1917: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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The German high command resumes unrestricted U-boat attacks, despite the probability that such attacks will bring the United States into the European war. The strength of the Hindenburg Line on the Western Front and the collapse of Russian opposition on the eastern front bolsters German confidence as revolution begins in Russia.
Admiral George Dewey of Spanish-American War fame dies at Washington, D.C., January 16 at age 79.
British intelligence intercepts a wireless message January 17 from the German foreign secretary Arthur von Zimmermann to the German ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff at Washington. Decoded, the Zimmermann note says, "We intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to recover the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona."
Berlin notifies Washington January 31 that unrestricted submarine warfare will begin the next day, the United States severs relations with Germany February 3, Latin American nations, including Brazil and Peru follow suit. The passenger liner S.S. Laconia is torpedoed without warning by a U-boat in the North Atlantic February 25 (she has carried 76 passengers, including six Americans), and the sinking of the Laconia increases popular support for U.S. entry into the war.
Sen. Robert M. La Follette (R. Wis.) launches a filibuster March 3 to block a House-approved bill that would finance arming of U.S. merchant vessels against U-boat attacks. He speaks for 3 hours, defending the right to free speech in time of war, 10 colleagues join him in speaking around the clock, the Senate chamber verges on violence the next morning, and President Wilson denounces the senators March 4 saying, "A little group of willful men, reflecting no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible." The Senate adopts Rule 22 March 8 providing for "cloture," but it takes a two-thirds majority to stop a filibuster and cloture will rarely be invoked (see 1949). The Senate launches an investigation of what some call La Follette's treasonable conduct.
Russian troops mutiny March 10 following 2 days of strikes and riots at Petrograd, Czar Nicholas II en route home by private train March 15 has the train pulled into a siding and abdicates in favor of his brother Michael, Michael abdicates March 16 in favor of a provisional government headed by Prince Georgi Evgenievich Lvov, 55, and the Romanov dynasty founded in 1613 comes to an abrupt end. Menshevik leader Nikolai Semyonovich Chkheidze, 52, becomes chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies but is unable to reconcile competing moderate and radical elements. V. I. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders arrive at Petrograd in April; the German high command has sent them by sealed railroad carriage from Switzerland across Germany in a calculated move to undermine the pro-Ally provisional government (see Lenin, 1916).
The new Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl I dismisses Gen. Franz Conrad, Graf von Hötzendorf, in March as he increases his control of the military. He replaces the somewhat inept Conrad with Arz von Straussenberg.
The United States declares war on Germany April 6—4 days after President Wilson has sent a war message to the Senate, using terms taken directly from communications that he has received over the past 3 years from Ambassador Walter Hines Page (the French ambassador Jean-Jules Jusserand has also played a role in obtaining U.S. entry into the Great War). Congresswoman Rankin's is the lone dissenting voice; Rankin will lose her bid for the Republican Senate nomination next year, and she will not be reelected to Congress until 1940. Sen. Robert M. La Follette (R. Wis.) also votes against U.S. entry into the war (so do five other senators), and when a newspaper questions his patriotism he draws censure from the Wisconsin state legislature and there is talk of removing him from office.
Canadian troops under the command of British general Sir Julian Byng take Vimy Ridge north of Arras in the Battle of Arras that lasts from April 9 to May 16, but while the British 3rd Army under Gen. Edmund Allenby, 56, and the 1st Army under Gen. Henry Horne have 5,000 guns (four times as many as the Germans) and advance four miles they are unable to effect a breakthrough against Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who loses about 27,000 men (British casualties total about 20,000). A British force led by Field Marshal Herbert (Charles Onslow) Plumer, 59, takes Messines Ridge. British air ace Albert Ball dies May 7 at age 21 when a German machine gunner in a church clock tower at Annoeuillin shoots him down; Ball has downed 44 German planes since enlisting in 1914. Both sides in the conflict lionize their air heroes to distract attention form the carnage in the trenches.
The "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen shoots down 21 Allied planes in April as aerial combat escalates in the skies over France (see 1916). His Jasta 11 unit scores a total of 89 victories in what will become known as "Bloody April." Troops in the trenches on both sides of the conflict witness the aerial dogfights. The Jasta 11 joins with three other units June 24 to create the first Jagdgeschwader, it quickly becomes known as "Richthofen's Flying Circus" because its planes are painted in bright colors for easy identification, Richthofen's is a bright red, and his autobiography The Red Battle Flyer (Der rote Kampfflieger) adds to his reputation as a fearless, cold-blooded air ace (see 1918).
The Women's Army Auxiliary Air Force organized in France by London botany professor and fungi expert Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne-Vaughan (née Fraser), 38, works to keep Britain's de Havillands, Farmans, and Sopworth Camels in the air against the Fokker fighter planes flown by Baron von Richthofen's "Flying Circus."
French troops mutiny after sustaining cruel losses in April and hearing of mutiny among Russian troops on the Eastern Front. French minister of war Paul Painlevé relieves Gen. Robert Georges Nivelle, 61, of his command but exonerates him of blame for the failure of his plans and replaces him with Gen. Pétain, who tries to restore order as the mutiny sweeps through 16 corps, the government executes 23 socialist and pacifist agitators, but the brunt of the Allied war effort falls on the British Tommy as the French poilu loses heart for continuing the war.
More than half the 875,000 tons of Allied shipping lost in April is British; Prime Minister Lloyd George prevails on the Admiralty to adopt a proposal by Admiral Sims and employ a convoy system for merchant vessels. Convoys begin May 10 to safeguard shipments of U.S. foodstuffs, war matériel, and troops bound for Britain and Europe.
The Selective Service Act adopted by Congress May 18 authorizes the first draft since the Civil War, makes the office of the Provost Marshal General responsible for the process of selecting men for induction into military service, and gives the governors of the 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico responsibility for managing the process, but the law applies only to men aged 21 to 31. Registration for the draft begins June 5. Gen. "Blackjack" Pershing is named to head an American Expeditionary Force as the French and British sustain enormous losses on the Western Front. Gen. Frederick Funston has died of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, February 19 at age 51, and Pershing, now 56, has been recalled from his pursuit of Pancho Villa.
Greece's pro-German Constantine I abdicates June 12 under pressure from the Allies and former prime minister Eleuthérios Venizélos, now 53, heads a provisional government. The king is a brother-in-law of the German kaiser and has insisted on Greek neutrality; he does not renounce his titular right to the throne, but his 24-year-old second son will reign until 1920 as Alexander. Black Hand Society (Crna Ruka) terrorist Dragutin Dimitrijevic is sentenced to death with six other officers in June and executed at Thessalonika June 27 at age 40. He is believed to have played a key role in the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in 1914.
British authorities in Ireland release Countess Markievicz June 18 on orders from Prime Minister Lloyd George, who wants to reassure the Allies that London is trying to solve its Irish Home Rule problem (see 1916). Irish Republican Brotherhood leader Thomas Ashe dies September 25 at Mountjoy Prison while on a hunger strike following an attempt by prison authorities to feed him forcibly (he has led a campaign for prisoner-of-war status and, when this was refused, began the hunger strike with 29 others) (see 1918).
German radicals who include Wilhelm Pieck, 41, and Clara Zetkin found the Independent Social Democratic Party (Spartacus League) (see 1919).
The Espionage Act adopted by Congress June 15 with overwhelming public support and signed into law by President Wilson prescribes fines of up to $10,000 and prison sentences of up to 20 years for vaguely defined antiwar activities that are listed in the measure, the first such legislation in America since the Sedition Act of 1798. More than 1,500 people are arrested for expressing views against government policies; Emma Goldman is arrested at New York along with Alexander Berkman, their journal Mother Earth is suppressed, and they are sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment for leading opposition to U.S. military conscription (see 1906; 1919). Polish-born New York socialist Rose (Harriet) Pastor Stokes (née Wieslander), 37, worked in a cigar factory and as a journalist before marrying millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes 11 years ago, and although both withdraw from the Socialist Party July 9 after it adopts the St. Louis platform condemning U.S. participation in the war, she rejoins the party in the fall and is arrested on charges of violating the Espionage Act (see Sedition Act, 1918).
An embargo proclamation issued by President Wilson July 9 places exports of U.S. foodstuffs, fuel, iron, steel, and war matériel under government control. Wilson sends U.S. destroyers to help blockade German ports and convoy merchant ships bound for Britain.
Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, U.S. Navy (ret)., dies at Newport, Rhode Island, July 28 at age 90, having served as the Naval War College's first president. Rear Admiral William S. (Sowden) Sims, 58, has headed the War College but wins promotion to vice admiral and is given command of the U.S. fleet that will operate with the Royal Navy in European waters. Sims served in the U.S. Asiatic fleet from 1901 to 1902, learned from a British officer about the new gunnery techniques of continuous-aim firing (see Fiske, 1915), and has been influential in improving ship design, fleet tactics, and naval gunnery.
German troops begin using mustard gas in July (see chlorine, 1915). The oily, volatile liquid CH2ClCH2S smells like ground mustard and has an extremely irritating effect on the skin, blistering skin and disabling men. The end of the war next year will abort deployment of the far more powerful vesicant and lung irritant Lewisite that U.S. chemist W. (Winford) Lee Lewis, now 37, will soon develop at Catholic University, combining acetylene and arsenic trichloride on the basis of an unpublished 1904 paper by Belgian-born chemist Julius A. (Arthur) Nieuwland, now 39 (see Geneva Protocol, 1925).
