Boosters argued that the fans were willing to pay more to have Solomon and other out-of-town stars to play for their team. However, this seems unlikely in view of the Tanks- Silents game for the "state championship," during which more people watched the game from outside the park rather than pay the higher ticket price for the game. Booster used the nameless "fans" to represent a few men and attritbuted this minority's desire to the majority. The minority favored hiring the out-of-town player or increasing the cost of attending a game, however, this was a minority with money.
While The Morning Irontonian contended that the Tanks were the community's team, this was only true in a loose sense, no one owned the Tanks. Lambert could represent the team, the community could support the team, the Chamber of Commerce could help fund the team, but the players reserved for themselves the control of the team and they decided its fate by voting on important issues. This began to change when the team accepted money form Ironton's businessmen. The three men from outside the team who tried to recruit the Columbus player exemplified this shift even though the Tanks voted not to accept the services of Solomon.
The remaining three games of the Tanks' 1924 season helped to prove the players' position, but not conclusively. The Tanks beat the Cinnicinati Potters and the Huntington Boosters, but tied the Portsmouth Smoke House team in a scoreless game. The Morning Irontonian declared that the Tanks played a "mediocre brand of ball" and that this would not suffice for a club upholding the community's good name.
The club's play was not good enough for the business that the Tanks' were becoming. The terms of the Ironton- Portsmouth game were made public. Portsmouth's managment orginally wanted a $700 guarntee, claiming that this was the among normally given to a visiting team. Lambert offered Portsmouth $400. The two sides compromised with Portsmouth receiving a $400 guarantee and 40 percent of any gate receipts over 1600 paid tickets. About three thousand fans filled the bleachers at Beechwood Park in driving rain and cold winds to watch the Tanks lose.
The Morning Irontonian declared that the Thanksgiving day game against the Canton Bulldogs, one of the most prominent of the early professional football teams, would be the first real test of the Tanks during the 1925 season. However, the Bulldogs did not play the Ironton team that established a good reputation for the Tanks; rather, it played and defeated a team consisting of players recruited from outside the community especially for the game. For this game the Tanks imitated the behavior of which its opponents were so fond; it "loaded up" with outside talent from throughout the state and tri-state to replace injured players. The team that the Tank player wrote a letter to defend in 1924 was slowly losing its spirit as the future was decided more with money than with words and arguments.
The willingness of local businessmen to spend as much as $4,000, which was the cost of the Tanks-Bulldog game, can be partially explained by the emergence of professional football as an accepted sport during the 1920's. Other business trends of the time influenced the booster's decisions. In his examination of Amercian advertising, Roland March argued that advertising agents were more often influenced by the secondary audience than their primary one. March and's work is useful in examining the role Ironton newspapers had in the community. For advertisers, the secondary audience consisted of other advertising agents, their bosses, their clients, and the critics of advertising; their primary audience was the new economically powerful faceless masses who were to purchase the products.
Such an analysis of Ironton newspapers allows for insight in to the way the Tanks fit into the community's culture. It is probable that the Ironton papers covered the Tanks extensively because they recognized the popularity of the team and hoped to capitalize on this popularity through increased sales and increased advertising revenue. The number of advertisements in the Ironton newspapers indicate that a healthy percentage of their revenue came from advertising. The Ironton paper's secondary audience was the local merchants who bought advertisements. The Ironton newspaper's editors and writers were dependant on both the primary and secondary audiences, but the newpaper writer found himself or herself more influenced by the middle class and business people than with the "average Joe" who often remained an abstraction. Ironton papers often mentioned elites by name but identified other people as "fans," "fanettes" "locals," "boys" "girls" "sweeties" and similar labels.
The Tanks' function in the community went beyond the martial rhetoric of defended honor; the Team was, in the minds of Ironton's elite, good advertising for the town. This is not to say that the Tanks was a financial assest to Itonton. The team did not employ a significant number of people and did not hold any property which the city could tax. Eventhough fans came from out of town to attend the games, there is no evidence that they spent any extra money in Ironton or even that Ironton businesses took steps to entice these fans. On at least one occasion, Ironton merchants considered closing for a special Armistice Day game. The rest of the Tanks' games were on Sunday, when many of Ironton's stores closed; and the club played the big game on Thanksgiving Day, which also meant a limited opportunity for fans to spend their money.
The high school team, the other potential rival played on Friday evenings or on Saturdays. Furthermore, the Tanks and the Ironton High School team shared a close relationship, often having the same coach and sometimes skirmishing against one another. Even on Sundays the Tanks shared Beechwood park with the church softball teams and other althetic organizations, so the Tanks could have shared the Beechwood park with the high school teams and perhaps attracted more attention.
