On January 16
the Volstead Act, or 18th Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States, became law. No alcohol consumption.
The trouble started in 1862 when President Lincoln taxed
liquor to raise money for the Civil War, thus making it
legal. During President Grant's scandals the liquor
people played a part, making the early Dries mad, with good
reason. Making decisions while drunk doesn't always
work out.
Since most
teachers were ladies, and ladies didn't drink, children were
taught in the school that alcohol led to sin, or worse.
The Dries became numerous, especially in the rural areas,
Methodists followed closely by the Baptists, were the most
radical anti-alcohol. It became a duel between the
country and the large urban mentality, or between the few
and the many, being inspired by Lenin, who did it with 1,000
followers.
Because of
compromises the law was as full of holes as a "No Hunting"
sign. First, the three groups that opposed liquor got
to keep theirs. The clergy got its wine, industry
still produced industrial grade alcohol, doctors and
pharmacists had access. A patient could be prescribed
a pint of good whiskey every ten days, it would prove to be
financially lucrative for all three.
Legally, a
person could buy the contraband but no one could sell it.
Sears sold mail-order stills that produced a gallon a day
for $7. The Dries got their opportunity with the
Declaration of War in 1917. Because it took food to
make beer, wine, and other spirits, the manufacturing of
these commodities was temporarily suspended until the end of
war. The Dries and the people whose job it was to
enforce the law naively thought that because Americans were,
for the most part, law abiding citizens it was just assumed
that everyone would just stop drinking because everybody
would comply, only 1,500 Federal agents were hired to
regulate 110,000,000 people, many of them hard-core
alcoholics. The groups that supported the law 110%
were the Ku Klux Klan and guys like Al Capone, the Dries
were now in league with the devil.
The men coming
home for the war were asked to vote on Prohibition, and the
voted over 90% against it.
Fairmount Park
opened on May 16, a cloudy, cool day. Too cold to
swim, with "New Attractions Galore" and "No Advance in
Prices."
Fairmount's
new attractions were the "Maggie Murphy" and the "Double
Whirl." Electric Parks crowds were huge, between
25,000 and 30,000. Both Electric and Fairmount turned
to Vaudeville. That was a sign of good financial times
for the parks. Every couple of weeks the acts would
change, mostly changing lady dancers. Called, "The
Fairmount Revue," a company of eleven headed by Earl Flynn
and Eddie McLaughlin. They played the winning season
dancing at the Orpheum theater where they were regulars, all
vaudeville. There were two shows a day on weekends,
5:30 and 8:15, weekdays at 8:15.
The bathing
beach opened on Memorial Day, George McMinn was Mr.
Carlisle's manager. He slept on a cot on the second floor,
above the men's dressing room, in the winter he also worked
at the Orpheum, a member of Local 31 Stagehands, living
above the men's dressing room. New sand, diving boards, and
bathing suits awaited. New picnic tables, ovens, and
free ice water.
There would be
many picnics, some planned, some not, some large, some
small.
The following
was found in the Missouri Valley Room of the Kansas City
Public Library. The author is unknown.
<<<insert>>>
Al Carlisle
tells me that he remembers some of these people.
They were still added in the late twenties. The rides,
from time to time, changed their name, or with a different
coat of paint, could be called, "new," but many were new.
Like the new Mountain Speedway ("Goes a Mile a Minute!").
The rain on
the Fourth of July caused the giant, patriotic fireworks
display to be postponed until July 17. On August 8,
the Standard Oil of Sugar Creek refinery held the first of
many annual picnics at Fairmount Park, "The Home of
Picnics." Picnics, large and small, was the park's
bread and butter. The largest was the Grocers' Picnic,
over 30,000 came for the goodies. All the stores
closed at noon. After a parade of forty bands and
floats downtown, trolleys were boarded for the ride to the
picnic.
Labor Day
weekend was special in those days of unrest. Inflation
was bad, unemployment was rising, the farmers' goods were no
longer needed in Europe, so prices dropped. To bring an end
to Fairmount's most successful season, the park had the
coolest Labor Day of Labor Days. Both the labor unions
and the Kansas City American Legion posts met at Fairmount,
the latter celebrating its second anniversary after being
born in France.
After the two
parades downtown, almost every trolley in town headed for
Fairmount Park, loaded, and so were some of the people, as
Prohibition was already breaking down. Motorists were
asked to volunteer to drive the disabled veterans out to the
park. Leading the parade from the Great Lakes Naval
Base was the Great Lakes Naval Band. Pershing's own
band from Camp Funston, i. e., Fort Riley, Kansas, followed.
Fairmount furnished several bands, and at the park they
would all play from Tuesday till Sunday, many playing at the
same time, till Sunday, September 12, the last day of the
park's season.
Awaiting them
at the park were some Army toys. One jumbo and two
baby tanks, four 75mm "3-inch cannons," the same kind used
by Captain Harry Truman and his boys, machine guns, and
several tons of Army issued pyrotechnics. Tanks were set up,
two for the twenty-six tank men, drivers and mechanics.
There was a mess tent and a medical tent with a doctor, a
captain. The commander o the the First Battalion,
Third Regiment, Major E. W. Slusher, recon ordered the area
for the huge firefight. The tanks and grunts attacked
the machine guns, who were well dug in. The machine
guns also did a live fire, no one was hurt. The Navy
took over the lake, blowing things up including some fish.
Some Marines demonstrated a rescue mission, a recreation of
"Night in Flanders, pistol flares, rockets, signal bombs,
cannons, and small arms luminated the lake. When it
was all over, manager Sam Benjamin was off to the East Coast
to buy new park stuff for 1921.
Location,
location, location, that's what the area just to the Kansas
City side of Fairmount Park was. By 1920 businesses
stretched west on both sides of the Independence road for
over a quarter of a mile, and there was Mt. Washington just
to the west of that.
