1919 – The Year in Review
by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, January 3, 2020.
1919 should have been a year of recovery. The Great War was over, soldiers and sailors were returning home, the austerity of life – food and coal shortages – should have come to an end. And yet, there were changes in society that proved to be fast and troubling to many people. Exeter did its best to ride the waves of change.
After the war, it was clear that motorization was changing everyday life. In January, the Exeter and Hampton Street Railway announced it would stop running the streetcars from Exeter to Hampton Beach. Although the service was losing money and ridership was down, the public outcry prevented termination for a few more years. Several plans were floated to save the street railway, including public ownership, but with so many automobiles on the road, it was eventually impossible to keep the system running. The proposed shutdown in 1919 was like the ghost of Christmas future.
There were still deaths due to Spanish Influenza in the early months of 1919. Both Flora Stanley and her infant son succumbed to the illness. These would be some of the last to lose their lives to this outbreak, but in another foreshadowing of the future, six-year-old Harold Shaw died of polio after having been sick for only one day.
National prohibition passed through both houses of Congress in January. New Hampshire was already dry thanks to wartime prohibition (and this would be extended for the period before national prohibition would take place in January of 1920). There was little commentary in the news about the banning of liquor. Anheuser -Busch advertised “Bevo – The Beverage,” a non-alcoholic malt beverage with the tag line: “Bevo is classified by the U.S. Government as a soft drink!”
The McLane Restaurant on Water Street was sold to Bretschneider & Greene, who reopened it as the White House Café. The business would flourish during the following decades. Exeter citizens still suffered from coal shortages as a holdover from the war. Many turned to burning wood for heat. Some also began using coke as a fuel source. McReel Coal Company advertised “We Have Otto Coke.”
Of the countries devastated by war, Americans took special interest in the needs of Armenia and Syria. Exeter exceeded its collection goal, donating $1400.00 to the cause. Public interest quickly turned to a ‘Drive for Starving Jews’ spearheaded by the small, but local, Jewish residents.
In March, the nation began to debate whether to become partners in the League of Nations. Informational debates were held in Boston at Symphony Hall and in Exeter at Phillips Church (then called the Academy Chapel). Should the United States become embroiled in this – foreign – organization? President Wilson, still in Europe, supported the idea, but many Americans were suspicious. There was so much change already happening at home. Support for Women’s suffrage was gaining strength. Exeter’s Equal Suffrage League held that women’s work during the war had proved them capable of participation. Editor John Templeton drafted a promo for the silent film, “Oh, You Women.” “It may have been fine for the women of the country to take the positions held by the men while they served in the Great War and helped make the world safe to live in, but it is all wrong for them to keep these positions when their heroes come back home. So firmly did they believe in those principles that they made a photoplay based on that theme.” The film, sadly lost to time, played at the Ioka one month before the amendment went to the states. The advertisement was most likely proofread and typeset by Ella Gilman Templeton, the editor’s working wife.
Far from being a period of recovery, 1919 proved to be perilous for workers. Wages were kept low bringing on strikes that became violent. Anarchist mail bombs sent fear throughout the public. “This country is no place for terrorists. It is to be hoped that all responsible for the bomb plot against men of official or business prominence, discovered non too soon, may be detected and justly punished,” affirmed the News-Letter.
Spring came late, with April beginning snowy and cold. In May, word reached Exeter that Margaret Fuller, who had divested herself of her husband Edward Eliot several years earlier, was working at the Paris Peace convention as secretary. It was a small thread, but somehow the town felt there was local participation in world events.
The American Legion organized Pingree Post No. 26 at the county records building in August. “Following a quite general custom, the post is named for the first Exeter man to fall in the Great War.” Corporal Almon Pingree had been killed in action in France in April of 1918. Thirty-five men immediately joined the organization – by September there were over one hundred.
The two largest taxpayers in Exeter in 1919 were Phillips Exeter Academy and the Exeter Masonic Association.
New Hampshire ratified the Susan B. Anthony amendment on September 10th ensuring that Exeter’s women would help choose the next president.
Mira Richards, who used the pen name “Morgan” to write her political dispatches from Washington D.C., was the first to raise alarm after it was reported that the president had taken ill in October. The dispatch from the White House called it the President’s “indisposition.” Richards wrote, “There are many alarming rumors as to the President’s nervous and mental condition, but whether or not they are exaggerated is not known as he is so closely guarded by physicians and family.” A week later, official word was, “the news from the president’s bedside seems daily more gratifying.” But Richards, ear to the ground, wrote, “Nothing is known in detail of the President’s illness except that he will be forced to remain in bed without any work or care of any sort for an ‘extended period.’ The official statements tell but little and the air is full of disquieting rumors. In Washington, all regard the illness of the president as far more serious than had been made public.” She was, of course, right. President Wilson had suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered. Without his lobbying, the League of Nations debate faltered. The presidency ended the year in a state of suspension. Wilson made no public appearances. Senators were sent to his bedchamber to gauge his mental fitness, but were unable to agree on his condition.
As the year came to a close, social, political and economic uncertainty loomed large. Just before Christmas, the News-Letter reported that 249 anarchists – presumed anarchists, really – were placed on board a US Army transportship and deported out of the country. With the economy in flux, the presidency in a constitutional crisis and immigration laws being used as law enforcement, the nation was ill at ease as the new decade – to be forever known as ‘roaring twenties’- began.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Paul Bretschneider (seen here on a parade float) opened his White House Café in 1919. The public sensed that big changes were on the way – prohibition of alcohol, votes for women, increased mechanization – and the year ended with fears of foreign terrorism and a president gravely ill.
