Category Archives: History

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

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People who didn’t like Margaret Thatcher at all have driven “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” to the top of the charts in Great Britain (the British can be rude to their politicians, and good for them!).

In addition to writing the lyrics to that one, as well as “Over the Rainbow” (the actual title), Yip Harburg, born Isidore Hochberg, also wrote the words to this terrific song about the Great Depression. The music was composed by Jay Gorney, based on a Russian lullaby.

Bing Crosby recorded the most famous version back in 1931. This one is by James Crowley and the Top Hat Orchestra. It was released in 2011, in the continuing aftermath of the Great Recession.

If anyone in Great Britain records a new version of “The Witch Is Dead”, this would make a great flip side, if we still had flip sides. 

James Boswell on the Death of David Hume

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James Boswell visited David Hume on July 7, 1776, about seven weeks before Hume died. Boswell later wrote an account of their meeting. Some excerpts:

I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing-room. He was lean, ghastly, and quite of an earthy appearance. He was dressed in a suit of grey cloth with white metal buttons, and a kind of scratch wig. He was quite different from the plump figure which he used to present. He had before him Dr. Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric. He seemed to be placid and even cheerful. He said he was just approaching to his end….

I know not how I contrived to get the subject of immortality introduced. He said he never had entertained any belief in religion since he began to read [John] Locke and [Samuel] Clarke. I asked him if he was not religious when he was young. He said he was….

He then said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious. This was just an extravagant reverse of the common remark as to infidels.

I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever….

Mr. Lauder, his surgeon, came in for a little, and Mr. Mure, the Baron’s son, for another small interval. He was, as far as I could judge, quite easy with both. He said he had no pain, but was wasting away. I left him with impressions which disturbed me for some time.

http://digital.nls.uk/scotlandspages/timeline/17762.html

Adam Smith on the Death of David Hume

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Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher, and David Hume, the philosopher and historian, were very close friends. In 1776, after Hume died, Smith wrote a letter describing his friend’s attitude toward his coming death. It is controversial whether Hume was an atheist, but it is clear that he maintained his skepticism regarding religion until the end.

Below are excerpts from Smith’s letter:

His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements run so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. “I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmondstone,” said Doctor Dundas to him one day, “that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery.” “Doctor,” said he, “as I believe you would not choose to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.”

When he was reading, a few days before, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. “I could not well imagine”, said he, “what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore have all reason to die contented.”

He then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them. “Upon further consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him, Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the alterations.” But Charon would answer, “When you have seen the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.”

But I might still urge, “Have a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue.”

Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion…. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.

I ever am, dear Sir, Most affectionately yours, Adam Smith

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic880131.files/Adam.Smith.to.W.Strahan.Death.of.Hume.pdf

Unbalanced and Ignorant, Even Today

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Henry Adams was an historian and journalist, the grandson of John Quincy Adams and the great-grandson of John Adams. Forty years after the Civil War, he wrote an autobiography in the third-person: The Education of Henry Adams.

This is an excerpt from chapter 7, “Treason (1860-61)”:

“Adams found himself seeking education in a world that seemed to him both unwise and ignorant. The Southern secessionists were certainly unbalanced in mind — fit for medical treatment, like other victims of hallucination — haunted by suspicion, by idées fixes, by violent morbid excitement, but this was not all. They were stupendously ignorant of the world. As a class, the cotton-planters were mentally one-sided, ill-balanced, and provincial to a degree rarely known. They were a close [sic] society on whom the new fountains of power had poured a stream of wealth and slaves that acted like oil on flame. They showed a young student his first object-lesson of the way in which excess of power worked when held by inadequate hands”.

This description reminds me of certain players on the contemporary political scene, many of whom live in the South even today. 

The Southern Strategy

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In an article about the “Southern Way of Life”, Michael Lind argues that cheap labor is the basis for the South’s economic and political system, not racism. Slaves were surely low-paid workers, but so far the Southern system has survived whether cheap labor was provided by slaves, sharecroppers, indentured servants, the poorly educated or the supposed beneficiaries of “right to work (without unions)” laws:

“From the 19th century to the 21st, the oligarchs of the American South have sought to defend the Southern system, what used to be known as the Southern Way of Life.

Notwithstanding slavery, segregation and today’s covert racism, the Southern system has always been based on economics, not race.  Its rulers have always seen the comparative advantage of the South as arising from the South’s character as a low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation site in the U.S. and world economy.  The Southern strategy of attracting foreign investment from New York, London and other centers of capital depends on having a local Southern workforce that is forced to work at low wages by the absence of bargaining power.

Anything that increases the bargaining power of Southern workers vs. Southern employers must be opposed, in the interest of the South’s regional economic development model.  Unions, federal wage and workplace regulations, and a generous, national welfare state all increase the bargaining power of Southern workers, by reducing their economic desperation.  Anti-union right-to-work laws, state control of wages and workplace regulations, and an inadequate welfare state all make Southern workers more helpless, pliant and dependent on the mercy of their employers.”

It’s obvious that the Republican Party, which draws many of its leaders and much of its electoral strength from the South, is trying to convert our whole country to the Southern system. It’s class warfare, but in some quarters it’s considered impolite to say so.

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/slave_states_vs_free_states_2012/