1938

  

Martians invade New Jersey.

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“We shall stand or fall by television – of that I am quite sure.”

 

E. B. White, predicting the future impact of TV on American civilization

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January: Quong Ku Kee, the last Chinese man in Tombstone, Arizona passes away, at age 86 or 87. 

He and his fellow countrymen and women had long faced discrimination. After passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) it was a matter of time before the Asian population in Tombstone and elsewhere withered. 

Meanwhile, distrust directed toward people of Asian descent was common, as reflected even in the following description of the feasts they held for Chinese New Year. One description of “forty courses” offered claimed that they consisted, “partly of Chinese brandy, rat pot pie, bird’s nest soup, roasted puppy dogs with caterpillar sauce, shark tails stewed in India ink, monkey hands fried in marrow, kittens fried in batter plus many other delicacies to make a delightful repast.”

 

The Chinese were first regarded with open suspicion by the people of Tombstone, mainly because of their unusual appearance and cultural traits. The men all wore their hair in a queue or pigtail (a subjugation gesture required by the Manchu government, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911). Of the few women who came, some had bound feet. To the puzzlement of other locals, the Chinese drank boiled water infused with “tree leaves” (tea) as a precaution against illness. They ate with wooden sticks while squatting without a chair to sit upon.

 

White saloon owners, storekeepers, and gamblers bitterly rejected acceptance of the Chinese. The Chinese were included in the Western U.S. census, but in Arizona they were excluded from the state census and not included in the marriage licenses (although they have criminal records). The Whites depended, however, on the work of the Chinese coolies (ku li, meaning hard laborer), who had good work habits and who were willing to do anything for less pay.

 

Since the Chinese were not allowed to become citizens, their rights were severely restricted. They were banned from voting. Nor could they testify in court against white people. 

At one point, Tombstone had at least 300 Chinese residents, perhaps more. Games like White Dove (now known as Keno), Mah Jong, and regular poker served as entertainment in “Hoptown,” as the neighborhood where the Chinese lived was called.

 

Running an “opium smoking joint” resulted in fines of $10 and $23 for Ah Sing (1881) and Gee Wah (1886). In 1905, a doctor reported in a death record that Yee Hing, a “Chinaman” from Tombstone, died from opium poisoning at Cochise County Hospital. Until 1906, opium and laudanum were imported and sold openly in the United States and used as medicine by Whites and other nationalities as well. 

 

With Chinese individuals barred from entering the U.S. for many decades, the Chinese population declined steadily, until the death of Quong Gu Kee, put an end to an era.

 

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February: Roosevelt signs the Agricultural Administration Act, controlling production “through soil conservation payments and acreage allotments.” Growers of five crops: wheat, corn, rice, cotton and tobacco are to receive parity payments. Farmers would receive up to 75% of what they would have made in a base period, 1919-1929 for tobacco, 1909-1914 for the other four crops. “The law likewise provided for crop insurance against natural disasters, export subsidies to stimulate foreign sales, and distribution of surpluses to those on relief.” (1127/45)

 

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June: In a fireside chat, FDR, thwarted in part by members of his own party in the South, warns,

 

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction, if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod…As the head of the Democratic Party, charged with the responsibility of the definitely liberal declaration of principles set forth in the 1936 Democratic platform, I feel that I have every right to speak...where there may be a clear issue between candidates for a Democratic nomination involving these principles.

 

Among those FDR could not forgive: Vice President Garner, who had held his nose in the Senate and gave the thumbs down to the “court-packing” plan. (1127/47) 

Gov. Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, a Democrat, railed against a “nigger loving” New Deal and “that cripple,” Franklin Roosevelt. He bragged openly of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. (1147/48)

 

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Critics of President Roosevelt sneer at what they call his style of “government-by-elocution,” and warn that he will not be able to “grin the country back to prosperity,” as Wolfskill puts it. (1127/180)

 

*

 

Overtime pay becomes law.

