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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78443 ***
+
+
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                          ADVENTURES IN ERROR
+
+
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                              ADVENTURES
+                                 _in_
+                                 ERROR
+
+                                 _By_
+                         VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                              _New York_
+
+                      ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                          ADVENTURES IN ERROR
+
+                            COPYRIGHT 1936
+                       BY VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON
+
+                     PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
+                              OF AMERICA
+
+                             FIRST EDITION
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
+
+
+Chapters I. and II. are, with alterations, from my short book _The
+Standardization of Error_, published some years ago by W. W. Norton &
+Company and now out of print. Chapter III. is but slightly changed from
+an article that originally appeared in _The American Mercury_, May,
+1927. Chapter IV. is adapted from an address which I gave before the
+American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, January 2, 1931. About
+the first ten thousand words of Chapter V. appeared in _The American
+Mercury_ of July, 1927, but much additional information has been added.
+Chapter VI. is published with slight changes from an article entitled,
+_That ‘Frozen’ North_ which appeared in _Maclean’s Magazine_, Toronto,
+November 15, 1929.
+
+
+The publishers regret that owing to Mr. Stefansson’s sudden departure
+on an extended journey he was unable to read the proofs of this
+manuscript.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                  I.
+
+                     THE STANDARDIZATION OF ERROR
+
+                                PAGE 3
+
+
+                                  II.
+
+                       THE PLEASURES OF BUNCOMBE
+
+                                PAGE 16
+
+
+                                 III.
+
+                    ARE EXPLORERS TO JOIN THE DODO?
+
+                                PAGE 67
+
+
+                                  IV.
+
+                           TRAVELERS’ TALES
+
+                                PAGE 88
+
+
+                                  V.
+
+                          STANDARDIZED WOLVES
+
+                               PAGE 136
+
+
+                                  VI.
+
+                          BEYOND THE FRONTIER
+
+                               PAGE 223
+
+
+                                 VII.
+
+                              OLOF KRARER
+
+                               PAGE 243
+
+
+                                 VIII.
+
+                   HISTORY OF THE BATHTUB IN AMERICA
+
+                               PAGE 279
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ADVENTURES IN ERROR
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE STANDARDIZATION OF ERROR
+
+
+It is said that Bacon considered all knowledge his province. But the
+sciences of today are so many and complex that a single Baconian view
+of them is no longer possible, and perversions of thought and action
+result because our intellectual horizon has been narrowed to a part of
+the field. From a realization of this have come various attempts to
+co-ordinate the sciences to permit a unifying view of the whole. Comte
+made one of these a century ago in his _Positive Philosophy_. There
+have been many since.
+
+But if we pause to state clearly the case against the standardization
+of knowledge, the essential absurdity becomes so patent that we have to
+recall the numerous failures to convince ourselves that anyone was ever
+foolish enough even to try it.
+
+Consider for instance the physiology of the human skin or the
+composition of a dust nebula. In these fields, among others, the
+accepted facts of a dozen years ago have become the error and folklore
+of today. You standardize knowledge, and while you are at the job the
+knowledge changes. Long before the thing can be done adequately it has
+ceased being worth doing at all.
+
+Then why are we continually attempting this hopeless task? Partly,
+let us say, from irrepressible human optimism, which leads us to
+think that any desirable thing is possible. Partly, also, because of
+unclear analogizing from fields that seem related but are not. One of
+these analogies is from business. If you have on hand, on July 1st,
+a pair of socks, assuming honest and successful management, you will
+have them still on hand on August 1st, or else cash in your till to
+correspond. But, in spite of unlimited honesty and efficiency, you have
+no guarantee that an idea on hand on July 1st may not have been simply
+removed by August 1st without any equivalent remaining. You may have
+discovered that month, for instance, reasonable assurance that the moon
+is _not_ made of green cheese, without being able to get any clear idea
+as to what it _is_ made of.
+
+The reader may here jump to the conclusion that we are arriving at a
+philosophy of pessimistic hopelessness. That is not the way of the true
+philosopher. His ideal is the _tabula rasa_. He sweeps away the systems
+of others, that he may build his own on a smooth foundation.
+
+Realizing simultaneously the insatiable craving of the human mind
+for order and the impossibility of bringing order into the chaos of
+knowledge, we appear to be faced with a dilemma no less distressing
+than insoluble. But on looking deeper we find the dilemma apparent
+only. This will become clear when we consider the essential nature of
+knowledge.
+
+The thoughtless among us may speak, for instance, of a red cow, and
+naïvely imagine we could prove our point with the testimony of a
+witness or two. But the philosophers have long ago made it clear that a
+cow would not be red but for the presence of someone to whom it looks
+red. Having established that point, the deeper of the philosophers go
+on to prove that the cow would not only not be red, but would not even
+exist, were it not for the presence of someone who thinks he sees a
+cow. In our argument the position is even stronger than this, for we
+have two lines of defense. First, we agree with the philosopher that
+you cannot prove of any given cow that it is red, or even that it
+exists; and then we point out that an idea is so much less stable than
+a cow that, even were the philosophers wrong about the cow not being
+red, they might easily be right about an idea not being right, or not
+existing.
+
+Take an example: The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both
+that the earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they
+are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer
+dispute about whether it is flat. This shows the greater lasting power
+of a real thing (whether it exists or not, for that point has not yet
+been settled) as compared with an idea, which may not only not exist,
+but may also be wrong even if it does exist.
+
+We have now come in our discussion to the point where we see the
+absurdity of supposing ourselves to have any knowledge, as knowledge
+is ordinarily defined--or at least we would have come to that point
+but for lack of space which prevents us from making the subject really
+clear. However, it doesn’t matter from a practical point of view
+whether you have followed this philosophical reasoning. Perhaps you
+are not a philosopher. In that case, and in the homely phrase of the
+day, I ask you, what’s the good of an Englishman’s learning, first,
+that all Americans speak through their noses and, secondly, why they
+do so, when he has to find out eventually that they do not? What’s the
+good, again, of knowing that central Australia is a desert and that
+certain principles of physiography make it so, when you may have to
+listen to an after-dinner speech by someone telling that it is not a
+desert?
+
+Such things do not always go in triplets of (1) so it is, (2) why it
+is, and (3) it is not--but that is a common order.
+
+The reader may here protest that we are not getting much nearer our
+promised emancipation from the dilemma between our passion for system
+and the impossibility of systematizing knowledge. We have hinted above
+that the solution lies in finding a new basis for knowledge, and this
+we now proceed to do.
+
+So long as you believe in them, the nasality of American speech and the
+desert nature of central Australia are fragments of knowledge capable
+of being arranged in a system. The trouble comes when you discover that
+they are “untrue.”
+
+This gives the solution of our problem. We must have knowledge that
+is incapable of being contradicted. On first thought this seems
+impossible, but on second thought we realize that such facts do exist
+in the domain of mathematics. Two and two make four.
+
+But why do two and two make four? Obviously because we have agreed that
+four is the name for the sum of two and two. That principle has been
+applied in mathematics to such advantage that it is rightly called the
+science of sciences; and this is the principle which, now at length,
+we propose to apply to all knowledge. Through it every science will
+become a pure science, and all knowledge as open to systematization as
+mathematics.
+
+The trouble with facts, outside mathematics, has been inherent in the
+method of gathering information. We call these methods _observation_
+and _experiment_, and have even been proud of them--not realizing
+their clumsy nature, the unreliability of the findings, the transient
+character of the best of them, and the essential hopelessness of
+classifying the results and thus gratifying the passion of the human
+intellect for order and symmetry in the universe.
+
+Take an example: A man comes from out-of-doors with the report that
+there is a red cow in the front yard. Neglecting for the moment the
+philosophical aspect of the case--as to whether the cow would be red if
+there were no one to whom she seemed red, and also the more fundamental
+problem of whether there would have been any cow at all if no one had
+gone out to look--neglecting, as I say, the deeper aspects of the case,
+we are confronted with numerous other sources of error. The observer
+may have confused the sex of the animal. Perhaps it was an ox. Or if
+not the sex, the age may have been misjudged, and it may have been a
+heifer. The man may have been color-blind, and the cow (wholly apart
+from the philosophical aspect) may not have been red. And even if it
+was a red cow, the dog may have seen her the instant our observer
+turned his back, and by the time he told us she was in the front yard,
+she may in reality have been vanishing in a cloud of dust down the road.
+
+The trouble lies evidently in our clumsy system of observing and
+reporting. This difficulty has been obviated in the science of
+mathematics. A square is, not by observation but by definition, a
+four-sided figure with equal sides and equal angles. No one has denied
+that and no one can, for the simple reason that we have all agreed in
+advance that we will never deny it. Nay more, we have agreed that if
+anyone says that a square has three or five sides we will all reply
+in a chorus: “If it has three or five sides it is not a square!” That
+disposes of the matter forever.
+
+Why not agree similarly on the attributes of a front yard?--making it
+true by definition that, among other things, it contains a red cow.
+Then if anyone asserts, for reasons of philosophy, color-blindness, or
+the officiousness of dogs, that there is no red cow in the yard, we can
+reply, as in the case of the square: “If it does not contain a red cow,
+it is not a front yard!”
+
+The author feels at this point a doubtless unwarranted concern that
+he is not being taken seriously. Or perhaps the plan proposed is not
+considered practical. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
+The thing has been tried, and successfully--not in the systematic way
+now proposed, but sporadically. Some instances are well-known and
+convincing.
+
+Take the assertion that a Christian is a good man. If you attempt to
+deny this on the ground that Jones, a deacon in the church, ran off
+with some public funds, your stricture is at once shown to have been
+absurd by the simple reply: “If Jones was a thief, he was _not_ a
+Christian.” A Christian is, not by observation but by definition, a
+good man; if you prove that a certain man was not good you merely show
+that he was not a Christian. Thus we have established that a Christian
+is a good man. It is like a square having four sides.
+
+But if someone asserts that a Bolshevik, a Conservative, or a chemist
+is a good man, you can soon confute him; for the members of these
+classes have neglected to define themselves as good. Thus their
+attributes have to be determined by observation and experiment. It is
+highly probable that evidence could be brought against many Bolsheviks,
+and even some Conservatives, to show that they are not good men. At any
+rate we have here no such clarity of issue as in things that are true
+by definition--as the four-sidedness of a square or the goodness of a
+Christian.
+
+Through some experience of arguing this case in the abstract I have
+learned that its essential reasonableness can best be established from
+concrete examples. Let us, then, take cases at random from various
+fields of knowledge.
+
+Consider first the ostriches of Africa. These birds have been studied
+in the wild by sportsmen and zoologists, and as domestic animals by
+husbandmen who tend them in flocks like sheep. There are accordingly
+thousands of printed pages in our libraries giving what purports to be
+information upon their habits. Besides being indefinite and in many
+other ways faulty, this alleged information is in part contradictory.
+
+Having studied the bird of Africa, let us turn next to the ostrich
+of literature, philosophy, and morals. Instead of confusion, we now
+have clarity and precision. This is because the ostrich of literature
+exists by definition only. He is a bird that hides his head when
+frightened. You may too precipitately object that men would not accept
+universally this definition of the ostrich of literature if it did not
+also fit the zoological ostrich. The answer is that the definition has
+never received any support from zoologists, hunters, or owners of the
+domesticated birds, and yet it has been accepted universally throughout
+Europe since Pliny’s time (about 50 B.C.). It has survived all attacks
+from science and from the bigoted commonsense of those who did not
+recognize its true nature. Like the definition of a four-sided square
+or a good Christian, it has survived because it was useful. Can you
+imagine any real attribute more instructive than the head-burying of
+the ostrich-by-definition? As a text for moralists, as an epithet that
+politicians use for their opponents, as a figure of speech generally,
+what could serve as well? Our literature is richer, our vocabulary more
+picturesque through this beneficent bird of hypothesis. He has many
+inherent advantages that no real bird could have. Since his habits are
+defined we need not waste time studying him first hand, nor in trying
+to adjudicate at second hand between books about him that disagree.
+Since he never existed as a beast he is in no danger of the extinction
+that is said to threaten the lion and swan.
+
+Consider next what trouble we should get into if we did not have
+the literary ostrich and wanted to convey picturesquely the idea of
+that sort of wilful blindness from which we ourselves never suffer
+but which curiously afflicts our opponents. In pursuit of suitable
+analogy we might vainly canvass the whole animal kingdom. The
+ostrich-by-definition is, therefore, not only less trouble to deal
+with than a real bird; he is actually more useful and instructive
+than any real bird or beast. When we consider how often he has been
+used in sermon and precept we must admit that this model creature
+has contributed substantially not only to the entertainment and
+instruction of nations but also to the morality and general goodness of
+the world.
+
+The ostrich is but one of several useful birds of definition. But we
+must be careful not to confuse these with real birds or their value is
+lessened. An example is the stork that brings babies. By a confusion
+of thought which identifies this stork with real storks, and through
+the pernicious birth control propaganda which insists on rationalizing
+everything, the baby-bringing stork has ceased to be useful except in
+conversation with children, in the symbolism of the movie, and in the
+picture postcard industry.
+
+The wolves of literature are among the most picturesque and useful of
+our definitions. Zoological wolves go in pairs or families, never above
+a dozen. It is clear how inadequate this would be for movie purposes,
+where they should run in packs of scores or hundreds. Even in a novel
+or short story of Siberia or Canada you need packs large enough for
+the hero to kill fifteen or twenty, with enough left over to eat, or
+to be about to eat, his sweetheart. This is readily accomplished by
+using a wolf of the general type we advocate--having no relation to
+the so-called realities but possessing by definition all the required
+characteristics (habit of running in packs of any desired size,
+willingness to eat, or attempt to eat, the heroine, etc.).
+
+Another useful definition has long been that of Arctic, Canadian,
+and Siberian cold. The danger and disadvantage of confusing this
+hypothetical with a so-called real climate are best seen if we compare
+the facility with which people who have never been in these countries
+use the weather in conversation, speeches, and books, and contrast that
+facility with the awkwardness of travelers and natives. An example is
+a story by Tolstoi. Great as he was, he failed to realize the advantage
+in simplicity and vividness of postulating that Siberia is always
+cold, and actually allowed himself to be led into the artistic blunder
+of having the convicts in one of his novels die of sunstroke. An
+acquaintance of mine was filming this story. He realized the pictorial
+ease of “putting over” drifting snow as compared with heat waves--the
+snow could be managed with confetti and an aeroplane propeller, but how
+would one photograph heat waves? He realized still more clearly that
+the public is wedded to the defined, as opposed to the “real” climate
+of Siberia, and did what Tolstoi would have done in the first place had
+he been a Californian--he changed the scene from summer to winter, and
+then froze to death as many convicts as the picture required.
+
+These few examples from among many are enough to show not only that
+the method of knowledge-by-definition is and long has been in standard
+use, but also that it has the advantages of being easily grasped,
+picturesque, and of a higher average moral value than the so-called
+“real” knowledge. It is inherent in the genesis and nature of defined
+facts that they can be made picturesque in proportion to the ingenuity
+of the one who defines them, and as moral as necessary. This is a
+striking advantage over empirical knowledge, which cannot always be
+relied on to support the fashion of the time or even the moral system
+of the community.
+
+It is from this last point of view that there has grown up in many
+countries of recent years a profound distrust of “facts” and the
+theories deduced from them. In England the situation is dealt with
+by the simple and adequate means of paying little attention to the
+exposition of “new” things. In the United States it has been found that
+the public listens even to the newest views, and sometimes actually
+wants to act upon them. This has necessitated the expedient of passing
+laws prescribing what may and may not be advocated and believed. These
+American laws are a step in the right direction, but inadequate because
+they have back of them only specific considerations. Few people as
+yet realize the general reasons of expediency and broad sanity that
+underlie the scheme we are here proposing.
+
+Let us consider next a sample or two of knowledge-by-definition that
+could well be added to our present stock. Just as artificial tongues
+are built upon spoken tongues but avoid their mistakes, so may we
+conveniently base our knowledge-by-definition, or absolute knowledge,
+on what is already believed by some.
+
+Assume, for instance, that all Irishmen are peasants holding land by
+insecure tenure from grasping landlords, that each has a pig under
+his bed, that everyone carries shillalahs, that kissing the _Blarney
+Stone_ is the chief national occupation. Having agreed on these things,
+we could teach them in the schools of all countries. We should then
+presently all agree (on the basis of common facts) as to what our
+attitude toward Ireland should be, and the troublesome _Irish Question_
+would disappear from politics and history.
+
+Think, too, what a charm the new system would lend to travel in
+Ireland! As soon as you landed you would note the rarity or absence
+of all the things you had expected. You would meet surprise after
+surprise, which would not only delight you at the time but give you
+material for endless letters home and for endless stories to tell when
+you got back. Thus would be built up an increasing tourist traffic, a
+source of revenue to Ireland itself and to the shipping and tourist
+companies of the various nations.
+
+You may think such tourists, on coming home, would upset our
+system of facts-by-definition about Ireland. Not if that system is
+once thoroughly established. Consider in that relation the Greek
+pronouncement that at any time of year it becomes colder the farther
+north you go. North America is in language and civilization a
+homogeneous country in which one might think knowledge would therefore
+spread rapidly, and in which Atlanta, Richmond, New York, and Montreal
+are, and have been for a century, large and well-known cities that
+are by observation about equally hot in July. Yet there is even today
+practically unanimous adherence in all these cities to the Greek
+definition (“the farther north the colder at any time of year”), and
+each city believes those farther south to be hotter and those farther
+north to be colder, though thousands of travelers for a hundred years
+have found it to be uniformly otherwise. The ostrich with his head in
+the sand has survived two thousand years and is still going strong.
+No human being can retain oil, but the hypothetical Eskimo drinks it
+by the flagon in our books and belief, and is none the worse for it.
+Then why should not all the world forever believe that every Irishman
+has a pig under his bed? All parties would benefit. It would be only
+the hypothetical Irishman that has the pig, and we could by hypothesis
+arrange that he should thoroughly enjoy it. The real Irishman would get
+the benefit of the increased tourist trade and surely he ought to be
+grateful. The tourist would make facile discovery of the non-existence
+of the pig; that would please him and interest all his friends forever
+after as a sort of occult knowledge, like knowing privately that Indian
+fakirs are really no more clever than our conjurers, a pleasing secret
+now possessed and highly valued by many without detriment to the fakirs
+or to those who prefer to say they have seen them do marvels. Thus
+would everyone be the gainer.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PLEASURES OF BUNCOMBE
+
+
+The most striking contradiction of our civilisation is the fundamental
+reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard
+for it which we practice. This is the veriest commonplace. The lowest
+journalism fattens on pointing it out and the highest clergy prosper in
+the same occupation. According to them all, the world is rotten to the
+core with hypocrisy and falsehood.
+
+But while they agree on the condition, the physicians of the world
+order hopelessly differ on the remedy. Without disagreeing on the
+condition, either, we want to suggest nevertheless that it is a bit
+naïve of the philosophers to diagnose from the mere scarcity of truth
+that the world is sick with an incurable malady. Is it not just
+possible that they cannot cure us for the basic reason that we are not
+ill?
+
+And if we are not ill, the worries of the moralists should dissolve
+into good cheer. Can we, then, be well though the truth be not in us?
+Strangely late in the history of philosophy, we now for the first time
+address ourselves to that problem.
+
+God and Truth have from the earliest times been the two ideas that have
+commanded the greatest reverence. They have been much argued by the
+philosophers, with many curious parallels and one striking contrast.
+Typical of the parallels are the long disputes about whether there can
+reasonably be supposed to exist either an absolute god or an absolute
+truth. The one contrast is that while the philosophers have discussed
+at great length whether God is good, they have never discussed whether
+Truth is good. Is it not a bit suspicious that this is the one thing
+they have always assumed? And in a world of chaotic philosophies that
+get us nowhere, is it not high time to ask if there be any sound reason
+why Truth should be exempted from that fundamental scrutiny to which
+even the gods have had to submit?
+
+In addressing ourselves to this hitherto neglected question, as to
+whether truth is good, we adopt in the first instance a test which has
+long appealed to the common sense of mankind: _By their fruits shall ye
+know them._
+
+In defining our subject, we admit at once that the truth may have
+effects outside of the immediate field in which we shall study it,
+that of human affairs. It is like the question of soul. For thousands
+of years the civilization which is intellectually descended from the
+lands around the Mediterranean has agreed that all men have souls.
+Usually those who speculated have considered that women have souls
+also, a few that horses and dogs have souls, and the most generous that
+all animals have them. But it is only the highest intellectuals and
+the most benighted savages who have ever conceded souls to plants and
+sticks and stones. We shall ignore, for the time being, such possible
+extensions of our subject, and discuss Truth solely in its relation to
+men (including women).
+
+As both definition and defense of our method, we premise, further, that
+mankind frequently does much better than it knows. Nearly all of us,
+for instance, can keep in balance as we walk along upright, though the
+physiologists are still arguing about exactly how we do it. Similarly,
+the biologists tacitly agree that we know what life is; for they test
+their definitions of life by measuring them against the reality which
+they feel they know, though they cannot define it quite successfully.
+
+Go through any considerable number of examples like the preceding,
+selecting them, if you like, from every sphere of life, and you will
+gradually reach a firm confidence in the reasonableness of human
+actions as compared with the flightiness of our theories and the
+contradictions so frequently involved in our explanations. That may
+be because (admitting the evolutionary theory and the geological time
+scale) we, and the pre-human ancestors from which we inherit our
+traits, have been acting so as to save our bodies and reach our desires
+for a good many million years longer than we have been speculating on
+how to save our souls and protect our reputations. And practice makes
+perfect.
+
+We arrive then at a simple problem: If we ignore all theories and study
+those instances where mankind has preferred truth or falsehood the
+one to the other, we shall be in a position to determine which set of
+choices has been of the greater benefit.
+
+In a later and more rigorous inquiry we may go in for objective proofs,
+like statistics. Here we shall use only such examples as are well-known
+to everyone, so that the conclusions we state will certainly be merely
+the equivalent of the reader’s own verdict, set before him in print.
+
+Few things are more generally admitted than that parents, in most
+cases, love their children and desire their greatest good. These
+parents may be in error as to what constitutes good, but this is beside
+the mark, for we are at the moment merely trying to find out what it is
+they think is for the children’s welfare. Of course, if you ask them,
+they will quote you Truth with a capital, or more likely TRUTH all in
+capitals. For so have they been taught to protest. But study their
+actions, which are a surer guide than their words.
+
+
+THE CASE OF INFANTS
+
+To put it bluntly, most loving parents take the greatest care to
+surround children not with truth but with deception.
+
+We cannot deceive children before they are born, so we do the next
+best thing and practice every deception about them. We conceal, not
+only from children but also from grown persons so far as possible, how
+babies come into the world. The marriage is announced, and even made
+a public occasion, but thereafter everything is mystery. Pregnancy is
+concealed by an artful dress, the expectant mother hides or goes to
+a remote place. In some classes of society it is rather a breach of
+etiquette if the doctor talks openly about whom he is going to attend
+that night. There is a blare of publicity after the birth, in which,
+however, only a few things may be told--the weight and sex of the
+child, whom it resembles, and in a very general way how the mother
+is progressing. But the fact that the child looks red and wrinkled,
+that its eyes do not focus, and several other details about it, are
+of so private a nature that many mothers discover these and other
+more “intimate” things only in their own children. And certainly to
+most fathers the new-born looks as surprising as it looks unpleasant.
+That, by the way, is a fact every parent must conceal--it would be
+dreadful if anyone were ever to find out what a disagreeable shock his
+first-born was to him.
+
+The reader may here want to stop and argue with the author that all
+this is but decent and proper reticence--which if he does he pleases
+the author very much. For there would be nothing to argue about. The
+author, too, feels that this is how all these things should be. He
+certainly would hate to break any such taboos. But let us not argue
+one way or the other. To do so would be unscientific. We should pursue
+our inquiry with a steady view to just one thing: Is it true that
+the majority of people feel and do as stated? From that survey will
+emerge a general conclusion as to which it is that men really prefer in
+practice, truth or falsehood.
+
+The systematic deception of the child usually begins almost at the
+moment of birth. The instrument is speech, most fittingly, since
+our studies will show that this is the favorite means of deception
+throughout life. At first, the child does not understand any words, and
+balks the mother thereby. However, she makes capital of this dilemma
+by seeing to it that her baby shall chiefly hear (and therefore learn)
+only incorrect speech. This is known as teaching the child “baby talk.”
+
+There are certain standard forms of baby talk which, through wide
+usage, are not completely deceptive; as when the child is taught to
+say that papa has gone bye-bye when the meaning is that papa has gone
+out. Accordingly, most mothers invent a special jargon so that each
+child grows up with several dozen sounds or combinations of sounds
+which are either not words of any language or else are real words with
+perverted meanings.
+
+As the child grows up he discovers that he has been deceived in the
+first speech taught him; and thus he gets an early and practical lesson
+in one of the main concerns of life--how to deceive others.
+
+As soon as the child has acquired a vocabulary by which he can be
+misled, people begin to deceive him in ways that increase in complexity
+with his growing faculties. Many of these are specially devised by his
+mother and family and do not lend themselves to sociological study, for
+they are seldom placed on record. But there is a general system, one
+broad aspect of which is stories, especially classics, that fall under
+the heads of fairy tales and folklore.
+
+There has come to my attention a very practical way of determining what
+people really think of the place of folklore in the education of the
+young. As there has been prejudice to guard against, I need to describe
+the manner of my investigation before I come to the matter of it.
+
+In a very tentative and general conversation I casually introduce the
+subject of bolshevism. In three cases out of four there is an immediate
+hostile reaction, and then I go no further, for my desire has been to
+get an opinion on a reported bolshevik undertaking, and a person who
+bristles at their very name is certain to be opposed to anything they
+sponsor. Correspondingly I get in some cases reactions of favorable
+enthusiasm, and these are equally hopeless, for they would naturally
+support any part of the bolshevik program.
+
+In the few cases of seeming freedom from bias, I proceed to retail,
+without vouching for it, what I have heard about certain educational
+experiments conducted in the Soviet Union. It really makes no
+difference about the truth of these reports, for a person scientific
+enough to be neither strongly pro- nor strongly anti-bolshevik is also
+intelligent enough to consider a hypothetical case and give the same
+sort of verdict he would if it were a real one.
+
+It is said, then, that the Soviet powers believe in the maxim of Paul
+about proving all things and accepting only those that can stand the
+most rigid investigation. I do not know (I must say, since the subject
+has been brought up) whether the bolsheviks are trying to discourage
+baby-talk, insisting that mothers shall speak a real language even to
+the youngest child; but it has been represented to me that from the
+time the child begins to speak the government makes an effort to see
+that it is told only the truth.
+
+One of the first things western mothers tell their children is about
+Jack and the Beanstalk. The Russians feel reasonably certain that there
+never was such a Jack or Beanstalk. Accordingly, neither that fabled
+youngster nor the fabled plant is ever mentioned, I am told, to the
+up-to-date bolshevik-sponsored child.
+
+But, says the Russian, there are in real life things quite as
+interesting and marvelous as Jack and his stalk; for instance, a child
+named Tom instead of Jack, and surnamed Edison. Nothing very marvelous
+is reported about this Tommy while he was small. But when he became
+a sizable boy, or perhaps even later, he got an idea about how a
+string could be heated till it became red and even white, and how this
+string could be put in a glass bottle and hung up to give a light much
+brighter than any lamp that ever existed up to that time.
+
+The Soviet educators are said to maintain that by applying the same
+ability and ingenuity to telling the story of Tom and the glowing
+string that has been used in popularizing the adventures of Jack
+and his Beanstalk, you could create an equally vivid story, equally
+entertaining and, they contend, more beneficial since it is “true.”
+
+In the case of a child taught to believe in the Beanstalk, it becomes
+necessary to tell him later (or else to let him find out for himself)
+that it never existed. Some psychologists claim that there is an
+injurious mental shock involved when a child’s faith is shattered.
+What the Soviets emphasize is that if Jack had been real the child’s
+interest would not have had to cease at the age of five or six, but
+might have continued growing until the larger boy gradually mastered
+all the history and later grasped the achievements of Jack. If, then,
+instead of Jack and the Beanstalk, you begin with Tom and the red-hot
+string, there is no shock, they argue, no dead halt, no shifting of
+interest from one thing to another, but instead a growing delight in
+the whole adventurous life of Thomas Alva Edison that finally develops
+into a grasp of all the sciences with which he was concerned.
+
+I seldom get this far in my second-hand explanation before my listeners
+stop me with rhapsodies on the glories of the imagination and diatribes
+against the bolsheviks who now for the first time are seen by these
+previously impartial people to be insidious foemen of the soul.
+
+This counterblast used to floor me and I would stop at that point; but
+more recently I have developed a flanking operation. People strong
+on the beauties of the soul are nearly always great admirers of
+Maeterlinck. So I apparently change the subject, falling in with their
+praise of the imagination and asking if they think its subtle beauties
+are anywhere more evident than in the great son of Belgium. There is
+usually agreement, and soon we are communing ecstatically together
+about his book on the bee.
+
+The next step is to ask the champions of the imagination whether they
+remember that Maeterlinck says near the beginning of that book (which
+we have just agreed is one of his greatest works) that he has long
+since given up trying to invent anything half so marvelous as the
+truth. Oh, yes, they remember that, but they always understood it to
+mean Truth with a capital letter, which is something very different
+from a fact, and apparently means anything you are so fond of that you
+are prepared to stick to it whether it is true or not. But a little
+discussion about the sort of truth which Maeterlinck says he is trying
+to present in the Bee, and the sort which the bolsheviks say they are
+trying to present about Edison, shows that both are of the same kind.
+This conclusion results in no increase of admiration for the bolsheviks
+but a noticeable decrease of liking for Maeterlinck, who apparently has
+been cheating some of his readers into thinking that he was telling
+them Truths when he was only telling facts.
+
+Usually the outcome of the conversation is a feeling of how blessed are
+we whose imaginations have been stimulated and delighted by Little Red
+Riding Hood, Bluebeard with his many wives, and tales of that sort,
+and what an eclipse of the imagination is spreading its shadow over
+Russia, where even little children have to be told the truth.
+
+The Soviet campaign against folklore in general has been paralleled
+by an American campaign for Santa Claus in particular, which shows
+the differing temper of the two countries. Santa, it is well known,
+drives reindeer. Now it happens that some friends of mine own a hundred
+thousand reindeer in Alaska and have been trying to find a market for
+them. Other friends of mine own and edit _The Kansas City Star_, one
+of the most respectable and respected newspapers in the United States.
+Theodore Roosevelt, after he had been President, thought it an honor
+to be one of its editors: and the standards of personnel, management
+and policy are quite as high now as then. My Alaskan friends are, in
+ideals and character, not below the level of even the _Star_. However,
+they were not at that time as well-known, nor was their standing in
+the community possibly of as direct business value to them. You might,
+therefore, suspect them of using Santa Claus to help them find a
+reindeer market, no matter what they thought of the Saint himself. But
+surely the _Star_, whose business sense is as keen as its ethics are
+scrupulous, would not touch the enterprise unless its editors were sure
+of two things: that Santa was all right, for otherwise the _Star_ would
+not associate with him even for profit; and that nearly everybody else
+thought Santa all right, for otherwise the _Star_ would not profit by
+associating with him.
+
+The campaign was planned to deceive the children of Kansas City into
+believing that the real Santa with his real gift-bearing reindeer had
+entered into an arrangement to arrive in Kansas City some weeks before
+Christmas and to be on exhibition there. The _Star_ organization were
+his alleged representatives and the part for which I was requisitioned
+by the Lomen Reindeer Corporation was to write to the kiddies a
+letter telling how I had visited Santa in his northern home and what
+message he had sent by me to the children of the United States. My
+letter would be printed on dozens of front pages, aggregating millions
+in circulation, for this was a nation-wide campaign handled by
+newspapers or department stores in many of the larger cities, such as
+Cleveland, Brooklyn, Denver, Oklahoma City, and I have forgotten what
+other places. The letter I wrote was deceptive, though not literally
+untruthful. It was printed by all the papers engaged in the Real Santa
+campaign, and between me and a thousand other willing collaborators who
+all felt we were doing the nation’s children a real service, we fooled
+them so thoroughly that the _Star_ (to come back to that worthy paper)
+was able to stage a parade through the streets of Kansas City that was
+even larger, it was said, than the American Legion could muster when
+they held their National Convention in the same city the year before.
+The entire police force was needed to control the crowd. Some other
+cities did almost as well.
+
+I have heard much comment on the campaign waged by the _Star_, and by
+the like-minded papers of other cities, and none has been unfavorable.
+I believe the mayor of Kansas City thanked the _Star_ for a great
+public service--or something of that sort. But mayors do such things
+rather perfunctorily--whatever is done by a prominent enough citizen
+or foreigner, at that they publicly rejoice. But tradesmen are usually
+more hard-headed, and their chief organizations are discreet and
+particular to be always on the side of the common weal. But higher than
+any of our non-religious bodies in its ideals and aims is likely to be
+the Parent-Teacher Association of the city. Listen, then, to what they
+said in a display proclamation which occupied, in suitably large print,
+nearly a whole page of _The Kansas City Star_ on Christmas Day, 1925:
+
+ To _The Kansas City Star_:
+
+ May we express our congratulations and appreciation to _The Star_ on
+ the wonderful success of its enterprise in bringing Santa Claus and
+ his reindeer to Kansas City and acting as the host, friend and guide
+ of the children’s Christmas saint.
+
+ We believe all Kansas City and our neighboring towns share with us in
+ our felicitation. It is nothing new for _The Star_ to be generously
+ mindful of the children at Christmas time. We have not forgotten
+ _Snow White_, _The Seven Swans_ and _Peter Pan_! But this year Santa
+ Claus and his reindeer have been brought “in person,” have paraded
+ our streets, visited our schools and hospitals and have taken their
+ Christmas cheer directly to the children and to the older folk as well.
+
+ The Old Spirit of Christmas has been revived and stimulated, and
+ everybody has been made happier and better by this Yuletide visit.
+ With this Christmas Spirit in our hearts, we now think it most fitting
+ to thank _The Star_ publicity for its unique and happy achievement.
+
+  TO SANTA CLAUS AND
+  HIS HOST:
+
+  A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND
+  THANK YOU
+
+  Merchants Association:
+  Parent-Teacher Association:
+  Chamber of Commerce
+
+You agree with them, heartily, Gentle Reader, I am sure. And so do I.
+The pudgy Saint with his sleigh load of gifts and his eight reindeer
+is part of the glory and romance of childhood. You and I, when we were
+small and believed in him, saw with our mundane eyes nothing more than
+a jolly old man in a red coat with a crinkly smile and a flowing beard;
+the more blessed youngsters of today (thanks to the Lomen Corporation
+in Alaska and men of humanity and vision in our cities who cooperate
+with them), become personally acquainted with Dancer and Prancer, and
+Donner and Blitzen, and all the other members of the famous team. They
+ride in the sleigh with Santa and they ride on the backs of his deer.
+They are thrilled by the no longer simulated (as in our day) interest
+of their parents who now stand shivering with cold and quivering
+with delight as they are shoved about by policemen to make way for a
+Santa-and-Reindeer parade as large and enthusiastic as ever marched
+behind a young lady that swam the channel or a young gentleman who flew
+the Atlantic.
+
+Best of all, this apparent faith of the elders enables us to stretch
+the faith of the younger generation a year or two longer than was
+possible before the Lomen concern thought of providing real reindeer to
+make the mythical Saint more real. We used to lose such beliefs when
+we were five, but today the Parent-Teacher Association, the Merchants
+Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the _Star_ are able to
+stretch the faith of Kansas City at least till seven--two years of
+happy unreality given to thousands of children in that one city alone.
+And so in many other cities. Multiplying the clear gain, two years
+for each child, by the total number of children affected, we have an
+aggregate of millions of happiness-years added for this nation alone.
+When the fashion spreads to other countries and continues through the
+years, the total gain to the world will become incalculable.
+
+Preserving the faith of children was the main purpose of the Santa
+campaign, but the more enterprising newspapers used the opportunity
+to benefit older readers as well. The Denver paper (which we will
+not name, for some people mistakenly consider it wrong to deceive
+grown-ups) erected an imitation snow house near where the reindeer
+were kept (I think it was at the municipal buildings) and employed an
+Eskimo, who had never before seen that sort of snow house except in
+movies, to explain to visitors that he and other reindeer herders of
+Alaska dwelt in that kind of snow house when they were at home. So far
+as I could judge, and I was in Denver at the time, every grown person,
+from Unitarian to Rotarian, swallowed that as readily as the children
+did the Santa part, and with as much satisfaction. Such beliefs have a
+moral as well as an entertainment value. It certainly makes you more
+content with a hall bedroom if you can visualize the Alaska Eskimos
+shivering in huts of snow.
+
+But this about Alaska snow houses and the preservation of the faith
+of adults, has been a digression. We must proceed with our systematic
+inquiry into the planned and benevolent deception of the growing child.
+
+
+THE CASE OF THE GRADE SCHOOL
+
+We aim in this book at no more than establishing a reasonable
+presumption either in favor of truth as opposed to deception or else
+in favor of deception as opposed to truth. We shall not, therefore,
+attempt a study of our educational system as a whole but shall take a
+few cases that are typical.
+
+_The Teaching of History_: Under this head we shall consider two
+general problems and then a few specific instances.
+
+One of those disadvantages of facts which their advocates usually
+admit, is that they are complicated. Another is that in most cases
+people cannot agree as to what are the facts. Simplification and
+standardization are therefore necessary, especially for the young. This
+is universally conceded.
+
+Not till the prospective historian starts graduate work in a university
+does he usually begin to have any conception of how debatable are most
+of the things that he has been taught as a child. The disillusionment
+then continues rapidly until he feels like selecting as the best
+definition of his specialty the one usually credited to Napoleon:
+“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” But (and this is significant),
+in spite of the high average moral tone of our populations, few
+historians become crusaders against history. The simplest, and I
+believe the correct, explanation is that they think that, on the whole,
+deceiving children does them good.
+
+When we entered the 1914-18 war, we suddenly discovered that most of
+our school histories were anti-British. Many of them were forthwith
+changed to pro-British, without a murmur from anyone except a few
+people who (we all agreed, as soon as they began to protest) were
+either pro-Germans or Pacifists. But the War, after we got into it,
+was so short that before it was over there was not time to oust all
+the anti-British propaganda from the texts. I had the instructive
+experience of being in a city where a violent newspaper controversy
+sprang up between correspondents, some of whom advocated anti-British
+history but most of whom favored pro-British. The ground of the pros
+was that we ought to stand by our former allies, that there might soon
+be another war, and that we should bring up the younger generation
+strong for English-speaking unity, because that was the natural basis
+of the coming alignment. Some argued specifically that we might be
+able to annex Canada if we used the same sort of histories as the
+Canadians and therefore grew up to the same beliefs. Even the Hearst
+papers, which then opposed this view and anything else that seemed to
+favor the British, later came out for the principle and advocated an
+English-speaking union.
+
+The voices which suggested an impartial history were few and weak. Thus
+did what we believe to be the sound common sense of the people manifest
+itself. For next after patriotism comes a right world outlook. We must
+know in advance what country to favor in time of trouble. And how can
+the needed unanimity be secured in a democracy except by teaching the
+youngsters to like the right country so that they may vote correctly
+when they later come to decide tariffs, treaties and wars?
+
+Much proof of what no one doubts is tedious and we have gone far
+enough in the argument. Certainly if you are pro-British, you will see
+at once that teaching love for British ideals, respect for British
+institutions, cannot help but benefit any country. If you are not
+pro-British, you can arrive at the same conclusion by substituting in
+the discussion the name of whatever country you most admire. Call that
+country X. You will then at once see the advantage of teaching the
+rising generation to be pro-X, or _proex_--to coin a much-needed word.
+
+The reader may here object that even if it is agreed that history
+teaching in the schools should be chiefly for the purpose of laying
+down principles to guide us in life, it does not follow that we have
+to teach children to be in favor of any particular country or set of
+countries. Perhaps you are a pronounced isolationist and think we are
+strong enough to go it alone, then this strength would be increased
+by the solidarity we would gain if we learned in school to dislike
+all other nations and later ran our government and shaped our private
+actions so as to get them all to dislike us. That is an old and
+much-advocated principle: that real unity can be attained only in the
+face of a common enemy. Very well, then, you are not a Proex but an
+Antex, and you must go about trying to get the schools into your hands.
+Let the best men win! It looks just now as if it would be the Antexes.
+
+Coming to specific problems of truth in history, we need little but a
+catalogue to see on which side we stand. Supposing, just for argument,
+that the biographers of Lincoln could prove, as some of them have
+tried to do, that he was of illegitimate descent, would you then want
+that taught in the schools? The conclusive arguments against are: (1)
+Such teaching would attack the Home, the most precious of all our
+institutions; for Lincoln is our greatest national hero, and having
+him illegitimate, even if only back in his parents’ or grandparents’
+generation, would be a destructive influence. (2) That teaching would
+also attack the institution of National Heroes. Lincoln is our greatest
+hero; nothing is more beneficial than to have heroes to look up to; we
+would not look up to Lincoln quite so much if he were in any degree
+illegitimate; therefore we ought to hide the fact, if it were a fact.
+(3) Nothing could be gained by encouraging children to attach scandal
+to the names of great men. (4) It would be in bad taste to teach in
+school about the illegitimacy of anyone. On the basis of these and
+many similar reasons, all decent people will agree that the question
+of whether Lincoln was illegitimate should never be mentioned in the
+schools.
+
+To be on the safe side, the author states here emphatically that the
+biographers who favor the legitimacy of Lincoln, even unto the third
+and fourth generation, have, in his opinion, much the best of the
+argument. For this book might possibly fall into the hands of minors.
+
+It is maintained by some that it would do no harm for adults to
+know the fact, if it were a fact, that Lincoln was illegitimate.
+Their reasoning is that character is formed in infancy and that the
+perverting influence of a truth, no matter how improper, is negligible
+in adults. We agree with that contention, and the more readily because
+it is in harmony with the conclusion at which we are fast arriving (a
+conclusion, by the way, at which you could arrive still faster with
+less reasoning): The purpose of child training is to build character,
+and all education should therefore trend toward that goal. The truth
+should be admitted into the curriculum or kept out of it by that test
+alone. Facts of a disturbing nature should be permitted, if at all,
+only when characters have set beyond the reasonable possibility of
+change.
+
+The importance of discretion in history teaching was once brought
+forcibly to my attention when I was spending a summer in northern
+Vermont, and found in use three miles away across the Canadian line in
+Quebec, school texts in which the War of 1812 differed so much from
+the war in the Vermont histories that you would hardly believe it was
+the same war. You can readily see how wise that was on both sides.
+Imagine the discord that would be introduced into the teaching of
+Canadian patriotism if they used Vermont histories, and similarly what
+havoc a Canadian history could work, if tossed into our school system
+like a stone into delicate machinery. Nor is there any halfway course
+possible. If you were to cut out all the contradictions, there would
+be little left of that particular war; neither would the leavings be
+any good for inculcating patriotism or other moral virtues into either
+Canadians or Americans. Obviously things had best remain as they are.
+
+Or would you ever hint in the history courses that Sir Galahad never
+had a bath? That Tristram’s courting, so touchingly described by Edwin
+Arlington Robinson, must have smelled pretty strong even at arm’s
+length (except when the wind was just right)? That some of the most
+revered saints of the Church made vows never to bathe and never to be
+unkind to the lice that swarmed over them? And that the only two great
+bathing eras of known history were the ancient period which historians
+call the decline of the Roman Empire, when civilization was going to
+the dogs, and our modern period, when the Fundamentalists tell us we
+are all going to the Devil? Would not such teaching suggest that there
+may be a connection between clean bodies and unclean living? And what
+could be worse for æsthetics or for the soap trade?
+
+The fact was, of course, that Tristram liked the smell of his
+sweetheart, and she liked his, both being used to it, and that the
+sinners as well as the saints of the Middle Ages really enjoyed what we
+would call the stink of foul linen. The past was not necessarily such
+an unpleasant time for those who lived in it (in view of their tastes).
+But, even after dwelling on that, most of us will remain convinced of
+the superiority of our own taste, and will continue unwilling that
+historical studies shall in any way encourage those of our youngsters
+who seem to have been born with medieval propensities for dirt.
+
+Indeed, what possible good end could be served by letting such facts
+(if they be facts) gain currency through history teaching? Would
+patriotism, good manners, or good morals profit thereby? Would such
+teaching build character? Certainly not, and the present course is the
+right one: to say nothing about bathing in the Age of Chivalry, but
+to imply always that cleanliness is the natural state and passion of
+man--excepting rare miscreants who come to school inadequately washed
+behind the ears.
+
+And so we might go on, canvassing our histories and our moral,
+political and æsthetic judgments till we arrive at the conclusion that
+in school texts at least the truth needs to be very judiciously handled.
+
+_The Teaching of Physiology_: If the truth be a tricky thing in
+history, it is no less so in many other “branches” taught in the first
+eight grades of school. For instance, consider physiology. We need not
+dwell on sex, which most of us instinctively and rightly feel must not
+be thrust upon the young, but will instead continue under this head the
+discussion with which we ended the section on history.
+
+Cleanliness may seem to lie in the field of æsthetics, but it has the
+most practical value. You would be ostracized socially if people knew
+you did not bathe; you would be worse off than if you had halitosis and
+four-out-of-five pyorrhea. Personality courses, books on etiquette, and
+the efforts of the Hamilton Institute combined with Pelmanism would
+be of little avail to gain you preferment. Listerine could not remove
+the odor nor Pond’s Cream make your countenance seem agreeable. So
+at least, we believe, and so the rising generation must be taught to
+believe, or cleanliness may depart from among us.
+
+But it is now said by some of the physiologists (doubtless untruly)
+that nearly all the supposed scientific arguments for bathing are
+fictions and fallacies. _Item_: The skin does not excrete any
+appreciable amount of harmful substances from the body, nor do the
+pores “breathe.” Therefore your system is not purified by “keeping the
+pores open” and one argument on bathing-for-health disappears. _Item_:
+A chief function of the skin is to protect the body; poisons, such as
+mercury, cannot enter your body through a skin proofed with its own
+secretions, but will seep through if the natural lubricants have been
+washed away with warm water, soap, or other methods. Therefore your
+health is, in this respect at least, the safer the less you bathe, and
+another of the standard arguments vanishes. _Item_: The skin’s own
+secretions keep it softer and in better condition than any substitute
+yet discovered. This is a deserved pat on the shoulder for the Lord
+who made us, but a rather stiff jolt for the cosmetic manufacturers.
+_Item_: The body odors come chiefly from three areas or parts of the
+body (that are too taboo for mention even here). Keeping these clean
+goes nine-tenths of the way toward freeing you from odors that other
+normal humans can detect, and changing your underwear every day, or
+even every other day, would go the remaining one-tenth, thus removing
+that argument for bathing.
+
+And so on for many arguments more, the sum of which is that if you have
+a healthy skin it is safe enough to bathe if you like; but with eczema
+and certain other diseases you must not bathe if you want to stop the
+blotches from spreading, or to sleep for the itching at night.
+
+Now just assume, for argument’s sake, that all the above (or to be
+conservative, say half of it), is true. Then ask yourself, would
+you be in favor of having little children of the dirty-ear stage
+find out about it? The slogan was, in the generation of our parents:
+“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” But the investment in soap and in
+the allied industries has grown faster since then than the property
+of the churches, and the soaps advertise more. Today the sales talk
+sways the nation, and it is doubtful if godliness even approaches
+cleanliness in popularity. We must fight harder, therefore, to keep
+such physiology out of the schools, than any fundamentalist has yet
+fought to keep Darwinism out of the colleges. And we shall succeed,
+backed as we are by the advertising funds and the publicity genius of
+the whole soap industry from Bon Ami to Zap.
+
+But there is one disquieting thought: The interests of Listerine
+and the perfumers are opposed to those of the soap and bath towel
+manufacturers. Europe, too, may seek to control our cleanliness, as it
+does our politics, by its insidious propaganda. But, fortunately, it
+will be disunited. It will be England pleading that odors be removed
+with Lifebuoy against France urging that they be covered up with
+Houbigant. These may kill each other off. Then there will be apathy
+and discord at home among our Napoleons of business. Some will stand
+aside from the struggle, for great houses, like Colgate, make soap as
+well as perfume. The underwear manufacturers will be against both, and
+so will the laundries, for they will want us to get rid of odors by
+frequent changes of linen. Frequent launderings wear out clothes and
+thus benefit the cotton planters of the South and the wool ranchers of
+the West.
+
+The issue will be doubtful if the battle ever starts. We, the great
+public, having once been won over from France and the perfume to
+England and the tub, should try to prevent the issue from ever rising
+again by keeping the unæsthetic new physiology out of the schools.
+
+Furthermore, especially as this book may fall into the hands of minors,
+the so-called new physiology is doubtless all wrong. So let us continue
+circulating the story about the page in Venice who was clothed in gold
+leaf for a pageant and who died of suffocation because his pores could
+not breathe. Let us never forget suggesting, when we see a lad whose
+face is covered with pimples, that he has doubtless been neglecting
+his wash basin and soap. And let us soft pedal the fact, if it be a
+fact, that abstinence from bathing is frequently prescribed by the most
+expensive skin specialists.
+
+_The Teaching of Geography_: The teaching of this science brings out a
+new consideration--the reticence customarily practiced in it, while no
+less benevolent than in the other subjects, is based on motives new in
+our discussion and results in benefits of a different kind.
+
+When facts are played down in geography teaching it is not usually
+because they would be in bad taste or otherwise detrimental to the
+character of the scholars, but rather because they are too complicated.
+The teachers are busy and overworked, and the pupils have limited time
+for the curriculum, for some of them may have to quit school soon and
+go to work. A complicated idea takes a long time to teach, it is hard
+to learn and difficult to remember and understand. From both the giving
+and receiving end, simplicity is therefore desirable, but facts have
+usually the unfortunate defect of being complicated. In the practice
+of teaching it is therefore often necessary and sometimes desirable to
+ignore them. We can best and most sympathetically understand this if we
+take a case where we have been ourselves deceived, for we shall then be
+able to testify from personal knowledge that we have benefited, or at
+least that we have suffered no harm.
+
+The best geographical example under this head is perhaps one of those
+upon which we touched briefly in the first section of this book--that,
+other things being equal, the farther north you go the colder it gets,
+no matter what the time of year. We shall develop that topic more
+fully than we did before, exploring some of its more instructive and
+entertaining ramifications.
+
+First we need perspective from the history of geographical science. As
+in many other cases, we owe the beginnings of learning in this field
+to the Greeks. They may have borrowed from earlier civilizations,
+and probably did; but they formulated the doctrines and cast them
+into the molds in which many of them are still set. One of their
+chief achievements was that they worked out the laws of temperature
+distribution over the earth substantially as we learned them in the
+grade schools up to a few years ago, and roughly as they still remain
+in the minds of the general public.
+
+Already five hundred years before Christ, the Greeks knew that the
+earth was a sphere. They understood the migration of the sun northward
+over the earth in summer and southward in winter between what they
+called, and what we still call, the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
+They also determined the polar circles beyond which the sun does not
+rise in winter nor set in summer. This was dividing the earth into five
+logical zones. The Greeks and the rest of mankind lived, they said, in
+a zone that was temperate. But if you crossed the Mediterranean and
+were to travel south into Africa you would get too near the sun and
+come first to a section unpleasantly hot, then to one intolerable, and
+last to a burning region where no living thing, either plant or animal,
+could exist by reason of the fierce downpour of the sun’s heat. This
+was the Torrid Zone. Going north from Greece you came similarly first
+to lands unpleasantly cold, then to others intolerable, and last to a
+permanently frozen region “where life is as impossible because of the
+freezing as it is in the Torrid Zone because of the burning.” South of
+the tropics there doubtless was another temperate zone and this might
+be inhabited--probably was, in fact, though we should never know except
+by inference, as no one could ever cross the burning tropics. And at
+the south end of the earth would be a second frozen zone.
