ON THE PAN

Dear Listening Post-More power to you. Here is a little contribution from East Greewich

Hear, friends, the story of a state
Caught in the net of those who prate
That their sole thought is public weal
In all they do and all they feel.
Blatant and cowardly their way
And plotting tricks from day to day.
Foremost in this most holy ring
Of patriots, our Pawtucket king.
Not in the limelight, but in still
Or muddied waters works Ike Gill.
Sitting in state he shuns the light,
Giving his orders left and right,
Nor hesitates to call upon
In time of trouble John Bull John.
Livvy, the great society light,
In days of stress takes rapid flight
And in his private palace car
Makes off for where the thick steaks are,
Knowing nought and caring less,
Content to leave things in a mess
And let Rhode Island stew alone
Leaving San Souci on the "throne."
Behold "Hen" Lippitt, tariff king.
Year in, year out, his story sing;
Tells of the tariff, sacred screed,
Revealing all the hosts of greed
In every word, you know the breed.
Dear Nathan Wright, a boss in name,
Upon the wreck with Burlingame.
On every hand they note with pride
Your state and mine disgraced, defied;
No pledges kept, no single act
Of statesmanship, the cards all stacked;
Stolid and callous to our need,
Intent on serving private greed.
Rathom. and Eaton, --all the crew
Reckless of anything but YOU.
And how they squirm. at each new roast
Grilled by our good old Listening Post

W.L.G.

It was not long after the bundles of that day's edition had been safely dropped off for newsstands and carriers that phones began to ring at places where people gathered in Providence-posh clubs of the bankers and lawyers, City Hall and the State House, fire houses and Legion halls and neighborhood speakeasies. But the first of the calls was made to the News cityroom. The message was short and simple: read On the Pan again, but only the first letter of each line, and from the bottom up.
WHO pulled it off? History does not say with certainty; it merely records the suppositions. Not to anyone's surprise, of course, no trace was ever found of a W.L.G. in the sparsely populated town of East Greenwich. Some of the more fanciful probably were tempted to link the initials with those of the 1840s abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. Did the initials stand for the surnames of three identified in the verse? Not likely. The lines were too good to have been penned by a committee.
One school of thought, part of the hoax folklore, holds that the verse was written on College Hill by a certain wellknown Brown University professor of English.
But the theory given the greatest credence over the years was and is that the verse was written and the whole hoax engineered by Rathom, himself.
Garrison certainly believed it.
A theoretical case against Rathom's having had anything to do with the hoax could be made on the very fact that he was a newspaper veteran. As such he would have known how vulnerable a newspaper is-or was then-to

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