1913 Hunting & Fishing Licenses in Historical Context – Part Three

In todays’ conclusion to our series on the hunting and fishing licenses that were issued during 1913, we shall take a look at many examples issued during the fall hunting seasons – including the first resident hunting licenses for Ohio and Pennsylvania. As we work through the fall months, we shall continue building our historical frame of reference and see a lot of great pieces from the golden era of pre-stamp licensing, so enjoy!

 

September

1  French aviator and flight instructor Adolphe Pegoud (see Figure 1) became the first to fly an airplane inverted (upside down). On September 21, he flew a loop and believed (as it was widely publicized) that this was the first time that feat had been accomplished. Later he found out that Russian pilot Pyotr Nestrov had beat him to it (see Part Two). 

At the start of WWI, Pergoud became the first fighter ace in history. A fighter ace or flying ace is a military aviator who is credited with shooting down multiple enemy aircraft during arial combat. On February 15, 1915 Pergoud and his gunner were credited with shooting down two German aircraft and forcing a third to land; in April (flying in a single-seat aircraft) he shot down two more German planes and then in July he shot down a sixth.

 

 

 

 

4  Notorious American gangster Mickey Cohen (see Figure 2) is born in Brooklyn, New York. Shortly after his birth, his mother moved their family to Los Angeles where Cohen grew up wanting to be a professional boxer. He subsequently moved to Cleveland to pursue a career in boxing and there he fell in with mobster Lou Rothkopf and became a member of the Moe Dalitz Outfit; then Cohen went to New York and became a racketeer – before moving to Chicago where he ran gambling and was an enforcer for Al Capone’s Chicago Outfit.

Cohen returned to Los Angeles in 1939, where Meyer Lanskey arranged for him to work with “Bugsy” Siegel. With Siegel, he set up the first major resort hotel in Las Vegas, The Flamingo, and ran its sports book operation. After Siegel was killed by the mob for mismanaging the Flamingo, Siegel fled to L.A. where he hired Johnny Stompanato as his his bodyguard – until Stompanato was killed by his girlfriend’s (Lana Turner’s) daughter, Cheryl Crane. After the funeral, Cohen turned Lana’s love letters over to the press causing a world-wide sensation.

 

 

 

 

5  Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor is performed for the first time. The original manuscript was destroyed during the Russian Revolution and reconstructed by Prokofiev in 1924. Over a hundred years later, it remains one of the most technically complex and difficult pieces in history. It is said that less than a dozen people in the world can play it properly.

11  Legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant was born in Moro Bottom, Arkansas. Bryant would go on to coach the University of Alabama Crimson Tide to six national championships from in the 1960s and 1970s.

25  Actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, with the Keystone Film Company. His onscreen persona, “The Tramp”, would soon become iconic and in 1919, along with D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, he established United Artists.

27  American psychologist and author Albert Ellis was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1955, Ellis developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy – later known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Ellis is considered the second most influential psychotherapist in history – behind only Carl Rogers (Sigmund Freud is third).

28  American women’s tennis player Alice Marble (see Figure 3) was born in Beckwourth (Plumas County), California. Marble was one of the best known athletes and biggest celebrities of her day and is one of the top tennis players of all time, winning 12 U.S. Open titles and six Wimbledon titles. She was the Associated Press Athlete of the Year in both 1939 and 1940.

 

 

 

 

29  The Second Balkan War came to an official end as representatives from the Kingdom of Bulgaria and The Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Constantinople. During WWI, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were allies.

 

Licenses Issued in September

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October

1  Work continued in the Panama Canal. After 32 years of labor, water flowed from Gatun Lake into the Gamboa Dike. On October 13, the dike was exploded via telegraph by President Wilson from Washington, D.C., allowing the water from Gatun Lake to flow through the Culebra Cut.

Work was completed the following spring and the first Canal Zone governor, George Washington Goethals, took office on April 1, 1914. The outbreak of WWI delayed the official grand opening until August 15, 1914. 

3  U.S federal income tax was signed into law by President Wilson. The Revenue Tax Act of 1913, also known as the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, reduced or abolished many tariffs and offset the loss of revenue by imposing an income tax for the first time since the civil war.

4  The legendary Annie Oakley gave her last public shooting exhibition in Marion, Illinois. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “At 30 paces she could split a playing card held edge-on, she hit dimes tossed into the air and shot slices from cigarettes and cigars that her husband, fellow marksman Frank Butler, held in his lips.”

7  A moving assembly line was first used by Ford Motor Company in Highland Park, Michigan to manufacture its Model T automobiles. The assembly line cut the time it took to assemble a vehicle by more than half – from 15.5 hours to 5.5.

15  Chinese President Yuan Shikai ordered the arrest of a list of opponents, including Sun Yat-sen (see Figure 4). Remembered as the “Father of China”, Sun Yat-sen served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China in 1911, following the the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution.

