How did the New Year feel for Detroiters 100 years ago?

By Melissa Walsh

​A week before crossing into this new decade, I decided to read each Detroit Free Press edition from December 21, 1919 to January 2, 1920. (I was unable to find a January 1, 1920 edition in the archives at the Detroit Public Library.)

This research is in step with legwork I’ve done the past few years for writing ten short stories of historical fiction for a book I aim to publish in 2020 called Little-known Lives in the Motor City. Each story focuses on characters I imagined living through real events in Detroit during the twentieth century. The stories are heavy in historical research. I use old newspapers to gain a sense of the background of the period — fashion, political mood, economics, style of speaking, etc.

I suspect a hundred years from now there will be another history nerd analyzing Detroit’s crossing into 2020, just as I investigated its crossing into 1920. Certainly, a future analyst will discover news of the detainments and deportations of foreign nationals in Detroit — middle eastern Christians and muslims, Mexicans, Albanians and others. This person will read about Detroit’s changing demographics, discovering that some commentators present the city's changes as evidence of renaissance and others decry them as gentrification. The researcher also will note metro Detroit’s pro-Trump and anti-Trump sentiment and demonstrations.

The researcher might note that the weather of December 2019 was exceptionally mild. I learned that December 1919 was so warm and rainy that the launch of hockey season had to be postponed.

I also learned that in 1919 divorces were listed in the newspapers like obituaries. I noticed that men dictated news while women were given a gentle voice in editorials on domestic chores and entertaining and on how to catch a husband.

I discovered that Detroit was growing rapidly in 1919 and in 1920 would become the nation’s fourth-largest city. Close to 800 miles of road was constructed in Michigan in 1919, most of which ran through the southeastern portion of the state, near Detroit. In December, Detroit City Council considered a solution proposed by Mayor Couzens for Detroit’s overcrowded and costly-to-maintain street-car system. Integral to the plan would be municipal ownership of additional lines.

The influx of workers into Detroit's growing manufacturing plants had led to a severe housing shortage by 1919. Families were sharing small houses and apartments requiring increasingly higher rent by landlords who allowed the dwellings' maintenance to decline. A report released by the city in 1919 estimated that 33,000 of Detroit's housing spaces were “makeshift, cramped or insanitary.”

Veterans were still returning from wartime service in Europe and having difficulty finding employment. Demands for higher wages by Detroit's firefighters, policemen and teachers were refused by Mayor Couzens. These and other Detroiters were hustling in a post-war economy of high inflation. The hardest hit goods were food and fuel. The steep price increases nationally prompted Congress to extend the U.S. 1917 Food and Fuel Control Act, also known as the Lever Act, to impose heavy penalties on those hoarding food and fuel for racket.

The following was the lede in a December 24, article entitled “3,000 families will get gifts”: “Long lines of men, women and children, the former weary and dejected, the latter rollicksome, even with toes sticking out from their ragged shoes, stood at a number of neighborhood centers Tuesday afternoon, waiting to receive from Santa Claus the presents provided by the joint efforts of the Community union, the old newsboys, the news papers and individual contributions and distributed by the girls of the Junior league.”

Christmas Tragedy

A 15-year old boy died from a policeman’s bullet Christmas day. He was believed to be attempting to steal a car when he was shot.

Also, that evening a 38-year old woman made a toast at her family dinner in a home on the 600 block of 24th Street before drinking wine she had spiked with poison. She died from suicide in St. Mary’s hospital hours later.

One person was killed and 12 were injured due to a series of auto accidents in Detroit on Christmas Day. William L. Baldwin, 40, was injured and his wife killed as they were struck by an automobile on Hamilton and Euclid. Eleven others were injured from collisions at Kercheval and Montclair, Hamilton and West Grand Boulevard, Forest and Baldwin (involving a drunk driver) and the hit and run of a pedestrian at Warren and Greenwood.

Also on Christmas Day 1919, Cadillac Motor Car company plant caught fire, destroying the carpenter shop.

“Long lines of men, women and children, the former weary and dejected, the latter rollicksome, even with toes sticking out from their ragged shoes, stood at a number of neighborhood centers Tuesday afternoon, waiting to receive from Santa Claus the presents provided by the joint efforts of the Community union, the old newsboys, the news papers and individual contributions and distributed by the girls of the Junior league.”
​From “3,000 families will get gifts,” The Detroit Free Press, December 24, 1919.

Cartoon in the Detroit Free Press on December 31, 1919.

A column found in the Detroit Free Press on December 26, 1919

A column found in the Detroit Free Press on December 30, 1919

Preparing for Prohibition 

Late 1919, local authorities and residents were gearing up for the Volstead Act to go into effect January 1, 2020. Though the prohibition of alcohol for consumption had gone into effect in Michigan in May 1917, Detroiters enjoyed a supply from neighboring Ohio. With the Volstead Act drying up all U.S. states, Detroit’s bootleggers turned to a supply chain from Canada. And many of Detroit's doctors had been writing prescriptions for whiskey, which would be filled in Windsor pharmacies just across the Detroit River.

The Canadian government had announced on December 10, 1919 that it would lift its war-time prohibition on alcohol (and horse-racing) effective January 16, 2020 and granted amnesty to offenders who were criminalized while the act had been in effect. The manufacturing of liquor would be permitted for shipment from one province to the other. This restricted the sale of intoxicants, but opened up the means, per export permit, for Detroit's neighbors in Windsor to have liquor delivered to their homes for “private consumption.” We know from history that bootleggers, like the Purple Gang, took advantage of this policy to illegally transport Canadian whiskey from Windsor over the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair into Detroit, the Downriver communities and St. Clair Shores.

