The Bridge: An appreciation of George Gershwin

George Gershwin in 1937. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.

Presented to the Club  on Monday Evening March 19, 2018 by Albert
E. Easton

The Triborough Bridge connects the Bronx, Manhattan and
Queens. Basically it’s a bridge from the Bronx to Manhattan, with an offshoot
connected to Queens. George Gershwin built a bridge too, basically from popular
music to classical, but connected in is a bridge that already existed from
popular music to jazz. We wouldn’t be at all surprised today if a classical
piano program included some pieces by Gershwin, and we could probably stand the
shock if there was a little jazz thrown in.

Gershwin’s parents came to the United States in the 1890’s
from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rose Burkin came first and was living in
Manhattan when a couple years later, Moise Gershowitz (who later changed his
name to Morris Gershvin) arrived and asked her to marry him. Both came from fairly
well off families in Saint Petersburg and had known each other there. They
married in 1895, and in December 1896, their first son Israel (who later
changed his name to Ira) was born. Almost two years later, in September 1898,
their second son Jacob, who was always called George, was born.

The Gershwin family was fairly well off, and always had a
maid. Morris was an entrepreneur at heart and bought and managed several
businesses: cigar store, restaurant, several Turkish baths and many others. Each
time he took on a new business, he moved his family to be near it. If I told
you George Gershwin was a product of the lower East Side, like so many famous
Jewish Americans, I wouldn’t be lying because he did live there sometimes, but
he also lived lots of other places. In all, the Gershwins had over 20 addresses
in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn while George was growing up. Religion and
Jewish tradition did not play a very important part in their lives, although
they always celebrated the seder at Passover.

One of the Gershwin boys was a model student, always
carefully studying his lessons and earning high marks. That was Ira, of course,
the serious one. George was more-or-less the opposite. More interested in
having fun than in studying, he played hooky at times, and his grades were less
than outstanding. Only Ira received a bar mitzvah, George never had one,
perhaps because he was reluctant to undertake the necessary study of Hebrew.

As an example of George’s personality as a young boy,
there’s a story that he asked his father for ten cents to see a movie. When he
was refused, he took off his shoes, went out in the street, and began telling
passing strangers that he was a very poor boy and hoped they could spare a few
cents. He got to see his movie.

In 1910, Morris Gershwin purchased a piano, with the thought
that his serious son Ira, could become proficient at it. Of course, that’s not
what happened. As soon as the piano arrived, 12 year old George sat down and
began playing some popular music of the time. He had already encountered a
piano at a friend’s house, and had learned to play there, something his father
was not aware of. The piano quickly became a very important part of George’s
life.

George loved that piano, and he spent as much time as he
could with it, sometimes to the detriment of his schoolwork, which he never
cared much about anyway. He went enthusiastically each week to lessons with his
teacher, Charles Hambitzer, an accomplished pianist who even did some composing
of his own in the classical realm. Hambitzer wrote of his student: “The boy is
a genius, without a doubt. He wants to go in for this modern stuff, jazz and
what not. But I’m not going to let him for a while. I’ll see that he gets a
firm foundation in the standard music first.”

George had the two things anyone needs to excel in any field
– natural ability and a genuine love for what he was doing. By the time he was
15 he could play any music that was put in front of him, transpose it to any
other key, and improvise on it. This talent got him a job at the Jerome Remick
music publishing house working with the “song pluggers.” A song plugger was
expected to pick up any music Remick wanted to push, and have it played for the
visiting talent looking for songs they could add to their act, in whatever key
they found comfortable.

Remick music had gotten its start on west 28^th Street, the street known at the time as “Tin Pan Alley” for the jangling sound
of the many pianos all being ponded at once, although they later moved uptown
to West 46^th Street, an area that even today is the cradle of
popular music. George being on Tin Pan Alley was too much for Charles
Hambitzer, and his piano lessons ended at this point, but Hambitzer encouraged
him to take music theory lessons from a Hungarian named Edward Kilenyi. Kilenyi
was sympathetic to his desire to work with popular music. And at Remick he
began to make friends with people who would later play an important part in his
career. For example, young Fred and Adele Astaire came looking for material for
their vaudeville act, and he became friendly with them. The pay for ten hours a
day of pounding the piano in a small cubicle was $15 a week.

It doesn’t seem to be possible to tell any American story
without mentioning the influence of race on American history. The public was
beginning to become aware of a very original American type of music. Black
music, in the form of jazz and ragtime, had come on the scene. Black musicians
were emerging from the deep south and performing in northern venues. Syncopated
rhythms (ragged time) hadn’t quite made it to popular music, but ragtime
pianists, notably Scott Joplin had quite a following. George Gershwin was
fascinated by this music and spent hours listening to ragtime piano in cafes
and bars.

By 1915 his skill at the piano had earned him such a
reputation that he was able to get a job recording piano rolls. For this he was
paid a fee of $35 for six rolls, which he could polish off easily on a Saturday
afternoon. Over the course of several years he recorded a total of 130
different songs. Most of the piano rolls available on the internet that were
recorded by Gershwin are in later years, recordings of his own compositions,
but I did find one - Havanola by HugoFrey – that was recorded in 1917. Very definitely classic ragtime.

Gershwin clearly couldn’t
be satisfied forever with plugging only songs written by others, but Remicks
wouldn’t allow him to plug his own songs. So his first published song “When You Want ‘Em You Can’t Get ’Em, When You’ve
Got ‘Em You Don’t Want ‘Em” was published by the Harry von Tilzer company. For
this he was paid five dollars. But it was a start.

After hearing some of his
tunes, Gershwin formed a firm friendship with Jerome Kern, who was by then a
well established composer. As an established composer, Kern generally had a
musical on Broadway. In those days, it was not uncommon for a song by an
unknown composer to be interpolated into a show most of whose songs were by an
established composer, and Gershwin was able to do some of this. By 1918, he had
enough of a reputation to place five songs in a revue called Half Past Eight,
but that closed after a week’s tryout. He then wrote the complete score for a
musical called La La Lucille, which ran for a while but was not a major
hit. But he was about to have a major hit.

By 1919, he had formed a
partnership with lyricist Irving Caesar. The two wrote a number of songs
together, among which was a song called Swanee.
The song was included in a revue that wasn’t too popular. But that wasn’t the
end of Swanee. Gershwin’s reputation
was such that he was invited to a party by Al Jolson at Bessie Bloodgood’s
whorehouse in Harlem, and he was invited to play a few numbers. When Jolson
heard Swanee he asked to interpolate
it into his own review, Sinbad, which was currently running on Broadway.
The combination of Gershwin’s music and Jolson’s delivery proved magical. It
was the biggest hit ever for both of them. Jolson’s recording sold over two
million copies and the sheet music outsold even that. Suddenly, Gershwin was
rich from the royalties. A total of over $10,000 – an enormous sum in 1919.

