A head-and-shoulders portrait of Louis Armstrong, facing left and playing the trumpet
16 September 2022
(Update: 25 September, Gerald Cohen has provided me with facsimiles of the 1913 San Francisco Bulletin articles, so I am relying on those rather than secondary sources that quote them. I’ve also added some commentary about Gleeson’s 1913 uses of jazz.)
Jazz is, of course, a musical genre, but its name is the subject of much etymological debate. The word’s origins have been fairly well documented for over twenty years, but less-well-informed and regionally partisan ideas of its origin have held on. While jazz music originated among Black musicians in New Orleans, the name itself was first applied to the genre by white musicians elsewhere who were appropriating the musical style.
Surprisingly, jazz first arose in the slang of West Coast baseball, where it had the sense of pep, vigor, enthusiasm. It became associated with music through a band that played for the San Francisco Seals during their 1913 spring training, and from there it was spread by itinerant musicians to Chicago and elsewhere.
Where the sense of jazz meaning pep or vigor comes from, however, is still a bit of a mystery. The most likely explanation is that it arises from jasm, a nineteenth-century slang term meaning energy or pep. Here’s a use from the 1860 novel Miss Gilbert’s Career by J.G. Holland:
“No mistake about that. Oh! she’s just as full of jasm!”
Frank Sargent laughed again. “You’ve got the start of me,” said he. “Now tell me what ‘jasm’ is.”
“Well, that’s a sort of word, I guess, that made itself,” said Cheek. “It’s a good one, though—jasm is. If you’ll take thunder and lightning, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix ’em up, and put ’em into a woman, that’s jasm.”
Jasm, in turn, is a variant of jism or gism, which originally carried the same meaning. Here is an example in a description of an October 1842 horse race from the turf magazine Spirit of the Times:
At the drawgate Spicer tried it on again, but his horse was knocked up—“the gism” and the starch were effectually taken out of him by the long and desperate struggles he had been obliged to maintain, so that “he couldn’t come it.” He broke at the gate, and “the race was over all but the shouting!”
By the end of the nineteenth century, jism would also develop the sense of semen or seminal fluid—a metaphorical extension of energy and vitality to the creation of life—but this sexual connotation doesn’t figure directly into the development of jazz, which would be a cousin of, rather than a descendent of, the sexual sense.
We see jazz recorded in reference to baseball at the beginning of the 1912 season. It appears in the Los Angeles Times of 2 April 1912, uttered by Portland Beavers pitcher Ben Henderson as the name of a variation on the curveball that he had invented:
BEN’S JAZZ CURVE
“I got a new curve this year,” sofetly [sic] murmured Henderson yesterday, “and I’m goin’ to pitch one or two of them tomorrow. I call it the Jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can’t do anything with it.”
As prize fighters who invent new punches are always the first to get theirs Ben will probably be lucky if some guy don’t hit that new Jazzer ball a mile today. It is to be hoped that some unintelligent compositor does not spell that the Jag[?] ball. That’s what it must be at that as it[?] wobbles.
(The digital scan of this article that I have access to is not a particularly good one.)
The following day, it appeared again in the Los Angeles Times, this time with the spelling jass:
Of course, they will want to know what the first ball pitched by each slabster was. Well, Leverenz got away with a nice straight strike, and Henderson cut the outside corner with a fast curve also for one strike. Benny calls this his “jass” ball.
But it was the following year that jazz would break into the big time. It was evidently in oral use in California baseball circles for at least a year until it was picked up by San Francisco sportswriter E.T. “Scoop” Gleeson in his accounts of the San Francisco Seals’ 1913 training camp at Boyes Spring in Sonoma County. Gleeson would use the word to describe the Seals’ mood and attitude in a series of articles for the San Francisco Bulletin beginning on 3 March 1913. The first of these is as follows and is somewhat out of step with Gleeson’s uses of the word that would come later:
Just as Joe Gedeon jumped into prominence last season during the training siege at Paso Robles, so also has George Clifford McCarl, who gives his age as 24 years and his home as Davenport, Iowa, captured the plaudits of the little group at Seal headquarters.
One might venture the guess that McCarl is even a little better ball player than Gedeon, since he has done a lot of stepping around at all preliminary stages of the practice season.
