Chicago History | Summer 1989

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John W. eonsidine. Jr. presents

·_RUDOLPH .YALENTINO "Tl\e Son of the Sheik 11

a Sequel toThe Sheik'

VILMA BAN KY

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Addpt~ to the Sc,,•cr

GEORGE FITZMAURICE

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PRODUCTION

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CHICAGO HrsTORY-

____T_h_e_M_agazine of the Chicago Historical Socie~---

EDITOR

Summer 1989

R USSELL LEWLS

Volume XVIII, Number 2

ASSOClATE EDITOR

M EG Moss ASSISTANT ED ITORS ALEli\ ZAK M ARGARET WEI.5H

CONTENTS

DESIGNER

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ot Only a Game GERALD

DESIGN ASSISTANT

TED GIBBS

R. GEMS

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On Their Own Terms: Mass Culture and the Working-Class World

J AY CR,\\l'FORD

LIZABETH COHEN

PHOTOGRAPHY

EDITORlAL INTERN R-\CI I EL

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Banding Together CLARK BALKER

Copniglu 1989 by the Chicago 11 istorical Societ~ Clark Street at ;-,.;onh Al'enue Chicago, IL fi0ti l I

ISSN 0272-85.J0 Article, appearing in this journal are abstraeted and indexed in H1Jloncal Ab,tracts and Ammca: 1-fotory and Ujf. Footnoted manuscripts of the articles appearing in this issue are al'ailab le from the Chicago Historical Society\ Publications Office.

Col'er: Postn- ji-r11n the film The Son of the Sheik ( 1926). Hilly Rose Thratre Co/lectwn, The Sew >iirk Public 1-,hra') al Lmcoln Genin; ,\\Im; /,nwx and 71/den

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DEPARTME TS 3 60

From the Editor Yesterday's City

Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS Philip W. Hummer, Treasurer Philip D. Block III, Chairman Mrs. Newton N. Minow, Secretary W. Paul Krauss, Vice-Chairman Stewart S. Dixon, Immediate Past Chairman Richard H. Needham, Vice-Chairman Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director

TRUSTEES WilliamJ. McDonough Philip D. Block III Robert Meers Laurence Booth Mrs. Newton N. Minow Mrs. Em melt Dedmon Richard H. Needham Stewart S. Dixon Philip W. Hummer Potter Palmer Edgar D.Jannotta Bryan S. Reid,Jr. Philip E. Kelley Edward Byron Smith,Jr. W. Paul Krauss Dempsey J. Travis Mrs. Brooks McCormick John R. Walter Mrs. Abra Prentice Wilkin

LIFE TRUSTEES Bowen Blair John T. McCutcheon,Jr. Andrew Mc ally III Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Gardner H. Stem Theodore Tieken

HONORARY TRUSTEES Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chicago William C. Bartholomay, President, Chicago Park District

The Chicago Historical Society is a privately endowed institution devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and selected areas of American history.

It must look to its members and friends for continuing financial support. Contributions Lo the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts.

Membership Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's goals and activities. Classes of annual me mbership and dues are as fo llows: Individual, $30; Family, $35; Student/Senior Citizen, $25. Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; a quarterly newsletter, Past-Times; a quarterly Calendar listing Society programs; invitations to special events; free admission to the building at all times; reserved seats at films and concerts in our auditorium; and a JO percent discount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store.

Hours The Museum is open daily from 9:30 A.M . to 4:30 P.M .; Sunday from 12:00 NOON to 5:00 P.M . The Library and Manuscripts Collection are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 A .M. to 4:30 P.M. All other research collections are o pen by appointment. The Society is closed on Christmas, ew Year's, and Thanksgiving days.

Education and Public Programs Guided tours, slide lectures, gallery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from preschool through senior citizen , are offered.

Admission Fees for Nonmembers Adults, $1.50; Children (6-1 7), 50¢; Senior Citizens, 50¢. Admission is free on Mondays.

Chicago Historical Society

Clark Street at North Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60614

312-642-4600

FROM THE EDITOR After two decades of great popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, the time capsule is making a comeback in Chicago. As early as 3,000 B.C:. Sumerians buried messages in the foundations of their temples and palaces in Mesopotamia, imploring future rulers to restore the buildings if they were destroyed. The mode rn tim e capsule-a sealed container with an eclectic selection of objects meant to be a "snapshot" of a particular place and time-appeared in the nineteenth century. Since promoters filled and buried an e laborately designed cylinder with great fanfare to celebrate New York's l939 world's fair, America's interest in the time capsule has grown.

Chicago businessmen and developers have made burying these capsules a ritualistic part of building a new city. They are found in the Prudential Building, Marina City, the Equ itable Building, the First National Bank, and th e john Hancock Center. A new interest and appreciation for this tradition has re-e merged during the city's recent building boom. The Chicago Board of Options, the State of Illinois Building, the BC Tower, and the Leo Burnett Building have capsules, and the developers of the planned World 's Tallest Building and the Chicago Bar Association Headquarters Building will include them as well. Even the Chicago Historical Society has a time capsule, which will be opened in the year 2038.

I believe we bury time capsu les to fulfill the fundamental human needs to link ourselves to future generations and to be remembered. But their value for history is more suspect. The burying of a time capsule in a newly erected building is like the ob ligatory breaking of a champagne bottle across a ship's bow at its official launching-largely ceremonial. The contents of time capsules will not give future historians any great insights into our lives. Indeed, they are much like the countless booster histories produced in the nineteenth century by local city chambers of commerce. Although couched in civic duty and foresight, time capsules serve contemporary public relations far better than they will future historians. I don't mean to disparage such efforts to reach out to the future. But Chicagoans in particular need to seek out the many ties that bind today's city to the city of the past. Erecting a building helps us look to the future , but it also gives us an opportunity to dig up the past. Urban archaeology, more than contrived capsu les of history, can help us understand our own time.

Almost all urban archaeo logy today is the result of accidental discoveries during construction. Although most major cities do not require developers or builders to support archaeological investigations, in places like London and New York developers have allowed archaeologists to carry out important excavations. This past spring, for example, Museum of the City of London archaeologists unearthed the remains of the sixteenth -century Shakespearean Rose Theater on a construction site, and New York City workers discovered the remains of a seventeenth-century building believed to be the city's first a lmshouse. Both excavations were only possible through the cooperation of developers and city government.

It is surprising and disturbing that Chicago-a city more conscious of its history than most-has never explored what lies hidden beneath its streets and buildings. Over the years, few Chicagoans buried time capsules, but they have left behind something more importantphysical evidence of day-to-day urban life. Although much city history can be gleaned from heirlooms and keepsake passed down through generations, other parts of the story lie waiting to be discovered in what was discarded. It is a part of Chicago's history long overlooked.

"History does not exist," esteemed historian Lynn White, Jr. , once remarked, "all that exists is debri -scattered, mutilated , very fragmentary-left by vanished ages." The Chicago of the past is sending us a message-not in a capsule but in the flotsam and jetsam of its culture.

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Not Only a Game

by Gerald R. Gems

Eager to promote good citizenship, tum-of the-century industrialists and reformers worked to recruit immigrants for the American team.

Gerald R. Gems is chairperson of the Department of Health and Physical Education at North Central College, Naperville, Illinois.

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Through activities such as this 1914 physical education class, instrucLors at the Chicago Hebrew lnstitute tried to instill in children a sense of patriotism in the context ofJewish culture.

Not Only a Game In Chicago, a city often torn by ethnic, racial, and political strife, the 1986 football season was perhaps the greatest display of cultural unity in more than a century. The revelry excited by the Chicago Bears' Super Bowl victory was capped by a frenzied civic celebration by more than 30,000 fans who braved sub-zero temperatures to welcome their heroes home with a ticker-tape parade. The role of sports as an agent of cultural cohesion in the city had become firmly established by 1940, when most ethnic Chicagoans embraced the traditional American sports ofbaseball, football, and basketball as their own. But in the years immediately following the Civil War and until the beginning of World War II, Chicago's ethnic groups resisted abandoning their own sports and leisure activities and defied assimilation into a homogeneous middle-class American society. In response, Progressive Era reformers' "Americanization" efforts during the first decades of the twentieth century included an ambitious program of sports activities in city schools, parks, playgrounds, and settlement houses to instill in immigrant children traditional American values and to make them good citizens. Americanization through sports succeeded, but the struggle between Chicago's diverse ethnic populations and its native-born residents over leisure activities transformed both groups' lifestyles and was thus an important force in shaping the city's modern urban culture.

Organized sport in nineteenth-century Chicago was closely tied to America's industrial boom and unbridled commercial opportunities.

Nowhere was growth and civic pride more evident than in Chicago, where men such as Potter Palmer, John V Farwell, Marshall Field, George Pullman, and other transplanted ew Englanders became commercial and cultural leader . All were imbued with the Yankee ideals of commercialism, piety, and the Protestant work ethic, values they upheld and diffused throughout Chicago's upper and middle ranks of society by a network of social, religious, and philanthropic affiliation . In the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1871, such civic cohesiveness helped rebuild the city very rapidly. By 1876 Illinois boasted fifty-three railroad companies. and the aggressive spirit of Chicago businessmen made the cit; a leader in transportation, meat packing, and steel production, as well as a national

Immigrant children who played unsupervised in parks and empty lots such as this one at 45th and Laflin streets could not receive "proper" American middle-class guidance.

commercial and financial center.

This ebullient spirit of growth and promise was reflected in the city's sporting life. Baseball, in particular, exemplified both the commercial values of Chicago's businessmen and the traditional values of teamwork, discipline, and selfsacrifice, while still allowing for a measure of individual achievement. Baseball players, like businessmen, gained success through efficient production, specialization, and cooperative effort. The baseball career of Chicago businessman Albert G. Spalding demonstrated that sport was a means of upward mobility and achieving the American dream. A star pitcher from Rockford, Illinois, Spalding raised himself from professional player to manager to club president and also became a leader of the National League by 1882. Concurrently, he developed an extremely successful sporting goods company. Spalding maintained that the virtues he learned in baseball helped pave the way for his later commercial success.

The rapid growth of industry in Chicago brought an influx of immigrant labor to the city.

Irish and western Europeans had sought refuge in America after the potato famine and political turmoil of 1848. The migration intensified as waves of southern and eastern Europeans fled poverty and repression in the 1880s and 1890s in search ofa better life. By 1890 almost 80 percent of the city's residents were foreigners. In numbers alone they posed a threat to the native population, but their alien cultures, which contrasted 5

Chicago History, Summer 1989

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Baseball promoted teamwork and cultivated a sense of neighborhood unity for these Seward Park youths in 1909.

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Not Only a Game so sharply with middle-class values and traditions, were an even more alarming menace. Many immigrants were Catholics or Jews; others were free-thinking nationalists or anarchists. Differing perceptions of democracy between natives and immigrants led to labor conflicts and armed clashes during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Riot of 1886, and the Pullman Strike of 1894 were among the confrontations that exposed cultural and social class differences.

The widening gap between rich and poor seemed to betray immigrants' belief that they would find equality and opportunity in America.

The contrast between immigrant and native cultures was also reflected in their ideas about when, where , and how to recreate. Nativists wanted to use public parks for picnicking, strolling, and later for bicycling, and above all, they wished park grounds to be aesthetically pleasing.

Immigrants, on the other hand, wanted to use park grounds for athletic training and competition. And while nativists believed that sport should be practiced after work and on Saturdays, immigrant Catholics traditionally enjoyed recreation on Sundays, which was contrary to the strict Protestant Sabbath. The consumption of alcohol during recreation confounded temperance supporters and often hampered an immigrant's job performance. Jews, who observed a Saturday Sabbath, could not be counted on to work the required six-day work week.

From the beginning, employers and social workers saw a need to Americanize immigrant leisure practices. Chicago employers tried to devise ways to tum workers' leisure practices to their own advantage. Drinking on Sundays was of great concern to employers whose production was dependent on a reliable work force. "Blue Mondays," the result of overindulgence on Sundays, meant a loss of time and profit. As early as the 1860s businesses organized baseball games as a wholesome and healthy pursuit for employees.

As Spalding's career had demonstrated, baseball taught cooperation, teamwork, and self-sacrifice, values that employers hoped to instill in their employees. Games were scheduled during workers' leisure hours, which otherwise may have been spent in saloons. Local leagues were already widespread by the 1870s, and employers soon found ways to expand such programs.

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Chicago History, Summer 1989 George Pullman was the first employer to seize upon the full potential of sport as a tool for labor relations. In Pullman, the town he constructed outside of Chicago for his employees, he provided the first comprehensive industrial recreation program, the Pullman Athletic Association.

(Saloons were conspicuously absent from the town, and Pullman had installed a branch of the YMCA to insure that workers had proper moral guidance.) The magnificence of the facilities, the quality of the teams, and the national sporting events the town hosted brought Pullman national acclaim. Although labor conflicts persisted despite the sports program , it provided a model for the future industrial programs of the twentieth century that would benefit both employers and employees.

At the same time, Progressive Era reformers began promoting child labor laws, mandatory education, and required physical education to

impart American values and build character.

