Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)

by David Wangerin

  The USFA appropriated a trophy which had been donated for an earlier competition by Sir Thomas Dewar, the Scottish whisky distiller and sporting enthusiast, and hailed the Field Club as national champions. It had grossed more than $1,000 from the competition, aided by an insistence that clubs charge a minimum admission of 25 cents. But not even the sight of a baseball park brimming with soccer fans was enough to convince everyone in the host city that the game's time had come. 'Association football is still a game for English folk,' sniffed the Pawtucket Times, 'and Pawtucket, on account of its peculiar manufacturing interests, is the home of many who followed the game closely across the water.'

  The next season, the number of cup entries swelled to 82, including virtually all the clubs in the National League. Entries from Ohio appeared for the first time and the number from Illinois and Michigan grew significantly. St Louis remained the most conspicuous absentee, operating with resolute independence. In fact, the city had never even bothered to establish any sort of governing body of its own, a foible which had produced some chaotic side-effects. In 1913 a second St Louis League sprang up and, having affiliated to the USFA, attempted to suffocate its rival. The damage proved to be mutual and the two leagues - identically named - wandered down a perilous path before finally amalgamating in 1915. But the city's ambivalence toward the USFA lingered, and it would be another four years before any of its teams entered the Challenge Cup. This was a pity, particularly given the boasts made by many St Louis fans that their home-grown, hard-working teams were the equal of any in the country. The periodic western tours made by top clubs from the east - which often pulled in large crowds during the holiday season - were regarded as litmus tests, and while victories by eastern powerhouses over clubs from Cleveland, Detroit or Chicago were generally predictable, outcomes became less certain once they reached Missouri.

  Yet the top team of the era, and probably the first in America that could be considered genuinely professional, originated not in St Louis, or Fall River, or Kearny, or even New York. It came instead from the steel mills of eastern Pennsylvania, bearing the name of an industrial colossus. Sixty miles north of Philadelphia, the town of Bethlehem and the mammoth Bethlehem Steel Corporation created what many still consider to be the most successful of America's soccer clubs. The firm had been founded in 1904 by Charles Schwab, a notorious union-buster and a businessman of questionable ethics, who later circumvented American wartime neutrality laws by sneaking his steel into Britain via Canada. Like many of his kind, though, he was also a philanthropist, erecting a top-class hotel for the town and underwriting various artistic endeavours. Such munificence found its way to the workforce in 1915, when Schwab donated an enormous $25,000 for them to spend on sport however they wished. The high proportion of immigrant labour at the firm ensured that soccer would be provided for, though few could imagine just how well.

  The success of Bethlehem's team is largely attributable to another company executive, Horace Edgar Lewis. Born in south Wales in 1882, Lewis emigrated to Pennsylvania when he was 14 and at 17 was employed in the steel industry. In 1906 he came to work for Bethlehem, where soccer seems to have first caught his eye. Enamoured of the locals' adroit ball skills, he was said to have become determined to learn the game himself, and a year later captained the city's first team. As a member of the Bethlehem FC which entered the first Challenge Cup, he conceded a penalty against the Brooklyn Field Club which led to his team's third-round exit.

  The rise of Lewis to company vice-president in 1916 mirrored that of the soccer club. Although the steel firm had formed a team as early as 1909, it was designed principally to promote the virtues of exercise and teamwork. But by 1915 Bethlehem FC had officially become Bethlehem Steel Company FC; a strong soccer team, it seems, was good for business. With corporate resources at his disposal, Lewis could make frequent trips to Britain for fresh talent, tempting candidates with the offer of a job as well as a place in the team.

  No club in the country recruited players quite as effectively, and as a result Bethlehem rapidly outgrew whatever league they joined. In 1913 they finished first in the Eastern Pennsylvania League. The following year they won every match they played in the Allied League of Philadelphia - often by embarrassing scores - and took the American Cup as well, the first of its many `doubles' of varying magnitude.

