Today -100: May 16, 1920: Of stinking carcasses, peace resolutions, ambassadors, crumbling regimes, and deserters

The Communist Party USA’s central committee writes to Eugene Debs, asking why he accepted the Socialist Party nomination for president: “Not even your name can hide their counter-revolutionary tendency. The class-conscious workers of America are through with the stinking carcass that calls itself the Socialist Party of America.”

The Senate passes the Knox Resolution ending the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary, voting 43-38 largely along party lines.

Pres. Wilson receives the ambassadors of Japan and Poland, in a move intended to dispel rumors that he’s sick again.

Wishful-Thinking Headline of the Day -100:

During the war, Carl Amerine went AWOL from Camp Sherman in Ohio to see his wife and child. His father explained to him that he was now a deserter, and they shoot people for that, so he’s been living in a cave in the hills of Ohio ever since. Authorities somehow get word to him that he won’t be shot, and he turns himself in.

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Today -100: May 15, 1920: Not nostrums but normalcy

Eugene Debs issues a statement from prison accepting the Socialist Party nomination. “The Socialist Party will appeal this year to men who think.” As Adlai Stevenson would say, that’s not enough, we need a majority. The D’s and R’s are “both wings of the same bird of prey,” Debs says. Admitting to the divisions within the Socialist Party, he says the radicals keep the conservatives from giving away too much in order to popularize the movement. “To begin to placate your enemies is to invite decay.” He says campaigning from prison “will be much less tiresome and my managers and opponents can always locate me.”

The Socialist Party’s national convention decides to adhere to the Third International as long as the party is not required to adopt one particular means of attaining socialism, such as the dictatorship of the proletariat. The party will hire 3 negroes to do propaganda work among negroes; one will be black and work among black women.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Speaking of normal, Warren G. Harding delivers his famous “Return to Normalcy”  speech (incomplete transcript) to the Home Market Club of Boston, setting out the theme of his presidential campaign and making the previously very-little-used word “normalcy” into a thing:

there isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational. ... 

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. ... 

Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people.

I’m a little startled to see words a later president kind of lifted:

If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded.

The NYT reports the speech on page 20 and misses out on the word normalcy. The Library of Congress website has a studio recording Harding made of this speech in June for Columbia Graphophone.

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Today -100: May 14, 1920: Of mimeographs, barracks, debses, and night work

Pres. Wilson vetoes the appropriations bill for federal salaries because it gives Congress control over all government publications and mimeographs, which it could use to censor the executive branch.

Sinn Féin has a fun day out, burning down something like 50 police stations and barracks, some of them not presently in use, as well as some tax offices.

The Socialist Party national convention nominates Eugene Debs for president, as was the custom. This will be the fifth time he runs for president, although the first time he will do so from a prison cell (he’ll receive his most ever votes this time). His running mate is Seymour Stedman, evidently chosen because as a lawyer he knows what he can say and not wind up in prison like Debs.

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith vetoes a bill banning women from night work in printing. He says “there is international recognition of prohibition of night work for women as a health measure.”

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Today -100: May 13, 1920: Because you just can’t eat thrones

Jackson, Wyoming (as in Jackson Hole), pop. 300, elects an all-female ticket for mayor and town councilwomen. The defeated ticket was all-male, and Rose Crabtree defeated her husband Henry for a council seat.

When Kaiser Wilhelm fled Germany, he left behind palaces full of stuff, and bills. Various provisioners who were owed the latter grabbed the former. “The royal beds were seized for unpaid wienerwurst accounts,” writes a NYT correspondent who is clearly enjoying himself. The throne, the actual throne, is about to go on auction in New York. Germany only allowed the export of that and other items because it was promised the proceeds would be used to import food.

The New York Board of Trade and Transportation opposes a blanket bonus for all WW I veterans (as opposed to just the disabled), saying it would “arouse the resentment and contempt of every patriotic American soldier and sailor.”

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti resigns, unable to get support in a parliament largely divided between irreconcilable Socialists & Catholics.

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Today -100: May 12, 1920: Of huge cannibals

Headline of the Day -100:

Huge cannibals are the worst kind (the Yanomami are not cannibals, by the way, although Dr. Rice claims to have “recognized them at once” as a tribe of cannibals only seen by outsiders once before, in 1763; he's just that good). Rice was accompanied by his wife Eleanor, whose vacations kind of sucked: she was on the Titanic with her son and her previous husband, which is how he became previous.

The French government announces it will dissolve the General Federation of Labor (Confédération Générale du Travail), pissed at its Bolshie leaders and its attempt at a general strike since May Day. The rationale will be that unions are legally allowed to strike only for economic interests and the CGT is striking for political ends.

Cynthia Curzon, daughter of British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, marries Oswald Mosley, 23-year-old Tory MP and future leader of the British Union of Fascists. The kings and queens of Britain and Belgium are in attendance.

The Netherlands won’t tax the former crown prince of Germany, because his residence in the country, under internment, is not voluntary.

