Today -100: March 16, 1910: Of the census, inter-state commerce, official cars, unnecessary noise, general strikes, plain-clothes cops, and Frisco

Since I raised the question of race in the 2010 census, let’s look at 1910. The 1910 census was the last to categorize people as mulattoes (the more specific Octoroon and Quadroon designations were dropped after 1890). The Census Bureau defined mulatto for its enumerators as “all other persons having some proportion or perceptible trace of negro blood”. One problem with this system was that “perceptible” varied according to the race of the census worker (you’ll recall the Bureau’s fear that white people would be enumerated by black enumerators), with black census workers managing to detect more mulattoes than white ones. Efforts were also made to detect the racial purity of Native Americans. Asians were either Chinese or Japanese. Everyone else was “other.”

While recent socialist-led demonstrations in Germany for greater democracy (Prussia’s system is particularly antediluvian) have been met by police sabers, the Reichstag has voted to introduce a bill to make the government responsible to it rather than to the kaiser. It also voted to make Alsace-Lorraine, seized from France in 1870 and soon (spoiler alert) to be seized back, a federal state, with a diet elected by universal suffrage and a secret ballot.

An interesting discussion of separation of powers in the Senate. Taft’s bill for changes in inter-state commerce law, including the establishment of a Court of Commerce which would mostly deal with railroad cases, came to the Senate floor without a single senator willing to speak in support of the president’s bill (which isn’t to say the R’s won’t force it through anyway). Albert Cummins (R-Iowa) attacked the bill for having been re-written several times by the White House at the request of railroad magnates, with the Inter-State Commerce Committee simply adopting those changes verbatim. This is a departure, Cummins says, from Roosevelt, who said it was improper for the executive to suggest precise phrasing of bills.

Meanwhile the House of Reps has voted not to provide the vice president and speaker of the House Cannon with official automobiles.

The Society for the Prevention of Unnecessary Noise (evidently a women’s group) is lobbying NYC Mayor Gaynor against the Fourth of July, but it turns out he likes fireworks. So they plan to make his life miserable by phoning him at all hours and bombarding him with letters and requests for visits.

Since taking office 2½ months ago, Gaynor has been engaged in a fairly impressive attempt to reform the NYPD, cracking down on corruption and cracking down on cracking heads with clubs. Now he’s asking the police commissioner how many plain-clothes cops there are and what exactly they do that they couldn’t do in uniform. He also wants to know how many cops “are assigned to what is called special duty”. I don’t know what that is.

Compare and contrast: March 1910, the British Liberals plan to turn the House of Lords into a wholly elected body; March 2010, the Labour Party plans to turn the House of Lords into a wholly elected body.

The Philadelphia general strike – which may soon be joined by a state-wide sympathy strike – is growing or declining, depending on who you believe. The transit company says that today it operated more trolleys than on any day since the strike began, although they are also running over quite a few people. And the mayor and public safety director tell The New Theatre not to perform John Galsworthy’s play about a strike, “Strife.”

A letter from a former resident of San Francisco says that he never heard Los Angeles referred to as “Los,” but that there was an ad on the SF street cars asking people not to call the city “Frisco,” a term which rankles San Francishoovians to this very day.

History in Texas

I hesitate to announce a contest when my recent posting of little besides 1910 blogging has so reduced readership, but let’s give it a try: give us an excerpt (or excerpts) from history textbooks drawn up to the new specifications of the Texas Board of Education (sic). Remember, you can mention Phyllis Schlafly but not Thomas Jefferson, and free-enterprise system but not capitalism.

Census

Got my census form, just like the letter last week said I would. Thank you for the warning, superfluous letter.

They want to know my race. I don’t intend to reify socially constructed (that is, not actually existing) categories by answering this one. Will probably write “none.” Thoughts?

(Just checked the ol’ archives to see what I did in 2000. I was thinking about none then too, or something from the Star Trek universe. 3 days later I wrote, “In 1941 the Census Bureau told the government where to find Japanese Americans for internment. I may have to rethink the idea of listing my race as Romulan.”)

Update: I hear vampires are very popular among the kids these days. Maybe I should write that.

Today -100: March 15, 1910: Of midgets

How did New Yorkers entertain themselves in 1910? The midget circus is in town! Gerson’s Lilliputian Circus at the Hippodrome. 35 little people, none over 3 feet tall, and one of them described as a “small negro,” doing circus acts.

There was a related article, “Curious Facts About Midgets,” in the previous Sunday paper, in which the manager of the troupe explains that midgets dislike being picked up and called cute. So keep that in mind.

Today -100: March 14, 1910: Of general strikes (strikes general?)

The Philadelphia Central Labor Union orders all milkmen, bakers, grocery clerks and other providers of food to join the general strike (they avoided this sort of thing in the first week, but I guess the gloves are off), and for all union members to withdraw their money from banks. The NYT lists the costs to the trolley company of the strike, $1,150,000 so far, including $2,000 to replace 5,750 panes of glass broken in trolley cars, $1,350 to feed 6,000 policemen (480 Pinkerton men have also been hired). The company plans to make the city pay for damages inflicted by rioters (no wonder they’ve been so obdurate).

Don’t know much

In fact, as far as Texas conservatives are concerned, the only worthwhile thing Jefferson ever did was to fuck his slaves.

Today -100: March 13, 1910: Of automobilists, trolleys, persuasive language, and Los Angeles forever

At least in NYT usage, people who drive cars are now “automobilists” and not “autoists” as they were in 1909.

Taft refuses to intervene in the Philadelphia strike. A trolley which sped up “to avoid a fusillade of missiles” ran over a 3-year-old girl. The crowd tried to seize the scab motorman and lynch him, but the police clubbed them back.

