Today -100: August 6, 1922: Of hibernians, Fascists, einsteins, and crittendens

The Ancient Order of Hibernians declares war on the Ku Klux Klan. 

Violence has slowed down in some parts of Italy, but the Fascists order a general mobilization of their forces. The Facta Cabinet meets this threat by deciding to issue a politely worded appeal to the country. Facta, giving off a strong Biden-talking-about-Republicans vibe, says he trusts the sense of responsibility of the leaders (!), the sense of fraternity among the masses (!) and the goodness of the Italian people (!) to prevent a recurrence.  An anonymous Socialist deputy tells a newspaper that the Fascists are planning to march on Rome. No spoilers, anonymous Socialist deputy!

Death threats drive Albert Einstein out of Germany. Since they come from Organization C, the group that assassinated German Foreign Minister Rathenau, he’s right to take them seriously. One assumes their problem with Dr. Einstein is that he’s Jewish.

Crittenden Clark is nominated by the Missouri Republican Party to be a Justice of the Peace. He would be (and indeed will be) the first elected black judge in Missouri.

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Today -100: August 5, 1922: Evil shepherds are the worst kind

Fascists seize Milan’s Municipal Building. Gabriele d’Annunzio addresses the crowd from its balcony, because the dude loves him a balcony. He calls for unity and brotherhood: “Every workman, every peasant and every sailor led astray by evil shepherds must be convinced of this.” Because nothing says unity and brotherhood like accusing everyone who thinks differently from you of being led astray by evil shepherds.

Lots of street fighting and other violence in Genoa, Milan, and all over Italy really. Can’t tell how many dead - a few dozen? This isn’t a Fascist uprising or anything, it’s just everyday life in Italy now. The NYT’s coverage of Italy is at best beset by both-sidesism, at worst outright pro-Fascist: “Police and Fascisti are keeping the disorderly elements well in hand.” Beating up parliamentary deputies, burning anarchist clubs and chambers of labor, you know, keeping the disorderly elements well in hand.

In Texas, the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK join together to support US senatorial candidate Earle Mayfield against impeached former governor James Ferguson in the second Democratic primaries (although the Drys don’t all seem entirely happy about who they’re in bed with). Mayfield refuses to say answer questions about whether he’s a Klan member and will continue to refuse.

US Marines are sent into Teapot Dome naval oil reserve to oust a Mutual Oil Company drilling crew. The White House says the operation was done “sweetly and without conflict.”

Blood and Sand, the bullfight movie starring Rudolph Valentino and Lila Lee, premieres.

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Today -100: August 4, 1922: Ask not for whom the Bell doesn’t toll

Germany, whose currency is still in free fall, has been resisting French demands for repayment of old debts to French citizens, so France, as was the custom, is threatening not only to occupy the Rhineland, but to remove it from Germany altogether and set up a separate country, under Allied financial control. 

Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral will be marked by a one-minute silence. That is, all telephone service in the US and Canada will be suspended.

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The Irish Civil War reaches the inevitable kinky phase.

Oh dear, I wrote that before seeing the sub-hed:

Evidently, “landing forces in Dingle Bay” is the Irish euphemism for, um, striking irregulars in the rear.

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Today -100: August 3, 1922: Ask not for whom the Bell tolls

Indiana Gov. Warren McCray declares martial law over the coal miners’ strike and calls for “volunteer miners.” Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover approves plans for the federal government to take over the distribution of coal.

Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, 75, dies. Among other things, he played with big box-kites, taught Helen Keller, and was prevented by Pres. Garfield’s idiot doctors from possibly saving his life.

And the phone thing.

Rep. Lemuel Padgett of Tennessee dies, which I only mention to point out that you don’t see the name Lemuel nearly as often these days.

The Italian Fascists are threatening to move 14,000 squadristi into Rome with “solid arguments” against the general strike which the Communists called in protest of previous Fascist violence. Someone shoots at the mayor’s car. Companies whose workers are among the strikers are politely requested by the Fascists to fire them and replace them with... Fascists. 

Mayor Jack Walton of Oklahoma City takes the Democratic nomination for governor on an anti-KKK platform.

Since the start of Prohibition, 22 federal dry agents have been killed.

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Today -100: August 2, 1922: Just the factas

Harding offered a plan to solve the railroad strike, but the railway execs reject it out of hand. They’ve been especially interested in using the strike to take away seniority from strikers. They’re also not thrilled by Harding’s demand that they follow any and all decisions of the Railroad Labor Board without question (or lawsuit).

Britain sends a note to Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Romania, Portugal, and Greece saying that Britain would like to cancel Allied countries’ debts to Britain but can’t because the US is demanding payment of British debts to it, but Britain will reduce the amount it’s demanding in proportion to US debt forgiveness. The Balfour Note says it would prefer a general cancellation of debts, including German reparations.

Luigi Facta does the impossible and forms another Italian government. It’s a mix of the same centrist parties as the last Cabinet. No Socialists or Fascists.

