Today -100: October 25, 1913: Of Catholic voting and miners

The Vatican’s lifting of the ban on Italians voting that’s been in place since the unification of Italy isn’t unconditional; they can only vote if the “right” sort of candidate is running in their district. The Vatican also bans Clerical candidates from forming a Catholic bloc in parliament for whose actions it might be held responsible.

As work continues to remove bodies from the Dawson, New Mexico mine explosion, the town’s mayor, acting on the request of Phelps, Dodge, deports United Mine Worker officials.

189 striking copper miners are arrested in Calumet, Mich. for violating an injunction against picketing.

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Today -100: October 24, 1913: Of vetoes, coal mines, withering militancy, and plague rats

Anthony Comstock, head of the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice and puritan wannabe, applies for warrants to arrest sellers of the British newspaper The Suffragette (one of the issues which discusses venereal disease and its relationship to women’s rights). Local suffragists head off possible prosecution by saying they’ll sell the remaining issues out west.

Woodrow Wilson issues his first veto, of a Congressional joint resolution to reinstate a West Point cadet who flunked out, and issues his first proclamation, designating Nov. 27 as Thanksgiving Day.

Tammany candidate for mayor of New York Edward McCall refuses to answer accusations that he paid Boss Murphy $35,000 for his nomination to the state Supreme Court.

Speakers of Esperanto protest the ritual murder trial in Kiev, because why not.

Another coal mine explosion, this one in Dawson, New Mexico. 261 dead, of whom 238 not yet recovered.

Huerta still claims not to be seeking election to the presidency, although he’s been trying to expel candidate Felix Díaz from the country (candidates for the presidency have to be on Mexican soil at the time of the election).

The Wilson administration blames Britain for Mexican dictator Huerta’s supposed new lease on life (the new British ambassador presented his credentials the day after the coup). Coincidentally, Britain is seeking a concession to build an oil pipeline in Mexico.

The Bishop of Winchester appeals to militant suffragists and the government for a “Truce of God” entailing the end of militancy, an amnesty and a suffrage bill or referendum. Even the non-militant leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett tells him where to stuff his Truce of God. Annie Kenney of the Women’s Social and Political Union replies in a letter the London Times didn’t print, saying that while the bishop claimed that if the vote was won by militant methods its benefits would be impaired, suffragettes “believe that if women get the vote by militancy, which means both fighting and self-sacrifice, it will bring with it a special blessing and a special power.”

In other pompous-British-male-lectures-suffragists news, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George tells a deputation from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies that militancy has “ruined” this Parliament as far as women’s suffrage is concerned, although he thinks the spirit of militancy is “withering.” In other words, he met with the non-militant suffragists and the only thing he talked about was militancy. Meanwhile, the withering militants set fire to the Bristol University Sports Pavilion. Bristol students will return the favor tomorrow against the furniture of the Bristol WSPU office.

Headline of the Day -100: “War on Plague Rats.” Seattle would like to point out that although it has many rats with bubonic plague, there has been no case among humans in six years.

Blind Senator Thomas Gore is being sued for (sexual) assault and slander.

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Today -100: October 23, 1913: Of land, Maderos, and lynchings

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George says that the Liberal government plans to establish a Ministry of Lands with the power to seize uncultivated land, regulate conditions and pay for farm laborers, and promote emigration from the towns to the land. Nothing will come of this, and it’s hard to believe Lloyd George thought anything would.

Two of the late Mexican President Madero’s brothers have been captured by the regime. We’ll see if they live longer than the last Madero brothers arrested by Huerta.

A negro is lynched in Monroe, Louisiana, for making an insulting remark to a white woman.

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Today -100: October 22, 1913: We know now the joy of battle, a joy men long kept from us

Headline of the Day -100: “Chihuahua in Danger.” The state, not the yappy dog, of course. By Pancho Villa. Villa is also ordering the cotton crop harvested for sale in the United States.

An indictment against Tom Watson, the Populist Party candidate for president in 1904, for sending improper material through the mails, is dismissed because the government was relying on extracts from an article in Watson’s magazine rather than the entire article. The judge says that under that tactic, the Bible could be prosecuted. The article “purport[ed] to embody questions asked by Catholic clergymen in the confessional,” in other words typical sensationalistic anti-Catholic propaganda of the period (since his Populist days, Watson had veered towards espousing many and various bigotries).

Emmeline Pankhurst speaks at Madison Square Garden. She defended using the US as a piggy bank for her wing of the British suffrage movement: “Why should I not come here. What helps women in England helps women all over the world. It is not necessary for women in the United States to be militant. Perhaps one reason is that we are doing the work for them. We are proud to do that work. We know now the joy of battle, a joy men long kept from us.”

Death of the Day -100: Gen. Samuel J. Crawford, Indian Fighter. The third governor of Kansas, he resigned in 1869 to go kill some Indians.

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Today -100: October 21, 1913: It will be Gaffney or war

Emmeline Pankhurst is allowed to enter the US after Pres. Wilson’s personal intervention.

Britain’s new Lord Chief Justice is Sir Rufus Isaacs, a Jew. The NYT declares anti-Semitism over in Britain. That’s nice.

The Progressive Party nominates ousted Gov. William Sulzer for next month’s election to the NY Assembly for the 6th district (which is in New York City). He has evidently been asked to run, in writing, by more than half the registered voters in the district. The Republican candidate will drop out and support him. Sulzer will also, immediately after election day, begin a lecture tour at $1,000 per lecture.

And Sulzer does, finally, have lots to say. He says that “Boss” Charles Murphy offered him money early in his term, and later threatened him when he wouldn’t appoint Murphy’s nominee as commissioner of highways (“It will be Gaffney or war,” Murphy allegedly told him). Every day, Murphy sent some emissary (Sulzer pointedly names Edward McCall, Tammany’s candidate for NY mayor) to make demands and threaten consequences.

Women from colored women’s clubs in Los Angeles complain to the Police Commission about the city’s color line. They say black people are charged 25¢ to 50¢ at some movie theaters where the regular price is 5¢ or 10¢ and are similarly over-charged at bars. The Police Commission said their only recourse was to file civil suits.

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Today -100: October 20, 1913: Of moral turpitude

Mexican rebels blow up a troop train, killing 46.

Woodrow Wilson is personally looking into whether Emmeline Pankhurst should be deported. In the meantime, hearings will examine the extent of the militant suffrage movement in Britain and whether Mrs P’s crimes were political, in which case she cannot be excluded unless moral turpitude is involved (suffragists have been pointing out that for decades Irish former political prisoners have been allowed into the US unimpeded). Mrs P supposedly says that if deported she’ll start hunger-striking and be dead within 24 hours. I say supposedly because the next day she denied having said any such thing but the NYT story had her alleged words in quotation marks. It is a puzzlement.

