USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 16
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Since 1932, when it had been founded by Ted Shawn, the School of Dance at Jacob's Pillow, as outstanding a develop- ment in its way as Tanglewood and South Mountain, had been presenting recitals of modern and classic dance every summer on Friday and Saturday afternoons. The now widely-known Berkshire Playhouse opened in Stockbridge in 1938. Taking over and remodeling the old Stockbridge Casino, the Playhouse offered as its first presentation The Cradle Song, performed by Eva LeGallienne and her Civic Repertory Theatre Company of New York. All of these well-patronized neighboring institu- tions brought many people to Pittsfield in search of lodgings or restaurants, or cocktail lounges, or just to look around.
With 1935, economic conditions in Pittsfield slowly began to improve. There was a small but substantial increase in employ- ment, in wage rates, and in volume of business. Among other orders, the General Electric plant was building huge transform- ers to be installed at Boulder Dam. The Pittsfield Electric Com- pany spent $225,000 to improve its equipment and office build- ing. After a disastrous fire, Woolworth's erected a new build- ing on North Street at a cost of $60,000. Through the gen- erosity of Z. Marshall Crane of Dalton and of his sister, Mrs. Samuel G. Colt of Pittsfield, a large $90,000 addition to the Museum was constructed.
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Retail trade began to expand. Early in 1935, opening a new business, the first special snow trains from New York and other cities were routed to Pittsfield, bringing in thousands of skiers to practice their skills on the Honwee Mountain slopes or those at Yokun Seat. The latter were soon lighted at night for the first time, and large groups came from Lenox, Stockbridge, and Lee to join the Mount Greylock Ski Club in evening frolics.
Recovery was even more pronounced in 1936. The city re- corded a marked drop in the number of families on relief as employment rose rapidly, being 50 per cent above 1935, twice as high as in 1933. The General Electric plant almost doubled its working force within twelve months. The textile mills, the Eaton Paper Corporation, and other local industries began hir- ing many more workers.
By the end of the year, due not only to increased employment but to wage increases, the weekly payroll of Pittsfield's twenty- two largest firms totalled more than $193,000, substantially up from $132,000 the year before. In addition, local concerns gave their employees Christmas bonuses, gifts, and profit-sharing payments of more than $250,000. The 1936 Yuletide holidays were the happiest the city had known for seven years.
In the 1936 national elections, Governor Alfred M. Landon was nominated by the Republicans to run against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seeking his second term. Intent on again being the first in the country to report complete returns, as they had been doing since 1916, the voters in neighboring New Ash- ford were up early as usual. By 6:38 a.m., the ballots had been counted, and a special Eagle staff from Pittsfield radioed the news to the world-26 votes for Landon, 19 for Roosevelt.
But the town suffered the humiliation this time not only of being beaten by Millsfield, New Hampshire, but of not even finishing second, being also outstripped by a town in Vermont. When the next elections came in 1940, New Ashford was "the forgotten town." Having lost the crown, voters there could do some chores or even lie comfortably abed before repairing at their leisure to the polls, which perhaps pleased them just as
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well as the ephemeral headlines they had been winning every four years.
Most political "experts" expected a comfortable Landon vic- tory, largely on the basis of public opinion polls, especially that conducted by The Literary Digest. This weekly magazine never recovered from its confident prediction of the election results. Its poll was entirely discredited by the huge Democratic land- slide, the greatest in our history, and the magazine soon ceased publication.
Landon carried only two states-Maine and Vermont. In Pittsfield, Berkshire County, and Massachusetts the vote was heavily for Roosevelt. The Democrats greatly increased their already commanding majorities in both houses of the Congress.
One of the relatively few Republicans to escape the Demo- cratic sweep was the representative of the 1st Massachusetts Congressional District, which included Pittsfield-Allen T. Treadway, of neighboring Stockbridge. He was returned to the House for his thirteenth consecutive term and was continuously reelected down to his retirement in 1944. At that time he was the senior Republican member in the House, having served there for thirty-two years, becoming a powerful figure in party circles.
