USA > Indiana > Public men of Indiana : a political history, 1890-1920, v. 2 > Part 3
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And to educate all of them to an observance of American laws, usages and ideals called for new and vigorous methods of instruction, so that until ten years ago their education in civic duties had not been seriously attempted in some communities, ex- cept possibly by the use of the ballot, and in its use a class of agitators known as "reds" have been more diligent and efficient as instructors than American politicians.
Seemingly these "reds" have met with no effec- tive restraints in poisoning the minds of many immigrants with the virus of anarchy and dis- loyalty. And some of the aliens in America un- fortunately have been taught that their highest prerogative and duty as American citizens is to overthrow the government that grants to every man the right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of his own conscience, the greatest liberty - consistent with good order, and vouchsafes to every one all the blessings of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
The difficulties that their employers and the lovers of law and order experienced in dealing with the conditions that existed in many localities from 1914 to 1920 can only be here touched upon in general terms. The beginning of the World War was soon followed by spies and German emissaries appearing in concert with "reds" among foreign workers in numerous states and inciting riots, strikes and disturbances of every character to bring about unrest, idleness, violence and disloyalty.
To preserve law and order under the circum-
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stances was sometimes most difficult, but the vigilance of employers, officials, and citizens pre- vented crime and criminals from getting the upper hand. Many of the foreigners who had come to the United States had not renounced their alle- giance to the sovereign powers and potentates who ruled their native lands and returned to serve in their armies, while others inwardly disloyal to America, hastened to declare their intention to be- come American citizens to complete the mockery of our naturalization laws, and to the end that the land of their birth might not be drenched with their blood. How well the County of Lake, where these conditions existed, filled its quotas of soldiers and
provided the sinews of war is related in other pages. How a revolutionary movement that was under way after the armistice was signed was defeated appears in accounts of Indiana's part in the World War; also in revelations of events by Colonel Walter J. Riley, of East Chicago, in a volume entitled "A Report from the Front Line Trenches," herein- after quoted from.
Some of the difficulties and dangers that manu- facturers and employers of labor had to meet to continue successful operations are revealed in this book by Colonel Riley of the Manufacturers' Asso- ciation of the city of East Chicago, Indiana, in 1920, who reviewed industrial events of 1918 and 1919.
Among other things he says, referring to the year 1918: "All activities of men and machinery were subordinated to one end, winning the war.
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Nineteen hundred and nineteen opened with the world too dazed to realize that the war was at an end. - Looking back to January a year ago we find munition plants gradually coming to a stop, steel industries undergoing war deflation, armies demob- ilizing and radicalism showing its teeth. An im- penetrable screen seemed to obscure even the near future; there was no precedent to try to gauge what was ahead. Yet the picture is that of a United States uncertain, but displaying optimism. Our government was as unprepared for peace as it had been unready for war. Business waited on many things, price stabilizations for one thing. Forces of unrest were active: bomb outrages in the cast, Soviet attempts at Seattle, authority crashing in central Europe, and a grave industrial struggle prostrating England. As the world turned to Paris to make a peace, out of Russia came the spectre of Bol- shevism, a spectre that seemingly has frightened the world more than Prussianism. Throughout the early post-war period American business func- tioned; there was a rush to form export combines to sell to Europe, but a sick continent did not then buy.
"This prologue is not a chronology. . .. A dominating element of 1919 was world-wide in- dustrial unrest. During 1919 the cost of living was an irritant. Food prices reached the highest point in a generation. Profiteering in many lines has been barefaced, but despite this there has been an orgy of spending, especially on the part of many wage-earners.
