By all accounts he was a very serious young man. Born in Cleveland in 1882, Charles Emil Ruthenberg was the son of German immigrants and the youngest of nine children--the first and only child in the family to be born in America. He grew up in a working class neighborhood of Germans and Bohemians on the west side, in a house on W. 85th Street which is still standing today. As a boy, Charles was a model student who aspired to become a Lutheran minister. But his studies led him to question the fairness of capitalism to the working class in America, and as a young man he became active in politics, running for Ohio Governor in 1910 as a Socialist, when he was just 28 years old.
Described by one reporter as "tall, blonde [and] good-looking," Ruthenberg ran for a number of other political offices in Ohio in the 1910s decade, including several runs at mayor of Cleveland. In the city's 1917 municipal elections, as the Socialist Party's candidate, he received more than 27,000 of the 100,000 votes cast in the five-man race.
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Ruthenberg protested against America's entry into that war, which he contended benefited the wealthy at the expense--and very lives, of the working class. He became embittered--some might instead say that he became hardened, when America nonetheless entered the War. He became even more so later by the treatment he received at the hands of police, politicians and the general public when he continued to speak out against the War. In 1917, Ruthenberg was convicted in a federal court for obstructing the draft, and spent a year in prison, where he was tortured by prison officials. He emerged a radicalized man.
Just months after his release, Ruthenberg led a peaceful march in downtown Cleveland on May 1, 1919, in celebration of the working class and the Russian Revolution. Red was the theme of the day, as red banners and red flags were carried. Some even wore red ribbons. It all turned violent when enraged war veterans, who literally saw red, attacked the marchers. Then the police joined in the melee. Dozens of people were injured, and two killed. Ruthenberg and 124 other marchers were arrested, and he was inexplicably charged with assault with intent to kill, although the charges were later dismissed.
After this event, Ruthenberg spent little additional time in Cleveland. In September 1919, in Chicago, he co-founded the American Communist Party, becoming its first Executive Secretary. Already a targeted individual, this new office insured that Ruthenberg would be constantly harassed by law enforcement officials who were fearful of the "Red Scare" to the point of panic. For the next eight years, there was never a time, according to a biographical article written in 1937 by his son Daniel, that he was not either under indictment or in jail, earning him the sobriquet of "America's Most Arrested Man."
In March 1927, at the age of just 44 years, Ruthenberg died suddenly of a ruptured appendix, while his appeal to the United States Supreme Court from his latest conviction in a Michigan court was still pending. Ruthenberg was cremated and his ashes carried overseas to Russia where he was interred in the Kremlin Wall, becoming one of only a handful of Americans to have ever been accorded this honor.
]]>It's 1840 and you're traveling from Detroit to Buffalo on business. The fastest route would be by boat, straight across Lake Erie from west to east, but it's November and this shallowest of the Great Lakes is notoriously treacherous this time of the year. So you've wisely elected to take the post road that runs through the city of Cleveland, that fast-growing little commercial center about halfway along your route. You had planned to spend the night just east of Cleveland at Dunham Tavern, on the Buffalo Road, but an early winter snowstorm has kicked up and you need to find shelter quickly. Just a mile or so west of Ohio City, the other fast-growing city on the Cuyahoga River, you spot an Inn on the Detroit Road that looks inviting. The proprietor, Samuel White, welcomes you in out of the cold into a large room with a roaring fire. His son Roderick takes care of your tired and cold horse, shivering outside in the cold.
Today, most Clevelanders could identify most of the places mentioned in this imagined 1840 trip. They would know, of course, the cities of Detroit and Buffalo, if for no other reason, because they are NFL rivals of the Browns. And they would recognize Ohio City, now a trendy neighborhood on Cleveland's near west side. And many would have even heard of Dunham Tavern, said to be the oldest standing building in Cleveland and now a museum which teaches adults and children what early nineteenth-century travel was like in the Midwest.
But few, if any, in Cleveland could tell you anything about Samuel White's Roadside Inn. It is not a landmark; it is not on the National Register of Historic Places; and, yet, just like Dunham Tavern it was an important stop for travelers in the early nineteenth century. And, more importantly, it is still standing, at 9400 Detroit Avenue, in the west side's Cudell/Edgewater neighborhood. And the number of Clevelanders that could tell you that is a very small number indeed.
