Meet You In Hell!

I just finished reading "Meet You In Hell," the story of the relationship between Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. Frick was the chairman of Carnegie Steel after Carnegie retired, but while Carnegie still owned most of it. It's a fun book because almost everyone in it appears "larger than life." Carnegie and Frick both started out poor, and both started and ran their own businesses. Both eventually were stupendously wealthy. Stupendous is really the only word for it. If you look at the amount of money that Carnegie received when he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan to form the U.S. Steel conglomerate, it doesn't seem like much: $500-plus million. But when you view that money as a fraction of the US GNP, it's about equal to $200 billion today. You can buy and furnish a nuclear powered aircraft carrier for that much money. More to the point, you can put the Gates and the Waltons and the Cabots and the Stanfords in one pocket, and put one hell of a lot of change in your other pocket.

The two fell out, mostly over the handling of the Homestead strike, and that led to Fricks ouster from Carnegie Steel and from the H.C.Frick Coke company. In the process, Carnegie tried to cheat him out of a fortune, literally, by trying to force him to accept the "booked value" of his stake. The difference between $1.5 million and $150 million may not seem like much now, but ... well, no, it does seem like a lot.

The author describes Frick as a man who "never met a grudge he couldn't carry." Not surprisingly, he held onto this grudge for the rest of his life. Carnegie Steel had a huge (for the time) office building in Pittsburgh. Ten stories of gleaming, modern edifice controlling nearly all the steel in the U.S. When a church went on sale next door, Frick bought it, relocated the congregation, and built a fifteen story building a mere twenty feet to the east of the Carnegie building. The Frick building still stands in Pittsburgh, or at least it did when I went to college. The Carnegie building never again saw the light of morning, being in perpetual shadow until lunchtime, and was eventually torn down.

My own grandfather reportedly argued with his sister, and ordered her, in a fit of rage, to "Get out! Get out and never darken my door again!" Through the next four decades he never spoke to or of his sister again. I can relate to carrying a grudge, even if there isn't a fortune involved.

Carnegie, however, had a problem with unpopularity. So on his deathbed he sent a trusted minion to hand-carry a letter to Frick. Frick admitted both the man and the missive, and opened it in his presence. "So, Carnegie wants to meet, does he?" completely surprised the confidant, who had been there when the two men had their contretemps. "Sure, I'll meet with him. Tell him I'll see him in Hell, where we're both going!" was Frick's final rejection.

Andrew Carnegie is famous for selling Carnegie Steel and spending "the rest of his life trying to give away the world's largest fortune." He built libraries, churches, hospitals, and museums; gave organs to churches; established charitable foundations that survive to this day (see any PBS broadcast for example); and tried to advance the relationships among nations to the point of making war an artifact of history. But, "again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Carnegie could not stand opprobrium, and went out of his way to respond to it, even (perhaps especially) when it was justified. It is pretty clear that his desire for a "good name" is what led to his split with Frick, and is what was driving him to his "good works." Frick's reply was not just the rough language of a coke and steel man, but a barb aimed at Carnegie's secret fear.

Early in the book, the author promises that there are many incidental stories that he won't cover. Parts of the history of steel, or of one man or the other, or of America, that don't directly relate. I had no idea, when I mildly accepted his limitation of focus, how truly many stories there were. In passing, he mentions that Frick had become the "King of Coke," driving his competitors under. Carnegie worked for a railroad, and eventually built one of his own. Frick invested in a "Country Club" that owned a valley with a lake formed by damming a river. Downriver was Johnstown, and when the dam collapsed the Johnstown flood ensued. (I've got a book on the subject in my to-read pile, but had no idea of the connection until now.) Carnegie, during his heyday, got the contract for the steel to build the bridge over the Missouri at St. Louis, and to provide all the steel for the Brooklyn Bridge (I finished reading "Nothing Like It In The World" a few weeks back, so I knew that was coming.) He lived through the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and WWI, and died of "The Great Influenza." Before dying, he had offered Woodrow Wilson, then President of the U.S., that he would create a think-tank to work for world peace if Wilson could get two of the great powers to sign eternal peace accords.

Apparently, all the really good bits of American history happened between 1846 and 1920. Man, is that frustrating!

Old home week...

The news this week is filled with stories about China's launch of a two-man craft into orbit, and the videos the two "taikonauts" are sending back. They're national heroes in China.

Strangely, nobody seems to have mentioned why it would be important for the Chinese to put a man in space. What motivates a nation to spend the money it takes to develop a space program, especially a manned program?