"Lafayette, we are here," says Col. Charles E. Stanton July 4 at the tomb of Lafayette in Paris, but U.S. troops do not go into action until October 27.
A new Russian provisional government headed by Minister of War Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerenski, 36, succeeds the Lvov government July 7 as Russian troops pull back on all fronts. Supported by Admiral Aleksandr Vailyevich Kolchak, 43, who has won distinction in the Gulf of Riga and commanded the Black Sea fleet, Kerenski has launched an offensive July 1 (June 18 Old Style), attacking Austro-German forces with an army that includes a women's battalion of 300 young working-class women, some only 17 years old, who have had combat experience serving as front-line nurses. Admiral Kolchak resigns in June, and Kerenski sends him to study in the United States with a view to invading the Bosphorus; Kolchak stops off in Britain, where he offers his services to the Royal Navy. But although the Russian Army pushes toward Lvov under the command of Gen. Aleksei A. Brusilov, its soldiers soon refuse to fight, the offensive collapses within a few days, the Austrians and Germans mount a counter-offensive July 6, and encounter little resistance as they advance through Galicia and into Ukraine. Kerenski appoints Gen. Lavr Georgyvich Kornilov, 47, commander in chief, and Kornilov insists that discipline be restored.
Former British first sea lord Louis Alexander Battenberg, now 63, relinquishes his German titles at the request of George V, changes his surname to Mountbatten, and is created 1st marquis of Milford Haven July 17 (see 1914).
The German Reichstag adopts a resolution July 19 proposing a negotiated peace with no territorial gains, but the resolution has no effect.
Former French premier Georges Clemenceau charges Minister of the Interior Louis-Jean Malvy, 41, with laxity in dealing with defeatists and pacifists July 22. Malvy resigns August 31, Premier Alexandre Ribot resigns September 9, and a new cabinet takes over September 12 headed by Paul Painlevé, now 53. A former Sorbonne mathematics professor who has been minister of war, Painlevé appoints Ribot to that position; royalist Léon Daudet charges Malvy with high treason in October (see 1918).
The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) from July 31 to November 6 costs the British 324,000 men (80,000 killed and missing, 230,000 wounded, 14,000 taken prisoner). Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer commands the British 2nd Army, Gen. Sir Hubert Gough, the 5th, Gen. Sixt von Arnim the German 4th Army, Gen. Otto von Below the 6th. The French lose 50,000 dead and wounded, the Germans 50,000 killed and missing, 113,000 wounded, 37,000 captured. Fought in a sea of mud so deep that tanks sink up to their roofs and men simply vanish (years of shellfire have destroyed the area's drainage system), the battle ends with the capture of Passchendaele Ridge and a village, but it leaves the British completely demoralized. English-born New Zealand territorial army Brig. Gen. Bernard C. (Cyril) Freyberg, 28, is awarded the Victoria Cross in December, having been promoted at age 27 (the youngest brigadier general in the British Army) and distinguished himself in some of the fiercest fighting.
Royal Navy squadron commander E. H. Dunning lands his Sopworth Pup August 2 on the converted deck of the light battlecruiser H.M.S. Furious, the first successful deck landing (see 1912), but when Dunning tries to repeat the feat August 4 a tire bursts, his plane goes over the side, and he is drowned (see 1918).
German U-boats continue their depredations despite convoys, sinking 8 million tons by October 10, but the German submarine campaign has lost force, permitting an increase in U.S. troop shipments.
Dutch-born dancer Mata Hari (Gertrud Margarette [or Margaretha Geertruida] Zelle), 41, is convicted of having spied for the Germans and shot by a firing squad October 15 at St. Lazare. At 19 she married an army officer with whom she traveled to the Java, learned the rudiments of Balinese temple dancing, returned to Europe, left her husband, went to Paris, and later entertained audiences under the name Mata Hari (Malay for "the sun" or "eye of the dawn"), doing semi-nude "Indian" dances until the novelty wore off and she turned to prostitution. It is doubtful that she sold the Germans anything more than her body.
Caporetto in the Julian Alps near Italy's Austrian border comes under German and Austrian artillery bombardment in late October. Troops commanded by Gen. Otto von Below move in beginning October 24 under cover of heavy fog in an effort to reach the Tagliamento River, von Below's original force of 15 divisions is increased to 35 as the fighting goes on, Gen. Luigi Capello's 2nd Army initially has only five divisions and later has 41, but while 45,000 Italians are killed or wounded, and about 250,000 taken prisoner, and more than 300,000 desert in the 2-month Caporetto campaign (the 12th Battle of the Isonzo), the Germans and Austrians make little real progress. They capture 2,500 Italian guns but suffer about 20,000 casualties. Gen. Luigi Cadorna is removed as chief of staff and replaced by Gen. Armando Diaz, 55 (see 1918).
Former British viceroy in Egypt Evelyn Baring, 1st earl of Cromer, dies at London January 29 at age 75.
Anglo-Indian troops under the command of Sir Frederick Stanley Maude occupy Baghdad without resistance March 11, take 9,000 Turkish prisoners, and receive a loud welcome from the city's 140,000 inhabitants (see 1916). Lt. Gen. Maude issues a proclamation (written by diplomat Sir Mark Sykes) March 19 saying, "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators" (but Britain will control Mesopotamia for the next 41 years; see 1919; Iraq, 1920).
Aqaba in Arabia falls July 6 to Arab forces led by Col. T. E. Lawrence, who has responded to the Allies' need of the port to bring in supplies via the Red Sea, has seen that Turkish fortifications on the heights controlling the city have made it impregnable from the sea, and has led armed horsemen across the desert to take Aqaba from the rear (see 1916). Lawrence has survived bouts of dysentery, malaria, and ulcerated saddle sores. He forces the surrender of the Turkish garrison without firing a shot and breaks the Turkish communications link by disrupting the 9-year-old Hejaz Railway that came under attack from Bedouins even before the war because it weakened their control of the route taken by pilgrims to Muslim holy places. George V offers to confer knighthood and the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on Lawrence; he declines both in a gesture of protest against what he considers a betrayal of promises he made to the Arabs that their help would gain them independence. Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn takes command of Central Powers forces in Palestine July 9, but his troops (mainly Turkish) are no match for the British. Gen. Maude dies of cholera November 18 at age 53, having consumed contaminated milk; he is succeeded as commander in chief of Mesopotamian forces by Sir William (Raine) Marshall, 52 (see 1918).
The Balfour Declaration issued November 2 by Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour, now 69, says the British government favors "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" (see Herzl, 1897). British troops have invaded Palestine under the command of Gen. Allenby and take it from the Ottoman Turks, who have held it since 1516. Prompted by Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Lord Balfour's declaration takes the form of a letter to zoologist, former MP, and Zionist sympathizer Lionel Walter Rothschild, 49, 2nd Baron Rothschild, who heads the British branch of the banking family. The Russian-born Weizmann has turned 43 at London November 2, received a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Freiburg in 1900, and has been lecturing at the University of Manchester. Gen. Otto Liman von Sanders succeeds Gen. von Falkenhayn as commander of Central Powers forces in Palestine, but Jerusalem falls to the British December 9 (see 1922; Weizmann-Faisal Agreement, 1919; mandate, 1920; Passfield Paper, 1930).
German colonial troops gain a victory in mid-October at Mahiwa and invade Portuguese East Africa.
A Bolshevik revolution begins at Petrograd the night of November 6 (October 24 by the Julian calendar still used in Russia). Acting on orders from V. I. Lenin, Commissar Aleksandr B. Belyshev, 24, fires a blank shot from the foredeck gun of the cruiser Aurora anchored in the Neva River. Housewives waiting in endless bread-shop queues have been demonstrating in protest; they are joined by soldiers from the Petrograd garrison, sailors from Kronstadt, and the factory workers' Red Guards, who seize government offices and storm the Winter Palace of the Romanovs, which the Battalion of Women helps to defend.
Aleksandr Kerenski has been forced to accept Bolshevik support to resist alleged efforts by Gen. Kornilov to make himself dictator, and the Bolsheviks have secured a majority in the Petrograd Soviet under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, now 40, who was expelled from France last year and has returned from exile in the United States and England to support Lenin.
London withdraws diplomatic representation from the new Bolshevik capital at Moscow but leaves an unofficial M16 mission whose members include Odessa-born British spy Sidney (George) Reilly (originally Sigmund Georgevich Rosenblum), 43; it will fund anti-Bolshevik groups and encourage their efforts at sabotage and subversion (see 1918).
Russia's Kerenski government falls, Kerenski himself goes into hiding (he will later take sanctuary abroad), and a new government headed by V. I. Lenin takes office November 7 under the name Council of People's Commissars. Menshevik leader Nikolai S. Chkheidze returns to his native Georgia. Leon Trotsky is commissar for foreign affairs and Georgian Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, 39, who calls himself Josef Stalin is commissar for national minorities. Peace talks with Germany begin in December at Brest-Litovsk, and the Royal Navy sends Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak to direct anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia, where he is appointed minister of war and navy in the socialist government established at Omsk (see 1918). Russian peasants seize their landlords' fields as the Bolsheviks initiate plans to make Moscow the nation's capital. The Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution (Cheka) is founded December 10 by Russian revolutionist Feliks Dzerzhinsky, 40, whose secret police organization is designed to protect the Council of People's Commissars and crush opposition. The Cheka will become the GPU and, later, the KGB.
