” at home, and the drive for conformity and 100% Americanism continued. Fear of Bolshevism and domestic radicals replaced the hatred of the Hun. Instead of diminishing the antiradical hysteria and demand for 100% Americanism, the war’s end only intensified it. With economic abnormalities, the capital-labor dispute and the explosive national mood the stage was set for America’s first Red Scare.

As opposed to America’s “Red Scare” of the late 1940s and 1950s, the Red Scare of 1919-1920 erupted during the early months following the armistice which ended the First World War. Hysteria gained momentum throughout the spring and summer of 1919, and climaxed in January 1920. By mid-1920 the illiberal frenzy had fizzled.

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had a profound effect on the American people. Stories of communist atrocities filled column after column in America’s newspapers. Details of mass executions by the communists, along with the horrors of the European war, convinced Americans of the Red Menace. Millions of otherwise rational Americans listened to ugly rumors of a huge radical conspiracy and feared a Red Revolution in the United States. A series of domestic and world events convinced many Americans that the U.S. stood on the brink of its own Bolshevik. No longer willing to tolerate socialists, communists and foreign-born radicals, Americans took swift and decisive action to combat the growing Red threat.

Bolshevik uprisings plagued Bavaria and Hungary, and threatened Italy and France. In March 1919 the Communist Third Internationale in Moscow drafted plans to promote civil war and world revolution. Social unrest in the U.S. had little to do with a world-wide communist conspiracy. Nevertheless, the American people made the most preposterous connections between foreign and domestic dangers, and responded by crushing what they believed were Bolshevik-inspired strikes, suppressing radical publications, and clamoring for the wholesale deportation of alien “reds.”

Ironically, the federal government’s wartime repression had eliminated the majority of domestic radicals, leaving few politically active in the postwar states. In 1919 no more than 100,000 members, or .001 percent of the adult population, belonged to the two American Communist parties. Labor strikes, radical bombings, race riots, and Red demon-strations further compounded America’s postwar fears. Strike activity in 1919 alone involved four million American workers in 3,600 strikes. During the Boston police strike, the little-known Governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, reflected the feelings of American people when he declared, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” Employers continually fed the antiunion sentiment by purposefully equating all strike activity with revolutionary radicalism. The anxieties of the Red Scare seriously damaged organized labor, including the moderate American Federation of Labor. In reality, most workers struck for legitimate reasons. Wages had not kept pace with wartime inflation and after the Armistice, most industries had returned to the traditional ten- to twelve-hour work day. During the fall of 1919 coal miners, and iron and steel workers struck to achieve increased wages and better working conditions. In Seattle, shipyard workers struck in an effort to equalize all wages paid by shipyard owners. Boston’s “finest”, its policemen walked out, hoping to achieve higher wages and recognition for their union. In each case the strikers lost. Public officials, like Seattle’s Mayor Ole Hanson, denounced the workers as “Bolsheviks” and utilized the National Guard to suppress the “Bolshevik-inpired” demonstrations.

More dramatic events plagued American society. In April 1919 a bomb was discovered in Mayor Hanson’s mail. The next day a bomb addressed to Senator Thomas A. Hardwick blew off the hands of a domestic servant in Atlanta. A mail clerk in New York discovered sixteen parcels containing “infernal machines” addressed to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and other government officials and industrialists. All together thirty-six packages turned up. A few weeks later serveral bombs exploded, one in front of Attorney General Palmer’s Washington home, blowing a man, presumably the bomber, to pieces. Although the bombings were largely the work of criminal fanatics, actions like the veteran’s raid on the New York Call socialist newspaper office, the Cleveland May Day Riot, and the Centralia Washington Massacre, were planned by overzealous patriots, paranoid dissidents, or overreacting citizens.

With each new frightening event, America’s fear of the “Red Menace” increased. Public figures and the media reflected this concern. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee advocated sending native-born redicals to a penal colony in Guam. Evangelist Billy Sunday wanted to stand all the “ornery wild-eyed Socialists and IWWs” in front of a firing squad. The Tacoma (Washington) Leader crudely demanded,

“We must smash every un-American and anti-American organization in the land. We must put to death the leaders of this gigantic conspiracy of murder, pillage, and revolution. We must imprison for life all its aiders and abettors of native birth. We must deport all aliens.”

Various governmental agencies responded to the anti-”red” clamor. In New York, the Lusk Committee of the State Assembly authorized a raid on the Communist headquarters. The Committee’s investigation led to the eventual arrest of hundreds of Bolsheviks and “fellow-travelers.” The federal government also acted. In November and December of 1919 and in January of 1920 the Justice Department led by Attorney General Palmer and special investigator John Edgar Hoover conducted a series of “Red Raids” and arrested thousands of alien radicals. Believing that the United States stood on the brink of revolution, Palmer and his assistants ignored fundamental human and civil rights. Many arrests took place without warrants. Suspected communists were seized in their homes and jailed, often without any knowledge of the specific charges against them. In Detroit, authorities herded over a hundred men into a bullpen measuring twenty-four by thirty feet and kept them there for a week under intolerable conditions. In Hartford, overzealous officials took the further precaution of arresting and incarcerating all visitors who came to see the suspects.

