Today -100: June 20, 1912: Of the real and lawful majority of the convention, executions, and Lloyd George’s hat

NYT: “The convention today cheered for Roosevelt and voted for Taft.” There was a 45-minute pro-Theodore demonstration (to be fair, there was also a 15-second Taft demonstration later in the proceedings). Later, Roosevelt supporters withdrew from the convention’s credentials committee on the pretext of its refusal to give a full hearing to all the contested seats (and the convention voted to let 72 contested delegates, enough to swing the convention to either Taft or TR, vote on their own cases). TR had told a meeting of his delegates in the morning that if the “fraudulently seated delegates” were seated, they, “the real and lawful majority of the convention,” should organize their own convention. Incidentally, before the bolt, the Theodores were spreading a rumor that if the convention nominated Roosevelt, Taft was planning to run as an independent.

A convicted murderer will soon be executed in Nevada. Under a new law, he gets to choose the method of execution and has opted for being shot. The NYT thinks this is inappropriate for a non-military regime and that hanging is “a relic of the mediaeval punishments by public exposure.” It also thinks taking poison (an option the Nevada Legislature considered but rejected) is “revolting to modern sensibilities” and much prefers New York’s electric chair, which is “certain, scientific, and prosaic”.

British Suffragettes knock Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s hat off. Detectives seize the women while he jumps into a cab and escapes. No word on the fate of the hat.

Mittimal

ABC interviewed Newt Gingrich at the National Zoo, so the headline reads “Newt Gingrich’s Advice for Mitt Romney: Sharpen Your Animal Instincts,” although he didn’t actually say that. But it raises a question:

If Mitt Romney were an animal, what animal would he be?

CONTEST!

Today -100: June 19, 1912: Of hissing and leper republics

At the “sullen, ugly, ill-tempered” Republican convention, “hissing the order of the day.” Also, according to the NYT, savage talk, personal insults, hoots, grim silence, booing, cat calls, imitations of a steam whistle, derisive laughter, angry snarls... It took six hours to elect a temporary chairman, Sen. Elihu Root (the Tafties’ choice), by a handful of votes over Wisconsin Gov. Francis McGovern, a La Follette supporter backed by the Theodores in a tactical move. And, er, that’s it for day one. William Jennings Bryan, sitting in the press section, said “If you didn’t know where you were you might think you were in a Democratic Convention.”

Michael Walen of the United States is elected president of the Philippine Leper Republic.

Today -100: June 18, 1912: If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!

Metaphor of the Day -100: Some of the Taft delegates traveling to the Republican National Convention are injured in a train wreck.

Metaphor of the Day -100, runner-up: Theodore Roosevelt, at a meeting: “If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!” He asks Taft delegates to vote for his candidate for the temporary chairmanship of the convention to rebuke the “burglary and piracy” of the RNC and says that any action by the convention which was voted upon by fraudulently seated delegates would not be binding on the party (he wants organizational votes to be cast only by unchallenged delegates). William Jennings Bryan reports: “The Arabs are said to have seven hundred words which mean ‘camel’; Mr. Roosevelt has nearly as many synonyms for theft, and he used them all tonight. ... He compared political crimes, such as he charged against his opponents, with the crimes for which men are imprisoned, to the advantage of the latter, and declared that some of the governors among the reactionaries have refused pardons to criminals whose deeds were infinitely less wicked than the political misdemeanors of the governors themselves.”

Some of the negro delegates from Georgia defected to Roosevelt yesterday and defected back to Taft today, claiming they’d been bunkoed. The Georgia delegates almost came to blows, a white delegate who announced himself a Theodore raising a chair to ward off negro Tafties (Tafty is my own term, since there seems to be no one-word term for Taft supporters, but Roosevelt supporters are occasionally called Theodores). The Roosevelt strategy of winning over negro delegates (or bribing them, according to the Tafties) is not going well.

Taft vetoes the $92 million Army appropriation bill because of its provisions reducing the size of the General Staff, setting the qualifications for the office of Army chief of staff that would remove Taft’s appointee, and removing decisions on the distributions of forts and disposition of the army from the War Dept to a committee of retired officers.

The LAT, always so good in its understanding of the Celestial mind: “CHINESE RESIST REFORMS.: Abolition of Gambling and Girl Slavery Weakens Hold of the New Government on the Ignorant Masses.”

Today -100: June 17, 1912: Of meat riots, white planks, socialists, and negro rebellions

Meat riots in Chicago. Which sounds like a funny way of describing the Republican convention, but no, it’s actually rioting over the high price of meat.

Sen. Francis Newlands (D-Nev.) proposes a “white plank” for the Democratic platform: a constitutional amendment to disenfranchise all black people and ban all non-white immigration.

Republican delegates are arriving in Chicago, marching from the railway station to hq behind bands which only seem to know “Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here” or “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”


William Jennings Bryan, covering the convention for many newspapers, notes that “The Taft men, excepting the Southern delegates, are as a rule of the conservative type. They speak more deliberately and show less animation. Many of them are politicians of long experience who have been accustomed to the methods of the inner circle. They speak cautiously, act deliberately, and are more inclined to ‘view with alarm’ than to enthuse. They feel that things have been going along fairly well, and are anxious that such changes as are necessary may be made ‘slowly and only after careful investigation.’ The Roosevelt men, on the contrary, are largely of the aggressive type. They have already decided matters and have no doubts to settle. They are not waiting for investigation and are not weighing reforms in apothecary scales.”

For the first time, the Socialist Party will be on the ballot in every state.

The Canadian Supreme Court rules that Quebec can’t make mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants illegal if performed by a Protestant (but not a Catholic) priest.

The head of the negro rebellion in Cuba orders all foreigners in areas under his control to leave or be hanged.

Today -100: June 16, 1912: It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!

Taft campaign director McKinley says Roosevelt’s followers are trying to “sweep delegates off their feet by bluff, bulldoze, and bluster.”

The LA Times describes the California delegation, arriving in Chicago for the convention, as “screaming protests” at the unseating of their delegates from the 4th Congressional district (in violation of California election law).

The RNC has finished adjudicating contested convention seats, deciding 19 seats for Roosevelt and 235 for Taft, including those named by all-white conventions in Virginia. The NYT says that the Taft delegates from the South who were approved by the RNC are “decidedly of a better type” than the rejected Roosevelt delegates, but complains that the Southern states are represented at all, since those states are “hopelessly Democratic, where the actual Republican vote is very small, and where it is made up almost altogether of the weaker of the two races”; this is “bad for the negroes, for the Republican Party, and for the whole country. At home the negroes suffer from the bitterness of political feeling.”

Arriving in Chicago, Roosevelt tells the crowd greeting him, “It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!”

The Perth Amboy strike may be near an end, following numerous shootings and other violence (Gov. Woodrow Wilson refused to send in the militia, and claims he can’t find any strike leaders to deal with personally). One of the demands of the strikers is an end to the system by which men who worked more than 24 days in a row at the foundries got a bonus. Sentences of 6 months or a year have been handed out to strikers for throwing stones or “inciting to riot,” but the guards and/or deputies who shot down two strikers yesterday remain at large, although the prosecutor admits the shooting was illegal without the Riot Act having been read.

The Texas attorney general’s office rules that married women aren’t eligible for public offices that require bonds because married women can’t execute valid bonds unless they go through a lengthy legal procedure to remove coverture.

The NYT condemns a recent bit of naughtiness by British suffragettes, saying “The right to vote will never be secured through disorderly conduct.” When has it been secured through anything else?

