1917 - Commerce

Commerce

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 6.91 points (7.24 percent) February 1 in the worst drop since 1907, but the U.S. economy booms as demand increases for American-made ships, arms, munitions, shoes, textiles, chemicals, and other war-related goods.

The Special Preparedness Fund Act approved by Congress March 3 provides for excess profit taxes and higher inheritance taxes. The United States has more than 40,000 millionaires, up from 4,000 in 1892.

Millionaire railroad equipment salesman and trencherman James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady dies April 13 at age 60 in his $1,000-per-week ocean-view suite at Atlantic City's Shelburne Hotel.

The Emergency Loan Act passed April 24 authorizes the Treasury Department to issue $5 billion in 3.5 percent bonds. Congress amends the Federal Reserve Act June 21 to encourage membership, facilitate issuance of notes, and mobilized gold reserves.

Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and other film stars speak at bond rallies that will help sell $18.7 billion in Liberty Bonds this year and next despite their low 3.5 percent interest rate (railroad bonds yield 4.79 percent). Millions of Americans take money that they have kept hidden in mattresses and invest it in the new government bonds.

The price of copper reaches 37¢/lb. in March, up from 13½¢ in July 1914; an accident 2,400 feet down in the Granite Mountain copper mine at Butte, Mont., the night of June 8 starts a fire that kills 168 men before it is brought under control. The city has 14,500 men working in its underground mines, up from 2,000 in 1883, to meet the insatiable demand for copper; miner Manus Duggan leads 29 others to a safe area where they can wait for rescue crews but goes for help and dies of smoke inhalation. News of the disaster at Granite Mountain shocks the world; it takes 2 weeks to remove all the victims.

The International Workers of the World (IWW) presents mining companies at Bisbee, Arizona, with a list of demands June 24. Included are demands for a flat wage system to replace wages tied to the market price of copper and equal treatment for foreign and minority workers; about half the miners are on strike by June 27, the anti-union Citizens' Protective League brings in several thousand vigilantes, they seize the local Western Union telegraph office July 12 to cut off outside communication, Sheriff Harry Wheeler averts gunplay by having the vigilantes herd 1,185 men into manure-laden boxcars and "deport" them to the New Mexican desert, a machine gun is mounted on top, 186 armed guards ride the train to Columbus, N.M., authorities there say they have no accommodations for so many men and order the train to return, it stops at Hermanos, N.M., the men are abandoned, a later train brings them water and rations, but they have no shelter until July 14, when federal troops arrive and take them to Columbus, where many are detained for months. A Federal Mediation Commission set up by President Wilson in the fall finds that no federal law applied to the situation and refers the matter to the state of Arizona, whose authorities find that the vigilantes acted out of an excess of patriotism and support for the war effort.

IWW organizer Frank Little is abducted from his boarding house room at Butte, Montana, August 1 and lynched by five men who drag him behind a car to a railroad bridge and hang his body with a note pinned to his shirt warning IWW members to beware; federal agents raid IWW headquarters in 48 cities September 5 (see 1918).

New York labor leader Rose Schneiderman makes regular trips to the State Capitol at Albany and continues to lobby the legislature for passage of a 48-hour week law for women; she also demands a minimum wage that would benefit men as well as women, since employers would be less likely to replace male workers with lower-paid female workers.

The Anglo American Corp. of South Africa founded by German-born cigar maker's son and mining magnate Ernest Oppenheimer, 37, will become a major gold producer while Oppenheimer gains control of 95 percent of the world's diamond supply through his De Beers Consolidated Mines (see Rhodes, Barnato, 1880).

A second Liberty Loan drive launched October 1 offers $3 billion worth of U.S. Government bonds that yield 4 percent.

U.S. revenues from income taxes exceed revenues from customs duties for the first time (see 1913). By 1920 income tax revenues will be 10 times those from customs duties.

U.S. insurance companies sustain heavy losses from damage or destruction of ocean-going vessels they have covered. Many will join the American Foreign Insurance Association next year, marketing policies to Europeans whose domestic companies will be unable to pay war-related claims.

The Trading with the Enemy Act adopted by Congress October 6 establishes an Alien Property Custodian whose office seizes properties owned in the United States by enemy aliens.

Union Carbide and Carbon is created in November by a merger of Union Carbide, Linde, Prest-O-Lite, and National Carbon, famous for its Eveready flashlights and batteries (see technology [Union Carbide], 1911). The new company finds itself swamped immediately with government orders for activated carbon for gas masks, helium for dirigibles, ferrozirconium for armor-plating, and other war-related products (see Prestone, 1926).

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 74.38, down from 95 at the end of 1916.