The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Johnathan Freedland 326pg

 

This is the most important holocaust book that I have read   26/2/24

 2000 The author  realized that Rudolf Vrba's first wife  Gerta lived in London  she was aged 93. She gave him a pile of letters  from Walter Rosenberg (born 1924). His 2nd wife the widow Robin was in New York and talked to him about the post war man she was married to.

The head of the Slovakian government head was Catholic priest Father Jozef Tiso, the state religion of this infant republic was Nazism The Jewish community was 89,000  Slovakia had gained autonomy in December 1938 under the Nazis. 

The Hlinka Guard were Slovakia's state police and most willingly helped Hitler with his plans. It operated against Jews, Czechs, Hungarians,

Walter Rosenberg and his mother moved to Trnava 30 km from Bratislava  a town that smelt from the sugar beet factory. He though he could join Josip Titos partisan's in Yugoslavia.

For every Jew deported Bratislava handed Berlin 500 Reichsmarks officially to cover the costs. 

When Walter was eventually caught youth his age had been deported early so that they could not cause trouble now it was adults with children. At Zwardon the Slovakian, Polish border the Hlinka Guards handed them over to SS Nazi's who now took charge. At Lublin they were marched via backstreets  to the camp of Majdanek.

The chapter on life in Auschwitz I never read as it is too upsetting but because Walter knew languages he worked his way into a clerical position keeping records of who came in. He was one of the most informed people of what was happening.

The Escape

They hid in the outer field in a hole that their friend covered with a pile of planks. They had Soviet Cigarettes soaked in petrol that would act as a repellant against the dogs. An escaped prisoner resulted in the SS searching the outer field for 3 days. At night  only the inner watch tower were operated.

Most of the people who managed to escape Auschwitz were Poles whose conditions were not as bad but no Jew had escaped. A Russian informed him that a man can live on potatoes and salt for month. You must take matches to cook stolen food and a watch to double as a compass. Travel at night and stay hidden in the day. Find a hiding place before dawn breaks. Trust nobody and share your plans with nobody.  There was a network of informers amongst the poisoners. A German by himself is a fragile human being.

They headed for Slovakia a place where their accents would not betray them.  Silesia had once been Polish but the Polish population had been driven out and Ethnic Germans replaced them.

On the escape some people though they were Soviet POWs escaping. In Slovakia the Jewish doctors were given a reprieve and many were in rural areas.

They got to Cadena where Mrs. Beck gave them shelter she was related to Leo Baeck the eminent Rabbi. 

Walter Rosenberg and Fred Wentzler now revealed about Auschwitz. The Jewish Council had been the enabler s of the Nazi's. Of a group 2000 French Jews executed  they had seen the younger brother of Leon Blum.

Walter now took on the name Rudolf Vrba who had been a influential Catholic priest.

1944 March The German army moved in to Hungary deal with the Jews. The regent Miklos Horthy had made antisemitism a key part of his program. The Calvinist church protected 100,000 Christians of Jewish origin.  The Protestant leadership was considering and edict of denying communion to anyone who helped rounding up Jews or detain members of the resistance. Perhaps the Cardinal could issue a ruling like this in the name of Hungary's Catholics.   " The pope himself does not undertake to do anything against Hitler."

When Walter met the Cardinal Martilotti who was not moved by what was happening to Jews, he told him about Catholic priest shot and then brought to Birkenau in boxes to be disposed of . The cardinal was now shocked and almost fainted.

1944 23 June. Garrett contact Alan Dulles of the US intelligence who ran the Swiss bureau. BBC reported in Check and Slovak . In the US the head of the Office of the War information refused to authorize publication.

Oskar Krasnansky had appended a after word to the report calling on the Allies to  bomb the crematoria and the roads leading to it.  Mc Cloy instructed that they kill this bombing idea and that the best hope for the victims was the defeat of Nazism. The US does not want to see Jews killed by US bombes.

The US airforces bombed Monowitz. Siemen's, Krupp and I G Fabens had factories here and the concentration camp was a subcamp of Auschwitz. The US airforce photographed over Auschwiths and this proved every word of the Vrba Wetzler Report. This report got to London from a few sources and Chaim Weitzman and Moshe Shertok got it. It was now in Churchills hands.

The Americans bombed by day and the Brits by night only the Americans were capable of doing it. If Hungarian Jews knew they would stampeded away in panic and there would be ungovernable mayhem.

Reszo Kasztner and the Jewish leadership said this is the fertile imagination of 2 rash young men. The leader resolved to do nothing that would spread alarm.

In Slovakia the Jewish community negotiated directly with Eichmann and Dieter Wisliceny  they paid $45000 and Slovak deportation stopped temporary till autumn 1944 for Germany's own reasons. Kastner may have shown the document to Eichmann who said that the 2 should be captured and if it was exposed the Nazi negotiation about Kasztner train would be cut off. 1700 boarded Kastners train many from his home town Kolozavar $1,684000 were paid to the Germans.  500 postcards arrived from Jews resettled in Auschwitz but this was a trick. Kasztner did not allow the postcards to be distributed but nor did he allow the publication of the Vrba Wetzler Report.

The Nazis conducted the largest and swiftest deportation operation437,402 Jews were transported on 147 trains. Next the Nazis set their sights on Budapest's 200,000Jews.

In Bratislava  Josef Weiss worked in the Office of the Prevention of Venereal Disease  where the authorities did not investigate and they printed copies of the report there. The report got to Miklos Horty the regent of Hungary.  Roosevelt had his Secretary of State deliver a message to Horthy. The king of Sweden Gustav V also wrote to Horthy a warning and Horthy said the deportation must stop as nobody wanted to be a war criminal. There now ensued a power struggle in the Hungarian government. Hungarian police were sent into close of the Jewish area so they couldn't escape.

1944 2nd July the US 15th Air force bombed in and around Budapest their target was factories south of the city.

Hungary's ruling circles it appeared that Roosevelt was making good his threat to hold the political leadership responsible. So Horthy instructed his chief military commander to prevent the deportation of Budapest's Jews. One train was even turned around by Horthy's orders. Germany began to look like it was losing the war.

1944 August the Nazi's invade Slovakia and  trains started heading to Auschwitz.

1944 Autumn Horthy was toppled and the Arrow Cross the Nazi party took over.

 People did their best to escape and Rudi joined the partisans under Milan Uher where he won a Medal for bravery.

War over he went to the Czech Technical University in Prague to study chemical technology. Status of being an ex partisan enabled him to get a flat. He got a PhD in chemistry of the brain.

Rudi was a paranoid person, never trusting anyone perhaps this had caused his survival.

1946 Rudi visited Bratislava where he joined up with Wetzler, Moroowicz and Rosin the only 4 who had escaped from Auschwitz.

The annual commemoration of the anti Fascist Union Fighter nobody mentioned the fate of the Jews. 

