Today -100: October 31, 1922: Revolution of the peculiar and relatively harmless Italian type

The NYT says of the Fascisti Revolution, “All is over except the shouting.” So much shouting.

Mussolini names a Cabinet that’s half Fascist, with Mussolini holding both the interior and foreign affairs portfolios. Only one Cabinet member has ever held office before. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

Actually, he says “One always must speak well of one’s creditor – and we all owe the United States money,” which doesn’t sound much like friendship. He does complain about US immigration restrictions.

Sometime around now, US Ambassador to Italy Richard Child writes to his father: “We are having a fine young revolution... No danger. Plenty of enthusiasm and color. We all enjoy it.”

The NYT editorializes that “What has happened in Italy is certainly revolution, but revolution of the peculiar and relatively harmless Italian type.” Rather less wince-inducing is its comment that “The Fascisti are a self-appointed group of best minds whose title to power... rests on the fact that nobody was willing to fight to keep them out.”

In Spelter City, Oklahoma, 4 masked Klansmen try to abduct the president of anti-Klan organization True Blue Americans, one Tom Bogus. Bogus and a cop get in a shootout with the kluxers, one of whom is killed.

Super-Kinky-Sounding-But-Not-Actually-Super-Kinky Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 30, 1922: To Rome

Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel calls on Benito Mussolini, 39, to form a government. The Fascists’ demands escalated rather quickly over the last few days from 5 Cabinet ministers to 6 to complete control. And now they’ll have it. Mussolini is on his way to Rome to meet the king (he’s been making statements recently repudiating his former anti-monarchical views).

We are told that France’s “gravest fear” about the Fascist takeover is that there might be “difficulties” with Yugoslavia. The Fascists are again talking about reclaiming Fiume (Mussolini met with Poet-Aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio yesterday), the Swiss canton of Ticino, and even Malta and Tunisia.

Kansas Gov. Henry Allen (R) orders the attorney general to expel all Ku Klux Klan officials from the state. They didn’t apply for a charter, and they probably do other bad things.

The incoming class at Columbia includes a 12-year-old who wants to be a lawyer, seven 15-year-olds and 56 16-year-olds. It would have been helpful to know the total size of the freshman class.

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Today -100: October 29, 1922: Wherein is revealed the cause of all the abnormality in our daily life

Italian King Victor Emmanuel rejects the government’s request that he sign a state of siege. And that’s it for representative democracy, folks. Fascists are mobilizing at various locations, but have not actually started to march on Rome.

At former kaiser Wilhelm’s wedding, there will be no presents.

Henry Ford says he has “no hatred in my heart for the Jew.” So that’s good. “I do not blame the Jew money-lender for bunking humanity just as long as humanity lets him get away with it.” But “the Jew” is responsible for all the wars and “he is the cause of all the abnormality in our daily life because he is the money maniac.” But, you know, no hatred.

New British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law’s favorite drink is hot milk. Really, that’s everything you need to know about him.

Headline of the Day -100:  

3-year-old with a shotgun. Less interesting than the headline promised.

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Today -100: October 28, 1922: Of evil Cabinet spirits and mingoes

Italian King Victor Emmanuel asks Luigi Facta and his Cabinet to stay in office as caretakers until a new government, whatever that may be, steps in. 4 ministers, the anti-Fascist ones, have definitively resigned anyway. At the Fascist convention, Mussolini referred to Facta as “that kindly but useless gentleman” (it’s funny cuz it’s true) and the 4 ministers as “the evil spirits of the present Cabinet”. There will need to be some Fascist participation in the next government, or they will make the country (more) ungovernable.

The United Mine Workers gives up the Mingo strike after more than 2 years, facing a third winter of strikers living in tents and violent suppression by the state of West Virginia.

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Today -100: October 27, 1922: The march without actual marching

The Fascists merely threaten a March on Rome, and the Facta government resigns. To be fair, they weren’t really that enthusiastic about resisting Mussolini (think Ted Cruz to the duce’s Trump) and the army and police might not have been willing to stop the Fascists. The resignation doesn’t necessarily mean that the next government will be Fascist; at this stage, no one knows what it means.

Greece arrests Prince Andrew at Corfu for his role in the military disaster against Turkey. Also arrested: a general, the former foreign minister, the former interior minister, and the former governor of Thrace.

Éamon de Valera summons a republican alt-Dáil, which meets secretly and calls on de Valera to resume the presidency.

Following a speech given by William Jennings Bryan Sunday in St Paul, a bunch of Twin Cities Christian pastors call for action to remove the teaching of evolution (“a program of infidelity masquerading under the name of science”) in tax-supported schools, including the state university.

Bonar Law is running on a truly exciting platform: abolishing the Cabinet Secretariat and transferring British League of Nations representation to the Foreign Office. Oh, and abolishing the Pensions Ministry.

The NYT thinks Harding will replace retiring Supreme Court Justice William R. Day, who was appointed by Roosevelt, with a Democrat, because it’s customary for the Court to have at least 3 members of the opposition party and the NYT thinks there’s only one D. justice, because they’ve forgotten about Brandeis. Also, Justice Mahlon Pitney has had a stroke and is expected to resign/die. 

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Today -100: October 26, 1922: Of threats and bulwarks

Mussolini concludes the Fascist convention by saying that if the government isn’t given “peacefully” to the Fascists they will take it by force.

