This essay was originally published in the 1950 OCHS Yearbook. Please note that this essay was published over 80 years ago. While still useful for general education, language may be outdated and at times offensive. The Oswego County Historical Society does not stand by the language used in this essay. All photos were added in 2024 when this article was uploaded to the web. To view the original document, please visit NYHeritage.org.
Paper Given Before Oswego County Historical Society By William Schenck on Oct. 31, 1950 At Fulton
In the year 1811, Jacob Schenck and his wife and some of his children, including my grandfather, came to live on the West bank of the Oswego River, then a part of the Town of Hannibal, County of Onondaga, in the State of New York. He and several brothers and sisters, children of John Schenck, a Revolutionary Captain of Militia, had upon John’s death several years previously, left home at Penn’s Neck near Princeton, New Jersey, and wandered about in New York State. Jacob bought 100 acres of land, built a house “of the pioneer order of architecture, made of poles, enclosed and covered with broad pine boards, containing four rooms floored with broad pine plank ”
It stood on the west side of the river road (now West First Street in the City of Fulton) in a location then referred to as Oswego Falls which lay between Gansevort and Worth Streets of today. A few log houses belonging to other early settlers were not far away but there were no others below the Upper Falls. There were no settlers whose habitations were then distant from the immediate vicinity of the river. The Indians who had ceded the land to the State still roamed it for the purposes of hunting and fishing.
Daniel Falley Arrives
On June 13, 1813, Daniel Falley, son of another Revolutionary soldier, arrived from Westfield, Mass. (12 days en route) with his wife and mother and family, including my grandmother, to join his father in law, Samuel Holland, then operating the only store at what was known as the Lower Landing on the East side of the river. Their first house was nearby on the river side of the portage road opposite where the Mission Chapel of Samuel Green was located in the nineties (of the next century). They moved across the road later. The vicissitudes of life in a wilderness and the prospect of never seeing her mother again so distraught Mary (Falley) Cleveland, Daniel Falley’s sister, that she wrote the following letter, dated January 12, 1812, which is still interesting and in the family:
Norwich, Jan. the 7, 1812
To Mrs. Margaret Falley, Westfield, Mass.
My dear Mother, I have not heard a word from you or Brother Richard’s family since Zeviah was here. I suppose by this time Brother has retired and is now making preparations for his removal and I am sorry to inform you that our intended removal is given up for the present for which I am very sorry: ‘the goods of Mr. Cleveland which came out in Nov. last and which he intended to carry on to Auborn (sic) were very rich and of course very costly and by no means could answer for such a market in so new a country and he and Brother Benezett have concluded to go into business in New York; he sets out for that place tomorrow morning and will spend the winter there and in the spring we expect to move there if nothing unexpected takes place. I feel quite disappointed in not going to Auborn (sic) for I fully intended to have had you live with me as soon as we got settled there but for some wise purpose God has ordered it otherwise altho we cannot see why it is so. I wish it was so that I could come and see you before you remove but I do not see how I can but I wish you to write me and let me know when you expect to leave Westfield and if possible I will go up. My dear Mother, I think much of you and pray that God would grant you his holy spirit through all the changing scenes of life you have yet to pass through and at last receive us all to himself when re movals, sorrows and sighings shall be no more but when our uninterrupted day of joy and praise shall fill our hearts to God and the Lamb forever and ever. Do give my best love to Brother, Sister and all their dear children. Tell Zeviah and Amanda they must write me. Margaret has gone to Boston to spend the winter to attend school. This I expect will complete her education at school. I expect to spend a lonely winter. Do my dear Mother pray for me and mine that we may be kept from temptation in this world of evil and now my dear Mother may the Lord bless you and keep you in the hollow of his hand for Jesus sake, Amen. Rich ard and Susan send love to their dear Grandma, and all their Cousins and don’t forget your Dutiful and Affectionate child. M. CLEVELAND
The girls must not fail to write their aunt and tell me when you expect to go away and when and how Alexander is and how Brother Daniel’s family are.
