Luther Gulick had a sense of humor. That’s evident from his “TOP SECRET”  tongue-in-cheek report on looting in liberated 1945 Berlin, part of a more serious manuscript on wartime reparations from Germany.

There were two kinds of looting, Gulick wrote. One by treaty or protocol awarding oneself some coveted trophy; and the second, known as “liberation” by seizing some desired object and absconding with it (or her), declaring, “this, by God is mine.” The legal concept, he said, might be boiled down to the playground chant, “finders keepers.” But Gulick cautioned, “It is generally unwise to take things that leak or stink.”

Joking aside, there’s a puzzling postscript involving Gulick himself and a fairly valuable 1906 painting by the prominent German-Jewish artist Max Liebermann.

http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/max-liebermann-from-realism-to-impressionism#gallery

One of Liebermann’s most famous oils, “Two Riders on the Beach”, recently turned up in the trove of Nazi-confiscated works found in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of an art dealer, Hildebrandt Gurlitt, who had cultivated Hitler’s henchmen as they stripped Germany and occupied Europe of treasures deemed valuable or degenerate.

http://news.yahoo.com/5-works-art-hoard-found-germany-163506076.html

Before he died in May 2014, Cornelius bequeathed his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern which pledged to check the provenance of each piece and return any that were stolen to heirs of the rightful owners.

The painting that found its way into Gulick’s hands in the victory summer of 1945 was not one of these. But its travels from the “confiscated” home of a German diplomat to the walls of Gulick’s office in New York — and its whereabouts after a subsequent liquidation sale by the Justice Department’s Office of Alien Property — make for an interesting yarn.

As the tale unfolds, on July 29, 1948, David L. Bazelon, Assistant Attorney General and director of the Office of Alien Property, advises Glick that the office has been informed “that you may be the custodian of an oil painting by Max Liebermann, valued at $2500.00 and owned by Hans von Flotow, a German national…” [The sum would be equivalent to about $25,000 today.]Bazelon goes on to say they were told it was transferred to Gulick “in accordance with a lease agreement executed on Aug. 20, 1945.”

Bazelon reminds Gulick that General Order 34 requires the reporting of all property in the US owned or claimed by former enemy nationals.

Gulick, undoubtedly mortified, submits Form APC-56 identifying von Flotow as a prominent jurist in Berlin and descended from “a noted Prussian family, numbering several artists, professors, professional people and corporation officials.” (Actually, he had also been a German ambassador to Belgium and Italy before WWI and had died in 1947; his WWII record is unclear.) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Flotow

Gulick describes the painting, showing a man with two horses, as a 1906 “unfinished oil sketch on card” approximately three-feet by two feet, and valued as $500 “plus or minus.”

Gulick also writes Bazelon he was unaware such reports were required and was told “by someone connected with the Treasury, I believe” that the government was not concerned with effects “which did not involve convertible or fiscal assets.” And he goes on to relate the story of how he acquired it:

“This painting is one of a dozen or so left behind when the Russians looted the private art collection of Hans von Flotow in his Berlin home…I had a hunch that the Russians might be back in the US sector of Berlin some time, or that some Americans might get the picture in question, so I offered to take the picture to the US for safe keeping, getting my compensation out of the enjoyment of the picture, until von Flotow wanted it again, after things had quieted down in Germany.”

So far so good. But in an intriguing addendum he seems to have typed in later, Gulick adds: I executed a lease so that I would not be another looter.”

He also takes pains to show why the painting could not be valued at more than $500.

Early in the following year of 1949, her husband having died in October 1947, von Flotow’s widow, Hildegard, writes Gulick to inform him of Hans’s death and her difficult circumstances — the house on Klopstockstrasse in West Berlin had been “confiscated” at the end of 1945, by whom she didn’t say. She reminds Gulick he still has her painting and offers to sell it to him if he can suggest a price. Otherwise, she says, she will decide whether to sell it in America or turn it over to her children in West Germany.

Gulick responds on March 4, 1949 sending condolences and assuring her, “Your painting is in perfect condition and it is hanging on the wall of my office in a fireproof and well protected building.” [684 Park Avenue, at 68th Street] He also supplies a little more history, saying “as required by law, I reported the bringing in of the painting in 1945, but as I came in as an employee of the government, no notice was taken of the statement and no record was made of the report.”

