Today -100: October 8, 1920: The world is ready to recognize our moral leadership

The 1920 census is out. The US population is 105,683,108, up 14.9% from 1910. This doesn’t include the colonies (Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, the Panama Canal zone, etc). New York State leads with more than 10 million, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio. Nevada is least populous, with under 100,000. For the first time, more people live in urban than rural areas (urban defined as 2,500 or more).

Answering questions in Des Moines, Harding clarifies, or not, his stance on the League of Nations: “I do not want to clarify these obligations. I want to turn my back on them. It is not interpretation, but rejection, that I am seeking.” He says staying out of the League wouldn’t mean lessening US influence in the world: “We stand almost alone among the great nations in our disinterested relation to the problems of the world. Because of this the world is ready to recognize our moral leadership.” He says he will create “an association of nations for the promotion of international peace” which will allow the US complete freedom of action. Presumably every nation in the world would have to agree to drop out of the League and join this thing. Asked about Ireland, he says he wouldn’t tell Britain what to do in its internal affairs any more than he’d let Britain tell the US what to do with the Philippines.

Dublin Castle issues a list of “offenses” carried out in Ireland since the start of 1920, including 16 soldiers and 109 police killed, 63 court houses and 504 police barracks destroyed, etc. It notes that very few of those responsible are arrested. “In this fact might be found the motive for reprisals,” it says, almost as if the purpose in compiling this list was to justify Black and Tan terrorism

Alma Simpson, whoever that is, gives a concert in Carnegie Hall, singing “not too clearly, in half a dozen tongues,” including some Brahms and Schumann, the first time German has been sung in concert in New York since the war.

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