  Lewis's fatal handball had kept Bethlehem out of the Challenge Cup final that season, but five years passed before they missed out again. In 1915 Bethlehem won their first and second round ties by a combined score of 23-1 on the way to a semi-final with the Homestead Steel club of Pittsburgh (a duel ostensibly pitting Schwab against another industrial tycoon, Andrew Carnegie). Bethlehem won 4-1 in a match it was curiously allowed to hold in its own city. The USFA designated the football stadium on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem a neutral site, since it was not the home ground of either participant. In the first soccer match of any significance to be staged at a college gridiron facility, a crowd of around 3,000 saw Bethlehem reach the final.

  Lewis had offered the USFA a sizeable financial guarantee to play at Lehigh and his offer of another to stage the final there was gratefully received. The opposition were the beaten finalists of the previous year, Brooklyn Celtic, who two months earlier had knocked Bethlehem out of the American Cup (their only defeat of the season). In front of nearly 7,000 fans, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation brass band and one of the earliest film crews at an American soccer match, the home side claimed a 3-1 victory, one apparently less feisty than the previous year's final. `Soccer experts from all over the country were in the Bethlehems on Saturday,' claimed the Bethlehem Globe, `and all agree that Saturday's contest was one of the cleanest games played in recent years.'

  This was the last time the Steel played at home in such a showpiece game, though most of its famous team were rather a long way from home to begin with. The origins and career of Jock Ferguson, one of its stars, were typical. Born in Dundee, the full-back had played there as well as for Arbroath, St Johnstone and Leeds City before arriving in Pennsylvania, where he played until the age of 41. It may have been this decided Britishness which, in spite of all the success and national acclaim, prevented the team from becoming more popular in its home town. Year after year, local support for the Steel remained pitifully small. The relatively large crowds at Lehigh's stadium were an aberration, and much more akin to what the club could expect away from home, where they sold tickets far more easily. No matter how hard officials tried to fill the company's state-of-the art, multipurpose ground for soccer, they could rarely attract more than a few hundred. Attributing such apathy solely to the team's ethnicity may be too simplistic, but there is little doubt soccer would have been seen by many as un-American - particularly in a town with a college football team.

  The mood was entirely different in Fall River, whose Rovers consisted largely of American-born players and were busy staking their own claims to national superiority. Indeed, the next three Challenge Cup finals were contested by Bethlehem and Fall River, fuelling the greatest of the game's early inter-regional rivalries. Rovers carried the flag not just for New England, but also - at least for a time - the home-grown philosophy of the St Louis clubs. Bethlehem, the pride of Pennsylvania, were their British foils.

  Neither was immune from the damaging trait of fan violence which the game had acquired. The 1916 final, held in Pawtucket, attracted a frenzied crowd of 10,000, almost all backing Rovers. Ten minutes from time came a penalty for a push on a Bethlehem player, triggering animated protests from Fall River and howls of outrage from the stands. Bethlehem converted the kick, further enraging the crowd and sending Rovers into a desperate flurry of attacks. When, with only seconds to play, a deflected ball was seen to strike a Bethlehem arm, opposing players and fans screamed for a spot-kick of their own. The Pawtucket Evening Times describes what happened:

  Referee Whyte awarded Bethlehem a penalty kick on a foul by Burns. From then on until the finish the Rover rooters, distinguished by t
he yellow cards in their hats, kept up a fearful din of disapproval. Suddenly, just as Referee Whyte was about to blow his whistle and end the game, a short, thick-set man was seen running out toward the centre of the field. That was all there was needed to precipitate a riot. In an instant the field was black with people, and Referee Whyte disappeared in a vortex of struggling humanity. The players formed a cordon about the official, and, aided by the police, who used their clubs freely, Whyte was dragged to the J & P Coats clubhouse, his shirt torn from his back and his body black and blue from the pummelling he received. During the riot the police arrested Arthur Brodeur of Fall River, Mass., who is alleged to have been one of the ringleaders, and other Rover sympathizers left the field with unwelcome souvenirs of their encounters with the police.

