Judging a Book by Its’ Cover

The cover of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca.

I recently read a book that was much more than what I expected it to be.
It’s called Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca.
I expected a book about a female detective who solved crimes in 1917 New York City.
Instead, I got a book about a society woman, Mary Grace Quackenbos Humiston (1869-1948) who became a lawyer in 1904, and set up a company she called the Peoples Law Firm.
Mrs. Humiston spent the next 44 years of her life defending women and immigrants from injustice (often as an investigator, not lawyering in a courtroom).

Mr. Hyde (Frederick March) makes young Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) his mistress in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

There are several cases covered in Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.
There’s the featured story of 17-year-old Ruth Cruger, a middle-class girl who mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Manhattan.
There’s the story of German immigrant Charles Stielow, who was nearly electrocuted at Sing Sing, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of John Snowden, a Black man who was slandered and hung in 1918, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of several thousand Italian immigrants, kept in feudal bondage (1895-1912) by Southern plantation owners.

Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) confronts a drugged woman in a scene from The Blood of Fu Manchu (1966). Consuelo LaRue (a trafficking victim interviewed for the Ruth Cruger case), was said to have “borrowed” her white slavery story from a Sax Rohmer “Fu Manchu” novel.

In a press conference on 6/24/1917, Grace Humiston outlined her plan for keeping girls safe from predators:

New York does not yet realize how systematic the danger is for girls who live in it. . . Had I the power, I would cause to be inserted in the laws of every state an act that would make the tempting of a girl a serious offense, punished by an adequate penalty. I would call such practice ‘criminal persuasion’ and . . . if the white slaver knew he violated the law at the beginning of his ‘trade’ there would be fewer girls in the underworld. [Italics mine.]

She went on to discuss stationing agents throughout big cities, and keeping girls safe after they were rescued, so they could “start life anew,” free from shame.
In an America shaped by Grace Humiston, a Jeffrey Epstein would not have been possible.

To cash in on the notoriety of the Ruth Cruger case, director George Tucker (1872-1921) created the six-reel expose Traffic in Souls in 1913.

The Ruth Cruger case made Mrs. Humiston famous.
Ruth Cruger was reported as a missing person, by her parents, after visiting a motorcycle repair shop to have her ice skates sharpened.
The New York police force failed Ruth Cruger, because they assumed she was just a “wayward girl,” one of the 1,000-1,500 girls who disappeared yearly in 1917 Manhattan.
After months of searching, Mrs. Humiston (and her chief detective, Julius Kron), discovered Ruth’s battered, dismembered body buried in the cellar below Alfredo Cocchi’s Metropolitan Motorcycle repair shop.
Alfredo Cocchi happened to be a favorite fellow of the New York City motorcycle police.
Although Ruth was last seen near Cocchi’s shop, the police had quickly ruled him out as a suspect.

The dynamics are the same: girls vulnerable to the lechery of older men.
The terminology is different.
During the early 1900’s, newspaper headlines shouted about “white slavery” and “missing maidens.”
Today, we talk about “human trafficking” and “exploited children.”
Proportionally, there are more people in situations that involve human trafficking (and forced labor), in the 2020’s, than there were a hundred years ago.

Lois Weber and Phillip Smalley created the film The Celebrated Stielow Case in 1916. At that time, Charlie Stielow was on death row.

In West Shelby, New York, Mrs. Humiston didn’t believe that illiterate German immigrant Charles Stielow had murdered his employer Charles Phelps, and Phelp’s housekeeper Margaret Wolcott.
There was no evidence for him doing so.
Mrs. Humiston, and journalist Sophie Irene Loeb (1876-1929), were instrumental in staving off Stielow’s execution until his innocence could be proven.
Eventually, a junk dealer, Erwin King; and a wandering homeless man, Clarence O’Connell, confessed to the murders of Phelps and Wolcott.

A Second Reckoning: Race, Injustice, and the Last Hanging in Annapolis, by Scott D. Seligman.

