Similar to the idea that you can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its prisoners, I’ve always thought that you can tell a lot about a place by how it treats its kids.
A nation without kids is a nation without a future.
A community without the loud ramblings and rantings of toddlers, pre-teens, and teens, is a place without purpose.
The novel “Children of Men” tries to get at this idea, from author P.D. James in 1992. The novel is a bit of a chore and the movie a bit of a bore, but the basic concept and conceit of the tale is a good one: how would people react, and society adapt, if there were no more children?
The set-up of the novel is becoming our dystopian reality. Sperm counts are set to be below fertility in a generation. The abortion-related and chemical poisons in our water and foods are having a major effect as well.
But those are external factors working upon us, what’s most concerning is that most people don’t seem to care.
Even now, while fertility is still viable, most people don’t seem to care about the future. They don’t want to be bothered to have children. They don’t see any benefit in future generations, in the cost and hassle of having little ones trash and break everything you own.
This was always the most stark part about researching the Soviet Union: how the Russian people were cultured into not caring about children, and not wanting to have them.
And now that’s true of America.
One might think that it’s simply a measure of prosperity. Some claim it’s environmental. Others push various other theories. But the two that make the most sense to me are religious and ideological.
If you aren’t religious, if you don’t believe in an afterlife or a higher power, you aren’t going to incur the hassles of children. You fundamentally miss the most powerful reason to have kids: the beauty and joy of God’s creation via replication. Every child is a synthesis of mother and father, pulling some of their best and worst traits, expressed individually. No two children are alike. I have a set of identical twins, and they couldn’t be more different.
The second is ideological. If you are enamored with individualism and materialism, you are unlikely to do a communitarian activity that bleeds all of your available funds. If one desires self-gratification, kids typically aren’t in the cards.
The descendants of Soviet espionage agent Harold Ware.
The descendants of Soviet espionage agent Victor Perlo.
Alger Hiss was the son of Charles and Mary Hiss. Charles killed himself in the most horrific way when Alger was three years old. Mary was said to be a bit domineering and controlling. She came from old money in Baltimore and wanted to be seen there. Charles struggled with the family’s finances, and mounting family obligations, covering the debts of his brother-in-law Albert Hughes to protect their good name. When relatives couldn’t provide for their family anymore, Charles took them in.
In addition to his five children, when John Crowther Hiss (1861-1895), Charles’ older brother, had a heart attack and died in 1895 at the age of 34, he took those six children, his nieces and nephews, into his home. Of those six kids, it appears that there was only one child sent along into the next generation. Here are the six children of John Crowther Hiss who were sent to live with John Crowther’s brother Charles Alger after his heart attack:
Mary Cochran Hiss (1888-1975)
Lillian Hiss (1890-1969)
John Bosley Hiss (1891-1995); operated an antique store in Baltimore for many years, named the “Amy B. Hiss Antique and Gift Shop” in Towson. It was named after his first wife Amy Louise Beck who died in 1958. He left behind a wife, Jean Fulton, and a daughter, Laura Karll, along with 8 grandkids and 16 great-grandkids.
Edna C. Hiss (1892-Nov. 11, 1973)
Charles Alger Hiss (1893-Jan. 2, 1973); he left behind a widow, Kathleen Whitted, and no children.
Elizabeth Lucy Hiss Hartman (1894-Aug. 16, 1996); briefly married to James Henry Hartman before his death. She left behind no children.
Charles Alger went from having one child, to seven in his home, overnight in 1895.
The stress must have been enormous.
Alger wasn’t told how his father had chosen to end his life. One wonders what he was told, and what the adult thought when they were telling him, knowing that they were setting a little mental time bomb in his head.
He was able to find out from the typical neighborhood bullies. Some reports say he overheard the neighborhood women gossiping about it. Incredulous, he confronted a relative who confirmed the truth. Supposedly he replied that he was going to make it his life’s mission to clear his family’s good name.
Hiss told his son Tony later that his only childhood memory of his father was of his legs, nothing above the knee.
