PHILADELPHIA REFLECTIONS
The musings of a Philadelphia Physician who has served the community for nearly six decades

Volumes

America's Capital City, 1774-1800
The Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from 1774 to 1788. Except for some urgent interruptions, the new republic had its capital here from 1790 to 1800. Except for John Marshall's Supreme Court, Quaker Philadelphia thus formed the social environment for the twenty-five years which shaped the enduring political institutions of America.

Culture: The Flavors of Philadelphia Life
Philadelphia began as a religious colony, a utopia if you will. But all religions were welcome, so Quakerism mainly persists in its effects on others, both locally and in America, in Art, clubs, and the way of life.

Colonial Times
More than half of American history took place before 1776, but after 1492. For Philadelphia, the Colonial period lasted about a century.

Colonial Days
More than half of American history took place before 1776, but after 1492. For Philadelphia, the Colonial period lasted about a century.

Philadelphia Medicine
Several hundred essays on the history and peculiarities of Medicine in Philadelphia, where most of it started.

Philadelphia Since the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began about the time America declared Independence. The young nation faced a clean slate and boundless opportunities.

The Sights of the City
Philadelphia, broadly defined as the Quaker region of three states, contains an astonishing number of interesting places to visit. Three centuries of history leave their marks.

Tourist Trips:
Philadelphia and the Quaker Colonies

The states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey all belonged to William Penn the Quaker. He was the largest private landholder in American history. Using explicit directions, comprehensive touring of the Quaker Colonies takes seven full days. Local residents may need a couple dozen one-day wanderings to match it.

The Right Angle Club of Philadelphia
The Exchange luncheon club of Philadelphia, then meeting at the Bourse, withdrew from association with other Exchange Clubs on a point of principle -- hence the name it adopted, the Right Angle CTlub.

Computers, Websites, and other Digital Gadgetry
What is novel today is old-hat tomorrow; but what is old-hat to someone today is still novel for someone else. These are our own thoughts about a variety of electronic novelties, for whoever finds them of interest.

Recent Convulsions in World Finance
Few people choose to study economics; most people don't want to. But world economics have got in such a state that lots more of us had better give it some thought.

Invaders of Pennsylvania
For a peaceful state, Pennsylvania has suffered many invasions. It's all been one-way; Pennsylvania has never invaded anyone else.

BANKS REDEFINED
.

Tourist Walk in Olde Philadelphia
You've seen the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

Come now on a tour of the city the Founding Brothers lived in, a smaller city than today which they knew intimately. Their Colonial Philadelphia can be seen in a day's walk through the center of town.

Topics

Re-Designing Old Age
A brusque analysis of future trends from a member of the Quiet Generation.

Federalism Slowly Conquers the States
Thirteen sovereign colonies voluntarily combined their power for the common good. But for two hundred years, the new federal government kept taking more power for itself.

Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia
.

Philadelphia Medicine (2)
Philadelphia is where medicine began in America

Causes of the American Revolution
Britain and its colonies had outgrown Eighteenth Century techniques of governance. Unfortunately, both England and America lacked the sophistication to make drastic changes smoothly.

Land Tour Around Delaware Bay
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!

Banking Panic 2007-2009
Mankind hasn't learned how to control sudden wealth, whether in families, third-world countries, or the richest nation in history. The world banking crisis of 2007 is the biggest example yet.

The British Attack Philadelphia
Fighting in the Revolutionary War lasted eight years; for two full years (June 1776 to June 1778) Philadelphia was the objective of military attack. Only the Civil War killed a larger proportion of the population.

Right Angle Club 2009
In progress.

Right Angle Club 2008
A report, to the year 2008 shareholders of the Right Angle Club of Philadelphia, by the outgoing president, Neale Bringhurst... www.philadelphia-reflections.com/topic/120.htm

Quakers: All Alike, All Different
Quaker doctrines emerge from the stories they tell about each other.

Connecticut Invades Pennsylvania!
The rest of the world fights wars about national grievances, both recent and long past. Meanwhile, Connecticut once waged a serious war with Pennsylvania, and we don't even remember it.

Quakers: The Society of Friends
According to an old Quaker joke, the Holy Trinity consists of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Personal Finance
The rules of financial health are simple, but remarkably hard to follow. Be frugal in order to save, use your savings to buy the whole market not parts of it, if this system ain't broke, don't fix it. And don't underestimate your longevity.

Favorite Reflections
George Ross Fisher III M.D. In no particular order, here are the author's own favorites. filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler

Customs, Culture and Traditions
Abundant seafood made it easy to settle here. Agriculture takes longer.

Franklin Inn Club
Hidden in a back alley near the theaters, this little club is the center of the City's literary circle. It enjoys outstanding food in surroundings which suggest Samuel Johnson's club in London.

Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Bucks Counties
The Philadelphia metropolitan region has five Pennsylvania counties, four New Jersey counties, one northern county in the state of Delaware. Here are the four Pennsylvania suburban ones.