 

Ruby was the first Czechoslovak biologist to have won Soviet  recognition and was rewarded with a passport travelled to Denmark ,Ukraine and Russia and came back each time. 

1958 When he applied to go to a convention in Strasbourg and Vienna he went to the airport and his passport was handed back to him from the Ministry of Science. His wife and children left at the same time and crossed the border and defected . Rudi flew to Israel and worked at Beit Dagan's Veterinary research institute.

He did not like the fact that Kasztner was a government official in Israel. Grunewald accused Kasztner of collaborating with the Nazi and Grunewald was sued for criminal libel.. Hannah Arendt said this the darkest chapter in a  dark story of the role played by  Jewish leaders in the holocaust. Kasztner crime was his failure to share knowledge, and this judgement caused the government of Israel to fall. Kasztner was assassinator in the street.

After 18 months in Israel he found out his wife Gerta and children were in England and went there in 1960. Gerta was living with Sidney Hilton as husband and wife.

1960 May. Eichmann was brought to Israel. Rudi now was approached by the Daily Herald who did a 5 part series on Eichmann by Alan Bestic on Rudi's information.   Because he couldn't get into the US for being a Communist during Mc McCarthyism he was given a position in Vancouver by a Communist's group despite the fact that by now he was very anti Communist. He was appointed for 2 years as a visiting lectureship at Harvard Medical School.

1975 married 24 year old Robin Lipson, so he needed a women from a different generation and different continent. He would not talk to her about Auschwitz so she had to find his memoir in the Boston  public library. On seeing a tatoo number on a waiter arm told him that he must have been a Jew from Bedzin, Poland, who arrived at Auschwitz in the summer of 1943.

In Nazi trials he  showed that he was fluent in multiple languages and had an exceptional memory of the mass murder from beginning till end . The Nazis had taken pains so that nobody could understand the full process. He was in touch with Simon Wiesenthal especially about Nazi criminals in Canada.

1985Ernst Zundel was tried under a criminal code for false news a tract called "Did 6 million Jews Really Die" Rudi was a central witness and the truth of the holocaust was on trial.

1981 Martin Gilbert wrote a book Auschwitz and the Allies and he was a principal source. He advised on the World at War series and the Shoah by Claude Lanzmann. 

Josef   Lanik's book Co Dante Nevidel ( What Dante didn't see) he was portrayed as the leading character.  

The Zionist movement like every other, produced both saints and sinners while under the Nazi jackboot. Zionists led the armed resistant in Warsaw and Vilna Ghettoes some who saw Kasztner's case became the most anti Zionist.

Yehuda Bauer thought Rudi was a genuine hero of the holocaust but his deep hatred for Jewish leadership colored his judgement. Both Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi were writers and became famous while Rudi gave more information but did not achieve their fame.

His daughter Helena became a doctor and he was the last to know. She was a feminist and considered him a male chauvinist. She went to Papua New Guinee and committed suicide. (not unusual for Holocaust survivors  children).      1998 Haifa University awarded him an honoree doctorate. The same year Fred Wetzier who escaped with him, died in Bratislava 'Bitter, drunk and forgotten.'   As a librarian he never let on that that Jozef Lanik was his pseudonym.

Rudi's belief that once Jews understood what Auschwitz was about they would refuse to board the trains. The Nazi ambition to rid the world of Jews was no secret. 

Jan Karski a Polish Aristocrat in 1943 had informed Antony Eden  and Roosevelt of what he had seen of mass shooting in the Warsaw Ghetto. When supreme court Justice Felix Frankfurter met him for 20 minutes said I don't believe it.  Rome had been kept informed by the  apostolic nuncio Angelo Roncalli  in Istanbul, who became Pope John XXIII. (1958 to 1963) 

1942 Polish non Jews like Stanislav Jaster escaped and reported the killing of the Jews, or resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, but the Polish government in exile in London did not do much to publicize this. Whitehall want the British public to feel  they were fighting for Britain's sake and not to save the Jews.

A panicked refusal to go or a stampede would have forced the Nazi's to hunt deer rather than sheep. The young made plans to evade deportation but the middle aged had dependents careers and property and refused to believe what they were hearing. 

Allied military men said killing civilians did not make any military sense.  French Jewish philosopher Raymon Aron said "I knew but I didn't believe it. And because I didn't believe it I didn't know.'  

2006 Rudolf Vrba died aged 82. George Klein told him that 'you saved my like ' as I knew to run. You should be satisfied that you saved 200,000 Budapest Jews. Though he never escaped the holocaust shadow he  lived a full life.

Erik Weisz a Hungarian Jew and son of a Rabbi became Harry Houdini (1874 to 1926) The greatest magician and escapist.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Abraham Vergalese books Covenant of Water 2023 and The Tennis Partner 1998

 Covenant of Water by Abraham Vergalese 2023   724pg         4/2/24

A story of India between 1900 that ends in 1977.

A 12 year old girl marries a 40 year old widower who is illiterate She has an education and her father a Christian priest wanted her to keep studying but died and by marrying her off, she no longer has to be supported by her mothers family. there is a curse, a “Condition” that runs in the family – a drowning in every generation.

The land is shaped by water and its people united by a common language: Malayalam. Fable of Family and Medicine. Focuses almost entirely on good people (to whom many terrible things happen) Populated with archetypes rather than people as Charles Dickens style.

“Medicine is his true priesthood ,a ministry of healing the body and the soul of his flock.” A breech birth demonstrates how the wisdom of folk medicine can coexist happily with the knowledge of modern treatments. Two troubled love affairs—Big Ammachi’s son’s with a headstrong artist and Mariamma’s with a revolutionary communist.

In parallel, there is another story, of Digby Kilgour, a young Scottish doctor who travels from Glasgow to Madras to join the Indian medical service during colonial times. The two stories dovetail only towards the end, “like a river linking people upstream with those below”. Threaded through the novel are historic events – Indian soldiers fight for the British in the world wars; India gains independence; the newspaper then the radio then a post office arrives; the state of Kerala is formed; the communists win elections; the Naxalite revolution runs rampant.

The primary allegiance of the novel is to the land and the lives it sustains.  Novel’s 10 sections, each calamity tragic, Christianity provides the moral backbone, and Malayali pride shines through at key moments. Chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope. The covenant of Water is that is washes away the sins of the  world.

Historically, this community was organized as the of the Church of the East in India by Patriach Timothy (780–823 AD) These Saint Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast Portuguese Christian arrived in the 16C Travancore is at the southern tip of India between the Arabian Sea and the Western Gnats. Cochin has churches , basilicas and synagogues and cobblestone Dutch colonial streets .Paradesi were Iberian Sephardic Jews. Black Jews came to Cochin from the time of Solomon. The geography of the Spice Coast and the common Malayalan language unite the faiths.

