Today -100: October 16, 1921: Of strikes, governors, passports, and corsets

A big railroad strike is called for the 30th after railroad companies announce an additional 10% wage reduction following a 12% reduction approved by the Railroad Labor Board in July. The strike will include mail trains.

Taking office as governor of the colonial Philippines, Gen. Leonard Wood says “There must be no turning backward in the Christian faith,” which he thanks the Spanish imperialists for imbuing in the Filipinos. Also, he thinks the Philippines should have a common language. Which should be English. 

Senate Republicans aren’t sure they have the votes to ratify the peace treaty with Germany, especially with the late Philander Knox’s seat vacant and increasing opposition led by Woodrow Wilson, so they may postpone the vote until they can pressure Penn. Gov. William Sproul to quickly replace Knox (Sproul denies a rumor that he’ll resign as governor to take the seat himself).

At the Washington conference, the French may propose abolishing passports.

Ad of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 15, 1921: Of non-reapportionment and deeds

The House of Representatives rejects a bill to increase the number of Representatives, as part of reapportionment, to 460. It also rejects a plan for reapportionment that would keep the membership at 435 and another plan, from George Tinkham (R-Mass.), to reduce it to 425 and to base reapportionment on the number of registered voters rather than total population, thus reducing the representation of Southern states that disfranchise black people.

In Texas in January, a woman sold (or at least transferred “ownership” of) her 3-month old baby to another woman. When that woman moved to Florida, she went to the court house to have the deed registered. They’re pretty sure – but not entirely sure – that the whole thing is illegal.

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Today -100: October 14, 1921: Of persecutions, bitter injustices, hard-faced Balkan peasants, and leaks

A New York team wins the World Series.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Testifying before the House committee, Imperial Wizard, to give him his full title, William Simmons calls on God to “forgive those who have persecuted the Klan” and then dramatically collapses. He says the Klan is not anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish or anti-negro or anti-foreign, although all these people are banned from membership (well, “any Jew who can subscribe to the tenets of the Christian religion can get in”). He graciously asserts that if Harding resigned and the people proclaimed Simmons absolute monarch, he would refuse.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth decries the “bitter injustice” of the League of Nations division of Upper Silesia: “As long as there is German history the separation of these German cities in Upper Silesia will be felt as a colossal injustice.” (Plus, one might add, 43 of its 67 coal mines). The cities, Beuthen, Königshütte and Kattowitz, he points out, all voted strongly to join Germany rather than Poland. He thought he had an agreement with Britain on Upper Silesia and only accepted the Allied ultimatum on that basis, and doesn’t see how his government can now survive (which is a shift from the rumor that it would resign).

A large demonstration of the unemployed march on Whitehall and are violently attacked by police, as was the custom.

The Bulgarian government that got Bulgaria into World War I is put on trial.  The special court includes 7 real judges and 12 special judges described as “hard-faced Balkan peasants with only one collar among the lot.”

The Irish delegates to the Ireland conference complain about leaks to the press, according to a, well, you know, leak to the press.

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Today -100: October 13, 1921: A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire

Sen. Philander Knox, former attorney general under McKinley and Roosevelt and secretary of state under Taft, dies of apoplexy, as was the custom.

William Simmons, founder and imperial hood-meister of the modern Klan, defends his organization before a House committee. He says there is no room in the Klan for those who take the law into their own hands and “We have been charged with everything from the wave of high prices to the sweeping march of the boll weevil.”

Detroit bans a planned KKK Thanksgiving Day parade.

The German government threatens to resign if the League of Nations decision on Upper Silesia is, as rumor has it, to divide it between Poland and Germany.

The British and Irish delegations to the Ireland conference both bring lists of breaches of the truce by the other side. In an interview Michael Collins says he’s an optimist; “A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire.”

Margaret Sanger plans to open birth control clinics in Southern states which haven’t gotten around to making them illegal.

Dr. E. Stillman Bailey proselytizes for the beneficial effects of radium. Why, radium miners in Colorado were immune to the Spanish Flu and never get gout. He likes to give radium tablets to his patients, especially old people, and swears by the results. If you’re wondering what Bailey eventually died of: apoplexy. It was the custom.

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Today -100: October 12, 1921: Of lynchings, milk, unsavory organizations, and people with too many children and too little imagination

A lynch mob in Leesburg, Texas burn 19-year-old Wylie McNeeley, a black man accused of assaulting a presumably white 8-year-old girl, at the stake. Hundreds of people watch.

Harding says of the forthcoming disarmament conference that it’s “hard to imagine justifications” for conflict between peoples on opposite sides of the Pacific (i.e., the US and Japan).

The British-Irish talks begin, with little leaking from them. We do know that the British complained that Sinn Féin courts in Dublin are fining milkmen who sell adulterated milk. One can only imagine Michael Collins across the table from Winston Churchill. I count at least two on the Sinn Féin side who will meet violent deaths within a year or so.

There’s a civil war beginning in China, the NYT reports, in a two-paragraph story on the bottom of page 14.

Nothing interesting in the first day of Congressional hearings into the Ku Klux Klan (except a lovely typo in the NYT Index).

Elsewhere, the New York City Board of Aldermen calls the Klan an “unsavory organization.” And someone tries to shoot Elizabeth Tyler, who evidently survived the old morals charges arrest problem to become head of the Woman’s Department of the KKK.

