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1910's: Overview |

Introduction

The Tumultuous Teens.

As the United States entered the second decade of the twentieth century, Americansfound themselves in the midst of sweeping economic, political, and cultural changes. TheUnited States began the 1910s as the richest nation in the world, and by the end of thedecade it had emerged from World War I with an economic output greater than that of allEurope combined. The United States had also become the most important voice for democratic ideals, but Americans drew back from the responsibility of making thoseideals a worldwide reality. A decade that began full of what Herbert Croly called "the

promise of American life" ended with a year of labor unrest, race riots, and hysteria over the threat of radicalism. In a decade of causes and crusadesfor woman suffrage,

Prohibition, the rights of workersAmericans tested the pronouncement of one of thedecade's brightest young minds, Walter Lippmann, who wrote in 1914 that earlier generations "inherited a conservatism and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have touse it." Freedom took many forms in the 1910s, some having little if anything to do with

politics: from a looser code of behavior among the young, to an emerging ethic of leisureand consumption among the middle class, to the exhilaration of travel in the increasingly

popular automobile. But freedom brought with it uncertainty, restlessness, and conflict,as Americans in peace and war grappled with who they were and what they were

becoming.

The High Tide of Progressivism.

The surge of political and social movements that began in the 1890sto advocate reformof government at every level, to push for stronger regulation of big business and publicownership of utilities, to establish settlement houses, trade-union leagues, and child-welfare organizationscrested in the 1910s. Former president Theodore Roosevelt, a

progressive Republican who remained the most compelling political figure in the country,made clear the power of progressive ideals in a speech he delivered at Osawatomie,Kansas, on 31 August 1910. There he put conservatives in his own party and nationwideon notice that the rugged individualism of the past "must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to thegeneral right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare

may require it." After failing to wrest the Republican presidential nomination fromincumbent William Howard Taft in 1912, Roosevelt embarked on a third-party challengeas the nominee of the Progressive (or "Bull Moose") Party. The presidential race that year featured Taft, Roosevelt's handpicked successor, who had prosecuted the trusts evenmore vigorously than his predecessor; Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who had establisheda progressive record as governor of New Jersey; Roosevelt, whose "New Nationalism"

platform promised a graduated income tax, workers' compensation for industrial injuries,and other progressive measures; and Eugene V. Debs, the candidate of the Socialist Party,

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who won 6 percent of the popular vote. Between them Wilson, Roosevelt, and Debs wonmore than 70 percent of the popular vote, giving Wilson a clear mandate to chart a courseof reform. During his first term in officesupported by progressives in both theDemocratic and Republican partiesWilson established one of the most impressivelegislative records of any American president, passing measures to establish the Federal

Reserve System, regulate trusts, provide credit to farmers, curb child labor, and enact agraduated income tax. During the 1910s four amendments to the Constitution wereadopted, each reflecting the often conflicting principles of the progressive movement:direct election of senators, the federal income tax, woman suffrage, and Prohibition. Intotal the reforms of the 1910s established the basic framework for the New Deal of the1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s.

Growth and Prosperity.

Fueled by the growth of new industries, the application new technologies, and a profitable agricultural sector, the American economy expanded rapidly in the 1910s,

spreading its benefits to a new middle class of professionals and managers. The moststriking example of the astounding productivity of American manufacturing was theautomobile industry, which rode a huge wave of consumer demand for its product andimplemented innovative production techniques to dominate of the world market in the1910s. Led by Ford Motor Company, which adopted the moving assembly line to

produce its Model T beginning in 1913, American automobile makers were producingmore than two million cars a year by 1920, putting what had once been a luxury for thewealthy few within reach of millions of American consumers. In automobile, electrical,chemical, and other industries, the adoption of scientific management and newmanufacturing techniques increased productivity and boosted the profits of stockholders.By the end of the decade the growing popularity of "personnel management" was

pointing the way toward the welfare capitalism of the 1920s, in which a mix of profit-sharing plans, grievance procedures, company unions, and company-sponsored socialactivities were used to blunt worker unhappiness and foster loyalty to employers. Duringthe war years, business leaders and government regulators created new arrangements thatassured generous profits for business in exchange for cooperation in the expansion of federal involvement in economic planning. Despite industrial growth, however, povertyremained widespread in the rural South, in urban immigrant communities, and amongAfrican Americans. For the majority of workers, economic security was a still distantdream, and persistent inflation during the decade eroded their hard-won gains.

An Artistic Awakening.

With an expanding economy creating new opportunities for education and leisure amongmiddle-class Americans, a generation of artists and writers emerged in the 1910s, intenton reinventing a national culture. As an editorial in the first issue of The Seven Artsmagazine declared in November 1916, "It is our faith and the faith of many that we areliving in a renascent period, a time which means for America the coming of that nationalself-consciousness which is the beginning of greatness." Indeed, the 1910s were a decadeof awakening in American painting, photography, poetry, drama, fiction, and dance.

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Inspired by the Armory Show, an exhibition of avant-garde European painters andsculptors in New York City in 1913, young American artists launched their ownmodernist experiments in form and subject in a burst of creativity not seen since the daysof Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and HermanMelville in the mid nineteenth century. Unleashing themselves from stale traditions and

slavish devotion to Old World models that had dominated American taste in the GildedAge, the young American rebels of the 1910s embraced the cacophony of modern urbanlife, even as they critiqued the dehumanization of work in the modern factory. Born in the1880s and 1890s, the new American writers were children of the Industrial Revolution,

but they were profoundly skeptical of the premise that the path to happiness lay in thrift,industry, and piety. Instead they drifted to bohemian enclaves in New York, Chicago, andSan Francisco, seeking like-minded souls who shared a dis-taste for the confinements of middle America and rejected the Victorian pieties of their parents. Often they coupledradical politics with radical artistic experiments and through magazines such as TheMassesand The New Republicarticulated a vision of America remade in their ownimage.

America and the World.

