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Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan threatens that if everybody keeps talking about the Armenian Genocide, he’ll be forced to expel from Turkey 100,000 Armenians who he claims are illegal immigrants. See, and you thought that there was maybe some sort of animosity in Turkey towards Armenians, wasn’t that just silly of you?
Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen gives Barack Obama a bowl of weeds shamrocks. CAPTION CONTEST!
The meat strike (boycott), which began in Cleveland and spread throughout the Midwest, is officially over. It was always supposed to be a 60-day event, but in practice most 1910 Americans simply couldn’t last much more than a week without beef. The price of beef has increased by 20% or so since the strike was announced.
The Philadelphia general strike continues. The transit company again claims a record number of trolleys in operation by scabs, with only one small child run over.
The Prussian Diet votes to reform the state’s electoral system, very slightly. There will be direct suffrage (presently, groups of 150 citizens vote for delegates who in turn elect members of the Diet), but Prussia will retain the three-tiered system in which electors are classified according to the amount of taxes they pay, each group electing one-third of the Diet, so that a small number of rich people in the 1st tier elects the same number of MPs as the vast majority of people in the 3rd tier.
NYC’s board of education votes 23 to 15 against equal pay for women teachers.
Ratio of the number of times a fire extinguisher is used in a Hollywood movie or tv show to extinguish a fire to the number of times a fire extinguisher is used to hit a guy in the face: 1:20.
I thought the British newspapers were going to be worthless today, since David Beckham did himself an injury, but by gum we’ve got “Mummified Hand Stolen from Pub” – a pub haunted by the ghost of the “Demented Whist Player,” no less – and “Combat Dogs Take to the Skies for Secret Missions in Afghanistan.”
In priest child abuse news, most of the attention has gone to the pope’s personal involvement in the 30-year cover-up for an abusive priest in Germany, but for sheer assholery, you have to look to Cardinal Seán Brady, who made victims of abuse by a priest in Ireland take an oath of silence – did he make them swear on the Bible? – and is now daring the pope to fire him as the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Brady says it wasn’t his responsibility to report the crime to the police.
John Oliver in the Bugle podcast says of Biden’s 90-minute boycott of the state dinner in Israel in response to the announcement of new settlements (would Biden have even bothered to mention it if the announcement had been made the week before he visited or the week after?) that Israeli leaders were punished by being made to fill up on breadsticks.
Since I raised the question of race in the 2010 census, let’s look at 1910. The 1910 census was the last to categorize people as mulattoes (the more specific Octoroon and Quadroon designations were dropped after 1890). The Census Bureau defined mulatto for its enumerators as “all other persons having some proportion or perceptible trace of negro blood”. One problem with this system was that “perceptible” varied according to the race of the census worker (you’ll recall the Bureau’s fear that white people would be enumerated by black enumerators), with black census workers managing to detect more mulattoes than white ones. Efforts were also made to detect the racial purity of Native Americans. Asians were either Chinese or Japanese. Everyone else was “other.”
While recent socialist-led demonstrations in Germany for greater democracy (Prussia’s system is particularly antediluvian) have been met by police sabers, the Reichstag has voted to introduce a bill to make the government responsible to it rather than to the kaiser. It also voted to make Alsace-Lorraine, seized from France in 1870 and soon (spoiler alert) to be seized back, a federal state, with a diet elected by universal suffrage and a secret ballot.
An interesting discussion of separation of powers in the Senate. Taft’s bill for changes in inter-state commerce law, including the establishment of a Court of Commerce which would mostly deal with railroad cases, came to the Senate floor without a single senator willing to speak in support of the president’s bill (which isn’t to say the R’s won’t force it through anyway). Albert Cummins (R-Iowa) attacked the bill for having been re-written several times by the White House at the request of railroad magnates, with the Inter-State Commerce Committee simply adopting those changes verbatim. This is a departure, Cummins says, from Roosevelt, who said it was improper for the executive to suggest precise phrasing of bills.
Meanwhile the House of Reps has voted not to provide the vice president and speaker of the House Cannon with official automobiles.