The federal prohibition director says the cost of prohibition enforcement in the last fiscal year was $6,250,095.43, but penalties, taxes etc brought in $2,152,000 plus seized property worth nearly $11 million, and of course bribes.

Highland Park, Michigan, which already fired married women municipal employees, bans the hiring of new unmarried women.

A.B. Burgess, a black Georgian, has 32 children by 3 wives, including 7 sets of twins and 2 sets of triplets. After a while, he just ran out of names, having two Sallies and two Willies (stop it!), so he didn’t bother naming the most recent twins, and they picked their own names when they started school (the article does not enlighten us on those names).

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Today -100: October 11, 1921: Of expensive lawyers, boycotts, and balloons

Atlanta lawyer W.H. Terrell sues the Ku Klux Klan for $100,000 for his services as general council until he quit a year ago. He demands the Klan produce all its minutes, rules, financial records, etc. Terrell is a member of the Atlanta Board of Education. 

To dramatize his proposed boycott of foreign products, Gandhi burns a large pile of imported clothing.

Harry Fox leaps from a burning balloon (ok, just the guide rope was burning; maybe he over-reacted?) over Point Pleasant, West Virginia, although his parachute was also on fire. It functions most but not all of the 1,500 feet down and he lands on some sand with just some broken ribs. He says he’ll continue flying. His father and brother have both died in separate airplane accidents.

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Today -100: October 10, 1921: Of marches, duties, and fatal shaving brushes

Pacifist groups will be banned from organized labor’s Armistice Day celebrations at Madison Square Garden.

Speaking of celebrations, a parade in Cincinnati for the Holy Name Society is marked by no fewer than three marchers dropping dead of heart attacks.

In advance of the Washington Conference on Disarmament, French PM Aristide Briand says “no country more than France has the duty to remain armed so long as her security is not assured.”

The Central American Federation of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is now a thing.

Ways In Which You Could Die in 1921 Which You’re a Lot less Likely to Now: anthrax-infected shaving brushes.

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Today -100: October 9, 1921: Of arms, lunarian foliage, and textbook propriety

Babe Ruth has an infected arm and drops out of the World Series. Anyway, the game is rained out. 15 men with badges who may or may not have been real prohibition agents try to get into the game without paying, and after a long argument are refused, to the delight of others in line. The federal prohibition director says none of his agents were tasked with inspecting the World Series for prohibition violations. This World Series is the first broadcast by radio, on KDKA, Pittsburgh’s news leader.

Harvard Astronomy Prof. William H. Pickering says there is life on the Moon. There are crops growing in craters, he says. And he found them with a 50-year-old crappy telescope; imagine what he could find with a better one. In the past Pickering discovered two of the moons of Saturn, one of which, Phoebe, is actually real.

There are 82 known Saturnian moons now, by the way, many with cool names, some with no names at all, which is sad.

NYPD Patrolman Lovitt saves two black men being attacked by a mob after an attack on a presumably white 12-year-old girl (there’ s no evidence the two men had anything to do with it). The cop has to pull his gun to extricate the men from the mob and get them to the relative safety of a police station, although if any of the mob want to find them again, the NYT helpfully provides their addresses.

The New York City school district creates a committee to check whether history textbooks “contain matter either in derogation or in disparagement of the accomplishments of American heroes, and questioning the sincerity of the aims and ideals of the founders of the Republic, and to those who have guided its destinies.” The chair of the committee says it’s not about whether the statements were true “but whether propriety would be observed if they were included in them.”

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Today -100: October 8, 1921: Of fatties and non-lynchings

Fatty Arbuckle is arrested by the feds for having possession of liquor at That Party.

A lynch mob drives from Fort Worth to Dallas to lynch a black man who stuck up a party, but they give up and go home instead.

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Today -100: October 7, 1921: Of individualism, rewards, charters, and a good deal of Jolson

Headline of the Day -100:  

The New Economic Policy (NEP). Also, “full evening dress is now not uncommon among the opera-goers.”

The German government issues warrants for the leaders of the March 1920 Kapp Putsch, including Wolfgang Kapp. There’s a reward of 50,000 marks, which is the equivalent of some money. I think all eight men fled the country. Still, what took so long?

West Virginia Secretary of State Houston Young refuses to issue a charter to the state Ku Klux Klan. 

I’d almost forgotten about Fiume. A Prof. Riccardo Zanella is elected president of the independent state of Fiume by the Constitutional Assembly. He was a professor of bookkeeping. He is opposed by the Fascists, who want Fiume annexed by Italy.

Alexander Woollcott reviews the premiere of Al Jolson’s new show Bombo. “[T]here is a good deal of Jolson,” he says. Woollcott spoils some of the jokes, to no great loss if you ask me. Maybe it’s the way he told ‘em. Of the songs, he mentions the proffer of “another Mammy song,” but fails to mention the new songs “California, Here I Come,” “April Showers,” and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goo’ Bye!” Woollcott also fails to say anything about the plot, in which Jolson plays a slave of Columbus. In black face, of course.

 

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Today -100: October 6, 1921: Of sepoys and extraditions

Gandhi et al issue a manifesto calling on Indians in the Indian Army or working for the colonial government to quit.

Indiana Gov. Warren McCray refuses to extradite David Robb, a United Mine Workers organizer, to West Virginia, saying he could not get a fair trial there. McCray also points out that Robb was actually deported from West Virginia, so he is not a fugitive from justice and no backsies.