The writer of the foregoing letter was the grandmother and her son, Richard, was the father of Grover Cleveland, later President of the United States
Oswego County Formed
The East side of the Oswego river at Fulton was at that time included in Oneida County. Later in 1816 when Oswego County was created by the State Legislature, it was known as the Town of Volney with the West side known as the Town of Granby both became a part of Oswego County.
The Oswego River is a stream of water formed by the Seneca River, the outlet for the Finger Lakes, and the Oneida River, an outlet for a lake so named, which unite at “Three Rivers” 24 miles South of Lake Ontario. Midway there is a natural waterfall -Oswego Falls—the locale of one of the Leather Stocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper. This also is the scene of the events set forth in this paper.
History, however, is not geography. It is neither a description of a stream of water—nor an account of the physical changes effected by dams or bridges across it or canals or aqueducts along its banks. It is a story of a stream of human life which has coursed through the years, in this case from this place as well as at this place, while it was being transformed from a wilderness to a city.
Typical Settler Families
The story of the Falley and Schenck families as typical of the first settlers here has been deemed of sufficient importance by the Oswego County Historical Society as to warrant my effort to prepare and present it. My sources of information, though triple, lack the definiteness of diaries and other like records.
I have my father’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings, historical and biographical, as he corrected and annotated them -and a History of Oswego County quoting my grandfather as to some matters – and a History of Fulton which describes it as I knew it and heard about it in 1901. I also have many original letters dating from 1812 onwards.
I also have some vivid personal recollections of reminiscences of the last of the early Schenck settlers in this area as heard in boyhood days at the family gatherings in the home of my grandmother on Sunday afternoons.
To find the beginning and make an end of a story such as this is like locating the start of a completed circle or a triangle. Rather than undertake to relate it chronologically either as to scenes or actors, I will, except as to Daniel Falley and Jacob Schenck, review the subject under topics: Occupations, Religious Interests, Civic Interests, Homesteads, Families, and Finale.
Schenck And Falley
Families Jacob Schenck built a saw mill which he operated with water power obtained by means of a wing dam at the Lower Falls. Cyril Wilson was his partner.
Before there could be any real farming in the region it had to be cleared of timber. Hence logging and lumbering became the principal means of a livelihood on the West side of the river. In a small way it competed with the East side in the portaging of boats and their cargoes which generally could not be taken over the Falls of the Oswego River. The eastern bank of the river at “the Falls” and at “the flats” a mile or so below the Falls provided better places for boats and their cargoes to be separately loaded on trucks and transported overland between these points. Small settlements were located at these points which were known as “Upper Landing” and “Lower Landing.” This activity which included a warehouse and a store at each place, and a tavern, afforded a means of livelihood to Daniel Falley and others on the East side of the river.
Daniel Falley’s family included five children—George F., aged 15; Lewis F., aged 13; Sarah, aged 12; Mary (my grandmother) aged 7; and Minerva, aged 5. An infant son born after the arrival here of the family soon died.
Jacob Schenck’s family included nine children—John, aged 17; Peter, aged 15; (though his ar rival was delayed until 1815 by reason of his having been apprenticed and required to complete his apprenticeship agreement); Anna, aged 13; William (my grandfather), aged 11; Isaac, aged 9; Mary, aged 7; Daniel, aged 5; Sarah, aged 3; and Phoebe, aged 1 (who came with her Grandmother Lett later). Three other children, Caroline, Alfred and George, were born in the “Big Shanty” after the family’s arrival at Oswego Falls.
To bring this paper within reasonable bounds, we will eliminate from further discussion of them all except Jacob Schenck and his wife and their sons, John, Peter and William, with an occasional reference to Isaac as they were the only ones to spend most of their lives in this vicinity. Except Daniel Falley and his wife and two of their children, George F. and Mary, with occasional references to Lewis F. and Sarah the members of the Falley family will not be discussed further. Those eliminated moved away in early life or when they married.
