1919: Lucasville's Centennial Year

Beautiful Ohio

I sailed away;
Wandered afar;
Crossed the mighty restless sea;
Looked for where I ought to be.
Cities so grand, mountains above,
Led to this land I love.

CHORUS:

Beautiful Ohio, where the golden grain
Dwarf the lovely flowers in the summer rain.
Cities rising high, silhouette the sky.
Freedom is supreme in this majestic land;
Mighty factories seem to hum in tune, so grand.
Beautiful Ohio, thy wonders are in view,
Land where my dreams all come true!

ORIGINAL CHORUS (written by Ballard MacDonald):

Drifting with the current down a moonlit stream,
While above the Heavens in their glory gleam,
And the stars on high
Twinkle in the sky,
Seeming in a paradise of love divine,
Dreaming of a pair of eyes that looked in mine.
Beautiful Ohio, in dreams again I see
Visons of what used to be.

In 1969, the Ohio legislature adopted "Beautiful Ohio" as Ohio's state song. Mary Earl, whose real name was Robert A. "Bobo" King, composed the music. Ballard MacDonald wrote the original lyrics to the 1918 song. The song became a big hit in 1919 – almost 100 years ago as recorded by artists such as Canadian Henry Burr and the Waldorf-Astoria Dance Orchestra. The melody is partly based on "Song of India" by Rimsky-Korsakov and "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster.

In 1919, Ohio and the town of Lucasville found their beautiful way into the hearts and minds of the nation. In celebration of Lucasville, Ohio's 200th birthday in 2019, let's turn the clock back 100 years to 1919, the year of the Lucasville Centennial.

What was it like during that time? Thanks to historical chronicles we can better answer that question. Our town and our America were going through some defining changes. Let's explore our past. I hope you enjoy the time travel.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat from New Jersey, was president. He had been re-elected in 1916 over Republican Charles Evans Hughes, the only sitting Supreme Court Justice to serve as a major party's presidential nominee, in a very close election. Wilson won the state of Ohio with 51.86 percent of the popular vote. 

A declaration of war by the United States against Germany passed Congress by strong bipartisan majorities on April 4, 1917, with opposition from ethnic German strongholds and remote rural areas in the South. The United States had entered World War I. 

A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919.

After the Germans signed the Armistice, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, “Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?” But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

Wilson's influence? He helped transfer American foreign policy from isolation to internationalism. He also had success in making the Democratic Party a “party of reform.” The man also had the ability to shape and mobilize public opinion – something that surely fashioned the modern presidency.

The Progressive Era

The 1890s to the 1920s was known as the Progressive Era, a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the country. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Doesn't that sound familiar? I guess some things never change.

Progressives were people who believed that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace. Progressives lived mainly in the cities, were college educated, and believed that government could be a tool for change. A hallmark group of the Progressive Era, the middle class, became the driving force behind much of the thought and reform that took place in this time.

Ohio Progressives like Tom Loftin Johnson and Samuel Jones became prominent. In 1897, Jones received the Republican Party's nomination for Toledo's mayoral office. Workers united behind Jones's candidacy, and he won the election. Jones proceeded to implement Progressive reforms. During his time in office, Jones worked to improve conditions for the working class people of his community. The mayor opened free kindergartens, built parks, instituted an eight-hour day for city workers, and did much to reform the city government. Jones encouraged voters and politicians to renounce political parties.

After World War I, the Progressive Movement began to decline in popularity. The era of the Roaring Twenties began, and many Americans sought a more carefree and less moralistic lifestyle. Aspects of Progressivism remained until the Great Depression and beyond, but it failed to exist as a concerted movement by the early 1930s.

World War I Treaty

One of the most important dates of 1919 was June 28. On this date, the Treaty of Versailles was signed and thus ended World War I. American losses in World War I were modest compared to those of other major conflicts, with 116,516 deaths and approximately 320,000 sick and wounded of the 4.7 million men who served. The U.S. lost more personnel to disease (63,114) than to combat (53,402), largely due to the influenza epidemic.

