by Willie Drye
News of the powerful storm was telegraphed to the Miami Daily News from Belen Observatory in Havana.
Miami mayor Edward Romfh had been among those who, only a few weeks earlier, had accused the Red Cross of overstating hurricane damage to his city. His comments had inflicted serious damage on the Red Cross’s effort to raise money to help storm victims, and had contributed to the failure to meet its fund-raising goals. But with another ruinous storm at his doorstep, Romfh asked Red Cross officials to take over his city’s preparations for the storm and set up shelters in the city.
The Red Cross set up aid stations throughout Miami.
The exodus from Miami escalated as hundreds of residents decided they simply could not stand the emotional strain of enduring another terrible storm. They boarded northbound trains to get as far away from the city as possible, and the Dixie Highway was clogged with northbound cars carrying women and children out of the city.
Schools and businesses closed.
“Miami Prepares to Meet Storm,” headlined the afternoon Miami Daily News edition of Wednesday, October 20, 1926.
The evening of Wednesday, October 20, 1926, began in a frighteningly similar fashion to the awful night a month earlier. As darkness fell, winds steadily increased and rain fell in torrents.
This time, however, Miami got lucky. Although Key West, about 150 miles southwest of Miami, was lashed with 100-mile-an-hour winds as the eye passed near that city of 20,000 residents, the hurricane’s eye—and its most powerful winds—stayed offshore. The outer edge of the storm still brought rain, high winds, and terrifying reminders of the earlier hurricane to Miami residents. Trees came down and fell across power lines and knocked out electricity, but fortunately, that was the worst of it.
The next day, hundreds of Miami’s terrified, hurricane-weary residents gathered at the post office to watch those awful red-and-black hurricane warning flags hauled down from the flagpole. They were so delighted that they broke into a spontaneous celebration.
“The sun is shining brightly in Miami and its inhabitants, after a night of anxiety, are busily engaged in their everyday tasks,” said a Miami Daily News editorial on Thursday afternoon, October 21. “Thursday’s sunshine is emblematic of Miami’s future, unmarred by threatening clouds.”
Red Cross officials, however, were assembling a glum forecast as the 1926–27 tourist season approached. A few days after the October hurricane scare, Henry Baker met with other Red Cross leaders in Atlanta to discuss the progress of the agency’s work in Florida.
Despite such cheery public optimism as was expressed in the Miami Daily News, the Red Cross leaders were skeptical about the city’s immediate future. Among the topics they discussed was a prediction that tourism revenues, which had totaled about $145 million during the 1925–26 season, would drop by as much as 40 percent during the 1926–27 season, which was just around the corner. That would be devastating to small-business owners and workers who depended on tourism to pay their bills.
Unemployment was still very high, and the steep drop in tourism would mean that it would stay high during the time that it usually eased. And in the wake of the slide in real estate prices, many Florida residents were stuck with no equity in a house that was no longer worth the mortgages they were struggling to pay. In twenty-first-century parlance, their mortgages were “underwater.”
Some homeowners were burdened by as many as nine mortgages. When banks stopped making loans after a third mortgage, finance companies were stepping in to provide desperately needed cash—also escalating homeowners’ debts.
And even worse for the Red Cross, Baker was certain that “influential local institutions”—meaning local and state boards of real estate brokers and the Miami Chamber of Commerce—would launch a well-funded, all-out publicity campaign against the Red Cross if the agency continued to try to tell the truth about conditions in Florida.
While Red Cross leaders tried to help those who needed it and fight the headwinds of misinformation, some powerful men continued their determined effort to distort economic conditions in Florida.
The November 1926 edition of the respected journal Review of Reviews published essays by four business leaders who were deeply invested in Florida. The essays, collected under the heading “Florida after the Storm,” were requested by the Review of Reviews editor, Albert Shaw, who said he’d asked the “leading men of affairs” in Florida to inform his readers of the “conditions and prospects” in the state.