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"Touching on the question of prosperity and of workmen, wages were never higher, never was there such a common labor shortage, and never was there such a tendency on the part of labor to shirk work, nor such a tendency in organized labor to disregard authority in its own ranks. ... It should be pointed out that 1919 is distinctive for three great social experiments. These great social experi- ments are the institution of nation-wide prohibition in the United States, the first time in which a free government of a great country undertook to regu- late the personal habits of its people; the extension of Communism or Bolshevism to countries beyond Russia, and the growing campaign in England and in the United States to nationalize mines, industries and railways, including the erection in Britain of a powerful labor party which is ambitious to take over the government. The year 1919 also stands out as one in which but little counter-propaganda was undertaken to offset those phases of these great social experiments as they relate to the ravishing of property rights.
In his book on 1919 Colonel Riley gives this account of the revolutionary demonstrations in the Calumet district. "Locally, the winter of 1919 was marked by many 'red' meetings and an increas- ing propaganda. The climax of the first half of the year came early in May when 'reds' flaunting red emblems, carrying revolutionary signs, and shouting and cheering for the world revolution. paraded in this city unmolested. Police, citizens and deputy sheriffs had to turn out in Gary carly
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in May with riot guns to suppress a regional 'red' demonstration. The history of labor unrest in this district is contemporary with that of 'red' propa- ganda, and radical activities that found outlet in the bloody episode of the car works strike at Ham- mond and the uncovering by military intelligence officers of revolutionary manifestations in this region during the steel strike. . .. Conditions in 1919 changed with such rapidity, event after event, dramatic to the extreme and epochal in impor- tance, occurred in such succession that the human mind cannot gauge them all, much less make analyses. . .
"In America we saw the movement for workers' control assume two definite channels. An inces- sant propaganda for abolition of the capitalistic system, wiping out of the 'bourgeoisie' element, and the establishment of the 'dictatorship of the prole- tariat' was fostered by foreign agents and by the foreign language press. That the steel mills would be sovietized and operated by the workers was a strong conviction of a large share of the Russian strikers. .. . As all these things evolved in America there was a broader disposition to extend industrial democracy to workers and to give a share in profits."
In the face of the conditions so vividly described by Colonel Riley and in spite of the trying ordeals through which the manufacturers passed, their plants were enlarged, their production increased, many new manufacturing enterprises sprung up in the district, and the population continued to
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grow until Lake County is now the second in the State in taxable wealth and population and the State's continued supremacy in industrial pros- perity is assured. The facts he has stated and the conditions he has depicted together with his comments and conclusions are deserving of atten- tion and consideration by all serious-minded people and especially by moral philosophers and political sages in solving the numerous problems calling for solution to the end that the vouchsafed "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" may be fully enjoyed by a people of a great State. The new forces that the Riley volume has described as "mass move- ments" that have arisen as the outgrowth in great part of the facts he has exhibited call for all the genius, skill and ability that our statesmen possess in defining the policies which our State must adopt and maintain. Following is Colonel Riley's deserip- tion and interpretation of these new forces:
"In considering 1919 from its many angles atten- tion should be called to the development of a new force that is arising-mass movements. Conditions bred of the times produce the surprising phenomena we have been witnessing. Mass movements in- clude history in the making in Russia, the spread of Bolshevism, and labor in Great Britain be- coming power-conscious to a degree that chal- lenges political forces, and is even approaching the taking over the government itself. A rising domi- nance by labor is also displayed in Germany, Bel- gium, France and Italy. In America the great steel strike revealed to an astonishing degree this
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new phenomenon of mass movement. An un- dreamed of cohesiveness existed among the alien element, among a score of races speaking as many languages. Yet they developed their own local leaderships, and while misled and misguided pre- sented an unaccountable tendency to weld into mass movement."
