Chandler JD - Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice & Misdeeds in Mayor Bakers Reign (True Crime)

Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC
www.historypress.net

Copyright 2016 by JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy
All rights reserved

First published 2016
e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978.1.62585.705.7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015956821

print edition ISBN 978.1.46711.953.5

Notice : The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Stop bragging. All cities are like that.
Lincoln Steffens

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I must thank Mr. JD Chandler, writer and crime historian extraordinaire, for inviting me to be a part of this project. JDs faith in my writing skills and research abilities continue to move me to give thanks that there are writers as skilled and prolific as he is, who promote and support the work of other writers who are less known. That level of generosity is rare in the world of writing and publishing today and sorely needed. I must also thank those people who helped in my research, such as Brian Johnson and Mary Hansen of the Portland Archives and Records Center, who made those thrilling aha! moments possible when searching through countless, dusty police personnel files from seventy and eighty years ago. I would like to thank Scott Daniels of the Oregon Historical Society for his generous assistance in helping me with the selection and purchase of images for the book, which proved to be a challenging endeavor. Lastly, I must thank my husband, Don DuPay, for his unfailing support and encouragement and for his expert speculative opinions regarding police politics and police culture of long ago. I would like to thank others for their friendship and support as well, including J.B. Fisher, Phil Stanford and all the supporting staff at The History Press who make books like this possible. Where there is the time and the resources, there will always be people like JD and myself, trying to apprehend those forgotten scenarios and make them approachable for all to enjoy and learn from in the decades to come.

THERESA GRIFFIN KENNEDY

There are two questions people ask me on a regular basiswell, actually three, but I wont talk about my clothing choices right now: why do you focus on such dark subjects? Doesnt your work make you cynical? Everybody asks these things, and I have been struggling for a good answer that I can give when it comes up. I havent got it yet, but I know two things: life is dark whether I make that choice or not, and in the words of Lily Tomlin, No matter how cynical I get, I just cant keep up. I love learning about the criminal activities of our grandparents and the worst things that people can do to each other. Deep inside me is an eight-year-old boy who loves gore and scary stuff, delights in the humor of Alfred Hitchcock and cant get enough of the chills. And I like history, too. Thanks to Theresa Griffin Kennedy for encouraging me in my madness and Dawn ONeill for aiding and abetting my activities. All the usual suspects (and a few new ones): Barney Blalock, Steve Chandler, Don Dupay, Carie Eisler, J.B. Fisher, Gary Flynn, Julie Generic, Ken Goldstein, Mary Hammer, Jim Huff, Michael Munk, Shirley Obitz, Zach Ollila, Leslie Sands, Austin Schultz, Brittany Sharp, Phil Stanford, Nancy Stewart, Jake Warren, Stephen Weinstein, Fred Stewart (super sponsor) and all the patrons and first lookers at www.patreon.com/jdchandler . Support your local historian.

Thanks for reading.

JD CHANDLER

INTRODUCTION

THE LIQUOR QUESTION

[Prohibition] cant stop what its meant to stop.
We like it.
Its left a trail of graft and slime
Its filled our land with vice and crime.
It dont prohibit worth a dime,
Nevertheless, were for it.
Franklin P. Adams

The first decade of the twentieth century was an exciting time in Portland. The Progressive movement, under the leadership of William URen and others, expanded democracy through its innovative Oregon System, which included the direct election of senators, citizen initiative, referendum and recall elections, as well as open primaries. In 1912, when women finally achieved the vote in Oregon, it seemed as if anything was possible with more opportunities and a surging hope for womens concerns. In 1913, when the women working at the Oregon Packing Company cannery on Southeast Morrison Street walked out on strike, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) supported them and began a campaign to win public support for their cause and create a general strike. The IWW, members of which were known as Wobblies, was a radical labor organization that avoided politics and embraced workplace action instead. Wobblies organized the most exploited of the poor, female and child workers, transient laborers and the unemployed in order to build power. They organized across racial lines and emphasized class consciousness and direct action through work slowdowns and stoppages. Their goal was to create a general strike in which all of the citys workers would rise up to seize the means of production and end the capitalist system, which they called wage slavery, impacting the most vulnerable.

Bindle stiffs, who walked or rode the rails from job to job carrying their belongings in bindles, made up the majority of membership in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Photograph by Dorothea Lang. U.S. Library of Congress.

Wobblies used cultural resistance as the strategy of their organizing, using songs, jokes and cartoons as their main tools of persuasion. IWW songs, which were included in the Little Red Songbook that many Wobblies carried, poked fun at the bosses and religious leaders and emphasized solidarity and class consciousness. Songs like Joe Hills The Preacher and the Slave and Pat Kellys Hallelujah, Im a Bum used catchy melodies and simple lyrics to glorify the working class and illustrate the absurdity of offering an unreachable pie in the sky to hungry people. The inclusive policy and simple message of the IWW made it a very popular organization among the most downtrodden workers. The popularity of the IWW scared the employing and ruling classes; its militancy and confrontational style put the employers on the defensive. Through the nineteenth century, American employers had taken a very hard line on worker organizing, and there had been several violent episodes across the country as well as in Portland. Against heavy odds and hard opposition, the labor movement had established itself solidly in Portland by 1900, and with the revolutionary IWW at the forefront, it seemed to be on the verge of expanding its power.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Portland had a well-established ruling/employing class made up of several prominent families descended from the citys early merchants. These families built great fortunes through real estate transactions and trading in the wide variety of goods and resources that poured into Portland from the surrounding countryside. Descendants of Ladd, Corbett, Failing, Ainsworth and their numerous friends made up the ruling class, as well as the membership of the Arlington Club. For half a century, the city had been organized and run for their benefit. While being descended from one of the founding families was important for social status, power was available to anyone who could accumulate enough money while maintaining a public image of respectability and virtue. Keeping up the appearance of respectability and virtue was not easy because most of the citys fortunes were at least partially based on the sale of alcohol and other vices and extreme exploitation of the working classes. The Progressive movement had risen up to combat the corrupt city government and thoroughly compromised police and judicial systems that had grown accustomed to serving the founding families. Their successes threatened the benefit that these families received from the corrupt system, and they were ready to use all the power available to them to protect it.