”The future is not for parties ‘playing politics,’ but for measures conceived in the largest spirit, pushed by parties whose leaders are statesmen, no”The future is not for parties ‘playing politics,’ but for measures conceived in the largest spirit, pushed by parties whose leaders are statesmen, not demagogues, who love not their offices, but their duty and their opportunity for service.”---Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was the eighth and last president from the state of Virginia. Ohio also can claim eight presidents, of whom four died in office. Only eight presidents have died in office so there is something extremely unlucky about winning the presidency from the great state of Ohio. Warren G. Harding, who assumed the presidency after Wilson, was the eighth and final president from Ohio and also was one of the men who died in office. It is interesting that the streaks for the two states who produced the most presidents ended within a matter of years of one another. Maybe the American public put two and two together to equal four and realized that, odds were, voting for another Ohio man for president was dooming the candidate to death.
I started reading this book because, after surviving the 2020 election, at least I think I have survived it, I was really wanting to read a presidential book, and Obama’s book release was still weeks away. I scanned my shelves and skipped quickly over Reagan, Nixon, and Coolidge. I wasn’t in the mood (the last four years have cured me of some of that interest) for dissecting Republican neurosis. I nearly decided to start the four, rather large volumes of the Caro LBJ biographies, but Wilson by A. Scott Berg caught my eye. Compared to the Caro books, the Berg book is a tidy 743 pages of what I hoped would be some escape from the crazed political environment of today. Of course, the Republicans were mucking about even back in the early twentieth century. Henry Cabot Lodge was gleefully trying to undermine everything that Woodrow Wilson attempted to do, including striking down the treaty that ended WW1 and he ensured as well that America would not join the League of Nations, which had a long lasting impact on world events, including, quite possibly, contributing to WW2.
Wilson was a very popular president with the American people. If not for ill health, I do believe that Wilson would have run for a third term. Despite the dire news on his medical chart, he did contemplate the idea. He was incapacitated, okay we might be able to use the word nearly incapacitated, by a stroke in his final term, leading many to call his wife Edith the first female president of the United States. I’m a Wilson fan, but I have to tell you that he should have stepped down from office. He had recovered enough to walk and talk, and most of his razor wit had returned by the time the 1920 election season rolled around, but fortunately, common sense won out over another grueling election.
”Seldom in the nation’s history had the change in government swung so far in the opposite direction.” Berg is talking of course about 1920, but for a moment there I thought he was talking about 2016. It was baffling to think that, after the vast popularity for our arguably most well-educated president, we would choose to elect, as Alice Roosevelt referred to him,...a slob. Warren G. Harding was enjoying life, drinking, gambling, and chasing skirts. He wasn’t really that interested in being president, but the powers that be in the Republican party selected him because he...looked presidential.
He did have a bit of the look of Roman Caesar about him, but below the face he was an empty suit. Henry Ford, after meeting him, decided that he was going to have to run for president in 1924 just to remove this immoral, useless man from office. Harding’s first order of business was to undo everything that Wilson ever accomplished. Sound familiar? The voting American public is certainly schizophrenic. They were thrilled with Wilson, but then voted for someone diametrically opposed to everything Wilson stood for. They were thrilled with Barack Obama, but then voted in...what’s his name? Can we erase history and chisel his name off everything in the tradition of the pharaohs of Egypt? Certainly, Harding and _____ tried to do that.
I was surprised to learn that Wilson was a great orator. I had always thought of him as this stiff academic. When he was a teacher at Princeton, he was the most popular lecturer. It wasn’t abnormal for his lessons to end to the sound of applause from his highly engaged students. One of his favorite sayings was,” Don’t learn history, learn from history.” He encouraged his students to place themselves in history, think about what they would have done, what they would have supported. I love to personally do that as well, and it certainly increases my enjoyment with any history book I read. When he became president of Princeton, he tried to turn the school back to a focus on learning instead of an obsession with social clubs. It was turning into a place to meet future powerful people, rather than to get an education. I think we can certainly agree that our institutes of higher learning have become too focused on the social aspects of college.
When he was president, he continued to use those oratory skills to override Republican opposition. If not for his health that derailed his cross country train trip to raise support for the treaty and the League of Nations, I have a feeling he might have forced Lodge to support both. Women finally achieved the right to vote in 1920, under his administration. Wilson deftly used their sacrifices and their contribution to the war effort to convince enough elected officials to finally get them the vote. It should have happened earlier in his administration, but thank goodness this was done before the beginning of a decade of Republican presidents. Otherwise, women might have had to wait until FDR was elected in 1933.
Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act, but Congress overrode his veto, ushering in yet another disastrous Republican policy that opened our country up to organized crime and spawned a generation of dedicated drinkers. There is a lot to love about Wilson, but one place that he really failed to come up to the mark was on Civil Rights. He was a man of Dixie, and like most men of his era, his speech was littered with racist allusions. For all that, black men in the South voted in great numbers for him. They saw that, despite his heritage, he was still a better choice for them. I wish that he had used WW1 to desegregate the armed forces, but he was too unsure of his position. He ran in 1916 with the slogan...he kept us out of war, then he promptly got us in the war in Europe. The Republicans were against going across the pond to fight, in their minds, a European war. When Wilson gave his rousing speech to convince Congress to vote for war, he found the excessive applause... heinous. He wept over his message of death.
It wasn’t until 1948 that another Democratic president, Harry S. Truman, desegregated the armed forces.
Wilson was quite the amorous man. As a young man he fell in love fast and hard and was so dedicated to winning a wife that he sent more than one scurrying away to the hills. He loved his first wife Ellen dearly and wrote her love letters long after the ardor of first love should have cooled. Whenever they were parted, he would write her salacious notes, not only of his love, but of his desire for her. One of my favorite lines from one of his letters was: ”Are you prepared for the storm of love making with which you will be assailed?”
Goodness Professor!
He was a man of grand passions, not only politically but also between the bedsheets. It was fascinating to discover a much more interesting, much more human person, behind the stuffy, academic persona.
So I came away from the biography with a more balanced view of Wilson. He was a much more complicated man than I first thought. I can’t help speculating, by taking Wilson’s own advice regarding history to heart, about what would have happened in the 1920 election if a healthy Wilson had been pitted against Harding. It’s difficult to know how many votes he would have lost from entering the war, but it never hurts to win a war in American politics. I think it would have been a close election; certainly, Harding would not have won by a landslide, like he did against Cox. I believe Wilson would have won his third term, and America would have been spared the disaster of Harding. If we take it a step further, in what universe would _____ have defeated Obama? Hopefully, not this one, but who knows? The schizophrenia of American voters is certainly hard to predict.
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1912 Electoral Presidential map. It was a three way race with Roosevelt, unhappy with his picked successor Taft, deciding to run as an “independent” candidate.
Do take a few minutes and look up the electoral maps of Presidential elections from 1912 to the present and marvel at the changes. Wilson was looking at an entirely different path to the White House than Joseph R. Biden. I do believe that we may be on the cusp of seeing a very different map in 2024 and 2028, compared to 2020.
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Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone.
”Beyond the pleasure it brought to the men themselves, the Edison-Ford frie
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Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone.
”Beyond the pleasure it brought to the men themselves, the Edison-Ford friendship also thrilled ordinary Americans, whose lives were radically changed, to great extent blessed, by the two men’s inventions and innovations. Later in 1914 the outbreak of war in Europe, and America’s potential entry into the conflict, began dominating the news. That made it even more refreshing to read about Edison and Ford in newspapers and magazines--they were among the country’s most prominent celebrities, after all--and entertaining to wonder what future advancements the unique pair of friends would deliver. Only a generation or so earlier, electric lights in homes, phonographs, movies, affordable horseless carriages, substantial factory wages, and shorter workweeks would have been beyond public imagination. As individuals, Edison and Ford had already extended the boundaries of the possible. Now their genius was joined, and more miracles were certain.”
From 1914 to 1924, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, until his death in 1921, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone would attempt to go on a motoring/camping vacation together every year. They were not always successful because one or the other had pressing concerns that would not allow them to go, but when they did all manage to go, it was a newspaper sensation. At the time, there were no more prominent Americans than Ford and Edison. One had innovated the car, and the other had brought light to all corners of America. When on these excursions, the press would follow them like the paparazzi follow movie stars, pop stars, and politicians.
Besides friendship, and I do believe these men really liked each other and enjoyed spending time together, they also appreciated the publicity that these trips produced for the products their livelihoods were tied to. Burroughs sold more books. Ford sold more cars, which meant Firestone sold more tires, and Edison sold more light bulbs and other sundry things that were made by his laboratories. These trips were one big social media hashtag.