Finnish patriot Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, 55, becomes prime minister of Finland November 27, having returned from exile in March. Finland gains independence December 6 after centuries of domination by Russia and Sweden, but Bolsheviks gain control of the country's Social Democratic Party (see civil war, 1918).
French premier Paul Painlevé resigns November 13 after 14 months in office; Georges Clemenceau, now 76, will serve until 1920 as premier and minister of war, revitalizing France's war effort and cementing relations with Britain.
The Battle of Cambrai that begins November 20 gives the British some initial success; 300 British tanks launch a surprise raid in the first great armored attack of the war. Gen. Byng commands the 3rd Army with 19 divisions plus 476 tanks of the Tank Corps; Gen. Georg von der Marwitz initially has only six divisions but is soon reinforced with 14 more, the Germans counterattack November 30 and recover most of the territory that they have lost. British casualties total about 44,000, German about 53,000.
The Rajah of Sarawak Sir Charles A. J. Brooke dies at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, May 17 at age 87 after a 49-year reign in which he has employed the indigenous Iban men in his military, encouraged immigration of Chinese agriculturists on a limited basis, and insulated his subjects from the hardships (but also the benefits) of Western-style development. Sir Charles is succeeded by his son Charles Vynder de Windt Brooke, 42, who will oversee a gradual modernization of the country as demand for oil and rubber brings an economic boom but will terminate his family's rule in 1946.
China severs relations with Germany March 14. Chinese warlord Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch'i-jui), 52, tries to force the National Assembly to enter the war on the side of the Allies in May but is dismissed by President Li Yuan-Hong (Li Yüan-Hung). Duan makes his own declaration of war against Germany August 14 and receives support from the Japanese, who provide him with financial and military aid, help him create a military establishment (the Anfu Clique), and raise fears that Duan is opening the country to domination by imperialist powers (see 1919).
Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens under terms of the Jones Act signed into law by President Wilson March 2 (see 1900). The late Luis Muñoz Rivera campaigned for passage of the measure, which gives islanders a large measure of self-government; only those who sign a statement rejecting citizenship are excluded, but if they do sign it they are considered aliens and stand to lose civil rights that include the right to hold office. The law makes voting compulsory and, at the request of the San Juan government, it applies the Selective Service Act to Puerto Rico, which drafts 18,000 men into the U.S. Army.
The Danish West Indies become a U.S. territory March 31 upon Senate ratification of a treaty giving Denmark $25 million for 132 square miles of land that include the Virgin Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, with 26,000 inhabitants.
Lawyer and onetime U.S. ambassador to Britain Joseph H. Choate dies at New York May 14 at age 85; former Canadian prime minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell at Belleville, Ontario, December 10 at age 93.
A race riot at East St. Louis, Illinois, July 2 leaves at least 40 dead and hundreds injured; the mob drives 6,000 blacks from their homes. New York blacks led by W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP walk in silence 15,000 strong down Fifth Avenue to protest the violence at East St. Louis (see 1910; 1948).
The Third Battalion of the black Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry travels by train with seven white officers July 27 from its regimental encampment at Columbus, N.M., to Houston with orders to guard a construction site on the outskirts of town, where military installations are to be built at Camp Logan and Ellington Field. The contingent encounters racial discrimination when the men receive passes to go into Houston, police and other public officials regard them as a threat to racial harmony, the troops resent epithets voiced by white construction workers, they take umbrage at having to stand at the rear of city streetcars when they can see vacant seats in the "white" sections, and a riot erupts August 23 when two city police officers arrest a black infantryman for interfering with their arrest of a black woman. A mutinous sergeant leads 100 armed companions on a 2-hour march into the city, they open fire and kill 15 whites who include four policemen, 12 more are seriously wounded and one (another policeman) later dies, the sergeant advises his men to slip back into camp under cover of darkness and then shoots himself in the head. Civil authorities impose a curfew on Houston, and the army sends the battalion back to Columbus, N.M. by train. Military tribunals will indict 118 enlisted men on charges of mutiny and riot, 110 will be found guilty, 19 hanged, 63 given life sentences in federal prison. No white civilians will be brought to trial.
Russian women observe the seventh International Women's Day February 23 (March 8 in Western calendars) by demonstrating against the excesses of the czarist government. Women now make up half the nation's labor force (up from one third before the war). Russian women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Norway, 1913; Canada, 1918).
Federal authorities at New Orleans respond to America's entrance into the war by shutting down Storyville, whose brothels now have fewer than 700 prostitutes (see 1900).
"We want the vote so that we may serve our country better," says Emmeline Pankhurst April 23 in a speech at the Queen's Hall. "We want the vote so that we shall be more faithful and more true to our allies. We want the vote so that we may help to maintain the cause of Christian civilization for which we entered this war. We want the vote so that in the future such wars if possible may be averted."
The first U.S. woman governor takes office in Texas. Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson (née Wallace), 42, fills the vacancy left by her husband, James, who has been impeached and removed from office (see 1924).
Lawyer-suffragist Belva Lockwood dies at Washington, D.C., May 19 at age 86.
The Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario grant women voting rights (see 1916). A Wartime Elections Act enfranchises Canadian women with close relatives in the armed services, and a Military Voters Act gives the vote to women who are themselves in active service (see 1918). Most Canadian provinces will enact equal guardianship laws in the next 6 years, giving mothers rights equal to those of fathers with regard to custody, control, and education of children. Divorce laws will be made less discriminatory, although property settlements will not recognize a housewife's contribution to a family's assets.
The National Woman's Party pickets the White House in October to urge presidential support of the woman suffrage amendment (see 1916). Demonstrators who include Alice Paul and 265 others are arrested and sentenced to 7 months' imprisonment in the filthy Occuquan Workhouse, where most will serve 60 days. Paul is placed in solitary confinement in the psychiatric ward in an effort to discredit her, and force-fed when she goes on a 3-week hunger strike.
President Wilson endorses equal suffrage October 25 when he speaks at the White House before a group from the New York State Woman Suffrage Party; 20,000 women march in a New York suffrage parade October 27.
New York adopts a constitutional amendment November 6 that makes it the first state to grant equal voting rights to women (see 1918).
The Association of Lions Clubs International is founded at Dallas by Chicago insurance broker Melvin Jones to foster a spirit of "generous consideration" among the world's peoples and encourage an active interest in civic, commercial, moral, and social welfare while promoting good government and good citizenship. Less stringent in its membership rules than the Elks, Kiwanis, or other service clubs, the Lions will become larger than any of the others, with members in more than 180 countries.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 6.91 points (7.24 percent) February 1 in the worst drop since 1907, but the U.S. economy booms as demand increases for American-made ships, arms, munitions, shoes, textiles, chemicals, and other war-related goods.
The Special Preparedness Fund Act approved by Congress March 3 provides for excess profit taxes and higher inheritance taxes. The United States has more than 40,000 millionaires, up from 4,000 in 1892.
Millionaire railroad equipment salesman and trencherman James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady dies April 13 at age 60 in his $1,000-per-week ocean-view suite at Atlantic City's Shelburne Hotel.
The Emergency Loan Act passed April 24 authorizes the Treasury Department to issue $5 billion in 3.5 percent bonds. Congress amends the Federal Reserve Act June 21 to encourage membership, facilitate issuance of notes, and mobilized gold reserves.
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and other film stars speak at bond rallies that will help sell $18.7 billion in Liberty Bonds this year and next despite their low 3.5 percent interest rate (railroad bonds yield 4.79 percent). Millions of Americans take money that they have kept hidden in mattresses and invest it in the new government bonds.
The price of copper reaches 37¢/lb. in March, up from 13½¢ in July 1914; an accident 2,400 feet down in the Granite Mountain copper mine at Butte, Mont., the night of June 8 starts a fire that kills 168 men before it is brought under control. The city has 14,500 men working in its underground mines, up from 2,000 in 1883, to meet the insatiable demand for copper; miner Manus Duggan leads 29 others to a safe area where they can wait for rescue crews but goes for help and dies of smoke inhalation. News of the disaster at Granite Mountain shocks the world; it takes 2 weeks to remove all the victims.
The International Workers of the World (IWW) presents mining companies at Bisbee, Arizona, with a list of demands June 24. Included are demands for a flat wage system to replace wages tied to the market price of copper and equal treatment for foreign and minority workers; about half the miners are on strike by June 27, the anti-union Citizens' Protective League brings in several thousand vigilantes, they seize the local Western Union telegraph office July 12 to cut off outside communication, Sheriff Harry Wheeler averts gunplay by having the vigilantes herd 1,185 men into manure-laden boxcars and "deport" them to the New Mexican desert, a machine gun is mounted on top, 186 armed guards ride the train to Columbus, N.M., authorities there say they have no accommodations for so many men and order the train to return, it stops at Hermanos, N.M., the men are abandoned, a later train brings them water and rations, but they have no shelter until July 14, when federal troops arrive and take them to Columbus, where many are detained for months. A Federal Mediation Commission set up by President Wilson in the fall finds that no federal law applied to the situation and refers the matter to the state of Arizona, whose authorities find that the vigilantes acted out of an excess of patriotism and support for the war effort.
