An address by Arthur Hobson Quinn at the J. William White Dinner on January 17,1952, commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the founding of the Franklin Inn Club.
The Founders:
Edward W. Bok, Cyrus Townsend Brady,
Edward Brooks, Charles Heber Clark,
Henry T. Coates, John Hornor Coates,
John Habberton, Alfred C. Lambdin,
Craige Lippincott, J. Bertram Lippincott,
John Luther Long, Lisle De Vaux Matthewman,
John K. Mitchell, S. Weir Mitchell,
Harrison S. Morris, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer,
Arthur Hobson Quinn, Joseph G. Rosengarten,
Charles C. Shoemaker, Solomon Solis-Cohen,
Frederick William Unger, Francis Chruchhill Willams,
Francis Howard Williams
It is a somewhat lonely eminence in which I find myself. That I am the only living founder of the Inn is due simply to the accolade of chronology -I have been able to survive the others! May I take this opportunity to thank the Inn for creating me the first honorary member? My association with it has been purely one of enjoyment; I have never held an Office, and except for membership on Entertainment Committee, I have done little to serve the Inn. It has not been because of any lack of affection.
The founding of the Inn was due to some intangible and some concrete impulses. The turn of the century was responsible for many new movements and it is heartbreaking now, to those of us who were young at the time, to remember how we welcomed the dawn of what we were sure would be better days.
Centering in Philadelphia, there were at that time an unusual number of men of distinction as creators of literature. Weir Mitchell had written in Hugh Wynnethe greatest novel of the Revolution, and in his Characteristics had created the novel of psychology. Horace Howard Furness, Senior, had won eminence with his Variorum Shakespeare. Henry Charles Lea was producing his histories of the institutions of the Middle Ages. John Bach McMaster had just published the fifth volume of his great History of the People of the United States. John Luther Long had just created the Character of Madame Butterfly, to become a world figure. Langdon Mitchell had won a triumph with his play of Becky Sharp. Owen Wister had scored a popular success with The Virginian, a romance with a theatrical flavor appropriate to the grandson of Fanny Kemble, and while Charles Heber Clark was trying to forget that as Max Adeler he had delighted thousands with his humor, Out of the Hurly-Burly was not forgotten . I can still remember the day when he remarked dryly, "I can not bring myself to read these books written by other people."
It should be a matter of pride to us that it was in this creative atmosphere that the Inn was born. All the writers I have mentioned were members of the Inn, and although their participation in our activities varied, their fellowship was an inspiration. I owe to Karl Miller's great statistical ability and keen interest in the Inn some figures which show that of the fifty-one members who joined in 1902, forty-four were then of later listed in Who's Who in America. It was a noteworthy group.
As long as I have been selected as the "authority" on the foundation, here is the result of my memories and my research, aided greatly by the labors of the Secretary, William Shepard.
For the record, then, the concrete sources were follows:
On February 19, 1902, ten men meet at the University Club, drew up a preliminary draft of a constitution and signed a Call for the formation of an "Authors' Club." In our printed booklet of 1950, the statement is made that Dr. Mitchell was present. I see no evidence that he was there, for he did not sign the Call. The account is in the handwriting of Francis Churchill Williams, the first secretary, and it is clear that Dr. Mitchell was elected President in his absence. It is interesting that of the ten signers of the call, J. Bertram Lippincott, John Luther Long, William J. Nicolls, Harrison Morris, and Craige Lippincott remained members of the Inn until their death; that Francis Howard Williams became Vice-President and Churchill Williams was the most active force in the actual organization of the Inn.
While Weir Mitchell was not the actual founder, he became the inspiration, the creator of the spirit of the Inn. While he did not belong to any organized preliminary group, his home was the center of gatherings which met there on Saturday evenings after nine o'clock to listen to what he truly described as "the best talk in Philadelphia," and these gatherings were certainly one of the indirect sources of the Inn. Many of his guests joined the Inn, and while I was a guest only after the Inn was founded, I am sure there must have been discussion of such a club.