Since its founding as a nation, the United States has been ambivalent about its role on theworld stage. Some Americans believed that it was the nation's destiny and responsibilityto serve as a beacon of freedom and democracy; others argued that American policyshould consist of little more than heeding George Washington's admonition to avoid"entangling alliances." By 1910 the interest of American manufacturers in competing for markets and raw materials around the globe had involved the country inevitably in affairs

beyond its borders, and despite the preference of most Americans to remain neutral, thoseinternational economic ties, as well as pro-British sentiment, eventually drew the United

States into World War I. In Latin America and the Caribbean presidents Taft and Wilsonfollowed long-established precedents of intervening to assert American influence and protect U.S. economic interests. In 1914 Theodore Roosevelt's dream of an American-controlled passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific was realized when the fifty-mile-long, $352-million Panama Canal was completed. By 1912 one half of all Americanforeign investments were in Latin America. To Roosevelt's "Big Stick" and Taft's "Dollar Diplomacy" Woodrow Wilson, the son of a Presbyterian minister, added the convictionthat the United States was chosen, as he said in 1910, "to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty." Yet Wilson's moral diplomacy wastempered by his recognition of hard realities: American industries "will burst their

jackets," he warned in 1912, "if they cannot find free outlets in the markets of the world."

In 1911, when the Mexican Revolution began to create turmoil south of the border,Wilson's moralism did not prevent him from resorting to armed intervention and anattempt to impose American ideals through force. When World War I began in thesummer of 1914, Wilson hoped to use moral suasion to bring about a just peace; butwhen that policy failed, the United States combined force of arms with the principles laiddown in Wilson's Fourteen Points in an attempt to create a new world out of the old.

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World War I.

Compared with the losses of lives and resources endured by the European nations over more than five years of war, American sacrifices in the conflict were slight. But the war nonetheless had a profound impact on American life and American politics from the

moment it began. For those bred to believe, as many were, that Europe was the pinnacleof civilizationwith its ancient cathedrals and its great literary and artistic traditions the carnage of war came as a tremendous shock. Though Wilson called on his fellowAmericans to remain "neutral in fact as well as in name, impartial in thought as well asaction," it was difficult if not impossible for a nation of immigrants to avoid choosingsides in the conflict. As the war continued, ethnic tensions and questions about the loyaltyof recent immigrants intensified. At the same time, American bankers and businessmenleaped at the opportunities created by the war. Trade with the Allies increased from $300million to $3 billion during the first two years of the war, and loans to the Allies fromAmerican banks totaled better than $2 billion by the end of the war. As the novelist JohnDos Passos remarked in his novel 1919(1932), war provided "good growing weather for

the House of Morgan."

The War at Home.

Once the United States entered the war in April 1917, these effects intensified andmultiplied. Three million American men were drafted, and another two millionvolunteered. Of these five million troops some two million served overseas between 1917and the armistice in November 1918. More than one hundred thousand Americans losttheir lives in the conflict, slightly more than half to diseases that modern medicine hadnot yet conquered. With millions called into service, the depletion of the labor forcecreated new opportunities for women and African Americans, who had long been

relegated to the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. More than four hundred thousandsouthern blacks heeded the call of the Chicago Defender (the leading African Americannewspaper of the era), which pleaded in an editorial: "I beg you, my brother, to leave the

benighted land.Get out of the South." Thus began the "Great Migration" of blacks fromthe rural South to northern cities, a migration that reshaped not only African Americancommunities and family life but profoundly affected American culture as a whole.Similarly, close to a million women entered the labor force for the first time during thewar years, working in hospitals, schools, and factories, and creating the economic basisfor the emergence of the independent young "flapper" once the war had ended. In manynew ways the war made government a recognizable daily presence in the lives of Americans. Through hundreds of executive agencies and war boards the federal

government extended its reach into economic policy, production decisions, labor disputes, and other sectors once considered securely in the private realm. Government propagandaorchestrated by the Committee on Public InformationencouragedAmericans to despise the "Hun," support the troops, buy war bonds, and embrace "100

percent Americanism." In a nation that prided itself on toleration and individualism,conformity with official opinion and popular sentiment was enforced through theEspionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 and occasionally by vigilante justice.German Americans found themselves the objects of suspicion and abuse at the hands of

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local patriots. Radicals of every stripeanarchists, communists, and socialistsfacedsimilar treatment, particularly in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in

November 1917. As historian Barry Karl has written about the war years, "the enemy athome became the most visible enemy to attack."

Nineteen Nineteen.

The last year of the 1910s was one of the most tempestuous in American history. InWashington the battle over the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations ragedthrough most of the year and contributed to President Wilson's collapse from a stroke inOctober. For American workers the battle was not over grand plans for peace but over thesize of their paychecks. Throughout the decade labor unions had battled employers for improved wages and working conditions, hoping to share the fruits of economic growth.In 1917 there had been more than four thousand strikes, but most workers had put their demands on hold for the duration of the war. Severe wartime inflation, rapiddemobilization, and a postwar recession rekindled the fires of discontent. In 1919

hundreds of thousands of workers walked off their jobs in steel, coal mining, and other industries. Boston police went on strike as well, and there was a general strike in Seattle.Though most of the strikes were defeated, they ignited fears of a radical uprising, and bysummer 1919 the nation was in the grip of the Red Scare. Alien radicals were deported

by the hundreds, radical labor organizers were lynched, and duly elected Socialists wereexpelled from the New York State legislature. Though the worst of the hysteria was over

by summer 1920, the Red Scare helped to dampen the reform energies of progressiveswho had seen government as a force for good. Their optimistic spirit was further dampened in the bloody summer of 1919 by race riots in Washington, D.C., New York,Chicago, and other cities, as returning black soldiers and workers who had moved northin search of opportunity met resistance and resentment from their white counterparts.

When Americans voted for a new president in 1920, they chose Republican Warren G.Harding, who promised "not heroism but healing, not nostrums but normalcy, notrevolution but restoration, not agitation but adjustment, not surgery but serenity, not thedramatic but the dispassionate, not experiment but equipoise, not submergence ininternationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality."

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Important Events of the 1910s

1910

Movies As It Is in Life, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Mary Pickford; Dr, LafleursTheory, starring Maurice Costello and Clara Kimball Young; The Fire Chief's Daughter , starring Kathlyn Williams; His Trust/His Trust Fulfilled , directed by D.W. Griffith; In the Days of the Thundering Herd , starring Tom Mix; A Romanceof the Western Hills, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Mary Pickford; TheSaloon Next Door, Ye Vengeful Vagabonds.