IWW organizer Frank Little is abducted from his boarding house room at Butte, Montana, August 1 and lynched by five men who drag him behind a car to a railroad bridge and hang his body with a note pinned to his shirt warning IWW members to beware; federal agents raid IWW headquarters in 48 cities September 5 (see 1918).
New York labor leader Rose Schneiderman makes regular trips to the State Capitol at Albany and continues to lobby the legislature for passage of a 48-hour week law for women; she also demands a minimum wage that would benefit men as well as women, since employers would be less likely to replace male workers with lower-paid female workers.
The Anglo American Corp. of South Africa founded by German-born cigar maker's son and mining magnate Ernest Oppenheimer, 37, will become a major gold producer while Oppenheimer gains control of 95 percent of the world's diamond supply through his De Beers Consolidated Mines (see Rhodes, Barnato, 1880).
A second Liberty Loan drive launched October 1 offers $3 billion worth of U.S. Government bonds that yield 4 percent.
U.S. revenues from income taxes exceed revenues from customs duties for the first time (see 1913). By 1920 income tax revenues will be 10 times those from customs duties.
U.S. insurance companies sustain heavy losses from damage or destruction of ocean-going vessels they have covered. Many will join the American Foreign Insurance Association next year, marketing policies to Europeans whose domestic companies will be unable to pay war-related claims.
The Trading with the Enemy Act adopted by Congress October 6 establishes an Alien Property Custodian whose office seizes properties owned in the United States by enemy aliens.
Union Carbide and Carbon is created in November by a merger of Union Carbide, Linde, Prest-O-Lite, and National Carbon, famous for its Eveready flashlights and batteries (see technology [Union Carbide], 1911). The new company finds itself swamped immediately with government orders for activated carbon for gas masks, helium for dirigibles, ferrozirconium for armor-plating, and other war-related products (see Prestone, 1926).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 74.38, down from 95 at the end of 1916.
Paris Jeweler Pierre Cartier gives railroad and steamboat heir Morton F. (Freeman) Plant, 65, a two-strand Oriental pearl necklace in exchange for Plant's Renaissance-style New York mansion at Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street (see 1902). Pierre opened the first New York Cartier salon in 1908 on a Fifth Avenue mezzanine; his brother Louis, now 42, designed the first man's wristwatch 10 years ago for French aviator Santos Dumont (it was basically a small pocket watch with a wrist strap; women have worn bracelet watches for decades); Cartier will introduce the Tank watch next year as a tribute to the men of the American Tank Corps, and sales of wrist watches will soon eclipse those of pocket watches as men give up vests in favor of two-piece sack suits. The Fifth Avenue mansion will remain Cartier's headquarters into the 21st century.
Petroleum pioneer William Knox D'Arcy dies at Stanmore, Middlesex, May 1 at age 67, having made Persia a major source of oil.
Phillips Petroleum is incorporated at Bartlesville, Oklahoma, June 13 as the war doubles oil prices (see Healdton Field, 1913). Nebraska-born banker Frank Phillips, 43, and his brother Lee (Eldas) Phillips, 40, sold most of their properties last year to Tidal Oil Co., retaining some Oklahoma acreages that Tidal would not accept; their new company starts with $3 million in assets, owns 16 gas and oil leases, produces 384 barrels of oil per day, employs 27 people, and has a gross income of $218,000 in its first 6 months; net assets by 1922 will exceed $50 million, with earnings of $3 million on a gross of $12.5 million, as Phillips adds refineries (see 1927; Skelly, 1919).
Oil prospectors discover the Gerber-Covington oil pool east of Enid in Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip as oil prices revive.
Houston real estate operator Jim Cheek asks Hughroy Cullen to serve as his agent in acquiring oil leases in western Texas (see transportation [Houston Ship Canal], 1914). Now 36, Cullen agrees on condition that Cheek take him in as partner; he quickly learns how to lease property and drill for oil, and in the next 14 years will discover oil fields worth billions of dollars (see 1934).
U.S. use of electric signs is restricted November 16 to conserve coal. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels will later write, "New York responded with such howls and denunciations as can hardly be described . . . It raised such a row that coal operators doubled their energies to furnish enough coal so that the White Way could again blaze brightly and let New York City turn night into day."
Germany has 18 ships in the port of New York April 6, five of them anchored in the Hudson off 135th Street; Dudley Field Malone, collector of the port, sends 600 customs agents to board the vessels and seize them in the name of the United States Government. Malone himself is in the boarding party that takes over the giant Vaterland and runs up the U.S. flag in the first act of war. The 22nd Infantry boards army tugboats at Governors Island and arrests 1,200 German soldiers along with 325 officers; all are taken to Ellis Island for internment. A company of troops marches through the Hudson tubes to Hoboken, seizes the piers of the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerika lines, and rounds up about 200 Germans in the dock area saloons and boarding houses for internment on Ellis Island. Army engineers sink a steel net in the waters across the Narrows to block any U-boat trying to sneak into the Upper Bay, and the port of New York becomes the nation's chief port of embarkation for shipping cargo and troops overseas.
Shipping magnate William Matson of Matson Navigation Co. dies at San Francisco October 11 at age 67. The U.S. Navy takes over his Wilhelmina, Maui, and Matsonia (see 1908) and will keep them until 1920.
U.S. trolley-car ridership reaches 11 billion, with 80,000 electric streetcars plying 45,000 miles of track, up from 30,000 trolley cars on 15,000 miles of track in 1900. Connecting lines make it possible to travel from New York to Boston by trolley and even for more than 1,000 miles from eastern Wisconsin to central New York State, paying a nickel to ride to the end of each line (see 1939).
The Hell Gate Bridge (New York Connecting Railroad Bridge) opens April 1 over the East River to give Pennsylvania Railroad trains access to New England. Designed by engineer Gustav Lindenthal, it is the longest steel arch bridge built up to now. Its massive arch extends for 1,107 feet, it carries four tracks, and it is part of a two-and-a-half-mile system that includes viaducts, overpasses, and two smaller bridges. Not only does it shorten the trip between Boston and Washington from 15 hours to about 12, but it also reduces traffic at Grand Central Terminal and increases traffic at Penn Station.
A "Stop-Look-Listen" warning sign for railroad crossings begins to replace the "Watch for Engines" sign in common use. A Seattle, Wash., safety lecturer has devised the sign for the Puget Sound Power Co.
Australian engineers complete a 2,715-mile railroad line connecting Perth and Kalgoorlie on the Indian Ocean with Adelaide (it will be extended to Sydney on the Pacific). Begun in 1912, the line crosses desolate country that includes the Nulabar Plain and includes the straightest stretch of track in the world.
The worst train wreck in world history occurs December 12 at Modane, France, where a passenger train jumps the tracks killing 543, injuring hundreds more. Three U.S. train wrecks in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Kentucky kill 20, 23, and 46, respectively.
Rail equipment shortages delay movement of U.S. troops and freight to ports; President Wilson uses the Federal Possession and Control Act December 28 to take over "each and every system of transportation . . . within the boundaries of the United States" and puts his son-in-law William G. McAdoo, secretary of the treasury, in charge of a newly-created U.S. Railroad Administration (see 1918).
Dirigible pioneer Ferdinand, graf von Zeppelin, dies at Charlottenburg, outside Berlin, March 8 at age 78 (see Eckener, 1918).
Chance Vought Co. (initially Lewis Vought Corp.) is founded at Long Island City, N.Y., by New York-born aeronautical engineer and designer Chance (Milton) Vought, 27, with financing from Birdseye B. Lewis. Vought designed and built an advanced training plane 3 years ago, the British have been using it to train pilots, and as chief engineer at the Wright Co. in Dayton, Ohio, Vought last year produced the Vought-Wright Model V military biplane (see United Aircraft, 1929).
Italian-born Long Island, N.Y., flying-school operator Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, 31, designs and produces the first monoplane with an enclosed cabin (see 1911; Bellanca, 1927).
U.S. auto production reaches 1,745,792, up from 543,679 in 1914. Model T Fords account for 42.4 percent of the total. Apperson, Biddle, Buick, Cadillac, Chalmers, Chevrolet, Cole, Crow-Elkhart, Daniels, Detroit Electric, Doble Steam, Essex, Fageol, Franklin, Haynes, Hudson, Hupmobile, Jordan, Kissel, Lenox, Maxwell, McFarlan, Mitchell, National, Oakland, Ohio Electric, Packard, Paige-Detroit, Pathfinder, Peerless, Pierce-Arrow, Premier, Pullman, Reo, Saxon, Scripps-Booth, Willys-Knight, Willys-Overland, and others vie for customers.
The Lincoln motorcar is introduced by former Cadillac president Henry M. Leland, now 74, who starts a company that will produce and market a luxury car to compete with Cadillac, Duesenberg, Packard, and Pierce-Arrow (see Ford, 1922).
Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) is created at Munich by a reorganization of Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. The company will introduce the world's first six-cylinder high-altitude aircraft engine and a 550-horsepower nine-cylinder engine (see motorcycles, 1923).
National Cash Register Co. converts its Dayton, Ohio, plant to making precision shell timers and airplane instruments on a "fixed fee" (not a "cost-plus") basis (see 1913). Founder and CEO John F. Patterson, now 72, was on the last train to leave Berlin after war broke out in 1914.