Early Activities At Fulton
My Grandmother Falley often mentioned her father and mother and her childhood but seldom referred to his store or the government store house of which he was keeper at the time of the War of 1812. He acquired his father in law’s interest in the firm of Holland & Crocker and in Steen’s location, and he prospered. Upon the death of Mr Crocker who owned the other half interest in said firm and land, this was acquired by his son, George F. Falley, and by Norman Hubbard, husband of Sarah Falley, both of whom had been engaged in the store and they proceeded to develop a settlement where the business section of Fulton is now centered.
Daniel Falley built the foundation and frame for a large, three story public house or hotel at the southeast corner of Oneida and First Streets, on the portage river road, in 1825. In January, 1826, his daughter, Mary, married Levi Carrier, the school teacher, who took over the property and completed the hotel in time for it to have a share in the Fourth of July celebration in 1826 when the cornerstone of the first lock in the Oswego Canal was laid at Fulton.
A new Post Office was also established in that settlement. (May 27, 1826) when the postmaster at the Upper Landing refused to move the post office to Fulton for the convenience of the greater number of persons now resident there.
Elder Schencks Leave
The struggle of Jacob Schenck for a living was different in both manner and result Logging and lumbering were more arduous, more hazardous and less prosperous undertakings in general and for him in particular. The local demand for lumber was slow for many years; it was not always in line with the production of logs; it was out of door weather work: too little or too much snow was as bad as too little or too much water.
When a Spring freshet carried away his wingdam, he was soon beset with financial difficulties which ended in overwhelming financial reverses and the loss of all his property. Opportunities for work elsewhere soon resulted in a change of residence. With the younger members of his family, he and his wife and her mother went to Rochester. This move occurred only a few years before the construction of a private toll bridge across the Oswego river and the completion of the Oswego Canal and its accompanying dam by the State invigorated the business of the locality and paved the way for opportunities for Jacob’s sons who had grown up and were ready to grasp them—along with their friend, George F. Falley.
Second Generation Occupations
Peter Schenck, tiring of work either as a clerk or a painter, had already lived with relatives near Auburn to learn the fundamentals of surveying and had so qualified himself by home study, that he was engaged to survey and lay out the lands for new settlements and his map of 1829 undoubtedly established his reputation as a surveyor. It has been said of him that “he knew every inch of ground, every dividing line, the location of every lot anywhere in this vicinity. As a surveyor, he was esteemed the end of the law. The lines he ran have stood many a strife and contest and will doubtless continue on forever. He surveyed and blocked out both the villages of Fulton and Oswego Falls and maps of his making are the best authority we have as to the streets and blocks of these two villages.”
He was appointed on the State Commission to drain the swamps about Lake Neah-tah-wan-tah and became the surveyor for the project. Letters to his father relate some of his experiences in connection with this work and were known to me when my swimming hole was in the lake outlet which he deepened. He was “Uncle Peter” to most of the family then, though my great Uncle, but there was yet one who called him “Father”.
Uncle John Schenck (my great uncle) had always been engaged in boating except for the time during his youth when he served as a toll keeper for the first wooden bridge across the Oswego river above the Falls from the Upper Landing and Yelverton Island to the tavern of Artemus Curtiss on the West side. Before the Oswego canal was opened, he operated river boats between Salina and Oswego. With the opening of the canal in 1828 he became a “canaler” and followed this occupation thereafter. Instead of describing Uncle John’s early experiences and work on the river, I will relate what I know better about my grandfather’s similar experiences.