America's Historic Square Mile (pre-1800)
Society Hill: Philadelphia's authentic colonial area, from the Delaware River west to 8th Street the limit of settlement in 1776, but for a while the center of America. The richest, most famous men in America lived within a few blocks of each other. Things happened here.

Albert Gallatin
A magnificent but largely forgotten man.

Philadelphia's West Country
Like all cities, Philadelphia is filling in and choking up with subdivisions and development, in all directions from the center. The last place to fill up is the Welsh Barony, a tip of which can be said to extend all the way in town to the Art Museum.

Tourist Trips Around Philadelphia and the Quaker Colonies
The states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey all belonged to William Penn the Quaker. He was the largest private landholder in American history. Using explicit directions, comprehensive touring of the Quaker Colonies takes seven full days. Local residents would need a couple dozen one-day trips to get up to speed.

Government Organization
Government Organization

Outlaws
Even the criminals, the courts and the prisons of this town have a Philadelphia distinctiveness. The underworld has its own version of history.

Dislocations: Financial and Fundamental
The crash of 2007 was more than a bank panic. It was a collision of several revolutions which were all ripples from the same splash.

Haddonfield
Haddonfield is a bit of a secret. It's Philadelphia's "Main Line, East".

Website Development
The website technology supporting Philadelphia Reflections is PHP, MySQL and DHTML. The web hosting service is Internet Planners.

Nature Preservation
Nature preservation and nature destruction are different parts of an eternal process.

Sporting Philadelphia
A few reflections about sports in and around Philadelphia.

Curtis
To Cy Curtis, magazines were just vehicles for advertisers. In fact, his mags taught former farmers how to manage urban life, more or less accidentally creating a focus for American books, authors, politics and literature. The fall of his empire teaches the lesson that antitrust laws against vertical integration are probably unnecessary.

Subcultures
A few reflections about the subcultures in and around Philadelphia.

Investing, Philadelphia Style
Land ownership once was the only practical form of savings, until banking matured in the mid-19th century. Philadelphia took an early lead in what is now called investment and still defines a certain style of it.

Art in Philadelphia
The history of art, particularly painting and sculpture, has been a long and distinguished one. If you add in the art schools, the Philadelphia national influence on artists has been a dominant one.

Historical Preservation
The 20% federal tax credit for historic preservation is said to have been the special pet of Senator Lugar of Indiana. Much of the recent transformation of Philadelphia's downtown is attributed to this incentive.

City of Rivers and Rivulets
Philadelphia has always been defined by the waters that surround it.

Medical Economics
Some Philadelphia physicians are contributors to current national debates on the financing of medical care.

Whither, Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve seems to be a big black box, containing magic. In fact, it's high-wire acrobatics that must not be allowed to fail.

Indigents
With a long history of welcoming and assisting the poor, Philadelphia has always risked swamping the lifeboat by attracting more of them than it can handle.

The Proprietorship of West Jersey
The southern half of New Jersey was William Penn's first venture in real estate. It undoubtedly gave him bigger ideas.

Benjamin Franklin
A collection of Benjamin Franklin tidbits that relate Philadelphia's revolutionary prelate to his moving around the city, the colonies, and the world.

In Memoriam
.

Medical Club of Philadelphia
The Medical Club of Philadelphia was founded in the Nineteenth century, as a social club of doctors devoted to non-medical interests. Lots of famous names, here.

Reminiscences
Watching the constantly passing scene, occasionally opportunities arise to change its flow.

Historical Motor Excursion North of Philadelphia
The narrow waist of New Jersey was the upper border of William Penn's vast land holdings, and the outer edge of Quaker influence. In 1776-77, Lord Howe made this strip the main highway of his attempt to subjugate the Colonies.

Foreign Affairs
This topic is under construction. Feel free to watch it evolve.

Tourist Walk in Olde Philadelphia
Colonial Philadelphia can be seen in a hard day's walk, if you stick to the center of town.

Philadelphia Medicine
The first hospital, the first medical school, the first medical society, and abundant Civil War casualties, all combined to establish the most important medical center in the country. It's still the second largest industry in the city.

Computers, Digital Cameras, and Cellphones
Much of the early development of the electronic computer took place in Philadelphia. We lost the lead, but it might return.

Right Angle Club 2007
A report, to the year 2007 shareholders of the Right Angle Club of Philadelphia, by the outgoing president. www.philadelphia-reflections.com/topic/73.htm

Quakers: William Penn
Although Ben Franklin lately gets more ink, William Penn deserves at least equal rank among the most remarkable men who ever lived.

Philadelphia Reflections is a history of the area around Philadelphia, PA
... William Penn's Quaker Colonies.

  • Try the search box to the left if you don't see what you're looking for.
  • Click the button on the upper right to visit a sampling of our locations on Google Earth.
  • We're Cooliris (Piclens)-ready. Download Piclens, check out its tour, then come back here.