The Electron by University of Chicago physicist Robert A. (Andrews) Millikan, 49, describes the atomic particle that he has been the first to isolate (see Rutherford, 1911). Millikan has improved on the falling-drop method of measuring the unit electrical charge (e) devised by John S. E. Townsend in 1897; this has enabled him to measure the electron's charge more accurately, and he has calculated the first accurate value of Avogadro's number—the number of molecules in a mole (or the number of atoms in a gram atom). Future work will determine that Millikan's result is not entirely accurate but very close.
General Electric research physicist Albert W. (Wallace) Hull, 37, devises a powder method of using X-rays to study crystal structures (he is unaware of last year's finding by Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer). The ability to study crystalline materials in finely divided microcrystalline form will enable Hull to determine for the first time the crystal structure of iron and most other common metals.
On Growth and Form by Scottish zoologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 57, departs from the work of previous zoologists by interpreting and analyzing the growth and structure of organic form in mathematical and physical terms instead of in terms of comparative anatomy, evolutionary theory, and phylogenetics.
Nobel chemist Johann F. W. Adolf von Baeyer dies at Starnberg, Oberbayern, August 20 at age 81; mathematician Georg Frobenius at his native Berlin August 3 at age 67; Nobel biochemist Eduard Buchner is killed in action at Focsani, Romania, August 24 at age 57.
Typhus sweeps Russia, compounding problems of defeat and revolution (see Serbia, 1915). The epidemic will kill up to 3 million in the next 4 years (see 1918; Armand Hammer, 1921).
A paper published by Félix d'Hérelle of the Institut Pasteur at Paris gives the name bacteriophage to the virus that "eats" certain bacteria (see 1915). He predicts that it will bring a revolution in the treatment of infectious diseases, but it will turn out that there are hundreds of different types of phages, each kills only one variety of bacteria, and when a phage bursts out of a patient's cell it leaves behind debris that can contaminate the solution and prove fatal (see penicillin, 1928).
Shock treatment for mental illness has its beginnings at the University of Vienna, where Julius Wagner-Jauregg, now 60, infects syphilis patients with malaria to induce fevers that arrest the syphilitic meningoencephalitis, or general paresis, that has heretofore been incurable and fatal (see 1887). The results are dramatic (see Sakel, 1933).
Bacteriologist Emil von Behring dies of pneumonia at Marburg March 31 at age 63; Nobel surgeon Emil Kocher at his native Berne July 27 at age 75, having introduced a type of forceps and gallbladder surgical incision that will bear his name; osteopathy founder Andrew T. Still dies at Kirksville, Missouri, December 12 at age 89.
Salvation Army women go to the front to serve doughnuts to U.S. doughboys (who call them "Sallies"). New York advertising man Bruce Barton donates his services, produces a fund-raising pamphlet entitled "Only One Thousand Dollars," and comes up with the line, "A man may be down, but he's never out."
Catholic missionary Frances X. Cabrini dies at Chicago December 22 at age 67. Naturalized in 1909, she will be canonized in 1946.
The Julius Rosenwald Fund established by Sears, Roebuck president Rosenwald, now 55, works to help blacks help themselves (see 1911). Following the dictates of Jewish morning prayers that urge giving the needy an opportunity to work rather than giving them money or food, Rosenwald has been impressed by the efforts of Urban League founder William Baldwin Jr. and the late Tuskegee Institute head Booker T. Washington, whom he assisted beginning 6 years ago with money to finance construction of new schools for blacks in Alabama. By 1931 the Rosenwald Fund will have financed 5,295 school buildings from Maryland to Texas (they will become known as the Rosenwald schools), but Rosenwald insists that local governments assume responsibility for operating the schools, and it will be difficult to construct and maintain them in the face of opposition from the Ku Klux Klan and other hostile whites. Rosenwald also insists that some of the support for the schools come from the black community, however impoverished it may be (farmers in one village will plant a small area in cotton, calling it the Rosenwald Patch, and donate the proceeds to the school fund).
Washington D.C.-born Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent (Raphael) Floyd P. (Phillips) Gibbons, 29, files a 4,000-word story on the sinking of the Laconia after she is torpedoed in the North Atlantic February 25 while en route to France. He was one of her 76 passengers, many of whom have been rescued.
President Wilson establishes the first U.S. propaganda agency 1 week after the declaration of war in April. Total government censorship is imposed; newspapers and magazines are prohibited from publishing photographs of dead soldiers lest they discourage enlistments. The new U.S. Espionage Act contains a provision empowering the postmaster general to bar materials from being sent through the mail if he considers them radical, dissenting, or otherwise suspect. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson enforces the provision, seizing a wide variety of literature.
Esperanto founder L. L. Zamenhof dies at Warsaw April 14 at age 57, having seen the world go up in flames for lack, in part, of a universal language; Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis dies at Hollywood, California, July 30 at age 80.
The June issue of Seven Arts magazine at New York carries an article by Randolph S. Bourne, "The War and the Intellectuals." The magazine is suppressed in September after further antiwar articles, many of them by Bourne.
New York-born journalist Dorothy Day, 19, quits her job on the IWW newspaper The Call and joins The Masses, the literary and political journal edited since 1911 by Max (Forrester) Eastman, now 34; it is suppressed in December for its opposition to U.S. participation in the war. Day began her career with the New Orleans Item by working on assignment as a taxi dancer in a cheap Canal Street dance hall; she will abruptly become a Catholic in 1927 after years of Bohemian Greenwich Village life in which she will rally "the masses," go to jail, drink all night with her radical friends, marry on the rebound, write a novel, fall in love, and bear a child (see 1933).
Excelsior begins publication at Mexico City. The daily will become Mexico's leading newspaper.
"The Gumps" appears February 12 in the Chicago Tribune, whose publisher Joseph Medill Patterson has dreamed up the comic strip and named it (see 1910). Bloomington, Ind.-born cartoonist Sidney Smith, 40, has created the characters based on real people, and in mid-March 1922 he will be signed to the first $1 million cartoon contract with a guarantee of $100,000 per year and a new Rolls-Royce.
The "Katzenjammer Kids" launched in 1897 is renamed "The Captain and the Kids" as German names become unpopular. The comic strip moved 5 years ago from Hearst's New York Journal to Pulitzer's New York World.
"The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains" begins syndicated publication. Devised by Louisville, Ky.-born cartoonist Fontaine (Talbot) Fox, 33, the strip features the Powerful Katrinka, who can single-handedly put the trolley back on its tracks; the Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, who may be based on Fox's father; Suitcase Simpson; Eppie Hogg ("the fattest woman in three counties"); and Mickey (Himself) McGuire.
Shufunotomo (Housewife's Companion) begins publication in March at Tokyo.
Forbes magazine begins publication at New York September 15 under the management of Scottish-born Hearst financial columnist B. C. (Bertie Charles) Forbes, 37, with Magazine of Wall Street general manager Walter Drey. Forbes has been business and financial editor of the New York American since 1912, writing a syndicated daily column that will continue in the Hearst papers until 1942; he will claim that he gave up a salary higher than that of the governor ($10,000 per year) to start the 15¢ fortnightly.
A superheterodyne circuit developed by New York-born U.S. Army Signal Corps major Edwin H. (Howard) Armstrong, 26, will become the basic design for all amplitude modulation (AM) radios (see 1906). By modulating the intensity (amplitude) of sound, it greatly increases the selectivity and sensitivity of radio receivers over a wide band of frequencies (see FM, 1933).
David Sarnoff urges marketing of a simple "radio music box" (see 1912). The American Marconi Co. says his plan will make the radio "a 'household utility' in the same sense as the piano or phonograph" (see 1920; speaker, 1918; RCA, 1919).
H. W. Wilson Co. moves from White Plains, N.Y., to the Bronx. Vermont-born publisher Halsey William Wilson, now 49, put out the first issue of his Cumulative Book Index February 1, 1898, issued the Essay and General Literature Index beginning in 1900, Book Review Digest in 1905, International Index to Periodicals in 1907, the Index to Legal Periodicals in 1908, Industrial Arts Index in 1913, and Agricultural Index in 1916. He moved to White Plains in 1913, and by the time Wilson dies in March 1954 his firm will be publishing on a cumulative basis indices to the contents of 118 periodicals but will be best known for its Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, found in virtually every U.S. library.
The World Book Encyclopedia is published in its first edition; described on its title page as "organized knowledge in story and picture," the U.S. children's encyclopedia will have annual supplements beginning in 1922 and grow in the next 60 years to have 22 volumes, outselling every other encyclopedia.
Nonfiction: The Immigrant and the Community by Nebraska-born Chicago social worker Grace Abbott, 28, who has worked with Jane Addams at Hull House and exposed the exploitation of immigrants in a series of weekly articles for the Chicago Evening Post. Abbott goes to work at Washington, D.C., where she will head the child-labor division of the Children's Bureau until 1919; The Truth About Mexico by Philadelphia-born New York Evening Post Washington correspondent David Lawrence, 28; A Son of the Middle Border (reminiscences) by Hamlin Garland; Parnassus on Wheels by Haverford, Pa.-born essayist Christopher (Darlington) Morley, 27, is the odyssey of a horse-drawn library.
