Samuel C. Thomson at Noranda Mines, Quebec, 1922
My grandfather, Samuel Clifton Thomson, The Order (Bones) 1891, was from Pottsville, Pa, an important coal mining center to this day. The Thomson family had been involved in coal mining from the early eighteen hundreds into the mid-twentieth century. The family was descended from Scottish Covenanters (Scottish Presbyterians who arrived in America in the mid seventeen hundreds. I have a beautiful sword presented to my great grandfather by officers in his Pennsylvania regiment at the conclusion of the Civil War.)
The original homestead exists in bad repair in Thompsontown, PA. My great grandfather changed the spelling of Thomson to Thompson adding a “p” since he wanted to show off his flourishing handwriting and a “p” really made the grade in this regard.
Grandpa graduated from Andover Boys Preparatory School, Yale University and from Columbia School of Mines with honors, in 1893. He received the School of Mines medal from the President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler.
Nicholas Murray Butler, on the Executive Committee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, delivered an address entitled “Higher Preparedness” on Nov. 27, 1915 to the Union League of Philadelphia in which he stated “The old world order changed when this war storm broke — the old world order died with the setting of the day’s sun and a New World Order is being born while I speak.” From A World in Ferment, a Collection of Butler’s Speeches, Scribners 1917, page 106.
Butler’s book Across the Busy Years — Recollections and Reflections, Scribners, 1935, pp 160-161 reveals much regarding Butler’s role as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University, in changing American education from its traditional academic orientation to a behaviorist (Wundtian/Pavlovian) orientation originating in Leipzig, Germany. This change was necessary for brainwashing (value change) and implementation of the present work force training required for a planned economy. It was Butler’s access to Daniel Coit Gilman, an incorporator of Skull & Bones, and a key activist in the revolution of education which, resulted in bringing to Columbia University, Professor James McKeen Cattell. Butler’s information ties in well with Tony Sutton’s coverage of The Order’s influence on American education. Sutton’s book America’s Secret Establishment is the only book on The Order which documents The Order’s extraordinary influence in bringing about what this author refers to as “the deliberate dumbing down of America.”
Butler’s book also refers extensively to the activities of Charles D. Hilles, Sr. (not a member of The Order) whose role in the Republican Party included running for Governor of New York, Vice President of the United States, and who was Chairman of the Republican Party Platform Committee, 1916. Charles D. Hilles, Sr. was the father of Charles D. Hilles, Jr., one of my father’s closest Bones’ associates who stands behind the table in the Tomb (See photo of 1924 members of The Order. A few Bonesmen about whom I have written are seated as follows: my father, Clifton Thomson, is to the left of the table, Hilles behind table, Spofford standing left of the clock, and Blair standing, third from the left.)
What all of this has to do with Bones is not clear, but there surely must be connections. No doubt Grandpa’s receiving the School of Mines medal was well-earned. However, it is also likely that Butler, an internationalist with connections all over the English-speaking world, selected Grandpa for the honor not only due to his engineering abilities, but also due to his connections through his membership in The Order.
Grandpa had good credentials for being tapped for The Order. He was a Unitarian and a Mason, from Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Had it not been for his being tapped for Bones, and his being awarded the mining medal, I rather doubt that he would have been invited to go to South Africa which took him to the pinnacles of the engineering profession and led him into a leadership role in the opening up of the gold mines. He had a close personal and working friendship with Sir Abe Bailey, who I believe was a South African Fabian socialist, and I understand he was an acquaintance of Cecil Rhodes. Upon returning to the United States, he explored in Quebec, Canada and founded Noranda Mines in the early twenties.
My memories of him are all wonderful. He was a most generous, unspoiled fellow who preferred to spend his evenings in the company of the less affluent on the West Side of NYC, eating hot dogs and drinking beer, rather than in his elegant suite at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue. I have a small silver trophy (cup), which I cherish, engraved “Grandpa to Charlotte for swimming, 1938” which he had made specially for me when I won a swimming race while on vacation with him at the Seigneury Club in Quebec. (I use it as a double shot measure in memory of grandpa who was an enthusiastic scotch drinker!)