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Today -100: August 1, 1922: Or our revolvers will proclaim their doom

In the prosecution of publisher Thomas Seltzer by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and two other books, the defense calls Carl Van Doren, Columbia U professor and literary editor of The Nation (and uncle of the Quiz Show guy); Gilbert Seldes, editor of The Dial; the editor of the New York Medical Journal, and others to testify to the non-obscene nature of the books. Prosecutor James Wilson complains that these witnesses are “no authorities on morality or immorality” and says obscenity can only be determined by a cross-section of people unable to weasel out of jury duty.

Recently deposed Italian PM Luigi Facta is now trying to form a new government after everyone else has had a go. The Socialists have called off their threatened general strike because they are afraid of Fascist violence, with good fucking reason. Mussolini says: “Either the Socialists must cease attempting to break the peace of Italy” – the WHAT now? – “or our revolvers will proclaim their doom.” Il Popolo d’Italia, the Fascist newspapers, issues an ultimatum to both the strikers and the state itself, the Fascists threatening to stop the strike itself if it doesn’t stop, or the state stop it, within 48 hours. After that, “Fascism will claim full freedom of action and will replace the State, which will once again have shown its powerlessness.”

Greece does indeed proclaim a protectorate in Smyrna. It will be called Occidental Asia Minor. Greece claims the announcement was received with much enthusiasm by everyone in the region, regardless of race or religion, but especially Muslims. Greece actually thinks everything’s going swimmingly, and is lobbying the Allies to be allowed to occupy Constantinople. But if you’re looking for a map showing “Occidental Asia Minor,” it’s going to have to be printed before the end of the month.

The Irish Free State captures Tipperary.

Connecticut Gov. Everett Lake says there is no “serious or semi-serious” evidence of KKK activity in his state, beyond “a comic opera midnight initiation”.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Ouch.

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Today -100: July 31, 1922: Of excommunications, Asia minors, and klandidates

Cardinal Michael Logue, the octogenarian primate of Ireland, threatens to put the town of Dundalk under excommunication for being all violent and shit.

Trotsky says Lenin’s health has improved and he’s at work again.

Vittorio Orlando gives up trying to form a government for Italy after the Socialists threaten a general strike if he includes the Nationalists, Conservatives or Fascists. Mussolini says a center-left government wouldn’t represent the will of the majority of Italians; he wants a new election.

Greece, having been told by the Allies that it won’t be allowed to occupy Constantinople, now says that areas it occupies in Asia Minor, Smyrna and environs won’t be given back to Turkey but will be turned into an autonomous state, or protectorate or something. Which is very much against the Allies’ idea of what peace should look like.

With the Oklahoma primaries coming soon, the Klan distributes model Democratic tickets to every Protestant church in Oklahoma City. The NYT only tells us their candidate for governor, but he will lose lose lose.

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Today -100: July 30, 1922: Of cockeys, unconvincing parades, and women candidates

The Italian Socialists may form the next Cabinet, everyone else having failed.

In Macon, Georgia, Deputy Sheriff Walter Byrd is shot by a black man named “Cockey” Glover, and all hell breaks loose, with lots of black people being shot at. Glover is still at large (but will be lynched).

Sarcastic Headline of the Day -100:  

Izetta Brown, former actress and widow of Democratic congresscritter William Gray Brown Jr, is running for the US Senate in West Virginia, the first such woman candidate in the South.

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Today -100: July 29, 1922: Of betrayed war ministers, hungry hungry intellectuals, lynchings in hope, assassination plans, and helicoplanes

The movie “How Kitchener Was Betrayed,” which portrays the sinking of War Secretary Earl Kitchener in 1916 as being the result of the nefarious actions of a German spy, female of course, rather than by his ship simply hitting a mine, is held up by US customs officials and will ultimately be banned at Britain’s request.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Fascists occupying Ravenna have taken over the federated labor unions’ building, burned a co-op and several Socialist and Republican clubs. But one Fascist gets shot in his car, and suddenly the Fasc are claiming to be the victims.

A quarrel between a black street-paver and his white boss in Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton, leads to the former being lynched. The fight was over a drinking cup – possibly a whites-only drinking cup? unclear.

The French government claims that German monarchists (“Organization C,” presumably) are planning an assassination attempt on French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré. Unclear if this is based on information passed to them by the German government. 

Anna Tynan’s claim for compensation for blood poisoning in her Brooklyn job as a hat-maker is rejected because her employer refuses to tell the Workmen’s Compensation Commission what chemicals it uses. Hat-making is notoriously dangerous.

A “helicoplane” which can supposedly rise vertically and hover is tested in Britain. It travels 5 yards and rises one (1) foot into the air (which is as high as its controls can be operated from the outside, because who would dare ride inside the thing).