+
+Thus from their doctrines of beauty, simplicity, and symmetry, and
+from the principles of logic the Greeks evolved laws of temperature
+distribution which are so easy to explain and understand that if
+you had never heard of them before you could have grasped both them
+and their necessary implications from a description no longer nor
+better composed than mine that you have just read. Such a natural
+law is a boon to teacher and student alike. No wonder, then, that it
+held its ground from more than four hundred years before Christ to
+more than fourteen hundred years after, as John Kirtland Wright has
+recently proved in a long and scholarly work published by the American
+Geographical Society of New York: _The Geographical Lore of the Time of
+the Crusades_.
+
+That we do not still have in the schools these Greek temperature laws
+in all their pristine simplicity is due to two of mankind’s most
+troublesome qualities, cupidity and skepticism. In the fifteenth
+century Western Europe was greedy for the riches of the Far East, and
+the road to Cathay, traveled by Marco Polo and his predecessors and
+successors, had been closed by Mohammedan victories over the less
+bigoted Mongols. It is usually easy to disbelieve anything that crosses
+our desires, and so doubts began to arise as to whether the tropic
+lands were really burning hot and the tropic oceans boiling. Henry the
+Navigator gets most of the credit for cooling off the burning zone by
+sending out ship after ship that went farther and farther south along
+the West Coast of Africa, each returning with fearful tales of what
+they had seen or imagined, but most of them nevertheless returning and
+thus giving hope that others might go still farther. At last a ship did
+sail to where the sun stood overhead without cooking the sailors alive.
+Indeed, she returned with the story that the days had not been hotter
+right below the sun than they were on some occasions in Portugal.
+
+So began the “Conquest of the Tropics,” and so ended the simplicity of
+the Greek laws of temperature distribution. Every work on meteorology
+of college grade now tells you that the highest temperatures registered
+by thermometers in the shade, under weather bureau conditions, are not
+recorded in the Torrid Zone at all; but in the Temperate (!) Zones.
+Probably the highest in-the-shade records so far taken are those of
+Death Valley, California, about 900 miles north of the northern edge
+of the Torrid Zone--136°; almost certainly the highest temperatures
+that can be recorded in Africa are in the Sahara Desert, also north of
+the tropics. If there are higher temperatures south of the Equator we
+feel sure they will not be near the Equator, but near the tropic of
+Capricorn or else (more likely) in the South Temperate Zone.
+
+These principles are now known to all authors of text books, but
+they are still able to maintain a degree of simplicity in the lower
+school grades by implying it is average temperatures that matter, and
+by saying nothing about extremes. The fact is that averages count for
+some things and extremes for others, and that both are important. It
+is not, of course, the average cold of January that sometimes destroys
+the fruit in the South, but the one extreme night; similarly it is not
+the average heat of July that kills by sunstroke in New York but the
+one extreme day. Extremes are really more important, in that sense,
+than averages; but averages are much simpler and more teachable. It
+is so complicated to explain and remember that extremes may be high
+where averages are high, that extremes may be high where averages are
+low, and that extremes may be low where averages are low. We would
+certainly have to lengthen out our school courses if we went into such
+hairsplitting, and our millions of potential workers would be kept out
+of the mills and factories even longer than they are now. Besides, the
+complexities of facts are bewildering and confusing to the average
+mind, and never give the feeling of enlightenment you have when you
+grasp a simple principle which throws a flood of logical light on a
+previously haphazard world.
+
+It is unfortunate--or perhaps fortunate--that we have not space to go
+deeply into the history of the way in which the simple Greek law of
+temperature distribution has been gradually broken down by explorers
+who went to remote places and came back with stories of conditions that
+did not fit into the theory, and how the scientists toiled at fitting
+together the mosaic pieces till they finally evolved an explanation
+that does fit all the facts. But we must give at least a brief sketch.
+
+The investigation that has been going on since the days of Prince Henry
+the Navigator started from the simple Greek proposition: There is no
+cold and the greatest heat on the Equator, no extreme of either heat
+or cold in the North Temperate Zone, and no heat but merely intense
+cold at the North Pole. The first slight exceptions to this had, of
+course, been noted long before Henry’s day: The mountain tops are cold.
+Other discrepancies due to sea breezes, ocean currents, and many other
+things soon followed, but they were, on the whole, not very difficult
+to explain as exceptions to the rule. True enough, the altitude one was
+taken to be a universal exception; mountains were said to be colder
+than their surroundings in any zone at any time of year, and it became
+a popular saying that climbing a few feet up was like traveling a good
+many miles north.
+
+All exceptions other than altitude were explained in the Middle Ages,
+and down to our day, as an inroad of conditions from one zone into the
+territory of another--the Gulf Stream warmed the British Isles because
+it came from the tropics, the Labrador Current cooled Newfoundland
+because it came from the Arctic, and so on. New Yorkers still speak
+of sunstroke waves as coming from the Equator, even on occasions when
+the press reports few or no deaths south of Washington and the weather
+bureau shows that Boston is hotter than Richmond (those who think about
+it at all probably supposing that the heat arrives by some special
+conveyance through the upper atmosphere). By similar acceptance of
+theory and lack of reasoning, cold winds are still spoken of as coming
+from the North Pole.
+
+Serious trouble for the classic theory first developed when travelers
+returned from the Arctic with their reports. John Davis, whose name
+you find on the strait west of Greenland, said, for instance, that he
+had been far within the so-called Frozen Zone “three divers times”
+(1585-1588) and that he had on occasion found the weather there “as
+salubrious as ever I did in the Isles of De Verde”--which was certainly
+amazing, for those islands lie in the region supposed until Prince
+Henry’s time (after 1400 A.D.) to be lifeless “because of the burning.”
+
+Both before and after Davis there were, however, conflicting reports
+from the Arctic explorers, those of the hero kind speaking (with
+modest reserve) only about the cold, while those of the commercial
+type, like Davis, dwelt on the surprising heat. On the whole there
+was reason for the textbook writers to side uncompromisingly with the
+Greeks (particularly in elementary education, where simplicity is most
+desirable), so long as any travelers continued to support them.
+
+The balance was more seriously disturbed than ever before when the
+weather bureaus entered the field, and the U. S. Weather Bureau, for
+instance, began to report from Fort Yukon, Alaska, which is within
+the Arctic Circle, temperatures and humidities like those which kill
+people in New York. After that the classic simplicity of the zone in
+which it is “always cold” could be maintained only by ignoring the
+records. This has been done with remarkable success, for the textbooks
+stating or plainly inferring that it is never warm in the Arctic were
+in extensive use in American schools for more than twenty years after
+the Bureau at Washington began to publish at government expense Arctic
+temperatures ranging up to 100° in the shade. You can verify this by
+going ten years back in the geographies used by the schools of your own
+neighborhood--not in every case, but in most.
+
+There are some texts still in use which imply that it is never warm
+in the Arctic, but many have felt themselves compelled to present the
+following complicated explanation of Arctic summer temperatures (after
+stating that the old law does hold for three-quarters of the year):
+Practically all the heat comes from the sun, some arriving at any given
+spot directly in the form of light, some transported there by various
+agencies, such as winds, ocean currents. The amount of heat (light)
+delivered straight from the sun to a unit of the earth’s surface on
+a summer day depends primarily on how nearly vertical the sun is and
+for how many hours it shines; but secondarily it depends on other
+factors, such as clouds or dust in the atmosphere, the color of the
+surface the light rays strike, and so on. The resulting temperature,
+as observed either by a thermometer or by the human sensory organs, is
+further modified by how long a night, during which heat was lost, has
+preceded the day, and by how much “cold” was stored in that locality
+by the preceding winter. In some places that are mountainous, such as
+Greenland, this winter chill has been effectively stored in the form
+of snow, which not only throws back the light rays without giving
+them a chance to turn into heat but also neutralizes those that have
+become heat by using them to lessen its own cold; other places, such
+as the ocean, have also stored the “cold” effectively, and cancel the
+heat of the summer with great success. Therefore it is never very hot
+on mountains in the Arctic, nor on the ocean; and it is probable that
+if you spent a summer in a tent on an ice floe at the North Pole
+out-of-doors you would never observe a temperature higher than twenty
+degrees above freezing (say 50° or 55° F.) measured five feet above the
+ice. It would of course be much hotter if you put up a windbreak and
+then let the sun shine on a dark tarpaulin spread on the floe.
+
+But there are in the Arctic, the explanation would continue, thousands
+of square miles of low land not very near either to mountains or to
+the sea. Over these it is far colder in winter than at the North Pole
+(because the air above the Pole is warmed by the heat radiated by
+the ocean up through the floating ice). Winter winds are therefore
+frequently warmer when they blow from the north than from some other
+direction, and in some places the coldest winds are southerly. This
+extreme cold makes a heavy precipitation impossible, and the average
+snowfall of the Arctic lowlands for twelve months is therefore less
+than the average snowfall of Virginia or Scotland. This little snow
+dissolves quickly in the spring, and after that the sunlight strikes
+a dark surface, which helps it turn into heat. Nor is there much cold
+stored anywhere near that can become effective to neutralize the sun.
+What cold had been stored up by the snow is gone, except as it is held
+in a little water on or near the surface. What has been taken up by
+the ground through last winter, and through the centuries, is securely
+imprisoned there; for the first few inches which thaw near the surface
+become an insulating blanket that confines the rest of the chill and
+makes it as powerless to affect the temperature of the air as if it
+were hundreds of miles away.
+
+On the Arctic prairie that is remote from mountains or the sea, one
+factor, then, far overshadows all others in determining how hot any
+given day shall be. This is the quantity of heat received each hour
+from the sun at that place, multiplied by the number of hours. Now,
+at the Equator the sun can deliver heat no more than twelve hours out
+of every twenty-four, giving the tropical prairie an equal length of
+time in which to cool off. But on the prairie north of the Arctic
+circle the sun shines the whole twenty-four hours, delivering less
+heat per hour than at the Equator, but more per day, and without any
+night in which to cool off. There is, accordingly, a period in summer,
+varying in length according to where you are in the Arctic, during
+which the sun delivers to your locality about the same heat per day as
+at the Equator. _This is the rule_, for it is based on the broadest
+principles; the places where it does not work out are exceptions, for
+narrower or special reasons. And it is a fact that there are many
+places on and near the Equator where the hottest day in a hundred years
+does not equal the hottest days of the same century at many places in
+the Arctic that are equally high above sea level.
+
+Few will deny the interest of the preceding facts; but, says the really
+sensible man, the world is full of interesting things, and we certainly
+have not room for them all in the textbooks, nor time for them all in
+the schools. The practical value of this curious Arctic lore is very
+small to the average man, who stays at home or, at the most, goes to
+Paris; though it is undeniably highly useful to those few individuals
+who travel to the Arctic and who want to know in advance what sort of
+weather to expect, warning them to take fly dope instead of furs if
+they are going on a Midnight Sun excursion to Fort Yukon. But even
+for the excursionist, facts are not an unmixed blessing. If you know
+about the heat and the mosquitoes in advance, you will not have the
+pleasure of discovering them; the fly dope may save you from stings,
+but it also spoils the after-dinner value of the tale about how foolish
+you were and how badly instructed _before you went north_, which sort
+of story is the only really satisfactory way of putting your listeners
+both firmly and pleasantly among the uninstructed where they belong.
+And even from their point of view, too much advance knowledge is rather
+a bore, for what is the drawing-room value of that which everybody has
+learned in school when compared with: “Jones, you know, the Famous
+Traveler, told me once that when he was in the Yukon, etc.”
+
+Facts are tedious, anyhow, and we should think carefully before
+agreeing that the simple and edifying Greek rule shall go by the board.
+Consider just a few of the entertaining and instructive things, some of
+them with no mean character-building value, that would have to go, too.
+
+_Item_: All the ideas would have to go that are similar to the familiar
+kindergarten ditty that has been sung by millions of little Americans
+and which goes something like this (there seems to be no standard
+version):
+
+  “Frosty little Eskimo,
+  In your house of ice and snow.”
+
+and so on, till the final line:
+
+  “For in Greenland there is nothing green to grow!”
+
+We might be able to salvage the house of ice and snow temporarily,
+though it is a bothersome fact that of something over 14,000 Eskimos
+in Greenland, by the last census, less than 300 had ever seen a snow
+house. But the “nothing green to grow” would not last very long under
+the combined attack of the unromantic geographers, who insist on
+pointing out weather bureau records, and the historians of Greenland,
+who will tell you that the country was a republic from 986 a.d. to 1261
+(a good deal longer than the United States has yet been a republic) and
+a dependency of Norway and Denmark thereafter; that they had churches
+and monasteries administered from European archbishoprics (you may
+have seen the Greenlandic church ruins in the movies some years ago,
+as background for the King of Denmark hobnobbing with Eskimos). The
+historians will point out that a European civilization could not have
+existed in Greenland during the Middle Ages except for stock raising.
+The colonists had cattle, with as many as a hundred head in a single
+barn. They lived in considerable part on milk and milk products,
+and wove cloth from their own sheep, making garments which you can
+examine today through photographs in many books or study in the museum
+collections of Europe. Both cattle and sheep raising are now again
+practiced in Greenland, and have been for many decades. That means hay,
+and hay means meadows with that “something green to grow” which is
+denied by the kindergarten.
+
+Such are the facts, but what of it? If we pressed them upon children
+while they were at the impressionable age, we would so change their
+mental picture of Greenland as to rob it of every charm it has so
+long had for us. What substitute would they find for the delicious
+thrills and chills that creep up and down our spines as we look with
+the mind’s eye upon a world of permanent white silence and peer into
+Greenlandic snow houses where Eskimos shiver (doubtless without their
+teeth chattering, else it would not be so silent) as they devour (again
+silently) the blubber that enables them to eke out their miserable
+existence. And then there is the character-building value of thinking
+what a marvelous thing is the human spirit that continues its fight
+against the powers of darkness and cold even up there on the frozen
+edge of the world. On the other hand, too, how fortunate we are who
+live in a country of warmth and green grass--and schools. Take away,
+if you must, the good old picture of the North that is always cold;
+but consider first what it is you are going to give our disillusioned
+children in its stead. Surely it will have to be something better than
+cow pastures and a few ruined churches. We already have at home enough
+of the one and many of the other.
+
+_Teaching Through Educational Movies_: While our love for children
+makes us conceal from them anything that may be injurious to their
+welfare, the same affection leads us to strive for their instruction
+in whatever we consider beneficial. But in this field we are sometimes
+misled. I have in mind a special case, parents who were greatly
+incensed at a movie called _Nanook of the North_, which, although
+not true to the native life of the Eskimos, had been shown in their
+children’s school and recommended as true. But these parents were
+wrong, as will appear.
+
+To begin with, the _Nanook_ story was at least as true as that of
+Santa Claus, of which those parents approved. It was the same sort
+of partial truthfulness, only greater. Real as well as Santa reindeer
+have horns, four legs, and are driven before sleighs in harness, though
+not such sleighs, quite, nor in such harness as the ordinary Christmas
+pictures show. They run on the ground, not through the air; they are
+very swift, though not quite so speedy as Santa’s. There are in the
+world old men, too, who would like to give a present to every child
+at Christmas if they could, though there is no old man that actually
+succeeds in doing it. Thus the Santa story, while fiction in a way,
+does represent truths.
+
+Similarly with the movie, _Nanook_. There are Eskimos in Hudson Bay
+where the picture was taken, and the people you see on the screen
+are Eskimos, which is more realism, right from the start, than you
+have ever had in a Santa Claus picture. The country you see, too,
+is the real Hudson Bay. True enough, not even the coldest month up
+there averages as cold as _Nanook_ tells you the whole year averages
+(35° below zero), but then you must have something exceptional in a
+movie or it would not impress. You are told, too, that the Hudson
+Bay Eskimos still hunt with their primitive weapons, and this is
+justified. For it would spoil the unity of the picture to tell the
+truth about the weapons, though it is an interesting fact in itself
+that the forefathers of the Eskimos shown on the screen have had guns
+for generations, as the Hudson’s Bay Company has been trading into the
+Bay since 1670. Moreover the titles do not actually say that the Bay
+Eskimos hunt with primitive weapons _only_, so you can take it any way
+you like. Doubtless the producer meant nothing more than to say that
+the children (who are certainly Eskimos) still play at hunting (which
+would be hunting of a sort) with bows and arrows.
+
+No real Eskimos, in my belief, ever hunted seals through the ice in
+the manner shown in the picture, nor do I think a seal could be killed
+by that method unless he were a defective. But it is true that certain
+Eskimos in other parts of the Arctic (about half of all there are) do
+know how seals can be killed through ice. That the Hudson Bay Eskimos,
+with whom our producer had to deal, did not know such methods was no
+fault of his, and he would have been deficient in resource if he had
+allowed that to stop him. Neither are there libraries in Hudson Bay
+where he might have borrowed a book that described the method so he
+could have studied it up and taught it to the local natives. There
+he was with an expensive movie expedition, the picture just had to
+be taken, and audiences in the South would demand to be shown what
+they had heard of--Eskimos sealing through the ice. And so a method
+was developed (perhaps by the Eskimos themselves along lines roughly
+indicated by the director) which photographs beautifully and gives as
+much feeling of enlightenment to an audience as if it showed the real
+technique that does secure seals.
+
+I have gone to _Nanook_ many times for the purpose of observing the
+audiences. In several cases some movie fan has noticed that the
+seal ostensibly speared in the picture is stiff and dead, clearly
+planted there. But that, it seems to me, is all the realism you could
+expect in a play. You would not demand that Fairbanks really kill
+all his adversaries, though you do appreciate seeing a bit of good
+swordsmanship. And in _Nanook_, what seal but a dead one could possibly
+be expected to allow himself to be speared in the manner shown?
+
+Another thing I have found _Nanook_ audiences complaining about is
+that they had heard somewhere that Eskimo snow houses are warm and
+comfortable, while the _Nanook_ picture shows the occupants shivering
+as they strip for going to bed, and there are clouds of steam puffing
+from their mouths and nostrils. These erudite fans are still more
+troubled when they see the movie title which says that the Eskimos must
+always keep their snow house interiors below freezing to prevent them
+from melting, for they have read a book by someone who has lived in a
+snow house and who has explained the principles of physics by which,
+when the weather is cold enough outside (and no weather was ever quite
+so cold as the _Nanook_ country is supposed to be), the snow does
+not melt though it is comfortably warm inside--say, as warm as the
+average British or Continental living rooms in winter. But the answer
+is simple, and the producer is quite justified by it: An Eskimo snow
+house is too small for inside photography, and the light might not
+be good enough. So to get the best light and plenty of room for the
+camera man, half the house was cut away (like the “sets” you see in
+the movie studios), and the poor Eskimos were disrobing and going to
+bed out of doors. But it would have spoiled the picture to introduce
+such technical details. Hence the producer had to explain the shivering
+people and their visible breathing by the harmless pretence that snow
+house interiors have to be colder than freezing to prevent the walls
+and roof from thawing.
+
+And so on for the whole picture.
+
+It was the very fact just stated and others like them which made my
+friends angry. That may have been because the realities of the picture
+were not so charitably interpreted to them as we have done above. It is
+possible to make the same facts look a good deal worse if you try.
+
+But no charity is needed, and only a proper understanding of the
+case, to reconcile any parent to a movie like _Nanook_ and to its
+presentation in the school. For the Eskimo, properly understood,
+is really the grown-up’s Santa Claus. We love the world of the
+imagination. Santa, fat, jolly and generous, portrays certain things
+and qualities as we would like them to be. But in the world of fancy
+we need contrasts; ugliness as well as beauty, wickedness as well as
+goodness. For the proper effect, we need not only Heaven, but Hell
+also. It may be pleasant to think how fortunate you will be if you go
+to Heaven, but that is nothing compared to the satisfaction you get
+from a reasonable prospect of being able to keep out of Hell.
+
+What we mean, then, is that the Eskimo is really a sort of reversed
+Santa; and that since Hell has begun to fade, the Arctic is our best
+substitute. For somehow grown people, even those who cannot visualize
+Hell, seem to be able to believe not only that Hudson Bay is in the
+Arctic but also that the Arctic averages thirty-five degrees below
+zero, as the picture says the Hudson Bay country does, and that it has
+all the other distressing attributes.
+
+In fact, the Arctic, peopled by Eskimos, is much more practical for
+our purposes than any inferno ever was when peopled by tormented
+spirits. No picture of spirits ever gets us like one of a wretched
+flesh-and-blood Eskimo who shivers from one year’s end to the other.
+Away up there, crouched in his foul, unventilated house, drinking oil,
+he has a power to make us remarkably contented with poor lodgings,
+a careless landlord, and meals at Childs’. In our little backyard
+with its one wretched tree we think with a pleasant compassion of
+the stunted little Arctic Mongol who has never seen even a bush. And
+then, to make his usefulness complete, we remember in summer when we
+are perishing with the heat that Nature has her compensations! She
+mercifully sees to it that her chilled children of the snows shall at
+least escape sunstroke and the after effects of too much Coca-Cola.
+
+And how could you get these and other similar benefits from the Eskimo
+and the Arctic if you did not encourage such pictures as _Nanook of the
+North_, and the books that correspond? And what better time than the
+impressionable years of childhood in which to acquire ideas that are
+going to have such high consolatory and moral values later?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you had arrived at the truth about Truth before
+you saw this treatise. If so, you will know, or you may have guessed
+by the trend of this inquiry, that neither side is going to have it
+all its own way. At first Truth (in the sense of facts) seemed to be
+getting the worst of it, being so frequently immaterial, inexpedient,
+even immoral, and nearly always in such bad taste. But the last
+argument from geography has shown the merits divided, with, generally
+speaking, the “practical” advantages in favor of the facts, but the
+idealistic ones against them. We are likely to feel here an immediate
+concern that in a crass and materialistic age the “practical” side
+will prevail. Not necessarily, for we may be able to show the higher
+practicality of idealism.
+
+We will admit now, partly to save the trouble of a formal canvass,
+that the rest of the argument from the schools will go, on the whole,
+against us; or, rather, against the conclusions deduced. The fact is,
+our position is not really at all what it has seemed to be. We keep
+another, and so far unhinted, solution in reserve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_A Glance over the Other Studies_: A critical study of psychological
+teaching would not go against the preceding conclusions from history,
+physiology, geography, and the educational movies, but in fact
+decidedly in their favor, more especially as the newer developments
+have tended so strongly toward an undesirable, and, in fact, degrading
+materialism. Psychoanalysis and especially behaviorism come near
+being a total loss from the point of view of character-building. But
+chemistry has scarcely any bad aspects unless you happen to be a
+pacifist, objecting to gunpowder and poison gas. But even so, what
+is that when measured against soap, a product of chemistry on which
+rests that perfect cleanliness revered today even beyond godliness?
+Physics, too, is on the right side, especially those theories of it
+that are neither so puzzling that the ordinary man can make nothing of
+them, or else are clear in statement but seemingly lead to impossible
+conclusions--which can, nevertheless, be experimentally verified. For
+it is so valuable to be able to lay one’s hands somewhere on views
+that seem either silly or impossible and can nevertheless be proved.
+Reasoning from them gives such force to analogous religious views
+which it does not happen to be possible to verify.
+
+Going ahead thus to canvass the rest of the grade school and high
+school sciences (for we have inadvertently progressed on our argument
+a little beyond the grades before we knew it) we shall come to the
+provisional conclusion that about forty per cent of the truths of
+education are good and should continue to be encouraged, about forty
+per cent are bad and should be ignored or suppressed, and the remaining
+twenty per cent are all right in themselves but too complicated and
+should be reserved for those who continue their education into the
+universities.
+
+Since our love and care prompt us to make the education of our children
+their best and most logical preparation for the life which we admire,
+it is not really necessary for our present examination to go beyond the
+common and high schools, for they are a sort of abstract or synopsis of
+the world as we both think it is and want it to be. Still it will do no
+harm to take another case or two.
+
+In politics, for instance, would you want the whole truth told about
+every candidate? You can test that out with a few simple reactions.
+When it was whispered around, for instance, that Harding was partly of
+negro descent, was it your first inclination to try to discover if the
+charge were true or not? On the contrary, you almost certainly took no
+thought of truth or falsehood, but were offended and angered by the bad
+taste and poor sportsmanship of whoever it was that started the yarn.
+In the case of Wilson, would you have favored it (even as a Republican)
+if there had been openly circulated some of the things which (as a
+Republican) you firmly believed about him? Bad sportsmanship again,
+and bad taste; you would not have done it and are glad no one did. Even
+in the case of so innocent a thing as President Theodore Roosevelt’s
+bad eye, said to have resulted from a boyish sparring bout, would
+you, as a Democrat this time, have favored any campaign use of it
+whatsoever? Once more, bad sportsmanship, bad taste, an emphatic no.
+
+In the August, 1927, number of _Harper’s Magazine_ Dr. Joseph Collins,
+famous as a physician in all literary circles, had an article on
+_Should Doctors Tell the Truth?_ It will not take a reading of that
+article, nor anything but a backward glance of the mind over our own
+experiences, to make us agree with him when he says: “The longer I
+practice medicine the more I am convinced that every physician should
+cultivate lying as a fine art.” Nor do we quarrel with the general
+conclusion that while a physician should tell the truth in certain
+cases, lying is usually the kinder, the safer, and therefore the better
+way.
+
+And what of the every day social relations that are more important
+than our business or professional contacts to most of us? Consider
+the one remark: “How well you are looking!” Can you imagine the sort
+of place this world would be if that little exclamatory sentence, or
+its equivalent, were not working overtime in every country? I know my
+own case. Ever since I can remember the declaration: “You are looking
+better than when I saw you last,” has cheered me greatly. It was not
+till a year or two ago that it first struck me that if this had been
+uniformly true all these years I ought to be looking remarkably well
+by now. But even so, I am still able to take a little comfort in this
+serial fiction.
+
+In view of the benevolent nature of the many sample reticences we
+have considered, all of which and many more like them are sure of a
+heavy vote in their favor could this nation, or any other civilized
+country, be polled on the subject--in view of this and much more that
+could be said in favor, is it not rather strange that most of us have
+allowed ourselves to fall victims to that cynical outlook on life which
+considers the deceiver, almost necessarily, wicked? You see how absurd
+that is, particularly if you think back over the cases of your own
+deception. As a child you may have deceived your parents occasionally
+to get out of a licking; but far oftener, I am sure, you did it to
+save their feelings, so they would not be offended or worried--on the
+well-known and sound principle that “what you don’t know don’t hurt
+you.” And, in later life, was it not usually the same? In school you
+bluffed partly for marks, of course, but very often, almost oftener
+than you realized, to save the feelings of a kindly teacher who trusted
+you and would have been so disappointed had he known. In married life,
+too, you deceive, oftener than not (I am sure the married will agree)
+to save the feelings of the other party. In fact, the conjugal relation
+calls for the highest known percentage of benevolent reticence. There
+are, for instance, certain situations that do not seem to irk the
+technically aggrieved parties, even when they know about them, so long
+as they are able to keep up the appearance of not knowing. And what
+is more, that public which always takes an interest in the marriage
+relations of other people, does not think it reprehensible for the
+technically aggrieved party to know about the dereliction and still do
+nothing, so long as he does not know that the public knows he knows.
+
+In fact, next in importance after the systematic deception of children
+by parents, comes the amiable deception of husband and wife by each
+other. That is not only in the nature of things, but proper according
+to the highest standards, since the family is the social unit and the
+home the strong citadel of our institutions.
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+We have now come to a point where we can survey the whole ground and
+draw reasonable conclusions from the facts set down. The irresistible
+main decision is against the rest of the philosophers and against all
+their philosophy. This is as it should be; for what would be the profit
+of a new philosophy if it failed to destroy the old? The philosophers
+may, of course, rise to counter-attack; but what do we reck of that?
+For we have the public with us, since we have come to a conclusion
+which justifies what they always have done, what they dearly love
+doing, and what they are at heart convinced is right--though they did
+not know it, any more than the perfect athlete knows how he balances
+when he walks.
+
+The conclusion is, then, that like religion, truth is neither good nor
+bad. There are good religions and bad religions, good truths and bad.
+
+Generally, though, or at least more often than not, truth is, in
+practice, bad--especially in the fields of æsthetics, ethics, morals,
+character-building, and business (which last we have not stopped to
+argue since it is so self-evident).
+
+We pointed out in the first section of this book the necessary
+imperfection of all the sciences except mathematics. Since nothing is
+true there by observation or by any evidence, but merely by agreement,
+it is obvious that truth in mathematics need never be bad--since we are
+not obliged to agree on it if we do not like it, and nothing is bad
+unless it is something we do not like.
+
+Though we have not covered the field exhaustively, we may agree that
+truth is good, usually, in engineering, chemistry, physics, and the
+allied sciences. It is good in astronomy and geology whenever it
+does not conflict with religion. It is good about as often as bad in
+sociology, psychology, physiology, biology, and several of the related
+sciences, for in these about half the time it appears to support
+present-day manners, current morals and the prevalent religion. In
+history, civics and many such fields it is always open to the gravest
+suspicion. In the training of very young children as a general thing it
+should be rather carefully avoided.
+
+
+THE NECESSARY REFORMS
+
+Having arrived at this conclusion, we must profit by it. At first
+sight it will seem that, since we have found the truth bad as often
+as not, the thing to do would be to proclaim our emancipation from
+its tyranny. But that would be forgetting the more important part of
+our findings--the benevolent nature and salutary effects of at least
+a good half of all the deception there is. How could you carry on a
+Santa Claus campaign, or remain happily married, if you said openly
+that you were going to deceive whenever you thought it best? It is
+only in prestidigitation, where “the quickness of the hand deceives
+the eye,” that you can safely tell people that you are going to fool
+them. In spiritualist seances, in praying for rain, or in forecasting
+a year without a summer, what effect do you suppose you would produce
+if you said to everybody that you were doing everything for its mere
+psychological effect on them?
+
+We can well take our pointer as to what to do from a famous general who
+has announced publicly that he is going to explain in a book just how
+he himself and his associates invented and circulated some of the most
+effective (or outrageous) lies of the Great War. In connection with
+this announcement he has had two things to explain, and he has made an
+explanation that is not only satisfactory in his case but admirably
+suited to broader uses.
+
+Asked how he could, without shame, admit such lies as he proposed to
+admit, he replied in substance that if you are justified in using
+shrapnel, poison gas, torpedoes from submarines and bombs from
+airships, you are justified in using any means at all. The main concern
+is to make the nation at home and the soldiers in the field a unit
+for the war, and you cannot do that unless you at least convince them
+that there is good reason to fight. The more convinced they are the
+better they will fight, and what propaganda does is to make them more
+convinced. This argument is so familiar that it deserves no further
+amplification.
+
+The General’s second defense was against the accusation that he had
+said himself that he expected another war within twenty-five years from
+the last, and that such a war could not be won without propaganda. How,
+then, did he justify himself in giving away his country’s secrets of
+just how its citizens were fooled in the last war? His reply was that
+the remedy would be very simple. All you had to do was to say: “Yes,
+quite right; we fooled you in the last war. But times have changed and
+that sort of thing would not work now. Besides, we would not fool you
+even if it served our ends, we have become so honorable.” Having said
+this, you could go ahead and fool them not only with the old methods
+but, in some cases, with the very same tale. All you will have to do in
+the last case is to explain: “The story which we invented in the last
+war must have given the enemy the idea, for now they are actually doing
+what we then accused them of.”
+
+We may well adapt the General’s ideas to a wider field. The leaders of
+thought among us must continue to proclaim their devotion to Truth, in
+order that they may be able to get people to believe and act upon those
+things that are for the general welfare.
+
+The conclusions and recommendations at which we have arrived will
+receive informal support from most thoughtful and all public-spirited
+persons. But will that be enough, especially in view of the solid front
+presented by the old-school philosophers, who still hold that the Good
+is the same as the True, and that the True is whatever corresponds to
+facts? It should be enough, for we have an initial advantage in the
+cogency and popular appeal of our reasoning. By considering the very
+same facts as the old philosophers, but merely selecting them more
+judiciously and approaching them from the opposite, or scientific,
+angle (of reasoning from facts to principles), we have discovered (what
+has long been instinctively felt) that many facts are bad; and have
+demonstrated that the Good cannot be synonymous with every kind of
+fact, for that would make good synonymous with bad, which is nonsense.
+The Good, we have thus demonstrated, has no necessary relation to facts
+at all, but is ultimately determined by the sound instincts of the
+majority.
+
+The ancients, it seems, anticipated our findings in a measure; but that
+is natural, and strengthens our position, for we are only trying to
+go back to the first principles of Nature, and they understood Nature
+better than we, being closer to her and yielding a freer rein to their
+instincts. They expressed their conclusion in the saying that “The
+voice of the people is the voice of God.” The triumph of the same idea
+was poetically forecast by Tennyson when he spoke of an epoch in which
+“The common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe.”
+
+Can we secure the triumph which Tennyson foresaw, the need of which we
+have shown, without a special organization to attain it? Pondering the
+question, it does not seem that we need any wholly new organization,
+but rather a federation of those existing agencies that believe in
+acting on our principle--the principle of the sound common sense of
+the majority. Consider what we have to start with: The Fundamentalists
+would take care of religion, the American Legion and the Liberty
+League would see to patriotism and would safeguard the status quo,
+the Anti-Saloon League, the W.C.T.U., and similar organizations would
+look after the prohibition of alcoholics (and other prohibitions, as
+needed); the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Watch and Ward
+Society, and their kind, would protect our literary and other morals.
+And so on through the list.
+
+Of course it will never do for the benevolent organizations to
+continue acting separately, each for its own end. They must unite.
+The Fundamentalists must agree to support the Legion and League on
+patriotism, and they must return the favor by a united Anti-Darwinism.
+All of them must get behind the next Clean Books Bill, and so on till
+every organization to promote the common good has the support of every
+other.
+
+Such union will be strength, but there will be more power in reserve
+that may be called on when needed. Suppose, for instance, that the
+schools are threatened. The toy makers, the printers of fairy tales,
+and the educational movie people will see to it that Noah and his Ark
+remain in our religion, Jack and the Beanstalk in our folklore, and
+the permanently frozen Arctic in our geographies. The politicians
+will arrange that the histories shall continue to be reticent and the
+soapmakers will look out that the physiology of the skin does not get
+too well understood. Back of all such individuals, corporations, or
+groups, will be the sound morality and the good taste of the community,
+taking care that mere facts shall not lead us too far astray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ARE EXPLORERS TO JOIN THE DODO?
+
+
+There are few who will not admit that exploration is a Good Thing (we
+do not here deal with those who question its economic importance, and
+so on). In this chapter we offer proofs that exploration can remain
+durable after the last island has been discovered.
+
+With so much recent flying over seas previously unknown, and no land
+discovered on any of the flights, the commentators are beginning
+to worry about the end of the romantic Age of Exploration, and the
+possible extinction of the Columbus family. Are there to be no more
+explorers, they ask, or, at least, no more Great Explorers?
+
+Waiving the question of whether it matters much if the tribe of
+Columbuses does perish, we have encouragement, of a sort, in a
+study of the inside history of exploration, by which we see that
+nearly all the most famous explorers came into their greatest fame
+through misunderstanding, or through the planned or accidental
+fruits of publicity. That is good news for those who want us to
+have Great Explorers in future. For there is always room for more
+misunderstandings, and surely the arts of publicity are not on the
+wane. The Columbuses should, therefore, be able to flourish among us
+yet awhile. Their last fade-out will come only when mankind ceases to
+delight in being humbugged.
+
+For those who want new Columbuses hereafter, there is nothing more
+encouraging than the story of Christopher Columbus himself. If there
+were any such thing as an abstract greatness in discovery, then surely
+_the_ discoverer of America would not have been Christopher, but the
+first human being who stepped ashore on the continent, or who first
+saw it from a distance (I rule out of court the beasts that were ahead
+of the humans, since the institution of fame has never been developed
+among them).
+
+This first human discoverer came thousands of years ago, and may have
+been a Negrito or some sort of Negroid person. He may have resembled
+a kind of Chinaman, or perhaps he was a good deal like some modern
+Europeans. (In that case the Nordics would assume, _a priori_, that he
+must have been a Nordic, or at least an Asiatic proto-Nordic, in whom
+their coming greatness was already foreshadowed.) One more assumption
+is that the discovery probably took place across Bering Straits or
+along the Aleutian chain, though some contend that it may have been
+from island to island across the South Pacific.
+
+But we are really perverting the meaning of “discoverer” by this talk
+of Negro or Mongol, for by immemorial practice the use of that word
+is confined to Europeans. No place is discovered until some European
+finds it. It might be safer to narrow down still farther the meaning
+of “discoverer,” for there are books claiming that a kind of European
+(in the sense of coming from Europe) really found North America in
+very ancient prehistoric times. These would not have been adequate
+discoverers, for they probably resembled Eskimos, and no one would
+suggest that a place was discovered when the first Eskimo found
+it--even if he came from Europe.
+
+We do not arrive at a proper competition in claims of discovery until
+we begin to discuss whether the Irish found America. They have enough
+political and other prominence--in fact, they are the next most
+fashionable whites after the Nordics. Still, merely being Irish is not
+enough, for what we really mean by a Great Discoverer is a European
+who was hurrahed while living or at least haloed reasonably soon after
+he died. The Irish discoverer, if there was one, does not meet these
+requirements. The Irish themselves never tried to make much of him
+until recently, when they became ambitious for setting up a rival
+to Columbus. Greatness does not sit very securely on even the most
+deserving dead man unless, as said, he develops a cult soon after his
+real or alleged deeds.
+
+After the Irish, we come to more formidable discoverers, for we know
+their names and they have the advantage of being Nordic--Gunnbjorn,
+who first of known Europeans sighted the American island of Greenland,
+probably around the year 900; Eric the Red, who colonized Greenland
+following 982; and his son Leif the Lucky, who visited the American
+mainland in A.D. 1000. There are no scholars and few intelligent laymen
+who dispute the records of Eric and his son Leif, but still most of
+them agree that they were not the real discoverers of America, even
+though the Papacy followed soon and effectively in their footsteps
+by establishing churches in Greenland about 1050, maintaining them
+for 400 years, and encouraging the knowledge of the Western World to
+spread throughout Europe by way of the learning that bound together the
+medieval monasteries.
+
+Christopher Columbus is _the_ discoverer of America chiefly because he
+and what he was supposed to have done got the right advance publicity.
+Marco Polo and others had reminded Europe afresh of the riches of
+the East. Desert raiders, fairly well press-agented for those days,
+were making more dangerous the overland routes which had always been
+difficult. Prince Henry the Navigator and his group had finally worked
+out an eastward seaway by rounding South Africa, but the way was stormy
+and tedious. Everybody wanted an easy and cheap eastward route. For
+centuries many had been trying and the public interest was constantly
+getting more and more inflamed.
+
+Then, at the psychological moment, Columbus sailed westward for
+the East, with all his other publicity advantages strengthened by
+fashionable royal backing. He struck land, and at first everybody
+thought he had discovered a short route to the wealth of the Indies.
+A little later doubts arose, about which people argued violently, and
+the arguing was quite as good for advertising as the previous harmony
+of acclaim. Before the legend died that Columbus had found Asia, other
+legends about gold and jewels and fountains of youth had grown up to
+take its place. There never was a let-down of publicity until colonies
+developed, and America became wealthy in her own right.
+
+As a result of the centuries of advertising that thus went before the
+rise of historical scholarship, it is hopeless now to try to disturb
+the preeminence of Columbus by publishing the truth about all the
+discoverers who preceded him. Folklore has gathered about him until he
+is almost as safe in his historical shrine as if he had never existed,
+like some god or demigod. When a well-known character is securely
+mythical he has such permanence as our world can give. Hercules is more
+famous now and his achievements are more widely known than ever they
+were in the days when a handful of Greeks believed in him. Little Red
+Riding Hood is better known than Queen Elizabeth, more safely immortal
+than Mary Baker G. Eddy. If fame depends on any achievement at all, it
+depends only on publicity achievement.
+
+Greatness in the field of discovery can be acquired today or tomorrow
+by the same publicity methods that worked for Columbus. That such
+modern greatness happens to have been secured most often by men who
+deserved well and worked honestly, is really beside the point. For
+others who deserved as well and worked as honestly are now forgotten,
+or else were never known to the public at all.
+
+The most striking case in point is that of Admiral Peary. For
+integrity, ability, courage, persistence, and many other admirable
+qualities, he had few equals. He discovered or elucidated several laws
+of nature that are of permanent value to science, and he widened the
+horizon of geography. Theories of the wind circulation of the globe,
+for instance, hinge in considerable part on Peary’s work in Greenland.
+Now that we are flying, and especially when we begin to fly more with
+dirigibles, to understand the winds has become crucially important.
+Peary is a world benefactor in helping us to that understanding, but
+it is reasonably certain that his fame will not thereby be appreciably
+increased. Geographers are nearly unanimous in holding that his
+biggest achievement was determining that Greenland is an island. Also,
+his demonstration that the north end of Greenland, now called Peary
+Land, is free of snow in summer, and that it supports plant and animal
+life the year round, was a death blow to the old theory that if lands
+were only far enough north they would be sure to be covered with ice.
+But in spite of all these things, Peary’s greatness has been made to
+depend almost solely on his having been first to reach the North Pole.
+With all his real worth, Peary would not have become an immortal had
+the North Pole not been a well-advertised place. He rode in on its
+publicity.
+
+A side issue is that the public will not usually consider a man great
+unless he has done something which it can visualize. Children play with
+tops and we have all seen vehicles running on wheels, so we think we
+know what is meant by the axis of the earth. We translate axis into
+axle, visualize a top or a wheel, and imagine that we understand about
+the North Pole. It is one end of the axle on which the earth spins
+like a top or wheel. Accordingly, we think we can understand and value
+properly the achievement of the man who first got there.
+
+But what most people knew about the North Pole until recently was an
+understanding as far from reality as it was clear. By an artificially
+simplified theory of the nature of the earth, they had arrived at the
+conclusion that this pole had many remarkable qualities beside being
+the end of the axle of the earth. It was discussed as if it were the
+coldest place on earth, the center from which the cold winds were
+distributed, the hardest place to reach, and the one toward which the
+magnetic needle pointed. It was supposed to be at least five poles in
+one--Cold Pole, Wind Pole, Pole of Inaccessibility, Magnetic Pole, and
+North Pole. We now know that the coldest place is more than a thousand
+miles from it, the wind center nearly a thousand miles, the hardest
+point to reach about four hundred miles away, and that the magnetic
+needle points toward a district in Canada that is much closer to the
+nearest railway station than it is to the North Pole.
+
+However, during the long time when the North Pole was still supposed
+to possess the qualities of all the other poles, it became so famous
+and acquired such a hold on the public imagination that if you were
+now, by knowledge and argument, to strip away from it one by one
+all of its supposed attributes of greatness you would not detract
+appreciably from its fame--just as Pike’s Peak remains the most famous
+mountain in Colorado although more than twenty peaks in that state
+alone are higher--just as Hercules will always be more famous than any
+real strong man--just as Columbus will remain the great discoverer of
+America no matter how many earlier discoverers history may soundly
+establish.
+
+Peary seems to have agreed with Cicero that to be ambitious for the
+immortality of your name is among the greatest of human virtues.
+Furthermore, he wanted the glory for his associates and for the flag
+of his country. So he went to the North Pole and became immortal. It
+was not the most difficult of his achievements nor the most important
+scientifically. But it had the necessary advance publicity, and the
+proper follow-up.
+
+In fact, the North Pole has a superfluity of popular reputation,
+enough to make many explorers famous. Byrd will probably become
+immortal for having been the first to fly there, and Amundsen for
+having been the first to fly there in a dirigible. No motor vehicle
+yet devised is likely to travel effectively over the floating ice
+north of Spitsbergen, but if such is built it is likely to make its
+driver semi-immortal for having been the first to visit the North Pole
+by automobile. This Pole is doubtless reachable by submarine, and the
+first man who goes there that way will become still another fixture in
+history. And so on for several firsts by new methods.
+
+These will all be international immortalities. National immortalities
+will fall to the first Frenchman, the first Japanese, the first Siamese.
+
+If you want to find out how much glory a man gets for doing a hard
+thing that is little advertised, just check up on the credit Amundsen
+received for flying over the Pole of Inaccessibility. That pole is at
+least as much harder to reach than the North Pole as the top of Mount
+Everest is harder than the highest point yet climbed. But, you will
+discover, the applause of the world for Amundsen’s Inaccessibility
+Pole achievement was only a faint echo of what he received a few hours
+earlier for the North Pole. Although he was the first man to do the
+most difficult thing possible on our earth from the point of view of
+exploration, he got out of it far less than for being the third man to
+visit an easier place that was better advertised.
+
+True enough, this North Pole flying immortality does not depend
+entirely upon the publicity of the North Pole. Some of it rests in
+considerable part on the publicity value of the airplane. Unless
+it be swimming,[1] nothing has a better press now. Just imagine the
+vaudeville salary of the first man to swim to the North Pole!
+
+Close beside the North Pole and the airplane in publicity value is
+femininity, as used recently, for instance, in the Channel swims. Thus
+we may one day have immortality for the first woman who goes to the
+North Pole, then for the first mother of a family, and eventually, when
+we get a little more advanced, for the first divorcee. And think of the
+first visit to the North Pole by Siamese Twins! (A later set of them
+could be the first to marry there, perhaps in an airplane.)
+
+If and when the public gets fed up on the North Pole we could no doubt,
+by suitable publicity, convince them that the Pole of Inaccessibility
+is really more interesting because more difficult. Hereupon vast glory
+will come to the first man to fly there in an airplane, to the first to
+walk there, the first to motor there, and so on. Then would come the
+first debutante to go there, the first mother of a family, and so on,
+with no limit other than that set by the arts of publicity.
+
+A further encouraging thing about geographic discovery is that people
+are forgetful of details, although they remember generalities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After more than three hundred years of heralded search, the Northwest
+Passage has become permanently famous. Then it was discovered by Sir
+John Franklin in 1846, but nobody knew about that and gold medals were
+awarded to Sir Robert McClure for discovering it in 1853. The world
+resounded with McClure’s glory for a while.
+
+The great public had forgotten about even McClure, but still remembered
+that there had been a search for a passage, when, in 1903, Amundsen
+sailed west from Norway. Three years later, when the job was done,
+some newspaper man misunderstood Amundsen’s announcement that he had
+navigated the Northwest Passage and put a story on the wires that he
+had discovered it. The public hurrahed for the discovery even louder
+than they had done in the case of McClure half a century before, and
+most people think even now that Amundsen discovered the Northwest
+Passage. Why not, if Columbus discovered America?
+
+That it is not the first discovery, but rather the best advertised
+discovery that counts, was proved to me from my own career. For, in so
+far as I am known at all, I am generally known as the discoverer of the
+“Blond” Eskimos. But the first traveler to report a strangely blond
+people in the Arctic was not I, but Nicholas Tunes 256 years ahead of
+me--in 1656. This seems to have been in Baffin Island, far from my
+locality. But in my own district, without attracting much attention,
+European-like Eskimos had been reported in the following order: by Sir
+John Franklin in 1824, by Dease and Simpson in 1837, by Captain Charles
+Klinkenberg in 1906, by Captain William Mogg in 1908, and lastly by me
+in 1911. The report that created a furore was my second, given out in
+1912.
+
+That none of these reports about a European-like people in the Arctic
+produced an appreciable stir in the world was apparently either because
+the public did not know of the possible romance behind them, or else
+failed to make the proper connection. They certainly did know of the
+romance in 1911, but they failed to see its relation to my report, even
+though it was published in the London _Times_, a paper that commands
+much attention. But in 1912 the same report was dressed in newspaper
+extravagance and joined up by the reporter with the tragic drama of
+the colony of 5000 Europeans who disappeared from Greenland in the
+Middle Ages. There was better reason for connecting the report of Tunes
+with the lost colony than with mine, and at least a reason equal with
+mine of 1912, for connecting those of Franklin, Simpson, Klinkenberg
+and Mogg, and my own report of 1911, but it simply was not done. The
+achievement of making the same discovery was presumably a little less
+each time it was made, yet more glory resulted from the last one than
+from all the others put together--because the right publicity note was
+struck.
+
+The connection once made with a topic of high publicity value
+(involving also a misunderstanding similar to the supposition that
+Amundsen had discovered the Northwest Passage), the “Blond” Eskimo
+story swept the world and has not yet been forgotten after fifteen
+years--in fact, shows no signs of fading.[2]
+
+In view of how often America, the Northwest Passage, and the “Blond”
+Eskimos were discovered before the hero came along who got the maximum
+publicity out of each, we have little reason to be depressed, thinking
+that the glamor of discovery is about to fade. When the first man has
+climbed Mount Everest, the first woman can do it, and then the first
+mother of a family; when the first airplane has flown over Everest,
+there is still room for the first dirigible. You can go to Northwest
+Australia this year and visit a black family who have never seen a
+white man; next year you can capitalize the same family by taking a
+woman to see them, for they will never before have seen a white woman.
+Then will come the turn of the first mother of a family, who really
+should take one of her children with her. There would be a tremendous
+thrill in the cannibalism angle. To make the front pages it would not
+be necessary to have the baby actually cooked and eaten.
+
+It may seem for the moment absurd that we shall ever be as excited
+again as we were recently over the North Pole, the Northwest Passage,
+or the “Blond” Eskimos. But the wisest guessers frequently guess wrong,
+and especially about news. During the last several years I have read
+many estimates of the journalists of New York; none of them have failed
+to put Mr. Carr Van Anda high as a judge of news, and most of them have
+put him at the very top. Yet, in 1912, Mr. Van Anda said to me that,
+with the North Pole found and the Cook-Peary controversy settled, the
+Arctic would never again occupy much space on the front pages of the
+New York papers. But in 1926 he either himself directed or was present
+while someone else directed that the entire front page of the New York
+_Times_, along with several of the inside pages, should be given over
+to the North Pole, first for the second party to visit it and a few
+days later for its third visitors.
+
+I doubt if Mr. Van Anda would prophesy as confidently today as he did
+in 1912 that twenty years from now the North Pole will occupy little
+space on the front page. And who knows but the public may forget
+Amundsen as they did McClure, so that a new discoverer of the Northwest
+Passage may ride in on a new wave of hurrahs? Some explorer with a
+good press may be able to get the same result sooner by flying the
+Passage, or swimming it. A new man may in time get new renown out of
+my “Blond” Eskimos as I did out of Franklin’s. The “Tunnit” remains of
+Labrador were discovered for perhaps the tenth time in 1926, and the
+tenth discovery (if it wasn’t the twentieth) won more glory than any
+preceding it. Judging from past records, those “Tunnit ruins” could be
+found again with even greater _kudos_ about 1946. And so on for many
+thrilling discoveries.
+
+It is, then, the best of discovery methods to find a thing over
+again after just enough years so that the public has nearly, but not
+quite, forgotten. Next best, as a perpetual device, is to search
+again and again for a thing never found. The interest created is not
+so intense as in the case of a repeated discovery, but there is the
+compensating advantage that you can search perhaps three or four times
+more often--you get passable results say once every five years for
+the repeated search method; effective rediscoveries need at least
+twenty-year gaps.
+
+One of the best examples of perpetual search and resulting publicity is
+the quest for an Arctic continent.
+
+Through various theorizing it had been pretty well established a
+century back that a great land mass spread across the northern polar
+sea. It was the Arctic Continent or Polar Continent. The corner towards
+Europe and America had been found and was called Greenland. The corner
+towards Asia had been seen by natives looking north from northeastern
+Siberia but had as yet no well recognized name.
+
+Just for walking to the North Pole it seemed best to climb upon the
+continent at the Greenland corner. But sailing might be easier, and
+there was known to be a lot of water north of Alaska. So it appeared
+logical to sail up through Bering Straits, coast along the east side
+of the land seen by the Chukchis. This would presumably take you into
+a deep bay. When you got to the head of it you would just anchor your
+ship in some harbor and walk the rest of the way to the Pole.