Grandpa left for California in the late eighteen hundreds and worked at Grass Valley in a chlorination factory for a short while during the gold boom. He soon after was invited by the great John Hays Hammond to go to Africa, an invitation he declined, but later accepted from Thomas H. Leggatt. He arrived in the Rand in 1898 and spent twelve additional seasons (1902-1914) in charge of the mining operations of Norman and Company and Sir Abe Bailey. During that time Thomson’s major concerns were the Witwatersrand Deep, the Treasury and Great Central mines. Many other properties came under his charge, as well, so that by the time he left Africa, he was widely known to the gold-mining fraternity. I have a solid gold cigarette box, the inside cover of which is engraved with the signatures of American mining engineers which they presented to him when he left the Rand in 1914.
During his stay in South Africa, Thomson saw service as a lieutenant in the British Army through the later phases of the Boer War. (He was in charge of protecting the mines from Boer sabotage.) It was Thomson’s plan, on leaving the Rand in 1914, to engage in consulting practice in London, England, principally for Sir Abe Bailey and his associates. He evidently worked closely with Bailey while in South Africa. I had a wonderful black and white photo of my grandfather and Sir Abe Bailey, but somehow it has been lost.
World War I intervened while he was on holiday in the United States, however, thus reserving grandpa’s future for Canadian mining, and to Noranda Mines. (He was one of the principals in the discovery and development of copper mines in Canada.) The Anglo-American connections are clear and of course, we are all aware of Carnegie’s plan to bring America back to the mother’s bosom, something we are looking at today. (George Bush and Tony Blair!)
My Dad, Clifton Samuel Thomson, a graduate of Hotchkiss Boys School, class of 1924 at Yale, Columbia Law School, 1926, and a Bonesman, was born in 1903 in Johannesburg, S.A., and lived there until 1914 when his family went to live in London for a while and then moved back to Englewood, N.J., U.S.A. Dad was also a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon while at Yale. This fraternity boasts many important members, including four Presidents of the United States: Hayes, Bush, Sr. Bush, Jr. Roosevelt, and Ford. I have always felt there was a very, very close connection between The Order and DKE. While in London he attended Cheam Boys School, the very elitist school outside of London, which caters to British royalty. He detested every minute of it (cold showers and lousy food) and his dislike of all things English, including the British cruelty exhibited in the Boer War, remained with him until he died in 1984. Dad was, I believe, an unlikely candidate for Bones, being very down to earth, an individualist, honest to the core, and Christian. He served as Mayor of Sands Point, Long Island, N.Y., as a vestryman at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church at Port Washington, New York, and was elected councilman, Mendham Township Council, Mendham, New Jersey.
I knew three or four of his Bones classmates quite well: One, my sister’s godfather, was I believe, instrumental in starting the Hemlock Society! This fellow who bounced me on his knees and told great stories … was the last person I would ever have thought to be involved in bringing euthanasia to America. Dad also spent a couple of weeks at Bohemian Grove as a guest of his very close friend Edwin Blair, another Bones guy, who was nick-named “Mr. Yale” since he was such a good fund raiser. (Blair was also a partner with Chuck Spofford at Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland and Keindl … see below.) Dad was not impressed by most of the activities at the Grove although he said a few presentations were noteworthy, food was excellent and accommodations top of the line. He had one big, and I mean “big” problem with pompous people, and there was no shortage of such types at Bohemian Grove functions. Henry Allen, another Bones friend of Dad’s, was a director of the American Civil Liberties Union, set up by Amos Pinchot (The Order), and the daughter of his friend, Sherman Ewing, married a Rockefeller, but Ewing himself was not involved in any high level international or national policy planning.
