Today -100: June 19, 1920: Of preserved nationality, wets, false teeth, headless bodies, and tractors

An interview Woodrow Wilson gave to the New York World (which I skimmed and didn’t think contained anything new), arguing that the Democratic convention should support all of his policies, especially the League, is being taken as indicating that he might still decide to run for re-election or at least try to bind the candidate to his policies.

Warren Harding responds to the interview, welcoming an election on the question of “preserved nationality.”

William Gibbs McAdoo, former treasury secretary and presidential son-in-law, not necessarily in that order, says he is definitely not running for president. He says he needs to make a bunch of money first, which is the reason he gave when he resigned as treasury sec.

William Jennings Bryan says no Wet can win the Democratic nomination for president.

Prohibitionist leader Virgil Hinshaw says Warren Harding used to own stock in a brewery.

After railway workers in Ireland refuse to run trains carrying British troops and munitions, Prime Minister David Lloyd George meets members of the union and threatens to shut down railways in Ireland. Or maybe fire all the workers and have the army run the railroads. He also says Britain would fight to prevent an independent Ireland, citing the US Civil War.

Woodrow Wilson signs a bill allocating $35 for a set of false teeth for Brooklyn Navy Yard worker Michael MacGarvey. There’s probably an interesting story there, but the NYT doesn’t tell it.

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Harold Lloyd signs a deal that will make him the highest-paid actor in the world, earning $1,500,000+ in the first year.

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Today -100: June 18, 1920: Of punchy Belgians, lynchings, bears, and women’s suffrage

There are rumors that former kaiser Wilhelm was punched by a Belgian.

The St. Louis County, Minnesota County Attorney Warren Greene says at least 2 of the 3 men lynched in Duluth were definitely innocent.

There’s a gang war in progress in Chicago, as is the custom. The latest victim: Paddy “The Bear” Ryan, a nickname presumably intended to be terrifying rather than adorable.

Emma Goldman, in exile in the Hotel Astoria in Petrograd, says there’s “no health” in Russian state socialism.

After having failed to pass the federal women’s suffrage Amendment, the Louisiana State Senate also fails to pass one to the state Constitution.

Obit of the Day -100: Dr. James Hyslop, retired Columbia professor and psychic researcher to the stars.

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Today -100: June 17, 1920: Of coalitions, sociologists, and national athems

Constantin Fehrenbach will be the next German chancellor, heading a coalition of his Catholic Zentrum Party, the Democrats (DDP), and the People’s Party (DVP), with the Socialists outside the government but neutral towards it.

Sociologist Max Weber dies of Spanish Flu at 56.

The Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, is coming to the US, but some of the passengers on his ship are trying to get him barred because he failed to stand up for the US national anthem in Honolulu harbor. Immigration officials say there’s no law making that an excludable offense. (A later denial filed with the State Dept says he did stand but didn’t sing, not knowing the words. He did, however, remain seated during the British anthem, being Irish.)

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Today -100: June 16, 1920: Of Minnesota not so nice, log cabins, and bluebeards

Three black men, circus workers, are lynched by a large mob in Duluth, Minnesota, for supposedly attacking a 17-year-old white girl. Interestingly, the mock trial conducted by the mob acquitted three other black men and returned them to their cells.

Vice President Whatsisname says he is not only not a candidate for president but will be retiring from public life, which is a surprise to everyone who didn’t realize he was actually in public life.

Harding will not run for re-election to the Senate after all, but won’t resign his seat.

Harding denies having been born in a log cabin.

Heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey is acquitted of evading the draft.

The French authorities are investigating Henri Désiré Landru for killing 11 (or more) women he met through matrimonial ads. And then selling their furniture.

Landru was fictionalized by Charlie Chaplin in his too-dark-for-1947 comedy Monsieur Verdoux. There’s also a 1963 Claude Chabrol film Landru (update: which I have now seen and I just had to check: yeah, that’s what he looked like, all right).

Also played by George Sanders in 1960’s Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons, which I haven’t seen.

