race

THE TEDDY BEAR MENACE

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Here’s my new example of why this research is such fun: You discover a silly editorial about the “teddy bear fad,” and a few moments later, your jaw drops while learning that Hitler was a big fan of Theodore Roosevelt.

The 1907 Press Democrat editorial was a reaction to the absurd idea that little girls had to play with dolls that looked like people or they would lose all desire for motherhood. Such was the claim of a Michigan priest that had appeared in scores of newspapers nationwide as a July 8 AP wire item :


A dispatch to the tribune from St. Joseph, Mich., says:

The “Teddy Bear” fad was denounced by the Rev. Michael G. Esper from the pulpit of St. Joseph’s Catholic church yesterday.

The priest held that the toy beast in the hands of little girls was destroying all instincts of motherhood and that in the future it would be realized as one of the most powerful factors in the race suicide danger.

Father Esper asked all parents to replace the doll in the affections of children and discard the “Teddy Bear” forever.

PD editor Ernest L. Finley ridiculed the notion, but the story was often printed without commentary on the front pages (my favorite headline was from the Salt Lake Tribune: “Teddy Bear Dooms Race”). In newspapers with a strong Catholic identity, the item was expanded to explain the importance of preventing “race suicide.”

As it turns out, preventing “race suicide” was quite a favorite cause of Teddy Roosevelt, whose hunting adventures had inspired the creation of the “Teddy Bear” five years before. That a toy named after the president was now being accused of causing “race suicide” is one of those bizarreries of White House history, such as John Wilkes Booth being in the VIP section directly behind Lincoln during his second inauguration (Booth scored a ticket because he was engaged to a Senator’s daughter).

(RIGHT: A search for “race suicide postcard” on eBay or the collectible postcard web sites will turn up many examples c. 1905-1910. Most common were humorous cartoons with baby-delivering storks, but also found frequently are postcards with racist themes, such as the one shown at center. After Esper’s anti-teddy bear appeal, a new wave of “race suicide” postcards depicted little caucasian girls cuddling dolls. The bottom postcard was the exception that seemed to poke fun at the priest’s alarm. CLICK any image to enlarge)

Roosevelt’s interest in the topic began in the early 1890s, and let’s be clear that the primary “race” in Teddy’s concerns wasn’t a race at all, but “old-stock” white Americans, particularly those with ancestors from New England. Roosevelt thought the declining birthrates of that group was threatened by the higher birthrates found among the immigrants whom he called “inferior races.” By 1898, his views had become even more radicalized, writing that “evil forces” were causing “the diminishing birthrate among the old native American stock,” and any who chose to not to have children were “race criminals.”

Roosevelt’s solution was that Americans should “Work-fight-breed,” a message that melded into his overall promotion of a healthy “strenuous life.” But his glorification of motherhood cloaked uglier underlying views of women as breeders, and that eugenics was a good thing if it ensured “the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding.”

While this all sounds rather Nazi-ish, it must be emphasized that Roosevelt never suggested that “old Colonial stock” Americans were a kind of Übermensch. Speaking at Oxford in 1910, he noted that he was an eighth-generation American with ancestors from many different “European races.” It was the “common heirship in the things of the spirit,” he said, that “makes a closer bond than common heirship in the things of the body.” He made that same point in other speeches, defining Americans as those who fully assimilated and embraced Uncle Sam’s culture and customs, not just those who had Plymouth Rock bloodlines. In other words, he was expressing a fundamental view of American exceptionalism.

At the same time, there’s no way to reconcile Theodore Roosevelt’s contradictory views on racial issues that swing wildly between extremes.

Good-Teddy encouraged France, Germany, and England to take interest in “race suicide” birthrates in their countries, further showing that he didn’t believe in a particular flavor of racial superiority; that’s offset by Awful-Teddy denouncing the people in southern Italy as the “most fecund and the least desirable” race in all of Europe. While Good-Teddy vigorously opposed discrimination against African Americans, Awful-Teddy called genocide against the Indians “as ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable,” and said that “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

TEDDY BEARS ARE A FAD

And now they say the “Teddy bear” craze is a bad thing, because the fuzzy little animals have largely displaced the dollies of our fathers–or mothers, rather–and while the fondling of dolls tended to develop the maternal instinct, play with “Teddy bears” awakens no such sentiment and consequently tends to produce race suicide.