+
+Meantime the land seen by the Chukchis had also been seen by the
+British--by Kellett in the ship _Herald_, so that an island was named
+after the ship and a greater land seen to the northwest after the
+captain. A modicum of fame resulted from this discovery.
+
+The first attempt to pick up the east coast of Kellett Land and sail
+north into the polar bay was by the American De Long in 1879-81.
+Instead of sailing much, however, he was caught among eddying floes
+that with the autumn frost solidified around his ship and carried him
+drifting to the northwest across a corner of the theoretical continent,
+amputating Kellett Land--the piece now called Wrangel Island. The
+expedition made notable discoveries and was successful in adding to our
+knowledge as well as to the record of well-conducted adventures, but it
+ended in personal tragedy for De Long and a third of his men. Some of
+the interest which the world gave De Long was through the bearing of
+his work on the discovery of the Arctic Continent.
+
+A series of notable attempts to walk over Greenland to the North
+Pole was made by Admiral Peary. The result was one of the greatest
+geographic achievements of the last hundred years, the determination
+that Greenland does not run to the Pole, but is an island. De Long
+had made a small amputation; Peary now made a large one. The Arctic
+Continent had contributed materially to his fame.
+
+The work of many expeditions to the north of central and western
+Asia, notably the voyage of Nansen, cut farther into the theoretical
+continent and the chance became small it could contain the North Pole.
+In 1909 Peary marched from Ellesmere Island to the Pole, the whole
+distance over floating ice, and took a sounding at the Pole showing
+the water two miles deep. No shore of the dwindling continent was
+therefore likely to be very near the Pole. Peary thought, however, that
+he had seen land to the northwest of the north tip of Heiberg Island,
+which might, of course, be a foreland on the continent. This was named
+Crocker Land.
+
+So the two greatest explorers of their time, Nansen and Peary, had
+profited materially in popular acclaim and in more enduring reputation
+through the bearing of their work on the Arctic land mass concept.
+
+The interest in the elusive polar land had grown enough by 1905 that
+an Englishman, Harrison, organized an expedition the chief purpose of
+which was to search for the continent to the north of Alaska. He might
+have done something, for he was a good man himself and had with him one
+of the finest northern travelers, Hubert Darrell, whose quality can be
+measured from Hanbury’s book, _Sport and Travel in the Northland of
+Canada_, London and New York, 1904, one of the great travel stories,
+an account of an expedition shared in by Darrell. But there was now a
+whaling fleet at Herschel Island. Whalers and Eskimos alike were sure
+that anyone was crazy who tried to travel afoot over the sea ice to the
+northwest, and, strangely, were apparently able to convince Darrell.
+Harrison stuck to his ideas but could get no one to go with him.
+Therefore, his book, _In Search of a Polar Continent_, London, 1908,
+has in a way a deceptive title--the search was never started. But it
+had a good name. The Polar Continent, through being much sought after
+and never found, had become a thing to conjure with.
+
+There was a receptive popular audience when there appeared in
+Washington a scientific study by R. A. Harris which, in the opinion
+of the author and of many others, came near proving that there was
+a continent. The land’s dimensions and the situation of its corners
+were pretty well determined by deductions from what he thought to be
+reliable tidal observations taken at a few northerly points.
+
+Between wish thinking and mathematics the continent grew substantial
+and for the first time had a name, Harris Land. The other names had
+been for just corners--Greenland, Kellett, Crocker; this was a name for
+the whole land, now shrunken but still spoken of as a continent. In
+size it still more or less deserved the name.
+
+Our 1913-18 expedition had somewhat better luck than Harrison’s. The
+whalers and Eskimos were not able to talk us into believing that we
+could not travel over the sea ice far from land and live by hunting.
+Between sledge journeys and the drift of one of our ships (the
+_Karluk_, Captain Robert A. Bartlett master), we made further inroads
+upon the continent. More serious, we took soundings of 1386 meters
+without bottom near some of the farthest points we reached. However, to
+the northwest of the Ringnes Islands where, on one occasion, we were
+forced to turn back less than 100 miles from shore the soundings were
+only around 500 meters, and there seemed possibility of land.
+
+Between driving Harris Land from some of its outposts north of Alaska
+and finding what might be signs of it northwest of the Ringnes
+Islands--between these achievements our expedition got a whole lot of
+_kudos_ out of the Arctic Continent.
+
+A year after we started our work in the sea north of Alaska, Donald
+MacMillan attacked the problem and sought the theoretical continent
+under the name of Crocker Land. He started out from Cape Thomas
+Hubbard, Heiberg Island, whence it had been seen and tentatively
+located by Peary. MacMillan returned without seeing land but there
+was no assurance that it might not be hidden a little way beyond,
+for the expedition had taken no deep soundings near its farthest. It
+was, therefore, possible to speculate after the return that perhaps
+the farthest point might have been over very shallow water, the land
+therefore possibly only a bit farther on, concealed by clouds.
+
+So between our shallow soundings, MacMillan’s absence of them, and
+Peary’s report that land had been seen, there was an interest growing
+keener with the number of searchers and the publicity of each.
+
+The interest remained keen and there was much talk of the undiscovered
+continent when Amundsen, Ellsworth and Nobile flew in 1926 from
+Spitsbergen to Point Barrow by way of the North Pole. They saw no land
+and would have divided the theoretical continent into approximate
+halves but for the saving report that for portions of the journey
+between Peary’s farthest (the North Pole) and Alaska the weather had
+been so thick that they had not been able to see what lay beneath.
+This, said the commentators, still left a chance that they crossed
+fairly wide stretches of low snow-covered land. The continent still
+lived.
+
+In 1927 Wilkins and Eielson flew 550 miles northwest from Point
+Barrow and took at their farthest point the deepest sounding ever
+recorded in the polar sea, 5440 meters. The flight itself removed land
+possibilities through a wide space. The sounding was a cause of further
+discouragement to the geographers, but the public didn’t mind. So far
+as they were concerned the Continent was merely elusive, rather clever
+at hiding itself.
+
+In 1928 Wilkins and Eielson crossed from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen.
+They went some 200 or 300 miles out of their way to avoid the North
+Pole, for three assigned reasons--they wanted to avoid the sections
+which had been visited by previous explorers; they did not want to
+be suspected of a play to that gallery which was still interested in
+the North Pole; and they wanted to cross the area within which, for
+reasons we have just given in dealing with the Peary, Stefansson and
+MacMillan expeditions, there seemed the best chance of finding land.
+The newspaper files show there was a great deal of speculation as to
+whether they might find the Arctic Continent. There was also talk of
+checking up on the observations of Dr. Cook who had reported one or
+more lands to the west of the course he described himself as having
+followed back from the North Pole in 1908.
+
+Wilkins took a course which was for a time approximately halfway
+between the areas explored by our 1913-18 expedition and those seen
+by Amundsen. Then he swung toward skirting the district explored by
+MacMillan, and so on to Spitsbergen, without seeing land. However,
+he was forced to admit that for portions of the flight they, like
+Amundsen, had been unable to see what lay beneath. The speculators said
+there still remained the possibility of the Arctic Continent. There
+was talk that somebody really must go and settle the question of the
+Continent.
+
+Between what is reasonably inferred from the soundings and from the
+visual report of travelers there is, however, small chance now for an
+undiscovered land in the Arctic bigger than Cuba. Islands from that
+size down are possible, though not probable. But the interest in what
+is now beginning to be called the lost continent still continues. There
+will probably be plenty of talk about it next time anybody flies.
+Anticipating discussions have already speculated on the chance that the
+next flyer may discover “a lost continent the size of Cuba.”
+
+As we admitted in the beginning, there have been in the search for the
+continent no such storms of excitement as there were from at least two
+of the discoveries of the Northwest Passage, after McClure’s report
+(third or fourth discovery)[3] in 1854, and Amundsen’s (fourth or
+fifth) in 1906. But on the whole the theoretical continent has given a
+pretty consistent performance for a hundred years.
+
+I have myself been in parties, of three in one case and of four in
+another, that discovered large islands, rich with vegetation, birds
+and animals, which had never been seen before by human eyes, press
+agented or otherwise exploited. We were thrilled, of course. It was
+one of the great experiences of our lives. But to judge by outward
+appearances, there are friends of mine who have been even more thrilled
+by “discovering” hamlets in Brittany that were “absolutely unknown to
+Americans.” And I think they really had at least an equal right with
+us to the thrill, for I imagine that discovering polar countries never
+seen by human eyes is today easier than the discovery of a Brittany
+village previously never seen by Americans.
+
+Adventure, in the last analysis, is measured by the thrill it gives
+to the discoverer, and later to those who hear about it. You can
+predispose the world to any desired thrill by suitable advance
+publicity. A deliberate campaign would be too long and expensive, so
+you should choose for discovery something well advertised already, as,
+for instance, the word and idea “ray.” We have long had the rays of the
+sun, and they have been very popular. Then there are the X-rays, radium
+rays, and many others, until the world is now ready to be thrilled by
+anything that is called a ray. It is also important to have a good
+adjective for the ray you are going to promote. “Cosmic ray” is the
+best to date--see what it has done for Millikan. If you can find a name
+a little better than cosmic, people will go daffy over the discovery
+of your ray. (Death rays are perennially successful.)
+
+Thus we arrive at a heartening conclusion: the tribe of Great
+Discoverers will not become extinct until the Age of Advertising has
+passed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TRAVELERS’ TALES
+
+
+What we now call a fish story the Elizabethans spoke of as a traveler’s
+tale. I shall discuss whether there are many fish stories among the
+travelers’ tales of today, whether they have an important effect on the
+sciences which gather their data in part from the reports of explorers,
+and whether we ought to do anything about it. These questions are more
+important in our time than in Elizabeth’s, for the explorers were mere
+travelers then. Now they all claim to be scientists or at least to be
+the leaders of scientific expeditions.
+
+I address you both as an expert and as Exhibit A. For my own
+expeditions have been insistently, if not so very effectively,
+publicized as scientific; and I am one of the travelers who, by my own
+contention and the claims of my friends and backers, should be taken as
+a scientific explorer.
+
+I begin, then, by discussing the extent to which my own books and other
+protestations are to be taken seriously.
+
+In a way this exposition is the direct result of a talk which I gave
+in 1907-8 before the Century Association of New York City. It is my
+necessary introduction to repeat in condensed form what I said there
+and to tell you what the Centurions thought about it.
+
+So far as I remember, I began by explaining to the Century Association
+that I was an exceptionally reliable witness, and particularly so
+with regard to the Arctic. My father and mother had both been born on
+the north coast of Iceland on the very edge of the polar circle, and
+that furnished me with a useful background. I myself had been born in
+Manitoba where winter temperatures run down to 55° F. below zero, which
+is about as low as they get on the north coast of Canada--as a matter
+of fact lower than any official record, for the lowest of these to date
+is -52°. I had read the northern literature from infancy and had always
+been so soaked in it that my first published article labeled scientific
+(apart from a brief linguistic study) was “The Icelandic Colony in
+Greenland,” _American Anthropologist_, April-June, 1906. In North
+Dakota I had seen blizzards as bad as any I had experienced on my first
+Arctic expedition, which I was then describing to the Century, and the
+prairies of my childhood Dakota, when snow-covered in winter or green
+in summer, were much like the Eskimo prairies of northern Canada, so
+that I had been quite at home in the Arctic from the first, gathering
+information more reliable than if I had been a nervous visitor who was
+frightened by conditions different from those of his childhood--as
+might easily be the case with, say, a Frenchman.
+
+Such preliminaries being disposed of, I launched into what I still
+believe was to the Century Association a convincing first-hand picture
+of how things are with the Eskimos of the Mackenzie River.
+
+I told how I was taken into an Eskimo home where 22 people and myself
+lived in one room through the middle of the winter and where my life
+with the people was intimate throughout the year. I enjoyed being there
+and they apparently enjoyed having me with them. I entered both into
+their routine and into the spirit of their beliefs, so that they began
+to discuss things with me or in my presence quite as freely as if no
+stranger had been near. In fact, no stranger was near--I had become as
+one of them.
+
+On the basis of this I regaled the Century with many amusing and
+allegedly important contributions to the ethnology of the Mackenzie
+Eskimos. I shall here review only one topic.
+
+One of the Eskimos, Memoranna, wore an eagle feather on the left
+shoulder of his reindeer-skin coat. I asked him once why he did this
+and he said there were two reasons:
+
+In Memoranna’s childhood the people of his native village had been more
+numerous than now; and, besides, there were many visitors. Athletic
+games were common and the people took off their coats perhaps when
+wrestling or running foot races, throwing them in a pile. Every coat
+was of deerskin and most of them had the same trimmings, but they
+were not all of the same size or workmanship and some were newer than
+others. It was, then, important that when the games were over each man
+should be able to find his own coat. “Therefore we each had a mark on
+our coats. One man would have a weasel tail in the middle of his back,
+another perhaps a strip of wolf skin on his sleeve. I had an eagle
+feather on my left shoulder.”
+
+The second reason for these marks was that when everyone was dressed
+alike and when there were hundreds together you could not recognize a
+man unless you saw his face. But with the eagle feather on the shoulder
+of the coat anybody could tell that the wearer was Memoranna.
+
+The chief reason why I repeat all this is that at the end of my talk
+Dr. Franklin H. Giddings, Professor of the History of Civilization at
+Columbia University, a foremost figure in American sociology, came
+to me. He had been making a study of property marks, he had been
+much interested in this particular contribution of mine, and he was
+satisfied of its accuracy not only because of my careful methods of
+observation and my intimate life with the people but also because it
+fitted in with his studies of the origin and development of property
+marks among primitive people.
+
+This address of mine before the Century was based on a year with the
+Eskimos of the Mackenzie River. I returned north in six months and
+spent four years more, making five all together. In the last of those
+years I finally acquired such a control over the language that I could
+speak with the people almost as freely as they spoke with each other.
+Then at last I learned that the eagle feather was a talisman, with no
+intentional property mark connection.
+
+Some weeks after I learned this I met Memoranna and asked him why he
+had deceived me four years ago. He replied in substance that he had
+been almost brought up as a cabin boy on whaling ships and had besides
+associated with missionaries, so that he knew the white man’s point
+of view. If an Eskimo told his real beliefs, a sailor would call him
+a damn fool and a missionary would explain how wrong and wicked they
+were. Through long experience he had learned the kind of explanation
+a white man likes; giving that kind saved a lot of trouble. He had not
+meant specially to deceive me; he was merely treating me as just one
+more white man.
+
+There are within the social sciences few more broad-minded or with
+a keener sense of humor than Professor Giddings. Still, it is my
+impression that he felt just a little bit more enlightened and pleased
+when he heard the original incorrect property mark explanation of
+the eagle feather, which agreed with his own theories, than he did
+when later I told him the final and as I still believe correct
+explanation--which did not fit into his sociology quite so neatly.
+
+If this property mark tale were an isolated case it would not be
+worth repeating, but it is typical of my work. The impressions and
+conclusions of my first year in the Arctic were, I now think, mostly
+wrong. Luckily for me I did not publish a book at the end of the first
+expedition but placed the diaries of it in storage with the American
+Museum of Natural History of New York City. They remained there during
+my second expedition of four years and while I wrote my first published
+book, called _My Life With the Eskimo_, 1913. They remained there also
+during my third expedition of five years and while I wrote my second
+book, called _The Friendly Arctic_, 1921.
+
+It was only in 1922 that I got out the diaries of the first expedition
+and studied them as the basis of my third book, _Hunters of the Great
+North_. In the introduction to that volume, I said: “As I look over
+my diaries I shudder to think how vastly I might have augmented the
+already great misknowledge of the Arctic had I published everything I
+imagined I had seen and everything I thought I knew.”
+
+You may think this autobiographical preface strange. But I shall
+presently be dealing with names far more eminent and respected than my
+own, even with those holding membership in this oldest of the great
+scientific societies of America, and I need myself as the thin entering
+wedge for a general discussion.
+
+The introductory remarks closed, I turn to what I intend as a criticism
+of the social sciences in so far as they depend for their data on the
+findings of explorers.
+
+If I were giving a course of lectures, and had at my disposal ten
+evenings instead of one, I should like to consider under three heads
+the misinformation contained in the books and reports of travelers. The
+first would be intentional misrepresentation, the deliberate drawing of
+the long bow; the second would be that unintentional misrepresentation
+which results from careless observation or from misplaced confidence
+in witnesses; the third would be that subdivision where the traveler
+states as a fact which he has observed a thing which he cannot possibly
+have observed but in which he believes because it conforms to, or is
+part of, a belief which he holds and has never questioned.
+
+Since I have only one evening, too short for me although it may be too
+long for you, I shall not merely confine myself to the third heading
+but shall discuss only a few typical cases under it. What I said awhile
+ago, then, about property marks does not belong to our subject and has
+its use merely as part of the introductory approach.
+
+We turn, then, first to a large body of false testimony which is
+nevertheless a small subdivision of the last third of our subject, and
+consider some of the things that have been testified to about animal
+and plant life in that small but typical sample of our world, the Far
+North.
+
+The foundation of European belief about the distribution of life over
+the earth was laid by the Pythagorean Greeks, if not by someone else
+from whom the Pythagoreans borrowed the idea. Essentially it was that
+terrestrial life depends on heat from the sun. This heat, when it is
+of a degree called warmth, permits life in a belt called the temperate
+zone. To the south of the temperate zone there was, according to
+orthodox Greek belief, a burning region where the rocks were red-hot
+and the oceans boiling. North of the temperate zone was a region frozen
+solid. One of the ancient authorities has it that in the North life is
+as impossible because of the freezing as it is in the South because of
+the burning.
+
+It is not a part of my northern specialty to review what is so
+well-known to historians, that from the Greek learned period before
+Christ to the age of Prince Henry the Navigator, and therefore through
+almost 2000 years, it was nearly or quite the unanimous opinion of
+the learned world that no human beings would ever cross the lifeless,
+burning and boiling tropics. It is more within my field as an Arctic
+explorer to point out that the accepted Greek belief was at one time
+that because of the cold no living thing could exist north of Scotland.
+Then the Irish discovered Iceland, 600 miles north of Scotland, and the
+Icelanders, or someone else, discovered Spitsbergen, another 600 miles
+still farther north.
+
+The average January temperature of Reykjavik is about the same as that
+of January for Milan in Italy or Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and
+the tourist companies which contract with their passengers to show
+them pack ice are forced, some years, to carry them 200 miles beyond
+Spitsbergen to keep their promise. But at every advance of knowledge,
+which in this case has been the northward advance of travel, it has
+been discovered with profound surprise that life was there ahead
+of the traveler. The interpretative scientists have been driven to
+every expedient of logic to explain the contradiction between what
+they believed and what they saw. This effort, in turn, has been the
+foundation of much false testimony by those of them who were explorers.
+
+Take the case of perhaps the most solidly famous and respected of
+the British polar explorers, Sir Edward Parry. He landed on Melville
+Island the summer of 1819 and found musk oxen grazing there. This
+was startling, but had to be accepted. Presently he went into winter
+quarters, practically hibernating with his men for several months. When
+they emerged in the spring they saw musk oxen. Hereupon Lieutenant
+Sabine, himself later a distinguished explorer in his own right but
+acting for the time as naturalist in the publication of the scientific
+results of Parry’s voyage, wrote as follows:
+
+ “They (the musk oxen) arrived in Melville Island in the middle of May,
+ crossing the ice from the southward, and quitted it on their return
+ towards the end of September.”[4]
+
+This was accepted by the entire learned world because it fitted in
+with two of their preconceptions--that Parry and Sabine were reliable
+witnesses, and that the Far North was by nature hostile to animal
+life. It had been believed earlier that no animals could exist, at any
+season, as far north as Melville Island. Now, when they had been found
+to be there in summer, the scientists executed a strategic retreat by
+saying: “The beasts make a summer foray deep into the Arctic, but they
+flee from the winters to the hospitable shelter of the temperate zone.”
+The theory of the complete absence of grazing animals from this part
+of the Arctic was thus replaced by an elaborate theory of seasonal
+migration.
+
+For a quarter century after Parry’s first voyage there seems to have
+been practically if not complete unanimity among the explorers and the
+stay-at-home scientists alike that the musk oxen, in spite of short
+legs, made each year a 1200-mile round trip between the winter shelter
+of the forest on the North American continent and the summer stamping
+grounds in Melville Island.
+
+Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, who both shared in and wrote books about
+the Franklin Search, appears to have been the most thoughtful of those
+officers. Yet in 1856 he published _The Discovery of the North-West
+Passage_ ... and assumed in it that the grazing animals of the
+islands north of Canada migrate south to the mainland in the Autumn
+to return each Spring. But in 1857 he published a second edition with
+a new Chapter, XVII, on “The Migration of Animals Theory.” For the
+views there expressed he says he has been “nearly excommunicated as
+a heretic.” In this chapter he points out the manifest theoretical
+absurdity of the postulated migrations and cites a little testimony he
+had been able to get which tended to show that there was no migration.
+
+Thirty years later Greely was sure that the musk oxen of the Arctic
+islands do not migrate south[5] and most observers are now agreed
+that they do not move from one Arctic island to another at any time
+in any direction. Yet there are still in use in the English-speaking
+countries, among others, textbooks of recent copyright which retain the
+Parry statement and the Parry explanation--that the musk oxen migrate
+and that they do it because they need the shelter of the forest against
+the severe climate of the northern winters.
+
+When the scientists were finally converted to believing that the musk
+oxen do live in the remote Arctic permanently, they and the travelers
+cast about for some more explanations--the philosophical scientists
+are continually busy trying to reconcile new knowledge with ancient
+theory. They now hit upon something clever. People had believed, they
+explained, that grazing animals could not exist without grass, and that
+was why they had thought there would be no such animals in the Arctic.
+They were right in part; there was no grass. What they could not have
+foreseen was that in the Arctic the place of the flowering plants is
+taken by mosses and lichens. The musk oxen live on mosses and lichens!
+
+The musk ox still lives on mosses and lichens in the usual reference
+works; he is mounted with his mouth stuffed with them in the usual
+museums. This is in part because many explorers have supported the
+philosophizing scientists by testifying that lichens are verily the
+food of the musk ox.
+
+But many explorers have denied this flatly. Greely said[6] “... in
+no case did I ever note the musk-ox feeding on the latter vegetation
+(lichens), although in many places near Conger the ground was covered
+with scanty, minute lichens for acres in extent.” Roderick MacFarlane
+says[7] that musk oxen live mainly if not wholly on flowering plants,
+and I have said the same.[8]
+
+But the traditional belief is still being advanced by explorers as
+testimony and as observed fact. For instance, a statement implying
+that musk oxen do live on mosses and lichens was issued within the
+year by the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch of the Department
+of the Interior of Canada, for they published a photograph of musk
+oxen with an accompanying letterpress which said that they were here
+shown grazing on mosses and lichens. I wrote at once to a friend, O. S.
+Finnie, who is official head of this department although not personally
+responsible for the picture and description. I asked him how did they
+know that these animals were feeding on lichens and whether their
+botanists could not (by examining the original photograph and perhaps
+enlarging it) determine what plants were really visible along with the
+animals. Finnie then submitted the photograph to A. E. Porsild, the
+distinguished Danish-Canadian botanist and specialist in Arctic flora,
+whose verdict came in a letter of February 27, 1930:
+
+ “There is a firm and rather hard turf composed chiefly of grasses and
+ sedges with a slight admixture of flowering plants. Most predominant
+ is the Alpine Foxtail grass (_alopecurus alpinus_) which probably has
+ a higher food value than any other Arctic grass. With the foxtail grow
+ a few sedges (_Carex_). In the foreground to the right are flowers of
+ the Alpine Chickweed (_Cerastium alpinum_). A few twigs of a decumbent
+ willow (_Salix_) show in the center of the photo.”
+
+Not only these recent Canadian Government observers but also many
+scores of normally honest travelers have, then, testified, because of a
+solidly founded belief, that musk oxen live exclusively or mainly on a
+food which in fact they rarely eat--and then probably not by choice.
+
+One of the most interesting of the systematic fabrications about the
+polar regions is within the observational domain of the exact sciences,
+although its effects are noticed chiefly in the social sciences. This
+is the statement that at a certain place a certain observer has noted
+that the midnight sun was visible for a given number of days in summer
+and that correspondingly the noonday sun was invisible at the same
+place for the same number of days in winter. All statements ever made
+to this effect are false. They could not be true anywhere in the world
+unless at least one important fact were changed and some laws of nature
+altered or abolished. The fact needing change is that the sun would
+have to be contracted down to a pinpoint; the laws needing change are
+those governing refraction.
+
+A medieval writer, Jordanes, says:[9]
+
+ “In its northern part (of Norway) live the people Adogit, who, it is
+ said, in the middle of the summer have continuous light for forty days
+ and nights, and likewise at the time of the winter solstice do not see
+ the light for the same number of days and nights.”
+
+On this Nansen comments[10] to the effect that there can never have
+been any such place. For, says he, if the sun was visible at midnight
+40 days in summer then it never disappeared at all in winter. Or if it
+was invisible 40 days in winter then it was visible 63 days in summer.
+
+Nansen conjectures for the writers of this immediate group, the
+commentators on northern Norway, that they had heard for a given
+place that the sun was invisible for a certain number of days in
+winter and had then added a gloss (in conformity with Greek theory) to
+the effect that the midnight sun was visible for the same length of
+time in summer. Nansen seems to believe, then, that had the writers
+themselves been residents of northern Norway, or had they spent a year
+well beyond the Arctic Circle, they could not have written as they
+did. In this judgment Nansen is not at his best as a student of human
+nature. Nor does he show thorough familiarity with the writings of his
+contemporaries, for there are on record a number of them who without
+question have seen with the eyes of the body that the periods of the
+sun’s invisibility and visibility are unequal, but whose mental eyes
+have been holden so that they thought they had observed the periods to
+be equal.
+
+We could go into a long catalogue of instances but shall actually use
+but a single example which, although typical in a sense, is striking
+for three reasons among others: that the witness is a Russian and
+therefore a member of a northern people who ought to understand
+northern conditions, that his general scientific work is looked upon
+by his colleagues as good, and that he has undoubtedly spent long
+periods within the Arctic Circle. The quotation we are about to give
+was published on pp. 581-2 of the _American Anthropologist_, for
+October-December, 1929. The author is Waldemar G. Bogoras, who says:
+
+ “The north polar circle forms the southern border of the area which
+ has in midsummer the continuous day and in midwinter the continuous
+ night. And so, for instance, on 68-70 degrees of north latitude, we
+ have in the polar zone three or four weeks of continuous night in
+ winter and as many weeks of continuous sunshine in summer.”
+
+Unaware of the laws of refraction and forgetful of what they knew
+concerning the brightness of the twilight before sunrise and after
+sunset, Europeans throughout the Middle Ages and down to our time have
+assumed generally that darkness comes in the Arctic when the sun dips
+below the horizon. This belief is popularly translated into saying:
+“In the Arctic there are six months of daylight and six months of
+darkness.” That most people hold this belief is shown by the frequency
+with which the idea appears in school texts, in serious newspapers, and
+in the humorous journals. The average reader supposes the humor to rest
+upon some basis of fact when an Eskimo wife who sits up to await her
+husband’s homecoming starts scolding and he replies: “Why, my dear, it
+is only half past October.” The father of a baby with the colic walks
+the floor with it through the night and is then referred to as being
+on a six months’ tramp. A funny paper tells that Macpherson operates
+his business from San Francisco during the summer and from Point Barrow
+during the winter. You want to know why he goes north in winter and
+are told he conducts his business a good deal by telegraph and uses the
+Barrow office six months to get the benefit of night rates.
+
+That great universities and leaders in science are still teaching the
+view on which the humorists base their quips, was brought in upon me
+through a talk I gave at the Explorers Club in New York. There I cited
+one traveler after another who had reported from various places within
+the Arctic Circle, some of them far north, that they had observed the
+sun to be fully visible in summer and wholly invisible in winter for
+equal periods. These men, I contended, had reported what neither they
+nor anyone else can ever have seen.
+
+A few days later a troubled voice called me on the telephone for an
+appointment with regard to a situation at Columbia University. On
+arrival he proved to be a student in a course on meteorology. He had
+heard my talk and had reported to his instructor my saying that there
+was no spot on earth where the days of the sun’s complete visibility
+and invisibility could be equal in number. The instructor had not been
+impressed, and had pointed out that the author of a book they were
+using in the class, Robert DeCourcy Ward, Professor of Climatology
+in Harvard University, likely knew what he was talking about when in
+defining the zones he said:
+
+ “In the polar zones, the sun is below the horizon for twenty-four
+ hours at least once in winter, and is above the horizon for the same
+ length of time at least once in summer.”
+
+I had Ward’s _Climate: Considered Especially in Relation to Man_ in
+its 1908 edition. Sure enough, on p. 20 were the lines cited by the
+Columbia instructor. I procured a “Second Edition, Revised” which says
+in a note dated August 1917:
+
+ “I have taken the opportunity offered by the publication of a second
+ edition of this volume to make some revision of the chapters on ‘The
+ Characteristics of the Polar Zones’....”
+
+In that edition I found, unchanged, the statement we have quoted.
+
+Professor Ward had, then, taken special thought of his chapter on the
+polar zones and had nevertheless repeated himself verbatim. No wonder
+the Columbia instructor was also firm.
+
+Some textbooks, with a pretense to meticulous accuracy that makes them
+more effectively deceptive than others, will contain such statements
+as: “Among the Eskimos there is continuous darkness for three months.”
+There are, of course, no Eskimo settlements that have continuous
+darkness for even three days, or one day.
+
+The textbook writers are in a vicious circle. Embryo explorers learn
+from school texts about the continuous Arctic winter darkness; they
+come back some years later from an Arctic expedition with testimony of
+having observed the said darkness, and this testimony becomes in turn
+the basis of new incorrect textbooks. A case is Elisha Kane, the most
+famous of American polar explorers before Peary. He reported having
+wintered at a place where there was no trace of daylight in a clear
+sky at the winter solstice. For comment on this it suffices to quote
+Captain George E. Tyson, who says: “Have passed Rensselaer Harbor,
+where Dr. Kane wintered during 1853-55. I am surprised that in the
+latitude of Rensselaer Harbor (N. Lat. 78⅔°) he should have found the
+darkness so intense as he describes it. It was not totally dark with us
+at high meridian at any time in clear weather....”[11]
+
+In Heft 1/2, 1930, of the international scientific journal _Arktis_,
+Dr. Wilh. Meinardus of Göttingen, has published a diagram of the
+distribution of daylight and darkness within the polar regions
+throughout the year which shows not only that Kane (as Tyson implies)
+must have had a lot of daylight at noon on the shortest day of the year
+but also that no polar explorer except members of one Nansen and one
+Peary expedition have ever been so far north (or south) in midwinter
+that they could say accurately that there was no trace of daylight in a
+clear southern sky at the solstice. Yet there are dozens of explorers
+who have said so in books or reports which have been believed. Many
+of these were as respectable and respected as Nansen or Peary. They
+were not liars; rather they were observers and reporters who had been
+hypnotized by a belief.
+
+It may be said in the defense of these travelers that when they
+said “no daylight” they meant “only a little daylight.” But would
+we similarly excuse a chemist after an autopsy if he said “no trace
+of arsenic” and really meant “only a little arsenic”? Explorers are
+putting themselves forward as scientists. If we are to take them
+seriously and at their own evaluation, we should require of them the
+standards not only of truthfulness but also of precision that we
+require of chemists or astronomers.
+
+It follows naturally from what we have said above how ridiculous it is
+to suppose, as many school textbooks still assert or imply, that you
+have “six months of daylight and six months of darkness at the North
+Pole.” If you mean by daylight what Captain Tyson means in criticizing
+Dr. Kane, then we have at the North Pole more nearly four months of
+darkness (from October 6 to February 5) and eight months of daylight
+(from February 6 to October 5). If, on the other hand, you mean ability
+to read ordinary print throughout a clear day out-of-doors, then the
+division must be something like 5 months of darkness and 7 months of
+daylight.
+
+A further corollary is equally plain. It is that we are being misled
+when it is constantly being stated or implied that there is less
+daylight per year in the polar regions than in the tropics or temperate
+zone. You can perhaps defend that old view if you say that by daylight
+you mean the quantity of sunlight delivered per unit of earth’s surface
+per year, but that is not really at all what we mean when we say
+daylight. For instance, you will hardly say that daylight is lacking
+when there is so much of it that you have to wear colored glasses to
+protect your eyes and must be careful to sleep in dark places so as
+not to go snow-blind while in bed. Judged by ability to read print
+out-of-doors, there is more daylight at an average Arctic station per
+year than there is in the temperate zone or in the tropics. (We are
+not here entering into niceties of how dark it is in Arctic mountain
+canyons or how light on snow-clad tropical peaks.)
+
+There was a time when it was commonly believed in Europe (by those
+who did not identify travelers’ tales with fish stories) that the
+people of a certain remote land had ears so conveniently large that
+in sleeping they used one for a mattress and the other for a quilt.
+This we now consider a strictly medieval belief. But it is thoroughly
+modern to believe that Eskimo women carry babies in the hoods of their
+coats. We shall cite you eminent men, many of whom are living, who have
+asserted that they themselves have seen Eskimo women carry babies in
+their hoods, but first, departing from the main chronological order of
+our discussion, we give the testimony of the man indisputably the best
+authority on this subject.
+
+Knud Rasmussen was born in Greenland of a Danish father and a mother
+who was part Eskimo. He was brought up by the Eskimo women somewhat
+as our Southern babies are by their Negro mammies. He was raised
+bilingual, his two mother tongues Danish and Eskimo. He associated with
+Danes in the house and played with Eskimo children out of doors. In due
+course he was taken to Copenhagen where he went through that university
+and other training which has made him both a well-equipped scholar and
+a cosmopolitan gentleman.
+
+Quite apart from his childhood, which is in this connection the most
+significant period, Rasmussen has spent more time in the countries
+inhabited by Eskimos than any other man who is ordinarily classified as
+an explorer. He is the only one of us explorers who has visited every
+Arctic Eskimo territory and practically every Arctic Eskimo people from
+the east coast of Greenland to the west coast of Alaska and to the
+East Cape district of Siberia. He is primarily an anthropologist and
+geographer. For his sound work in these fields, and especially for his
+interpretation of the Eskimos to the learned world, he has been awarded
+gold medals by nearly every important geographical society in Europe
+and in the United States.
+
+On the basis of the studies for which Rasmussen has really deserved
+these medals, he says about the belief that Eskimo women carry babies
+in their hoods: “The women in Greenland have never in the past carried
+their children in their hoods, nor do they do so now ... the child is
+decidedly not (carried) in the hood, as that would simply choke the
+mother.” (Letter to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 3rd May, 1930.)
+
+Now we turn to the history of the belief. The early travelers through
+Eskimo lands described from most if not all districts a custom whereby
+women’s coats were made especially roomy in the back so that a baby
+could be slipped up under the coat and supported by a belt. The child
+was then held by the coat and belt against the small of the woman’s
+back. Usually in removing the child the mother would undo the belt and
+let the baby slide down, but the neck of the coat was naturally made
+roomy to enable the child to breathe and sometimes the mother would
+reach in that way and pull it up and out. It is not impossible, but
+was at least geographically rare, that mothers inserted the baby into
+the coat from above. But whatever the method of ingress or egress, the
+baby, according to early northern books, was always carried inside the
+body of the coat, never inside the hood.
+
+Since there are now living men who hold distinguished professorships
+in great universities and others of equal rank who say that they
+themselves have seen babies carried in hoods, I am planning one
+day to write almost a book on this subject, citing, so far as my
+researches allow, practically every traveler who has said anything
+about how Eskimo babies are carried. Here I give only a few typical
+cases, generally men who are not only entitled to respect but who have
+received it from the learned world.
+
+Taking them chronologically, the first writers examined are the
+following:
+
+ Hans Egede: _A Description of Greenland_, first published in 1757 (pp.
+ 132 and 148 in the London, 1818, edition).
+
+ David Crantz: _The History of Greenland_, London, 1767. Vol. I, pp.
+ 138 and 162.
+
+ Hans Egede Saabye: _Greenland ... in the Years 1770 and 1778_, London,
+ 1818, pp. 13 and 259.
+
+ Vol. XIX of the _Continuation of the General History of Voyages_,
+ Paris, 1770, in which there is a “History of Greenland” by an
+ anonymous author.
+
+All of this early Greenland evidence agrees with Rasmussen--the manner
+in which the child is carried and the coat in which it is carried are
+described in almost the same terms as he uses.
+
+But there existed a stream of contradictory testimony. Henry Ellis
+published his _Voyage to Hudson’s Bay_ at London in 1748. There you
+find on p. 136:
+
+ “The Difference between the Dress of the Men and the Women is, that
+ the Women have a Train to their Jackets, that reaches down to their
+ Heels. Their Hoods are also larger and wider at the Shoulders, for the
+ sake of carrying their Children in them more conveniently on their
+ Backs.”
+
+On pp. 495 and 496 of Sir Edward Parry’s _Journal of a Second Voyage_,
+London, 1824, the hood-carrying is weightily reinforced.
+
+Between Parry’s time and about 1855 I have found the following
+references:
+
+ BABIES CARRIED IN HOODS:
+
+ G. F. Lyon: _The Private Journal_, London, 1824, p. 315.
+
+ John Franklin: _Narrative of a Second Expedition in the Years 1825,
+ 1826, 1827_, London, 1828, p. 118.
+
+ John Rae: _Narrative of an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea
+ in 1846 and 1847_, London, 1850, p. 39.
+
+ John Richardson: _Arctic Searching Expedition_, London, 1851, Vol. I,
+ pp. 252 and 369; also _The Polar Regions_, Edinburgh, 1861, p. 306.
+
+ Berthold Seemann: _Narrative of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Herald during
+ the Years 1845-51_, London, 1853, Vol. II, p. 53.
+
+ BABIES NOT CARRIED IN HOODS (BUT CARRIED INSIDE COATS):
+
+ Captain W. A. Graah, _Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of
+ Greenland_, London, 1837, p. 118.
+
+ Thomas Simpson: _Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of
+ America_, London, 1843.
+
+ Joseph Bellot: _Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot_, London,
+ 1855, Vol. I, p. 186.
+
+Around 1850 there was living in Greenland a man who knew the Greenland
+Eskimos at least as well as even Rasmussen does now. This was Samuel
+Kleinschmidt, born of missionary parents and brought up there until he
+had learned Eskimo as one of his mother tongues. He was then educated
+in Germany and went back to Greenland to spend the rest of his life,
+much of which he devoted to the preparation of an Eskimo-German grammar
+and an Eskimo-Danish dictionary.
+
+In some Eskimo dialects _amaut_, _amaun_, or some variant of that word
+is the name of an enlargement for child accommodation in the back of a
+woman’s coat, or it may be the name for an entire coat which contains
+this enlargement. In many districts the nursing mother wears a coat
+of no special design but one simply large enough so the child is well
+accommodated. The name of the coat is still _amaun_. This is, then, a
+word referring to the purpose for which the coat is used, not to its
+design. _Amaun_ is never used as the name for a hood, of a woman’s coat
+or of any other garment.
+
+In _Den Gronlandske Ordbog_, Copenhagen, 1871, p. 24, Kleinschmidt
+defines the verbal form _amarpok_, “carries a child on her back in
+a roomy coat designed for that purpose”; and the noun form _amaut_,
+“such a coat for carrying the baby.” Thus we see that while most of
+the travelers had by this time been converted to the Ellis-Parry
+hood carrying and were testifying that they had themselves observed
+it, Kleinschmidt, working as a missionary and scholar in his native
+Greenland, had either never heard about the belief that children are
+carried in hoods or else considered it so absurd as not to be worth
+noticing in his dictionary.
+
+In 1927 Schultz-Lorentzen published a dictionary which in many respects
+is an improvement on Kleinschmidt’s. At that stage, as we shall show
+in a moment, the books were favoring by a substantial majority
+the Ellis-Parry view, at least if you merely count noses among the
+testifiers. Greenland books, among others, were favoring it and on p.
+16 of the Schultz-Lorentzen dictionary we find: _amaut_, “fur jacket
+with hood for carrying child.”
+
+But this is really an ambiguous definition. If you think already
+that babies are carried in hoods, you will read that meaning into
+Schultz-Lorentzen’s words; but if you think that babies are not thus
+carried, you will understand him to mean that the coat is for carrying
+the baby and that this coat also has a hood. It is therefore fair to
+him to cite some of his allied definitions: _amaq_, “child carried in
+fur jacket with hood”; _amarpa_, “takes him on his back; carries him on
+his back”; _amarpoq_, “carries a child in fur jacket with hood.”
+
+From about 1855 down to about 1888 the evidence of explorers who had
+traveled among Eskimos is divided as follows:
+
+ BABIES CARRIED IN HOODS:
+
+  Charles Francis Hall, 1865.
+  Isaac I. Hayes, 1867.
+  Dr. Henry Rink, 1877.
+
+ AMBIGUOUS:
+
+ A. W. Greely, 1886.
+
+ BABIES CARRIED INSIDE COATS:
+
+ No testimony during this period.
+
+Now we come to what makes our discussion really worth while. It is that
+one of those who report Eskimo babies carried in hoods is Franz Boas,
+Professor of Anthropology in Columbia University and President of the
+American Association for the Advancement of Science.
+
+Boas is, if not the most eminent living anthropologist, which he very
+well may be, at least the most distinguished of those who are also
+Arctic explorers and who have made some specialty of Eskimo studies (we
+classify Rasmussen here as a traveler or geographer rather than as an
+anthropologist). Moreover, the Smithsonian Institution, through which
+Boas published a book on the Eskimos on Baffin Island and neighboring
+districts, is in one sense at least our foremost scientific body. It is
+then significant that on p. 556 of the _6th Annual Report, Bureau of
+Ethnology_, 1884-85, in the Section, _The Central Eskimo_, by Boas, we
+have:
+
+ “The women’s jacket ... has a wide and large hood reaching down almost
+ to the middle of the body.... If the child is carried in the hood, a
+ leather girdle fastened with a buckle is tied around the waist and
+ serves to prevent the child from slipping down....”
+
+Boas spent a winter with the Eskimos at Baffin Island and undoubtedly
+had hundreds of opportunities of seeing how the women carried their
+babies. He was there for the purpose of studying just such things and
+there is no doubting his sincere desire to record and interpret rightly
+everything he saw.
+
+But Boas had in a considerable part of his Eskimo work the
+collaboration of a man who testifies directly against him, a man, too,
+of keen observation, shrewd judgment, and much longer experience among
+Eskimos. This is Captain George Comer, who lives at East Haddam,
+Conn., co-author with Boas of _The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson
+Bay_, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XV,
+1901. On the subject of the belief that Eskimo women carry babies in
+their hoods, Captain Comer says:
+
+ “... (The statement that) Eskimo women carry their babies in the hood
+ of their garment is perfectly absurd.... Once when I spoke of the
+ child being carried in the hood it made the women laugh.” (Letter to
+ Vilhjalmur Stefansson, May 22, 1930.)
+
+This discussion has been based on the easiest reading of Boas, which is
+that he means to say the Eskimo babies are carried in the hoods of the
+women’s coats. However, the part about the leather girdle serving “to
+prevent the child from slipping down” may be taken to show what Boas
+really meant was that the child is carried not in the hood, but inside
+the coat as described by Rasmussen. For an examination of Baffin Island
+women’s coats in museums, or an examination of the pictures from Boas
+and others which give the women’s coats of Baffin Island, will show
+that if a child (or anything else) is in the hood, then there is no
+chance of its sliding down along the woman’s back whether or not she
+wears a girdle.
+
+Continuing our studies, we have made the following classification of
+the reports on the Eskimo manner of carrying babies by travelers later
+than Boas.
+
+ BABIES CARRIED IN HOODS:
+
+  Lucien M. Turner (Bureau of Ethnology), 1894.
+  David Hanbury, 1904.
+  E. W. Hawkes (Canadian Dept. of Mines), 1916.
+  Donald MacMillan, 1918.
+
+ BABIES CARRIED INSIDE COATS:
+
+  Alfred H. Harrison, 1908.
+  John W. Kelly (U. S. Bureau of Education), 1890.
+  Fridtjof Nansen, 1893.
+
+ AMBIGUOUS:
+
+ Ejnar Mikkelsen--expedition 1906-08 (book undated).
+
+ John Murdoch (Bureau of Ethnology)--reports them carried in coat for
+ those Eskimos he visited but says that among the eastern Eskimos (whom
+ he had not visited) the baby is carried in the hood--1892.
+
+ Josephine Peary--describes method of carrying, showing that child is
+ really carried in coat; but she calls it the hood--1893.
+
+ Henry Rink--same as above, description correct for carrying in coat
+ but speaks of it as hood--1877.
+
+You may think that in spite of the distinction of some of the
+advocates, the carrying of babies in hoods has by now been relegated
+generally to the domain of folklore and that this discussion has
+therefore grown academic. But until within the last twelve months
+several of the foremost up-to-the-minute authorities have in reality
+been influenced to believe that the baby hood-carrying is a fact.
+
+For with Rasmussen and Boas in knowledge of the Eskimo we might well
+group Diamond Jenness, Chief Anthropologist of the Canadian Government
+at Ottawa, who, as anthropologist on the staff of the expedition which
+I commanded from 1913-18, spent three years in studying the Eskimos
+from western Alaska eastward along the north Canadian coast as far as
+Coronation Gulf. Since then, through his continued studies and official
+position, he has been in close touch with anthropologists and with
+the development of Eskimo research. On March 29, 1930, he wrote me in
+substance that, although he was convinced those early travelers who
+had testified that babies were carried in hoods in the districts which
+he had himself later investigated were mistaken, nevertheless he was
+willing to believe other travelers who said that in certain districts
+which he had not visited the babies were so carried. It was only when
+Rasmussen and Comer testified about those very districts in which
+Jenness still credited the hood-carrying that he realized the belief
+had a folklore nature outside his own territories as well as within
+them.
+
+There is plenty of evidently correct testimony that Eskimo women do
+carry certain things in their hoods. Among things frequently mentioned
+are cigarettes (in recent times), needle cases, dolls or other
+playthings for their babies, and small stolen articles. Why is it not,
+then, reasonable that they might carry babies similarly?
+
+The reply is that the admittedly hood-carried articles are light.
+A baby is so heavy even at birth that (as Rasmussen points out) it
+would choke, or at least seriously incommode, the mother if its weight
+reposed in the hood. (Babies are carried on women’s backs until they
+are three or four years old, making the weight increase considerably
+each year.)
+
+The second paragraph in rebuttal will be that most testimony represents
+the babies in the hoods as usually naked, at least while very young.
+If you study the construction of the hoods on women’s coats in any of
+our museums, you will find not only that a weight in them would press
+against the mother’s throat with choking action, but also that they are
+so open at the top that a naked baby would necessarily suffer a great
+deal from cold, at least in winter, even if it were not frozen to death.
+
+It may be suggested that when Boas, for instance, speaks of a hood he
+is actually referring to the enlargement farther down in the coat which
+makes it commodious, as described by many travelers and easily seen in
+museums.
+
+The reply is that this might not be a bad defense argument for
+Greenland, where the women frequently have coats without hoods, but
+that Boas is dealing with Baffin Island and other neighboring districts
+where the women’s coats, at least usually, have hoods. Since Boas
+does not describe the coat he has in mind as having two hoods, we are
+inclined to feel that by hood he means what the rest of us do.
+
+Then it may be advanced that there are motion pictures and other
+photographs in existence which show Eskimo babies actually in the
+hoods of women’s coats. This would serve as good argument, if not full
+proof, were it not that we know the circumstances under which those
+photographs were taken, which are that to oblige the photographers,
+or for pay, the women consented to place the babies in the hoods for
+the time of as much photographing as the explorer needed to show
+graphically on his return what he believes to be the custom of a
+primitive people.
+
+In other words, we are driven to the conclusion that the many travelers
+who have said they have seen Eskimo babies carried, as a matter of
+widespread custom, in the hoods of women’s coats, have all testified to
+having seen things they did not see. The merited eminence of some of
+these unreliable witnesses comforts the rest of us who, led by faith,
+have said or implied in print that we have seen certain objectively
+non-existent things. For it is not only misery but error that loves
+company. People like Dr. Franz Boas and Sir Edward Parry are very good
+company indeed.
+
+The importance of the babies-in-hoods case is in that it shows
+strikingly the danger to which the social sciences are exposed when
+they include the testimony of explorers among their data.
+
+There are bound to be many in every scientific audience who feel that
+the misrepresentations and misstatements of their own science are as
+serious as any that will fall within the domain of the geographers and
+anthropologists. They may be right, which, if they are, makes the case
+more interesting. What we cite are then not exceptions but fair samples
+of the body of knowledge.
+
+I have, in reality, never met any specialist who thought that fully
+half of what is now being taught in the schools about his subject was
+contrary to fact or definitely misleading; but that proportion fits
+my opinion with regard to my specialty and I shall use the last few
+minutes of my time in dwelling upon it.
+
+The first reason for there being abroad fewer “untrue facts” about
+the Temperate than the other zones is that ours is a temperate
+zone civilization and that to our forefathers (and, to an extent,
+ourselves) the two regions of unrestrained imagination were the tropics
+and the Arctic. Five hundred years ago the percentage of misinformation
+was no doubt approximately the same with regard to the zones north and
+south of the North Temperate, but of late books and ideas about the
+tropics have become relatively correct. For the crossing of the tropics
+has been a commonplace these 400 years, while the crossing of the
+Arctic was not accomplished until within our own time and is not yet a
+commonplace, though it soon will be.
+
+The tropic myths have been dispelled by the frequent journeys of
+investigators and by the necessities of commercial development. The
+Arctic myths have not been dispelled by these or any other causes, or
+at least not to the same extent. Moreover, the human mind appears to
+crave some district where the fancy may roam. Our favorite character
+of the imagination is Santa Claus and we are perhaps right in feeling
+subconsciously that it is fitting and necessary for him to reside in
+an imaginary world. Moreover, our present attitude towards explorers
+makes them the grown-ups’ equivalent of childhood’s Santa Claus. The
+explorers, then, need an imaginary world for a satisfying background.
+
+I might confess here that to the extent that I am successful in talks
+such as this, I feel as if I were stealing candy from a child when I
+make it increasingly difficult for the rest of the world to swallow the
+good old hokum about the Arctic. Fortunately, I have never been very
+successful.
+
+But it is equally fortunate that I am not very serious about
+Truth--fortunate at least for me. I am no Jeremiah declaiming against
+iniquity. I like to contrast my benevolence with the misanthropy of
+the satirists, and I go on now to point out the amusing but effective
+ways which the scientific organizations, some of them nearly as lofty
+and respected as the American Philosophical Society, have discovered
+for keeping Santa Claus in his Arctic so that all may be well with the
+imaginary world.
+
+One of the branches of our government is the Geological Survey and
+another branch is the Signal Corps. Lieutenant P. H. Ray, of the United
+States Army, discovered on the Signal Corps expedition to Point Barrow
+(1881-2) that “willows” 20 feet in height grow a little way inland from
+Barrow, more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. But it is out
+of character to picture such large vegetation in the Arctic, and so
+the Geological Survey now comes to the rescue by issuing through the
+journal _Science_, the official organ of the American Association for
+the Advancement of Science, and through _Science Service_, a statement
+that in the great triangle north of the Endicott Mountains in Alaska
+(an area larger than that of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
+there is no tree-like growth bigger than a lead pencil.
+
+Before any of us were born the Hudson’s Bay Company had a trading
+post called La Pierre’s House, on the Bell branch of the Porcupine
+River, and at Fort Yukon, where the Porcupine enters the Yukon. Ever
+since then missionaries, traders, and white men and women of nearly
+every condition and description, have been traveling up and down that
+river or residing upon it. Now the United States Bureau of Education,
+among its other contributions to the Santa Claus background, tells
+that one of its agents will go northward and associate on this river
+with Indians who are untouched by the white man’s civilization. The
+implication is that some of them will never have seen a white man
+until the Bureau representative gets there. Really he will find
+there Athapaska Indians speaking English with a Scotch accent, their
+inheritance from the Orkneyman “servants” of the Company.
