Uncle Lyle Bland

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

On IG Farben and Richard Sasuly's book:

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/gravity-f.html

On the Political side, GR is about the 60s, well, how
America got to the 60s and into the 70s, how germany, it
rocketry, its idealism, its bomb over our heads, is an
American story. VL picks up the 60s in the 80s flashing back
through American Politics and the family. Baker and Cowart
look at the 60s in GR in their most recent publications in
'Critique', but Pynchon's VL is not only about the 1960s and
the 1980s, like GR it digs deep into  200 years of American
domestic and foreign policy.  

"Uncle Lyle...a hustler in the regional Jim Fisk style.
GR.285

Jim Fisk? What is Pynchon's interest in Jim Fisk & CO.? 

See SL.162,  "The Secret Integration." 

"he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the
jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."


Later in GR Bland's political role will become more clear. 
For now, he is one of Slthrop's "ancestors" reasserting"
himself here in the Zone as the repressed returns. 

In VL it is much easier to trace the political history, we
get it through family history or a landmark, like a Bridge.
In GR, Pynchon's Politics is more subtle, much more subtle.
We are in Europe during the second world war, but the
Vietnam war is raging and the politics and dirty deals of
the Rail Road robber barons are here as well. "TSI" is a key
that fits into this political lock and opens the door. Hogan
Slothrop sends Tyrone a shirt from Hawaii. That shirt
functions in much the same way as Zoyd's dress in VL. I'll
have more to say on this as time permits.  

Bland is half name for Richard P. "Silver Dick" Bland.

A blatant political power play begun in 1877 and enacted in
1878, on February 28, 1878, the Bland-Allison Act promoted
by Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri and Senator
William B. Allison of Iowa became law over the veto of
President Rutherford B. Hayes. In its final form, the Act
required the U.S. Treasury to purchase between $2 and $4
million worth of silver per month on the open market and to
coin it into silver dollars. 

The political motivations behind the Act included the
support of Western mining states which were being hurt by
falling silver prices (caused in large part by their huge
output). Bland, understood the power of Inflation. It could
make him a powerful man and make his political friends rich. 

The cost? 

The Inflation

    Made possible the growth of Stinnes into a colossus.

    Dealt a fatal blow to small businesses and the German
middle class.

    Started in 1914 when Reichsbank suspended conversion of
notes to gold.
    Volume of notes in one month jumped 2 billion marks.
Before inflation was
    over there were 93 trillion marks in circulation. At the
beginning of 1924, US$
    = 6K marks.

    Inflation enabled Germany to wipe out of all internal
debt. Brought tremendous
    gains to IG and Ruhr steel magnates. "They could produce
goods, meet current
    costs of production in worthless currency, and sell
cheaply abroad; German
    foreign trade was thereby quickly reestablished. And
they could pay off all
    debts and meet all taxes (based on the old price level)
virtually for nothing.
    German industry emerged from the inflation greatly
strengthened." (46)
    "Industrialists profited to an even greater extent
through the wiping out of
    insurance policies, mortgage bonds, and fixed incomes
generally." (47)

    Inflation was started by Germany's heavy borrowing to
finance WWI. Only 6%
    of cost of WWI was met by taxation. Unfunded debt
reached 39 billion marks.

    Workers' wages could not keep pace with prices.

    "[Industrialists] had one and all made a calculated,
co-ordinated effort to ruin
    the credit of their country in order to secure discharge
from their war
    obligations. Stinnes was openly held by the mass of the
German people to have
    played in this matter especially for his own hand, and
to have been responsible
    for the fall of the mark and resultant position in
Germany." (47)

Stinnes in 1922 to German Economic Council: "If you
gentlemen charge me, and the
men who think as I do, with opposing stabilization of the
mark at any price, you are
absolutely right." (47-48)