Actress Irene Castle cut her hair short in 1915 shortly before an operation for appendicitis. She liked it so much she never grew it back. In 1919, American women began following her lead.

Newspapers were full of articles about the trend, but since it hadn't yet spread beyond major East Coast cities, critics in the heartland held their criticism. That would not last.

This photo shows Alcock and Brown shortly after landing in Ireland at the conclusion of their record-setting Trans-Atlantic flight. You can see that the plane has tipped nose-first into a bog. Alcock and Brown are the two men in front of the plane in dark hats and coats.

An estimated 12,000 Native Americans served in World War I, many of them volunteers. They received high praise for their courage acting on behalf of a nation that refused to grant them citizenship, abused their children and kep their tribes in penury.

Emiliano Zapata was a skilled horseman, an inspirational leader and an unyielding revolutionary. He had no use for political theory and no patience for political compromise. He is still revered by many Mexicans for his unrelenting efforts for the poor and downtrodden.

Concerned about the state of America's roads, the U.S. Army sent 80 trucks and cars to cross the country and evaluate the state of the roads. They averaged 6 miles per hour and at one point in the Utah desert had to be rescued by teams of horses. The experience planted a seed in one of the officers on the trip, an idea to create an efficient nationwide highway system.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The first non-stop transatlantic flight - 100 years on
• The Overlooked Story of Native Americans in World War I | Time
• In 1919, Eisenhower Suffered Through History's Worst Cross-Country Road Trip - Atlas Obscura
• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 by Ann Hagedorn — Hagedorn's book tells the story of the flight of Alcock and Brown, discusses the translatlantic convey, and tells the full story of Emeline Puffer and Arthur Hazzard.
• "Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution" by Frank McLynn
• Emiliano Zapata!: Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico" by Samuel Brunk, Samuel
• "Emiliano Zapata!: Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico" by Samuel Brunk, Samuel

The Temperance Movement began in the 1840s and gained significant momentum through the rest of the century. Women were major leaders in the movement, with many pledging to never let the lips that touch liquor touch theirs. Unfortunately, this seemed to have little effect.

In the second half of the 19th century, an influx of immigrants from beer-loving countries, including Germany and Ireland, dramatically increased the consumption of beer in the United States. German brewers arrived to meet the demand. The most successful among these brewers was Adolphus Busch. As owner of Anheuser-Busch, he built a massive, vertically integrated operation that controlled every aspect of beer production and distribution, from mining the coal that fueled the brewery to building the refrigerated railcars to deliver the beer to Anheuser-Busch owned saloons.

Saloons were more than watering holes. They were hubs for the entire community and played important roles in the lives of patrons, especially when those patrons were recent immigrants.

Pictured here is a saloon in Wisconsin. Notice the little boy sitting at the table with his own beer glass. Boys often accompanied their fathers to saloons. Women and girls, however, were not welcome, and a woman who stepped in a saloon ruined her reputation.

Here's another saloon, this one from Michigan. In a saloon, men could meet friends, participate in local politics, eat a free lunch, take a bath, find a job, get his mail and pawn his watch.

By 1900, most saloons were "tied houses." That is, they were tied to, if not actually owned by, breweries. In exchange for agreeing to sell only one brand of beer, a barkeeper would receive cash for his licensing fees, an inventory of glassware, and the furnishings for the saloon, including the pool tables and the mirrors on the walls.

This photo shows a Miller bar in Chicago.

Temperance activists believed saloons were evil through and through. This cartoon, probably from the mid- to late-19th century, shows children desperately calling for the father, who stands in his natty coat and top hat at the bar. The bartender is a grinning skull, and another skull atop crossed bottles decorates in the bar. In the background, a brawl has broken out. Clearly, nothing good happens at a saloon!

Women's rights activists in particular believed that alcohol was the cause of domestic violence. In this illustration, a drunken man takes a swing at his wife as his children cling to his legs. Many woman suffragists believed that prohibition would stop violence in the home.

The Anti-Saloon League became a force to be reckoned with by organizing all of the anti-alcohol groups. The League was led by Wayne Wheeler, a genial midwesterner that author Daniel Okrent noted resembled Ned Flanders. In fact, Wheeler was a passionate, focused organizer with a backbone of steel who could make or break political careers.

Breweries tried reframe beer as a health-giving, nourishing beverage. The Saskatoon Brewing Company tried to sell their beer as "liquid bread."

Knickerbocker Beer ran ads declaring "Beer is Food" and claiming that beer was not only "a wonderful aid to digestion" and a "valuable source of energy" but also "a mainstay of practical temperance."

An Anti-Prohibition coalition produced this ad, showing a fat and happy baby drinking a stein of beer. No one was convinced by any of these campaigns.

Once the United States entered World War I, a new argument began to be made against the alcohol industry: it wasted food and fuel. Americans were called upon to save food for the military, as well as for the British, French and Belgians. The Anti-Saloon League argued that the alcohol industry wasted tons of food and fuel.

In this cartoon, Uncle Sam puts up posters calling to save food and fuel while the saloon tosses out barrels not only of goods but also of "wasted manhood."

"Non-essential" was an insult during the war--anything non-essential to winning the war was useless and to be despised. Here a woman clad in an American flag hurls the word at a fat man identified as "Booze."

In late 1917, riding the wave of anti-alcohol sentiment, the Dry alliance pushed the 18th Amendment through Congress. It went to the states for ratification.

The Anti-Saloon League coordinated the ratification fight with an attack on the United States Brewers Association and an immigrant association it had long backed, the German American Alliance. The League convinced the Senate, and the American people, that the Alliance and the Brewers were under the control of the Kaiser and enemies of America.

A Senate sub-committee investigated the charges and seemed to prove all sorts of underhanded dealings. It's true that the Brewers had played dirty by bribing politicians and and paying off newspapers, but their aim had been to stop Prohibition, not lost the war to Germany.

No charges ever came out of the subcommittee, but it didn't matter. Americans had found the Alliance and the Brewers guilty in the court of public opinion.

In this heady atmosphere, the 18th Amendment was rapidly ratified by all but two states on January 17, 1919. In one year, the amendment would go into effect.

The most important job for Congress was to pass legislation defining the terms of the 18th Amendment (what constituted an "intoxicating beverage"?) and creating enforcement mechanisms. The man responsible for the bill was Andrew John Volstead, a man so strait-laced he did yardwork in a coat and tie.

Volstead's bill passed in October, but then Wilson vetoed it. Americans were shocked. Wilson had never even committed on Prohibition. Congress, fed up with the president after the long and ugly League of Nations fight, overturned the veto two hours later.

The Volstead Act called for the creation of a new Prohibition Unit to stamp out illegal alcohol. But the agents were to be paid measly salaries and the majority lacked any law enforcement training or experience. They were, inevitably, corrupt.

Criminals also spent 1919 getting ready for Prohibition. Arnold Rothstein, who providing the funds to throw the 1919 World Series, organized a comprehensive smuggling operation to bring liquor from Europe to the United States. He was only one of many crooks and bootleggers getting their ducks in a row for the following year.

Brewers had to find a way to make do. Anheuser-Busch sold malt extract, brewer's yeast, and Bevo, a soft drink. It was not a success.

Companies also found creative ways to exploit loopholes in the Volstead Act. It was perfectly legal, for example, for wineries to condense grape juice down to semi-solid block known as a "grape brick." These bricks were sold along with careful instructions on how not to mix the juice with water to make wine. You wouldn't want people to accidentally break the law, now would you? Homebrew kits came with similar instructions.

Moonshine operations sprang up across the country, with different regions developing their own recipes and reputations for quality or lack thereof. Pictured here are stills seized from moonshiners in Colorado. The metal was sold for scrap. It's likely by the time this photo was taken, the moonshiners had already begun their next batch.

As the clock wound down to January 17, liquor stores began selling out their inventory. People stockpiled as much as they could afford--since, as far as they knew, alcohol would be illegal forever in the United States.

Here a line extends out of the store as men line up to buy a last few bottles. It was going to be a long, dry time.