+
+We have been listing a few of the notable contributions from scientific
+departments of the American Government to our knowledge of the Arctic.
+There are naturally similar contributions from the governments of other
+countries. We close our remarks on this subdivision of our topic with a
+note on the Antarctic which appeared in _Science_ on February 27, 1925:
+
+ “The Minister of the Colonies, by a decree dated December 30, has
+ created a large game sanctuary in France’s Antarctic possessions ...
+ the principal animals protected are polar bears, walrus, sea lions and
+ penguins. The French naval station in Madagascar will be responsible
+ for the patrol of the new preserve.”
+
+In this French decree we seem to have the first published reference
+to walrus south of the equator. The polar bear citation is even more
+remarkable, for up to this time there had been discovered in the
+Antarctic no land mammal, small or big.
+
+The walrus in southern waters has apparently not been reported again
+since the French government’s original note; but the polar bears, once
+introduced (and protected by gunboats in Madagascar only a few thousand
+miles away) have been doing well in our Antarctic mental world. True,
+they appear as yet with comparative rarity in print; but they appear
+frequently in pictures--not in photographs, of course, but in drawings.
+A sample contribution was a cartoon of the _New York World_, spring
+1930. Formerly in such drawings, penguins by themselves had symbolized
+the Antarctic; now they were joined by the polar bear. Father
+Knickerbocker was shown standing at the New York waterfront to welcome
+Byrd home from his southern adventures. The boat conveying the hero
+toward shore was rowed by a crew of polar bears and steered by penguins.
+
+These same late years that have been so propitious to the Antarctic
+have seen a reciprocal enrichment of the Arctic. As there had been no
+bears in the South so had there been no penguins in the North. Or,
+rather, there had been a sort of penguin, the Great Auk, which became
+extinct a century ago. It would manifestly add charm to have penguins,
+and so they have been appearing more and more frequently in references
+to the North. As with bears in the South, they are most frequent in
+drawings. There is, however, a growing demand for photographs of them.
+It happens to me, for instance, with increasing frequency that lecture
+committees bargaining for talks on the Arctic request that I shall use
+movies, or at least stills, showing penguins.
+
+I get friendly advice, too, after my talks--what I said was interesting
+and they didn’t realize before they saw my pictures that there are
+flowers in the Arctic. But why did I not also show the penguins?--they
+are so solemn, so funny and so human.
+
+Next after the official Government agencies in the Santa Claus
+propaganda, with regard to Arctic and Antarctic, may be ranked our
+great universities. Few of them are greater (and I remind you again I
+am not trying to be satirical) than the University of Chicago. In the
+spring of 1928 that university informed us through what appears to be
+an official press release that a graduate student of theirs, Cornelius
+Osgood, was going to live on Great Bear Lake. They said:
+
+ “If he is successful, young Osgood, ... will be the first white man
+ ever to live in the Great Bear Lake region. Two missionaries who tried
+ it in 1912 were slain by the natives. Armed only with rifles, cameras,
+ note-books, recording phonograph disks and a sleeping bag to withstand
+ the 79 degrees below zero weather, Osgood will seek to win the
+ confidence of the natives, living their lives, helping in their work
+ and eating their food.... The only other white men who have penetrated
+ the district are Steffanson, the Arctic explorer, and his companion
+ D’arcy Arden, a famous figure of the North, and a Northwest Mounted
+ Policeman who captured the murderers of the missionaries.”
+
+The stodgy fact is, of course, that John Franklin wintered at Fort
+Franklin on Great Bear Lake a hundred years ago, that the Hudson’s
+Bay Company operated on the lake thereafter, that Richardson and Rae,
+three quarters of a century ago, built their Fort Confidence on Great
+Bear Lake, and that white men too numerous for easy cataloguing have
+been there off and on ever since. I was so overborne by this knowledge
+that when I was there in 1910-11 I lacked the courage, or something, to
+claim I was the first white man ever to winter.
+
+The bit “Steffanson ... and his companion D’arcy Arden” will be news
+to him, as it is to me. We never met at or near Great Bear Lake. I
+believe he began his long residence in that district a year or so after
+I left there. The lake is big, however, and the country is big--he may
+have been to the west somewhere in 1910 without my knowing it.
+
+It is perhaps heaping Pelion on Ossa to prove further the thesis of
+this paper, that even scientists will constantly and solemnly report,
+as having been observed, things for which there is no foundation but an
+inherited belief. I might have resisted the temptation except that a
+beautiful example has just fallen into my hands.
+
+In Canada, Dr. F. G. Banting, Professor of Medical Research, Toronto
+University, Nobel Prize winner, is the country’s foremost scientist
+in that more people know his name than that of any other Canadian
+scientist now living. The Canadian Government has deservedly recognized
+his position by what the papers say is a lifetime stipend. There is in
+Canada now an organization called the Canadian Geographical Society,
+a purpose of which is the increase and diffusion of knowledge of
+Canada. I shall list for you a few of Dr. Banting’s observations on a
+summer trip North, as chronicled in Volume I, No. 1 (May 1930), of the
+official organ of the Society, the _Canadian Geographical Journal_:
+
+ 1. “The thickness of the pans (of sea ice) varied from twenty to forty
+ feet, depending on whether they were one-year-old or two-year-old ice.”
+
+Many Northern explorers, prominent among them Nansen, have studied the
+time required for the thickening of sea ice. Their reports are of the
+order that the first winter’s freezing is from seven to nine feet,
+that of the second winter adding one to three feet, the third perhaps
+less than a foot.
+
+ 2. “On the surface of the older pans were pools of fresh blue water,
+ while on the year-old pans the pools were of salt water.”
+
+“Pans” several years old and those a year old will both have on them
+pools of water fresh to the taste in summer, if the spray has not
+reached them. It is ice much younger, only a few weeks or months old,
+that has salty pools.
+
+ 3. “Varieties of saxifrage, fireweed and stunted willow spring up
+ beneath the snow and ice.”
+
+Probably what Banting means is that during the winter they had been
+under snow, as plants are in Minnesota. Some of the spring processes
+may conceivably quicken a little while the snow is still above the
+plants, but, if so, how could Banting learn this on a summer trip?
+Since he distinguishes between ice and snow, what can he mean by their
+springing up beneath the ice? What ice other than snow would there be?
+
+ 4. He lauds Franklin and his men who, on Franklin’s last expedition,
+ “in tiny sailing vessels, ventured through these perilous waters.”
+
+Franklin’s _Erebus_ was 370 tons and his _Terror_ was 340 tons, large
+to date for ships which have gone in among the islands that are north
+of Canada. Amundsen’s _Gjoa_, by which he navigated the Northwest
+Passage, was 47 tons. The largest of the six ships of my own third
+expedition was the _Karluk_, 247 tons; the smallest, the _North Star_,
+about 30 tons.
+
+ 5. “In protected spots the flowering mosses of various colors ...
+ reminded us of a summer day at home.”
+
+Either Banting here made some startling discoveries or he was a bit
+confused as to the nature of mosses. Not a few works of reference
+divide plants into flowering and non-flowering, putting the mosses on
+the non-flowering side of the fence.
+
+ 6. “During these blizzards the land animals huddle together with their
+ backs to the storm and allow the snow to drift around them.”
+
+Banting must have been thinking of cows and horses down Ontario way.
+The ordinary report of hunters and naturalists is that both caribou
+and musk oxen feed into the wind and are more likely than otherwise to
+travel into it.
+
+ 7. “... thunder is so rarely heard that the natives are frightened by
+ it.”
+
+I know people in New York who are frightened by thunder, and have seen
+the like farther south.
+
+ 8. “The married women wear larger hoods which are used for carrying
+ the baby.”
+
+We have earlier in this paper dealt with the question of whether babies
+are ever carried in hoods.
+
+ 9. “... the Eskimos live in igloos made from blocks of hard snow.”
+
+We consider this under two heads:
+
+(a) If Banting means that an Eskimo calls his dwelling an igloo, then
+he is of course right; the Eskimo word _iglu_ means dwelling. A lot of
+people in a lot of countries live in dwellings.
+
+(b) If by igloo Banting means a snow house, then he should not have
+said “the Eskimos.” Certainly there are Eskimos who live in snow houses
+in winter; but it is equally certain that the number of Eskimos who
+have never lived in a snow house is larger than that of those who have
+lived in them. This statement goes not only for the 20th century but,
+so far as we believe, for the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries at the
+least. In fact, there are good reasons to consider that the snow house
+was geographically more widespread in 1900 than it was in 1600.
+
+ 10. “... the native has _no_ natural immunity.”
+
+The only necessary comment is to say that the italization in this
+quotation is ours.
+
+ 11. “In a country where there is no sunshine for three months of the
+ year the people are dependent on their food for their vitamins ...”
+
+The inference seems to be that if there were more sunshine these
+remarkable people would not have to depend on food for any of their
+vitamins. The recipient of one Nobel Prize for endocrine studies may
+then well be candidate for another in comparative racial physiology and
+in deficiency diseases.
+
+ 12. “Perhaps the most important introductions (from whites to the
+ Eskimos) are the darning needle, which has been the greatest help to
+ the women in making the clothes and boots, and matches for igniting
+ their lamps.”
+
+The testimony of many travelers has been that Eskimos felt it a
+hardship to sew with copper or bone needles which almost necessarily
+were too large for their purpose. Accordingly, the needles which the
+Eskimos most valued when the whites arrived were those that were
+smaller than darning needles. No. 1 needles are much smaller than
+darning size but are, nevertheless, about the largest that I have found
+the Eskimos of my territories to value at all appreciably. No. 3 was
+a rather large needle for most of the seamstresses whom I have known,
+who did most of their sewing with size 5 or smaller. So far as my
+experience goes, it has been a standing marvel with white women, and
+with white men used to sewing, that the western Eskimos sew with such
+small needles. I do not recall ever seeing one use a darning needle for
+anything but darning or sewing heavy cloths, like tenting.
+
+As to the preciousness of matches to the Eskimos: I have reported that
+the Stone Age people of Coronation Gulf, with whom we spent the summer
+1910, often got their camp fires lighted with blocks of iron pyrites
+quicker than we did ours with matches. On days of strong wind pyrites
+has particular advantages, so that it seemed to me the Eskimos needed
+matches less, and appreciated them less, than they did many of our
+other contributions to their way of life.
+
+The issue is not so clear with the matches as with the needles. It is
+ludicrous to claim that darning needles supplied a keenly felt want.
+Whether the matches did is in the field of legitimate dispute.
+
+To guard against misunderstanding I close this discussion of the
+Banting paper by reminding you, and insisting upon it, that I am on
+the whole one of his great admirers. It appears to me that his career
+and character are both of a high order. That is my point. We get from
+eminent and deservedly respected men substantial contributions of
+misinformation useful in maintaining the general unreality (or shall we
+say poetic quality, imaginative charm?) of our world outlook.
+
+Before introducing the next example of how the great stand with us
+shoulder-to-shoulder in the battle to keep the world unreal, we mention
+that the North Pole of reality lies in a deep ocean and is removed
+some 400 miles from the nearest land. During a hundred years there
+have been numerous explorers studying this ocean. No one has during
+this century, or at any other time, seen an iceberg within 300 miles
+of the North Pole; few have been seen within 600 miles. We know, too,
+the conditions under which icebergs are formed. So it appears both from
+well-established theory and from uniform observation that there are not
+and cannot well be icebergs anywhere near the North Pole.
+
+Now we come to a statement that could not be introduced to you more
+impressively than by a simple recital of facts. The publication is
+the September 20, 1928, number of _Science_. The original author of
+the statement is Sir James H. Jeans, who, according to _Who’s Who_,
+is M.A., D.Sc. from Oxford, LL.D. from Aberdeen, F.R.S. and secretary
+of the Royal Society. He is quoted with implied approval by Robert A.
+Millikan, who, according to _Who’s Who in America_, is A.B., A.M.,
+Ph.D. from Columbia, studied at Berlin and Göttingen, is D.Sc. from
+Oberlin, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Amherst,
+Dublin and Yale, and LL.D. from California, as well as holder of the
+Nobel Prize.
+
+And this is what Millikan says, quoting Jeans: “Our position is that
+of polar bears on an iceberg that has broken loose from its ice pack
+surrounding the pole.”
+
+Millikan and Jeans consider, then, that icebergs come from the vicinity
+of the pole. But if you could take a census of icebergs as we take
+a census of the human population of the United States, you would
+find more of them in the temperate zone than in the Arctic; if you
+could determine the population center of icebergs as we determine the
+population center of the United States, you would find this center is
+nearer the British Isles, where Sir James lives, than to the North
+Pole. Or, speaking astronomically, since Jeans is an astronomer, it
+would be as correct to imply that Saturn is the center of our solar
+system as it is to imply that the North Pole is the center of icebergs.
+
+Jeans tells us in a recent work on _Cosmogony_ that light, which goes
+eight times around our earth in a second, requires 140,000,000 years to
+reach us from the farthest celestial object that our telescopes now
+show. With his intellect and with that marvelous tool of the intellect,
+mathematics, he probes these depths. The while he probes the vulgar
+onlooker speculates as to how accurate Jeans may be about those distant
+reaches when he is so far from being accurate about things that are,
+comparatively speaking, within a stone’s throw of his house.
+
+It may be said that many people have heard of icebergs who have never
+heard of sea ice, and that Millikan and Jeans were perhaps just
+catering to their audience in using the better-known word. For it is a
+common view that scientists, addressing the laity, have an obligation
+to translate their rigorous phrasing into the looser forms of common
+speech. But when Millikan referred to the iceberg as “broken loose from
+its ice pack surrounding the pole,” he was, according to _Science_,
+giving not a popular talk but an “Address before the Society of
+Chemical Industry, New York, September 4, 1928, on the occasion of the
+conferring on Dr. Robert A. Millikan of the Messel Medal in honor of
+his work on the structure and relations of atoms.” We are too polite to
+believe it was necessary to talk down to that audience.
+
+Jeans and Millikan were no doubt really thinking of floe ice when they
+said iceberg. Their precision of speech would then be like my referring
+to Halley’s planet or calling the moon a nebula. An iceberg differs as
+much from sea ice as a comet does from a planet.
+
+The iceberg is formed on land; floe ice at sea. The iceberg begins as
+snow and gradually acquires the semblance of common ice through time,
+pressure, etc., while sea ice forms directly from liquid water. The
+iceberg has been fresh since it started; the floe ice began salty and,
+if fresh now, has attained that state through a long process. The ice
+destined to be a berg gradually approaches the sea; the floe ice was on
+the sea from the start. These are but a few of the differences.
+
+It is possible, however, that Jeans and Millikan were not confusing an
+iceberg with any form of sea ice. For it appears to be the view of the
+average scientist who is not a geographer that the northern polar sea
+is just filled full of icebergs. For instance, practically everybody
+whom I ever heard objecting to the use of submarines in the northern
+polar basin will say that you are bound to collide with icebergs even
+if you can navigate deep enough so that there is no chance of colliding
+with sea ice.
+
+It may be said, finally, that since Jeans is an astronomer, and
+Millikan a physicist, you can’t expect them to know much about the
+earth. But why not? I find in several of Jeans’ books which I own, and
+have even read, that he talks a lot about the earth in general. He
+analogizes from earth to moon and to various other bodies. And Millikan
+should know something of land, sea and air, for he and his agents scale
+mountains and go aloft in aircraft to study his later rays, sometimes
+crossing oceans to do so. Meteorology and geography should be to him,
+then, not wholly alien professionally.
+
+The fact is, of course, that this whole reasoning is beside the mark.
+Jeans and Millikan, leaders in science, are simply acting, too, as
+leaders in that great effort where we all collaborate, the struggle to
+keep the world unreal.
+
+Or, declining to close with a negative statement, we affirm that
+all the way through from my telling the Eskimo method of property
+identification to Millikan’s telling of icebergs breaking loose
+from an ice pack surrounding the pole--through that whole gamut we
+multitudinous scientists are champions of a higher knowledge which I
+have advocated in _The Standardization of Error_, knowledge derived
+from facts-by-definition.
+
+There is a perhaps subconscious awareness that lands near home are
+getting dull through excessive familiarity and it may be this feeling
+which prompts many who are not scientists to join them towards keeping
+the ends of the earth from becoming too ordinary. There are many
+examples in recent polar exploration and we take a few.
+
+The New York newspapers carried one day a statement that Byrd had flown
+over the North Pole and that the temperature of the air had been 10° F.
+above zero. Now that is a commonplace temperature, without fascination;
+for every state north of the Mason and Dixon Line has had it, as well
+as a good many states farther south. This cheapening of the North Pole
+needed counteracting. Accordingly, there was an editorial the next day
+to the effect that in properly evaluating Byrd’s achievement we must
+remember that the flight was performed in cold so intense as to be
+unimaginable to New Yorkers.
+
+The reports from most of the winter flights in the Arctic or Antarctic
+have been that the planes flew in warmer air than on the ground. There
+have been instances where they flew at 40° or 50° warmer; in one case
+the temperature was 79° higher at the plane than on the ground below.
+Reports of this kind we neutralize in our discussions by assuming,
+without citing figures, that (because high mountains are snow-capped
+and for various other reasons) the heroic polar flyers contend during
+their journeys with temperatures even colder than those endured by
+their earth-bound predecessors who explored by dog and afoot.
+
+A danger well-known to the air mail between New York and Cleveland,
+too well-known in most parts of the so-called temperate zone, is that
+of ice forming on wings to make the plane heavy and, what is more
+serious, to change its aerodynamics so that it becomes unmanageable.
+This occurs in what the people of New York and Cleveland think of as
+cold weather. Accordingly, in our discussions of polar flying we just
+assume that because it is much colder the danger to the flyers, through
+ice formation, must be that much greater than on the New York-Cleveland
+winter run. This gets by 90 per cent of the readers and is one of our
+most effective devices in keeping the polar districts unreal. The fact
+is, of course, that ice forms on wings chiefly at temperatures between
+freezing and fifteen degrees below that point (between 30° above zero
+and 15° above). When it gets colder you have comparatively little icing
+trouble with a plane.
+
+The Arctic and Antarctic have their chief social usefulness as proving
+grounds for heroes. The stay-at-homes are thrilled by that courage,
+that devotion to the aims of science, which leads men to expose
+themselves to the terrors of a frozen and lifeless wilderness. In order
+that the said terrors shall have their maximum appeal to the reading
+public there should be a good many of them. One of the things commonly
+dreaded is illness, and it is therefore desirable to have it believed
+that the polar risks include the greatest possible number of diseases.
+Recent deficiency-disease study has been helpful through showing that
+one at least of the vitamins can be produced by sunlight falling on
+the human skin. Obviously, then, the members of exploring parties are
+going to suffer great deprivation, are going to be in imminent risk of
+their lives, because of the long absence of the sun in winter. This
+belief has been utilized in two chief ways: You take along ultra-violet
+lamps and then make a great play on the forethought of a commander who
+enlists the newest powers of science towards protecting from disease
+the members of his courageous band. Or else you have the expedition
+go into the field without the lamps, and then work up a suspense on
+whether by cleanliness, regular exercise, amusements, and strict
+medical supervision it may turn out possible for the men to retain
+their health until the sun comes back after the Long Polar Night.
+
+On the whole, disease scares have been managed satisfactorily by the
+public relations departments of at any rate the larger expeditions;
+but until just recently there was a serious exception. It had been
+found by many explorers, and had been so often reported as to reach
+the public consciousness, that head colds and the related diseases of
+the pulmonary passages were rare on polar journeys. Some said they had
+been practically absent. For instance, it was reported on one of the
+British expeditions that nobody had a cold for several winter months,
+that everybody then caught cold from germs which emerged when boxes of
+clothing were unpacked, and that when this flare-up was over no more
+head colds appeared through the rest of the year.
+
+Obviously the polar explorer is deprived of half his chance to be
+courageous if the life and the climate are represented as normally
+healthful. The growing awareness that cold prevents colds had to be
+dealt with. Simplest was, no doubt, to counteract this through the
+old belief that cold produces colds. Notable help in the campaign was
+received from the cough-drop industry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+STANDARDIZED WOLVES
+
+
+Those who want to believe that wolves do not run in packs should read
+only the first two-thirds of this chapter. For believing in wolf-packs,
+read the sections “Crumbs for Believers” and “Wolves for Posterity.”
+The section “Wolves and Babes” can be read safely by believers and
+non-believers, for these are an entirely different (though standard)
+species and the nursing complex, save for one classic exception, seems
+to be confined to Hindu wolves.
+
+To read all sections may prove not merely difficult but also
+confusing--may we hope even befuddling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everybody knows that wolves run in packs. One of the standard
+definitions of pack is: “A large number of predatory animals, such as
+wolves, banded together for the purpose of hunting their prey.”
+
+That used to be an undisputed statement of the case. But now there is
+an argument about whether any wolf-pack ever really existed, with the
+scientists nearly all on one side, the general public nearly all on the
+other, and the sportsmen divided about half and half.
+
+On the affirmative side we have the undoubted fact that “everybody
+knows,” especially in Russia, that wolves do run in packs. If you want
+to refresh your mind as to what Russian wolf-packs are believed to be
+like, you can do so easily and pleasantly by turning to Willa Cather’s
+_My Antonía_, page 63. The people Miss Cather is going to feed to her
+wolves are the very diet to which Russian wolves are most accustomed--a
+wedding party. There are six sleighs drawn by three horses each and
+carrying from six to twelve passengers. There is starlight on the snow
+and the road is through a forest. The first distant wolf howl does not
+drown the tinkle of the sleigh bells or the laughter of the wedding
+guests. But the rallying cry is answered from many sides, the leaders
+of the pack draw nearer, and fear grips every heart. The bride sobs on
+the groom’s bosom and the drivers lash their horses to breakneck speed.
+The rear sleigh upsets, the passengers sprawl out over the snow and
+the wolves are on top of them in a moment. The screams of horses being
+eaten alive are more dreadful than the shrieks of people whose entrails
+are being torn out. The cries of terror from the remaining sleighs are
+as loud as the cries of pain from the dying. The wolves are silent
+now--they have other work to do.
+
+And so the story goes on for sleigh after sleigh in Miss Cather’s
+story, and in all the typical stories, until only the bridal sleigh
+is left. About forty or fifty people and fifteen horses have now been
+eaten, but the wolves are still hungry and going strong. There are
+hundreds of them, you see, and wolves have proverbially good appetites.
+Nothing will save the last sleigh but throwing the bride to the pack.
+This Miss Cather accordingly does, and so do half the other authors
+of tales. But it seldom happens that quite everybody is eaten.
+Somebody has to be saved, to give the narrator a chance to portray the
+survivor’s life of shame and remorse through many effective pages that
+lead to a distant and friendless grave.
+
+Such tales as Miss Cather’s we usually consider to be “true in spirit”
+only, since they occur in novels, but we take them for sober fact when
+we read them in books of travel or in newspapers. The press stories
+excel the books in verisimilitude, for they tell us what is said to
+have happened yesterday or last week. They give the names of places
+that are on every map, they frequently mention the widow and orphaned
+children, they sometimes tell that the funeral of the fragments left by
+the wolves was conducted by the home lodge of Masons. There is every
+detail to prove that what you see in the _Sun_ (or the _Bee_ or the
+_American_) is really so.
+
+If you look in the index to the news published by the New York _Times_,
+you will discover scores of authentic-looking wolf-pack stories. I have
+the space to reproduce here only a sample:
+
+ WOLVES DEVOUR 3 MEN IN NORTHERN ONTARIO
+
+ _An Elderly White Trapper and Two Indians Fall Victims to a Horde of
+ Hungry Beasts_
+
+ Port Arthur, Ont., Dec. 27--A great roving band of hungry timber
+ wolves has devoured three men.... Last Saturday an elderly trapper
+ left his cabin in the woods seventy miles north of Ignace to mush
+ down to the settlement for his Christmas mail.... There was no mail,
+ however, and the old man said he would come back Christmas morning.
+ At noon he had not arrived. The postmaster sent two Indians to follow
+ the trail....
+
+ About two miles from the settlement the Indians found a spot pounded
+ down in the snow. There was blood. Bits of dog harness torn to shreds
+ were scattered about. In the midst of them the Indians found human
+ bones. They hastened back to report their discovery. The lure of the
+ bounty on wolves, however, urged the Indians to take the trail again,
+ with extra ammunition. They sped behind the dog team into the woods as
+ the villagers waved good-bye. They did not return.
+
+ Yesterday a new searching party departed. They found another patch
+ trodden in the snow, with much more blood, about two miles from
+ the first. The two guns the Indians had carried were lying in the
+ crimsoned snow. Scattered about were bones, bits of clothing and empty
+ shells.
+
+ The carcasses of sixteen dead wolves--some half eaten--lay stretched
+ in a circle about the remains of the two Indian hunters.
+
+I quote from the New York _Times_ of December 28, 1922. The story, from
+what is justly considered one of the world’s greatest and most reliable
+newspapers, gives proof of the cunning no less than of the ferocity of
+the North American wolf. Judging from the evidence, the pack must still
+have been hungry when they got through eating the trapper (perhaps he
+was small and skinny), so they lay in wait to finish their meal on
+the search party, which they evidently knew was coming. Then, still
+hungry, and fearing the size and prowess of the second search party,
+they reluctantly ate a few of each other for dessert before retreating
+into the shadows of the forest. That was discretion and admirable
+generalship. They fought when there was a chance to win, and then
+withdrew before superior numbers.
+
+There are plenty of such wolf stories in the papers, and now and then
+others even more impressive. During 1926, for instance, in the pages of
+the New York _Sun_ packs of wolves held Italy under a reign of terror;
+a bit later in the New York _Times_ villages in Siberia were barricaded
+against wolves. Two million cattle and many people were killed.
+
+Thus stands the evidence for the affirmative--wolves _do_ run in packs.
+They devour wedding parties in Russia and they eat trappers and Indians
+in Canada. They terrorize Italy and lay siege to towns in Siberia--in
+the papers, at least.
+
+But there are skeptics who do not believe all they see in the papers or
+read in books of travel. These iconoclasts tell you that every story of
+a wolf-pack that you ever read or heard is fib, fiction, or folklore,
+and that there never has been a pack of wolves in Russia, America, or
+anywhere except in people’s imagination. That seems a hard position to
+defend, but they go at it valiantly. Their defense lies in both logic
+and fact. For the logic they ask you to consider the caribou-hunting
+wolf as a sample.
+
+Their argument begins with the generally accepted fact that there
+are more than ten million wild caribou in Northern Alaska, Northern
+Canada, Northern Siberia and the Arctic islands. From these at least
+two million caribou are born every year; two million must, therefore,
+die, or the numbers would increase. Certainly less than 10 per cent of
+these are killed by human hunters. None die of old age and very few of
+accident or disease, for if a caribou is old or sick it moves slowly
+and is soon overtaken and devoured. This means that wolves kill every
+year a good many more than a million and a half caribou.
+
+In summer, when their puppies are being brought up, the northern wolves
+live in part on eggs, fledgling or moulting birds, and rodents. But in
+winter the birds have flown south, the rodents are safe asleep in their
+frozen burrows, and almost the only thing a wolf can find to eat is
+caribou. I know how wolves kill caribou, and I can offer some personal
+testimony on wolves in general, for I was born on Lake Winnipeg in
+a wolf country; I was brought up among wolves and coyotes in Dakota
+before it became “civilized” and was split up into North and South
+Dakota; I lived for some ten years in the Arctic, supporting myself
+most of the time by hunting. I have shot wolves with a rifle and have
+seen hundreds of them either trotting quietly along or loping steadily
+in pursuit of caribou. I have seen the tracks of thousands following
+game, and have found signs of hundreds of tragedies where they had
+killed some bird or beast. I have asked dozens of Arctic Indians
+(Slaveys, Dogribs, Loucheux) and hundreds of Eskimos about how the wolf
+hunts, and there has been no divergence between what they have told me
+and what I have seen.
+
+A wolf cannot run nearly as fast as a caribou, and must capture it by
+tiring it out. That is the essence of all I have seen and all I have
+been told. It means that, before it is killed, each caribou has to
+be pursued by the wolves from several hours to several days--nobody
+knows exactly how long. All hunters agree that (except for newborn
+calves) the youngest caribou are the swiftest and staunchest runners.
+The ones killed by wolves are therefore chiefly the old bulls and old
+cows. A cow may weigh two or three hundred pounds, and a bull three or
+four hundred, live-weight. Nearly half of that is waste. The wolves
+are, then, pursuing anything from 100 to 200 pounds of food. For, no
+matter how large the caribou herd may be when the chase begins, they
+eventually scatter, and the pack, if there is a pack, finds itself
+pursuing the single slowest animal.
+
+Suppose, now, there are 200 or 300 wolves, as in Miss Cather’s
+heart-rending story. She provided hers with six sleigh loads of
+Russians, six to twelve in a sleigh, and three presumably fat horses
+hitched to each. That would make a square meal for even 300 wolves.
+But it would be far otherwise if the 300 followed a single 300-pound
+caribou for three days, or even one day. They would be so hungry
+that the beast, divided by 300, would be to the pack no more than a
+tantalizing appetizer. There would be nothing for it but to resort to
+another well-known habit of the fiction wolf and use their whetted
+appetites on each other--eating, let us say, a dozen to correspond to
+the soup course, a dozen for the fish, and two dozen for the roast,
+with at least another dozen of the youngest and tenderest for dessert.
+But the continued practice of dining on each other like that would
+soon reduce a wolf-pack below fiction and movie standards. In fact,
+you might as well do without a pack altogether; for it is scarcely
+worth the bother to build one up to the required size, just to have it
+disappear again in a few weeks by the members of the troupe swallowing
+one another.
+
+Those who are trying to prove that the wolf-pack really exists will
+perhaps admit that the abstract logic of pack hunting seems a little
+faulty, but will insist, and quite rightly, that logic does not amount
+to a hill of beans when contradicted by facts. The pack stories, they
+will tell us, are simple truth. Newspapers may exaggerate, but the
+better ones never invent. Besides, nearly everybody has an uncle or
+an aunt who had a grandmother or grandfather that was eaten or nearly
+eaten by a pack of wolves.
+
+That brings us to the evidence--are the wolf-pack stories true? To save
+time, we shall take at once the testimony of a group of scientists
+and practical hunters who ought to know because they make the study
+of wolves their profession--studying also the testimony of everyone
+they ever heard of who claimed to have seen a pack of wolves. They are
+Americans, too, and within your reach, so you can write postcards to
+them tomorrow and see what they really think. Don’t be diffident about
+asking. You are probably a taxpayer. They are your servants, for they
+work for the government that taxes you.
+
+The branch of the government that studies wolves as a part of its
+business is the Bureau of Biological Survey at Washington, and the head
+of it is Dr. E. W. Nelson,[12] a lifetime student of wild animals. He
+was four years among Arctic wolves in Alaska (1877-81) and has himself
+studied wolves in Mexico and all over the United States. Furthermore,
+he has under him other men who have studied wolves, among them Edward
+A. Preble, who has spent much time in the sub-Arctic and Arctic forests
+and prairies of Canada. But more significant still, there is under
+Dr. Nelson’s successor’s direction the wolf-killing service of the
+United States Government. This is a body of men who hold themselves
+in readiness for telegraphic appeals from stockmen, usually in the
+West, who find their animals being destroyed by wolves. They come and
+exterminate the wolves “scientifically,” and the flocks and herds are
+safe again.
+
+In gathering material for a book I was writing about wolves, I
+consulted Dr. Nelson. We agreed, first, that the accepted meaning of
+the word pack, when applied to wolves is _a large number of wolves that
+have come together to help each other in hunting_. In other words, one
+mother with her puppies would not constitute a pack. Dr. Nelson felt
+so positive about the nature of wolves in North America, from Mexico
+to the Arctic, that he thought I would be safe in denying flatly in my
+book that any wolf-pack ever existed on our continent. But, just to
+make sure that no different opinion was held among people of authority
+corresponding to his own, we formulated a letter which he addressed to
+certain scientific students of wolves, and to all his wolf-killers.
+
+As to how many wolves had been seen together, the various replies
+naturally gave different answers, for experiences varied somewhat. But
+they ranged only from two to five. They were unanimous in reporting
+that if several wolves were seen together then these were always the
+mother with her puppies, or conceivably the father and mother with
+their puppies, and never a pack in the usual sense of that word.
+
+Then what about the story of the wolves that killed the elderly trapper
+and the two Indians on the front page of the _Times_? Surely that was
+no family of puppies--sixteen dead wolves, killed by the Indians; a
+few, presumably, killed by the old trapper, and enough left over to
+eat up one white man, two Indians and part of sixteen dead wolves.
+To make the inquiry into the truth of the story official and more
+authoritative than if I were doing it myself, I suggested to Dr. Nelson
+that he write to Ignace, Ontario. For checking up, I wrote also to
+Mr. J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of National Parks, Ottawa, who was at
+that time (1922) in charge of the administration of the game laws of
+Canada, and therefore in a position to set in motion official machinery
+to find out about this wolf story. Thus I received the same replies
+from two directions, one through Dr. Nelson and the other through Mr.
+Harkin. They were, in substance, that no such man as the old trapper
+ever existed and that no white man had been killed by wolves. No such
+Indians as described existed there and none had been killed by wolves,
+whether in packs or otherwise, either in the vicinity of Ignace, or
+anywhere in the world, as far as anyone living in the vicinity of
+Ignace knew.
+
+Hundreds of other tales about wolf-packs, published in newspapers or
+books, have been traced by the United States Biological Survey and by
+various students, including myself. In no case was evidence found to
+support them. Just try it yourself on the next American despatch you
+read. In spite of all the pretended details--the sorrowing family, the
+Masonic funeral--it will be reasonable odds to bet dollars to doughnuts
+that the story will turn out pure fiction, or at best will rest on
+testimony no court of law would accept as proof.
+
+The case seems to be definitely settled against the wolf-pack in North
+America. But there still remains Russia. Well, why not let Russia
+remain? No one seems to have checked wolf-pack stories in Russia for
+everyone is so sure they are true. And perhaps they are. Besides, it is
+a distant country, and the fancy must somewhere have play.
+
+The book on wolves which the July, 1927, _Mercury_ said I was writing
+is still being written (1936), or, rather, the evidence for it is
+still being gathered. We use here from that accumulation sample case
+histories which give the trend of the material.
+
+Under a date line of Winnipeg, April 16, 1922, many or most Canadian
+newspapers printed a story which I read in the Ottawa _Morning Journal_
+about the body of a trapper, Ben Cockrane, having been found torn to
+pieces north of Fisher River on Lake Winnipeg the previous Thursday.
+“He had been attacked by a pack of timber wolves. His bones and pieces
+of his clothing and a rifle with a broken stock were found nearby.
+Before being killed, Cockrane shot seven wolves dead and clubbed four
+to death, their bodies lying around his tattered remains being the only
+evidence of his fight for life.”
+
+That story had a personal interest. For I was born on Lake Winnipeg and
+might, therefore, seem to have had as a child a narrow escape from the
+ancestors of the pack which destroyed Cockrane--we were there in the
+pioneer days back in the late 70’s, long before railways, when there
+was only an odd cabin along the shores of the lake and when presumably
+the wolves were even more numerous than now, and more predatory.
+Investigation would be simple, too, for I could write to some of our
+old neighbors or their descendants.
+
+But the case was being handled so widely and with so much respect
+by the press that a formal approach seemed indicated, one above the
+suspicion of bias. Accordingly, two lines of inquiry were started, both
+of them official. Nelson, at my suggestion, inquired on behalf of the
+logical department of the United States Government. In Canada, Harkin
+was then in charge of wild-life investigation for his government and
+could use the machinery of the Dominion Parks Branch. When I placed the
+newspaper report in their hands I received friendly assurance that the
+case would be followed up both in their own interest and because of
+their previous association with me in similar studies.
+
+Under date of May 22 Harkin wrote that an investigation had been made
+and that “Mr. Cockrane has stated ‘that the report of his death was
+grossly exaggerated.’” On May 31, Nelson, after like findings, wrote:
+
+ “This amusing climax to the ferocious wolf tale is similar to that of
+ many other newspaper accounts of the killing of human beings by wild
+ animals, which the Biological Survey has run down during the last
+ thirty years or more. Such stories are almost invariably pure fiction.”
+
+A third inquiry, made by a friend in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s office
+at Winnipeg, brought a statement that when their representative
+interviewed Mr. Cockrane he seemed annoyed and replied, I gather
+somewhat petulantly, that as long as he could remember there had seldom
+been so few wolves around as this year.
+
+Sometimes when we trace the story of a pack devouring a group of school
+children we find that it all started when a small boy stepped on a
+dog’s tail and was bitten in the leg. There does not appear to have
+been even that much local base for the Cockrane fabrication.
+
+The Ignace, Ontario, story (given above in its _American_ _Mercury_
+form) has in my files considerable documentation. On January 2, 1923, I
+wrote Dr. Nelson in part:
+
+ “I wonder if you missed the interesting wolf story that appeared
+ in the New York _Times_ for December 28th. In case you did, I am
+ enclosing a copy.
+
+ “I am writing an article for publication in _Collier’s Weekly_ about
+ fake wolf stories and especially about the great wolf-packs that
+ gallop through our books and newspapers. Just as this article is being
+ prepared for publication out comes another story. I am so sure that
+ this one also is a fake that I am not holding up the publication of
+ the article. However, I hope very much that you will be able to put
+ a tracer on it and find out whether there is any truth behind this
+ particular version.”
+
+Dr. Nelson replied January 4:
+
+ “... I saw the New York _Times_ article copied in a local paper and at
+ once considered it one of the typical wolf articles which appear in
+ the press, particularly every winter.
+
+ “In order, however, to get definite information on the subject, I am
+ writing to the postmaster of Port Arthur, Ontario, and also at San
+ Ignace, sending them copies of the article and asking them what basis
+ there is for a statement of this kind. I will let you know the results
+ when they are received....”
+
+I had written similarly to A. Brabant, Fur Trade Commissioner, Hudson’s
+Bay Company, Winnipeg, and to Harkin. Brabant, who later investigated
+for me more fully, gave preliminary reply January 6:
+
+ “I believe that the wolf story which was enclosed with your letter of
+ the 2nd inst., is merely romance....
+
+ “As you are well aware, there are few, if any, cases of wolves
+ attacking people....”
+
+G. D. Russell, Postmaster of Port Arthur, Ontario, wrote Dr. Nelson
+January 17, 1923, in part:
+
+ “There have been similar stories circulated during the past years,
+ but all have been found to be untrue, and while wolves are a serious
+ scourge to wild animal life in the bush, and a source of annoyance
+ to settlers in the back country, in so far as they are not averse to
+ raiding their domestic fowl, yet the genuine evidence of men being
+ killed by them has yet to be established.
+
+ “This recent story originated at Ignace, 200 miles west of Port
+ Arthur. My personal opinion (and the consensus of opinion) is, that
+ there is not the slightest foundation of truth in it.”
+
+The Postmaster of Ignace, John Davies, wrote Dr. Nelson January 18,
+1923:
+
+ “Your letter to hand, RE: the killing of three men by wolves north of
+ Ignace. We in Ignace know nothing about this affair excepting what
+ we read in the papers. I don’t think there is a word of truth in it.
+ There are a lot of wolves which are doing a lot of damage among the
+ wild game but so far as tackling human beings, I have never had any
+ proof yet.”
+
+The press discussion of the Ignace story was voluminous throughout
+Canada, particularly in Ontario. On January 18, 1923, Harkin sent me a
+quotation from “one of our local papers, under date the 17th instant”:
+
+ “... The scene of the tragedy was laid on a trail seventy miles north
+ of Ignace. The names of the victims of the wolves were not given.
+ Several old timers in Northern Ontario have ridiculed the story and
+ have claimed that wolves are not man-killers. A Toronto man ... wrote
+ to W. T. Thompson, dealer in furs at Ignace, asking as to the facts of
+ the story.
+
+ “Mr. Thompson is quoted as replying: ... ‘Wolves are very numerous
+ around here, but I have lived in this country for twenty-five years
+ and have yet to hear of anyone being killed by wolves. During the past
+ ten years, or over, I have been buying raw furs from trappers and
+ Indians and have never heard any such tales that turn out true.’”
+
+Reverberations of the Ignace yarn continued to reach me for several
+months. For instance, there came in a letter from an old friend,
+Inspector G. L. Jennings, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (now
+styled Royal Canadian Mounted Police), dated April 20, 1923. We shall
+use the main part of it in another connection but print here extracts
+from a cutting he sent taken from the Edmonton _Journal_ of February 10:
+
+ “Recently I read a letter concerning the habits of wolves. I had also
+ read some time ago of a tragedy in the woods of our north country in
+ which several men were pulled down and devoured by these animals,”
+ says Dr. J. S. McCullough, writing in the Toronto _Globe_.
+
+ “In the gold rush of 1897 or 1898, when so many men made an attempt
+ to get into the Klondike country via Edmonton, Athabasca Landing,
+ Great Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River, I was one of a party which
+ attempted a traverse from the Mackenzie River to Fort Norman to the
+ Stewart or McMillan River over the divide. I was obliged to come
+ back on account of sickness when we had got out about 60 miles on the
+ trail. After dividing the supplies with my partner I made the trip
+ back alone and as it was necessary that the onward-going party should
+ have two tents I did not even have a tent to cover me on the return
+ trip, but built little shelters of spruce, rolled in my sleeping bag
+ with only boughs with a fire at my feet, and this slight windbreak to
+ protect me from the winds and the wolves. Wolves there seemed to be
+ in plenty, judging from the terrifying howls at night, but they were
+ seldom seen. In my weakened condition from dysentery I made very slow
+ time on my return trip to the banks of the river, six miles below Fort
+ Norman, where there were several unoccupied, roughly-built log shacks.
+ With 75 to 100 pounds on my sled I would drag along five or six miles,
+ construct a stage and place my pack in safety, returning over the
+ ground until I had all my stuff moved up. At this time of year and in
+ this latitude I saw little of the sun, and frequently I made my move
+ at night if the light was good and not much wind.
+
+ “I found the wolves very curious, following along on my snowshoe
+ track, crossing and recrossing it, appearing at one side and ahead and
+ then on the other side ahead or behind, always, however, in silence.
+ I had been given to understand by Billy Paton, then of the Hyslop and
+ Neaggel Trading Company, that the wolves never attacked a man, and so
+ I traveled all alone, and very seldom with a weapon of any kind other
+ than a light camp axe, and, although I was very lonesome and very weak
+ and very down-hearted, I really never had any fear of the wolves.
+ There was one that I became pretty well acquainted with, a very large
+ and almost black fellow, who was afterward accidentally caught in a
+ bear trap which had been set by an inexperienced miner by the name of
+ Low Day. The trap was lost beneath the snow, and although Day knew
+ about where it was, we were all afraid to hunt for it for fear of
+ getting into it ourselves. The large, almost black, wolf that followed
+ my trail like a ghost in some mysterious way sat down on his haunches
+ right in the jaws of this trap, where we found him dead and frozen
+ stiff.
+
+ “I think that those of us who put in the balance of the winter on the
+ bank of the Mackenzie were all more relieved that the trap was thus
+ discovered than at catching the wolf. What I have said here makes a
+ very negative sort of wolf story, but the fact that I was out night
+ after night alone and that every time I went back over my trail I saw
+ fresh wolf tracks, and that through the long Arctic nights one could
+ almost always hear the howl or bark of the wolf probably chasing
+ hares, for the big game was driven away by the 40-odd men who had gone
+ over the country, leaving hungry wolves and little else but hares and
+ ptarmagan, would seem to prove that if ever the wolf would attack a
+ human being the conditions were right for them to do so as I plodded
+ my slow course back alone over this trail.
+
+ “... Personally I do not believe that the wolves of Canada ever attack
+ a living human being. They would in time probably become bold enough
+ to pick the bones of anyone dying or being frozen to death in the
+ bush country. I have talked of wolves to many bushmen and never yet
+ have I come across anyone who had bush experience but had an absolute
+ contempt for the wolf so far as being attacked by him or them went....
+
+ “I can quite believe that a person who had been fed-up on wolf stories
+ might take to a tree in fear when the wolves kept appearing and
+ disappearing as they will do on the trail of a woodsman as he marches
+ along at dusk, but I believe that it is only the wolf’s natural
+ curiosity that leads to his follow-up tactics. The black tail or mule
+ deer will often do the same thing if you pretend not to have seen
+ him....”
+
+The Cockrane story, as said, never gave us investigators a trace of
+foundation. One version of a basis for the Ignace story was contained
+in a letter of January 12 from L. M. Gleeson, of 416 Victoria Avenue,
+Fort William, Ontario, who wrote me on the letterhead of the Fort
+William-Port Arthur Rotary Club:
+
+ “Replying to your letter of January sixth, re wolf story from Port
+ Arthur. I would say that the story was just a rumor. It originated,
+ I believe, by a trainman running between here and Ignace, Ont., and
+ as the story was re-told it was enlarged upon. I do know that the
+ newspaper here tried for sometime to get a confirmation of the story
+ direct from Ignace, but they were unable to do so. This story did not
+ appear in our local paper although it was telegraphed outside....”
+
+A theory of the Ignace yarn, published long after, makes it a fable
+devised for the good of a community. On January 16, 1933, the Portland
+_Oregonian_ printed a letter from Ada Alice Tuttle, summarizing
+investigations which she had made or was familiar with, the occasion
+being that the “Ten Years Ago” column had revived the story:
+
+ “The occurrence was investigated by several persons, Dr. (William T.)
+ Hornaday among them. The explanation reveals the resourceful boss of a
+ lumber camp, solving an acute liquor problem. It seems that a number
+ of his men were in the habit of going to the nearest settlement to get
+ drunk. So, remembering the effect produced on the youthful mind by the
+ adventures of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ he also invented a fairy tale,
+ suiting it to his audience by introducing plenty of action and lots of
+ gore. ... They swallowed the yarn, hook, line and sinker, and after
+ that stayed where they belonged, with the most admirable docility.”
+
+As Dr. Nelson pointed out, the newspapers run dispatches on wolf-packs
+chiefly in winter. This, according to the stories themselves, is
+determined by laws of Nature. The rigors of the weather have banished
+or destroyed the wild animals on which the wolves customarily prey;
+besides, there is no doubt an increased metabolic rate, wolves, like
+people, needing some of the caloric energy from the food they eat for
+keeping themselves warm. In desperation the beasts gather in larger
+and larger packs and finally in extreme cases attack houses or even
+villages--the latter chiefly in some distant foreign country. In
+America they seem to confine themselves to attacks on people that are
+out in the woods. Usually we have to depend on word pictures by the
+survivors for information regarding these encounters, but on December
+9, 1923, the New York _Times_ was able to publish in its rotogravure
+section two photographs from Sudbury, Ontario, giving the supporting
+testimony of a camera. One of the pictures showed two men standing
+knee-deep in snow as they defended themselves against a pack of wolves.
+The caption was “A Tragedy Among the Snows of the Far Northern Woods.”
+The summarized printed account said that, ammunition gone, two huntsmen
+were set upon by a pack of fifteen wolves. They fought them off, one
+using for a club the barrel of his gun, the other an axe. Before the
+battle came to a decision a third member of the hunting party arrived
+and was able to turn the tide with gunfire. The second picture has the
+description:
+
+ “The aftermath of a bloody battle in the wilds. Huntsmen binding up
+ their wounds after hand to hand battle with pack of timber wolves from
+ which they were saved by the timely arrival of a third member of their
+ party.”
+
+When I sent these pictures to Harkin for investigation, if he thought
+well of it, and in any case for comment, he replied that he was fed up
+with tracing stories of wolf-packs. It seemed to him a study of the
+picture indicated that the wolves in the picture had all been dead for
+some time. Apparently they had been allowed to freeze stiff in various
+attitudes and had then been propped up in the soft snow to give the
+semblance of an attacking wolf-pack.
+
+Doubtless the three hunters were too excited during the battle and
+forgot about taking pictures. So they had to re-enact the adventure for
+the camera next day. The chief difficulty about that explanation was
+that some of the “wolves” looked a bit like dogs.
+
+Sure enough, time proved that the doggy look of the wolves had its
+reason. On April 12, 1927, the Utica _Press_ carried a letter from B.
+H. Divine in which he said, in part:
+
+ “The New York _Times_ published a picture a while ago of two men
+ with clubbed guns fighting for their lives against a pack of wolves.
+ Following this up I received word from the Royal Canadian Mounted
+ Police that the wolves in the picture were dogs very cleverly posed,
+ and the whole thing was a fake.”
+
+During the next years there were few American stories of note although
+striking accounts of packs and their depredations were printed from
+Europe--these we shall discuss farther on. The American scene
+brightened with January, 1926, when on the 17th the Chicago _Tribune_
+presented to its readers the desperate situation then facing one of the
+territories of the United States:
+
+ ALASKA TO WAR ON WOLF PACKS WITH AIR BOMBS
+
+ Shrapnel from Planes May Save Game
+
+ Juneau, Alaska--(Special)--Dropping bombs from airplanes upon packs
+ of big timber wolves is a method for destroying these game-killing
+ brutes, now advanced and approved by Governor George A. Parks. A
+ trial of the idea is planned for next month, generally known as the
+ hunger-month of winter, when wild life is at its lowest ebb and
+ gnawing pangs grip wolves, lynx and owls.
+
+ According to reports received at the governor’s office, female
+ caribou, deer, and domesticated reindeers have been repeatedly
+ attacked this winter by large bands of timber wolves. The destruction
+ among the female caribou is appalling.
+
+ The bull caribou in winter round-up together, peacefully content,
+ leaving the cows to protect themselves and yearling calves as best
+ they can. All are antlered, but they lack the weight of caribou bulls,
+ likewise the fighting strategy.
+
+ Air mail men operating in the Alaskan service have filed many reports
+ of instances where packs of wolves, hearing and seeing the planes in
+ the sky, gathered forces and raced the aviators, leaping and barking
+ at the birdlike machines after the manner of dogs barking at pigeons.
+ To the aviator it seemed that a large rock dropped into the packs
+ would easily kill or maim many.
+
+ The plan proposed is to drop bombs loaded with shrapnel and dynamite
+ into wolf-packs powerful enough to wreak terrific damage even hundreds
+ of feet away in all directions. Trappers and hunters believe that the
+ animals, seeing a bomb dropped, would instantly run to examine it,
+ thus bringing about their own destruction.
+
+ Timber wolves weighing 250 pounds, seven to eight feet in length,
+ have been killed by trappers this winter near Fairbanks. The same
+ breed of animal infests the territory from Ketchikan, far north in the
+ tundra, where herds of reindeer forage. The native herders report many
+ encounters with prowling brutes eager to pull down young reindeer.
+
+ A powder manufacturing concern has offered bombs free for the unique
+ hunting expedition.
+
+The _Tribune_ account thus pictures not only a situation physically
+serious but paints a discouraging view of the moral deterioration of
+the Alaska bull caribou which were no longer willing to place at the
+service of the smaller and weaker members of the herd their superior
+antlers, greater weight and their fighting strategy.
+
+But it was encouraging to read that the very head of the Alaska
+territorial administration, Governor George A. Parks, was in charge
+of the relief operations. I happened to know he was in Washington and
+wrote him there February 19. His reply came dated February 23 from the
+office of the Secretary of the Interior:
+
+ “Concerning the clipping from the Chicago _Tribune_, I am at a loss
+ to understand how it originated. I left Juneau, December 16, 1925,
+ and have been in Washington since early in January. I never have
+ authorized any such statement. It may be a fact that the bulls
+ separate from the rest of the caribou herd during the winter, but
+ my personal observation has been to the contrary. If any of the
+ pilots in the Air Mail Service have filed reports as alleged in the
+ newspaper account, these reports never have come to my attention. It
+ would be most unusual to hear a wolf bark like a dog. There may be
+ wolves in Alaska that weigh 250 pounds, but I do not know of any such
+ records.[13] I believe that it is conceded generally that a wolf-pack
+ usually includes only the members of the family--father, mother, and
+ pups--and they separate about the beginning of the next mating season.