A US Court of Appeals lets stand an injunction against the United Mine Workers by the Hitchman Coal & Coke Company of West Virginia, restraining the UMW from unionizing employees or picketing “for the purpose of using violence or threatening or persuasive language” to induce employees to strike.

On Feb. 20, the NYT ran an editorial insisting that the proper way to pronounce Los Angeles was “Loce Ahng-hayl-ais” (with a long o in Los) as opposed to Loss Anjelees, with a short o. It claimed that everyone on the Pacific Slope called it simply “Los” (I have never ever heard anyone do this), which it doesn’t like at all, and says rather bitchily that “There is nothing about [LA’s] present state of profitable confusion to suggest angels, and very little to suggest Spanish origin or the poetical conceits of Iberia. ... Los Angeles has outgrown its traditions and its angels.” The LA Times has responded to the “illiterate, unlettered, and altogether uninformed provincial person of this New York newspaper,” “Does he not know that Los Angeles was named in an hour when Destiny stood breathless on the hill tops and the Star of Empire held the constellations tied at the post? ‘Los Angeles’ is a name wrought from the singing soul of Castile to the music of golden harps. Los Angeles forever.”

Today -100: March 12, 1910: Of general strikes and trolleys, and tax cheats

The Philadelphia general strike grew again today, or is about to collapse, depending on who you believe. Some more attacks on trolley cars, some more attempts to force the transit company into arbitration.

Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, says that in banning meetings etc, Philadelphia is treating Americans as Russian subjects are treated.

And in Trenton, the trolley strikers win. What do they win? 23¢ an hour and a (roughly) 10-hour day within 12 consecutive hours (i.e., no shifts), but not union recognition.

David Francis, governor of Missouri in the 1880s and ‘90s and interior secretary in the 1890s, is arrested for property tax evasion.

Today -100: March 11, 1910: Of navies, trolleys, car salesmen, and sensitive suffragists

Canada wants to build its own navy, independent of Britain’s. Isn’t that adorable?

Another trolley strike, this one in Trenton. Strikers and strikebreakers engaged in a shoot-out, but no one was hit.

And in Philadelphia, thousands fought with police, with no deaths but plenty of injuries, after police banned a mass meeting by strikers at the National League ball park (that is, on private property). So they marched to City Hall, singing “Hang Mayor Reyburn to a Sour Apple Tree,” where the real fight with mounted police took place. High school boys joined in, although they seem mostly to have “contented themselves with smashing every hat in sight”.

Russia is issuing expulsion orders against Jews in various towns.

The news of the plight of young Philander Knox Jr, shunned by his father for marrying without permission, has brought offers of employment from all over the nation. He has decided to sell automobiles.

NY Assemblyman James “Paradise Jimmy” Oliver denies that he insulted the suffragist, and is backed up by other assemblymen, while Henrietta Mercy’s version is backed up by another suffragist. A NYT editorial insists he hadn’t meant to insult her, but “When he pointed out to his visitor, who, by the way, did not wait for the formality of an introduction, that the younger Assemblymen would likely be more susceptible to feminine arguments than a seasoned old legislator, he spoke truly enough. He meant nothing wrong.” And “When he addressed his visitor as ‘little girl’ he merely recognized her youth.” (She seems to have been at least 21). The paper suggests that “When the women get into politics they must expect to be treated as other politicians. The suffragists must get over their sensitiveness.”

The Christmas Miracle

Secretary of War Gates visited the town of Now Zad, Afghanistan.

He was accompanied by Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, who said, “This represents the rebirth of a city that had been dead.” Because nothing says rebirth like an American invasion. “We call this [place] the Christmas miracle.” Really, is that what you call it. I don’t think I’ve run across Nicholson before, but for “Christmas miracle,” I am bestowing upon him this blog’s highest military accolade, the title of Military Moron (MM).

You know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?

In the wake of the revelations of hot Rahm-on-Massa lobbying, the WaPo launches an investigation of “how much business politicians conduct while naked.”

Sen. John Tester said, “This morning [at the Senate gym] I talked with Lamar Alexander about a hold”.

On a nomination! A hold on a nomination!

Rep. Patrick Kennedy said, “It’s the only place where you get to see a member in a different light.”

Today -100: March 10, 1910: Of New York’s need for mothering, New York assemblymen’s need for hugs and kisses, and of course trolleys

As happened at this time every year, women suffragists and anti-suffragists traveled to Albany to lobby the NY state Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees. Mrs. Anna Etz, President of the Steuben County Woman Suffrage Association, said, “New York State needs mothering.” Carrie Chapman Catt said NY might fall behind in the progress of democracy, noting that “woman suffrage prevails over 1/15th of the earth’s area”. Well, that’s Finland and Australia and New Zealand, is that really 1/15 of the earth’s area?

On the anti-suffrage side, a Mrs. Henry Stimpson argued that “Were we so presumptuous as to think we could take up men’s work we should have to take it up in addition to our own, and, while the Legislature might make us voters it could not make you men mothers. ... Women, if they become voters, will succumb to the nerve-racking brain strain,” lowering the birth rate.

One suffragist “girl delegate,” identified by the NYT as “Little Miss Henrietta Mercy,” lobbied Assemblyman James Oliver of NYC, who she says told her he didn’t want to be bothered about it, and that she should find some young assemblyman and give him a hug and a kiss. “That’s the way the girls on the street get what they want.” He denied to the NYT that he’d used those words – “It isn’t like me, is it?” – but admitted saying something about the advantage of bringing women’s charms to bear in appealing to the younger, more susceptible, more good-looking members of the Legislature.

The Philadelphia general strike grew or shrank again today, depending on who you believe. One trolley car in operation was caught in a blast of dynamite laid on the tracks.

Speaking of trolleys, a trolley on Nevsky Prospect (St Petersburg) clipped Emperor Nicholas’s carriage.