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Today -100: October 19, 1913: Of misdirections of human energies, moral turpitude, bloody foundation stones, new languages, and angry Frenchmen

British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill proposes a one-year “naval holiday” with Germany, in which both countries would stop building battleships (Germany plans two in that period, Britain four). Churchill figures every other country on earth would follow suit. He says the arms race is a “serious misdirection of human energies.”

Austria presents Serbia with an ultimatum to remove its troops from Albania within 8 days.

British suffragist leader Emmeline Pankhurst arrives in New York, but is held by immigration authorities and ordered deported on grounds of “moral turpitude.” She will appeal.

Former US ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson, proving once again why Pres. Wilson was right to fire his ass, says that Huerta’s government is just as legal as Roosevelt’s was when he became president after McKinley’s assassination. Which would be true if Roosevelt had ordered McKinley’s assassination.

There have been protests in Russia against the ongoing ritual murder trial of Mendel Beilis in Kiev, with strikes, protests signed by students, etc. Prosecution witnesses have fallen apart on the stand, some accusing the police of pressuring them to lie. Beilis has plenty of witnesses that he was at work at the time of the murder, but still the trial drags on. Today, for example, “Another rumor, that some of Yushinsky’s blood was used in connection with the laying of the foundation stone of the Old Age Home, was shown to be groundless by the testimony of Mark Zaiteff, one of the proprietors of the brick works, who produced proof that the ceremony took place several days before the murder.”

Linguistic Headline of the Day -100: “Norway to Adopt an Entirely New Language.” Landsmål. You don’t want to know.

Dog-Bites-Man Headline of the Day -100: “Germans Anger French.” By celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig.

Motoring Headline of the Day -100: “Cyclist Falls on Coffin.” Unfortunate motorcycle rider crashes a funeral procession.

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Today -100: October 18, 1913: I have lost my office, but I have kept my self-respect

The High Court of Impeachment acquits NY Gov. Sulzer of the remaining charges, then votes 43-12 to remove him from office, but votes unanimously not to ban him from holding government positions (elected or appointive) in the future, and indeed Progressives are already talking about nominating him for Congress or the state Assembly.

Sulzer issues a statement calling the impeachment trial “a farce, political lynching, the consummation of a deep-laid political conspiracy to oust me from office. ... The well-settled rules of evidence were thrown to the winds. A horse-thief, in frontier days, would have received a squarer deal.” He goes on to say that Boss Murphy of Tammany ordered the impeachment and controlled the court: “he was the judge and the jury, the prosecutor and the bailiff.”

Acting Gov. Martin Glynn, sworn in as the new governor, says he will not be a factionist. Phew. The NYT effusively describes him as “not devoid of independence” from Tammany.

The zeppelin L II, undergoing trials to determine if it should be the flagship of the German aerial navy, explodes over the city of Johannisthal near Berlin, killing 28 in the biggest aviation disaster to date. Not a good year for German airships: The Navy’s L I was destroyed by a storm last month, breaking in half and killing 15. And the day after that an army zeppelin dragged two of the soldiers holding its lines into the air; they died when they let go.

The last officer who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade (1854) dies at 81. His name was Sir George Orby Wombwell, because of course it was.

The Mexican cabinet “won’t let” Huerta resign, which is of course all he ever really wanted to do.

In the US Congress, Rep. Isaac Ruth Sherwood (D-Ohio) says a consortium of nations should establish a military protectorate over Mexico.

The Austrian Army is complaining about the shortage of recruits from the Polish regions of the Empire, which they attribute to emigration of young men to work on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Headline of the Day -100: “WHAT DOES MARS WANT?” A Swiss astronomer thinks Mars is signaling the Earth with blue lights. The NYT thinks that “with regard to governing ourselves intelligently, regulating our lives in accordance with well-established facts, obeying natural laws, settling trivial disputes without bloodshed, we can tell them nothing that a people so old and wise as the Martians must be do not know already.”

Actually, Mars only wanted a little sexting.

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Today -100: October 17, 1913: Of impeachments and the tango

NY Gov. William Sulzer is convicted by the High Court of Impeachment of falsifying campaign finance reports and threatening witnesses before the Legislature’s investigative committee, but acquitted of bribing witnesses and posting pictures of his junk on Twitter. Votes on other charges will follow.

Headline of the Day -100: “Chicago to Investigate the Tango.”

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Today -100: October 16, 1913: Of royal benevolence and Zulu football

The news is all about princes today.

Royal wedding: Prince Arthur of Connaught marries Alexandra, Duchess of Fife. Artie, the first royal to attend Eton, was Waldorf Astor’s fag. The couple will help the families of those colliers killed in Wales by exhibiting their wedding presents to the public to raise funds. It is literally the least they could do.

Prince Madikane Quandiyane Cele of the Zulus says American football is too brutal.

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Today -100: October 15, 1913: Of coal mines, coups, the rule of the sea, and bones of persons tortured to death by Jews

439 coal miners die in a mine explosion and fire in Senhenydd, Wales, as is the custom. Most of the bodies won’t be recovered. One woman is waiting for word about her husband, four sons and three brothers.

Huerta still plans to hold elections on the 26th in whatever parts of Mexico he controls and with whatever parts of the government he controls. Sure he does. Anyhoo, the US informs him that it won’t recognize the results of those elections. Huerta says the deputies he arrested will be tried for treason. And that he will be taking charge of the interior, finance and war ministries.

Gandhi begins his first act of large-scale civil disobedience. He gathers Indian supporters in Natal province, South Africa, to march to the border with Transvaal province and cross it in violation of the race-based pass laws.

Headline of the Day -100: “Women Not First.” On the fiery Volturno, the “women and children first” rule was not observed.

In the Kiev ritual murder trial, a former Jew, now a monk, testifies that sure, Jews torture Christian children all the time. “If the bowels of the earth opened up one would discover many bones of persons tortured to death by Jews.”

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Today -100: October 14, 1913: Of raids, warships, and prohibition

Police raid a suffrage meeting to arrest Sylvia Pankhurst, who is rescued by her East End followers. East Enders don’t fuck around, yo.

Secretary of State Bryan asks Huerta not to kill those arrested deputies, please.

Germany thinks about the Mexican coup and decides that what the situation really requires is the presence of a German warship.

The Arkansas Supreme Court allows a prohibition bill to take effect in January. Liquor licenses may only be granted in any community if there is a petition signed by the majority of all white adults.

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Today -100: October 13, 1913: Ireland must remain a nation

Last week -100, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill suggested excluding Northern Ireland from Home Rule. Leader of the Irish Nationalists John Redmond says no, Ireland must remain a nation.