+ I have no personal knowledge of any large bands of wolves, nor have
+ I been able to find any authentic cases where bands of wolves have
+ molested reindeer or caribou herds. Many times during my winter trips
+ through Alaska, I have been told about the wolf-packs, but so far as I
+ know the stories never have been founded on fact.
+
+ Geo. A. Parks
+
+ Governor of Alaska.”
+
+Logically the Bureau of Biological Survey was concerned with the
+situation and its Chief, Nelson, wrote me February 24:
+
+ “The other day I had a conference with Governor Parks on various
+ matters relating to Alaska and he showed me the copy of the Chicago
+ _Tribune_ clipping of January 17, a copy of which you sent me,
+ containing the weird tale of the plan to bomb wolves by the use of
+ airplanes. Governor Parks was inclined to be somewhat exercised over
+ the connection of his name with this absurd statement....
+
+ “Of course, the whole thing is an absurdity on the face of it ...
+ there is no such abundance of wolves in Alaska as indicated in this
+ article.... The claim that timber wolves weighing 250 pounds have been
+ killed near Fairbanks the present winter is another evidence of the
+ absolute unreliability of the article.”
+
+This is trying to be a chronological statement but we are unable to
+resist the temptation to print from a Washington despatch of the
+_Associated Press_ as it appeared in the New York _Times_ of May 31,
+1936:
+
+ “Plans for an airplane attack on savage packs of Alaskan wolves were
+ worked out today by three Federal agencies....
+
+ “Last Winter, Governor John W. Troy cabled for help....”
+
+It may have seemed a bit far afield in 1926 to go all the way to Alaska
+for stories of wolf-packs, so the _Associated Press_ in 1927, with a
+Chicago date line of January 24, had a story which one paper used under
+“Hunters to Renew Search for Wolves Near Chicago. First Venture Fails
+to Disclose Marauding Pack Reported by Farmers.” However, there was
+skepticism (that’s the difficulty of having the stories too near home)
+and Leroy Davidson, former chief of the Cook County Highway Police, was
+quoted:
+
+ “Wolves--bah! Last summer there was a camp of Campfire Girls in the
+ forest preserve. They had three dogs--the dogs were a mixture of
+ Airedale and police dog. When the girls broke camp they left the dogs
+ behind. I also had an Airedale. He ran away and joined the other
+ three. These four dogs are the ‘pack of wolves’ that are causing all
+ the commotion.”
+
+That pronouncement threatened at first to be a wet blanket. However,
+there is in my files a press cutting dated February 4 with the
+heading: “Fliers Hunt Wolves on Edge of Chicago. Posse Has Had No
+Luck.” So the story did keep going awhile.
+
+When it requires ten days on the edges of Chicago to dispose of a
+wolf-pack, even with the assistance of the chief of the Highway Police,
+no wonder stories from Alaska have a considerable lease of life. Some
+of them promise to become, and to remain, a part of the source material
+of Alaskan natural history.
+
+The year 1927 proved rich in American wolf tales, making up for the
+comparatively lean years since 1923. My favorite of that season, and of
+many years, I was able to trace through the help of my old friend Lee
+Smits, free lance writer and also columnist for the Detroit _Times_.
+It is not a story of a wolf-pack, but we digress a moment to place
+chronologically a striking episode of a lone Michigan wolf. We quote
+the St. Ignace _Enterprise_ of February 3, 1927:
+
+ LARGE TIMBER WOLF
+
+ Entered the Home of Robert Alexander and Attacked Woman and Children
+
+ Mrs. Robert Alexander and children were made the victims of a savage
+ attack by a large timber wolf in their home in Brevort township last
+ Wednesday. The animal, made desperate evidently by hunger forced its
+ way through the doorway of the kitchen and made a rush at the children
+ who were playing on the floor. Mrs. Alexander got between the wolf and
+ the children and called to her husband to get a gun, and she also was
+ leaped upon by the animal and borne to the floor. Before it could do
+ serious harm Alexander appeared with a gun and first kicking the wolf
+ from the prostrate form of his wife fired as the wolf made its escape
+ through the doorway and slightly injuring it. It was making towards
+ the woods when Mrs. Lottie Page, a neighbor, hearing the shot came out
+ of her home with a loaded shotgun in her hand and seeing the wolf made
+ a lucky shot killing the animal.
+
+ While wolves have been reported as being numerous in Brevort and
+ surrounding townships, and have done considerable damage, this is
+ the first instance that one has been known to have attacked a human
+ being. The Alexanders are of the opinion that the attack was caused by
+ starvation as the animal appeared to be weak from exhaustion.
+
+On seeing this gem, I wrote Smits, who replied April 29:
+
+ “State Conservation Officer George Gish, Jr., who patrols the area
+ in which the ‘attack’ occurred, called at the Alexander home and was
+ shown the dead wolf. It was a small mongrel of the collie type, with
+ a bob tail, a white blaze, yellow in color, weighing not more than 40
+ pounds. There is an epidemic of ‘running fits’ or ‘fright-disease’
+ among dogs, and this dog may have rushed into the cabin while
+ delirious, or it may have merely been cold, hungry and lonesome. It
+ was a male dog. The rumor that the animal was a timber wolf started
+ when someone in the neighborhood ‘guessed maybe’ there was wolf blood
+ in the dog. Not because of its appearance, but because it came out of
+ the woods and acted strangely....
+
+ “... The story is from a paper at the county seat. It was carried
+ extensively over the wires....”
+
+Although chiefly known to the literary world for his novel _Spring
+Flight_, Smits is, among other things, one of America’s connoisseurs
+of un-natural history. So he could not resist going on:
+
+ “Not only can many bartenders and hotel clerks in the backwoods give
+ you good wolf yarns--attacks on mankind--but old lumberjacks know, by
+ direct hearsay, of some desperate encounters. The editor of the daily
+ paper at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., ... has for several years offered
+ $100 for an authenticated report of a wolf attacking a person in the
+ Algoma district of Ontario. No takers.
+
+ “The state prison at Marquette, Mich., fronts on Lake Superior and,
+ although on the outskirts of a small city, is at the edge of a strip
+ of wild country extending into rather large areas of swamp and timber
+ and offering cover for a fugitive for hundreds of miles. Very few
+ escapes are attempted, and the fear of wild animals is unquestionably
+ a deterrent. One gang got loose and were rounded up because they made
+ straight for roads and kept on them. They spent one night in the
+ brush, with a few hares, porcupines and owls about them, and perhaps a
+ fox or coyote, and said when they were caught that they all were sorry
+ they ran away when darkness closed in on them. They had a terrible
+ night. All city gunmen.”
+
+That there are at times very special motives behind wolf-pack stories
+appears from a letter from B. H. Divine, published in the Utica, New
+York, _Press_ of April 12, 1927:
+
+ “To the Editor of _The Press_:
+
+ The following wolf story recently appeared in _The Press_:
+
+ ‘Huntsville, Ont., March 31--While making his way to a lumber camp
+ near Algonquin Park, Elwood Bloss was pursued by a pack of wolves. He
+ fled onto the open ice, where the animals, 16 of them, surrounded him.
+ Their howling attracted the attention of a game warden, who arrived
+ before they closed on their intended victim. He shot seven before the
+ pack fled.’
+
+Upon writing to the authorities at Huntsville for the truth of the
+matter, I received the following letter from T. Muyhum, postmaster:
+
+ ‘This story was first published here early in January last, but since
+ that time it has been pretty thoroughly exploded.
+
+ ‘The young man (aged 22) started out to walk six or seven miles to the
+ railroad station early in the morning. The howling of some wolves at
+ a distance frightened him so badly that he did not recover for some
+ days. It was necessary to make some explanation of his condition,
+ and the truth sounded so inadequate he built the story to suit his
+ condition. It was soon into the papers, and after being contradicted
+ from the pack end he acknowledged that much of it was not true.’”
+
+For some reason there did not come to my attention until 1931 a
+support of wolf-packs by book reviewers and press commentators who
+relied on a volume published in 1929, _The Last Stand of the Pack_, by
+Arthur H. Carhart and Stanley P. Young. At last, said the reviewers,
+a distinguished biologist and student of wild life has spoken out,
+resentful about the sniping at wolf-packs by amateur naturalists.
+
+Young was chief biologist of the U. S. Biological Survey, exclaimed the
+champions of the pack, in consonant triumph. They were right, for I
+looked him up in _American Men of Science_ and found this substantial
+record:
+
+ “... U. S. Govt. hunter, bur. biol. surv., U. S. Dept. Agr., Ariz.,
+ 17-19, in charge ground squirrel control work, 19, coyote control
+ crew, southeast N. Mex., 20, asst. leader predatory animal control,
+ 20-21, leader, Colo-Kans. dist., 21-27, asst. head div. econ.
+ investigations, Washington, D. C., 27-28, prin. biologist in charge
+ div. predatory animal and rodent control, 28-....”
+
+The reviewers did not notice, but I did, a sensational angle. To have
+Young opposing Nelson was like Roosevelt falling out with Smith--the
+chief of a division of the U. S. Biological Survey opposing that
+retired chief of the Survey who had brought him to Washington. It was
+a delicate situation but I had to get Nelson’s view and wrote him
+discreetly April 28, 1932. He replied May 14 from California:
+
+ “... It will surprise me very much if he has recorded a pack of any
+ considerable size beyond that which you and I believe to be normal
+ (mother with litter of pups). I will look up the matter soon after I
+ return and talk to him about it. Will then write you....”
+
+An invalid, and busy though officially retired, Nelson did not
+communicate until March 22, 1933. There was to be no Smith-Roosevelt
+situation, it now appeared, for the retired Chief said:
+
+ “Under date of March 14, 1933, Stanley P. Young of the Biological
+ Survey writes....
+
+ “‘With regard to your question on wolves, I heartily agree with you
+ that the great packs of wolves such as have been often described
+ in books and newspapers exist only in the minds of writers. In my
+ experience the typical wolf-pack consists of the two parents and
+ their young of the year. One is apt to see this so-called pack in
+ the late fall and up until the early spring. Also it is possible in
+ the formation of this so-called pack for two families of wolves to
+ intermingle for a short time in the fall of the year, particularly if
+ one family group is in close proximity to another, and a kill is in
+ progress. My experience, even under these conditions, however, is to
+ the effect that wolves of several families never unite in a long and
+ friendly association....
+
+ “‘It is therefore possible from the foregoing that newspaper writers
+ and authors have in mind the family groups of wolves rather than the
+ packs of adults. However, these writers usually give the impression
+ that these packs are made up of adult wolves. The greatest number of
+ wolves in one litter that I have ever seen totalled eight. This pack
+ was made up of the eight young, which were apparently whelped in early
+ March, and the old female and old male.’”
+
+Nelson felt Young was a bit too generous “in explaining what the
+writers have in mind in their tales of big packs. Really they are
+drawing from an inexhaustible store of ignorance on the subject.
+Probably less than 1 per cent of them ever saw a wolf in the wilds.”
+
+The year 1933 closed on a note ominous for New York State. For the
+_Herald-Tribune_ of December 30 reported:
+
+ “Lithgow Osborne, State Commissioner of Conservation, has assigned Ray
+ Burmaster, game protector of the Saranac Lake district, to exterminate
+ the wolves which have been seen in the northern counties in recent
+ weeks. Ten dozen snares and traps have been set in the wolf-infested
+ areas and seventy-five skilled hunters and trappers will be employed.
+ Wolves recently attacked two farm hands near Fort Covington, in
+ Franklin County.... The pack now at large numbers from twelve to
+ fifty.”
+
+The New York _Times_, evidently not jealous, supported its rival the
+_Herald-Tribune_ by saying in an editorial of January 5 that: “...
+one pack hunting in Franklin County at this time is estimated at from
+twelve to fifty in number....” They added that: “An application has
+been made to the Biological Survey at Washington for the services of an
+expert wolf trapper to rid New York of the unwelcome visitors.”
+
+I wrote the Conservation Department of New York at Albany January 5,
+and Lithgow Osborne, Commissioner, replied January 12:
+
+ “... we do not have any definite information to indicate that the
+ wolves which have recently appeared in the vicinity of Owls Head in
+ the Adirondacks are running in packs. We are sending one of our field
+ investigators, Mr. Darrow, into the region which the wolves apparently
+ inhabit, in an effort to determine just what the situation is. I shall
+ be pleased to request a report from him as to whether or not the
+ wolves are actually hunting in packs, and to see that the information
+ is forwarded to you sometime early in the spring.”
+
+The Commissioner’s follow-up slipped and I did not remind him for two
+years. On July 13, 1936, came a letter from John T. Gibbs, Deputy
+Commissioner. He mentions several reports on the Adirondack wolves “all
+of which resulted in our deciding that there were no packs of timber
+wolves in the Adirondacks.”
+
+One of the reports was from E. A. Goldman of the U. S. Biological
+Survey. He had been in the region of the packs and “we crossed a fresh
+track of one of these canine beasts in a remote section of the forest.
+Owing to the softness and depth of snow it had been making slow
+progress. The track, about one day old, appeared like that of a rather
+small dog.”
+
+Two animals from the supposed wolf-pack had been captured, but “general
+appearances indicated, however, that both are dogs.”
+
+The skin and skull from another animal killed was sent to the American
+Museum of Natural History of New York. On February 15, 1934, H. E.
+Anthony, curator, reported that in his judgment the relics were those
+of a dog.
+
+By 1935 the news magazine _Time_ had already secured a wide public
+for its news radio broadcast. They had enough nobility or were secure
+enough to print in their “Letters” of January 21, 1935, an indignant
+protest from Manitoba against what the correspondent felt was their
+nature-faking. Axel Nielsen wrote them from Cranberry Portage, Manitoba:
+
+ “Your radio representation of the wolf story (Dec. 21, 1934), was most
+ unconvincing. Don’t let yourself be taken in by such stories....
+
+ “For 15 years I have traded and prospected in the North, over a vast
+ territory, a belt 1,200 miles long by 500 wide, the top of all the
+ prairie Provinces and beyond. I have met wolves, traveled with them,
+ trailed them. They have trailed me too; they’re a curious lot. But
+ my own sleigh dogs were ten times more dangerous.... Your terrified
+ passengers were probably stretching the imagination valiantly, thanks
+ to the nursery version of wolves in general.... In all my experience,
+ all my questioning of Indians, whose language I speak fluently, I have
+ never yet discovered a single wolf half as dangerous as the ordinary
+ pasture bull, an irritable sow, or a gander.”
+
+
+THE WOLF PACK IN THE OLD WORLD
+
+The _American Mercury_, July, 1927, statement on the wolf-pack closed:
+
+ “The case seems to be definitely settled against the wolf-pack in
+ North America. But there still remains Russia. Well, why not let
+ Russia remain? No one seems to have checked wolf-pack stories in
+ Russia for everyone is so sure they are true. And perhaps they are.
+ Besides, it is a distant country, and the fancy must somewhere have
+ play.”
+
+For many years I sought and found reliable information on conditions in
+what is now the U.S.S.R. from a learned and far-traveled officer of the
+Russian Navy, Commander N. A. Transehe, who was doing scientific work
+in New York. One of our conversations dealt with packs of wolves.
+
+Transehe had journeyed through recognized wolf districts of Russia
+and Siberia so extensively that few could have had more experience.
+He never saw more than single wolves or a pair (doubtless male and
+female), except when it seemed clear that the group was one or both
+parents with a litter. I suggested that doubtless the wolf-pack, then,
+existed in Russia only as folklore, but this he considered did not
+follow at all. “I have lived in New York several years,” he said. “I
+have never been to Wall Street but I know there is a Wall Street. I
+have lived in the United States without seeing the Rocky Mountains but
+I know there are Rocky Mountains. It is that way with packs of wolves
+in Russia. They are of common knowledge.”
+
+This was the considered view of a Russian whose judgment I had often
+found good. Also there were two of the foremost authorities on wild
+animals in the United States, who had expressed to me the feeling that
+Eurasian wolves might be quite different from ours and that we had
+better not get too dogmatic about their not running in packs or in
+general about their being just behavior replicas of American wolves.
+These authorities were the above-cited Nelson, in several letters and
+conversations, and C. Hart Merriam in a letter of December 9, 1924.
+
+In 1926, with the hilarious Lake Winnipeg (Ben Cockrane) and Ignace
+yarns fresh in mind, I found myself an after-dinner speaker at a New
+York banquet of the Western Universities Club where Kent Cooper, then
+recently elected General Manager of the _Associated Press_, presided.
+The opportunity was too good, and I dealt with press faking, spinning
+yarn after yarn and alleging, in some cases not correctly, that these
+had been carried by the _Associated Press_.
+
+On July 8, 1926, I received a letter from Jackson S. Elliott, Assistant
+General Manager, saying that the _Associated Press_ was making “use of
+the information you gave to us about the wolves not running in packs in
+order to have our own service as near accurate as possible.”
+
+Three things seemed to me: that the _AP_ carried fewer American wolf
+stories during the next several years, that most American wolf stories
+in the press during that time were not of _AP_ origin, but that stories
+of wolf-packs from abroad failed to decrease in number.
+
+Magazines were active in European tales. Through an article, “Russia of
+the Hour,” by Junius B. Wood, the _National Geographic Magazine_, for
+November, 1926, p. 521, said:
+
+ “It is only a step from Moscow ... into the wide open spaces. Wolves
+ and bears still roam in the Moscow district, and when the dull winter
+ dusk comes at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the country is under its
+ white mantle of snow, hunger drives them to prey on mankind.
+
+ “They boldly attack villages and, this year, even assailed a railroad
+ train of cattle. No peasant ventures alone far outside his village,
+ and one group of 20 men, fancying safety in numbers, was attacked by a
+ wolf-pack. Several were killed and all seriously torn before the pack
+ was driven off.”
+
+The author proved to be a correspondent of the Chicago _Daily News_,
+with broad experience of travel, including Russia. I wrote him July 14,
+1927, with interest in his picture of Russia under the Soviets, asking
+several questions, mainly ones that would enable me to check on the
+reports further:
+
+On what railroad and near or between what towns was the cattle train
+attacked, whence did the information come, when did the attack take
+place? Could the author furnish corresponding information regarding the
+twenty men attacked? What further information could he give regarding
+wolves in Russia, as to their traveling or working in packs? What
+sources for still more knowledge could he suggest?
+
+Wood wrote from Paris, France, August 31:
+
+ “Your letter of July 14, in which a certain unidentified group
+ designated as ‘we’ requests further information concerning my
+ reference to Russian wolves in an article in the _National Geographic
+ Magazine_ has been forwarded to me here. From time to time this
+ coming winter when I return to the U.S.S.R. I will be pleased to send
+ you what information I receive on this subject as wolves are as active
+ a source of news in that country as bootleggers are in the U. S. A.
+
+ “This information was taken from Soviet newspapers. The attack on the
+ cattle train standing on a siding was later corroborated from other
+ sources. The attack on the villagers went into details to the extent
+ of giving the names of those killed. Both occurred in the winter of
+ 1926-7. As I do not have my papers here and do not remember the names
+ of villages, railroad, casualties and other details requested in
+ questions 1, 2 and 3, I must postpone answering further until I return
+ to Moscow and have opportunity to look them up.
+
+ “Your statement ‘You know, of course, that of all wolf-pack stories
+ published by the American newspapers, more than 75 per cent are
+ without any foundation whatever, and that most of the rest are
+ based on some misapprehension’ indicates a clairvoyance worthy of
+ your fellow explorer ‘Doc’ Cook. It is the first suggestion which
+ has come to me that I ‘know’, or even admit such a theory. It is
+ far from proven.... (I) have serious doubts of your impartiality on
+ the gregariousness of wolves. Though entirely personal, my humble
+ opinion would accept the version of unscientific but not blind
+ natives, including rural correspondents, who are living with wolves in
+ preference to scientists’ dogmas which appeal to publishers and lyceum
+ managers....”
+
+The letter then goes on to valuable and no doubt accurately quoted
+statements by Russians on wolves, ending with: “Packs are reported as
+varying from 5 to more than 100 which, while leaving the figures open
+to doubt, cannot be entirely an optical illusion.”
+
+The promised letter of information from Moscow did not come, but I
+secured Moscow and general U.S.S.R. information from other sources.
+Waldemar Jochelson, distinguished Russian traveler and anthropologist,
+was then in New York and wrote me twice concerning the Wood article,
+July 27 and August 11, 1927. The letters do not say it outright, but
+there is to be inferred from them a view that wolf-packs do exist, or
+at least may exist. In this Jochelson resembles most Russians whom I
+know. But, again like most, he holds this belief, or this willingness
+to believe, in spite of, rather than because of, his own experience. He
+says in the August 11 letter:
+
+ “As to my own observations in Siberia before the railroad was built
+ and in places far away from the railroad after its construction I
+ may say that I never saw a single wolf in my numerous voyages except
+ puppies taken from wolf’s den.
+
+ “I was told by my reindeer drivers of instances when single wolves
+ attacking herds of reindeer seized calves in spite of the presence
+ of the herdsmen. I remember one case when a reindeer of my team came
+ running and fell exhausted at the entrance of my tent and the team
+ driver told me that the reindeer was pursued by a wolf.
+
+ “Siberian hunters told me the following on the habits of the Siberian
+ wolf. He does not like the woods, preferring the tundra and other open
+ places, where he can see and smell his prey from a distance. Grown up
+ wolves do not like company. Wolves have separate dens and she-wolves
+ abandon their puppies when they become able to hunt for themselves.”
+
+The outstanding foreign wolf tale of 1927, not so much in itself as in
+what it led to, was printed as an _Associated Press_ release by the New
+York _Times_, February 9:
+
+ CAUCASUS WOLVES BOMBED FROM AIRPLANE; HUNGRY PACKS INVADE TOWNS,
+ KILLING PEASANTS
+
+ GENEVA, Feb. 8 (AP).--Wolves in the Caucasus have become so numerous
+ that the military authorities there sent an airplane to the infested
+ districts, where poison gas bombs were dropped on packs, killing 200
+ of the invaders, say reports received by the League of Nations.
+
+ Wolves are becoming a menace to the lives of peasants in remote
+ regions of Russia, Poland and some other countries of East Central
+ Europe, the reports say. Ferocious from hunger, these beasts, which
+ have multiplied surprisingly, are reported as frequently making
+ attacks on villages, and in some cases have killed and devoured
+ helpless peasants.
+
+ Austria reports that one farmer kept twelve wolves at bay with an
+ axe, wounding them all with powerful swinging blows, and that he was
+ finally rescued by villagers, who saved his life by quick bandaging of
+ bleeding arms and legs.
+
+ In the district of Vilna, Poland, packs of wolves, maddened by cold
+ and hunger, descended on the town of Ostrovsk and boldly attacked
+ the inhabitants, who, during several hours, were obliged to put up
+ an organized defense with rifle and shotgun before the savage enemy
+ retired. Poland is reported to have mobilized several regiments to
+ carry on an offensive against wolves.
+
+ From Russia come even more terrifying stories. In the rural region
+ wolves by hundreds attack villages and even boldly enter the smaller
+ cities in broad daylight. At Verchofourye five peasants were slain by
+ the beasts before the packs were driven off.
+
+ At Orenburg three packs entered the town from different points,
+ throwing the population into a panic and forcing all to barricade
+ themselves in their houses, from which they launched a steady fire,
+ finally killing all the wolves, which tenaciously refused to abandon
+ their attack.
+
+Perhaps through too much Edgar Wallace and E. Phillips Oppenheim I got
+on this story a slant which appears from a letter written by N. M.
+Stiles, Foreign News Editor of the _Associated Press_, to their Geneva
+correspondent, Joseph E. Sharkey, on February 24:
+
+ “Please recall your Wolf story which you sent us by mail. We used it
+ on February 8, but before it got to the wires we sent out a note to
+ editors suggesting its elimination for two reasons, the first being
+ that the incidents described were so extraordinary, the second being
+ that the statement that wolves travel in packs has been disputed.
+ However, although the story did not get on the wires, two of the New
+ York papers nevertheless printed it--the New York _Times_ putting it
+ in a box on the front page.
+
+ “Now comes a letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson, in which he asks the
+ following somewhat startling and curious question:
+
+ ‘Do you suppose the wolf dispatch you carried about two weeks ago
+ from Geneva could possibly have been some sort of a cipher message on
+ behalf of almost any sort of secret organization? If so, you are the
+ people to do detective work on its origin. I am putting out two or
+ three lines to trace it from the pseudo-natural history point of view.’
+
+ “As you recall we cabled you for confirmation of the story, and
+ you replied that the reports were received unofficially leanations
+ (League of Nations) circles also printed widely Swiss newspapers.’
+ Now when you come to read this story with the thought in mind that
+ the word ‘wolves’ might be a code word to identify some sort of an
+ organization, as for instance an anti-Bolsheviki outfit, the dispatch
+ does read most interestingly. One can imagine that the organization
+ was putting these messages over on the Swiss newspapers.”
+
+Meantime I tried to find out directly how the League was connected
+and wrote to the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association of New
+York City. Their librarian, A. G. F. Aylmer, replied February 24 that
+they could not understand how the wolf stories should interest the
+League, and while, like me, they had seen the press despatch, they had
+no direct information of any similar kind from Geneva. Their office
+would let me know if they found later that there had been some League
+connection.
+
+The Stiles letter brought a reply from Sharkey, dated March 12. It puts
+the case reasonably and shows, particularly in the last of our quoted
+paragraphs, how normal it is in Europe to read, pass on, and believe
+wolf-pack stories.
+
+ “Answering your letter of February 24 concerning the wolf mail story
+ let me say that this was founded on stories and despatches appearing
+ in Swiss newspapers and on confirmatory talks with secretaries of the
+ League of Nations....
+
+ “The League interest in the wolf reports is chiefly economic. The
+ reason was explained to me at the time by ... member of the League
+ information section....
+
+ “He told me about recent cases of wolf-packs attacking peasants in the
+ outlying districts. I have never before heard disputed the statement
+ that Russian wolves ‘carry on’ in packs. When I was in Siberia in
+ the winter of 1918-19 a detachment of the British Hampshire regiment
+ which ‘en-sleighed’ from Omsk to Ekaterinburg was attacked by a pack
+ of wolves. The soldiers killed most of them. Participants told me the
+ story personally and I wrote it at the time. The whole history of
+ Russia shows that wolves, desperate with hunger, will attack in packs.
+ The word pack means what it says.
+
+ “Since mailing you my story there has appeared a despatch from
+ Constantinople declaring that wolves had attacked people in the
+ outskirts. There is a general idea that the lack of arms in Russia
+ (the Soviet government not favoring extensive arsenals in the outlying
+ districts) has led to a big increase in wolves while the present
+ severe winter has brought the beasts out into the open to secure
+ food. I am sorry I have thrown away all my clippings. Certainly Mr.
+ Stefansson’s theory is startling and interesting and I shall follow
+ any new wolf despatch from a new angle, letting you know, of course,
+ the result.
+
+ “The wolf narratives have created no stir in Europe whatsoever because
+ they are regarded as entirely probable, given the circumstances
+ outlined above.”
+
+In due course a letter came from the Information Department of the
+League of Nations, dated Geneva, March 14, and signed by Arthur
+Sweetser. This letter vouches for the generally high character of
+the American press representatives at Geneva, the particularly high
+character of Joseph E. Sharkey, and the authenticity of the news
+conveyed by Sharkey so far as concerns its having been received by the
+League of Nations organization and passed on by them. The general tenor
+of Mr. Sweetser’s long and careful statement is that, without being
+exactly able to prove the truth of the stories, he really knows them
+to be correct, and that therefore the League is neither a victim of
+propaganda nor indulging in any when it passes on information of this
+kind. One section of his letter reads:
+
+ “... it is a fact that one of our officials has seen 6, 8, or 10 (he
+ does not remember the exact number) despatches from Eastern European
+ countries regarding the increasing depredations and boldness of
+ wolves.... The official in question is a native of that part of Europe
+ and his information, and the experience of his friends as to the
+ habits of wolves, differs from that of Mr. Stefansson.”
+
+On June 1, Sharkey wrote me from Geneva:
+
+ “... there may be an inherent difference in the wolves found in North
+ America and those found in Russia, including, of course, Siberia.
+ I personally spent three months in Siberia during the winter of
+ 1918-1919, and persons who had long lived there frequently spoke to me
+ about the depredations of wolves which seemed to run in packs....
+
+ “... I want to bring to your attention the testimony of a young
+ Frenchman who with others was conducting an aeroplane trip over
+ Ukraine during the latter part of the war.... He said: ‘I think I
+ can throw some light on that question, for when I and my colleagues
+ were flying over Southern Ukraine we distinctly saw a pack of wolves
+ marching slowly and somewhat solemnly through an opening in the
+ woods. The band seemed to have a distinct formation with one wolf
+ striding some feet ahead of the main pack as if he were their leader.
+ Stragglers were seen in the rear, but the whole band seemed to have a
+ distinct and almost military formation under a distinct leader.’
+
+ “I have talked again with the Polish friend whose father did a good
+ deal of hunting of wolves, and he repeated that there is no doubt but
+ that in Poland, where the wolves run over from Russia, the animals
+ operate in packs or groups.”
+
+The _Associated Press_ received as late as March 23 pack despatches
+from Geneva, “where interest in news of wolf activity is chiefly
+economic.” One of the despatches closed with these three paragraphs:
+
+ “There is a general belief here that the lack of arms in the Russian
+ country districts has led to a big increase in the number of wolves,
+ while the severe winter has brought the beasts into the open to secure
+ food.
+
+ “Despite the assertions of many naturalists that wolves do not hunt in
+ packs those who have personal knowledge of wolf hunting, particularly
+ in Poland, assert that wolves, desperate with hunger, will attack in
+ packs.
+
+ “In the winter of 1918-19 a detachment of the British Hampshire
+ regiment in Siberia which went by sleigh from Omsk to Ekaterinburg
+ reported an attack by a pack of wolves. The soldiers killed most of
+ the animals by rifle fire.”
+
+These despatches, though I saw them through the kindness of the
+_Associated Press_, were not sent out to the newspapers--for the
+reasons given in the already-quoted letter from their Foreign News
+Editor. On June 22, Stiles wrote further:
+
+ “I have just read your article on wolves in the _American Mercury_,
+ and am reminded that I intended to send you a mail story on the
+ subject that we received some time ago from our then correspondent
+ in Moscow, Mr. James A. Mills. We did not make use of it, as it was
+ for the most part a denial of the wolf story that came from Geneva to
+ which you called our attention and which we had already endeavored to
+ ‘kill.’”
+
+The Mills contribution is valuable as a statement of the time from
+Moscow and is, of course, wholly authentic to the extent that it is a
+report of what was believed there then about wolves. We accordingly use
+more than three-quarters of it:
+
+ “Moscow, March 17.--Soviet Government officials were amazed at reports
+ reaching the League of Nations recently that Russia was overrun with
+ wolves to such an extent that in the Caucasus region the military
+ authorities had to dispatch airplanes with poison-gas bombs to kill
+ the invaders. The wolves had become so numerous and ferocious, the
+ League reports said, that they devoured human beings and terrified
+ whole cities and towns.
+
+ “‘A wolf story is always as good as a fish story,’ said a prominent
+ Soviet official to the correspondent. ‘The more it is exaggerated, the
+ better it sounds. But such stories ought to be left to those whom the
+ late President Roosevelt called “Nature fakers.” It is in poor taste
+ for a dignified, serious organization like the League of Nations to
+ issue them. The story about an airplane being sent in pursuit of packs
+ of these wolves is pure fiction. Russia has its share of wolves, but
+ they are no more numerous nor savage than those of any other country.’
+
+ “That Russian wolves are no more abundant or ferocious than their
+ brother-wolves in other countries, is however, not strictly accurate;
+ for statistics show that not only are wolves on the increase in
+ Russia, but their depredations are much more extensive and costly
+ than formerly. The animals are also considerably larger, stronger
+ and fiercer than the average wolf. The increase in their number is
+ attributed to the peasants’ lack of rifles and shot with which to hunt
+ them. It is only within the last year that the Government, yielding
+ to complaints of the peasants that wolves were menacing their sheep
+ and cattle, organized special detachments of professional hunters to
+ exterminate the wolves, giving a premium for each animal killed.[14]
+
+ “The loss in sheep, cattle and horses caused by wolves during the last
+ year is estimated at $6,500,000. A full-grown Russian wolf can easily
+ kill a horse, cow, or even a bull. But he rarely, according to Russian
+ authorities on natural history, shows sufficient courage to attack a
+ man. Indeed, the wolf usually runs in terror at the sight of a human
+ being. Even when travelling in large packs, these Russian experts say,
+ wolves avoid meeting a man in daylight; they become dangerous only at
+ night, when they may collectively attack a person along a lonely, dark
+ road in the country.
+
+ “Throughout the day they usually sleep, wandering and hunting in
+ search of prey only in the dark. At such times, say the Russian
+ authorities, the most formidable weapon against the animals is not a
+ loaded gun, but a simple flare of artificial light, like a burning
+ match, a bonfire or an illuminated candle, wolves having mortal fear
+ of anything resembling fire.
+
+ “Wolves always live in families--the father, mother, two young wolves
+ born the previous year and two baby wolves born in February or March.
+ Throughout the Summer and Autumn they never leave the neighborhood
+ where their young were born. It is only during the mating season in
+ December and January that the male wolves, seeking their female kin,
+ form packs and roam for scores of miles at night.”
+
+This statement would have been more convincing with the last paragraph
+omitted. For perhaps the Russians might err on packs when they were
+so wrong, or at least so far from what naturalists think they know,
+about mating habits and size of litters among wolves. The usual view
+is that instead of being whelped in pairs, as these Moscow informants
+had it, wolves are born in litters ranging up to twelve, and that they
+do not accompany the mother beyond six or eight months. It is a fresh
+contribution, too, that wolf-packs consist of males that are searching
+for females.
+
+For the time being the packs had it--Sharkey’s suggestion (and Nelson’s
+and Merriam’s) that wolves might be different in Europe seemed to be
+carrying the day.
+
+But there was the matter of wolves attempting to devour the Hampshire
+regiment of British troops on its sleigh journey from Omsk to
+Ekaterinburg in 1918-19. Sir Sidney Harmer of the Natural History
+Museum, South Kensington, was a student of animal habits and of animal
+lore. He should be able to get in touch with members of the Hampshire
+regiment, and I wrote him June 23. The Museum’s Keeper of Zoölogy, W.
+G. Calman, replied on the Museum’s behalf July 21 that the Hampshire
+story was fading “as wolf stories generally do when they are more
+definitely enquired into.” He forwarded a letter dated July 19 from
+H. M. Howgrave-Graham, who is Secretary of the Metropolitan Police of
+London and was (says _Who’s Who_) “Captain in the 1/9 Batln. Hampshire
+Regiment in India and Siberia, 1914-19.”
+
+ “I was in Colonel Johnson’s Battalion (the Ninth Battalion of the
+ Hampshire Regiment) and it happens that I was in charge of the only
+ party which made any considerable sledge journeys during the winter
+ 1918-19.
+
+ “My party tried to get to Orenburg from Omsk but didn’t get so far. We
+ went by train to Troitsk and from there we made two sledge journeys,
+ one to Verkhne Uralsk and back and one to Orsk and back. I remember
+ being told that we might see wolves and had hopes of doing so as we
+ travelled a good deal at night. But we were disappointed and never saw
+ or heard any signs of wolves at all....”
+
+Junius B. Wood said in his above-quoted letter to me:
+
+ “Your statement ‘You know, of course, that of all wolf-pack stories
+ published by the American newspapers, more than 75 per cent are
+ without any foundation whatever, and that most of the rest are based
+ on some misapprehension’ indicates a clairvoyance worthy of your
+ fellow explorer ‘Doc’ Cook. It is the first suggestion which has come
+ to me that I ‘know,’ or even admit such a theory ... unless you can
+ show that you have tabulated and checked the individual inaccuracies
+ of ‘all’ the newspaper stories which you so sweepingly include, I am
+ extremely sceptical of your ‘75 per cent’ and have serious doubts of
+ your impartiality on the gregariousness of wolves.”
+
+It had never been my intention to claim that three-quarters of all
+cases had already been studied and found without any vestige of
+truth. What I meant was that several students whom I know, among
+them the Chief of the United States Biological Survey, had been
+investigating for years the cases which came to their attention and
+that three-quarters of these had proved without foundation--while
+most of the rest, and perhaps all, were based on misquotations,
+misunderstandings, and the like.
+
+Particularly with regard to a distant and vast realm like the U.S.S.R.
+it is hard to study all the cases reported. With increasing frequency
+through my investigations I began to run upon the name of Sergius
+Buturlin as a lifelong student of Russian and Siberian wild life and
+as the foremost authority, among other things, on wolves. Accordingly,
+I wrote him July 14, 1927, requesting as much general information and
+as definite information as he felt like giving. He replied August 18:
+
+ “I began hunting when about 8 years old, now--I am sorry to say--some
+ 46 years ago. And though my chief interest was always with birds, and
+ my first ornithological paper was published (in _Okhotnichia Gazeta_
+ or _Hunter’s Journal_, Moscow) in 1888, I was, and am still, very fond
+ indeed of big game shooting (bears, moose, wolves).
+
+ “I hunted much in the basin of middle Volga (governments of
+ Simbirsk--now Ulianovsk--Penza, Kazan, Nijny, Nijny-Novgorod) in
+ governments of Tula and Orel, in Livonia and Esthonia, in governments
+ of St. Petersburg--now Leningrad--and Novgorod, in Kirghiz country
+ (between Irtysh and Ob), Kulunda steppe, gov’ts. of Tomsk and Irkutsk,
+ and in the north: Arkhangelsk and Olonetz gov’ts., Kolguev, Novaia
+ Zemlia, Yakutsk, Verkhoiansk, middle and lower Kolyma, some parts of
+ Chukchee-land and Kamchatka.
+
+ “As from 1888 on I was always an active contributor to almost
+ all our hunters’ journals, Russian and German (we had _Baltische
+ Waidmann’s Blätter_), and from 1898 always took part, as now, in the
+ editorship of our best hunter’s periodicals, I had a vast amount of
+ correspondence with our most experienced shooting men.
+
+ “I can fairly say that we have now too much wolves in our country, but
+ I remember years--for instance, about 1900--when in my native Simbirsk
+ gov. and Penza gov. they were as plentiful as now.
+
+ “And never in my life have I seen more than 14 wolves in one pack,
+ and this only twice. And never have I heard a reliable account of
+ such a case. And I have known many old and experienced professional
+ trappers and hunters.
+
+ “Usual number is about 5-8.
+
+ “But I have seen--it was about half-past five in the morning on the
+ 13th Oct. 1893, near my grandmother’s estate Lava in the middle part
+ of Simbirsk gov., Sura basin,--when a pack of 5 attacked a herd of
+ about 10,000 sheep, frightened about a thousand of them in a narrow
+ ravine and in a few minutes slayed 153 sheep--without even taking away
+ a single sheep, as I drove them away.
+
+ “I suppose if I didn’t happen to ride near by I would be informed
+ afterward by shepherds that they were attacked by 50 wolves. It was of
+ course too dark to see, but though there was no snow, the ground was
+ soft from rains, and I could count all their footprints in the morning
+ in the bush and woodland near this ravine.
+
+ “I am quite sure that wolves (at least in Russia and Siberia) hunt
+ only in family packs, that is, papa, mamma, young ones of the year and
+ often some ones of the previous brood. And this amounts to 5-8, more
+ rarely 9-10, and quite exceptionally 14 specimens.”
+
+Privately we had disposed of the Russian packs of the winter 1927 but
+in the newspapers they continued to do well. There appeared in Miami,
+Florida, (and no doubt elsewhere), a despatch which we copy from the
+_News_ of June 12:
+
+ “MOSCOW, June 11--Ten families were rushed to the Pasteur institute at
+ Moscow from Kalujsky, a small village of the Kuban district, after a
+ large pack of mad wolves had swept down the village street, invading
+ gardens and even entering several homes, biting the residents.”
+
+By now the _Associated Press_ was keen on wolves--indeed had been for
+six months when Stiles wrote on September 30 that there was in his
+office a Polish representative who believed stoutly in wolf-packs and
+that they had received (and, I gather, killed) a press despatch from
+Warsaw:
+
+ “Polish military patrol Russian border attacked by pack wolves
+ dispersed them with gunfire.”
+
+I had long been thinking to write my classmate John B. Stetson who was
+Minister to Poland. This gave occasion, and he replied June 8, 1928:
+
+ “A long time ago I had your letter regarding the possible attacks of
+ wolves....
+
+ “While there is much talk about the danger of wolves attacking human
+ beings and while people relate incidents which occurred to them when
+ they have seen wolves which they thought were going to attack them,
+ etc., it is extremely difficult to find specific instances when
+ attacks have been made by wolves....
+
+ “I asked the Chief of the Frontier Guards to make an investigation of
+ the various border posts to see if any attacks had been noted along
+ the 1500 kilometer front between Russia and Poland. This region is
+ wild and not densely settled. I enclose herewith the letter which I
+ have received from him.”
+
+The letter from General Minkiewicz had specific information on two
+cases of wolves, each time three in a group, that had been fired on by
+frontier guards.
+
+As to whether wolves attack in large packs, the General says:
+
+ “Accounts of wolves attacking men sometimes appearing in the
+ press have their origin in the phantasy of correspondents seeking
+ sensational news.
+
+ “In a few cases, however, we have noted a very aggressive attitude
+ displayed by wolves and, if they did not dare to attack me, it was
+ only due to the fact that there were but few of them....”
+
+The general commanding the frontier guard, then, had apparently never
+heard that (around September, 1927) “Polish military patrol Russian
+border attacked by pack wolves dispersed them with gunfire.”
+
+Lee Smits had suggested my writing David C. Mills of the National
+Association of Fur Industries as likely to be informed on wolf-packs.
+Mills wrote from New York, December 9, 1927. A summary of his
+three-page letter is:
+
+Vladimir Eitington (of Eitington-Schild Co., 226 West 30th Street, New
+York City) was once followed by wolves in Siberia until he camped and
+built a fire. He thought there might have been 15 or 25, “but he says
+that in the dark and under such circumstances, he could not make a
+rational estimate.”
+
+Many animals have the following habit. Mills cites from his own
+experience wolves (two), coyotes (several), and bears.
+
+Writer’s opinion, and that of his friend, is that wolves never kill
+people. Specially cited here is John B. Burnham, noted American
+authority on wild animals, former secretary of the American Game
+Protective Association.
+
+Mills thinks that “common knowledge” of wolves and suchlike is usually
+wrong. Then he has his own summary:
+
+ “The information from Russian sources in re. the wolf myth is--
+
+ “1st There has never been a scientific investigation of the question.
+
+ “2nd That wolves, under ordinary conditions, do not attack humans.
+
+ “3rd That mad wolves sometimes enter villages and snap right and left
+ at anything or anyone. I presume this means rabies, as that disease is
+ also found in America among coyotes.
+
+ “4th That they have no knowledge of any authenticated case of wolves
+ in packs attacking travelers in sleighs, etc., but do not know that it
+ has never happened.”
+
+In 1928, perhaps for variety, the newspaper wolf-packs transferred
+their chief European activities to districts other than hackneyed
+Poland and Russia. The American papers informed us soon after the New
+Year (we quote the New York _World_ of January 6) that:
+
+ “... eleven peasant girls of the Czechoslovakian town of Maramaros
+ Sziget were devoured by wolves when returning from a neighboring
+ village through the forest.”
+
+The Consul General of Czechoslovakia gave preliminary reply to my
+inquiry on January 10, warning that stories of wolves “especially
+stories from Vienna are always greatly exaggerated.” On April 2 he
+wrote that “we have here the reply of the Administration of the
+Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia stating that the report of killing of eleven
+peasant girls by wolves in Maramaros Sziget is not true.” Further on
+the letter says that some wolves were seen near Maramaros Sziget in
+January “and this was the possible foundation for the wild report of
+_Neue Freie Presse_.”
+
+November 7 the _Evening Standard_ of London, England, printed a Moscow
+despatch of even date:
+
+ “Wolves are becoming a menace to life in the country districts of
+ North Russia and Siberia....
+
+ “... A pack of several hundred attacked a priest and his wife while
+ they were driving from one village to another 100 miles south of
+ Moscow.
+
+ “While his wife held the reins, the priest beat off the wolves with a
+ whip. Suddenly a wolf bit one of the horse’s legs. It lurched forward,
+ throwing the priest from the wagon. He was killed by the wolves. The
+ horse carried the woman to safety.
+
+ “Similar attacks on persons are reported daily from all parts of the
+ country.--International News Service.”
+
+On this the Chairman of the Amtorg Trading Corporation, Saul G. Bron,
+wrote me November 25:
+
+ “These are termed in the Soviet Union as the ‘big Russian cranberry
+ tree’ tales. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that malicious
+ white-Russian propaganda agencies ... are working overtime and that
+ the comparative scarcity of reliable information about the U.S.S.R.
+ in this country makes a fertile field for the circulation of stories
+ about uprisings, wolves roaming the countryside, etc.”
+
+October 25, C. K. Ogden (whom H. G. Wells has since discussed in the
+Fifth Book of _The Shape of Things to Come_) wrote me from the Royal
+Societies Club, London. He told that the De Reszke cigarette had small
+prize cards in their packages and that the one on The Wolf said “dogs
+and wolves hunt in packs.” He wrote them and they replied:
+
+ “We are sorry that we cannot give you any zoological authority to
+ maintain the view that wolves hunt in packs as stated on the back
+ of picture No. 26 of our Zoological Studies.... The error will be
+ corrected should we have a reprint of the series.”
+
+Through laxity, or real failure of the sources, my wolf record is
+blank for Europe and Asia during 1930 and 1931--there is no account
+of tenderly-nurtured wolf children from India, of babies devoured in
+Siberia, of forays of Rumanian wolves into Czechoslovakia. But in 1932
+the times were more abundant and my records are bulky.
+
+On January 10, 1932, Duncan Campbell Scott, president of the Canadian
+Authors’ Association, descended to his more factual role of president
+of the Royal Society and wrote from Ottawa with concern for my wolf
+studies. He sent a press cutting headed “From Our Own Correspondent,
+Vienna, Sunday”:
+
+ “While an express train from Bucharest was snowbound near Zloty and
+ awaiting help, a pack of hungry wolves bore down upon it.
+
+ “Having no firearms, the train staff emptied a luggage van and threw
+ into it raw meat from the restaurant car.
+
+ “Twenty or more wolves jumped into the van and began to fight one
+ another for the meat. The doors were promptly locked and later the
+ train proceeded on its journey to Kischinev, Bessarabia. On arrival 18
+ wolves were found alive, the rest having been torn to pieces.”
+
+In view of the style of this despatch I have looked up Karel Capek
+in _Who’s Who_ and _Britannica_ but cannot determine from the brief
+sketches whether he was in Vienna during January, 1932.
+
+How wolf stories rotate appeared two years later when C. K. Ogden sent
+me what is essentially the same tale--though with a new city of origin,
+a new date line, a few new frills. The cutting is unfortunately from an
+unnamed paper of London, England--I dare not guess which paper, though
+I think I recognize the style. It was from Budapest, December 19, 1933.
+Like the one of two years earlier it was “From Our Own Correspondent.”
+It ran:
+
+ “An unpleasant adventure which overtook the direct train from Bucarest
+ to Budapest is reported from Bucarest.
+
+ “During the night the train was held up by snowdrifts and obliged to
+ stand nine hours in an uninhabited part of Roumania. To the terror
+ of the passengers a pack of wolves surrounded the train, and the
+ situation was only saved by the wit of a conductor.
+
+ “An order was given that the luggage van should be emptied, and some
+ raw meat from the kitchen was then placed in the van and the doors
+ thrown open. When all the wolves were safely inside the van the doors
+ were shut, and the train continued its journey with these unusual
+ passengers.
+
+ At the station of Chrisina, in Roumania, the wolves were transferred
+ to cages which had been prepared for them.”
+
+It is usually difficult to trace stories from the Balkans, perhaps
+because their Ministers and Consuls there get tired of answering
+questions about all the strange things we print from their part of the
+world. For instance, I still covet the real truth on what appeared,
+as Special Correspondence, in the New York _Times_, February 28, 1932,
+from Bucharest:
+
+ “Two peasants on the way to market in Oradea Mare were attacked on the
+ highroad today by a pack of starving wolves. They were unarmed and,
+ after a brief attempt to beat off the animals with sticks, were pulled
+ down, killed and partly devoured.”
+
+I queried the Roumanian Legation on this but never had a reply.
+
+I have had better luck with the northern countries, perhaps because
+there I know the ropes. The Director of the University Museum,
+Philadelphia, wrote March 21 on behalf of himself and one of his
+vice-presidents, passing on to me heartrending news:
+
+ WOLVES KILL GIRL IN FINLAND; INVADE VILLAGES FOR FOOD
+
+ Wireless to The New York _Times_.
+
+ “HELSINGFORS, March 4.--Villagers in Eastern Finland were terrorized
+ this week by an invasion of hungry wolves, roaming southward from the
+ frozen plains of Lapland.
+
+ “The beasts entered villages and even the outlying districts of towns
+ in search of food. The young daughter of a farmer in middle Finland
+ was attacked and killed by wolves while she was walking on a highway
+ near her home. Her parents found only bones and fragments of clothing
+ after the tragedy....”
+
+I wrote Helsingfors, sending a copy of the _Times_ despatch. The
+Intendent of the Zoological Museum replied March 20th:
+
+ “... it is not true that a young daughter of a farmer was attacked and
+ killed. A similar notice was found in our press, so that the telegram
+ to New York is therefore explicable. By an official investigation,
+ the whole thing turned out to be a manifestation of too vivid
+ imagination--somebody had found a bloody rag on the road, and thus the
+ story was immediately given. In the same way it is a real nonsense
+ that the wolves had penetrated into villages and towns. The whole
+ thing was about a couple of animals which killed a number of dogs
+ before they were driven away and killed.”
+
+The cruel ingenuity of man towards wolves is a defensive reaction
+to the cruel rapacity of wolves toward man. In fact, the wide
+dissemination of stories about packs is a necessity in justifying the
+extensiveness of the war we wage and the character of the weapons and
+tactics we use. We would not be half so successful in protecting the
+chickens of the farmer and the sheep of the rancher if we did not
+constantly circulate reports of how wolves will attack anything from
+a child playing on a cabin floor in Michigan to a regiment of British
+troops in Siberia.
+
+Some of the methods used against wolves are commonplace, not worth
+describing, though we might name a few of them--trapping, shooting, the
+use of poisoned bait, the finding of dens and smoking out of the pups
+to be clubbed to death. One method is so peculiar that we describe it.
+
+Under date of March 12, 1927, the _Associated Press_ received, but did
+not issue to the newspapers, information upon the extent and manner of
+wolf hunting in Poland.
+
+ “... for centuries wolf hunts have been carried out by Poles (1) by
+ the aristocrats as a sport, (2) by peasants as a means of livelihood.
+ The same method, which is gentle, as you will see, has been employed
+ by nobility and peasant.
+
+ “A live pig is attached by a leather rope at the rear of sleigh or
+ sled in which six or seven men take their places, all heavily armed.
+ The sleigh is drawn by two or three horses. Two men devote themselves
+ exclusively to protecting the horses from the onslaught of the wolves
+ which, led from their lairs by the screams of the suffering and dying
+ hog, rush in a pack after the swiftly moving sleigh. Two other men
+ empty their rifles at wolves from either side and two others do their
+ execution from the rear.
+
+ “... (Our informant) said his father has often hunted wolves, which
+ attack in packs, after this fashion.”
