A buck well spent…

The hallmark of Americans through the first two centuries from our founding was optimism. That virtue was in large part what made American exceptionalism possible. In an age of, you didn’t build that, it is nice to be reminded that the country was not always run by third-rate imitations of second-rate men who had to use the tax authorities to hobble their opposition and spy agencies to keep tabs on the press. Springs enjoys the advantage of having Burke Davis tell his story since Davis has done such an excellent job with other notable Southerners including Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lee and Stonewall Jackson we can appreciate what he has done for a man who served his nation and his community quietly but well.

When I was a good deal younger Springs’s advertisements for Springmaid sheets were among the most entertaining of their day. Like Burma Shave they may have skated a little close to the thin ice of the risqué but they never crossed the bounds of decency into prurience. They were an example of America having fun, chuckling up its sleeve at the puritan fathers, and giving even the most straight-laced something to smile about. Enjoy the ad that made his product famous and enjoy the story of the man who knew something genuine about leadership.

War bird : the life and times of Elliott White Springs Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c 1987 Burke Davis Springs, Elliott White Hardcover. 1st. ed., later printing. viii, 267 p., [26] p. of plates: ill.; 24 cm. Bibliography: p. [244]-258. Includes index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Elliott White Springs was a man of so many talents that it would be difficult to choose any one of his accomplishments as his most outstanding. At his death, he was chairman of Springs Cotton Mills, a company that he took over in 1931 when America was in the depths of the Great Depression, and 10 years later had made it one of the textile industry’s major success stories.

But first there was Springs the aviator, one of the finest, bravest, and most daring pilots produced in World War I. He was the fifth-ranking American ace of the war, with 11 kills to his credit and many more that were not officially confirmed. At the end of the war, in 1918 and a year after he graduated from Princeton, he was 22 years old, a squadron commander, a captain, and holder of the British Flying Cross and the American Distinguished Service Cross. He returned to military service during World War II and left with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Then there was Springs the writer, a Roaring Twenties author of nine books and scores of short stories, many published in the leading magazines of his day. He earned a quarter of a million dollars with his writing, and his Warbirds: the Diary of an Unknown Aviator is considered the most important writing about World War I aviation ever produced.

Springs the textile executive was equally impressive. At 35 years old, he inherited from his father the task of running Springs Cotton Mills, which consisted of five comparatively obsolete plants in Lancaster, Chester, and York counties. Everyone who knew Elliott Springs expected him to waste his inheritance within a few years. His father’s estate was valued at about $5 million, ranking him informally as the wealthiest man in South Carolina. But few people realized to what extent Springs committed himself to learning the business or how hard he was willing to work to learn the fundamentals of textile manufacturing. He not only learned the new business but became familiar with every technical detail related to operating a textile plant. He worked on a loom in his basement, testing proposals of his workers and supervisors.

He discovered that “for a man who loves machines, a cotton mill beats an airplane.” He worked until he knew the workings of all machines in the plants and could tell by the sound whether things were running right. In the face of the Depression, Springs consolidated the five mills into one company, built a finishing plant, established a sales organization, and modernized the business. At the end of 1958, the last full year he managed Springs Cotton Mills, assets were $138.5 million, compared to $13 million when he became president. Sales were $184 million at the end of 1958, more than 19 times greater than sales in 1933. In 1958, Springs Cotton Mills was only the seventh-largest textile company in the United States, but it led the textile industry in profitability. And Springs had become the world’s largest producer of sheets and pillowcases.

Then there was Springs the advertising genius, whose innovative series of humorous, risqué ads made Springmaid sheets a household word and changed the course of American advertising. Today, nearly 45 years after those ads ran, the company receives hundreds of requests each year for reprint copies, and the series is used in advertising courses in dozens of universities as the most successful ad program ever launched. In fact, within a few months, the ads and the restructuring of Springs had transformed Springmaid from a virtually unknown brand into one of the most familiar textile products in America.

Springs had great respect for his employees, offering medical care, profit-sharing, and recreational facilities. He established a foundation to help meet community needs for education, recreation, health care, community improvement projects, and church developments.

There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others… Niccolo Machiavelli

Precisely what is ethical about putting your own citizens in harms way to satisfy a doctrine?

Just War: the Just War tradition: ethics in modern warfare New York, Walker, 2007 Charles Guthrie, Michael Quinlan Just war doctrine; International relations  Moral and ethical aspects Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. 51 p. ; 23 cm. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Every society and every period of history has had to face the reality of war. War inevitably yields situations in which the normal ethical rules of society have to be overridden. The Just War tradition has evolved over the centuries as a careful endeavor to impose moral discipline and humanity on resort to war and in its waging, and the tradition deserves our attention now as much as ever.

Just War traces the origin and nature of the tradition from its roots in Christian thinking and provides a clear summary of its principles, which are accessible to all beliefs. As the circumstances and necessities of war have changed over time, so too have the practical interpretations of the tradition. Drawing examples from Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the wars in Iraq, Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan look at the key concepts in relation to modern armed conflict.

The tradition sets rational limits and respects the adversary’s humanity amid the chaos of war, and provides systematic questions which governments and armed forces must ask themselves before they engage in war. This short but powerful book is a timely re-examination of its tenets and their relevance in the 21st century, setting out the case for a workable and credible moral framework for modern war before, while, and after it is waged.

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador. An English sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it.” Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his reply: Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world! Ambrose Bierce

The pirates: authentic narratives of the lives, exploits, and executions of the world’s most infamous buccaneers; including contemporary eyewitness accounts, documents, trial transcripts, and letters Avenel, New Jersey : Gramercy Books, 1996 Charles Ellms Pirates Hardcover. Originally published in 1837 as The pirates’ own book. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

preface to the original edition…
In the mind of the mariner, there is a superstitious horror connected with the name of Pirate; and there are few subjects that interest and excite the curiosity of mankind generally, more than the desperate exploits, foul doings, and diabolical career of these monsters in human form. A piratical crew is generally formed of the desperadoes and runagates of every clime and nation.

