MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW
THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI The State Historical Society of Missouri, heretofore organized under the laws of this state, shall be the trustee of this state - Laws of Missouri, 1899; Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri, 2000, chapter 183. OFFICERS, 2001-2004 BRUCE H. BECKETT, Columbia, President JAMES C. OLSON, Kansas City, First Vice President SHERIDAN A. LOGAN, St. Joseph, Second Vice President VIRGINIA G. YOUNG, Columbia, Third Vice President NOBLE E. CUNNINGHAM, JR., Columbia, Fourth Vice President R. KENNETH ELLIOTT, Liberty, Fifth Vice President ROBERT G. J. HOESTER, Kirkwood, Sixth Vice President ALBERT M. PRICE, Columbia, Treasurer JAMES W. GOODRICH, Columbia, Executive Director, Secretary, and Librarian
PERMANENT TRUSTEES FORMER PRESIDENTS OF THE SOCIETY H. RILEY BOCK, New Madrid ROBERT C. SMITH, Columbia LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla Avis G. TUCKER, Warrensburg LEO J. ROZIER, Perryville
TRUSTEES, 2000-2003 JOHN K. HULSTON, Springfield DALE REESMAN, Boonville GARY R. KREMER, Jefferson City ARVARH E. STRICKLAND, Columbia JAMES B. NUTTER, Kansas City BLANCHE M. TOUHILL, St. Louis BOB PRIDDY, Jefferson City HENRY J. WATERS III, Columbia
TRUSTEES, 2001-2004 WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield DICK FRANKLIN, Independence W. H. (BERT) BATES, Kansas City VIRGINIA LAAS, Joplin CHARLES R. BROWN, St. Louis EMORY MELTON, Cassville VERA F. BURK, Kirksville JAMES R. REINHARD, Hannibal
TRUSTEES, 2002-2005 CHARLES B. BROWN, Kennett W. GRANT MCMURRAY, Independence CHARLES W. DIGGES, SR., Columbia THOMAS L. MILLER, SR., Washington DONNA G HUSTON, Marshall PHEBE ANN WILLIAMS, Kirkwood JAMES R. MAYO, Bloomfield EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Eight trustees elected by the board of trustees, together with the president of the Society, consti tute the executive committee. The executive director of the Society serves as an ex officio member. BRUCE H. BECKETT, Columbia, Chairman JAMES C. OLSON, Kansas City WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield ROBERT C. SMITH, Columbia H. RILEY BOCK, New Madrid AVIS G TUCKER, Warrensburg LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla VIRGINIA G YOUNG, Columbia DICK FRANKLIN, Independence MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOLUME XCVIII, NUMBER 1 OCTOBER 2003
JAMES W. GOODRICH LYNN WOLF GENTZLER Editor Associate Editor
RHIANNON SOUTH WORTH REYNOLDS Information Specialist
The MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW (ISSN 0026-6582) is published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Receipt of the MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW is a benefit of membership in the State Historical Society of Missouri. Phone (573) 882-7083; fax (573) 884-4950; e-mail
COVER DESCRIPTION: AS automobile ownership became more widespread in the state during the 1910s, many Missourians began to see the need for modernizing the road system. The Missouri Good Roads Federation used the emblem on the front cover in their campaign to pass a $60 million bond issue to finance highway construction in November 1920. Richard Traylor explores the leg islative conflicts over who would control the placement of roads and the surfaces used during the General Assembly's 1921 extra session in "Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud: Highway Politics, the Centennial Road Law, and the Problems of Progressive Identity," beginning on page 47. [Cover image from Francis Asbury Sampson Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia] EDITORIAL POLICY
The editors of the Missouri Historical Review welcome submission of articles and documents relating to the history of Missouri. Any aspect of Missouri history will be con sidered for publication in the Review. Genealogical studies, however, are not accepted because of limited appeal to general readers. Manuscripts pertaining to all fields of American history will be considered if the subject matter has significant relevance to the history of Missouri or the West.
Authors should submit two double-spaced copies of their manuscripts. The footnotes, prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., also should be double-spaced and placed at the end of the text. Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts, prefer ably in Microsoft Word, on a disk or CD. Two hard copies still are required. Originality of subject, general interest of the article, sources used, interpretation, and style are criteria for acceptance and publication. Manuscripts, exclusive of footnotes, should not exceed 7,500 words. Articles that are accepted for publication become the property of the State Historical Society of Missouri and may not be published elsewhere without permission. The Society does not accept responsibility for statements of fact or opinion made by the authors.
Articles published in the Missouri Historical Review are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts, America: History and Life, Recently Published Articles, Writings on American History, The Western Historical Quarterly, and 77;e Journal of American Histoiy.
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BOARD OF EDITORS
LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN ALAN R. HAVIG University of Missouri-Rolla Stephens College Columbia
WILLIAM E. FOLEY VIRGINIA J. LAAS Central Missouri State University Missouri Southern State College Warrensburg Joplin
SUSAN M. HARTMANN DAVID D. MARCH Ohio State University Kirksville Columbus
ARVARH E. STRICKLAND University of Missouri-Columbia CONTENTS
THE ORIGINS OF CAPE CATHOLICISM: THE VINCENTIAN PRESENCE IN CAPE GIRARDEAU, 1828-1868. By Douglas J. Slawson 1
"THE CITY BELONGS TO THE LOCAL UNIONS": THE RISE OF THE SPRINGFIELD LABOR MOVEMENT, 1871-1912. By Stephen L. Mclntyre 24
PULLING MISSOURI OUT OF THE MUD: HIGHWAY POLITICS, THE CENTENNIAL ROAD LAW, AND THE PROBLEMS OF PROGRESSIVE IDENTITY. By Richard C. Traylor 47
MEMBERS TO VOTE ON PROPOSED DUES INCREASE AT ANNUAL MEETING 69
NEWS IN BRIEF 70
MISSOURI HISTORY IN NEWSPAPERS 71
MISSOURI HISTORY IN MAGAZINES 77
BOOK REVIEWS 84 Frazier, Harriet C. Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865. Reviewed by Dominic J. Capeci, Jr.
Barnes, Harper. Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis. Reviewed by Joel P. Rhodes.
Gardner, Michael R. Harry Truman and Civil Rights. Reviewed by William O. Wagnon.
Schirmer, Sherry Lamb. A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960. Reviewed by Arvarh E. Strickland. BOOK NOTES 90
Bushwhacker Jail Tales: One Hundred Years of Fact and Fancy from The Old Vernon County Jail (1860-1960).
Weaver, H. Dwight. Lake of the Ozarks: Vintage Vacation Paradise.
Sligar, Ann M. Waltus Watkins & His Mill.
Talbott, Donna Koch. Germantown, Missouri, and St. Ludger Church, 1833-2002.
Gerard, Sue. Just Leave the Dishes.
Houts, Joseph K., Jr. Quantrill's Thieves. ) "^
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Drawing on reverse side of John Timon letter to Jean- Baptiste Etienne, 26 May 1838, Vincentian Correspondence, Archives of the University of Notre Dame St Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Cape Girardeau
The Origins of Cape Catholicism: The Vincentian Presence in Cape Girardeau, 1828-1868
BY DOUGLAS J. SLAWSON*
"From Pointe-Coupee [Louisiana] to Ste. Genevieve [Missouri] there is not one missionary," wrote John Mary Odin, a French Vincentian priest at St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary near Perryville in 1823. "The cities of Natchez, New Madrid, Cape Girardeau, Kaskaskia, St. Michael, Portage [des
*Douglas J. Slawson is vice president for student services at National University in San Diego, California. He received a bachelor of arts degree from St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary in Perry County, Missouri, a master's degree from De Andreis Seminary in Lamont, Illinois, and a doctoral degree in history from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. 2 Missouri Historical Review
Sioux], St. Charles, and several small posts, are entirely abandoned."1 Thus did he describe the spiritual plight of the Mississippi River valley, a region that had successively belonged to Catholic France and Catholic Spain before returning to French ownership and passing to Protestant America in 1803. Odin's bleak description gives the impression that these priestless towns had once been Catholic, something true of all but Cape Girardeau. Though named after the French Ensign Sieur Girardot, it was a thoroughly Protestant com munity. The first priest to engage in a sustained missionary effort to the region undertook the challenge as a result of a visit to a condemned man. Within twenty-five years of the initial missionary endeavor, Cape Girardeau boasted a convent school for girls, a Catholic academy for boys, a novitiate for the priests of the Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic college, and an elegant stone church to serve the parish of St. Vincent de Paul, numbering over two hundred. Moreover, the parish itself had become the center for mis sionary outreach to Benton, Commerce, Jackson, and Tywappity Bottom. Known in the English-speaking world as Vincentian Fathers, the Congregation of the Mission was founded in 1625 by Vincent de Paul to preach parish missions (a Catholic form of revivalism) to the rural poor of France, the most religiously neglected portion of the population and too often served by spiritually bankrupt pastors. While missions were the Vincentians' primary puipose, they also had a secondary aim: the formation of the clergy. De Paul early realized that no lasting good would come from revitalizing the spiritual lives of country people only to leave them with religiously unfit pas tors. So he established seminaries for the education and spiritual formation of men for the priesthood. This work brought the Vincentians to the United States.2 Louis Lorimier, a French Canadian, established the settlement of Cape Girardeau in 1793. Lorimier's marriage to a half-Shawnee woman height ened his acceptability to the Indians of the area. In 1795 he applied for and received a patent for 8,000 arpents of land (6,400 acres) on the west bank of
' Quoted in John Rothensteiner, History of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis: In its Various Stages of Development from A.D. 1673 to A.D. 1928 (St. Louis: Blackwell Wielandy, 1928), 1: 419-420.
2 Pierre Coste, The Life & Works of Saint Vincent de Paul, trans. Joseph Leonard (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1987), 1: 72-159; 2: 118-191, 197-225; 3: 20-64; James E. Smith, "The Vincentian Mission, 1625-1660," Vincentian Heritage 4 (no. 2, 1983): 40-60; Joseph M. Connors, "The Vincentian Homiletic Tradition," ibid., 3-39; Luigi Mezzadri, "Le Missioni Popolari della Congregatione della Missioni nello Stato della Chiesa (1642-1700)," Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 33 (January-June 1979); 12^14; G. Minois, "Le seminaire de Treguier jusqu'a la fin du XVII siecle," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de I'Ouest, t. 84 (December 1977): 570; Stafford Poole, A History of the Congregation of the Mission, 1625-1843 (Santa Barbara, CA: Privately published, 1971), 1-28, 79-101; Douglas J. Slawson, "Vincent de Paul's Discernment of His Own Vocation and That of the Congregation of the Mission," Vincentian Heritage 10 (1989): U25. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 3
the Mississippi, across from Cypress Island. About the same time, the Spanish government, which had taken over Louisiana from the French in 1763, invited Americans to populate the upper Mississippi valley, thus estab lishing a buffer against the British in Canada. Land was granted gratis and tax exempt. The first, and for a time the largest, American settlement in Louisiana was in the Cape Girardeau District, 120 miles south of St. Louis. The majority of the migrants came from Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. They found the terrain appealing, and the first American settler, Andrew Ramsey, who knew the area well, acted as an informal land agent, directing new pioneers to the best locations. In 1799 the population of the Cape region included 416 whites and 105 black slaves. Four years later, when the United States acquired the territory, the numbers had risen to 1,206 and 180 respectively. During the era of Spanish rale, Lorimier served as both civil and military commandant. For a long time he and his family were the only Catholics in the area.3 The center of Catholicism in southeast Missouri lay forty miles upriver at the Barrens Settlement, located about a mile and a half west of present-day Perryville in Perry County. In the early 1800s, Kentucky Catholics of English Maryland stock had taken advantage of the Spanish offer of land and settled there. By 1818 about eighty Catholic families but no priest lived at the Barrens. To provide themselves with a spiritual leader, the residents entered into an arrangement with Louis William Valentine DuBourg, bishop of Louisiana. Three years earlier he had recruited a band of Italian Vincentians to establish a seminary in New Orleans. Problems with the lay trustees of the church in that city caused the bishop to change his mind about the location. At the same time, the Catholics of the Barrens offered him 640 acres on which to erect a seminary. After some hesitation, DuBourg accepted and St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary was established in 1818. Soon thereafter, the institution added a lay college to provide Catholic education for the people of the upper Mississippi valley.*4 Doubling as the local parish, the seminary also
3 Rothensteiner, Archdiocese of Saint Louis, 1: 490^191; Louis Houck, A History of Missouri (1908; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1971), 2: 167-192; 3: 160-161; William E. Foley, A History of Missouri: 1673-1820 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 49-50, 57; William E. Foley, The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 91-92; William E. Parrish, Charles T. Jones, Jr., and Lawrence O. Christensen, Missouri: The Heart of the Nation (St. Louis: Forum Press, 1980), 31-34; Eberhard Pruente, "The Beginning of Catholicity in Cape Girardeau, Missouri," Saint Louis Catholic Historical Review 3 (January-April 1921): 50-51.
4 Houck, History of Missouri, 1: 382-387; The Centennial History of Perry County, Missouri (Perryville, MO: Perry County Historical Society, 1921), chap, v; Joseph Rosati, "Recollections of the Establishment of the Congregation of the Mission in the United States of America," trans. Stafford Poole, Vincentian Heritage 1 (1980): 67-95; 2 (1981): 33-54; 3 (1982): 146-160; 4 (1983, no. 2): 109-139; 5 (1984, no. 1): 103-107; Stafford Poole, "The Founding of Missouri's First College, Saint Mary's of the Barrens, 1815-1818," Missouri Historical Review 65 (October 1970): 1-21; contract between Louis William DuBourg and the 4 Missouri Historical Review served as an agent within the larger Protestant culture for lessening prejudice and winning converts. During the 1820s, the cry of "No Popery" resonated throughout the land. In the wake of the American Revolution, the nation's traditional anti- Catholicism had ebbed because of the spirit of liberty and religious freedom. From the 1790s through the mid-1820s, there occurred a number of rancorous quarrels around the country between Catholic lay trustees, who held church property, and their bishops. The trustees attempted to democratize Catholicism in order to accommodate it to the American situation. When the bishops resisted the effort, the trustees took their case to the public, some times appealing for help against the hierarchy, thus prompting Protestant fear of a papal incursion into the nation. A wave of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany, who arrived on the nation's shore in the post- Napoleonic era, heightened Protestant concern and touched off the No- Popery crusade.5 Anti-Catholic sentiment became so rampant in Perry County that Protestant ministers went to the doors of the seminary church to challenge the priests to debate. For example, in 1829 six Methodist ministers dared Father John Timon to discuss Catholicism at a large public gathering in York Chapel, about six miles southeast of the seminary. At issue were the "folly of the Real Presence and the wickedness of Transubstantiation." Timon defended Catholic teaching on the basis of Scripture so well that Protestant preachers thereafter avoided the neighborhood of the seminary. The home missionary efforts of John Odin and Timon dissipated much of the ill feeling. The pair went about Perry County teaching catechism to non-Catholic children and then visiting with their parents who, the two discovered, "were far less protes- tants [sic], than haters of the Pope and Papists."6 The first record of Bishop DuBourg's solicitude for the few Catholics at the Cape came in 1820 when he urged Father Joseph Rosati, superior of the seminary, to send a priest to visit the sixty Catholic families in New Madrid about fifty miles farther south. "He may go first to Cape Girardeau," wrote
Trustees of the Roman Catholic Congregation of Holy Mary in the Barrens, 18 June 1818, DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives (hereinafter cited as DRMA), H-C(MO)-9-B-l, land grants and deeds, De Paul University, Chicago.
5 Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1820-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1964), 32-48; Patrick W. Carey, People, Priests, and Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the Tensions of Trusteeism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 7-277; Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1789-1989 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,'1989), 19,20,24, 27-28,68-101 passim; David O'Brien, Public Catholicism (New York: MacMillan, 1989), 20-28; Thomas T. McAvoy, A History of the Catholic Church in the United States (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 74-120 passim.
* John Timon, "Barrens Memoir" (typescript), 4, 18-20, DRMA, Provincial Papers. The Origins of Cape Catholicism
SHSMO 2003.0135 The original York Chapel, constructed of logs, was built by the Methodists of Perry County in the mid-1820s. The stone building above replaced the log structure in 1844 and was used until a new building was erected in 1914. the bishop, "and stop at Mr. [D. E] Steinbach's [sic for Steinbeck] whose family are Catholic; there he will celebrate, Mass for the little number of Catholics of that district." Rosati sent Father Francis Cellini to New Madrid, and he probably stopped at Cape as DuBourg had suggested.7 Timon undertook sporadic mission work in the district, beginning irreg ular tours of Cape Girardeau and Scott Counties as early as the summer of 1827.8 Sometime the next year an unusual circumstance laid the foundation for the eventual spread of Catholicism to the Cape. In early 1828, Timon traveled to the Cape Girardeau County seat of Jackson to deliver a sermon in the courthouse. He countered Protestant charges that Catholicism was a false religion that taught the commandments of men rather than those of God. In
7 Rothensteiner, Archdiocese of Saint Louis, 1: 491; Annabelle M. Melville, Louis William DuBourg: Bishop of Louisiana and the Floridas, Bishop of Montauban, and Archbishop of Besangon, 1766-1833 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986), 2: 558.
8 St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Cape Girardeau, Baptismal Register; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 6. 6 Missouri Historical Review
May, Pressly Morris, an unchurched convict in the Jackson jail under sen tence of death for murder, summoned Timon from the Barrens. Morris's motive is unknown; he professed no religion at all. Possibly he had been a prisoner when Timon had spoken in the courthouse. In any case, he refused to see any clergyman but the Vincentian.'' Arriving at nightfall, the priest sought to speak with Morris alone, only to be rebuffed until a crowd of anti-Catholics could be gathered, led by the local Baptist minister, Thomas Green. Timon was then allowed to see the condemned man in the company of the crowd. In the presence of all, he explained to Morris the beliefs of the Catholic faith: the Trinity, incarnation, future reward and punishment, redemption, and the sacraments. "The culprit who up to that moment, had laughed at all religious teaching seemed deeply affected," reported Timon. "Tears flowed from his eyes." Tired from the jour ney, the priest concluded the exhortation at 9:00 P.M. by requesting Morris to join him in reciting the Apostles Creed. When the two reached the words "and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord," Green rushed up and said, "Do not deceive that poor man, do not make him lose his Soul by teaching him the commandments of men." "Mr. Green," replied Timon, "I am teaching him the Apostles Creed. Do not you also hold that venerated Creed?" The min ister countered, "But your Church is that idolatrous one that worships images, and that gives to Mary the homage due only to God."1" The priest reminded Green that not long ago he had publicly explained the beliefs of Catholicism at the Jackson courthouse. Green himself had been present. "I then called upon any one ... to come forward and show if there was any flaw in the evidence which I brought to prove that Catholics had been cruelly and most unjustly calumniated," said Timon. "You were silent. Surely that was your time, not this when I am preparing an unhappy man who has sent for me to aid him in meeting a death so certain and so near." Green challenged Timon to a disputation the next day at the courthouse, and the priest accepted. The Baptist minister concluded with a prayer that, among other things, included the petition: "Oh God of Mercy, save this poor man from the fangs of Anti-Christ who now seeks to teach him idolatry and the vain traditions of men." Timon exclaimed, "Gentlemen, is it right that, in a prayer to the God of Charity and truth, this Gentleman should introduce
* Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 6; "Pastoral Work of Vincentians at Jackson and Cape Girardeau, 1828-1838," 95, DRMA, II-C(MO)-9-D, oversize box 12; Goodspeed's Histoiy of Southeast Missouri (Cape Girardeau, MO: Ramfre Press, 1955), 322-323; Robert Sidney Douglass, A History of Southeast Missouri (Cape Girardeau, MO: Ramfre Press, 1961), 193, 201.
"' Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 6-7. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 7
calumny against the majority of Christians?" A deep silence fell on the crowd, suggesting that the priest's words had struck a chord." The next day, with Circuit Court Judge John D. Cook acting as modera tor, Timon debated with Green and his assistant, Greer Davis, a lifelong Methodist and the circuit attorney. After three or four hours of animated dis cussion, Davis gave up and left; Green followed soon thereafter. In sole pos session of the field, Timon addressed the crowd for another hour and a half, exhorting "serious and candid men to return to the Old religion." He then went back to see Morris, who had heard the result of the debate and asked to be baptized a Catholic. Several people previously unknown to be of that faith later asked that Timon hear their confessions.12 Then, two Protestant couples, Edward and Ann Fricke and George and Olivier McDermot, requested that he baptize their children, four in all.13 Although the seed of Catholicism had been sown, there was little immediate follow-up in the region. From 1828 until 1832, Timon infrequently celebrated mass at the home of L. Byrne, an Irish Catholic living four miles southwest of Cape Girardeau.14
" Ibid., 7-8. 12 Ibid., 8; "Pastoral Work," 95. 13 St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Baptismal Register, 25 May 1828. 14 John Francis McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful In All His Works': A Contemporary Account of Vincentian Activity in the District of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 1828-1850," edited and annotated by Douglas J. Slawson, Vincentian Heritage 7 (1986, no. 2): 241.
SHSMO 2003.0138
Greer Davis immigrated to Jackson, Missouri, in 1818 and was admitted to the bar two years later. A prominent lawyer in southeast Missouri, Davis served as circuit attorney for seventeen years. He died in 1878. 8 Missouri Historical Review
The beginning of what would eventually be a vibrant Catholic presence in the Cape District came with the conversion of Ralph Daugherty, a man whose troubles in an anti-Catholic environment would ironically lead direct ly to the area's becoming a center of Catholic life. Present at the Timon- Green debate, Daugherty had been deeply moved by the priest's words but failed to act on them until falling ill four years later in September 1832. He then sent a Catholic friend, James Murrain, to fetch Timon to baptize him. When the Vincentian arrived, he brought Daugherty into the church and tried to effect a reconciliation with his wife, Sarah, the daughter of Major George Frederick Bollinger—a prominent resident, an ardent member of the German Reformed Church, and a foe of Catholicism. She had recently left her hus band, taking the youngest of their four children, an infant, with her. Though unsuccessful at reuniting the couple (Sarah shared her father's implacable anti-Catholicism), Timon did baptize all four children. After Daugherty's conversion, the priest began making regular visits to the Cape. Because of the prejudice in the region, he said mass privately in Daugherty's house at 6:00 A.M. for the area's few Catholics. At 9:00 he gave a catechism lesson to children, and at 11:00 he preached to the many Protestants who gathered to hear him.15 In October 1832, Daugherty placed his two older sons in St. Mary's College at the Barrens and his daughter in the Bethlehem convent school con ducted by the Sisters of Loretto across the road. Fearful that the Bollingers would not countenance this arrangement, the Vincentians required that Daugherty sign an agreement promising not to hold the schools responsible if his wife or her family reclaimed the children.16 This move proved wise, for in the next month Sarah Daugherty arrived at the Barrens. Posting guards, she visited her three children and convinced them to return home with her. Shortly thereafter, Bollinger and his attorney entered separate suits against Daugherty for a total of more than $2,500. William and Elizabeth Daugherty, Ralph's parents, were convinced that Sarah and her father intended to ruin their son "both in property and mind."17 If that was the plan, it worked. Learning that his wife had taken their children, Daugherty, who had probably not completely recovered from his illness, became mentally deranged.
13 "Pastoral Work," 95; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 8; St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Baptismal Register, 28, 29 September 1832; Douglass, Southeast Missouri, 79-80; Houck, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 188.