Contemporary educational theory stressed the necessity of play in a child's developmental process. Social agencies thus used sports programs to help assimilate the multitude of immigrant groups that overwhelmed the city. The reformers implemented play and games as a means to achieve societal health in the belief that competitive sports and games would teach immigrants and their children American values of order, efficiency, teamwork, self-sacrifice, and commercial spirit. They sought to replace immigrant sports that promoted individual strength, such as gymnastics, or ethnocentrism, such as Gaelic hurling, with American team sports-football, basketball, softball, and particularly baseball. For nativists, these "American" sports had the additional value of helping to divorce the country from its cultural dependence on British games and literature. Chicago's commercial interests

Public drinking at traditional German "Saengerfests" such as this 1868 feast in Wrights Crol){' (Clark Street between Wrightwood Avenue and Diversey Street) perturbed Protestant nativists who preferred their parks pristine and free from alcoholic indulgences.

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Not Only a Game supported such efforts. Private businessmen as well as companies donated land for playgrounds, and women's clubs and commercial organizations provided equipment, awards, and instructors.

Sport became a dominant tool in the wideranging attempt in schools, parks, playgrounds, and settlement houses to introduce ethnics to American culture. Soon, Progressives began to focus their Americanization efforts almost exclusively on immigrant children, realizing that adult immigrants were very much tied to their ethnic traditions.

A loosely organized national playground movement began in 1886 with the introduction of Boston's sand gardens, which were based on European kindergartens. Hull House initiated the playground concept in Chicago in 1894, and Jane Addams soon became a national leader in the movement. Trained supervisors directed activities designed to Americanize immigrants and educate all children in the commercial ideals of teamwork, cooperation, and competition. Holiday festivals featured parades, games, and patriotic songs. Because of the strong influence of immigrant groups and Jane Addams's acceptance of pluralistic cultures, folk dances and ethnic traditions were also included in such celebrations. But proper American middle-class guidance was all important. The Playground Association stressed that a playground without careful direction was hardly worth having.

In keeping 1,¡ith the reformers' aims, the parks, like the schools, were expected to become centers of communit)' recreation and a means to assimilate ethnics into mainstream America. ;vlayor Carter H. Harri. on appointed a Special Parks Commission in December 1899. Super' ised play programs to address the problem of juvenile delinquency were implemented on a year-round basis. In 1910, 2..J: percent of Americans and only 9 percent of immigrant children attended school beyond the ixth grade. Poverty and lack of guidance caused many to fall prey to illicit pleasures and criminal opportunities they found in the citr The park programs were intended to combat such activit} by offering children alternati1¡es. Pools. beaches, and athletic leagues provided 1, holesome summer activities.

The South Park District unveiled a system of field house~ 11¡ith indoor facilities in 1907. G~ ms , clubrooms. games, fc~t ivals, ancl organi1ed sports

Seu/,ements helped immigrant boys channel their ethnic rivalries into the more positive outlet of baseball by organizing teams and games.

programs brought boys and girls to the parks where structured recreation might inculcate them with the sanctioned values ofa progressive society. Park leagues adopted a scoring system in which points were awarded to teams on the basis of attendance, winning, and sportsmanship.

Many businessmen supported the park system because of its emphasis on discipline, competition, and fair play. Some were humanitarians; others saw an opportunity to use sport as a means to train an efficient and reliable work force.

Most immigrant groups, however, had longestablished sporting traditions they were reluctant to forego. Emphasizing religious or social customs and nationalistic objectives, ethnic sports organizations throughout the city consciously attempted to preserve immigrant cultures, and their activities challenged Progressive assimilation efforts. Ethnics wielded their political power to influence city school boards on physical education issues in cities such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Chicago. Various physical training systems were in use throughout the country, and no consensus could be reached about which was best suited for schools. Colleges opted for the incipient and eclectic American system developed by Harvard University's Dudley Sargent; Boston adopted the Swedish system; and, despite nativist opposition, Chicago adopted the German Turners' training system into its elementary schools and extended the program to high schools by 1889. The Turner system was well entrenched among the German refugees who had fled to America, many of whom espoused socialist sympathies. Initiated by Frederic LudwigJahn as a reaction to the apoleonic 9

Chicago History, Summer 1989

At settlement-sponsored festivals, refonners cultivated a new American culture that encompassed ethnic traditions such as the Maypole dance.

conquest of Germany, it employed gymnastics and heavy apparatus under the tutelage ofa disciplined instructor. Its intent was clearly nationalistic, meant to build fitness and strength in order to perpetuate German culture. Jahn's grandson was among the first physical education teachers employed by the Chicago schools. Autonomous local school districts allowed ethnics to implement such training in the curriculum along with ethnic language instruction. Nativists protested that the Turner system was adopted due to the influence of Louis Nettlehorst, a German Turner and board of education president in 1885. But the German system remained in public schools until after World War I, when anti-German sentiment prompted the resignation of Henry Suder, a German Turner and supervisor of the public schools' physical education program since 1885.

Fraternal as well as athletic associations, the German Turners, the Czech Sokols, and the Polish and Lithuanian Falcons maintained ties to European parent organizations, and their activities reflected nationalistic objectives often tied to homeland independence movements. Ethnic sports clubs engaged in the non-American games of soccer, cricket, gymnastics, and Gaelic hurling.

Annual festivals united regional and national organizations in an ethnic network, and exchange programs with European clubs reinforced ethnic solidarity. While the groups also participated in American sports, their political ventures still focused on the preservation of ethnic cultures. They mobilized to retain parochial schools and bilingual instruction and often 10

funneled American money Lo European separatist organizations. Theirs was a pluralistic vision of society, and tl1eir staunch cultural unity gave them the political muscle in Chicago to resist the Americanization effort.

Ethnic nationalist movements centered in the Catholic parishes and were often led by Old World clergy. On the secular front, ethnics allied with other special interest groups Lo realize their goals. The United Societies for Local SelfGovernment led by Anton Cermak, who later became mayor of Chicago, comprised a multitude of ethnic groups. It joined variously with the Teachers' Federation , labor unions, and brewery companies to defeat proposed school reforms, temperance, and sabbatarian measures that directly affected immigrant lifestyles. Bloc voting assured the attention and support of ward bosses and aspiring politicians.

Class and cultural differences often overwhelmed the best intentions of reformers.

Altl10ugh diligent regulation of parks and playgrounds and a multitude of programs made headway in promoting American sports and some competitive values, they failed to fully stir the melting pot. Different ethnic groups interacted with each other in sport but not outside it. ewly arrived groups of immigrants were perceived by established ethnic populations as a threat to the labor market. Ethnic rivalries that transcended the immigration process were played out in sport and encouraged factionalism rather than the homogenization of culture that

Norwegian Children's Celebration, May 17, 1907.

Not Only a Game

The Gennan Tumers' physical education program promoted personal fitness and strength as opposed to teamwork and self-sacrifice.

park district programs were designed to accomplish. Thus many parks served as battlegrounds for ethnic rivalries, and despite the efforts of police and supervisors, ethnic gangs (or "socialathletic clubs" as they were called) resorted to coercion, force, and even pitched battles for control of parks. Park directors attempted to channel this conflict into acceptable forms of competition such as football, wrestling, track, and baseball.

Supervisors organized intrapark, local, and citywide competitions to encourage a greater sense of the neighborhood as a community.

For ethnic groups often stereotyped as weak or inept, athletic victories served to refute the notions of inferiority so blatantly espoused by the middle-clas media. Although such successes did not di pel racism, sport provided such groups with a measure of self-respect and solidarity to confront social antagonism. The all-black track and field team from Buetner Playground demonstrated a perennial mastery in the city track championships, while Scandinavians dominated

ice skating events. The Jewish People's Institute took great care to develop national caliber boxers and wrestlers to overcome the stereotypical image of erudite weaklings. The Jewish boxers served a more practical role as well, protecting young scho lars en route to religious schools from gangs of Polish antagonists.

Ethnic religious institutions adopted American sports but provided alternative organ izations for their practice. Catholic parishes and the Jewish People's Institute were anxious for member.s to use their facilities because they feared that the YMCA'.s recreation movement was a proselytizing effort. A Protestant organization, the YMCA'.s program was adopted by many wealthy industrialists. Fearing that the Protestant doctrine would be imposed upon Catholic workers, the Knights of Columbus offered alternative tournaments as early as 1902, and a Catholic Schools Athletic League was in operation by 1910.

By the end of the 1910s interest in ethnic sports was dwindling. Progressive reforms were taking 11

Chicago History, Summer 1989

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Although soccer taught teamwork, nativists opposed it in order to break American deperuumce on European sports and games.

hold and second generation immigrant youths were adopting the American sports they had learned in schools, parks, and playgrounds. To maintain their traditional activities, ethnic clubs found it necessary to import European athletes.

Continued European ties and ethnic political power on Chicago's park governing boards allowed the clubs to retain some of their ethnic nature, but ethnicity was often compromised as recruiting players became increasingly difficult World War I generated a new wave of nativism that had a devastating effect on ethnic sport and added fuel to the Americanization movement.

Under George Cardinal Mundelein, Chicago's ethnic parishes underwent a thorough Americanizing, and postwar immigration quotas severely limited the newcomers it would take to keep ethnic sporting traditions alive. While ethnic sports were certainly acceptable, the selective participation of ethnics in mainstream culture offended nativists. When the Public Schools Athletic League was subsumed by the Bureau of Physical Education in 1920, its officers made their objectives clear by stating that "the purposes and aims of the league are to promote and 14

provide for 'American' sports and games among the students of the Chicago public schools."

Although sport was instrumental in the Americanization of immigrants, it also helped form social class cohesion among disparate ethnic communities. The physical and communal nature of working-class culture placed greater emphasis on particular sports. Team sports such as football, baseball, and basketball allowed participants and their neighborhood supporters to band together in social networks familiar to southern and eastern Europeans. Teams typically emanated from parish social or athletic clubs that allowed ethnics to selectively participate in American sports while retaining their religious and cultural values. The working class held boxing and other power sports in particularly high esteem. Strength and toughness were highly valued qualities, not only admired but necessary in working-class areas. The immediate success of the Golden Gloves program during the 1930s rested entirely upon blue-collar participants.

Sport allowed for the natural expression of cultural values without the constraints imposed by labor relations or mitigating social norms.

Sport also provided working-class athletes with an acceptable means of economic mobility and social status. Workers turned to sports competition as a means to augment meager wages and to gain release time. Many industrial teams played in the city's semi pro circuits where rampant gambling led to the recruitment of nonemployees, including professional players and college stars.

In the post-World War I years, former University of Illinois star Henry Penn, who pitched for the semipro Eclipse team, turned down four offers to play professional baseball. He made more money combining his salary and his gambling

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fbotballgame at Addison Street and Lake Michigan, 1917.

Not Only a Game

Fearing Protestant influence, ethnic organizations such as the Chicago Hebrew Institute developed athletic programs to teach American sports on their own terms.

winnings than he could have ever received from a major league contract.

George Halas, a young Bohemian-American who played for Western Electric, Commodore Barry, and the semipro Logan Squares, was a prototypical success story. After a successful college football career at the University of Illinois, he accepted a position with the Staley Starch Company in Decatur where his duties included service on the company baseball and football teams. Halas parlayed his winnings into a multimillion dollar enterprise: the Chicago Bears. By World War II almost all Chicago neighborhoods could boast of a favorite son who had made it into the professional baseball leagues. Many others earned a living playing for minor league teams in Chicago's City League.

Bowling became the most popular sport for workers. Prize money at national tournaments (which amounted to thousands of dollars) and widespread gambling brought economic mobility to a few. The most successful bowlers often

became community entrepreneurs, reinvesting their winnings in neighborhood taverns or bowling establishments. In these ventures they relied on friends, relatives, and former coworkers as patrons, and they continued to share the traditional values of the working class as they always had. Some small entrepreneurs helped to bridge social gaps, but for most, life and leisure remained within well-defined boundaries of their class and ethnic communities.

For working-class athletes, sport was a way to achieve social status within these boundaries. As the process of industrialization robbed laborers of their self-worth, sport took on greater value for the working class. Success for the working class was not always defined by material gain (which was often temporary and limited) but was more often measured by self-esteem, physical prowess, peer acknowledgement, and local acclaim gained through sport-achievements unavailable in other spheres oflife. Such psychological rewards compensated for the social power 15

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Catholic Youth Organization boxers gained a great deal ofesteem in the working-class world, where strength and toughness were not only admired but necessary.

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Not Only a Game and material rewards so often denied to the working class. Frederic Thrasher's The Gang and William Foote Whyte's Street Corner Society have shown the importance of athletic prowess in establishing a social hierarchy within workingclass communities.

Sport helped workers make sense of their leisure life when their jobs were so often controlled by others. As laborers grew older, their status diminished with a decline in their physical skills in both their working and sporting lives. Whereas the middle class's means of mobility (such as education) tended to enhance its members' stature with age, working-class success was measured by a different set of values. For a few, such as Halas, status allowed them to transcend class lines and achieve material gain. For most, however, the temporary status that success in sports afforded paralleled the general instability of working-class Ii fe.

After World War I sport became increasingly intertwined with labor relations as employers attempted to use sport as a form of welfare capitalism, providing company-sponsored teams and recreational facilities as a means to dilute labor consciousness and appease workers. Chicago's semiprofessional industrial leagues benefited both employers and employees. Industrial recreation programs involved workers in the wholesome use of leisure while bringing favorable publicity to the company. Employers found that providing organizational structure, equipment, and in some cases facilities as a subtle gesture of magnanimity was more effective than the confrontational tactics that had marked the prewar years. Most workers saw industrial sport as a new opportunity to suit their own needs for status and material gain. For workers such as Halas whose salaries were contingent upon their performance on company teams, labor and leisure coincided.

