March 18, 2020 • 13 mins
The American Pledge of Allegiance is much more interesting than you might think. Give us 12 minutes and we'll fill you in.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. Just as it should be, short stuff. Let's go.
Do you remember the Pledge of Allegiance by heart? I do.
I was at a city council meeting the other day
and I, um, as you do said it. Yeah. I
was like, oh, I'm a little rusty. It's been a while.
I know I did the same thing. I went to
say it in my head and I was like, I
(00:24):
think I'm getting some of these words wrong. But this
is about the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we should
I'll just read it real quick so everyone knows what
we're talking about. This is this is what we do
in our country. Everybody every morning when we wake up.
When you wake up, the loud speaker in everyone's house
commands you to rise and say the pledge. I pledge
(00:47):
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and and to the Republic for which it stands, one
nation under who, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice
for all all everybody. That was the most bizarre rendition
(01:08):
of the Pledge of Allegiance. I've ever heard in my life.
That's right, and as it turns out, as we will see,
the Pledge of Allegiance was a marketing tool. It was,
it really was. It was an add on for sales
for a little um magazine called The Youth Companion, which
(01:29):
just is not a good name for a magazine. But
it sounds that. I know it's not, but that sounds
so Nazi, it does. That sounds it sounds blandly menacing
somehow right. But it was edited by a guy who
was the opposite of blandly menacing, a guy named Francis
Bellamy Um or he was a Yeah, he was an
(01:52):
assistant editor at the time, and his last name might
sound familiar. His cousin, Edward Bellamy wrote a very famous
utopian novel called Looking Backward, and Looking Backward was basically
about how you know, by the year two thousand, inequality
will have been done away with and people won't work,
will retire at forty five and have a life of leisure,
(02:14):
and things are just gonna be a lot better than
they are now. And one of the ways that they
were going to get better, according to Edward Bellamy and
his cousin Francis, who's the main character in this story,
is through Christian socialist values, and so Francis Bellamy was
a Christian socialist. Josh, it's a socialist. Who's a Christian?
(02:34):
That's right. It was a group of people who said,
you know what, we can get a equitable society. We
can go further as a people through Christian values and
uh being christ like who we can all agree was
probably a socialist. Oh, most decidedly. Everybody knows that. So
(02:59):
at the time, and this is the eight nineties, um,
when our story really is set. Um, there was a
huge influx of immigrants in the United States and it's
very much like it is today. There was a lot
of division over you know, is that a good thing?
Is that a bad thing? Are they going to take
over you know, our jobs? Are they going to drive
(03:19):
wages down? Um? It was a time of great change
for the United States. There was a huge amount of inequality,
just like there is today. It's it's I don't want
to say, a mirror image of our our time, but
there are a lot of similarities. And so Francis Bellamy
was like, I believe that having immigrants is a good thing,
but I also believe that they should become members of America.
(03:42):
They should become Americanized. And one of the ways that
one of the ways he um, he thought that that
would be a good A good way to carry that
out is to um to basically inculcate their children in school,
in public school. Yeah, startom early. Uh. It's an old trick,
(04:03):
the oldest trick in the book. Yeah, it really is.
This is not like radical innovative thinking, No, get get it,
going with the kids and you got them. Um. This
was a big deal though, because um, pre Civil War
there wasn't some big, huge public school system. It was
it was post Civil War eighteen seventies and eighties when
you really started getting the ramp up in public schools
(04:25):
and the idea that hey, we've got all these kids
trapped all day long. Yeah, we can do whatever we want.
We can we can do whatever we want. We can
make them good citizens as well as educating them, and
we can do it all. Hey. I read this article
years back. I don't remember when, but it basically said
that the public school system, I guess, starting about this time,
(04:46):
it was training kids for the sole purpose of going
to work in factories like mindless busy work, um, sitting
still in quiet for eight hours. That Yeah, that that
was ultimately what they were what they were teaching kids
to do. And I was like, wow, that was an
eye opening thing to read. Wow. So sorry to blow
(05:07):
your mind like that, Chuck. But um, around about this time, uh,
the Colombian Exposition was about to happen, and we know
that um by its other name, the World's Fair of Chicago.
