London Evening Advertiser
- Father and Son Die as Train Hits Truck
- Two Dead as Warfare Is Resumed in Chicago
- Britain Leading in Russian Trade
The Advertiser's front page for October 12, 1926, led its local news with a fatal crash at a railway crossing at Crumlin, near London: a C.P.R. Montreal–Chicago express running 20 minutes late struck a light truck, killing Edgar C. Clark, 48, and his five-year-old son Kenneth, and tore spokes from the locomotive's pilot. From Chicago the page carried a vivid account of a machine-gun attack beside Holy Name Cathedral that mowed down five men, left two dead, and was expected to set off another round of reprisals between bootlegging gangs. A Moscow dispatch cited Soviet trade-commissariat figures showing that Britain had overtaken the United States as Russia's leading trading partner, with Germany second and America, which had led in 1925 without recognizing Moscow, slipping to third.
This reading covers three excerpts from a partly legible front page. The right edge is torn or darkened, cutting off the price and the ends of some right-hand stories, including items on Mussolini's militia, a Holland trawler and Toronto coke, which are not translated. The Crumlin and Chicago excerpts break off mid-sentence, the destination of the Crumlin train is illegible, and the visible Chicago text does not name the victims. The excerpts were transcribed from the page images because the supplied OCR was badly fragmented.
Translation
Father and Son Die as Train Hits Truck
Tragedy Near Crumlin This Morning. DROVE DIRECTLY IN PATH OF FAST EXPRESS
Driving his truck onto the C.P.R. tracks at Crumlin directly in the path of C.P.R. train No. 21, Montreal-Chicago flyer, at 11:28 a.m. today, Edgar C. Clark, 48, and his 5-year-old son, Kenneth, were instantly killed.
The train, speeding toward [?] 20 minutes behind schedule, hit the truck with such force that two of the metal spokes of the pilot were completely wrenched off, while the light truck was demolished.
Clark was driving north and hit the engine cowcatcher on the fireman's side, leaving splinters of the motor car body wedged into the machinery.
It is believed that Clark was driving over to
Two Dead as Warfare Is Resumed in Chicago
…has opened between two opulent bands of booze racketeers for control of the city liquor traffic.
That fearful engine of war, the machine gun, was the sinister weapon employed by gangsters who mowed down five men in the shadow of Chicago's great Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Name on North State street late yesterday.
The murderous attack, more daring than the assassination of Assistant States Attorney McSwiggin, was expected to bring reprisal and counter-reprisal—the eternal vicious cycle that all "alky" feuds go through.
"It is another gang killing. No one knows anything. No one wants to
Britain Leading in Russian Trade
Germany Takes Second Place As America Slumps to Third.
Moscow, Oct. 11.—Great Britain has captured first place from the United States in the volume of trade with Russia.
In 1925, despite the absence of diplomatic recognition, the United States led the world in Russian trade, but this year has fallen to third place.
According to the statistics of the trade commissariat for the last 11 months,
Context
Who regulated railway safety in Canada when the Crumlin crash happened
In October 1926, the national body responsible for railway safety in Canada was the Board of Railway Commissioners. The Advertiser reported that Edgar C. Clark and his son Kenneth were killed when Clark drove onto the C.P.R. tracks at Crumlin in front of train No. 21, the Montreal–Chicago flyer, which was running late. Canadian legislation had treated accident prevention as a public matter for a long time: an 1857 statute gave the then Board of Railway Commissioners supervisory powers over passenger safety and the prevention of railway accidents. The Railway Act of 1903 replaced the Railway Committee of the Privy Council with a new Board of Railway Commissioners, which took office on February 1, 1904, and that Board's jurisdiction included railway safety along with tolls and rates. The Board kept this form until the Transport Act of 1938 turned it into the Board of Transport Commissioners, so it was the authority over railway safety at the time of the Crumlin collision. The excerpt itself describes the crash and its force, and does not mention any action by the Board or the railway.