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Today -100: October 5, 1921: Of stunt fliers and any necessary force

Professional stunt flier Madeline Davis, 23, stunts her last fly, attempting to jump from a moving automobile onto a moving aeroplane. She grabs the rope ladder but loses her grip.

San Antonio’s police chief and sheriff say they will stop a planned KKK parade with “any necessary force,” and six district judges call on grand juries to investigate masked bands, you know, not just the KKK but all the other ones (there are no other ones).

The United Mine Workers’ union bans Kluxers from membership.

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Today -100: October 4, 1921: Of regulated households

Juan Huyke is appointed commissioner of education for Puerto Rico, the first actual Puerto Rican in the role under US occupation. English will be taught in schools equally with Spanish.

The Michigan Supreme Court rules that a husband is legally responsible if his wife makes and sells home brew in their home because the “husband is the head of the family and has the right at common law to regulate his household”.

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Today -100: October 3, 1921: Of assassinations, internees, councillors, and crashes

Two more Italian MPs are shot, one (Socialist) assassinated, presumably by Fascists, in Bari, the other (Fascist) when police open fire at a banned Fascist march in Modena. Some cops disobey the orders to shoot.

Sinn Féin would like the British to release the 4,000 interned without charge, please and thank you.

In Paris, Communists celebrate (and by celebrate I mean break a few windows, as was the custom) the election to the Paris Municipal Council of André Marty, who is serving a long sentence for his role, whatever that was, in the Black Sea Fleet mutiny at Sebastopol in 1919.

King Alexander of Yugoslavia, who is in Paris and is supposed to be too ill to return to his homeland, while driving his car on the Champs-Élysées crashes into the car of the Italian ambassador, because only people with titles are allowed to drive on the Champs-Élysées, I assume.

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Today -100: October 2, 1921: Oh, that’s the problem?

A sheriff’s posse and a KKK parade in Lorena, Texas get into a gunfight. The sheriff is shot twice and several others are wounded.

The French Ministry of Justice says duelists will be prosecuted because “the war has cost us too much blood.”

Some rich American wants to find an apartment for the winter in Paris. 9 rooms, 2 baths, price no object. So he hires a plane and drops 100,000 cards over the city, because he’s never heard of a classified ad.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Chicago Police will stop using stool pigeons, the Grand Jury says.

Betting on the World Series is underway. Gimme a sawbuck on New York.

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Today -100: October 1, 1921: Of harsh dictations, bibles in schools, and merry parties

Éamon de Valera accepts Lloyd George’s invitation to talks.

The German Reichstag ratifies the peace treaty with the US. A Communist deputy calls it “the harsh dictation of the New York Stock Exchange.” Only the Communists vote no, but some right-wing deputies leave the chamber without casting a vote.

István Friedrich, former Prime Minister of Hungary in 1919, declares West Hungary, which is supposed to go back to Austria, an independent republic.

Church groups plan a test case to get the Supreme Court to rule on whether the Bible can be excluded from public schools. They’ll focus on Washington State, which has such a ban. The Presbyterian Synod of Washington says the Declaration of Independence is a covenant between God and the US, so children have to study the Bible to understand that covenant, that’s just science.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“It was a merry party, but there was no liquor.”

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Today -100: September 30, 1921: Obnoxious

New York Gov. Nathan Miller accuses Police Commissioner Richard Enright of violating constitutional rights in his enforcement of Prohibition, which he calls an “obnoxious law” being enforced in such a way as to make it more obnoxious.

Lloyd George invites Sinn Féin leaders to a conference on October 11th, “with a view to ascertaining how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire may best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.” He will meet with them as “spokesmen of the people you represent,” which is vague as hell, but hopefully can allow for a meeting without LG having to recognize them as representatives of an Irish Republic and without their having to give up their understanding of themselves as just that.

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Today -100: September 29, 1921: Hit ‘em with a pie, Fatty

Police Judge Sylvain Lazarus (!) rules that Fatty Arbuckle can be released on bail, because the evidence doesn’t support a charge greater than manslaughter. Lazarus says “This is an important case. We are not trying Roscoe Arbuckle alone. We are not trying the screen celebrity who has given joy and pleasure to all the world. Actually, in a large sense, we are trying ourselves. We are trying our present-day morals, our present-day social conditions, our present-day looseness of thought and lack of social balance. ... We need not speak of bacchanalianism, or saturnalianism, or sybaritism, or any of the terms of the ancient days. We are supposed to live and breathe and have our being in a better and more advanced age.” One with thesauruses. He blames the St. Francis Hotel management for not stopping the “orgy.” On his release, Arbuckle is greeted by women shouting “Hurrah for Fatty,” “Good for you, Fatty,” and “Hit ‘em with a pie, Fatty.” Fatty is going home to Los Angeles, presumably in his custom-made $26,000 car which the authorities were talking about seizing if it could be proved he’d had alcohol in it when he drove to San Francisco for the orgy. (Update: he takes the train.)

There’s been a lot of fuss recently about Russia supposedly executing members of its relief committee. Russia denies it.

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Today -100: September 28, 1921: Don’t worry, eventually someone drinks it

Two are killed in fights between Italian Fascists and Socialists near Mola di Bari, where socialist deputy Giuseppe di Vagno was murdered earlier this month.

The lawyer for a black man on trial in Muskogee, Oklahoma for theft of livestock asks prospective jurors whether they’re Klan members. 3 admit membership. The judge says he won’t allow the question in the future.