Music from this Episode

• "The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine," by Sam Booth and George T. Evans, sung by the Women's Choir at Concordia College on February 2016 as part of the exhibit "Wet and Dry" at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
• "Under the Anheuser-Busch,", music by Harry von Tilzer, words by Andrew B. Serling, sung by Billy Murray. Charted at #2 in 1904.
• "Close Up the Booze Shop," music by Charles H. Gabriel, words by Harry Edwards, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation.
• "Molly and the Baby, Don't You Know," by H.S. Taylor and J.B. Herbert, sung by Homer Rodeheaver. Recorded in 1916.
• "Alcoholic Blues," by Edward Laska and Albert von Tilzer, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919.
• "How Are You Goin' to Wet Your Whistle? (When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry)" by Francis Byrne, Frank McIntyre and Percy Wenrich, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919.
• "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea," music by Irving Berlin, words by Irving Berlin and Rennold Wolf. Sung by Ann Wilson with piano by Frederick Hodges at the Annual West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, California, 2008.
• "I'll See You in C-U-B-A," by Irving Berlin, sung by Jack Kaufman. Recorded in 1920.
• "A Toast to Prohibition," by Irving Berlin, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• "Revelry Masks Grief at Rum's Death Throes," The New York Herald. January 17, 1920, PART TWO, Image 11 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress — I quote extensively from this article, which begins at the top right and goes on to another page. The whole thing is hilarious and worth a read.
• "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" by Daniel Okrent
• "Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City" by Michael A. Lerner
• "Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation" by Marc Mappen
• Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns | PBS — Video excerpts are available on the PBS website. You can also rent the entire documentary through YouTube, and possibly through other streaming services--check availability online.
• "Booze Close Ally of German Kaiser." The American issue. Chronicling America « Library of Congress — Be aware that The American Issue was a publication of the Anti-Saloon League, and therefore its articles have a definite anti-alcohol, Dry slant.
• "Menace of the Reptile Beer Fund," New-York Tribune. November 01, 1918, Page 5, Image 5 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "Wide Scope Given to Probe Brewers." Evening Star (Washington, D.C.). October 08, 1918, Page 16, Image 16 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress — Note that the headline about the investigation into the Brewers Association is next to a headline about nurses needed for the influenza pandemic.
• "Liquor's Hand Exposed; Huge Plot Shown to Rule Country," The Bemidji Daily Pioneer, September 21, 1918, Image 1 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "Seek Relief from Drastic Dry Plans," The Sun (New York), July 10, 1919, Page 5, Image 5 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "Dry Bill So Dry it Shocks Dry Leader," The Sun (New York), July 09, 1919, Page 3, Image 3 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "World War I played key role in passage of Prohibition", The Mob Museum
• "1,500 Agents Begin Dry Enforcement," New-York Tribune, January 17, 1920, Page 3, Image 3 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• Opinion | "Why Americans Supported Prohibition 100 Years Ago" - The New York Times, January 17, 2020

Dora Lewis was the member of prominent Philadelphia family. She was dedicated fighter for the right of women to vote.

In 1919, Lewis participated in the Watchfires protests, in which suffragists burned the speeches of Woodrow Wilson to reject his hypocricy of speaking about democracy and justice without protecting them for women at home.

The woman suffrage movement in the United States is usually said to have begun at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and several friends and colleagues, produced a Declaration of Sentiments that called for women to "secure for themselves their right to the elective franchise."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony (right) met in 1851 and become close friends and dedicated fighters for votes for women.

The "New Woman" of the turn of the 19th century was educated, independent, and career-minded. These women were more demanding than previous generations and less concerned about upsetting gender norms.

I joked in this episode about New Women and their bicycles, but this was actually an enormous breakthrough for women. For the first time, women had freedom of movement that opened up a world that been narrowly restricted for previous generations.

Alice Paul was charismatic, magnetic, and impossible to refuse. She was willing to work herself into the hospital and expected the same level of effort from her friends. (She is also, in this photo, wearing an awesome hat.)

Alice Paul spent the years between 1907 and 1909 in the United Kingdom, where she joined the radical suffragette movement. She learned the power of protest in England, as well as the power of her own will.

In 1909, Paul went on a hunger strike in prison and was force fed. This was a horrifying, traumatic experience--a fact that the suffragettes didn't hesitate to leverage in their promotional material.

Paul's first major action back in the United States was the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913. Scheduled the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, it achieved maximum publicity for the cause. This image was used as the cover of the official procession program.

This photo shows the start of the procession, with attorney Inez Mulholland on horseback.

Paul and other organizers intended to segregate African-American marchers to the end of the parade, but Ida B. Wells-Barnett had no intention of being segregated. She joined the Illinois delegation halfway along the route.

Massive crowds viewed the parade. Without adequate police monitoring, the crowd got out of control, spilled into the street, and began harassing the marchers.

In 1917, the Silent Sentinels began protesting daily at the White House. They carried banners demanding the president take action on women's right to vote.

For several months, the protests were peaceful. But Paul began cranking up the tension in the summer, and D.C. police began arresting and detaining the protesters.

Eventually, suffragists were sentenced to time at Occoquan Workhouse a grim, remote facility. Here several suffragists, including Dora Lewis, pose in their prison uniforms.

Suffragist prisoners began protests in prison, refusing to wear uniforms or do assigned work. Some, including Alice Paul, went on hunger strikes. Prison guards reacted with increasing violence. Here one of the suffragists has to be helped to a car after a harrowing stay at Occoquan.

At the same time the members of the NWP were protesting daily at the White House, members of the rival organization NAWSA were conducting a massive campaign for suffrage in New York. They won the vote for 2 million women and reinforced the nationwide conviction that the time had come for a federal amendment.

The New York campaign was one of the most inclusive in suffrage history. NAWSA partnered with both the Wage Earner's Suffrage League and the New York City Colored Woman Suffrage Club. African-American suffrage clubs were popular in northern states; this image is of such a group. (I was unable to figure out exactly where these women were from.)

After the House of Representatives passed the federal woman suffrage amendment in 1918, the NWP and NAWSA set aside their differences and worked together to lobby Senators for votes for women. They developed an early form of a database in an index card system that tracked each Senator's friends, memberships, and donors. They also logged notes of each meeting with a Senator, as you can see in this card.

When the amendment failed to pass the Senate in 1918, the NWP began its Watchfires protests burning the president's speeches and even an effigy of the man himself. Crowds inevitably gathered, as seen in this photos, and often the women were arrested.

In the summer of 1919, Wilson finally took decisive action, and the House and Senate passed the woman suffrage amendment. The fight moved to the states for ratification. Eventually it all came down to Tennessee the vote of one man, Harry Burn. This is a photo of the letter from Burn's mother that was delivered to him the morning of the vote that made him decide to vote "aye" for suffrage, knowing his constituency would not approve.

Women across the country celebrated the passage of the 19th Amendment.

NAWSA evolved into the League of Women Voters and devoted itself to the education of new voters. It continues in this role today.

Alice Paul kept the National Woman's Party in operation and began advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment to remove all legal descrimination against woman. Here she is seen in 1969 with one of the original banners from the suffrage fight.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• "Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote," by Tina Cassidy
• "Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote," by Ellen Carol DuBois
• "Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote," by Susan Ware
• Declaration of Sentiments - Wikipedia
• "The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote," by Elaine Weiss
• "Woodrow Wilson and Woman Suffrage: A New Look," by Christine Lunardini and Thomas J. Knock (paywalled)
• The 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade - The Atlantic
• Arrests and Violence - Voices of History: The Woman's Suffrage Movement
• "Occoquan Guards Show Marks of Picket Battle," Richmond Times-Dispatch, Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "How the Spanish Flu Almost Upended Women's Suffrage," by Alisha Haridasani Gupta, The New York Times
• "How the Spanish flu nearly derailed women's right to vote," by Ellen Carol DuBois, National Geographic
• American Women's Suffrage Came Down to One Man's Vote - HISTORY
• Why the Fight Over the Equal Rights Amendment Has Lasted Nearly a Century - HISTORY
• Sufferin' til Suffrage -- Schoolhouse Rock
• American Experience: The Vote, premieres July 6, 2020

Correction: In this episode I state that Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing mysteries after the flu pandemic. This is simply not true. Doyle published numerous mysteries, including several Sherlock Holmes stories, between 1919 and his death in 1930. My apologies for the error, and thanks to the listener who caught it.

Heroic efforts went into creating a vaccine for Pfieffer's Bacillus, which was believed by many doctors to cause the Spanish Flu. These efforts were all in vain, since Pfeiffer's Bacillus is a fairly common bacteria and not the cause of the flu. The actual cause would not be understood until the existence of viruses was proven in the late 1930s.

The Spanish Flu hit in three waves, in the the spring of 1918, the fall of 1918, and the spring of 1919. There is no evidence that the relaxing of social distancing and/or quarantines triggered the second wave. It is more likely that the virus mutated into a more easily transmitted and more deadly form over the summer. However, the third wave can be linked to relaxed social distancing.

Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root was a popular patent medicine used to treat the flu. So were onions and Vick's Vapo-Rub.

Nurses played an enormous role during the Spanish Flu, perhaps a greater role than doctors, since recovery was largely the matter of careful nursing. A severe shortage of nurses put a huge burden on those trying to treat patients.

The American health system was strictly segregated in 1918-1919, and nurses of color struggled to treat the patients that overwhelmed the small and underfunded African-American hospitals.

There was no precedent in 1918 for the federal government to play anything other than a coordinating and research role during the Spanish Flu. But the situation was so dire that states and cities begged for help. Surgeon General Rupert Blue seemed unable to rise to the challenge.

The Surgeon's General's advice on how to avoid the flu was distributed widely but offered little in real help and failed to acknowledge the severity of the situation.

The 1918 mid-term election went ahead as planned, but in parts of the west, polling places were unable to open because too many workers were sick with the flu.

Public campaigns urged individuals to cover their faces when coughing or sneezing and to avoid shaking hands. If this cartoon is any indication, some people thought the efforts were extreme.

Cities railed at residents to stop spitting on the street. This was an enormous problem, although this warning seems particularly stark.

Masks were adopted across the country, and some cities mandated their use. The masks became a symbol of the disease. This cartoonist pokes fun at their ubiquity by proposing new styles soon to come out of the Paris fashion houses.

San Francisco required residents and visitors to wear face masks, and initially compliance was high. Red Cross workers sold masks at ferry terminals and on the street.

