Today -100: February 23, 1921: Why should a great empire wish to sell any part of itself?

Harding’s “tentative” cabinet picks: Charles Evans Hughes for secretary of state, Harry Daugherty attorney general, former senator John Weeks secretary of war, former congresscritter (and third gunner’s mate during the Spanish-American War) Edwin Denby secretary of the navy, Sen. Albert Fall secretary of interior, banker Andrew Mellon treasury secretary, businessman/philanthropist Herbert Hoover secretary of commerce. Harding will leave under-secretary appointments to the secretaries. Not all of these men have accepted yet – Hoover’s being especially coy – but they will.

German War Minister Otto Gessler says Polish troops are massing on the border as part of a threat by the Entente that if Germany doesn’t agree to its terms on reparations and disarmament, Poland will be allowed to invade Silesia.

Brig. Gen. Frank Crozier, commander of the Royal Irish Constabulary’s Auxiliary Division (the Black and Tans), resigns to protest the reinstatement of 21 auxiliaries he’d fired for looting. There’s some confusion about this: Ireland Secretary Sir Hamar Greenwood tells Parliament that Crozier has it wrong and they were actually sent back to Ireland to be court-martialed. We’ll see.

There’s a coup in Persia.

There’s been talk, from ex-senator Arthur Beveridge and current Sen. James Reed that Britain and France should give the US some of their Caribbean colonies to pay off their war debts. The Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) asks “Why should a great empire wish to sell any part of itself?” Why indeed.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 22, 1921: Everyone’s a critic

The publisher and editor of The Little Review (motto: Making No Compromise with the Public Taste), Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap respectively, are each fined

$50 by a NY court for publishing an “improper novel,” James Joyce’s Ulysses, which the magazine serialized 1918-21. The judge calls it “unintelligible.” 

The Syracuse city council bans all forms of jazz dancing.

Harding names his campaign manager Harry Daugherty to be attorney general. The NYT notes that Daugherty is known as a politician rather than a lawyer and is not qualified for the post: “If a best mind is needed anywhere, it is in the Department of Justice. Instead, Mr. Harding has been content to choose merely a best friend.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Allied conference in London hears from Greek delegates about the Treaty of Sèvres. The Powers are thinking about revising it – it almost accidentally became more punitive towards Turkey than was intended – to give Turkey back some of the territory given to Greece, but Greece would really like to hold on to Smyrna and claims to be prepared to totally kick Atatürk’s butt.

The next vice president and the speaker of the House won’t get that salary increase after all. So they’ll get $12,000 per year instead of $15k. The speaker rejected the raise because other congresscritters weren’t getting one, so that sunk it for Coolidge as well.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 21, 1921: You should never be too busy to read books, and particularly history

In County Cork, near Midleton, British soldiers attack “armed civilians” in a house, killing 13.

Sinclair Lewis says Henry Ford is so stupid about Jews because he hasn’t read history. “That is a good object lesson for you business men in the audience. You should never be too busy to read books, and particularly history.” “Also history blogs,” he added, probably. 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 20, 1921: Free hands are the best kind of hands

Charles Evans Hughes, former NY governor + former Supreme Court justice + failed 1916 candidate for president, accepts Harding’s offer to be secretary of state. Harding says that only Hughes will speak for the State Department, or, as the NYT phrases it, he will have a “free hand.”

Many Mexicans believe that US oil companies are funding rebellion in Tampico and Tuxpan, possibly to provoke a US invasion, occupation and possible annexation of the oil-fields areas.

The US State Dept conducted an actual investigation into German claims that black French colonial troops on the Rhine were raping their women. Gen. Henry Allen’s report says French colonial troops are, as a general rule, “quite orderly and well-behaved.” And some of the German women... less so.

The US Senate votes 62-2 to restrict immigration to 3% of the number of people from each country who were in the US in 1910, if I’m understanding this correctly. How it deals with European countries that didn’t exist in 1910 or are much smaller or larger than before the war is unclear. Canada, Mexico and South America are exempt, and Asiatics are still barred. The decision to reduce the number from the proposed 5% was probably helped by the recent spread of typhus in Italy and Yugoslavia. Also, Bolshevism!

Thomas Pope, the postmaster in Greenville, South Carolina, challenges President-elect Harding to a game of golf to determine if he gets to keep his job. Harding replies that he’s too crap a golfer to make it the basis for appointments, although history suggests he might have done better if he had.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 19, 1921: Of dastardly crimes, the nature and temperament of women, and horsey lèse-majesté

The National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul’s radical women’s suffrage organization, is dissolved, and in its place a new body is formed, called... the National Woman’s Party. Its goal: to fight for the removal of the legal disabilities of women. Soon, this will take the form of 80+ years of advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment. Proposals to work instead for world disarmament fail. 