+
+I might have traced this account through my aforementioned classmate
+the Minister to Poland, and would have done so but for chancing upon
+remarks of Sir Albert Gray before the Royal Geographical Society of
+London as they are reported in that society’s _Journal_ for June, 1921,
+p. 445. They are to the effect that people continue holding strange,
+romantic, beliefs no matter how often these are exposed. He has in
+mind chiefly the idea that wolves run in packs and quotes the (for the
+time and place) annihilation of the idea by Baddeley in his _Russia in
+the Eighties, Sport and Politics_, (London, 1921). I was on the track
+of wolf-packs then and followed Sir Albert’s clue. I found the author
+demolishing the pack to his own satisfaction and that he also pays his
+respects to various beliefs regarding the methods of hunting wolves.
+
+John F. Baddeley spent in Russia, of which a large section of Poland
+was then a part, most of the decade following 1879 and much of those
+years in hunting and in the company of sportsmen and naturalists. After
+denying that wolves ever go in packs and after denying also that wolves
+are numerous in Russia, he says, beginning on p. 149:
+
+ “The idea that wolves are very numerous in Russia has gained
+ substance, also, from the very natural tendency of certain sportsmen
+ to exaggerate their performances; and more especially is this the case
+ in regard to that form of sport in which wolves and sucking-pigs are
+ supposed to play the chief parts. According to published accounts--I
+ have one or two before me but will not pillory the writers--you
+ have only to take a sucking-pig (in good voice) and drive along the
+ highroad in a sledge any winter’s night, trailing behind you a bundle
+ of straw at the end of a string to represent piggy--who meantime must
+ be made to squeal his loudest--to enjoy excellent sport with the
+ numerous wolves that will assuredly come to the lure the first time of
+ asking. Here again I am regretfully forced to say that I never knew
+ a man of proved veracity who claimed to have bagged even one wolf by
+ this method, while one honest friend assured me that he had tried it
+ no less than seventeen times in places where wolves were known to
+ exist, but had only once had a shot at what he thought might be one.”
+
+It may be, as claimed by this author, that wolves do not swarm in
+from Polish forests at the squeals of a pig, but the belief that they
+do is useful. Faraway, in Michigan for instance, stories detailing
+the alleged Polish ingenuities will tend to lead American woodsmen
+to cleverness of wolf-killing that, in the long run, saves the local
+farmers a good many chickens and lambs.
+
+A reporter friend tells that the wolf-pack is a standard joke among
+the foreign correspondents in Europe, certainly in Vienna, and he has
+passed on to me a crystallization of their attitude, as expressed by
+the correspondent for a London paper:
+
+The yarn is that the Orient Express was held up by a pack of wolves.
+They began at the front end, eating the engineer and fireman, and
+proceeded towards the rear, devouring everyone as they went until, in
+the last car, they came upon a correspondent whom they spared on his
+promise that he would give them adequate publicity.
+
+
+CRUMBS FOR PACK BELIEVERS
+
+The evidence has been, then, that wolf-packs which come up to motion
+picture and folklore standards do not exist. But there still may be a
+foundation of reality upon which the imaginative and inventive have
+built their fabrications.
+
+Students who scout the pack as ordinarily defined and pictured have
+nevertheless agreed on certain things which, by multiplication,
+magnification and misinterpretation, could start the pack idea going,
+or at any rate might keep it going.
+
+Obviously wolf pups will remain with their mother until weaned.
+Doubtless the family breaks up before the young are quite full grown,
+or when they are between five and eight months old. There may be as
+many as twelve in a litter, fourteen by some views. When you meet
+stories of packs with five to fifteen in them you can thus have a true
+report of a family hunting, traveling or living together. If the story
+describes a “gigantic leader of the pack” you may be sure that a family
+is involved. With the even-sized pups taken for normal wolves, mama
+looks colossal. If there are two gigantic leaders, then papa must be
+traveling along.
+
+A foremost authority for America, Nelson, and a foremost one for
+Eurasia, Buturlin, differ on one point, though only in degree. Nelson
+is somewhere between thinking it rare and thinking it improbable that
+last year’s pups will be found still traveling with their mother after
+this year’s become large enough to hunt; Buturlin thinks it rare but
+sees no improbability. Accordingly, when Nelson credits a report of
+say twenty wolves he is inclined to think that two families have come
+together accidentally for a few moments, or are only following each
+other accidentally instead of really traveling together. Buturlin feels
+these are probably one mother’s litters of two years and that they are
+in semi-permanent company.[15]
+
+With such family groups for nuclei, the traveler’s tale, the peasant’s
+yarn which the reporter believes, become easy. Just multiply by ten and
+you have packs of 50, 100, 200. Zero is nothing. So what is a zero more
+or less in a good yarn?
+
+There are methods other than simple multiplication which can lead
+reasonably to packs of great size.
+
+In the Arctic and sub-Arctic I have stood at vantage points from which
+I could see in one, two, or several directions from me scattered wolves
+which, counted together, would make a “pack.” These are no more really
+a pack of wolves than the scattered and unconnected pickpockets of a
+city are a band of thieves. But assume the story is thrice repeated.
+First version: I saw 100 wolves from one place. Second version: Jones
+saw 100 wolves in one place. Third version: Brown says Jones saw a pack
+of 100 wolves.
+
+It might happen that two wolf families scent a caribou or a band.
+Running up the wind they might so nearly come together, without really
+joining, that a careless observer seeing the two packs running in
+the same direction would take them to be one pack--this all the more
+because groups that are indubitably a mother with pups will sometimes
+string out half a mile as they lope in pursuit of caribou. But two
+families strung out, say a mile from the first to the last of them,
+would not make a pack in the sense of a band working systematically and
+semi-permanently together.
+
+With considerations such as these in mind, we examine seemingly
+reliable testimony for considerable numbers of wolves having been
+observed together.
+
+“Considerable” needs defining. The wolf-killing service of the U. S.
+Biological Survey were polled by Nelson and voted for two, three, and
+at highest five wolves being seen together, these always mother or
+parents with pups. Many have testified for seven in a family, however,
+among them the zoologist, Dr. R. M. Anderson, Chief Biologist, Ottawa,
+who has in Canada an official position similar to Nelson’s in the
+United States. A few apparently good witnesses have testified to nine.
+We are, then, chiefly concerned in this section with numbers larger
+than nine and with their interpretation--were they really together and
+then in what sense? How permanently were they together? Were they
+family groups?
+
+My voluminous correspondence on packs was, as said, begun in 1922 when
+I realized that my own belief in wolf-packs, begun in _The Friendly
+Arctic_ (see that book’s index) was untenable. We have already used
+that part of the correspondence which attempted to trace packs reported
+between 1922 and 1936, finding all that could be traced wanting. We now
+canvass the rest of the evidence, using it in the main chronologically.
+
+_The Encyclopedia Britannica_, Fourteenth Edition, says in its article
+on wolves that: “Except during summer when the young families of cubs
+are being separately provided for by their parents they assemble in
+troops or packs.”
+
+That edition is dated 1929. Seven years before, on March 27, 1922,
+Anderson wrote to Nelson that during several years spent in Arctic and
+sub-Arctic Canada and Alaska:
+
+ “... I never saw more than seven wolves in any band nor did I hear
+ of any larger bands than seven. A reliable Eskimo in my employ told
+ me that he was once followed by nine wolves on a river near Herschel
+ Island, and in the Joint Report, _Survey International Boundary, 141st
+ Meridian_, 1918, there is a report of nine wolves seen in a band on
+ the boundary.
+
+ “In that region the wolves are more often seen in bunches of two or
+ three, or singly, and the bunches of five or more are probably an old
+ female with her cubs of the year. Several that we killed out of such a
+ band at Langton Bay were all immature....
+
+ “I have heard occasional vague rumors of larger bands of wolves in
+ more southerly parts of Canada, but have never been able to verify any
+ such reports....”
+
+In passing on to me, November 25, 1922, the information given by
+Anderson, Nelson added:
+
+ “... I am satisfied that the stories of great packs of wolves banded
+ together to pursue caribou or any other game are based on the fertile
+ imagination of the writers and not on observations in the field. It
+ is common knowledge that the wolves pair more or less permanently and
+ are in no sense gregarious animals. At the end of each breeding season
+ and until well into the following winter, my field experience and the
+ information which has come to the Biological Survey from its large
+ force of hunters destroying predatory animals in the western states,
+ coincide in enumerating packs of wolves not exceeding the ordinary
+ normal number of the two parents and the litter of the season which
+ may vary from three or four animals up to ten or twelve. Such bands
+ of parents and their young of the year hunt together until well into
+ the following winter but with the approach of spring they separate
+ to mate.... There is a bare possibility that in pursuing bands of
+ reindeer or caribou, several of these family packs of wolves might
+ accidentally come together in pursuit but such union would be purely
+ fortuitous and of very temporary endurance.
+
+ “My observations and personal information obtained at first hand
+ extends from the mountains bordering the valley of Mexico, north to
+ the Arctic circle in Alaska and also the observations of our large
+ corps of hunters numbering several hundred men, who, during the
+ progress of their campaign against predatory animals in the western
+ states have killed between four and five thousand of these animals
+ within the last six years.”
+
+Nelson wrote me January 4, 1923, after a fresh study of some Russian
+evidence, that clearly they have there the same situation as we have
+here, “the wolves running in family parties exactly as they do in
+North America, running in great bands only in literature and folklore.”
+
+On January 18 Harkin sent me a long quotation from a story he had found
+in “one of our local papers, under date the 17th instant.” It is a long
+statement, generally claiming that wolves are not dangerous. A section
+bearing on our present theme is under the subhead “Whole Pack Fled.” In
+northern Ontario the sledge was crossing a lake, on a winter evening,
+toward an island:
+
+ “We were just making the point of this island, and what should we meet
+ coming from the other side but a pack of wolves. We just met there.
+ The leader, a big, grizzled, long-legged old chap, looked me over from
+ a distance of about twenty feet; the rest of the pack ranged behind
+ and alongside of him, their tails straight out for just about as long
+ as it takes to stiffen them out with fear. Then they broke. They just
+ flattened out on the ice and flew--twenty-one of them.”
+
+We have used in another connection parts of a letter from Inspector
+Jennings of the R.C.M.P., Edmonton, April 20, 1923, one of the most
+informative of the whole wolf correspondence:
+
+ “... it appears timber wolves are becoming more numerous in the
+ McKenzie Delta, but do not appear to be running in packs. At Baillie
+ Island where a number were killed in the winter of 1921-22 they appear
+ to be running in packs of from four to seven. We have also paid
+ bounties at Tree River Detachment for wolves killed in the Coronation
+ Gulf. C. Klinkenberg, whom you remember, told me in 1921, when I was
+ North, of a fight he had with a she wolf and five yearling pups. He
+ was attacked by all of them, and only by the fortunate appearance of
+ his son with his rifle was his life saved.... The general impression
+ is that such bands, or what may be called a band, is generally a
+ family, and that it is only occasionally, when hunting for food, that
+ two or more families might come together and constitute a real pack.
+
+ “In regard to the McKenzie District, an old prospector who has
+ travelled from the headwaters of the Thelon River to the British
+ Columbia boundary in the West states that while east of the McKenzie
+ River wolves may be plentiful when Caribou are numerous, he has
+ never seen them in what may be called a pack, although at times in
+ the open several wolves may be seen together, but evidently working
+ independently. Below Simpson and also on the Liard River in the Foot
+ Hills, he has seen as many as twenty under one leader, but generally
+ the pack is from five to nine. The band of twenty was following a
+ moose track. At another time he states that when his party had killed
+ a moose, shortly after, a large grey wolf was seen on the opposite
+ side of the river. This wolf called a few times and was soon joined by
+ others to the number of ten....
+
+ “One of my officers in February, 1916, while traveling on the
+ McKenzie, about 30 miles below Simpson, came upon a band of seven, at
+ a place where a moose had been killed the previous day.”
+
+December 19, 1924, Nelson reaffirmed his lack of evidence for believing
+that two or more families ever made up a “temporary pack.” He also
+defined the terms under which, for sake of argument, he might concede
+theoretically, in the absence of evidence, that unions might take place.
+
+ “I am still skeptical about the formation of wolf-packs which are
+ made up of two or more families hunting in companionship. I have
+ no knowledge of any such combination, and knowing the habits and
+ characteristics of wolves doubt this occurring except under what might
+ be termed fortuitous circumstances. Two or more family parties of
+ wolves might incidentally come together in the pursuit of the same
+ game animal and join in the kill; but if they did so I should expect
+ a fierce battle to ensue between the different parties of wolves,
+ strangers to one another, just as would happen in the case of strange
+ dogs. Furthermore, I believe that should two or more family parties of
+ wolves thus come together in the immediate pursuit of game, they would
+ promptly spread into their original units as soon as the kill was made
+ or the chase ended. Wolves have much the same nature as dogs, and the
+ hostility that strange dogs show one to another is a good indication
+ of what might be expected on the part of wolves....”
+
+C. Hart Merriam wrote January 12, 1925, quoting his own _Mammals of the
+Adirondacks_ (New York, 1882):
+
+ “Comparatively few wolves are now to be found in the Adirondacks,
+ though twelve years ago they were quite abundant, and used to hunt in
+ packs of half a dozen or more.... The amount of noise that a single
+ wolf is capable of producing is simply astonishing, and many amusing
+ episodes of camp lore owe their origin to this fact. More than one
+ ‘lone traveler’ has hastily taken to a tree, and remained in the
+ inhospitable shelter of its scrawny branches for an entire night,
+ believing himself surrounded by a pack of at least fifty fierce and
+ hungry wolves, when, in reality, there was but one, and (as its tracks
+ afterwards proved) it was on the farther side of a lake, a couple of
+ miles away.”
+
+Merriam further quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s _Hunting Trips of a
+Ranchman_ (New York, 1885):
+
+ “According to my experience, the wolf is rather solitary. A single one
+ or a pair will be found by themselves, or possibly with one or more
+ well-grown young ones, and will then hunt over a large tract where no
+ other wolves will be found; and as they wander very far, and as their
+ melancholy howlings have a most ventriloquial effect, they are often
+ thought to be much more plentiful than they are.”
+
+In its care to avoid nature faking the _Associated Press_ refused to
+circulate a story which they received from Winnipeg and which Jackson
+S. Elliott, Assistant General Manager, sent along for my wolf files
+July 8, 1926. That account, however, runs well within family limits and
+so has the probabilities for it. The applicable section runs that “the
+hunter noticed a string of seven grey wolves crossing the prairie. He
+waited until they approached and was successful in bringing down five
+of them.”
+
+The story seemed probably correct and gave a lead to further
+information, so I wrote A. Brabant, Fur Trade Commissioner of the
+Hudson’s Bay Company, Winnipeg, and received through him a valuable
+letter from their A. C. Clark, Norway House, Manitoba, August 3:
+
+ “Carl Sherman, the trapper who killed the wolves referred to, is at
+ present in this locality, and I have been able to get the details of
+ the story referred to.
+
+ “Sherman is trapping on the Hayes River, about 150 miles north of
+ Oxford House Post. He was travelling north one day early in November
+ ... and saw about 14 or 15 wolves making for the point on which he
+ stood. When they got to within 75 yards of him, he fired and brought
+ down the leader. By the time they got out of sight, he had killed
+ five.... They were all full grown, and all males. The wolves were not
+ dangerous, but made for safety, as soon as they got over the surprise
+ of the first shot. The wind was in the wrong direction for the wolves
+ to get the scent of Sherman.
+
+ “I can vouch for the above story being correct....”
+
+This, then, is a remarkable story. The reader will find several things
+in which it contradicts, or seems to contradict, Nelson, Buturlin, and
+Anderson in so far as he was quoted (above) by Nelson. It fits badly
+with the rest of our evidence but is nevertheless impressively vouched
+for.
+
+Information similarly difficult came in an undated letter July, 1927,
+from Fred B. Kniffen of the Department of Geography, University of
+California, Berkeley:
+
+ “... I have seen two wolf-packs.
+
+ “I had occasion to spend the winter of 1923-24 prospecting in the
+ upper Tanana region of Alaska. I hunted considerably as caribou meat
+ furnished an appreciable part of my diet and almost all of that of my
+ dogs. One afternoon I was seated on a little hill about a quarter of a
+ mile from a small lake. Through the natural pass below me the caribou
+ had been passing at the rate of several hundred a day. As I watched,
+ a file of wolves emerged from some brush on the opposite side of the
+ lake, skirted the shore and went off in the direction the caribou were
+ going. They seemed to be running roughly in a column of twos and I
+ counted about twenty-eight in the pack.
+
+ “One night I was awakened by the howls of my dogs responding to those
+ of some wolves. I stood in the doorway of my cabin and a little later
+ could distinguish the forms of five wolves against the snow of the
+ river, perhaps seventy-five yards away. The dogs were now growling,
+ apparently in fear. One shot dispersed the wolves....
+
+ “These events all occurred in late winter. It is quite possible that
+ an old she wolf and her pups may have accounted for a large part
+ of this but the large pack could hardly be explained away in this
+ fashion.”
+
+Kniffen himself suggests a family explanation for his second pack. On
+July 14 I suggested in a letter to him that _possibly_ the first set
+were not a pack, either,--in the sense of having banded together for
+cooperative hunting. I said that: “The wolves you saw following each
+other, though there were twenty-eight, were (then) no more necessarily
+a pack than eleven college men walking towards an athletic field are
+necessarily the college team.”
+
+The well-known and highly-regarded student of Canadian wild life, Tony
+Lascelles, wrote for the Winnipeg _Free Press_ of April 25, 1936, an
+article, “The Mammals of Manitoba.” A paragraph in it can be read as
+supporting the traditional wolf-pack--I did not so read it but thought
+others might. But Lascelles writes from Mistamick Lodge, Dauphin,
+Manitoba, May 15, 1936, with reference to his use of the key word, that
+“the pack is a family group and the maximum pack is a maximum family.”
+
+With this we close the section of our discussion which is written for
+those who like to believe that even the seemingly most absurd folklore
+tale has developed from a nucleus of fact.
+
+
+WOLVES AND BABES
+
+The misanthropy of wolves, dramatic in their pursuit of wedding parties
+and in the siege of stalled trains, is particularly horrible toward
+little children. They eat them all up, rather jocularly in Red Riding
+Hood, grimly in our newspapers. See, for instance, the tragic story
+“Copyright, 1928, by the New York Times Company. By Wireless to The New
+York _Times_:
+
+ “RIGA, Jan. 1.--A woman of the Unciany district of Lithuania, riding
+ with a child in a one-horse sleigh and pursued by a pack of wolves,
+ made a desperate effort to escape, but after a short, sharp race the
+ horse collapsed.
+
+ “The wolves tore the child from its mother’s arms, devoured it, and
+ then fell on the mother. Some peasants, hearing her cries, hurried to
+ the scene and rescued her, torn but still alive.
+
+ “As a result of the severe weather the depredations by wolves in many
+ parts of Russia are unusually alarming. The Soviet authorities are
+ carrying out an organized campaign against the danger by offering
+ rewards for wolves’ heads. In some districts detachments of the Red
+ Army are used.
+
+ “Packs of wolves have appeared in many parts usually immune,
+ especially in the Crimea.”
+
+Reporters naturally have time for cabling such stories but ministers
+at Washington and consuls-general in New York, though frequently kind
+and helpful, are at times so buried in humdrum that you cannot get them
+interested. I failed in tracing this despatch from Riga. Therefore we
+can but deal in likelihoods and refer to the Michigan story of February
+3, 1927, reported _ante_--it was nearer home and so we were able to
+enlist the help of local investigators.
+
+We are reluctant to pursue further this gruesome child-eating. The case
+against the wolf in this respect is indeed black enough, what with
+the inclusion of many babes among the people devoured already in this
+chapter by the ravenous hordes. We turn with relief to a brighter side
+of the case. In warm contrast are the maternally kind and otherwise
+friendly wolves that have nursed and cared for children, sometimes even
+twins, as in the case of Romulus and Remus. In our present century
+there is never a decade, there is seldom a year, when newspapers do not
+bring us well-attested cases.
+
+Through the _Associated Press_ the New York _Times_ reported October
+22, 1926 (from London, October 21):
+
+ “Two little ‘wolf girls’ were found recently living in a wolf’s den
+ near an isolated village in Bengal, British India. The story is told
+ by _The Westminster Gazette_, which received it from India, vouched
+ for by the Rev. Jal Singh of Midnapur, Bengal, and Bishop Pakenham
+ Walsh of Bishops College, Calcutta.
+
+ “Bishop Walsh relates that about the end of August, while visiting the
+ Rev. Jal Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur, Mr. Singh recounted how he
+ discovered the ‘wolf girls.’
+
+ “In a distant part of his district not long before, the villagers
+ pointed out to him a path they avoided because it was haunted by
+ demons. Investigation revealed a wolf den in which there were several
+ wolf cubs and two girls, about two and eight years of age, both
+ exceedingly fierce, running on all fours, uttering guttural barks and
+ living like wolves.
+
+ “The supposition was that they were abandoned as babies by their
+ mother or mothers and were found and adopted by the she wolf. With
+ much difficulty, the children were rescued, but the younger died soon
+ afterward.
+
+ “The elder child survived and is now at the orphanage. She was
+ gradually weaned from her savage ways, but she fought fiercely
+ against wearing clothes, and tore them off even after they were sewn
+ on her. For a time she refused to be washed and ate with her mouth in
+ a dish. Eventually she was taught to use her hands and say a few words.
+
+ “She still is weak mentally and neither cries nor laughs, but is
+ gentle with animals, preferring the company of dogs to children.”
+
+Sir Sidney Harmer, British student of wolves, wrote November 15, 1926,
+that the _Westminster Gazette_ had told him they knew the bishop of the
+story existed and believed the wolf children also were real. Sir Sidney
+closed:
+
+ “I have myself no information on the subject, and I do not know
+ of anyone else who could help you. We are inclined to be a little
+ sceptical.”
+
+I never did get farther with the investigation of this particular case.
+
+Reports that were traced, though not by me, appeared several times
+the next year. The first, “Copyright, 1927, by The New York Times
+Company--Special Cable to the New York _Times_, Allahabad, British
+India, April 5,” said that:
+
+ “Herdsmen near Miawana, seventy-five miles from here, found a small
+ Indian boy supposed to be about 10 years of age, in a wolf’s den. From
+ marks in the den it was obvious that the boy had been living there. He
+ was unable to talk or to walk properly, but went on all fours, lapped
+ water and ate grass.
+
+ “The boy was brought here, put in a special lockup and supplied with
+ food and medicine. At night he barked, bit himself and other people
+ and had to be tied down. He is very thin and emaciated, but his limbs
+ are otherwise well formed. He has a terrible scar on one side of his
+ face, as if he had been mauled by some animal.
+
+ “He has been taken to Bareilly for treatment at a mental hospital.”
+
+The _Times_ furnished a supplementary note:
+
+ “This is the third case of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ hero,
+ Mowgli, in real life which has been discovered in India within the
+ last ten months. Last September Bishop Walsh wrote to the Indian
+ _Social Reformer_ of Bombay of the case of two little girls who
+ had been found by the Rev. J. Singh in a wolf’s den near Bengal.
+ They revealed the same characteristics as the boy described in the
+ Allahabad dispatch. One of them soon pined away and died, but the
+ other rapidly became ‘humanized’ in Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur. It
+ was supposed that the girls, as is sometimes the case in India, had
+ been abandoned in the jungle by their parents on account of their sex
+ and had been mothered by a she wolf which had just been deprived of
+ her young.
+
+ “The same explanation would not account for the presence of the boy in
+ a wolf’s den near Miawana.”
+
+Further news, similarly special and copyrighted, came by wireless from
+London and was published April 27:
+
+ “Further information is now available about the so-called ‘wolf-child’
+ whose discovery near Miawana, British India, seventy-five miles from
+ Allahabad, provoked so much discussion. Some travelers tell of similar
+ discoveries extending back many years, but medical authorities are
+ inclined to dismiss them as fables.
+
+ “The boy found in Miawana is judged to be between 7 and 12 years
+ old and in general appearance is said to be little different from an
+ ordinary child, but in his actions betrays signs that are declared to
+ point to his bringing up with wolves. He can stand up and walk, but
+ sometimes prefers to crawl, sitting on his haunches with legs curled
+ up and propelling himself forward with the palms of hands....
+
+ “He is said to display certain instincts even lower than those of his
+ alleged foster parents....”
+
+On July 10, a long, undated communication marked “London,” said that:
+
+ “News of the discovery of another alleged wolf-child in India has
+ started a brisk controversy here over the authenticity of such
+ children. No previous wolf-child has occasioned so much stir in
+ scientific quarters as has the boy discovered by Indian herdsmen a
+ few weeks ago in a wolves’ cave near Miawana, seventy-five miles from
+ Allahabad.
+
+ “Some of the best known medical men in London have called the story
+ incredible. Old Indian army officers have replied by asserting that
+ they have actually seen wolf-children....”
+
+whereupon the _Times_ devotes more than a column to a statement
+generally in support of the India despatches. Among those in favor is:
+
+ “Rudyard Kipling, whose Mowgli of the ‘Jungle Book’ is the best known
+ wolf-child in fiction, has for once withdrawn his veto on newspaper
+ interviews, and is quoted as saying that wolf-children ‘are by no
+ means impossible.’ The author goes on to say:
+
+ “‘There have been other instances of them. They say that the Miawana
+ boy crawls on the hands and knees: I think it much more likely that
+ it would be the knees and elbows. That was the way of the other
+ children who, like Mowgli, were adopted by wolves and knew all the
+ mysteries of the jungle. That way leaves their hands free to seize
+ their prey and to defend themselves.’”
+
+This long article, dealing with many cases of wolf-children, says that:
+
+ “... the one commonly known as the Secundra wolf-boy, is the best
+ authenticated case within the memory of living man. This boy was
+ captured in 1867 by a shooting expedition in the unfrequented jungles
+ of Bulandshahr. The hunters surprised a stray wolf, which they
+ followed to a small mound of earth with a flat-topped rock sticking
+ out of the mound. A small, strange-looking animal was asleep in the
+ sun on the rock. To the amazement of the hunting party, it proved to
+ be a boy, who leaped from the rock as soon as he saw the hunters and,
+ running on all fours, disappeared into a cave along with the startled
+ wolf.
+
+ “The hunters were either unable or afraid to go further; but, feeling
+ that something ought to be done, they returned to Bulandshahr and
+ consulted the Magistrate. They were advised to go back to the cave and
+ smoke out the wolf and its weird companion. This they did. The wolf
+ was shot as soon as it rushed out and its companion was pounced upon
+ and captured after a severe struggle, during which several members of
+ the party were bitten. Two wolf cubs were also killed and the party
+ returned to the Magistrate to claim a reward for the dead wolf and the
+ dead cubs, and to exhibit the human being they had captured.
+
+ “The wolf bounty was paid and the wolf-boy was sent to the Secundra
+ Orphanage. He was thought to be about 7 or 8 years old. For a long
+ time he tore off the clothes that were supplied him and persisted in
+ eating his food from the ground. As the years went by he became more
+ docile and eventually was baptized, taking the name of Sanicher, which
+ is Hindustani for Saturday, the day on which he was captured. His head
+ was small, his forehead low and narrow; his eyes were large and gray
+ and restless. He squinted incessantly and when walking lifted his feet
+ high like a man walking through wet grass, his entire body moving in a
+ series of jerks as he stepped along.”
+
+Interest, sympathy, resentment were among the feelings commonly
+expressed by those who wrote “Letters to the Editor” during the
+outstanding wolf-child year of 1927. An undated cutting from the
+New York _Times_, probably around July 15 or 20, has a letter from
+Jacqueline Nollet:
+
+ “Have men for ‘humanity’s sake’ the right to take this Miawana boy
+ away from his mother-wolf and from his brotherly playmates, from the
+ jungle’s new and enthralling life, and to condemn him instead to an
+ existence devoid of companionship and a life of utter misery...?
+
+ “Since the wolf-man is no longer free to pursue his own mode of living
+ and is considered as a near-animal, could not the Society for the
+ Prevention of Cruelty to Animals interfere and have a law voted to the
+ effect that a child saved from starvation, loved and protected by the
+ wolves against ferocious beasts, might be left to live with his wolf
+ family? And if the boy must be taken away from the wild, could not man
+ take a lesson and be as merciful as a wolf and spare the life of the
+ foster-mother and her cubs?
+
+ “Let us hope never to see repeated the act of the magistrate of
+ Bulandshahr who planned and rewarded the murder of the wolf family of
+ the Sanicher boy....”
+
+The scientists were more hard-boiled. For instance, Herman B.
+Sheffield, M.D., of New York City, wrote July 10, evidently fresh from
+reading the long historical summary in the _Times_ of that date:
+
+ “Judging by the article on the ‘New Wolf Child Found in India,’ I
+ surmise that there are still a large number of civilized people,
+ including scientists, who seriously believe that ‘wolf-children’
+ exist in reality instead of in fiction. As a matter of fact, such
+ ‘wolf-children’ are frequently met in daily practice and are nothing
+ but microcephalic idiots.
+
+ “These children are born with small, often dome-shaped, heads in
+ consequence of undeveloped, small brains. Owing to their extreme
+ restlessness and awkward power of locomotion, their habit to hop from
+ place to place often resembles that of a rabbit, goat or monkey.”
+
+As the _Times_ reported, there was keen interest in London. The
+Over-Seas League was naturally concerned and published in their journal
+_Over Seas_ a statement by “A Member” which says that:
+
+ “Valentine Ball (previously quoted) mentions that he asked an eminent
+ surgeon of his day what he thought of all these stories, and the reply
+ was, ‘I don’t believe any of them.’ The medical profession of to-day
+ seems to share this lack of conviction....
+
+ “No one, apparently, has ever found a child living in an animal’s lair
+ and left it there, returning from time to time to observe how it was
+ progressing and to find out how it was fed. There is no trustworthy
+ evidence to show that the children so far reported as wolf-children
+ have ever survived for more than a few hours or days away from human
+ care before they were discovered and restored to such care. There is
+ no recorded case which could not be explained on the theory that the
+ child had wandered from home or been abandoned within a day or two
+ of its being rescued, and it is a well-known fact that Indian mothers
+ will sometimes ‘lose’ in the jungle mentally defective children,
+ which goes far to account for the imbecility of all so-called
+ wolf-children....
+
+ “All the stories of alleged wolf-children rest on native evidence, and
+ native evidence is by no means always to be relied upon as faithful
+ records of fact. The world of reality has its limits. The world of
+ imagination, especially of Eastern imagination, is boundless.”
+
+Somewhere in the reports on most children nurtured by wolves there is
+comment that, even after they had been taught by their human captors
+to eat meat, they continued fond of roots, and even of grass. Is it
+possible, then, that the wolves which bring up children are of a
+kindlier disposition than ordinary wolves for the reason that they are
+vegetarians?
+
+
+WOLVES FOR POSTERITY
+
+As said at the beginning of this chapter on wolves, we write for
+every shade of belief. This last section is for a group first in our
+thoughts, because largest--the lovers of romance, the enemies of the
+cant of science, the vast multitude of free believers in the freedom to
+believe.
+
+True, the attacks on the wolf-pack are numerous. But what do they
+amount to? They are not campaigns by great armies, they are at most
+guerrilla warfare. More accurately, they are sniping.
+
+For example, the chief of a biological survey writes letters to a
+friend of his, poohpoohing wolf-pack stories, and the friend perhaps
+shows them around a bit. Not half of the few who see the letters will
+be affected--everybody knows what scientists are, a self-elected Brain
+Trust dictating to all of us as to what we may and may not believe. If
+the letter is shown in any place like a smoking room, it is talked down
+by several who know people who know other people who have been treed,
+pursued, or at the very least scared half to death by immense packs of
+wolves.
+
+Or a pack story in the newspapers gets a large head on the front page;
+the denial comes a week later in small type on an inside page where no
+one reads it. Again the pack triumphs.
+
+The disgruntled may have for a time the active support of a
+news-gathering organization, as above mentioned for the _Associated
+Press_, but the most they can do is to caution their own direct
+employees to be careful. They may not dictate to their affiliates, as,
+for instance, the _Associated Press_ trying to dictate to the _Canadian
+Press_ or to _Reuter’s_. Besides, they could not hold their own as
+purveyors of readable news if they left to rivals the wolf-children
+of India, the sieges of trains by wolf-packs in the Balkans, or that
+increase of wolves in the U.S.S.R. which (everybody at that time
+agreed) resulted from the substitution of communism for capitalism.
+
+You may manage, perhaps, to get printed a diatribe against packs in
+a highbrow journal, as I once did in the _American Mercury_. But you
+cannot make new disbelievers in wolf-packs by addressing the readers
+of such a magazine, for the badge of their sophistication is that they
+are disbelievers already in whatever the rest of the world believes. If
+you ever made nearly everybody sceptical on wolf-packs the _Mercury_
+clientele would start believing in them--which is, of course, a
+digression.
+
+We shall close this chapter with a triumphant, because sufficient,
+proof that wolf-packs are a reality. To accomplish this we use the
+democratic method, adjudication by majority vote.
+
+We shall have support for wolf-packs from that most popular appeal to
+the people, our greatest of weeklies, the _Saturday Evening Post_, with
+its millions of sold copies and no doubt several readers per copy.
+We shall have on our side, too, the most orthodox and the broadest
+appeal to the scientists, which is through the American Association
+for the Advancement of Science and through their kind of affiliate
+_Science Service_. They do not have so large a membership as that of
+the _Post_, but it is effective since it overlaps but slightly the
+circle of the _Post’s_ readers. The members of the Association include
+most professors and other teachers of science in our various schools
+and colleges, most scientists in the employ of commercial companies
+(at least those in the higher brackets), and most of those employed by
+the national, state, and other governments. Their official journal,
+_Science_, goes to every library of consequence in the United States,
+and widely through other countries. _Science_ is read for excerpts and
+for ideas on behalf of newspapers and magazines. Then a great many of
+the papers subscribe to _Science Service_, and even use it.
+
+If we can show that the _Post_ and _Science_ (including _Science
+Service_) are on the side of the wolf-pack, we have it winning hands
+down.
+
+On January 9, 1932, C. B. Ruggles had in the _Post_ an article,
+“Neighboring With Wolves.” We are told, or given to understand, in this
+and other of his _Post_ contributions, that Ruggles yields to few in
+the extensiveness and intensiveness of his northern lore. He has not
+merely been in Alaska; he has actually lived there. He must have been
+way up north, for he tells about the sun that “it would, for one hour
+and fifteen minutes, skirt the earth’s rim before sinking below the
+horizon for another twenty-odd hours of opaque-lidded slumber.” We have
+been told a little earlier about a Light of Delusion--“The Eskimos call
+this kind of light Woosha Kua”--which plays strange tricks with your
+eyesight. Still, apparently, it was not, in the Ruggles judgment, due
+to the Woosha Kua that he saw wolves pursuing caribou in great detail
+and that “There were twenty-seven wolves in the pack.”
+
+About this time I happened to give a talk before a small group at the
+University Museum, Philadelphia. I must have said something about
+wolf-packs and the Director, Dr. Horace H. F. Jayne, must have given my
+address to Max C. Goodman, of 3143 West Diamond Street, Philadelphia,
+who in turn must have written to C. B. Ruggles, at Freedom, Oklahoma,
+telling that Ruggles and I seemed in disagreement on wolf-packs.
+These things are inference, for there is a gap in my records. I have,
+however, a copy of a letter from Ruggles, dated January 19, 1932, sent
+me by Goodman, which runs in part:
+
+ “Nature causes wolves to gather in monstrous packs in all parts of the
+ wilderness the last part of December or the first part of January.
+ Eskimos call these large wolf-gatherings, ‘KA-MA-CHUA’ (Mate choosing
+ season) for this is about four or five weeks prior to wolf mating time
+ and the Eskimos as well as the Northern trapper believe nature has
+ brought these gatherings about for the young and unmated wolves to
+ choose their mates, believed for life.
+
+ “I am writing you the above for the sole purpose of you taking it up
+ with the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find. If
+ you should find that Mr. V. Steffenson’s statement is false, kindly
+ investigate other positive statements that he has made regarding the
+ Arctic....
+
+ “I hope to hear from you again and in regard to the results of your
+ investigation of my statement as well as the investigation of the
+ statement of V. Steffenson.”
+
+Goodman was to submit the Ruggles statement and mine about wolves to
+“the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find.” So I
+wrote Goodman on January 25 a letter in about 90 per cent disagreement
+with Ruggles and taking substantially that position contrary to his
+which is stated in the first section of the present chapter. Goodman
+submitted this letter and the Ruggles one, which we quoted just above,
+to the often-mentioned Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey, Dr. E.
+W. Nelson. Nelson wrote Goodman from the Hotel Johnson, Visalia,
+California, February 10. Again we quote in part:
+
+ “Your letter came to me just as I was preparing to leave Washington
+ for California--hence, the delay in my reply.
+
+ “I have been interested by the letters from Ruggles and Stefansson and
+ am in complete accord with the statements in Stefansson’s letter. Mr.
+ Ruggles appears to be imbued with the old folklore idea about huge
+ packs of wolves roaming wild regions of the North.
+
+ “In common with most people, as a young man, I had the same ideas
+ derived from the commonly published misstatements on the subject.
+ Then for more than twenty years as a field naturalist, much of the
+ time in wolf country and later for more than that length of time
+ administrating the field work of other naturalists and hunters in wolf
+ country, I came to a definite knowledge that the typical wolf-pack
+ consists of the two old wolves and their young of the previous spring.
+ These ‘packs’ may number from three to more than a dozen animals,
+ according to the number of survivors of the litter of young. Sometimes
+ a wolf may have a dozen young. There is no doubt that, by chance, two
+ or perhaps more litters might come together, but such association
+ would be extremely brief. I have never known or had definite
+ information of such an instance and it is given as a mere possibility.
+
+ “For many years, the Biological Survey in Washington investigated
+ every published account of devastations and of the killing of people
+ by wolf-packs in the United States and Canada by writing to the
+ postmaster or others living near the scene of the alleged work of
+ wolf-packs and without a single exception, they proved to be purely
+ imaginary.
+
+ “Under my direction, one of the best field naturalists in the
+ Government Service spent more than a year in the Tanana River country
+ of Alaska in the very district where Alaska papers published accounts
+ of great wolf-packs destroying caribou and although he traversed that
+ country in various directions in winter, he saw only occasional wolf
+ tracks in the snow and never a sign of the alleged packs....
+
+ “My information is from my own observations and from hundreds of other
+ reliable men in the field in wolf country.”
+
+Once more there is, superficially, a defeat of the wolf-pack. Really
+the pack won, for the _Post_ is read by several million people of the
+type who believe what they see in that sort of publication, while the
+quadrangular Goodman-Nelson-Ruggles-Stefansson correspondence could
+have had an effect upon only one of the four. Ruggles knew already
+there were packs, so we could not convince him there weren’t. Nelson
+and I knew there weren’t any, so Ruggles could not convince us there
+were. Goodman remained the only one who may have been affected, and he
+may have swung either way. I believe Dr. Jayne saw the correspondence,
+but from his record I think he was likely enough prejudiced already
+against the pack. Perhaps a dozen or two of Goodman’s friends saw the
+correspondence, and perhaps some of them were influenced. If so, they
+may have gone in either direction. Therefore, the balloting, _Post_
+readers against some of the letter readers, must have gone something
+like a million to one in favor of the pack.
+
+The authenticity of the wolf-pack might have been secure for years on
+the strength of just the one Ruggles article in the _Saturday Evening
+Post_. But they have carried more articles by Ruggles, and may have
+carried further eyewitness testimony. Then certainly there are many
+journals, only a little down from the _Post_ in their sway of the
+public mind which have borne witness. Packs are going strong in the
+movies and, as shown heretofore, they appear frequently in the daily
+press. The general verdict is, therefore, clear.
+
+But we said above that we would range scientists with the true
+believers. This we do by referring to the previously described journal
+_Science_, from which we quote in part an item that appeared in the
+issue of February 28, 1936:
+
+ “Wolf fighters, skilled in warfare against these voracious
+ pack-hunting beasts, are asked for in an emergency wire from Governor
+ John W. Troy, of Alaska, recently received at the Department of the
+ Interior.... Vicious gangs of wolves have been raiding the reindeer
+ herds owned by natives of northern Alaska.... Native hunters have
+ proved unable to cope with the animals, but it is believed that about
+ four hunter leaders, each with a few assistants, could in a swift
+ campaign break up the marauding bands.”
+
+Thus we have the official journal of a foremost scientific body
+vouching for wolves as pack-hunters, as being in gangs and in bands.
+
+But a testimony from Canada is in a way more striking than any can be
+from the United States, for wolves are by common consent more numerous
+and widespread there. As in the United States, the Canadian Government
+takes special cognizance of them, for they prey on flock and fowl.
+There is, then, _Bulletin No. 13, New Series_, Dominion of Canada,
+Department of Agriculture, “The Habits and Economic Importance of
+Wolves in Canada,” by Norman Criddle. On p. 6 we read:
+
+ “Parent wolves live in pairs during the summer months, but as the
+ young develop they form with them small bands, which meeting with
+ other families in their wanderings, acquire the proportions of packs.
+ These packs break up again in February....”
+
+We close our case by repeating and insisting that attacks on
+wolf-packs are not serious--they are no more than sporadic sniping.
+
+The _Saturday Evening Post_, _Science Service_, and the Department
+of Agriculture of the Dominion of Canada, powerful and worthy of all
+respect and confidence, are in this relation spokesmen too for a
+popular and a scientific multitude. The wolf-pack, then, is secure
+even as things stand. But conditions are bound to trend steadily in
+their favor. As living beasts, wolves are getting fewer with the
+colonization of the wilderness, but wolf-pack stories do not thereby
+get fewer--witness how they come again and again from districts where
+wolves no longer exist. The fewer the living wolves the less the chance
+of their being so studied that evidence against the pack habit can be
+gathered. Finally there will be no wolves left, except in zoos. The
+belief in packs will have survived the means of refuting it. It will
+have become a truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BEYOND THE FRONTIER
+
+
+The following chapter was originally a serious complaint against the
+schoolbooks of Canada, but, in the light of more mature thinking along
+the lines of standardization, it appears to us now that the points we
+have made against the textbooks are really points in their favor. We
+have established (Chapter I.) that the standardization of error would
+simplify our thinking, thus making life easier and, to that extent,
+better. We must commend Canada for her pioneer work in our theory,
+especially when, as we readily perceive, it is done at the expense of
+her own development, therefore in a spirit of true self-sacrifice.
+
+The lower schoolbooks we shall quote in this statement, for contrast
+with university teaching, are: _Ontario Public School Geography_,
+authorized for use in the public schools of Ontario; _The Teacher’s
+Manual_, authorized for use of teachers in Ontario; _Public School
+Geography_, authorized for use in the public schools of Alberta;
+_Manual of Geography, I_, authorized for use of teachers and high
+school students of Alberta; Dent’s _Canadian Geography Readers_, Book
+II, optional or supplementary reading in several provinces; _The
+Canadian School Geography_, authorized for use in the public schools
+of British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Saskatchewan;
+_Canadian Readers_, authorized for use in the public schools of
+Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Most of these
+books are dated 1928 or 1929. All of them were bought from displays for
+the present school season.
+
+The observed temperatures about to be quoted in this article for
+contrast with the textbooks are, unless otherwise stated, taken from
+the records of the Dominion Meteorological Service. Some of the other
+facts used are from Government reports; most of the rest are from my
+own observation through ten winters and thirteen summers spent in the
+Arctic, during which I traveled there afoot about 20,000 miles--a good
+opportunity to see conditions as they are.
+
+Studying the books purchased, I found that practically all of the
+geographies were still holding to the ancient Greek philosophical view
+that the farther north you go the colder it is, no matter what the time
+of year. One book expresses it, “The temperature steadily decreases
+from the Equator to the Poles,” and the others have the same idea
+worded differently. The climate of the North is “especially unfavorable
+for both plants and animals.” In the Arctic “terrible blizzards often
+rage for days together.”
+
+Postponing our discussion of the more important season of summer,
+what are the facts about the Canadian winter? One is that children
+in certain wheat-raising sections of Alberta, who probably shudder
+with sympathy for the poor Eskimos, are themselves living in a region
+that has minimum winter periods colder than any Eskimo is known to
+have lived through. Few Eskimos have ever seen sixty below zero. The
+probable lowest temperature for the North Pole itself is twenty degrees
+warmer, say fifty-eight or sixty below. The lowest temperature recorded
+on the north coast of Canada is fifty-two below. But we have the
+following minima from the southern third of Canada: Quebec, sixty-three
+below; Ontario, sixty below; Manitoba, sixty-three below; Saskatchewan,
+seventy below; Alberta, seventy-eight below.
+
+There is probably, then, no Eskimo living who has felt a temperature
+as low as thousands of our children face going to school in prosperous
+communities of southern Canada. If there are Eskimos who have felt cold
+equal to that of some of our farming communities, they belong to tribes
+that winter inland, well to the south of the coast dwellers.
+
+As to blizzards and snowfall: excluding the Atlantic and Pacific
+coasts, the line of heaviest snowfall in Canada is approximately at
+the Canada-United States border. Storms are, on the average, fewer and
+milder in the Arctic than in any other equally large area on earth, as
+the great explorer, Nansen, pointed out more than thirty years ago. It
+is for these reasons among others that trans-Arctic flying is steadily
+pushing to the front as the practical solution of commerce by air
+between the Old World and the New.
+
+However, from the strictly economic point of view, it makes little
+difference what we teach in the schools about the winter temperatures
+of Canada. Mining, for instance, can be carried forward in any climate,
+for among the successful coal mines are those of Alabama, 1,000
+miles south of Winnipeg, and those of Spitsbergen, 2,000 miles north
+of Winnipeg. In factory work the expenditure for fuel varies and
+is an important charge against operation, but still there are great
+industrial centers developing all the way from Birmingham to Montreal.
+
+Blizzards are perhaps unpleasant. I have met in the Arctic numbers of
+Royal Canadian Mounted Police who had been stationed at Regina, in
+southern Saskatchewan, not so far from the United States border, and
+I don’t remember finding one who did not think Regina blizzards as
+bad as any they had seen on the north coast of Canada. Yet Regina is
+considered one of the fine Canadian cities and its chief handicap of
+late years has been not the cold nor blizzards of winter--it has been
+the dryness of the hot summers. July temperatures are frequently higher
+in that part of Saskatchewan than in the Miami part of Florida.
+
+Cold may distress you, but Montreal is larger than New Orleans. Of the
+two Red River valleys, the one in Louisiana is warmer, but the one in
+Manitoba is better for wheat. Winnipeg, which handles more wheat than
+any city in the world, has an average temperature for the year that is
+just at the freezing point--thirty-two F.
+
+Winter temperatures, then, have little effect upon the prosperity of
+lands or the growth of cities, nor do blizzards signify. It is the
+summer temperatures that matter, and the length of the summer, for upon
+them depend the economic vegetations that give food to the people and
+feed to grazing animals.
+
+The greatest economic damage to Canada that is wrought by the public
+schools is, therefore, in describing incorrectly its northern summers.
+For the schools teach as a principle that the farther north you go the
+colder the summers become. They do further harm by misrepresenting not
+only the summer temperatures of Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada but also
+the length of the growing season.
+
+As to the heat and length of the northern summer, and some of their
+direct results, the textbooks approved by various provinces teach the
+following things among others: “In northern Canada and northern Alaska
+... during the short summer the very slanting sunlight is unable to
+raise the temperature much above the freezing point,” says a geography
+approved by several provinces. “There is no warm season (in the
+Arctic),” is how we are told the same thing in a manual of geography
+authorized by a department of education for the guidance of teachers,
+and printed not by a commercial house, but by a King’s Printer. Every
+province has some officially approved textbook that states or implies
+that hot weather--eighty to ninety degrees in the shade--does not
+occur in the Arctic at all, and that it occurs rarely even in those
+parts of the Northwest Territories that lie between the Arctic Circle
+and Edmonton--which is just south of 54° and corresponds to Leeds in
+England, Copenhagen in Denmark, and Moscow in Russia.
+
+This would be sad if true. But the summer temperatures in the Mackenzie
+district of the Northwest Territories hard up against the Arctic
+Circle really go to ninety-six degrees, while the highest for Prince
+Edward Island, in southeastern Canada, is only ninety-two. The highest
+temperature recorded since 1900 in Winnipeg is one hundred degrees and
+the same temperature has been recorded in Alaska by the United States
+Weather Bureau at Fort Yukon, north of the Arctic Circle. Temperatures
+ranging from eighty to ninety degrees are common both in the Canadian
+and Alaskan Arctic.
+
+Some of the lower school geographies give the real facts of Arctic
+summer temperatures, but do not correlate them so as to enable an
+ordinary student to realize that what the textbook says elsewhere
+about the summer never being warm must be incorrect. The texts state,
+for instance, that in midsummer the sun delivers about half as much
+heat per hour in the Arctic as it does at the equator. Elsewhere
+they mention that the Arctic day is twenty-four hours long and the
+equatorial day only twelve hours long. What they do not draw attention
+to, thus failing to enlighten the careless reader, is that there is no
+difference between the result of half the heat-delivery for double the
+time and double the heat-delivery for half the time.
+
+It is just because half the heat for double the time is as good as
+double the heat for half the time that you expect, and do get, tropical
+heat in those north polar lowlands (and they are extensive) where sea
+breezes do not seriously interfere.
+
+Having described the climate in such unfriendly terms, perhaps it is
+consistency that impels the Canadian textbooks to make the vegetation
+correspond with it. “Much of this vast area,” says one, “is a treeless
+wilderness of rock and swamp, covered with mosses and lichens which
+provide food for the caribou and musk ox.” “In the extreme north,”
+says another, “(there is) a cold desert where, however, vegetation is
+not entirely wanting; for in the marshes in summer the ground becomes
+covered with reindeer moss on which the caribou and musk oxen feed.”
+“Why cannot trees grow there?” asks a third, to which the general
+textbook reply is that the winters are too cold for them. A reading
+selection continues the work of the geographies with, “In that land
+there is little but ice and snow.”
+
+But what are the facts? One is that inside the Arctic Circle mosses and
+lichens are not so prevalent as they are inside the textbook covers.
+By tonnage they comprise less than ten per cent of the vegetation. The
+other ninety per cent is represented by flowering plants. In all my
+Arctic experience I have never found a region where mosses and lichens
+prevailed over the flowering plants. I had to visit a section near
+Churchill, Manitoba, 600 miles south of the Arctic Circle, to see that
+sort of country.
+
+What about trees? A hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle in Canada
+the Forestry Branch of the Department of the Interior has reported
+trees seventy feet high, straight, and fourteen inches through. Similar
+trees go at least twice that height beyond the Circle in Siberia.
+Moreover, the textbooks imply in most cases, and specify in one,
+that winter cold limits the growth of trees; but the coldest known
+spot north of the equator--Verkhoyansk, in the Yakutsk Province of
+Siberia--has a dense forest of both evergreen and deciduous trees,
+although the recorded temperatures go down to ninety-three degrees
+below zero.[16] The Prairie Provinces which have approved this book
+are themselves in part treeless. Would they appreciate the intimation
+that this is because of the cold? And if so, how can they reconcile
+the teaching of their schools with the fact that the largest treeless
+sections of the Prairie Provinces themselves are in their southern
+parts, the largest forests in the northern?
+
+The Canadian textbook allegation that in the Arctic “there is little
+but ice and snow” conveys to the child among other things the idea
+that there is a heavy snowfall. Instead, the snowfall, as previously
+mentioned, is heavier in the most southerly hundred miles of Canada
+than in the most northerly hundred. Or again, the pupil may think the
+statement means that in July and August there is more snow or ice on
+the ground in the North. But the fact is that British Columbia has ten
+times as much snow in July (permanent snow) as the whole of the much
+larger section of our continent designated the Northwest Territories.
