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FORTNIGHTLY IN REDLANDS
One Thousandth Regular Paper of theRedlands
Fortnightly Club, November 17, 1960
by Lawrence Emerson Nelson, Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Redlands, Redlands,
California
Fortnightly's first thousand regular sessions have
loosed upon the absorbent atmosphere of Redlands at least eight million words of
concentrated wisdom or a moderately reasonable facsimile thereof, apparently without
disastrous damage to tonsils, eardrums or brain cells. These bi-weekly bursts of verbal drumfire have for sixty-five years
recurringly churned and challenged the ideas and near-ideas of the club's cumulative
membership of three hundred men, What caused the fortnightly club to be formed?Intellectual loneliness.Kirke II. Field, last surviving active charter member, told the inside
story of its founding:The Reverend Doctor Easter cane to Redlands as rector of Trinity Church
December 31, 1893. I had arrived in the fall of 1692, and had been seriously engaged in
disproving the predictions of my physicians. By the early winter of 189?-95 my health
permitted some return to the activities of life. At that time Dr. Easter and I met at a
small afternoon reception. Ee spoke of the difficulty that men had meeting socially and
the fact that most of us were recent arrivals, unacquainted with each other. It lad us to
a discussion of literary and social clubs to which we had belcnr;ed, and the possibility
of establishing some such organization in I~,edla r.;Is.:,....~:~ finally made a list of
twenty men, who might be interested in such a project, and each agreed to see certain
ones. As i had more leisure, and going any distance with horse and buggy over our
undulating roads required time and patience, prospects living in the ccuntry were assigned
to me. In all, nineteen were invited to meet at my house, now number 434 West Highland
Avenue. Thirteen responded. The foregoing nineteen became the charter members.Nineteen were invited nineteen became members -- a batting average which
even Chris Barnes will admit is a pretty fair one in any league.Tucked into Field's brief recital are several incidental clues concerning
the Redlands into which the Fortnightly club came. "Most of us were recent arrivals,
unacquainted with each other," he said. He himself had been in Redlands slightly more
thin two ;ears, Dr. Easter less than half as long_. L. M. Winston had been here three
years, Dr. R;. T. Allen two, W. H. White two, J. H. Williams one and W. M. Smith but a few
months. Alfred H. Smiley had spent parts of five winters here. Dr. C. Sanborn was an
old-timer of six years’ seniority and F. P. Morrison a patriarch of thirteen years'
residence, omission of whose name from anything being started in Redlands would have been
heretical indeed. Many of Redlands ' most honored pioneers – George W. Beattie, J. S.
Edwards,, John P. Fisk and Isaac Ford, to name but four, later became members, but they
were not charter members. The club was organized by lonely newcomers, who had found it
hard to get; acquainted.There were several causes for this acute loneliness.Redlands itself was a new town, too new to have house numbers, which came
only with the advent of residential mail delivery A letter describing downtown Redlands
only eight years before Fortnightly says:When the writer first looked upon the site of Redlands one bracing morning
in December, 1886, a blacksmith shop on the South bank of the Zanja and a family of
Mexicans encamped nearby occupied the business center of the future metropolis, while a
few scattering houses in the distance relieved the monotony of valley and plain and the
rugged picturesqueness of the mountains.In eight years that shabby shack and that lone squatters tent had become
an incorporated city, with brick buildings, electric lights, street cars, a free public
library, some of the best housed and best taught schools in the state, and four blocks of
vitrified brick pavement of which the town was so proud that it passed a special ordinance
forbidding bicycle riders to do fancy riding thereon. Not that it objected to the newly
fashionable bicycles, but bicycles frightened horses, and Redlands horses were numerous,
restive and occasionally original, as when one runaway at 10 p.m. whirled around the
corner at Orange and State, slipped, fell, skidded through the glass doors of the First
National Bank, and remained in the lobby until removed. One hopes that Frank P. Morrison.,
Fortnightly charter member and president of the bank, was as philosophical next morning as
had been druggist McCartney three months earlier when a horse crashed through his screen
door, fell down behind the counter, got up and walked sedately out."What's the matter?" asked the crowd."Oh, nothing: only a sick horse after some good medicine,'' smiled
the urbane advertiser.
So sensitive to the frayed nerves of its skittish steeds did the city
become that it passed its famous Drum Ordinance, forbidding drum beating and horn blowing
on the streets without special permission of the mayor., whereupon the Salvation Army
paraded with the American flag draped in mourning, and carried the case to the state
Supreme Court, where Fortnightly charter member, Judge Otis' decision was sustained and
the ordinance was held valid. The Army, therefore, which had originally invaded Redlands
from saintly San Bernardino, bringing along a 'Salvation Cyclone' equipped with 'drums,
flags and other implements of war,' borne 'by a host of redeemed publicans and sinners,'
wherewith 'to storm the forts of darkness in Redlands, ' was legally free thereafter to
scare hell out of the hearts of the people of Redlands but not out of the hides of their
horses, including the gentle nag, suitable for a semi-invalid, which placidly pulled Kirke
Field over the undulating country lanes of Redlands in quest of a quorum for his purposed
club. Redlands was really undulative before it was leveled for the gravity flow of water,
and so dusty that realtors advertised windward lots as on the clean side of the street, a
sales gimmick which fooled no one who had been in town three hours.Why in a city so dynamic as Redlands, did newcomers find difficulty in
acquiring acquaintance?There was little residential cohesiveness.
For this, too, there was a cause.
Redlands had not started from a business center and edged out toward
residentially as most cities do but had started residentially at widely separated points
on the circumference and had suddenly caved in to a common business center.