But people soon tired of wearing masks, or wore them slung around their necks. Soon police and public health officers were busy fining and arresting scofflaws.

Crowds packed the Civic Auditorium for a boxing match in November 1918, and a photographer snapped this image of hundreds of San Franciscans without a mask in sight. Dozens of city leaders were fined for violated the mask ordinance. The ordinance was lifted a few days later.

However, the ordinance was re-imposed in January when the flu returned to San Francisco. This time, opposition to masks was not just heated but organized. An anti-mask league held a meeting to which up to 5000 people attended.

Violet Harris was 15 years old and living in Seattle when the flu closed schools. She kept a diary that gives a sense of life during the shut down.

Some rumors traced the flu pandemic to German scientists and claimed the disease was spread by German submarines. This Brazilian cartoon conveys in this a rather grim way.

Hundreds of thousands of children were left orphaned by the Spanish Flu. This photo shows a group of children who lost their families when the flu raged through the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, by Laura Spinney, Amazon
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, Amazon
• Influenza 1918 | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
• "Influenza 1918: Searching for Cures," American Experience, PBS
• "Did Lack of Social Distancing in 1918 Pandemic Cause More Deaths Than WWI?", by Dan Evon, Snopes.com
• "Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly," by Dave Roos, HISTORY.com
• "Aspirin Misuse May Have Made 1918 Flu Pandemic Worse," ScienceDaily
• “Eat More Onions! Desperate and massively debatable medical advice from 1918." by Catharine Arnold, Lapham’s Quarterly
• "'A terrible new weapon of war': The Spanish flu had its own share of conspiracy theories," by Ofer Aderet, Israel News - Haaretz.com
• "Fake news and the flu," by Hannah Mawdsley, Wellcome Collection
• "Nursing During the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918,"by Elizabeth Hannink, Working Nurse.
• "In 1918 and 2020, race colors America’s response to epidemics," by Soraya Nadia McDonald, The Undefeated
• “'There Wasn't a Lot of Comforts in Those Days:' African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic," by Vanessa Northington Gamble, Public Health Reporter.
• Responsibilities in a Public Health Emergency, National Conference of State Legislatures.
• "How a Fragmented Country Fights a Pandemic," by Polly J. Price, The Atlantic
• "How they flattened the curve during the 1918 Spanish Flu," by Nina Strochlic and Riley D. Champine, National Geographic
• "Everyone wore masks during the 1918 flu pandemic. They were useless." by Eliza McGraw, The Washington Post
• "Face masks: what the Spanish flu can teach us about making them compulsory." by Samuel Cohn, The Conversation.
• "When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance" by Becky Little, HISTORY.com
• San Francisco, California and the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic | The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia
• "The 1918 Flu-Pandemic Quarantine Was Profoundly Lonely," by Noah Y. Kim, The Atlantic
• "Spanish flu quarantine: Life during 1918’s pandemic was just as weird as today," by Michael Waters, Slate.
• 1918 Pandemic Influenza Survivors Share Their Stories [Oral Histories], Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH)
• 1918 influenza pandemic survivor interview: Mrs. Edna Boone, interviewed 2008 - YouTube
• "Survivors remember 1918 flu," NBC News
• "Pandemic Influenza of 1918: An Interview with Edna Register Boone." Alabama Public Health.
• "Grandfather's letter amid Spanish Flu gives family a glimpse at life under quarantine 100 years ago," Jenson Strock, wtol.com
• "Dining during an epidemic," by Jan Whitaker, Restaurant-ing Through History Blog
• "Theatre and the Last Pandemic," by Charlotte M. Canning, American Theater.
• "How the 1918 Flu Halted Hollywood," by Hadley Meares, Hollywood Reporter
• "The 1918 influenza did not kill the US economy," by Efraim Benmelech and Carola Frydman, VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
• "Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Implications for a Modern Day Pandemic," by Thomas A. Garrett, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (PDF)
• "The Lessons of the Elections of 1918," by Donna Searcey, The New York Times
• "The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918: A Defining Characteristic in the Life and History of the American Family," by Ellie Vance, The Thetean.
• "The political lessons of the 1918 pandemic," by David Faris, The Week.

The Wingfoot Express took its maiden voyage around Chicago on July 21st, 1919. The 150-foot long airship was filled with hydrogen gas--lighter than air, but extremely flammable.

The dirigible caught fire in downtown Chicago, inside the Loop, right above the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, at the corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard. The entire ship was consumed in literally seconds. The five men aboard jumped and tried to inflate their parachutes, but only three were successful. One man, mechanic Carl Weaver, plunged through the skylight of the bank.

In this photo of the bank before the disaster, you can see how the interior was ringed by a circle of teller stations. They enclosed an area where typists, telegraphists, and other bank staff worked. For security purposes, this inner area could only be accessed through two gated entrances.

Flaming debris, including the engine and two full tanks, crashed through the skylight above this inner area, starting a massive fire and trapping employees inside.

This image of the interior of the bank after the disaster gives some sense of the horror of those trapped inside. 13 people died in the crash, ten of them bank employees.

Before radio, fans had few ways to follow a live baseball game. Newspapers would receive game updates by telegraph and posted results in their windows. In 1912, the Washington Post invested in an elaborate scoreboard system complete with lights indicating balls, strikes, and position on the field. You can see here fans gathered to "watch" the 1912 World Series.

The American and National Leagues kept player salaries low with the reserve clause, a provision in player contracts that kept players tied to one team and unable to negotiate higher salaries. The clause also made it difficult for new teams and new leagues to attract top-quality players. The Federal League, founded in 1913, tried to operate as a third major league and ended up suing the established leagues for operating an illegal monopoly.

This is an official scorecard of one Federal League Team, the Neward Peps.

The case came before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. It couldn't have landed on the desk of anyone more deeply invested in the game of baseball.

At the start of World War I, team owners were desperate to keep the game going and their players out of the trenches. One attempt to demonstrate their patriotism was the practice, seen here, of holding drill sessions with players before games. The War Department was not impressed and made players eligible for the draft after the 1917 World Series.

The president of the American League, Ban Johnson, suggested reserving 18 players for each team and conscripting the rest. No one was impressed by this plan.

While more than one third of major league players enlisted, others went to work for factories in essential industries such as steel manufacturing or shipbuilding. The players spent far more time playing baseball for factory teams than painting or welding, and team owners worried that major league baseball would be run out of business by industrial ball.

Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox, denounced the factory team players as unpatriotic and sniffed that he wasn't sure he wanted them back on his team.

The 1918 World Series was held in early September at the request of the War Department, so the second, most deadly wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic was just getting started when baseball ended for the season. Nevertheless, at least some players took to the field in masks to prevent the spread of the disease.

I have been able to find out little about this photo. I don't know who was playing or the exact date. I wish I knew more--when and where the picture was taken would be a start. If I find out more, I will post it.

The 1919 White Sox had a fantastic team, with several top-notch players and one genuine superstar in Joe Jackson.

Shoeless Joe Jackson is one of baseball's all-time greatest players.

Eddie Cicotte was a fine pitcher and possibly the inventor of the knuckleball.

Lefty Williams was another strong pitcher for the White Sox.

Chick Gandil, on other hand, was just average. On the other hand, he had a reputation as being crooked and multiple contacts with gambling organizations.

Gandil's connections went all the way back to New York underworld figure Arnold Rothstein. Thoughtful and scheming, Rothstein inspired multiple fictional representations, including Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.

The Cincinnati Reds beat the White Sox in the World Series five games to three. It was difficult to tell, watching the White Sox play, if some men on the team were playing to lose. Certainly, some of the players seemed off, but a player can have a run of bad luck. Other members of the team, such as the catcher, were sure something fishy was going on. Rumors swirled throughout the series and into the off-season that the the series had been fixed.

In the fall of 1920, the story broke open, the case went before the Cook County grand jury, and all eight players were indicted. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams confessed before the grand jury--after being told they would not be prosecuted if they told the truth. In fact, the person who made that promise, Charles Comiskey's attorney, had no power to make such a promise.

In the summer of 1921, the Black Sox went on trial for intent to injure the business of the Chicago White Sox. It was a difficult case to prove. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams retracted their confessions, and it proved impossible to get the gamblers in court. Ultimately, the men were acquitted.

Despite their acquittal, Judge Landis, now the Commissioner of Baseball, declare the men banned from baseball for life. This had the intended effect of cleaning up the game, but was seen then and now as unjust.

In this cartoon from 1921, a laundry woman, identified as the jury, shows Landis the White Sox uniforms and declares them "Clean and white!" Landis replies, "They look just th' same to me as they did before."

