From the Notebook

The Background

The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written by W.W. Goodrich, an architect who practiced in Atlanta between 1889 and 1895.

Here, Goodrich provides what absolutely no one asked for: his critique of an article called “Mutual Aid Among Savages” by Peter Kropotkin, a 19th-century Russian anarchist philosopher.

Per usual, Goodrich couldn’t even be bothered to spell the man’s name right, repeatedly referring to him as Kraptokine. And no, he wasn’t being clever here: crap didn’t appear in the American vernacular until after World War I.²

As Goodrich recounts in disbelief, Kropotkin had the audacity to suggest that “the savage races are equal if not superior to civilized peoples in innate goodness and common honesty.” Not that Goodrich knew anything of honesty.

His tutting, condescending lectures are too tedious to counter at this point, but I must call attention to one obvious hypocrisy: “Everybody does not live with his head in a moral fog like the average Russian nihilist,” Goodrich loftily proclaims.

So says the man arrested for check fraud and larceny in multiple states. Was his head not in a moral fog when he pretended to be insane in a Los Angeles jail?

No doubt to prove how cultured he was, Goodrich had to rattle off a list of every tribal group imaginable, using terms that are mostly outdated and offensive today, and nearly all misspelled—no surprise.

It’s also not surprising that Goodrich, who constantly mythologized Native Americans while calling for their genocide, again repeats his “Good Indian, dead Indian” sentiments here. Oh, and he also refers to women as “the weaker sex,” just for good measure.

There’s truly nothing redeemable about this man.

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Innate Savage Goodness

Comparisons of Civilization and Barbarians.

A French Review’s Interesting Article.

The Customs and Habits of the Different Races.

In China Many of the Girl Children and Old and Infirm Men and Women Are Killed.

Written for The Journal.

Kraptokine has recently written an article for a French review with the object–not avowed, of course–of proving that the savage races are equal if not superior to civilized peoples in innate goodness and common honesty. His process of reasoning is to throw into relief the commendable qualities he finds even among the most debased tribes, like those of Australia, China and New Guinea, and efface or excuse their cruelty, their cannibalism and the inhuman practice so common in savage life of infanticide or the killing of relatives when they become too old and infirm to be longer useful. The Russian nihilist and philosopher is far from accepting the American theory so tersely expressed in the phrase, “Good Indian, dead Indian,” and if called upon to give his opinion would doubtless prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that the culture found in a Sioux or Apache community is far superior to that of which Boston is the presumed center. Though it cannot be fairly claimed that the opinions of a man who believes that the assassination of one or any number of individuals is justifiable as a political means are above suspicion, it may be interesting, from the standpoint of scholarship or ethnology to hear what he has to say on the subject.

He begins with the bushmen, whom Lubbock describes as “the filthiest of animals,” but who have been found by Burchell and Moffat to be faithful to their promises, tenacious in returning a service rendered, and so attached to their offspring that when one of the children of the tribe is carried off the mother follows it into a state of slavery, leaving, of course, her other babes to be brought up (this detail is not added) the best way they can by the father.

It is, perhaps, not perfectly logical to rely too strongly on the maternal instinct as a test of innate goodness, since man shares this quality with the lowest animals. It would not be difficult to find in works of natural history instances where a wild beast has in the same manner followed her young to bondage or certain death. Among the Hottentots and among the Fueggians, who live in the greatest degradation, it is the custom when any person is in the possession of a full meal to invite all persons to partake of it. Testimony is wanting to conclusively prove the universality of this custom, but even if it were as general as alleged it would simply show that this community of food is an absolute necessity, the supply of nourishment being intermittent, he who has enough for the day being able to be starving a few days later, and consequently dependent on those to whom he is at the moment seemingly generous.

The practice at its best is a form of mutual assurance, and indicates rather a prudent foresight than innate goodness. The integrity and chastity of the Hottentots are commended by Kolben, an English writer, who says of them that they are the best and most amiable people on the face of the globe. Kraptokine adds that similar compliments are paid to the Otsiaks, Samoyedes, Esquimaux, Dyaks, Aleuts, Pajuans, and other tribes among the lowest in the social scale, not exceeding the Sioux, and the natives of Northeast Siberia, who resemble the Esquimaux. The enumeration will suggest some curious ideas to an American–that is to an American of the southern states–though the philanthropists of Boston and Philadelphia may see nothing abnormal in model like these held up for their imitation.

Kraptokine lingers lovingly on the gentle qualities displayed by the native of Australia, China and New Guinea, in whom few travelers have hitherto found much to commend.