A federal grand jury of the Chicago PD hears of gangs of cops “confiscating” whisky shipments, then selling them off, then demanding protection money from the people they sold them to, then raiding them anyway, seizing the whisky again, then selling it again....

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Today -100: September 27, 1921: Of eugenics and assassinations

Speakers at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in New York, support birth control. But they say college-educated women should pop out more babies.

Assassination attempt on Polish Pres. Józef Pilsudski. 3 shots fired, Count Grabowski hit in the leg. Pilsudski drops him off at the hospital and proceeds to the theater as planned. No word on what play he was so determined to see.

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Today -100: September 26, 1921: Of assassination attempts, bombs, officer-bootleggers, and duels

In the Hungarian National Assembly, a former army lieutenant takes five shots at former foreign minister of Austria-Hungary Gyula Andrássy and former president of the National Assembly Dr. Rakovsky. Neither is hit. The lieutenant, Ibraham Kover, “gave evidences of insanity,” but the police don’t buy it, claiming he’s part of a widespread conspiracy to kill monarchists trying to restore Emperor Charles.

In other Hungary news, the country tells the Allies that it is unable to get Hungarian insurgents out of Burgenland, the territory assigned to Austria. Austria thinks this is part of the plot to restore the former emperor.

Sinn Féiners and Orangemen throw bombs at each other on the streets of Belfast, as was the custom. There are also looters and snipers.

Greece thinks it’s doing well in its war with the Turkish nationalists, and plans to annex part of Anatolia.

Chicago Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris says half the city’s cops are bootleggers. The feds are investigating the force. Fitzmorris says prohibition enforcement in Chicago is a joke.

France will prosecute two duelists, the Count de Poret and Camille la Farge, as well as their seconds. They started off with pistols in a Paris park, each shooting and missing twice. They then moved on to swords, both taking several wounds over an hour and a half. The cause of the duel is unknown.

Premiering today: Rudolph Valentino in Camille, starring Alla Nazimova.

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Today -100: September 25, 1921: Of kluxers, tainted aliens, and tarzans

Headline of the Day -100:  

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke resigns, taking his aide/girlfriend Mrs Elizabeth Tyler with him. The police records of their 1919 arrest on morals charge seem to have mysteriously disappeared. (Cute “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” ref in that headline, btw).

Headline of the Day -100:  

17-year-old John Weismuller, the future Tarzan, breaks the world 100-yard swimming record.

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Today -100: September 24, 1921: Of women MPs

Margaret Wintringham wins a by-election in Lincolnshire, becoming the third woman ever elected to the British House of Commons, the 2nd to take her seat. And unlike the Countess Markievicz (Irish) and Lady Astor (American), she’s properly British. She is the widow of Thomas Wintringham, the previous MP for the seat. She’s a Liberal and a prohibition activist.

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Today -100: September 23, 1921: Of peace treaties and furtive kluxers

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) plans to lead opposition to Harding’s peace treaty with Germany, as he did against the League of Nations. He’s especially worried that the US will appoint reps to the reparations committee and other Allied commissions established by the Versailles Treaty. He wants at least Senate approval of such reps.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty may summon Ku Klux Klan leaders to Washington for interrogation. He says the US doesn’t need organizations to help enforce the law.

Missouri Gov. Arthur Hyde condemns the Klan as “furtive” and says the Masons are not involved with it.

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Today -100: September 22, 1921: Look out if you do not heed these signs

Diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia resume; a German ambassador arrives in Moscow.

NY Mayor John Hylan issues a proclamation, which he sends to businessmen, merchants, and shopkeepers, accusing “hate-crazed newspaper publishers” of attacking New York (i.e., reporting on violent police attacks on unemployed people) and advertising the city as “a paradise for criminals.” He demands that newspapers publish his proclamation in full without editing it (he puts edit in scare quotes).

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke and Mrs Elizabeth Tyler, the people effectively running the Klan since Imperial Wizard William Simmons disappeared into a bottle, resign after revelations about their arrest in 1919 on morals charges, but Simmons hasn’t yet accepted.

300 Klansmen parade through Shawnee, Oklahoma. They ensure that the local newspaper cover it by kidnapping the editor, as was the custom. The parade’s banners warn joy-riders and adulterers and lawyers, and say “Don’t follow us; it’s not safe,” “We’ll be back; be careful and be a man,” “Look out if you do not heed these signs,” “We have your taw,” “You can’t eat grub your wife made by washing.” No idea what the last two mean. Anyone?

Headline of the Day -100:  

I can think of one.

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Today -100: September 21, 1921: Of commercialized race hatred

Britain accuses Russia of going back on its promise not to conspire against the British in India and Afghanistan. The charges include some minor conspiring but are mostly about propaganda.

The NAACP asks Pres. Harding for an investigation of the KKK, possibly followed by legislation against “commercialized race hatred.” Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty plans to consider maybe possibly doing something about the Klan.

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Today -100: September 20, 1921: Of comptollers, morals charges, and fourth-degree oaths

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is Socialist candidate for NYC comptroller. Her focus would be on schools, she says.

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke and Mrs Elizabeth Tyler deny New York World charges that they were doing something wrong when they were arrested on morals charges in 1919. The two are the publicists who turned the second Klan into a thing. And they are totally fucking.