Today -100: March 9, 1910: Of trolleys, trusts, secret marriages, moving pictures, blackmail, and lenten ideas

In Philadelphia, a party of strikebreakers respond to attacks by strikers on trolley cars by stealing a trolley car and going on a joyride, shooting into crowds, hitting 6. The general strike grew or shrank today, depending on who you believe.

Standard Oil files a brief in the Supreme Court arguing against its being broken up for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Rather than getting stinking rich by restraint of trade, the brief says, Rockefeller et al did so by “untiring energy, with infinite skill, with abundant capital, and the steady reinvestment of early profits”.

Secretary of State Philander Knox’s college-aged son Philander Jr. (!) secretly married without parental permission. He brought his new wife to Washington but failed to receive forgiveness.

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt is Now Hunted.” Teddy Roosevelt, still on safari in Africa, is being stalked by American journalists “lying in wait for him all along the river [Nile].” They want to ask him if he will run for president again.

A Circuit Court gives Thomas Edison an injunction against three movie production companies, saying he has the sole patent on the process of making motion pictures. There are 13,000 movie theaters in the country; ticket prices average 7¢ each.

Enrico Caruso is now being given the sort of police protection normally accorded presidents, thanks to a stack of threatening letters (blackmail letters, in the older use of the word) from the Black Hand, including a threat to throw acid on him from an upper box in the Academy of Music.

A letter to the NYT calls for heathen countries to be divided up by the Christian ones so that they may be forced to become Christians. It is signed “A Lenten Idea.”

Difficult words

California State Senator Roy Ashburn, who was caught drunk driving on his way home with a, ahem, friend from a gay nightclub, now says: “I’m gay. Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. Because I had a cock in my mouth.”

I may have made up the last sentence.

Today -100: March 8, 1910: Of general strikes, shirtwaists, hatpins, and the Solomon of Flatbush Court

Philadelphia general strike: the unions say 100,000 are on strike, the police authorities say 18,407, the mayor 12,000.

Remember the shirtwaist strike? The Women’s Trade Union League states that it was won on more or less favorable terms, and the WTUL is now focusing on publicizing the firms that made the best settlements. Two firms, the NYT notes, are even putting union labels on their goods. So, um, look for the union label.

One thing they credit with helping the strike: the change of police policy, stopping arrests of peaceful picketers, by Mayor Gaynor after he came to office in January.

The Chicago city council’s judiciary committee orders an ordinance drawn up to ban hatpins extending half an inch beyond the crown of the hat. Several women came to express their disapproval of the City of Chicago regulating their clothing. Alderman Mack responded, “Well, you women want to regulate what we men drink, don’t you?” and Alderman Bauler said, “If women care to wear carrots and roosters on their heads, that is a matter of their own concern, and it cannot be interfered with by the city, but when it comes to wearing swords they must be stopped.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Policeman Swims for Negro.” An exciting story of a cop who jumped into Rockaway Inlet to capture an armed killer trying to escape by launch, who was not only, as the story informed us repeatedly, a negro, but a “giant negro.”

Two neighbors in Brooklyn go to court over possession of a newly lain egg found in a vacant lot. Magistrate Nash says he will ponder the matter a few days. “It is believed that the Magistrate will settle the dispute by having the egg hard boiled and divided equally between the two families.”

No applause, please, we’re British

The British general election will feature the first ever debate between party leaders, and the rules have been agreed upon: there will be an audience, but there will be complete silence. No booing, hissing, applause, or heckling. In other words, it will be exactly like British sex.

Today -100: March 7, 1910: Of general strikes, quiet rubber, and phosphate violence

The city of Philadelphia’s director of public safety claims there are only 30,000 out on strike; the unions disagree. (And many paragraphs later, the NYT gets around to mentioning that the director of public safety is also a major stockholder in the Rapid Transit Company). Rioting was met by police shooting (annoyingly, the NYT is making no effort to keep count of the fatalities in this strike, but it’s certainly in the double digits). Emma Goldman is said to be on her way to the city, but the union leaders don’t want her. So far, 500 trolley cars have been burned or so damaged that they can’t be used, and people are soaping rail lines so the cars can’t climb hills. Scabs are being imported and paid a princely $5 a day (and some of them seem also to be keeping the fares they collect), compared to the $2 to $2.50 earned by the men they are replacing, who have actual experience.

The price of rubber has become less volatile, leading to the Headline of the Day -100: “Rubber Quiet in London.”

A short story with no details reports a race war with two dead in a phosphate camp in Florida. Don’t know what it’s about, but suddenly I want a chocolate phosphate.

What, too soon?

A new level of vulnerability for government officials that would be chaotic

Robert Fisk on Turkey’s tantrum over a possible US recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide: “The message is simple. Acknowledge the genocide, and the US will lose its airbases in Turkey and the Turkish roads its military convoys use into Iraq. The fact, unfortunately, is that these roads are the very highways down which the Armenians were sent on their death marches in 1915.”

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David Paterson is refusing to resign but it’s not for himself, it’s for the benefit of future scuzzy politicians: “To step down from office over unproved allegations would create a new level of vulnerability for government officials that would be chaotic.” “Vulnerability” may not be a word someone who bullied a woman who’d been physically abused by his aide should really be using. Also, note the non-denial denial: “unproved” allegations. The same thing Israel says about that Mossad murder in Dubai.

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Speaking of which, when I heard that some of those killers came directly from Dubai to the United States (using false passports yet), I sort of assumed that meant we’d have to join in investigating the affair. Not that I expected US politicians to criticize Israel for making us look complicit in their crimes (assuming we weren’t).

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NYT headline: “More Scanners Headed to Airports.” 3 nerd points if, reading that headline, you pictured a head exploding. 10 nerd points if, reading that headline, you muttered to yourself, “Scanners live in vain.”

