William Watson: Hindsight 1920 — maybe we shouldn't be so obsessed with time present

On page 24 of its issue of Friday, December 20, 1918, just above an ad for “the new Arrow form-fit collar: 25 cents each” and another for “pure silk sox” for 55 cents a pair, a two-inch news story carried the headline: “6,000,000 Died of Influenza. Regarded as the World’s Greatest Plague Since the Black Death.”

© Provided by Financial Post A page from an Ottawa Evening Citizen newspaper from 1935. How did newspapers look back on 1920, the year Spanish flu petered out in North America? Simple answer: They didn’t.

It began: “London, Dec. 19: The (London) Times’s medical correspondent says that it seems reasonable to believe that throughout the world about 6,000,000 persons perished from influenza and pneumonia during the last three months,” a killing rate five times more deadly than the war. “Never since the Black Death has such a plague swept over the world…” End of story.

Elsewhere on the page, readers could find another short piece on jobs for returned soldiers and a much longer piece on when the Post Office would be returning operation of Western Union and other telegraph companies to their owners. Also: the “Lost and Found,” with no “found” entries but 26 “lost,” including a certificate for one share of Canadian Pacific Railway stock.

The Times obviously did cover the Spanish flu. There were four other references to influenza in that issue of December 20, including two mentions in obituaries and a five-line note on page 2 about how the deposed emperor of Austria-Hungary and his four children were sick with it. The first front-page story about flu had appeared June 21. Over the years 1918, 1919 and 1920 the Times mentioned “influenza” 1,464 times, including in many obituaries. By contrast, a search of this year’s Times finds 3,312 hits for “COVID-19” — a disease that so far has killed a quarter as many people.

I started looking back at these old newspapers because I thought it would be fun to compare the Hindsight 2020 series we’ve been running over the past few days with how editorialists looked back on 1920, the year Spanish flu petered out in North America. Simple answer: They didn’t.

On December 31, 1920, the Times’ lead editorial was a glowing farewell to New York Governor Al Smith, who had been defeated in the November elections, with a lengthy review of his achievements — but no mention of influenza. The second editorial was an argument that farm conditions were not as bad as farm lobbyists made out: “Farmers are not such poor creatures as to be driven to despair by one bad year…” Then came pieces on: post-war Greece; the difficulty of making economies in Congress; an Italian-Yugoslav border dispute; General Pershing’s recent speech favouring reductions in armaments spending; and a meditation on news that the star Betelguese “would fill our entire solar system … out almost to the orbit of Mars.” The word “influenza” did not appear in the entire issue. This was not for lack of news reach: top of p. 1 was a note about how, earlier than normal, the St Lawrence had frozen over at Three Rivers.

I did that searching using my Times digital subscription, which most larger libraries also offer. The forebear of this newspaper, the Financial Post, you can get free through Google News archive search. We were a weekly then but there was a paper on December 31, 1920. Word search by issue seems unavailable but a reasonably close reading finds no mention of influenza or Spanish flu. “Unemployment in Canada less than in 1913-14” was the lead story. “Many merchants are still holding out for prices above the market,” was the Page 1 feature. Businesses’ search for above-market prices never ends, does it?

Our lead editorial was about how credit-tightening by the banks since the spring was helping cool post-war inflation. That was followed by a piece about the Ontario government’s deal with a U.S. pulp maker that had threatened, according to the Globe, not to sell in Canada. (We told the Globe to chill.) Then a lament that people not paying their property taxes was discouragingly common. And finally a denunciation of Bolshevism, which was on the move in the form of Russia’s Red Army though “…advocates of bloody revolution and destruction will no doubt have their following in every community — and there are many here in Canada — and for this reason should be vigorously suppressed.” Hear, hear!

Editorial notes held that: “Public funds should be expended with great discretion in works being pushed ahead primarily to give employment.” Today’s spending numbers are immensely larger but our sentiment is unchanged. And then a piece about how in 1918 the U.S. government taxed away fully $89 million of the $137.5 million earned by Americans with over $1 million in income, while all those with income less than $3,000 paid only a little over $60 million. Our view? “This seems to come pretty close to socialism.” The feature story on the ed page was “Free trade would undermine Canada’s industrial prosperity” — so times do change. This was a report on cross-country hearings of the federal Tariff Commission. Through the rest of the decade federal Liberal governments mainly slashed taxes, tariffs included. Yes, federal Liberal governments.

Courtesy 2020 technology, all this history is available in the comfort of home, or, this year, in home exile. I don’t know what someone in 1920 did who wanted to read newspapers from 1820. No doubt the world’s largest libraries had paper copies. Most probably didn’t.

Of course, the same digital technology that gives us access to more of the past than any previous generation has had also makes possible the fixation on our own problems that has been so evident this year. Hindsight 1920 tells me maybe we shouldn’t be quite so obsessed with time present.