The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation, when not cruising on the ocean, the great highway of nations, selects the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself near the shores of rivers, bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited countries, so that if pursued he can escape to the woods and mountain glens of the interior.

The islands of the Indian Ocean, and the east and west coasts of Africa, as well as the West Indies, have been their haunts for centuries; and vessels navigating the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, are often captured by them,
the passengers and crew murdered, the money and most valuable part of the cargo plundered, the vessel destroyed, thus obliterating all trace of their unhappy fate, and leaving friends and relatives to mourn their loss from the inclemencies of the elements, when they were butchered in cold blood by their fellow men, who by practically adopting the maxim that “dead men tell no tales,” enable themselves to pursue their
diabolical career with impunity. The pirate is truly fond of women and wine, and when not engaged in robbing, keeps maddened with intoxicating liquors, and passes his time in debauchery, singing old songs with
chorusses like

  “Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul,
    Let the world wag as it will:
  Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl,
    Drain, drain the deep bowl and fill.”

Thus his hours of relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics amongst the lofty forests of palms and spicy groves of the Torrid Zone, and amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable productions of
that region. He has fruits delicious to taste, and as companions, the unsophisticated daughters of Africa and the Indies. It would be supposed that his wild career would be one of delight.

But the apprehension and foreboding of the mind, when under the influence of remorse, are powerful, and every man, whether civilized or savage, has interwoven in his constitution a moral sense, which secretly condemns him when he has committed an atrocious action, even when he is placed in situations which raise him above the fear of human punishment, for

  “Conscience, the torturer of the soul, unseen.
  Does fiercely brandish a sharp scourge within;
  Severe decrees may keep our tongues in awe,
  But to our minds what edicts can give law?
  Even you yourself to your own breast shall tell
  Your crimes, and your own conscience be your hell.”

With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich plunder, caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of outlandish coins, secreted in lonely, out of the way places, or buried about the wild shores of rivers, and unexplored sea coasts, near rocks and trees bearing mysterious marks, indicating where the treasure was hid. And as it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty, and from the perilous life he leads, being often killed or captured, he can never re-visit the spot again; immense sums remain buried in those places, and are irrecoverably lost. Search is often made by persons who labor in anticipation of throwing up with their spade and pickaxe, gold bars, diamond crosses sparkling amongst the dirt, bags of golden doubloons, and chests, wedged close with moidores, ducats and pearls; but although great treasures lie hid in this way, it seldom happens that any is so recovered.

 

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out… James Bryant Conant

Voyage of the turtle: in pursuit of the Earth’s last dinosaur New York: Holt, 2006 Carl Safina Leatherback turtle Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. xvi, 383 p., [16] p. of plates: ill. (some col.), maps; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [352]-367) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Though nature is indifferent to the struggles of her creatures, the human effect on them is often premeditated. The distressing decline of sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate what can go both wrong and right from our interventions, and teach us the lessons that can be applied to restore health to the world’s oceans and its creatures. As Carl Safina’s compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the astonishing leatherback turtle, whose ancestry can be traced back 125 million years, is in our hands.

Writing with verve and color, Safina describes how he and his colleagues track giant pelagic turtles across the world’s oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent. As scientists apply lessons learned in the Atlantic and Caribbean to other endangered seas, Safina follows leatherback migrations, including a thrilling journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds on the most remote beaches of Papua, New Guinea. The only surviving species of its genus, family, and suborder, the leatherback is an evolutionary marvel: a “reptile” that behaves like a warm-blooded dinosaur, an ocean animal able to withstand colder water than most fishes and dive deeper than any whale.

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope… Mahalia Jackson

This book is a supposedly in-depth study of blues and the women who have the right to sing them. In reality it is a white bread girl living in her white bread world who is short on music history and long on the rights of anyone who claims to be liberated to proclaim themselves an artist – no matter how small their musical talent or how outrageous their behaviour. All music begins with folk music – there were songs and ballads long before the were symphonies and recording labels. Most organized music begins in religion where the voices of the faithful were first organized. Thus the drinking songs of the Roman Legions are adapted into Gregorian Chant and wind up on the tracks of the Moody Blues. The experience of the Jews in captivity becomes the voice of the cantor just as the experience of the blacks in slavery transitions from the mournful spiritual to the blues. The Jewish experience winds up in Hava Nagila -  Let us rejoice – and the blues wind up in jazz which is pretty much the same thing. Although she is not featured prominently in the work we begin our illustrations with Mahalia Jackson who is the real first lady of Gospel and blues music in the first half of the twentieth century.

A bad woman feeling good: blues and the women who sing them New York: W.W. Norton, c 2005 Buzzy Jackson Women blues musicians United States Biography Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xiii, 319 p.: ill.; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

An exciting lineage of women singers — originating with Ma Rainey and her protégée Bessie Smith — shaped the blues, launching it as a powerful, expressive vehicle of emotional liberation. Along with their successors Billie Holiday, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and Janis Joplin, they injected a dose of reality into the often trivial world of popular song, bringing their message of higher expectations and broader horizons to their audiences.

These women passed their image, their rhythms, and their toughness on to the next generation of blues women, which has its contemporary incarnation in singers like Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams (with whom the author has done an in-depth interview). Buzzy Jackson combines biography, an appreciation of music, and a sweeping view of American history to illuminate the pivotal role of blues women in a powerful musical tradition. Musician Tommy Dorsey said, “The blues is a good woman feeling bad.” But these women show by their style that he had it backward: The blues is a bad woman feeling good.