In 1937, with the approach of the biennial city elections, Mayor Allen H. Bagg, serving his second term, announced that he would not run again. As his successor, the voters chose James Fallon, attorney and special justice of the District Court, who ran on a platform of "no promises" to anyone. He was given a large majority-more than 5,250 votes-the largest majority a candidate for the office had yet received.
"It was the first time I ever voted for a candidate who suited me perfectly," the Mayor-elect smilingly remarked, and he seemed to suit the city, too. He was returned to office many times by large majorities, directing affairs at City Hall for ten years before announcing his retirement.
Meantime, in Washington, pointing to "one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished," the second Roosevelt administration had taken measures to help correct this by re-
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viving agriculture, coal mining, and other severely depressed industries, and by promoting low-income housing, fair labor standards, and an extensive social security program. The curve of employment continued to rise.
In 1937, there were 8,500,000 more people at work than in 1933. Yet there remained almost 10,000,000 unemployed. Pro- duction was approaching the high 1929 level, but the popula- tion had steadily grown since that time. As a result, there were far more workers than jobs. It would take a great war and at- tendant preparations to close that gap.
Pittsfield had its share of unemployed, most of them working on WPA, PWA, and various Federal projects, some of which were substantial. A new $50,000 State police barracks was built on Dalton Avenue. With PWA bearing almost half the cost, the city constructed a new sewer bed installation for $275,000, three main bridges for $90,000, and the Sand Wash Brook Dam and Reservoir for $300,000.
Projects for writers, artists, and other professional people were established. The painters, etchers, and others working in the graphic arts had occasional exhibits in the Museum, the Athenaeum, and other places. The local Writers Project, under the direction of Clay Perry, compiled and wrote an engaging guide book entitled The Berkshire Hills, a valuable and useful work on Berkshire County, past and present. Sponsored by the Berkshire Hills Conference, issued by a New York publishing house for general distribution, the book was part of the exten- sive American Guide Series. The local Writers Project also pub- lished a Winter Sports Guide for the county, and Motor Tours in the Berkshire Hills.
With Federal aid, Pittsfield got a new police station at long last, a handsome two-storied brick structure across School Street from the old town lockup, and facing the post office. At once a police station, a comfort station (the only public convenience of the kind), and a municipal annex providing office space for several city departments, the new $220,000 building was occu- pied early in 1940. The old lockup was renovated and refitted
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to provide more badly-needed office space for city business, and is still so used.
Private building increased at the same time. New construc- tion in 1938 totalled more than $900,000, the highest since 1931, almost triple what it had been in 1934. Part of the old Allen Farm off the Dalton road was opened as a new residen- tial district. Named Allen Heights, some 200 acres in extent, this was the first large real estate development since the crash. Having acquired in 1931 the adjoining building of J. R. New- man & Sons, men's clothiers, England Brothers further enlarged their already large department store on North Street in 1937. The Old Colonial Theatre on South Street was renovated and reopened as a movie house.
Facilities were built for Pittsfield's first radio station, WBRK, which went on the air early in 1938. A few months later, the first airmail flight from the city left the airport, which had been enlarged and improved as a WPA project. Almost $10,000 was spent in modernizing the old Hinsdale house on Wendell Avenue, the new quarters of the Women's Club, given by Simon England.
St. George's Greek Orthodox Church dedicated a new house of worship on Bradford Street. A bell tower was added to St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. A large new $90,000 parish school appeared on Melville Street, built by Notre Dame Church to accommodate 300 pupils.
While no new public school buildings were constructed, the older structures were rehabilitated under an extensive program that provided them with new plumbing, new boilers, sanitary drinking fountains, new roofs, new desks, better lighting, and some much-needed paint both inside and out. Classes were re- moved from the undesirable "portable" schools, which were sold and carted away. The school budget again allowed the purchase of new textbooks and other modern tools of learning to replace the old texts and obsolete materials the children had been using for years.
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The city's finances had so far improved, in fact, that teachers had their salary cuts restored. The wage cuts of other city em- ployees were rescinded.
