A Humorous Account of America's Past: 1898 to 1945

Preface

IN MY FIRST VOLUME OF A Humorous Account of America’s Past, I led the reader on a sometimes humorous – and more often serious – trek through the trials and tribulations and joys and victories of America’s history from 986 A.D. to 1898. I can’t speak for the few souls who read my book, but I can truthfully say that I enjoyed the experience of researching and writing it so much that I’ve produced a second volume – A Humorous Account of America’s Past: 1898 to 1945. This second volume, far more brief in terms of the time-span covered (as America has grown, so has the complexity of her history) than its earlier cousin, has been a delightful exercise in playing history god: deciding who/what not to include. For one who loves his country’s history as I do, playing the god of exclusion was not an easy task. But it was certainly necessary if only to save our forests from extinction. Fewer heroes, villains, and events saved on paper and the cost of my book. Besides, who wants to read more than six hundred pages of relatively small print?

As with my first volume, I firmly believe that history is not a subject that should be made fun of; history should be a life-long interest we choose to have fun with. If we do not enjoy learning about our past and forming rational conclusions about important events and people, how can we as Americans, and as citizens, avoid repeating past mistakes? For example, what can we learn from the arguments of the imperialists and the anti-imperialists in 1898 that may apply to American foreign policy today? What, in your opinion, worked, and what failed, during Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal? During Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom? How did T.R. and Wilson influence F.D.R.’s New Deal? What mistakes – American and European – following World War I helped to create World War II? Is Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism still radical today?

Again, as in my first volume, I have purposely picked topics I am especially fond of, or find worrisome, and have left the rest of America’s past for others to pontificate about. And again, it was not an easy task to play the history god of exclusion, but it was nevertheless necessary if only to reduce boredom, fatigue, and the consumption of trees. While I have attempted to be fair and balanced in my coverage of events, I have consciously avoided being politically correct whenever possible. Being politically correct is like always having to say you’re sorry.

One of the possible advantages of my second volume over my first is simply the fact that its topics, heroes, and villains are more recent and modern in nature – more familiar. Who doesn’t still love reading about life during America’s Roaring Twenties? Or about 1930’s desperadoes like John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde? Or about Hitler during his bouts of carpet-eating? Or how Bonito Mussolini influenced F.D.R.’s New Deal and was once Time’s Man of the Year. Or about how Eleanor Roosevelt earned more money than her husband while he was President of the United States? History can be a hoot! Let it be.

A HUMOROUS ACCOUNT

OF AMERICA’S PAST

Part I

The Progressive Movement: 1898 to 1920

Chapter I

1898

I. AMERICA GAINS AN EMPIRE

1898 WAS A TRANSITIONAL YEAR in American history. Like 1776 (the American Revolution), 1804 (the Louisiana Purchase), 1828 (the Jacksonian Revolution), 1846 (the Mexican War), and 1860 (the Civil War), 1898 (the Spanish-American War) changed America forever. In early April 1898, America’s forty-five states stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, completing her Manifest Destiny to span the North American Continent from sea to shining sea. Her territories included Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, and a Protectorate in the Samoan Islands. During the brief span of four months – between May 1st and August 14th, 1898 – America annexed Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Spain’s islands in the West Indies, and occupied Cuba and the Philippines. The Philippines alone were comprised of over seventy-one thousand islands with nearly one hundred and sixteen thousand square miles of land and approximately fourteen thousand miles of coastline. Within four brief months, the United States of America had become an empire. How did this happen? Secretary of State John Hay once wrote that it was because of that splendid little war.

II. THE SPLENDID LITTLE WAR

As discussed in detail in the author’s book A Humorous Account of America’s Past: 986 to 1898, the splendid little war, a.k.a. the Spanish-America War, was the most popular war in American history. As historians Will and Ariel Durant once wrote, War is a nation’s way of eating.[1] During the spring and summer of 1898, the United States of America devoured Spain’s colonial empire as a result of America’s attempt to liberate Cuba. Commodore George Dewey and his men feasted first before they sank Spain’s entire Pacific fleet in a surprise attack at the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1st. Dewey’s one-sided victory over the Spanish navy at a total American casualty count of zero dead, eight slightly wounded gave the American public – already insensed over the atrocities committed by the Spanish army against unarmed women and children in Cuba – a hearty appetite for more meals to come. They soon got their opportunity when Commodore Winfield S. Schley caught Spain’s Cuban fleet attempting to escape off the coast of Santiago, Cuba, on July 3rd. The poor Spanish were roasted alive by Schley’s brave and proficient gunners. After just two meals, Spain’s Pacific and Cuban navies ceased to exist. The American navy had performed magnificently.