I see the NYT is still referring to Huerta as the “provisional president” of Mexico, even though he’s no longer pretending that he intends to hold elections and happily step aside.

The Kiev ritual murder trial is going badly for the prosecution, with witness after witness (including police witnesses) showing astonishingly faulty memories, and some admitting to having been told what to say by the police. Even the anti-Semitic newspapers are making fun of the case.

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Today -100: October 12, 1913: Of Volturnos, dictators, new kings, new archipelagos, and tangos

The steamship Volturno, sailing from Rotterdam to Canada, bringing emigrants from Russia, Poland, etc, catches fire in the mid-Atlantic. 125 die but wireless distress calls brings ships which rescue 521 after several hours of being prevented from doing so by a storm, which also smashed some of the lifeboats against the ship (although lack of training of the crew was also responsible). The captain was the last off the ship, along with his dog Jack. The Volturno was regulated by the British, who didn’t require hand fire extinguishers, so there weren’t any.

Huerta dissolves the Mexican Congress. He says this will restore peace and prevent anarchy, so yay.

Suffragists mob King George and Queen Mary as they arrive at a music hall, shouting “Women are being tortured in prison!”

Prince William Frederick of Wied accepts the job of king of Albania.

Russian Arctic explorers have discovered a body of land as large as Greenland (it really isn’t). They name it Emperor Nicholas II Land (the Soviets will imaginatively rename it Severnaya Zemlya, or Northern Land.)

Headline of the Day -100: “Boston Bans the Tango.” A cop and a matron will be stationed in every public dance hall to prevent the dance, by order of Mayor John Fitzgerald (JFK’s grandfather). The turkey trot is also banned, and youths under 17.

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Today -100: October 11, 1913: Of coups within coups, deformed and mutilated manhoods, and dynamite

In Mexico, Sen. Belisaro Dominguez disappears or, to phrase it more accurately, is disappeared, after making a speech critical of Huerta. Members of the Chamber of Deputies sign a resolution warning Huerta about that and threatening to move out of Mexico City. So he sends soldiers into the Chamber to arrest 110 of them.

Federal troops in Mexico lose Torreon to the rebels (Pancho Villa’s forces).

Alton Parker concludes his speech against NY Gov. William Sulzer in his impeachment trial. Parker says there is no limitation on what might constitute a cause for impeachment (including non-criminal acts and acts before Sulzer took office) and that it is up to the High Court of Impeachment to decide. I’m getting flashbacks to the Clinton impeachment.

Oh, dear, now I’m reading Alton’s speech and REALLY getting Clinton impeachment flashbacks: “Stripped to his quaking flesh, he stands now naked before this tribunal, without a rag of his attempted vindication clinging to his deformed and mutilated manhood.”

Woodrow Wilson touches a button on his desk to detonate 8 tons of dynamite to blow up a dike in the Panama Canal. It blowed up real good.

A Kiev newspaper, an anti-Semitic newspaper yet, is suppressed for saying that the “blood ritual murder” trial is bullshit.

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Today -100: October 10, 1913: Of opium, bullfights, roads, plague rats, hunger-strikers, impeachments and blood libels

Britain plans to establish an opium monopoly in Hong Kong, to facilitate ending the trade, supposedly.

French President Raymond Poincaré is visiting Spain. They scheduled a bullfight in his honor, but he said fuck no, he likes animals.

Nebraska has two of those everyone-work-on-the-roads-for-free days.

Headline of the Day -100: “Plague Rat Dooms a Building.” A rat with bubonic plague is caught in the Old Seattle Hotel, which is ordered demolished.

British Home Secretary Reginald McKenna orders the resumption of forcible feeding of imprisoned suffragettes. The Cat & Mouse Act was supposed to end that by releasing hunger-strikers for a bit to recover and then putting them back in prison (the last part the government has been doing at its discretion, because it would rather intimidate suffragettes into “behaving” than make martyrs out of them), but McKenna has decided that those convicted of arson should not be released.

The former judge acting as NY Gov. Sulzer’s attorney in his impeachment trial tells the High Court of Impeachment (which consists of the state senate plus high court judges) to shit or get off the can on the issue of whether a public servant can be impeached for acts that took place before he held office: “If that can be done in the present instance, then this court could convict the governor of the state and remove him from office because he stole cherries when a boy or spat on the sidewalk when a man.” He also argues that the law requiring the reporting of campaign expenses applies only to money expended, not donations received, and anyway no affidavit or oath is required, so no perjury was committed.

Speaking for the prosecution, Alton Parker, former chief judge of the NY Supreme Court and the 1904 Democratic candidate for president, says that Sulzer can indeed be impeached for the cherry thing, although I can’t say he makes much of a case for it. He also says of Sulzer blaming the incomplete campaign donation statements on a subordinate, “if Sarecky’s morals were bad and his business methods questionable, we must remember that he got all his moral and business training as an attaché of Mr. Sulzer’s office.” Wow, that is some crappy lawyering, Judge Parker. The prosecution is also doing a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose thing with Sulzer’s (laughable) claim that the donations he didn’t report were personal rather than campaign contributions: the prosecution case is that if that’s true, Sulzer is guilty of larceny because the donors would have assumed their money was going to the campaign.

700 Hungarian rabbis sign a declaration that Jews don’t use blood for religious purposes and send it (the declaration, not blood) to the court in Kiev currently trying Mendel Beilis.

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Today -100: October 9, 1913: Of battleships, impeachments, and dead princesses

Woodrow Wilson wants to build three new battleships, but is having trouble with the big steel firms: Bethlehem and Midvale Steel companies are refusing to compete with each other, offering identical bids. So the government may have to build its own armor-plate factory.

NY Gov. Sulzer’s lawyers in his impeachment trial end the defense case without the governor testifying. Neither did his wife, who he’s been blaming for diverting campaign funds into stock speculations, although not so much during the actual case. He’s been implying that while he didn’t want to be such a cad as to put his wife on the stand, she was totally responsible.

It seems Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach did not commit suicide because she was forbidden from marrying a Jew, but out of guilt for running over and killing a girl the month before (her chauffeur was just acquitted, and wasn’t it delightful of the royals to let him stand trial for it when she was driving?).

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I’ve been willing to compromise my entire political career

Today Obama held a press conference.

He starts by saying he told Boehner “that I am happy to talk with him and other Republicans about anything -- not just issues I think are important but also issues that they think are important.” Or, to put it more plainly: I don’t think the issues they think are important are actually important.

“Think about it this way, the American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs.” I’m pretty sure Mitt Romney referred to his employees’ wages as ransom.

“You don’t get a chance to call your bank and say I’m not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox.” I think it would be hilarious if everybody in America with a mortgage tested this proposition tomorrow.

