In a 1921 lecture to military officers at the General Staff College in Washington, DC, [General Amos Fries] lauded the Chemical Warfare Service for its wartime achievements. The US entered the chemical arms race “with no precedents, no materials, no literature and no personnel.” The 1920s became a golden age of tear gas. Fries capitalized on the US military’s enthusiastic development of chemical weapons during the war, turning these wartime technologies into everyday policing tools. As part of this task Fries developed an impressive PR campaign that turned tear gas from a toxic weapon into a “harmless” tool for repressing dissent.
The trade press provided the first and largest forum for the spread of the tear gas gospel. In the November 6, 1921, issue of Gas Age Record, Theo M. Knappen profiled Fries, the “dynamic chief” of the Chemical Warfare Service. Knappen wrote that Fries had:
“…given much study to the question of the use of gas and smokes in dealing with mobs as well as with savages, and is firmly convinced that as soon as officers of the law and colonial administrators have familiarized themselves with gas as a means of maintaining order and power there will be such a diminution of violent social disorders and savage uprising as to amount to their disappearance … The tear gases appear to be admirably suited to the purpose of isolating the individual from the mob spirit … he is thrown into a condition in which he can think of nothing but relieving his own distress.”
Under such conditions an army disintegrates and a mob ceases to be; it becomes a blind stampede to get away from the source of torture … Nobody can travel very fast in a narrow street or in the midst of obstacles with streams of burning tears flowing from his eyes … An advantage of the milder form of gas weapons in dealing with a mob is that the responsible officer need not hesitate to use his weapons.
In the future, Knappen predicted, when breaking up a demonstration,tear gas “will be the easy way and the best way.”
This early promotional writing struck a careful balance between selling pain and promising harmlessness. Its psychological impact set tear gas apart from bullets: It could demoralize and disperse a crowd without live ammunition. Through sensory torture, tear gas could force people to retreat. These features gave tear gas novelty value in a market where only the billy club and bullets were currently available.
Officers could disperse a crowd with “a minimum amount of undesirable publicity.” Instead of lasting traces of blood and bruises, tear gas evaporates from the scene. Its damage promised to be so much less pronounced on the surface of the skin or in the lens of the camera […]