Colt’s Revolvers

THE FIRST COLT’S REVOLVERS.
From the New York Herald.

“There is a romantic side in weapons of war,” said an old army officer the other day. “The origin of our purely American arm, the Colt revolver, furnishes an instance that will illustrate this. It seems perfectly adapted to American frontier conditions. It has given its skillful wielders the victory on many a hard-fought field. And this is why its rise and development should be a part of our country’s military history.

“In the ’30s we were enlarging our national boundaries in the Southwest. We could not consistently develop in any other direction, for the country to the northwest was not very desirable. We were looking for a region that was especially adapted to southern products to be cultivated by slave labor. The South was in the saddle, and meant to remain there if southern blood and valor could accomplish it. The young and thriving republic of Texas was the point toward which the attention of the region south of Mason and Dixon’s line was turned. A handful of daring young Americans had wrested from Mexico a region five times the size of any state in the Union. It was then called the republic of Texas.

“The state of Tennessee was primarily responsible for this daring step. Gen. Sam Houston had gathered together a handful of daring young men full of hot-blooded courage. The blood of the plo??ers that took Tennessee from the most warlike Indian tribe on this continent was in them. For a long time it was an uphill fight. Not only the Mexicans, but the Comanches and Lipans — unequated warriors and daring horsemen — harassed and raided the scattered frontier settlements and towns along the Texas border, until it really appeared as if the entire scheme of the settlement of Texas must go down in blood.

“But the men who started in to do this work were not of the quitting kind. They were of the tory hating, Indian fighting stock that obstacles did not daunt nor danger quell. And they set their teeth hard and swore they would stay. To guard their frontier thoroughly and effectively they organized bands or companies of rangers, under officers who could not only fight Indians and Mexicans, but control and discipline their own men.

“Among these commanders Colonel Hays, better known as ‘Jack’ Hays, was incontestably the ablest. He was a born leader of men, just such men as were peopling that great southwestern frontier. In stature he was about 5 feet 8 inches, and never weighed over 160 pounds. His hair was darkish brown, inclined to be red, and his eyes were of several colors, according to his moods. In his hours of relaxation and among his friends they were of a dark gray with a hue of hazel. In excitement, and especially in a fight, hey were of a color indescribable. They simply seemed to blaze.

“Some time in the late ’30s Colonel Hays was directed by the president of Texas to go to New York and purchase suitable arms to equip his troops. He had then about 150 men, but they were not uniformly armed and lacked equipment suitable for a command. They needed to be equipped alike and with the very best weapons available at that time.

“So, in obedience to his orders, and with a letter of credit on the Texan treasurer, Hays took passage in a schooner bound for New York. He was a month in making the trip, for he started in September, when the gulf is usually stormy and the prevailing winds from the southwest and everywhere else. They were blown into nearly every port from Galveston northward before they got in sight of the island of Manhattan. Colonel Hays went the rounds of the firearms dealers of New York. It was not a difficult undertaking, for there were but four or five of them, but he did not find anything he had not seen before in the way of firearms.

“One day, however, a dealer said: ‘There is a man living over in New Jersey at present who has just invented a pistol which I would like to have you see.’

“‘What is there about it that makes it different from other pistols?’ asked Hays.

“‘Well, for one thing, it shoots six times without reloading.’

“Colonel Hays’ interest was immediately aroused. ‘Indeed, I’d like very much to see it,’ he said.

“‘Very well; then I’ll have him in here with it to-morrow about this time,’ responded the dealer. So the next day about 1 or 2 o’clock the man came in. He was about 30 years old, and chiefly a gun smith by trade, though he did all sorts of work in fine steel. He said he had just concluded an order of sabers for members of the regiment of dragoons just then being raised.

“‘This is my pistol, colonel,’ said he, opening a case and handing the weapon to the Texas colonel. ‘The instant I looked at it I said it was just what I wanted,’ said Hays to his brother, Gen. Harry Hays of New Orleans. There was a 60 foot gallery in the rear of the store for the testing of arms. They took the model pistol, which was about like the Colt’s pocket arm of to-day in size, caliber and weight, and the expert fired all six barrels off in less than a minute. The penetration was good, as was the accuracy.’

“‘Now, I want a pistol of this pattern, but with a long cylinder and eight-inch long barrel, taking a bullet of about 50 grains weight, made as soon as you can make it. I will advance you $?0 on it now to enable you to purchase the material and have the barrels ri??ed. If the pistol shoots as well as I think it will I will talk to you about a contract for 100 of them, and also about a rifle on the same principal.’

“In two weeks the pistol was ready to be tested. It shot very well with sufficient force to kill if it hit a man at from 100 to 150 yards distance. At the same time a rifle was constructed on the same principle. It was about a .44 caliber, with a cylinder that would contain about 80 grains of powder, and carried a round and an oblong bullet. The arm came up to Hays’ expectations in all respects. He took the model to Texas with him and submitted it to his rangers. When it had been thoroughly tested they ordered 100 of the pistols and ?0 of the rifles. The latter was so constructed that when the cylinder was fired it could be slipped out, and another cylinder, all ready loaded, put into the arm in one time and two motions — that is, in 30 seconds.

“Shortly after the troop had been armed with these new weapons they were tried in a sharp fight that settled the question of the superiority over those of their Indian and Mexican antagonists once and for all. About 600 or 700 Mexicans and Comanche and Lipan Indians crossed over into Texas, under the leadership of Canates, a noted ‘raider’ from the other side of the Rio Grande, and with a herd of about 1,000 head of fat beef cattle and perhaps 500 mules, were making their way back to Chihuahua, where Canates had a fine ranch and lived in princely style. He was one of the richest men in Northern Mexico and the ablest soldier in that section.

