Opportunity Speaks

Image from IPINglobal

OPPORTUNITY SPEAKS.

(William J. Lampton, in “Success.”)

Yes,
I am Opportunity;
But say, young man,
Don’t wait for me
To come to you;
You buckle down
To win your crown,
and work with head
And heart and hands,
As does the man
Who understands
That those who wait,
Expecting some reward from fate —
Or luck, to call it so —
Sit always in the way-back row.
And yet
You must not let
Me get away when I show up.
The golden cup
Is not for him who stands,
With folded hands,
Expecting me
To serve his inactivity.
I serve the active mind,
The seeing eye,
The ready hand
That grasps me passing by,
And takes from me
The good I hold
For every spirit
Strong and bold.
He does not wait
On fate
Who seizes me,
For I am fortune,
Luck, and fate,
The corner stone of what is great
In man’s accomplishment.
But I am none of these
To him who does not seize;
I must be caught,
If any good is wrought
Out of the treasures I possess.
Oh, yes,
I’m Opportunity;
I’m great;
I’m sometimes late,
But do not wait
For me;
Work on,
Watch on,
Good hands, good heart,
And some day you will see —
Out of your effort rising, —
Opportunity.

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

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

When Paw was a Boy

WHEN PAW WAS A BOY.

I wisht’ I’d been here when
My paw he was a boy;
They must have been excitement then
When my paw was a boy;
In school he always took the prize,
He used to lick boys twice his size —
I bet folks all had bulgin’ eyes
When my paw was a boy.

They was a lot of wonders done
When my paw was a boy;
How grandpa must have loved his son
When my paw was a boy!
He’d get the coal and chop the wood,
And think up everything he could
To always be jist as sweet and good —
When my paw was a boy.

Then everything was in its place,
When my paw was a boy;
How he could rassle, jump and race,
When my paw was a boy!
He never, never disobeyed;
He beat in every game he played —
Gee! what a record they was made
When my paw was a boy!

I wisht’ at I’d been here when
My paw was a boy;
They’ll never be his like agen —
Paw was a model boy!
But still last night I heard my maw
Raise up her voice and call my paw
The worst fool that she ever saw —
He ought to have staid a boy.

Mountain Advocate (Barbourville, Kentucky) Dec 30, 1904

In The Attic with Wilbur D. Nesbit

Image by Janet Kruskanp.

I had originally planned to post this with the other “dolls in the attic” poem (see previous post) but after doing some  research on Wilbur D, Nesbit, I decided to separate the poems so I could include more about him and his work.

IN THE ATTIC.

Up in the attic where mother goes
is a trunk in a shadowed nook —
A trunk — and its lid she will oft unclose
As it were a precious book.
She kneels at its side on the attic boards
And tenderly, soft and slow,
She counts all the treasures she fondly hoards —
The things of the long ago.

A yellow dress, once the sheerest white
That shimmered in joyous pride —
She looks at it now with the girl’s delight,
That was hers when she stood a bride.
There is a ribbon of faded blue —
She keeps with the satin gown;
Buckles and lace — and a little shoe;
Sadly she lays that down.

One lock of hair that is golden still
With the gold of the morning sun;
Yes, and a dollie with frock and frill —
She lifts them all one by one.
She lifts them all to her gentle lips
Up there in the afternoon;
Sometimes the rain from the eave trough drips
Tears with her quavered croon.

Up in the attic where mother goes
is a trunk in a shadowed place —
A trunk — with the scent of a withered rose
On the satin and shoe and lace.
None of us touches its battered lid,
But safe in its niche it stays
Scared to all that her heart had his —
Gold of the other days.

— W.D. Nebsit in Chicago Tribune.

New Castle News ( New Castle, Pennsylvania) Oct 28, 1904

Wilbur D. Nebsit was also the author of An Alphabet of History, the FRANKLIN image above taken from the book, which can be viewed/read on the Open Library website. I linked the Google book version of this book in my The Unknown Blue and Gray post, which also includes his poem by the same name.

*  *  *  *  *

A very brief Masonic Bio can be found HERE. Some of his Freemason poetry can be found HERE.

Below are  some articles that give a little more insight:

Image from The Indianapolis Star – Apr 4, 1914

RACE DRAWS LARGE GROUP OF WRITERS

Scribes From Afar Arrive to Describe Speed Battle for Papers and Journals.

The 500-mile Motor Speedway race has drawn men from two continents, whose names are known to the world of letters. These men will relate the human interest tale of the struggle of men and steel machines against time and danger in the columns of publications throughout the world. Gellett Burgess is one of the many who will pen the history of the race.

Wilbur D. Nesbit, author of poems, comic operas and books, is another. He will write the story of the race for Harper’s Weekly….

The Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, Indiana) May 30, 1912

CHICAGO HOOSIERS ELECT.

Wilbur D. Nesbit Made President of Indiana Society.

Wilbur D. Nesbit, the well-known bard, was elected president during his absence in New York….

The Indianapolis Star – Jan 17, 1912

*  *  *  *  *

I clipped this particle biographical sketch from a book on Ancestry.com:

Source Information:

Ancestry.com. Indiana and Indianans : a history of aboriginal and territorial Indiana and the century of statehood [database on-line]. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Original data: Dunn, Jacob Piatt,. Indiana and Indianans : a history of aboriginal and territorial Indiana and the century of statehood. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1919.

Image from the Culver-Union Township Public Library website – Culver Through the Years

*  *  *  *  *

The following poem by Wilbur D. Nesbit appeared in The Indianapolis Star as part of:

the remarkable sermon delivered by Wilbur D. Nesbit, the famous Hoosier writer, in the Mt. Vernon Methodist Episcopal pulpit at Baltimore last Sunday…

A handful of dust, that is blown by the wind
That is sporting with whatever thing it may find.
It goes swirling and whirling and scattering on
Till it puffs into nothingness — then it is gone —
A handful of dust.

It may be a king who of old held his rule
O’er a country forgotten — it may be his fool
Who had smiles on his lips and had tears in his heart;
But the king, or the fool; who may tell them apart
In a handful of dust?

It may be some man who was mighty and proud,
Or a beggar, who trembled and crept through the crowd;
Or a woman who laughed, or a woman who wept,
Or a miser — but centuries long have they slept
In a handful of dust.

It may be a rose that once burst into flame,
Or a maiden who blushed as she whispered a name
To its ruby-red heart — and her lips were as read —
But no one remembers the words that she said,
In this handful of dust.

A handful of dust — it is death, it is birth.
It is naught; it is all since the first day of earth;
It is life, it is love, it is laughter and tears —
And it holds all the mystery lost in the years —
A handful of dust.

The Indianapolis Star — Jun 15, 1913

Call of “30” for Poet

Wilbur D. Nesbit, vice-president of the Wm. H. Rankin and Company Advertising Agency, and an author of renown, died Saturday at the Iroquois hospital in Chicago, thirty minutes after he had collapsed on the street.

During his career, Nesbit had served as humorous writer on the old Inter-Ocean, the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore American and the Chicago Evening Post. In more recent years he had allied himself with an advertising agency, but was a frequent contributor to magazines and had acquired much fame as an after-dinner speaker. As a poet, he ranked with the best. One of his finest contributions, which will always endear his name to the patriotic people, was entitled “Your Flag and My Flag.” This poem appeared in the Baltimore American in 1902, and was circulated throughout the country during the World war. A verse will not be amiss at this time:

“Your flag and my flag,
And how it flies today,
In your land and my land
And half a world away!
Rose-red and blood -red
The stripes forever gleam;
Snow-white and soul-white
The good forefathers’ dream.”

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Aug 23, 1927

Famous Folk

Wilbur Dick Nesbit, the poet and journalist, whose first novel, “The Gentleman Ragman,” has just been published, was born in Xenia, O., in 1871. He began his career as printer and later worked as a reporter. His reputation has been won largely as a contributor of verse to magazines.

While Nesbit was finishing “The Gentleman Ragman” he was spending a few weeks in a country town in Indiana. He had sent nearly all of the revised manuscript to his publishers, but certain details of the completion of the plot had been the subject of discussion between himself and a friend connected with the publishing house.

One day a telegram for Nesbit was received at the village telegraph office. It read:

“What are you going to do about Annie Davis and Pinkney Sanger?”

Annie is the heroine of “The Gentleman Ragman;” Pinkney is the villain, if there is one in the book. The local telegraph operator personally delivered the message, and Nesbit wrote this reply:

“Will marry Annie Davis and shoot Pinkney Sanger as soon as I return to Chicago.”

The operator stared at Nesbit wonderingly when he read the message, but Nesbit did not fathom that stare until the morning when he took the train for home, when the village marshal stepped up and said meaningly:

“Mr. Nesbit, I would advise you, as an officer of the law, sir, not to do anything rash when you get to Chicago.”

Cambridge Jeffersonian (Cambridge, Ohio) Dec 20, 1906

The above poem is signed with Wilbur D. Nesbit‘s alternate nom de plume — Josh Wink. (see mention in below article.)

Bedford Gazette (Bedford, Pennsylvania) Apr 25, 1902

Des Moines Daily Leader (Des Moines, Iowa) Oct 13, 1901

*   *   *   *

RAY HIGGINS:

Cracker Barrel

WILBUR DICK NESBIT expounded a brand of patriotism that seems to have fallen out of fashion in the current age when draft dodgers become folk heroes and the American flag is publicly despoiled.

Born in Xenia Sept. 16, 1871, the son of a Civil War veteran and court bailiff here, he grew up in Cedarville where he learned to set type on the old Cedarville Herald in which paper his first wrtings appears.

After two years he went to an Anderson, Ind. papers as a reporter, then to the Muncie (Ind.) Star in a similar capacity. There his copy attracted the attention of John T. Brush, an Indianapolis clothing merchant, who put him in charge of his store advertising.

From there he joined the ad staff of the Indianapolis Journal and next became a feature writer for the Baltimore American under the nom de plume Josh Wind [k]. After three years he was lured to the staff of the Chicago Tribune where he conducted the column “A Line O’ Type Or Two” and then joined the Evening Post.

*   *   *

AFTER HE BECAME director of the copy staff for the Makin Advertising Co. he bought an interest in it and changed the name to Rankin Advertising Agency. HE co-authored the musical comedy “The Girl of My Dreams” and turned out reams of poetry in some of which he collaborated with cartoonist Clare Briggs.

His collection, “Trail to Boyland,” reminisced about Greene County and Cedarville in the pastoral patern of James Whitcomb Riley. He also published “After Dinner Speeches and How to Make Them,” “Sermons in Song,” and “Poems of Homely Philosophy.” His “Your Flag and My Flag” was recited in most school classrooms.

Nesbit died Aug. 20, 1927. Recently his friend and admirer, ex-Cedarvillian, Fred F. Marshall, came up with his timely and appropriate poem entitled “The U.S.A.,” which follows:

There’s them that wants to get us skeered
By tellin’ us o’ things they feared.
They say we’re goin’ to th’ dogs,
Th’ gov’nment has skipped some cogs
An’ that ef we don’t trust to them
Our futur’ wont be worth a dem!
But I want to say
Th’ U.S.A.
Ain’t figgerin’ to run that way.

I’ve noticed things fer many years;
I’ve seen these men arousin’ cheers —
These high-hat men with long-tail coats
That tells us how to cast our votes,
I’ve noticed, too, their idees is
That votin’s all the people’s biz
But I want to say
Th’ U.S.A.
Ain’t only jest election day.

I’ve seen ’em lift their trimblin’ arm
An do their p’intin’ with alarm
Afore election! An’ I’ve seen
How they don’t do much work between
Elections! Seem to save their brains
For workin’ durin’ th’ campaigns
An’ I want to say
The U.S.A.
Don’t give them fellers its O.K.

There’s one or two that I wont name
That keeps a firm hand-holt on Fame
By stormin’ up an’ down the road
A-tellin’ us what long we’ve knowed
That is, they rise to heights sublime
Along about election time
Yit I want to say
The U.S.A.
Ain’t figured yit to turn their way.

It ain’t th’ men that tells our sins
That almost al’ays sometimes wins —
Its them that rolls their sleeves an’ helps
While these yere talkin’ humans yelps
That makes us know our native land
Has got a craw that’s full o’ sand
An’ makes us say
The U.S.A
Is settin’ tight an’ here to stay!

Xenia Daily Gazette (Xenia, Ohio)  Nov 2, 1972

The White Man’s Burden

Click images for larger versions.

Here is a hodge-podge of the White Man’s Burden, including imperialism, alcohol, women, in-laws, war, clothing, taxes, education, politicians and even himself!

THE POET’S CALL

“We Ask American Manhood What Its First Duty in This Matter Is”

There was a ringing poem of Kipling’s printed in the News yesterday. Like much of his verse, it has the searching quality. It cannot be evaded. The same stern logic that speaks through his poem “An American” that speaks through his “Song of the English” and through his “Recessional,” speaks through this, “The White Man’s Burden:”

Take up the White Man’s Burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.

Through all this time of uncertainty, this time in which the American people apparently are halting in their course, there is one great characteristic element in the situation which cannot be explained away, and which, as the poet seems to reveal with prophetic insight, is not going to be dodged, unless to our everlasting degradation, and that is the responsibility which has been thrust upon us. It has the double quality. It is not something we sought. It is something that sought us. For years we had seen the suffering of a helpless people at our very doors until we could almost arraign ourselves for cruel indifference. Finally, with as pure a motive as ever a nation undertook anything, we attempted to relieve that suffering.

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” we were just where we find ourselves today. We had crushed the remnant of Spain’s authority in the Philippines, driven her from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Never, we believe, has history recorded an instance in which a nation was confronted with such responsibility so clearly without premeditation, or intention of its own, as in this instance. With no desire to say a word for expansion or against expansion, we ask American manhood, we ask the higher self of this land, what its full duty in the matter is. The poet asks it with searching inquiry:

Take up the White Man’s burden!
Have done with childish days —
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

Indianapolis News.

The Arizona Republican (Phoenix, Arizona) Feb 18, 1899

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.

(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Take up the white man’s burden
Lift up the white man, too,
He has dallied with the booze can
And a small bottle or two.
He has fallen down by the wayside;
Far away from his own abode;
It seems that the white man’s burden
Is a very unwieldy load.

Take up the white man’s burden
And help the poor chap to stand,
Once  he possessed his senses
And had a pull in the land;
Once he was upright and sober,
Was able to talk and to think,
But the war with the Filipinos
Has driven the white man to drink.

Take up the white man’s burden
And bear it away to a cell,
‘Twill be better away from the rumsters
Who would aid it to trip and fall;
Who gloat o’er the bond i? that feller
The slaves of King Alcohol.

Take up the white man’s burden
When the maudlin night is o’er,
When the head of the suff’ring white man
With expansion’s swelled and sore;
Take the victim to his fireside
Where a broomstick’s lying in wait
And then if you know your business
You’ll escape ere it is too late.

— Bradford Era.

The Evening Democrat (Warren, Pennsylvania) Feb 14, 1899

***

***

Wow, Mr. Henderson, tell us how you really feel:

OUR “WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.”

[With no Apologies to R. Kipling.]

[By W.J. Henderson.]

“Take up the White Man’s Burden!”
What hollow words are these?
‘Tis the croak of the ink-pot raven
That flits on the seven seas.
“Take up the White Man’s Burden!”
Why, who are you to prate
To those who swept the desert
From Maine to the Golden Gate?

Who gnawed the crusts of famine
Beneath Virginia skies,
Till the white man’s blood ran water,
But never the white man’s eyes?
“Take up the White Man’s Burden!”
Who set their backs to the main,
And sent the sons of the forest
To skulk on the treeless plain?

Who harried the fiends of torture,
And gave their sons to fight
With the poisoned arrow by daytime,
The brank and the knife by night?
Who shackled the scalp-locked chieftains,
And bade them abide in peace,
And housed them and clothed them and taught them,
And gave them the land’s increase?

Who fondled their sons and daughters
and showed them the way of life,
While their fathers crept out of the mountains
To flood the valleys with strife?
Got look at the long, red roster
Of dead in our rank and file;
Yet we nurture and pray and are waiting
At Hampton and Carlisle.

Who struck the fetters of thralldom
From off the limbs of the limbs of the slave,
And thundered the anthem of freedom
Through cloister and choir and nave?
We gave the blood of our fathers —
We children who cast out Spain —
To pay white debt to the black man,
and we split our home in twain.