A myth arose about the Black Sox, that they were more sinned against than sinning--hard working, blue-collar guys who just wanted to play ball but were unfairly treated by the owners, the lawyers, and the commissioner. The ultimate expression of this myth is the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. In this scene the spirits of the players emerge from an Iowan cornfield to again play baseball.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball by Charles Fountain
• Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, from the Society for American Baseball Research
• City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, by Gary Krist
• History of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank
• "Horrified White Sox fans witness Wingfoot Express blimp disaster in Chicago," Jacob Pomrenke, Society for American Baseball Research
• "The History of How We Follow Baseball" by Philip Bump, The Atlantic
• Opinion | Forget What You Know About the Black Sox Scandal - The New York Times
• 'On Account of War' | Baseball Hall of Fame
• "1918 flu pandemic did not spare baseball" by Bill Francis, Baseball Hall of Fame
• The 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal w/ Charles Fountain - Most Notorious Podcast on Youtube
• Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the 1919 White Sox - ESPN
• Frank Sinatra - "Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game" from Guys And Dolls (1955) - YouTube

William Monroe Trotter was one of the most significant civil rights leaders in Amerian history, yet he is little remembered today.

Trotter crossed the Atlantic on the SS Yarmouth as assistant cook--a strange position for a Harvard graduate with two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Trotter's father James Monroe Trotter fought in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Afterward, he served as the first Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a lucrative position where he earned a small fortune. James' only son William would inherit both wealth and influence, but James insisted that this privilege should be employed to fight for African-American rights.

In 1899, William Monroe Trotter married Geraldine Pindell, known by friends and family as Deenie. She was passionate about civil rights as her husband.

A year after his marriage, Trotter decided to fulfill the mission laid upon him by his father by publishing a newspaper, The Guardian. The weekly was dedicated to exposing racial issues across the United States.

In 1905, Trotter, along with W.E.B. DuBois and several other black leaders, founded The Niagara Movement to advocate for civil rights and counter the message of the Tuskegee Machine. The organization collapsed within two years, largely because Trotter was so difficult to work with.

In 1909, DuBois joined other activists to establish the NAACP with much the same aims. Trotter rejected the group, which he saw as dominated by white donors and leaders and too timid to tackle real issues. In response, he founded his own organization, which in time would take the name the National Equal Rights League, or NERL.

The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation prompted immediate reaction from both the NAACP and Trotter's NERL. But those reactions took different forms. The NAACP focused on legal challenges and attempts to disprove the historical accuracy of the movie. The NERL organized public protests intended to demonstrate the depth of African-American opposition to whites.

Among the protests Trotter organized was this one in Boston Common. The photo is extremely poor quality, but you can get a sense of the size of the crowd.

At another Trotter-organized event, 11 protestors were arrested for disturbing the peace. Trotter was among them.

At the end of the Great War, a dozen or so other delegates were elected to present an appeal for equal rights and justice to the Peace Conference. Among them were Trotter and Madam C J Walker. Walker has an incredible story--she built her business selling cosmetics and hair care products to African-American women into one of wealthiest and most successful in the country.

At the same time Trotter was trying to get to Paris to present his appeal, W.E.B. Du Bois was organization the Pan-African Congress, which included representatives from African nations and the African diaspora.

When Trotter returned home from Paris, Red Summer had begun. Trotter focused on creating a new organization that would help African-Americans defend themselves, using force against force.

The ABB ceased to be a secret in 1921 when the armed response of African-Americans during the Tulsa Race Massacre horrified white Americans. The ABB was accused of conspiracy with all of the usual suspects of the era, including the Reds and the Wobblies. In this case, the Reds, were, in fact, a factor. Within a few years, the ABB had been absorbed by the American Communist Party.

As these images show, whole blocks of Tulsa were burned to the ground, including the entire Greenwood Neighborhood, known as the "Negro Wall Street." It's unknown how many people died in Tulsa

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter by Kerri K. Greenidge — Greenidge's book was my essential guide during this episode. I highly recommend the book. Trotter fought far more battles than I had time to describe, and Greenidge does a fantastic job of placing his life in the context of the time and place.
• "The Legacy of a Radical Black Newspaperman" by Casey Cep, The New Yorker
• Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
• "Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist — even by the standards of his time" by Dylan Matthews, Vox
• "The Crisis," NAACP, January 1915 — This issue of "The Crisis" contains Trotter's description of his 1915 encounter with Woodrow Wilson, as well as several responses. The article begins on pages 119. It's also worth look at the other articles for insight into the time.
• "The Birth of a Nation: How the fight to censor D.W. Griffith’s film shaped American history." by Dorian Lynskey, Slate
• "The Black Activist Who Fought Against D. W. Griffith’s 'The Birth of a Nation'" by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
• W.E.B. Du Bois, "Close Ranks," Editorial from "The Crisis"
• A Letter From Camp Devens | American Experience — At the height of the flu pandemic, one of the doctors at Boston's Camp Devens wrote a letter to a friend and fellow physician describing his experience. Deenie Trotter was a regular visitor at the camp, where she visited with soldiers, until she died of influenza in October 1919.
• Africa and World War I | World War I | DW
• The First World War and its consequences in Africa | UNESCO
• Home | Thugs and Miracles — Ben's podcast is a huge amount of fun and a great look at the wild and wacky kings and queens of France. Highly recommend you check it out!

Chicago's beaches in 1919 were not segregated by law, but any attempt by African-Americans to stand up to convention could prompt harsh and sudden violence. This is the white beach on the South Side, which started around 29th street.

The beach used by African-Americans was a few blocks north, around 25th street. The two beaches were divided by a rocky inlet--and as five teenaged boys discovered that July, the line between them was all to easy to cross.

In the South, the Jim Crow system enforced the segregation of all public places. African-Americans couldn't eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, sit in the same movie theaters, use the same restrooms, or even drink the same water as whites.

Ida B. Wells had not intended to take on the cause of lynching until her friend Thomas Moss was dragged out of jail and shot in a railyard. Her investigation into lynching was a bombshell that shattered the Southern narrative about racial violence.

You can read Wells' original report, titled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases," online.

General Pershing likely never intended the 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellraisers, to fight on the front lines, but under pressure from the Allies he turned them over to French command. They served with courage and distinction and won the respect and admiration of the entire French nation.

Private Henry Johnson fought off a 24-man German patrol alone while wounded. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre--but received no medals from his own country.

James Reese Europe served as the 369th's regimental band leader. A brilliant musician, conductor, composer, and arranger, he brought jazz to France.

Author W.E.B. DuBois electrified readers of the NAACP magazine The Crisis with his essay "Returning Soldiers," which urged African-American veterans to fight racism at home. You can read the essay online.

Riots broke out in early summer in Charleston, South Carolina; Longview, Texas; and Washington, D.C. This sort of scene was happened frequently--black men were dragged out of trolley, as well as seized walking down the street or yanked out of businesses to be beaten by a white mob.

Poet Claude McKay wrote "If We Must Die" in 1919 in the same spirit as Du Bois' "Returning Soldiers." It was a call for African-Americans to stand up and defend themselves against white attacks. You can read the poem online or listen to Ice-T read it.

During the Chicago riot, bands of white men prowled the city looking for African-Americans. Here a group of men are running through a black neighborhood.

Order was finally restored when the state militia arrived. Generally, the soldiers were impartial and prevent further attacks on African-Americans, but encounters between white troops and black men were still fraught.

The riot in Omaha, Nebraska drew an enormous crowd, estimated at anything from 5000 to 15,000. Here you can see some of that mob surrounding the Omaha courthouse, which they eventually set alight.

Newspapers across Arkansas ran headlines about the supposed uprising of African-Americans in Phillips County.

Conductor and intelligence agent Water H. Loving submitted a report to the Department of War that explained that socialist, communist, and labor organizers had nothing to do with the violence in 1919; rather, African-Americans had decided enough was enough. His report was shelved and ignored.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Red Summer by Cameron McWhirter — McWhirter's book was my primary source for this episode, and I highly recommend it for the in-depth context and masterful storytelling.
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration: Isabel Wilkerson: 8580001042800: Amazon.com: Books — Wilkerson's book has won every award under the sun, and it should probably win more. It is brilliant and moving and heartbreaking and a must-read.
• "Ida B Wells: the unsung heroine of the civil rights movement" by David Smith, The Guardian
• "Against All Odds: A new play and photo exhibition call attention to Ida B. Wells and her brave fight to end lynching in America" by Clarissa Myrick-Harris, Smithsonian Magazine
• "The Arkansas race riot" by Ida B. Wells-Barnett via the Internet Archive
• "THE N.A.A.C.P. and the Struggle for Anti-Lynching Legislation, 1897-1917" by William F. Pinar, Counterpoints, on JSTOR — This article is behind a paywall, but you may be able to access it through your library. It is an excellent resource on the role of the NAACP in anti-lynching legislation.
• Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
• "One Hundred Years Ago, the Harlem Hellfighters Bravely Led the U.S. Into WWI," by Eric Trickey, Smithsonian Magazine
• World War I and Great Migration, US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
• "Race Riots of 1919 - The Red Summer" ESRI Map Journal  
• Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots -- A Series of Community Conversations
• In Their Own Words: The 1919 Race Riot
• Opinion | The Forgotten History of America’s Worst Racial Massacre - The New York Times
• "I'll Just Stand and Wring My Hands and Cry" by Ed Ware — This song was written by Ed Ware, one of the twelve men from Phillips County while sitting on death row. It's an old and scratchy recording, but deeply moving.

A. Mitchell Palmer's home was devastated when a bomb exploded at his front door on the night of June 2, 1919. If Palmer had been at his usual spot in the library, he likely would have been killed.

This is another view of the blast damage. Notice that all of the windows and the door were blown out.