“The 200 lancers with him charged Hays’ men fearlessly. Hays let them come on until they were within good easy range, and then opened up on them with his 50 rifles. After the first volley Canates thought he had the Americans foul. ‘Meurah los Americanos,’ he shouted, as he dashed at the little band of intrepid fighters commanded by ‘Ned’ Burleson, one of Hays’ most trusted lieutenants. Crash, crash, crash, went the rifles.

“‘Por Dios,’ what sort of a rifle have those devils of Americans?’ they shouted to one another, as leaving the stolen cattle and about one-sixth of their command dead or badly wounded on the ground in the hands of the dreaded Americans, they struck out for the Rio Grande and the other side. Hays had captured a priest, and sent him with others to tell Canates to send an escort and wagons enough to carry away all the wounded that were able to be moved. It was soon reported along the border that las Americans had a dreadful rifle that they used by magic of some sort as long as they wished without reloading.

“Canates offered a great reward for one of these new guns. He was a well-educated man, and realized at once that the Americans had some sort of arm that was not generally known and was vastly superior in rapidity of fire and reloading to any then in use. It was nearly two years, however, before he could get his hands on one of them. Col. Samuel Colt had pledged himself not to furnish his new arm to any but Americans and men who would not suffer if to get into the wrong hands.

“The United States army, particularly the three mounted regiments then in service, the first and second regiments of dragoons and the mounted rifles, were equipped with Colt’s revolving pistols as soon as the ordinance department could be persuaded to adopt them.

“It is a curious feature of our ordinance office that it is always the very last of the military establishments to see any merit in any invention that does not emanate from some member of its corps. That used to be the invariable rule. But it has been a good deal modified in late years, with the invention and adoption of other nations of warlike instruments that were of American invention and plan.

“The renown of the famous American pistol soon spread all over Europe. Russia was the first country to give Colt a big order, and this it did sufficiently to take three years in its completion. when the Crimeah was began the English and the French guard found, to their amazement, that the Russian guard cavalry and some of the picked mounted regiments of the line were armed with a pistol and carbine far excelling that in the hands of the allied armies of England, France and Turkey, and to-day, in spite of multiplicity of inventions, nothing superior has ever been devised.”

The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana) Nov 2, 1903

Samuel Colt’s Ready Revolver in London

From PBS‘s Who Made America?

THE READY REVOLVER.

A Great Increase in the Carrying of Deadly Weapons in England.
[London, Telegraph. March 26.]

In the official catalogue of the great exhibition of 1851, and in the section devoted to the products and manufactures of the United States of America, appears the following entry:

“821, Colt, Samuel, Hartford, Connecticut, inventor. Specimens of firearms.”

Image from Connecticut History on the Web

Among the arms exhibited by Col. Samuel Colt are specified “the formidable revolving charge pistols,” and to this is added the statement that “the efficiency of a troop of horse armed with these weapons, which discharge six shots without reloading, has been more than tripled.” The testimony of general Harney and of major Thornton, of the United States board of ordinance, is adduced in favor of Col. Colt’s invention. There is nothing new under the sun, and the repeating pistol, equally with the mitrailleuse and the Gatling gun, have all had their precursors in bygone times. A Spanish pistol or musketoon, made about the end of the sixteenth century, could be fired twenty-six times in succession with one supple of ammunition; and in the Museum of Artillery at Paris there are revolving pistols that were manufactured more [than] two hundred years ago. Although these weapons had four, five, or six chambers apiece, they never came into general use in consequence of their unavoidable clumsiness; each chamber having its own hammer and pan, which had to be kept primed.

The ingenious Samuel Colt first directed his attention to the improvement of repeating pistols, by increasing the number of discharges, by arranging several barrels in one cylindrical group round a central spindle, and causing them to revolve by each cocking of the lock sufficient to bring another barrel in contact with the hammer. All the barrels being loaded, the piece could be fired as rapidly as the hammer was raised and the trigger pulled. Still, second thoughts were best in the case of colonel Colt and his revolver. The plan finally adopted by him was to construct a revolving six-chambered breech for the charges, which adapted themselves to a single barrel, in connection with which the chambers were successfully brought by drawing back the hammer to the full catch. Acknowledged as was the e????cy of these weapons, they failed to give entire satisfaction, owing to the necessity of stopping after every discharge to cock the pistol for the next shot; and during the last ten years there has been a continuous emulation among American, English and French manufacturers toward the perfection of the revolver.

Vast varieties of the firearm, truly called “formidable” in the exposition catalogue of ’51, were invented; graduating between the toylike yet murderous Lefaucheux, which can be hidden in a lady’s glove, and the “Texan six-shooter,” sometimes called the “Injun’s Pison,” or “Horsethief’s Settler,” used by the United States cavalry, and almost as large as the old dragoon carbine. It is not undesignedly that we have briefly sketched the history of the revolver, since, within the last few years, this terrible arm of precision has come to play a very important part, not only in military but in civil affairs. Prior to the year 1840 the repeating arms made in the states were complicated and easily deranged; but in 1850 the improvements carried out by Col. Colt had had such successful results that out of the 2082 tested by the ordinance department only one revolver burst; and in this solitary case failure was due not to faultiness of construction, but to an unforeseen imperfection in the quality of metal. It is not surprising that revolvers, which had been used to some extent in the Mexican war, should have grown after the experiments of 1850 into rapid and extensive favor with the government.

Image from Old Picture of the Day. Read more about George W. King at the link.