What nonsense!

The “Teddy bear” is only a fad, and is said to be already fast losing its popularity. But if current reports are to be relied upon, Santa Claus is laying in a larger stock of dolls for the coming Christmas than ever before.

– Press Democrat editorial , August 30, 1907

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1907 MEDIA RACISM REPORT CARD: THE INDIANS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Indians suffered a perplexing form of racism in the old Santa Rosa newspapers. As with other minorities, the racism was mostly passive: They were simply ignored, except when a serious crime was committed or there was a demeaning incident that the editor viewed as entertaining (even better if it could be written up in comic dialect).

Yet at the same time, editors resisted dipping the pen into the inkwell of snark when it came to writing about Indians as a race, as shown in the sympathetic 1907 articles below on the desperate conditions of Native people in Northern California. This was also an expression of racism – a domestic version of “The White Man’s Burden,” suggesting that Indian welfare had to be managed by missionaries and federal agents. These presumptions go back to the origins of Frontier America, and were probably best summarized in the “Lo! the Poor Indian!” chapter from Horace Greeley’s 1860 book, “An Overland Journey:”


But the Indians are children…they are utterly incompetent to cope in any way with the European or Caucasian race. Any band of schoolboys, from ten to fifteen years of age, are quite as capable of ruling their appetites, devising and upholding a public policy, constituting and conducting a state or community, as an average Indian tribe. And, unless they shall be treated as a truly Christian community would treat a band of orphan children providentially thrown on its hands, the aborigines of this country will be practically extinct within the next fifty years.

These benevolent services could best be rendered, of course, if the Indians were restricted and isolated on distant reservations. If the Indians were viewed as “children” they were treated as unwanted ones, whom the Americans wanted to neither see nor hear.

A third kind of media racism can be found in articles that touched upon the “pioneer” years. Here the Indians were treated as a caveman-like race who lived here ‘way back in antiquity. Sometimes they weren’t mentioned at all, leaving the impression that the Anglo and Hispanic whites discovered an empty Eden. In another story below, Thomas Hopper recalls the days when he saw great herds of elk roamed “everywhere about this section.” Hopper – an illiterate man who became a successful banker because of his knack for numbers – first came to Sonoma county in 1849, when there was still an Indian presence in the area (the round up and death march to Round Valley started around 1857), and hunting wild elk would have been one of the few sources of meat still available to them.

Below are also a pair of 1907 reports describing workmen coming across an Indian grave in Sebastopol. In both local papers, it’s presented as a curiosity; “It is generally believed the spot was once a Indian burial ground,” the Republican noted. What both papers failed to reveal was that the remains were found on the perimeter of the Indian cemetery on the Walker ranch, which was still active at the time, with the last known burial in 1912. (MORE on the Indian community in Sebastopol.)

To be fair, we can only make benign assumptions as to why both papers omitted any link in those stories to Indian culture. Whether or not old Tom Hopper was one of the few living people who might have witnessed a Pomo or Coast Miwok elk hunt probably didn’t seem interesting. It’s doubtful the editors saw any hypocrisy in their respectful and lengthy obituaries of any old “pioneer” who died and their offhand description of ditch-diggers handling someone’s old bones. Intentional or no, the Indians disappeared a little bit more with each column-inch of print, and their legitimate right to be here a little further diminished.

INDIANS ASK PROTECTION
Want Better Conditions for the Tribesman

Edward Posh and William Benson, two prominent Indians of this county and Mendocino county respectively, have returned from the conference recently held at Mount Hermon, where matters for the betterment of the Indians were discussed. There were nineteen Indians present at the conference and they petitioned the great white father at Washington to supply the needs. In the memorial sent to the nation’s capital, the first thing the Indians request is that lands and homes be provided for twelve thousand out of the seventeen thousand Indians in this state. Five thousand are provided for in the Round Valley reservation. Mr. Posh estimates that there are between three and four hundred Indians scattered through Sonoma county.