The Final Capture of Philadelphia (6)

{howe}
howe

Philadelphia had only 25,000 inhabitants during the Revolutionary War. Now, nearly that many British soldiers of Sir William Howe poured into town, victorious. Victorious, except for being cut off from their supplies on the warships in the Chesapeake. Men o'war soon sailed up the Delaware River, but found the narrow channel between Fort Mifflin and Fort Mercer in New Jersey blocked by strange contraptions called chevaux-de-frise. These instruments consisted of heavy timbers sunk to the bottom of the river, containing massive iron prongs that reached almost to the surface but pointing downriver. They were effective blocks to wooden vessels, almost impossible to dislodge. The general arrangement was: Fort Mercer on the top of the New Jersey cliff called Red Bank (now National Park), overlooking the blockaded channel. On the other side of the ship channel, Fort Mifflin on an island. A second channel between Fort Mifflin's island and the Pennsylvania shore was quite shallow, allowing special American gun barges and galleys to come down and attack the larger British vessels, then to escape pursuit by fleeing upstream. The Americans had two years to perfect this defense, and it was formidable. Only one or two large sailing vessels could maneuver near it downriver, and at least the Pennsylvania side was difficult to attack across the mud flats.

{jonas}
jonas

When Howe was earlier considering how to attack Philadelphia as he sailed Southward past the mouth of the Delaware, he had decided it was hopeless for his fleet to attack this barrier if it was defended by an army, and the strategy evolved to defeat Washington, first. However, in the event, Washington's Army remained essentially intact after the conquest of the city, and from Valley Forge was not only able to interfere with supplies from the Chesapeake or lower Delaware Bay, but still send reinforcements to the river defense. The communication line on the West side was essentially what is now the Blue Route, the third side of a triangle from Conshohocken to Fort Mifflin which contained all of the British troops. The bend in the Delaware made two sides of this triangle, and turbulence created by the river bend threw up mud islands which made the channel particularly narrow. These islands have since been filled in for the airport, the stadiums and the Naval yard, so the battleground is today unfortunately a little hard to make out, just as is also true of Bunker Hill, North Church, etc. in Boston Harbor.

Four or five hundred Americans were in each of the two forts, and eventually most of them were wiped out, at least half of them by starvation and exposure as much as cannon and musket fire. They had British on both sides of them, heavy guns bombarding them, under attack for weeks. The British kept at it, because to fail would have meant the loss, by starvation and snipers, of the entire British expeditionary force in Philadelphia. A contingent of Hessians under von Donop was sent to Haddonfield and down the King's Highway to attack Fort Mercer from the rear. In a moment famous in Haddonfield, a champion runner named Jonas Cattell sneaked out of the town and ran to Fort Mercer to tell the troops to turn their guns around for an attack from the rear, while meanwhile the Quakers in the little town entertained the Hessians in a very friendly way. There was more to it than that, with some heavy fighting in the open, but von Donop and most of his troops were casualties. The fort had been made smaller in the past, unexpectedly presenting the attackers with a second set of fortifications after they surmounted the outer ones. Later on, a second assault by a different contingent of Hessians did level the Fort. If not, there would have been a third or a fourth assault, because a river passage simply had to be forced to relieve starving Philadelphia. Before the repeated assaults were over, Fort Mifflin had also been bombarded into rubble. But what really carried the day for the British was the late realization that if small Americans boats could sneak down the channel on the Pennsylvania side of Mifflin; then small British boats could go the other way, as well. Although the river blockage was eventually broken, it took six weeks after the battle of Germantown, and meanwhile the heroic defense did a great deal to rally the sympathies of what had been considered maybe a loyalist city, and partly loyalist Colony of New Jersey. Before the winter was over, Howe had to go back to London to explain himself, being replaced by General Clinton, who was much less clever and much more provocative as a conqueror. The first two years had British control by a minority of hothead aristocrats. For the remaining five years of the war, the sobered British concept was no longer liberation of colonial Tories, but subjugation of fanatic Rebels. The realization gradually spread, through both England and America, that the war had been lost, since Independence was more sustainable than such subjugation.


Pennsylvania Prison Society

{http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/images/kingjamesii.jpg}
Duke of York

William Penn, who spent considerable time in British prisons, established a penal code for his new colony which largely swept away the draconian punishments established by the code of the Duke of York. Until as late as 1780, jails were mainly confinement hotels for debtors, prisoners awaiting trial, and witnesses. For actual punishment, the methods were execution and flogging. Penn's Code for Pennsylvania restricted execution to the crime of murder, and flogging to sexual offenses; everything else was punished by fines and imprisonment. Hidden in this code, of course, was the need to invent and construct prisons to service the imprisonment. It would take over a century to address this need, and Philadelphia still has not completely caught up with the need for more prison cells. Without a prison system, the Penn code was impractical, and the colonial penal code retrogressed toward floggings, pillories and hangings after Penn's death.

