Rhode Island

364 Pages·2013·10.58 MB·English

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RECENT EVENTS IN GREATER RHODE ISLAND
“When one is happy in forgetfulness,
facts get forgotten.”
— Robert Pen Warren, 1961
THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR
GO BACK TO THE PREVIOUS CENTURY
1900
In the Touro Synagogue, to supplement the seats around the walls of the room, pews were installed.
NEWPORT
RHODE ISLAND
Between this year and 1932, the US Patent Office would be receiving some 350 applications for new designs
of water closet. Two of the first of these to succeed would be to designs by Charles Neff and Robert Frame of
Newport, Rhode Island, who would imagine a siphonic wash-down closet that in later years, after redesign of
the bowl by Fred Adee a decade later to avoid the messy overflows to which the design was prone, would
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become the norm of the nation.
GOD IN THE JAKES
WATER SUPPLY
1. “Recent” meaning in the course of this extended 20th Century.
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At about the turn of the century the area of downtown Providence, Rhode Island available to its Chinese
population was being narrowed down, by urban renewal projects, to the point that all of Chinatown was made
up of one stretch along Empire Street. Surprise, the white people didn’t really want the Chinese around.
Publication, in Providence, Rhode Island, of Augustine Jones’s BRIEF HISTORY OF PROVIDENCE FRIENDS
SCHOOL, about the Yearly Meeting School of the Religious Society of Friends on top of the hill.
In this year or the following one, the Quaker schoolhouse near Princeton, New Jersey, virtually abandoned and
a ruin, would be torn down. The land on which it stood is now the parking lot of the new school.
August 10, Friday: A message reached the Peking legations that the relief force was on its way.
A team of Harvard College students defeated an invited team of British tennis players in a challenge match at
Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. The victors’ cup was donated by, and therefore named
after, one of the Harvard students, Dwight Filley Davis.
In Providence, Rhode Island at 11AM Milton S. Hershey sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for the round
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sum of $1,000,000. (this bought-out entity would go on to become the Hershey Company of Derry Church,
Pennsylvania, largest chocolate manufacturer in America).
1901
Gypsy moth infestations were discovered in Rhode Island.
William Hannaway relocated the blacksmith operation from the lean-to on the west side of the mill at
Saylesville to a nearby carriage house.
2. Some of the initial problems in the bowl design in Neff and Frame’s unit, causing messy overflows, would be corrected a decade
later by Fred Adee. From this would develop the German-style toilet, in which the shit lies on a ledge at the rear for your inspection,
until it is flushed down a hole at the front, and the French-style toilet, in which this arrangement is inverted, the hole being at the
back. Only in British and American toilets does the shit fall directly into the water. In FEAR OF FLYING, Erica Jong would comment
on this: “German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of
anything.” Slavov Žižek comments that when one visits the lavatory, immediately one is knee-deep in ideology.
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In its beginnings, the Quaker Meeting for Sufferings committee of the New England Yearly Meeting of the
Religious Society of Friends, which had been so named because it was commissioned to care for Friends who
were suffering persecution during the American revolution, had acquired a dominant position within the
society. In 1872, in a belated recognition of the fact that Friends were no longer being persecuted for their
peace testimony, the name of this governing committee had been updated to “Representative Meeting.” At this
point the name was updated again, to “Permanent Board.”
Publication, in Providence, Rhode Island of Augustine Jones’s A SKETCH OF WILLIAM ROTCH, a pamphlet
which contained information relating to the role played by Friends William Rotch and William Rotch, Jr. in
the formation of the Yearly Meeting School of the Religious Society of Friends at the top of the hill.
1902
The Quaker Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island went into debt in order to erect Hawes
Gymnasium at a cost of more than $30,000 (the debt would be eliminated later when a bequest would be
received from Sarah J. Hall).
Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates was offered a cocoa plantation on San Thome (a West African
island) but saw an advertisement on which its workers had been listed as assets, at so much a head, so Cadbury
instead looked to the Gold Coast (Ghana) where the quality of cocoa was at the time perceived as poor.
At the Cadbury facility in England, Men’s and Women’s Suggestions Committees were set up, formalizing a
process that had already begun (in 1893 women had voted in favour of starting work later than 6AM and
working later each day).
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1903
Quakers had in this year, as always, a grand reputation, more or less warranted, for probity and solidity, tending
mildly in the direction of obesity:
It is evident, however, that there was in this year some doubt, among the general public, about allowing these
Quakers of probity and solidity and stick-to-your-ribs substance to educate the next generation of your family.
What sort of weird ideas would your kiddies try to bring home, from a Quaker school? –Would they try to
bring home, for instance, the Quaker Peace Testimony? In this year the Friends Yearly Meeting School of the
New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Providence, Rhode Island under Principal
Augustine Jones (“principal” means that he was pocketing one half of the annual excess income) took out an
advertisement, which it printed among other places in the “Who’s Who,” in which it offered among its many
advantages as a school the fact that although it was admittedly “under the management of the Society of
Friends,” what it was engaged in nevertheless amounted to nothing other than “the most complete preparation
for the best American colleges and universities, and for the highest walks of business or professional life.” One
need not be afraid of the influence of this Friend Moses Brown, since he also helped found Brown University
(and you know that Brown University isn’t weird). You can feel free to send your child to this “unsectarian”
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school, since we can reassure you that in point of fact most of the students are non-Quakers and therefore non-
problematic, and since we can reassure you that in point of fact most of the teachers also are non-Quakers and
therefore non-problematic! Don’t worry, the actual Quakers are in a minority and can be handled. (This actual
advertisement is pictured on a following screen — so that you can judge for yourself whether these
extrapolations from its implicit argument are appropriate or inappropriate.)
In the absence of any policy of racial inclusiveness it goes without saying that this advertisement by Principal
Augustine Jones of the “Friends School” was aimed only at acceptably white matriculants. Despite the
school’s need to attract a wider clientele, and despite Quakerism, any applicant of color would have been
turned away:
Quakers had created schools for free people of African descent
and newly freed African Americans in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries but, well into the twentieth century, they
showed little interest in educating students of color in the
schools they had created for their own children. This
disinclination was, in part, a function of the Quakerism of
earlier centuries when Friends founded schools to retain the
purity and the distinctiveness (or sometimes their own branch)
of their religious society. Quaker children, Friends maintained,
required a “guarded” education where teachers could instill
religious values and limit the influence of the secular culture.
As the Quaker population began to decrease, Friends faced the
choice of opening schools to non-Quaker students or closing for
lack of adequate income. Most schools chose the former, but they
typically admitted the children of parents attracted to the
particular teachings and quality of Quaker education, who –
without concerted efforts to attract a diverse student body–
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were virtually always of European descent.
3. Page 319 in Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s FIT FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR FRIENDSHIP: QUAKERS, AFRICAN
AMERICANS, AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL JUSTICE (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2009).
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July 21, Tuesday: George Thomas Downing died after a long illness in his Bellevue Avenue home in Newport, Rhode
Island (the funeral would be held at the Emmanuel Church on Dearborn Street).