Even the hotels showed this. First there was the Crafton Retreat, little
more than an improvised invalids t rest home, four miles east of Orange and State. Then
Prospect House, at the top of Cajon, a mile southeast. Next, northeast nearly a mile, was
the Terrace Villa, part of which still stands, housing a church. For a time, it is true,
two hotels did exist downtown, the Sloan House, which was displaced to make way for the
First National bank building, currently being remodeled, and the Windsor, where the Bank
of America now has its building and parking lot. But the next one, the Terracina,
adjoining the present Community Hospital site, went so far west that it had to have a
special street car line out Olive avenue to make it accessible. To complete the segmented
circle the Barton house, which yet stands near the Asistencia, was briefly a hotel, and
the Gladysta was planned at the northwest edge of town, where the tall palm trees loom
high against the sky.
Why these
odd locational arrangements?
Each originally was part of a separate, competing community, intent
upon becoming a town. Redlands is therefore the inheritor of the residual debris of half a
dozen preceding civilizations and of half a score competing townsites.
Earliest of these, at the western edge of Redlands, was the settlement
variously called Guachama, Old San Bernardino, the Mission district or, in the felicitous
phrasing of Frank Cole's Fortnightly paper, "Cottonwood Row in the Morning." Here, seventy-six years before Fortnightly, the San Gabriel mission, at the request of
unchristianized Indians, introduced cattle raising and farming. Later, moving eastward to
the nearest convenient hill, the mission started the Asistencia, soon taken over as a home
by one of the Lugos, who covered the plains and hills with their cattle and horses, only
to be succeeded by the Mormons, intent upon grain raising, milling, lumbering and
education. These in turn were quickly succeeded by druggist and legislator Dr. Ben Barton,
with his diversified farming, vineyards and winery. The southeasters neck of his holdings,
where the Kingsbury school now stands, was so totally unprepossessing that he tried to
dump it at forty cents an acre, but failed.
So he grazed sheep upon it, lest it be a total loss.
At the eastern end of the valley, Myron H. Crafts was sending his Indian
shepherds into the Crafton hills with his sheep, was feeding the grain he raised to his
hogs; was busily shipping wool and honey and hams, was drying peaches and apricots and
raisins, was experimenting gingerly with oranges as Anson van Leuven had done at
Cottonwood Row before him, and, with the help of Indian and Chinese servants, was starting
the valley’s first health haven. Having acquired 1850 acres, he established a
townsite at the eastern end of Colton avenue, and set aside forty acres for a future
college at Sixth avenue, between Wabash and Opal streets, facing the present home of Carl
and Helen Doss with their twelve adopted children of assorted nationalities, a ready-made
student body, had the college ever been started there.
Northwestward, between the Zanja and the Santa Ana river, lay sandy-soiled
Lugonia with its peaches, its apricots, its grapes, its dryers, its winery where the
college now stands, its few oranges along, Pioneer avenue:, its alfalfa and its olive
orchards.
South of the Zanja was the Redlands Residence Tract, with its plaza at
Cypress and Center, its formerly sheep-tracked soil having now proved superb for citrus,
making Redlands for two Generations the heart of the navel orange empire.
West of Redlands and Lugonia was a row of four other planned townsites:
Terracina, Barton, Victoria and Gladysta, to omit that slightly more rowdy western
settlement variously designated as Idlewild, Nahant, Redlands Junction and Bryn Mawr,
which, according to Chris Barnes' lively "I Remember When" Fortnightly paper,
was so unrestrainedly effervescent in its Saturday night celebrations that each Sunday
morning the constable searched its weedy ditches for corpses or prospective convalescents.
Immediately cast of Lugonia and Redlands were Mentone and that
business-minded Chicago Colony whose shrewd politicians helped manipulate the ten
competing communities (except Mentone and Bryn Mawr into more or less reluctant acceptance
of the new downtown Redlands business site as the commercial center for all.
Acceptance of the: Redlands site was more easily attained than acceptance
of the Redlands name. Earlier the whole area had been referred to as the East San
Bernardino Valley, soon shortened (by the mere dropping of seven of the nine syllables) to
Eastberne, defined s including 'the Redlands -Lugonia-CraftonTerracina-Old San
Bcrnardino-Highlands country,' and giving name to a subdivision and two railroad stations
south of the present college campus.
When the incorporative merging of Redlands, Lugonia and Crafton was
brewing, redbeardod Scipio Craig nominated some inclusive new names.
"Moreno, a Spanish word meaning brown."
Frank E. Brown, that is, of Judson and Brown, cofounders of Redlands. His
popularity was amusingly attested by the Santa Ana Blade:
F. E. Brown is certainly
the most popular man in Redlands and this part of the San Bernardino valley. The proud
father, searching for a suitable name for his firstborn, instantly selects Brcwn in,
preference to George Washington, Grant or Lincoln, and there is no doubt that in the near
future, when the ambitious young town has reached somewhere .near the dimensions predicted
by its inhabitants ....we shall have Brown's Hall, Brown's University, Brown Avenue, and I
should not be surprised if the people some day, in a moment of enthusiasm, change the name
of the city to Brownland.
The Moreno hills, the Moreno Valley and the town of Moreno actually are
Frank E. Brown's namesakes, but that is as near as Redlands ever got to being named
Brownland, though the progressive chance of color caused by continued cultivation is
causing the name to become increasingly appropriate.
In addition to Moreno, Craig suggested:
Redonia, a compound work, formed from Redlands’ first syllable
and the last of Lugonia
Lugoland, from the same words in an inverse order.
Miramont, from two words, mira, to look at, and mont, mountain:
really meaning, "? look 4t the mountain,: which no one in Redlands could ever escape
doing until God sent smog, after which thick darkness covered the face of the earth as
the: waters cover the sea.
