The crest of Cold War and Anti-Communist hysteria may have passed by July 30, 1956, but there was still plenty of residual energy.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, signed a bill that designated the words “In God We Trust” as the official Motto of the United States.  The year before Congress had acted to require that the phrase be put on all coins and bills.  Of course the U.S. had a defacto motto which had long been included on coins and currency—E Pluribus Unim, usually translated “out of many, one.”  That phrase was approved in 1792 for the Great Seal of the United States.  It did not satisfy fervid religionists.  Indeed the Great Seal itself, which was filled with Masonic and Deist symbolism without a hint Christian piety, had been a bone of contention since the first struggles over the proper role of religion in the Republic.  The largely Deistic founders had purposefully omitted any referenced to God in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was silent on the subject except to prohibit Congress from the “establishment” of any religion or interfering with the religious observances of its citizens.  Practical men with a knowledge of history, they were concerned lest a favored religion or a defined heresy create civil discord and perhaps civil war.  Washington and Jefferson occasionally invoked a vague Deity, most often referred to Providence, Nature’s God, or sometimes the God of Creation, all common Deist constructions for an original moving force of the Universe.  They avoided terms like the Lord God which invoked the patriarchal deity of the Old Testament and never invoked Jesus Christ.  John Adams, a true product of the Puritan tradition as it evolved eventually into Unitarianism, firmly believed that organized religion was necessary to constrain the “passions” of an innately sinful humanity.  Moreover he was politically indebted to the support of the Black Legion—the clergy of the New England Standing Order—against “atheistic” Jeffersonian Republicanism.  Yet even he resisted considerable pressure to inject explicitly Christian prayer, practice, and symbolism into official use.  A complex battle between the evolving movement of Evangelical Protestantism and republican secularism see-sawed back and forth for the first decades of the nation’s existence.  Some compromises were unofficially reached, but on the whole the government remained resolutely secular, nor were Presidents even expected to make personal religious declarations.  During the crisis of the Civil War, however, President Abraham Lincoln needed the fervent support of the Protestant clergy, particularly its avidly abolitionist voices.  Not a personally “saved” Christian, and deeply influenced by the Founder’s secular Deism, Lincoln non-the-less was a student of the Bible as literature and was adept at echoing its cadences and invoking powerful Biblical language in his speeches.  But he was always being pressed by the clergy to make more overt religious statements.  It was in this context that Lincoln called for national days of fasting and Thanksgiving.  He also undoubtedly approved when his Treasury Secretary, the devout Salmon P. Chase, first directed the Mint to inscribe the words “In Good We Trust” on a two cent coin issued in 1864.  The approbation of the preachers far outweighed the slight protests of Freethinkers and over the next decades most—but not all—coins added the phrase as they were re-designed.  Government issued Greenback currency, however, contained no religious declaration, just a practical promise to pay the bearer in specie upon demand.  And so the situation stayed until the dawn of the Cold War.  Then Catholics, who had long been reluctant to join with Protestants in any religious demands on the government because they assumed, quite rightly that the Protestants would insist on narrow language that excluded Catholic worship,  became particularly alarmed at the rise of “atheistic Communism” and the suppression of Catholic worship in the new Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe.  Leading anti-Communist Prelates launched a campaign to require “In God We Trust” on currency as well as all coins and to make it an official motto.  Federal authorities, who were eager to use those same Bishops to influence the heavily Catholic industrial working class against “Communist infiltration” of the labor movement, were more than glad to add religious arrows to their crusade against Reds.  When leading Protestant Evangelicals fell into line, the movement in Congress became irresistible even to those who were squeamish.  What Congressman wanted to be painted as voting against God?  Controversy over the motto and its use on currency and coins has never gone away.  Church and state separation advocates, civil libertarians, and atheist activists have repeatedly challenged the motto and its use on coins and currency in court.  And just as routinely have lost.  In the case of Aronow v. United States in 1970, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, “It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.”  The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.  In another case The Supreme Court upheld the motto in because it has “lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”  With public support of continued use of the motto on coins and currency standing at 90% in a 2003 Gallup Poll it does not appear that the phrase will be going away any time soon.