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CHAPTER VI
IN dealing with radical activities and the new forces born of the times and conditions that have been mentioned, it can be recorded to the credit of citizens and officials of the Calumet distriet that they did not resort to counter-irritants nor form any Klu Klux Klan organizations that concealed the identity of its members under masks, or adopt any shibboleths declaring that they were "100 per cent Americans," nor did they take into their own hands the enforcement of law and order to the exclusion of executive officers and soldiers charged with that duty. They did not array the various religious sects and different races of people in hostility to each other or seek to ostracize any class of citizens be- cause they happened to be of a certain religious faith or because their skins were black instead of white, nor did they call to their aid any inflan- matory publications bearing insulting or sacri- legious names at their heads. Upon the contrary, they had a full realization that the war that had been ended was the achievement of the solidarity of the people in which there was no distinction between Protestant and Catholic, Jew or Gentile, black or white, nor did they forget that there are fourteen million persons of foreign birth in the United States, meaning one-eighth of its entire
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population and a much greater per cent in this particular locality, nor that in early years it was the policy of this country to encourage immigra- tion and to open the gates of Castle Garden to all nationalities, and that if that had not been the policy that territory would have continued to be a barren waste.
Neither did they disregard the fact that the first amendment to the Federal Constitution provides that Congress shall make no law respecting an es- tablishment of religion or prohibiting the free exer- cise thereof. That the sixth article of the Federal Constitution provides that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. That the Bill of Rights in the Indiana Constitution provides that all men shall be secure in their natural right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience. That no law shall in any case whatever control the free exercise and enjoy- ment of religious opinions or interfere with the right of conscience. That no preference shall be given by law to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no man shall be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to main- tain any ministry against his consent. That no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of trust or profit.
In the face of the great difficulties in bringing about assimilation and respect for American laws the intelligent citizens of this district knew that it could only be brought about through education,
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fellowship and fair dealing and not by keeping alive racial hatreds or religious prejudices and the result has been that many foreign-born people and their descendants are numbered among the most pro- gressive, loyal and prosperous of that community, and it is a noticeable fact that foreigners take a great interest in both the public and parochial schools and usually dress their children better for attendance than the so-called 100 per cent Amer- icans do.
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CHAPTER VII
T THE swamp lands where East Chicago is now located first assumed an industrial aspect in 1888. Following that year the Chicago and Calu- met Terminal Railway extended its line to East Chicago and thereby put the community in touch with outside railway lines and riveted attention on the possibilities for cheap industrial sites. Outside capital began to be attracted and a succession of land syndicates acquired large traets, the largest of these being the East Chicago Company, under whose auspices the Port of Indiana Harbor was construeted in 1901. Its dedication as an Indiana enterprise was attended by Governor Durbin and other officials and prominent citizens of the State. The building of a ship canal was begun in 1904. From this harbor extends what was first known as the Indiana Harbor Railroad through the counties that border the west line of the State to Danville, Illinois, a project of C. W. Hotchkiss. Indiana Harbor was transformed from a desolate, unsettled sand streteh along Lake Michigan into industrial territory by the location of the Inland Steel Com- pany.
This industrial center of diverse activities, be- cause of its rail and water transportation facilities, its nearness to the sources of raw material and its
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location with respect to Chicago and all Indiana cities, is probably not surpassed in any other part of America and its shipping port now exceeds in volume the tonnage of the port of the Chicago River. Extending to it are pipe lines from the oil fields of Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and the natural gas and oil pipe lines of Indiana, and not infrequently ocean-going vessels sail from it to foreign shores.
During the World War the city of East Chicago was one of America's most important arsenals, fur- nishing naval and military shells, heavy artillery, shrapnel casing, benzol, military acids, fabricated boats, submarine parts, naval and aircraft oils and fuel, and other ordnance equipment. Further men- tion of this district and the cities of Hammond, Whiting and Gary will appear hereafter.
The Calumet district in Indiana is at the greatest railroad center of the world. It contains more than four hundred factories. It is but a few miles from the center of population of the United States. It is at the end of the deep water navigation of the Great Lakes. The combined population of the great and growing cities of Hammond, East Chi- cago, Whiting and Gary now exceeds two hundred thousand and is increasing at the rate of twenty thousand a year.
