Writer
Born in''Clutch of the War-God''
Three of Hastings’ science fiction works are known to survive: ''In the Clutch of the War-God'' (1911), ''The Book of Gud'' (with Harold Hersey, 1919), and ''City of Endless Night'' (1920). There may be others serialized in a Bernarr Macfadden publication, as was the case with Milo’s known works. ''Clutch of the War-God'' was serialized in three parts in the July, August, and September 1911 issues of ''Physical Culture'' magazine. It was never published in book form. What is known of the origin of Clutch comes from the Sam Moskowitz article “Bernarr Macfadden and His Obsession with Science-Fiction” that appeared in ''Fantasy Commentator'' in 1986. Macfadden at the time (1910) was under a suspended jail sentence for an obscenity conviction related to a beauty contest. He commissioned Milo to write a futuristic fiction story promoting his (Macfadden’s) views on physical health and scolding the federal government, hoping to shame officials into granting him a pardon. Macfadden wrote a signed introduction to the story:Foreword: In this strange story of another day, the author has "dipped into the future" and viewed with his mind's eye the ultimate effect of America's self-satisfied complacency, and her persistent refusal to heed the lessons of Oriental progress. I can safely promise the reader who takes up this unique recital of the twentieth century warfare, that his interest will be sustained to the very end by the interesting deductions and the keen insight into the possibilities of the present trend of international affairs exhibited by the author. — Bennarr Macfadden.The story is subtitled “The Tale of the Orient’s Invasion of the Occident, as Chronicled in the Humaniculture Society’s ‘History of the Twentieth Century.’” Japan has a superior society and government but suffers from food shortages and excess population. They go to war with the United States successfully invading the central states with airplanes transported across the Pacific on flat-topped ships. Here is an excerpt:
But with all her material glory, there was not strength in the American sinews, nor endurance in her lungs, nor vigor in the product of her lions. Her people were herded together in great cities, where they slept in gigantic apartment houses, like mud swallows in a sand bank. They over-ate of artificial food that was made in great factories. They over-dressed with tight-fitting unsanitary clothing made by the sweated labor of the diseased and destitute. They over-drank of old liquors born of ancient ignorance and of new concoctions born of prostituted science. They smoked and perfumed and doped with chemicals and cosmetics — the supposed virtues of which were blazoned forth on earth and sky day and night.Some predictions in Clutch are remarkably accurate. Modern aircraft carriers are anticipated as is industrial agriculture. As a polemic the story served to further antagonize the government against Macfadden. Milo continued to write for Macfadden for years to come.
''The Book of Gud''
In 1919, Hastings and''City of Endless Night''
The science fiction work for which Hastings is best known is ''City of Endless Night'', a dystopian work. It first appeared as the story "Children of Kultur" serialized in ''True Story Magazine'' in seven installments from May to November, 1919. The word ''kultur'', German for culture, had been made infamous by Allied propaganda in World War I. AfterOf the pioneering anti-Utopian novels, one of the finest and least known is ''City of Endless Night'' by Milo Hastings, first published in book form by Dodd, Mead in 1920. This unusual work, filled with uncanny prescience about impending events, was born out of the experience of World War I and the impact on Americans of imperial Germany’s statist creed, which believed in the subjugation of the individual for the sake of the nation. On all counts of inventiveness, social significance, narrative flow and intrinsic worth, it ranks with When the Sleeper Wakes byH. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''Victor Rousseau Victor Rousseau ( Feluy, 16 December 1865 – Forest, 17 March 1954) also known as M. Victor Rousseau, was a Belgian sculptor and medalist. Biography Rousseau was of Walloon heritage and descended from a line of stonemasons. He began carv ...and We by Eugene Zimiatin, all written and published about the same period. ''City of Endless Night'' was written as World War I was ending and anticipates the resurgence ofGermany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...and the rise offascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an .... City of Endless Night is one of the works cited in an article on “Literary Propheteering” by Murray Teigh Bloom that appeared in the February 1, 1941 ''Saturday Review of Literature ''Saturday Review'', previously ''The Saturday Review of Literature'', was an American weekly magazine established in 1924. Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971. Under Norman Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, ess ...'':Back in 1920 there was another prophet for modern Germany. His name was Milo M. Hastings and he put his guesses in a fast-paced novel called "The City of Endless Night." The city was Berlin of the year 2041. It had become an entirely roofed-in city of sixty levels, sheltering 300,000,000 sun-starved humans. Since 1941 the city had held out against the World State (here it is again) which tried to bomb it into line. Hohenzollerns ruled this tight world; ruled it with the blessings of "autocratic socialism," "the perfect government which we Germans have evolved from proletarian socialism." Other Hastings bulls'-eyes: o A rigidly controlled press. ("Every paper, every book and every picture originates in the shops of the Information Staff . . . the writing is done by specially trained workers of the Information Service. ... ") o State-fixed diets, on a calories-for-work-done basis. o Nazi religion: "We supermen long ago repudiated that spineless conception of the soft Christian God and the servile Jewish Jesus." However, "Jesus’ father was an adventurer from Central Asia, a man of Teutonic blood." o The importance of "pure and un-defiled pedigrees" for marriage partners. o Eugenic breeding. o A vast labor corps, whose members are trained from childhood to do only manual labor. o Racial theories. "We have long known that all those great men whom the inferior races claim as their geniuses are of truth of German blood and that the fighting quality of the other races is due to the German blood that was scattered by our early immigrants."Some say that ''City of Endless Night'' was the original inspiration forFritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...’s 1927 science fiction film ''Metropolis A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big ci ...''.
