Memory Monday: Third Week of June 1918 -- BUY WAR SAVINGS STAMPS
by meep
Well, it looks like the perennial “BUY WAR SAVINGS STAMPS” is back again. (No, no particularly suspicious deaths, either)
They weren’t about subtlety in their propaganda.
PENSION CONTENT
So, remember – this is 1918, over 50 years after the end of the Civil War. The veterans of that war were likely mostly over age 72 by this point, or near to it…. or dead. Most likely of all.
Smoot became better known for his co-sponsored tariff bill over a decade later.
Evidently, Reed Smoot had some other political stances which led to some doggerel by Ogden Nash:
Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverend occiput.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l__ns,
Smite h_p and th_gh,
We’ll all be Kansas
By and by….Nash, Ogden (January 11, 1930), “Invocation”, The New Yorker: 30.
Always picking on Kansas. tsk tsk.
HAPPENINGS
I haven’t shown a huge amount of these in prior posts, but there’s about two pages worth of “happenings” from localities — there’s a Croton Falls happenings, and I believe these are from Brewster:
Think of it like the Facebook status updates of its time. Minus cute cat pics.
In many ways, the society of 100 years ago wasn’t all that different. June was associated with weddings and graduations.
They had to deal with car thieves:
and don’t you remember the famous UWANTA brand?
Okay, maybe not.
REGISTERING WOMEN TO VOTE
There were several voter registration drives once women were given the vote. It’s interesting to see the tally by party:
Note the Socialist count at the bottom….and the Prohibition count. BOOOOOOO
The Republican v. Democrat difference is not surprising, any more than a ratio the other way would be surprising in New York now.
PAY YOUR DAMN PHONE BILL ON TIME
I think we’re going to get a lecture each week from the phone company.
OLD-FASHIONED REPORTING
So I just clipped out parts of some stories, just because they read so odd to us today…
That is an awful lot of detail on the laundry operations.
No problem with editorializing (as it were) in front-page stories (and a bit of an odd choice for front page… but when you look at HAPPENINGS again, you see this may be a bit more exciting.)
Chocolate Fund? Hmmmm.
Anyway, even though I haven’t seen what I’m looking for yet, I have found a lot of things I hadn’t expected.