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Today -100: July 28, 1922: Of crashes, jazz, pleasing and serving white people, and prison escapes

Two US army reserve aviators are arraigned for violating NYC’s minimum 2,000-feet limit for flying machines. They were actually flying their military plane at 0 feet at the time they crashed in Far Rockaway, but they were pretty low even before that. If they question the ability of cops to determine if they were flying at 2,000 feet, evidence will be introduced that people could see their faces.

Headline of the Day -100:  

James Vardaman, the former governor and US senator from Mississippi, says Woodrow Wilson only opposes his run for senator because the last time he was senator, “I performed my duties... with the intention of pleasing and serving the white people of Mississippi and not to please or flatter the occupants of the White House.”

The IRA blow a hole in the wall of Dundalk Gaol in County Louth, and 105 prisoners, I think just IRAers, escape. Half are recaptured by evening.

Italian Fascists are pouring into Ravenna to fight Socialists & Communists. Several dead. The Fascists give Socialist, Communist & Republican leaders (all of them, or just in Ravenna?) 24 hours to leave the country.

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Today -100: July 27, 1922: Of shipwrecks and Italian governments (but I repeat myself)

A British company will try to salvage gold from the wreck of the Lusitania. An American company that wanted to do the same asked the US government to protect its plans, since the ship was sunk in international waters, but the government says no.

While the German federal government has yet to use its brand new Republic Defense Act, Bavaria has used its version (which the German Cabinet calls “illegal and unconstitutional”) to ban two anti-Semitic newspapers. I guess this is in aid of the claim that Bavaria’s rejection of the federal act is about some sort of state’s rights principle rather than an attempt to protect monarchists and far-right terrorists.

In Italy, political leaders (Vittorio Orlando, Ivanoe Bonomi) are either refusing or failing to form a government. Outgoing premier Luigi Facta suggests the king get Catholic Party leader Filippo Meda, who brought down Facta’s coalition, to do it.

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Today -100: July 26, 1922: Of putting the people to work, defying Berlin, and fish civil wars

Henry Ford has a cunning plan to end civil strife in Mexico by opening motor assembly factories and “putting the people to work.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

Bavaria has passed its own version of the central government’s Republic Defense Act and will reject any enforcement inside Bavaria of the federal law by the courts and police set up by that law. But it’s their justification that’s most startling: the Weimar constitution allows states to promulgate extraordinary measures if there’s danger coming. In this case, Bavaria is saying that that danger would be the furious reaction of Bavarians to implementation of a federal law to protect the republic from terrorists.

Former kaiser Wilhelm is suing the author Emil Ludwig in a Berlin court to prevent the publication or performance of his play Bismarck’s Dismissal, not because it’s libelous, but on the principle that there should be no portrayal of his ex-highness during his lifetime. Willy’s real complaint is that Ludwig makes Bismarck look better than him (his lawyer is named Dr. Frankfurter, by the way).  (Willy will win the case).

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 25, 1922: Of independence, republic defense, and rum-running

The Philippines now has three political parties, the latest being the Collectivist Party (Partido Nacionalista-Colectivista) of Manuel Quezon, president of the Senate and future president of the country. All 3 parties want independence.

The German state of Bavaria is resisting implementation within its borders of the federal Republic Defense Act (Republikschutzgesetz) which was just passed in response to the assassination of Walther Rathenau and is aimed at terrorist groups. The Bavarian governing coalition breaks up over this stance, and the left is threatening a general strike. The ability of the central government to get the Bavarian military to enforce the law is questionable.

The US asks Britain to help suppress rum-running from its Caribbean colonies. Britain has no treaty obligation to do so, and I’m not sure any non-US law is being broken.

And isn’t “rum-running” a rather delightful phrase? Say it out loud: rum-running rum-running rum-running.

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Today -100: July 24, 1922: Of klandidates and hearses

The big winners in the Texas Democratic Party primary (votes not all counted yet): the Ku Klux Klan and the candidates it supports. Among the latter: Earle Mayfield, who is well ahead of former impeached governor James Ferguson and will indeed be the next US senator; incumbent Gov. Pat Neff; and many down-ballot races.

After some act(s) of violence, Britain is already threatening to take back control of Egypt.

A hearse transporting a corpse from Long Island to Manhattan is stopped five separate times by prohibition agents sure it was carrying booze.

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Today -100: July 23, 1922: Of flatheads, wool battles, masks, and radio

Headline of the Day -100:  

What the hell is going on in the Senate?

KKK “Acting Wizard” E.Y. Clarke orders klansmen to refrain from wearing masks, except in their lodge rooms. This is in response to Gov. Thomas Hardwick of Georgia’s threat to ban masks.

The German Reichstag passes laws allowing women into the legal profession and exempting women employees of the federal government from disciplinary measures because of unwed motherhood.

In May, NYC metropolitan area radio stations agreed to divide up daily broadcasting hours between them. The popular (and high-wattage) WJZ, Newark refused to go along, and the other stations are demanding it be forced off the air. This wouldn’t be an issue if the Commerce Dept didn’t restrict radio stations to 360-meter waves.

