Today -100: April 11, 1923: Broken on the wheel of maternity

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes revokes the visa of Ekaterina Kalinin, wife of  Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin, in retaliation for the execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch. Mikhail signed the death warrant. She was due to speak in the US on behalf of the Red Cross and Russian orphans, and was already enjoined from talking about politics. She may or may not already be on her way, but if she arrives she’ll be held at Ellis Island and then deported.

The Irish Free State fatally wounds IRA Chief of Staff, the alliterative Liam Lynch. They think they nearly caught Éamon de Valera as well during the raid.

Harding, just back from a long vacation, will soon start a trans-continental trip, ending in Alaska, but he objects to people referring to it as the re-election campaign trip it so obviously is. He’s even threatening to cancel the trip – I will turn this train around! – if newspapers don’t treat him solely as a president and forget that there is such a thing as a 1924 election.

Margaret Sanger, testifying before the NY Legislature on behalf of a bill allowing doctors to give birth control information, says “the women of this state and country must free themselves from child-bearing. ... Mother love has a chance to develop and become intensified if the children are not born too close together. Hundreds of thousands of women are being bent, bowed and broken on the wheel of maternity.” Assemblycritter Louis Cuvillier (D-NYC) calls birth control advocates “blasphemers” who ought to be “swept from the face of the earth.” So that’s probably a no vote.

The Republican NY Assembly rejects Gov. Al Smith’s request that they repeal the Lusk Anti-Sedition laws.

NYC bans human flies. Harold Lloyd-type human flies, not Jeff Goldblum-type human flies.

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