Old News! From the Oregon State Journal July 26, 1879
It light of today’s new news which is either ridiculously crazy or horrifying to watch, I decided to peruse through some news that is almost 140 years old and see what people had to deal with back then from where I live in the Wild West near Eugene, Oregon. I was just as wild then as it is now. In some instances even much worse:
An ad on the front page states, “Gray’s Specific Medicine. The Great English Remedy. An unfailing cure for Seminal weakness, Spermatorrhea, Impotency, and all Diseases that follow as a sequence of Self-Abuse; as loss of Memory, Universal Lassitude, Pain in the Back,Dimness of Vision, Premature Old Age, and many other Diseases that lead to Insanity or Consumption, and a Premature Grave.”
Wow. A magic cure-all! The Gray Medicine Co. from Detroit Michigan must have been making lots of money selling their mysterious, but Specific, medicine to the druggist of the day. There is a little drawing of a man before and after. Death’s door vs Healthy and vital. Who wouldn’t pounce on that?
That reminds me of some of the commercials I see on t.v. for Viagra and Hair growth for men. But, I’ve yet to see a magic cure-all against Insanity. Insanity might occur from information overload about Spermatorrhea or Universal Lassitude. Either that, or watching the news these days.
There was a railroad strike in ’77 where rioters got out of hand. Two years later, a long article about it appears. A Mormon preacher was gunned down. There were mobs that went a-lynching, and State troops who went on raids against “Indian” enemies. They had people trying to take the law into their own hands and showdowns and stand-offs between forces.
Gee, we have dangerous rioters today in the news. We have the same crap in the news, it’s just the names have been changed. That’s insane.
In 1879 the news was full of a yellow fever pandemic in America. Elsewhere there was a scarlet fever epidemic, and in Berlin they had cholera and diphtheria as their pandemic.
Gee, we still have a pandemic on the earth.
Another article discusses how most of the 32,000,000 people living in England are at the mercy of a handful of the prosperous and wealthy. Two or three families living in splendor, while those around them live in abject poverty, slaves to the soil, looking forward to a pauper’s grave.
Gee, has much changed? Isn’t the world still largely out of whack in the socio-economic realm?
The next article begins, “Of all the abundant absurdities of this thing that we call the nineteenth century civilization, the education which is given to the average young woman is the most outrageously absurd.” It basically describes the futility in educating women who turn out to be “silly or vapid in her talk, romantic in her imaginings and foolish in her acts…” who still can’t marry the right man and is unfitted for a happy life.
Gee, is it society’s fault, the fault of the college, or the fault of not having a very good fish bowl to choose from?
There were still rapes. One woman was found bound, gagged and had been “outraged” and left barely alive in a cave. A man was found guilty of incest, and had forced his teenage daughter to have a “home made” chemical abortion. There were bar fights and murders, house fires, stolen horses, ships, steamers, and yachts capsizing or crashing and people drowning left and right.
Today we have jet ski accidents involving little children. We have vehicles stolen. We still have bar fights and murders. And we still have people drowning left and right.
And in the background of all the craziness of the that time period, the largely populated “whites” who controlled everything still oppressed those minorities of other cultures and skin colors. Sometimes change is slow in establishing itself. The newspaper articles do not have the author’s names attached to them, but the wording of the articles back then reveal the biased attitudes of the society at large.
Racial slurs were generously spread to cover “Colored,” “Chinamen,” “Jews,” and “Indians,” while the word choices for heinous crimes were selected with delicate care so as not to “outrage” the readers’ sense of civilized society. Especially, those of the feminine nature.
One article touched on the guillotine still being used in France to execute public capital punishment. Waaaaay back in 1848, there was a brave family by the last name of Hugo. Remember Victor Hugo? Most of his poetry was written in exile. Two of his sons were arrested for insulting the law and magistracy by speaking out against capital punishment in the newspaper, “L’ Evenement”.
Wow. We are STILL discussing capital punishment to this day! Have you ever watched “The Life of David Gale”? It has Jodi Foster starring in it. It’s thought provoking.
The paper also exposes the belief systems of two prominent Evangelical church leaders. Back in the day the Evangelical Party believed that slavery was perfectly lawful and scriptural. Whitfield was an avid slave owner. Wow.
It notes: “It must be borne in mind that except for The Society of Friends none of the Churches in England or America had as yet borne any testimony against either slavery or the slave trade.” Wow. Just wow.
Did I say I was taking a break from watching the news to preserve my sense of sanity? I think I’m ready for a trip out to my garden and then an episode of “Larry David” or “Mom”…
