Gathering Leaves

It’s February, 1910. The years between 1906 and 1910 were the worst in U.S. history for mine disasters and in February, 1910 there were at least three deadly incidents.  On the 1st of February, in Primero, Colorado thirty-one miners, most of them Hungarian and Slovak immigrants, are killed in a mine explosion. On the next day, thirty-five miners are killed in an explosion in Drakesboro, Kentucky. On the 5th, an explosion at a mine in Indiana, Pennsylvania kills eleven and traps thirty.

This month there are deadly train wrecks in Michigan, Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida.

People travel long distance by rail and steamship. Ads in the papers encourage folks in California to take the train to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Folks in Atlanta are encouraged to take the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Route to San Francisco. Time to travel from San Francisco to Chicago by rail – three days. From Galveston there is regular steamship service to New York, Cuba, and Jamaica. Cost of cabin fare from Galveston to European ports via steamship is $65; steerage fare is $35.

On February 4, the steamer Kentucky of the Alaska-Pacific Steamship Company is sinking while struggling through heavy seas 240 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The captain and the seventy-five man crew struggle to keep the vessel afloat until aid can reach her. The SOS signal is heard by wireless stations in Washington, D.C., Savannah, and Charleston. Within five minutes after the first word of the Kentucky’s peril is received in Washington the machinery of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (today the U.S.Coast Guard) and the Navy Department are set in motion to send aid to her. By mid-day the crew of the Kentucky is rescued by another steamship and taken to Key West. News of the Kentucky’s desperate plight is received by newspapers around the nation in a dispatch from the United Wireless Telegraph Company station at Cape Hatteras.

Western Union introduces a new service allowing callers to use a telephone to send a telegram by calling a special operator. It will be another six years before long distance telephone service is introduced by AT&T and another 41 years before callers will be able to make long distance calls without the aide of an operator.

On the 18th, the first aeroplane flight is made in Texas from a field south of Houston. In California, a college professor proposes that aeroplanes be used for transporting the U.S. mail.

In Atlanta, a dentist offers gold fillings for $1, gold crowns for $3, or a “set of teeth” for $3.  A pair of shoes costs about $3 and an overcoat can be bought for $11.

By mail, one may order rye or corn whiskey from Kentucky to be sent to one’s local express office – cost $12 for 12 full quarts. Although national prohibition is nine years away, eight states are now officially “dry” in 1910 and the hatchet-wielding prohibitionist Carrie Nation makes her last known attack on a saloon in Montana in this year.

In 1910, there is no boyfriend or girlfriend – the word is “affinity”. Automobiles are referred to as “machines” and if one “takes the car to work” they are riding the trolley.

Men and women wear hats – no one dares step outdoors without a hat on their head without fear being thought crazy, lazy or common.

In St Louis a runaway street car kills one and injures seventeen. A strike of trolley car drivers in Philadelphia turns into a riot as trolley cars are stoned and burned.

Former heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan marries his high school sweetheart in Boston.

The Boy Scouts of America are founded on February 8.

A minor diplomatic stir is raised when former-Vice President Fairbanks while visiting Rome is refused an audience with the Pope after the former-VP refuses to cancel a meeting with Methodist ministers in Rome at the request of the Vatican.

A revolution in Nicaragua is in the news. The recently deposed President of Nicaragua, Jose Santos Zelaya, while exiled in Mexico, accuses the United States of supporting the rebels who are now in control of that country. The former-President of Venezuela has been exiled to the Canary Islands.

Chinese troops march into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet forcing the 13th Dalai Lama to flee to India.

Speaker of the House, Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon is under attack from a coalition of progressive Republicans and all Democrats in the House who want to strip him of his power to appoint committees. He will soon be replaced by Rep. Champ Clark.

Southerners are outraged to learn that President Taft has agreed to speak at a negro college in Ohio whose African-American president is married to a white woman. A newspaper in Atlanta has on almost every page a tiny two line advertisement for “KKK brand flour”.