The grand jury investigating the Wall Street bombing of last September comes to a conclusion: It was “a dastardly crime.”

British troops close off 20 blocks of Dublin with barbed wire and conduct house-to-house searches for IRAers. It will take 3 days, during which time no mail or newspapers will be allowed in. 

The French Senate refuses to remove from the section of Civil Code on marriage “The husband owes protection to his wife. The wife owes obedience to her husband.” The Commission appointed to consider the proposal said it would be contrary to good order, dangerous to family life, and “contrary to nature and the temperament of women.”

France is trying to get Poland and Czechoslovakia to form an alliance to work against not only possible German resurgence but the spread of Bolshevism. France would also like to get Romania to join. Slight problem: the Poles and Czechs do not get along. At all.

Britain’s Prince Henry is kicked in the head by a horse. But he’s a royal so you can’t tell the difference. He later became governor-general of Australia. Henry, not the horse.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 18, 1921: You poor fish

Headline of the Day -100:  

A performance in Vienna of Arthur Schnitzler’s 20-year-old play Reigen (La Ronde) is disrupted by 500 hooligans, mostly students, who beat up theater-goers and turn on the fire hose.

Petrograd residents are reportedly being forced to go to Communist plays, or pay a fine.

The German Foreign Office denies France’s insistence that it has pulled non-white soldiers from the Rhineland.

Mrs. Bridget Rupple of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania is tried as a common scold. She likes to greet her neighbors, “You poor fish.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 17, 1921: These things are done because it is your will that they should be done

A lynch mob in Athens, Georgia burns a black man at the stake.

Arkansas Gov. Thomas McRae vetoes a repeal of the law against cigarettes.

There’s a proposal before the Idaho Legislature to split the state in two. It’s not clear what seething resentment exists between the Northern and Southern Idahoovians. Probably something about the baked potato setting on microwave ovens.

North Dakota can’t find any banks or investment companies to sell its state bonds. I think this is bankers trying to blackmail the ruling party, the Non-Partisan League, into abandoning its policies.

Éamon de Valera writes a letter to all British MPs accusing British troops of waging war on the Irish people “contrary to all the rules of civilised warfare.” He enumerates the war crimes, telling the MPs, “These things are done because it is your will that they should be done. If you willed otherwise they would cease. It is you, not your troops, who are primarily responsible.”

The IRA are destroying bridges and roads in County Cork to slow down military trucks so they can be more easily ambushed.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 16, 1921: Of improving situations, mustard gas, and stunt appendectomies

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament that the situation in Ireland is improving and that he won’t publish the report into the burning of Cork, although he claims 7 Black and Tans have been fired.

Bank robbers blow open the vault of the Farmers and Merchants’ Bank of Utica, Michigan, only to be hit by mustard gas that had been installed 10 days before as a security measure.

Dr. Evan Kane operates on himself, removing his own appendix, to prove the operation can be done under local anesthesia. Or that’s why he says he did it, but two years ago he amputated one of his fingers, so I suspect it’s some sort of fetish thing.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 15, 1921: Of big navies, perfect girls, dingles, and Trobach’s monster

The House of Representatives votes to continue the Navy’s massive ship-building program begun in 1916. Amendments to postpone until after the international disarmament conference Harding says he’ll call are defeated.

How Marriages Were Arranged in 1921:

The British blockade Dingle Peninsula. Which sounds like a sex thing.

Otto Trobach, a chef in Chicago, asks the sheriff for a gland from the corpse of the next man hanged in Cook County, to be transplanted into his body to bring back his youth, which was stolen from him by an accident, he says.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 14, 1921: Of premiers, fires, and rounds

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood remarked that Irish Nationalist MP (i.e., a moderate) Joseph Devlin might become the First Premier of the Ulster Parliament. Devlin replies that it’s All-Ireland or nothing.

There have been fires at numerous factories and businesses in Manchester and throughout Lancashire. IRA? Manchester Chief Constable Sir Robert Peacock (!) thinks so.

Arthur Schnitzler’s 20-year-old play Reigen (La Ronde) is not only offending Nazis in Munich, but also the Minister of Interior in Austria, who orders performances halted. The province of Vienna objects to this interference by the federal government, leading to a heated discussion in Parliament. Socialists see reactionary Catholicism in the ban, Christian Socialists see secularism gone mad in the play.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 13, 1921: And if that’s not how you celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday, I don’t know how you do celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday

Britain keeps privately asking the US to forgive its wartime debt.

Headline of the Day -100:  

As was the custom.