By the end of 1937, industrial workers were receiving a high- er average wage in Pittsfield than in any city in the state- $30.28 a week. Payrolls in the city had risen to almost $240,000 a week. With local business improving, Bobby Jones, one of the great golfers of all time, bought the franchise of the Coca Cola Bottling Company on West Housatonic Street. Bringing in more outside capital, the J. J. Newberry Company, operator of a chain of variety stores, opened a gleaming emporium on North Street, leasing the quarters of Wallace's, one of the city's larger and older stores.
Thinking that sufficient had been done in "priming the pump," hoping that private business could now keep going on its own, the Roosevelt administration drastically cut its appro- priations for road-building, PWA construction, WPA projects, CCC camps, and other Federally-supported programs.
A sharp slump followed. Payrolls in Pittsfield dropped almost 20 per cent within a few months. The city's welfare costs rose to almost $800,000 for 1938, exceeding the budget estimates by $280,000. This caused serious financial strain and a general mood of pessimism. But this secondary depression soon passed as the Federal government came to the rescue again by expanding its relief programs and grant-in-aid projects.
Meantime, New England had been struck and almost para- lyzed by a great hurricane. The tail of one of those fearful twist- ers that every fall come roaring out of the West Indies, this one hit the Northeast with terrific force on September 27, 1938, taking a heavy toll of lives, more than 500 in all.
The greatest loss of life occurred along the Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts coasts, though the screaming winds swept up the valleys and wrought great destruction as far inland as the White Mountains in New Hampshire, disrupt- ing communications, taking down houses and barns, making a. shambles of great forests. Then came devastating floods from: the torrential rains that accompanied the storm.
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The Berkshires escaped the worst of the winds, which passed to the south and east. But damage was nevertheless heavy. The whole county was blacked out as wires went down. Highways were washed away, railroad lines were blocked, many houses and buildings were damaged, and tens of thousands of fine young and old trees were lost. In Pittsfield, floods caused one death and forced scores of families in the Lakewood section to abandon their homes and flee for their lives. East Lee, Adams, and North Adams were the most severely hit. Flood damage in North Berkshire alone was estimated at more than $2,500,000.
After three days of chaos, some semblance of order began to be restored. Repair crews were brought into New England from as far away as the Midwest. Hundreds of linemen made Pittsfield their headquarters as they worked to restore telephone and electric power service in the Berkshires. Arterial highways were hurriedly patched up. A week after the storm, trains were running again on the main tracks, but several months passed before normal service was resumed on secondary lines. All told, the hurricane cost New England close to one billion dollars, not to speak of the hundreds killed and the many thousands injured.
But these years brought Pittsfield more than hard times and hurricanes. Giving the town something else to talk and think about, Police Chief Sullivan had a head-on collision with the facts of life in Life, the illustrated weekly, which in one of its numbers presented a four-page feature on "The Birth of a Baby." The article was soberly, scientifically, and unsensational- ly done, with photographs taken from a documentary film of the same title which had been seen by millions, having been exhibited and widely praised from coast to coast.
The Chief took a very dim view of all this. Whether well or ill done, he would have none of it. Though he could not detect the diabolical hand of Communism in the article, and did not go so far as to pronounce it obscene, he was nevertheless ada- mant that "The Birth of a Baby" had no place in Pittsfield and that Life could be seen in the city only with four pages ripped out.
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"Articles of this kind do more harm than good," he said. "Speaking as a father, I feel it my duty to ban such public dis- play." Besides, it was "muffled propaganda for birth control"- though there was not a word about that subject in the article.
A careful reading of the charter and the laws, said some, failed to reveal the Chief's authority to impose his taste, doc- trine, and personal views upon the community. "Speaking as a father" was not part of his commission. As the controversy over censorship grew more heated, Mayor Fallon declined to inter- vene, saying that it was a matter for the police, which only inflamed the debate.
If the Chief were really concerned about the corruption of tender young minds, why had he not done something about all the pornography and horror stories on the newsdealers' shelves? asked the Eagle, picturing the lurid covers of a sample of this "literature," bearing such titles as Girls for Torture, Spicy Ad- venture Stories, and Women in Crime.