The Society for the Prevention of Unnecessary Noise (evidently a women’s group) is lobbying NYC Mayor Gaynor against the Fourth of July, but it turns out he likes fireworks. So they plan to make his life miserable by phoning him at all hours and bombarding him with letters and requests for visits.
Since taking office 2½ months ago, Gaynor has been engaged in a fairly impressive attempt to reform the NYPD, cracking down on corruption and cracking down on cracking heads with clubs. Now he’s asking the police commissioner how many plain-clothes cops there are and what exactly they do that they couldn’t do in uniform. He also wants to know how many cops “are assigned to what is called special duty”. I don’t know what that is.
Compare and contrast: March 1910, the British Liberals plan to turn the House of Lords into a wholly elected body; March 2010, the Labour Party plans to turn the House of Lords into a wholly elected body.
The Philadelphia general strike – which may soon be joined by a state-wide sympathy strike – is growing or declining, depending on who you believe. The transit company says that today it operated more trolleys than on any day since the strike began, although they are also running over quite a few people. And the mayor and public safety director tell The New Theatre not to perform John Galsworthy’s play about a strike, “Strife.”
A letter from a former resident of San Francisco says that he never heard Los Angeles referred to as “Los,” but that there was an ad on the SF street cars asking people not to call the city “Frisco,” a term which rankles San Francishoovians to this very day.
I hesitate to announce a contest when my recent posting of little besides 1910 blogging has so reduced readership, but let’s give it a try: give us an excerpt (or excerpts) from history textbooks drawn up to the new specifications of the Texas Board of Education (sic). Remember, you can mention Phyllis Schlafly but not Thomas Jefferson, and free-enterprise system but not capitalism.
Got my census form, just like the letter last week said I would. Thank you for the warning, superfluous letter.
They want to know my race. I don’t intend to reify socially constructed (that is, not actually existing) categories by answering this one. Will probably write “none.” Thoughts?
(Just checked the ol’ archives to see what I did in 2000. I was thinking about none then too, or something from the Star Trek universe. 3 days later I wrote, “In 1941 the Census Bureau told the government where to find Japanese Americans for internment. I may have to rethink the idea of listing my race as Romulan.”)
Update: I hear vampires are very popular among the kids these days. Maybe I should write that.
How did New Yorkers entertain themselves in 1910? The midget circus is in town! Gerson’s Lilliputian Circus at the Hippodrome. 35 little people, none over 3 feet tall, and one of them described as a “small negro,” doing circus acts.
There was a related article, “Curious Facts About Midgets,” in the previous Sunday paper, in which the manager of the troupe explains that midgets dislike being picked up and called cute. So keep that in mind.
The Philadelphia Central Labor Union orders all milkmen, bakers, grocery clerks and other providers of food to join the general strike (they avoided this sort of thing in the first week, but I guess the gloves are off), and for all union members to withdraw their money from banks. The NYT lists the costs to the trolley company of the strike, $1,150,000 so far, including $2,000 to replace 5,750 panes of glass broken in trolley cars, $1,350 to feed 6,000 policemen (480 Pinkerton men have also been hired). The company plans to make the city pay for damages inflicted by rioters (no wonder they’ve been so obdurate).
In fact, as far as Texas conservatives are concerned, the only worthwhile thing Jefferson ever did was to fuck his slaves.
At least in NYT usage, people who drive cars are now “automobilists” and not “autoists” as they were in 1909.
Taft refuses to intervene in the Philadelphia strike. A trolley which sped up “to avoid a fusillade of missiles” ran over a 3-year-old girl. The crowd tried to seize the scab motorman and lynch him, but the police clubbed them back.
A US Court of Appeals lets stand an injunction against the United Mine Workers by the Hitchman Coal & Coke Company of West Virginia, restraining the UMW from unionizing employees or picketing “for the purpose of using violence or threatening or persuasive language” to induce employees to strike.