In August of 1917, Mrs. Humiston also didn’t believe John Snowden had murdered an Annapolis white pregnant woman (Lottie Mae Brandon).
However, this time, Humiston’s efforts to save an innocent man failed.
Although there was scant evidence, and authorities received an anonymous confession to the rape and murder, soon after Snowden was hanged, he didn’t receive a posthumous pardon until 2001.

In July of 1907, Mrs. Humiston began spending her time as a hands-on detective in the service of several thousand Italian immigrants who worked picking cotton on Southern plantations.
Families were recruited directly from Italy, and also from factories in cities like New York.
(That’s how Humiston discovered the case.)
After the immigrants arrived in the American South, they were installed in windowless hovels, and forced to buy all their food and clothing from the company store.
Young children worked alongside their parents.
Italian babies died from malnutrition.

Cover of a record album featuring “Sixteen Tons.”

The situations of these sharecropper families reminded me of the 1955 hit* “Sixteen Tons”:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? 

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go.

I owe my soul to the company store.

Working on gigantic 13,000-acre farms like Sunny Side Plantation (in Arkansas) at first may have reminded Italians of the “mezzadria” system in Italy.
“Mezza” means “half;” in Italy, Italian tenant farmers received half of the crops, in return for working the land.
(The “mezzadria” system didn’t collapse in Italy until the 1970s.)
On Southern plantations, however, the families were overcharged for goods and services, fell into debt to the plantation owners, and many sank into abject poverty.

On 3/31/1910, Grace Humiston testified before Congress about Sunny Side plantation, and other issues related to immigration reform.
She talked about agents fooling immigrants into providing labor.
She discussed expert masons sent to labor on cotton plantations, and skilled tailors who could only get work in mines.
She testified:

The point is that we Americans are exploiting the aliens . . . For while our Federal laws are excellent for keeping them out of the country, we show a noticeable lack of interest in them after they are admitted.

Mrs. Humiston’s time in the limelight didn’t last long.
Soon after she became well-known, she lost her shining reputation because of exaggerated claims she made about young women being abused near Camp Upton, an army training camp in Long Island (1917).
As a result of the uproar, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods revoked her badge, and her credibility was ruined.
This was a tragedy, because if Mrs. Humiston had kept her ties to the Government, and to the N.Y.C. police department, she might have accomplished more good work within the system.

*“Sixteen Tons” is a folk song about coal miners. It was written, and first performed, by Merle Travis (1917-1983), in 1946. The song became a big hit in 1955, when sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991). 

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Mel Brooks (shown above) played Goddard Bolt in Life Stinks (1991) the story of a real estate tycoon who bets that he can live 30 days as a homeless man in a Los Angeles slum.

According to the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal, and we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The sad truth remains that many of our fellow citizens consider certain people “more worthy” of the pursuit of happiness, than others.
It’s all about hierarchy.

During the “Age of Enlightenment,” 17th century men questioned the “divine right of kings” idea.
However, they replaced it with the equally stupid concept that property-owning people are more important than non-property-owning people.
(Jesus tried to dissuade people of this idea in the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, human greed, and clannishness, are strong drives.)

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is the story of the Joad family—tenant farmers driven, by a bank foreclosure and drought, to give up their Oklahoma farm, and drive to California. From right to left, Henry Fonda as former convict Tom Joad, Jane Darwell as his mother, and Doris Bowdon as Rosasharn, his sister.

Because property-owners were considered “better” than non-property-owners, most American states originally required property ownership in order to vote.
By 1790, only 4% (out of 3.9 million Americans) possessed enough property to vote.
At the same time, immigrants were allowed to become citizens, after only two years of residency.
Therefore, of the relatively few men who voted in the late 1790s, some were likely recent immigrants.
Then, as now, money equaled power.

During the early days of this country, most states required men to own a certain amount of property in order to hold political office.
The amount varied from state to state.
In South Carolina, men had to “be worth” at least 10,000 £ (the equivalent of one million dollars today) to run for Governor.
In New Jersey, men had to own property worth at least 1,000 £ (the equivalent of $150,000 today) to become Senators.
While those old laws are long gone, it’s still an anomaly for a poor man to run for political office in the U.S.
(Governor Tim Walz was the poorest man ever selected to run for vice-president.)

