THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP ––– WHICH? (part 2)

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP --- WHICH?

by Elbert Hubbard,

Published by The Roycrofters, East• Aurora • Erie • County • N.Y.

Done into a Book by The Roycrofters at their shop, which is in East Aurora, State of New York.

Copyright 1910 By Elbert Hubbard

The Closed or Open Shop?

(Part 2)

THE Federation of Labor has placed The Roycroft Shop on the Unfair List.

Isn't that terrible !

It occurred two years ago, and here I have never heard of it until day before yesterday.

Hic, My God ! or words to that effect. We are up against it !

When this bad news was brought to me I set the wheels in motion to find out the whyfore. And here are the reasons : First, The Roycroft Shop is teaching trades to an unlimited number of boys and girls.

Second, I have quoted J. K. Turner, who says, "Nothing that is secret can succeed." Also, I am a personal friend of C. W. Post, D. M. Parry, J. W. Van Cleave, John D. Archbold and James J. Hill, and have spoken well of these men in print.

To all these things I plead guilty ; and I might also add that I am a personal friend of Eugene Debs, T. V. Powderly, Clarence Darrow and Samuel Gompers.

The way I found out I was on the Unfair List

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was when an advertiser canceled his contract with us, explaining that a certain Union had notified him that our publications did not bear the Union-Label, that we were officially "Unfair," and that he should cease advertising with us or stand the consequences.

Further investigation proved the facts as stated.

¶ Let it here be said that the Roycroft Shop has never had a strike ; that the wages we pay are above Union scale ; that the conditions under which the Roycrofters work are better than any Union ever demanded or imagined. Our offense is simply that by teaching trades to young people we increase the supply of skilled laborers ; and that to be a friend of men who have spoken in opposition to Unionism is a thing to invite displeasure. This displeasure then finds form in an endeavor to injure our business by posting us as "Unfair."

The hope, of course, is to drive us out of business, or else to force us to adopt the "Label" ; that is, force us to employ only those tho have a Union-Card. This means turning our business over to the Unions, and allowing them to say whom we shall teach and when and how. ¶ Did tyranny ever go further?

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Did any "Trust" ever try to do worse? ¶ The Roycroft Shop has been placed on the "Unfair List," not because we are unfair to labor, but because we are not favorable to the Labor Trust. And it is a distortion of language to say we have been unfair to the Labor Trust, simply because we have told the truth about it. Is this not America, the home of free speech?

So let this fact be stated : The Federation of Labor does not stand for labor –– it only stands for such a portion of it as consents to be owned and dictated to by itself. For the multitude of young men and women who wish to gain an education through the skilled use of hands, it cares nothing. It knows nothing about educating the brain by use of the hand. The "pay-envelope" is all it knows or cares about.

Also it cares nothing for production or the net result of labor. All it thinks of is more wages and shorter hours.

The despotism of Unionism, if it could have its way, would reach past human belief. It seeks to paralyze human freedom and stop progress. The building of railroads and growth of cities is nothing to it. The pursuit of another's happiness is its chief concern.

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¶ It intimidates my customer until he cancels his contract, fearing that he, too, will be placed on the Unfair List, and that customers will desert him.

¶ It seeks to chain my pen, and say whom I shall speak well of, and whom not.

It tries to name my friends, and if it could separate me from those I respect and admire, it would make their names anathema.

It steps into my household and tells me how my boys shall be educated and how not.

It examines my magazines and warns me to buy only of those advertisers who patronize magazines bearing the "Label."

And then when I protest, it says, "Oh, we do not want to hurt anybody –– if you employ only Union labor and use the Label, nothing will happen to you."

Isn't this disunionism?

Isn't it exactly the attitude of Spain during the Inquisition? Did not Spain say to the Jews, "Come into the Catholic Church, be one with us, and no harm shall befall you !"

The man with the big stick, who flashes a dark lantern in your face, and assures you that if you give him your watch, no harm shall happen to you,

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is not a robber. Oh, certainly not ! Gompers just can't see the other side–– it is a matter of human limitation and so we will have to see it for him. He would stop manual training in schools, fearing trades in all prisons, for fear the prisons will become popular and honest men will be left without jobs. ¶ The endeavor of Unionism is to make the job last, not to get it done.

It assumes that the supply of work is limited and, if there are too many apprentices, the working man will soon be on half-time.

Any man with this buzzing bee in his bonnet is already a failure. Superior men see no end to work and all great men make work for thousands. Hill and Archibold are the best friends that labor ever had. They set armies to work and build cities where before were only prairie-dog towns.

Now the men who belong to the Unions are not bad men. Gompers is not a bad man. He gets five thousand dollars a year, and God knows he earns it. I don't want his job. His end will be the hatred of the people he seeks to serve, for labor is always ungrateful. Gompers is a Jew, and above all men the Jews ought to know the sin of persecution by

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this time. But Gompers is a man, and no man is fit to be trusted with unlimited power. We are only safe where there is a strong opposition. To gain his lamented point Gompers would outdo his old friend, the lamented Torquemada, who chased the ancestors with sword and fagot. The only word of cheer Sam has for me is this, "Run a Union shop, and I'll guarantee you protection."