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CHAPTER VIII
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N many counties of Indiana there are public and private libraries in which will be found histories of their organization, development, resources and other pertinent matters, including biographical and character sketches of their prominent citizens. It was not within the scope of this work to do more than select a few counties for mention of some of their prominent citizens whose. activities in public affairs and in commercial, financial and industrial enterprises have made much more than provincial history, and have in fact contributed greatly to the material interests and wealth of the State at large.
The county of Lake is deserving of mention be- cause of its marvelous growth during the period covered by this volume. It was created by an act of the Indiana legislature in 1837 when its popula- tion was mainly of small tribes of Indians and a few white settlers, all of the real North American type, and greatly in contrast with the present popu- lation that embraces people from all parts of the world.
The county then comprised 508 sections of land and of these less than one thousand acres were con- sidered tillable.
The Calumet and Kankakee marshes were then estimated to cover about one hundred thousand
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acres then not deemed susceptible of reclamation, and thousands of acres contiguous and adjacent to Lake Michigan were composed of sand dunes, sloughs and swamps.
The Ohio River that washes the southern borders of the State, the Wabash that courses it from the northeast to the southwest corners, and the pro- jected, and long since abandoned, Wabash and Erie Canal were then the only transport waterways within the visions of navigators to serve the com- mercial interests of the State, but their visions in later years extended to Lake Michigan and brought about the location of a harbor at Michigan City. That the shores of Lake Michigan that border Lake County on the north would afford great harbors for ocean voyage vessels from many parts of the world was not a realization until very recent years, and only became manifest through the courage and confidence of the far-seeing men hereinafter men- tioned.
Before giving an account of their work that made what is known as the Calumet district the marvel of the world in manufacturing, industrial and com- mercial activities, a brief statement of its early judicial history will be set forth.
Lake County was created by a division of the territory that originally belonged to Porter County, and by the legislative enactment providing for its organization the territory comprising it became en- titled to all the privileges, powers and jurisdictions which belong to other separate and independent counties of the State. At that time, under the
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State's Constitution of 1816, Cireuit Courts and Probate Courts were the judicial tribunals, each county being entitled to a Probate Court composed of one presiding judge and two associates. Its Circuit Court was a part of the Ninth Judicial Cireuit, composed of the counties of Fulton, Mar- shall, Kosciusko, Elkhart, St. Joseph, LaPorte, Porter and Lake. Judge Samuel C. Sample, of South Bend, held its first term of court, serving from 1837 until 1843, when he resigned to accept a seat in Congress and was succeeded on the bench by John B. Niles, of LaPorte, who became one of the prominent members of the Constitutional Con- vention that framed the Constitution of 1851 and later served as a State senator and was for many years the leading lawyer of Northern Indiana.
The Constitution of 1851 provided for two courts inferior to the Supreme Court, one the Circuit Court, the other the Court of Common Pleas. Their jurisdictions were coneurrent in most cases and their distriets covered the same territory. Thomas Stanfield, of South Bend, was the first judge of the Circuit Court to serve in Lake County under the new system. The Court of Common Pleas was abolished by the legislature of 1873.
Andrew L. Osborn, of LaPorte, served as cir- cuit judge from 1857 to 1870, and in 1873 was appointed supreme judge for the new Fifth Supreme Court District by Governor Thomas A. Hendricks.
The State was redistricted for judicial pur- poses in 1873 and the counties of Lake, Porter
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and Starke were made to constitute the Thirty-first Judicial Circuit and Hiram A. Gillette, of Val- paraiso, was its first judge and was succeeded in November, 1879, by Elisha C. Field, the first cir- cuit judge of Lake County, who served until 1889 when he was appointed as the general counsel of the Monon Railroad, and was for a short time its president, and resigned that position and caused the appointment of Harry R. Kurrie, a native of Orange County, as president in his stead. Kurrie had been his able general solicitor of the company while he was general counsel.
