The Adelman Commonplace

Quotations and passages of interest in the reading of Joseph M. Adelman.

[jmacommonplace]

Robert Moses’ arrogance was first of all intellectual; he had consciously compared his mental capacity with other men’s and had concluded that its superiority was so great that it was a waster of time for him to discuss, to try to understand or even listen to their opinions. But there was more to his arrogance than that. Had it been merely a product of a consciously reasoned comparison, it would have been governable by reason, reason that must have informed him that if he hoped to win the prize he so desperately wanted he must for a period of a few weeks conceal his contempt for the public. Had his arrogance been merely intellectual, he could have disciplined himself—this man with a will strong enough to discipline himself to a life of unending toil—for the few weeks necessary to give him a chance at the Governorship. But his arrogance was emotional, visceral, a driving force created by heredity and hardened by living, a force too strong to be tamed by intellect, a force that drove him to do things for which there is no wholly rational explanation. It was just that Robert Moses didn’t want to listen to the public. It was that he couldn’t listen, couldn’t—even for the sake of the power he coveted—try to make people feel that he understood and sympathized with him.

Robert A. Caro, <em>The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York</em> (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 424-25.

[jmacommonplace]

In a modern society, who is allowed to speak with authority is a political act. Of course, all U.S. citizens are allowed to speak. We have an entire amendment guaranteeing us this right with notable exclusions like hate speech and prisoners, who can be arbitrarily denied speech by the State. But not all of us are presumed by the publics to which we belong to have the right to speak authoritatively. Speech becomes rhetoric, or a persuasive form of speech, only when the one speaking can make a legitimate claim to some form of authority.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, <em>Thick, And Other Essays</em> (New York: The New Press, 2019), 19-20.

[jmacommonplace]

If something—or someone—happens only once in all of time and space, can that human happening still have importance to us? Can we say true things about it, and can those things be meaningful to us in the present?

Jonathan Wilson, “Story-Shaped Things,” Contingent Magazine, Oct. 16, 2019.

[jmacommonplace]

While London, and especially Anthony Todd, saw them as the defining feature of the American post, they did not significantly alter colonial communications. Expensive and uncompetitive with merchant ships for civilian customers, they never obtained the dominant share of transatlantic correspondence. Their slow speed and infrequent arrivals meant they only meaningfully affected the way news travelled during the winter months, when few ships crossed the ocean. What American officials saw as the main story of the post office was very different: the rapid growth in volumes of letters carried, and the way the post began to facilitate, and reflect, deeper and more frequent ties among the colonies.

Rohit T. Aggarwala, “‘One Chief Letter Office at New-York’: Packet Ships, Imperial Administration, and the Geography of the American Post, 1692–1783,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2019.

[jmacommonplace]

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” TED Talk, 2009.

[jmacommonplace]

The books, newspapers, and letters which arrived with the ships were not the only avenues for the flow of information and news in Afro-America. While written documents always had a vital place, black cultural traditions that favored speech and white laws that restricted literacy gave a continuing primacy to other channels of communication. For the harbors where the masterless congregated also buzzed with an assortment of orally transmitted accounts—scraps of news, conflicting interpretations, elusive facts, and shifting rumors. A spicy story or telling anecdote could furnish attentive listeners with news of slave unrest, an impending imperial conflict, unstable sugar prices, or new departures in colonial policy. Whatever their form, reports of developments abroad which might have a tangible effect on American slave societies brought to the surface underlying tensions about authority, legitimacy, and belief. In cultures where people depended upon direct human contact for information, news spread quickly and became part of a shared public discourse.

Julius S. Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (London: Verso, 2018), 76-77.

[jmacommonplace]

The real importance of parties in the time of the Founders is as rather loose but intense communities of political ideology, emotion, and action that took form among politicians, political writers, and their audiences, especially but by no means limited to the adult white males who could actually vote.

Jeffrey L. Pasley, The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy, American Presidential Elections (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2013), 6.

[jmacommonplace]

Most proprietors of newspapers did not enter their works under the Statute of Anne or otherwise claim exclusive rights in news. Those who specialized in financial and commercial information did attempt to stop others from copying, but with little success. A few magazine publishers sought to protect maps and other features that they paid for. But newspaper editors would not have dreamed of prohibiting the copying of individual paragraphs, essays, or letters, because that would have made it much harder to fill their own columns. Newspapers were interdependent, and editors treated individual articles as shared resources.

Will Slauter, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 85.

[jmacommonplace]

Publishing news in periodical form is artificial, since most events of public concern do not occur on a predictable schedule. Adherence to weekly or daily periodicity creates the obligation to go to press regardless of whether something interesting occurs. News received after an issue is printed must be held until the following day or week. In addition to the need for a steady supply of news, periodicals require an effective means of distributing each issue to customers. Both of these tasks depend on a reliable postal service, which was only beginning to develop in the seventeenth century. In addition, periodicals involve a regular production schedule in a fixed location, making it easier for authorities to monitor them.