[…]
McCarl has been heralded all along the lines as a “busher,” but now it develops that this dope is very much to the “jazz.”
Linguist Gerald Cohen, who deserves plaudits for much of the research work on the origins of jazz, notes that the word here means “hot air,” and the OED follows suit placing it as the earliest citation under that sense of the word. And from a straightforward reading of Gleeson’s article that would seem to be the case. From the records, it appears that McCarl broke into organized ball with the Seals in 1913, and from Gleeson’s account there were doubts about his abilities, but he showed great promise in spring training. Hence, the “dope” about him was just “jazz.” But in retrospect, the dope proved correct, and he was indeed a “busher.” Once the season started, McCarl would only play thirteen games with the Seals, and his performance was lackluster (.250 batting average). He was traded to the Spokane Indians of the Northwestern League where he played out the season. He played in that league for three more years with the Vancouver and Butte teams; his performance there was good for that level of ball, but evidently not good enough to re-attract the attention of higher-level leagues.
But this is Gleeson’s only use of jazz in this sense. It seems likely that jazz was carrying the sense of hype in oral use, and Gleeson extended that meaning to encompass confidence and energy. He would use that extended sense a few days later in a 6 March 1913 article in the Bulletin:
The Seals are down from Boyes Springs for tomorrow's first engagement with the Sox and now we’ll get a round of real baseball. The squad numbers fifteen men and reached the city shortly after 10 o'clock, having departed from the Spa before the camp was awake.
Everybody has come back to the old town full of the old “jazz” and they promise to knock the fans off their feet with their playing.
What is the “jazz”? Why, it’s a little of that “old life,” the “gin-i-ker,” the “pep,” otherwise known as the enthusiasalum [sic]. A grain of “jazz” and you feel like going out and eating your way through Twin Peaks. It’s that spirit which makes ordinary ball players step around like Lajoies and Cobbs. The Seals have it and we venture to say that everybody in the big town who has ever stopped to “pan” the San Francisco club in the past several months will be inoculated with it by the time the coming string of games is over.
“Hap” Hogan gave his men a couple of shots of “near-jazz” last season and look at what resulted—the Tigers became the most ferocious set of tossers in the league. Now the Seals have happened upon great quantities of it in the quiet valley of Sonoma and they’re setting the countryside on fire.
The team which speeded into town this morning comes pretty close to representing the pick of the army. Its members have trained on ragtime and “jazz” and manager Del Howard says there’s no stopping them. Class will not be denied, and whether they are ball players or not the members of the first squad will not be wanting in spirit and determination.
“We’ll stand ’em on their heads,” says “Tub” Spencer with a Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford brand of confidence. “Just let us tangle with Ed Walsh and these Chicago fellers a few times, and San Francisco will move to Boyes Springs for the balance of the training season.[”]
Remember last year how all these Seal boys were saying unkind things about each other; how the policeman didn’t like the pitcher, the pitchers didn’t like the catcher, and everybody in general was at swords’ points with the management? Well, that’s over, boys. Howard has fixed that—Howard and the “jazz.”
[…]
Meanwhile, keep your eye on the Seal outfit. The players are just brimming over with that old “Texas Tommy” stuff and there is a bit of the “jazz” in everything they do.
Gleeson’s pairing of ragtime and jazz in this article hints that jazz may have been used to refer to the musical genre this early, but it is more likely that Gleeson is just comparing the vibrant musical style of ragtime with the Seals’ style of baseball. And two days later, on 8 March 1913, Gleeson wrote:
“Tub” Spencer’s work sparkled while he was doing duty behind the log. “Spence,” who looks like a whole bunch of catchers, zipped that old pill around the infield like a Jimmy Archer. He opened a can of “jazz” at the tap of the gong and everybody was pettered [sic] up when the blue-clad batsman faced the elongated “Cac” Henley for the first frame.
Those sitting directly behind the catcher asserted that “Handsome” didn’t have anything much on the ball, but the Sox players didn’t seem to feel that way about it. Harry Lord did connect for a homer and a double, but that’s about the heaviest thumping that “Cac” received. When his own teammates came back at a spitball twirler—Douglas by name, a recruit from the Western League—and chased a few runs over the rubber, Henley breathed a bit easier and put a little more of the old “jazz” on the pill.