Despite such success, industrial recreation programs did not reach all workers and even alienated some who resented the favoritism shown to athletes. During the 1920s a communist sport organization presented a direct challenge to capitalist efforts. Individual labor unions spent more than a million dollar on athletic programs and facilities during the Great Depression to induce members to forego employers' offerings and maintain working-class culture. The radical Labor Sports Union, a communist organization,

George Halas (back row, third from right) played second base for the Commodore Barry baseball team and parlayed his eamings into a sports empire.

A Catholic Youth Organization hockey team.

The proud Alliance Club basketball team, 1905.

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Chicago History, Summer 1989 held two Workers' Olympics in Chicago in 1931 and 1932. But by 1932 most workers had adapted to the capitalistic concept of competition and had overwhelmingly defected to the Democratic party as the champion of labor. Communist contentions that professional sports were exploitive found little favor with laborers who had come to accept the ideology of sport as a meritocracy.

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Ethnic athletes abounded in all professional sports by the 1930s. Both ethnic and native press extolled the virtues of sport, and the representation of athletic heroes as role models afforded even local stars a measure of status and respect unattainable in other spheres of life. Athletic prowess signified manliness and power in a period when industrialization had robbed many

Not Only a Game of their self worth. Sport, then, allowed workingclass people to construct more meaningful existences within the strictly prescribed boundaries and perspectives of their lives.

Rather than reflect the middle-class vision of society, sport provided disparate groups in Chicago with a means to adopt and adapt Progressive values selectively to suit their own cultures. The

interrelationships engendered by sport transformed both native and ethnic lifestyles. Unified participation in American sports by the onset of World War II engendered a pervasive interest in athletic activities throughout American society.

Consolidation of American sports had been achieved, but sport continued to hold different meanings for the diverse residents of Chicago.

For Further Reading To explore the evolution of American sport see Milton Cantor, American Working Class Culture (Westport, CL: Greenwood Press, 1979); Frank D. Collins, Popular Sports: Their Origin and Development (Chicago: Rand Mc ally and Co., 1935); Robert H. Boyle, Sport: Mirror of American Life (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1963); and Harvey Green, Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

For more on sport as a form of we lfare capitalism see Wilma]. Pesavento, "Sport and Recreation in the Pullman Experiment, 1880-1900," journal of Sport History, vol. 9, no. 2. Clarence E. Rainwater examines Progressive Era play programs in The Pi.ay Movement in the United States (Washington, D.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1922).

Illustrations All images are from the CHS Prints and Photographs Collection . 4, ICHi-21173; 5, ICHi-21166; 6-7, DN 7588; 8, ICHi-16083; 9, ICHi-21165; 10 top, ICHi-2ll60; 10 bottom, DN 4972; 11, ICHi-14858; 12-13, ICHi-21153; 14 top, ICHi-21158; 14 bottom, ICHi-21162; 15, ICHi173LO; 16-17, ICHi-21177; 18, D 76,811; 19 top, ICHi21151; 19 center, ICHi-21168; 19 bottom, ICHi-21156; 20-21, ICHi-14859.

Bowling was the most popular working-class sport. Vast sums of prize money and gambling winnings brought economic mobility to a lucky few.

21

The traditions of working-cum consumerism changed slowly with the advent of mass culture. In working-cum ethnic neighborhoods local groceries remained more popular than chain stores until the 1930s. Gift of Shirl,ey j. Stone.

22

On Their Own Terms: Mass Culture and the Working-Class World

by Lizabeth Cohen

Rather than buy into the expanding mass consumer culture of the 1920s, Chicago's ethnic workers adapted that culture to suit their traditional needs.

In 1929 the publishers of True Story Magazine ran full-page advertisements in the nation's major newspapers celebrating what they called "the American Economic Evolution." Claiming to be the recipient of thousands of personal stories written by American workers for the magazine's primarily working-class readership, they felt confident reporting that since World War I shorter working hours, higher pay, and easy credit had created an "economic millennium." Now that the nation's workers enjoyed an equal opportunity to consume, "a capital-labor war which has been going on now for upwards of three hundred years" had virtually ended. True Story claimed that twenty years ago, Jim Smith, who worked ten to twelve hours a day in a factory and then returned home "to his hovel and his woman and his brats," was likely to resort to strikes and violence when times got tough. Not so his modern-day counterpart. Today, the magazine asserted, Jim Smith drives home lo the suburbs after a seven- or eight-hour day earning him three to seven times as much as before, which helps pay for the automobile, the house, and a myriad of other possessions. Now an upstanding member of the middle class, Jim had learned moderation. Mass consumption had tamed his militance. Advertising executives at the J. Walter Thompson Company Lizabeth Cohen is assistant professor of history at CamegieM ellon University. Her book, Learning to Live in the

Welfare State: Industrial Workers in Chicago Between the Wars, 1919- 1939, will be published by Cambridge University Press in fall 1990.

23

Chicago History, Summer 1989

s

Like other immigrant groups, Chicago Lithuanians enjoyed traditional music on mass-produced foreign-language phonograph records.

shared True Story Magazine's confidence in the homogenizing power of mass culture. In an issue of their own in-house newsletter devoted to "the New National Market," they too claimed that due to standardized merchandise, automobiles, motion pictures, and most recently the radio, the so-called "lines of demarcation" between social classes and between the city, the small town, and the farm had become less clear.

Sixty years later, historians are still making assumptions about the impact of mass culture similar to those of True Story Magazine's editors and J. Walter Thompson Company executives.

With little more data about consumer attitudes and behavior in the 1920s than their predecessors, they too assume that mass culture succeeded in integrating American workers into a mainstream, middle-class culture. When workers bought a Victrola, went to the picture show, or switched on the radio, in some crucial way, the usual argument goes, they ceased living in an ethnic or working-class world. This common version of the "embourgeoisement thesis" credits a hegemonic mass culture with blurring class lines.

When labor organizing occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, the view holds, it stemmed not from industrial workers' class consciousness but from their efforts to satisfy middle-class appetites.

It is difficult to know the extent to which workers participated in various forms of mass culture

24

and to understand the meanings they ascribed to their preferences. But shifting the focus from the national scene, where data on audience reception is weak, to a particular locale rich in social history sources can yield new insights into the way that workers responded to mass culture.

Chicago offers a particularly good case study since it was the best documented city in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. In this period , Chicago was a laboratory for sociologists, political scientists, and social workers-and a multitude of their students. Their numerous studies of urban life, along with ethnic newspapers, oral histories, and other local sources, can serve social historians today as revealing windows into working-class experience with mass culture. Chicago's industrial prominence, moreover, attracted a multi-ethnic and multiracial work force, which gives it all the more value as a case study. In order to investigate how workers reacted to mass culture in Chicago, this essay will examine carefully how workers in Chicago responded to mass consumption, that is, the growth of chain stores peddling standard-brand t'onue;rafai \ dtui ui l'inigus

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On Their Own Terms

By 1925 the radio had taken a prominent place in the silting room al the Swedish Oki People's Home in Norwood Park. Gift of Fiekl Enterprises.

goods; to motion picture shows in monumental movie palaces; and to the little box that seemed overnight to be winning a sacred spot at the family hearth, the radio.

While True Story Magazine's Jim Smith may have bought his way into the middle class, in reality industrial workers did not enjoy nearly the prosperity that advertisers and sales promoters assumed they did. All Americans did not benefit equally from the mushrooming of national wealth during the 1920s. After World Warl, wages advanced modestly if at all in big manufacturing sectors such as steel, meat packing, and the clothing industry, particularly for the unskilled and semiskilled workers who predominated in this kind of work. And most disruptive of workers' ability to consume, unemployment remained high . Workers faced unemployment whenever the business cycle turned downward, and even more regularly, faced layoffs in slack seasons. So

Chicago's average semiskilled worker did not have nearly as much money to spare for purchasing automobiles, washing machines, and Victrolas as manufacturers and advertisers had hoped.

But people with commodities to sell worried little about workers' limited income. Instead, they trusted an elaborate system of installment selling to permit all Americans to take part in the consumer revolution. "Buy now, pay later," first introduced in the automobile industry around 1915, suddenly exploded in the 1920s; by 1926 it was estimated that $6 billion worth of retail goods were sold annually by installment, about 15 percent of all sales. "Enjoy while you pay," invited the manufacturers of everything from vacuum cleaners to literally the kitchen sink.

Once again, popular beliefs of the time do not hold up to closer scrutiny: industrial workers were not engaging in installment buying in nearly the numbers that marketers assumed.

25

Chicago History, Summer 1989 Automobiles by far accounted for the greatest proportion of the nation's installment debt outstanding at any given time-more than 50 percent. But though True Story's Jim Smith may have driven home from the factory in his new automobile, industrial workers in Chicago were not likely to follow his example. One study of the standard ofliving of semiskilled workers in Chicago found that only 3 percent owned cars in 1924. Even at the end of the decade, in the less urbanized environment of nearby Joliet, only 24 percent of lower income families owned an automobile, according to a Chicago 1hbune survey. The few studies of consumer credit done at the time

indicate that it was middle income people-not workers-who made installment buying such a rage during the 1920s, particularly the salaried and well-off who anticipated larger incomes in the future. Lower income people instead were saving at unprecedented rates, often to cushion themselves for the inevitable layoffs.

When workers did choose to buy on credit, they were most likely to purchase small items like phonographs. But whether buying a phonograph or a washing machine changed workers' cultural orientation is unclear. Those who believed in the homogenizing power of mass consumption claimed that the act of purchasing

Chain stores that purportedly were revolutionizing consumer behavior attracted mostly the middl.e and upper classes. By /917 this A & Pon Montrose Avenue was offering nationally advertised brands and canned goods to the residents of middl.e-class Albany Park. Next door, Smiths continued to peddl.e fresh fruits and vegetabl.es. Photograph by Chas. E. Barker. Gift of Arthur C. Leuy.

26

On Their Own Terms such a standardized product drew the consumer into a world of mainstream tastes and values.

Sociologist John Dollard argued at the time, for example, that the Victrola revolutionized a family's pattern of amusement because "what they listen to comes essentially from the outside, its character is cosmopolitan and national, and what the family does to create it as a family is very small indeed." We get an impression of wage-earning immigrant families sharing more in middle-class American culture every time they rolled up the rug and danced to the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

But how workers themselves described what it meant to purchase a phonograph reveals a different picture. The majority of industrial workers in Chicago in the 1920s were first or second generation ethnic, most from eastern or southern Europe. In story after story they relate how buying a Victrola helped keep Polish or Italian culture alive by allowing people to play foreignlanguage records, often at ethnic social gatherings. Rather than the phonograph drawing the family away from a more indigenous cultural world, as Dollard alleged, many people like Rena Domke remembered how in Little Sicily on the Nortl1 Side during those years neighbors "would sit in the evening and discuss all different things about Italy," and every Saturday night they pulled out a Victrola "and they'd play all t!1ese Italian records and they would dance .... " In fact, consumers of all nationalities displayed so much interest in purchasing foreign-language records that in the 1920s Chicago became the center of an enormous foreign record industry, selling re-pressed recordings from Europe and new records by American immigrant artists. Even the small Mexican community in Chicago supported a shop that made phonographic records of Mexican music and distributed them all over the United States. And some American-born workers also used phonograph recordings to preserve their ties to regional culture. For example, southerners-white and black-eased the trauma of moving north to cities like Chicago by supporting a record industry of hillbilly and "race records" geared specifically toward a northern urban market with southern roots. Thus, owning a phonograph might bring a worker closer to mainstream culture, but it did not have to. A commodity could just as easily help a person reinforce ethnic or working-class culture as

it could help lose it.

Of course, when the publishers of True Story spoke of a consumer revolution, they meant more than the wider distribution ofluxury goods like the phonograph. They were referring to how the chain store-like A & P or Walgreen Drugsand the nationally advertised brands that they offered-like Lux Soap and Del Monte canned goods-were standardizing even the most routine purchasing. A distributor of packaged meat claimed, "Mass selling has become almost the universal rule in this country, a discovery of this decade of hardly less importance than the discovery of such forces as steam and electricity."

Doomed, everyone thought, were bulk or unmarked brands, and the small, inefficient neighborhood grocery, dry goods, or drug store that sold them. Wherever they lived, it was assumed , Americans increasingly were entering stores that looked exactly alike to purchase the same items from a standard stock.

Closer examination of the consumer behavior of workers in a city like Chicago, however, suggests that workers were not patronizing chain stores. Rather, the chain store that purportedly was revolutionizing consumer behavior in the 1920s was mostly reaching the middle and upper classes. Two-thirds of the more than five hundred A & P and National Tea stores in Chicago by 1928 were located in neighborhoods of above-average economic status. An analysis of the location of chain stores in Chicago's suburbs reveals the same imbalance. By 1926 chains ran 53 percent of the groceries in prosperous Oak Park and 36 percent in equally well-off Evanston. In contrast, in working-class Gary and Joliet, only 1 percent of the groceries were owned by chains. As late as 1929, the workers of Cicero found chain management in only 5 percent of this industrial town's 819 retail stores. Chain store executives recognized that workers were too tied to local, often ethnic, merchants to abandon them, even for a small savings in price. A West Side Chicago grocer explained: "People go to a place where they can order in their own language, be understood without repetition, and then exchange a few words of gossip or news." Shopping at a particular neighborhood store was a matter of cultural loyalty. As one ethnic merchant put it, "The Polish business man is a part of your nation; he is your brother. Whether it is war, hunger, or trouble, he 27

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On Their Own Terms is always with you willing to help .... Therefore, buy from your people."