Headline of the Day -100: “Only The Kaiser Can Blow This Horn.” Evidently no one is allowed to copy the sound of Kaiser Bill’s car horn, which “differs from any other signaling instrument in the world in that it consists of four or five distinct tones, blended into a harmonious whole, which produces more the effect of an operatic recitative than a prosaic blast”.

Today -100: June 15, 1912: Of bribery, biddles, and rifles

The RNC today awards 14 more disputed delegates to Taft, none to Roosevelt.

More accusations of bribery between the Roosevelt & Taft camps, related to negro delegates from the South. No need to get into the details, but it arises because it is “traditional” to pay the traveling expenses of these (usually poor) negroes.

In Virginia, Taft is trying to build up a whites-only Republican party to counter-balance Roosevelt-supporting black Republicans. Both sides are trying to scrounge up delegates from the South, where they don’t have to worry so much about the feelings of the rank and file Republican party members, because there basically aren’t any. Roosevelt is actively courting negro Taft delegates to switch their votes.

Taft issues a denial that he is considering stepping aside in favor of a compromise candidate, a fairly remarkable statement for a sitting president to have to make.

Rumors (reported as fact) that VP Sherman, who is not at all well, will not run again this year.

Name of the Day -100: A NY judge is marrying a Miss Beatrice Biddle.

San Diego police buy 20 rifles but deny it has anything to with the IWW.

We can’t afford to jeopardize our future by repeating the mistakes of the past

Romney a speech on the economy in which he criticized Obama for giving a speech on the economy: “He’s doing that because he hasn’t delivered a recovery for the economy.” “Talk is cheap,” Romney says. While talking. Cheaply.

He said he’d build the Keystone pipeline “if I have to build it myself”. It’s good to have a hobby.

Then Obama gave his economic speech. It was very much a campaign speech, explicitly defining itself against the Romneybot and the Republicans. It didn’t, for example, ask Congress to do anything before November.

COMPLETE AGREEMENT ACHIEVED! “there’s one place where I stand in complete agreement with my opponent: This election is about our economic future.”

WHAT THIS ISN’T: “Now, this isn’t some abstract debate.” Really? Because Romney’s economic plans are based entirely on abstract ideology. Also, Barack, what’s so wrong about have having “some abstract debate”? Ideas are good. Ideas are your friend.

It’s not only not some abstract debate, it’s also “not another trivial Washington argument.” It’s “a make-or-break moment for America’s middle class”.

WHAT NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN: “And while there are many things to discuss in this campaign, nothing is more important than an honest debate about where these two paths would lead us.” Oh good, nothing is more important than an honest debate, because I’m sure an honest debate is just what we’re going to get. Honest debate, woo hoo.

THE RETURN OF IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, this was not your normal recession.”

THE CRISIS OF 2008: “So recovering from the crisis of 2008 has always been the first and most urgent order of business”. “The crisis of 2008” is probably a good phrase for him.

MAN, WE CAN’T AFFORD ANYTHING ANY MORE: “We can’t afford to jeopardize our future by repeating the mistakes of the past”.

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS TIME TO GO BACK TO A GREATER RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUELS FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES, RIGHT? “Now is not the time to go back to a greater reliance on fossil fuels from foreign countries.”

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS TIME TO SADDLE AMERICAN BUSINESSES WITH CRUMBLING ROADS AND BRIDGES, RIGHT? “now is not the time to saddle American businesses with crumbling roads and bridges”.

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT’S TIME TO GO BACK TO TAKING ON OUR FISCAL PROBLEMS IN A DISHONEST, UNBALANCED AND IRRESPONSIBLE WAY, RIGHT? “And finally, I think it’s time we took on our fiscal problems in an honest, balanced, responsible way.”

WHO’S SAYING THAT? ARE ANY CANDIDATES FOR ANY PUBLIC OFFICE SAYING THAT? “And let me leave you with one last thought. As you consider your choice in November -- (applause) -- don’t let anybody tell you that the challenges we face right now are beyond our ability to solve.”

Graveled down

In its story about the Michigan legislator not allowed to speak after using the word “vagina” during the debate on abortion restrictions, ThinkProgress says “Republicans sought to gravel down the women.”

ThinkProgress of course meant to say gaveled down.

But I like it.

I therefore propose the immediate introduction of the phrase “graveled down” into our political discourse.

That is all.

Today -100: June 14, 1912: Of Hatfields & McCoys

RNC hearings continue, give Roosevelt a few delegates, for once. Lots of debate about whether party conventions at the congressional district level were held without notice and whether negroes and Roosevelt supporters were ejected from Mississippi conventions.

The Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia is a Dr. Henry Hatfield, as in Hatfields & McCoys (evidently the feud is over and the McCoys will work for his election).

Window-smashing by suffragettes in Dublin.

The Socialist mayor of Schenectady appoints Helen Keller to the Board of Public Welfare.

Today -100: June 13, 1912: Of saturnalias of fraud and larceny

The RNC gives another 40 contested seats to Taft and none to Roosevelt, including 2 in California, simply disregarding the California primary law, because RNC rules are “supreme.” (This was the first ever presidential primary in California. When the Progressives came to power, they decided to go with principle over party machinery and enacted a primary law that awarded delegates based on the proportion of votes in the state as a whole. The Taft side accepted this, because it would give them some power, and Taft himself gave written approval to his list of delegates, as required by the law. But when he lost badly, his side claimed that party rules required that delegates be awarded by district, then claimed to have won two districts by a small margin, which is literally impossible to determine, since some precincts crossed district lines. Got it?) Gov. Hiram Johnson refuses to go before the committee to argue against the decision, saying it would be “an insult to the people of California were I to appear in a trial of the title to stolen property, with the thief who stole it sitting as Judge.” Sen. Dixon of Montana says the RNC is presiding over a “Saturnalia of fraud and larceny”. The Arizona primaries were also basically ignored in awarding that state’s delegates.

In a statement denouncing the RNC, Roosevelt says that the opponents of the Republican bosses are not the “irregulars” and would not be “bolting” the party, as the common usage would have it, but vice versa. He points out that the Taft majority on the RNC comes from territories (Alaska, the Philippines, etc) which don’t have a vote, states with very few actual Republicans, and states where Taft was rejected in the primaries.

Roosevelt finally comes out unequivocally in favor of a women’s suffrage plank in the party platform.

175 Mexican federales and rebels are killed in a battle in the Mormon colony – the battle that caused the Romneys to flee back to the US.

Striking Hungarian and Slav workers take over Perth Amboy, NJ after the companies bring in strikebreakers and guards, who shoot at the strikers.

The kind of healthcare they deserve

Romney gave a speech on health care today: “I believe that states have responsibility to care for people in the way they feel best.” Doesn’t the phrase “in the way they feel best” strip that “responsibility” of all content whatsoever?

Of course the real solution is to “get health care to act more like a consumer market”. Isn’t it adorable how a profit-based, capitalist approach is called a “consumer market”?

Worried about pre-existing conditions after he repeals Obamacare? “We’re gonna have to make sure the law we replace Obamacare with assures that people who have a pre-existing condition, who’ve been insured in the past, are able to get insurance in the future so they don’t have to worry about that condition keeping them from getting the kind of healthcare they deserve.” Don’t you feel “assured” by that? I mean, wouldn’t you feel assured if you could figure out what the hell it meant? Also, when health care acts more like a consumer market, people won’t get “the kind of healthcare they deserve,” they’ll get the kind of healthcare they can afford. I guess for Romney, having money and deserving the things money can buy are the same thing.

