‘What’s on the other side?’
The Tribune’s New Year’s editions reflect the many mood swings of a city
In thewaning days of 1871, a Tribune staffer sat down in the paper’s makeshift office to write an editorial for Jan. 1. It’s a standard assignment and comes with a template of perennial clichés. The writer could have pounded out trite lines like: “There are two kinds of people— those who breakNewYear’s resolutions, and those who don’t make them.” Or he might’ve taunted a sports franchise: “Where’s that championship you promised, howmany years ago?”
But the Great Chicago Fire of Oct. 8-10, 1871, had ravaged the city, and so a traditionalNew Year’s editorialwould have been inappropriate.
Aweek after the disaster, twoTribune employees briefly returned to the newspaper’s burned-out offices atMadison and Dearborn. They looked out the windows of one room and decided therewas no point in continuing to write. “There are very few buildings in this city todaywhichwould permit of a view fromtheir top-story widow,” they reported.
The few buildings thatwere still standingwere poised to collapse. Chicago’s commercial centerwas rubble and ash.
The disaster’s aftershocks— andmoments of relief— were reported forweeks thereafter.
In a list of the missing and found: “A little girl, 4 years of age, namedMcCauley, strayed from her parents in Fulton Street. She is at Centenary Church.”
Froma report of stories told at awedding held after the fire: “Three men have just come in who have had but four soda crackers between them since Sunday, and this is Wednesday morning.”
Something told theTribune staff writer of theNewYear’s editorial to take its theme fromnature’s cycle of death and rebirth.
“The fire which burns over the prairie in the fall makes the young grass of the next spring always greener and stronger, and the soil richer andmore productive,” hewrote. “The same result will ensue in our own case, ifwe hasten to seize upon the advantages offered us.”
One year later onNewYear’sDay, the Tribune reported that, like themythological phoenix, Chicago had risen fromits ashes.
“Avery large portion of the burned area has been restored to business and living in a more substantial and elegant manner than before, and property-owners may congratulate themselves upon the fact that the increased business of the city has found ample facilities for its transaction.”
Collectively, theTribune’sNew Year’s Day editions record the mood swings of the city, as the newspaper’s editors measured them.
On Jan. 1, 1946, an editorial cartoon depicted Father Time listening to a record and asking,“Wonder what’s on the other side?”— perhaps a nod to the jitters of a city andworld healing froma devastatingwar.
Two stories in the same edition set expectations with these answers: hope and sadness. One reported on the anticipated death ofMei-mei, the Brookfield Zoo’s much beloved panda, and another noted: “Altho they knowthe chances are slim, surgeons in JohnsHopkins hospital today decided to operate in a forlorn attempt to give an Italian boy aNewYear’s present of eyesight.”
OnNewYear’sDay of 1899, theTribune emptied its inkwell of purple prose with a gushing tribute to the Spanish-American War. As the spoils of victory, theUnited States seized the Philippines and Puerto Rico, thereby becoming a colonial power.
“The year of ’98— forsworn to the sacrificial altar of liberty, ornate with the garlands of heroism, of matchless bravery, of love and self sacrifice— is nomore. The star-eyed goddess has claimed her ownand it nowrests as the brightest gem among all the precious jewels in her reliquary of the past.”
But on Jan. 1, 1917, theTribune donned sackcloth and ashes to announce that, as the saying goes, Chicago is going to hell in a handcart.
“The fingers of Chicago youth clutch the stock of a revolver almost as readily as the handles of awheelbarrow,” theTribune said. “When the citymakes itsNewYear’s resolution, it must be to eradicate murder and violent crime, to make honest business safer and more profitable than taking by force the gains of honesty.”
Jan. 1 in 1942 cameweeks after the bombing of PearlHarbor got us intoWorld War II, prompting theTribune’s society columnist to predict:
“The toasts to theNew Year that ring out in the various clubs and private homes todaywon’t be exchanged with the gay abandon of former years, but it’s certain that they’ll carry sincere hopes for a ‘Better NewYear.’”
Some Jan. 1 editorials fromtheTribune’s archives provide a check on whatwe intuit about the distant past. We knowthatWorld War II ended in 1945, but the feeling at the start of that yearwas not one of optimism.
As the Tribune’s editorial board observed: “Itwould be useless to avoid knowing— and needless to refrain fromsaying— that 1945 does not break out its new entry books as auspiciously as had been hoped six months ago.”
D-Day— Allied forces’ marvelously successful invasion of occupiedEurope in June 1944— was followed in December by the frustrating Battle of the Bulge, the Germans’ counterattack. The SovietUnion’s Josef Stalin, our supposed ally, was subjugating Eastern Europe. Great Britain’s WinstonChurchillwas fighting Greeks who had fought their fascist occupiers.
Other years, the editorswerewondrously naive. OnNew Year’sDay in 1920, the Tribune repeated the federal government’s call for Americans to heed the forthcoming start of Prohibition, which ultimately misjudged readers’ commitment to civic responsibility.
“Whether prohibition is awise national policy is no longer a question for debate or contention among good citizens,” theTribune quoted the internal revenue commissioner as saying.
Illicit drinking shortly became a national sport. As Al Capone put it: “I amjust a businessman, giving the peoplewhat they want.”
OnNewYear’sDay in 1930, in a list of news briefs about the stock market, a headline in the Tribune proclaimed, “Has a Good Year.” YetWall Street had crashed two months before, triggering the Great Depression. Investorswere wiped out. Wages fell 42%, and 25% of theworkforce would end up unemployed.
On Jan. 1, 1931, a reader’s wishwas printed in the “Wake of theNews,” the Tribune’s odds and ends column: “May the NewYear bewhatwe hoped the old might have been.”
And sometimes, an editorialwriter cut through history’s avalanche of facts to remind us of one that should never be forgotten.
The bloody CivilWar ended andAbraham Lincolnwasmartyred in 1865. The NewYear’sDay editorial of 1866 acknowledged both, but didn’t stop there.
“We shall not see another such year,” the editorial continued. “No slave empire, striking at the nation’s life remains to be vanquished. The greatwork is nearly done. The darkness is past, and the dawning of a more glorious day than theworld ever saw gilds the horizon of our national life, as the year sinks into the eternal past.”
Finally, 2020 brought an unending series of disasters: the pandemic and its economic consequences. With jobs lost and schools closed, everyone could use a spoonful or two of hope. So the Flashback team extends to its readersAdam’s wish for the first new year.
Abba Arikha, a venerated third-century rabbi, reasoned that, as the first man on Earth, Adam had no one to explain to him the progressive shortening of the days of autumn. FromAdam’s perspective, it looked like the sunwould shortly disappear. He’d be left in total darkness.
Then at the height ofAdam’s despair came the winter solstice. On the 22nd of whatwe callDecember, the sun’s vanishing act ended. Fromthat point on, the days grew longer. The light neverwent out. “Kalon dio!” Adam exclaimed.
The Greek phrase has been variously translated as “Beautiful day,” or “May the sun setwell.” But freely translated, it means: “HappyNewYear!”