USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 12
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"It is almost impossible," the Chief declared, "but the officers do get the merchants to shovel off the snow and ice from their sidewalks. But in summer, you have seen it, the sidewalk lit- tered with papers and dust, especially Sunday mornings. The time has now arrived in Pittsfield, when some of our business- men have got to change their methods."
Sullivan was rather pleased with himself and his record. In an annual report at this time he pointed out that the city had had "no serious crimes, no breaks, no hold-ups, no assaults against person, liquor and gaming kept at a minimum, fires
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discovered, alarms rung in, ninety-eight per cent of people miss- ing located, only eleven automobiles stolen from thousands on your streets and all recovered except one, traffic scientifically handled, auto accidents cut down, the care of an entire sleep- ing city at night, quick replies to eleven hundred letters from different parts of the world .
"I know I am right when I say to you, Mr. and Mrs. Tax- Payer, that you have received dollar for dollar spent by me in service rendered to you by your Police Department."
During 1920, with a force of thirty-eight partolmen, the de- partment made 1,161 arrests, including one for what was termed the "Chastity Act," seven for the "Illegitimate Child Act," five for walking on the railroad track, thirty-six for bur- glary, fifty-two for violation of the liquor laws, 133 for traffic violations, and 263 for drunkenness.
A teetotaler himself, Chief Sullivan was an ardent supporter of prohibition, though he confessed that enforcement gave him aggravating troubles. It was very difficult to get evidence suffi- cient to convict bootleggers. But worse than the bootleggers were the respectable people who patronized them.
These people had to "make up their minds to obey the law," the Chief thundered. "Public opinion must not sit on the fence. It has to get off and it will as liquor is a curse and right and principle is with Dry Enforcement."
Those patronizing bootleggers or making booze at home were corrupting both the community and their own families, said Sullivan, who in 1924 reported "more stills than ever in private homes." This led to juvenile delinquency and worse things, one of which simply had to stop-the "petting parties" that went on in cars parked without lights along out-of-the-way streets and lonely roads. Any "neckers" found in dark cars parked any- where, even if well off the road or in private driveways, were to be arrested for violating the automobile light laws. It is not recorded how many were caught with their ardor on and their lights off.
Even during post-war depression years, Pittsfield continued to grow. Its population increased almost 10 per cent from 1920
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to 1925. As little new construction had occurred during or since the war, this created an acute housing shortage.
Initiating a trend that gradually transformed the city, most new construction consisted of single houses, which began to replace the older multiple-family "tenements," usually of wood and primitive in their conveniences. But this trend made it in- creasingly difficult to find rooms and houses for rent. Buying the Beech Grove Inn in 1920, the Eaton, Crane and Pike Company made it into a boarding house with living quarters and club rooms for its women employees.
Sabbath "desecrators" won wider latitude in 1920 when the state lifted the prohibition against amateur sports on Sundays. Aware of deep-seated prejudices in some quarters, the Park Commission approached the problem gingerly, deciding to try amateur Sunday baseball at Wahconah and Clapp parks, and at the Pontoosuc and Pitt playgrounds. Every Sunday during the season, baseball games were played on these grounds, "and everything proceeded in an orderly manner," with no violent popular explosions, or flashes of lightning from on High, or early unseasonable frosts to kill the crops. The commission expanded its program, recommending more field houses, tennis courts, and wading pools, especially more facilities for skating, coasting, and other winter sports.
Establishing an institution that later became an annual event, Pittsfield staged a Winter Carnival early in 1922, the first in the Berkshires. Prizes were offered for skating and traditional winter sports, and arrangements had been made to introduce skiing, "a novelty in the sports line in this section." A ski-jump- ing exhibition was promised, along with a big parade on the opening day. Unfortunately, the high spirit of the Carnival was dampened when, at the last minute, everything had to be called off "because of rain." Staged the next week, there was no ski- jumping for want of snow-an increasingly frequent want in recent years.
In the skating contests, Pittsfield oldsters more than held their own, skating rings around their juniors. The prize for
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men's fancy skating went to "Joe" Durwin, aged 52. The five- mile race was won by Archibald Mosier, aged 47.