Early Shipping On River
In 1821, as the newspapers report and as I recall it, he “hired out” to Norman Hubbard “to run a flat boat between Salina and Oswego Falls ” These trips were made by aid of the wind if it was favorable or by the current, but the chief means of locomotion was by ‘poling’, that is, by pushing the vessel along the shallow stream by aid of long poles and some times when this means failed, by pulling the craft along by a rope stretched to the shore upon which the sailors tugged. At the end of two or three years, he was himself the proprietor of a flat boat, which he named the “Perseverance”, with a capacity of 16 barrels of salt. This vessel was as large as any that in those days navigated the Oswego River. As time went on his trips were extended from Salina to Oswego, his vessel “shooting” or “running” the river falls on its way down river. During those days, Mr. Schenck was opposed to the use of liquor and never allowed whiskey on his boat for the use of his hands, “preferring as a matter of economy to pay extra wages instead.”
“In 1826, Mr. Hubbard offered him a partnership and they built a saw mill which was situated in the immediate proximity of the present canal lock in the rear of the Kenyon Block on First Street and they carried on the saw mill! and lumber trade there until Mr. Hubbard’s death in 1827 and he carrying on the mill until 1836. This was operated by power from a wing dam, probably the same wing dam referred to in the plans for a road to Hannibal as ‘Hubbard & Falley’s mill dam’.
Early Manufacturing
“On the Oswego Falls side of the river”, according to a newspaper clipping, “William Schenck built what later became the Thomas Wright saw mill, sundering his business connections in Fulton and carrying on the saw mill and lumber business until 1847 when, being in poor health he gave up that business and engaged in merchandise pursuits in Fulton, forming a partnership with Cyrus Phillips and having a store at one time in the building now (1878) occupied by Kenyon’s Savings Bank and at another time in the post office building which he continued until 1853 and during this time they also manufactured furniture in a building near the river below the dam on the East side.
“His first purchase of farm land was in company with three others when he bought 600 acres on the South Hannibal plank road. Then he bought a farm at Granby Center and subsequently his present property.” A letter to his father, dated January 4, 1855, refers to some of these matters in the prosperous days before the financial depression of 1857.
The Toll Bridge
The bridge mentioned in this letter was the private toll bridge built by the Falleys and others in 1826 which the Town of Volney and the Town of Granby had purchased in 1849 and rebuilt for the free use of the public. Although the fact was not mentioned, William Schenck contributed half of the cost of increasing its height. In 1871 this bridge was replaced by an iron bridge and about the same time the D. L. & W. R. R. Co, which had purchased the Oswego & Syracuse Railroad a few years earlier, built a spur of its tracks to the West end of the bridge and erected a freight station there. William Schenck contributed the land needed there for and for a connecting street.
At one time William was the sole owner of water power at the West end of the dam. With John E. Dutton and Charles G. Case he owned the water power at the East end of the dam. They formed the Fulton Water Company. Like the land of Steen’s location (and the other two patents of land here), it was in time divided and subdivided.
How the financial depression affected William and his fortunes is none of our concern though it wrought a change just “as the coming of the canal dropped the bottom out of portaging boats between the Upper Landing and Lower Landing and the sale of merchandise at these points.” For George F. and Lewis F. Falley and their brother in law, Norman Hubbard, it was a change for the better. Their land located between the Landings set them up in business again, and many, many others for it was there that life here in Fulton made a new start.
For George F. Falley, life lasted only 20 years more, less than that for Norman Hubbard. Lewis F. Falley removed a little later to Indiana.
Second Generation Homesteads
As the last statement should indicate, the Falley place in social life of the combined families was not such that a third generation would have enough information or interest to talk about them. From living in it for ten years I know about the homestead of my grandfather, William Schenck. His first wife, Patience Earl, died early in 1835 as he was completing a new home, leaving a daughter. Minerva, aged three.
My grandmother, Mary Falley, has already been referred to as the widow of Levi Carrier who died in 1833. They were then living in the brick house he had built for her at the northwest corner of Cayuga and Third Streets now one of the landmarks of Fulton and long known as the Thayer house because of its long ownership by A. J. Thayer, which was once the home of Chester S. Lord, later for more than 50 years destined to be the managing editor of the “New York Sun,” when his father was the minister of the Fulton Presbyterian Church preceding and during the Civil War period.
