THE PROFESSIONAL PRIG

 

I have absolutely no sympathy for Anthony Comstock (above),  a man described by a biographer as having  “no conspicuous talents and...boundless energy”.   His brother's death from wounds suffered in the three days of slaughter at Gettysburg, compelled Anthony to join the Union Army. But the Connecticut farm boy then spent a year of isolation and boredom guarding the backwaters of St. Augustine, Florida. 

Most of his fellow soldiers considered him a bible thumping prig, who instead of simply refusing it, pompously poured his daily whiskey ration out on the ground. And the great lesson this “religio-monomaniac” took from the four bloody years that ended slavery, was that his fellow soldiers were addicted to pornography.

By 1861 there were almost 3,000 photographers in Paris, and 200 schools teaching the skill in London. And from day one, a significant percentage of these technicians found taking “dirty pictures” very profitable.  

Shortly after Gettysburg, another smug priss, General Marsena Rudolph Patrick (above), had boasted in his diary of “burning up a large quantity of obscene books, taken from the mails.” 

And it wasn't just pocket editions of “Fanny Hill”, and the “Libertine Enchantress” that he burned. There were also the “barrack favorites”, the “carte de visite” French postcards – nude photos of women, which went for twelve cents each, and “London and Paris Volupuarties” engaged in actual sex acts, for $3 a dozen ($9 for stereoscopic views). Comstock found himself drawn to these “deadly poisons” - as he called them - “cast into the fountain of moral purity.”

By 1868 the muscular Comstock was a menial worker in New York City, making $12 a week as a porter for a dry goods store. He was a man "devoid of humor, lustful after publicity, and vastly ignorant “ who, by his own admission, spent many lonely evenings fearing “for the souls of the young men” who roomed with him. 

He joined the Young Men's Christian Association, and became convinced he faced “some of the most insidious and deadly forces of evil” in America.  A nation racked by continued violence inspired by four bloody years of war saw pornography as a low priority.  But Comstock did not share that opinion.

He quickly attracted the attention of the President of the WMCA, Morris K. Jessup (above), who had made his fortune as a banker for railroad tycoons. Jessup interviewed Comstock in his Madison Avenue mansion and liked what he saw. 

They made an unlikely pair. Jessup stood over six feet tall, and was a philanthropist to many causes. Comstock was short and brutally single minded. Despite their differences, for the next forty years Jessup supported Comstock, with money and political influence, even creating the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for the Christian warrior, when others in the WMCA questioned his tactics. (It is interesting to note that of all the social reform movements of the late 19^th century, the Comstock's “Society” was the only one with no women in positions of authority.) Comstock would admit in his diary, “ Only one man thinks as I do and that is Mr. Jessup.”

With Jessup's support Comstock successfully lobbied congress for the Comstock Law, the last act of a lame duck congress on 3 March, 1873,  which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material through the mail. The act also created a job of Special Postal Inspector for Comstock, allowing him define as pornographic anything mentioning birth control or preventing venereal disease. In Comstock's view, “God has set certain natural barriers. If you turn loose the passions and break down the fear (of unwanted pregnancies or disease) you bring . . . disaster.” 

His first year the new Special Inspector, always dressed in his black frock coat, traveled 23, 000 miles on a free rail pass, looking for sin in America. And luckily, since his job depended on it, he found it everywhere, and 24 states passed their own versions of "his" law, collectively called the Little Comstock Laws.

In 1872 Comstock won national attention when he went after Victoria Woodhull (above). She was no common pornographer, but a feminist who had run her own Wall Street brokerage firm and her “Weekly” newspaper -  in which Victoria argued, ”When woman rises... into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom...then will woman be raised”  

To highlight the hypocrisy of men making decisions about birth control, the “Weekly” published details of an extramarital affair by one of her critics, popular Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Breecher.  The same day the article appeared, Victoria, her husband and her sister were all arrested. Reporting the affair, said Comstock, was spreading obscenity. Comstock's belligerent theatrics in the court room so offended some members of the jury, they hung. Still, the trial only increased the popularity of both Comstock and adulterous Breecher.

