When World War I began in Europe in 1914, American public opinion was heavily against involvement. But on May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine, killing 1,198 people including 128 Americans. This "uncivilized" attack provoked great outrage in the U.S., helping to push the country towards joining the Allied war effort in 1917.
Massachusetts manufacturers came together to advocate for the interests of employers of highly skilled workers, unionized or not, at a time when labor conflict in low-skilled textile and apparel industries dominated political discourse. Europe had been at war since 1914; although the U.S. was still neutral, transatlantic trade was severely disrupted. Domestic politics felt the effect of the progressive movement, which favored more regulation of business - an impulse which had split the Republican Party in 1912.
Massachusetts was a large industrial state, one of the wealthiest in the nation. Its politics were ordinarily conservative and Republican, though Boston and other cities generally voted Democratic.
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), a graduate of the Harvard Law School, had a broad and profound influence on American law and society. As a Boston lawyer, he pioneered the use of evidence beyond legal citations in briefs, defined the individual right of privacy, and founded two AIM members: the firm that became Nutter McClellan & Fish as well as Savings Bank Life Insurance. He proved to be an extremely influential Justice, particularly in the realm of civil liberties.
The Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) had its origins in an organization established in 1916 to administer claims under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act. Benefits are available under this Act to more than three million federal employees, members and the Peace Corp and Americorps * Vista volunteers.
The presidential election of 1916 took place during World War I. The United States remained neutral at this time, but the war was an important aspect of the election and U.S. society. Incumbent President Woodrow Wilson faced off against Republican candidate Charles Evan Hughes, resulting in the reelection of President Wilson. Wilson won 277 electoral votes - only eleven more than were required to secure the presidency.
General relativity was Einstein’s theory of gravity, developed in 1915, which extended special relativity to take into account non-inertial frames of reference — areas that are accelerating with respect to each other. General relativity takes the form of field equations, describing the curvature of space-time and the distribution of matter throughout space-time. The effects of matter and space-time on each other are what we perceive as gravity.
‘We are coming to see that we are dependent upon commercial and industrial prosperity, not only for the creation of wealth, but for the solving of the great problem of the distribution of wealth. There is just one condition on which men can secure employment and a living, nourishing, profitable wages for whatever they contribute to the enterprise, be it labor or capital, and that condition is that some one make a profit by it.’
Gillette worked out a mega deal with the U.S. Armed Forces in 1917 to provide safety razor and blades to every enlisted man or officer on his way to Europe as a regular part of the standard issue gear. During World War I the U.S. government ordered 3.5 million razors and 36 million blades to supply all its troops. In order to meet military supply schedules, shifts worked around the clock and Gillette hired over 500 new employees.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.
Massachusetts created a war emergency industrial commission, by statute, composed of two representatives of employees, two of employers, and the commissioner of labor as chairman, to act on requests for suspension of labor laws in war emergencies. Massachusetts industry played a major part in the war effort; for example, the Fore River/ Squantum shipyards in Quincy produced more destroyers than all other US shipyards combined.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born 29th May 1917 at 3 pm as the second child and son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. His older brother was Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr, born in July 1915. John was delivered by Dr. Frederick L. Good at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Mass. His nickname would be ‘Jack’.
The first recorded cases of influenza in the United States occurred in Boston. On August 27, several sailors at the Commonwealth Pier reported sick with influenza. Within two weeks, more than 2,000 military officers and men stationed in the Boston area had influenza. Between September 1, 1918 and January 16, 1919, approximately 45,000 people died from influenza in Massachusetts alone.
The overthrow of the czar and creation of the Soviet Union under communist rule had long-lasting domestic repercussions in the U.S., from the Red Scare of 1919 through the end of the Cold War 70 years later.
The Rabinowitz (Rabb) family opened a corner market called Economy Grocery Stores in Somerville in 1914. In 1918, they introduced cash-and-carry shopping, where customers picked out their own groceries. The Somerville shop became the first modern, self-service supermarket, demonstrating a level of innovation that is still a cornerstone of the company it is today – Stop & Shop Supermarket Company.
Major league baseball continued during World War I, with a shortened season (and many players away in the service). The Boston Red Sox, led by pitcher/outfielder Babe Ruth, won their fourth World Series in eight years (the Boston Braves added another). This was the last world championship for the Sox until 2004, and the last time they clinched the title at Fenway Park until 2013.