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1904
As the Augustine Jones administration ended and the administration of Dr. Seth Kelley Gifford began at the
Yearly Meeting School of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Providence,
Rhode Island, the Lower School building was constructed at a cost of $20,000 and the school formally changed
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its name to the Moses Brown School. There were 172 students. The overt objective of the new headmaster
would be to convert this old Quaker school into a college-preparatory academy. Here is how this new
administration at the school would be described in Friend Eric Kristensen’s “An Outline of Moses Brown
School’s History,” prepared for the Ad Hoc Subcommittee of the Permanent Board on Financing Moses Brown
School Renovations:
1904-1924: rising academic standards to compete with public high
schools; Upper School (Forms I-V [grades 8-12]) curriculum
reorganized as a college preparatory course, yet with a broad
scope to satisfy those who may not go on to college (more than
90% of students in this period did go on to college); admission
standards become stricter (number of non-college preparatory
students rapidly declines); last herd of School’s farm animals
sold; day student enrollment greatly increased, and a lower
school (grades 1-7) built to accommodate younger students; total
enrollment regularly more than 300 students; number of girls
continues to decline and co-education seen as a problem needing
to be solved; numerous surpluses allowed the school to invest
more than $75,000 in physical plant; playing fields extended,
tennis courts built, trees, shrubs and lawns planted, memorial
gates erected and a fence installed along Lloyd Ave., heating
and lighting systems extended and renovated, and Middle House
remodeled. (page 8)
Here is how Friend Eric Kristensen had described the previous “Augustine Jones Administration” which was
ending:
1879-1904: Music and art invade the school in great profusion.
Student life flourishes with clubs, athletic associations and
teams, and various society forms. Girls and boys mix in classes
and in many extracurricular events. Elizabeth Fry fund
established by Ella J. Wheeler with a gift of $30,000 for
scholarships; Stephen T. Olney bequeaths $43,000 for the
permanent fund of the school; other gifts and bequests by Sarah
Slade, Timothy Earle, Philip Tripp, Eleanor Cattell and others
bring the gift total to more than $90,000 most of which was added
to the permanent endowment. (page 7)
4. The school had been taking out advertisements in which it termed itself “Friends School,” but in these advertisements it attempted
to distance itself from the Friends, pointing out for instance that they were in a minority. Would not changing the school’s name ease
this problem of feeling a need to apologize for the Quaker influence? The suggestion to make this change had originated with
Charles Sisson, a member of the School Committee. The timing of the name change obviously was inspired by the fact that the
College of Rhode Island had changed its name to Brown University exactly one century earlier, in 1804. However, there is
something to be said about this other than the mere timing of it. For some four decades the school had been being administered for
the incentive compensation of its headmaster, who had been putting half of its annual surplus in his own pocket, rather than in
implementation of the intent of its benefactor Friend Moses Brown (that it provided a guarded environment in which a Quaker
education was provided to Quaker students) — and a sorry situation such as that cries out for a cover story. Since we are no longer
honoring our founder in fact, we will honor him nominally!
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June 11, Saturday: 14,000 German troops arrive in South West Africa to deal with the Herero uprising.
Completion of the Rhode Island state capital building of Georgia marble, on Smith Hill in Providence.
The dome of this building is the 2nd largest of four famous unsupported marble domes in the world: largest
the St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican in Rome, then this Rhode Island state capital structure, then the Taj Mahal
— and the Minnesota state capital building in St. Paul, where (incidentally) my spouse took her Oath
of Allegiance to the US of A. The Rhode Island dome atop Smith Hill is tipped by a gilt statue which does not
seem to photograph well by telephoto close-up, known as “The Independent Man”:
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1905
Since there weren’t a thousand or more Quakers anymore in the vicinity of Newport, Rhode Island and the
New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends would not be assembling there anymore,
the Great Meetinghouse, which in 1699 had been the largest structure of any kind in the American colonies
between Boston and New-York, was repurposed as a black entertainment center, hosting segregated dances
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and that sort of thing.
A number of the evangelical opponents of Elbert Russell’s critical Bible teaching at Earlham College were
associated with the Christian Workers’ Training School for Bible Study and Practical Methods of Work (or
Cleveland Friends Bible Institute) that had been founded by Holiness Friends J. Walter Malone and Emma
Brown Malone in March 1892 at the Whosoever Will Mission in a former Free Methodist Church in
Cleveland, Ohio.
Friends had to learn by sad experience that the “Inner Light”
is not an easy substitute for the encyclopedia.