Here’s a bit of the Hiss family genealogy.
ALGER’S PARENTS——————————————-
Charles Alger Hiss (1863-1907)
Mary Lavinia Kent Hughes Hiss (1868-1958)
Said later to be a bit of a domineering woman and personality.
They were married Wednesday December 5, 1888 in Baltimore at the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, officiated by W. U. Murkland.
Hiss Children:
Anna Hiss (1893-1972)
Mary Hiss Emerson (1896-1929)
Bosley Hiss (1900-1926)
Alger Hiss (1904-1996)
Donald Hiss (1906-1989)
ALGER’S SIBLINGS——————————————-
Anna Hiss (1893-1972) was a physical education instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. Apparently she was decently popular, and for a while, there was a Gym named after her there. Upon retirement, she moved back to Baltimore, and died in 1972.
No Husband, No Kids.
Mary Ann Hiss Emerson (1896-1929) married Elliott Shearer Emerson in Boston, MA on Saturday February 8th or 14th, 1920 at the Church of the Redeemer in Cambridge, Mass. Emerson, a stockbroker or stock trader, was 17 years older than she was. She was a ‘17 graduate of Smith College, and was Chair of the Alumni association. She had two daughters, Mary and Barbara. She committed suicide on May 2, 1929, as Alger was about a month away from graduating from Harvard Law.
m. Elliott Shearer Emerson (5/25/1879 - 9/17/1963)
daughter: Mary Helen Emerson (1/30/1922 - 12/5/1997). At the time of her death she was Mary Helen Campbell.
daughter: Barbara Emerson (1925 - 1995)
I can’t find any evidence that Barbara ever married, or that either ever had any children.
Alger’s son Tony, in his 1977 breezy biography of his father, describes Alger’s sister Mary in almost crude and obscene terms. Here’s the passage from page 10 of “Laughing Last,”
Tony says that Mary committed suicide in “the smash” ostensibly referring to the great stock market crash of 1929.
The problem with that observation is that Mary killed herself in May of 1929, and the stock market crash wasn’t until late October 1929. In May the market was doing just fine comparatively.
Bosley Hiss (1900-1926) married a woman significantly older than he was, and died in 1926. He was a 1922 graduate of Johns Hopkins University. Officially he had Bright’s Disease, which is a chronic failure of the liver/kidneys. Alger tended to his side as he was sick. Whittaker Chambers later claimed that he died from alcoholism. Alger was between graduating undergrad and entering Harvard Law as a graduate student. Bosley died on November 3, 1926.
m. Margaret Owen, May 15, 1926
No Kids
What’s also of note about the sad early death of Bosley, is that Alger Hiss claimed, at one point, that this was evidence that Whittaker Chambers was lying. Chambers had said that Alger told him that Bosley died from chronic alcoholism, and Alger, at one point, said that Bosley had, instead, died from Bright’s disease. But Bright’s disease is exacerbated by chronic alcoholism, since it involves a failure of the liver/kidneys.
Here are Hiss defenders again trying to make this specious argument about Bosley dying from Bright’s disease and not alcoholism, as if those two are unrelated things:
Here’s how the death of Bosley is treated on page 11 of “Laughing Last” by Tony Hiss. You can see that the earlier limitation about Bright’s disease was a purposeful half-truth.
This might seem like a small detail to fight over, but the pro-Hiss folks do, indeed, fight over it. Here’s Jeff Kisselhoff in 2007 arguing this point in CounterPunch:
“* Tanenhaus says that Hiss’s brother Bosley Hiss died from lethal alcoholism. He died from Bright’s Disease, which may or may not have been a result from his excessive drinking.”
In certain contexts, the Hiss faction admits Bosley’s alcoholism killed him. In others, they use it as a way to disprove the claims of detractors for saying the same thing.