+The part of Alaska which lies in the temperate zone has a hundred times
+as much permanent snow as there is in the Arctic section of Alaska. In
+the south Alaska mountains the snow line comes down to sea level; in
+the north Alaska mountains it is 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea.
+
+Lest the child may think that the desolation and worthlessness are
+largely confined to the Arctic Circle proper, a fifth-year Canadian
+reader instructs him in part as follows: “Long before the treeless
+wastes are reached, the forest ceases to be forest except by
+courtesy.... On the shores of Great Bear Lake--which is, of course, in
+the Temperate Zone--four centuries are necessary for the growth of a
+trunk not so thick as a man’s wrist.... Still farther north the trees
+become mere stunted stems set with blighted buds that have never been
+able to develop themselves into branches; until, finally, the last
+vestiges of arboreal growth take refuge under a thick carpet of lichens
+and mosses, the characteristic vegetation of the Barren Grounds.”
+
+The textbook editor borrows this heartening description, and much other
+cheerful information about Canadian resources and climate, from a
+book entitled, humorously enough, _Greater Canada_. If a country thus
+described be indeed a “Greater Canada,” then we wonder what those may
+believe who are really pessimistic.
+
+Against this “Greater Canada” view let us set the facts, uncontested by
+those who have lived on Great Bear Lake and have traversed the forest
+north of it to where it meets the Arctic prairie. Instead of being no
+bigger around than your wrist, the larger trees on Bear Lake are a foot
+and a half through, and a hundred feet high. There is no such gradual
+diminution in size as the author makes out. We have already mentioned,
+for instance, the Forestry Service report which describes trees seventy
+feet high a hundred miles north of Great Bear Lake and within five
+miles of the beginning of the Arctic prairie. Again there is Big Stick
+Island, northeast of Great Bear Lake, a clump really beyond the tree
+line. It is only a few acres, and yet the trees are a foot through,
+tall and straight.
+
+I have come in from the Arctic prairie to the northernmost forest at
+various points on the thousand-mile front ranging from the Colville to
+the Coppermine, and I have never seen the peculiar trees of _Greater
+Canada_ with “blighted buds that have never been able to develop
+themselves into branches.” Once, for instance, when I discovered trees
+just a few miles inland from Franklin Bay in a section where I did
+not expect them, I entered in my diary the unusually (for me) poetic
+description that I had seen “a little band of Christmas trees climbing
+the hillside.” They were of such proportions as to branch and stem that
+they would have been saleable at Yuletide in any of our cities.
+
+We have commented before on the textbook idea that the chief vegetation
+of the Arctic, or even of the “Barren Grounds,” is mosses and lichens.
+Here we comment rather on the name itself--Barren Grounds. According
+to a bulletin of the Department of the Interior, the epithet “Barren
+Grounds” was originally applied to the prairie districts between
+Winnipeg and Calgary. When growing knowledge showed how absurd the name
+was for that section, it was not abolished as it should have been, but
+was, so to speak, lifted up and transported from the southern prairies
+across the northern forest to the northern prairies and there set down
+to do its part in holding back the development of the North as it
+already had held back for awhile the development of the West.
+
+I was born and brought up in that West which was originally called
+“Barren Grounds,” and have often said that had I been transferred in
+my boyhood by magic from the prairies, across which I used to ride
+as a cowboy, to the prairies of Banks Island, 200 miles north of the
+north coast of Canada, I should have known on waking up that I was
+not in my home district, but I could not have decided offhand that I
+was not somewhere in northern North Dakota or southern Saskatchewan.
+Dropping on my knees and playing Sherlock Holmes, I could have decided
+by careful study of the vegetation and soil that I was in a strange
+place, but looking off to the sky line I should have felt at home.
+There would have been the same rolling prairie, with perhaps somewhat
+less grass but with a great many more flowers. Had it been winter there
+would have been snow on the ground in both places, but less in Banks
+Island than in Saskatchewan.
+
+With such experience of the trees, grasses and flowers of southern
+and of northern Canada, it is easier for me to read the lower school
+textbooks as works of humor than of sober instruction. But children
+take them seriously, and it is difficult to look upon the results as
+merely funny.
+
+The ground frost of northern Canada is made a handicap in the
+textbooks. But in real life as often as not it is useful. “Fields of
+ice and snow and a permanently frozen subsoil effectively limit man’s
+movements in the Arctic ... regions,” says one of them, and that is a
+just sample of what most of them say or imply.
+
+The first advantage of frozen subsoil is that there can be no dry
+season. The growers of cereals and vegetables now count on that in
+Alaska. So do the reindeer ranchers. For if the season has less rain
+than usual it means only that the ground will thaw deeper than usual,
+and the roots of the plants will reach farther down for their water.
+The only thing the rancher has to guard against is the trampling out
+of the forage vegetation by the animals, just as he would if he were
+an Australian sheep farmer. So far as dry seasons are concerned, he
+can graze the same numbers on a given ranch for any period of years, a
+thing the Australian cannot do, for his feed varies with the rains.
+
+A second advantage, less important, but spectacular and about to come
+much into public view, bears upon flying. For where there is a frozen
+subsoil there is no underground drainage, and rain and thaw waters stay
+where they fall. This creates innumerable lakes all over the country,
+providing flyers with natural landing fields for pontoons in summer
+and skis in winter. That is one reason why accidents are fewer in the
+Arctic than in temperate or tropic flying. If you are a mile high and
+you develop engine trouble, you can always glide to a safe landing
+where the subsoil is frozen.
+
+Those who have kept track of the advance of the Hudson Bay Railway from
+The Pas to Churchill, even if it be only through press despatches, are
+familiar with a third advantage, for the ground frost has simplified
+and made cheaper and easier the building of that important pioneer
+line. In so far as the cost of construction is derived from taxes, the
+people of the whole of Canada have benefited in purse from the very
+condition which they formerly thought would increase the building costs.
+
+Coming back again to Arctic vegetation in the textbooks, we find a
+reader approved for school use in four provinces saying: “There are no
+trees in this cold land, but there is a kind of hard brown moss that
+grows under the snow.” There are known to be more than 300 species of
+Arctic moss. These the textbook ignores along with more than 700 kinds
+of flowering plants. And why does this one moss that is known to the
+textbook compiler do its growing under the snow? Isn’t it poor judgment
+for even a moss to wait idle during the hot summer and to begin to
+grow in the fall when snow comes? Or--and I gather this from the
+complete selection--perhaps the author believes that a snow covering is
+permanent in the Arctic. The fact is, of course, that Arctic land is
+permanently snow-covered only on or near mountains. Most Arctic lands
+are low and, like the Prairie Provinces, they have snow in winter and
+none in summer. In Peary Land, the most northerly land on earth, there
+are bees and butterflies in the rolling meadows of flowers and grass.
+
+The textbook statement that musk oxen feed on moss is perhaps a
+minor error from the point of view of this article, but it shows how
+widespread are the inaccuracies. All those who have studied this animal
+report that it lives mainly on grasses, sedges, and browse.
+
+Up to this point, the geographies have, in the main, agreed to disagree
+with the scientists. On the question of animal life they begin to
+disagree with each other. Some of them, having talked so convincingly
+of sparse vegetation, continue this idea. For, since many of the Arctic
+animals are herbivorous, if the text admitted that there are large
+numbers of them, the children might well begin to puzzle as to what
+they lived on. Therefore we find one author saying that the Eskimos
+live almost wholly on animals and that their “available food supply is
+scanty.” A school reader has it that “there are very few (musk oxen)
+left. They keep them in a park with a high wire fence about it.”
+
+Others, however, report large herds of caribou and musk oxen, and some
+go so far as to mention polar bears, wolves, foxes, hares, seals and
+fish. But we gather from the texts that these animals lead a precarious
+existence.
+
+As a fact, few known waters are richer in fish, whales and seals than
+those of the Arctic. The caribou of Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada number
+several hundred for each single Eskimo, and yet travelers who have
+described bands of thousands, and even herds of a hundred thousand
+moving together, have never reported any noticeable depletion in the
+vegetation.
+
+In the case of musk oxen, there are probably 4,000 wild for every
+forty that are in fenced parks. These wild musk oxen are in no danger
+of extinction at present, for most of them are on islands that are
+uninhabited, many of them never even visited by Eskimos.
+
+Having invented a fictitious country and named it Eskimoland, the
+textbooks find it necessary to invent a fictitious people, and the
+Eskimos are misrepresented even more than the territories they inhabit.
+They are supposed to be all alike, though some of them live farther
+away from others than Canada is from Mexico, and have less contact.
+Their climate has only one description in most textbooks, although
+they really live in several different climates. The materials of
+the description of land and people, so far as they are not invented
+have, however, been gathered from many Eskimo countries, many Eskimo
+climates, and many Eskimo peoples. The result is a patchwork portrait
+which resembles no Eskimo who ever lived. Then they make this patchwork
+man live in a patchwork country. One is as real as the other.
+
+The schoolbook accounts of the Eskimo presumably arouse in the child
+both pity and amusement. Here are some of the quotations:
+
+ “The Eskimo has an environment which forces him into constant conflict
+ with Nature. He is in continual danger of freezing and starving to
+ death.”
+
+ “The Eskimo suffers from intestinal diseases, malnutrition and scurvy,
+ and his resistance to disease is greatly lowered.
+
+ “The ravenous eating of tallow candles and soap by Eskimo children is
+ well attested.”
+
+ “When the Eskimo boy is thirsty, he drinks oil.”
+
+Against this picture stands in my mind my own experience of living more
+than ten years as an Eskimo among Eskimos. To me it seems that as a
+race they have more leisure than city dwellers, for instance. Some of
+the geographies mention their ivory carving and ornamental ceremonial
+dress, but they leave it a mystery how a people under terrific strain
+for a livelihood find time for such things. My observation has been
+that in many communities the needed work to provide food, shelter
+and clothing requires from the Eskimo less than half of our standard
+eight-hour day. Four hours of work and eight of sleep give him twelve
+hours of leisure. Accordingly, a man will spend a week carving an
+ivory handle which he could have made plain in half a day. A woman who
+could sew a warm coat in two days will spend two months making one not
+so warm (but in her opinion prettier) by cutting up whole skins and
+piecing them together in complicated designs. Entire communities spend
+weeks singing and dancing and listening to story-tellers spinning out
+long tales of adventure with spirits and with men. The winters, so
+frightful in the textbooks, are their holiday season, spent in carrying
+out elaborate festivities.
+
+Most of the textbooks say or imply that most or all Eskimos live in
+snow or ice houses in winter. This is geographical hodgepodge. No
+Eskimos live in ice houses, or at least I never heard of it. Some
+live in snow houses, but more than half the Eskimos in the world have
+never seen them. In the textbooks all snow houses are called “igloos,”
+but the word _iglu_ simply means house in general, or dwelling. It is
+misleading to imply that snow houses are known to all Eskimos and used
+by most of them. In many districts the snow house, being unknown, is
+not even represented by any word in the vocabulary. Many Eskimos live
+in houses built of earth and wood, or with bone rafters and walls of
+stone and earth. There are several other types of dwelling.
+
+The case is worse about the use of oil. According to the above textbook
+quotation and many similar, they drink it. Before my recent study of
+Canadian lower school texts, I had heard that they did this for two
+other reasons--one that they liked it, and the other to keep warm. It
+remained for a Toronto textbook to advance the new explanation that
+they do it to quench thirst. But to have this true, the laws of both
+physiology and chemistry would have to be changed. Physiology teaches
+that thirst is quenched only by water, and chemistry that there is in
+oil no water which the human stomach is capable of extracting.
+
+The Eskimo stomach is similar to your stomach. If you think he drinks
+oil for any reason, I would suggest that you take about a water tumbler
+of whatever oil you prefer. If you have a strong will you may be able
+to get it down, but the chances are three in four that you will not be
+able to keep it down. If you are the one in four who can keep it down,
+you will very soon wish that you weren’t.
+
+The truth is that Eskimos use oil with their food, as we do salad oil
+or gravy. They eat it but they don’t drink it, and, therefore, instead
+of being weird monstrosities, they are just like us in this respect, as
+they are in most fundamental human things.
+
+One textbook says that a cold climate produces people who are stunted
+in mind and body. For body the Eskimo might be described as of average
+stature rather than small. Mentally their teachers usually report them
+to be near the European average.
+
+That brings us to the question of the spread of European education in
+the Far North. A school reader says: “There are no books in that land
+and (the Eskimos) could not read them if there were.” If this were
+true, it would bear out the allegation that the Eskimos are stupid,
+for the Danes began trying to teach them reading and writing about
+two centuries ago. They found them apt pupils, the knowledge gained
+by one or a few spreading by native instruction from house to house
+and village to village. The work since then has been shared by two
+governments, the Danish and that of the United States--Canada has,
+as yet, taken no direct educational action. Effective cultural work
+has been done by the churches, among them the Anglicans, Lutherans,
+Moravians, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Roman Catholics. It would
+be strange if the efforts of all these bodies, some going back two
+hundred years, left it still a justifiable criticism of Eskimos that
+they cannot read or write. As a matter of fact, more than half the
+total Eskimo population of Greenland, Labrador, Canada and Alaska
+can read and write some language, generally their own. They publish
+some of their own books and have (in Greenland) a magazine that has
+appeared regularly since 1867. Editors, proof-readers, type-setters,
+engravers, printers, subscription solicitors and the rest have all
+been Eskimo through all that time. No other language has been employed
+in connection with the journal. It is as Eskimo as the _Spectator_ is
+English.
+
+Which, by the way, is more interesting, the fiction that “the Eskimo”
+does not know what a book is, or the fact that one of the older
+journals in the western hemisphere is in Eskimo?
+
+That Eskimo children eat soap is ridiculous on the face of it. I have
+never seen Eskimos eat candles, nor heard of a case. But if they did
+eat tallow candles it would be no stranger than the eating of tallow in
+any other form. Tallow is only suet, and many a well-ordered meal in
+our country still includes suet pudding.
+
+As for the “deficiency diseases and scurvy,” the Eskimos are, as far as
+we know, free from them so long as they live on their own accustomed
+diets. Once they begin to live on white men’s groceries and neglect
+to secure fresh meat, these diseases grow. Dr. William A. Thomas, of
+Chicago, found in Labrador, for instance, that the Eskimos who suffered
+most were those nearest the trading stations and most supplied with
+white men’s food. In the sections beyond the reach of the traders, or
+little affected by them, the deficiency troubles vanished.
+
+As to commercial dealings with the outside world, we are instructed
+by the geographies in contrary ways. On page 12 of one of them, the
+printed matter says: “The Eskimos have almost no trade with other
+people. They must depend on their own country to supply their wants.”
+But on page 123 of this same book, there is a photograph of six power
+schooners--not whaleboats--with the caption “Eskimo Whaleboats, Fort
+McPherson!”
+
+It is, as a matter of fact, one of the important industries of Edmonton
+to supply Eskimos with power schooners. I have seen a photograph from
+the Arctic, sent me by an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
+showing $100,000 worth of these in a single view. The same engines
+that produce electric light for these Eskimos on shipboard in summer
+are used by them sometimes to light their houses in winter. Some have
+separate Delco electric lighting systems for their homes.
+
+But the teachers of Edmonton, the city which furnishes most of these
+supplies, use now, or did use recently, textbooks which state or imply
+that the Eskimos have no boats except skin canoes, and no light except
+seal-oil lamps. Nor can you defend the books by suggesting that they
+are talking of fifty or a hundred years ago. The context shows that
+these allegations are supposed to fit the present.
+
+To balance all these unfavorable truths about the northern half of
+Canada, I have been able to discover in the school texts one--and only
+one--favorable mistake. A geography says, “Mosquitoes are found all
+over the North American continent except in the extreme north.” Anyone
+who has been there will tell you that the contrary is the fact. Until
+you approach the Arctic you do not know how bad mosquitoes can be.
+
+A thing which the incorrect schoolbooks are doing is to dampen that
+current enthusiasm about the Far North of Canada which is due to the
+beginning of actual mining in the Middle North, where Flin Flon and
+Sherritt Gordon are already words to conjure with.
+
+For these mines are in the sub-Arctic, which, according to the
+textbooks, is almost as bad as the Arctic itself, a land barren because
+of the cold. Mining is expensive where food is not produced locally and
+where no one lives except the miners and their dependents. There is, in
+consequence, a fundamental need to colonize even the richest mineral
+districts with a food-producing population. Sunlight and rainfall
+are, therefore, the most important resources of any district, and the
+younger generation of Canadians should be permitted to grow up with a
+true understanding of how heat and water are distributed, and how these
+are used by nature for the production of those plants upon which all
+animal life, including the human, must in the last resort depend.
+
+Canada is two things, a people and a country. We need truthful
+histories for a reasonable judgment of our past; we need accurate
+geographies for planning the future. The schoolboys and the schoolgirls
+of today, most of them without university training, will step into
+control of this land tomorrow. Their chief equipment for that task
+is their education. What the university courses teach in advanced
+geography and climatology is not propaganda but truth. Why not give
+the pupils of the common schools the advantage of the same correct
+description of the climate and its results, so that they, too, will
+know how to prepare for the great spread of settlements northward that
+must continue till inhabited Canada becomes as broad as it is long,
+a nation drawing power from all its territories, even the farthest
+islands in the northern sea?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OLOF KRARER
+
+
+In the schools of many lands, including those which speak English, the
+Eskimos are studied during the early grades. In my youth I learned many
+strange things concerning them. We spoke of Eskimos and of Eskimoland
+as if the people were all alike and lived in one place.
+
+The Eskimos are a godsend to the schools. From their simplicity you
+can get a parallel to the simplicity of our own remote ancestors and
+also a contrast to the multiplicities of civilization. It is easy to
+teach and to learn that, while in our land it is sometimes hot and
+sometimes cold, there is a district south of us where it is always hot
+and another north of us, Eskimoland, where it is always cold. This
+impresses upon the child-mind that there is a balance and symmetry in
+nature, which has been a favorite doctrine since Greek times.
+
+Heat is life-giving (the school instruction went on); the hot lands
+are luxuriant and beautiful. Cold is deadening; the cold lands of the
+Eskimos are sterile, bleak, forbidding. Things develop to large size in
+heat; cold has a stunting influence. Therefore, trees become smaller
+and smaller as you go north until you come to the last cringing shrubs.
+Beyond them, in a treeless waste, are the Eskimos, a little people,
+themselves stunted by the cold. In their bitter struggle to eke out
+the scantiest of livings they cower, wrapped in furs, inside huts of
+snow which give them bare shelter from the furious Arctic blizzards. To
+keep warm they eat the most warming food, which is fat; so they live on
+blubber. They grease their bodies with oil as a further protection from
+the cold, and they drink oil. Though we need varied meals, a balanced
+ration, the Eskimos are strangely able to live on animal tissues alone
+and they eat their meat raw, usually warm from a recently slaughtered
+beast or else frozen.
+
+But, marvelous to relate, in spite of all these things, the Eskimos are
+a jolly, happy little people. They serve thus a double moral purpose.
+The gruesome view of their land and of their life makes us better
+contented with ours; we see from their happiness under conditions of
+misery that really it isn’t so bad, in comparison, to be poor and
+jobless down here. We should all, therefore, be contented and happy.
+
+In view of the large place held by Eskimos in our scheme of child
+training, the misfortune is serious that our educators, particularly
+the writers of our schoolbooks, have been forced to get their Eskimo
+material at second hand from the writings and lectures of explorers.
+The situation was made worse in that a good many explorers lacked the
+imagination and the literary gifts necessary for making possible the
+desired insight into the heart and soul of these present-day survivors
+of Stone Age man.
+
+It is a major good fortune that American educators have had opportunity
+for close relation with at least one Eskimo, Olof Krarer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The autumn 1912 I came south after four consecutive years in the
+Arctic, making several reports, one of them that among some hundreds
+of Eskimos who were not known to have been in touch with Europeans I
+had seen ten or more who were as light in complexion and eye color as
+if they were anything from one-quarter to three-quarters European. A
+reporter changed my statement to convey the impression that I had found
+near Coronation Gulf several hundred Eskimos all of whom were blond.
+This reporter has since claimed, probably with more right than anybody
+else, that he made me famous. Certainly there was a big newspaper
+hubbub.
+
+In a barrage of letters to the press there came one from Ithaca, New
+York. The writer was a professor of Cornell. He tried to bring into
+an acrimonious discussion a quiet, urbane tone. It was not fair, he
+contended, to denounce Stefansson as a charlatan for having claimed to
+discover a new race of blond people in the Far North, for these people
+indubitably exist. But neither was it fair to praise his “discovery”
+vociferously, as some were doing, for blond Eskimos were so well known
+that they were, for instance, a matter of his own experience and that
+of his family. For he and his wife had had the pleasure some years ago
+to entertain in their home one of them who had come to Ithaca as a
+lecturer. She was a woman named Olof Krarer, small of stature like the
+rest of her people, with light hair and with blue eyes of quite the
+Scandinavian type. She had made a favorable impression.[17]
+
+The letter from Cornell stirred childhood recollections. I had heard
+my mother and the neighbors talk of a strange and pathetic girl who
+came with them on the emigrant ship from Iceland in 1876. She must
+have been nearing twenty but she was small for a child of ten, a
+dwarf. She was vivacious, ambitious, and talked of the opportunities
+for distinction and advancement which awaited her in the New World.
+Her fellow-immigrants did not know whether to laugh or weep. She was
+clever, but her physical handicap seemed more than her gifts could
+surmount.
+
+The party of colonists landed in Nova Scotia. After a year in that
+province many of them traveled west through the Great Lakes and by
+way of the Red River of the North to Lake Winnipeg, where my parents
+settled and where I was born.
+
+In 1880 our family moved to Dakota Territory and so did Olof’s, but she
+had gone off on her own and was probably in Winnipeg. Some years later
+we heard in North Dakota that she was in a circus exhibiting herself as
+an Eskimo. The Icelanders (who until recently were proud of being about
+the least adulterated Nordics in Europe) were at first scandalized
+and inclined to attempt stopping the imposture. On second thought
+most if not all of them felt that little harm could be done to their
+nationality by the fraud compared to the tragedy it would be for this
+handicapped woman to be exposed and deprived of the one thing which
+gave her a livelihood and a tolerable life. We know now that she even
+won respect and affection--witness the above Cornell testimony and much
+shall be hereinafter cited.
+
+There was presently in the Icelandic community in North Dakota a
+connected story of Olof Krarer. I do not know whether it was brought
+or whether it just grew. No doubt it was partly imagination; equally
+without doubt it was partly true.
+
+Our North Dakota version of the story ran that Olof had been waitress
+in a hotel. Seeing how small she was, the guests asked about her and
+were told, sometimes by herself and sometimes by the hotel people, that
+she was an Icelander. The comeback was usually: “How interesting! We
+never saw an Eskimo before.” Olof would then explain that Icelanders
+were not Eskimos and that their blood was chiefly Norwegian with a
+little mixture of Irish.[18] The interest waned. There were plenty of
+Norwegians around; the Irish were no rarity. That sort of dwarf was
+hardly a seven days’ wonder.
+
+But there were new guests in the hotel daily, new questions about
+Olof, and new accents for the tiresome: “How interesting! We never saw
+an Eskimo before.” She became bored, annoyed, outraged. Finally she
+stopped explaining that Icelanders were not Eskimos and simply flounced
+off. The interpretation of that was, poor thing, she was ashamed of
+being an Eskimo. Her silence now gave consent.
+
+One day a local clergyman appeared. He said that the young people of
+his church had a mid-week meeting and they would be so interested if
+Olof would come down and talk to them informally about the Eskimos.
+They would be glad to pay her five dollars.
+
+I go back to what my mother said of the pathetic ambition and
+anticipations of the dwarf. I imagine how, perhaps at first through
+embarrassment Olof did not correct the minister. When his invitation
+came to the five-dollar offer she was already realizing that her chance
+had come. She agreed to give the talk.
+
+Combining testimony of the Cornell professor with that of my mother, I
+imagine further that Olof went to the town library next day, or to some
+bookish friend, and read up on the Eskimos. Then, to the best of her
+ability, she improvised a story of an Eskimo childhood and gave it at
+the mid-week church meeting. It was accepted and she was on that road
+which took her to the lyceum platform and the circus. As we shall see,
+it took her to other places, to fame and to a lasting influence upon
+American education and thought.
+
+My memories, temporarily revived in 1912 by the Cornell professor’s
+letter, had receded vaguely into the background when, in 1922, I had a
+secretary, Miss Dorothy Daggett. She came from a week-end one Monday
+morning and asked whether a young man whom she had met at the house
+party might come and consult me about an extraordinary yarn which he
+had picked up in Florida and which he had already sold tentatively to
+a magazine. She had urged him not to print without consulting me, for
+the story was about an Eskimo and seemed to her spurious. She did not
+think that a young man ought to risk publishing that sort of thing at
+the beginning of a literary career.
+
+In due course John Schoolcraft arrived and told the following story
+which I quote from notes made at the time:
+
+ THE STORY OF OLAF CRERAR
+
+ as told by
+
+ John Schoolcraft
+
+ The Eskimo woman, Olaf Crerar, says she was born on the north coast of
+ Greenland in a village of thirty or forty houses, with an average of
+ four people in each house. A family of eight children in that country
+ is equivalent to one of twenty in this. The average family has two or
+ three.
+
+ One day two big white men came into their village, the first big men
+ they had ever seen and the first whites. The North Greenland Eskimos
+ are blond themselves, but owing to the smoke in their houses they
+ didn’t know it. The two big men were Icelanders. After living in the
+ village about a year, they persuaded Olaf’s father to go on a long
+ journey with them. He had no idea where he was going but he consented,
+ and, as is always the case on long hunting trips, he took his family
+ with him. They started across the ice and it took them something like
+ three months to make the journey from northern Greenland to northern
+ Iceland. When they came to the Gulf Stream it was partly open. There
+ they went from one ice floe to another, like Eliza crossing the Ohio.
+ They finally got to Iceland.
+
+ Olaf was about sixteen when she left Greenland (or perhaps she was
+ twenty). She stayed in Iceland something like four and a half years.
+ At the end of that time, all of her family were dead except herself
+ and her father. They died from the change in climate. There was a
+ missionary there who took a great interest in her and baptized her
+ into the (Lutheran) church. Her Eskimo name was Ahbo. The missionary,
+ in giving her a Christian name, wanted to get one as close to the
+ Eskimo as possible, so he called her Olaf. I don’t know where she got
+ her last name, which sounds like Crerar.
+
+ Olaf suffered so from the Icelandic climate that the missionary
+ decided to send her and her father with some friends of his to Canada,
+ thinking its climate would probably be better for them both than the
+ Icelandic. He started them off on a boat with a company of Icelanders,
+ and there may have been some Swedes and Norwegians. They landed at
+ Quebec.
+
+ Olaf was knocked around from pillar to post in the United States and
+ Canada for awhile, with this funny little father of hers. At that time
+ she was 40 inches high, 45 inches around the waist, and weighed 136
+ pounds. Her father was smaller than she.
+
+ She told that she had been a nursemaid and implied that she had worked
+ in hotels. On one occasion she was taken sick in a hotel in St. Paul
+ and a doctor visited her who had been in Greenland and who knew a few
+ words of her language.
+
+ Then Mr. Slayton of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau ran across her and
+ thought she would be a good lecturer, so he took her into his home and
+ together they worked up a lecture. She went around the country for
+ something like twenty-five years (she is sixty-two now) lecturing. For
+ the last few years of this time she was not only a lecturer but a sort
+ of collector for Mr. Slayton. He would give these (lyceum) courses and
+ she would be the last one on the course and would collect the money
+ from those who had sponsored the course. The understanding was that at
+ his death she was to have a home in his house as long as she lived.
+ She did live with Mrs. Slayton for a number of years.
+
+ While in Florida she met the people named Stone who took her back to
+ Michigan with them--Mr. I. K. Stone, Maple Street, Battle Creek,
+ Michigan. She is living there now and has been with them two or three
+ years. She is always telling them how in Greenland people always
+ tell the truth. It is a great shock to her, she says, to come into a
+ civilization where they don’t tell the truth. So in the household,
+ when they aren’t kidding each other, they have the saying, “This is
+ Greenland.”
+
+ Olaf says that the people up in northern Greenland where she was born
+ continue to grow until they are thirty-five. When mature they are very
+ small, like herself, and they mature slowly. They don’t marry until
+ they are twenty-five, and children don’t walk until they are three.
+ She says that the mothers do not nurse their children at all. As soon
+ as a baby is born they give him a piece of whale meat and tell him to
+ carry on. Many life processes there seem greatly slowed down.
+
+ However, a person of sixty is very old. They die off rapidly from what
+ Olaf thought was something like tuberculosis. It was a wasting disease
+ and usually ended with hemorrhage. She thought it was brought on by
+ the change in going from the heated hut into the cold air outside.
+
+ North Greenland children are born either in the light time or in the
+ dark time (the well-known six-month day and six-month night). When a
+ child is born, the mother picks out a certain kind of bone. Since they
+ live on polar bears, walrus and seals more than anything, it might be
+ a bone from one of these animals. She has a little bag on the wall and
+ drops into it a certain distinctive kind of bone for each child, and
+ as each light time or dark time comes around she drops another bone
+ of this same sort into the bag. In that way she can keep track of the
+ children’s ages. The children are forbidden to touch that bag, and if
+ they do the punishment is severe.
+
+ Olaf said these people believed in one big good spirit and one big
+ bad spirit, and there are also little good spirits and little bad
+ spirits. The big good one sent the little good ones around, and
+ similarly with the bad spirit. When a person dies he becomes a good
+ or bad spirit according to the way he has lived. Asked what was their
+ standard of good and bad, she replied that if during this sickness,
+ which evidently came on them all, the man or woman was patient and
+ unselfish, then he turned into a good spirit. Those who were cross and
+ complaining turned into bad spirits.
+
+ If a woman is sick she is put into one corner of the hut and no one
+ pays any attention to her. If she is given anything, it is given
+ furtively. In the case of a man he is taken off and put in a hut
+ by himself. The reason is that sickness is brought about by one of
+ the bad spirits, and if you favor the sick person you bring the bad
+ spirit’s attention to yourself.
+
+ The language is extremely simple, with a great many words which by
+ different intonations mean different things. They count up to ten
+ and have one word which means ten and some more, which may be eleven
+ or eleven million. The hardest thing for her to do in Iceland and in
+ this country was to learn to think. The Eskimos talk a little about
+ the fire and a little about the polar bear and walrus, but have no
+ abstract ideas. The vocabulary is very small. There is absolutely no
+ vegetation in North Greenland, with the exception of some seaweed. The
+ reindeer there, which are very poor and which the people do not use
+ for food purposes at all, live on fish.
+
+ These Eskimos have no steel, and when a man goes on a long trip where
+ he can’t carry a fire, he makes a fire by striking a stone against a
+ walrus tusk. He may work hours and hours to get a spark.
+
+ When a young man wants to marry, he picks out the girl he is
+ interested in and stops hunting. He goes to the house of this girl
+ and gets his food there for some time. If the girl’s parents continue
+ to make him welcome, he knows he is acceptable. Then he has to get
+ the girl out of that house into some other house in the village (it
+ doesn’t matter which one) without being seen. His success constitutes
+ the wedding ceremony. If he fails, he is punished by death. Failures
+ occur and the death penalty is actually inflicted.
+
+The facts on Olof put Schoolcraft in a position from which he could
+find no escape. His literary conscience would not permit him to use
+the story in its original form, after he had found that it was a hoax;
+his humanitarian instincts would not allow him to expose the old lady,
+who was, after all, harmless in his view compared to the hordes of
+charlatans who get by. As long as her friends believed in her she
+would have a home, and these were probably her last few as well as
+her declining years. Schoolcraft, who needed both money and _kudos_,
+gritted his teeth and canceled his bargain with the editor.
+
+You have guessed it. The young and high-minded author received his
+reward. Dorothy Daggett is now Mrs. John Schoolcraft.
+
+No more than Schoolcraft could we publish, until Olof Krarer’s death.
+But the responsibilities we feel towards that small minority who seek
+the facts, dictated eventual publication and therefore the immediate
+gathering of testimonies, documents, and explanatory theories.
+
+The first step was to enlist the help of Miss Thorstina Jackson, a
+graduate student at Columbia University, whose father, Thorleifur
+Joakimsson Jackson, had been historian of the Icelandic colonization in
+North America--chiefly Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan
+and Alberta, but also Nova Scotia and Utah. Many of his studies had
+been published, but there were others in manuscript. On canvass, these
+sources did not yield much directly, but Miss Jackson (now Mrs. Emile
+Waters) knew just how to follow up the investigation.
+
+From the various replies to her letters it was possible to establish
+Olof’s baptismal name, the names of her parents, her birthplace and
+date of birth. For a time we were following the wrong track on these
+points, for the first answer to our queries stated that Olof was the
+daughter of Jonatan Halldorsson. Jackson’s pioneer sketches did not
+list Olof as a child of this family and a later correspondent, G. J.
+Hallsson, of Hallson, North Dakota, in a letter dated May 26, 1926,
+gave the right clue:
+
+ “... I feel certain I know the person you refer to. It must be Olof
+ Solfadottir, from Langamiri in Hunavatnsysla. This girl was a dwarf in
+ stature....”
+
+At this time Miss Jackson made a trip to Iceland. While there she
+went to the Government library in Reykjavik and obtained from
+the _Kirkjubok_ (Book of Church Records) a copy of Olof’s birth
+certificate. We quote a translation of the Icelandic document which she
+forwarded:
+
+ BIRTH CERTIFICATE
+
+ _Ólöf Sölvadóttir_
+
+ Born 15 February 1858 baptized 17th of the same month.
+
+ Parents: Sölvi Sölvason and Solveig Stefánsdóttir, man and wife of
+ Outer Langamyri.
+
+ The above is correct according to the register of Audkul Parish.
+
+ Certified
+
+ The National Archives, Reykjavik, 13 July, 1926.
+
+ (Signed) Hannes Thorsteinsson.
+
+The following year the identification was further confirmed and
+documented by B. L. Baldwinson, of 729 Sherbrook Street, Winnipeg,
+Manitoba, as will appear.
+
+All the accounts of Olof’s early years in Canada, before she assumed
+the character of Miss Krarer the Eskimo, swayer of American educational
+destinies, are vague and the details vary, but the general outlines are
+similar. As a continuation of the above Hallsson letter, we quote a
+version, differing somewhat from my memory of my mother’s:
+
+ “... She (Olof) had been living with her father in Winnipeg and left
+ him in 1880 to live with an English couple. They were then resident
+ in Winnipeg but I have no doubt they were really traveling players
+ who had some connection with a large company of actors. I believe
+ that shortly thereafter they left Winnipeg for the United States, for
+ (soon) after she got south across the line she was recognized as the
+ same girl, although she had then already assumed her Eskimo character.
+ Why she did this, I am unable to explain. I knew her very well and
+ lived in the same neighborhood. For that reason I would consider it
+ remarkable if she did anything seriously reprehensible so long as her
+ conduct was fully governed by her own desires. She seemed to have a
+ good and firm character and was intelligent above the average.
+
+ “According to my understanding, it seems clear that the woman who
+ adopted her came to be largely in control of whatever she did.”
+
+The most complete and thoroughly documented information came from
+Baldwinson, who enclosed with his letter on November 16, 1927, a
+statement which we quote in full.
+
+ “_Olof Solvadottir_
+
+ “Born at Ytri Longumyri in Blondudal in Hunavatnssyslu in Iceland
+ about the year 1860 or 1861.
+
+ “Her father Solvi Sölvason, farmer.
+
+ “Her mother Solveig Stefansdottir: his wife.
+
+ “Solvi lost his wife in Iceland and remarried there; his second wife
+ was Soffia Eyjolfsdottir, a widow. They emigrated from Iceland to
+ Canada in the year 1876 and settled a short distance north of the town
+ of Gimli in Manitoba and remained there for about 3 years until they
+ moved to Winnipeg in or about the year 1879, where they resided for a
+ period of 2 years. They then moved to Hallson in N. Dakota, built a
+ house and resided there for several years, until they moved to Seattle
+ in the state of Washington. There they built a house in Ballard and
+ remained there until their death.
+
+ “Olof Solvadottir is a dwarf. She left her family while they lived
+ in the Gimli district and went to Winnipeg to secure work. There she
+ joined up with an American traveling tent show and has since been lost
+ to all her relatives though she is known to be alive and well and in
+ the care of wealthy benefactors in the United States. Her nearest
+ relatives are:
+
+ (Here followed names and addresses of three brothers and a sister, in
+ the U.S.A. and Canada, and of a relative in Iceland.)
+
+ “This information is given by Magnus Bjornson, 11 McDonald St.,
+ Winnipeg, who is a foster brother to Olof since she lost her mother
+ in Iceland, and also by her brother at Westbourne as to names and
+ addresses of her brothers and sisters. The two photos herewith
+ enclosed are taken from photos the property of Magnus Bjornson.”
+
+The accompanying letter from Baldwinson said in part:
+
+ “... Magnus Bjornson, Olof’s foster brother ... ran into Olof in a
+ circus a few years after she had begun to exhibit herself. She then
+ pretended not to recognize him, which he said suited him well enough,
+ for he did not want to be the cause of her getting into trouble about
+ her (pretended) nationality.”
+
+An earlier letter from Baldwinson contained an explanatory note on some
+photographs which were enclosed.
+
+ “I have also secured two pictures of her, one by herself, the other
+ with the man that she is said to have been married to--both of them
+ are wearing wedding rings.”
+
+This photograph shows the figures of equal stature. The body
+proportions are those of dwarfs.
+
+Following these inquiries my activities in the Olof Krarer case were
+long suspended. And then, in Utica, New York (1932), I met Miss Frances
+A. Finch who, as a child, had known Olof Krarer in Florida. She told me
+something of her childhood recollections of this interesting character,
+and later confirmed them by a letter which I quote in part, dated from
+Skaneateles, New York, November 27, 1932:
+
+ “As you requested, I have gone into the question at home, but I think
+ that the enclosed material (photographs) is all I have that would be
+ of interest to you....
+
+ “Print No. 1 is the one I mentioned as having been taken during the
+ winter of 1917-1918. I was ten years old at the time. Miss Krarer and
+ I are standing on the same step. I presume I was of average height,
+ for now, at the age of twenty-five, I am about five feet two and a
+ half inches tall. (The picture shows the girl of ten considerably
+ taller than the old “Eskimo.”)
+
+ “Miss Krarer was about fifty-eight years old when these pictures were
+ taken, and print No. 2 shows Miss Olaf with a bouquet presented her at
+ that year’s celebration of her birthday....
+
+ “... The woman with whom Miss Krarer lived was Mrs. (H. P.?)
+ Slayton.... Although Mrs. Slayton was considered the owner of
+ the Seven Gables Apartments, rumor had it that Olaf Krarer had a
+ substantial interest. I’ve been unable to verify the location of the
+ Seven Gables Apartments, pictured in print No. 3, except that it
+ stands at a corner of Williams Park in St. Petersburg, Florida.”[19]
+
+In November, 1934, my friend, Miss Gretchen Switzer, of Columbia
+University, told me that she was about to visit St. Petersburg. For
+reasons two or three paragraphs ahead, she was interested in the case
+of Olof Krarer. She followed up the information given by Miss Finch.
+In St. Petersburg she was able to verify the name and address of Mrs.
+Slayton (Mrs. W. P. Slayton) and the location of the Seven Gables
+Apartments. She also talked with the clerk of the Princess Martha
+Hotel, H. B. Boardman (now of The New Hotel Delaware, Ocean City, New
+Jersey) who said that Olof was known there only as Olof the Eskimo. To
+the best of his knowledge she had gone to Battle Creek and at that
+time (1934) was in Chicago.[20]
+
+Some years ago I became interested in the similarity between the
+Krarer tradition and the views about Eskimos held in Teachers College,
+Columbia University. I asked Miss Switzer, then a member of the New
+College staff of Teachers College, where she had obtained her ideas
+and it seemed she could trace a number of them to having studied in
+the lower grades a book published by Rand McNally and Company, _Eskimo
+Stories_ (copyright 1902). A check showed that the author, Mary Estella
+E. Smith, of the Jenner School, Chicago, had for the last paragraph of
+its introduction, dated June 14, 1902:
+
+ “The author acknowledges her appreciation of the valuable suggestions
+ made by Miss Olof Krarer, who read the book in manuscript, and whose
+ interesting autobiography appears at the close of the volume under the
+ title, ‘The Story of a Real Eskimo.’”
+
+A little earlier in the introduction Miss Smith says that
+
+ “... various books have been consulted and drawn upon for basic
+ material, but special acknowledgment is due ‘My Arctic Journal,’ by
+ Josephine D. Peary, and ‘The Children of the Cold,’ by Frederick
+ Schwatka.”
+
+Clearly Miss Smith did get a considerable part of her material from
+the dry-as-dust fact school, and perhaps three-quarters of her book
+would be in humdrum correspondence with things as they physically are.
+But some of the more entertaining portions, likeliest to cling to the
+mind of a learner, are seemingly based on the “valuable suggestions
+made by Miss Olof Krarer.” Though perhaps small in quantity, beside the
+contributions by Mrs. Peary and Lieutenant Schwatka, the Krarer section
+of the schoolbook was bound to impress itself, for the author says to
+the teacher at the head of the Krarer autobiography, _The Story of a
+Real Eskimo_, that “this story should be read to the children before
+they begin reading the book.”
+
+We quote portions of _The Story of a Real Eskimo_:
+
+ “I was born on the east coast of Greenland, the least known to
+ civilization, about one thousand miles north and a little west
+ of Iceland. I am the youngest of eight children. As nearly as I
+ can remember,[21] my father’s house was on a low plain near the
+ seashore....
+
+ “Our house was built of snow....
+
+ “... Outside of the door was a long, narrow passageway, just high
+ enough for one of us little Eskimo people to stand up straight in.
+ That would be about high enough for a child eight years old in this
+ country; and it was only wide enough for one person to go through at
+ a time. If one wanted to go out and another wanted to come in at the
+ same time one would have to back out of the passageway and let the
+ other go first....
+
+ “Our fireplace was in the center of the house. The bottom was a large
+ flat stone with other stones piled about the edge to keep the fire
+ from getting into the room. When we wanted to build a fire we would
+ put some dried meat and bones on the stone; then a little dry moss was
+ put in, and then my father would take a flint and a whale’s tooth and
+ strike fire upon the moss. Sometimes it took a long time to make it
+ burn. After the fire started he would put some blubber upon it....
+
+ “... Our food is eaten raw and frozen. We have only the salt ocean
+ water, and if we had soft, fresh water we would not dare to use it,
+ for it would be like poison to our flesh with the thermometer 80° or
+ 90° below zero. So, when we eat, we take a piece of raw meat in one
+ hand and a chunk of blubber in the other, and take a bite of each
+ until it is eaten. Then we carefully rub the grease and fat all over
+ our hands and face, and feel fine afterwards. My people have long
+ hair, made dark by the smoke and grease.
+
+ “There was no chance to play and romp inside the snow house. We
+ just had to sit still with our arms folded. It was in this way that
+ my arms came to have such a different shape from people’s arms in
+ this country. Where their muscle is large and strong, I have but
+ very little; and instead of that, I have a large bunch of muscle on
+ the upper side of my arms, and they are crooked so that I can never
+ straighten them.
+
+ “Sometimes we used to get very tired in the dark snow house and then
+ we would try a little amusement. Two of us would sit down on the fur
+ carpet, and looking into each other’s faces, guess who was the best
+ looking. We had to guess at it, for we had no looking-glass in which
+ to see our faces.
+
+ “The one whose face shone the most with the grease was called the
+ prettiest. If at any time we grew tired of it all, and ventured to
+ jump about and to play, we were in danger of being punished. When a
+ child was naughty, mother would place a bone on the fire, leaving it
+ there until it was hot enough for the grease to boil out. Then she
+ would slap it on the child. She was not particular where she burned
+ her child, except that she was careful not to touch the face....
+
+ “But it was not always so that we had to stay in the snow house. Once
+ in a while father would come in and say it was not so cold as usual,
+ and then we would have a chance to look around outside the snow house.
+ We never took long walks. There were some steep, jagged rocks in sight
+ of our village, and during the long daytime enough of the snow would
+ melt off to leave the rocks bare in a few places....
+
+ “Now, in order that you may understand our way of living better,
+ I will explain that we have six months night in Greenland, and
+ during that time nothing is seen of the sun.... Before and after the
+ night-time there was about a month of twilight....
+
+ “In the long day we had the hardest time, for then the sun shone out
+ so brightly that we would be made snow-blind if we ventured far from
+ home. The day was four months long, and if we did not have food enough
+ stored away in an ice cave to last us through, we would be in great
+ danger of starving.
+
+ “... My father’s name was Krauker, my name was Oluar. On arriving in
+ Iceland I was baptized Olof Krarer.
+
+ “One thing had a great deal of interest for us all. When the sun shone
+ out at the beginning of the daytime, it marked the first of the year,
+ as New Year’s day marks the beginning of the year in this country.
+ Then our parents would take out the sacks, each one of the family
+ having one of their own. In each sack was a piece of bone for every
+ first time that person had seen the sun. When ten bones were gathered,
+ they would tie them into a bundle, for they had not words to count
+ more than ten. In such a land was I born, in such a home was I brought
+ up. In such pleasures I rejoiced until there were about fifteen bones
+ in my sack.
+
+ “Then something happened which changed my whole life. Six tall men
+ came to our village. They proved to be Iceland whalers who had been
+ shipwrecked in a storm and who finally reached Greenland. When they
+ returned to Iceland my father’s family went with them....
+
+ “Eskimos have no idea of a book.... They think, in their ignorance,
+ they are the only people, and are consequently contented and happy.
+
+ “June 16, 1902.
+
+ “Olof Krarer.”
+
+By her own account Miss Krarer had been born an Eskimo in Greenland;
+those who claim to be her relatives state she was born an Icelander
+in Iceland. Both countries, and the sea between them, are hazy to the
+average reader and so a few remarks may be worth while.
+
+Iceland is the largest country now inhabited by Europeans which had no
+aborigines when discovered. It is, too, the largest in the northern
+hemisphere of those islands which do not show, archeologically or
+historically, any evidence of pre-white human occupation.
+
+The Irish discovered Iceland around or before A. D. 795; the Norsemen
+first visited the country around 850 and say they found ahead of them
+no people except the Irish. These things, so far as we know, are
+undisputed.
+
+The part of Greenland, where Olof claimed to have been born around
+1860, “a thousand miles north and a little west of Iceland,” can never
+have been inhabited during the last several thousand years, since that
+distance takes you far into the interior, up on the inland ice where,
+so far as we understand it, neither humans nor the animals upon which
+hunters depend can have lived since prior to that Ice Age which,
+millenniums back, gave the land its present cap of snow.
+
+Be liberal with Olof and place her family on the seacoast of Greenland
+north and a little east from central Iceland. We then have a district
+that is believed by anthropologists and explorers not to have been
+inhabited by Eskimos at or anywhere near the time when Olof was born.
+If you wanted to be extremely generous, you might connect her story
+up with the few Eskimos seen by Clavering, near what is now Shannon
+Island, in 1823. Shannon is, true enough, some 500 miles south of
+Olof’s claimed birthplace, but then it is also 500 miles north of where
+her alleged family claim she was born. That is kind of fifty-fifty.
+
+The Clavering people were, by his account and that of Sabine,
+apparently just ordinary Eskimos, looking more or less as if they were
+Chinese. Olof tells that her Eskimo relatives were blond, but then she
+mentions that they did not know they were blond, they were so blackened
+with the smoke from their lamps. Most travelers have explained that
+Eskimos trim their lamps so carefully that they rarely smoke--but, if
+we start out to be generous, why haggle over a few smudges of lampblack?
+
+Except Olof’s there is no account of Icelanders going to eastern or
+northeastern Greenland near the time she says, nor ever any time for
+many decades before and after. So far as known, Europeans never visited
+northeastern Greenland (1000 miles north of Iceland) until after Miss
+Krarer became a prominent lecturer. Those Europeans were Danes, not
+Icelanders.
+
+Olof seems to be the only person who has claimed that the sea was ever
+so frozen, or so filled with ice, between Greenland and Iceland that
+people could walk across in the manner described by her, or in any
+manner.
+
+I know of one Eskimo having been in Virginia; I cannot find testimony,
+except Miss Krarer’s, that any Eskimo ever was in Iceland. Just
+possibly at some time during the Middle Ages some Icelander may have
+brought an Eskimo from Greenland, but, if so, there is no account of
+it. There is one account of a medieval Icelander who did see Eskimos
+on the southern east coast of Greenland, but the narrative explicitly
+states that when he sailed from there he left the Eskimos behind.
+
+Iceland is among the countries which do not feel, or at least did not
+until very recently, any such need for Eskimos in their system of
+education as we feel in ours. You can see through authorities such
+as Professor Ellsworth Huntington of Yale, in his _The Character of
+Races_, that they are comparatively a learned people, so you would
+expect book knowledge of the Eskimos which Olof might have picked
+up. But other writers, for instance, Bayard Taylor in his _Egypt
+and Iceland in the Year 1874_, have pointed out that the Icelandic
+learning, next after dealing with their own antiquities, is heavily
+preoccupied with Greece, Rome, and the Mediterranean countries
+generally. The Icelanders tend to be classicists in their schooling and
+reading.
+
+It was, therefore, in one way unfortunate that Olof, when she came
+to formulate the accounts of her Greenland childhood, had little
+groundwork derivable from her Icelandic education or from the knowledge
+of her friends and family. But in another way it was fortunate that she
+had to pick up her ideas in America. For this made it simple to fit
+herself to traditional beliefs, avoiding conflict with her hearers.
+So in Miss Krarer’s account, as in the view previously common, the
+Eskimos are (for instance) a small people, they grease themselves with
+oil, they all live in snow houses, and they suffer long periods of
+uninterrupted darkness followed by long periods of uninterrupted light.
+
+The Krarer version of Arctic lore does introduce a few novelties, as,
+for instance, where she says that:
+
+ “... we have six months night in Greenland.... Before and after the
+ night-time there was about a month of twilight.... The day was four
+ months long.”
+
+That replaced the six-month day and six-month night. After all, she had
+to contribute something novel or there could have been little advantage
+in getting knowledge for American textbooks and supplementary readers
+straight from a real Eskimo.
+
+There is an almost tragic contrast between the Krarer division of
+daylight and darkness and the one which has recently forced its way
+into American school teaching, disturbing its symmetry. Like Miss
+Krarer’s, this view attacks the even division between light and dark
+but (and here is the tragedy) where Miss Krarer arrived at a darkness
+period much longer than the daylight, the astronomers who are bothering
+the schools claim a daylight period much longer than the darkness.
+Their ratio is practically the same as hers, only reversed.
+
+What a triumph it would have been for the little Eskimo had she only
+reversed the naming of her four-month and eight-month periods! The
+astronomers, right enough, are talking for the mathematical North Pole
+and Miss Krarer for a point only a thousand miles north of Iceland;
+but that discrepancy would not have been so hard to explain away.
+After all, Miss Krarer was born at a time when many geographers still
+believed Greenland extended to and beyond the North Pole, and she might
+so easily have been mistaken as to whether she was born one thousand or
+sixteen hundred miles north of Iceland.
+
+As mentioned, it was the opinion among the Icelanders in North Dakota
+that Olof Solvadottir, the normally blond and blue-eyed Nordic
+dwarf, born in Iceland, had been induced by “the English couple” who
+adopted her to take the character of the Eskimo Olof Krarer, born in
+northeastern Greenland. The first the Icelanders knew of her changed
+status was when they discovered her as a freak in a circus. According
+to my mother’s version of how Olof came to assume the Eskimo character,
+she went straight from waiting on table in a hotel to lecturing on a
+lyceum circuit--there was no mention of an intervening circus career.