Government in a box

McChrystal said, “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in” to Marja, failed to specify what type of box. It seems the new governor, Abdul Zahir Aryan, spent 4 of those 15 years in Germany in prison for getting all stab-y on his stepson, who’d complained when Zahir beat up one of his wives. The WaPo quotes American military types saying it’s not a “big deal,” but not, for some reason, by name.

Must... resist... tasteless joke.... Can’t... resist... tasteless joke

Headline of the Day (WaPo): “Rep. Barney Frank Warns of Fannie, Freddie Risks.” And when Barney Frank warns you about fannie risks....

Sorry.

Today -100: March 6, 1910: Of general strikes

A NYT editorial on the Philadelphia general strike displays several assumptions that are worth examining. It assumes, without feeling any need to argue the point, that it is the job of the government to put down the strike, not simply because of the violence already displayed against trolleys and the scabs operating them, but because a general strike is inherently illegitimate, an act of violence rather than a withdrawal of labor. That definition in turn rests on the assumption that workers, even 100,000 of them, many in highly skilled trades, are simply interchangeable cogs. “The real element of efficacy in the general strike consists in the violence that would follow if it were carried out in the spirit already shown. ... If employers and merchants and tradesmen of all sorts had nothing to fear but the inconveniences attending the changes in employés that would occur, they would look upon a general strike with a good deal of equanimity.” Unionists, the NYT goes on, would not have voted for a general strike had they depended solely on this “inconvenience” to enforce their demands, given how very replaceable they know themselves to be, but on violence as well, and it is the duty of the authorities to repress this violence with, um, violence. A general strike is “a dream of the revolutionary minds of Europe”, a “declaration of war upon the community. It sets the unions apart from the rest of society in a hostile camp. It differentiates their members from the mass of the people, not only as a class, but as an enemy class, bent on attaining selfish ends by unfair and cruel means.”

Embracing the agenda

Right-wingers’ latest crusade is four SEALs who beat up an Iraqi prisoner of war and are being court-martialed. Here’s Sarah Palin’s tweeted contribution:


Yes, question that anti-beating-prisoners-up-and-lying-about-it agenda. Question it, I say!

Today -100: March 5, 1910: Of strikes, Russian Jews, and Enrico Caruso and the Black Hand

The Philadelphia general strike has begun, with 60,400 said to be on strike, including 200 milk wagon drivers, 2,000 cigarmakers, 225 egg candlers, 150 piano wagon drivers, 300 horseshoers, 200 suspendermakers, and 350 fresco painters. A demonstration has been called for Independence Square, which the police plan to ban; Mayor Reyburn quotes, in support of the ban, a Supreme Court decision that “the public possesses in the highway the right of transit only”. He calls on people not to loiter on the streets, collect in or join crowds, or use insulting language.

Harriot Stanton Blatch (suffragist, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) warns the NY Legislature against passing the Dana Bill, which has already passed the lower house, and would require that future amendments to the state constitution get a 2/3 vote of the electors rather than a simple majority. She believes (wrongly, I think) that it is intended specifically to thwart women’s suffrage and warns that “Heretofore there has been no reason in America for suffragettes to use militant methods... Our methods so far have been quiet and amiable. But with an added burden put upon us like this, we shall have to resort to...” wait for it... “open-air meetings, to bands and banners, and holding up people on the street corners.”

A committee of the Russian Duma denounces a 1907 government circular which instructed officials not to evict Jews who had settled recently outside the pale of settlement. The committee wants them not only evicted but brought to trial.

Two members of the Black Hand are arrested after sending threatening letters to Enrico Caruso demanding $15,000. Caruso wouldn’t talk to the press, and the director of the Met, Gatti-Casazza, merely “threw up his hands and said: ‘It is not musical and it is not artistic, and I know nothing about it.’”

Location location location

Senior German politicians suggest that Greece deal with its financial difficulties by selling off some of its uninhabited Aegean islands. I think we know what sort of buyers they might find, but how much income will that bring to the beleaguered Greek economy?

Today -100: March 4, 1910: Of civil wars, trolleys, lynchings, schools of crime, and presidential hoe-downs

I’ve more or less stopped following the stories of battles in Nicaragua, because they seemed highly untrustworthy, but the NYT reports that Estrada’s insurrection has been almost completely defeated, the impetus (as well as the possibility of direct American intervention) having gone out of it with Zelaya’s resignation.

The NYT publishes the positions of various sides in the Philadelphia trolley strike. The Central Labor Union complains that the trolley company sent detectives to spy on the union, fired employees purely for union membership, broke the agreement covering wages and negotiations, etc. Its manifesto also focuses on the role of City Hall in using violence and arrests against unionists and bringing in the State police. The trolley company claims that the June 1909 closed shop agreement was the result of “political coercion” and says it is fighting for the rights of its employees to deal directly with the company “without the intervention of an organization officered and controlled by outside men” and for the right of the company to fire anyone for any reason. Mayor John Reyburn criticizes the ministers’ association for “support[ing] a lot of men in the destruction of property and murder... Why, the same men would be the first to burn down their churches.”

In Dallas, a lynch mob of 3,000 people seized a black man in a courtroom where he was being tried for attacking a 3-year-old white girl, threw him out the window, which broke his neck, then dragged his body half a mile away and hung it on a spike. The mob stormed the jail, but other prisoners had been removed. Firemen tried to disperse the mob with water but “retired from the contest” when threatened with being lynched themselves. The first sentence of the longish story mentioned an “old negro” at the head of the mob, but nothing more was said about him.

Two women, 18 and 19 years old, arrested for shoplifting, tell the court that they were “instructed in the art of pilfering in a school of crime fitted up in imitation of a department store” in the home of a fellow employee of a button factory. Charmingly Dickensian, no?