The following week, on 14 March 1913, Gleeson would use it in reference to the then-current Pacific Coast League Champions, the Oakland Oaks:
Right now listlessness seems to be each tosser’s middle name and it behooves somebody in authority to get a move on and instill a little of the old “jazz” into the troupe of Champions.
[…]
Before the string of games with the major leaguers began nobody would have given two pins for the Seal team. Ask a fan what he thought about the coming race and he would be most likely to observe that the Oaks looked like repeaters. A few days has made all the difference in the world up at Boyes, where there’s “jazz” in the morning dew, “jazz” in the daily bath and “jazz” in the natural spring water. Manager Howard has succeeded in developing a team that really looks good. Even if there is one “jagger” in among the crowd of “jazzers” prospects are none the less bright.
Here, and in the 8 March article, Gleeson is using jazz specifically in reference to pitching, which ties his use of the word back to Ben Henderson’s use the year before. But in general, Glesson is using the word more expansively. And on 24 March 1913, Gleeson would use it to refer to a jazz party, a possible early connection to musical style:
The very man you may have been touting around the cigar shop as a wizard may be shunted to Vallejo or some other far-off pasture. One never can tell how the aspirants in the spring practice are to be handled. This is about the time when the first inoculation of the old “jazz” wears off and much of the early effulgence of the busher begins to pale. Unless there is a kind-hearted manager in sight to come to the rescue or unless the player is a relative of the club owner things are apt to be pretty tough with him.
[…]
This is the last week of the boys at Boyes, and a grand “jazz” party has been prepared for the last night. At that time the Seals will be wished all kinds of success by the camp followers, and farewells will be exchanged until another year.
Art Hickman’s Orchestra, c.1919. Ten musicians in suits and straw boaters posing at playing a variety of instruments. Hickman is at right on the drums.
The jazz party is undoubtedly a reference to the fact that the Seals had hired Art Hickman’s Orchestra to play for them in the evenings at Boyes Springs. Hickman’s band played what was then known as ragtime or swing and following their engagement by the Seals were hired to play at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Hickman was one of the white early adopters of the ragtime musical style being played by Black musicians out of New Orleans. This phrase jazz party here seems to denote a lively affair rather than one where jazz music is played, but jazz music was in fact played there. So, it’s not a use of the word as a label for the music, but it comes close. Ironically, given his role in naming the genre, Hickman did not like jazz as a label for his music and never used it himself.
The next day we get a published use of jazz by someone other than Gleeson. Francis J. Mannix writes in the Bulletin of 25 March 1913 and specifically connects jazz to Hickman’s band:
Art Hickman, the jovial dispenser of mirth at the springs, met the guests at Verano with a giant gas buggy and brought them over to the hotel, where a great repast was spread in their honor. The old “jazz” was introduced to the boys, and the key of the place—some difficulty was found in locating it—turned over to them.
By 30 April 1913 we see another California paper, the Sacramento Bee, use jazz, again in reference to the Seals who were imparting jazz to the opposing Sacramento Senators (a.k.a. the Solons):
When last we saw the Senators, they were an amiable, uncomplaining set of tossers, willing to accomodiate [sic] almost any team with four or five games, or even an entire series if it was needed badly. But the club under Wolverton has wrought an unmistakable change in their deportment. There is about them now a suggestion of aggressiveness which has all the earmarks of the original old “jazz,” and the San Francisco fans were not slow to recognize it.
“Some team, that!” “Likely looking bunch!” “They’ll be heard from soon,” were samples of the comments.
The “jazz” was in evidence all over the field. Tommy Tennant, erstwhile idol of the Seal fans, set the pace for the noise-makers and his colleagues chimed in with a chorus of cheer-up stuff that did not terminate until the last man was out in the final frame.
Within a few months, we start to see newspaper articles about current slang include jazz as a term coming out of San Francisco, indicating that the word had achieved a wider currency, at least regionally in the Bay Area. There is this article in the Idaho Statesman of 5 June 1913 that bears a dateline reporting from Indiana:
San Francisco—“Are you jerry to the old jazz?”
