September 8, 1920. The start of Air Mail

On this day in 1920, the U.S. Post Office inaugurated Air Mail in the United STates with early morning flights taking off from New Jersey and San Francisco, ultimately bound for the other location, and with distribution stops and refueling stops along the way.  Cheyenne was one of the cities on their flight path.

As the Cheyenne paper noted, unusually spelling it out, the reason for the numerous stops was that the Airco DH4 airplanes dedicated to the project didn't carry sufficient fuel not to make numerous stops.  The DH4 was a British designed World War One bomber which the US had ordered in sufficient numbers to make the United States the largest customer for the aircraft. After the war they were placed into mail service, which they'd continue to perform up until 1932.  Indeed, as late as that year the US seriously considered purchasing an updated variant.

On the same day an Italian crises continued as the Italian Regency of Carnaro, effectively declaring Fiume to be a city state, was proclaimed by Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet and wartime Italian army officer.  The move sought to formalize the Italian control over the city of mixed ethnicity but went beyond that in the formation of a proto fascist state.  It's independence would be more formalized the following year, but would be brief, as it followed a treaty with Italy that sought to incorporate it within the Kingdom of Italy. That effort lead to a brief war which Italy obviously won.

And this peaceful photograph was taken.

Y.M.C.A. Island & playground, Lynchburg Virginia.

September 6, 1920. Miske v. Dempsey

 Dempsey - Miske heavyweight championship fight, Labor Day, Sept. 6, 1920, Benton Harbor, Mich.

Dempsey knocked Miske out in the third round, the only time Miske suffered that fate in his professional boxing career.  It was the first boxing match broadcast on radio.

Miske died of Bright's disease in 1923.  He fought a final boxing match only shortly before that, even though he knew that the disease was fatal and about to take his life.

August 29, 1920. Visitors

 

James M. Cox (1870-1957) at the Police Field Day Games which were held on August 29, 1920 at Gravesend Race Track at Gravesend, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City.

August 27, 1920. Recalling Plymouth Rock.

Three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims, Provincetown, Mass., August 27, 1920

 

August 26, 1920. Summer Camp boat exercises at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

 

August 22, 1920. The club picnic.

 

August 18, 1920 The 19th Amendment Ratified

Which meant that universal suffrage now included women.  Tennessee, "the Volunteer State", brought the amendment over the bar.

It was a close vote, passing by a margin of four, and only after some last minute changes in position came about.

Which shows, I suppose, that people, and by that we can suppose that to principally be men, were still not fully convinced that women should vote.  On the same day, North Carolina declined to pass the amendment.

Given the monumental nature of the 19th Amendment, a person could be justified in believing that its passage was the only think on people's minds that day, but of course that view would be wrong.  On the same day the fate of Poland remained in the headlines, and very much in the minds of Polish Americans as well.

Joseph P. Tumulty addressing crowd of American citizens of Polish birth or extraction, who called at the White House to present resolutions to President Wilson asking him to continue the present national policy in support of Polish independence.

Polish Americans wanted the US to do something about the fate of Poland, but there was really little the country could in fact do.  Proposed military interventions had been considered by the UK and France, but Weimar Germany had blocked them. Therefore, the 1st Division, pictured below, didn't have to worry about imminent deployment.

1st Division, Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.  August 18, 1920.

August 13, 1920. Working in the mill and the Pan African Flag.

Esmond Mills, Esmond, R.I.  August 13, 1920.

On this day in 1920 the Pan African flag was adopted by Garveyist organizations meeting in New York City.

The flag was in reaction to an anti black song that had lampooned the lack of a flag, as odd as that may seem, representing black causes.  The flag became influential in that it is not only still used for black causes, but became the basis of some national flags in Africa.

In Poland, Soviet troops advanced within 20 miles of Warsaw.

August 10, 1920. Turkey and the Blues

Panoramic view of Lake Fairlee from Quinibeck Lookout,  August 10, 1920.