Cocoanut and Palmyra palms are abundant and land includes water wide lagoons and canals. Travancore , Cochin and Malabar today is the State of Kerala.. The spice trade swept Europe peppercorns, fennel seed, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon as well as mustard seed  with garlic and onion to  make masala the foundation of curry. From 1400 The Portuguese followed by the Dutch and French and then the English came.

There is a genetic  Condition in this family with a death by drowning in every generation.

1903The Wright brother first heavier than air flight

1919 The story of Digby in Glasgow. Received a Carnegie Scholarship to study medicine. His mother hung herself with his school tie.

1927 Lindbergh flight across the Atlantic. He takes the ship via Suez past Bab el Mandeb ( the gate of tears). He joined the Indian Medical service as a surgeon. being a Catholic could not advance at home. With the caste system in India the British just came and moved everyone down a rung. His boss ran the British and  Anglo Indian wards that were empty while he did surgery of the native wards. Anglo Indians regards themselves as British but are excluded. With his limited knowledge the peoples choice was him or nothing. Celest's parents had been missionaries in Calcutta and died of cholera.

Cancers of the tongue and larynx are related to chewing poan 16 annas make a rupee.

WW1 a million Indian soldiers fought and 100,000 died, in the British army. War was the only proper school for surgeons.

Fort St George Madras or Chennai is the British East India Companies first settlement.

Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn't last. 

The doctor cut into this growth but it was an aneurism on the jugular and Jeb exsanguinated. Celeste wanted her sons back and though if her husband can't pay the boarding school fees they would return to India. Praemonitus Praemunitus  = Forewarned is Forearmed.

Leprosy -the only pain people feel is exile, leprosy is rarely contagious. The hospice was name Sister Brigitta the patron saint of Sweden. Hansen's Disease or leprosy, in which there is no feeling and without the gift of pain we have no protection.

The caste system is abominable against everything in the bible. The Maharajah is a Brahmin only the oldest son can inherit the property. Nairs are the worrier caste and overseers for the property. some become property owners. Eshava  are craftsmen and the lowest caste is landless peasants porayar or untouchables. Legend has it that St . Thomas converted only Brahmins. The English missionaries knew only one class heathen and porayars. converted willingly. The local would not accept the lowest caste but the new government school accepted all.

Moby Dick - better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian. " Fiction is the great lie that tells us the truth how the world lives."

Our hands have 34 different individual muscles. Henry Vandyke Carter was the one who illustrated Greys anatomy but was cheated by Henry Grey and later joined the Indian Medical Service. What distinguishes us from other animals is not the opposing thumb but our brains.

Badagas are an ethnic group in Tamil Nadu and are skilled welders mechanics and shop owners, they ran the estate.

Mullers Madness - Gerhard Muller was a German with a vast estate but because he never put in a road it was worthless as it could not develop.  Literacy alters patterns of life that have gone undisturbed for centuries. The Mahrajah is a young man who wants to see development in his state Travancore and enacted the Temple Entry Proclamation 1936 so that all castes could enter all temples. 

The war causes every tailor in Cochin to stitch uniforms so for  ready made clothes they go to Jew Town.

WW2 Indian soldiers were rushed to British Sudan and liberated Abyssinia from the Italians they then headed to Burma where the Japanese were invading. Later Tripoli , El Alamein With the war the price of coconuts went up but an anti hoarding act caused prices  to fall.

Success is not money but fully loving what you are doing. I have been bent and broken but I hope into a better shape.

Japanese plane bombed Madras Oct 1943. The fall of Rangoon results in the end of rice imports to India and so the British stockpiled locally grown rice for their troops, is how famine is triggered. Acetone odor is  of a body consuming itself the scent of starvation.

When electricity comes only 4 families are prepared to share the cost of the cable extension, when the other decide they want it they will have to pay plus price increase, this enables them to get a few lights bulbs and connect the radio.

1848 to 1906 Raga Ravi Varma met and painted all the famous beauties of the day. painted portraits fusing European art to purely Indian sensitivity . Elsie wanted to be an artist but had to marry as her entire fathers estate goes to her brother.

1945 Two and a half million Indian soldiers demobilized. Now for t he first time there were Indian officers. There had been none in WW1. Soldiers  who died to free  Abyssinians and the French and to free Europe from Hitler won't abide anything less than freedom for India. 200,000 British civilians in India could be slaughtered. Most troops joined for  signed-on  bonus and the salary.

1592 - 1666 Emperor Shah Jahan. The Moghul Emperor known for his architecture works and Taj Mahal near the city of Agra.

1947 Midnight August 14 India become independent with Jawaharlal Nerhu as Prime Minister.

Gwendolyn Gardens was a tea  plantation , coffee growing used less labour and the switched to robusta coffee when leaf rust  wiped out the arabica  plants. Here the tea could be plucked all year round unlike in Assam.

Balm of Gilead the cure for all ailments.

1951 Flood with hundred drowned, thousands displaced and there is rampant cholera and dysentery. Don't  count your children till the smallpox has come and gone. God gave us a beautiful girl because more foolish men you don't need.

1952 People joined the Communist party as the only group willing to undo the caste system. Malabar  Travancore-Cochin merged to become Kerala, which had the first democratically elected government in the world. Das Capital  and Stalins history of the Communist Party were the only books translated into Malayalam.

1964 The Maramon Convention was a Christian organization and even poor people contributed money to open a hospital in the area.

1897 The Red Fort  part of the  Madras Medical Collage. The Indian cotton could only be shipped back to England to English mills and then sold back to Indians. The handlooms of Indian weavers were smashed.

Mortus vivos docent  In learning anatomy by bisecting a cadaver thus the dead are teaching the living. You came into this world on an inbreath and will leave it by an outbreath.

Indo Simian Campaign - they had a problem of monkey climbing into the windows and damaging the residents to get food.

In anatomy they would have a test of having to put their hand into a  bag and feel and identify the bone. Here the male examiner wanted her to put her hand into his pocket. She squeezed his penis so hard he fell and had a heart attack.  Sometimes you have to imagine what is the to find it.

1960s. In Colombia and Brazil the Jesuits disobeyed their church and set up liberation theology.

For Moslem women with complication in giving birth , death  was preferable to being taken to a hospital where a white male obstetrician might touch them.  

Fiat Premier Padmini , The Ambassador(Morris Oxford) The Standard Herald (Triumph) are the only 3 rebranded foreign models licensed to be build in socialist India other imported car have a 150% import tax added.

Robert Bristow a marine engineer arrived in Cochin in 1920 and had to deal with a sand bar and ridge that barred all but small boats from entering the port. Now ships can enter the port and breakwater the Willington Island is the Cochin Airport.

The family Condition of an aversion to water, in every generation drowned , or had a dizziness and many went deaf. You see a person whose skin is covered with bumps and this is called neurofibromatosis or Recklinghausen's disease. The famous Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick was believed to have suffered from this. This was a different version of this. This is what made the daughter decide to specialize in neurosurgery at the Christian Medical Collage in Vellore in Tamil Nadu.