 

 

 

 

17  The largest and greatest of all German zeppelins, the LZ-18 (also known as the L-2), caught fire in mid air, exploded and crashed – killing all 28 passengers and crew in the worst air disaster up until that time. The L-2 was 158 meters long (over 518 feet) and was able to travel at speeds up to 47 mph (see Figure 5).

 

 

 

 

21  The Shubert Theatre opened on Broadway (225 West 44th Street) in NYC. The first production was the play Ceasar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw. Some of the more famous recent productions have been A Chorus Line (6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990 – the longest running show in Broadway history) and Chicago (1996 to 2003). The Shubert Theatre is also home to the annual Tony Awards.

27  In A famous speech in Mobile, Alabama, President Wilson announced “The United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She will devote herself to showing that she knows how to make an honorable and fruitful use of the territory she [already] has…” The speech was widely interpreted to mean the U.S. would never again wage a war of aggression.

29  On this day, engineer and inventor Edwin Armstrong applied for a patent on the regenerative circuit. The invention increased the gain of amplifying devices, such as tubes or transistors, by feeding some their output energy back into the input – thus regenerating it and making the device more efficient, powerful and having greater range.

It made radio receivers more sensitive and improved their overall quality. Today, virtually all radio receivers and television sets are constructed making use of one or more of Armstrong’s inventions. He would also go on to develop frequency modulation (FM radio) in 1933 (see Figure 6).

 

 

 

 

Licenses Issued in October

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November

1  In their first annual football game, Notre Dame upset Army 35 – 13. Notre Dame made unprecedented use of the forward pass, led by star receiver Knute Rockne. It was this win that put the fighting Irish on the national map.

5  Actress Vivian Leigh was born in Daejeeling, British India. Although she made only 20 films, Leigh made an indelible impression on cinematic history. Among the 20 were Gone with the Wind, Waterloo Bridge and A Streetcar named Desire – and, of course, Leigh won the Oscar For Best Actress in a Leading Role for her memorable portrayals  of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in Streetcar.

6  Mohandus Gandhi led a march of Indian miners in South Africa and was arrested. Gandhi became legendary as an Indian activist who employed a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience. He led India to independence from British rule and inspired a worldwide civil rights movement before he was assassinated on January 30, 1948 (see Figure 7).

 

 

 

15  Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa captures Ciudad Juarez. The capture of Jaurez in 1913 is typical of the events that made Villa legendary in his lifetime (see Figure 8). Jaurez was well defended and could not be attacked outright – out of fear that flying bullets would hit U.S. citizens in El Paso. So Villa instructed his men to capture a federal supply train on its way into the city.

He then forced the train officials to telegraph the city and report everything was fine and the train would be pulling into the station early in the morning. Villa’s troops removed all the supplies from the train and got inside – over 2,000 men in Pancho Villa’s version of the Trojan Horse. The city was captured with hardly a shot fired.

 

 

 

 

17  After 10 years of construction, the [Canadian] National Transcontinental Railway was completed when the last spike was driven just to the west of Cochrane, Ontario. It ran between Moncton, New Brunswick and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Initially built as a private enterprise, in 1923 it was taken over by the Canadian National Railway.

18  Pioneer American aviator and barnstormer Lincoln Beachey performed a “loop the loop” for the first time. Beachy became a huge celebrity and known as “The World’s Greatest Aviator.” Some reports claim that as many as 17 million people attended his exhibitions in a single year.

His exploits are numerous. In 1911 he became the first person to fly over Niagara Falls before 150,000 spectators. After his performance he dove down into the mist of the falls coming within 20 feet of the surface of the Niagara River – then he flew under the Honeymoon Bridge and down the Niagara Gorge.

Also in 1911, he raced a train as part of the Chicago International Aviation Meet – and touched his wheels on the train as it passed underneath. After Nestrov and Pegoud became so famous for flying loops (see Part Two), Beachey wanted to do it. Never one to be outdone, Beachy got to where he could complete as many as 80 loops in a row (see Figure 9).

 

 

 

 

21  Pancho Villa’s army gathered 35 miles south of Jaurez. Two days later, on November 23, Villa attacked the federal army under the command of Jose Inez Salazar in The Battle of Tierra Blanca. The two armies were fairly evenly matched (5,500 under Villa vs 7,000 under Salazar) and little progress was made by either side the first day.

On the second day (some accounts say the third), Villa rammed a steam locomotive filled with dynamite and percussion caps into the federal position and the huge explosion caused Salazar’s troops to flee in retreat.

 

 

Licenses Issued in November

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December

1  Gulf Oil opens the first drive-in gas station opens in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania at the intersection of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street (see Figure 10). The station offered free water, air and road maps. By 1920, there were15,000 gas stations in the U.S. and by 1929 there were over 200,000 – more than there are today.