That's right. It was at marked the fourth anniversary of
Columbus's first New World Journey. And so the Youth Companion,
(05:31):
the magazine that we've mentioned, and Bellamy, they said, hey,
we can really um get involved in this thing, and
we can really ramp up the patriotism if we team
up with some civic groups and we can sell a
lot of American flags, we can get a lot of
new subscribers to our magazine. We can make some serious coin, yeah,
make some big money basically. And so we're going to
(05:53):
print a program, a patriotic program for these schools all
over the country that kids can recite on this date
on October, which was the big celebration day nationally for
the Colombian celebration. And they said, Bellamy, you go right
this thing, go put something together. Yeah, and he did.
(06:13):
He came up with plays patriotic songs, um ways to
uh um uh honor. Well, I don't know what the
word I'm looking for is. I don't know. I guess
profiles of Civil War heroes. It's just typical patriotic American stuff.
But one of the things, just one of these things
(06:35):
that we're part of this big whole program and wasn't
meant to be some standout thing like it became, was
a Pledge of Allegiance. And it was kind of like
the one that we have today, but a stripped down version.
And we will really get into it right after this message. Alright,
(07:13):
So it's uh right, I got this big celebration going
on honoring the great, great Christopher Columbus, who did everything
the right way. I love that guy. Everyone does. And
there was already a Pledge of Allegiance in eighteen eighty five.
We should mention which came about for the very first
Flag Day celebration. Poor George George T. Balk Or Balch.
(07:39):
It's probably marked from birth. What was that name? Yeah, yeah,
it was never gonna work out for him. He actually
wrote the first Pledge of Allegiance and in some schools
they were doing this and it said, I give my
heart and my hand to my country, one country, one language,
one flag. Not bad. The whole thing on us reads
(08:00):
like a yawn. No, it didn't in Bellamy. I mean,
Bellamy could have just republished this, but he's like, I
can do better, he said, he called it childish. Yeah,
he did. So he wrote his own pledge, a new
pledge of allegiance, and it said, I pledge allegiance to
my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation,
(08:21):
indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And so in
all of the schools that got this UM program recited this,
I guess all at once. It was kind of like
the predecessor to Hands across America or something like that.
And Bellamy said, um, he was. He was pretty proud
of it. But apparently he was going to add liberty, equality,
(08:44):
fraternity at the end, like the French slogan, um, the
French republic slogan. But he's like, it's too fanciful, so
he just left it, left it as is. That's right.
And he also Chuck recommended a way to salute the
flag during the Pledge of allegiance. Dud didn't he sure did? Um,
I mean there's no other way to describe the Bellamy
(09:06):
salute other than a Nazi salute, an upside down Nazi salute. Yeah,
but this was, um, this was way way way before
that came about. So obviously there was there was no
Nazi salute. There were no Nazis. No. But apparently that's
so rather than you know, just imagine the Nazi salute,
but rather than um, your your palm down, your palm
(09:30):
is up kind of like almost like you're like a
backup dancer, like like given it to the to the
lead dancer at the front, but then you got to
do both hands and start them at your waist and
bring them up rights. Have you ever seen that dream
Hands video. No, I'll send it to you, and you're
gonna love it. It's like an instructional dance video for
(09:53):
you know, upward bound kids, and uh, it's I'll just
send it to all right. But anyway, so, it wasn't
until nineteen forty three that we ditched the reverse upside
down Nazi salute to the flag. Until ninety post war
people were doing that, actually, not post war Perry War. Yeah.
(10:17):
I think nineteen twenty three though, was when they had
the first revision to the not lyric, but I guess
you could sing it. Um. At the National Flag Conference,
delegates there said that my flag. They said, you know,
this little vague, and we don't want anyone thinking that
immigrants are talking about their home countries flag. So they changed.
(10:41):
So they changed it to the flag of the United States.
