Record
The Day Book (Chicago, Ill.)
1912-09-11
Page Page 9
The Day Book (Chicago), 11 September 1912, page 9: the Rockefeller Black Hand story 'stretched'
BLACK HAND STORY ON JAWN'S ESTATE STRETCHED (as the OCR reads it; 'Jawn' is the paper's joke spelling of John)
- Paper
- The Day Book (Chicago, Ill.)
- Date
- 1912-09-11
- Page
- Page 9
- Headline
- BLACK HAND STORY ON JAWN'S ESTATE STRETCHED (as the OCR reads it; 'Jawn' is the paper's joke spelling of John)
- Rights
- A United States newspaper published in 1930 or earlier. Public domain in the United States. The Library of Congress serves the page from Chronicling America.
Page 9 of the Day Book, Wednesday, 11 September 1912. The story is datelined Pocantico Hills, N.Y., 11 September. The paper’s correspondent writes in the first person that he expected to find armed guards and “black handers lurking behind the trees” at John D. Rockefeller’s estate, and instead walked in on a fine September day without being stopped. “As for armed guards, if there was any such, he was in hiding, and your correspondent couldn’t find him.”
The piece is satire, and it is filed as a contemporary record of press scepticism about a Black Hand scare story. It answers the wire item the Day Book itself printed on 3 September (The Day Book, 3 September 1912). The research record for this page gives the headline as “John’s“; the Library’s OCR reads “JAWN’S,” and the OCR reading is printed above until the scan can be checked.
The correspondent uses a racial term for workers on the estate in the body of the story. It is not quoted here. No scan of this page is stored: the Library of Congress image service was unavailable when the page was filed.