On Feb. 20, the NYT ran an editorial insisting that the proper way to pronounce Los Angeles was “Loce Ahng-hayl-ais” (with a long o in Los) as opposed to Loss Anjelees, with a short o. It claimed that everyone on the Pacific Slope called it simply “Los” (I have never ever heard anyone do this), which it doesn’t like at all, and says rather bitchily that “There is nothing about [LA’s] present state of profitable confusion to suggest angels, and very little to suggest Spanish origin or the poetical conceits of Iberia. ... Los Angeles has outgrown its traditions and its angels.” The LA Times has responded to the “illiterate, unlettered, and altogether uninformed provincial person of this New York newspaper,” “Does he not know that Los Angeles was named in an hour when Destiny stood breathless on the hill tops and the Star of Empire held the constellations tied at the post? ‘Los Angeles’ is a name wrought from the singing soul of Castile to the music of golden harps. Los Angeles forever.”
The Philadelphia general strike grew again today, or is about to collapse, depending on who you believe. Some more attacks on trolley cars, some more attempts to force the transit company into arbitration.
Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, says that in banning meetings etc, Philadelphia is treating Americans as Russian subjects are treated.
And in Trenton, the trolley strikers win. What do they win? 23¢ an hour and a (roughly) 10-hour day within 12 consecutive hours (i.e., no shifts), but not union recognition.
David Francis, governor of Missouri in the 1880s and ‘90s and interior secretary in the 1890s, is arrested for property tax evasion.
Canada wants to build its own navy, independent of Britain’s. Isn’t that adorable?
Another trolley strike, this one in Trenton. Strikers and strikebreakers engaged in a shoot-out, but no one was hit.
And in Philadelphia, thousands fought with police, with no deaths but plenty of injuries, after police banned a mass meeting by strikers at the National League ball park (that is, on private property). So they marched to City Hall, singing “Hang Mayor Reyburn to a Sour Apple Tree,” where the real fight with mounted police took place. High school boys joined in, although they seem mostly to have “contented themselves with smashing every hat in sight”.
Russia is issuing expulsion orders against Jews in various towns.
The news of the plight of young Philander Knox Jr, shunned by his father for marrying without permission, has brought offers of employment from all over the nation. He has decided to sell automobiles.
NY Assemblyman James “Paradise Jimmy” Oliver denies that he insulted the suffragist, and is backed up by other assemblymen, while Henrietta Mercy’s version is backed up by another suffragist. A NYT editorial insists he hadn’t meant to insult her, but “When he pointed out to his visitor, who, by the way, did not wait for the formality of an introduction, that the younger Assemblymen would likely be more susceptible to feminine arguments than a seasoned old legislator, he spoke truly enough. He meant nothing wrong.” And “When he addressed his visitor as ‘little girl’ he merely recognized her youth.” (She seems to have been at least 21). The paper suggests that “When the women get into politics they must expect to be treated as other politicians. The suffragists must get over their sensitiveness.”
Secretary of War Gates visited the town of Now Zad, Afghanistan.
He was accompanied by Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, who said, “This represents the rebirth of a city that had been dead.” Because nothing says rebirth like an American invasion. “We call this [place] the Christmas miracle.” Really, is that what you call it. I don’t think I’ve run across Nicholson before, but for “Christmas miracle,” I am bestowing upon him this blog’s highest military accolade, the title of Military Moron (MM).
In the wake of the revelations of hot Rahm-on-Massa lobbying, the WaPo launches an investigation of “how much business politicians conduct while naked.”
Sen. John Tester said, “This morning [at the Senate gym] I talked with Lamar Alexander about a hold”.
On a nomination! A hold on a nomination!
Rep. Patrick Kennedy said, “It’s the only place where you get to see a member in a different light.”
As happened at this time every year, women suffragists and anti-suffragists traveled to Albany to lobby the NY state Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees. Mrs. Anna Etz, President of the Steuben County Woman Suffrage Association, said, “New York State needs mothering.” Carrie Chapman Catt said NY might fall behind in the progress of democracy, noting that “woman suffrage prevails over 1/15th of the earth’s area”. Well, that’s Finland and Australia and New Zealand, is that really 1/15 of the earth’s area?
On the anti-suffrage side, a Mrs. Henry Stimpson argued that “Were we so presumptuous as to think we could take up men’s work we should have to take it up in addition to our own, and, while the Legislature might make us voters it could not make you men mothers. ... Women, if they become voters, will succumb to the nerve-racking brain strain,” lowering the birth rate.
