Grandfather Paul was a dirt farmer in White County, Indiana. He raised four boys and two girls on a quarter section in White County Indiana. The years between eighteen seventy and the turn of the century were tough times. There never was enough cash money with wheat 32 cents and corn 23 cents a bushel.
There was just enough money for one pair of boots a year. Grandfather got the new boots. Uncle Bill got Grandfather's. Uncle Dan got Uncle Bill's. Uncle Jim got Uncle Dan's. And what was left of Uncle Jim's came to Pop. About the crops, Pop said, "We sold what we could. What we couldn't sell we fed to the pigs. What the pigs wouldn't eat, we ate."
Certainly things were pretty tough, but come hell or high water, on the first of October of each year, Grandfather would scratch up a $5 bill to give to the White County Republican Committee.
I never knew my grandfather. He evidently was a decent sort. He was a deacon in the church and was a God-fearing man. But according to the "old timers" who had known him, he was also a two fisted cusser. I've heard from thirty different people that Grandfather swore.
This story happened back in August of 1883. Grandfather had a quarter section of good Indiana bottom land and had about 60 acres of it in wheat. It was all cut and shocked and waiting for the thresher. In those days, before the modern combine, a big steam driven threshing machine would follow the harvest north and would hire out to a circle of neighbors. The neighbors would then pitch in and help each other with the threshing, till the entire harvest was finished. Part of the deal was that each farm would play host for a noon day meal. And feeding 25 or more hungry threshers was no light chore. It entailed great quantities of food, and a great deal of help from the neighboring women folk.
From the moment the machine pulled into Grandfather's farm, the trouble started. Everything went wrong. The first day it rained. On the second day the belt on the steam engine broke beyond repair and all of daylight was wasted while a man went to Lafayette for a replacement. Meanwhile, the problem of feeding these people was becoming increasingly difficult. The first day Grandmother had prepared 18 old hens with the appropriate dumplings and trimmings. The second day had required the use of the last five hams hanging in the smoke house. On the evening of the second day Grandmother decided that they would have to butcher a sheep for the third dinner; so late that night Grandfather killed the sheep, dressed out the hind quarters and loins, trussed them up with wire and hung them in the well.
The next day dawned clear and bright. By eight o'clock the dew was sufficiently gone from the shocks and the loading started. The steam engine huffed and puffed. The blower on the thresher came to life and work began. Just then Grandfather saw Grandmother walking toward him across the field. With determination and great singleness of purpose she marched right up to Grandfather and said "Judson, the mutton fell in the well."
Grandfather replied, "Oh Hell." On this single outburst was born a life long reputation as a swearer.
When I was a kid in our little town in Indiana, Great-uncle Cloyd was the only one in our family who had any money. He was a big man with a red face and white handle bar mustache. When he spoke, Mother curtsied and Pop listened. He was chairman of the White County Republican Committee, deeply involved in state politics. Uncle Cloyd was widely credited with having brought the Indiana delegation to his friend Mark Hanna, and William McKinley in the convention of '96. Uncle Cloyd believed in two things, "God and the Republican Party."
One August afternoon in 1912, a team of matched chestnuts, followed by a trail of dust, came to a sliding stop in front of our house. Great-uncle Cloyd jumped out.
He charged up the front walk and with a "Where's your father?" slammed into the house. For fifteen minutes, shouts and swear words were all I heard. Then Uncle Cloyd slammed out of the house, jumped into the buggy, lashed up the chestnuts, and disappeared in another cloud of dust.
This is my first memory of a political discussion. I was seven years old. It seemed that Uncle Cloyd had just heard that Pop was going to vote for Teddy Roosevelt, and he had just been giving him hell.
You may doubt that a seven year old could have understood the significance of this scene. I can only assure you that I did. Kids in those days had no television. There were no cars or movies or radios. Kids were included in family conversations. Our porch in the evening always had a neighbor or two, and I was allowed to sit and listen. Certainly much of it went over my head. But I think that I did understand why Pop decided to throw over the tradition of a lifetime, bolt the Republican Party, and be an aggressive supporter of the Bull Moose Movement.
You see, my father was a laboring man. He was an engineer on the Pennsylvania Rail Road and ran freight trains between Chicago and Columbus, Ohio. He belonged to the Union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and in 1910 he was elected president of Local Twenty. Pop was very active in union affairs and the home was filled with stories of the union. One project fostered by the Union was the automatic coupling. At the time, all the freight trains had to be coupled by hand. A brakeman would enter between the cars and slip in a pin to couple the train. It was dangerous work and many brakemen were killed and injured coupling and uncoupling the cars.
Westinghouse had developed an automatic coupling, an adjunct to their air brake and wanted to sell it. The Pennsylvania Railroad was reticent to endorse the automatic coupling because of the enormous cost. So Pop, a member of a committee, went to Washington to try to get some legislation on the matter. They called in Jim Watson, Senator from Indiana who brought in a Senator from Wisconsin, Bob La Folette to help. La Folette initiated and fought for specific legislation on the automatic coupling. The bill was killed in committee by stand-pat Republicans who were in control.