FictionMary Austin, The Basket Woman;Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley Says;HamlinGarland, Other Main-Travelled Roads;Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus and the Little Boy;O. Henry, Strictly Business;Robert Herrick, A Life for a Life;Henry James, The Finer Grain;Owen Johnson, The Varmint;Jack London, Burning Daylight;Clarence Mulford, Hopalong Cassidy;David Graham Phillips,The Husband's Story;Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Franklin Winslow Kane;EdithWharton, Tales of Men and Ghosts.

VerseRobert Underwood Johnson, Saint-Gaudens, an Ode;Edwin Arlington Robinson,The Town Down the River.

Popular Songs"Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," by Victor Herbert; "Any Little Girl That's a NiceLittle Girl Is the Right Little Girl for Me," by Fred Fisher and Thomas Gray; "CallMe Up Some Rainy Afternoon," by Irving Berlin; "Come, Josephine, in MyFlying Machine," by Fred Fisher and Alfred Bryan; "Down by the Old MillStream," by Tell Taylor, "Dynamite Rag," by Rssel Robinson; "Every GirlLoves Me but the Girl I Love," by Herbert Ingrananti and Beth Slater Whitson;"Grizzly Bear," by Irving Berlin; "Heaven Win Protect the Working Girl," by A.Baldwin Sloane; "Hilarity Rag," by James Scott; "I'm Falling in Love withSomeone," by Victor Herbert and Rida Johnson Young; "Let Me Call YouSweetheart," by Leo Friedman and Beth Slater Whitson; "Lovey Joe," by JoeJordan; "Play that Barber Shop Chord," by Lewis F. Muir and William Tracey;"Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey," by Albert Von Tilzer and Junie McOree;"Stoptime Rag," by Scott Joplin; "Under the Yum Yum Tree," by Harry VonTilzer and Andrew B. Sterling.

The Poetry Society of America is founded at the National Arts Club in New York City.

28 Feb.Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova makes her American debut at the MetropolitanOpera House in New York City.

18 Mar.

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The Metropolitan Opera presents its first production of an opera by an Americancomposer, Frederick Shepherd Converse's The Pipe of Desire.

21 Mar.Gustav Mahler conducts for the last time at the Metropolitan Opera.

28 Mar.

Pablo Picasso's first one-man show opens at Alfred Stieglitzes 291 gallery in NewYork City.1 Apr.

Some two thousand people attend the opening of the Exhibition of IndependentArtists in New York City. The show continues through 28 April.

20 JuneFanny Brice makes her debut in the Ziegfeld Follies.

3 Nov.The Chicago Grand Opera opens with a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida.

7 Nov.Victor Herbert's operetta Naughty Mariettahas its premiere at the New York

Theatre.10 Dec.In New York City Ruth St. Denis opens in Egypta, a play that features the moderndances she has based on traditional Eastern dance forms.

Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), based onDavid Belasco's play of the same name, becomes the first opera to have its world

premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

1911

Movies Artful Kate, directed by Thomas Ince, starring Mary Pickford; Bronco Billy's Adventureand Enoch Arden, directed by D. W. Griffith; The Fisher-Maid ,directed by Thomas Ince, starring Mary Pickford; From the Manger to the Cross; A Girlish Impulse, starring Florence Lawrence; In the Sultans Garden, directed byThomas Ince, starring Mary Pickford; A Knight of the Road , directed by D. W.Griffith; The Last Drop of Water , directed by D. W. Griffith; TheLonedaleOperator , directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Blanche Sweet; A Tale of TwoCities.

FictionFrances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden;Margaret Deland, The IronWoman;Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt;Edna Ferber, Dawn O'Hara;ZonaGale, Mothers to Men;Hamlin Garland, Victor Ollnees Discipline;EllenGlasgow, The Miller of Old Church;O. Henry, Sixes and Sevens;Robert Herrick,The Healer;Owen Johnson, Stover at Yale;Mary Johnston, The Long Roll;Jack London, South Sea Tales;Kathleen Norris, Mother;David Graham Phillips, TheConflict;Gene Stratton-Porter, The Harvester;Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome;Harold Bell Wright, The Winning of Barbara Worth.

Verse

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Ezra Pound, Canzoni;George Sterling, The House of Orchids;Sara Teasdale, Helen of Troy.

Popular Songs"Alexander's Ragtime Band," by Irving Berlin; "All Alone," by Harry Von Tilzer and Will Dillon; "Everybody's Doin' It Now," by Irving Berlin; "Felicity Rag," by

Scott Hayden; "Hello, Central, Give Me 603," by Harry Von Tilzer; "I Want aGirl Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad," by Harry Von Tilzer and WillDillon; "If You Talk in Your Sleep, Don't Mention My Name," by Nat D. Ayer and A. Seymour Brown; "The Little Millionaire," by George M. Cohan;"Moontime Is Spoontime," by Paul Pratt; "Novelty Rag," by May Aufderheide;"Oh, You Beautiful Doll," by Nat D. Ayer and A. Seymour Brown; 'The Rag-timeViolin," by Irving Berlin; "Red Rose Rag," by Percy Wenrich; "A Ring on theFinger Is Worth Two on the Phone," by George W. Meyer and Jack Mahoney;'Whirlwind Rag," by Rssel Robinson.

The Irish Players from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin tour the United States. Their

repertoire includes John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Pennsylvania becomes the first state to create a board of motion-picture censors.

21 Mar.The Winter Garden Theatre opens at Broadway and Fifty-first Street in New York City.

22 Apr.Varietyreports that vaudeville-theater owner Marcus Loew has secured backing,largely from the Shubert organization, to expand his chain of theaters and equipthem for showing movies.

23 May

President William Howard Taft dedicates the New York Public Library.8 Aug. Pathes Weekly, the first newsreel made in America (produced in New Jersey bythe French-owned Path company), is released and shown in movie theaters.

9 Dec.John Philip Sousa and his band conclude their yearlong world tour with a concertat the five-thousand-seat Hippodrome in New York City.

