USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 11
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A few days before the Fourth, there had been another great celebration, not so general, but spirited enough-on June 30, 1919, the day before the saloons were to close under a tempo- rary prohibition measure decreed by President Wilson. It was to remain in effect until demobilization was completed. But as the 18th amendment had already been ratified-Massachusetts had been the eleventh state to agree, on the grounds that "national prohibition would prohibit"-it seemed that Ameri- cans would never quaff beer or "red eye" again, and there were many mourners, eager to drown their sorrow at the sad parting.
On the first day of the drought, the local police reported of the night before that it had been "fairly quiet," though the drugstores noted an extraordinary run on buttermilk as an an-
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tidote and "solace." Pittsfield, according to the local press, "is now as dry as the Sahara." But a few days later, in the first arrests under prohibition, three men were locked up for ten days for being drunk on Jamaica ginger.
Invited by local temperance groups, William Jennings Bryan, former Secretary of State and many times a candidate for the White House, came to talk in behalf of the Anti-Saloon League's drive for 2,000,000 members. Speaking at the First Methodist Church, which was "comfortably filled," Bryan de- clared that passage of the prohibition amendment represented "the greatest moral victory in history." America was rid of demon rum for all time. Prohibition "would sweep the world," he concluded, as local White Ribboners applauded.
Flushed with victory, the WCTU and affiliated groups started a drive against another evil, enlisting many in Pittsfield. Con- fidently predicting victory within five years, they began cam- paigning for a 19th amendment-to prohibit the use of tobacco.
Other moral matters agitated Pittsfield. Sunday sports, even amateur sports, were still banned by state law, under old Puri- tan statutes that prohibited not only pleasure but all work on the Sabbath. In 1917, the legislature relaxed this a bit, making it legal for people to work on Sundays in their war gardens, which did not please everybody.
Among the more vehement local critics was the Reverend Janeway Gordon of Westminster Chapel, who, speaking at the First Congregational Church, castigated the "moral laxity" of the times. A few months previously, it so happened, a heavy and unseasonably early frost had severely damaged the war gardens in Pittsfield and throughout Massachusetts, which was all the proof required, said the speaker, of God's wrath against "Sabbath desecrators."
To others, women's clothes were a matter of mounting con- cern. Younger women were charged with "carrying war econo- my to an extreme," in their skirts and especially in their bathing suits. The latter still consisted of a high bodice, skirts to the knees, stockings and shoes below, with little bare skin showing. Even so, Chief of Police Sullivan did not like the trend, an-
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nouncing that if any women appeared "indecent" on local beaches, they would be ordered "in to get some clothes on." Nor did the Chief like the latest dances. He closed down a dance pavilion at Pontoosuc Lake when he found some young people there doing the "shimmy."
Though 1919 was not generally a prosperous year, Pittsfield continued to expand. General Electric enlarged its local plant with a $250,000 building, and the Berkshire Woolen added a large warehouse. Inspired by the Board of Trade, recently re- organized and renamed the Chamber of Commerce, the Pitts- field Industrial Development Company was formed, having as its first objective the buying of a large part of the extensive Allen farm on Dalton Road, another old Pittsfield land- mark that disappeared during these years.
The farm had been established in the 1880s by William Russell Allen, great-grandson of "Fighting Parson" Allen and son of the Thomas Allen who had given Pittsfield the Berk- shire Athenaeum building, among other benefactions. Born in St. Louis and settling in Pittsfield in 1871, William Russell Allen built himself a large house on East Street, later used by St. Luke's Hospital. A wealthy man, Allen devoted himself to horse breeding, being an officer in the National Trotting Association and a president of the American Association of Horse Breeders.
In 1886, he established his stable off Dalton Road on a 1,250-acre farm, entered through a large stone arch that still stands. Here he laid out a private racetrack to put his trotters through their paces and erected a huge barn, said to be the largest in Massachusetts. Built of Canadian spruce, the barn stood seventy feet to the ridgepole, was 100 feet wide and 210 feet long, having sixty box stalls, steam-heated and parti- tioned with glass. Round about stood thirty buildings-smaller barns, tenant houses for a working force of thirty, hay and sulky sheds, blacksmith shops, foaling sheds, and a large in- door track for winter training.
