Memory Monday: First Week of May 1918
by meep
No disease news today — as per usual, most of the stories in the May 3, 1918 paper relate to World War I.
But let’s start out with something non-war-related.
THOSE YOUNG UNS SURE ARE RUDE
This little bit made me laugh:
Guys, that’s from 100 years ago. Yeah, let’s not get too misty-eyed about the “good old days”.
Heck, go back to what Dickens had to write in Martin Chuzzlewit, or Mark Twain wrote in his many books…. Americans have generally had a reputation of being a bit crude, rude, and unrefined in the mass. For over a hundred years. And even Americans complaining about it.
That said, what it likely is happening is that the writer is getting old, and sees every slight as related to his age. He may have been pushy himself as a young man, but as he wasn’t on the receiving end (as he’d be able to push back), he ignored it.
THE TAMMANY DEMOCRATS STILL GOING STRONG
I mentioned a little bit of the wryness in last week’s post, and this Republican-linked newspaper keeps digging at the state Democrats:
I went to look it up: Tammany Hall wasn’t dissolved until 1967. I assume it had been in decline well before then, and according to the wiki article, it was essentially FDR who got it pushed down. None of the Roosevelts were much for Tammany. Evidently, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the people who got it quashed in the 1950s, when the corrupt organization tried to come back.
Evidently, Charles Murphy, the Tammany boss during this period, tried to keep a low profile (with his hands on as much power as he could get away with.)
AMERICAN SOCIALISM IS A GERMAN PLOT?
Don’t take my word for it… take Samuel Gompers’s – the founder of the AFL: (later merged to become AFL-CIO)
That’s a bit different.
ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA FROM GERMANY
Just to let you know where the war stood at this point: the Germans were trying to make a last push in Europe in 1918 – Russia was out of the war (due to the Soviet revolution, partly) and the U.S. wasn’t at full strength in the field early on in 1918.
The Germans were trying to win something so they could get the war over before Americans did get fully in the war… because pretty much it was a foregone conclusion once America was all in. All the other countries involved were essentially exhausted – the amount of young men, specifically, killed in the war was so devastating, and then there were the huge amounts of money involved.
So anyway, here is a German politician’s bright idea: make America pay.
He was correct. Only America would be able to afford to pay. We were the ones not wiped out by the war.
But we weren’t willing to pay much post-WWI for anything, and even Cal Coolidge called in the money from the UK in the 1920s for the loans they took out before the U.S. entered.
BUY BONDS AND SPRAY YOUR TREES
A little more crass commercialism tied to the war effort.
MORE WAR LOANS AND SAVINGS STAMPS
THIS IS WHAT COUNTS FOR HUMOR
There was this letter run on the front page. I will excerpt only the last bit.
I guess you had to be there.
