The Great War: The Film & More

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Elizabeth Raymond
Historian

Q: Was Tasker Oddie, who was running for re-election, Wingfield's man?

ER: In later years, Tasker Oddie and George Windfield definitely were political allies. So when Tasker Oddie was in the Senate in the 20s into the early 30s, they were clearly political confidants. In 1914 though they have a different relationship. It's a more distant, more formal relationship. And George Wingfield is not entirely certain about his own political role as early as 1914. He slowly moving in to fill the shoes that Nixon's death left. He's not an opponent of Oddie's but he's not a political ally in the same way either.

Q: So was Wingfield a player in 1914?

ER: In 1914, George Wingfield was just emerging as a player in Nevada politics. He had on the death of his partner, George Nixon, in 1912 been appointed to the US Senate seat. He declined the appointment because he felt as he said at the time at least that he could do more for the state of Nevada by staying in the state. He saw himself very clearly as the economic power in Nevada. I think it was less clear to him how intertwined the political and economic power really were in 1914. By 1915, 16, 17, he's clearly getting the hang of it and he's clearly emerging as a political force.

Q: What was Wingfield hoping to gain from his Fallon investments?

ER: George Wingfield always saw himself -- others never saw him this way -- but he saw himself as a benevolent capitalist. He thought by going to Fallon he would invest in something that he knew very well. After all he came from a ranch background. He knew ranching property. He knew horses, he knew agriculture He thought he would invest in something he knew well and brings a better line of stock to the state. He invested heavily in good cattle to sell to farmers in Fallon. He invested in a beet sugar outfit a little bit later to try and create a market for sugar beets in Fallon. He started a dairy, a creamery, to purchase the milk that was produced. And he really had a sense of himself as fostering an industry out of Fallon that would be a counterweight to the vagaries of, which inevitably went down as often as they went up.

Q: It's Interesting how he sees himself because others saw him as a corporate octopus.

ER: He clearly is a capitalist and he's a capitalist on the 1920s model of corporate capitalism. He has a huge organization. He has lots of people who work for him. They work for him throughout the state, banks all over the state. He controls a lot by virtue of investing his money in the state and he is aware of that. He does that on purpose. And in fact it's something he's really proud about. He tells people, I am the only one to remain in the state with my money. Most of the money from the mines traditionally in Nevada had gone somewhere else. People who had been fortunate enough to make it had taken it with them. He made a lot and he stayed in Nevada with it. And he was proud of that. 00;06;20;20 He did it because he thought he had something to contribute to the state. And it's clear that he was not the model of beneficent capitalism that anyone in Nevada would have recognized. But to himself it was a calling almost. His investments in Fallon were not primarily about making money. They were about contributing to the state.

Q: His Fallon investments were kind of a wash for him.

ER: He certainly didn't make money there. And it's not that he ever intended to make major money there. But he'd hoped to encourage, in the same way today that we encourage diversification in Nevada. He'd hoped in his time to encourage alternative industries to mining, which pretty much all there was in the state at the time.

Q: Is it accurate to say that Nevada was doing well economically in 1914-1917?

ER: It depends upon whom you talk to. Wingfield, for instance, experienced the first part of the teens as a bit of a fall off from the glory days in Goldfield when the Goldfield Consolidated had been making major money. They paid their biggest dividend, I think in 1912. I'm not absolutely sure about that. But it's clear for instance that the deposits at Goldfield were no longer going to sustain much of an industry. It was a low-grade mine. It was still operating, still had ore, but it was a low-grade mine. There were no other big prospects in the early 19 teens. There were places that were mining, weren't finding anything spectacular. There was a sense of living on borrowed time almost, economically. Ely was definitely booming. The copper industry in Ely and Eastern Nevada was definitely booming. So that's not to be confused with the silver and gold mining. And the war of course, as soon as the war arrived in Europe, mining fortunes picked up. But in the very early years, there definitely was a sense, Wingfield for instance, had relocated from Goldfield. He'd moved out and moved up to Reno because it was clear that the fortunes of Goldfield were no longer where the state was going. So there was a sense of needing to find the next thing. I think that's part of the agricultural investment in Fallon for Wingfield. It's part of trying to find the next thing.

Q: Were Boyle and Wingfield allies?

ER: Boyle and Wingfield were not allies in any sense. They were not acquainted. Anybody who was anybody in Nevada was acquainted. Not in anyway in collusion with each other I think in terms of working in the long-term the state they actually had pretty similar agendas. Each of them felt the need to do so and sought to do so. To do something, what we now would call economic diversification.

Q: How did the war affect Wingfield?