No less important, the chain store's prices may have been cheaper, but its "cash and carry" policy was too rigid for working people's limited budgets. Most workers depended on a system of credit at the store to make it from one payday to the next. In tough times, the loyal customer knew an understanding storekeeper would wait to be paid and still sell her food. So when an A & P opened not far from Little Sicily in Chicago, people ignored it. Instead, everyone continued to do business with the local grocer who warned, "Go to A & P and they ain't going to give you credit like I give you credit here." While middle-class consumers were carrying home more national brand packaged goods in the 1920s, working-class people continued to buy in bulk-to fetch milk in their own containers, purchase chunks of soap, and scoop coffee, tea, sugar, and flour out of barrels. What standard brand products

working-class families did buy, furthermore, they encountered through a trusted grocer, not an anonymous clerk at the A & P. When workers did buy mass-produced goods like ready-made clothing, they purchased them at stores such as Chicago's Goldblatt's Department Stores, which let customers consume on their own terms. Aware that their ethnic customers were accustomed to central marketplaces where individual vendors sold fish from one stall, shoes from another, the second-generation Goldblatt brothers, sons of a Jewish grocer, adapted this approach to their stores. Under one roof they sold everything from food to jewelry, piling merchandise high on tables so people could handle the bargains. The resulting atmosphere dismayed a University of Chicago undergraduate sociology student more used to the elegance of Marshall Field's. To Betty Wright, Goldblatt's main floor was a mad 'jumble of colors, sounds, and smells:â&#x20AC;˘ Circulating amidst

The saus floor at the Milwaukee Avenue Co-op in 1906 (above) bustled with the activity of an Old World market. Gift of Field Enterprises.

The Goldblatt brothers opened bmnches of their store in working-class neighborhoods on the West and South sides and advertised in the languages of their customers (left). They kept prices low and hours long, and inside they cultivated a marketplace atmosphere.

31

Chicago History, Summer 1989 the bedlam, she was amazed by the many women present with old shawls tied over their heads and bags or market baskets on their arms. They stopped at every counter that caught their eye, picked up the goods, handled it, enquired after the price, and then walked on without making any purchase.

I have an idea that a good many of these women had no intention whatsoever of buying anything.

They probably found Goldblatt's a pleasant place to spend an afternoon.

Most appalling to this student, "Customers seemed always ready to argue with the clerk about the price of an article and to try to '.jew them down.'" Betty Wright did not appreciate that behind Goldblatt's respectable exterior facade thrived a European street market much treasured by ethnic Chicagoans.

Ethnic workers in a city like Chicago di9 not join what historian Daniel Boorstin has labeled "national consumption communities" nearly as quickly as many have thought. Even when they bought the inexpensive, mass-produced goods becoming increasingly available during the 1920s, contrary to the hopes of many contemporaries, a new suit of clothes did not change the man (or woman). Rather, as market researchers would finally realize in the 1950s when they developed the theory of "consumer reference groups," consumption involved the meeting of two worlds-the buyer's and the seller's-with purchasers bringing their own values to every exchange. Gradually over the 1920s, workers came to share more in the new consumer goods, but in their own stores, in their own neighborhoods, and in their own ways.

In the realm of consumption, workers could depend on the small-scale enterprises in their communities to help them resist the homogenizing influences of mass culture. But how did ethnic working-class culture fare against forms of mass culture-such as motion pictures and radio-that local communities could not so easily control? Did the motion picture spectacle or the twist of the radio dial draw workers into mainstream mass culture more successfully than did the A & P? Workers showed much more enthusiasm for motion pictures than for chain stores. While movies had been around since early in the

32

century, the number of theater seats in Chicago reached its highest level ever by the end of the 1920s. With an average of four performances daily at every theater, by 1929 Chicago had enough movie theater seats for one-half the city's population to attend in the course of a day; and workers made up theirfairshare-ifnotmore-of that audience. Despite the absence of exact attendance figures, there are consistent clues that picture shows enjoyed enormous popularity among workers throughout the twenties. As the decade began, a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of the cost of living of workingmen's families found Chicago workers spending more than half of their amusement budgets on movies. Even those fighting destitution made the motion picture a priority; in 1924 more than two-thirds of the families receiving Mothers' Aid Assistance in Chicago attended regularly.

But knowing that workers went to the movies is one thing, assessing how they reacted to particular pictures is another. Some historians have analyzed the content of motion pictures for evidence of their meaning to audiences; the fact that workers made up a large part of those audiences convinces these analysts that they took home particular messages decipherable from the films.

But the variety of ways that consumers encountered and perceived mass-produced goods suggests that people can have very different reactions to the same experience. Just as the meaning of mass consumption varied with the context in which people confronted it, so too the impact of the movies depended on where, with whom, and in what kind of environment workers went to the movies during the 1920s.

Chicago's workers regularly patronized neighborhood movie theaters near their homes in the 1920s, not the Chicago, the Uptown, the Granada, and the other monumental picture palaces built during the period, where many historians have assumed they flocked. Neighborhood theaters had evolved from the storefront nickelodeons prevalent in immigrant workingclass communities before the war. Due to stricter city regulations, neighborhood movie houses now were fewer in number, larger, cleaner, better ventilated, and from five to twenty cents more expensive than in nickelodeon days. But still they were much simpler than the ornate movie palaces that seated several thousand at a time. For

On Their Own Terms

The openmg of the Rmnova Theater featured a program tailored to its neighborhood. Folk music, moving pictures of local events, and Lithuanian films were sure to appeal to the local ethnic audience.

33

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Early radio listeners played an active role in their hobby, tracking distant stations and tackling other technical challenges.

example, local theaters in a working-class community like South Chicago (next to U.S. Steel's enormous South Works plant) ranged in size from Pete's International, which sat only 250-more when Pete made the kids double up in each seat for Sunday matinees-to the Gayety holding 750 to the New Calumet with room for almost a thousand. Only rarely did workers pay at least twice as much admission, plus car fare, to see the picture palace show. Despite the fact that palaces often claimed to be "paradise for the common man," geographical plotting of Chicago's picture palaces reveals that most of them were nowhere near working-class neighborhoods: a few were downtown, the rest strategically placed in new shopping areas to attract the middle classes to the movies. Going to the

34

pictures was something workers did more easily and cheaply close to home. As a U.S. Steel employee explained, it was "a long way"-in many respects-from the steel towns of southeast Chicago to the South Side's fancy Tivoli Theater.

For much of the decade, working-class patrons found the neighborhood theater not only more affordable but more welcoming, as the spirit of the community carried over into the local movie hall. Chicago workers may have savored the exotic on the screen, but they preferred encountering it in familiar company. The theater manager, who was often the owner and usually lived in the community, tailored his film selections to local tastes and changed them every few days to accommodate neighborhood people who attended frequently. Residents of Chicago's industrial neighborhoods rarely had to travel far to find pictures to their liking, which they viewed among neighbors and friends.

When one entered a movie theater in a working-class neighborhood of Chicago, tJ1e ethnic character of the community quickly became evident. The language of the yelling and jeering that routinely gave sound to silent movies provided the first clue. "The old Italians used to go to these movies," recalled frequent moviegoer Ernest Daile-Molle, "and when the good guys were chasing tJ1e bad guys in Italian-they'd say'Getem'-'catch them'-out loud in the theater."

Stage events accompanying the films told more.

In Back of the Yards near the packinghouses, at Schumacher's or the Davis Square Theater, viewers often saw a Polish play along with the silent film. Everywhere, amateur nights offered "local talent" a moment in the limelight. At the Butler Theater in Little Sicily, which the community had rechristened the "Garlic Opera House," Italian music shared the stage with American films. In tJ1e neighborhood theater, Hollywood and ethnic Chicago coexisted.

Neighborhood theaters so respected local culture that they reflected community prejudices as well as strengths. The Commercial Theater in South Chicago typified many neighborhood theaters in requiring Mexicans and blacks to sit in the balcony, while reserving the main floor for white ethnics who dominated the community's population. One theater owner explained, "White people don't like to sit next to the colored or Mexicans .... We used to have trouble about

On Their Own Terms the first four months, but not now. They go by themselves to their place." Sometimes blacks and Mexicans were not even allowed into neighborhood theaters. In contrast, the more cosmopolitan picture palaces, like those owned by the largest chain in Chicago, Balaban & Katz, were instructed to let in whomever could pay. Thus, the neighborhood theater reinforced the values of the community as powerfully as any on the screen. This is not to deny that working-class audiences were affected by the content of motion pictures, but rather to suggest that when people viewed movies in the familiar world of the neighborhood theater, identification with their local community was bolstered, and the subversive impact of the picture often constrained.

Thus, even if local communities did not control the production of motion pictures during the 1920s, they sti ll managed for a good part of the decade to influence how residents received them. The independent neighborhood theater in that way resembled the neighborhood store, harmonizing standardized products with local , particularly ethnic, culture. eighborhood stores and theaters buffered the potential disorientation of mass culture by allowing their patrons to consume within the intimacy of the community. Rather than disrupting the existing peer culture, that peer culture accommodated the new products. Shopping and theatergoing were

easily mediated by the community because they were collective activities. Radio, on the other hand, entered the privacy of the home. At least potentially, what went out across the airwaves could transport listeners, as individuals, into a different world.

However, radio listening did not require workers to forsake their cultural communities any more than shopping or moviegoing did.

Radio listening was far from the passive, atomized experience we know today. Many working people became interested in early radio as a

Eclwphone Radio and Trimm Home Speaker, c. /924. Gift of Charles Dienethal.

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36

t I

On Their Own Terms hobby and built their own crystal and vacuum tube sets. Radio retailers recognized that workers were particularly apt to build their own radios.

"If the store is located in a community most of the inhabitants of which are workmen ," a study of the radio industry showed, "there will be a large proportion of parts" in contrast to the more expensive, preassembled models stocked by the radio stores of fashionable districts. That radio appealed to the artisanal interests of Chicago's workers was evident in their neighborhoods in another way. As early as 1922 a Chicago radio journalist noted that "Crude homemade aerials are on one roof in ten along the miles of bleak streets in the city's industrial zones."

Even workers who bought increasingly affordable, ready-made radios spent evenings bent over their dial boards, working to get "the utmost possible DX" (distance) and then recording their triumphs in a radio log. Beginning in the fall of 1922, Chicago stations agreed not to broadcast at all after 7:00 P.M. on Monday evenings to allow the city's radio audience to tune in distant stations otherwise blocked because they broadcasted on the same wavelengths as local stations. "Silent Nights" were religiously observed in other cities as well. In addition to distance, radio enthusiasts concerned themse lves with technical challenges such as cutting down static, making '.'the short jumps," and operating receivers with one hand.

Not only was radio listening active, but it was also far from isolating. By 1930 in Chicago, there was one radio for every two or three households in working-class neighborhoods, and people sat around in local shops or neighbors' parlors listening together. Surveys showed that on the average, four or five people listened to one set at any particular time; in 85 percent of homes, the entire family listened together. Communal radio listening mediated between local and mass culture much like the neighborhood store or theater.

Even Chicago's working-class youth, whose parents feared they were abandoning the ethnic fold for more commercialized mass culture, were listening to the radio in the company of other second-generation ethnic peers at neighborhood clubs when not at home with their families.

Known as "basement clubs," "social clubs," or "athletic clubs," these associations guided the cu ltural experimentation of young people from

their mid-teens to mid-twenties. Here, in rented quarters away from parental eyes and ears, club members socialized to the constant blaring of the radio-the "prime requisite" of every club, according to one observer. The fact that young people were encountering mass culture like the radio within ethnic neighborhood circles helped to minimize the disruption.

But even more important to an investigation of the impact of the radio on workers' consciousness, early radio broadcasting had a distinctly grassroots orientation. The technological limitations of early broadcasting ensured that small, nearby stations with low power dominated the ether waves. Furthermore, with no clear way of financing independent radio stations, it fell to existing institutions to subsidize radio operations. From the start, nonprofit ethnic, religious, and labor groups put radio to their service. In 1925, 28 percent of the 571 radio stations nationwide were owned by educational institutions and churches, less than 4 percent by commercial broadcasting companies. In Chicago, ethnic groups saw radio as a way of keeping their countrymen and women in touch with native culture.

By 1926 several radio stations explicitly devoted to ethnic programming broad casted in ChicagoWGES, WSBC, WEDC, and WCWR-while other stations carried "nationality hours." Through the radio, Chicago's huge foreign language-speaking population heard news from home, native music, and special broadcasts like Benito Mussolini's messages to Italians living in America. One of the stations that sponsored a "Polish Hour" and an "Irish Hour" is also noteworthy for bringing another aspect of local working-class culture to the radio. The Chicago Federation of Labor organized WCFL, "the Voice of Labor," to, in its own words, "help awaken the slumbering giant of labor." Having suffered a variety of defeats after World War I, most notab ly the fai lure to organize Chicago's steel mills and packing p lants, the federation seized radio in the 1920s as a new strategy for reach ing the city's workers. "Labor ews Flashes," "Chicago Federation of Labor Hour," and "Labor Talks with the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union" alternated with entertainment like "Earl Hoffman's Chez Pierre Orchestra" and "Musical Potpourri ."

