Few images better typify the Midwestern town than the factory with its billowing smoke stacks and the businessman boosting his home town. Ironton, Ohio, was no exception. Founded in 1849, Ironton's location on the Ohio River and in the mineral rich Hanging Rock Iron Region of northern Kentucky and southern Ohio allowed the city to prosper throughout the nineteenth century. Like civic boosters throughout the nation, Ironton's leading citizens believed that their city was destined to become a major metropolis-- the next Pittsburg or Cinncinati. However, by the early twentieth century, their city faced economic stagnation. many problems confronted the civic leaders in their attempts to revitalize the city. The iron barons of them Hanging Rock region had depleted the iron ore deposits that the city was named for and major railroads failed to connect Ironton to the rest of the state as the Ohio River declined in relative importance as an economic transportation route. Civic leaders, such as members of the Chamber of Commerce, dealt with the depletion of local resources by emphasizing the proximity fo the "inexhaustable coal fields of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia". By the 1920's the population of Ironton had reached approxiamately 14,000, and there it would remain.
Despite the ecomnomic and demographic stagnation, not all was going poorly for Irontonians. Between 1919 and 1931 the Ironton Tanks dominated semi-professional football in southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The team was not the creation of local boosters; returning World War I veterans banned together because they wanted to play ball. During the "goldenage of sport," the Tanks compiled a record of 85 wins and 19 losses. The Tank, a powerful new industrial weapon intoduced in the Great War, seemed and appropriate rallying symbol for the small industrial town that had seen better times.
Would Ironton remain a small rowdy river town or would it become a reformed, prosperous city? Ironton's local elites and boosters favored the latter and used all three Ironton newspapers to promote the Tanks as a "city institution," a business, and a champion, against regional rivals. The Tanks' players, for the boosters, symbolized the morality and hard-working, manly character the people of ironton needed to fuel the city's growth. Local boosters hoped that a successful professional football team would aid in the transition of Ironton into a modern urban setting with the poopulation and the capital to support professional spectator events.
The other view as to the role of the Tanks in the community, taken by the lower-level white collar and blue collar workers who comprised the early Tanks teams, held that the team should represent the population of the city and not the economic potential of the city. The Tanks, for them, was personal institution. During the course of the team's history, local businessmen seized control of the club and transformed it from an informal group of men to a business; the businessmen who took control of the team justified their actions with a rhetoric of heroism ans civic virtue. Characteristics in the citizenery that could, they hoped, ensure the return of prosperity.
With Ironton's economic future in doublt, it was no wonder the town supported the Tanks; the Team won and it won with local talent. Marc Matlby, in study of the early years of professional football, argued that local teams protected the community's honor and prestige. Communities formed strong attachments to their football teams for the sake of honor, and the local press often identified closely with the team. Furthermore, the task of Ironton's boosters was to promote the idea of Ironton to both outsiders and, more importantly, to locals who might be in need of convincing that Ironton was indeed a good place for them to live.
During the 1920's the Ironton club consisted of local men who competed against similar teams from towns in the tri- state area of Ohio, West Virgina, and Kentucky. The parachial nature of the team can be seen in the lack of ex- college players in its first few years. An examination of the Tanks' roster shows that most of the men who tried out for the 1921 team were locals with lower level white collar or blue collar jobs. In the fall of 1921, when the team held try-outs, The Morning Irontonian encouraged as many local men as possible to fight for a position on the squad. The newspapers provided the club with plenty of optimistic support when, in mid-September, the Tanks held a meeting at the Elks Club at which "football was in the air and the fine bunch of men present were confident of getting across a winning tradition of the Iron City." The ambition for a winning tradition propelled the Tanks to new heights and contained the seeds for the team's demise.
In Ironton, sports writers encourage Irontonians to support the Tanks by making the team's season a soap-opera- like drama. Rhetorical conflict became an essential part of promoting the Tanks and civic unity. The local sportswriters developed a formula in which the Tank's oppostion always had excellent credentials. In the unfolding drama of the season, the chief villians were the college players whom the opposing towns recruited expecially to beat the Iron city, at least that was the explanation provided by the Ironton newspapers.