“In the same way, members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs.” Sometimes I think Obama’s just stopped paying attention.

“No American president would deal with a foreign leader like this.” Ask Iran and Cuba about this, to name just two.

“Either my chief of staff or I have had serious conversations on the budget with Republicans more than 20 times since March.” Define serious.

“So even after all that, the Democrats in the Senate still passed a budget that effectively reflects Republican priorities at Republican budget levels just to keep the government open, and the House Republicans couldn’t do that either.” Obama’s not even looking for a negotiating partner anymore, he’s looking for someone to accept his surrender, and he can’t even find that. Wait, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

“Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb, a weapon too horrible to use. It would disrupt markets, it would undermine the world’s confidence in America as the bedrock of the global economy...” I guess my stock portfolio isn’t big enough to consider disrupted stock markets just as bad as thermonuclear war.

“the way we got to this point was one thing and one thing only, and that was Republican obsession with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying health care to millions of people. That law ironically is moving forward.” More Americans will have access to ironic health care than ever before!

“And when I hear people trying to downplay the consequences of that, I think that’s really irresponsible. And I’m happy to talk to any of them individually and walk them through exactly why it’s irresponsible.” Wow, the president will personally explain to me how irresponsible I am, sign me up, said no one ever.

“So -- so a lot of the strategies that people have talked about -- well, the president can roll out a big coin and -- or, you know, he can -- he can resort to some other constitutional measure -- what people ignore is that ultimately what matters is, what do the people who are buying Treasury bills think?” In case you were wondering who really runs the country.

“I have flaws. Michelle will tell you. One of them is not that I’m unwilling to compromise. I’ve been willing to compromise my entire political career.” That sentence can be read two ways, both of them correct.

Asked if the capture/kidnap (capnap?) of Abu Anas al-Libi in Libya followed international law, he somehow failed to answer.

“I was at a small business the other day and talking to a bunch of workers, and I said, you know, when you’re at the plant and you’re in the middle of your job, do you ever say to your boss, you know what, unless I get a raise right now and more vacation pay, I’m going to just shut down the plant; I’m not going to just walk off the job, I’m going to break the equipment -- I said, how do you think that would go?” And they said, ha ha, thanks for reminding us that organized unionism has been destroyed in this country.

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Today -100: October 8, 1913: Of race riots and forgotten property

Race riot in Romeo, Illinois after blacks attack the jail to release a woman jailed for drunkenness. The leader is shot dead. “Two households, both alike in dignity,” indeed. (The NYT is using the town’s old name; it changed its name to Romeoville when its sister town Juliet – isn’t that adorable? – changed its to Joliet).

Headline of the Day -100: “Buys Property, Forgets It.” A Mr. E.R. Wood of Philadelphia paid $3,800 for a property in 1887, and forgot all about it, as one does. It was taken over by squatters and eventually bought for $100 by a couple who are now awarded ownership.

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Today -100: October 7, 1913: I am going to give them my body and they can do anything they like with it

The impeachment trial of NY Gov. William Sulzer continues. From the opening remarks of his counsel: “The respondent is a plain, affable man, easy to approach, and a man who, until the year 1913, never made enemies. ... He never kept books of account or records of his transactions. He is exceedingly careless and unmethodical. Details are something to which he is almost a stranger.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Russia May Want Another Pogrom.” The Manchester Guardian suggests that the prosecution of a Jew, Mendel Beilis, in Kiev for the supposed ritual murder of a Christian teenager (who was very probably actually killed by a criminal gang who thought he was a snitch) is being deliberately conducted and publicized in such a way as to foment hatred of Jews.

Yuan Shih-kai is elected president of China by the Chinese Parliament.

Francis Burton Harrison, the new governor-general of the Philippines, arrives in Manila and makes a speech proclaiming Woodrow Wilson’s policy of “ultimate independence” for the Philippines (he neglects to provide a date for that ultimate independence). The number of natives in the appointive upper house of the Philippine Congress will be increased to a majority.

The Metropolitan Police raid a Women’s Social and Political Union meeting in order to arrest Annie Kenney, who was out on a Cat and Mouse Act license. Resistance was strong but futile. After the cops left, the meeting resumed and they auctioned off hats that had been knocked off the heads of cops (the one from a chief inspector went to an American for $25). Flora Drummond, referring to forcible-feeding and NOT TO ANYTHING ELSE, said, “This week I am going to give them my body and they can do anything they like with it.”

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Today -100: October 6, 1913: Of radium monopolies and tax loopholes

A company is being formed which will attempt to establish a world-wide monopoly over radium called European Radium, Limited. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand has something to do with it, which seems like the basis for a good conspiracy theory, sort of a post-steampunky thing.

Woodrow Wilson is exempt from the new income tax (as are federal court judges), because the Constitution forbids reducing their salaries. The tax will therefore only apply to future presidents and judges.

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Today -100: October 5, 1913: Of arson, car accidents, and darkness in Prussia

I guess the British suffragette militancy truce is over: the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Mary Richardson sets fire to an unoccupied house owned by the chancellor of the Diocese of London.

President Wilson’s car hits a kid on a bicycle. The Navy’s assistant surgeon, Wilson’s personal physician, was in the car, so the kid (his age isn’t given) got medical attention, and they drove him to the hospital. Wilson promised to replace his bike.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Police Decide When It’s Dark.” “The mere fact that it may happen still to be daylight in defiance of police orders is of no importance.” That’s the ruling of the Prussian Supreme Court in the case of a wagon-owner who was driving without a lantern 30 minutes after sunset, which is when the Prussian police have decreed that it is dark even if it isn’t. Germans, huh?

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Today -100: October 4, 1913: Of bosses, cannibals & radium, undesirable aliens, and tariffs

Woodrow Wilson’s secretary Joseph Tumulty denies that he is now the Democratic Boss of New Jersey (a newspaper claimed that he tried to impose a choice for state chairman on the NJ Democratic Party).

Cannibals in Papua New Guinea kill an American mineralogist who was searching for radium. I just like the combination in one story of cannibals and radium.

The secretary of labor allows Marie Lloyd and her fella into the country.

The Underwood-Simmons Tariff Bill becomes law. It reduces average tariffs from 37% to 27%, exempts many products altogether, and does various other tariff-billy things.

Oh, and introduces a federal income tax.

Theodore Roosevelt is off to South America for six months.

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Today -100: October 3, 1913: Of undesirable aliens, ether, duels, happy families, and fathers

Immigration authorities at Ellis Island order the deportation of famous English music-hall singer Marie Lloyd, who arrived to do a US tour, as well as her... companion... jockey Bernard Dillon, when they discover that the two are not married. To be continued...

