Radio Script #118
Little Talks On Common Things
October 14, 1951
I have no doubt you are getting tired of my harping on government spending, but It Is a subject that won’t bear letting up. It behooves every one of us to keep informed of the as to unding facts.
Everyone of us wants to see the nation strongly and securely defended, and we are willing to pay a high price for that security. But is there no limit to what we can or ought reasonably to do? The cost of girding our nation for possible war is already going sky high. Four years of peace may be almost as expensive as was the whole cost of World War II. In fiscal year 1950 we spent nearly 23 billions for defense; in 1951 it mounted to 61 billions; in fiscal 1952 already authorized are 108 billions, and the end is not yet insight.
Now the least we can ask of such huge spending is that it get one hundred cents worth for every dollar. And the way the money is thrown around — at the Limestone Air Base, for Instance, to take only one case near home — It is at least a fair question whether a lot of it isn’t wasted. And how about that huge civilian personnel in the Pentagon? For everyone of them that replaces a uniformed soldier we have only praise, but any visitor to the great five-sided building can see a lot of idle sitting around. As one Congressman said the other day, the busiest places in the Pentagon are the coffee counters at any hour of the day.
We are to Id that, even if we keep out of war we must expect to spend twenty per cent of the national income for defense. That means that every worker in America must work one day in every five for the military protection of the nation. Surely that is not too high a price to pay to save our country, but it is too high a price if waste and Inefficiency is the method, for that way the country can not be saved.
Last week we left Solyman Heath on the prairies attending a Mason I c funeral. By that time some of the company were getting enough. On June 8th Solyman wrote in his Journal: “One of our teamsters has been discharged for fomenting discontent. There has been a lot of growling, but I think very few are sympathetic with it.”
Solyman himself was getting somewhat calloused by the experience, though he was sometimes so sick — but not with cholera — that he could not write in the Journal for several days and had to cover the elapsed time in one day’s account.
Yet it is with a touch of uncalloused sympathy that he records the eleventh death. “It took”, he writes, “a young lady only 18 years old, married Just before we left Independence. was present at the wedding and recall with what eagerness she looked forward to gohlen California.” But on the same day he tells us that he passed a tent, where four men with spades waited for a sick man to die, that they might bury him. “Such”, says Solyman, “Is the estimate of life on the plains. ” Then he adds, without apparent emotion, ”The sick man was named Harlow from Belgrade, Meine.”
There seemed to be no end to the plague. On June 24, when they had been on the westward trek for 49 days, it still stalked their camp. On that day Heath wrote: ”We have just passed eleven graves, all occasioned by cholera. We had supposed we had passed beyond its ravages, especially since we have had drier weather, but we are horribly mistaken.” On that night they made near famous Chimney Rock their fortieth camp since leaving Independence. Forty camps in 49 days shows that they had indeed had to remain in some of the camps more than one day.
Yet they had now seen the worst of the disease. Only an occasional mention of it from here to the end of the Journey, and no more deaths among their own company.
All of Heath’s Journal is by no means so grim and ghoulish as the passages have Just been talking about. At the risk of making the whole program morbid and doleful I have carried you through Solyman Heath’s experience with cholera because that is’ the only way I think you can get the picture of how it haunted the emigrants’ steps day after wearisome day.
But now let us take a look at some of Solyman’s more cheerful passages. He never got over his wonder at the vast expanse of the prairie, the beauty of the colored cliffs, the seeming closeness of the starry sky at night. On May 26 he wrote: “Ever since leaving the creek, we have been on high roiling prairies. From some of the highest elevations the view has liIeen en … chanting. A Maine farmer placed here could ask for nothing tetter.”
On June 5th he set down this account: ”Have seen many antelope and some elk. Wonderful country, but no inhabitants. Not a single wigwam in sight. Desolation reigns on one of the fairest regions on the face of the earth. Yet In the past few days we have traversed enough of rich soil to furnish bread for the whole world. When shall this land be settled? That Is an Interesting question .. “On June 11th he wrote: “Country covered with beautiful cactus. What a magnificent plant!”
On June 24th they called near the famous Chimney Rock. “At our distance”, wrote Solyman, “it truly resembled a giant chimney shooting 300 feet into the air. It is of sandstone and has a large crack, Indicating that this remarkable object of the plains will disappear in a few years.” Well, solyman, a hundred years have gone by sl nce you looked on Chimney Rock, and it is still there.
On the 25th our diarist was given to a bit of religious reflection. “Today we got our first for glimpse of the Rocky Mountains”, he writes. “How far away we do not know. Distances are deceptive on the plains. A bluff that appears to be not more than a mile away may be six or eight miles. To a religious mind the prairie views afford the very highest themes for reflection. Whether one gazes upon the unbroken, treeless prairie, or turns upon these gigantic, broken, storm-beaten cliffs, one Is led Immediately to the contemplation of the Divine, and feels his own weakness and littleness amidst this wonderful display of omnipotence. Yet how few who have beheld this have given a thought to the Almighty Architect.”