Craig's own preference was for the name
Citropolis, from the Greek, meaning -- freely translated -- City of
Oranges.
This brought forth a Letter to the Editor from a man in Massachusetts:
Regarding a name under which the whole east valley may be incorporated and
be happy let me add my thought.
The mountains are common
property to all parts of Southern California, or in fact, most parts of the state, so we
will pass by the Monte Vistas, etc.,, etc.
I wish again to call attention to a natural feature of the scenery common
to Crafton, Lugonia and Redlands, the beautiful Zanja.
Why not make that brook which has been the physical barrier between
Lugonia a and Redlands, the. tie which shall for all future time bind the settlements
together with a common name, common purposes and common ambition? Calling attention to
this brook, beautiful as any among the mountains of Pew England, and to the giant alders.
on its banks, why not let the inhabitants of Crafton, Lugonia and Redlands unite to drink
health and long life to the common name of ALDERBROOOK?
In these degenerate latter days, when both alders and brook have died and
the downtown freeway usurps the former divisive function, perhaps we sniffing the aromatic
odors of the exhaustless exhausts, can now rename the town DIESELDORF. Ironically true. it
is that the downtown business center to which the other communities so reluctantly
capitulated, is., under pressure of automobiles and of population growth already reverting
to scattered shopping centers located in approximately the same: areas as the early
competing townsites. Thus does the whirligig of time bring in its twisted revenges.
It is amply evident, however, that in 1895 Kirke Field's quarry lived far
asunder, and it is small wonder that in the earlier years of Fortnightly any rainy day
caused automatic cancellation of a meeting.
To me it is somewhat surprising that Field anti Easter, newcomers both,
were able to nominate impromptu, in a town as scattered as Redlands.. twenty suitable
members.
Of course the town was, population-wise, tiny. Its exact total in January
1895, we do not know. Field estimated it as nearer 3,000 than 3,500. We do know that the
census of 1890 gave it 2,315, not counting the Indians.
In 189?, two years after the formation of Fortnightly, Redlands contained
954 residences, ranging from fourteen tents to seven mansions of sixteen or more rooms
each. In them dwelt 3,935 people. The 1960 preliminary census reports credit Redlands with
26,634. Today a task comparable to Easter's and Field's would be for a committee of
sixteen recently arrived Redlanders to name offhand 1600 men of marked intellectual
interests and to secure 172 of them as charter members of a n: w discussion club.
Fortunately we lack one advantage they had. Redlands is no longer
primarily an ambulatory infirmary. You doubtless noted Field's wryly humorous description
of himself:
I had been seriously engaged in ,disproving, the predictions of my
physicians. Jay the early winter of 1894-95 my health permitted some return to the
activities of life.
Early Redlands was crowded with invalids and near-invalids, enforcedly
idle, many of the; a well educated, intellectually able and needing distraction from their
troubles.
In his 1955 Fortnightly paper, 'Aspirin for Redlands in 1960? Donald S.C.
Anderson noted. that, perhaps 20% of the early population came here on doctors' orders,
having various pulmonary ailments but that hope and a dry climate without smog worked
wonders.
Not always.
Of 63 deaths in Redlands during the year ending six months before
Fortnightly, 27 were from consumption. In the year ending, six months after the formation
of Fortnightly, of 'l2 do atho, 36 were from consumption. James i4. Wheat Secretary of the
Board of Health, commented:
As usual, deaths from consumption swell the list, being one-half the whole
number. Three only can be justly charged to the city; .others were invalids from that
disease, and came here hoping to prolong life, living from one hour to seven years.* a.
Two of the three noted as due to Redlands were victims from. nursing consumptives....This
disease seems to be coming to the front as a contagious disease. Statistics show that one
fourth of all adults die of consumption .... As the last season's influx of .consumptives
began to arrive at Redlands, the City Trustees took informal action to prevent its
contagion.
Perhaps no more startling evidence as to present changed conditions and
changed terminology can be afforded than the comment of my twenty-one years old secretary
as she typed these statistics-- .
"What,: she asked
curiously, "is consumption?"
I have no means of knowing statistically the incidence of illness among
the early members of the Fortnightly club, but the following may be considered, shall I
say, symptomatic.
In 1882 J. S. Edwards came here to die, and he faithfully did so fifty-one
years later. In-188h Isaac Ford, aged twenty-two, arrived with a life expectancy of six
months; he died recently at ninety:. six. Broken in health, John P. Fisk quit teaching at
Beloit college., became Redlands' first realtor in 1887, died in 19h5. It was his
daughter's illness that brought W. F. Harper
here. In 1891 W. E. Lockwood, Fellow in Physiology ,at Clark University, found his
strength overtaxed, resigned came to Rodlands. Charles Putnam, deprived of a college
education by reason of his own illness, came here for his wife's health. E. T. Painter,
Pittsburgh physician and medical editor, arrived in 1891, recuperated, opened an office
for eye, ear, nose and throat.
Philadelphian E. F. Partridge. after a highly successful career in
banking and manufacturing, achieved despite severe physical infirmities died in Redlands
at 64. W. M.. Smith member vi' the Army Beard of Medical Examiners in Washington, D.C.,
later the most far ,sighted and successful
health officer the Port of New York had until then had, came to Redlands in 1894 after
traveling widely in search of health. 11, 1887, the Reverend Orange H. Spoor carne, at
once bean to recuperate from illness caused by overwork.