A black man accused of assaulting an old white woman in Ocala, Florida is hanged by a lynch mob, after they have the woman identify him.

300 IRAers attack the police barracks in Drimoleague, County Cork. The military arrive and force the town’s entire male population to repair the damage at gunpoint, because there’s nothing like forced labor to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling towards the Union.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Stanley. His name was Stanley. How hard is that, scientists?

Blondes are out in Paris this season, brunettes are in.

What to Watch: the pre-release of Buried Treasure, with Marion Davies, “The greatest picture drama of reincarnation ever shown” with “a vivid sea battle with pirates”.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 12, 1921: Better than a pail of warm spit

Harding’s presidential pay will be $75,000 a year, the same as Wilson’s (although he’ll have to pay income tax, which Wilson did not). However Congress raises the vice president’s pay from $12,000 to $15,000 for Coolidge. These days, the president gets $400k and the veep $235,000.

The NYPD raid a dance at the Odd Fellows Hall, arresting 600 (!) for indecent dancing or spectating at said dancing. Two cops acquired tickets through some sneaky means to the private event.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 11, 1921: There will be less talk and more thinking afterwards

A large meeting of Irish moderates in Dublin rejects the Irish Home Rule Act.

A large IRA force is moving on the delightfully named County Cork town of Skibbereen,. A preliminary raid is led by someone who claims, “I am Michael Collins, the killed and much-wanted man.”

Edward Brislane, due to be hanged Friday in Chicago, wants it to be public, in Grant Park. He thinks most supporters of capital punishment couldn’t stick it out, but “there will be less talk and more thinking afterwards.”

The US marines who attacked a Nicaraguan newspaper’s offices are arrested by the US military authorities. 

Warren G. Harding, who has already had to abandon one houseboat when he got it mired in the mud, has a fishing trip ruined by a black cat eating all the bait. Seems like enough metaphors for one vacation.

Sen. James Phelan (D-California) explains that his earlier comparison between negroes in the South and Japanese in the West simply meant that both are race problems because they are unassimilable. Also the Japanese breed like rabbits, so California could become “an Oriental colony tributary to an alien government.” 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 10, 1921: Dog bites finger

US Marines raid a newspaper in Nicaragua that said some bad things about marines (we are not informed what those bad things were), and destroy its presses.

NYC Special Assistant District Attorney Charles Whitman (presumably not the former DA and governor of that name)(a later article says it is that Charles Whitman, but I’m not sure) is investigating whether the NYPD is covering up murders. There were 679 murders in 1920 in NY County, for which there were 78 indictments and one (1) conviction for first-degree murder (plus 7 for second-degree and 28, if I’m reading the blurred numbers correctly, for manslaughter). Some of the 679 were suicides. Poor police work led to a lot of murder cases being plead out, one for a conviction for assault. Also, only 9 car thieves were sent to jail. And some cops are filling booze orders for restaurants and saloons.

France says it has no remaining black troops occupying the Rhine, though Germans have been whining about them endlessly. There are some Moroccans, who the NYT carefully explains “are not black men but are Moors” and “As a rule they are very well behaved.” There are also some Malagasy, who are used as officers’ servants because colonialism.

In Munich, the Nationalist Party and the Nationalist Labor Party (which is the NYT’s translation of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Nazi for short) are refusing to comply with the Entente demand for disarmament. The NYT describes the Nationalist Labor Party as consisting “mainly of former officers, students disguised as workmen and unemployed who are hired with money furnished by royalists. They wear large red badges emblazoned with the swastika, which has become the emblem of anti-foreign sentiment”. They recently disrupted a performance of Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen (La Ronde) since “theatre audiences are thought to consist largely of war profiteers and other drones” and they think the play is immoral.

President Harding will have a pet alligator. No word yet on its name. Or gender. I’m thinking Daisy in either case.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 9, 1921: Oh I knew I was forgetting something

The German government sternly tells Bavaria to comply with Allied demands on disarmament or face French occupation.

Learning that British soldiers would be on a train in West Donegal, IRAers roll boulders onto the track around a curve. The train hits it and derails, but no one is hurt.

OK, this time Prince Kropotkin really is dead.

 

There’s a mutiny in the Russian fleet at Kronstadt.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Eventually, after some discussion about whether the death warrant is still valid, the governor will just commute his sentence.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 8, 1921: Of armies and unions

The Senate votes 67-1 to override Wilson’s veto of the joint resolution instructing the War Department to end army recruiting until its size is reduced to 175,000 from its current 280,000. The House voted to override a couple of days ago.