Will Slauter, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 22.

[jmacommonplace]

In short, reading in the urban centers of Venezuela was no longer perceived as an exclusively religious practice but as an educational and even recreational activity that also facilitated—and required—social interaction. The lack of printing presses and bookshops did not prevent readers in Venezuela from accessing books; instead, it encouraged them to connect with other readers and to create networks for sharing and transcribing books. Venezuelan readers quickly realized that in order to follow recent European publications and news, they needed to rely on social networks of friends, neighbors, family members, teachers, classmates, and acquaintances.

Cristina Soriano, Tides of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in Venezuela (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018), 36.

[jmacommonplace]

History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the Advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how Men and their Properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: The Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice, &c. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politicks be fix’d in the Minds of Youth.

Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, [October 1749],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed May 28, 2019. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 3, January 1, 1745, through June 30, 1750, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, pp. 397–421.]

[jmacommonplace]

Whether written on papyrus and delivered by messenger or composed on electronic screens and delivered by electrical pulses, the post has always been a product of social relations and material circumstances, just as it has always played a role in the production of those relations and circumstances.

Jay Caplan, Postal Culture in Europe, 1500-1800, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 167.

[jmacommonplace]

The early modern post was an impersonal and continuously available system for the collection and delivery of mail and the transport of passengers along fixed routes.

Jay Caplan, Postal Culture in Europe, 1500-1800, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 5.

[jmacommonplace]

It may seem obvious that there is a difference between the fact that something occurred and a verbal or visual representation of it, but attempts to obtain exclusive rights over news often encountered the objection that nobody could own the news. It was often unclear what each side meant by the news; it was difficult to distinguish between the expression and the fact.

Will Slauter, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 12-13.

[jmacommonplace]

New Englanders have generally thought of the eighteenth-century press as an important part of the story of American freedom, but shops like Thomas Fleet's both enabled the slave trade and relied on slave labor to produce the very texts that promoted literacy and political engagement.

Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins, “The New England Primer: An African-American Artifact?,” in Schooldays in New England, 1650-1900, ed. Peter Benes and Jane Montague Benes, Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 2015 (Deerfield, MA: Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2018), 119.

[jmacommonplace]

The Advantage of the Office to a postmaster in these Countries has been in many Places so inconsiderable, that the Office is not sought after as in England, but we were glad to find an honest careful Man who would at our Request undertake it, to oblige us and his Neighbours. Such Persons would remit us Money from time to time as it arose in their Hands, and when it suited with their Leisure draw out and send us their Accounts but if rigidly required to do it at certain Periods, would decline the Service, and desire us to provide some other Person to undertake it. We were therefore under some Necessity of tolerating these Omissions, and content ourselves with obtaining a Settlement when we could. As Correspondence is lately much encreased, more of the Offices become valuable; and as People increase in the Towns, it is more easy to find suitable Officers. In these Cases, we can insist more absolutely on a Regularity in the Execution of the Office; and shall do it; but as in this growing Country there is a Continual Necessity of erecting new Offices in Young Places, the same Difficulty will for a Time continue in such Places, and we do not see how it can be avoided.

Benjamin Franklin and John Foxcroft to Anthony Todd, in Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959-), X: 281-82.

[jmacommonplace]

It is now near 24 Years that I have been concern’d in the Management of the offices between Philadelphia and New York, and in all that time have had no Complaint made to me of Inconvenience from the Posts continuing the Route I found them in. And I must own myself at a Loss to conceive the difficulty Governor Boone mentions of his Corresponding regularly with the Board of Trade, and that “Dispatches receiv’d from their Lordships could not be answered by the first Pacquet, tho’ [thro’] the Posts Omission of Burlington and Amboy in their Route.” His Excellency resides at Amboy, and the Letters for him which arrive at New York in the Pacquet, must be forwarded to him at farthest within three days, as the Post goes from New York twice a Week and passes within 4 Miles of Amboy at Woodbridge, where the Governor’s Letters are left, and sent to him immediately by a special Messenger from the Office there. The Post returns twice a Week from Philadelphia to New York, and passing thro’ Woodbridge takes up and carries forward any Letters left there. The Pacquet stays at New York at least 20 Days, and during that time the Post passes 6 times thro’ Woodbridge to New York, and would carry forward any Letters the Governor should lodge at Woodbridge for that purpose. And if he happens to be at Burlington with his Assembly, the Post passes equally often thro’ Bristol (within a Mile and half of him only just cross a Ferry) where it cannot be much Trouble to send his Letters. So that on the whole I am persuaded it must appear, when duly consider’d, that his Excellency’s Want of Punctuality in his Correspondence with their Lordships cannot justly be charg’d to the Account of the Post Office.

Benjamin Franklin to Henry Potts, April 23, 1761, in Leonard W. Labaree, et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959-), IX: 306-307.