 

June 25: Congress approves the Fair Labor Standards Act, but only after the president makes a last-minute appeal to the public. The act provided for a 25 cent per hour minimum wage, to be increased in stages to 40 cents, set the work week at 44 hours, to be reduced to 40 over a three-year span, and provided for time-and-a-half overtime pay. “The law also had the effect of abolishing child labor by forbidding the interstate shipment of goods produced by persons under sixteen years of age.” (1127-45)

Georgia turpentine worker, photo by Dorothea Lange.

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July 1-3: Veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg hold a ceremony to mark the 75^th anniversary of the bloody fight.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: It might be worth discussing with students what those veterans must have thought, having seen combat themselves, having read about the horrors of what was called “The Great War,” now called World War I, and with war possibly looming again. 

In all my conversations with combat veterans, I have never met one who relished the experience of seeing other men (and women) die.

 

 

* 

“I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television – of that I am quite sure.”   E. B. White  (Fred W. Friendly, frontispiece) 

“Too often the machine runs away with itself … instead of keeping pace with the social needs it was created to serve.”  William S. Paley, one of the founders of CBS  (Fred W. Friendly, introduction, xi)

 

*

 

“Miss Lillian.” 

Jimmy Carter’s family finally gets electricity in their home. (Running water had come only three years before. Carter, then 14, will later remember, “The greatest day in my life was not being inaugurated president, it wasn’t even marrying Rosalynn – it was when they turn the electricity on.” 

At that time the Carters are the only white family in tiny Archery, Georgia. Most of the 200 residents were black tenants who worked Earl Carter’s land. Earl, the future president’s father “believed in the black man’s inferiority,” Jimmy’s mother, Lillian later recalled. She did not. According to a recent biography of the 39^th president, by Kai Bird, “Miss Lillian,” as she was known, was the reason their son turned out so different than most white folks of that era. 

In a New York Times book review, we learn: “ She took meals with Black people, defended Abraham Lincoln and in the 1960s, when John Kennedy started the Peace Corps, a program designed for young Americans, Miss Lillian answered the call, going to India for two years at the age of 67.”

 

 

*

 

At the Texas State Fair, two brothers, Neal and Carl Fletcher serve the first official Corny Dogs, hot dogs on sticks, wrapped in fried dough.

  

 

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September 14: Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s prime minister leaves for Germany, to negotiate with Hitler. During the next eighteen days, H.V. Kaltenborn, an American radio commentator, offers up his thoughts. 

Chamberlain, he says, “is risking his prestige, risking his position, risking almost everything upon this journey.”

 

The Czechoslovak delegate from Geneva said today: “Do we go on the butcher’s block or have we found a champion who is going forth to battle?” Translated into other terms, that delegate is asking this: Must we Czechs give up to Germany our only dependable frontier, our richest industrial area and our right to exist as an independent nation?

 

I am convinced that Chamberlain will not go away empty-handed. He is bound to get something. The Prime Minister of Britain who would visit the leader of Germany won’t return completely empty-handed. Chamberlain is skillful enough, and the two men with him are sufficiently skillful in diplomacy, to bring back something. But my own feeling is that it will be little more than a truce. There is grave doubt as to whether or not the visit will bring peace. (1129-/39)

 

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September 30: When Prime Minister Chamberlain returns from his trip, he predicts with what we now know was too much confidence that the agreement he and the German leader have reached will mean, “Peace in our time.”

 

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October 30: Orson Welles, 23, presents “Invasion from Mars,” as a radio play, including fake news bulletins, announcing that Martians with death rays were devastating areas of New Jersey. Many listeners panicked.

 

In New Jersey, families tied wet cloths over their faces to escape “gas attacks,” piled into their cars and clogged traffic for miles. A woman in Pittsburgh, screaming “I’d rather die this way,” was barely prevented from taking poison. At the end of the show, most listeners were apparently too frightened to hear Welles, chuckling, sign off by saying, “If your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian… it’s Halloween.

 

Belatedly realizing the commotion that the show had caused, CBS peppered the airwaves with reassurances that the play had been a spoof. But it took days before the last vestiges of terror disappeared. (1129/35)