"The Deadly Auto": 1924 Editorial Compares Road and War Fatalities

100 years ago the afternoon paper editorialized on "the deadly auto," comparing its casualties to those in World War I. "It is apparent that the auto is a more deadly weapon than all the paraphernalia of modern warfare."

November 29th, 1924

It is hard not to think that the piece was prompted by and in response to a piece in the New York Times a week earlier. (Historian Peter Norton observed its 100th anniversary recently.)

That piece in the NYT starts out:

The horrors of war appear to be less appalling than the horrors of peace. The automobile looms up as a far more destructive piece of mechanism than the machine gun. The reckless motorist deals more death than the artilleryman. The man in the street seems less safe than the man in the trench.

Both make the comparison to war, and it does not seem likely they both are responding to a common source. The afternoon paper must depend on the NYT piece. The Commerce Department and Secretary Hoover, which the NYT references, would not probably make that comparison.*

NY Times, November 23rd, 1924

The piece here, though, already mystifies causes, focuses on individual failures in judgement, and avoids the word "speed." At the same time it points to the machine itself, the "deadly auto," it blames users and bystanders in "reckless driving" and "pedestrian carelessness." Its lack of clarity hides much, displacing and diffusing real causes.

• For more on the AAA's propaganda and reframing, "In 1924 AAA Reframes Safety for Motorist Innocence, with Kids as Intruders on Road"
• And on death cars in mid-1920s literature, "Daisy and the Great Gatsby's Beau Monde: Careless, but not Carless" (2012)
  

There were other interesting items in the afternoon paper that day.

Thanksgiving Ads in 1924 were all about the Chain Stores

The most striking image in the Thanksgiving advertising from 100 years ago is the man of wealth and taste in a heavy overcoat hauling a turkey carcass. In one image part of the turkey is wrapped, but in another it is unwrapped and undressed, maybe even oozing or dripping on the fine new overcoat. It doesn't quite add up!

November 20th, 1924

November 23rd, 1924

But what we're really interested in here are the grocery ads.

November 27th, 1916

You may recall that as recently as 1916, the Thanksgiving advertising featured neighborhood corner stores.

• "Thanksgiving Weekend in 1914 Illustrates History of Autoism"
• "1916 Thanksgiving Grocery Ad Shows Frequent Corner Stores"
• "Thanksgiving Ad for 1917 Frets over Loss of Neighborhood Stores"
• "It was Hoover and War, not Flu, that Shaped our Thanksgiving in 1918"
• "Thanksgiving in 1919 Showed National Advertising, Probable Decline of Corner Store"

Not even a decade later, in 1924 the corner store in advertising has faded greatly.

It's nearly all chain store advertising.

Subscription Drive for Film Projector at Parrish goes Sideways in 1924

Though actual Klan membership here in Salem tailed off in 1924, nonetheless the ideas and prejudice that animated it generally leavened Salem culture. The ways that the afternoon paper opposed the organization and style of the Klan while offering much less criticism of their beliefs and values is one example of this. Another example took place at the brand new Parrish Junior High.

The school had opened in the fall of 1924, though not every detail in construction and equipment had been fully completed. As part of its advanced tech, the school included a film projection room and theater, but the school did not have a projector. 

Apparently the Ford empire presented a solution.

November 24th, 1924

In late November, students, and presumably some adults, had arranged for a subscription drive with the Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford's newspaper, in order to win "a motion picture machine."

December 3rd, 1924

About a week later a parent made complaint that

she considered the Ford paper an anti-Jewish propaganda publication seeking to stir up racial strife...and refused to allow her daughter to join the students in their solicitation for subscriptions.

The children had been "designated as slackers" and shamed as "poor citizens" for not participating.

City Council, November 25th - Flood Insurance

Monday's Council agenda is light on items of interest here, but one to note is a change in City rules for  the National Flood Insurance Program.

100- and 500-year flood zones (City of Salem)

It's not terribly clear, however, and there seems to be a consistent error in the Staff Report. There are three options to consider, and the Staff Report flips a couple of times between recommending Option 2 and Option 3. (I think Option 3 is the intended recommendation.)