At the same time as he was
writing Swanee, Gershwin was still
taking theory lessons from Kilenyi. As part of his lessons, he wrote a movement
for a string quartet. This was performed by a few of his friends during his
lifetime, but never published. It was revived after his death. It’s been given
the name Lullaby and has now beenperformed by many quartets and string orchestras. It was his first venture into
classical music. 

Gershwin’s passion, however, was still the Broadway musical.
Producer George White was anxious to produce a revue that would compare to
Florenz Ziegfeld’s Ziefeld Follies. The first edition of George White’s
Scandals was produced in 1919, with composer Richard Whiting, who was hired on
the strength of his major hit Till We
Meet Again. White wasn’t satisfied with Whiting, however, and for George
White’s Scandals of 1920, he hired George Gershwin as the composer.

George White’s Scandals were mostly to showcase beautiful
girls, and Gershwin realized that they were not a good vehicle for his best
material, so he provided music that was mostly pretty pedestrian. Lyrics were partly
by Ira and mostly by another well known lyricist, Buddy De Sylva. Gershwin was
the main composer for the Scandals for five years, ending in 1924. One of the
compositions he included in George White’s Scandals was a one act operetta Blue
Monday. Blue Monday featured jazz music and was intended to be sung
by African-American actors. As such, it was a precursor to Porgy and Bess.

One of the popular songs that emerged from the Scandals of
1924 was Somebody Loves Me. Somebody
Loves Me includes what’s known as a “blue note.” A blue note is a note that
isn’t in the major scale, but inserts a note from the minor scale into the
song. It can’t be played on the white keys of the piano. It’s characteristic of
Afro-American music and is used to produce a sad feeling – the blues. “Somebody
loves me, I wonder who”  “Who” is the
blue note. George Gershwin certainly didn’t invent the blue note, but he used
it extensively, and you find them in many, if not most, of his most popular
songs.

In January, 1924, Gershwin was taking a break from working
on the last of George White’s Scandals, when his attention was called to an
article in the New York Tribune that mentioned “George Gershwin is at work on a
jazz concerto.” He was stunned, since he hadn’t begun any work on such a piece,
although he had told his friend Paul Whiteman that he hoped to do this soon. Whiteman
was anxious to present a concert featuring American music, and had attempted to
book Carnegie Hall for the purpose. When Carnegie Hall was booked for the date
he wanted, February 12, he switched the venue to the smaller Aeolian Hall. Whiteman,
of course, was the source of the press release in the Tribune.

Accounts differ as to the length of time it took Gershwin to
write Rhapsody in Blue– anywhere from
eight days to three weeks. He wrote the score as a two piano piece, intending
that one piano would be orchestrated and replaced by Whiteman’s band. He would
play the solo piano. For his later works, he did his own orchestration, but this
one was handled by Whiteman’s orchestrator.

Gershwin was quite well satisfied with his work, and by the
day of the concert he was confident that it would be well accepted.  The Rhapsody was placed nearly at the end of
the program, which generally went quite well, but Gershwin’s music and his
piano playing far eclipsed everything else. The applause was frenzied. Whiteman
wrote later “At half past five on the afternoon of February 12, we took our
fifth curtain call.” Whiteman had hoped that the Aeolian Hall concert would
help to define American music, but instead it became known as the concert that
launched Rhapsody in Blue. It was the
one item that occupied music critics and journalists in the weeks that
followed, because it established that the jazz idiom had a place on the
classical music stage.

The Rhapsody in Blue
that was performed that day was sixteen minutes long, but it includes a lot of
repetitive passages, and is often edited down. Performances of the Rhapsody can
be anywhere from five minutes to sixteen and still include all its beautiful
themes. I grew up listening to the very popular Victor recording featuring
Gershwin playing and recorded on the two sides of a 12 inch 78RPM disc. For
many years I thought that’s all there was to Rhapsody in Blue.

Through the 1920’s Gershwin claimed a premier place on
Broadway, and most of his greatest songs come from the shows that he
contributed to.  For Swanee and others of his early songs, he had used Irving Caesar as
a lyricist, and after that he frequently teamed with Buddy De Sylva. But most
of his great songs were written with lyrics by his brother Ira. George and Ira
made a good team. George composed a tune, Ira then supplied lyrics. It’s not
really as simple as that, of course; there had to be a lot of back and forth. But
that was easy for two brothers used to getting along with each other.

I’m going to list some of his most popular shows, and the
songs from them that have become standards. The list isn’t inclusive, and I
apologize if I’ve left out one of your favorites:

1924 Lady Be Good – Oh Lady Be Good and The Man I Love.

1925 Tip Toes – Looking for a Boy and Sweet and Low Down.

1926 Oh Kay! – Do, Do, Do and Someone To Watch over Me.

1927 Funny Face – He Loves and She Loves, How Long Has This Been Going On, and ‘S Wonderful

1928 Treasure Girl – Feeling I’m Falling and I’ve Got a Crush on You

1929 Show Girl – An American in Paris Ballet and Liza (An American in Paris was originally published as a separate
orchestral piece and interpolated into Show Girl)

1930 Strike Up the Band
– Soon and Strike up the Band

1930 Girl Crazy – Bidin’ My Time and I Got Rhythm (I Got Rhythm
made Ethel Merman’s Career. She was a virtual unknown until she held a high C
for 16 bars of orchestration)

1931 Of Thee I Sing – Of Thee I Sing, Love Is Sweeping the Country, and Who Cares

In other words, for these eight years, George Gershwin had a
hit on Broadway every year and one or more hit songs. His share of the box
office as well as his royalties from sale of sheet music and recordings left
him quite well off financially. Financial stability leads to the question: Why
didn’t he marry? Well he probably intended to someday, but meanwhile he was
having way too much fun being a bachelor. He dated lots of chorus girls and
other women, never getting too serious about any one although one biographer
says the love of his life was Paulette Godard. Another biographer claims that
he had an illegitimate son by a chorus queen named Margret Manners (stage name
“Mollie Charleston.) Others say this is somewhere between highly speculative
and ridiculous.

Following the success of Rhapsody
in Blue, Gershwin began to write separate concert pieces establishing
himself in the classical field. These included An American in Paris, Concerto
in F, Second Rhapsody, Cuban Overture, and Variations on I Got Rhythm, all of which have been performed and
recorded many times. As Irving Berlin said “He was the only songwriter to
become a composer.”