A Huge Dwelling
Mrs. Carrier became the wife of my grandfather December 15, 1835, and the mistress of his new home, a one and one half story frame building on the West side of the river road on the West side of the river. She had lived there for forty five years when as a boy of seven I came there with my parents to live with her. From front porch to the back door it was then 119 feet long, three one and one half story sections and two lower ones. With a horse barn, corn shed, smoke house, &c and a garden of flowers, berry bushes, fruit trees and a vegetable patch, the homestead occupied the entire block to the South of the D. L. & W. freight station at Lower Oswego Falls as that part of the village was then known. It was a boy’s paradise.
It was never a palace but the trees about it, all planted by my grandmother, made its surroundings palatial, huge elms, willows, arbor vitae and maples. Down the street to the North, between the approaches to the Lower bridge, on the East side of the road and opposite the original home of Jacob Schenck, was the homestead of his son, Peter, though it was built in his boyhood for his grandmother, Anna Lett. It was then occupied by Peter’s son, Henry, and his family.
“Not very much further on my way to school was great Uncle John Schenck’s homestead at the southwest corner of Worth and Third Streets, then occupied by his daughter, Alice, and her mother, already then invalided and soon to die.
Family Afternoon Gatherings
My grandmother thus became the matriarch of the Schenck family there and the only Falley. It was the custom of the third generation Schencks left in Fulton to gather at her home on Sunday afternoons. Calling in those days was a pleasurable form of entertainment. I would not presume to pretend being able to relate what took place or what was said by anyone on a particular Sunday, nor specify the first or last occasion. They were a happy group except when someone was in trouble. Usually some one had a letter from a Schenck or Falley or ‘in law’ elsewhere. We all had pleasant recollections of all these homesteads and their occupants. Personal rather than business affairs were the subject of inquiry or of anecdote or tale. As many of these pertained to topics which I have not considered, I will proceed with another chapter.
Religious Interests
As a little girl, my grandmother was thrilled when the Methodist circuit riders came and visited at her home. As early as 1813 her father, Daniel Falley, became a Methodist class leader for a number of the neighbors. In 1818, one of the circuit riders who came to preach occasionally, conducted a revival service of considerable length. Her grandfather, Samuel Holland, then 84 years old, her brothers, George and Lewis, also William Schenck ‘professed religion’. It is not surprising therefore that when a Methodist Church was organized, April 17, 1826, two of them were incorporators or that they should become and remain its trustees for life.
In 1847 when the General Conference of the Methodist Church assumed control of Fulton Academy, renamed Falley Seminary in recognition of a substantial gift of money to it by George Falley, and appointed its trustees, William Schenck was appointed trustee and chosen President of the Board, an office he held until 1854 when the Seminary again became a private institution. Peter Schenck was then also a trustee and Secretary of the Board, though he was a Presbyterian. His mother had been a charter member of the Fulton Presbyterian Church organized in 1818 and he became one of the trustees of the re-organized church in 1832.
John Schenck and his family and Isaac Schenck and his family were Methodists.
Political Interests
None of the Schencks or Falleys were Federalists, (in the 19th century) and there is only one today. They were Jeffersonian Republicans. The relations of the Federal government to the State governments were understood and expressed by Jefferson as follows:
“The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best—that the states are independent as to everything within themselves and united as everything respecting foreign relations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the mer chants will manage better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a very inexpensive one—a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.”
In his inaugural address Jefferson stated that the government should manage foreign affairs and “should encourage commerce and agriculture and diffuse information. With these exceptions, the Federal government will undertake no domestic functions.”