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Today -100: June 15, 1920: Of front lawns and metal planes

Warren G. Harding celebrates his first day as nominee by playing golf, as is the custom. This will be followed by a week’s vacation, playing more golf. He’s planning a “front lawn” campaign in which he stays in Marion, Ohio and does not go around the country making speeches and kissing babies.

The US Army thinks all-metal airplanes, now being tested, might be the wave of the future.

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Today -100: June 14, 1920: Congratulations to you

If elected, Harding will be the first Baptist president.

Republicans are worrying that Sen. Robert La Follette will bolt the party for an independent run for the presidency, to the left of Harding on many issues but also strongly anti-League of Nations. Fears that Hiram Johnson would do the same are alleviated when he sends Harding a fulsome message which I now present verbatim: “Congratulations to you. Hi Johnson.”

The first assistant postmaster general rules that children cannot be sent by parcel post as live animals. Which is a thing that had actually happened.

A bomb explodes at Enrico Caruso’s farewell performance at the National Theatre in Havana. No one killed. It may have been a protest against the high ticket prices for Caruso’s shows ($35 and up!).

Gen. Essad Pasha, the Ottoman official who sometimes ran Albania and was scheming to return from exile as its ruler, is assassinated in Paris by an Albanian nationalist, Avni Rustemi. Rustemi says he didn’t plan it; he always carries a revolver, saw Pasha Essad and just couldn’t help himself. “I have killed for Albania,” he tells the French attorney general. He will be acquitted in a French court in December, return to Albania in glory, enter its National Assembly, and of course be assassinated himself in 1924.

Germany: Hermann Müller fails to form a new cabinet. Pres. Ebert calls on the People’s Party (DVP)’s Rudolf Heinze to also fail to form a cabinet.

The Irish Republican Army issues a boycott against the Irish constabulary, ordering that they not be sold food, milk, etc.

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Today -100: June 13, 1920: What can happen when you’re bleary eyed with loss of sleep and perspiring profusely

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The Republican National Convention nominates Sen. Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio for president on the 10th ballot. By the 8th ballot, Gen. Leonard Wood and Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden were still in the lead, and then there was a little recess, and...

Some time back, Harry Daugherty, Harding’s campaign manager predicted what would happen. (The NYT puts this in quotes, but it’s really a paraphrase): “At the proper time after Republican National Convention meets some fifteen men, bleary eyed with loss of sleep and perspiring profusely with the excessive heat, will sit down in seclusion around a big table. I will be with them and will present the name of Senator Harding to them, and before we get through they will put him over.” This indeed happens in the proverbial smoke-filled room in the Blackstone Hotel (in fact, this is the origin of the phrase “smoke-filled room,” coined by UP reporter Raymond Clapper), where senators decide on Harding as a compromise candidate, despite his poor performance in primaries. They might have gone for Philander Knox if they’d been able to get Hiram Johnson to drop out in his favor, but they couldn’t.

The NYT describes Harding as “a very respectable Ohio politician of the second class. He has never been a leader of men or a director of policies.” The editorial says his nomination is “the fine and perfect flower of the cowardice and imbecility of the Senatorial cabal that charged itself with the management of the Republican Convention”. The Times is much happier with the choice of Gov. Calvin Coolidge as his running mate, saying his actions against the Boston police strike showed him to be “a man.”

That choice was evidently a much easier one for the boys in the Blackstone (Harding had no input in the decision, as far as I know).

A Japanese newspaper reports that Trotsky is dead and Lenin has fled.

France and Belgium agree a military alliance. I guess the idea of Belgian neutrality is done.

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Today -100: June 12, 1920: Of president-picking, and whist experts

The Republican National Convention holds its first 4 ballots. Gen. Leonard Wood topped all 4, with Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden not too far behind, and Hiram Johnson and Warren G. Harding well behind. Wood has the Old Guard Republicans strongly opposed to him, I guess because of his close military and political association with Theodore Roosevelt, so his potential support in the convention has a natural ceiling. And more and more information is leaking out about how much money Lowden is spending to buy the nomination, which doesn’t look good (a lot of it is his own money, or his wife’s – he married into the Pullman railroad family).