Lenin complains in an article in Pravda entitled “The Communist Party in a Crisis” that unions are endangering the communist state by trying to win material benefit for their members.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 7, 1921: Of extreme eugenics, angoras, and hostages

A committee of the Connecticut Legislature is considering putting hopelessly insane people to death.

The Japanese Diet is considering a bill to remove the ban on women going to political meetings or joining political organizations. A petition in favor of the bill, signed by thousands of women, is presented, saying the measure is necessary to make women better wives and mothers.

Atatürk says he’ll move the capital of Turkey from Constantinople to Angora, as Ankara was called in the West, but there’s no song about that, is there?

Sinn Féin MP William Sears, editor of the Enniscorthy Echo, is used as a hostage, chained to a military truck as it drives through Dublin.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 6, 1921: Of armies, smoking, and bad luck

The House votes 271-16 to override Wilson’s veto of the joint resolution instructing the War Department to end army recruiting until its size is reduced to 175,000 from its current 280,000. The War Dept wanted 500,000.

Kitty O’Shea, widow of Charles Stewart Parnell, dies.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Senate kills a measure to ban smoking in all executive branch offices. There is some discussion first about whether chewing tobacco should be included.

What to Watch: French comedian Max Linder’s Seven Years Bad Luck.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 5, 1921: Of strongholds, the battle of the Dimitrioses, mandates, and disarmament

Poet/playwright/fantasy author Lord Dunsany is court-martialed for possessing shotguns and ammunition, and is fined £25. Dunsany claims to be loyal to the Crown, having fought in the Boer and Great wars, and Dunsany Castle “was built as a stronghold to safeguard the power of the Crown.”

Dimitrios Rallis resigns as Greek prime minister after a fight with his Minister of War Dimitrios Gounaris over which one would go to the London conference, that argument being a proxy for the larger one over whether to go to war with the Turkish Nationalists.

Mary Ellen Smith, a suffragist who won her dead husband’s seat in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly in 1918 (slogan: “Women and Children First”), is given what may be the first appointment of a woman to cabinet office in the world, certainly the first in the British Empire, as minister without portfolio.

The League of Nations finally makes public the terms for the British mandate over Palestine, 2 months after they’re submitted. The British government “view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” while safeguarding the civil and religious rights of everybody. Aaaaannd...

Harding will call an international disarmament conference.  Meanwhile admirals and generals are talking up the importance of battleships, oh and they’d like some aircraft carriers too, please and thank you.

There is unrest in Japanese-occupied Formosa. Taiwanese nationalist Rin Kendo, which sounds like a Star Wars name, says Formosans have come to the conclusion that Japan is attempting to enslave them.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 4, 1921: Who’s a special session? YOU’RE a special session

Pres. Wilson calls a special session of the Senate, at Harding’s request, for inauguration day, to start approving Harding’s nominees.

The IRA claims to have sunk a British submarine two weeks ago, with a loss of 57 hands, using an “electrically controlled projectile.” Actually the K class was a pretty crappy sub, and it probably just sank. It was never recovered.

500 or so IRAers ambush Crown forces near Rosscarberry, County Cork. The latter seem to have gotten the better of it.

Police and army trucks now carry chained hostages.

Attacks on police in Dublin have become very frequent.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 3, 1921: Why does Europe make all this fuss over an outlaw?

The Coolidges will spend his veepship living in a hotel, the same one Vice President Whatsisname currently uses.

Scientific American’s $5,000 Will Someone Please Explain Einstein’s Theory to US? prize is won by one L. Bolton of the British Patent Office.

The Clonfin Ambush: in County Longford, Ireland, the IRA explodes a mine – this is considered for some reason to be more or less the first ever “IED” – under two military trucks crossing a bridge. They ten fire on the trucks, starting a two-hour firefight before the cops surrender. The IRA fighters escape with a shit-ton of weapons and ammo, but only after tending to the British wounded.

The Austrian government is demanding that former Emperor Carl return the crown jewels. He’s refusing.

King Constantine of Greece says there will be no negotiations with the Turkish Nationalists: “I do not recognize Mustapha Kemal [Atatürk] as a person worthy to be dealt with. Why does Europe make all this fuss over an outlaw? Mustapha Kemal is only a big bluff – a big bubble – and we could blow him off the map as we would blow a fly off a table.” SPOILER ALERT: No they can’t. Connie says the Greek army has beaten the Turks every time they’ve fought, which is not the case.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 2, 1921: Of nights at the theatre, pardons, finite universes, and the 20th degree of North Latitude

Woodrow Wilson goes to the theatre for the first time since what the NYT calls his “breakdown,” because evidently we’re just ignoring that everyone knows it was a stroke. What drew him to the theatre? John Drinkwater’s “Abraham Lincoln,” and yes that’s kind of weird.