For its pains, the Eagle was roundly abused by a vociferous few, including some of the clergy, Catholic and Protestant, who took the newspaper to task for gratuitously advertising such publications, but without saying a word about the publishers and purveyors of such trash and filth.
Newsdealers thought it prudent, however, to do something- or at least make a pretense-about cleaning up their shelves. As is obvious, the reform was not permanent. In spite of all protests, the Life number remained under ban in Pittsfield, as in Springfield, Northampton, Boston, and several other Massa- chusetts cities. But unexpurgated copies were bootlegged into Pittsfield from neighboring towns and widely circulated, with- out any marked effect upon the increase-or the decrease-of the birthrate.
By 1939, with the depression lifting, the country was in a more optimistic mood, beginning to draw plans for a brighter future. It was symptomatic that New York organized a great World's Fair to show the "World of Tomorrow," with exhibits from all over the country and most of the globe. Laid out on a lavish scale at Flushing Meadows, Long Island, the fair attract-
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ed millions of visitors, many of them coming time and again to take in all the wonders.
None of the attractions was more popular than the General Electric's fascinating "House of Magic," in which the exhibit of wonders came to a climax with a demonstration of man-made lightning-a terrific thunderbolt of 10,000,000 volts, produced by apparatus designed and built in Pittsfield. More than 2,500, 000 people witnessed this awesome display within a few months.
The fair opened on May 1, 1939, and a few days later there descended upon it a large party from Pittsfield, organized by the local Dope Club. This club had been founded in 1909 by thirteen members, all of them newspapermen, who from time to time initiated more of the profession and a few honorary members chosen among local worthies.
The activities of the club were largely festive, and a very good time was usually had by all, though some had difficulty the next morning in recalling just what they had been doing the night before. After some years of suspended animation, the club was revived in 1939 to take in the fair, announcing its com- ing in a telegram to Grover Whalen, New York's official hand- shaker, who was in charge at Flushing Meadows:
"Five hundred descendants of founders of first county fair held in this country will arrive at your cattle show at 11 tomor- row morning. Berkshire County Commissioners have declared holiday."
The resurrected "Dopes" had twenty-three members, includ- ing Judge Arthur M. Robinson, State Representative Matthew J. Capeless, former Mayor Jay P. Barnes, Eagle publisher Kel- ton B. Miller and many members of his staff-Lawrence K. Miller, A. A. Michelson, Theodore Giddings, Richard V. Happel, and Clay Perry, among others. On the New York safari, these were joined by about 400 paying guests of both sexes. A special non-paying guest was Mayor James Fallon.
Early on a Saturday morning, the club's gay and crowded "Berkshire Day Special" pulled out of the Pittsfield station with a well-stocked lounge-buffet car and an orchestra on board.
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Faked dispatches soon began pouring in to the Eagle office that the Dope train had been sighted at Niagara Falls, Canada; at Biloxi, Mississippi; at Toledo, Ohio, where the militia had been called out to intercept it; at Dodge City, Kansas, where some odd relics had been found along the tracks-"three empty bot- tles, four carnations (slightly wilted), and one brochure en- titled The Lure of the Berkshires-all of which had been sent to the local taxidermist.
Correcting all this, a later dispatch announced that the train- load had arrived in New York and been arrested there by Fed- eral Narcotics agents, being freed only upon proof "that the 'Dope' in the Pittsfield Dope Club referred to the members, not to their habits or hobbies."
As a matter of fact, the party was met in New York by New- bold Morris, president of the metropolitan City Council and a long-time summer resident in the Berkshires. The leaders of the group, including Mayor Fallon, were invited to spend some time with Mayor LaGuardia.
The mayor of New York offered to trade city councils with Mayor Fallon, but Fallon assured him that he would be getting no bargain.
After a full day at the fair, the excursionists were home again late that night, with many of them aware at the moment only of aches in the feet and the head. The "World of Tomorrow" could wait till tomorrow when they might feel better, they hoped.
