Hit and Run, Hansel and Grettel (sic), Ice Cream - 1921

1920s Hit and…Stay? Or I suppose it could be a long way around a hit and run, depending on if the injured boy was right or not...

INJURED BOY HAS FAITH
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Says Unknown Owner of Car Will Pay for Damages Done Him.

Paul Lansing, 13-year-old son of Mrs. H. S. Lansing, 300 College avenue, has faith in the good will of man. Paul was riding his bicycle down South Ninth street this morning when he was struck by an automobile. The front wheel of his bicycle was smashed, and Paul suffered an injured knee.

After the accident, the man who was driving the automobile took Paul and the bicycle to a bicycle shop on North Ninth street, where the bicycle was left for repairs. The man told the proprietor of the shop to fix the wheel, that he would be in later and pay for it, and left without giving his name. Paul says that he does not know the man, and did not ask his name, but he feels sure that the damage done to his bicycle will be paid for.

--The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 8, 1921

THEY "BROKE BREAD" IN TRUE HANSEL AND GRETTEL FASHION
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Have you ever come in on the night train from Kansas City or St. Louis and, in the small hours of a chilly morning, arrived in Centralia to wait there until 7 o'clock to be taken to Columbia? Usually you go across the street to a hotel and sit huddled in sleepy groups in the lobby until train time.

Last week-end a student stepped off the Kansas City train, went into the hotel and found a friend off the St. Louis train attempting to sleep in a chair.

So at 3:30 o'clock they strolled over to th (sic) town. In the back of a shop on the main street, they saw a light. They knocked on the door and requested that they be permitted to come in. It was the warm back room of a bakery and so they watched the process of bread baking until it came out of the oven, hot and delicious. They bought a loaf of the hot bread and went to an all-night cafe where they ate it piping hot with coffee. The warm morsels verily melted in the students (sic) mouths and although it was rather early for breakfast they both agreed that it was decidedly good.

--The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 8, 1921

And a cute ads…mmm, delicious high-fat ice cream…


--The Columbia Evening Missourian, October 8, 1921

British Helping Japanese Pilots; Jazz Wedding; Babies; Piggly-Wiggly

So Blogger saved this as a draft and didn't publish it! Well, better late than never. Sorry about that! This was meant to go up Friday 7/15.

Still traveling through the Library of Congress website. Unlike some of the other newspapers, Tulsa's seems to have real news.

File this under "a little early but still good." Fascinating--I had no idea that British pilots helped teach the Japanese.

JAPAN PREPARING FOR FUTURE WAR
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Bolster Up Each Branch of Armed Forces With Struggle as Goal
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TRAINED BY BRITISH
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English Flyers Arrive to Aid Instruction of Cadets for Aviation Service
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WORK IN "FEVERISH HASTE"
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Disarmament Talk Has No Effect on Military Plans, Says Correspondent

(While the rest of the world is on the verge of disarming, Japan is losing not a second in bolstering evry (sic) branch of her armed preparedness. Duke N. Perry, staff correspondent of the International News Service in Tokio has made a careful investigation of Japan's aviation program. Following is the first of a series of these stories on what he found.)

By DUKE N. PARRY
T. N. S. Staff Correspondent.

TOKIO, June 26--(By special courier to San Francisco, July 15.)--Japan, if she should go to war with the United States within the next ten years, would employ against the American naval section, aviators whose original instruction was received from British naval aviation experts--experts who for the past several months hav (sic) been arriving in Japan. While disarmament talk in the United States runs high, while opponents of preparation measures throughout the United States gain favor for their beliefs, Japan goes "feverishly on" with preparations. Her diplomats and statesmen non-comittally agreeing that disarmament is a measure in which lis much good, her officials in some cases stating that Japan will look with favor upon such a disarmament conference as has been suggested, the imperial Japanese government through its department of the navy is showing what will rank well along in great speed contests for preparation in building and in learning.....

Trainers Picked by Government.

First, British former officers, former experts and commercial designers, with mechanics, to the number of 59 positively, 74 possibly, have arrived in Japan in the last year. While not the representatives of the government of Great Britain, it is stated with authority that they have been chosen for the Japanese government and this claim is borne out by the fact that all are men whose work for Great Britain ould make them the ones who would most likely be chosen as those best able to instruct in naval aviation and construction. Japan informally announced in 1920 that the imperial Japanese navy hoped to have 17 divisions in naval aviation trained and ready for duty in 1923. Fifteen of these divisions were to be the flying divisions whil two were to be training. They are to be located as follows:

Flying: Yokosuka, 5; Sasebo, 5; Kure, 4; Maidura, 1.
Training: Kasumigara, 1; Yokosuka, 1.