Every family has its secrets but not all secrets are meant to deceive. Many families are defined by their secrets. However the secrets of this Condition was a killer. Secrets kill - how does one tackle a disease if you don't know how many are affected. A women build a tree house as she was terrified of floods and not heights.

Cushing s Response  = the affects of pressure in the brain. The stick a needle in to a specific part of the brain to drain the fluid. This Condition affects personality and makes them eccentric.

The very people who the Revolutionaries cause they championed were the ones who found the reward money offered by the police to hand in the Revolutionaries. A fungus called blister blight did more for the class struggle that the Naxalites as it wiped out the tea estates and the owners abandoned the land to the tribal whos land it originally was.  

In the1950s many daring young man took dhows across the sea to get jobs in Dubai or Qatar because they could not afford No Objection Certificates or of plane  or ship tickets. The build palaces in the gulf and then returned home to build their dream houses.

 

1957 When Digby and Cromwell took over Gwendolyn Gardens. They now build an access road which was just completed before the price of tea and rubber soared. Art is never finished only abandoned.

The word Confessor applies both to the one confessing as well as the priest listening. What defines a family is not blood but the secrets they share.

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Tennis partner by Abraham Verghese   1998  345pg       23/3/24

This book is about the relationship between David Smith and his professor.  Between learning to be a physician and how tennis can influence the lives of the players.

When you take drugs first you destroy your family then your partners, then your finances, then your health goes and your job performance is the last to go.  The Talbott Marsh clinic was set up for rehab of medical people in Atlanta Georgia. If he wanted to practice medicine David he must submit himself to treatment.

1598 Onate held a Mass of Thanksgiving at El Paso  and claimed this territory New Mexico in the name of Phillip II of Spain 2 decades before the Pilgrims reach Plymouth Rock

The writer is an African born to Indian parentage but a naturalized American, like the Spaniard he also come looking for an el Dorado. He was now working as a professor of internal medicine at the Texas Tech School of Medicine. His parents were brought from India  to Ethiopia by Haile Selassie to teach at one  dozens of school all over the country that the king had set up.  His parents were Syriac Christians who had set up in South India in the Church of St Thomas.

With a tennis racket and ball he would hit against the wall. He had instruction in a school tennis  court  that had been set up by originally by the British school.

10 years before the Americans had given Saddam of Iraq weapons, now they were used against America.

Abraham was now a full professor at the age of 37. Pancho Segura said never ask a better professional prayer, to play with you, he will either turn you down of sulk and hit ungraciously.

He had a large AIDS practice, rural boys had moved to big cities and then returned with HIV. His wife Rajani took the 2 sons to visit her parents at Coonoor in South India. Her father was a tea broker. He and his wife were different personalities one that his wife couldn't easily enter. He was prepared to occasionally smoke a joint , some moonshine and fascinated equally by the genius and misanthrope. He kept notes on his tennis thoughts and says that if he had paid as much attention as that to his wife he may have kept his marriage.

El Paso is at the end of the Franklin mountains which divides the east from the cities west. The el Paso tennis club had started in the 1940s.

A good Tennis player has to win, win, win or  lose his Collage scholarship. Coyote is a person who carried someone across the river or a Spanish Indian half caste. To him it meant a magnificent wild animal a carrier of rabies.

A man bitten on the hand in a bar fight had an Eikmella infection. This is from a mouth flora. People who shoot Retilin get infected with Eiknella as it burns them and the lick the place.

A fulminant pneumonia can be caused by exposure to rodents.

A tattoo Nascentes Morimur born to die mocked the doctors trying to save him. People who shoot drugs get all sorts of infection. Some use a cigarette filter on the needle to clean their drug. Where the pill is not properly crushed without a filter you get a  talc flash. If you sterilize the needle with a flame you get the soot creating a tattoo from the  vein. Swollen legs with flaky skin from injecting them. People have lost arms through gangrene by causing vein infections.

When a patient comes in with pneumonia they have to hear the history of it and start treatment immediately before they get the test results that can take several days. Eating quese de cabra , unpasteurized  goats cheese can cause brucellosis. Owning a pet bird can cause psittacosis pneumonia. Chronic alcohol ingestion can cause liver damage and less efficient metabolizing estrogens that males have. 

In India the Consul asked a medical student why he wanted to go to the US and was answered that he wanted to pass medical exams by his own merit and not by paying bribes, he was given a visa.

Phlebotomist one who takes blood at a blood bank. 

In the early days of AIDS it was not easy to get consultants from other disciplines to treat these patients. It took 4 years to understand HIV. HIV specialist learned to become jacks of all trades. On TV one could see that Arthur Ashe (who had been a top tennis player) was pail and suffering from AIDS from a blood transfusion.  He had had bypass surgery in 1979 and 1983 and died in 1993. He appealed to fund raiser for AIDS.

Old houses in El Paso came with the Moors to Spain and then with Cortez to New Spain of Mexico.

David Smith had saved a patient who had arrived with lungs unable to oxygenate his body was put on a ventilator, his kidney had failed. 2 decades previously he would have died but David had saved him and he was able to walk back into the hospital. This had not moved David understanding of his great  achievement. 

Tennis rackets sometimes are stretched to 90 pound tension these can sometime snap causing an implosion on the airplane frightening the travelers.

1885 El Paso was the  first planned city in Texas.

1911 Revolution across the Orozco River, Villa and Madera attempted to overthrow the 30 year rule of dictator  Porfrio Diaz. The battle of Jaures saw armillary , firearms and finally hand to hand combat. Wealthy Mexicans Porfiristas fled the revolution and settled in mansions of Sunset Heights, El Peso. This had architectural styles of classic, revival , Tudor, mission and Californian bungalow.

From El Peso you can see the flares of Chevron Refinery and the smoke stacks of Asarco smelting plant sticking out from the haze.

He visited Carlsbad, California and asked if the old man is still coaching tennis. He paid him $100 for an hour session and then asked him to autograph his sons photo. The name is Pancho Segura, who had won Wimbledon in 1946 and later was known to all the movie stars in Hollywood who he coached died in 1917.

Tennis is the art of hitting a ball that is never in one place, and brought out a parallel effect on the psyche.

The disease concept of taking drugs. Thousand of soldiers in Vietnam used heroin but only a few % of them continued its use when they got back.  Narcan can be used to reverse the effect of heroin reducing the person to normal, then the return to feel their suffering of this world.

Salmonella arizonae means that somebody had either eaten poorly cooked rattlesnake meat or bought rattlesnake pills as an aphrodisiac from a curandero  (a healer) in Jaures across the border.

David said as a professional tennis player he would limp after a game for a week and played the next game before  his limp had properly recovered. He had been drawn to doctoring because of subconscious  thought that if he attended pain of other it would take care of his own pains.

The artificial River :The Erie Canal and the paradox of progress.1812-1862 by Carol Sheriff 1979 272pg.