To meet the cost of U.S. participation in World War I, the Treasury Department in 1918 issued Thrift Stamps and War Savings Stamps for those who could not afford Liberty Bonds – in part to encourage patriotic engagement among immigrants and school children. Thrift Stamps cost 25 cents; 16 stamps brought a certificate redeemable for five dollars in 1923. In little more than a year more than $1 billion was raised in this campaign. AIM honored a group of member employees who were promoting the program in 1918.
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
The dial telephone was introduced in 1919 in the US, and spread until it was nearly universal in the 1950s. It began an era of rotary dial telephone sets that would span the rest of the 20th century. This desk set was the first free-standing dial telephone.
Two million gallons of molasses flooded Boston on January 15, 1919, drowning 21 people. One of history’s most bizarre disasters, the flood has remained a topic of grim fascination ever since, prompting a range of historical analysis. Experts believe the tank was stressed well beyond capacity and made from a steel susceptible to fracture — the same type used on the Titanic.
By 1916, 23 of 48 states had passed anti-saloon legislation. Many went further, prohibiting the manufacture of alcoholic beverages as well. After the congressional elections that year, “dry” members (as those who favored a national prohibition of alcohol became known) won a two-thirds majority over “wet” in the U.S. Congress. On January 29, 1919, Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacturing, transportation and sale of alcohol within the United States.
Striking telephone operators in Massachusetts won the right to negotiate with the New England Telephone Company in 1919. The young, single women who had flooded into the industry in the early 1900s wanted higher wages and better working conditions. When they took off their headsets and walked off the job, they brought business in New England to a standstill. The strike ended in less than a week, but the operators soon faced a more serious threat: the self-dial telephone.
The aircraft that accomplished the first transatlantic crossing on May 6, 1919, was the U.S. Navy’s NC-4. It was a four-engined flying boat originally built for antisubmarine patrols. The NC-4 left Rockaway Beach, New York, on May 8, 1919, with two companion NC planes, to attempt a trans-Atlantic crossing. After landing for repairs in Chatham, with stops in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Azores, the NC-4 flew into Lisbon, Portugal, on May 27, 1919, accomplishing the first trans-Atlantic crossing.
Frederick Huntington Gillett; October 16, 1851 – July 31, 1935) was an American politician who served in the Massachusetts state government and both houses of the U.S. Congress between 1879 and 1931, including six years as Speaker of the House from May 19, 1919 until March 3, 1925.
By the end of the war, women made up 20 percent of the US industrial workforce (40 percent at the Springfield Armory, where "watershop girls" worked). After the war, Massachusetts was one of several states to reduce the legal workweek limit for women from 54 to 48 hours. Men's hours were not limited. Much early labor legislation focused on protecting women, children, and veterans, rather than the entire workforce.
In Boston, the largely Irish-American police force had seen its wages lag badly during the war. Efforts were made to organize in order to gain not only higher pay, but shorter hours and better working conditions. Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis refused to sanction a police union and suspended the leaders from the force in August 1919. On September 9, more than 1,100 officers went out on strike. On the following day, Mayor Andrew J. Peters summoned local militia units, which managed to restore order.
For the first time, most Americans lived in urban areas (which was true of Massachusetts by 1850). Women made up 21 percent of employed Americans, but only 9 percent of married women held jobs. More than one-third of US households had electricity.
Ponzi began selling notes in Boston with 50 percent interest payments payable in 45 days. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1921. He was released from prison in 1924, but was jailed again for fraud and deported.
Although Boston's South Station was for a time the busiest passenger rail terminal in the world, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad struggled for decades to make its southeastern Massachusetts service profitable. The New Haven eventually ended service in 1959. Commuter service to the region has been restored by Amtrak and the MBTA (most recently with the reopening of the Greenbush line).
On April 15, 1920, gunmen staged a payroll robbery at the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company factory in Braintree, killing two employees. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants with anarchist connections, were arrested and tried for the crime, and convicted in a trial atmosphere heavily influenced not only by anti-Italian feeling but also by a series of terrorist acts attributed to foreign-born anarchists. The verdict survived appeal and review, and the men were executed in 1927.