Many Americans felt that the Treaty was unfair on Germany. More importantly, they felt that Britain and France were making themselves rich at Germany's expense and that the United States should not be helping them to do this.

The treaty would largely come to be seen as a failure for Wilson, however. Congress, concerned about conceding individual power in order to become a member of the League of Nations, refused to ratify it. Wilson had been the driving force behind the League of Nations, and while the other signatories of the treaty embraced the League, American isolationism quashed enthusiasm for it at home. Many were concerned that belonging to the League would drag the U.S. into international disputes that were not their concern. In the end, the Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.

In place of the Treaty of Versailles, Congress passed a resolution, known as the Knox–Porter Resolution, in 1921 to formally end the war with Germany. The League of Nations would be resurrected after the Second World War with a proposal to create a United Nations along similar lines.

Soldiers who survived the Influenza outbreak awaiting transport back 

to Camp Sherman from downtown Chillicothe. c.1918

The Deadliest Pandemic: Spanish Flu

There is good argument for the flu being the most important event of the time. The influenza pandemic (January 1918– December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. It was recorded as the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide – about one-third of the planet's population – and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans.

In Ohio, Camp Sherman in Chillicothe was affected more by the epidemic than any other training camp in the nation. The disease swept through the camp in the late summer and early fall. Approximately 5,686 cases of influenza were documented among Camp Sherman soldiers in 1918. 1,777 of them were unable to ward off the disease and died before the epidemic ended.

The National Park Service offered these gruesome details of the pandemic …

“With the high mortality rate at Camp Sherman, The Majestic Theater on 2nd Street in Chillicothe became a temporary morgue. Bodies would be 'stacked like cordwood' at the theater while it was operated as a morgue. Body fluids that were drained during the embalming process ran off into the alley next to the theater giving it the dubious nickname of 'Blood Alley.' Once victims' bodies completed the embalming process, they would be transported by wagon back to the camp so they could be sent back to their hometowns by railway. As these wagons made their way through Chillicothe, funeral hymns were played to reflect the somber mood. As with all public places in the U.S., meeting places, bars and theaters were closed to try to prevent further spread of the disease. All personnel at Camp Sherman were quarantined from Chillicothe as well.”

Statewide in Ohio, hundreds of thousands of people became infected and tens of thousands died from the influenza. During the last week of October 1918, 1,541 Ohioans died. Between October 1918 and January 1919, almost six hundred Dayton residents perished. In an attempt to stop the spread of the disease, many colleges temporarily closed their doors. In some cases, campus buildings were made into makeshift hospitals to treat those who had contracted the illness. Many other parts of the country also experienced tragedy as a result of the influenza epidemic.

The First Red Scare

Once the United States no longer had to concentrate its efforts on winning World War I, many Americans became afraid that communism might spread to the United States and threaten the nation's democratic values. Fueling this fear was the mass immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States as well as labor unrest in the late 1910s, including the Great Steel Strike of 1919.

Therefore, in 1919, the U.S. was plunged into the First Red Scare – a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism due to real and imagined events; real events included the Russian Revolution and anarchist bombings carried out by the Italian anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani from April through June 1919. How strange it seems that the terrorists of the day were Italian. Yet, how much the threats of foreign and domestic terrorism then parallel those of modern times.

At any rate, in late April 1919, at least 36 booby trap dynamite-filled bombs were mailed to a cross-section of prominent politicians and appointees, including the Attorney General as well as justice officials, newspaper editors and businessmen, including John D. Rockefeller.

Both the federal government and state governments reacted to the fear and the events by attacking potential communist threats. They used acts passed during the war, such as the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, to prosecute suspected communists. The Ohio legislature passed a law known as the Criminal Syndicalism Act, which allowed the state to prosecute people who used or advocated criminal activity or violence in order to obtain political change or to affect industrial conditions.

