Today -100: November 3, 1921: Of glowworms, plebiscites, and Asian exclusion

Former Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles is on his way out of Hungary, prisoner on the British gunboat Glowworm, which will take him down the Danube to the Black Sea and then... er, the Allies are still working that out.

The British Cabinet reportedly has sent a letter to Northern Irish PM Sir James Craig asking him to allow a plebiscite in the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh over whether they’d like to join the South.

The British Columbia Legislature passes a resolution calling for a complete ban on Asian immigration.

Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow is published sometime this month. Oh well, everyone’s first novel can’t be great.

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

Today -100: November 2, 1921: Insolence?

Lloyd George, who has had to cancel his trip to the Washington Conference to deal with Ireland, thinks the Irish conference could be saved if the Northern Ireland administration graciously gives up Catholic-majority counties Tyrone and Fermanagh. Like that’s a thing that could happen.

Italy and Russia sign a trade agreement.

The Senate creates a special committee to investigate allegations made by Sen. Thomas Watson (D-Georgia) yesterday that lots of US soldiers, white ones he hastens to clarify, were executed by the Army during the Great War without court-martial and that officers often shot enlisted men for “insolence.” James Wadsworth (R-NY) challenges Watson to prove his claims – what we’ve got so far is that Watson has a photo of a gallows which he claims was taken in France and people have told him at least 21 soldiers were hanged on (from?) it in a single day – but Watson refuses to do so before the Military Affairs Committee, thus the special committee. During this back and forth, Watson adds new claims to those he made yesterday: officers “made courtesans of too many of the nurses,” soldiers had no shoes, wounded soldiers were left to die in ditches, etc. Secretary of War John Weeks says the War Department is only “aware” of 10 American soldiers hanged in France (6 for rape, 1 for murder & intent to commit rape, 3 for murder and rape).

Headline of the Day -100:  

This is another protest against the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, according to a note left at the scene. Also, it was probably a grenade rather than a bomb and the consul, I guess, nudged it with his foot and walked on before it went off, so this wasn’t the action-movie sequence the headline suggests.

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

Today -100: November 1, 1921: That’s how you lost America

The British Parliament gives a vote of confidence in Lloyd George’s Irish policy, by a vote of 439-43. The vote of censure was proposed by Unionist “die hards.” Rupert Gwynne  (C-Eastbourne), seconding, declaimed “Our empire was built on considering justice and right, not on considering the opinion of other people,” to which T.P. O’Connor interjected, “That’s how you lost America.” Of course the vote is about a conference (currently between sessions) whose doings are mostly unknown to the members of Parliament, you know, the people about to vote about those doings. Lloyd George says closed-door conferences are the only ones in which you can do business. He says yes, he’s negotiating with killers and, worse, people who are not loyal to the king, but that’s who the Irish people elected. He says the issue in this vote is whether Britain should drop the negotiations, crush the rebellion, and impose terms. But it is “a question of cost.” Winning a guerilla war is tough, he says, reminding the House of the Boer War.

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

Today -100: October 31, 1921: Of bailiffs and bribes

One thing former emperor/king Charles again refuses to abdicate. They’re sending the archbishop who crowned him to ask him again. It also seems he failed to pay for that private plane that took him from Switzerland to Hungary. The bailiffs have shown up.

Prohibition investigator Howard Kiroack rejects the offer of a $25,000 bribe to drop an investigation of a big booze guy in New York. Kiroack doesn’t go to the meet and arrest the briber, because there’s never been a conviction for bribery of dry agents, he says, so why bother.

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

Today -100: October 30, 1921: Of recalls, snow insurance, and Jack the Clipper

The people of North Dakota vote to recall Gov. Lynn Frazier as well as the state attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture and labor. The new governor will be independent Ragnvald Nestos. This is the first recall of a governor in the US (with, I have to say, not much interest from the NYT).

Yugoslavs have been wondering for more than two months if their new king Alexander would ever show up in Yugoslavia, but he’s finally left the lights of Paris. The rumor is spreading, possibly from Alex’s people, that he wasn’t really laid up all this time with appendicitis but with wounds from an assassination attempt in June. Not true.

D.W. Griffith, filming “The Two Orphans,” or “Orphans of the Storm” as it will be called on release, takes out a $25,000 insurance policy against there not being sufficient snowfall while he’s filming. I smell a publicity stunt.

Marjorie Haws of Westwood, New Jersey, 17, sets off a panic by claiming that a man knocked her unconscious and cut her hair. In fact, according to an investigation by the district attorney, her story (“pure bunk”) was concocted to cover up her getting her hair bobbed against her parents’ wishes. The young women of Westwood may now feel safe.