“Take up the White Man’s Burden!”
Gods! was a Lincoln’s death
The pause of a life of shadow,
The end of an empty breath?
An era of white men’s burdens
Ran out with that one life’s sand,
And the sweat of that day is yet heavy
On the brow of our southern land.

“Take up the White Man’s BUrden!”
Oh, well have we borne our share
Till our heart-strings cracked with the straining;
But we knew not how to despair.
And now if the load has grown greater,
Well, we have grown greater, too.
We’ll tread our measure in South and East,
And we’ll ask no help of you.

Fort Wayne News (Fort Wayne, Indiana) Feb 17, 1899

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.

“What is the White Man’s Burden?”
A man asked me today
“I hear so much about it,
What is it, anyway?
Is it debt, or money, or a jag,
That a burden makes of life,
Or — his voice dropped to a whisper —
“Does it mean his wife?”

“What is the White Man’s Burden?”
About the first is clothes,
He starts in life quite minus,
As everybody knows.
But soon begins a struggle
To get the latest style,
And when they’re bought and paid for
To wear them with a smile.

Another of his burdens,
And one that’s hard to bear,
Is getting proper food to eat,
Which requires greatest care.
To all the cook’s enticements,
To all the pastry’s lures,
He falls a willing victim —
Then takes dyspepsia cures.

“What is the White Man’s Burden?”
Go ask the plumber bold,
The iceman and the coal man
Who revel in the cold.
The funny man and the poet,
The politician shrewd,
The deadbeat and his mother-in-law,
The masher and the dude.

“What is the White Man’s Burden?”
The war inquiry boards,
The yowlers ‘gainst expansion,
The yellow journal hordes.
The only thing surprising
That cause for wonder gives,
Is how, ‘neath all his burdens,
The average white man lives.

— Topeka Capital.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Feb 21, 1899

***

Here, let me relieve you of that turkey, I mean burden:

***

Someone isn’t very fond of his wife’s family:

ANOTHER VERSION.

Take up the white man’s burden,
And blow in your hard-earned tin
For codfish and canned tomatoes
To fatten your wife’s lean kin;
Her aunts and her wicked uncles
Are coming to drive you wild;
These half-starved, sullen people,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the white man’s burden,
And fill your house with bunks,
That kinfolks may sleep in comfort;
They’re coming with bags and trunks.
They’re coming to stay all summer,
To die in your yard next fall —
These half-shot, sullen people,
Half stomach and half gall.

Take up the white man’s burden,
And sit on the porch and swear,
For kinfolks will use the sofa,
And loaf in your easy chair.
They’ll cut all the pies and doughnuts,
And you must subsist on prunes —
These fine-haired, silken kinfolks,
Half pelicans and half loons.

Thrown down the white man’s burden,
And get a breech-loading dog,
And mangle the first relation
(Half crocodile and half hog)
Who comes with his ten valises
And seventeen tourist trunks
To eat up your canned provisions
And sleep in your ill-spared bunks.

— Atchison Globe.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Feb 28, 1899

Below, the women’s libbers jump on the parody bandwagon:

THE LADY SPEAKS.

Take up the white man’s burden,
And put yoru own away;
‘Tis only right that woman
Should run affairs today;
We want to sit in congress,
We’re bound to be supreme
In everything that’s going,
And that’s no idle dream.

Take up the white man’s burden,
And drive him from the scene;
He’s growing pale and puny,
And “parts his hair between.”
Come on, O sturdy sisters,
Let’s show slow-going man
How we would run the nation
On the bargain-county plan.

— Exchange.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Mar 4, 1899

One of the TRUE White Man’s Burdens:

“THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.”

(Bjorge Djenison.)

What is the “White Man’s Burden?”
It surely can’t be coons;
Though Kipling oft avers it is
In very rhythmic tunes.

What is the white man’s burden?
The preacher thinks it’s sin,
The poor man thinks it’s poverty,
The banker thinks it’s tin.

What is the white man’s burden?
The coward thinks it’s fear,
The brave man thinks it’s bravery,
The brewer thinks it’s beer.

What is the white man’s burden?
To the question will return,
Perchance, by often asking,
The truth we may yet learn.

What is the white man’s burden?
The fat man thinks it’s girth,
The lean man thinks it’s leanness,
The joker thinks it’s mirth.

What is the white man’s burden?
The mourner thinks it’s grief,
The soldier thinks it’s discipline,
But Alger thinks it’s beef.

What is the white man’s burden?
The aged think it’s years,
The youngster suffers for his youth,
The weeping with their tears.

What is the white man’s burden?
Ere he’s laid upon the shelf
Ere Father Time has cut him down,
He’ll know it is himself.

Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, New Jersey) Mar 15, 1899

***

Still a burden after all these years:

This one is kind of amusing:

GETS COLTISH AT ONE HUNDRED TEN

Indian Stumbles When Attempting to Take up the White Mans’ Burden

Captain Jones fell from grace yesterday at the age of 110 years. He assimilated too much liquid refreshment and was gently escorted to the city bastile although the police declare he felt younger than ever.

According to the declaration of Chief Hillhouse, this is the first time Captain Jones, a redman, native of Nevada, has ever been “pinched” or even known to take a drink. He is known about the city because of his appearance with his wife on the streets dispensing pictures to those who will buy.

At the age of 110 which he gave at headquarters, his qualities of absorption seem unimpaired although he was found slightly wanting when it came to carrying the white man’s burden.

Nevada State Journal (Reno, Nevada) Nov 10, 1913

I think it could be said that  we stepped up and took on that burden and then some:

“The White Man’s Burden.”

Rudyard Kipling recently told an American visitor in London that when he wrote “The White Man’s Burden” he had America in mind, not Great Britain. America’s isolation has now ceased. She is responsible with the other nations who helped whip Germany for the orderly and safe conduct of the world. She must take upon her own shoulders a large share of the burden. If this means additional privileges it means also vastly augmented responsibilities. Upon England and America together rests the chief duty of a decent place in which to live and work.

— Lothrop Stoddard in the World’s Work.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Jul 3, 1919

The most painful (and never ending) of the burdens:

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Taxes
More taxes
And some more taxes.

The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) Sep 22, 1933

And golf!

You Say Korea, They Say Corea

Corea – Korea: How do we spell thee?

In the 1870s,  it was spelled COREA.

EXPEDITION TO COREA. —

A New York special of the 31st inst., says: The frigate Colorado, and the corvettes Alaska and Benicia, ordered to the Asiatic squadron, have been equipped with an extra supply of howitzers and regulation rifles and pistols for the special purpose of punishing the natives of Corea and Formossa for their depredations on American shipping. The English, French, American, Dutch and Russian squadrons will unite in an expedition which will land five or six thousand men to attack the principal cities in Corea and bring the authorities to terms.

Galveston Daily News (Galvestion, Texas) Apr 8, 1870

 

Image from http://www.history.navy.mil

NEWS BY MAIL.
DOMESTIC.

WASHINGTON, June 16. — A Cabinet meeting was held to-day, at which Secretary Robeson read a dispatch from Admiral Rodgers, commander of the Asiatic squadron, giving an account of the fight between the Chinese on the Corea peninsula and the combined forces of Americans and Europeans connected with the squadrons in these waters. Although the dispatch has not yet been made public, it is understood that Admiral Rodgers was conveying to Corea a number of Coreans whom he had rescued from shipwreck, intending to illustrate the friendship of civilized nations as contrasted  with the acts  of the Coreans, who not long ago murdered a French crew wrecked on that coast. The boats’ crews from the French, English, Russian and American vessels on this mission were fired upon by the Chinese, who probably were not aware of the object of the expedition. A fight ensued, in which the Chinese were punished, and Admiral Rodgers intimates that the conflict would be renewed next day.

The dispatch from Admiral Rodgers, of which the following is the substance, was received at the Navy Department and dated at Borsee Island, Corea, June 3, and sent from Shang hai:

Our minister and the Corean Envoys exchanged professions of amicable intentions. The Coreans made no objection to a survey of their waters. The Monocacy, Palos and four steam launches, under Commander Blaker, were sent on June 1st to examine the river Sable at a point called Difficult Passage on French chart No.2750. At a point where the navigation was most perilous, masked batteries, manned by several thousand Coreans, were unmasked and opened a heavy fire, without warning, on our people. The French ship in advance fought gallantly, our vessels bearing up drove the enemy from their works. The tide swept all the boats past the batteries. They anchored and threw shells among the retreating enemy. Eight-inch shells were evidently not expected.

The Monocacy was slightly injured by knocking upon a sunken rock, but is now temporarily repaired. The vessels on returning received no fire, the enemy having been driven from the forts. Our people displayed great gallantry, and one or two were slightly hurt.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Jun 23, 1871

 

Image from http://www.history.navy.mil

 

 

SPECK OF WAR.

The rencontre between the French and English squadrons on the one side, and the Coreans on the other, will probably teach the “Heathen Chinee” that both nations have a good deal of fight left in them.

The Coreans are a treacherous, false-hearted race. By profession pirates on the sea and assassins on the land.

Corea is a narrow strip of land on the northeast coast of Asia, jutting out into the water for a distance of four hundred miles. It separates the Yellow Sea from the Sea of Japan. Its coast is rugged and dangerous. Many vessels are annually wrecked thereon, and their crews are frequently murdered. With a view to lessening the dangers of the navigation, Christian nations have engaged in the survey of these coasts, with the consent of the Corean Government. As the squadrons entered the river Sable in the pursuit of this object, they were fired on from masked batteries. Of course they replied in a manner that sent the Celestials howling inland.

Corea is tributary to China. In fact, its relation to China is similar to that of Canada to England. The standing army amounts to half a million.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Jun 28, 1871

 

Image from http://www.history.navy.mil

 

THE COREAN EXPEDITION — THE SECOND FIGHT.

NEW YORK, August 22. – The mails bring details of the second fight in Corea.

It appears that on the morning of June 10 the expedition started from the fleet. It consisted of about nine hundred men, of which seven hundred, including one hundred and five marines, were to operate on land, four hundred and twenty-five from the Colorado, and one hundred and twenty-five each from the Alaska and Benicia, all the crew of the Monterey and Palos being required to work the guns on board. The Monocacy took the lead, followed by the Palos, with all the smaller boats in tow, except the steam launches.

The main object of the attack is built on top of a small conical hill on a tongue of land that projects from the right and west bank of the river, and extending out into the water about half a mile. Its average width from north to south is about 400 years. The river makes a sharp bend around the points of this peninsula, and during the rise and fall of the tide the water rushes past it with fearful rapidity. About 300 years from the extreme point of this small conical hill arises about three hundred feet high.

The Coreans have fortified this in such a manner, that looking from the water the walls of the fort appear but a continuation of the extrusion upward of the steep sides, only approaching more nearly to a perpendicular, the sides of the hill forming an angle of about forty-five degrees with the horizon, and the fort so built on top as to occupy a whole level space of almost eighty feet in diameter, leaving no level ground.

Outside of the parapet wall the ground between this and the water’s edge is very rough, steep and rocky, and difficult for military operations. The Coreans had a water battery of twenty-four and thirty-two pounders, and a small old brass piece, commanding the channel past this point, and protecting the approaches to the fort from the water on the front. As this was the grand object of the attack it was determined to land several miles below and take it in the rear.

Accordingly, when the boats reached the first fort, about two miles below the point above mentioned, the Monocacy and Palos opened fire on it with vigor, but the Palos, unfortunately running on a rock, was held fast there, and her effectiveness impaired for a while. The Monocacy’s fire continued, silencing the fort and driving in its defenders, and under cover of this fire, the smaller boats which had been towed up by the Palos, cast off and rowed rapidly to the beach and landed a portion of the force designated to operate by land. The landing was effected in good order, and without difficulty, but the men had then to toil through some 200 years of mud, from one to two feet deep, and over sluices, in some parts much deeper, before reaching good firm dry land.

This done, the first fort was easily occupied, its defenders having been silenced by the fire from the Monocacy and Palos, and retreated on the approach of the skirmish line of marines, who were thrown out in advance of the attacking party, firing a few harmless shots as they fled. Night now coming on, the whole land force bivouacked till next morning, posting strong guards in advance.

On Sunday, the 11th inst., the whole expedition moved forward on the next fort, and took it without resistance. They then extended their line across the peninsula and advanced on the main fort, called by the French Fort de Condeoff (Fort of the Elbouaf,) from its being located in the bend or elbow of the river. This being a place of great strength, and the way of approach rough and difficult, some time was necessary to get the whole force up into position, when the order was given to charge.

About half-past 10 o’clock our whole line went with a rush and yell, which was responded to by the death-wail or war-whoop of the Coreans in the fort. The Coreans here made a firm stand and desperate resistance, firing their clumsy gongals with great coolness and deliberation at our men as they charged up the hill, then fighting hand to hand with long spears and swords.

When the fort had been stormed, and our men were inside the ramparts, Lieut. McKee, of Kentucky, who led the charge into the fort, was the first to enter, and fell, fighting bravely, being overwhelmed by superior numbers. Two hundred and forty-three dead Coreans were found in the fort, and several prisoners taken, among whom was the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, who was wounded.

Our own loss was Lieut. Hugh McKee, Seth Allen, ordinary seaman, of the Colorado, and private Houlahan, of the marine corps, killed. Seven were wounded, including Passed Assistant Surgeon, C.J.S. Wells, of the Colorado.

After the capture the destruction of the forts was immediately begun; the houses were fired, the works and guns destroyed and the magazines exploded.

The land force encamped in the neighborhood of the fort on the night of the 11th, and early next morning took up their line of march to the fleet, the object of the expedition having been fulfilled, namely, avenging the insult to the American flag on the 1st of June.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Aug 26, 1871

**********

JAPAN.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 7. — The steamship China brings Yokohoma (Japan) dates to October 14th. The murderer of Mr. Haberth, the North German Consul, was beheaded on the 26th of September, and the government of Corea has promised to send to Japan the heads of all persons implicated in the insult to the Japanese the government.

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Nov 8, 1874

**********

Fast forward to the 1880s, and things become muddled:

 

Daily Northwestern - Feb 20, 1885

 

Newspapers use both Corea and Korea… in the same articles!

 

Galveston Daily News - Apr 2, 1886

 

In 1891 we have new rules for spelling geographical names:

By a recent decision of the United States board f geographic names the letter “c.” whenever it has the sound of “k,” must be replaced by “k.” For instance, Congo must be spelled “Kongo,” and Corea becomes “Korea.” When we come square down to fact there is really no use for the letter “c” in the English language anyhow. It has no independent sound of its own. Give it the soft sound, as in “society,” and it steals the work of the letter “s.” Pronounce it hard, as in “Columbia,” and here it steals the sound of “k.” Why not abolish it altogether, and let young America have one less letter to learn?

The Daily News (Frederick, Maryland) Aug 5, 1891

**********

Let’s see how well the papers adhere to the new spelling rules:

THE real ruler of Korea is said to be the premier, whose name is Min Yung Jun. According to all accounts he must be the “boss” premier. A few years ago he was worth practically nothing, and now at the age of forty he is a millionaire, rides about town in a chair, seated on a leopard skin, accompanied by hundreds of cheering followers and nimble-footed dancing girls, and has a home containing scores of rooms. The “boss” does not seem to be confined to American politics.

Adams County Free Press (Corning, Iowa) Sep 27, 1894

**********

So far so good……….oops!

 

Nebraska State Journal - Jan 15, 1898

 

London appears to be a real spelling rebel, or maybe they just didn’t get the memo:

 

Lima News - Sep 15, 1898

 

Hmmm…copycat crime in Michigan?

Conspirators Are Hanged.

A dispatch from Seoul, Corea, says that Kim Hong Nuik and two other men who were the leaders of a conspiracy to poison the Emperor of Corea, were hanged. The populace secured the bodies of the conspirators, dragged them through the streets and mutilated them.

Bessemer Herald (Bessemer, Michigan) Oct 22, 1898

**********

Almost everywhere else, they seem to be playing it safe:

 

Daily Northwestern - Mar 31, 1900

 

Wisconsin

 

Nebraska State Journal - Jul 19, 1900

 

Nebraska

 

Atlanta Constitution - Mar 14, 1902

 

Georgia

 

Daily Review - May 31, 1902

 

Illinois

 

Atalanta Constitution - Sep 25, 1902

 

Massachusetts continues to defy Uncle Sam:

OPEN MARKET ASKED OF COREA.

Seoul, Corea, Dec. 5. — United States Minister Allen had a long interview with the emperor of Corea today on the subject of the request of the United States for the opening to the commerce of the world by Corea of Wiju on Yalu river. No definite decision was reached. The government is placed in a dilemma by the request of the United States.