How the Holy Name Cathedral shooting fit the Weiss–Capone war
The attack the Advertiser described was the killing of Hymie Weiss, leader of Chicago's North Side Gang, on October 11, 1926; the visible part of the excerpt does not name him, but the date, place and weapon match. Weiss had taken over the North Side Gang after Dean O'Banion was killed in his flower shop on November 10, 1924, and launched a campaign of revenge against the Torrio–Capone organization. After Johnny Torrio left for New York, Chicago broke out into a city-wide gang war. On September 20, 1926, a convoy of North Side cars poured gunfire into Capone's Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero. Three weeks later Weiss was walking with his bodyguard Sam Pellar, the gangster Paddy Murray, the attorney William W. O'Brien and the investigator Benjamin Jacobs when gunmen hidden in a rooming house opened fire with a submachine gun and a shotgun. Weiss and Murray were fatally wounded, O'Brien was hit four times, and Pellar and Jacobs were also wounded, which matches the paper's 'five men' mown down and its headline count of two dead. Stray bullets chipped the cornerstone of Holy Name Cathedral across the street. Chicago police later named Jack McGurn as the man behind the tommy gun, but the remark the paper quoted, 'No one knows anything,' reflects how unsettled responsibility was on the day after the shooting.
Which agencies carried Soviet trade with Britain and the United States
Soviet trade with both Britain and the United States ran through Soviet-controlled companies set up under local law. In Britain, the All-Russian Co-operative Society, known as ARCOS, began operating in London in October 1920 as the Soviet government's official buying and selling agency; it was a British company under British law, though all its stockholders were Soviet citizens. The 1921 Anglo-Soviet trade agreement gave official Soviet trade agents diplomatic immunity, and the two governments also maintained diplomatic relations, which grew increasingly strained after Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government was elected in 1924. In the United States, Amtorg was founded in New York in 1924 as the first Soviet trade representation there, and until the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1933 it served as a de facto trade delegation and quasi-embassy. That arrangement helps explain how, as the Moscow dispatch put it, America could lead Russian trade in 1925 'despite the absence of diplomatic recognition.' The ranking itself rested on eleven months of figures from the Soviet trade commissariat, so the claim that Britain had moved ahead is Moscow's own statistic as relayed by the paper.
What happened to Anglo-Soviet trade after 1926
Britain's position as Moscow's leading trade partner was soon overtaken by a political rupture. On May 12, 1927, British police raided the London headquarters of the Soviet trade delegation and ARCOS, searching for top-secret documents alleged to have been stolen from the War Office. The raid breached the 1921 trade agreement, which had given official Soviet trade agents diplomatic immunity. In late May 1927 Britain severed diplomatic and economic ties with the Soviet Union, ending the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement under which the trade reported in this dispatch had grown. Over its six years of existence ARCOS handled roughly £100 million in trade between Britain and the Soviet Union, a figure that gives a sense of the scale of the Anglo-Soviet commerce behind the 1926 ranking.
Original
FATHER AND SON DIE AS TRAIN HITS TRUCK
Tragedy Near Crumlin This Morning. DROVE DIRECTLY IN PATH OF FAST EXPRESS Driving his truck onto the C. P. R. tracks at Crumlin directly in the path of C. P. R. train No. 21, Montreal-Chicago flyer, at 11: 28 a. m. today, Edgar C. Clark, 48, and his 5-year-old son, Kenneth, were instantly killed. The train, speeding toward [?] 20 minutes behind schedule, hit the truck with such force that two of the metal spokes of the pilot were completely wrenched off, while the light truck was demolished. Clark was driving north and hit the engine cowcatcher on the fireman's side, leaving splinters of the motor car body wedged into the machinery. It is believed that Clark was driving over to
TWO DEAD AS WARFARE IS RESUMED IN CHICAGO
has opened between two opulent bands of booze racketeers for control of the city liquor traffic. That fearful engine of war, the machine gun, was the sinister weapon employed by gangsters who mowed down five men in the shadow of Chicago's great Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Name on North State street late yesterday. The murderous attack, more daring than the assassination of Assistant States Attorney McSwiggin, was expected to bring reprisal and counterreprisal-the eternal vicious cycle that all " alky " feuds go through. " It is another gang killing. No one knows anything. No one wants to
BRITAIN LEADING IN RUSSIAN TRADE
Germany Takes Second Place As America Slumps to Third. Moscow, Oct. 11. - Great Britain has captured first place from the United States in the volume of trade with Russia. In 1925, despite the absence of diplomatic recognition, the United States led the world in Russian trade, but this year has fallen to third place. According to the statistics of the tradecommissariat for the last 11 months,
Source: Holding institution