The Founder’s Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America, by Willard Sterne Randall. Nearly all the facts, that I’ve mentioned about the Founders, are found in this book.

Most men who signed the Declaration of Independence were wealthy.
Benjamin Franklin was the printer of 30% of all books and journals published in America.
Founding Father John Hancock owned fleets of ships, and hundreds of retail shops.
When George Washington died, his estate was valued at $17 million dollars (in today’s dollars).
(A major portion of George’s wealth came to him through his marriage to Martha.)

Beginning in the late 1960’s, society devised yet another factor “to separate the wheat from the chaff.”*
Gradually, a college degree became as necessary, as a high school diploma had been, to enter the middle class.
There were exceptions (Bill Gates, sports stars, movie actors).
However, people aspiring to become clerks, low-level managers, police detectives, paramedics (and even graphic artists) were asked to obtain degrees beyond high school.

Moreover, there’s a money gap between people who earn degrees in order to educate others (or to treat them medically), and those who earn their degrees so they can deal with money.
The median salary for teachers in 2024 was $63,000.
The median salary for financial advisors in 2024 was $102,140!
Medical doctors are significantly smarter than bankers, but their jobs don’t bring in the moolah.
It’s clear that, in American society, people whose jobs involve helping others, are valued less highly than people who handle money.

The Founders realized that Americans tend to value money more than other nationalities do.
Therefore, they wrote the Emoluments Clause into the Constitution, to stop Federal officials (including the U.S. President), from accepting “gifts, payments, or benefits from foreign states.”
The goal was to prevent foreign influence.

Emperor Napoleon III’s snuffbox, from about 65 years after 1789 (when Jefferson was given his). 

Soon after the Emoluments Clause was written, Thomas Jefferson (then Ambassador to France) violated the law by his acceptance of a diamond-encrusted snuff box (valued at $81,000 in today’s money) from French officials.
Jefferson solved his ethical problem by removing and selling the diamonds from the snuffbox.
He then used most of the money (but not all!) to purchase reciprocal gifts for his French hosts.

Money has been at the root of many events in the 250-year-old history of the U.S.
One major boost to the budding American economy was the property that Loyalists left behind when they fled to Canada or England.
France spent years trying to recoup the money that it spent supporting the American Revolution, because America was reluctant to pay its’ debt.
America never paid reparations to the African-Americans whose unpaid labor was its’ major source of wealth.
The “40 acres and a mule” promise (made by Northern officials after the Civil War) was unfulfilled.

Meet John Doe (1941) is a comedy-drama about a homeless man, John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), and a reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) who invents a story about him. Willoughby is duped into being the symbol of a grassroots political party, by a corrupt businessman.

Despite not holding true to its’ promises, the U.S. has still managed to accumulate a massive debt.
According to Forbes magazine (“With the U.S. Debt A Staggering $38 Trillion Dollars, Who Exactly Do We Owe?” by Doug Melville) the U.S owes $1.13 Trillion to Japan, $807 Billion to the United Kingdom, and $750 Billion to China, with 75% of the debt controlled domestically.
According to Forbes, the interest on this debt will reach $1 trillion per year in 2026 ($83 billion per month).

America has used many strategies to keep the economic wheel turning for the upper crust.
The U.S. allowed generations of immigrants into the country, and used them to do the menial jobs (earning low wages with no benefits).
Immigrants don’t receive Social Security or Medicare benefits; therefore, immigration has helped to keep those systems solvent.
The U.S. healthcare system is based on insurance offered as a benefit through employment. This gives power to the employer, over the employee.

Few Clothes Johnson (James Earl Jones, center) in Matewan (1987). Matewan is the story of coal miners trying to build a union. It’s based on the true story of the 1920 “Matewan Massacre.”

Essentially, America has set up an underclass of Americans who are, by design, at the mercy of the monied elite.
It’s sad how many Americans are still under the illusion that they aren’t the ones being sifted out, as chaff.

*To separate the wheat from the chaff means to separate out the “good stuff,” the wheat, from the waste, or the chaff.