[…]
Now out in San Francisco, the most popular word is “the old jazz.” It means anything you may happen to want it to.
And there is this article which appears in the 22 June 1913 issue of the Duluth News Tribune. The article appears to be a reworking of the same piece that had appeared in the Idaho paper a few weeks before. The article is distinctly different from the 5 June piece, but much of the phrasing is the same:
Take Frisco, the great slang factory of this broad land. Out there they ask you, “Are you jerry to the old jazz?” meaning thereby, “Are you hep to the—” whatever you are supposed to be hep to. “Jazz” stands for whatever you want it to.
We had started to see the transition from baseball to music in the 1913 coverage of the Seals, but none of that reporting used jazz definitively as the label for the genre of music, then primarily known as ragtime or swing.
We have indirect evidence that jazz was being used to refer to the music as early as 1914 and that there was at least one band that incorporated it into its name by that year, Bert Kelly’s Jazz Band that played at the College Inn in Chicago. But we have no surviving uses in print of the word referring definitively to the music until 1915.
From 15 May to 28 August 1915 a group billed as Tom Brown’s Band from Dixie Land played at Lamb’s Café in Chicago, a popular dance spot. And on 22 May 1915, the following advertisement appeared in the Chicago Examiner:
Lambs’ Café
The Original
JAD ORCHESTRA
For DancingRandolph and Clark Sts.
JAD here is almost certainly a misprint for jazz, the word not yet being familiar to the paper’s typesetters. Later appearances of the ad do not use the word. But we do get a clear use of jazz to refer to music in the Chicago Daily Tribune of 11 July 1915:
The Worm [i.e., woman’s husband] had turned—turned to fox trotting. And the “blues” had done it. The “jazz” had put pep into the legs that had scrambled too long for the 5:15.
What mattered to him now the sly smiles of contempt that his friends uncorked when he essayed the foxy trot a month before; what mattered it whose shins he kicked?
That was what “blue” music had done for him.
[…]
“What are the blues?” he asked gently.
“Jazz!” The young woman’s voice rose high to drown the piano.
A tall young man with nimble fingers rose from the piano and came over. “That’s me,” he said. And then he unraveled the mystery of the “blues.”
“A blue note is a sour note,” he explained. “It’s a discord—a harmonic discord. The blues are never written into the music, but are interpolated by the piano player or other players. They aren’t new. They are just reborn into popularity. They started in the south half a century ago and are the interpolations of darkies originally. The trade name for them is “jazz.”
“There’s a craze for them now. People find them excellent for dancing. Piano players are taking lessons to learn how to play them.”
Thereupon “Jazz” Marion sat down and showed the bluest streak of blues ever heard beneath the blue. Or, if you like this better: “Blue” Marion sat down and jazzed the jazziest streak of jazz ever.
Saxophone players since the advent of the “jazz blues” have taken to wearing “jazz collars,” neat decollete things that give the throat and windpipe full play, so that the notes that issue from the tubas may not suffer for want of blues—those wonderful blues.
Try it some time—for that tired feeling—the blues.
Clearly, it was in Chicago in 1915 that the term jazz became indelibly associated with the musical genre. Years later, musician Bert Kelly would claim to have been the first to use jazz to refer to the musical genre. Kelly had played in Hickman’s band in 1913, subsequently moving east to Chicago to start his own group. Kelly writes in a letter published in Variety on 2 October 1957:
As I conceived the idea of using the Far West slangword, “jazz,” as a name for an original dance band and my original dance band and my original style of playing a dance rhythm, at the College Inn, Chicago, in 1914, it is my wish to unravel the skein of ridiculous falsehoods concocted by overanxious writers, publishers and music critics who start with the erroneous premise that the jazz-band and jazz style of dance music were originated in New Orleans and the etymology of the word jazz could be found in New Orleans or Africa instead of in the ’49ers mining-camp dancehalls of the Far West.
[…]
When I originated the jazz band in 1914, there were just three dance bands of any note to the music and theatrical world in America, namely: Bert Kelly’s Jazz Band at The College Inn, Chicago; Earl Fuller’s Orchestra at Rector’s in New York; and Art Hickman’s Orchestra at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.