19 Dec.The Association of American Painters and Sculptors is founded.

1912

MoviesThe Bearded Bandit; Ouster's Last Raid , directed by Thomas Ince; Fathers Flirtation; A Feud in the Kentucky Hills, directed by D. W. Griffith; A Girl and Her Trust , directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Mary Pickford; The IndianMassacre, directed by Thomas Ince; Lena and the Geese, directed by D. W.Griffith, starring Mary Pickford; The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D. W.Griffith; The Old Actor , directed by D. W. Griffith; An Unseen Enemy, directed

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by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish; War on the Plains, directed by ThomasInce.

FictionMary Austin, A Woman of Genius;Willa Cather, Alexanders Bridge;TheodoreDreiser, The Financier;Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance;Dorothy Canfield

Fisher, The Squirrel-Cage; ZaneGrey, Riders of the Purple Sage;James WeldonJohnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man;Mary Johnston, Cease Firing;Jack London, Smoke Bellew;David Graham Phillips, The Price She Paid;Edith Wharton, The Reef.

VerseRobinson Jeffers, Flagons and Apples;William Ellery Leonard, The Vaunt of Man;Vachel Lindsay, Rhymes to be Traded for Bread;Amy Lowell, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass;Ezra Pound, Ripostes;Elinor Wylie, Incidental Numbers.

Popular Songs"And the Green Grass Grew All Around," by Harry Von Tilzer and WilliamJerome; "Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee," by Henry I. Marshall and Stanley

Murphy; "The Bunny Hug," by Harry Von Tilzer, "Clover Blossoms Rag," by E.J. Stark Jr.; "Everybody Two-Step," by Wallie Herzer and Earl C. Jones; "HitchyKoo," by Lewis F. Muir, Maurice Abrahams, and L, Wolfe Gilbert; "It's a Long,Long Way to Tipperary," by Jack Judge and Harry H. Williams; "Melancholy(My Melancholy Baby)," by Ernie Burnett and George A. Norton; "On the EightO'Clock Train," by Russel Robinson; "Scott Joplin's New Rag," by Scott Joplin;"The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi," by Dudleigh Vernor and Byron D. Stokes; 'ThatDemon Rag," by Russell Smith; "That Mysterious Rag," by Irving Berlin; "TheTurkey Trot," by Ribe Danmark (J. Bodewalt Lampe); "Waiting for the Robert E.Lee," by Lewis R Muir and L. Wolfe Gilbert; "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," byErnest R. Ball, Chauncey Olcott, and George Graff Jr.; "Wise Old Moon," byArtie Matthews.

The Little Theater in Chicago and the Toy Theater in Boston, thefirst influential little theaters in America, are founded. A revival of George M. Cohan's 1906 hit musical, Forty-FiveMinutes from Broadway, opens in New York City. The Dramatists Guild is founded in New York City.

14 Mar.Horatio Parker's opera Mona, winner of the Metropolitan Opera's $10,000 prizefor the best new American opera, has its premiere in New York City.

22 JulyThe first of the Shuberts' annual Passing Showmusical revues opens at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City.

Aug.Alfred Stieglitz devotes an issue of his periodical Camera Work to modern art,including Gertrude Stein's word portraits of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

1 Sept.

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In Los Angeles the one-thousand-seat Walker Theatre opensa theater devotedexclusively to showing movies (admission prices range from ten to twenty-fivecents).

5 Sept.Queen Elizabeth, a French feature film starring Sarah Bernhardt, opens in Marcus

Loew's New York City movie theatersafter Loew pays $25,000 for theAmerican rights to the movie.23 Sept.

The first Keystone Comedy movie, the split-reel Cohen Collects a Debt and TheWater Nymph, directed by Mack Sennett, is released.

The first issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, edited by Harriet Monroe, is published in Chicago, with expatriate Ezra Pound as overseas editor. Themagazine is dedicated to publishing the work of American poets.

1913

MoviesThe Adventures of Kathlyn(serial), starring Kathlyn Williams; The Battle of Gettysburg , directed by Thomas Ince; Caprice, starring Mary Pickford; In the Bishop's Carriage, starring Mary Pickford; The New York Hat , directed by D. W.Griffith, starring Mary Pickford; The Prisoner of Zenda, starring James K.Hackett; Tess of the D'Urbervilles, starring Minnie Maddern Fiske; A VersatileVillain.

FictionWilla Cather, O Pioneers!;Ellen Glasgow, Virginia;O. Henry, Rolling Stones;Robert Herrick, One Woman's Life;Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna;Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie;Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country.

VerseWitter Bynner, Tiger;Paul Laurence Dunbar, Complete Poems;John GouldFletcher, Fire and Wine;Robert Frost, A Boys Will;Vachel Lindsay, General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems;William Carlos Williams,The Tempers.

Popular Songs"American Beauty Rag," by Joseph Lamb; "Danny Boy," by Fred E. Weatherly,"The Dogin' Rag," by Rob Hampton; "Don't Blame It All on Broadway," by BertGrant, Harry Williams, and Joe Young; "The International Rag," by Irving Berlin;"Junk Man Rag," by Luckey Roberts; "Kismet Rag," by Scott Hayden; "Memphis

Blues," by W. C. Handy; "On the Old Fall River Line," by Harry Von Tilzer,William Jerome, and Andrew B. Sterling; "Peg o' My Heart," by Fred Fisher andAlfred Bryan; "Sailing Down the Chesapeake Bay," by George Botsford and JeanC. Havez; "Snookey Ookums," by Irving Berlin; "The Trail of the LonesomePine," by Harry Carroll and Ballard Macdonald; "When I Lost You," by IrvingBerlin; "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)," by James V. Monacoand Joseph McCarthy, "You've Got Your Mother's Big Blue Eyes," by IrvingBerlin.

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The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company (later ParamountPictures) is founded in Hollywood, California. The New York Motion Picture Company sends director-producer Thomas Ince to California to make Westerns.

17 Feb. The International Exhibition of Modern Art, commonly called the Armory Show,opens in New York City, with more than thirteen hundred paintings andsculptures. For many Americans the show is their first opportunity to see works of avant-garde modern art.

24 Mar.The million-dollar, eighteen-hundred-seat Palace Theatre opens on SeventhAvenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Streets in New York City,charging a top ticket price of two dollars, twice that of other vaudeville theaters.