350 state militia are on patrol in the streets of Cairo, Illinois while a grand jury investigates the possible involvement of Sheriffs deputies in the death of a member of lynch mob.

Although the Civil War ended over forty years ago, some Republican politicians still “wave the bloody shirt”.  An Idaho Senator rankles southerners when he delivers a long rambling speech in the Senate opposing the loan of US government tents to a Confederate Veterans association who are meeting in Mobile, Alabama. The speech which lasts over an hour ends when Senator Heyburn finally drifts into the question of honoring men by placing their statues in the Congressional Hall of Fame and by unmistakable inference he condemns the action of Virginia of sending the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee to Washington."Take it away and worship it, if you please," he thundered, "but don’t intrude it upon the people who do not want it!" When the Senate votes the tent loaning measure all of the Senate, except Heyburn, vote yea.

That’s the news from February, 1910.

It’s January, 1910. US President William Howard Taft is starting his second year in office. The economy is starting to rebound following the near collapse of the NY Stock Exchange in 1907; although now in 1910 the higher cost of living is on everyone’s mind.

“Trust-busting” is the word of the day and a lot of rage is being focused towards the “meat trusts” – meat producers and packers – who are accused of artificially raising the price of meat. There is talk of boycotts, vegetarian diets, and Congressional investigations. A federal grand jury in Pennsylvania has handed out thirty subpoenas to the big three meat packers – Armour, Swift, and Morris.

While most people still get around in horse-drawn buggies and by the railroads, aeroplanes and automobiles are the tech news of the day. In Southern California, the 10-day Los Angeles International Air Show is held on a field at Dominguez Ranch (now present day Carson, California) and in Oakland people flock to the first annual Motor Car Exhibition.

Newspapers make sure to tell their readers when a news item was received via wireless telegraphy and advertisers let the readers know they answer “both phones” in cities where more than one telephone company has subscribers.

Scandals and gossip are front-page news. We read of the Christy Custody trial going on in, of all places, Zanesville, Ohio. Famed artist Howard Chandler Christy and his ex-wife are locked in a custody battle over their 10 year-old daughter. Daily we learn of scandalous testimony regarding Mrs. Christy’s alleged dalliances with the family chauffeur and her drinking habits. Howard Christy is best known for his Spanish American War illustrations and later for his WWI recruiting posters.

From San Francisco there is the story of the “pretty” nurse from German Hospital eloping to Los Angeles with a bigamist from Mendocino County. Then there is the story the Mexican spitfire, Senora Amelia Calderon, and her affinity, Count Jose De La Franconia, both vaudeville performers, who are arrested in San Francisco and threatened with deportation when it is learned that she has abandoned her husband and father of her daughter in Mexico City.

While former Vice President Charles Fairbanks is preparing for a tour of Europe, his son, Frederick is being sued for allegedly misappropriating $130,000 from the funds of the Old Mexican Land and Industrial Company.

A libel suit brought by former President Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan against Joseph Pulitzer and his publishing company is thrown out of court. The New York World had exposed an illegal payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909.

In France, thousands are left homeless by disastrous flooding caused by blinding snowstorms that wrecked homes and turned the streets of Paris into canals resulting in 200 million dollars worth of damage to city (1.5 billion in 2010 dollars). In some parts of the city the water is 20 feet high.

That’s the news from January, 1910.

Haiti sits on the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola and shares the island with the Dominican Republic. Discovered by Columbus in 1492 and ceded to the French in 1692, the colony of Sante Domingue (now called Haiti) became the French jewel of Caribbean as a source of sugar and coffee primarily from the labor of slaves imported from Africa who eventually outnumbered the French colonists by 10 to 1. In 1789 the French Revolution sent out the message of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" and this was heard by the slaves in Sante Domingue. In 1791 the slaves revolted and established the second independent republic in the western hemisphere (the USA being the first). The revolt in Haiti inspired others in South America to revolt. In 1815 Simon Bolivar, the South American political leader who was instrumental in Latin America’s struggle for independence from Spain, received military and financial assistance from Haiti.