How They Died 100 Years Ago: Sir Frederick Williams, 4th baronet of Tregullow, dies from an overdose of ether, which is popular in Paris as a recreational drug.

How They Didn’t Die 100 Years Ago: Rouzier d’Orcières fights his 173rd duel. Loses, actually, with a couple of slashes to his wrist and forearm.

British suffragist Eva Ward writes to the NYT about Sir Almroth Wright’s book The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage, which explains how the women’s suffrage derives from hysteria (he’s a doctor, you know). It seems Wright’s wife Jane is prominent in several women’s suffrage societies, and gives every female college graduate a leather-bound copy of John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women. Almroth and Jane do not live together any more.

Rep. J. Hampton Moore (R-PA) proposes that the first Sunday in June be designated Father’s Day. Presumably he needed some new ties.

Moore has eight children, if you were wondering.

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Today -100: October 2, 1913: Of woman suffrage’s destructive course, telegraph lines, destroyed romantic illusions, and hobo kings

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson marry. I predict a long and weird marriage.

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage says that if suffragists can prove to them (by December, for some reason) that a majority of women want the vote, it will “withdraw its opposition, albeit sorrowfully, and allow woman suffrage to roll on its destructive course.” It doesn’t explain how this support is to be demonstrated.

Woodrow Wilson plans to introduce legislation for a federal takeover of the telegraph lines and perhaps of inter-state phone lines as well.

A judge grants an injunction against Morgan College (now Morgan State University, a historically black college) from building a settlement in the Mount Washington suburb of Baltimore or, more specifically, from moving in any negroes (except as servants, of course).

A Canadian man kills himself in New York because, according to his diary, “Bernard Shaw has destroyed all my sentiments and romantic illusions”. Yup, Shaw’ll do that.

At the American Road Congress, a man announces himself as the Hobo King of America and asks to be seated as a delegate because “who is more interested in good roads than hoboes?” They seat him, because after all he is the Hobo King of America (C. Jeff Davis, President of the International Itinerant Workers’ Union).

President/King Davis wants you not to confuse hoboes with tramps, “who disgrace our profession.”

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Today -100: October 1, 1913: A night at the theatre

The University of Berlin will no longer allow students from Russia. Currently its medical school has a large number of Russian Jewish students because Jews can practice medicine in Russia but aren’t allowed to study medicine there.

King Nicholas of Montenegro has written a play, “The Siege of Scutari,” which opens in Cettinje in front of an audience some of whom evidently don’t know the difference between a play and real life and had to be dissuaded from killing actors playing Turks.

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I’ll have a chance to obviously speak more to this

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived at the White House yet again to give Obama his marching orders.

Obama: “I commended him for entering into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinian Authority”. Because nothing says “good faith” like Netanyahu pretending to negotiate with the PA.

“And we have a limited amount of time to achieve that goal [a two-state solution], and I appreciate the Prime Minister’s courage in being willing to step forward on behalf of that goal.” He doesn’t explain why time is so limited. If that’s not referring to the expansion of settlement activity that Netanyahu refuses to halt, then I can’t think what it refers to, in which case I don’t know why he’s praising Bibi’s “courage.”

Obama says we’ll be “consulting very closely” with Israel over the Syrian civil war, because of possible “spillover effects,” which is a great way of sabotaging the rebels.

“So we will continue to work with the Egyptian government, although urging them and pushing them in a direction that is more inclusive and that meets the basic goals of those who originally sought for more freedom and more democracy in that country.” Can you have “more” democracy without having actual, you know, democracy? Because I’m pretty sure the “basic goals” were actual freedom and actual democracy, not “just a little bit more freedom and democracy than we had under a fucking military dictatorship.”

Obama seems to have picked up an obvious verbal tic: “these are hectic times, and nowhere is that more true, obviously, than in the Middle East”; “discussing how we can resolve what has been, obviously, one of the biggest challenges for a very long time in the region”; “Obviously, we have a broad set of strategic concerns in Syria”; “Chemical weapons inside of Syria obviously have threatened Syrian civilians”; “And we had an opportunity, obviously, to discuss Iran”; “And I’ll have a chance to obviously speak more to this.”

“In all of this, our unshakeable bond with the Israeli people is stronger than ever.” Obviously not including any Palestinians who happen not to have been driven out of Israel. Our bond with the Palestinian people is very shakeable indeed.

Netanyahu: “I know that you know and the American people know that there is no better ally -- more reliable, more stable, more democratic -- other than Israel in a very raw, dangerous place.” Of course Israel’s policy, and to a large extent the US’s, is to ensure that other Middle East countries are unstable, undemocratic, or both.

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Today -100: September 30, 1913: Of derailed trains, race riots, and peace, ain’t it grand

A train is derailed somewhere between Baku and Batum (which doesn’t narrow it down much) in the Russian Empire because “brigands” tore up the rails for some reason. 40 dead.

In Harriston, Mississippi, scene of that race riot yesterday (death toll 11), today 2,000 blacks are forced to pass by the coffins of the two young black men lynched yesterday. “This had a remarkably quieting effect on the negro population.”

Turkey and Bulgaria sign a peace treaty ending, I guess, the last Balkan War but one.

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Today -100: September 29, 1913: Of insulted flags, elections, and boys

Chinese Gen. Chang Hsun accedes to Japan’s ultimatum and personally goes to apologize at the Japanese consulate in Nanjing for the insult to the Japanese flag (and the deaths of some Japanese people), averting the threatened military occupation. For now.

General elections are called for Italy, under a new election law doubling the electorate to nearly universal male suffrage, including illiterates if they have served in the army or are over 30. So, illiterates, but no women (until after World War II). Deputies, previously unpaid, will now receive a salary. The Catholic Church will allow Catholics to vote for the first time (not that the ban ever stopped many people).

You can kinda tell when the NYT used local stringers for its stories from the South, as in this one, datelined Harriston, Mississippi: “A reign of murder, started early this morning by two negro boys who were crazed by cocaine, developed into a race riot which ended only after three white men, four negro men, and a negro woman had been killed, a score of persons wounded, and the two boys lynched.” They were 20 and 18, if you’re wondering what constitutes a “boy.” If the story is to be believed, the Walter and Will Jones did go on quite a shooting rampage before the mob got hold of them.

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Today -100: September 28, 1913: Peace in Mexico is impossible until one party or the other has been exterminated

Democrats in the Tennessee Legislature successfully filibuster the anti-alcohol bills, and the special session ends.

11,000 Ulster Volunteers march in Belfast, as is the custom, to demonstrate their 1) loyalty to, and 2) willingness to go to war with, the British government. They carry dummy rifles, because carrying real firearms without a license would be illegal. So they’re threatening civil war but won’t break the Firearms Acts.