Then I think about a year after that tagged on
of America, just so everyone knew what was going on,
and so um, everybody went bonkers for this pretty pretty
much out of the gate. UM school started reciting it,
like said, they were reciting the other pledge before. Now
(11:02):
they picked up this new one. And UM in New
York became the first state to make reciting the pledge
in schools compulsory, which is a whole different jam than
everyone just saying the pledge is part of this. You know,
um uh this to Christopher Columbus, right, And so very
(11:25):
quickly after that, especially around World War One, at the
beginning of the US's involvement, UM, more and more states
started requiring compulsory pledges in schools too. That's right. And
you know, it's it's no coincidence that those aligned with
moments of political and and certainly warlike upheople in this country. Yes,
(11:47):
and then yeah, we gotta mention and under God because
I think you noticed it and never said that up
until this point in the podcast except at the beginning
when I read it right. That didn't come about until
are I know Eisenhower said, you know, he's the Knights
of Columbus said you know what, Dwight, maybe you should
throw under God in there, and he did, and they said, Um,
(12:11):
I think the quote was, uh, they felt that schools
in the United States were under threat of infiltration by
godless communists, so let's just throw that in there. And
I wonder if they're going to further change it too,
Uh highly divisible instead of indivisible. So so divisible, yes, Um,
(12:34):
there was. There's been a couple of Supreme Court cases
about it, too, Chuck when UM States passed it as compulsory.
Now it's compulsory typically for teachers to lead the pledge,
but not for students. That's not how it always was
UM until ninety three, students were compelled to say the
pledge as well. But then in three in the case
(12:56):
West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnett, which involved some
hope has witnessed children who were like, I'm not supposed
to be doing this. It's a religious thing, um, students
who are Finally, the Supreme Court said no, you can't.
You can't force anyone to say the pledge. That's right.
So that's it for the Pledge of allegiance. Huh Yeah,
(13:16):
good stuff. Thanks to Dave Rouse, our old, our old
pal there. And that's gonna be uh, this is hot
off the presses. This is going to be on the
house Stuffworks website. Yeah, so good. Check it out at
house Stuff Works and in the meantime, Short Stuff is out.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(13:37):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. Just as it should be, short stuff. Let's go.
Do you remember the Pledge of Allegiance by heart? I do.
I was at a city council meeting the other day
and I, um, as you do said it. Yeah. I
was like, oh, I'm a little rusty. It's been a while.
I know I did the same thing. I went to
say it in my head and I was like, I
(00:24):
think I'm getting some of these words wrong. But this
is about the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we should
I'll just read it real quick so everyone knows what
we're talking about. This is this is what we do
in our country. Everybody every morning when we wake up.
When you wake up, the loud speaker in everyone's house
commands you to rise and say the pledge. I pledge
(00:47):
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and and to the Republic for which it stands, one
nation under who, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice
for all all everybody. That was the most bizarre rendition
(01:08):
of the Pledge of Allegiance. I've ever heard in my life.
That's right, and as it turns out, as we will see,
the Pledge of Allegiance was a marketing tool. It was,
it really was. It was an add on for sales
for a little um magazine called The Youth Companion, which
(01:29):
just is not a good name for a magazine. But
it sounds that. I know it's not, but that sounds
so Nazi, it does. That sounds it sounds blandly menacing
somehow right. But it was edited by a guy who
was the opposite of blandly menacing, a guy named Francis
Bellamy Um or he was a Yeah, he was an
(01:52):
assistant editor at the time, and his last name might
sound familiar. His cousin, Edward Bellamy wrote a very famous
utopian novel called Looking Backward, and Looking Backward was basically
about how you know, by the year two thousand, inequality
will have been done away with and people won't work,
will retire at forty five and have a life of leisure,
(02:14):
and things are just gonna be a lot better than
they are now. And one of the ways that they
were going to get better, according to Edward Bellamy and
his cousin Francis, who's the main character in this story,
is through Christian socialist values, and so Francis Bellamy was
a Christian socialist. Josh, it's a socialist. Who's a Christian?