Experienced American officers were enthusiastic in their eulogies of the new weapon, of which it was observed that “a dragoon armed with a Colt’s repeating pistol would be the most formidable of combatants for the frontier service, and particularly when encounters with savages occur — as they generally do — in prairies, de??les, and mountain gorges, when a few bold men, well skilled in the use of those weapons, could, under such circumstances, encounter and scatter almost any number of Indians.” The revolver has, since these lines were first printed, more than borne out its high reputation. It has done fearfully good service not only against Indian savages, but in deadly combats between white American federals and confederates; between Australians, Prussians and Danes; between Frenchmen and Austrians; between Germans and Frenchmen; between Englishmen and Russians, Hindoos, Chinamen, New Zealanders, Ashantees, Abyssinians, Afghans and Zulus. There is little new to distinguish the American from the English and the continental revolver. The lethal weapon can be produced of every size and bore, and sold at any price, even down to a few shillings. Revolvers are as plentiful as opera glasses. Rarely is the window of a pawnbroker’s shop destitute of a neat assortment of six-shooters; but the far from gratifying result of this plenitude and cheapness of revolvers has been their adaptation to uses certainly not contemplated by Col. Colt and the American government, which first patronized his invention.

Image from The Ellison Collection

The weapon was looked upon as a valuable addition to the soldier’s armory; nothing more. But in a very short time it occurred to civilians of the classes known as “dangerous” that revolvers would be to them very effectual auxiliaries in carrying out their nefarious designs. The midnight burglar, the bank-safe robber, the hotel thief, hastened to provide themselves with Colts. Then their peculiar availability in connection with mass meetings, torchlight processions, stump oratory, and vote by ballot was discovered, and the revolver soon became a recognized factor in American party-politics.

Dueling had, long before colonel Colt’s time, been disagreeably prevalent in the western and southern states; but the development of the revolver gave a new direction and a wide scope to homicide by powder and ball. Persons of a pugnacious temperament no longer challenged their foes to mortal combat. They simply drew a revolver and shot their enemy there and then, a course of procedure which averted all the fuss and delay of naming seconds, measuring distances, dropping handkerchiefs as signals to fire, and so forth. In the old days, again, of single and double-barreled pistols, no great diversion could be derived from the practice of “firing free,” or promiscuously, say among a crowd collected in a bar-room; since before the free-firer could reload his weapon for the next merry shot he would probably be knocked on the head by a cautious bystander. With a revolver the gentleman who fired free was master of the situation so far as his half-dozen shots went. The six-shooter was likewise found to be a great help and consolation to the professional gambler and the habitual loafer and “scalawag.”

Image from Free Republic

Nor was lovely woman slow to perceive the advantages offered by a weapon which could at once be made a means of persuasion and of chastisement. The cowhide had hitherto been the instrument with which the trans-Atlantic fair had most commonly avenged on the tyrant man any wrongs of which she had had cause to complain; but so soon as six-shooters came in, and were constructed of a size convenient to be grasped by the lily land of beauty, the ruder and deceptive sex began to find to their dismay that broken vows might be punished very summarily indeed by a Nemesis taking the form of a revolving pocket pistol and a “pin-fire” cartridge.

We have got the revolver from the Americans; but admirable revolvers are manufactured at Paris, Liege, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Toula — ?? over the continent, in fact; and the ultimate complexion to which the implement has come is that it is a public nuisance. The persons who are most plentifully in possession of revolvers are, as a rule, those who are the least entitled to have such dangerous articles in their possession. The old housebreaker, with his “knuckle-duster” or his life-preserver, or, at the worst, with a pair of rusty “barkers,” or pistols, very apt to miss fire, was objectionable enough; but a revolver securely strapped to the waist is now one of the recognized and systematically adopted tools of the modern burglar. We were wont in former days to boast that, alone among civilized states, we were enabled to maintain a municipal police force armed with no weapons more formidable than a short, tough wooden staff; but the time is rapidly approaching when we shall have to ask ourselves whether our police constables are in a position adequately to protect themselves with their truncheons when attacked, and whether it might not be expedient to arm them, at least when on night duty, with revolvers.

Image from SHAFE

During the Chartist troubles of 1848 the London police were temporarily provided with cutlasses; but a weapon which has to be drawn from its scabbard ere it can be used, and the stroke of which can not be reckoned on with absolute certainty, is obviously inferior to the unerringly, precise pistol, with its repeated discharges.

Unfortunately, it is not alone, the criminal classes who have got hold of revolvers. Multitudes of silly young men all over the country labor under the delusion that there is something bold and plucky in going about with loaded pistols slung in pouches at their waist-bands. In the case of persons who have to traverse lonely roads and lanes at late hours of the night, the possession of a revolver is justifiable enough; but the practice becomes simply preposterous when it is adopted by striplings whose most adventurous journeys are performed on the knife-boards of omnibuses or in the carriages of the Underground railway.

To crown the scandal, mere boys have taken to flaunting revolvers as trophies or playing with them as toys. Scarcely a week passes without the occurrence of a fatal pistol accident, in which some mischievous urchin, incautiously meddling with the perilous weapon, shoots his brother, or his sister, or a schoolfellow dead. Sooner or later the chancellor of the exchequer may find himself under the painful necessity of adding to the already onerous fiscal burdens of the nation, by establishing a new impost, in the shape of an annual license to possess a revolving pistol. Such a tax, rigorously assessed and stringently levied, would not only benefit her majesty’s exchequer, but would serve to check the vanity, the foolhardiness, and the wanton spirit of mischief which are at present encouraged by the indiscriminate impunity given to all and sundry to provide themselves with weapons capable of being turned either to an injurious or murderous use.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Apr 18, 1879

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS – No Matter How You Say It!