Hearing that Wilson has refused to pardon him, Eugene Debs says it’s Wilson, not he, who needs a pardon.

Albert Einstein thinks the universe is finite.

The German government says it will reject the Entente’s reparations terms as going beyond the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

Former Louisiana Governor Ruffin Pleasant has a suggestion for the upcoming state Constitutional Convention: deny suffrage rights to anyone coming from south of the 20th degree of North Latitude, an area which “is credited with none of the civilization of the world.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 1, 1921: Of pardons, plots, and rejuvenated women

Woodrow Wilson rejects Attorney Gen. Palmer’s recommendation to pardon Eugene Debs.

Nationalists (fascists?) in Florence, Italy claim to have uncovered, while they were looting a newspaper office before burning it, proof of a Communist plan for a national uprising on Feb. 3rd.

The Communists are alleged, as was the custom, to be planning a general European rising on May Day.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 31, 1921: Of loans, dictatorships, and suicides

The Allies keep adding burdens to Germany which are not covered by the peace treaty. Now it’s a ban on German governments at any level getting foreign loans without permission.

Lenin says dictatorship may be necessary in Russia for 40 years because the peasants are reactionary and won’t give up agricultural products without getting paid.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 30, 1921: Oops

The French Supreme Court rules that 6 soldiers shot for cowardice in 1914 were innocent and orders pensions for their widows and children. At their court-martial, a lieutenant denied that he panicked and gave a retreat order, which he did.

Obit of the Day: Prince Kropotkin, anarchist extraordinaire (although the NYT calls him a nihilist). I’m not sure if this makes him a good anarchist/nihilist, but he’s not actually dead.

A father and his two daughters, unbeknownst to each other, all elope and marry within 24 hours of each other.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 29, 1921: Of kaiserinnen, obedience, and reparations

The former Mrs Kaiser of Germany is dying (although she’s not as close to death as everyone thinks). She will be buried in Germany, but if Wilhelm attends the funeral, the Netherlands says, he won’t be allowed back in.

The Anglicans are revising the Book of Common Prayer for the first time since 1662, but are not removing “obey” from the female version of the marriage vows.

The Allies agree to extract from Germany reparations of 2 to 6 billion gold marks a year for 42 years (probably at 2 billion for 5 years, then 4 billion for 5, then 6), and a 12½ tax on its exports. The last bit, unlike the rest, can’t be simply imposed on Germany, since it wasn’t mentioned in the peace treaty.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 28, 1921: Of reparations, women voters, papal states, and helicopters

French President Alexandre Millerand intervenes in the Interallied talks to overrule his government and reduce the French demand for reparations from Germany to 100 billion gold marks, paid over 42 years with interest bringing the total to 250 billion gold marks, which is the equivalent of some money. Lloyd George had made it clear that he would never agree to France’s earlier maximalist demands.

New governor of New York Nathan Miller, addressing the League of Women Voters’ New York convention, mansplains that the League has no reason to be in existence. He says political parties are good but groups trying to exercise political power are bad and a menace to the institutions of the republic. He complains about the League’s attempt in the last election to defeat Sen. James Wadsworth, who for many years led the charge against women’s suffrage in NY. Miller also objects to their support of various social welfare measures, saying that provision for old age, illness, and unemployment should be left to the thrift and foresight of the individual. “For the most part his speech was received in dead silence, with here and there a burst of derisive laughter”. Carrie Chapman Catt responds with a defense of pressure groups, noting that no great reform (abolition, prohibition, women’s suffrage) came from a political party, and “No political party will ever take up an idea until that idea has grown so strong that unless it takes it up it will lose votes.” (Republican members of the League will issue a reply to the governor).

500 new Klansman are initiated at the Alabama State Fair Grounds, much of which was underwater.

The Allies decide to recognize Estonia and Latvia as independent states, ignoring Woodrow Wilson’s position that they shouldn’t take advantage of Russia’s current weak state to try to dismember it. There’s also a worry that Japan will take advantage of this precedent to annex Siberia.

The Austrian Christian Socialist party wants Austria to become a papal state (the Vatican is not a country at this time).

France buys Raúl Pateras Pescara’s helicopter.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 27, 1921: Of reparations, lynchings, home duties, and castles

France suggests that German reparations should be 200 billion marks gold, which is the equivalent of some money, plus interest, which would double that amount. Lloyd George is sceptical that Germany could pay this.