  Such behaviour was already carving out an unfortunate reputation for soccer. Baseball had taken emphatic steps to curb violence towards its arbiters, with the celebrated cry of 'Kill the Umpire!' long since reduced to rhetoric. Headlines such as Fists Fly at Soccer Contest or Soccer Game Halted After Riot soon became grist for the sports editor's mill, with the game's authorities seemingly unable to control the hostilities. Part of this could be attributed to politicking and administrative spinelessness, but in the cramped, primitive arenas common to the sport, restraining unruly fans was quite a challenge.

  Even less manageable was the weather. The 1916-17 season saw Bethlehem's cup ties pushed back on five occasions while the Southern New England League, weighed down by winter postponements, never completed its season. Establishing soccer as a winter game might have been practical in Britain, but in the northern part of America sub-zero temperatures and copious snow cover could last for months. Baseball was untouchable as the ritual of summer and the country had yet to establish any winter equivalent. However impractical the season proved, the USFA seemed entrenched in its old-world views.

  It rained steadily during the 1917 Challenge Cup final, one which the referee survived without the loss of his shirt, and which attracted a crowd of 5,000 to Pawtucket (one account claimed 'some of the spectators stood over two hours in the rain waiting for play to start') to see Fall River avenge their 1916 loss to Bethlehem with a goal in the first minute. The following season Rovers took their rivals to a replay before losing 3-0 in New Jersey, the last of their famous Challenge Cup confrontations. Their claim to American soccer supremacy may have been quashed, but Fall River's halcyon days were far from over. Bethlehem continued to search for a league worthy of their team. In 1916 they chose not to play in one at all, but even with the freedom to choose their opposition won their first 18 games with little difficulty.

  St Louis still gave a wide berth to the Challenge Cup, but its tradition of exhibitions against eastern powers reached new heights in 1916 with the arrival of Bethlehem for a two-match tour. On Christmas Eve 7,500 turned out to watch the national champions play an all-St Louis XI, winning 3-1. The next day Bethlehem took on the winners of the St Louis League and, in front of 6,000, drew 2-2- enough for the Bethlehem Globe to concede that'St Louis now has a legitimate claim to premier ranking in soccer'.

  That the sport was not as tarred with the ethnic brush in St Louis as it was elsewhere certainly helped to sell tickets, but it created problems of its own. Clubs in other parts of the country were often either works teams or outcrops of ethnic organisations, but St Louis came to rely on local businesses, whose primary attraction was not the sport so much as an opportunity to promote the company name. One of the city's earliest sponsors was the Ben W Miller Hat Company (catchphrase: 'Ben Miller wants your head'), which first attached its name to soccer in 1913 and continued to do so for two decades. The Ben Millers, as they were frequently known, won league championships in 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1920. Few other sponsors in the city proved as loyal, and in years to come the life of a single St Louis club would typically encompass several name changes: Minit-Rubs, Correnti Cleaners, National Slug Rejectors.

  The Millers undertook an eastern tour at the end of the 1917 season (losing 2-0 in Bethlehem) as the St Louis League continued to pursue national bragging rights in its own way. But America's entry into the war in 1917 curtailed the game there and elsewhere. By 1918 entries for the Challenge Cup had dwindled to 48. The Southern New England League was suspended for two seasons, taking Fall River with it. The Rovers would return; other clubs would not.

  Bethlehem, as might be expected of a team sponsored by a steel company in wartime, carried on without too much hardship. As perhaps the one soccer club in the country with true name recognition, they continued to pull in crowds virtually everywhere but at their own ground. More than 9,000 witnessed their fifth straight Challenge Cup final appearance - in Fall River - though the opponents from New Jersey attracted most of cheers. 'The Fall River followers of the sport showed clearly from the start of the game that they wanted the Paterson club to win,' observed the Fall River Evening Herald, illustrating that feelings between the two areas remained high. But the patronage proved of little help to Paterson FC, a National League team which featured players born in England, Scotland, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland as well as a few from the United States. In a victory which perhaps marked the peak of their existence, Bethlehem won 2-0. The scoreline was repeated the following week when the same two teams contested the American Cup final before a decidedly smaller crowd in Philadelphia.