{Dr. Benjamin Rush}
Dr. Benjamin Rush

In colonial Philadelphia, the main prison was on Walnut Street, with sixteen cells. A neighboring Quaker, Richard Wistar, started a soup kitchen in his own home, taking the soup over to prisoners. By 1773, he had established the Pennsylvania Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners, which was unfortunately disbanded by the occupying British Army in 1777. In 1783, Dr. Benjamin Rush with the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, Bishop White, and the Vaux family, founded the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, which after a century changed its name to the Pennsylvania Prison Society. The Prison Society believes it is the oldest continuous non-profit society in America.

{Eastern State Penitentiary}
Eastern State Penitentiary

The Prison Society has had several major changes in direction. The original concept was to substitute public labor for imprisonment, a less costly arrangement than imprisonment while avoiding a return to floggings and dismemberment. However, the degrading sight of prisoners in chain gangs caused public outcry, and the approach was abandoned. In the spirit of the French and American revolutions, loss of liberty was seen as the greatest punishment conceivable. Added to this was the Quaker concept of inspiring remorse through silent meditation, and the eventual outcome was the construction of the Eastern State Penitentiary on what was then called Cherry Hill. In 1823, it was ominous that Eastern State Penitentiary was the largest structure in America. Although the concept was widely admired and imitated, the prolix Charles Dickens took a violent dislike to the idea of never talking to anyone, and led a reversion away from penitentiaries back to simple prisons. In the days before Alzheimers and schizophrenia were well characterized, the spectacle of massive recidivism was added to the rumor that protracted solitude led to insanity.

{Catherine Wise}
Catherine Wise

From Catherine Wise the Communications Director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the Right Angle Club recently learned that the current evolution of the American penal system has led to a steady state, but a troubled one. There are 2.2 million inmates in American prisons today, more than any other nation including Russia and China. Of these, 75,000 are confined in Pennsylvania, 9,000 in Philadelphia. Recidivism is 67%, the cost is $31,000 per year per inmate, the majority of inmates have been involved with illicit drugs, a growing number are infected with HIV and Hepatitis C , mental illness runs around 20%. The cost of incarceration is growing faster than the cost of either education or healthcare for the community. Prison overcrowding is extremely serious, the programs for managing parole and integration back into society are weak and underfunded. Eighty percent of the inmates are non-white, most prisons are located in remote regions too far for easy visiting, medical care in prison would not seem at all acceptable in general society. The Prison Society has no difficulty finding projects which are urgently needed. Just for an example, take the peculiar prison statistics; it really seems improbable that only 9,000 of the 75,000 Pennsylvania prisoners are in Philadelphia. Then reflect, NIMBY, that no one wants a prison or its visitors near his home, except areas of rural poverty welcome the employment a prison brings. Reflect for a moment that "jails" are paid for by local county taxes and contain prisoners with less than two years to serve. "Prisons" are paid for with state taxes, and contain those sentenced to longer than two years. Finally, add the fact that nonvoting Philadelphia prisoners in rural prisons are counted by the census as residents of the rural area for the purpose of distributing legislative and congressional seats. The rural politicians love the system, the urban neighbors love to be rid of the prison environment, but the prisoner families can't visit the prisoner. Who cares? Who even notices?

During the first World War, Quaker interest in prison matters was greatly stimulated by the imprisonment of many Quaker conscientious objectors to the wartime draft; since that time prison conditions have again become a central interest of the religion. It's hard to prove, but is confidently asserted, that violence and mistreatment of prisoners is appreciably less in Pennsylvania than the rest of the country, California for example. In any event, The Pennsylvania Prison Society is a particularly effective advocate for humane treatment because of credibility achieved over two centuries, with newspaper editors on its board, and sympathetic affiliations with the legislative judicial committees. It knows what it is talking about, as a result of over 5000 annual prison visitations, and it has served the prison administrative corps by performing volunteer work, accepting contracts for parole projects, arranging bus trips for prisoner families to remote prisons, and working for improved funding for prisons. At the moment, there are six highly imaginative bills before the Pennsylvania Legislature, devised and researched by this outside organization with credibility, and political clout. Although the Society takes an occasional contract for a project, it is itself entirely funded by outside contributions, and because of occasional adversarial situations, asks for no funds from the state. Even the contract funds have been questioned, and are only accepted when the working relationships fostered are more useful for the prisoner clients than any co-option which might result.