Gershwin had long entertained the idea of writing an opera,
and had contact with the Metropolitan Opera. In 1933, he acquired the rights to
DuBose Heyward’s play Porgy, which he had long considered might be a
good vehicle for the kind of opera he had in mind. He worked with Heyward in
adapting the play, and finally produced his masterwork Porgy and Bess. He
decided to have the Theater Guild produce it rather than the Metropolitan,
since a Metropolitan production would run only a few times during the season,
whereas a Theater Guild production would run continuously. He insisted on an
all black cast (no black-face), which created some difficulty since the opera
world had not developed many black artists at the time. The production, which
include some of his best songs, like Summertime,
I Got Plenty o’ Nothin’ and It Ain’t
Necessarily So was critically acclaimed, but only a modest success on
Broadway. During the period while he was writing Porgy and Bess, he
solidified his financial status by producing a radio program Music by Gershwin. A few episodes have survived. 

By 1930, the motion pictures known as “Talkies” had come
into their own. Beginning in 1929 with Al Jolson’s appearance in The Jazz
Singer, movie goers were treated to music that came with the movie. Gershwin
was not particularly interested in movies, but in 1930 he got an irresistible
invitation from Fox Studios for him and Ira - $70,000 and a reserved coach from
New York to Hollywood. The film – Delicious didn’t produce any hits. George
enjoyed the sunny climate that winter of 1930, but decided Hollywood was not
for him.

But by 1936, Broadway seemed to have dried up for him. He
returned to Hollywood (where Ira had stayed) and wrote some of his best songs
for three very successful movies – Shall We Dance, A Damsel in
Distress, and Goldwyn Follies. Songs from these movies included: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, They All
Laughed, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, A Foggy Day in London Town, Nice
Work If You Can Get It, Love Is Here To Stay, and Love Walked In.

In June, 1937 he began to have agonizing headaches. He was
diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor and died on July 11, only 38 years
old. His brother Ira survived him until 1983 and devoted himself to keeping the
very considerable Gershwin legacy alive. In 1990, Warner Communications paid a
total of 200 million dollars to acquire the rights to the Gershwin catalog.

Read More

The Back Stairs: The world of servants in America

Presented to the Club on Monday Evening, March 7, 2016 by Albert Easton

I am sure that most of us here have watched, or are at least familiar with the television program Downton Abbey, or its predecessor, Upstairs Downstairs. Each of these programs derives part of its drama from the contrast between the aristocracy and the servant class. Although each is based in England at a time and place when this contrast was most clearly delineated, there certainly was a somewhat similar contrast in America up to about 1930, and my purpose tonight is to explore the world of servants. Who were they, what were they like, and what has become of them?



Servants have probably existed for most of human history. It was natural for one person who was able for whatever reason to dominate another, to request that that other person take on some of the tasks he had been doing. Very often, the dominance was a result of warfare, and the people of the defeated nation were made the slaves of the victor. Often, too, the younger children did not inherit enough to support themselves, and had to offer services to others in order to survive.





Some authors have suggested that the role of servants in England grew out of the feudal system. Certainly, the existence of an aristocracy was a heritage of feudal times, but America has never had a hereditary aristocracy. America’s aristocracy consists, in general, of those who have the money to play the part. And playing the part requires, or at least did require, having servants.



It is estimated that in the early years of the twentieth century about one American household in six had servants. This includes many houses that had only a part time servant, a one-day-a-week laundress or cleaning woman, for example. Only a much smaller fraction had one or more full time servants, and only about half of these were live-in. If a house had only one servant, she was almost always of the category: “maid-of-all-work.” More about the duties of such a person later. Houses with a full complement of servants might have a butler, a housekeeper, a cook, and one or more maids or footmen. This does not include the “outdoor servants” — gardeners, farmhands, coachmen, stablemen and (after the advent of the automobile) chauffeurs.



Even in houses with a large number of servants, the lady of the house was considered the housekeeper. She was responsible for maintaining her home in all ways. .But assisting her was the highest ranking servant, the hired housekeeper. The hired housekeeper’s status was on a par almost with members of the family. Her post was an administrative one. She assumed responsibility for the smooth functioning of the household. She oversaw the training and discipline of the rest of the staff, including their performance and personal behavior. She managed the household expenditures, including the purchase of household supplies (but not including the purchase of food – that was the cook’s job.) She supervised the hiring and firing of the rest of the staff and the payment of their wages.



Working closely with the hired housekeeper was the butler. His status was just below hers, and he filled in for her when she was not available to do her job as overseer. He was also responsible for directing the footmen, who were his assistants. He saw to the security of the house, and to the care of the china, glassware and silverware stored in the butler’s pantry. He also managed the purchase, decanting and storage of the household supply of wine and liquor. And many miscellaneous tasks fell his way. For example, arranging the flowers and providing place cards at formal dinner parties. (The arrangement of seats at the table itself had to be left to the lady of the house. Only she was able to discern the social status of her guests, especially in this country with no hereditary aristocracy.) I should mention that the relative status of the housekeeper and butler seems to be reversed on Downton Abbey. This may be because of Carson’s personal dominance, or because roles were somewhat different in England from those in America.



To do his job the butler required the assistance of footmen. Footmen’s duties paralleled those of the butler, plus serving at the dinner table. One author has suggested that: “Male servants (commonly known as flunkeys) became the ultimate status symbol. They were paid for their servility; their function was to emphasize the social position of the employer. Male retainers received twice the wages of most female servants, and did half the work.” To accomplish this, they were on view as greeters at the door, guarding hallways and delivering messages to the parlor.



Another type of male servant was the valet. The valet’s responsibility was to look after the master’s clothing and appearance – in general, a fairly easy job. But the valet was also a “gentleman’s gentleman” – responsible for carrying out whatever errands his employer assigned, and usually traveling with his master. P. G. Woodhouse was written many stories about “Jeeves” – a valet who miraculously manages to extricate his master “Bertie” from the various scrapes Bertie manages to get himself into. Bertie is a bachelor and Jeeves his only servant. The light duties would seem to make valet an easy job, but it was also the most likely to make its incumbent feel like a second class citizen, and thus not the choice of a fully self-respecting individual.



The lady’s maid was the female counterpart of the valet. She had the same kind of responsibilities as a valet – caring for clothing and jewelry, dressing her mistress, generally seeing to her appearance and traveling with her when necessary, often even accompanying her to evening entertainments. Dressing took place at least twice a day, since day clothes were not worn to dinner or evening entertainments. Her job was somewhat more involved than that of the valet, since managing a lady’s clothing and appearance is more complicated than that of a gentleman.



There were also two other types of maids – the parlor maid and the chamber maid. (Chambermaids were sometimes known as “the upstairs maid.”) Parlor maids began each day by removing ashes and cinders from the fireplaces in the parlors and drawing rooms, cleaning the andirons, and preparing new fires. They also swept the carpets and floors in these rooms and the hallways, dusted and periodically washed windows and polished the brass. Chamber maids had the same responsibilities in the bedrooms, and also the daily chore of emptying and cleaning chamber pots, as well as making beds. In the evening, while the lady of the house was at dinner, they cleaned up the clutter left from the nightly dressing-for dinner ritual, turned down the beds, and saw to the fire if necessary.