(02:34):
That's right. It was a group of people who said,
you know what, we can get a equitable society. We
can go further as a people through Christian values and
uh being christ like who we can all agree was
probably a socialist. Oh, most decidedly. Everybody knows that. So
(02:59):
at the time, and this is the eight nineties, um,
when our story really is set. Um, there was a
huge influx of immigrants in the United States and it's
very much like it is today. There was a lot
of division over you know, is that a good thing?
Is that a bad thing? Are they going to take
over you know, our jobs? Are they going to drive
(03:19):
wages down? Um? It was a time of great change
for the United States. There was a huge amount of inequality,
just like there is today. It's it's I don't want
to say, a mirror image of our our time, but
there are a lot of similarities. And so Francis Bellamy
was like, I believe that having immigrants is a good thing,
but I also believe that they should become members of America.
(03:42):
They should become Americanized. And one of the ways that
one of the ways he um, he thought that that
would be a good A good way to carry that
out is to um to basically inculcate their children in school,
in public school. Yeah, startom early. Uh. It's an old trick,
(04:03):
the oldest trick in the book. Yeah, it really is.
This is not like radical innovative thinking, No, get get it,
going with the kids and you got them. Um. This
was a big deal though, because um, pre Civil War
there wasn't some big, huge public school system. It was
it was post Civil War eighteen seventies and eighties when
you really started getting the ramp up in public schools
(04:25):
and the idea that hey, we've got all these kids
trapped all day long. Yeah, we can do whatever we want.
We can we can do whatever we want. We can
make them good citizens as well as educating them, and
we can do it all. Hey. I read this article
years back. I don't remember when, but it basically said
that the public school system, I guess, starting about this time,
(04:46):
it was training kids for the sole purpose of going
to work in factories like mindless busy work, um, sitting
still in quiet for eight hours. That Yeah, that that
was ultimately what they were what they were teaching kids
to do. And I was like, wow, that was an
eye opening thing to read. Wow. So sorry to blow
(05:07):
your mind like that, Chuck. But um, around about this time, uh,
the Colombian Exposition was about to happen, and we know
that um by its other name, the World's Fair of Chicago.
That's right. It was at marked the fourth anniversary of
Columbus's first New World Journey. And so the Youth Companion,
(05:31):
the magazine that we've mentioned, and Bellamy, they said, hey,
we can really um get involved in this thing, and
we can really ramp up the patriotism if we team
up with some civic groups and we can sell a
lot of American flags, we can get a lot of
new subscribers to our magazine. We can make some serious coin, yeah,
make some big money basically. And so we're going to
(05:53):
print a program, a patriotic program for these schools all
over the country that kids can recite on this date
on October, which was the big celebration day nationally for
the Colombian celebration. And they said, Bellamy, you go right
this thing, go put something together. Yeah, and he did.
(06:13):
He came up with plays patriotic songs, um ways to
uh um uh honor. Well, I don't know what the
word I'm looking for is. I don't know. I guess
profiles of Civil War heroes. It's just typical patriotic American stuff.
But one of the things, just one of these things
(06:35):
that we're part of this big whole program and wasn't
meant to be some standout thing like it became, was
a Pledge of Allegiance. And it was kind of like
the one that we have today, but a stripped down version.
And we will really get into it right after this message. Alright,
(07:13):
So it's uh right, I got this big celebration going
on honoring the great, great Christopher Columbus, who did everything
the right way. I love that guy. Everyone does. And
there was already a Pledge of Allegiance in eighteen eighty five.
We should mention which came about for the very first
Flag Day celebration. Poor George George T. Balk Or Balch.
(07:39):
It's probably marked from birth. What was that name? Yeah, yeah,
it was never gonna work out for him. He actually
wrote the first Pledge of Allegiance and in some schools
they were doing this and it said, I give my
heart and my hand to my country, one country, one language,
one flag. Not bad. The whole thing on us reads
(08:00):
like a yawn. No, it didn't in Bellamy. I mean,
Bellamy could have just republished this, but he's like, I
can do better, he said, he called it childish. Yeah,
he did. So he wrote his own pledge, a new
pledge of allegiance, and it said, I pledge allegiance to
my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation,
(08:21):
indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And so in
all of the schools that got this UM program recited this,
I guess all at once. It was kind of like
the predecessor to Hands across America or something like that.