Eugene V. Debs serves as a case study of pre-war opinions about socialism. As leader of the Socialist Party in America, he was considered leftist, but not radical--until the Russian Revolution changed attitudes about anyone or anything related to communism. For saying basically the same things he had been saying for years, Debs was tried under the Sedition Act in 1919 and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Many Americans believed in the progression laid out literally step by step in this political cartoon. Disturbances such as strikes would lead inevitably to Bolshevism and chaos.

The majority of people believed that immigrants were mostly or wholly responsible for radicalism in the United States. It seemed the easiest solution was that proposed by the 1918 Immigration Act: deport them all.

To be fair, not everyone believed the Reds were an imminent threat. While many political cartoons fed the fear, others mocked it, like this example, which pointed to the hysterical tone of the Overman Report.

When A. Mitchell Palmer took the job of Attorney General in March, he was among the moderates. Everything changed when his house was blown up--and really, you can hardly blame him.

Palmer placed the young but well-liked and hard-working J. Edgar Hoover in charge of intelligence for his Red hunt. Hoover quickly gained the trust of his boss and ultimately managed all of the planning and operations details of the November and January raids.

After the November 7th raids, 249 people were deported to Russia. The sailed on the Buford, a ship that Hoover arranged to borrow from the war department. It became known as the Soviet Ark.

Up to ten thousand people were rounded up in the January 2nd, 1920 raids. Individuals were arrested, searched, and held without warrants, often in deplorable conditions.

Deportation hearings began almost immediately. This is a photo of men waiting to be called for hearings at Ellis Island. It was an incredibly fraught situation. Many of the suspected radicals had lived in the United States for decades. They had families and children--and their children had often been born in the U.S. and were therefore citizens.

Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post insisted on full constitutional protection for those rounded up in the Palmer Raids and ended up dismissing the majority of cases. He infuriated Palmer, who arranged for him to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Post's testimony was a major factor in Palmer's downfall.

After all was said and done and the panic subsided, the anarchists struck again. The 1920 Wall Street Bombing left 38 dead and hundreds wounded. It was likely the work of the anarchists, who still had not been captured.

Historic Newspapers

If you are not familiar with the fantastic resource that is the Library of Congress Chronicling America site, let me introduce it to you. It contains scanned newspapers from across the country and the decades.

Click here to find the results of a search of headlines nationwide on June 3rd, 1919, the morning after the bomb attacks. It's fascinating to compare the headlines and see what else was considered important that day.

Then have fun looking up more dates and more newspapers. You'll probably be there some time.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• YOUNG J. EDGAR: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920 by Kenneth D. Ackerman — I relied heavily on Ackerman's book, which provides an excellent overview of the events of 1919-1920 and fantastic insight into the main players.
• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America by Ann Hagedorn — Hagedorn's book continues to be incredibly useful and insightful.
• Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner — Weiner's book extends far beyond the Red Scare, but its treatment of the events of 1919-1920 is excellent.
• When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals by Adam Hochschild, The New Yorker — The New Yorker had great timing with this excellent article about the Palmer Raids and the role of Louis F. Post in turning the tide.
• "To the American people; report upon the illegal practices of the United States Department of Justice" - via HathiTrust Digital Library — The entire report on of the National Popular Government League is available online, and is fascinating just to dip into, even if you don't want to read the entire thing.
• Watch The Bombing of Wall Street | American Experience | Official Site | PBS — The PBS series "American Experience" presented a fantastic overview of the 1920 bombing of Wall Street that I highly recommend.

The Wobblies were so famous for singing that they repeatedly published their lyrics in "The Little Red Songbook," which contained Wobbly sayings and organizing advice as well as songs.

"Big Bill" Haywood was tough and physically imposing, but he had a big heart and a gift for communicating with workers.

Samuel Gompers was leader of the IWW-rival the American Federation of Labor. He cultivated a reputation for the organization as reasonable and cooperative--and achieved many results for his members.

Pinkerton agent James McParland took over the investigation of the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, and his handling of the main suspect was, shall we say, questionable. McParland was one of the country's most famous Pinkerton agents, known for his infiltration of the Molly Maguires--so famous, in fact, that Arthur Conan Doyle modeled a character in his novel The Valley of Fear on McParland and imagined a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and the real detective.

The trial of multiple Wobbly leaders for the murder of Frank Steunenberg garnered nationwide--even international--press attention.

The most successful IWW-led strike was the "Bread and Roses" strike in 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Many of the strikers were women, seen here on the picket line.

IWW organizers urged the strikers to remain peaceful no matter how much the police and state militia threatened them. The strikers generally remained non-violent, although in one confrontation between the two groups a young woman was shot and killed. It remains uncertain who was responsible, but IWW organizer Joseph Ettor was placed on trial. No evidence connected him to the murder, and he was aquitted.

Joe Hill was an uneducated, unskilled Swedish immigrant with a remarkable gift for songwriting--in an adopted language, no less. He was convicted of murder and executed by firing squad in 1915. His death can be seen as matter of perverse stubbornness in the face of officialdom--he refused to explain how he had received a gunshot wound on the night a former policeman was killed. Or it was a blatant miscarriage of justice in which a man with no connection to the the murder victim became a convenient scapegoat. Or perhaps it was both. In any case, Hill became a martyr to the Wobbly cause.

This remarkable image shows striking miners and those considered their allies being loaded up into cattle cars on the morning of July 12, 1917 by the sheriff of Bisbee, Arizona and the self-appointed Citizens' Protective League. The men were told if they attempted to return to town, they would be killed. The cattle cars were abandoned across the New Mexico border, leaving the men without food or water.

Sheriff Harry Wheeler was unconcerned that his actions might have been illegal. "It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?'" he said.

In September 1918, 48 IWW offices across the country were raided. This image shows one office after the raid.

More than one hundred IWW members and leaders were tried under the Espionage Act. Most were convicted and received sentences of up to twenty years.

The union spent most of 1918 and 1919 raising money for defense and appeals. This was a Wobbly fundraising picnic. The banner reads, at the top, "We're in For You" and asks for money for the "Class War Prisoners."

When the unions of Seattle called a general strike in January 1919, the mayor was so terrified he requested U.S. Army troops, including machine gun companies, be sent to his town.

Actors walked out of Broadway shows in August 1919 in the first Actors Equity union strike. Here actors walk the picket line.

When the Boston Police went on strike in September 1919, the public was terrified they would be helpless at the hands of criminals. The recently elected governor Calvin Coolidge sent the state militia to town and earned nationwide praise for ensuring law and order. Coolidge is seen here inspecting militia members.

The steelworkers strike was pushed from the bottom up and never had the full support of the unions who were supposed to organize and lead it.

The factory owners convinced workers that the cause was hopeless and they should go back to work. Notice that this advertisement, which ran in a Pittsburgh newspaper, is in mutiple languages to reach immigrant workers.

When the town of Centralia, Washington planned a parade for the first anniversary of Armistice Day, rumors swirled that the IWW hall would be attacked. The rumors were so prevalent that the Wobblies issued a statement requesting that the townspeople avoid violence and turn to law enforcement if they believe the IWW is guilty of any crimes.

This photo shows the parade stepping off, before violence erupted at the IWW hall.

Warren Grimes had served with the U.S. Army in Vladivostok and had a well-earned fear of Bolshevism. He was a local hero, and when he warned about the IWW, people listened. Grimes was one of the first shot in the conflict between the IWW and the American Legion. Exactly what happened that day remains under dispute.

It is not disputed that a mob of Centralia townsfolk dragged Wobbly member Wesley Everest out of jail and hanged him on a nearby railway bridge.

Labor Songs

"Solidarity Forever" by John H. Chaplin, recorded by Pete Seeger on the album "If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle," Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1998.

"The Popular Wobbly" by T-Bone Slim, recorded by Eric Glatz on the album "IWW Rebel Voices: Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World," Universal Music Group, 1984.

"Bread and Roses" from a poem by James Oppenheim, sung by Bronwen Lewis, from the movie "Pride," 2014.

"There Is Power in a Union" by Joe Hill, recorded by Joe Glazer on the album "Songs of the Wobblies, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1977.

"The Preacher and the Slave" by Joe Hill, recorded by Utah Phillips on the album "Classic Labor Songs from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2006.

"Joe Hill's Last Will" by Joe Hill, recorded by John McCutcheon, 2015.

"Union Burying Ground" written and performed by Woody Guthrie, recorded in the 1940s and released on the album "Struggle," Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1976.

"Bread and Roses" from a poem by James Oppenheim, sung and recorded by Bronwen Lewis, 2014.

Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America by Philip Dray — Dray fills the story of labor in America with all of the drama and excitement it deserves while never losing sight of the big picture.
• Songs Of The Workers Fifteenth Edition : Industrial Workers of the World, via Internet Archive — This edition of The Little Red Songbook was published in 1919 and makes for a fascinating read. I was unable to find recordings of all of the songs, but it's worth it just to read the lyrics.
• "Old Letter Sheds New Light on Joe Hill Murder Case," by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times — This article looks at recently discovered evidence to provide a possible explanation for why Joe Hill refused to explain his gunshot.
• Why the Great Steel Strike of 1919 Was One of Labor’s Biggest Failures - HISTORY — A brief but thorough account of the 1919 Steelworkers Strike.
• The US national steel strike, 1919 - Jeremy Brecher — Another excellent overview of the steel strike, this time with more detail, especially about the inter-union conflicts.
• "Painful Memories: The Historical Consciousness of Steelworkers and the Steel Strike of 1919," by Robert Asher, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, via on JSTOR — This article includes accounts of steelworkers who participated in the 1919 strike and is a fascinating look at the experience of those on the ground. The article is behind a paywall, but you may have access through your local library.