Another concrete source was the Write about Club, a small group of men founded in 1897 and still in existence, who met weekly and read stories and verse for the criticism of their fellows. Among this group were Churchy Williams, who joined it with the idea of turning it into a club such as the Inn became, but found this impracticable; Charles C. Shoemaker, a publisher, for thirty-four years Treasurer of the Inn, needed the money ; Edward Robins, a short story writer; Edward W. Mumford, who became president of the Inn and did great service at the time of temporary low water; Rupert Holland, a director, and still a member of the Inn, and Lawrence Dudley, for many years the active chairman of the Entertainment Committee. The relations of these two clubs were mutual, Dudley and John Haney were first members of the Inn and later joined the Write about Club. Robins, Williams, Shoemaker, and I were first members of the Write about Club and were elected members of the Inn at its foundations.
To return to actual meetings of the Inn. Dr. Mitchell did preside at the meeting held at the Art Club on March 4, 1902, when the scope and purpose of the Club were definitely settled. Thirty-two or Thirty-three men were present. The Name of the Club was the subject of heated discussion. Dr. Mitchell objected to the proposed name "Authors' Club." He remarked that the "Authors' Club." in New York was one of the dullest place he has ever visited, and some years later, I was able to confirm his opinion. Another heated discussion as to qualifications was crystallized by the decision that the Club should be founded upon "the book, its creator, its illustrators and its publisher," who made the book available. The undated minutes of the next meeting tells us that the name "Franklin Head" and three for "Authors' Club." I have among my own memorabilia a notice which reads, "A first meeting of the Franklin Inn Club will be held at the Club House, 1218 Chancellor St., at eight, Wednesday evening June 4, 1902." I also find in my scrapbook an invitation reading, "The President of the Franklin Inn Club desires to say that the dinner you have done him the honor to accept will be at the Club House at seven, punctually, on January 6, 1903."
It will be noticed that although some of us have made it a point to say "Franklin Inn" without the "Club," the earliest notices were inclusive of that word. The names of the diners are recorded in a framed manuscript, hung on the wall in an inconspicuous place; it should have a more dignified position, for it was the first of these dinners, of which this is the fiftieth. Thirty-six names are immortalized there, signifying the Club's willingness to accept an invitation to good dinner. Dr. Mitchell's presiding was, of course, the feature of any dinner. When he died in 1914 it was impossible to replace him, the resulting election for president tore the Inn in two.
I wish to take this opportunity to pay a tribute not only to the first president of the Inn but to the man himself and to the great novelist. He was always willing to help younger writers and great novelist. He was willing to help younger writers, and I owe to his friendship introductions to men like William Dean Howells and others which aided me greatly in my work in American Literature. He was a patrician, as George Meredith recognized when he, in commenting on Dr. Mitchell's Roland Blake, Which he had read three times said, "It has a kind of nobility about it." He imparted this quality to his characters from Hugh Wynne down to Francois, the thief of the French Revolution they too are patricians. They do not argue about caste like the people in the novels of Henry James, who saw his countrymen through a haze of social hopeless. From whatever time or place they come, they are natural gentlefolk, who have seen the best of other civilization, and remained content with their own inheritances of culture.
Like all men of spirit, Weir Mitchell had a large capacity for scorn. In his fiction and poetry, this revealed itself in his artistic reticence, springing from the innate refinement of his soul. He knew death in its most horrible forms; he knew life in its most terrible aspects. He had read human minds in the grim emptiness of decay or the frantic activity of the possessed. With his great descriptive power, he could have painted marvelous portraits of the human race in its moments of disgrace. But with a restraint which puts to shame those who today in the name of realism are prostituting their art and exploiting the base or the banal in our national life, the first great neurologist knew the difference between pathology and literature. The scientist knew how bitter life would be for in Roland Blake he said, "if memory were perfect, life unendurable. " But the artist knew that the highest function of literature is to record those lofty moments which make endurable the rest of life.