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Today -100: May 11, 1920: Of obstructionists, bluebeards, and non-emergencies

Pres. Wilson reiterated in a telegram to the Democrats of a county in Oregon that the D’s should fight the election on the basis of ratifying the Versailles Treaty without any reservations. Now the Democratic senators who voted for reservations are worried that he plans to work against them. Other responses to the telegram: Taft calls Wilson “the greatest obstructionist in Washington.” William Jennings Bryan says Wilson has “been denied the information essential to sound judgment and safe leadership.”

Obregón orders that Carranza be captured alive.

James Watson, aka Bluebeard, is sentenced to life for the murder of one of his wives. The number of wives he has so far confessed to killing is up to nine.

Connecticut Gov. Marcus Holcomb refuses to call a special session of the Legislature to ratify the women’s suffrage Amendment, saying there’s no special emergency to justify it.

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Today -100: May 10, 1920: Of fleeing presidents, and everyone wants Fiume

As reported yesterday, the forces of Generals Álvaro Obregón and Pablo González, both candidates in the theoretical Mexican presidential elections, entered Mexico City, but they have not fought each other, so that’s good. Supporters of President-On-The-Lam Carranza are not a factor. Carranza himself is falsely reported to have been arrested. His train is stopped but he escapes on horseback. He is believed to be hiding in Vera Cruz, where the federal garrison just defected to the revolutionists.

Reports/rumors say that Hungary will soon put in its own demand for Fiume. And that it will reject the peace treaty.

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Today -100: May 9, 1920: I will blow up myself

Polish troops capture Kyiv.

The armies of Álvaro Obregón and Pablo González, both candidates for the Mexican presidency, enter Mexico City. Pres. Carranza has fled.

The US Navy calls up marines and destroyers to be ready to invade Mexico to protect American citizens. American citizens near ports, anyway.

Poet-Aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio says of the negotiations between Italy and Yugoslavia that sooner than hand over Fiume to Yugoslavia, “I will blow up the bridges, I will blow up the railroad stations, I will blow up the railroad station, I will blow up the city, I will blow up myself.” That probably sounds adorable in Italian.

French PM Alexandre Millerand denies German allegations that white women were molested by black French troops in the Ruhr, allegations he says have been made up to appeal to racist Americans. Protests against the deployment of non-white troops (mostly Senegalese and Algerians) extend across the German political spectrum, including a protest from the Social Democratic Party conference.

The peace treaty for Turkey will require it to annul all conversions to Islam since November 1, 1914 and undo adoptions of non-Muslim children by Muslims.

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Today -100: May 8, 1920: The world must disarm or the world must starve

A conference of the New York delegates to the Democratic National Convention recommends a plank for universal disarmament as the best means of achieving universal peace, and reducing the cost of living: “The world must disarm or the world must starve.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Well I’m sure they’ll bounce back.

Sorry.

Whiskey is being fired by underwater torpedoes from Canada across the Detroit River, according to “a mysterious informant.”

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Today -100: May 7, 1920: I am not going out asking people to vote for me for president

Herbert Hoover was trounced by Hiram Johnson in the primary in their home state of California, but he’s pleased he did as well as he did, 175,000 votes, and will stay in the race as long as he doesn’t have to, you know, do anything himself. “I am not going out asking people to vote for me for president. I haven’t asked anyone to vote for me and I will not do so. I will not organize a campaign, have my supporters raise a great campaign fund and then mortgage my soul in advance in order to attain the election.”

Mexican President Venustiano Carranza issues a statement about the current “delicate situation, both military and political.” He refuses to resign and calls on the military and everyone else to support him, possibly by helping him pack.

The Delaware State Senate passed the federal women’s suffrage Amendment, but doesn’t send it to the House (where it would likely have been defeated anyway), instead adjourning.

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Today -100: May 6, 1920: Of camel humps, deportations, and diphtheria denialists

With the price of meat at astronomical levels, Parisians are experimenting with serving lion and camel hump. The latter is on sale now (believed to have been sourced from a private zoo; not the first time Parisians have chomped their way through zoos), but chefs are debating how one cooks a camel.

Secretary of Labor William Wilson decides that mere membership in the Communist Labor Party is not sufficient grounds for deportation, unlike the Communist Party, because the former is willing to take power through elections. Palmer’s Justice Department is pissed off at WillWil.

Andrew Walker of Newark, a Christian Scientist, is found guilty of manslaughter for allowing his 9-year-old daughter to die of diphtheria. A Christian Science healer who treated her over the telephone told the court that there’s no such thing as diphtheria. Walker will be fined $1,000

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Today -100: May 5, 1920: Of collusion, deadlines, carriages, and bluebeards

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100:

There is a highly plausible rumor that the campaign managers for Hoover, Harding, Hiram Johnson and Lowden have a gentlemen’s agreement to refrain from opposing each other in the primaries, the better to defeat the juggernaut that is Gen. Wood. For example, Harding and Lowden didn’t enter the Maryland primary, giving Johnson room to compete with Wood for the old Progressive/Bull Moose voters. If Wood can arrive at the convention without too many delegates (and most will be uncommitted), the Old Guard can pick a candidate in one of those smoke-filled-rooms you hear so much about.