On July 29, 1869 American novelist and dramatist Booth Tarkington was born into a comfortable, upper middle class family in Indianapolis, Indiana.  His long and very productive career was marked by his close examination of those 19th Century Middle Western roots in the humorous, nostalgic vein of his popular Penrod novels and Seventeen, as well as more serious depictions as in The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams.  At first educated in Indianapolis schools, his socially ambitious family had him transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, the fashionable eastern boarding school that was a conduit to the Ivy League.  But his family lost some of their wealth in the Panic of 1879, and young Booth was sent instead to Indiana’s own Purdue University.  A gifted enough student not to have to work hard for decent grades, he was popular on campus and enjoyed his two years there.  With improving fortunes he was sent to Princeton to finish his education.  There he joined a theatrical group where he excelled as an actor and first turned his hand as a playwright.  He became one of the charter members when the drama club was re-chartered as The Triangle Club, which continues to this day producing original work by students.  He also belonged to the Ivy Club, the oldest and most prestigious of Princeton’s dining clubs and also edited the Nassau Literary Magazine.  Voted the most popular student of the class of 1893, Tarkington failed to graduate, missing credit in one class.  However, he kept close ties to both of his colleges and made significant gifts to each when he became a wealthy and successful writer.  A residence hall at Purdue was named for him after he underwrote its construction and both schools awarded him honorary degrees.  In fact, he was the only person ever to receive two honorary degrees from Princeton, a measure of his literary prestige in the first quarter of the 20th Century.  Upon leaving school, Tarkington was able to undertake the traditional grand tour of Europe and spent time in such upper-class enclaves as Kennebunkport, Maine between extended stays in Indianapolis.  He began successfully  writing short stories for popular magazines.  In 1900 he had success with his second book, Monsieur Beaucaire.  Uncharacteristic of most of his work the slender novel was a comic historical romance 18th Century England.  It’s themes of social class and caste, however would be reflected in more American scenes.  The book went on to be a successful play, was made into an operetta, and was twice filmed, in 1924 with Rudolph Valentino and 1946 with Bob Hope.  Tarkington married in 1902 and set up primary residence in Indianapolis. The marriage, which produced one daughter, ended in divorce in 1911 and Tarkington married Susanah Keifer Robinson the following year.  In 1902, the year of his first marriage, Tarkington was elected to a single term as a Republican in the Indiana legislature, which gave him fodder for his book In the Arena: Stories of Political Life published in 1905.  Tarkington was soon publishing nearly a book a year in addition to a volume of poetry and plays, including adaptations of his books.  Later he would also do screenplays from his work.  Penrod, the first of a series of books about the adventures of a small town boy of comfortable circumstances, began as magazine stories and was published in 1914 and was widely popular.  The next year Tarkington finished The Turmoil,  the first book of the Growth trilogy about the fall of an old wealth family and the rise of the industrial new rich.  The second book of that series, The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918 and is considered by most critics as him most important work.  It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919.  Orson Wells famously made it into a classic film in 1941.  In between, in 1916 came Seventeen, a much beloved, painfully comic tale of a young man’s unrequited love.  It is still an entertaining and enjoyable read.  In 1922 Tarkington won a second Pulitzer Prize for Alice Adams, his tale of a vivacious small town girl of modest means who plots to snag the handsome son of the town’s leading wealthy family.  It, too, was twice made into a film adapted for the screen most famously in 1935 by my distant kinswoman Jane Murfin for Katherine Hepburn.  Presenting Lily Mars, published in 1933 told the story of a stage struck young woman and incorporated themes from Tarkington’s lifelong interest in the theater.  It was made into a MGM musical staring Judy Garland in 1943. In the early ‘20’s Tarkington began to lose his sight and was blind by mid-decade.  He continued to produce a steady stream of novels, plays, and non-fiction by dictation up to his death in 1946.  In all nine of his novels were top best sellers and several of his stage plays long running hits.  His reputation as a novelist has been eclipsed by harder edged work by later American writers.  Seventeen remains perennially in print as a juvenile favorite, but Tarkington is now best remembered for the films made of his work.

Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur conferring with his cavalry commander, Major George S. Patton on Pennsylvania Avenue during the action against the Bonus Marchers,  The officer with back to the camera and hands on hips is MacArthur’s aide, Major Dwight Eisenhower.

On July 28, 1932 Washington, D.C. became a battle zone when President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to “clear out” veterans, their families and supporters who had been camped since June pressing demands for an early payment of a bonus promised to World War I soldiers.  It was nearly four years into the Great Depression with no relief from an almost total economic collapse in sight.  True unemployment was estimated to be nearing 25% with no safety net other than voluntary soup kitchens.  Tens of thousands of small businesses had failed dropping once solid citizens into poverty.  Farm income had collapsed.  Across the board, conditions were bleak.  Veterans of the Great War were still relatively young men, most in their late 20s to early 30s.  They had been welcomed home as heroes.  Despite the inevitable post-traumatic stresses of any war’s aftermath, most had married and were raising families when disaster struck.  Largely able bodied and well disciplined, they were perhaps the most employable men in America.  But many, very many, were in desperate shape that summer.  In 1924 under pressure from veterans’ organizations, especially the American Legion, Congress had passed Adjusted Service Certificate Law over the strenuous objections of President Calvin Coolidge.   3,662,374 bonus certificates were issued to veterans, the face amount determined by a formula of how many days each soldier served in the U.S. with a greater payment for each day overseas.  The maximum amount due was $500 for domestic service and $650 payable when the certificates matured in twenty years—1945.  Although veterans were allowed to borrow against a percentage of that sum—eventually raised to 50%, the money had to be repaid with interest.  Congress financed the scheme with annual appropriations of more than $12 million to fund the 1945 payments which were expected to be more than $3.5 billion.  Loans paid out against the certificates had already placed the fund in the red.  None the less, in face of the dire emergency leading figures like popular retired Marine Corps General Smedley Buttler began advocating for an immediate early payment of the bonus certificates.  Democratic Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, then in the second term of his long career, introduced a bill to authorize the payments.  It was ardently opposed by the President and Republicans in Congress.  Hoover, a Quaker, had risen politically largely on his reputations as The Great Humanitarian for his work feeding starving European civilians in the wake of the war.  He was the only engineer until Jimmy Carter, to be elected President, a man of meticulous attention to detail, a deep attachment to Republican laissez faire economic philosophy, and a practically physical revulsion at “disorder.”  He had responded to the Depression with cheerleading, rosy predictions for recovery, expressed sympathy for those affected but a firm belief that they were on their own and that the Federal Government had no Constitutional responsibility to them.  More concerned with the holy writ of a balance budget, he urged spending be slashed—a policy that not only did not help but actually deepened the Depression.  Naturally he and the unified Republicans railed against the proposed Patman Act as a budget buster. The Bonus Expeditionary Force was organized by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant in the AEF—American Expeditionary Force—in World War I, to descend in mass on Washington to pressure Congress to pass the Patman Act.  Veterans and their families from all over the country, but mostly from the East, responded to the call arriving in the city on June 17 as the Senate took up the bill, which had already cleared the House.  Senate Republicans blocked action on the bill and the Bonus Marchers settled into makeshift camps, nick named Hoovervilles.  Although the shabby camps were assembled from what tents could be obtained and junk scavenged from scrap yards, the veteran leaders exercised military discipline.  They were laid out in orderly streets, sanitation facilities were dug and maintained, common kitchens established, and camps patrolled by volunteer M.P.s.  Men had to register producing evidence of honorable discharge to be admitted and were each expected to do duty keeping the camps clean, orderly and secure.  The men responded to daily revelry and held regular parades.  American flags were prominent. The veterans were very concerned that the public see them as loyal patriots.  And by in large, despite being denounced as dangerous Communists in the most conservative press, the public was at least sympathetic to them.  