The artificial River 15/1/24

The Erie  canal even enabled oysters caught on the coast to be transported inland still fresh. The canal took the Great Awakening - an evangelical movement that later called for abolition.

1817 the Erie canal construction began and it would be part of the larger transport revolution. The period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was a dramatic period in the change of people lives in America, with economic development and market expansion. It led to Northerners and Midwesterners to see themselves as different from the South which had a semi feudal economic social system. It was in the rapid economic growth of agrarian upstate NY with growing cities that started the fiery evangelical movement that led to the abolition sentiment.

New Yorkers celebrated the canal as a wonder of human progress and felt it would bind the nation together. Humans could improve and perfect the world around them.

The geological clash between the Adirondack and Appalachian mountains checked the westward expansion of Euro American settlers. These run 3200 km between Canadian Newfoundland and Alabama.

The canal was to run 363 miles and end at Lake Erie. Up to now Dutch and Iroquois traders had used the rivers for trading furs. The upper state NY had farmers who wanted to unload their agricultural surpluses. Access to markets was a prerequisite for settlement. The Dutch Holland Land Company invested heavily in roads connecting and had turnpikes linking farms to waterways.  From 1792 The Inland Navigation company  improved  rivers but this company was not able to make a profit for its investors.

The founding principles of the Republic that the goals of the individuals be subordinated to the common good of the commonwealth. In the years after the revolution the US had to accommodate it swelling population and pay its war debts and reduce its dependence on Europe.

Founding of the American Republic was considered an event only secondary to the creation of the earth and offered adult white men unparalleled rights and responsibilities.

Alexander  Hamilton's Federalists supported a strong central government that sponsored industrial expansion.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic -Republicans wanted a limited Federal government and saw that they could use the land for agrarian expansion and rejected some of Adam Smiths ideas of laissez faire. 

1800 bringing  a ton of goods from the interior 30 miles cost the same as shipping it from England.

1801 Already at this stage the US had to develop a navy to deal with the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean as they no longer had British protection.

1810 Offices of the Holland Land Company were in Batavia. A transport hub, but to get there, one had to go by ship to Albany and use a wagon on the turnpike. Few settlers had laid claim to the vast fertile land west of the Appalachians. They wanted to get there without the use of the British Lake Ontario.

Jesse Hawley  under the nom de plume Hercules wrote 14 essays that influenced the idea of the Erie Canal.

1810 7 Commissioners were appointed to oversee the states canal. Private gain and public good need not be at odds with each other  common prosperity with individual opportunity.

1812-  War lasted 3 years and was about the trade disagreement with Britain and to stop the Royal Navy from the impressment of American merchant sailors as well as the US native policy encroaching on Canadian territory. it ended with the treaty of Ghent in 1815. Britain had been at war with Napoleon till 1815. Americans could no longer legally trade with Britain and had to make their own cloth and shoes.

The Federal government would not fund the Erie canal in an era where state power was greater than national power. 1815 power looms copied the British models now moved weaving out of the home  to water driven factory ones.

1917 loans for the canal would be repaid by tolls, Some land for the canal would come from donors speculating that the canal would increase the value of their remaining property. The route between the Mohawk and the Seneca rivers was known but that of the other 2 section would come later.

The state took on the  Erie and Chaplain canals.

1817 4th July it inaugurated and was declared the the US was destined for political , physical and moral greatness with the triumph of human ingenuity and exertion. Later in the 1840 the westward movement was called the countries "Manifest Destiny" 

The canal would have an elevation of 680 feet with 83 locks and 18 aqueducts and this was all done with stone structures and not wood. Only in 1824 did the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, would  provide  graduate courses most of the engineers in the USA.

  In 1817 most of the canal workers were locals mainly farmers in their slow seasons of agriculture.  but later they were mostly foreigners and by the 1830 most were Irish and it was mostly contractors than government hired workers. English , Scots Welsh and people of German origin arrived as families but Irish tended to be single males  were heavy drinkers. 

In 1817, 1819, 1822 as well as the Great Famine of 1845 brought an continuous flow of Irish. The Irish were feared as they were Catholics even though there were many protestant amongst them. They saw the US as a poor mans country with affordable farmland available. Most of them were illiterate and left no records. Irish fled poverty and the control of their landlords. Convict laborer's were also used. In the south they relied on slaves.

Before secret ballot the workers were beholden to the boss or the land lord in voting. Property ownership was a prerequisite to suffrage and only property owning whites  men. As the canal reached closer to Lockport they had to pay higher wager to attract laborer's out there.. Going through the swamps in 1819 more than a 100 workers were ill, diseases  drove up wages. Draining swamps caused forests to decay. Working for contractors was not steady work like farming. Citizens never offered recognition to the largely disenfranchised labor who build the canal. On completing a section of the canal the local resident had something to celebrate as it ended their fields  been damaged and crops lost.

1820 Missouri Compromise. Missouri admitted  as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. It also outlawed slavery above the 36º 30' latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory. This removed slavery from the national agenda for a time.

1825 40,000 passenger travelled the waterway. Tourist came to see Niagara Falls and this great waterway, and emigrants from Europe with luggage took passage on packet barges, that travelled at 5 mph as apposed to freight boats at 2mph. these barges could accommodate 40 passengers, but conditions were not very comfortable. People had to duck for low bridges. The state excepted the emigrants luggage from the tolls. The bounty of the west got out to the world and eastern manufactures, luxuries got to the west...The very fast pace of settlement eased isolation, plus the chance of travel for mail and  visits by using the canal.

1831 Trains started arriving in the Empire State with DeWitt on  the maiden voyage between Albany and Schenectady on a train called the De Witt. The states charter did not allow freight except during the 5 month closed winter season. 1847 freight allowed but tolls had to be paid in the canal season, but by 1851 these tolls were removed. Till 1880 the canal carried more freight than the railways.

1837 The canal loan  paid off it was a great success, as toll started being taken as sections were completed. Locks increased the travel time considerably and the enlargement of the canal in 1838 and 1842 doubled the locks and widened the canal. Passengers pressed for time could avoid some locks using the stage coach. Aqueducts crumbled , locks malfunctioned and banks burst causing severe delays, silt collected in the canal bed. even shutting the canal for 2 weeks. The canal would freeze up for 5 months in winter, and sudden freezes trapped boats in mid journey, thaws could also be dangerous in spring. These weaknesses lead to the use of the trains.

New mills and factories sprang up diverting the water and a new commercial class developed.

NY state officials oversaw the waterway and not chartered private corporations  1826 a Canal Board was created. This was the first state run enterprise and the board sat in Albany. another 8 canals running north south connected to the Erie. A land owners proximity to the canal outweighed the land appropriated from the farmers. This compensated for the property loss to the owners. Where a farm was split in 2  owners wanted a bridge. Where the canal flooded field they wanted compensation..