In California, no one is running for the Democratic nomination for president, so D’s are voting in the R primary. For some reason, it’s assumed they’re voting for Hoover, who nevertheless is trailing well behind Sen. Johnson in the incomplete count.

Mexican Pres. Venustiano Carranza called his remaining generals into council a few days ago. They told him to resign by the 15th or else.

Poor former kaiser Wilhelm puts an ad in the paper to sell his carriages, hunting wagon, horses, and gold-mounted harnesses.

Prolific wife-killer James Watson leads police to the body of one of the 5 wives he has admitted to murdering, 5 miles north of Coyote Wells, California. Hundreds of lookie-loos follow the expedition. Watson issues a statement, which his lawyer would like you to know he had no part in drafting, arguing that his actions prove he is insane, and he was mistreated as a child, and “My every act shows I am to be pitied more than to be blamed.”

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested in Brockton, Massachusetts for a robbery/murder in Boston last month.

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Today -100: May 4, 1920: Of attitudes of neutrality, coins, and sordid endurance tests

The Carranza government loses control of another Mexican state, Juarez. Juarez is not joining the rebellion, just adopting an “attitude of neutrality” until there’s a stable government in Mexico City.

The Senate authorizes a two-cent Teddy Roosevelt coin.

The Dublin Corporation officially recognizes the authority of the Irish Republican Parliament.

Novelist Fannie Hurst (Imitation of Life, etc) announces her wedding to pianist Jacques Danielson, which actually happened 5 years ago but they’ve been keeping it a secret, even from most of their friends. They’ve kept separate apartments because she didn’t want marriage to “lessen my capacity for creative work or pull me down into a sedentary state of fat-mindedness”. She notes that 90% of marriages are “merely sordid endurance tests, overgrown with the fungi of familiarity and contempt [which] in a few months becomes as a breakfast cloth, stale with soft-boiled-egg stains”. They have kept their own friends and meet by appointment.

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Today -100: May 3, 1920: Of moral leprosy

Pres. Wilson naturally opposes the Republican measure passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to repeal the declarations of war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Homer Cummings, chairman of the DNC, presumably speaking on behalf of the White House, says it is evidence of the “moral leprosy which is eating out the heart of the Republican Party.”

Some days ago Sinn Féin kidnapped 6 men who had robbed a large sum from bank officers in Cork, presumably intending to extract that money from the robbers for The Cause. They have held a secret court and pronounced the men guilty and will deport them, to where is not revealed, though they offer to hand them over if the bank wants them, but not to any British officials.

The last 35 hunger-striking Sinn Féin prisoners are released from Belfast jail.

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Today -100: May 2, 1920: Headed off

There were no revolutionary outbreaks, bombings, or assassinations in New York on May Day, which the NYT naturally attributes entirely to the “extraordinary precautionary measures taken by the Federal authorities and the police to hold the forces of disorder in check.” The feds are happy to accept credit. “While the night is not over, it looks as if the expected disturbances had been headed off,” says J. Edgar Hoover.

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby has a message from Pres. Wilson for the New York Press Club’s dinner: “he is rapidly recovering that vigor of mind that has always been his.” So he’s getting back what he never lost. Got it.

The Sunday NYT has a review of Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color; The Threat Against White World Supremacy.

(he will later write The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man [1922], which actually sounds even more racist and introduced the concept of the untermensch, which the Nazis adopted as their own). The book does what it says on the tin, raising fears that the White Man’s day is over, thanks to the Great War and rising non-white birth rates, and advocating ending all non-white immigration (yes, including Jews). He thinks Europeans should pull out of their Asian colonies and defend the racial battlements in Africa and Latin America (which is threatened with takeover by the Japanese, or something). Warren Harding will quote the book approvingly.

The Brooklyn Robins and the Boston Braves play 26 innings, which is still a major league baseball record, before being called on account of darkness. The score is 1-1. “The less hardy of the fans began to show signs of the strain by moving restlessly in their seats and babbling about perpetual motion and eternity.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

No word on how brave the bride was.

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Today -100: May 1, 1920: Object, matrimony

Panicked Headline of the May Day -100: 

Also, this one:

And another one: 

(A typo in the NYT Index had me pondering what it meant to “forest all radicals” for longer than I care to admit). For some reason, the authorities thought the forestalled radical plan, or part of it, was to shoot a bunch of black people.

But, on the other hand, this headline:

That does sound like Palmer, doesn’t it?

The US hears that Mexican Pres. Venustiano Carranza is going to flee Mexico for the US. Which will probably let him in if he makes it to the border (he won’t). Meanwhile the State Dept authorizes Americans doing business in Sonora and in the other states in rebellion against the federal government to pay taxes and customs duties to those states rather than the feds.