Philosopher Franz Brentano dies at Zürich March 17 at age 79; pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim at Paris November 15 at age 59. His only son was killed last year while fighting alongside his French comrades on the Balkan front, but he has been denounced at the Sorbonne as a "professor of apparent German extraction."
Fiction: The Book of the Martyrs (Vie des Martyrs) with war stories by French novelist Denis Thévenin (Georges Duhamel), 35; Abel Sanchez (Abel Sánchez: una historia de pasión) by Miguel de Unamuno; South Wind by Norman Douglas, who has settled on Capri, the Italian island he idealizes as "Nepenthe"; Nocturne by English novelist Frank Swinnerton, 33; The Rise Of David Levinsky by Jewish Daily Forward editor Abraham Cahan; The Three Black Pennys by Joseph Hergesheimer; Regiment of Women by English novelist-playwright Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton), 26; Gone to Earth by Mary Webb; Prelude by Katherine Mansfield, who begins to show symptoms of tuberculosis but next year will marry the critic John Middleton Murry, with whom she has lived since 1912; Platero and I (Platero y yo) by poet Juan Ramón Jiménez; A Daughter in the Morning by Milwaukee journalist-suffragist Zona Gale, 43, is a fictionalized declaration of female awareness; The Blue Envelope by Denton, Md.-born playwright-novelist Sophie Kerr, 37, whose novels will be serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and the women's magazines.
Poetry: "Prufrock and Other Observations" by T. S. Eliot appears in The Egoist, where the poet works part time as assistant editor, and expresses Eliot's disenchantment with modern life in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (see 1915); The Old Huntsman and Other Poems by English poet Siegfried (Lorraine) Sassoon, 30, who rebels against the sentimental glorification of war; "La Jeune Parque" by French poet Paul Valéry, 45, who dedicates his first great poem to André Gide and follows it with "Aurore"; The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay; Merlin by Edwin Arlington Robinson; Renascence and Other Poems by Maine-born poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, 25, whose title poem appeared 5 years ago and won her a sponsor who has put her through Vassar; "To Him Who Wants It!" ("Al Que Quiere!") by William Carlos Williams; Green Fruit by Charles Town, W. Va.-born poet John Peale Bishop, 25, who obtains his bachelor's degree from Princeton and enters military service; Vision de Anáhuac by Mexican poet-diplomat Alfonso Reyes, 28; Diary of a Newlywed Poet (Diario de un Poeta Recién Casatio) by Juan Ramón Jiménez, who adopts a style of free verse; Love Songs by Sara Teasdale; The White Flock (Belaya staya) by Anna Akhmatova.
Poet-novelist Edward Thomas is killed in Flanders April 9 at age 39; English poet-critic-philosopher T. E. (Thomas Ernest) Hulme is killed in action September 28 at age 34 after 3 years with the artillery in France.
Juvenile: Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher; Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery.
Painting: The Card Game (La Partie de cartes) by Fernand Léger, who is at Paris on convalescent leave; Piano Lesson by Henri Matisse; Harlequin, Portrait of Olga, and Passeig de Colom by Pablo Picasso; Nude at the Fireplace by Pierre Bonnard; Forward by Marc Chagall; Amorous Procession by Francis Picabia; Crouching FemaleNude by Amédéo Modigliani; The Embrace by Egon Schiele; Ladies in Crinoline by Wassily Kandinsky; John D. Rockefeller by John Singer Sargent; Light Coming on the Plains III and Evening Star III by Wisconsin-born New York painter Georgia O'Keeffe, 29; Allies Day, May 1917 and The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam. Albert Pinkham Ryder dies at Elmhurst, N.Y., March 28 at age 70; Edgar Degas at Paris September 27 at age 83 (he has been blind since 1909).
Dutch painter Piet Mondrian founds the art review De Stijl with Theo van Doesburg.
The Independents exhibition that opens at New York's Grand Central Palace April 10 is the largest art show ever held in America—twice as large as the Armory Show 4 years ago. Financed by Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Archer M. Huntington, and other philanthropists, it displays 2,125 works by some 1,200 artists, but a "sculpture" entitled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt" is narrowly rejected just before the opening by the exhibition's committee (the New York Herald reveals that Marcel Duchamp submitted the urinal, either as a prank or a Dadaist gesture).
"I Want You," says Uncle Sam in a recruitment poster painted by New York illustrator James Montgomery Flagg, 40, who has used his own face as a model for the stern-visaged Uncle Sam (see communications, media, 1813; communications, media, 1852). U.S. Army recruitment officers distribute 4 million copies.
Sculpture: Man with Mandolin by Lithuanian-born French sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, 25; Bacchanal Russe (ballet figures) by Malvina Hoffman, who has applied to Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons to study dissection and anatomy. Auguste Rodin dies at Mendon November 17 at age 77.
Alfred Stieglitz devotes an entire issue of his 14-year-old magazine Camera Work to New York-born photographer Paul Strand, 27, who was raised on the upper West Side, given a Brownie camera on his 12th birthday, and introduced to Stieglitz's Fifth Avenue gallery by photographer-sociologist Lewis W. Hine, now 43. Strand had his first one-man show last year, and has won distinction by breaking away from the soft focus romanticism of the 19th century, using an 8" x 10" Deardorff view camera or a 5" x 7" Graflex. Says Stieglitz, "His work is rooted in the best tradition of photography. His vision is potential, his work is pure. It is direct. It does not rely upon tricks or the process."
Theater: The Burghers of Calais (Die Bürger von Calais) by Georg Kaiser 1/29 at Frankfurt-am-Main's Neues Theater is an impassioned appeal for an end to the war; Johnny, Get Your Gun by Edmund Laurence Burke (revised by Dorothy Donnelly) 2/12 at New York's Criterion Theater, with Everett Butterfield, 160 perfs.; Sorina or the Child Murder (Die Sorina oder Der Kindermord) by Georg Kaiser 3/6 at Berlin's Lessing Theater; The Willow Tree by J. H. Benrimo and Harrison Rhodes 3/6 at New York's Cohan and Harris Theater, with Los Angeles-born actress Fay Bainter, 24, Harold De Becker, Shelly Hull, Richard Tabor, 103 perfs.; The Old Lady Shows Her Medals and Seven Women by James M. Barrie 4/7 at London's New Theatre, with Jean Cadell in the first, Irene Vanbrugh in the second, 68 perfs.; From Morn to Midnight (Von Morgens bis Mitternachts) by Georg Kaiser 4/28 at Munich's Kammerspiele, with Vienna-born actor Max Pallenberg, 39; The Temptation (Die versuchung) by Georg Kaiser 5/31 at Hamburg's Thalia-Theater; Right You Are—If You Think You Are (Cosi e (se vi pare)) by Luigi Pirandello 6/18 at Milan's Teatro Olimpio; The Silken Ladder (La scala di seta) by Luigi Chiarelli 6/28 at Rome's Teatro Argentina; Polly with a Past by George Middleton and Guy Bolton 9/6 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Ina Claire, Louise Galloway, Cyril Scott, 315 perfs.; Lombardi, Ltd. by Frederic and Fanny Hatton 9/24 at New York's Morosco Theater, with English-born actor Percival Vivian, 27, Danville, Ky.-born actress Marion Abbott, 40, Leo Carillo, Columbus, Ohio-born ingénu Warner Baxter, 18, 296 perfs.; Tiger Rose by Willard Mack 10/3 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Mack, Thomas B. Findlay, Lenore Ulric, 384 perfs.; The Centaur (Der Zentaur) by Georg Kaiser 10/23 at Frankurt-am-Main's Schauspielhaus; Dear Brutus by James M. Barrie 10/17 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Gerald du Maurier, Norman Forbes, 363 perfs.; The Coral (Die Koralle) by Georg Kaiser 10/27 at Frankfurt's Neues Theater is the first in Kaiser's Gas trilogy; In the Zone by Eugene O'Neill 10/31 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse (one-act play); The Long Voyage Home by O'Neill 11/2 at the Provincetown Playhouse (one-act play); Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath by C. W. Bell and Mark Swan 12/24 at New York's Republic Theater, with French-born actress Francine Larrimore, 19, New York-born ingénue Helen Menken, 15, 232 perfs.; Why Marry? by Illinois-born playwright Jesse Lynch Williams, 46, 12/25 at New York's Astor Theater, with English actress Estelle Winwood, 34, Shelly Hull, 120 perfs.
Showman William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody dies bankrupt at Denver January 10 at age 70; actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree at his native London July 2 at age 63; theater manager William Kendal at his native London November 7 at age 73; actor Walter Hale at New York December 4 at age 48.
The Empire Theater at Montgomery, Ala., installs the first theater air conditioning (see architecture [Carrier Corp.], 1915). Within 40 years, every major U.S. theater will be air conditioned, even those in northern cities.
New York's Rivoli movie theater opens at 1620 Broadway in Times Square. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb and S. L. "Roxy" Rothafel for the Rialto Theater Corp., it has 2,206 seats and fills the east side of Broadway between 49th and 50th streets with an austere façade resembling that of a Greek Doric temple, precluding the need for an extravagant electrical sign such as the one used on the Rialto that opened last year (see Capitol, 1919; air conditioning, 1925).