Over 17,000 men enrolled. Their wives and children plus some approved volunteer supporters—especially nurses and medical personnel swelled the camps to a total population of over 40,000.  The main camp was laid out on the mud flats and boggy ground by the Anacostia River across from the core of the city.  Marchers gathered daily for orderly demonstrations near the Capital.  By late July it was evident that the Republicans in the Senate would not budge and that the Patman Act was doomed.  Acting on direction of the President Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered District Police to “evacuate the city” of bonus marchers on the morning of July 28.  Veteran leaders were taken by surprise by a police charge and the men resisted.  Ill trained police responded by emptying their revolvers into the crowd killing two men outright and injuring dozens.  Enraged, the veterans fought back, pelting police with rocks, bricks and anything else they could lay their hands on.  A few may have had handguns and fired back or fired with weapons taken from disarmed officers.  Police were forced to withdraw with nearly 70 men injured.  The veterans remained on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Learning of the failure of the police, Hoover ordered the Army to take action.  Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, in dress uniform and festooned with every decoration he ever received, decided to take personal command.  As commander of the famed Rainbow Division made up of National Guard units, many of the veterans in the streets had served under him.  MacArthur employed two full regiments, the 12th Infantry, and the 3rd Cavalry, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton.  The Army arrived on the scene about 4:30 as Federal employees were leaving their offices.  MacArthur, with his aide Major Dwight Eisenhower at his side, ordered his troops to advance.  At first many of the veterans were glad to see their brother soldiers.  Some believed that they had arrived to protect them from the police, other said they thought the advance at first was a parade in their honor.  Then Patton ordered his cavalry to charge, sabers drawn.  As the horrified witnesses from surrounding office buildings screamed “Shame, Shame!” the cavalry crashed into the thick mass of veterans.  As the veteranss reeled back, the infantry came up with bayonets fixed and using adamsite gas, an arsenic based gas inducing violent vomiting, to clear the camps.  Women, children, and civilian volunteers alike were swept up.  Against the President’s explicit order, MacArthur crossed the Anacostia into the vast main camp.  Tents and huts were put to the torch, destroying all of the personal positions of the veterans and their families.  Survivors, including many injured, were scattered into the country side where local law enforcement personnel hectored them for days as they tried to find ways to get home.  In the end at least four veterans, including two of their leaders, William Hushka and Eric Carlson were killed and an estimated 1,017 injured.  Most historians agree that both of those figures are low because the injured were either unable to get medical treatment or afraid to seek it.  In addition one woman suffered a miscarriage and an infant was killed.  Again historians, believe, based on eye witness accounts, that other children, especially infants were killed or died later as result of the gas.  Within a week newsreel footage of the attack was being played in every movie theater in the country.  Public outrage played a big part in the defeat of Hoover for re-election that November.  But if veterans thought that Franklin D. Roosevelt would support payment of the Bonus, they were wrong.  Roosevelt wanted to use money for other projects and direct relief.  But F.D.R. was not about to make the same mistake as Hoover when a smaller Bonus Army appeared in the summer of 1933.  Instead to sending in the Army, he sent Eleanor, who brought tea to the veterans and urged them to instead enlist in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  Hundreds took her up on the proposal and were put to work building the causeway road to Key West, Florida.  When the September 2, 1935 Labor Day hurricane, killed 258 veterans working on the Highway, public sentiment again swung behind the veterans’ demand.  In 1936 Congress over-rode Roosevelt’s veto to finally authorize the early payment of the promised bonus.  After World War II the G.I. Bill with its promises of immediate money for education or a home purchase was enacted specifically in response to the plight of World War I vets. The 1963  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom called by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies was inspired by the Bonus Marchers.  His 1968 plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, which included a camp of protesters, was even more evocative.  The Campaign, conducted after King’s murder, was not dispersed by troops.