Today -100: June 12, 1912: Of adjournments and discredited bosses

Rep. Robert Wickliffe (D-LA) is run over by a train. A resolution to adjourn the House out of respect was being read out when suddenly someone realized that the congresscritter’s wife was in the gallery, and hadn’t been informed yet that she was a widow. Someone took her to one side and explained it.

Today for the first time, the RNC decided a disputed national convention delegate in Roosevelt’s favor. And awarded 17 more to Taft. Of the disputed seats decided so far, that’s 101-1.

Daily Telegraphy

News you can abuse, from the world’s foremost “news”paper:

London Mayor Boris Johnson (ah, this will be on tonight’s Daily Show) offers New Yorkers freaked by Bloomberg’s “soda tyranny” refuge in London.

Incidentally, if Johnson is interviewed by Jon Stewart instead of by John Oliver, a great opportunity for comedy will have been lost.

Woollen coffins?

One Ray Dolin, hitchhiking the US while writing a book called “The Kindness of America,” is shot in a drive-by in Montana, because of course he is.

Embarrassing Death of the Day: A South African man wearing his dead dog’s leash around his neck – as a tribute and certainly not for any kinky reasons, whatever makes you think that – got into his car without noticing that its end was sticking out the door. It got caught in his front wheel and snapped his neck as he reversed out of a restaurant. “Police captain Stanley Jarvis confirmed that police are not treating the incident as hilarious suspicious.”

And, of course, the story that David Cameron accidentally left his 8-year-old daughter in a pub (right after his government launched a “troubled families” initiative)(the Telegraph doesn’t mention that, but does interview social workers who say, yeah, you’d normally make a couple of calls after something like that to see if everything was all right in the home).

Today -100: June 11, 1912: Of reassuring warships, conspiracies, and turkey trots

Unconvincing Headline of the Day -100: “Havana Reassured as Warships Arrive.”

As the RNC decides yet more disputed delegations to the party national convention in favor of Taft supporters, Roosevelt writes in The Outlook that Taft’s people are “conspiring to steal the victory from the people.”

The Senate votes for an Army appropriations bill that includes a provision ousting the current chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood. Not sure what they have against him.

Headline of the Day -100: “Dies After a Turkey Trot.”

Today -100: June 10, 1912: Of warships, wretched palterers in chicane and corruption, and the mighty Mississippi

The US is now sending two warships to Cuba, without having informed Cuba in advance.

The NYT says that the RNC’s rejection of all of Roosevelt’s contested delegates demonstrates a plot to buy the presidency for Roosevelt, a plot which has failed “because of the utter incapacity of his miserable agents. Had their skill been equal to their, and his, unprincipled audacity, if instead of being wretched palterers in chicane and corruption they had been competent in crime, men thoroughly schooled in the higher branches of political villainy, the picture now presented to the eyes of the Nation in Chicago might have been very different.” (In another editorial a couple of days ago I didn’t link to, the NYT dismissed the primaries, in which TR beat Taft’s ass like a flabby drum, as a failed experiment, because turnouts were so low that clearly most people would rather just leave the selection of their presidential candidate to the party bosses.)

Pro-Roosevelt Gov. Walter Stubbs of Kansas says “It is just as reprehensible to steal delegates as it is to steal sheep or horses.” And that’s pretty darn reprensible.

The Mississippi has been flooding. Roosevelt says if he’s elected president, he’ll put a stop to that.

Today -100: June 9, 1912: Of sinister plots and kaiser hands

Anti-negro riots in Cuba.

Sen. Knute Nelson (R-Minn.) claims that the insurrections in Cuba and Mexico are financed by American owners of businesses in those countries, trying to provoke annexation. Which is one way to get around the sugar duty.

The Republican National Committee is in the process of deciding every single contested national convention delegate seat in favor of Taft supporters.

Cruel Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Kaiser’s Hands Strengthened.”

Doing fine

Obama held a press conference today.

NOW IN MISLEADING COMPARISONS THEATRE: “The fact is job growth in this recovery has been stronger than in the one following the last recession a decade ago.”


He complained that Congress (i.e., Republicans in Congress, but he didn’t say that) “left most of the jobs plan just sitting there. ... They’re not just my ideas; they’re not just Democratic ideas -- they’re ideas that independent, nonpartisan economists believe would make a real difference in our economy.” After 3½ years in office, he still believes that the opinions of “independent, nonpartisan economists” hold some sort of sway. Isn’t that adorable?

No, no it isn’t.



TO THE MERKEL-PHONE, CHIEF O’HARA! “We have been in constant contact with Europe over the last -- European leaders over the last two years”.

DOIN’ FINE: “we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine.”

Later in the day, at an event with whichever member of the Aquino dynasty is currently ruling the Philippines, he was forced to address the issue of whether the private sector was, in fact, actually doing fine: “Listen, it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That’s the reason I had the press conference.” Obama 2012: Fixing The Economy One Press Conference At A Time.

SO STOP SPECULATING, OR HE WILL TOTALLY DRONE YOUR ASS: On the NYT killer flying robot story, he claimed that “my attitude has been zero tolerance for these kinds of leaks and speculation. ... The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive. It’s wrong.” So that settles that.

Today -100: June 8, 1912: Of treaty obligations

Secretary of State Philander Knox informed Cuban President José Gomez that if he continued to fail to protect American nationals and their property from the negro rebellion, the US would be compelled, yes, compelled under its treaty obligations to intervene. 5,000 more troops are ordered into readiness to be transported to Cuba to act in accordance with American treaty obligations with extreme prejudice.

Jullus Kovacs, a member of the Hungarian Diet (rather unnecessarily described as a member of the opposition), shoots at Count Tisza, the president of the Chamber, who has been making a practice of having the police throw obstructive opposition MPs out of the chamber. Kovas misses Tisza with his three shots, then shoots himself in the head.

Today -100: June 7, 1912: Of lynch mobs & railroads, last interventions, colonial problems, and opium panics

The Supreme Court is reviewing a lawsuit brought by one Annie May Rogers against the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific Railroad Company. Her husband was accused of killing a Mr. Brown but was going to be released, due to double jeopardy, so Brown’s brother got together a lynch mob and hired a special train to take it from Monroe to Tallulah, Louisiana, where they lynched Rogers. Jumping ahead to 1914, we see that Mrs. Rogers got $7,000 from the railroad.

Cuban President José Gomez takes to the field personally against the negro rebels, afraid that if the army takes too long to defeat them, the US will invade and annex Cuba. Evidently one cause of Cubans’ refusal to believe that the US doesn’t intend to do this is an old comment by Roosevelt when he was president that “the next intervention will be the last.” Another is the Platt Amendment, in which Cuba was only granted “independence” if it “agreed” that the US could intervene whenever it felt like it.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “FRANCE’S COLONIAL PROBLEMS.: The Wild Tribesmen of Morocco Are Difficult to Handle, War Being a Diversion to Them.” #1stWorldInvading3rdWorldProblems

Other Headline of the Day -100: “Panic in Opium Market.” Hey, you know what would take the edge off that panic....?

Today -100: June 6, 1912: Of primaries and torture

Roosevelt wins the South Dakota primary, which is the last primary of 1912. Only 12 states held primaries. Roosevelt won 9 of them, with landslides in 8.

The Presbyterians accuse Japan of torturing Korean Christians.