Dad was at Hotchkiss School with E.O. Matthiessen (Bones 1923). An interesting aside follows: Matthiessen’s daughter lived in the same town where I was on the local school board creating problems for the liberals … in the seventies. She knew my father was her father’s friend due to Hotchkiss and Bones, but that didn’t make any difference to her … she went after me with a vengeance, often, and in public (even at social occasions!) due to my opposition to the federally-funded non-academic and no right/no wrong programs being implemented in the seventies. She was a carbon copy of her father about whom Tony has written in his newsletters. Her Dad is quoted on the jacket of Tony’s book as saying “As long as we have somebody from Bones who can bring pressure on the committee, I should think we’ll be all right.” — E.O. Matthiessen (S&B 1923) to Donald Ogden Steward (S&B 1916) about “Matty’s” upcoming appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
In my opinion, the most important Bonesman in the Class of 1924, a close friend and roommate of my father’s, was Charles Merville Spofford, who rose to great heights in international law and politics. Dad, once, close to the end of his life, related to me an account of Spofford’s promotion to positions of international influence, much of which is covered in detail in Yale ‘24-’24S and which I am including since Spofford provides a most important case study in how a very few members of the Order become global shakers and movers.
An account of Spofford’s meteoric rise to fame, taken from page 326 of Yale ‘24-’24S, published in 1955, follows:
Chuck, who took his LL.B. at Harvard in 1928, was with Isham, Lincoln & Beal in Chicago until 1930 and has since been with Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland & Kiendl, in which he became a partner in 1940. He is a director of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, the Distillers Company, Ltd., and the Gordon’s Dry Gin Company, Ltd., and is on the boards of the Free Europe Committee, Union Theological Seminary, the Carnegie Corporation, the Juilliard Musical Foundation, the Juilliard School of Music, and the national council of the English-Speaking Union. He belongs to various bar associations and to the Council on Foreign Relations. He went on active duty as a lieutenant colonel in October, 1942, was assigned to the General Staff Corps, and had thirty-two months’ service in the Eastern Theatre of Operations and Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, ranking as a brigadier general at his release in December, 1945; he was in the Reserve from 1947 to 1954. In addition to the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal and Purple Heart, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm and was made a commander of the Legion of Honor, the Order of the British Empire, the Order of Ishan Iftikhar (Tunisia), and the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus (Italian). Chuck was appointed U.S. deputy representative to the North Atlantic Council, with the rank of Ambassador, in June, 1950, the next month being elected chairman of the North Atlantic Council Deputies; for his work in this capacity (which continued until April 1952), he received the following decorations: officer, Legion of Honor; grand officer, Order of the Crown (Belgium); commander with star, Order of the Falcon (Iceland). He is the author of “The North Atlantic Treaty,” in the Journal of the Royal Empire Society, “Toward Atlantic Security,” in International Affairs, “North Atlantic Security,” in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, and “NATO’s Growing Pains” in Foreign Affairs.
I remember his coming into my office in Middle Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, in 1956, at the peak of one of the continuing Mid-East crises, to participate as a board member of The Suez Canal Company.
After Chuck had divorced his wife of many years, he had a serious stroke, which confined him to a wheel chair. Surprisingly enough he remarried his former long-time secretary at Davis, Polk, a wonderful, down-to-earth woman with whom I had worked at one time. They lived in Easthampton, Long Island, in a house he bought from William Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury. I relate these seemingly unimportant bits of information to reveal how even those who rise to great heights in world affairs encounter the same difficult problems in marriage, severe illnesses, etc. that we plain regulars encounter, and that occasionally they survive through attachments to persons whose backgrounds are totally different (normal?). His second wife, who came from an entirely different background, took such wonderful care of Chuck until he passed on. She probably turned out to be the most important person in his life, outside of his children. There were other Bones friends of Dad’s I knew fairly well but I don’t have any interesting stories. I’d say only 3 or 4 out of the 15 were involved in important U.S. Government or international policy decisions.
Dad always supported the Bush family in its election efforts, while Mom, a true-blue conservative Catholic from Virginia, whose family served on the Confederate side during the Civil War, supported Reagan. The Order would solicit campaign contributions for Bush from its members. Dad attended the reunions on Deer Island, but not frequently.
Dad was a Senior Partner with Appleton, Rice, and Perrin, a small Wall Street law firm. Lee Perrin, Bones 1906, was a very fine gentleman who I suspect brought Dad on board at the firm. (Connections help!) Dad was also the attorney for a French company, the Matham Corporation, during World War II. I remember that he received all sorts of pins (medals) from Matham for his service to the company during the war. I believe Matham was involved in manufacturing arms.