White, a native of Vermont who came to Cleveland as a young boy in 1804, built his Roadside Inn on Detroit Road in about 1828, when the area was part of Brooklyn Township. The Inn operated for the next two decades until 1845 when, as a result of accumulating debt, White was forced to sell it. In 1866, the Inn, which had likely closed by this time, was purchased by Samuel Ware. A farmer who had emigrated to the Cleveland area from Philadelphia, Ware used the Inn as his personal residence, but it soon became better known as the home of his son Liberty H. Ware, a lawyer and yachtsman, who during the last three decades of the nineteenth century held a variety of public offices in the Village of West Cleveland, including two terms as its mayor and several years as its justice of the peace.
During this period, the Roadside Inn-turned-residence also served as Liberty Ware's law office and, when he became justice of the peace in 1892, he used that office as his courtroom. Liberty was by all accounts one of the most colorful figures in this era of Cleveland's history and, when he was holding court, newspaper reporters flocked to his home to hear and report on the witticisms uttered by "Squire Ware." Liberty, not to be confused with his son Liberty B., died in 1910, but the house remained in the Ware family for another 50-plus years. The house underwent a substantial renovation in the period 1913-1915, which included removal of the east wing, moving the house to a new location on the lot, and adding a layer of dark brick veneer to the exterior walls. In 1969, the house was sold to the Islamic Center of Cleveland, which uses the historic building today as a house of worship and a cultural and educational center.
]]>When people think of the auto industry, they usually think of Henry Ford and Detroit. What most people don't know is that in the 1890s Cleveland was the automobile capital of America. One reason for this was a Scottish immigrant and bicycle company owner named Alexander Winton.
The Winton Motor Carriage Company went into business on March 15, 1897. Their first automobiles were built by hand. Each vehicle had fancy painted sides, padded seats, a leather roof, and gas lamps. B.F. Goodrich made the tires for Winton. By 1897, Winton had already produced two fully operational prototype automobiles. In May of that year, the 10-horsepower model achieved the astonishing speed of 33.64 miles per hour on a test around a Cleveland horse track. However, people were still skeptical of the new invention. To prove his automobile's durability and usefulness, Alexander Winton had his car undergo an 800-mile endurance run from Cleveland to New York City.
On March 24, 1898, Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, became one of the first men to buy an American-built automobile when he bought a Winton for around $1,000. Allison had seen an advertisement for the car in Scientific American. Later that year the Winton Motor Carriage Company sold twenty-one more vehicles. One of those customers was James Ward Packard, who would later become the founder of Packard automobile company. It is believed that Packard was not satisfied with his car and complained to Winton. The story goes that Winton challenged him to do better. That same year, Leo Melanowski, Winton's Chief Engineer, invited Henry Ford to come to Cleveland for an interview at the Winton Company. Alexander Winton was not impressed with Henry and decided not to hire him. Henry went back to Detroit to continue working on his second Quadricycle. These miscues would eventually come back to haunt Winton.
More than one hundred Winton vehicles were sold in 1898, making the company the largest manufacturer of gas-powered automobiles in the United States. By 1901, widespread publicity continued to increase interest in the Wintons. That year, news that members of the wealthy Vanderbilt family had purchased Winton automobiles boosted the company's image substantially. It was around this time that Winton built a new factory complex at 10601 Berea Road, on Cleveland's far west side. Later that year, however, a Winton automobile lost a race near Detroit to one of Henry Ford's cars. Winton vowed to come back and defeat Ford. He produced the 1902 Winton Bullet, which set an unofficial land speed record of 70 mph in Cleveland that year. Despite its speed, 'The Bullet' was defeated by another Ford later in the year. The company received some positive publicity In 1903, though, when Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson made the first successful automobile drive across the United States in a Winton. The trip took 64 days, including breakdowns, delays while waiting for parts to arrive, and the time it took hoisting the Winton up and over rocky terrain and mudholes.
In the 1910s Winton continued to market his expensive, custom-made cars primarily to wealthy consumers. This would eventually lead to the company's downfall, as by the 1920s Winton was unable to compete with the less expensive, mass produced cars like those made on Henry Ford's assembly lines. In 1922, Winton made only 690 cars, and on February 11, 1924, the Winton Motor Car Co. ceased car production.
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