The second request is that the Indians be provided with common schools that they may learn to read and write and that industrial schools be established for the young people that they may learn some useful occupation. They also ask that the laws be enforced relative to the selling of liquor to Indians and suggest that the laws be amended so that no person with Indian blood in his veins shall be able to secure liquor. They ask that the party selling and the party purchasing liquor both be punished. Among the other suggestions made for the Indians is that they be provided with a field physician appointed by the government to attend sick tribesmen, and that they be provided with legal protection that they may secure justice in all the courts when involved in litigation.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 22, 1907
SONOMA INDIANS AT MT. HERMON
Efforts to Be Made to Secure Allotment of Lands for Redmen of This County

Twenty Indians – nineteen men and one woman, all members of the Sonoma county Indian tribes – returned on Sunday from Mount Hermon in Santa Cruz county, where the Northern California Indian Missionary Society has been meeting last week. One of the Indian leaders is Edward Posh, an intelligent man with some education, who told a reporter Monday that he and his people believe some good will result from the efforts of this society to better the condition of the native tribes of northern California, who have suffered much at the hands of the white men, and who are now for the most part destitute.

“My home, I have none,” he said when he was asked where his home was. “None of us have homes. That’s the trouble with us. That’s what the Indian Association is trying to get for us.”

“Five objects are sought by the Association,” said Edward Posh. The first of these is homes for the homeless Indians. The second is education – common school education for the Indian children and industrial education for those who are grown. The third thing sought is protection from the drink evil. It is well known that the use of liquor by Indians brings results much worse than the use of liquor by white men. The Indians themselves ask further protection from this evil by asking that the government impose heavier penalties upon those white men who supply intoxicants to members of the tribes; and they ask, also, that the law punish Indians who buy liquor as well as white men who sell to them.

“The fifth thing asked by the Association is that the government provide us with doctors. When an Indian gets sick, he generally suffers and dies or suffers and gets well with no medical attendance. Few of us have any money; none of us have much; and there are few doctors anywhere near us. And of those who are near, not many will attend us, for there is poor prospect for a fee.”

J. A. Gilchrist is the manager of the Indian missions. The Rev. J. A. Johnson of Berkeley, is one of those leading the movement for the betterment of the tribes. They say that the difficulty of the Indian problem is not due to any stubbornness of the Indians themselves, nor to any improvidence or to unfitness to be civilized. They declare that the government itself has repeatedly broken faith with the natives despoiled them of their lands on promise to give them others and neglected or refused to keep the promise. They term the last 100 years of United States history “A Century of Dishonor” in its reference to dealings with the aborigines, and they seek to make amends for it in all possible ways.

– Press Democrat, July 13, 1907
THOS. HOPPER SAW DROVES OF ELK
Well Known Pioneer Recalls Early Days When Antlered Herd Roamed at Will Here

“I saw elk in droves when I first came to this country, and shot quite a number of them. I remember not only seeing them wandering here and there on the site where Santa Rosa stands today, but everywhere about this section,” said Thomas Hopper, the well known pioneer and capitalist as he surveyed the big stuffed elk in the Press Democrat building on Thursday.

“I remember seeing one of the largest drove of elks I ever saw over near Bloomfield, and one time saw two fine ones down on the Cotati. I tell you they were big fellows.”

Mr. Hopper, despite his eighty-seven years, walked down town briskly on Thursday morning from his McDonald avenue residence. He has just returned from an outing on Wesley Hopper’s ranch near town, and while there took a little exercise at splitting stove wood with an axe. The exercise he says drove away the rheumatism from his shoulder.