And that means, give Gompers the key to my shop and let him appoint a superintendent.

Men are Men––that is the trouble. When Debs indicts "Capitalism," all he does is to indict human nature. Men clutch for personal power, and forget the rights of other men.

The safety of this country demands that we shall resist coercion and intimidation, whether offered by a Church Trust or a Labor Trust. Why does n't Gompers start a factory of his own? Let him run a closed shop if he wants––we do not care.

The Unions have, as we have said, done much good in the past––to them we owe factory-inspection, child-labor laws and the shorter working day. But because a thing is good in small doses is no proof that we can stand an unlimited quantity of it.

A United States Court has declared that posting a

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man as "Unfair" because this man employs certain men is itself unfair and must not be continued. For this offense before the law, Gompers may go to jail, and he declares that he is willing to to to jail. If need be, Gompers will be taught the lesson––the leisure will give him a chance to see the truth, which is that the boycott is un-American and must be bundled into the rag-bag of things that were. Lessee, what was it Patrick Henry said about freedom?

Both the word "boycott" and the thing itself are importations, borrowed from a people who, says my old college chum, Wu Ting Fang, govern everybody but themselves, and have influence everywhere, save in their own country. The boycott, I repeat, is un-American. It is a fight in a fog––a secret, treacherous, sneaking stab in the back––a crawling in the tall uncut. If we are going to fight let us fight in the open. Rightly has Judge Gould placed an injunction on the boycott. Let it be deported to the land where it originated.

It cose the Gobeille Pattern Company, of Cleveland, forty thousand dollars to get its name off the Unfair List. But that was ten years ago. I wouldn't give forty cents to have my name blotted from the

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"Index Expurgation" of the Federation of Labor, any more than I would give Collier's thirty cents––Collier's who are doing my advertising gratis, to avoid publicity in their columns.

Commercial excommunication now is no worse than church excommunication. When the Church cuts you off, you can go to God direct. You simply eliminate the middleman. When organized-labor leaders seek to starve you out, you make your appeal to the people––and wax fat. Who represents the folks that actually work in this country, anyway ! On your life it is not the Walking Delegate!

When Gompers reaches out his long pole from Washington, New York, or Boston and endeavors to lambaste a man in Battle Creek, Indianapolis or St. Louis, he only wakes the party up and soon has a fight on hand. That a laborer shall not sell his labor where and when he desires ; that an employer shall employ only certain people ; that my boy shall not be educated ; that an advertiser shall not patronize certain periodicals––all this is shockingly Russian and overwhelmingly Irish.

We long ago decided not to be ruled by a person in England, or a man in Italy. The Anglo-Saxon is a transplanted Teuton, with a dash of hardy Norse

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in his fiber that makes slavery for him out of the question. In every land upon which he has placed his foot, he has found either a throne or a grave. ¶ When those Norsemen with their yellow hair flying in the breeze sailed up the Seine, the people on the shore called to them in amazement and asked, "Where are you from and who are your masters?"

And the defiant answer rang out over the waters, "We are from round the world, and we call no man master !"

To these men we trace a pedigree. And think you we are to trade the freedom for which we have fought, for the rule of a Business Agent graduated from a cigar factory?

Excuse this smile––I really can't help it.

When that punk party known as George the Three Times disregarded the warning of one Edmund Burke, who said, "Your Majesty, you must not forget that these Colonists are Englishmen––our own people, and they can not be coerced," he invited his own fate.

The English and hired Hessians fought Washington five to one, but Washington was an Anglo-Saxon, a transplanted Teutonic Norse-American, and in

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his bright lexicon no such word as "fail" could be found.

Imagine Sam Gompers handing an ultimatum to George Washington, and you get a spectacle no more ridiculous than that of the Federation of Labor saying to the people of America, "You shall not introduce manual training into your public schools for fear it will deprive Michael Mulaney of a job as plumber's monkey !"

Let Gompers rule his Hessians, but remember this, their children will be Americans.

Yet a Labor-Union may do good. I never ask a man whether he belongs to a Union any more than I would ask if he belongs to a Church. That is his business. I most certainly would not ask him to renounce his Union unless the Union were trying to throttle him. Even then it is his affair. But certainly we will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess.

All attempts to build up class hatred in this country must fail. We stand for co-operation, reciprocity, mutuality. "Once a laborer, always a laborer," is not our shibboleth.

Our Labor-Union friends are lifting a fine cry about

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the injustice of injunctions. But what is their whole intent but to place an injunction of fear and coercion upon the employer, so that he dare not turn a wheel without permission ! ¶ Is sending Gompers to jail, for violating a court order, any more tragic than for Gompers to send me to the poorhouse for disregarding his orders? In God's name, where is the difference? ¶ We have agreed as a people to obey the courts––that is civilization––and we should obey them right or wrong. We have all been stung at times by the courts, and we take our medicine, knowing that in the long run the courts are right. But we have never agreed to abide by the edicts of the secret conclave of Amalgamated Molders, and I hardly think we will. ¶ There are inequalities in this country that must be worked out ; there are injustices that must be righted ; but the boycott, the club, the fagot, the bomb and the secret conclave––the air brakes on prosperity's wheels––can never right them. We must bring patience, good nature and reason to bear. To solve the problems we must discuss, agitate, write, talk and educate––and yet again educate. Some day, then, the fog will lift, and the sun will shine out. In fact, it is beginning to shine out now.

