By John J. S. Mead, 1948
History generally shapes itself around events which have a continuing importance. And so we will probably place the events of the last year in the Mead Family more accurately against the background of such issues as the struggle with Russia, rising inflation, events on the labor front and the approaching presidential election than as the year of the new look and the great snow.
A year ago found this country finally realizing that one world could not develop from a one sided policy, with the consequent beginning of the Marshall plan for building up strength against Russia. It found us also with an economic boom in full swing and prices skyrocketing. In the labor field, caution was the watch word as both sides sized up the Taft-Harley law, recently passed. And people were just beginning to think of the presidential campaign a year away with the first talk of a third party to grow out of the Truman-Wallace split.
As the summer heat intensified, the cold war brought the only chill and Russo-American relations began to harden. Fall and winter only intensified this tendency. Russian intransigency began in Berlin, and the U. S. acquired air bases in the Mediterranean as conditions in Italy, Greece, Trieste, Turkey and Palestine made the whole of that ancient theater shudder. Beginnings of union in western Europe appeared with the Benelux customs union.
In the spring, Russia by ruthlessly nailing down her gains in Czecho-Slovakia and by pressure on Finland, made the whole world realize what her program was. This in turn brought on war scares which resulted in a quickened passage of the Marshall Plan and the development of a new rearmament program for us. These factors combined to have a great effect on our internal affairs. The intensification of the Russian pressure on Berlin helped bring possible European union closer with the Mutual Aid Pact – an extension of the Benelux customs union into a military union over a wider area and with the tacit backing of the United States. But the overwhelming defeat of the Communists in the Italian elections eased the immediate strain and even brought a peace feeler from Stalin through our new neighbor – Henry Wallace. At the end of the period it was apparent that these feelers for bilateral action had been turned down for multi-lateral action through the UN. Thus, for once, the totalitarian tactic of divide and rule was not working.
At home the labor picture, except for occasional displays of fireworks by John L. Lewis, calmed down as both sides found that the Taft-Hartley Act did not take the government out of the labor picture, but merely made the power of governmental regulation over industrial relations two sided. The labor leaders found their power curbed by their old enemy, the injunction, but this time wielded by the government rather than by capital. As a result, the voice of the average laborer became more felt in the unions, and help was given to curbing the power of Communism in the unions.
The curve of economic activity generally rises and falls. But during this year it has risen steadily, pausing now and then for a fresh breath. At the beginning of last summer it appeared that the boom was slowed by the first budget surplus since 1930 and the easing of consumer shortages. But in July the new coal contract pushed through by Lewis, together with the easing of rent controls and bad crop weather offset these tendencies, and the curve started up once more, becoming a price boom which was aided in the fall by the approaching Marshall Plan and in the winter by the forecast of rising arms costs. Again at the end of winter the boom began to get shaky, to be rescued once more by further news of increasing armaments and the long awaited tax cut which was finally passed over a veto.
But, by late spring, it appeared that prices were beginning to stabilize and that the Alphonse-Gaston act of successive wage and price rises was meeting resistance. This helped bring on the first sizeable advance in the stock market for two years. But building costs continue to soar. In this field material costs are still going up. Labor costs are rising and labor is less efficient. It has been estimated that labor in this field is receiving 76% more pay and doing 38% less work than in 1939. The local effect of this can be seen in building costs which ran about forty cents a cubic foot in 1939 and are now running about a dollar fifteen. They told us in the winter that the dollar was then worth sixty cents as against on hundred cents in 1939, and that ratio has dropped since. All we know is that last year most of us made more money than ever before and had less to spend – a condition which is getting acute.
During the same period we have been rolling up our sleeves for an old fashioned presidential campaign. Truman’s fortunes in the summer and fall did not look too bad. But the Eisenhower boom in the late autumn put a frost on him until the General put an end to that. By the first of January Mr. Truman again looked like a fifty-fifty chance. About that time, politics took over as the main policy forming influence. The Wallace threat became real to Truman, Dewey and Taft began to threaten a deadlock among the Republicans and Vandenburg emerged as the number one compromise candidate.
In February came the southern revolt over the President’s civil rights program. By March the combination of the Wallace movement, the southern split and the deterioration of the foreign situation made Truman look so badly (sic) that the city machines of the north showed signs of leaving the Truman ship. In April Stassen made his bid for the Republican nomination and got far enough to make that fight a three way rather than a two way one and to really tie it all in a knot. So now, as we again head into summer, while there is a temporary lull on the foreign and labor fronts, we find ourselves so prosperous we are going broke, and on the verge of conventions which will launch the presidential race into the sprint.