On this day in 1920 Mamie Smith recorded Crazy Blues, which would go on to be the first blues recording in American musical history to cross over the racial divide and be a general musical hit.

Mamie Smith

Smith would go on to have a short but successful blues career, but after her retirement from music things did not go as well.  She died penniless in 1946 at age 55 and was buried in an unmarked grave in New York City.  A gravestone was finally erected after a campaign to have one installed in 2012.

The Ottoman government signed the Treaty of Sevres in which they agreed to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, recognize Greek and Italian claims to Anatolian domains, and grant Armenia independence.

Signed outside of Paris, the Ottoman government was already fighting a revolt from Ataturk and therefor the treaty would never really come into full effect in the way envisioned.  Those parts of that would more or less be carried out were in those areas where the Allied already controlled Ottoman domains outside of Anatolia.

Regarded as an example of outrageous overreach by the Allies today, the treat wasn't completely without its merits.  The release of non Ottoman territories in Arabia, if only into mandates that were effectively European colonies, did recognize that those areas should eventually be independant, even though they definitely were not at the time.  Achieving a free Kurdistan and Armenia would have been a real achievement, the former of which has never occured and which continues to plague the region today.  Greek claims to the Anatolian mainland grossly overreached, however, and doomed any chance of acceptance of the treaty, which in turn doomed Armenian and Kurdish independence.

Photographed on this day in 1920, with "US" service lapel pins, campaign ribbons, Nurses service pin, and overseas stripes.  Still really don't know what more is here, but something is as it was a news photograph.

The Big Picture. Nashville Terminal, 1905.

Nashville terminal, 1905

July 31, 1920. Sojourns

Bearpaw Mountains, Montana.  July 31, 1920.  Viewing scenes like this before the widespread introduction of the automobile was a fairly involved endeavor.  After the automobile. . . not so much.

The hottest month of the year was coming on, and people were getting out in automobiles, still a new innovation in 1920.

And accordingly still being celebrated on the cover of magazines.

In a hot region of the United States, the U.S. border with Mexico, Laredo, Nuevo Laredo and Ft. McIntosh found themselves being photographed.

Cities of Laredo Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. July 31, 1920.

Fort McIntosh, Texas, 1920.  This post dated to 1849 and was named after a U.S. Army officer of the Mexican War.  It's now part of the Laredo Community College.

At the same time it looked like the Mexican conflict in Lower California was cooling down.

Worried about the male casualty rate of the Great War, France banned every type of contraceptive.  Part of that concern was founded in the fact that France's pre war birth rate was at 2.5 children per woman, which is statistical replacement, not growth. France had slipped below replacement during the war, and it never returned to it, pointing out something that I discussed in another post here earlier this past week.

Communism continued its bloody rise as lands went over to it and others hoped to take lands into it.  Byelorussia saw the formation of a local Communist Party on this day following the recent occupation of Minsk by the Red Army. The Communist Party remains strong there to this day.  In the UK, the Communist Party of Great Britain was formed.  It reached its high water mark in 1946 with 60,000 members, but fell so low that it disbanded in 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union.

It is now completely impossible to view the shift away from an agrarian society. . .

Experimental farm, Willson North Dakota.  1914.

as anything other than a tragic mistake, at best.

We've exchanged a life outdoors and close to nature for one indoors that's artificial.  We've lost our connection with nature in its real, and often not always kind, but always existentially beneficial, sense.  We've lost our connection with other animals in the same way.  In the process, we've made ourselves increasingly physically and mentally ill.  We know that, and in struggling to deal with it, we're moving in the opposite direction.

We've forgotten who are neighbors are.  We don't found real bonds of love with anyone.  We've forgotten what a community really is, as we don't live in them.  We have no connection with the place or the land.  We don't understand ourselves as creatures.  We're obsessed with money even when we claim we aren't.

