Posted by Marc Hodak on December 15, 2007 under History | 
You will hardly find anything about F. Joseph Giessler in or out of the blogosphere, so I’ll provide this landing point on Google.
Joe grew up in northeastern Ohio, I believe it was on a farm near Akron, during the Depression and war. He went to Case University (now Case Western Reserve) to study engineering, where he graduated at the very top of his class. There he met his wife, JoAnne. After a stint in the military, they settled in Dayton, near her family and the Wright-Patterson air base that would directly or indirectly employ his considerable engineering talents for most of his working life.
The first time I met Joe was in 1986, at a lunch in Philadelphia that his daughter had somewhat anxiously arranged for me to meet her parents. We got along well from the start. Joe and JoAnne became wonderful in-laws and grandparents to our children. Although their daughter and I split when the kids were still infants, I continued to get cards or presents from her parents every birthday and Christmas to this day. On one of my birthdays when I happened to be in Cincinnati on business, they drove down from Dayton to take me out to dinner. We always appreciated our time together. Even after being forced to retire due to rapidly deteriorating vision, Joe never lost his optimism and willingness to explore new things. He even took up ballroom dancing.
The fact that my older son is now studying to become a ‘third-generation’ engineer derives from a lineage through me from Joe, and likely reflects a greater respect for the latter. I always had a unique regard for Joe in a similar way that I do for engineers in general. Most other disciplines–literature, philosophy, economics–invariably devolve into myriad conceptions of what mankind could be, resulting in a normative push on society toward some distant ideal. Engineers solve problems. They pull society up one measured step at a time. That’s what Joe was like–in his work, with his family, and with everyone else privileged to gain his friendship. The world is several steps improved by him.
Joe passed away at age 75 last week. Even in his brief, but vicious illness, he retained that uniquely Midwestern mixture of sobriety and humor, while clearly and courageously communicating his sense that his love for his family, at least, was undying.
Posted by Marc Hodak on December 13, 2007 under History |
Anna Mary Robertson was born on a small farm in rural New York in September of 1860. As soon as she was able to work, she hired herself out to help older couples in their homes. At the ripe age of 27, she married a farmer named Thomas Moses. They moved south, settling in Virginia on a 600 acre farm doing mostly dairy chores.
“Here our ten children were born, and there I left five little graves in that beautiful Shenandoah valley, coming (back) to New York state Dec. 15, 1905, with our five children to educate and put on their own footing.”
They bought a dairy farm, and raised their family. Twenty-two years later, with the oldest children having since struck out on their own, her husband died, and their youngest son and his wife took over the farm.
“Leaving me unoccupied, I had to do something, so took up painting pictures in worsted, then in oil…”
Anna Mary was 76 when she began to paint. By the time she passed away on this day in 1961, at the age of 101, she was one of America’s most famous artists, known around the world as Grandma Moses.
Read more of this article »
Posted by Marc Hodak on November 25, 2007 under History |
On this day in 1867, Alfred Nobel patented dynamite–a stable compound of nitroglycerine and silica that could be remotely detonated with a blasting cap. We could now literally move mountains.
Thirty years later, Nobel’s will was executed with a 31 million kronor (about $5 million at the time) endowment for the prizes for which he is now best remembered. Whether or not he created a “Peace” prize out of a sense of guilt, as some historians contend, I highly doubt. But there is no doubt that his invention made both large-scale construction and large-scale killing much easier, and he was acutely aware of the implications of the latter for his legacy.
If Nobel’s impact on the world is considered by some (not me) ambiguous, the value of his Peace prize is (at least, I think) far more so. Here is an excellent primer on what it takes to win one.
Posted by Marc Hodak on November 22, 2007 under History |
The first Thanksgiving story, as they teach it in school:
Our national holiday really stems from the feast held in the autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to celebrate the colony’s first successful harvest.
The Pilgrims would not have survived at Plimouth without the help of the native Wampanoag people and their leader Massasoit. So it was fitting that they joined the Pilgrim’s feast. Massasoit sent several men to hunt deer as a gift to the English for their feast.
And this entry from Wikipedia:
The early settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts were particularly grateful to Squanto, the Native American and former British slave who taught them how to both catch eel and grow corn and also served as their native interpreter. Without Squanto’s assistance, the settlers might not have survived in the New World.
This story sounds so nice, full of cooperation, success, and good food.
Here’s the Thanksgiving story you might have missed:
Read more of this article »
Posted by Marc Hodak on October 8, 2007 under History |
Yesterday’s WSJ has a story about Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann. Dann is nurturing a reputation as a “bad cop” in enforcement against certain business practices. He says:
My job is to be the bad cop, and I’m comfortable with that role because I believe a terrible crime has been committed.
The “crime” he’s referring to is the chance that banks took on turning low-income folks into homeowners, what Dann calls “the largest financial scam in American history.”