May I appeal with a message from the founders to keep our ideals clear; they would wish me, I know, to remind you that it is not just another club of gentlemen interested in literature. Our Constitution provides for a limited number of distinguished public citizens. But unless the Inn is built around the "Book," it has not kept the spirit and intention of the founders. I realized this is not always easy. Great writers and painters come in clusters. They have come three times to Philadelphia first in the late eighteenth century, when Franklin, Francis Hopkinson, Thomas Godfrey, and Benjamin West established in America the art of the essay, poetry, drama, and painting; second, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Robert Montgomery Bird and George Henry Baker for the first time challenged the playwrights of England with The Gladiator and Francesca da Rimini, and when Poe spent his six greatest years in Philadelphia; Third, in other group of our founders. Another cluster will arise in Philadelphia and, when that day dawns, may the Franklin Inn keep the light burning to attract them to its fellowship. I believe that ed can be helped by celebrations of the pioneers. I have tried to pay a tribute to them in a bit of verse-.
Those days are done. Around the hall
You see the portraits on the wall
Of those who played the founder's part
In this, our friendly home of art,
Whose triumphs we tonight recall.
Time runs-He never stoops to crawl-
The veil of memory partly pall
The splendors which the years impart-
Those days are done!
Yet when across this evening fall
Clear voices from the past call
The quick blood back along the heart,
We know, by every pulse's start,
That Never, Till the end of all,
Those days are done!
-- by: Arthur Hobson Quinn, January 17, 1952
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Captain Parker, Minuteman
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American schoolchildren today, and maybe a majority of Americans even at that time, have found it bewildering that we declared independence fifteen months after the battles at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, well after George Washington besieged the British in Boston, or Benedict Arnold dragged the captured cannons of Ticonderoga over the mountains to save the day. Just who started our Revolution, and why; and for that matter, when, have been at issue for a long time.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged hot correspondence for fifty years along these lines. Adams was miffed that Jefferson claimed all the credit for a defiant public resolution they both had a hand in writing, when real men in Boston had been getting shot and killed for Liberty years earlier, and Admiral Howe's fleet had even set sail for Staten Island
long before that Declaration was printed. To which scolding, might well be added that Abraham Lincoln reached back to "all men are created equal" when he wanted to find Constitutional justification for what was only 3/5 true in 1787, and not true at all on Virginia plantations in 1776. And, of course, was a phrase not echoed in the Constitution. Yes, John Adams had a point, and Thomas Jefferson had other points. But weren't they both in Philadelphia at the same time, working on the same document? Jefferson and Adams were rather probably raking over the coals of the bitter 1800 election, where Jefferson turned Adams out of the White House, and Adams wouldn't even stay around for appearance sake to attend the inauguration of his successor. On another level, they were both likely thinking about the Constitution more than the Declaration of Independence, anyway. Jefferson never liked the Constitution, had been in France when it was written and preferred to submerge its precedence to a level of temporary revisions to the Declaration of Independence, which stressed unalienable human rights rather than a strengthened central government. It seems unfortunately true that politicians were introducing what is now called "spin". To the extent debate was heated rather than analytical, it could easily become immaterial whether 1774 was before or after 1776.
New England eased into rebellion with the Crown without a great deal of documentation of serious grievances; they must mostly be supposed. The fact that resentments were wide-spread lends substance to the idea that subjects of a remote monarchy had grown a little presumptuous, just as unsupervised Governors dispatched to rule them may have strutted authority unwisely. Successive generations of native-born colonists can be expected to have decreasing allegiance to the mother country, particularly after the need for protection from the French subsided, but irritation at quartering British troops persisted. Mercantilism is not intended to be fair; when imposed on foreigners there is more danger of provoking war when imposed on colonists, appeals to patriotism are mocked as self-serving. Unfortunately, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, the two main leaders of Massachusetts dissension, were not terribly clear about economics, and Hancock was definitely involved in some smuggling. Doctor Joseph Warren was more precise, but unfortunately died rather early. We assume competition in fishing off Newfoundland, and dominance in West Atlantic maritime trade seemed paramount to a region somewhat unsuited to agriculture. The English civil war left vivid memories of how quarrels could get out of hand. More than anything else, it would seem likely the British ministry decided to become more authoritarian, at a time when the colonists were drifting toward feeling more independent. They tested each other, and matters got out of hand.