So when Jim Watson, La Folette, Hiram Johnson from California, Borah from Idaho, and others joined Teddy Roosevelt and bolted the party in 1912, Pop went down the line with them. It was a Quixotic gesture because in November the Democrats with about 40% of the popular vote waltzed into the White House. Uncle Cloyd never forgave Pop.
Pop worked as an engineer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. He would take a freight train from the big switching center in Logansport north to Chicago or east to Columbus, Ohio. It was hard work that often required twenty four hours in the open cab of a big 4-6-4 locomotive. At the end of the line he would eat a hot mean in the company of his mates and then collapse in a bunk for a few hours rest before he started the return trip. He always enjoyed the company of railroad men and he later became active in union politics and was known as the "root cutter" for reasons long since forgotten.
One didn't start out in the lofty position of engineer. As a farm boy be followed in the footsteps of his friend and neighbor Pierpont Edwards, five years older, to a job as a fireman on the railroad. Now that was hard work but no harder than working on the family farm. It took a strong back and a thick skin. He stuck to it for five years lost 30 of his 175 pounds on his six foot frame. In 1902 Pop was promoted to engineer.
Pop became something of a sentimental hero in the family when on a spring day in 1915 he suddenly stopped his freight train on the spur line near the town of Brookston, Indiana. He set the air brakes and jumped from the cab and bounded across the road to a farm house set back in a grove of trees. The engine clanked and hissed behind him as he knocked on the door. The startled woman who answered was his younger sister Edna, but the reason for his visit was his five year old niece, Anna, in bed with a broken collar bone. He brought her flowers and they visited for a few minutes in spite of the hoots and hollers of the train crew.
Of all my relatives, the one who made the biggest impression on me was Uncle Jim, Pop's older brother. Right after he mustered out of the Spanish-American War, he worked his way down to Arkansas, and bought a section of swamp land in the southern part of the state. He took in ten mules and 200 goats, cleared up and dredged the land, and in a few years Uncle Jim had the prettiest 640 acres of alfalfa and corn you ever saw. He fattened up Texas steers and was well on his way to challenging Uncle Cloyd as the money bags in the family. Uncle Jim never married.
He came north to visit us in 1913. Mother was mortified. Uncle Jim had ridden the day coach all the way from Arkansas in overalls. "Trains is hard on britches" he announced by way of explanation. As I remember them, they were clean, but he never got out of them while he visited us. Uncle Jim was lean and lank and leathery, he had two wonderful gold teeth, and he could laugh louder than anyone I ever heard.
Uncle Jim talked Mother into letting him take me into Chicago for the day. We started out early, overalls and all by catching the milk train before the sun was up. We took in Marshall Fields department store, Comminisky Ball Park, and in the evening the Star and Garter Burlesque Show. He brought back some perfume for Mother, and swore me to secrecy about the burlesque. But within an hour after we got up the next morning, the story was out. Mother was in tears. Even Pop wanted to know how he got an eight year old boy into the Star and Garter. It seemed that Uncle Jim had given the ticket taker a $5.00 gold piece. He explained that he thought what the boy didn't know, wouldn't hurt him. Of course, his visit was cut short, but his parting advice to Pop and me was, "Damn the women, and damn the Democrats."
incidentally when Uncle Jim died in 1945, he was still a bachelor. But he owned two sections of black Arkansas bottom land, and he left it all to a little widow woman down by the river, except for $1,000 that went to the Nevada County Arkansas Republican Party.
In the fall of 1919, Pop was appointed police commissioner of our town by the newly elected mayor. Our police department consisted of eleven men and a captain. The commissioner's job was a part time affair, but Pop took his duties seriously, and spent much of his free time down at the station.
Now, Effie Schildt ran the "Sportin' House" in our town. It was down by the river, below the railroad tracks, and was the center of much rioting and brawling. The police, and Pop in his capacity as commissioner, had numerous opportunities to quell disturbances. Effie and her brood regularly appeared Monday mornings before the judge, paid their fines, and quietly returned to the house by the river. Now Effie had her own set of standards. One of her beliefs was that no kid of high school age should be admitted to her palace of delights. She knew every boy in town, and it was well known that you couldn't get in till you had graduated from high school.
Now, our neighbor, Mr. Hochhalter was against sin in every form. Particularly was he against Effie. He spearheaded a campaign against her, first through letters to the editor, and finally at town mass meeting. He insisted that Effie be run out of town, her place closed, and eternal vigilance be practiced against her return. He even suggested that police collusion might be going on, and proposed a citizen's committee to take charge of the police department.
Now, I like to think that Pop was against sin too, but he had an unusual realism for those years and that locality. He seemed to think that he and his big-footed cohorts down at the police station could handle the situation better than Mr. Hochhalter. He even went so far as to suggest that our town could do a lot worse than Effie, indeed, that she might even be an asset to the place. The issue subsided with no official action.