Today -100: June 5, 1912: Of pure political brigandage

Headline of the Day -100: “Brigands, Roosevelt Cries.” Taft is given Ohio’s delegates-at-large to the national Republican convention by the state convention, despite his humiliating electoral defeat. This, says Roosevelt, “is, of course, pure political brigandage.... fresh and conclusive proof that Mr Taft and his advisors care nothing for the will of the people”.

At the convention, Former Lt. Gov. Warren G. Harding speaks for Taft and is hissed. He complains that he was never hissed before. “Harding attempted to quote the words of the Saviour on the Cross, but was hooted down. ‘You will all repent of your sins,’ were the speaker’s closing words.”

The NYT does a better job today of explaining the spreading unrest in Belgium, which is a response to the defeat of a Liberal-Socialist alliance in the recent elections by the Clericals, who want more public money for Catholic schools. The Liberals were persuaded to add universal male suffrage and abolition of plural voting (extra votes for education qualifications and fatherhood) to their platform. Also, there’s a Flemish/Walloon element to the conflict.

LAT Headline: “COLORED MAN LIVES CENTURY.: Pomona Darkey Rounds Out One Hundred Years With Celebration and Expresses High Hope.” High hope that he won’t be called a pejorative name by a newspaper on his 100th birthday? That he’ll live to 106 so he can live as a free man for as long as he lived as a slave?

Today -100: June 4, 1912: Of angry Belgians, race wars, and clean senators

Republicans in the newest state, Arizona, hold competing Taft/Roosevelt state conventions.

Helpful Foreign News Headline of the Day -100: “Belgian Workmen Angry.” Liège gendarmes shoot up a meeting in front of the Socialist Club, killing 3. The anger has something to do with a strike and an election.

President Gomez asks the Cuban Congress for the power to suspend the constitution in order to take severe measures to strike terror into the colored race (I’m not sure if that’s a paraphrase or what). See, and we worried when we liberated Cuba from the Spanish that they wouldn’t be able to learn from us, but clearly they have. So the US will be selling the Cuban government 5,000 rifles and 1 million rounds of ammunition.

The French kill 600 Moroccan tribesmen, because why not. Hey, France, define “protectorate.”

Headline of the Day -100: “$6 to Bathe a Senator.” Evidently the Senate Office Building baths are really quite posh and expensive to maintain.

Today -100: June 3, 1912: Of Rodins

Auguste Rodin is being denounced for supporting L’après-midi d’un faune. There is also some debate over whether it’s worth it for the state to accept Rodin’s offer that if he is allowed to live rent-free at the Hôtel Biron (the current location of the Rodin Museum) for the remainder of his life, he will bequeath the state his sculptures.

Today -100: June 2, 1912: Of constitutions and lecherous fauns

The Ohio Constitutional Convention votes to put 42 constitutional amendments before the voters, including women’s suffrage, popular election of US senators, the initiative and referendum, and limiting saloons to one per 500 people.

Nijinsky’s ballet L’après-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun), based on Debussy, opens in Paris to great scandal, because of, you know, the leotards and the sexy. Le Figaro denounces it on the front page as “neither a pretty pastoral nor a work of profound meaning. We are shown a lecherous faun, whose movements are filthy and bestial in their eroticism, and whose gestures are as crude as they are indecent.”

Today -100: June 1, 1912: Of suing for peace, daiquiris, and wild men of Borneo

Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti says he’d be perfectly happy if Turkey “sues for peace,” as long as it agreed to Italian sovereignty over Libya. “Italy in her might has hitherto been merciful, but her patience is nearly exhausted.”

Some at the University of Michigan are worried that discriminatory treatment of its Hindu students, who have been refused service at restaurants and hotels in Detroit and Ann Arbor, will drive them to Harvard and Yale, where Indians are treated as Aryans rather than as negroes.

Cuban President Gomez “consents” to US Marines and a gunboat guarding mining companies at Daiquiri, like he had a choice in the matter. In fact, the US seems to have informed him of this by a telegram from the American ambassador (ending “My Government adds explicitly that this should not be considered as an intervention,” which I think means, We don’t care who wins your stoopid civil war, we just want the iron).

“Plutano,” one of the “Wild Men of Borneo,” from P.T. Barnum’s freak show (actually mentally disabled dwarf strong men from Ohio), dies at 92 (or 85-ish, according to Wikipedia).

Today -100: May 31, 1912: Get him a nurse and a perambulator

Wilbur Wright dies of typhoid fever at 45.

There’s some nonsense about a memo from then-President Roosevelt about some architectural alterations to the White House being “permanent during my lifetime,” which some people are claiming means he envisioned making himself president-for-life, or something. TR says this can only be “heeded by men with brains of about three guinea-pig power.” He’s not wrong.

Headline of the Day -100: “Talk of Imperialism Annoys Roosevelt.” At Gettysburg for a Memorial Day speech, TR says that just like the talk by “foolish people” after the Civil War about the North establishing a dictatorship, so too if any man talks about Roosevelt making himself a dictator, “get him a nurse and a perambulator.”

Possibly needing an especially sturdy perambulator, Taft, making his Memorial Day speech at Arlington, says the Civil War was all about preserving the limitations of the Constitution and popular representative institutions, by which I assume he means no one serving a third presidential term.

US Marines will guard mines in Cuba.

Today -100: May 30, 1912: Of lepers and falling window-washers

Headline of the Day -100: “Back Porch for Leper.” Health authorities will let a leper in Bay City, Michigan stay in his own home, but he has to build a new back porch, stay off the front porch and not leave his property. His wife will stay with him and be similarly quarantined, but their four children can’t live with them.

Headline of the Day -100, Runner Up: “Hurt by Falling Workman.” A window-washer fell from the 8th floor of a Chicago office building onto a Rev. Henry Heck (!) breaking his ankle. The rev’s ankle, that is. The window-washer died, although that part didn’t make the headline, and his name didn’t make it into the story. Priorities.

Today -100: May 29, 1912: Of feeble Republicans, sleeping Roosevelts, machete-wielding Cubans, and the kaiserin’s hats

In Texas, it’s the Taft supporters who split from the main Republican state convention to hold their own. Usually it’s the other way around.

Theodore Roosevelt easily defeats Taft in the New Jersey primaries. The NYT is very, very disappointed: “The Republicans of New Jersey must be accounted a feeble folk.”

Election Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Sleeps at Ease.” But wakes up carrying a big stick.

NJ Gov. Woodrow Wilson also wins his primary.

There’s a small push, which will go nowhere, to nominate Robert Lincoln, son of the president (and a critic of Roosevelt’s), as Republican candidate for president.

The Senate concludes its investigation into the Titanic disaster. Votes $1,000 for a gold medal for the captain of the Carpathia. Votes a spanking (they’ll leave actual punishment to the British authorities) for the captain of the California, which ignored the Titanic’s distress signals, and for the late Capt. Smith of the Titanic, and for the White Star Line’s executives for ordering insufficient lifeboat drills, and for Leonardo DiCaprio, “who knows what he did.” The report calls for various reforms in ship safety: more lifeboats, life preservers, etc etc.

The State Dept explains to Cuba: “If a commander of an American force now on the island sees or hears of a Cuban holding his machete over the head of an American, he certainly is not going to enter into negotiations with Cuba nor question Washington as to whether he shall stop it or not.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Kaiser Buying Hats for Wife Called Good Omen.” The Temps (Paris) thinks that a monarch who chooses his wife’s hats himself isn’t preparing for war.