Usually, there was a laundress, sometimes with assistants. The laundress handled the washing and ironing, which was strenuous work in the days before the advent of modern appliances. In earlier times, the laundress was also responsible for preparing her own starch, bleach and cleaning products. Not only was the work back-breaking, it required some judgement and intelligence, since missteps in laundering could destroy a family’s wardrobe.



The kitchen was the responsibility of the cook. While in very large establishments the cook might be a man (the “chef”), usually the cook was a woman. The cook was responsible for ordering, storing, and preparing food, including that of the servant staff. The cook also was responsible for washing dishes and keeping the kitchen clean, but sometimes had the help of a scullery maid for these chores. When food was prepared over a wood or coal stove, it was the cook or scullery maid’s job to keep that stoked and cleaned.



A final indoor servant was the nursemaid, who cared for the children of the house. The job of nursemaid required a person of tact and intelligence, since she was responsible for teaching the children as well as caring for them. She also had all the duties toward the children that a lady’s maid had toward the lady of the house. She generally was expected to sleep near the children, so that she could be available to care for their needs in the night. She might have severe restrictions on the extent to which she could reprimand or punish the children, and of course had the unpleasant job of changing diapers for the youngest children. Some houses especially sought a nursemaid who spoke another language as well as English, so that the children might be raised bilingual.



I have not mentioned the governess, who was not really a servant, but a teacher. As such, she outranked all the servants. A governess was expected to teach the children reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as history and culture, including the etiquette and demeanor that they needed to assume the station in life that their parents aspired to for them. Like the nursemaid, she may have had severe restrictions on her ability to correct the children.



Outdoor servants included gardeners, coachmen and chauffeurs. If they were live-in, they usually did not sleep in the house, but in the appropriate out-building. Coachmen and chauffeurs were more likely to be live-in, so that they could be available to provide transportation at any time.



Of course, even upper middle class houses could not always afford a full retinue of servants, so compromises had to be made. A frequent combination in a middle class house, was a cook (who also took on the duties of the laundress), a maid (combining the duties of the parlor maid and chambermaid) and a single male servant who was a combination valet and footman. In some houses, even the male servant was not present, leaving only a cook-laundress and a maid. (If the ages of the children in the house required it, there might be a nursemaid, who often was not live-in.)



Further down the ladder, a situation very often encountered in America, was a house with only one servant – the “maid-of-all-work.” A maid-of-all-work performed the duties of the footman (waiting at table), the cook, the parlor maid and the chamber maid. While this was a tremendous amount of work, many managed it. If the house to which she was assigned was a farm, the maid-of-all-work might also be expected to join in feeding the animals and helping with the milking.



There was no such thing as a minimum wage in the early part of the twentieth century, but if there had been, servants would have been at or below it, in spite of the back-breaking work often required of them. An important part of a servant’s compensation was the privilege of living in a very comfortable house. Houses to be occupied by members of the upper middle class in this country, built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, almost always included a section intended to be used by the servants.



The servants’ part of the house was separated from the part intended for use by the family, and tended to emphasize the difference between the two classes. The servants’ quarters included the necessary number of small bedrooms for the servants. (Maids sometimes shared a room, but male servants rarely did.) In houses with indoor plumbing, there was usually a small bathroom and toilet for the use of the servants. Downstairs, the servants had the kitchen, the pantry, the laundry, and in larger houses a “servants’ hall” – a room where servants dined and had their relaxation. Rooms in the servants’ part of the house were very simply decorated, as opposed to the elaborate adornment in the drawing room, dining room, and parlors., and in the upstairs chambers in the family part of the house. An extra set of stairs, the “back stairs” was provided for the sole use of the servants, so that they would not have to intrude on the other part of the house to go from floor to floor.



Beginning about the turn of the century, houses with servants often contained a system of electric bells, for summoning the servants. There would be a front door bell to alert the butler or footman when visitors had arrived, and a different sounding bell for the back door, alerting the cook to the arrival of a tradesman or a visitor for one of the other servants. Other bells were used for summoning servants to the dining room, drawing room, or one of the bedchambers.



Houses with back stairs and servants quarters like those described were very common in American communities, and most of the larger houses built from 1850 to 1920 included them. While some have been altered by remodeling, there are a great many older houses that still include these outmoded accommodations. Without question, many of our predecessors in the Monday Evening Club lived in such houses.



Of course, the living quarters described for servants weren’t universal. Unfortunately, many maids slept on sleeping porches or in furnace rooms. There was also a wide variety in the meals available to servants. In really large establishments, a separate meal might be prepared for servants, and in smaller ones they might enjoy the remains of the dinner served in the dining room, but there was no guarantee as to the amount of food they would get in that case. Servants almost never ate until the meal in the dining room was finished, since they were expected to be on hand to serve it and clean up afterwards, so the time between their lunch and dinner meal might be very long.



Wages for servants varied widely, but they were generally quite low. References indicate that live-in servants received between five and ten dollars a week. Servants who did not live in received about the same, although they generally worked shorter hours and were given car fare to get to and from work each day. There were even cases where the maid was expected to work for room and board only, or (for someone with little experience) for the training they received at the hands of the more senior servants.



The wealthy not only paid more, but there was some satisfaction and esteem to working for a very wealthy family. America had no hereditary aristocracy, but servants preferred working for a family that had been established for several generations, so that they were used to dealing with servants. Wealthier families were more likely to have more attractive quarters for the servants, and it must certainly have been more satisfying to be part of a well-organized and disciplined staff. Servants had hierarchy of position to strengthen their self-esteem, with the butler ranking highest, then the valet, then the footmen. As mentioned, the head housekeeper was highest ranking, but the male servants outranked almost all the female ones.



 Alexis de Tocqueville in his landmark work Democracy in America, published in 1840 mentions his observation that America had no permanent servant class, because American society was too mobile. I think that overlooks the existence of slavery, which was still prevalent in the time he was writing, but the matter became truer and truer as the years went along. Very few people in this country were raised expecting to be servants. The source of most servants in this country was, and still is, immigration. And, for many years after the civil war, African Americans migrating North, or simply trying to make a living in a still segregated Southern society.



And this gave rise to the “servant problem” – the lack of people willing and suitable to take a service position, and the difficulty of filling vacancies. After all, who, in fact, would want to? Being a personal servant is considered to be very low status. So a footman has much lower status than a waiter, and a chef outranks a cook. A reasonable case can be made for the advantages of living in a well-equipped mansion in a beautiful area, but the traditions of service required that servants live in the least desirable part of the house, in the smallest rooms with the least desirable furniture. If the house had an ocean view, for example, servants lived on the side away from the water.