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Today -100: July 22, 1922: Of aerial traffic cops, arsenic, and limericks

The NYPD’s aviation dept will start sending up planes to pull over private planes violating the new minimum flying height of 2,000 feet, “using force if necessary.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

They say it’s so they can poison boll weevils cheaply. A likely story.

The Irish Free State captures Limerick & Waterford from the rebels.

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Today -100: July 21, 1922: To any reaction we will answer with insurrection

Two men are executed in Sing Sing. One of the official witnesses is a blind man who wants to “sense the feeling” of an execution.

In the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini says of the prospective new Cabinet, “Soon the Fascisti will have to decide whether to continue their struggle in a legal or insurrectionary form.” He says no government will be able to govern Italy “should machine guns against the Fascisti figure in its program. We have numerous disciplined well-organized forces. We will react with extreme violence against any attempt to oppress us.” “To any reaction we will answer with insurrection.”

The NYT thinks the next Italian government may not have the same problem with violence: “Communists and Fascisti fight hard enough, but their energies are usually exhausted after a few days and they go home till the next inspiration moves them.” So much New York Timesiosity in that combination of ethnic stereotype and both-sidesism.

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Today -100: July 20, 1922: Of domestic peace and shylocks

Italian PM Luigi Facta loses a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies when the Catholic party turns against him. Evidently he’s failed to secure domestic peace. Mostly because he hasn’t tried.

Russian delegate to the Hague Conference Maxim Litvinov tells an AP reporter between acts of a gala performance put on for the conference of “Shylock,” which... yeah, that Russia won’t attend any more conferences.

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Today -100: July 19, 1922: We die for our ideals

Two of the 3 assassins of German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau (the other is in custody) are cornered by police in the tower of a ruined castle – I’m telling you, silent films are really documentaries – after being spotted by two clerks on a walking holiday. They shoot themselves, yelling “We die for our ideals!”

They also shout “Long live Ehrhardt,” a leader of the Kapp Putsch. Although himself on the run, Hermann Ehrhardt takes the time to deny any involvement in the assassination by Organization C, which he explains has been dissolved, and which only existed to combat Bolshevism, international Socialism, and – of course – the Jews.

A black man is lynched at Lake Jennie Jewel, Florida.

Things have more or less calmed down in Cremona, Italy, as the Fascists who invaded the town have taken their rampages on the road. It’s unclear if Luigi Facta’s government will survive the current political turmoil. In his newspaper, Benito Mussolini complains that Socialists use the Chamber of Deputies to spread “the most infamous propaganda, aiming to rouse passions and keep up hatred.” And if there’s one thing Mussolini hates, it’s rousing passions and keeping up hatred.

Russia officially denies that Lenin was poisoned on a train a couple of weeks ago and his body thrown into the Don River, and that he is now being impersonated etc etc.

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Today -100: July 18, 1922: I therefore invite you to return to your mine properties and resume operation

The coal strike in West Virginia leads, as was the custom, to a battle that left the sheriff of Brooke County and some others dead.

Pres. Harding meets coal company owners at the White House and explains to them that coal is jolly important to the country and “I therefore invite you to return to your mine properties and resume operation.” Who knew it could be so simple? He doesn’t seem to ask them not to cut miners’ pay. Probably slipped his mind.

The British Parliament debates how honors, peerages etc are awarded, which is that Lloyd George sells them, and pretty openly too. The MP introducing a motion for a joint committee to investigate is named Godfrey Loocker-Lampson, which is a name to conjure with (Update: dammit, that’s a NYT typo, he’s actually called Godfrey Locker-Lampson, which is about a third as funny).

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Today -100: July 17, 1922: Of dealers in air

Lenin is supposedly slowly resuming his leadership tasks. Or they’re lying. One or the other.

Pravda says the Soviet delegation to the Hague Conference arrived with concrete proposals, but the allies are “merely dealers in air.”

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Today -100: July 16, 1922: Of overbearing attitudes, Edison Bucks, and ukelele riots

Italian Fascist bands occupy several towns, including Viterbo, Cremona, and Alatri, complaining of the Communists’ “overbearing attitude” in those places. And if there’s one thing followers of Mussolini hate, it’s an overbearing attitude.

Thomas Edison suggests an alternative form of money based on products held in a government warehouse, or something. Because “tech guy endorses a new type of currency” always works out so well.

Headline of the Day -100:  

I feel like this story is missing a few steps. A Jeremiah Goldringer is seen by railroad cops in the Penn. Railroad Yards in Chicago, carrying the ukelele. Naturally they chase him, and send him to the loony bin for examination.

