American History Revised (74 page)

In 1910 the Rathbones’ son had the brick wall torn down and found the bloodstained dress still there. Believing it to be a curse on his family, he had the dress burned.

Not part of the 1865 presidential party were three people who had been invited but chose not to come: Robert Todd Lincoln and General and Mrs. Ulysses Grant. How lucky they were.

1900
In 2006, Hurricane Katrina caused a political uproar when 1,600 people died as the levees failed and the Gulf of Mexico waters poured into New Orleans. The devastation of the city was nothing to be astonished about. Had federal officials and the city mayor paid more attention to the history of hurricanes, they would have been ready for Katrina. Such lack of appreciation of history borders on legal negligence.

More prosperous than Houston or Dallas in its day, Galveston in 1900 was the major trading port of Texas, “the New York of the Gulf,” served by forty-five steamship lines and twenty-six foreign consulates. Ornate classical houses adorned its major streets, and the city boasted more millionaires than the Robber Baron retreat of Newport, Rhode Island. Galveston, wrote the historian Eric Larson,

Galveston had been a disaster waiting to happen. Almost as vulnerable as New Orleans situated below sea level, Galveston was an island of sand, whose average elevation was five feet above sea level. And as with Katrina, there was plenty of warning ahead of time, but owing to civic “it can’t happen here” pride, people did not heed warnings to flee until it was too late. To the city officials of Galveston, the prospect of a hurricane
flooding the city was an “absurd delusion.” The city didn’t even have a seawall, figuring such expensive precautions were unnecessary.

Galveston, Texas, after the hurricane

Everyone in Galveston knew in advance that a hurricane was rapidly approaching; it was even reported in the newspapers. Telegraph reports four days old told of havoc in the Caribbean, and ships arriving at the Galveston port reported stormy seas in the Gulf of Mexico. The day before the hurricane arrived, official warning flags were posted throughout the city. But less than half of the population bothered to evacuate. To the contrary, many hundreds of people came over from Houston to enjoy the thrill of a storm—a thrill most of them failed to live to tell about. The hurricane, with 200 mph winds, came in and blanketed the city with seawater ten feet high; by the time it receded the next day, twelve city blocks—nearly three-quarters of the island city—had been destroyed and 20 percent of the population killed.
*
It was the worst natural disaster ever to occur
in America. Six thousand people died—more than in the legendary Johnstown Flood, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Great Chicago Fire, and Katrina combined.

Determined that such a catastrophe never happen again, Galveston embarked on one of the most remarkable engineering wonders of the world: it not only built an eighteen-foot seawall, but lifted itself up to the seawall level. It did this by jacking up various buildings one by one, then filling in the empty space with earth. An entire cathedral was raised with hand jacks and filled in with earth underneath. “So today,” observes CNN, “a visitor to Galveston gets a very different sense of the island’s relationship to the sea than a visitor would have had in 1900.”

Galveston learned its lesson from this tragedy. Other cities, like New Orleans, did not.

1904
America’s auto industry faced stiff competition from across the ocean, where the world’s largest auto producer threatened to dump more and more cars in the United States. Responding to pleas for help from the auto industry, Congress passed legislation that succeeded in stemming the flow of auto imports.

The year was 1904: France, the world’s largest auto producer, got socked with a 45-percent tariff. This congressional measure saved the U.S. auto industry, as France turned its attention to the UK, where it quickly captured substantial market share. The U.S. tariff stood until 1913, when it was finally reduced to 30 percent. (As for Japan in the 1980s, there was no formal U.S. government legislation, just friendly pressure on the Japanese urging “voluntary” restrictions; furthermore, these restrictions failed to stem the tide. Japan’s annual quota of cars increased from 1.68 million in 1981 to 2.3 million in 1985, and Japanese auto companies moved upscale and generated record revenues and profits, while Detroit’s “Big Three” auto companies struggled and two of them eventually went belly-up.)

1911
Nothing characterizes America’s “unique way of life” more than the automobile. See what people back in 1911 thought the car would look like in fifty years.

Note that this car is riding “off road.” Such a car has extra wheels to provide the necessary traction, and a powerful engine to enable the vehicle to roar up the hill. Obviously, for such a behemoth, gasoline was no problem: America was awash in cheap oil.

Today this car—utilizing modern technology and electronics—is the SUV, accounting
for 55 percent of new car sales. Unfortunately the energy component essential to sustain this love affair has changed. If U.S. vehicles that average 24 mpg got 34 mpg as in Europe and Japan, the United States wouldn’t need to import a drop of oil from the Persian Gulf, and we would never have heard of Osama bin Laden.

“Things the Motorist Wants to Know”—1911 vision of 1961 car

1917
President Reagan introduced the Laffer Curve in 1981 as an instrument of government policy. According to the economist Arthur Laffer, a reduction in the tax rate would increase revenues because people would be rewarded for producing more and declaring all of their income instead of trying to shelter it.

What Laffer and Reagan never mentioned was that the Laffer Curve idea had been tried before, sixty-five years earlier. In 1917 the United States had experimented with a dramatic change in the tax rates, with equally dramatic changes in taxpayer behavior and realized tax revenues.

In 1916 the minimum income tax was 7 percent. It was increased to 15 percent that year, then up to 67 percent the following
year, then up to 77 percent in 1918. As the previous page shows, confiscatory taxes drove wealth underground. The number of people declaring high incomes ($300,000–$1 million) dropped from 1,090 to 225, and the number of people declaring millionaire incomes dropped from 206 to 21. The government’s tax revenues increased hardly at all.

1923
This small but powerful 20th-century nation, after taking over nearby territory, was becoming increasingly belligerent, to the point of installing the most powerful weapons of the day (subsequently called weapons of mass destruction). The prospect of the rogue country having such weaponry terrified the world’s major powers, especially the United States. The international body representing all the world’s nations sought to get its inspectors in, but was rebuffed. Because this international arbiter had no military force of its own, and because no member nation was strong or daring enough to challenge this aggressive small country, the country continued to defy world opinion. Finally war came and the country was attacked and defeated by the United States, sending its troops halfway around the world.