Pop won that argument with Mr. Hochhalter, but he never lived it down with Mother. I remember Christmas morning that year. A little wicker basket with a red ribbon showed up on the back porch. There was no card inside - just four bottles of "Golden Wedding Whiskey." Pop always insisted that he had no idea where they came from. But Mother did!
And then there was Great, Great Uncle Charlie Breckinridge. Scottish born, he came with his large family to America as a child in the 1840's. He was awfully old when I knew him. He must have been near 90. He always sat in a chair alongside a pot-bellied stove, a blanket in his lap and a cane in his hand. I think he bored my father and mother and the rest of my relatives, but he could tell wonderful stories, and I loved to listen to him. He had been an aide to General Lou Wallace in the Civil War, and he took me with him from Island Number 10, on to Fort Donaldson, to Shiloh, to Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge, to Kings Mountain, to Atlanta and finally to the sea. But in Uncle Charlie's mind the Rebels and the Democrats were all mixed up. I can hear him now, waving his cane, "By durn" he said, "We chased them cursed Democrats from Shiloh to Chicamagua."
The 1916 Presidential campaign really began for us in the summer of '15 when Pop took me down to the big Chataugua tent, to hear William Jennings Bryan. He led us in some hymns, read a passage from the bible, and then launched into a violent attack on Woodrow Wilson and his foreign policy. You remember from your history books that Bryan had been Wilson's first secretary of state, but that Wilson had fired him after a couple of years, because of a disagreement over foreign policy. He accused Wilson of a personal ambition to assure a position of world leadership. He gave us example after example of Wilson's attempt to involve us in the foreign dispute. He called upon us to follow a course of neutrality, and not allow ourselves to be involved.
When the conventions rolled around the next summer, the Bull Moose staggered back into the Republican party, and were reunited behind their candidate Charles Evans Hughes, an ex New York governor, and member of the Supreme court,
The Democrats in their convention obviously put their finger on Wilson. He was determined to take his position to the people. He was riled at Bryan but insisted on pursuing his course. In a surprise keynote speech that left Wilson flabbergasted, one of the cleverest and most effective phrases of all time was coined. "He kept us out of war". Sensing the temper of the country, the Democrats put wraps on Wilson, and flooded the country with their orators who shouted again and again one thing - "He kept us out of war."
The politicians mostly played down the foreign situation, and hammered away at domestic economic problems. And these issues were important to us. What were the domestic issues? Primarily the tariff. In my eight year old mind, this was the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats believed in free trade - and Republicans in a protective tariff. It may be difficult for you to realize that the laboring man was almost 100% behind this principle of protect American industry. The slogan "Full Dinner Pail" inferred that as industry prospered, so would labor, or the common people. "Buy American" was the Republican catch phrase. It was difficult for me to swallow, however.
When Herbert Hochhalter, my best friend from across the street, and I argued about the tariff, he always brought up our pocket knives. Every boy carried a pocket knife. I had a dandy, a Keen Kutter. It had two blades and a cork screw, was made in Connecticut, and cost me 40 cents. But Herbert had an even better one; bone handle, wonderful steel, beautiful workmanship. His uncle had brought it to him from Montreal. It was made in Germany and only cost 30 cents.
This tariff business touched me in another way. In those days kids our age all wore short pants and long black stockings. The dye industry in America was non existent, All dyes came from Germany. DuPont and Union Carbide started experimenting and eventually a dye of inferior quality appeared on the market. All good Republicans carefully bought stocking made with these new dyes, and they looked wonderful till they were washed. After each washing they became a sicker and sicker green. But in every bunch of kids you could always pick out the Republicans and Democrats.
Woodrow Wilson's vice-president was a man named Thomas Marshall. He had been the Democratic governor of Indiana, but was as nearly a goon as America has ever put into high office. His enduring claim to fame rests on his studied observation that "What America needs most is a good five cent cigar."
In the summer of 1920 he agreed to come to our town to dedicate a new library that had been willed to us by the local brewer, recently died. I remember that Marshall arrived a half hour late, and there were several thousand people gathered on the steps of the new building. The vice-president was introduced with great fanfare and, so help me, his talk went something like this . . .
"My friends, we are gathered here to honor one of the eminent citizens of this flourishing community, (takes surreptitious peek inside his pocket) Henry C. Mulcahy. (another peek). Henry C. Mulcahy in his generosity and his wisdom, is following in the footsteps of that renowned philanthropist (peek) Andrew W. Carnegie, and has endowed this garden city with this splendid library, filled with books by that bard of Avon (peek), William Shakespeare. I am sure that in these hallowed halls you will find many tomes regarding the life and works of that great emancipator (peek) Abraham Lincoln. And do, good friends, revere the name of your benefactor, (peek) Henry C. Mulcahy, and I bid you now to go in peace with the blessing of our lord and savior, (peek) Jesus Christ."
Copyright © 1996, Jonathan Paul