The essays were written by Hamilton Holt, president of Rollins College in Orlando; Richard Hathaway Edmonds, editor of the Manufacturers’ Record; Barron Collier, who had essentially been given his own county in 1923 by the Florida legislature after promising to complete the Tamiami Trail; and Peter O. Knight, the Tampa attorney who a few weeks earlier had taken to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and Arthur Brisbane’s millions of readers to downplay the hurricane damage and disparage the Red Cross’s efforts to raise money for storm victims.
All four writers repeated the misleading statement that the hurricane’s impact on Florida had been minimal because it had affected only Miami and Moore Haven. But in reality, nearly one-third of the money driving the Florida boom was in Miami banks, and the city was leading the nation in bank clearings—that is, checks being cashed or deposited. And the city had been called “the greatest market per capita in the world today” by Literary Digest. So to say that Florida was fine because the hurricane had only hit Miami was like saying that since a bullet had only pierced the heart, the rest of the body was unharmed.
And the Review of Reviews essayists added their own touches of misdirection.
Holt, the Rollins College president, noted that “thousands of dollars” had been contributed to the Red Cross to relieve suffering in Florida, but did not mention that the Red Cross had failed to reach its fund-raising goal because of the determined campaign being waged by Warfield, Knight, and others.
Manufacturers’ Record editor Edmonds said Red Cross chairman Payne had misled the nation, and accused him of disparaging “the people of Florida who went to work so vigorously, so cheerfully, and so optimistically” to rebuild after the hurricane.
Knight, the attorney who worked for Warfield, repeated his claim that damage from the storm would not exceed $25 million—even though the Miami Chamber of Commerce had publicly estimated damage at more than $100 million—and said that the only industry that had been harmed by the storm was the citrus industry. But the loss of so many citrus trees still had a silver lining because it would mean higher prices for the growers, he said.
“The tourist business . . . was not involved,” Knight wrote. “There will be more tourists in Florida this winter than ever before, and by January 1 every vestige of damage, so far as the tourist business is concerned, will have disappeared.”
Collier said he was moved by the “misfortune” of Miami and Moore Haven, but added: “I join Governor Martin in his just and strong condemnation of those who use the misfortunes of two cities to injure a whole commonwealth.”
As 1926 drew to a close, Red Cross officials summarized their efforts in Florida, issuing on Christmas Eve a news release saying that 16,000 families totaling 60,000 people had been helped by the Red Cross effort in Florida. The Red Cross was making “an award a minute” of financial aid, and had disbursed more than $3.4 million—about $45 million in twenty-first-century dollars. Meanwhile, two of the state’s largest railroads were reporting good news to their stockholders. Both the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and the Seaboard Air Line Railroad had set records for revenue in 1926. The Atlantic Coast Line had grossed $97 million, and the Seaboard had recorded $67 million for the year.
Warfield, Seaboard’s owner, was pouring money and dreams into Florida. And he’d also told Edwin Menninger’s South Florida Developer about plans to build repair shops in Indiantown for his railroad. That would add one thousand jobs to Martin County. And in anticipation of the completion of the Tamiami Trail linking Tampa and Miami, h
e had inaugurated train service to Naples and other cities on the Gulf Coast.
But the crown jewel of Warfield’s Florida empire was the extension of his railroad from West Palm Beach to Miami. Thanks to the new extension, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad now would offer direct connections from New York to Miami.
At 6:25 p.m. on the evening of January 5, 1927, Warfield and hundreds of businessmen and bankers boarded a southbound Seaboard Air Line train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. It was the inaugural run of a train featuring amenities that would quickly make it a legend—the Orange Blossom Special.
Additional trains—also part of the Orange Blossom Special’s inaugural run—joined the New York group in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The trains chuffed southward into the night through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, carrying around six hundred well-heeled passengers who controlled millions of dollars’ worth of potential investments.
Florida governor John Martin and a group of Florida dignitaries that included Tampa attorney Knight joined the celebratory caravan. They were accompanied by dozens of reporters from Florida and national news services, such as the New York Times, the Philadelphia Record, the Atlanta Constitution, and others.