– Press Democrat, October 12, 1907
SEBASTOPOL WORKMEN DIG UP HUMAN BONES

Workmen for the Petaluma and Santa Rosa electric railroad in digging a trench at Sebastopol recently, came across many human bones in the earth they threw from the trench. The bones were examined to ascertain if they were really from human beings. In the same spot the workmen discovered some flint arrow heads and some beads, indicating that the bones were those of Indians. Whether the men had been killed or died a peaceful death will never be known. It is generally believed the spot was once a Indian burial ground.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 19, 1907
UNEARTH HUMAN BONES

While engaged in widening the electric company’s roadbed on Petaluma avenue this week workmen uncovered a skeleton surrounded by a stone mortar and pestle and numerous flint arrow heads. It is believed to be the remains of an Indian buried in the years long past. The bones were almost dust and many of them crumbled when handled. An old Indian burying ground is supposed to have been opened and if the excavations are carried on other finds may be reported.

– Press Democrat, July 19, 1907

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GERTRUDE’S SECRETS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

It was a story that O’Henry might have written, and the widow Higginson could have been a character from one of his tales. And not to give too much away, O’Henry’s short stories always ended with a twist. Read on.

It was just after the Fourth of July in 1907 when Gertrude met her husband-to-be, Tom. He was the chef-owner of a successful restaurant in Healdsburg that served French-American food; that summer the San Francisco Call even ran an item praising his restaurant, and particularly his way with a beefsteak. He was taking a camping vacation on the coast when he happened to meet Gertrude at a summer resort. Over tea, sparks flew. He cut his vacation short and returned to Healdsburg, where she soon joined him. Ten days later, she was sporting a diamond engagement ring and they were planning to be married as soon as possible.

Gertrude was already a widow at age thirty, and was five years younger than Tom. She was quite pretty, dressed nicely, and had some talent at piano playing. She also was well off, thanks to a savvy investment in gold mine stocks. One more thing to know about Tom and Gertrude: She was white, he was Chinese.

It was illegal for them to marry in California; the state’s anti-miscegenation law dated back to 1880, forbidding weddings between a white person and “a Negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.” Not all states had such a racist law, however, so Gertrude and Tom were soon on the train to Seattle, where they were wed. Their interracial marriage and out-of-state flight was unusual enough to make the newspapers in San Francisco and Reno.

Coverage of the events by the Santa Rosa papers was fairly predictable. The Santa Rosa Republican called him a “Celestial” and a “son of Confucius,” regrettable stereotypes that were old-timey but still commonly used by even progressive newspapers in that era. But at least the Republican gave him some measure of the respect he deserved; the Press Democrat’s coverage ended with a dismissive, you’ll-never-be-as-good-as-us swipe that while he was successful, “he is a Mongolian, just the same.”

Tom Chun was certainly a man of accomplishment. Born about 1870, he emigrated at age eleven and settled in Healdsburg while still in his teens. He acclimated into American culture, spoke and wrote fluent English, and was adept at the card games that were the primary social activity of Americans in that day. That he was in turn embraced by the community is shown in the description of his wedding reception in Healdsburg, where “a large company of doctors, lawyer and others were there with their wives.”

But here’s the next twist in the story: Within three months of their marriage, Gertrude disappeared.

A notice appeared in the Healdsburg newspaper: “Gertrude May Chun (formerly Mrs. Higginson) having left my bed and board, I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by her after this date, November 13, 1907. TOM CHUN.” Tom also swore out a warrant against her, charging that she had stolen his gold watch and chain.

Was Gertrude a con artist who only married Tom with the intent of theft? This is reminiscent of the 1904 two-week marriage of wealthy hop-grower Ah Quay to a woman of Hispanic and Indian ancestry, who disappeared after having expensive dental work that included gold fillings. Maybe it’s a coincidence that there were two such similar incidents in little Sonoma County within a few years, or perhaps prosperous Chinese immigrant men were not infrequently tricked into sham marriages. Scholars. sharpen your pencils.

What happened to Gertrude is not known, except that it’s likely that she didn’t return to Tom; he’s again single in the 1910 census, and the 1920 census shows he has a new wife named Sena. But we do know this: Her name when they met was not really Gertrude May Higginson.

