The Regulation and Reform of Prizefighting in Progressive Era America Margaret Frisbee
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-17-2011 The iF ght of the Century: The Regulation and Reform of Prizefighting in Progressive Era America Margaret Frisbee Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Frisbee, Margaret. "The iF ght of the Century: The Regulation and Reform of Prizefighting in Progressive Era America." (2011). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/31 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Margaret Frisbee Candidate History Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: . Chair erson \ THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: THE REGULATION AND REFORM OF PRIZEFIGHTING IN PROGRESSIVE ERA AMERICA BY MARGARET FRISBEE B.A., History, Loyola Marymount University, 2001 M.A., California State University, Northridge, 2004 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to all my friends, new and experienced, for helping me with a project that I enjoy. Thanks to family, who support all endeavors great and small. I also appreciate the financial support I received from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, the Wild West History Association, and the University of New Mexico. iii THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: THE REGULATION AND REFORM OF PRIZEFIGHTING IN PROGRESSIVE ERA AMERICA BY MARGARET FRISBEE B.A., History, Loyola Marymount University, 2001 M.A., History, California State University, Northridge, 2004 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2010 THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: THE REGULATION AND REFORM OF PRIZEFIGHTING IN PROGRESSIVE ERA AMERICA By Meg Frisbee B.A., History, Loyola Marymount University, 2001 M.A., History, California State University, Northridge, 2004 Ph.D., History, University of New Mexico, 2010 Abstract This dissertation considers the symbolic, social, and political conflict between heavyweight prizefighters and progressive reformers from 1892 to 1910. That time frame encompasses the careers of champions “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, and Jack Johnson. Their fights to win or defend the heavyweight title were planned for California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, and New York, among other places. By protesting them at every stop, reformers sought to prevent the permanent establishment of prizefighting as a legitimate business, even as the fame of these fighters elevated the sport to the highest level of popularity that it had enjoyed to that time. The fundamental battle of prizefight reform pitted local and state governments against each other in a contest over the regulatory control of American morality. In the process of resolving that question, states accrued more power for themselves and weakened the strength of civil authorities in villages, towns, and cities across the United States. Although reformers throughout the country categorized v prizefighting as a vice and damned it with fairly uniform rhetoric, cultural insecurities and political anxieties specific to states or regions were the real motivations for enacting or enforcing prizefight legislation. Cultural, political, and economic pressures planted on state governors by people other than moral reformers proved to be much more powerful instruments of change than the vocal minority’s genuine belief in progress. vi Contents Introduction ...............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 The “Slogging” Craze in California .......................................................22 Chapter 2 The “Daring” Conservatives of the South ..............................................59 Chapter 3 “The Right Way to Promote Something Is to Prohibit It”......................107 Chapter 4 The Ascendance of the Fightocracy in Nevada ......................................152 Chapter 5 The Big Fix: Prizefighting in New York ................................................208 Chapter 6 Paradise Lost: The End of Prizefighting in California ...........................255 Conclusion.................................................................................................................290 Bibliography..............................................................................................................296 vii Introduction Bob Fitzsimmons punched people for pay, and he had scheduled a defense of his middleweight championship title against Jim Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, for July 22, 1891. Given that Tommy Ryan had defeated Danny Needham in a five-hour fight to the finish in Minneapolis just five months before, the 1890 Minnesota law prohibiting prizefighting should have posed no problem for Fitzsimmons. Newspaper publicity for the title fight emboldened reformers to threaten Gov. William Rush Merriam with impeachment if he did not prevent the fight; so, clearly feeling politically endangered, he ordered the county sheriff to enforce the law and blocked the bout. In a pattern repeated in several states over the next decade, the governors, the attorneys general, the militias, local law enforcement officers, and a clutch of anti-prizefight activists united their efforts to preserve their state’s national reputation, predicated through honor and virtue, from assault by immoral prizefighters. Not every attempt to purge this “vice” from their state or community was as successful as that of Governor Merriam, who privately supported such athletic pursuits, but a victory over prizefighters was a political badge of honor on the record of a progressive governor. For Fitzsimmons, the canceled event was simply a failed business venture.1 1 “Governor Merriam Powerless,” New York Times, July 22, 1891, p. 1; “Knocked Out,” New Orleans Picayune, July 23, 1891, p. 2; and Joel A. Rippel and Patrick Reusse, Minnesota Sports Almanac (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006), 312–13. 1 This dissertation considers the symbolic, social, and political conflict between heavyweight prizefighters and progressive reformers from 1892 to 1910. That time frame encompasses the careers of champions “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, and Jack Johnson. Their fights to win or defend the heavyweight title were planned for California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, and New York, among other places. By protesting them at every stop, reformers sought to prevent the permanent establishment of prizefighting as a legitimate business, even as the fame of these fighters elevated the sport to the highest level of popularity that it had enjoyed to that time. The fundamental battle of prizefight reform pitted local and state governments against each other in a contest over the regulatory control of American morality. In the process of resolving that question, states accrued more power for themselves and weakened the strength of civil authorities in villages, towns, and cities across the United States. Although reformers throughout the country categorized prizefighting as a vice and damned it with fairly uniform rhetoric, cultural insecurities and political anxieties specific to states or regions were the real motivations for enacting or enforcing prizefight legislation. Cultural, political, and economic pressures planted on state governors by people other than moral reformers proved to be much more powerful instruments of change than the vocal minority’s genuine belief in progress. The crusade against prizefighting was but one scrap in the great fabric of Progressive reform that blanketed the United States from the 1880s to the 1920s. But this ornamental piece was one of the earliest triumphs of reformers, at least on paper, to incorporate the nation by normalizing a particular set of moral values. The prizefighters’ defenders and detractors engaged in a larger discourse about the conditions of and 2 conflicts between morality and democracy in turn-of-the-century America. Although the legislative bodies of many states and the national government had enacted laws regulating or prohibiting prizefighting, the zeal for enforcement was unevenly distributed across the United States. Local custom that allowed prizefighting was often at odds with state and national policy. The undeniable popularity of the sport—driven in large part by the press—the celebrity of the fighters, and the cleverness of their promoters and managers in selling them to an eager public overwhelmed the legal barriers erected by state governments. State governments began to seize control of the problem only when a scheduled heavyweight prizefight combined social and political conditions in a manner lethal to prizefighting. The exact combination of these elements was particular to the place. The increasing popularity of pugilism paralleled the rise of reform movements in the late nineteenth century. The Progressive Era began roughly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the strong influence