The American public supported the “Palmer Raids” and the removal of alien radicals. Utilizing the power given by the Immigration Act of 1917, the Labor and Justice Departments cooperated in the first deportation of 249 anarchists, including the notorious Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The ship, dubbed the “Soviet Ark,” left for Russia on December 21, 1919. Constantine M. Panunzio, in a study of these cases, argued that,

“To deport a person merely for the possession of ideas, however objectionable, is not only an illiberal, but a wholly futile, method of directing intellectual development.”

According to Panunzio the majority of those deported were hard working Russian and Ukrainian immigrants with families who have lived in the United States from six to ten years. Only a small minority of those exiled could be called “dangerous radicals.”

Gradually, opposition to these practices emerged. Twenty-two New York clergymen denounced the “deportation delirium,” while one U.S. district attorney resigned in protest. Acting Labor Secretary Louis F. Post held up these proceedings, and released most of the six thousand prisoners against Attorney General Palmer’s wishes. Palmer retaliated by calling Post a “Bolshevik.” Mounting opposition and legal obstacles caused the movement to quickly subside, but only after 556 had been deported.

Society’s intolerance did not limit itself to the purging of Eastern European immigrants. During the war, blacks and other disadvantaged groups had experienced unprecedented economic gains. The army had siphoned millions of men from the labor market creating a huge labor shortage, and with immigration reduced to a trickle, blacks migrated form the rural South to the industrial centers of the North to fill wartime jobs. As more and more blacks came into contact with whites, racial conflicts erupted. In 1917 for example, a bloody riot gripped East St. Louis, leaving forty blacks clubbed, beaten, stabbed or hanged. A series of race riots continued throughout the war. With the return of America’s soldiers many employers fired the unwanted blacks and whites, and contributed substantially to black unemployment and poverty.

Following World War I, race riots broke out inseveral cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Tulsa, and Knoxville. Hundreds of lives were lost. In addition, the number of blacks lynched rose from thirty-six in 1917 to seventy-seven in 1919. The meteoric revival of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s symbolized and embodied this increased nativism and racism.. The new Klan defended white against black, gentile against Jew, and Protestant against Catholic.

The agonies and sacrifices of the First World War and its aftermath along with the threat of a communist conspiracy, had elicited from Americans strong feelings of superpatriotism and xenophobia. This nationalistic and nativistic emotion triggered increasing intolerance of political dissidents, prejudice towards minorities and a flagrant disregard for human rights. Confronted with a mounting concern over radicalism, labor strikes, runaway inflation, and high unemployment, American society capitulated to the postwar Red Scare.

All Rights Reserved, 1979, 2002 by Ted DeCorte.

Want to know how the economy is doing? Try the North American Rail Freight Traffic Carloading Report

Summary of Rail Freight Traffic from Atlantic Systems Inc.

Data through May 23, 2009 — 20 W 2009

A Weekly Report of North American Rail Freight Traffic

by Major Railroad and Commodity

via Railfax Report – North American Rail Freight Traffic Carloading Report.

Obama Approval Compares Favorably to Prior Presidents / Gallup

PRINCETON, NJ — So far in May, Barack Obama has averaged 65% job approval. Since World War II, only three of the previous eight presidents elected to their first terms — Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan — have had a higher average approval rating in May of their first year. Obama’s average exceeds those of the three most recent presidents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

via Obama Approval Compares Favorably to Prior Presidents.

AdFreak: DDB Poland child-welfare ads pack a punch

“You can lose more than your patience,” is the theme of a new print and poster campaign by DDB Poland that makes shattering impression, literally, for the “Good Parent” appeal of the Nobody’s Children Foundation. See two full ads here. Broken dolls have been used before in similar contexts, but that doesn’t dilute the visual impact. The key elements aren’t the shattered “children,” though their ruined limbs and cracked faces tend to linger, uncomfortably, in one’s mind. It’s their juxtaposition with the unsettlingly sterile household surroundings, and the flawless photographic compositions, that deliver the emotional knockout punch. Child-welfare groups worldwide should get permission to use the ads. They convey a message that translates in any language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AdFreak: DDB Poland child-welfare ads pack a punch.

How CSI Works / HowStuffWorks

by Julia Layton

Introduction to How Crime Scene Investigation Works

­On TV shows like “CSI,” viewers get to watch as investigators find and collect evidence at the scene of a crime, making blood appear as if by magic and swabbing every mouth in the vicinity­. Many of us believe we have a pretty good grip on the process, and rumor has it criminals are getting a jump on the good guys using tips they pick up from these shows about forensics.

But does Hollywood get it right?

via HowStuffWorks “How Crime Scene Investigation Works”.

How to Avoid Facebook Scams / HowStuffWorks

by Jonathan Strickland

It’s not an exaggeration to say that online social network sites have revolutionized the Web. They’re at the forefront of the Web 2.0 movement and Facebook is one of an elite few leading the charge. Every day, hundreds of people join the Web site to reconnect with old acquaintances and make new friends.

via HowStuffWorks “How to Avoid Facebook Scams”.

Cooltribe – Green Social Networking Site Launches

by Ron Callari

Do you believe fervently in saving our planet? Would you like to communicate with others that share that passion? Well, today there is an online community that can address those concerns. Cooltribe, the social networking site dedicated to connecting green-minded, socially-conscious people from around the world was recently launched. One of the first of its type, Cooltribe welcomes members who are dedicated to saving the environment and fighting global warming while pursuing sustainability and other ethical issues that affect all citizens of planet Earth.

via Cooltribe – Green Social Networking Site Launches.