Against this background our heavenly twins, “Peter” Studwell Foundation and “Paul” Mead Property have been wending their business way. Paul, having robbed Peter in the spring of 1947 to pay his own bills, had brought on a family conclave to derive means of preventing a continuation of that process. A committee report filed just about a year ago, while recommending certain operation on Paul’s budget, concentrated for the most part on evolving a long term solution for the liquidation of Paul’s own frozen assets, thereby providing him income and removing the temptation to pick Peter’s pockets.
A start had already been made in subdividing some of Paul’s lake front property. Certain overall policies to control this work were developed. And the restrictions were made workable by transferring their enforcement from the full Board of Directors to a small committee. Later the subdivisions of another parcel of land along the second nine of the golf course was necessitated by the sale of a plot from it to the James H. Barretts. Road building reared its ugly head, and it was decided to accomplish this through Earl Smith, his new tractor and the company forces, a plan which now appears to be working well and economically.
As this program began to develop in the fall, the need for a new sales organization became apparent. About the first of the year we entered into a sales agreement with Mr. V. A. Bowman of Katonah to market the property as it is developed and to pick up the sales work until now so ably done by Aunt Alice Neergaard. As we go into the summer, the East Ridge parcel on the golf course is ready to for sale, the Perch Bay parcel along the southern lake shore is being finally mapped and we are entering the sales campaign. The cost of development is being set in the first instance out of property sales and a land mortgage. So, while Paul’s expenses are still being paid largely out of Peter’s pocket, we hope that we are working in the right line for a permanent solution. We can only hope that the aforementioned high building costs will not so limit our market as to prevent our slowly gaining our declared purpose of independence for Paul.
Peter in the meantime continues on his serene way, somewhat handicapped by the depredations of his brother, but always gamely doing his job of being the main support of his parents. In that capacity he has recently received a breather with the advance in the stock market.
One other angle of our corporate existence is the Mead Memorial Chapel; there the year has seen great changes. The new organ given by Mr. Arcie Lubetkin in memory of Mr. William Mathias Sullivan of Dunrovin, Ridgefield, was dedicated in September. The cemetery is in the process of transfer to the Chapel. Through the kindness of Caroline Bartlett, Elizabeth Murdock and Constance Hunt and her mother and through the hard work of the Neergaard family, supplemented by Earl Smith’s men and equipment, it has been enlarged and beautified.
But more apparent even than that will be the change this year in the Chapel services. Sally Marseilles has asked for a well deserved release from ten years of lining up ministers for the summer services. She has been replaced by Aunt Alice who had obtained the services of Dr. Ernest R. Palen of the Middle Collegiate Reformed Church of New York City to conduct the services throughout the summer. This represents a departure from our old practice of obtaining different, visiting ministers throughout the season, but one the need for which has been making itself increasingly apparent. We are all interested to see how this change works out.
So much for the corporate existence of our bodies and souls. Now for the doings of individual members of the family during the year.
Last year ended with the marriage of Emmy Lou and Morgan Lott. On their return from a Canadian honeymoon, they entered into that peculiar enterprise for newlyweds – the management of the Millbrook Freezer. Dave and Marianne and family moved into 5 Walworth Avenue, Scarsdale, for the summer and during their stay became one more with the arrival on July 16 at Harkness Pavilion of Jay Prescott Mead. The first grandson of Uncle Dave and Aunt Elizabeth, he was christened at Mead Memorial Chapel on August 23.
Ted Smith spent the summer in Vermont, having rented his house. Jane left Geneva and, after touring a bit of Europe during which time she saw Olga in Paris, returned home in August to be greeted at a great dinner party given her by the Neergaards. The Marseilles became much more comfortable upon the completion of very attractive remodeling of The Croft. Bill Marseilles, 3rd, labored long and hard on the golf course and Marley at Lord and Taylor. Lillian Smith visited the Marseilles in August. The Jack Meads again spent the summer in Madison, Connecticut, where Johnny lost a pair of tonsils that had been holding him back. Nothing stops him now.
Autumn saw two milestone birthdays in the family. On September 20 Jane celebrated her twenty-first watching the Dodgers absorb a licking. On October 5 most of the family joined the Brookes in New York to celebrate Aunt Alice’s seventieth. Dim transferred his activities from Borden & Co. to Benton & Bowles advertising agency. Ted started new commercial ventures in taking on the dealership for Rexair. Emmy Lou and Morgan had a pleasant trip to Maine to pick up a carload of lobsters for freezing.