Some of the flood zone that could be affected is in West Salem where we are considering a Climate-Friendly, Walkable Mixed-use Designation. 

This is another piece of evidence that our CFA/WaMU designations should not be clustered only downtown, but should be dispersed around the city with multiple hubs, including elevated ones on hills well above flood zones.

The recent plans for the former Boys Reform School and Prison Annex area are likely unaffected since approvals precede any change, but would otherwise have been likely affected.

There might be more to say later on this.

A Survey on Priorities for 2027-2032 Funding at the MPO and a Nice Story about an old Oak on Gaiety Hill

Our Metropolitan Planning Organization started a survey for preferences in scoring, ranking, and ultimately choosing projects to fund in the next 2027-2032 cycle, in which about $28 million is expected to be available.

Safety and Climate head the list

The survey design is a bit dodgy. At the top of the list are high level values like "climate" and "safety." But the next item is "reduces a gap," much more specific. The level of generality is not at all consistent.

They also jam together disparate elements. Safety and security have different connotations. The problem of greenhouse gas is acute and chronic right now in a way the problem of carbon monoxide is not. It wasn't necessary to mention carbon monoxide unless you deliberately wanted a path to old-school congestion relief.

Some of the categories overlap. Reducing gaps also increases access. Improving transit also reduces greenhouse gas.

And the very great problem of speed is not mentioned.

With the way the survey is constructed, it may not be possible to give the MPO clear signals about what to prioritize.

Still, take the survey and reply more fully in the free response box towards the end. Safety and climate deserve more attention!

An Old Oak

The Oak at High and Oak Streets on Gaiety Hill

Salem Reporter has a lovely story about the prospect of cutting down the old Oak at the intersection of Oak and High at the crest of Gaiety Hill, right by the Smith-Fry house of 1859.

Beginning of the End for Streetcar Service: First Buses in 1924

Though the final end of Salem's streetcar service has been dated to 1927, one significant moment in that transition happened three years earlier in 1924. The first buses directly replaced streetcars. There had been less formal jitney and motor stage service before around Salem, and streetcar routes abandoned, but not an explicit and direct swap for buses operated by the streetcar company.

November 30th, 1924

Back in the summer of 1924 Seventeenth Street had been torn up in preparation for paving. It was delayed and as summer passed, residents got upset.

August 19th, 1924

The poles and wires for the streetcar were the impediment, and the streetcar company was waiting for "appropriations from the New York office." The City could not proceed on its own since the streetcar company owned them.

The delay turned out to be an opening for the streetcar company to end service. A week later it secured

Permission to abandon more than one mile of street car track in the city of Salem and to substitute two motor busses....Under the ordinance eight-tenths of a mile of track on Summer between Market and Chemeketa would be abandoned and the tracks, wires and poles removed. The same would apply to the North [Seventeenth] street line between Center and D, with that portion of Seventeenth between D and Market still with the track.

August 26th, 1924

The ordinance was signed a couple weeks later. At the time residents of Englewood objected that the removal would reduce their property values and make real estate sales more difficult. They understood the streetcar as core transportation and also an amenity.

Portland's Audit of Vision Zero can Point to a Better Instance Here

Only partial progresss

There's been a good bit of coverage for the City of Portland's formal Audit of the Vision Zero program.

City of Portland Audit

If if hasn't hit your news reading yet, here are good pieces:

• A BikePortland, "City Auditor gives PBOT mixed report card on Vision Zero"
• At Portland Mercury, "As Traffic Crash Fatalities Rise, Portland Auditor’s Office Recommends Changes to Vision Zero Program"
• And at OPB, "As traffic deaths surged, Portland transportation bureau fell short of safety goals, audit says"

Above all, they say, there's no feedback/assessment loop, insufficient "evaluation and monitoring." Did this countermeasure or intervention work? Did it make a difference?

Many of the observations apply equally to our Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan. 

As the City of Salem updates our Transportation System Plan and develops its own Vision Zero Plan, it would be helpful to anticipate the critique in Portland's Audit and proactively incorporate its suggestions into our own plans and execution of them.

We'll come back to this in more detail later!