As it turns out, “Gertrude Higginson” happened to be a very unusual name in the U.S. at that time. There was only one Mrs. Gertrude Higginson, and she apparently spent her entire life in Rhode Island and Connecticut, married to a steam fitter. Gertrude May Higginson is absolutely unique; this was the maiden name of a woman wed to a Kansas farmer. Both women were about the same age as the woman who married Tom Chun. While it can’t be proven that one of the Gertrudes didn’t leave her husband and child, travel across the country to become a bigamist and roll the poor guy for his jewelry, then return home and spend the rest of her life in the bosom of her family, it’s, um, unlikely. The woman in question probably made all or part of the name up, or happened to know one of the real Gertrudes at some time in her life.

There are some clues, however, about this mystery woman’s past. “She hails from Goldfield, Nevada,” the Republican reported, “where she states that she has relatives and that others of her family are living at Coronado, in southern California.” Goldfield was one of the last great boomtowns in the West, and in that year it was the largest city in Nevada, boasting a 195-room hotel (which still stands), three newspapers, and a saloon with 80 bartenders on duty. Coronado is a small island just offshore from San Diego that had (and still has) a luxury resort frequented by royalty and presidents and others world famous. What they had in common was that both areas would have been well known to prostitutes in that day.

Aside from the wealthy who stayed at the resort there were few who lived on the island, most of them workers at the hotel. But about 2,000 feet across the water from Coronado Island was San Diego’s infamous Stingaree District, which at the time was a booming tenderloin near the U.S. Naval base. An excellent study found that the number of prostitutes in the area approximately tripled between 1900 and that year while the number of saloons doubled.

Anyone who lived in San Diego knew of Coronado, just as anyone who lived in Goldfield would know the supposed source of her fortune, the Mohawk mine, which produced about $5 million of gold in less than four months. The red-light district in Goldfield was even larger than San Diego’s; one contemporary source estimated that there were 500 women working there at one time, making the district virtually a “city onto itself.” A Nevada history web site offers photos of the prostitution cribs, with the names of the women painted on signs by the shack doors.

(RIGHT: “Dance hall girls” at Goldfield’s Jumbo Club. Photo: uncredited from Life, May 11, 1959)

Goldfield and Stingaree were two of the three largest prostitution districts in the western U.S. The last of the trio was San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, which was a short hop from the north county summer resort where Tom happened to meet “Gertrude.”

All this is conjecture, of course. Perhaps nothing was amiss; maybe they just didn’t get along. Maybe Tom Chun misplaced his valuable watch, and “Gertrude” somehow evaded mention in all official records, just as she oddly happened to be associated with every hot spot for prostitution in the West. Maybe it’s a coincidence that she said she was a waitress in Goldfield, and that San Diego study found that “waitress” was the most common profession claimed by prostitutes. Maybe it’s also irrelevant that “Gertrude” speedily married Tom at a time when the women working in the San Diego brothels were almost all younger than her, even though she still had her good looks.

We’ll probably never know if she really was one of the “soiled doves,” but even if she was, pity is in order; it’s doubtful that she ended her days living in a nice cottage in a nice little town with a nice, prosperous husband. Her fate was probably as far from all that niceness as you can imagine.

AMERICAN WOMAN TO WED A HEALDSBURG CHINESE

From Healdsburg, Monday, came a story of romance, love and betrothal. The peace and quietude of the fair city of Sotoyome vale is sadly disrupted by the proclamation of the coming event. Cupid has played a queer prank, and woven with his ribbons of love a heart of the Orient with that of the Occident.

Tom Chun, a celestial, who has lived in Healdsburg for over twenty years, is the party of the Orient, and he is to wed Mrs. Gertrude Higginson, an American by birth, and a comely widow of perhaps thirty years of this world’s life.

Tom Chun keeps a restaurant in the northery [sic] city, and during his thirty-five years of life has accumulated a goodly store of American gold. About two weeks ago, growing weary of the griddle and the flapjack, he held himself to a hunters’ camp on the coast ranges. While passing a summer resort by the way he stopped for a cup of good tea to quench his dusty throat. It was there he met his fate. It was there the comely widow became a reality in the life of this son of Confucius. He was in need of a waitress in his chowchow house and she was in search of just such a position.