The molasses storage tank of the Purity Distilling Company stood 50 feet tall and 190 feet in diameter over the North End of Boston. It was constructed in a hurry to meet high demand for molasses to be distilled into ethanol and grain alcohol for rum.

Margaret Sanger led the charge for birth control in the United States, opening the first clinic to offer contraception to women in 1916. Sanger founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood.

Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review in 1917 to promote the cause of legalizing contraception. Since sending information about birth control through the mail was illegal, the magazine was sold by hand.

Kitty Marion hawked the Birth Control Review every day in New York City for thirteen years, enduring every kind of harassment from passersby and the police.

Even before the United States entered World War I, anti-German swept the country. Numerous states passed laws outlawing the speaking of German in public. These laws were passed in Iowa under then-governor Warren G. Harding.

Hysteria about immigrants in general and German-Americans in particular created enormous pressure for people to prove they were 100 percent American.

The American Protective League was a private organization that was authorized by the Justice Department to investigate the loyalty of Americans.

I didn't go into this in the episode, but the American Protective League spawned a number of both sister and rival organizations, among them the American Defense Society. All of them recruited Americans to spy on their neighbors.

This photo shows the extent of damage from the Molasses Flood.

Here you can see the elevated railway that ran alongside the tank. If you look closely, you can see steel panels from the sides of the tank twisted under the rail line.

This photo shows the damage to the train structure. Only the quick actions of the train brakeman saved the passengers on the following train.

The Engine 31 Firehouse was knocked off its foundation, and the first floor collapsed. Several firefighters were trapped in a gap under the second floor ceiling, pinned by rubble, and threatened by a slowly rising tide of molasses.

The Boston press was consumed with the story of the Molasses Flood for weeks.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

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Links:

• Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo — Puleo's book is a definitive guide the Boston Molasses Flood, and darn good read that vividly recreates the disaster.
• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 by Ann Hagedorn — Hagedorn's book is a comprehensive and compelling view of America in 1919.
• The World Remade: America in World War I by G. J. Meyer — Meyer's book traces the rise of anti-German and anti-immigrant hysteria through the World War I years, as well as the passage of the Espionage Act, Immigration Act, and Sedition Act.
• Why History Should Remember the Violence of Women's Rights | Time — This Time Magazine article tells the story of Kitty Marion, the ferocious promoter of birth control in New York City.
• Principal Causes of Death in the United States Registration Area, 1920: Census Bureau's Summary of Mortality Statistics on JSTOR — Before antibiotics, deaths from infectious diseases were far more common than today--while causes such as Alzheimer's weren't even on the list.
• Most Common Jobs in America 100 Years Ago | Stacker — The most common jobs in the United States have changed significantly in a century.
• The Anti-German Sentiment of World War I - Re-imagining Migration — The rise of anti-German sentiment was shocking to the millions of Americans of German descent, who believed they had shown themselves loyal to their adopted country.
• America’s War on Language | Illinois — One manifestation of anti-German hysteria during The Great War was the imposition of state and local laws banning the use of the German language.
• American Protective League: Before Hoover took over the FBI, the APL was investigating food hoarders and spies. — The American Protective League didn't hesitate to search the private homes of American citizens on mere suspicion. This remarkable letter describes a raid on the Foran family, who were accused of hoarding food.
• 100 Years Later: Lessons From Boston's Molasses Flood Of 1919 | Radio Boston — This is an excellent overview of the Great Molasses Flood from WBUR in Boston.
• The Physics of the Boston Molasses Flood — This video by a Harvard scientist includes simulations of the Great Molasses Flood and a discussion of how the syrup proved so deadly.
• The Science of the Great Molasses Flood by Ferris Jabr, Scientific American — The Great Molasses Flood has fascinated scientists for decades. This article in Scientific American provides a fascinating overview of the evidence.

Colonel Charles Hagadorn was a respected officer who had served in the Philippines, Northern Mexico, and Panama as well as at West Point as a drawing instructor. His suicide was reported across the United States.

Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois was like many of the army camps thrown together after the United States declared war on Germany. The camp's experience with the Spanish Flu was not unusual; many camps were devasted by the pandemic. In this photo, soldiers at the camp play baseball, probably during the months either before or after the flu, since during the crisis all hands were needed to care for the sick and tend to the dead.

This photo depicts typical hospital conditions in army camps. It was taken at Camp Funston in Kansas, which some researchers believe was where the flu virus originated. Unusually virulent cases of flu had been reported in Kansas, and the camp saw some of the first cases in the United States. That did not stop the camp from sending soldiers to other camps across the country and to Europe.

Despite the fact that cases of flu had been reported among navy personnel in Philadelphia, the city went ahead with its massive Liberty Loan parade in September 1918. The streets were packed with several hundred thousand people. Within days, tens of thousands fell ill.

As the crisis continued, the Archbishop threw open churches for use as hospitals, ordered seminary students to help bury the dead, and allowed cloistered nuns to serve as nurses.

Toward the end of the pandemic, the city had to recruit workers to dig mass graves for the dead.

Cities tried to implement measures to limit the spread of the disease. Spitting on the street was a frequent target.

Islands and remote communities tried to impose quarantines to keep out the sickness. Many of these, as in Prince Edward Island, Canada and Australia, proved ineffective. However, Gunnison, Colorado's strict restrictions kept the flu out of the community.

Despite the dire situation, many governments tried to downplay the seriousness of the flu. They considered it important to maintain morale and avoid panic. The Albuquerque Morning Journal argued that fear took more lives than the disease.

The flu was a global disaster, although I have found it difficult to find photos that give a real sense of its scope. This image is from Tokyo and shows schoolgirls wearing gauze masks in an attempt to prevent spreading or catching the disease. Masks were worn around the world during the flu outbreak.

I mentioned in the episode the terrible losses in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Native villages across Alaska were hit particularly hard by the flu, and thousands of orphans were left in the aftermath of the pandemic. This photo shows a group of these orphans at the Kanakanak government orphanage.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, seen here in a photo from 1915, was one of many political and social leaders who became seriously ill with the flu.

Katherine Anne Porter, pictured here about 1912, nearly died in the influenza epidemic and was one of few writers of the era to chronicle her experience.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no matter how terrible the crisis, someone will try to make money off of it. The Victor Victrola dealer of Billings, Montana, for example, informed the public they could still enjoy music even while concert halls and movie theaters were closed if they bought their own record player.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney — Spinney's book focuses on the spread of the globe across the world and how it changed the society's where it struck. Vivid and detailed--a great read.
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry — Barry's book concentrates on the medical response to the influenza pandemic as well as considers possible origins of the H1N1 virus. Another well-written and compelling book.
• "Ireland and the great flu epidemic of 1918" by John Dorney, The Irish Story — This article details the impact of the flu within Ireland and specifically discusses the role of the women's nationalist movement Cumann na mBan.
• "How the Spanish flu of 1918 Changed India" by Laura Spinney, The Caravan — Spinney also wrote this article for The Caravan magazine that looks specifically at the effect of the pandemic on India.
• DeBoice, Benjamin S. - Interview and Memoir : The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield — Benjamin DeBoice's description of his nightmare train journey to Georgia makes for fascinating reading. His full oral history transcript is available from the Illinois Digital Archives.
• Oral Histories · Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Flu Pandemic · UNC Libraries — The interview with Nannie and James Pharis is also fascinating reading for insight into the flu pandemic. Scroll about halfway down the page; you can both read a transcript and listen to the audio. Several other oral histories about the flu are also available from this page; they are all fascinating.

General William S. Graves wanted to lead troops in France, but instead he was given confusing and contradictory orders and sent to Vladivostok in far eastern Siberia.

The Americans joined representatives of multiple other nations in Vladivostok, including French, British, Romanian, Serbian, Polish and Japanese troops. Many of the British units were from Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Representatives of the Czechoslovak Legion and the White Army were also on hand. In this photo, American soldiers parade through Vladivostok shortly after their arrival in 1918.

I continue to struggle to find maps that show what I want. This one shows a few key points. First, the location of the territory firmly in Bolshevik hands, land generally surrounding Moscow, is in dark gray. The route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, along which the Czechoslovak Legion seized territory, crosses Siberia. Dark arrows indicate where various Allied troops landed and tried to advance into Russia.

You'll notice arrows moving up from the South, from the Crimea and around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. These were primarily French and British troops, and Americans weren't involved. I haven't discussed these attempted invasions just to simplify matters.

Conditions in Siberia and northern Russia were predictably harsh. This photo shows American soldiers eating while sitting on a snow bank. This looks like a relatively happy gathering; it was not usually this pleasant.

This photo gives at least an inkling how cold it was, especially in northern Russia.

