City Fights Socialists

THE PLAIN DEALER . SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 1998 5-D OUR CENTURY 1919 AT A GLANCE Prohibition star ts r un on saloons City fights Saturday, May 24, was the busiest day in the history of Ohio saloons and liquor stores. Drinkers lined up three and four deep at bars. Others trudged home with cases of liquor. National Prohibition would not take effect Socialists until 1920, but the amendment to the Ohio Constitution passed in November 1918 took effect May 27, 1919. Only a handful of saloons Cleveland not immune bought a special license allowing them to open on the final Monday, the 26th. to Red Scare of 1919 The law closed 6,000 saloons statewide, of and red flags. The main column, led which 1,200 were in Cleveland, as were 13 by Ruthenberg, left Socialist head- breweries. About half of the saloons planned By Fred McGunagle quarters at 1222 Prospect Ave., and to reopen serving food and soft drinks and Europe was in chaos and the tur- marched along Prospect and E. 9th about half of the breweries continued to make moil was spreading to America. St. It had just turned east on Euclid “near beer.” Still, nearly 3,000 Clevelanders were thrown out of work. In Russia, Communists had seized Ave. — the band was playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” — when a But another industry sprang into being — control of St. Petersburg as the war group of soldiers and ex-soldiers bootlegging. Contrary to popular mythology, it was ending, but elsewhere they still never was illegal to drink in Ohio. State law, battled remnants of the “white” charged the group and tried to grab like the federal Volstead Act, banned only sale army. The countryside was lawless, the red flags. and manufacture of spirituous liquor (federal plundered by marauders such as Police waded in, using nightsticks law added transportation). “God’s Army.” on the marchers and their attackers. · In Versailles, the victorious Allies The vanguard of the parade contin- were redrawing the map of Europe — ued to Public Square, where a Lib- One thing led to another: Orris P. and Man- and demanding harsh German repar- erty Bond rally was scheduled for tis J. Van Sweringen, reclusive bachelor ations that would lead to another war later in the afternoon, and was at- brothers, needed a streetcar line to serve their in 20 years. In Hungary, Bela Kun’s tacked by the crowd when marchers popular Shaker Heights real estate develop- Communist government was be- tried to put red flags on the dais. Po- ment. In seeking a right of way through Kings- lice broke up the fighting with horses bury Run, they sieged by “Cech, Roumanian and Serbo-French” troops. In Munich, and Army tanks that had been bought the brought in for the Liberty Bond rally. Nickel Plate “Bolsehviki” murdered hostages and Railroad and quickly were executed themselves. In Fights also were breaking out along soon added Latvia, the “Lettish” provisional gov- all the parade route and in other other railroad ernment was overthrown by Balto- parts of the city. A crowd stormed So- German troops. An illustration, probably from 1917, of Charles Ruthenberg in the Cleveland properties. cialist headquarters and wrecked it; Leader. In New York, postal authorities in- police made no arrests. At E. 9th St. Now they and Woodland Ave., a policeman shot needed a down- tercepted 16 bombs mailed to government officials and bankers. And in and killed 17-year-old Samuel Pearl- town railroad- man. Rapid Transit Cleveland, Charles Ruthenberg an- terminal. In nounced a mammoth Socialist- More violence broke out in the eve- January 1919, Communist parade for May 1, 1919 — ning. Onlookers and police broke up a Cleveland vot- May Day. May Day parade at W. 25th St. and Police estimated there were 5,000 PD FILE ers approved a In part, the parade would protest Lorain Ave., injuring six. A crowd Union Terminal the 10-year sentence given in Cleve- stormed a Socialist meeting at 2115 The Van Sweringen under an office- Lorain Ave. and, The Plain Dealer re- people in the four parade groups, brothers, M.J. and O.P. land’s Federal District Court to Eu- retail-hotel gene Debs, the Socialist presidential ported, “routed the reds and then complex, in- candidate, for an anti-draft speech in flew an American flag from one of the all led by marchers carrying cluding a 14- Canton the previous year. Four windows while the crowd below story tower topped by a 50-foot cupola. groups of marchers would converge cheered.” At E. 89th St. and Buckeye When the Terminal Tower opened in 1930, it on Public Square, where they would Rd., a police