Allen Towner Treadway Quotes
The example which Massachusetts and New England offer in the retention of longstanding custom should be given very careful consideration before ruthlessly permitting it to be sacrificed for mercenary considerations.
America was just emerging from the Great Depression and the economy was still very soft. This quotation is very interesting in that it shows how President Roosevelt tried virtually everything to strengthen the economy which had been devastated under President Hoover—even pushing up Thanksgiving to extend the Christmas shopping season for a week.
Allen Towner Treadway, 1867-1947, U. S. Congressman (MA), Protest of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s proposal to celebrate Thanksgiving one week earlier, 1940
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Note that this is a tribal right and not an individual one. When whites first came to America, the Iroquois, were the most sophisticated Native Americans. They were actually a confederation of 5 different tribes each of which was composed if many clans. Although fierce warriors, they had agreed not to fight each other and to assist if any were attacked. They developed a strong agricultural base, to go with the fishing and hunting, and their confederation were very aggressive and sophisticated traders taking them far from their upstate New York “capitol.” Their governmental structure was quite sophisticated with an elaborate, formal, system of checks and balances, multi-cameral legislatures that recognized numbers of citizens, power and wealth, and even cultural traditions. They were literate, capitalistic and globalistic in that they wanted to trade with all. They had written laws, and women had a role that was unique in world history in that only women owned property in a matrilineal society. Further, it was only the Clan Mothers who voted for the 50 Sachems (~Senators)—but their selections had to be accepted by the people they represented. Ironically the descendants of the Iroquois who remained in New York became a very successful Native American group. In the 2000 census, the average Indian in New York State earned the same income as the average White with no Indian gambling money.
Democracy and a republican form of government ran counter to the Chinese customs and failed, with Yuan Shikai taking all power—the “immemorial custom” of the autocratic Mancho and earlier Chinese dynasties. This failure of republican government in China so colored the future Chinese political leadership that both the Communists and Chang’s Kuomintang Nationalist anti-communists were both dictatorial and autocratic with great power lying in military hands. It was only in the later years of the 20th century that the Nationalists began to have a real democracy and although the Communists became avid capitalists and loosened up in terms of economic freedom, they did not feel the Chinese masses were ready to accept anything but the authoritarian political system that was the Chinese “immemorial custom”. They would not risk another collapse of modern government and all the factions fighting for control as in the Republic failure.
Conservative ire and real hatred has not generally been pronounced in modern times for Democratic Presidents. However, the two most effective and popular Democratic Presidents of the 20th century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and William Clinton produced the most extreme.