Curiously, both were blacksmiths, a vanishing trade, though there was still some horse-and-buggy business to be done. The "horseless carriage" was rapidly taking over Pittsfield's streets, but there yet remained in the center of the city a large livery stable-Sweener's, on Summer Street-with thirty-five horses for hire.
Also in 1922, establishing another institution now part of the city's life, Pittsfield held its first community Halloween party. The idea, said the sponsors, was to keep the young from tearing the town apart on the night before All Saints' Day and allow their elders "to forget such vexations as the scarcity of coal, high taxes, and the tariff."
With the stores all lighted and almost everybody in costume, there was a big parade on North Street, with youngsters of twelve and above placed up front, just behind the band, trailed by other groups and scores of floats. North Street was jammed from the Park up to Charles Street as a crowd of 50,000 watched the "most weird, fantastic, and gorgeous parade" the city had ever seen.
Everybody agreed that it was "some party," and the com- munity Halloween has since become traditional, growing ever more elaborate. In more recent years, General Electric workers spend hours of their free time making for the occasion huge self-propelled dragons and other monsters to delight young and old alike.
Innovations were made in other fields during these years. A major change in the city's educational system occurred in 1920 with the introduction of junior high schools. Under the new system, there were six grades in the elementary schools, three in the junior high schools, and three in the senior high school. Eight elementary schools-Dawes, Mercer, Plunkett, Pomeroy, Crane, Redfield, Russell, and Tucker-were trans- formed into junior high schools by February 1921, under the direction of a new superintendent of schools, John F. Gannon.
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He was appointed early in 1920, coming to Pittsfield from Worcester, where he had been assistant superintendent.
The high school building on the Common, though not so old, presented many problems. It was "out of repair, out of date, overcrowded, utterly inadequate," declared Superintendent Gannon in one of his first annual reports. To help relieve con- gestion, the high school had been split in 1920. Part of it, the Commercial Department, was established as the Pittsfield High School of Commerce and moved to the Read School nearby.
This and the establishment of the junior high schools con- siderably reduced the number of students in the main building. Even so, it was still so crowded that classes had to be held in the corridors and the basement. Whether to expand the old building or construct a new and larger high school was a sub- ject of lively debate-a question not to be resolved for some years.
The introduction of junior high schools was not the only innovation made in local pedagogy at this time. In 1921, Super- intendent Gannon notified all school principals that "in the future, no strap, whip, or rubber hose {!] shall be used in whip- ping a pupil. A light rattan applied to the palm of the hands should suffice."
Revolutionary developments had occurred in other fields. For some years, under the direction of Frank W. Peek, Jr., one of its brilliant engineers, the local General Electric plant had been conducting high-voltage research and experiments. On June 5, 1923, a distinguished group was invited to the High Voltage Laboratory at Morningside to witness a demonstration of "man-made lightning"-a great blinding spark of 2,000,000 volts-"controlled by a mere touch."
Of general and scientific interest around the world, the event was covered by the press wire services and the reporters of many American and foreign newspapers. One of the best ac- counts, praised by General Electric officials as "accurately descriptive ... journalism of the first rank," was written by a local reporter, a member of the Eagle staff, Alexander Smith, a graduate of the Pittsfield High School.
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It was so good that it was preserved in a published volume, an international roundup entitled The Best News Stories of 1923, competing with such "hot" items as the wreck of the Twentieth Century Limited, the Japanese earthquake, the Dempsey-Firpo fight, Mrs. Belmont on marriage, the rise of Leon Trotsky, Russia's Red Army (still hot), and "Wallie" Reid's last moving picture.
Though business remained rather slow, there were signs of returning prosperity in 1923 when the local textile mills gave their employees a pay raise, a substantial increase of 12.5 per cent, a partial restoration of heavy pay cuts made after the war. The three Tillotson mills, which had been closed, were run- ning again, having been restored to local ownership and con- trol late in 1922, when they were bought from the Goethals company of New York by James R. Savery, Denis T. Noonan, and W. V. E. Terhune, principal stockholders and directors of the local Berkshire Woolen Company. Operating the Tillotson Company as a separate unit under its old name, the new owners announced their hope of soon employing 700 or more workers.
