Historical Tidbits: Blood-drinking in the 1870s

In the 1870s, many Americans latched onto the latest fad, imported fresh from France: They’d travel by carriage to their local slaughterhouses -- known as "abattoirs," the word being another French import. There the manager would usher the guests into a room set aside for the purpose, and pour them a glass of hot, steaming blood.

Enthusiasts claimed that the beverage cured paralysis, consumption (tuberculosis), and fatigue. Thin people gained weight; fat people lost; and the weak became strong. Blood-drinkers had become so numerous at the Brighton Abattoir just outside Boston that the facility’s management considered building a hotel to accomodate the vistors.

Not everyone was convinced. One doctor said that he and his medical colleagues hesitated to prescribe the "tonic." It was "generally conceded," he explained to a reporter, "that the appetite for blood becomes even stronger than that for liquor, and cases have been known where it has produced mania of the most violent type." (*1)

Miracle cure? Or addictive toxin? You be the judge.  

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*1: "The Blood-Cure," Chicago Tribune, November 30, 1877, p. 8A.

Audience Participation Time: What Does the Word "Meat" Mean to You?

Anyone up for a little audience participation here? (And yes, I’m prepared to be completely mortified if no one responds.) I

just realized that the working title of my new book may not make any sense. The working title  is Carnivore Nation: Meat and the Making of Modern America. (We hot-shit writers refer to the titles of works-in-progress as “working” titles.) (What? You didn’t know I was a hot-shit writer? What’s the matter with you?) (I’m kidding.)

It’s not perfect (the word “nation” as part of a book title is on the verge of becoming a limp cliche), but it’s not bad.

In fact, given the book’s theme and content, it’s a good description: I’m using the production, processing, and consumption of “meat” to examine the fundamental conflicts that Americans experienced as they shifted from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and from a rural nation to an urban one. It will cover the period from 1870 to the present, and will look at beef, pork, and poultry.

But today, it occurred to me that “meat” may not be the most appropriate word choice. So after my long-winded introduction (and if you’re a regular, you know I’m prone to windy), here’s my question:

What does the word “meat” mean to you? If you saw that title, would you assume the book was about beef? And only beef? Or would you assume or expect that the word “meat” includes the three major flesh categories: beef, pork, and poultry?

Any and all comments are welcome and appreciated. (As they always are!) And if you’ve got ideas for a new title, let’s hear ‘em.

The Moment Writers Live For: Attraction Becomes Passion

As regular readers have noticed, the blogging is slooooow at the moment. Slow. Because I’m deep into the new book and it’s hard to work on it and muster the creative energy necessary for the blog.

Truth be told, I’ve finally landed in the place I always know I’ll find (and that I’m guessing every writer lives for): The moment when frustration and confusion give way to clarity; when interest and attraction become . . . passion.

This is my fourth book and it’s always like this. I come up with the book idea. Think it through. Decide it’s viable. Spend months and months and months (and yes, it takes that long) wading through (literally) millions of words of primary and secondary materials, teaching myself the basics of the topic.

Next comes the getting-off-the-ground process: An even longer slog in which I gather unto myself my newly accumlated knowledge and begin writing.

Or try to. “Slog” hardly describes it. Trying to match that research to words is, at first, like wandering through the murkiest, most pestilential, swampiest swamp imaginable. The journey makes the hobbits’ trek in Lord of the Rings seem like a backyard romp. I wonder if I’ll ever find the other side. Wonder if I’ll ever make sense of the material.

And then . . .  Finally!

The moment I long for (and, truth be told, know will come eventually): I reach the edge of the swamp. I understand the research. I’ve found my “characters” (because although it’s non-fiction, I’m dealing with human beings). I know my theme and my argument.

What had been a getting-to-know-you series of dates turns into all-consuming passion and I’m hooked. No. I’m intoxicated and all I want to do is write so that I can tell the rest of the world about this amazing piece of human history.

So. At the moment, I’m . . . in love. Devoured by my “work.” And blogging is slow.

Wait. “Work”? This is . . . work? Give me more!

Historical Tidbits: Gus Busch on Being a "Winner"

In the 1950s and 1960s, August Busch, Jr. --- more commonly known as Gus --- steered Anheuser-Busch into brewing domination, toppling the Uihlein family and Schlitz Brewing from their spot as kings of beer.

Gus Busch gambled on a strategy of spending money to make money, a tactic that paid off but transformed him into a target. "'It’s wonderful to be a winner,'" he mused during an interview, but "'the only one who really loves a winner is the winner himself.'"

Everyone else enjoyed the “delight” of "taking potshots" at him.”

Nor, he added, did the pleasure of being number one provide him or anyone else at Anheuser-Busch “‘with any sense of permanent security.’”

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Source: “Promotional Flair Keeps Busch On Top,” Business Week, April 13, 1963, p. 116.

Historians and the Preservation of Newspaper Content, Part 4 of 4

Part 1 --- Part 2 --- Part 3 --- Part 4 One more point about saving newspapers: Newspapers as source material and the weirdness of what matters and what doesn’t. (This, by the way, isn’t directly  connected to the three previous parts of this series, but it’s as good a place as any to make my point.)