Over the tea cups she promised to assist him, on his return to Healdsburg, in dispensing rice to the hungry. Right then he forgot his camping trip, forgot his cue, forgot his joss. He returned the same day to his restaurant and sent for the widow waitress. That was but ten days ago. Today on East street in Healdsburg is a cottage all new with tables of oak and chairs of cherry. Oriental rugs are on the floor and an upright piano stands ready for the touch of the bride’s deft fingers, for she is an accomplished musician.

Monday the couple left on the afternoon train for Seattle, Washington. The laws of this state forbid their marriage here, so they will travel to the northern city to become man and wife.

Personally the bride-to-be is quite a pretty widow and of seeming ordinary intelligence. She is neat and attractive in appearance. She hails from Goldfield, Nevada, where she states that she has relatives and that others of her family are living at Coronado, in southern California. She was a waitress in Goldfield and made considerable money in Mohawk stock. She now wears a brilliant diamond ring, the engagement token from the groom. On her wrist an ivory bracelet of the royal house of Tom Chun rattles.

Tom Chun is an Americanized Celestial. He speaks English fluently and can read and write with ease. At the gaming table he plays pedro with the boys and is an all around sport in games of chance.

They expect to return from the north during the later part of the week, when they will go to housekeeping in their newly furnished cottage. A wedding feast has been promised and “at home” cards will be sent out by Mr. and Mrs. Tom Chun.

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 5, 1907
LEAVE STATE TO EVADE THE LAW
White Woman Infatuated With a Healdsburg Chinaman Goes With Him to Washington to be Married

Mrs. Gertrude Higginson, a white woman who recently came from the mining town of Goldfield, Nevada, and Tom Chun, a Chinaman, started Monday together from Healdsburg to go to the State of Washington to be married.

The laws of Washington provide no such penalties for the crime of miscegenation as do those of California. There neither the parties to the contract nor the clergyman who performs the marriage rites may feel the hand of the law. After Mrs. Higginson has become Mrs. Tom Chun, she and her Mongolian spouse could return to Healdsburg to reside.

Tom Chun has lived in Healdsburg twenty years and runs a restaurant. He long ago cut off his pigtail, and he wears American clothes. But he is a Mongolian, just the same.

– Press Democrat, August 7, 1907

CHINESE IS DULY WEDDED
Tom Chun Marries Mrs. Gertrude Higginson

A telegram from Seeattle announces that Tom Chun, the Healdsburg Celestial, and Mrs. Gertrude Higginson, also of that city, were married Wednesday by Justice of the Peace R. R. George. The Rev. J. P. Lloyd, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, refused to marry the couple, declaring the laws of the state did not permit the ceremony between the white woman and the Celestial. The bride broken [sic] down and cried at the refusal of the minister, but was smiling and happy when the justice spoke the words which made the couple husband and wife. The bride declared she was a music teacher and missionary.

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 8, 1907
TOM CHUN BRINGS HIS BRIDE HOME

Tom Chun, the Healdsburg Chinaman, who recently went to Seattle to marry a Caucasian woman, Gertrude Higginson, after only a three weeks’ acquaintance, arrived home from the north a few nights ago. The bridal party stopped off of the evening train in Santa Rosa and from here took a carriage to Healdsburg. A reception was tendered them and a large company of doctors, lawyer and others were there with their wives. “Jim,” as the Celestial is familiarly known, has furnished a neat cottage in Healdsburg for the home of himself and bride.

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 16, 1907
CHINESE WIFE LEAVES HER HOME

Tom Yun [sic], the Healdsburg Chinese restaurant man, who a few months ago went to Washington in order to marry Mrs. Gertrude May Higginson, is now looking for his fair white wife. After living with her Celestial husband for a short time, the woman has wearied of her spouse and “flew the coop.” Yun is now after her with a warrant, claiming that she took his gold watch and chain and that this was his separate property.

Soon after Mrs. Yun left her husband and home the man advertised in the Healdsburg papers that he would not be responsible for any debts contracted by her, and that she had “left his bed and board.” It is thought that should the officers find the woman and she agree[s] to return the watch, that would be the end of her prosecution.

– Santa Rosa Republican, November 19, 1907

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