The Old Dominion of Virginia had an established landed aristocracy, better able than in Massachusetts to say what the ruling class wanted, and what the state was going to do. Tobacco had started to wear out the Virginia soil, and people like Washington were anxious to acquire land in Ohio. This was blocked by a British prohibition of white men settling to the west of the Proclamation Line of 1763 along the Appalachian watershed, a separation intended to reduce friction with the Indians, concentrate English settlements along the seaboard for mercantile reasons, and direct further English immigration to Florida and Canada to hold back Catholic influences. The effect of the Proclamation on Virginians was varied, amounting at the least to feel they might just as well have lost the French and Indian War. The southern colonies were not in competition with England on manufacturing, but as agricultural exporters, were in frequent conflict with English merchants and bankers. Power and wealth were concentrated in fewer hands in the South, so personalities played a larger role in public policy.
The colonies were all growing rapidly, with a general sense that governance was getting cumbersome across a wide ocean. Benjamin Franklin was particularly ambitious for more level American versions of the United Kingdom, with Englishmen in the colonies of equal stature in Parliament and elsewhere. With skill, this could be the richest and most powerful nation on earth. As early as the Congress of Albany in 1754, Franklin was proposing a union of the colonies as a step toward full partnership with the British Isles in a transatlantic nation. He continued to pursue that sort of goal for twenty years. Variations of this idea were heard in Parliament. As a mechanism for riding the crest of the Industrial Revolution, this would have been a powerful arrangement for world domination, possibly but not necessarily including visions of world peace. In the Quaker colonies before 1774, Independence from England held little attraction, and merger with New England had less. After all, New England squabbles with Old England about Atlantic maritime trade brought attention to what most of it consisted of rum and slaves. Philadelphia Quakers had rallied around John Woolman to see the evil of slavery, and had largely succeeded in abolishing it locally. And Philadelphia Quakers were well aware that Quaker Abraham Redwood of Newport, Rhode Island had devised the famous triangular trade of slaves, molasses and rum. Pressure had built up within Quakerism to expel Redwood when he refused to free his slaves, no matter that he was probably the largest philanthropist of the colonies. Before that, relations between the Puritans and Quakers had often been difficult. Quakers believed in freedom of religion for everybody; the Puritans hanged Quakers. The Congregationalists of Connecticut had actually invaded the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, three different times, the last of which was when Washington's army was wintering in Valley Forge. Furthermore, if we must attribute everything to economics, there was no land hunger in Pennsylvania. The Penn family, almost exclusively devoted to selling land, owned thirty million acres; by the time of the Revolution, they had only sold five million. The Penn family got along just fine with the Monarchy. The grievances up in New England were not entirely clear. Perhaps the Puritans should learn how to settle their differences in a more peaceful, and effective, way.
And then, Admiral Howe with a huge fleet of warships, and his brother General Howe with a huge army appeared at the beaches of New Jersey. They had orders to impose disciplined governance on every one of the colonies, right away.
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Peter Conn
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Peter Conn, a member of the Franklin Inn of Philadelphia, is recently retired from the University of Pennsylvania. Since he has adoption in his family, he became curious about the matter, found that almost nothing has been written about the history of this topic, and decided to write a book about it himself. At a recent monthly meeting of the club, he described his findings, which are pretty surprising.
In a vague sort of way, everyone's general readings do confirm his findings that adoption was frequent among the American Indians, and also among the ancient Romans. In early 6th century Europe, however, it seems to have died out, only to return as a common experience in the 16th century. The first American law that Dr. Conn could find establishing the rules and legal conditions of adoption was passed in Massachusetts in the 19th century, at roughly the time American states were passing laws forbidding abortion. Whether there is a connection between the two movements or not is speculative. However, it does seem pretty likely that our current perceptions about adoption are surprisingly recent, reflecting a strong likelihood that Roman and Indian traditions have nothing to do with it, but fairly recent history might well have a lot to do with it.
