Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor:

The Republican was never slow to impart wisdom gleaned from greater minds. I’ve always known “ridicule is the fool’s argument,” but I’ve never been sufficiently fast or brave enough to voice the sentiment when circumstances warrant it.

Credulous people then and today could not and will never acknowledge “truth is too simple for us” is precisely about them. One reason is “we do not like those who unmask our illusions.”

These observations from 1881 remain entirely true. The reality occasioning them plagues our conversation and politics.

“One must feel intellectually secure before he can venture to dress shabbily; none but a great scholar or a great genius dares to be dirty.” Excerpted from Washington Irving’s “The Poor Devil Author,” this pithy gem affords me hope when I trudge home tired, unkempt and quite disinclined to shower.

Locals read all those years ago that the less he knows, the happier the man. And so, many were to be congratulated.

Good deeds rarely caused much gossip in small towns like Danville, but evil acts were immediately notorious. I do not believe that is exactly true today, particularly across America. Some nefarious deeds are praised by willfully blind or downright rotten minions.

The Republican unfailingly saw fit to republish political, social, financial and religious items from across the nation and beyond. The paper exhorted at times.

From October 1882, there was Jane Cunningham “Jennie June” Croly, editor of Demorest’s Monthly, who argued it was time women took up some reins of business.

“Women who are ignorant of the details of business give men credit for a vast deal more knowledge and wisdom than they possess . . . the amount of stupidity . . . would be a revelation to many women.”

That revelation would rid them of any fear of not being able to “compete and ‘hold their own’ in a contest of sense, judgment and intelligence.”

“A large class” of young men and women in Danville were employed in the early 1880s by the week or month, often spending all that they earned, acquiring bad habits, having never “had their attention called to the necessity or wisdom of learning” to simply save money, possibly through a building and loan association. It appears that not long afterward a building and loan association was formed. Wisdom was a big deal a century ago. The 1914 county history hailed farmer Joseph Airhart for pursuing the rule, “the wisdom of yesterday is sometimes the folly of today.” As for farmer Fred Albert Hays, he believed “the wisdom of yesterday is the folly of today.” To my thinking, Fred was more precise. Either that, or the historian omitted or added a word in describing Joseph and Fred.

I’m oddly minded of Heracles’ fifth labor where he was tasked with cleaning the Aegean Stables – a farm chore. A thousand immortal cattle had occupied the place for 30 years. Mortal cattle dung would be bad enough, but immortal filth?

Heracles diverts two rivers and washes out the stables, polluting both with a vast amount of E. coli. That was folly however you look at it – then, and it would be now. After lengthy checking and diligently employing word search, I’ve concluded our county history routinely accorded “wise economy” to quite a few local farmers, and that a copy editor was not considered necessary.

Perhaps half a dozen times I’ve read -- with slight variations – that so-and-so “was not favored by inherited wealth or the assistance of influential friends, but . . . by perseverance, industry and a wise economy, he has attained a comfortable station in life . . .”

I’ll not stake a meal over the assertion what our county history, like others across Indiana, relied on common commerce and the willingness of certain citizens to pay for nice things to be said about them, along with documenting their genealogy and that of their wives, their religious affiliation and politics.

The result mirrors the sanitized pablum we were fed in our history classes.

Paul Miner Lizton

[Editor’s note: We must remember that our early histories of the county were sold by subscription and the amount of glowing adjectives could be increased in proportion to the price the person being written about paid. Photos, of course, were an additional cost, and while Photoshop had yet to be invented, early photographers were skilled at modifying poor complextions and softening the effects of age. And as to the engravings included in the large county atlases published, the sketch artist would gladly add a new wood fence where only the intention existed at the time of publication.

History, as the saying goes, is written by the winners, or in some cases, by the wealthy.