Did and Didn't

[LizzieMaine]

Making a vast array of literature and knowledge available to hundreds of millions people, many who otherwise couldn't have afforded it, is his legacy.

Whether there was some bunk among the books or the question whether Haldeman did or didn't evade taxes, pales in comparison to this colossal feat.

That's pretty much the size of it. In an America where the majority of the public hadn't gone beyond the eighth grade, his publications were of immeasurable value. The political and the sexuality-oriented material may have aroused the most controversy, but the breadth of his list was extraordinary -- and even more so, he made a point of publishing and distributing material with which he himself disagreed, feeling that all ideas and all beliefs were worthy of discussion.

Those who have a picture of Golden Era America in which only a narrow range of narrow ideas were ever discussed should look up a "Little Blue Books" ad, and see for themselves the range of information that was available to anyone with a dollar and a coupon from a copy of "Popular Mechanics."

 

[jamespowers]

The Girard Press, July 6, 1978. Notes form my article in the November 5, 1980 feature in the Kenyon Collegian, and information acquired incident to the completion of my Junior Thesis.

I have always bn a great fan of the Little Blue Books and did my Junior Thesis on the firm's cultural impact whenI was at Kenyon. This was back in 1981, and information was at that time readily available from original sources. Henry Haldeman was quite helpful, though initially a bit wary. Fred Turner, the then editor of the Kenyon Review was instrumental in getting access to the family.

Turner was initially unfamiliar with the Little Blue Books but was quite impressed with the project when he understood its scope.

What was your source, by the way? That review posted on Amazon?

So where is the article then? I'll believe it when I SEE it. Anyone can say anything---as you have done before with Morgenthau.

I bet Haldeman was wary. He figured you might have found out his rouse and get the insurance money back. lol lol

There is something on Amazon? I got my information from Michigan State University archives---East Lansing---online.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Penny ante in the sense that his books sold for pennies to what was known at the time "the little man" or "the little people" meaning ordinary people without wealth power or influence.

Hoover had the right to be sore at every Democrat from President Roosevelt on down. If he was the vindictive type, which I don't believe he was, it would have taken him 1000 years to work his way down the list to Haldeman Julius. Besides, after Roosevelt was sworn in he didn't have the power to sic the federales on anybody.

 

[vitanola]

So where is the article then? I'll believe it when I SEE it. Anyone can say anything---as you have done before with Morgenthau.

I bet Haldeman was wary. He figured you might have found out his rouse and get the insurance money back. lol lol

There is something on Amazon? I got my information from Michigan State University archives---East Lansing---online.

What information?
I do agree, anyone can indeed say anything.

As for Morganthau, are you referring to that spurious quote that was being bandied about in 2009 during the political battle over economic stimulus? I would have thought that you would have noticed Folsom has rather walked it back.

Was Haldeman charged with arson? I don't imagine that you would be making an assumption about someone with whom you politically disagree.

Besides, whatever does James Wilson have to do with Haldeman. We are discussing Girard KS, not Bethesda MD.

I'm certainly behind the times, and did not research this subject online back in '80. Heck I was just barely learning BASIC on our school's PDP11-44. Quite a different environment from ALGOL and the card-based UNIVAC 1108 that we undergrads had been using at Case in my Frosh year.

I find that the Girard paper does not have online archives at this time. I would think that the fire would have been covered in the town's other paper of the time. Don't now remember its name. The Sun, perhaps? Mayhap it has online archives. I'll try to check when I get home and can use a real machine, not this Gen. 1 iPad which crashes every time a website uses Java.

As far as Moo U, do you mean here?
http://u.search.msu.edu/index.php?q....msu.edu&analytics=UA-21197319-2&search=local

Or here?
http://u.search.msu.edu/index.php?q....msu.edu&analytics=UA-21197319-2&search=local

I couldn't find anything at all relevant, and so assume that I must be using the wrong search term. Was this arson charge in a newspaper? In a book? Written on the inside of a hatband?

I know of no MSU collection of Haldeman-Julius material. Of course I would have not expected to look there, and am not at all familiar with that school's collections.

Michigan on the other hand has a fair grouping of the Little Blue Books, but generally on political subjects. Not much about the firm or the family, though there are some MS from the father.

Some family papers are at Illinois, the major H-J collection currently resides at Pittsburgh, KS.