The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 limited the franchise to males, although women occasionally voted in town meetings. In 1879, legislation allowed women to vote for school committees. In 1915, however, a statewide referendum on the proposed amendment to the US Constitution lost in every community except Tewksbury (149-148).
The Harding-Coolidge ticket was elected four days later. Also speaking was Dwight Morrow, one of America’s leading businessmen, a future Ambassador to Mexico and U.S. Senator, who was Coolidge’s classmate at Amherst College.
With Coolidge presiding over the Senate as Vice President, and Frederick H. Gillett Speaker of the House, both chambers of Congress were led by Amherst College graduates from the Pioneer Valley.
The British luxury carmaker, pursuing the American market, opens its only factory outside England in Springfield to take advantage of the local tradition of precision manufacturing. Most of the 3,000 Rolls-Royces produced in Springfield are still in existence.
Bethlehem was the nation's second-largest steel company and largest shipbuilder, a major Massachusetts employer through its ownership of the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.
The Dewey & Almy Chemical Company of Cambridge, founded in 1919, devised a method of sealing "tin" cans without lead solder -- an important consumer safety advance at a time when canned food was in wide use. The company, now part of W.R. Grace, later invented shrink-wrap.
The Harding-Coolidge ticket won the 1920 election in a landslide and the men took office in March 1921. Coolidge quickly grew frustrated with his largely ceremonial duties as vice president, but just two years later, Harding's sudden death on August 2, 1923, unexpectedly vaulted him to the Oval Office. On November 4, 1924, Calvin Coolidge was elected President of the United States.
Massachusetts Investors Trust, founded by L. Sherman Adams, was the first mutual fund company in the United States. Beginning with $50,000 in investments, it grew to $2.5 million by 1926. It was one of the first investment companies to establish an in-house research department.
Earlier commercial mayonnaise tended to separate when chilled, limiting its appeal to consumers.
As commodity manufacturing shifted to lower-cost regions, Massachusetts retained industries that required highly skilled workers, including manufacture of looms and shoe machinery.
IBM, which has sustained its leadership position in the computing industry over many decades, is one of the world's largest and most respected companies, with a significant presence in Massachusetts.
Radio, the first electronic mass medium, dominated in-home entertainment from the 1920s until the emergence of television in the 1950s. Massachusetts played an important part in the earlier history of radio, including the first transatlantic broadcast from the US (Guglielmo Marconi, 1903, Wellfleet) and the first voice broadcast (Reginal Fessenden, 1906, Brant Rock). KDKA, Pittsburgh, is considered the first commercial radio station (1920).
Similac ("simulated lactation") remains a dominant brand in the infant formula field. The product has been reformulated as nutritional knowledge has advanced.
Both of these technologies had significant roots in Massachusetts, with pioneers such as Alexander Graham Bell and Reginald Fessenden.
Clarence Birdseye invents frozen food in Massachusetts. Birdseye, a scientist, was in Newfoundland when he noticed that an Inuit tactic of catching fish and freezing it immediately didn’t destroy the foods’ texture. With this knowledge, he set up a company in Gloucester, and the frozen food industry was born.
Edith Nourse Rogers (1881-1960) was the sixth woman to enter the US House of Representatives, and the first from New England. A Republican representing the Merrimack Valley, she served 35 years after succeeding her late husband. A strong advocate for local industries, she also sponsored the GI Bill, the law creating the Women's Army Corps, and an unsuccessful measure to admit Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The Veterans' Administration hospital in Bedford bears her name.
The 888-foot USS Lexington, an early aircraft carrier, was one of the naval vessels that, along with passenger and cargo ship orders, revived the Massachusetts shipbuilding industry after a postwar lull. The Quincy-built "Lady Lex" was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.
Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), a physics professor at Clark University, is considered the father of modern rocketry. Goddard was born in Worcester and educated at Clark and WPI. After years of theorizing and experimentation (met with much scoffing and little support) he launched the first liquid-fueled (gasoline and liquid oxygen) rocket on March 16, 1926, in Auburn. It traveled 184 feet before landing in a cabbage field; later tests did better.
The New York service was offered by Colonial Air Transport, a precursor of American Airlines. Logan today is New England's gateway to the world, with nonstop flights to 45 international destinations.
"The Lone Eagle" captured the public imagination with his 33-hour prize-winning flight, seen to represent individual achievement in a mechanized, corporate age.
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