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************

Thus ends part 2.

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP ––– WHICH? (part 1)

Purchased at auction in Monmouth, IL, today, a pamphlet of rare timeliness:

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP --- WHICH?

by Elbert Hubbard,

Published by The Roycrofters, East• Aurora • Erie • County • N.Y.

Done into a Book by The Roycrofters at their shop, which is in East Aurora, State of New York.

Copyright 1910 By Elbert Hubbard

The Closed or Open Shop?

IN Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, an engineer on a fast passenger-train, on a railroad that need not here be advertised, became violently insane. The time on his run had been cut down to fifty miles an hour. It was very rapid running at that time, and told severely on the man's nerves. Suddenly, while at the throttle, reason gave way, and the engineer started to make a record run. He imagined there was another fast train just behind ; his life was at stake, and safety for himself and his train demanded that he should make a hundred miles an hour.

He had nearly attained his pace and was flying past a station where he should have stopped for orders, when the fireman, realizing the situation, laid the madman low with a link-pin, and the train was slowed just in time to escape a wreck.

______

THERE is a natural law, well recognized and defined by men who think, called the Law of Diminishing Returns, sometimes referred to as

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the Law of Pivotal Points. ¶ A man starts in to take systematic exercise, and he finds his strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets "––that is, becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal Point and is getting a Diminishing Return. In running a railroad-engine a certain amount of coal is required to pull a train of given weight a mile, say at the rate of fifty miles an hour. You double the amount of your coal, and simple folks might say you double your speed, but railroad men know better. The double amount of coal will give you only about sixty miles instead of fifty with a heavy train. Increase your coal and from this on you get a Diminishing Return. If you insist on eighty miles an hour you get your speed at a terrific cost and a terrible risk.

Another case : Your body requires a certain amount of food –– the body is an engine ; food is fuel ; life is combustion. Better the quality and quantity of your food and up to a point you increase your strength. Go on increasing it, and you reach a point where you get Diminishing Returns. Go on increasing your food and you get death. Loan money at five per cent, and your investment is reasonably secure and safe. Loan money at ten

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per cent and you do not double the returns ; on the contrary, you have taken on so much risk! Loan money at twenty per cent and you probably lose it ; for the man who borrows at twenty per cent does not intend to pay it if he can help it.

The Law of Diminishing Returns was what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he said : "Because I like a pinch of salt in my soup is no reason I wish to be immersed in brine."

Churches, preachers and religious denominations are good things in their time and place, and up to a certain point. Whether for you the church has passed the Pivotal Point is for you, yourself, to decide. But remember this, because a thing is good up to a certain point, or has been good, is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy, that because a thing is good you can not get too much of it.

_________

LABOR-UNIONS well illustrate the law of Diminishing Returns.

Labor-Unions have increased wages, shortened hours, introduced Government Factory-Inspection, have partially done away with child-labor, and done

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many other useful, excellent and beautiful things. But when the Labor-Unions go beyond the Pivotal Point and attempt to dictate the amount of the output : forbidding any mand to earn more than so much ; decide on the proportion of apprentices to workmen, that is, who shall advance and who not ; declare what work shall be done in schools, in prisons, and what not ; tear out work that has been done by non-Union men and require that it be done over by Union men ; insist that you must join a Union, or else be deprived of the right to work –– then the Union has passed the Pivotal Point, and has ceased to give an equitable return. When your children do not go to school for fear of the cry of "scab" ; when your wife dare not hang out the washing in the back yard for fear of the cry of "scab" ; when you hesitate to go to your work, knowing you may be carried home on a shutter ; when brickbats take the place of reason, and the Walking Delegate says "Carry a Union-card or take out an Accident Policy," –– then things have gone so far that in self-protection the Union must be temporarily laid low with a link-pin.

The people of America can not afford to let any combination of men become an engine for the

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destruction of liberty, be it Labor-Unions, Molly Maguires, Ku Klux, or church.

There are a million and a half men in America paying dues in Labor-Unions. There are eight thousand paid Walking Delegates or Business Agents, who look to the laborers for support.

A million dollars a year is paid to organizers, the money being paid by the laborers.

Here we get an institution that supports a large number of men who do not work ; who can call a strike or declare it off ; who can prey on both employee and employer at will.

It is like a religious institution grown great, that lives and thrives on the fears of its constituents.

¶ Local Unions meet weekly or daily. The men are called together in the "chapel" to receive orders. Conference and consultation are out of the question –– Unions are run by the men who get paid for running them. And the talking men in any Union are, almost without exception, men who hope to rise through loyalty to the Union and not by helping along their employer. Did you ever hear of a Union where the men were called together to discuss methods and means to better the business that supplied them with work? ¶ Well, not exactly!