Once the Special reached Florida, it stopped at every town and hamlet along the way. Much of Florida dropped its daily routine and turned out to welcome the train.
“School children in white summer clothes were there, singing and waving flags; farmers came from miles around, traveling in motor cars or on foot, to greet Mr. Warfield and Governor Martin,” wrote a reporter for the New York Times. “At Fort Myers, the citizens arranged an elaborate reception, with brass bands and an automobile parade through decorated streets. There was a similar reception in Naples, which was welcoming a railroad for the first time in its history.”
The celebration continued on the state’s east coast. Parades, local dignitaries, and attractive young women greeted the Special at every stop. Warfield, Martin, and Knight vied to see who could kiss the most girls at each station, and a reporter for the Miami Daily News declared Knight the winner.
As the four trains comprising the Special neared Miami, the celebrations became more complex. At Opa-locka, developed around an Arabian theme by aviator Glenn Curtiss, the festivities included men dressed as Arabian warriors on horseback and women in harem costumes.
During the stop at Hollywood, the earthy, acerbic Knight entertained the crowd and reporters with pithy comments about the passengers from the large northern cities.
“I’m tired of that bunch of millionaires from the north who make up the first section of this train having all the glory at these receptions,” Knight said. “We of the third section are just Florida crackers, but we’re proud of it, and if it hadn’t been for us, the financiers up ahead would never have come to Florida at all.
“One thing is certain. Those hard-boiled, cold-blooded capitalists didn’t come here just because they like us or wanted to be nice. It takes fourteen cocktails to make any one of that bunch germinate the first spark of sentiment.”
Reporters didn’t ask Knight how he had managed to count the number of cocktails necessary to soften up a Yankee banker on a train supposedly prohibited from selling liquor.
The Orange Blossom Special arrived in Miami at dusk on January 8, hours late because of all of the celebrations along the way. Fireworks exploded as the trains rolled to a stop at a temporary Seaboard Air Line station at Seventh Street and Twentieth Avenue. At Royal Palm Park on the waterfront, the crowd was entertained by Arthur Pryor’s Band. The band included more than two dozen musicians led by virtuoso trombonist Arthur Pryor, who had once so dazzled an audience of German soldiers that they had insisted on taking apart his instrument to see if it was real. The band had recorded the novelty song “The Whistler and His Dog” in late 1925, and the catchy, lilting tune was still being hummed and whistled across the nation.
The Orange Blossom Special’s arrival in Miami brought a renewed sense of optimism to the city’s boosters, which included the Miami Daily News.
“Today Miami enters upon another era of progress,” the Daily News said in a front-page editorial on January 9, 1927.
The new Seaboard Air Line service to Miami was an indication that the erratic boom-based economy of 1925–26 was being replaced by stable growth. “Booms frequently follow railroad expansion; but railroads do not follow booms,” the editorial continued.
Warfield’s decision to invest heavily in South Florida was based on a careful cost-benefit analysis. And the Seaboard’s benefit from its Miami extension would be income from shipping fruits and vegetables grown on land reclaimed from the Everglades, the Daily News said. The South Florida Developer predicted that the farms also would be needed to feed the thousands of workers coming to Indiantown to work at the new sawmill and train repair shop.
“When expansion of the character Miami now witnesses is consummated, we may rest assured it is only after all the risks have been carefully weighed,” the Miami Daily News editorial said. “. . . Railroads open up undeveloped lands and create markets at the same time. That is Warfield’s mission in Florida. It will be fulfilled.”
Despite the new optimism among Miami boosters, however, there were stubborn signs of problems in Paradise. A few weeks after the Orange Blossom Special merrymaking, Henry Baker, the chairman of the Red Cross’s relief effort in Miami, reported to the agency’s national headquarters that unemployment was becoming “more acute daily.”
In a January 27 report, Baker noted that families who had not needed help in the weeks immediately after the September hurricane now needed financial assistance.