1 Apr.With admission costing as much as one dollar a ticket, Quo Vadis, an eight-reel

movie made in Italy, opens at the Astor Theatre in New York City, beginning atwenty-two-week run and fueling Americans' desires for longer movies.13 Apr.

Arturo Toscanini conducts his first concert in America, Beethoven's NinthSymphony at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

26 MayThe Actors Equity Association is founded.

7 JuneIn New York City more than one thousand striking silk-mill workers fromPaterson, New Jersey, march up Fifth Avenue to Madison Square Garden, wherethey stage a political pageant intended to dramatize the plight of industrial

workers, with sets by theatrical designer Robert Edmond Jones and painted under the direction of artist John Sloan.20 June

Varietyreports that "the feature-length movie is now an establishment.Thefuture will see little else."

1 Oct.Director D. W. Griffith leaves Biograph, the company for which he has mademore than four hundred movies in five and a half years.

1914

MoviesThe Avenging Conscience, directed by D. W. Griffith; The Bargain, directed byThomas Ince, starring William S. Hart; The Battle of the Sexes, directed by D. W.Griffith, starring Lillian Gish; Between Showers, starring Charlie Chaplin; TheCall of the North, directed by Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille; Cinderella,starring Mary Pickford and Owen Moore; Dough and Dynamite, starring CharlieChaplin; The Eagle's Mate, starring Mary Pickford; The Escape, directed by D.W. Griffith, starring Donald Crisp, Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, and Robert

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Harron; The Exploits of Elaine(serial), starring Pearl White; Hearts Adrift ,starring Mary Pickford; Home, Sweet Home, directed by D. W. Griffith, starringLillian and Dorothy Gish; The Horrors of War, In the Latin Quarter , starringConstance Talmadge; Judith of Bethulia, directed by D. W. Griffith; Kid Auto Races at Venice, California, starring Charlie Chaplin; Mabel's Strange

Predicament , starring Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand; The Man from Home,directed by Cecil B. DeMille; The Perils of Pauline(serial), starring Pearl White; Pool Shark , starring W. C. Fields; The Squaw Man, directed by Cecil B. DeMille;Tess of the Storm Country, starring Mary Pickford; Tillie's Punctured Romance,directed by Mack Sennett, starring Marie Dressier, Charlie Chaplin, and Mabel

Normand; The Virginian, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; War Is Hell; Wildflower ,starring Marguerite Clark; The Wrath of the Gods, directed by Thomas Ince.

FictionEdgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes;George Washington Cable, Gideon's Band;Theodore Dreiser, The Titan;Hamlin Garland, The Forester's Daughter;Robert Herrick, Clark's Field;Jack London, The Mutiny on the Elsinore;Frank

Norris, Vandover and the Brute;Booth Tarkington, Penrod;Harold Bell Wright,The Eyes of the World.Verse

Conrad Aiken, Earth Triumphant;Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound;RobertFrost, North of Boston;Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems;Vachel Lindsay,The Congo and Other Poems;Amy Lowell, Sword-Blades and Poppy Seed;James Oppenheim, Songs for the New Age;Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons,

Popular Songs"Aba Daba Honeymoon," by Arthur Fields and Walter Donovan; "The BostonStopHesitation Waltz," by Henry Lodge; "By the Beautiful Sea," by HarryCarroll and Harold R. Atteridge; "Chevy Chase (A Rag)," by Eubie Blake;"Chicken Tango," by E. J. Stark Jr.; "Fascination Waltz," by Henry Lodge; "FizzWater (A Rag)," by Eubie Blake; "Hot House Rag," by Paul Pratt; "The Land of My Best Girl," by Harry Carroll and Ballard Macdonald; "The Lily Rag," byCharles Thompson; "Missouri Waltz," by Frederick Knight Logan and J. R.Shannon; "Oh! You Turkeya Rag Trot," by Henry Lodge; "Play a SimpleMelody," by Irving Berlin; "St. Louis Blues," by W. C. Handy, "The SyncopatedWalk," by Irving Berlin; "They Didn't Believe Me," by Jerome Kern and HerbertReynolds; "When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose," by PercyWenrich and Jack Mahoney, "Yellow Dog Blues," by W. C. Handy.

Heiress and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founds the Whitney StudioClub (later the Whitney Museum) in New York City.

13 Feb.The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) isfounded in New York City.

Mar.Mabel's Strange Predicament , the Keystone comedy in which Charlie Chaplin'sLittle Tramp character is introduced, is released.

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l Apr.The Strand Theater opens in New York, designed as a vaudeville and moviehouse for upscale audiences.

27 Apr.Vernon and Irene Castle begin their twenty-eight-day tour of thirty-two cities,

which culminates in a national dance competition held in Madison SquareGarden, New York City.4 June

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius makes his first American appearance, conductingthe world premiere of his symphonic poem Oceanidesat a music festival in

Norwalk, Connecticut.3 Nov.

The first American show of African sculpture opens at Stieglitz's 291 gallery in New York City.

3 Dec.The Isadorables, six young European dancers trained by Isadora Duncan, appear

at Carnegie Hall in New York City, after escaping with her from war-torn Paris.8 Dec.Irving Berlin's first musical, Watch Your Step, starring Vernon and Irene Castle,opens on Broadway.

1915

MoviesThe Arab, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; The Bank , directed by and starringCharlie Chaplin; The Battle Cry of Peace, starring Norma Talmadge; The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, andMiriam Cooper; The Captive, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring BlancheSweet; Carmen, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar andWallace Reid; The Champion, starring and directed by Charlie Chaplin; Chimmie Fadden, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Victor Moore; The Coward ,directed by Thomas Ince; Esmeralda, starring Mary Pickford; The Fairy and theWaif , starring Mary Miles Minier; A Fool There Was, starring Theda Bara; TheGirl of the Golden West , directed by Cecil B. DeMille; The Goose Girl , starringMarguerite Clark; Graustark , starring Francis X, Bushman; Hell's Hinges,directed by Thomas Ince, starring William S. Hart; His New Job, starring anddirected by Charlie Chaplin; The Iron Strain; The Lamb, starring Douglas Fair-

banks; Mistress Nell , starring Mary Pickford; My Valet , directed by Mack Sennett; The New Exploits of Elaine(serial), starring Pearl White; A Night Out ,directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Rags, starring Mary Pickford; The Romance of Elaine(serial), starring Pearl White; The Tramp, directed by andstarring Charlie Chaplin; The Warrens of Virginia, directed by Cecil B. DeMille,starring Blanche Sweet; The Whirl of Life, starring Vernon and Irene Castle; TheWild Goose Chase, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Ina Claire; Work ,directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin.

