London Evening Advertiser
- TREWARTHA IS UNABLE TO ACCEPT NOMINATION, GOES TO TELL LEADER
- 30 Dead, Thousands Are Hurt
- SCOTS WOULD RESTRICT IMMIGRATION FROM ERIN
The London Evening Advertiser of October 21, 1926, led this reading with Ontario's liquor fight. Clinton sources said Mr. Trewartha, a dry Conservative backbencher and former Huron County warden, had gone to Toronto to tell Premier Ferguson that he could not again accept the party nomination or back the government's liquor policy, following Attorney-General W. F. Nickle's resignation; a party official denied knowing of other defections. A wire report described a hurricane that struck Havana, killing 30, injuring thousands, razing the USS Maine monument and wrecking shipping in the port. A Glasgow dispatch reported a push to have Parliament limit Irish Free State immigration into Scotland.
This reading covers three articles from a partially read page: the Trewartha report, the Havana hurricane dispatch and the Glasgow item on Irish immigration. The Trewartha and Havana texts begin mid-sentence, with the missing opening marked [?], and both break off before their ends. The Glasgow item opens with the tail of a separate item about a service in a Rumanian church. The page edges are slightly cropped and the OCR is badly corrupted, so the transcription relies on visual reading of the scan.
Translation
TREWARTHA IS UNABLE TO ACCEPT NOMINATION, GOES TO TELL LEADER
[?] with Premier Ferguson on his liquor policy. Mr. Trewartha could not be reached, though Clinton sources stated that he is in Toronto today at the Parliament Buildings with the intention, it is believed, of informing his leader that, because of his dry principles, he cannot again accept the Conservative nomination in his riding and support Mr. Ferguson's liquor policy in the House. The step taken by Mr. Trewartha, in accordance with his frequently expressed views for the maintenance of the Ontario Temperance Act, follows the lead given by Attorney-General W. F. Nickle, K. C., in resigning his portfolio. While there are signs that several other Conservative members will break away from Mr. Ferguson's wet leadership, A. A. Ingram, St. Thomas, president of the Western Ontario Conservative Association, stated emphatically today that no cases of the kind had come to his knowledge.
An Able Member.
Mr. Trewartha, a former warden of Huron County and clerk and reeve of Goderich Township for many years, was regarded as one of the abler backbenchers amongst the Conservative members. He was chairman of the agricultural committee of the House for one or more sessions and was also
30 Dead, Thousands Are Hurt
[?] hurricane which struck Havana early Wednesday morning. The addresses of the victims indicated that they lived in the poorer sections of Havana. Communications with all parts of the republic is interrupted. No definite reports have been received of the extent of the damage done in the provinces of Matanzas, Pinar del Rio and Havana, over which the hurricane passed. It is believed that nearly all the buildings in Havana suffered damage, but few of them collapsed. The monument erected by Cuba for the 266 Americans who were killed in an explosion which sank the United States battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 was razed. Only the base and two 10-inch guns, relics of the battleship, remain. The heaviest damage occurred in the port of Havana, where two steamers, five schooners, forty fishing vessels,
SCOTS WOULD RESTRICT IMMIGRATION FROM ERIN
service in a Rumanian church.
SCOTS WOULD RESTRICT IMMIGRATION FROM ERIN
Glasgow, Oct. 21. - Steps to induce the British Parliament to pass regulations limiting the number of Irish immigrants who have been invading Scotland have been taken here. Nine thousand Irish persons came to Scotland in 1924, and in five years there have been 45,000 immigrants from the Free State. Advocates who are desirous that Parliament intervene claim that the Scots are threatened with being crowded out of their own country.
Context
Ferguson's liquor plan and Nickle's resignation
Trewartha's break grew out of an issue Premier Howard Ferguson had chosen to open himself. His government proposed to repeal the Ontario Temperance Act and replace prohibition with government control of liquor sales, and that proposal became the principal issue of the provincial election held on December 1, 1926, often called the temperance election. W. F. Nickle, the attorney-general whom the article names as setting the lead, resigned from cabinet in October 1926 when Ferguson announced the plan. Nickle then sought re-election in Kingston under the Ontario Prohibition Union's banner and was soundly defeated. The article was written when it was still unclear how many Conservatives would follow Nickle; in December, Ferguson's government was re-elected to a second term with a majority.
Why rural Conservatives found the wet policy hard to carry
The pressure on a member like Trewartha came from the geography of the 1924 prohibition referendum, which the temperance side had won narrowly. The large cities, the core of Conservative support, voted overwhelmingly wet, while rural areas voted predominantly dry, and many Conservative members had pledged themselves dry to their local communities during that referendum. The paper identifies Trewartha as a former warden of Huron County, and Huron was one of the rural counties whose representation was cut from three seats to two in the redistribution before the 1926 vote. The article reports signs that several more Conservatives would defect, yet also prints Ingram's flat denial, showing both sides of the uncertainty the party faced that October.