ER: During WWI, Wingfield profited from it. His mines in Tonopah in particular were operating at full strength again. Metal prices went up. He made money definitely during the war. He too like Boyle recognized that with the end of the war. That it was an artificial boom. That with the end of the war the prices would decline again. He did everything he could to maximize his profits during the war. And organized and sold shares in his Tonopah mine, clearly cognizant of the fact that after the war they wouldn't be worth as much.

Q: That was the businessman. How about the man himself?

ER: Wingfield was an extremely reserved individual privately. Again I think conscious of his checkered past, a little uncertain of his own social skill he wasn't a man who mixed with the people. He was never a man of the people. Although often one on one with individuals he was enormously generous. He helped a lot of broken down prospectors, people who needed loans. He gave them money under the guise of a loan never, knowing that it would never be rapid. He contributed widely charitable causes, the Red Cross and so forth. And he did contribute during the war such fundraising efforts. But he was not a man given to patriotic demonstrations. He was however virulently anti-radical, which is how he would have described the IWW and the anarcho-syndicalist. So he was very opposed to any sort of radical labor movement. And there was such a movement in Tonopah, of course, during the war.

Q: So was he anti union or just anti radical union?

ER: Wingfield was scared by the Goldfield strike of 1907. And the movement of the IWW into that strike made it much more difficult to resolve the issues, at the time. And after that, ever after that he was extremely suspicious of any organized labor movement. At the time of the Goldfield strike he was actually inclined to negotiate in good faith with the Western Federation of Miners but was entirely disgusted by the program of the IWW. After that strike he tended to suspect any kind of labor organization as being some kind of front for the IWW. Increasingly as time went on he suspicious of all union movements although initially he was just anti-radical labor.

Q: Would he have been heavy handed in resolving the Tonopah Strike?

ER: I suspect that by the time of the Tonopah strike, it would have very much been his style to crush it early rather than to let any radical opposition force grow to the point that it could be strong enough to actually challenge you. I think he would have wanted to crush it early. He for instance traditionally employed spies in all of his mining operations. He employed undercover agents who were actually reporting to him but their principal duty was to report on the presence of any kind of radical activity, any kind of union organization that might be going on, any new man who came along who might be a bit suspicious. All of that was reported back to the Wingfield organization so that they could check on it. He circulated among his mine managers lists of men who were known to be IWW associates who should not be employed, and if they happen to be on the payroll they should be fired.

Q: Did Wingfield tie up the loose ends of the Tonopah strike?

ER: I think it's safe to say, yes. That the terms of negotiation that Boyle concluded successfully, and everybody went home and said hooray we resolved it didn't end the problem. Because as I understand it, the IWW workers -- who were not the full panoply of workers - but those who affiliated with the IWW refused to honor the terms that had been negotiated and accepted. And when they continued to strike, then other miners, other union members wouldn't cross the picket line. So the strike effectively went on even though all of the principal players had agreed to terms to end it.

Q: So by the end of 1919, we have two opposing visions for Nevada's future. Boyle see one based upon tourism versus Wingfield's based on gambling.

ER: It's actually a mistake to say toward divorce. Wingfield was extremely interested in gambling, of a sort, of a particular sort. He was interested in the pari-mutuel-betting bill in 1915. And like Boyle he was equally oriented by 1919 towards tourism, road building. He had by then purchased one substantial Reno hotel. In the 1920s he'd build what would become the landmark luxury hotel of Reno, the Riverside. And from the time he started investing in hotels he began to have an interest in events that would bring people to Nevada and to Reno in particular. He promoted road building and he promoted anything he thought would attract people. And his interest in the pari-mutuel betting Bill of 1915 was really at least as much that it would bring what Wingfield considered a higher class person, a person with money, to Reno for the horse meets, for the race meets, than would be the case without the gambling bill. So he was very interest in the gambling because it was an instrument of tourism. In addition to being a stimulus for horse breeding. He was a passionate horse breeder throughout his life. He had a major thoroughbred stock farm.

Q: Wingfield had his fingers in a lot of pies. He's seen as an octopus of sorts.

ER: The octopus image is exactly right. He had his fingers in everything. He owned hotels. He owned a share of a business that bid road contracts and did paving. He owned numerous mines, banks all over the state. Through the banks, he had interests in ranches and hotels in other areas. So enormously broad economic interests. And eventually he came to exercise the political power to protect those interests as well. But he really didn't need the illicit interests. And his position on gambling and later on prohibition was always pretty consistent, that they ought to be legal because people did it anyway. And to have people flaunting the laws by disobeying them and not have any consequence was worse than just not having the law. If people were going to break it anyway, why have it.