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FictionWilla Gather, The Song of the Lark;Irvin S. Cobb, Old Judge Priest;TheodoreDreiser, The "Genius";Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Bent Twig;Jack London,The Scarlet Plague;Ernest Poole, The Harbor;Booth Tarkington, The Turmoil;Harry Leon Wilson, Ruggles of Red Gap.

Verse Stephen Vincent Bent, Five Men and Pompey;John Gould Fletcher, Irradiations: Sand and Spray;Ring W. Lardner, Bib Ballads;ArchibaldMacLeish, Songs for a Summers Day;Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology;John G. Neihardt, The Song of Hugh Glass; Ezra Pound, Cathay;SaraTeasdale, Rivers to the Sea,

Popular Songs"Agitation Rag," by Shelton Brooks; "Babes in the Wood," by Jerome Kern;"Down Among the Sheltering Palms," by Abe Olman and James Brockman; "TheGirl on the Magazine Cover," by Irving Berlin; "Hesitating Blues," by W. C.Handy; "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier," by Al Piantatosi and Alfred

Bryan; "I Love a Piano," by Irving Berlin; "The Jelly Roll Blues," by Jelly RollMorton; "Joe Turner Blues," by W. C. Handy; "The Little House Upon the Hill," by Harry Puck, Ballard Macdonald, and Joe Goodwin; "Memories," by Gus Kahnand Egbert Van Alstyne; "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kitbag and Smile,Smile, Smile" [British], by Felix Powell and George Asaf; "There's a BrokenHeart for Every Light on Broadway," by Fred Fisher and Howard Johnson;"Weary Blues," by Artie Matthews; "When I Leave the World Behind," by IrvingBerlin; "You'll Always Be the Same Sweet Girl," by Harry Von Tilzer andAndrew B. Sterling.

Modern dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, who were married on 13 August

1914, found the Denishawn School of Dancing in Los Angeles.8 Feb.

Despite protests by the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP), D. W. Griffith's twelve-reel movie The Birth of a Nation, aboutthe Ku Klux Klan in the post-Reconstruction South, has its world premiere atClune's Theater in Los Angeles.

20 Mar.The Russian Symphony Orchestra plays the premiere performance of Aleksandr Scriabin's symphony Prometheusat Carnegie Hall in New York City. The

performance includes the projection of color images onto a screen.21 May

Varietynotes that "the bottom has apparently fallen out" of the market for one-reel movies.

SummerThomas Ince's Kay Bee studio, Mack Sennett's Keystone studio, and D. W.Griffith's Reliance-Majestic studio are combined to form the Triangle FilmCorporation.

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The Provincetown Players give their first performance: a double-bill productionof Constancyby Neith Boyce and Suppressed Desiresby Susan Glaspell andGeorge Cram Cook, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

1916

MoviesThe Apostle of Vengeance, starring William S. Hart; Behind the Screen, directed

by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Civilization, directed by Thomas Ince; The Dream Girl , directed by Cecil B. DeMille; The Eternal Grind , starring MaryPickford; The Fall of a Nation; Fatty and Mabel Adrift , directed by Mack Sennett,starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand; The Floorwalker , directed by andstarring Charlie Chaplin; The Good Bad Man, starring Douglas Fairbanks; The Heart of Nora Flynn, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; Huida from Holland , starringMary Pickford; Intolerance, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish andMae Marsh; Less than the Dust , starring Mary Pickford; Maria Rosa, directed byCecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar and Wallace Reid; One A.M., directed

by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Patria, starring Irene Castle; The Pawnshop,directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Pearl of the Army, starring Pearl White; Poor Little Peppina, starring Mary Pickford; The Rink , directed by and starringCharlie Chaplin; Temptation, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring GeraldineFarrar, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; TheVagabond , directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; The Vixen, starring ThedaBara; War Brides, starring Alla Nazimova and Richard Barthelmess; The Wharf Rat , starring Mae Marsh.

FictionSherwood Anderson, Windy McPhersons Son;James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour;Margaret Deland, The Rising Tide;Hamlin Garland, They of the HighTrails;Ellen Glasgow, Life and Gabriella;Williamm Dean Howells, The Leather-wood God;Ring W. Lardner, You Know Me Al;Booth Tarkington, Seventeen;Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger;Edith Wharton, Xingu and Other Stories;Harold Bell Wright, When a Mans a Man.

VerseConrad Aiken, Turns and Movies;John Gould Fletcher, Goblins and Pagodas;H.D., Sea Garden;Robert Frost, Mountain Interval;Edgar A. Guest, A Heap oy Livin';Robinson Jeffers, Californians;Sarah Orne Jewett, Verses;AlfredKreymborg, Mushrooms;Amy Lowell, Men, Women, and Ghosts;Edgar LeeMasters, Songs and Satires;James Oppenheim, War and Laughter;Ezra Pound, Lustra;Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky;Carl Sandburg,Chicago Poems;Alan Seeger, Poems.

Popular Songs"Beale Street Blues," by W. C. Handy; "Bugle Call Rag," by Eubie Blake;"Chromatic Rag," by Will Held; "Everybody Rag with Me," by Gus Kahn andGrace LeBoy; "Have a Heart," by Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse;"Homesickness Blues," by Cliff Hess; "Mama and Papa Blues," by James P.Johnson; "Mother (Her Soldier Boy)," by Sigmund Romberg and Rida Johnson

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Young; "Nola," by Felix Arndt; "Oh! How She Could Yacki, Hacki, Wicki,Wacki, Woo," by Albert Von Tilzer, Stanley Murphy, and Charles McCarron;"Poor Butterfly," by Raymond Hubbell and John L. Golden; "Pretty Baby," byGus Kahn, Tony Jackson, and Egbert Van Alstyne; "Prosperity Rag," by JamesScott; "Springtime Rag," by Paul Pratt; "There's a Little Bit of Bad in Every Good

Little Girl," by Fred Fisher and Grant Clarke; "Twelfth Street Rag," by Euday L.Bowman; "You Belong to Me," by Victor Herbert and Harry B. Smith,Jan.-May

Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes performs at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

SpringCharlie Chaplin signs with Mutual for $10,000 a week, plus a $150,000 signing

bonus.12 Apr.

Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky makes his American debut.24 June

Mary Pickford negotiates a new contract with Adolph Zukor's Famous PlayersCompany for more than $1 million over the next two years.28 July

At the Wharf Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Provincetown Playersstage Bound East for Cardiff , the first production of a Eugene O'Neill play.

5 Dec.The Society of Independent Artists is established.

1917

Movies

The Adopted Son, starring Francis X. Bushman; Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara;The Clodhopper ; The Cure, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; The Fall of the Romanoffs; The Gun Fighter , directed by and starring William S. Hart; The Immigrant , directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Joan, The Woman, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar; Just Nuts, starring Harold Lloydand Bebe Daniels; The Little American, directed by Cecil B, DeMille, starringMary Pickford; A Modern Musketeer , starring Douglas Fairbanks; The Poor Little Rich Girl , starring Mary Pickford; Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, starring MaryPickford; A Romance of the Redwoods, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starringMary Pickford; The Spirit of '76; Thais, starring Mary Garden; The Woman God Forgot , directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar.

FictionSherwood Anderson, Marching Men;Mary Austin, The Ford;James BranchCabell, The Cream of the Jest;Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky;JohnDos Passos, One Man's Initiation;Edna Ferber, Fanny Herself;Henry James, The Ivory Tower;Ring W. Lardner, Gullible's Travels;Jack London, Jerry of the Islands;David Graham Phillips, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise;Ernest Poole, His Family;Upton Sinclair, King Coal;Edith Wharton, Summer.

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VerseConrad Aiken, Nocturne of a Remembered Spring;Witter Bynner, Grenstone Poems;T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations;Edgar A. Guest, Just Folks;James Weldon Johnson, Fifty Years and Other Poems;Vachel Lindsay,The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems;Archibald MacLeish, Tower of Ivory;

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems;Edwin ArlingtonRobinson, Merlin;Sara Teasdale, Love Songs;William Carlos Williams, Al QueQuiere!

Popular Songs"Au Revoir, But Not Goodbye, Soldier Boy," by Albert Von Tilzer and LewBrown; "The Bells of St. Mary's," by A. Emmett Adams and Douglas Furber;"Dance and Grow Thin," by Irving Berlin; "The Darktown Strutter's Ball," byShelton Brooks; "Efficiency Rag," by James Scott; "For Me and My Gal," byGeorge W. Meyer, Edgar Leslie, and E. Ray Goetz; "Gum Shoe Fox Trot," by E.J. Stark Jr.; "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here," by Theodore Morse, Arthur Sullivan, and D. A. Morse; "Harlem Strut," by James P. Johnson; "Magnetic

Rag," by Scott Joplin; "Oh, Johnny! Oh!," by Abe Oleman and Ed Rose; "Over There," by George M. Cohan; "The Ragtime Volunteers Are Off to War," byJames F. Hanley and Ballard Macdonald; "Smiles," by Lee S. Roberts and J. WillCallahan; "Tiger Rag," by the Original Dixieland Jass Band; "Till the Clouds RollBy," by Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse;" Till We Meet Again," by Richard A.Whiting and Ray Egan; "When the Boys Come Home," by Oley Speaks and JohnHay; "Where Do We Go from Here?," by Percy Wenrich; "Where the MorningGlories Grow," by Richard A. Whiting, Gus Kahn, and Ray Egan; "Whose LittleHeart Are You Breaking Now?," by Irving Berlin; "Why Keep Me Waiting SoLong?," by Tony Jackson.

The Supreme Court rules in favor of ASCAP in a test caseconcerning the payment of royalties to songwriters for public performances of their works.

Eddie Cantor and Will Rogers make their debuts in the Ziegfeld Follies.

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its seventy-fifthanniversary. Seventy-two-year-old French actress Sarah Bernhardt makes her last tour of the United States, playing (among other roles) Portia in TheMerchant of Venice.

1 Apr.Victor becomes the first record company to release a recording of jazz, by the(all-white) Original Dixieland Jass Band.

9 Apr.On the opening day of its first exhibition the Society of Independent Artistsrejects Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal that he entered as sculpture under thename of Richard Mutt.

11 Apr.

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Isadora Duncan, draped in an American flag, performs a modern-dance work called Star-Spangled Banner at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

14 Apr.President Woodrow Wilson appoints a Committee on Public Information (alsoknown as the Creel Committee, after its head, George Creel) to design a code for

voluntary censorship of media and arts during the war.27 Oct.Sixteen-year-old Russian prodigy Jascha Heifetz makes his American debut atCarnegie Hall in New York City.

10 Nov.The Philadelphia Orchestra announces that it will play no works by Germancomposers for the duration of the war.

14 Nov.Acting on orders originating with Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, the mayor of New Orleans closes Storyvillethe city's red-light district, where manyAfrican American musicians are employedprompting an exodus of blues and

jazz artists to northern cities.25 Dec.The Jesse Lynch Williams comedy Why Marry?opens at the Astor Theatre in

New York City.

1918

Movies Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, starring Mary Pickford; Beware of Boarders,directed by Mack Sennett; A Dog's Life, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Fatty in Coney Island , directed by Mack Sennett, starring Fatty Arbuckle andBuster Keaton; The Ghost of Rosy Taylor , starring Mary Miles Minter; The Great Love, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish; Hearts of the World ,directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish; Huns Within Our Gates; Johanna Enlists, starring Mary Pickford; Mickey, directed by Mack Sennett,starring Mabel Normand; Old Wives for New, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; One Hundred Percent American, starring Mary Pickford; Prunella, starring MargueriteClark; Shoulder Arms, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Stella Maris,starring Mary Pickford; Tarzan of the Apes, starring Elmo Lincoln; Till I Come Back to You, directed by Cecil B. DeMille; The Venus Model , starring Mabel Normand.

