Today -100: February 17, 1919: Of retaliation and riffraff

A Le Journal reporter who “escaped” from Petrograd says that 4 Russian grand dukes were shot without trial in retaliation for the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Senate committee investigating Russian Bolshevism hears from the American former manager of a factory in Russia, who is testifying incognito. He claims that factory workers are not Bolsheviks and that the government is “made up of the riffraff of the industrial and the peasant world.” There are many delightful 1919 words that have sadly slipped out of modern usage, and then there are words like “riffraff” that can just go fuck themselves. Mr. Anonymous brags about having armed his workers to resist government demands that his factory pay its taxes.

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