The Fitchburg Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Dec 5, 1903

 

Reno Evening Gazette 0 Dec 26, 1903

 

Above are two articles printed side by side. The one coming out of Washington uses a “K,” while the one from Paris uses a “C.”

 

 

The Daily Northwestern Dec 28, 1903

 

My theory was going to be that the foreign papers continued to use  Corea, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. They seem just as confused as the American papers.

 

Reno Evening Gazette - Jan 14, 1904

 

The map below uses the  COREA spelling:

 

Richwood Gazette - Jan 21, 1904

 

Uncle Sam seems to notice not everyone is playing along. He makes another attempt to spell it out for us:

 

 

Washington Post - Jul 17, 1904

 

 

 

Washington Post - Jul 17, 1904

 

The prime object is to secure uniformity in the spelling of geographical names in all government publications. A board sitting in Washington takes up all place-names of more than one form that may be submitted to it, applies to them a code of rules formulated for the purpose, and then votes on the forms suggested by the members. The form receiving a majority vote becomes the official one, and, under the act of Congress creating the board, will thereafter be used in all government publications, including maps. to effect the desired reform, the board proceeds under the following rules:

1. The avoidance, so far as it seems practicable, of the possessive form of names.

2. The dropping of he final “h” in the termination “burgh.”

3. The abbreviation of “borough” to “boro.”

4. The spelling of the word “center” as here given.

5. The discontinuance of the use of hyphens in connecting parts of names.

6. The omission, wherever practicable, of the letters “C R” (Court House) after the names of county seats.

7. The simplification of names consisting of more than one word by their combination into one word.

8. The avoidance of the use of diacritic characters.

9. The dropping of the words “city” and “town” as parts of names.
…..

Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) Jul 17, 1904

 

Bessemer Herald - Sep 16, 1905

 

TITLES COMMAND PRICE IN MARRIAGE MARKET

ONE EXCEPTION.
There is one conspicuous exception, in the case of the wife of the heir apparent to the throne of Corea, who is an American girl, Emily Brown, daughter of a Presbyterian missionary from Wisconsin, long resident in that country. She brought practically no dowry to her royal husband.

Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Dec 28, 1905

 

Sheboygan Press - Jan 29, 1927

 

Old habits die hard:

 

Sheboygan Press - Jul 23, 1928

 

At The Marmot’s Hole, Robert Neff has a post wondering who is responsible for the spelling change: Corea or Korea – who is responsible? He includes links to other articles discussing the same topic.

Using the two spellings wasn’t unique to articles about Corea – Korea. Newspapers had the same problem with Pittsburgh and Galveston.

Seth Bullock Goes to Deadwood

FROM THE BLACK HILLS.

A Newsy Letter from Seth Bullock.

Through the courtesy of Mr. Chas. Warren we are permitted to use the following letter from the well known ex-Sheriff of Lewis and Clark county:

DEADWOOD, Sept. 8, 1876.

“I arrived here August 3d, and found a “red hot” mining town, situated at a point where Deadwood empties into Whitewood. The gulches are very rich; claims are all taken, and sold at high figures. Deadwood is the best gulch so far as known. Claims are 300 feet up and down, and extend from hill top across — about as large as a ranch. The country is overdone, or rather men have come here too fast for the amount of work that can be done in one summer. A great many are here idle and broke. The Indians will not permit a man to go out side of the gulch, so that very little prospecting can be done.

Crowds arrive and leave daily. Most all the travel is by way of Cheyenne. Fare all the way from ten to thirty-five dollars; time from five to thirty days. Business of all kinds are represented. Langrishe has a theatre here, and two dance houses boom nightly. We have no law and no order, and no prospect of either. Several murders have been committed and nothing done. A night herd romes the streets at night, and whoop and shoot until morning.

Nebraska farmers peddle flour, bacon and groceries from claim to claim, which makes the grocery trade dull.

Dennee is here. “Sid Osborne” left for Montana a few days ago on biz. The country is full of Montanians. Ches. Trais arrived to-day and 106 others. Tell your friends not to come here this fall, that is, those who come to work or prospect. I cannot advise you to come; on the contrary I think you are doing better than you could here. Board here is $10 per week, flour $8 per hundred, bacon 20 cents per pound, etc., whisky 25 cents a drink. The Hills are too near the “genial influnces” for times to be here as they were in Montana in ’49 without other diggings are found. Two years will take the cream of this country. I don’t believe it is any better for farming than Montana. We have a little more rain here, and as many grasshoppers. Sol Star is here and doing fair. I am satisfied to remain for a while. I shall go east this winter if you do. We have no regular mail. A coach is expected here daily. Let me hear from you with the Montana news.

Your friend,

SETH BULLOCK.

Butte Miner (Butte, Montana) Oct 3, 1876

Seth Bullock Has Him In Charge.

DEADWOOD, August 26. Three road agents who have been plying their vocation on the Cheyenne stage route were arrested and jailed here this evening. They came into town yesterday morning and were spotted by the Sheriff and his deputies. The arrests were made this evening. One of the robbers resisted arrest, drawing a revolver and shooting Officer May through the arm, The fire was returned, but the desperado succeeded in getting to his horse and started over the hills. The horse was killed by a rifle shot, and before the robber could recover himself from the fall Sheriff Bullock closed with and easily overcame him, as he had been shot through the body and was weak from loss of blood. The wound is probably fatal.

The Helena Independent (Helena, Montana) Aug 28, 1877

In the contest for the office of Sheriff of the Black Hills, between Seth Bullock and John Manning, both old Montanians, the latter was victorious. The entire Democratic ticket was elected by handsome majorities. Doc Carter ran on the People’s ticket for County Recorder and got left out in the cold.

The Helena Independent (Helena, Montana) Nov 21, 1877

Seth Bullock, Capt. Hazerodt and J.F. Mckenna are the Republican, and John Manning, Jeff McDermott and W.H. Stittwell the Democratic aspirants for the office of Sheriff in Lawrence county, Dakota.

The Helena Independent (Helena, Montana) Oct 1, 1878

Montanians Seeking Office.

The Black Hills people appear to take a good deal of stock in Montanians, as they nominate them for all the important offices. Those who were formerly residents of Helena and candidates on the Democratic ticket, are: John Manning, for Sheriff; Geo. Felix Ingram for Assessor, and Frank Abt for County Commissioner. The Republicans have nominated Seth Bullock for Sheriff and James Carney for Treasurer.

The Helena Independent (Helena, Montana) Nov 2, 1878

Seth Bullock, an old-time sheriff of Lewis and Clarke county, arrived in the city last Sunday from the Black Hills, where he is extensively engaged in business. He received a perfect ovation from his many friends here.

The Helena Independent (Helena, Montana) May 23, 1882

Deadwood Dotlets.

Special to the Globe.

DEADWOOD, Dak., June 6. — It was announced yesterday that the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley railroad, the track of which is now laid within fifty miles of Rapid City, would build north and west to a point near Fort Meade this summer. This will bring the railroad within fifteen miles of Deadwood…

The Electric Light company will start up this evening, after two weeks idleness. The company had been reorganized and the works will be moved from the present location on Sherman street to Upper Main street …

Judge Church of the district court on Monday denied an injunction to F.W. Hamilton et al. against Seth Bullock and others who are in possession of the Hattenbach smelter and water right at the carbonate camp. The decision was received with general rejoicing here as it was feared that had the decision been otherwise work would be stopped on the Iron Hill for some years, as the Hattenbach water right affords the only water at present available for working the Iron Hill mill…

The annual meeting of the Iron Hill stockholders was held in this city yesterday, who re-elected the old board of directors. A monthly dividend of 5 cents per share was declared….

The grand lodge of Knights of Pythias will meet at Rapid City on the 15th inst. The knights of the hills are determined to make this session of the grand lodge a memorable one, and large delegation will attend from Deadwood, Central City and Lead City.

St. Paul Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota) Jun 7, 1886

A new faction is to appear in the Watertown convention from the Black Hills, designated as the Bullwumps. It will appear as a contesting force, nominally for SETH BULLOCK, but ready to trade with any faction that will give them a show for seats. The name is, of course, derived from that of the leader. There are two or three other lots of contestants that will tend to enliven matters at Watertown.

St. Paul Daily Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota) Aug 18, 1888

DEADWOOD NIPPINGS.

Judge Palmer Was Wired as the Proxy of the Hills at Huron.

DEADWOOD, Dak., Jan. 18. — “We, the people of Lawrence county,” met at the city hall Tuesday afternoon the 13th, and elected twenty-two delegates to attend the Huron convention. An obscure call appeared in the morning papers of the same morning, and before those papers appeared in the outside precincts, the “mass” convention had met, resoluted and adjourned. It is well said that Dakota holds more conventions than any other state in the Unions, but in Lawrence county they can  call and hold a mass meeting of the citizens of the county in less time than it takes to tell. The one held on the 15th was remarkable in that it was conceived, called, held and over with in less than ten hours, and the county is larger than the state of Rhode Island. The total number present at this “we, the people” was five, consisting of Messrs. G.G. Bennett, Seth Bullock, Samuel Cushman, Ploughman and Church. Several newspaper representatives were also present.

Twenty-two delegates were chosen, comprising what is known as the Mugwump element of the county and a few others, and the proxies of the entire delegation were telegraphed to Judge Palmer.

Resolutions were also telegraphed favoring division and admission and a new constitutional convention for South Dakota, and strongly urging a new election of officers.

St. Paul Daily Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota) Jan 19, 1889

ENERGY’S LIBERAL REWARD

The Gates of Mineral Edens Yield to Hard, Persistent Knocks.

A SKETCH OF ENTERPRISE IN THE BLACK HILL
[Excerpt]

The Black Hills.

DEADWOOD, S.D., Aug. 27. — Correspondence of THE BEE. — The Bald mountain and Ruby Basin mining districts of the Black Hills which are just now attracting more attention perhaps, than any other gold and silver mining districts in the United States, lay some eight miles north of Deadwood, in Laurence county. The districts are some four miles long by three miles wide and are remarkable for the great number of deposits of pay ore that have been brought into sight by a minimum amount of development. The ore which is silicious, occurs in blanket veins, from three to twenty-five feet thick, and from ten to eight feet wide, as in the Golden Reward, and ranges in value from $18 per ton upwards into the hundreds. The general average being about $30….

With a courage and determination admirable, when the many difficulties standing in the way, and the long line of misfortunes by which all previous efforts had been met, are contemplated Mr. Franklin and the gentlemen associated with him, refused to abandon the purpose they had in view, and lost no time in looking about for some other process. The Newberry-Vautin chlorination method was just then attracting attention in the United States, as well as in Australia. The company had a small plant in Denver, and thereto Messrs. Franklin, Bullock and C.W. Carpenter went.

Several weeks were spent studying the process, the gentlemen returning to Deadwood satisfied that while as operated at Denver it was not practical for Black Hills ores, it was susceptible to change and modifications, which would excellently adapt it to the peculiarities of the Hills. So many failures had characterized the effort to treat these ores that when approached for subscriptions toward building another plant, a majority refused having anything to do with the project. The burden, therefore, fell on some eight or ten, most prominent among them being Harris Franklin, his business partner Ben Baer, Seth Bullock, Colonel C.W. Carpenter and George C. Hickok.

These gentlemen organized a corporation under the name of “Golden Reward Chlorination works,” and at once began building a plant. Warned by other failures they started on a small scale, the works at first having a capacity of only thirty tons per day. The first run was not a brilliant success. Nothing daunted the gentlemen continued putting money in, and some seven or eight months later were able to positively announce that the difficulty has at length been solved, that the chlorination process, as operated by them, was an absolute success in saving every cent of gold contained in the ore, and that the operation of Bald Mountain and Ruby Basin mines to a profit was not only possible, but probable and practicable.

The next four months’ operations of the plant proved conclusively all they had claimed for it. Capacity was doubled and the plant has been kept continually busy on ore from the Golden Reward mine, turning out bullion at the rate of $30,000 to $33,000 per month. It is not claimed for this process, however, that it will save any silver the ore may contain, and as a good many of the silicious deposits referred to carry silver in value ranging from $8 ot $30 per ton (Golden Reward ore carried from $1 to $3 silver only), in addition to the gold, it became necessary to devise a method for saving the silver.

At the Golden Reward plant the cost of treatment is something under $5 per ton for gold alone, and experiments made proved that by adding vats and resort to lixiviation the silver could be saved for an additional cost of $2 per ton. The ore of this particular mine carries so little silver, however, that it has not been deemed advisable to put in the additional machinery necessary to save it.

About the time Mr. Franklin and associates completed this chlorination plant, Dr. Franklin R. Carpenter, then dean of the Dakota school of mines, who had given close study to Ruby Basin and Bald Mountain ores, and who had some months previously published an article in the Rapid Republican, advocating their treatment by pyritic smelting, made a series of successful experiments with the process at the school of mines laboratory. At some of these experiments Seth Bullock, then president of the Iron Hill mining company, and the late J.K.P. Miller, of Deadwood, were present. The gentlemen were both convinced that the process was an absolute success, and returned with that idea firmly fixed in their minds. Mr. Bullock shortly afterward determined on a practical test at the Iron Hill. The result is concisely told in the following clipping from the Black Hills Times of January 1, 1890.

“The first practical test of the pyrite scheme was made by Seth Bullock at the Iron Hill, when the basic ores of the mine were mixed with the dry gold-silver ores of Ruby Basin and pyrite from Galena, also carrying a little gold and silver, thus modifying but very slightly the process as usually practiced. The process was a gratifying success as demonstrated by the treatment of over 400 tons of ore. Two runs were made — thorough test of eight days continuance, the only change necessary to the smelter being the filling of the lead well. The proportions of a charge cannot be stated more definitely than that from fifteen to twenty per cent of pyrites is an ingredient with Iron Hill and Ruby ores and lime, effecting a concentration of ten tons into one and giving an absolute clean slug.”…

Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska) Aug 30, 1891

Seth Bullock of Deadwood will write a book entitled, “Twenty Years in the Territories.” Its subject matter will touch on the doings of vigilants of Montana, the horse thieves of Nebraska and the stage robbers of the Black Hills.

Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska) Jul 10, 1893

HERE IN UP-TO-DATE GUISE

FRONTIERSMAN SETH BULLOCK VISITS ST. PAUL

Was One of the Civilizers of Montana and the Black Hills Region — As the First Sheriff of the Black Hills He Put to Death Many of the Desperadoes of the Frontier.

Seth Bullock, a frontiersman, who assisted in the civilization of Montana and the Black Hills region, by sending innumerable desperadoes over the great divide via the pistol route and the hangman’s noose, is visiting the Twin Cities in the thoroughly up-to-date guise of a promoter for the Belle Fourche Smelting and Refining company, of the Black Hills.

Mr. Bullock formerly owned the land being worked by the Belle Fourche company, and now that his former occupation of sheriff, vigilante and Indian fighter is gone, he is engaged in furthering the mining interests of the section where he passed through so many dangers and thrilling experiences.

As the first sheriff of the Black Hills, Seth Bullock was a peace officer feared by the desperadoes of the hills. His determination to do his duty, coupled with indomitable courage, led him to relentlessly pursue evil doers, and when the “bad” men found Bullock on their tracks they knew justice would be meted out to them.

While never taking life needlessly, Seth Bullock says he has been forced to kill so many tough characters that he has lost actual count of the notches on the butts of his “shooting irons.”

Sometimes, when accompanying a valuable consignment of bullion overland, Mr. Bullock was obliged to distribute the contents of his Winchester rifle among half a dozen bandits who attempted to hold up the stage. The stage seldom stopped to get a list of the dead and wounded from the robbers, so Mr. Bullock does not know just how many he killed in these “sorties.” On one occasion, however, while the stage which he was carrying through traveled a small canyon sixty miles from Deadwood, four knights of the road undertook to appropriate the treasure aboard, but a series of rapid shots from Bullock’s rifle eliminated all danger and annihilated the robbers.

Mr. Bullock made his reputation as chairman of the 3-7-77 vigilance committee, of Helena, Mont., before he went into the Black Hills. There was a great deal of work for the vigilantes in those days, and very frequently the figures 3-7-77, meaning a meeting of the committee was to be held that night, could be seen chalked about the street.

In the secret conclaves Bullock presided over the deliberations of men as sternly bent on exterminating lawlessness as himself, and when it was decided that any particularly tough character was due, he was soon captured. The vigilance committee did not execute the criminals, but turned them over to the courts.