The trips themselves were not really of much interest to me. After all, they were the early days of reality TV. Fake reality is about the lowest form of entertainment I can think of. George R. Holmes of Hearst Newspapers did write a very poignant paragraph about their campsite. ”Out of the inky blackness that hangs like a shroud over the Adirondacks these nights, there blooms nightly along some quiet mountain stream a ghost-like tented village...Eight tents, almost transparent with the incandescent lamps inside them, stood out last night like so many jewels against the velvet blackness of the forest on all sides. In the center of the tiny village a campfire burned, for it is nippy in the mountains these nights.” They were quite comfortable on these trips. The idea that these older men could be roughing it wouldn’t really make any sense. They’d all be in the hospital with pneumonia by the end of their travels.
President Warren G. Harding joined them briefly during one of their trips. It was an attempt to beef up Harding’s image as an everyday man. His administration was rocked by scandal, and the constant rumors of his flagrant infidelities were hurting his chances at reelection. So how does a guy like this get elected? Beware the American public who wants radical presidential change.
”Most major newspapers savaged Harding editorially, noting his complete lack of legislative accomplishment as a senator and describing him as one of the most unqualified presidential candidates in the nation’s history. But Americans wanted a change, and there were strong sentiments. Harding and Coolidge won in a landslide.”
President Warren G. Harding joined them for a brief amount of time on one of their trips. I won’t say much about this meeting between the four friends and this bizarre choice for president, but Henry Ford was so horrified by his impression of this man that he knew, for the good of the country, that he would have to run against him for president. Ford was at the height of his popularity at this time and would, most likely have become the 30th president. Fortunately for Ford and for the country, Harding died in office in 1923, and Ford was so impressed with his replacement Calvin Coolidge that he dropped all thoughts of running for president.
Jeff Guinn revealed several disturbing things about Henry Ford which changed my impressions of the man. I’d always praised him for paying his workers a liveable wage and being an advocate of the 40 hour workweek, but it turned out that those thoughts actually came from his general manager, James J Couzens. By paying a good wage, turnover was reduced, which cut the cost of training new people. Cutting the workweek encouraged people to buy Model Ts because they would have time to use them for pleasure drives. Investing in people is always a boon to the economy and to the companies that support their workers. Couzens later went on to be mayor of Detroit and a senator. He was defeated in the 1936 Senate race because he was a Republican supporting the New Deal programs. Mentally, I must strike those innovations from the positive column for Ford and start thinking of Couzens as the man we should all be admiring.
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Senator James J. Couzens, a man of principle.
Ford also was an antisemetic, even producing a paper that advocated his beliefs. He was also contemptuous of the importance of history and those people who read books. ”Henry Ford was mostly disdainful of books and those who loved them. In his opinion, people ‘read to escape thinking’. So far as Ford was concerned, being literary-minded was symptomatic of an escalating national softness, with far too many people content to lounge poring over pages instead of getting on their feet and doing something. ‘Book sickness is a modern ailment.’”
GASP!
Wouldn’t it be great if we were a nation suffering from book sickness? Alas, that is simply not the case. The majority of Americans agree with Henry Ford. Reading for them is considered a waste of time.
This book might be based around the trips these four famous men took, but the real meat of the story was exploring their personalities. Firestone was the least known of the four men, but he was the mediator that helped these larger than life men get along. He was a very successful businessman in his own right, but not as good at self-promotion as the other men. This book brought to light new information and reminded me of some things I’d forgotten.
It was also strangely relaxing to wander the byways and soon to be highways of America before we started drifting away from the very things that made us great in the first place. We used to make things here, and the manufacturing jobs that made it possible for so many generations to go to college are now supporting families in China. I believe that if any company wants to sell any product in the United States that at least 51% of that product should be made in America. We are entrenched in too much greed. American business is more worried about making as much money as it can now, even if it bankrupts its future. They want us to buy their products, but they don’t want to invest in us. James Couzens, over a century ago, understood that the future is determined by how you treat people today.
”He talked constantly about hands. He always judged people he saw for the first time by their hands.
‘Did you see that fellow, the way he tore open the”He talked constantly about hands. He always judged people he saw for the first time by their hands.
