EDITORIAL
INCREASE A. LAPHAM AND THE GERMAN AIR RAIDS
The reader may well be excused if at first sight he is puzzled over our title. What possible connection can there be between the simple Wisconsin scholar, whose life of busy service for the betterment of humanity terminated almost half a century ago, and the baby-killing air raids upon London and other English cities with which the soldiers of Emperor William are accustomed to divert themselves?
Gentle reader, we propose to show you. Increase A. Lapham delved in many fields of learning, but chiefly he was a scientist and perhaps his greatest single achievement was his practical conquest of the secret of foretelling the weather. Now we learn, on the authority of the London Illustrated News, that the imperial German government has utilized Lapham’s discovery to insure the success (or at least to minimize the danger) of its air raids on London. “When the east wind blows beware of air raids.” Thus might a modernized English edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac read. Also, “When the night is moonlight, beware of air raids,” but frequently moonlight nights are enjoyed sans the nocturnal visitants. The twofold explanation is that the air raiders must have clear weather and it is desirable if not essential that they have the wind behind them on the outward raid and in their faces on the return journey, rather than vice versa. The Germans have control of Europe from the North Sea far into Russia and so it is possible for their meteorological observation posts to give warning for something like twelve hours in advance of any change in weather conditions coming down behind an east wind. As long, therefore, as there is a steady wind across Europe anywhere between northeast and southeast those in charge of the raiding squadrons in Belgium have full warning of what the weather is
going to be like. Accordingly the fiendish flying brood can be sent forth in confident assurance that neither its arrival at its destination nor its return to the home station will be frustrated by stormy weather.
Increase Lapham labored for years to promote his great discovery because he had a vision of the service it would be to mankind. One of his most striking arguments for enlisting community action in the promotion of his work was a calculation of the number of lives and of vessels which annually would be saved from destruction on Lake Michigan alone. Happily for him he did not live to witness the spectacle of the world’s most efficient government perverting his great achievement to the promotion of the indiscriminate slaughter of the men and women, the mothers and babies of the world’s greatest metropolis.
SAVE THE RELICS[134]
The original of the letter written by Horace Greeley, sometime near the middle of the sixties, in reply to the application for advice of a discharged soldier boy, and in which occurred the famous phrase, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country,” is supposed to have been destroyed, with other valuable historic papers, in a recent fire in Youngstown, Ohio.
It was superb advice profitably followed by thousands of young men, sires and grandsires of millions of the finest of western citizens of today.
But—Why was that historic document in private possession? That was not at all fit wit for our Youngstown friend to exhibit. In the safe custody of the Ohio Historical Society that precious letter justly belonged, and there it would repose securely now if prudence had but guided its owner.
Which raises the pertinent question—Have you an historical souvenir that is being endangered while you neglect to transfer it to the Wisconsin State Historical Society? Wisconsin homes contain many mementoes that rightly belong in the historical society’s fireproof building.
Are you playing safe? Let us not expose the lack of circumspection shown by the Youngstown antiquarian. Besides—Ten thousand persons can enjoy relics in the historical rooms where one does in a private home.
Therefore—Be warned!
THE NEWSPAPERS[135]
It is the glory of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin that Draper gathered into its collections the papers of the Ohio Valley migrations, that Thwaites added the records of the fur trade, and that neither forgot while pursuing these remote and unique sources to assemble day after day the current accumulations of the people among whom they lived. As the latter collector and editor loved to say: The history for tomorrow is preserved in the waste paper baskets of today. The society that lays aside the policy of accumulating accessions to devote itself to the conscious pursuit of particular treasures can never become more useful than its curators or wiser than its superintendent. The greatest libraries are those whose growth has been chiefly in the routine addition, from year to year of all that has been regarded as worth saving, and of much more whose immediate value has been doubtful.
The State Historical Society of Wisconsin has for so many years followed the practice of saving its daily newspapers, and adding to them as opportunity occurs, that it now owns one of the notable American collections. From the middle of the last century, when the state came into being, the development of its people can be traced in the detail
which only the inquisitive county daily can follow. Its relations to the Northwest and to the rest of the nation can be checked in the selected files which have ever been cherished. Through the wise foresight of its founders it owns the great sources for all of modern history—for in our day the course of the historian is more and more fundamentally laid among the newspapers.
