10. The Spread of Straw Hat Riots from Pittsburgh to Other Cities
Once America’s youth got it into their heads that, come every September 15th, they were entitled to yank straw hats off of people’s heads and destroy them, it became well-night impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. As many newspapers reporting on Pittsburgh’s 1910 straw hat disturbances noted, things were bound to get worse. They were right. In 1922, New York City erupted into a days-long Straw Hat Riot that Pittsburgh’s 1910 disturbances to shame. It began in Manhattan’s Mulberry Bend, when some urchins decided to ignore the September 15th cutoff. Instead, they figured that they could get a head start on their annual crime spree, and began to snatch and destroy straw hats on September 13th. The first targets of New York’s young ruffians were some dockworkers, who went about in straw hats. As seen below, it did not go as planned.