+But there was a circus period, that seems clear. Perhaps the sequence
+was small-time lecturing, circus, big-time lecturing.
+
+At any rate, there is no reason to doubt the testimony which connects
+Olof with a foremost bureau of lyceum’s heyday.
+
+Some of the leaders in the modern celebrity business are old stagers
+from the lyceum and Chautauqua days. Among these are O. B. Stephenson,
+head of the long successful Emerson Lyceum Bureau, Orchestra Building,
+South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, and the veteran field worker and at
+present independent bureau manager, William H. Stout, Bluff Road
+37, Greenwood, Indiana. From them and others we piece together the
+following:
+
+At the crest of the lyceum and Chautauqua business one of the most
+successful organizations was the Slayton Lyceum Bureau, dating back
+also well among the pioneers. They ranked almost if not quite with
+such great institutions as the Redpath Bureau and produced some very
+successful managers who later branched out for themselves, as for
+instance, Charles L. Wagner, who was secretary for the Slaytons, a
+dominant figure with them at that time, and who is now a New York
+leader in concert management, with offices at 511 Fifth Avenue. It
+seems clear that the Slaytons had nothing to do with Olof’s change of
+state but received her as a full-fledged Eskimo from those earlier
+patrons who may have been influential in changing her, or who at any
+rate may have been with her at the time she changed and thus familiar
+with the stages of the transformation.
+
+The story of Miss Krarer’s entry into and success in the big-time
+lyceum field is succinctly given by W. P. Slayton, son of the founder
+of the bureau, who writes from the Hotel Lorraine, Chicago, June 30,
+1936:
+
+ “As I recall, my Father, Henry L. Slayton, made a trip to Minnesota to
+ meet Miss Krarer with a view of making a contract for her appearance
+ under the management of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau. At that time she
+ was lecturing on Greenland with bookings arranged by a personal
+ manager. This was back in the Eighties, I believe.
+
+ “She was glad to come under our management and we booked her for the
+ next thirty years or until her eyesight failed and she had to give
+ up platform work. She filled over 2500 lecture engagements for us, of
+ which over eighty were delivered in Philadelphia alone.
+
+ “The last two years of her life were spent at the Old Peoples Baptist
+ Home in Maywood, Ill. She must have been over seventy years old. Her
+ height forty inches. A very interesting personality on the platform
+ and she had a host of friends all over the country.”
+
+From the time, then, when Henry L. Slayton discovered her, Miss Krarer
+was one of their chief and successful attractions. She was on the road
+pretty well constantly, lectured in schools, universities, churches,
+auditoriums, and under summer Chautauqua tents. Wherever she went she
+appears to have made a favorable impression personally and to have
+conveyed vividly her picture of that northeastern Greenland where she
+said she had been born an Eskimo.
+
+We have further proof of Miss Krarer’s success on the lyceum and
+Chautauqua platforms from S. Russell Bridges, one of the leaders in the
+lyceum field and now head of the Alkahest Lyceum Bureau of Atlanta,
+Georgia. He writes under date of July 31, 1936:
+
+ “Yes, I remember the little Eskimo lady, Miss Krarer, whom we had on
+ one of our Chautauqua circuits, as I recall, in the summer of 1911.
+ Then the following winter she came down and filled a few lyceum
+ engagements. She was an excellent attraction who always made good with
+ her audiences, and besides, she was a good box office feature.
+
+ “... I recall trying to meet her when she first came down from Chicago
+ to begin her tour for us but I missed her at the station and followed
+ her on to the hotel where they had refused to give her a room until I
+ arrived and identified her....
+
+ “Another incident I recall is that she and William Jennings Bryan
+ appeared on our Chautauqua at Newnan, Georgia, the same date, he in
+ the morning and she in the afternoon, but they were both leaving at
+ the same time and when the train pulled in at the depot, I took her
+ baggage and went ahead and Mr. Bryan was following but when I got on
+ the platform of the train, she was trying to reach the step but could
+ not quite make it. Finally Bryan picked her up and put her up on the
+ platform as you would a child.”
+
+The way in which Olof Krarer was presented to the public, the character
+of her service, and the impression she made upon her audiences, we try
+to show more concretely by quotations from a statement about her made
+by the Slayton Lyceum Bureau (then of Steinway Hall, Chicago). The
+document we have was likely printed in 1902 or 1903, according to an
+informant who was in touch with Miss Krarer then. It is, therefore, of
+about the period when The Little Eskimo was collaborating with Chicago
+educators and publishers along those lines which, through _Eskimo
+Stories_ and otherwise, have had so profound an influence upon American
+schools. The statement runs:
+
+ “MISS OLOF KRARER has become one of the best known lecturers that ever
+ appeared on the lyceum platform. She does not appear as a freak or a
+ curiosity, but on her merits. The Bureau always guarantees that she
+ will give entire satisfaction to any audience, however critical. Large
+ sums of money have been made from her lectures by churches, charity
+ organizations and lyceums. Many a church debt has been raised and a
+ weak lecture course freed from debt by the receipts from one of her
+ lectures.
+
+ “For several years after the arrival of Miss Krarer in the United
+ States it was very difficult for her to live through the summer
+ months; she has, on the other hand, taken long rides during our
+ coldest days in winter, with only her ordinary apparel, without the
+ slightest discomfort, while those accompanying her were nearly frozen
+ to death.
+
+ “The simple story of her life, as she tells it, is more interesting
+ than a fairy tale. At the close of her lecture anyone in the audience
+ is at liberty to ask her any proper questions concerning her life and
+ native country. Some of the ablest legal talent in this country have
+ taken advantage of this privilege, but Miss Krarer is always equal
+ to every occasion and emergency. The Bureau, in her behalf, takes
+ this occasion to thank the many hundreds of people and the press of
+ the country for the uniform kindness and attention received at their
+ hands. During the past Miss Krarer has delivered more lectures than
+ her strength would really permit, and for that reason it will be
+ necessary in the future to limit the number of her engagements, but
+ first applications will receive most favorable dates.”
+
+That the general claims of managers were no empty sales talk is borne
+out by the specific statement that Miss Krarer had already (as of about
+1902) lectured 85 times in Philadelphia, 16 times in New York, 14 times
+in Chicago, 6 times in Baltimore, 5 times in Jersey City, Cleveland,
+and Aurora (Ill.), and 3 times in Albany, N. Y., Syracuse, N. Y.,
+Detroit, Mt. Pleasant, Ia., St. Louis, Cortland, N. Y., Toledo, O.,
+Orange, N. J., Newark, N. J., and Dayton, O.
+
+Before the close of her career she lectured several more years; a
+corrected tally would give her more appearances in these cities than
+here listed.
+
+The direct statement of the Slaytons is well supported by
+representative newspapers from the Atlantic coast to beyond the
+Mississippi. We quote them as they are quoted in the (1902?) booking
+circular of “Miss Olof Krarer, Esquimau”:
+
+ “Newark (N.J.) _Evening News_: An appreciative audience greeted Miss
+ Olof Krarer, the Esquimau lecturer, at the Irvington rink last night.
+ She is a pleasant-faced little woman, only three feet five inches
+ in height and weighing 120 pounds, who left Greenland with a party
+ of Icelanders and was educated by missionaries in Iceland. She told
+ many interesting things about East Greenland, of which so little is
+ known. In her native land, she said, ... There is only one social
+ distinction--the man who owns a flint for making fire is looked
+ upon as a big gun, but he is bound by custom to loan it freely and
+ without remuneration. Water--that is, fresh water--is unknown.... The
+ women of her country, she said, lived a life of pathetic idleness
+ and helplessness, with no housework, no washing, no fancy work, no
+ amusement and no cooking. All meat is eaten raw, and this is the sole
+ food. The main occupation of the men was hunting ... this being done
+ mainly in the twilight period, lasting four months of the year. The
+ remainder of the year is made up of four months of perpetual night,
+ lighted by stars and moon, and four months of daylight. The latter
+ is the hardest time for the Esquimaux, as large numbers of them are
+ afflicted with snow-blindness, caused by the dazzling effect of the
+ sun on the ice and snow.
+
+ “The only record of time kept by these primitive people is by means of
+ a bone bag--one bone dropped into a fur bag on the day on which the
+ sun is first seen each year.... Miss Krarer says her people ... are
+ becoming more stunted in growth and shorter-lived every generation....”
+
+ “Holyoke (Mass.) Paper: Last night a large audience assembled in the
+ city hall and listened to Miss Olof Krarer’s talk on ‘Greenland, or
+ Life in the Frozen North.’ Since her visit to this city two years ago
+ Miss Krarer has increased her knowledge of English and entertained her
+ audience finely. The lecture was the same as that given by her when
+ she lectured under the auspices of the Scientific Association. Last
+ evening, at the close of her lecture, Miss Krarer appeared in northern
+ costume, a genuine polar bear skin from its natural state, which she
+ had taken great pains to secure.... Miss Krarer still finds this
+ climate trying, and during the summer months seeks the coolest spot
+ she can find.... Tomorrow she speaks in Westfield, next in Warren.
+ Almost every night she is engaged and business increases every season.”
+
+ “West Chester (Pa.) _Republic_: Olof Krarer fairly captivated her
+ audiences at the Normal yesterday afternoon and last evening. The
+ story of the life of the inhabitants of Greenland became doubly
+ entertaining when related in the quaint broken English of this bright
+ and witty little native of that frozen land. The Normal School course
+ of lectures thus inaugurated promises to be exceedingly popular and
+ will no doubt have a large patronage.”
+
+ “Manchester (Iowa) _Union_: The lecture on Greenland by Miss Olof
+ Krarer at the city hall last evening in aid of the Orphans’ Home was
+ one of the most interesting and instructive lectures ever heard in
+ this city.”
+
+ “Vicksburg (Miss.) _Daily Commercial Herald_: Miss Olof Krarer’s
+ pictures of life from a Greenlander’s standpoint afforded a very large
+ audience at the opera house, last night, a unique experience, of which
+ not the least entertaining feature was the personality of the speaker.
+ She is scarcely taller than a ten-year-old girl, a neat, trim, plump
+ little woman, with very bright eyes and a countenance that has nothing
+ unfamiliar in its appearance, such a one as might be seen anywhere
+ in the United States and in no respect Mongolian or Indian.... Hers
+ is a plain, unvarnished story, that of a sensible, educated woman,
+ depicting the terrible conditions of life around the North Pole. It
+ was deeply interesting, however, and the audience frequently applauded
+ her. She sang ... an Esquimaux love-song, which would no doubt impress
+ a damsel of the frozen coast as something too altogether lovely. The
+ lecture was given under the auspices of the Circle of the Silver
+ Cross, King’s Daughters, and was a financial success.”
+
+ “Brooklyn (N.Y.) _Daily Eagle_: The hall of the Young Men’s Christian
+ Association was well filled last evening by an audience gathered
+ to hear the lecture of Miss Olof Krarer, an Esquimau lady from the
+ eastern shores of Greenland, her subject being ‘Greenland, or Life in
+ the Frozen North.’ Miss Krarer is the only Esquimau lady in the United
+ States and her lecture was unusually interesting....”
+
+ “Detroit (Mich.) _Free Press_: The speaker’s platform at Y.M.C.A.
+ hall last evening presented a very Arctic appearance, covered with
+ polar bear skins and white draperies, with a silver fox skin mounted
+ over the speaker’s stand. This was done to be in consonance with the
+ character of the evening’s entertainment, a lecture on the Esquimaux
+ of Greenland, by Miss Olof Krarer, a native of that hypoborean
+ region.... She was decidedly short, being only 3 feet 4 inches in
+ height, and weighing 100 pounds. Otherwise her appearance did not
+ vary strikingly from that of many a German maid, met with daily in
+ Detroit....”
+
+ “Sioux City (Iowa) _Journal_: At the Y.M.C.A. auditorium last night
+ Miss Olof Krarer, the Esquimau woman, lectured on the customs of her
+ people. The audience was intensely interested in the lecture.”
+
+ “Mount Pleasant (Iowa) _Free Press_: As a psychological study, the
+ little lady from Greenland, who gave her second lecture in this city
+ last Thursday evening, is probably unexcelled on this continent; and
+ as a study in heredity or the influence of vocation and environment
+ for successive generations upon the body she is equally so.... Miss
+ Krarer’s person bears corroborative testimony to the claim of her
+ being a native of Greenland, whose racial developments are as marked
+ and as universal as color in Caucasia or Africa; and the indices of
+ nationality in every unmixed people on earth.... But it is Miss Krarer
+ as an intelligent and agreeable lady that is most interesting. The
+ evolution from the national, natal condition of absolute non-exertion,
+ into the consciousness of being a responsible, immortal, spiritual
+ being; gracious in self-reliance, dignified in self-respect and potent
+ in an intelligent, conscious, self-hood; attractive in demeanor, and
+ gracious and punctilious in every point of social relations, she is
+ certainly the most interesting personality to the student of mind that
+ it is possible to find on this continent. The school people who failed
+ to see and hear this speaker failed to see and hear a most suggestive
+ object lesson in psychical development under the Christian idea of the
+ nature of God and man. It is through Mr. Fred Hope that Miss Krarer
+ was engaged to come to Mt. Pleasant. Having heard her in Washington,
+ D.C., and knowing the interest she awakened in her audiences in that
+ city, he induced the people of the Christian church to bring her here.
+ Should she ever come again, let those who did not hear her upon this
+ occasion be sure to do so.”
+
+Thus through half a century, nearly forty years of which were active,
+did Olof Krarer, blond Nordic dwarf who may never have seen an Eskimo
+in her life, continue to entertain and impress those who saw her and
+those who read about her. It does not appear from other sources, any
+more than it does from press comments, that her authenticity as an
+Eskimo was questioned by her friends, her managers, her audiences or
+her readers. On this we summarize representative testimony.
+
+Obviously a great and careful house like the Rand McNally Company
+would not have accepted Olof Krarer as a collaborator on one of their
+schoolbooks had they not at the time believed her to be what their book
+says and implies, an Eskimo born in an Eskimo country. If possible, it
+is still more clear that Miss Mary E. E. Smith and her fellow educators
+were convinced of Miss Krarer’s authenticity. Plainly the confidence
+of the educational world in Miss Krarer is still maintained for, as
+mentioned above, what is usually considered the foremost school of
+education in America, Teachers College of Columbia University, has on
+its staff teachers who until recently developed no suspicion either
+of Miss Krarer or of those views which at least some of them realized
+came from _Eskimo Stories_. Strongest proof of all that the faith still
+remains is the gratifying continued sale of _Eskimo Stories_, which
+employees of the Rand McNally Company report as late as July, 1936.
+
+The testimony is the same from the lyceum fraternity. Not perhaps quite
+so meticulously careful as professional educators and the publishers of
+educational books, they nevertheless tried to maintain a high standard
+for their “attractions.” Remember, those were the William Jennings
+Bryan and uplift days, when gate receipts were more likely to drop
+than they are now if lecturers or their management fell below ethical
+standards.
+
+In a rather careful profession, then, the Slayton Lyceum Bureau stood
+high and in considerable part through the very influence of Miss
+Krarer. The Redpath Bureau, as well known in the lyceum world, has been
+at the very top in every requirement. I have a letter from Miss Amy M.
+Weiskopf, who was in close association when the Redpaths bought out
+the Slaytons, and who is with the Redpath organization still, or with
+its head, Mr. Harry P. Harrison. She says that she never doubted Miss
+Krarer’s authenticity and that she never heard doubts of it.
+
+An old friend of mine of high standing in the lyceum world and still
+active, is the aforementioned William H. Stout. He heard Miss Krarer
+lecture before the University of Indiana, had no doubts of her
+authenticity himself, and heard none expressed.
+
+Those who knew her respected and liked Olof Krarer. Through charm of
+personality she confirmed the interest of the country, and particularly
+of the schools, in that frozen wonderland of the remote north where
+live those unique people, the Eskimos.
+
+Olof died in 1935, but during the season 1936-37 teachers all over
+the United States are carrying on her work through continuing into
+its fourth decade of usefulness the book _Eskimo Stories_, which she
+read in manuscript, on which she “made valuable suggestions” and which
+contains her “interesting autobiography.” The teachers who use the book
+are no doubt being careful to follow the author’s directions that Miss
+Krarer’s autobiography, _The Story of a Real Eskimo_, which we quoted,
+_ante_, should be read to the children before they begin reading the
+book.
+
+Olof Krarer belonged to three cultural agencies that have had their
+ups and downs, the Chautauqua, the lyceum, and the circus. Chautauqua
+has faded; the lyceum is emerging slowly (we hear) from a temporary
+eclipse by the radio; the circus does pretty well, what with “Jumbo.”
+But a greater cultural agency, the schools, in which Miss Krarer took
+her place 34 years ago, has never suffered eclipse. The teachers go
+marching on. In their ranks marches the forty-inch spirit of that good
+trouper, Olof the Eskimo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+HISTORY OF THE BATHTUB IN AMERICA
+
+
+Those versed in fabricated history had moments of sheer delight the
+forenoon of May 27, 1936, while listening to Dr. Shirley W. Wynne,
+formerly Commissioner of Health for New York City, as he spoke over
+station WEAF of the National Broadcasting Company on the subject “What
+Is Public Health”:
+
+ “Even ordinary bathing, one of the simple factors in our personal
+ hygiene, had a hard time getting inaugurated in our grandfather’s day.
+ The city fathers in the good town of Boston ruled that it was unlawful
+ to take a bath except on a doctor’s advice; and that law remained in
+ effect from 1854 until 1862--think of it. In Philadelphia they were a
+ little more open-minded. The law in Philadelphia was that you couldn’t
+ take a bath between November and March. The cities of Hartford and
+ Providence discouraged bathing by raising the charges for water supply
+ about 400 per cent for people who owned bathtubs. In 1847, in Newport,
+ Rhode Island, a doctor tried to convert the people to the habit of
+ washing, though at the same time he conscientiously warned them that
+ the first bath or two might affect their hearts. The American Medical
+ Association immediately opposed him and said that bathing was NOT
+ compulsory to health, and the people needn’t wash unless they just
+ wanted to do so for some whimsical reason of their own. So you see
+ our great-grandfathers and even our grandfathers all belonged in that
+ category referred to inelegantly as the Great Unwashed.”
+
+The source of joy to the connoisseurs in hoaxes was that the learned
+ex-Commissioner of Health was reciting over the NBC what sounded a
+whole lot like an abridgment of a certain contribution to the history
+of the bathtub which was published in the New York _Evening Mail_ of
+December 28, 1917. We have secured permission and herewith offer what,
+in spite of much quoting and discussion, is probably the first complete
+reprinting of this (the author is beginning to feel) overtenaciously
+successful hoax:
+
+ “A NEGLECTED ANNIVERSARY[22]
+
+ _By_
+
+ H. L. MENCKEN
+
+ “On December 20 there flitted past us, absolutely without public
+ notice, one of the most important profane anniversaries in American
+ history, to wit, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the introduction of
+ the bathtub into These States. Not a plumber fired a salute or hung
+ out a flag. Not a governor proclaimed a day of prayer. Not a newspaper
+ called attention to the day.
+
+ “True enough, it was not entirely forgotten. Eight or nine months
+ ago one of the younger surgeons connected with the Public Health
+ Service in Washington happened upon the facts while looking into the
+ early history of public hygiene, and at his suggestion a committee
+ was formed to celebrate the anniversary with a banquet. But before
+ the plan was perfected Washington went dry, and so the banquet had to
+ be abandoned. As it was, the day passed wholly unmarked, even in the
+ capital of the nation.
+
+ “Bathtubs are so common today that it is almost impossible to imagine
+ a world without them. They are familiar to nearly every one in all
+ incorporated towns; in most of the large cities it is unlawful to
+ build a dwelling house without putting them in; even on the farm they
+ have begun to come into use. And yet the first American bathtub was
+ installed and dedicated so recently as December 20, 1842, and, for all
+ I know to the contrary, it may be still in existence and in use.
+
+ “Curiously enough, the scene of its setting up was Cincinnati, then
+ a squalid frontier town, and even today surely no leader in culture.
+ But Cincinnati, in those days as in these, contained many enterprising
+ merchants, and one of them was a man named Adam Thompson, a dealer
+ in cotton and grain. Thompson shipped his merchandise by steamboat
+ down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, and from there sent
+ it to England in sailing vessels. This trade frequently took him to
+ England, and in that country, during the ’30’s, he acquired the habit
+ of bathing.
+
+ “The bathtub was then still a novelty in England. It had been
+ introduced in 1828 by Lord John Russell and its use was yet confined
+ to a small class of enthusiasts. Moreover, the English bathtub, then
+ as now, was a puny and inconvenient contrivance--little more, in
+ fact, than a glorified dishpan--and filling and emptying it required
+ the attendance of a servant. Taking a bath, indeed, was a rather
+ heavy ceremony, and Lord John in 1835 was said to be the only man in
+ England who had yet come to doing it every day.
+
+ “Thompson, who was of inventive fancy--he later devised the machine
+ that is still used for bagging hams and bacon--conceived the notion
+ that the English bathtub would be much improved if it were made large
+ enough to admit the whole body of an adult man, and if its supply of
+ water, instead of being hauled to the scene by a maid, were admitted
+ by pipes from a central reservoir and run off by the same means.
+ Accordingly, early in 1842 he set about building the first modern
+ bathroom in his Cincinnati home--a large house with Doric pillars,
+ standing near what is now the corner of Monastery and Oregon streets.
+
+ “There was then, of course, no city water supply, at least in that
+ part of the city, but Thompson had a large well in his garden, and
+ he installed a pump to lift its water to his house. This pump, which
+ was operated by six negroes, much like an old-time fire engine, was
+ connected by a pipe with a cypress tank in the garret of the house,
+ and here the water was stored until needed. From the tank two other
+ pipes ran to the bathroom. One, carrying cold water, was a direct
+ line. The other, designed to provide warm water, ran down the great
+ chimney of the kitchen, and was coiled inside it like a giant spring.
+
+ “The tub itself was of new design, and became the grandfather of all
+ the bathtubs of to-day. Thompson had it made by James Guinness, the
+ leading Cincinnati cabinetmaker of those days, and its material was
+ Nicaragua mahogany. It was nearly seven feet long and fully four feet
+ wide. To make it watertight, the interior was lined with sheet lead,
+ carefully soldered at the joints. The whole contraption weighed about
+ 1,750 pounds, and the floor of the room in which it was placed had to
+ be reinforced to support it. The exterior was elaborately polished.
+
+ “In this luxurious tub Thompson took two baths on December 20,
+ 1842--a cold one at 8 a.m. and a warm one some time during the
+ afternoon. The warm water, heated by the kitchen fire, reached a
+ temperature of 105 degrees. On Christmas day, having a party of
+ gentlemen to dinner, he exhibited the new marvel to them and gave
+ an exhibition of its use, and four of them, including a French
+ visitor, Col. Duchanel, risked plunges into it. The next day all
+ Cincinnati--then a town of about 100,000 people--had heard of it, and
+ the local newspapers described it at length and opened their columns
+ to violent discussions of it.
+
+ “The thing, in fact, became a public matter, and before long there
+ was a bitter and double-headed opposition to the new invention, which
+ had been promptly imitated by several other wealthy Cincinnatians.
+ On the one hand it was denounced as an epicurean and obnoxious toy
+ from England, designed to corrupt the democratic simplicity of the
+ republic, and on the other hand it was attacked by the medical faculty
+ as dangerous to health and a certain inviter of ‘phthisic, rheumatic
+ fevers, inflammation of the lungs and the whole category of zymotic
+ diseases.’ (I quote from the Western _Medical Repository_ of April 23,
+ 1843.)
+
+ “The noise of the controversy soon reached other cities, and in more
+ than one place medical opposition reached such strength that it was
+ reflected in legislation. Late in 1843, for example, the Philadelphia
+ Common Council considered an ordinance prohibiting bathing between
+ November 1 and March 15, and it failed of passage by but two votes.
+ During the same year the legislature of Virginia laid a tax of
+ $30 a year on all bathtubs that might be set up, and in Hartford,
+ Providence, Charleston and Wilmington (Del.) special and very heavy
+ water rates were levied upon those who had them. Boston early in 1845
+ made bathing unlawful except upon medical advice, but the ordinance
+ was never enforced and in 1862 it was repealed.
+
+ “This legislation, I suspect, had some class feeling in it, for the
+ Thompson bathtub was plainly too expensive to be owned by any save
+ the wealthy. Indeed, the common price for installing one in New York
+ in 1845 was $500. Thus the low caste politicians of the time made
+ capital by fulminating against it, and there is even some suspicion
+ of political bias in many of the early medical denunciations. But
+ the invention of the common pine bathtub, lined with zinc, in 1847,
+ cut off this line of attack, and thereafter the bathtub made steady
+ progress.
+
+ “The zinc tub was devised by John F. Simpson, a Brooklyn plumber, and
+ his efforts to protect it by a patent occupied the courts until 1855.
+ But the decisions were steadily against him, and after 1848 all the
+ plumbers of New York were equipped for putting in bathtubs. According
+ to a writer in the _Christian Register_ for July 17, 1857, the first
+ one in New York was opened for traffic on September 12, 1847, and by
+ the beginning of 1850 there were already nearly 1,000 in use in the
+ big town.
+
+ “After this medical opposition began to collapse, and among other
+ eminent physicians Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared for the bathtub,
+ and vigorously opposed the lingering movement against it in Boston.
+ The American Medical Association held its annual meeting in Boston
+ in 1849, and a poll of the members in attendance showed that nearly
+ 55 per cent of them now regarded bathing as harmless, and that more
+ than 20 per cent advocated it as beneficial. At its meeting in 1850 a
+ resolution was formally passed giving the imprimatur of the faculty to
+ the bathtub. The homeopaths followed with a like resolution in 1853.
+
+ “But it was the example of President Millard Fillmore that, even more
+ than the grudging medical approval, gave the bathtub recognition
+ and respectability in the United States. While he was still
+ Vice-President, in March, 1850, he visited Cincinnati on a stumping
+ tour, and inspected the original Thompson tub. Thompson himself was
+ now dead, but his bathroom was preserved by the gentleman who had
+ bought his house from his estate. Fillmore was entertained in this
+ house and, according to Chamberlain, his biographer, took a bath in
+ the tub. Experiencing no ill effects, he became an ardent advocate of
+ the new invention, and on succeeding to the presidency at Taylor’s
+ death, July 9, 1850, he instructed his secretary of war, Gen. Charles
+ M. Conrad, to invite tenders for the construction of a bathtub in the
+ White House.
+
+ “This action, for a moment, revived the old controversy, and its
+ opponents made much of the fact that there was no bathtub at Mount
+ Vernon or at Monticello, and that all the Presidents and other
+ magnificoes of the past had got along without any such monarchical
+ luxuries. The elder Bennett, in the New York _Herald_, charged that
+ Fillmore really aspired to buy and install in the White House a
+ porphyry and alabaster bath that had been used by Louis Philippe at
+ Versailles. But Conrad, disregarding all this clamor, duly called for
+ bids, and the contract was presently awarded to Harper and Gillespie,
+ a firm of Philadelphia engineers, who proposed to furnish a tub of
+ thin cast iron, capable of floating the largest man.
+
+ “This was installed early in 1851, and remained in service in the
+ White House until the first Cleveland administration, when the present
+ enameled tub was substituted. The example of the President soon broke
+ down all that remained of the old opposition, and by 1860, according
+ to the newspaper advertisements of the time, every hotel in New York
+ had a bathtub, and some had two and even three. In 1862 bathing was
+ introduced into the army by Gen. McClellan, and in 1870 the first
+ prison bathtub was set up at Moyamensing Prison, in Philadelphia.
+
+ “So much for the history of the bathtub in America. One is astonished,
+ on looking into it, to find that so little of it has been recorded.
+ The literature, in fact, is almost nil. But perhaps this brief sketch
+ will encourage other inquirers and so lay the foundation for an
+ adequate celebration of the centennial in 1942.”
+
+Varying motives in the fabrication of history lead to varying methods.
+When the purposes are moral or political, as they seem to have been
+with Parson Weems in his handling of Washington, there is no deliberate
+straining at probabilities, there are no planted clues. But when
+the purpose is outright spoofing, as Mencken says it was with the
+bathtub, there is frequently a mendacious plant. Samples of these in
+Mencken are that he tells you the bathtub’s first American home was
+at the intersection of Monastery and Oregon Streets, in Cincinnati,
+in the year 1842, and that a certain reference to bathing comes from
+Chamberlain’s biography of President Fillmore. Now you can discover in
+any big library, or by writing the friendly librarians of Cincinnati,
+that while one of the two named streets, Oregon, may have existed there
+in 1842, the second, Monastery, is not listed until decades later. They
+will add that streets of these names have never intersected in that
+town. At your local public library they will report on the telephone
+that they cannot find any biography of Fillmore by Chamberlain.
+
+Having in part given the victim fair warning, the Mencken type of
+spoofer proceeds to be reasonable enough to trap the unwary. Much
+of his tale of bathtub vicissitudes is, for instance, so reasonable
+superficially, so much in accord with what has actually been the
+history of the institution at other times and in other places, that
+not only are health commissioners liable to get caught but they have,
+on being caught, a pretty fair excuse. For, after all, you could, from
+so-called real facts, obtain approximately the same pictures and
+pretty roughly the same morals as you get from the fiction.
+
+Indeed, one of the strongest arguments against troubling to fabricate
+history or science is that, with judicious manipulation and suitable
+reasoning, you can frequently extract from ordinary facts tales as
+pleasing and conclusions as ethical as are commonly based on those
+facts-by-definition which some call fictions.
+
+Mencken probably felt that the numerous planted clews to his spoofing
+intent would keep “A Neglected Anniversary” from remaining long
+undetected. If so, he discovered presently that even he had overrated
+the public’s discrimination. Then the initial delight with which
+Mencken had watched the poor fish biting, started to fade. By 1926 it
+seemed to him the yarn was getting altogether too firmly historical so
+he began trying to call it off. On May 23 of that year he owned up that
+he had invented the tale, pointing out its absurdities. This confession
+was printed simultaneously in thirty American newspapers. One of
+them, the Boston _Herald_, used the article on a leading page, under
+a four-column head; three weeks later the same paper reprinted, as a
+piece of news, the substance of the story as it had originally appeared
+in 1917.
+
+We give below a classified list, which does not attempt to be complete,
+of some of the individuals, institutions and publications that took one
+or the other side of the ensuing controversy over the bathtub hoax.
+
+
+ACCEPTING THE HOAX
+
+Support from Journalists:
+
+ _Scribner’s_, October, 1920.
+
+ A booklet entitled _The Story of the Bath_, published by the Domestic
+ Engineering Company of Chicago, 1922.
+
+ _New York Herald_, Paris edition, September, 1925, mainly quoting an
+ article in the _New York Sun_ by Ruth Wakeham.
+
+ _Chicago Evening American_, December 7, 1926, under heading “For and
+ About Your Home.”
+
+ March 21, 1927, Colonel W. G. Archer, representing National Trade
+ Extension Bureau of the plumbing and heating industry, in an address
+ before the Clearfield, Pa., Commercial Club at the Jordan Hotel,
+ Clearfield.
+
+ _Chiropractor_, 1927, an article called Splash, by A. J. Pufahl.
+
+ _Cleveland Press_, November 15, 1927, letter from E. Hershey, D.C.,
+ P.C.
+
+ A pamphlet entitled _Saga of the Bathtub_, by Walt Dennison, published
+ by the LeRoy Carman Printing Company of Los Angeles, California, 1929.
+
+ _American Baptist_ (Lexington, Kentucky), February 13, 1929, in an
+ article headed Selected--probably indicating quotation from some other
+ source.
+
+ _Baltimore News_, March 16, 1929, in a column headed “Baltimore Day by
+ Day,” by Carrol Dulaney (real name Richard D. Steuart).
+
+ _House Beautiful_, May, 1930, p. 535.
+
+ W. Orton Tewson, October 11, 1930, in a syndicated column, “The Attic
+ Salt Shaker,” quoting a Dr. Moody (possibly Dr. W. R. Moody, who had
+ recently printed a life of his father, Dwight L. Moody).
+
+ _Golden Book_, early in 1931, article by Lenora R. Baxter.
+
+ _New York Sun_, February 17, 1931, review of _Puritan’s Progress_, by
+ Arthur Train, indicating the book accepted the hoax as fact.
+
+ _Baltimore Evening Sun_, May 22, 1931, letter signed S. A. Fact.
+
+ _Tucson Daily Star_, December 1, 1931, interview with C. R. King,
+ manager of the Tucson branch of the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing
+ Company.
+
+ _New York Sun_, December 22, 1931--quoting the _Military Engineer_.
+
+ _New York Sun_, October 12, 1933, advertisement of “Blue Coal,” part
+ of which advertisement was an illustration showing a policeman, ca.
+ 1842, threatening to arrest a man in a bathtub.
+
+ United Feature Syndicate, April 27, 1933, illustration by Russ Murphy
+ and Ray Nenuskay under the caption “How It Began”--illustration
+ showing Adam Thompson in his first bathtub in Cincinnati.
+
+ _New York Herald Tribune_, March 4, 1934, reprinted portions of above
+ article by Lenora R. Baxter, under heading “Baths in Disfavor for Long
+ Periods, History Recalls.”
+
+ _New York Sun_, January 6, 1935, news story.
+
+ _New York Times_, August 4, 1935, news story, “The Bathtub Wins Wider
+ Patronage.”
+
+ United Press Red Letter for September 26, 1935, “Bathtub Once Viewed
+ as Curse.”
+
+ J. Vijaya-Tunga, _New Statesman_ (London), October 5, 1935.
+
+ Central Press Association, November 15, 1935, _Scott’s Scrapbook_,
+ cartoon.
+
+ _Digest and Review_, December, 1935.
+
+ _Australia Age_ (Melbourne), December 31, 1935.
+
+ _Liberty_, March 21, 1936.
+
+ James N. Kane, _Famous First Facts_, published by H. W. Wilson & Co.
+ of New York (no date).
+
+Support from Leaders of Thought:
+
+ Dr. John H. Finley (former president of the American Geographical
+ Society and of the College of the City of New York; now an editor of
+ the New York _Times_), in an article in the _Survey_, July 15, 1927.
+
+ Alexander Woollcott, radio broadcast for February 24, 1935.
+
+ Dr. Hans Zinsser (professor in the Medical School of Harvard
+ University), in _Rats, Lice and History_, Boston, 1935.
+
+ Dr. Shirley W. Wynne (former Commissioner of Health for the City of
+ New York)--cited _ante_.
+
+Support from Governmental Agencies:
+
+ Federal Housing Administration clip sheet. Vol. 2, No. 9, February,
+ 1935, sent out to newspapers throughout the U.S.
+
+ _Bulletin_ of the Department of Health of Kentucky, October, 1935.
+
+
+EXPOSING THE HOAX
+
+Exposure by Journalists:
+
+ Western Newspaper Union, November 28, 1930, syndicated article by
+ Elmo Scott Watson, under the title “James, Draw My Bawth”--apparently
+ printed in a great many small papers throughout the United States.
+
+ _Martha’s Vineyard Gazette_, April and May, 1931.
+
+ _Macon Telegraph_, August 31, 1932.
+
+ _Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger_, January 15, 1935.
+
+ _Editor and Publisher_, February 2, 1935, Marlen Pew, commenting on
+ the circulation of the bathtub hoax by the Federal Housing Commission.
+
+ _Baltimore Evening Sun_, April 16, 1935.
+
+ _Wilmington Evening Journal_, June 24, 1935.
+
+ _Passaic Herald News_, July 26, 1935.
+
+ _New Statesman_ (London), November 2, 1935, a letter signed J.M.G.,
+ exposing the story as printed in the October 5 issue of the same
+ magazine.
+
+ _Mobile Times_, December 28, 1935.
+
+ _Chicago Times_, January 23, 1936, editorial headed “A New True
+ Story,” first quoting a speaker who addressed the members of the
+ American Institute of Banking in Chicago. The speaker had related the
+ bathtub story; the editorial then went on to expose the hoax.
+
+Exposure by Leaders of Thought:
+
+ Rev. Nolan R. Best, executive secretary of the Baltimore Federation
+ of Churches, letter to the editor of _Survey_, exposing the article
+ by Dr. John H. Finley. Paul Kellogg, the editor, wrote to Finley, who
+ replied July 31, 1927: “The bathtub information was furnished me by a
+ representative of the Cleanliness Institute.”
+
+ Curtis D. MacDougal, editor of Evanston, Illinois, _News Index_, made
+ an investigation of newspaper hoaxes, exposing, among others, the
+ bathtub hoax. A summary of his report was printed in the _Editor and
+ Publisher_, January 12, 1935. Later he embodied his material in an
+ article for the _Journalism Quarterly_. A summary of that article was
+ printed in the Worcester, Mass., _Gazette_ for August 10, 1935. Dr.
+ MacDougal printed a second article on the subject in the _Evanston
+ News Index_, August 9, 1935; in it he discussed especially the
+ apparent impossibility of putting such hoaxes down.
+
+Exposure by Governmental Agencies:
+
+ Bureau of Municipal Research, Philadelphia. The Bureau’s exposure of
+ the hoax was printed in the _Philadelphia Evening Bulletin_, July 10,
+ 1933, under the heading Bathtub Myth Exploded.[23]
+
+History, whether real or fabricated, may lose or gain, may remain
+unchanged or may change with time. These things are handily illustrated
+by coupling statements from Mencken of 1917 and Wynne of 1936:
+
+ _Mencken_: “Boston early in 1845 made bathing unlawful except upon
+ medical advice, but the ordinance was never enforced and in 1862 it
+ was repealed.”
+
+ _Wynne_: “The city fathers in the good town of Boston ruled that it
+ was unlawful to take a bath except on a doctor’s advice; and that law
+ remained in effect from 1854[24] until 1862--think of it.”
+
+ _Mencken_: “... the Philadelphia Common Council considered an
+ ordinance prohibiting bathing between November 1 and March 15, and it
+ failed of passage by but two votes.”
+
+ _Wynne_: “The law in Philadelphia was that you couldn’t take a bath
+ between November and March.”
+
+ _Mencken_: “... in Hartford, Providence, Charleston and Wilmington
+ (Del.) special and very heavy water rates were levied upon those who
+ had them (bathtubs).”
+
+ _Wynne_: “The cities of Hartford and Providence discouraged bathing by
+ raising the charges for water supply about 400 per cent for people who
+ owned bathtubs.”
+
+ _Mencken_: “After this medical opposition began to collapse, and among
+ other eminent physicians Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared for the
+ bathtub.... The American Medical Association held its annual meeting
+ in Boston in 1849, and a poll of the members in attendance showed that
+ nearly 55 per cent of them now regarded bathing as harmless, and that
+ more than 20 per cent advocated it as beneficial. At its meeting in
+ 1850 a resolution was formally passed giving the imprimatur of the
+ faculty to the bathtub.”
+
+ _Wynne_: “In 1847, in Newport, Rhode Island, a doctor tried to convert
+ the people to the habit of washing, though at the same time he
+ conscientiously warned them that the first bath or two might affect
+ their hearts. The American Medical Association immediately opposed him
+ and said that bathing was NOT compulsory to health, and the people
+ needn’t wash unless they just wanted to do so for some whimsical
+ reason of their own.”
+
+That there is pleasant edification for believers in Menckenized
+history we infer from its popularity; that the employment of the many
+learned and famous commentators, disseminators and denouncers has been
+remunerative, we hope; that there is occasionally a spot cash return
+even to the man in the street we can show by an example:
+
+A well-named periodical, _Liberty_, which encourages among other
+freedoms the one to believe, has a feature, “Twenty Questions.” For
+those who, in view of the following, may desire to try making an
+honest dollar, we quote that “Liberty will pay $1 for any question
+accepted and published. If the same question is suggested by more than
+one person, the first suggestion received will be the one considered.
+Address Twenty Questions, P. O. Box 380, Grand Central Station, New
+York, N. Y.” Some time before March 21, 1936 (for we quote from that
+issue) they had, then, paid one dollar for what appeared on that date,
+p. 39, as question No. 17:
+
+ “In which city of the United States was it against the law to take a
+ bath in 1845?”
+
+As directed, we turn to p. 48 and find under 17 the answer:
+
+ “In Boston, Massachusetts. It was then deemed unlawful to take a bath
+ except when prescribed by a physician.”
+
+When, belated, I discovered this in _Liberty_, I wondered how the
+Bostonians were taking what must be a steady barrage, and wrote the
+Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Henry D. Chadwick, who replied from
+the State House, Boston, July 16, 1936:
+
+ “The story which you quote from the magazine, _Liberty_, is
+ periodically cropping out in various parts of the country.
+
+ “I obtained from W. J. Doyle, City Clerk of Boston, what I consider a
+ true statement of Boston’s attitude toward bathing in the early days,
+ and I enclose a copy.”
+
+The Doyle statement said in part:
+
+ “In several forms during the past ten years an item has appeared in
+ various publications stating ... that the City of Boston at some time
+ by ordinance forbade the use of bathtubs, or bathing except on the
+ advice of a physician.
+
+ “The story has not the slightest foundation in fact. No such ordinance
+ was ever adopted either by the Town or City of Boston from its
+ settlement in 1630 up to the present time....
+
+ “... In 1843 an ordinance was enacted requiring that all prisoners in
+ the Jail or House of Correction should be given a weekly bath. So much
+ as regards bathing except on advice of a physician. The statement that
+ bathtubs were prohibited is so silly as to hardly merit denial, but it
+ is usually made referring to a mythical ordinance supposedly adopted
+ in 1848 and not repealed until 1870. No such ordinance was ever
+ adopted and no such ordinance was ever submitted to the City Council.
+
+ W. J. Doyle,
+
+ City Clerk.”
+
+I was evidently a long way from being the first to query Boston
+officials on Menckenized history, for the Clerk’s original statement,
+of which I received the above copy, was dated May 24, 1929.
+Incidentally, that dating explains his reference to “the last ten
+years.” For Mencken’s “Neglected Anniversary” had been published less
+than twelve years before.
+
+How the Mencken fabricated knowledge is being used towards the end of
+its second decade has cultural significance. We take a few samples.
+
+Hans Zinsser, A.B., A.M., M.D., D.Sc. (hon.), is professor in the
+Harvard Medical School. During 1935 his _Rats, Lice and History_, a
+piece of trenchant writing, was a best seller, one of the much read
+books that was also much discussed, filled with novel and startling
+facts. One of these (perhaps no longer exactly novel) is on p. 285:
+
+ “The first bathtub didn’t reach America, we believe, until about 1840.”
+
+During February 1935, the Federal Housing Administration issued, in
+Clip Sheet, Vol. 2, No. 9, a statement on bathtub history:
+
+ “In 1842 Adam Thompson startled neighbors in Cincinnati by installing
+ a box-shaped affair lined with lead in his home. Shortly after, in
+ 1845, historians on the subject say the city of Boston passed an
+ ordinance making it illegal to bathe unless a doctor had so ordered.
+ Not until the early days of the Civil War was the act removed from
+ that city’s statute books....
+
+ “Further indication of the manner in which early lawmakers viewed the
+ matter of personal cleanliness is seen in a resolution introduced
+ about 1843 in Philadelphia under which bathing would have been
+ prohibited by the city fathers from November to March! As it turned
+ out, the suggestion was tabled.
+
+ “When Millard Fillmore became President, the tide turned, due
+ principally to his installing a tub in the White House....”
+
+But on July 25, 1936, Robert B. Smith, Assistant to the Administrator,
+Federal Housing Administration, wrote:
+
+ “After this story was published, we found that the statements made
+ in it could not be substantiated so far as ordinances and laws
+ against bathing were concerned. The Health Commissioners of Boston
+ and Philadelphia both wrote us that they could find no trace of any
+ anti-bathing ordinances in their records....
+
+ “After this bathtub experience, we took care to have the statements
+ made in the Clip Sheet double-checked....”
+
+August 4, 1935, the New York _Times_ was celebrating progress in
+America’s metropolis. East Side tenants had made “demands for the
+installation of that former luxury,” the bathtub. This reminded the
+_Times_ that:
+
+ “It was with fear and travail that bathtubs were introduced in these
+ United States. One of the first bathrooms appeared in Cincinnati,
+ Ohio, about 1850, and certain clergymen hearing of it preached that
+ such luxury meant nothing less than degeneracy. The fading of the
+ glory that was Greece and the collapse of the grandeur that was Rome
+ were freely mentioned. The baths of wicked Caracalla also were cited.”
+
+The _Bulletin_ of the Department of Health of Kentucky, October 1935,
+said on p. 75:
+
+ “The first bathtub in the United States was installed in a Cincinnati
+ home in 1842. It was made of mahogany and lined with sheet lead.
+ Newspapers denounced it as undemocratic vanity. Boston, in 1845, made
+ bathing unlawful except when prescribed by a physician. Virginia
+ soaked the rich by taxing bathtubs $30 per year.”
+
+A letter from J. Vijaya-Tunga was printed in the _New Statesman_,
+London, for October, 1935. We quote an extract as reprinted in the
+_Australia Age_ (Melbourne) for December 31, 1935:
+
+ “The first American bathtub was built in 1830. It was made of
+ mahogany and was 7 feet long and 4 feet wide. It was lined with
+ sheet lead and weighed more than 2,000 pounds. The invention was not
+ popular. Boston authorities made bathing unlawful, and Virginia put
+ a tax of $300 on each bathtub. Fifteen years later Boston declared
+ bathtubs illegal, except on medical advice.”
+
+The _Age_ did not fall for the hoax but the _New Statesman_ apparently
+did.
+
+The Chicago _Times_ of January 23, 1936, quotes a speaker addressing a
+Chicago meeting of the American Institute of Banking:
+
+ “‘The hardest job on earth for the average man,’ he said, ‘is to sit
+ and think. He’ll sit all right, but he won’t think, and that is why
+ the public always detests a new idea. Why, do you know that when the
+ first bathtubs were introduced in America intellectual Boston passed
+ an ordinance making it unlawful to bathe in a bathtub except on
+ medical advice?’”
+
+The _Times_ treated this speaker editorially as the victim of a hoax
+which, perhaps naturally, did not influence Vice Presidential candidate
+Frank Knox’s Chicago _Daily News_, which said July 11, 1936, under the
+heading “Bathtub Suffered Same Fate in U. S. as Most Pioneers,” that
+
+ “America’s first bathtub, according to a recent issue of
+ _Architecture_, was built in Cincinnati in 1842 and was made of
+ mahogany and lined with sheet lead.
+
+ “While still accepting the oft-quoted relationship of cleanliness and
+ godliness, the people of the day were not receptive to such fantastic
+ innovations, and the tub, suffering the fate of most pioneering
+ ventures, was denounced as a luxurious and undemocratic vanity.
+ Doctors, according to the magazine, termed it a menace to health.
+
+ “In 1843 Philadelphia prohibited by ordinance bathing between Nov. 1
+ and March 15, and Boston made bathing unlawful except when prescribed
+ by a physician. Also, bathtubs were taxed $30 yearly.”
+
+A paper of which Knox is publisher stops in the heat of the Landon-Knox
+campaign to support Mencken as a historian; Mencken swerves from
+other forms of history-making the while to campaign for Knox as Vice
+President. With these things happening at and just after the Republican
+convention, we feel that God’s in His Heaven and that all should be
+well at any rate with the making of history.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This was written when Gertrude Ederle was being showered with
+ticker tape. Neither she nor the ticker stood quite so well three years
+later.
+
+[2] This was written in 1927. The press version of the “Blond” Eskimo
+story, as opposed to my book version, is still going strong in 1936.
+
+[3] It can be argued that the first European discovery of the Northwest
+Passage was by Thomas Simpson (with whom Peter Warren Dease was
+associated) in 1839. If this be not admitted, then the claim falls
+to John Rae who worked both before and after the Third Franklin
+Expedition, on which the Passage was also discovered. Thus the McClure
+discovery in 1853 was either the third or fourth.
+
+[4] Appendix X, Natural History, (p. clxxxix), _Journal of a Voyage
+for the Discovery of a North-West Passage, 1819-20_, by William Edward
+Parry, London, 1821.
+
+[5] _Three Years of Arctic Service_, by Adolphus W. Greely, New York,
+1886, p. 221.
+
+[6] Op. cit., p. 105.
+
+[7] Charles Mair and Roderick MacFarlane: _Through the Mackenzie
+Basin_, Toronto, 1908, p. 175.
+
+[8] Vilhjalmur Stefansson: _The Friendly Arctic_, New York, 1921, p.
+584.
+
+[9] Fridtjof Nansen: _In Northern Mists_, London, 1911, Vol. I, p. 131.
+
+[10] Nansen: Vol. I, p. 133.
+
+[11] Tyson’s winter latitude, to which he here refers, was 81⅔° N. For
+our quotation see Tyson’s _Arctic Experiences_, New York, 1874, p. 195.
+
+[12] Dr. Nelson died some five years after this paper was printed.
+
+[13] Most authorities consider 105 to 110 pounds as very large for
+northern male wolves.
+
+[14] The United States has long had this type of service. As mentioned,
+_ante_, it is administered from Washington by the Biological Survey.
+
+[15] J. Stokley Ligon, American student of wild life, says: “I am
+inclined to agree with Dr. Nelson regarding young of a previous year
+not banding with parent animals and their young of a current year.”
+(Letter March 17, 1928.) He writes in the same letter: “I have never
+observed the big packs of wolves one hears and reads about.”
+
+[16] Since this was written it has been ascertained that Oimekon, about
+300 miles southeast and 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, is colder
+than Verkhoyansk, and is therefore now the coldest known spot on earth.
+Like Verkhoyansk, the Oimekon vicinity is forested.
+
+[17] Most things in this chapter are documented, but this letter is
+paraphrased from a vivid memory. Some details may be wrong, but the
+general trend is right.
+
+[18] In 1904-06 I was fellow and assistant instructor in anthropology
+at Harvard. I had to read the examination papers but my seniors made up
+the questions. It was a standard joke with them to slip in somewhere:
+“In what country do the Eskimos live?” A good percentage of Harvard
+men, ranging from sophomore to senior, could be depended upon to
+answer: “The Eskimos live in Iceland.” That, my colleagues thought, was
+a pretty good joke on me.
+
+[19] We have prints of the photographs described above and two
+additional ones--another of the apartment house and one that may be of
+Olof by herself, though it is most too good looking and may be of Miss
+Finch at the age of about 10.
+
+[20] We note here some of the ways in which this ties in with, and
+fails to tie in with, what Schoolcraft learned. Olof told him that it
+was a Mr. Slayton who managed her lecture career, that after his death
+she lived with Mrs. Slayton for a number of years. See his account for
+why she left them. Then Olof met some people named Stone (I. K. Stone,
+Maple Street, Battle Creek, Michigan) who took her to Battle Creek
+where she had then (1922) been living for two or three years.
+
+[21] Youthfulness at the time Olof left Greenland, as hereinafter
+stated, is said to have been useful in circus sideshow and on the
+lyceum platform--if challenged Miss Krarer used to say, modestly, that
+since she had for sources only vague childhood memories she might very
+well go wrong on particulars. But in general, she maintained, she
+was conveying an undeceptive first-hand impression of Eskimos and of
+Eskimoland.
+
+[22] The article was printed with an editorial note: “Here’s a series
+of inspiring bath hour thoughts suggested by H. L. Mencken’s discovery,
+through official channels, that America’s first bathtub was built in
+Cincinnati and put in operation on December 20, 1842. Adam Thompson,
+its founder, got the idea on his visit to England, where Lord John
+Russell had started the custom of bathing fourteen years before. So, if
+any of the next best authors spring a freshly tubbed Englishman on you
+in a story of the revolution, you’ll know he’s phony.”
+
+[23] Mencken’s own summary of the first decade of struggle over the
+bathtub hoax is given in his _Prejudices, Sixth Series_, New York,
+1927, pp. 194-201.
+
+[24] The discrepancy between this 1854 and Mencken’s 1845 may well be
+due to a mere transposition of figures.
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78443 ***