The British Labour Party issues its election manifesto: reducing German reparations, a stronger League of Nations, self-government for India, independence for Egypt, shifting taxation to the rich, nationalization of the mines, etc. It denies being for revolution, saying that indeed the Labour program “is the best bulwark against violent upheaval and class wars.”

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Today -100: October 25, 1922: Either we are allowed to govern, or we will seize power by marching on Rome

Mussolini tells the 1st annual convention of the Fascist Party that the government has given in to his demands for elections, soon, under new rules. He says he wouldn’t join the cabinet himself, but has demanded for the Fascists the ministries of war, the navy, foreign affairs, labor, and public works. He says democracy needs to be superseded by super-democracy, whatever that means.

The US is banning ships entering US ports with alcohol onboard, but British law requires steamers to carry a gallon of brandy for every 100 steerage passengers. For medicinal purposes, obvs.

Boy, Bonar Law’s Cabinet sure contains a lot of viscounts this and marquises that and dukes of whatever. Which means that the colonial secretary, for example, won’t be in the Commons to defend the government’s colonial policies.

Ten IWW members are being tried in Sacramento under California’s Criminal Syndicalism Law. A former aide to Big Bill Haywood claims that during the war Wobblies tried to send poisoned canned goods to American soldiers in France.

Woodrow Wilson will be able to vote in next month’s election after all. New Jersey, a state in which he no longer resides, will allow him to vote as a (very) absentee voter. He’s registered at a one-room apartment in Princeton he once lived in but which is now occupied by a student.

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Today -100: October 24, 1922: Of mad counsels, Communists v. Restaurants, and klandidates

Andrew Bonar Law (who lived the first 12 years of his life in New Brunswick) is now prime minister of the United Kingdom. There will be a general election on November 15th. That’s a Wednesday. The Labour Party justifiably thinks that the choice of a weekday is intended to suppress the Labour vote; Conservatives say Wednesday is more convenient for small shopkeepers.

Lord Arthur Balfour praises Lloyd George and says the Conservative MPs who voted to break up the Coalition took “mad counsels.” Balfour was the last Tory prime minister.

A rumor, which the Berlin Police took seriously, spread that “Communist gangsters” would attack fancy restaurants. They didn’t. Another rumor is that there will be a Red Revolution™ on November 9th. (Spoiler Alert: there won’t be).

When Klan-backed Earle Mayfield won the Texas Democratic primary for US senator, anti-kluxers quickly adopted George Peddy as a fusion candidate (independent D’s plus R’s), but the Democratic secretary of state refused to let his name appear on the ballot. Peddy’s lawyers say the Klan has absorbed the D. party in Texas, so Mayfield is not the D. candidate. Federal judges uphold the secretary of state’s decision. A second lawsuit aims to keep Mayfield’s name from appearing as the Democratic candidate, Mayfield claims he only attended one Klan meeting in Dallas, not 3 like a witness had said. So that’s okay then.

Harding endorses Peddy in a statement that condemns the Klan without specifically naming them.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth suggests responding to the collapse of the mark by defaulting on reparations. He has taken to repeating the slogan “First bread, then reparations.” Speaking of bread, the price is about to double, thanks to the centrist bourgeois parties in the Reichstag caring more about Prussian landowners and other agrarian types than they do about workers.

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Today -100: October 23, 1922: Of Liberal Free Traders, and what it’s okay and not okay to do on a Sunday

The realignment of parties in Britain is confusing to the electors, but also to some politicians. It’s more than a little unclear what party or party splinter Prime Minister David Lloyd George is representing or leading. Will he create a new Center Party? (Spoiler Alert: he won’t). Churchill (in bed recovering from appendicitis surgery) says he will “stand as a Liberal and a Free Trader, but I shall ask the electors to authorize me to co-operate freely with the sober-minded and progressive Conservatives in defending the lasting and central interests of this realm and its wide empire against the very dangerous attacks now about to be leveled upon them by the Socialist and Communist forces, as well as against the almost equally serious menace of downright reaction from the opposite quarter.” We’ll see if the good people of Dundee want to be represented by a member of the Liberal/Free-Trader/Free-Cooperater-with-sober-Tory Party (Spoiler: they won’t). Within a couple of years he’ll rejoin the Tories, performing the rare death-defying double-ratting (having left the Tories for the Liberals in 1904).

And no one knows how strong the Labour Party, which not having been part of the Coalition doesn’t face the messy splits in the Lib & Tory parties,  might be, and it’s creating a lot of anxiety. They’ve won a lot of by-elections, suggesting they’re much more popular than in the last election, they’re much better organized, and they plan to put up candidates in 400 constituencies.

Seven hooded and masked Ku Kluxers invade the First Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey and ask the pastor to read their platform – patriotism, pure womanhood, etc. Which he does. After they leave, the pastor says he agrees with the Klan platform and is fine with the incursion.

Samuel Rzeschewski, 10-year-old chess prodigy, is arrested as a juvenile delinquent for taking part in a Sunday entertainment, a benefit for the National Hebrew Orphanage in which he was to play 5 opponents simultaneously.

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Today -100: October 22, 1922: Of radios, days, fish, and fairies

Henry  Ford plans to establish 400 radio stations throughout the US, so he can disseminate his anti-Semitic opinions, I’m assuming.