One tricky thing for Harding is that the deadline for filing for re-election to the Senate was yesterday. He filed.

Austria’s government, led by Karl Renner, resigns.

Agatha Christie Pastiche of the Day -100:

Actually, looking it up, I find that this case is considered the inspiration for the genre of locked-room mysteries. It was never solved.

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Today -100: June 11, 1920: That word is tragedy

The Republican platform says Wilson & the Dems were unprepared for war and unprepared for peace. It promises to end “executive autocracy” and restore constitutional government; it attacks Wilson’s “vindictive vetoes.” It calls for tightening immigration and naturalization, and for continuing the exclusion of Asians. Calls for “Americanizing” the foreign population of Hawaii and the “rehabilitation of the Hawaiian race,” whatever that means. It vaguely calls for Congress to “consider the most effective means to end lynching”. Calls for states with Republican legislatures to ratify the women’s suffrage Amendment in time for this election. On the League, it says it supports “agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world” buuuuut without compromising national independence or the US people’s “right to determine for themselves what is just and fair when the occasion arises without involving them as participants and not as peacemakers in a multitude of quarrels, the merits of which they are unable to judge.” It accuses Wilson of being a “dictator” in demanding the Senate ratify the covenant without any changes.

Hiram Johnson declares victory on getting that anti-League plank. Victory over whom? International bankers, of course.

Florence Harding says she’d rather Warren not be president: “I can see but one word written over the head of my husband if he is elected, and that word is ‘Tragedy.’”

The American Federation of Labor’s annual convention warns affiliated unions, specifically the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, against excluding blacks. Black delegates objected to being referred to during the debate as “nigger freight handlers,” as well they might.

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Today -100: June 10, 1920: So that’s when California went wrong

The census shows that Los Angeles’s population now surpasses San Francisco’s.

The Republican National Convention is having trouble agreeing on its planks on foreign relations, peace, and the League of Nations. Hiram Johnson in particular is fighting any move short of complete rejection of the League. That issue is pretty much his whole campaign now. Some are worried he’ll do a third-party run if he loses the nomination. Also, there will be no planks dealing with the soldier bonus or prohibition.

Yet another horse-race story insists that “Senator Harding was eliminated from the contest some time ago, according to the general view.”

Italy: Francesco Nitti’s government resigns (again), brought down by its decision to lift the cap on bread prices because the government subsidies were too expensive. Fighting this is an issue on which the Catholics and the Socialists can (finally) agree.

Another country with a squabbling coalition government, Germany, held parliamentary elections this week. The Social Democrats remain the largest party but lost a bunch of seats to the further-left Independent Social Democratic Party. Right-wing parties also picked up support. Ebert is trying to put together a workable coalition with parties to his right.

More anti-Semitic riots in Vienna.

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Today -100: June 9, 1920: Of enthusiasm and suffrage

The Republican National Convention opens “with an impressive lack of enthusiasm.” To be fair: 81-minute speech by Henry Cabot Lodge. Also: fewer of the delegates than in past conventions are boozed up (liquor in Chicago is going for $6 to $9 a pint). 21 searchlights are turned on so that a film crew can preserve the convention in (silent) posterity, and delegates find that a bit too bright.

The Louisiana State Senate votes down ratification of the federal women’s suffrage Amendment 22-19.

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Today -100: June 8, 1920: Of enthusiasm, prohibition, negro martyrs, and anti-Semitism

In Chicago a day before the opening of the Republican convention, Sen. Harry New of Indiana puts his finger on it:  “there is little real enthusiasm for any candidate”. The whole field is made up of Bidens.

Ruling on several cases, the Supreme Court unanimously upholds the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. It says prohibition applies even to liquors produced before it was adopted. Also, Congress gets to decide what constitutes “intoxicating,” not the states.

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Well, which of us hasn’t been fatigued by the beatification of negro martyrs? That shit’s just fatiguing.

Posters appear in Vienna calling for the expulsion of non-Austrian Jews from the country, and all Jews from the army.