Today -100: May 28, 1912: Of lynchings, the restless and the reckless, frothing reds, and Dutch necks

Taft responds to Cuban President Gomez’s cablegram, insisting that he didn’t intend to intervene in Cuban affairs, this time. Still sending the Marines, though.

A black man is lynched in Robertson County, Tennessee; shot 100 times.

The NYT wants Republicans in at least one primary, that of New Jersey tomorrow, to not vote for Roosevelt. “It would be unjust and untrue to say that all of Mr. Roosevelt’s followers are revolutionists, that all of them are dangerous radicals. But it is true that the unstable, the ignorant, or the half-informed, the restless and the reckless part of our political society is to be found in the Roosevelt ranks. Are the men of substance and soberness going to let the party they have so long and so loyally sustained be destroyed by what Mr. Roosevelt correctly describes as the ‘crowd’? ... The conservative Republicans have acted this year as if they had lost interest in their party.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Frothing Reds Leave in Irons.” The LA Times gloating over the deportation of two foreign IWW activists, Abraham Joseph Dumont and Albert Wilson.

Confusing Headline of the Day -100: “Dutch Necks Forbidden.” Some sort of fashion thing, and Western Union employees can’t wear them.

Today -100: May 27, 1912: Of marines, smart sets, and pie

Cuban President José Gomez protests against the US sending Marines, and anyway we can kill our negroes without any gringo help, thank you. He has also refuses an offer of aid from 500 American cowboys.

Theodore Roosevelt, writing in The Outlook, notes that in the 11 states that had primaries, Taft received only 48 delegates out of the 324 selected and has only won victories in states “where the party is in control, not of the people but of the bosses.” So a Republican national convention that nominates Taft “would have to defy the will of the voters.”

The San Diego police have told the LAT that many fugitives are taking refuge in the unwashed ranks of the IWW forces converging on SD, including safecrackers, murderers, burglars, and hold-up men.

1912 sports news: The NY Giants arrive in Paterson for a game and are horrified to find that the team they were scheduled to play is a negro team, the Smart Sets. After arguing about it for a while, they finally agreed to play, although their pitcher, Louis Drucke, insisted on being announced by a different name. After various displays of ill temper, the Giants stormed off the field during the 10th inning (tied at 3-3). Their bus was surrounded by the crowd, which threw things at it.

1912 nutrition news: The New York Medical Journal says that pie is good for you.

Some great conspiracy

David Cameron: “Some people are saying there was some great conspiracy between me and Rupert Murdoch to do some big deal to back them in return for support. Rupert Murdoch has said that’s not true, James Murdoch has said that’s not true, I have said that’s not true. There was no great conspiracy.” So that settles that.

Today -100: May 26, 1912: How can a man speak of the questions of the day when a prizefight is going on?

One of Theodore Roosevelt’s guards is run over and killed by TR’s car in Atlantic City after he fell off its running board. Meanwhile, Taft is driving around New Jersey at speeds of up to 70 mph.

In Elizabeth, NJ, Roosevelt says Taft can’t win the popular vote and can’t win over the Republican national convention either without “deliberate cheating,” i.e., refusing to sit TR delegates.

Woodrow Wilson asks, “How can a man speak of the questions of the day when a prizefight is going on?” How indeed.

2,000 people help lynch a black man in Tyler, Texas. They make him confess to attacking a white woman, then set him on fire, as is the custom.

Today -100: May 25, 1912: Of terrorists, vigilantes, limousines, and negro elks

Taft campaign manager Rep William McKinley (R-No Relation and Stop Asking Already) says Roosevelt and his supporters “will resort to every known means to terrorize the Chicago convention.”

The chief of police of San Diego claims that the IWW has armed men in town, who were chosen by lot to assassinate the mayor, district attorney, police chief, etc.

The LA Times’ support of the anti-IWW vigilantes in San Diego was totally in character, but I’m a little surprised at the NYT also doing so.

Every year, students at Dickinson College are collectively assessed a charge for damage to school property during the session. Students angry at an increase in the charge this year to $1.95 each, stone the dean’s house in protest. Getting their money’s worth, I guess.

The limo of Max Blanck, one of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company’s two owners, hits two children in two separate incidents on the same day. The same chauffeur was driving both times, but one time he was driving Max and the other time his wife. Both instructed him not to tell the other, but they found out when a reporter came to ask about one of the incidents, and hilarity ensued – “Do you mean to say you had an accident and didn’t tell me of it?” “Well, you didn’t tell me of your accident either, did you?” It’s like a really crappy episode of a really crappy sitcom, starring Max Blanck as the lovable scamp who should have been in jail for manslaughter instead of tooling around New York.

Headline of the Day -100: “Negro Elks Restrained.” A black fraternal lodge is enjoined from using the name Elks.

Today -100: May 24, 1912: Of battleships, ever victorious Italians, and muck

Democrats in the House refuse to include funds to build new battleships in the Navy budget.

Riots and a general strike in Budapest over the postponement of a bill for universal male suffrage end when the government reverses itself.

In Libya, the Italians have been dropping leaflets from airplanes telling the Arabs that they should surrender because Italy is totally winning the war, which “indicates that God is the protector of the Italians. As for the Turks, they have the habit of lying, and they will tell you that these things are not true. But we swear that all these things are true.” Other letters assure the Arabs that “the ever victorious Italians” consider them as their own children. Children that they will drop bombs on, “annihilating you and your domestic animals” but “take refuge with us and you will be treated with kindness.”

The US is sending 700 marines and some gunboats to Cuba because of the “negro uprising,” supposedly just to protect Americans (and American-owned property, naturally).

The NYT explains that while negro Cubans performed well in the fight to overthrow Spanish rule and were thwarted in their desire for their share of public offices and whatnot after independence, “The plain truth is that Cuba had to decide whether she would be a black or a white republic, and a black republic meant in time another Haiti.” The NYT doesn’t mention this, but the proximate cause of this rebellion is a law banning the negroes from forming a race-based political party.

Headline of the Day -100: “Urge Prussia to Keep Muck.” That’s conductor Karl Muck, who plans to move from Germany to Boston to take up the directorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Today -100: May 23, 1912: Of undoubtedly pure motives

Women’s Social and Political Union leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence are sentenced to 9 months for conspiracy to break windows. The jury recommended leniency on the grounds of the “undoubtedly pure motives underlying the agitation,” but Lord Chief Justice Coleridge ignores them.

Today -100: May 22, 1912: Whereas Taft is round in the middle

Theodore Roosevelt wins the primary in Ohio, Taft’s home state (TR 165,809, Taft 118,362, LaFollete 15,570). Taft was counting on the black vote but didn’t get it. Ohio Gov. Judson Harmon beats Woodrow Wilson in the Democratic primary. D. voters could actually vote for the candidate they preferred, while R’s had to vote for delegates, with nothing printed on the ballot indicating who they supported. The Taft people tried to put large banners near polling places listing Taft delegates, some of which were torn down. The Roosevelt people (including election officials) handed out cards.

Prince George of Cumberland dies in a car accident. This will evidently end the Guelph claims to the throne of Hanover. Whatever.

Today -100: May 21, 1912: Marching on the swampy ground of trickery and humbug

At the London conspiracy trial of Women’s Social and Political Union leaders, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (treasurer) says the true conspiracy was that of the Liberal Cabinet, who were not open to listening to reason and argument: “The methods of the politician were the methods of trickery and chicanery. For two years they went on in a constitutional way, but they were marching on the swampy ground of trickery and humbug.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Drinks Too Much Milk.” The Tafties have been spreading a rumor that Roosevelt’s a booze-hound. He insists he’s never had a martini or highball in his life.