The response of the British government so far to all this has been confined to a threat not to send mail to any post offices run by a rebel Ulster government.

The NYT thinks “the whole Ulster situation is a species of political bluff,” as proven by the fact that the Ulster Volunteers are not concealing their preparations for civil war. Another interpretation is that they don’t have to conceal them, because there are no consequences. The Times complacently predicts that Home Rule will go into effect “with no serious disturbance.”

Mexican rebel leader and (spoiler alert) future president Venustiano Carranza warns that anyone elected president in the elections Huerta plans to hold next month will be considered a traitor, and if rebels capture him they’ll try him under an 1862 law allowing for the summary execution of traitors without trial, like the Emperor Maximilian (so I guess he would be tried without trial). “Peace in Mexico,” Carranza says, “is impossible until one party or the other has been exterminated.” (Little-known historical fact: Carranza was a Dalek).

Negroes in Tuscon are boycotting the separate-but-equal schools. Not because they’re segregated schools, the LAT claims, but because they want better segregated schools.

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Today -100: September 27, 1913: Do as I shall: deny it

Headline of the Day -100: “Lynched Negro, Condemned Deed.” Some Mississippians lynched a negro accused of attacking a farmer’s wife but “Opinion was divided as to the guilt of the negro, and at a mass meeting held later resolutions were adopted in condemnation of the lynching.” Sentence first, verdict after, as the Red Queen said.

Loopy Headline of the Day -100: “DOUBLE LOOP BY PEGOUD.” The French aviator is just showing off now.

Turkey and Greece seem to be threatening to start a third Balkan War. And Greece is letting Serbian troops use its railways in their fight with Albania. “The Belgrade newspapers urge the complete extermination of the Albanians,” as is the custom.

At the impeachment trial of NY Gov. Sulzer, several of his donors have testified, convincing no one, that their donations had been to Sulzer personally rather than to his campaign (thus Sulzer’s failure to report them as required by law). Today, ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau is recalled, and testifies that before his first appearance, Sulzer called him up and asked him to say that his $1,000 donation was purely personal. Duncan Peck, who was appointed state superintendent of public works by the previous administration, contributed $500 to Sulzer, not at all connected to his retaining his job. He too now says that Sulzer told him, “Do as I shall: deny it.”

The Huerta Junta in Mexico asks deposed dictator Porfirio Díaz to return from exile, maybe to head up the War College. Also, Huerta declares that the revolution is suppressed, except for occupying the rebellious northern states (which seems a fairly big “except for”) and elections can go ahead.

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Today -100: September 26, 1913: Of saloons, charming cities being charming, and parades

The Tennessee Legislature has more gunmen today, with Nashville cops sent by the mayor to protect Speaker Stanton from the prison guards sent by the governor to intimidate him over anti-alcohol legislation. However, Stanton orders the State House be searched top to bottom and any gunmen be expelled. Visitors were then excluded from the House chamber, except women and the press. “The explosion of a photographer’s flashlight created a small panic among the Representatives, several automatically reaching for their weapons.” The session is again abruptly adjourned due to “a sudden illness of the Speaker.”

Baltimore City Council passes an ordinance for residential racial segregation. People currently living on the “wrong” block will have to move. (The Maryland Supreme Court will strike this down next month).

A little civil war in Serbia, government v. Albanians, as is the custom.

Russia occupies Kobdo and Tchougoutchak in Western Mongolia.

Sir Edward Carson’s first act as self-proclaimed premier of Ulster is to take to his bed on doctor’s orders. There will be a parade of Ulster volunteers on Saturday, and the Unionists asked that a big football game be moved so as not to conflict with it.

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Today -100: September 25, 1913: Of saloons, provisional governments, and automatic pilots

The Tennessee Legislature is still calmly considering anti-saloon legislation while prison guards sit in the galleries pointing guns at legislators they don’t like. Speaker Stanton abruptly adjourns the session.

The Ulster Unionist Council sets up the machinery for implementing a provisional government to “tak[e] over the province in trust for the British nation” if and when Home Rule is established. The premier will be Sir Edward Carson, who still hasn’t been arrested for treason.

French aviator Albert Moreau demonstrates an automatic pilot, flying 30 minutes without touching the control levers.

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Today -100: September 24, 1913: A little was enough for me

Headline of the Day -100: “Not So Afraid of Germany.” In November, Britain will send a bunch of warships into the Mediterranean, in a change from its policy in recent years of keeping them nearby just in case Germany tries something.

A few days ago the Tennessee state senate passed bills banning the importation into the state of alcohol and defining the sale of any alcohol as a public nuisance, allowing courts to close saloons on the petition of ten taxpayers. The lower house of the Tennessee Legislature is now discussing the bills. Speaker Stanton complains that Gov. Ben Hooper has stationed armed guards in the House to force him to make rulings favorable to the bills. A state senator breaks down a door in the Capitol building behind which he finds seven guards (prison guards, probably) and a suitcase filled with revolvers.

Anthony Comstock, “in the role of a literary critic,” arrests a publisher and one of his employees who sold an allegedly immoral book, “Hagar Revelly” by Daniel Carson Goodman, which “deals with the problems of life as faced by two poverty-stricken girls in New York City.” You can sort of read it online, because it’s been “DoiizodbvCoogle” or “DolizodbvCoOglc” or “DolizodbyGoOgle”, which I think means Digitized Really Badly by Google. A quick skim suggests that Emile Zola didn’t have anything to worry about, but neither did it reveal what got Comstock so hot and bothered (Comstock admits that he didn’t read the whole book; “a little was enough for me”).

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Today -100: September 23, 1913: Of resentful hunchbacks and trains

Headline of the Day -100: “HUNCHBACK IS RESENTFUL.; Woman Strokes Him "for Luck" and He Throws Her In a Pond.”

Mexican rebels dynamite a passenger train, as was the custom, killing 50, 40 of whom were Federal soldiers.

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Today -100: September 22, 1913: Of assassins, bloody Sundays, slaves, and airborne tea

The man alleged to have assassinated Mexican President Madero during the coup is himself assassinated.

Another bloody Sunday in Dublin, with police attacking strikers and vice versa.

Several US colonial officials in the Philippines have been asserting that slavery is widespread, though Rep. William Jones (D-VA) denies it.

The first airship tea party takes place aboard the Zeppelin passenger ship Sachsen somewhere above Berlin. But no cigarettes afterwards.

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Today -100: September 21, 1913: Of impeachments, whimsical little bodies, general strikes, and mud

William Sulzer says he will not resign and will fight the impeachment to the end. Why, he would no sooner resign than commit hara-kiri. Or to put it another way, his feelers about whether resigning would stop the impeachment were rebuffed. “Mr. Sulzer thumped his interviewer on the chest and gave other evidences of being in a fighting mood,” writes a terrified NYT reporter.