Hamilton Daily News Journal (Hamilton, Ohio) Dec 24, 1936

CHRISTMAS CULLINGS

The Blessings Which are Ours in This Year of 1940 at Christmas.

The Hammond Times (Hammond, Indiana) Dec 24, 1940

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL!

The Hammond Times (Hammond, Indiana) Dec 24, 1935

The Supreme Court’s Inconspicuous Start

Image from Architect of the Capitol

Supreme Court Of The United States Had An Inconspicuous Start

Washington — In a small and undignified chamber on the first floor of the unfinished Capitol of the United States, there assembled in 1801 a body of nine men who probably in the next few years did as much as anyone to mold the still malleable forms of the American Government.

The recent reconvening of the Supreme Court for its 1927-28 term, from October to June here, recalls the inauspicious beginnings of the body in the days of John Marshall. No branch of the Government and no institution under the Constitution, it has been said, has sustained more continuous attack or reached its present position after more vigorous opposition. Today, in black-robed dignity, under the benign smile of Chief Justice William H. Taft, the court sits in assured national respect, in the room in the Capitol which was the Senate Chamber 50 years ago. In 10 or 15 years more the court will sit in its own million-dollar building authorized by the last Congress, to be located on the hill near the Library of Congress.

Quarters Were Inconspicuous

But in 1801, and in the year of the famous Marbury vs. Madison decision, which decided once and for all the court’s power to review, and, if need be, declare unconstitutional acts of Congress, the Supreme Court sat in a chamber only 24 feet wide, 30 feet long, 21 feet high, and rounded at the south end. This was the room casually set aside for it only two weeks before the court came for the first time, in 1800, to the “Federal City,” known now as Washington, D.C.

After 12 years of control by the Federalists, John Adams had been defeated. Jeffersonian Democracy was to have its opportunity. Feeling ran high. Along the unpaved streets of the little capital-town that is now the center of America’s co-ordinated Government, new and old office-holders came almost to blows. Riding into power came the “Anti-Federalists” or Republicans, not to be confused with the present party of that name. Eventually they were to become the Democratic party. Tammany Hall still inscribes its campaign inscription with “Democratic-Republican candidates.”

The Anti-Federalists, with Jefferson, had won the executive and the legislative fields in 1800, but it was the Federal strategy to hold control of the judiciary. A short time before retiring, President Adams almost doubled the number of inferior federal courts and filled them with supporters. Then on Jan. 20, 1801, a little while before leaving office, he sent the name of his Secretary of State to the Senate for confirmation as the _______ Justice. It is recorded that John Marshall, under the stress of the times, nearly failed confirmation at the outset of his 34 years in office.

Image from awesomestories – MARBURY VS. MADISON

Mingled With the People

John Marshall, the man who upheld the right of judicial review and thereby definitely confirmed that the American Government should ride three-wheeled instead of tandem, with equal powers divided between executive, legislative and judiciary, was regarded as a tower of strength by the Federals. He as a man who felt he could mingle with the people without losing dignity, for he pitched quoits, dressed carelessly, read novels ceaselessly, it is said, and went to market — basket on arm.

He was reared in Fauquier county, Va., served in the Revolution, and was the oldest of a family of 15. From the same state came his arch-opponent in constitutional theory, Thomas Jefferson, the new President. At one end of the unpaved Pennsylvania avenue, in the White House, sat the man who believed in states’ rights; in the stuffy room over the basement, east entrance hall, of the unfinished Capitol sat John Marshall, the very embodiment of the theory of a strong central government.

Decision Delayed Two Years

The incident that made the Supreme Court what it is today came almost at once. Under the act rushed through by the Federalists establishing additional judicial offices a certain William Marbury and three others were named justices of the peace in the District of Columbia. Jefferson coming into office instructed James Madison, as Secretary of State, to refuse to issue their commissions. Marbury and his associates moved by their counsel in December, 1801, in the Supreme Court for a mandamus — a writ requiring a person to do a specified act. A delay of two years ensued. Justice Marshall did not have congested dockets to excuse his delay, but weightier political reasons for withholding judgment.

Then from the small room in the Capitol in 1803 was first enunciated from the Supreme Bench in unmistakable language the doctrine that judicial control over legislation is implied in the provisions of the Federal Constitution. In fact, Chief Justice Marshall was the first man who declared an act of Congress unconstitutional.

Image from Free North Carolina

Comment Still Continues

The Marbury vs. Madison decision declared Marbury was entitled to office and that a mandamus was the rightful remedy. However, the application for the latter from the Supreme Court was denied, on the ground that the authority given the Supreme Court by a recent Judiciary Act of Congress was not warranted by the Constitution. Comment has continued on the decision from that day to this.

The right of judicial review is still challenged. Chief Justice Walter Clark of North Carolina, for example, declared the authority of the court is a “doctrine never held before, nor in any country since,” and attacked it as giving sovereignty in the Nation to a majority of the court — “to five lawyers, holding office for life, and not elected by the people.” On the whole, however, the Nation has supported the Marshall view. The whole course of American democratic development since then has been founded upon it.

Today as the nine Supreme Court justices file into their decorous chamber, led by Chief Justice Taft, smiling broadly, and greeted with old-time pomp of prim, deferential bows from clerk and court attaches, they probably have to thank John Marshall not only for their expanded quarters but for the dignity and power which, under him, the great judicial body has obtained.

— Christian Science Monitor.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Oct 13, 1927

X-Raying The Constitution

Image from Frugal Café Blog Zone

X-Raying The Constitution

The Constitution does not grant the Supreme Court specific power to declare legislation constitutional or unconstitutional. Nevertheless the court has declared many New Deal acts invalid. How has it gained this power? How has it exercised it through the years? Why have its decisions created a situation that has given rise to agitation for Constitutional change? In this last of his series on “Ex-Raying the Constitution,” John T. Flynn, NEA Service author-economist, reviews the history of the court’s domination over state and federal legislation.