There are a couple of reasons I can see. I don't claim these are "the" reason: they are the inscrutable Chinese, after all. But I'm willing to bet cash money that mentioning any of these in a room with the leadership elements of the Chinese government will draw some smiles:

1. Resources: The Chinese know that there are resources in space. This is trite, and sounds sci-fi nerdish, but I think it's true, and when you're running an absolute oligarchy you can take the long view. China is famous for taking the long view anyway, and also famous for having a population in excess of a billion people. What people often don't say after talking about China's population is that the one billion people are supported using 18th and 19th century techniques: most Chinese don't eat food from highly automated farms, the way Americans and Europeans do. That means two things: China could have a surplus if they automated, and China can easily double (or more) their population, if they wish.

But while that works for grain and rice, it doesn't necessarily work for aluminum, zinc, nickel, and other "mineral" resources. So unlike the Americans, who plopped back down on the couch after they beat the Russians at something in space, the Chinese are looking at launching their own satellites and maybe collecting their own rocks.

2. Prestige: Putting a man in space is an exclusive club. Far more so, in these days, than detonating a nuclear device. So China's launch of a manned spacecraft says to the "old" powers: the US and former USSR, "Hey, we're a young hip spacefaring nation. Show us some respect!"

It also, of course, one-ups the other powers in the region: India (also nuclear), and Japan (spacefaring with satellites). On a political/propaganda level, the Chinese have scored a pretty major "be true to your school" type goal. This week, it's cool to be Chinese.

3. Weight: Space capsules are heavy. This is the reason that nobody is talking about: the elephant in the newsroom. Here's a pop quiz for you:

• What's the Chinese word for "rocket powerful enough to place a ton or more of space capsule into orbit"?

It's kind of a trick question, of course. The word is the same in every language on the planet. It's 'inter-continental ballistic missile.'

I'm part of the last generation to grow up with MAD being something other than a bunch of parents whining about drunken driving. So understandably a lot of the people in the newsroom may not have made the connection right away. But I will guarantee that the crowbar that was used to pry the money out of the Chinese government for a manned space program was not: "Gee, boss! We'll beat the Koreans to the moon!"

The Chinese are viewed by everyone — especially the Chinese — as being an "up and coming" nation. They're developing a technological infrastructure, extracting natural resources, becoming a leader in the region, maturing diplomatically (to the point where they've become the leash-holder for N. Korea), and in general are getting ready to become part of what was once called "the First World."

But they've still got that Communist government. What that means, more than anything else, is they've got a government that puts old men in power. Like the Communist USSR and the Mafia, you've got to spend your time, take your licks, pay your dues, whatever, to make it to the top of the Chinese political org-chart. And that means that the people in charge are older even than I am, by a wide margin. They still think this way. Believe it.

The public launch of a manned space mission is fundamentally a statement: "We hereby announce that we have the wherewithal to successfully launch nuclear weapons at targets anywhere on the planet." But it says so in a way that's okay to put on TV. That's what a bunch of generals and politicians get out of a manned space program. 'Tang, the Space Drink' ain't in it!

Now, you'll recall the furor during the Clinton administration over the Chinese theft of plans for some of America's most modern nuclear weapons. Here's the fun news: those weapons are secret- super ultra tippety toppety secret- because they're small. Heavy, mind you: you don't make anything lightweight out of elements that end with "-ium". But we know they've got a booster platform capable of putting a 'manned capsule' in space, and they've got the ability to build very small warheads. It's time for question 2:

• What do you get when you combine a heavy lifter with small warheads?

This is where we separate the sheep from the lambs. If you were born before 1970, I'll bet you got this one right: Multiple, Independently-targetable, Re-entry Vehicles. Hello, MIRV!

MIRV is significant, you probably don't remember, because it was the pinnacle of nuclear warfighting technology. MIRV made it all but impossible to negotiate arms control agreements: counting warheads and launch vehicles separately drove everyone nuts. A 'single' missile with eight or ten or sixteen(!) warheads was 'one'. But take it apart for maintenance or inspection and it stopped being 'one' and started being 'lots'. What a headache.

Now if you've read this far, you're probably thinking, "Dude! You need to drink less coffee and get back on your medication — your paranoia is showing!" And you may be right. But before the butterfly-net boys get here, let's answer one more question, shall we:

• How do you defeat a ground-based missile defense?

As you know, the US government has continued to develop the so-called "Star Wars" program: ground- and space- based missile defenses. They've done so over the objections of the Union of Scientists to Save the Republic, and various other groups who are going to put the genie back in the bottle by forgetting the fact that ballistics is a scientific field that every kid learns about in high school.