If Ironton businesses were to profit from the Tanks, the logical assumption is that this profit came form associating the team's good name with business establishments. However, Ironton was a small enough community so that every business could, if their proprietor wished, associate themselves with the team and therefore limit the competitive advantage provided by this form of advertising. The Tanks did not have a copyrighted trademark, which made it easier for proprietors to exploit the popularity of the team and the game in their advertisements. Merchants used football in general in advertisements that appeared in the sports page and thus drew upon the popularity of the Tanks.
This line of reasoning assumes the rationality of the Ironton businessmen, which was not necessarily the case. March and argues that business people often accepted and kept particular advertisements for the benefit of their ego, rather than for the benefit of their profit margin. This seems to have been the case of Ironton. These middle- class businessmen were in a position to hinder the developement of professional sport--as happened in some communities--but in Ironton they chose to encourage the professionalization of the game. Professionalization was a way both to participate in an overcome the "bifurcation of society" that meant locality was less important in a growing national culture and economy as well as a way to shape the public culture within the community. The Tanks became a way for the more affluent but less mobile upper and middle class to assert the importance and autonomy of locality.
Even though Ironton's relative economic and social position was in decline, the Tanks continued to search for a higher caliber of competition. When the Tanks beat the Murray City Tigers by a score of only 6 - 0, The Morning Irontonian was ready to offer a series of excuses for the poor showing. The primary complaint against the Murray City eleven was that the team broke a "gentlemen's agreement" by violating its list of eligible players and consequently, coach Davies was unprepared for the team fielded by Murray City. This argument by the sportswriter does not ring true because of the instability of the Tanks' normal schedule. It was not uncommon for one team to cancel, forcing the Tanks' to seek an opponent on short notice. Also, the papers did not normally discuss any special preparation for upcoming games except hard work and, perhaps, improving the passing game.
The close score in the Murray City game allowed The Morning Irontonian to develop the drama for the following game against the Louisville Brecks. Professional football had made its way yo Kentucky by 1910, and Louisville boasted a number of semi-professional teams. The Brecks was one of these teams, and in 1922 the team joined the National Football League. When taking on the Tanks in 1924, the Brecks had "a man sized task on their hands" and the Tanks' poor showing against Murray City showed that all was not right in the iron town. Even the Tanks "staunchest followers...whispered" among themselves " Our team will be easy prey for the stellar Louisville eleven." The Morning Irontonian assured its readers (and the doubters) that football was not croquet and that the weather had been entirely too hot for such a manly game as football, especially when the Murray City boys brought "Ohio State University" to play in its place. The Ironton paper found the Murray City team's use of college players, a common practice in the early days of professional football, to be especially unfair since Worthington Scott, "youthful flash of the Ohio State Freshman team" could not play for Ironton because of injury.
The local newspapers reported that a "we want opposition" contingent of fans were delighted to be facing a team of the Breck's caliber. The local boosters either created or reported a conflict as a way to increase the drama of the the forthcoming game. The "we want opposition" fans wer sorely disappointed by the National Football League's representative; the Tanks beat the Brecks by a score of 41-0 and did not allow the Louisville club to make a single first down.
Perhaps Ironton's best chance to produce a stable and successful football team was to convince the players to become committed to the community. Perhaps hoping to end the debate over the nature of the team, the businessmen of Ironton assumed control of the Tanks through the Beechwood Staduim Committee (BSC) in April 1926. BSC was compromised of the "various committees appointed by the clubs and societies to consider the Beechwood stadium project." This group established a permanent committee to oversee the building and maintenance of a stadium. The committee funded the stadium by selling approximately 300 stocks to raise $30,000, with the debt to be paid from the gate receipts. Many members'of the Committee said that they were willing to buy five to ten shares, with each share costing $100. Thus, the Committee members' potential commitment to the stadium was $500 to $1000 each. The BSC demonstrated the political power of it membership when it convinced the local school board to make available land for the stadium, with the agreement that once the BSC paid for the stadium, the stadium would be turned over to the Ironton Board of Education.
For the most part, BSC members were professionals or proprietors who had an established clientele and family ties to the community. With the building of the stadium these people had avested interest in the Tanks. The BSC wed the developing institution of the Tanks to the community through itself and not through the players, as the team had previously done. After the BSC tool over the team, The Ironton Evening Tribune commented that the "The Tanks are more than a city institution now. They have branched out and are now drawing the attention of the folks from througout the state and even the Middle West". The Tanks were now becoming a part of the broader society and less of a parochial team, which was similar to the goal that Ironton's elite wanted for the city itself.
The Tanks' transition to the status of a managed team was turbulent. In 1926, the Tanks' management had its first contract dispute with the players, as some players refused to sign the BSC's contracts and were not satisfied with the method of picking players. The BSC consisted of more members then the team had players, so the BSC selected another committee consisting of players Coach Winters (who replaced Davies when he left the team for a short time), Bill Brooks, Olin Smith, Andy Andrews, Kermy Frecka, and Clarence Poole to select the 1926 Tanks team. The committee to choose the players became deadlocked, and Manager Lambert was chosen to cast the deciding votes as to who became Tanks. Local men found fewer positions on the team to compete for because the recruited professionals chosen by the Committee already filled many positions.