Backing up the San Francisco to Chicago trail is this description of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band on a cover sheet for a 1917 Victor Records catalog:
New Victor Records
Jass Band and other Dance SelectionsThe Original Dixieland Jass Band
SPELL it Jass, Jas, Jaz or Jazz—nothing can spoil a Jass band. Some say the Jass band originated in Chicago. Chicago says it comes from San Francisco—San Francisco being away off across the continent. Anyway, a Jass band is the newest thing in the cabarets, adding greatly to the hilarity thereof.
Kelly was undoubtedly among the first to use jazz as a label for the musical genre, but it is unlikely he was the only one. There is indirect evidence that the term had already migrated to New Orleans with other musicians by 1914. Also note, that when Kelly writes that his was one of only “bands of any note” he is referring to white musicians. There were many Black musicians playing jazz music in New Orleans and elsewhere.
The indirect evidence for the wider spread of the term comes in a pair of 1916 articles in Variety. The first, in the 27 October 1916 issue, makes the claim that jazz originated in Chicago:
Chicago, the home of “Walkin’ the Dog,” “Ballin’ the Jack” and sundry other cabaret features, has added another innovation to its list of discoveries in the so-called “Jazz Bands.” The Jazz Band is composed of three or more instruments and seldom plays regulated music. The College Inn and practically all other high class places of entertainment have a Jazz Band featured, while the low cost makes it possible for all the smaller places to carry their Jazz orchestra. A number of the organizations are reported to be considering the possibilities of invading New York and it would not be surprising to note the disappearance of the classical orchestras for the syncopated groups.
The following week, on 3 November 1916, Variety’s New Orleans correspondent posted a reply indicating that musical style had been played there for decades and the term jazz itself had been known in New Orleans for several years:
Chicago’s claim to originating “Jazz Bands” and “Balling the Jack” are as groundless, according to VARIETY’s New Orlean’s [sic] correspondent, as ’Frisco’s assuming to be the locale for the first “Todolo” and “Turkey Trot” dances. Little negro tots were “Ballin’ the Jack” in New Orleans over ten years ago, and negro roustabouts were “Turkey Trotting" and doing the “Todolo” in New Orleans as far back as 1890, he says. “Jazz Bands” have been popular there for over two years, and Chicago cabaret owners brought entertainers from that city to introduce the idea. New Orleans’ “Brown Skin” dance is also to be instituted in the Windy City shortly, is the claim.
And the same issue of Variety contains this note, also from the New Orleans correspondent:
Herb Trustee, long the foremost exponent of the “Jazz” in the local cabarets, left here [i.e., New Orleans] Sunday to join the Amy Butler act at Cleveland.
Further evidence can be found in the reminiscences of musician Nick La Rocca, who, in the journal Song Lyrics for November 1937, recalled being introduced to the term jass at the Schiller Club in Chicago in 1914:
“It was at this place,” said La Rocca as he observed the magnificence of his NBC surroundings, “that I heard the word ‘jass’ (later spelled ‘jazz’) for the first time. It happened this way: A dance-crazed couple shouted at the end of the dance, ‘Jass it up boy, give us some more jass.’ Promoter Harry James immediately grasped this word as the perfect monicker [sic] for popularizing the new craze.”
If La Rocca’s memory is correct, James was the first man to use the word “jass” in connection with an orchestra. He called his headliner the “Original Dixieland Jass Band.”
“There is no doubt in my mind,” said La Rocca, “that the word ‘jazz’ is Northern in origin, for I had never heard the word before that specific night at the Schiller Café in Chicago.”
There you have it. Jazz originated as a slang term for energy and enthusiasm among California baseball players in 1912–13, and through a band hired to entertain the San Francisco Seals baseball team during 1913 spring training, it became associated with and a name for what had up to that point been labeled ragtime or swing music.