San Francisco electrician Charles Buckley, who killed a 4-year-old girl while driving drunk, offers her parents his own 5-year-old girl. They decline the offer.

Supreme Court Justice William R. Day (a Roosevelt appointee) will resign in order to be umpire (I guess that’s the official term) on the German-American claims commission.

Headline of the Day -100:  

They only find out it was the king and two princesses who rescued them after giving them the fish.

A review of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies. Dude still believes in the obviously fake Cottingley Fairies photos, years later.

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Today -100: October 21, 1922: The burden is off my shoulders and my sword is in my hand

Lloyd George tells a crowd seeing him off at the train station, “I am a free man. The burden is off my shoulders and my sword is in my hand.” He portrays his position as country v. party: “When the country gets through its troubles we will have the dog fight, but until then let us stand by the old country.”

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth tells the Reichstag that there are at least two murder plots against him.

A mob in Camden, Tennessee seizes a father and son who were convicted of manslaughter and lynches them. The article fails to mention their race.

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Today -100: October 20, 1922: Of coalitions and enigmas

Lloyd George is out. Many had thought that LG, slippery weasel that he is, would figure out a way to hang on a bit longer. The Tories worried that they wouldn’t be able to pull out of the Coalition without splitting their party between Cexiters (a term I have just made up) and those, like their leader Austen Chamberlain, who wanted the Coalition to continue. But the vote of Tory MPs at the Carlton Club to withdraw is unexpectedly overwhelming. Chamberlain will soon resign as party leader if he hasn’t already. Lloyd George recommends to the king that he call on Andrew Bonar Law to form a government, but Law isn’t yet his party’s leader and says he can’t do it until he’s sure the Unionist Party is behind him. I mean, Tory MPs might not want to form a solely Tory government, who knows, gonna have to ask them. Once ensconced in Number Ten, Law might call a general election, but isn’t obliged to do so (see also Johnson, Boris).

Negotiations between Mussolini and former prime minister Giovanni Giolitti fail, and Mussolini and poet-aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio sign an agreement uniting their forces.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Yup, that’s Ohio, sooooooo enigmatic.

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Today -100: October 19, 1922: Of hateful, venomous by-products, disenfranchisements, and hoods & nighties

Friedrich Ebert was elected provisional president of Germany in 1919, provisional because the Weimar constitution hadn’t gone into effect yet, and he’s still provisional. The Reichstag was supposed to set an election, but never did. Now, it decides to extend Ebert’s term until 1925. Ebert actually wants the election that was supposed to occur in December, which he’d certainly win, to go ahead but some centrists are afraid of a campaign, “with all its hateful, venomous by-products” (hateful, venomous by-products are the worst kind of by-products). Skipping the election will take a constitutional amendment. They’ll do that next week; evidently amending the constitution isn’t that difficult.

Woodrow Wilson is no longer able to vote since he lives in D.C. and the New Jersey election laws that let him vote in Princeton while he was president have been changed.

Harding tells the Allied Christian Societies that the US will never depart from the 18th Amendment.

Milwaukee’s Socialist mayor Daniel Hoan responds to Charles Fowler, founder of Lanier University in Atlanta, which he sold to the Ku Klux Klan, rejecting Fowler’s kind offer to help Milwaukee maintain law and order (why Milwaukee ? fuck if I know), saying he’d make Milwaukee the “hottest place this side of hell” for any Kluxer who attacked anyone in his town, adding “for you to come here from the State where lynching is the most popular outdoor sport to tell our people that they need this organization, with its hoods and nighties, to insure law and order is in itself ridiculous.”

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Today -100: October 18, 1922: Of absent professors, burning blimps, beebs, and robins hood

Italian PM Luigi Facta is standing on the railroad station waiting for a train to take him to the king where he plans to hand in his resignation when he receives a mysterious phone call that causes him to change his mind. His minister of war has been talking to people and it is believed either that former prime minister Giovanni Giolitti has said he won’t take the job again or that the Fascists have refused to participate in a coalition government. 

Belgian historian Henri Pirenne has just discovered that he’s been a Princeton professor of history for the last 6 years. Princeton appointed him in the hopes that it would get Germany to release him from captivity, which it did not. But it never told him. Or paid him.

Another US Army airship, the C-2, the army’s largest blimp, catches on fire in San Antonio after experiencing an unexpected “strong puff” of wind on takeoff. The C-2 previously made the first transcontinental trip by an airship. Most of its crew injure themselves jumping to the ground, but no one’s killed this time. Once again, hydrogen and airships prove not to be a good combination.

The BBC is founded, sort of.  British Broadcasting Company Ltd. Financed by a royalty on BBC radios, but radioheads (wirelessheads?) built their own, so it will go bankrupt and the British government will use its assets to create the Beeb we know today. It will go on the air next month.

Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, premieres. Too much “Earl of Huntingdon” and the Crusades, not enough “Robin Hood” and Sherwood Forest, if you ask me.

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Today -100: October 17, 1922: Of liberty, chicken oaths, and limits

Theodore Schierlman, mayor of Liberty, Kansas, is kidnapped by 15 Klansmen, taken out of town and whipped for having spoken against the Klan. His lawyer says he will sue the town for $100,000 under the Kansas mob law.