Union Street Bikeway shows Problem with Insufficient Attention to Design Speed

Over the weekend our Strong Towns group considered a table of speed targets from Eugene. The targets were not just for signage but were engineering targets for the details of "design speed."

via FB

Salem should absolutely do this.

But this was also a very large missed opportunity in the Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan. The plan hardly mentioned design speed and reductions in posted, lawful speed.

Speeding is too casual and easy throughout the city

The way we design roads makes it way too easy and comfortable to speed.

A 1936 Footnote on the 1935 German Eugenics Exhibit

In March of 1936, a year after the German Propaganda Eugenics Exhibit was popular here, a Willamette University Professor who had praised the exhibit crossed over a line with advocacy for infant euthanasia.

March 13th, 1936

Sceva B. Laughlin had come to Willamette in 1923.

August 14th, 1923

He died in 1947, and his obituary noted he was "a nationally known Quaker...prohibitionist, and a member of the Grange and Farmer's union." He had also been a Salem City Councilor.

City Council, November 12th - Doughboy Centennial

With Veterans Day, Council meets on Tuesday the 12th.

Nov. 12th, 1924

100 years ago the Doughboy statue and World War I memorial was dedicated at the old Courthouse. It has since been moved to the small monument park beside the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs.

• "A Century Ago Salemites Raised Funds for Doughboy WWI Memorial" (May)
  

On Council agenda is an interesting note about a new record high in cyanotoxin levels in the source of our drinking water.

Beginning June 10th, routine testing of the North Santiam River at the Middle Intake, the raw water intake to the Geren Island Water Treatment Facility, indicated levels of microcystin were elevated. Levels continued to rise throughout the summer, peaking at over 18 µg/L on July 16th, 2024, at the Middle Intake. This was almost 3 times higher than the highest level experienced during the 2018 cyanotoxin event.

On the one hand, we haven't been keeping records for very long, but on the other hand this is clearly a growing problem because of climate warming, and it seems unlikely that any earlier period would have led to a higher reading.

July 2024 temperatures (Accuweather)

Though the Staff Report doesn't mention it, July 16th was towards the end of a heat wave in the first half of July, with five consecutive days of 100+ heat. They could discuss the link to climate change explicitly, but seemingly prefer not to.

Early Suffrage Advocate and Lawyer, Olive S. England Deserves to be Remembered Better

Back in 1912, after failed attempts in 1906, 1908, and 1910, the Oregon amendment for woman suffrage was close and took several days to count.

Olive S. England, c.1898
(via OE and WU Law)

Election Day was November 4th. By the 8th, victory had finally become clear.

November 8th, 1912

The morning paper first went to Olive S. Enright for comment.

A couple weeks later as a celebration was organized, listed as Olive England Enright she was to give the welcoming remarks.

November 21st, 1912

Olive S. England, as she most often seems to be known, has not been discussed much at all in Salem history. In the Oregon Encyclopedia article on Woman Suffrage she is not mentioned. It is plausible, perhaps likely, that she was not a significant figure in any statewide context.

Even so, she is certainly an interesting and significant person in local Salem history and deserves more notice.

Climate Committee Reviews Idling Campaign and Get There Challenge on Monday

With the flooding in Spain following flooding in Asheville and Tampa Bay and other nearby places from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, extreme weather has been in the news of late. The Climate Action Plan Committee meets tomorrow on Monday the 4th, and they continue to think too small.

Emissions-intensified congestion (NY Times)

Hurricane costs (Sunday)

On the agenda are updates on the "idle reduction campaign" and the "Get There Challenge."

A Zoning Primer: Another Legacy of Herbert Hoover

In the fall of 1924 the morning paper serialized excerpts and adaptations from a Department of Commerce pamphlet on zoning.

A Zoning Primer

Back in 1922 a committee appointed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover published "A Zoning Primer."

October 3rd, 1924

After a couple of years it and its issues registered strongly enough for the morning paper to serialize it in the "Better Homes" Sunday section. You may recall that the Realtors had started discussing and advocating for zoning in the early fall of 1924.

The Commerce Department committee did not hit the theme of "undesirable citizens," as the Realtors felt free to do, and instead focused on equality, "applicable to all." The leading theme was stabilization of property value, which even if you didn't own property still applied, at least theoretically.