Unfortunately for the American public’s dinner table discussions, America’s invasion force – the Fifth Army Corps – soon proved to be far less efficient than the United States Navy at devouring the enemy. America’s Fifth Army Corps was brave, enthusiastic, and boastful, but amateurish. At the beginning of the Spanish-American War, Spain had nearly two hundred thousand troops in Cuba alone; in January 1898, the entire American army was one-fourth that size, spread out over the continental United States and Alaska. Oops! It took the first two months of the war – May and June – to recruit, outfit, and train the make-shift force necessary for the invasion of Cuba and the conquest of the awaiting Spanish army.

The American army’s role in the Spanish-American War proved to be anything but a picnic in the park. America’s regular army had years of experience in Indian fighting and industrial strike-breaking on American soil, but no experience in amphibious invasions of a foreign country.[2] To further complicate matters, the War Department was headed by a well-intentioned but incompetent, peacetime political appointee named Russell A. Alger. And the Fifth Army Corps was placed under the command of General William Shafter, a three-hundred pound former desk jockey. While comparable in girth to President Lincoln’s elderly first Chief of Staff, General Shafter was no Winfield Scott. Within five months of the war’s beginning, an angry President McKinley established the Dodge Commission to investigate the army’s conduct of the war. Meanwhile, America’s troops were forced to endure training in the hot Florida sun and then summer combat in Cuba while wearing dark-blue woolen winter uniforms. Their rifles, when finally issued, were mostly obsolete, old-fashioned Springfields. And, while the summer-khaki-clad Spanish utilized modern, smokeless ammunition, the Americans were stuck with old-fashioned frontier-style powder ammo that gave off huge clouds of white smoke every time they fired at the enemy, revealing their positions. Even America’s most famous warriors of the war, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, had to run up San Juan Hill in the face of enemy fire because the army forgot to arrange with the navy for transportation for their cavalry horses from Tampa to Cuba. But some tactical genius did arrange for observation balloons to fly directly above the American troops as they advanced along narrow trails through dense, concealing jungles, thus telegraphing their positions on the ground to the awaiting Spanish riflemen. For the American soldiers who survived the stupidity and continued to bravely fight, the Spanish-American War was no picnic.

In spite of all of the above screw-ups, plus the ill-effects of feeding America’s troops embalmed beef, and the fact that American soldiers were thirteen times more likely to die of tropical diseases than Spanish bullets, the Fifth Army Corps won the land battle for Cuba in two months! And America became a major world power. The United States was about to face the dawn of the 20th Century as both a republic and an empire.

III. AMERICA’S NEW ROLE IN THE WORLD

The 19th Century was Great Britain’s century. It was often said that The sun never sets on the British Empire. In 1898, that statement was certainly true. Great Britain was the most powerful nation in the world. Great Britain’s Union Jack flew over the British West Indies, including the islands of Barbados, Bermuda, and Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, India, Ceylon, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, South Africa, Southwest Africa, Togo, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria. And her loyal Dominions included Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Empire indeed!

During the Spanish-American War, Great Britain, so often an enemy during the early years of the American republic, was the only European power to informally side with the United Stated in its dispute with Spain over the liberation of Cuba. It was in Great Britain’s best interest to do so. Why? Given her vast, world-wide empire, a happy, pro-British America, by following the Monroe Doctrine and maintaining the status quo in the Caribbean, would allow the British to reassign their West Indies fleet to more troublesome waters elsewhere. The presence of a friendly American navy in the Caribbean was enough to ensure the security of Britain’s island possessions in the region without assigning large numbers of English sailors and ships to protect them. It was in Britain’s best interest to encourage a friendly America to dominate the Western Hemisphere while the Union Jack controlled the world’s oceans. And the McKinley administration was happy to oblige.

In 1898, America, as a result of the splendid little war, had become a player among the colonizing powers of the world, including, of course, Great Britain, and also France and Germany in Europe, and soon, the Asian upstart, Japan. Unlike Britain, Germany, France, and Japan, however, America never felt fully comfortable in its new role as an imperial power. Cuba had already been promised its independence once order on that large island had been restored. But the unanticipated possession of the Philippines (Dewey sank Spain’s Pacific Fleet at Manila Bay primarily so the Spanish would be unable to come to the aid of their army in Cuba) rapidly caused two opposing camps to arise in the United States due to America’s destiny with empire: The imperialists and the anti-imperialists.

