1892

 

Born in Bavaria in 1848, Nathan Straus first settled in the South, where his father established a profitable general store. By the 1880s, Straus and his brother Isidor had become part owners of Macy’s department store in Manhattan. Straus had long been concerned about the childhood mortality rates in the city — he had lost two children to disease. From another German immigrant he heard about “pasteurization,” which was finally being applied to milk. 

As The New York Times noted, 

Straus saw that pasteurization offered a comparatively simple intervention that could make a meaningful difference in keeping children alive.

 

One major impediment to pasteurization came from milk consumers themselves. Pasteurized milk was widely considered to be less flavorful than regular milk; the process was also believed to remove the nutritious elements of milk — a belief that has re-emerged in the 21st century among “natural milk” adherents. Dairy producers resisted pasteurization not just because it added an additional cost to the production process but also because they were convinced, with good reason, that it would hurt their sales. And so Straus recognized that changing popular attitudes toward pasteurized milk was an essential step. In 1892, he created a milk laboratory where sterilized milk could be produced at scale. The next year, he began opening what he called milk depots in low-income neighborhoods around the city, which sold the milk below cost. Straus also funded a pasteurization plant on Randall’s Island that supplied sterilized milk to an orphanage there where almost half the children had perished in only three years. Nothing else in their diet or living conditions was altered other than drinking pasteurized milk. Almost immediately, the mortality rate dropped by 14 percent. (See also: 1858 and 1907.)

 

*

“Necktie Parties” and Vigilante Days.

April 5: Savage violence flares in Wyoming, in what comes to be known as “The Johnson County War.” 

For some years previously, trouble had been brewing, as rich cattle barons suffered heavy losses to bad weather, and then became convinced that part of their losses were due to rustlers. The Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, and a variety of rich men, organized to seek justice. Several people were lynched, including Jim Averill and his business partner and paramour, Cattle Kate, who ran a log cabin saloon in a valley off the Sweetwater River. Averill, says Smith, “was a bit of a Populist” and had been critical of the biggest ranchers. Sometimes referred to, even in the caption to a picture accompanying the article, as “necktie parties,” these extra-judicial killings were crude and often gruesome affairs. Yet Owen Wister, later the famous writer, could report one day, “Sat yesterday in smoking car with one of the gentlemen indicted for lynching the man and the woman. He seemed a good solid citizen and I hope he’ll get off.” (52) 

The Stock Growers’ Association made increasingly tough rules. Cowboys were not allowed to own a brand or stock on their own, lest they be tempted to brand a few mavericks. The Association ran the roundup as it pleased, and made it hard on smaller ranchers to participate. Says Smith, “If you call a man a thief, treat him like a thief, and deprive him of all chance to earn a living honestly, he will soon oblige you by becoming a thief.” (53) 

Now, in the spring, a group of small famers and stockgrowers announced plans for their own roundup. The group hired two foremen, including Nathan D. Champion, a Texan said to be lightning with a gun.

Powder River Pass, Johnson County, Wyoming. Author's collection.

The big ranchers announced a plan of “extermination,” Smith writes, not “arrest” but “extermination.” Their death list includes 70 names, including 19 alleged rustlers, but also the sheriff of Johnson County and three county commissioners. The acting governor and both Wyoming senators were aware in advance of this plan. The Stock Growers’ Association even imported 25 gunfighters from Texas to help them in the fight. 

On April 5, fifty men headed for Buffalo, the county seat, but heard that Nat Champion and, they hoped, a few rustlers, were at the cabin on Powder River. A bad storm caught them as they approached, coating their beards and moustaches as they rode. They soon had the cabin surrounded; and when morning came Nick Ray, one of the suspected rustlers, was shot down going for a morning bucket of water, and had to be dragged back inside. The cabin was eventually set on fire, and when Champion exited, he was cut down by 28 bullets. The posse left him on the bloodstained snow, with a note pinned to his shirt: “Cattle thieves, beware!”

 

Champion was trapped for hours, being surrounded, and took some time to write down what had happened. “Me and Nick was getting breakfast,” he said, “when the attack took place. … Nick started out and I told him to lookout, that I thought there was someone at the stable and would not let them come back.” 

He kept up a brief running account: 

Nick is shot but not dead yet. He is awful sick. I must go and wait on him.

 

It is now about two hours since the first shot. Nick is still alive.

 

They’re still shooting and are all around the house, Boys, there is bullets coming in here like hail.

 

Them fellows is in such shape I can’t get at them. They are shooting from the stable and river and back of the house.

 

Nick is dead. He died about 9 o’clock.

 

Hours passed. The attackers loaded a wagon with hay and wood chips and set it afire, pushing it up against the cabin. Champion was still writing: 

I heard them splitting wood. I guess they are going to fire the house to-night.

 

I think I will make a break when night comes if alive.

 

It’s not night yet.

 

The house is all fired. Goodbye boys, if I never see you again.

 

Then he signed the paper, “Nathan B. Champion.” 

After he was cut down, the attackers found his diary, and it was presented to a Chicago newsman who had ridden along with the posse. 

