Monday, Jan. 21, 1918
“The lid was down tight on everything except foodstuffs and drugs in this city today,” The Saratogian reports on the fourth day of the federal government’s five-day shutdown of factories east of the Mississippi.
Today is also the first of ten consecutive Mondays on which most other businesses must also close to save coal for the U.S. war effort. Places that sell food are exempt from the Monday order, as are drug stores, theaters and newspaper offices. Theaters open today for the entertainment of idle workers will be closed for the next ten Tuesdays.
Newspapers are exempt from the shutdown order because the government considers them essential for conveying information to the public. With that in mind, the federal fuel administration is allowing two Saratoga County paper mills, the International Paper plant in Corinth and the West Virginia Pulp & Paper mill in Mechanicville, to reopen one day early and stay open on Mondays. That will put approximately 2,000 people back to work tomorrow.
Saloons will be closed on Mondays, and “drinks of any kind were out of the question” today. “Even the soda fountains in the drug stores were not allowed to operate and the man who was caught without smoking materials had to borrow his cigars or tobacco or go without.”
Food stores were originally supposed have halfdays today, but the latest orders allow them to stay open all day.
“Probably the most disgusted lot of people in the city today were the clerks in the grocery and other food serving stores,” one reporter writes, “Many plans that had been made for the halfholiday were shattered.”
While The Saratogian publishes today, local newsstands are closed. “Newspapers had to be bought on the streets or at the offices of publication.”
The federal government and federal fuel administrator Henry Garfield have come in for harsh criticism since the five-day shutdown was announced. The Saratogian editors have had nothing to say on the subject until today.
“One of the wholesome effects incidental to the five days’ suspension of industrial activity east of the Mississippi is that it has brought home to the country, as nothing had done previously, the fact that the United States is engaged in a big, hard war,” today’s editorial observes.
“Everyone has got to work and save and feel and suffer. And the more keenly we feel the situation now, the more clearly we see the facts now, the harder we work now, the more frugally we live now, the more we suffer now, the less we shall have to pay later, and the smaller will be the total toll.”