As I mentioned in part one, historians today enjoy access to digital archives of many newspapers. It’s possible to read and search the first issue ever published of, say, the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Makes sense, right? We all know that those are important daily newspapers with huge readerships. They’re both regarded as significant records of American life.

Here’s the kicker: Those newspapers were archived because they’re the survivors. But in the nineenth century, neither newspaper was particularly important. Indeed, for decades, the New York Times was a no-account also-ran to three other newspapers: The New York Herald, the New York Tribune, and the New York World. (Throw in the NY Sun, and you’ve got the nation’s Big Four of the nineteenth century). (Several of these papers folded into each other. At one point, for example, the Herald and Tribune merged.) Ditto the Boston Globe, an also-ran to a number of that's city's newspapers.

If you’re a historian and you want to research nineteenth century America, you want to read the most important sources, right? You want to read the NY Tribune or the NY Herald. Lotso luck. All of the afore-mentioned are available on microfilm, but not digitally. There’s a not very useful printed index for the Tribune (or is it the Herald?), but no way otherwise to search these important sources.

Why? Because when various libraries began filming newspapers in the twentieth century, they focused on what were THEN the important papers, in this case the Times and the Globe, rather than the newspapers that had been, in the 19th century, larger and more widely read.

So historians have access to amazing digital newspaper archives -- but those are not necessarily the archives that matter most for historical research. The same is true, by the way, for the two main archives for small-town newspapers: newspaperarchive.com and geneaologybank.com. (Although I have to say that if you can only subscribe to one, go with geneaologybank.com. Newspaperarchive.com is badly designed, riddled with bugs, and hard to use.)

Don’t get me wrong: these are amazing resources for historians. Using these two archives, I’ve been able to piece together the story of major changes in nineteenth century American meat processing and distribution, a story that has never been fully told because of lack of sources.

But those databases also contain newspapers that various Powers That Be decreed as important. In this case, there’s a definitely skew toward New England newspapers, especially ones published in Massachusetts.  (Big relief! By sheer coincidence, the meat-related changes I’m researching unfolded Massachusetts.)

Put another way, these databases are based on decisions made decades ago by various historical societies that decided X was important, not Y. What’s the conclusion? As always, nothing with any wow-factor. Digital newspaper archives are extraordinary tools for research, but no one should assume that they’re perect, or that they’re accurate representations of American society in the past.

Historians and the Preservation of Newspaper Content, Part 3

Part 1 --- Part 2 --- Part 3 --- Part 4

Okay, so we know that owners of newspapers typically preserve copies of the printed edition. But what about the electronic editions of defunct newspapers?

Consider the Rocky Mountain News, which went under a couple of weeks ago. I’m certain that the printed editions of that newspaper were preserved, either by filming, scanning, or digitization. As of this moment, the site is still online. It’s not being updated, of course -- it’s essentially frozen at the moment of that last issue -- but you can still search its old contents. (And it has a fee-based archive that goes back to the 1980s.)

But -- who or what will maintain that site? For that matter, who will own and administer access to that electronic archive?

Websites are like empty houses:  Someone needs to show up once in awhile to make sure the roof’s not leaking and no one’s broken in. Same with abandoned websites. Someone needs to maintain it -- or not. If the site is abandoned, eventually all of its contents will disappear. That's the same as hauling the newspaper's paper documents to the city dump.

Frankly, the thought of these sites vanishing is, well, an unhappy one. If the New York Times goes under (god forbid; it's a planetary treasure), will some deep-pocketed person or organization agree to administer the online site?

But the growing number of defunct newspapers also poses another, paper-related matter, namely, what will become of the paper trail generated in the process of publishing a daily newspaper? For example, the staff of the Rocky Mountain News generated photographs (not all of which landed on the website or in the printed edition); drafts of stories; reporters' notes; telephone records; management memos; and other paper-based documents.

In theory, that material will be boxed for storage, and the entity that owns the company itself will look for a repository for this material. A logical choice is the Colorado State Historical Society, or perhaps Special Collections at the University of Colorado or some other university, or the Denver Public Library.

The catch here is money: Anyone can donate material to a historical society or library. You can donate your shopping lists, kids' drawings, family photos, and anything else your heart desires to save. But unless you also donate some some cash, it can be difficult for the recipient to do much with the material except store it in a warehouse.

That's because the task of sorting through and cataloging that paper-based material requires the services of professional archivists. Like everyone else, archivists don’t work for free, so until and unless an institution can afford to sort, process, and catalog a paper collection, it will sit in boxes. (I hasten to add boxes of archival material are stored in buildings with high-tech controls for humidity and temperature.)

So the short answer to the question that launched this series is that newspapers have been saving their contents, but the future of the paper version of a newspaper is more certain than the future of its online version. Which is completely counterintuitive, but hey, this the Age of E-Quarius. Who knows what will happen?

NEXT: How a historian's research is affected by what is, and is not, saved.