Ill health drove W. M. Tisdale from law, made him the manager of three
hotels in Redlands, and an ardent, frequently published author. W. H. White, who
engineered sewers in New York, helped engineer the harbor at San Pedro., caused the buying
of the Pillsbury and Washburn m:ills in Minneapolis, came to Redlands a consumptive, and
was the first Fortnightly member to die. H. H. Sinclair, marine lawyer, worked on a
Redlands ranch to recover his health, and pioneered what has grown to be the California
Edison empire, All these were Fprtnghtly members.
An extremely valuable fortnightly paper could be prepared showing the
immense contributions to the greatness of Redlands which have been made by her valiant
valetudinarians. One can but muse on the possible relationship of this to the presumed
danger signals noted by Don Anderson two years ago in his "Seventy and Still in
Second," in which he said:
Redlands has been a town
set apart, above the. average... Will it soon become just another nondescript small town
with no claim to distinction, whose citizens are content with the ordinary and satisfied
with the minimum?
Our big concern on our seventieth birthday is not with the small day to
day problems ....but rather with the long term decisions to be made ....by people having a
paucity of background and vision.
And,may I add, of dedication?
Perhaps one trouble with Redlands today is that we have grown too healthy
and too much at ease in Zion.
What an intriguing lot those 3,936 early Redlanders were. Only 883 were
native Californians, 437 Redlands born. The remaining:, 3,053 were from 49 other states
and territories, and 24 foreign countries. So Redlands, while new and scattered and small,
was decidedly cosmopolitan.
Illinois had sent 319, Ohio 235, New York 215, Pennsylvania 159, Iowa 149,
Michigan 145,- Missouri i 122, Massachusetts 119, Connecticut 117, Indiana 106. The South
had furnished but few -- Texas 55, Kentucky 38, Tennessee 23, Virginia 19, Alabama 1L,
Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, West Virginia 33 each, Arkansas 8, Georgia, North
Carolina 7 each, South Carolina 5, Florida 2.
Canada had sent 139, England 13.0, Germany 58, Mexico but 51, China.,
Sweden 39 each, Ireland 3h, Scotland 23, Austria 13, Japan, Norway Portugal 10 each,
Denmark, Wales $ each, France 6, Australia h, Colombia Switzerland the West Indies 3 each,
British India 2, Bermuda, Finland, Hawaii, Turkey one each. The 39 Chinese were the
dwindled remnants of hundreds who been driven out of Redlands by the new Geary law and job
shortages caused by the panic of 1893 and the catastrophic bankruptcy of the Bear Valley
Irrigation company with its shattered grandiose plan of furnishing water to Moreno
Alesandro, Perris and, ultimately, Elsinore.' The Domestic water company confined -t
itself la r; ely to filling the faucets of Redlands residences, any; to untangling the:
intricacies of the fifty-two items on which water bills ware based, some of which wore:
Water furnished to a family of not more than 5 persons, per mo. $1.00For :each extra one in family, above 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10For each head of stock kept by private family, not over 2, per mo. . 25Each head of stock ever 2 . s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Each bath tub in private house, per month . . . . . . . .,. . . . . 25Each water closet in private house, per month . . . . . . . . . . . 25Building purposes, each 1,000 brick wet and laid . . . . . . . . . . 15Meters for running coffee mills, per month . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.00Lawns, for each square yard over 50 square yards, per month . . . .1/2
cent
In addition to being new and small and scattered and consumptive and
cosmopolitan, and bedeviled with fifty-two varieties of water rates, Red1ands was
exceptionally well educated. The founding members of Fortnightly fairly oozed academic
excellence.
And that meant much in 1895, when higher education was not the commonplace
it has since become. The meticulous arrangement of names titles and
professions in the minutes of the first meeting reveals clearly the pecking order of early
Fortnightly prestige.
First named was the Reverend Dr. J. D. Easter;' next noted were the
Reverends A. J. Wells, J. F. Dutton and J, H. Williams. One pace behind the Reverends was
the Professor, Charles H. Gleason. In undistinguished mediocrity came the mere Mssrs
Alfred H. Smiley L. M. Winston., W. Howard White, H. VI. Nason., E. McK. Hayden,, Charles
Putnam, J. H. Field and Daniel W. Willard though some of them were very distinguished
mediocrities indeed.
Of these not initially present, yet charter members, the judge outranked
the physicians, the physicians outranked the banker and others: Judge George E. Otis Drs. Robert F. Allen and C. A. Sanborn., Mssrs. H. D.
Moore, Frank P.Morrison, H. H. Garstin.
The Reverend Dr. J. D. Easter, Episcopal minister in a village of 3,000,
was worthy of the intellectual respect of any man. After his first degree from Yale, he
had, graduated as chemist and geologist from Heidelberg and. had followed this by further
studios at the University of Gottingen and the Saxon School of Mines at Freiberg. He had
taught chemistry and physics at the University of Georgia until his ordination.
Incidentally. at his death he left his valuable collection of minerals to the University
of Redlands He had bean for thirteen years a member of the Jacksonville., Illinois,
Literary Union., which he proposed as a pattern for the new club, Field suggesting as
name, Fortnightly Club, with the usual result -Easter was unanimously elected president,
Field unanimously vice-president..
Those who propose, get proposed.
The educational backgrounds of the charter members presaged lively and
intelligent discussions. The Reverend J. H. Williams was a graduate of Amherst and of the
Andover Theological Seminary, and had been a high school teacher of Faun, Chemistry and
Rhetoric.
Professor Charles B, Gleason was teaching at the newly-formed high school,
which had just graduated its first class, of twelve, who had done so well that already the
high school was pridefully joining Town and Gown in Redlands. Within little more than a
year after the University of Redlands opened, tuo-thirds of its faculty were members of
Fortnightly. If the same ratio existed to`^y there would be sixty University of Redlands
active i'or nightly members now. Sine: 1909. there have been thirty-six or 12% of all
Fortnighters. These have given .•z somewhat wider diversity to the club membership
tending, to count erbalance the original preponderance of engineers and medicos, rind to
bring in -.en :.hose academic training, vas predominantly mid-- rather than New
Englandish.
