Today -100: May 14, 1913: Of the smokeless power of love, goat lymphs, censorship, and alien land

At a meeting for the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, Secretary of State Bryan exercises his wit in the interests of diplomacy, saying that the best battleship is... friendship. “Its compass is the heart, its shells carry good will; its missiles are projected by the smokeless power of love; its Captain is the Prince of Peace.” Beat that, John Kerry!

William Lorimer, who was US senator from Illinois until he was expelled in 1912 for having gotten his seat through bribery, is now revealed to be behind a fake mail-order tuberculosis cure (a lymph taken from goats).

The British Labour Party’s publishing house says that it will take over the publication of The Suffragette as a matter of principle, namely opposition to the government’s attempt to pre-censor the newspaper.

A Paterson jury convicts IWW organizer Patrick Quinlan of inciting a meeting to attack scabs, after a hung jury last week. A bunch of cops testified that he made the speech, a bunch of IWWers and a reporter that he never spoke at all. At the second trial, Quinlan did not use some anarchist witnesses who made a poor impression at the first trial when they replied no to the prosecution asking whether they believed in country, law or God. Quinlan could be sentenced to 7 years.

California Gov. Hiram Johnson responds to Sec of State Bryan with a letter explaining why he won’t veto the racist Alien Land Act, but without actually explaining it. He refers to “a very grave problem, little understood in the East” (meaning the East Coast of the US, not Asia), but fails to say what there is about a, let’s face it, rather small number of Japanese buying farmland, that constitutes a very grave problem.

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