Allen's celebrated stallion, Kremlin, was the champion trot- ter in 1892 and sired a talented breed. One of his descendants,
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Baden, won more prize money than any other trotter in 1912, being subsequently sold to the Czar of Russia. The following year, trotters born and bred at the Allen farm made more records and won more prize money than those from any other farm in the country. Kremlin was still living on the Allen farm, aged twenty-nine, when his owner died on September 2, 1916.
After Allen's death, his stable-121 horses, in all-was sold in New York. Two years later, the great barn was torn down. Most of the farm was divided up and sold as small build- ing lots, in a development called Allen Heights. One of the streets in Pittsfield' was named Kremlin for the one-time lord of all these acres. In 1952, with anti-Communist hysteria at its height, the people along the street had its name changed to Lillian.
Part of the Allen farm lay along the Boston and Albany railroad, offering many good factory sites. For $70,000, the Pittsfield Industrial Development Company bought this portion of the farm-264 acres-for the purpose of holding it intact for future industrial development. The corporation soon sold fifty-eight acres of it to General Electric, which used part of it for making industrial porcelain and other insulating mate- rials, constructing a large building along what was first known as Ceramic Avenue, now Plastics Avenue.
At this time, bringing more "foreign capital" into the city, the Tillotson textile company was bought by a New York firm headed by General George W. Goethals, engineer-builder of the Panama Canal. The latter announced that the mills would be kept running full time. Other mills in the city were running near capacity.
With the General Electric plant expanding and smaller local industries at least holding their own, Pittsfield entered the 1920s in a hopeful mood, notwithstanding some clouds gath- ering on the business horizon.
The preceding decade, in spite of the dislocations of the war, had been one of substantial growth. From 1910 to 1920, the city's population had increased from 32,121 to 41,751-an in-
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crease of 30 per cent, three times the rate of growth for Massa- chusetts as a whole, and more than four times that for Berkshire County.
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VI
Pittsfield in the Twenties
T HE NINETEEN TWENTIES are firmly lodged in the popular fancy as the "Dizzy Decade"-gay, gaudy, and militantly unconventional. Certainly, the period marked a swift and sharp change in the social, moral, and intellectual climate of the nation, in the whole tone and manner of American life. Old taboos suddenly lost their mystic power, and there was gleeful slaughter of many a "sacred cow."
It was the day of "free love," of the speakeasy, of the often- caricatured young flapper with her long cigarette-holder and her knee-length skirts, and her "sophisticated" boy friend in a raccoon coat, always with a silver flask on his hip to keep the blues away.
"Drinking among the young is the big problem," Pittsfield's probation officer observed after two years of prohibition. "A new crop of high-voltage liquor consumers has come forth."
Bootlegging became a highly organized and profitable racket, with open bloody warfare between rival gangs. With moon- shine stills and alcohol plants running full blast, the price of hard liquor in Pittsfield, according to the local press, fell rap- idly from $15 to $2 a gallon, though old-timers cannot recall ever buying it that cheaply.
In the early Twenties, Pittsfield had a complex liquor, "love nest," and "robbery" scandal that had the community by the ears for months. A North Street jeweler, Philip E. Schwarz, re- ported the disappearance of $140,000 of diamonds on consign-
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ment to him from a business friend, a New York jeweler, who was visiting the city. Police investigation of the Schwarz store failed to reveal the diamonds or any clue as to how they might have been stolen.
Pursuing their inquiries, the police made interesting discov- eries. They found that in Schwarz' private office on the second floor of his store there was a secret stair leading to a luxurious room on the third floor, a "Throne Room," which was a revela- tion. At one end was a "royal" chair on a dais, with a canopy overhead. On the carpet which stretched from wall to wall were two polar bear rugs. The furniture included a large handsome lounge and a day bed. There were artificial flowers hanging from a richly decorated ceiling. Heavy brocade curtains covered the walls and also the windows, so that no light could get in- or out.