Fiction

Willa Cather, My ntonia;Theodore Dreiser, Free and Other Stories;Mary E.Wilkins Freeman, Edgewater People;Zona Gale, Birth;Zane Grey, The U. P.Trail; Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus Returns;Ring W. Lardner, Treat 'Em Rough;Jack London, The Red One;Ernest Poole, His Second Wife;ThorneSmith, Biltmore Oswald;Wilbur Daniel Steele, Land's End;Edward Streeter, Dere Mable: Love Letters of a Rookie;Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons;Edith Wharton, The Marne.

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VerseSherwood Anderson, Mid-American Chants;Stephen Vincent Bent, Young Adventure;John Gould Fletcher, The Tree of Life;Amy Lowell, Can GrandesCastle;Edgar Lee Masters, Toward the Gulf;Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers;Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise.

Popular Songs"Beautiful Ohio," by Mary Earl (Robert A. King) and Ballard Macdonald; "TheDaughter of Rosie O'Grady," by Walter Donaldson and Monty C. Brice; "DreamOn, Little Soldier Boy," by Irving Berlin; "Everybody Knows I Love Him," byRussell Smith; "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," by Eddie Green; "Hinky-DinkyParlezvous," anonymous; "I'll Say She Does," by Gus Kahn; "I'm Always ChasingRainbows," by Harry Carroll and Joseph McCarthy; "I'm Gonna Pin a Medal onthe Girl I Left Behind," by Irving Berlin; "The Kaiser's Got the Blues," by W. C.Handy; "K-K-K-Katy," by Geoffrey O'Hara; "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in theMorning," by Irving Berlin; "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," byJoe Young and Sam M. Lewis; "Snookums Rag," by Charles L. Johnson; "The

U.S. Field Artillery March," by John Philip Sousa; "When Alexander Takes HisRagtime Band to France," by Alfred Bryan, Cliff Hess, and Edgar Leslie.

Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, who is extremely popular inAmerica, records George M. Cohan's wartime hit "Over There." The annual O. Henry Awards are created to honor the short-storywriter, who died in 1910. The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for drama (Jesse LynchWilliams's Why Marry?)and fiction (Ernest Poole's His Family),

15 Feb.

Serving as a pilot in the war, dancer Vernon Castle is killed during a trainingexercise.Mar.

The Little Reviewbegins serializing James Joyce's Ulysses.25 Mar.

German-born Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Carl Muck is arrested andimprisoned as an enemy ddlien.

16 Oct.Congress passes the Alien Act, which allows for the deportation of immigrantsand aliens with radical political views. The act is later used to justify thedeportation of Muck and the harassment of other German- and Austrian-bornartists working in America.

Dec.The Theatre Guild is founded in New York City.

14 Dec.Giacomo Puccini's Il trittico, a trilogy of one-act operas// Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi is given its world premiere at the MetropolitanOpera House in New York City.

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1919

Movies Broken Blossoms, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish and RichardBarthelmess; Captain Kidd, Jr., starring Mary Pickford; Daddy Long Legs,starring Mary Pickford; A Days Pleasure, directed by and starring CharlieChaplin; Dont Change Your Husband , directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starringGloria Swanson; The Girl Who Stayed at Home, directed by D. W. Griffith,starring Carol Dempster, Girls, starring Marguerite Clark; Heart o' the Hills,starring Mary Pickford; Kathleen Mavourneen, starring Theda Bara; Male and Female, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Gloria Swanson; The MiracleMan, starring Lon Chaney, Sunnyside, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin;True Heart Susie, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish.

FictionSherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio;James Branch Cabell, Jurgen;FinleyPeter Dunne, Mr. Dooley on Making a Will;Ellen Glasgow, The Builders;FannieHurst, Humoresque;Ring W. Lardner, Own Your Own Home;Jack London, Onthe Makaloa Mat;Upton Sinclair, Jimmie Higgins;Albert Payson Terhune, Lad: A Dog.

VerseT. S. Eliot, Poems;Amy Lowell, Pictures of a Floating World;Edgar LeeMasters, Starved Rock;Ezra Pound, Quia Pauper Amavi;John Crowe Ransom, Poems about God.

Popular Songs"Alice Blue Gown," by Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy; "Bohemia Rag," byJoseph Lamb; "Castle of Dreams," by Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy;"Daddy Long Legs," by Harry Ruby, Sam M. Lewis, and Joe Young;"Dardanella," by Fred Fisher; "How You Gonna Keep em Down on the Farm," byWalter Donaldson, Sam M. Lewis, and Joe Young; "Indian Summer," by Victor Herbert; "Liberty Loan March," by John Philip Sousa; "The Little Church Aroundthe Corner," by Sigmund Romberg and Alexander Gerber, "Mandy," by IrvingBerlin; "Peace and Plenty Rag," by James Scott; "Peggy," by Neil Moret andHarry Williams; "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," by Irving Berlin; "RoseRoom," by Art Hickman; "Swanee," by George Gershwin and Irving Caesar;"You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet," by Al Jolson, Gus Kahn, and B. G. De Sylva.

Maid of Harlem, an all-black musical starring Fats Waller, Mamie Smith, JohnnyDunn, and Perry Bradford, is a hit at Lincoln Theater in New York City.

5 Feb.United Artists is founded in Hollywood by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford,Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, and other investors.

19 Apr.The Theatre Guild opens its first production, Jacinto Benavente's The Bonds of Interest , in New York City.

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The Actors Equity strike begins, soon including more than two thousand actors,stagehands, and musicians.

6 Sept.The Actors Equity strike is settled, with theatrical management meeting theactors' demands on pay, job security, and control over contracts.

24 Oct. During the opening performance at Capitol Theatre on Broadway, sixty chorusgirls dance to George Gershwin's new song "Swanee," which Al Jolson also singsin his Winter Garden show a few weeks later.

31 Oct.The Provincetown Players stage Eugene O'Neill's play The Dreamy Kid with anall-black cast.