The obvious patriotism coming out of World War I, as evidenced by anti-German sentiment in Ohio, helped to fuel the Red Scare. The federal government's fervor in rooting out communists led to major violations of civil liberties. Ultimately, these violations began a decrease in support for government actions. But, once again, history would repeat itself in the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy when another Red Scare born of Cold War tensions would fuel fears of widespread Communist subversion.

Postcard with a color image of the Seal of Ohio with a woman's face in the center. The woman's face is framed by the rising sun and the slogan "Let Ohio Women Vote." The postcard was sent from Columbus, Ohio by Elizabeth J. House to Mrs. C. L. Martzolff in Athens, Ohio, 1915.

The 18^th and 19^th Amendments

And, two important amendments were enacted in the year. 

First, on January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition, went into effect in the United States. In what later become known as a misguided and ineffective effort to fight alcoholism, family violence, and saloon-based political corruption, activists led by pious Protestants and social Progressives supported the ban on alcoholic beverages. However, within a week after Prohibition went into effect, small portable stills were on sale throughout the country while private and large-scale bootlegging began in earnest ushering in an era of rampant organized and widespread criminal activity.

Considering that John Lucas, the founder of Lucasville, operated a local tavern until his death on July 31, 1825, at age 37, I wonder how many residents secretly imbibed with a toast or two to the good old days. In 1919, I'm sure many were singing the bars of the old Irving Berlin tune “The Near Future.”

“How dry I am, how dry I am
Nobody knows how dry I am... Hooow dryyy I aaaaaam!"

The other amendment that made news in 1919 was the 19^th Amendment. On June 4, the United States Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would soon guarantee suffrage to women, and sent it to the U.S. states for ratification. Women had fought for the right to vote since the mid-1800s. They marched, protested, lobbied, and even went to jail.

Ohio women were actively involved in the struggle for suffrage. The Women’s Suffrage Movement first gained popularity in Ohio largely due to the second Woman’s Rights Convention having been held in Salem, Ohio from April 19-20, 1850. Cleveland was home to one of the nation’s earliest suffrage conventions, in 1869. The state legislature approved women voting in school board elections in the 1890s, but progress was much slower for other political offices and at the state level. Women formed the Ohio Woman's Suffrage Association in the late 1800s and participated in a number of other local, state, and national organizations.

Ohio History Central reports …

“An Ohioan, Harriet Taylor Upton, was instrumental in both the state and national campaigns for women's suffrage. She served as president of the Ohio Women's Suffrage Association for a number of years, as well as acting as treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1912, supporters were able to persuade Ohio's Constitutional Convention to take up the issue. As a result, Ohio voters went to the polls that year and voted on an amendment to the state constitution that would allow women to vote, but the amendment did not pass. Women's suffrage was entangled in the debate about Prohibition by the early twentieth century. Manufacturers of alcoholic beverages successfully campaigned against the amendment. Brewers feared that, if women had the right to vote, they would support Prohibition.

“During World War I, women contributed significantly to the nation's war effort. As a result of their service and because more and more politicians began to realize that women could be an important source of votes, the United States Congress supported passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.”

Passage of the 19th Amendment was not easy. The United States House of Representatives originally approved the amendment by only one vote more than required, and the United States Senate held three different votes before passing it as well. The majority of Ohio's representatives voted in support of the Nineteenth Amendment.

When the amendment came before the Ohio legislature for ratification, support was much stronger. The state Senate voted in favor of the 19th Amendment by a vote of twenty-seven to three, and the House of Representatives passed it with a vote of seventy-three to six. As a result, Ohio was the fifth state to ratify the 19th Amendment. On June 16, 1919, Ohio voted in favor of the amendment. By August of 1920, 36 states approved the proposal and the 19^th Amendment became law.

One must wonder what Lucasville lady at the time of the Centennial led others as a local suffragette. I believe it likely that many took an active role in favor of the amendment. I'm certain the celebration of the town's 100^th Birthday was buzzing with hope and a little controversy. I bet this quote by the late Susan B. Anthony was familiar to progressives of the time: “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. ... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”

The Red Summer

1919 was also the year of Red Summer, a national racial frenzy marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the United States, as a result of approximately 25 anti-black riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county.