Schwarz modestly described this secret chamber as his "rest room." In it the police found a large cache of bonded whisky, a violation of the prohibition law. A week after the "robbery," while making another thorough search of the premises, the police found the missing diamonds in a bag stuffed behind a steam pipe in the basement, evidently just "planted" there. "An inside job," Chief of Police Sullivan had declared from the start. Tried for larceny, Schwarz was acquitted.
But with all its "flaming youth" and assorted giddiness, the period was also one of high creative activity of profound sig- nificance-in science and technology, in philosophy, in educa- tion, and in all the arts from music to architecture. Shaking off the last of foreign ideological shackles, tired of imported con- cepts and standards of little relevance, the country took a fresh look at American life in all its aspects. It was a day of discov- ery, of radical new departures. Our "modern" America dates from the Twenties.
Politically, however, the country went back to Old Guard conservatism-"back to normalcy," as it was phrased by War- ren Gamaliel Harding, who overwhelmingly won the presi- dential election in 1920. Harding and the Republicans routed the Democratic ticket on which the vice-presidential candidate
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ยท was a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was soon stricken by polio and forced into re- tirement for some years. But he would be heard of "again and again and again."
Pittsfield followed the campaign with special interest. The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Calvin Coolidge, gov- ernor of Massachusetts, was well known in Pittsfield. Long a leader in nearby Northampton, he was regarded as almost a son of Berkshire, especially as he was a mountain man himself, having been born in the neighboring hills of Vermont.
The city also followed closely the campaign activities of the two powerful Massachusetts senators, Henry Cabot Lodge and W. Murray Crane. Lodge had posed the major issue of the campaign in leading the attack on the Versailles peace treaty and the covenant of the League of Nations negotiated by Presi- dent Wilson.
The other senator, W. Murray Crane, of neighboring Dalton, was considered by Pittsfield as almost one of its own, for he had many financial ties and other interests in the city. It was Crane, the acknowledged "field marshal of the GOP Old Guard," who was responsible in large part for securing Hard- ing's nomination as a compromise candidate at the Republican convention. Dying at Dalton on October 2, 1920, Senator Crane did not live to see the triumph of the Old Guard and his own triumph as a "king maker." To mourn the passing of an old friend, Pittsfield flew its flags at half mast.
In the 1920 election, as in 1916, the tiny Berkshire town of New Ashford, aided by the Eagle staff of Pittsfield, again made national and international headlines, being the first precinct to report its complete presidential returns-this time, by 7:38 a.m., with the poll revealing 28 votes for Harding, 6 for Cox. Again, as in 1916, Pittsfield followed New Ashford in giving the Re- publican candidates a sizeable margin, by a majority of three to two.
In the election, for the first time in Pittsfield, women voted, enfranchised by the woman suffrage amendment which had just been ratified. Exercising their new freedom and responsibility,
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the women turned out in large numbers to cast their ballots. Even the most critical males had to admit, however reluctantly, that they "voted like experienced veterans, causing little con- gestion or delay at the polls."
In the city elections a month later, Pittsfield took another step along the "emancipation" road, electing its first woman to public office. Ward 5 chose Mrs. Clark J. (Clara) Harding to represent it on the School Committee. Two years later, she was joined on the Committee by Mrs. Jennie S. Pierce, from Ward 4. Both were re-elected when their four-year terms ex- pired.
Gay and gaudy as the later Twenties may have been, the opening years of the decade were grim and grey for millions. In Pittsfield, as throughout the country, many war veterans re- turned to find there were no jobs for them. By the end of 1920, a short but sharp depression was tightening its grip on the country, and most of the world as well. Revolutionary uprisings threatened abroad. Long bread lines formed in our larger cities and industrial centers. Many farmers were going bankrupt, dragging down the whole economy. Between planting and harvest in 1920, farm prices fell from a third to a half.
But retail prices resisted the downward trend, leading to loud protests against "gouging" and "profiteering." To investi- gate and control the local situation, Mayor Merchant appointed a Fair Price Committee. But as the committee consisted largely of merchants and other businessmen, it did little but agree that prices should be "fair."
