Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • For selling an ounce or less of marijuana to an unregistered person, the federal tax was $100. (To give some sense of how prohibitive the tax was, “legitimate” marijuana was selling for $2 a pound at the time. In 1992 dollars, the federal tax would be roughly $2,000 per ounce.)

  • The Marijuana Tax Act effectively destroyed all legitimate commercial cultivation of hemp. Limited medical use was permitted, but as hemp derivatives became prohibitively expensive for doctors and pharmacists, they turned to chemically derived drugs instead. All other nonmedical uses, from rope to industrial lubricants, were taxed out of existence.

  • With most of their markets gone, farmers stopped growing hemp, and the legitimate industry disappeared. Ironically, though, hemp continued to grow wild all over the country, and its “illegitimate” use was little affected by Congress.

  WAS IT A CONSPIRACY?

  Was a viable hemp industry forced out of existence because it was a threat to people’s health or because it was a threat to a few large businesses that would profit from banning it?

  THE HEARST CONSPIRACY

  • Hemp was outlawed just as a new technology would have made hemp paper far cheaper than wood-pulp paper.

  • Traditionally, hemp fiber had to be separated from the stalk by hand, and the cost of labor made this method uncompetitive. But in 1937—the year that hemp was outlawed, the decorticator machine was invented; it could process as much as three tons of hemp per hour and produced higher-quality fibers with less loss of fiber than wood-based pulp. According to some scientists, hemp would have been able to undercut competing products overnight. Enthusiastic about the new technology, Popular Mechanics predicted that hemp would become America’s first “billion-dollar crop.” The magazine pointed out that “10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land.”

  • According to Jack Herer, an expert on the “hemp conspiracy,” Hearst, the Du Ponts, and other “industrial barons and financiers knew that machinery to cut, bale, decorticate (separate fiber from the stalk) and process hemp into paper was becoming available in the mid-1930s.” (The Emperor Wears No Clothes)

  Coney Island was once full of rabbits, which New York’s colonists called “coneys.”

  • Hearst, one of the promoters of the anti-hemp hysteria, had a vested interest in protecting the pulp industry. Hearst owned enormous timber acreage; competition from hemp paper might have driven the Hearst paper-manufacturing division out of business and caused the value of his acreage to plummet. (ibid.)

  • Herer suggests that Hearst slanted the news in his papers to protect his pulp investments. “In the 1920s and ‘30s,” he writes, “Hearst’s newspaper chain led the deliberate...yellow journalism campaign to have marijuana outlawed. From 1916 to 1937, as an example, the story of a car accident in which a marijuana cigarette was found would dominate the headlines for weeks, while alcohol-related car accidents (which outnumbered marijuana-related accidents by more than 1,000 to 1) made only the back pages.” (ibid.)

  • Herer says that Hearst was even responsible for popularizing the term “marijuana” in American culture. In fact, he suggests, popularizing the word was a key strategy of Hearst’s efforts: “The first step [in creating hysteria] was to introduce the element of fear of the unknown by using a word that no one had ever heard of before...‘marijuana.’” (ibid.)

  THE DU PONT CONSPIRACY

  • The Du Pont Company also had an interest in the pulp industry. At this time, it was in the process of patenting a new sulfuric acid process for producing wood-pulp paper. According to the company’s own records, wood-pulp products ultimately accounted for more than 80% of all of Du Pont’s railroad car loadings for the next 50 years. (ibid.)

  • But Du Pont had even more reasons to be concerned about hemp. In the 1930s, the company was making drastic changes in its business strategy. Traditionally a manufacturer of military explosives, Du Pont realized after the end of World War I that developing peacetime uses for artificial fibers and plastics would be more profitable in the long run. So it began pouring millions of dollars into research—which resulted in the development of such synthetic fibers as rayon and nylon.

  Los Angeles’ full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

  Two years before the prohibitive hemp tax, Du Pont developed a new synthetic fiber, nylon, that was an ideal substitute for hemp rope.

