The Last Gasp

by Scott Christianson

  36. G. A. Roush, ed., The Mineral Industry: Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade during 1920 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1921), p. 314; Alan Lougheed, “The Anatomy of an International Cartel: Cyanide, 1807–1927,” Prometheus 19(1) (2001): 4, 9.

  37. “Head of German Society Is Held for Activities,” Syracuse Herald, July 12, 1918. Today DEGUSSA remains best known for its manufacture of Zyklon-B, the poison gas used to exterminate millions of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. In 1922 DEGUSSA took over DEGESCH (Deutsche Gessellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung, or the German Society for Pest Control). DEGESCH was the successor to the War Ministry’s Technical Committee for Pest Control headed by Fritz Haber, which had concentrated on methods of killing lice in trenches, barracks, and submarines, and set the safety rules and standards for use of various pesticides. In 1920 DEGESCH had been converted into a corporation owned by a consortium of chemical firms. Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chapter 1.

  38. Alan Lougheed, “Anatomy of an International Cartel,” p. 3.

  39. Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity, p. 6. See also K. D. Friedberg and H. A. Schwarzkopf, “The Exhalation of Hydrocyanic Acid in Cyanide Poisoning” (in German), Archives of Toxicology 24 (1969): 235–42.

  40. “Alien Enemies’ Property Sold,” LAT, July 19, 1919.

  41. Ibid. “Wants Judge Impeached: Ex-Federal Tax Employee Accuses Meekins, Once Miller’s Counsel,” NYT, May 8, 1926.

  42. Arthur Altridge, “Sidelights on Alien Property,” The Searchlight on Congress 71(1) (June 30, 1922): 19. Miller resigned as alien property custodian in 1925, and in 1927 he was convicted of defrauding the U.S. government.

  43. Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Company circular from 1916, reprinted in G. A. Roush, ed., The Mineral Industry: Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade during 1916 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1917), p. 24.

  44. Roush, ed., The Mineral Industry: Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade during 1920, p. 314.

  45. American Cyanamid, Annual Reports to the Board of Directors, 1916–21, Princeton University Library; Roush, ed., The Mineral Industry: Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade during 1920, p. 314.

  46. Ibid., 313.

  47. Ibid., p. 314.

  48. “German Firm Seeking Duty,” LAT, February 14, 1921, p. 15.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid.

  51. R. W. Hodgson, “How Fumigation Methods for Fighting Scale Have Changed,” LAT, April 3, 1921.

  52. “Los Angeles Buyers Invading Nevada,” LAT, November 7, 1920.

  53. Guy Louis Rocha, “An Outline of Capital Punishment in Nevada,” Nevada State Archives and Records, Nevada State Prison Inmate Case Files, updated on September 26, 1997.

  54. The abolitionist states to that point had included Michigan (1846–), Rhode Island (1852–), Wisconsin (1853–), Iowa (1872–78), Maine (1876–83, 1887–), Colorado (1897–1901), Kansas (1907–35), Minnesota (1911–), Washington (1913–19), Oregon (1914–20), North Dakota (1915–), South Dakota (1915–39), Tennessee (1915–16), Arizona (1916–18), and Missouri (1917–19). Margaret Cahalan, Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850–1984 (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 1986), p. 13.

  55. Nevada State Journal, February 8, 1924. Curran was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, on June 26, 1886. His father was a prominent Boston attorney, and he was educated in Massachusetts, at the Ecole Alsacienne in France, and at Boston University School of Law, where he studied with Lothrop Stoddard (the white supremacist author and agitator against the “yellow peril”) and graduated in 1909. Curran was admitted to the bar in Arizona but suffered ill health and moved to Nevada and California before returning to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where he served as district attorney of Lander County. After practicing law in Reno and other locations in 1920, he served as secretary to Senator Key Pittman (D-Nevada) during the Cox-Harding campaign. In 1922 he moved to practice law in Fresno, California, and he later served as deputy district attorney of Los Angeles. See Lilbourne Alsip Winchell, History of Fresno County; the San Joaquin Valley (Fresno: A. H. Cawston, 1933), p. 246. During World War I he had joined the army but failed to qualify for the aviation branch. Governor Scrugham Papers, Nevada State Archives.