16 Ralph Daugherty, Agreement, 29 October 1832, DRMA, H-C(MO)-3, box 33. 17 Elizabeth Stephenson (writing for William and Elizabeth Daugherty) to Timon, 31 December 1832, MVIN Vincentians Microfilm (hereinafter cited as MVIN), roll 1, Archives of the University of Notre Dame; George Bollinger v. Ralph Daugherty, Cape Girardeau Circuit Court, Office of the Clerk, Record Book F, 281; Johnson Ramsey, administrator of Mary Frizel deceased v. Ralph Daugherty, ibid.; "Pastoral Work," 95. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 9
Psychologically disturbed, he failed to appear in court, so the judge found in favor of both plaintiffs. Although apparently kept tranquil by letters from Timon for a while, Daugherty worked himself into a frenzy in January 1833 and attacked Bollinger's house where Sarah and the children were living. He was arrested and jailed at Jackson.18 Timon went to the jail, where he found Daugherty confined with Isaac Whiston, who was to be executed the next day for killing a drinking partner after the two had spent a long night in a local tavern. After tending to Daugherty, the priest turned his attention to Whiston, a "poor fellow who had come to the sad conclusion to die drunk." He was so inebriated that Timon's effort proved useless. The priest had all liquor removed from the cell and per suaded the jailer to let no more pass. The next morning, before any alcohol could be brought, Timon instructed and baptized the culprit, "whose tears during the ceremony proved how deeply his heart had been touched." Within a few hours "he was launched into eternity." The priest then calmed Daugherty and effected a truce between him and Bollinger. Thus, Daugherty was released from jail and, at Timon's persuasion, went to Mexico to recu perate. Before the priest returned to the Barrens, Ralph's father, William, entered the church and became a fervent Catholic for the short remainder of his life. Not three weeks later, Timon baptized three of Ralph's nephews and nieces, the two children of his sister Martha Able and the son of his brother- in-law Henry Sanford.19 While Ralph was out of the country, Sanford, the clerk of the circuit court, offered Major Bollinger all of Daugherty's property in settlement of the judgment against him. The major refused. With a lien against Daugherty's property, he intended to see it auctioned at a sheriff's sale. Undoubtedly, it would sell for under the market value, a sum insufficient to cover the amount owed to Bollinger. Thus, the latter would have the balance to hang over Daugherty's head and enable him to imprison his son-in-law at will. Sanford went to the Barrens to explain the situation to Timon and John Baptist Tornatore, the superior of the seminary. He urged them to buy Daugherty's
18 "Pastoral Work," 95-96. In December 1832, Daugherty wrote a pathetic letter reveal ing his mental disarray and appealing to Timon for help. "I have at times ambitious views. I have thought that I was going through the military exercise as a general, at other times I walked like a sailor. These things are very unpleasant to me and I want the Church through you to inter fere and stop it. I have thought at times that I was acting as a Priest and at other times as a Bishop.... I have thought at times that there was anticipated a division of the Catholic Church. If there is I have no participation in it and will consider myself as belonging to the old Church and not to the new. I would not alter one Item of the Catholic faith or Church rules on my responsibility to be absolute monarch of the whole world." Daugherty to Timon, 31 December 1832, MVIN, roll 1.
" "Pastoral Work," 96; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 8; St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Baptismal Register, 17 February 1833; Daugherty to Timon, 25 March 1833, DRMA, II-C(MO)-3, box 33; Goodspeed's Histoiy, 323. 10 Missouri Historical Review
property for $2,500, the amount needed to settle with Bollinger. Unwilling to take advantage of a man's misfortune, the two priests agreed to the purchase only if no better offer could be found elsewhere. Several days later, Sanford returned to the Barrens with Daugherty to finalize the deal. Chronically strapped for cash, the Vincentians had to borrow $2,000 from a lender to con clude the transaction. For a total of $3,200 ($2,500 in currency and $700 in an educational fund for Daugherty's children), they acquired five pieces of property: two town lots in Cape Girardeau, another lot on the south edge of town (the future site of St. Vincent's College), a swamp farm about a mile and a half below the latter lot, and a quarter section of land in Scott County.2" In June 1833, Timon was again summoned to Cape Girardeau to minis ter to the ailing Ralph Daugherty. After tending to him, the priest visited William Daugherty and his wife, living rent-free on the swamp farm now owned by the Vincentians. He heard William's confession and then contin ued south across the Big Swamp, a lowland stretching several miles along the Mississippi, to see Hanna Smith, a widow alarmed by the cholera epidemic then sweeping the county. Nightfall found Timon at Jackson on his way back to the Barrens. There a messenger overtook him with word that William Daugherty had just been stricken by cholera. The priest hurried back to the farm but did not arrive in time. William was dead. His wife, Elizabeth, asked to be baptized, and Timon obliged. Because it was midnight and raining, the priest and the Daughertys' friends spent the night. Elizabeth kindly prepared a place for Timon to rest. "The only bed in the house was occupied by the corpse. He was pushed up against the wall, a clean sheet spread near it, and the Missionary [Timon] was invited to share the bed of the dead man. He did so, and slept soundly."21 Before returning to the Barrens, Timon administered the last rites to another cholera victim near Jackson, an elderly woman named Mrs. Green. To the great surprise of all, she recovered shortly after receiving the sacra ments. Her daughter, a Protestant, declared to the neighbors that her mother had been cured as soon as the priest finished the prayers of extreme unction. Her pain ceased, and within a few hours she was herself again.22
2,1 "Pastoral Work," 96; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 12; deed of transfer, Daugherty to John B. Tornatore, 28 March 1833, DRMA, II-C(MO)-3, box 21. 21 Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 9; "Pastoral Work," 97. Timon indicates that he had stopped at the elder Daughertys' home on the return from a visit to New Madrid. The account above, based on "Pastoral Work," is to be preferred because that document probably antedates the "Barrens Memoir," which Timon penned after becoming bishop of Buffalo, New York, in 1846. The cholera epidemic of 1833 claimed 128 lives in Cape Girardeau County. Goodspeed's Histoiy, 430; Douglass, Southeast Missouri, 263.
22 "Pastoral Work," 97. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 11
Born near York, Pennsylvania, in 1797, John Timon came to Missouri to join the Vincentians in 1826. Following his service in southeast Missouri, he served as prefect apostolic in Texas and then as bishop of Buffalo, New York. Timon died in 1867.
DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, DePaul University, Chicago
Ralph Daugherty soon passed from the annals of Cape Catholicism. Having sold all his property to the Vincentians, he seems to have become an adventurer or a vagabond. Because his children were prevented by then- mother from attending school at the Barrens, he dunned the Vincentians for the $700 educational fund. Though not legally bound to pay him the money, they did so in full by 1836. Daugherty had apparently left the Cape in 1834 or 1835. His last recorded appearance in Vincentian documents showed him penniless at Mine Shiboleth, Missouri, in 1838, still claiming that the priests owed him money. Timon lent him $25, which Daugherty repaid.23 In July 1833, Timon converted an old frame warehouse on the Cape Girardeau riverfront into a makeshift chapel. On the seventh, he said the first public mass in the town and preached to a large congregation, mostly Protestant. "He was heard with great respect and attention," commented a later chronicler.24 The warehouse served as a church for some time. Timon returned there quarterly at first, and then once a month, to offer mass, preach, and catechize. Services were always well attended, and many children
23 Timon to Henry Sanford, 30 October, 2 November 1833, DRMA, II-C(MO)-3, box 33; itemized receipt from Elizabeth Daugherty, 14 July 1836, ibid.; Ralph Daugherty to Timon, 12 July 1838, MVIN, roll 2; Ralph Daugherty to Elizabeth Daugherty, 21 July 1838, ibid. McGerry, "'God Is Wonderful,'" 251; "Pastoral Work," 97; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 12-13. 12 Missouri Historical Review remained afterward for catechism. His visits, Timon noted, proved quite suc cessful "in dissipating the prejudices of the people."25 As evidence of this, Greer Davis, who had supported the Reverend Green in the 1828 religious debate at the courthouse, sent two of his sons to St. Mary's College at the Barrens between 1833 and 1836.26 By 1835, Catholics in Cape numbered seventy-seven, many of them recent arrivals from Maryland and Kentucky. There were, of course, long time residents like the widow Ellen Atwell and her daughter, Sarah Erving. Until Timon had begun missionary journeys to Cape, Atwell had not seen a priest in thirty years, and her daughter, who had been baptized as a baby, was never educated in the church. Both returned to the fold. Other longtime res idents included Miles Doyle, John Roach, and Samuel Morton and family. At Jackson, there lived the various branches of the Daugherty family, converts all: the mother, Elizabeth; Jeremiah and Martha (Daugherty) Able and their three children; Elizabeth's other daughter, Mrs. Henry Sanford, and her three children.27 In October 1835, to use the words of Father John Francis McGerry, a Vincentian stationed at Cape Girardeau from 1844 onward, there occurred a "Singular Coincidence" that augmented the number of Catholics in the town. Business unexpectedly took Timon to Cape Girardeau, apart from one of his regular visits. Shortly after his arrival in the evening, William Watson called on the priest to attend his dying mother-in-law, Esther Bradly Thorn. "Is she a Catholic?" inquired Timon. "No, there is no Catholic in my house," replied the stranger. Thinking that the woman simply wanted a clergyman to pray for her, Timon brought neither ritual nor holy oils with him. He found her quite ill and very well disposed to Catholicism. He explained the tenets of the faith to her in the presence of her children. She professed faith in Jesus Christ and believed all that Timon had told her. He then left to get baptismal water and the holy oils.28 As he was departing, Sarah Watson, Thorn's daughter, stopped him. "Sir, there is something extraordinary in all this," she told him.
My mother has never been in a Catholic church, she never but once heard a Catholic priest, she knows nothing of Catholic doctrine, yet she has for months past been expressing a desire to become a Catholic; and
25 Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 16-17; "Pastoral Work," 97. 26 Account Book 83438 BSVC (A108), DRMA, II-C(MO)-9-B, box 2; Account Book 83257 (A88), ibid., box 3. 27 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 251, 256-257; "Pastoral Work," 98. 28 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 253; "Pastoral Work," 97; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 25. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 13
she frequently requested those near her to send for a Catholic priest. Last night, in a dream or vision, she saw a man, clothed like you now are, enter their room and gave her what I believe you call a crucifix to kiss; at the same time an interior voice said to her, "Do what this person tells you, and you shall be saved." She immediately begged us to send to the Seminary for you, but thinking it not necessary and it being very inconvenient, we declined. She was just repeating the same request, when we were informed that you had arrived.
This information spurred Timon's zeal. As soon as he returned to the house, he presented a crucifix to Thorn, who pressed it with emotion to her lips. All were struck by her fervor. Timon baptized her conditionally and heard her confession. The next day, he administered the last rites to her, whereupon she died peacefully. Her two daughters then presented all their children for baptism. When Timon inquired about Thorn's life, her family said that she had always been distinguished for charity to the sick and poor. "It was this, no doubt," he remarked, "that drew down a special mercy on her last end." Within three years, Thorn's daughters and William Watson became Catholics. Eventually, all the Watsons converted to Catholicism.29 Within a year of Thorn's death, Cape received its first resident pastor. In April 1836, Timon, then provincial superior of the American Vincentians, sent John Odin there, accompanied by John Baptist Robert (a Frenchman) and three slaves, Harry, Minty, and their daughter, Juliana. The black family served as domestics for the new pastor. Under Odin's zealous administration, the congregation of St. Vincent de Paul parish began to take form. Each Sunday Odin said mass in the crowded little warehouse-chapel. He taught catechism once each day and twice on Sundays, first for white children and then for slave children, the latter attending in great numbers with many of them becoming Catholics. He also paid occasional visits to the Catholic fam ilies of Jeremiah Able in Jackson, Moses Byrne across the Big Swamp, and Doctor John Golden in Commerce. During Odin's short stay at the Cape, he converted about twenty people, with many more in preparation.30 At the time, the Protestants of the town had no church building. As a result, many of them attended Sunday mass, where they often outnumbered
29 Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 25-26; McGerry, "'God Is Wonderful,'" 261-262; "Pastoral Work," 98. Both Timon's memoir and "Pastoral Work" agree in substance about the event. Even the quoted conversation is substantially the same. The quotation is from "Pastoral Work."
311 "Pastoral Work," 98; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 23; McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 251-252, 255-257; John Mary Odin to Timon, 14 June 1836, MVIN, roll 1. Until 1835 the Vincentians in America were a mission of the Roman Province. In that year, the superior gen eral established the American Vincentians as an independent province with Timon as provincial superior. "A Survey of American Vincentian History, 1815-1987," in John E. Rybolt, ed., The American Vincentians: A Popular Histoiy of the Congregation of the Mission in the United States, 1815-1987 (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1988), 38-41. 14 Missouri Historical Review
the Catholics. An anonymous chronicler commented that they "were impressed with love and respect for the priest." Swelled by Protestant visi tors, the crowded Catholic ceremonies prompted Odin to complain: "Our chapel is absolutely too small." He had approached a local contractor about the construction of a real church, but the man was fully booked. The erection of a formal structure would fall to one of Odin's successors. The priest reported that the attendance of so many Protestants at the services had prompted the Reverend Green to form a Baptist parish in the town and com mit its adherents to building a meetinghouse. Until the latter was erected, he held services in a local school. Still, many Protestants chose to attend Catholic services instead. The Baptists finally constructed a church in 1838, and even then the local priest was welcome to speak there, an event that would "generally engross religious conversation."31 For a brief period, Odin's replacements rapidly succeeded each other. In November 1836, Fathers John Boullier and John Rosti, French and Italian Vincentians respectively, took Odin's place. Boullier remained only about eight months before being transferred to the parish in Ste. Genevieve. Rosti continued to pastor Catholics at Cape until the winter of 1838 when Father John Brands, a Dutch Vincentian, took over the parish. With Brands at the helm, Catholicism at Cape began to take institutional form. In April, Bishop Joseph Rosati of St. Louis came to Cape Girardeau, where he confirmed ten people and laid the cornerstone for a new church. In October of that year, Brands opened St. Vincent's Male Academy with Michael Flinn as teacher. That same month the Sisters of Loretto moved their convent school from Perry County to Cape Girardeau. Each institution enrolled about fifteen stu dents during the first year.32 To counter this Catholic educational effort, John McLane, a Presbyterian preacher, opened a rival school. The anti-Catholic faction in town, now com paratively small, enjoyed some success in a drive to enroll children in McLane's academy. Brands did not think the school would last, however, because the teacher was unpopular. So too, apparently, was McLane. His preaching displeased the folk of Cape Girardeau enough that he was forced to abandon both school and pulpit after some time.33 On July 21, 1839, Bishop Rosati returned to Cape to consecrate the new church, "a neat stone building with cut stone front and a neat steeple." More than five hundred people attended the ceremony. The next day Rosati
31 "Pastoral Work," 98-99; Odin to Timon, 14 June 1836, MVIN, roll 1; Timon, "Barrens Memoir," 23; McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 256-258; Douglass, Southeast Missouri, 465. 12 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 260-265; "Pastoral Work," 99-100. 11 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 265; Brands to Timon, 19 October 1838, 27 September 1839, MVIN, roll 2. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 15
Joseph Rosati, born in Italy, was a founder of the Vincentian St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary in Perry County in 1818. He became bishop in St. Louis in 1827. A tireless worker, Rosati main tained a deep interest in education. The first Cathedral of St. Louis was built dur ing his administration.
SHSMO 2003.0139 confirmed six persons.34 Thus, by the summer of 1839, Catholicism had become established in Cape Girardeau, with a resident pastor, a permanent church, and two schools—one for boys and another for girls. Like the Barrens before it, the parish at the Cape became a mission cen ter. In 1838, Brands found an opportunity to preach to Protestants below the Big Swamp. Moses Byrne had died, and the priest went to bury him. The funeral attracted a large number of people. Brands explained the meaning of the ceremony, the doctrine of purgatory, and the usefulness of prayers for the dead. At a gathering at the Byrne home, he spoke for two hours on the prin cipal points of Catholic belief. He reported that "the people there seem to be well disposed." A chronicler of Catholicism in the area noted that local resi dents were "displeased" with Methodist preachers and asked Brands to return, which he did from time to time.35 Vincentian missionaries frequently heard about Protestant displeasure with Methodist ministers. Priding itself on simplicity and humility, the Methodist Church selected clergymen from the literate laity, the ability to read being the only criterion for ordination. In 1824 an Arkansas Presbyterian had told Odin that the locale had Methodist
24 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 267-268. 15 Brands to Timon, 22, 31 March 1838, MVIN, roll 2; McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,' 263-264, 266-267, 269-270. 16 Missouri Historical Review
preachers aplenty, "but they themselves are as or more ignorant than those they are seeking to enlighten."36 Extending the Vincentian missionary reach even farther south, Brands initiated regular visits to the more than twenty-seven Catholics living in Tywappity Bottom, an extensive lowland lying along the Mississippi River from the Scott County hills south to the Saint James Bayou. In September 1839, Thomas Tucker, a Catholic, completed construction of St. Francis de Sales Church on the quarter section of land the Vincentians had acquired from Daugherty. Whenever Brands or his assistant pastor, Michael Collins, cele brated mass there, a large number of non-Catholics also attended the service. Late in the year, Brands began preaching occasionally in Benton. To ensure his regular return, the Catholics of the town built St. Mary's Church. In 1846 the parish was removed from Benton to New Hamburg. At the request of Bishop Rosati, Collins began making routine visits in 1840 to Cairo, Illinois, a port city at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, where Catholics had already constructed St. Athanasius Church. Collins regularly visited the town for the next two years. Early in 1841, Timon considered the appointment of a resident pastor, but Brands counseled against it because of the town's poor financial situation in the wake of the collapse of a British banking firm heavily invested there. Indeed, Cairo's economic condition deteriorated to the point that its Catholic citizens abandoned it in 1842.37 The quality of Catholic life at the Cape during the first three years of for mal parish existence seems to have been fairly good, save for a spate of mar riages outside the church. In summer 1837, Odin, then at the Barrens, report ed to Timon in Paris: "At the Cape I do not know how things are managed but every marriage is celebrated before the baptist [sic] preacher. Knott, J. Wathen, and Mary Wheeler have given great scandal."38 In fact, no weddings occurred in the Catholic church between March and September 1837. The Knott mentioned by Odin was probably Joseph, whose marriage was ratified
36 M. [Jean-Marie] Odin to M. Cholleton, [1824], Annates de LAssociation de la Propagation de la Foi 3 (1828-1829): 63-66; Douglas J. Slawson, "Catholic Revivalism: The Vincentian Preaching Apostolate in the United States," in Michael J. McClymond, ed., Embodying the Spirit: New Dimensions of American Revivalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming); Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 85; Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious Histoiy of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 437^138. 37 Brands to Timon, 3 September 1839, 23 April 1840, 1 February 1841, MVIN, roll 2; Timon to M. Durando, 25 September 1840, ibid., roll 3; Hector Figari to Timon, 13 July 1841, ibid.; McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 269-270; John E. Rybolt, "Parish Apostolate: New Opportunities in the Local Church," in. American Vincentians, 235-236.
38 Odin to Timon, 18 September 1837, MVIN, roll 2. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 17
Born in France in 1800, Jean Odin became a Vincentian in 1825 while at St. Maiy of the Barrens Seminary. He served the church in Missouri until 1840 when he was sent to Texas. Odin became archbishop of New Orleans in 1861. \:t I
,'r.
DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, DePaul University, Chicago
in spring 1838.39 In that year, eighty-six Catholics resided in Cape Girardeau, thirty-two in Jackson where mass was said once a month, and twenty-seven in Tywappity Bottom in Scott County. In 1838 and 1839 about 75 percent of the Cape congregation made the Easter Duty (the religious requirement to go to confession and receive communion during the Lenten or Easter seasons) while Jackson scored a similar percentage in the latter year.40 Catholic life was not without its difficulties. In the spring of 1840, Brands reported to Timon that John Healy, a diocesan priest teaching at St. Vincent's Male Academy, was growing too familiar with a few families at the Cape. The pastor had "heard some hints from others" that an "opposition party" was forming against himself and Collins, although Brands considered it "nothing but talk." Healy continued to be an irritant to the Vincentians.41 Nor was anti-Catholic prejudice altogether dead at the Cape. That same spring, an epidemic of congestive fever ravaged the convent school of the Sisters of Loretto, taking the life of a girl boarder. The enemies of the sisters tried mightily to blame them for her death.42 In May 1841, the town received a new religious institution when the Vincentians moved their novitiate from the Barrens to Cape Girardeau. The
39 St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Baptismal Register, 1837-1838.
40 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 262, 266-267.
41 Brands to Timon, 8 May 1840, 1 February 1841, MVIN, roll 2.
42 Brands to Timon, 16 April 1841, ibid. 18 Missouri Historical Review novitiate was a special seminary in which men seeking to become Vincentians spent a two-year probationary induction period prior to formal acceptance into the religious order. Timon made the transfer to separate the novices from the college and diocesan seminary students at the Barrens. He appointed twenty-nine-year-old Father Thaddeus Amat, a Spanish Vincentian, as master of novices even though his English was virtually non existent. Amat and his charges lodged in cramped quarters behind the parish church in the former home of Commandant Lorimier, a Daugherty property owned by the Vincentians. One of the novices, John Francis McGerry, later reported: "All the exercises of the novitiate were most exactly followed."43 Similarly, when Father Thomas Burke visited the novitiate in June, he report ed to Timon: "The novices are as . . . regular as they are in any house in Europe.... Mr. Larkin [another novice] has told me that he would rather live under the regular discipline of Mr. Amat at the Cape on one meal a day, than feast in the Barrens as he was."44 The American notion of what constituted regularity (exact observance of the rules) differed markedly from the European standard. Amat, only two and one-half years in the United States, saw things quite otherwise. He believed that American Vincentians were "inclined to give a little too much dissipation to the novices, saying that the circumstances of the country demand it so." He, however, was "inclined to believe everything to the contrary because the dangers [in America] were too great." Twice he complained to the superior general about the difficulty of inducing the novices to observe the rules. Healy, who lived with them but refused to keep the rule of silence, was part of the problem. Also, the male academy had begun taking in boarding stu dents, who were lodged in the already cramped quarters of the novitiate. In addition, Amat considered the superior of the novitiate, Father Hector Figari, an Italian Vincentian, too lenient with the novices. When they disliked what Amat told them to do, they went over his head to Figari.45 In August, Amat asked Timon either to appoint a new novice master or to take effective meas ures to remedy the situation "because . . . the observance of the Rules instead of going forward does nothing but get worse."46 Figari also complained, not about the novices, but about Amat. He too suggested that Timon find a new master of novices, "for the one whom you have appointed is worse than a child." The novices spoke no Spanish and
43 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 276. 44 Burke to Timon, 26 June 1841, MVIN, roll 3. 45 Thadee Amat to Jean-Baptiste Nozo, 27 May, 1 July 1841; Brands to Timon, 22 October 1840, all in ibid. 46 Amat to Timon, 2 August 1841, ibid. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 19
Amat no English. During periods of recreation, when the novices conversed among themselves in English, then- master thought they were speaking about him. He would then reprimand them in French (the international language of the Vincentians), which they did not comprehend, "and then it becomes a comedy." Thus, Figari reported that he received complaints from both sides, each about the other. He concluded with a remark that indicates the difficul ty may have been compounded by ethnic tension between Spaniards and Italians. "I have found better sense among the Boys of the College [at the Barrens]," he told Timon, "than among our Spanish brethren."47 In November, Timon finally took pity on his miscast novice master and appoint ed him rector of St. Mary's Seminary. An able theologian and an excellent teacher, Amat was better suited to this role. James Rolando, an Italian, replaced him as novice master. Amat was not the only priest to be removed from the Cape. Healy, who had been a disruptive influence in the novitiate, had also become a distur bance in the boys' academy. He was apparently not well liked by some of the students or by his fellow teacher, a Mr. Moony who had replaced Flinn. Brands reported to Timon that Moony, universally popular with the boys and their parents, had delivered an ultimatum: either Healy leave or Moony would. Brands recommended that the former be transferred to the Barrens.
Figari to Timon, 14 September 1841, ibid.
SHSMO 2003.0132
/
Thaddeus Amat immigrated to the United States in 1838. Sixteen years later, he was ^ 1^ ordained as bishop of Monterey, v California; in 1859 he moved to Los Angeles and became bishop of Monterey- Los Angeles. Amat died in 1878 in Los Angeles. 20 Missouri Historical Review
Finally, one of the parishioners at the Cape complained to Brands about Healy. Although the exact nature of the complaint remains unknown, it pos sibly provided further evidence of Healy being a divisive influence in the parish, for Brands remarked, "That person assured me that the Rd. Mr. H[ealy] had already been here too long." At last, Timon accepted Brands's advice and transferred Healy to St. Mary's Seminary.48 In 1842 the Vincentians decided to erect a college for lay students at the Cape. Constructed to serve the graduates of St. Vincent's Male Academy, it solved another vexing problem regarding St. Mary's Seminary. Almost from the beginning, the latter had accepted both clerical and lay students who stud ied side by side. This arrangement proved troublesome because post-bac calaureate clerical students of theology doubled as instructors of pre-bac- calaureate college students. Thus students taught students while living together in the same building, resulting in the expected friction. Moreover, some Vincentian priests did not consider the education of lay students a prop er work for their religious community. Vincentian superiors in Paris agreed, issuing an edict in 1835 to suppress the lay college at the Barrens. Though American authorities secured a repeal of this command, they needed an appropriate resolution of the problem.49 The remedy lay in the establishment of a separate lay college in Cape Girardeau. Construction began in spring 1843 on the lot at the south edge of town purchased ten years earlier from Ralph Daugherty. The building was a large brick edifice, fifty feet by one hundred feet and three and one-half sto ries tall. The half-floor was actually a partially sunken basement, eight feet of which was above ground and windowed. In May 1844, the lay students at St. Mary of the Barrens moved to St. Vincent's College in Cape Girardeau. For a short time, there was considerable discontent because beds had yet to arrive from Pittsburgh, doors were still to be hung, desks needed to be made, and the "necessaries" (outhouses) remained unfinished. Within a month or two, however, all was well.™ With the opening of St. Vincent's, the novitiate was returned to St. Mary of the Barrens, which for the first time served only clerical students.