Old Guard Republican congresscritters are trying to boom senator and former secretary of state Philander Knox, because they really don’t like Gen. Wood and they don’t like the League.

Canada would like to have its own ambassador to the United States, rather than having Britain represent its interests.

James Watson aka “James Huirt” among other aliases, confesses to the LAPD to the murders of two of his wives and to having been... present... at the “accidental” deaths of 2 others, both of whom fell out of boats and drowned. He admits to having been married 10 or 20 more times, honestly he can’t even remember them all, even their names, but some of them he didn’t actually kill. He found them by placing classified ads. And this was all in just a few years. He often had several wives on the go at once; he told them he was in the Secret Service and had to be away a lot. His most recent wife got suspicious and hired a PI, who discovered his stash of correspondence, marriage licenses, wills, jewelry, etc. While definitely a con man who  got money from his wives and their families, some of the women he fake-married had no money and some he murdered on impulse. Just liked drowning women, I guess. He won’t be executed because of the deal that resulted in his partial confession. He died in San Quentin in 1939, the full extent of his matrimonial and homicidal career never entirely clear.

The Saturday Evening Post publishes the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” (text, audio book,

1976 adaptation with Shelley Duvall.

Some quotes, from whenever I last read it:

youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally restless

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

"Oh, please don't quote `Little Women'!" cried Marjorie impatiently. "That's out of style."

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Today -100: April 30, 1920: Of scrubs, May days, and joy rides

Pro- and anti-Sinn Féin crowds clash violently outside Wormwood Scrubs Prison. And Sinn Féiners blow up a police barracks only 10 miles from Dublin.

Attorney Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer claims there is a Red plot to assassinate many many many political leaders and others on May Day. He thinks all his arrests and deportations have thwarted this nefarious nation-wide plot. Also, he says, there’s a plot for a general strike, in conjunction with European leaders. All aimed at forcing peace with Russia.

Pres. Wilson takes his longest car ride since his stroke and doesn’t bring along his doctor.

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Today -100: April 29, 1920: Of black Republicans, impossible candidates, and hunger strikes

The Arkansas Republican state convention refuses to seat some negro delegates. The NYT doesn’t seem to know how many, or how many other black delegates were seated. But all the black delegates leave and hold their own separate convention, vote their own delegates to the National Convention to contest the lily-white delegation, and nominate Josiah Blount, a black school principal, for governor (Blount, born a slave in 1860, will receive 8.4% of the vote).

Virginia negro Republicans also hold a convention, disputing the legitimacy of that state’s all-white convention and also elect an alternative delegation to the national convention.

Harding did receive more votes in the Ohio Republican primary, but Gen. Wood did well too and they will divide the delegates. There were also primaries Tuesday in New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts. The NYT concludes that Harding has been eliminated, he’s “an impossible candidate,” and the Republican presidential battle is nearly tied between Wood and Sen. Hiram Johnson of California.

The Sinn Féin prisoners’ hunger strike spreads to Belfast jail. For days there have been crowds outside Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London cheering on the prisoners there; for the first time they come into conflict with anti-SF demonstrators. Tom Kelly, Lord-Mayor of Dublin, is released from the Scrubs due to ill health; I’m not sure if he was hunger-striking.

A Unionist MP, Ronald McNeill, responds to the US Senate’s concern with Irish independence by bringing up the Philippines, so there. Sir Edward Carson suggests it would be better for each country to leave the other alone.

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s forces shell an Italian torpedo boat destroyer, missing it, although perhaps they were (20) warning shots. Italy is finally sick of the poet-aviator’s shit; its current blockade of Fiume, unlike the previous ones, is more or less effective. D’Annunzio planned to shower pamphlets by plane over the San Remo Conference, replicating his feat over Vienna during the war, but he started too late. The pamphlet would have claimed that his Anti-League of Nations includes Ireland, Egypt, Persia, all of Islam, Croats, Albanians, etc.

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Today -100: April 28, 1920: Of examples of independent manhood and practically eliminated candidates

Alongside the overalls movement to protest the high cost of clothing is the old-clothes movement, which finds an adherent in Louisiana Governor-Elect John Parker, who boasts of having bought only one pair of shoes in the last three years. He says “The man who has the moral courage to wear old clothes these days is setting an example of independent manhood to the whole world.”

A story that Warren G. Harding is leading in the incomplete results from the primary in his home state of Ohio sits on the front page next to one saying Harding is practically eliminated from the race after doing poorly in the primary, losing the big cities to Gen. Wood, in part thanks to Democrats voting in the Republican primary since the state’s Gov. James Middleton Cox was a shoo-in on the D side.

In Indiana, a William Ray, a black man, is tried, convicted and sentenced to death in a single day for killing a 14-year-old white girl. The state will get to try out its brand-new electric chair.

In Bristol, England, thousands of unemployed veterans riot against the continued employment of women on trams. The mob also enter random offices and banks and order the firing of women in favor of vets on 8 days’ notice.