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

Today -100: October 29, 1921: Of abdications and bunk

The Allies tell Hungary that unless Charles abdicates, they won’t oppose the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) invading. But Charles doesn’t wanna. They keep politely asking him, but haven’t turned up the pressure by, say, erecting a guillotine outside the monastery they’ve got him stashed in, and there’s no provision in Hungarian law for deposing a king.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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

Today -100: October 28, 1921: Of strikes, censures, fatal germs, ethnic cleansings, and duels

The railroad strike is off. The unions blame the successful propaganda of the roads convincing the American public that the strike would have been against the government (the Railroad Labor Board) instead of the railroad companies.

The House of Representatives votes 203-113 to expel Thomas Blanton (D-Texas) for inserting naughty words in the Congressional Record, where they might be read by children – CHILDREN!  That vote is shy of the 2/3 needed. They then censure him, 293-0. After the censure is read to him, Blanton runs out of the chamber, faints in the corridor, and makes his way to his office weeping.

Sen. Pat Harrison (D-Miss.) worries that Harding’s speech yesterday encouraging, as he sees it, negroes to seek political equality “is a blow to the white civilization of this country that will take years to combat.” It would allow the black man to become president or hold a cabinet position. (I just had to look this up: the first black man to hold a cabinet position was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Robert Weaver in 1966, and the first black man to become president was someone called Barack Hussein Obama – that can’t be right, can it?). And Sen. Thomas Watson (D-Georgia) complains that Harding “should go down in the South and plant there fatal germs in the minds of the black race.” Other racist senators chimed in as well, but I’m sick of typing out their words.

A day after cops kill two black men in Enid, Oklahoma, a parade of autos carrying hooded Klansmen politely suggests that all black people leave the town.

Ettore Ciccotti, wrongly identified in the NYT as a communist editor, loses a sword duel with Benito Mussolini, or really the duel is called after more than an hour because Ciccotti is too poorly to continue.

The German government grudgingly accepts the division of Upper Silesia. Poland already has.

Hungarian PM Count István Bethlen says Charles must abdicate. He calls the attempt to seize the throne a “putsch” and says the Chuckster cannot be trusted.

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

Today -100: October 27, 1921: All true negroes are against social equality

In Birmingham, Alabama, Pres. Harding tells a “great audience of whites and colored people” that blacks are entitled to full economic and political rights, but not to social equality, dear god no not social equality, because there will never be racial amalgamation in the US due to “a fundamental, eternal and inescapable difference.” “The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man.” He says the black man should be permitted to vote when he is fit to vote and the white man deprived of his vote when he is unfit, whatever that means, but the line got applause from the blacks in the audience and silence from the whites. He praises Lothrop Stoddard’s book The Rising Tide of Color, or to give it its full title, which Harding does not, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. He says the key is education, but he doesn’t want people, black or white, educated “into something they are not fitted to be,” which seems to mean training black people to be doctors or lawyers rather than manual laborers. The new immigration limits will soon “force us back upon our older population to find people to do the simpler, physically harder manual tasks,” so the South should treat black men better to prevent them being drawn North and West.

Also, Harding says, all white Southerners shouldn’t vote in a bloc for Democrats and all blacks shouldn’t vote in a bloc for Republicans. The latter should be easier after this godawful speech. And the Virginia Republican candidate for governor Henry Anderson (selected by a lily-white convention) saying that since whites own everything, they will continue to run the government without black assistance.

Marcus Garvey sends Harding a telegram congratulating him on the speech, saying “All true negroes are against social equality, believing that all races should develop on their own social lines.”

Feds claim there’s a radical plot for a nationwide bombing spree in the 3 days before Halloween in retaliation for Sacco & Vanzetti’s conviction or to prevent a death sentence or something.

Joseph Wirth’s new cabinet is approved by the Reichstag. Where his last was called the Cabinet of Fulfilment, this one is the Cabinet of a Predicament. Not sure who assigns these names.

US soldiers occupying the Rhine will soon be removed, and they’re not happy about it. The drop in value of the mark means they’ve been living like kings, plus the, you know, 4¢ beer.