There are a number of origin stories for jazz that are often repeated. These have little or no evidentiary support. As we have seen, while the musical style flowed out of New Orleans, the name jazz did not. Some have tried to make connections to various, sometimes fictitious, West African words. While this makes sense as a hypothesis if jazz were to have started among Black musicians in New Orleans, the origin in white California baseball makes an African origin unlikely. Another claim conflates the sexual sense of jasm/jism with jazz. While a sexual connotation cannot be ruled out, the timeline of the development of the senses militates against it. Similarly, the explanations that the term comes from a New Orleans prostitute named Jezebel or from jasmine perfume worn by prostitutes in that city are pure invention. Jazz is also sometimes associated with a supposed Black musician named Jasbo Brown, but he is fictitious, and the tale was invented as a post hoc explanation. Finally, claims that jazz comes from the Middle French jaser, meaning to chatter or gossip, or the Irish teas, meaning heat, are absurd on their face.
Sources:
The research behind this article is not mine. I’m just summarizing the work of others. Credit for the spadework in digging up the early citations and tracing the early development of the term jazz goes to, among others, Gerald Cohen, George Thompson, Ben Zimmer, and Barry Popik. And special thanks go to Gerald Cohen for providing me with facsimiles of the San Francisco Bulletin articles from 1913.
Advertisement. Chicago Examiner, 22 May 1915, 17. Chicago Public Library Digital Collections.
“Ben’s Jazz Curve.” Los Angeles Times, 2 April 1912, 3.2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Bird, Owen, R. “Around the Bags.” Los Angeles Times, 3 April 1912, 3.3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Brunn, H.O. The Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1960, 28–29, 92–Plate viii.
“Cabarets.” Variety, 44.9, 27 October 1916, 12. ProQuest Variety (Archive: 1905–2000).
———. Variety, 44.10, 3 November 1916, 20. ProQuest Variety (Archive: 1905–2000).
Cohen, Gerald. “1937 Recollections of Band Leader Nick La Rocca.” Comments on Etymology, 35.1–2, October–November 2005, 70.
———. “Searching for Evidence in the 1913 San Francisco Bulletin.” Comments on Etymology, 35.1–2, October–November 2005, 21–26.
“George McCarl.” Baseball Reference, 2022.
Gleeson, “Scoop.” “M’Carl Performs Like Youngster Who Will Do.” San Francisco Bulletin, 3 March 1913, 13.
——— . “M’Carl Pulls Off Stunts at First Just Like Chase.” San Francisco Bulletin, 8 March 1913, 12.
——— . “Oaks Not Playing With Dash of Cal Ewing’s Del-Peppers.” San Francisco Bulletin, 14 March 1913, 20.
———. “Seals Return from the Spa to Tackle the Famous White Sox.” San Francisco Bulletin, 6 March 1913, 16.
———. “When Will a Del Pepper Become a Dill Pickle?” San Francisco Bulletin, 24 March 1913, 16.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. jazz, n., jazz, v.
Holland, J.G. Miss Gilbert’s Career. NewYork: Charles Scribner, 1860, 350. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“’I Grab You, Gus!’ Grab This and Master it Thoroughly; It Is the Latest in Slang.” Duluth News Tribune (Minnesota), 22 June 1913, 10. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Kelly, Bert. “Bert Kelly Stakes Claim to Heading 1st Jazz Band in Chicago Back in ’14.” Variety, 2 October 1957, 64. ProQuest Variety (Archive: 1905–2000).
Mannix, Francis J. “Sox Recipients of Royal Welcome at Seals’ Home.” San Francisco Bulletin, 25 March 1913, 16.
“Nine Cheers for Ripton!” The Spirit of the Times (New York), 29 October 1842, 1. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2008, s.v. jazz, n. and adj., jazz, v., jazzer, n., jasm, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. jism, n.
Samuels, O.M. “New Orleans.” Variety, 44.10, 3 November 1916, 46. ProQuest Variety (Archive: 1905–2000).
Seagrove, Gordon. “Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 11 July 1915, 8.8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Senators Show Lots of ‘Jazz’ but They Lose to Seals 4–3; Good Game.” Sacramento Bee, 30 April 1913. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Will ‘Hod Dickety Dog’ Win Lovers of Slang? Idaho Statesman, 5 June 1913, 10. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers.
Image credits:
Louis Armstrong. Unknown Photographer, 1953. Library of Congress. Public domain image.
Art Hickman’s Orchestra. Bain News Service, c.1919. Library of Congress. Public domain image.