Chicken husbandry
Hastings’ interest in chickens began as a teenager on his family’s farm. In college atKansas State Agricultural College Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public instit ...he began their poultry husbandry program. He built a new kind of chicken house based on plans from the Maine Experiment Station. It was a “curtain-front” house, the idea being a big frame covered with heavy white cloth on the south side instead of glass windows. The cloth let the water vapor pass through to keep the house drier, but was as warm as glass. In 1904 while still at Kansas State he began the first official egg laying contest in America. It was during his college days he got the idea for the forced-draft chicken incubator. The goal was to incubate eggs in large numbers. Up to that time eggs were incubated by the dozens. Milo’s goal, later appearing on his stationery, was the million egg incubator. The technical problem was the control of heat and humidity. Eggs in the early stages of incubation take in heat. In the later stages they give off heat. Milo’s idea was an incubator with eggs in various stages of incubation with a fan to move the excess heat of the later stages to the earlier stages all while maintaining the proper humidity. He proposed the idea to the Department of Agriculture where he was working after he completed college in 1906. The idea was rejected as impractical. The Department did accept his 1909 patent (Serial No. 911,875) for a cold-storage evaporimeter. Hastings recognized the importance of maintaining proper humidity in the cold storage of eggs. He wrote Circular 149, "A Cold-Storage Evaporimeter", describing the device and Circular 140 on "The Egg Trade of the United States." In 1909 while still working for the Department (he left in 1910) he wrote ''The Dollar Hen'', which became the classic guide to free-range chicken farming. The book was published in 1911 by the National Poultry Publishing Company. It was republished in 2003 b
Norton Creek Press
and is also available on the Internet through Project Gutenberg. The book is full of practical advice and Hastings’ witticisms:On the most successful New England poultry farms, warm houses for hens have been given up. Hens fare better out of doors in Virginia than they do in New England, but make more profit out of doors anywhere than they will shut up in houses. If your climate will not permit your hen to live out doors get out of the climate or get out of the hen business.Hastings’ serialized portions of ''The Dollar Hen'' as “Home Course in Poultry Keeping”. The series was distributed by the American Press Association and appeared in several papers in 1910 and 1911. Hastings made three tries at building a large commercial forced-draft chicken incubator. In 1911 he built a 6000 egg incubator in Brooklyn, New York, for a Walter B. Davis. An advertising booklet “Davis Poultry Farm” described operations on the farm. Later in 1911 Hastings went to Muskogee, Oklahoma and built a 30,000 egg incubator in a business arrangement with a Lieber, a local lawyer and business man. In the spring of 1912 Milo went to
There is, however, a vast difference in the kind of out-of-doors. The running stream with its fringe of trees, brush and rank growing grass, forms daylight quarters for the hen par excellence. Rank growing crops, fodder piled against the fences, a board fence on the north side of the lot, or little sheds made by propping a platform against a stake, will all help. A place out of the wind for the hens to dust and sun and be sociable is what is wanted, and what must be provided, preferably by Nature, if not by Nature then by the poultryman.Petaluma, California Petaluma (Miwok: ''Péta Lúuma'') is a city in Sonoma County, California, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Its population was 59,776 according to the 2020 census. Petaluma's name comes from the Miwok village na ..., then the chicken capitol of the West, trying to generate interest in a million egg incubator. With interest lacking he then went to Port O’Conner, Texas and built a 150,000 egg incubator with financial support from a local businessman. All these business ventures were undercapitalized and none were a commercial success. While still working on the Brooklyn incubator, Milo filed for a patent, Serial No. 624,885 for “A Hatchery for the Eggs of Domestic Fowl”. (The application was witnessed by Edgar Chambless, Hastings' urban planning mentor.) Supporting documents were filed in July, 1911 and further amended by counsel on May 24, 1912. The patent was rejected, the rejection appealed, and on Dec 30, 1912 the appeal was rejected. The patent application was eventually abandoned. In 1918 a Smith got patent Serial No. 1,262,860 for basically the same invention. The Smith patent was challenged in both the United States and Canada. The matter was in the courts for years. At