Most of our scholars returned to their former haunts. Betty started at Berkshire Hills in Great Barrington, Bobby Murdock entered Browning School and George started laboring at Kent. There in the fall he and Johnny were baptized and George confirmed. Billy Marseilles early in October was separated from his appendix. Tim Smith played on the football team at Westminster. Frances G. and Mother moved to 1919 Fifth Avenue (Waccabuc) for the winter.
In early winter Ted moved back to Crow’s Nest, turning over his other house to Uncle Dave. Ted also took on the local sales agencies for Randolph fire extinguishers, Wonderway Waxers and Jiffy-Tite screwdrivers, and throughout the year has kept us posted of the doings of Olga in Paris.
Most of the story of the winter consists of one word – snow. Starting with cold weather in December, we put in such a winter as few of us want to see again. It is small comfort that the snowstorm of December 26 outdid the blizzard of 1888. With the cold continuing, snow piled on snow without a break until the latter part of February. Most of the social activities of the season were replaced by shoveling and battling the snow. Had it not been for Earl’s new tractor and the Mead Property snow plough, most of us feel we would be snowed in yet.
The Christmas dinner, as usual, was at Gaard House and most of the family managed to make it. Lillian was visiting the Marseilles at the time. During the winter, Billy Marseilles played on the Loomis hockey team and Tim distinguished himself at the same sport at Westminster. Jane got in a week’s skiing trip in the Laurentians. The Neergaards ducked the last part of the snow by leaving in February for six weeks in Miami and Nassau, in both of which locations Uncle Charley (sic) was working on new hospitals. Jane gave up the vice-presidency of the Smith College Anniversary Drive, and Marianne in February attended a two day state Junior League conference in Troy.
The opening of spring was marked by the hard labors and misfortunes of the Brooke-Jallade contingent. Aunt Coralie, faced with the necessity of moving all her furniture from Elmdon, transferred it to the Casino (pardon, Carriage House) and staged a most successful sale during April. In the midst of her planning for this program, the two young Jallades went to the hospital for tonsillectomies. The next day Aletta came down with, of all things, the mumps. Soon John Jr. had those, too. And later he also surprised with the measles. The young Jack Meads, thinking they were really suffering from the chicken pox, decided they were lucky by contrast. But the Jallades had their reward in the form of a new home in Scarsdale into which they moved in May. Uncle Dave, Aunt Elizabeth, Betty and Jane repaired to Pinehurst for a ten day holiday at Easter, while in April the Marseilles, somewhat delayed by the Wall Street strike, took a three week holiday in Florida, returning by way of Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge Mountains. On May 8, Dim and Marianne journeyed to Norwood, Massachusetts, to join in the celebration of Grandmother Prescott’s seventieth birthday. But spring was not officially ushered in until Frances G. and Mother, having had no nibbles on the sale of Tarry-a-Bit, moved back there, and until the Murdocks spent Memorial Day in the country. The beginning of the movement of the carriage barn at the Croft to a site on Schoolhouse Road purchased by the Butlers from Aunt Alice Neergaard, marked the start of Salem House, a building venture begun by Jack Mead in partnership with Ing Elder and Mr. James E. Muir to supplement the land sales program of Mead Property.
It is fitting that this chronicle should close with a list of the scholastic achievements of the family members – and what a list. Jane, having finished an outstanding four years at Smith by becoming a Sophia Smith scholar, graduated on June 14. But it was the Bartlett family which really surpassed us all. Mary Spaulding, the first of her generation to complete her education, graduated from Wells College on May 24 and has been accepted at Yale School of Nursing. George graduated from Groton on June 10 and enters Williams in the fall. Frances graduated from St. Mary’s-in-the-Mountains on June 3 and will go to the School of Horticulture in Ambler, Pennsylvania, next autumn. All other students are making progress in their respective schools, Tim winding up an athletic year by playing on the Westminister baseball team. To show that his accomplishments were not all muscular, he also was on the Student Council and was appointed a prefect for next year besides being elected to the Hay Society. The Bartletts really topped things off the South Kent’s Prise Day on June 7. According to late reports, the whole Bartlett tribe has retired to Eastham in a state of imminent collapse.
And so another year has rolled past – an average year in the spreading affairs of the Mead Family. It is a reassuring thought that, whether the background be thunderous or calm, although the names and faces in the chronicle change, each year sees a new chapter added to the history of our group. It does not make the writer feel any younger to think that his turn has come and gone; but that is what makes this family history. So we pass on the baton.
John J. S. Mead