A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a legal text or a set of rules that people identify and use to avoid adhering to it. Exploiting loopholes in tax legislation by big corporations or wealthy individuals is a preoccupation of our time. The authorities fight a losing battle trying to plug them as lawyers specialize in finding new and profitable flaws. [Read more…] about Raines Law, Loopholes and Prohibition
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt on Horseback
Theodore Roosevelt gave this signed photograph to his close friend and confidant Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in May 1902. The two men first met at the Porcellian Club at Harvard University and then again in 1884 when Republican Party politics brought them together in their support of presidential candidate James G. Blaine. [Read more…] about Theodore Roosevelt on Horseback
Cycling History: Manhattan Scorchers & Louis Chevrolet
Lexicographer Eric Partridge was an intriguing figure. Born in New Zealand, he was educated in Queensland, Australia, served in the First World War and finished his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. He would spent the rest of his life in Britain, working as a researcher and lecturer. The Library of the British Museum (now: British Library) became his second home. Always seated at the same desk (K1), he produced numerous books on the English language.
A surprising aspect of this unassuming man’s career was his interest in slang and offbeat language (which apparently was rooted in his wartime experiences), culminating in 1937 with the publication of a Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. From this rich offering of linguistic treasures, many words have been “dropped” over time or changed their original meaning. [Read more…] about Cycling History: Manhattan Scorchers & Louis Chevrolet
Teddy Roosevelt’s Wild Ride to the Presidency
On September 9th through 11th Newcomb, in Essex County at the heart of the Adirondacks, once again celebrates 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, who was vacationing at the Tahawus Club there in 1901 when the wheels leading to his presidency were set in motion.
Roosevelt had come to the Tahawus Club, a hunting and fishing retreat created in the 1870s on the site of early mining efforts on the uppermost reaches of the Hudson River, as a guest of one of its members. His arrival had been delayed by the assassination attempt on William McKinley, but after a trip to Buffalo where the stricken President was recovering, Roosevelt felt assured that he could join his family at Tahawus. [Read more…] about Teddy Roosevelt’s Wild Ride to the Presidency
Featured Historic Site & Wild Area: Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill
The Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, was the home of the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, from 1885 until his death in 1919. It’s located in Cove Neck, in Nassau County, NY near Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island, about 25 miles east of Manhattan. [Read more…] about Featured Historic Site & Wild Area: Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill
Alton B. Parker: New York’s Neglected Statesman
The History Channel’s new special on Theodore Roosevelt describes his victory in the 1904 presidential election but doesn’t even mention his Democratic opponent.
That was New York Court of Appeals’ former Chief Judge Alton B. Parker (1852-1926), probably the most neglected major party presidential candidate in U.S. history. Yet at the time of the election Parker was the leader of one of the nation’s two major political parties and one of the nation’s foremost judicial statesmen. [Read more…] about Alton B. Parker: New York’s Neglected Statesman
1899 And The Making Of New York City
On August 31st, 1901, Polish-American anarchist Leon Czolgosz booked a room in Nowak’s Hotel at 1078 Broadway.
Six days later he made a trip to Buffalo, site of the Pan-American Exposition where President William McKinley was due to speak. He shot him from close range. [Read more…] about 1899 And The Making Of New York City
Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929
The break-up of Standard Oil and other monopolies during the Trust-busting Era, created somewhat greater competition, but did not significantly impact Wall Street, or its major players. For example, after the success of the Justice Department in the 1911 Supreme Court Case United States v. Standard Oil (in which the Court ruled that Standard Oil of New Jersey violated the Sherman Antitrust Act), the company was ordered broken into 34 ostensibly independent companies. *
The stock in each of these companies was distributed to Standard Oil Company shareholders (principally the Rockefeller family) and each company had separate boards of directors and separate management, but by and large they continued to operate on separate floors of the same building — 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929
Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt
As control of the American economy became increasingly centralized in trusts located on Wall Street after the Civil War, and the wealth of men like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller grew exponentially, there developed an increasing backlash against such concentrations of wealth. In the 1880s, through an investigation by a committee of the New York State Legislature, Americans became aware that Standard Oil secretly controlled a number of supposedly competing oil companies. By 1910 almost 90% of the world’s oil supply was controlled from the company’s headquarters at 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt
Ed Zahniser On Wilderness & New York State
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands of the Adirondacks and Catskills are living fossils of the broad 19th-century movement to protect wild forests of the federal public lands in the West as forest reserves and not as national forest sources of fiber, forage, and minerals.
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands therefore are living proof that the wilderness preservation movement is not an upstart 20th-century offshoot of the mainstream American conservation movement. [Read more…] about Ed Zahniser On Wilderness & New York State