In a twist on the more common concern that professional athletics would corrupt collegiate athletics, the primary concern for Ironton sportswriters was the potential corruption of the game by the rival towns bringing in collegeiate players. When the Tanks played the Athens, Ohio team in 1922, the Ironton writers reported that the Athens professional team recruited ex-college stars from Ohio University, also located in Athens. When the Tanks defeated the Athens Eleven, The Morning Irontonian praised the Athens club for its sportsmanship. However, the coverage was not all praise for the defeated team. "They came, they saw, and they got defeated," the sportswriter wrote. "This was the story that the Athens boys carried back to the bughouse town. Of course" he continued "They didn't have any intentions of defeating the Tanks when they left the trollyless town." The paper used the Tanks' victory as an opportunity to brag of Ironton's sophistication compared to Athens. However, the reference to the bughouse town points out the real differencces between Athens, the home of both a univeristy and a state mental asylum, and Ironton, a town that lacked state institutions.
The widespread popularity of college football added credence, if not always validity, to the claims of the Ironton writers. Lancaster, another small town in Ohio, also relied on college players to compete with the Tanks. In addition to local talent, or so writers for the Ironton newspapers claimed, players for Ohio University, Akron Univeristy, Washington and Jefferson College, Cornell University, Washington State University, the Naval Academy, and Miami University made the Lancaster Eleven formidable.
When the local newspapers decried the presence of former college players on opposing squads, they expressed a concern about the increasing importance of education and specialized training necessary for business and professional opportunities, an especially important point as Ironton's major business, in particular the iron furnances, became less technologically competitive. The newspapers' expression of concern with college players on other teams also became disingenuous, considering that some local boys were being given the oppurtunity to play football for nearby schools like Marshall College and Ohio University, so that by 1924 all but three members of the Tanks had experience palying college ball, if not a college diploma.
As a counterpoint to complaints of collegiate players, the Ironton newspaper writers also depicted other towns as smaller, hick communities although the towns were of comparable size. During October 1922, the Tanks played the Jackson, Ohio, Bearcats, which The Morning Irontonian hailed as the best team that "little town" had produced in years. The writer for the Ironton newspaper expected almost everybody from Jackson to be at the game, including the sheriff, the bootleggers, and the Jackson "sweeties to let out a yell for their sheik who is getting all mussed on the gridiron of honor." Within the public culture, the writer elevated the players to warriors who competed for the community's honor, while demoting women to status of "fanettes," whose affection was a prize to be won with physical courage. According to the Ironton "dope" even the little town of Jackson had several college all-stars and professional players on their team, which was still not able to defeat the Tanks.
Eventually, the Tanks adopted college style tactics to compete with other teams. Much of the early success of the Tanks can be attributed to Carlton "Shorty" Davies, who joined the tanks in 1919 and helped the club make the transition to big time football. For the Ironton sportswriters and boosters, Davies became the archetypical Tankman and Irontonian. Davies, an Irontonian by birth, played football for both Ohio State University and West Virginia University. Davies traveled from Ohio State, and later West Virginia University to play in crucial games for the Tanks. Following his college career, Davies became the captain of the Tanks and coach for both the Tanks and the Ironton High School team. Under Davies, the Tanks were a disciplined team that relied on hard work, conditioning, and college tactics to win, many of the same qualities that Irontonians needed to make a success of the town, at least according to the team's boosters.
One of the highlights of Davies' career as a Tankman came during the 1923 season in the club's second game against the community's archrival, Portsmouth. At least on the surface, Ironton offered essentially the same opportunities for busines development and growth as Portsmouth, its nearby rival, but Ironton was the slowest growing of the communities in the tri-state area of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia from 1900 to 1920.
Again, the Ironton writers feared the Portsmouth would bring in "ringers." Portsmouth coach Sam Ackroy and his team conducted some warm-up drills before the game, as, according to the Ironton writer, "Portsmouth sportsmen with their long green in the hands waltzed up and down the Ironton side of the field, hungry for bets." The writer reported that the Ironton fans did not take up the sportsmen's offers. At game time a large moving van appeared and the Columbus West Athletic Club emerged, "cleverly and cunningly disguised" as the Portsmouth representatives. The Columbus team was to receive $650 if it won and $350 if they lost. Adding to the drama, Davies, the Tanks star, appeared only minutes before game time. He led the Tanks to a decisive victory over the Columbus team.
Earle W. Norris, an Ironton sportswriter, lawyer, and local politician, took vindictive pleasure in the Portsmouth/Columbus defeat. His account demonstrated the public culture local elites create when he transformed the game into a battle between Ironton and "The World." Portsmouth, Columbus, Huntington, Wheelersburg, New Boston, and "Mud Sock" went "wild" when the Columbus team scored, according to Norris. He contrasted the pure Ironton fans, who refused to gamble, with the Portsmouth fans who wagered and cursed in a manner not fitting for the Sabbath. He likened the actual Portsmouth team, who sat watching the game, to a grammar school team watching college football. Football was a man's game, and the Portsmouth team members were still boys not suited to play Ironton's champions. The virtue and morality of Ironton, symbolized by the Tanks, trumphed over the greed of the booming, more prosperous, Portsmouth and the rest of the tri-state region.