February: Lincoln Steffens’s “Rhode Island: A State for Sale” appeared in McClure’s Magazine:
RHODE ISLAND: A CORRUPTED PEOPLE
SHOWING THAT AMERICAN CITIZENS CAN BE BOUGHT (CHEAP)
TO SELL OUT THEIR CITIES AND STATES
THE political condition of Rhode Island is notorious,
acknowledged, and it is shameful. But the Rhode Islander resents
the interest of his neighbors. “Our evils are our troubles,” he
says; “they don’t concern the rest of you. Why should we be
singled out? We are no worse than others. We are better than
some; we want to set things right, but can’t. Conditions are
peculiar.”
This is all wrong. The evils of Rhode Island concern every man,
woman, and child in our land. For example:
The United States Senate is coming more and more to be the actual
5. This view dates to 1850. Note that when eventually this building would be restored as a Quaker meetinghouse in the service of
the Newport tourist industry and carriage trade, their tourist literature would carefully avoid divulging the factoid, that the white
silent-worship center had seen major service as a jiving black dancehall. Notice also that the repurposing of this meetinghouse as a
dancehall has enabled us, by the deployment of carefully interlocking qualifiers, to claim that our meetinghouse near the Great Road
in Lincoln, Rhode Island, the oldest portion of which was erected after the oldest portion of this Newport meetinghouse was already
standing is the oldest in New England, that has remained in continuous use (the actual oldest in all America in continuous use
being the Great Meetinghouse of the Third Haven Friends in Maryland, which has been in continuous use since shortly after August
14th, 1684).
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head of the United States Government. In the Senate there is a
small ring (called the Steering Committee) which is coming more
and more to be the head of the United States Senate. The head
of this committee is Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, who has been
described as “the boss of the United States,” “the power behind
the power behind the throne,” “the general manager of the United
States.” The fitness of these titles is questioned, but it is a
question of national politics, and all I know to the point in
that field is what everybody knows: that Senator Aldrich, a very
rich man and father-in-law of young Mr. Rockefeller, is supposed
to represent “Sugar,” “Standard Oil,” “New York,” and, more
broadly, “Wall Street”; our leading legislative authority on
protective tariff, he speaks for privileged business; the
chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he stands for high
finance. These facts and suppositions, taken together with the
praises I have heard of him in Wall Street and the comfortable
faith he seems to inspire in business men all over the country,
suggest that we have in Senator Aldrich the commercial ideal of
political character, and —if not the head— at least the
political representative of the head of that System which is
coming more and more to take the place of the passing paper
government of the United States.
What sort of a man is Senator Aldrich? What school of politics
did he attend, what school of business? What kind of a government
is it that forms the traditions and perhaps the ideal of the
most powerful man in our national legislature? What kind of a
government does he give his own people in his own State? In
brief, what is the System that he has produced and that has
produced him? These are questions of national interest, and
Rhode Island can answer them. Mr. Aldrich is the senior Senator
for Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
And Rhode Island throws light on another national question, a
question that is far more important: Aren’t the people
themselves dishonest? The “grafters” who batten on us say so.
Politicians have excused their own corruption to me time and
again by declaring that “we’re all corrupt,” and promoters and
swindlers alike describe their victims as “smart folk who think
to beat us at our own game.” Without going into the cynic’s
sweeping summary that “man always was and always will be
corrupt” it is but fair while we are following the trail of the
grafters to consider their plea that the corrupt political
System they are upbuilding is founded on the dishonesty of the
American people. Is it?
It is in Rhode Island. The System of Rhode Island which has
produced the man who is at the head of the political System of
the United States is grounded on the lowest layer of corruption
that I have found thus far — the bribery of voters with cash at
the polls. Other States know the practice. In Wisconsin,
Missouri, Illinois, and Pennsylvania “workers” are paid “to get
out the vote,” but this is only preliminary; the direct and
decisive purchase of power comes later, in conventions and
legislatures. In these States the corruptionists buy the
people’s representatives. In Rhode Island they buy the people
themselves.
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