_____

By JOHN T. FLYNN
(Copyright, 1936, NEA Service, Inc.)

A gentleman by the name of William Marbury, one day in the year 1800, filed a suit against James Madison, Secretary of State, to compel him to deliver a commission appointing him Justice of the Peace in Washington, D.C. Thomas Jefferson had just been elected President, sweeping the old Federalist party into the dust-bin. But the Federalists had several months left before inauguration to provide some jobs for “deserving” Federalists. Among others a law was rushed through setting up numerous judicial jobs. And on March 2, just two days before he was to go out of office, John Adams appointed William Marbury a Justice of the Peace under this law. He made many other appointments in this last hurry.

But the hurry was too much. Adams wanted to vacate the capital before Jefferson arrived. He wanted to snub Jefferson. And so in the haste of clearing out a terrible tragedy happened to poor Mr. William Marbury. His eleventh hour commission was not delivered to him. Many others failed to out. And when Jefferson came in he ordered them all cancelled. Marbury thereupon brought a mandamus action again James Madison, Jefferson’s Secretary of State, to force the delivery of the commission.

Jefferson resisted the suit, asserting that the Supreme Court had no power to interfere with the executive department. Thus the first great battle between President and Court was fought. And the case of Marbury vs. Madison became historic.

The tongues wagged, because it was felt John Marshall and his court would decide against Jefferson and that Jefferson would ignore the decision. But Marshall turned out to be too astute. He made one of the most cunning legal decisions in the history of the Court. Jefferson claimed the Court could not interfere with other departments of the government. But Marshall decided the case in favor of Jefferson and Madison. This is, he refused to order Marbury’s commission delivered. But he decided it on the ground that the congressional act under which Marbury was appointed was unconstitutional. Thus Marshall gave Jefferson the decision, but he did it by supporting the very principle which Jefferson so bitterly assailed. He asserted the right of the Court to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional.

That famous case — 136 years ago — settled that point and determined the whole course of our history. Because it is fair to assume that had Marshall held the Court could not declare laws unconstitutional, this would have been the end, as Senator Borsh had put it, of the inviolability of the written Constitution.

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And so it has been in the Supreme Court that all the great constitutional battles of the last 136 years have been fought.

As already pointed out, these battles have revolved around two great tendencies. One has been the effort of the central government to increase its power. The other has been the effort of the propertied groups to prevent the states and nation from exercising control over their affairs.

First let us look at the struggle of the central government to exercise wider power over national concerns, particularly in the economic field. It’s not a new fight. It didn’t begin with the New Deal. The federal government has sought to increase its field through the power of taxation, through the power to regulate commerce among the several states and with foreign nations and through its power over postoffices and post roads.

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One of the great weapons used by Congress to extend its power has been what is known as the commerce clause, under which Congress has power to deal with foreign and interstate commerce.

But in the last forty years countless battles have been fought over two points. What is commerce? What is interstate commerce? It was on this point the famous Schechter chicken NRA case was decided. The Court held that the poultry men in the case, while they handled chickens which were shipped in from other states, were not engaged in interstate commerce. When the poultry arrived at their plant, it was held there, handled there and the workers who did the work there were engaged in a business which was wholly within the state. Goods are in interstate commerce only when they are in “current” or “flow” not merely into the state, but into the state an on, with the manufacturer merely performing some function which is connected with this flow of the commodity in question.

Under this decision, a tremendous limitation was put upon the power of Congress to reach out and deal with various types of business on the ground that it is interstates.

Another weapon of Congress is taxes. Taxes were used in the AAA case. One of the first attempts to regulate industry through taxation was in the famous child labor cases.

The power to tax is the power to destroy. The courts have held that Congress can tax even to destruction. But the tax must be a legitimate tax — that is, for the purpose of raising revenue. Otherwise it would be invalid.

In the AAA cases, Congress attempted to tax processors to raise funds to pay benefits to farmers. This case also involved the power of Congress under the general welfare clause. This clause is frequently invoked to extend the power of Congress. In the famous AAA case, the Court held that Congress had no power to regulate agriculture, that under general welfare clause it could aid agriculture — that is give it benefits, but that if it attached conditions to the benefits, that could be regulating agriculture indirectly and that, therefore, the tax, imposed to aid this plan, was invalid. It was not a legitimate exercise of the taxing power.

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The other great series of battles about the Constitution have to do with the effort of organized business to prevent the states or Congress from interfering with it. These fights are made chiefly under the so-called “due process” clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments.

The first first on this subject came in 1875 in the famous Granger cases. States started regulating railroads rates. The roads held that fixing rates was equivalent to taking property from the roads and hence was depriving them of property without due process of law. The Supreme Court upheld the right of the States in this famous case — Munn V. Illinois, 113, U.S. This became then the charter for all our state regulatory commissions in the utility field.

But later the court began narrowing this view. It held that a New York statute prohibiting bakeries from employing men for more than 10 hours a day was a violation of the due process clause. It has held that commissions in fixing rates must allow utilities a fair return on investment or they will be depriving them of property without due process of law. It has held that laws fixing minimum wages for women and children are violations of the due process clause.

The Court has been holding that the federal government was encroaching on the rights of the states. These problems of regulation belonged to them — they were able to deal with them. One state — New York — tried to deal with one such problem — sweatshops and starvation wages for women in industry. It adopted a minimum wage law for women. Only a few weeks ago the Supreme Court held the law unconstitutional. It violated the due process clause. So the state, too, is as powerless as the federal government to deal with its economic problems.