Dad resigned his position with Matham due to its involvement with the Nazis. He was very principled, and I’m sure not at all on the Bones’ wavelength of supporting both sides (i.e. Hitler and Stalin). Of interest and along the same lines was a comment he made to Alan Klotz, a Wall Street attorney, also a Bonesman from another year, regarding dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Dad said he told Klotz, who reacted in shock, that, “we should have dropped it on Moscow instead.” That doesn’t jibe with Bones politics, does it? My mother always jokingly said, “One day Dad acts like a capitalist; the next day he acts like a communist.” That’s quite a comment, isn’t it? I rather suspect that could be applied to most of those guys who received the same brainwashing at Yale. Isn’t that known as cognitive dissonance in psychological circles?
On a personal level, that is, his attitude towards my work, he was “cool.” Although he and I were very, very close as Dad and daughter and did many things together (tennis, swimming, long walks, talks, etc.), it always bothered him that I was critical of the public education system and U.S. foreign policy. (Although he would often make disparaging remarks about the “striped pants” guys running the world.) He once said he couldn’t understand why I was opposed to world government and I responded “Dad, I can’t believe what you are saying … whose Constitution will our country have?” (He was a conservative, constitutionally oriented, and had been mayor of our town!) He lent back in his chair, took a long puff on his cigar and slowly uttered the following in a deep voice: “Oh, Char, we’ll take care of that when the time comes.” He also once said when I complained about the national debt “not to worry, we owe it to ourselves!”
Although he considered me a very good writer, he said, “I don’t agree with where you are coming from.” He was brainwashed big time at Yale, especially considering how the brainwash lasted for such a long period of time (over the years) with someone who was so fair, honest, unspoiled, etc., and in constant pursuit of the truth. He was an avid reader ... I never saw him without a book in his lap. His favorite writer was Thoreau and he had read all the books in Will and Ariel Durant’s The History of Civilization series.
My sister and I spent the last year of his life with him at his home in Gladstone, New Jersey. He was dying of cancer and my sister and I kept him at home; didn’t allow him to be put in the hospital. Our mother was in a nursing home. Very sad they were separated like that at the end of their lives. He died in 1984 with his dog, Whiskers, a Welsh terrier, on the bed beside him!
1984 was the year Phyllis Schlafly’s book, Child Abuse in the Classroom, which was really half mine since I had written most of the parts about the parents’ testimony at U.S. Department of Education hearings. Phyllis and I worked on the book by phone, in order to have it available at the Republican Convention in Texas. Dad was able to hear our conversations about everything from death education to world government. His bedroom was on the ground floor next to the kitchen where I sort of lived with the phone. About a week before he died he looked at me and said, “If I had more time, I’d help you.” That was so nice.
He had also told me several months before he died that he wished he had been a farmer rather than a Wall Street lawyer, and I really believe he meant that. When not in town with his Wall Street friends, at the Downtown Association for lunch or in his office, all of which he surely enjoyed, he was painting landscapes, cooking, walking the dogs, creating a small pond, or turning the earth in his garden, a plain down to earth person and the greatest friend to many, many people. He never turned down a request for legal or other advice … was available to everyone, free, no matter rich or poor. A more generous person never lived. He was a man of few words, had a laid back personality, and was incredibly witty with a very dry sense of humor.
What a role model for his daughters!
My parent’s wedding was attended by all fifteen of his Bones friends who served as the ushers in 1926 and there is a photo of all fifteen Bones members in the Temple, all standing, with exception of my Dad and another Bones guy, who are sitting on either side of a table which holds the Skull and Bones. Yuk!
I also inherited the beautiful grandfather clock which I believe is given to Bones members when they marry. Dad always insisted that the women in the family never, ever allow the clock to stop. We were never told what would happen if we forgot and let it wind down. Sounded like some occult monkey business at work. Interestingly enough, since I inherited that clock it has broken down numerous times no matter how intent I am on not letting it wind down! I also have the little Skull and Bones pin each member is given upon initiation.
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Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculums in America’s classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa. Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of Congressional hearings.
www.DeliberateDumbingDown.com