One final word about medical care in prison. It's not as good as medical care for non-prisoners, and unfortunately it probably never can be. The remote rural location of prisons makes it difficult to obtain physicians and nurses, regardless of wage levels. It's dangerous to be around prisoners, as any guard will tell you, and it's more dangerous to be in control of narcotics amidst a population of addicted convicts. Malingering is nearly universal, both to obtain desired drugs and to spend "easy time" in the infirmary. Many prison escapes are engineered around the necessarily weakened security of the medical system. The prison budgeting system has all the rigidity and weaknesses of any governmental medical system, and in this case it's run far out of sight of the public. Even the bureaucrats in charge are victimized by other bureaucrats. The average duration of incarceration in Pennsylvania is longer than in most other states; the prisons have to keep mental patients because the mental hospitals have all been closed. Fifty years ago, when there was no place to put a non-criminal with tuberculosis, he was put in jail. The parole system is underfunded, there is not nearly enough community support to absorb ex-con's. Behind all this is a shortage of prison facilities. The legislature has got itself into a position that if it moved more prisoners into the outside, more prisoners would just fill the vacancies, costs would go up, and things wouldn't look much better. Only after the backlogs have been absorbed, would there be much visible effect.

WWW.Philadelphia-Reflections.com/blog/1263.htm


Sixth and Walnut to Broad and Samson

{top quote}

In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area remains dominated by medical institutions.
{bottom quote}

Dr. Fisher

As you emerge from the Curtis Building, it is worth a half-block detour to 7th and Samson to glance at Jeweler's Row, a curious concentration of diamond merchants who have clustered there since before the Civil War. However for this leg of the tour, turn about to Washington Square, now a quiet manicured residential square but once the site of the Walnut Street prison, the location of the first balloon ascension, the potters field of colonial days, and the home of the unknown soldier of the Revolutionary War. There are accounts of people catching abundant fish in a brook once running through the square, well into the Nineteenth Century. Because of the brook, there were tanneries in the region; tanneries always smell bad. Accordingly, the deed from the Penn family for the Pennsylvania Hospital nearby is revocable if anyone ever decides to build another tannery on its grounds.

On Sixth Street, a few feet south of Walnut, is the splendid brownstone Italianate structure of the Athenaeum, established just after the Revolution as a private lending library, and continuing so today. It's well worth a brief visit to grasp why Lafayette joined it, and so many other members have contributed Nineteenth Century, mostly French, sculpture and paintings. Next door is the former home of then-Mayor Richardson Dilworth. It looks vaguely Georgian in style, but was actually built forty years ago as Dilworth's personal statement that Society Hill needed to be revived as a fine place to live. Although Charles Peterson is credited with the idea of starting Society Hill by restoring Stephen Girard's house at Third and Spruce, Peterson bought it for $1800 and eventually sold it for millions. By contrast, Dilworth spent millions for his house, and it later sold for much less. Although they served the same cause, the two men of entirely different social class were always rather reserved with each other.

Cross the grassy Washington Square, turning left on Seventh Street. Until 1980, this area was the home of publishing, mainly medical publishing, but now publishing's loft buildings have been converted to condominium apartments. The penthouses on the top of these buildings are invisible from the street, but are truly spectacular.

Spruce Street itself is a sort of architectural museum, with houses on the Delaware dating to 1700, getting progressively more recent as you go West. At the level of Seventh Street, the houses date from around 1810, eventually reaching Broad Street around 1890. Midway up the block of Spruce Street from 7th to 8th on the North Side (the South Side is nothing but facade, covering hospital buildings) is the house --really two houses run together -- of Nicholas Biddle. He had more backyard than most houses in the suburbs now do, even once keeping a baby elephant there. The house was made famous for dinner parties conspiring against Andrew Jackson, and later its social glamour was described admiringly by that gossip diarist of the time, Sydney George Fisher.

At Eighth and Spruce, one half of a city block is occupied by the most modern of hospitals, now tending 440 patients after the manner of a medical Swiss watch. The remaining half of the block is a museum of American Medical History, polished and manicured by professional museumologists. There are, however, many people still alive who remember when it containing 160 desperately sick poor people, tended to by unpaid nursing students and resident physicians. It is frequently said that the history of American Medicine is the history of the Pennsylvania Hospital .

At Ninth and Spruce, Joseph Bonaparte the Emperor's brother once lived, subsisting on a steamer trunk of gold coins he brought along. Continuing north to Locust Street, Thomas Jefferson University begins, and stretches for several blocks in all directions. Before turning west, however, glance down to the southwest corner of 8th and Locust, the original Musical Fund Hall. The music moved west to Broad Street, but the Musical Fund Building was long the largest auditorium in town, housing entertainments and graduations. Abe Lincoln was nominated for his second term, there. Turning about to view Jefferson, it is easy to believe it is now the largest employer in Center City, and furthermore owns most of the major hospitals in the Pennsylvania suburbs.

Now proceed west on Walnut (although if hungry you might instead wish to take a short detour to the Reading Terminal Farmers' Market), going past the little alley between 12th and 13th Streets called Camac Street, a street of little clubs the most notable of which is the Franklin Inn. Note that Camac Street is paved with wooden blocks, to deaden the clip-clop of horses' hooves. At the corner of 13th and Walnut is the Philadelphia Club, the oldest and toniest men's club in town with a membership limited to 300. As you reach Broad Street, you can see the brownstone gingerbread of the Union League, now by far the largest and most successful club in town.