How the Havana death toll grew beyond the first report
The paper's figure of 30 dead came from the first hours after the storm, when communications across Cuba were cut. Later accounts of the October 1926 Havana hurricane put deaths in Havana alone at no fewer than 58, many of them people struck by collapsing walls or flying debris, and record at least 325 buildings and homes destroyed in the city, a heavier picture than the report's statement that few buildings collapsed. The storm made two landfalls on Cuba as it reached its peak strength, with winds of about 150 mph. Several details in the dispatch agree with the later record: strong waves sank or damaged many ships, including 40 fishing vessels, and the monument to the victims of the USS Maine was destroyed by high floodwaters.
The Havana storm and the Miami hurricane a month earlier
The Havana storm came barely a month after the Great Miami Hurricane, which made landfall near Miami on September 18, 1926. That storm caused catastrophic damage in the Bahamas and along the U.S. Gulf Coast as well, with a damage toll of about US$100 million. Most of its deaths occurred near Lake Okeechobee, where storm surge breached muck dikes and drowned hundreds of people, and homes and office buildings served as refugee camps for roughly 38,000 displaced people. Its devastation brought Florida's land boom to an end. The October storm passed offshore of Florida and caused generally minor damage in South Florida.
Where the Scottish campaign against Irish immigration came from
The Glasgow dispatch reflects an argument that had found institutional voice in Scotland earlier in the decade. The Rev. John White served as convener of the Church of Scotland's Church and Nation Committee during the 1920s, and under his convenership a 1923 report titled The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality was produced. The report accused all members of the Catholic Church in Scotland of subverting Presbyterian values and of drunkenness, crime and financial imprudence, and it called for ending the immigration of Irish Catholics to Scotland. The dispatch states its figures of 9,000 Irish arrivals in 1924 and 45,000 from the Free State over five years without naming their source, while the claim that Scots were being crowded out is attributed to the advocates of restriction. The Church of Scotland expressly repudiated the 1923 report in 2002.
Original
TREWARTHA IS UNABLE TO ACCEPT NOMINATION, GOES TO TELL LEADER
[?] with Premier Ferguson on his liquor policy. Mr. Trewartha could not be reached, though Clinton sources stated that he is in Toronto today at the Parliament Buildings with the intention, it is believed, of informing his leader that, because of his dry principles, he cannot again accept the Conservative nomination in his riding and support Mr. Ferguson's liquor policy in the House. The step taken by Mr. Trewartha, in accordance with his frequently expressed views for the maintenance of the Ontario Temperance Act, follows the lead given by Attorney-General W. F. Nickle, K. C., in resigning his portfolio. While there are signs that several other Conservative members will break away from Mr. Ferguson's wet leadership, A. A. Ingram, St. Thomas, president of the Western Ontario Conservative Association, stated emphatically today that no cases of the kind had come to his knowledge. An Able Member. Mr. Trewartha, a former warden of Huron County and clerk and reeve of Goderich Township for many years, was regarded as one of the abler backbenchers amongst the Conservative members. He was chairman of the agricultural committee of the House for one or more sessions and was also
30 Dead, Thousands Are Hurt
[?] hurricane which struck Havana early Wednesday morning. The addresses of the victims indicated that they lived in the poorer sections of Havana. Communications with all parts of the republic is interrupted. No definite reports have been received of the extent of the damage done in the provinces of Matanzas, Pinar del Rio and Havana, over which the hurricane passed. It is believed that nearly all the buildings in Havana suffered damage, but few of them collapsed. The monument erected by Cuba for the 266 Americans who were killed in an explosion which sank the United States battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 was razed. Only the base and two 10-inch guns, relics of the battleship, remain. The heaviest damage occurred in the port of Havana, where two steamers, five schooners, forty fishing vessels,
SCOTS WOULD RESTRICT IMMIGRATION FROM ERIN
service in a Rumanian church. SCOTS WOULD RESTRICT IMMIGRATION FROM ERIN Glasgow, Oct. 21. - Steps to induce the British Parliament to pass regulations limiting the number of Irish immigrants who have been invading Scotland have been taken here. Nine thousand Irish persons came to Scotland in 1924, and in five years there have been 45, 000 immigrants from the Free State. Advocates who are desirous that Parliament intervene claim that the Scots are threatened with being crowded out of their own country.
Source: Holding institution