Break No Custom.

Great Britain's commercial men, who send their representatives to Japan to teach and build for the Japanese are breaking no international custom by so doing. Calling the "unofficial mission" of Great Britain to Japan, the present group of naval aviation men now in this country is in no wise different from the military mission which trained the Japanese army and which came from France. The present army, which is headed by Lieutenant Colonel Meares (sp?), retired, of the British air forces, represents a business enterprise in Great Britain. Its members are finding employment in Japan far more lucrative than they could find in their own country ; they are if recommended by the British government, receiving some of the good post-war treatment that is due ex-service men and they are yet, in no wise, the official representatives of Great Britain. This does not lessen the fact, or make it less interesting to Americans the fact that, if war were declared any time within the next ten years, American naval aviation men would go up against Japanese aviators whose preliminary instruction was given by American's one-time ally Great Britain.

Japan as far back as 1919, began to realize her weakness in a line of warfare which has only in the past decade come to be included in the service branches of the powers. Before that time, when the peace was being settled, Japan had, to a degree unnoticed, succeeded in getting planes allotted to her which are today being assembled and gone over by the rapidly improving Japanese aviation section. She ordered planes later from Great Britain and figures given subsequently in this account show to what extend her people are being taxed today, that the branch of naval aviation may be built up.

Other Nations are Wise.

Some idea of how much other nations anticipated Japan's intentions along the line of the naval aviation may be had from the fact that it is common belief in Tokio that aviators who flew from Rome to Tokio last summer, flew not alone because of an interest in aviation but to demonstrate to the Japanese people (which, by the way, they did not do) that Italian aviators were quite as capable of teaching the Japanese navy and war department the art of flying and building as were the aviators of any other nation.

It is thought quite probable here in Tokio that the Italian aviators and builders were just as anxious to get contracts and place men in Japan as were those of any other European nations. And there was reason to believe Italy was convinced of Japan's intentions to start upon her plans of naval aviation expansion immediately.

Today there is no branch of warfare in which Japan is more interested than in aviation. British builders are said to be having some success in teaching their Japanese pupils and the program for intense study of the work and final development of a great branch of Japanese naval aviation is well under way...

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World, July 16, 1921

One of the most interesting things is that the Internet cites the Sempill Mission http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1380539/The-Highland-peer-who-prepared-Japan-for-war.html as the point where the British taught the Japanese to fly...and they say that's SEPTEMBER 1921.

Lighter note!

Will Weigh Babies.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., July 15.--Efforts to "humanize" the postal service in accordance with a recent order of Postmaster General Hays received some development here today when Postmaster E. A. Purdy ordered that all parcel post wagon drivers permit mothers to weigh their babies daily, providing the babies are brought to the parcel post wagon scales.

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World, July 16, 1921

And to think I've never been to the Piggly Wiggly. I also didn't know it was such a grand place...

VISION

On the face of an apple Newton saw the force that links the stars together and binds us to the myriad suns.

On the movement of a teakettle cover Watt saw mighty moguls climbing mountain sides and titanic liners plowing the deep.

On an electric shock received from a key attached to powerful machinery lifting stone and steel to build our modern pyramids of business.

Vision gave to the world Piggly Wiggly Stores where every housewife can get the best foods at the market's best price--and make her own selections...

(Click to enlarge.)

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World, July 16, 1921

That same page cites a "modern" "Jazz Wedding Ceremony" by Rev. G.W. Hatcher, a "marrying parson". I wonder if he ever went actually performed the following ceremony, or if it's just a poem. Does not reflect well on women. :P

"Wilt thou take her for thy pard, for better or for worse; to have, to hold, to fondly guard, till hauled off in the hearse?

"Wilt thou let her have her way, consult her many wishes, make the fire every day and help her with the dishes?

"Wilt thou sooth her in her woes; keep her spirit bright and gay? Wilt thou turn the wringer, hang the clothes and trust her for the pay?

"Wilt thou give her all the stuff her little purse will pack, buy a monkey board, a muff, a little sealskin sack?