Ironton's boosters, much like the men and women in the emerging business of the advertising, were profits of modernity, but they were also, and perhaps more importantly, apostles of a middle-class community. A 1923 newspaper writer maintained that:
The cleanness, squareness and manly play of the Tanks was never criticized. Every team that has visited the city in the past few years has commented upon the wonderful team that Ironton has and the clean football they played and how well they were treated. A team has yet failed to leave the city saying they did not get a square deal. This itself speaks enough for the city that the Tanks should be backed to the best of financial ability.
This quote offers a fine example of the image that the boosters wanted for the city. They stressed fairness, honor, and manly behavior as key elements to Ironton's future success. Irontonians thought that success would come not only through luck and hard work (although these were important), but also through the collective virtue of the community.
However, the fans did see the direct connection between virtue and financial gain that the local elites did. Popularity in the town and success on the playing field did not necessarily lead to a healthy profit for the team, demonstrating that in some ways the team remained a personal institution created for camaraderie and not for profit. In 1923, the Morning Irontonian warned that without financial backing the Tanks could not compete and reminded its readers:
Remember big football teams are composed of former college stars, men who have won fame on the gridiron, who have been named [to] All-American, all-conference, and all-state elevens. They do not play for nothing. The Tanks have men of the same caliber and class. They have local players who, had they been given the chance on a college team, would no doubt have won great fame and made great names for themselves in rah, rah, gridiron circles.
The self-assured attitude of the booster concerning the local talent belies the fact that Ironton lacked a university or a college, and few of its players had diplomas; it was important that the Tanks beat those who had a chance to win fame and fortune in the "rah, rah, gridiron circles." Indeed, the larger public gridiron circles represented the larger public cultures, such as those of the Midwest and the Tri-State, that was having an effect on the local culture while Irontonians were having less success in the influencing the larger circles. This fear of a lack of opportunity might well have reflected the worries of Ironton's boosters rather than the desires of the masses.
While the success of the Tanks mught not have created opportunities for Ironton's boosters or for the community at large, new opportunities did arise for some of the players. In September 1923, The Morning Irontonian reported that teams from Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Huntington had approached some of the Tanks' players with tempting offers, opportunities for individual players but a loss for the community. The question of the Tanks' survival was purely financial and the answer, according to the boosters, was financial support form the community.
Local businessmen formed a committee to raise funds for uniforms, equipment, and other necesasties and to take advantage of the Tanks' advertising potential. Appropriately, Brumberg's Clothing, of downtown Ironton advertised Bradley Knir Wear on the sports page which had demonstrated "on the mudde practice field and in the scuffle of inter-collegiate games" its "wear-resistance and color fastness." A.B. Brumberg,who owned the clothing store, was one of the businessmen that raised money for the Tanks and a long standing leader of Ironton's business community. He utilized the popularity of the game (and implicity the team) to sell his clothes. Like nineteenth century baseball players in small Ohio towns, Irontonians expected Tanks' players to behave in a manner that would be a credit to the community they represented and also for the businessmen who helped pay the bills.
Unlike the earlier years when the Ironton Tanks battled the other tri-state towns, the Ironton boosters expected fans from Jackson, Wellston, Portsmouth, Chillicothe, Huntington, Ashland, Gallipolis, Pomeroy and other points to cheer for the Tanks. Ironton was attempting to become the football capital of the region. The team required more talented players who were good for the community, something the local players could not provide.
While the Tanks dominated local rivals on the field, community boosters writing for The Morning Irontonian found it necessary to remind the readers of their duty as Ironton citizens. These duties went beyond attending games in the park and cheering on the local players. The booster writing in the newspaper billed the Tanks' game with the Akron Silents as the semi-professional championship of Ohio. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company sponsored the team, and all the players were deaf and mute and worked for the company. the Tanks-Silents game was more expensive to arrange because of the higher caliber of competition and the high stakes involved and so the price fo a ticket increased. The Morning Irontonian justified this action by reminding its readers that:
After all, the Tanks are not Manager Lambert's team, but belong to the city of Ironton and it is up to the fans to get the crowds out. A very heavy guarantee is promised Akron, and a large attendance is necessary to keep the Tanks above board on their receipts.
Though The Morning Irontonian proclaimed the contest to be a championship game, the Akron team did not equal its billing. There was no official championship for the Tanks claim. Furthermore, the Silents was a good team, but it was not in the top-rung of semi-professional football; the team's best season was in 1920 when it went undefeated.