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¶ Members of a Union hope to rise by helping along the Union. They want more pay, shorter hours, and give their time to stating grievances that grow by telling. They wish to become Walking Delegates, organizers or officers in the Union. Men who are loyal to the firm ; who have ambitions about furthering the business ; who expect to become superintendents, foremen, partners and officers in the company, keep out of the Unions, because they are not wanted there. John Mitchell was right, "Once a laborer always a laborer," if you are Union man and work in a Closed Shop. The Closed Shop writes the life-sentence of every man in it, and shuts the man off from the assistance and friendship of the employer.

Labor-Union organizers constantly fan the fallacy that employers are the enemies of the men to whom they supply work ; that capital is at war with labor, and that success lies in secretly combining against capital.

The organizers and helpers are really paid attorneys, and their business is to distort the truth for their own interests. They are preachers upholding their own denomination.

Labor-Union meetings are all ex-parte –– only one

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side is represented. The employer, his superintendents and foremen are carefully excluded. With the Open Shop the Labor-Union is a good thing–– it brings men together, and that which cements friendships and makes for brotherhood is well.

But the Closed Shop creates a sharp line of demarcation between labor and capital, and between Union and non-Union men. It says, "Once a laborer, always a laborer." It stops the law of evolution ; throttles ambition ; stifles endeavor ; and tends to make tramps of steady and honest working men. Working men who won homes can not afford to join Unions, and men who are in Unions can not afford to invest in homes. Because to strike is not a matter of choice ; they have to throw up their jobs as the crook of the finger of a man who, perhaps, has no home, no wife, no children, no aged parents. Men over forty who go on a strike do not get back. Strikes are ordered by young men who have no property interests ; no family ties and nothing to lose. For old men who can not earn the scale there is no work. Men with children to feed and clothe had better not forfeit the friendship of their employer by disregard-

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ing or opposing his interests. ¶ When the Unions have power to dictate a Closed Shop, they have reached a point where they say, "You must join our Union or starve."

That is, join our church or you shall not live in this community. Exactly the condition that existed in Spain when Torquemada gave all Jews thirty days to join the Catholic Church or leave the country. When he saw that many were leaving the country, he fell upon them, and the gutters of Granada ran ankle-deep in human blood. This, in degree, stopped the emigration, and thousands of people, to save their lives, were forced into hypocrisy and mental servitude.

When Unionism gets to a point where it dictates to the employer whom he shall hire, and decides who shall have the right to labor and who not, then Unionism has become un-American –– a menace too great to overlook. Unlimited power is always dangerous when centered in the hands of a few men.

The American Federation of Labor is controlled by eleven men.

These men are not working men. They may have been once, but now they live in the labor of others.

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They undertake to manipulate and regulate the lives of those who toil, and take toll for their service. The result is that, being humans, they are drunk –– power-crazed by success –– and are attempting to run an engine fitted for fifty miles an hour at a speed of one hundred. It is the working out of the Law of Diminishing Returns. From being a benefit, the Labor-Union has become a burden. the few men who control the Labor-Unions have created a phantom in their minds called "Capital," which they think is after them and is going to shunt them into the ditch. They have frightened the laborers so long with ghost-stories that they have come to believe their own fabrications.

What shall be done about this insane clutch for power? Must we forever endure the rule of the Demagog?

Who is right in this question of "Labor versus Capital"?

I'll tell you : both sides are right and both sides are wrong. The capitalists of this country, for the most part, were once working men, and many are working men now.

And any laborer who owns a home and has a savings-bank account is a capitalist.

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THE Open shop means liberty. The Closed shop means slavery. Moreover, it means faction, feud, strife, violence.

The Open Shop will make employers considerate, and Labor-Unions cautious. Employers are not base and grasping, any more than men who work for wages are truthful, trusting and intent on giving honest service.

Men are men, and safety lies in the balance of power.

__________

HENRY GEORGE, one of the sanest men that America or any other country has ever produced, a working man, and for many years a member of a Union, and the Labor-Union candidate for Mayor of New York in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six, says, in his "Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII" :

While within narrow lines trades-unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of interests, and often helps to raise courage and further political education, and while it has enabled limited bodies of working men to improve somewhat their condition, and gain, as it were, breathing space, yet it takes no note of the general causes that determine the conditions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a small part of the great body by means that can not help the rest. Aiming at the restriction of competition –– the limitation

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of the right to labor –– its methods are like those of the army, which even in a righteous cause are subversive of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the strike, is destructive in nature, both to combatants and non-combatants. To apply the principle if trades-unions to all industry, as some dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste system. Union methods are superficial in proposing forcibly to restrain overwork while utterly ignoring its cause, and the sting of poverty that forces human beings to it.

And the methods by which these restraints must be enforced, multiply officials, interfere with personal liberty, tend to corruption, and are liable to abuse.

