Adventures in Research: Tear Gas and Salesmanship

My Curious Reading

Adventures in Research

Tear Gas and Salesmanship

 

 

 

 

 

From the NYT of September 25, 1936. “Tear Gas War on Bootleg Miners.”

During this period the coal mines in Pennsylvania, racked by strikes, were infiltrated by bootleggers, miners illegally harvesting coal to sell, generating an income they would otherwise have lacked in the midst of the Depression. The mine owners hatched a plan to smoke them out with tear gas. The Senate’s Lafollette Subcommittee held hearings on civil liberties violations.

A. S. Ailes, Vice President of the Chemical Co. of Cleveland, testified that he had gassed himself 1000 times, insisting upon the harmless nature of his company’s product. He stated, “I am sorry we have strikes. I am sorry we have Communists in the country.”

Rival chemical firms aggressively promoted their products to corporations as a means of arming themselves pre-emptively. Ignatius H. McCarty, a Chemical Co. salesman had himself appointed as a special officer to the San Francisco police, so that he could demonstrate the use of his company’s gas equipment.

“He said he had demonstrated much of it during the San Francisco waterfront strike, largely to overcome the sales efforts of his competitor representing the Federal Laboratories.”

 

 

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Tear Gas

Theft and Trousers

 

 

 

 

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culture

 

The Structure We Believe

 

One warning one shiver

The structure we believe

Remains sound

 

Springs dampen the recoil

Thrust back on the tidal bore

Bones in age yield too little

End of day’s cast in glass

Eye stares back, and after hours radio comes

On river boats and traffic stalled

Songs and news about this and that

Want to see no more

 

More weight and gravity

Near liquid under pressure

Unheeded the offspring

Retreats higher and farther

The caretaker does not report

The hand has let the brake go free

Wind begins to race and seasons

Unfettered engine forth

 

Iron reinforcements for plans in concrete

A moment’s infinite fall of leaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2014, Stephanie Foster)