The Growlery (June 2004), Essays by Michael Gilleland "Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here." Charles Dickens, Bleak House, chapter VIII

Philanthropy
The Great Cabot Mill Robbery
Luddite Voices

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Philanthropy

In his essay on Self-Reliance, Emerson fulminates against the philanthropy of his day:

Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

"For the poor always ye have with you" (John 12.8), and the welfare cheats always have ye with you as well, it seems. There are a number of passages in the Talmud about these "deceivers." Here is one, from the Jerusalem Talmud, Pe'ah 8.9:

Samuel left his father, and halted by some huts of the poor. He heard them say: "Shall we eat to-day off vessels of gold or of silver?" He went back and told his father, who said, "It is incumbent upon us to show gratitude to the deceivers among the poor."

R. Hanina was wont to send a poor man four zuzim every Friday. Once he sent them by his wife, who reported on her return that the man was not in need. "What did you see?" said the Rabbi. "I heard how he was asked, 'Would he use the silver outfit for his dinner or the gold outfit.'" Then R. Hanina said, "This is what R. Elazar said, 'We must be grateful to the deceivers, for were it not for them, we might sin every day.'"

I confess that these are "hard sayings" for me, and I wonder if Samuel and R. Hanina's wife were really convinced. I wish that the deceivers would get not a penny more, and that they would be forced to pay a penalty for their deceit besides. But there is much in the Jewish tradition about almsgiving that I find easier to accept, especially Maimonides' "Ladder of Tzedakah," in which he ranks the various types of giving, from least to most worthy:

1. Giving to another begrudgingly.
2. Giving less than one should, but cheerfully.
3. Giving after being asked.
4. Giving before being asked.
5. Giving where the recipient, but not the donor, is anonymous.
6. Giving where donor, but not the recipient, is anonymous.
7. Giving where both the donor and the recipient are anonymous.
8. Giving that enables another to become self-reliant.

In chapter 38 of Middlemarch, George Eliot defines the philanthropist as "a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance." The literary epitome of this definition is Mrs. Jellyby in Dicken's Bleak House, whose efforts on behalf of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha in Africa are unstinting, but who shamefully neglects the welfare of her own family, to the point that her daughter Caddy finally cries out in despair, "I wish Africa was dead!"

Among Mrs. Jellyby and her friends, Borrioboola-Gha was the fashionable object of their concern. It is fashionable nowadays to follow the lead of certain so-called celebrities and adopt particular "cool" countries. For example, actor Richard Gere's pet country is Tibet. He and his cronies go gaga over that poor oppressed exile, the Dalai Lama. You hardly ever hear a peep from the Hollywood peace and justice crowd over such catastrophes as Congo. Tibet is cool, Congo isn't.

So what are we to do about the unceasing clamor from unfortunates at home and abroad, the constant appeals to our pocketbooks and our sympathy? It's tempting to turn a deaf ear to it all, in disgust at the cheats and frauds and in frustration about the inability to do any real, lasting good. When this temptation assails me, I try to recall Matthew 25.31-45:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

The Great Cabot Mill Robbery

John Gould is one of my favorite Maine authors. He started his writing career as a reporter for the Brunswick Record, the newspaper in my birthplace of Brunswick, Maine.

I have a newspaper clipping (unfortunately undated) of an article by John Gould in which he reminisces about the Great Cabot Mill Robbery, a robbery in which my grandfather Eddie Paiement played a part:

Now and then in the 1930s the quiet little Brunswick Record would be confronted by a story that was bigger than we were, and the best we could do was the very best we could do. We didn't always play second fiddle to the big-time daily newspapers. The best example is the Cabot Mill robbery. On a Friday payday some rude and uncouth gentlemen walked into the mill office, stuck a gun in the face of Eddie Paiement -- who was appropriately the paymaster -- and demanded the cash. Eddie had just returned from the bank, and at the moment could think of no reason not to comply. Eddie handed over the money and the gentlemen departed.

Not only did the dailies send reporters and photographers, but the constabulary responded with special investigators, deputies, chiefs, detectives, and fingerprint experts. Eddie told his story over and over, still shaking, and as the money had been in First National Bank wrappers the F.B.I. was alerted and arrived in force.

We had a couple of young ladies in Brunswick at the time whose reputation for cordiality was known, and one of them said yes, that just a week ago she had a visit from Red Griffin. Red was an established offender with a record, but he hadn't been in Brunswick for some time. Mention of his name suggested plausibility. The girl told Billy she and Red hadn't done much talking, so she had no special information to impart -- he had said something about a town in Massachusetts.

I don't remember my grandfather ever talking about the robbery, but my uncles Bob and Phil (both great raconteurs) have some more details, slightly different from Gould's account.

Uncle Bob writes:

Here's what I remember from Pa:

The payroll was done in cash, they would actually count out the right amounts and put it in envelopes. Pa, a payroll clerk, walks in and sees the guys there with guns. He's across the room and decides to make a run for it. As he runs outside, the huge mill windows are open; Pa said they were only open on very hot days, maybe two or three days per year. So he runs by, not that many feet away from them, by the open windows.