Of the original faculty GE-orge Robertson A. B., McGill University, was
already a member of Fortnightly. Like J. D. Easter he combined the church with science,
having been the Canadian born Congregational pastor of the Mentone Community church before
becoming the highly revered professor of geology and botany at the university. After his
death the first endowed professorship was established in his honor. .
A. Harvey Collins, with his bachelor's decree from the University of
Indiana, and grnduate work at the University of California, had been in Fortnightly while
principal of the Kin gsbury school in Real Redlands, before removing to the public school
system of Covina* Returning as professor of history and registrar, and after retirement,
-is muni c i pal court. judge he resumed members hip in Fortnightly, and became its
secretary.
George L. Melton came to the deanship of the college and to Fortnightly
with one-yearold Ph.D. from the University of -Chicao, where he had been for two years
instructor in history and superintendent of library purchasing.
The riverside lad who as little Willie Kyle had visited Redlands in his
boyhood, now returned as Junes 1'1. Kyle, professor of Latin and Greek, with degrees from
Denison and Chicago, and further study at the Royal Museum 3t Berlin and in the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens.
George D. Knights as pastor at Upper Alton, Illinois, had tried to
persuade Victor Leroy Duke. not to leave Shurtleff college for the uncertain future of the
new University of Redlands. Duke, however, proved the more persuasive, and both came,
Knights as professor of English, which position I later held, and Duke as professor of
..mathematics, treasurer, later as dean and ultimately as president. While the infant
University of Redlands grew strong, the long established Shurtleff languished, and went
out of existence a few years ago. Knights held degrees from Colgate and Rochester, and was
near his doctorate at Pennsylvania. Duke's degrees were from Shurtleff, with graduate work
at Chicago.
These had been brought to Redlands and were joined in Fortnightly by the
University's first president, .Jasper Newton Field, whose training had been at Denison in
Ohio and ?:organ Park in Illinois.
Two members of his faculty could not join Fortnightly -- Don Jose
Rodrigues.. head of the school of music, because of his pain-racked tubercular body, and
S. Guy Jones, the youngest member of the staff, whose duties as professor of chemistry and
physics and extra duties as athletic coach confined him to the campus at Fortnightly
meeting .times. Rodrirues was the first member of the faculty to die; Jones is now the
only surviving member of the faculty of 1909.
The bright and shining star of all the faculty, however.,, failed to be
invited into Fortnightly. President Field openly rated him above all others on his staff
in ability, and boasted about him most lyrically in letters to prospective students.
A graduate of the College of the Ozarks and the University of Missouri,
With his doctorate from Heidellberg.. he had taught at the Academy of languages in accredited in al). the five
fields then taught at the University ity in Berkeley, whereas rose California hi^h schools
were accredited in but two or three . Gleason, a high honor:, graduate of Harvard, was
adept in the classics, in mathematics, and in modern languages Having been a Harvard
player, he coached the Redlands High School's first football team He soon left the
Redlands High school and the Fortnightly club to teach at the University of California.
Six decades later Berkeley richly repaid the debt by letting us have as our deeply
appreciated secretaryits Dean C. W. Porter.
Dr. Robert Thomas Allen, British born, recently from San Francisco, and a
practicing physician in Redlands, confessed to two medical degrees from the University of
Edinburgh, though a possibly over-imaginative reporter had upon his Arrival credited him
with degrees also from Lublin, Berlin, Vienna and Leipsic. Soon after reaching Redlands he attained American citizenship.
Dr. Charles A. Sanborn had finished the medical course at Bowdoin, at the
Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York and had twice taken post graduate courses
,at the Postgraduate Medical College in New York City.
Plain Quaker Alfred H. Smiley, with a bachelor's degree and a master's
degree and teaching experience, all at Haverford., formerly headmaster of his own
privately owned prep school, formerly public high school principal, formerly city
superintendent of schools, had lost his pecking order of academic pr-stige by de.:
generating into me=rely a wealthy inn-keeper and philanthropist. He personally had
gathered pledges to start the first free public library in Redlands, for which his twin
brother Albert Y. later gave the building in which note we meet. This same brother,
together with T. E. N. Eaton, Professor of Pure Mathematics at Massachusetts Polytechnic,
was made an honorary member of Fortnightly at its second sea= sion. Albert had already
been for twenty years a trustee of Brown University. For the decade since its beginning he
had been a trustee of Bryn Maawr college, and had been the president of the ..board of
trustees of the flew York State Normal ever since its founding. The Smileys had sponsors-d
at their own expense perhaps the most significant conferences in America on Indian
affairs, on the welfare of negroes north and south, and on international arbitration. They
were the trusted councilors of the mighty.
Plain Lindley Murray Winston, also Quaker, also Haverford, and may next
door neighbor for four years when I first came to Redlands'. had been a civil engineer for
the C8&Q railroad, a bridge builder for the city of Philadelphia, end a construction
engineer for the Santa Fe railway.
W. Howard White after graduation from Harvard, had continued his education
as a civil and sanitary engineer in Europe. Daniel Willard was a graduate of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Frank P. Morrison had.spent three years in Yale's.
Sheffield Scientific School.
