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Rhode Island PDF

364 Pages·2013·10.58 MB·English
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1 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 2 become the norm of the nation. GOD IN THE JAKES WATER SUPPLY 1. “Recent” meaning in the course of this extended 20th Century. HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 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 00 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. 5208 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 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). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5209 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 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” 5210 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 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– 3 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). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5211 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 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). 5212 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 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 4 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! “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5213 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 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”: 5214 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 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 5 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). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5215 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 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. 5216 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.