48 Brands to Timon, 1 February, 16 April 1841; James Buriando to Timon, 4 August 1841, all in ibid.
* John E. Rybolt, "Saint Vincent's College and Theological Education," Vincentian Heritage 7 (1986): 292-293; Stafford Poole, "Ad Cleri Disciplinam: The Vincentian Seminary Apostolate in the United States," in American Vincentians, 101-102, 104; "Survey of American Vincentian History," 33-34.
30 John McGerry to Timon, 9 June 1844, MVIN, roll 3; McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 277-280; Rybolt, "Saint Vincent's College," 292-293; Poole, "Ad Cleri Disciplinam," 101-102, 104; "Survey of American Vincentian History," 33-34. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 21
Both natural and man-made disasters damaged the Catholic institutions at the Cape. From late January to early February 1848, the steamboat Sea Bird had been docked in front of the college because ice prevented passage to St. Louis. Loaded with fifteen hundred kegs of gunpowder, the ship caught fire on the night of February 4. About midnight the captain finally advised the college of his cargo. The students had time to evacuate the building and walk some two miles away before the ship blew up. "The explosion was ter rific," reported McGerry. "Every door and window in the college was dashed to pieces. The roof [was] raised some inches and then settled nearly on its former place. The plastering on all the rooms of the college was broken and thrown down. The college appeared [to] be a complete wreck." Not until July were the repairs finished." Two years later, on November 27, 1850, at 3:00 P.M., "a most violent and destructive hurricane" (probably a tornado) passed over the city from the southwest. "When it came," McGerry reported, "all was confusion and ter ror. It carried everything before it. Trees, fences, houses, everything was swept away from the face of the earth." The storm reduced St. Vincent's Church, only eleven years old, to rabble. The roof and steeple vanished with out a trace, and the stone walls were destroyed practically to ground level. Like the roof of the church, that of the college disappeared. All the chim neys were destroyed, and the walls on the third floor of the southwest corner were demolished. A falling beam in the slave quarters killed Harry, an elder ly slave, but his wife and daughter were unhurt. Two college students received braises and cuts from being rolled about in debris by the wind. They were found across the street amid the ruins of what had been the Methodist meetinghouse. The college officials sent all the students home. After a brick mason examined the building, the Vincentians decided to repair it. Work was completed in the spring, and the students returned. The parish church, how ever, was so totally devastated that nothing could be done but clear the ground and start afresh.52 For a brief period, the Cape became the focal point of priestly education for the ecclesiastical province of St. Louis. In 1853 the Vincentians began again the policy of mingling secular and clerical students, this time at St. Vincent's College. Timon, then bishop of Buffalo, New York, sent his stu dents for the priesthood to be educated at the Cape. Five years later, the Second Provincial Council of St. Louis decided to close the seminary run by the Vincentians in Carondelet, a suburb of St. Louis, and transfer both the
31 McGerry, '"God Is Wonderful,'" 285. 32 Ibid., 287-290. 22 Missouri Historical Review
SHSMO 1111.002812 The main building of St. Vincent's College was erected in 1843, the same year the institution was chartered by the Missouri General Assembly. faculty and students to St. Vincent's. The lay students there were dismissed, and it became the diocesan seminary serving St. Louis and its suffragan sees.53 The seminary had an inglorious history as a center of clerical learning. Faculty members were young and inexperienced. The accidental drowning of two students one week before the beginning of the first term marred the sem inary's opening. Then the dislocations of the Civil War sent the school into a tailspin. Enrollment declined by half, with most southern students transfer ring to the Vincentian seminary at Bouligny, a suburb of New Orleans. Other students were drafted or enlisted. The German students fell out with the pre dominantly Irish faculty. The Vincentians expelled some of the students and transferred others to the newly opened seminary in Milwaukee, a city heavi ly populated with Germans. When the war ended, few students remained at St. Vincent's. The Vincentians at the Barrens urged that the Cape school resume its "classical" or lay student program. This soon became a necessity. The seminary at the Barrens had closed in 1862, and St. Mary's once again became a lay college. When the building burned in 1866, the students were transferred to the Cape, and St. Vincent's resumed its role as a lay college.54 In 1858, when the bishops of the St. Louis province had decided to make St. Vincent's their seminary, the growing German community in Cape
53 Rybolt, "Saint Vincent's College," 293-297; Poole, "Ad Cleri Disciplinam," 107. 54 Rybolt, "Saint Vincent's College," 298-321; Poole, "Ad Cleri Disciplinam," 107-109. The Origins of Cape Catholicism 23
Girardeau asked Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick to create a separate national parish for them. Beginning in the late 1830s, German Catholics had been migrating into the area, most of them settling in the swamp region south of town. Given the unhealfhfulness of that region, they had moved into town. During the 1860s a German-born Vincentian, Aloysius Meyer, cared for their spiritual needs. As the result of a parish mission given them by Father Rainerius Dickneite, the Germans resolved to build their own church. Vicar General Henry Muehlsiepen laid the cornerstone of St. Mary's Catholic church, the German national parish, in 1868. Even before the building's com pletion in 1871, Kenrick appointed them a German pastor.55 By way of epilogue, it should be noted that the Vincentian difficulties with the Bollinger wing of the Daugherty family resurfaced in 1872. In that year, George Frederick Daugherty, Ralph's eldest son, named after his mater nal grandfather, sued St. Vincent's College for the property on which it stood, sold to the Vincentians by his father. George alleged that the priests, Timon in particular, had taken advantage of Ralph's insanity "to cheat, injure, and defraud" him and his heirs of their rightful property "by fraud . . . religious fervor, fear, and divers other fraudulent practices." Daugherty also alleged that in 1833 the property was worth not $3,200, but $15,000. He claimed fur ther that even though the Vincentians had agreed to pay $3,200, no money ever changed hands.56 Daugherty lost the suit. By the late 1860s, the riverfront town of Cape Girardeau had become a Catholic center in southeast Missouri, where Catholicism had been virtually unknown four decades earlier. The transformation occurred through John Timon's tireless missionary efforts in the area, the followup of his confreres, and the economic misfortunes of the convert Daugherty. The sale of the lat- ter's property to the Vincentians paved the way for the institutional develop ment of the church in Cape. Within eleven years of the purchase, the city boasted a Catholic church, a convent school, a boys academy, and a college. The Vincentians there supplied religious services to mission stations in Jackson, Benton, Commerce, Tywappity Bottom, and Cairo, Illinois. Shortly after the Civil War, a second parish was added. Catholicism had come to the Cape.
33 Rothensteiner, Archdiocese of Saint Louis, 2: 242; Rybolt, "Parish Apostolate," 236. 36 George F. Daugherty v. the President and Faculty of Saint Vincent's College, amended petition, 13 November 1872, DRMA, II-C(MO)-3, box 33. SHSMO 2003.0164 Commercial Street in Springfield, c. 1889
"The City Belongs to the Local Unions": The Rise of the Springfield Labor Movement, 1871-1912
BY STEPHEN L. McINTYRE*
When E. J. Smith, an organizer for the Cigar Makers International Union (CMIU), visited Springfield, Missouri, in early 1903, he found a vibrant local labor movement that consisted of fifty-four unions. After surveying the eco nomic and political landscape of the city, Smith concluded: "The city belongs to the local unions if they will all join hands and get out and hustle; it only needs the asking."1 Smith's assessment was insightful. During the next few years, the combined efforts of local unions and an active Socialist Party turned organized labor into a significant economic and political force that city leaders could not disregard. Unfortunately, Missouri historians have ignored the Springfield labor movement, primarily focusing instead on unions in St. Louis.2 Two recent
*Stephen L. Mclntyre is an associate professor of history at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. He earned a master's degree and a doctoral degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
1 Cigar Makers'Official Journal 28 (15 March 1904): 3. 2 The only work to devote any significant attention to the Springfield labor movement is Gary Fink, Labor's Search for Political Order: The Political Behavior of the Missouri Labor Movement, 1890-1940 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973). "The City Belongs to the Local Unions " 25
books have shifted the focus from St. Louis to smaller communities, but the labor movement in Kansas City, St. Joseph, Joplin, and Springfield remains largely unexamined.3 Organized labor in Springfield grew and gained influ ence between 1871, when the city's first union was chartered, and 1912, when Reuben T Wood, a young socialist cigar maker and Springfield labor leader, assumed the presidency of the Missouri State Federation of Labor. He was elected in large part because of the Springfield labor movement's statewide reputation for aggressive organizing and socialist political activity. Although Springfield socialists never succeeded in electing any candidates, their pres ence forced local political and business leaders to accommodate many of the demands of the city's growing labor movement. The roots of this labor radicalism can be found in the late nineteenth cen tury, when many of Springfield's eatiy-twentieth-century labor leaders first joined unions and experimented with third-party politics. In 1870, the year the railroad arrived in Springfield, the city's population totaled 5,555. Thirty years later the population had increased to 23,267, ranking it the fifth largest in the state. The growth of railroads during this period made Springfield an important processing and shipping center for the region's agricultural prod ucts. Manufacturing also expanded, with a 35 percent increase during the 1890s, making the city the state's fourth-largest manufacturing center by 1900. The city's largest employer in this period was the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, whose division headquarters and repair shops were locat ed in Springfield. By 1899 the railroad's machine and repair shops provided employment for about 2,500 residents.4 Railroad engineers organized the city's first union in 1871, followed by the cigar makers in 1879. As the economy improved and trade unions revived nationally following the depression of the 1870s, unions in the city increased, with workers in six more trades establishing locals during the 1880s. By
3 On Sedalia see Michael Cassity, Defending a Way of Life: An American Community in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). On Ilasco, near Hannibal, see Gregg Andrews, City of Dust: A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996).
4 Craig Miner, "Hopes and Fears: Ambivalence in the Anti-Railroad Movement at Springfield, Missouri, 1870-1880," Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 27 (January 1971): 146; Morey W McDaniel, "A Comparison of Springfield and Joplin, Missouri" (B.A. honors thesis, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 1961), 14-17; Twenty-First Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspection of the State of Missouri (Jefferson City: Tribune Printing Co., 1899), 190; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States . . . 1900, Manufactures (Washington, DC, 1902), vol. 8, pt. 2:477; Lawrence Christensen and Gary Kreraer, A Histoiy of Missouri, Volume IV, 1875 to 1919 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 92-93. 26 Missouri Historical Review
1892, Springfield was home to at least fifteen unions, six of them in the rail road trades.5 Often exclusive, craft unions generally ignored the concerns of workers in other trades. But several developments during the last two decades of the century worked to promote broader working-class solidarity in Springfield. In 1886 local unions joined together to form the Springfield Central Labor Union. Although records of the organization's activities in this era are virtu ally nonexistent, it would become a crucial vehicle through which workers pursued political objectives during the early twentieth century. In 1891 the Central Labor Union, in conjunction with the locals of the cigar makers and carpenters, joined seventeen other unions from across the state in founding the Missouri State Federation of Labor to work for legislative goals.6 The establishment of six local assemblies of the Knights of Labor in Springfield during the 1880s also fostered greater working-class unity. Workers created the first local assembly in Springfield in 1881 and another in 1882. By 1883 more than 10 percent of the nonagricultural workforce in Greene County belonged to the Knights. An even higher percentage of work ers within the city may have been Knights. Four more assemblies appeared in Springfield in 1885-1886 as railroad workers nationwide poured into the Knights during major strikes against Jay Gould's southwest system. At its peak in Springfield in July 1886, the Knights' district assembly counted 1,353 members, making it a force to be reckoned with in a town of about 20,000.7 Local assemblies of the Knights were usually mixed, composed of work ers from a number of different trades. This proved true for five of the Springfield locals, with the sixth not reporting on the subject. Such assem blages served to break down the craft exclusivity of trade unions and foster a greater sense of class solidarity among members. The Knights also differed from other nineteenth-century labor organizations in their inclusiveness. Unlike trade unions, which usually ignored the needs of unskilled, African American, and women workers, the Knights admitted all three groups into the order, albeit black and women workers often belonged to locals segregated by
3 Histoiy of Greene County, Missouri (St. Louis: Western Historical Co., 1883), 849-850; Cigar Makers' Official Journal 5 (10 March 1880): n.p.; Hoye's City Directoiy of Springfield, Missouri, 1888-1889 (Kansas City: Hoye Directory Co., n.d'.), 293;'Springfield Daily Herald, 20 January 1888; Hoye's City Directoiy of Springfield, Missouri, 1892-1893 (Kansas City: Hoye Directory Co., 1892), 419-420.
6 Neal Moore, "Ozarks Labor History," Springfield Union Labor Record, 1 March 1984; Stephen Mclntyre, With One Voice: A Century of Service to Missouri's Workers (Jefferson City: Missouri AFL-CIO, 1991), 17.
7 Jonathan Garlock, Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 243; Nelson Lichtenstein et al., Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society (New York: Worth Publishers, 2000), 2: 93; Ruth Allen, The Great Southwest Strike (Austin: University of Texas, 1942), 256. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 27
race and sex. Whether women joined the Knights in Springfield has not been ascertained, but by 1886 the city had one assembly composed primarily of black workers. Although the Knights had declined nationwide by the early 1890s, the order's impact endured because many future labor leaders had been members of the organization.8 Many railroad workers who had been Knights found their way into the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893 and 1894. Eugene Debs, former secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and a future Socialist Party presidential candidate, joined with other former members of the railroad brotherhoods to found the ARU in 1893. They established an industrial union open to all white railroad workers. Railroad employees in the West, especially the less skilled who were not members of any of the railroad brotherhoods, flocked to the ARU during its first year. Springfield quickly became an important site of ARU organizing, joining Chicago, Minneapolis- St. Paul, and Portland, Oregon, as the only cities in the nation with two locals. Only St. Louis, with three locals, surpassed the organization in these cities. By the summer of 1894, the ARU had enrolled about 150,000 members nationwide, a figure that nearly equaled the membership of all American Federation of Labor unions combined.9 Springfield railroad workers participated in the Pullman strike during July 1894 and witnessed firsthand the use of U.S. marshals to force movement of
8 Leon Fink, Workingmen 's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 3-15; Garlock, Guide to the Local Assemblies, 243.
* Shelton Stromquist, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 79, 84-85; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Noonday Press, 1989), 205.
The St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad moved its repair shops from Pacific, Missouri, to North Springfield in 1873. Railway workers represented a significant proportion of union members in Springfield in the late nineteenth century. SHSMO 2003.0163 - ^^•--^ „.__- .--..-- ^ i3== r : _,_^,r,_^ ^ ...... -=^= " '. ..-::=:3L"""•"'"" - —
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the trains. The collapse of the strike after the intervention of the federal gov ernment and his subsequent six-month jail sentence on a contempt of court conviction led Debs to conclude that only independent political activity by workers could overcome the united power of corporations and the state. Debs had endorsed the People's Party in March 1894, prior to the Pullman strike, and he helped found the Socialist Party in 1901.'" Whether railroad workers in Springfield in the 1890s came to similar conclusions about the need for independent political activity remains unknown, but third-party candidacies had seen limited success in the city during the previous two decades, making such a break with Democrats and Republicans at least plausible for the work ers. The Greenback Party, which rose to prominence in large part due to hos tility toward the railroads, first exposed workers to a significant third-party challenge in Springfield in the late 1870s. In 1869, Greene County voters had rejected a proposal to issue $400,000 in bonds to support railroad construc tion but then saw the county court issue the bonds a year later. A movement to refuse payment on the bonds emerged in the early 1870s, leading bond holders to sue for nonpayment in a number of court cases in the mid-1870s. In 1877 anti-railroad sentiment increased due to the nationwide railroad strikes. Although railroad workers in Springfield did not strike, they met and demanded restoration of their slashed wages and expressed sympathy for strikers, including those involved in violent confrontations with authorities in Pittsburgh. Some of those attending the meeting also expressed support for the Greenback Party." A year later local Greenback Party candidates won both of the county's state representative seats and one of three county judgeships. Springfield's mayor, Homer F. Fellows, ran a close third for state senate on the party's tick et. Some Springfield workers may have supported the party due to the pro- labor provisions of its 1878 national platform, which included planks calling for a reduction of hours, the establishment of state and federal bureaus of
"' H. F. Rice, "The Great Pullman Strike of 1894," Springfield Union Labor Record, 25 April 1963; Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 147, 188; Laurie, Artisans into Workers, 209-210.
" David Thelen, Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Democracy in Industrializing Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 64; Edwin L. Lopata, Local Aid to Railroads in Missouri (New York: Arno Press, 1981), 107; Histoiy of Greene County, 555-556; Springfield Patriot-Advertiser, 26 July 1877; Springfield Weekly Leader, 26 July 1877. When the national railroad strike reached Pittsburgh in July 1877, many local citizens sided with striking railroad workers, prompting railroad executives to request that the state mili tia be sent to the city. Following the militia's arrival, violent confrontations occurred between its members and strikers and local residents. Ultimately, twenty Pittsburgh citizens were killed by militia rifle fire during the conflict, leading to attacks on railroad property by thousands of Pittsburgh citizens. During the ensuing battle, twenty additional civilians and five militia mem bers died. Lichtenstein et al., Who Built America? 13-14. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 29 labor statistics, an end to prison contract labor, and restriction of Chinese immigration. In 1880 the party continued to demonstrate strength in the county, with the Greenback presidential and gubernatorial candidates each receiving 24 percent of the vote. Ira Hazeltine, a Springfield Greenbacker who ran as a Greenback-Republican fusion candidate, won election to the U.S. Congress.12 During the 1880s, the Knights of Labor became active politically in Springfield, a city in which closely contested elections gave an organized bloc of working-class voters the potential to affect the outcome of elections, if not to elect their own candidates. The local Republican Party responded by beginning to court working-class voters, in some cases by nominating work ers for office. In the 1886 municipal elections, the Knights supported a Republican city council candidate in the Third Ward, turning the race in the normally solidly Democratic ward into a close, but losing, contest.13 The Knights also supported Greenback candidates in this period, although by 1884 the party no longer posed a serious threat of electing
12 Springfield Patriot-Advertiser, 7 November 1878; Missouri State Almanac and Official Directoiy, 1879 (St. Louis: John J. Daly and Co., 1879), 98; Missouri Official Directoiy, 1881 (St. Louis: John J. Daly and Co., 1881), 45, 80; Jonathan Fairbanks and Clyde Edwin Tuck, Past and Present of Greene County, Missouri (Indianapolis: A. W. Bowen, 1915), 1: 522; Histoiy of Greene County, 558, 560-561, 752; Paul Kleppner, "The Greenback and Prohibition Parties," in Histoiy of U.S. Political Parties, vol. 2, 1860-1910, The Gilded Age of Politics, ed. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), 1558-1564.
13 Springfield Express, 24 October 1884, 10 April 1885, 9 April 1886; Springfield Daily Herald, 1 April 1886.
SHSMO 2003.0137
Homer F. Fellows, a native of Pennsylvania, organized the Springfield Wagon Company in the early 1870s. Active in Springfield's civic affairs, he seived two terms as mayor. He was involved in establishing a street railway system and the city waterworks. 30 Missouri Historical Review candidates in Greene County. Nonetheless, the presence of Greenback can didates who could tip the balance in favor of one or the other of the estab lished parties continued to concern local politicians. In 1886, Fellows ran again on the Greenback ticket, seeking election to Congress. During the 1877 railroad strikes, Mayor Fellows had received a cool reception among workers when he spoke against the strikes, commenting: "Labor, like every other com modity, is worth just what it will bring." By the 1880s, however, Fellows's sympathies for labor had increased. As president of the Springfield Wagon Company, he voluntarily instituted the eight-hour day in 1886, without reduc ing wages. Although the company was not unionized, such actions by Fellows won him the admiration of the local Knights, who endorsed his unsuccessful candidacy for Congress.14 The Springfield Knights began to field candidates on their own United Labor Party ticket in 1887. Such independent political activity by the organ ization became common nationwide between 1885 and 1888, with the Knights' demands including the eight-hour day for municipal employees, minimum wage laws, and increased public expenditures for education and poor relief. The Knights also entered politics in response to their defeat in the 1886 Great Southwest railroad strike. They believed political power would allow them to defeat unfriendly politicians, including judges, and restrain the use of the police in future strikes.15 Although the Knights entered the Springfield municipal elections in April 1887, no United Labor candidates were elected. The following spring the Knights again fielded a United Labor ticket, this time with somewhat better results. In the city's Sixth Ward, located on the working-class north side, the United Labor candidate for city council finished second in a three-way race, receiving 34 percent of the vote compared to the victorious Republican's 40 percent. Most citywide United Labor candidates did not fare well, except in the race for city assessor. The Republicans had nominated an African American, J. H. McCracken, for the office. The Democrats chose not to run a candidate, leaving the United Labor nominee, railroad engineer John Berry, as the sole opposition to McCracken. Initially, the local press reported a nar row three-vote majority for McCracken, but the city council later certified Berry the victor with a majority of 260 votes, for reasons unexplained in the local press. Berry assumed office with McCracken threatening to contest the
14 Springfield Express, 17, 24, 31 October 1884; Springfield Patriot-Advertiser, 26 July 1877; Springfield Leader, 26 July 1877; Steven Lee Stepp, '"The Old Reliable': The History of the Springfield Wagon Company, 1872-1952" (master's thesis, Southwest Missouri State College, 1972), 72-73.
13 Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 25-31; Missouri Official Directoiy, 1887-1888 (Jefferson City: Tribune Printing Co., 1888), 200, 204. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 31 election results, but the press reported no further consideration of the issue by city officials.16 In 1887 members of the Knights of Labor, the Greenback Party, the farm ers' alliances, the Grange, and various antimonopoly movements met in Cincinnati to found another third party—the Union Labor Party. The party platform, which aimed to appeal to both farmers and workers, opposed the monopolization of land by speculators—a central theme of political econo mist Henry George's critique of American society in Progress and Poverty, published in 1879—and the importation of Chinese labor and endorsed arbi tration of strikes, elimination of child labor, government ownership of the railroad and telegraph industries, a graduated income tax, direct election of senators, and women's suffrage. Most of the party's support came from west ern farmers, with urban workers in the East largely ignoring this new electoral alternative. Midwestern workers were somewhat more sympathetic, as evi denced by the support of party candidates by the Milwaukee and St. Louis labor movements.17 In Springfield organized labor at least flirted with the new party. Party leaders created an infrastructure in the city, with two Union Labor Party Clubs and a party newspaper, the New Crusade, in existence by 1888. Notices of Union Labor Party club meetings were published in local newspa pers alongside trade union notices. Frederick Mayfield, a local labor figure, edited the New Crusade and served as secretary of the Central Labor Union, Knights of Labor Local Assembly 6315, and Union Labor Party Club No. 1. Controversy swirled around the party in Missouri, with Springfield papers reporting just days before the 1888 election that the party's gubernatorial can didate, Ahira Manning, might be replaced for failure to conduct an acceptably active campaign. The Springfield Leader reported: "This leaves the party in a deplorable condition within a week of the election. All sorts of charges of boodle and sell out are made in the rank and file of the party."18 The Union Labor Party enjoyed little success nationally or in Springfield. Alson Streeter, the party's presidential candidate, received only 1.3 percent of the vote nationally and 3.6 percent in Missouri. In Springfield, Streeter also fared poorly, garnering only 3.3 percent of the vote citywide and 5.4 percent
'" Springfield Daily Leader, 5 April 1887; 30 March, 4, 7 April 1888; Springfield Express, 6 April 1888; Hoye's City Directoiy . . . 1888-1889, 31.
17 Andrew D. McNitt, "Union Labor Party," in Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America, ed. Immanuel Ness and James Ciment (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 3: 569-571; Missouri Official Manual, 1889-1890 (Jefferson City: Tribune Printing Co., 1889), 236-237; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7 November 1888.