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Today -100: July 15, 1922: My voice is too feeble to be heard, so I used the gun

Another day etc.: At the Bastille Day military review in Paris, Gustave Bouvet – “a pale, emaciated youth of the type so common among militant anarchists” – takes a couple of shots at President Alexandre Millerand’s carriage. Well, the carriage he thought was carrying President Alexandre Millerand. It was actually the police prefect’s carriage, but the assassin missed him too. One bystander’s arm was slightly burned. Bouvet, who is subdued by the crowd, first admits trying to kill Millerand, then says he wasn’t really trying to kill anyone, just to “make a demonstration that would attract attention to the condition of the proletariat.” “My voice is too feeble to be heard, so I used the gun.” He’ll be sentenced to 5 years in prison plus 10 years’ banishment, but will only serve 25 months, released partially paralyzed. He will die in 1984.

Armed men on horseback invade Radin/Radun in Poland (now Belarus), round up the Jews, flog and rob them. It’s a famously Jewish town, at least for the next 20 years; now it has no Jews.

The Hague Conference ends (give or take a few more recriminations) with a failure of the Western powers and Russia to come to any agreement. Russia refuses to restore nationalized foreign-owned property and everyone else refuses to offer credits to Russia.

H.G. Wells will accept an invitation to run for Parliament as a Labour candidate for the University of London seat (voted for by graduates of the university).

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Today -100: July 14, 1922: Of crowns and bowler hats

No one wants to be king of Albania. The crown’s been offered to a Bonaparte, to an Italian duke, and to a Bulgarian prince. Now they’re thinking about finding some rich American.

Making front-page news, King George wears a bowler hat to the races rather than the traditional top hat. The 1920s have fully arrived.

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Today -100: July 13, 1922: Of reparations, dropping gas, and seltzer

Germany, facing a financial crisis, as was the custom, asks for a halt to cash reparations payments through 1924.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Same.

Actually, the US Army will no longer produce poison gas. Well, except for “research” and for developing defenses against poison gas.

The negroes of Harlem, increasingly annoyed about being excluded from Republican Party decision-making in the district, say they will run a black candidate against sitting Republican US Rep. Martin Ansorge, who has actually been working quite hard on the doomed anti-lynching legislation and who took a lot of shit for nominating a black man to Annapolis. They haven’t chosen their black challenger yet, maybe William Ferris, editor of Negro World and author of Typical Negro Traits.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly not one of those times where silent comedies are revealed as documentaries, with a court case degenerating into a seltzer fight. Rather, publisher Thomas Seltzer is being sued by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for putting out D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, Arthur Schnitzler’s Casanova’s Homecoming, and A Young Girl’s Diary, anonymously published by Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, an Austrian Freudian psychoanalyst who performed some sort of psychoanalytic experiments on her nephew, who murdered her in 1924.

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Today -100: July 12, 1922: Of railroad strikes

Pres. Harding issues a Proclamation demanding that railway workers accept the reduced wages decreed for them by the Railroad Labor Board, and he “directs” everyone to refrain from interfering with interstate transportation and the carrying of mail.

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Today -100: July 11, 1922: We have no room for invisible government in this State

Alfred E. Smith’s name will be put before the NY Democratic Convention as candidate for governor despite his increasingly non-credible protestations that he just wants to be left alone to do whatever it is he does with trucks.

Nelson Rockefeller, son of John F. Rockefeller Jr., spent his 14th birthday in the hospital after shooting himself in the foot with an air rifle a few days before. And if that doesn’t qualify him to be Gerald Ford’s vice president, I don’t know what does.

Gov. Thomas Hardwick of Georgia says if members of the Ku Klux Klan don’t unmask he will sponsor legislation to make mask-wearing in public illegal. “We have no room for invisible government in this State,” he says.

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Today -100: July 10, 1922: The Ku Klux Klan is going to make this a white country

Communist Party circulars call on railwaymen to strike, ignoring injunctions and the, you know, US Army.

At a speech before the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey says “The Ku Klux Klan is going to make this a white country,” he says, so negroes should go back to, you know, Africa.

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Today -100: July 9, 1922: Of assassinations and asparagus

German authorities are confident that the attempted assassination of editor Maximilian Harden was ordered by the Deutschvölkische Partei, which is big among Bavarian monarchists and in whose newspaper, “extinction of Jews, distinguished Republicans and members of the Entente commissions is preached with impartiality.” Anti-Semitic publisher Albert Grenz has admitted acting as go-between to hire the two assassins.

The Harding Admin has been pushing the idea of allowing members of the Cabinet to sit in Congress as non-voting members.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 8, 1922: Of indices, ectoplasm, immigrants, and breaches of promises

The Vatican puts all of Anatole France’s works on the Index.

Experiments at the Sorbonne, conducted with three actual Sorbonne professors and a medium Eva (they may mean spirit guide), fail to detect ectoplasm during seances.

The start of the immigrant-quota year on July 1st saw a race of ships from Europe, as last year. The annual Greek quota has already been filled. Indeed, of the 165 arriving on the Acropolis, only 60 will be admitted. This is a monumentally stupid system.