Films: D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World with Lillian and Dorothy Gish (financed by London to arouse U.S. sympathies against the Germans but released after U.S. entry into the war); Marshall Neilan's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm with Mary Pickford, screenplay by San Francisco-born writer Frances Marion (originally Owen), 30, who has become Pickford's closest friend and signs a contract with Famous Players-Laski that pays her $10,000 per week plus a share in the profits and lets her control casting and editing; Clarence Badger's Teddy at the Throttle with Wallace Beery, Chicago-born actress Gloria Swanson (Gloria May Josephine Svensson), 19; Charles Chaplin's The Cure with Chaplin.
President Wilson appoints veteran New York stage and motion-picture producer William A. Brady, now 53, to head a committee whose task is to organize the film industry for war propaganda.
Opera: English soprano Florence Easton, 35, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/7 in the 1890 Mascagni opera Cavalleria Rusticana. She will be a Met regular until February 1936.
Basso Edouard de Reszke dies at Garnek, Poland, May 25 at age 63.
Ballet: Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur 4/12 at Rome's Teatro Constanza, with Leonide Massine, music by the 18th century composer Domenico Scarlatti, book by French playwright Jean Cocteau, 27, choreography by Massine; Parade 5/18 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, with music by French composer Erik Satie (Alfred Leslie), 51, choreography by Massine, scenery by Pablo Picasso (the first cubist ballet), program notes by French man of letters Guillaume Apollinaire, now 37, who coins the term surrealism to denote so-called anti-establishment art (see art [Dada], 1916; Nonfiction [Breton], 1924); Oak Park, Ill.-born ballerina Doris Humphrey, 21, makes her debut with the Denishawn Company founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn.
First performances: Trois Poèmes Juifs by Ernest Bloch 3/23 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Israel Symphony by Bloch 5/3 at New York's Carnegie Hall; Schelomo (Solomon) Hebrew Rhapsody for Violoncello and Orchestra by Bloch 5/13 at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, 30, loses his right arm at the Russian front, apparently ending a promising career that was interrupted by the war. But in the postwar years Wittgenstein will commission and perform works for the left hand by composers such as Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, and Benjamin Britten.
Stage musicals: Have a Heart 1/11 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Louise Dresser, Thurston Hall, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, music by Jerome Kern, 76 perfs.; Love o' Mike 1/15 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Peggy Wood, Clifton Webb, book by Thomas Sydney, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, 192 perfs.; The Maid of the Mountains 2/10 at Daly's Theatre, London, with José Collins, 28 (daughter of Lottie) as Teresa, Thorpe Bates, book by Frederick Lonsdale, music by London-born composer Harold Fraser-Simson, 44, and James W. (William) Tate, 41, lyrics by Harry Graham, 42, F. (Frank) Clifford Harris, 41, and Valentine (Archibald Thomas Pechey, 40), songs that include "Love Will Find a Way" and "A Paradise for Two," 1,352 perfs.; Oh, Boy! 2/20 at New York's Princess Theater, with Marion Davies, Edna May Oliver, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, songs that include "Till the Clouds Roll By," 463 perfs.; The Passing Show 4/26 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with De Wolf Hopper, music chiefly by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics chiefly by Harold Atteridge, songs that include "Goodbye Broadway, Hello France" by Billy Baskette, lyrics by C. Francis Reisner and Benny Davis, 24, 196 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 6/12 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with Lower East Side-born blackface comedian Eddie Cantor (originally Edward Israel Iskowitz), 25, and Oklahoma-born humorist-actor William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers, 34 (who have been discovered by Follies lyricist Gene Buck), W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Kansas City-born ingénue Dorothy Dickson, 23, music by Raymond Hubbell and Dave Stamper with a patriotic finale by Victor Herbert, 111 perfs.; Maytime 8/17 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Peggy Wood, Charles Purcell, Karl Stall, music by Sigmund Romberg, book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young, songs that include "Will You Remember (Sweetheart)," 492 perfs.; Cheer Up 8/23 at New York's Hippodrome, with book by R. H. Burnside, music by Raymond Hubbell, lyrics by John L. Golden, 456 perfs.; The Boy 9/4 at London's Adelphi Theater, with Lily Elsie, book from Arthur Wing Pinero's farce The Magistrate, music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot, lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenback, 801 perfs.; Leave It to Jane 9/28 at New York's Longacre Theater, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton based on George Ade's 1904 play The College Widow, 167 perfs.; Jack O'Lantern 10/16 at New York's Globe Theater, with Fred Stone, book by Anne Caldwell and R. H. Burnside, music by Ivan Caryll, 265 perfs.; Over the Top (revue) 11/28 at New York's 44th Street Roof Theater, with comedian Joe Laurie, Omaha-born dancer Fred Astaire (originally Frederick Austerlitz), 18, and his sister Adele, Norfolk, Va.-born ingénue Mary Eaton, 16, music by Sigmund Romberg and others, 78 perfs.; Going Up 12/25 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Frank Craven, Glasgow-born actor Donald Meek, 39, Minneapolis-born actress Edith Day, 21, music by Louis A. Hirsch, book and lyrics by Otto Harbach based on James Montgomery's 1910 play The Aviator, 351 perfs.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds composer Victor Herbert in a suit against Shanley's Café at New York for having used music from his operetta Sweethearts April 1, 1915, without permission. Shanley's has argued that since it did not charge its patrons anything extra for the music it was not using it "for profit" and was therefore not violating Herbert's copyright, but Justice Holmes writes in his majority opinion, "If rights are infringed only by a performance where money is taken at the door, they are very improperly protected. The performances . . . are part of a total for which the public pays." The January 22 decision supports ASCAP, which Herbert helped start 3 years ago and which issues licenses to hotels, restaurants, dance halls, cabarets, motion picture theaters, and other establishments to play music controlled by ASCAP members.
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band opens in January at Reisenweber's beer garden on New York's Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle; another New Orleans jazz group has appeared in the city earlier, but this one uses showmanship and publicity to attract wide attention. "The Darktown Strutters' Ball" by Shelton Brooks, recorded for Columbia Records at New York in January, is by some accounts the first jazz record and has sales of 1 million copies by year's end, but other jazz historians will give the honor of being first to D. J. "Nick" LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which records a one-step and "Livery Stable Blue" February 26 at New York's Victor Studio; released March 5, it has sales of 250,000 copies at 75¢ each, outselling any record ever made by Enrico Caruso or John Philip Sousa. "Tiger Rag" is published as a one-step with music by D. J. LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, lyrics by LaRocca's clarinetist Lawrence (James) Shields, 24.
New Orleans jazz pioneer Joseph "King" Oliver, 32, moves to Chicago and Ferdinand J. La Menthe "Jelly Roll" Morton, 31, to California following the U.S. Navy's shutdown of Storyville brothels. A cornetist in Kid Ory's band, Oliver is succeeded by his student Louis (Daniel) Armstrong, 16, who in 1922 will join Oliver's Creole Jazz Band at Chicago. Pianist-composer-singer-dancer Morton will claim to have invented jazz and stomps as a sporting house entertainer, cuts a fine figure in flashy clothes, has a diamond implanted in a front tooth, and will tour with his seven-man Red Hot Peppers, moving to Chicago in 1922.
Comedienne Cicely Courtneidge appears at the Victoria Palace Music Hall, competing with stars such as Marie Lloyd (see 1885), Florrie Ford, Vesta Tilley (male impersonator Matilda Alice Powles, now 53), and Gertie Miller. Now 34, Courtneidge has married comedian Jack Hulbert.
Composer Paul A. Rubens dies at London February 5 at age 41; Broadway musical star Dave Montgomery at Chicago November 20 on the eve of his 47th birthday.
Popular songs: "Over There" by George M. Cohan, who writes it for the American Expeditionary Force embarking for the war in Europe; "You're in the Army Now" by Isham Jones, lyrics by Tell Taylor and Ole Olssen; "Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here" by Theodore Morse, who has adapted a melody by the late Arthur S. Sullivan from Act II of the 1879 Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance, lyrics by D. A. Esrom (Morse); "Back Home in Indiana" by James F. Hanley, lyrics by Ballard MacDonald; "Smiles" by Lee S. Roberts, lyrics by O. Will Callahan; "For Me and My Gal" by George W. Meyer, 33, lyrics by Edgar Leslie, 32, and E. Ray Goetz, 31; "They Go Wild, Simply Wild, Over Me" by Fred Fisher, lyrics by Joe McCarthy; "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh" by Abe Olman, 29, lyrics by Edward Rose, 42; "The Bells of St. Mary's" by Australian-born London composer A. Emmet Adams, 27, lyrics by actor-playwright Douglas Furber, 31.
Ragtime composer Scott Joplin dies at New York April 1 at age 49. He has lived in the city since the summer of 1907, and although many of of his songs have been published, and some put on mechanical piano rolls, not one has been recorded.
Robert Lindley Murray, 23, wins in men's singles at the Patriotic Tournament held in lieu of regular USLTA championships; Molla Bjurstedt wins in women's singles.
The Chicago White Sox win the World Series, defeating the New York Giants 4 games to 2.
Former world heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons dies at Chicago October 22 at age 55. He quit the ring only 3 years ago.