Judge Talley of General Sessions (NYC), after a Chinese witness is sworn in, asks the interpreter how much the oath “really means to a Chinese.” The interpreter explains that it would only count if the witness placed their hand on a dying sacrificed chicken. The judge doesn’t go along with it.

Britain rejects a proposal from the US to extend the 3-mile territorial limit to 12 miles, within which the US could search ships for booze. This is aimed at the Bahamas and other British colonies.

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Today -100: October 16, 1922: Of Fascists and geishas

Some members of the Italian cabinet think they should give in to the Fascists’ demand for a new election on new rules, but the majority of ministers don’t want to do that, so the cabinet will just resign and let the king decide who the next prime minister should be. Possibly frequent prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, who is already sounding out people for cabinet positions, including, possibly, some Fascists. An AP story says the government realizes it lacks sufficient authority and prestige to re-establish respect for the law, and the Fascists are “the real rulers of the country,” who, despite their “excesses,” are credited with preventing the Communists taking over.

The appellate court of Osaka, Japan rules that girls are not bound by contracts made by their parents or guardians without their consent. Geishas, we’re talking about geishas.

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Today -100: October 15, 1922: Of phones, drummers, new cities, and criteria

Automatic phones are inaugurated in NYC, so one can now dial, say, Pennsylvania 6-5000 without going through the operator, if one has a dial phone and lives in the Pennsylvania exchange, which is so far the only one with this service.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sounds like an ill-conceived children’s book. The drummer goes by “Sambo.”

The president of Brazil is authorized to begin construction of a city in the center of the country to serve as the new capital. They’ve been talking about this for decades, and it will actually take a few more decades for work to begin on Brasilia.

T.S. Eliot founds The Criterion, a literary magazine, which he will edit. The first issue includes his poem The Waste Land.

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Today -100: October 14, 1922: Of coalitions

Tory Party leader Austen Chamberlain opposes breaking up the Coalition government, saying the only choice is coalition or (gasp, horror) a Labour government. So he is happy keeping Lloyd George (Lib) in office as prime minister, but are the Tory MPs?

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Today -100: October 13, 1922: Every time I see the name Learned Hand it’s always startling

US District Judge Learned Hand issues a temporary injunction against the feds enforcing their rule against liquor on ships. The shipping companies complained, among other things, that Italian passengers and crew have to have wine. I mean, they just have to. (Update: I think it’s literally a requirement that crew on French and Italian ships are provided with wine).

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Today -100: October 12, 1922: Of sleeping firemen, immigration, and drug dealers

Headline of the Day -100:  

Which is NYC Mayor John Hylan’s excuse for denying them a pay raise. And he’ll remove the beds from fire stations. Also night school teachers pad their rolls, so no pay raise for them either. Or for cops.

Immigration officials like to “inspect” disabled foreigners before allowing them into the country, even for short visits, to ensure they don’t become a public charge. So they hold up Brunel Cohen, a former major and current Member of Parliament whose legs were shot off at Ypres, on his way to an American Legion convention. Other passengers of the Cunarder liner Berengaria who are inspected include actor Frederick Worlock, coming to act in a play, who lost a hand in Flanders, and Henry Biggs, a University College, London professor coming to give lectures, who has bad hearing.

Startling Ad of the Day -100:

You can get a tube of Listerine tooth paste at certain drug stores. The first one is free; after that it’ll cost ya 10¢, cause that’s how drug dealers roll.

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Today -100: October 11, 1922: Whither shall I lead 400,000 exiles?

The (Greek) governor of Eastern Thrace, Xenophon Decasos, asks “Whither shall I lead 400,000 exiles?”, now that Greece has agreed to give up the province. He figures Christians “will find life intolerable under this new and more terrible Turk”.

The Fat People’s League for Copeland is launched to support the Senate run of NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland. “Recruits are coming in by the ton”. Har fucking har.

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Today -100: October 10, 1922: Of queens and smooty prayers

The British Labour Party demands new elections, responding to the possibility that Lloyd George’s Near East policies will lead Britain into war with Turkey. 

When Princess Hermin of Reuss-Greiz marries former kaiser Wilhelm, they’re planning to call her Queen Wilhelmina of Prussia. Wilhelm and Wilhelmina, like Pinky and Pinkie in Adam’s Rib, isn’t that cute? No word yet on whether Germany will be banning the “queen” from entering Prussia like Wilhelm is.

Sen. Reed Smoot says First Lady Florence Harding recovered from her illness because of Mormon prayers.

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Today -100: October 9, 1922: I’ve had enough

Uncle Joe Cannon, former speaker of the House, is retiring after spending 46 of the last 50 years in Congress (a record). “I’ve had enough,” says the 86-year-old, who attended the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Greece says it will accept the decisions of the Allies at the Mudania conference – provided they’re unanimous. Which is kind of a big condition, but Greece does seem to have accepted, maybe, that it’s lost Thrace. Eastern Thrace, anyway.

The World Series is won by the New York team.

WJZ, Newark’s news leader, invites the NY Republican and Democratic candidates for governor and US senator to speak on the talking-type wireless.

Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) premieres in NY, with Spencer Tracy as a robot. The word robot now enters the English language.

