Life was more exciting in 1919
“It is pitiful to note that the Republican leaders in this great crisis remember only that they are Republicans, and partisan Republicans at that.”
National Democratic Committee Chair Homer Cummings in 1919
I would have liked being a journalist in 1919.
I mean, has there ever been a more exciting news cycle? The nation was recovering from the end of a World War and a pandemic, and was about to prohibit the sale of alcohol.
And crime news was so much spicier. Writers had the liberty to deem the bad guys as “desperadoes,” or “fiends” or ... “bad guys.”
I’ve been firing up the Wayback Machine every few months to check how the pandemic tracks with the timeline of the so-called “Spanish Flu” 102 years ago. Thirteen months back, we found there was a 1918 mandate against sneezing in church and an uprising of barbers against wearing masks. By spring of 1919, more attention was focused on raising money for the post-war effort via “Doughnut Day” sales.
As we brace for a spike in infections over the holiday season, influenza in 1919 was already old news by Thanksgiving. That strain had claimed most of its victims and been downsized to a flu that still manifests itself a century later. It’s a cautionary tale that some version of COVID-19 may still be around in 2121.
One downside to a reporter’s ego a century ago is that there were no bylines. On the upside, local news held much higher value. When Stamford’s Daily Advocate decided to expand its coverage area by reporting on a land battle between Indian Harbor Yacht Club and the Town of Greenwich, copies of the paper were selling in Greenwich for a dollar. The Advocate cost 2 cents at the time. That would be the equivalent of buying tomorrow’s paper for $100. See, this product is a bargain.
There are also bizarro parallels to today’s news in regard to pop culture, a public fascination with grisly crime news and politics.
Will movies survive? The future of motion pictures has not faced a threat like COVID since the advent of television. But back in 1919, 1,600 names were signed to a petition to allow moving pictures to be screened Sundays in Stamford. Only two names spoke up at a public meeting, while many others voiced opposition, including one who suspected a Soviet plot.
One man spoke of returning from “the open cities of France” and not wanting “Stamford to be a boulevard city.” Spoiler Alert ... Another speaker noted “the influence of moving pictures are not wholesome for home life.” Spoiler Alert II ...
The antagonists had one little contradiction in their argument. They insisted Sunday remain a day to get outdoors, while also staying indoors to attend religious services. They won this culture war for a spell, but ... Spoiler Alert III. How to commit a
crime: As if women didn’t have enough problems in 1919, they were also accused of having an impulse to shoplift.
Department store detectives in Boston reported that 75 percent of shoplifters were females “who are unable to control their desire for articles on display and believe they can steal them without being detected.”
Another story details that one woman was looking through a jewelry store window before being struck by a car that knocked her through the glass. The jeweler lost a court case trying to seek $300 in compensation from the driver for items that “mysteriously” vanished from the showcase.
For a different account, a reporter essentially writes “A Guide to Forgery.” A counterfeiter successfully got away with turning dollars into $10 bills by clipping $10 marks from larger bills and pasting them onto smaller ones. Journalists are notoriously bad at math, so I can’t figure out how that adds up to a profit.
I’m stealing this for a script: I’ve long been fascinated that many of the most popular television shows involve the darkest of crimes. I can’t say I’ve seen anything as gruesome as a 1919 account of a toddler whose body was reportedly found in a Jersey swamp after he was kidnapped. Suspicious that the body belonged to a different boy, a coroner dug open graves of area children of 2 or 3 years of age who died within the previous six months.
Is that story not dark enough for you “Dexter” addicts? How about this one? After a man was hanged in San Quentin, a wealthy businessman offered $10,000 to buy his glands. The widow turned him down. Proof for the antivaxxer: Influenza was fading, but the whooping cough was back. It had caused 279 childhood deaths in Connecticut in late 1917, and returned in late 1919 with a much higher fatality rate than diphtheria.
Gee, whatever became of whooping cough and diphtheria? Oh, that’s right, we all got a vaccine that prevents both.
Politics will never change: Ahh, remember the good ol’ days when
there was a “middle” in politics.
No, you don’t.
Back in 1919, the chair of the National Democratic Committee was Stamford’s Homer Cummings. Perhaps you know Cummings as a founder of the law firm Cummings & Lockwood in 1909, as it is still in practice. Or as a three-time Stamford mayor. Or as U.S. attorney general under FDR. Or as the main character in the 1947 Elia Kazan movie “Boomerang,” in which Bridgeport is “portrayed” by Stamford. Or as the inspiration for Cummings Park in Stamford.
OK, you probably never heard of the guy. But he was Grand Poobah of the Democratic Party in 1919, when the nation was trying to unite and heal after World War I. What inspiring words did Cummings offer a weary nation?
“It is pitiful to note that the Republican leaders in this great crisis remember only that they are Republicans, and partisan Republicans at that,” Cummings declared.
Cummings’ words were inspired by Republican opposition to the United States joining the League of Nations. President Woodrow Wilson won a Nobel Peace Prize for being chief architect of the league. So, of course, Republicans successfully opposed joining it.
Spoiler Alert: There was a World War II.
Final Spoiler Alert: I’ll receive the first letters written in opposition of the League of Nations in almost a century.