In 1872 Bullock was elected sheriff and during four years of service hung many criminals. He was quite a monopolist as regarded the hanging function as was indicated on one occasion when lynch law was about to be invoked in the case of two men arrested for train robbing.

The vigilantes wanted to string the prisoners up without ceremony. Seth reckoned as how he would attend to the hanging himself and proceeded to execute the robbers.

“You are a d–m monopolist,” said one of the vigilantes, “you want to do all of the hanging yourself.”

Mr. Bullock was a personal friend of Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill, with whom he was at times closely associated. Seth liked Wild Bill, and though McCall killed many men, Seth thinks he was justified in many cases.

When the gold discoveries were made in the Black Hill Seth Bullock and a party of friends went with the rush to this section. It was a lawless country, where murders and robbery were the order of the day. Outlawry became so rampant that Bullock was prevailed upon to accept the office of sheriff in the hills as he had done in Helena. His election gave the Black Hills country its first sheriff, and as such Bullock’s name struck terror to the hearts of evil doers.

It was here that he did most of his Indian fighting. The troublesome Sioux of Sitting Bull made border life extremely dangerous, and when the general uprising, which resulted in the terrible Custer massacre, threatened the extermination of white settlers, it was Seth Bullock who offered to put down the red skins. Bullock had been appointed adjutant general of the territory and wired Gov. Pennington the following message:

“The Indians are still massacreing our people in Spear Fish and Belle Fourche valleys. I advise that you permit me to take my troops down and kill the agents at Pine Ridge, Cheyenne and Standing Rock. This will stop the Indian trouble.”

Gov. Pennington telegraphed in reply: “Better wait awhile, Seth.”

Mr. Bullock says his plan was somewhat unusual, but declares it was a solution of the problem, as he charges the Indian agents with the responsibility of the uprisings.
In appearance Seth Bullock is the typical frontiersman, with one exception. He has never worn his hair long, as is characteristic of most Western notables. Fully six feet tall, straight as an arrow, with a muscular figure and aquiline features, he appears a splendid type of physical manhood. His blue-gray eyes are a noticeable feature.

Sparkling with subdued fire, they are kindly in expression, but bespeak the “flinty” look of the yellowback novel, should the owner become aroused.

Since it has become safe to live in the Black Hills, Mr. Bullock has undertaken the development of rich gold property which came into his possession. Several Twin city capitalists are associated with him in business. Mr. Bullock declares the Black Hills district is the richest gold producing country in the world. Last year the output, he says, was $10,000,000, and that of the year before $8,000,000, and all of this wealth, Mr. Bullock says, came from a district within a ten-mile radius of Deadwood.

The mining in this section is all quartz mining, Mr. Bullock says, and the claims owned by large companies, who operate huge smelters for extracting the precious yellow metal, the largest smelter in the world, he says, being at Deadwood. Mr. Bullock says few people realize the richness of the Black Hills gold region.

The Saint Paul Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota) Mar 25, 1898

Enlisting Rough Riders.

DEADWOOD, S.D., May 4. — (Special Telegram.) — The appointment of Seth Bullock as a captain in the regiment of cavalry which Attorney General Grigsby has been authorized to raise has created much enthusiasm in this and other adjoining counties of the Black Hills. As soon as his appointment was telegraphed him Mr. Bullock sent runners to every cow camp in the Black Hills and has now enrolled in his command over 400 of the best shots and most fearless riders in the world, all of whom are ready for service in Cuba or the Philippines.

Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska) May 5, 1898

Grigsby’s Rough Riders.

The daily reports of the surgeons show that the health of the camp is improving.

The Rough Riders were mustered in yesterday morning and will probably receive their pay today. Several of the officers left camp to obtain signatures of those who are sick, so they can draw their pay.

The troop commanded by Captain Bullock has been pronounced the healthiest body of men in the regiment….

The camp of Colonel Grigsby’s cowboys was moved yesterday from the location where they have been camped since their arrival at the park, to the Brotherton field, east of the First Illinois cavalry. Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd, who is in command of the cowboys, is well pleased with the new location and thinks the change will prove beneficial to the health of the regiment….

A general court-martial has been appointed and ordered to be convened at the brigade headquarters by Assistant Adjutant General William E. Almy. The following are the members of the court-martial: Major L.H. French of the cowboys and Major Frank B. Alsip of the First Illinois cavalry and Captains Seth Bullock, J.B. Binder, C.E. Gregory and J.T. Brown of the cowboy regiment…A large number of cases will be tried by the court.

Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska) Aug 4, 1898

Captain Bullock Convalescing.

DEADWOOD, S.D. Sept. 26. — (Special) — Captain Seth Bullock of Grigsby’s regiment had been dangerously ill in this city with malarial fever, which was contracted in Camp Thomas. He is slowly recovering.

Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska) Sep 27, 1898

TO THE FOREST RANGERS.

A Circular Issued by Seth Bullock, of Deadwood.

The manner in which the great timber preserves of the Northwest are protected against fires and the ravages of outlaw timber cutters is illustrated in a circular letter just issued by Seth Bullock, of Deadwood, S.D., one of the most energetic forest supervisors in the country. Mr. Bullock was sheriff in Deadwood when that town was infested by the most lawless element of the West. His decisive actions resulted in the establishment of law and order. Under his regime ugly characters learned to give Deadwood a wide berth.

President Roosevelt, while operating a ranch at Medora, was one of Mr. Bullock’s deputies. The circular issued by Mr. Bullock is addressed to the Forest Rangers, and is as follows:

“To Forest Rangers, Black Hill Forest Reserve.

“Sirs: Your attention is called to the fact that in a number of instances the monthly reports of the forest rangers of this Reserve show but a few miles traveled per day while patrolling their districts. From two to ten miles frequently appears as all that is accomplished, no other work being undertaken or reported as having been performed.

“You are advised that a forest ranger is supposed to patrol his district on horseback, and that the patrolling of districts on foot will not be permitted. A few monthly reports — very few, I am glad to say — indicate that that particular ranger performs as little service as he can during the month, just enough to have his report approved and escape censure. Rangers of this class must not be disappointed if they are furloughed this fall, and an additional leave of absence granted them next summer. Shiftless, careless work will not be tolerated in the future. An honest day’s work honestly performed is what is required and will be insisted upon.

“You are expected to thoroughly patrol your district, getting to every part of it at least once a month, familiarizing yourselves with every trail and every road upon or through it; by whom and for what purpose they are used. You should also know the name and occupation of every resident of your district temporary as well as permanent, and ascertain by what right they are upon the reserve and what their business it. An especial and vigilant watch must be kept for forest fires. Visit often the places frequented by campers as they are a prolific source of fires. Establish correspondence at various points within your district with persons  residing therein who will keep you advised of forest fires and depredations, either on the forest reserve or on the public lands near by.

“See that the forest fire notices are put up and maintained upon all the public roads and trails of your district. Report all cases of fire and trespass as soon as you have knowledge of them. In all your intercourse with the public extend such treatment that every honest man within your district shall be your personal friend. Very respectfully,

“SETH BULLOCK.

“Forest Supervisor.”

The Evening Times (Washington, D.C.) Oct 12, 1901

BORDER MAN IS GUEST AT WHITE HOUSE

Seth Bullock See the President Daily.

Former Sheriff of Deadwood Warmly Welcomed.

Tells of Mr. Roosevelt’s Career in the Black Hills Country.

Special Dispatch to the Call.

CALL BUREAU, 1406 G STREET. N.W. WASHINGTON, Feb. 28. —

“Have you met Seth Bullock yet?” asked President Roosevelt of a caller to-day. “He comes from Deadwood and is about as fine a type of the real man as you will find in the Western country. He used to be a neighbor of mine.”

Seth Bullock of Deadwood, formerly a Black Hills Sheriff, has been a guest at the White House several times during the last week at luncheons and once or twice at dinner.

He has had a horseback rid or two with the President and last Thursday, mounted on one of the best horses in the White House stables, he and little “Archie” Roosevelt, mounted on his spotted pony, took a long ride over the country roads of Maryland.

Mr. Bullock, or “Captain” Bullock, as he is called, is supervisor of the national forest reserve in the Black Hills, which comprises a stretch of woodland 100 miles long and fifty wide. He is the commanding officer of twenty or thirty forest rangers.

This friend of the President is as straight as one of the pines in his native State of Michigan. He is six feet tall and as spare as a trained runner. He has the eagle nose of the fighter and eagle eye of a man who does not know what it is to flinch. He has a sandy moustache and a full head of hair that has dodged the Indian scalping knife a half dozen times. He was a born adventurer, because when 14 years of age he followed his five older brothers into the army and enlisted as a drummer boy.

“I have known the President for a good many years. I knew him first when he took up his ranch on the Little Missouri,” said he to-day. “It didn’t take the neighbors of Mr. Roosevelt very long to find out that, although he was from the East and a bit near-sighted, he was just as able to take care of himself as any of us who had been out there since the first stampede to the Black Hills, and he was ready to do his part, too. When cattle thieves came out of the Black Hole, he took his share of work in bringing them to justice, and when he had to be made a deputy Sheriff and was asked to go after a couple of desperadoes down in the river bottom he always went and he always brought them back.”

The San Francisco Call ( San Francisco, California) Mar 1, 1903

LOVELY SPURS FOR ARCHIE ROOSEVELT

President’s Son Gets Keepsake From Capt. Seth Bullock.

DEADWOOD, S.D., June 9. — Capt. Seth Bullock, of Deadwood, has ordered as a present for Archie Roosevelt, third son of the president, a handsome pair of cowboy spurs, made on a special order. They were procured for Capt. Bullock by Edward McDonald, mayor of Deadwood, who is a saddler. They are hand made and represent the highest skill of forging and finishing.

They are of the regulation cowboy type with drop shank, large rowells and locks with wide hand-stamped Russia leather and gold conchas. The spurs are silver mounted and chased with an artistic design. The boy for whom they are intended rode much with Capt. Bullock when the latter was in Washington.

The Saint Paul Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota) Jun 10, 1903

SETH BULLOCK IN WASHINGTON

ROOSEVELT’S OLD BAD LANDS FRIEND LUNCHES WITH HIM.

Doesn’t Like to Talk About the Days When He Was a Terror to Evildoers in Deadwood — More Interested in Forestry — Punctures the Calamity Jane Myth.

WASHINGTON, April 9. — Seth Bullock is making his annual visit to Washington. It is the same Seth Bullock, who, as the first Sheriff of Deadwood, was a terror to law breakers all over the Black Hills region and officiated at some half a dozen more or less impromptu executions of horse thieves and bad men. But in one way he has changed.

To his old comrade and friend, Theodore Roosevelt, and to his other companions of the old days on the Little Missouri, he is the same always. But to strangers who would fain converse about the dime novel exploits of his comrades and himself on the frontier he is simply a plain American citizen, quietly plodding paths of peace, and a little surprised, and even grieved, when the conversation is turned to such subjects as the early days of Deadwood and the exploits of Corral Charlie and Calamity Jane.

And so it happens that the conversation soon reverts to the affairs of the Black Hills Forest Reserve, of which Mr. Bullock is the Federal superintendent, and to the glories of President Roosevelt’s Administration and to Roosevelt’s peerless virtues as a gentleman and a scholar. Not even Jacob Riis is a more ardent admirer of Mr. Roosevelt than is Seth Bullock.

He knew Roosevelt when Roosevelt was a plainsman, and it is his proud assertion that his old friend of the Bad Lands hasn’t changed a bit since he was elevated to the highest place in the nation. He took luncheon with the President at the White House the other day, and they swapped stories of the old days, and seriously discussed affairs of State and of the Black Hills Forest Reserve.

Last year he was the President’s guest at the White House, and he attended some of the largest of the State entertainments. He is quite at home in polite society, and except as a man of muscular build and the possessor of a rather fierce looking, melodrama villain’s mustache, would not attract special notice from casual observers.

To some intimates he did remark that the Marine Band played fine music, but that it was pretty far up the gulch for him; and he wished they would play “There’ll Be A Hot Time” and a few similar pieces more to his liking.

Bullock’s saddle gait and his sun tanned skin give him the look of a plainsman, or at least of a man accustomed to a vigorous outdoor life. The only article of apparel that suggests his habitat is a sombrero of the Montana peak variety, but he remarked to a friend who admired his that:

“Why, I’ve seen more hats almost like this in Washington to-day than you’d see in Deadwood in a week.”

To a reporter who called on him Mr. Bullock said smilingly that he didn’t propose to talk about Deadwood as it was, nor to discuss Calamity Jane, Corral Charlie, Arizona Ike or any other of the Western celebrities with whom he came into more or less forcible contact when he was Sheriff of Deadwood in the palmy days of the Black Hills gold excitement.

“The West, including Deadwood, is civilized now,” he said, “and I am sure there is more genuine interest in its present and future development and in the irrigation and forest reserve problems than in discussing the more or less notorious characters of the early days who have been lifted from their actual level in real life to a much higher plane in the realm of fiction.

“And I must say that I grow sorrier and sorrier every day to think that I was ever Sheriff of Deadwood. I am perfectly willing to discuss the Black Hills Forest Reserve by the hour, for it is a good work and an important work and a work in which any one might well take an interest. But I have found that when I meet a man who looks as if he wanted to ask questions and am priming myself to give him statistics of the population of Deadwood, and describe the trolley cars that run through the streets of that hustling little town, he usually begins by saying in a coaxing voice:

“‘Mr. Sheriff, is it true that you have killed forty-seven men?’

“That may appear as a joke to some people, but it is far from being one. Last year when I came to Washington and had been in town for half a day or so, I was somewhat surprised that no newspaper men came to interview me. You see, I have become rather used to the process.

“But in this case it seemed that personal interviews were not necessary, for when I read the papers the next morning I found various delightfully interesting and accurate accounts of the life of ‘The Sheriff of Deadwood,’ ‘The Conqueror of Deadwood Dick,’ ‘The Terror of South Dakota,’ ‘The Man With Sixteen Notches on His Gun Butt,’ and a lot of other things that make a man feel tired.

“The only way that I can figure it out is just that only two men I ever did send over the range — and they were worthless and deserved it — have been drawing compound interest all these years. At any rate, all that sort of thing is, to put it mildly, disagreeable. I don’t like it and my family and friends don’t like it.

“I am down here in Washington just now,” said Mr. Bullock in answer to a question, “on official business. There are some matters in connection with the forest reserve on which I wanted to consult the officials of the General Land Office.

“It is quite a change to be here in Washington, and I like it. When I am home, as Superintendent of the Black Hills Reserve I spend about half the time in the saddle, and of course it grows tiresome at times. You see, I have only fourteen men under me in the winter and between twenty-five and thirty in the summer, and it keeps us pretty busy patrolling a tract seventy miles long and forty wide, and containing about a million and a half acres of timber land.

“But our work is well repaid, for we have not had a forest fire of any size in the reservation since I became superintendent, and the timber is reproducing itself. Just as much timber is being cut as ever, but the careful supervision exercised over the tract and the cutting of timber under observation have resulted in reproduction, and if the same course is followed there will be just as much timber on the land fifty or one hundred years from now as there is as present.”

“I guess those were swift old days in Deadwood during the Black Hills excitement,” remarked the reporter reflectively.

“Oh, shucks!” said Mr. Bullock in disgust, “you’re just like all the rest. I thought I had you switched on to the forest reserve proposition, and I’ll bet you haven’t even been listening, but just waiting to spring that question.

“I don’t want to talk about those times, though I’ll admit they were strenuous; but I will say that just about as much fiction has been printed about one of the so-called famous characters of those times as there has about me. It is of a different kind, though, I trust.

“I mean Calamity Jane. Calamity Jane never was a scout and she never did any of the thousand and one wonderful things she’s been credited with doing.

“She started out once in her buckskin as a mule driver with an expedition that was going out after the Indians, but the commander discovered before very long that she was a woman and left her at Fort Laramie.

“There was a newspaper correspondent there who had started with the detachment, but got sick with mountain fever.

“Calamity Jane nursed him back to life, and he was so grateful that he gave her a reputation in fiction that she certainly never possessed in real life.

“And that’s about all of Deadwood — the old Deadwood — for today. Want to know anything more about the Black Hills Forest Reserve?”

The Sun (New York, New York) Apr 10, 1904

LIKENS CONVENTION TO FUNERAL DIRGE

Western Admirer of Roosevelt Deprecates Lack of Noise, Music and Enthusiasm.