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Today -100: October 8, 1922: A little of what you fancy

Although the assassins of Germany Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau killed themselves rather than be captured, 15 of their alleged conspirators are on trial, and some of them got sick. Naturally, rumors are spreading that they were given poisoned chocolates to stop them implicating high-up reactionaries. (Update: actually this is true).

It is discovered that insulin might help fight diabetes, but it is very expensive.

British music hall singer Marie Lloyd dies at 52. She was known for such songs as “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery,” “When you Wink the Other Eye,” “Twiggy Vous,” “A Little of What You Fancy” (below), “My Old Man Said Follow the Van” and other slightly naughty songs. She was almost refused entry into the US in 1913 because she was traveling with her the man who was not yet her 3rd husband; the labor secretary intervened to let her in.

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Today -100: October 7, 1922: Of booze cruises, and fictitious governments

Harding and Attorney General Daugherty ban the sale of alcohol on American ships even outside US territorial waters. The order also bans foreign ships entering US ports with alcohol even as cargo not destined for the US.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Mussolini says “In Italy there exists two governments – a fictitious one, run by [Prime Minister] Facta, and a real one, run by the Fascisti. The first of these must give way to the second.” There has been “much talk” of the Fascists occupying Rome.

Mayors of a bunch of towns near Boston say they won’t allow the KKK to operate or hold meetings in their towns.

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Today -100: October 6, 1922: Winner takes 3/5

Mussolini and the Fascists demand general elections before the end of the year, and that any party receiving a majority of votes, like they think they would, get 3/5ths of the parliamentary seats. The Fascists got 35 of the 535 seats in the May 1921 elections, which was fought on proportional representation.

The second game of the World Series (my money’s on the New York team) is called on account of darkness, thus ending in a tie, infuriating the fans, who accuse the owners of a scheme to wring more money from the series. So the teams hastily agree to turn over the game’s takings to New York charities, disabled soldiers and the like.

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Today -100: October 5, 1922: We are still the biggest lot of talkers that ever lived

Talks are beginning over the Near East. Both sides want the Allies to send troops to Thrace to keep the other side out until it is turned over to Turkey.

The Italian Socialist Party convention votes to purge moderates willing to work within the system as opposed to working to overthrow it. Can’t wait to see which method establishes the Socialist utopia in Italy.

The Italian Fascists occupy Trent and Bolzano, both new additions to Italy taken from Austria. They oust Julius Perathoner, who has been Bolzano’s mayor since 1895.

Kansas Gov. Henry Allen insists his Industrial Court doesn’t infringe on free speech. “We are still the biggest lot of talkers that ever lived,” he says. He says he told shopkeepers that putting placards in their windows in support of the rail strike was illegal under the anti-picket law, and then had the editor of the Emporia Gazette arrested for saying that that was a violation of free speech.

Swedish voters reject prohibition 924,874 to 889,078.

Rebecca Latimer Felton says “I shall not strive to win glory in statesmanship” in, um, the one day she will spend as senator when the Senate is not in session. She also talks some shit about flappers.

The NYT praises the appointment of Felton, saying that Georgia “speaks with no jarring note of sex antagonism,” compared to the condition Alva Belmont attached to her gift of a headquarters building to the National Woman’s Party barring men from holding office or receiving a salary from the NWP. The NYT considers that “arbitrary discrimination against one-half the sum total of the Creator’s handiwork.” When will men catch a break? The NYT invokes “Southern chivalry” because of course it does.

A couple of days ago furrier Abraham Seligman was hit by an arrow through the window of his 3rd-floor 5th-Avenue shop. Turns out Douglas Fairbanks, in town to promote Robin Hood, was playing with bows and arrows with his entourage on the roof of the Ritz-Carlton and... something something. The next day Fairbanks read about Seligman in the newspaper and visited him, after which Seligman mysteriously was no longer interested in pressing charges.

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Today -100: October 4, 1922: It’s going to thrill the nation

Rebecca Latimer Felton accepts the appointment to fill Georgia’s US Senate for a day. “It’s going to thrill the nation,” she predicts. Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party says women throughout the world will be pleased by this recognition of the new position of women. Paul mentions Felton’s work for women but not that it included repeatedly advocating protecting white women by lynching as many “ravening human beasts” as necessary.

The Irish Free State offers an amnesty to rebels who turn in their arms and stand down by October 15th. Until October 15th: party!

The Italian Socialist Party convention, which has been bitterly divided on whether to 1) join the government or 2) have a revolution, devolves into fisticuffs.

The NYT notes Pres. Harding & SecState Charles Evans Hughes are reportedly “dumfounded” by the expectation of many people, especially churchfolk, that the US should intervene in Near Eastern affairs, to protect Christians if nothing else. I mean, don’t they realize that Harding was elected on a platform of isolation?

Henry Ford plans to start making cars in China.

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Today -100: October 3, 1922: Of empty honors, dead Alexes, modest villas, Borgia rings, and lynchings

In what the NYT calls an “empty honor,” Georgia Gov. Thomas Hardwick will appoint Rebecca Latimer Felton to the US Senate to fill the seat vacated by Thomas Watson’s death. He’s already offered it to Watson’s widow, but she is expected to (and will) decline. Hardwick is running for the seat, so this is mostly a bid for the female vote. Felton would be senator for one (1) day, when the Senate isn’t supposed to be in session, thus the emptiness of the honor. Felton, who is 87, is the widow of a congresscritter whose campaigns she managed. She  be the first woman senator and the last senator who had owned slaves. She’s a loud proponent of lynching. It will be nearly a decade before there is another woman senator.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Disappointing because at first I thought it must be about that monkey whose bite took the life of Greece’s King Alexander a couple of years ago denying the whole thing. Turns out the story is actually that the Hungarian News Agency has retracted its report that there was a revolution in Yugoslavia and Yug. King Alexander had been assassinated.