Further north on Broad Street looms City Hall, designed to be the tallest building in the world but superceded by the Eiffel Tower made of tinker toys while the Philadelphians struggled to build with solid stone. Short of the Maginot Line, it is hard to imagine any building more solid than this one. No expense was spared, and it is really worth a tour. That little statue of William Penn on top is 37 feet tall. Just across the street to the north of it is the Masonic Temple, an equally spectacular series of architectural flourishes. If you visit (the public is quite welcome), you will never forget seeing this place. The Masonic Temple is not an imitation of City Hall; it was built there first.

So that's the end of our one-day historic walking tour of historic central Philadelphia. No doubt you are tired and want to go home. We've left you right by Suburban Station (17th and Arch) if you are going to the suburbs. If you are going to New Jersey, take the high speed line at Broad and Locust (there's an entrance down stairs on the two eastern corners).


Steep Yield-Curves Subsidize Banks

The steepness of the federal interest rate curve on a graph -- three-month treasury bills pay less interest than ten-year government debt, with yields for intervening time durations sloping from low to high -- is all a carefully maintained function of the Federal Reserve. The slope of this curve in the newspapers quickly summarizes current Fed policy. The Federal Reserve mainly controls the money supply by issuing or retiring short-term government debt; the effect upon supply by such action raises or lowers short-term rates, which in turn "changes the slope of the yield curve at the short end". The Fed ordinarily ignores the cost of longer term debt, leaving that to be determined by the public bond markets. Less often, the Federal Reserve buys or sells long-term treasury bonds to modify long-term yields, or to adjust the international value of the dollar. By affecting rates at either end of the curve, change in the curve's slope is the result. Sometimes that's intended, and sometimes it just can't be avoided.

Because banks pay interest to depositors at around the short-term rate, while the same banks charge interest rates to borrowers at about the higher federal long-term rate, the current slope of the curve is said to be the main determinant of bank profits. In fact, banks charge whatever the market will bear, and their profitability mainly reflects the cost of the money, which the Fed has the power to set. Banks borrow short, and lend long. If the Federal Reserve artificially cheapens costs for the banks, then bank profits get fattened by public subsidy. Of course, it works the other way as well; in a banking crisis, the yield curve can be forcibly steepened to rescue banks from failure, temporarily sacrificing ideal monetary levels for the purpose. For the most part, what's good for banks is good for the economy; but it turns out bank profits are artificially subsidized much of the time. This artificially widened yield curve eventually punishes retirees and other savers by lowering interest rates on their savings accounts, or else it could punish debtors by increasing the interest rate they pay on mortgages and other credit. For political reasons, the pain is usually shared among voting blocs. It can be argued this subtle subsidy of banks by the public creates the compensating benefit of economic stability despite occasional bubbles and recessions like the present one. However, the Federal Reserve system has operated for almost a century, revealing an enduring bias in favor of inflation, i.e, the subsidy of debtors by creditors. Present policy intentionally allows a steady rate of 2-3% inflation, and the century-long effect of such policy since 1913 has been to increase the price of gold from $17 to $900 an ounce. A penny then is a dollar now, making no allowance for income tax shrinkage of such fictitious gains. Overall, the effect of semi-stabilizing the yield curve is to reward banks and debtors, extracting this subsidy from creditors and retirees. To go a step further, independent of the Federal Reserve but by government action, retirees have been compensated in the past by unearned Social Security payments. The payment imbalance of the entitlement programs is admittedly about to shift in the other direction in a few years. All this is rough math, with many individual exceptions; but the initial effect of the Federal Reserve system is to benefit bank profits at the expense of creditors. If we assume creditors react by demanding higher interest rates to compensate for the cost, bank stability is being maintained by increasing interest rates by 2-3%, mostly paid for by borrowers.

Is this standardless monetary standard worth its inflationary cost? Compared with a strict gold standard, yes, it probably is. A limited supply of gold to support a constantly growing economy once led to deflation and economic instability, and would do so again. An economy without a hard monetary standard responds to politics, is inevitably inflationary. The political independence of the Federal Reserve is dubious at best, and constantly under populist attack. So slow steady inflation seems to be one part of the system we can live with, in order to avoid either deep deflations or galloping inflations. Gradual low inflation may well be the best compromise we can devise, assuming the method of achieving it is otherwise tolerable. The 2008-2010 banking crisis, however, may be a moment of discovery that market systems must also be able to rely on the assumption that almost every bidder in an auction is limited by his pocket book. When two or more determined bidders are eager to buy but unlimited in resources, price ceases to have restraining power and becomes irrational. A marketplace can tolerate a few bidding frenzies, but excessively flexible monetary systems lead to bubbles in small markets, explosions in big ones. Disregard of price is particularly exaggerated by globalized trading systems, where customary prices are soon forgotten by abstraction within a virtual environment of essentially unlimited bidding power by essentially unlimited numbers of bidders. For bidding to stop, all bidders but one must run out of discretionary money.