The Spanish-American War produced an empire for America. But many Americans, for a wide variety of reasons – some laudable, others objectionable – were less than delighted with the prospects of empire. After all, America had stumbled into the Spanish-American War in an idealistic attempt to rescue a rebellious Cuba from a repressive Spain. Cuba had been rescued and would soon be self-governing according to plan. While the acquisition of Guam and the Hawaiian Islands as an accidental consequence of the war had not been anticipated by the American public, the fact seemed perfectly acceptable, especially in light of their past associations with the United States and their strategic locations in the Pacific. Even the acquisition of Spain’s tiny islands in the West Indies and Spain’s former colony of Puerto Rico caused little concern. But the vast archipelago of the Philippines? Should we keep the Philippines? Some anti-imperialists claimed that it was a sin against God to subjugate those whom you have just freed. Others claimed that these natives, many of whom had fought the Spanish for independence, were incapable of self-rule and would pose more problems than they were worth. Racists claimed that an American empire of Black and Brown, non-Anglo-Saxons would pollute America’s racial-stock and ultimately sap its strength. And some historians warned that Rome’s Republic declined AFTER it became an empire.

American imperialists favored keeping the Philippines. Ironically, many of them had been among the few Americans – primarily Wall Street financiers and business leaders – who had expressed mild opposition to America’s entry into the war in early April 1898, fearing that a war for Cuban independence would cause staggering losses in investments and property damage in Cuba so common as a result of war. Suddenly, the splendid little war had expanded America’s horizon half-way around the world, and Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines would provide American trade and commerce valuable bridges to Asia. Columbus had sought the same thing in 1492. In a matter of weeks, America’s military – and especially her navy – had made Columbus’ dream a bankable reality. Simply put, acquisition of the Philippines was good for American business. Some imperialists claimed that it was a sin against God if America chose not to take every advantage of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Philippines and Asia. Others, for more racist reasons, expressed their desire to accept Rudyard Kipling’s famous doctrine of the White Man’s Burden. As members of the superior race, it was America’s duty to civilize the inferior Filipinos.

It was with these conflicting conceptions of what was right for the Philippines that President McKinley struggled for several weeks. Finally, McKinley concluded that it was in America’s national interest to protect the Philippines from being acquired by Britain, France, or Germany – America’s commercial rivals in Asia. A vulnerable, independent Philippines would ultimately harm America’s national interest and be bad for business. McKinley therefore sided with the imperialists and the Philippines remained an American possession for their protection, and for America’s national security. Under William McKinley’s leadership, the United States of America was about to face the dawn of the 20th Century as both a republic and an empire.

IV. DOMESTIC POLITICS

In the Election of 1896, William McKinley, Republican from Ohio, defeated William Jennings Bryan, Democrat from Nebraska, for the Presidency of the United States. The Battle of the Standards -- gold vs. SILVER and gold – was the most hotly contested Presidential election since Lincoln’s first in 1860. William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech (which won him the Democratic nomination) is, to this day, one of the most famous speeches in American history. Bryan, The Boy Orator of the Platte, traveled the entire country by train extolling the virtues of a national currency backed by silver (as well as gold) in America’s first whistle-stop campaign. McKinley, the more conservative of the two, countered with a well-orchestrated front-porch campaign from his home in Canton, Ohio, while his party flooded the nation with campaign pamphlets – many in German, Italian, and Chinese (especially in California) – lauding the virtues of McKinley and the Full Dinner Pail! McKinley won.

In 1898, William McKinley was serving his second year as America’s twenty-fifth President. Garret A. Hobart, a former corporate lawyer from New Jersey, served as Vice President. Both houses of Congress were controlled by the Republicans, with Thomas B. (Czar) Reed serving as Speaker of the House. And the Chief Justice of the United States in 1898 was Melville W. Fuller of Illinois.

In 1898, the nation’s population was sixty-two million. The largest state in the Union, according to the U.S. Census of 1890, was New York, with 6,003,174. Pennsylvania was second with 5,258,113. Illinois was third with 3,826,352. Ohio was a close fourth with 3,672,320. And Missouri was fifth with 2,679,185. These five states (of a total of forty-five), held nearly thirty-five percent of the nation’s population and electoral votes. In 1898, according to the most recent census, Texas had a mere 2,235,527 people, and California – today’s most populace state – had only 1,213,398, or less than one-third the population of the City of Los Angeles in the year 2000. Nevada – including Reno and Las Vegas – had a total of 47,355 people.

In 1898, according to the census of 1890, America’s foreign-born population was 9,249,560, of whom 2,784,894 had been born in Germany (thirty percent of the total foreign-born). 1,871,509 of America’s foreign-born had come from Ireland (twenty percent). Taken together, these two groups – the Germans and the Irish – constituted one-half of all America’s immigrant population in 1898. For many politicians, the Irish of Boston and New York City, and the Germans of Pennsylvania, Chicago, and the mid-west, were crucial to winning public office. And for most foreign-born Germans and Irishmen, many American-born cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, wives and husbands, and sons and daughters could be found. While America was indeed a melting pot in 1898, half of those immigrants who were melting into Americans were from Germany or Ireland. And most lived in the northeast or the mid-west, prime targets for any national candidate.

