Description:
This photo looking west down Main Street from Broadway shows what appears to be a typical day at the busiest intersection in the city. However the hubbub pictured here was generated by the arrival of over 5000 cattlemen and their wives to Oklahoma City for the annual convention of the Panhandle-Southwestern Stockmen’s Association March 3-5, 1914. Special trains brought attendees from all over the southwest and as far away as Kansas City and Chicago. So many came that the Daily Oklahomanproclaimed, “Southwestern Stockmen Take Possession of City” in one of its headlines. The visitors were welcomed by the host city and hundreds of residents donated the use of their automobiles to provide sightseeing tours of the proud metropolis while the women’s clubs escorted visiting wives on shopping junkets around town. Conventioneers attended to the business of the association during the day and at night were entertained by various balls, concerts and other high culture activities sponsored by local women’s clubs. On the ranchers’ last night in town, however, a “smoker” (what we would call a stag party today) was held at the city auditorium and a dancer named “Queenie” was brought in from Chicago. Queenie performed so well that the men called for several encores and by the end of the evening Queenie left the stage with fewer clothes than when she began – none in fact. A spy was present that night, though, and the next morning the local women’s clubs were made aware of the event at an ad hoc meeting at the Carnegie Library. They decided to call for a federal investigation into the “gross insult thrust at the womanhood of our city” by “importing a woman for immoral purposes”. Nothing came of the federal probe, but it can be assumed a number of husbands in the city became acquainted with sleeping on the couch for several weeks that spring of 1914!
FURTHER READING
“Club Women Ask A Federal Probe,” Daily Oklahoman, March 8, 1914.
“Offices Opened for Big Meeting of S. W. Cowmen,” Daily Oklahoman, March 1, 1914, 1.
“Southwestern Stockmen Take Possession of City,” Daily Oklahoman, March 3. 1914, 3.
Stout, Joseph, A. Oklahoma Cattlemen: An Association History. Stillwater, Okla.: Oklahoma State University Press, 1981.