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It is around these points — the commerce clause, the taxation power and the due process clause — that the New Deal measures have been argued. The court decided the “hot oil” case 8 to 1 against the New Deal; the railroad pension case, 5 to 4 against the New Deal; the AAA case 6 to 3 against the New Deal; the minimum wage law for women, 5 to 4 against the New Deal. It decided the rice millers’ case unanimously against the New Deal. The only cases won by the New Deal were the gold clause case and the TVA.

Two sets of reforms are being urged. One deals with the Court and is a plan to prevent the Court from declaring acts of Congress unconstitutional, save by a two-thirds decision.

The other plan suggests two amendments to the Constitution. The first would change the 5th and 14th amendments which prevents the government from passing regulatory laws because they tend to deprive men of property without due process of law. The other is to give the government outright jurisdiction of industry, corporations, power in all matters affecting the national economic welfare of the nation.

Around these measures, sooner or later, a great national struggle is certain to take place.

Anniston Star (Anniston, Alabama) Jul 12, 1936

Letter to Santa

Davenport Daily Gazette (Davenport, Iowa) Dec 19, 1885

Appleton Post Crescent, (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 17, 1925

A New Deal – In Silhouette

A NEW DEAL — IN SILHOUETTE

Of course you must have seen them. Either in your own house or in that of your grandparents or in the window of an antique shop or in books about the American Revolution. For a century and a half ago, silhouettes were as common as snapshots are today. Everybody, high and low, rich and poor, had himself silhouetted, and such mighty personages as George Washington and Marie Antoinette and Frederick the Great and Benjamin Franklin were silhouetted until they must have been as sick and tired of the own shadow-pictures as George Gershwin must be of his “Symphony in Blue.”

The process was exceedingly simple. Everybody could make silhouettes. All he needed was a willing subject, a white screen, a candle, a piece of black paper and a pair of sharp scissors. The rest depended upon his native or acquired ability to catch the shadow of his victim and reduce it to the right proportions. for all I know, the craze for these fascinating shadow pictures may return tomorrow. For the stage is all set for a return of M. de Silhouette. No, he was not some sort of prehistoric photographer, a vague ancestor of that famous M. de Daguerre, who gave us the daguerreotype and modern photography. M. de Silhouette was a financier of great repute and the New Dealer of the reign of King Louis XV of France.

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This is the way that amiable nobleman turned himself into one of the immortals. For when all is said and done, what a greater fame can a man achieve than to make his name part of the current vernacular?

It was during the middle of the Eighteenth Century, France, having been most thoroughly ruined by the dynastic wars of the Great King Louis (whose royal mansions in Versailles were so recently repaired by the generosity of our own Mr. Rockefeller), was about as bankrupt as any nation can be without ceasing to function altogether.

Even in Versailles, where nobody ever learned or forgot anything, a few of the brighter spirits discovered that 1,000,000,000 times zero still makes zero. Evidently, it was time that something be done and be done right away.

Looking around for a bright young man to swing on the dangerous trapeze of finance, the choice fell upon a certain Etienne de Silhouette, a native of Limoges, a former secretary of the Duke of Orleans and member of the royal commission that had settled the Franco-British difficulties in Acadia in 1749.

Young Etienne had been an industrious student of British financial affairs and had translated a good many English books on finance into French. In short, a sort of brain-trust all by himself.

In March, 1759, he was put at the head of the finances of France with unlimited power to do whatever he pleased, provided he go His Majesty’s kingdom out of its desperate difficulties. This appointment was made at the suggestion of the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. The dear lady was not famous for her morals. But she had a good brain. If she and de Silhouette had been given free rein, they might, between them, have saved France from the Revolution.

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But of course the poor New Dealer could accomplish absolutely nothing unless first of all he tackled the problem of the privileged classes. He did his best. He tried to reduce all pensions of all the hangers-on of the court. He proposed to tax the lands of the nobles. He suggested that everybody spend just about half of what he had done thus far, and that there be an end to the wasteful luxury of a court which benefitted nobody but the Versailles pastry-cooks, the Paris jewelers and the light ladies of both cities.

The idea struck the court as something so unusually funny that all of fashionable society began to do things “a la Silhouette,” which was a polite way for doing them “on the cheap.” Thus far, everybody had had his portrait painted by a regular painter. But now of course they could no longer afford to do so, and they had their pictures cut out of a piece of black paper. They had it done “on the cheap” or “a la Silhouette.”

And when the joke had lasted long enough, they booted poor Etienne de Silhouette out of his high office, and the good old times came back right away, and the New Deal went into discard, and Etienne de Silhouette died as the forgotten man, and Marie Antoinette and her boy and girl friends had a perfectly swell time laughing their pretty heads off over this pedantic bore with his everlasting howls about he coming disasters and calamities.

And then they all went to jail and made lovely little silhouettes of each other’s pretty little necks.

And then they had their pretty little necks cut off by the guillotine.

And that is the story of the New Deal of the year 1749 and of Monsieur Etienne de Silhouette.

Rochester Evening Journal (Rochester, New York) Dec 19, 1934

Meet the Commentator
Hendrik Willem
VAN LOON

Van Loon wrote The Story of Mankind, a wonderful history book geared toward children:

Read online or download a free copy at this google link.

An Educational Toy

An Educational Toy

THE picture shown in this editorial was taken by a roving cameraman seeking pictures of novel toys for Christmas. It presents a contrast.

Study the innocent, trusting face of the little boy. Now look at the toy he is trying out.

In case you have never handled or faced one — it is a MACHINE GUN — the outlawed weapon of the gangster and public enemy.