The NYT returns in an editorial to the subject of Christabel Pankhurst’s recent writings, “a book so nasty that even the Pankhurst contingent of British suffragists is dismayed. Christabel has hitherto been looked upon as a whimsical little body, somewhat too fond of inciting riot, perhaps, but decent in speech and behavior.” But now she has “come to the conclusion that they can cause as great a rumpus by talking about things no decent woman used to discuss... as they ever did by smashing the hats of Cabinet Ministers.”

The annual conference of the German Social Democratic Party rejects the general strike as a political instrument, not even to achieve universal (male) suffrage in the state of Prussia (which has an insanely retrograde electoral structure).

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “Little Natalie Throws Mud.” In Kharkoff, Russia, the governor of the province was driving through a town when a little girl, aged 5, threw some mud at his car, and some of it... the horror... fell on his coat. Her parents were made to march 8 miles to the nearest police post, then back, where the entire village had been called to adopt a petition craving forgiveness. The police chief wanted the village to present it on their knees, but they refused. The governor came the next day, when the entire village was called out again; he looked ostentatiously in the other direction while they had to shout to get his attention. Eventually they were allowed to go home, but the mother was imprisoned for 15 days.

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Today -100: September 20, 1913: Votes for Women and Chastity for Men!

Max Blanck, one of the two owners of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company, 146 of whose employees burned alive 102½ years ago because the exits were locked, is charged with... wait for it... locking the exits of his new factory. His lawyer, the same high-priced shyster who got him off last time, will argue that the locks are necessary to prevent theft. The judge will fine Blanck $20 and apologize to him for having to do that.

The family of Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, still claiming that she died of heart disease (at 25) rather than from blowing her brains out, hurriedly cremates her, the first female royal ever to be cremated.

The Mexican Congress shows some cojones, rejecting Huerta’s nomination for minister of public instruction for being too Catholic.

Woodrow Wilson broke with the tradition of sending black ambassadors to Haiti, and the NYT claims that Haiti actually prefers it that way because many of the “better class of Haitians” have French as well as black blood, and therefore have “French sensitiveness to slights, real or apparent.” It’s all in the blood, you know.

Speaking of things found in the blood, the NYT notes that there is a debate within the British Women’s Social and Political Union, without making it clear what the hell it’s talking about. Christabel Pankhurst has been publishing articles in The Suffragette which “state in the plainest language facts not usually found outside medical works.” Were 1913 readers able to intuit that the words the NYT is unable to bring itself to print are venereal disease? I don’t know. The LAT says Christabel has been talking about “certain phases of the social problem” and “has been calling spades by something even more distinctive than the plain word spades,” but the last two words of the article are “white slavery,” which gets near the topic.

In Miss Pankhurst’s “Great Scourge” articles (here’s a link to the American edition of the book form of these articles), she ascribes the spread of VD entirely to male promiscuity, and asserts that there is only one cure: “Votes for Women and Chastity for Men.” Indeed, she is now charging that the real reason men oppose women’s suffrage is “sexual vice.”

Mary Winthrop Turner is being sued by Arthur Bender for $5,000 for libeling his dog, Countess Toots. Ms Turner contends her dog, Champion, the Dollar Princess (I don’t know if that’s a name or a title), is a better dog.

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Today -100: September 19, 1913: Fundamentally incapable of efficient and decently just rule

What is it with deceased NYC Mayor Gaynor and ships? He was shot on board one ship in 1910, died on another one in 1913, and now his body is being returned on... the Lusitania.

Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach commits suicide, shooting herself in the head after being refused permission to marry a commoner (and by commoner I mean Jew).

The NYT thinks the European Powers should make sure the Ottoman Empire doesn’t mistreat its Armenians. This can only be done, it says, by reducing the Empire’s power in the Armenian regions in favor of a governor nominated by the Powers, because “the Turks are fundamentally incapable of efficient and decently just rule... due to the inherent qualities of the race and to the religion by which for centuries they have been inspired.”

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Today -100: September 18, 1913: Of defamations, whale butts, and intractable tribesmen

The Anti-Defamation League is founded to fight characterizations of Jews on the stage, in textbooks, etc.

Headline of the Day -100: “Whale Butts a Steamer.” A whale runs into a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. It is NOT a reference to whales farting.

An Italian general and a bunch of other soldiers are killed by “a body of intractable Arab tribesmen” in Libya.

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Close bonds

The White House responds to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s cancellation of her visit to the US.

The statement says that the invitation was “a reflection of the importance he places on... the close bonds between the American and Brazilian people.” Granted, one of these close bonds, the NSA’s reading of the Brazilian people’s emails, was one the Brazilian people were not aware of, but it was a very close bond nonetheless.

“As the President previously stated, he has directed a broad review of U.S. intelligence posture, but the process will take several months to complete.” Presumably this review is to determine if the allegations in the Snowden infodump were true, something which Obama claimed not to know when he met Rousseff at the G-20.

“the presidents have agreed to postpone President Rousseff’s State Visit to Washington”. That’s after Rousseff said she wasn’t coming. Obama graciously “agreed” to let her not come, as opposed to sending in Seal Team Six to rendition her to the White House State Dining Room.

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Today -100: September 17, 1913: Of dynamite miscreants, axe & pistol duels, rebellious loyalists, and impeachments

Someone sends a bomb through the mail to the owner of the L.A. Times, reactionary asshole Gen. Harrison Gray Otis. The package looked suspicious, so it wasn’t opened and the police safely detonated it. Gen. Otis blamed it on “certain dynamite miscreants”. He thinks it’s unionists, but the cops think it’s someone opposed to Otis’s support of the Mexican Huerta Junta.

Headline of the Day -100: “Two Die in Duel of Axe and Pistol.” H.F. Hendricks, a timber magnate, had the revolver, and pulled it on his old foe Mississippi State Senator Dr. H.F. Broyles. Broyles was working on a dam and threw the axe at Hendricks, slicing through his skull. Hendricks fired as he fell, hitting Broyles in the heart.

Irish Unionists claim to have an army of 100,000 prepared to resist Home Rule with violence.

The impeachment of NY Gov. Sulzer is underway, and the impeachment managers are claiming to have found another large campaign donation that Sulzer failed to report, but Hugh Reilly, a railroad contractor (in Cuba) (historical trivia: the first railroad line built in the Western Hemisphere was in Cuba), says it was actually a personal loan of $10,000 he made to Sulzer after he was nominated for governor, and that Sulzer owes him that plus $16,500 from earlier loans, which Sulzer has failed to pay back; Reilly says he’s “kissed the money goodbye.”