A former president of the United States, William Howard Taft, soon to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, joined the outcry against the "high cost of living," es- pecially against the high prices of clothes. As Taft was a tall man of extraordinary girth, his remarks led a local editor to comment, with an eye on the Berkshire scene, that "when a man the size of William H. Taft threatens to take to denim clothes, the woolen manufacturers should sit up and take notice."*
*On one occasion, when on his way to attend an event at Williams College, Taft stopped in Pittsfield at a local clothier's to buy a formal black bow tie, having forgotten to bring one with him. Getting a tie long enough to go around his collar presented quite a problem, which was finally solved by sewing together two standard black bow ties.
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Not only those dealing in woolens, but manufacturers and merchants in all fields, sat up with a start and took notice when the bottom suddenly dropped out of the market. Pittsfield stores were filled with "bargains," with few takers. Most people could not afford to buy. This forced more bankruptcies and unemploy- ment, wider distress, and still lower prices as the downward spiral continued.
For want of orders, the General Electric plant in Pittsfield was operating at half capacity. Several woolen mills closed down, while the others ran their spindles and looms only part time. On Christmas Eve in 1920, the mills gave their employees a rude shock by announcing that wages would be cut 22.5 per cent effective immediately. Workers protested by going on strike, but won no concessions. Unemployment rose steadily throughout the country until almost 5,000,000 were out of work, with other millions working only part time. Pay cuts finally reached the executives and office workers in the local General Electric plant, who had their salaries reduced 10 per cent.
In the summer of 1921, in a phrase he almost exactly re- peated when president ten years later, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in the new Harding administration confidently asserted, "The worst phase of the business depression is over . . We have already turned the corner." In Pittsfield, certainly, the corner had not been turned, as the Board of Overseers of the Poor declared.
According to their report: "The {local] industrial situation became very bad in October 1920, and continued all through 1921, becoming very acute when the cold weather set in. Many families that had always been self-supporting have been obliged to apply to the city for aid. The fact that coal still sells at war prices, although wages for common labor have been reduced 50 per cent, has been a very great hardship to many families."
Local social service agencies and relief organizations did the best they could with their limited resources to help provide the needy with food, fuel, clothes, and a roof to shelter them. Hold- ing the still fashionable notion that if a man really wanted to
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work, there was work to be had, the Chamber of Commerce set up an employment bureau. So did the city administration and the American Legion.
What was obviously needed was not more employment agencies, but steady work that paid something more than occa- sional odd jobs here and there.
The city, county, and state, aided by Federal funds, embarked upon a road-building program to take up part of the slack in employment. The Pittsfield-Albany road was improved by the construction of a new concrete highway from West Pittsfield over Lebanon Mountain to the New York line, a vastly better road than the old one, though it was often impassable for months at a time.
Under the practice of the day the state built and maintained the chief cross-country highways. But it left the responsibility for keeping them open during the winter to the townships and communities through which they passed. Many towns were too small and poor to do much about this.
Pittsfield was handicapped by the fact that the neighboring town of Hancock, for example, had the responsibility for keep- ing the highway over Lebanon Mountain cleared of ice and snow. The expense was too high for the town.
Besides, the town center was not on this highway, but on another road some five miles to the north. As few of its people ever used the Lebanon Mountain road, Hancock was not much concerned about it. In consequence, the road over the mountain was frequently blocked by snow and ice for long periods, as was the Mohawk Trail and the road to Springfield over Jacob's Ladder.
More and more people began to protest that it was not good business "to build a road at a cost of $20,000 or more a mile and then let it lie idle for weeks at a time when a few dollars would make it passable." Finally, in 1922, the county com- missioners agreed to provide a few snow plows, an innovation that would have been "unthinkable and unpopular" a few years earlier.
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Even with the plows, the situation did not immediately im- prove. In 1923, the Pittsfield-Albany road over Lebanon Moun- tain and the Pittsfield-Springfield road over Jacob's Ladder were blocked for three months-from New Year's Day to March 25. In the previous winter, they had been snow-bound almost as long. The clearing and removal of snow also presented major difficulties in towns and cities. Wise motorists of the day, es- pecially in the high and hilly Berkshires, put their cars away at the first sign of snow and left them up on blocks in the garage till spring came.
