Today -100: September 23, 1921: Of peace treaties and furtive kluxers

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) plans to lead opposition to Harding’s peace treaty with Germany, as he did against the League of Nations. He’s especially worried that the US will appoint reps to the reparations committee and other Allied commissions established by the Versailles Treaty. He wants at least Senate approval of such reps.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty may summon Ku Klux Klan leaders to Washington for interrogation. He says the US doesn’t need organizations to help enforce the law.

Missouri Gov. Arthur Hyde condemns the Klan as “furtive” and says the Masons are not involved with it.

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Today -100: September 22, 1921: Look out if you do not heed these signs

Diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia resume; a German ambassador arrives in Moscow.

NY Mayor John Hylan issues a proclamation, which he sends to businessmen, merchants, and shopkeepers, accusing “hate-crazed newspaper publishers” of attacking New York (i.e., reporting on violent police attacks on unemployed people) and advertising the city as “a paradise for criminals.” He demands that newspapers publish his proclamation in full without editing it (he puts edit in scare quotes).

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke and Mrs Elizabeth Tyler, the people effectively running the Klan since Imperial Wizard William Simmons disappeared into a bottle, resign after revelations about their arrest in 1919 on morals charges, but Simmons hasn’t yet accepted.

300 Klansmen parade through Shawnee, Oklahoma. They ensure that the local newspaper cover it by kidnapping the editor, as was the custom. The parade’s banners warn joy-riders and adulterers and lawyers, and say “Don’t follow us; it’s not safe,” “We’ll be back; be careful and be a man,” “Look out if you do not heed these signs,” “We have your taw,” “You can’t eat grub your wife made by washing.” No idea what the last two mean. Anyone?

Headline of the Day -100:  

I can think of one.

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Today -100: September 21, 1921: Of commercialized race hatred

Britain accuses Russia of going back on its promise not to conspire against the British in India and Afghanistan. The charges include some minor conspiring but are mostly about propaganda.

The NAACP asks Pres. Harding for an investigation of the KKK, possibly followed by legislation against “commercialized race hatred.” Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty plans to consider maybe possibly doing something about the Klan.

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Today -100: September 20, 1921: Of comptollers, morals charges, and fourth-degree oaths

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is Socialist candidate for NYC comptroller. Her focus would be on schools, she says.

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke and Mrs Elizabeth Tyler deny New York World charges that they were doing something wrong when they were arrested on morals charges in 1919. The two are the publicists who turned the second Klan into a thing. And they are totally fucking.

The Chicago City Council pledges to keep the Klan out of the city. The Atlanta City Council, on the other hand, responds to the revelations about the Klan by calling on the newspapers publishing them also to investigate the “4th degree oath” of “an unpatriotic and un-American secret order,” the Knights of Columbus. The oath is a fiction, made up by the Klan, in which Knights of Columbus members supposedly pledged to make war “openly and secretly” against Protestants.

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Today -100: September 19, 1921: Probably looking for Fatty imprints

Lloyd George telegrams Éamon de Valera, again saying no conference is possible unless the insistence that the Irish delegates would represent a sovereign independent Ireland be retracted.

8,000 people go to look at Virginia Rappe’s body, because what else is there to do on a Sunday?

Boston District Attorney Joseph Pelletier calls on members of the Knights of Columbus, of which he is an official, to report any KKK activity in Boston.

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Today -100: September 18, 1921: We can only recognize ourselves for what we are

In the latest in the never-ending series of telegrams between Éamon de Valera and Lloyd George, LG says if the reps of the Dáil Éireann continue to claim that Ireland is independent, he can’t meet them without it constituting “formal and official recognition” of Irish secession. And then other countries could deal with Ireland as an independent state, and we can’t be having that.

De Valera responds that he was only accepting LG’s earlier invitation to meet without pre-conditions: “We have not asked you to abandon any principle, even informally, but surely you must understand that we can only recognize ourselves for what we are.” Anyway, he points out, you’ve already had meetings with me where I went as the leader of the Irish Republic, so if that involves recognition, you’ve already done it.

This exchange has gotten so circular that I’m not actually sure which of those Sept. 17th telegrams came first.

A mob, “many of them cowboys,” invade the Maverick Theatre in Thermopolis, Wyoming, which was showing a Fatty Arbuckle film, and seize and burn the film.  (Update: evidently this is a false story, possibly a publicity stunt by the theatre.)

Headline of the Day -100:  

“It’d be super cool!” urge experts. “So freaking steampunk!” urge experts. “Just keep buying them until they stop blowing up!” urge experts.

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Today -100: September 17, 1921: Of recalls, definitely opposed positions, and masks

Enough North Dakotans have signed petitions to force a recall vote on Gov. Lynn Frazier (Non-Partisan League) as well as the attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture.

Éamon de Valera telegrams Lloyd George expressing surprise at the latter’s calling off of talks. He says the two sides’ positions being “so definitely opposed” is precisely the reason talks are required.

El Paso bans public gatherings of people wearing masks. Permits are possible for masked balls but probably not for meetings of the KKK, at whom this ordinance is obviously targeted.

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Today -100: September 16, 1921: I regard this hat-smashing as a serious piece of business

Franklin Roosevelt’s polio is admitted.His doctor says he won’t be permanently crippled. FDR is 39.

It’s not just Fatty Arbuckle’s pictures which are barred from being shown, it’s his alleged victim Virginia Rappe’s films as well. Some theatres have been using the publicity to sell tickets, although she was never exactly a major player in any movie.

Éamon de Valera wrote Lloyd George saying Dáil reps would only come to LG’s proposed conference as representatives of a sovereign state. So LG cancels the conference. 

Oh, now I understand the new Sinn Féin stress on “the Consent of the Governed™”: that was what Lloyd George said in 1916 should be the basis for peace after the Great War.

Former Illinois Gov. (and former mayor of Chicago, evidently the only person who’s been both) Edward Dunne (D) forms the National Unity Council to “develop harmony and good feeling between different classes,” or to put it another way, to fight the spread of the KKK.

Louisville bans a planned KKK meeting, and any KKK meetings in the future, and says anyone attending one will be regarded as a “law violator.” They don’t say what law.

The German government issues 10,915,500,000 new marks, which is the equivalent of some money, although it’ll be worth a lot less soon if that’s any consolation.

NY Night Court Magistrate Francis X. McQuade is cracking down on people who grab other people’s straw hats. “I regard this hat-smashing as a serious piece of business,” and he’ll send future hat-smashers to the workhouse. Straw hats are a not-after-Labor-Day thing, but not everyone can afford winter hats.

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Today -100: September 15, 1921: Of ethnic cleansing, lynchings, world courts, applications of some force, and little lords

All the black residents of Montlake, Tennessee are driven out after a black girl shoots a white girl.

Negro Gilman Holmes is lynched in Columbia, Louisiana for supposedly attacking a (male) railroad station agent during a robbery. He’s hanged from a telephone pole in front of the station; his body is shot up, then burned.

29 countries agreed to join a World Court, surpassing the minimum needed to establish it, so the League of Nations elects members of the Court, including an American, John Bassett Moore, professor at Columbia and former assistant secretary of state, despite the US not having joined.

The SF coroner’s jury charges Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle with manslaughter, claiming Virginia Rappe’s peritonitis was caused by “the application of some force.” The jury recommends authorities take steps to prevent similar affairs, “so that San Francisco shall not be made the rendezvous of the debauchee and the gangster.” Dude, the official motto of San Fran is “Welcome To The Rendezvous of the Debauchee and the Gangster.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

I believe we’re officially at the lying-about-the-polio stage.

Premiere of Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart, playing both the title character and his mother.

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