He says of the Australians: “They are very indifferent regarding their food. They devour bodies horribly putrified and have recourse to cannibalism in time of famine. The sentiment of friendship is very strong among them. The weak are generally protected and the sick are cared for. They take care of the weak and sick, not abandoning them and never killing them. They are cannibals, but rarely eat members of their own tribe, unless it be the bodies of those that have been sacrificed. They prefer the flesh of foreigners.” There are here some delicate distinctions, the writer seeming to convey the idea that this abstinence from the flesh of friends and relatives is a noble trait. It is further to be noted that the weak are not always protected, while it is left to inference that the old are sometimes let to the tender mercies of wild beasts.

Our philosopher reposes his faith in the savages of New Guinea on the testimony of one Bink, who says “that the Papuaus are gay and sociable and laugh a great deal.” Mr. Bink might have completed his phrase by adding “as do generally the inhabitants of the tropics.” He, however, goes on to say that they take care of the sick and old, never abandoning them and in no case killing them, unless it is sometimes a slave that has been sick a long time. Prisoners of war are sometimes devoured.

Children are kindly treated and much loved. Old and feeble captives are put to death, the others are sold into slavery.

They have no religion, no divinity, nor any supreme authority. They eagerly seek vengeance and pursue their enemies to the death.” But, who would have thought it “when they are well treated, they are very good,” which justifies their being held up to as models.

After having visited the tropics Kraptokine turns his attention towards the poles, where he finds the Esquimaux a most gentle and lovable people, and the Aleuts, who are in many respects altogether remarkable. As the first, their characteristics are too well known to Americans to require discussion in this place. Though the Aleuts are nearer, we have not, it appears, perfectly learned to appreciate them. Our author who has drawn this information from the works of Russian missionaries describes them as of rare endurance of hardship, privations and severity of climate.

Their code of morals is varied and severe. The perfect Aleut considers it shameful to fear inevitable death, to implore pardon of a rival, to die without having killed an enemy. He never caresses his wife no dances in the presence of other persons. He is a pattern of neatness, bathing himself every morning in the icy sea, and afterwards incoestly exposing himself on the verge in the costume of our first parents. In time of famine he gives his last decayed fish to his offspring, and feeds himself with its lingering order.

The men do not communicate state secrets to their wives, the weaker sex seeming to share the garrulous foibles of a higher civilization. The children partake of the virtues of their elders, never fighting with one another with their fists but insulting one another’s mothers by saying that the boy’s mother doesn’t know how to sew, the Aleut woman being a very trivial being if she lacks this accomplishment.

The circuitous way in which these facts are divulged to the people of the Atlantic coast through the medium of a Russian mission, a Russian nihilist and French review will not, it is hoped, detract from their interest or diminish their general utility. Also the Dyacks [sic] of Borneo, recognized by all who have known them as one of the most savage of peoples, though the young man cannot marry until he has brought in the head of an enemy, have most estimable qualities.

It is not surprising after all this special pleading that Krapotkine should find excuses for infanticide, cannibalism and the killing of the old and useless in the hereditary customs and religious superstitions of savage tribes. But of what use is such a recapitulation? A resume of the noble instincts and the maternal tenderness of domestic animals or of wild beasts would be quite as valuable and prove quite as much. From savages we expect nothing, therefore every virtue they have astonishes. From civilization we expect every thing, and we estimate it by the distance it falls below absolute perfection. The logic in either case is faulty. The possession of the good quality, either in savage or in civilized beings, does not atone for the luck of all the rest. There was never a criminal so hardened or debased that he did not retain a lingering tenderness for his mother.

The wild Bedouin of the desert receives and entertains with ostentatious hospitality for the night the chance traveler, or even his worst enemy, then waylays and slaughters him in the morning a mile from his tent. The reasoning of Krapotkine would make of this bandit and assassin a noble being, but fortunately, the common sense of humanity estimates differently and by higher standards. Everybody does not live with his head in a moral fog like the average Russian nihilist.

W.W. GOODRICH³

References

1. Agostino iacurci ↩︎
2. Thomas Crapper and the Word “Crap” – Tired Road Warrior ↩︎
3. Goodrich, W.W. “Innate Savage Goodness”. The Atlanta Journal, May 6, 1893, p. 4. ↩︎

The Background

The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written by W.W. Goodrich, an architect who practiced in Atlanta between 1889 and 1895.

If Goodrich ever designed a classroom building during his time in Atlanta, there’s no record of it. His only known project for an educational institution in the Southeast is Yonah Hall, a dormitory and library at the Georgia Female Seminary^{1 2 3}(later Brenau University) in Gainesville, Georgia.

