Howard M Headlee

How bad was life before modern science, technology, and economic growth? Awful. The example I will use in class this Wednesday is Henry Clay (1777-1852). He was one of the most powerful men of his time in the U.S., not just among the elite but among the elite of the elite: Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, Senator, and three-time presidential candidate. He was also rich and a large slaveholder. The U.S. was among the richest countries in the world (perhaps only behind Great Britain) and among the most technologically advanced. And we are not talking about the early Middle Ages, but about the first half of the 19th century. Given the constraints of his time, he had nearly everything within reach. Clay and his wife, Lucretia (both in the photograph), had eleven children: six daughters and five sons. He buried all six daughters. By 1835, all were dead: two as infants, two as children, two as young mothers. He also buried a son in a war his father had opposed. Another son, Theodore, fractured his skull as a child, but since nobody could treat him, he spent decades in an asylum in Lexington. Think about this for a second: seven children dead and one handicapped out of eleven, in the first half of the 19th century, among the elite of the elite, in one of the richest and most advanced places on the planet. And I was angry yesterday because my cell phone coverage in Toddington (England) was poor.