Indeed, the world of peace and progress displayed at New York-a world of infinite potentialities and a promise of a good life for all-was, in a sense, a mirage. Man did have the tools and ingenuity to build a better future. But he lacked the will to build any sensible machinery to keep the peace. The world was plunging toward another terrible bloodbath, the worst in history, ending with A-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The clouds of war had been piling up all during the Thirties. The American people, preoccupied with their own critical con- cerns, had taken only casual note of distant events as crisis after
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crisis tightened international relations-Japan's invasion of China in 1931 and its moves toward Southeast Asia, the open aggressions of fascist Germany and Italy, the overthrow of the Spanish Republic by General Franco and his Blue Shirts with the aid of Hitler and Mussolini, the Nazis' forcible annexation of Austria.
Shamefully deserted at the Munich Conference by the west- ern democracies with whom it was allied, Czechoslovakia was soon swallowed by the Nazi Reich. Its democratic framework was scrapped, and its elected leaders fled into exile.
Though known to almost none in Pittsfield at the time and to few since, the city was visited in 1939 by the ex-president of Czechoslovakia, Eduard Benes, one of the great statesmen and most ardent democrats of his day. He and his wife were living in exile in Chicago when he was asked to come to Trinity Col- lege in Hartford, Connecticut, to be awarded an honorary degree.
In view of existing conditions, our State Department decided that it might not be safe for him to go by train to Hartford via Springfield. It was arranged that he, his wife, and small party should leave the train at Pittsfield early on the morning of June 18, 1939, where they were met by Colonel William H. Eaton, to whom their safety had been entrusted, and escorted to his house by strong details of city and Massachusetts state police.
Though information had been received that an attempt might be made to assassinate Dr. Benes, there were no un- toward incidents. The party later motored to Hartford with Colonel and Mrs. Eaton and a police escort.
As the war clouds darkened, the country took a number of steps to assure our neutrality and isolation in the event of hos- tilities. It wanted no part in another world war. Belligerents would receive no loans or credits from us. Americans were to stay off belligerents' ships. An embargo was placed on foreign shipments of arms and strategic materials. Washington issued many pleas for peace. But the powder trains had been laid and early in 1939 were rapidly burning toward a gigantic explosion.
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Japan moved deeper into China and began creeping down the Asia coast. Italy attacked Albania and annexed it. Germany took over the last of Czechoslovakia and presented Poland with stiff demands.
Seriously alarmed, Britain and France signed a mutual assist- ance pact with the Poles. The Soviet Union, suddenly reversing the field, signed a neutrality and non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. The pact fell like a bombshell in Western capitals, giving Hitler the green light to go ahead.
Little more than a week later, on September 1, 1939, Der Fuehrer loosed his armies on Poland, setting World War II ablaze. Within little more than a month, the Polish armies were absolutely shattered by the Nazi blitzkrieg, which gave a shocked world its first full revelation of the might of armored columns, the horror of indiscriminate bombing from the air, and other revolting aspects of modern warfare.
On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Ger- many, honoring their recent pledges to Poland. This country proclaimed its neutrality, though President Roosevelt declared in a fireside radio chat:
"This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well."
A month before the shooting began, Dr. Albert Einstein, a refugee from Nazi Germany, had sent President Roosevelt a letter, the contents of which were not publicly known for many years. Dated August 2, 1939, it was as important a letter as any ever written:
"Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard,* which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element Uranium may be turned into a new and im- portant source of energy in the immediate future . ..
"A single bomb of this type . . . exploded in a port .. . might very well destroy the whole port, together with the sur- rounding territory."
Though no one in Pittsfield and few elsewhere knew it, man- kind was entering-for weal or woe a new era, the atomic age.
*Also refugees from fascist tyranny.
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IX
Pittsfield and World War II 1940-1945
W AR IN EUROPE had one immediate effect in Pittsfield. It caused-or at least was made the pretext for-a sudden steep increase in prices, for food especially. Overnight, house- wives had to pay much more for flour, sugar, meat, eggs, lard, and other staples.
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