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Today -100: June 7, 1920: Nobody is talking Harding in Chicago

With the British due to hold talks with a Russian envoy about resuming economic relations, France, which wants a much harder line against the Soviets, claims to have foiled a Russian plot to start revolution throughout Europe on May Day. They have the proof in Trotsky’s own handwriting, says Le Matin. And naturally, this is all funded with jewels taken from Russian churches.

According to the NYT, “Nobody is talking Harding in Chicago.”

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Today -100: June 6, 1920: Of candidates, political expediency, aliens, and spinsters

The Republican presidential nomination is

In the lead: Gen. Leonard Wood, Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden, Sen. Hiram Johnson of California, and Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio, in that order, with dark horses including Gov. William Sproul of Pennsylvania, former Supreme Court Justice and former NY governor Charles Evans Hughes, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler, Gov. John Calvin Coolidge Jr. of Massachusetts, former Food Tsar Herbert Hoover, and Senators Philander Knox of Pennsylvania, Miles Poindexter of Washington, and Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin. It’s “taken for granted that Harding, [Ohio’s] favorite son, is already out of the contest”.

Congress adjourns for six months. Wilson accuses it of having failed to work for the public welfare, saying it was instead motivated by “political expediency.” He points to its failure to do anything about the cost of living, railroads, the merchant marine, and of course, peace. A lot of bills are left hanging by the adjournment, including the Soldier Bonus and the budget.

One thing Congress did complete: a bill allowing deportation of aliens for simple membership in (or giving money to) any organization advocating sabotage, destruction of property, or revolution, such as the Communist Party, Communist Labor Party, or IWW. Also: aliens who write stuff advocating those things, or distribute such literature.

Having already passed a tax on bachelors, the French National Assembly is considering a tax on spinsters.

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Today -100: June 5, 1920: Of mayo, pickets, and not banned in Boston

The White House denies rumors that Wilson is to undergo an operation – by the Mayo brothers, no less.

With the Republican National Convention imminent, no one knows whether it will name Johnson, Wood, or Lowden as its presidential candidate.

Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party will picket the Republican convention, blaming the R’s for the delay in ratification of the federal women’s suffrage Amendment.

A French airplane sets the record for longest continuous flight, more than 24 hours.

Someone “in a position to know the President’s views” tells the NYT that Woodrow Wilson has no preference for Democratic presidential candidate. In fact, Wilson still hasn’t said whether he’d accept the nomination for a third time if he was, you know, asked nicely.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill says there are 40 tanks and 28 aeroplanes stationed in Ireland.

Hungary signs its peace treaty.

Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge vetoes a bill establishing movie censorship, saying it violates federal rules on interstate commerce and eliminates jury trials. The House votes to override.

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Today -100: June 4, 1920: Of beeckmans, segregation, and war laws

Rhode Island Gov. R. Livingston Beeckman, which is the most Republican-Rhode-Island-Governor name imaginable, in Chicago for the Republican National Convention, complains that the Republican senators plan to take complete control over the convention. Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee Virgil Hinshaw, which is the most Chairman-of-the-Prohibition-National-Committee name imaginable, wants to question the candidates about prohibition.

For the first time the two parties’ conventions will have “electrical sound amplifying devices,” courtesy of Ma Bell.

The RNC passes a motion that no delegations be seated in the future if elected at places (hotels etc) in the South from which blacks are banned.

The House of Representatives votes 343-3 to repeal most war laws. Not included: food and fuel control acts, which R’s like because they can be used against strikes. R’s claim it’s actually about punishing profiteering.

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Today -100: June 3, 1920: Of grammar, keeping abreast of the world, and prescriptions

Pres. Wilson vetoes a bill criminalizing the transporting across state lines of licentious movies because it has bad grammar (which turns out to be a clerk mistakenly putting the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the wrong place. The House corrects and re-passes it.

A Senate committee has been investigating campaign spending in the Republican primary, and some candidates, notably Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden, whose campaign paid delegates to the national convention large sums without any stipulation about how they were to spend it, are seeing their campaigns tank as their spending practices are revealed. Which upends the plans of the Republican Old Guard to use Lowden to undercut the Wood & Johnson campaigns.