18 Hoye's City Directoiy . . . 1888-1889, 293-294; Missouri Official Manual, 1889-1890, 193; Springfield Daily Herald, 20 January, 2 September 1888; Springfield Leader, 30 October 1888; Springfield Republican, 30 October 1888. 32 Missouri Historical Review
in the working-class Sixth Ward where a United Labor city council candidate had received strong support the previous spring. Party candidates for state and local office fared little better with Springfield voters.19 The populist insurgency of the 1890s gained much greater support in Springfield. Nationally, the People's Party backed a number of labor causes and in turn received far greater support from organized labor than had the fledgling Union Labor Party. Although in serious decline by the 1890s, the Knights of Labor formally endorsed the party, as did Eugene Debs. Samuel Gompers, the AFL president, opposed offering the federation's support, but workers in many parts of the South and West warmly embraced the party, as did many AFL affiliates. The Missouri State Federation of Labor and eleven other state federations endorsed the party, as did nearly two dozen city cen trals, including those in Kansas City and St. Louis.20 No evidence exists on
" McNitt, "Union Labor Party," 571; Missouri Official Manual, 1895-1896 (Jefferson City: Tribune Printing Co., 1895), 11; Springfield Daily Leader, 12 November 1888. 20 Julie Greene, Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53-54; Philip S. Foner, Histoiy of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 2, From the Founding of the American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1955), 300-320; Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, 147; Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 84-85; Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 343-344.
Couitesy Tamiment Institute Library, Dictwnmy of American Portraits
Euguene V Debs was elected president of the newly organized American Railway Union in 1893. He became a socialist dur ing his imprisonment following the Pullman strike in 1894 and ran for presi dent on the Socialist Party ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 33
the relationship between organized labor and populism in Springfield, but populist candidates fared well in the working-class wards. In the 1892 presidential election, People's Party candidate James Weaver received 8.5 percent of the vote nationally and 7.6 percent in Missouri. Lawrence Christensen and Gary Kremer have argued that one of the reasons for populism's poor showing in Missouri was the party's failure to attract working-class voters. This proved to be true in St. Louis, but Weaver's vote totaled 12 percent in Springfield, far exceeding the statewide average. The People's Party candidate ran particularly well in Springfield's four northern working-class wards, receiving 11 percent in Wards Five and Six, 14 percent in Ward Seven, and 26 percent in Ward Eight.21 Regardless of whether organ ized labor in Springfield endorsed the People's Party, the populist message resonated well with many of the city's workers. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic and Populist candidate in the 1896 presidential election, won a narrow victory in Springfield, with a mar gin of only eighteen votes. His victory represented a reversal of fortune for the Democratic Party in Springfield; Republicans had carried the city in the two previous presidential elections. Bryan won in three of the four northern working-class wards and lost in the other ward by a narrow margin. In the preceding two presidential elections, these wards had voted mainly Republican, perhaps indicating a change in allegiance due to Bryan's endorsement by the Populists.22 The lack of evidence on organized labor's relationship to populism in Springfield may stem from the declining fortunes of the city's unions during the 1890s. Springfield was home to sixteen unions in the early 1890s, but unions declined in strength and number with the onset of a serious economic depression in 1893. By 1896 as few as two unions may have survived in the city.23 With so few unions, organized labor received little attention in the local press during the populist insurgency. Despite this decline, Springfield work ers gained significant experience with trade unions, labor reform, and third- party political activity during the late nineteenth century. These collective influences would shape organized labor in the city during the next decade. Nationwide, AFL craft unions enjoyed a revival between 1897 and 1904 due to economic recovery following the mid-1890s depression. Membership nationally quadrupled to more than two million during this period.
21 Missouri Official Manual, 1895-1896, 12, 19; Foner, Histoiy of the Labor Movement, 2: 309; Christensen and Kremer, History of Missouri, 142.
22 Martin Gerald Towey, "The People's Party in Missouri" (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 1971), 98, 105-106, 164; Missouri Official Manual, 1895-1896, 11-12, 19; Missouri Official Manual, 1897-1898 (Jefferson City: Tribune Printing Co., 1897), 10, 20.
23 Cigar Makers'Official Journal 28 (15 March 1904): 3. 34 Missouri Historical Review
Springfield's labor movement enjoyed similar explosive growth during this period. The number of unions in the city increased rapidly between 1896, when only two unions may have remained, and the end of 1902, when the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that thirty-six unions existed in the city (see table 1). According to state statistics, twenty-four new local unions were organized during 1902. By the end of 1904—the first year for which the state compiled membership numbers for Springfield—the city had 2,311 union members. In 1910, Springfield trailed only the state's three largest cities, St. Louis, Kansas City, and St. Joseph, in union membership while surpassing all three in union density, primarily due to the large number of unionized railroad workers in the city.24 The number of unions in Springfield between 1900 and 1912 may have far exceeded the figures presented by the state. The labor bureau counted thirty-nine unions in 1903, 1907, and 1909, but other sources suggest a high er number. The aforementioned CMIU official who visited Springfield in 1903 noted fifty-four unions in the city. Newspaper reports for the years 1906 to 1912 routinely reported the presence of between forty-three and forty- seven unions.25 Union membership may also have exceeded the bureau's estimates. State figures for the years 1904 to 1911 show union membership peaking in Springfield at 2,311 workers in December 1904, yet the local press reported union membership at 5,000 in 1906. The latter figure may represent an exaggeration on the part of labor leaders, but it seems unlikely that they would claim membership twice their actual numbers. In part the discrepan cy may be explained by the possibility that local labor leaders included rail road telegraphers in their figures. The telegraphers' union maintained its district office in Springfield, but most of the 600-800 members of that union resided in towns throughout the state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped including the telegraphers in its calculations for Springfield in 1910, and the figures presented in this article have been adjusted to exclude the telegraphers for all years. Even if one subtracts as many as 800 telegraphers from the local estimates of union membership, local reports remain nearly 2,000 members higher than state reports. The state may also have under stated union membership by using a reporting date of December 31, a time when construction union membership was undoubtedly low. Local press reports in 1907 suggest that construction unions may have had 300 to 400
24 Lichtenstein et al., Who Built America? 158; Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics... 1911 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.). See also sources listed in table 1.
23 Cigar Makers' Official Journal 28 (15 March 1904): 3; Springfield Republican, 4 September 1906, 25 March 1908, 3 September 1911, 3 September 1912. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions " 35
TABLE 1. SPRINGFIELD UNIONS AND UNION MEMBERSHIP, 1900-1911
Yeai" Number of Locals Union Membership^
1900 6 n/a 1901 12 n/a 1902 36 n/a 1903 39 n/a 1904 34 2,311 1905 27 1,418 1906 27 1,405 1907 39 1,970 1908 38 1,892 1909 39 2,099 1910 38 2,307 1911 37 2,147
Source: Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics annual reports, 1901-1912.
0 Reported on December 31 each year.
b Before 1910 the Bureau of Labor Statistics included members of the railroad telegraphers union, which was based in Springfield, in calculations of the city's union membership. Because the members were spread throughout the state, the bureau decided in 1910 to no longer include them in Springfield's union membership calcu lations. To present consistently comparable figures, the author has excluded telegra phers from membership figures before 1910. more members during construction season than when the state collected its data in December. Given these differences, it seems reasonable to estimate that union membership in Springfield peaked at more than 3,000 workers dur ing the centuiy's first decade.26 Three institutions gave voice to the demands of organized labor in Springfield—the Central Trades and Labor Assembly, the labor press, and the Socialist Party. The Central Trades and Labor Assembly had been organized as the Central Labor Union in 1886, but its effectiveness increased with the growth of unions in the early twentieth century. Most of the locals in the city belonged to the assembly, which claimed 3,000 members in its affiliated unions in 1907.27 The assembly sought to unite existing locals and organize
26 Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspection... 1905 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 363; Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics . . . 1911, 145; Springfield Republican, 13, 28 July 1906; 1, 5 May 1907.
27 Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics . . . 1911, 145; Springfield Republican, 23 March 1907, 25 March 1908. 36 Missouri Historical Review
new locals to expand labor's presence in the community. Weekly meetings served to educate the approximately 100 delegates with speakers or debates on important local issues. Although the assembly did not endorse political candidates, it took positions on issues such as tax levies and the commission form of government in city elections and pressured city officials to pay pre vailing union wages and avoid the use of convict labor.28 The labor movement displayed its power annually on Labor Day, which the Springfield Republican characterized as a "big event in Springfield."2'' Each year from 1905 to 1912, between 1,500 and 5,000 trade unionists marched in a Labor Day parade sponsored by the labor assembly. Family and friends joined union members in a city park after the parade for a picnic, games, and a visiting speaker, producing crowds estimated by the press as large as 20,000 people, but more often numbering between 6,000 and 10,000. Such public displays in a city that claimed 35,000 residents in 1910 remind ed other members of the community of organized labor's numbers and soli darity and buttressed the labor assembly's claim to speak for Springfield's workers.30 The existence of local labor newspapers also gave unions a heightened visibility in the city. By 1905 a weekly labor paper titled the Sunday Tradesman was being published with the endorsement of the Central Trades and Labor Assembly. Although the assembly removed the endorsement for unreported reasons a few years later, the Tradesman continued to label itself a labor paper until it ceased publication in 1912. That same year the labor assembly helped launch a new weekly paper, the Springfield Laborer, which continued publishing until 1920.31 An active Socialist Party offered Springfield workers an alternative to the two major parties and gave organized labor a stronger political voice in the city. Socialism's roots in Springfield can be traced to the late nineteenth cen tury, when socialist ideas, if not institutions, circulated in unions and work ing-class neighborhoods. Following the 1877 railroad strikes, the Workingmen's Party, which in 1878 changed its name to the Socialist Labor
28 Springfield Republican, 23 March 1907; 6, 13 March, 1 May 1909; 22 January 1910.
w Ibid., 13 July 1906.
3" Ibid., 19 August, 5 September 1905; 28 July, 4 September 1906; 21 June 1907; 8 September 1908; 7 September 1909; 1, 3 September 1912; Springfield Leader, 7 September 1908; 5 September 1910; 4 September 1911; 2 September 1912.
31 Missouri Official Manual, 1905-1906 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 335; Missouri Official Manual, 1907-1908 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 508; Missouri Official Manual, 1909-1910 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 613; Missouri Official Manual, 1911-1912 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 608; Missouri Official Manual, 1913-1914 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 623; Fairbanks and Tuck, Past and Present, 1: 523; Springfield Republican, 25 July 1908. 'The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 37
Courtesy History Museum for Springfield-Greene County Labor Day Parade, Springfield, 1912
Party, gained momentum in a number of cities, including St. Louis, where socialists elected candidates to the school board and city council. The party never ran candidates for office in Springfield, but local newspapers reported that advocates of the party resided in the city. Yet the lack of a viable Socialist Party in Springfield did not prevent the spread of socialist ideals. As historian Julie Greene has noted, during the late nineteenth century, "it was the idea and the culture of socialism, not its institutional expression, that per suaded so many."32 In Springfield, trade unions, particularly the cigar makers' local, spread socialist ideas. Nationally, socialists had a strong presence within the Cigar Makers International Union throughout the late nineteenth century. When Socialist Labor Party delegates at the 1894 AFL convention proposed a plank calling for "collective ownership by the people of all the means of production and distribution," 68 percent of cigar makers nationwide endorsed the plank in a union referendum. Members of Springfield's Local 23 frequently voted for J. Mahlon Barnes, a Philadelphia socialist, for CMIU president and unan imously endorsed the AFL collective ownership plank.33
32 Springfield Times, 20 August 1877; Stephen L. Mclntyre, '"Communist Progress': The Workingmen's Party and St. Louis Educational Politics, 1877-1878," Missouri Historical Review 95 (October 2000): 23; Greene, Pure and Simple Politics, 55.
33 Patricia A. Cooper, Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 23, 27-28; Cigar Makers'Official Journal 20 (January 1895): 10-11; ibid. 21 (November 1895): 18, 21; ibid. 21 (March 1896): 10-13; ibid. 26 (March 1901): 4; ibid. 27 (November 1901): 11; ibid. 28 (March 1903): 15. 38 Missouri Historical Review
Whether other unions in Springfield were home to socialists in the late nineteenth century is uncertain. Following the defeat of the Pullman strike and then of populist hopes in 1896, Debs and other American Railway Union leaders became socialists. It seems likely that, given the large number of rail road workers in Springfield and the existence of two ARU locals in the city, at least some railroad unionists followed Debs's path to socialism. The Central Labor Union did elect socialist leaders during the late nineteenth cen tury, suggesting that socialist sympathies extended beyond the CMIU.34 J. A. Wayland's Appeal to Reason, a national socialist newspaper that began publishing in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1895 before moving to Girard, Kansas, in 1897, introduced many workers to socialist ideas. Wayland's paper circulated widely in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri, particu larly in rural areas and small towns and cities that lacked their own socialist press. By 1900 the paper's circulation was 140,000; it eventually reached 750,000 at its peak in 1913. The efforts of a volunteer army of more than 80,000 "salesmen-soldiers" who sold subscriptions to the paper across the country brought about the increase in circulation. Several of these "salesmen- soldiers" resided in Springfield, where the Appeal to Reason had a small but loyal following by 1900. Springfield was also home to socialist writer and editor Henry Mulford Tichener, some of whose articles appeared in the Appeal. The Appeal and other socialist papers played a vital role in circulat ing socialist ideas at the turn of the century when the two most important socialist parties—the Socialist Labor Party and the Social Democratic Party—were small and had little or no presence in Springfield and other small towns and cities. When the Socialist Party surveyed its membership in 1908, 52 percent of the respondents reported that they had been converted to social ism by reading literature such as the Appeal to Reason?5 Consequently, even with no viable party in Springfield at the turn of the century, socialist ideals gained a hearing through local unions and the socialist press. After the founding of the Socialist Party in 1901, the socialist movement grew significantly. Nationally, workers composed the majority of the party, with members of organized labor highly represented. Socialists elected to local political office in the early twentieth century also came primarily from
34 Stromquist, Generation of Boomers, 96; Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, 153-163; Gary Fink, Labor's Search, 28; Springfield Republican, 1 September 1909, 6 September 1910, 16 September 1913.
33 Elliott Shore, Talkin' Socialism: J. A. Way land and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890-1912 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988),* 75-76, 81-83; James R. Green, "The 'Salesmen-Soldiers' of the 'Appeal Army': A Profile of Rank-and-File Socialist Agitators," in Socialism and the Cities, ed. Bruce M. Stave (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975), 14, 16, 34; Peter H. Buckingham, Rebel Against Injustice: The Life of Frank P. O'Hare (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 22; Appeal to Reason, 28 July, 11,18 August, 29 September, 6 October 1900; 9 March 1901. "The City Belongs to the Local-Unions" 39 the working class. The Socialist Party in Springfield, which commenced activity by 1903, displayed similar membership characteristics. Skilled workers composed 74 percent of party officials and candidates in Springfield between 1905 and 1911 and 68 percent of party membership in 1914. Railroad workers made up a large percentage of the local party—53 percent of party leaders and candidates and 40 percent of identified party members. Machinists alone accounted for 26 percent of party officials and candidates and 15 percent of the identified party membership.36 As in most cities, the Springfield Socialist Party had close ties to the local labor movement. By the early twentieth century, socialists had a strong pres ence in the CMIU, several railroad unions, and probably other local unions as well. Socialists also controlled Springfield's Central Trades and Labor Assembly during the early twentieth century. In 1908, Gompers, upset with the Republican Party, sought to guide the AFL toward an alliance with Bryan
M Richard W. Judd, Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 29. Calculation of numbers of party officials and candidates is based on forty-one names taken from newspaper reports in the Springfield Republican, 1905-1911. Of these, the author identified thirty-five by examining Springfield city directories and the U.S. censuses for 1900 and 1910. Calculation of party mem bership is based on ninety-eight socialists who signed a petition in support of a candidate for Springfield postmaster, located in the Ewing Y. Mitchell, Jr., Papers, microfilm roll 27, folder 951, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia. Of these, the author identified eighty-one by examining Springfield city directories and the U.S. censuses for 1910 and 1920.
In 1889 the Southwestern Cigar Factory, owned by F. A. Haecker, was one of seven cigar factories in Springfield.
SHSMO 2003.0162
Mi :
•I IV • --' " ' ] ' 'M ^ r*. HP' . - ' ' •7"- 40 Missouri Historical Review and the Democrats. The Springfield labor assembly wrote Gompers to object to his "partiality shown in mentioning only two parties when there is another in the field which demands your attention and the attention of every man who labors for a living." Featured speakers at Springfield's Labor Day events fre quently attacked Gompers's political strategy and advocated socialism. At the 1905 Labor Day celebration, William Brandt, an influential St. Louis cigar maker and socialist, told the assembled crowd to go into "class politics" because "our emancipation will not come until we own the job instead of the job owning us." Chris Rocker, a St. Louis socialist, condemned Gompers's alliance with Democrats in his 1908 Labor Day speech.37 The Springfield local aligned itself with the right wing of the party, which embraced electoral politics as a means of achieving social and political reforms that would gradually lead to socialism. This wing of the party, which attracted many skilled trade unionists, was more conciliatory toward the AFL than the left wing, which supported the Industrial Workers of the World and embraced political work primarily as an educational tool. With immigrants comprising only 4.5 percent of the population in 1900 and 3.2 percent in 1910, and with little large-scale manufacturing, the left wing of the party, which emphasized organization of immigrant industrial workers through industrial unionism, did not speak to the economic realities of the city's large ly native-born, skilled craft workers.38 In 1904 the national Socialist Party adopted a municipal program that called for public ownership of utilities and expanded city services, particular ly in working-class neighborhoods. Although party leaders recognized the limited nature of these demands, most believed that local political campaigns served as a vital means of educating and recruiting party members. The Springfield local embraced this program and adopted platforms calling for municipal ownership of utilities, including street railways, gas, electricity, water, and telephone; municipally owned bakeries, ice plants, parks, bath houses, hospitals, and dispensaries that would provide drugs at cost; increased support for public schools, including enlargement of school buildings,
37 Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. .. 1910 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing Co., n.d.), 354-355; William H. Bush to Samuel Gompers, 20 August 1908, AFL Papers, ser. 11, file A, box 8, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Gary Fink, Labor's Search, 21, 27; Springfield Republican, 5 September 1905, 8 September 1908, 7 September 1909; Appeal to Reason, 25 December 1909. The secretary of the Missouri Socialist Party reported in the Appeal that one of the largest unions in Springfield had elected all social ists as officers in 1909 but failed to note which union. The eight largest unions in Springfield in 1909 were railroad unions, with the largest being a machinists local.
38 Greene, Pure and Simple Politics, 220; James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 3-9; Thirteenth Census of the United States . . ., 1910 Abstract. . . with Supplement for Missouri (Washington, DC: GPO, 1913), 626. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 41 decreased class size, free schoolbooks, and higher teacher salaries; an eight- hour day and union wages for city workers; public jobs for the unemployed; and democratic reforms such as the initiative and referendum and recall of elected officials.39 Springfield socialists propagated their message through the socialist press, frequent visiting speakers, and local election campaigns. Salesmen- soldiers continued to sell the Appeal to Reason in Springfield, and nearby Fair Grove had a socialist paper—The News—from 1905 to 1908.40 Eugene Debs appeared in Springfield on several occasions, and Mary Harris "Mother" Jones visited the city at least once. Both spoke to packed houses in local the aters. Other less-prominent socialist speakers also frequented Springfield regularly, with five visiting the city in 1909 alone.41 Beginning in 1903, Springfield socialists regularly ran candidates for local and state offices and supported Debs's presidential campaigns. The prospects for electoral success appeared to be good in the city. The Socialist Party experienced its greatest success in midwestern towns and cities with populations between 10,000 and 50,000 that had well-organized labor move ments and whose workers were culturally homogeneous. Springfield, with a population of 23,267 in 1900 and 35,201 in 1910, a high percentage of union ized workers, and a very small immigrant population, seemed to offer the right conditions. Furthermore, the party's call for municipal ownership of utilities potentially appealed to middle-class voters in Springfield because of repeated conflicts between citizens and the privately owned street railway and telephone companies.42 These favorable conditions produced some strong showings by socialist candidates but no electoral victories between 1903 and 1912. In presidential elections Springfield voters gave Debs stronger support than voters statewide or nationally, with the highest vote totals in Wards 5-8 on the working-class north side. Yet Debs never polled more than 8 percent of the Springfield vote in the 1900-1912 elections and no more than 11 percent of the combined vote in the northside wards (see table 2). Socialist candidates for state representa tive from Greene County's First District, which encompassed the city of Springfield, fared little better than Debs. The socialist vote in the district
3' See, for example, Springfield Republican, 6, 10, 31 March 1908.
40 Appeal to Reason, 10 April 1909; Missouri Official Manual, 1905-1906, 335; Missouri Official Manual, 1907-1908, 508.
41 Springfield Republican, 18 August 1905; 20 June, 10 July 1906; 9 July 1910; Appeal to Reason, 27 February, 26 June, 1 August, 11 September, 13 November 1909; 8 January, 19 March, 9 July 1910.
42 Judd, Socialist Cities, 25; Twelfth Census of the United States. .., 1900, Population, 1: 240; Thirteenth Census . . . 1910 Abstract, 626; Springfield Republican, 6, 10, 31 March 1908. 42 Missouri Historical Review
TABLE 2. EUGENE DEBS PRESIDENTIAL VOTE, 1900-1912
Year U.S. Missouri Greene County Springfield Wards 5-8
1900 0.6% 0.9% 0.7% 0.9% 1.0% 1904 3.0% 2.0% 3.8% 4.9% 6.7% 1908 2.8% 2.2% 3.5% 4.3% 5.8% 1912 6.0% 4.0% 6.0% 7.7% 10.8%
Source: Missouri Official Manuals, 1901-1902, 1905-1906, 1909-1910, 1913-1914. steadily increased from 4.5 percent in 1906 to 7.8 percent in 1912 but offered little hope of impending victory. Socialist mayoral candidates in Springfield also polled poorly, never obtaining more than 10 percent of the vote.43 Springfield socialists fared best in city council elections on the north side but did not elect any socialists to the council. On two occasions a socialist ran second in a three-way race, with the best such result in Ward Eight in 1906, when the party's candidate received 34 percent of the vote. In 1911 the socialist candidate in that ward received 45 percent of the vote in a two-way race.44 From one point of view the socialist experiment in Springfield can be deemed a failure. The party elected no candidates between 1903 and 1912, even in the heavily working-class, unionized wards. Yet the significance of the Springfield Socialist Party may best be measured not by election victo ries, but by its impact upon the local political scene. Socialist electoral activ ity combined with a well-organized and active labor movement gave labor leaders considerable influence with the established parties as each vied for the labor vote.45 The substantial Springfield labor vote greatly interested local political leaders. In 1910, Springfield's population included 10,516 males of voting
43 Missouri Official Manual, 1907-1908, 635; Missouri Official Manual, 1909-1910, 833; Missouri Official Manual, 1911-1912, 827; Missouri Official Manual, 1913-1914, 1139. The local press irregularly reported city election results. For the 1906 mayoral election results see Springfield Republican, 4 April 1906.
44 Springfield Republican, 5 April 1905, 4 April 1906, 3 April 1907, 8 April 1908, 7 April 1909, 5 April 1911; Judd, Socialist Cities, 22-29.
43 Richard Schneirov offers a model for such analysis of Chicago labor and socialist pol itics, arguing that labor's political power can best be measured by the increased influence in the Democratic and Republican Parties produced by periodic socialist and labor party insurgencies, rather than by third-party electoral victories. See Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 366. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 43
age. Using the most conservative estimate of labor union membership pro vided by the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics, the city had 2,292 male union members that year. Although a few of these men were not yet of vot ing age or immigrants without voting rights, it seems likely that union mem bers made up at least one-fifth of Springfield voters. Trade unionists did not vote in unison at all times, but local Democratic and Republican politicians viewed such a large organized bloc of voters as an important constituency to be courted. It was not uncommon for politicians to praise organized labor publicly, as Democratic Mayor James Blain did in 1907 when he told a Labor Day gathering that unions had been responsible for a decline in child labor and helping workers get a fair deal from their employers. Although the Central Trades and Labor Assembly did not formally endorse candidates, political discourse during local election campaigns frequently centered on which office seekers were friends or enemies of organized labor.46 The use of police and the courts to break strikes caused great concern among the ranks of organized labor in most cities. When Reuben Wood cam paigned for city marshal in 1908, he commented that he had "always been opposed to police and soldiers because of the way they have been used as a club over the heads of laboring men." In Springfield, the political power of organized labor produced police and judges who remained more neutral than in many cities. During strikes, police arrested strikers involved in violence against strikebreakers, but they also arrested strikebreakers who violated the law. Molders at United Iron Works, the most heavily capitalized industrial fern in the city and the fourth-largest industrial employer, went on strike on May 1, 1906, as part of a nationwide molders' strike for the nine-hour day. The company responded by hiring two armed guards and importing forty nonunion molders from St. Louis whom the company also armed. During the strike, which stretched into the summer, police arrested at least one striking molder for assaulting a strikebreaker but refused to allow strikebreakers to roam the city armed, arresting five of them for carrying weapons while intox icated. United Iron Works sought an injunction against forty-one striking union molders and a union leader in late May, claiming that the men had tried to intimidate their replacements. In June a Greene County judge issued a per manent injunction against one molder but dismissed the case against the other forty-one defendants. Al P. Tatlow, the elected Springfield city attorney, rep resented the union in the case.47 Organized labor and local socialists proved effective at pressuring city officials to provide public works employment for the unemployed during the
46 Thirteenth Census . . . 1910 Abstract, 621; Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics . . . 1911, 102; Springfield Republican, 3 September 1907; 24, 25, 29 March 1908; 1 April 1911.