Free Quaker Meetinghouse

{Independence Hall}
Independence Hall

Until this year, there was a Beautiful Mall stretching north from the State House (Independence Hall) to the approaches of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Concealing an enormous parking garage underneath it, the surface looked like a several-block lawn lined with flowering trees in the spring, framing the beautiful Eighteenth Century building (just as the mall in Washington leads up to the Washington monument.)

Stretching from Independence Hall east to the Delaware River is another mall filled with historical buildings like Carpenters Hall , the First Bank(Girard's) and Second Bank (Biddle's), the Old and the New Custom houses, the American Philosophical Society, and others. The eastern mall was the property of the State of Pennsylvania when it was created, but it soon seemed more economical to the frugal rural legislature to turn it over to the federally funded National Park Service, joining the mall stretching northward. Well, somebody got another ton of federal money appropriated, and now we are filling the north mall with buildings which largely hide Independence Hall from the passersby. With just a few more Congressional earmarks, the imposing beauty of the mall will be submerged, but it hasn't quite reached that point yet. There is a perfectly enormous New Visitors Center, containing a couple of auditoriums and a big bookstore. Mostly the concept seems to be to provide a place to get out of the rain if you are an out of town visitor, provide public bathrooms, and a place to get a hot dog. At least the visitors center is red brick, and arched, with white woodwork. At the far northern end is an overwhelming stark granite block of a building, which will open July 4, 2003. It is a Constitution Center, claimed to be an interactive museum, and we shall see what we shall see. The looming monolith overwhelms and blocks the view to Independence Hall, and it better be good, when the insides get finished.

{Free Quaker Meeting}
Free Quaker Meeting

If Independence Hall, which after all is a block long, is overwhelmed by the new constructions, the Free Quaker Meeting is totally hidden. This perfectly charming Eighteenths Century Quaker meetinghouse is just across Fifth Street from Benjamin Franklin's Grave, and just across Arch Street from the Constitution thing, completely in its shadow. Charles E. Peterson designed the restoration of the building, which had been added to and detracted from, over the years, but you can be sure its interior is now both beautiful and authentic. Before you go in, notice the inscription on the plaque under the northern eaves:

By General Subscription for the FREE QUAKERS. Erected in the Year of OUR LORD 1783 and of the EMPIRE 8.

The Quakers who built this building seem to have thought they were part of a new empire, but that implies an emperor, and of course one was never created. Three years after the dedication of this building the Constitutional Convention met in the same Independence Hall, and our national form of government was somewhat strengthened from the Articles of Confederation also written here. Benjamin Franklin had a hand in both documents, but the first one was mainly composed by John Dickinson, and the second one by James Madison. If you go into the Free Quaker building, it seems to be a single large room with an interior balcony, and a couple of small staircases in the back leading down to what would presumably be restrooms. As a matter of fact, the Park Service extended the basement to include kitchen and dining room, and several offices for themselves which are a surprise if you are allowed to go down to see them.

{History of Free Quaker}
History of Free Quakers

Charlie Peterson wrote a book about the restoration, but the main book about the spiritual history of this group was written by Charles Wetherill. Quakers, as everyone ought to know, are pacifists. The American Revolution put a number of them in a quandary because they agreed that Great Britain was injuring their rights by denying them a representative in the Parliament which ruled them; but resorting to violence was another matter entirely. Eventually a group did break away from the main Quaker church to fight for independence. They were promptly "read out of meeting" , the equivalent of being excommunicated, not allowed to worship in the regular meeting houses they had helped finance or to be buried in the church graveyards. Samuel Wetherill was one of the leaders of this group, just as his descendents are the most active today in the surviving historical society. Samuel created quite a furor, demanding to use the Orthodox meeting house and burial grounds. He was, in his own view, just as much a Quaker as the others since no doctrine is absolutely fixed in that religion, and was freely entitled to speak his mind to persuade others of the rightness of his sincere positions. The main body of Quakers would have none of it, and the Free Quakers were firmly expelled, forced to hold a public subscription and build their own meeting house. Wetherill of course personally knew every one of the members who expelled him, and there may be some truth to his loud, pointed and unchallenged contention that the true division was not between pacifists and fighters, but between Tories and advocates of Independence. Whatever the truth of these accusations, it does seem in retrospect that the split was fairly divided between wealthy established merchants, and small shopkeepers and artisans. Quite a few now-famous names appear on the rolls of the Free Quakers, like Timothy Matlack the actual Scribe of the Declaration of Independence document, Biddles, Lippincott, John Bartrum, Crispins, Kembles, Trippes, and Wetherills. When the meeting had dwindled down in 1830 to two lone parishioners, one was a Wetherill, and the other was Betsy Ross, herself.