One suffragist “girl delegate,” identified by the NYT as “Little Miss Henrietta Mercy,” lobbied Assemblyman James Oliver of NYC, who she says told her he didn’t want to be bothered about it, and that she should find some young assemblyman and give him a hug and a kiss. “That’s the way the girls on the street get what they want.” He denied to the NYT that he’d used those words – “It isn’t like me, is it?” – but admitted saying something about the advantage of bringing women’s charms to bear in appealing to the younger, more susceptible, more good-looking members of the Legislature.
The Philadelphia general strike grew or shrank again today, depending on who you believe. One trolley car in operation was caught in a blast of dynamite laid on the tracks.
Speaking of trolleys, a trolley on Nevsky Prospect (St Petersburg) clipped Emperor Nicholas’s carriage.
In Philadelphia, a party of strikebreakers respond to attacks by strikers on trolley cars by stealing a trolley car and going on a joyride, shooting into crowds, hitting 6. The general strike grew or shrank today, depending on who you believe.
Standard Oil files a brief in the Supreme Court arguing against its being broken up for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Rather than getting stinking rich by restraint of trade, the brief says, Rockefeller et al did so by “untiring energy, with infinite skill, with abundant capital, and the steady reinvestment of early profits”.
Secretary of State Philander Knox’s college-aged son Philander Jr. (!) secretly married without parental permission. He brought his new wife to Washington but failed to receive forgiveness.
Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt is Now Hunted.” Teddy Roosevelt, still on safari in Africa, is being stalked by American journalists “lying in wait for him all along the river [Nile].” They want to ask him if he will run for president again.
A Circuit Court gives Thomas Edison an injunction against three movie production companies, saying he has the sole patent on the process of making motion pictures. There are 13,000 movie theaters in the country; ticket prices average 7¢ each.
Enrico Caruso is now being given the sort of police protection normally accorded presidents, thanks to a stack of threatening letters (blackmail letters, in the older use of the word) from the Black Hand, including a threat to throw acid on him from an upper box in the Academy of Music.
A letter to the NYT calls for heathen countries to be divided up by the Christian ones so that they may be forced to become Christians. It is signed “A Lenten Idea.”
California State Senator Roy Ashburn, who was caught drunk driving on his way home with a, ahem, friend from a gay nightclub, now says: “I’m gay. Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. Because I had a cock in my mouth.”
I may have made up the last sentence.
Philadelphia general strike: the unions say 100,000 are on strike, the police authorities say 18,407, the mayor 12,000.
Remember the shirtwaist strike? The Women’s Trade Union League states that it was won on more or less favorable terms, and the WTUL is now focusing on publicizing the firms that made the best settlements. Two firms, the NYT notes, are even putting union labels on their goods. So, um, look for the union label.
One thing they credit with helping the strike: the change of police policy, stopping arrests of peaceful picketers, by Mayor Gaynor after he came to office in January.
The Chicago city council’s judiciary committee orders an ordinance drawn up to ban hatpins extending half an inch beyond the crown of the hat. Several women came to express their disapproval of the City of Chicago regulating their clothing. Alderman Mack responded, “Well, you women want to regulate what we men drink, don’t you?” and Alderman Bauler said, “If women care to wear carrots and roosters on their heads, that is a matter of their own concern, and it cannot be interfered with by the city, but when it comes to wearing swords they must be stopped.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Policeman Swims for Negro.” An exciting story of a cop who jumped into Rockaway Inlet to capture an armed killer trying to escape by launch, who was not only, as the story informed us repeatedly, a negro, but a “giant negro.”
Two neighbors in Brooklyn go to court over possession of a newly lain egg found in a vacant lot. Magistrate Nash says he will ponder the matter a few days. “It is believed that the Magistrate will settle the dispute by having the egg hard boiled and divided equally between the two families.”
The British general election will feature the first ever debate between party leaders, and the rules have been agreed upon: there will be an audience, but there will be complete silence. No booing, hissing, applause, or heckling. In other words, it will be exactly like British sex.
