U.S. PRESIDENT, NY GOVERNOR | One Weak, One Strong

March 30, 2020—The President denied the gravity of the crisis and stuck with his free-market message. The Governor of New York State understood the crisis and took action at once. The Governor was a stronger leader than the President, or any other Governor. The President tried to squash the New York Governor, and failed. Aghast at looking like a wimp, the President took decisive action against a vulnerable group that desperately needed help. The President's callousness backfired and from then on, the President's reelection prospects were doomed.

Hoover (L) and FDR, March 1933

The context, of course, was October 29, 1929. After dropping 5 percent the day before, the NYSE index dropped another 20 percent on what is called Black Tuesday. GOP President Herbert Hoover announced that this was a temporary blip and that the economy was “sound and prosperous.” 

However, the market persisted with its decline  and by mid-1932 it was a mere 17 percent of its September 1929 peak. By early 1933, 45 percent of all farm mortgages and 40 percent of home mortgages were in default. 

Hoover's excessive optimism and lack of action was noted in early 1930 by New York State's Labor Commissioner, Frances Perkins. When Hoover said the job market was rebounding, she observed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics data did not support this statement, and the January 1930 job numbers had deteriorated. Governor Franklin Roosevelt believed Perkins, and told her so, and in March 1930, he created the first state commission on employment in the country. He then became the first Governor to support the idea of unemployment insurance. Hoover said in May that the worst was over, but Governor Roosevelt told Democrats at their annual dinner at the Commodore Hotel (now the Grand Hyatt Hotel) that he disagreed and that Hoover's crowd just didn’t care about the impact of the crisis on vulnerable members of the public. The next speaker called for FDR's reelection as Governor.

Hoover (L) and FDR, March 1933

In 1930, the GOP put up racket-busting Charles Tuttle to oppose FDR's reelection as Governor (until the Constitution was revised in 1938, New York's Governors were elected every two years). Tuttle attacked FDR for not repudiating Tammany Hall. Hoover sent three Cabinet members—(1) the Oklahoman Secretary of State, (2) a New Yorker who was Secretary of War, and (3) the Undersecretary and later Secretary of the Treasury, New Yorker Ogden Mills—to support Tuttle and attack FDR. 

FDR ignored Tuttle's attacks and instead stuck with promoting his programs for unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. Not until three days before the election did he address Tuttle's attacks on him for being too close to Tammany Hall. He said he would address the charges in the courts, where they could be proven, and not in the newspapers. He attacked one of the visiting spokesmen for Hoover as a carpetbagging outsider and the other two as defeated candidates for Governor who had already been rejected by the State. “We of the Empire State can take care of ourselves,” said FDR. Tammany’s Jim Farley meanwhile delivered the most lopsided victory of any New York Governor.

So FDR had some momentum in 1932 when he took on Hoover, who botched his reelection effort by looking savage when he should have looked kind, and vice versa. Having shown himself as a ditherer on the economy, Hoover decided to look strong by sending in the U.S. Army to rout the unarmed veterans who were assembled to ask for early payment of World War I bonuses. At the order of Secretary of War Patrick Hurley, General Douglas MacArthur led cavalry and tanks to force with tear gas the decampment of unemployed World War I veterans. The troops burned the makeshift shelters. The Capitol's Republican newspaper said: “If the Army must be called out to make war on unarmed citizens, this is no longer America.”

Meanwhile, Hoover was gentle where he should have been tough. To calm the financial markets, he needed to reassure the financial community that his Treasury policies would continue whether or not Hoover himself was reelected. He therefore asked FDR to commit himself to certain free- market and sound-money principles, though he knew that such a commitment would be incompatible with FDR’s New Deal proposals. FDR waited more than a week to respond, and then coolly replied to Hoover that it was too late for “mere statements,” showing Hoover up as too weak to take needed action. FDR stuck to that line right up to the inauguration, despite Hoover's rising panic as banks folded, gold flowed out to Europe, and unemployment rose, making the runup to the election and inauguration as disruptive as it could be. A good administrator, but not a leader, Hoover was helpless as tragedy washed over the country.

FDR beat Hoover in a huge landslide in 1932. The day before the inauguration, Hoover  told FDR, who had suggested calling on someone, “You will learn that the President of the United States calls on nobody.” FDR and Hoover famously rode together to FDR's inauguration. Hoover asked a favor of the President, to keep on a member of his staff. FDR was mostly silent. The two of them never again met.

After his first press conference, FDR paid a call to the I Street home of retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose birthday it was, and asked Holmes for advice, thereby ignoring Hoover's advice. FDR took the advice of Holmes, who said, as a veteran of the Union Army: “Mr. President, you are in a war. Form your battalions and fight.”