"Wilt thou comfort and support her father and mother, Aunt Jemina, Uncle John, 13 sisters and a brother?

"Wilt thou tell her to her face that she is sweet and kind, that the like of her in all the race would be difficult to find?

"Wilt thou be to her the same and never shirk nor falter, as she shall wear thy name and thou shalt wear the halter?"

To break the monotony of the questionnaire on matrimonial promises, Rev. Dr. Hatcher supplies the result on the groom: "His face grows pale and blinks; it is too late to jilt. As to the floor he sadly sinks, he quickly says: 'I wilt.'"...

Bride Has Questionnaire, Too....

"Wilt thou take him for thy pard, for better or for worse; to have, to hold, to fondly guard his person and his purse?

"Wilt thou make him mind and show him every fault and, then, in spite of groan or whine, make him walk the chalk?

"Wilt thou make him eat the scarps (sic?) that belong to days of yore, so you'll get your mid-day naps and over novels pore?

"Wilt thou be quick to take control of all that's on the place and say to him in language bold: 'You're not my boss in any case'?

"Wilt thou make him sweep the floor, fetch the wood and water, pick up things--or whatever else you order?

"Wilt thou make him darn his socks, sew buttons on his britches and get your fingers in his locks every time he misses?

"Wilt thou make of him a carry-all for bandbox, grip and bundle; make him take the parasol and to the racket tumble?

"Wilt thou be to him his dear beyond all conjecture, and when you get upon your car give him a certain lecture?"

The bride is supposed to smile. In the rhyme of the minister: "Her face is all aglow, her eyes as jet, and she queenly stands upon the floor and loudly says: 'You bet!'"

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World, July 16, 1921

Hot Dog Strike! - 1921 - Also Coney Island Con

I found this fascinating. 1920s sarcasm, too.

Famine Barks in Coney's Wake as Frankfurter Makers Strike
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10 Hours Too Long, $37 a Week Too Little for Their Art, Say Stuffers of Familiar but Ever-Mysterious Refetion, Solace of Bleacher and Boardwalk
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A general strike became effective yesterday in the frankfurter industry in this city which, it is believed, will spread want and famine in Coney Island. Hot dogs are delicate creatures and age rapidly. The strikers are confident that when to-day's supply is exhausted the red-hot man will have to get a job with the Weather Bureau or some other place where his cry of "Here y'are! Red hot! Red hot!" will cause no mouths to water.....

The decision to strike followed ineffectual attempts to adjust a dispute enused by the announcement of the Meat Packers' Association of New York that frankfurter men's wages would be reduced from $44 to $41 a week to $37 and $34 and their hours increased from eight hours a day to ten....The meat packers insisted that they and the hot dog could survive only if hours were lengthened and pay rolls shortened. The frankfurter stuffers asserted that they would stuff frankfurters eight hours a day and not a minute longer, nor would they take a penny's reduction in their pay.

They regard themselves as the true scientists of the meat packing business, synthetic chemists, secure in their position by reason of the recondite knowledge of the structure and anatomy of the hot dog which they alone possess.

Their confidence of success is based upon knowledge of their power. No amateur, they assert, could turn out a genuine hot dog even though he worked with text books at his elbow and devoted an entire ten-hour day to the task.

A hot dog to the professional frankfurter stuffer is art of the highest type. It savors of the poetical, but no mere poet ever achieved one; its harmony is as delicate and definite as that of the composition of a supreme composer, but no mere musician ever stuffed a perfect frankfurter; the creative vision and precision of the painter are required in the efficient stuffer of hot dogs, but the painter would be helpless with the implements of the master stuffer at his hand.

With their very art and science in peril, the frankfurter men are determined to fight ruthlessly, even though Coney Island starve.

--New-York Tribune, June 11, 1921, page 18

Hot Dog Reserves Feed Coney Multitude Despite Strikers
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Veterans of Many a Gridiron Rush to Front When 300,000 Visitors Clamor; New Acquaintance Robs Two Girls of $1,000 in Jewels and Cash
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Undaunted by the strike of the frankfurter stuffers, 300,000 persons made their way to Coney Island yesterday by trolley, train, motor, afoot and boat, and for the first time this season the bathhouse establishments were taking them as they came....

To be sure, there was the usual number of children lost only to be found by frantic mothers, but Coney Island is one place where children simply will get lost--and found.