A Walking Delegate
It is recorded of Peter Schenck that “he was a delegate to the County Convention at Mexico held the year after the organization of Oswego County from the counties of Onondaga and Oneida in 1816 for the purpose of establishing a party organization in the new County. He was a delegate to the Congressional Convention held soon afterwards at Onondaga Hill which nominated James Earl for Congress. He went to and from both conventions on foot through the woods and devoted three days to each, walking 75 miles to attend the Congressional Convention.
As exhibits of the zeal of his party for the Convention plan of choosing candidates for office there is before you a copy of the personal appeal made to voters by the Corresponding Committee to vote at the Election of 1822 and the County Convention Resolution regarding support of the Republican candidates at the Election of 1823. The advocacy of the Convention in opposition to the then prevailing caucus plan of making nominations for office changed some National Republicans to Democratic Republicans, and their support of Jackson for a second term without their party’s endorsement changed them into Jacksonian Democrats and finally Democrats.
Members of both the Schenck and Falley families seem to have always supported Jackson. The Falleys obtained and held the appointment of Lewis Falley as the first Post Master in the new settlement of Fulton and Peter Schenck held his position as the first Post Master of Granby.
Aided Underground Railroad
The new issue regarding slavery and the political battles over the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave law, the Kansas Nebraska bill and the Dred Scott decision led William Schenck into the “Underground” Railroad movement and into the new Republican party formed in 1854 and later in 1856, in opposition to Buchannan and led four years later in 1860 by Abraham Lincoln. Having read as a boy “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and sensed some of the dangers of flight by a slave or in aiding his escape, it gave me cold chills to stand in what I understood to be a one night hiding place in our cellar for some one my grandfather would deliver to the next station on a route which crossed the Canadian border. My grandmother never admitted knowing about this but her position is clearly shown in Ihe letter she wrote her brother, Lewis Falley, dated March 13, 1856.
Slavery Split Church
William Schenck and John Schenck did not secede from the Methodist Church as their brother Isaac did when the Wesleyan Methodist Church was organized in protest against the early official attitude of the Methodist Church toward slavery. In politics as in religion their children followed their folk. Even the children of Peter did in respect of religion. But not in respect of politics; for Peter was a pacifist at heart and shunned conflicts. Though John called him a “Copper head” once, Peter was President of the Village of Oswego Falls from its incorporation in 1853 until 1866 except for three years.
George F. Falley, along with William and Peter Schenck, was a town supervisor for a time but he served Oswego County in the State Legislature in 1829.
The temperance question also became a political issue. Without exception, Schenck voices, ballots and habits have never supported the liquor traffic. A more positive statement would be diverting.
Second Generation Families
One question popping up quite often in the midst of the most interesting projects we have already considered was: ‘Tis it a boy or a girl?” John answered it or got the answer on nine occasions; Peter eight times and William ten times. Somehow most of them, had enough home grown, home made food and medicine to bring them through or up. The Falleys also had twenty five children in all.
They had what was deemed proper home training in respect of chores, and religion and matters of common sense and common knowledge They also had the advantages of a common school elementary education, then free to all children. In fact their parents promoted and provided for them an educational institution which became famous, Falley Seminary, which the late Dr. Henry F. De Forest has so well depicted— in a paper given before this society several years ago.
Although many second generation Falleys had died or moved away, some of their children came back to attend the Seminary.
Second generation Schenck children here of age, or almost so, were ready to have a share in the affairs of the villages and their parents doubtless were looking forward to a new lease of life, surrounded by them, a busy throng of villagers and prosperous farmers in all directions. War came. Two Schenck sons of John (Martin and Marcus), two of Peter’s sons (Herman and Ed ward), and two of William’s sons (Daniel and William), volunteered to serve in Lincoln’s army to save the Union.