A lynch mob drives 100 miles in six cars to grab a black man, Henry Lowery, who was being brought in by train from Texas, where he had fled after killing two people while drunk. The mob takes them from deputies in Sardis, Mississippi, where they had arrived early, “made no secret of their intentions and calmly waited at the hotel.” They then drive Lowery back to Nodena, Arkansas, and ask him if he has anything to say. He says he’s hungry, so they give him a “hearty meal” (details not provided), and burn him at the stake, which takes 40 minutes. “Repeatedly he was turned over and more oil poured on the flames to hasten the burning.” Gov. Thomas McRae calls the lynching the most disreputable act ever committed in Arkansas. He wants any cop who didn’t prevent it fired.

Anna Lee Worley (D) is elected to the Tennessee State Senate. The first woman in the state Legislature, Worley is filling the vacancy left by the death earlier this month of her husband, James Parks Worley. He was an anti-suffragist who claimed to represent the women who “were at home tending to their home duties.” In March, she will successfully sponsor a bill to allow women to hold public office. Suck it, dead husband!

Headline of the Day -100:  

Fantasy author, poet and playwright Lord Dunsany is arrested after ammunition is found in Dunsany Castle in a search under martial law, then released when it is found to be obsolete ammunition.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 26, 1921: Some of them may not be married, and it is a terrible thing for them

Socialists and Fascists are killing each other in Modena and elsewhere in Italy. All gun-carry permits are revoked in the provinces of Modena and Bologna.

The Dept of Labor reports that between February 1919 and the end of 1920 it deported 505 “anarchists.”

A divorce case in London is heard, for the first time, by a jury of 6 men and 6 women, but one of the lawyers is upset that women see all the evidence: “Some of them may not be married, and it is a terrible thing for them.” So the document (a letter, I guess) is only shown to the male jurors.

A court martial begins in the requisitioned Dublin City Hall of two men for the murder on “Bloody Sunday” last November of a lieutenant who “for good and sufficient reasons” was living in Dublin under an assumed name.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 25, 1921: Of reparations, dead Lenins, mad mullahs, and universal robots

The Interallied Conference discusses German reparations. “The difference arises from a divergence in the fundamental conception of Germany’s position. England sees Germany in the light of a bankrupt who owes more than he can pay, but who is entitled to be given an opportunity to settle on a basis on which the creditors can agree. France regards Germany as a criminal who should be sentenced to thirty years’ hard labor to repair the damage of his crime.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The graphic descriptions in such stories (front page, above the fold) continue to startle me.

British planes bomb the shit out of the Somali strongholds of the Mad Mullah, which is not going to make him less mad (actually, he died a month ago of influenza).

Russia denies rumors that Lenin is dead. Again.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) premieres in Prague. The US premiere in 1922, with 22-year-old Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien, both in their Broadway debuts, will introduce the word “robot” into the English language.

If you’re going to read Čapek, and you should, you’re better with his short stories or his novel The War with the Newts.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 24, 1921: Of reapportionment, lynchings, and helicopters

States which would lose seats in Congress after reapportionment if membership were kept at 435 are uniting to fight that plan.

A race riot in Warrenton, North Carolina which developed from “a quarrel over a trade involving some apples”, is followed by the lynching of two black men.

Argentinian inventor Raúl Pateras Pescara claims to have invented a helicopter, which is good because that word was coined 60 years ago and it’s just been waiting all that time to be applied to something in the real world. He’s planning to sell it to the French military, if it works. He’s gotten it (literally) off the ground, but is still working on hovering and, you know, flying (it will take him two or three years to make one with a powerful enough engine to do those things).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 23, 1921: As popular as baseball

Snow falls in Hollywood. The end of the world is nigh.

Woodrow Wilson proposes to the League of Nations that the great powers pledge to guarantee Russia from attack, putting to the test Russia’s claim “that they are afraid to demobilize because they fear new attacks.” This idea will gain just about as little traction among the Powers as you’d expect.

New French Prime Minister Aristide Briand’s plan on German reparations is not to set a fixed amount until the German economy has recovered, but in the meantime to demand 3 billion gold marks, which is the equivalent of some money, for each of the next 5 years. And then, presumably, the sky’s the limit, for decades to come.

Ireland Secretary Sir Hamar Greenwood inspects the Black and Tans, and tells them they are the custodians of civilized government in defeating the Sinn Féin “conspiracy.”

The new business manager of the Chicago Opera Association says “We intend to make opera as popular as baseball.” Men will even be allowed wear overalls instead of tuxedos. Hell, it’s Chicago, overalls are probably mandatory.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 22, 1921: Splitters

The left-wing faction of the Italian Socialist Party, failing to get the party to join the Third Internationale, splits and forms a Communist Party.

Poet-Aviator d’Annunzio is gone from Fiume, but the legionaries he left behind attempt a coup.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 21, 1921: Of retaliation, car accidents, franklins, kids and passion

British forces blow up more houses in Cork in retaliation for sniping at police.