47 Springfield Republican, 11, 30 May, 19, 20, 30 June, 12, 15, 20 July, 26 September 1906; 3 March 1908; 4 July 1909. 44 Missouri Historical Review
SHSMO 2003.0167 The United Iron Works depression that followed the Panic of 1907. With unemployment high in the winter of 1907-1908, both the Central Trades and Labor Assembly and the Socialist Party called upon the city government to hire the unemployed to work on city streets. Such demands had been made by the AFL since the 1890s, and they became a growing part of the Socialist Party's national municipal strategy to politicize unemployment. The day after Springfield Socialists called for such public works jobs, the city council voted to employ one hundred men on city street work. During the spring election season, the chairman of the Springfield Republican Party launched the municipal cam paign by commenting: "We should adopt every method possible to give as many men employment on our streets as the revenue will permit." Springfield certainly was not alone among cities in making use of public works to aid the unemployed. Many cities had established large-scale pro grams during the depression in the 1890s, and numerous municipalities again expanded public works employment during the recession of 1907-1908. Unlike many cities where conservatives criticized public works employment as an example of creeping socialism and many social workers opposed the efforts, no such public criticism appeared in Springfield, perhaps a mark of labor's political influence with both parties.48 Well aware of organized labor's power, city leaders frequently sought labor's input on important issues facing the community. In 1908 citizens complained about a twenty-five-year franchise the city council planned to
48 Springfield Republican, 4 April 1906; 3 April 1907; 18 January, 3, 5, 26 March, 8 April 1908; Judd, Socialist Cities, 35; Udo Sautter, Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment before the New Deal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 96, 100; Leah Hannah Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression: A Study of Measures Adopted in Certain American Cities, 1857 through 1922 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1936), 214-217. "The City Belongs to the Local Unions" 45 offer Ozark Bell Telephone Company. Council members appointed five organizations—the Springfield Club, the Commercial Club, the Elks, the Retail Merchants Association, and the Central Trades and Labor Assembly— to investigate the proposal. Ultimately, the city council accepted the recom mendation of the groups to reject the franchise agreement. In 1910 when city officials began plans to secure a second-class city charter for Springfield, the head of the Central Trades and Labor Assembly joined the mayor, a city coun cilman, a state senator, and representatives from the Springfield and Commercial Clubs on the planning committee. The committee's proposed charter incorporated a key demand of organized labor and socialists—an eight-hour day for city employees and employees of city contractors.49 Organized labor's political influence extended to elected state officials as well. In an analysis of voting patterns in the Missouri House and Senate between 1907 and 1939, historian Gary Fink determined that representatives from Springfield, St. Joseph, and Hannibal and senators from Springfield, St. Joseph, and Sedalia were the most supportive of organized labor's interests in the state legislature. Conversely, no bloc of legislators from St. Louis or Kansas City could be counted on to support labor's concerns in the General Assembly. Fink cites three factors that contributed to the election of pro- labor representatives in smaller cities—capable labor leaders who involved themselves in politics, a large number of railroad workers whose unions were politically active due to the nature of their industry, and an active Socialist Party that imparted a political consciousness to workers. With regard to Springfield, Fink concluded that the local labor movement was "considered a force to be reckoned with by politicos of the city."50 It proved also to be a force in the Missouri State Federation of Labor (MSFL). Springfield had long exercised considerable influence in the organ ization through the perennial service of Henry A. W. Juneman as a convention delegate. Juneman had moved from New York City, where he worked with Samuel Gompers organizing cigar makers, to Springfield in the 1870s. A committed socialist, Juneman helped organize Springfield's CMIU local in 1879, served as secretary-treasurer of the Central Labor Union and secretary of the city's first Knights of Labor Assembly during the 1880s, and was a del egate to the founding convention of the MSFL in 1891. Juneman was widely admired and influential in the state labor movement and recognized by many labor leaders as a mentor.51
49 Springfield Republican, 11, 24, 25 March 1908; 10, 17 December 1910; 15 January 1911. 3" Gary Fink, Labor's Search, 193-194. 51 Ibid., 28; Springfield Union Labor Record, 25 April 1963, 1 March 1984; Cigar Makers' Official Journal 5 (10 August 1880): 4; ibid. 7 (15 September 1882): 3; Hoye's City Directory 46 Missouri Historical Review ^~m f Born in 1884, Reuben Wood became active in the Springfield labor movement in the early twentieth century. He was a leader in the drive to pass a workmen's • ~«%.:
compensation law in Missouri. Wood -™ - 'J-«S«5®K served as a U.S. Representative from Missouri, 1933-1941. I - /
OLUA-12-2002, Ozarks Labor Union Archives
In 1912, Juneman and other Springfield delegates to the MSFL conven tion lobbied for the election of Reuben Wood as federation president. Having served as an officer of his CMIU local and as president and vice president of the Central Trades and Labor Assembly and having stood for office three times as a Socialist, Wood had extensive experience in the Springfield labor movement. At the convention, Wood's presidential bid also gained the sup port of many Socialist delegates from St. Louis. Cigar makers from across the state, who had played a critical role in the federation from its beginning, also likely supported his candidacy. In an election one delegate recalled as being "spirited and close," Wood defeated J. B. Conroy, a much better known St. Louis union leader, by a narrow margin. Despite Wood's relative anonymity statewide, the Springfield labor movement's successes were well known, thus making possible his election.52 Wood's victory represented the culmination of the Springfield labor movement's rise to power between 1871 and 1912. That power was predi cated upon both effective organization of most trades in the city and a will ingness to experiment with third-party politics. Although such third-party campaigns rarely produced electoral victories, they nevertheless encouraged elected officials to grant concessions to the city's labor movement in an effort to preempt a leftward electoral drift by workers. Such a result suggests the need for more careful consideration by historians of the relationship between unionization and politics in Missouri's smaller communities. of Springfield, 1892-1893, 419; Springfield Republican, 7 September 1909, 6 September 1910, 16 September 1913; Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual and Third Biennial Convention of the Missouri State Federation of Labor, 1928, 53.
32 Cigar Makers' Official Journal 79 (August 1955): 7; Springfield Union Labor Record, 28 July 1955; Springfield Leader, 20 September 1912. SHSMO 2003.0184 Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud: Highway Politics, the Centennial Road Law, and the Problems of Progressive Identity
BY RICHARD C. TRAYLOR*
In the fall of 1921, about thirty-five miles south of Kansas City, J. D. Gustin sat in his car, covered with mud, wondering how he could have been so gullible. While on an afternoon drive with his wife and children, Gustin had come upon a condemned country bridge. Just as he was pondering whether to turn back, a man with a rifle emerged from the brush along the road. Gustin took the man to be a local hunter and asked him if the bridge
*Richard C. Traylor is an assistant professor of history at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, master's degrees from the University of North Texas in Denton and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and a doctoral degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. 48 Missouri Historical Review was safe. The stranger advised him that it was sound, so Gustin and his fam ily drove on and crossed the bridge successfully. But just as they reached the other side, they jolted forward as their car tipped into a deep mudhole in the road. All of Gustin's efforts to extricate his vehicle from the crater proved futile and were made all the more frustrating since he had not even seen the hole to avoid it. With his car securely stuck, Gustin looked up to see the help ful hunter leading a team of horses from the nearby brush. He thought it odd that the horses were harnessed and pulling only a doubletree.1 The erstwhile hunter explained that for a dollar he and his team could pull the car out of the hole. With few other options, Gustin paid the man and had his car removed. Once out of the hole, he turned the car around and headed back the way he had come. Gustin briefly looked back, only to see the stranger working with his team, leading them so that they dragged the doubletree across the mud- hole. This action did not fix the hole but merely spread a thin layer of dirt over it to conceal the deep mud pit beneath. For Gustin, the sinister scheme appeared plain at once. He had been duped, but he could do little else but return home with his damaged car and mud-encrusted family and contact the Auto Club to warn other motorists.2 The year that J. D. Gustin needed help to pull his car out of the mud was a time when many Missourians were wrestling with the same issue. Over eighty years after this incident, good roads and highways seem to satisfy the American urge to drive, while bad roads only aggravate and exasperate. Historically, road construction has produced a great deal of controversy, espe cially in regard to government expenditures and subsidies for improvements. In the early twentieth century, the issue of road reform became a battleground for social identity throughout the Midwest as the automotive juggernaut made the horse and buggy obsolete. While good roads movements had initiated the drive for highway reform, the Centennial Road Law of 1921 finally provided for a statewide interconnected highway system in Missouri.3 Conflicts with in the state, however, nearly killed the road bill. The struggles surrounding the passage of this significant law exemplify how urban and rural conflict nearly mired one element of modernization. For Missouri, the Centennial Road Law helped to herald what historian Hal S. Barron has labeled the "second great transformation." The law created new
1 A doubletree is a wooden board used with two singletrees (wooden bars with metal rings attached) and tugs to attach horses' harnesses to an implement. 2 J. D. Gustin to Arthur M. Hyde, 31 October 1921, folder 605, Arthur M. Hyde Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia. 3 Theodore Gary, "The Road History of Missouri," in Missouri, Mother of the West, ed. Walter Williams and Floyd C. Shoemaker (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1930), 2: 597. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 49 mechanisms whereby the state could strip county governments of their power and overlay Progressive ideals on Missouri. The disputes over the reform also reveal how farmers—history's stereotypical "traditionalists"—divided over the new Progressivism and wrestled with their identity as an interest group in modern politics.4 It is unfortunate that Barron's study of this trans formative process ignored Missouri's experience because the inherent con testation is apparent in the tense battles over roads. Both the urban and rural factions in the state and in the legislature desired good roads, but each wanted such progress on their own terms. Without agreement on the overall goal, nothing could have been accomplished. The disagreements over what constituted a "good road," which faction would receive more money, who would control the road-building process, and when each faction would be serviced compelled a mobilization of interests through out the state and a grand wave of divisiveness. Lurking beneath these obvi ous quarrels, however, lay more fundamental questions about the look of Missouri's future and who would control it. Thus, the true conflict arose between urban progressives and rural populists with distinct visions of the future who would engage dialectically in the process of road reform. This cultural tug-of-war featured rampant mudslinging. Each faction labeled the other with derisive sobriquets: "dirt-roaders," "mud-daubers," "hard-roaders," "peacock-laners," "pork-barrelers," and "square-rooters." The so-called "hard-roaders" saw their opponents as mired in backwoods provincialism, as stuck in the mud as motorist J. D. Gustin. The "dirt-road ers" viewed the "highway men" as true highwaymen who gain the confi dence of their victims, like Gustin's rural charlatan, and then pilfer their pockets while claiming to do them a favor. Still, underlying these political machinations was the process whereby Missouri pulled itself into the twen tieth century and the concomitant values of efficiency, bureaucracy, pragma tism, centralization of power, and greater spatial connectivity. These were the watchwords of Progressivism in the early twentieth cen tury, particularly the branch led by those whom historian Robert H. Wiebe labeled the "new middle class" of reform-oriented professionals. According to Wiebe, the late-nineteenth-century Populists had attempted to defend the self-determination of their scattered and isolated "island communities" against the tentacles of industrial capitalism. The twentieth-century Progressives transcended such localism and sought to organize and sanitize society through bureaucratic means. Some historians, including Peter G. Filene, found progressivism unusable as a concept for categorizing the broad and diverse agendas of the figures and
4 Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xi-42. 50 Missouri Historical Review groups traditionally labeled "progressives." One persistent trait that progres sives displayed, however, was faith in experts to control social and govern ment institutions. They expected these trusted professionals to use scientific and pragmatic techniques not only to reform the inefficiencies and injustices that existed in the modern, industrial world, but also to extend a measure of control over the forces of social change. While this progressive impulse waned in the disillusioning wake of World War I, it endured into the 1920s in efforts such as those in Missouri to rationalize the state's road system through professional expertise.5 Missouri's roads at the turn of the twentieth century were poor at best. Most Missourians traveled on dirt or gravel roads. The urban centers had some hard-surfaced roads that met their traffic needs, but a patchwork quilt of roads covered the state. As late as 1921, one traveling salesman wrote that Missouri's roads tended to "start in the middle of nowhere and end nowhere."6 Road troubles took on grave proportions as more motorists like
3 Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 52-55, 111-132, 164-166; Peter G. Filene, "An Obituary for 'The Progressive Movement,'" American Quarterly 22 (spring 1970): 20-34; Daniel T. Rodger's, "In Search of Progressivism," Reviews in American Histoiy 10 (December 1982): 113-132; Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1983), 1-10, 21, 85-96, 111-113.
6 W. A. Lippman to Arthur M. Hyde, 30 April 1921, folder 604, Hyde Papers.
Most of Missouri's roads were unpaved in the 1910s.
Charles Trefts Collection, SHSMO 000034.01676
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k&" — l¥*y .-•„ • ..if.' . JJ- --••*?-* Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 51
J. D. Gustin traveled through the state. In 1911, Curtis Hill, Missouri's first state highway engineer, stated that only a few of the roads could be labeled "improved." Further, most of those roads ran through the more urban coun ties of St. Louis, Jackson, and Jasper. At the time of Hill's report, roughly 16,000 motor vehicles were registered in Missouri; by 1917 that number jumped to over 150,000. State leaders clearly perceived the growing need for road improvements.7 Missouri's problems resembled difficulties that the South and Midwest had faced for over three decades. Bicycle enthusiasts in the late 1800s had begun good roads organizations that lobbied federal and state governments for highway improvement. As the bicycle craze subsided, the National Good Roads Association, formed by road enthusiast Arthur C. Jackson in 1907, picked up the fight. Within a few years, Jackson's group had assisted in the formation of local and state associations. The federal Office of Public Road Inquiry (OPRI), formed in the midst of the bicycle craze, also assisted in pro moting good roads among farmers, attempting to convince rural residents that better roads provided the key to a better life. Citizens from across the nation deluged the OPRI with questions regarding road materials and how to form local road organizations. But as Missouri's difficulties with good roads leg islation in the 1920s would indicate, the OPRI had not successfully persuad ed the rural community.8 The issue of local control in road construction created one obstacle to improving roads in a statewide system. In Missouri, prior to 1907, the coun ty courts in each of the 114 counties independently determined the location of roads, coordinated construction, and provided improvement. In 1907 the General Assembly passed legislation that provided for the appointment of highway engineers in each county, established a "general state road fund," and provided for a state highway engineer to act in a strictly advisory capac ity.9 County officials continued to maintain control, thus restricting statewide coordination and improvement. Another obstacle also limited Missouri's highway development: lack of funding. In 1916, three years after becoming the first American president to ride in a motorcar to his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Highway Act. This measure allowed states to receive federal funds on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis, provided
7 Gary, "Road History," 597-598; David D. March, The Histoiy of Missouri (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1967), 2: 1330. 8 Bruce E. Seely, Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 11-12, 16-17, 21, 24; Howard Lawrence Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie: Accessibility and Modernization in the South, 1885-1935 (Knoxville: University of Temiessee Press, 1991), 79-80.
' Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie, 13; Missouri Official Manual, 1923-1924 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Press, n.d.), 681. 52 Missouri Historical Review
the state organize and equip a state highway department, pay its share of nec essary construction costs, maintain the highways constructed with federal assistance, and draw up a map of proposed interstate and intercounty roads.10 The act forced the states to move ahead with progressive measures of control and funding if they wished to receive federal assistance. Two men in Missouri's capital pushed the effort to acquire the federal highway money: Governor Frederick D. Gardner and state legislator Harry B. Hawes. The representative had already become a hero for the cause in St. Louis County by leading the drive for a $3,000,000 bond issue for better roads—the largest bond issue passed by a county in the United States up to that time. For his part, Governor Gardner pressured the General Assembly in his inaugural address of January 8, 1917, to do the work that would allow them to collect the over $2.5 million in federal funds. Within three months, the legislature passed what came to be known as the Hawes Road Law. The legislation created an autonomous state highway department directed by a bipartisan, four-member board appointed by the governor. The board, in turn, was to appoint a state highway engineer. The law charged the new depart ment with designating and improving no less than 3,500 miles of "state roads" that would extend into each of Missouri's counties." Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Gardner awarded Hawes the title "Father of Good Roads in Missouri," the legislation that bore Hawes's name did not provide for sufficient roads or the financial requirements for the lim ited goals. To reach every county, the state needed more roads and had to raise millions more in funding. To deal with these problems, the General Assembly amended the road legislation in 1919. The amendments added a state highway superintendent to the department payroll, increased the desig nated state road mileage from 3,500 to 6,000, and provided money to local road construction units for every mile they surveyed and constructed. But the amendments did not provide funding for the added cost. So highway depart ment officials scurried to various counties, helping the local good roads clubs campaign for local road bonds.12
10 Richard M. Abrams, The Burdens of Progress: 1900-1929 (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1978), 9; March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1330.
" Lewis B. Ely, Harry B. Hawes: An Intimate Sketch (St. Louis: Allied Printing, n.d.), 7- 8; March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1330-1331; Missouri Official Manual, 1917-1918 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Co., n.d.), 131. Funding for the state roads mandate would come from motor vehicle registration, corporate filing fees, the sale of option stamps, and funding guaran teed under the Federal Highway Act.
12 Ely, Harry B. Hawes, 8; March, History of Missouri, 2: 1331; Gary, "Road History," 612. The amendments were labeled the McCullough-Morgan amendments for their co-spon sors: Senator Frisby McCullough of Edina and Representative James G. Morgan of Putnam County. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 53
By 1920 legislators in Jefferson City had failed to meet the state's need for good roads while the number of automobiles in the state totaled almost 300,000. Construction of roads still remained in the hands and at the discre tion of the counties. Increasingly, many Missourians began to realize that local control of construction and the financial burden inflicted on individual counties should be replaced with a new system. An even greater concern was the state's ability to maintain the funds necessary to participate in the federal matching program. The loss of federal funds would imperil any hope of mod ernizing the road system.13 In the midst of this crisis, the struggle over accomplishing real road reform began in earnest in 1920. That year, the state legislature placed a con stitutional amendment on the ballot that would permit issuance of a $60 mil lion bond issue. If passed, the bond issue would finance the construction of 6,000 miles of hard-surfaced roads—roads that would finally connect each of Missouri's counties. Given the controversial nature of the road bond issue
13 March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1331; Gary, "Road History," 612.
Advocates of modernizing Missouri's road system feared losing federal monies unless the state raised matching funds.
SHSMO 2003.0185
POR HARD ROADS POR. MuD 54 Missouri Historical Review
and the staggering amount of money involved, the Highway Department launched a statewide educational campaign. The new state highway superin tendent, John Malang of Jasper County, issued numerous publications and proclaimed the benefits of the bond issue at good roads rallies in half the counties in the state. Harry B. Hawes, while waging a campaign to represent the Eleventh District in the U.S. Congress, organized the first meeting of the Missouri Good Roads Federation in June. Road enthusiasts from across the state met in Jefferson City, organized under Hawes's leadership, then left to spread the gospel of hard roads. Hawes worked tirelessly on the project, helping to raise over $100,000 for the educational campaign. Through the federation, he also published millions of pieces of good roads literature. When finally placed in the hands of the voters in November, the amendment passed with only 52.4 percent of the vote, carrying just fifty-eight counties. Even though the bond issue was in the farmers' interest, it would easily have failed without the favorable nod of urban voters in St. Louis, Kansas City, Joplin, St. Joseph, and Springfield.14 Rural voters largely rejected the idea of a bond issue. Many rural Missourians thought that if motorists were going to tear up the roads, then they should pay for them through license fees.15 The November 1920 election also brought in a Republican-dominated General Assembly and a Republican governor, Arthur M. Hyde. Since Hyde believed the highly charged road bond issue would bog down other legisla tion in regular session, he requested that the assembly defer debate on the issue until he convened them in a special session on June 14, 1921.16 While the delay may have accomplished Hyde's goal of focusing the legislators, it also offered time for factions to coalesce, draw battle lines, and entrench themselves. In the spring of 1921, each faction used the state's newspapers to spread false information about their opponents and to sensationalize the issues. Thus, even before debates began in the legislature's extra session, dif fering interest groups banded into two factions. The first consisted mainly of urban residents and northeastern Missouri businessmen. They had support ed the bond issue in 1920 and desired a statewide system of hard-surfaced roads as well as a central governing authority to decide road placement. The hard-road faction accused their opponents of offering flawed and ill-consid ered solutions and of conveniently forgetting that the cities were footing most of the bill to pay for the roads. More significantly, these hard-roaders saw
14 Gary, "Road History," 614; Ely, Hariy B. Hawes, 9; Missouri Official Manual, 1921- 1922 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Co., n.d.), 463, 470-471.
13 Gary, "Road History," 597-598; March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1330.
" March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1332; Gary, "Road History," 614. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 55 themselves on a noble crusade for progress with weighty consequences. If they failed, mud and Missouri would be forever inseparable in the eyes of the nation, and the state would lag behind its neighbors. The other sizable faction, mainly ruralists, wanted power over road placement and construction to remain in the hands of county courts and local officials. They desired "farm-to-market" roads and were content with gravel or macadamized roads as opposed to concrete, asphalt, or cement. They con tended the hard-roaders were only interested in serving their own needs and in building beautiful "peacock lanes" for city-types to travel easily across the state. Finally, they accused the hard-road advocates of neglecting the citizens and farmers of Missouri in favor of tourist dollars that would certainly pour chiefly into urban coffers.17 Such animosity led to increased apprehension as the special legislative session drew nearer. Letters written to Governor Hyde expressed many Missourians' alarm over road reform. Hyde calmed one concerned citizen, saying that he "need not be alarmed" concerning newspaper reports that pur ported to reveal where the roads would be placed since even the legislators were not sure. One farmer feared that the law would require him to pay a penalty if he damaged the new roads with his thresher. "How are the people to live," he asked, "if they can't get their threshing done?" A businessman
17 March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1332; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 June 1921.
STTSMO -i-
Bom and reared in Princeton, Arthur M. Hyde became only the second Republican governor of Missouri fol lowing the end of Reconstruction. In 1929 he was appointed as the Secretaiy of Agriculture in the Herbert Hoover administration. 56 Missouri Historical Review wrote the governor that "nothing would be more disastrous to the interests of the entire people of this state than that any successful attempt should be made to spread the money derived from the bond issue in patch work instead of connecting roads." Clarence King, a progressive St. Louis jeweler, support ed the governor's hard-road plan and also saw the future as hanging in the balance. Encouraging Hyde's highway goals, King asserted: "Missouri must advance. She must see herself. She must acquire a true vision of her proper place among the States of the Union in wealth, population and ability. We have done much in the past decade to outgrow that slogan 'Show me' and it is incumbent upon us to lose entirely the spirit which prompted it."18 In the week prior to the convening of the special session on June 14, more organized voices sought to influence the assembly. The Federation of Missouri Commercial Clubs met at the Carnegie Library in Jefferson City to prepare a resolution to submit to the General Assembly and to raise money for lobbyists. A dirt-road lobby, the federation heard from like-minded sup porters during the meeting. One speaker was William Hirth, the president of the Missouri Fanners Association (MFA). Hirth, a Democrat opposed to the Republican governor's highway plans, urged the legislature to think of the fanner before considering the tourist. He argued that two hard-surfaced roads in each county would not suffice. It meant that only 20 percent of the farm ers would be accommodated. Since four-fifths of the state's farmers would be left partially in the mud, Hirth threatened that he would see to it that the whole state stayed that way. His army of farmers, he said, would use the process of initiative and referendum to undo in 1922 any hard-road nonsense passed in 1921. Though Hirth claimed to represent the interests of 70,000 agriculturalists, such a blunderbuss attack on the proposed legislation led some farmers to distance themselves from him. One member of the farm club movement later wrote: "Our 70,000 members are not as solidly behind Mr. Hirth as, it would appear, he would have you believe."19 While that may have been the case, the rhetoric had heated up the debate, and some worried that no legislation could be passed in such a climate of intimidation. Interestingly though, Hirth's crusade to derail the legislation reveals one of the tensions of progressive identity. The optimistic progressive belief in efficiency, bureaucratic expertise, and centralized power infused the hard- road movement. But Hirth's position of authority and challenge was also imbued with progressive values. Founded as a populist farmers' cooperative
18 Hyde to M. F. Oxford, 9 April 1921, folder 299, Hyde Papers; A. S. Robinson to Hyde, 11 March 1921; W. A. Lippman to Hyde, 30 April 1921; Clarence H. King to Hyde, 1 March 1921, all in folder 604, ibid.