Radio, therefore, brought already fami liar distractions into the homes of workers: ta lk, ethn ic 37

Chicago History, Summer 1989

The Chicago Federation of Labor organized WCFL to "help awaken the slumbering gi,ant of labor." By 1931 the station was broadcasting from Navy Pier and had offtees and studios located at the American Furniture Mart on Lake Shore Drive.

nationality hours, labor news, church services, and vaudeville-type musical entertainment featuring hometown-often ethnic-performers.

More innovative forms of radio programming, such as situation comedy shows, dramatic series, and soap operas, only developed later. And a survey commissioned by NBC in 1928 found that 80 percent of the radio audience regularly listened to these local, not to distant, stations.

Sometimes listeners even knew a singer or musician personally, since many stations' shoestring budgets forced them to rely on amateurs; whoever dropped in at the station had a chance to be heard. Well-known entertainers, moreover, shied away from radio at first, dissatisfied with the low pay but also uncomfortable performing without an audience and fearful of undercutting their box office attractiveness with free on-air concerts. While tuning in a radio may have been a new experience, few surprises came "out of the ether."

As a result, early radio in Chicago promoted ethnic, religious, and working-class affiliations 38

rather than undermining them, as many advocates of mass culture had predicted. No doubt radio did expose some people to new cultural experiences-to different ethnic and religious traditions or new kinds of music. But most important, workers discovered that participating in radio, as in mass consumption and the movies, did not require repudiation of established social identities. Radio at mid-decade, dominated as it was by local, noncommercial broadcasting, offered little evidence that it was fulfilling the prediction of advocates and proving itself "the greatest leveler," capable of sweeping away "the mutual distrust and enmity oflaborer and executive ... business man and artist, scientist and cleric, the tenement dweller and the estate owner, the hovel and the mansion:' By letting community institutions-ethnic stores, neighborhood theaters, and local radio stations-mediate in the delivery of mass culture, workers avoided the kind of cultural reorientation that Madison Avenue had expected.

Working-class families could buy phonographs or ready-made clothing, go regularly to the picture show, and be avid radio fans without feeling pressure to abandon their existing social affiliations despite the expectations of mass culture promoters. To some extent, people resisted aspects of mass culture, as ethnic workers did chain stores. But even when they indulged in Maxwell House Coffee, Rudolph Valentino, and radio entertainment, these experiences did not uproot them since they were encountered under local, often ethnic, sponsorship. When a politically aware communist worker asserted that "I had bought a jalopy in 1924, and it didn't change me. It just made it easier for me to function," he spoke for other workers who may not have been as self-conscious, but who like him were not made culturally middle class by the new products they consumed.

Beginning in the late 1920s and increasingly in the 1930s, local groups lost their ability to control the dissemination of mass culture. Sure of their hold over the middle-class market, chain stores more aggressively pursued ethnic working-class markets, making it much harder for small merchants to survive. The elaboration of the Hollywood studio system and the costs of installing sound helped standardize moviegoing as well.

Not only were neighborhood movie theaters

On Their Own Terms increasingly taken over by chains, but the "talkies" themselves hushed the audience's interjections and replaced the ethnic troupes and amateur talent shows with taped shorts distributed nationally. Similarly, by the late 1920s, the local nonprofit radio era also had ended. In the aftermath of the passage of the Federal Radio Act of 1927, national commercial network radio imposed order on what admittedly had been a chaotic scene, but at the expense of small local stations. When Chicago's workers switched on the radio in 1930, they were likely to hear the A & P Gypsies and the Eveready Hour on stations that had almost all affiliated with either NBC or CBS, or had negotiated-like even Chicago's WCFL, "the Voice of Labor"-to carry some network shows. The Great Depression only reinforced this national commercial trend by undermining small distributors of all kinds.

Thus, grassroots control over mass culture did diminish during the thirties. But the extent to which this more national mass culture succeeded in assimilating workers to middle-class values remains an open question. It is very likely that even though the structure of distributing mass culture changed by the 1930s, workers still did not fulfill the expectations of True Story Magazine editors and J. Walter Thompson Company executives. It is possible that workers maintained a distinctive sense of group identity even while participating. Historical circumstances may have changed in such a way that workers continued to put mass culture to their own uses and remained a class apart. And increasingly over time, mass culture promoters-moviemakers, radio programmers, chain store operators, and advertisers-would recognize this possibility and gear products to particular audiences. The 1930s marked the emergence of the concept of a segmented mass market, which gradually displaced expectations of one homogeneous audience so prevalent in the 1920s.

We also should not assume-as advocates of the embourgeoisement school do-that as workers shared more in a national commercial culture, they were necessarily depoliticized. In fact, much evidence suggests that a more national mass culture helped unify workers previously divided along ethnic, racial, and geographical lines, facilitating the national organizing drive of the CIO. A working population that shared a

common cultural life offered new opportunities for unified political action; sit-down strikers who charted baseball scores and danced to popular music together and union newspapers that kept their readers informed about network radio programs testified to the intriguing connections between cultural and political unity. Extension of this study into the 1930s and beyond might reveal that, ironically, mass culture did more to create an integrated working-class culture than a classless American one. In taking this study beyond the 1920s, then, it is imperative that investigators continue to pay careful attention to the context in which people encountered mass culture, in order not to let the mythical assumptions about mass culture's homogenizing powers prevail as they did in our popular images of the twenties.

For Further Reading How has mass culture affected our society? See Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) and Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983). Surveys of ethnics reveal their reactions to 1920s consumerism. See the Chicago Area Project Papers in the CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection. In the University of Chicago Library see the Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey, a collection of ethnic newspapers Lranslated into English (also on microfilm al the Chicago Public Library). Also at the University of Chicago are the papers of Ernest Burgess, a sociology professor who saved the participant/observer papers written by his students that cover vast and varied ethnic experiences.

Illustrations 22-23, CHS, ICHi-21056; 24 top, Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; 24 bottom, from Margulis magazine, May 15, 1929, Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; 25, CHS, DN 78,707; 26, CHS, ICHi-21061; 28-29, CHS, DN 68,695; 30, from Sonntagpost,July 15, 1928, CHS Library; 31, CHS, DN 4000; 33, from Margulis magazine, August 15, 1929, Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; 34, CHS Library; 35, CHS Decorative and Industrial Ans Collection; 36, from WCFL Radio Magazine, spring 1928, CHS Library; 38, CHS Library.

A longer version of this article was published in American Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 6-33.

39

Banding Together

by Clark Halker

Long before Chicago~ segregated musicians' union locals merged at the height of the civil rights movement, black musicians struggled for equality with their white counterparts.

On January 11, 1966, union, religious, and political leaders from Chicago filed into the downtown headquarters of Local 10 of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Hardly a routine business meeting, the gathering generated an unusually festive tone. The presence of Chicago mayor Richard Daley, national AFM president Herman Kenin, Local 10 president Bernard Richards, and Local 208 AFM leader William Everett Samuels guaranteed that this would be no ordinary labor event. With the audience, these dignitaries had come to celebrate the end of segregation in the Chicago Federation of Musicians. The 'Jim Crow" discriminatory policy in effect since 1902 that had split musicians along racial lines had formally ended. With the merging of white Local 10 and black Local 208, the union became known as Local 10-208, The audience applauded as Local 10 president Richards and Local 208 leader Samuels clasped hands. The unification of the two locals closed a significant chapter in Chicago's labor and music histories.

The handful of black musicians who first attempted to organize at the turn of the century had few illusions about white racial attitudes toward them. Nonetheless, these musicians strove for equal membership with their white counterparts in the AFM, founded in 1896, and Chicago's Local 10. Alexander Armant, George Dulf, William Dorsey, Henderson Smith, William Berry, Carter Lum kins, Dan Bruno, J. W. Corbin, and other black musicians would have been perfectly Ai American Federatwn of Mmicians Local JO president Bernard Richards (center) looks on, Mayor Richard Daley congratulates Local 208 1ecretary William Everett Samuels during a ceremony 011 Jam,ary I I, 1966, marking the mergmg of the two locals and the end of segregation m the AFM.

Clark Halker is a professional musician and assistant professor of history at North Central CollegP, Naperville, Illinois.

happy with an integrated local. Armant and Dulf, who led the organizing effort, fought diligently for a single union for all musicians, regardless of race or creed. However, they were suspicious when Thomas Kennedy, the head of Local 10, approached them in 1901 about joining the AFM as equal members. The black musicians, especially Dulf, believed Kennedy intended to use them merely to increase his power base in the union. They were receptive to his offer because an integrated local would give blacks access to more jobs previously reserved for white members only. But they remained skeptical of Kennedy's motives.

Their skepticism was well grounded. Five years after its founding in 1896, the AFM had voted to establish separate locals for black and white musicians. But while the AFM officially endorsed segregation on a national level, its constitution did not require it for locals. When Local 10 voted against admitting blacks in 1901, Kennedy, rather than jeopardize his position among the white members, abandoned his offer of an integrated union. He defended the Jim Crow ruling in a 1902 issue of Presto, the union's publication, declaring that Many of the members object to playing with a colored musician, but the chief objection is the appearance of a musical body composed of black and white musicians. To obviate the necessity for continual rulings it was decided to separate the two bodies and give the black union a charter.

Kennedy and other Local 10 members had no legitimate reasons for excluding blacks from membership in their local. The credentials of this group of young black musicians were impressive and their talent immense. Armant, Dulf, and others belonged to the famous 8th Illinois Band, 41

Chicago History, Summer 1989 which grew out of Armant's popular Knights of Pythias Band. Recruited as a national guard regimental band during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the 8th Illinois played for black and white audiences throughout the turn-of-thecentury Midwest. With Armant as director and Dulf as cometist and principal musician, the band served as a training ground and source of employment for outstanding musicians and garnered a reputation as an orchestra nonpareil.

Henderson Smith trained at the Dana Musical Institute in Ohio and managed prominent minstrel and vaudeville shows in the United States, Europe, and Australia, claiming the title "America's Black Sousa." William Berry, a future president of Local 208, performed with and led several orchestras and also served as bandmaster of the 8th Illinois Band for several years. William Dorsey became a prominent band leader and arranger with the Knights of Pythias Band and his own orchestras. He also led a number of vaudeville groups and spent considerable time touring England prior to World War I.

Believing a racially separate local was better than none at all, Armant, Dulf, and sixteen other black musicians chartered their own. On July 4, 1902, after months of debate, Local 208 of the AFM became the first black local in the country. Like all unions at this time, Local 208's most pressing order of business was survival. In its first year, membership increased from twenty to fifty.

Officers received no remuneration, and revenues did not cover office rent. Poolhalls and barbershops frequently served as meeting places.

George Dulf, the first secretary, struggled to keep the local afloat and regularly covered its day-today operating expenses from his own pocket.

Nonetheless, Local 208 survived. Through the diligence of officers such as Dulf, William Berry, Edward Smith, George Smith, and Hugh Swift, the local grew steadily during its first two decades. Membership rose to more than three hundred by the end of World War I. In 1918 the local purchased a three-story building with offices and clubrooms at 3934 S. State Street and paid for it in less than five years. Moreover, in the

During the 1930s the officers of AFM Local 208 fought declining membership, a result of the collapse in the music business brought on by the Great

Depression.

42

Banding Together

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43

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Local 208 was important in Chicago s music scene, persuading many clubs to hire only union musicians such as drnmmer Red Saunders and his orchestra. Gift of Theodore D. Saunders.

theaters and nightclubs operating in the city's Black Belt, Local 208 began to exercise some clout, enforcing a wage scale comparable to that of Local 10. It helped members find work and provided insurance and a social hall at headquarters. Important musical figures such as Erskine Tate, Walter Dyett, Charles "Doc" Cooke, Charles Elgar, William Everett Samuels, "Musco" Buckner, Robert Giles, and Ellwood Graham worked closely with or served as officers of Local 208. Even renowned jazz artists Lil and Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, who played in Chicago regularly, paid local dues.

The growth of Local 208 in the 1920s depended on the strength of Chicago's economy and the vitality of the local music scene. But when the Great Depression hit in 1929, the music business collapsed along with the rest of the nation's economy. Optimistically counting six hundred members in 1929, Local 208 witnessed membership decline as the economy faltered. A. T Steward, the local's president from 1932 to 1937, proved unequal to the tasks his union faced. While a brief but successful contract strike against the

44

Vendome Theater in 1932 prevented further loss of members, Steward neither offered firm leadership nor tapped into the South Side's growing working-class militancy that was centered in the stockyards and steel mills.

Fortunately, Steward's fellow officers demonstrated remarkable talent as leaders. Harry Gray, a nationally known clarinetist and saxophonist, played with Ben Shux, "Doc" Cooke, Eubie Blake, and Joe Jordan before becoming president of Local 208 in 1938. He was joined by William Everett Samuels, whose trumpet and "Society Syncopaters" had played at the highest-paying spots in the region. Samuels became secretary in 1939. He and Gray would serve Local 208 until the 1966 merger.

Gray and Samuels guided the local forward despite the depression, and membership stabilized and grew when the local lowered its dues.

It established an unemployment fund and sponsored dances Lo provide employment for members who could also locate jobs through the union hall on State Street, where Samuels served as booking agent, union officer, and orchestra

Chicago History, Summer 1989 leader. He also founded and edited a newsletter for the local, and with the other officers he established a credit union to provide financial services for members. Finally, the local selected Samuels and others as delegates to national AFM conventions each year.