  The year after the hemp tax, Du Pont was able to bring another “miracle” synthetic fabric onto the market—rayon. Rayon, which became widely used for clothing, was a direct competitor to hemp cloth.

  “Congress and the Treasury Department were assured, through secret testimony given by Du Pont, that hemp-seed oil could be replaced with synthetic petrochemical oils made principally by Du Pont.” These oils were used in paints and other products. (ibid.)

  • The millions spent on these products, as well as the hundreds of millions in expected profits from them, could have been wiped out if the newly affordable hemp products were allowed onto the market. So, according to Herer, Du Pont worked with Hearst to eliminate hemp.

  • Du Pont’s pointman was none other than Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the FBN. Anslinger was appointed to the FBN by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who was also chairman of the Mellon Bank, Du Pont’s chief financial backer. But Anslinger’s relationship to Mellon wasn’t just political—he was also married to Mellon’s niece.

  • Anslinger apparently used his political clout to sway congressional opinion on the hemp tax. According to Herer, the American Medical Association (AMA) tried to argue for the medical benefits of hemp. But after AMA officials testified to Congress, “they were quickly denounced by Anslinger and the entire congressional committee, and curtly excused.”

  FOOTNOTES

  • Five years after the hemp tax was imposed, when Japanese seizure of Philippine hemp caused a wartime shortage of rope, the government reversed itself. Overnight, the U.S. government urged hemp cultivation once again and created a stirring movie called “Hemp for Victory”—then, just as quickly, it recriminalized hemp after the shortage had passed.

  • While U.S. hemp was temporarily legal, however, it saved the life of a young pilot named George Bush, who was forced to bail out of his burning airplane after a battle over the Pacific. At the time, he didn’t know that:

  Cincinnati was so famous for its hog industry in the 1830s that it was nicknamed “Porkopolis.”

  Parts of his aircraft engine were lubricated with hemp-seed oil.

  His life-saving parachute webbing was made entirely from U.S.-grown cannabis hemp.

  Virtually all the rigging and ropes of the ship that rescued him were made of cannabis hemp.

  The fire hoses on the ship were woven from cannabis hemp.

  Ironically, President Bush consistently opposed decriminalizing hemp grown in the United States.

  • Does the hemp conspiracy continue? In March 1992, Robert Bonner, the chief of the Drug Enforcement Agency, effectively rejected a petition to permit doctors to prescribe marijuana for patients as a medication for chronic pain. Bonner said: “Beyond doubt the claims that marijuana is medicine are false, dangerous and cruel.” But, according to a federal administrative law judge Francis Young, “the record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people and doing so with safety under medical supervision.” (The New York Times)

  RECOMMENDED READING

  • This article was excerpted from It’s a Conspiracy!, by the National Insecurity Council. It’s highly recommended by the BRI for your bathroom reading.

  • If you’d like a copy (and we know you would), send a check for $10 to EarthWorks Press, P.O. Box 1117, Ashland, OR 97520. Or ask for it at your local bookstore.

  AND NOW, A COUPLE OF BAD JOKES...

  A mushroom walks into a bar and says, “Drinks are on me.”

  The bartender ask
s, “Why are you buying everybody drinks?”

  The mushroom says “Because I’m just a Fungi.”

  Q: Why was the idiot staring at a carton of orange juice?

  A: Because it said concentrate.

  The world’s first female telephone operator was named Emma M. Nutt.

  Q & A:

  ASK THE EXPERTS

  More random questions and answers from America’s trivia experts.

  ON THE SPOT

  Q: What causes freckles?

  A: “Except in the case of albinos, every person’s skin has cells called melanocytes, which produce a certain amount of melanin, a dark pigment that absorbs ultraviolet light. These cells produce melanin at increasing rates when the skin is exposed to sunlight—hence the sunbather’s tan. Some melanocytes are more active than others. Thus when groups of active melanocytes are surrounded by groups of less active melanocytes, the results are islands of pigment known as freckles.” (From Do Elephants Swim? compiled by Robert M. Jones)

  INFLATED WITH PRIDE

  Q: Why is Chicago called the Windy City?