And I actually think that that whole suffrage issue is where he becomes as it were he gains political maturity. Because he does throw a little tantrum when suffrage is proposed and says, if suffrage passes in this state I'm taking all my money and leaving. Something he'd been previously proud of not doing. So he was definitely making a threat. He was blackmailing the state. And it didn't work and he didn't leave. And I think from then on, he learned to play in the game he was in. How to play by the political rules of the place in which he was living, how to get what he wanted to have happen without having to have the sort of public embarrassment of threatening to leave. So I think he became much more astute after the suffrage campaign than he was before. That's where the 1915 act comes in, when he decided that having established for himself a thurobred racing stable, that he wanted to have race meets. He wanted to have people bring their horses and race against his. And he wanted them to be able to wager on each other horses. He went about going to the legislature to get what he wanted. He was actually against the liberalized divorce bill that was in the 1915 legislature. And he compromised and traded votes on behalf of divorce in order to get the pari-mutuel-betting bill, the horseracing bill that he wanted.

Q: How did George view Anne Martin?

ER: He certainly was an opponent. George Wingfield never have much use for women in positions of public authority. He mistrusted the morality that was commonly associated with women, and which Anne Martin certain personifies. So he wouldn't have been a supporter under any circumstances. I actually don't think he had to do much mobilizing. I don't think there was enough of a chance in predominantly male world and largely immigrant world of Nevada that Anne Martin really would have represented a threat. So I couldn't say he mobilized against her, but he clearly opposed her and that would have been enough for some people.

Q: So he opposed women's suffrage?

ER: My suspicion is that the suffrage campaign would have attracted a lot of support from people who thought that women would have a good influence, an uplifting, a morally beneficent influence on Nevada, which heaven knows could have used it. So there was a lot of sympathy for a suffrage campaign and in particular about the economic and political issues in which women needed to protect themselves, abusive husbands, and alcoholism and so forth. There would have been considerable sympathy for that, that would not have accrued to an individual woman running for public office. And Anne Martin was an individual woman running for public office on a very public platform of considerable change in the state. A lot of people in Nevada didn't want to see considerable change in the state, of whom George Wingfield was certainly one.

So that women who campaigned for suffrage were widely thought to be the engine for a number of moral reforms, that they'd long been campaigning for. Prohibition is one of them but not the only one. But prohibition would have been a threat to George Wingfield, himself a heavy drinker throughout his life. A man who had once owned a saloon man. A man who all of whose socializing went on around drinking. So prohibition in particular would have been seen as a kind of insult to the way of life in Nevada. But also it's clear that women didn't approve of the racetrack and the slightly illicit activities that went on, that were involved in betting at the races. Women would no have doubt suppressed the vice activities of his friends, Graham and McKay. And they were the ones running the prostitution rings and illegal gambling and so forth. Even if Wingfield wasn't making money off of it, they were his friends and he approved of that social world. His was the social world of the saloon. And that's what women were perceived to be threatening at the time of the suffrage campaign.

It was a Homo-social world. It was a world of men who mostly came to know each other apart from families. It's not that they didn't have families, but they socialized apart from families. They socialized in rough mining camps, often in saloons. They had a kind of common rough background experience that they prized. It was their view and women inhabited a truly sphere from them. And they were all happily or less happily married, and had families. It's not that they disapproved of that, but they feared the threat to that world that the reformers such as Anne Martin represented.

Q: So how would you sum up Nevada in 1919?

ER: Anne Martin wrote an article in 1922 called Nevada, Beautiful Desert of Buried Hope. And I think she's right. That in 1922 looking back on it, something had changed. A moment had been lost. And the possibility for the vision that she was promoting of agricultural families, ranching families, or farming families, settled across the landscape, in a kind of economic and social structure that more resembled eastern states, that was over. And that was not a vision that George Wingfield necessarily opposed, but it was not one that he was as, it was not one so clearly in the forefront of his economic program as it was for her. So I actually think that Nevada, at that time, was poised to become what it has become, the tourist mecca with an economy based on legalized vices of various sorts. But no one really fully understood that the time, of course. At the time they were just living through a time of chaos and trying to find the next thing. But it was in retrospect a time of tremendous transition.

Q: On the impact of the influenza epidemic.

ER: Well, in American cultural history, generally of course, the 1920s are stereotypically the jazz age, the time of wild abandon and self indulgence after the Progressive Era of the 19-teens. So there something clearly that happens, something changes for people around the time of WWI. And partly it's the impact, the horror of the huge sacrifice and the terrible casualty rates of that war. But it's also the aftermath of the war and the fact that influenza sweeps down and it can't be controlled and it kills an inordinent number of people and kills them very quickly. No one knows how it's spread, people are fearful. And there seems to be just a terrible response as you might expect to this general loss of, a sense of a world that one knew and could function in, a world that one could controlled to some degree. Everything seemed out of control after the war.