The water was warm and unusually free from banana and orange peels. So as the good word went from one to another, the beach by mid-afternoon began to resemble a bathing beach rather than a picnic ground....

The hot dog bazars fooled every one and went about selling their wares as if there was never such a thing pending as a scarcity of woofers due to the strike of the aroused frankfurter makers. At one booth alone it was estimated that 35,000 pounds of frankfurters were sold during the day. The keen-sighted venders (sic) had laid in an extra large supply to carry them over any emergency. Whether they will have anything in that line to sell next Sunday is something to be worried about next Sunday.

So if it had not been that a dapper young man, introducing himself by the odd yet serviceable name of John Smith made off with Miss Mary Frimerman's engagement ring and other jewelry and money amounting to $1,000, the day as it fell upon Coney Island would have been perfect.

It was Miss Rose Frimerman who met Mr. Smith yesterday in a restaurant. She had never seen him before, it is said, but his manner while offering to pay her check was so irreproachable that she took him around to the house and introduced him to Mary and Joseph Yacker, Mary's fiancé.

Mr. Smith, unfortunately, did not have a bathing suit, so when the others decided to saunter over to the beach for a dip, he departed.

Before starting for the water Rose and Mary put their rings and money in a beaded bag and hid the receptacle in one of the rooms. Seventy-four dollars belonging to Yacker also was put in the bag. Then they went out.

What prompted Rose to worry about the safety of the bag is not known. But she did, and returned to find Mr. Smith in the room.

"Oh, hello," she said. "What are you doing here?"

Mr. Smith blushed modestly while he explained that he had a few pounds of unnecessary sand in his shoes and had come in to get rid of it.

That was all there was to that. Mr. Smith left once more, and when Rose looked for the bag it was gone. She was able, however, to give a good description of him to the police.

--The New-York Tribune, June 13, 1921

Couldn't find any other reference to the strike in later issues of the paper. But there was this little tidbit in August, dateline Boston:

...Frankfurter sandwiches, popular with those who patronize quick lunches, cost an average of 2 4-10 cents, including mustard, and usually sell for 10 cents, the report said.

--The New-York Tribune, August 27, 1921

Murder (thugs hired by midwife!) and Ads

So if you didn't notice last week, I found a new source for news, Chronicling America at the Library of Congress website!

From Saturday, June 11, 1921:

Wife Admits Hired Thugs Slew Kaber
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Charges Midwife She Paid to Have Husband Beaten Got Pair of Assassins to Stab Him Instead
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Woman She Accuses Arrested in Ohio
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Widow Breaks Down in Grilling here; Absolves Her Daughter of Blame
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CLEVELAND, June 10.--Withthe arrival late to-night of Mrs. Eva Katherine Kaber, widow of Daniel B. Kaber, wealthy Lakewood citizen, and Miss Marian McArdle, Mrs. Kaber's daughter, three generations were in the county jail here facing trial fir the first degree murder of Kaber two years ago. Mrs. Mary Brickel, sixty-nine, mother of Mrs. Kaber, has been in jail several days in default of $5,000 bail....

Midwife Seized
One of the women under arrest, a midwife, according to Mrs. Kaber's confession, as related by Prosecutor Stanton, planned the murder of Kaber, who was stabbed twenty-four times. She was taken into custody at Sandusky, Ohio, and is alleged to have concocted a poison, later hiring the assassin. The man figures in Mrs. Kaber's confession, according to Stanton, as one of the agents who hired the two other men to stab Kaber, while the second woman, according to Mrs. Kaber's statements, knew of the plot to commit the murder. The two men at large, Stanton declares, are the actual hired assassins.

In her confession Mrs. Kaber declared the men were hired to "beat up" Kaber "to make him treat her better." The poison was given him, according to the confession, "as medicine to cure his bad habits." She did not know it was poison, Mrs. Kaber insists, declaring it was given to her as medicine.

Although Mrs. Kaber declared she refused to pay the hired foreigners when she learned they had murdered her husband, one of the men being sought is alleged to have left behind in his flight an automobile said to have been given him in payment for his part in the crime. The men were to act as "ghosts," Mrs. Kaber's confession states.

Thinks He Fought
She said Kaber had never believed in ghosts or spirits, and that he probably fought with the men when he awakened and found him by his bedside, the stabbing resulting.

Prosecutor Stanton was prepared to confront the three prisoners with Mrs. Kaber and her daughter to-night in the hope that the prisoners would tell what they knew of the murder.