what activities or speakers do you have coming up in the spring of this year.
Posted by: terry lee kaly    |    Mar 17, 2009 10:55 AM 2307
I just realized I may be in possession of a Cyclopedia set from 1873 which is signed by F. C. Williams, the founder of The Franklin Inn Club, if someone could verify this it would be appreciated, I have the Cyclopedia set on e-bay right now! Item number 170293848019 I have some videos that give a closeup of the signature on volumes 1 through 9. Is it his?
Posted by: Jorge    |    Jan 12, 2009 6:10 AM 1999
I see you've been busy. But I miss your expertise in medicine.
Wish you were back. Take care and continue your good work.
Posted by: Joyce Gross    |    Jan 2, 2009 11:51 PM 1977
Thanks!,
Posted by: Bhrwerxu    |    Dec 13, 2008 1:31 PM 1947
Dear Dr. Fisher, Your site certainly has grown since its conception and is an all encompasing Philadelphis resource and superbly written and interesting. However, with respect, leaving abortion up to the states only means the wealthy people will travel to a state where it is legal, which is unfair. If that were to happen, then poor people would be aborting illegally again and be at more risk of endangering their health. Nobody likes abortion, however, quality is better than quantity, especially since overpopulation on this globe will kill us all. Besides, do we need more babies going to full term and being left in dumpsters?
Posted by: Elizabeth    |    Nov 4, 2008 3:49 PM 1689
i hope to come to Philly soon. I have so much research to do particularly on the hospitals during the civil war and Thomas Dyott.
Posted by: Susan Neely    |    Aug 2, 2008 4:24 PM 1600
If you have a little free time, read this post:,
Posted by: Phzgiqqa    |    Jun 25, 2008 1:13 AM 1577
where oh where are the kids from the "downtown jewish orphanage" which broke up in the early 60's. It was located at 9th and Shunk. Where are you Dorothy and Sonia Kauffman, Barbara Goldstein, Suzanne Goldstein, Paula and Steve Lickman, Sol and Yvonne Rickland, Bunny Pearl, Darlene and Sarah Markowitz, Kenny Oskow, etc. Get in touch at www.d.art@juno.com Please There are a million stories.....remember the talent shows we had to put on for the fund raisers,,,,,,,Bell Bottom Blues.................Please contact..........................
Posted by: diane ginsberg    |    May 31, 2008 6:09 PM 1543
interesting post thx
Posted by: kris    |    May 19, 2008 8:36 PM 1515
my e mail address is irvger@comcastnet
Posted by: Dr. Irv Gerson to GSF    |    Feb 15, 2008 10:47 PM 903
I was surprised at the division of budget distribution at Penn. Is this good or bad??
Posted by: Dr. Irv Gerson    |    Feb 15, 2008 10:42 PM 902
I would like to see more of your "take" on econonic condtions and the current "industrial revolution"
Posted by: Dr. Irv Gerson    |    Feb 15, 2008 10:27 PM 901
I was researching the West Jersey Pact when I ended up on your wonderful pages. Thank you for so much good Philadelphia information.

Kimmer, volunteer for
genealogytrails.com/penn/philadelphia/index.html
Posted by: KIMMER    |    Jan 24, 2008 5:14 PM 874
Your conception about the orin of theComputer is partially correct . I was there in 1936 during its evolution at Ursinus College. Dr John Mauchley was my Physics Prof
Posted by: Irv Gerson    |    Dec 6, 2007 8:50 PM 780
What a remarkable thing to talk abouyt and so interesting
Posted by: Jamie Kreller    |    Nov 19, 2007 2:08 PM 739
Stumbled upon your website while doing research on ethnic heritage of Philadelphia. I very much enjoy your musings....

Anita McKelvey
anitmckelvey@verizon.net
Posted by: Anita McKelvey    |    Mar 11, 2007 1:28 AM 549
Hello i was wondering what countyhe died in i need it for a report please.
Posted by: Tressa doudna    |    Feb 15, 2007 10:56 AM 515
I am sure that every Chamber of Commerce in the Philadelphia region would be delighted by your Reflections.

Why not contact them and suggest that they link to you and perhaps even recommend you to their visitors?

Ditto the local magazines and newspapers. One of their missions is to generate interest in the region and a recommendation from any of them would drive a great deal of traffic to your diary.

You would get the satisfaction of increased, and perhaps active readership; they would get a great source of interest in the local area.
Posted by: George 4th    |    Jun 3, 2006 7:30 AM 126
Doctor,

I'm glad to see you're back on the air: rotating your articles and adding new content. A veritable encyclopedia on the Quaker Colonies and environs!
Posted by: George 4th    |    May 21, 2006 1:33 AM 70
Please enter your comments here

Name

Comments