The cowboys and small ranchers were outraged at the news, as were many citizens of Buffalo, and the went looking for the posse on April 10. The 50 men took shelter at the ranch of a friend, and dug in. Soon they were surrounded by 300 “hornet-mad” foes, led by Sheriff “Red” Angus. Ladies of the town were busy baking cakes to send to Angus and his men. (74-75)

 

Telegraph lines out of town were cut repeatedly; but on April 12, a message was finally sent to the governor. Troops from the Sixth Cavalry were sent to the rescue, arriving the next day. Forty-four men surrendered that day, not including a few defectors, and two Texas gunmen, who later died of their wounds. Other than that, the leaders of the Stock Growers’ Association paid little price. 

They were never brought to trial. Two fur trappers had been in the cabin with Champion and Ray, but had been taken prisoner before the shooting. Now they were prepared to testify in court – until they were “escorted” out of the state, so that they couldn’t. As Smith explains, 

“Counting bribes to federal officers and judges, legal fees, forfeited bail, and other expenses, it was said to have cost $27,000 to get the witnesses across Nebraska alone. The trappers have been promised a payoff of $2500 each, and given postdated checks. When presented for cashing, the checks proved to be on a bank that had never existed.”

 

The average citizen of Buffalo, Wyoming in 1892 might have strong feelings about the abuse of the powerful ranchers. But since most of the big ranchers were Republican, and most of their opponents were Democrats, the war also had a political side. A newspaper writer noted at the time, that the members of the posse, whose leaders were all important men, had the backing of “the Republican machine from President Harrison on down to the state organization…They have the president, the governor, the courts, their United States Senators, the state legislature and the army at their backs.” There were even efforts later, to silence the press. 

Smith writes: 

A small town editor who criticized the cattlemen two violently was jailed on a charge of criminal libel and held for 30 days – long enough to silence his paper. A second editor was beaten. But the latter, whose name was a period S. Mercer, exacted an eye for an eye in his celebrated chronicle of the invasion, published two years later and resoundingly entitled: the banditti of the planes, or the cattlemen's invasion of Wyoming. The crowning infamy of the ages.

 

Thereupon his print shop was burned to the ground, and another subservient judge ordered all copies of the book seized and burned. But while they were awaiting the bonfire Kama and wagonload of them was removed one night and drawn by galloping horses over the Colorado line. Thereafter copies on library shelves were stolen and mutilated as far away as the Library of Congress until only a few were left. But two new additions of since been published, and so—in the end – Mr. Mercer won.

 

A trial might still have been held, but a judge friendly to the big ranchers, agreed to move any trial from Johnson County to Cheyenne, where the defendants would have many friends. More than a thousand veniremen were examined over a period of nineteen days (January 1893), but only eleven were seated on the jury, and the prosecutors gave up. 

Their witnesses, of course, were long gone. (77) 

That party was then surrounded soon after by enraged citizens and narrowly avoided being lynched. (“The Johnson County War,” undated American Heritage article by Helena Huntington Smith).

 

* 

June 7: The New York Times notes, that on this date, 

a racially mixed shoemaker from New Orleans named Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket for a train bound for Covington, La., and took a seat in the whites-only car. He was asked to leave, and after he refused, he was dragged from the train and charged with violating the Louisiana Separate Car Act. He pleaded guilty and was fined $25.

 

On Friday [November 11, 2021], nearly 130 years after the arrest, the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted to clear his record.

 

“There is no doubt that he was guilty of that act on that date,” Jason Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, told the board during a brief hearing on Friday. “But there is equally no doubt that such an act should have never been a crime in this country.”

* 

The following account is from Ridpath’s People’s History of the United States, published in 1895. 

About the time of the national conventions in this year began the distressing series of events which, with increasing volume, widened into all departments of American industry, blasting the fruits of labor and indicating in the industrial society of the United States the existence of profound and dangerous vices. On the 30th of June, the managers of the great iron works at Homestead, a short distance from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, apprehending a strike of their operatives on account of a reduction of wages, declared a lockout, and closed the establishment. This was said to be done under the necessity of making repairs and the like; but the dullest could not fail to understand the true intent of the corporation.

 

The operatives, thus wronged, assumed a threatening attitude; and the manager sent secretly to the Pinkerton detective agency at Chicago for a force to protect the works. A large body of armed men was sent with the purpose of putting the same secretly into the works to defend the establishment. As the boat bearing the Pinkerton force came near to Homestead, it was fired on by the strikers, and a battle ensued, in which ten strikers and four detectives were killed. A very large number of the latter were wounded on the boat, and the whole were driven away. The strikers gained possession of the works; the civil authorities were powerless; and an appeal was made to the Governor of the State.

 

The Pennsylvania National Guard to the number of 8500, was called out, under proclamation of the Governor. On the 12th of July, a military occupation was established at Homestead, and was maintained for several weeks. The restoration of order was extremely difficult. Superintendent Frick of the iron works was attacked by an anarchist who attempted to assassinate him in his office. At length, under the necessity which the social order has to maintain itself, the original wrong done by Andrew Carnegie, proprietor of the works, and his subordinates, was enforced by law and by the power of the military. In the meantime, the miners of the Coeur d’Alene mining region in far-off Idaho rose against a body of nonunion working men, who had been introduced into the mines, killed many, and drove away the remainder. Railroad bridges and other property were destroyed, and a reign of terror established. It was not until the 17th of July that military rule prevailed over the rioters, whose leaders were arrested and imprisoned. (1219-522)