While immigration from England had diminished since pre-Civil War days, the English still ranked third in the number of foreign-born residents in America (909,092, or ten percent), and those born in Sweden came in fourth at five percent (478,041). According to the 1890 census, only 206,648 persons living in America (a little over one percent of all immigrants) identified their country of birth as Southern European, including a total of 182,580 from Italy. As late as 1898, the vast majority of immigrants living in the United States of America had been born in Northwestern or Northeastern Europe. However, because of changing social, economic, and political conditions in Europe during the late 19th Century – improving conditions in Northern Europe and deteriorating conditions in the South and Southeast – the visages and demeanors of fresh-off-the-boat immigrants was rapidly changing. Many Americans – even those of foreign birth – thought these new changes in the home origins of America’s immigrants presented a growing threat to America’s culture and the nation’s "racial stock." And politicians took notice. Some politicians even claimed that the new immigrants from Southern Europe looked shabby, talked funny, and smelled awful. Were they to be trusted? Other politicians and their organizations, especially in America’s main port of entry, New York City with its famous Ellis Island, saw these new immigrants as potential political surrogates to take the place of past waves of immigrants who had passed them by on their way up America’s socio-economic ladder. In essence, establishments such as Tammany Hall found in these newly arriving Southern Europeans – including the Italians – new instruments of manipulation for retaining their political power: Kindness and favors for votes!

Meanwhile, in the South, the Southern way of life had survived Reconstruction, and segregation was being fully implemented, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).[3] Plessy v. Ferguson made separate but equal public facilities legal. By 1898, especially in the South, one would find a plethora of segregated public schools (supposedly "separate but equal"), trains, buses, drinking fountains, parks, pools, and lunch counters. One could even find separate entrances to city halls and courthouses marked Whites and Colored. 1898 witnessed the rise of the Jim Crow South. The South of 1898 had truly become segregated. And in many places posted signs declared Colored Not Welcome. The South had also become the solid, Democratic South. Republicans were also not welcome.

V. IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1898

On the international scene, Great Britain and its many colonies and Dominions were just recovering from the many lavish celebrations regarding Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee of 1897, marking her fiftieth year in power over the British Empire, upon whom the sun never sat. The pomp and circumstance continued for the still-healthy Victoria during 1898, the year in which her loyal subject, Sir William Ramsay, discovered the inert atmospheric gases xenon, krypton, and neon, and another Brit, H.G. Wells, first published his The War of the Worlds. In France, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium. Half a world away, in Japan, the bacteriologist Shiga discovered the dysentery bacillus. In Germany, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin built his first airship while his fellow German, Prince Otto von Bismarck, lay dying at his country estate near Hamburg. Bismarck, the former Iron Chancellor of Germany, who, through cautious use of well-planned force and diplomacy, defeated France, unified Germany, and established a modest-sized overseas empire during decades of careful planning, was less than amused when he learned on his death-bed of America’s many overwhelming victories over Spain in a matter of days. The old chancellor was heard to say, Providence has a special place for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America.

In America, 1898 witnessed many important events, most war-related, including:

• February 9th – The publication of the De Lôme Letter by William Randolph Hearst in his New York Journal. De Lôme was Spain’s Minister to the United States. His private letter to Spanish officials in Cuba was stolen by Cuban rebels from the Havana post office and was submitted to Hearst for publication in his newspaper to garner American support for Cuba’s revolution against Spain. De Lôme’s letter was highly critical of President McKinley, and requested help from Cuban officials to lobby Congress on Spain’s behalf. Its publication caused a national scandal and De Lôme’s prompt resignation.

• February 15th -- Newspaper headlines across the nation reported the mysterious explosion and sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine, peacefully anchored in Havana harbor. All two hundred and sixty-six American seamen were killed. Many headlines soon screamed, "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!"

• March 9th – The United States Congress appropriated fifty million dollars for national defense.

• April 19th -- The United States Congress declared that America had no intention of annexing Cuba, but would assist the Cubans, if necessary, in their fight for independence from Spain if Spain refused to grant Cuba her independence.

• April 21st – President McKinley ordered the United States Navy to blockade Cuba.

• April 22nd – Congress passed the Volunteer Army Act, authorizing the First Volunteer Cavalry, later known as the Rough Riders.

• April 25th – In response to Spain’s declaration of war against the United States on April 23rd, Congress declared war against Spain, officially starting the Spanish-American War.

• May 1st – Commodore George Dewey destroyed Spain’s Pacific Fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay.

• June 10th – Congress passed the War Revenue Act, which raised taxes on beer, tobacco, amusements, and a variety of business transactions.

• June 12th, 13th and 14th – The seventeen thousand fighting men of the Fifth Army Corps, under the command of General William Shaftner, left Florida for Cuba.

• June 21st – American naval forces seized the Spanish island of Guam in the Pacific and claimed it as U.S. territory.