President Taft gave a dinner in honor of Speaker of the House Cannon (who, rumor has it, he would love to get rid of). Afterwards, they danced. Cannon did a Highland fling, then, as he bragged about how well he’d done it, “For answer the President stepped smilingly forward and those who were present say the two executed several steps of an old-fashioned ‘hoe-down’ that delighted every one. Both were puffing when they finished.”

Today -100: March 3, 1910: Of ballots, guns, and sleeping bull moose

In an editorial on the Massachusetts ballot system, the NYT argues against its alphabetical listing of candidates and in favor of some system that allows voters to vote the party ticket, without bothering themselves to inform themselves about individual candidates. The real problem with elections is not straight-party voters, the Times says, but the large number of offices electors have to vote on. The “short ballot” would be a much more helpful reform than direct primaries or referenda.

Rep. Henry Rainey (D-Illinois), later Speaker of the House, accuses Bethlehem Steel, which has been getting increasing numbers of War Department orders, subcontracted from government arsenals, of doing shoddy work and of underpaying its skilled workers. A 14-inch gun burst during ordinance trials, Rainey says, and this was hushed up.

It is feared that Teddy Roosevelt, still on safari in East Africa, may have contracted sleeping sickness!

You won’t have Nicole Minetti in a gold bikini on a swing to kick around any more

Berlusconi’s party will not be running candidates in regional elections in 2 of the 13 regions voting later this month. In Lazio (around Rome), a party official failed to turn in the candidate list by the deadline. He says he was late because he was eating a panino sandwich. Or he was checking on his sick daughter. Or he was “distracted” by the Radial Party members. And in Lombardy, 500 of the necessary 3,500 signatures turned out to be invalid. This is a definite bump on the political road for showgirl slash dental hygienist Nicole Minetti, who was to have run in Lombardy. The Assemblea regionale’s loss is dental hygiene’s gain.

Ram or jam

Reading Orrin Hatch’s WaPo op-ed on why reconciliation would be the worstest thing ever leads me to wonder: which is the better verb – to “ram” through HCR or to “jam” it through? Ram, jam. Jam, ram. Has Frank Luntz focus-grouped this yet?

Today -100: March 2, 1910: Of union tyranny

In Philadelphia, pretty much the entire city is pressuring the trolley car company to accept arbitration, but it is still refusing. The NYT thinks there won’t be a general strike in Philadelphia, because businesses would take the opportunity to replace their workers with non-union ones and reorganize on an “open shop” basis to escape “union tyranny.”

The Maryland Legislature fails to pass a proposed bill to give women the vote in Baltimore municipal elections.

Today -100: March 1, 1910: Of women cops and hatpins

Mayor Samuel Shank of Indianapolis plans to introduce women police to clear the streets of the shopping district of “objectionable characters.”

The Chicago City Council considers enacting an ordinance restricting the length of women’s hatpins, which often stick several inches beyond the hat and are thus a hazard. Some women, on the other hand, insist that hatpins remain available for self-defense.

Berlusconi and the Silvioettes

Berlusconi has picked the latest batch of unqualified hotties as candidates for regional elections. Let’s meet them, shall we?

Nicole Minetti, a showgirl slash dental hygienist, who treated Berlusconi – I’ll bet she did, I’ll bet she did – after he was hit with that statue.


Former Miss Italy 2001 finalist Italia Caruso,


Giovanna Del Giudice, who Berlusconi “discovered” in a nightclub and made her a star, or at least a weather girl on one of his channels,


and model Graziana Capone, the “Italian Angelina Jolie.”


Minetti says, “I have my CV, I am prepared and I am up to fulfilling the role. Can you stop publishing photos from when I worked in TV?”

No, no we can’t.

John Reed

Well this is sad. D’Oyly Carte singer John Reed has died, and I can’t find his rendition of the Nightmare Song from Iolanthe on YouTube. Also – no obit in the London Times?

Today -100: February 28, 1910: Of trolleys, elevators, nails and x-rays, and suffrage and socialism

The Philadelphia unions vote for that general strike in support of the trolley-car operators, although the start will not be for six days. The violence ramped up again, now that the State Police have left the city to shoot at the Bethlehem Steel strikers instead. At 6th street, a crowd was smashing the windows of trolley cars; a motorman of an approaching trolley turned on full power in order to plow through the – then he got scared and jumped out. The car jumped the rails, hitting the crowd and smashing into a candy store, killing two people, one of them a child.

Chicago elevator operators have voted to strike. There are over 800 of them in the union. Well, I thought that was interesting.

Surgeons at Beth Israel used an X-ray machine to guide forceps in removing a nail from a 9-year-old boy’s lungs (he’d swallowed it).

Yesterday -100 was woman’s day for the American Socialists, which held women’s suffrage meetings all over the country. The NYT has been printing red-scaredy-cat letters for days, warning that women’s suffrage means socialism and socialism means women being shared in common. In New York, there was a large meeting where, as the NYT subhed puts it, “Speakers at Carnegie Hall All Women Except One, and He Denounces Man.” The sex traitor was one Franklin H. Wentworth of Salem, and you can read his speech (which was published) here if you want to, which trust me you don’t, though here’s a not-too-bad bit 20 pages in: “I do not fear the free woman. I fear only the enslaved woman. The man who fears to see his mate walk the earth a free and untrammeled being is himself at heart a slave, unworthy of his mother’s agony. I do not know what woman will do when she is free. I am willing to trust her. I do not even know what man will do when he is free! But what I do know is that all outworn institutions of human tyranny that fear the free man are the same ones that doubly fear the free woman”.

Name of the Day

The White House announces a new social secretary, who clearly deserves the job on the basis of her name alone: Julianna Smoot. White House Social Secretary Julianna Smoot.