The Chicago City Council pledges to keep the Klan out of the city. The Atlanta City Council, on the other hand, responds to the revelations about the Klan by calling on the newspapers publishing them also to investigate the “4th degree oath” of “an unpatriotic and un-American secret order,” the Knights of Columbus. The oath is a fiction, made up by the Klan, in which Knights of Columbus members supposedly pledged to make war “openly and secretly” against Protestants.

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Today -100: September 19, 1921: Probably looking for Fatty imprints

Lloyd George telegrams Éamon de Valera, again saying no conference is possible unless the insistence that the Irish delegates would represent a sovereign independent Ireland be retracted.

8,000 people go to look at Virginia Rappe’s body, because what else is there to do on a Sunday?

Boston District Attorney Joseph Pelletier calls on members of the Knights of Columbus, of which he is an official, to report any KKK activity in Boston.

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Today -100: September 18, 1921: We can only recognize ourselves for what we are

In the latest in the never-ending series of telegrams between Éamon de Valera and Lloyd George, LG says if the reps of the Dáil Éireann continue to claim that Ireland is independent, he can’t meet them without it constituting “formal and official recognition” of Irish secession. And then other countries could deal with Ireland as an independent state, and we can’t be having that.

De Valera responds that he was only accepting LG’s earlier invitation to meet without pre-conditions: “We have not asked you to abandon any principle, even informally, but surely you must understand that we can only recognize ourselves for what we are.” Anyway, he points out, you’ve already had meetings with me where I went as the leader of the Irish Republic, so if that involves recognition, you’ve already done it.

This exchange has gotten so circular that I’m not actually sure which of those Sept. 17th telegrams came first.

A mob, “many of them cowboys,” invade the Maverick Theatre in Thermopolis, Wyoming, which was showing a Fatty Arbuckle film, and seize and burn the film.  (Update: evidently this is a false story, possibly a publicity stunt by the theatre.)

Headline of the Day -100:  

“It’d be super cool!” urge experts. “So freaking steampunk!” urge experts. “Just keep buying them until they stop blowing up!” urge experts.

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Today -100: September 17, 1921: Of recalls, definitely opposed positions, and masks

Enough North Dakotans have signed petitions to force a recall vote on Gov. Lynn Frazier (Non-Partisan League) as well as the attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture.

Éamon de Valera telegrams Lloyd George expressing surprise at the latter’s calling off of talks. He says the two sides’ positions being “so definitely opposed” is precisely the reason talks are required.

El Paso bans public gatherings of people wearing masks. Permits are possible for masked balls but probably not for meetings of the KKK, at whom this ordinance is obviously targeted.

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Today -100: September 16, 1921: I regard this hat-smashing as a serious piece of business

Franklin Roosevelt’s polio is admitted.His doctor says he won’t be permanently crippled. FDR is 39.

It’s not just Fatty Arbuckle’s pictures which are barred from being shown, it’s his alleged victim Virginia Rappe’s films as well. Some theatres have been using the publicity to sell tickets, although she was never exactly a major player in any movie.

Éamon de Valera wrote Lloyd George saying Dáil reps would only come to LG’s proposed conference as representatives of a sovereign state. So LG cancels the conference. 

Oh, now I understand the new Sinn Féin stress on “the Consent of the Governed™”: that was what Lloyd George said in 1916 should be the basis for peace after the Great War.

Former Illinois Gov. (and former mayor of Chicago, evidently the only person who’s been both) Edward Dunne (D) forms the National Unity Council to “develop harmony and good feeling between different classes,” or to put it another way, to fight the spread of the KKK.

Louisville bans a planned KKK meeting, and any KKK meetings in the future, and says anyone attending one will be regarded as a “law violator.” They don’t say what law.

The German government issues 10,915,500,000 new marks, which is the equivalent of some money, although it’ll be worth a lot less soon if that’s any consolation.

NY Night Court Magistrate Francis X. McQuade is cracking down on people who grab other people’s straw hats. “I regard this hat-smashing as a serious piece of business,” and he’ll send future hat-smashers to the workhouse. Straw hats are a not-after-Labor-Day thing, but not everyone can afford winter hats.

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Today -100: September 15, 1921: Of ethnic cleansing, lynchings, world courts, applications of some force, and little lords

All the black residents of Montlake, Tennessee are driven out after a black girl shoots a white girl.

Negro Gilman Holmes is lynched in Columbia, Louisiana for supposedly attacking a (male) railroad station agent during a robbery. He’s hanged from a telephone pole in front of the station; his body is shot up, then burned.

29 countries agreed to join a World Court, surpassing the minimum needed to establish it, so the League of Nations elects members of the Court, including an American, John Bassett Moore, professor at Columbia and former assistant secretary of state, despite the US not having joined.

The SF coroner’s jury charges Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle with manslaughter, claiming Virginia Rappe’s peritonitis was caused by “the application of some force.” The jury recommends authorities take steps to prevent similar affairs, “so that San Francisco shall not be made the rendezvous of the debauchee and the gangster.” Dude, the official motto of San Fran is “Welcome To The Rendezvous of the Debauchee and the Gangster.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

I believe we’re officially at the lying-about-the-polio stage.

Premiere of Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart, playing both the title character and his mother.

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Today -100: September 14, 1921: Of primaries, fatties, good horse sense, and foreign legions

Henry Curran wins the Republican primary for New York City mayor, beating out Fiorello La Guardia, who will get the job in ‘33 after another couple of tries.