Labor-associations can do nothing to raise wages but by force. It may be force applied passively, or force applied actively, or force held in reserve, but it must be force. They must coerce or hold power to coerce employers ; they must coerce those among their own members disposed to straggle ; they must do their best to get into their hands the whole field of labor they seek to occupy, and to force others to join them or starve. Those who tell you of trade-unions bent on raising wages by moral suasion alone are like people who tell you of tigers that live on oranges.

Labor-associations of the nature of trade-guilds or unions are necessarily selfish ; by the law of their being they must fight, regardless of who is hurt ; they ignore and must ignore the teachings of Christ, that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, which a true political economy shows us is the only way to the full emancipation of the masses. They must do their best to starve workmen who do not join the, they must by all means in their power force back the "Scab," as a soldier in battle must shoot down his mother's son if in the opposing ranks : a fellow creature seeking work –– a fellow creature, in all probability, more pressed and

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starved than those who bitterly denounce him, and often with the hungry, pleading faces of wife and child behind him. And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that the trades-guilds and unions do but to impose more restriction on natural rights ; to create "trusts" in labor ; to add to privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes ; to press the weaker to the wall?

I speak without prejudice against trade-unions, of which for years I was an active member. I state the simple, undeniable truth when I say their principle is selfish and incapable of large and permanent benefits, and their methods violate natural rights and work hardship and injustice. Intelligent trade-unionists know it, and the less intelligent vaguely feel it.

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Thus ends the first half of Elbert Hubbard's pamphlet. I intend to post the rest in the near future, but this demanded I post it today...

William Urban: THE SINGING REVOLUTION

THE SINGING REVOLUTION
By William Urban

This documentary was recommended by a friend who was aware of my publications in Baltic history. Indeed, this well-produced story of the peaceful Estonian resistance to Soviet occupation was once central to my career.
The story began in 1939, with the Hitler-Stalin pact that led to a Soviet invasion of the four independent states on the Baltic Sea. Fifty years later it was becoming clear that the Soviet Empire was unraveling, and nobody was tugging harder at the strands than the Estonian people. This little land between the Gulf of Finland and Latvia was threatened by environmental destruction and being overwhelmed by Russian-speaking immigrants. The former was part of Soviet economic policy, the latter a “Russification” that would reduce native languages and traditions to folklore celebrations. If the Soviet economy had produced anything like the results promised by one communist leader after another, or if Russian culture had been perceived as superior to that of the West, the response might have been muted rather than musical. But the Soviet Union never employed a soft touch when a heavy hand would do.
Estonians, knowing well the futility of open resistance, used a music festival to remind people of their ancient heritage. Estonians love to sing, and the festival every five years had worked to keep national feeling alive for over a century. Once, when Communist authorities forbade patriotic songs, the mass choir of 20,000 singers refused to leave the stage until they could conclude the program with national favorites.
In the late Eighties I had come to realize that the Soviet government, struggling to reform a failing system, might soon allow foreigners to visit the Baltic states. It was not practical for me to learn Estonian, much less Latvian and Lithuanian, too, so I studied for two summers to revive my university Russian. (I didn’t revive it all that much, but it helped greatly when I visited the three Baltic states in 1992 and ten years later when I spent part of the summer in the south of Russia.) In 1990, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jackie and I were asked to be the first Americans to teach at the university in Kaunas, Lithuania. When the Soviet ambassador would not give us the visas that Moscow had approved, we went instead to Prague and Berlin, where events overshadowed what was happening in the Baltic States.
Shortly afterward, when American scholars were able to enter the Baltic States, there was no one willing to stay home and edit the troubled Journal of Baltic Studies. With the encouragement of Dean Julian I agreed to take on that task.
Roger Noel was my first co-editor, then later Jim Betts and Ira Smolensky. Eileen Loya eventually agreed to help with the correspondence. No released time from teaching, but with two student assistants we managed to put out six years worth of issues in four years, erasing the accumulated backlog from previous editors.
In 1992 a group of American Baltic specialists went to Riga to meet with administrators of the national universities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We explained how western universities operated, then offered them computers and internet connections on two conditions — that everyone have access and that no record be kept of what they wrote. When the rectors protested that their universities were not accustomed to operating in that fashion, our response was, “They are our computers. You can have them on our terms or not at all.” They gave in.
I then spent a month in Tallinn, teaching American history to a very enthusiastic group of Estonian students at a newly founded liberal arts college. Fortunately, I had a suitcase of discarded junior high textbooks contributed by Tom Best, because otherwise there would have been only Soviet texts in Russian. You should have seen the students’ eyes when I said that they could take the books home.
Afterward I made arrangements for the rector of the college to visit Monmouth. He was very impressed. Monmouth College was exactly what he wanted to create in the Estonian capital. Unhappily, President Haywood was not enthusiastic, and two years later President Huseman even less so. Thoughts of what might have been were present throughout my viewing of The Singing Revolution.
Greatness is not achieved through having superior resources, but through seizing the moment. Monmouth College missed the opportunity to become the first liberal arts college with a Baltic connection. Fortunately, the Estonians made the most of their chances.
If you like to see courage and patience rewarded, this is a film for you. The story isn’t over, of course. The Russian bear is still next door (President Medvedev’s name means “bear”), and it is growling.

