This ‘Perry Mason case’ is classic American patriotism

Will the real Perry Mason please stand up? 

Actor Raymond Burr played the role of defense attorney Perry Mason.

Author Erle Stanley Gardner chose to name his fictional defense attorney who starred in his mini-novels and then on radio and television as Perry Mason.

 

Erle Stanley Gardner

Is there a story behind that? Oh, yes. Indeed there is. 

Perry Mason Company in Boston, Mass., was the publisher of The Youth’s Companion, a magazine that was a favorite read of Gardner, as a young boy in Malden, Mass. 

The character Perry Mason debuted in Gardner’s works in 1933. Gardner presented Mason as a “hard-boiled, two-fisted attorney.” 

Except Perry Mason the printer wasn’t real either. 

The Youth’s Companion was a weekly newspaper that “dispensed moral education, information and fiction to generations of young people.” Its mission was to “warn against the ways of transgression, error and ruin…and allure to those of virtue and piety.”

 

Daniel Sharp Ford, a Baptist newspaper editor from Cambridge, Mass., acquired The Youth’s Companion in 1857. 

Ford named his new business Perry Mason Company for reasons that remain unknown, “other than his seeking anonymity” from his publication, concluded history scholar Dr. John W. Baer. (Ford’s name never appeared within the publication. He remained editor until he died in 1899.) 

Ford and his nephew, James Bailey Upham, launched a patriotic marketing campaign in 1888 to “place a flag above every school in the nation.” All the better if schools purchased those flags from the Perry Mason Company.

 

Schools began to teach “patriotism and American values,” reported the New England Historical Society.  

In 1892, Ford and Upham saw a great opportunity for “schoolchildren to participate in a flag-related ceremony on Oct. 12, 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas,” the society’s archivist said. 

Freelance writer Zachary Crockett called the initiative a Perry Mason “marketing gimmick” to get schools to buy more flags. “Upham, in a spurt of genius, decided to monetize patriotism by creating a ‘pledge’ in which children would declare their undying love for America.” 

Francis Julius Bellamy, a Baptist minister and a new employee at The Youth’s Companion, was assigned the task. He sat down and wrote 22 words. They were: 

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Francis Julius Bellamy

Flag historian and author Jeffrey Owen Jones called Bellamy’s work “a clean, easy-flowing and pleasantly cadenced piece of writing. The kind of compact prose that trips off the tongue as The Pledge does is deceptively difficult to craft,” Jones added. 

Bellamy said he gave it “two hours of arduous mental labor” to produce the succinct and rhythmic tribute.” 

Ford published The Pledge of Allegiance in The Youth’s Companion’s back-to-school edition in in early September 1892. School officials loved it. President William Henry Harrison proclaimed Oct. 21, 1892, as a new national holiday – “Discovery Day” – to be “observed in schools, churches, and other places of assembly,” honoring Christopher Columbus.”

 

“It is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be…the center of the day’s demonstration,” Harrison said. “Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”

Instantly, The Pledge became a warm blanket covering all elements of society. It was recited at schools, athletic events, other public gatherings…and in Congress.

 

This year marks the 130-year anniversary of the creation of The Pledge of Allegiance…and 430 years since Columbus sailed the ocean blue.