Elsewhere in NY elections, anti-Tammany Democratic candidate for Assembly in Queens Patrick Dowd is shot in the head after polls close during a fracas between his supporters and those of his opponent Peter Leininger when the Dowdies refuse to pay off on a bet about the election outcome. And Joseph Shalleck, campaign manager for another anti-Tammany D. Assembly candidate, James Hines, is beaten and shot at the polling place near the home of “Boss” Murphy after detecting unsbutle signs of ballot-tampering. The turnout of women, voting in local NY elections for the first time, is high.

Fatty Arbuckle is indicted for manslaughter. Virginia Rappe died of peritonitis but the implication everyone’s tittering over, I imagine, is that he caused her organs to rupture by being, you know, on the chunky side (which probably isn’t what killed her). One witness has disappeared, one has reversed her earlier statement, which leaves star witness Mrs. Delmont, who admits at the inquest having had ten (10) drinks of whiskey before the incident and later she and the detective “drank all the gin and orange juice.” And she says Rappe tore at her own clothes (being in pain from, you know, peritonitis), although I could swear I read that at trial her torn clothes were presented as evidence of rape.

In other Fatty stories today, we are informed that he was a mischievous lad back in Kansas, but not a violent one, and that his birth weight was 16 pounds. The Theatre Owners’ Chamber of Commerce in NYC orders the withdrawal of his films from 600 theaters. And the Los Angeles Athletic Club revokes his membership. 

Adolf Hitler is arrested for starting a fight at a meeting of the Bavarian League in Munich. He will serve one month in jail for assault, and in 1934 will have Otto Ballerstedt, the Bavarian League leader he fought with, murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.

Mrs Julia Sidman is the first woman to serve on a New Jersey grand jury. She dislikes the publicity (she says to reporters), but thinks “this whole matter is merely one of using good horse sense and in no way calls for all the excitement which has been created.” (You never hear about bad horse sense). The prosecutor earlier said that he has an old-fashioned regard for womanhood and doesn’t want them sitting on the grand jury.

Spain recruits 300 men from the US, Canada, Cuba and Mexico for the Spanish Foreign Legion, to fight in Spanish Morocco. Not exactly the Lincoln Brigade, is it?

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Today -100: September 13, 1921: Ignorance and too much money

Details of statements by witnesses to Fatty Arbuckle’s “drinking party” are leaking. He supposedly pulled Virginia Rappe into a room, saying “I’ve waited for you five years, and now I’ve got you.” There were screams, and when Fatty finally emerged, he was wearing pajamas and Virginia’s hat at an angle, showing his “foolish screen smile.” Rappe, moaning, said “Arbuckle did it.” I should say the witness, Bambina Maude Delmont, will turn out to have a record of blackmail and extortion. And she’s being paid, at least her hotel bills, by Rappe’s finacée. She called in a doctor, who, after Rappe’s death, performed a post-mortem without official authority, which is weird, right?

If some of this is open to doubt, we do get the definitive answer to the question: how fat was Fatty? His booking info says he is 5 foot 5 and 3/8 inches tall and 266 pounds. He’s 34.

Movie theaters are withdrawing Fatty Arbuckle movies. And in at least one town, the mayor banned them. It is explained that an actor “with a questionable reputation might be acceptable in a sophisticated drama, but not in a simple, frolicsome comedy that will be watched by thousands of young people and children.” 

Henry Lehrman, Virginia Rappe’s fiancée and a director of several of Arbuckle’s films, says he’ll kill Fatty if he’s released. He says Fatty is “the result of ignorance and too much money” and had to be warned to keep out of the women’s dressing rooms, like a common Trump.

Rep. Isaac Siegel (R-NY) writes to Pres. Harding about the unfair way the new immigration law is being carried out, such as sending back a 10-year-old Polish girl – her father came to the US years ago intending to bring his family over but the war broke out, them he heard they were dead, but he finally located them, then his wife died just before they were to come, so the daughter came alone – because the Polish quota for the month had been reached. Harding responds blaming “dishonest steamship agents.” Oh no, not his mortal enemies the dishonest steamship agents!

The California Supreme Court overturns the alien poll tax, an annual $10 tax on alien male residents between 21 and 60, passed this year to put into effect a November ballot measure. It not only violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection, the court rules, but the treaty between the US and Japan.

Russia declares war on Romania over Bessarabia, which the Allied Supreme Council gave to Romania, with what authority is unclear.

The governments of Poland and Bavaria both resign.

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Today -100: September 12, 1921: Of fatties and kluxers

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (and can I just give my guess that every time the NYT has to give his name that way, an elderly editor with a green eyeshade died inside just a little) is arrested for the murder of Virginia Rappe. The detective captain in charge, Duncan Matheson, keeps saying “without a doubt” about the charge, but refuses to reveal what evidence he has. They’re talking about first-degree murder because it occurred during the commission of a felony. I imagine most readers would have understood that they’re claiming he raped her.

Elizabeth Tyler, one of the two chief organizers of the Ku Klux Klan, is in New York for what she claims is just a shopping trip but also maybe about a libel suit for $1 million they’re supposed to be filing against the New York World for its exposé on the Klan. She accuses the paper of saying that the KKK fosters race prejudice, which she denies while at the same time saying the US is “a white man’s country, so ordained by the will of God” and white people alone should control it and “We stand unreservedly for white supremacy.” So, you know, no race prejudice. Also no anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish feeling, though Klan members are required to owe no allegiance to foreign governments, so Catholics and Jews “automatically bar themselves” from membership, that’s just science.