Western NY was now quickly transformed into a commercial and manufacturing corridor, with a thickly settle area along the Mohawk Valley.

1835 Canal Enlargement Bill widening the canel from 40 feet to 70 feet and deepening it from 4 feet to 7 feet. This new cannel required 3 fewer locks, and abandoned 13 miles of the old canal By the 1840 more people in NY were employees than self employed. Mercantile activated was promoted over agriculture. Agricultural land now became move valuable as the owner along the cannel could open taverns or trading stores but what if they farmer was not capable of this while h lost land. The new canal bypassed Rome by half a mile instead of it running through the town centre losing the town a lot of trade.. Petitioners to the cannel board always tried to show that what was good for the petitioner was good for the state.

Just the marketing of wheat, crated millowners, ware houses, merchants, forwarders. The state levied different tolls on different freight. This promoted different crops. In many towns the artificial river replaced the main street. Lockport would become one of the largest upstate cities. Farmers grew oats for all the horses used and blacksmiths made horse shoes.

Democrats and Whigs supported economic progress through state intervention. However the economy always experienced  booms and busts.  

Perils of Progress 

1935 1500 grog shops lined the canal. 

By 1840 30 thousand workers laboured day and night to keep the canal working, There were 3400 canal boats. The canal became a haven for vice and immorality as workers drank, swore , whored and gambled, and children mostly boys made up more than a quarter of the workforce. Boys mostly worked leading the horses. Girls as maids and cooks but at night as prostitutes. Not many people learned to swim and falling into the 7 foot deep canal could be fatal, life expectancy for boys was on average 12 years from the day they started

  Reformers tried to get merchant to be moral guardians of the employees, and teach them religious faith. Businessmen had Paternal responsibilities. Reformers tried to introduce Sabbath observance on the canal.

Evangelism became peaked on the canal in the 1820s and they attracted wage earners.

The Seamans Friend Society , the Bethel  Society. Many workers had grown up in pious homes but were away from their families and needed the missionaries to reawaken their religion beliefs and help them with their work troubles. Some workers had bosses who insisted on seeing them in church. Many converted boatmen felt compelled to leave the evil influences and seek other work.  Temperance campaigns developed in industrial areas as alcoholism reduced productivity.

1839 with the railways arriving prospects on the canal were discouraging. 

 Herman Melville worked briefly on a canal boat and some of his rough characters he met were portrayed in Moby Dick. Half the driver boys were orphans, some falsely claimed this to get sympathy.  Governor William Seward said that the canal improvement would lead America to her Manifest Destiny. He understood that immigration brought sustaining economic progress. The diversity of the population was a temporary evil that time would overcome.

1842 The Boston Albany railroad opened. Seward said the deprived masses were all capable of getting citizenship. He called for the free labour policy and the concept of upward mobility became central to the idea of progress.  At this time the Bethel society and other evangelists and missionaries became big  abolitionists.  Slave owners denied slaves this upward mobility. 1858 Seward as a Senator observed that the Slave labor of the South and the free labour of the North , 2 system would collide. The north was sending waves of fear throughout the White South

1854 Seward was one of the founders of the Republic Party and they opposed the westward expansion of slavery. 

1859 The NY state could not close the canal traffic on the sabbath as it was a public river  or road.

1862 by the time of the last expansion of the canal the Republican progress and the commercial era and the public felt the world was theirs to shape leading them from a very different future from the South who succeeded and the civil war broke out.

1793 Eli Whitney's cotton gin so that one slave could do the work of 50 to remove the cotton seed  from the cotton. This manufacturing could easily begin to move and develop  the north

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Bond of Union Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire by Gerard Koeppel 2009 sample

1/1/24

1825 October the celebration  of the opening of the Erie Canal. NY had recently replaced Philadelphia as the nations largest city. The Appalachian mountains guarded the interior from to Maine threatened to confine America to the Atlantic seaboard.

1812 War    proved that the United States was still a shaky nation. The lack of roads had cost the government a fortune in transporting war supplies. The Erie Canal was the boldest and biggest  engineering structure undertaken in its century.

Canals were build in ancient times but joined water of the same level.  Raising water to a higher level was described by Leonardo Da Vinci using locks and  was used in Milan. 500 years later lock gates have the same design. Canals were flourishing in France at the Canal de Midi. From France the technology went to England in the Bridgewater canal to get coal to Manschester.in 1759. James Brindley even build a canal over the Irwell river on a aquaduct.and was considered the greatest canal builder. This canal fed the coal powered Industrial Revolution and the  canal fever that followed the Erie canal in America.

Erie was build by Yankee born farm families and Irish immigrant labour, it eventually cost $8 million.

The 3 most important people were De Witt Clinton , Jesse Hawley and Samuel Wilkeson. Hawleys nom de plume was Hercules and wrote essays on the subject, bringing everyone into the Canal Age.

James Geddes and Benjamin Wright who were in charge of the great public  public works had never constructed a canal but nor had any American. 

Canvas White had travelled in Europe discovered water proof cement without which no canal could be build and this marked the birth of the American cement industry. Nathan Roberts a self made math's teacher became a surveyor/ engineer and designed the Lockport  5 double locks. Samuel Wilkinson rallied the Buffalo's settlers to build a harbour making Buffalo the canals western terminus, when he engineer he hired failed he designed it himself, he had been a shipwright..

1817 Ground was broken for the Erie canal. The Virginians wanted a canal west on the Potomac and in fact voted against Federal funds for the Erie project. This was the beginning of the north south split.

Ch2 12000 years ago the Ice Age began to recede. The natives developed canoes and had a river based culture of trade. Native American had been cleared from NY by the time the canal was being build.

1624The Dutch West India Company established Fort Orange on the Hudson River now Albany. After the natives stopped coming to them to trade furs ( because of the French further north) The Dutch began travelling up the Mohawk river. And saw the fall point and waterfalls beyond which you could not go by boat. The American were limited to the coast while the French aspired to create "New France" from Montreal to the mouth of the Mississippi.  The only way of travelling this country was by rivers and lakes.

1765 the British started imposing the stamp tax to pay for the war against the French.

1783 Even before the end of the War of the American Revolution, Washington was approached  to improve navigation of the Ohio River. Thomas Jefferson's patriotism was gilded by Virginian chauvinism, he realized that soon after the war that New York for the north and Virginia for the south would compete for the wealth of the west .Christopher Colles at this time proposed a canal along the Mohawk River to the Erie. He was an Irish engineer and not taken seriously but his ideas inspired others.

1792 Watson and Phillip  Schuyler set up the Western Inland Company to improve the navigation on the Hudson River.. They managed to improve navigation of the Mohawk middle but not the ends, which was beyond their technical ability. This company had lost its share holders money and surrendered its right to the state, after Schuyler early death. They had however succeeded in reducing freight cost by 2 thirds on the route. People still paid tolls on the route but it was extremely dangerous. There were flood and dry periods and the river was not durable. The companies failure had still helped in the development of the Erie effort.