There is no immediate danger the earnest-faced baby will harm himself or anyone with this toy, but there is danger this toy will harm some man of the future, now a baby-faced boy.

Serious persons, interested in child training, have demonstrated the educational value of toys. The photographer, unaware, has depicted another type of “educational toy.”

A “Pretty Boy” Floyd or a “Baby Face” Nelson may be the idol of some adventure-loving youngster, but the stamp of approval should not be placed upon his misguided hero-worship by a fond parent, bent on “keeping in step with the times” by providing the newst of toys. This picture shows one of the latest things in toyland.

Do not bring your boy up to be a big shot gangster by glorifying the tools of the gunmen’s trade.

There are many other toys — new and marvelous — which you can buy your son this year. The stores of Rochester present many marvels of modern science in the new toys.

If you want to give your boy something “in step with the times,” get him a streamline electrical train or automobile, but —

DO NOT PUT A MACHINE GUN — EVEN A TOY — IN HIS HANDS.

Rochester Evening Journal (Rochester, New York) Dec 13, 1934

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Yet, if the law-abiding citizens had real machine guns, maybe they wouldn’t have been clamoring for this, which ran on the same page as the above editorial:

Rochester Evening Journal (Rochester, New York) Dec 13, 1934

Stockings and Pie

Cunning.

Jimmie — But your stockin’s have holes in them.

Johnnie — Sh! I’m goin’ ter put a basket beneath ’em.

— New York Journal.

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Old English Saying.

As many mince pies as you taste at Christmas so many happy months will you have.

The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) Dec 21, 1901

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 13, 1921

Back to the Beef

BACK TO THE BEEF

Farewell for awhile to the succulent chop,
Farewell to the pork and the beans,
For beef has declined with a favoring drop
That brings it within a man’s means.
Last week it went up with a “cornering” air,
And there seemed not a ray of relief,
But now it resumes its old place in our fare,
And we gladly get back to our beef.

Though mutton and pork may suffice for a time,
And chicken’s nice cheer now and then,
Yet what can compare with good beef in its prime
For the feeding of muscular men?
With beef in a “corner” one sorry resource
Might haply have caused us much grief,
But we’re saved from the fear of the hard-driven horse
By the pleasant rebound in the beef.

Oh, “corner” men, let not our steaks tempt your greed,
Our porterhouse rush not too high,
And leave us our sirloins from “cornerings” freed,
That we may continue to buy;
Let trusts and combines otherwhere work their way
Restrictions on food must be brief,
For whatever goes wrong we must have honest play
For our piece de resistance — good beef!

Bangor Daily Whig and Courier (Bangor, Maine) Dec 2, 1899

C.C. Slaughter

LIVE STOCK ROUND-UPS.

COLONEL SLAUGHTER ADDRESSES THE CATTLEMEN AND BUTCHERS.

He Outlines the Work of the Beef Producers and Butchers’ National Association and Asks for Assistance — Farmers and Feeders.

DALLAS, Tex., December 23. — To the cattle raisers, cattle feeders and butchers of the United States: By direction of the executive committee of the Beef Producers and Butchers’ National association, I hereby invite all cattle raisers, cattle feeders, cattle dealers and butchers in the United states who desire the re-establishment of competitive cattle markets and the enactment by the states of such prudential live stock inspection laws as will raise beef products above all suspicion of disease, to send $5 to the secretary of the Beef Producers and Butchers’ National association at Dallas, Tex., to cover membership dues in the association for one year.

Membership dues have been placed at the small sum of $5 to enable every one interested in the beef trade to participate in the efforts we have inaugurated to place the business of cattle raising and slaughtering on a basis determined by the natural laws of trade, and to secure to consumers absolute protection from all possibility of eating diseased meats.

Bills prepared by Colonel James O. Broadhead, president of the American Bar association, will be introduced in every legislature assembling this winter providing for state and territorial live stock inspection. Copies of these bills and Colonel Broadhead’s opinion, demonstrating the constitutionality of the legislation asked for, will be forwarded in a few days to parties in every state and territory, who will see that the legislation desired is pushed to the greatest possible extent.

From advices received from various parts of the country, I have reason to believe that the people of the United States are fast awakening to the necessity for such legislation as will take it out of the power of the men who have notoriously acquired their millions by cornering food products, by rebates from railroads, adulterating lard and other methods alike injurious to public interest and public health, to longer monopolize the beef trade of the United States.

It affords me pleasure to state that prominent cattlemen who have large interests in various portions of the west, and who have never heretofore been identified with our cattle associations nor with efforts previously made for the benefit of the cattle industry, have already joined our association and given it their unqualified and enthusiastic support.

All indications point toward the complete success of the efforts that we are now making to liberate the cattle industry from the power of the combine which has depressed cattle values without cheapening their products to consumers, and if our association is very generally supported by those interested in the beef trade, our success will be complete, notwithstanding the fact that the corrupting power of money may be used to control papers and to influence men against us who by every reason of interest and honor should be identified with our cause.

If every one interested in this great movement will subscribe the small amount of $5 at once the work outlined can be successfully carried out.
While we will use no corruption fund to accomplish our purpose, at the same time it is requisite for our success that we have a fund sufficiently large to compass the legitimate expenses attending work of this character.

The movement we have inaugurated in the interest of the people of the entire country should be supported by all who are not connected or controlled by the beef monopoly, and I would earnestly ask every one who desires tu see the cattle industry once more prosperous and prices obtained for cattle determined by the law of supply and demand, and wholesome beef secured at reasonable prices for the mechanics, laborers and wage workers of the nation as well as for the millionaires, to use their influence to secure members for our association.