The government has pointed at Saddam with his Scud attacks on Israel, Ghadaffi in Libya, Iran, North Korea, and at bad people all around as reasons to keep building. But they generally haven't pointed at China and Taiwan, and they generally haven't reminded everyone in a loud voice that mainland China does short- and intermediate- range missile tests by firing directly over Taiwan. Not that they're threatening anyone, or anything.

There's two answers to the last question, actually. It depends on the ground based system you're facing:

A1: If you're facing a "point defense" system: one that has sensors and defensive stuff (guns, missiles, lasers) located in the same place (like: an island in the Pacific) the answer is to attack it from orbit. Localized systems generally can't respond fast enough to objects that are very far away (like: in orbit) to hit them before they become a threat. In other words, ICBMs.

A2: If you're facing a "distributed" system: one that has sensors spread out across the width and breadth of, say, a continent, then you have a problem because the sensors can be spread out so that a radar in one place (like: Alaska) can hand targeting data off to a weapons system in another place (like: California). In this scenario, you have to provide lots of targets, including specially built "decoys", so the system is too busy to kill all the incoming targets. In other words: MIRV.

So yeah, my medication might be a little low this week. But I'm feeling okay because I've been here before. I know about ICBMs. I know about MIRV. It's old home week for me: I grew up with those guys.

What was the third time?

My excellent buddy Wigwam Jones is a member of a "fraternal organization" - the Knights of Columbus. This story made me think of him:


An old couple were sitting around one evening and the man says to his wife, "We are about to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. We've had a wonderful life together, full of contentment and blessings. But there's something I've always wondered about - tell me, have you ever been unfaithful to me?"

She hesitates a while and then says, "Yes, three times."

"Three times? How did it happen?" the man asks.

The wife begins slowly, "Well, do you remember right after we were married and we were broke and the bank was going to foreclose on our little house?"

"Yes, that was really a terrible time," he replies.

The wife continues, "And remember when I went to see the banker one night and the next day the bank extended our loan?"

"It is hard to take," the man says, "but I guess it really was for us and I can forgive you. What was the second time?"

"Well," she continues, "Do you remember years later when you almost died from the heart problem because we couldn't afford the operation?"

"Yes, I do" the man replies. "Then you remember that right after I went to see the doctor he did your operation at no cost?" the wife continues.

"Yes," says the husband. "That shocks me too, but I understand you did it because of your love for me and I forgive you. But what was the third time?"

The wife lowers her head and says, "Remember when you ran for Exalted Ruler of the Elks and needed 62 more votes?"

Cuba

I read this article this morning from Ralph Peters. He's ex-military, offering advice to America on our problems with the world. He says some interesting things in support of his thesis: that America thrives when the world is changing. He struck a chord with me on Cuba, in particular:

"Cuba may be a small problem in the geostrategic sense, but it certainly fixes America's attention. The instability likely to embarrass us in Cuba will come after Castro's disappearance, as the island's current regime weakens and dissolves. The Batista-Cubans we have harbored in South Florida, whose political influence has maintained one of the most counterproductive of American policies, will try to reclaim, purchase, and bribe their way into power in the land they or their elders exploited then fled. The Cubans who stayed in Cuba, for better and worse, do not want their rich relatives back. And were we to be the least bit just, we would recognize that those who stayed behind have earned the right to decide how their island will be governed in the future. For all our ranting about the Castro dictatorship--which may not be admirable, but which is far more liberal and equitable than many of America's client governments (tourists clamor to go to Havana, not Riyadh)--an honest appraisal reveals that the average Cuban, though impoverished by the policies both of his own government and of the United States, enjoys a better quality of life than that of the average resident of many a "free" Caribbean state. If we intervene at some future date to protect the "rights" and the "legitimate property" of the Miami Cubans at the expense of the Cuban people themselves, we will shame ourselves inexcusably. Post-Castro Cuba, on its own, has an unusually good chance of evolving into a model democracy, but it will not do so if we sanction and support the carpetbagging of emigres who have never found American democracy fully to their tastes."

How true. I grew up in South Florida, and still have some links to Miami, and it's surprising the extent to which the Cuban community has refused to 'Americanize.' In rough numbers, I think a third of Miami Cubans would attempt to return to a post-Castro Cuba.

My buddy Jesse, who sent me the article, points out that this is a particularly bad thing for Floridians since the Cubans are an activist, aggressive voting block and so hold a disproportionate share of power at the state level: the two-thirds that remained behind could compel Florida and possibly U.S. politicians to attempt just this kind of foolishness.