From 1900 to 1950, Oxford endured economic and social change as its population fell from 1243 to 757. The oyster boom ended because of overfishing, pollution, and lack of regulation, while boatbuilding remained a major industry and shifted from working watercraft to recreational boats. In 1904 downtown Baltimore was destroyed by fire. In 1910 Red Man's Hall was built on Morris Street as the social center of White Oxford, with an auditorium and a movie theater seating 200. By 1912 the Oxford-Bellevue ferry was a small barge pushed across the river by the little tug Vivian. During World War I, the U.S. became involved but rejected membership in the League of Nations after the armistice, and in 1917 a large canning house on Pier Street supplied troops with canned tomatoes while Oxford boatyards were busy with government wartime contracts. In 1918 a huge ice jam toppled the Benoni Point lighthouse at the mouth of the Choptank River. In 1919 Moton High School opened in Easton, giving Oxford's Black children their first opportunity for higher education. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote, the sale and manufacture of alcoholic liquor was outlawed, illegal drinking joints, home-produced alcohol, and gangsterism flourished, and Oxford's population declined to 998. The first electric lights replaced gas lamps along Morris Street in 1921, and in 1924 Congress gave Indigenous People the right to citizenship. In 1928 Albert and Downes Curtis opened their sail loft in the former Black school on Tilghman Street, and a new Oxford School for White children was built on the edge of town, now the Oxford Community Center. In 1929 the United States entered the Great Depression. In 1931 the first self-propelled diesel ferry, the Tred Avon, was launched and put into service by Captain Buck Richardson, and the Kap Dun Sailing Club was established at the foot of Morris Street and later became the Tred Avon Yacht Club. In 1932 scheduled Chesapeake Bay steamboat service eliminated its stop in Oxford. In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal, the sale of alcohol resumed, the cannery, oyster house, and crab house at the railway terminal on Pier Street employed over 150 people, and the Oxford Bank failed, costing many residents their life savings. The first Oxford Library opened in 1938, and Captain Bill Benson took over the ferry Tred Avon and remained captain for 36 years. In the 1940s, 126 vessels were built in Oxford for the war effort, and the hosiery mill on Market Street thrived as Americans stood in line for hours to buy stockings. After Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. In 1945 the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, World War II ended, and passenger train service to Oxford ended. In 1950 River View House was sold, renovated, and renamed the Robert Morris Inn.