15 Jefferson City Daily Capital-News, 17 June 1921; Paris Mercury, 1 July 1921; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 28, 29 June, 6 July 1921; J. L. Laxton to Arthur M. Hyde, 11 December 1921, folder 605, Hyde Papers. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 57
SHSMO 2003.0184
'The Dirt Road Plan"
that might allow members to cultivate and market their products more prof itably, the MFA now allowed Hirth to articulate the farmers' alleged desires as a political interest group. Claiming the moral authority of the farmer's hoe, Hirth threatened to use the political hammer of initiative and referendum to smash his opponents. It is fitting that Hirth might wish to use the progressive political tools of initiative and referendum to counter what he allegedly viewed as the power of urban interests in Jefferson City, but it is also inter esting that by doing so, he revealed how the progressive impulse could fold back upon itself.20 With this in the background, the legislators began their heated debate on June 14, 1921, in the newly constructed, un-air-conditioned capitol building. Legislative tempers rose inside as the temperature rose outside. While the process of lawmaking is rarely an appetizing or appealing business, it can be dramatic. And with sharp battle lines drawn on the road issue, the summer- stock legislators filled the session with all the bellicose blood-and-thunder of a modern melodrama.
20 Raymond A. Young, Cultivating Cooperation: A Histoiy of the Missouri Farmers Association (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995), 13-31; David Thelen, Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Democracy in Industrializing Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 218-219, 230-232. 58 Missouri Historical Review
The first act of this political theater entailed sorting out leadership posi tions and hammering out the issues before the men hammered each other. One of the early power plays involved committee chairmanships. Two of the most powerful positions in the General Assembly were the chairmanships of the Roads and Highways Committees in the House and Senate. Shortly before the special session began, John Dyott, chair of the House Roads Committee, accepted a position as assistant U.S. attorney general in St. Louis. As such, he was ineligible to serve in the legislature. Walter Bailey of Jasper County, vice chairman of the committee, seemed to be the likely choice to replace Dyott, but dirt-roaders in the House petitioned Speaker Samuel O'Fallon to replace Dyott with James Morgan of Putnam County. Morgan's claim to the position stemmed from his co-sponsorship of the 1919 road amendment, an act that had been coined a "mud road bill." Bailey eventual ly received the post as chairman, but the conflict aggravated the tense atmos phere.21 While House members began slowly as each presented his own home grown bill, the Senate moved more swiftly under the leadership of Richard Ralph. Elected from St. Louis County, Senator Ralph wanted the hardest roads possible and a system of cross-state highways. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Roads and Highways, Ralph exerted tremendous influ ence on the proceedings in the upper house. He had also done his homework for the summer session. To prepare for the good roads legislation, Ralph had led a committee on a fifteen-state tour to gather data on progressive features as well as the mistakes and regrets of other states' highway accomplishments. On June 22, Ralph submitted Senate Bill 30, which, for dirt-roaders in the House and Senate, became the bill to defeat. Ralph's bill called for three items: the construction or improvement of 6,000 miles of state highways with a significant apportionment (no less than $200,000) for each county; the for mation of a four-member state highway commission; and a definition of "hard-surface road" that excluded dirt as the primary component.22 A handful of dirt-road senators acted quickly to amend the Ralph bill in three power plays. First, Senator Frisby McCullough, from Knox County in the Twelfth District, the other co-sponsor of the 1919 "mud road bill," pro posed that earth roads be considered hard-surface roads since, in many parts of the state, the earth contained suitable gravel—enough to call it a gravel road. The Roads and Highways Committee unanimously rejected the amend ment. In a second move, McCullough proposed to restrict the power of the
21 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 June 1921. 22 Missouri House Journal, 51st General Assembly, 1st Extra Session, 1540-1576 (here inafter cited as House Journal); Missouri Official Manual, 1921-1922, 43, 77, 463; Missouri Senate Journal, 51st General Assembly, 1st Extra Session, 1225; Winona Shannon County Democrat, 15 July 1921; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 29 June 1921. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 59
/
Frisby H. McCullough, a native of Marion County, served as mayor of Edina and prosecuting attorney of Knox County before his election to the Missouri Senate in 1918. [SHSMO 2003.01651
\ /'
highway commission to determine the location of future highways. With this proposal, McCullough sought to protect the plan that he and Morgan had devised in 1919. That plan had arranged for the 6,000 miles to be surveyed as two cross-county roads in each county: one north-to-south, the other east- to-west. In contrast, Ralph's bill allowed the highway commission the flexi bility to adopt the McCullough-Morgan system where it saw fit or to reject it completely. McCullough's successful amendment required the commission to accept the 1919 survey and alter it only where necessary. This reasserted the legislators' power over road placement, ensuring that the predominantly rural representatives protected their constituencies from any chicanery by the urban professionals on the highway commission. Third, William Irwin of central Missouri successfully altered Ralph's bill in regard to commissioners' salaries. The bill eventually passed on July 12, but some observers viewed the amendments as the efforts of a largely beaten minority. It appeared to some that the compromises favored the "hard-road" interests in the Senate, thus the senators in the minority designed amendments to encourage similar efforts by their dirt-road compatriots in the House. Though the Senate hard-road forces held their own in the amendment process, they denied themselves a celebra tion since they expected that the dirt-road-oriented House could still halt road reform.23 As the Senate battled over Ralph's bill, power plays within the House chamber clogged the first days of the session. Unlike the Senate, the House
23 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 29 June, 8, 12 July 1921. 60 Missouri Historical Review had no clear leader. Hard-road advocate Walter Bailey served as chairman of the Roads and Highways Committee. But the Speaker of the House was Samuel O'Fallon, a Republican from Holt County—a moderate county that was split on the road issue. Most of Bailey's committee colleagues were dirt- roaders and disagreed with his vision, thus stymieing the process. In the first two weeks of the special session, several varying highway visions were sub mitted to the Roads and Highways Committee, only one of which was Bailey's. Most reflected the rural dirt-road approach. Many hard-road con stituents condemned the House members for their pork-barrel politics and became concerned that if the House passed a strictly "dirt-road" bill, then a deadlock could ensue between them and the Senate.24 Bailey's committee heard testimony from various constituencies on the issue, but it was the testimony of Speaker O'Fallon that created a stir in the capitol. The dirt-roaders of the House had expected O'Fallon to take their side since he was from rural Holt County. Instead of aligning with either fac tion, the Speaker advocated taking the high road. He scolded his colleagues for spreading false information and for name calling. O'Fallon made sug gestions to the committee that seemed to be compromises, but in the end, they resembled the Senate bill.25 Other voices of compromise in the midst of the factionalism included that of John Malang, the state's former highway superintendent. Malang recom mended a truly statewide system of roads rather than a county system. He denounced cheap and ephemeral clay-bound gravel as "moonshine roads" that solved no problem. Malang argued that the traffic a road would carry should determine the surface material used in its construction. He proposed a system of primary and secondary roads. The busy primary roads made with concrete would cross the state, connecting major population centers. The sec ondary roads, however, given to light traffic, could be built of gravel. Malang's expert testimony seemed to fall on deaf ears as some members cor rupted his vision with their own localist interests. Representative William Elmer of rural Dent County, for example, offered an idea of splitting the $60 million bond issue to accommodate both urban and rural interests. He pro posed that $25 million be appropriated to pay for Malang's primary roads and that $35 million be divided among the remaining counties for a cross-county system of gravel roads.26 Working within this spirit of compromise, Chairman Bailey put his twen ty-one-member committee to work on developing a substitute bill that would
24 House Journal, 1540-1576; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 June 1921.
23 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 June, 2, 6 July 1921; Missouri Official Manual, 1921-1922, 47, 65, 470.
26 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6 July 1921. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 61 capture the best of all the visions presented and that might appeal to the Senate. Like Senator Ralph, Bailey focused the committee's efforts on the issues of money, materials, and the men who would regulate the process. Within these three categories, Bailey charged members to consider the sub stitute bill in terms of eight separate issues. First, they had to determine the manner of designation of roads. The committee agreed by July 8 to settle upon the cross-county highways laid out by the McCullough-Morgan amend ment of 1919. The other seven issues before the committee would pose harsher challenges. They had to find a way to guarantee that every county would get roads. This concerned committee member D. L. Bales since his constituents in Shannon County had been allocated only one road instead of two in the 1919 law. The committee had to define "hard surface road." They had to determine the size, powers, and duties of the state highway commis sion. Along with these weighty questions, the committee considered a refund provision to counties that had already spent local funds constructing roads, a procedure for road maintenance, a fair way to begin construction so that urban counties were not favored over rural ones, and the permission for use of funds by counties.27 Despite tones of compromise in the House, "Act Two" of the heated interplay involved continued factional antagonism between and among the political parties on the road issue. Many outside observers despaired of any resolution. One rural newspaper editor criticized his fellow Missourians as conflicted in their desires. Missouri wants good roads, he stated, but elected a legislature "which seems unwilling to let it have what it wants." He wrote: "Trying to pull a state out of the mud when it doesn't want out seems a com panion stunt to leading a horse to water when it objects to taking a drink. . . . Our Republican friends must either make vast improvement on the old order of things or stand forth as princes as promisers and paupers as performers." Still others called on the governor to take a public stance and assert his influ ence in the proceedings of the special session.28 Governor Hyde saw the road effort crumbling because the legislature could not agree on the key issues. He also needed to appear politically strong in the first months of his administration. Thus, Hyde called a joint session of the assembly on July 11 to deliver a stern message. Though the governor's speech dealt with several topics, he concluded that the legislature's bickering over details was depriving the state of the roads the voters had approved in the election of 1920. He continued:
Ibid., 8 July 1921; Missouri Official Manual, 1921-1922, 82.
Paris Monroe County Appeal, 8 July 1921; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1 July 1921. 62 Missouri Historical Review
The road bond amendment specifies its own purpose. The matter is not open to debate. It does not matter what arguments were used in the cam paign, even our own views are beside the point. ... It is evident from the amendment that a system of roads is desired by the people. No hodge-podge of disconnected and isolated roads would suffice. A division of the fund on any basis is impossible. . . . Such a system cannot be built in a year, nor can a unified system be worked out for the state as a whole, except by some directing head, be that head a commission or otherwise. None of us can foresee or provide for the multitude of intricate details of business adminis tration and of engineering which must necessarily arise. To accomplish the mandate of the people some perpetuating and central head must be entrust ed with the details of construction and of administration. We are each jeal ous of the right of our own county.
This editorial cartoon titled "The Governor Hits the Trail" appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch two days after Hyde's address to the joint session of the General Assembly.
SHSMO 2003.0187 Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 63
It is proper that each county be guaranteed a proper place in the state sys tem. ... It is unthinkable that a state should do otherwise.2'
Despite the governor's entreaty to the legislators to do their duty, the House members plodded along with each hour offering the hope of compro mise or the dejection of failure. For example, after the governor's message, Chairman Bailey and Representative H. Paul Bestor of Pemiscot County desired to expedite the compromise process by simply amending Senator Ralph's bill to comply with the raral interests in the House. By this method, they believed they could be done in two weeks. Their prospects improved when three ruralists joined them on a subcommittee charged with this pur pose. After a day of work and having produced forty amendments to the Ralph bill, the three ruralists voted to abandon the effort and return to the committee substitute bill approach.30 Complicating the matter further, rural representatives, seeking to ensure that their counties received their appropriate share of the road money, flood ed the Roads Committee with apportionment plans. O. B. Whitaker and James Morgan submitted a plan to apportion the road bond funds based on the square root of each county's area. Other House members, including those who agreed with Whitaker and Morgan on fundamental road issues, jokingly dubbed them the "square rooters," and the two withdrew their plan. Hard- road representatives, frustrated with the many apportionment schemes, added "pork-barrelling" to their favorite pejorative, "dirt-roader."31 Four miserable days after Governor Hyde's speech, on July 15, the House Roads Committee finally issued its substitute bill. Unimpressed, Senator Ralph immediately blasted the bill as an insult to the people's mandate. He claimed, first, that they had watered down the definition of a "hard road." Second, they offered the highway commissioners a high salary structure that would attract "hungry political office seekers." Third, they proposed a low salary for the highway engineer that would repel those with experience. Ralph believed the bill to be wrong in every detail, adding: "I will stay in Jefferson City until next summer's sun thaws next winter's snow before I will vote for or consent to the passage of a bill even approximating that reported by the House committee."32
29 Sarah Guitar and Floyd C. Shoemaker, comp. and ed., The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1930), 12:206.
30 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13 July 1921. The three ruralists were James Morgan, W. E. Whitecotton of Monroe County, and O. B. Whitaker of Hickory County. 31 Ibid., 13, 15 July 1921. 32 Ibid., 18 July 1921. 64 Missouri Historical Review
Richard F. Ralph served three terms as prosecuting attorney of St. Louis County prior to his election to the Missouri Senate in 1920. He was reelected to rep resent the Twenty-fifth District in 1924 and 1928. [SHSMO 2003.0166]
Specifically, the House committee bill defined the lowest type of hard road permissible as clay-bound gravel: a definition open to interpretation. Commissioners, under the Senate bill, would receive only ten dollars a day for each day they met. The House substitute bill fixed the commissioners' salary at $2,400 a year. Regarding the highway engineer's salary, the Senate bill specifically left the issue open so that the commissioners would have the freedom to recruit an experienced engineer. The House proposal limited the annual salary to $5,000. Wisconsin, Ralph complained, paid its engineer $7,500 and the small state of Connecticut paid $6,500. The senator saw two further difficulties: the mileage and the location of roads in the highway sys tem. Whereas the Senate called for 6,000 miles of road, the House bill raised the mileage to 7,000. Further, while the Ralph bill left the placement of roads up to the engineering staff, the committee substitute bill specifically posi tioned the routes through each county. To Senator Ralph, this left the new highway plan a collection of county systems rather than a state system.33 While Ralph fumed, dozens of House members began submitting amendments to the committee bill. Senators could only stand by and watch the House slowly deliberate. Making the situation worse was the fact that many House members were enjoying the summer and doing business only three days a week. After seeing such lackluster commitment in the House, the senators passed a resolution calling for adjournment at the end of the month, agreeing that it was better to go home than to pass a weak bill.34
Ibid., 31 July 1921. 34 Jefferson City Daily Capital-News, 21 July 1921; House Journal, 1702-1784; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 July 1921. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 65
The House finally passed an amended bill on July 23, with only twenty- one negative votes. This placed the senators back in the spotlight, and they faced a difficult decision. They could either kill the bill and end the session without passing any road legislation, or they could amend the bill and resub mit it to the House for concurrence. If the House refused to concur, a special conference committee would be convened with three members from the House and three from the Senate. These six would then compromise on the fundamental differences between the two chambers and present a revised bill to each chamber. If either house rejected the committee's compromise, another committee would be appointed, and the process would continue until an agreement was reached or the legislators agreed to adjourn.35 The Senate took up the House bill and began the amendment process the following week. Though it was expected that the Senate would merely resub mit the significant items from the original Ralph bill, the deliberations took on a life of their own. Since any amendments passed by the chamber would play a critical role in the inevitable conference committee, Senator Ralph realized that the hard-road forces in the Senate must hold the line. Ruralist sympathizers such as Frisby McCullough realized this as well and, knowing that the three Senate conferees would be hard-roaders, assisted their compa triots in the House by beating back Ralph's majority as much as possible. Ruralist opposition continued throughout the day on July 26. Late in the afternoon, Senators William Irwin and McCullough engaged in such heated verbal assaults on the issue of apportionment, accusing each other of falsifi cation, that it appeared the two would come to blows. By the end of the next day, Ralph's hard-road forces had weathered the assaults, and the Senate passed the amended House bill, 27 to 5.36 As expected, the House would not assent to the Senate's changes; thus, a conference committee was appointed to iron out the differences. With the committee in place, the brief third act of the session began, and it began well. At the end of the first day of negotiation, the committee had resolved the def inition of a hard-surface road as anything ranging from concrete to properly bound gravel.37 On the second day, the six legislators compromised on the
33 House Journal, 1821; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 22, 27 July 1921.
36 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27 July 1921. One specific loss for the Ralph plan on this day occurred when Senator Howard Gray successfully amended the House's limitation on the engi neer's salary. Ralph had specified no limit; the House limited it to $5,000; and Gray offered a compromise at $7,500. Most legislators assumed that the change would ultimately have been necessary, but by amending it in the Senate, the hard-road forces lost a potential bargaining tool.
37 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27, 28, 31 July 1921; House Journal, 1924, 1934; Laws of Missouri, extra session, 1921 (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Co., 1921), 133-134. The con ference committee consisted of Senators Ralph, Jefferson D. Hostetter, and David M. Proctor as well as Representatives Walter Bailey, D. L. Bales, and O. B. Whitaker. 66 Missouri Historical Review
SHSMO 2003.0188 Daniel Fitzpatrick depicted the fight between the Senate and the House over the definition of a hard road in this July 30, 1921, cartoon, "The Plight of the Road Bill." highway engineer's salary at $7,500 annually. They compromised on a plan similar to John Malang's on the issue of road placement. Each county would receive two cross-county roads, and the 1,500 miles of those roads that con nected the cities would be constructed of concrete. The committee also com promised by limiting the highway commissioners' power. The commissioners could alter the routes only where absolutely necessary. The conferees, how ever, could not agree on the apportionment issue and the time frame for com pleting the road system. How would the $60 million be divided?38 While the conference committee debated, the other legislators sat in the heat and waited in frustration, venting their disappointment on and off the House floor. Ruralist warhorse James Morgan castigated the senators on the committee, adding: "It is proposed by the Senate to give us a fine law, but no
38 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 29, 30, 31 July 1921; Jefferson City Daily Capital-News, 30 July 1921. Pulling Missouri Out of the Mud 67
money to build roads. I am willing to stay here all summer until we get the money for our roads. If we fail, the blame will rest on the Senate." Others packed up and headed home despite Speaker O'Fallon's appeals to wait. Still others offered last-minute compromise deals that more closely resembled horse trading than law making. D. L. Bales of Shannon County, for instance, enjoined the House to pass the Senate bill on the condition that the Senate pass the House bill, then they would send both to the voters in 1922. The House tabled Bales's resolution.39 Finally, on the third day, in an appropriate deus ex machina moment, a mysterious mediator consulted with the committee and somehow brought about an end to the debates. Contemporary accounts disagree whether the behind-the-scenes personality was House Speaker O'Fallon or U.S. Representative Harry Hawes, who had been the driving force behind the road bond in the first place. Either way, the committee concluded that $29 million would go to the so-called "peacock lanes" and $31 million would service the lesser county highways. Each county would also receive one complete cross- county road before any work began on the concrete roads. These crucial compromises signaled to the rural faction that the cities and the "tourist"
39 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 July 1921; Gary, "Road History," 615; House Journal, 1922.
A native of Kentucky, Hairy Hawes moved to St. Louis in 1887. After grad uating from Washington University Law School, he practiced law in the city. Hawes served as president of the Missouri Good Roads Federation and the Federated Roads Council of St. Louis. [SHSMO 2003.0172] 68 Missouri Historical Review
roads would not consume all the money before the counties were addressed. Once settled, the committee recommendations went back to the legislators, where they were passed overwhelmingly in the House and unanimously in the Senate. Thus, the conference committee had done in three days what the entire assembly could not accomplish in seven weeks.40 Whatever forces led the conferees to agree to the final bill, the legislators rejoiced that they could finally adjourn. Both political factions claimed vic tory for their constituents in what was the most expensive extra session in Missouri's history to that point. Representative James Kyle of Ozark County successfully proposed that they name their summer project the "Centennial Road Law" in commemoration of the state's centennial celebration that year.41 Tension from the summer's struggles continued throughout the state, leading one newspaperman to exhort: "Instead of quibbling over how it was done or why it was done, let's get busy on the roads."42 The fact that motorist J. D. Gustin's family would find themselves stuck in a hole on a western Missouri road in the fall after the special session symbolized how the actions taken that summer would see fruition only slowly. But while the business of road building proceeded incrementally over the next decade, the deeper meaning of the road issue began with the final vote. In 1921, Missourians had taken some of their first steps into modernity with a vision of interconnectedness on a state and national level. Both the urban and rural factions of the state had dedicated themselves to valuing efficiency, bureau cracy, and professionalism while negotiating their former antipathies to accommodate the imperatives of modernization. Thus by the end of the 1920s, the "island communities" that had been disintegrating since the late nineteenth century were purposefully dismantled both by the new middle class of progressive reformers and the market-driven farmers of Missouri. By participating in this "second great transformation," both the urbanists and the ruralists confronted their changing modes of living. The struggles over the road issue that culminated in the Centennial Road Law symbolized how both groups would introduce themselves to the new, faster-moving world.
4,1 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 July 1921; March, Histoiy of Missouri, 2: 1333; Gary, "Road History," 615; Ely, Harry B. Hawes, 9; Jefferson City Daily Capital-News, 28 July 1921. Theodore Gary, who would become the first chairman of the highway commission, stated that Speaker O'Fallon influenced the House conferees to accept the compromise on apportionment. Lewis Ely wrote a brief biography of Harry B. Hawes in preparation for Hawes's campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1926. He cites Hawes as the modifier who met with legislative leaders in a private conference and helped them reach a compromise. While Ely's account could be dis missed as campaign propaganda, Hawes did make a special trip to Jefferson City from Washington, D.C., arriving on July 27, the day before the conference committee began deliber ations.
41 Jefferson City Daily Capital-News, 31 July 1921.
42 Paris Monroe County Appeal, 5 August 1921. 69
Members to Vote on Proposed Dues Increase at Annual Meeting
The Society will hold its annual meeting at the Donald W. Reynolds Alumni and Visitor Center on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus on Saturday, October 18. At the business meeting, members will vote on a proposed amendment to the Constitution and Bylaws that will increase most annual membership dues and the life membership fee. Like other state agen cies, the Society has received decreased state appropriations during the past two fiscal years. The reductions have forced the Society to eliminate some staff positions and to cut back programs. The Missouri Historical Review, for example, has been reduced by thirty-two pages in each issue. Costs for such necessities as book purchases, newspaper and journal subscriptions, and microfilming have continued to increase. To help offset the reduced state appropriations, the board of trustees and the executive committee have determined that the membership dues should be increased. The proposed dues structure follows: individual annual, $20; foreign annual, $30; family annual, $30; contributing annual, $50; supporting annual, $100; sustaining annual, $200-$499; patron annual, $500 or more; and life, $1,500. The addition of the foreign annual category reflects the higher postage and handling costs required to send the Missouri Historical Review to foreign addresses. The family annual category has been proposed in response to requests from households in which more than one person wish es to be a member but the household wants to receive only one copy of the journal and newsletter. The Society last increased membership dues in 1991. The proposed dues structure and maintaining or increasing membership will allow officers and staff to augment state appropriations and better fulfill the Society's mission of collecting, preserving, publishing, and making accessible the history of Missouri to the state's citizens and researchers from around the nation.