Just a little reflection about all the stories we read, alluding to orphanages, foundlings, wards, primogeniture, romantic love, choices of marriage partners, and the like, quickly confirm a realization that conditions and attitudes about reproduction must have changed a very great deal, and fairly recently. It was not very long ago that children were apparently so numerous they could be treated as expendable. Considering how dangerous childbirth has been until recently, current attitudes about "valuable babies" , motherhood, and even the role of women in society must be evolving quickly without our realizing it, and in directions so recent they may well require further revision. Just whose views are old fashioned and whose views reflect modern insights are both judgments we probably should classify as tentative for at least a few more decades.
For example, the dates of major changes in attitudes about foundlings inevitably generate reflections about the attitudes of the Catholic Church. That ancient organization probably has enough troubles with bedroom issues, without adding this one. But the coincidence of the dates with the rise of the Church in Europe, and the subsequent rise of Protestantism, inevitably generate questions about Church attitudes as the cause, or possibly some sociological changes in society which transform both church and reproductive attitudes at the same time. What were the roles of the Crusades, and the Arab invasion of Europe, or the Ottoman invasion? Or the black plague and the white plague, or the Industrial Revolution? We have to know more about these cataclysmic events in order to have even a small idea of whether they might have influenced each other.
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Milton Hershey founded the Hershey Industrial School
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It makes a lot of difference whether a culture needs agrarian workers or not, to understand why "the best interests of the child" should only recently have been established as a legal basis for oversight of contested adoptions. Or why inheritance by adoptive children has only been such a recent phenomenon, endorsed by law. What happened to cause the abandonment of all the orphanages we used to have? Why have we chosen to split the issue between adoption and foster care, and treat the two so different? Where do the Girard College and the Hershey School fit into this transition? Why do the Russians feel they are injuring America by forbidding American adoption of Russian orphans?
And get this: during the 19th century in America, when there was a surplus of women on the East Coast resulting from a massive migration of males to the West, about 250,000 American orphans were packed on various trains and sent West. We are told they stopped at a station and let the local settlers select a few, and then the train continued going West, letting off more and more adoptees until they were all gone. Transcontinental railroads were only built after the Civil War, so this sort of child disposal was not more than a century before the political battles of Roe v Wade. We have a lot to learn, and probably a lot to be humble about. So let's not bury the truth under a mountain of political correctness, but let's not have any witch-hunts, either.
REFERENCES
| Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History: Peter Conn: ISBN:ISBN-13: 978-1137332202 |
Amazon |
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Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi
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Even loyal Congressional Democrats demanded more explanation for passing Obamacare than they received. Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi implausibly explained, "We have to pass the bill in order to see what's in it." That didn't help very much.
An unexpected bungle of computerized insurance exchanges that didn't work, would soon confront Obamacare supporters with explaining things to a hostile public, instead of to a merely curious one. Instead of providing better insurance to thirty million people, many of whom did not have insurance, the Administration had to cope with the possibility of uselessly depriving several hundred million people of insurance that did satisfy them. And to do so past the deadline for renewal of their old programs, made several million suddenly anxious that newer products must somehow be worse, not better.
It was expedient politics to add new but more expensive mandatory features. But since many people could already choose a more expensive policy if they craved more features, the practical effect was usually to make insurance more expensive without providing anything new. Here, it also had the unwelcome appearance of extra cost paying for somebody else's subsidy. In any event, health insurance was certainly not cheaper.
Employees of big business were evidently particularly dissatisfied, so their arrangement will be announced later, probably after the elections. Two years after passage, the Affordable Care Act was still a work in progress, but it was hard to call it a victory.