Institutionalization, however, did not mean the end of conflict as some local players did not like the new BSC contracts and refused to sign. A writer for The Tribune issued a poorly veiled threat when it reminded it readers that the National and American football leagues had recently cut their rosters. Consequently, there were available many "good men who were not quite able to make the grade at the top of the profession so a single wire would bring in a hundred athletes if they needed." These players would be happy to play for the $50 a game the BSC offered. "The Management wants all the Tanks to sign and play," The Tribune asserted, "but if they don't then it is nobody's fault connected with the team, and the fans will shout about as loudly and lustily for anyone who might be selected to fill a berth as they ever did for the original. Fans are that way." Regardless of the tension that The Tribune reported, the paper still maintained the contract dispute was a minor issue that the fans had magnified because they knew the businessmen would act as a "safety valve."
The Tribune writer reported that the "business folks of Ironton" supported Coach Winters, and that the BSC gave control of the team's day-to-day activities to Winters and Lambert. The "petty" matters, such as relationship with the players, that might arise during the preparation of the team did not interest the business people, instead "the business interests of the stadium" concerned them. They believed the coach and the manager best guarded those interests. In other words, the team had to win to turn a profit.
The BSC placed a local businessman in charge of the team. The committee replaces lambert, a clerk, with McMahon, the owner or an automobile repair garage and taxi service. MaMahon managed the arrangement of the increasignly more expensive games and the complex recuiting. Significantly, the Tanks still paid for advertisements in The Ironton Tribune even though the sports editor was a stockholder of the team. Traditionally, local businesses and political parties often bought advertisements and placed printing orders with local newspapers in order to subsidize the papers.
The Tanks needed to attract fans to pay the bills. P.A. Burke, sports editor of The Ironton Tribune, a member of the the Beechwood Stadium Committee, and a shareholder in the Stadium, showed a keen interest in the attendance figures for the games. From 1926 on, the Tanks usually attracted between 2,000 and 3,000 fans in a stadium that seated just over 3,000 people. While Burke often urged more people to attend the games, it should be noted that the stadium was often filled to near capacity representing approxiamately 14 to 20 percent of the population of Ironton.
The BSC members undoubtedly hoped that fans would cheer for out-of-town professionals when in 1928 the second archetypical Tankman arrived from the University of Nebraska. The recruiting of Glen Presnell showed that the Tanks' management ws firmly committed to recruiting quality professional and collegiate players from throughout the country, then making them "town boys." Presnell, and the collegiate players who came to Ironton with him, formed the nucleus of a new team. Presnell had just graduated from the University of Nebraska where he had played basketball for two seasons, started at halfback for three years, was a New York Sun all-American and a Walter Camp all-American second string selection, who took part in the Shrine All-Star game. Presnell earned $150 per game to play and coach and $1,600 per year to teach school. The New York Giants offered Presnell $150 to $175 per game, but he turned down the Giants offer because it was only for three months and the Tanks offered comparable money to play football in addition to the teaching position. Since McMahon and the BSC lacked the financial resources to pay someone enough money to be only a professional athlete, they compensated for this shortcoming by offering the prospective players jobs within the community that would allow them the flexibilty to play football. In short, the BSC members blurred the distinction between public and private to transform the Tanks into a successful business.
With the new professionalized Tankmen came a new batch of high school coaches for most of the schools in Lawrence County, demonstarting the political influence of the members of the BSC. One prospective player wrote to McMahon, "My wife is not a school teacher, but thank you for wanting to place her in the school there." Although his wife was not a teacher, the player wanted a position in the school system because it was the largest school. Besides teaching postions, McMahon offered one man a job on the local newpaper and another one employment for $20 a week in a men's clothing store. McMahon usually offered a player $50 to $150 per game; the prepondance of offers fell in the higher range.
McMahon's recruiting efforts and the new business of the Tanks did not receive universal approval, as the BSC used public property and government resources to further the interest of the BSC and the Tanks. During 1929, Mr. Claud Danniel of Proctorville, Mr. Otis Dillon of Willow Wood, and Mrs. Morris Forgey of South point ran for election to the County Board of Education. They charged that members of the Stadium Committee (now called Stadium Association) had helped to bring about the hiring of Tanks members as teachers in the county high schools. They charged that hiring football players had benefited the Stadium Association rather than the school system and the people of Lawrence County.]
The Stadium Association issued a statement defending its actions. The Association argued that no football player had been hired as a teacher at the expense of a local teacher and that it was normal practice for the school board to hire teachers from outside the county. The Association claimed that its actions were motivated by a patriotic duty to Ironton High School (they failed to mention the other high schools in the county) and by a desire to see "clean athletics" at the high schools. Furthermore, they said that no Association member had profited from investment in the Beechwood Stadium; in fact, the members had lost money.