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Today -100: September 11, 1921: Trinkle down theory

San Francisco police say they will detain (but not charge) Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the death of Virginia Rappe at a party in his hotel room. He’s coming back from LA to help the SFPD with their enquiries. Ms Rappe, 23 if you believe the NYT, 26 if you believe Wikipedia, or 30 if you believe imdb, was an actor most famous, I’m just going to assume, for playing “Lucy Butts” in “His Musical Sneeze.”

As I’ve mentioned, the Virginia Republican Party decided to purge itself of negroes. Its gubernatorial candidate, Col. Henry W. Anderson, defends the party’s lily-white convention, saying it is in accord with the US Constitution because it removes the race question from politics. Not sure if I understand his point. The Lily Black Republicans, as they call themselves, who were excluded from that convention, name their own slate of (black) candidates, none of whom the NYT bothers to name. John Mitchell Jr., newspaper editor, banker, etc, is the gubernatorial candidate, and an actual woman, Maggie Walker, is candidate for superintendent of public instruction. The Democratic nominee for governor is still named, regardless of all sense, Elbert Lee Trinkle, leading to such phrases as “Chairman Flood predicts that Trinkle will carry the State”.

And, indeed, Trinkle will carry the state.

Marshal Joseph Joffre of France delays his official visit to Japan because he needs a new plumed hat and it won’t be ready in time.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics tries to standardize terms: “aircraft” should be used rather than “airship,” which should only be used for lighter-than-air craft; “airplane” should be used in place of “aeroplane,” etc.

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Today -100: September 10, 1921: Of frightful evidence, raids at sea, tunnels, and drinking peacefully

Headline of the Day -100:  

Federal agents seize the drug-smuggling ship King Alexander, shooting 5 Greek sailors and blackjacking 20 more, as was the custom. The feds failed to tell anyone they were going to board the King Alex, because they suspected there were moles in Customs, so they’re fired on by customs guards and a harbor police launch who think the feds are rum-runners. An hour after the raid, Frank Fitzpatrick, one of the raid leaders, commits suicide, possibly for unrelated health reasons.

40 to 50 IRA prisoners escape from the internment camp at Curragh. They dug a tunnel.

Cyril Lincoln Reed, “of a good family in London,” wrote a bad check so he could fly to Paris  to get a drink or two, also paid for by bad checks. When he did it all over again a few days later, he’s arrested. He tells the court, “I had been turned out of every bar in London. After 24 hours I became so thirsty that I simply had to fly to Paris in order to be able to drink peacefully.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

From his... “pneumonia.”

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Today -100: September 9, 1921: Of quick and even quicker “justice,” and the consent of the governed

Headline of the Day -100:  

The day after Harry Latimar, a black man, allegedly commits “a crime” against white 8-year-old Wanda Varney in Williamson, West Virginia, he is indicted, tried, and sentenced to death, the verdict and sentence coming less than an hour after the first witness took the stand.

And two black men are lynched in a cornfield near Aiken, South Carolina.

Some time ago the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) fired the head of the English Department, Robert Kerlin, for having written an open letter to the governor of Arkansas, published in The Nation, about black men unjustly sentenced to death after the Elain massacre of 1919. The NYT says too many in the South “cannot see straight or reason clearly when the race question is thrust at them” and thinks Kerlin’s firing “a bad case of stupid intolerance.”

A federal judge enjoins Pittsburgh from banning the street sale of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George sends Éamon de Valera another letter calling for talks with no preconditions except of course that Ireland must be tied up in Britain’s colonial basement forever. As to Sinn Féin’s call for Consent of the Governed™, he denies that can be used as the basis for an Irish Republic: “the principle of government by consent of the governed™ would undermine the fabric of every democratic State and drive the civilized world back into tribalism.”

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Today -100: September 8, 1921: Disarming

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes objects to newspapers calling the upcoming international meeting a “disarmament” conference, because it only aims to limit arms.

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Today -100: September 7, 1921: If England is issuing an ultimatum, let it be an ultimatum

Harding praises the achievements  of the Republican Congress. “[W]e are working our way out of a welter of waste and prodigal spending at a most impressive rate.”

As the British Cabinet meets, Éamon de Valera issues a statement, declaring, “The British imperial statesmen are trying to sell Ireland second-rate political margarine, and are very angry because we do not accept the butter label they put on and believe all the advertising stuff they have had printed about it. ... If England is issuing an ultimatum, let it be an ultimatum. Brute force, naked and unabashed, has been used against small nations before. Our nation has known it for long.”

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Today -100: September 6, 1921: Of banned black boxers, klans, and hereditary princes

Newark police forbid boxer Jack Johnson speaking, or leading a parade of black people, because a couple of weeks ago he predicted that one day blacks as a race would be able to cope with whites.

The KKK (or someone so signing themself) post a notice in the black quarter near Corsicana, Texas, ordering all black people to pick cotton (they’ve been demanding a pay increase). And many of them do. Intimidation pays!

Speaking of, the New York World begins an important exposé of the Ku Klux Klan today. The NYT won’t mention it.

So there’s a guy at the French seaside resort Crotoy who’s convinced everyone that he’s Omar Ibrahim, the eccentric “Hereditary Prince of Egypt,” by attending the opera in a bathing costume and riding a bicycle into a ballroom. You know, like a hereditary prince does.