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Senator Ron Johnson
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Worse to come wasn't just an idle possibility. Millions of complacent people then received letters of cancellation (from their old, private insurance companies) in spite of specific provision in the law (section 1251) and repeated assurances from the President that this would never happen. Retired people on Medicare had mostly ignored Obamacare, which didn't apply to them. But any cancellation of existing benefits quickly revived anxiety that the real intention might be to pay for poor people (Obama's "base") with cuts in Medicare, which everyone over 65 had grown accustomed to receiving. A large new group was suddenly asking awkward questions.
Government workers and Congressmen definitely had to accept the new plans, probably to demonstrate shared sacrifice. That led Senator Johnson from Wisconsin to sue for damages because his constituency might think he really wanted to have it, in spite of nominal opposition. Big business received more extensions to its one-year postponement, which increasingly looked like a repeat of the 1994 Clintoncare experience where they had walked out, in a somewhat more obvious way. Small business was immediately refused similar relief, introducing concern about political favoritism, and conspiracies yet to be revealed. One of them surfaced a few months later, when "postponements" for employers with 50-100 employees were announced, effectively adding them to the definition of big business. Once more, there had been no such proposal in the enabling legislation. A majority of state governments refused to establish insurance exchanges, and an appreciable number of governors even refused to expand their Medicaid programs with Federal money. It could be argued that bribes that weren't permanent were essentially no different than direct coercion of states by the Federal Government, but were just a different method of revoking states rights under the Constitution.
Since it might be many years before deaths and retirements made it possible for insider biographies to explain everybody's true motive, the public applied the ancient Roman test of Cui bono? ("Who comes away from it, better off?") Everyone half expected the Obama base to be rewarded, and the Republican base to pay for it; but rewarding five percent at the expense of ninety-five percent, went beyond any election mandate, or even any tradition of the spoils system. Better medical care at cheaper prices always sounded over-optimistic. But worse care at a higher price now began to seem like the real outcome. Who comes away from that, better off?
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Republican Senator Scott Brown
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If a copy can be found, it certainly might be tempting to review the final original House bill and compare what was in it with the ultimate product (which was really just the Senate bill). But at that particular moment, there had been a Democratic majority, and that majority declared its preference for the Senate version. That is what the President signed. He then apparently hoped to solve its deficiencies by Executive Branch regulation, which might well lead to Constitutional lawsuit based on the "Vesting Clause" in Article 1 of the Constitution that, All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. . When he subsequently did issue several dozen unauthorized regulations, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, announced his intention of filing a Constitutional suit in the Supreme Court. In a sense, that took matters back to Franklin Roosevelt's "Court Packing" uproar in the 1930s, with more or less the same issue of a President illegally delegating legislative power to an executive agency. This once proved to be a convulsive national issue. So this book deals with it in a later chapter, because the state legislatures got to the Supreme Court first in a related Constitutional matter.
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Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy
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This uncertainty must be quickly resolved. The final law has over 450 sections, so some can be suppressed for a long time before an absence is noticed. The President's public restatement of section 1251 after the policies had already been canceled, remains particularly baffling. There are times when it almost seems the President was daring the Legislative branch to sue him. Although it is possible this maneuvering is more aimed at the Tea Party than the Democrats, it would certainly be the most dramatic Constitutional crisis since the Court-packing attempt in the 1930s. It deserves consideration in detail, but first, we must review the other Supreme Court action in the early days after passage of the Act, which may or may not have been the start of an elaborate collision of historic proportions. Preliminary conclusions must be reserved. Speaker Boehner may call off his suit after the outcomes of the 2014 Senate elections are known. International events may take a sudden turn. And the financial markets may still contain some surprises. More directly, there may be actions by the central actors in what Senators refer to as "this train wreck". In view of its potential destructiveness, the only consolation is it might at least inhibit Congress and the President from this particular maneuver a third time in the future.
Soon combined with a disastrously failed computer program for Insurance Exchanges making it impossible for the program even to get started, 2014 appears to be a bad year for tranquil discussion. It dramatized that trying to bully through was a bad choice. Millions of letters notified clients their old insurance was terminated as "inadequate" while the President continued to appear on television programs assuring such a thing would never happen, -- all of this projected a pretty poor image.
Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.