Goodrich also wasn’t an ophthalmologist, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to diagnose the cause of myopia and astigmatism in Atlanta’s children.

“Atlanta today is inquiring the cause of its youth wearing glasses,” Goodrich writes. Were they, though?

“Little boys and girls in our city are seen every day wearing glasses”, he continues. “In the times of our grandparents, children wearing glasses were unknown and unheard of.”

Citing “European oculists,” here Goodrich attributes vision problems in Atlanta’s students to a lack of northern light in their classrooms.

He then provides a detailed description of an ideal school building of the early 1890s: built on a ridge, designed with a steel frame and fireproof materials (apparently requiring “no insurance”), with a north light in the classrooms—”and only a north light.”

I won’t criticize Goodrich’s description too much—it’s more interesting than most of the things he wrote about.

It’s also true that, at the time, schools were often designed so that their classrooms were primarily exposed to the softer, consistent tones of northern light, but that wasn’t always practicable due to site limitations.

Note that Goodrich’s plan includes a “dynamo” to “furnish the light for dark days”—electric lighting was available, but was quite dim by modern standards, so architects still had to design schoolrooms to receive as much natural light as possible.

In the 1880s and early 1890s, Bruce & Morgan of Atlanta were the undisputed leaders of school design in the Southeast, planning so many academic structures that in 1889, they even wrote a book about it: Modern School Buildings, which included full-page illustrations of their projects.⁴ If a copy of the book still exists, I’m unaware of it.

Of the dozens of grade schools designed by Bruce & Morgan, only one remains in Union, South Carolina.⁵ However, most of their landmark college buildings still stand, such as the Main Building at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Samford Hall at Auburn University in Alabama, and Agnes Scott Hall at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.

Only the buildings at Auburn University and Agnes Scott College are north-facing, but all of the firm’s school designs feature an abundance of oversized windows.

In 1891, G.L. Norrman addressed the problem of school lighting with his plan for Atlanta’s Edgewood Avenue Grammar School.

Built on a ridge with a north-facing front, the building was designed so that each of the eight classrooms received sunlight from four sides, and as the Atlanta Journal reported of the plans: “Mr. Norrmann [sic] himself is so much in love with them that he has had them copyrighted.”

Norrman immediately repeated the Edgewood plan for the Sixteenth Street School in Columbus, Georgia, and both buildings survive.

In 1896, Norrman’s plan for the Anderson Street School in Savannah, Georgia, was reportedly selected, in large part, because all 12 of its classrooms received southern exposure.⁶ So much for that theory on northern light.

The Anderson school plan was so successful that Norrman later duplicated it for both the 38th Street School and Barnard Street School in Savannah—all three buildings still exist.

In this article, Goodrich praises his fellow Atlanta architects, describing them as “men of rare discernment and practical intelligence” and commending their “beautiful school buildings.”

Obviously, Goodrich was a bullshitter and ass-kisser, but he was right about one thing: Atlanta’s architects did design some beautiful school buildings.

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Light In The Schools.

A Suggestion For The Board Of Education.

The North Light Only Should Be Used.

Mr. W.W. Goodrich Calls Attention to the Matter.

What the European Governments are Doing for Protection and the Good Results Obtained.

Written for The Journal.

The public is at present more interested in schoolhouse sanitation, and the light in our public school rooms than in any other subject before our practical, everyday people, who have made Atlanta what she is and what she will be “in the glorious future.”

Atlanta today is inquiring the cause of its youth wearing glasses. Myopic and astigmatic optics are of such frequent occurrence and of such everyday appearance on the streets that people have ceased to wonder at its cause or causes, and accept the fact as a matter of course, and pass the subject by as too frivolous to be thought of, or of too common place a subject to pay any attention to.

The optic organism is of such a sensitive nature, and its development of such a wonderful use to everyone, that without good eyes anyone thus afflicted is indeed in a sad predicament. And yet, little boys and girls in our city are seen every day wearing glasses. In the times of our grandparents, children wearing glasses were unknown and unheard of.

The subject being discussed must and should be first thought of your public school board, “yet that august body,” so far as the parents of the school children are aware, have never considered this subject at all. At least if they have, the school-room does not show it, and the astigmatic and myopic optics of many pupils are in contradistinction to good sanitary school measures and good optical schoolroom arrangements.

“First”–A site for a schoolhouse should be on a ridge, so that the drainage shall fall on all sides.

“Second,” the site should be a north light, and a north light only; each room should have a north light, and only a north light, and no other light from any other points of the compass, should enter a schoolroom than what comes from a direct line to the north star.

