‘Great War’ At Home And Abroad

Mayor John Mitchel Mitchel Square in Washington Heights is named afterMayor Mitchel was killed in 1918 during training as a combat pilot.

Hogs Headlines In October 1917

Get into a conversation with a long-time Queens resident and you’re likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star-Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper’s name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal--The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to 1917!

The United States was in the thick of World War I in October 1917. The Star-Journal reported regularly on the movement of troops through Queens on their way to training camps or overseas, usually mentioning the appreciative crowds who turned out to cheer them on. But there was an unfortunate incident on October 19 when "soldiers attacked a Negro porter. Stabbed and beaten by soldiers of a southern regiment, Charles Farrer, 52 years old, of Ozone Park, is in St. John’s Hospital in serious condition. Farrer was set upon by the soldiers at the Borden Avenue station of the Long Island Railroad [sic] and bayoneted in the face. About 75 members of a regiment believed to be from the Alabama contingent were on the train, according to railroad officials. Officials of the Long Island Railroad are now conducting an investigation and will not stop until the guilty soldiers are brought to justice."

Jackson Heights Apartments. Flushing Line, looking west toward Manhattan, probably from 33rd/Rawson Station. Collection of David Pirmann.

Weekly there were reports in the Star-Journal from Queens recruits in training camps or already at the front. Sergeant Alvah Thompson of Astoria wrote from "Somewhere in France" that "very few trees are left. All you see along the road is dugouts, trenches, barbed wire and graves." However, he reassured his parents that he was too far from the fighting to be in danger. A former Star-Journal reporter, Paul Tierney, who was serving in the ambulance corps with the American forces in France, wrote, "We get along well with the French people, who are polite and cordial, often taking us into their homes."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Star-Journal praised the patriotic hospitality of some Jackson Heights residents. "We have had occasion before to refer to the remarkable community spirit that prevails at this unusual apartment house development. On the invitation of the residents, members of the 117th trench mortar of Baltimore and the 151st field artillery of Minnesota were transported to and from [Camp Mills on Long Island], given home-cooked dinners in the various apartments, and then entertained at the casino with music and a dance. Jackson Heights is to be congratulated for doing a gracious thing in a gracious way."

Garden apartments in Jackson Heights, opened two years earlier by the Queensboro Corporation, were considered a very innovative experiment. The extension of the Corona subway line (today’s No. 7 train) would make the neighborhood more accessible to commuters. The parent real estate company was in the news on October 26, when Mayor John Mitchel was denying allegations made against him in the bitterly fought election campaign that was vying with the war news for coverage. Characterizing the charges against him as "outright falsehoods," the mayor denied that "he received $5,000 for changing the Corona subway route in favor of the interests of the Queensboro Corporation."

Mitchel had been elected in 1913. His administration was known for its efforts to cut waste and rid the city of the alleged corruption of the Democratic political machine known as Tammany Hall. In 1917 Tammany fought hard to put their candidate, John Hylan, into the Mayor’s office. On October 25, James Cronin, chairman of the Queens campaign to elect Hylan, charged that Mitchel’s behavior "verges on treason…His picturing of himself on the walls of the city in the garb of an American soldier has aroused the anger and contempt of all the patriotic citizens of the city." Cronin’s prediction that "Hylan will carry Queens by a large majority" was proved correct in November when Hylan was elected mayor by a landslide. The defeated Mitchel went on to prove his patriotism by enlisting in the army and was killed in 1918 during training as a combat pilot. Mitchel Square in Washington Heights is named after him.

Women had not yet won the right to vote when the election of 1917 took place. However, their tireless war work was one of the factors that led to the passing of universal suffrage in 1920. On October 19 the Star-Journal announced that "women fighters for democracy will carry their campaign for food conservation into Queens on the week of October 22, and it is hoped by those in charge of the U.S. Food Administration that by the end of the week nearly 1,200,000 New York housewives will have put their signatures on the administration’s ‘pledge cards.’ When the card is signed, the canvasser presents the housewife with a colored window card announcing she is a member in good standing of the U.S. Food Administration."

Queens women also had to cope with war shortages. It was predicted that the "sugar famine" in the borough would extend into December, and future president Herbert Hoover, then head of Food Administration, appealed to people not to pay black-market prices. On October 26 the Star-Journal ran a story on the lack of coal; a coal dealer in Elmhurst said that people would be cold that winter. "In College Point it was said by a dealer that there was not a pound of coal in the yard."

College Point was in the news again when a three-alarm fire gutted the plant of the British-American Chemical Company on October 12. Rumors spread that the fire had been caused by the combustion of chemicals used in the secret manufacture of war munitions. On October 20, chairman C.W. Embrey sent a signed statement to the Star-Journal editor reassuring "the people of the village that his company is not manufacturing chemicals to be used in making ammunition and that its product is in no way dangerous to the health and safety of the neighborhood."

That’s the way it was in October 1917.

Compiled by Clare Doyle, Librarian, Greater Astoria Historical Society.

For more information, contact the Society at 718-728-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org.