Production and employment at the General Electric plant increased when orders were received for large transformers to be installed in Alabama and North Carolina, and in Japan, which had been devastated by one of the worst earthquakes in modern history. More than 175 carloads of transformers left Pittsfield for shipment to Japan. The plant supplied 1,000 elec- tric fans for the world's largest ship, the American Leviathan, formerly the German Vaterland. Its volume of business increasing, the Eaton, Crane and Pike Company, with about 1,000 on its Pittsfield payroll, opened more sales offices and warehouses in cities across the country.
The revival of the local building industry provided an in- creasing number of jobs. In 1923, the Berkshire Loan and Trust Company moved into a new marble building it had built on North Street. A handsome new church on Fenn Street, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was dedicated in 1924. The General Electric plant enlarged its facilities for building and testing transformers. The residential sections of the city began to ex-
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pand again, principally toward the northeast and southeast, as new houses went up. Though some special economic problems of a local and regional character remained, most of the slack in employment had been taken up in Pittsfield by the end of 1924.
One of the city's well-known citizens was "lost" at this time -the postmaster, Clifford H. Dickson, long prominent in the political and fraternal life of the city. He had been tax collector for seven years, a member of the School Committee, a State representative, a treasurer of the Republican City Committee, an active churchman, and a high official in the Elks Lodge.
On the morning of September 2, 1922, just as two inspectors arrived for a routine check of local postal affairs, Dickson walked out of his office as if he intended to be gone only a few minutes on some business in town. That evening he chanced to be seen on the streets of New York City by two young Pittsfield women. This caused no comment until several days later when Dickson had failed to return and no word from him had come either to his office or to his worried wife, who had the care of five children.
Their suspicions aroused, the postal inspectors began a close check and found Dickson's papers in great disorder. This came as a shock to the community, for Dickson had always been known as a meticulously methodical man. Untangling Dickson's scrambled accounts as best they could, the postal inspectors re- ported that he had absconded with at least $16,642, and perhaps more. Postal sleuths were immediately put on his trail.
Meantime, Dickson had simply vanished. No clue or trace of him was found since his reported presence in New York on the evening of the day he walked quietly out of his office in Pittsfield. A nation-wide search was made for him. He became, in a sense, the most photographed man in the city's history, for in all post offices and other public buildings from coast to coast his picture was posted among those "Wanted." Still, nothing came of all this. Not a clue was turned up-nothing.
The mystery might have lasted forever. But in 1927, after five years of wandering, Dickson decided to surrender, giving
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himself up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Brought back to Massa- chusetts, he pleaded guilty and was given three years in prison.
Dickson declined to talk about his wanderings except to say that he had been in the Southwest. He added laconically that he had not used the money taken from the post office, that he had not spent any of it on himself. This may have been so.
Some evidence at his trial suggested that the funds stolen from the post office had been used to cover an unexplained deficit of almost the same amount which had been found in the city tax collector's office soon after Dickson had left it. If so, he had been juggling public moneys for some time.
In the summer of 1923, upon the sudden death of President Harding, Pittsfield decreed an official mourning, flying all flags at half-mast. But the city and the Berkshires in general felt con- fidence in the future as an old friend and neighbor moved into the White House-Vice President Calvin Coolidge. The new president steered a discreet course in the gathering storms about the great scandals in the Harding administration which were just coming to light. But the scandals did not touch Coolidge, and his popularity grew as the 1924 election approached.
In that national election, as in 1916 and 1920, neighboring New Ashford again led the country in being the first precinct to report its complete presidential returns-20 votes for Coolidge, 4 for Davis, none for LaFollette. Pittsfield, Berkshire County, and Massachusetts also gave Coolidge overwhelming majorities, being proud of him as an adopted son.
Massachusetts voters had also been called upon to vote on three proposals-ratification of a Federal constitutional amend- ment to prohibit child labor, adoption of daylight-saving time during the spring and summer months, and the levy of a 2 cents tax on every gallon of gasoline to finance an improved highway program.