While the Stadium Association ignored the issues raised in the election of 1929, Presnell coached the Tanks during the 1928 and 1929 seasons. While the 1928 season was a success, the following one was the Tanks' only losing season. The two defeats at the hands of the newly formed Portsmouth Spartans were particulary painful. The Portsmouth Spartans joined the National Football League and later, after they were bought and moved, became the Detroit Lions. According to Portsmouth's newspaper, the formation of the Spartans was Portsmouth's oppurtunity to rise out of mediocrity and into the football elect as Portsmouths' population grew rapidly.
The Tanks' financial situation mirrored the ebb and flow of the club's success on the field and the beginnings of the Great Depression in Ironton. At the conclusion of the 1928 season, the Tanks' receipts had decreased by one-half from the previous year, perhaps a symptom of the same disgruntlement raised in the election. The Association's treasurer credited the decrease in revenue to a drop in attendance at the high school games (which were also played in the stadium) and to the fact that six out of eleven of the Tanks' games were away. Still, the team paid $2,490 in stadium rent and $876 in dividends.
Apparently, the Tanks' treasurer had underestimated the team's financial difficulties because after the 1929 season, the Stadium Association reported that the Tanks were $1,800 in debt and that no stock payments would be made. The Association proposed selling the Beechwood Stadium to the School Board at a loss of $10,000. The School Board was not interested in purchasing the stadium, especially one built on school board property that the school system had guaranteed access to. Again, only this time unsuccessfully, the BSC attempted to use public property for their benefit, if not necessarily the wishes of the "fans."
To alleviate the financial crisis, the Stadium Association decided the team should stop using weekend players and use more full time players. To achieve this end, the team hired Earle "Greasy" Neale as head coach to allow Presnell to concentrate on playing. Neale had been a succesful coach and player at West Virginia Wesleyan College, was a seasoned coach and athlete who had played on the 1919 Cincinnati Reds baseball team, and had coached the 1922 Washington and Jefferson College football team to the Rose Bowl. Neale was also the future coach fo the Philedelphia Eagles. Neale led the 1930 Tanks to a 7 and 3 season, which included a victory over the Portsmouth Spartans. The three loses were more than overshadowed by the Tanks' victories over the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears.
Perhaps the Association's stragety of letting Presnell concentrate on playing was a wise one. During the Tanks- Giants Armistice Day game, Presnell was again playing big time football. He rose to the occasion as he rallied the Tanks to a come from behind victory in the final minutes of play and handed the Giants its first exhibition loss. Another reason for the Tanks' victory was that the Giants played cautiously to avoid injuries during the exhibition game, while the Tanks played aggresively.
The Giants caution on the field in an exhibition game during the play offs was understandable. At this time, professional football was still not firmly established and teams needed various ways to raise both capital and prestige; therefore, major professional teams like the Giants barnstormed the country playing small town teams. Still, this did not detract from the quality of football played by the Tanks. Two weeks later, the club beat the Chicago Bears in another exhibition game.
Naturally enough, Irontonians took pride in beating the Bears and the Giants. These games brought attention to Ironton from people in major cities; they also brought more attention to Presnell and some of the other new recruits who were shortly hired away form the Tanks. In 1931, Glen Presnell and other Tankmen joined the Portsmouth Spartans (which eventually became the Detroit Lions) and the National Football League. In 1931, Ironton joined with teams from Ashland, Huntington, and Charleston, West Virginia, to form the Tri-State Football League. Once again, Irontonians focused their attention to the tri-state area.
It is ironic that the fame the Tanks brought and the boosters desired for Ironton also highlighted Ironton's economic limitations and threatened the harmony of the community. During the 1920's, athletic competitions became mass entertainment; therefore, to be successful, the club had to have access to mass media, including radio and newspapers with large circulation. For a 1928 game at Akron, The Ironton Evening Tribune sponsored a party at the Elks Club where special phone line allowed P.A. Burke, the paper's sports editor, to report the plays of the game for the party. The limited potential of a special phone line contrasts poorly with the growing effectiveness of radio.
During the 1920's Ironton's boosters attempted to demonstrate metropolitan nature of their city. They failed, however, and had trouble reconciling Ironton remaining "local" with the requirements of competing on a national scale. Their public culture was shaped by a conflict between those who wished to have a football team to act as the city's champion. While the Tanks battled external foes, the team under went internal changes. The team took on greater financial responsibility, and this eventually proved to be it's downfall. As Ironton's boosters transformed the Tanks from a team composed on local talent to a team composed of outside professional talent, they attempted to disguise the transition in the public culture with a rhetoric of heroism, inclusiveness and civic virtue.
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