It’s Two-fer-Tuesday

On July 28, 1866 permanent telegraphic connection between North America and Europe was established when a new trans-Atlantic Cable was completed. It was the fifth attempt to make the connection.  The first, in 1857 and failed.  The second attempt in 1858 did establish a connection.  Queen Victoria wired her congratulations to American President James Buchannan.  Despite this engineering  triumph for the company launched and guided by Cyrus West Field, the new cable failed within a month when excessive voltage was applied while to achieve faster telegraph operation.  A second attempt that year to lay a replacement also failed.  Although the brief operation proved the project was feasible, the great expense and technical challenges—and the intervening crisis of the American Civil War—delayed further attempts until 1865.  By that year successful underwater cables in the Mediterranean and elsewhere led to the development of an enduring and well insulated cable.  According to Wikipedia the new cable:

The core consisted of seven twisted strands of very pure copper weighing 300 lb per nautical mile (73 kg/km), coated with Chatterton's compound, then covered with four layers of gutta-percha, alternating with four thin layers of the compound cementing the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400 lb/nmi (98 kg/km). This core was covered with hemp saturated in a preservative solution, and on the hemp were spirally wound eighteen single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine strands of manila yarn steeped in the preservative. The weight of the new cable was 35.75 long hundredweight (4000 lb) per nautical mile (980 kg/km), or nearly twice the weight of the old.

In 1865 S.S.Great Eastern captained by Sir James Anderson began laying the improved cable heading west from Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland.  After 1,062 miles the cable snapped and the end was lost to the bottom of the sea.  Anderson had to return to Britain and Field had to scramble to raise new capital for another attempt the following year.  He formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, to lay a new cable and complete the broken one and sold enough stock to try again in 1866.  This time the Great Eastern completed its task bringing the cable to its western terminus at Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland.  Displaying its usefulness the first message from the continent in addition to praise from The Times contained word that a peace had been signed between warring Prussia and Austria.  After a few days in port, Anderson turned the Great Eastern back to sea to try and locate the lost end of the 1855 cable and restore it to operation.  It was an epic search conducted by dragging a grappling hook over the sea bed a mile and a half below.  The cable was snagged and lost once before it was finally recovered and spliced to new cable in the ship’s hold.  On September 7the ship returned to Heart’s Content and two cable connections were soon functioning.  When the Transcontinental telegraph between California and the America East was completed on one end and Russian telegraphy stretched to the Pacific, much of the world was connected.  And London was the hub of world communications. Messages over the vast distance were not instantaneous.  Only eight words in a minute in Morse Code could move and took several minutes to cross the ocean.  None the less, connection was made and valuable information—especially commercial news and stock quotations, were quickly going back and forth.  In the next few years seven other cables laid by companies from Britain, the U.S., France, and Germany.  By the 1870’s improved technology allowed duplex and quadruplex transmission and receiving systems to relay multiple messages over the cable.  It was literally possible to have “conversation” with questions and answers across the ocean in hours. 

Blucher the little colliery engine considered the first modern steam locomotive.

Cheyenne Frontier Days was a well established 13 years old when former President Theodore Roosevelt visited in 1910.  That’s T.R. standing at the top of the stairs to the platform in front of the packed grandstands.