As early a May 1, riots broke out in Cleveland, Ohio, and in Charleston, South Carolina. In most instances whites attacked African Americans, who, of course, fought back. The racial riots against blacks resulted from a variety of postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs and housing among ethnic white people and black people.

The highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where five whites and an estimated 100–240 black men, women and children were killed. Violence erupted when whites attacked a meeting of black sharecroppers who were organizing to demand fairer treatment in the cotton market. After a white person was shot, federal troops were called in to “quell” the violence, but instead they joined white mobs in hunting black residents for several days.

Chicago and Washington, D.C. had 38 and 15 deaths, respectively, and many more injured, with extensive property damage in Chicago.

The New York Times lamented the new black militancy: "There had been no trouble with the Negro before the war when most admitted the superiority of the white race." A "Southern black woman," as she identified herself, wrote a letter to The Crisis, the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), praising blacks for fighting back ...

"The Washington riot gave me a thrill that comes once in a life time ... at last our men had stood up like men. ... I stood up alone in my room ... and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and humiliation of a life time -- half a century -- was being stripped from me."

In the fall of 1919, Dr. George Edmund Haynes, co-founder and first executive director of the National Urban League, completed a report on the causes and scope of Red Summer. He reported that “the persistence of unpunished lynching” contributed to the mob mentality among white men and fueled a new commitment to self-defense among black men who had been emboldened by war service. “In such a state of public mind,” Dr. Haynes wrote, “a trivial incident can precipitate a riot.”

I can only assume Red Summer had a direct emotional effect on the residents of our small Ohio town. Even though the Civil War and emancipation were in the distant past, race relations in 1819 Southern Ohio were tenuous considering that de facto segregation was firmly established. Integrated and segregated mindsets surely clashed. Of course, Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South had been upheld in 1896 by the U.S. Supreme Court's "separate but equal" legal doctrine.

From its beginnings, Lucasville felt the need to confront inequality. It must be noted that the William Lucas, father of our founder, did this in the early 1800s:

“In leaving the slave state of Virginia for the free embryo commonwealth of Ohio, which had not as yet been admitted into the Union, performed one of those noble and generous acts so characteristic of the better class of those who were bred under the patriarchal system in the olden time. He freed every one of his adult slaves who wished to remain in Virginia, and provided for the younger ones, most of whom he took with him to Ohio, till they became of legal age and able to support themselves.”

The 1919 World Series

If you were a Cincinnati Reds fan, 1919 was a great year … well, kind of. It was the year of the infamous Black Sox Scandal in which the Chicago White Sox “threw” the World Series to the Reds. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally losing the series against Cincinnati in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein.

On October 1, the day of Game One, there were rumors amongst gamblers that the series was fixed, and a sudden influx of money being bet on Cincinnati caused the odds against them to fall rapidly.

However, most fans and observers were taking the series at face value. On October 2, the Philadelphia Bulletin published a poem which would quickly prove to be ironic:

“Still, it really doesn't matter,
After all, who wins the flag.
Good clean sport is what we're after,
And we aim to make our brag
To each near or distant nation
Whereon shines the sporting sun
That of all our games gymnastic
Base ball is the cleanest one!”

Yet, sometimes nasty rumors prove to be true ...

On October 1 after throwing a strike with his first pitch of the Series, Eddie Cicotte's second pitch struck Cincinnati leadoff hitter Morrie Rath in the back, delivering a pre-arranged signal confirming the players' willingness to go through with the fix.

The fallout from the scandal resulted in the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball, granting him absolute control over the sport in order to restore its integrity.

In perhaps less-noteworthy news of 1919, people began dialing numbers for themselves as the rotary dial telephone by Western Electric was put into public use. You can also thank the U.S. Congress of this year for the continual cycle of Americans aimlessly “springing forward” and “falling back” since the often maligned daylight-saving time was first put into effect. And, let's never forget that 1919 was the year Charles Strite invented the Pop-Up Toaster. Still, the problem back then was that all bread was cut by hand, making the machine largely ineffective to uniform slices. It took another ten years during which bread slicing machines gained great popularity to give rise to the invention of the Pop-Up. (Sorry for the hackneyed pun.)

