Reitman is mentioned in Ragtime as being one of Emma Goldman's lovers. He was a well-known anarchist and physician to the poor. He was known as the "hobo doctor", offering services to hobos, prostitutes, the poor, and other outcast. He performed abortions, which were illegal at the time. This is what Goldman had to say about Reitman in her autobiography: He arrived in the afternoon, an exotic, picturesque figure with a large black cowboy hat, flowing silk tie, and huge cane. "So this is the little lady, Emma Goldman," he greeted me; "I have always wanted to know you." His voice was deep, soft, and ingratiating. I replied that I also wanted to meet the curiosity who believed enough in free speech to help Emma Goldman. My visitor was a tall man with a finely shaped head, covered with a mass of black curly hair, which evidently had not been washed for some time. His eyes were brown, large, and dreamy. His lips, disclosing beautiful teeth when he smiled, were full and passionate. He looked a handsome brute. His hands, narrow and white, exerted a peculiar fascination. His finger-nails, like his hair, seemed to be on strike against soap and brush. I could not take my eyes off his hands. A strange charm seemed to emanate from them, caressing and stirring... Goldman called her passionate love affair with Reitman the "Great Grand Passion" of her life. They lived and traveled together for almost eight years, campaigning in favor of birth control, free speech, women's rights, and anarchism. They traveled to San Diego for the free speech fight in 1912-1913. While Goldman spoke on free speech, Reitman was kidnapped, tarred and feathered, branded with "I.W.W", and his rectum and testicles were abused. Years later, the couple was arrested under the Comstock Act for advocating for birth control, and Reitman served six months in prison.
Both Goldman and Reitman believed in free love, but Goldman became jealous when one of Reitman's lovers became pregnant. Their relationship ended in 1917 after Reitman was released from prison.
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Ragtime begins by describing the patriotism in America at the turn of the century while Teddy Roosevelt was president. Roosevelt became the 26th president of the United States after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. He served two terms, leaving office in March of 1909. He was succeeded in office by William Howard Taft.
Trust regulation A trust is a large business with significant market power, sometimes used to refer to monopolies in the United States during the Second Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. When Roosevelt took office, he began to sympathize with the public concern over monopolies on business created by the super wealthy. His domestic policy included more populist acts such as support of organized labor unions to curb the power of trusts. He became known as the "trust-buster" using the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act to bring 44 antitrust suits. He "busted" the Northern Securities Company which had a monopoly on American railroads and Standard Oil, the largest oil and refinery company. He also created the United States Department of Commerce and Labor. For big businessmen such as J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford, Roosevelt's policy must have seemed threatening. Coal strike of 1902 In eastern Pennsylvania, anthracite coal miners went on strike for higher wages, shorter workdays, and recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America. The strike threatened to shut down the winer fuel supply to major US cities. Roosevelt created a fact-finding commission that suspended the strike. It was never reopened; together with J.P. Morgan, Roosevelt crafted an accord in which the miners received a 10% wage increase and reduced work days from ten to nine hours, but the union was not recognized. This was the first labor dispute in which the US government involved itself as a neutral arbitrator. Executive orders Roosevelt became the first president to issue more than 1,000 executive orders, more than the first 25 presidents combined. He is infamous for extending the reach of his presidential office, even attempting to make changes to the official rules of football. His executive orders largely focused on environmental conservation, an issue which he believed was one of the most important of his time. Rosicrucianism is a combination of occultism and other beliefs including but not limited to Hermeticism, Jewish mysticism, and Christian Gnosticism. The central belief of rosicrucianism is that its followers possess a prisca theologia, or secret wisdom, passed down from ancient times. Their name derives from their symbol, a rose on a cross ("rosi" meaning rose and "cruc" meaning cross). Christian Rosenkreuz, the alleged founder of the group as detailed in three anonymously published texts from the 16th century, is now considered to be a fictional character rather than a real person. Despite its initial popularity due to the mix of alchemy and mysticism associated with its ranks, the reason and skepticism of the Enlightenment led to its steep decline in the 18th century. It regain influence at the turn of the 19th century with the establishment of the most successful modern Rosicrucian organizations, the Ancient Mystical Order Roase Crucis (AMORC) in New York City in 1914, and the Rosicrucian Fellowship in Seattle in 1909. H. Spencer Lewis, the founder of the AMORC, bears similarities with J.P. Morgan as Doctorow describes him. Both shared a reverence for ancient Egypt. Lewis believed Egypt to be the "cradle of Rosicrucian wisdom", subsidizing the establishment of the Egyptian Museum at the group's headquarters in California. The Rosicrucians were probably one of the inspirations for the Pyramid, a secret society of Doctorow's invention of which Morgan and Ford were the only members. There is little historical evidence that this society was a reality. The answer to everything seemed to be Atlantic City. The Breakers Hotel was originally a five story hotel under the name Hotel Rudolf, in existence since 1895. After a few decades of operation, Joel and Julian Hillman purchased and renamed the hotel the Breakers. The hotel underwent an extensive renovation, adding 7 stories, a banquet hall, a bathhouse, a rooftop restaurant, a façade overlooking the beach, and a special dietary kitchen. In 1931, the hotel was repurchased by Emmanuel Katz who made it the first hotel in Atlantic City to observe Kosher dietary laws. It catered mainly to Jewish clientele and was known as the "Aristocrat of Kosher hotels".