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Today -100: September 16, 1913: Of menacing defectives and ugly men

Headline of the Day -100: “15,000 Defectives Menace New York.” A Dr. M. G. Schlapp of the Post-Graduate Hospital, the “clearing-house for defectives,” says there is only enough room to institutionalize 6,000 mentally defective New Yorkers. He wants them all put away, because “almost every defective child is a potential criminal.”

More from 1913 science: anthropologists at the British Association meeting say that women don’t mind marrying ugly men, while men prefer to marry hot women. And by anthropologists, I mean male anthropologists. It all has to do with evolution. For example, all women used to have beards, but men didn’t like them, so they were bred out.

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Today -100: September 15, 1913: A sex problem that women alone can solve

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage issues a press release claiming that the National Association of Chiefs of Police says that women’s suffrage does not cure prostitution. They quote just one chief of police, that of Plainfield, NJ, who says that the consensus of the police chiefs is that “the social evil is a sex problem that women alone can solve.” Evidently women aren’t nice enough to prostitutes.

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Today -100: September 14, 1913: Of ultimata, vivisection, and big Tims

China gives in to Japan’s ultimatum. (Update from a later issue: not all of it, such as the demand that the governor of Kiang-Su province be fired).

An anti-vivisection movement has been developing in Britain (in the US, not so much). The Home Office releases a report saying all animals being cut open or experimented upon by Dr. Moreau and the other 598 licensed vivisectors (vivisectionists?) in the UK are “suitably lodged and well cared for,” so that’s okay then.

“Big Tim” Sullivan, NYC Tammany leader/organized-crime boss/former state legislator/US congresscritter (he wore many hats, straw ones if Google Images is anything to go by), dies at 51. He had escaped from his brother’s house, where he was confined due to syphilitic insanity, and was hit by a train. So thank you, NYT, for saying that for the last 13 days he “had been lying in the Morgue – in three Morgues, in fact” BEFORE explaining that that was because they moved his body around, not because different body parts were in different morgues. There are theories that he may have been murdered and his body placed on the train tracks. It took 13 days to identify the body because no one tried, despite its having good clothes and diamond & gold cufflinks with his initials, and despite his face being untouched, and despite the fact that the coroner was a friend of his. He was about to be buried in Potter’s Field when a passing cop recognized the corpse. In November 1912 he was elected again to Congress (he had served 1903-6 before resigning to spend more time with his graft) but never re-took his seat, given the, you know, tertiary syphilis. Since he was declared mentally incompetent, his congressional pay went to his conservators. I can think of a few members of congress...

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Today -100: September 13, 1913: Of martial law in where now?

Martial law is declared in New Lexington, Ohio. A former Catholic priest was scheduled to make an anti-Catholic speech at the Opera House. A mob of Catholics threw eggs at his followers. Hilarity ensued.

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Today -100: September 12, 1913: Of assassinations, votes for Northern Irish women, and cocaine

Remember how New York City Mayor William Jay Gaynor was shot in the throat three years ago as he was about to sail for Europe? Well, a few days ago he finally started on that belated vacation, and has now dropped dead in a deck chair onboard the ship as a result of the bullet fragment that was never removed.

Gaynor’s assassin died in prison a few months ago.

The Women’s Social and Political Union announces that it will hold Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Ulsterites who is now threatening to go to war, literally, with the British government over Home Rule, responsible for giving votes to women in Northern Ireland. Christabel Pankhurst writes in The Suffragette that Carson has appealed to women to share the risks and penalties of rebellion, and that every excuse he could give for denying women’s suffrage would be a negation of his own arguments against Home Rule.

Carson replies, and very promptly too, by including votes for women in his draft Ulster constitution.

Japan issues an ultimatum to China regarding the deaths of three Japanese citizens and the mistreatment of others: it wants an apology for insults to the Japanese flag, punishment of those responsible (including the commander of Chinese government forces in Nanking), and an indemnity.

The War on Drugs, 1913 version: a black drug dealer, convicted in New York of selling cocaine to children, is given the maximum: 1 year in prison and a $500 fine.

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Today -100: September 11, 1913: Of vaudeville, thaws, and souls

Woodrow Wilson sees his first vaudeville show. He liked it.

100 Japanese marines land in Nanking. Oh good, that always ends well.

The Canadian government throws escaped lunatic murderer Harry Thaw out of the country, suddenly and in defiance of the Quebec courts, which were to hear a habeas corpus appeal on Monday, and literally pushed over the border into Vermont. He is caught by authorities in New Hampshire.

Sir Oliver Lodge, a major inventor in the field of electromagnatism (radio telegraphy, that sort of thing), says science has nearly proven the existence of the human soul and its survival after death. Also telepathy.

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The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks

Obama addressed the nation on Syria.

UM, IRAN? “My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about Syria, why it matters and where we go from here.”

“But I have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force”. Now he tells us.

“Because these weapons can kill on a mass scale, with no distinction between soldier and infant, the civilized world has spent a century working to ban them.” Nothing disqualifies you from intervening in the affairs of a Third World country so quickly as using a phrase like “the civilized world.”

“On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons”. Then he mentioned gas attacks in World War I (noting that American GIs were exposed to it but neglecting to add that the United States also used chemical weapons in that war) and the Nazis’ use of it in the Holocaust (but not the execution of nearly 600 people in US gas chambers, most recently in 1999).

“When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory.” In democracies, we just wait until a new president says we need to look forward, not backward.

He did the slippery slope thing: if we don’t bomb Syria, Syria will keep using chemical weapons, then other tyrants will, then they’ll use them on our troops, then terrorist groups will get them, then George Zimmerman. Then they’ll be used against Israel, because everything is about Israel. Then everyone will acquire other prohibited WMDs and Iran will build nukes, and we’re back to Israel. Smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

“After all, I’ve spent four and a half years working to end wars, not to start them.” It’s nice of Obama to remind us, as he’s starting another war, that he’s taken longer “working to end wars” than it took to fight entire world wars.

He reassures us that this won’t be “an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan” or “a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo,” even though the authorization he sent to Congress included no such limitations. Funny, that.

“Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks.” Is the military’s inability to do anything that isn’t violently destructive on a large scale something to brag about?

“Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver.” Er, why no other nation?

“I don’t think we should remove another dictator with force. We learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next.” Bombing without responsibility is so much more fun.

“It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But al-Qaida will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death.” Can’t say I see the logic here.

“And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.” So his argument is that if you have a large military, it’s just silly not to crush a few small countries from time? We really do have to switch the name of the DOD back to War Department.

“To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.” Bombing for freedom and dignity, what leftie couldn’t get behind that?

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