Negro uprising in Cuba!

Albert, King of the Belgians, is suing a newspaper for reporting various rumors about his private life, including one that Queen Elisabeth caught him in flagrante with a chambermaid, pulled out a revolver and shot her dead. Evidently that’s not true.

Today -100: May 19, 1912: Here you are, boys; start at once

Roosevelt has discovered that Alphonso Taft, the president’s father, was one of the people trying to get Grant a third, non-consecutive term as president in 1880. If that doesn’t prove that Roosevelt deserves another term, nothing does.

The NYT graciously refrains, unlike some, from calling Theodore Roosevelt insane: “We decline to throw the charitable mantle of insanity over Col. Roosevelt. He is as sound in mind as any other calculating and unscrupulous demagogue.”

The lord mayor of Belfast, R.J. McMordie, tells Parliament that 300,000 young men in Northern Ireland have armed themselves. He complains that Parliament is ignoring this state of affairs in passing the Home Rule Bill, saying “Here you are, boys; start at once.”

The LA Times on the tar & feathering of Ben Reitman: “Lynch law is to be deplored, but it is sometimes better than no law at all. ... Maybe he got on the whole about what was coming to him.”

Baseball news: the Detroit Tigers walk off at the beginning of a game to protest the suspension of Ty Cobb, who last week went into the stands to beat up a spectator –- a crippled man missing one hand and several fingers on the other hand. Rather than face a $1,000 fine for forfeiting, the manager recruited a whole new team from the spectators, who lost to the Athletics 24-2. Naturally, everyone in Detroit supports Cobb. Mayor William Thompson says “Cobb was perfectly right in resenting with his fists insulting remarks from the stands. The fan who insulted Cobb deserved what he received.”

Today -100: May 18, 1912: Debs-Seidel 1912!

The British court of inquiry into the Titanic sinking interrogates survivors, including Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon, over whether they and other passengers had objected to the suggestion that their lifeboat row back and pick up more survivors. Which it didn’t, they say.

The Arizona Legislature is discussing a bill to segregate public schools (or possibly just remove black children altogether from any school attended by white children, the LA Times isn’t clear). During the debate, Rep. A. G. Curry calls the Speaker a “nigger lover” and is removed.

The Socialist National Convention nominates Eugene Debs for president and former Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel as his running mate. The party also adds to its constitution a commitment to women’s suffrage and a provision for the expulsion of any member who advocates violence or sabotage by the working class.

Philipp Scheidemann, Socialist Reichstag deputy (and future Weimar chancellor), points out that the kaiser’s threat to incorporate Alsace-Lorraine into Prussia (“smash the constitution of that province into fragments” is how he delicately put it) is “a momentous confession” that being part of the Prussian state is “the most severe punishment that can be inflicted upon a people – a punishment like imprisonment and the forfeiture of civil rights.” The Conservatives storm out of the chamber in protest.

LA Times headline: “Iron Hand Used to Stop Misconduct of Vagrants.” Or to put it another way, vigilantes are threatening (“resumed their programme of ‘friendly advice’”) anyone who posted bond for IWW members arrested for making speeches in the street, in an attempt to get their bails revoked. The vigilantes will also read all articles proposed for the two pro-IWW newspapers and decide if they get to print them.

Today -100: May 17, 1912: The elector’s bullet is his ballot

The London Times reports that in the conspiracy trial of Women’s Social and Political Union leaders in Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst’s lawyer, the Irish Nationalist MP Timothy Healy, quotes... someone... saying “the days are past for rioting” because people have the franchise now. “Formerly, when the great mass of the people were voteless they had to do something violent to show what they felt; today, the elector’s bullet is his ballot.” Obviously, Healy points out, this doesn’t apply to women, who are therefore perfectly justified in breaking a few windows. Then he reveals that he was quoting the attorney general, Rufus Isaacs, who is prosecuting the case but was temporarily out of the room.

The anarchist Ben Reitman (Emma Goldmans’ manager) describes how he was grabbed by vigilantes in San Diego, taken into the desert, and tortured. Pretty horrific stuff. The Citizens’ Committee (i.e., the thugs responsible) try to stop the publication of the IWW-friendly San Diego Herald and Labor Leader and threatens every printer in town in an attempt prevent news of the vigilante violence being publicized. Reitman is trying to get warrants sworn out against his kidnappers from L.A., but the San Diego Under Sheriff says he’ll ignore any warrants not sworn out in SD, where Reitman is understandably reluctant to set foot again.

The Mexican government buys three airplanes to use in their war against the Orozco rebels.

Today -100: May 16, 1912: Of men on horseback, dead kings, red flags, and puzzlewits

Sen. Boies Penrose (R-PA) is thrown by his horse, spooked at the sight of a steamroller (Penrose “departed from his back parabolically”). His elbow is bruised. What I’m saying is, 100 years ago senators still rode around Washington D.C. on horseback.

More on the death of King Frederik VIII of Denmark: he died of apoplexy while walking alone on the street in Hamburg (in the Goose Market). Unrecognized and without i.d., he spent five hours in the municipal morgue.

The new king is Christian X, which sounds like a Black Muslim who is painfully unclear on the concept.

The Austrian prime minister, Count Karl von Stürgkh, goes suddenly blind. It is said to be hopeless, but I think not.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee reports out favorably the McCall resolution for an international ban on war for the acquisition of territory. (Elsewhere in the NYT, an editorial deplores the Democratic proposal to grant independence to the Philippines eight years from now, whether “the people are ready and fitted for it and wish it” or not.)

Spokane follows Seattle in banning red flags being carried in parades, requiring all such parades to be headed by an American flag, twice the size of any other flag, and also bans IWW street meetings.

Competing Taft and Roosevelt conventions were held in Washington state (after Roosevelt delegates, even uncontested ones, were thrown out of the state convention)(or so they say), and will each try to get their delegates seated at the National Republican Convention.

I must have missed it, but Roosevelt called Taft a “puzzlewit.”

Today -100: May 15, 1912: Of spectacular candidates, crooks, red flags, and dead kings

Roosevelt wins the California primary, on a low turnout, coming in first in every county but San Joaquin, where La Follette wins. The NYT blames TR’s strong showing on women, voting in their first presidential election in the state, saying they “voted for the spectacular candidate.” Champ Clark wins the D. primary with more than twice the number of votes as Woodrow Wilson.

In Steubenville, Ohio, Roosevelt denies the class warfare charge: “I preach hatred toward no class except the class of crooks – political crooks or financial crooks, big crooks or little crooks. Even then I do not preach hatred of the crook himself, but of his crookedness.”

Mexican President Madero is “highly elated” over Gen. Huerta’s victory over the Orozco rebellion. So that’s okay then.

Seattle bans the carrying of any flag (i.e., the red flag) other than that of the United States. All parades must be lead by an American flag no smaller than 54 X 66 inches.

King Frederik VIII of Denmark dies on a visit to Germany. He is best known for the song “I’m Freddy the Eighth, I Am, I Am,” probably.

Today -100: May 14, 1912: Of amendments, dancing, outrageous romantic lying, and honeyfugling

The Senate Judiciary Committee votes for a Constitutional amendment changing the presidency to a single 6-year term. Yes, it’s aimed at Roosevelt (the NYT editorializes that the notion of a president not being eligible for re-election must have gained “great multitudes of conversions” in the last month). One argument against the amendment is that the American people should be forced to pay attention to public business more often than sexennially.

