1913

__________ 

“All I want is a man who is fit for the place, a man who stands for clean government and progressive policies.” 

Woodrow Wilson

__________ 

 

March 4: Woodrow Wilson’s  Inauguration Day speech is one of the briefest ever. He says, in part:

 

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men’s hearts wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me! (10/265)

 

President Taft tells him, “I’m glad to be going – this is the loneliest place in the world.”  (10/283) 

Wilson would later say that the presidency required “the constitution of an athlete, the patience of a mother, the endurance of the early Christian.” (10/285) 

When filling positions in government, Wilson balked when a subordinate said he would not present anyone’s name who had opposed the candidate during his run for office. Wilson responded, “straight from the shoulder,” as Walworth explains. “It makes no difference whether a man stood for me or not. All I want is a man who is fit for the place, a man who stands for clean government and progressive policies.” (10/280) 

*

Racism was often reflected in textbooks.  

Say what you like about “critical race theory” in 2023. The old textbooks used in U.S. schools often fostered racism in all kinds of ways. Consider this description of the four races of mankind found in World Geography, Part II by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, published in 1913. 

There are, the authors explain, four races.

 

These are (1) the white, or Caucasian people; (2) the black, or Ethiopian races; (3) the yellow, or Mongolian people; For the red men, or American Indians. These groups comprise about one and one half billion people.

 

About one hundred and seventy-five millions of the inhabitants of the earth are negroes, or Ethiopians. This is often called the black race. There are many divisions of this group, but they all have a deep brown or black skin; short black, woolly hair; broad, flat noses; and prominent cheek bones.

 

The original home of the Ethiopians is Africa, south of the Sahara Desert; but many have been carried to other lands as slaves, and have there mingled more or less with other races. The negroes in Africa are still either savages or barbarians of low type; but in many other lands they have advanced to a civilized state.

 

A second great division of the human race is that of the American Indians, often called the red race. It is the smallest of the four groups, and includes only about twenty-two millions. These people resemble the Mongolians in some respects. They were in possession of both North and South America when Columbus discovered the New World, and many of them still live on these continents. The Indians have a copper-colored skin, prominent cheekbones, black eyes, and long, coarse, black hair.

 

The third division, the Mongolian, or yellow race, numbers about five hundred and forty million. They live mainly in Asia, though some, as the Finns, Lapps, and Turks, have migrated to Europe.

 

The Chinese and Japanese are the best example of Mongolians. They have a yellowish skin, or in some cases even a white, skin, prominent cheek bones, small slanting eyes, a small nose, and long, coarse, black hair. The Malays, who live in southern Asia, and in the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans, are a division of the yellow race. Most of the Mongolians are highly civilized, although their kind of civilization is different from that of the white race.

 

The largest and most highly civilized of the four divisions of mankind is the white, or Caucasian race, which numbers about seven hundred and seventy millions. They are also the most widely scattered over the earth. Their original home is not known, but now they are found in great numbers in all the continents.

 

There are two main branches of the Caucasian race: (1) the fair type, with light skin, light brown, flaxen, or red hair, and blue or gray eyes; (2) the dark type, with fair skin, dark brown or black hair, often wavy or curly, and black eyes.

 

The leaders among these four great divisions are the whites. They have learned the use of ships in exploring distant lands, and have spread with great rapidity. They have conquered the weaker peoples and have taken their land from them, so that they now rule nearly the whole world. The only race that has held out against them is the Mongolian.

*

In Victorian times a popular game was “Magic Square,” where given words could be arranged two ways:

 

F O U R

O G R E

U R G E

R E E D

 

Arthur Wynne, an immigrant from Liverpool, working for the New York World, is given the task of devising a new puzzle. He blacks out certain squares and crisscrosses the squares. On December 21, 1913, the first “crossword puzzle: is published.

A tourist enjoys the view on the Maine coast.

 

*

 

James Thurber writes in My Life and Hard Times about his senile grandfather, who believes Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry are on the loose when the 1913 flood hits. “We had to stun grandfather with an ironing board.” He also comments on the sad efforts of an Ohio State football player to get through college, “a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter.”

* 

On the matter of race, writing in 1958, Woodrow Wilson’s biographer, Arthur Walworth is tone-deaf, to say the least. Wilson was a great idealist – an admirable man in most regards – but he failed almost completely in his dealings with African Americans. 

At one point Walworth writes:

 

The Wilsons [the president and Ellen, his wife] respected good colored folk but had little sympathy with aggressive ones. At Princeton they had been unwilling to force the issue of a Negro’s right of admission to the university. It seemed to the President that segregation of the races kept embarrassing problems from arising and he did not comply with repeated pleas from champions of Negro rights whose support he had sought in the election campaign. Urged to appoint a national commission to study problems of race relations, Wilson had explained in the summer of 1913 that such a move would rouse resentment among southerners in Congress and thus put his vital legislative program in jeopardy.

 

Wilson condoned segregation of races in government bureaus as a policy “distinctly to the advantage of the colored people themselves” and one that made them more safe in their possession of office and the less likely to be discriminated against. He was moved by the sentiment that had possessed Ellen Wilson when, stepping by mistake into a Jim Crow railway car, she had sensed a feeling on the part of its colored occupants that their rights had been violated by her intrusion. In reply to protests against segregation that came from [Oswald Garrison] Villard, the grandson of Garrison the abolitionist, the President wrote: “I hope and, I may say, I believe that by the slow pressure of argument and persuasion the situation may be changed and a great many things done eventually which now seem impossible. But they cannot be done, either now or at any future time, if a bitter agitation is inaugurated and carried to its natural ends. I appeal to you most earnestly to aid in holding things at a just and cool equipoise until I can discover whether it is possible to work out anything or not. (10/325)

 

Fifty years later, African Americans would still be fighting for the same rights Wilson failed to advance.