For Sale —American Paradise (14 page)

The Florida that emerged during the 1920s would, in many ways, resemble these fantasies—for a few years, at least.

Although Florida had been part of the United States since 1845, it was still very much a work in progress as a state in 1920. It had frontiers that were every
bit as untamed, undeveloped, and unexplored as the American West of the nineteenth century.

The changes wrought in American society and the world by the Great War would not be noticed immediately. Still, the transition would be steady, and it would unfold over the coming decade. During this seminal ten years, many comfortable beliefs, social mores, and public attitudes would be peeled away until the fading vestiges of the nineteenth century were gone.

A denizen of the twenty-
first century transported back to the United States of 1925 would, of course, be struck by many differences. Automobiles would not be sleek and aerodynamically designed computers on wheels. They would resemble the boxy horse-
drawn carriages and buggies they were replacing. Telephones, on the other hand, would be stylishly designed, but they would be attached to a wire. Any reference to “wireless” would be referring to radios.

Still, there would be much that would be familiar to modern sensibilities. Automobiles, though boxy and primitive in appearance, would exist. Their numbers were steadily increasing, and their profound influence on society was becoming apparent. Henry Ford was perfecting a manufacturing technique that would lower the cost of automobiles so that even people of modest means could afford a family flivver. They would reshape American society.

Telephones and radios were primitive by modern standards, but they were bringing instant communications to the masses. Popular culture, influenced by radio and the growth of the motion picture industry, was steadily changing the way Americans thought, spoke, dressed, and behaved. And Americans were buying the postwar era's new technological marvels without paying for them with cash on the barrelhead, a practice that would have appalled their Victorian grandparents.

The visitor from the future also would see the often bitter conflict between progressive and conservative social forces so familiar to the early twenty-first century.

When Wyoming became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages would become illegal a year later. The Ku Klux Klan would be railing against immigrants, and the Klan's membership would steadily increase through the 1920s. Conservative Christians—including William Jennings Bryan, whose politics were a sometimes bewildering mix of progressivism and conservatism—would be insisting that Darwin's theory of evolution not be taught in public schools.

But at the same time, progressive forces were moving the country away from other traditional restrictions, and among the most obvious changes were new freedoms for women. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment—also supported by Bryan—gave women the right to vote beginning in 1921, and they were demanding and seizing freedoms their grandmothers wouldn't have dreamed of asking for.

When the decade began, however, only 644 people lived in Miami Beach—which had changed its name from Ocean Beach when it was incorporated in 1915—and Carl Fisher was wondering whether his vision for the island as a playground would ever materialize. Miami's population was about 30,000, and George Merrick was still a year away from selling his first lot in Coral Gables. Florida's national banks held just over $88 million in deposits and had loans totaling almost $67 million.

The state's population was just over 968,000.

All of those figures would change dramatically in just a few years.

It took a while for the US economy to readjust after the Great War ended, and the nation endured a brief economic slump in 1920. Still, more people were coming to Florida, despite the downturn.

When Republican Warren Harding was elected president in November 1920, Americans figured that prosperity would follow. In his inaugural address in March 1921, Harding sounded a theme that he was sure would be well received. With the Great War behind them, Americans were ready for a return to normalcy.

“I would like to acclaim an era of good feeling amid dependable prosperity and all the blessings which attend,” Harding said.

The prewar “normalcy” that Harding wanted to restore was gone, however, blasted away by the carnage on the European battlefields. “Dependable prosperity” might be at hand, but the attendant “good feeling” might be a bit more elusive, since Prohibition loomed.

On November 23, 1921, a group of real estate brokers gathered in Miami heard Gordon Nye, editor of the
Florida Real Estate Journal
, tell them that Florida was not being properly sold to the nation, and that its efforts to grow and develop were being seriously hampered by derogatory stories about the state being published in out-of-state newspapers and magazines.

“We are not doing anything to combat this propaganda except issuing Chamber of Commerce booklets once a year and letting it end there,” he said.

There was no mention in the
Miami Daily Metropolis
of whether George Merrick attended this meeting, and he was known to avoid public functions. But Merrick was about to launch a pro-Florida selling campaign that would far exceed anything Nye had in mind.

In November 1921, Merrick had added several thousand acres to his father's citrus farm, and accumulated $500,000 in capital. He was ready to start building his carefully planned city. Eventually, Coral Gables would be acclaimed as a landmark accomplishment in urban planning.

But when Merrick—who had what a novelist might describe as a “broad, honest face”—sold his first lots for $600 each on November 27, 1921, there were more doubters than believers in his ambitious undertaking.

Kenneth Roberts, who wrote a series of articles about Florida for the
Saturday Evening Post
in the mid-1920s, said knowledgeable people thought Merrick's plans were doomed to failure. Coral Gables was too far from the water—too far
from anything, in fact. The doubters “could understand paying almost any price for waterfront property—even as much as $5,000 for a lot, or $10,000 even. But not $600 for a lot six miles from anywhere!”

Merrick had great difficulty raising additional capital, Roberts said.

“Merrick, for a time, was avoided as though he had a touch of the plague when he attempted to raise money to carry out his building schemes for Coral Gables,” Roberts wrote. “Forward-
thinking financiers would stare mournfully at one another after Merrick had attempted to wrench a little money from them, and express a moderate amount of near-
sympathy for the wretched individual who might eventually decide to take a chance with him.”