 

 

 

 

1  Actress, singer and Broadway star Mary Martin was born in Weatherford, Texas. One of the most memorable theater actresses of all time, Mary Martin originated many classic roles, Including the title role in Peter Pan, nurse Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music (winning the Tony Award for each role).

Martin was also active in film, radio and television. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1973 and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one for Radio). She is also the mother of actor Larry Hagman.

8  Construction begins on the Palace of Fine Arts for the Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Fransisco. Ostensibly, the purpose of the exposition was to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. However, locals also used it as an opportunity to showcase San Fransisco’s remarkable recovery from the devastating earthquake and fire in 1906. For more information, see California Hunting & Fishing Licenses – Part Four.

10  The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was officially opened on American-controlled land in southeastern Cuba. The U.S. had previously established a smaller naval base there after the Battle of Guantanamo Bay that occurred during the Spanish-American War. In 1903, The U.S. and Cuba signed a lease agreement for the base as “it was needed to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba.” Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, only one rent check has been cashed by the Cuban government and apparently that was due to some sort of confusion.

21  The first crossword puzzle appeared in a (Sunday) newspaper, the New York World. It was created by Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England. Crossword puzzles originated in England during the 19th century. They were small and uncomplicated, most often included in books intended for children. After Wynne published his puzzle, other newspapers picked up on the idea and by 1930 they had evolved into the format we see today (with dark internal squares) and were featured in nearly every American newspaper.

23  President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, creating a central banking system in the U.S. known as the Federal Reserve System (often referred to as the Fed). The initial purpose of the system was to provide American citizens with a higher level of confidence and security during times of financial stress (such as recessions and depressions) and alleviate the tendency toward panic-induced crises.

The main impetus was the Panic of 1907, sometimes referred to as the Knickerbocker crisis. Starting in mid October of that year, the New York Stock Exchange fell nearly 50% from its mark the previous year. This all happened over three weeks, fueled by panic resulting from a failed attempt to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company and the subsequent failure of the behemoth Knickerbocker Trust Company.

 

 

License Issued in December

 

 

 

Summary

As we have just seen, the licenses that were issued in 1913 have a different look and feel about them as compared to those that we find with fish and game stamps affixed. In general, production values were higher: they were often larger in size (sometimes much larger), may have included graphics or the year date in large numerals across the face and frequently were printed on cloth or heavy card stock. Yes, compared to licenses issued a couple of decades later – they look old.

Prior to reading through this series of posts, perhaps we all had a sense of what 1913 was like. Some of us probably more than others. A lot of people are drawn to collecting “old things” because they have an interest in history and the objects or artifacts we collect often represent a bygone era or even capture a specific snapshot in time.

So for those who are history buffs, perhaps you were already aware of much of the information provided in these three posts. For others, hopefully they help to give you a better frame of reference for the time period when these licenses were issued. Obviously, 1913 was over a hundred years ago – 106 to be exact. However, without context, 1913 can easily seem like an abstract date.

Now we know that a lot of famous people were born in 1913 – people that affected all aspects of our culture and helped shape the world as we know it. People like Loretta Young, Richard Nixon, Rosa Parks, Jimmy Hoffa, Muddy Waters, Vince Lombardi, Mickey Cohen, Bear Bryant and Vivian Leigh.

1913 was also a year of firsts – the first year American citizens had to pay a federal income tax, the first year we directly elected state senators, the first year John Maynard Keyes published a book on economics, the first time Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor was performed, the first time Notre Dame played Army in football and the first time we were able to do a crossword puzzle in the newspaper.

In 1913 they started to build the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Grand Central Terminal opened in NYC as did the Palace and Shubert Theatres and the Brooklyn Dodger’s Ebbets Field. The New York Yankees played their first game and the nation’s first gas station opened in Pittsburg.

The world scene was dominated by the Balkan Wars, the Mexican Revolution, women’s suffrage, nonviolent civil rights protests led by Mahatma Ghandi, exciting advances in aeronautics and the completion of the Panama Canal. Oh, and a relatively unknown artist by the name of Adolph Hitler moved to Germany.

Closer to home as far as our hobby is concerned, 1913 saw the passage of the first federal law to protect the shooting of migratory birds, the Weeks-McClain Act, and no less than five states issued their first resident hunting license – Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

 

 

 

 

I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts and looking at all the licenses. They say that 80% of our thought process is subconscious; so the next time you see a hunting or fishing license from 1913 – or thereabouts – your first reaction will probably still be: Wow, that is cool because it is so old!

That’s OK. At least now you will have a better idea of just how old it is, and maybe – just maybe – your mind (armed with your new historical frame of reference) will subsequently be able to make some meaningful connections and the piece may hold more than just a passing interest for you…

 

 

 

 

To see all of the 1913 licenses in one gallery, click here.