Ex-king Constantine of Greece has decided to live in Sicily in a “modest” rented villa, because it’s cheap and he’s claiming poverty, as was the custom with deposed kings, although we know he moved his investments and the queen’s jewels out of the country in preparation for just such an event.

Isadora Duncan and her entourage are let into the US after a couple hours’ interrogation by immigration officials. “[T]hey wanted to know what I looked like when I danced. I said I could not tell because I have never seen myself dance.”

A curio collector who bought a 15th-century ring in the shape of a snake from the Borgia period is poisoned by it but not killed, yet anyway, presumably because the poison weakened over time. The ghosts of the Borgias are disappointed.

After a mob in Montgomery, Alabama are told that the guy they’re looking for was sent to another jail, they grab a black fireman (presumably any black guy will do) from his home and lynch him instead.

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Today -100: October 2, 1922: The soul of Russia and the soul of America are about to understand each other

The Prohibition Party asks New York Gov. Nathan Miller (R) if he would accept the Prohibition Party nomination for re-election. He’s not a prohibitionist, but he does stand for enforcing all laws, which is good enough for them. Miller says no, he’s not a prohibitionist and doesn’t want to be mistaken for one. They’ll wind up endorsing him anyway.

The Anti-Saloon League tells its Illinois members to just ignore next month’s referendum on beer and light wines, which the head of its Ill. branch says is just a referendum on obedience of the law.

The NY Republican state convention adopts a plank for equal rights for women.

Dancer Isadora Duncan and her husband, Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, plus a secretary and her children, arrive in the US, but immigration officers order them kept on the ship until a board of inquiry decides whether to allow them into the country. She denies coming to disseminate communist propaganda, she’s all about the art: “We believe the soul of Russia and the soul of America are about to understand each other.”

While sticking up a Dublin pub, robbers shoot Pres. Cosgrave’s father dead when he grabs one of their guns. This isn’t the pub owned by Pres. Cosgrave himself that was robbed last week, but another pub owned by some relative.

The NYC Post Office is reopening the old pneumatic mail tube system shut down by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Cool.

The medical commissioner for insanity in Cook County, Dr. James Hall, says the number of people going crazy in Chicago has doubled since prohibition.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“Skillfully severed”.

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Today -100: October 1, 1922: Being a king is no fun these days

Ex-king Constantine (or Prince Flukesbouren, as he now styles himself), ex-queen Sophie, and still-prince Nicholas leave Greece on a steamer for Sicily. Conny plans to live in Italy, as Switzerland and (allegedly) Britain have told him no. He says “being a king is no fun these days.”

Russia introduces conscription for all men aged 20 to 40 for terms between 1½ and 4½ years, depending on the military branch.

Speaking of former emperors, the NYT relays the hot goss about the minor royal family that Wilhelm will be marrying into. It seems Princess Hermin’s father Heinrich XXII insisted on personally administering corporal punishment to public school children of both sexes at the palace, and that her brother Heinrich XXIV is deaf, blind and “imbecilic,” the latter possibly because of the eye operation that also rendered him blind because his mother insisted it be done while she held him on her lap and she... flinched.

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Today -100: September 30, 1922: Perfect freedom of the limbs

The military government in Greece arrests several members of the ousted government and will put them on trial for treason for the crappy job they did in the Asia Minor military campaign.

Britain and Turkey are exchanging ultimatums & offers to meet, as was the custom.

The New York Democratic Party state convention names Al Smith as candidate for governor, William Randolph Hearst as candidate for nothing, and president of the NYC Board of Health Royal Copeland, who did such a bad job during the Spanish Flu, for US Senate. After Hearst is rejected, NYC Mayor John Hylan stalks out of the convention and goes home.

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Today -100: September 29, 1922: I wish to be considered as dead

I could have sworn the Turks promised to respect the neutral zone around the Straits just a couple of days ago. Anyway, the Turks occupy the neutral zone around the Straits.

There are rumors that Mohammed VI has abdicated as Sultan of Turkey. No, that’s still a little ways off.

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That would do it. (Greece, by the way, not Turkey). Troops enter Athens and form a “revolution committee” to take temporary charge of the government and restart the war against Turkey in Thrace. New king George is sworn in. Old king Constantine might go to Denmark, where he’s a prince. The US has also been rumored. Former prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos is still in Paris, showing no signs of returning to save Greece. He says “I wish to be considered as dead” when asked what role he might play.

The Michigan Democratic Party Convention declines to endorse Henry Ford for president in 1924, because that’s two freaking years from now. 

John Sumner of the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice still wants to ban the Satyricon, maybe shopping around for a more congenial magistrate. He complains that someone repeating the language in it on a street corner could be jailed for 6 months. He further complains that the purchasers of the Satyricon “are not limited, as is claimed, to highly moral, intellectual and sophisticated readers.” Why, anyone with $20 can buy it. If anyone really has to read it, there are copies in libraries under lock and key – in Latin.