Something Wrong
Lexington Intelligencer, 28 September 1889
A child who had just mastered her catechism confessed herself disappointed, because, she said, "though I obey the fifth commandment, and honor my papa and mamma, yet my many days are not a bit longer in the land, because I am still put to bed at 7 o'clock." 70
NEWS IN BRIEF
The Society's annual meeting will be held on October 18 in the Reynolds Alumni and Several groups toured the Society's Visitor Center on the University of Missouri- libraries and Art Gallery in May, June, July, Columbia campus. Gary E. Moulton, the edi and August, including attendees of the John tor of the acclaimed thirteen-volume Journals William "Blind" Boone Ragtime and Early of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Jazz Festival, the University of Missouri Scholars Academy, and members of the Sorenson Professor of American History at Missouri State Genealogical Association the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will be annual conference, held in Columbia. the luncheon speaker. His topic will be "The Living Legacies of Lewis and Clark." The day's events will begin with two concurrent workshops open to members and the public. The forty-sixth annual Missouri Blythe Cermak, digitization program manager Conference on History, sponsored by the for the Missouri Library Network Missouri State Archives, will be held in Corporation, will present "Exploring Virtually Jefferson City on April 22-23, 2004. Missouri," focusing on the Virtually Missouri Proposals for sessions and papers related to website, which links collections and databas all facets and eras are welcome. Persons es from an array of cultural and scientific her interested in organizing sessions and present itage institutions. Tim Dollens of the Daniel ing papers should submit an abstract and a Boone Regional Library in Columbia will dis brief curriculum vita to Dr. Shelly Croteau, cuss "Beginning Genealogy: Show Me Style." Program Coordinator, Missouri State This introductory workshop will focus on Archives, P.O. Box 1747, Jefferson City, MO how to begin researching a family history and 65102; or via e-mail at useful forms. The morning business meeting [email protected]. The deadline for and an afternoon open house in the Society's submission is January 13, 2004. quarters following the luncheon address will The conference also seeks nominations for complete the day's activities. its book and article prizes. The book award will be given to the best volume on any his torical topic written by a Missouri resident and published in 2003. Articles eligible for Currently on exhibit in the Art Gallery is nomination must relate to a Missouri history Drawing as Process: Works from the Society's topic and have been published during 2003 Collection. This exhibit features over sixty (no restriction on the residence of the author). drawings and sketches from such artists as The deadline for nominations is January 13, Frank Nuderscher, Fred Shane, Charles 2004. Three copies of each book or article Schwartz, George Caleb Bingham, Charles should be sent to Dr. Shelly Croteau at the Morgenthaler, Daniel Fitzpatrick, and Frank above address. Stack. The exhibit will run through December. The North-South Corridor exhibit is Walter Schroeder, associate professor Commemorating Bill Mauldin: 1921-2003. emeritus of geography at the University of The display highlights editorial cartoons the Missouri-Columbia, received a Certificate of noted World War II cartoonist drew during his Commendation from the American tenure at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Association for State and Local History 1958 to 1962. The display will run through (AASLH) fifty-eighth annual awards program October. The Art Gallery is open 8:30-4:00, for his book Opening the Ozarks: A Historical Monday through Friday. The Corridor Geography of Missouri's Ste. Genevieve Gallery is open 8:00-4:30, Monday through District, 1760-1830. Friday, and 9:00-4:30, Saturday. 71
MISSOURI HISTORY IN NEWSPAPERS
Ash Grove Commonwealth July 30, 2003: "A look back at Ash Grove's past," by Carole Bills.
Ashland Boone County Journal July 2, 2003: "Readin, 'ritin' and 'rithmatic [sic] in Southern Boone's one-room schools," "Retrace the Lewis and Clark Journey through Boone County," and "Locals bring their per spectives to Lewis and Clark bicentennial," all articles by Steve Schnarr.
Branson Tri-Lake Daily News June 12, 2003: "The Spirit of America: The nation's first shopping center," Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, by John Rayburn.
Cahoot Enterprise July 17, 2003: "A history of Faith & Hope Church," Texas County, by Jewel Wagner.
Canton Press-News Journal July 24, 2003: "[John H.] Wood led C[ulver]-S[tockton] through disaster, depression, & war."
Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian July 7, 2003: "A Gift of History: Family donates one-room schoolhouse [Head School] to Scott City."
Carthage Press June 5, 2003: "ALasting Legacy: Bess Truman took on role as First Lady with dignity and integrity," by Glenita Browning.
Centralia Fireside Guard May 28,2003: "A[lbert] Bfishop] Chance: Father of Centralia," by Ethel Mullikin Brinley.
Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune June 30, 2003: "Recordings bring [Harry S.] Truman back to life." July 7: "C[hillicothe] M[iddle] Sfchool] Young Reporters learn history of federal build ing."
Columbia Daily Tribune May 4, 2003: "Nikawa's final journey," William Least Heat-Moon's boat from River Horse. June 8: "Key Discovery," John William "Blind" Boone's piano, by Sara Agnew. June 15: "[Lucile] Bluford blazed trail in civil rights." July 19: "Rural church celebrates 175 years: Old Auxvasse [Presbyterian Church] also recognizes anniversary of 1968 merger," by Liz Heitzman, 72 Missouri Historical Review
Columbia Missourian May 5-9, 2003: Series of articles on 1923 lynching of James Scott, an African-American, in Columbia, by Barton Grover Howe. July 20: "Learning from the Past," about Columbia Cemetery, by Ginger McFarland.
Concordia Concordian July 16, 2003: '"If someone gets into trouble, we are all there to help': Small rural con gregation has survived since the mid-1800s by sticking together," Oak Grove Community Church, Johnson County, by Mel Bockelman; "Old county farm, graveyard information found," in Lafayette County, by Bud Jones.
Cuba Free Press July 3, 2003: "Prosperity Corner returning to Cuba," by Jane Reed.
Dexter Daily Statesman July 1, 2003: "Hard Rock Houses: Buildings made with Missouri red granite remain as vestiges of Depression years," by SamBlackwell.
Elsbeny Democrat July 16, 2003: "Historical marker installed" at Mount Zion Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lincoln County.
Fairfax Forum June 12, 2003: "Students research the history of Dotham," by Ashley Million, Samantha Silkett, Becky Pickard, Ryan Koop, McKale Burke, Sarah Johnson, Michelle Law, Kenny Pinzino, and Tayne Thompson.
Festus Jefferson County Leader June 5, 2003: "13 decades and counting: Mahn & Sons [Plumbing and Heating] is old man of De Soto businesses," by Barbara E. Stefano.
Fulton Sun May 6, 2003: "Trade by river and rail lay foundations of Portland," by Colin E. Suchland. May 18: "Kingdom Notes," construction of Callaway Hospital. June 13: "Students unearth a rare glimpse of Missouri's past," Oak Grove slave quarters in Marshall. July 1: "Once-thriving Steedman now reminder of earlier time," by Colin E. Suchland.
Gainesville Ozark County Times July 30, 2003: "Step back in tune at Rockbridge: Former county seat is home to colorful history."
Glasgow Missourian July 10, 2003: "Chicago and Alton Railway Bridge, Glasgow Missouri - circa 1880."
Hannibal Courier-Post June 3, 2003: "Flying Eagle: 100 years later, a community remembers," centennial of fatal steamboat wreck. Missouri History in Newspapers 73
Holden Image June 5, 2003: "Historic Rock Springs Cemetery receives restoration." July 17: "Local communities [Kingsville and Holden] suffered the wrath of Civil War arguments," by Richard Rodman.
Independence Examiner June 4, 2003: "[William] Ray's Blacksmith Shop," in Raytown. June 7: "The life of Frank James," by James Dornbrook. July 10: "Museum owner [Ron Pastore] says he can prove Jesse James faked death." July 11: "[Harry S.] Truman diary found," by David Tanner. July 23: "Portraits of the Past: Eight feet and rising," Ella Ewing, by Ted Stillwell.
Jamesport Tri-County Weekly June 5, 2003: "Actress Martha Scott Powell Buried at Jamesport."
Jefferson City Catholic Missourian June 20, 2003: "Cole Camp parish [SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church] to celebrate 125th [anniversary]," by Lisa Meyer.
Jefferson City News Tribune May 11, 2003: "History Matters: 2003 marks 100th anniversary of the Jefferson City Art Club," by Gary Kremer. June 8: "History Matters: Dennis Higgins went from Park Board baseball to the major leagues," by Gary Kremer. July 13: "History Matters: Early 20th century business leader Charles C. Carson came to the capital city to run prison factory," by Gary Kremer.
Jefferson City Post-Tribune June 29, 2003: "Liberty hopes history, eclectic shops will lure tourists back"; "How Jefferson City came to be state's capital," by Bob Watson.
*Kansas City Dispatch-Tribune April 30, 2003: "Oldest town in central Missouri [Boonville] offers rich history," by Lysa Allman-Baldwin.
Kansas City Star May 18, 2003: "Jazz legends [Jay McShann and Claude Williams] jam for other players," by Jeffrey Spivak. May 31: "From Union Station to reservoirs, legacy of 1903 flood endures," by Brian Burnes. July 11: "[Harry SJ Truman diary from '47 found," by David Goldstein and Brian Burnes. July 22: Leeds "Community was rich in sharing," by Steve Penn.
Lebanon Daily Record May 23, 2003: "Family tradition," seventy years of business at the Holman-Howe Funeral Home, by Matt Decker.
"Indicates newspapers not received by the State Historical Society. 74 Missouri Historical Review
Liberty Tribune-News July 18, 2003: "History overlooks [John] Dougherty: Historic plantation owner traded with Native Americans," by Quinn O'Brien. July 23: "Multnomah: Tara of the Northland," John Dougherty plantation in Clay County, by Quinn O'Brien.
Lincoln New Era July 3, 2003: "Long History Of Gun Industry In Benton County, MO."
Linn Unterrified Democrat July 30, 2003: "History of Osage County," by Hallie Mantle, reprinted.
Maryville Daily Forum July 23, 2003: "Archaeologists sifting through ancient refuse in McDonald County," Henson Cave, Henson Shelter, and Southview Shelter.
Mexico Ledger June 28, 2003: "New recordings bring [Harry S.] Truman back to life," by Brian Burnes. June 30: "A Brief History [of Audrain County]."
Monett Times June 4, 2003: "Milling around Missouri - a look at Old Red [in Verona] and Jolly Mills [Pierce City]," by Melonie Roberts. June 9: "Milling around Missouri - Edwards Mill," at Point Lookout, by Melonie Roberts.
Nevada Daily Mail July 17, 2003: "Then and Now: D. P. Giboney and Sallie Mayfield brought back to life," by Patrick Brophy.
*Nixa News-Enterprise June 25, 2003: "Chadwick: Town was once an extension for the world famous San Francisco Railroad," by Ron Schott; "Highlandville and Spokane histories intertwined," by Amanda Jones; "Community history: County rivalry helps city grow," Nixa and Ozark; "Ozark: Named for the gently rolling hills that French Canadian trappers called 'aux arcs,'" by Donna Osborn; "Sparta: From tragedy to triumph," by Kathryn Simpson.
Noel McDonald County Press July 30, 2003: "So, What's all the digging about?" at Henson Cave, by Joyce Haynes.
Odessa Odessan July 24, 2003: "Odessa's history tied to railroads, highway"; "Recalling Mowed Sales and the Mustang mower," by Leanna Thompson; "Last stop for 'Puddle Jumper' train [from the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad] was April 14, 1960," by Bud Jones. July 31: "Holt County Created in 1841; Oregon Named County Seat," by Ronnie Stephenson. Missouri History in Newspapers 75
Osceola St. Clair County Courier May 9, 2003: "A Look At History: Woodmen Gravestones," lodge of Woodmen of the World in Taberville and Appleton City.
Palmyra Spectator July 2, 2003: "Taylor Post Office has interesting history," by Frances Griesbaum.
Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic June 10, 2003: "4 members of Lewis & Clark team settled in Cape [Girardeau]," George Drouillard, Alexander Willard, John Ordway, and Reuben Field, by Bryce Chapman.
Richland Mirror June 18, 2003: "Pulaski County courthouse celebrates 100th birthday," by Gordon Warren.
St. James Leader-Journal May 28, 2003: "The Battle of the Hemp Bales, the Anderson House and Wonder Bread," in Lexington.
St. Joseph News-Press May 13, 2003: "Jesse [James] keeps popping up - or does he?" by Ken Newton. May 20: "Covered Bridges: A Link to the Past," near Jackson, Laclede, Paris, and at Sandy Creek. July 6: "Historian [Michael Riggs] hopes to preserve [Charles C. Rich] cabin" in Far West, by Scott Lauck. July 21: "New prison next step in penitentiary's history" in Jefferson City, by Michelle Reagan.
St. Joseph Telegraph July 3, 2003: "Commerce Bank building is 100 years old this month," by Paul A. Stewart m.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 29, 2003: "Reopening of the Eads Bridge: A Bridge to the Past & Future," by Robert W. Duffy.
Ste. Genevieve Herald May 7, 2003: "Louisiana Academy Building Now Belongs to DePaul University," in Ste. Genevieve, by Jean Feld Rissover.
Sedalia Democrat July 13, 2003: "Hurray for Hughesville: Township [in Pettis County] marks 125 years of history," by Chuck Orman.
Springfield Mirror February 14, 2003: "St. Eustachius Parish [Portageville] remembers its history, celebrates centennial," by Julie Pettyjohn. 76 Missouri Historical Review
Springfield News-Leader June 21, 2003: "World's Fair Baby [Louisiana Purchase O'Leary] dies at 100."
Stockton Cedar County Republican July 9, 2003: "Re-enactor [Eldon Steward] does cemetery duty," to honor Confederate sol diers, by Patrick Brophy.
Sweet Springs Herald May 28, 2003: "Immanuel Lutheran church celebrates 125th anniversary."
Trenton Republican-Times May 29, 2003: "State's Historic Jails Give Their Visitors A Glimpse Into The Past," in Independence, Nevada, Farmington, Springfield, East Prairie, and Liberty.
Union Franklin County Watchman June 30, 2003: "Franklin County History: George Hearst," by Sue Cooley. July 7: "Franklin County History: Jacob Clark, Early Teacher, and George Hearst," by Sue Cooley. July 14, 21, 28: "Franklin County History: George Hearst," continued, by Sue Cooley.
Washington Missourian May 21, 2003: "Little Country Church 'Not One to Stand Still,'" Senate Grove Immanuel United Methodist Church's 125th anniversary, by Karen Cernich.
Waynesville KJPW's Old Settlers Gazette July 26, 2003: "Historic [Pulaski County] Courthouse Celebrates 100th Anniversary"; "Piney Lodge [Hunting and Fishing Club] -The Piney Story," in Pulaski County; "Ice Dam On The Big Piney River," by Adlyn Willits; "Pulaski County Memoir," the Albeit Washington Davis family, by Lela (Davis) Duncan; "Old Friendship Baptist Church," in Pulaski County, by Dwight Baranowski; "Thomas J. Zumwalt: Pulaski County Pioneer Preacher," by John Zumwalt; "The [Reuben] Morgan Farm: Missouri's Oldest Farm," in Pulaski County; "Devil's Elbow Revisited," by Gordon Warren; "Some Interesting Pioneers," William Wallace Wade and William Henry Scott; "Pulaski County in 1903," "The Turkey Ridge Fair," Pulaski County, and "The Great Waynesville Bank Robbery," three articles by Gary Knehans; "Miller County's Pioneer Families From Pennsylvania," "Jim Henry - An Early Osage Indian of Miller County," and "History of the Miller County Courthouse," three articles by Peggy Smith Hake; "Excerpts From 'Childhood In The Ozarks,'" by Bland Nixon Pippin.
Webb City Sentinel July 11, 2003: "Lakeside Park: Then and Now," by Jerry Pryor.
West Plains Daily Quill June 3, 2003: "That 'old round building on Washington Avenue' is former haven from the storm," by Marideth Sisco. July 29: "Memoir by W[est] P[lains] man [William Monks] who was guerrilla in Civil War is being reprinted as book," by Allison Skinner. 77
MISSOURI HISTORY IN MAGAZINES
The Adair Historian Summer 2003: "William Wallace Farmer - U.S. Navy," by Faye Pickens Farmer; "Recollections of the Home Front," Kirksville during World War II, by Helen J. Baker; "Memories of World War H," by Mrs. Edward R. (Marietta) Jayne; "Strange Connections," Major Robert Faurot serving in World War II, by Vera Faurot Burk.
Ameren Journal May 2003: "Turning 50: Meramec [plant] Celebrates Five Decades of Generation," in St. Louis.
Big Muddy Volume 3, Issue 1: "Show Me Socialists: Missouri's Early Radical Heritage: 1861-1920," by E. Scott Cracraft.
The Blue & Grey Chronicle June 2003: " T Predicted the Horrors of a Fratricidal War': Brigadier General Daniel Marsh Frost, C.S.A.," by Joanne Chiles Eakin; "The Fall of Memphis: Naval Battle on the Mississippi," reprinted. August 2003: "John William Bellamy," and Missouri Fifth Cavalry Regiment history, by Joanne Chiles Eakin; "Dr. Johnston Lykins: Baptist Missionary, Realtor, Doctor, First Legal Mayor of Kansas City," by Fred L. Lee; "Galvanized Yankees: Or Is That Galvanized Rebels?"; "Second Company A, First Missouri Confederate Infantry: Missouri's Galvanized Yankees"; "The Daily Western Journal of Commerce: Reports on the War in Jackson County," three arti cles by Wayne Schnetzer.
Bonniebrook News Summer 2003: "History of Bear Creek, Part 3," in Taney County, by Robert H. Gibbons.
The Border Bugle, Civil War Round Table of Kansas City May 2003: "General Jo Shelby: The 1863 Missouri Raid, For Glory & Southern Retribution," by David C. Hinze.
Bulletin, Glendale Historical Society June 2003: "The [Erwin and Celeste] Rnoesel House: A 1930s Style House on Devon Road," by Nancy G Hunter.
Bushwhacker Musings, Vernon County Historical Society January 1, 2003: "From Wilson's Creek to Lexington: By Way of Nevada and Big Drywood," by Captain John Wyatt.
Cherry Diamond 2003-2004 Roster: "The Missouri] A[thletic] C[lub]'s Founding Father," Charles Henry Genslinger, by Jim Wilson. 78 Missouri Historical Review
Christian County Historian May 2003: "The Story of Clarence and Roscoe Jones," by John Nixon.
Clay County MOsaic April-May-June 2003: "Early Towns in Clay County: North Kansas City."
CMFA News, Confederate Memorial Friends Association Summer 2003: Mrs. Claiborne Fox Jackson, Martha Price, Molly Jennings, Belle Starr, and Margaret M. E. McClure, "Heroines of the [Civil] War," by Francis Eloise Vaughn.
Collage Of Cape County, Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society June 2003: "Slave Narrative - Betty Abernathy."
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly Spring 2003: "C[oncordia] Publishing] Hfpuse]: The First Fifty Years," by J. Edmund Seuel.
County Lines, Boone County Historical Society July-August 2003: "The Poorhouses of Boone County," by David P. Sapp.
The Despatch, Recreated First U.S. Infantry and Boone's Rangers July/August 2003: "In Search of Sibley's Fort. . ." by Michael D. Harris.
Documentary Editing Spring 2003: Joseph J. Mersman, "A Patient's Point of View: Nineteenth-Century Syphilis Treatment," in St. Louis, by Linda A. Fisher.
The Epistle, First Presbyterian Church of Columbia July 16, 2003: "Minute for History," an early history of women in the church.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review March/April 2003: President of the Reserve Bank of St. Louis "Darryl Francis and the Making of Monetary Policy, 1966-1975," by R. W. Hafer and David C. Wheelock.
Friends of the James Farm Journal February 2003: "Indictment leads to trial of Frank James in Ala[bama]." May 2003: "Interview with Judge James Ross: Jesse's great-grandson offers recollec tions," by Jack "Miles" Ventimiglia.
Gateway Heritage, Missouri Historical Society Spring 2003: "Springfield's Crime of the Century," shoot-out between law officers and brothers Paul, Jennings, and Harry Young, by Darrell Schulz; "Reaction to Liberation: Official Response to the Black Liberation Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri," by Kenneth Jolly; '"Where the Czechs Are Is My Home': Lessons from St. Louis's Other 'Hill,'" by Timothy J. Fox.
German Life June/July 2003: "Hermann, Missouri: Memories of Germany," by Dorothea S. Michelman. Missouri History in Magazines 79
Grundy Gleanings Spring 2003: "Grand River College," in Edinburg, Grundy County, by Loma Hurst; "Clyde Tolson, FBI Associate Director: From Laredo, Missouri, to Washington, D.C."
GSCM Reporter, Genealogical Society of Central Missouri May/June 2003: "Red Rock [Methodist] Church," near Dripping Springs, by Susan Deaver Olberding; Columbia "Christian Church Organized in 1832"; "Missouri United Methodist Church: A Brief History," in Columbia, by Jere DeVilbiss; "The Building of the First Prairie Grove Church," by John F. Wilkinson, reprinted; "The Birth of a Church Named Liberty," in Rocky Ford Township, Boone County, by Bobby D. Bedsworth; "History of Sugar Creek Church," in Boone County, reprinted. July/August 2003: "The History of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, Missouri," by Virginia Botts.
Heritage, Assemblies of God Summer 2003: "The Big Picture from the Long, Long Altar: An Insider's View of the Worldwide Revivaltime Ministry," at Central Bible Institute, Springfield, by Barbara Cavaness; "My Seventeen Years as Revivaltime Speaker: Following in the Footsteps of C. M. Ward," by Dan Betzer.
Historical Footnotes, Concordia Historical Institute Summer 2003: "Lewis & Clark in Perry County, Missouri," by Martin R. Noland.
Historical Journal of Wyandotte County Volume 1, No. 8: "Observations of the Natural History of the Missouri River-Bend by the Coips of Discovery - 1804 and 1806," by F. Cuppage; "Lewis & Clark Voyage to Kaw Point: Villages between St. Louis and Kaw Point"; "1903: The Great Flood: First In A Series On The Flood"; "The Coming of the Steamboat," three articles by Loren L. Taylor. Volume 1, No. 9: "The Great Bend of the Missouri River at the Mouth of the Kansas River: How Did It Appear to Lewis & Clark in 1804?" by Pete Cuppage; "Lewis and Clark: Spanish Intrigue," by Loren L. Taylor.
Indian Awareness Newsletter June 2003: "Forced to March: The Potawatomi passed through central Illinois en route to Kansas reservation," by Doug Pokorski, reprinted; Potawatomi Indians "Trail of Death's impact still strong," by Lou Mumford, reprinted.
Journal of the Douglas County Historical and Genealogical Society Summer 2003: "Moses Lock Alsup - Just How Endurable Was He?" by Catherine (Alsup) Riley; "History of Banking in Douglas County - 1857-1980," by Kenneth Brown; "My Life As I See It - Part 2: Memorable Occasions," growing up in rural northwest Douglas County, by Neil Edward Sagerser.
Journal of Illinois History Spring 2003: "Roswell Field's 'Lights and Shadows,' 1905," by Lewis O. Saum.
Kansas City Genealogist Winter 2003: "Seven of 72 Survive Voyages On Missouri River By Henry Siebens's Commodores: Sand Bars," reprinted; "William Ray or Absalom Wray? Raytown's Founding an 80 Missouri Historical Review
Enigma" and "Charles Esmonde Kearney: Overland Freighter & City Developer," both articles by Fred L. Lee.
Kinsfolks Search, Reynolds County Genealogy and Historical Society June 2003: "Ferby Piles Lewis Mann of Reynolds County, Missouri," by Linda Simpson.
Lawrence County Historical Society Bulletin July 2003: "Those Wonderful Rural One-Room Schools," by Carl Teel; "Backtracking with Claude Kendall," the McCanse family, reprinted.
Mississippi Monitor July 2003: "Lessons of Great Flood of 1993 Forgotten Ten Years Later."
Missouri Life June 2003: "The Jewel [Box] of Forest Park," by Jim Winnerman; "Along the River With Lewis and Clark: Summer 1804," by Brett Dufur.
Missouri Municipal Review June 2003: "The Bridges of University City," by Evelyn Shields-Benford.
Missouri State Genealogical Association Journal Vol. XXm, No. 2, 2003: "Absalom Grimes, of Hannibal, MO., Escapes (1/2)," by Jim Brasher; "The Buchanan County Poor Farms," by Sue Cooley.
Mizzou, MU Alumni Association Summer 2003: Jane Froman, "Preserving the Song in Her Heart," by Chris Blose; "Three- Legged Racer," Tripod, University of Missouri's unofficial mascot, by Gordon E. Parks.
Newsletter, Audrain County Area Genealogical Society Summer 2003: "Capt. [George] Bryson Wounded While 'Bushwacking' [sic] Near Here: Carried Mexico Bullet in Hip 39 Years," reprinted.
Newsletter, Belton Historical Society July 10, 2003: "Apples, Cherries, Oil Wells and Spring Water: William J. Beem Remembers"; "Memories of Belton [black] Neighbors in the Thirties: George Elkins Remembers."
Newsletter, Gasconade County Historical Society Summer 2003: "From Altena to Mt. Sterling: The Journey of Rev. August Rauschenbusch," by Anna Radermacher.
Newsletter, Howard County Genealogical Society July 2003: "It Cannot Was," the settlement of Howard County, by William Clark.
Newsletter, Jefferson County Genealogical Society June 2003: "Collision of [steamboats] The Boonslick and Missouri Belle." Missouri History in Magazines 81
Newsletter, Lincoln County Historical and Archaeological Society Volume 17, Issue 2: "Alexandria (Old Alexandria)"; "Old Alexandria Methodist Church"; "Scraps of County History: The Troy Herald June 28, 1876," reprinted. Volume 17, Issue 3: "Olney (Lost Branch-Nineveh)."
Newsletter, Osage County Historical Society May 2003: "Pfeter] Pfarker] Patterson: Patriarch, Farmer, Adventurer," reprinted.
Newsletter, St. Francois County Historical Society July 2003: "Farmington Childrens Home History and Update."
Newsletter, Sappington-Concord Historical Society Summer 2003: "Our National Cemetery," Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, by Terry L. Rupp.
Newsletter, Scott County Historical and Genealogy Society June 2003: "The Little River Drainage District."