“European oculists” have convinced their respective governments that to preserve the eyes of the present and future generations, only a north light will be admitted in a school room and in all class rooms whether in public or private room, and the governments of Europe have made laws to that effect. The effect of said laws has been to decrease optical diseases or malformations, to cure many old and chronic cases in children and to increase and restore the mental and physical health of all its youth, and to eradicate occult faults. Truly a wonderful blessing, more so than vaccination for smallpox. It is thus seen, that it is imperative upon the school board, to first consider that subject treated. And not let it go by without any consideration.

Atlanta has beautiful school buildings, the architects of them are men of rare discernment and practical intelligence, graceful, classic detail, and ornament, that thrill the mind’s eye, and enrapture the soul, and inspire the whole being to do grand and great things for our city, rise uppermost in the pupil and student of both sexes.

And they have a keener discernment to accomplish great tasks and to improve their minds by their study under the classic roofs and Roman detail and Spartan simplicity than is accomplished under any other order of architecture.

Structural construction should be a thoroughly ventilated basement built of granite, cased with hollow tile, and plastered with the patent wall coverings inside.

The superstructure, of pressed brick, terra cotta and marble trimmings, lined with hollow tile, plastered with patent wall coverings on the inside.

The floor joists and studding of steel filled in with hollow tile, the studding plastered with patent wall covering in a light tint of bluish gray, the ceilings of pearl green.

The floor covered with asphaltum over the hollow tile; “no wood at all” on the floors.

The roof of steel, covered with slate. The windows should have plate glass, so that there will be no reflex curves and no distorted concave or convex surfaces.

The sanitary arrangements should be in an annex and of the most scientific appliances with ventilating shafts. The ventilation should be by a fan and air shafts, a dynamo run by city service easily kept in order, constantly in motion, would change the air in each room in three minutes, and the dynamo could furnish the light for dark days, or for scientific laboratory work.

The building entire heated by live steam, using direct in a coil in tanks in the basement for each room service, and conveyed upward by fan.

It will be seen at a glance that our building is “fire proof”–no insurance, no nuisance by defective plumbing, and solid as the future of Atlanta. Her educated and practical architects can blend the requirements of hygiene with that nobles of all professions “American Architecture,” and Atlanta must be as she should be, the center from our which shall go the saying that she sets the face of the world.

W.W. GOODRICH⁷

References

1. “A Great School for Gainesville.” The Atlanta Constitution, May 25, 1893, p. 3. ↩︎
2. “An Elegant Building.” The Atlanta Journal, June 22, 1893, p. 1. ↩︎
3. “Gainesville Gossip.” The Atlanta Constitution, June 23, 1893, p. 3. ↩︎
4. “From Our Notebook.” The Atlanta Constitution, June 23, 1889, p. 17. ↩︎
5. “The Graded School Building.” The Weekly Union Times (Union, South Carolina), June 19, 1891, p. 2. ↩︎
6. “The New School Building.” The Morning News (Savannah, Georgia), February 12, 1896, p. 8. ↩︎
7. Goodrich, W.W. “Light In The Schools.” The Atlanta Journal, April 17, 1893, p. 3. ↩︎

The Background

The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written by W.W. Goodrich, an architect who practiced in Atlanta between 1889 and 1895.

Like any self-respecting architect, Goodrich considered himself an expert on, well, just about everything.

Here, he pontificates on the health and dietary habits of 19th-century Americans in a condescending and frequently offensive diatribe that begins by dismissing vegetarians as “fanatics” while also scolding “the rich” for “the excessive use of meats.”

Sounding every bit like a shill for the dairy industry, Goodrich spends the bulk of the article extolling the alleged benefits of drinking milk, with a string of dubious assertions unsupported by modern science.

Everything from fever to liver failure could be cured with a “milk regimen,” Goodrich explains, as practiced by “certain savage or semi-civilized tribes of pastoral habits.”

Goodrich made these claims at a time when milk production was unregulated in the United States, and dairy manufacturers regularly tainted their products by dumping in everything from calf brains to formaldehyde.

Tainted milk in the 19th century led to the outbreak of multiple diseases and the poisoning deaths of thousands of Americans—primarily infants. Drink up, baby!

As Goodrich acknowledges, tuberculosis was frequently transmitted by bacteria found in unboiled milk, a danger well known to the public by the 1890s.

Here, he advocates for pasteurization, a process that wasn’t widely employed in the United States at the time and wouldn’t be legally required until the early 20th century.

Goodrich’s stated desire in this writing was “to infuse a little hygienic good sense into the average American” who only needed to “observe the laws of temperance.”