The House passes a resolution in favor of another Constitutional amendment, for the direct election of senators. It includes a provision for federal supervision of elections, which Southern racists, i.e. the entire Southern delegation, oppose, joined by only two Republicans, Knowland and Kahn, for equally racist (anti-Japanese) reasons.

Italy has succeeded in closing off the Aegean, preventing Turkey sending ships & troops to Libya.

Paraguay defeats a rebellion led by ex-President Alvino Jara, who is killed.

The Methodist church’s conference decides against allowing dancing.

George Bernard Shaw writes to the Daily News against the “explosion of outrageous romantic lying” by journalists and others about the Titanic to fulfill the narrative demands of “romance in a shipwreck,” which filled news reports whether true or not. These demands: That the captain must be a superhero, “a living guarantee that the wreck was nobody’s fault”. “Such a man Captain Smith was enthusiastically proclaimed on the day when it was reported that he had shot himself on the bridge, or shot the first officer, or been shot by the first officer, or shot anyhow to bring the curtain down effectively.” “The officers must be calm, proud, steady, unmoved in the intervals of shooting the terrified foreigners.” Everybody must face death without a tremor, though in reality the crew didn’t tell the passengers that the ship was sinking to prevent a panic, and the band was ordered to play Ragtime to reassure the passengers.

Arthur Conan Doyle naturally responded in the same paper a week later, singing paeans to those very romantic demands. The officers did do their duty and Shaw “tries to defile the beautiful incident of the band by alleging it was the result of orders issued to avert panic.” Shaw responded “there is no heroism in being drowned when you cannot help it.”

Your Old-Timey Vocabulary Word of the Day (from a Taft speech in Ohio): honeyfugle. To deceive or swindle.

The contrasting features of both genders

In 2004, Twitt Romney testified to Congress against gay marriage: “The children of America have the right to have a mother and a father.” It’s always bizarre when social reactionaries use the language of “rights,” isn’t it? “Of course, even today, circumstances can take a parent from the home, but the child still has a mother and a father. If the parents are unmarried or divorced, the child can visit each of them. If a mother or a father is deceased, the child can learn about the qualities of their departed parent. His or her psychological development can still be influenced by the contrasting features of both genders.”

The contrasting features of both genders. I’ve said this before: homophobia is a subset of sexism.

Today -100: May 13, 1912: Of wet corpses, butt missions, duels, and horse thieves

The Titanic’s bodies are still being recovered, four weeks after the sinking.

President Taft thinks “there is a conspiracy for the purpose of arousing religious prejudice against me.” Specifically, anti-Catholic prejudice, with claims that Taft is favoring the Catholic church. Taft himself is a Unitarian, but there were rumors that Major Butt was in Europe on a mission from the president to the Vatican (sub-hed for this story: “‘Butt Mission’ a Falsehood”) and that Taft wired congratulations to the new Apostolic Delegate, both of which he denies. But he did countermand an order by the Indian Commissioner banning nuns wearing their habits when teaching in Indian schools.

Theodore Roosevelt sweeps the Minnesota primaries.

In a duel in Hungary, one of the duelists accidentally chops off the hand of one of the seconds, who didn’t get out of the way fast enough when the duel started.

Italy extends the franchise to illiterates (over the age of 30).

I seem to have missed a story last week where the San Diego police killed Joseph Mikolasek, an IWW member (who came after the cop with an ax, if the LA Times and the SD police are to be believed, which they probably aren’t)(Update: a quick Google search tells me that Mikolasek was either 1) shot by cops in his own home, 2) shot down in front of IWW hq, or 3) died in jail. Thanks a lot, Google). Anyway, the IWW plans a procession (with the body) to protest the death, tomorrow. But today, the grand marshal is arrested as a horse thief.

Today -100: May 12, 1912: Of senators, serial killers, red flags, automobile brigands, dueling, and unwanted Canada

The House will vote next week on a constitutional amendment for the popular election of US senators. But evidently 9 Pacific Coast congresscritters will vote against it in exchange for Southerners voting against abolishing the mints at San Francisco and Carson City.

Remember the Atlanta Jack the Ripper? Just killed his 20th black woman, or “comely yellow girl,” as the NYT puts it.

Indianapolis Police Superintendent Martin Hyland bans red flags from tomorrow’s socialist parade (there’s a, um, National Socialist Convention).

The NYT claims the Paris automobile bandits (or “automobile brigands” – we don’t use the word brigand enough these days) are actually anarchists.

The German Reichstag’s Budget Committee asks the chancellor to wipe out the practice of dueling in the army.

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Denies He Wanted Canada.”

Today -100: May 11, 1912: Of yellow perils, veterans, draft riots, and dancing

The Dillingham Immigration Bill, passed by the Senate but not the House, would add a literacy requirement for male immigrants, and, they’ve just noticed, would probably accidentally remove the enforcement mechanism for the exclusion of Chinese, because Chinese immigrants would now only have to carry the same papers as other immigrants, not ones with their picture, as under previous racist immigration laws, which also provided for immediate deportation of any Chinese immigrant found without their papers on them, and it would abolish the provision that they prove, by the testimony of two white witnesses, that they were in the country legally before the first Chinese exclusion act of 1892.

The House votes 175-57 for pensions for every Civil War veteran 62 and older (I guess former child soldiers are screwed) who served at least 3 months. An amendment to segregate negro veterans in separate but no doubt equal old soldiers’ homes was defeated 137-43. The 43 were all Democrats.

Charles Appleby, 88, is suing the city of New York for damages to his property, the Hotel Allerton, which was burned down during the draft riots of 1863 (plus 50 years’ interest).

The barber of severe conservatism

Today -100: May 10, 1912: Of black perils, home rule, imperious ambitions, vanities, and mysterious antipathies, and ham strikes

South African Prime Minister Louis Botha announces there will be a commission into the “black peril.”

The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its second reading in Parliament 372-271.

There is a rumor that Theodore Roosevelt plans to be a delegate at the Republican National Convention.

Secretary of State Philander Knox, in a speech in L.A., says Theodore Roosevelt is a man “prompted by whims” and of “imperious ambitions, vanities, and mysterious antipathies.” And your point is? He attacks TR’s “new nationalism” as an assault on the autonomy of the states that might lead to a new civil war. Knox was Roosevelt’s attorney general (inherited from McKinley).

A white man is sentenced to hang (and his brother to life imprisonment) for killing a black man in Alabama. Huh. Didn’t think that was illegal in Alabama.

Headline of the Day -100: “Crew Strike for Ham.” The crew of the United Fruit Company’s steamship Admiral Farragut wanted ham instead of corned beef.

Two things I haven’t figured out about Mitt Romney yet

1) How intelligent is he? Smarter than George Bush, dumber than Barack Obama, sure, but where in that large gap does he fall? Part of the problem is that he’s so conventional in his thinking that it can barely be said to be thinking at all. And he says a lot of stupid things, but they generally arise from his narrow experiences, even narrower circle of acquaintances, and a complete lack of empathy rather than from faulty thought processes per se.

2) Why does he want to be president? The thought that he feels his privileges oblige him to give something back to his country is too ludicrous to be entertained, he seems too smugly self-satisfied to be haunted by the daddy issues that motivated GeeDubya, and he doesn’t have an agenda he’s burning to impose on the country. Sure, he wants to lower taxes on his rich friends, but does he seem like someone who would go this far out of his way for the benefit of his friends?