By the way, Haldeman-Julius' drowning was ruled accidental. I've only heard it called suicide by conspiricists who suggest that he was driven to it by government persecution or by the people who simply loathe what they believe to have been his politics, the same sort of folks who might claim that Mrs. Roosevelt had frequent, er, "congress" with African American gentlemen and that Vince Foster was a victim of murder most foul.

 

[vitanola]

Penny ante in the sense that his books sold for pennies to what was known at the time "the little man" or "the little people" meaning ordinary people without wealth power or influence.

Hoover had the right to be sore at every Democrat from President Roosevelt on down. If he was the vindictive type, which I don't believe he was, it would have taken him 1000 years to work his way down the list to Haldeman Julius. Besides, after Roosevelt was sworn in he didn't have the power to sic the federales on anybody.

No, it was Haldeman-Julius' active socialism that brought him to the attention of the Feds back during the War. The Hoover thing was actually my poor attempt at humor. Yes he did publish that little screed. no, you are right, it didn't amount to a hill of beans in 1931. Had Hoover a particularly thin skin I think that you underestimate how far down the line of vituperation that little book was. The President would probably not have got around to H-J until at least 5269 A.D. Now LOU HOOVER was a different matter! Wouldn't want to get on her bad side. She was entirely too smart to safely have as an enemy.

Apropos of nothing, have you read the Herbert and Lou Hoover's excellent translation of Agricola's medieval mining engineering text "De re Metallica"? Some really fine scholarly work. A century on it remains the standard text on the subject. Apparently the coupled took the project on immediately after Hoover's return from China and devoted nearly two years to the work. It was a difficult job, for Agricola's Latin was barbaric, full of jargon and occult symbolism in addition to being very hight technology indeed for the Sixteenth Century.

 

[Harp]

I got my information from Michigan State University archives---East Lansing---online.

fftopic:
...the Rib Cage, several blocks from the MSU campus on Washington Blvd, best place for ribs after a game.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Had Hoover a particularly thin skin I think that you underestimate how far down the line of vituperation that little book was. The President would probably not have got around to H-J until at least 5269 A.D.

At the very least, he would have gone after Eddie Cantor first. "Let's hang the fathead to a tree! Cheer up! Smile! Nertz!"

 

[tonyb]

The subtitle of the Menand piece is "How Emily Bronte met Mickey Spillane," which is an allusion to such divergent literary efforts finding themselves on the same wire rack, and their often similar cover art. The cover for a paperback edition of "1984" reproduced in the magazine is quite the hoot. Looks like it might well have been done by the same artist who did the covers for "Women's Barracks" (you could put an eye out with one of those things) and "Scandals at a Nudist Colony."

 

[Stanley Doble]

I didn't know Hoover translated Agricola although I have great respect for both men and their achievements. I once designed a motor based on a pump first described by Agricola.

There was a lot of lousy Latin and lousy handwriting in the old days. Education was kind of hit or miss for quite a long time. This does not make the translator's life easy, even if he can find good copies of old works that are not obliterated or have pages missing.

 

[vitanola]

I didn't know Hoover translated Agricola although I have great respect for both men and their achievements. I once designed a motor based on a pump first described by Agricola.

There was a lot of lousy Latin and lousy handwriting in the old days. Education was kind of hit or miss for quite a long time. This does not make the translator's life easy, even if he can find good copies of old works that are not obliterated or have pages missing.

The Hoover translation is still standard and is the one available currently on Amazon. I STRONGLY reccomended it to anyone who might be interested in metallurgy, History of Science and Technology, Medieval History, Alchemy, Harry Potter or Hobbit fans... Quite frankly anyone who can read will probably find some part of this book to be interesting.

Both MEN? Remember that Lou Hoover was a classicist, and was a full partner in this work. Again, a brilliant woman. They made a very well matched couple. If only he had not run for president in 1928.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If only he had not run for president in 1928.

If only a safe had fallen on Andrew Mellon. In 1874.

 

[Harp]

... and that Vince Foster was a victim of murder most foul.

sibi ipsi responsio sic insidiae consuli

 

[Stanley Doble]

I meant Herbert Hoover and Georgius Agricola. Unless you are saying it was Mrs. Hoover who did the translation?

 

[vitanola]

I meant Herbert Hoover and Georgius Agricola. Unless you are saying it was Mrs. Hoover who did the translation?