Killed At Gettysburg
I have a daguerreotype of William’s family around the coffin of his son, William, brought from Gettysburg, which I mention because the people who gathered frequently Sunday afternoons in my grandmother’s sitting room as I have related, were with her about that coffin—her youngest son, my father, George Frederick, her eldest son, Daniel, home on furlough, her son, Schuyler, holding the home front then and to the end of her days, and her daughters, Minerva and Elizbeth; also, Uncle John’s sons, Martin and Marcus, home on furlough; and Uncle Peter’s sons, Edward, home on furlough, and Henry. William Schenck, Jr., had been killed at Gettysburg fighting as a member of the famous 147th New York Regiment of volunteers raised in Oswego County and commanded by Col. H. H Lyman of Oswego.
The war ended and the world went on for others. When the custom of the family calling on Aunt Mary began is beyond my memory if I ever knew. She died the year I went to Cornell college. When my mother died the old William Schenck homestead made way for business when Henry Schenck and his wife died. Peter’s house soon went the same way. When John Schenck’s daughter, Alice, moved away, his homestead was sold but it still stands. All of the other second generation Schencks went away too, literally and figuratively. The homes, mills, stores, school buildings, churches, dams and bridges they built have mostly been wrecked or replaced. Only in so far as they were able to pass on the intangible things of life, the impact of their lives is not spent.
Who can measure to the end of that?
A Reminiscence
Scientists say that the energy released by the fission of an atom in some form survives the destruction it accomplishes. Will you pardon a personal experience. Thirty years after the close of the Civil War when I had just been admitted to the bar, Hon. Nevada N. Stranahan recommended me to Hon. H. H. Lyman of Oswego as assistant to Hon. Patrick W. Cullinan, also of Oswego, his Counsel as State Commissioner of Excise, at Albany, N. Y. I got the job and considered myself chiefly indebted to Mr. Stranahan, until I learned that I got it because my uncle, William, had been an officer of the regiment of which Mr. Lyman was the colonel. I then recalled the mysterious tears on Col. Lyman’s cheek during my first interview with him. That was more than fifty years ago but almost the first thing you would notice if you were to enter my home would be an oil painting of that William Schenck and upon looking about, you would also find portraits of Messers Lyman, Cullinan and Mr. Stranahan because I want part of the story of their lives to stay with mine.
Family pride has no right to first place in a paper like this one. Historical papers should deal with individuals only to illustrate how the founders of their community met the circumstances common to all and how on their own feet and with their own hands they labored for a living and established what we proudly call “the American way of life.” Every generation must learn how to live individually, socially and politically, choosing its own way. Edmund Burke once said: “Civilization is a great contract between the great dead ,the living and the unborn”. The great dead have kept their contract faithfully with us and bequeathed to us a mighty heritage. It is for this generation to ask the question (as he did then)—Are we keeping our contract with the unborn as faithfully as the great dead kept theirs with us?
Pressure Groups
Today there are political pressure groups which wittingly or unwittingly would sacrifice some of our American ways in order to meet the social or economic problems of their own group. They are not satisfied with equality under the law. They want equality of opportunity under freedom fortified by legislation which, as an equalizing circumstance, will enable them to deal with those affected by such legislation on an even footing though it destroys their equality under the law.
Other pressure groups, not satisfied with the measure of their own ability to produce what they want, would make the next generation pay for it by issuing bonds.
Other pressure groups want government guarantees that crops will bring specified prices.
Other pressure groups want government protection against the high cost of living. We now even hear of pressure groups to redistribute wealth through taxation in order to promote the general welfare. It is of small concern whether the people of Fulton or Oswego County or any place in this country can name the men and women who, generation by generation, have contributed to our heritage.
It is of vital importance that they have enough interest in it to have a hand in preserving and improving it.
The swift action by organizations from one end of the country to the other to rid themselves of Communists recently indicates that people everywhere do value and do desire to preserve their freedom.
Only the right leader is sometimes needed to put his finger on the right spot at the right time in every contest with these pressure groups, just as the little Dutch boy saved his country’s dike by plugging a leak with his finger until help came.
We will always need more than a dog in the manger. The horse must be fed, because the very existence of such groups in so many places and so many political parties points to problems which will not be settled until they are solved.