And as for the people of Atlanta?

“Nowhere in the world is self-restraint more necessary than in Georgia”, Goodrich explains, claiming that the hot and humid climate of the Southeast both “stimulates the appetite” and “render[s] digestion difficult.”

Why ask a doctor for health advice when you can consult a third-rate architect?

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Hints on Hygiene

Some Secrets of Good Health for Every Day Use by Everybody.

Written for the Journal.

If people knew how to eat and drink properly or were willing to confine themselves to articles of food suited to their digestion, and would just take the amount of exercise necessary to facilitate the digestion, the lives of the greater part of the human race would be indefinitely prolonged.

There would have to be excepted from this sweeping assertion certain diseases – like those of throat and lungs – that cannot always be avoided, but which nevertheless in many cases can be limited in their ravages by prudence.

The statement as made is a truism, and has been known to sensible persons since dawn of civilization and the origin of gormands and epicures. Some old Persian writer placed the whole secret of health in the ability to leave off eating before the appetite was entirely satisfied, and the wise men of Greece and Rome never ceased to preach similar truths, both by precept and example. These things they had learned, not from works on hygiene, which did not abound in ancient times, nor from family physicians, who were far from being plentiful as they are now but from simple observation.

The apostles of a vegetable diet have usually been fanatics, but there has always been a grain of truth in their doctrines, for it is true that the greater part of diseases are caused, especially among the rich, by the excessive use of meats.

It is only a few years since the nourishing qualities of milk and its hygienic value began to be properly appreciated. Everyone was aware that the young of the human race and of the lower animals using it as their only diet flourished and grew strong alike in bone and muscle.

It appeared to be easily digested and seemed to contain all the elements that the body seemed to need, at least in the early stages of its growth. Adults – at least those in civilized countries – despised it and would have considered themselves doomed to an early death had they found themselves confined to a milk regimen. The same opinion, has, fortunately, not prevailed among certain savage or semi-civilized tribes of pastoral habits, who have maintained a healthy existence from time immemorial on milk and its products.

Medical science, aided by chemistry, has for some years past been working a gradual change in these ancient prejudices.

The chemists have discovered that milk contains all the elements necessary to make blood, bone and muscle. It adapts itself to the most difficult digestion.

A man can live and enjoy perfect health on milk and its products alone, or his system find in it everything needful – fatty matter, caseine, albumen, and especially phosphate of lime for building up his bony framework. Doctors prescribe it for patient suffering from low fevers.

If a person finds himself suffering from torpididty of the liver, or a tendency to indigestion let him drink milk freely, say two or three quarts a day, and abstain from meat, and he will almost invariably find himself cured speedily.

It may be said of certain diseases of the liver and kidneys and of the dyspepsia that they have invariably been brought on by ignorance or disregard of the laws of hygiene, and no one need ever have them unless he is obliged to live in the tropics, or has by chance been so situated that the choice of his diet was beyond his control.

It has been in all ages of the world been difficult to make any considerable number of human beings observe the laws of temperance in eating and drinking if the means of indulgence were at their disposal.

It is much more difficult to infuse a little hygienic good sense into the average American of today than into the luxurious Roman in the time of Lucullus, and nowhere in the world is self-restraint more necessary than in Georgia, where the climate constantly stimulates the appetite, while at the same time certain latent qualities of the atmosphere seem to render digestion difficult.

While milk in its perfect state is capable of such infinite service to the health, it has at the same time an extraordinary facility in transmitting diseases. A great part of that consumed in large cities is from cows kept in stables and fed often on unwholesome food.

When tuberculosis diseases become too common among these animals the newspapers ventilate the matter and the health officers show a temporary activity, but the evil continues. It is more trying from the fact that diseased milk is largely used as nourishment for young children.

If the purity of milk is suspected, however, it only needs to be remembered that the noxious germs it contains may be destroyed by boiling. In England, where milk is rarely boiled, there have been occasional local epidemics caused by the use of milk from diseased cows.

In 1870 an epidemic of typhoid fever at Islington was propagated in this manner. Epidemics of croup and scarlatina have also in England been attributed to the same cause. The nutritive and hygienic qualities of milk and its tendency to transmit disease have for the last ten years been frequent subjects for discussion at the sessions of the Paris Academy of Medicine. The matter is sufficiently practical and important to attract the attention a little oftener of medical associations in America.

W.W. Goodrich¹

References

1. Goodrich, W.W. “Hints on Hygiene.” The Atlanta Journal, April 29, 1893, p. 1. ↩︎