Womb lynchings

In a tactic they must hope won’t get back to their white Bible Belt base, anti-abortionists are targeting black communities with claims that abortion is a “conspiracy” to keep the black population down. Says the NYT, “Black abortion opponents... sometimes refer to abortions as ‘womb lynchings’”. Sigh. Of all the anti-abortion arguments, this one is as contemptuous of women as any I’ve recently heard. Will black women respond positively to a campaign that tells them they are the idiot dupes of white racists?

(And Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona said today that the abortion rate among black women means that “Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery.”

Today -100: February 27, 1910: Bunga bunga!

At the other big strike in Pennsylvania, the State Police shoot at strikers at the Bethlehem Steel Works, killing one and wounding two others. The NYT keeps stressing that some of the strikers are “foreigners,” and darkly notes that foreigners have bought up every pistol for sale in the area.

A bomb went off in a NYC tenement. Someone, presumably a member of the Black Hand (as the Mafia was known), was trying to put it together in his apartment. He escaped before police arrived, but did leave behind three fingers.

The NYT has caught up with the story of the Dreadnought Hoax, actually carried out in England on the 7th. Several members of the Bloomsbury Group, which first made itself known to the wider public with this event, disguised themselves as princes from Abyssinia and were given a royal tour of the H.M.S. Dreadnought, the most powerful battleship in the Royal Navy or indeed the world. This is them:


The one on the left, “Prince Sanganya,” is Virginia Woolf (Virginia Stephen, as she then was). To her right are Duncan Grant, Adrian Stephen (Virginia’s brother), playing the translator, Anthony Buxton, Guy Ridley and Horace de Vere Cole, playing a Foreign Office attaché (as of late February, their real names were not known beyond their circle of friends). They blacked up, put on false beards and shoes with turned-up toes, and spoke in a gibberish comprised of bits of Greek and Latin, pointing and exclaiming “Bunga bunga.” For some time thereafter, people on the streets muttered the phrase whenever a sailor from the Dreadnought went past. (Update: I’ve just discovered that the term has an altogether less pleasant meaning now.) After the incident, the ship was sent out to sea until the embarrassment died down.

A study in contrasting obituaries

From Friday’s NYT obits page. Lucky: Robert Myers, an actuary who in 1934 determined that the optimal retirement age for the planned Social Security program was 65, has died at the age of 97.

Unlucky: Kermit Tyler, who was at the aircraft tracking center in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and responded to reports that radar had picked up a whole bunch of incoming planes, “Don’t worry about it.”

Today -100: February 26, 1910: Of lamas, trolleys, and more trolleys

China announces that it has deposed the Dalai Lama, calling him “an ungrateful, irreligious, obstreperous profligate who is tyrannical”. He is accused, among other things, of intrigue and refusal to pay tribute to Peking. The edict also declares all Tibetans to be Chinese subjects.

John Murphy, President of the Central Labor Union of Philadelphia says there will be a general strike if the trolley car strike is not settled within two days, and predicts bloodshed if the general strike occurs, noting “There are men in the Northeast who can shoot as straight as any trooper who ever drew a breath.” A warrant for inciting to riot is sworn out for him. The street car company rejected a plan for arbitration presented by a committee of clergymen.

The Edison Company tests a trolleyless street car that runs off batteries rather than overhead wires. They claim it can go 150 miles on a single charge, at speeds up to 15 mph.

Still not done making fun of McCain

In that clip two posts back, Obama told McCain, “The election’s over,” and McCain responded, “I’m reminded of that every day.” Do you think he has an aide (or possibly Lindsey Graham) whose task it is to remind him of that fact every day, or does Cindy leave post-it notes on the bathroom mirror: “Your name is John,” “You are a United States senator,” “You are not the president (sorry),” “You are a ‘maverick,’” “The nice man who just gave you the sponge bath is named Lindsey,” etc.

The Arizonans hate California

McCain, at the health summit: “I won’t talk about California, because the Arizonans hate California, because they’ve stolen our water.”

I did not know that. But speaking for all Californians, I can say that we don’t hate Arizonans. We never think about Arizonans. Ever.

Unsavory – I say that with respect

Today -100: February 25, 1910: Of trolleys and duels

The Pennsylvania state police have “awed” the trolley car strikers. In other words, they fired on several crowds, although they seem to have killed only one person so far.

In France, two senators, Raphaël Milliès-Lacroix and Lintilhac, fought a duel in a park in Paris. Some dispute over the secret ballot. With swords and everything. Milliès-Lacroix, the former colonial minister, stabbed Lintilhac in the forearm and the seconds stopped the duel. Dueling was almost never legally punished in France, and quite popular among certain politicians – Georges Clemenceau, prime minister 1906-9 and 1917-20, fought 22 duels. The practice largely died out, rendered absurd by World War I, although Gaston Deferre, the Socialist party leader and mayor of Marseille, fought his last duel with swords in 1967.

Misc

NATO sort of admits that an air raid in Afghanistan December that killed 8 boys aged 12 to 18 in their home was a “mistake.” An unnamed NATO official says “Knowing what we know now, it would probably not have been a justifiable attack.” What sort of human being feels the need to insert the qualifier “probably” into that sentence?

Some of us have waited impatiently our entire lives for this news: jet packs will be manufactured for sale.

The Navy will allow women onto their watery phallic symbols submarines. One supporter of this decision (but not of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell): Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead.

Headline of the Day

LA Times: “L.A. Obesity Summit Will Feature Schwarzenegger, Clinton.” As before and after?

Today -100: February 24, 1910: Of lamas, fingers, trolleys, and great white chiefs

I just read about the current Dalai Lama visiting Universal Studios in Hollywood, then I switched to the 1910 paper, in which the very first story is about his predecessor fleeing Lhasa, which was being occupied by 25,000 “anti-Buddhist” Chinese troops (drilled by Japanese officers). China was trying to reduce the number and influence of lamas in Tibet (for example by killing them and sacking their monasteries) and settle Chinese immigrants there. In Tibet history doesn’t repeat itself, it reincarnates.