In the winter of 1926-27, through a series of heavy blizzards, the arterial highways around Pittsfield were kept open for the first time with scarcely any interruption of traffic. The city had just bought its first large snow-loader, which did the work of a hundred men. The next winter, the state took over the snow and ice problem on main routes, to the considerable relief of counties, towns, motorists in general, and the growing number of long-distance truckers.
The local press reported rumors that trucks were being built "to give speeds in excess of 30 miles an hour ... Ordinary users of highways may soon be warned to watch out as a truck wants to pass them." One wonders if this prophet is still alive to see and tremble as great trailer-trucks go thundering by at 70 miles an hour, threatening to sweep all out of the way, giv- ing the ordinary motorist the feeling that he is just standing still on the road.
With the war intervening, little had been done about Pitts- field's "deplorable" streets since 1916. In 1921, partly to relieve unemployment, Mayor Michael W. ("Doc") Flynn, a practic- ing dentist, recommended a paving policy that would add a few permanent improvements each year.
Under this program, paving was laid around Park Square for the first time, and extended out East Street to Elm, and along Elm Street to Newell. This pleased the mud-wallowing in- habitants of the rapidly growing southeastern section of the city, though some complained that water was frequently very high along lower Elm Street-so high that they had seen
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muskrats paddling along there, evidently just looking for a place to build a home.
The pavement on South Street was extended for a few blocks. New West Street was paved to a point beyond the overhead railroad bridge. Tyler Street and Dalton Avenue were hard- surfaced from Woodlawn Avenue to Benedict Road. Almost the entire length of First Street was paved, from East to Tyler streets, with the aim of diverting some traffic from congested North Street.
With traffic accidents mounting, many ascribed the maiming and "slaughter of the innocents" to the fact that many more women were driving, now that cars were equipped with self- starters. Women were not as good drivers as men, it was alleged.
Chief of Police Sullivan did not subscribe to this view. But he had noted, he said, that when milady put on her finery and got behind the wheel of a "nice car" for a tour along crowded North Street, she was less concerned about the weaving traffic than "watching the sidewalks for friends, and enemies."
In 1922, Chief Sullivan bought six movable semaphore standards for better control of traffic. Equipped with red and green lamps for night use, these were set up in the center of main intersections. In summer, each was shaded by a large green umbrella, and the Chief won for his men a major concession. In hot weather, they no longer had to wear heavy blue jackets buttoned up to their chins. They could appear in light flannel shirts, "color grey, single breasted."
In the summer of 1925, Pittsfield installed its first traffic lights, just four of them in the center of the city-at South Street and East Housatonic and West Housatonic Streets, at the corner of West Street and North Street, on North Street at Fenn Street, and on Fenn Street at First Street. Pronounced "satisfactory" after a trial, a few more were installed the next year. But come winter, they were turned off, from December 31 to May 1, the amount of traffic during those months evident- ly not justifying their cost in electricity.
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Chief of Police Sullivan had his own ideas about traffic con- trol, as about most things. Pedestrians had their rights, to be sure. But in the crowded business section, they should not be allowed to cross the streets at main intersections. They should cross in the middle of the block, in well-marked pedestrian lanes and under strict police control-which would require, of course, more patrolmen.
The Chief admitted that he had "often heard second-hand remarks from some businessmen and property owners" that the cost of the Police Department was already much too high. Sul- livan had no patience with this view.
"Police is the foundation of Government," he declared, tak- ing sharp aim at his critics. "The cost of a policeman means nothing. One act of a policeman saves his year's salary. Yea, his entire life's salary ... When a new firm or corporation wants to locate in your city, the first question asked the Mayor is, 'Mr. Mayor, what kind of a Police Department have you got?' "
And who were these critics with their "second-hand re- marks"? They professed to have Pittsfield's best interests at heart, but "many do not show the proper spirit, to prove it." Too many of the North Street business people left their cars parked every which way for hours at a time, "using our main street as a garage." Merchants along the street were loading and unloading goods at the front door, across the sidewalks, in- terfering with "the Pedestrian," the merchant's best friend. Nor did these merchants take much pride in their street.
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