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

Today -100: October 26, 1921: Of failed coups, strikes, business man’s cabinets, bats, and dirty, dirty words

Former emperor/king Charles accepts the Hungarian government’s terms of surrender, renouncing the throne for himself and his son (Update: No, he hasn’t). They’re stashing him in an abbey until the Allies decide what to do with him – Switzerland says he can’t come back and his entourage have to leave the country. There are stories that he tried to commit suicide, only to be dissuaded by former empress/queen Zita, which is the sort of thing the super-dramatic Hapsburgs would do but is also the sort of rumor that gets spread about them. I don’t think it’s true.

The Railroad Labor Board asks the railroads to postpone their request for a second double-digit wage reduction, in the interests of averting a strike. The railroads say no. Conflicts between various unions make the strike actually look increasingly less likely, but various governors are preparing to use troops to keep the trains moving, and 700 Harvard students volunteer to man the roads as scabs (Columbia will refuse to let its students do the same, or at least will penalize them for missed classes).

Joseph Wirth, who resigned as German chancellor Saturday, is chosen to be chancellor again and form a “business man’s” cabinet.

“Bat” Masterson dies. The last of the Olde West gunfighters, sheriff of Dodge City, etc., but more recently a sports writer and editor, he dies at his desk at the Morning Telegraph in NYC at 67.

The House of Representatives is outraged at something Thomas Blanton (D-Texas) slipped into the Congressional Record, a purported conversation between a union and a non-union printer for the Record – Blanton hates hates hates unions – and they’re considering expelling him altogether. They don’t like him anyway because he keeps demanding roll call votes and calling other congresscritters liars. They vote 313-1 to expunge whatever the offending matter was. The NYT certainly won’t tell us what it was, but we are assured it is so filthy it could not legally be sent through the mails.  And here’s some of it, exactly as it was printed: “G__d D___n your black heart, you ought to have it torn out of you, you u____ s_____ of a b_____. You and the Public Printer has no sense. You k_____ his a____ and he is a d_____d fool for letting you do it.” (I can’t figure out what the U-word is).

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

Today -100: October 25, 1921: Of beer, königputsches, pardons, and lynchings

Since the Senate failed to pass a bill banning beer, the IRS is forced to draw up  rules for medicinal beer (technically, the prescribing of beer has been legal but without these regulations it couldn’t be done). No more than 2½ gallons of beer, or 2 quarts of wine can be prescribed at one time. Doctors are not permitted to prescribe booze for themselves. (Only 9 states permit prescribing beer, though: California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin).

The Hungarian authorities arrest former emperor Charles and Mrs. former emperor Zita 40 miles from Budapest. The details are somewhat unclear, thanks to Hungarian censorship. It sounds like a couple of hundred of the soldiers who defected to Charles were killed in clashes and more of the army stayed loyal to the government than the Carlists expected (they’d anticipated marching triumphantly into Budapest unopposed, their path strewn with flowers). So the army was able to surround them, forcing a surrender and some ignominious fleeing. The Allies demand that Charles be deposed as king (the government’s position has been that he is actually king but that circumstances prevent him ruling at present), which they didn’t demand even after Charles’ last coup attempt last Spring.

To celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III pardons, among others, Fascists who attacked Socialists (and vice versa, but we know who the aggressors mostly were) and legionaries who supported Fiume’s independence against Italy.

A black man is seized by a lynch mob at the railroad station in Fairfax, South Carolina, where a sheriff who had arrested him for murdering a white farmer was trying to get him to Columbia “for safekeeping.” The mob shoots him and burns the body, possibly post-mortem, possibly not.

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

Today -100: October 24, 1921: Inevitable and final catastrophes are the worst kind of catastrophe

The forces supporting former emperor Charles’s coup attempt in Hungary send government forces fleeing in their first encounter. The Horthy government reassures the Allies that the monarchy will not be restored – at this time – and that Charles will be forced to leave the country. It declares martial law and calls on the people to “restrain the royalists and plotters who are plunging Hungary into inevitable and final catastrophe.” The NYT is full of unverified rumors: the Horthy government has fallen; Charles is already in Budapest; Czechoslovakia is about to invade; Yugoslavia is about to invade; Romania is about to invade...

Paris police & troops again prevent Communists from protesting the Sacco & Vanzetti convictions at the US Embassy.

The Workers’ League, a radical-communist group running candidates in the NYC elections, complains about their meetings being broken up by cops and Socialists, accusing the latter of resorting to “capitalistic violence.”

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

Today -100: October 23, 1921: Of kingly coups, assassinations, and resignations

Former Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles is back in Hungary, arriving in disputed West Hungary by plane from his Swiss exile (reportedly his first ever ride in an aeroplane), in his second attempt this year to become King of All the Hungaries. He’s gathering supportive troops.