BLAMES EASTERN DELEGATION

Seth Bullock, First Sheriff of Deadwood, Says if the President Were Present Things Would Be Run With a Whoop and a Bang.

REPUBLIC SPECIAL.
Chicago, June 21. — Seth Bullock of Deadwood, S.D. says:

“It’s too blame slow.”

Of Seth Bullock, President Roosevelt once said to the writer: “Have you seen Seth Bullock in town to-day? He is about as fine a type of man as this country produces.”

He was the first Sheriff of Deadwood, and is now Captain of the Black Hills Rangers. He can ride fast and shoot straight. He came here to see “his friend Theodore” nominated in a whirlwind of Black Hills excitement — a slap, a dash, a whoop and a bang. He is disappointed and does not hesitate to so express himself.

“Why, you New York fellows,” said he to-day, “are regular clams. We have got mosquitoes out in Deadwood that would create more enthusiasm than the entire New York delegation. Looks to me as if they were from the Jersey flats. No bands, no whooping and cheering and very little hand-clapping. Why, it’s as cold as Alaska, and I don’t like it.”

Captain Seth Bullock’s duty is to protect the forest reserve. So it happens that he is another of the Federal officeholders attending the convention. He is accustomed to seeing things done quickly and with enthusiasm.

“I must confess,” said Mr. Bullock, “that I am surprised at all this. If Mr. Roosevelt were only here himself you’d see things whooped up. We are for him out in the West good and hard. I’d like to see more noise about his nomination. We men out West are not gaited that way. Why, I saw hardly a smile on the New York delegation during the entire proceedings at the convention to-day, and when Mr. Root mentioned Mr. Roosevelt’s name at the end of his speech it was our fellows from the West who made the noise. And Mr. Roosevelt is a Republican, come from New York, and from Manhattan Island.”

“How many conventions have you attended?” was asked.

“My first was in 1880, right in this city, when Garfield was nominated. I was one of the original 306 Grant men, and I stuck to him to the finish. Grant was a sort of Roosevelt man, and we liked him out in the West for what he was and what he did. But when Garfield was finally nominated we whooped it up for the ticket just the same, because we were good Republicans.

“Why, there was more hollering in that convention in one minute than I have heard all the time since I’ve been in Chicago. That’s the way to nominate a man. Why, in those days the bands played all night. Now they don’t play in the daytime, or, if they do, it’s something like a dirge. And then I came to the convention here in 1888, which nominated ‘Ben’ Harrison. There was noise then, too, and, although General Harrison was not a man to inspire a great deal of hollering, yet we produced the goods. That’s why this convention seems so tame to me.”

“What are you Western Republicans going to do for Mr. Roosevelt in November?”

“Give him a corking big majority. Every State west of the Rockies will go for him strong, and I might say every Western State. But, all the same, I don’t like the way your New York crowd acts and I can’t understand it.”

And Mr. Bullock, Esq., wandered off to the cigar stand after more consolation.

The St. Louis Republic (St. Louis, Missouri) Jun 22, 1904

17 FEDERAL PRISONERS.

HEADED FROM SOUTH DAKOTA TO LEAVENWORTH.

IN CHARGE OF SETH BULLOCK

Horse Thieves, Bootleggers and a Counterfeiter Were Taken Through Here at Noon — Some of the Prisoners Were Bound in Chains.

It was a strange party of travelers that passed through Norfolk at noon bound from Deadwood, S.D., to Leavenworth, Kan., in a special car and chaperoned by a no less genial person than Seth Bullock, United States marshal for the district of South Dakota.

Seventeen federal prisoners, Indians, half breeds and criminal whites, formed one of the largest parties of convicts that have ever been transported through Norfolk. Federal court has been in session at Deadwood and the travelers through Norfolk represented the convictions ground out by the federal mill of justice.

There were no “bad men” in the bunch, just ordinary law smashers of the reservation variety. Here are the statistics of the party: seven horse thieves, seven boot leggers, two white sellers of whisky to the noble red man off the reservation, one counterfeiter.

Chains jingled from the limbs of a few of the prisoners but for the most part the South Dakota collection of criminals were simply under the watchful eyes of Marshal Bullock and his four guards.

Two nights and nearly two days is spent in the long trip across Nebraska to the federal prison at Leavenworth where federal convicts in this section of the northwest serve their time. And any one who has ever seen Marshal Bullock, a typical westerner of the best breed of the western prairie, won’t doubt for a minute but that the long line of criminals from the South Dakota west will file into the prison doors with none of the charming bunch missing.

E.M. Mathews of Omaha, chief deputy marshal of the Nebraska district, left Norfolk on the Deadwood train for Omaha and exchanged greetings with the South Dakota official.

Seth Bullock was with Secretary of War Taft when Taft went through Norfolk this summer.

The Norfolk Weekly News-Journal (Norfolk, Nebraska) Sep 20, 1907

TWO STATESMEN’S VIEWS.

Within the past week two distinguished South Dakota statesmen have passed through Norfolk and have stopped in the new northwest’s gateway long enough to give their views on this or that. One was United States Marshal Seth Bullock of Deadwood, the other was Governor Coe I. Crawford of Pierre. And it is interesting to note the diametrically opposite views of these two statesmen regarding a question which has been uppermost in the mind of the nation for some months past — the question as to President Roosevelt’s successor.

Seth Bullock was a rough rider with Roosevelt and is one of the warmest personal friends of the president to be found in the west. Governor Crawford is likewise a staunch friend of the president’s policies in government, though not the intimate personal friend that Bullock is to the chief executive. And because both are such ardent friends and admirers of the president, their precisely opposite opinions regarding the third term question for Roosevelt is the more interesting.

Governor Crawford in Norfolk the other day declared that he is absolutely and unqualifiedly for Roosevelt for a third term, and he said that he believed that South Dakota republicans would send a delegation to the next national convention instructed to insist upon the president’s acceptance of another nomination. “We have no second choice,” said the governor, because that would be qualifying our support of the president.”

But Seth Bullock takes a different view. Seth Bullock has just come back from Washington, where he talked with President Roosevelt as a matter of course. And when shown a dispatch quoting Senator Clapp of Minnesota as declaring that the president would be compelled to accept a third term nomination, Bullock said: “I’d like to see a photograph of anyone compelling Theodore Roosevelt to accept a nomination for the presidency of the United States. The American people know that the president can’t be driven to do anything. United States senators ought to know it and if they don’t it is about time they were finding it out.”

Seth Bullock and Governor Crawford both know that the president on the night of election, November 8, 11904, in the face of an overwhelming Roosevelt landslide, declared his faith in “the wise custom which limits the president to two terms” and continued: “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.” Apparently Seth Bullock, the personal rough-rider friend who knows Roosevelt, the man, has more faith in the latter’s integrity and sincerity than has Governor Crawford for where the one would take the president at his word and be willing to allow him to live up to the letter of his announcement, the other apparently so far doubts the absolute determination of the president to such an extent that he will seek, and with some hope of success, to persuade the president to reverse himself and take another nomination in the face of his declaration.

The general public naturally questions which of these South Dakota opinions is right when he says that the president can’t be driven to accept, or whether Crawford is right when he pins his faith to the hope that his delegation, and others like it, may influence the president to change his mind. And it might be remembered in this connection that first of all Bullock is a personal friend of the president, and is in better position to know the man’s determination and absolute integrity of purpose than the governor, who knows the president only at long range. It must also be borne in mind that Bullock, secure in his federal appointment so long as his friend Roosevelt remains at the helm, and maybe longer, is in a position to say just exactly what he thinks without regard to its effect upon the voters, while Governor Crawford must consider to a large degree, in view of his candidacy for Senator Kittredge’s toga, what effect his public expressions will have upon the public in South Dakota. And a dispatch recently sent out from Pierre goes so far as to suggest that, in case Roosevelt should finally reverse his decision and accept another nomination, the Crawford-Gamble faction in South Dakota, who have started the third term movement in that state, would inherit an enviable political prestige as creators of the boom.

In other words, it may be his sincere wish that the president should be forced to abandon his original announcement and accept another nomination in spite of it.

Governor Crawford’s views in the matter can not for a moment be separated from his own ambition to acquire sufficient popularity to elect him senator; while on the other hand, Seth Bullock, the personal friend of the president and under more obligations to the latter than any other man in South Dakota, and with no candidacy of his own to further, has such implicit faith in the president’s sincerity and integrity as to neither doubt his word for a moment nor to desire to enlist in any movement whose purpose is to compel the president to go back on that word.

Seth Bullock is a true blue republican and his loyalty is with the same party with which Governor Crawford is associated. But where the one would seek to force the president to retract his repeated announcement, the other would prefer that the integrity of the president in that announcement, because integrity in one matter involves integrity in all matters and because the party’s integrity is linked with the integrity of its official representatives, should be allowed to stand unshaken.

The Norfolk Weekly News-Journal (Norfolk, Nebraska) Sep 27, 1907

TAFT RETAINS SETH BULLOCK

ONLY REQUEST ROOSEVELT MADE IS KEPT.

South Dakota Cattle Puncher to Get United States Marshalship Without Wire-Pulling.

HIS FRIEND OF OTHER DAYS.

Washington, Dec. 29. — Theodore Roosevelt’s name is a good one to conjure with at the white house. This was shown when the announcement was made that Capt. Seth Bullock, who hails from out Deadwood way, will be reappointed United States marshal for the district of South Dakota. In territorial days Mr. Roosevelt, then a young man, punched cattle in Dakota, and while there he ran up with Seth Bullock, who was something of a rover at that time. A warm friendship sprang up between the two men and it still continues.

When Mr. Roosevelt was president, Seth Bullock was on a number of occasions a guest at the white house, and when the distinguished New Yorker was inaugurated in 1905 the Deadwood man brought a cowboy regiment to Washington that was easily the headline attraction of the occasion. This particular regiment cut up high jinks in the inauguration parade, and in the white house lot on the night of March 4, 1905, it marched into the white house ground and Mr. Roosevelt delivered a speech to the cowpunchers that tickled them nearly today. Right in front of the executive mansion these cowpunchers from the plains performed a number of stunts in lariat throwing and dare-devil riding that astonished the multitude and came near making Mr. Roosevelt forget that the inaugural ball was about to begin and awaited his presence.

Soon after Seth Bullock, who had up to that time been the head ranger of the Black Hills forest reserve in South Dakota, was named United States marshal. It may be stated upon good authority that before he left Washington Mr. Roosevelt did not make many requests of the man who was about to succeed him. In fact, it is known that he took the position that it would be indelicate for him to make suggestions as to the filling of public office in the new administration. He made an exception, however, in the case of Bullock. Mr. Roosevelt told his successor that if he could see his way clear to do so it would please him if Bullock was reappointed United States marshal. Accordingly, the nomination of Mr. Bullock for another term will be sent to the senate next week.

The Paducah Evening Sun (Puducah, Kentucky) Dec 29, 1909

Presidential Nominations.

(Herald Special.)

Washington, D.C., Jan. 17. — Among the presidential nominations today Seth Bullock was named for United States marshal of South Dakota, and Frederick W. Collins for the Southern district of Mississippi.

Palestine Daily Herald (Palestine, Texas) Jan 17, 1910

Image from The Black Hills Believables by John Hafnor

Highest Dakota Peak To Be Mt. Roosevelt

“Round Top,” One of Blacks Hills, Will Be Rechristened on Fourth of July

The highest peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota is to be rechristened Mount Theodore Roosevelt on July 4. The mountain, heretofore variously known as Sheep Mountain and Round Top, rises about three miles from Deadwood and from its summit can be seen the country where Roosevelt, the young ranchman, sought and found that bodily vigor which sustained the strenuous life of years to come.

Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Colonel William Boyce Thompson, president of the Roosevelt Memorial Association, and a large party will go from here to attend the ceremony. The Governor of South Dakota will preside and Major General Leonard Wood will be one of the speakers. State officials of Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana have promised to attend.

Captain Seth Bullock heads a committee of the late ex-President’s early associates in the Northwest in charge of the affair. They are having erected at the top of the mountain a memorial cairn of boulders of native granite. This will be dedicated on Independence Day.

Next Sunday a number of Colonel Roosevelt’s old friends in North Dakota will hold a meeting at the Custer Trail Ranch, Medora, and organize a committee of the Roosevelt Memorial Association. The Custer Trail Ranch formed part of the Roosevelt Ranch on the Little Missouri. Sylvane Ferris and William J. Merrifield, Roosevelt’s ranch partners, and Joe Ferris, who took him on his first Buffalo hunt, have arranged a big round-up and barbecue picnic to mark the occasion.

New York Tribune (New York, New York) Jun 13, 1919

Image from Find-A-Grave - Laura Harvey

Find-A-Grave Link for Seth Bullock.

Seth Bullock, Friend of Roosevelt, Dead

DEADWOOD, S.D., Sept. 23. — Seth Bullock, lifelong friend of the late Theodore Roosevelt, died at his home here this morning after an illness of several weeks. He was a pioneer of the Black Hills and was sixty-two years old.

Seth Bullock was born in Sandwich, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. He went West just as soon as he was able to ride a horse. In South Dakota, he was miner, prospector, peace officer and cattleman.

When he became Sheriff of Deadwood he proceeded to clean up the town. One night, it is related of him, he himself arrested thirty-seven “bad men” by beating each one into insensibility with the butt of his gun. Three of the men escaped and hid in an old mine not far from Deadwood. Bullock went to the mine and smoked them out.

New York Tribune (New York, New York) Sep 24, 1919

Image from Find-A-Grave - by afraydknot

SETH BULLOCK HAD PICTURESQUE CAREER

Sheriff of Deadwood, Who Died Yesterday, Was Friend of Roosevelt

Deadwood, S.D., Sept. 24. — Seth Bullock, who died here yesterday at the age of sixty-two years, had numerous claims to celebrity before his friendship for Theodore Roosevelt brought him into the limelight.

As the first sheriff of Deadwood when this community was in its formative stage and had just as much respect for laws — whether man-made or heaven-inspired — as Seth had for the reputation of the bad men who were making Deadwood no place for a prohibitionist, the young Canadian (he was born in Sandwich, Canada, just across from Detroit) proved his mettle.

Straight, as slender and as strong as a Saskatchewan spruce and with the speed of a diamondback rattler, he looked like what he was. He was the easterner’s cherished vision of what the first sheriff of Deadwood, S.D., ought to be and look like. What the movie hero of a Wild West drama tries to portray Seth Bullock was and did.

His clean-up of Deadwood was swift and effective. He dominated the place by becoming just a little tougher than any citizen who was catalogued as tough before his election. Those yearning for a fight had but to apply to Seth and they got complete satisfaction.

It is said of him that Seth Bullock arrested thirty-seven bad men the night following his election as sheriff, using such measures as beating recalcitrants into submission with the butt of his gun and carefully shooting others in those sections of their anatomy that housed no vital organs.

By these direct methods Deadwood was transformed into as clean a town as the West of those days boasted, and he had a thoroughly enjoyable time doing it.

When Theodore Roosevelt set up his ranch on the Little Missouri river in 1885 a friendship was established between the two men that was genuine and permanent. At Roosevelt’s inauguration Bullock took a band of cowpunchers to Washington and with them participated in the inaugural parade. Roosevelt made Bullock United States marshal for South Dakota and throughout his career showed his high regard for the friend of his cowboy days. He went to London in 1910, arrayed in a hard-boiled shirt and eastern shoes, but he clung to his wide-brimmed hat so loudly and fiercely that he escaped the bowler destined for his sunburned brow.

In London Captain Bullock met Colonel Roosevelt again. The Colonel had just returned from his African exploration, and he and the sheriff of Deadwood did London and traveled Scotland together.

Upon his return Seth Bullock had things to say about Europe.

“There were plenty of kings in the atmosphere in London,” said Seth. “You’d had no trouble filling a royal flush at any time, while four kings would have been easier.”

Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Sep 24, 1919

*****

Books (Google books links)  of Interest:

Title: Grigsby’s Cowboys
Author: Otto l Sues
Published: 1899
Biography:Seth Bullock

Title: The happy Hunting-Grounds
Author: Kermit Roosevelt
Publisher: C. Scribner’s sons, 1921
Includes pictures of Seth Bullock

Title: Black Hills Believables: Strange-but-ture Tales of the Old West
Author: John Hafnor
Edition: 2 (Preview only)
Publisher: John Hafnor, 1984

Title: The Rough Riders: An autobiography
Volume: 153 of Library of America
Authors: Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Auchincloss
Editor: Louis Auchincloss
Edition: illustrated (picture of Seth)
Publisher: Library of America, 2004

Title    Outlaw tales: legends, myths, and folklore from America’s middle border
Authors    Richard Young, Judy Dockrey Young
Editors    Richard Young, Judy Dockrey Young
Publisher    august house, 1992
Seth Bullock and the miners (preview only)

Title: The Reader, Volume 6
Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1905
Picture of Seth

Title: William Howard Taft, American
Author: Robert Lee Dunn
Publisher: The Chapple publishing company, ltd., 1908
Picture of Taft and Seth Bullock

Robert V. Carr: The Cowboy Poet

From his book, "Black Hills Ballads"

Robert V. Carr (aka Bob Carr) was the official poet of Seth Bullock’s Cowboy Brigade. I got an email from Carl Steiger the other day, which prompted me to see what all I could find on Mr. Carr. Based on census records, as well as a mention by Cabot Yerxa in one of his articles, Robert Carr appears to have been born in Illinois, and not South Dakota, as mentioned in some sources.

STORIES PICKED UP.

Th’ trees are whisperin’ a tale,
Of shade an’ lazy dreams;
Of loiterin’ and lingerin’,
Beside th’ singin’ streams —
‘Tis loafin’ time.

Th’ woods are makin’ love to you,
They’re callin’ you to jest
Come out from work an’ idle there,
Upon th’ lap of rest —
‘Tis loafin’ time.

— Robert V. Carr.

Des Moines Daily Leader (Des Moines, Iowa) May 17, 1902

SIMPLY TO LIVE.

(By Robert V. Carr in The Jaw Bone.)

To simply live, and drink of Sorrow’s cup
To know of Happiness, the blessings of Content;
To love, to hate, to rest, to strive and toil,
And know that all is for a purpose sent.
To simply live and gather by the way
Impressions which e’er mould and make the character of man.

Tri-City Star (Davenport, Iowa) Oct 18, 1904

Cowboy Lyrics.

“Cowboy Lyrics,” by Robert V. Carr, is a neat little volume of poems published by the W.B. Conkey company, Chicago.

If one is surfeited with the conventionalities of city and society, if one would have the open and unbroken prairie, if one would see the “bronco buster” in real leather breeches, if one would know the appetite before the call for dinner of the cow puncher, if one would see the roundup as it really is, he should get these “Cowboy Lyrics.” There are human tastes and human passions in the book, and they are related with much warmth and expression by the uncultured poet of the “Old Pactola Trail.” The spirit of the author is in “The Old Cowman.”

I’m not so young as I uster be,
I’m somewhat gray and wrinkley,
An’ I wear my hat — my old white hat —
On the back o’ my neck on a roll o’ fat
An’ I don’t ride much like I uster, tho’,
I’m not so dog-goned gumbo slow
When it comes to bronks, but yet I’ll say,
A buggy fer mine ‘most any day.

But my heart is young, oh, my heart is young,
An’ she sings the songs like she allers sung;
Dealin’ fair and dealin’ square,
An’ findin’ friendship everywhere;
An’ never a fear does she let slide,
Fer the day when I cross the Great Divide.

Old pards are gone — no use to care,
They’ve rode the trail to Overthere;
But I’ll see ’em again, I should shout!
To jes’ shake hands fer all get out!
I’ve no regrets an’ that’s no lie,
A white man’s never afeer’d to die;
Old age an’ death has got to be,
An’ by the bods, they don’t scare me!

Milford Mail (Milford, Iowa) Jun 25, 1908

ROBERT CARR, COWBOY POET, PAYS A VISIT TO BUTTE

Robert V. Carr of South Dakota has been visiting in Butte the past few days. Mr. Carr has gained fame as the author of a little volume of verse styled “Cowboy Lyrics.” The volume is in four divisions, “Ranch and Range,” “On the Trail of Love,” “Where the Chinook Blows” and “The Road to Yesterday.” In the verses are found faithful pictures of cowboy life, as it is, life on the range and through the great West. Mr. Carr is possessed of a genial humor, a practical philosophy and kindliness of heart which find voice in these poems and are bound to make them most popular.

The Anaconda Standard ( Anaconda, Montana) Oct 25, 1909

“How.”

I’d like to meet you anywhere,
Along the sunset trail
An’ roll with you a cigarette,
An hear a range-land tale.
I’d like to hear you drawlin’ speak
That word that rhymes with cow,
An’ tastes o’ sage an’ alkall —
That little old word “How.”

I’d like to sight you from a raise
Upon the Big Divide
I bet I’d know you from the way —
The reckless way you ride.
I bet I’d yell — Aw, blame the luck!
I’d give the world jes now,
To hear the pound o’ hoofbeats an’
that little old word “How.”

Fer charmed, I’m sure, an soft handshake
Of high society,
Somehow, don’t never git its rope
Upon the heart o’ me.
I want to beat you on the bark,
In joyous, friendly row,
An’ call you names — I want to hear
Taht little old word “How.”

— Robert V. Carr in the Popular Magazine.

Syracuse Herald (Syracuse, New York) Feb 25, 1911

From Literature of South Dakota - by Oscar William Coursey

NEW BOOKS

Robert V. Carr, the author of “Cowboy Lyrics,” of which a complete and revised edition will be issued by Small, Maynard & Co., of Boston, in October, did not write his lyrics of the western cattle range from the window of a Pullman, or in ease and comfort.

Mr. Carr, in a recent interview, tells of his first attempts to lariat the wild and untamed muse.

Said he, “You must not think that the way of the writer of western verse is strewn with posies. I believe I was about 14 years old when, in addition to an overpowering ambition to be a cowboy, I began to cherish fond hopes of becoming a writer. Possessing a couple of Indian ponies, I drifted from ranch to ranch, from cow outfit to cow outfit, and when I was not annoying the cooks, I was scribbling poetry. Some of those verses I sent to a country editor. He returned them with a note to the effect that they were not worth space. Years later that editor transgressed the law and was sent to jail. That served as an awful warning to me, and later, when I became a country newspaper editor, I always published the poetry sent in.

“Still, in the camp and on the trail in that trampled country north of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I wrote of the things I saw. Sometimes they were printed, but more frequently rejected.

“I left the western country for a bitter experience in teh army in the Philippines and returned to the Black Hills a physical wreck, but still writing. I then sought the cities, but managing editors had little space for western poetry and I drifted on. In that time I came in contact with the down-and-outs, the hungry men, the broken men. I need no books to tell me of despair. In many a dark hole in the city I longed for the clean prairies and a sniff of sage. But still I scribbled. And in time I returned west.

“Years later, when my old cowboy friends had coiled their ropes forever, a magazine editor wrote me, asking for some cowboy lyrics. I was the most surprised mortal in the United States. The editor got his lyrics and I received a check. I hated to cash that check. Naturally, one does not desire to part with something that has cost him 15 years of fighting.

“Yes, the way of the poet, like that of the transgressor, is hard; but yet, when I get a friendly letter from one of the boys in the west, or some chap whose authorship is confined to chalkmarks on water tanks, I do not regret the efforts. I am thankful that I was made to suffer, for it is only by suffering that we learn anything worth while.”

The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah) Jan 4, 1913

TONOPAH.

Robert V. Carr, in The Popular

Slung his money like he knowed
He had staked the mother lode
Wine and song and all the rest —
Everything the very best
Said he wanted to get rid
Of his excess dust — he did!
Wildest splendor ever saw
Struck it rich, had Tonopah

Friend had he — fair-weather kind,
But he did not seem to mind
Said that he proposed to live
While he had a chance, and give
Every kind of sin a test,
So he’d know which was the best
Swiftest sport I ever saw,
That prospector, Tonopah

Throwed his coin across the bars,
Smoked them dollar-each cigars,
Buys of diamonds ’bout a peck,
This and that girl to bedeck
“Sparkler for a smile,” says he,
“Nothin’ cheap now goes with me.”
And the beat I never saw
Of that there young Tonopah

Then one day the cuss went broke,
Put his watch and chain in soak,
Friends began to drift away
And to dodge the sad-faced jay
See that poor bum over there
Beggin’ for two bits? I swear!
That’s the young sport I once saw
Down and out — old Tonopah!

The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) Jan 26, 1913

Both Cabot Yerxa and Bob Carr homesteaded here in 1913. Five months of each year was spent in other localities, in pursuit of dollars to keep them going through the seven months they spent on their homesteads. Bob Carr finds a position as writer for Keystone Comedies under Mack Sennett, but is told most writers only last a week. All writers are in one large room and from their various yarns Sennett selects what he considers the best to make a picture. Mr. Yerxa continues:

Shortly after Bob Carr was installed, Mac Sennett came into the room, instructing the writers they must use what was on hand in the Studio to form their stories.

There are now on the pay roll one cross-eyed man, a jig dancer, one fat woman, an Irish comedian, one small elephant, two negroes, and six bathing beauty girls. Their bathing suits are all new and we don’t want them to get wet.

Now you fellows go home and come back here in the morning, each with his own story. You must use these characters, they are all paid for by the month. We can not afford to hire extra actors, just for one picture. Go out on the lot and look over the sets available for backgrounds here in the studio. Search in the costume room, we have comedy police uniforms and other things of use perhaps. You picture story can take people to the beaches and places near Hollywood. But no long trips or over night stops, they cost too much. Income is not all we wish it was, because the public seems hard to pull away from old fashioned theatres.”

Bob stayed up nearly all night working on his story construction. The waste basket was full of discarded copy, but he felt satisfied with his plot and action, as he entered the conference room next morning.

Mac Sennett walked in early and ceremoniously laid down some typed pages and announced that he, himself, had written a story and proceeded to read it forthwith. Then he asked each man in turn what he thought of it. The assembled men, all complimented the story very highly, because they hoped to stay on the payroll over Saturday night. Sennett was not above praise and he beamed under the barage of honeed words. Turning to Bob, the last man, he questioned, “And you, Carr, what do you think of my story?” Bob needed to be on the payroll very badly, but shrewdly felt that just to echo praise would get him nowhere.

He decided to be honest and replies quietly, “I think the story is rotton poor, and not worth building onto.” There was a hushed silence in the room!

(Continued next week)

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Oct 18, 1951

Mr. Yerxa continues:

The other writers knew that Bob was a goner Saturday night, unless Sennett fired him on the spot. They waited.

But Mac Sennett was no rich man’s son sitting in the easy chair of authority, prepared for him by some doting father. He had come up the long hard road, lifted by his own bootstraps. Not too long ago he had been carrying a spear in a crowd of extras hired for the night on a New York stage. His present position of success and rising prominence in a new industry had been won by showing foresight, originality, and much determination. Many things far more complicated than a story lay on his desk for solution. Therefore the writing of a script was not too important. Although take aback by the blunt criticism, he was inwardly pleased by the new man’s courage of conviction. So in an even voice, he asked Bob what was wrong with it, and Bob picked the story apart. Then Sennett questioned, “All right, Carr, now read your own story.” Bob did.

Sennett approved, and ordered it to be used for the first draft of the new senario.

Bob stayed on the payroll over the first Saturday night, and indeed was kept on the story writing staff until the time came for him to return to the desert….

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Oct 25, 1951

The most picturesque and attract[ive] cabin on the desert in homesteading days was that of Bob Carr. This was “B.A.”, before autos. There is something sacreligious about riding over the desert or up to a cabin in an automobile. The Desert is so quiet and clean, and wild life so retiring amidst the scant vegetation, that a mere man made machine roaring about is sadly out of place.

The Carr cabin was on a sandy shelf thirty feet above the desert floor, with a clear view to the south and of San Jacinto Mountain. On the west was a thick high bunch of mesquite which gave ample shade and furnished complete protection from the west wind.

It was built of up and down boards with cracks covered by batt strips. All knot holes covered carefully with tin can covers. The one living room was 10 x 14 feet. Cast iron stove at the east end and small sleeping porch at the west end. The only furniture was a plain pine unpainted table, with Bob’s typewriter, the only dictionary in the desert, and a few books of synonims. Three plain wooden chairs and a couple of boxes for extra seats and a pile of mesquite wood for fuel completed the cabin requirements.

Yet with this meager array, his quiet wife, Stella, was able by her ingenuity and feminine view point to make the cabin extrememly attractive. Little plants in dishes and cans, home made curtains at the windows, spotless dishes, magazine pictures, picked with care, fused with Congress. He made pinned here and there, and curtains and stiched covering shelves made the room very cheerful.

(Continued next week)

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Nov 1, 1951

Mr. Yerxa continues:

Stella was a very excellent cook and made wonderful bread. Whenever Bob was out at night she always had a lighted lamp set right against the window glass, and we could see this for many miles, as we trudged cabinward from the railroad post office through desert sand in darkness. Stella Carr was a cheerful companion to Bob and pioneered all through the homesteading days, and at his death, took up her home in Sierra Madre, California, where she now lives.

On that pine table, Bob wrote many a magazine story, novelette, and western poetry, which has amused and interested thousands of people all over the United States. He had a flare for using characters in western settings and stories to make readers laugh. Others were war stories from his experiences in the Spanish American war, or straight western style, cowboys, miner, and Indians.

Bob Carr was a delightful personality and a great comrade. We had wonderful days on the desert together. Just we two walking about, examining all the new things of the desert about us, and enjoying endless conversations, about philosophy, religion, history, poetry, books, Indians, explorers, and the strange complication that civilization has brought into human life. And always with us was that intelligent burro “Merry Xmas.”

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Nov 8, 1951

Bob Carr always viewed any situation from the dramatic angle because he was a born story teller. One day after the wood boxes were heaped high, and all the water pails full to the top in both cabins, he and I got to discussing what two men could do with their bare hands if lost in the desert without food or equipment. Or two Indians running away from marauding tribes. So we approached the problem this way. We hunted round for clay, carried some to Two Bunch water hole, formed a shallow wide dish, and hastily burned it. Although badly cracked it served our purpose to bring more clay to our pottery work spot.

We had used matches to start our fire as twirling a stick to get a flame we considered unnecessary time loss.

Having now abundant clay and water, we fashioned a crude olla to hold a gallon of water, and a rather deep dish with thick walls to cook with. Also we formed two small bowls to eat out of, and made two clumsy spoons. We placed these articles to dry slowly, and later in the day fired them in hot ashes. They held water. With carefully selected stones of the proper size we set out on the prowl for food. We succeeded in obtaining three small birds, and after a time one small cotton tail rabbit fell to our barage of stones. We could not in fairness use a knife, so we used sharp pointed sticks to aide in skinning and cleaning our game.

After searching we found a rock with an edge sharp enough to sever the heads and feet, and to cut up the birds and rabbit into small pieces. We filled the deep dish with water, threw in the pieces of meat and started them to cook over a fire. Some mesquite beans were gathered, cut up and added to the stew. Several sage leaves were added to give flavor. After considerable time the food was ready and served in the individual bowls and we had our clay spoons to use. Thus refreshed, we gathered branches, and palm leaves to build an Indian style “wick-i-up” and were well launched in the business of house-keeping.

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Mar 6, 1952

Cabot Yerxa

The Cabot Yerxa image can be found on Find-A-Grave,  (LINK) along with a biographical sketch, posted by Jane Pojawa.

Cabot Yerxa, homesteading here in 1913…. Mr Yerxa continues:…

Bob Carr and his wife homesteaded on land joining mine in 1913. They kept a dozen chickens, which were well locked up at night. But at one period a chicken was missing every few days during daylight hours. Large animal tracks were noted, a few feathers scattered about and some drops of blood in the sand. That was all.

Bob cleaned his rifle and kept it near the door. On one bright sunny morning, he and I were sitting in the shade of his cabin speculating as to whether it was a coyote or linx responsible for missing chickens. Just then we heard a chicken squawk near the edge of mesquite brush, and looked in time to see a big spotted linx retreating with a full grown chicken in its mouth. Bob grabbed the rifle and we took up the trail. In a few moments we saw the linx with its prey and it saw us too. Whereupon the linx promptly dropped the chicken and advanced slowly towards us, menacingly. Stopping now and then with teeth bared and snarling, its glinting eyes steadily in our direction. We three were very close together now, and just for an instant the linx crouched low and steadied itself for a spring upon us. But Bob was cool and had been holding a line on the animal with his rifle. His shot went true to the mark and the linx never completed the spring, but fell within a half dozen feet of us, screeching and clawing the small brush and sand. Had we been unarmed we would have been in for a very serious encounter, indeed. Such a large animal could kill a man, or at least make extremely serious injuries.