Comstock claimed he convicted 3,500 people of distribution of pornography and destroyed 15 tons of obscene books, including medical text books that displayed female anatomy charts or mentioned abortion. To Comstock, woman’s health was far less important than their moral purity. 

He also burned novels written by D.H. Lawrence and Theodore Dreiser. Comstock even tried to close down a play by George Bernard Shaw, whom he called an “Irish smut dealer”. Of the first twelve people convicted of violating the Federal Comstock law, 5 were pardoned by President Ulysses Grant, who had signed the law.  And of the 105 people arrested for violating Comstock's campaign against birth control,  all but 16 were found not guilty. In state courts Comstock fared much better.

He saw himself as “the weeder in God's garden”, but his critics saw him as “a first class Torquemada”, who had run the church's inquisition. They also saw him as chief of America's “moral eunuchs.” In 1877 Comstock went after Massachusetts social activist Ezra Heywood (above) for publishing a pamphlet about marriage called “Cupid’s Yokes”. 

The judge told the jury the pamphlet was too offensive to allow them to read it, and without reading the offensive words, they sentenced Heywood to two years at hard labor in the Dedham jail. Six months later President Rutherford B. Hayes pardoned Heywood, but Comstock saw that as a challenge. 

Comstock (above) now persecuted Heywood, having him arrested four more times, once for reprinting two poems by Walt Whitman, and again for discussing a contraceptive device called the “Comstock syringe” . By the fourth arrest the sixty year old Heywood was broke and emotionally exhausted, when in a state court he sentenced to another two years of hard labor.  This time there was no pardon. In 1892, after a year in jail, he was released, but died soon after , from tuberculosis he had contracted in jail. Comstock had won again.

Comstock boasted he had driven 15 people to suicide. His most famous victim was Ida Craddock, a free spirit and writer of fact based guides like “The Marriage Night” and “Right Marital Living”. 

After pleading guilty to violating Illinois Little Comstock law,  and receiving a suspended sentence,  Ida was immediately arrested under New York's version in 1892 and suffered three months in a workhouse. As she left that jail Comstock had her arrested again (above) on Federal charges for the same offense. This time she was sentenced to five years at hard labor. And Comstock let her know, that as soon as she served that term, he intended on arresting her again.

The night before she was to enter prison yet again, Ida Craddock put her head in an oven, turned on the gas jets, and then slit her wrists. In her public suicide note, Ida blamed her death on “This man, Anthony Comstock,...(who is) unctuous with hypocrisy..."

...."if the reading of impure books and the gazing upon impure pictures does debauch and corrupt and pervert the mind", wrote Ida,  "...(and) Anthony Comstock has himself read perhaps more obscene books, and has gazed upon perhaps more lewd pictures than has any other one man in the United States, what are we to think of the probable state of Mr. Comstock's imagination?"

Ida (above) called Comstock, "...a sex pervert;  he is what physicians term a Sadist...for nine long years I have faced social ostracism, poverty, and the dangers of persecution by Anthony Comstock.. I beg of you, for your own sakes, and for the future happiness of the young people who are dear to you, to protect my little book...” Comstock insisted that her suicide was one of his proudest achievements.

It was not only Comstock's bullying, but also his lack of self awareness that gradually weakened his grip on public morals. The final breaking point came in 1913 when Harry Reichenbach besieged Comstock with complaints about the Braun and Company gallery on west 46^th street in Manhattan. The prig-in-chief found the sidewalk in front of the art gallery crowded with young men snickering and praising the beauty of a painting of a nude woman (above) in the front window. 

Comstock stormed into the gallery and ordered the painting removed. The clerk, James Kelly, stammered, “But that is the famous “September Morn” by Paul Chabas”.  The work was indeed famous, having won a medal of honor from the French Academy of Painting just the year before. Undaunted, Comstock replied, “There is too little morning and too much maid”, and threatened to arrest the gallery owner, Philippe Ortiz,  if the painting was not removed.

Defiantly, Mr. Ortiz kept the painting in his gallery's front window for another two weeks, removing it only after the crowds jamming his studio had bought every single print of it.  Twenty years later in his memoir, “Phantom Fame”, Reichenbach admitted he had staged the entire thing, including hiring the young men to ogle the painting, as a publicity stunt for the gallery. Comstock, who was not in on the joke, had behaved as boorishly and brutally as expected.  The Gallery made a bundle.