A NY Supreme Court jury awarded a 15-year-old who worked for the George Sclecher Piano Company of Ossining who lost four fingers in an industrial accident $4,000 (a grand, er, a thousand dollars, each).

In response to the Philadelphia trolley strike, now in its fifth day, the city government yesterday called in something called the State Fencibles, which was some sort of non-governmental militia. They were completely routed by the strikers, who had a lot of fun with them, pulling their hats over their eyes and so forth. The state police, which is basically a military body created to fight coal strikes, is now being called in. There was somewhat less violence today.

The NYT reports a great relief in the US Senate that the Mississippi Legislature did not elect as the new senator (replacing the Confederate colonel who once discussed with John Wilkes Booth a plan to kidnap Lincoln) James Vardaman, the former governor (1904-8), aka the “Great White Chief,” a white supremacist (“if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched, it will be done to maintain white supremacy”) whose main concern was repealing the 14th and 15th Amendments. Instead, the new senator will be Le Roy Percy, who is much... calmer on racial issues. In 1912, when senators were first chosen by popular election, Vardaman defeated Percy in the primary and was elected to the Senate, but lost in the 1918 election, having voted against World War I.

Today -100: February 23, 1910: Of kisses and votes

A letter to the Times from “Anti-Suffragist” points out that Socialists support women’s suffrage, which “only goes to prove what rational and careful persons pointed out long ago – that woman suffrage leads to Socialism. The yellow banner of the suffragists is very apt to turn a bloody red, and their ‘votes for women’ battle cry is a call to the road to ruin.”

But there will be no kisses on the road to ruin. Suffragist Alma Webster-Powell writes in to deny an earlier report in the paper about her proposed tactics: “I have never advocated the exchange of kisses for votes. Indeed, my inclination would be quite different, and instead of sending pretty maids [young women, I presume, rather than domestic servants] to Albany to woo votes with kisses, I would send our strongest women to force justice with horsewhips. Force applied in a noble cause is never undignified”.

Extremely saddened

Headline of the Day (the USA Today):
“Pediatricians Call for a Choke-proof Hot Dog.”

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NATO air strike kills 27 Afghan civilians, Gen. Stanley McChrystal is “extremely saddened,” rinse, lather, repeat.

McChrystal added, “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.” Um, right, inadvertently killing people does undermine their trust and confidence in your claim to be protecting them. “We will redouble our effort to regain that trust.” Re-gain?

Today -100: February 22, 1910: Of trolleys and booze

The Philadelphia PD arrest Clarence O. Pratt, the national organizer of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees, for “conspiring to incite to riot,” and refuse to recognize a discharge after bail is entered for him. The arrest will likely lead to sympathy strikes. Although there have been over 150 arrests, worries that police are too sympathetic to strikers in their own neighborhoods has led to cops being shifted en masse to other districts.

The Virginia Legislature votes against a state-wide referendum on prohibition.

Today -100: February 21, 1910: Of trolleys

A trolley strike in Philadelphia has evidently led to “mob rule,” with rioting, the destruction of 297 trolley cars (update: the next day’s paper says 375, but explains that some of those just had their windows broken), tracks obstructed, and many dead and injured.

We hardly knew ye

Fran Lee. She was an actor, broadcaster, consumer and health and safety advocate, she lived 99 years, she will be remembered for dog poop.

It’s all about the context

The Justice Dept exonerates John Yoo & Jay Bybee, overriding its own Office of Professional Responsibility, because “the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers’ actions, had given short shrift to the national climate of urgency in which Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘Among the difficulties in assessing these memos now over seven years after their issuance is that the context is lost,’ Mr. Margolis said.” So that’s okay then.

(Update: Yoo said in as many words that the president can order a village of civilians massacred.)

Today -100: February 20, 1910: Of lynchings, dust, and funeral mutes

In Cairo, Ill., the inquest was held into the death of the one member of the lynch mob. The jury was most interested in determining which black deputy might have shot him. They didn’t, but the names of the four black deputies (which may – or may not, I’m unclear – mean people deputized by the sheriff for the occasion, after the militia failed to show up and he couldn’t find any white volunteers) who fired at the mob are now public. That’ll end well, I’m sure.

The local Catholic priest helpfully explains the race problem in Cairo: “Politics is the ruin of Cairo. The whites purchase the negroes’ votes, and that brings the negroes here. To my mind it is a disgrace that a white man should climb into office by the purchased votes of negroes. But so long as the negro can vote in Cairo this will be the trouble.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Strike Against Dust Settled.” Granite cutters in Vermont, unhappy with the dust caused by pneumatic brush hammers.

But that isn’t the Strike of the Day -100. That would be the strike being considered in Paris by the funeral mutes (croque-mortes). Since the separation of church and state in France, the undertaking profession is now supervised by the government rather than the Catholic Church, so the mourners-for-hire, rather than being paid a salary or a fee or however that worked, now have to beg from the real mourners.

Lamest attempt at a guilt trip ever

Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama “seriously hurts the national feelings of the Chinese people”.

You can’t spell CPAC without ac

Sadly, I just could not force myself to watch any of it for more than 15 seconds at a time. 1) Tune to C-SPAN. 2) “It’s the Star Spangled Banner, Obama, get over it!” 3) Turn off C-SPAN.

Actual quote.

Today -100: February 19, 1910: Of lynchings, the negro problem, and elephants

Cairo, Illinois update: no lynching, thanks to a sizeable contingent of soldiers. One of the lynch mob, the son of a former mayor, is dead from shots fired by the deputies (six of whom were black, interestingly, enlisted for this duty only when white ones refused, if I’m reading the NYT correctly), and four were wounded, including an AP reporter. And the black purse-snatcher, who plead guilty, is sentenced to 14 years. The purse contained “a silver dollar to which a postage stamp had become attached.”