About 90% of servants were women. Only the largest staffs employed any men. It was understood during the period when servants were prevalent that most domestic employment was “women’s work”. Girls were taught “Home Economics” in school – learning the basics of cleaning, cooking, laundering, table setting, and generally caring for the smooth running of a household.



In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were three ways of filling a vacancy among the servants. By far the best was a referral from friends, but these were rare. If friends had a good servant, they generally wanted to keep him or her, and of course they would hesitate to refer an unsatisfactory one. A second method was by advertisement in a newspaper, but this resulted in contacts from a variety of persons who needed to be interviewed and have their references reviewed. The final method was to contact an employment agency. Employment agencies specializing in filling service positions were known as “intelligence offices”. Intelligence offices often did their own recruiting and the better ones were often a good source.



The final question I want to deal with is: Where did all this go? Why do we so rarely see homes with servants today? The peak of the servant period was about 1900, when 7% of homes had a full time servant. This was down to 5% in the 1930s, and 2% in the 1950s. Today the proportion is less than 1%. One quick answer is to suggest that labor saving appliances have eliminated the need – in other words, robots have replaced humans. That is part of the answer, but by no means all of it.



Sociology probably holds the rest of the answer. The American dream of the 1950s was a home of one’s own and many of the vast number who returned from overseas were able to achieve that goal. Wives, at that time were expected to be at home raising children, and employing the skills they had learned in their universally taught home economics classes.. Both these ideals (even if not universally achieved) were inconsistent with serving in someone else’s house. No one desired any longer to earn a living by caring for someone else’s family.



Most of us would much rather not have our privacy disturbed by the presence of servants in the house, although we still enjoy being waited on, even if not every night. A restaurant waiter does much the same work as the footman did and receives much higher pay, especially when tips are included. His co-worker in the kitchen, the chef, is much better educated and higher paid than a domestic cook. And many of us still have cleaning women who come in occasionally, and a laundry service. Those who need child care have ways of arranging it. We still have servants, even if we don’t call them that, and their status is much higher.

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The long haul: The Erie Canal's place in the growth of a nation

Photo by mcgmatt, via Flickr, used under Creative Commons License

Presented to the Club by Albert Easton for on Monday evening, January 16, 2012

“As a bond between the Atlantic and Western states, it may prevent the dismemberment of the American Empire.  The most fertile and extensive regions of America will avail themselves of its facilities for a market.  All their surplus productions will concentrate in the city of New York, for transportation abroad or consumption at home.  And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.”  In 1816, when New York governor Dewitt Clinton wrote those words, James Madison was president of the new and struggling country, the United States.  His predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, had scoffed at the idea of a canal across New York State, but Madison was more neutral, and actually was persuaded to sponsor a bill in congress providing some funding.  The United States was financially exhausted, however, from the costs of the War of 1812, and the bill went nowhere.

However, Clinton was successful in persuading the New York legislature to support the canal building effort, and it became known later as “Clinton’s Ditch”.  The advocate who had sold the idea to Clinton was named Jesse Hawley.  Hawley had gone bankrupt from trying to get the huge quantities of grain he had been growing on his western New York real estate shipped to market.  It was from debtor’s prison in Canandaigua that he began his agitation for a canal along the 90 mile long Mohawk River valley, and with the help of friends (including land speculator Joseph Ellicott, who later became the first canal commissioner) sold the idea to Clinton.

The project presented enormous challenges, of course.  The total rise from the Hudson at Albany to Lake Erie is 600 feet, and the tallest locks available in 1800 could handle only 12 feet – thus a minimum of 50 locks over that 360 mile distance.  The costs would be enormous, and almost beyond the early nineteenth century imagination.  Nevertheless, the New York legislature eventually committed the then huge sum of seven million dollars to the project, and work began on the 4^th of July 1817.

Like any large financial commitment, the canal required elaborate funding.  The bill passed by the legislature established the Canal Fund, to be administered by elected officials, and funded by a loan from the state to be repaid from toll revenues.  The Canal fund also received revenue from the sale of state land near the proposed canal route, and the inevitable state lotteries.  Taxes designated for the Canal fund were on those who would benefit most from it: salt (it was plentiful in the canal region, and expensive to ship without it), steamboat travel (expected to increase greatly on the Hudson) and land within 25 miles of the proposed canal route.

The site for the start of work was well chosen.  The area from Rome, New York to Utica is fairly level, and a stretch of about 15 miles could be completed without locks, thus enabling a part of the canal to be put in to service the year after it was built.  This, of course, helped to sell the rest of the building effort.  The original canal was cut 40 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, with the removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a tow path.  Canal boats, then, could be up to 3.5 feet in draft, and pulled by horses or mules on the towpath.

There was only one towpath, generally on the north side of the canal.  When canal boats met, the boat with the right-of-way steered to the towpath side, and the other boat steered to the opposite side.  The driver of the mules on the right-of-way boat brought his mules to the canal side of the towpath while the other driver took the other side of the path and stopped his team.  The rope would go slack as the boat continued on by momentum.  The right-of-way team would step over the slack rope; the right of way boat would pass over it, and both would continue on.

As you might expect in any massive project, there were a lot of problems that had to be dealt with in building the canal.  The digging wasn’t all through marsh or farmland – some cuts had to be made through hard limestone, all with little more than the power of the muscles of men and animals.  Fairly often, the route of the canal cut a farm in half, and the state had to provide bridges over the canal.  In an effort to keep expenses down (and minimize the problem of getting livestock over the bridge), the bridges were not very high.  Not only did this put limits on the size of boats that could travel the canal, but it also resulted in the famous cry of: “Low Bridge, Everybody Down”.  Anyone caught on the high part of the deck as it passed under a bridge would have suffered unpleasant consequences.

There were some other difficulties in building the canal.  Dependable water sources had to be found to keep the canal and the locks full in all those seasons when the canal was open (it froze in winter, of course), and in several cases, aqueducts had to be built to provide them.  Aqueducts also had to be built to carry the canal itself over rivers and streams that were not active sources of water.  Not only did these aqueducts have to carry water, they had to provide for a towpath, so they were combination aqueducts and bridges.  The aqueduct over the Mohawk River from Rexford to Schenectady was one of the longest – 610 feet, but there were many others. 

The United States had no one who called himself a civil engineer before the building of the canal.  All the several geniuses who designed and managed the work were amateurs – lawyers, storekeepers, but later deservedly considered engineers.  None had seen firsthand the canals of Europe, but had to rely on written accounts of their design and operation.