He goes on to tell her of the letter from the Justice Department, saying the government might have learned of it from the filing of her husband’s estate but noting that he had heard nothing further. And alas, he concluded, “my personal status is not such that I can make you a reasonable offer.”

Gulick then contacts the Justice Department again, asking whether the Liebermann could be donated or sold for a nominal price to the Institute of Public Administration.

Sorry, Bazelon tells him on April 25, 1949, “it is important that the Office of Alien Property obtain public bids” and “dispose of it to the highest qualified bidder.”

That, apparently, was done. Who bought Max Liebermann’s  man with two horses is, at this writing, unknown. And what happened to the other Liebermanns supposedly looted by the Russians is equally mysterious.

Sometimes a picture is indeed worth 1,000 words.  Take these two graphs we just came across in reports on civil service and housing by the Institute of Public Administration, successor to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the scrappy 1906 powerhouse that fueled the good-government movement and fostered the first science of public administration.

It’s everything you need to know about The Roaring Twenties and Great Depression in New York City.

( OK, not everything, but a lot.)

Graph No. 1 shows average salaries of New York City employees 1920-1940 compared to the cost of living.

What jumps out is how good it was to have a city job during the Great Depression.

As the 20’s began, average salaries (dark line) had fallen far below the cost of living (dotted line). City workers couldn’t earn enough to live well.

Within two years, the lines converge — wages meet the cost of living in the base year of 1923.

And then, within four years  — even before the stock market crash on Black Friday 1929 — the lines start to diverge again. Only now, the cost of living takes a dive — it was called the Depression for a reason — while salaries rise slightly, keeping pay well above the cost of living. So a city job (if you could get one) was a good way of surviving the Depression.

Now take construction. You can see why it was called The Roaring Twenties.

Class dismissed.

What would you find in a millionaire’s waste basket in 1910? (Today maybe make that billionaire.) The usual stuff, of course: Eggshells, coffee grounds, dog hair, squeezed-out toothpaste tubes, single errant socks…But also something else quite particular, according to Mrs. E.H. Harriman, widow of the railroad mogul and philanthropist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Williamson_Averell

Lots and lots of letters from people wanting — what else? — money. Begging letters, to be precise. And almost all would be destined for her garbage.

The Harrimans, along with Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Jr., had been among the earliest benefactors of the government reform movement represented by the New York Bureau of  Municipal Research, where Robert Moses, Luther Gulick and other eminences of public administration made their names.

After E.H. died at 61 in 1909, leaving his missus up to $100 million (around $2.5 billion in today’s money), Mrs. Harriman continued their largesse, notably funding the Bureau and its momentous Training School for public servants headed by the redoubtable historian Charles Beard.

But there was a downside, as she lamented in an unpublished 1912 manuscript found in the archives. The incessant appeals for money.

Entitled simply “Manuscript of Book on Efficient Giving”, the work, by the Bureau, with a foreword by Mrs. Harriman, detailed the barrage of mail she received by supplicants seeking pieces of her fortune, and what the public  needed to know about her system of  philanthropy.

(So the title could have been worse. Note the alternates including: Six Thousand Begging Letters: Philanthropy’s Waste Basket; Millionaire’s Waste Basket; and American Benefactions and Maleficiaries.)

If there was a common theme to the appeals, it was this: You can send me $20,000 and never miss it.

Mrs. H’s answer: there are better ways of giving.

For its study, the Bureau analyzed 6,000 letters of appeal sent to her in 1910 and 1911 from individuals, churches, hospitals, charities, universities and other hopefuls all over the world.