Comstock died suddenly on the evening of 21 September, 1915. His monument was that during World War One the United States was the only nation not to supply its soldiers and sailors with prophylactics.. Instead, under Comstock's insistence, the Army and Navy merely lectured in favor of abstinence. 

As a result the Army and Navy of the United States discharged 10,000 men during a war who had become infected with sexually transmitted diseases, the largest single cause of American causalities during World War One. 

It would be another 18 years before birth control could be openly purchased in the United States. Shadows of Anthony Comstock's warped vision have distorted American education well into the 21st century, in states which refuse to offer high school students sex education, opting instead for preaching abstinence - which has proved no more effective today than it did in 1916 to 1918.  And the never ending war on "Planned Parenthood", was also begun under that prig Comstock.

It seems, like every prig, Anthony Comstock was convinced he was the savior of civilization. And yet no prig ever saves anything,  because they trade human lives for a tattered myth, a fig leaf of morality.

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AMERICAN NARCISSIST

 

I can see Andrew Phillip Kehoe (above) as clearly, as if he was standing next to me at this moment. According to his drivers' license, he was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and had gray hair,  “ ...a slight, hollow-chested man”, of 46, with thin lips. But a neighbor, when shown several photographs of the man, said, “ "I knew him well and he never looked like that.” 

Afterward, Howard Kittle, the Clinton County agent and Farm Bureau manager, received a letter from Andrew, and admitted that if anyone else had written it “I would have thought sure he was insane.'” But that was before - when he was a community leader, a trusted guardian of the township's wealth and its future. Afterward the local newspaper - the Clinton County Republican-News - was forced to wonder, “Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?” You see, the man at issue was a anti-tax warrior and an American narcissist who murdered 34 children and 8 adults.

Bath in 1927 was a little farm town of about 300 people 10 miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan. “(It) had a ( grain) elevator, a little drugstore, and you knew everybody within 20 miles” said a life long resident.  Which means pretty much everyone knew Phillip Kehoe.

In 1922 rural Clinton County closed its scattered one room school houses. They used $8,000 of their own hard earned money to buy five acres of ground just south of Bath. They borrowed $35,000 to build a two story Consolidated School building. 

Here, classes would be divided by age,  to protect the younger, smaller children from older bullies. With fewer teachers, higher standards could be required of the instructors -  even a college teaching degree. And amenities such as a library, lunch programs, athletics, music and art were added. Buses now picked children up at their front doors and returned them safely home each night. It was the foundation for a secure world that future generations would grown up in. And it was not cheap for the older generations.

The future always costs. You either invest in it now, or it proves much more expensive.  In 1922 property taxes in Clinton county were $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation ($160 today, or over $16%). In 1923 those taxes had gone up by half to $18.80 ($235 today). This was not the decision of a few liberals. This was debated for years within the community. And over time the decision was made to invest in the future of Clinton County,  in the counties' children, and to spend the money on their  future. 

Three years later, eager to eliminate the debt quickly, the elected leaders of Clinton County paid off $7,200 of their obligation, and taxes topped out at one dollar higher (to $240 per thousand of valuation in today's dollars). It was expected taxes would now start to drop, but that did not take into account the rising inflation of the 1920's, and the selfishness of one egomaniac who chose - chose -  not to have a future, and to steal the counties'.

Let me tell you about Andrew Phillip Kehoe, the way most Americans learned of him by sharing a headline from the New York Times, dated Wednesday, 18 May, 1927; “Maniac blows up school, kills 42, mostly children; Had protested high taxes...Children Pinned in Debris. Others hurled against walls or out windows – Searchers still hunt for missing. Agonizing scenes in yard. Distraught parents find little ones dead beneath blankets...”. 

The early numbers were wrong, of course. The maniac killed eight adults and 34 children at the school, that day. The last little victim, nine year old Richard Fitz (above), would die of an infection caused by his injuries, a week short of a year after the explosion that killed him. 