The Monmouth Review Atlas (August 6, 2009), 4.

William Urban: UNCLE WALTER

By William Urban

Walter Cronkite’s death has rightfully provoked reflection on the state of journalism today. He was foremost among that generation of television anchors who projected honesty and accuracy, so that when he said, “That’s the way it was,” that was the way it was. He was, as some have reported, an adult in a medium increasingly populated by children. Spoiled children, too, who were more interested in projecting their version of politics than in reporting.
This version of history is over-simplified. Walter Cronkite had strong views, too. But he did not allow them to appear until he could make a difference by expressing them. As was once said in a different context, “less is more.” If he had expressed his disillusionment with the Vietnamese War at a time when the public still backed it strongly, he would have merely lost the trust of his audience. His terse statement after the Tet offensive caused Nixon to despair, to fall back more and more into alcohol and self-pity.
This is an awkward legacy, because the Tet offensive was exactly what General Westmoreland had said it was — a total disaster for the Viet Cong. The guerillas had come out of the jungles to fight a more or less conventional war, and they were shot to pieces. Henceforth the war was conducted by the North Vietnamese army.
Westmoreland’s statements illustrated the reverse of Cronkite’s personality. He had said so many times that the Viet Cong were being beaten that their momentary display of strength was a game-changer — not only Cronkite, but Congress and the media lost faith in any hope of victory. Westmoreland was soon out, and though his successor managed to stabilize South Vietnam, the American public was saying what was repeated just before the Iraq surge — that the war was lost. There was a peace agreement that the North Vietnamese immediately violated, but the public didn’t care. Congress went so far after Nixon withdrew American forces, then resigned, that it denied the South Vietnamese and Cambodian governments the money, the ammunition and the air cover they needed to survive. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese had help from the Soviet Union and China.
Walter Cronkite’s experience with war, against Nazi Germany, had been much clearer. The great issue of the Fifties and Sixties — America’s race problem — was a replay of that struggle: America had to break with attitudes that had too much in common with Hitler’s screaming crowds. Vietnam, at the beginning, seemed similarly straight-forward. There was no question that the Communist regime was repressive and brutal. Cronkite left no doubts that the long-term results of a communist victory would be an impoverished, backward, intellectually stunted Vietnam — as proved to be the case. Later he understood that nationalism, not communism, was the driving force of the North Vietnamese, but believed that building a South Vietnamese state was impossible in that multi-cultural region. No one today would imagine that a Buddhist monk burning himself to death would change anything, but in Walter Cronkite’s world, “that’s the way it was.”
And that was the way it was. With three television networks, each with good international services but only fifteen (later thirty minutes) to cover the world news, one had to fall back on newspapers get in-depth daily reporting and on magazines for more detailed analysis.
Some commentators blame the proliferation of media outlets for the disappearance of centrists like Cronkite. This is certainly at least partly true — today each television network has a specific target audience in mind. Some, like FOX, have a large moderate conservative following; others, like MSNBC, is discovering that liberals don’t watch much television. But also important is “advocacy journalism” which blurs the lines between reporting and usually pushes a liberal point of view. This has been, arguably, harder on newspapers even than on television because conservatives read more papers; radio, on the other hand, has flourished. Radio is something that people can do while working at another task, and, unlike newspapers, it is — if you are willing to listen to the ads — free. Also conservatives have found ways to make their radio programs more entertaining than have liberals; on television, in parodies of the news, the opposite is true. There isn’t much room for the calm reportage of “the most trusted man in America.”
Cronkite had his views. After retirement he let it be known that he often agreed with progressive policies. This reflected his upbringing in the Thirties, when FDR was the idol of the chattering class and Stalin was preferred to Hitler. It was a stance that would have earned him a niche in modern journalism, but nothing like the influence that he once exercised.

Review Atlas (July 30, 2009), 4.

