Today, I am thankful for those treasures that we secure at a bottom-basement bargain.
If you ever visit the Platka market in Athens, just at the foot of the mighty Acropolis, you’ll find hundreds of small shops peddling everything from small statues of the Parthenon to Spartan masks reminiscent of the ones the great warrior Leonidas adorned during the famed battle of Thermopylae. All these trinkets can be purchased for a price. However, what the actual cost of the item might be is really subject to debate. There’s an unwritten rule with all the shopkeepers in the Platka that any purported price is negotiable. In fact, if a customer was to inquire about the cost and then proceed to reach for their credit card to pay for it at the announced price, you might find a slight twinge of disappointment overcome the face of the Greek retailer.
You see, in my motherland, the shopkeepers expect you to haggle. It’s all part of the Greek culture, like souvlaki, ouzo, and folk dancing. In many ways, the haggling over the price is a commercial cat-and-mouse game played for the entertainment of all. By haggling, the shopkeeper enjoys some revelry amidst the boredom of their mundane job. In turn, the tourist gains a sense of internal achievement, having walked away with a bona fide bargain.
Of course, this assumes that what you are buying is not rubbish.
But, Greece is not alone in its adoration of the fortuitous transaction. Here in the United States, we idolize a sensational bargain. Why else would Americans deliberately choose to spend the day after Thanksgiving battling the throngs of humanity at the mall to secure some Black Friday deal? Why do we wait for that end-of-summer sale to finally buy the sandals we have wanted to all season long? Why else do we wait for a ‘clearinghouse’ to make a large purchase, such as a new automobile, sofa, or iPhone? Perhaps Americans subconsciously appreciate that, throughout our short history as a nation, we have secured our fair share of bargains.
When President Thomas Jefferson entered the newly finished White House after the Election of 1800, he faced the growing threat of the French in the wild frontier west of the Mississippi River. In an effort to secure a small tract of land around the city of New Orleans, he sent James Madison and Robert Livingston to Paris to discuss a peaceful exchange of land for money. Much to their pleasant surprise, Napoleon offered to sell France’s entire 828,000 square mile stake in North America at the extremely reasonable cost of 18 dollars per square mile. For a mere $15 million, the US secured land that comprised at least part of 15 future states, stretching as far west as Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. During this third week in October, in 1803, the US Senate ratified the purchase, with little dissention or opposition. The next year, Jefferson would send a caravan of 29 explorers, led by Lewis and Clark, on an expedition to find a waterway passage to the Pacific Ocean.
But, if one truly thinks the Louisiana Purchase was the best bargain in US history, they would be sorely mistaken. Nearly 65 years later, William H. Seward, the famed Secretary of the State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, would negotiate the purchase of a tract of land from Russia for a bottom-basement price. Approximately 120 years earlier, in 1741, a Russian explorer named Vitus Bering had secured possession of a vast mountainous, frigid region in North America north of the United States and west of Canada. For the next century, a few hundred Russians peacefully occupied this region, known as ‘Alaska‘, along with hundreds of members of native tribes and a few other British, Spanish, and American frontiersmen. Without much of a navy to reach its colony and in need of financial support for its own nationalistic interests, the Russian czarist government entered into negotiations with President James Buchanan in 1859 regarding a peaceful transfer of the land to the United States. However, the inevitable change in US administration in 1860, coupled with the Civil War, put the deal on the proverbial backburner while the US fought to secure its own survival. Well, after the war ended, Secretary of State Seward returned to this idea of expanding westward. A strong proponent of Manifest Destiny and American expansionism, Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska’s 586,000 square miles for the inconceivably low price of two cents per acre, or $7.2 million.
Well, the United States Congress and the American press were in an uproar. While Seward attempted to secure the support of the US Senate to annex Alaska, many mocked the impending purchase as ‘Seward’s Folly’, ‘Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden’, ‘Walrussia’, and the ‘Russian Fairy Land.’ The notorious New York Tribune editor, Horace Greeley, mocked Seward’s purchase of the ‘territory of rock, snow, and ice’ as a ‘burden…not worth taking as a gift.’ One US Senator even joked that he would only follow through in support of the annexation if Seward were ‘compelled to live there.’ Nevertheless, the Alaska purchase was approved by the US Senate, at a vote of 37-2, on April 9, 1867. On this day (Oct 18), General Lovell H. Rousseau arrived in the Alaskan outpost of Sitka to lower the Russian flag and raise the Stars and Stripes.
Well, Alaska turned out not to be a folly after all. Instead, the Last Frontier is a veritable goldmine. Literally. The discovery of gold in 1898, followed by the eventual unearthing of natural resources, such as oil, gas, and crucial minerals such as zinc, has led to Alaska becoming one of the most critical states in the entire nation. The fish and lumber industries rely on the yearly supply of salmon and wood from the 49th State. Finally, tourism remains an integral component of the Alaskan success story.
I guess the morale of the story is to never underestimate the opportunity to secure a good bargain, even if you have to haggle to get it. As the old adage goes, sometimes ‘one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.’
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