  Inter-regional rivalries acquired an extra dimension the following year when St Louis finally entered the Challenge Cup and intensified arguments over the importation of foreign talent. The Ben Miller club, American-born to a man, emerged from the western half of the draw as one of the finalists; the eastern winners were the Fore River club of greater Boston, composed entirely of British players. By now the USFA had changed its mind over the use of neutral venues, and both the semifinal - which the Millers won convincingly over Packard FC of Detroit - and the championship match were to be played in St Louis. Keen to spread interest in the competition, as well as its own influence, the governing body had decided that the final would now be held in eastern and western cities in alternating years. The decision must have delighted the St Louis Globe-Democrat, which had earlier declared:

  St Louis really deserves to be honored with the contest, if for no other reason than because of the fact that the Ben Miller club is composed of players born and bred within the environs of the city, whereas the Fore River eleven, the other finalist, as well as the more prominent teams of the East, is made up of players of foreign birth.

  More than 12,000 turned up in one of the city's baseball parks for the final, a figure which if nothing else vindicated the financial propriety of the decision. The Millers won 2-1, taking the trophy west for the first time, a remarkable triumph considering the club was more accustomed to playing in 60-minute matches.

  As champions, Bethlehem Steel had accepted an invitation from Tom Cahill to spend the summer of 1919 touring Scandinavia. Their touring team included several players from other clubs, including 21-year-old Archie Stark, who would go on to greater things than anyone else in the squad. Bethlehem's own front line had been strengthened by the arrival of Harry Ratican, arguably the best American-born forward of his day, though the St Louis native would soon join the formidable Robins Dry Dock team of Brooklyn, and then a string of other clubs in the northeast. Bethlehem lost only two of their 14 tour games - nearly a match every three days - and staged a number of baseball contests against whatever local opposition it could find. Cahill, acting as the team's manager, found himself elevated to a level of esteem rather different from what he was used to at home. Both King Gustav V of Sweden and King Christian of Denmark granted him audiences amid the secretary's busy schedule. To attend the different banquets and dinners you have to change clothes about three times a day,' he noted, 'and be prepared to make a talk on any subject that may be under discussion.'

  Cahill returned to Scandinavia the following season, ostensibly with the new national champions, but because many in the Ben Miller team spent their summers
playing baseball, a mythical 'St Louis Football Club'- which included several eastern players - went instead. They too lost just twice in 14 games. Bethlehem almost broke further new ground with a tour of South America, only for organisers to withdraw the invitation at the last minute.

  In spite of the rampant political in-fighting, the violent behaviour of fans and players, the miserable weather and the inexorable rise of gridiron, this was still a promising time for American soccer. And it owed a considerable debt to Cahill, who, in the words of one St Louis sportswriter, had 'fought his way into the cliques and inner circles of the old countrymen who handled the game for themselves'. He had made a good fist of the Challenge Cup - by 1921, entries were back up to 118, helping to put the USFA on more solid ground. The older American Cup yielded to its increasing irrelevance, and with the advent of a National Amateur Cup in 1923 it was contested only twice more. (The trophy is now said to be in the possession of a Texas man who keeps it in a bank vault and wants the US Soccer Hall of Fame to pay him $100,000 for it.)

  Of course, in other parts of the world the game was positively flourishing - particularly in Europe, where it had transformed itself from a largely middle-class amateur undertaking to a professional enterprise with working-class appeal. Indirectly, this evolution would leave its mark on the US, where immigration patterns were changing markedly. American teams began to take a more central European turn, with clubs named Thistle, Rangers and Sons of St George giving way to others called Sparta, Schwaben and Magyar. In Chicago, the new wave of arrivals precipitated the start of an International Soccer Football League, which survives to this day as the only slightly less grandiloquent National Soccer League, the oldest in the country. By 1920 the New York Evening Telegram reported that Cleveland, with its large Hungarian community, was primed for a two-division, professional league 'with the first decidedly stronger than the second'. In western Pennsylvania, coalmining towns near Pittsburgh were starting to produce gritty teams of locally born players whose impact on national amateur competitions in particular would be considerable.