(Continued next week)

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Mar 19, 1953

Cabot Yerxa continues his report of animals and men of the desert back in the early teens of our century….

The Bob Carr single pine board cabin, with a one slope roof, was on a sandy shelf above the flat desert and half hidden in thick undergrowth of mesquite and grease wood. Bob and I, had cleared several pockets out of the sandy depression amid the sand hills near his cabin. These pockets were circular open spaces in which a camp fire was safe and out of any adverse wind condition which might be affecting the open desert.

To these secluded spots we often went for talks and long discussions of outside news which had trickled in to us by mail. Sometimes to wonder at the way nature had provided plants, birds and animals, and other desert things with qualities which made their survival possible in such a land as this. For variation we talked about books, famous people, historical events, and pages out of history which have changed the course of the world. Sometimes Bob would recount again parts of his past life which had been very eventful and on some days we went over the trials and experiences which had befallen me, which were many and varied. Anyway, we spent very interesting hours crouched by small campfires buried out in the desert without benefit of radio or television which people find so necessary today. We did not even have a newspaper. There we were, just two men by a fire, in the middle of many thousand acres of land, with no roads, and no strangers prowling about. After I found the black burro called “Merry Xmas,” it would follow us and lay down by the fire, and I am not at all sure that “Merry Xmas” didn’t understand much that was said. Because its intelligence was so much greater than any ordinary burro.

(Continued next week)

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Mar 26, 1953

Bob Carr and Cabot Yerxa, both writers, enjoyed each other’s company and the desert before it became inhabited. Mr. Yerxa continues.

In a large mesquite tree of venerable age lived a family of seven great spotted white owls …standing fully twenty inches high and the wing spread of these beautiful birds of the night was astonishing. During the darkened hours they would often fly slowly, and close overhead with a ghostly swish of wings.

Sometimes they would come quietly to rest on a convenient limb and call a very mournful “Who, who.” This was all very eerie in these primitive surroundings.

To our campfire hideouts Bob and I took the occasional city visitors who chanced to come to see the desert and us. We would start out at night, in the dark from Carr’s cabin, walking single file, with the city man in line. We walked in circles, and loops, thru thick brush, sometimes on hands and knees under low lying mesquite branches. Then over sand hills, through rocky washes, and patches of cactus, until the weary visitor was nearly exhausted and at last drop into one of our secluded camp spots. Here a small fire was built and stories told of wild cats, mountain lions, linx, rattlesnakes, etc. The visitor thot he was miles away from the Carr cabin, and with the background of night and location of the camp fire spot all the stories seemed very real. But in fact we were never more than a quarter mile from the cabin. Often coyotes would yap, desert rats scampered about in the brush and sometimes the firelight glinted back from animal eyes peering out at us from the darkness. So therefore, when the large white owls sailed overhead slowly with a very audible swish of wings, and called “Who, who” in the blackness of the night, — all visitors were ready to return to the cheerful lamp lighted cabin. We walked them the same long way on the return journey, up hill and down and round about, so they never suspected that it was all a game which Bob and I enjoyed very much. The stories these men told in Hollywood about visits to Carr’s desert cabin were very amusing.

Balzac, the French novelist, often wrote a whole book just to set forth the character of one person, so Bob and I got the idea of writing very short character sketches for newspaper readers. Bob wrote most of these, but I helped along. They were published in Los Angeles papers, one every day.

(Continued next week)

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Apr 2, 1953

Bob Carr and Cabot Yerxa worked and played together on the primitive desert years ago. Mr. Yerxa continues:

Bob Carr had been a cowboy, miner, newspaper reporter, soldier, and columnist. He was the pioneer type man, but primarily he was a writer. We had plans all made to start a desert magazine here in this location when he passed away in Sierra Madre, California. It was too much of a problem for me to undertake alone, therefore the project never got underway. But Randal Henderson started the “Desert Magazine” so the field is now well covered.

Bob and I each wrote about one hundred of these characters cameos:…

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Apr 9, 1953

Here are some examples of the character cameos mentioned by Cabot Yerxa which also ran in the Atlanta Constitution, the Anaconda Standard and the Indianapolis Star (Above heading and cropped cameos are from the Indianapolis Star) :

*****

*****

*****

*****

Cabot Yerxa builds a house back of Miracle Hill in 1925. He tells of animals interested in his progress….

Into the new ranch house went not only my own small buildings, but the Bob Carr cabin from its place in the mesquite hills, which I purchased and took down board by board and hauled home….

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Apr 1, 1954

Cabot continues his description of the house he built back of Miracle Hill, recently the home of General Alexander and 27 Wolf Hounds. A fire destroyed the house and the General moved into a tin store house in back which was destroyed a few weeks ago.

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel (Desert Hot Springs, California) Apr 8, 1954

Carr gravestone also posted on Find-A-Grave (LINK) by Jane Pojawa.

NOTE: Notice the gravestone has Mr. Carr’s death as being in 1930, but the obituaries are from 1931.

ROBERT W. [V.] CARR, COWBOY POET DIES SUNDAY

Sierra Madre, Calif., Jan. 12 — Robert V. Carr, 43, known as “the cowboy poet of the Black Hills” died here yesterday. He had been living in the desert near Palm Springs while in search of health.

Carr for many years was a writer for the Whitewood, S.D. Plain Dealer, where he first began to celebrate the bad lands of that state in poetry. He later worked on newspapers in Chicago, Denver, Spokane and Seattle and edited a livestock journal at Sioux City, Ia. He came here in 1912.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jan 12, 1931

WESTERN AUTHOR CALLED BY DEATH

SIERRA MADRE, Jan. 13. — Death closed a life of adventure late Friday night when Robert Carr, 52, well known Sierra Madre author, died at his Canyon Park home following an extended illness. Carr, who lived in Deadwood, S.D., during pioneer days and edited a weekly paper there, came to Southern California 12 years ago. His adventurous life furnished material for his short stories which have appeared in many magazines. He as a veteran of the Spanish-American war. He is survived by his widow.

Arcadia Tribune (Arcadia, California) Jan 13, 1931

CARR — Estella R. Carr of Sierra Madre, passed away March 31, 1973. A native of Illinois, she had been a resident of Sierra Madre since 1912. She was a widow of the late Robert V. Carr, well writer and syndicated columnist. She is survived by a niece, Mrs. Genevieve C. Pedlar of North Hollywood; and other nieces in the East. Funeral Services, 11: a.m. today, at graveside, Sierra Madre Cemetery, Ripple Mortuary, Sierra Madre, directors.

Star News (Pasadena, California) Apr 3, 1973

*****

You can read Robert V. Carr’s poetry books online:

Title: Cowboy Lyrics
Author: Robert Van Carr
Publisher: Small, Maynard & company, 1912

Google book LINK

*****

Title: Black Hills Ballads
Western Americana, Frontier History of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1550-1900
Author: Robert Van Carr
Publisher: The Reed Publishing Company, 1902

Google book LINK

Dust Off the Old Waffle Iron

Today is National Waffle Iron Day!

GRIDDLE-CAKES, WAFFLES, ETC.

If you have not used your griddle or waffle-iron for some time; wash it off hard with hot soap and water; wipe and rub well with dry salt. Heat it and grease with a bit of fat salt pork on a fork.

It is a mistake, besides being slovenly and wasteful, to put on more grease than is absolutely necessary to prevent the cake from sticking.

A piece of pork an inch square should last for several days. Put on a great spoonful of butter for each cake, and before filling the griddle, test it with a single cake, to be sure that all is right with it as well as the batter.

The same rules apply to waffles. Always lay hot cakes and waffles upon a hot plate as soon as baked.

Indiana Progress (Indiana, Pennsylvania) Feb 17, 1874

RAISED FLOUR WAFFLES.

Stir into a quart of flour sufficient lukewarm milk to make a thick batter. The milk should be stirred in gradually, so as to have it free from lumps. Put in a table-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-cup of yeast.

When risen, fill your waffle irons with the batter, bake them on a bed of coals.

When they have been on the fire between two and three minutes, turn the waffle irons — when brown on both sides, they are sufficiently baked.

The waffle irons should be well greased with lard, and very hot, before one is put in.

The waffles should be buttered as soon as cooked. Serve them up with powdered white sugar and cinnamon.

Title: The Ladies’ National Magazine, Volumes 7-8
Publisher: C. J. Peterson, 1845
(Google book LINK Pg 178)

WAFFLES.

We are indebted to the Germans for this cake, which, if this receipt is exactly followed, will be found excellent. Warm a quart of milk, and cut up in it a quarter of a pound of the best fresh butter, and stir it about to soften in the warm milk. Beat eight eggs till very thick and smooth, and stir them gradually into the milk and butter, in turn with half a pound of sifted flour. Then add two table-spoonfuls of strong fresh brewer’s or baker’s yeast. Cover the pan with a clean thick cloth, and set it in a warm place to rise.

When the batter has risen nearly to the top, and is covered with bubbles, it is time to bake; first stirring in a wine-glass of rose-water. Having heated your waffle iron in a good fire, grease it inside with the fresh butter used for the waffle mixture, or with fresh lard; fill it, and shut the iron closely. Turn it on the fire, that both sides of the cake may be equally well done. Each side will require about three minutes baking. Take them out of the iron by slipping a knife underneath. Then grease and prepare the iron for another waffle. Butter them, and send them to the tea-table “hot and hot;” and, to eat with this, a bowl or glass dish of sugar flavored with powdered cinnamon.

In buying waffle irons choose them very deep, so as to make a good impression when baked — if shallow, the waffle will look thin and poor. Those that bake one waffle at a time are the handsomest and most manageable.

Title: Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book
Author: Eliza Leslie
Publisher: T. B. Peterson, 1857
(Google book LINK, pgs. 441-442)

RICE WAFFLES.

Two cupfuls flour, one-half teaspoonful salt, one teaspoonful baking powder, one egg beaten separately, one tablespoonful butter, one cupful milk, one cupful cold boiled rice, one-half cup of the water in which the rice was boiled. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl; make a hole in the center, into which put the rice and the rice water. Add the well beaten yolk of the egg, the milk and melted butter. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Lastly, fold in the white of the egg beaten to a still froth.

Fry in a well greased waffle iron.

Fort Wayne News (Fort Wayne, Indiana) Mar 23, 1899

To make rice waffles take a teacup and a half of rice that has been well boiled, and warm in a pint of rich milk, stirring it till smooth and mixed. Then removed it from the fire, and stir in a pint of cold milk and a teaspoonful of salt. Beat four eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture, in turn, with sufficient rice flour to make a thick batter.

Bake in a waffle-iron.

Send them to the table hot, butter them, and eat them with powdered sugar and cinnamon, prepared in a small bowl for the purpose.

Indiana Progress (Indiana, Pennsylvania) Mar 27, 1873

How to Make Good Waffles.

Boil and mash about a pint of sweet potatoes. Sift one good teaspoonful of soda with three cups of flour. Beat two eggs light. Add one teaspoonful salt and sour milk enough to make a thin batter. Have the waffle-iron as hot as possible without burning the waffles.

Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) Mar 24, 1890

GERMAN WAFFLES.

1 quart flour, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 3 tablespoonfuls sugar, 2 large teaspoonfuls Royal Baking Powder, 2 tablespoonfuls lard, rind of 1 lemon, grated, 1 teaspoonful Royal Extract Cinnamon, 4 eggs and 1 pint thin cream. Sift together flour, sugar, salt and powder; rub in lard cold; add beaten eggs, lemon rind, extract and milk. Mix into smooth, rather thick batter.

Bake in hot waffle iron, serve with sugar flavored with Royal Extract of Lemon.

***

SOFT WAFFLES.

1 quart flour, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful sugar, 2 teaspoonfuls Royal Baking Powder, 1 large tablespoonful butter, 2 eggs, 1 1/2 pints milk.

Sift together flour, salt, sugar and powder; rub in butter cold; add beaten eggs and milk; mix into smooth consistent batter that will run easily and limpid from mouth of pitcher.

Have waffle-iron hot and carefully greased each time; fill 2-3, close it up, when brown turn over.

Sift sugar on them, serve hot.

The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) May 25, 1895

South African Wafels.

South African “wafels” vastly differ from our waffles merely in being made with wine as a “moistener” rather than with milk for the principal liquid ingredient.

In South Africa when they are going to make “wafels” they take a pound of flour, three-quarters of a pound of butter, half a pound of sugar, eight eggs, half a pint of wine and a teaspoonful of sifted cinnamon. The butter and eggs are creamed; then they mix in alternately one egg and one spoonful of flour, add the wine and spice and bake in a waffle iron.

Eau Claire Leader (Eau Claire, Wisconsin) May 10, 1903

CREAM WAFFLES.

Put into a bowl two cupfuls of sifted flour, three and a half level teaspoonfuls of baking powder and half a teaspoonful of salt. Beat the yolks of two eggs and add to them one and one quarter cupfuls of milk and then the flour mixture. Beat until smooth one teaspoonful of melted butter and the whites of two eggs whipped stiff.

Cook on a hot, greased waffle iron and serve with maple sirup.

The waffles should be thin and crisp.

The Daily Review ( Decatur, Illinois) May 14, 1904

Tomato Waffles

Pare six medium-sized ripe tomatoes, chop very fine and add one teaspoon salt, one-fourth teaspoon pepper, one tablespoon butter melted after measuring; sift one-half teaspoon soda in a little flour to make the mixture like a thin griddle cake batter; have your waffle iron very hot, grease both under and upper lids, place a small tablespoon of the batter into each section, close the lid upon it and bake at least one minute on each side; when serving, cut the sections apart and arrange on a napkin.

This makes a novel and delicious entree.

Title: Good Living and How to Prepare it
Authors    King’s Daughters of Iowa, King’s Daughters of Iowa. Circle No. One (Oskaloosa)
Publisher: Hedge-Wilson Co., 1905
(Google book LINK pg. 113)

Waffles, Southern Style.

Mix and sift one and three-fourths cupfuls of flour, three teaspoonfuls of baking powder and one-half teaspoonful of salt, add gradually one cupful of milk, the yolks of two eggs well beaten, one tablespoonful of melted butter and the white of two eggs beaten stiff.

Cook on a greased hot waffle iron and serve at once with maple syrup.

A waffle iron should fit closely on the range, be well heated on the one side, turned, heated on the other side, and thoroughly greased before the iron is filled. In filling put a tablespoonful of the batter in each compartment near the centre of the iron, cover, and the mixture will spread to just fill the iron. If sufficiently heated, it needs to be turned almost as soon as filled and covered.

Trenton Times (Trenton, New Jersey) Sep 14, 1906

Recipes For Waffles.

(By Mrs. J.M. Fine)

One-half cup of cornstarch, two cups of flour, three teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, three eggs, well beaten, one and one-half cups of sweet milk, three tablespoons of melted butter, one tablespoon of Karo corn syrup.

Mix to a thin batter.

Have waffle iron very hot before pouring in the batter.

Witchita Daily Times (Wichita Falls, Texas) Sep 3, 1914

Buckwheat Waffles.

2 cups buckwheat flour.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
4 teaspoons baking powder.
2 tablespoons molasses.
2 cups milk.
1 tablespoon melted fat.
2 eggs, beaten separately.

Mix and sift dry ingredients. Add molasses, milk, melted fat and eggs.

Heat waffle iron and grease well, put a tablespoon of mixture in each compartment, cover and cook, turn occasionally until crisp and brown.

Serve with syrup.

These may be cooked on a griddle if a waffle iron is not available.

Fitchburg Daily Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Jun 17, 1918

The chocolate nut waffles are made by sifting together 2 cups of pastry flour, 1/3 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of ground chocolate or 3 tablespoons of cocoa, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt. Beat 2 egg yolks and add 1 1/4 cups of milk. Stir liquids into dry ingredients and add 1/2 cup melted butter. Fold in stiffly-beaten egg whites and 1/2 cup finely-chopped nuts and bake in hot waffle iron. This makes 7 or 8 large waffles.

Centralia Chronicle Advertiser (Centralia, Washington) Apr 24, 1936

The Man With the Hoe

Image from http://www.ischool.utexas.edu

The Man with the Hoe
by Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this —
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed —
More filled with signs and portents for the soul —
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
A protest that is also a prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?

Image from Shorpy.

THE REAL MAN WITH THE HOE.

(By Robert E. Jenkins, of the Chicago Bar.)