It has not been altogether easy to build up this collection. A metropolitan daily of today means twelve large volumes to be bound, shelved, and housed each year. The cubic contents of the sources know no limit. There is some room for fear that after they have been stored away they may rot in their bindings before any scholar uses them.
But no society which understands the course of modern history can fail to run the risk of dry-rot or to preserve such records as exist. For no period before the present is there such a factual reconstruction possible as we possess. No newspaper can lie and live—very long. The user must correct for bias, and careless error, and malicious misstatement, all of which occur in nearly every issue of any paper. But no student can read a continuous series of files for twenty years without knowing that he has before him the truth, and more of the truth than society has known in any earlier period.
In our judgment one of the great functions of any historical society today is to collect ephemeral literature, beginning with the newspapers of its immediate region and extending as far as its money and its shelves permit. No Society should be too poor for the town dailies and one New York file. Larger societies may take in the county, or the region, as the area for their collections, and may increase the selected list of remote journals to be preserved. All will be judged in the future by the intelligence and patience in this direction which their shelves may finally reveal. None can
be permanently of greatest use with a policy such as is exposed in the journal of a sister society:
“The State of * * * has thousands of them [newspapers] in the Libraries of the State House. Many of them are bound, others are unbound, tied in bundles and carefully stowed away. Their day is done; rarely has any one in our knowledge asked to examine any of these newspapers for any date or facts. History has culled from them such truths as could point a moral, or hold out a danger signal to the world of the present time, and they are closed, perhaps never more to be consulted.”
REMOVING THE PAPACY TO CHICAGO
Possession of the faith by which mountains are removed is, we are inclined to think, the fundamental characteristic of the American spirit. To the American all things are possible because the true American takes it for granted that to him nothing is impossible. The manifestation of this spirit has its unpleasant—oftentimes its ridiculous—side, of course; yet the possession of it has made possible the performance here in the New World of miracles as astonishing as any set forth in holy writ.
By popular consent the metropolis of our inland seas has long since come to be regarded as perhaps the most striking exponent, among cities, of the characteristic American spirit. Throughout her history the supreme confidence of her citizens in the city’s present greatness and future development, together with the will to transmute the prolific visions of her leaders into present realities, has constituted her most valuable civic asset. We have seen no better illustration of this characteristic Chicago (and American) spirit than the one contained in a story which William J. Onahan, a Chicago Irishman of sixty-four years’ standing relates. Meeting Mr. Armour on a street corner at a time when, because of political turmoil in Italy there was talk of the Pope’s seeking an asylum
outside the peninsula, the two stopped to talk for a moment, whereupon the captain of industry calmly proposed that the papacy be brought to Chicago. Onahan undertook to explain something of the magnitude of the Pope’s responsibilities, and the impossibility of the proposed removal from the Eternal to the Windy City, with the following result:
“Mr. Armour listened patiently to my harangue on the necessities of the Pope, and then proposed another conundrum to me: 'How much would it take to provide all these buildings?’
“I did not know; could not guess. Would it take ten millions—twenty millions?
“'Look here,’ he added, 'you undertake this affair. You know how to manage these things. You get the Pope to agree to come to Chicago. We can arrange and provide everything suitable for his needs.’
“'Why, how on earth could you do these things?’ I asked in bewilderment.
“'I’ll tell you my idea,’ he said. 'We will get a big tract of land outside Chicago, ten or twenty thousand acres. We will build necessary offices, a palace, a great Cathedral, whatever may be necessary. Half that land set apart and turned over to the Pope, don’t you see that we will make enough out of the other half to pay for the whole business?’
“I was dumfounded at the audacity of the idea, the ingenuity and method of carrying it out, and the characteristic Chicago aim—'there’s money in it.’ When, many years afterwards I saw the wonderful 'White City’—the World’s Fair—its marvelous architectural beauty, the vastness and symmetry of its buildings, the beauty of all the arrangements, I said to myself, Chicago could indeed, if put to it, build a new Eternal City.”
[134] Reprinted from the editorial column of the Madison Democrat, January 22, 1918.
[135] Contributed by Prof. Frederic L. Paxson.