William Urban: FROM EGYPT TO BABYLON

By William Urban
This book by Paul Collins, a curator at the British Museum, is subtitled The International Age 1550-500 BC. It differs from traditional histories of the ancient world in that it is not centered on the Bible, but on archeology. Archeology is not new — Monmouth College had its Classical Collection well over a century ago. About that same time a Monmouth College alum arranged to have one of the three plaster copies of the Canopus Stone sent to Monmouth (the other two copies went to the Louvre and the British Museum); it is on display in the Hewes Library, which has also a nice collection of newer donations. Charles Speel taught Biblical Archeology for decades, Bernice Fox kept Latin and Greek alive through the decades following the nationalization of the women’s colleges in Egypt where many Monmouth College graduates had taught, and I was hired to teach Greek and Roman history. Tom Sienkewicz organized a local chapter of the American Institute of Archeology that has been strongly supported by a series of Monmouth College presidents and deans. Each year he brings in a half-dozen nationally-known speakers to talk about their work in the field — talks that are open to the public — and for several years now students have given programs about their summer experiences in various digs. He takes students each year to Italy, Greece, or this coming May, with Cheryl Meeker, to Troy. The students I have taken to the great museums of western Europe are always enthusiastic, as have been the local high school Latin students my wife took to the museums in Chicago.
This prepared me well to follow the complicated stories in Paul Collin’s book. In his first chapters the societies are well-known — Egypt and Mesopotamian states (modern Iraq) — but quickly new states come to the fore — Assyria, the Hittites — then yet newer ones which reflect the results of modern excavations. Archeologists have become expert at reading inscriptions, particularly the boastful claims of rulers to have conquered neighboring cities; this is one basis of Collin’s political history. Archeologists can also identify imported goods, thus allowing them to recognize when trade or tribute bring foreign objects to a site. By comparing the quantity of foreign goods in various city ruins, and looking through the garbage dumps and what fire and looting have left, archeologists can see when economic times were good and bad.
Collin’s overview of the rise and fall of states is densely written. His is not a book for those who like a straight-forward plot line. If you want good stories, read the Bible, but many names will be familiar to those who do know the Old Testament. This ancient world is very different from the present Middle East. There were no Arabs, no Turks, no Kurds, and the Hebrews show up only from time to time. Moses, who left no archeological evidence, gets a single line; Solomon and David only a few more. Older histories emphasized the fact that the Hebrews were at the crossroads of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but Collins describes fully how many armies marched across these roads. Assyrians rampaged through the region century after century, Hittites moved in, the Sea Peoples destroyed coastal cities.
Greeks don’t get much more coverage than the Jews. The Trojan War is barely mentioned, and Homer’s heroes are truly marginal figures to the great narrative of the mainland empires. When the Persians finally conquered everyone else, they brought order, unity and good government until they ran into the Greeks (a story which viewers of the cartoon-like 300 will recognize, or maybe not). Collins perhaps should have used Persians in his title instead of Babylon, but Babylon is much better known to potential purchasers.
It’s not an easy book to read, but the illustrations are first-rate. No one who works through the text will ever see Egypt as eternally stable and unchanging, but it may not be easy to look at the pictures and see exactly what changed — art resisted change even as the empires of the pharaohs evolved.
This is a story of brutal wars, famines, epidemics and climate change. Some may find in these depressing records a reason for despairing of the human condition — can we ever learn to avoid the mistakes of the past, or are we doomed to defending ourselves forever against evil and aggressive men, a new one always appearing as soon as we defeat the last? Abject surrender seems to work as badly as fighting overwhelming odds, and political choices are always problematic. Others may find solace in comparing our own comparatively minor problems to those of the distant past, but it may help to remember that between the years of disaster and suffering there were long periods of peace when people planted trees and vines, plowed fields and built cities. Without the belief that life must go on there would have been no artifacts for archeologists to dig up.

Review Atlas (July 18, 2009), 4.

William Urban: EMPIRES OF THE SEA

By William Urban

Economic and political growth and decline are much on people’s minds nowadays. Since gazing into the future is about as effective as staring into a crystal ball, looking in the past gives us at least some perspective.
This history by Roger Crowley — subtitled “The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World” — is a trilling read about the climatic struggle between Christendom and Islam that had begun five hundred years earlier, with the Turks almost overwhelming the Byzantine Empire, then the crusaders driving all the way to Jerusalem, then the long Muslim offensive across the Sea and into Europe. There is nothing particularly new in the account, except perhaps to realize how much there is to learn about events that every historian is vaguely aware of having taken place, but does not quite know how to fit into other important events of that era — the Protestant Reformation, the Dutch Revolt, the religious wars in France, and the Great Armada.
What Crowley demonstrates is that all these better-known events were less important than the threat represented by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the great. From his siege of Vienna in1529 to the battle of Lepanto in 1571, it appeared that Suleiman would press deeper into Catholic Europe, solidifying his hold on Hungary and the Balkans, raiding coastal villages in Italy and Spain (with considerable help from the Catholic king of France), and interrupting trade. Many more white Europeans were being carried into African slavery than Africans were to servitude in the New World.
Crowley does not absolve Christian Europe from all blame for this. The Knights of St. John (a Catholic military order) used their base on Rhodes for pirate attacks on Muslim shipping until Suleiman captured it in a dramatic siege in 1522, then made Malta into the center of their operations. All sides — neither Christendom nor Islam being completely unified at all times — required prisoners to row their war galleys; those slaves, chained to their seats, hardly knew whether to hope for victory or defeat whenever two naval forces clashed — if their ships were sunk, they went down with the vessel, but what other hope of freedom was there? Ransom was possible, but only if one had rich relatives.
One has to feel sorry for poor Spain at this moment. Phillip II was paralyzed by fear of another naval disaster such as Djerta in 1560 that had opened his coasts to attacks by Moorish pirates; he struck back at domestic Moors who had converted to Christianity, believing they were aiding the pirates; he allowed his general in the Low Countries to commit atrocities against Dutch Protestants, believing that this would restore religious unity and peace; and one day he would take care of Queen Elizabeth, who was allowing her pirates to attack Spanish fleets bringing gold and silver from the New World, gold and silver Phillip needed to prosecute, half-heartedly, the war with Suleiman.
There were heroes at Lepanto. Don Juan of Austria, as Phillip’s illegitimate half-brother was known, was young, but he had the personality to inspire soldiers and was intelligent enough to listen to his elders’ advice (and wise enough to tell when to ignore it). He was made commander of the quarrelling Christian states which provided ships and had secretly ordered their commander to avoid battle. Then there was the pope, who provided the money to pay the soldiers and who stiffened the backbones of politicians and generals alike.
Crowley has written a timely book. Only a few years ago Harvard historian Samuel Huntington provoked controversy by predicting that our next conflict would not be a war between states, but a clash of civilizations. Foremost of these clashes, but not the only place where western secular and democratic institutions would be challenged, was with Islamic fundamentalism. Crowley shows that the crisis of the mid-sixteenth century was much more serious than ours today, if that is indeed what we have. A divided West somehow met the challenge. The West has largely forgotten this struggle, but not the Muslim world — it was western naval supremacy, not only in the Mediterranean, but in the Indian Ocean, that led to the political and economic decline of the Ottoman Empire. When that empire collapsed in 1918, the most important symbol of Islamic unity was shattered.
Al Qaida wants a return to the glory days of Suleiman, only this time with Arabs, not Turks, in charge. Its leaders would do well to read this book, too, since the Ottoman sultans understood that power and prosperity resulted from good government, not the enthusiasm of zealots.