Conservatives do well in the elections for the Dutch upper house, the first in which women can vote. 7 women are elected (no, I don’t know of how many who ran, or how many seats there are, and don’t feel like looking it up). The paper says the majority of women didn’t vote the same way as their husbands – how do they know that? is there no secret ballot?

Cathal Brugha (aka Charles Burgess), the Irish minister for defence from 1919 until January 1922, who commanded rebel forces in O’Connell Street, is killed whilst failing to surrender.

Mary Sterner wins $250 in a breach of promise suit against actor John Pauls. 6 years after they met, he said he’d marry her in Vienna. She sailed, he didn’t, and when she came back she found that he’d married someone else. Which led me to wonder when breach of promise suits stopped being a thing in law. Evidently they’re still a thing in half the states and do occasionally wind up in court (I think mostly to recover costs of weddings that didn’t happen).

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Today -100: July 7, 1922: Of horse bridges, metropolitans, and naughty newsreels

The Irish Free State calls on young men to join the army, which has up until now consisted almost entirely of IRA men.

From now on, the Brooklyn Bridge will be reserved for the exclusive use of horse-drawn traffic and the Manhattan Bridge for motor-drawn traffic. The Brooklyn Bridge will be horse-only until 1950. And get a bike lane in 2021.

Russia sentences 11 people, including the Metropolitan of Petrograd and various bishops and archbishops, to death for interfering with the seizure of church treasures. 

The NY Supreme Court’s appellate division rules that the State Motion Picture Commission can censor newsreels. Evidently Pathé showed a girl/woman in a bathing suit in Atlantic City.

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Today -100: July 6, 1922: Of flags, extraditions, and overly exciting sports

A. Bruce Bielaski, the former head of the Dept of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, who escaped kidnappers in Mexico after 3 days, is ordered arrested. Newspapers have been claiming he connived at his own kidnapping to discredit the Obregón government. 

The last rebel stronghold in Dublin surrenders. The Free State is now in charge of what remains of Dublin. Let the executions begin! 

No one knows where Éamon de Valera is.

Awkward NYT Juxtaposition of the Day -100:  

In Germany, tensions are high over the recent assassinations. In Saxony, a bunch of republican workers demand Count Gneisenau remove the imperial flag from his chateau. The graf’s lackeys respond with fatal rifle and machine gun fire. The workers then raid a sharpshooters’ association and return to the battle, with more deaths on both sides. The next day a bunch of Communist miners arrive, heavily armed, and get that damned flag down. There are a bunch of other violent incidents scattered throughout Germany, but this was the most entertaining. The Wirth government is working on a bill to increase powers to Defend the Republic, but will need Communist votes in the Reichstag.

Gov. Harry Davis (R) of Ohio refuses to extradite a black man to Georgia to face murder charges, saying he’d be lynched.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 5, 1922: Of fancied senses of personal liberty and popcorn time at the Sorbonne

The Irish Free State forces are bombarding rebel-occupied hotels on O’Connell Street in Dublin. And they’re getting 3 planes from England for use tomorrow to bomb Dublin if Éamon de Valera refuses to surrender.

Polish authorities prohibit an anti-Semitic lecture in Vilna (Vilnius), resulting in a riot in which a cop is killed.

Pres. Harding gives a speech at Marion, Ohio for July 4th. He mentions Prohibition, which he almost never does, saying it’s the will of America, so it must be “sustained by the Government and public opinion” against a minority denied “a fancied sense of personal liberty.” He also talks about the “right to work,” by which he means the government will help corporations which hire strikebreakers.

In Paris, surgeon Jean Louis Faure films an operation he performs, the removal of a fibroma from a stomach, and shows it in a class at the Sorbonne. Which reminds me of an obscure fact I happen to know: the first autopsy shown on British tv was performed by Jonathan Miller of Beyond the Fringe.

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Today -100: July 4, 1922: Outlaw strikes are the coolest kind of strikes

11 railroad companies centered in New York say strikers will be fired, and re-employed only with loss of seniority, while the new strikebreakers will be retained. This after the Railroad Labor Road declares the strike an “outlaw strike.”

The NYT correspondent in Dublin reports that the Free State forces have nearly won, that many of the republicans are boys or “mere roughs,” that the Army is restraining itself in a “clean, humane fashion” and.... yeah, the story was passed by the army censor, although one could be forgiven for thinking it was actually written by the army censor.

I missed a phrase used by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George at the Hague Conference: he warned against “hungry Russia armed by angry Germany.”

Another day, another assassination, this time a failed attempt to kill Maximilian Harden, editor of Die Zunkuft. Two men stab him on the street. One is captured; he’s carrying a membership card in the Association of National-Minded Soldiers, a reactionary anti-Semitic group (Harden is Jewish).

Forcibly retired kaiser Wilhelm still hasn’t denounced the assassination of Walther Rathenau.