  56. Las Vegas Age, March 19, 1921; PR, March 25, 1921; NSJ, March 29, 1921; CCDA, January 6, 1923; REG, January 18, 1924; Loren B. Chan, “Example for the Nation: Nevada’s Execution of Gee Jon,” NHSQ 18(2) (Summer 1975): pp. 95, 104.

  57. Nevada Legislature, Assembly, Journal of the Assembly, 30th sess. (1921): 247, 301, 314, Nevada Legislature, Senate, Journal of the Senate, 30th sess. (1921): 255, 257, 262, 272; Nevada Statutes (1921): ch. 246; CCDA, March 29, 1921.

  58. From a two-page, unpublished typescript in the Nevada State Prison Papers, File 2320, Nevada State Archives.

  59. “Nevada to Use Gas to Execute Criminals,” NYT, March 18, 1921; “Signs Nevada Law for Lethal Execution,” NYT, March 29, 1921. Boyle corresponded with Adolph Lewisohn, the famous philanthropist and mining tycoon who was president of the NCPPL based at Columbia University, about capital punishment.

  60. PR, August 19, 1921.

  61. “Painless and Yet Horrible,” NYT, January 30, 1922.

  62. “Huge Profits Charge Made,” LAT, May 4, 1922. Pittman’s background is described in Betty Glad, Key Pittman: The Tragedy of a Senate Insider (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); and Fred Israel, Nevada’s Key Pittman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). Founded in 1882, Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Company had its corporate headquarters in New York and plants in Perth Amboy and Niagara Falls. It merged with E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company in 1930.

  63. “Farm Bloc Victor in Tariff Fights,” NYT, May 30, 1922.

  64. C. R. DeLong, “The Import and Export Trade in Chemicals,” JIEC 16(1) (January 1924): 83.

  65. C. R. DeLong, “The Chemical Division of the United States Tariff Commission,” JIEC 16(6) (June 1924): 610.

  66. “Defeat of Cyanide Duty Saves Mines Big Sum,” REG, May 30, 1922.

  67. “American Cyanamid: Fourth-Largest U.S. Chemical Company,” Fortune 22 (September 1940): 66–71.

  68. Articles of Incorporation of the California Cyanide Company, Secretary of State records, book 450 at page IXX, California State Archives, Sacramento. F.W. Braun arrived in Los Angeles in the early part of the century to sell drugs and chemicals wholesale. “Men interested in developing fumigation brought their troubles to me,” he wrote. “I did not know much about cyanide, and at that time I knew nothing whatsoever of fumigation, but I believed that I knew how to push the buttons and pull the strings so as to get not only the information but the goods.” Braun Corporation, School of Fumigation… Held at Pomona, California, August 9–13, 1915 (Los Angeles: Braun Corporation, 1915), p. 43.

  69. See, e.g., “2 Die in Vain Effort to Rescue Another in Gas-Filled Ship,” NYT, July 14, 1921.

  70. See Alfred J. Hillier, “Albert Johnson, Congressman,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 36 (July 1945): 193–211.

  71. “Problems to Be Attacked by the Conference,” LD 71 (November 12, 1921): 1. See also Will Irwin, The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense (New York: Dutton, 1921).

  72. “Hears War Gas Is Made Abroad,” NYT, May 25, 1922. See also Kenneth D. Ackerman, Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007); Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

  73. “Our Army Drops Gas as Treaty Provides,” NYT, July 13, 1922.

  74. U.S. Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 67th Cong., 2nd sess., 1922, 62, part 5: 4230.

  75. “Urges Free Speech for Army Officers,” NYT, March 25, 1923; Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat,” pp. 162, 199.

  76. “Says Fries’s Critics Are Led by Moscow,” NYT, April 5, 1923; “Lions Back Fries’s Slap at Pacifists,” WP, A
pril 5, 1923; “Fries’ Stand on Defense Endorsed by Lions Club,” WP, April 12, 1923.

  77. “Anti-War Council Denies Red Taint,” NYT, April 14, 1923.

  78. See Lucia Maxwell, “Spider Web Chart: The Socialist-Pacifist Movement in America Is an Absolutely Fundamental and Integral Part of International Socialism,” DI 24 (March 22, 1924): 11.