Taft spoke about the “negro problem” in the South, which he believes can be solved through education of the negro and increasing the wealth of the South.

In San Francisco, three elephants left a parade and “ran amuck” for 30 blocks.

Hopey and Dalai

Caption contest:

Today -100: February 18, 1910: Of colds, warpaths, primaries, and lynchings

Kaiser Wilhelm is sick! Okay, it’s not much of a story, but the NYT took advantage to sneak in a little alliteration in its headline: “Kaiser Confined by a Cold.”

However, the Headline of the Day -100 would have to be “Mad Mullah on Warpath.”

Illinois enacts direct primaries (as opposed to nominating conventions). Three previous attempts since the 1890s were struck down by the courts.

In Cairo, Illinois, the site of two lynchings in November 1909, there were shots exchanged between sheriff’s deputies and a mob trying to lynch a negro accused of... purse snatching. At the time the story was filed, the mob was threatening to lynch the deputies as well.

Our presence did not leave good memories

Sarkozy visited France’s former colony, Haiti, and cancelled its debt, which is pretty much the least France could do for Haiti. Sarkozy acknowledged, with atypical Gallic understatement, “Our presence did not leave good memories.”

The Miami Herald tells us: “Haiti and France have had uneasy relations ever since slaves on the western side of the island of Hispaniola fought off French troops and declared independence in 1804.” Gosh, I’d think the uneasy relations started some time before 1804, possibly when the French kidnapped people in Africa and put them in chains, then transported them to a life of slavery in this island they’d seized. Uneasy relations, sheesh.

Batman needs to kick some Virginian ass again

Virginia passes a bunch of pro-gun bills, including allowing them in shelters – that’ll work out well – as well as churches and restaurants that serve alcohol. Also, you can shoot a burglar. And they’re rescinding the ban on buying more than one handgun per month. Which means VA will once again become the number one provider of guns to the gangs of Gotham City New York (the ban was originally enacted in 1993 when VA was embarrassed by having its gun policy illustrated in a Batman comic book).

Today -100: February 17, 1910: Of being hammered, and 9¢ of waste

Speaking to Civil War veterans, Taft said that the criticism with which he was “hammered” during his first year in office was nothing compared to what Lincoln faced, and anyway every president faced intense criticism, with the possible exception, he added wistfully, of Teddy Roosevelt.

A letter to the Times notes that some contractor pays $1,717 a week to take whatever he wants from the city dumps and sells salvaged junk for $350,000 per year. The letter-writer thinks this proves that all the talk about the high cost of living is nonsense because people are wasting so much stuff. The NYT rather sarcastically headlines this letter “New York Extravagance. Proof That Each of Us Wastes at Least 9 Cents a Year.”

Today -100: February 16, 1910: Cocaine goes wrong

NY State Senator Timothy D. Sullivan, the corrupt Tammany politician, had a problem with cocaine. Evidently it was used during a minor operation – as an anaesthetic? – went to his heart and nearly killed him. “About once out of 7,000 times,” he said, “cocaine goes wrong.” They all say that.

A major shootout

Another quote from Cheney’s “This Week” interview: “I can remember a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House where we had a major shootout over how this was going to be handled between the Justice Department, that advocated that approach, and many of the rest of us, who wanted to treat it as an intelligence matter, as an act of war with military commissions.”

Maybe a guy who once shot his friend in the face should pick another metaphor than “major shootout.”

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A capital crime in Afghanistan: digging.

Headline of the Day

The Independent: “Bishops Meet Pope over Child Abuse Scandals.” Is that like “bishops meet pope over coffee”?

Today -100: February 15, 1910: Of trains and planes and war balloons

Taft tells that delegation of airplane boosters that strict economy means he won’t be endorsing their project for war balloons and military planes this congressional session, but might do so next session.

Not much going on today, although there were I think 3 different stories about train accidents, including a head-on collision between two trains in Georgia which killed eight people and an incident in which a train bumped Andrew Carnegie’s carriage, causing no injuries but upsetting his lunch party (headline: Carnegie Shaken Up) – guess which story, both on the front page, is longer.

A big supporter of waterboarding

Dick Cheney went on “This Week” this morning, because nothing starts off Valentine’s Day right like Dick Cheney, and said about what you’d expect Dick Cheney to say.

If the Obamaites are going to take credit for Iraq, “it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘Thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, were just dead wrong.” Is there such a thing as a healthy dose of Thank you, George Bush?

The Underpants Bomber should be tortured – “the professionals need to make that judgment ... how they can best achieve his cooperation” – and says the Obamaites “didn’t know what to do with the guy.”

“I was a big supporter of waterboarding.”

Thinks we should be threatening Iran with war.

Thinks it’s time to reconsider gays in the military. Then send the gays to invade Iran.

But you knew that

Today -100: February 14, 1910: Of war balloons

The president of the Aero Club will meet the president of the United States to urge the military necessity for airplanes and dirigibles. He will point out that there is a war balloon gap: Germany has 14 military dirigibles and 5 airplanes, France 7 and 29, Russia 3 and 6, England 2 each. The US Army has just 1 dirigible and 2 planes.

Is there a more chilling phrase in the military lexicon than “war balloon?” I think not.

Some good news, at last, for Marya Aman

The Israeli High Court has ordered the government to provide the family of Marya Aman, the 8-year-old girl paralyzed by an Israeli rocket attack (details at my previous post on Marya, with links to earlier posts), with a home near her Jerusalem hospital, and to allow her father to actually leave the hospital without fear of arrest and deportation for the first time in 4 years.

Good News of the Day with Rather Unfortunate Headline of the Day

NYT: “Gay Guardsman Has Returned to Drills With His Unit”