Of the Black Hills Solyman writes: ”These hills present a beautiful, deep color, such as I have never seen before, and the shapes are continuously changing like the figures of a kaleidoscope.” Two days later he tells us: “We have been proceeding over a region which had evidently been swept by the ocean. The region is terribly dry. The greatest droughts we ever have in Maine are pleasant showers compared to the burning on the Upper Platte. The moisture has evaporated from my skin, my face and hands are cracked, and it seems as though I would dry up. Yet I confess it is a region of magnificent beauty. ”
On July 17 he says: “We are in sight of the Wind River Mountains, a magnificent outline spotted allover with snow. We begin to take courage, In the prospect of soon reaching waters that run the other way.” The hot springs 0f Wyoming we re another novel experience. ”We came”, he says, “to some hot springs covering a quarter acre. The water bubbled up from a marshy place. In some spots it was much hotter than in others. We parboiled beans there for supper. I washed my hands and face in one of the springs, but with some difficulty because the water was so hot. less than a hundred yards distant was a spring of the clearest, coldest water, wonderful to drink. Within such proximity are heat and cold, even at the surface of the earth.”
The next day Solyman found at the base of a mountain a large stream of hot water, in which he took what he termed “a delicious wash, the temperature being about that of high-toned dish water.” Then he adds, “last 1’1 f ght at our ca”1l water froze an inch thick.” That was on August 18th. They were indeed high up in the Rockies.
Many persons have an entirely wrong picture of these journeys across the continent in the prairie schooner days. They think of a family starting out alone with wa~on and oxan, or perhaps horses, and making their lonely hazardous way across the plains and the mountains. The truth Is that the journey, though hazardous, was anything but lonely. The emigrant had plenty of company. By the time that Solyman Heath reached Independence in May, 1849 emigrant trains were leaving the Missouri town every two or three days. A train might be composed of as many as fifty wagons, though thirty was a more usual number. Often the persons in one of the trains numbered 200, and there were trains that had double that number. There were whole families — men, women and children. There were single, unattached males. There were the professional teamsters, and In some cases even slaves. Solyman Heath found plenty of other people to talk with all the way to California.
Travel In those bands or trains was necessary, not only as protection against hostile Indians, but to insure safety for those whose wagons broke down or whose draft animals died or strayed away. Then it was very important to have someone along who, if not a regular doctor, at least knew something about the care of the sick.
Solyman Heath’s journal gives us striking information about the numbers of people who were lured to California by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. On June 5, Solyman set down this record: “Met three teams returning. Said they had lost most of their oxen by stampede and had to turn back. They told us that there are more than 5,000 wagons ahead of us, that 4,000 had passed Fort Kearney in the last month.”
When, on the national holiday of July 4, they crossed the south fork of the Platte, Solyman wrote: “We were determined to get ahead of the mass waiting at the upper crossing. There are said to be over 2,000 wagons waiting there to get across. So we took the lighter passenger wagons across on a ferry farther down stream, and the baggage wagons managed to get across with great difficulty some distance above, but not so far as the upper crossing where the congestion existed.”
Crossing the Platte was a major event of the trip and deserving of recognition on the holiday. So Heath tells: “It being the Fourth of July, a dozen of our passengers celebrated, after the crossing, with a large allowance of whiskey, brandy, songs and wit, which latter grew keen as the bottle went around. A due quantity of powder was exploded, with the usual noise that characterizes the holiday in the States.”
In a group of people, living closely together under such trying circumstances for several months, peace and harmony did not always reign. You will recall that they had to discharge a teamster because he was foment.og discontent.
It was only three days after that Fourth of July crossing of the Platte that some-thing really exciting occurred. Solyman thought it worth a detailed account in his precious Journal. ”We came near”, he tells us, “having a dl:l8l In caq> between an Englishman and a Frenchman. The former called the latter an S .O.B., and -the Frenchman demanded satisfaction. They had no seconds, but went out some 30 rods, armed with pistols. Naturally most of the camp followed along. After getting on the ground, the Englishman recanted his charge, and they walked back again, as whole as they went out, to the great amusement of the passengers.
When they got back the Eng II shman sa i d: ‘Gentlemen, I do not think Mr. LaMa 1-pheu is an S.O.B.; I think he is a pretty good bas.’ Thus the matter ended, with the parties good friends.” Evidently that word beginning “bas” was no insult at all.
However plentiful the co~any and however exciting the Journey, Solyman would· have been less than human had he nat suffered occasional pangs of homesickness. Yet he entll’Q’Sts such feelings to the journal only after he has been two full months out of Independence, and more than three months from home. On July 5 he wrote: “last night I lay In the light of soft. mellow moon, thinking of home, wife and child ran. These thoughts cheer rather than depress me. love to contemplate the probable enjoyment of each member at home.”
July 15 was, for some reason not clear to us, an especially trying day for Solyman. That night the journal received these words: “Our journey is becoming tedious. It is altogether too long and the food is much too monotonous. Already here months have passed since I left horne, and It all seems like a dream. I often wonder how those at home have fared, for no word from them has reached me. “With those thoughts of home we leave Solyman Heath tonight, promising you that next week we shall get” him through to the gold fields.
Year: 1951