Grain produced in Western New York was plentiful and cheap. Jesse Hawley saw that there was place for a grain merchant to buy up grain and get a high price for it in NY and Albany. His business failed for lack of means of transport and he ended up in debtors jail. It was considered that the NY rivers did not have enough water for a perennial water way but lake Erie was the solution, Hawley wrote articles in the press using the nom de plume Hercules. These article " Observation on Canals " eventually would be on the front page of the Messanger. Hawlwy only revealed himself 29 years alater.

The boats on the rivers were first canoes then the changed to flat bottomed 3 ton battoes. In 1730 the Durhams were used on the rivers and these had a bigger crew and carried 16 ton.

1807 Jefferson turned to the Treasury secretary eager to offer Federal support to roads and canals. A circular called for specifics on canals dimensions, distances, routes , costs water supply, toll and state legislation. Thus there was general federal interests in a canal. In New York articles appeared that if NY is to progress and prosper it to develop a route eastwards.  Instead of the 40 locks talked about that would cause great delays. Hawley suggestion that with the unlimited supply of water from Lake Erie as few as 5 locks were needed and it would cost about $5 million to build. Hawley got the type of canal wrong. Hawley had a friend who were agents of a land company that had land in Western NY through which the canal would run. Hercules predicted that all the lake  business would come via New York rather than Canada.

1800 Joseph Ellicott  was the surveyor for the Holland Land Company, his Great Survey was a document by which the company would sell its lands . His maps were the starting point about the development of Western New York. He read Hercules articles and realized that his company would benefit from a canal.  Ellicott sent to the state surveyor general Simon De Witt a description of the terrain between Batavia and the Genesee River unbroken land that he was familiar with., and suggested a canal route. 

Robert Fulton  and partner Robert Livingston travelled on a paddle wheeled steamboat along the Hudson and travelled from Manhattan to Albany in just over 30 hours. They would be attached to the Erie canal effort.

The hostile relation between England, France and the US would eventually result in the 1812 War.

1793 Eli Whitney's cotton gin so that one slave could do the work of 50 to remove the cotton seed  from the cotton. This manufacturing could easily begin move to the north

 

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The secrets of the C&O canal by James Rada 2018

Little known stories & hidden history along the Potomac River  13/11/23 Sample

The Chesapeake and Ohio canal runs from Georgetown DC on the Potomac Cumberland MD. This operated between 1831 and 1924. The last 50 miles was only completed in 1840 to reach Cumberland. 

It has an elevation of 605 feet and has 74 locks.  The Erie Canal, built between 1817 and 1825, threatened traders south of New York City, who began to seek their own transportation. 

George Washington formed the Potowmack Company to build a canal to skirt the Great Falls

1828 President John Quincy Adams broke the ground a the Great Falls MA. but by the time the canal reached Cumberland in 1850 the Baltimore and Ohio railway had already been there for 8 years.

Boatman were called Canalers many started as young children and mules were used to pull the barges that could carry 120 tons of coal. 

1889 Jamestown flood did such damage to the canal it went into receivership and was taken over by the B&O Railways after that it never ran at a profit. The 1924 Spring floods damaged the canal and closed it for good.

Building the Canal : In 1785 a meeting was called of Maryland and Virginia commissioners as the canal affected both states. It was moved to Mount Vernon, Washington's home.  This Mount Vernon Conference gave Washington the idea to get all the States together to cooperate and build a great empire. The next year a convention was held in Annapolis but only 5 states came so there was no quorum.  

1787 the colonies sent representatives to Philadelphia and this became the First Constitutional Constitution resulting in something far more important than building a canal.

1785 Washington set up the  Potowmack Company to open up the the Potomac to reach Fort Cumberland M. However they could not find sufficient laborer's so used indentured servants and slaves. They could not find a suitable engineer to to the project as there were few trained engineers in the States

1789 Washington was appointed President without knowing it.

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 Canal Fever Ohio and Erie Canal from Waterway to Canalway by Lynn Metzger and Peg Bobel 2009 

7/12/23 Sample

Before the canals many farmers would float their produce down rives on rafts. However the wanted to get produce to New York. Canals can only go where  water course are available to keep the channels full. All the routes followed the Indian pathways that crossed the Continental Divide of  north and south flowing. Canal builders needed water available at high points 

In the 19Century  as a result of the canals western agricultural produce became more economical that growing in the East and so the east coast began to mas manufacture goods. NY banking houses finances the state bond issue and Jacob Astos leant $1million as NY capital understood the value of the canals.

1818 Governor Ethan Allen Brown urged the Ohio legislature to survey the Ohio River and this was started at Cleveland and connects the Cuvahoga with 42 locks going up 395 feet to Arkon  Rivers the onto Columbus and the terminus is at Portsmouth. This stretched 309 miles.

1825 Ground was broken and the system was based on the experience of the New York Erie canal. The very same year ground was Brocken for the National Road and it crossed the Ohio canal at Hebron. Both road and canal fell into disuse when the railways arrived.

1827  Ohio  released a number of prisoners from the state prison to build the Columbus Feeder.

1832  Canal completed at a total cost of $4.3 million making it less expensive the any other canal of similar length in the US.. It took 7 years to build and it was done at a time that Ohio's population was less than 300,000  Besides the loans Federal Land was granted and the proceeds were used, this was on condition that it could never be  charged tolls to use the canal.

1836 2000 vessels called Cleveland home.

Passenger travel was uncomfortable and unpredictable as a storm could rupture an embankment leaving the canal without water. The stagnant water led to insects like mosquitoes and other illnesses.

1847 James Garfield was a hogee on the canal and after getting ill, left to study. He became the 20th US President in 1881.

1850 by this time the patterns of immigration influence could be seen, and the economy of Ohio was rapidly transformed. Mases of grain moved along the canal and Arkon served as a regional milling center. It had gone from a agrarian frontier wilderness to a prosperous agricultural and industrial commonwealth. Also branch canals followed Pennsylvania &Ohio, Sandy & Beaver. However the Beaver was never completed and the company went bankrupt in 1853

Cleveland had a weight lock to access the toll to be paid. After the civil war Cleveland milling industry grew and Quaker Oats head quarters were there. Akron had a large canal boat building industry. The Mahoning Valley was coal rich and profited for 10 years till the railways brought competition.

1861 The interest in this canal had waned and the railways had taken over, and soon  2 railways running through Cleveland.. The City of Cleveland sold it canal development rights to the Valley Railroad Company who used the canal right of way for its new railway line. By 1877 the canal ceased functioning. much was out by flooding. North of Cleveland still carried on to lake Erie and used by farmers.

1913 The Great Dayton flood caused by snow followed by massive spring rains, destroyed the canal, aqueducts and embankments.  Lock one had to be dynamited to release the water build up.  American Steel and Wire, and Goodrich Rubber used the canal as a source of water and so maintained parts of it. 