But southern planters in the USA refused to recognize Haiti as a sister democracy because the nation had been established by former slaves. In 1802, Napoleon egged on by French investors who had lost holdings in Haiti sent a force to Haiti to put down the rebellion and reestablish slavery. A yellow fever epidemic wipe out most of the expeditionary force enroute to New Orleans. As a result Napoleon gave up on North America and sold French holdings on the mainland to the USA in what is known as the Louisiana Purchase.

In July 1825, King Charles X of France sent a fleet of fourteen vessels and thousands of troops to re-conquer the island. Under pressure, the Haitians agreed to a treaty by which France formally recognized the independence of the nation in exchange for a payment of 150 million francs (about $21 billion in today’s money.) (the sum was reduced in 1838 to 90 million francs) – an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade. French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher wrote, "Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood." The debt was not paid off by Haiti until 1947.

So essentially the former slaves of Haiti who had won their independence in a revolution were forced to pay for their freedom through the generations. Did the British force the American Colonies to pay indemnity? No. There was a clause in the Treaty of Paris that “recommended” that the states restore property confiscated from loyalists, but that was largely ignored.

It is interesting to note that the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine stated that efforts by European governments to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed by the United States of America as acts of aggression requiring US intervention. Yet the USA did nothing to stop Europe from imposing its will on Haiti.

Throughout the 19^th century the USA and European powers did nothing to support Haiti except to use the country as a source for imperial profiteering and cheap labor. On more than one occasion, French, U.S., German and British forces claimed large sums of money from the vaults of the National Bank of Haiti. Expatriates bankrolled and armed opposing groups.

In addition, national governments intervened in Haitian affairs. For instance, U.S. Marines supported a military revolt against the government in 1888. In 1892 the German government supported suppression of a Haitian reform movement In January 1914, British, German and United States forces entered Haiti, ostensibly to protect their citizens from civil unrest. In 1915, US Marines invaded Haiti to push out the Germans. The USA imposed racist Jim Crow laws on Haiti and proceeded to occupy the country until 1934. From then on the USA supported one dictator after another all in the name of anti-communism.

So that in a nutshell is why Haiti is what it is today.

As the tragedy in Haiti unfolds, Americans are generously donating millions of dollars to aid organizations.

But when Americans donate to charity with their credit cards, the credit card companies get rich. In some cases they keep 3% of the donation as a "transaction fee," even though that’s far more than it costs them to process the donation.

It’s outrageous and wrong—and it needs to stop.

Can you sign this petition to the CEOs of the major credit card companies demanding that they waive their processing fees for all charitable donations?

The petition says: "Credit card companies shouldn’t be getting rich off of Americans’ generosity. They should waive all fees on charitable contributions from today on."

The credit card companies are trying to get ahead of this story, announcing they will temporarily waive the fees they charge on some Haiti-related charitable contributions for the next 6 weeks. But that’s nowhere near enough. Many emergency donations to Haiti will still get hit with hefty bank fees. (To give a sense of how limited the exemption is, Doctors Without Borders isn’t on any of the publicly available lists of charities that won’t be charged fees.)

All American credit card companies should announce that they will waive ALL fees on charitable contributions, starting today, and going forward for good. This isn’t about helping political organizations like MoveOn, just helping true charitable organizations.

It’s the right thing to do, and honestly, it’s the least they could do after the role they played in crashing the entire global economy last year.

But they won’t do it unless they know how angry Americans are that they’re profiting off of this terrible tragedy. Click here to sign the petition, which MoveOn.org will deliver to the heads of the major credit card companies:

To sign the petition go to: http://pol.moveon.org/nofees/

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Building on the success of his series African American Lives (called by the New York Times "the most exciting and stirring documentary on any subject to appear on television in a long time,") and African American Lives 2, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. again turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans.
The series premieres nationally Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3, 2010 from 8-9 p.m. ET on PBS.

For more information please see Faces of America at PBS.org