The Montgomery Advertiser
- Community Chest Bids Fair to Survive After Workers Give Aid
- Storm Death List Shows Seventeen American Victims
- Moonshine Booze Gets Chief's Okeh
The Montgomery Advertiser of October 23, 1926 led with a local fundraising rescue. Volunteers for the city's Community Chest finished on Friday handing out pledge cards that should have gone out on Tuesday, subscriptions rose through the day, and the campaign total reached $43,152.10. The paper presented the drive as the only way to avoid a return to disorganized monthly tag-day appeals. An AP dispatch from Havana carried the first news from the Isle of Pines after more than 48 hours of silence: Wednesday's Caribbean storm had killed 32 people, 17 of them Americans, and injured about 100. From Washington, the AP quoted Assistant Treasury Secretary Andrews, head of Prohibition enforcement, saying the only liquor worth drinking came from mountain stills in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, and complaining that the moonshiners were moving on to more profitable territory in other states.
Translation
CHEST BIDS FAIR TO SURVIVE AFTER WORKERS GIVE AID
Confronted with the alternative of disorganization and monthly tag day drives or systematic and economic dispensation of the public funds, the public spirited forces of Montgomery rallied to the cause Friday and completed distribution of cards, which were scheduled to have been distributed Tuesday. The revival of interest was not alone in the ranks of the workers. A general increase was noted in subscriptions through the day. At the close the total for the campaign stood at $43,152.10.
STORM DEATH LIST SHOWS SEVENTEEN AMERICAN VICTIMS
HAVANA, Oct. 22 (AP) — The Isle of Pines was severely ravaged by the Caribbean storm of Wednesday, 32 persons being killed, among them 17 Americans and about 100 injured. This was the startling news brought to Havana this afternoon after more than 48 hours without word from the Isle of Pines, which lies about 35 miles south of Cuba.
MOONSHINE BOOZE GETS CHIEF'S OKEH
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 (AP) — The only liquor worth drinking today comes from the moonshine stills in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, Assistant Secretary Andrews, chief of the dry forces, says. And the only moonshiners worth while were reared in these backwoods sections, says the general. The trouble is, he adds, the moonshiners are migrating from their native stills to more lucrative fields, and the trails of those who have wandered into other sections have been crossed in many states.
Context
What the Community Chest was and why Montgomery's drive mattered
A Community Chest pooled a community's charitable giving into a single fund instead of leaving each charity to raise money on its own. The first one, called the Community Fund, was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1913 by the Federation for Charity and Philanthropy. The model spread quickly after the First World War: between 1919 and 1929 the number of Community Chest organizations rose from 39 to 353. Montgomery's 1926 campaign was part of this nationwide growth. The article argues the local case for the model directly. It sets the Chest's 'systematic and economic dispensation' against 'disorganization and monthly tag day drives', which shows that local backers sold one annual pooled campaign as a replacement for repeated street collections. The paper does not give the campaign's goal. What it reports is a delay, with cards due out on Tuesday distributed only on Friday, and a recovery that brought the total to $43,152.10. The claim that failure would bring back monthly tag days is the paper's own framing of the stakes.
How the October 1926 hurricane struck the Isle of Pines and Cuba
The 'Caribbean storm of Wednesday' was the major hurricane later known as the 1926 Havana–Bermuda hurricane. Modern reconstructions place its landfall on the Isle of Pines, today's Isla de la Juventud, at 0800 UTC on Wednesday, October 20, before it went on to strike western Cuba. The island took the first blow, and the dispatch explains why the news came late: Havana had gone more than 48 hours without word. The paper's figures of 32 dead and about 100 injured were therefore an early count. A later account of the storm records at least 38 deaths and more than 200 injured across the island. Havana itself suffered at least 58 deaths, many of them people struck by collapsing walls or flying debris. The early dispatch understated the island's losses, and the gap between the figures is typical of first reports from a place that had been cut off.
Why so many Americans lived on the Isle of Pines
Seventeen American dead on a small Cuban island reflects a quarter-century of uncertainty over who owned it. The Platt Amendment provided 'That the Isle of Pines shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba,' leaving title to a future treaty. The Hay–Quesada Treaty recognizing Cuban sovereignty was negotiated in 1904 but was not ratified by both parties until 1925. American settlers and investors moved in during this long delay, expecting the island to become American territory. In a Senate debate in 1924, Senator William E. Borah said that 700 of the island's 4,250 residents were U.S. citizens and that they owned 90 percent of the land. The U.S. Senate finally ratified the treaty on March 13, 1925. When the hurricane struck in October 1926, the island had been formally recognized as Cuban for only about a year and a half, and its American colony was still large enough to account for more than half of the dead in the AP's early count.
Who 'the general' at the head of the dry forces was
The 'Assistant Secretary Andrews' of the dispatch was Lincoln Clark Andrews, who had been a brigadier general in the U.S. Army during World War I. That is why the AP calls him 'the general'. As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from 1925, he was in charge of Prohibition enforcement. He immediately began reorganizing the Prohibition bureau in 1925, which led to the layoffs of numerous senior agents. He treated enforcement as a matter of strict law enforcement and was not an ideological supporter of the dry movement. That outlook helps explain the tone of this story. A crusading dry would hardly praise the quality of illegal whiskey, but an administrator could talk about the mountain distillers as a professional problem. His real complaint, that skilled moonshiners were spreading into other states, fits the concerns of a man trying to run a national enforcement organization. The headline's 'Chief's Okeh' is the paper's own joking reading of remarks whose point was a warning.
Why mountain moonshining held out and spread under Prohibition
Andrews's picture of the southern mountains as the home of the best stills and distillers matches the region's history. Many Southern Appalachian people were descended from the Scotch-Irish, who already had traditions of home-brewing whiskey. Much of the region had also been historically isolated, with little interference from the law. Prohibition turned this local craft into a large business. In the 1920s there were huge amounts of money to be made in illegal brewing, and a fieldwork study in Alleghany County, North Carolina, records that mountain liquor was often shipped to Chicago and other big cities to supply bootleggers there. This trade is the background to Andrews's complaint that moonshiners were 'migrating from their native stills to more lucrative fields': the skills of isolated mountain counties had become valuable in national markets. The study draws on case studies of two former moonshiners, so it shows how the trade was remembered locally rather than giving exact figures for the 1920s.
Original
CHEST BIDS FAIR TO SURVIVE AFTER WORKERS GIVE AID
Confronted with the alternative of disorganization and monthly tag day drives or systematic and economic dispensation of the public funds, the public spirited forces of Montgomery rallied to the cause Friday and completed distribution of cards, which were scheduled to have been distributed Tuesday. The revival of interest was not alone in the ranks of the workers. A general increase was noted in subscriptions through the day. At the close the total for the campaign stood at $ 43, 152. 10.
STORM DEATH LIST SHOWS SEVENTEEN AMERICAN VICTIMS
HAVANA. Oct. 22 - (AP.) - The Isle of Pines was severely ravaged by the Caribbean storm of Wednesday, 32 persons being killed, among them 17 Americans and about 100 injured. This was the startling news brought to Havana this afternoon after more than 48 hours without word from the Isle of Pines, which lies about 35 miles south of Cuba.
MOONSHINE BOOZE GETS CHIEF'S OKEH
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22. - (AP) - The only liquor worth drinking today comes from the moonshine stills in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, Assistant Secretary Andrews, chief of the dry forces, says. And the only moonshiners worth while were reared in these backwoods sections, says the general. The trouble is he adds, the moonshiners are migrating from their native stills to more lucrative fields, and the trails of those who have wandered into other sections have been crossed in many states.
Source: Holding institution