The Tanks found it difficult to take in more money even after beating the Akron Silents and claiming the "championship" before a dissappointing crowd of 1,800. Given the small size of the paying crowd, the Silents' championship credentials must not have impressed Irontonians enough to pay the extra money, although, The Morning Irontonian reported that 2,000 non-paying fans "viewed the contest from the tree tops, step-ladders, etc." The Ironton - Akron game was a conflict with the public culture. The boosters and local elites had a much readier access to the media and consciously desired to shape the behavior of the people of Ironton. However, many Irontonians simply chose not to pay to see a game held at a city park which functioned as a free space where other community events occured.
While the sportswriter expressed disappointment with Irontonians and the Silents-Tanks game, local businessmen showed an increased interest in the team, an increased interest that was not reciprocated by the players. Late in the 1924 season, an important issue was the replacement of injured players. Moses Solomon, a professional football player from Columbus, contacted Manager Lambert and informed him that he would play the three remaining games with the Tanks for $300. Three local businessmen started raising funds to accept Solomon's offer. When Lambert informed the team members that Solomon was being recruited he learned "that no little dissention had arisen and was informed the sentiment of the team was strongly against securing the services of Solomon." This, apparantely, was an understatement.
The recruiting of Solomon, sparked a heated debate in the Ironton newspapers. A letter form an anonymous Tanks' player, in favor of not hiring Solomon argued:
First, The judgement of Coach Davies as to whether the team was in dire need of extra men should be accepted. Second: The future Tank team [would] be injured if Solomon was paid as such a sum as $100 per game. The Tanks are not organized along such lines and it would conflict with the spirit of the squad. Third: It has been intimated that the Tanks are selfish and are out for money, refusing to contribute a share to the fund to secure Solomon. But Tanks received $290 for an entire season of strenous playing; certain persons are willing to pay a man $300 or more for three games. Fourth: Would it not be better for the Ironton Tanks to win then to have a man from Columbus win for them. Fifth: If the fans are eager to pay Solomon $100 per game, why should not that amount be paid Davies, Snowdy, Poole, Brooks, Pope, and others who are in the game every to win. Sixth: We are going to defeat Cincinnati and show the fans that the team is not in such a crippled condition as been reported.
However, there were two sides to the argument about the nature of the team (and the community). Another anonymous letter written under the pseudonym "100 Per Cent Booster," presented the opposing opinion. Oddly, Booster's letter appears to be a direct response to the player's letter, but The Daily Register printed it the day before the player's letter appeared in the The Morning Irontonian. Booster mocked the player for believing that the Tanks were invincible and for saying:
Shorty Davies[is] the greatest all-around football player and leader in professional ranks today, and he is not sure that Charlton [Davies] is not the best player in [the] country including colleges. He knows that Concrete Poole is a start, that Harry Pope and Bill Brooks, Wardaman and Abel and all the other fine fellows are absolutely in a class by themselves.
After making light of the player's arguments, he acknowledged the high quality of the current Tanks team, but he insisted that the community needed an insurance policy to guarantee the continuation of the team. He suggested that this could be ensured by hiring out-of-town players. Booster's letter was laden with business terms; he equated the common good of the fans with the victories, thus translating the Tanks' popularity into a profit for the team and good advertising for the community, or at least the community defined as the business class of Ironton.
As for the spirit of the team, Booster conceded that "from a team standpoint there is merit in this contention, but from the standpoint of the city and of the fans who follow the team wherever it goes, there is another viewpoint." He further argued that the Tanks' popularity was a direct result of the team's victories and said that if the fans wished to hire out-of-town players to ensure future victories, then the team should accept this practice. Hiring new players would not mean less money for the currnt players or the loss of their status on the team, he said. Booster argued that the Solomon's $100 a game was not much more than the Tanks' regular pay because the Columbus player must also pay the cost of commuting. Booster concluded that the Tanks' players had no reason to complain.
Booster's arguments foreshadowed the remaining history of the Tanks and highlights the conflict within the public culture. He was probably one of the local businessmen who started to raise funds to pay Solomon but found themselves frustrated by the players. While the player's letter showed him to be an articulate person, it also demonstarted that his access to the media was limited to letters to the editors while the local boosters had ready and frequent access to the newspapers. It appears that Booster had prior knowledge that the player's letter would be printed and so was able to prepare a response in advance to be published in the rival paper. Furthermore, the use of psuedomens suggests that Ironton was a small enough community that the men would not wish to publicly argue over the team's future; perhaps the player feared he would be removed from the team or fired or perhaps Booster feared alienating potential voters or customers.
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