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POSTSCRIPTS
TEN-HUT!
WRITE YOUR MOTHER
When Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, began to see the often crass and commercial uses to which her sacred day was put (as recounted in James P. Johnson’s “How Mother Got Her Day,” April/May, 1979), she flew into a rage that lasted the rest of her life. However, she surely would have approved a project put forth in 1918 by the normally unsentimental General John J. Pershing—a story passed along to us by reader Richard W. Sackett of Bethesda, Maryland: “In the late winter and early spring of 1918, when thousands of doughboys were arriving in France, many of the home people complained to their congressmen and to the Post Office Department that they were not hearing from their boys in France. Perhaps in response to these complaints, and to forestall any possible political pressure, General Pershing telegraphed all his commanding officers two days before Mother’s Day—May 12, 1918: ‘I wish that every officer and soldier of the American Expeditionary Forces would write a letter home on Mother’s Day. This is a little thing for each one to do, but these letters will carry back our courage and affection to the patriotic women whose love and prayers inspire us and cheer us on to victory.’ The soldiers were instructed to write ‘Mother’s Letter’ on the envelopes so that the Army Postal Service could spot them more easily and speed them home.
“The campaign was a great success; one transport alone carried no fewer than 1,425,000 letters, according to the Stars and Stripes for July 12, 1918. It must have been on the basis of this that Pershing, with the blessing of the Secretary of War, organized another campaign in 1919, this time far enough ahead so that the YMCA, which supplied writing materials to the troops, could print ‘Mother’s Day Letter’ on special envelopes.” Shown here, courtesy of Mr. Sackett, are Mother’s Day “covers” for 1918 and 1919.
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THE HAIRLESS HANGING
Among the photographs of outlaws alive or dead or about to be dead that were collected by telegrapher George Lawton in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see “The Wilder West of George Lawton,” April/May, 1979) was one of the notorious Tom Horn, shown with a rope of hair woven with his own hands.
Relying on a notation by Lawton himself, we identified the rope as the one that was used to hang the convicted man in 1903.
Not likely, says Philip H. Reisman, Jr., of Larchmont, New York: “Most accounts of Horn’s two-year imprisonment … mention that he passed the time doing what he called his ‘hair work’—weaving horsehair into hat bands, hackamores, lariats, love knots, and other ‘cowboy jewelry’ which he sold or gave away to his admirers. Examination of your photograph … strongly suggests that what he is holding is a lariat, tastefully woven of spirals of light and dark horsehair.…
“Common sense suggests that it is unlikely that a condemned man would be permitted to make his own hanging rope, any more than he would be allowed to build his own electric chair if he were to be electrocuted.…
“Anyway, no self-respecting hangman of that place and period would work with equipment that he hadn’t provided and tested himself. Hobbycrafted rope, no matter how decorativeIy woven, would never have been considered suitable for the job.
“Hanging ropes were hand-made of Kentucky hemp, one and one-eighth inches thick, stretched for a year with two-hundred-pound sandbags until there was no elasticity and they were one inch in diameter. With no ‘give’ left in them, the drop was certain to end in instant death from a snapped neck.…”
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SOCIAL INSECURITIES
In “The Birth of Social Security” (April/May, 1979) author Kenneth Davis outlined some of the flabbiness and financial uncertainties that plague the system today and might, he wrote, bring it to the edge of a “great crisis.” Whether or not a crisis is impending, one wonders if the present operation can even begin to stack up against the ad hoc “social security system” worked out in 1847 by John Chaffin, gentleman, age seventy-three, and his son, John Emerson Chaffin, yeoman, age twentytwo, both of Holden, Massachusetts. The story is told by Mrs. Nancy C. Knox of Princeton, New Jersey:
“On April 24,1847, the elder Chaffin sold the 134-acre family farm to his son for $3,000. Later in the same day, curiously enough, yet another deed was executed, in which father John paid $1,500 to buy back half of the same farm, but this time with a lengthy proviso attached. Young Chaffin now owned $1,500 and half a farm; he was to earn the rest, to wit: by providing for ‘my honoured father and mother during their natural lives in the following manner: to provide them with good and suitable meats, drinks and vegetables and groceries with any and all things necessary to furnish a good and suitable table for their board and sustenance; to cook and furnish them with good and suitable board, or to pay for their board where either or both may wish to live… to provide them with good and suitable clothing of all kinds which they shall wish for their convenience and comfort; to provide them with all the wood they want of a good quality fitted for stoves or fireplaces as they shall direct… to provide and keep a suitable horse, carriage, and harness for their use when ordered by them; to have the use of one half the house they now occupy; to provide them with suitable help and attendants in sickness and in health subject to their order; to pay their doctoring, nursing, and funeral charges.…’ ”
The system worked without a hitch, and young Chaffin did his duty for the remaining thirteen years of his parents’ lives. Not as much can be said for the recent experience of Miss Duane WiIkins, as reported in the New York Times in February of this year. Miss Wilkins, it seems, was writing down her Social Security number for her dentist when he stopped her. “That can’t be your number,” he said. “That’s my number.” And so it was; they both had the same number—363-14-9879—hers issued six years ago, his thirty-five years ago. “Virtually impossible,” said the local bureaucrats, who then passed the buck to the Social Security records center in Baltimore.
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