Biltmore pillage

 

I'm getting a banner made with the image above, having walked up yesterday to the P&W site in the mud and rain to get the image. I want to use it when we do our vigil in Biltmore Park in front of the offices of Biltmore Farms LLC. Jack Cecil, the owner and CEO of the company is the one who donated the land to Pratt & Whitney for the plant. It is he who is responsible for the clear cutting of the forest that can be seen in this image. 

The Biltmore Farms company was founded by George Vanderbilt, the local oligarch who created the Biltmore Estate, now a local tourist attraction. Here's how the Vanderbilts lived:

Cecil is the grandson of Vanderbilt. Wikipedia says this about the Vanderbilt family:

The Vanderbilt family is an American family of Dutch origin who gained prominence during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthropy. Cornelius Vanderbilt's descendants went on to build grand mansions on Fifth Avenue in New York City; luxurious "summer cottages" in Newport, Rhode Island; the palatial Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina; and various other opulent homes. The Vanderbilts were once the wealthiest family in America. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest American until his death in 1877. After that, his son William acquired his father's fortune, and was the richest American until his death in 1885. 

In other words, the Vanderbilts were robber barons who made their fortune pillaging the labor, lands, and wealth of others.

The Cecil family married into the Vanderbilt family. Here's a little bio that was put together by Bill Branyon, a local journalist:

Mr. Cecil’s great, great, etc., great grandfather is William Cecil, who was Queen Elizabeth’s most important advisor according to the book The Cecil’s, The Power Behind the Throne. He established a secret police force to fight Catholic influence in Protestant England, and was responsible for assassinating many treasonous Catholics, as well as the beheading of Elizabeth’s first cousin, the militant Catholic, Mary Queen of Scotts. In addition, William built England’s navy to be second to none and thus helped insure the Catholic Spanish Armada could not successfully invade Protestant England. Whereas another of Jack’s ancestors, Robert Cecil was Prime Minister of England during the Boer War. So the Cecil family is quite familiar with the fortunes of war, and the business needed to fight wars.

The Biltmore Estate and Buncombe County developments are, in my very vague estimation,  maybe one-tenth or less of their family wealth, and Jack is probably trying to feels more a respected member in the family by making a ton of money like I guess everyone else in the family does. I mean the reason the Cecil’s came to Asheville as perhaps a money-making scheme. According to Britannica, John was the third son of the third son of [sic] of the Third Marquess of Exeter. Even title-mad England balked at granting titles to third sons twice removed. And John’s father was merely the “Groom in Waiting” to Queen Victoria and the “Extra Gentleman Usher” to George V.        

There was hardly any chance that John was going to inherit the family mansion called the Dillington House, but then he met the artistic, enchanting Cornelia Vanderbilt while serving as 1st Secretary of the British Ambassador to America. Thus, when they married in 1924, John became the titular head of a home almost twice as big as either of the family leviathans of Burghley and Hatfield. Those two mansions are about 90,000 square feet compared to the 179,000 square foot Biltmore House.

Biltmore Farms prides itself on being progressive. Here's what it says on its website: "Our company has evolved to meet today’s marketplace. Once the region’s largest independent dairy operation, Biltmore Farms is now a dynamic multi-faceted company spurring economic development and thoughtful growth in our region. Wellness, educational enrichment, and a deep respect for sustainability and the beauty of our mountains—these values have been with our company from our start and remain at our core today."

What's happening to the property at the behest of Pratt & Whitney hardly lives up to these values. And the thing is, Cecil is working with the local Economic Development Coalition (EDC) to extend this project into including more businesses up there on the Farms. The EDC is already recruiting more businesses, using the Pratt & Whitney presence as a draw, kind of like an anchor big box store in a mall. We don't know what other businesses are being recruited, but believe the vision is for a military-industrial park of sorts. 

That's what we are trying to stop: more Biltmore pillage.