Note — Markham’s “Man With the Hoe” is an insult to every farmer and every farmer’s son in America. It draws a picture that has no foundation in fact. It is utterly vicious, in that it degrades honorable labor and promotes contempt for work and dissatisfaction, unrest and despair where there should be hope, happiness and courage. It and all similar woeful wailings are worse than worthless trash. — R.E. Jenkins.

The man with the hoe of whom I shall write,
The American man who stands forth in his might;
The American king, where hard, honest toil
Sheds halo of glory o’er tillers of soil.

This man with the hoe, the typical man,
Of the husbandman noble, and not under ban,
But free to do right, with open, fair chance,
To their own and their children’s best fortunes advance.

This man with the hoe, foundation of wealth,
Supplies grain for the trader and food to save health;
He drives away famine and want and distress,
And ushers in plenty all people to bless.

This man with the hoe is type of the best
Of our national life in the east or the west.
The ideal man of the people en masses,
The pride of Columbia, the yeomanry class.

This man with the hoe moves well in his place,
With a good manly stride and a smile on his face,
With strong, brawny arms his implement wields,
Nor leans on his hoe to gaze ’round o’er the fields.

This man with the hoe is settled for life
With the maid with the pail for his comely young wife;
They earn their own home, they toil and they strive,
They bear trials with courage and hopefully thrive.

This man with the hoe keeps up with the age,
He reads through the evening the works of a sage,
Or a tri-weekly paper or book of the farm,
Till wisdom and knowledge both give his life charm.

This man with the hoe is father of boys,
Six fine, manly sons share his cares and his joys;
They work on the farm as farmer’s boys do,
Then attend school in winter when working is through.

This man with the hoe was faithful to God,
Was sustained from above as life’s journey he trod,
Took his children to church and taught them to trust,
To observe all the laws and in dealings be just.

This man with the hoe saw his children succeed,
Grow up and go forth different callings to lead,
Saw the lawyer, the merchant, the farmer contented,
The pulpit and platform and press represented.

This man with the hoe and his true, loving wife,
Blessed the world and were each blessed with long, happy life;
Was honored with office and places of trust,
The reward of the man who is earnest and just.

The man with the hoe, the man with the hoe,
You can find him abounding wherever you go,
One knowing him not has wailed o’er his lot,
And drenched him with tears, though he needed them not.

Who in our country most laurels has won,
The barefoot from the farm or the millionaire’s son?
This one in his ease fails high purpose to press,
The other necessity drives to success.

These men of the hoe, look on them with pride!
In all trades and professions through the land far and wide
The farmer’s boy heads, Hard work made him strong,
Take the hoe for his emblem! Enshrine it in song.

Oh man of the hoe, oh man of the plane,
Oh man of the brake on the swift rolling train,
Man of the toilers whoever you be,
Your labor is patent of true dignity.

The pess’mists standard for men is all wrong,
He rails at the wealthy and envies the strong;
‘Tis manhood, not money, we should prize here on earth,
What a man is, not has, along measures true worth.

Most sons of the rich and all sons of ease,
Who lazily live and seek themselves but to please,
Are failures indeed. For all life is strife
And worth only to live is the strenuous life.

Shame on the teachers of hopeless despair,
Who call man a brute, crushed down under care;
Who degrade and debase in their doctrine of woe,
The real, manly, triumphant, good man with the hoe.

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) Jul 5, 1899

Image from http://www.nypl.org

“THE MAN WITH A HOE.”

Its Author Received the Tribute That Parody Pays to Genius.

Kansas City Journal: No publication of recent date has evoked such widespread and varied discussion as Prof. Edwin Markham’s “The Man With the Hoe.” Markham took as his text Millet’s picture, showing an uncouth peasant leaning on his hoe and staring into a blank world with eyes deadened to all intelligence. There can be no question as to the power of the poem from a literary standpoint. All the critics admit that. But there is hot disputation over the question of whether or not the painter and the author have made a true characterization of a class of humans really existing in the civilized world. The poem degrades the man with the hoe to a level with the beasts of the field, and the two most striking verses are here repeated:

“Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

“O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?”

One thing, however, is sustained by every American critic. There is no such being in America as is here pictured. If intended to apply to the American agricultural laborer we must agree with Mr. Ralph E. Jenkins of Chicago, who has contributed an article holding up to admiration the “qualities of self-respect, independence and intelligence to be found in the American rural classes.” With considerable heat Mr. Jenkins says: Markham’s ‘Man With the Hoe’ is an insult to every farmer and every farmer’s son in America. It draws a picture that has no foundation in fact. It is utterly vicious, in that it degrades honorable labor and promotes contempt for work and dissatisfaction, unrest and despair where there should be hope, happiness and courage. It and all similar woeful wailings are worse than worthless trash.”

As is true of every poem worth remembering, many imitations have been made of Markham’s verses and not a few parodies. In the Chicago Time-Herald Mr. S.E. Kiser gives us the picture of a drunken man hanging to a post, together with some lines, from which we quote as follows:

“Bowed by a weight of fiery stuff, he leans
Against the hitching post and gazes ’round!
Besotted emptiness is in his face,
He bears a load that still may get him down
Who made him dull to shame and dead to pride,
A thing that cares not and that never thinks,
Filthy, profane, a consort for the pig?
Who loosened and let down that stubbly jaw?
Whence came the scum adhering to those lips?
What was it clogged and turned away his brain?

“O masters, lords and rulers in our land,
Must this foul solecism still
Be tolerated in an age when men
Grasp power from the circumamorent air
And speak through space across the roaring gulfs?
Must this vile thing be left to wed at will
And propagate his idiotic spawn,
A shame upon the age in which we live,
A curse on generations to be born?”

Image from http://www.shorpy.com

And then comes Hester A. Benedict, in the Pacific Ensign, denying that “Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf, there is no shape more terrible than this.” She holds that lower yet is the woman who must consort with this bestial thing, saying:

“Look into that ‘last gulf,’ O poet! I pray thee,
Down, down where its nether cave leans,
And find there — God help us — a ‘shape’ to gain-say thee,
A shape that affrighteth the fiends.
And listen, O listen! For through all the thunder
A voice crieth — heavy with woe —
‘I, I am the woman, the woman that’s under
The heel of “The Man With the Hoe.”‘

“She is the begotten of derelict ages,
Of systems senescent the flaw,
She is the forgotten of singers and sages —
The creature of lust and of law.
The tale of the ‘Terror’ — the ox’s brute brother,
Can never be told overmuch,
But she is the vassal, and she is the mother,
The thrice-accursed mother of such.

“Look up from that last gulf, thou newest evangel,
Thou builder of ladders for men,
Look up from the pleading, pale face of the angel
That wooeth a prince of the pen.
And sometimes, a little, tho’ half the world wonder,
And critics cry high and cry low —
Sing out for the woman — the woman that’s under
The heel of ‘The Man With the Hoe.'”

Of the parodies that have been written perhaps none is better calculated to affect our risibilities — particularly at this season when the voice of the lawn mower is heard in the land — than a bit given without the name of the author in the Chicago Tribune:

“Bowed by the meanness of the act, he leans
Upon the handle, gazes on the ground.
With empty stomach — ’tis but 5 a.m. —
And on his back naught but an undershirt.
Who made him dead to other people’s rights,
A thing that cares not how much woe he makes,
Stolid and selfish brother to the ox;
His is the hand that shoves that thing along
Whose loud, infernal racket breaks the sleep!
Is this thing, made in likeness of a man,
To have dominion o’er the neighborhood;
To end the tired dreamer’s morning nap;
And shall no victim have the right to shoot him?
Is this the dream of all the ages past,
For whose sake bends the spacious firmament?
Down all the block to its remotest house
There is no dread so terrible as this —
More potent to o’erwhelm the soul with wrath,
More filled with portent of a day’s unrest —
More fraught with emphasized profanity!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

O masters, lords and aldermen, give ear!
How will ye deal out justice to this man?
How answer when some gaunt, long-suffering wretch
Whose slumbers he has murdered craves the right
To punch his head off and once more bring peace
To a distracted neighborhood? Ye men —
Ye men who rule the town, ’tis up to you!”

Daily Iowa State Press (Iowa City, Iowa) Sep 9, 1899

Image from http://www.life.com

“THE MAN WITH THE HOE.”

Question of His Responsibility for His Condition.

To the Editor of the Tribune —

Sir: Would it be possible through your paper to gain an expression of the opinion held by women in general on that topic so widely discussed of late, “The Man with the Hoe?”

Interest in the subject is not confined to those able to make a literary or artistic criticism; women who are students of the most elementary psychological and sociological questions are seeking to know how much of the blame for “The Man’s” condition ought really to be thrown upon the man himself. There seems to be in Mr. Markham’s verse no recognition of any obligation on the part of each individual to assume a share of the responsibility of his own intellectual advancement. Regard, if you will, “the man with the hoe” as a type of his class, and that class of the lowest social order; he surely cannot be divested of some responsibility for his own condition. Then is society wholly to blame for the existence of such as he?

Certainly no thoughtful person can have seen Millet’s picture or a reproduction of it, without receiving a profound impression, in part sobering if not saddening. Yet there are those who have gazed upon the painting and have found there portrayed a certain peace. To me, at least, there is no hopelessness in the man’s pictured figure; rather it speaks of thankfully taking a rest, found sweet because earned by strenuous effort. I claim that Millet’s peasant is not the oppressed creature represented by the poet. I deny the oppression. To say that this labor is oppressed because he works at a task that compels him to look more often at the earth than at the sky is as unreasonable as to declare that the millionaire oppressed when he is taxed to the full value of his property and is required to keep up repairs.

Mr. Markham calls upon the world to answer for the man’s “dulled brain.” He leads us to forget for a time that in the beginning all were dull of brain; that men must raise themselves, and that they can only do so through unceasing education. It is unfair to charge the world with effects springing from the free will acts of the individual. Such free acts, wrongly directed, have brought “The Man” to his present state. He should, I hold, be regarded as the result of the practice of shirking mental exertion.

No one can question, however, the responsibility of the world to lend needful aid or to even urge it upon any who are striving for personal development; yet, if the man’s “dulled brain” will not rouse him to response, impel him to action, he must abide the consequences. To make the world answerable for the result would be a monstrous wrong. What “made him dead to rapture and despair” but his own unheeding of the first faint impulse to reach beyond? Mental slothfulness checked desire, will to overcome was not put forth, and so it is sadly true that

Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this,

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
More fraught with menace to the universe.

Thus “The Man” now. He is here, the result of ages of self-neglect. In the far dim past the choice has made; some remained as “brothers to the ox” and some elected to know

Plato and the swing of Pleiades,
***the long reaches of the peaks of song.

But even yet, if this man will cast aside the indolence of mind which has cursed his race, he, too, may see

The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose,

as they were seen by the first venturers in the field of thought. And though it is eternally true that man himself must make himself, it does not follow that no responsibility rests upon the seeing to help the blind. Women, whose work it is to uplift into light and beauty the lives of the lower classes, feels this and is striving to overcome wherever it is possible the effects of ages of mental indolence.

The slothfulness of the adult is almost incurable, yet free self-activity must be stimulated, and they who believe “the child to be father to the man” look to the little ones whose youthful training will help them to battle against some of the evil brought into the world by the great Army of the Unthinking. Can we not believe that the kindergarten toddler of today is able to grasp as deep a thought as that which dawned on the comprehension of the first man who did not shirk mental exertion in those long past ages when reflection began to challenge humanity to a struggle? And this child, though he may become a man with a hoe, a veritable toiler, need he be as a “brother to the ox?”

— F.J.S. in New York Tribune.

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) Aug 7, 1899

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The general opinion of the enlightened public seems to be, after due consideration, that Mr. Markham, the poet of the “Man with the Hoe” got the cart before the horse when he suggested that this poor man was the creation of the rich and the powerful. On the contrary the man with the hoe antedates all other men of modern times and the rich and the powerful are his creation.

It was the man with the hoe in its ancient rude form that began the structure of civilization. Then he got a plough and became better off, then he invented agricultural machines of all sorts and wealth and culture followed.

He is now as he always was, the author and finisher of all civilization. The poet who would try to make a brute of him is a degenerate. Having within him all the springs of progress and wealth if he is a brute he is a self-made one. It is “the man with the growler” that is an off scouring of civilization, not the man with an implement of agriculture in his hand.

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) Aug 18, 1899

There is a singular relationshiop of blood and marriage among these perils. They are interwoven and concomitant. Unlike as are the men in whom they are separtely embodied, the man through whom they all become possible is the celebrated “man with the hoe.”

HEAR A PARABLE OF THE MACHINE, THE MONEY BAG, THE MOUTH AND THE HOE. The man with the machine persuaded the man with the hoe to vote precisely as he told him and thus made himself of much value as a commodity of barter or an instrument of assessment. The man with the money bag, desiring protection or power, went into the market place and found there the man with the machine, whereupon these two discovered a community of interest. This worked well until the man with the hoe grew suspicious that his part in the transaction, while the most important, was the least profitable. Then appeared the man with the mouth, promising to wind up the concern, distribute the assets and alter the laws of nature so far as necessary to effect a universal exchange of hoes for money bags. This programme was not fully carried out, but the machine was put temporarily out of repair, the money bag was sent abroad for its health, the mouth had an opportunity to explain some of its promises and retract the rest, and THE HOE, HAVING MARCHED IN SEVERAL PROCESSIONS AND GAINED MUCH EXPERIENCE, WENT ON HOEING AS BEFORE.

I do not mean to say that this somewhat allegorical description has ever been completely realized on any large scale in our country, but certain fragmentary features of it may be dimly recognized here and there in our politics. Men whose chief distinction is their wealth, men, whose only profession is the manipulation of political wires (underground), men who are related to real statemen as quacks to real physicians, have at times found their way into our ruling classes. Their presence is a menace to the integrity and security of the democracy.

The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) Dec 9, 1901

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The Man With the Hoe

By BEN ELLIS

The New Version.

“Who, indeed, is the ‘Man with the Hoe?'”
Said the preacher whose price is ten thousand or so,
“He’s nothing to me; he never has given
A dollar to buy my reserved seat in Heaven;
To be sure, our churches from taxes are free,
And the ‘Man with the Hoe’ pays the tax, but you see —
If churches were taxed and the tax couldn’t shirk,
Then some of us preachers must needs go to work.
And that would ne’er do, for we’re called of the Lord
To preach about Jonah, the Whale and the Gourd.”

“From the soles of your feet to the crown of your head
The ‘Man with the Hoe’ has clothed you.” I said,
“And even that binding of calfskin you prize
Because it preserves superstition and lies
Which you say are ‘holy,’ so, of course, it is so,
Was made by the overworked ‘Man with the Hoe.'”
But the preacher was shocked; he really didn’t know —
He guessed he wouldn’t bother ’bout the “Man with the Hoe.”

“Who in Hell is this ‘Man with the Hoe?'”
Asked the political boss, with his millions in “dough.”
“He’s the man who created the wealth you bestow
On race touts and gamblers and much vulgar show;
He’s the man who you rob by political stealth
And the woman who slaves to pile up your wealth
Through laws that are passed by your corrupt ‘pull’ —
He’s the man whose eyes you keep covered with ‘wool.'”

Yet this Man

Gathers the fuel and boils the pot
And cooks the dinner for the whole blessed lot
Of liars and loafers and political bums —
Then weeps that for him the good time never comes.
Then he follows the wagon and “carries the can,”
And goes to the polls and votes for their man.
The biggest damned fool in this whole “bloomin’ show”
Is this very same fellow, this “Man with the Hoe.”

Mansfield News (Mansfield, Ohio) Mar 23, 1904

Image from http://www.nytimes.com

THE MAN WITH THE DOUGH

William J. Lampton, after reading Markham’s world-famous poem, penned this, “The man with the ‘Dough'”:

Bowed by the weight of capital,
He leans
Upon the bank,
And gazes on the ground
That looks to him to people it
With all producing industries;
He fills the emptiness of ages
With his energy,
And on his credit bears
The burden of a world
That needs his strength;
Wealth makes him dead
To doubting and despair.
A thing that grieves not
And who always hopes,
Stolid and Stunned,
The brother to the ox
Is raised by him
To higher brotherhood,
Who loosens and lets down the jaw
That chews up Poverty?
Whose hand slants back the tide
Of panic and defeat?
Whose breath blows out
The light of failure and decay?
The man with the “dough.”
And don’t you forget it.

Title: International wood worker, Volume 14
Authors: Amalgamated Woodworkers’ International Union of America, Machine Woodworkers’ International Union of America
Publisher: Amalgamated Wood-Workers’ International Union of America, 1904 (Google book LINK)