Sure, that didn’t work out perfectly, but Santayana’s famous quote works well, here. About 130 years ago, Ohio attorneys general began a crusade against Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Ohioans of the day viewed Standard’s products as superior in quality as well as lower in price. They saw Rockefeller as a local Clevelander who did well, a rags-to-riches story to inspire youths everywhere, and a boon to their state’s move to compete with Pennsylvania and New York as a major industrial and financial center. Ohio’s political and media elite had other ideas.
Euclid Avenue, 1912
Ohio’s politicians began what can only be called an obsessive campaign against Standard Oil. Ohio tax authorities began the relentless pursuit of Standard, and Rockefeller personally, for highly questionable tax liabilities. In 1890, Ohio’s attorney general, successfully went after Standard’s charter, forcing the trust to temporarily dissociate. These attacks propelled the careers of these prosecutors, and sold a lot of newspapers based on the narrative of the “tough” public servant pursuing a big business “unaccountable to the people.”
Rockefeller eventually, and with a heavy heart, moved his family and his headquarters east to escape the persecution. Standard’s mammoth financial and business activities followed him to New York. The oil refining industry shifted to what would become the “Chemical Coast” of New Jersey. Despite the fact that Cleveland is where the mighty New York Central, Erie, and Pennsylvania railroads converged on a fine harbor, Cleveland lost its industrial anchor, and the transportation hub of the U.S. would migrate west to Chicago.
Euclid Avenue, 2006
Today, when a New Yorker or Philadelphian wanders the streets of Cleveland, it seems like a city that has been largely bypassed by the 20th century. While other cities went through ups and downs with the economy, from the late 1800s Cleveland only went down. Unlike Philadelphia, Chicago or Pittsburgh, Cleveland never bounced back from the depression. Most businesses along what was once a thriving Euclid Avenue remain shuttered to this day. No major business calls Cleveland its home.
The destruction of Cleveland’s hopes of becoming a major city on par with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Chicago was not an economically driven loss. It was a politically driven forfeit.
So, Ohio’s current attorney general comes from a distinguished line of “tough” guys going after “criminal” business interests.
At least the Indians are still in the pennant race.
Posted by Marc Hodak on September 17, 2007 under History |
Today in 1787, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia put their names to their new creation. The Constitution was a remarkable document in several ways. First, it’s short. At 5,000 words, it may be the shortest national constitution ever written. Our Founding Fathers understood the virtue of keeping it simple. People have to understand the rules if they are to accept them, let alone abide by them.
In contrast, the proposed E.U. constitution was about 150,000 words. Few understood it what it actually said. Its length and jargon was an insult to a free and educated people. It went down in flames. I’d like to think that the example of our short, relatively transparent document was partly responsible for that.
Much of our Constitution’s power came from its support by a literate, propertied class upholding a heritage of personal and economic freedom. If it had been drafted outside of this context of the highly evolved social institutions it sought to support, the Constitution would have likely have ended up as merely 5,000 words on a piece of paper. Consider this cheap imitation:
The Constitution guarantees all Frenchmen equality, liberty, security, property, public debt, freedom of worship, public schooling, public relief, unrestricted freedom of the press, the right to assemble in groups, and the enjoyment of all the rights of man.
But it’s difficult to take these words seriously as they were written at the onset of the Reign of Terror, where the state proceeded to murder 40,000 Frenchmen for things as simple as hoarding food or not showing enough revolutionary ardor in trials that could only yield verdicts of acquittal or death.
Or consider this phrase from another constitution:
In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: 1. freedom of speech; 2. freedom of the press; 3. freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; 4. freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
The only people who believed these words meant anything were certain naive Americans like Franklin Roosevelt, who very well may not have known that Uncle Joe was murdering tens of millions of his own people at the time even as he wrote those words.
Of course, the greatest thing about our constitution is that, despite its flaws and its reliance on highly imperfect people and institutions, it works. In the end, it delivers a government that is pretty much what the people want.
Posted by Marc Hodak on July 11, 2007 under History |
My dad was the first to call this morning to wish me a happy birthday. I figured he was the first person to wish me that when I came into the world, but he reminded me that things were different then. The father typically paced the waiting room until a doctor came out to announce, “Congratulations, it’s a boy.” After a while, the dad would be taken to a window behind which were an array of newborns that all looked much less like him than his bald, crotchety Uncle Saul. My case was complicated, my dad told me, by the fact that the doctors found the umbilical cord around my neck, and had to cut my mom to get me out which, at that time, was still a serious operation.
In contrast, when my big guy was born on this same day 18 years ago, I was in the operating room to see him emerge. (Like me, a generation earlier, he decided he wouldn’t leave his mother without a scar for her trouble.) So, like every year since, we wished each other a happy birthday.
Actually, it’s birthday week. My best friend was also born this day, and my wife on Monday. I took her out then, and she’s taking me out tonight. Neither of us is that into growing older, but I always remind her that it’s better than the alternative.
Which reminds me of the lady who brought me into the world. She was a 22 year old girl when the doctors cut her. Year’s afterward, she often showed me her scar to remind me of the day I started causing her trouble–probably the weakest attempt at Jewish mother guilt I’ve ever seen. No doubt, the biggest trouble I caused her–also no fault of mine–was my near death due to illness just a few months after I was born. The doctors plainly told my parents that my survival was a miracle. My dad, who was hunted by Nazis as a child in France, probably took it as just another bit of good luck in an outrageously lucky life, but event clearly traumatized my mom. I believe it contributed to her unadulterated sincerity every time she wished me happy birthday thereafter. I’ve missed her calls very much these last few years.
Posted by Marc Hodak on July 4, 2007 under History |
How many people know what the Declaration of Independence actually says? My son, who just got back from a course at FEE (he loved it) read it yesterday because he figured it was probably worth knowing first hand.
Much of what we know about the drafting of the Declaration comes from John Adams. Adams had agitated for a formal declaration. He pushed through the formation of a subcommittee to write it and the quiet, young Jefferson as a member of that subcommittee. Here is his famous recollection of the argument with Jefferson over who should draft it.
The subcommittee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft.
I said, ‘I will not,’ ‘You should do it.’
‘Oh! no.’ ‘Why will you not? You ought to do it.’
‘I will not.’
‘Why?’
‘Reasons enough.’
‘What can be your reasons?’
‘Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.’
‘Well,’ said Jefferson, ‘if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.’
Most schoolchildren, who these days are often told that Jefferson was just another white slaveholder, don’t know that some of the most impassioned rhetoric in his original draft included an invective against “negro slavery.” Jefferson was bitterly disappointed (though not surprised) that this passage was struck by the South Carolina and Georgia delegates.
The Declaration ends with the famous pledge by the signers of “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor,” but few people understand how dangerous the Declaration really was for it’s signers. Up until July of 1776, members of the Continental Congress could hold out some hope for a negotiated settlement with the Crown, whereby they might get the King to see the errors of his ministers in provoking the colonies, and perhaps be spared from hanging for treason. The colonies were in a state of rebellion for over a year by then. The Continental forces had lost every battle thus far, and was steadily approaching desperation.
Against this backdrop, the Declaration was drafted and passed, personally calling the King a “tyrant” and completely severing the bond to England. This was the point of no return. To every practical person alive that day, each signer of the Declaration had basically signed his death warrant. It wasn’t until the following Christmas eve that there arose the first glimmer of hope among the colonists to be free of the Crown, and among the signers of living to an old age, when General Washington would win his first battle in his surprise attack on Trenton after crossing the Delaware.
The Declaration was originally passed on July 2nd when most delegates were in a rush to get out of Philadelphia. John Adams sent a letter to his wife the next morning predicting the celebrations that continue to this day, kind of:
The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
As it turns out, the Congress debated a few more changes in the final draft on July 3rd and 4th before finally approving the document. Thus history fixed the date joining Adams and Jefferson in history forever as the 4th of July. Adams and Jefferson both died on July, 4, 1826.
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 27, 2007 under History |
On this day in 1893, the price of silver lost 15 percent of its value. This collapse triggered a panic that would eventually engulf over 600 banks and 15,000 businesses in bankruptcy, and lead to fifteen percent unemployment for the next several years.
What would cause such a drop in silver? How could a drop in one commodity have such a devastating effect? Just a few years earlier, the country was on a gold standard, which meant that the government had to keep gold reserves against which federal certificates could be redeemed. Since federal certificates were the basis for credit throughout the banking system, the gold standard, had the effect of keeping a lid on commodity prices and restricting the amount of credit that banks could issue. The resulting price stability and sound banking practices were beneficial to the East Coast money centers, but put a crimp on farmers and miners (i.e., commodity producers) who were subject to the tender mercies of fluctuating demand and (for the farmers) uncertain supply. This created the feeling among the western and southern population that the gold standard was mainly for the benefit of the urban bankers in the Northeast. Populist politicians fanned this suspicion, and in 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which required the government buy 4.5 million ounces of silver per month, a dramatic increase from its earlier pattern of purchases.
This Act had several effects that would set the economy up for the Panic of 1893 and ensuing depression, including:
Read more of this article »
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 12, 2007 under History |
Light blogging this last week because I’ve been in Switzerland. We’ve basically driven across the country, from Geneva to St. Gallen. The proximate reasons for this trip were a lecture I gave at the University of St. Gallen and our annual meeting with my partners in Lucerne.
Our Swiss partner took us on a boat ride on beautiful Lake Lucerne today to the place where Switzerland was born. He pointed out the area where the William Tell legend occured. William Tell is a Swiss hero on the order of Paul Revere or Patrick Henry in the U.S. After hearing our host retell Tell’s story, I cheekily asked him, “So, how much of that story do you think is true?” He said, “Of course it’s true,” with the kind of smile that belied his assertion. I suggested that it was probably as true as our Paul Revere story.
Questioning legends is a much less popular pastime than propogating them. It almost seems unpatriotic to embrace the truth, suggesting that the first casualty of war never really recovers. Nevertheless, questioning the legends a significant part of my upcoming series on the History of Scandal, starting with the Enron Story. (I didn’t intend to segue that harshly into self-promotion. Really.)