Maj. Gen. Strickland, in charge of troops in Ireland, complains that women are hiding guns in their dresses. He wants “vigilance committees” formed to snitch on the IRA. And he opposes indiscriminate retaliation but supports official retaliation, presumably like that in the previous item, but prefers that it be called “punishment.”

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica will sign a compact Monday to merge their nations. Nicaragua is staying out, and the plan will go nowhere.

The car of King Albert of Belgium, in which the king was a passenger, runs over and kills a 5-year-old girl and injures her 7-year-old brother. The king is said to have been quite distressed.

Franklin Bache Huntington, an architect and also the great-great-great grandson of Benjamin Franklin, will be given a tour of New York dressed as his ancestor, who expressed a desire to see what the US would look like in a 100 years. I don’t think that’s what he had in mind.

What to Watch: premiering at Carnegie Hall in a charity screening is The Kid, the sentimental Charlie Chaplin feature film (his first) that shows how, with the right homeless adoptive father, a child can grow up to become Uncle Fester. Also on the bill, Pola Negri in Ernst Lubitsch’s Passion, which is an odd double bill.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 20, 1921: Of daily stars, reapportionment, and independence in any form whatever

Harding will escape the pressures over his Cabinet appointments by going on a 12-day cruise. And he’ll announce the whole Cabinet at the same time, rather than naming Charles Evans Hughes secretary of state early as he’d planned. He says it will be a Republican Cabinet. He resigns as president of the Harding Publishing Company. The Marion Daily Star will just have to get along without him.

The House of Representatives decides not to increase its size to 483 members for reapportionment after all. Where that plan (and districts of 218,979 people) would not have reduced the size any state’s delegation, keeping membership at 435 (242,267 people each) would reduce the delegation of 11 states and increase that of 8 states. Rep. George Tinkham (R-Mass.) proposes to cut representation for the Southern states as called for in a never-used clause of the 14th Amendment because of their suppression of black voting rights This is ruled non-germane although it is totally fucking germane.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Says Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippines Senate.

Speaking of independence in any form whatever, the Philippines Territorial Legislature drops a bill to require men to wear trousers.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 19, 1921: Of roots, needful repose, constitutional kings, and prosecutors

Republican senators are pressuring Harding not to name Charles Evans Hughes secretary of state, threatening not to work with him. They’d prefer Elihu Root, mostly because they like saying his name out loud over and over – try it, it’s fun – but to be honest they don’t much like him either.

Poet-Aviator-Looooooser Gabriele d’Annunzio leaves Fiume, anticlimactically, in a simple automobile. He is going to Switzerland for “desired solitude and needful repose”. Italy’s blockade of Fiume has been lifted.

Charles, the former emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is willing to accept a demotion to constitutional king of Hungary, although he seems to be conditioning that on his being (re-)coronated between June and September, which is crowning season, I guess.

Cook County (Illinois) State’s Attorney Robert Crowe says in future all women tried in the county will be prosecuted by women deputy prosecutors.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 18, 1921: Of crown princes, trademark infringements, chefs, and black runners

Congress votes a resolution to reduce the Army to 175,000 (yes, it was supposed to be 150,000 last week) and asks Secretary of War Newton Baker to stop recruiting until it gets down to that level.

Supposedly the Netherlands asks former kaiser Wilhelm and all his family to leave the country, since the crown prince, the Don Jr. of the Hohenzollerns, has been violating the terms of asylum by plotting a coup in Germany. (This will be denied by the Dutch government tomorrow).

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard William Simmons offers a $100 reward for anyone using the KKK name “in an unlawful manner or in connection with any purpose or movement not sanctioned by law.”

Sing Sing Prison chef Jim Blanche, himself a prisoner, although one with only 3 weeks left in his sentence, quits as death row chef because the inmates just kept complaining (and not tipping)(are they really expected to tip, or was this a joke?), in part because their food always arrives cold from the distant kitchen.

Senate Republicans decide to refuse to convene in any executive session called by Wilson so they don’t have to confirm any nominations he makes. There are thousands pending (I think mostly post office jobs).

Winston Churchill is moved from his post as war minister to colonial secretary. Oddly, he’ll still be Air Minister. I’m not sure why he’s being demoted.

The Harvard varsity track team cancels its planned trip through the South after the University of Virginia and Annapolis cancel meets because the Harvard team has two negroes.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 17, 1921: Of cabinets, anti-Semitism, Dadaist hoots, and Tibbles the Great

France: Peret couldn’t form a cabinet, so Aristide Briand will. This will be Briand’s 7th time as prime minister (but not the last), because the Third Republic was ridiculous that way.