Most Americans had no idea their soldiers were in Russia until the issue was picked up by Senator Hiram Johnson of California. Johnson, a Republican who despised President Wilson, made the return of the troops his number one priority in late 1918/early 1919. He hoped the issue would carry him all the way to the White House.

Johnson's pressure combined with the new-found strength of the Red Army and the general American desire to bring all of the boys home ended American intervention in Russia. Most troops in northern Russia were home by the summer of 1919. The Polar Bear Division, the 339th Infantry Regiment from Michigan, were welcomed with an enormous party in Detroit, seen here.

Japan sent more than 70,000 troops to Vladivostok. The campaign became deeply unpopular at home, in part because its purpose was unclear, in part because it was a resounding failure. In order to rally public support, Japan produced numerous propaganda images. This one shows Japanese troops landing at Vladivostok to the great joy of the Russian people. The defeat of the Japanese army in Siberia contributed to the collapse of democratic rule in Japan.

Americans might have forgotten about the Allied intervention in Russia, but the Russians certainly didn't. When Nikita Krushchev visited New York in September 1959, he pointedly brought up "the time you sent the troops to quell the revolution."

Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

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Links:

• The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919 byJames Carl Nelson — This is a fascinating, detailed look at the Allied intervention in Russia, focusing on the Polar Bear Division from Michigan.
• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 by Ann Hagedorn — Hagadorn's book has been an invaluable companion as I've worked on this season. She provides an excellent overview of the American involvement in Russia and the fight by Hiram Johnson to bring them home.
• Polar Bear Expedition History | Bentley Historical Library — This is a good overview of the Polar Bear Expedition from the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, which has assembled a collection of historical artifacts and and materials about the unit.
• "The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War" | History | Smithsonian — This is a really solid overview of the American intervention in Russia and includes some fantastic photos.
• US Soldiers Fighting in Russia - The End of the "Polar Bear Expedition" I THE GREAT WAR May 1919 - YouTube — The Great War YouTube channel has a very good overview of the withdrawal of American troops from Russia within the context of the Russian Revolution as a whole.
• Siberian Intervention 1918-1922 | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1) — This entry in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War contains interesting information about Japan's involvement Siberia and the effect on internal Japanese politics.

Hugo Ball established the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where Dada came to life in February 1916. In this photo, he's dressed in his "magic bishop" costume. The costume was so stiff and ungainly that Ball had to be carried on and off stage.

You can hear the entire text of Ball's "Karawane" on Youtube. You can also read the text.

Marcel Duchamp arrived in New York to a hero's welcome, a far cry from the disdainful treatment he was receiving in France. He was hailed for his success at the 1913 Armory Show, where his painting "Nude Descending a Staircase" was the hit of the show.

"Nude Descending a Staircase" was considered radical art, but it was still oil paint on canvas. Duchamp would soon leave even that much tradition behind.

Francis Picabia was handsome, rich, dashing, and about as faithful as an alley cat. That he wasn't court martialed for neglecting his diplomat mission to Cuba for artistic shenanigans in New York was entirely due to his family's wealth and influence. He was also well known in New York for his visit there during the Armory Show.

Picabia abandoned traditional painting for meticulous line drawings of mass-produced items, including this work, titled "Young American Girl in a State of Nudity."

Duchamp horrified New Yorkers when he presented "Fountain" to an art exhibit as a work of sculpture. A urinal may not seem particularly shocking now, but it violated any number of taboos in 1917.

While "Fountain" is generally atttributed to Duchamp, it is possible, although by no mean certain, that it was actually created by the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. A German ex-pat, she was creating art out of ready-made objects more than a year before Duchamp and lived her life as a kind of non-stop performance art. Whatever her role in "Fountain," she deserves to be better remembered as a pioneering modernist.

After he returned to Europe, Picabia's art became less disciplined and more outlandish. He titled this ink-blot "The Virgin Saint."

Picabia also published a Dadaist journal, in which he published this work by Duchamp. It's a cheap postcard of the "Mona Lisa" to which he added a mustache. The title "L.H.O.O.Q. is a pun in French; it sounds like "she has a hot ass."

Tzara and other Dadaists in Paris devoted themselves to events and performances. This is a handbill for a "Festival Dada" that took place on May 26, 1920. Tzara and Picabia are listed as performing, along with several other prominent Dadaists including Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Eluard. These evenings became increasingly frantic and nihilistic as Dada wore on.

By 1919, Pablo Picasso part of the artistic establishment and no longer a radical on the edges of society.

In 1911/1912, Picasso paintings looked like this--this is "Ma Jolie," a dense, complicated, frankly intimidating Cubist painting.

Ten years later, he painted this work, Woman in White. With its clarity, beauty, and nods to tradition, it is a prime example of Picasso's embrace of neo-classicism after the Great War.

The impulse to create clear, simple, ordered art existed in many European countries. In the Netherlands, Piet Mondrian worked in the Neoplasticist movement creating his iconic grid paintings. This is "Composition No. 2" from 1920.

At the same time, in Germany the Bauhaus was established. As a school of arts and crafts, it taught a stripped-down, clean aesthetic that applied to everything from architecture to furniture design, industrial design to graphic design. This poster advertising a 1923 exhibition is a good example of Bauhaus design and typography.

The Surrealist movement arose out of Dada's ashes in the mid- to late-1920s. It combined the traditional painting technique of neo-Classicism with the bizarre imagery of Dada. Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory," for example, is a technical masterpiece, with masterful execution. It's also impossible and, frankly, disturbing.

T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" gives the impression of randomness, of lines picked out of a coat pocket. In fact, it is painstakingly constructed and shows as much technical skill as Dali's clocks. You can read the poem, or listen to Alec Guinness read it--or maybe do both at the same time.

This meme was created in 2013 by cartoonist KC Green. It captures the Dadaist attitude that shows up in popular culture a great deal here in 2019--a sense that the world is really weird right now.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula — A really well done history of Dada from its origins in Zurich to its collapse in Paris. Rasula's book was my primary source for this episode, and I recommend it very highly.
• Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction by Anne Umland, Cathérine Hug, Francis Picabia, George Baker, Carole Boulbes, Masha Chlenova, Briony Fer, Gordon Hughes, Michèle Cone — This is a pricey exhibit catalog, but it's also the best English-language biography of Picabia I've ever found and contains an excellent cross-section of his work.
• Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography by Alice Goldfarb Marquis — My favorite biography of Duchamp, and I've read several. (Duchamp haunts my career, along with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." I can't seem to escape them.) The author looks beyond the mask that Duchamp tried to keep between himself and the world.
• "Biography of Elsa Von Freytag Loringhoven" from Widewalls — A short but compelling biography of the Baroness. I'm not entirely convinced she created "Fountain," but I'm not convinced she didn't either. In any case, she's an important figure who should be better remembered.
• "Cabaret Voltaire: A night out at history's wildest nightclub," by Alastair Sooke BBC Culture — A look at Cabaret Voltaire, where Dada began.
• School of Paris: The Historical Context by Jeanne Willette, Art History Unstuffed — A really good introduction to Return to Order in post-war Paris. Art History Unstuffed is really an excellent resource.
• "This Is Fine creator explains the timelessness of his meme," - The Verge — A fun interview with the creator of the iconic--and very Dada-esque--meme.

American author John Dos Passos in his World War I uniform. Dos Passos spent 1919 traveling around Europe and wrote about the adoration of ordinary people for Woodrow Wilson. The story about the baker from Belfort was included in essay titled "America and the Pursuit of Happiness" and published in The Nation on December 29, 1920. The essay is included in John Dos Passos: The Major Nonfictional Prose. The book is out of print, but you can find it at libraries.

President Woodrow Wilson believed himself a pure and shining force for good. He had many fine traits, including an inspiring faith in the potential of humankind, but modesty was not among them.

Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points in a speech on January 8, 1918.

General Principles

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined.

Territorial Issues

1. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
2. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
3. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
4. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
5. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.
6. Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
7. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
8. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

The League of Nations

1. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Decisions at the Paris Peace Conference were supposed to be made by a council of four, pictured here. Left to right, they were British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando, French Premier Georges Clemenceau and US President Woodrow Wilson. In reality, Orlando had very little influence.

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican from Massachusetts, opposed the League of Nations covenant as it had been written but was willing to accept it with amendments and reservations. He deeply disliked Wilson, once stating, "I never expected to hate anyone in politics with the hatred I feel for Wilson."

Senator Hiram Johnson of California was one of the "irreconcilables" who considered the League of Nations unconstitutional. He fought hard against the League throughout 1919. The speech that I excerpted was read by an actor in a production called "Great Senate Debates: The League of Nations" by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. You can see the entire documentary here.

Senator William Borah, a Republican from Idaho, was another Irreconcilible who rejected American involvement in the League of Nations in any form. His speech denouncing the League was one of the most emotional moments during the final push for a vote on the Senate Floor. The excerpt from Borah's speech is also read by actor and from "Great Senate Debates: The League of Nations."