Today will mark the start of rodeo competition at the 114th annual Cheyenne Frontier Days.  Known as The Daddy of ‘em All, it is both the longest continuously held cowboy competition in the world and by far the largest outdoor competition of its kind. Although there has been a National Finals Rodeo since 1956 to crown individual champions in each main professional rodeo event, that indoor event, currently held in Las Vegas, lacks the pageantry and history that make Frontier Days unique.  The first Cheyenne Frontier Day was a one day competition for local cowboys working the big ranches in the area on September 27, 1897.  The event included a cowboy parade through downtown.  Cheyenne was a bustling and modern small city, not only the Wyoming state capital, but home to major Union Pacific Railroad facilities.  Its streets were the first in the nation to be illuminated by electric arc lamps back in 1883.   Fueled by the cattle barons on Millionaire’s Row, the city considered itself up-to-date and cosmopolitan.  Even in 1896, however, just six years after statehood and four years since the bloody events of the Johnson County War, residents were becoming nostalgic for their wild west heritage.  The first event was so successful that Frontier Day became an annual event.  The competition was soon being promoted nationally by the Union Pacific to boost tourist traffic on its trains, and the local business community loved the sound of cash registers ringing at local hotels, restaurants, bars and brothels.  By the turn of the 20th Century elements of the popular wild west shows popularized by Buffalo Bill Cody and others, including mock hold-ups of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage coach, Indian battles, and in particularly bad taste given recent history, re-enacted lynching of “rustlers” were incorporated into pageantry surrounding the rodeo.  Other events like street dances, amateur theatrics, menageries, and carnivals were added to the ever growing event over the years as more days of competition were added to the rodeo. Cowgirl competitions were an early favorite. The cowgirls rode the same stock and took the same risks as the men but were judged separately. In 1910 former President Theodore Roosevelt was delighted to be on hand to congratulate the winning rider.  In 1903 as sitting president he had visited and a special one day rodeo was staged in his honor and he participated in a ride over Sherman Hill from Cheyenne to Laramie with Senator Francis E. Warren and big-wigs of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.   By the 1930’s stars of Hollywood’s popular westerns, including the state’s own favorite son Col. Tim McCoy, were regularly making personal appearances and sometimes incorporating the rodeo itself into their films.  Concerts by popular Hillbilly and Cowboy singers—and later the masters of Western Swing were added to the mix.  Since 1931 reigning over the event has been Miss Frontier and her court.  For the first three years the winner of the honor was selected on the basis of who could sell the most tickets to a dance.  Starting in 1934 the Frontier Committee has privately picked Miss Frontier and her two attendants, traditionally drawing on the daughters and granddaughters of local cattle barons or Cheyenne business leaders.  One requirement was that she had to be an expert horse woman.  Miss Frontier of 1936 was Mary Helen Warren Wolborn, granddaughter of the state’s founding patriarch Francis E. Warren.  She designed and the distinctive white buckskin culottes costume worn to this day.  Her inspiration was a costume worn by celebrated fan dancer Sally Rand who had titillated audiences the year before.  The 1950’s were the Golden Age of Rodeo.  The most storied figures of the sport were active—Casey Tibbs, Big Jim Shoulders, the Bell Brothers, and the legendary rodeo clown and bulldogger Wilbur Plaugher—and  shined in Cheyenne.  Monte Blue, known for playing the sheriff in countless B westerns, was the arena announcer famous for his signature call at the beginning of each rodeo, “Let’s go, let’s show, let’s rodeo!”  Chief Charley Red Cloud and Princes Blue Water, who had appeared with Buffalo Bill, brought their band of Oglala Sioux each year to perform traditional dancing and live in a teepee village on the grounds of Frontier Park.  Top movie and TV stars from Roy Rogers to Hugh O’Brian made personal appearances and country music stars like Ernest Tubbs, Red Folley, and the Sons of the Pioneers performed nightly at the Frontier Pavillion. From 1954 through 1956 my father, W. M. Murfin as Secretary of the Frontier Committee, played a leading roll in coordinating the rodeo and all of the other activities.  My brother Tim and I (see my profile picture for confirmation) reveled in riding in the parades and meeting the cowboys and celebrities that often came through our house.  Today the whole Frontier Days extravaganza stretches over ten days and includes 9 rodeos sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).  