  79. Daniel P. Jones, “American Chemists and the Geneva Protocol,” Isis 71(3) (September 1980): 433–35. The single most influential article was Winford Lee Lewis, “Poison Gas and the Pacifists,” The Independent 115 (1925): 289–91, 308. Lewis was famous as the inventor of lewisite, which was said to be the most deadly weapon in the history of mankind at the time.

  80. Jones, “American Chemists and the Geneva Protocol,” p. 428.

  81. “Arms Conference Interests Chemists,” LAT, November 28, 1921.

  4. STAGING THE WORLD’S FIRST GAS EXECUTION

  1. State of Nevada v. Gee Jon and Hughie Sing, Justice Court of Mina Township, Mineral County, Nevada, September 9, 1921, pp. 5, 19–20, 22, 28, 30, 39, located in criminal case file no. 56, District Court Clerk, Mineral County, Hawthorne, Nevada. Barbara Parker Weber, “Lethal Gas Execution: Nevada’s Daring Experiment,” Nevada Appeal (Tahoe), February 7, 1999.

  2. Loren B. Chan, “Example for the Nation: Nevada’s Execution of Gee Jon,” NHSQ 18(2) (Summer 1975): 91–92, 102. See also Stanford M. Lyman, The Asian in the West, Social Sciences and Humanities Publication no. 4 (Reno and Las Vegas: Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada System, 1970), pp. 123–25. From 1912 to 1923 California newspapers carried hundreds of articles about tong fighting activities.

  3. Although the term “yellow peril” had been around since the nineteenth century, it had particular resonance in the American West in the 1920s, after the publication of Lothrop Stoddard’s screed The Rising Tide of Color against World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920). In 1913 and 1922 California passed alien land laws that were originally aimed at the Japanese but later amended in 1923 and 1927 to cover all Asians. Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Montana also enacted similar laws. As aliens under these measures, Chinese were ineligible for citizenship and denied the right to buy or own land. These laws were not declared unconstitutional until 1947. The 1924 Immigration Act would bar any Chinese women from entering the United States for permanent residence.

  4. Nevada, Seventh Judicial District Court, County of Mineral, State of Nevada v. Gee Jon and Hughie Sing, trial transcript, 28030 November, December 1–3, 1921, pp. 212–14; NSJ, August 31, 1921; Confidential file no. 2321, Nevada State Prison, Nevada State Archives, Carson City (hereafter NSP-2321); Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 92, 103.

  5. Confidential file no. 2320, Nevada State Prison, Nevada State Archives, Carson City (hereafter NSP-2320).

  6. Chan, “Example for the Nation.” 90–106.

  7. TT, January 26, 1924.

  8. CCDA, January 26, 1922; “To Die by Lethal Gas,” NYT, January 28, 1922.

  9. CCDA, January 26, 1921; January 27, 1921; March 29, 1921; February 27, 1922.

  10. “Painless and Yet Horrible,” NYT, January 30, 1922.

  11. The State of Nevada v. Gee Jon and Hughie Sing, 46 Nev. 418, 211 P. 276, 30 A.L.R. 1443 (1923).

  12. Raymond Hartmann, “The Use of Lethal Gas in Nevada Executions,” St. Louis Law Review 8 (April 1923): 168.

  13. Chan, “Example for the Nation”; NSJ, July 6, 1923; July 8, 1923; Nevada, Attorney General, Biennial Report, 1923–1924, p. 196.

  14. CCDA, July 27, 1923; August 14, 20–21, and 31, 1923; September 5 and 29, 1923; NSJ, August 21, 1923; Chan, “Example for the Nation.”

  15. William Kennett to Jay H. White, December 27, 1923, case no. 2547, Nevada Supreme Court Clerk, Carson City; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 96–97, 104.

  16. CCDA, January 16, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 97, 104.

  17. REG, January 11 and 22, 1924; NSJ, January 25, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation.”

  18. Chartered in 1919, the American Legion had already grown to become a formidable force in American politics, contributing to the formation of the Veterans Bureau (later known as the Department of Veterans Affairs) and spearheading the campaign against “the Reds,” or Communists. In 1923 its national commander, Alvin Owsley, publicly endorsed the new movement of fascism that had been started by Benito Mussolini.