Pittsfield, Berkshire County, and Massachusetts voted against the child labor amendment. Not because they favored child labor, but rather because they opposed Federal "interference" in the field, for Massachusetts already had one of the best state child labor codes.
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Pittsfield, Berkshire County, and Massachusetts voted against the gasoline tax, leaving the state one of five not having such a levy. Pittsfield and Berkshire County voted against daylight- saving time. But the majority in Massachusetts favored it, and daylight-saving time has since been a state institution.
The overwhelming victory of Coolidge and the conservatives seemed a good omen to the business community as it shook off the post-war depression. Ironically, this conservative triumph touched off one of the wildest speculative booms of history. The election marked the beginning of the great bull market in Wall Street that sent stock prices soaring to fantastic heights, only to have them suddenly blow up and fall with a crash that shook the country to its foundations.
It was the day of giant mergers, of great holding companies, of high dividends in cash and in stock as "melons" were cut- and many proved to be "melons" indeed. Capitalizations were pyramided upon capitalizations. The nation was flooded with "wild cat" stocks representing little but the fanciful flights of get-rich-quick promoters. Almost any properly engraved stock certificate could be sold and resold and sold again at great profit. The sky was the limit for paper values.
"Confidence" was the watch-word of the day. With optimism rampant, Pittsfield adjusted itself to the "new prosperity" that, in a classic phrase, promised "two cars in every garage and two chickens in every pot." The local Internal Revenue office de- clared on the basis of income tax returns that many in Pittsfield were "playing the market," as many as one out of every four or five of those in the income tax brackets. At the height of the boom, Pittsfield had eight brokerage offices, several with board rooms, all busily trading in stocks and bonds.
But underneath the speculation and stock-jobbing and un- principled frauds, solid work went forward. The country was expanding its economic base, multiplying its industrial facilities, lifting its general living standards. In most fields, it was a time of full employment and rapidly rising wages, not only in terms. of dollars, but of real wages-i.e., purchasing power.
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The national income reached $90 billions in 1926, an increase of more than 40 per cent within five years. On July 1, 1927, the Federal government closed its books on the most prosperous year in its history. The Treasury reported-believe it or not-a $640,000,000 surplus!
Pittsfield reflected the general air of prosperity. Large orders came to the General Electric plant-among others, for a 66,667 kva transformer for use in Buffalo, New York, the largest trans- former yet built in the country, and for Leland Stanford Univer- sity in California testing equipment to supply 2,000,000 volts, the highest 60-cycle voltage so far produced.
Facilities for building and testing transformers were en- larged. In May 1925, a dial telephone system for intra-plant communication was installed, the first dial telephones in the city. Land for further plant expansion was acquired in 1927 with the purchase of ninety-two adjacent acres from the Pitts- field Industrial Development Company. About four more acres were added two years later, bringing the total area of the plant close to 250 acres.
The company continued its high voltage research and its experiments with man-made lightning, releasing a 3,600,000- volt flash in 1928. The next year, it released a mighty bolt of 5,000,000 volts, the thunderous crack of which was heard round the world by radio hook-up.
Pittsfield had been "on the air" for the first time on March 20, 1926, when the local chapter of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, holding its annual banquet at the Hotel Wendell, arranged to have the proceedings broadcast from Sta- tion WGY of the General Electric in Schenectady, by means of three leased wires from that city. The evening was enlivened by music offered by the Kilowatt Orchestra, composed largely of electrical engineers at the local General Electric plant. The head of the plant, Cummings C. Chesney, national president of the AIEE that year, made a talk.
Those present were pleased that on Pittsfield's first broadcast such a good program was going out. What they did not know until later was that listeners heard scarcely anything of the
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broadcast. A sudden SOS call from a distressed ship somewhere in the Atlantic forced Station WGY to cut the program off the air for most of its allotted time.