Review Atlas (July 16, 2009), 4.

William Urban: HONDURAN HEADACHES

By William Urban

It would have been easy to miss the “military coup” in Honduras last week. Michael Jackson was all that radio, television and the print media wanted to report on. Besides, who can locate Honduras? But it was quite an event: President “Mel” Zelaya, once a conservative businessman but now a protégé of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was determined to be reelected in spite of the constitution limiting him to one term — he claimed that only his strong leadership could eliminate crime, the drug traffic and general governmental instability. When he asked for a special referendum to amend the Constitution, his Congress refused to go along; when he announced that he was holding the referendum anyway, the Supreme Court said that it was illegal. When he proceeded with his plan, the Court ordered the military to arrest him and escort him out of the country. Once Zelaya was in neighboring Costa Rica, the Honduran Congress then appointed his legal successor as president until the fall election.
Well, all hell broke loose. You can’t do that! Military coups are the sort of thing that military dictators used to do. First came denunciations from Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, then from Barack Obama (who had just announced that it was not American policy to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries—like Iran). Then came the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and practically everyone else. No one seemed to be bothered by Zelaya’s unconstitutional acts. Chavez, after threatening to send the Venezuelan army to set things right, provided an airplane that took him to New York and Washington, then circled the Honduran capital’s airport but was unable to land. He presumed that crowds would welcome him, then install him in office again. Shots were fired when the crowd tried to surge through a security fence. Zelaya landed first in Nicaragua, where troops are supposedly being prepared for war, to confer with Daniel Ortega, then in neighboring San Salvador, a nation that in 1969 had fought a war with Honduras over a soccer match. This war was more serious than it sounds, but practically everything in Central America is.
We have become accustomed to Latin American presidents coming to office with less than a majority of the votes, then pushing for radical changes, even illegal changes. First was Castro, though he hardly counts, since he seized power by overthrowing Batista (not everyone’s favorite democrat, but much like today’s strongmen who stuff the ballot boxes: “he’s an elected president!”). Then came Salvador Allende of Chile, then Ortega of Nicaragua, then Chavez, who has sponsored look-like strongmen all across the region — most notably, Boliva, Peru and Equador — and has stirred up trouble in Mexico and Columbia. To protect himself from American intervention, Chavez is buying Russian fighter aircraft and welcoming visits by Russian warships.
Our best hope of weakening this crowd is in keeping the price of oil low. It is amazing how oil seems to attract crooked autocrats; the higher the price per barrel, the greater the corruption and the propensity to make trouble (as Saddam Hussein and Iran clerics, and Saudi religious zealots have all demonstrated in various ways). Dealing with our drug problem would help, too.
So, what are we supposed to do about Honduras? It is indeed awkward when an army has to escort a president out of office. Just think how hard it was for Illinois to get rid of Blago. What is South Carolina supposed to do with Mark Sanford? — probably the same thing that Arkansas did with its philandering governor (who didn’t get into real trouble until later, when he lied to a grand jury); the same thing that the people of Massachusetts did with its politician who swam away from a sinking car and didn’t bother to tell the police until the next morning; or how the citizens of Idaho have dealt with a senator who has a “wide stance.” That is, we’ll ignore it. The Hondurans couldn’t do that. A raw grab for power has to be dealt with. If there is a mob in favor of Zelaya, there is an even bigger one ready to resist his return.
President Obama must know how disastrous it would be to send in troops to reinstall a leftist strongman who flouts the constitution and the courts — both the Left and the Right would be angry. Most likely, the president will just not invite the acting president to any photo ops at the White House. After the election in the fall we’ll pretend that nothing happened and that the president is responsible for setting it all right. Meanwhile Latin Americans are preparing to act on their own. It could be a real headache.

Review Atlas (July 13, 2009), 4.