  A: Chicago is pretty windy (with a 10.3-mph-wind average), but that’s not where the nickname comes from. It comes from the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbia Exposition—which was supposed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World, but ended up being used by city politicos to hype Chicago. “So boastful and overblown were the local politicians’ claims about the exposition and the city that a New York City newspaper editor, Charles A. Dana, nicknamed Chicago ‘the windy city.’” (From The Book of Totally Useless Information, by Don Voorhees)

  EVERYTHING’S RELATIVE

  Q: Is it true that Einstei’s parents once thought he was retarded?

  A: Believe it or not, yes. “It took Einstein so long to learn to speak (he didn’t become fluent in his mother tongue of German until age nine) that his parents suspected he was ‘subnormal.’ His teachers agreed: according to legend, when Einstein’s father ask his schoolmaster which profession young Albert should adopt, the schoolmaster replied, ‘It doesn’t matter; he’ll never make a success of anything.’ Actually, though, historians don’t know all that much about his childhood. The reason: Einstein’s memory for personal things was so bad that even he couldn’t remember what happened to him as a kid. ‘You are quite right,’ he said when a friend commented this was hard to believe. ‘My bad memory for personal things [is] really quite astounding.’

  The world’s 1st “motor-hotel”, the Milestone Mo-Tel, opened in San Luis Obispo, CA, in 1925.

  “Interesting note: Even as an adult, Einstein’s genius was not immediately recognized. As late as 1910, more than five years after he published his famous papers on statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and the special theory of relativity, he was still only an associate professor at the University of Zurich earning just 4,500 francs a year. The meager salary wasn’t enough to live on; he was forced to supplement his income with lecture fees and by taking in student boarders. He once told a colleague: ‘In my relativity theory, I set up a clock at every point in space, but in reality I find it difficult to provide even one clock in my room.’” (From Late Night Entertainment, by John Dollison)

  HAIRY THOUGHTS

  Q: Why do people get goose bumps?

  A: “Goose bumps are a vestige from the days when humans were covered with hair. When it got cold, the hairs were stood on end, creating a trap for air and providing insulation. The hairs have long since disappeared, but in the places where they used to be, the skin still bristles, trying to get warm.” (From The Book of Answers, by Barbara Berliner)

  SLICK QUESTION

  Q: Why is ice so slippery?

  A: “Ice has several unusual properties, one of them being that it melts when subjected to pressure. Your foot on ice is such pressure, and a film of melted ice—water—reduces the amount of friction and thus sliding can occur.” (From Science Trivia, by Charles Cazeau)

  See for yourself: Sitcom characters on TV rarely say goodbye when they hang up the phone.

  FIRST REPORTS

  Over the years, we’ve collected “First Reports,” newspaper articles that gave readers their first glimpse of something that eventually became important in some way. Here are a few examples.

  SPACED OUT

  Most people don’t know it was one incident—and one short newspaper story—that started the UFO craze. Here’s the story, sent out over the AP wire from the Pendleton East Oregonian on June 25, 1947.

  Pendleton, Ore. June 25 (AP)—“Nine bright saucer-like objects flying at ‘incredible speed’ at 10,000 feet altitude were reported here today by Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, pilot who said he could not hazard a guess as to what they were.

  “Arnold, a United States Forest Service employee engaged in searching for a missing plane, said he sighted the mysterious objects yesterday at three p.m. They were flying between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, in Washington State, he said, and appeared to weave in and out of formation. Arnold said that he clocked and estimated their speed at 1,200 miles an hour.

  “Enquiries at Yakima last night brought only blank stares, he said, but he added he talked today with an unidentified man from Ukiah, south of here, who said he had seen similar objects over the mountains near Ukiah yesterday.

  “‘It seems impossible,’ Arnold said, ‘but there it is.’” This story was picked up by papers all over the world. At that moment, according to the UFO Encyclopedia, “the age of flying saucers began.”