The Great Depression, but not poverty, ended within weeks of the arrival of FDR, as the nation recognized that someone was in charge and people started going back to work. Key elements were: (1) Treasury Secretary William H. Woodin’s commandeering of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce greenbacks, pack them up for the banks, send off the trucks to the banks, and film the entire process for the newsreels in movie theaters during the following weeks, all across the country. (2) President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, which showed that someone competent was in charge and that people could be confident that the country would get through the crisis. 

FDR showed public relations genius as well as an acute understanding of the nature of the problem the country faced and how it could be. He put a Republican CEO in charge of implementing the practical steps to address the panic and then rebuild the country. He told Will Woodin to handle the task of getting money out to the banks, while he crafted his Fireside Chats. The financial system they created lasted for 70 years. FDR's social safety net is still with us.

The story resonates today, as we watch President Donald J. Trump interface with Governor Andrew Cuomo. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. 

P.S. (May 16, 2020) ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news source, argues that in crucial days in early March, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio were slow to listen to their health experts. The story contrasts New York State with California, which had a friendlier relationship between Governor and Mayor (or San Francisco) and lost fewer lives to the coronavirus. The story is long and full of details. It succeeds most effectively at conveying the difficulty of trying to make the right decision about something unexpected when there are legitimate arguments on both sides about how best to proceed (the health experts did not always agree).  https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california

PANDEMIC | Best Trend Tracker

I am following this Tableau wizard, Jonas Nart. Hat tip to Domenick B.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/jonas.nart#!/vizhome/COVID19_15844962693420/COVID19-TrendTracker

VIEWS | 210K, Ten Most-Read Posts in March

This blog has passed 210,000 pageviews! Your readership is appreciated. Please leave your comments or contact your blogger direct at teppermarlin @ aol.com. This blog's most-read posts in March 2020 were topped by the story of Tilly den Tex van Hall, wife of the great Resistance Banker Wally van Hall. They were: WW2 | Tilly den Tex van Hall (1907-1988) Jul 28, 2015

WW2 | 1.The Boissevain Clan (Updated July 9, 2016)... Oct 31, 2014

LISTER | First article on antiseptic surgery Mar 16, 2020

U.S. FLAG | Why Its Origins Are Masked (Updated 20... Jun 2, 2013

POETS | Elizabeth Bishop in Ouro Preto Feb 16, 2014

GYM MEMBERSHIPS | Disclosures, Cancellations Feb 29, 2020,

MUSIC | The Trapp Family Camp (Personal Comments) Mar 19, 2014,

HERALDRY | Wilfred Bayne, OSB, Heraldist, Portsmou... Feb 20, 2016

WOODIN | 9A. Musician (Updated Mar 11, 2017) Oct 13, 2013

MUSIC | Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg and Leona... Jan 23, 2016

SURGERY | Lister's first antisepsis article, March 16

Lord Joseph Lister of Lyme Regis (1827-
1912), Father of Modern Surgery

March 16, 2020 – As the world confronts the pandemic COVID-19 disease, antiseptic hygiene is becoming widely stressed. Wash your hands, wash your hands – soap and hot water, in a vigorous 20-second routine.

The theory behind it was first set forth in an article  published on this date in 1867 by the august British journal The Lancet. The author was Joseph Lister, later to become Lord Joseph Lister of Lyme Regis (1827-1912).

He is called the Father of Modern Surgery. He would be called Dr. Lister in the United States, but British surgeons like to acknowledge barbers as their professional ancestors by calling themselves just "Mr."

Born in 1827, Joseph Lister attended University College Hospital, London for his training, the only place he could go as a non-conforming Quaker. He became a professor of surgery at Glasgow University in 1860 and moved to Edinburgh in 1869, marrying the daughter of an Edinburgh professorial colleague, James Syme. He was 40 when he published his first installment of a now-historic series of six articles on antiseptic surgery.

At that time, putrefaction commonly followed operation, leading to the common report that "the operation was successful but the patient died." Lister read Louis Pasteur's study of the cause of fermentation in beer and milk and speculated that the same cause might lead to putrefaction in wounds. Authorities in nearby Carlisle were using creosote to deal with bad-smelling sewage because it reduced the odor. They discovered it also reduced disease amongst cattle and humans. Lister theorized that it was the carbolic acid in creosote that stopped the putrefaction, and that Pasteur's study provided an explanation.

Ridiculed at first, Lister experimented to prove his theory. He used dressings soaked in carbolic acid to cover wounds. The practical outcome of his work was that the rate of infection in his own operations was vastly reduced. After trying combinations with different emphasis of hand-washing, sterilizing instruments, spraying carbolic in the operating theater (he developed a carbolic spray) and antiseptic treatment of wounds, he steadily improved surgery survival rates. His first article of six appeared in The Lancet on this date in 1867. The last appeared in July.