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Today -100: July 3, 1922: Of civil wars and orphan pity

Irish Free State troops bombard rebel strongholds in Dublin.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 2, 1922: Of thankless jobs, snipers, lynchings, opium, and aluminum

The fall of the Four Courts is not the end of it. Anti-Treaty IRAers are occupying 40 or so buildings, from which they’re merrily sniping, as was the custom.

Two black men, James Harvey and Joe Jordan, are seized from a deputy sheriff by a mob and lynched in, ahem, Liberty County, Georgia. Surprisingly, 4 of the lynch mob will be convicted of murder.

As Alien Property Custodian during the war, Francis Garvan gave a bunch of German patents to the Chemical Foundation of New York, which is headed by... Francis Garvan. Pres. Harding demands the Foundation give up the patents.

In 1912 the US and other countries created the Hague opium convention to cut down the illegal drug trade. That has since been superceded by the League of Nations, which has been trying to get information from the US about why it’s importing so many drugs, but the US has been pretending that the League of Nations doesn’t exist and the Hague convention still does. Finally, someone got the Dutch government to ask the US the same questions the League has been asking, and this time the US answered, and the Netherlands turned over the information to the League. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 1, 1922: Zero courts?

The rebels occupying the Four Courts in Dublin surrender after explosions, either deliberately set by the rebels or from their explosives store blowing up accidentally, destroy the  building and most of the national archives.

Churchill, naturally, blames a mine laid by the rebels.

400,000 railroad workers go on strike. They want to reverse a wage cut ordered by the Railroad Labor Board, as well as rules ending overtime pay, etc.

John Vitelle, the former Exalted Cyclops (that’s the best kind of cyclops) of the Taft, California Ku Klux Klan, is convicted of assaulting a doctor as part of a Klan mob. Don’t know what they had against the doc.

The Tuskegee Institute says 12 of the 30 lynchings in the US from January to June of 1922 were in Texas, 7 in Mississippi, and 4 in Georgia. 2 of the victims were white, 28 black.

At the Hague Conf, Russia ups its demand for credits to $1.6 billion, in exchange for paying its Romanov debts, eventually.

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Today -100: June 30, 1922: Recreant Irishmen are the worst kind

The Irish Free Staters are steadily taking charge of, or at least blowing to bits, the Four Courts, which is (are?) built like a fortress. The rebels proclaim: “The fateful hour has come. At the dictation of our hereditary enemy our rightful cause is being treacherously assailed by recreant Irishmen.”

British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill says the Free State hasn’t asked for any assistance; “This is purely an Irish quarrel”. Funny how sometimes Ireland is an integral part of the British Empire and other times... not.

Metaphor of the Day -100:  Three of retired-kaiser Wilhelm’s state carriages are sold at auction. They are purchased by an undertaker to use for funerals. 

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Today -100: June 29, 1922: Whoop for Hooper

Maxim Litvinoff, head of the Soviet delegation to the Hague Conference, says Russia will only recognize its debts (not, I think, including war debts) if it’s assured of a moratorium on paying them of, say, fifty years. He’s also resisting giving any details of Russia’s budget.

And we get the second-ever woman candidate for the US Senate. Selected by the Democratic convention, Jessie “Mrs. Ben” Hooper, the president of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, will run against Fighting Bob La Follette. Her slogan will be “Whoop for Hooper,” which is super dooper. The convention also selects not one but two candidates for governor, one wet and one dry.

Speaking of slogans, campaign buttons appear for William Randolph Hearst: “A Business Man for Governor.” It’s not exactly “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” or “Rosebud,” is it?

Irish Free State forces try to drive Rory O’Connor’s anti-Treaty IRAers out of the Four Courts, which now sport many new holes, as do many civilians and an unknown number of combatants on both sides. O’Connor issues a statement, posted all over Dublin – several NYT reporters are perplexed as to how a man under siege can do this – saying that none of his forces have been killed yet and “The boys are glorious and will fight for the republic to the end.” He points out that “Mr. Churchill cracked the whip in his speech Monday night when he ordered the Provisional Government to attack the Four Courts. His Free State agents have obeyed.” Éamon de Valera agrees with all that, saying the Republicans “are not willing that Ireland’s independence should be abandoned under the lash of an alien government.” Churchill issues a statement saying the Free State is acting entirely on its own and not in response to his statement telling them to do what they’re now doing and yes, we’ll certainly give them arms to suppress the Republicans if necessary.

The Free State claims the real reason it’s attacking the rebels now is that they’ve been extorting companies under the pretext of the boycott of Belfast, “which has no authorised existence.” Also, the rebels kidnapped a general.

The Communist Party of Great Britain applies to be affiliated to the Labour Party (like the Fabian Society and other groups), but is turned down by the Labour Conference. 

Russia lifts the limit of two letters a month that could be received by Russians from the US.

A. Bruce Bielaski escapes his Mexican captors while they’re sleeping.

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Today -100: June 28, 1922: Of hostages, credits, and parking lots

Mexican rebel Gen. Gorozave, whoever that may be, is holding 40 American employees of the Cortez Oil Company in the Tampico district hostage, as well as the company’s equipment, demanding 15,000 pesos, which is the equivalent of some money.