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I’ll give Obama one thing on gay marriage: he has ensured, I think, that he will be the last Democratic presidential candidate to oppose gay marriage.

Because it’s all about him

Obama: “for me personally it is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

North Carolina’s long proud history of being stupid

North Carolina banned white people marrying blacks or Indians in 1715 and again in 1875 (blacks being defined as those with at least 1/4 black blood). Just for the hell of it, blacks were banned from marrying Indians in 1887.

NC was the only state to file a brief in support of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Loving in 1967.

NC finally legalized interracial marriage in 1977 (technically the ban was invalidated by the Supreme Court in Loving, but it remained on the books until the state enacted a new constitution in 1971. The 1977 law recognized the legal validity of interracial marriages not recognized by the previous laws.

What is legal in NC: 14-year-old girls marrying. If they’re pregnant.

Today -100: May 9, 1912: Of miscegenation and dollar diplomacy

The German Reichstag votes 203-133 to reverse the attempt of the government to make inter-racial marriage illegal in German colonies.

Two “Dollar Diplomacy” treaties die in split Senate committee votes. They were with Honduras and Nicaragua, and would have allowed American syndicates to take over the debt of those countries and lend them money guaranteed by the US government, with the countries’ customs receipts as collateral. Something like that. Neo-colonialism.

June 2012 California proposition recommendations

Prop. 28. Re-jiggers term limits for the Legislature because evidently that’s what makes California politics so terrible. 28 would reduce max time in office from 14 years to 12, but allow those 12 to be served in one house.

Term limits are an insult to representative democracy: either you believe the voters can be entrusted to select their leaders, or you don’t.

Given that, it’s a little hard to care a great deal about these repeated attempts to play around with the rules for term limits. The changes proposed here would do away with some of the nonsense entailed in the scramble by legislators to switch from the Assembly to the Senate or vice versa, so that’s an improvement. On the other hand, the hard 12-year limit seems to mean that anyone who took over a seat mid-term after someone died or resigned would have to quit and force an unnecessary special election 12 years later.

I will probably vote a very unenthusiastic Yes, but if you wanted to skip the initiative so as not to vote for any term-limits measure, I wouldn’t argue with you.

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Prop. 29. $1 a pack tax on cigarettes (plus sales tax on top of that) to fund cancer research (not treatment).

A rather high tax on addicts (“those who choose to smoke,” as the yes argument calls them), mostly going to a fund overseen by appointees (one of whom must have been treated for a tobacco-related illness!) and UC chancellors. There’s no reason to think that this group would be qualified to determine where research money can be best spent to bring about a breakthrough, and in general I’d rather see the feds rather than the 50 states trying to cure cancer. Also, why is California creating a fund just for smoking-related cancer? Because it would have looked bad imposing a tax on bras to fund breast cancer research and calling it a “user fee?”

Lastly, I don’t smoke myself, but I don’t really see their greater likelihood of getting sick as a justification to punish them financially.

As much as I hate to be on the same side as the expensive Big Tobacco campaign against Prop. 29 or the hysterics who wrote the no argument (hurts schools! doesn’t clean up Sacramento’s wasteful spending!), this is a No.

Today -100: May 8, 1912: Of $30 dinners, 3-cent pieces, wills, effeminate schoolboys, and waifs

Two competing Republican conventions are held in Arkansas. Each elects competing slates of delegates to the national convention. The Taft convention also voted for women’s suffrage, “when the women have all signified their desire to vote.”

In Washington state, Taft’s loss to Roosevelt in Pierce County is attributed to a $30-a-plate dinner he attended last October (rather than holding a $1 dinner that more people could have afforded to come to). Still, I’m pretty sure Taft ate $30 worth.

Punch cartoon this week.


The caption reads: Uncle Sam (philosophically watching the Taft-Roosevelt scrap): “Wal! I guess old friends are the best!”

A letter to the NYT by Alice Hill Chittenden, who will soon take on the exalted post of president New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, writes that evolution means the increasing differentiation and specialization of the sexes and that the women’s suffrage movement “is in fact largely a condition of hysteria”.

The NYT defends Maryland’s negro voters against accusations made by Taft’s campaign manager that they were bribed to vote for Roosevelt. But the paper does press its case against democratic elections, insisting that if Maryland’s turnout had been higher, Roosevelt wouldn’t have done nearly as well, and that the “more intelligent Republicans” voted for Taft.

The House has voted for the minting of three-cent coins, which have been lobbied for by cities where that’s the fare on street cars. The vote also calls for a half-cent coin.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Are Our Schoolboys Effeminate?” Responding to the director of public schools in Munich, Georg Kerschensteiner, who says that the reliance of American schools on women teachers is producing “effeminacy and flabbiness” in schoolboys, the LAT says that the US has lots of college athletes, boxers, soldiers, etc., so there. It also says that everyone has aspects of both sexes: “temperamentally and psychologically every individual is really bi-sexual.”

81 “frowsy and illiterate” (according to the LAT) IWW members hijack a freight train, forcing the crew to bring them to San Diego, where they are promptly arrested.

The will of John Jacob Astor, who went down with the Titanic, specifies that his widow will lose the rather large income he bequeathed her if she remarries, which is a thing men used to put in their wills. This is the guy whose chivalry was highly praised when he died.

The “Titanic waifs” have been identified and their mother is coming from Paris to claim them (one of the waifs, Michel Navratil, Jr., will die in 2001, the last male Titanic survivor).

Today -100: May 7, 1912: I am not engaged in going about cutting off the heads of bosses

Roosevelt supporters hold one of those separatist conventions in Washington County, Tennessee, but it is captured by Taft supporters.

Taft expresses support for a plan to allow federal employees to retire at 70 with a pension worth half their salaries.

Roosevelt wins the popular vote in the Maryland primary, but Taft delegates will have the majority in the state convention. By state law, the convention will have to instruct delegates to the national convention to vote for Roosevelt, but only on the first ballot.

Champ Clark won the Democratic primary.

Taft denies Roosevelt’s charge that the political “bosses” all support him, and names several who support TR. However, he also says that he won’t go after the bosses: “I am not engaged in going about cutting off the heads of bosses. I cannot do it. It is not my function. It is the function of the people at home to reform matters. I don’t recollect in the seven years that Theodore Roosevelt was president that his path was strewn with the bodies of dead bosses that he had killed.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Turks Repulse Italians.” In Rhodes. Not that that stopped Italy appointing a governor.

NYT headline: “Home Rule Debate Tedious.” Everyone’s a critic.

Today -100: May 6, 1912: Of crooked misrepresentation

Compare and contrast these headlines on the Italian capture of Rhodes. NYT: “Rhodes Was Easily Taken.” LAT: “Use Bayonets on Turks.”

San Diego releases 16 IWW members from jail, where they have been held without trial for two months for violating the city ordinance against makes speeches in the street, but they are told to return for trial next month.

Theodore Roosevelt accuses President Taft of knowing that Taft delegates in Kentucky, Indiana, NYC and elsewhere were elected by “barefaced fraud. He stands guilty of connivance at and condonation of these frauds”. Taft “has stood for crooked misrepresentation of the will of the people.” He notes that since Taft started anti-trust suits against Standard Oil and International Harvester, their stocks have risen: “Evidently Wall St. has made up its mind that Mr. Taft’s prosecutions are fake prosecutions.”

Here’s my favorite putdown from TR’s statement: “he never discovered that I was dangerous to the people until I had been obliged to come to the conclusion that he was useless to the people.” Ouch.