Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
Harry Jaffa and I started our conversation on Marx, then found ourselves talking about Marxists whom Harry had known in New York during the nineteen-thirties, then dropped Marx altogether and discussed New York.
The son of immigrants, Harry explained, his father had started out as a waiter, done well, and soon owned a restaurant of his own.
"During Prohibition, customers would bring their own flasks of liquor.
My father sold them 'splits' of ginger ale for seventy-five cents a split. They'd pull out their flasks and add some flavor to their splits--nobody asked any questions. My father my sell a table three splits for seventy-five cents apiece, and dinner started at a dollar. He did all right.
"Of course you had to have friends in those days. Dutch Schultz took care of my father's place. My father never paid him any money. Schultz just seemed to like him. Schultz was okay until he broke the one rule the mob never broke: going after the legal establishment. Shultz threatened Thomas Dewey [then a prosecutor]. That was going too far. [Schultz was killed in a mob hit in 1935.]"
Harry's own efforts to make his way in the world proved less commercial successful than those of his father. Graduating from Yale in the Depression year of 1939, Harry took the best job he could find--working as a delivery boy for $12 a week. It didn't last. "When my boss found out I had a degree from Yale, he laughed me right out of the store."
I just spent an hour on the telephone with a man who can remember the Depression--and, before that, Prohibition--and whose own life has spanned two-fifths of the life of the nation.
We live in a young country.
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Aug '10
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
Two fifths. Headed to a visitation for my father-in-law who died at 91. A lawyer who went to Harvard and would take a dozen eggs or a pie if the client couldn't afford to pay the title work or whatever. These people carried a large memory of the depression, here in the midwest there was always something for everyone to do with farming being part of the mix. Pendergast rose up , as did his boy Truman . Character prevailed . There is so much to learn from the presently passing, it appears that there is little to learn from the presently appearing. Here in the flownover country our legends usually don't include good thinking ala Jaffe, but strong community and straight talk ala Truman. So my question : do you have any contemporaries named Harry ?
Jan '11
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
An interesting piece, and timely, too. But I must quibble with the young country bit. We have emerged from a high rate of growth and change, and apparently are now in a declining phase. Compared to the historical record of European nation states, we have outpaced them at a very high rate. It's a different quantity and quality of change, and it's apparently unsustainable. A number of writers in recent times have called our attention to the inevitable fate of democracies, which in twittering lingo is "down the tubes."
This is a much more jaundiced view than yours, less hopeful, more scary. It's still a minority view, I think, but not for too much longer I fear.
We have great human and other natural resources, and they promise great things, but it's the troubling arithmetic that just won't be left behind, even if we ignore it.
Oct '11
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
As I tell students, we are a very young country: There are people alive today who met Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who had as a child been bounced on John Quincy Adams' knee, and as a young man purportedly met Lincoln. The seven degrees of Kevin Bacon have nothing on Mr. Justice Holmes.
Oct '10
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
"...I just spent an hour on the telephone with a man who can remember the Depression--and, before that, Prohibition--and whose own life has spanned two-fifths of the life of the nation." Sorry you didn't meet my grandmother, who was born the year after the Civil War ended.
"...Dutch Schultz took care of my father's place..." When my father was in college (class of '29) on the East Coast, he was offered a ride back home to Chicago with Dutch Schultz. With wars raging there for control of the beer racket, my father declined the offer.
We do, indeed live in a young country. And that's aside from the clock's spinning faster as we mature (read: "age").
Apr '11
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
I read Lemuel Boulware's book several years ago about his time at GE. He hired on during the Great Depression in a very junior capacity (as a chemist, I think) and eventually became a senior VP. He said that as the Depression worsened, promotions meant taking a pay cut, to the point that when colleagues heard you had received a promotion, they would come around to murmur their condolences. It was amusing the way he told it, but I doubt it was very much fun in real life, much like the way my dad would talk about working in the mill as a kid in the '30's for a dime an hour.
Nov '10
Re: Harry Jaffa and Dutch Schultz
My father, who is still just fine, can remember chatting with an elderly relative who remembered the Civil War.