A protest against anti-Semitic propaganda is signed by, among others, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams, Charles Beard, Clarence Darrow, George Creel (who knows something about bullshit propaganda), Robert Frost, and Charles Dana Gibson. No Jews were involved, by design. Harding refused to sign, because it would be a bad precedent and he’d be inundated with memorials, but he says anti-Semitism is narrow, intolerant and un-American.

Arty Headline of the Day -100:  

P. T. Selbit (the stage name of Percy Thomas Tibbles – Selbit is sort of Tibbles spelled backwards) becomes the first magician to saw a woman in half (in public at least), at the Finsbury Park Empire in London. The woman is called Betty Barker, if you can believe it. Christabel Pankhurst turned down the job.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 16, 1921: Quitter

Mrs Sadie Harrington of Danville, Illinois gives up her hunger strike after 48 days of failing to coerce her husband into joining her church. Except she was probably faking the fast.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 15, 1921: Of armies, karpovs, hammer & scalpel, missing liquor, and the propeller

The Senate votes to reduce the Army to 150,000, ignoring the pleas of the secretary of war and “Black Jack” Pershing to keep it at at least 200,000. The 34-28 vote cut across party lines.

Gosh, it really was a guy named Karpov who died, not Lenin.

French President Alexandre Millerand chooses Raoul Peret, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, as prime minister. If he can form a cabinet, that is. It’s already going badly. Peret wanted Raymond Poincaré as minister of finance, but Poincaré would only take the post if he had a free hand against Germany on indemnities.

Hungarian dictator Adm. Horthy pardons 4 members of the government he overthrew who had been sentenced to hanging, after a polite reminder from Lenin that Russia still holds Hungarian prisoners with very cuttable throats.

Euphemistic Headline of the Day -100:  

An abortion, they’re talking about an abortion. I never know when I see euphemisms like this what percentage of readers knew what wasn’t being said.

Some of the liquor seized by dry agents in Chicago and stored in a government warehouse is missing. And by some, I mean 400,000 gallons.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Filippo Marinetti has some ideas about dance. The dancer of the Aviator will have gauze wings “which she will keep in a perpetual state of palpitation.” I bet she will, I bet she will. And a propeller on her chest... I don’t think devotees of the fox trot have anything to worry about.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 14, 1921: The people of Philadelphia need not be afraid to go to bed tomorrow night

A French court orders the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) dissolved because of its failed strike last May to force the government to nationalize the railroads, that is, because it struck for political rather than economic reasons, or, as the judge put it, “a phantasmagoric of revolutionary ideals more or less deceiving and more or less in opposition to the fundamental laws which regulate life and society”.

The NYPD mobilizes, placing guards around churches, public buildings, Grand Central, the homes of prominent men like Rockefeller, etc. Seems to be related to a radical plot to raze Philadelphia...

...Which the Philly police superintendent denies ever existed. “There won’t be any bomb outrages,” he says. “The people of Philadelphia need not be afraid to go to bed tomorrow night.” There was a planned parade of the unemployed at midnight, but it’s been called off.

Russia announces the death of M. Karpov of the Supreme Economic Council. Since no one’s heard of him and Karpov was one of Lenin’s old noms de guerre, obviously it’s actually Lenin who died. Again.

The US census shows that more Americans live in urban areas (generously defined as places with 2,500 or more people) than rural areas for the first time.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 13, 1921: Of kluxers, prohibition, and reminders of monarchical days

The NYPD have been searching for signs of the Ku Klux Klan in the city for two weeks, but have found none.

The government of Georges Leygues in France falls after less than four months, by a humiliating 463-125 vote in the National Assembly, which thinks he’s not hard enough on the Germans in the ongoing negotiations over indemnities. Leygues was essentially ousted by President Alexandre Millerand, who thinks that the president of the Third Republic should have more power, and the prime minister less. He’s pushing for a tame puppet PM, Charles Dumont. 

New NY Gov. Nathan Miller wants the state and local governments to start enforcing Prohibition.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The minister of interior says monocles are an “affectation and a reminder of the monarchical days.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 12, 1921: Of deportations, surrenders, and class antagonism

The State Dept asks the Labor Dept to deport Cork Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan, presumably before he has a chance to testify to the Committee of 100.

The Austrian government announces that it gives up, it doesn’t have the resources to continue, and on the 15th will turn over power to the Reparations Commission, whether it wants it or not.

NYC Mayor John Hylan writes the police commissioner, asking him to keep the Ku Klux Klan out of the city: “there is no room in this city for any group which runs counter to law and order and tends to create class antagonism.” The Klan has recently announced plans to expand into the northeast.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.