San Francisco tells members of the new teachers’ and firemen’s unions to quit them or be fired.

The president of Chatham Episcopal Institute, a girl’s boarding school in Virginia still around as Chatham Hall, bars a lecture on Harriet Beecher Stowe, so the (Northern-educated) faculty resigns en masse.

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Today -100: April 27, 1920: Of scab gamblers, poles, and German attitude

There’s rebel activity near Mexico City, and yet another general has defected from the federal government.

Tacked on to a story about events in Mexico is this from Agua Prieta, Sonora: “American gamblers employed here went on strike today. Employes of gambling houses demanded a raise from $10 a day to $15. Chinese gamblers were being employed as strikebreakers.” I have questions.

Explorer Roald Amundsen gives up his attempt to reach the North Pole, although giving up doesn’t mean much when your ship is stuck in the ice, as it has been for two winters now. Also: polar bear attacks.

The San Remo conference issues a statement accusing Germany of bad faith in implementing the Versailles Treaty and threatening to force Germany to comply by measures up to and including military force. Also, Germany’s application to retain an army of 200,000 instead of the 100,000 in the treaty, is rejected due to Germany’s “attitude.” Another conference is called for next month, to which Germany is invited to send delegates to explain itself.

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Today -100: April 26, 1920: In a smiling peace lies our only hope of salvation

The San Remo Conference gives the mandate over Mesopotamia and Palestine (which will be known as the “National Home for the Jews”) to Britain and gives Syria (which includes Lebanon) to France, and will offer Armenia to the US or at least get Wilson to arbitrate Armenia’s borders.

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti says “The trouble with the world today is it has forgotten how to smile.”

Now the Irish political prisoners held in the English prison Wormwood Scrubs also go on hunger strike.

The duel between Uruguayan Pres. Baltasar Brum and El Pais director Rodriguez Loretta is called off. Loretta would only do it in a foreign country, presumably one where dueling is legal?

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Today -100: April 25, 1920: Of overall parades, duels, and free states

William Howard Taft says he couldn’t be a candidate for president again because of his support for the League of Nations. He was asked to consider running by a postmaster in Morris Park, Illinois and by literally no one else.

“Whatever else New York may want to do about the high cost of living, it doesn’t want to parade about it.” The several-times-delayed overall parade in NYC consists of a mere 249 overall-clad participants.

Uruguay’s Pres. Baltasar Brum challenges the director of El Pais, Rodriguez Loretta,  to a duel, three weeks after a former president killed an editor of the paper in another duel. Brum’s brother was the first to challenge Loretta, who refused, noting that Pres. Brum isn’t maimed or old so he should be fighting his own damn duels.

Ohio Gov. James Cox accuses Republicans of trying to buy the presidential election with a slush fund provided by millionaires who expect to profit under a Republican administration. It’s funny cuz it’s true. He accuses R’s of stirring up Irish, Italians, Jews and Germans.

At the San Remo conference, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti accepts Woodrow Wilson’s idea of a Free State of Fiume, a buffer state not contiguous with Italy.

The US recognizes the Republic of Armenia.

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Today -100: April 24, 1920: You will have war in Asia Minor

Interviewed by reporters in San Remo, Lloyd George pooh-poohs (French) fears about Germany, saying the country is paralyzed and disjointed, not functioning as a unit, with the central government’s orders being disregarded. So no German military coup against the Allies is likely. Nor will it fall to Bolshevism because Germans are “too used to discipline.” He expresses disappointment that the US only sent someone to the San Remo conference to take notes, not to explain American positions.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Sam Remo conference decides to establish an independent nation of Armenia, because no one feels like taking the mandate. The League of Nations was asked if it would take it, but the League pointed out that it didn’t actually have a budget. The conference hasn’t worked out Armenia’s borders yet, but it will probably be smaller than earlier plans had foreseen because no one feels like sending in troops to evict the Turks occupying parts of Armenia. Smyrna will be officially part of Turkey but administered by the Greeks.

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti says the dismembering of Turkey means “You will have war in Asia Minor, and Italy will not send a single soldier nor pay a single lira.”

The New York State Senate passes the bills already passed by the lower house banning Socialists from public office.

The French Senate sentences former PM Joseph Caillaux to 3 years’ imprisonment (the time since his arrest in 1918, with time off for it being in a cell, covers this), plus 5 years’ banishment to a town designated by the Interior Minister, and 10 years’ loss of political rights.

The Senate votes to increase pensions for Civil War veterans to $50 a month, and for their widows to $30. Also the 215 veterans of the Mexican-American war and 1,576 widows, and 73 widows of War of 1812 veterans.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Seven black couples attend the senior dance of Brooklyn Girls’ High School. The senior class had voted to cancel the dance if black students attended. Some of them claimed to have no objection to their fellow black students, but worried that their escorts might want to dance with white girls. Protests ensued, including from W.E.B DuBois, who happens to be the father of one of the girls, so the school superintendent told them that if the black students can’t come, the dance would be cancelled. The class changed its vote because they’d already paid for dresses and the ballroom. One of the teacher chaperones says that “everyone seems to be enjoying the dance. Naturally, the negro couples are keeping to themselves and not mingling with other students.” Naturally.