Wall Street betting odds favor Johnson 6:5, with both Wood & Lowden at 3:1. On the Democratic side, William Gibbs McAdoo is favored 8:5, followed by Edward Edwards, the New Jersey governor so nice they named him twice.

At the NAACP conference in Atlanta, W.E.B. DuBois (whose first initial the NYT gives as N) calls for black people in the South to be given the vote “if the South wishes to be abreast of the world”. I can’t imagine where he’d get the idea that the South wants to be abreast of the world.  When the conference ends, delegates going north will be provided special Pullman cars in which Jim Crow rules will not be enforced.

Hubert Howard, federal Prohibition Director for Illinois, says that since prohibition went into effect, Chicago doctors have issued 300,000 spurious prescriptions for liquor (out of 500,000). Conditions evidently requiring alcoholic treatment include: fainting, insomnia, stomach ache, toothache, headache, runny nose, lumbago, menstrual cramps, bronchitis, ptomaine poisoning, gastritis, gaseous eructations, hay fever, asthma, grip, and of course, alcoholism. The usual prescription is for one ounce three times daily.

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Today -100: June 2, 1920: Of expert treatment and artificial stimulation, ratifications, and daring raids

A week before the Republican national convention, Sen. Warren G. Harding’s campaign, which was considered moribund, is picking up again, the beneficiary “expert treatment and artificial stimulation” from party elders using him in order to stop Gen. Leonard Wood, and definitely not because they intend to make him president. The plan is to keep Wood from winning for several ballots, in part by depriving him of the votes of delegates from Ohio, Harding’s home state, and then choosing the candidate behind closed doors.

Even though the Ohio State Constitution says that the state can only ratify federal Amendments after a popular referendum, the US Supreme Court rules that the Legislature’s ratification of the 18th Amendment was final, despite prohibition losing in the subsequent referendum last November.

That ruling also means that Ohio’s ratification of the women’s suffrage Amendment stands.

Sinn Féiners raid a military barracks, in central Dublin no less, take 25 soldiers captive, make off with a whole bunch of weapons and ammo, and melt into a cheering crowd.

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Today -100: June 1, 1920: Of provisional presidents and quaint Memorial Day traditions

Mexican Provisional President Adolfo de la Huerta, just appointed and already suffering from appendicitis, pledges that any candidates in the upcoming elections won’t be killed, probably.

Sen. Albert Fall (R[acist dickhead]-New Mexico)’s Foreign Affairs sub-committee demands that the new Mexican government be made to sign a new treaty and rewrite its Constitution to safeguard the property and lives and property of Americans living in Mexico (i.e., oil companies). American citizens should be exempted from the rules regarding land and mineral ownership, religious activities and schools that mere Mexicans have to abide by and not be subject to summary expulsion from the country like every other non-Mexican. Failing that, the committee recommends sending troops to “open and maintain open every line of communication between the City of Mexico and every seaport and border port in Mexico.” It also expresses concern about the number of Japanese in Mexico without, near as I can tell, explaining its problem with them.

At a Memorial Day event in Liscomb, Iowa, veterans firing a salute accidentally shoot 42 members of the crowd.

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Today -100: May 31, 1920: Of fools and socks

Ahead of its general election, Germany is rife with rumors of coups by nationalists, communists, or both. Chancellor Hermann Müller says Germany must show “that she has had enough of war for all eternity, and that no fool, crowned or uncrowned, shall drag Germany into a war of revenge.”

Coney Island bathing suit censors, out in force this Memorial Day weekend, go after women wearing socks and men wearing one-piece bathing suits, because too sexy for 1920, I guess.

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Today -100: May 30, 1920: What the Well-Dressed Opera-Goer and Presidential Candidate Are Wearing

US Attorney Annette Adams is nominated to be assistant attorney general. She will be the first woman assistant attorney general, the highest federal office occupied by a woman so far.

