Today -100: June 5, 1919: The modern stage is set for hell

The Senate passes the Susan B. Anthony amendment to the Constitution for women’s suffrage, 56-25. It now goes to the states for ratification.

Would anybody like to hear the opinions of clergymen on the state of the theater? Of course you would!  The Rev. William Burgess of Chicago, the director of the Illinois Vigilance Association, tells the Conference of Social Work in Atlantic City, “The modern stage is set for hell,” what with its “moral filth and sensual exhibits which might make devils blush.” And the Rev. H.R.L. Sheppard of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London, where I once attended a rather nice concert, calls for the Christian church to establish its own theatres so audiences can avoid “bedroom scenes” which are “an insult to their intelligence.”

The reaction to the anarchist bombings goes about how you’d expect:

Those lists, which we are hearing about for the first time, are the Justice Department’s file cards on alleged radicals. The 20,000 is for NYC alone.

NY Governor Alfred E. Smith comes from Albany to NYC to speak with the state attorney general Charles Newton and give him authorization to go medieval on the reds’ asses, only to find that Newton had left for Buffalo.

That’s Cleveland Mayor Harry Davis, whose house was bombed, who wants to deport all immigrants who fail to become US citizens or, as he refers to them, “the cancer which is gnawing at [the US’s] political life.”

The Austrian government doesn’t like the peace terms presented to it. Austria’s borders were decided by different committees dealing with the Italian-Austrian border, the Yugoslav-Austrian border, the Czech-Austrian border, etc without consulting each other, so the total picture is actually harsher for Austria than the Allies had intended.

Leaflets appear in Rhineland cities denouncing the Rhenish Republic as a Catholic plot and calling for a 24-hour general strike.