Want to go to the movies? Cecil B. De Mille’s Why Change Your Wife? with Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels opens at the Criterion Theatre in Times Square, which is converting from a live theatre to a movie theatre. 

It’s on YouTube.

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Today -100: April 23, 1920: Of mandates, lynchings, and lawlessnesses

Canada offers to take the mandate over Armenia if Norway says no, as is expected. (Tomorrow it will deny having made such an offer).

Indianapolis police break up an attempted lynching of a black man being held for the murder of a white girl.

The French Senate convicts former prime minister Joseph Caillaux for “commerce and correspondence with the enemy” during the war, commerce here meaning association rather than economic trade. Basically, he talked with some shady dudes with questionable connections to German intelligence, and that’s about it. Charges of high treason and “intelligence with the enemy” are rejected. It was a purely political trial, held behind closed doors. Long-time readers of this blog will remember that his wife, who committed the very real crime of shooting dead the editor of Le Figaro, was acquitted in 1914.

Presidential candidate Gen. Leonard Woods’ enemies are spreading a rumor that he’s Catholic.

Judge George Anderson of the First Circuit Court issues writs of habeas corpus to 13 aliens who the government ordered deported for being lefties, calling their detention without warrants for two weeks “lawless.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1920: A touch of jazz

Police shoot 14 IWW strike picketers in Butte, Montana.

At the San Remo Conference, the Allies decide not to decide what lines to draw on the map of all those territories being removed from Turkey. Turkey will therefore be expected to simply sign them over to the Allies for later disposal according to their whims. This includes Armenia, which might become a League of Nations mandate under the Netherlands, greater Syria (which has declared independence), Mesopotamia (ditto), Palestine, Anatolia, etc. The Allies have decided to leave Kurdistan with Turkey and come back to the issue in two years.

At the conference, Britain and France are at odds over how to deal with Germany. Lloyd George wants a fixed sum named for German reparations, and says the UK will even help France collect it with military force if necessary, but only if France gives up its self-declared prerogative of acting alone against Germany, like that’ll happen.

Overalls continue to make appearances in unaccustomed areas, with six congressional secretaries coming to work so attired, a “touch of ‘jazz’” which is evidently newsworthy.

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Today -100: April 21, 1920: Is there news in every little irritant in every community?

The NY State Assembly votes 83-56 to ban the Socialist Party from the ballot and give the attorney general the power to ask the courts to ban any other party with Bad Ideas. Both houses of the Legislature pass a Teachers’ Loyalty Bill.

Britain informs the Russian government that it would view with disfavor any persecution of captured members of the defeated White army of Gen. Denikin and explains that Britain has a moral right to involve itself. The Soviets have already suggested that an amnesty might be arranged in exchange for an amnesty for Hungarian Soviet members (and other concessions, unspecified here).

Speaking to a luncheon of newspaper editors, Vice President Whatsisname Marshall decries all the crime reporting: “Is there news in every petty murder, in every slimy divorce suit? Is there news in every little irritant in every community?” He says papers should instead publish “the things that are helpful.” He says that immigrants, evidently even naturalized ones, unlike native-born Americans, have no right to propose changes in the US system of government (i.e. socialism).

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, James Good (R-Iowa) says giving a bonus to veterans would just be insulting: “The greatest badge that the American soldier will wear will be the badge of sacrifice and not the badge of a bonus.” I didn’t know it was either/or.

Mexico says it did not in fact ask the US to allow passage of troops through US territory to attack the Republic of Sonora.

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Today -100: April 20, 1920: Of Jim Crow, bayonets, anti-leagues, and lynchings

The US Supreme Court upholds Kentucky’s Jim Crow law for railroad carriages.

The new British ambassador to the US, Sir Auckland Geddes, arrives and immediately tells everyone to butt out of Irish affairs and let the Irish work things out for themselves. You know, like this:

Poet-Aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio says he will form an Anti-League of Nations consisting of all the oppressed minorities of the world. He has invited representatives of Egypt, Ireland, Turkey, Persia, Montenegro, Hungary and India.

France finally gives permission for the US to dig up and repatriate the bodies of American soldiers.

A black man accused of attacking a white girl is lynched in Mulberry, Kansas.

Ad from a travel agency:

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Today -100: April 19, 1920: Of conferences, kapps, and black shames

The San Remo conference is set to start. Yugoslavia is boycotting it because it couldn’t come to an agreement in advance with Italy over their territorial disputes in the Adriatic. This means the conference won’t be able to consider those disputes. The United States will send observers (although the US ambassador to Rome is running late due to a railroad strike in Italy) but won’t participate. The delegates will hold their sessions in private.