Alger Hiss (1904-1996) married Priscilla Harriet Fansler Hobson (1903-1984) in December 1929. Priscilla had obtained a divorce from Thayer Hobson in January 1929, they had one child together. She had a relationship with William Brown Meloney V that year, and then aborted their baby when he said he wouldn’t marry her, and then married Alger in December 1929 while he was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. They had one child together, Tony, born 12 years into their marriage, in 1941.
m. Priscilla Harriet Fansler Hobson (1903-1984)
stepson: Tim Hobson (9/19/1926 - 1/8/2018)
son: Tony Hiss (b. 8/5/41)
Tim was Alger’s stepson, he was gay for a while, then went straight and got married and had four children before deciding he was gay again.
Tony’s married but has no kids of his own. He’s 82 years old.
Donald Hiss (12/15/1906-5/18/1989) had three children, Bosley, Cynthia, and Joanna. Son Bosley died childless, a kind of Buddhist monk, in 2017. At the time of Donald’s death in 1989, there were three grandchildren.
m. Catherine Gilbert Jones (10/9/1909 - 10/6/1996)
daughter: Cynthia Arden Grace Hiss Blagden (b. 1943, m. Crawford I. Blagden, Jr. on June 27, 1962) of Milton, Mass.
daughter: Joanna Hiss Hoople, (b. 1947) had two kids, two years apart. It looks like Joanna got her B.A. from Boston University in 1968, and her MSW from Brandeis in 1972. She is 77 years old now. She appears to be a realtor in Andover, Massachusetts. She ‘likes’ the League of Women Voters, lol. She had a 38 year old son Gordon Hoople, and the daughter is Katherine “Katie” Hoople, born around 1990. Joanna is married to Howard.
son: Bosley Hiss (Nov. 29, 1941 - March 29, 2017)
Bosley married. Bosley had no kids.
ALGER’S NIECES——————————————-
So these four are the only ones who conceivably conceived offspring:
Mary Hiss’ oldest daughter: Mary Helen Emerson (1922 - 1997) - lived in Cambridge, MA in 1941, went to a woman’s college in Greenboro, NC. Lived in Cataumet, MA for a while. Served abroad in the American Red Cross in Germany from 1945-1947. Unmarried as of 1947.
Mary Hiss’ youngest daughter: Barbara Emerson (1925 - 1995)Donald Hiss’ oldest daughter: Cynthia Arden Grace Hiss Blagden (born 1943, m. Crawford Blagden, Jr. on June 27, 1962) of Milton, Mass. I can find almost no details about Cynthia. In a 2002 interview, she mentions having children, including a daughter, and also of her ‘first husband’ so perhaps she remarried under a different name.
Donald Hiss’ youngest daughter: Joanna C. Hiss Hoople (born 1947, married Howard, had two kids, two years apart, a girl and a boy) of Andover, Mass.
I ran across this letter to the editor from Alger’s niece Joanna Hiss Hoople from 1993, complaining about the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles and its effect on her kids, Alger’s great niece and nephew.
Joanna’s uncle was the first United Nations Secretary General, and she can’t handle some culturally diverse ninja turtles?
The jokes here write themselves: “Hiss family continues its long-known public antipathy towards cultural remnants of the Japanese Empire.”
So after the incredible trauma to this family, they managed to survive. If we were to trace and track the major traumas:
John Crowther Hiss’ heart attack in his early 30’s, which led to the 6 children ending up with his brother Charles.
Charles’ suicide in 1907.
Bosley’s alcoholism and demise.
Mary’s self-destruction on a whim in 1929.
Alger’s public disgrace starting in 1948.
That’s a lot of hurt for any family to go through. And a large burden placed on them internally and externally.
“I’ve often thought that the Hiss case captured all the sadness in the family. I mean the suicides, and all the Hiss tragedies of Bosley’s death. So, that became a kind of funnel for all the other awful things that went on.”
-Cynthia Hiss Grace (Donald’s daughter)
The cost of far left ideas is often destruction. Liberalism is a socially acceptable mental illness. The social cost of far left ideas is usually familial and personal implosion.
Yet in a way it’s nice to know that their family continued and did not completely die off, even if it’s just a few remnants.
It’s both a bit bleak and hopeful at the same time.