  THE XEROX MACHINE

  When this article appeared in 1948, Xerox was still known as the Haloid Company.

  Rochester, N.Y. Oct. 23—“A revolutionary process of inkless printing has been developed that might completely change all the operations of the printing and publishing industry. This was announced yesterday by Joseph C. Wilson, presidential the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York.

  “Known as ‘Xerography,’ this basic addition to the graphic arts reproduces pictures and text at the speed of 1,200 feet a minute, on any kind of surface.

  In case you were wondering: The little flap in the back of your throat is called a uvula.

  “Although there is no immediate prospect of applying the method to general photography, the process will be available within about six months for copying uses. Wilson said it will be in the form of a compact Xerocopying machine for reproducing letters, documents, and line work...

  “Looking farther ahead, he said he foresaw incorporating the entire process in a portable Xerocamera. ‘With such a camera, the picture taker can snap the shutter and within a few seconds pull out a finished Xeroprint. If he doesn’t like the picture, he can discard it and try again, using the same Xeroplate.’”

  DEAR ABBY

  Dear Abby’s first column appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 9, 1956. She answered four letters. Here’s one of them.

  “Dear Abby: Maybe you can suggest something to help my sister. She is married to a real heel. He is 6’3” and weighs 240 and she is 5’ and weighs 106. He has a terrible temper and frequently knocks the daylights out of her.—L.L.

  “Dear L.L.: I admit your sister is no physical match for her heavyweight husband, but I’ve seen smaller gals flatten out bigger guys than this with just one look. If your sister has been letting this walrus slap her around frequently, maybe she likes it. Stay out of their family battles, Chum.”

  INTRODUCING THE CD

  This article appeared in the New York Times, March 18, 1983. “Five years ago, the electronics industry brought out the videodisk, heralded as the future of home entertainment systems. This month, the digital compact disk audio system will make its way into American homes, making similar promises. But marketers of the audiodisk play down the kinship, with good cause; sales of videodisks have been dismal. The compact audiodisk system, meanwhile, is expected to replace stereo turntables and albums as the industry standard within the decade.

  “Some question whether the audiodisk will succ
eed. Players now cost $800-$900, and disks are $16-20 each, far too expensive for a popular market.

  “Even if prices come down...some analysts doubt whether consumers will be willing to sacrifice substantial investments in turntables and stacks of traditional recordings.”

  Women have Adam’s apples, too. Men’s are larger to accommodate their longer vocal cords.

  FAMOUS TRIALS:

  THE CADAVER SYNOD

  Here’s the story of a trial that’s stranger than anything you’ll ever see on “Court TV” or “Judge Judy.”

  BACKGROUND. The late ninth century was a difficult period in the history of the Catholic Church. The Holy Roman Empire was disintegrating and as the empire’s power slipped away, so did the authority of the Church; not strong enough militarily to survive on its own, it had to depend on powerful European nobles for protection.

  HERE COMES GUIDO

  In 891, Pope Stephen V turned to Duke Guido III of Spoleto for protection. To cement the relationship, Stephen adopted him as his son and crowned him Holy Roman Emperor.

  ...AND POPE FORMOSUS

  That relationship didn’t last long. Pope Stephen V died a few months later and a new pope, Formosus I, was elected to head the Church. Guido was suspicious of the new pope’s loyalty. So in 892, he forced Formosus to crown him emperor a second time. He also insisted that Formosus name his son Lambert “heir apparent.”

  When Guido died in 894, Formosus backed out of the deal. Rather than crown Lambert emperor, he called on King Arnulf of the East Franks to liberate Rome from Guido’s family.

  ...AND ARNULF

  A year later Arnulf conquered Rome...and Formosus made him emperor. This relationship didn’t last long either: within a few months, Arnulf had suffered paralysis and had to be carried back to Germany; a few months after that, Pope Formosus died.

  ...AND LAMBERT AGAIN

  Lambert, who had retreated back to Spoleto, used the crisis to rally his troops and march on Rome. He reconquered the city in 897.