“Three thousand men, women and children in the United States asked $22,000,000 for themselves; 1,100 benevolent agencies in the United States asked for $153,000,000. 1,400 personal letters from Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia asked for $32,000,000; while 150 institutions of various kinds from foreign countries asked for $6,000,000. ”

A man wanted $20 to attend a reunion of Confederate soldiers; a New Jersey mother asked $2,000 for a chicken farm ;a church needed $50,000 for a mission among mountain whites in the south; a wife needed $15,000 to make up money she lost in speculation without telling her husband; European girls wanted dowries; inventors sought backing; self-described beautiful Kentucky girls needed money for musical training…

(The highfalutin language of some appeals might seem to have inspired the internet scam artists of a century hence: “We covet your most careful scrutiny and investigation of the details of this undertaking…” )

Others wrote offering to sell Mrs. H: a robe made of Arctic eagles’ breasts; a picture of “Betsey Ross”; a 1799 collection of hymns by John Wesley; the horn of a steer eaten for breakfast by a company of Virginia soldiers…

There were crank letters. A man mailed her a scented soap every two weeks, along with progressive chapters of his life history. A supposedly cured patient from a hospital for the criminally insane asked for a gift in exchange for a promise to grant Mrs. H and her family eternal life.

And that, the Bureau wrote, didn’t count the appeals that came to her verbally, face-to-face.

Mrs. H, being a wise and compassionate soul, pondered the meaning of it all, wondering, as she told the Bureau: “Is this touch with human need in all corners of the globe given me for no use? Can I do nothing but throw these letters in the waste basket merely because I have neither facts, nor hours in the day nor money to determine where I can help without hurting? Is there any lesson in these hundreds of appeals for me?…”

There was, she concluded. Through the Bureau’s study, she could lay out a strategy of scientific giving — much as the Bureau she was nurturing was devising a new science of scientific government and efficient public administration.

Clearly, Mrs. H concluded, it was more more sensible to give to charitable institutions that would determine individual needs. She also advocated “A National Clearing House for Givers.” (In a similar vein, the Bureau also studied the welter of duplicative  Jewish care organizations in turn-of-the-century New York and recommended a federation of Jewish philanthopies.)

In the end, Mrs. H issued what she called “A Magna Charta for Givers”:

Luckily for scholars, Luther Gulick was an avid accumulator — the files bulge with his saved drafts, correspondence, travel itineraries, expense accounts and souvenirs from a lifetime (close to a century, amazingly) in the public sector.

So, of course, when he heard that cities across the nation were issuing their own currency called scrip during monetary shortages in the Great Depression, he set about collecting that too.

Scrip has a long history but it was notably used in mining towns and other remote communities far from banks, notoriously as a way of keeping workers indebted to company stores. Scrip is everywhere in Las Vegas — you’ve heard of chips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip

In 1934, the Municipal Finance Officers Association wrote Gulick with a description of the kinds of scrip being issued.

Intrigued, he started collecting samples. At least once — possibly short of change himself — Gulick offered to pay with…stamps!

Gulick’s efforts paid off. Here are samples of scrip he assembled:

(And don’t the miss the digs at would-be Socialist Governor Upton Sinclair of California — scrip dollars of “The Red Currency”…”good only in California or Russia.”)

At 5 a.m. on Jan. 6, 1937, Luther Gulick was already hard at work, writing a message on governmental reorganization that President Roosevelt would deliver to Congress six days later.

(Like, no pressure, right?)

How do we know? Because the files have a copy of Gulick’s frequently revised “confidential” draft, with his handwritten note: “1st draft of President’s message by LG/Jan 6 -5-9 AM.”

It was the culmination of a momentous effort throughout 1936 by Gulick, Louis Brownlow and Charles Merriam –the President’s Committee on Administrative Management, known as the Brownlow Committee –to simplify the chaotic dis-organization of the federal bureaucracy, as FDR struggled to lift the nation out of the Great Depression and prepare for the growing threat posed by the fascist dictatorships overseas.

So here’s the point: take a look at Gulick’s draft above. See how he struggled with the right language to put in FDR’s mouth (or pen). “…trough of the depression…” etc.

Now take a look at the message, as Roosevelt sent it to Congress Jan. 12, 1937 (and reproduced by The New York Times).

Sound familiar?

The reorganization bill of 1937 failed. The Republicans denounced it as a power grab and defeated it.

Sound familiar?

But Roosevelt persevered and won passage of a watered down bill two years later. What the bill lacked, he made up for by administrative edit. And then he gratefully presented a ceremonial signing pen to Gulick, who preserved it in his safe.

The note — and pen — turned up in the collection.