Such.were the qualities of the men who pooled their intellectual and
financial resources to form the Fortnightly. Pooling of financial assets occurred at the
second meeting when they recklessly set annual dues at twenty-five cents. During the
ensuing sixty-five years expenses have steadily soared and the club has groin more wildly
extravarant, until dues now stand at a whopping 800% of their original liberal level, or a
paralyzing two dollars a year, thus inexorably and viciously substituting green matter for
grey matter tea a basis for membership. Unless sternly checked this financial debauch ray
persist until witin the next sixty- five years Fortnightly dues may conceivably zoom
another 000%, to reach sixteen dollars a year. Where then will we be?
Presumably we will be nearing our twp thousandth regular program. And
those programs will almost certainly be one of the most continuingly effective tiesIv
joining, Town and Gown in Redlands. Within little more than a year after
the University of Redlands opened, tvo-thirds of its faculty :are members of Fortnightly.
If the same ratio existed today there would be sixty Univcrsity of Redlands active
Forttnightly members now. Since 1909. there have been thirty-six or 12% of all
Fortnighters. These have given a somewhat wider diversity to the club membership tending
to count counterbalance the original pre-preponderance of engineers and medicos, and to
bring in man whose academic training vas predominantly midwestern .rather than New
Englandish
Of the faculty George Robertson A. B., McGill University, was already a
member of Fortnightly. Like J. D. Easter he combined the church with science, having, been
the Canadian born Congregational pastor of the Mentone Community church before becoming
the highly revered professor of geology and botany at the university. After his death then
first endowed professorship was established in his honor. .
A. Harvey Collins, with his bachelor's degree from the University of
Indiana, and graduate work at the University of California, had been in Fortnightly while
pri principal of the Kingsbury school in Real ands, before removing to the public school
system of Covina. Returning as professor of history and registrar, and after retirement, a
s municipal court judge he resumed membership s hip in Fortnightly, and became its
secretary.
George L. Melton came to the deanship of the college and to Fortnightly
with ' oneyear-old Ph.D. from the University of -Chicago, where he had been for two
years instructor in history and superintendent of library purchasing.
The riverside lad who as little Willie Kyle: had visited Redlands in his
boyhood, now returned as James W. Kyle, professor of Latin and Greek, with degrees from
Denison and Chicago, and further study at the Royal Museum at Berlin and in the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens.
George D. Knights as pastor at Upper Alton, Illinois, had tried to
persuade Victor Leroy Duke. not to leave Shurtleff college for the uncertain future of the
new University of Redlands. Duke, however, proved the more persuasive, and both came,
Knights as professor of English which position I later held, and Duke as professor of
.mathematics, treasurer, later as dean and ultimately as president. While the infant
University of Redlands grew strong, the long established Shurt,eff languished, and went
out of existence a few years age. Knights held degrees from Colgate and Rochester, and was
near his doctorate at Pennsylvania. Duke's degrees were from Shurtleff, with graduate work
at Chicago.
These had been brought to Redlands and ';ere joined in Fortnightly by the
University's first president, .Jasper Newton Field., whose training had been at Denison in
Ohio and Morgan Park in Illinois.
Two members of his faculty could not join Fortnightly -- Don Jose
Rodrigues.. head of the school of music, because of his pain-racked tubercular body, and
S. Guy Jones, the youngest member of the staff, whose duties as professor of chemistry and
physics and extra duties as athletic coach confined him to the campus at Fortnightly
meeting.times. Rodrigues was the first member of the faculty to die; Jones is now the only
surviving member of the faculty of 1909.
The bright and shining star of all the faculty, however,, failed to be
invited into Fortnightly. President Field openly rated him above all others on his staff
in ability, and boasted about him most; lyrically in letters to prospective students.
A graduate of the College of the Ozarks and the University of Missouri,
with his doctorate from Heidelberg he had taught at the Academy of languages in Buenos
Ayres and at the universities of Missouri Iowa and' Utah.
He secured from a publisher a sizable rift of new books for the
university's embryonic library. HQ secured elsewhere a cash gift of $10;000. He secured
students.
He directed plays and acted in them. He spoke eight languages and read twenty:
President Field wrote ecstatically; He is a born genius. He is a marvel, a walking
encyclopedia, a table of university contents, sharp as a razor and a bundle of enthusiasm.
He has a very engaging personality. .
And yet this paragon of perfection was never nominated for Fortnightly.
Why?
Evidently Fortnightly's careful scrutiny of prospective members was
even then in excellent working order, for at the end of his first year the angelic visitor
departed from Redlands under a quite tangible cloud, and President Field wrote feelingly
to his next prospective employer "The less you have to de with him the more fortunate
you are."
From its beginning, in the minds of J. D. Easter and Kirke Field,
Fortnightly has been carefully selective concerning its membership.
In one significant
way, however,, the club has departed from the pristine purity of its immaculate
conception. Initially it adopted the Jacksonville method of selecting topics for papers,
each member suggesting themes he would like to hear discussed. From these, listed in a
record bcok, members selected their subjects. Thus the hearers initiated the topics, and
each preparer of a paper was assured in advance of at least one interested listener.
Today there is no such comforting assurance. The speaker now
arrogates to himself the initiative, and brashly suggests to the club not what it may wish
to hear, but what he yearns to effervesce about. The prospective victims are thus limited
to voting merely on whether they are unalterably opposed to hearing him on that topic.
Unfortunately they seldom are: club courtesy can become a
vice,Stemming perhaps in part.from this changed method of topic selection, but probably
mere from an enlarged and more diverse membership) and from drastically changed world
conditions, has come a more prosaic pattern of papers in a less prosaic age.