Between 1864 and 1866, before his experiments and remedies, 46 percent of Lister’s surgical patients died; during the next three years, he brought the average down to 15 percent. Yet Lister was initially a prophet without honor in his own country. His work was accepted in Germany, but continued to be ridiculed in London (Scotland's science was still fair game for London opinion-shapers).

To promote his work, Lister accepted a post as Professor of Clinical Surgery at King's College Hospital, London in 1877. His teaching was finally accepted after his astonishingly successful "open" operation for fracture of the patella, the kneecap. A patient, Francis Smith, had fractured his patella a fortnight earlier. Lister wired together the separated fragments of his bone, a complicated process that previously might have been avoided because of the likelihood of "hospital disease." Lister showed how his antiseptic system “removed for ever the threat of hospital disease.”

Smith survived the operation and walked out of the hospital three months afterwards. Many people came to the hospital from far and wide to watch him operate (notices were posted in three different languages requesting no smoking in the hospital). In 1883, Lister was made a Baronet. In 1897 he was the first surgeon to become a peer, the 1st Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. Lyme Disease is indirectly named after the town attached to his title, since Connecticut's Lyme was named after the British one.

GYM MEMBERSHIPS | Disclosures, Cancellations

NY State Senator
Brad Hoylman
 (D-Chelsea, Manhattan)

February 29, 2020–I was pleased to see that New York State Senator Brad Hoylman (D-Chelsea, Manhattan) succeeded yesterday in getting his bill to protect users of commercial gyms through the State Senate.

Hoylman chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

His legislation is called the "I Wanna Quit The Gym" bill. It will protect New Yorkers who sign up for gym memberships from Roach Motel-type contracts that you can get into easily but can't get out of.

The contracts automatically renew until you figure out the magic words that get you released from them. This curse is not restricted to gyms, but you have to start the remedies somewhere.

I remember how easy it was for me to sign up for a gym membership years ago in Chelsea. They had a card table outside the front door with balloons tied to the table and warm, welcoming signs. Anyone could sign me in. A signature and a check and I was a member. Smiles and welcomes all around. Same thing when I signed up for a trainer.

Years later, when my job and daily routine changed and I decided to exit, the situation was very different. I handed in my reservation the same way I signed up, at the membership desk. But the monthly bills continued to come.

I went back to the branch and I talked to several people. The membership manager looked puzzled about how on earth to make this happen, as if I was the first person ever to ask for this. She even called a meeting together with several other people from the branch, to see if together they could figure out how to address this challenging request. In retrospect, forgive me for my thinking that she was showing them all how to talk to people who want to resign. Chat them up without giving them the information they need.

It turned out that I could not resign at the branch where I was gladly signed up. I had to follow a complex sequence involving a registered letter to an address that no one could remember.  

By the time I discovered what to do, in stages, several months had passed and I never was refunded the money for the months when I was no longer using the gym and was still paying for it. I still remember vividly at being rankled at the asymmetry of joining versus resigning.

"Exercising regularly is tiring enough," Hoylman said in promoting his bill. "New Yorkers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops simply to quit their gym and join another." You can say that again.

Senator Hoylman's bill will require gyms to disclose details about pricing and provide easy ways to cancel service.

At the very least, there should be symmetry between signing up and cancelation. If you can sign up at the branch, you should be able to cancel at the branch. If you have to send a registered letter to an obscure address to resign, they should make it just as difficult to sign up so you remember the drill.

As Hoylman said: "Too many gyms, subscription boxes and other companies use misleading offers and promotions to lock unwitting customers into long-term contracts that are ridiculously difficult to get out of. I’m grateful to Leader Andrea-Stewart Cousins for passing this strong consumer protection legislation that will help save New Yorkers money."

Bravo, Senator. It's about time. Now the bill goes to Assembly Member Dinowitz to push through the Assembly.

BOISSEVAIN | Frans Polak Family

Engelein de Booij and Frans Polak,
before the Nazi invasion, 1940.

The following powerful letter is posted here by permission of the writer, Maaike Knottenbelt, in Adelaide, Australia:

Hello John,

...from a person you do not know, but one who is overwhelmed by reading your chapter about Hilda Boissevain de Booij and her daughter Engelien, and Engelien's husband Frans Polak, in your 2015 post.

Since I'm not so digitally literate, I didn't think I would succeed in leaving the following comment on your blog, so I am writing direct and hope this reaches you.  