Mrs. Kaber's aged mother, Mrs. Mary Brickel, who confessed that her daughter knew who had committed the murder, is fretting in her cell here and waiting to be released, seeming to believe that her responsibility is at an end now that the information which she gave has resulted in the clearing up of the murder mystery. She is named in an indictment for murder jointly with hr granddaughter, Miss McArdle, Mrs. Kaber's indictment having been handed up separately....

Quiet on Return Trip
Mrs. Kaber spent the long afternoon on the train gazing out of the car window. She was quiet and apathetic. The wrist into which she jabbed the manicure file in the Harlem prison on Tuesday was bandaged, and a close watch was kept on her to prevent any possible attempt to jump out of the window.

Her daughter seemed to be in good spirits. She passes the time with magazines and in telling Mrs. Christensen's fortune with cards. The cards foretold a happy future for the police chief's wife, which seemed to afford Miss MacArdle some melancholy amusement.

The article mentions the police know the hired men are "Italians," and said the interrogation of Mrs. Kaber went from 2 o'clock PM Thursday through 4 o'clock Friday morning! It also mentions, if you believe it, that Mr. Kaber was a paralytic.

When the time for the train arrived a touring car took the prisoners and police to the Grand Central station. The two women bought books and some candy before boarding the train.

--New-York Tribune, Saturday, June 11, 1921, page 1

There's a summary of the whole (graphic) story at Lakewood History Files. According to that story, he died with 24 stab wounds and a lot of arsenic in his system, and Mrs. Kaber finally was found guilty in July 1921.

On a brighter note, here's a nice ad from Saks & Company. I wish they had a picture of the "Misses' Fairy-like Dance Frocks Of Georgette Crepe"!



Stop back tomorrow. The back of that same issue had a great story on hot dogs (!) that I just couldn't hide away here.

Coney Island and Memorial Day - 1921

Looking back at Marie Curie:

MME. CURIE HAS RESTFUL DAY

Spends Sunday With Mrs. N.F. Brady--Returns to Town Tonight.

--The New York Times, May 30, 1921

The article mentions that Ms. Curie's daughters planned to visit Coney Island! It also denies she had radiation sickness from the radium! (She actually died in 1934.)

HEAVY STORM HITS CONEY.

300,000 Rush to Shelter--Railway Entrances Flooded.

--The New York Times, May 30, 1921

The story describes the Sunday before Memorial Day. There was a 6 PM thunderstorm/rainstorm that flooded the entrances to the elevateds at West Eight Street and the West End terminal. It was so bad they reportedly constructed footbridges to get people in! One woman was injured. (Elsewhere, a 20-year-old drowned at the Rockaways.)

300,000 at Coney Island.

Two Girls Saved from Undertow by Guards--One Dry Arrest.

--The New York Times, May 31, 1921

The sky was overcast on Monday, Memorial Day, evidently, so people came in the afternoon. (I wonder if Sunday's flooding kept people back--after that rainstorm, I'd hesitate to go out in the clouds too!) The sun came out in the afternoon, making it the biggest day thus far in the season. There were a lot of tourists, and the crowds were mostly orderly, with just one person arrested under Prohibition.

The article also notes that Gertrude Maddock, 7 years old, fell out of a car on "The Scrambler," lacerating her scalp. She was treated at the Coney Island Hospital so it sounds like she was fine.

Lots of old Coney Island articles at http://oldtymeconey.blogspot.com/!

And speaking of Memorial Day, on May 3, 1921, President Warren Harding emphasized that Memorial Day was to honor all war dead, not just Civil War veterans.

Harding, in Memorial Day Proclamation, Asks General Homage to War Dead on May 30.

--The New York Times, May 4, 1921

Looks like it wasn't formally made a rotating holiday (last Monday of May) until 1971! So this year we get the "true" Memorial Day on May 30, as people celebrated in the 1860s and beyond.

This New York Times column from May 30, 1921 describes the history of Memorial Day, claiming the holiday was originally intended to remember Civil War dead (this page collaborates). But, the author says, later generations forgot and made it into a holiday. By 1921, though, thoughts went back to the World War in Europe. The author calls for bringing back the spirit of Memorial Day--at least to "pause for gratitude and benediction" amid the recreation. Good idea.

The New York Times also has an article about a Memorial Day speech by President Warren Harding, too.