• June 24th – American infantry defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Las Guasimas in Cuba.

• July 1st – U.S. infantry, aided by Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, captured San Juan Hill in Cuba.

• July 3rd – American naval forces destroyed Spain’s Cuban Fleet off the coast of Santiago, Cuba.

• July 7th – President McKinley signed a Congressional resolution to annex the Hawaiian Islands.

• July 17th – Twenty-four thousand Spanish troops surrendered to General Shaftner’s American forces at Santiago, Cuba.

• July 25th – American amphibian forces invaded Puerto Rico and quickly seized the island.

• August 12th – Spain officially granted Cuba its independence and ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States.

• August 14th – Spanish forces in the Philippines surrendered to the United States. The final status of the Philippines was to be determined at the peace conference between Spain and the United States in Paris that fall.

• September 9th – At President McKinley’s request, Secretary of State William R. Day resigned his post in order to head America’s peace treaty commission in Paris. John Hay replaced him as Secretary of State.

• September 26th – President McKinley appointed Senator Dodge to head the Dodge Commission to investigate the alleged misconduct of the War Department during its preparation for and conduct of the Spanish-American War.

• November 8th – Following the results of the mid-term Congressional elections, McKinley’s Republican Party maintained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

• December 5th – In his State-of-the-Union Address, President McKinley called for the construction of a Central American canal to cut travel time between the Atlantic and the Pacific for obvious military and commercial reasons.

• December 10th – The United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish-American War. Spain ceded Guam, Puerto Rico, and her other island possessions in the West Indies to the United States. The United States was also granted the power to set up a military government in Cuba prior to the establishment of an independent Cuban nation. None of these provisions was controversial. But the one concerning the Philippines was. By terms of the treaty, the Philippines were now an American possession at the cost of twenty million dollars paid to Spain. The highly controversial Treaty of Paris set off a national debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists. The treaty eventually passed the Senate by the slim margin of one vote (with barely two-thirds of the Senators concurring).

VI. THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS

The rise of big business in America was already in full swing prior to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. And its continued growth was uninterrupted by the splendid little war. Certainly, 1898 was not simply the year of the war. Life for most Americans went on as usual – war or no war. Yet times were obviously changing, with technological advances leading the way – the telephone and the electric light bulb being only a few examples among many. America was getting bigger.

1898 witnessed the rise of William Randolph Hearst and his growing newspaper empire as a major force in formulating public opinion nation-wide on such issues as, Should we go to war with Spain? By 1898, John D. Rockefeller and his ever-growing Standard Oil Company literally controlled America’s oil supply. In 1898, J.P. Morgan controlled the nation’s banks and railroads as he sat on the board of directors of forty-eight of America’s largest corporations. In 1898, Gustavus Swift, the Chicago butcher who combined two separate inventions, the ice-cooled railway car and the ice-cooled warehouse, and created America’s first national meat-packing company, presided over the growing giant, Swift & Company. 1898 saw James Duke, who, aided by the invention of a new cigarette-making machine, had recently combined America’s four largest cigarette producers into one giant company, reining supreme as the president of the American Tobacco Company. America’s captains of industry were better known to the public than most leading politicians of the day.

The Story of 1898 can not be told without mention of inventers turned entrepreneurs, chief among them, Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Bell’s telephone – originally a hearing aid for the deaf – had become, by 1898, American Telephone and Telegraph. AT & T had a monopoly of the nation’s telephone system. And Thomas A. Edison – the Wizard of Menlo Park – was the father of the nation’s many Edison companies, to whom all American’s who electrified their homes and businesses paid regular tribute in the form of utility bills. Never before in the history of our republic had two companies loomed so large in the everyday lives of Americans than the Edison Company and AT & T. America, indeed, was getting bigger. And the Captains of Industry were responsible.

By 1898, America’s favorite soft drink was becoming Coca-Cola. Invented by John Pemberton in 1886 in Atlantic, Georgia, Coca-Cola created a sensation, and its popularity rapidly spread. Laced with extract from real coca leaves, Coca-Cola’s original recipe was responsible for the addition of a new slang term to America’s lexicon to describe those addicted to its lively pick-me-up: Soda jerk.

VII. EVERYDAY LIFE IN 1898

In 1898, some Americans traveled on America’s first electric underground trains, or subways, in Boston – New York City’s famous subway would open six years later. By 1898, electric streetlights were common in America’s largest cities, and in smaller metropolitan areas such as Norfolk, Virginia, San Antonio, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. Thomas A. Edison had indeed become a national hero and a giant among America’s captains of industry. His latest invention, motion pictures, would soon revolutionize America’s entertainment industry, and those who rebelled from his iron-fisted control in New York City would soon flee to far-away California and create the movie-mecca, Hollywood.