Such measures undoubtedly contributed to the local's healthy condition during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. However, the most direct economic actions of Local 208 probably explain the membership increase from six hundred in the previous peak year of 1929 to nine hundred by 1939. In 1938 members voted for a uniform pay scale, or minimum wage, among all clubs, some of which had previously operated under different pay scales. Many of the "social clubs" that regularly hired the local's musicians, such as the Knights of Pythias and the Elks, reacted strongly

to the proposal and organized a "Council of Clubs" to boycott the local, but their haphazard efforts were to no avail. Local 208 officers also worked successfully to improve relations with Local 10, headed by James Petrillo since 1922.

(Petrillo became AFM president in 1940.) As a result, the scale for union members in Chicago, black and white, was double that of musicians in Minneapolis or San Francisco. As one officer of Local 208 proclaimed glowingly in 1940:

Local 208 has the same problems to face as all the AFM locals in the country have. Scale? Hell, here's a recording contract of one of our members from Columbia.

He'll receive the regular price-$30 for four sides in three hours, and $7.50 for overtime. Scale is scale in this town, regardless of color.

Local JO presidentJames Petrillo (center) and his supporters refused to welcome blacks into the union despite a 1931 merger plan proposed by Local 208 representatives. Photograph by Wide World Photos, Chicago Bureau.

46

Banding Together After World War II, Local 208 remained an important force in Chicago's music scene while extending its influence in the burgeoning recording industry. It persuaded many clubs to hire only union members, including influential black jazz and blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Ahmad Jamal, Nat "King" Cole, Red Saunders, Jimmy Reed, Buddy Guy, Booker Washington, and Milt Buckner. No one doubted that Local 208 had advanced the cause and improved the lot of the city's black musicians; by 1964 membership had grown to 1,500.

Local 208 members made progress, however, only within the parameters of the AFM's discriminatory racial policy, insuring that this and fortysix other "colored" locals would not gain access to the same opportunities and rewards as white locals. The lucrative downtown nightclub and hotel trade in Chicago and other cities went to white members better suited to the preferences of patrons and management. Black musicians followed a labyrinth of rules for downtown work, and they were keenly aware of the unequal treatment they received. The managers of these clubs made exceptions for Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong because they insured profits without offending whites, but the great majority of performers enjoyed no such luxury._ Local 10 promoted and perpetuated the color line in the nightclub circuit and beyond. When radio became a major entertainment medium in the 1920s, musicians clamored for the opportunity to ply their trade on the airwaves. AFM officials forced a union hiring policy on most major regional and national broadcasts. The union reserved this work for white members only and negotiated contracts that excluded blacks from work throughout the country until well into the 1950s. In a similar fashion, the movie industry cooperated with union locals to exclude black musicians from working on motion picture soundtracks. Regardless of their members' talents and no matter how hard the officers of black locals worked, separate meant unequal in the American Federation of Musicians, and blacks were systematically excluded from the more profitable work in the business.

Only Local 802 in New York encouraged membership for blacks and whites, but according to members, union officers continued Lo promote

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As live music clubs like the Band Box, Robert's Show Club, and the Blue Note declined in the 1940s, new musical markets in radio, records, advertising, and film helped fill the gap.

47

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Local 208 greatly improved the lot of black Chicago musicians like Willie Dixon and his Big Three Trio while becoming an important influence in the growing recording industry.

discrimination in the job market. The merger issue did not surface again in Chicago, however, until March 1931, when Local 208 representatives drew up a merger plan and presented it at a Local IO executive board meeting. After four hours of debate, Local IO president Petrillo and the board deferred action until they could consider it further. The following month the board met again, this time without Local 208 representatives, and promptly vetoed any merger proposal. The board expressed its sentiments in a unanimous motion: Motion was made that the matter of merging the two locals, at this time, in the opinion of Local No. 10 would not react to the best interests of either organization, and that Local No. 208 be informed of this fact, as it is felt that the present arrangement of the two separate organizations, having proven itself satisfactory over a period of years, be continued.

Petrillo believed the arrangement was satisfactory. Even the labor unrest and the growth of mass industrial unions involving black and white workers in the 1930s, along with the threat of an organizing drive among musicians by the more radical labor unions of the Congress oflndustrial 50

Organizations (CIO), could not shake his resolve .

He cajoled and courted his rivals and sat confident in his fiefdom. The CIO formed the American Musicians Union to compete with the AFM, but this attempt at dual unionism failed in 1937, allowing Petrillo to attract the remnants to his local. Disregarding ethnic differences, he merged the Polish-American Musicians Union with Local 10 as well. He even organized female musicians, who were allowed to become members of the local and form a social sub-organization, but he refused to welcome blacks.

Instead, the impetus for reform came from changes in the music industry and from the bitter lessons black Americans learned during World War IL Black musicians in Chicago and the rest of the nation witnessed decliningjob opportunities in the face ofrenewed prosperity as the live music scene dwindled and establishments employing black talent folded. Billboard magazine estimated that jobs for black talent dropped 25 to 30 percent from 1937 to 1940 and that not more than ten black bands worked in choice spots. The disappearance of black-owned clubs, the demise of swing, and continued racial prejudice in the face of a general decline in live music exacerbated the problem. White musicians suffered in this shrinking market, too, but new opportunities elsewhere offset their losses. Black musicians, remaining outside the new radio, record, advertising, and film markets tapped by the AFM, had no alternatives.

The injustice of this situation became all too clear to blacks fighting World War II to end one brand ofracism while suffering racial oppression at home. For many blacks, World War II became a call to arms against racism in America, and the music industry provided an easy target. Cries against discrimination went up everywhere, and the AFM began to draw fire. In the spring of 1943 charges of discrimination surfaced in Los Angeles after a fan of prominent black jazz musician Benny Carter was denied entrance to a club. A few months later Jimmy Lunceford, another wellknown black musician, quit an engagement in the same city after a racial incident, reluctantly returning only after the union demanded he do so. Then came the allegations of Local 767, a black subsidiary of white Local 4 7 in Los Angeles, that the AFM and movie industry had been collaborating on racially discriminatory hiring practices.

AND 041NCING

Local 208 fought lo give il, members an e ual chance t 路 th 111 hzghrr-paying downtown clubs; by the late 1t50s the bl :play e 路 I. C,zft 路 of TlzRodore ' ac had made much progre.<1 toward tlIll路 goa D. wzwn Sawukr.,.

Chicago History, Summer 1989

President Harry Truman (left) joins AFM president James Petrillo in a piano and trumpet duet at U,e union's 1951 convention. block locals throughout the country were pressuring Petrillo to end segregation and discrimination in the union.

52

Banding Together Finally, a battle broke out between the black and white locals in Miami over hiring practices for a jazz series.

Petrillo felt the pressure for reform, but he reacted slowly and deliberately in his home local and the AFM. Aware of black discontent, he counseled patience and made overtures toward black members. He balked at ending Jim Crow locals, however, until whites joined with black members to demand equal treatment. Public hearings held after the Los Angeles city council passed an antidiscrimination ordinance subjected the AFM to severe and much-publicized criticism and exposed its discriminatory practices in Hollywood radio and cinema. As if to symbolize the disparity resulting from such practices, downbeat magazine reported that white Local 4 7 enjoyed elaborately furnished headquarters in posh Hollywood while Local 767 operated out of a rundown house in a Spartan Los Angeles neighborhood. At the same time, Benny Carter and Marl Young led a movement calling for the merger of both locals and found support among blacks and whites. In the face of such overwhelming public pressure and legal threats, Petrillo had to act. Working with officers of 4 7 and 767, he designed a plan for merger that won approval from members in 1953. Not long afterward, the members and assets of Local 767 made their new home in an integrated Local 74.

From the Los Angeles merger until his replacement by new AFM president Herman Kenin in 1957, Petrillo publicly proclaimed his and the AFM's commitment to equal treatment of blacks while achieving little toward that goal.

When queried on the issue of integration in the AFM by downbeat in 1957, Petrillo gave a vague, confusing reply. He claimed he had insisted on "the abolition of 'subsidiary' local status for Negro locals" when first elected AFM president in 1940, that he "often advised locals to amalgamate" despite the "preference of Negro locals ... to retain their autonomy," and that the federation worked in an "advisory capacity" when necessary in amalgamation cases. In reality, the end of subsidiary status meant for some blacks far less than equality as the example of Local 208 demonstrated. Although this change represented improvement, most blacks had not previously belonged to official subsidiary locals. Moreover, little proof exists that Petrillo worked for amalgamation, 53

Chicago History, Summer 1989 since nearly every local before and after he left office had to raise the issue on its own. Petrillo and the AFM repeatedly refused to give blacks protection for their financial assets or grant them representation in the merged locals. Finally, to say that the federation served in an "advisory capacity" implied a lack of leadership and direction on integration and mergec If the federation under Petrillo's guidance acted only "when called upon," then black members could expect a long wait in gaining equality in the AFM. In 1957 black Local 669 of San Francisco presented white Local 6 with a merger proposal, supposedly with Petrillo's blessing. At the AFM annual convention he told whites they must merge or he would force them to do so. But when they voted against merging later that year, after blacks in Local 669 passed the proposal overwhelmingly, Petrillo did nothing. Neither did his successor, Herman Kenin, who allowed white Local 6 president Pop Kennedy to do everything he could to avoid merging. Kenin took action only after the California attorney general threatened legal prosecution under a 1959 fair employment law passed in the state. In the spring of 1960 locals 6 and 669 finally merged.

Developments both inside and outside the labor movement prodded Kenin to establish mergers and desegregation as an AFM priority and to take stronger action. Under the direction of John Hammond, a talent scout and jazz impressario, the music committee of the New York Urban League urged the AFM to end its Jim Crow policy immediately while allaying blacks' fears about the loss of representation in the merged locals. More important, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) issued a directive in 1960 urging international unions, including the AFM, to terminate segregation in their locals.

Adding fuel to the fire, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued a report in 1961 that sharply criticized the AFL-CIO and exhorted it to move swiftly against racial discrimination. Finally, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, formally outlawing racial discrimination.

Kenin now proceeded with greater urgency.

Only San Francisco's, Denver's, and Cleveland's segregated locals had merged since the 1953 Los Angeles merger, and the AFM was eager to

54

Banding Together

In 1963 merger proponents increased the pressure on Local JO by demonstrating to end Jim Crow policies. Gift of Theodore D. Saunders.

55

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Most Loop hote/,S and nightclubs hired white musicians lo please their white patrons; the Garrick Lounge, where Red Sa11nd1â&#x20AC;˘rs played, was an exception. Gift of Theodore D. Saunders.

show its enlightened racial views. Kenin publicly chastised Miami businesses still practicing racial segregation at the time of the 1963 AFM convent.ion there. Delegates voted in favor ofan antidiscrimination resolution and also declared their devotion to the cause of "equal opportunity for all." Two years later delegates openly condemned violence against blacks exercising their constitutional rights and urged support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black and white AFM members could also congratulate themselves as they initiated merger agreements in Houston, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Tulsa, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and twelve other cities across the country between 1965 and 1967.

Despite some progress, Kenin and his officers admitted that one embarrassing sore spot remained. Chicago's Local 10, the second largest 56

in the AFM and the focus of growing public attention, refused to surrender its white-only membership policy. Kenin knew that until locals 10 and 208 merged, the union could not defeat the lingering Jim Crow policy. White locals throughout the country watched carefully as Chicago became the litmus test of the union's dedication to dissolving the color line. Kenin made halfhearted efforts at best.

Although no longer president of the AFM, Petrillo, a close ally of Kenin's, continued to rule Local 10. Kenin dared not upset his union comrade. In 1963, however, Petrillo was ousted by the more "democratic" Bernard Richards, whose ascension to Local 10 leadership engendered hope for merger proponents. Richards had other ideas and used the issue to wield political power over members who had supported Petrillo while

Banding Together simultaneously avoiding a serious merger effort.

Like Thomas Kennedy in 1901, Richards probably wanted to use black members to strengthen his position in the local. Even as 208 and 10 began informal merger negotiations, he tried to circumvent the process by inviting seventy black musicians led by Red Saunders to enroll in Local 10. Saunders and others viewed the move as a positive step toward integration. Samuels and Gray, by contrast,justifiably perceived the action as no more than a raid on their local. Enraged, they grew even more suspicious of Richards.

In the months following Richards's March 1963 raid, the merger movement made little headway. Local 208 representatives were demanding guaranteed representation on governing boards and some protection for their financial assets.

Richards and his colleagues, on the other hand, would accede to little beyond equal membership. Kenin tried to break the deadlock by summoning representatives from both sides to AFM executive meetings late that spring, but the effort proved fruitless. Even the appointment of a supervisor from his office failed to produce results.

Finally in October 1963, after the Chicagobased Congress of Racial Equality intervened and demanded a merger, Ken in issued an ultimatum. He instructed the locals to "enter promptly into good-faith negotiations looking towards merger," to refrain from accepting members from the other local, and to begin the actual merger process no later than March 1964. Not meeting that deadline, he proclaimed, would require his taking"such action as may be deemed necessary to accomplish the merger." When that deadline passed, Kenin took the "necessary" action. He and the executive board offered their own merger plan and ordered both locals to begin immediate compliance with its terms to prepare to merge in January 1966. Violation of the order by either party meant disciplinary action by the AFM. The terms of the plan appeared quite clear.