So in 1919, while bootlegging opportunists like the Purple Gang were setting up logistics for importing bonafide Canadian whiskey, other less-sophisticated operators were selling low-grade moonshine. On December 27, 78 deaths were reported in four states (Michigan was not among them) within 48 hours from drinking “fake rum,” which was actually wood alcohol with brown coloring to pass as whiskey. Though Detroiters were spared this tragedy — still enjoying ample, though costly and illegal (but legal from a pharmacy), supply of genuine whiskey -- the move to crack down on alcohol distribution was ramping up by state and federal law enforcement. This led to a series of raids. It was difficult for Detroiters to discern from legitimate law enforcement agents from thieves. For example, the Christmas Eve edition of the Detroit Free Press reported that men posing as state food and drug enforcers seized 8 gallons of “Christmas cheer” from a Detroit man’s cellar.

A Murder Mystery

Following the discovery J. Stanley Brown's murdered body on Romeo Plank Road in Mt. Clemens the morning of Dec. 24, coverage of the investigation into the crime was in Detroit papers each day for the duration of 1919 and well into 1920. Brown, 26, one of four sons of the deceased Detroit cigar magnate John H. Brown, was found with a battered skull and four bullet holes in the back of his neck and head. A wrench sat in a pool of blood near the body. Held for questioning were Brown's 19-year old widow Ruth Prevost Brown, her cousin Lloyd Prevost and, allegedly, his mistress Cecile Beatrice Vester. Brown had been estranged from his wife during the couple’s pending divorce.

Two of Brown's three brothers pre-deceased him under mysterious circumstances. One brother died three weeks prior from consuming a licorice drop believed to be poisonous. Another brother reportedly suffered "a violent death" five years prior.
​
In June 1920, Prevost, 24, was found guilty of murdering Brown and lost an appeal. Ten years later, in 1930, witness testimony by a priest led to Prevost's pardon by Governor Fred Green.

Detroit's former federal building and post office, built in 1897 and demolished in 1931. From the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

The Red Scare

On December 21, 1919 the Freep reported that William D. Haywood, leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, who had been prevented from speaking at Auto Workers Hall Nov. 30 by the Detroit Commissioner, would be permitted to speak at the hall late December. To mitigate a disturbance, members of the newly formed American Legion proposed that admission to the meeting be with ticket only, thereby vetting attendees. The American Legion also urged its members to communicate their disagreeable opinions of the speaker by submitting a formal protest.

On Dec. 27, the Freep reported that Detroit Local No. 127, Automobile Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of American passed a bylaw requiring members to resign from the American Legion or pay a $100 fine. The union local viewed the American Legion as a union-breaking entity, as it had effectively interfered with strikes by policemen in Boston, miners in Kansas and longshoremen in New York. The local’s leaders accused the legion’s actions toward union workers as conflicting with the constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Early December 1919, the nation experienced “Red Movement” demonstrations calling for the abolishment of capitalism for the establishment of a workers’ republic. On December 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a “red-exile” bill, which called for the detainment and deportation of foreign nationals affiliated with “anarchistic organizations.” Included as a punishable radical act was displaying a red flag or banner at a parade. The bill was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Albert Johnson, a Republican who chaired the House Committee on
Immigration and Naturalization. Johnson vowed that a bill penalizing American-born citizens who presented Soviet sympathies would follow.

On December 21, the Freep reported that 249 foreign nationals accused of being socialists and anarchists were deported on the “Soviet Ark” from New York. The article also reported that many so-called red foreigners were concurrently detained in Detroit, which prompted political protests largely among trade union members near the city’s federal building.

The Detroit Free Press reported that roughly 600 men, teenage boys, and women believed to be pro-Soviet radicals or anarchists — foreign nationals and American citizens — were arrested in Detroit on January 2, 1920. (Later reports concluded that it was more than 800 people detained.) According to a November 11, 2019 article in The New Yorker about raids in several American cities that day, these Detroiters were detained for six days in a cramped corridor of the city’s federal building. They shared one toilet and one drinking fountain. They went without food the first 24 hours. Later, the only food they had available was that which their families sent them. The January 4, 1920 edition of the Freep reported that one of the “radicals” still wanted by federal agents was Industrial Workers of the World leader William D. Haywood, who had been granted permission to speak to Detroiters at a meeting just days earlier. With the new year, Haywood was wanted for arrest for his political proselytizing.

For more, see The (first) 'Red Scare' and the Founding of the ACLU.

Other Great War-influenced Political Maneuvering

Also making headlines late 1919 and early 1920 were various post-war recommendations from Congressmen toward formation of a peace treaty and international league, which would be known as the League of Nations. On, November 19, 1919 the U.S. Senate had rejected terms of the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55 to 39. A resolution ending hostilities with Germany and Austria-Hungary wouldn’t be approved until 1921. 

On December 10,1919, the American Legion presented a recommendation to the U. S. Senate military committee calling for mandatory service in a large citizen army, arguing that this would reduce and make more efficient the nation’s regular army and thwart military unpreparedness. The resulting bill, submitted to Congress on December 21, proposed a compulsory four months of service in the National Guard by men 18 to 21 years of age.

Century-old News and Human Nature

Reading 100-year-old newspapers offers insight to what's ageless in society: lovers' quarrels can be deadly; suppressed people will resist power; war destabilizes domestic and international communities; a damaged economy threatens civil society. Detroit news 100 year ago revealed this, as I'm sure the local papers of every major U.S. city had.

What other ageless societal traits have you noticed? Other than technology, what is markedly different in society today from 100 years ago? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.

​© 2020 Melissa Walsh

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