Meanwhile, in 1898, Americans still thrilled to Buffalo Bill’s world-famous Wild West Shows, featuring spectacular reenactments of various Wild West events using real cowboys and Indians (and real Black Buffalo Soldiers, Russian Cossacks, female sharpshooters, etc.). Most often featured were such surefire melodramas as Attack on the Deadwood Coach, Attack on the Settler’s Cabin, Custer’s Last Rally, and The Great Train Hold-Up and Bandit Hunters of the Union Pacific, under the gigantic big-top.[4] If unable to attend, Americans could read about Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows in detail in illustrated accounts frequently printed in major newspapers across the country. Or they could attend the Greatest Show on Earth – the Barnum and Bailey’s Circus – when it came to their nearest big town. Its arrival would be broadcast by a grand parade of elephants, horses, lions and tigers, and other circus animals and show girls, clowns, and a blaring band led by the ring master of the circus down the center of Main Street. In 1898, it was a common aspiration of young boys – and girls – to run away from home to join the circus and see the world. Few actually did, but the prospect was irresistible. And, of course, some lucky Americans could still be entertained by the live, on-stage comedy of Samuel Clemens as the beloved Mark Twain, or they could attend a local play, lecture, or sporting event. Soon, however, the movies and radio would dramatically expand America’s entertainment options.

The bicycle was big in 1898. The bicycle first gained popularity with many American adults at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, but, with a huge front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel, its design made it cumbersome and difficult to control. However, once an enterprising Englishman came up with the radical (and now so obvious) idea of making both wheels the same size in the late 1880’s, the bicycle, as we know it today, took off. Wilbur and Orville Wright and a host of other bicycle manufacturers began selling bicycles to adult customers as fast as they could produce them (whence the Wright Brothers got their money for experimenting with airplanes). Two years before he helped cause the Spanish-American War with such headlines as, Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!, William Randolph Hearst had his newspapers sponsor – and publicize – a pony-express-style bicycle relay from San Francisco to New York City. The relay (including a pouch of U.S. mail) became a grand success as the final group of bicyclists reached New York City’s Central Park after only eleven days on the road from San Francisco. Dignitaries, fireworks, and Professor Bilbo’s Olympic Mounted Bicycle Band greeted them gleefully. And bicycle mania was born.

But not so popular in 1898 was golf. While a few hearty males in such tweedy places as Sarasota, Florida, and Westchester County, New York, played a Scottish game called golf, newspapers of the day – and the public in general – derisively referred to the pastoral Scottish pastime as cow-pasture pool. Another game from the British Isles, lawn tennis, fared much better in 1898, especially with the female gender. High Society ladies played lawn tennis at the best country clubs in Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport, Rhode Island. By 1898, mixed-doubles were being played to lure gentlemen from the country-club set. And the game soon became more masculine when the ever-energetic Teddy Roosevelt, home from his victory at San Juan Hill, declared tennis to be a bully sport.

In 1898, football was also an aristocratic, but far more bone-crushing – and popular – sport. The Ivy League universities of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale were being challenged by new, younger aristocratic institutions from the mid-west and California – the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley. A Yale graduate, the University of Chicago’s coach, Amos Alonzo Stag, was in the process of becoming the guru of collegiate football.

And baseball, America’s pastime? In 1898, baseball was truly America’s favorite sport – in participation and attendance. Chicago Cubs fans existed even back then. In fact, the Chicago Cubs won the first-ever National League Championship back in 1876, much to the displeasure of fans in rivals Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, New York City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville. In 1898, professional and amateur baseball thrived. From kid’s sand-lot games to major league stadiums, baseball was alive and well in America. But, in 1898, there was still no American League. The Junior Circuit came two years later, in 1900, when professional teams from Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., joined together to form the American League.

In 1898, basketball was the seven-year-old invention of a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) instructor from Canada by the name of James Naismith. His supervisor in Springfield, Massachusetts, Dr. Luther H. Gulick, requested that he invent a rigorous indoor game that could help keep young men’s minds off trouble, including the opposite sex, during the cold, bleak winters while providing them with clean fun and wholesome exercise. Naismith complied, and basketball – tossing a soccer ball into a peach basket mounted on a pole – was born. By 1898, basketball was being played both indoors, and, more informally, outdoors. Its popularity rapidly grew. And so did the popularity of another American invention – the comic strip.

The Sunday Funnies featured in Joseph Pulitzer’s and William Randolph Hearst’s rival newspapers became such great circulation boosters that they soon became daily comic strips, and their successful cartoonists became some of Pulitzer and Hearst’s highest paid employees. Americans – children and adults alike – simply couldn’t get enough of the zany adventures of Hans and Fritz in The Katzenjammer Kids, Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff, Buster Brown and his dog Tige, The Yellow Kids, or Happy Hooligan. By 1898, drawing cartoons had become a recognized occupation, and comic strips (and comic books) had become an American staple.