First Lady Edith Wilson was fiercely protective of her husband after his stroke in October 1919. She controlled all access to the president for months. She passed along decisions that she claimed had been made by her husband, but it's not clear if he was capable of even of communicating during this time. Some historians have suggested that in a weird, unconstitutional way, Edith Wilson was the first female president of the United States.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only suggest books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

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Links:

• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan — MacMillan's book is the definitive guide to the Paris Peace Conference. The book conveys the personalities of the major players while clearly explaining the incredibly complicated and knotty process of making peace.
• The World Remade: America in World War I by G. J. Meyer — In the last quarter of this comprehensive book, Meyer presents a clear narrative about the battle over the League of Nations, both at home and in Paris.
• Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper, Jr. — Woodrow Wilson tends to prompt strong feelings among historians, biographers, and even humble podcasters. Obviously, I am not immune. Cooper's biography manages to be both sympathetic and clear-eyed, no easy task when it comes to the 28th president.

Here's the original meme that inspired this episode:

I left out a few lines to simplify things, but I love it.

This is a look at the different alliances during the war. The green countries are neutral. The pink countries are the Central Powers. Note that Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire didn't join the Central Powers until later in the war. The tan countries are the Triple Entente. Similarly, Italy, Romania and Portugal also didn't join this alliance until later in the war.

Introducing Austria Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Their assassination on June 28, 1914 began the crisis that ended in the Great War.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave Austria a "blank check" to take any actions it chose against Serbia. This is the emperor in only one of his outrageous uniforms. The skull on the cap is a nice touch.

Germany's plan for defeating both France and Russia was to put Russia on hold and make a lightening strike against France. ThiTSchlieffenhe plan, named after the general who developed it, was to sweep across neutral Belgium and Luxembourg into northern France and circle around Paris. The French and British stopped Germany at the outskirts of the capital.

In early 1917, the German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent a telegram to Mexico urging it to join the war against the United States. In return, it would be awarded all of the U.S. states it lost in 1848. This is a copy of the telegram that was intercepted by British code-breakers and translated into English. Outrage over the telegram was the final straw that broke U.S. resolve to stay out of the war.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson originally didn't want to join the war, but once he was thoroughly riled up, he threw all American resources into defeating Germany.

Wilfred Owen wrote some of the most devastating poetry of World War I. He was a young British officer, and he was killed one week before the Armistice.

Here's a link to the complete text of "Dulce et Decorum Est," and here's Christopher Eccleston reading the poem for the BBC.

Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling was once a huge supporter of World War I, but after his son Jack died, his tone changed. Here's a link to several excerpts from his 1919 collection Epitaphs of the War.

For more World War I poetry, I recommend this collection by the Poetry Foundation.

Production Notes

Thanks to Chris McAdams, my marvelous husband, for helping me record this episode.

The theme music for this podcast is "Mostly Mo" by Aaron Steinberg, from Strike Audio, courtesy PodcastMusic.com. PodcastMusic.com also provided several sound effects for this episode.

Thanks to Kraigpartridge for the bar scene sound effect, courtesy FreeSound.com.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman — Tuchman's book is now decades old, and some the details have been contested by recent researchers, but it still the best book about the origins of World War I, in my very humble opinion. It's vivid and packed with telling details, and somehow Tuchman manages to inject suspense into events that took place more than a century ago.
• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark — One of the most highly regarded recent publications about the start of the war, this book is scrupulously researched. I'll admit, it's heavy going at the beginning. You begin to feel you will never get out of the Balkans. But the last three-quarters make it worth sticking with the text. It's not a casual read, but it's worthwhile.
• A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by G. J. Meyer — This is a really solid overview that begins with the origins of the war and takes the reader through to the beginning of the Peace Conference in 1919. It's a very accessible history of the entire war with far more detail than you might think possible for such a vast subject.
• The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman — This short little book tells the story of the event that drove the United States into the war, the telegram promising Mexico a massive chunk of the United States if it joined the Central Powers. It's a great introduction to Tuchman, if the thought of "The Guns of August" is overwhelming, and a fantastic retelling of one of the most bizarre and consequential events in the war.
• The World Remade: America in World War I by G. J. Meyer — This book is a companion to "The World Undone" that focuses on events in the United States. The last quarter book is one of my main sources for this series, but the first half describes the process of the United States turning from isolationism to single-minded focus on winning the Great War.
• "The Big One," by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, August 15, 2004 — This article is technically a review of several books about World War I, but it offers a compelling overview of contemporary thinking about the origins of the Great War.
• The Great War YouTube Channel — I am incredibly impressed with this video series about the Great War and wish I had found it years ago. The creators take a week-by-week look at the war but also highlight key individuals and events in special episodes. If you're curious about any single aspect of the war, from social conditions in Germany to the guns used by Australians, check out this channel.

I'm so excited to announce this new project. I've always been fascinated by year-by-year approach to history, and I'm thrilled to be taking a close look at 1919. Over the course of the next few months, we're going to look at wars and revolutions, peace conferences and treaties, scientific discoveries and artistic innovations, scandals and triumphs.

The podcast launches September 3rd. Make sure to subscribe now so you don't miss a single episode.

Meanwhile, here are some notes on today's trailer:

Gilbert M. Hitchcock, a Democrat from Nebraska, served as U.S. Senator from 1911 to 1923 and was Chairmas on the Foreign Relations Committee until 1918. He was a supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and a strong advocate for the League of Nations. In 1919, he recorded a speech on the League as part of a Columbia Gramaphone Company series called "Nation's Forum." You can listen to the full speech on the Library of Congress website.

Nannie and James Pharis told their story about the Spanish Flu Epidemic as part of the Piedmont Social History Project. They were recorded at their home on January 8, 1979. The entire interview is fascinating, and you can hear it and read the transcript on the Going Viral website, a project of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina dedicated to documenting the impact and implications of the 1918 flu pandemic. (Scroll down to see the Pharis interview--it's the second on the page.)

Rilla of Ingleside is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. This is the cover of the first edition of the novel. The book was published in 1921, but Montgomery began writing it in 1919 immediately after World War I ended. It is, as best I can tell, the only contemporary account of World War I from the perspective of women on the homefront. Rilla of Ingleside is widely available, including from Amazon and most libraries. You can also listen to a free audio recording by LibriVox, which offers free recordings of books in the public domain. That's where I found my clips of Karen Savage reading the novel. You can find the LibriVox recording here.

William Butler Yeats was one of the most important poets of his generation. A mystic with a strong belief in the supernatural, he channeled his reaction to current events into powerful symbolic imagery. You can read the entire poem The Second Coming or see actor Dominic West reading it in a powerful performance.

Tsar Nicholas II, ruled as the last autocrat of all Russias but was brought down in 1917 by the Russian Revolution. His entire family, pictured here, were executed by Bolshevik forces. You can see the entire BBC documentary from which I quote on the British Pathe and Reuters Historical Collection website.

Eamon de Valera dedicated the early part of his life to achieving independence for Ireland from British rule. He fought during the Easter Uprising, served time in British prisons, and was elected president of Sinn Fein and the shadow Irish assembly Dail Eireann. He spent 18 months of his presidency in the United States raising money and lobbying for the Irish cause. During his months in the U.S., he recorded this speech as part of the Columbia "Nation's Forum" series. You can listen to the entire speech and read a transcript on the Library of Congress website.

An unnamed Palestinian man spoke to the BBC in 1936 about life in the British Mandate territory. In 1919, the British took over Palestine and began welcoming Jews with the goal to create a Jewish homeland. You can see the man's entire statement on the British Pathe and Reuter's Historical Collection website.

"How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)" was a 1919 hit with music by Walter Donaldson and words by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis. You can listen to the entire song by Arthur Fields from an original 1919 78 record on the Internet Archive website.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author, writer, editor and all-around amazing person. He was one of the founders of the NAACP and edited the organization's monthly magazine The Crisis beginning in 1910. He published the essay "Returning Soldiers" in The Crisis in 1919 calling on African-American servicemen returning from war to take up the causes of lynching, disenfranchisement, education and equal rights. You can read the entire essay on the website of Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. You can also hear a longer excerpt from the American Experience documentary The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.

Sufferin' Till Suffrage is the Schoolhouse Rock recounting of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted voting rights to women in the United States. It's a delight. You should go watch it immediately and sing it exuberantly the rest of the day.

"How Are You Going To Wet Your Whistle (When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry)" was one of many songs written in the anticipation of Prohibition, which took effect in January 1920. You can listen to the entire song on YouTube, sung by Billy Murray and uploaded by Bruce "Victrolaman" Young.

Marcel Duchamp, seen here wearing an absolutely enormous fur coat, repeatedly transformed the art world without ever seeming to care about art--or anything else, for that matter. You can see him discussing his career, including the Dada movement, in this 1956 interview.

Arthur Eddington, British astronomer and physicist, was one of the first scientists outside of Germany to understand and appreciate Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. He decided to prove the theory during a solar eclipse in 1919. You can see the clip from the film Einstein and Eddington in which David Tennant plays Eddington and explains Einstein's understanding of gravity with a tablecloth, a loaf of bread, and apple. (The dinner-party explanation begins at about 1:50 minutes.)

Shoeless Joe Jackson was an outfielder and power hitter who was caught up in the Black Sox scandal. Jackson admitted to agreeing to take money to throw the 1919 World Series, although the circumstances have never been fully explained. You can see the clip from the 1988 movie Eight Men Out in which Jackson, played by D. B. Sweeney, confronts a young fan on the courthouse steps. (The key scene begins at about 1:45 minutes.)

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