At the Hague Conference, Russia says it won’t talk about debts or property until there’s some sort of agreement on credits. Guess what subjects the other powers are saying should come first.

This time, none of the Russian delegates are wearing top hats.

Alderman Rudolph Hannock of the Bronx has an idea for the Board: public parking stations. You know, parking lots.

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Today -100: June 27, 1922: Of ultimata, indefinite occupations, and goodykoontzes

In the British Parliament, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill demands the Provisional Government of Ireland suppress the anti-treaty IRA faction. The present situation, he says, is a violation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and if the Irish government doesn’t crack down Britain is free to renounce the treaty and step in. Prime Minister David Lloyd George also makes a speech, which is considered “gloomy.”

The Senate committee on the US occupation of Haiti and Santo Domingo calls for “indefinite” continuation of the occupation of Haiti, as withdrawal would lead to revolution and brigandage. It dismisses most of the complaints of cruelty by Marines as false or hearsay testimony by illiterate natives and complains about “the process by which biased or interested individuals and committees and propagandists have seized on isolated instances, or have adopted as true any rumor however vile or baseless in an effort to bring into general disrepute the whole American naval force in Haiti.” They claim the majority of Haitians actually quite like being occupied.

$5,000 in ransom is sent for the release of former proto-FBI head A. Bruce Bielaski. The Mexican government orders that anyone connected with the kidnapping should be immediately executed.

Rep. Wells Goodykoontz (R-West Virginia, including Mingo) denounces the coal strike murders in Illinois and says the UMW should help the state prosecute its members. Rep. Edward Denison (R-Illinois, including Herrin) says Goodykoontz shouldn’t believe everything he reads in the newspaper. And yes, I’m only including item this to point out that there’s a congresscritter named Wells Goodykoontz. Which is also his porn name.

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Today -100: June 26, 1922: A state of political bestiality prevails

A coroner’s jury puts the whole blame for the murders of 19 scabs and two union miners in Herrin, Illinois last week on the Southern Illinois Coal Company.

At the party celebrating Illinois Gov. Len Small’s acquittal, his wife has a stroke which, well, I’ll let her doctors’ statement say it: “Absolutely no hope. Fatal case. Sinking rapidly.”

There are worries that the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson means the IRA will continue killing people in London, but it is decided not to arm the police because that would be un-English.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth accuses the Pan-Germans of creating the atmosphere in which the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau took place. “A state of political bestiality prevails. ... Our enemies are those who pour poison into the nation’s wounds. These enemies are on the Right.” Steps are taken to ban any meetings or processions inciting the destruction of the Weimar Republic’s constitution and to ban organizations doing the same.

Postmasters are complaining that dry police are storing seized liquor at post offices, which are now too smelly to work in.

A. Bruce Bielaski, the former director of the forerunner to the FBI (1912-19), is kidnapped in Mexico.

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Today -100: June 25, 1922: Of Organization C, acquittals, and embittered factions

Another day, another assassination. This time it’s German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, killed in a drive-by utilizing submachine guns and hand grenades by members of the Organization Consul (or “Organization C,” to give it the Bond-villainous-organization name it likes to call itself), a far-right nationalist terrorist group banned after the Kapp Putsch, the same group that tried to kill former chancellor Philipp Scheidemann earlier this month and which has assassinated literally hundreds of people, starting with Matthias Erzberger last year.

After the Reichstag is told of the murder, left-wing deputies rage at the Nationalists, who hated Rathenau because of the Treaty of Rapallo with Russia and because he was a, you know, Jew (his assassins thought him one of the Elders of Zion, of Protocols fame). The Socialist & Communist deputies are especially pissed at Karl Helfferich of the DNVP, who made a vituperative speech about Rathenau just yesterday.

Germans worry that this is the start of a reactionary coup.

Of the 3 assassins, 2 will die in a shootout with the police (monuments will be erected to them after 1933), while the 20-year-old driver Ernst Werner Techow will be captured, tried, convicted of accessory to murder, and... released in 1928 an amnesty. He’ll join the Nazi Party but quarrel with them. He’ll be killed after being taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945.

Illinois Gov. Len Small and Lt Gov. Fred Sterling are acquitted of conspiracy by a corrupt jury.

The AFL conference supports Gompers in refusing to call for the US to recognize Soviet Russia.

Final Irish election results: Of 128 seats, 58 go to “Treatyites,” 36 to Antis (both groups part of Sinn Féin), the rest going to Labour (17), the Farmers’ Party (7), Commercial Independents (6), and Trinity College, Dublin (4).

Headline of the Day -100, or any day, really:  

But Northern Ireland PM Sir James Craig says “Ulster people are too sensible to be provoked into retaliation by the murder of the Field Marshal.”

Japan says it will remove its troops from Siberia by October 30. And it promises a non-aggression policy in the future.

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