Straw hat riots of New York, 1922: a teenage prank or dangerous riots?

A baseball crowd showed how popular straw boaters were in summer. 

Ripley's

Throughout history, social mores have helped dictate per­sonal styl­es. Straw hats in America appeared in the 1890s and early C20th, largely as summertime wear related to sporting events like boating (hence boater). Initially the hat was not con­sidered good form for soph­isticated, big-city-men, even at the height of summer. But that too changed. By the early C20th, straw boaters were considered acceptable day attire in American cit­ies in summer, even for professionals and businessmen, but note there was the 15th Sept rule when felt hats became mandatory.

This date seemed arbitrary; earlier it had been 1st Sept, but it event­ually shifted to mid-month. And summer doesn’t officially end until 21st Sept in the USA! Nonetheless if any man was seen wear­ing a straw hat after the cut-off date, he KNEW youths would knock the hat off and stomp on it. 

A Pittsburgh Press article (15/9/1910) noted that pol­ice had to in­tervene occasionally to “protect straw-lidded pedest­r­ians.” They ex­plained that it was socially ac­ceptable for stock­brokers to dest­roy each other’s hats because they are among friends, but not right for a stranger to do so. If the in­form­­ality should become general, there will sure to be a number of obstinate gentlemen (with English blood in their veins) who would coolly proceed to treat the fun-making as a physical assault and defend themselves in a manner which would spoil the fun for all concerned. 

This tradition became well established, and newspap­ers of the day would often warn people of the impending approach of the 15th, when men would have to switch hats. As the New York Times ?joked, any man who wore a straw hat after this date “may even be a Bolsh­evik, a com­munal enemy, a potential sub­verter of the social order.

 
Boaters were still popular in the Roaring 20s. Few cities took the change-over date more seriously than fashion-conscious New Yorkers; these street-smart men knew bet­ter than to be seen wearing a straw hat out of season. But if the straw hat story had merely been letting off adolescent steam, the tradit­ion suddenly became very dangerous.

A full-blown N.Y riot started on 13th Sept 1922, two days before the straw hat ban would take effect. The Straw Hat Riot started when the lads got a jump-start on the trad­it­ion by grabbing and stomping on the hats of fact­ory workers in Manhattan’s Mulberry Bend section. The more innocent stomping turned into a brawl when the rowdy hoodlums attacked a group of dock work­ers, and the dock workers fought back. The 1922 brawl, which  totally stop­ped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge, lasted for days!

No literate New Yorker could claim ignorance of the riots.

The New York Tribune and other papers were full of the details

I was interested to read contemporary newspaper reports, to see if they under-stated the boyish conflict that had been underway. New York Times reported that hundreds of boys terrorised straw-lidded cit­iz­ens, forcing them to run through a gauntlet. To make the job of rip­ping off hats easier, many lads were pre-armed with large sticks. Some had nails protruding on the ends, to help hook the straw hats off peop­le’s heads, often leaving victims with serious injuries and hospitalisation. Police claimed 1,000 teens were part of a roaming mob on Amst­er­dam Ave, continuing the riot the following night. But only seven men were convicted of disorderly conduct in the Men’s Night Court.

New York Tribune said: Boys who were guided by the calendar rat­her the weather, and by their own trouble-making procl­iv­ities, indulged in a straw hat-smashing orgy through­out the city. NYC police off­icers were told to be on guard for hoodlums and did so with ext­reme prej­ud­ice, but the police were often outnumbered. 12 were arrested and 7 were spanked ignomin­ious­ly by their parents, on the order of the East 104th St police. Many of those arrested and taken to court were too young to be gaoled, so most opted to be fined instead.

Even if 17 year old boys were illiterate immature morons, did they not know about the riots and bombs that were ruining Americans’ lives in 1920 and 1921? Foreign anarchists were thought to be re­sponsible for bombings and mass deaths in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago etc. The police could not have known yet about the 1927 bombing massacre in Bath Mi, of course, but the atmosphere of fear was well and truly in place.

Sept 1922 saw the worst part of the straw hat riots, although no one died in the riot that year. Even in 1923 & 24, the police were slow to respond to the riots, but several off-duty police off­icers found themselves caught up in the brawl. In any case, more workers were hosp­it­alised from the beatings they received and many arrests were made. And note that in 1924, a man did indeed die during the riots.

In 1925 the U.S President Coolidge was seen wearing a straw hat on 18th Sept, a “shocking” move which received front page cover­age from the Times: Discard Date for Straw Hats Ig­nored by Pres Calvin Coolidge. Note the riots were a boon for hat shops, which stayed open late to provide soft head-wear for those who feared being attacked. In any case, after the U.S President rejected the ritual, straw hat-smashing did event­ually die out. 

Come Sept each year, ads for the new autumn hats started appearing

Credit: Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog

Was anything learned from this bit of post-WW1 history?