The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written byW.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”byPeter 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how cultured he was, Goodrich had to rattle off a list of every tribal group imaginable, using terms that are mostly outdated and offensive today, and nearly all misspelled — no surprise.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”.
There’s truly nothing redeemable about this man.
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. Goodrich. Cornice and capital on Yonah Hall (1893). Brenau University, Gainesville, Georgia.
The Background
The following article was published in The Atlanta Journal in 1893, and written byW.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 Seminary123(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, adding, “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, and then provides a detailed description of an ideal school buildingof the early 1890s: built on a ridge, designed with a steel frame and fireproof materials (requiring “no insurance”, apparently), with a north light in the classrooms — “and only a north light”, he stresses.
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 schools at the time 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 indisputed 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 8 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.” He immediately repeated the Edgewood plan for theSixteenth 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 3 buildings still exist.
Goodrich praises his fellow Atlanta architects in this article, 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.
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.
As the old man sinks onto the toilet, his prolapsed anus pulsing, he thinks to himself: “My God, it feels good to be superior.”
With thick, labored breaths, he spreads his pale, sweaty thighs, unable to see his shriveled cock and sagging balls for his bulging stomach.
Grunting and groaning with every flatulent squirt, he tries in vain to push out a turd that’s been compacting in his colon for days, inhaling deeply as he farts because he likes his own smell.
The tile on his bathroom wall is streaked with shit because he never washes his hands. In a nearby bucket are the cuttings of his pubes, which he trims to make his penis look bigger. It doesn’t fool anyone, though, even when he’s wearing a cock ring.
He pushes and heaves for what feels like an eternity, but the only evacuation from his body is a flaccid little stream of piss.
Finally giving up on his labor, he strains to wipe the fresh juice from the folds of his orifice, clumsily smearing it into the coarse hairs of his crack, all matted together with dried fecal crumbs.
Now red, irritated, and burning, the asshole begins to rage.
It infuriates him that the world doesn’t recognize how special he is — that he is divinely appointed for a special purpose.
He believes he’s smarter, stronger, and more talented than anyone else, and he alone is exempt from the laws of the universe. He is elevated, set aside, unique from all the other pissing, shitting creatures around him.
It’s never been enough for him to keep his exceptional superiority to himself, however — he needs everyone else to recognize it, too. As a god among mortals, he was made to be admired, worshiped, and adored.
He’s always had an endless supply of sycophants at his disposal: idolatrous, insecure asswipes he can seduce and trap with his magnetic charm. It was easier when he was young and good-looking, but age has given him the ugly mug and impotent cock he deserves.
His ass-lickers fawn over him, lavish him with praise, and hang on his every word. He feeds off their adulation for sweet life, but when he inevitably grows bored or is struck by fresh fear, he lashes out in self-righteous rage about disloyalty or some other invented slight, then quickly discards them.
Most of his enablers don’t go away completely — at least not at first. Some he never hears from again, but the weaker ones can usually be wooed back with flattery and empty promises when he needs a fresh supply. They return to him on their knees, groveling, begging forgiveness from their abuser, and the cycle repeats, each time shorter and more miserable than the last.
Yet even the most loyal lackeys grow weary of sucking him off to keep him happy. His words are worth less than his shit; he has an unquenchable thirst for attention, and his infantile need for domination is exhausting, suffocating, and above all, boring. Everyone drawn into his orbit eventually comes to resent and despise him.
He is consumed with paranoia and suspicion, and for good reason — those who profess the greatest loyalty to him are the ones who, for their own protection, become the smoothest of liars.
To have any long-standing relationship with him is to fabricate a persona that exists solely to pacify him: one that is obsequious and compliant. You must become detached, steely, guarded — and a consummate actor. Smile and tell him what he wants to hear, then conspire in whispers behind his back.
He is a man without love: no matter how good it begins, every relationship degrades into a cold and transactional exchange of power. Those who stick with him the longest are the ones who believe the deepest that they will benefit from his supremacy, too blinded to recognize that it’s a hallucination, a chimera, a mirage. They only know it when he has utterly stripped their souls, leaving them worthless, depleted, and without any of their original identity.
His string of failed relationships and consistent self-sabotage betray him as an abject failure of a human being. He desperately wants to be seen as intelligent, but anyone who’s been around him for any amount of time knows that he’s a bumbling imbecile: dumb as a post, dull as his dick, and a fool to the core.
He is, in fact, a pathetic husk of a man — a cipher, a void, a reptilian viper, a succubus from the darkest pit of hell. Look into his eyes: you’ll find there’s nothing in them.
He is an empty sack of darkness, a black hole of deception, manipulation, cruelty, and depravity. Lacking discipline and self-control, he seeks to wreak vengeance and humiliation on those he deems inferior to himself — and that happens to be everyone. Yet in constant threats and tirades, he reveals himself to be the very thing he fears to be recognized as: pathetic, fragile, and weak.
Beneath his gaseous cloud of illusion, baby boy knows deep in his bowels that there is nothing special about him at all. He is only one of many such monsters who roam the earth: Celebrities, politicians, pastors, executives, pissant middle managers, hucksters, grifters, and sheisty salesmen. There are a billion others just like him, all preying on those willing to surrender their souls for the illusion of second-hand power.
This class of dime-store demons should be mocked, derided, and ignored. Instead, they are honored, celebrated, and revered as aspirational figures by a world of suckling infants desperate for god-like caricatures to coddle and protect them while they distract themselves with trinkets and toys.
The old man has his role to play on earth, like everyone — the soul, after all, doesn’t grow without adversity. But as just one of a legion of adversaries, he is not unique: in time, he, too, will flame out and be forgotten. He is a passing shadow, a fleeting mist, a momentary fart.
And as he shifts on his throne to rip another one, he suddenly slumps forward and belches his last sulfurous breath.