The expertise of the engineers in this massive building effort would have meant nothing without the efforts of huge numbers of laborers.  While most of the canal laborers were native born, or immigrants from various other countries, canal folklore revolves around those who were Irish immigrants.  The Irish immigrants were more often single men without families, and tended to form their own social group.  Pay for the laborers was quite generous, and sometimes included room, board, and liquor.   The work was steady, but necessarily seasonal, and many found the winters hard to endure without any income.

All work for laborers was hard in the early 19^th century, and canal work was no exception.   Massive charges of gunpowder were used to help channel through some of the rocks, and attendant injuries were not infrequent.  In the course of building a channel through the swamp around the finger lakes, over a thousand were stricken with what appears to have been a mosquito-borne disease, and many died.

But all in a good cause.  On October 26, 1825, the canal was finally completed.  A fleet set out from Buffalo on October 6 headed by the boat Seneca Chief.  The Seneca Chief carried a large party of dignitaries, headed of course, by Governor Clinton, and was met along the way with celebratory cannon fire at its many stops.  It did not end its journey at Albany, but continued down the Hudson to New York, a trip totaling 500 miles.  There, in New York harbor, Governor Clinton emptied two barrels of water from Lake Erie into the ocean, in a ceremony that came to be called “The Wedding of the Waters.”

Many sections of the canal had been open for some time when the full length opened in October 1825, and commercial traffic was already well established.  Canal boats were capable of carrying 30 tons of freight, and this was a vast improvement over any form of overland transportation.  Eastbound cargos frequently consisted of lumber from the still nearly virgin forests of the Midwest, and grain from the Midwestern farms.  Westbound the traffic was usually manufactured goods from the quickly growing factories of the Northeast.

Passenger traffic began to increase too.  The trip by canal boat across the state was not only quicker, but far more comfortable than a trip by horse or stagecoach.  The boats were about 15 feet wide and forty feet long.  A special attraction for travelers was the food on board.  Here is a description from a boat captain:   "Breakfast: The meal may consist of a pike or bass, fresh caught on my overnight trawl line, a steak, bacon, sausage and ham;  a platter of scrambled eggs, boiled cabbage and squash, bread (both corn and white), pancakes (both wheat and buckwheat) with sorghum, maple, or honey to choice, and to wash all down, coffee, tea, milk, and cider.  Dinner will be heartier."

The journey across the state took several days, and passengers slept on board.  Here is a description from David Wilkie whose Sketches of a Summer Trip to New York and the Canadas describes his journey in the early summer of 1834:

There was a good company on board, considering the size of our vessel – about thirty gentlemen, and half as many ladies.  Four steps broad and 21 feet long was the size of our sleeping and dining cabin, and here, a score and a half of us had to be stowed away.  When we descended from deck between 8 and 9 o’clock, before the retiring hour, we found all the sleeping apparatus displayed in full form. On each side of the long narrow space were hung three tiers of canvas-bottomed frames, hardly broad enough to allow the occupant to stretch himself on his back, and three lengthwise, in all, affording accommodation for eighteen, and our surplus number had to betake themselves to the more humble couch afforded by the floor.



Our berths were allotted to us by precedence as our names were placed on the way-bill. When each cognomen was sung out by the captain, the individual doffed boots, coat and vest, and hoisted himself into place.  I contrived with little difficulty to crawl into my lair, and although enjoying less room, I believe, than if I had been a mummy in one of the pyramids, I passed a very unconscious and refreshing night.  

Wilkie was fortunate to have traveled in decent weather.  Many travelers complained of the excessive heat and stuffiness of the canal boat sleeping quarters.

Once the canal was opened, the problems of maintenance and repair began.  There were two kinds of problems – too much water and too little.  Actually, the results of both were the same.  Too much water caused breaks in the canal wall that ultimately left boats high and dry.  Walkers were assigned to pass along the tow path looking for weak spots that might cause problems at the next time of high water.  Inability for boats to move through the canal was a serious problem, of course.  An upstate newspaper from the 1830’s describes one such occurrence: “The break in the canal early last Saturday gave a few hundred canal men a rest they didn’t want, and cost them a lot of money they couldn’t afford to lose.  The lay-up came in the way of a bonanza of restfulness to horses and crews, but it was as welcome as sulfuric torments to the owners who saw drivers and steersmen with hearty appetites for corned beef and cabbage and horses eating their heads off in solemn ease with their noses buried in hay or oats.”

The reference to corned beef and cabbage, of course, is proof that many of the Irish laborers who had built the canal later became its steersmen, drivers and captains.  Canal men very often had no wives or families, they too seldom stayed in one place.  In Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick, Melville describes two canalers who have shipped on as part of the crew of a whale boat, the Town-Ho, and are the first to follow and last to abandon the rebellious Steelkilt in his attempt at mutiny.  Canal men were considered a tough lot.  One observer was quoted as saying “The boys who drive the horses [on the canal] are the most profane beings on the face of this whole earth, without exception.”

Then, also, the folklore of the canal is full of tales of the fearful storms that took place.  These are part of that staple of 19^th century humor, the tall tale.  Consider this example from Mark Twain in Roughing It:

On the Erie Canal it was, all on a summer’s day, I sailed forth with my parents, far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day there came a dreadful storm, that piled the billows high about and filled us with alarm.

Our captain cast one glance astern, then forward glanced he, and said my wife and little ones, I nevermore shall see.

The exaggeration we are supposed to swallow is that storms on the canal were as fearful as those at sea.  They were not pleasant of course, because breaks could occur in the canal wall, stranding boats.  But with a depth of only four feet, there weren’t likely to be a lot of drownings.

We need to understand the canal as more like a road than a waterway.  Its purpose was never to move or provide water, but to move people and goods from one place to another using the only motive power then available – draft animals.  At this it was quite effective, but looming on the horizon was the next great technological wonder of the 19^th century – steam power.  In 1807, many years before the canal was started, Robert Fulton’s steamboat had begun commercial service on the Hudson from New York to Albany.  In fact, Fulton was a member of the first canal commission, and a strong supporter.  Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, made the trip from New York to Albany in 32 hours on a regular basis.  By the 1830’s, helped by the extra traffic generated by the canal, there were over a hundred steamboats making the run and the time was down to ten hours. 

It was inevitable that steam power should next be applied to overland travel – by use of railroads.  In fact the Erie Canal spawned the earliest American railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson line, between Albany and Schenectady.  There is a rise of 215 feet between the two cities, and in the 19^th century this required 27 locks.  The journey of 16 miles between the two cities took a full day.  This was fine and acceptable for commercial cargoes.  It was most convenient that they be loaded from river to canal transportation only once.  But for passengers this added an extra and unnecessary day.  Even by horse or couch the journey was much quicker overland.  But as soon as the canal opened, a company was formed by, among others, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patron and owner of most of Albany County, to operate a railroad over the route.  The railroad, chartered as the Mohawk and Hudson, began service in 1831, using a steam engine and cutting the time of passage down to 40 minutes. 