Day Money is awarded to the winners in each event for each rodeo.  At the end of the schedule Cheyenne Frontier Days champions are named in each event and an All Around Cowboy, who has to compete in two or more events, are determined by the total amount of Day Money earned. There are also two nights of separate Professional Bull Riders (PBR) competitions. More than 2,500 local volunteers work on events that include the rodeo, parades, pancake breakfasts, concerts, chili and chuck wagon cook-offs, the carnival, exhibits, Indian Village, military open houses and performances by the United States Air Force Thunderbirds.  This year in addition to top Country Music acts like Brooks and Dunn and Alan Jackson, the decidedly non-country Kiss kicked off the concerts.  I know many readers of this blog are animal lovers and abhor rodeo and the people who love it.  No question about it, rodeo can be brutal to both animals and human competitors—bull riding is hands down the most dangerous competitive sport in the world.  It remains so even though significant reforms have been made in how rodeo stock is handled and particularly dangerous events for animals like the Chuck Wagon Races—think horse drawn NASCAR with often horrific pile-ups—and Steer busting—roping a steer around the horns then pulling past the animal catching its feet and throwing it to the ground, a maneuver that often resulted on broken necks or legs—have been eliminated.  Nothing short of abolition by law of all rodeo competition will satisfy many animal rights folks.  I understand that.  But I also love a good rodeo.  I guess you will have to lump me with the heartless brutes. 

The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball’s first all professional team in an illustration from Harper’s Weekly.  Team Captain Harry Wright sporting the muttonchops is seated second from the left.

On July 23, 1866 the Cincinnati Baseball Club was formed at a meeting in an office in the bustling riverfront city.  Among those involved were lawyer Alfred T. Goshorn who drew up the founding documents and was elected club President and George B. Ellard, president of the well established Union Cricket Club.  Goshorn would go on to head up the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia ten years later and Ellard’s connections would be invaluable in developing a strong team.  The club was an example of the explosion of interest in the relatively new game of baseball beyond the clubs clustering around New York and the East Coast.  Historians of the game cite the Civil War, where soldiers from around the country often spent extended time battling boredom in camps between episodes of horrific violence.  Eastern players brought their bats and balls with them and introduced the game to eager participants from western regiments.  In the first year the all amateur club of local players were able to arrange only 4 matches and had to scramble to find fields to play on.  For the 1877 season the club joined the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), which included members of most of the established Eastern clubs.  They also reached an agreement with the Union Cricket Club to hold matches at its already developed pitch.  Plans were made to add bleacher seating and build “a more substantial wall” around the playing field.  These improvement were financed by charging 10 cents admission to the public—members of either of the competing clubs were admitted free—and  25 cents for “foreign matches,” those booked by other teams looking for a hard to find playing field.  This innovative business model served the club well. Crowds did come and plunk down their hard earned cash to see the new game being played.  Several experienced athletes from the Cricket club, including their English club pro Harry Wright also joined the club team.  Wright acted as what would later be called the manager and pitched.  His salary continued to be paid by the Cricket club, circumventing rules against professionals.  This is an example of how quickly the English game was supplanted in public affection by the American upstart.  In 1867 the first team romped to sixteen victories against regional teams but was humiliated by a loss to the Washington Nationals that was a wakeup call about the different level of play in the East where organized teams had been competing—and developing talent—for years.  The  1868 team was very different.  Gone were half of the local players on the starting nine.  In their place were experienced ballplayers from the East including John Hatfield and Fred Waterman from the New York Mutuals, Asa Brainard a pitcher from the Brooklyn Excelsiors, and catcher Doug Allison Geary Club of Philadelphia.  These allegedly amateur players did not come to Cincinnati for the climate.  It was obvious to everyone that they were lured there with the promise of some kind of remuneration, such as no-work jobs at supportive local businesses.   