lieutenant suffered a American and red flags. was 38 stories taller. be addressed by Ruthenberg, a per- fractured skull; police fired into a · ennial Socialist candidate for mayor mob and killed Joseph Ivanyi, 38. and other offices who had thrown in When the day ended, two were On Sept. 15, pioneering air-mail pilot Eddie with the Bolshevik wing of the party. dead, 200 were injured and 120 were Gardner landed his biplane to refuel at Cleve- sentenced to 30 days in the work- Police used autos borrowed from the He only recently was out of jail for in jail. house and told they would be de- Loyal Americans League to follow up land’s “postage stamp” airport in Woodland anti-war activities. Hills Park. In Police Court the next day, it ported upon their release if they were clues. They were told to arrest any- When he tried to take off, he suddenly real- Police estimated there were 5,000 turned out that nearly all of the arres- not citizens. body found around “haunts of radicals” who could not give an account ized he would not clear the houses on Parkhill people in the four parade groups, all tees were foreign-born, and many Police Chief Frank Smith immedi- of his business in Cleveland. Ave. The plane hit the roof of one house; its led by marchers carrying American could not speak English. Most were ately announced a ban on open-air engine came loose and went through the roof meetings by Socialists, and City “If there is no way of securing a of another house, where it exploded, setting Council passed an ordinance banning conviction against these radicals,” fire to both houses and blowing out windows the display of red flags, even though on the street. the mayor said, “there are other ways the U.S. Justice Department warned Gardner was only slightly bruised. He gath- of making them realize that Cleve- ered up what was left of his 350- pound mail- that cities no longer had wartime land is not a healthy place for such bag, regaled reporters in interviews and powers to suppress dissent. people.” walked back to the airport to get another Chief Smith announced that the The same night Davis’ house was plane. He wasn’t as lucky the following year. city was looking into purchasing bombed, a bomb damaged the home While performing stunts before a crowd of some tanks of its own. “Tanks cut so of Attorney General A. Mitchell 10,000 in Holdredge, Neb., he failed to pull out wide a swath and strike such terror Palmer in Washington. The attorney of a tailspin and crashed for the last time. He that they scatter a crowd quicker general immediately ordered that was 32 years old. than a policeman on horseback “haunts of the anarchists, radical rev- But his 1919 crash had after-effects in swinging a club,” he said. olutionists and their sympathizers are Cleveland. That night, it started a discussion A Plain Dealer editorial said the to be combed from end to end of the on City Council, which led to the opening in country.” It was the beginning of 1925 of what is now Cleveland Hopkins Inter- ban on open-air meetings “is ap- plauded by every law-respecting citi- what would go down in history as the national Airport. Red Scare. Most plane flights didn’t end in crashes, zen,” but added that the “revolution- however. The first nonstop flight from Cleve- ists” had done one service: “They When Warren G. Harding became land to Washington ended safely after two exposed the deadly fangs of bolshe- president in 1921, he released Debs hours, 58 minutes, for an average speed of vism and put the city on its guard.” from prison. Debs denounced the 117.5 mph. The plane was made by Cleve- Some readers agreed. One wrote Communists who had split his Social- land’s Glenn L. Martin Co., which was to move that “if the red flag stands for anar- ist Party. Ruthenburg became execu- to Baltimore in 1929. chy and revolution, the police should tive secretary of the American Com- · have prohibited its display in public munist Party. He, journalist John Thursday, law or no law.” Reed and activist Bill Haywood are Babe Ruth cost a manager his job in 1919. It the only Americans interred in the was July 18, and the Indians had taken a 7-3 PLAIN DEALER FILE Gradually, calm returned. But on walls of the Kremlin. lead over the Boston Red Sox in the eighth in- June 3, a bomb exploded at the home Eugene Debs, second from left, with his wife, at left, Mrs. Theodore Debs, ning at League Park. But the Red Sox loaded of Mayor Harry L. Davis, who had McGunagle is a Cleveland free- the bases with pitcher-outfielder Ruth next at Theodore Debs and Catherine Debs.

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