The past was certainly not perfect by any measure.  And the present certainly isn't.  This year, 2020, has been a disaster.  A horrible pandemic that originated in the densely packed cities of China spread rapidly through the densely packed cities of the rest of the globe, and while we struggle to deal with it, the best we can come up with is to hide indoors.

Perhaps it's time to really reconsider what "progress" is, and where we're progressing to.

July 14, 1920 Summer camp.

A few of the boys for summer school, arriving at Naval Training Station, Naval Base, Hampton Roads, Va., July 14, 1920

Youth summer camps are something I'm wholly unfamiliar with as I never went to one as a kid, and I never knew any other kids who did either.

How about you?

The Big Picture: Stockyards.

South Omaha, Nebraska.  1908.

Same stockyard, September 1916.

Omaha stockyards, 1914.

Kansas City, 1909

Kansas City, 1907.

Union stockyards, Chicago.  September 1907.

Union stockyards, Chicago.  1899.

Union stockyards, Atlanta Georgia.  January 2, 1909.

Related threads:

Friday Farming: Denver Stockyards, 1939.

Cowgirls at the Pendleton Round Up, 1911

July 3, 1920. Gorgas and Georgism

Portland, Maine.  Fire Department No. 1.  July 3, 1920.

Portland, Maine, Fire Department, #2, July 3, 1920

The Surgeon General of the U.S. Army during World War One died on this day in 1920.  He was 65 years old.

William C. Gorgas.

Gorgas was an interesting character.  The son of a northern born Confederate Civil War officer, he had joined the Army as a physician in 1880.  In the Army, he'd become a specialist in tropical diseases, surviving a bout with yellow fever himself.  

His experiences in tropical areas lead him to become a Georgist, a fairly difficult to grasp economic theory which holds that a "Land Value Tax" is somehow the cure for all of society's ills.  The theory had some well known adherents, including Winston Churchill and William F. Buckley.

Connecticut College, July 3, 1920

Gorgas was 65 when he died.  He fits into a certain pattern for men who have endured the stress of command in war. They die soon after the conflicts have concluded.  An examination of the lives of officers from the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two, pretty clearly demonstrate that trend.

The Big Picture. American Indians, California. 1916.

June 9, 1920. In Memorium.

Fort Worth, Texas.  June 9, 1920.

Fort Worth was the subject of wide lenses on this day in 1920.

I've been to Fort Wort and this looks sort of familiar today, but I'm not familiar enough to really comment on it.  Is anyone who stops in here familiar with the town?

War memorials Council appointed by the Secty. of War as an advisory group for consultation with the War Dept. in matters respecting the deposition of overseas dead.

In the US the council appointed by the Secretary of War dealing with overseas war dead had their photograph taken.  In the UK, on the same day, the Imperial War Museum opened.  It is one of the greatest military museums in the world.

Mid Week At Work: The shipbuilders.

We ran this photograph yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: June 2, 1920. Ships and faraway places.:

June 2, 1920. Ships and faraway places.

Workmen posing before the launch of the USS Neches, Boston Navy Yard, June 2, 1920.  The ship was an oiler that would serve for 22 years until sunk by the Japanese submarine I-72 on January 23, 1942.

This photo is a truly remarkable photograph of the men associated with the building of a ship.  Highly detailed, and capturing them in their everyday clothes.

June 2, 1920. Ships and faraway places.

Workmen posing before the launch of the USS Neches, Boston Navy Yard, June 2, 1920.  The ship was an oiler that would serve for 22 years until sunk by the Japanese submarine I-72 on January 23, 1942.

On the same day a Shia revolt commenced in Iraq.  Known as the Great Iraqi Revolt, the revolution would run its course for months before the British were able to put it down.  The British would deploy aircraft using air delivered poisonous gas during the war and at least 8,000 Iraqi lives were lost during the conflict, as well as 500 British lives.

The United States Congress rejected the proposal that the country engage in a League of Nations mandate over Armenia.