Other railroads quickly followed.  By 1842, the Boston and Albany line was moving goods and people from New England to the canal, and about the same time a line from Albany to Buffalo paralleled the canal.  For moving goods, it could not compete well on cost, but it was much faster because it avoided all the lock time that canal transportation required.

So the railroads and the canal and the nation grew up together.  The canal was widened and deepened in 1862, and in 1903 the entire canal was replaced by the barge canal.  The barge canal made some material changes in the route.  For example, instead of paralleling the Mohawk River, canal traffic now travels on it from Schenectady to Little Falls. There is, of course, no longer a towpath.  Vessels using the canal must now supply their own motive power.  And the locks have become much higher than they could have been in the original canal.  There are now only 8 locks between Albany and Schenectady.  More pleasure boats than commercial boats use the canal these days, but it is still open all the way from Albany to Buffalo.

Some authors on the canal put more emphasis on the role of the canal in the development of the nation than it may deserve.   It is certainly true that the city of Chicago and the entire Midwest went through a period of tremendous growth in the 1830’s and 40’s, and much of this was made possible by the canal.  But given the resources of the prairies, that growth was inevitable, and would have occurred with the help of the railroads, although perhaps somewhat later.  In any case, the canal was a triumph of American industry and ingenuity, and is an important part of our history.

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The silent language of the star

Photo by StarrGazr, used under Creative Commons

Presented to the Club by Albert Easton in April, 1974





We live in an age where the eye is constantly bombarded by visual stimuli. The survival of a television producer, as well as some very important economic results to a number of people, depends on his being able to dazzle the eye of the viewer to a greater extent than his competitors for the viewer's time.



Thus, it should come as a surprise, perhaps, that in our house on a certain night in January, and I suspect our house was not alone in this respect, the family was not to be found at its usual place before the TV set. Instead, they were crowded around the southeast windows watching, at a distance of about three miles, that part of a display of pyrotechnics which was not obscured by South Mountain. To this enduring fascination which fireworks seem to hold for the human imagination, I would like to turn our attention tonight.



Fireworks are usually considered to be any combination of chemicals capable of combustion without necessarily obtaining oxygen from the atmosphere, and intended primarily for either noise or visual effects arising from that combustion. The first fireworks, then, by this definition, were probably those used in China in the eleventh century, A.D. Note that this definition rules out the earlier use of what was called "Greek Fire" in Byzantium around A.D. 676, where the visual and audible effects were secondary to the primary goal of setting fire to the enemy.



It is interesting, however, to compare the formula for Greek Fire with that for the Chinese fireworks of four centuries later. Greek Fire consisted of rosin, sulfur, bitumen, and (almost certainly) saltpeter, although the early formulas do not mention it. This mixture was rammed into a copper tube and ignited, the resulting spurt of fire directed for military purposes. Although the two may have arisen independently, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize a historical connection with the Chinese fireworks reported by Marco Polo to have been used for amusement, not military purposes, and which consisted of powdered charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter, rammed into a tube of bamboo. Making allowances for the different materials native to the two regions, the formulas are about as close as they could be.

Saltpeter is a key ingredient in both formulas, since firework devices will not work properly unless they have some means of obtaining oxygen other than from the air. It seems curious that the ancient formulas for Greek Fire do not mention it, but speculation suggests two possible reasons for this. First, it may have been that the true formula was a well kept military secret, and the one essential ingredient was deliberately left out by the recorder. It also seems possible that the ingredient bitumen, which even today is not a well defined mineral chemically, consisted in some part of potassium nitrate, the principal constituent of saltpeter, and about the only good oxidizing agent for fireworks purposes that occurs naturally in any reasonable proportions.



When the technology of pyrotechnics reached Europe from China, it was the military potential, of course, that appealed immediately to Europeans. Fireworks for amusement purposes do not seem to have had much existence independent of the military, although it was not uncommon to celebrate a victory with a fireworks display. At first, these displays almost certainly consisted of a firing off of some surplus shells unexpended in the battle, but they later came to be quite elaborate, and specially designed for visual effect. Special military pyrotechnicians were retained for the purposes of designing victory displays, although I'm sure there was no objection if these pyrotechnicians discovered, in the course of designing a victory display, an effect that was also militarily useful. It might seem at first that retaining a technician to help in celebrating a victory before the battle has been fought is somewhat bold, but if so, this is a boldness not unknown to politicians in our own time.



The art of fireworks construction as carried on in our own times (and there has been very little change since the late 19th century) consists of finding ways to combine and control the timing and direction of a relatively limited number of basic fireworks effects. The first, and perhaps most important of these effects is the force that arises from expanding gases when ignition takes place in a confined space, and for this purpose, the centuries have permitted very little improvement on the classic combination of charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter, which is still effective enough that it is commonly used today, since the ingredients are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. There is some advantage in substituting a metal such as powdered aluminum or magnesium for the material being burned, and potassium chlorate for the oxidizing agent, but these ingredients are hard to handle in some ways, and the relatively slight improvement over the classic formula is often considered not to justify the extra expense.



The second important fireworks effect is sparks, which may be obtained from the classic mixture, but here substantial improvement may be gained by adding a powdered metal. Iron will generate large bright yellow sparks, and the intensely bright light generated by the burning of powdered magnesium or aluminum needs no description to most of those here.



The final important effect for visual fireworks displays is the colored fire effect. Here the classical mixture leaves much to be desired. The combination of charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter burns with a dull yellow light, not unlike a wood fire, and except as noted for sparks, it is not often used as the colored portion of a fireworks device. A huge variety of colored fire recipes exists, usually relying on a metallic salt to impart color to the basic mixture, Thus, substituting strontium nitrate for the potassium nitrate leads to red fire, addition of boric acid leads to green fire, etc. Usually, these colored fire combinations do not burn quite as well as the basic mixture, and they are always more expensive, and therefore used only when necessary and where they will be seen.



About six basic fireworks types result from a combination of these basic effects:

1. Stars are basically just bits of colored fire. In the elaborate commercial displays stars may be used as the terminal effect of some other type such as a rocket or shell, or they may be arranged to spell words or show some symbol of the celebration such as a flag. 


2. Shells involve a charge placed in a hollow tube with the force resulting from ignition used to propel some sort of payload into the sky. An important distinguishing characteristic of the shell is that the charge itself is not propelled, but remains in the tube. 


3. Roman candles are similar to shells, in that a retained charge propels a payload, but distinguished by the fact that the payload in this case is an already ignited star. (The payload in a shell is controlled by a fuse that does not ignite it until sometime after it is aloft.) 