Another Mexican state, Michoacan, is in revolt against the central government. Its pro-Obregón governor flees the capital, taking the contents of the treasury with him, as is the custom.

Wolfgang Kapp of Kapp Putsch fame finally turns up, in Sweden, where he arrived by plane a day ago. He was arrested, but is being allowed to stay in a hotel, with a police guard. Sweden will evidently refuse to extradite him.

France withdraws half its troops occupying Frankfort, including all the non-white ones the Germans have been loudly  bitching about (Die Schwarze Schmach, the black shame, in their words).

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Today -100: April 18, 1920: Of overallers, assassinations, and cabreras

Overall Headline of the Day -100: 

“The mysterious blue overall, which has been reported in various sections of the country, made its appearance in Times Square yesterday, where it was seen, touched, examined and verified by hundreds of persons.” The president of the Cheese Club, which organized this event,  Thomas Oliphant, who has very possibly never left the island of Manhattan in his life, says “Many of you have seem them before, covering honest hearts in New England melodramas. ... I am informed that they are a common sight on the streets in some parts of the country.” And then it rained, and people found out why you don’t wear expensive silk shirts underneath overalls in the rain.

Other Overall Headline of the Day -100:  

Rep. William Upshaw  (D-Georgia) comes to Congress dressed in $4 overalls, as does some judge in Cleveland. But North Carolina (not Virginia, NYT, jeez) Gov. Thomas Bickett thinks all this will do is drive up the price of overalls for those who actually need them.

The Cork coroner’s jury inquest into the assassination of Tomás Mac Curtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, brings charges of willful murder against Lloyd George, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Viscount French, former Chief Secretary for Ireland Ian Macpherson, and various members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which they correctly accuse of carrying out the murder.

Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen rules that even after the federal women’s suffrage Amendment passes, women won’t actually be able to vote in in the state until there’s a state constitution amendment, which would take at least 2 years, or until there’s an act of Congress.

Guatemalan president/ex-president Estrada Cabrera surrenders after his forces are surrounded by Unionist forces.

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Today -100: April 17, 1920: Of strikes, stairs, overalls, and shortcuts

The wildcat railroad strike is disintegrating in the face of threats by the owners and lack of assistance from the unions.

17,000 elevator starters and elevator operators go on strike in New York. Many stairs are climbed. So many stairs. The Building Managers and Owners’ Association says if they wanted better pay, they should have chosen harder jobs, like longshoreman or something.

France and Britain will tell Germany that if it establishes a reactionary government opposed to the Versailles Treaty, all food aid will be cut off.

Prince Joachim Albrecht is fined 500 marks, which is the equivalent of some money, for starting that fight in the Hotel Adlon. Two of his confederates, Capt. Baron von Platen and Prince (take a deep breath here) Hohenlohe-Langenburg, are also fined for assault. This is the first time a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty has been charged in a criminal court. “A cordon of soldiers protected the court building from a mob that did not appear.” The prince claimed not to know that the people he attacked for refusing to stand for Deutschland Uber Alles were French.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Switzerland will ban automobile travel on Sundays, except for doctors, from May through September. Sunday strollers were complaining about the dust. People driving through the country, from France to Italy say, will just have to wait at the border.

The Mexican government asked the US to allow it to send troops through US territory to attack Sonora. That was a couple of days ago and the US still hasn’t answered.

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Today -100: April 16, 1920: Overalls over all

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

Volunteer scabs against the railroad strike, along with their male counterparts, including Princeton and Rutgers students. The owners’ association demands that strikers return to work within 48 hours or else, although they reserve the right to fire strikers guilty of violence, intimidation, or... seditious utterances. The teamsters call off their sympathy strike after winning wage increases, averting the threat of a butter and milk famine in NYC. The feds arrest a bunch of railway union leaders in Chicago. Special Assistant Attorney General Harry Mitchell says they interfered with the health of the entire nation by stopping food shipments and prevented industry getting fuel and it’s probably “a conspiracy to aim a blow at the government.” 

In other “strike” news, people (mostly college students, it sounds like) objecting to high clothing prices are wearing overalls in protest. This movement, originating in Florida and the South, has reached New York. There will be a march on Broadway today, weather permitting.

Sen. Warren G. Harding admits that his presidential campaign committee is spending quite a lot of money, but he says it’s probably not corrupt and he thinks there are no corporate donors. He objects to Sen. Borah’s bill to limit campaign spending to $10,000 per state, because he only plans to campaign in 2 or 3 states.

Margaret Bondfield, who will eventually be the first woman member of the British Cabinet, loses a by-election in Northampton.

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Today -100: April 15, 1920: No patriotic American could decline to serve

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer blames the railroad strike on the IWW as part of a world-wide communist conspiracy, as was the custom. The government thinks the railway workers will go back to work once the government informs them they’ve been duped. Palmer says the strike is part of a program “to capture the political and economic power, to overthrow the Government and to establish a dictatorship on the part of what they call the proletariat, and transport to this country the exact chaotic condition that exists in Russia.”