The new "Chicago Federation of Musicians Protective Union, Local 10-208" would include former members of locals 10 and 208 on an equal basis. Until the January 1966 completion date, a joint executive committee would supervise dayto-day business. Moreover, no Local 208 officer could serve his term beyond the merger date.

However, those belonging to Local 208 in 1965

would elect their own representatives to governing boards in the new local, including three of eight executive board members, an administrative vice-president, two of eleven trial board members, one of three examining board members, and three of six convention delegates. Former Local 208 members would elect an administrative vice-president and two executive board members again in 1969.

President Harry Gray and Local 208 officers received the proposal somewhat favorably, even though the board positions numbered fewer than they had advocated. Gray told Kenin his local would comply, and in May 1964 his members gave their approval. According to Gray, the plan represented a "reasonable compromise" and "a framework under which a meaningful merger can be affected."

Richards and Local 10 refused to agree to the plan. They framed an appeal at the 1964 AFM convention to explain why and devised a plan of their own. Richards told reporters he disliked Kenin's plan because it "was prejudiced against the white majority and continued segregation."

More specifically, he informed convention delegates, the plan practiced "reverse discrimination" in allowing separate voting for blacks and earmarking board positions for them. Instead, Richards proposed only two executive board positions for Local 208 and a July 1964 deadline for beginning merger proceedings. Richards believed his plan offered the only assurance of equality for all members.

The appeals committee of the convention disagreed and denied Local l0's appeal. Richards and his local grew more intransigent. They refused to abide by Kenin's order or convention wishes and voted against the plan. Kenin then countered by placing the Chicago local in legal "trusteeship" and sent a representative to supervise the forced merger. With nowhere to go, Richards played his last card. He obtained a temporary restraining order in district court, but a month later the court ruled against his local in favor of the national body and "trusteeship:' With Richards defeated, the bureaucratic work of merging the locals began immediately. After sixty-two years, the cruel Jim Crow policy under the guise of "separate but equal" finally ended.

New battles would be fought as those holding power in Local 10 transferred that power into the

57

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In March /963 Local/() president Bemard Richard1 (second from right) invited Red Saunders (left) and seventy other black mmiriam to join the all-white local. Saunders saw this as a positive step toward integration; other blacks saw it as simply a raid on their local. Gift ,if Theodore D. Saunders.

Banding Together

A group of f onner Local 208 members line up lo pay their dues lo become the first black members of Local JO. Gift of Theodore D. Saunders.

new local, and racial discrimination continued.

The merger represented only a small triumph, and it had been a long time coming.

The merger, however, should not be viewed as insignificant or inconsequential. Throughout the city and the nation other unions in the AFLCIO had already moved toward ending the formal vestiges of segregation in their ranks. With the 10-208 merger completed and the AFM now on record in opposition to segregation, the process would move with greater speed. Blacks throughout the labor movement could begin to count themselves as equal members with access to the same benefits and rewards as whites. The merger also sent an important message to the city's and nation's entertainment industries.

Thereafter, when the AFM and the industry crossed paths in clubs, hotels, recording facilities, and television studios, racial discrimination would be tolerated no longer.

For Further Reading For more information about Local 208's attempts to desegregate the AFM see Donald Spivey, Union and the Black Musician: The Narrative of William Everett Samuels and Chicago Local 208 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984) and Robert D. Leiter, The Musicians and Petrillo ( ew York: Bookman Associates, 1953 ). For a general survey of black music history see Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983).

Illustrations 40, Š used with permission of the Chicago Sun-Times, Inc. , 1989; 42-43, AFM Local 10-208; 44, CHS, ICHi21104; 45, downbeat magazine; 46, CHS, ICHi-2ll05; 47, CHS, ICHi-21112, ICHi-2lll4, ICHi-21113; 48-49, AFM Local I0-208; 50, CHS, ICHi-2lll5; 51, CHS, ICHi-21111 ; 52-53, CHS, ICHi-21109; 54-55, CHS, ICHi-21110; 56, CHS, ICHi-21141; 58, CHS, ICHi-21107; 59, CHS, ICHi-21106.

A version of this article was published in Black Music Research Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 207-222.

59

YESTERDAY'S CITY BY RICHARD LINDBERG The South Side's Baseball Factory

A signifu:ant chapter in spfJrts history was written in Comiskey Park. This 1913 photograph shows the parks easy access via the streetcar. CHS, DNS, S7, 726.

Richard Lindberg has authored three books on the Chicago White Sox. His latest book, To Serve and Collect: A History of the Chicago Police Department, will be published in 1990.

60

Yesterday '.s City Kneeling upon a genuine piece of the "auld sod"' on March 17, 1910, architect Zachary Taylor Davis laid in place a solitary green brick-the cornerstone of what would become Comiskey Park. A large assembly of Bridgeport Irish took time out from their St. Patrick's Day revelry to witness the somber proceedings. Davis skipped the formalities of a prepared speech. If he had any misgivings about the project or the meddling influences of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey in his original design , he did not tell the crowd of reporters. After securing the lucky Irish brick in place, Davis directed workmen to lay several tiers of masonry on top of it-just in case anyone entertained notions of claiming a souvenir in the middle of the night. The clump of Gaelic soil that Davis had knelt on was left behind, and it was quickly claimed by one of the spectators.

The baseball park that would bear the name of Charles Comiskey was scheduled to open July 1, 1910. Comiskey envisioned a park where the common man could be assured a seat as good as an alderman or an opera singer. His choice of location was neither coincidental nor haph azard.

In 1890 he had played first base for the Chicago Pirates of the Brotherhood in a small enclosed grandstand directly east of the new park. Yet Comiskey based his decision to b"uild at 35th Street and Shields Avenue more on what he viewed as sound business considerations than on personal sentiment. Besides its convenience to the Wentworth Avenue streetcar line, Comiskey felt that the ballpark would in time become the focal point of community life among his own people-the ethnic Irish of Bridgeport, Canaryville, Washington Park, and Back of the Yards.

Today, Comiskey Park has lost its traditional demographic base ofsupportand is slated for the wrecking ball in 1991 when the new White Sox park is completed. It might have survived into the twenty-first century had Comiskey chosen to heed the advice of the young architect entrusted to build it. Instead, he allowed cost considerations to stand in the way of strnctural and architectural innovation, resulting in a triumph of mediocrity over genius. By the 1980s the owners of the White Sox found themselves saddled with an archaic baseball dinosaur that had been sadly neglected in the intervening years. The controversy surrounding the park's demolition raises

Chicago Pirate first baseman Charles Comiskey would become a revered civic magnate and build a baseball monument in his oum name. CHS, ICHi-21148.

questions about what constitutes a landmark.

However, the significance of Comiskey Park lies not in its durability or in its style but in the history and nostalgia it evokes.

Charles Comiskey-called the "Old Roman" after helping to found the American League in 1900-was one of the most revered public figures in Chicago by 1910. As a prominent member of the Woodland Bards, a private club of show people, newsmen, politicians, and civic leaders, Comiskey cavorted and entertained his way into the ranks of Chicago's elite and powerful. While well known for his lavish and extravagant forays, Comiskey required his ball players to pay for the cleaning and pressing of their own uniforms. His professional penury was not public knowledge in 1910, for he was admired as a resourceful baseball magnate who had upstaged the Chicago Cubs, his powerful National League rival, with a daring brand of baseball. In 1906 the White Sox-known as the "Hitless Wonders" for their uncanny ability to win ball games despite having a team batting average of only .230, the worst in the American League-defied what seemed to be insurmountable odds by capturing the only all-Chicago World Series, four games to two.

61

Chicago History, Summer 1989

--

The woo/Un South Side Grounds, where the White Sox played from 1900 to /9 JO, was a potential firetrap. CHS, SDN,S858.

Before 1910 the White Sox played in a cramped, single-decked wooden firetrap near the comer of 39th Street and Wentworth Avenue.

Known as the South Side Grounds, the park was unsuitable for baseball-or any other athletic contest-when Comiskey arrived on the scene in 1900. The South Side Grounds had been home to the Chicago Wanderers Cricket Club since the 1893 World's Fair. Abandoned for a year or two and strewn with weeds and garbage, Comiskey leased the grounds and secured loans from the First National Bank to build a new grandstand.

During the winter of 1899-1900 construction crews worked double shifts to ready the park by opening day. But even after the costly renovation the size of the South Side Grounds proved inadequate for White Sox fans, who had trouble securing tickets for games. The grandstand was enlarged in 1902, and an overhanging deck was installed in left field for the comfort of bleacher 62

patrons, but in its heyday, total seating capacity never exceeded 7,500.

The Old Roman promised White Sox fans that a modern steel and concrete facility would be erected. As early as 1903 Comiskey scouted the city for a new stadium location. He secured an option on a tract of West Side real estate bounded by Harrison and Loomis streets, Congress Parkway, and Throop Street. Because the Cubs played in a nearby stadium at Lincoln Avenue and Taylor Street, and the surrounding neighborhood was populated by eastern European immigrants who were unfamiliar with and unenthusiastic about baseball, Comiskey reconsidered. He negotiated for several years with the heirs of Mayor John Wentworth to buy the grounds of Brotherhood Park at 35th Street and Wentworth Avenue, the property he considered ideal. But he wouldn't be able to secure the land for several more years. And so, the

Yesterday j City White Sox owner purchased the vacant lot at 35th Street and Shields Avenue three days before Christmas, 1908. Comiskey paid Roxanna A. Bowen and her husband $100,000 (with a promise to pay the 1907 back taxes) for property that South Side residents used as a community dumping ground. Years later White Sox shortstop Luke Appling allegedly tripped over a rusty kettle drum that had resurfaced in the middle of the Comiskey Park infield.

Comiskey seems to have looked past the emerging Black Belt already taking shape east of Cottage Grove Avenue. The South Side between 22nd and 39th streets was an area in transition.

East of the park from Wentworth Avenue to State Street stood a number of two- and three-story walk-ups built as low-cost housing in the 1870s and 1880s. These structures featured small shops on the ground level and narrow, cramped second-floor apartments appealing to poor, transient families. Though Comiskey did not realize it at the time, the South Side Irish community he hoped to serve was being replaced by an expanding black population.

The energetic Sox owner pressed ahead with plans for his new ballpark, the fifth baseball stadium to be erected on the South Side since 1874.

It was to be the third concrete and steel stadium in America. Philadelphia's Shibe. Park was the first in 1909, followed in the same year by Pittsburgh's Forbes Field. Concrete and steel structures all but eliminated the threat of fire that had

plagued many nineteenth-century stadiums.

Safety dictated that Comiskey shell out the money for a modern ballpark. (By 1911 he had leased the old South Side Grounds to John Schorling, owner of the American Giants, a Negro League team managed by the legendary Rube Foster.)

Comiskey envisioned a new home for the White Sox that had spacious contours and an abundance of25-cent seats in the outfield pavilions. He commissioned thirty-eight-year-old architect Zachary Taylor Davis to design a structure that would favor pitchers and fielders-the "Hitless Wonder" baseball the White Sox were known for. Born in Aurora, Illinois, and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Davis worked as the supervising architect for Armour and Company. The first major commission of his distinguished career, his design for Comiskey Park established him as the foremost expert on the new and innovative kite-shaped ballpark. Before he began his preliminary sketch, he sent Karl Vitzhum, an architect on Daniel Burn ham's staff, on a tour of other baseball stadiums. Accompanied by Ed Walsh, the most notable White Sox pitcher to date, Vitzhum gathered data and submitted a report to Comiskey and Davis. Walsh's role remains somewhat of a mystery. Certainly the crafty spitballer was the best pitcher of his day and was a personal favorite of A detail from Zachary Taylor Davi.s's Jirsl elevations shows Comi.skey Parks graceful arching windows. Chicago While Sox.

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63

Chicago History, Summer 1989

A rendering of Davis's original design on the official invitation to opening day shows the embellishments and fountains sadly eliminated from the final structure. Pat Quinn.

64

Yesterday~ City the Old Roman, but it is unlikely that a ball player wou ld be allowed to dictate the architectural specifications of his preference.

Davis submitted his first sketch of the park on October 6, 1909. It was to be built with common red-pressed brick along the exterior walls. (The famous initial "C" would be added during a 1927 renovation.) The outfield pavilions were single decked and detached from the two-tiered grandstand that ringed the park from right to left. For his media friends Comiskey set aside ten rows of e levated seats in the upper deck behind the rail.

This served as the press box for the next thirtyeight years. The notable feature of Comiskey Park was the sheer massiveness of the playing field. The original dimensions were 363 feet down the foul lines and 420 feet to dead center fie ld. The park dictated the "Chicago" style of play for years to come. The spacious contours favored the White Sox pitchers by making home runs very hard to come by. Comiskey believed that the best baseball game was low scoring and dominated by pitchers and fielders.

Davis drew much inspiration for his Comiskey Park design from Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

Shibe was built in the beaux-art style. It featured a lovely French renaissance dome on the exterior roof behind the plate and large arching windows that Davis later adopted for Comiskey Park. Shibe would have fit in well with Daniel Burnham's vision for Chicago: a "City Beautiful"

CHICAGO WHITE SOX

laced with public parks and grand buildings designed in classical or historical styles. Davis recommended adaptation of the cantile\'ered grandstand-free from bothersome obstructing posts-at an additional cost of 350,000.