The House of Representatives passes a bonus bill for veterans through an extraordinary suspension of the rules to limit debate, so much of the argument was about that. Robert Evans (R-Neb.) says “It is an outrage that 425 members are only eunuchs in the harem of the Steering and Rules Committee.” Most of the funding would come through various taxes on Wall Street and tobacco. Vets could choose one of the following: cash, or a 20-year bond, or vocational training, or farm or loan aid, or land settlement. The cash would be $1.25 per day of service overseas or $1 at home, to a max of $625. The bill is expected to die in the Senate.

Pres. Wilson commutes the sentence of Kate Richards O’Hare, who was convicted under the Espionage Act for opposing the war.

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Tomas Masaryk is chosen as president of Czechoslovakia by the country’s first elected parliament. During the proceedings, ethnic German deputies (think Sudetenland) complain that the Speaker spoke Czech rather than German. They later storm out.

The Indian National Congress has its own commission on the Amritsar Massacre, including Gandhi, which issues its own report. It suggests that the actions of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lt. Gov. of the Punjab, invited violence to justify a violent crackdown. It distances the actions of the Indian mob from Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement. It describes the massacre as “a calculated piece of inhumanity unparalleled in its ferocity.”

The NYT continues to push John W. Davis for the Democratic nomination for president. It thinks he’d be a really strong candidate. Ambassador Davis will have a chance to prove them woefully wrong, but not just yet. The Times also suggests that the Republicans, who “boast that they are the party of intelligence” (cough), not nominate Hiram Johnson; it does not suggest an alternative candidate.

News that Hungary will sign the peace treaty has supposedly led to many suicides being fished out of the Danube. And the army may refuse to evacuate territories as required by the treaty.

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Today -100: May 29, 1920: Of sentimental idealism, women’s suffrage, and Willy’s new suit

The House fails to override Pres. Wilson’s veto of the Knox Resolution to end the war. Stephen Porter (R-Penn.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, accuses Wilson of attempting , in his veto message, to lead the American people “into the underbrush of sentimental idealism, which is beautiful and attractive in theory, but is extremely dangerous in these days.” D’s point out that if the R’s were really so concerned with repealing wartime regulations, they could just do that.

Women’s suffrage Amendment ratification dies in the Delaware Legislature.

Former czar Wilhelm II has taken up tailoring as a hobby, because why not.

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Today -100: May 28, 1920: Of ineffacable stains

Pres. Wilson vetoes the Knox resolution to end the war. He says it would ignore the moral obligations which the US assumed when it went to war and would “place ineffacable stains on the gallantry and honor of the United States.” He says “The resolution seeks to establish peace with the German Empire without exacting from the German Government any action by way of setting right the infinite wrongs which it did to the peoples whom it attacked,” nor would it reduce armaments or establish freedom of the seas. The US would be announcing its unwillingness to assume “responsibilities with regard to the freedom of nations or the sacredness of international obligation or the safety of independent peoples.” “Have we sacrificed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans and ruined the lives of thousands of others and brought upon thousands of American families an unhappiness that can never end for purposes which we do not now care to sate or take further steps to attain?” I think that’s a trick question.

Rep. Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) points out an interview during the war in which Wilson was unconcerned with the freedom of the seas. Longworth asks “did the same man who gave the interview write the message?”, which I take to be suggesting not so subtly that someone else wrote the veto message. And while someone else (Mrs Wilson comes to mind) might easily have done so, it sounds very much like Wilson’s sentiments.

Canada puts in a rather belated claim for reparations from Germany of $1,871,000,000. Evidently it expects Germany to pay the whole cost of the war against it as well as $30 million for the explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax harbor in 1917 after it bumped another ship, which Canada is still pretending was a German plot of some kind.

Republican party leaders intend to keep the issue of prohibition out of the national convention.

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Today -100: May 27, 1920: Of generals and minimum wages

Rodolfo Herrera, the Mexican general in charge of the siege of Carranza’s camp, is arrested for questioning about the latter’s death. Herrera insists Carranza committed suicide.

The Senate kills a bill for a $3 a day minimum wage for government employees.