Just a couple more interesting notes about 1919 to close the entry ...

Molasses Flood

On January 15, 1919, the Boston Molasses Disaster (aka the Great Molasses Flood) killed 21 people  and injured 150 (revised totals) more in north-end Boston, Massachusetts. The event entered local folklore and for decades afterwards residents claimed that on hot summer days the area still smelled of molasses.

The tragedy occurred at the Purity Distilling Company facility. At about 12:30 in the afternoon a molasses tank 50 ft. tall, 90 ft. in diameter, and containing as much as 2,300,000 gallons collapsed.

Witnesses variously reported that as it collapsed they felt the ground shake and heard a roar, a long rumble similar to the passing of an elevated train, a tremendous crashing, a deep growling, or "a thunderclap-like bang!" [emphasis added], and as the rivets shot out of the tank, a machine gun-like sound.

The collapse unleashed a wave of molasses 25 feet high at its peak, moving at 35 mph. The molasses wave was of sufficient force to damage the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and tip a railroad car momentarily off the tracks. Author Stephen Puleo describes how nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet. Puleo quotes a Boston Post report:

“Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage ... Here and there struggled a form‍ – whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was ... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings‍ – men and women‍ – suffered likewise.”

Cleanup crews used salt water from a fireboat to wash the molasses away, and used sand to try to absorb it. The harbor was said to be brown with molasses until summer. (Of course this was Boston, home of the lyrical “Dirty Water.” Sorry, I couldn't resist this colorful, gooey reference.) The cleanup in the immediate area took "weeks" with more than 300 people contributing to the effort.

The Curse of the Bambino

Finally, sticking to the subject of Boston (And, excuse me once more for the tacky pun.), December 26, 1919, Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for $125,000, the largest sum ever paid for a player at that time.

Although Ruth twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and was a member of three World Series championship teams with the Red Sox, he wanted to play every day. He was fresh off a sensational 1919 season, having broken the major league home run record with 29 and led the American League with 114 runs-batted-in and 103 runs.

In addition to playing more than 100 games in left field, he also went 9-5 as a pitcher. With his prodigious hitting, pitching and fielding skills, Ruth had surpassed the great Ty Cobb as baseball’s biggest attraction.

Realizing the adulation that came with home runs, Ruth no longer wanted to pitch. But the team needed their star pitcher, not this home-run foolishness, so they pacified him with bonuses or whatever else it took to get him back on the mound. Then, sometime later, Ruth would threaten to leave, or he’d miss a few games in protest, and the process repeated. The team finished in sixth in 1919, and after the 1919 season Frazee started selling players to the New YorkYankees.

After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees amid controversy. The Yankees had not played in any World Series up to that time. The trade fueled Boston's subsequent 86 year championship drought and popularized the "Curse of the Bambino" superstition. In his 15 years with the Yankees, Ruth helped the team win seven American League (AL) pennants and four World Series championships.

Te term "Curse of the Bambino" was not in common use until the publication of the book The Curse of the Bambino by Dan Shaughnessy in 1990. It became a key part of Red Sox lore in the media thereafter, and Shaughnessy's book became required reading in some high school English classes in New England.

Postscript: Linda Scott messaged the following:

"You ask who in Lucasville might have led the charge for women’s right to vote. I think it would’ve been Alice Barker‘s mother, Bertha Rockwell Moulton. She was famous for her temperance movement activities and it was said she was responsible for Lucasville becoming dry.

"See Juli Phillips’ poem in the Backward Glance II Page 84. Women had good cause to ask for temperance because too many men were drinking up their pay And treating their families roughly. So yes, the alcohol industry had good cause to fear women’s voting because they would support temperance a as a general rule."

Here is the poem from Backward Glance: