The Last Page
Bellamy, Michael
MUGH PosT-9/ii advertising confuses patriotism with consumerism. But using the flag to sell things is an American tradition. While researching the life of my great-grandfather Edward Bellamy,...
...Since it first appeared, the Pledge has been surrounded by quarrels over ownership...
...And they grew weary and fired him...
...He preached to them relentlessly about Christian obligations to the poor...
...As I followed Francis Bellamy's rightward journey, it occurred to me that the eventual identification of Americanism with capitalism was implicit in the flag-and-pledge campaign...
...They, in turn, were to raise money to buy their school flags by selling these shares to classmates at ten cents each...
...So too was his tenure as a Baptist minister...
...The surrounding campaign certainly enhanced the magazine's considerable prestige...
...Though the official theme of the Columbus Day extravaganza was the Enlightenment— manifested in the inadvertent "discovery" of the New World and the establishment of Amefica's "free" (tax-supported) schools—the flag-and-pledge caper actually equated citizenship with capitalism, and stakeholding with holding stock...
...Years after he wrote it, Francis discovered—after hearing a quiz show on the radio—that the Companion attributed authorship to his deceased boss at the magazine...
...In the meantime, Francis's politics kept drifting rightward, much like the uses to which the Pledge has since been put...
...For the occasion, the magazine published an elaborate ceremony, written mostly by Bellamy, which included the Pledge...
...It may well be that his turn from socialism to reactionary politics was a response to his congregation's resistance to his left-wing ideas...
...Francis also wrote the Pledge of Allegiance...
...MICHAEL BELLAMY I I2 n DISSENT / Summer 2002...
...The proposal was never published (though the desire to use the Pledge to purge has endured...
...Years of depositions, recriminations, and character assassinations ensued...
...More than twenty-six thousand flags were sold at cost—or so said the Youth's Companion...
...Nothing of its scope had occurred before...
...While researching the life of my great-grandfather Edward Bellamy, the author of Looking Backward, I came across a noteworthy conflation of patriotic symbolism with greed...
...Perhaps it is time to think again about a meaning of a patriotism that is neither commodified nor cheap...
...It concerned the Pledge of Allegiance...
...He sent boiler-plate editorials to newspapers across the nation...
...Management's idea was to have simultaneous flag-raisings over the nation's schoolhouses on that quadricentennial Columbus Day...
...It was the byproduct of a scheme to sell flags to public schools hatched by his employer, the Youth's Companion, the best-selling American magazine of the time...
...Congress itself finally vindicated Francis, although this didn't prevent the later publication of a book-length polemic challenging his authorship...
...Bellamy, as project manager, orchestrated a variety of pseudo-events, including a Presidential Proclamation and interviews with congressmen...
...The celebrations were to coincide with the opening of the Chicago World's Fair...
...Frances wrote the Pledge the next year, in 1892...
...This proposal aimed to harness the Pledge to a campaign against "traitors...
...Old Glory wasn't a sacred symbol of the nation's indivisible unity, but a commodifiable object like any other...
...Edward's first cousin, Francis Bellamy, briefly became a socialist after reading Edward's celebrated political novel...
...He then quit the ministry altogether...
...The Pledge attained its canonical status through this media blitz...
...In the xenophobic 1920s, he devised "A Plan for a Counterattack on the Nation's Internal Foes: How to Mobilize the Masses to Support Primary American Doctrines...
...Francis's stint as a Christian socialist was enthusiastic, if brief...
...For Francis, "traitors" included immigrants, Wobblies, and union members...
...The Companion sent one hundred "free" flag "shares" to students across the country...
Vol. 49 • July 2002 • No. 3