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Today -100: May 26, 1920: Of Jim Crow conventions, massacres, 2.75% beer, married teachers, and general soreness

300 black delegates to the Texas Republican Convention quit it and hold their own convention after some are refused credentials by, you know, racists. So yet another state will send two competing delegations to the national convention in Chicago, although both will evidently support Gen. Wood. Oh, and the black delegates are led by a banker from Fort Worth known as “Gooseneck” Bill McDonald, the first black millionaire in Texas.

The commission led by Lord Hunter into “unrest” in India, including last year’s Amritsar Massacre, issues two reports, one from the 5 British members, one from the 3 Indian members. The two reports disagree on whether the anti-European attitude of the natives developed before or after the massacre, but agree that the soldiers needed to shoot into the crowd, though maybe not for quite that long. They also differ over whether the protests constituted “open rebellion” and whether martial law was necessary. Even the British members think Dyer’s order for Indians to crawl if they wanted to cross a particular street where a British woman had been assaulted was a bad move.

The feds say they will ignore the NY law authorizing 2.75% beer and prosecute those who sell it.

The New York Board of Education rescinds the 1903 rule barring married women teachers being hired or promoted.

French President Paul Deschanel is recovering from falling out of his train. According to his doctors, “There is general soreness, but no nervousness.”

Same.

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Today -100: May 25, 1920: It may surprise you, but I am Deschanel, president of the Republic

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To be fair to that railroad trackwalker, Paul Deschanel may well have been crazy. So the president of France falls out of the window of the moving presidential train. He walks, in his pj’s, to the nearest town, coming across that sceptical trackwalker along the way. He claims to have fallen out of the window of his carriage when trying to open it, but there are... questions. PM Millerand tells the NYT correspondent that Deschanel is “sound physically and mentally.” That he felt impelled to add that “and mentally” is not a good sign.

Pres. Wilson asks Congress to give him the power to accept the mandate over Armenia. He doesn’t actually think this might happen, does he?

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The New York Legislature passes a bill for 2.75% beer, which it defines as non-intoxicating, and Gov. Al Smith signs it. The beer can be drunk in restaurants but only with meals.

A Swiss newspaper reports that various Russian nobles and officers say the Czar and his family escaped and are living quietly in Japan.

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Today -100: May 24, 1920: Of non-wars, wiping out unrest, and putschists

Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of British troops in Ireland, says there is not a state of war in Ireland, as he floods the country with soldiers, who he says are just there to support the police, like the Irish people are not doing because of terrorism.

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It turns out it’s: cooperation and harmonization of capital and labor. Gosh, why did no one think of this before?

A bunch of German officers, including former head of the Admiralty Adm. von Trotha, are fired because of their participation in the Kapp Putsch. Shouldn’t that have happened, like, two months ago? 

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Today -100: May 23, 1920: Of dead Carranzas, borders, and mahogany commodes

Mexican President-On-The-Lam Venustiano Carranza is dead. To this day we don’t know whether he was killed or killed himself. Either way, his camp was surrounded and he was done. Obregón, who would have preferred to see Carranza either on trial or in exile, will attempt to blame the general in command of the forces besieging Carranza for not bringing him in alive.

Pres. Wilson accepts the San Remo conference’s request that he arbitrate the Turkey-Armenia border. He was also asked to accept the League of Nations mandate for Armenia, but hasn’t answered one way or the other.

The Anderson Galleries of New York City auction off a bunch of the former kaiser Wilhelm’s shit – chairs, clocks, draperies, cigarette boxes, and so on – seized from his many palaces by his many creditors. The gallery says the goods went for about 50% more than if they’d come from some rando. A mahogany commode that presumably once touched the emperor’s actual pale bottom fetched $1,100. I wonder where it is today.

The governor of Georgia and the mayor of Atlanta invite the NAACP to hold its convention in that city. Is it a trap? It’s probably a trap.

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Today -100: May 22, 1920: Of ending wars, acts of savagery, cabinets, and the world’s enigma

The House of Representatives passes the Knox Resolution declaring the war over, unchanged from the Senate version already passed, in order to get it vetoed in time for the Republican Convention. The R’s have shifted their rationale a bit, saying this is needed to end all those wartime measures, especially the ones giving unusual powers to the executive branch. D’s retort that they could have just repealed those measures if they didn’t also want an election issue.