Just before he murdered 34 children, the maniac had bludgeoned his wife one last time - this time to death. 

He had tired his two horses' legs together and left them in the barn stacked with all his farming equipment. Then he set the barn on fire. Before that he had poisoned and killed every fruit tree on his farm. Interestingly, it was figured by the cleanup crews, that he could have paid off his mortgage and his property taxes by selling most of his well maintained farm equipment, which, according to his neighbors, he rarely used.  

Neighbor M.J. “Monty” Ellsworth wrote later, “He was at the height of his glory when fixing machinery or tinkering...He spent so much time tinkering that he didn't prosper.”  The maniac also stood out, as a farmer, for his meticulous appearance. He changed his shirt quickly should a spot of dirt appear on it and was often seen sitting on his front porch (above), in a smoking jacket,  puffing on a cigar.  But his primary interest, his obsession, was in reducing his taxes.

The maniac had been elected to the school board in 1924, two years after the new school had opened and the first election after the new higher tax rate had been announced. His platform was to cut the cost of the new school. In 1925, after the death of Maude Detluff, the school board's treasurer, he had been appointed to fill that position. His book keeping was, like his appearance, meticulous. After his suicide, his books showed  “a long and detailed explanation” of a 22 cent discrepancy.  But in the spring of 1926, when he ran for election to officially take on that job, the voters had rejected him. Once again, the majority approved investment in the future  He stopped paying his mortgage and the insurance on his farm. Eventually, the previous owners - his wife's relatives - began foreclosure proceedings.

Early Tuesday morning, 18 May 1927, after killing his long suffering wife, and every other living thing on his property, Phillip Kehoe set his house on fire (above) and drove off to carry out the rest of his plan for revenge,

Decades earlier, Phillip's promising career as an electrical engineer in St. Louis had been cut short by a fall and a serious head injury.  So farming was the his second career choice. He married and moved to Clinton county, Michigan,  right after the First World War. He might have over paid for his farm, because land prices were inflated at time. And his wife was afflicted with tuberculosis, a wasting disease before antibiotics. But he still assaulted her, every time he felt the need to feel superior.

The Klu Klux Klan paid for and staged a funeral for Phillip. They expected to garner support by blaming his Catholicism for encouraging him to destroy the school because it was not a Catholic school. But even if all of that were true, none of it would justify the cold blooded murder of 34 innocent children, and nine adults, and the farm animals and his wife. He was probably a racist by modern standards, but all Phillip Kehoe could focus on was HIS taxes.

Before the school was built, he had opposed it. Once it was decided to build it, he insisted it should be a 10 grade institution, instead of 12 grades. He opposed the inclusion of a library, or athletic programs or a music department.  And he lost every argument. 

Once the building was constructed, the tax increase gave him enough supporters to win election to the school board, where his obstinacy continued. He even opposed giving the superintendent a paid vacation each year, and then argued it should only be one week, not two. And as he lost each of these arguments, his obsession grew, day by day. 

Words used to describe him during this time were “surly”, “obstinate”, “impatient” and “arrogant”.  Eventually he began to invest his money not in his farm, or his wife,  but in World War surplus explosives. He slipped the explosives into the basement of the new school, and rigged  them with a timer and set them to explode early on a Wednesday morning,  just after classes had begun. And just before that bomb went off, Kehoe set off the last bomb, packed into his car, killing himself , the school principle and others.  

The day after the bombing,  while still in shock and grief,  the Clinton Country Republican ran an editorial, which explains, far better than I ever could, the connection between the maniac's crime and his anti-tax fever. “That he was insane there is little doubt", wrote the editors of the paper. " But he was not always insane. To start with he was merely antagonistic. Then he became radical.. He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance...

"What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness", continued the editorial. "What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals...Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form. There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public. What are we going to do about it?”

It is almost a century later, and the question begs to be asked again, this time of a nation which elected an admitted rapist as President, supported by the power hungry unChristian unRight, - those who object to investing in the future because they choose not to believe we have one. And what are the majority of us going to do about it?  The answer after the 6 January 2021 U.S. Capital assault and the poison of the Trump Presidency is...not yet answered,

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