Newsletter, South Central Missouri Genealogical Society April/May/June 2003: "West Plains and the Civil War"; "Lee Hollow" valley, south of Mountain View, by George T. Moore.
Newsletter, Washington Historical Society Spring 2003: '"Cut and Fill' in Downtown Washington," creation of Washington's streets, by George Bocklage.
Newsletter, West Carter County Genealogical Society April, May, June-2003: "Dark Clouds Over Shannon [County]," Joshua Chilton, by Ray H. Weakley, reprinted.
The Newton County Saga Summer 2003: "Traveling by Wagon in the Automotive Age: The Diary of Violet Clark"; "Indians in Newton County," by Harvey Imbeau.
Novinger Renewal News April 2003: "Wild Cat Tales: The History of Novinger High School Basketball, Part 4," by Danny Ellsworth.
Old 'N Newsletter, Randolph County Historical Society April/May/June 2003: "War of 1812 Soldiers buried in Randolph Co, Missouri: Abraham Gooding," by Irgrid Jones.
Our Clay Heritage, Clay County Museum & Historical Society Summer 2003: "Reflections from Pier Glass Mirror," Allen and Missouri Ann Reed, by Kevin M. Fisher.
Ozark Happenings Newsletter, Texas County Missouri Genealogical and Historical Society April/May/June 2003: "The Tuesday Study Club," the Bay View Reading Club. 82 Missouri Historical Review
The Ozarks Mountaineer July 2003: "Harriet Hosmer: Breaking the Mold For Women Artists," by Esther Payne Davis; "Roy Queen: Missouri's Early Country-Western Guru," by Nancy Merz.
Platte County Historical & Genealogical Society Bulletin May-August 2003: "Ghost Towns of Platte County - Part II," Brenner Ridge, Woodruff, Winston, Barry, Union Mills, Ringgold, Stillings, Drydale, Edgerton Junction, and Dye; "Platte County Enlistees in the First Missouri Cavalry Regiment, CSA"; "The day Bonnie and Clyde shot it out with the law in Platte County," by Francis Williams.
The Resume, Historical Society of Polk County July 2003: "First Phones Brought Weather News to Town," by George Hooper.
River Hills Traveler March 2003: "Traveling Into History: Where is the Ozarks, and who was here first?" by Jim Featherston. June 2003: "Traveling Into History: Exploring down Indian trail toward Little Rock," George Featherstonhaugh, first U.S. geologist to study Ozark uplands, 1834, by Jim Featherston. July 2003: "Sauk and Fox moved to Missouri," by Kathleen Brotherton.
The Royal Arch Mason Summer 2003: Trenton Daily News publisher "Ray Vaughn Denslow - A Remarkable Man, Part One," by R. S. Sagar.
Rural Missouri June 2003: "The keeper of [Abe's Country Store museum in] New Lebanon: Memories of tiny village live on thanks to Jeanette Rothgeb Heaton," by Bob McEowen; Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee's 1938 photograph of Pearl Wilson, "The Sharecropper's Wife," of New Madrid, by Jim McCarty. July 2003: "Missouri's generals," John J. Pershing, Maxwell Taylor, and Omar Bradley, by Martin Northway.
St. Charles County Heritage July 2003: "The 1925 Air Show at Cave Spring," by Robert M. Sandfort.
St. Louis Bar Journal Summer 2003: "Widow [Alice] Slayback's Quest for Justice," by Marshall D. Hier.
St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly Spring 2003: "University City: Its First Twenty-Five Years," by C. Edwin Murray.
St. Louis Journalism Review May 2003: "Radio History: Come in, Woody," KMOX radio announcer Woody Klose, by Frank Absher. June 2003: "Radio History: Revealing an innocent age," St. Louis radio station KXOK in 1947, by Frank Absher; "Looking back," the St. Louis Newspaper Guild, by Benjamin Israel. Missouri History in Magazines 83
The Secessionist, Col. Emmett McDonald Camp #1846, Sons of Confederate Veterans July 2003: "Fourth Missouri Cavalry."
The Semaphore, Winston Historical Society July 2003: "Whatever Happened to Cole Younger?"
Show Me Missouri Farm Bureau May 2003: Reuben Morgan family farm in Pulaski County, "Oldest farm in Missouri rich in history," by Chris Fennewald.
Springfield! Magazine June 2003: "Queen City History: [Springfield Public] School's Technical Training Skills Helped Attract Zenith Color TV Plant Here in 1966" and "When TV Was Young: Rountree School Students Taught City's First Course On Satellite Communications Via KTTS-TV, Channel 10," both articles by Robert C. Glazier. July 2003: "Queen City History: Battlefield Mall, Park Central Square Continuing Chapters of Change for City," by Robert C. Glazier.
Waterways Journal July 7, 2003: "Historic World War II Vessel Stops In St. Louis: LST 325 Is Making 'Return' Tour Of Inland Waterways," by H. Nelson Spencer; steamboat "Ste. Genevieve" by Alan L. Bates. July 14, 2003: "Steamboat Regalia," by Alan L. Bates. July 21, 2003: "The Joseph HenrylLouisiana," by Alan L. Bates.
The Waybill, Mid-Missouri Railfans June 2003: "History of the COLT [Columbia Terminal Railroad]," by Christian Johanningmeier, reprinted.
Whistle Stop, Harry S. Truman Library Institute Summer 2003: "Nerves of Steel: Truman vs. The Supreme Court," by Ken Gormley.
Whistle Talk, The St. Louis Railway Enthusiasts June 2003: "Carco Memories," the St. Louis Car Company, by Bill Cordes.
He Needs a New Hobby
Richmond Conservator, October 10, 1889. A Mississippi man who counted the number of seeds in a bushel of various grains found that corn went 72,136; wheat, 832,000; peas, 199,800, and cotton seeds, 164,166. 84
BOOK REVIEWS
Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865. By Harriet C. Frazier (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2001). xii + 324 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95.
Harriet C. Frazier provides insight into slavery in the territorial and state history of Missouri. She draws from an array of archival material to detail the justice system as it evolved from Spanish to American jurisdiction (disre garding French governance for lack of records). She acknowledges that Spanish rale ended Indian enslavement yet otherwise failed to influence slav ery in Missouri. Instead, English common law influenced United States ter ritories and, ultimately, state governments. Unlike Spanish colonial law, for example, territorial lawmakers accommodated slaveholders who feared slave poisoning, assault, and arson. Frazier also reveals the inconsistency between white elites who used the courts to benefit their slaveholding and white crim inals who drew slaves into organized crime. Similarly, Frazier discusses the state government that recognized slavery but denied slaveholders political advantage. Unlike most slave states, the Missouri Constitution neither required lengthy residential or property requirements for legislators nor provided compensation to slaveholders for legally executed slaves. Thus masters paid the court costs of slave criminals, who were tried by juries (white) and, in capital cases, received counsel and penalties (equivalent to whites). This occurred due to federal influence before statehood and enlightened delegates such as attorney and future U.S. Senator David Barton. Despite a semblance of legal justice, black people—slave or free—expe rienced white violence. Generally, masters and whites who beat, even killed, slaves did so with immunity, as jurors refused to enforce state law. Nor were black and mulatto females, the "equivalent of today's battered women," beyond the reach of white males (p. 130). Indeed, Missouri slaves could sue only for their freedom, and free blacks fared poorly before the law. In iden tifying nineteen extralegal slave lynchings between 1850 and 1865, including two females, Frazier challenges the view "that slavery protected blacks from mob rage" until the 1880s (p. 252). While Slavery and Crime in Missouri contributes to better understanding both subjects, it is limited by incomplete and missing records, requiring Frazier to speculate often and narrate every available detail. When the author interprets, she sometimes overstates on the basis of too few cases and dis similar data. Hence she contends that slave mothers who murdered their chil dren have become forgotten among scholars such as Michael P. Johnson, who attributes the demise of most slave babies to sudden infant death syndrome. Book Reviews 85
She cites thirteen cases of violent infanticide (such as drowning and poison ing) in Missouri, while Johnson refers to thousands of deaths solely by suf focation in all slave states. Frazier adopts a singular interpretation, disre garding multicausal explanations by Deborah G. White and others. In sum, Frazier brings attention to important sources and topics, includ ing slave women as perpetrators and victims. She draws on earlier works, especially for the Spanish period, and she compares some of her findings in Missouri with those of other southern states. Frazier tends to be uneven, only occasionally tying slave crime to resistance, nor does she provide an overall thesis or conclusion. Slavery and Crime in Missouri is a beginning point that humanizes the abstraction of law and order in a key border state.
Southwest Missouri State University Dominic J. Capeci, Jr.
Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis. By Harper Barnes (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2001). xiii + 478 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95, cloth; $22.95, paper.
Harper Barnes's ambitious biography of David Rowland Francis chroni cles this distinguished Missourian's ascent to economic, social, and political prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, from "Boy Mayor" of St. Louis to the Governor's Mansion, and from organizer of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to revolutionary Russia. More significantly, it is this latter stage of Francis's career where Barnes focuses the lion's share of his writing skills, striving for a more bal anced and thoughtful revisionist appraisal of the ambassador's long-maligned diplomatic tenure. Instead of a doddering Midwestern greenhorn whose incompetence and naivete helped "lose Russia" to Bolshevism, Barnes pres ents a courageous and sometimes insightful Francis, committed to the Russian people during volatile times and confident that their revolution would ultimately bear democratic fruit. Dividing his work into two sections, Barnes begins with a thorough, witty, and articulate description of Francis's Missouri years. With the pluck and luck of a Horatio Alger character, we see the economic and political mat uration of David Francis as Barnes, the storyteller, traces the development of this complex and shrewd capitalist who never lost his Jeffersonian faith in the principle of equality of opportunity or his penchant for complimenting polit ical realities with economic self-interest. In the second half of the book, Barnes, the revisionist, takes advantage of post-Cold War research opportu nities and changing mindsets regarding American and Soviet relations to elo quently answer Francis's contemporary critics and later generations of schol ars who dismissed the man as wholly unequal to his formidable task. In 86 Missouri Historical Review
attempting to set the record straight, Barnes attributes many of the specious myths, legends, and critiques associated with Francis's time in Russia to the ambassador's fundamental image problem: an unpretentious, plainspoken Missourian who deliberately remained aloof from the niceties and finery of the professional diplomatic corps. There is much to like about this well-researched and well-written winner of the Missouri Conference on History and State Historical Society of Missouri's 2002 book prizes. Students of Missouri and St. Louis history will appreciate Barnes's depiction of the state's social and political elite in the Gilded Age. Likewise, the comparisons drawn between David Francis and Harry Truman, both derided as "accidents of Missouri politics," are thought provoking (p. 408). Although not a historian, Barnes consistently grounds himself in the secondary literature to provide adequate historical context where appropriate. Yet, unfortunately, Francis's own voice is too often silent in the narrative, especially in regard to his personal relationships with men like Grover Cleveland. In fairness, Barnes is more successful making Francis come alive during the Russian years, where the author had more personal cor respondence and the ambassador's memoirs to draw from. Ultimately, although his conclusions sometimes outpace the facts, Barnes presents an evenhanded consideration of David Francis, offering proof that many of the harshest contemporary criticisms of the ambassador, which have since informed much public and scholarly opinion, were actually based on careless hyperbole and factual inaccuracies. And while it appears clear that mistakes were made in the American embassy and Francis consistently mis read the situation in revolutionary Russia, his tenure was after all, as Alexander Bykov, a current Russian historian noted, something akin to '"searching for a gray cat in a dark room'" (p. 413).
Southeast Missouri State University Joel P. Rhodes
Harry Truman and Civil Rights. By Michael R. Gardner (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002). xx + 276 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $35.00.
Michael Gardner's subtitle, Moral Courage and Political Risks, defines the relationship between the president and the modern civil rights movement. In tracing the national political antecedents to the epochal U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, Gardner asserts that Harry Truman's personal convictions regarding the need to replace traditions of racial discrimination with national guarantees of racial equality proved criti cal for launching civil rights as a major force for changing postwar American culture and practices. Gardner maintains that, unlike presidents before and after Truman, the man from Missouri did not respond to pressure groups to Book Reviews 87 utilize the powers of the White House to reverse racism's hold over the nation. Instead, he acted on his own sense of morality and justice, in spite of contrary advice and the weight of traditions, to establish a record only exceeded by Abraham Lincoln in the annals of equality and freedom in America. Indeed, Truman advisers coined "civil rights" as a term to convey the administration's liberal goals. Emancipation was among Lincoln's lega cies; civil rights was among Truman's. Gardner, a communications policy attorney in Washington, D.C. and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Law, developed his interest in Truman's civil rights role while teaching courses in the history of the American presidency. He analyzes speeches, private correspondence and conversations with associates, executive orders that shattered federal segre gation policies, and appointments of like-minded civil rights activists to crit ical and precedent-setting positions to build his case. The most important of these was naming Fred Vinson as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The civil rights rulings of the Vinson court produced the prerequisite legal frame work for the Warren court's Brown decision. Truman appointed Vinson and other justices with these outcomes in mind. In the tradition of David McCullough, Gardner explains the development of public policy in terms of the personal character of Truman. Truman's respect for individual rights and devotion to basic human fairness explain why he used the powers of the presidency to these ends, despite his Missouri border-state heritage and the political obstacles he faced. Indeed, Gardner notes that Truman resorted to executive orders and judicial appointments when his proposals failed to persuade southern racist Democrats and conser vative Republican legislators. Gardner argues that because Truman had the will, he found ways. Gardner's Truman is the antithesis of Bill Berman's civil rights president. Berman's 1970 study of the Truman administration's civil rights efforts (The Politics of Civil. Rights in the Truman Administration) emphasized rhetorical hypocrisy and limited substantive achievements. More recent biographies of Truman tend to recognize both Truman's sympathies with the aspirations of black Americans in the postwar era as well as political pressure for change that no president could ignore. McCullough's biography only hints at what Gardner takes pains to develop. Gardner clearly describes Truman's personal feelings that inclined him to lead in behalf of civil rights. Enthrallment with those feelings, however, blinds Gardner to the compelling pressure of American presidential electoral politics in 1948 and the new Cold War leadership that made national Democrat leaders' deference to southern racists no longer possible. Urban northern black voters were critical for Truman's chances of election in 1948. Jim Crow practices undermined American prestige in the face of Soviet com petition for world leadership. Truman knew both and acted accordingly. In 88 Missouri Historical Review proposing a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), desegregating the armed forces by executive order, and making Supreme Court appointments, Truman no more acted out of a private sense of morali ty than did Lincoln in emancipating slaves. That both did act, however, demonstrates extraordinary leadership with profound subsequent conse quences for the nation. We are indebted to Gardner for reminding us.
Washburn University, Topeka William O. Wagnon
A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960. By Sherry Lamb Schirmer (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002). viii + 261 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95.
Settlement in Kansas City, Missouri, began in 1838, but the antebellum town was unimposing. The post-Civil War development of the city as a com mercial and transportation center brought rapid population growth and terri torial expansion. In many respects, by the 1870s, Kansas City had taken on the characteristics of a boomtown. The expanding population pushed south from the Missouri River, carving out residential neighborhoods and business districts. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the social structure for white Kansas City residents remained relatively fluid. Lower- level clerical and professional workers could aspire to solid middle-class sta tus and respectability. Nevertheless, the demographics of this growing pop ulation brought instability to neighborhoods and conflict over space. Class differentiation among white residents led to efforts to differentiate residential space for the various levels in the class hierarchy. The African Americans' presence became a complicating factor. They composed a sizable component of the new inhabitants, and their increasing numbers made African Americans a significant force in white efforts to establish homoge neous residential spaces in keeping with class status. The competition for liv ing space brought class, racial, and gender issues into play. Sherry Lamb Schirmer's study focuses on white racial thought, but sources generated by whites were inadequate for accomplishing her purpose. Consequently, she faced and acknowledged the paradox that to examine "white racial mentali ties," she often had to rely on "blacks to tell whites' story" (p. 7). With the expansion of African American residential areas during the 1920s, Kansas City experienced increased racial conflict. By the end of the decade, racism had become institutionalized, and Kansas City became a seg regated city. Schirmer, however, did not see this development as an inevitable result of racism. "Racial segmentation in Kansas City," she said, "was an expedient" (p. 120). In her opinion, whites resorted to segregation, which she termed "racialism," as a way to achieve "stable property values, well-ordered streetscapes, and staid rectitude" (p. 121). She acknowledged Book Reviews 89 that the end result was the exclusion of African Americans from "some of the most fundamental benefits of membership in civil society" (p. 121). The final three chapters explore the response of African Americans to segregation, their efforts to open race relations to public debate, and their methods of attacking the system of institutionalized racism. This section con tains an interesting and useful discussion of the small group of white activists who joined blacks in the straggle during and after World War II. Schirmer's interpretation of the African American experience, however, is somewhat simplistic. She ignores the role of African American national ism in the development of the black church, the black press, and black polit ical organization. She sees the development of black cultural institutions as primarily a way to challenge segregation. She also finds racism among most whites as relatively benign. Schirmer holds that the chief proponents of seg regation were "well-intentioned civic housekeepers,... officials and 'friends' who aimed for an orderly community, not a beloved one, and who were will ing to bargain away justice merely to avoid conflict" (p. 211). Nevertheless, students of urban history will find this work an interesting case study of class and gender as they relate to race relations in Kansas City, a twentieth-century metropolis.
University of Missouri-Columbia Arvarh E. Strickland
Letter "E" Is Important
Hannibal Labor Press, January 29, 1916 Some one has advanced the opinion that the letter "e" is the most unfortunate character in the English alphabet, because it is always out of cash, forever in debt, never out of danger, and in hell all the time. But we call his attention to the fact that "e" is never in war and always in peace. It is the beginning of existence, the commencement of ease and the end of trouble. Without it there would be no meal, no life and no heaven. It is the center of honesty, makes love perfect and without it, there would be no editors, devils, no news.
Tired of Questions
Carthage Peoples Press, January 27, 1876 An old fellow in Trenton got his ear boxed by a mule kicking him, and he was continu ously annoyed by his friends asking him what had happened to him, so he got a large card and had printed on it - "Got a bust in the snoot by a mule. This is written for benefit of jackasses." 90
BOOK NOTES
Bushwhacker Jail Tales: One Hundred Years of Fact and Fancy from The Old Vernon County Jail (1860-1960). (Nevada, MO: Vernon County Historical Society, 2002). 50 pp. Illustrations. $5.00, plus $1.50 shipping, paper.
After an introductory essay outlining the jail's history, the creators of this booklet use excerpts from the Nevada Daily Mail and the Vernon County Historical Society newsletter, Bushwhacker Musings, to tell the tales of Nevada's oldest surviving building. Often featured in the news accounts are the sheriffs who served, and a list of those who held that office is supplied. Line drawings and a layout of the jail and grounds illustrate the story of this humble structure. The publication can be ordered by contacting the Vernon County Historical Society, 231 North Main Street, Nevada, MO 64772.
Lake of the Ozarks: Vintage Vacation Paradise. By H. Dwight Weaver (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2002). 126 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. $19.99, plus $5.00 shipping, paper.
A companion to the author's previous work, Lake of the Ozarks: The Early Years, this volume focuses on the towns and businesses that helped cre ate one of the top vacation spots in the Midwest. Chapters are organized geo graphically by the towns surrounding the lake, beginning at Eldon and end ing with Warsaw. Snapshots and postcard reproductions provide a nostalgic glimpse of white middle-class America at their leisure from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Waltus Watkins & His Mill. By Ann M. Sligar (Lawson, MO: Watkins Mill Association, 2002). 125 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95, plus $3.50 ship ping, paper.
Despite its unique value as the only surviving 1860s woolen mill in America, this is the first book published about the Watkins Mill State Historic Site. The author, who served as the site's director for twenty-two years, pro vides brief essays on the history of weaving and wool production, as well as the Watkins family and other individuals who shaped the mill enterprise. Beautiful photographs portray the site and the intriguing weaving machinery that remains there today despite the mill's closure in 1898. To order, contact the Watkins Mill Association, 26600 Park Road North, Lawson, MO 64062.
Germantown, Missouri, and St. Ludger Church, 1833-2002. By Donna Book Notes 91
Koch Talbott (Montrose, MO: author, 2002). 52 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $10.00, plus $3.00 shipping, paper.
In addition to early parish and community histories, much of the research used in this publication is gleaned from the National Register nomination that won St. Ludger Church its designation as a historic site in 1998. Founded by immigrants from Westphalia, Germany, in the early nineteenth century, Germantown, in Henry County, suffered a decline when it was bypassed by the railroad in 1870, but St. Ludger Church opened a parochial school in 1953 and held mass until 1990. A roster of pastors, a list of items donated to the church, a brief biography of the church's architect, Henry W Brinkman, and the National Register application's architectural description of the church are included. The volume can be ordered from the author at Route 3, Box 156A, Montrose MO 64770.
Just Leave the Dishes. By Sue Gerard (Columbia, MO: Whip-Poor-Will Books, 2002). 347 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.00, plus $3.00 shipping.
Like the column she writes for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Gerard's sec ond book combines personal and cultural history with folk wisdom and good advice. In addition to chapters on growing up in Boone County and teaching at Columbia College, she relates her experiences bicycling across China, Canada, Samoa, and other foreign lands with humor and compassion. Gerard's books can be ordered through her website at < www. granny snotes .com>.
Quantritt's Thieves. By Joseph K. Houts, Jr. (Kansas City, MO: Truman Publishing Company, 2002). 293 pp. Illustrations. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95 + 7% tax for Missouri residents, plus $4.50 shipping.
In 1862 after a battle between federal soldiers and Quantrill's raiders at Pleasant Hill, Union officers discovered a muster roll of the guerrilla force and made two copies. One reached the hands of Major Thomas W. Houts, Company A, Missouri State Militia. Using the roster as a guide, the author, a descendant of the major, developed biographical sketches of William Clarke Quantrill and the ninety-three individuals who signed on to fight with him prior to the 1862 battle, including William H. Gregg, John Jarrette, and George Todd. To order, contact Truman Publishing, 218 Delaware, Suite #303, Kansas City MO 64105. 92 Missouri Historical Review
The Steamboat Idlewild, by Fred Geary Trace the Rivers of Missouri History The State Historical Society of Missouri collects, preserves, makes accessible, and publishes material relating to the history of Missouri and the Middle West. Its extensive collections of books, newspapers, journals, maps, manuscripts, and photo graphs are open to the public. An art gallery features rotating exhibits with selected paintings by George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton on permanent display. Memberships further the mission of the State Historical Society. They provide funds to purchase books, preserve newspapers, and publish materials. Each member receives annually four issues of the Missouri Historical Review and a quarterly newsletter. The State Historical Society is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization. Gifts of cash or property to the Society are deductible for federal income, estate, and gift tax purposes. For further information about gifts or bequests contact James W. Goodrich, Executive Director.
Individual annual membership $10 Contributing annual membership $25 Supporting annual membership $50 Sustaining annual membership $100-$499 Patron annual membership $500 or more Life membership $250
Memberships may be sent to State Historical Society of Missouri 1020 Lowry Street Columbia, MO 65201-7298 WITH PEN OR CRAYON ...
Experimental television stations began operating in the United States in the late 1930s, and the first commercially sponsored broadcasts aired in 1941. World War II halted the expansion of the infant industry when the government banned the commercial production of television equipment. The manufacture of televisions recommenced following the end of the war, and the number of television stations climbed. By 1948 twenty-seven stations oper ated in eighteen cities throughout the nation. KSD-TV began operations in St. Louis on February 8, 1947. Missouri's second television station, WDAF-TV, went on the air on October 16, 1949. In 1948, the year that Daniel Fitzpatrick drew "Haunting Hollywood," Americans owned 350,000 television sets, and almost 10 percent of the population, primarily in the East, viewed programs from their homes. The Texaco Star Theater, starring Milton Berle, and the Original Amateur Hour, which had originated on radio, enthralled viewers. Other forms of entertainment, including sports and the movie, radio, and theater industries, feared the impact of the new medium. Moviemakers began creating films for television, on one occasion working simultaneously on three productions. Yet, the 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves drew huge crowds despite being broadcast on television. St. Louis viewers watched the World Series and other KSD sports offerings such as local wrestling and the St. Louis Flyers hockey games in 1948. Evening programming included productions by local organizations such as the City Art Museum, Howdy Doody, newsreels, movies, and It's A Hit, a quiz show. For those in the market for a television, advertisers in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offered sets that ranged from $99.50 for a portable with a three-inch screen to $299.50 for a cabinet model with a twelve-inch screen. One deluxe model contained three entertainment media—television, radio, and phonograph. "Haunting Hollywood" appeared in the October 11, 1948, Post-Dispatch. -••.. . • -. :••; -.-.••• •:•••• • •• ••-. : •
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