One evening...Houdini's manager told him of being called by Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish of 78th Street, who wanted to book Houdini for a private party...Mrs. Fish was throwing commemorative ball in honor of her friend the late Stanford White, the architect of her home. He had designed her home in the style of a doge palace. A doge was the chief magistrate in the republic of Genoa or Venice. I won't have nothing to do with those people, Houdini told his manager. Dutifully the manager reported to Mrs. Fish that Houdini was not available. She doubled the fee. Marion Graves Anthon "Mamie" Fish was a socialite and self-proclaimed "fun-maker" at the turn of the century in New York and Rhode Island. Though she could barely read and write, she married Mr. Stuyvesant Fish at 23 years old, rising to become a ruler of society and renowned party planner. Doctorow calls her a member of the "Four Hundred", the social elite of New York City in the late 19th century. Ward McAllister named this group according to the four hundred people of New York who he believed "really mattered".
In her house Glenclyffe on 78th Street designed by Stanford White, she threw outrageous parties. One might see a monkey drunk on champagne throwing lightbulbs at guests from the chandelier, guests simultaneously dancing and feeding an elephant, or according to Doctorow, an entire party talking in baby voices. Houdini would have heard of her antics, prompting him to initially refuse her author. There is no record, however, of Houdini appearing at a Fish party. Coincidentally this was the time in our history when the morose novelist Theodore Dreiser was suffering terribly from the bad reviews and negligible sales of his first book, Sister Carrie. Dreiser was out of work, broke and too ashamed to see anyone...He took to sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. One day he decided his chair was facing in the wrong direction. Raising his weight from the chair, he lifted it with his two hands and turned it to the right, to align it properly. For a moment he thought the chair was aligned, but then he decided it was not. He moved it another turn to the right. He tried sitting in the chair now but it still felt peculiar. He turned it again. Eventually he made a complete circle and still he could not find the proper alignment for the chair...Through the night Dreiser turned his chair in circles seeking the proper alignment. Theodore Dreiser was born in 1871 in Terra Haute, India, the ninth of ten surviving children. His father had emigrated from Germany in 1844 and moved to the midwest with many other German immigrants. Dreiser's father became a moderately successful wool dealer and even became proprietor of a wool mill in Indiana. In 1869, however, fire struck the Dreiser mill and left his father with a crippling injury and the family with plaguing economic instability. Because of this accident, Theodore had few education opportunities in his troubled childhood. He never finished high school and dropped out of college after just a year. Despite his strict Roman Catholic upbringing, he later became an atheist.
Dreiser first worked as a journalist but found fame as a naturalist novelist. Naturalism is an art movement reaching its height at the turn of the century that did not believe in the existence of free will in enacting change in your life's circumstances. Despite the pessimism of the Naturalist movement, Naturalists were active in improving the conditions of the poor in America. Naturalists are simultaneously accused of being ethnocentric, painting stubbornly unflattering pictures of immigrants and the poor. Dreiser's first novel Sister Carrie has been called the "greatest of all American urban novels". It tells the story of a young girl who, after leaving her rural community for Chicago, struggles with poverty, prostitution, and complex relationships with me. She becomes a famous yet dissatisfied actress. It received poor critical reception due to moral objections to sordid relationships with men as a way to rise to fame. Despite the lack of recognition in Dreiser's lifetime, Sister Carrie has gained enormous fame since its publication in 1900. After the release of Sister Carrie, Dreiser suffered a mental breakdown as described by Doctorow in Ragtime. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930. He died in 1945 at age 74. Evelyn Nesbit divorced Harry Thaw in 1912. A year later she married Jack Clifford, a ragtime dancer with whom she had a stage act. Unfortunately, Nesbit seemed to be tarnished by her ex-husband's past. The public could not disconnect her reputation of "lethal beauty" with the "playboy killer" Thaw and the murder of her lover. Clifford's own identity became "Mr. Evelyn Nesbit" which he resented, eventually leading to their separation in 1918. They were not legally divorced until 1924. See the article in the Chicago Tribune declaring their divorce here.