There’s a lot of tut-tutting in England about de Valera’s letter to the pope. I’m beginning to wonder if Lloyd George would actually prefer the discussions with Sinn Féin to fail so he can hold a general election on the subject of rejecting Irish independence and keep his rickety coalition together a little longer.

50 Irish political prisoners in Cork go on hunger strike.

Bulgarian Minister of War Alexander Dimitrov is assassinated, along with his chauffeur and a couple of others.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth and his cabinet resign, precipitated by Upper Silesia and the dramatic fall of the mark.

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

Today -100: October 22, 1921: Of strikes, grenades, and lawbreakers

The Railroad Labor Board orders unions not to strike until after a conference it’s calling and then after any other delay it can think of.

Someone throws a grenade during a Paris meeting called by the Communists to protest the prospective execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. No dead, 20+ injured. Cops on horses prevent the meeting’s audience marching on the American Embassy.

A mob seizes 2 black “boys” from jail in Pilot Point, Texas and flogs them. A notice to the local paper signed “K.K.K.” says “Yes, we did it. This should be a warning to all loafers and lawbreakers.” Possibly they don’t understand that people who kidnap and assault other people are themselves lawbreakers.

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

Today -100: October 21, 1921: Of excess public functionaries, churlishness, lynch laws, and what’s the moon fucking doing now?

Portuguese Prime Minister António Granjo and former president António Machado Santos are assassinated (along with others) during the coup. One item on the program of the coup regime, along with reducing the deficit and suchlike, is “deal with the problem of the excess of public functionaries.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

De Valera is sure His Holiness won’t be mislead by the “ambiguities” of King George’s recent missive to the Vatican into believing that the Irish people owe allegiance to the king. The Times of London says the letter is “unmannerly to the point of churlishness,” which is a very Times reproach.

Cambridge University’s Senate again refuses to allow women limited membership in the university, as male undergrads outside chant “We won’t have women.” They celebrate their victory according to the customs of asshole Oxbridge undergrads with an attack on women-only Newnham College, ramming its gates (not a metaphor).

The House Judiciary Committee favorably reports out an anti-lynching bill, with penalties of 5 years to life for any participant in a lethal lynch mob, and 5 years or a fine for officials whose neglect of duty allows a lynching to occur. Also, the county in which a lynching took place would be liable to pay $10,000 to the families of lynch victims.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik premieres.

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

Today -100: October 20, 1921: Of coups, perfume bombs, and lynch mobs

Military coup in Portugal.

Germany threaten an economic boycott of the parts of Upper Silesia granted to Poland.

A bomb (actually a grenade) is sent to US Ambassador to France Myron Herrick, in the guise of a package from “a well-known perfumery house,” but it only injures his English valet, who luxuriates in the very English-valet name Blanchard. Blanchard recognized the sound from his wartime service and hurls it into the bathroom. The police won’t let the ambassador into the crime scene to get his evening clothes, so the bomb inconveniences him by forcing him to go out to play bridge in the same clothes he’s been wearing all day. The French police suspect the Communists, who have been sending letters to Herrick about Sacco and Vanzetti. 

Police thwart a lynch mob in Vineland, NJ, getting confessed alliterative negro child-slayer Louis Lively to safety, which is nice of them considering he shot a cop who tried to capture him.

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

Today -100: October 19, 1921: Peace, peace, and another peace, ain’t it grand

The Senate ratifies the peace treaty with Germany, 66-20. The treaty with Austria gets the same vote, that with Hungary is ratified by 66 to 17. Borah (R-Idaho) denounces the treaties as a secret plot to force the US into the League of Nations, somehow, eventually.

The German mark continues to drop dramatically in value. The Berlin Bourse will close every day this week except Thursday.

Former king of Bavaria Ludwig III dies. Contrary to the NYT obit, his wife did not die the same day he abdicated (nor did he properly abdicate).

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

Today -100: October 18, 1921: It is not anti anything but wrong

In his last day of testimony to the House, Imperial Wizard William Simmons accuses the New York World of planning to have one of its employees tarred & feathered and blame it on the Klan. He again says the KKK isn’t anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, or anti-negro; “It is not anti anything but wrong.” The House committee seems to have decided not to proceed with its investigation, leaving it up to the Justice Department.

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

Today -100: October 17, 1921: Boys and their toys

Headline of the Day -100:  

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

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:  

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.”

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

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.

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

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.

 

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

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.

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

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.

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

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”.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.”

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

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.

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

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.

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

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....

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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