Comiskey rejected this idea for reasons that are unclear today; his "penny wise, dollar foolish" attitude may be the best explanation. Instead, he ordered construction to proceed with vertical posts and without any classical ornamentation.

Sadly, the fine, graceful lines ofSh ibe Park were to be absent in Comiskey Park. Because of the restrictions Charles Comiskey placed on Davis, the final design emerged as uninspired contemporary architecture. Comiskey Park would be a functional baseball plant dropped into a working-class neighborhood and surrounded by factory buildings.

An inherently superstitious man, Charles Comiskey sought permission from the league during the winter meetings to reschedule the grand opening of his new ballpark from Friday, July 1, to Thursday,June 30, because ofan Irish superstition about un lucky Fridays. The request was denied. Comiskey must ha\'e had many reservations as misfortune and bad luck impeded the progress of construction. An unexpected strike of structural steel workers delayed construction for five full weeks. The first consignment of steel beams did not arrive until March 1910, and Comiskey allegedly paid off officials

NEW BASEBALL

HOME OPENS TO-DAY.

The Chicago Daily News chronicled the "Gala Day for random" when the park opened on July I, 1910. CHS Library.

65

Chicago History, Summer 1989

The most notable feature of Comiskey Park is the sheer massiveness of the playing field, 363 feet down the foul lines and 420 feet to dead centerfield.

CHS, ICHi-14054.

in the construction industry for scab workers to complete the job in time. The infield sod was planted on June 17, the same day that building department inspectors declared it "as safe as the Rock of Gibraltar."

The day before the gala opener a forty-six-yearold laborer named Frank McDermott died after falling off the top of the grandstand. Comiskey's superstitions must have been troubling him. On the grand day, a score of dignitaries joined 28,000 fans to watch the Sox quietly lose to the St. Louis Browns, even with Ed Walsh on the mound for Chicago. Within the next three days, four Sox regulars were felled by injury. Speculation arose that the park was cursed. And in some ways maybe it was. The next decade brought success and then scandal; Comiskey won two pennants only to see his team decimated by the 191_9 Black Sox affair.

The growth and prosperity of baseball in the 1920s convinced Comiskey to expand his park. At

66

certain times attendance was overwhelming, and fans were squeezed into roped-off standing room areas directly behind the outfielders. If a big event loomed on the horizon, such as a title fight or a testimonial day for a ball player, Comiskey would order construction crews to erect cheap temporary seating. Adding an upper deck at Comiskey Park seemed like a good decision in 1927, but in retrospect it was probably the worst thing the Old Roman could have done. For some years the South Side had been plagued by racial tensions that culminated in an uprooting of the Irish and Germans Comiskey was counting on to fill his new upper deck. Given the poor performance of the Sox in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the seats were rarely filled. Zachary Davis again oversaw construction. The outfield sections were connected, and three double ramps and four single ramps leading to the upper deck were installed. The center field scoreboard erected in 1917 was torn out, and two electronic auxiliary

Yesterday's City boards were built into the right and left field walls. Bleacher seats appeared for the first time in straightaway center field. Stadium planners assured the owner that capacity crowds could be emptied out in just six minutes now that stairways were converted to ramps. A soccer field adjacent to the east side of the stadium was converted into a parking lot-in recognition that the Wentworth Avenue streetcar line was no longer the preferred mode of travel to and from Sox games.

By the time the refurbished park opened on April 20, 1927, the seating ca pacity had increased to 52,000-less than Comiskey had planned but in line with existing fire codes. Double decking of the outfield pavilions enhanced Comiskey Park's reputation as a pitcher's haven while at the same time depriving the park of sorely needed intimacy. The imposing shadows of the upper deck in the twilight made the park seem cold and impersonal. In 1914 Charles Weeghman had commissioned Zachary Taylor Davis to design the present-day Wrigley Field.

In comparison to Wrigley, the "beautiful" ballpark resplendent in vines and sunshine, new Comiskey was cavernous.

A surveyor's team concluded that a ball would have to travel 4 74 feet on the fly to clear the expanse of the upper deck. Certainly no mortal man could hit a ball that far, they reasoned. At the height of his reign, however, Babe Ruth, the "Sultan of Swat," was the first to confound the experts. On August 16, 1927, Ruth sent a Tommy Thomas pitch over the right field roof. In the next thirty years only nine more "roof shots" would be recorded. Because most fans preferred high-scoring games with plenty of home runs, the White Sox tinkered with the dimensions of the field from time to time. In 1934 the diamond was moved fourteen feet closer to the wall to accommodate strong boy Al Simmons. The original dimensions were restored two years later. In 1949 and again in 1969 a chicken wire fence was strung along the perimeter of the warning track.

These changes increased home run frequency, but unfortunately it was usually the oppositionand not the White Sox-that profited.

Except for various cosmetic changes, including the addition of a public address system in 1935, a 144 million candle-power lighting system in 1939, and a new center field scoreboard in 1951, Comiskey Park remained basically unchanged

A small Jan reveals the scale of the park s vast playing field. Photograph by Tom Ham ey. CHS, !CHi-21146.

for many years. But the neighborhood east of Wentworth Avenue continued to deteriorate.

The once luxu1ious Mecca Apartment Buildings at 34th and State streets had become slum tenements by the 1930s. Comiskey's immense ballpark was an anachronism before it was a quartercentury old . According to Chuck Comiskey, grandson of the founder, the team considered alternative locations as early as 1935. During the lean depression years of 1932 and 1934, seasonal attendance fell below the 300,000 mark. Meanwhile, the Cubs were winning pennants on three-year cycles and drawing nearly a million fans each time. The charm of the "friendly confines" of Wrigley Field contrasted starkly with austere Comiskey Park. As Bill Veeck observed in his memoirs: The problem of attracting other Chicagoans to the games . .. [was] made even more difficult by the competition from beautiful Wrigley Field on the other side of town. Comiskey Park is in the grimy industrial Backof-the-Yards section of the South Side, and although it was basically sound and a solid structure, the maintenance had been so completely neglected over the years that it had all the appearance of an outdoor slum.

Comiskey Park and the White Sox fell into a vicious cycle that took many years to overcome.

With the park in disrepair and the team losing, the White Sox couldn't draw enough spectators to afford quality players or costly maintenance and renovation programs. In 1941 the original grandstand seats were replaced with wider, curved-back seats anchored to the concrete.

Seven years later the team spent $125,000 to paint 67

Chicago History, Summer 1989

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Fans who f reqwmted McCuddy Ba,; which sat in the shadow of the ballpark, were among theJew who campaigned to save Comiskey.

Photograph by Tom Hamey. CHS, ICHi-2 114 1.

68

Yesterday '.5 City

Loyal White Sox Jans endure the vertical posts that impair their view of the game. Photograph by Tom Harney. CHS, ICHi-21145.

the interior walls, to construct a lu:icurious press box for the Chicago Cardinals football team, their on-again, off-again tenants, and to install new flood lighting for the parking areas.

Bill Veeck purchased the White Sox in 1959.

In 1960 advertisers sponsored the construction of an exploding scoreboard in center field, and Veeck added a spacious picnic area under the left field stands for large groups. Veeck's winning ball club and zany promotions lured fans to the park in record numbers.

Arthur C. Allyn acquired the team in June 1961. But in a few years racial tensions began to simmer on the South Side. In 1965, in response to the growing fears and anxieties of his white suburban customers, he proposed that the City Council help finance a new domed stadium.

However, the city proved unresponsive. The team fell out of contention by 1968, and Comiskey Park attendance plummeted. Allyn battled growing fan apathy in the 1969 season by installing an Astroturf infield and staffing the park with pretty "Soxette" hostesses, but these measures only

subjected him to ridicule. Allyn considered moving the team to Milwaukee at the end of the 1969 season, but he sold the team to his brother John instead.

John Allyn dedicated himself to restoring the team-and the park-to past greatness. He gave immediate attention to the lingering concerns that Comiskey Park was dirty and unsafe, installing new lights under the stands at a cost of $20,000 and hiring off-duty Chicago policemen to staff the security force. Uniformed personnel guarded the street comers and parking lots adjacent to the main entrances. Allyn changed the name of the stadium to the more colloquial White Sox Park and scheduled the plant for a new paintjob every five years.

The fans returned in 1972 when slugger Dick Allen lit up the nighttime sky with prodigious home runs reminiscent of Babe Ruth. Suddenly the concerns about neighborhood safety and racial conflicts dissipated, proving that winning ball clubs can attract fans no matter how unsafe the neighborhood. (This point is best illustrated

69

Chicago History, Summer 1989 in Detroit and in the Bronx, where the Tigers and the New York Yankees annually draw in excess of two million fans.) But in rebuilding years a team must be assured of a decent attendance in order to survive and regroup. With the exception of Bill Veeck's second ownership from 1976 to 1980, when the White Sox foundered badly and still averaged yearly attendance of 1.3 million, attendance has generally dropped during losing seasons. Every team experiences these setbacKs; the resourceful ones learn to improvise or perish.

The Cubs have been sustained by the resources of WGN, the Chicago Tri,bune, and the perception that Wrigley Field is a "nice" and safe place to visit on a warm Sunday afternoon. But fans will not endure the unpleasantness of Comiskey Park and the reputed threat of the surrounding neighborhood for a losing team.

When Jerry Reinsdorfand Eddie Einhorn purchased the White Sox from Bill Veeck for the sum of $19 million in 1981, they inherited all the stadium's vexing problems. Long years of neglect had taken their toll, and the new owners were anxious to reverse the team's pattern of losing.

They succeeded in making the Sox respectable in a short period of time, but the old stadium proved to be a cash drain. They installed a tier of luxury suites in the upper deck in 1983-a first for Chicago sports stadiums-and widened the main aisle. Contoured plastic seats were built between the bases, and a state-of-the-art Diamond Vision scoreboard replaced Bill Veeck's original "Monster" in 1982.

By the time Comiskey Park celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1985, continuing its reign as the nation's oldest baseball stadium, plans were already afoot to relocate. The masonry of the infrastructure, especially in the upper deck, required yearly reinforcement and created a financial hardship on a team in decline following a division championship in 1983. By 1988, a pivotal year in White Sox history, Einhorn and Reinsdorf had invested an estimated $20 million to repair the archaic ballpark, continuing to fight the losing battle. Although the owners approached the team as a business enterprise, many fans considered the White Sox and the ballpark part of the public domain-civic institutions that should be cherished and preserved whatever the cost. The owners drew sharp criticism when they demanded that a new park be

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constructed and, failing that, threatened to move the team to St Petersburg, Florida.

To support his contention that Comiskey Park was deteriorating faster than the club could afford to repair it, Reinsdorf released a letter from engineer Peter Krallitsch on March 21, 1986, which concluded: "simply put, Comiskey Park is nearing the end of its useful life." A private

Yesterday's City

COMIS_KEY

For eighty years sports Jans have passed by this historic corner. Photograph by Tom Hamey. CHS, ICHi-2 I 14 3.

marketing survey determined that the team's best interests would be served by a move to Addison, Illinois, in DuPage County. The western suburbs reflected the demographic population shift of many third- and fourth-generation Irish fans who had fled Bridgeport, Brighton Park, and other South Side communities with the exodus of heavy industry and jobs. The push for Addison

was rejected by popular referendum in 1986.

DuPage residents feared an influx of crime, traffic congestion, and, though no one admitted it, a hastening of integration in the community.

When this option was rejected the state voted, at the final roll call of the 1988 legislative session, to build a new stadium across the street from the old Comiskey Park, fulfilling the wishes of the 71

Chicago History, Summer 1989

Comiskey Park might have become a cherished old landmark but instead became a baseball dinosaur. Photograph by Torn Hamey. CHS, ICHi-21142.

late Mayor Harold Washington . Except for the muted cry of a small but dedicated band of preservationists, little effort was made to save Comiskey Park from the wrecker's ball.

Through Comiskey Park's turnstiles have passed generations of Chicagoans: hearty fans shivering through cold Aprils and Septembers as the crosswinds off Lake Michigan whip through the stands, blowing hot dog wrappers and paper cups across the field. During the hot, sticky months of July and August, the smoky haze of thousands of cigarettes forms a lingering cloud over the infield. Underneath the stands the pillars of concrete-endless concrete-and the damp, uneven stone floors reek from Chicago's humidity. The poor sight lines in the left and right field corners and the forty-nine vertical posts never fail to obstruct the big play.

But great things have happened in this old park, and therein lies its true historical significance. The history of twentieth-century sport was written within the confines of its playing field. The first baseball all-star game in 1933, five title boxing matches, and the first professional

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football team, the Chicago Cardinals-all had their days in the Comiskey sun. At Comiskey the American League color barrier was broken in 1947, and a dozen memorable Negro League allstar games were played. The Beatles, John F. Kennedy, George M. Cohan, and Michael Jackson passed through the park at one time or another.

This is the enduring legacy of Comiskey Park-a flawed monument to a man who was not a visionary when it came to heeding the changing realities around him. Comiskey was notable in many ways, but the business decisions he made in 1910 and 1927 had an unforeseen, negative impact on the team of the 1980s. Design problems were later compounded by various owners so that the park could not be properly renovated and thus saved for future generations. With a singular design or an inspired idea Comiskey Park might have become a cherished old landmark ranked with Fenway Park in Boston and Yankee Stadium in New York. Any discussion of razing the park would have been premature.

Comiskey Park has stood for a long time, but ultimately, it could not stand the test of time.