The early 1900's saw competition between European engineers to produce "heavier than air" aircrafts at an all-time height. (While hot air balloons and blimps function using a mix of gases designed to make the craft float by displacing the air around it, hence the name "lighter than air", "heavier than air" aircrafts had yet to be invented). The Wright Brothers invented the Flyer III in 1903, but they were hesitant to make public demonstrations for fear of another engineer stealing their intellectual property. Therefore, many did not believe the Wright Brothers until a demonstration of their aircraft in August of 1908.
According to Doctorow, Houdini paid $5000 for his Voisin biplane 1909. He made the first "heavier than air flight" in Australia on March 18, 1910. He was competing against Ralph Banks and Fred Custance to set the record in Australia according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale; all three were magicians aspiring to make aviation a part of their remarkable repertoire. Houdini made at least 18 more flights before shipping his airplane back to England, never to fly it again. Doctorow also points out an interaction between Houdini and Archduke Franz Ferdinand in which Ferdinand congratulates Houdini for the invention of the airplane. However, there is no evidence that Ferdinand and Houdini ever met. A "sandhog" is a slang name for the miners who work on underground projects throughout New York City. They are responsible for much of the underground infrastructure in the city, including the Brooklyn Bridge, subway tunnels, sewers, and water tunnels. Many of the workers are historically Irish or West Indian. It is possible that some of the immigrants of the ensemble might be working as underground construction workers. One day there was a blowout so explosive that it sucked four workmen out of the tunnel and blew them through the river silt and shot them up through the river itself forty feet into the air on the crest of a geyser. Only one of the men survived. The freak accident made headlines in all the papers, and when Harry Houdini read the accounts over his morning coffee he hurriedly dressed and rushed downtown to the Bellevue Hospital where it was said the surviving worker had been taken. Doctorow describes Houdini's personal relationship to a freak accident that happened to four sandhogs working underneath the East River. Read the original New York Times article about accident. Interestingly enough, a very similar accident occurred 11 years later. Read a personal account from the second blow out here.
Carefully Tateh explained that although he was unalterably opposed to Goldman, she being an anarchist and he being a socialist, he had great respect for her personal courage and integrity; and that he had therefore agreed that some sort of temporary accord between the socialists and the anarchists was advisable, if only for the evening, because the funds raised for the occasion would go to support...the anarchist Francisco Ferrer, who was going to be condemned and executed for fomenting a general strike in Spain. Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia was born in 1859 in a small town near Barcelona to Roman Catholic parents. Influenced at the early age of 15 by an anti-cleric employer, Ferrer went on to become an anarchist leader in Spain. He was exiled to Paris in 1885 with his wife and children, later returning in 1901 to open his infamous Escuela Moderna (The Modern School) to "teach middle class children radical social values".
The Modern School was a "rational, secular, and non-coercive" primary and secondary school, according to the stated goal of the school. The private goal was to raise up a generation of leaders for the working class when revolution eventually struck. In reality, high tuition fees prevented anyone other than the wealthier middle class from sending their children to Ferrer's school. The Modern School closed in 1906 after Ferrer was arrested for sedition. Ferrer would go on to be executed by firing squad three years after the closing of the school. He was "found guilty in a military trial in which no solid evidence was brought against him". Goldman was largely responsible for Ferrer's legacy living on, calling Ferrer a "rebel" whose "spirit would rise in just indignation" and forming the Ferrer Association. Many of Ferrer's ideas spread after his execution, leading to the establishment of a handful Modern Schools, or Ferrer Schools, in the United States. Read Goldman's essay, "Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School", here. |
Dramaturgy for the Ragtime musical and novel.© Eliza Pillsbury, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eliza Pillsbury with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Categories
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