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Today -100: September 28, 1922: It took me back to school days once more

I guess the people have said they don’t want him any more. King Constantine, after first offering to go to Thrace to lead the Greek Army, abdicates the Greek throne in favor of Crown Prince George, but his wishes for the succession may not prevail, some preferring Prince Christopher; for now, there’s no king. And who will be prime minister? There’s a demonstration in favor of exile former PM Eleutherios Venizelos; the army kindly offers to form a government.

No doubt a complete coincidence, but the abdication of King Constantine is followed immediately by news that his niece, Princess Olga, and Crown Prince Fred of Denmark have broken off their engagement. They only met twice before announcing the engagement, which “gave rise to the belief that it was a case of love at first sight” in people who don’t understand how royal marriages work. She’ll have to settle for a Yugoslav prince.

The NY Society for the Suppression of Vice prosecutes the publisher of The Satyricon and once again loses in court. The magistrate, who’s done an extraordinary amount of research in coming to this judgment – “it took me back to school days once more” – suggests that the law didn’t intend to produce censorship of literature from the first century AD. The publisher, who glories in the name Horace Liveright and whose attorney is Arthur Garfield Hays, a man named after three mediocre presidents (really), plans to sue the Vice Society for libel.

The Irish Free State government will set up military courts with the power to inflict the death penalty.

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Today -100: September 27, 1922: Of Schrödinger’s king and kkkommies

The Irish Parliament is discussing a new Irish constitution. It rejects Gavan Duffy’s amendment to omit any mention of the British king.

The Irish government is thinking about creating a prison camp for Republican rebels on some island.

The AP reports that King Constantine says he will stay on the Greek throne “until the people say they want me no more”; Central News reports that he has abdicated. So the NYT just sticks the two contradictory reports in a single story and lets them fight it out.

Albert Einstein, who fled death threats in Germany last month, is going on a 6-month lecture tour of Japan.

Michigan authorities, after a raid on a Communist meeting in the woods, claim to have seized papers showing Communist plans to infiltrate unions . Okay, fine. And the Ku Klux Klan. Ummmmmm?

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Today -100: September 26, 1922: Of bail, kletters, stickups, memoirs, and paparazzi

A couple of hundred miners, I guess, in Herrin, Illinois were indicted for murders and rioting and whatnot during the coal strike. Unionists and the mayor of Herrin, A.T. Pace, went around to businesses and raised millions of dollars of bail for several dozen of them. Many more don’t need bail at the moment, because they haven’t shown up at court.

The Pittsburgh Ku Klux Klan order the local federal prohibition agent to raid a particular saloon Saturday, with more to be named later. Agent Hawker, for that is his (awesome) name, says he can’t do that without actual evidence to support a search warrant. This is evidently the first time dry agents have received a Klan letter, or kletter as they probably call it.

“The allied decision to deprive Greece of Eastern Thrace has caused great consternation in Athens.”

The Dublin pub owned by Irish Pres. William Cosgrave is robbed by 8 armed Republicans while Cosgrave is present, which sounds like a sub-plot on Peaky Blinders.

Former kaiser Wilhelm’s memoirs are being serialized in Germany (and the NYT), and monarchist/right-wing Germans are upset that he’s pissed all over Bismarck’s memory. For them, it’s like if Trump made disparaging comments about Reagan; they just hate to see mama and papa fight.

A plane trying to take pictures of the estate of Wilhelm’s fiancee, the Princess Hermin of Reuss-Greiz, crashes and the princess has to take care of the pilots and an American reporter.

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Today -100: September 25, 1922: Of sikis and fezes

A Parisian crowd at the world light heavyweight match of Georges Carpentier and Battling Siki force officials to retract the referee’s decision giving the win to the unconscious Carpentier because of alleged fouling (tripping) by Siki (photos show he didn’t trip him, but Carpentier did commit several fouls). What’s interesting is that Siki is black, from Senegal, but the crowd preferred fair play over race, in contrast, for example, to the riots following the 1910 defeat in the US of James Jeffries by Jack Johnson.

Siki was supposed to throw the match but changed his mind sometime during the fight. Ernest Hemingway, one of the audience members, partly based his 1927 short story “Fifty Grand” on this fight.

The changing circumstances of Turkish military victory has brought a major increase in the demand for fezes in Constantinople. They’re even having to import them from Austria.

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Today -100: September 24, 1922: Of thraces, war guilt, and prop guns

Britain, France and Italy graciously grant eastern Thrace to Turkey, even Constantinople, while the Straits would be under League of Nations guardianship (of course the League lacks a navy, so in event of trouble it would have to call on Britain) (Turkey, incidentally, is not a member of the League). This would all require a new treaty to replace the Treaty of Sèvres enforced upon Turkey at the end of the Great War. The Allies are inviting Turkey to talks, and pointedly not inviting Russia.

Bulgaria will have a referendum on the fate of the government ministers who got the country into the Great War. If 50% of voters find them guilty, they will be exiled for 10 years. If 60%, they will be imprisoned for 10 years. If 70%, they’ll get life.