I would call the special attention of the butchers of the United States to the importance of sustaining our organization. If we are successful they may hope to continue their legitimate business and be enabled to provide for themselves and families. If we fail, it is but a question of time when the butchers will have to abandon their independent and honorary trade and become meat cutters for Armour, Swift, Hammond and Morris. To the cattlemen who have not yet succumbed to the depressing influences which have been brought to bear on the cattle industry by the beef combine, I would say that if you support us with membership subscriptions to such an extent as to enable us to prosecute our work in your interest you may confidently rely upon a return of the prosperity formerly enjoyed during the time when your investments paid satisfactory returns. If you fail to aid us you may reasonably expect to join the ranks of the thousands of honest and honorable men who have lost their fortunes acquired by years of hard toil, owing to the pernicious methods of the beef monopoly.

The stock farmers and feeders who control the major portion of the beef product of the United States are earnestly urged to unite with us in support of measures which will prove of benefit to them. The breeders of thoroughbred and high-grade cattle have suffered, owing to the present artificial condition of the cattle trade, to a greater extent in proportion to their holdings than have the owners of cattle who are unable, owing to the depressed  condition of their business, to purchase bulls to grade up their herds at prices justified by investments made by breeding. The farmer whose corn is used for feeding purposes is also a sufferer by reason of the low prices paid by the beef combine for fat cattle. The merchants, bankers, and in fact the entire commercial interests of the nation are being seriously injured by the unnatural depression of the cattle business, and should aid us to secure legislation requisite to re-establish competitive cattle markets and restore the general prosperity of all business interests which are intimately connected with the cattle industry of the nation. If the centralization of the beef trade of the United States is to continue, it will only be a short time when the cattle receipts at the market controlled by the combine will reach 25,000 head a day, and even the semblance of other markets pass away forever. It is in the power of the Chicago beef syndicate to secure cut rates of freight by concentrating shipments over roundabout railroads, thus securing benefits in transporting their products, which enables them to defy all competition. To the 60,000,000 people of the United States, I would say that we desire such safeguards thrown around the beef trade of the nation as will place directly in the hands of the people, who are to be injured or benefited, the control of inspection which will secure wholesome beef in all markets. We believe that the deman for beef would be largely increased whenever local inspectors in all towns and cities condemn all meat that does not come from animals inspected by them alive and found to be healthy. Consumers on an average are paying as much for beef to-day as they did at a time when cattle were fully a third higher than at present. We can confidently assure the beef consumers of the nation that by their help, we can secure the enactment by the states of such live stock inspection laws as will restore the beef trade to natural conditions tending to reduce prices to them when cattle sell for low prices in the market centers of the country, and will secure them beyond all question thoroughly wholesome beef.

Relying on the intelligence and patriotism of the people of the United States, we call on them, one and all, to petition the legislatures of their respective states and [e?????ies to pass the state live stock inspection laws, which will be introduced under the auspices of our association in every legislature assembling this winter.

Reliance may be placed on the fact that we are thoroughly in earnest, and will use every honorable means to accomplish the work we have undertaken, the success of which will prove a benefit, not only to the cattle industry, but also to the people of the entire country.

C.C. SLAUGHTER,
President Beef Producers and Butchers’ National association.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Dec 27, 1888

The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) Apr 14, 1895

POLITICAL DRIFT.

The movement to pass live stock inspection laws for the purpose of shutting dressed beef out of many of the states, both east and west, is bound to fail. The people are more afraid of the local butchers’ monopoly that such legislation would develop than of the dressed beef combine at the slaughtering centers. It is very evident that live stock inspection would not lessen the price of meat to consumers or improve the quality of steaks and roasts, while there is good reason to believe that if such legislation could be enforced the price would rise and the quality would deteriorate.

[Denver Republican.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Feb 14, 1889

The people are being squeezed by everybody, and, naturally, the beef combine is under suspicion.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) May 6, 1902

Demurer of Beef Combine.

When the federal department of justice brought suit against leading beef and pork packers on the ground that they were in an illegal combine or trust, it will be remembered that the defendants boldly avowed their right to do what they had done and followed the declaration with the promise that they were ready at any time to produce their books and papers in proof of their contention that the high prices were justified by the condition of the market.

Now, when the government asks that these books and papers be placed in evidence, the packers answer with a demurrer, practically defying the authorities. What is the inference to be drawn from this action? If the advance in the price of beef has been wholly natural and the conditions of trade have been as set forth by the defendants, the most complete answer as well as the easiest would be for them to produce the proof obtainable from their books. When, after having asserted their readiness to do this, they promptly back down when confronted with a demand to that effect, the public can only suppose that the production of the documents would not sustain the claim. The contention of the packers that the publication of the details of their business would benefit rivals is untenable since the combine has no rivals.

Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) Jan 13, 1903

IT’S A PUZZLE, SURE.

Secretary Cortelyou of the department of commerce and labor has started his beef combine investigation. There are a few things he hopes to learn, and any one who can shed information should not hesitate to let himself be heard.

Here is one of the things. A year ago a great victory was won over the beef combine in the courts. The members of that combine were perpetually enjoined against entering into an agreement to control the price to be paid for cattle. Since then the packers have not entered into the agreement with each other forbidden by the courts, yet a man with cattle to sell has learned from experience that he is offered but one price. in the Chicago stockyards he will be offered $4 10 for his car load by the first buyer who comes along; this he refuses, and after a day or two he learns that no other offer is made him.

Secretary Cortelyou would like to know how the packers manage that so handily, especially since they have been compelled not to enter into an agreement with each other. It is an interesting puzzle.

The Daily Review (Decatur, Illinois) Mar 23, 1904