Among the
businesses were several grocery stores, meat markets, cafes,
a garage specializing in Ford automobiles, a livery stand
(cab stand), two drug stores, two hardware stores, a
furniture store, a jewelry and optical store, a dry goods
store, two coal yards, feed store, a lumber yard, a new
motion picture theater, two barber shops, a real estate
office, and in Mt. Washington, a bank called "The Commercial
State Bank," the working capital was said to be $14,000.
The president was said to be M. J. Halpin, and whoever W. M.
Halpin was, he was embezzling the money.
Technology
that would soon change the way entertainment is enjoyed had
its infancy at the home of G. S. Turner, Kansas and Pearl
street, Independence. On a snowy night, January 13,
about a dozen men met and formed "The Real Radio League of
Independence." Among the members were Virgil J.
McElroy. He was elected the secretary. They
fiddled with a receiver and picked up signals from amateurs
in Texas, Minnesota, Yonkers, NY, St. Mary's, Ohio, and
Roswell, New Mexico.
Also in
January the water in Independence started to taste a little
oily. Standard was sued by the Independence Water
Works, pumping the water directly out of the river a mile
downstream. Standard's argument was that the water
didn't belong just to the Water Works and if it couldn't
drop its goodies in the Missouri River it would have to
close, leaving 1,500 men without work, depriving the
community of $200,000 a month in wages, depriving the world
of 3,500,000 barrels of gasoline a year, and an investment
of two and a half million dollars. A few weeks later,
Standard was found to be the problem. But the real
problem was taking the water directly out of the river.
Liberty, Missouri, just to the north, had no problem.
They had aquifers. Since 2/3 of the water in a river
flows underground, only slower. In December Standard
agreed to pay to relocate the Independence water intake
upstream or pipe its pollutants downstream. The county
finally agreed to allow Standard to put in a pipeline
upstream.
A dry, hot
summer up north dropped the level of the Missouri River four
feet, below the intake of the Independence water company.
Independence's ten thousand residents went without water for
three days. A deal was worked out with nasty old
Standard Oil, whose intake was still below the water level
of the river. Standard, which had an excess of water,
pumped its water into the Independence pipeline using its
own labor and cost, saving Independence from becoming a
ghost town.
Standard also
paid to give adult citizens of Sugar Creek the opportunity
to go back to school. About sixty people signed up to attend
night school, Tuesday and Friday evenings in the Riverview
School. Professor Harry Andrews from Northeast High
School was hired by the Sugar Creek Board of Education.
He was experienced in teaching the foreign-born the three
"R's" and English. Many of the students had been
highly educated in Europe and needed to work on their
English. G. C. Chandler, a clerk at the refinery, was
also a teacher. The motivation for many was to learn
the language, important if you wanted to become a citizen.
For some time,
the people of Sugar Creek, the village, wanted to become the
City of Sugar Creek, meeting every Monday evening in the
hall above the bank building. They were the Sugar
Creek Improvement Association. On July 10, two
attorneys had two different opinions as to whether it could
be pulled off. One of them said no, because this area
is too close to a first class city, Kansas City. John
F. Thice, city counsel for Independence, said, "No problem."
First, Kansas City is not only a first-class city, it isn't
even a second-class city. A few working days later,
Attorney Thice, acting on behalf of the citizens of Sugar
Creek, filed incorporation papers with the county court.
Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek wasn't the only
village/community that wanted to become a city. Many
like Gilpen Town, Little Santa Fe, Courtney, Cement City,
Fairmount, Mt. Washington, Maywood, Englewood, Wayne City,
the list goes on and on, never made it. Standard Oil
was worth a huge amount of money. Sugar Creek was
falling apart. It needed improvements like sewers,
running water, electricity, there were a lot of outhouses,
the streets would wash out and Standard was tired of paying.
The solution was, let the residents pay part of it.
The refinery's tax money would come in handy. The
refinery wasn't going anywhere; gasoline was in.
On November
14, the county court granted the petition for incorporation.
Mayor for eight more years was H. R. Baughman, a supervisor
at the refinery. City Clerk and Collector A. D.
Woolridge, Marshal William Ginhart; Alderman First Ward,
Frank Woodward; Alderman for the Second Ward would have been
William Hollis, Jr., but he passed away at the Independence
Sanitarium a couple of days before and was replaced by
George Evenger. Third ward Alderman, Edward Lynn.
Fourth Ward was F. H. Frisbey. Frank Ainsworth
was the Treasurer. The first order of business was
gambling. A petition was presented, signed by 165
local women who wanted all gambling outlawed, including
punch boards, which were still legal in Independence.
No gambling on pool, no booze, no cards. That's going
to change. Money was a problem. There wasn't
any, as taxes weren't due until April. No one would be
paid. The Board also appointed Frank Berkhart Police
Judge; Dr. Charles E. Nixon, City Physician; City Attorney,
Mr. Thice, of course. Regular elections will be held
in April.
In December,
Standard Oil employees were allowed to invest in a stock
plan. For every dollar they invested, the company
kicked in a buck towards the purchase of common stock, and
give them voting privileges. Buying a share might take
a while, though, as the stock was $400 for one share.
Just before
Christmas, Sugar Creek's River View School's $75,000
addition was opened to the public. The bond was
originally $50,000 but it wasn't enough to finish the job,
so they voted another $40,000, and were able to bring it in
at $75,000. Entertainment was furnished by the
students in the new 1,000 seat auditorium. Four
classrooms, offices, and a gymnasium in the basement; it
also connected to the first building. It will be open
to the students after the holidays. The school employs
ten teachers, led by F. M. Stephens, formerly of the Blue
Springs School District.