The National Hockey League (NHL) organized November 22 at Montreal includes teams from that city (the Canadians and the Wanderers), Quebec, Ottawa, and Toronto. The first NHL hockey team to use artificial ice is the Toronto Arenas, who will become the St. Patricks in 1919 and the Maple Leafs in 1926 (hockey has been played up to now only on natural ice, with games canceled during warm spells). The first U.S. team to join will be the Boston Bruins in 1924, followed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1925 and the New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks, and Detroit Cougars (later Red Wings) in 1926, but the U.S. teams will be composed almost entirely of Canadian-born players.
The American Association of Park Superintendents issues "Bathing Suit Regulations" requiring that beachgoers wear proper attire, including tops for men (see Kellerman, 1907). Men will not be allowed to appear bare chested for another 20 years, and some municipalities will bar men from exposing their navels (see Bikini, 1946).
The U.S. War Industries Board asks women to stop buying corsets in a move to free up metal for war production (the 28,000 tons made available is enough to build two battleships). Patriotic women boost sales of brassieres (see 1914).
The first compact mascara is introduced by the Maybelline Co., founded 2 years ago by U.S. chemist T. L. Williams and named for his sister Mabel. He blended vaseline jelly with coal dust in 1913 to create the first mascara lash darkener, has been promoting the product through mail-order sales, and will soon be selling his compact mascara through pharmacies (see 1920).
Johnson Wheel Co. is founded at Terre Haute, Ind., by Louis, Harry, and Clarence Johnson, who built their first marine engine in 1908 and will sell their outboard-motor company in 1935 to Ole Evinrude's son Ralph and Stephen F. Briggs.
U.S. cigarette production reaches 35.3 billion, up from below 18 million in 1915. Camels have 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. market 4 years after their introduction. Gen. Pershing cables Washington, "Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons of it without delay," but V. I. Lenin finds tobacco smoke intolerable and forbids smoking on the train that takes him to Petrograd.
Invaders of the czar's Winter Palace at Petrograd find themselves in a building of 1,050 rooms with 117 staircases, 1,786 windows, and a 290-square foot map of Russia in emeralds, rubies, and semiprecious stones. Awed by the opulence, the soldiers and sailors leave the palace unmolested.
An earthquake on the island of Bali in the Dutch East Indies January 17 leaves an estimated 15,000 dead; an earthquake in China July 30 kills 1,800.
A new Catskill water system aqueduct opens to provide New York City with 250 million gallons daily of the purest, best-tasting water of any major American metropolis (see 1892).
Alaska's Mount McKinley National Park is established by act of Congress. The park embraces nearly 2 million acres that include large glaciers, spectacular wildlife (caribou, Dall sheep, grizzly bears, moose, wolves), and the highest mountain (20,300 feet) in North America. Called Denali (the Great One) by local tribespeople, the mountain received its English name in 1896 from William A. Dickey, then just out of Princeton and prospecting for gold on the Sustina River, after hearing of William McKinley's nomination for the presidency (see 1980).
An explosion destroys much of Halifax, Nova Scotia, December 6, leveling two square miles in the city's north end; it breaks windows 60 miles away, kills 1,654, blinds, maims, or disfigures 1,028, and leaves thousands homeless. The Norwegian relief ship Imo loaded with supplies for war-torn Europe has plowed into the French munitions ship Mont Blanc loaded with 4,000 tons of TNT, 2,300 tons of picric acid, 61 tons of other explosives, and a deck cargo of highly flammable benzene, which has caught fire and touched off the explosives. A half-ton anchor shank is thrown two miles, and the tidal wave created by the explosion washes wreckage at the shoreline out to sea.
The Smith-Hughes Act signed into law by President Wilson February 23 provides federal funds for agricultural education in land-grant colleges.
U.S. wheat prices rise precipitously beginning in early spring as Allied governments, U.S. millers, and speculators bid up prices on the Chicago Board of Trade. Some 570 million bushels (92 percent) of the 620-million-bushel crop have left the farms by March and have been marketed before the price rise, so few farmers share in the bonanza.
Kansas-born agronomist-geneticist Donald F. (Forsha) Jones, 27, successfully combines two single-cross hybrid corn (maize) varieties in a double cross, or four-way, combination that results in a new variety that is uniform and highly productive. Jones has studied under Edward M. East at Harvard and will produce the first hybrid sweet corn in 1924 (see East and Shull, 1921; Golden Bantam, 1933).
Drought begins on the Western plains.
Twine binder inventor John F. Appleby dies at Mazomanie, Wisconsin, November 8 at age 77.
Riots break out in February at New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, where rising food prices have made it difficult for poor people to feed their families (see 1916). The New York rioters attack food shops and burn peddlers' pushcarts on the lower East Side and in Brooklyn's Brownsville and Williamsburg sections, rejecting suggestions that they substitute rice for potatoes and milk for eggs and meat. Some 6,000 kosher poultry shops and 150 kosher poultry slaughter houses close down just before Passover to protest wholesalers accused of cornering the market.
Britain's war bread beginning in February is made from flour milled at an extraction rate of up to 81 percent with a compulsory admixture of 5 percent barley, oat, or rye flour to stretch available supplies. Food Controller Lord Devenport asks heads of families to limit their family bread consumption to four pounds per person each week, meat to 2½ pounds, sugar to three-quarters of a pound.
Britain's House of Commons is stunned by news that 2 million tons of shipping have been lost to German U-boats and that the country has only 3 to 4 weeks' supply of food in stock.
British retail food prices rise to 94 percent above July 1914 levels by the end of March. A four-pound loaf of bread fetches a shilling; a Royal Commission reports that rising prices and faulty food distribution are creating industrial unrest.
Some 200,000 Berlin factory workers strike for a week in April to protest a reduction in bread rations.
George V calls May 2 for national constraint on bread consumption.
The embargo proclamation issued by President Wilson July 9 places exports of foodstuffs under government control. Congress passes a Food Control Act (Lever Act) August 10, and Iowa-born mining engineer Herbert C. Hoover, 43, is officially named Food Administrator (he has been unofficial administrator since March). Hoover has served as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and encourages U.S. farmers with the slogan "Food Can Win the War."
The U.S. Food Administration's Grain Corp. buys, stores, transports, and sells wheat and fixes its price at $2.20 per bushel under terms of the Lever Act passed August 10 to establish government control over food and fuel.
Well-to-do Britons miss sugar, butter, and white bread, but price increases after July are at only one-fourth the rate earlier, and government subsidization of bread and other staples keeps food relatively cheap as compared with other commodities. Mostly because the war has virtually ended unemployment, British working class diets actually improve, although potatoes are often in short supply, and long rows of women, many with children and some with infants in their arms, queue up for margarine at London 2 weeks before Christmas.
British military conscription reveals that only three out of nine men of military age are fit and healthy. Poor nutrition is blamed.
Britain's Medical Council reports that at least half the children in industrial towns have rickets (see 1902).
Xerophthalmia is observed in Danish children whose diets are lacking in butterfats (see Japan, 1904). The abnormal dryness of the eye membranes and cornea can lead to blindness. Denmark has been exporting her butter to the warring powers even at the expense of her domestic needs, and dietary deficiency is endangering the children's eyesight (see McCollum, 1912).
The Smith-Hughes Act passed by Congress provides funds to land-grant colleges for training home economics teachers who will spread knowledge of new nutrition ideas based on economy and health rather than taste.
The American Dietetic Association founded at Cleveland will have 70,000 members by 1997.
Pennsylvania-born University of Wisconsin bacteriologist Alice Evans, 36, begins work that will show the ability of the bacterium that causes contagious abortion (Bang's disease) in cattle to be passed to human beings, notably via raw milk, and produce undulant fever or brucellosis (see Bang, 1896; medicine [Bruce], 1887). The dairy industry and medical profession will oppose Evans, but compulsory pasteurization of U.S. milk in the late 1920s will be achieved largely through her efforts in the next 9 years (see dairy practices, 1921).
Clarence Birdseye returns to his native New York to pursue the commercial exploitation of his food-freezing discoveries (see 1914). He has spent 3 years in Labrador, where obtaining fresh food for his young family has been an urgent problem. Birdseye has learned, after much experimentation, how to freeze cabbages in barrels of seawater, and he has found that frozen foods remain fresh when kept refrigerated at low temperatures (see 1923).
The first national advertising for Del Monte brand canned fruits and vegetables appears April 21 in the Saturday Evening Post (see California Packing Corp., 1916). Calpak acquires the Hawaiian Preserving Corp., whose properties include pineapple fields and a cannery on Oahu; in the next decade it will acquire canneries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Florida, start growing and packing pineapples in the Philippines, and enter the canned sardine and tuna industries.
A&P founder George Huntington Hartford dies at Spring Lake, N.J., August 29 at age 83.
Nathan Handwerker counters rumors spread by his Coney Island rivals who say that 5¢ hot dogs cannot be of the best quality (see 1916). He hires college students to stand at his counters wearing white jackets with stethoscopes hanging out of their pockets and word spreads that doctors from Coney Island Hospital are eating Nathan's hot dogs.
A U.S. immigration bill enacted January 29 over a second veto by President Wilson requires that immigrants pass a literacy test in any language. Inspired by the Immigration Restriction League founded in 1894, it becomes law February 5, excluding immigrants from most of Asia and the Pacific Islands, but to relieve the distress of Russian Jews it exempts refugees from religious persecution (see 1921). The U.S. population passes 100 million.
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