VIII. THE 100% AMERICAN

In 1898, one could find legions of 100% Americans. John the Bookkeeper was a typical (although admittedly fictitious) example. John the Bookkeeper loved to read the Sunday Funnies in his Chicago Tribune. The supervisor of the bookkeeping department of a major department store in downtown Chicago, John was a solid family man (as the Currier & Ives prints of Patriotic scenes on his parlor walls would attest to), a father of five who was happily married to his grammar school sweetheart (an eighth-grade diploma was more than adequate for most white-collar job in 1898!), and a patriotic, 100% American. Prussian by ancestry, John discouraged the speaking of German in his home ("In America, we speak English!) even though the Lutheran Church where he and his wife Olga and their children – Karl, Emil, Fritz, Anna, and Alma – attended, conducted two separate worship services each Sunday: one in German (in High" German, not Low German!) and one in English. Although proud of his Germanic roots, he was keenly aware that his father had fled his ancestral home at the age of fifteen to avoid eventual conscription to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. His father somehow managed to emigrate to Chicago, made a life for himself in the growing German community there, married, became a successful blacksmith, and raised eight children, of whom John was the eldest. John the Bookkeeper was a Missouri Synod Lutheran, a member of the Royal Order of Eagles, and a staunch Republican.

As a 100% American in the year 1898, John the Bookkeeper was proud that his relatively new two-story brick home in a quiet Chicago suburb had indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water, and that the toilet in the house’s one bathroom was connected to the latest in sanitary cesspools. Little did he know that wealthy Romans had indoor plumbing before the time of Christ. He did know that his own father, and many other successful Americans, still had outdoor privies. He not only had an indoor bathroom; his modern home had closets in each of its four bedrooms, a feature even most millionaires did not have in their homes prior to the Civil War. His home had the latest in American luxury. His home not only had electric lights in the ceilings of each room; it had electrical outlets just above the floor moldings for electrical appliances. He purchased (with his department store employee discount) General Electric fans for most rooms that he could simply plug-in to keep his family cool on those hot Chicago summer days and nights. True American luxury. And if his wife didn’t feel like making a hearty soup from scratch on a cold winter day, she could simply take out her new can-opener and open several cans of Campbell’s Soup, pour them into a large pan, add water, and heat over the gas flame on her new-fangled range. By 1898, Olga and other modern American housewives were depending more and more on the quality, consistency, and convenience of national brands and prepared foods.[5] And if they so chose, they could listen to live music from their RCA Victrola while they ate in the comfort of their own home.

Olga trusted Procter & Gamble’s Ivory Soap because it was so pure It Floats. Or Quaker Oats because it was East to Buy. Easy to Cook. And Easy to Digest. With the time Olga saved by using the new, convenient, store-bought foods (and home-delivery of groceries she could order by telephone, plus routine home delivery of milk via their home’s milk slot), she had extra time to read such in magazines as the Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Mc Clure’s, the Saturday Evening Post, and Woman’s Home Companion (all delivered to her home via U.S. mail), whose advertisements extolled the virtues of all kinds of new-fangled cleaning products, apparels, and labor-saving appliances and prepared foods. Montgomery Ward, Sears, Roebuck and Company (One could even order a kit to build a entire house from their famous catalog!), the Quaker Oats Company, Coca-Cola, Cudahy meats, Remington Typewriters, Singer Sewing Machines, Procter & Gamble cleaning products, General Electric appliances, and cigarette manufacturers – especially the American Tobacco Company and P. Lorillard – were major advertisers. Olga and her female friends all looked at the beautiful and fashionably dressed women pictured in Coca-Cola ads and saw them as models for the ideal American woman. Her husband John didn’t mind either. They were beautiful. Nor did John complain that his wife Olga preferred Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound to treat her female complaints over Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Later Federal analysis (following Teddy Roosevelt’s Pure Food and Drug Act) showed that Lydia Pinkham’s Compound contained only a little more alcohol than a glass of port wine, while Mrs. Winslow’s equally popular Soothing Syrup was heavily laced with morphine. And, while Olga’s favorite soda-fountain drink, Coca-Cola, had also originally been invented as a medicinal tonic, she truly enjoyed a new national product called Welch’s Grape Juice. Welch’s Grape Juice, originally created as a religious, non-alcoholic substitute for wine, was pure grape juice, and was rapidly gaining in popularity.

Back to John the Bookkeeper, our 100% American. John probably had no clue that the American-made bed he slept on was based on a design which originated in the Middle East.[6] The sheets on his bed were made of cotton, first produced in India. His blankets were made of wool from sheep first domesticated in the Middle East. As he stepped into his slippers, he was actually putting on moccasins invented by American Indians of the Eastern woodlands. As he walked into his bathroom, he entered the fairly recent realm of an Englishman, plumber to Her Majesty the Queen, named Crapper.