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Today -100: September 5, 1921: Of dominions, oil, and fat parties

The Dáil Éireann officially rejects Lloyd George’s offer, calling for negotiations on the basis of the consent of the governed, which is a new catch-phrase. The Dáil says what the British have offered as Dominion status is inferior to that of other Dominions (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand). And it objects to the creation of two “artificial states” in Ireland.

The Mexican government concludes what seem to be successful negotiations with five US oil companies.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle throws a party! Fun!

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Today -100: September 4, 1921: Of miners, cigars, and protocols

400 armed striking miners in West Virginia surrender to federal troops. One of the army’s bomber planes crashes.

Cuba is rushing 20,000 lady cigars to London for fashionable London lady smokers. They’re also taking up pipes, supposedly.

The London Times published last month, and the NYT reprints, evidence from the former’s Constantinople correspondent that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not only fake, but that it’s a rip-off of a very obscure 1864 French-language book published, possibly, in Geneva. I’m unpersuaded by the correspondent’s claim that he heard this from an unnamed expatriate Russian who found the book among some books he bought off an Okhrana officer who had fled to Turkey and he was struck by the similarities to the Protocols, but the book’s title page is missing so it can’t be identified... I mean it is true that “Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu” is a real 1864 book that was the basis for much of the Protocols, with “the Jews” replacing members of Napoleon III’s administration, but the story of how this fact reached the Times is very implausible.

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Today -100: September 3, 1921: Of the unthinkable, airplanes, and dispatches from the Arctic the easy way

More shootings in Belfast. The IRA claims police are shooting up the Catholic districts from armored cars while shouting “To hell with the Pope,” as was the custom.

The NYT editorial page once again unerringly predicts the future:

10 days ago, Nicaragua declared that a state of (non-great) war existed. The NYT seems disappointed that no actual war has broken out (although some rebels invading from Honduras were routed).

Federal airplanes are bombing the West Virginia miners, because of course they are.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Alive and well and dropping bombs in West Virginia.

Someone at the International Psychical Congress announces that explorer Knud Rasmussen promised to take part in research into sending telepathic reports from the Arctic.

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Today -100: September 2, 1921: In which a menace to free institutions is revealed

In 7 different fights on the streets of Pittsburgh, 9 men are arrested for fighting with paper sellers who were (illegally) selling Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent.

I’ve mentioned the Virginia Republican Party’s attempt to gain traction in the state by distancing itself from black people. The new party platform says it’s for their own good that black people should not be associated with just one party: “Political solidarity in either race is a menace to free institutions.” Oh, and they say they will appoint no (0) black people to public office.

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Today -100: September 1, 1921: Maybe it should have had actual apes instead

The D-6, the largest non-rigid dirigible (balloon) owned by the US Navy, burns on its maiden voyage, before it could be sent to the new hangar at Lakehurst, New Jersey, which was built for the ZR-2 dirigible which broke apart last week and will of course be the site of the Hindenburg disaster.

Opening on Broadway: Tarzan of the Apes, starring Ronald Adair and a couple of actual lions. And monkeys, but the apes are just people in ape costumes. It will be a flop, despite the lions.

(Yes, Ronald Adair is also the name of the murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Empty Room).

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Today -100: August 31, 1921: Them strikers ain’t int’rested in reco’nition o’ no coal mine unions no more than what you or I be

Harding issues a proclamation against “insurrectionary” striking miners in Mingo County, West Virginia, ordering them to disperse. This is a threat to send in federal troops.

Tolbert Hatfields, of the fussin’ and feudin’ Hatfields, says the Mingo uprising is more about moonshine than unionism.

More rioting in Belfast, now with added snipers.

Germany bans several far-right newspapers. And a decree bans people not actually in the army from wearing army uniforms, and this means you, Gen. Ludendorff.

Pittsburgh police ban the sale on the streets of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent, arresting two paper sellers.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: August 30, 1921: Our honor has been affronted

Texas Gov. Pat Neff denies that prisoners are hung by their wrists in chains as punishment – any more. A bill is pending to ban that practice and to limit beatings with a chunk of wood known as the “bat.”

King Alfonso of Spain, presenting a flag to the Valencia Regiment, says of Spanish military defeats in Spanish Morocco: “Our honor has been affronted, and Spanish soldiers know how to avenge an offense.” He says how sorry he is not to be able to go with them but, you know, it’s “forbidden.”

German President Friedrich Ebert issues a proclamation banning meetings, demonstrations, publications etc likely to encourage seditious movements. He says Germany’s public morals are disintegrating and “unbridled agitation” is threatening the foundations of the Republic.

Cleveland City Council opposes any branch of the KKK establishing itself in the city.

The Klan has 50 branches in New Jersey, at least according to King Kleagle Dr. Orville Cheatham. Newark Mayor Alexander Archibald, whose name, like Dr. Cheatham’s, is a bit much, says Newark can take care of maintaining law ‘n order without any assistance, taking the Klan’s claim to be a law ‘n order body at face value. Cheatham says the Klan’s principles are to protect pure womanhood, white supremacy, and yes, upholding law ‘n order.

Charlie Chaplin, in NY on his way to London, says women shouldn’t wear short skirts and should wear tailored suits and rolled stockings. He’s okay with bobbed hair. I should say it was reporters who brought up short skirts, not him. He’s surprised how many phone calls he’s getting in NY: “Out West I live a very quiet life. I’m not much interested in people, as people, and I haven’t much social activity. I have just a few personal friends. I hate actors.” He says capital must pay working people more.

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