Previously, in 1916, the bankers of Berkshire County, assem- bled at the Wendell Hotel for a banquet, had gathered round to listen to the first transcontinental telephone call from the city. It was a memorable occasion, made more memorable by the opening question, "How's the weather out there in San Francisco?" Some of those listening in Pittsfield swore that they could hear the swish of the Pacific Ocean-though it may mere- ly have been a loose connection.
In 1924, the Hotel Wendell had greatly increased its accom- modations by building along South Street an addition contain- ing sixty-five rooms, a new ballroom, and a solarium. In 1926, the Berkshire County Savings Bank constructed an addition to its already sizeable building at the corner of North Street and the Park. The Pittsfield National Bank became the Pittsfield National Bank and Trust Company in 1927, paying in that year its usual dividend of 7 per cent, plus an extra "prosperity" dividend of 1 per cent. In 1929, this bank merged with the Third National Bank to become the Pittsfield-Third National Bank and Trust Company, with combined assets of $6,640,000, having its quarters in the Berkshire Life Insurance building.
In 1929, as a sign of the times and a symbol of the future, the Grand Union chain-store grocery company bought the North Street store of W. H. Cooley, the oldest grocery firm in the city, known for generations throughout the Berkshires for its fancy and staple wares. Other chain-store systems were eye- ing the city as a field for operation.
Since the Armistice, the city had been discussing the question of erecting a proper memorial to its sons-and daughters-who had served in World War I, especially to those who had lost their lives in the war.
In 1922, Mayor Flynn appointed a special committee to con- sider the matter. The committee recommended the building of a quite elaborate war memorial on East Street, between Wendell and Bartlett avenues. In the center was to be a memorial flag
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staff, erected by public subscription. It was to be flanked by two large buildings-a new and badly-needed city hall on one side, and an ample municipal auditorium on the other-to be paid for largely by the taxpayers.
As times were bad, with money tight, nothing came of this proposal. Pittsfield still needs a new city hall and a municipal auditorium.
The proposed memorial began to take more tangible form in 1923 when a committee of fifteen, with Harry G. West as chair- man, suggested building a suitable monument on the South Street Common, where the high school had once stood.
In recommending this site, the committee had the advice of a distinguished friend and neighbor, Daniel Chester French, the celebrated sculptor of Stockbridge. The City Council approved the recommendation and set apart the land as Memorial Park. It appropriated for the memorial the sum of $21,350, which had just been received as a refund on the excess taxes raised by the state to pay the soldiers' bonus. The Chamber of Commerce led a campaign to raise other necessary funds for the memorial, setting its goal at $40,000. Altogether, almost $43,000 was sub- scribed, with school children contributing $5,260.
On the recommendation of Daniel Chester French, the memo- rial committee chose a distinguished sculptor to design and execute a fitting monument-Augustus Lukeman, a resident of Stockbridge, best known for his great Stone Mountain Memo- rial in Georgia to the generals of the Confederacy. Pittsfield had reason to be pleased with the choice of Lukeman, who gave the city a simple and noble monument-a group of martial figures with a symbolic figure of the Goddess of War above them, holding aloft a spray of laurel in token of victory and bearing in triumph on her shield the severed head of Hatred, the cause of war.
On July 8, 1926, with impressive ceremony, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial was unveiled and dedicated. Under the mar- shal of the day, Colonel William H. Eaton, commanding officer of Pittsfield's own reserve regiment, the 390th Field Artillery, there was a long and colorful parade through the main streets,
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with more than 2,000 marchers and five bands in line. A crowd of 25,000 attended the unveiling of the monument which, as the inscription at its base reads, was the city's "tribute to the loyalty and sacrifice of her sons and daughters who {in 1917- 18] gloriously defended the liberties won by their fathers."
Judge John C. Crosby, a former mayor of Pittsfield, now a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, presided at the ceremony. After the invocation by the Reverend Vincent G. Burns, pastor of the South Congregational Church and an artil- lery officer in the war, the monument was unveiled by the city's oldest Civil War veteran, Commodore William F. Hunt, who had fought under Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay and been cited for bravery in the action there. A member of the War Memorial Committee, Charles W. Power, then presented the memorial, which was accepted in behalf of the city by Mayor Fred T. Francis.
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