Judge Field was born at Valparaiso in 1843, received his education at the old Valparaiso College, studied law at the University of Michigan, in 1865 graduated, and then located at Crown Point; was a member of the Indiana legislature in 1877. The position of general attorney of the Monon Railroad was given him through the influence of Judge Walter Q. Gresham, who had taken an interest in him from a favorable impression that he made dur- ing the trial of an important case in the Federal Court. They became intimate, personal friends and so remained, and so grateful was Judge Field to Judge Gresham that when the latter became a can- didate for President before the Republican Na- tional Convention of 1888 Judge Field, who was a delegate from the Tenth Indiana District, refused to follow the instructions from the State convention for Harrison and voted for Gresham, as did the other delegate from the tenth district, insisting that the State convention had no power to instruct them
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or their constituents, who preferred the nomination of Gresham over Harrison.
David Turner was an early judge of the Probate Court of Lake County, serving in that capacity from 1849 to 1853 and later served as both a repre- sentative and senator in the General Assembly of the State, was a well-educated man and the father of A. Murray Turner, now and for many years a resident of Hammond, and prominently identified with its many business enterprises, and a liberal contributor to its great progress. In his younger days he was sheriff of Lake County for two terms, but never became identified with the office-seeking class. Is now the president of the First National Bank, of Hammond, of which he was one of the founders, one of the strongest financial institutions of Northern Indiana. He has been for years a prominent member of the Commercial clubs and other civic organizations, and is well known throughout the State.
Thomas Hammond, the subject of this brief memorial sketch, may fairly be said to have been the originator of business enterprises at the now great industrial and commercial city of Hammond, probably named in his honor.
He was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1843, where he attended the common schools and worked at the carpenter's trade until he was twenty-one years of age and then moved to Detroit, Michigan, and engaged in the packing business until attracted to what was then but little more than a railroad junction, where Hammond now
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shows up so well on the map, and seeing its favorable location for the packing house business and foreseeing its future greatness in manufac- turing enterprises of all kinds, established there a great packing plant called the Hammond Pack- ing Company that continued in business many years.
He was elected mayor of the city in 1888 and twice re-elected as a Democrat, and at the close of his last term as mayor in 1892 was nominated by his party and elected to Congress, in which he served from March 3, 1893, to March 3, 1895; died at Hammond September 21, 1909.
Johannes Kopelke, an able lawyer of the State and well known in the northern part of it, was born in Germany in 1854 and there received an educa- tion much like that afforded by ordinary American colleges of early days. He came to the United States in 1871, spent a year in the study of the English language, then taught school for two years, and then took up the study of law, graduating in the University of Michigan in 1876 and soon there- after began the practice at Crown Point, the county seat, where the law business was then transacted. He was elected to the State Senate in 1890 as a Democrat, and served in the sessions of 1891 and 1893. In 1911 the legislature of the State passed an act providing for two divisions of a superior court at Hammond, and the governor appointed Johannes as judge of one of these divisions, who held the place until 1914, when he was retired by the Republican voters of the county, as was Judge
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Lawrence Becker, former mayor of Hammond, who had also been appointed by the governor.'
The increasing business in the courts made it necessary that a Superior Court should be estab- lished at Gary. Charles E. Greenwald, who suc- ceeded Judge Kopelke, is now the judge of the court at Gary. He was born in Ohio in 1876, and in his childhood his parents brought him to Whiting where he received a good school educa- tion, attended and graduated from the law depart- ment of the University of Michigan, was twice elected and served as prosecuting attorney of the district then composed of the counties of Lake and Porter. He is highly regarded as a judge and per- haps no man in the State possesses the qualifica- tions he has for administering justice in a com- munity composed of so many different classes of people. He is not only learned in the law but is an accomplished linguist, speaking half a dozen or more languages, including several Slav dialects. In cases tried by the court he needs no interpreters and it is said that but few jury trials are called for in his court.
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