Gen. Pershing says that he’s not running for president, buuuuut “no patriotic American could decline to serve” if The People called him. Just couldn’t do it.

The Irish 89 hunger-striking prisoners are suddenly released, possibly because a general strike was called demanding it (I think this was its first day). The authorities had tried to divide the prisoners, releasing only some of them. And it tried to release them on license, to return to prison after their health recovered, under the Cat and Mouse Act brought in in 1913 for hunger-striking suffragettes. The prisoners rejected both proposals.

Mexican presidential candidate Gen. Álvaro Obregón flees the capital. And there was an assassination attempt against Pres. Carranza. Federal troops are moving into position to invade the now-independent Republic of Sonora.

Striking railroaders deny that they are revolutionaries. They just want better wages and shit.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Sadly, in an outrigger, not on a surfboard.

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Today -100: April 14, 1920: Of booze, wood, and meat

NY State Senator George Thompson claims that during the Assembly debate on expelling the 5 elected Socialists, assemblymen were plied with liquor by a lobbyist to win their votes, or at least their unconsciousness. Several had to be carried out of the chamber, Thompson says.

Gen. Leonard Wood leaves the presidential campaign trail temporarily to resume his day job in the army to deal with the rail strike. It’s not like he could take the train to his speeches anyway.

Ominous-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 13, 1920: Of plagues, overalls, and metros

As the railroad strike continues, threatening NYC’s food supply, Health Commissioner Royal Copeland warns of possible outbreaks of cholera, typhus and bubonic plague because everyone will be starving and become susceptible to disease. This is the guy who kept saying the Spanish Flu was no biggie. He wants to get in contact with the leaders of the strike, but doesn’t know who they are.

Men have started wearing overalls to fight the high cost of clothing. The idea began in Tampa, and the Overall Club of Birmingham has 4,000 members.

The president of Guatemala, Estrada Cabrera, shells Guatemala City after the National Assembly removes him from office for mental incompetence.

The general in charge of the self-described Republic of Sonora says 13 other states have seceded from Mexico, but he doesn’t say which ones.

Headline of the Day -100: 

A US Army Sgt. Bender denies having sold a bridge over the Seine but admits selling the subway. To whom is not disclosed. Or for how much.

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Today -100: April 12, 1920: Of toads and baffling peasants

French PM Alexandre Millerand threatens not to attend the San Remo conference to draw up a peace treaty with Turkey unless Britain rejoins the Committee of Ambassadors.

The wildcat railroad strike is still going on. Samuel Gompers calls it an “outlaw” movement (as does the NYT). Big Bill Haywood of the IWW calls Gompers a toad.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 11, 1920: Of hunger strikes, sonoras, treaty infractions, and plebiscites

104 hunger-striking prisoners in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin are said  to be near death. After just 6 days, really? They are striking for political-prisoner status, like the suffragettes before them and Bobby Sands after them. The position of Lord Lieutenant Viscount John French in refusing to extend political-prisoner status, as I understand it, is that it doesn’t apply to unconvicted prisoners, and since they’re being held without charges under the Defence of the Realm Acts...

Sonora State secedes from Mexico after Pres. Carranza orders federal troops into the state to fuck with Gen. Álvaro Obregón’s presidential campaign.

French PM Alexandre Millerand gives a statement defending his sending troops into the Rhine. The oddest thing is his suggestion that “the sending of troops into the Ruhr [by Germany] was not necessary in the interest of public order. They were being sent there simply as an infraction of the treaty.”

Hungary threatens not to sign any peace treaty that doesn’t provide for plebiscites in all the territories detached from it. The argument is that Hungary has no authority to dispose of those territories without the consent of their peoples, who are no longer represented in the Hungarian National Assembly, so what else is there except plebiscites?

Herbert Hoover’s wife Lou does not approve (her words) of the Herbster running for president.

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Today -100: April 10, 1920: Of hoovers, ending wars, enforcing peaces, and reeds

The chairman of the Massachusetts Democrats asks Herbert Hoover if he would accept the Democrat nomination if it was offered to him. No, no he wouldn’t.

The House passes the resolution to declare the war with Germany over, 242-150, not enough to override a veto. Claude Kitchin (D-NC), the former House majority leader and a huge racist, gives an impassioned speech against the resolution, then promptly has a stroke.

Britain tells France that if it continues to act unilaterally in “enforcing” the Versailles Treaty, as it did in occupying the Rhine, Britain will withdraw from the Committee of Ambassadors that oversees the treaty. Belgium, not surprisingly, will join France with a battalion.

A wildcat railroad strike is spreading in the US.

Unconfirmed and wrong reports say John Reed has been executed in Finland. He was caught stowing away on a ship trying to get from Russia back to the US, carrying diamonds and possibly microfilm.

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Today -100: April 9, 1920: Of occupations, training, and Martian signals

France’s allies (Britain, Italy) will not be joining it in sending troops to occupy the Rhine.

Congressional advocates for universal military training give up, lacking the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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