German Foreign Minister Adolph Koestler tells the Reichstag that Germany will complain to the League of Nations about the alleged acts of “savagery” by black French soldiers in the Ruhr.

In Italy, Francesco Nitti forms a new cabinet, his third in the last year, another attempt at a broad coalition with Catholics and liberals and whatnot. The government is trying to demobilize the army, but officers are refusing to be demobilized. I didn’t know it worked like that.

The Dearborn Independent publishes the first of owner Henry Ford’s series of editorials “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” a loose adaptation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “The Jew is the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that center rule the world, though not until he has undergone an assault by the united nations of mankind.”

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Today -100: May 21, 1920: Of anti-imperialism, hostage-taking, and dabbling in politics

Sir Edward Carson tells Parliament that the disorders in Ireland are being directed from New York by people who aren’t really interested in Ireland but in destroying the British Empire.

Dock workers in Dublin are refusing to unload munitions being sent for the military, and dock workers in London are now refusing to load them.

Hearing that Russia is detaining Americans, the US asks Austria to hold on to communists who fled Hungary after the fall of Béla Kun.

Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore warns women: “You rule the home, the husband and the children, and should not attempt to dabble in politics. If you try to rule over two kingdoms, you will surely lose both of them.”

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Today -100: May 20, 1920: Of Matewan massacres, ignored hoovers, and dear old pals of mine

12 men are killed on the streets of Matewan, West Virginia in a gun battle between coal miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, whose “detectives” arrived to evict strikers them from their company homes and tried to arrest Police Chief Sid Hatfield with a fake warrant. Shooting started, by whom is not clear. 7 detectives are dead, and Mayor Cabell Testerman. For further details, I refer you to John Sayles’s movie Matewan.

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith vetoes several anti-Socialist bills, including ones establishing loyalty tests for teachers, barring socialists from the ballot and from appointive state offices, and creating a secret police bureau to investigate criminal anarchy.

Headline of the Day -100:

Rude.

The first entertainment radio broadcast, on Marconi-owned station XWA (Experimental Wireless Apparatus) in Montreal, plays records (“Dear Old Pal of Mine”) and has live singing by Dorothy Lutton (“Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” and “Merrily Shall I Live” and others. It can barely be heard in Montreal, but reaches the meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in Ottawa. Ottawa broadcasts some ditties back to Montreal.

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Today -100: May 19, 1920: Of senates and coups

The British Parliament discusses Irish Home Rule. The idea now is for the two Irish parliaments to also have senates. Sir Edward Carson would prefer Northern Ireland have no parliament at all but instead continue to be ruled from Westminster. Which would also allow Britain to use Ulster as a “jumping-off place” in case it needs to go to war with “Sinn Féin Ireland.” Carson also suggests that the US butt out.

The London Daily Telegraph is pretty sure that Lenin et al have been displaced by Gen. Aleksei Brusilov after a military coup.

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Today -100: May 18, 1920: Of dry rulings, sending in soldiers, and proxy votes

Headline of the Day -100:

Britain sends another couple of thousand troops to Ireland, which surely just makes the case for independence clearer. Other Irish news: more street fighting in Derry, more police barracks burned down, most tax records seized and destroyed.

170 French deputies will introduce a measure to give votes to every man, woman and child, the latter to be exercised by the father, or by the mother if the father is dead. The deputy responsible for the bill notes that many families do not have male heads thanks to the war, and those families now go unrepresented.

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Today -100: May 17, 1920: Of oil, crossbows, and saints

The director of the Bureau of Mines says at the present rate, the US will run out of oil in 20 years.

Switzerland votes to join the League of Nations. The referendum was fairly close, with the French-speaking cantons voting to join and the German-speaking ones voting against. The NYT correspondent in Altdorf reports that the voting was guarded by soldiers with swords and crossbows, because Switzerland.

Joan of Arc is canonized.

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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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