Still, Merrick worked his carefully crafted plan. All the money that came in from sales went back into the development of Coral Gables. Streets were widened and a few houses were built. Because of the improvements, the price of lots went up the following year. Most were sold for $1,200 each, but a few brought $2,500.

Merrick continued building wide streets and added meticulous landscaping touches such as oak and royal palm trees.

But again, the money that came in was plowed back into the development. And Merrick continued to seek investors.

Finally, the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company of Greensboro, North Carolina, was willing to invest in Coral Gables. It was a lifeline for Merrick. As work progressed, Jefferson Standard was satisfied enough with the results to put more money into the project. Eventually Jefferson Standard's confidence prompted the Missouri State Life Insurance Company to make an investment, and then the Mortgage and Securities Company of New Orleans came on board.

“It then began to be fairly apparent to the more astute financiers that Merrick was not, as they had first supposed, in need of the gentle attention of a corps of alienists,” Roberts wryly noted.

Like Merrick, Carl Fisher struggled at first to get Miami Beach under way.

In 1915, Roberts wrote, Fisher's property “consisted of a desolate-
looking
sand-spit.”

Like Merrick, many observers questioned Fisher's judgment as he pushed ahead with his project, using a dredge to pile up sand from Biscayne Bay and actually create real estate where none had existed before. And although his cash flow had improved, all of the money Fisher brought in was going back into his development.

Fisher's wife Jane said that her husband was “practically down to his last dollar” when he opened the magnificent Flamingo Hotel in Miami Beach in 1920.

But Fisher, the tenacious opportunist, managed to get the ultimate VIP to stay at his hotel soon after it opened. President-
elect Warren G. Harding decided to take a Florida vacation after winning the nation's highest office in November 1920. When Fisher learned Harding was coming to Miami, he was determined to get him into the Flamingo.

Jane Fisher said her husband “shanghaied” Harding “right out from under the nose” of a Miami reception committee. Fisher hustled Harding aboard his own yacht, the
Shadow VI
, and took him to the Flamingo's penthouse, “where a poker game and plenty of scotch were waiting,” she wrote.

Fisher installed Harding in one of the luxurious villas he'd built on the grounds of the Flamingo. The four-bedroom house, specially decorated for Harding, included a fireplace and a porch overlooking Biscayne Bay. Fisher even obtained several days' worth of newspapers from Marion, Ohio, so the president-elect could catch up on news from his hometown.

The
Miami Daily Metropolis
reported that Harding was “carefully guarded against annoyances at Miami Beach” while he played golf, took a dip in the ocean, and toured the city.

Harding was delighted with the villa. “It's just an ideal little place,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fisher masterfully played the herd of newsmen trailing Harding, knowing that Miami Beach and his new hotel would be mentioned in news stories being sent around the world.

The
Metropolis
reported that the hospitality shown the reporters and photographers was “of a different character than anywhere else in Florida,” and had brought “the highest praise” from the newsmen.

Harding—minus the reporters and photographers—spent a night at Fisher's exclusive fishing camp, Cocolobo Key, in Biscayne Bay. He returned with a sunburned face and blistered hands from hauling in a sailfish, an amberjack, and a wahoo.

The president-elect also dropped in for a visit with William Jennings Bryan, now a full-
time Miami resident. The
Metropolis
didn't report what Harding and Bryan discussed, but it's likely that Bryan told Harding of his frustrations at how casually Prohibition was being violated in Miami.

But if forbidding the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages was an impediment to Fisher and other movers and shakers in Florida, it was a golden opportunity for the Ashley Gang.

For years, John Ashley and his felonious family had been operating three moonshine stills from the safety of their Everglades hideouts, so they were already on the wrong side of the nation's alcoholic beverage laws when Prohibition went into effect. But when booze was outlawed everywhere, they saw a chance to increase their income by getting into the business of bootlegging.

And with typical Ashley ruthlessness, they figured they could increase their income even more by eliminating the competition and taking their profits as well.

By 1921, when the president-elect was vacationing just down the coast from their hideout, the Ashleys were making a regular seventy-
mile run across the
Straits of Florida between Palm Beach County and West End in the British-owned Bahamas. There, they were loading up their small skiff with booze and hauling it back across open water to their lair.

The most obvious—and probably most popular—indication of Florida's indifference to the restrictions of the rest of the world was the state's unofficial attitude toward enforcing Prohibition. Supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment—including Miami's most famous resident, Bryan—had hailed it as a noble measure that would save the nation from perdition, but millions of otherwise law-
abiding Americans paid no attention to it. They bought their booze from bootleggers at outrageous prices, and the fact that they'd broken the law to get it only seemed to enhance their pleasure as they hoisted their glasses.

In Miami, Prohibition was regarded more as a challenging inconvenience than the law of the land. Every day, bootleggers in small, speedy boats—many of them powered by military airplane engines left over from the war—left Miami and other towns on the state's southeast coast and made the run to the Bahamas to buy whiskey. They could make their choices and have a free lunch while their purchases were loaded. By nightfall, the whiskey was being poured into glasses and sold for huge profits in Florida.

Selling booze to Florida bootleggers was such an economic boon to the Bahamas that in 1920 the islands' governor brought some unexpected good news to his legislature. Their worries about an expected $150,000 budget shortfall had been completely erased. So much whiskey was being hauled over to Florida that sales taxes had created a $500,000 surplus in the Bahamian treasury.