first the challenges were unsuccessful. Then a new strategy was tried: that the Smith patent was invalid because of Hastings’ prior art. So Hastings had a career as an expert witness. This was the only money he ever made off his incubator invention. The matter wound up in the Supreme Court and was decided in Smith v. Hall, 301 U.S. 216 (1937). The decision, confirming Milo’s prior art, was writing by JusticeHarlan Stone Harlan Fiske Stone (October 11, 1872 – April 22, 1946) was an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1925 to 1941 and then as the 12th chief justice of the United States from 1941 un ..., soon to become chief justice. The decision tracks the evolution of Milo’s incubator ideas and his whereabouts. Hastings was also interested in industrializing the raising of chickens. In a ''Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...'' of September 18, 1915 he detailed how to raise poultry on a manufacturing basis. Hastings’ final major poultry activity was raising chickens at his place in Tarrytown, New York. By 1928 he had 10,000 birds selling the eggs in New York City. Then in 1929 a chicken cholera epidemic wiped the flock out in a matter of weeks. Milo discusses this disease in ''The Dollar Hen''. His discussion of its deadliness is all too prophetic.
Weeniwinks
Hastings’ interest in healthy eating and his proclivity as an inventor lead to his creation of “Weeniwinks” in the early '30s. The idea was to create a processed food as a snack for kids that would be good for them. That meant the ingredients were based on natural grains and no sugar. At the time such a product did not exist. Milo tried many mixtures of ingredients before hitting on a promising combination of wheat and corn. He used his young children and their friends as taste testers. The technical problem to be solved in the manufacture of the product was how to cook the ingredients without their sticking to the mold. Milo tried several possibilities and wound up using ordinary cast iron. The development of the product was done in his compound in Tarrytown, New York where a pilot plant was built. For bulk production a factory was built on the family farm in Effingham, Kansas. With the deepening of the Great Depression the monies to continue the venture were not forthcoming and the factory was abandoned. Later in 1938 Hastings tried to promote the idea in Russia. A test-tube filled with Weeniwinks remains in the memorabilia of one of Hastings’ sons.
Urban planning
Another long-time interest of Hastings was urban planning and the linear city of Edgar Chambless. Hastings met Chambless in 1909 and they remained lifelong friends. Hastings lived with Chambless briefly early in their acquaintance and Chambless would entertain Hastings’ children later on. Chambless presented his ideas in his 1910 book ''Roadtown''. Hastings wrote magazine articles based on the same ideas for ''The Independent'' (May 5, 1910) and ''Sunset, The Pacific Monthly'' (January, 1914). Hastings entered a competition for "The Best Solution of the Housing Problem," sponsored by theAmerican Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...and the '' Ladies' Home Journal''. His entry, "A Solution of the Housing Problem in the United States", was awarded one of the two top prizes and printed in the ''Journal of the American Institute of Architects'' (June, 1919), the ''Ladies’ Home Journal'' (January, 1919), and ''The Joke About Housing''. The Harvard Design School Library retains an extensive collection of material about Roadtown. The goal of Roadtown was to reinvent housing according to principles of greater efficiency. The essential idea was a continuous linear house owned by the occupants with farmland on either side and the utilities beneath. Here is an excerpt from Milo’s Sunset article providing some of the details:In giving Roadtown a hearing remember that it is not a town and not a rural community. It is both. Compared with our present ideas of either it will have obvious advantages and obvious shortcomings, but take it as a whole and compare it with a modern town plus the surrounding farm territory, and then judge of Roadtown. The Roadtown is a line of city projected through the country. This line of a city will be in the form of a continuous house. In the basement of the house are to be placed means of transporting passengers, freight, parcels and all utilities which can be carried by pipe or wire.The Roadtown idea has a utopian aspect. The drawings and text almost read like science fiction. Chambless acquired rights to some of the patents needed to implement the concept. In particular,Thomas A. Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...contributed his cement pouring patents needed to construct the buildings. Chambless proselytized for his Roadtown concept for decades until the end of his life in 1936. Hastings had by then moved on to other things.