After he removed his pajamas that were originally invented in India, he washed with soap, invented by the Gauls in what is now France and shaved with a straight razor, invented by masochists in ancient Egypt.

Finished, John the Bookkeeper returned to his bedroom and dressed for work. His shirt and trousers were derived from the pelt clothing of ancient Asiatic tribes. His shoes were made from leather tanned by a process invented in ancient India. Their basic design was fashionable in the early civilizations of the Mediterranean. The fashionable tie he put around his neck was a very recent adaptation of a 17th-Century Croatian shoulder shawl.

At the breakfast table downstairs, John’s wife Olga served him an all-American breakfast of coffee, orange juice, three eggs sunny-side-up, a waffle, and four strips of bacon. John’s all-American coffee (much of the rest of the world drank tea) was invented in Abyssinia. His orange juice came from citrus fruit first consumed in the Eastern Mediterranean. His eggs came from chickens first domesticated in what is now Viet Nam. His bacon came from pigs first domesticated in China and salted and smoked by a process invented in northern Europe by his Germanic ancestors. The waffle he consumed was of Scandinavian origin made from wheat first refined in Eurasia, and his maple syrup was first invented by the American Indians of the northeastern woodland. Finished with his all-American breakfast, John kissed his wife, bid his children goodbye, put on his hat, grabbed his morning newspaper and his umbrella (it was raining outside) as he headed out the front door and walked to the corner of his block, where he boarded a new electric streetcar headed for downtown Chicago. The streetcar he rode in was a modern American invention. His dress hat, however, was made of felt, a fabric invented in northern Asia. His umbrella was invented in southeastern Asia. And the cigar he pulled from his inside coat pocket was derived from the Indians of Virginia, but made of an improved strain of tobacco originally smuggled into Virginia by John Rolfe (the husband of the famous Pocahontas) from the West Indies. As he relaxed and smoked his cigar on the streetcar, he read the headlines of his morning newspaper (delivered to his home daily by a local boy on a new bicycle). The headline and the front-page’s main article was all about the upcoming peace treaty with Spain. Splendid little war!, he mused. John had heard about the "Guttenberg Bible. His newspaper was printed using the same basic process. But the letters" used to form the English words in the articles he read were first invented in such ancient places as Babylon, Assyria, and Phoenicia. And the paper they were printed on was invented in China. Encouraged by the day’s good news, he quietly thanked his Hebrew God in an Indo-European language for his good fortune to be a 100% American! The America of 1898 was full of 100% Americans, bursting with pride about their wonder land of opportunity and the results of that splendid little war!

HISTORY AS HUMORIST

1898

• America gained an empire within four brief months as a result of that splendid little war.

• American forces under Commodore George Dewey (soon to be Admiral Dewey) destroyed Spain’s entire Pacific Fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay without the loss of a single American sailor.

• The American Army – the Fifth Army Corps – that invaded Spanish Cuba was commanded by a three hundred pound former desk jockey named General William Shafter.

• During the Spanish-American War, America’s troops were forced to endure training in the hot Florida sun and then summer combat in Cuba while wearing dark-blue woolen winter uniforms. The Spanish wore light-weight summer khaki.

• During the Spanish-American War in Cuba, Spanish troops utilized modern, smokeless ammunition, while America’s finest were stuck with old-fashioned, frontier-style powder ammo that gave off huge clouds of white smoke every time they fired at the enemy, revealing their positions.

• Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders had to run up San Juan Hill in the face of enemy fire because the army forgot to arrange with the navy for transportation for their cavalry horses from Tampa to Cuba.

• Some tactical idiot in the American army’s command ordered observation balloons to be flown directly above the American troops as they advanced along narrow trails through dense, concealing jungles, thus pin-pointing their positions on the ground to the awaiting Spanish riflemen.

• In spite of all this, American soldiers were thirteen times more likely to die of tropical diseases than Spanish bullets.

• Great Britain was the only European power to informally support the United States in its war with Spain over the liberation of Cuba.

• Dewey sank Spain’s Pacific Fleet at Manila Bay primarily so the Spanish would be unable to come to the aid of their army in Cuba. Hence, the Philippines became American because of Cuba.

• The small minority of Americans who had mildly opposed the Spanish-American War at its beginning – primarily Wall Street financiers and business leaders – became some of its staunchest proponents once the Philippines fell into American hands.

• Columbus had sought a sea route to the treasures of India and Asia in 1492. In less than four months, the United States Navy had conquered one.

• President William McKinley decided to keep the Philippines to protect them from being acquired by Britain, France, or Germany – America’s commercial rivals in Asia.

• William Jennings