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, January 3, 2020.
1919 should have been a year of recovery. The Great War was over, soldiers and sailors were returning home, the austerity of life – food and coal shortages – should have come to an end. And yet, there were changes in society that proved to be fast and troubling to many people. Exeter did its best to ride the waves of change.
There were still deaths due to Spanish Influenza in the early months of 1919. Both Flora Stanley and her infant son succumbed to the illness. These would be some of the last to lose their lives to this outbreak, but in another foreshadowing of the future, six-year-old Harold Shaw died of polio after having been sick for only one day.
National prohibition passed through both houses of Congress in January. New Hampshire was already dry thanks to wartime prohibition (and this would be extended for the period before national prohibition would take place in January of 1920). There was little commentary in the news about the banning of liquor. Anheuser -Busch advertised “Bevo – The Beverage,” a non-alcoholic malt beverage with the tag line: “Bevo is classified by the U.S. Government as a soft drink!”
The McLane Restaurant on Water Street was sold to Bretschneider & Greene, who reopened it as the White House Café. The business would flourish during the following decades. Exeter citizens still suffered from coal shortages as a holdover from the war. Many turned to burning wood for heat. Some also began using coke as a fuel source. McReel Coal Company advertised “We Have Otto Coke.”
Of the countries devastated by war, Americans took special interest in the needs of Armenia and Syria. Exeter exceeded its collection goal, donating $1400.00 to the cause. Public interest quickly turned to a ‘Drive for Starving Jews’ spearheaded by the small, but local, Jewish residents.
In March, the nation began to debate whether to become partners in the League of Nations. Informational debates were held in Boston at Symphony Hall and in Exeter at Phillips Church (then called the Academy Chapel). Should the United States become embroiled in this – foreign – organization? President Wilson, still in Europe, supported the idea, but many Americans were suspicious. There was so much change already happening at home. Support for Women’s suffrage was gaining strength. Exeter’s Equal Suffrage League held that women’s work during the war had proved them capable of participation. Editor John Templeton drafted a promo for the silent film, “Oh, You Women.” “It may have been fine for the women of the country to take the positions held by the men while they served in the Great War and helped make the world safe to live in, but it is all wrong for them to keep these positions when their heroes come back home. So firmly did they believe in those principles that they made a photoplay based on that theme.” The film, sadly lost to time, played at the Ioka one month before the amendment went to the states. The advertisement was most likely proofread and typeset by Ella Gilman Templeton, the editor’s working wife.
Far from being a period of recovery, 1919 proved to be perilous for workers. Wages were kept low bringing on strikes that became violent. Anarchist mail bombs sent fear throughout the public. “This country is no place for terrorists. It is to be hoped that all responsible for the bomb plot against men of official or business prominence, discovered non too soon, may be detected and justly punished,” affirmed the News-Letter.
Spring came late, with April beginning snowy and cold. In May, word reached Exeter that Margaret Fuller, who had divested herself of her husband Edward Eliot several years earlier, was working at the Paris Peace convention as secretary. It was a small thread, but somehow the town felt there was local participation in world events.
The American Legion organized Pingree Post No. 26 at the county records building in August. “Following a quite general custom, the post is named for the first Exeter man to fall in the Great War.” Corporal Almon Pingree had been killed in action in France in April of 1918. Thirty-five men immediately joined the organization – by September there were over one hundred.
The two largest taxpayers in Exeter in 1919 were Phillips Exeter Academy and the Exeter Masonic Association.
New Hampshire ratified the Susan B. Anthony amendment on September 10th ensuring that Exeter’s women would help choose the next president.
Mira Richards, who used the pen name “Morgan” to write her political dispatches from Washington D.C., was the first to raise alarm after it was reported that the president had taken ill in October. The dispatch from the White House called it the President’s “indisposition.” Richards wrote, “There are many alarming rumors as to the President’s nervous and mental condition, but whether or not they are exaggerated is not known as he is so closely guarded by physicians and family.” A week later, official word was, “the news from the president’s bedside seems daily more gratifying.” But Richards, ear to the ground, wrote, “Nothing is known in detail of the President’s illness except that he will be forced to remain in bed without any work or care of any sort for an ‘extended period.’ The official statements tell but little and the air is full of disquieting rumors. In Washington, all regard the illness of the president as far more serious than had been made public.” She was, of course, right. President Wilson had suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered. Without his lobbying, the League of Nations debate faltered. The presidency ended the year in a state of suspension. Wilson made no public appearances. Senators were sent to his bedchamber to gauge his mental fitness, but were unable to agree on his condition.
As the year came to a close, social, political and economic uncertainty loomed large. Just before Christmas, the News-Letter reported that 249 anarchists – presumed anarchists, really – were placed on board a US Army transportship and deported out of the country. With the economy in flux, the presidency in a constitutional crisis and immigration laws being used as law enforcement, the nation was ill at ease as the new decade – to be forever known as ‘roaring twenties’- began.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Paul Bretschneider (seen here on a parade float) opened his White House Café in 1919. The public sensed that big changes were on the way – prohibition of alcohol, votes for women, increased mechanization – and the year ended with fears of foreign terrorism and a president gravely ill.
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