Cincinnati was not the only team engaged in these ruses.  The Mutals and other top eastern teams were stealing from each other’s rosters.  Cincinnati was just doing it on a larger scale.  And it paid off.  In the 1868 played a heavy schedule of 43 games and lost only 7.  Again they dominated their regional rivals, but were able to split games against Eastern teams on a late season tour.  Over the next winter the NABBP bowed to reality and changed rules to allow teams to hire professionals.  They did so on the assumption that clubs would mix a few pros with local amateurs, but they set no limits.  Wright took advantage of that loophole and announced a wholly professional team of players paid cash money for an eight month season.  Wright shifted from pitching to the outfield, from where he became the captain of the defense and his younger brother  George Wright joined the team as shortstop and was on his way to becoming the dominant player of the era.  The team also adopted a new style of uniform which included a white flannel shirt emblazoned with a large Gothic capital C on the front, short white trousers with bright red stockings reaching nearly the knee, and floppy white caps.  The short pants and stockings were a never-before-seen innovation and quickly earned the team the nick name Red Stockings.  Their first game on May 4 against another local team the Great Westerns was a 43-9 romp.  It set the tone for a fabulously successful season.  The Red Stockings won 57 games and tied one against other teams in the NABBP and played over 70 games in all.  Their extended season included a long barnstorming tour that took them from Boston and New York all the way to San Fransisco.  The final game of the season at home at the Cricket grounds was a satisfying 17 to 8 drubbing of the Mutuals.  The team riveted the attention of the national press with publications like Harpers Weekly breathlessly covering team exploits and publishing engravings of players and the team.  Everywhere they went the professional Red Stockings spread their new, aggressive style of baseball and their snappy uniform style was copied by the wanna-be teams they played.  The same professional roster returned for the 1870 season and met continuing success.  The schedule of games was lighter as regional amateur teams were no longer eager to match themselves against the powerhouse.  That meant a dramatic fall of in revenue from home games.  Despite going 27-6 in NABBP games and finishing second over-all, the club was in financial trouble.  The club’s board voted over the winter not to employ a full 9 professionals in 1871 and cut salary offers to those it tried to keep.  The pros bolted.  A new National Association of strictly professional clubs was formed that year, which would become the first true baseball league.  The Wright brothers and half the team went to Boston where they signed with a new Association club which adopted their red stockings and nick name.  Other players went to Washington, but that franchise folded mid-season.  The new Boston Red Stockings dominated Association play from the first year.  In 1872 they were joined by some of their former team mates who had gone to Washingtion.  Together they won four of the Association's 5 championships.  When the new National League was founded, the Boston club became a charter member and continued its winning ways.  The Boston team went through other nicknames, including the Beantowners before becoming the Braves in 1912 after years of dwelling in the National League cellar.  The upstart—and much more successful—American League franchise swooped in and adopted the Red Sox nickname in 1907.  The Braves would go on to migrate to Milwaukee and eventually Atlanta where they can claim the oldest pedigree in baseball stretching back to the Cincinnati club.  They still wear a touch of red on their uniforms, including red stirrup socks.  Back in the Ohio city, a new club in the National League adopted the name Red Stockings in 1876 but was expelled in 1890 for refusing to stop selling beer at games and renting its field out to other teams on Sundays.  In 1882 a third club took the name, an entry in the new American Association.  The club was a dominate force in the new league through 1890 when it jumped  along with the Brooklyn club, to the National League that year.  The NL entry changed its nickname to a shortened Reds and spent most of the next twenty years scavenging near the bottom of the rankings.  In the McCarthy Era owners banished the name Reds and renamed the team the Redlegs, which met fan resistance and was finally abandoned with the passing of the Red Scare. The team eventually went on to better things including the dominance of the Big Red Machine in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s.  Today’s team likes to hint at connection to those first pioneer pros, but the only thing they have in common is the city—and that bright red hosiery.