“No one would expect that unemployment would be a serious problem here at this time of year,” Baker wrote.
A few days later, the Miami Herald—one of the early deniers of serious hurricane damage—published an editorial acknowledging that there was “a great deal of actual destitution in Miami.”
“Little children are actually suffering on account of lack of food,” the Herald editorial said. “Delicate women, scores of them, have insufficient food. Men are actually going hungry, looking for any small jobs that may turn up from the proceeds of which they may help their families.”
The Herald noted that the county’s welfare board—which was responsible for providing help for those in need—had “almost ceased to function” because the county had not had the money to keep the board funded. The Herald editors asked “generous-minded people of Miami” to make donations to the welfare board.
Around the time that the Herald was seeking donations to help the city’s needy, an innocuous businessman rented a bungalow for a winter vacation in Miami Beach. He said his name was Al Brown, and his business card said he was a dealer in secondhand furniture.
Brown was a beefy, jowly man with thinning black hair who might have been regarded as just another businessman who’d done well enough to afford to take several months off in the sun. But a long, nasty-looking scar on his left cheek belied his bland-sounding name and set him apart from the typical vacationers. Clearly, Brown had incurred some risks on his path to success.
In the coming months, Brown would provide a small stimulus to the ailing South Florida economy. And his presence would not go unnoticed by local officials or the national press.
By mid-February, the Red Cross was ready to fold up its tent and get out of Miami. On February 14, vice chairman James Fieser sent a special-delivery letter from Miami to Red Cross National Headquarters saying the Red Cross’s mission did not include staying in Florida to help those unable to find work. Besides, they couldn’t stay if they wanted to. They were out of money.
Solomon Davies Warfield was known as an autocratic business leader who could be very charming when it suited his purposes. As February turned to March and word spread that the Red Cross was pulling out of Miami, Warfield and other prominent Miami business leaders decided it was time to bury the hatchet.
On March 1, 1927, Henry Baker, the director of the Red
Cross relief effort in Miami, was the guest of honor at a testimonial luncheon at the Columbus Hotel. The gathering was hosted by James Gilman, the former chairman of a citizens’ committee formed to help with Miami’s post-hurricane recovery.
Among the speakers who praised Baker and the Red Cross’s relief effort was Miami mayor Edward Romfh, whose actions had helped to cripple the Red Cross’s fund-raising effort.
Romfh said the Red Cross effort had been “magnificent,” and that the city had been very lucky that Baker had been in charge.
Baker was equally magnanimous, saying that he’d been in charge of 147 disaster-relief efforts across the United States, and had never seen such a “vigorous and intelligent” local relief effort.
“There is an elusive but definite something here which I can only define as the Miami spirit,” Baker said. “It is a spirit of cooperation, understanding, and vigorous determination to overcome all problems.”
The following day, Baker was invited to a smaller gathering with a few of Miami’s high rollers. This gathering was held at the First National Bank in the private dining room of the bank’s president—Miami mayor Edward Romfh.
Warfield, the charmer, had an ulterior motive for meeting with Baker in a more private setting. He wanted to coax information from the Red Cross official. Joining Baker, Warfield, and Romfh at the lunch were Miami Herald publisher Frank Shutts and Glenn Curtiss, the aviator turned developer.
Baker sent a letter the following day about the meeting to Fieser, who had returned to Red Cross headquarters in Washington, DC, “The luncheon did not have to do with our disaster relief except in a rather indirect way,” Baker wrote.
Baker said that the reason Warfield and the others had invited him to lunch was to ask him what he’d learned during his Red Cross work about the “financial matters of Miami and the East Coast of Florida,” adding that “Mr. Warfield was quite interested in this phase of post-hurricane developments.”
Baker said Warfield had asked him and the others to keep their conversation confidential, and went so far as to ask Baker not to say anything to his supervisors in Washington. Baker honored that request in his letter, but he did say that the conversation was related to “a big reclamation project” in the Everglades. He promised Fieser that he would fill in the details in a private conversation when he returned to Washington.