[This is the post that Maaike refers to: https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-first-year-of-dutch-occupation.html. There is another one that fills in more details, here: http://warriors-families.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-dutch-resistance-goldberg-family.html - JTM]

I have not previously read any of your writing although I probably should have. I am a niece of that young Jewish man Frans Polak, whom Engelien your cousin married in 1940. I have a copy of a photo of them on their wedding day (perhaps you have photos of that occasion too). 

I also have in front of me a letter from Engelien written on 24 July 1999, after Frans had died. It confirms what you already know from a Boissevain source, that although they divorced after the war was over, they remained on good terms with each other until his death. I did not know the reason for their divorce but what Engelien said to you, that the debt he owed to her for his survival [the Nazis seem to have usually spared the lives of Jews married to gentiles in Holland] was too great to bear, seems so plausible to me. 

My mother Meta Polak was Frans’ younger sister. My mother went out to the Dutch East Indies in December 1939. She married my father, Robert Knottenbelt, the following year, in Batavia, 12 November 1940. It is therefore unlikely she was at Frans and Engelien's wedding in 1940 in Holland.

My parents both became Japanese prisoners of war – my father on the Thai-Burma Railway together with one of his older brothers; my mother in Sumatra together with the wife and three young children of one of my father’s cousins.  Elly, the eldest sibling of Frans and Meta was in different camps in Java, together with her two-year-old son.  Her husband Bert van Helbergen was also on the Thai-Burma Railway, but in different camps from my father and his brother (who were not always together in the same camps either).  My maternal grandmother’s brother Piet van der Goot, his wife and child died in camps on Java.  All other family members survived the Japanese camps.

My maternal grandfather James Joseph Polak left Holland with my grandmother Tetta van der Goot for North Carolina in early 1940 before the Nazi invasion of Holland; he worked for the Enka Corporation.  His brother Ernest Polak was a District Court Judge and second wife Renee Polak-Hirsch did not.  Stolpersteine [10x10 cm brass markers for victims of the Holocaust, at their last location seen alive] were laid for them in Rotterdam on 7 April 2010.

There are family war-time letters, including two postcards from Renée to Frans and Engelien written under very straitened circumstances.  

I was so moved to read the letter written by Engelien’s mother to your grandmother in Washington DC, which Engelien translated for you. Do you have more war-time letters from Engelien’s mother or Engelien? Have you finished your book [about the Boissevains in WW2]?  

I grew up on a diet of your mother’s unforgettable books: The Cottage at Bantry Bay, Francie on the Run, Pegeen, The Mitchells (oh Angela and the angel! ), Andries, Kersti and St Nicholas — I know there is another one there whose title currently escapes me. [A list is here: http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/vanstock.htm.]

With a great deal of help I am currently in the processes of collecting, transcribing and translating the family WW2 correspondence, and collecting also those primary source documents that support information about the writers. Unlike you I am not trying to compile a wider family history; just focussing on the wartime correspondents, their correspondence, and any subsequent correspondence that refers directly back to that time. This will always remain an incomplete collection: in the extant correspondence there are references to letters that do not appear to have survived. Perhaps also, more may yet emerge. [The Amsterdam Archief has a lot of Boissevain letters, well indexed.]

My father, mother, older brother and myself migrated to New Zealand in 1951, where the sibling count increased to six. I have lived in Adelaide, South Australia since 1979 with occasional excursions overseas.  I hope very much to hear from you —

Most sincerely,

Maaike Knottenbelt 

Second letter from Adelaide, Australia: 

I include below just briefly two quotations from my English translation of a letter dated 8 October 1945 written by my maternal grandmother Tetta (with a postscript by James) to their son Frans.  They lived in Asheville, NC, and Frans was in London at the time.  It was a momentous day, with the receipt of two family letters: the first letter from Elly in 3 1/2 years confirming that she and young Kees were still alive; the other from my father in Bangkok, confirming the same. No news yet from Meta.

“Aunt Olga writes that they will move soon to Montreal, where her son-in-law Marlin has become liaison-officer with the Inter[national] Civil Aviation Ass[ociation].”

and from the brief postscript written by my grandfather:

We also received recently a short letter from Willem van Marle, at Camp Davis.  He cannot get any leave, so I fear we shall not see him.”

PORTSMOUTH ABBEY | Monastery in the 1940s

PORTSMOUTH PRIORY MONKS IN THE 1940s

Standing: Aelred (Barney) Wall, Andrew Jencks, Hilary, John, Crepeau, Julian, Peter, David
Seated: Placid, Crenier, Richard, Prior Gregory Borgstedt, Hugh Diman, Wilfrid Bayne, Joseph
Missing from Photo: Alban, Ansgar

The monks I got to know quite well when I was a student there in 1955-58 were Fr Aelred, Fr Andrew, Fr Hilary, Fr Peter, Fr Wilfred, Fr Alban.