And this is strange. Who , reading our titles for the spring of 1960 would
guess that this was the year of chaos in the Congo, madness in Cuba, racial tensions in
America, inter- national summit meetings that did not meet, spectacular invasions of
space? In the midst of these gadarene rushings toward destruction. we have since January,
last discussed the religious settlement of America, the theory of tragedy (under the title
'Goat Song, with Variations") the modern and expanding use of life insurance, the use
of jet planes to reach contract bridge tournaments, hobbies, science versus the underworld
with special reference to banking (which, being interpreted is -- How to Blow a Safe and
How to Keep a Safe from Being Blown), the fascination of physics, the Pennsylvania Baptist
colony at Ephrata, and twice
we have discussed nostalgically the cc ::d old days of rugged
individualism, before coffeebreaks and social security.And have been preoccupied with
ourselves. How different the world was as . described by Kirke Field!
1895 is in the for away victorian era. How settled and
per-,,,r,nc;nt the leading nIticns seemed at that datel How safe the throne of monarchs!
Vict-Iria had begun her rein in 1837, Franz Joseph of Austria in 1848, the Mikado in 1867,
Leopold : f Belgium in 1865, Humbert of Italy in 1878 end Kaiser 'Wilhelm in 1888.
And yet Kirke Field's first paper yeas on Korea and the Chinese Japanese
war, Garstin's vats on the; Annexation of Hawaii Otis dealt with the Ruined Cities of
Central Amsrica and Putnam with Japanese Civilization. Each spoke from extensive first
hand knowledge. The Reverend vin. Dutton spoke on Ccsmic Culture in a Club (Ralph Waldo
Emerson), the Reverend Mr. Easter gave one of the very few book reviews in the history of
the club, dealing with Kidd's Social Evolution, the Reverend Mr. Williams discussed
the English Language. Professor Gleason talked on Greek and Latin Drama in Modern
Representation, Dr. Alien,, 1-I. D., discussed Hypnotism.
It was not until June that anybody r-ot around to arty topic so prosaic as
The Outlook for Orange Culture in This Re;.ion and The Water Supply of This Region. Our
forefathers seemed mere interested in world affairs than ire.
In 1927 A. Harvey Collins grouped the 467 Fortnightly papers thus far
given into 37 categories. Fifty-three he said dealt with sociology, socialism and the
like, 35 with history. Education, International relations and political science eaoh had
28, economics 27, science 24, literature had 21, medicine and health 19, horticulture and
agriculture 18. Fourteen ::are psychological or psychoanalytic, a like number
biographical, while 13 Were geographical. Twelve dealt with government, and 12 with other
peoples. Ten uses? transportation and communication, and the same number dealt with
geology while 9 were industrial. There were 8 each in archeology, forestry, religion and
theology, and: philosophy, 7 on travel, 6 each on recreation, war, and water problems,
five each on art and criminology, 4 on judicial topics, 3 on animal life, 2 each on
autobiography, inventions and discovery, the press, resources. Bring.up the rear with one
each were book reviews, charity and ethnography.
I am surprised at the 53 in his-first croup; though I would not have
lumped sociology and socialism together.' I am surprised at the negligible number on art,
book reviews, charity, criminology inventions, judicial topics, natural resources and the
press during the first thirty-two years of the club.
In another fashion we possibly have faltered in the faith. We now rarely
pass club resolutions upon how to run the world, whereas we formerly did so with
frequency, urgency, variety and a certain touching trust in the efficacy of such
pseudo-magical formulae as "WHEREAS" and "BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED."
The club's first formal action in a matter of urgent national import was
its pronouncement on the Venezuela dispute as related to the Monroe Doctrine
Resolve:: that we put on record our earnest protest against hasty action
on this grave and important mitten and respectfully petition. Congress to exhaust every
possible Moans to settle by peaceful methods controver. sies with Great Britain or other
foreign nations.
In like fashion the club called upon Congress to buy the remaining pine
for ests in the San Bernardino mountains to protect cur watershed; called upon the
government to quit discharging foresters in a time of great drought ,and fire hazard; to
set aside the Calaveras trove of bin tries .as a national park: called upon the state
legislature to defeat the Gates bill forbidding the University of California-to publish
the results of its tests of fertilizers; called upon the city of Redlands to adopt an
ordinance =nco to prevent the spread of tuberculosis; protested permitting San Francisco
further to encroach on the public domain in the Hetch valley as a water supply; protested
a pr oposed million dollar reduction in a federal appropriation for western forests;
proposed that Redlands stores and offices grant employees , Saturday half-holidays during,
the latter half of June and the months of July, August and September; opposed lowering the
California requirements for -P license to practice medicine; urged California legislators
to construct a reformatory for first offenders; endorsed a proposed federal child labor
law; -appointed a committee to seek for Redlands the state's n,;: experiment station. It
urged abolishing the Fahrenheit thermometer in favor of the Centigrade. It proposed
remedies for the unsanitary conditions of the streams supplying Redlands with water.
Gradually, however, the club lost this crusading spirit. When in 1919 A.
Harvey Collins - finished reading his paper on the league of Nations, Professor E. Ray
Nichols proposed
RESOLUTIONS 0111 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
1. The Fortnightly Club of Redlands endorses without qualification the
plan for a League of Nations adopted by the Peace Conference zit Versailles, France, and
endorses also the incorporation of the plan for the League as a part of the terms of the
Treaty of Peace.
2. Recognizing that the League of Nations Issue is and should remain a
matter of foreign policy upon which our country should present a united non-partisan
front, the Fortnightly Club deplores. and condemns the attempt made in the Sixty-fifth
Congress and elsewhere to seize upon this issue as a matter of partisan politics.
3. 'rho Fortnightly Club condemns,, further, the signed pact entered into
by thirtyseven senators of the Sixty-sixth Congress to fight the League of .Nations
plan, and requests the junior Senator from California to rem. ove.his -name from the list
of thirty-seven out oaf regard for the desires which we firmly believe to be held by the
large majority of his constituents.