  19. REG, August 19, 1922. Scrugham’s career is described in A. D. Hopkins and K. J. Evans, “James Scrugham (1880–1945), Governor on Wheels,” in Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas (Las Vegas: Stephens Press, 2005). Some of Dickerson’s gubernatorial papers are housed in the Nevada State Archives.

  20. NSJ, January 8, 1924.

  21. REG, January 3, 1924.

  22. NSJ, January 8, 1924.

  23. LAT, February 1, 1924.

  24. RGJ, March 13, 1977.

  25. Biennial Report of the Warden of the Nevada State Prison, 1923–1924, p. 3, in Governor Scrugham Papers, Nevada State Archives; (Canandaigua, NY) Daily Messenger, February 8, 1924.

  26. As for the prison staff handling this type of cyanide: (Elmira, NY) Chronicle-Telegram, January 22, 1924. Prison staff and witnesses were doubtless aware that at that time hydrocyanic acid was being used extensively as a fumigant to destroy insects and rodents, and this usage had very recently been studied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine the quantity of the fumigant that was absorbed and retained in various foodstuffs. Results of the investigation were given in Department Bulletin 1149, which had just been issued. The report did not offer any conclusions as to the safety of fumigated foods. See “Hydrocyanic Acid as a Fumigant for Pests,” (Bedford, PA) Gazette, December 28, 1923. Given the federal government’s condoning of HCN for fumigation of foodstuffs, it might appear there did not seem to be any lasting residual danger from HCN contamination of the death house or its equipment.

  27. “Condemns Delays in Execution,” LAT, January 29, 1924.

  28. Letter from Major Charles R. Alley to Attorney General, State of Nevada, January 30, 1924, Nevada State Prison Files, file 2320, Nevada State Archives.

  29. Fallon Standard, January 16, 1924.

  30. (Elmira, NY) Chronicle Telegram, January 22, 1924.

  31. CCDA, January 25, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 98–99, 104. See also “Gas Execution Is Inaugurated,” LAT, February 9, 1924.

  32. REG, January 28, 1924. Hughie would remain imprisoned at Carson City until his parole in 1938. Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 99, 104–5.

  33. CCDA, February 4–5, 1924; NSJ, February 5, 1924. Two warden-appointed medical doctors, Dr. John E. Pickard of Reno and Dr. Anthony Huffaker of Carson City, the prison physician, examined Gee and declared him sane. Young China, February 7, 1924.

  34. Gilbert Schenk, “Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide for the Control of Insects Infesting Grain in Storage Bins,” in Research in the Development of Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide (n.p.: American Cyanamid Co., 1926), pp. 3–41.

  35. NSJ, March 9, 1924. Two years earlier Water Heerdt in Germany had perfected a process for packing the volatile hydrogen cyanide in its principal product, a fumigant called Zyklon, in tins filled with small absorbent pellets. These stabilized the chemical until the cans were opened and the pellets were dumped, at which point the contents vaporized and would serve to block the transfer of oxygen to any warm-blooded organism in the vicinity. This product, known as Zyklon-B, amounted to a major technological breakthrough and rapidly enjoyed commercial success. Zyklon-B would have been safer to transport and easier to use in the Nevada execution because it didn’t require the additional step of dipping into an acid solution, but Zyklon-B was not available on the West Coast.

  36. REG, January 26, 1924; NSJ, March 9, 1924.

  37. REG, January 26, 1924.

  38. CCDA, January 15 and 28, 1924; SFCP, January 22, 1924; REG, January 26, 1924; February 5, 1924; Chan, “Example for the Nation,” pp. 99, 105. In
1923–24 American Cyanamid conducted a series of experiments in an attempt to use liquefied HCN to fumigate grain elevators, but it proved difficult to get the poison to distribute evenly throughout the bin of grain. American Cyanamid Co., Research in the Development of Cyanogas Calcium Cyanide, pp. 3–41.

  39. NSJ, February 5, 1924.

  40. NSJ, February 7, 1924.

  41. Ibid.

  42. “Ready with Death Gas,” LAT, February 7, 1924. The men who quit were identified as Harry James, John Gulling, Ed Kofed, and Richard Savage. NSJ, February 7, 1924.

  43. “Nevada Will Execute Slayer by Gas Today,” NYT, February 8, 1924; NSJ, February 8, 1924; Chung Sai Yat Po, February 8, 1924.