And Bellamy said, um, he was. He was pretty proud
of it. But apparently he was going to add liberty, equality,
(08:44):
fraternity at the end, like the French slogan, um, the
French republic slogan. But he's like, it's too fanciful, so
he just left it, left it as is. That's right.
And he also Chuck recommended a way to salute the
flag during the Pledge of allegiance. Dud didn't he sure did? Um,
I mean there's no other way to describe the Bellamy
(09:06):
salute other than a Nazi salute, an upside down Nazi salute. Yeah,
but this was, um, this was way way way before
that came about. So obviously there was there was no
Nazi salute. There were no Nazis. No. But apparently that's
so rather than you know, just imagine the Nazi salute,
but rather than um, your your palm down, your palm
(09:30):
is up kind of like almost like you're like a
backup dancer, like like given it to the to the
lead dancer at the front, but then you got to
do both hands and start them at your waist and
bring them up rights. Have you ever seen that dream
Hands video. No, I'll send it to you, and you're
gonna love it. It's like an instructional dance video for
(09:53):
you know, upward bound kids, and uh, it's I'll just
send it to all right. But anyway, so, it wasn't
until nineteen forty three that we ditched the reverse upside
down Nazi salute to the flag. Until ninety post war
people were doing that, actually, not post war Perry War. Yeah.
(10:17):
I think nineteen twenty three though, was when they had
the first revision to the not lyric, but I guess
you could sing it. Um. At the National Flag Conference,
delegates there said that my flag. They said, you know,
this little vague, and we don't want anyone thinking that
immigrants are talking about their home countries flag. So they changed.
(10:41):
So they changed it to the flag of the United States.
Then I think about a year after that tagged on
of America, just so everyone knew what was going on,
and so um, everybody went bonkers for this pretty pretty
much out of the gate. UM school started reciting it,
like said, they were reciting the other pledge before. Now
(11:02):
they picked up this new one. And UM in New
York became the first state to make reciting the pledge
in schools compulsory, which is a whole different jam than
everyone just saying the pledge is part of this. You know,
um uh this to Christopher Columbus, right, And so very
(11:25):
quickly after that, especially around World War One, at the
beginning of the US's involvement, UM, more and more states
started requiring compulsory pledges in schools too. That's right. And
you know, it's it's no coincidence that those aligned with
moments of political and and certainly warlike upheople in this country. Yes,
(11:47):
and then yeah, we gotta mention and under God because
I think you noticed it and never said that up
until this point in the podcast except at the beginning
when I read it right. That didn't come about until
are I know Eisenhower said, you know, he's the Knights
of Columbus said you know what, Dwight, maybe you should
throw under God in there, and he did, and they said, Um,
(12:11):
I think the quote was, uh, they felt that schools
in the United States were under threat of infiltration by
godless communists, so let's just throw that in there. And
I wonder if they're going to further change it too,
Uh highly divisible instead of indivisible. So so divisible, yes, Um,
(12:34):
there was. There's been a couple of Supreme Court cases
about it, too, Chuck when UM States passed it as compulsory.
Now it's compulsory typically for teachers to lead the pledge,
but not for students. That's not how it always was
UM until ninety three, students were compelled to say the
pledge as well. But then in three in the case
(12:56):
West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnett, which involved some
hope has witnessed children who were like, I'm not supposed
to be doing this. It's a religious thing, um, students
who are Finally, the Supreme Court said no, you can't.
You can't force anyone to say the pledge. That's right.
So that's it for the Pledge of allegiance. Huh Yeah,
(13:16):
good stuff. Thanks to Dave Rouse, our old, our old
pal there. And that's gonna be uh, this is hot
off the presses. This is going to be on the
house Stuffworks website. Yeah, so good. Check it out at
house Stuff Works and in the meantime, Short Stuff is out.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(13:37):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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