During filming of the movie Quicksands, Helene Chadwick accidentally shoots Noah Beery (father of Noah Beery, Jr., who played James Garner’s father, despite their mere 14-year age gap, in The Rockford Files) (I may have gotten distracted on imdb) with a prop gun that turned out not to be a prop gun. The movie, now lost, was written by Howard Hawks and Oliver Hardy.

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Today -100: September 23, 1922: It would be more fun if they were defending Zeus-worshipping civilization

Palestinians will boycott the Legislative Council elections decreed by the British, and Jewish rabbis are complaining that Muslim courts are granted more powers than the Jewish religious courts.

The Cable Act becomes law, allowing an American woman who marries a non-citizen to keep her citizenship if her husband is eligible to become a citizen (i.e., not an Asian or an anarchist or a polygamist). Non-citizen women who marry US citizens will have to naturalize independently of their husbands. This reverses a 1907 law that made a married woman’s citizenship status depend entirely on that of her husband. Various remaining discriminatory provisions will be dealt with by amendments from time to time through 1934.

Two white men are indicted for being part of a mob that lynched two black men, the first time this has happened (the indictment, not the lynching, obvs) in southeastern Georgia (Liberty County, no less).

Greece, which just badly lost a war with Turkey, threatens to go to war with Turkey if it invades Thrace. Greece says Thrace is part of Greece and the massacres in Smyrna shows that “Greece is defending Christian civilization.”

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Today -100: September 22, 1922: Too many men are going to college

Ford plants reopen after being closed 5 days, Henry Ford thinking he’s made some sort of point about the coal & railroad strikes.

Rumors say that the Turkish nationalists are about to issue an ultimatum to the Allies to get out of Thrace in 48 hours. Regardless of the truth of that, they are threatening to declare war on Britain if it interferes with the movement of Turkish troops into Thrace. The Morning Post (London) says British troops in Constantinople will respond to disturbances with “concentrated fire of machine guns and Lewis guns which the undisciplined Turkish mobs could not confront for long.”

Dartmouth College President E. M. Hopkins tells the opening assembly of the academic year that “Too many men are going to college” and it should be reserved for the “aristocracy of brains, made up of men intellectually alert and intellectually eager... if democracy is to become a quality product rather than simply a quantity one”.

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Today -100: September 21, 1922: Of bonuses, klandidates, sabers, and diplomats

The Senate upholds Harding’s veto of the Bonus Bill by 4 votes, after the House voted to override it by a large margin (258-54). Many senators who supposedly support the bonus choose not to show up.

Walter Sims wins the Democratic primary for mayor of Atlanta. He is the KKK’s candidate, though it is not known if he’s a member. He is currently on the City Council, where he fought to fire a teacher for being Catholic (the article doesn’t say if he succeeded) and introduced an ordinance to bar the races mixing in church services, which the mayor vetoed.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Literally. Not especially subtle. They’re still clearing the bodies but Standard Oil is already back at work.

Harding appoints Lucile Atcherson secretary of an (undecided) embassy or legation, the first female diplomatic officer. The State Department will not take this lying down.

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Today -100: September 20, 1922: Harding to World War Veterans: Drop Dead

Pres. Harding vetoes the bonus bill. He objects to distributing, “whether inspired by grateful sentiment or political expediency,” so much money to a mere 5 million people out of 110 million Americans, “a bonus which the soldiers themselves, while serving in the World War, did not expect.”

In the Democratic primaries in Erie County, New York, William Randolph Hearst gets exactly zero (0) delegates in his gubernatorial run. Pundits think that might not portend well for him.

The US will keep out of the whole Near East thing, diplomatically and militarily.

Kemal Pasha informs France that he won’t attack Constantinople or the neutral zone along the Dardanelles if Turkey is allowed to take eastern Thrace, including Constantinople and Adrianople.

The Bulgarian prime minister announces that King Boris is looking to marry a rich, beautiful, rich, young, rich American girl. He doesn’t have anyone in particular in mind. 

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Today -100: September 19, 1922: Of applications, Turk-fighting, studios, graciousness, and technicolor

For the first time, the Harvard entrance application asks students for their race and color, and whether they or their father have changed their name (presumably looking for secret Jews).

Britain sends its Atlantic Fleet to the Mediterranean to keep the bloody Turk out of the Dardanelles

The Canadian government deflects Britain’s request for troops to fight the bloody Turk, saying public opinion would demand a vote by the Canadian Parliament first. 

Artists in NYC are hard-pressed for studio space as bootleggers have been taking over studio apartments in Greenwich Village.

Former kaiser Wilhelm, or as his press statement describes him, “His Majesty, the Kaiser and King” has “graciously decided to contract a second marriage” with Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz. Graciously?

Hungary joins the League of Nations. 

A company called Technicolor Inc has been formed to produce color movies. Didn’t know the term was that old.

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Today -100: September 18, 1922: Fiendish tortures are the worst kind of tortures

France and Italy fail to back Britain’s threat of military force against Turkey to keep the Straits (the Dardanelles) open. The Daily Mail isn’t too thrilled either, noting that Lloyd George’s planning for a new war against Turkey has reached the stage of trying to get the Dominions to send troops for Gallipoli 2: This Time It’s Personal. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

Bavaria bans tourists (it’s a falling-mark thing).

Lev Kamenev is now the “substitute president of the Cabinet of Ministers and Council of Labor and Defence” in place of Lenin.

The Danish film Häxan premieres. It’s about witches.

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