It took six weeks for the club to pass a much modified version from which
it had deleted:
Resolved further, that senators who are influenced in the consideration of
this subject by-partisan political motives are false to the best interests of their
country. are unworthy representatives of their constituents and untrue to the memory of
the thousands of young Americans who laid down their lives that a better world might come
into being.
In 1924 the club polled its members , to fins how many had changed opinion
in the intervening five years. Of the A .votes, if still favored joining the League; 8
opposed. Of the 16 favoring 8 favored joining without reservations; 6 favored joining with
reservations; 2 Were doubtful as to reservations.Twenty-one favored joining the World Curt; 3 were; opposed.
Significantly, a near note appeared in Fortnightly minutes
"No action was taken as to broadcasting the results."
Thirteen years later, in 193?, when Still!:-:n Berry presented a
resolution sponsored by Dr. Iwar 1-.'cstcrber-_ condemning and oppo sir.:-; the proposals
of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to enlarge the Supreme Court, the resolution was
without discussion laid on the table, causing Secretary A. Harvey Collins to ex-
wrathfully in the only secretarial marginal cement in sixty-five years of Fortnightly
minutes: .
The secretary is wondering whether this club has reached such a condition
that the g foremost current national proposition cannot be discussed on its merits and
dispassionately.
Ten months later E. D. Patterscn was, after considerable discussion,
permitted by a large vote, to give his paper on "The Ku Klux Klan." In the
discussion that followed the paper I was shocked to hear four members. of the club -
Collins) Mr, Ide and Clock -- reveal that each had been approached: by members of the Klan
in Redlands., demanding that they join.
No resolution of any sort was proposed.
For good or ill, because of decreased faith in results, increasing
complexity of public questions, or less unity in club conviction, the Era of Resolvings
had delicately departed. .
OKs: belated BE IT RESOLVED I clo recall. quite recently, the club's
unanimous anathema against the new freeway's being ruthlessly rammed through the center of
town. That resolution, so far as effectiveness was concerned, resembled Samuel Goldwyn's
dictum concerning oral agreements. It wasn't worth the paper it-was written on.
Perhaps the demise of declarings may have been connected in part with the
increasing size of the club from its original twenty to its present thirty-five and its
resultant transfer from the intimacy of home gatherings to the more formal atmosphere of a
meeting in a public place, as noted in Professor S. A. Skinner's 1942 paper in which ha
listed the different places in which the slut:. has met before 1910 in homes of the
members; since then, successively, in the parlor of the Y. M. C. A. where the City Hall
not. stands, in the physicians' club room in the Masonic building^ next the Redlands
theatre,, in the reading room of the University Club at the southeast corner of Cajon and
Fern, now an apartment house, in the Presbyterian church parlor at Cajon and Vine, in the
Domestic Science building of the Redlands High School, and, finally, in. the L.yon Wing of
the A. K. Smiley Public library. .
Our first meeting in this wing on December 2, 1926, was the first meeting
of any sort held here except for the presentation ceremonies the day before The club felt
pleased and honored in having sir. Lyon as a n honored guest. (resident A. B. Drake
brought to the notice of the clue the the now room in which the slut: met needed a better
table for the presiding officers. Mssrs. Lyon and Field were asked to procure such a table
for the clue to donate to the library and an assessment of two dollars was declared to
care for the added expense after which Clarence G. White read his "Irresponsible
hamblungs in the Middle Ages," illustrating his own irrepressible irresponsibility by
passing around to all present small baskets of ice cream and cu;: cakes whist:, runs the
record, "caused idiate attention and appreciation to be given to the speaker."At the next meeting the new table was in place (rind still is) and the
officers were asked to secure .a suitable -ift plate to :c- attached to it. Twenty-four
years later the club having wcrn the ceiling thin !,y constant erosive oratory, raised two
hundred dollars to pay half. the cost .-.:f installing acoustical tile
Once in its sixty-five ye ^r^, on October 29 1930, the. club recklessly
al- R woman to address it. Mrs. Clara Dentler wife of member William J. Dentler narrated
her observations and experiences in Germany and -Lstria. Possibly over- by the unique
honor thus done: her, Mrs. Dentler :.-ft::r the death of her Lutheran minister husband,
resigned her position in the history department of the Redlands Hirh School anti became a
member of the faculty of the University of Florence, Italy, %..,hero she still resides,
perhaps yet basking; in her remembered moment of Glory in this room.
Twice additionally have women verged upon beautification - once in the
early years, when a lazy Fortnightly member read a paper written by his wife for another
club, and again latterly when, Harold 07. Woodrow presented his wife's hobby, artistic
candle making, when at least half the club had approved the topic under , the
misunderstanding that he had been given permission to analyze his wife's hi;.bye
Otherwise the club's record is spotless except that back in 1922 the
Reverend S. F. Langford rashly suggested that the admission of. women to membership might
possibly pep up the club. After listening to the remarks engendered by his proposal he
lapsed into a well-informed silence.
Fortnightly men have always been willing to do their own talking.
And not talking only. On Fortnightly's sixtieth anniversary in 1955 the
president commented that its 35 members then held 2? bachelor's degrees 16 master's, and
13 doctorates. They had published 38 L-coks, 2,500 articles, 50 poems, held h patents, and
had 25 listings in various Who's 'Whos.
Concerning this the editor of the Redlands Daily Facts commented:
The reward of membership comes through the enjoyment of hearing what
others arc: thinking a; out, studying, and willing to write a paper about it is this kind
of thing that promotes the high degree of culture for which Redlands is noted.
Let us hope that he was not entirely wrong..
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