Broadway connection
Though a prolific writer Hastings never learned to touch-type. This led to a never-ending search for typing help. That was how he came to be friends with Billy Rose. Billy Rose is remembered mainly as a Broadway impresario, writer and producer of many shows. He was born William Samuel Rosenberg in 1899. His first claim to fame was as a stenographer. He was trained inGregg Shorthand Gregg shorthand is a form of shorthand that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in ...byJohn Robert Gregg John Robert Gregg (17 June 1867 – 23 February 1948) was an Irish educator, publisher, humanitarian, and the inventor of the eponymous shorthand system Gregg Shorthand. Life Childhood John Robert Gregg was born in Shantonagh, Ireland, as th ...himself and at age 16 won a high-speed dictation contest. During World War I he was the chief stenographer for financier Bernard Baruch, head of theWar Industries Board The War Industries Board (WIB) was a United States government agency established on July 28, 1917, during World War I, to coordinate the purchase of war supplies between the War Department (Department of the Army) and the Navy Department. Because .... Somewhere Billy Rose and Milo Hastings met and hit it off. On the train between New York and Washington Milo would dictate and Billy would record. In the 1920s Billy began to write songs. Milo thought the songs were good but he needed a stage name and suggested “Billy Rose”. Billy would bring his girlfriends over to Milo’s apartment in New York and ask Milo what he thought. When Billy married Fanny Brice in 1929 Milo and his wife Sybil were wedding guests. In the early 1920s Hastings penned ''The Who-Ams'', a comedy-drama, with Leslie Burton Blades. Evidently the play was never produced. A copy exists in the archives of the New York Public Library Performing Arts Theatre. Hastings was also acquainted withNed Wayburn Ned Wayburn ''(né'' Edward Claudius Weyburn; 30 March 1874 – 2 September 1942) was an American choreographer. Career Wayburn was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Elbert Delos Weyburn and Harriet Landon Beach. Ned Wayburn spent much of ...the head of the Ned Wayburn Studios of Stage Dancing. Family lore holds that much of Wayburn’s 1925 book ''The Art of Stage Dancing'' was actually written by Hastings. In 1936, during the Great Depression, Hastings and Orrie Lashin (secretary toWalter Lippmann Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the te ...) wrote the play ''Class of ’29'' under the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project. The play is about the spiritual unrest of college graduates unable to find work during the Depression. Heywood Broun devoted one of his "It Seems to Me" columns in a March 1936 to accusations that the play was socialist propaganda. The play enjoyed a brief run at theManhattan Theatre The Manhattan Theatre was located at 102 West 33rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, directly across from Greeley Square at Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street. The 1,100-seat theatre opened in 1875 as the Eagle Theatre, and was renamed the ...on Broadway in the spring of 1936 and was presented in other US cities.
Family
Milo Milton Hastings was the youngest of the seven children of Reverend Zachariah Simpson Hastings and Rosetta (Butler) Hastings. Each of the children had double initials. "This happened so with the two first, with the others it was purposed so." His father was a preacher and farmer in Kansas where the family was raised. Only four of the boys survived to adulthood. Brother Paul P. Hastings became the VP of traffic for theSanta Fe Railroad The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and .... Milo's mother's father wasPardee Butler Pardee Butler (March 9, 1816 in Onondaga County, New York – October 20, 1888 in Farmington, Atchison County, Kansas) was a farmer and Restoration Movement preacher who arrived in Kansas in 1855 and was involved there in the run-up to the America ..., an abolitionist preacher who came to Kansas before theCivil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...and is remembered in Kansas history for being set adrift on the Missouri River for his beliefs.Butler describes his life and times in pre Civil War Kansas in
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
', Rosetta Butler Hastings, Cincinnati, Standard Publishing Company, 1889 After the Civil War the family became involved with the temperance movement and anti-smoking campaigns. Milo rebelled against his family's religious beliefs, although his writing is sprinkled with biblical references. Milo married Beatrice Hill in 1906. They soon separated and were divorced in 1913 after he had his first child by Carmen Horowitz (née Frances Horowitz.) He married a second time in 1916 to Sybil Butler, a first cousin, and had two more children. There are three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. After living many places in his youth, Hastings bought an old quarry inTarrytown, New York Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North ...in 1920 and lived there until his death in 1957. The quarry was given to the town of Tarrytown and is now a park. Milo is buried with some of his family in the Pardee Cemetery in Cummings,Atchison County, Kansas Atchison County (county code AT) is a county located in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 16,348. Its county seat and most populous city is Atchison. The county is named i ....
Notes
Bibliography
* – likely ghostwritten in part by Milo Hastings * * – Dan Spain is a pseudonym for Milo Hastings * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
External links
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hastings, Milo 1884 births 1957 deaths American health and wellness writers 20th-century American inventors People associated with physical culture People from Atchison County, Kansas