4. Rockets depend on the expanding gases in a charge to propel the charge; and sometimes a payload as well, into the sky. 


5. Fountains are basically rockets pointed toward the ground, so that the shower of sparks is propelled into the air. Usually the sparking power is improved by the addition of some powdered metal. 


6. Pinwheels are rockets mounted on a revolving wheel so that the propelling force and shower of sparks are resolved in a circular direction. As with fountains, powdered metal sparks are a usual addition to enhance the visual effect. 

From a very early time in their history, fireworks have suffered from what we would call today "a bad press" — sometimes, I must admit, with complete justification. In the 1930s, it began to become common to make fireworks for private consumption that relied on much more powerful explosives than those involved in the classic formulas, without adequate control or consideration of the additional dangers involved. Thus, it was possible to purchase (and is today in some parts of the country) a device resembling a firecracker that contains dynamite, gun cotton, or some other modified form of nitroglycerine, or even mercury fulminate as its primary charge. Also there has been considerable use of fireworks by children and others whose judgment is unreliable. Considering that the ingredients, and in some respects, the effects are the same, it makes no more sense to put a roman candle in the hands of a five year-old than a pistol. Given the reasonably mature judgment that is required, say, to use a rifle or a table saw safely, and given properly concocted and manufactured fireworks, pyrotechnics does not have to be a dangerous business.



Be that as it may, fireworks have, for some time, been subject to considerable legal restriction. A 1731 colonial Rhode Island law forbade the “unnecessary firing of guns, pistols, squibs and other fireworks." Pennsylvania adopted a similar law in 1751, and the Massachusetts law on the subject dates from at least 1836, although it has been strengthened at least once since then.



All told, 42 states and the District of Columbia now have laws restricting or prohibiting the use of possession of fireworks within their borders.About fifteen of these, including California and the District of Columbia, permit the use of fountains and stars, but prohibit the other types. The Massachusetts law on the subject is a classic example of legal overkill, and bears quoting for that reason: “No person shall sell, or keep, or offer for sale, or use, explode, or cause to explode, any combustible or explosive composition or substance, or any combination of such compositions or substances, or any other article, which was prepared for the purpose of producing a visible or audible effect by combustion, explosion, deflagration or detonation..." If I interpret that literally, it means that if I light a match, and decide to watch the flame instead of lighting my cigar, not only am I in trouble, but so is the tobacco store that gave me the matches.



I want to conclude this with a consideration of some of the psychological factors that make fireworks appeal to us, but before I do, and perhaps by way of illustration, I want to recount some of my personal experiences with fireworks. When I was fifteen, my parents indulgently permitted me to mantain a chemistry lab in a spare room in the basement of our house. The lab started out with honest and honorable intentions, and I did learn a lot of chemistry as a result. Chemlcal experiments fall into two categories, however, those that are interesting enough to repeat, and those that are not. Even today I have no desire to again observe the fact that litmus paper turns blue in the presence of a base, and due consideration for the limited attention span of a 15 year-old boy makes it easy to see why I soon became sated with experiments of that type.



For that reason,those expermments which were repeated tended to be those with the more spectacular effects, and I began concentrating more and more on fireworks. At first, these were confined to the very limited formulas which could be set off in the lab, but gradually I began to increase the quantity of the ingredients to the point where it was necessary to make use of the main part of the basement to fully enjoy the effects. Finally, even that became inadequate. A surprisingly small quantity of fireworks materiel can make enough smoke to completely fill a fairly good-sized house, and my parents absol-



utely forbade the further detonation of fireworks indoors.



For that reason, I arrived at the penultimate event of my career as a juvenile fireworks manufacturer under some severe restrictions. It was a mi-April day in 1954, almost exactly 20 years ago, and the weather in the Hudson valley at that time of year tends to confine itself more or less to cold and unremitting rain — exactly the kind of weather absolutely prohibitive to an outdoor fireworks display. I had as my guest a contemporary fellow experimenter, and the two of us having recently perfected our manufacture of rockets, were attempting to adapt that knowledge to the manufacture of a roman candle. We developed several trial models, and began to give consideration to the search for a suitable testing ground. Clearly, both the house and the great outdoors were out of the question, but at the back of our yard was a large outbuilding, intended as a garage, but now used mainly for storage purposes. This, we concluded, if not the ideal spot, was at least adaptable for use as a test site.



We adapted it by opening the two swinging doors to their widest, and placing the roman candle on a table with the business end pointing out the open end of the garage.



It is unwise to be satisfied with a partial scientific education. Learned as we may have been in chemistry, we were ignorant, or at least forgetful, of the practical effects of Newton's first law of motion. The proto-roman candle turned into a rocket, and instead of firing balls out the door, it fired itself into a mattress at the closed end of the garage. Dousing the matress with water did not succeed in extinguishing the sparks, and that night the garage burned to the ground in a conflagration still quite well remembered in that neighborhood.



That was not quite the end, although it should have been. Ordered by my parents to rid myself of all chemicals and supplies in any way related to fireworks, I began searching for a buyer. To facilitate this, I included in the purchase price an offer to mix the ingredients purchased to the buyer's specifications, and on this basis, I was able to sell the entire quantity quite quickly. The buyer's specifications, in this case, happened to be that we would make a giant roman candle out of a well pipe that had been sunk in his yard, but had reached rock before it ever reached water. Our intent was to use up all the chemicals in such a way as to create a varied and memorable display. It was at least the latter, if not the former.



For reasons that are still not entirely clear to me the gigantic experiment did not go at all as we planned. After filling the pipe with the ingredients, we poured down a combination of chemicals that will ignite spontaneously in about 6o seconds, and drew back some distance to witness the display. It is fortunate that we did; in about 60 seconds there was a single tremendous roar, and the pipe spurted into the sky, spraying mud on all buildings in the vicinity, and leaving a crater about five feet wide and equally deep.



I never attempted such an ambitious experiment again. I hope that these anecdotes are useful in illustrating why fireworks have endured as human amusement in spite of danger and legal restriction, and even lately in spite of better endowed and more commercially profitable entertainment. I note several psychological elements that seem to me to explain the appeal.



First, and perhaps most basic, is the natural attraction that light has for humans, and all living things. For most of mankind's history combustion was the only source of light known to him, other than the astronomical bodies, most of which he showed his admiration for by literally worshipping. If this was the basic, and original element, it came to be joined by another, that of danger, and, more recently, outright prohibition. The same argument which holds that open availability of narcotic drugs would lessen their appeal can be applied to fireworks, although I would agree in both cases that human judgement cannot always be trusted to be the controlling factor in the avoidance of excesses. In fact, in my own case at least, I consider myself fortunate not to have been exposed to the temptation of open availability of fireworks any more than I have.

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