1970s The Ohio Conservation  Division invested in stocking the Fulton section with fish for anglers, and in the  other recreation was set up like a replica packet boat for visitor rides.

1996 Sections of the canal was declared part of the National Heritage Canalways  by the US Congress

1785 George Washington set up the Potomack Canal company he wanted to bypass the Great Falls of the Potomac.  He also suggested that a canal be built from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.

00 Bc China's Grand canal began and Nebuchadnezzar created the Royal Canal of Babylon connecting the Tigris to the Euphrates River.

Republicanism is the political belief that the best form of government is one in which citizens choose their representatives and leaders through free elections. In the U.S., the Founding Fathers were proponents of republicanism. The idea that the government must act by the rule of law . 

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Canals for a Nation : The Canal Era in the United States 1790 to 1860 by Ronald E Shaw.1990 Sample.

9/12/23

Canals lowered transportation costs , transported vast amounts of grain from farms to the eastern ports, and Pennsylvania coal to New Jersey and NY. We see the transfer of European technology to the US. Canals also preserved republicanism and would bind the union together. 

Canals in Europe were developed by the Dutch then the French and the England. Many English canal had been built just as the canal era started in the US.

1790 Beginning of canal building in the US. All the engineers were from England  and attempted to join Philadelphia to the local river by canal. Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Conwego, Basingbroke  Canals. Many of these were rivers that might have been navigable for short periods of melt in the spring. 

George Washington belief in canals was strengthened by his knowledge of surveying. If a can could not be build from Virginia eastwards the colonies would become dependent on the British in the north. 

A waterway of 60 miles on the Potomac could save 200 miles by land. This required cooperation between the states. The Potomac had 5 rapids or falls to pass. The  Potomac Company 's improvements kept alive the ultimate goal to reach the Ohio River but there were not many settlements upriver and the company faltered.

1795 A 7 mile canal was build between Richmond and the falls at Westham

The Lock Navigation company in the Mohawk Valley illustrates the failures of pioneers canal builders. Locks build of wood would later have to be rebuilt of stone. Boatmen protested the high tolls, but most goods still had to be transported by wagon leaving no profits. The Americans still believed they could overcome the Rivalry of  Montreal on the trade of the Great Lakes.

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Filth and Progress:  Immigrants , Americans and the Building of Canals and Railroads to the West.

by Ryan Dearinger  2016  free sample.      20/12/23

1869 The Paradox of American Progress. The Golden Spike at Promontory Summit Utah marked the joining of the Central Pacific to the Union Pacific Railway was celebrated as Americas greatest technological achievement. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1925 was the first of many in steps for the progress enhancing the wealth of the nation. Movement to the west was the ultimate imperative..

This book is about the forgotten people on the economic fringes of  society who did the work.

American farmers in lulls of the agricultural cycle worked overtime with the status of ditchdiggers.

The Northern states slowly relaxed property qualifications for suffrage./Citizens distanced themselves from menial laborers and particularly immigrants. Protestants Whites or WASPs were considered .true American citizens. The Southern Canals were build by slave labour and in 1817 New York sanctioned convict labour to be used . Irish immigrants and free African American laboured on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal of 1920. Shoveling dirt was miserable dangerous form of wage labour. The term navies applied to unskilled canal workers and gandy dancer to track workers, or companies called the casual or common labourers or hands. The locals  always shunned personal contact. Without these European or Asian cheap labour the nations resources could not be exploited. True American claimed the credit for the progress . The increase in flow of goods from the hinterland and created new markets and consumers. US progress was build on the backs of second class citizens . 

1889 President Benjamin Harrison said that these workers were subjected to the peril of a soldier at war. The canals and railways united the North and  South East and West.

The Western Frontier was a symbol of independence and incubator of democracy. We see the sheer diversity of these workers who all lived together in construction camps.

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Building the Canal to save Chicago: Richard Lanyon 2016   24/12/23 sample

The Chicago Sanatory and Ship Canal was a man made system and with out this infrastructure Chicago could never expand and  develop into the metropolis it is. They have to deal with all aspects in the lives of the city, the water source , water supply, sewerage drainage , storm water , flooding and water sheds and rivers that return to the oceans. Because the whole area of Chicago is so flat the canal system is important. So they reversed the river for Chicago to raise itself out of the mud poor drainage and topography.

Towns downstream litigated as they were worried about receiving the cities wastewater.. The canal system was conceived , financed and implemented by local leadership and protected the health and welfare of the public by efficient drainage and treatment of the waste water.

1855 The polluted water resulting in the cities death rate being the highest of major cities. Typhoid was a big killer and the cities sewers discharged into lake Michigan efficiently, but it was the cities water supply at a time that both sewerage and drinking water was not treated. 

1847 The I and M canal opened allowed some water to flow into the Illinois River and even extra pumping into this canal did not help specially in flood years.

1886 The Chicago Commission on  drainage and water supply; this was authorized by the Illinois Legislature. This was at a time when the city had to invest in increasing the water supply in any case. Storm water was backflowing into Chicago from the Des Plaines River. One Authority should deal with both the fresh water and the sewerage. Down the Chicago River people never thought that the pollution would be a problem but a canal to Chicago and a water way to the great lakes would be in their interests.

The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Chicago Drainage Canal, is 45 km)  connects the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River flowing out of Lake Michigan. This was for much larger ships than the I& M canal of 1948. This eventually shut down the old I&M canal and it gave practical  training for engineers who later build the Panama Canal.

The Erie Canal by Ralph K Andrist 142pg 1964

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The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier epilogue to the American Revolution Thomas P Slaughter  1968

24/1/24

In England they had no problem collecting import duties or property tax but excise or internal tax had been resisted from the beginning as early as 1610. This was difficult to collect in rural areas , but easier to collect near London

1776 US Independence

1794 About 50 people arrived at the Philadelphia revenue collectors house and demanded to see the records of whiskey tax collected.

1791 This excise was the first internal tax imposed to pay for the War of Independence  debts. Farmers on the wester frontier distilled whiskey with their surplus grain and is became a means of exchange for them. The were fighting for the principals of of the American Revolution to appose this tax- no taxation without representation. 

Import duties, which were the government's primary source of revenue, had been raised as high as feasible.

Whiskey often served as a medium of exchange, which for poorer people who were paid in whiskey meant the excise was essentially an income tax that wealthier easterners did not have to pay. The tax had to be paid in specie ie gold or silver coin that was hard to came by. The tax was per gallon but in the west whiskey was cheaper than on the coast so this was unfair.

The government was not protecting the westerners from the frontier wars and Spain never allowed them to use the Mississippi for transportation. 

Washington put down the rebellion and in the end most of the rebels fled father west those convicted were later pardoned. This was what let to the formations of political parties.

1800. This excise was difficult to impose and was repealed by Jefferson. 

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