Readers Write: Letters from winters past

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Dear readers,

It’s become something of a tradition, on New Year’s Day, to reprint old letters to the editor from Star Tribune days gone by. We hope something in the letters below sparks reflection: on the parallels to the present, on the complexity of Minnesota history or on the reaction of a “photoplay” skeptic in 1928.

Happy New Year,

Elena Neuzil, letters editor

To the Editor of The Tribune:

We hear much in our day about democracy and also the melting pot. Now we have been receiving into this melting pot from every nation, but we have been very careless about watching what we got out of the melting pot. I am one of those who came from another nation and I was received with open arms and given citizenship and all the privileges belonging to that. I did not understand my duty as a citizen.

I understood that democracy meant to the Republican Party and men that belonged to any other party were, in my estimation, rebels. I was at first confirmed in those ideas by public speakers and most of them that I came in contact with. For instance, they told me that the Democrats were altogether blamed for the Civil War and all evils since that time. No effort was made by anyone to teach me the true principles of democracy, and many others have had the same experience.

As I see it now, it is indeed a miracle that we are not in a worse condition as a nation at present than we are, being so careless in training those that have come to our land.

As I believe now that we have come to a time when democracy will be born anew, I ask you, Mr. Editor, if you will consider it important enough to take up this question and discuss it in your valuable paper and with the press of the nation, introducing to the people this great question of learning how to do our full duty as citizens of this nation, as with the great privileges of being a citizen is also a sacred duty; and how we can expect our children or foreigners to know it when we never give them an opportunity to learn? Therefore, I suggest that in the high schools this be taught and in every community there should be formed organizations where older ones could come together and be taught, and to discuss great questions that come up before the nation.

Chas. Lundeen, Minneapolis Morning Tribune, Dec. 31, 1917

It seems to me that the press and the public in general have shown a woeful lack of tact in the way they have treated our German friends and neighbors. Human nature is human nature and persuasion works better than force any day. Enforced loyalty to my mind is not lasting loyalty and some of the methods used to bring the pro-Germans to time have savored so much of the autocratic as to lead one to think that democracy is a failure. And if it is, why spill the blood of our young men in an effort to make the world safe for it? My criticisms are these:

Mrs. Lynch, Minneapolis Morning Tribune, Dec. 5, 1917

To the Editor of the Tribune:

Your courteous call on old settlers for winter experiences leads me to narrate the following:

Early in January, 1854, I left Red Wing in company with S.J. Willard, John Day and Albert Olson for a place 14 miles distant, near where Vasa Church now stands, for the purpose of cutting and hauling logs preparatory for our settlement at that point the following spring. It was a clear, beautiful day, with the thermometer 20 degrees above zero; we had a span of good horses, a sleigh partly loaded with lumber, forage and provisions, for a few days. We arrived at the spot just before dark and camped in a ravine well sheltered with timber. After making ourselves comfortable with a good supper, and a blazing log fire, all four laid down to sleep on a bed made on the snow with a thin layer of hay on top of some boards, and were well wrapped up in blankets. During the night the temperature changed to a terrible cold, the thermometer falling to 45 degrees below zero, as we learned afterwards. Had we known this and kept our fire burning, there would, of course, have been no danger. But being very comfortable we all feel asleep early in the night, and were unconscious of the danger we were in until awakened by the pain of intense cold, and then we were already so overcome with the cold that we lacked power or energy to get up or even to move.

It was about 5 in the morning when we got up; we did not lie down again or attempt to haul out building logs, but started in a few hours on a bee line for a ravine that would lead us back to Red Wing. It was a struggle of life and death to get across the rolling prairie and had the cold been accompanied by a blizzard we would not have got across.

To keep warm we took turns to walk or run behind the sleigh, and Mr. Willard was walking when he was suddenly missed and the team turned back, following its tracks a short distance to a hillside, where we found him sitting down in the snow, apparently comfortable with no desire to move. He rather censured us for coming back after him, claiming that he was all right and would have come along when he got ready, but the fact was that he was already so stupefied with the cold that he would never have made any exertion to move.

After a drive of 10 miles we arrived at the first and only inhabited house between Vasa and Red Wing, and it was high time that we found shelter, both for ourselves and the horses. That was the coldest day of the year, and to me it seemed the coldest in the history of Minnesota.

Hans Mattson, Sunday Tribune, Jan. 22, 1888

Editor, The Star:

If it is true that radio programs have sunk to the level of the average photoplay then the radio is in need of rejuvenation of some kind.

But I don’t believe it is fair to compare the radio programs with the kind of movies they are distributing at present. I don’t believe it would be possible for two distinct types of entertainment to fall to a level as low as that to which the movies have descended.

It is apparent to anyone that the movies of the present day, with a few commendable exceptions, are just stereotyped entertainment features that flicker on the screen for a moment and are quickly forgotten. If there is one moneymaking stage success there are immediately a half-dozen movie versions of it, under various titles. This indicates clearly enough that the movie barons are out for the cash first, last and all the time. It is ridiculous to consider movies as an “art.” They are merely the prostitution of art.