‘Did you see that fellow, the way he tore open the package of cigarettes? He’s a scoundrel. And that woman--did you notice the way she brushed back her hair with her forefinger?...A good girl.’ Sometimes he labeled them--’stupid hands,’ ‘witty hands,’ ‘ordinary hands,’ ‘whore’s hands’...”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was an undisputable genius. He may not be my favorite painter, though I do love much of his work, but he might be the painter I respect the most. His character and his work ethic are so impressive.
It’s interesting thinking about Renoir judging people by their hands. I wonder how accurate he was with his assessments. If he saw my hands, what would he believe about me? Many people have told me I should have been a pianist with my long, slender fingers. I don’t see him falling for that trap. My palms along the knuckles have a few calloused ridges from gardening, but not like the bulging hills of my youth. He certainly wouldn’t be fooled into thinking I’m a manual laborer. I have scars. A ridge of scar tissue on the back of my thumb might tell him something. I was sliding a scoop shovel into a bracket holder on a grain truck and held onto it too long. A steel flange peeled the back of my thumb like a grape. There are other interesting scars scattered along my fingers, thin white lines that reveal little of the trauma that created them. He liked hands that could do things. Who would Renoir think I am?
Another interesting aspect of Renoir’s obsession with hands is the crippling arthritis that deformed his hands later in his life. Many artists would retire, but not Renoir. He continued to paint every day and with a precision that is marvelous to contemplate. His deft touch with a brush required a magnifying glass to see how precise his brush was, despite the state of his hands. What would Renoir make of his own hands if they belonged to someone else? Would he guess a painter? His eyes were so sharp that, though he may talk about the hands, I have a feeling, in Sherlock Holmes fashion, he weighed all the other clues available to him as well.
He scoffed at the idea that he was a genius, though it is frankly indisputable. His son Jean, who wrote this marvelous memoir, once screamed in frustration…”Enough of Genius.” It would be difficult venturing forth to find your own creative outlet when the person you know the best in the world is one of the best at what he does. Jean became a filmmaker; fortunately, he did not find his talent with a brush, but then with genius as the bar, who would have the cojones to even begin?
This book is mostly set during the later years of Renoir’s life. Jean was badly wounded in the war. There is this poignant scene described in the book when his mother came to the field hospital to see him. He was in a bad way, and the doctors wanted to take his leg. She refused to allow this but nursed him herself until he was out of danger. She saved his life as good mothers do who save their offsprings’ lives many times over their lifetimes without fanfare. While convolescenting, Jean decided it was time to really start to listen to the stories of his aging father. The result was this book.
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Andree played by the lovely Christa Theret in Renoir. The woman who seduced two Renoirs.
I had been wanting to read this book for a while, but what finally spurred me to pick it up this year was watching the 2013 movie Renoir, directed by Gilles Burdos, that was based on this memoir. The effervescent Andree became one of Renoir’s last models. Her luminescent skin soaked up the sun and reflected it. She later married Jean and became the actress Catherine Hessling. She is remembered for the films she made, but she was immortalized by the paintings she inspired.
I was also surprised by how much I liked the writing style of the book. For most of it, I felt like I was sitting on a bench with Jean, sipping wine, as he told me stories about his father and his encounters with life. I would laugh as Jean related how weird it was for him to go to boarding school and see how obsessed other boys were with seeing smutty pictures. He grew up surrounded by beautiful, naked women and didn’t really see what the big deal was. The women with whom Renoir encompassed himself were not only there to make his life easier but were also the inspiration for his art. ”He marries all the women he paints--but with his brush.” They also had a huge impact on Jean as extensions of his mother.
I mentioned Renoir’s work ethic. He painted every day, even when he was in poor health or racked by pain. He loved his chosen profession. He saw himself as a blue collar worker rather than an artist. He had no pretensions about his talent. He respected it by continually using it. He always wanted to improve. He painted on the last day of his life. ”He asked for his paintbox and brushes, and he painted the anemones which Nenette, our kind-hearted maid, had gone out and gathered for him. For several hours he identified himself with these flowers, and forgot his pain. Then he motioned for someone to take his brush and said, ‘I think I am beginning to understand something about it.’ That was the phrase Grand Louise repeated to me. The nurse thought he said, ‘Today I learned something.’”
He used his eyes and his brushes to continually search for truths about the world around him, and through his art, he attempted to share his findings with the rest of us.
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