Pa, who had never fired a gun in his life, said he thought that to hit someone with a pistol you had to practically be touching them with the barrel. That night, when he was on the steps of the old town hall talking with the Police Chief, he said that. The Chief pointed across Brunswick's wide Maine Street, to the A&P that was at the back of the parking lot across the Street. There was a cat there, maybe 50 or 100 yards away, and the Chief said that he could hit the cat 3 out of 5 times at that distance. Then Pa said he was scared.

Uncle Phil adds:

My father was in a part of the office that was separated from the bad guys by windows. When he saw what was happening, he ran to the fence and told a passer-by what was going on. The passer-by relayed that there was "trouble at the Mill". The cops did not respond in time. One of the bad guys saw my father going to the fence and said, "There's one getting away!". The leader decided not to do anything about it as they were just about ready to leave.

Later, my father said that he didn't get scared until he asked a policeman friend how accurate those pistols were. The policeman said that he could hit a dog across the street. My father was scared from then on.

At the time we were living on Federal Street, less than half a mile from the mill. We moved to Spring Street in 1933, when I was 8 years old. I remember I was in the kitchen with my mother. My grandfather (my father's father) came in and told my mother that my father had been shot. She had a plate of bread in her hand and she dropped it on the floor.

For what it's worth. When I went to work for G.E. in March of 1954, we were paid in cash. This was in Lynn, MA. There was a trailer next to a permanent building, with small windows in it, the bottoms of which were even with your neck. Everybody lined up, identified themselves, and received a small envelope with their net pay in cash. The amount of money inside was written in pencil on the outside. When the lunch hour arrived, dozens and dozens of wives lined up along the chain link fence and were handed the pay envelopes from their spouses, lest temptation on the way home might deplete the amount.

When I retire to my wood lot in Maine, one of the things I want to do is find out more about the Great Cabot Mill Robbery, by digging into newspaper archives and prison records.

Luddite Voices

I admire those who have the courage of their convictions, and one of those I admire for that reason is the writer Wendell Berry, whose essay Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer and its pendant Feminism, the Body, and the Machine I recently read in his book What Are People For? (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990).

It's incongruous that both of these essays by the latter-day Luddite are now available on the World Wide Web. I find myself wondering if Berry has kept his vow not to buy a computer, and whether he's still using pencil and typewriter. I hope so.

Luddites are those who reject, or at least resist, the encroachments of technology on their lives. It's a futile, quixotic quest, but attractive for that very reason. I sympathize with Luddites for the same reason I sympathize with most other reactionary, contrarian, underdog movements -- they act as a counterweight, a reproach to our currently fashionable but often unexamined assumptions. A curmudgeon can't help being a bit of a Luddite deep in his heart of hearts.

The original Luddites were early 19th century unemployed British textile workers who smashed the machines which took away their livelihood. They claimed to be followers of a shadowy figure called Ned Ludd, or General Ludd, or King Ludd, whence their name. The original movement died out after fourteen of its members went to the gallows as punishment for their sabotage.

Luddites are forced willy nilly to make some concessions to the age in which they live. Berry uses a typewriter. Samuel Butler (1835-1902) argued against any concessions at all in his Note-Books, ed. Henry Festing Jones (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913), p. 46:

Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

It might not stand up to searching philosophical analysis, but it's splendid as rhetoric. And some leading technologists of our own day have given voice to similar apprehensions about a possible takeover by machines. I'm thinking especially of Bill Joy's essay Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.

There are a few who not only kvetch about technology but do their best to eliminate every vestige of it in their lives. One of my favorite Luddites is Father Vincent McNabb, O.P. (1868-1943). He went further than Berry in that he refused to use a typewriter, he wore a homespun cassock, and he avoided automobiles whenever possible. The story of one time when he did take a cab is heart-moving. Michael Hennessy tells the story in his essay Father Vincent McNabb: A Voice of Contradiction:

For months he had made sick calls to a young girl - an only child - who was dying. The mother - who had asked him to come - was a Catholic; the largely absent father was not, and moreover was one of his chief hecklers at Parliament Hill. They were a poor family, lodged with another family in a single, small room in a crumbling tenement block near St. Pancras Station. Sadly, the daughter died: McNabb said the Requiem Mass. Just a few weeks later the mother died - she had been ill throughout her daughter's illness but had said nothing about it to anyone. McNabb again said the Requiem Mass. As he left the graveyard the husband approached him, gave him a flower from a funeral bouquet that Father McNabb had arranged from a pious benefactor, and asked him how he was planning to return to his Priory. The sky was thunderous and rain was beginning to fall. Father McNabb replied that he planned to return as he had come - on foot. The husband - trebly poor now - pulled from his pocket enough money to pay for a cab: at first Father McNabb demurred and then he realised that this was the widower's mite. With tears in his eyes he accepted the money. He never forgot this instance of simple charity. As he wrote:

Blessed are the poor! Few things have ever touched me more than that. Out of his poverty he offered me my fare. Imagine that coming from one who has not the faith. What am I to do when I see him next? To kiss his feet would be unworthy of him. I shall pray... that God may give him the consolation of the faith.

An altogether less sympathetic modern-day Luddite is Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, now in prison serving a life sentence for murder. His manifesto on Industrial Society And Its Future has attracted a small but ardent following. I remember the days after he was caught, when the airwaves were full of stories about his spartan life, his uncompromising beliefs, and his horrific crimes. One of my friends sent me an email saying "I'm glad it turned out to be someone else, Mike. I suspected the Unabomber might be you."