Oh, no! Neither ever claimed sole responsibility for the translation. It was very much a team effort. I just did to want to see the talented Mrs. Hoover get lost in the shuffle. If President Hoover's lifetime achievements are overshadowed by the debacle of the Great Depression Lou Henry Hoover's are doubly so.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Apropos the Little Blue Book discussion, I've just come across a small hoard of them -- all once owned by Katherine Mays of Plant City, Florida, and stamped with her "From The Library Of" mark.

Miss Mays does not at first glance seem to be *at all* the typical Little Blue Book enthusiast. She was no rough factory hand or female hobo. She was a young woman of considerable wealth and immense privilege -- she had traveled the world with her parents as a child, was well-educated, well-read, and well-connected. Her father was a force in Florida politics, and the family seems to have weathered the Depression with little impact.

And yet, in spite of this atypical backround, Miss mays seems to have had a considerable thirst for Emanuel Haldeman-Julius's publications. She began accumulating them at the very beginning of the Little Blue Book series, and her interests seem to have covered the gamut of what Haldeman-Julius put out -- so far I've come across lots of examples of the usual political and "free thinking" tracts, including multiple copies of "What America Needs" by E. H. J. himself, but alongside these there's an entertaining collection of the miscellaneous topics that Little Blue Books covered so well. Miss Mays learned how to build her own greenhouse, how to study, how to read character from the face, how to make fifty famous sauces, how to do basic masonry, cement and brick work, and how to learn "Ventriloquism, Self-Taught." There are several copies of this last title, all of them quite worn. She also learned about the life of Samuel Johnson, the famous proverbs of India, life in Greenwich Village during the Jazz Age (including the story of Hilda the Wild Swede, a champion at "strip mah-jong"), the morals of Ancient Babylon, facts everyone should know about light, what we should all know about our sensations, and how to make and break a will.

The only genre missing from this collection, interestingly, is the most famous category of Little Blue Books. Miss Mays seems not to have been interested in E. H. J.'s wide range of sex manuals, and the only booklet verging on this category is "Beginning Married Life Right," which discusses only the practical aspects of arranging a wedding and setting up housekeeping. On its last page it does make note of the need for both bride and groom to be thoroughly familiar with sexual matters before the wedding night -- and recommends several helpful Little Blue Book titles toward providing that knowledge. Although Miss Mays was married twice over her long life, her library shows no evidence that she followed this advice.

 

[tonyb]

Apropos the Little Blue Book discussion, I've just come across a small hoard of them -- all once owned by Katherine Mays of Plant City, Florida, and stamped with her "From The Library Of" mark.

Miss Mays does not at first glance seem to be *at all* the typical Little Blue Book enthusiast. She was no rough factory hand or female hobo. She was a young woman of considerable wealth and immense privilege -- she had traveled the world with her parents as a child, was well-educated, well-read, and well-connected. Her father was a force in Florida politics, and the family seems to have weathered the Depression with little impact.

...

The only genre missing from this collection, interestingly, is the most famous category of Little Blue Books. Miss Mays seems not to have been interested in E. H. J.'s wide range of sex manuals, and the only booklet verging on this category is "Beginning Married Life Right," which discusses only the practical aspects of arranging a wedding and setting up housekeeping. On its last page it does make note of the need for both bride and groom to be thoroughly familiar with sexual matters before the wedding night -- and recommends several helpful Little Blue Book titles toward providing that knowledge. Although Miss Mays was married twice over her long life, her library shows no evidence that she followed this advice.

You wouldn't be suggesting that those particular titles are conspicuous in their absence, would you?

Perhaps Miss Mays, as guardian of her own reputation, burned those volumes, but only after imbibing the wisdom therein?

 

[LizzieMaine]

You wouldn't be suggesting that those particular titles are conspicuous in their absence, would you?

Perhaps Miss Mays, as guardian of her own reputation, burned those volumes, but only after imbibing the wisdom therein?

The thought did occur, especially after I found a copy of "Benefits of Trial Marriage."

 

[tonyb]

Miss Mays sounds like a very nice woman.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The earliest Little Blue Book in this series came out when Miss Mays was 21. Something tells me she was very much a Bright Young Thing, and was no doubt the cause of much grievious annoyance to her parents. Especially once she learned ventriloquism.