Today -100: August 13, 1910: Of showers, trolleys, and conservationists

At a New York militia camp, members of Squadron C of Brooklyn are complaining about having to use the same showers as the Tenth Cavalry. Yes, the former are white, the latter black (New York state segregated its militia units?).

1/3 of Columbus cops are refusing to guard trolleys and the strikebreakers running them. They had been ordered to shoot anyone who refused orders to halt.

Interior Secretary Ballinger, who Taft is evidently planning to force out, tells the Commercial Club in Portland, Oregon that “The demagogue, the fanatic, the sentimentalist, the faddist are crusading under the banner of conservation”.

Today -100: August 12, 1910: Of the insanity defense, selfish farmers, and blowing up balloons

Gallagher’s lawyers intend to plead insanity for his assassination attempt on Mayor Gaynor.

A NYT editorial complains that farmers are organizing politically to defeat congresscritters who won’t pass pro-agriculture laws. The NYT does not like the idea of PACs, saying, “This puts politics frankly on a basis of selfishness, instead of patriotism. ... When farmers or unionists or Socialists or any other class of citizens seek any other object than the universal good they debase American citizenship.”

The German military tests field artillery against moving balloons, succeeds in blowing them up. The German military just likes to see children cry. And stuff blowing up. Actually, that does sound like a nice afternoon out.

George Bush and the Mangoes of Doom

Bush is back in Haiti, evidently suggesting that the way for Haiti to recover from the earthquake involves mangoes in some way.


Seriously, how does anyone see that face and not punch it? How is that even physically possible?


Which reminds me of the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq, which reminds me that I meant to note that two Pakistani tv stations were taken off the air for reporting that a grandfather in Birmingham threw one or both of his shoes at President Zardari, presumably in protest at his leaving Pakistan instead of staying to deal with the floods.

Today -100: August 11, 1910: Of planes, bicycles, cars and trolleys

The French military is running tests to see if military scouting airplanes can be shot by scouts on bicycles and automobiles. They can.

The Columbus, Ohio trolley strike continues, with lots and lots of violence, rioting, scabs beaten to death, dynamite found on the tracks, etc etc. But, interestingly, the city council refuses to appropriate money for extra police to protect the trolley company’s property unless it shows greater willingness to settle.

Minnesotans against moon gods

Lynne Torgerson wants you to know that the fact that she is running against Keith Ellison, who is black, doesn’t make her racist. Why she’s even dated black men and loves black cock (she may not have said the last bit). No, she’s running against Keith Ellison because he’s Muslim and worships “the moon god Allah” and wants to impose Sharia law, the end.

On the front page of her campaign website, you can click a link to buy the book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That Is Conspiring to Islamize America.

Dead Ted Contest

News has reached me through a series of... well, you know... that Former Senator Ted Stevens has died in a plane crash. Contest: make fun of Ted Stevens in comments.

Too soon?

Today -100: August 10, 1910: He took away my bread and meat

NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor has been shot. Fatally, sort of: he will actually continue walking around, doing the mayor thing, for more than three years before a bullet fragment (which was not removed from his throat) kills him. Gaynor was posing for pictures aboard the ship he was due to sail to Europe on when he was shot: the picture above captures that moment. The person behind and to the left of Gaynor must be Street Cleaning Commissioner “Big Bill” Edwards, “of Princeton football fame,” all 350 pounds of him, who tackled the assassin, a fired employee of the Dock Department named J.J. Gallagher. “He took away my bread and meat, I had to do it,” said Gallagher, who will die of syphilis in 1913, several months before his victim’s belated death.

Among many other stories on the shooting, the NYT has the scoop that Mrs. Gaynor (who seems not to have been accompanying the mayor to Europe) had a premonition when she woke up today that something was wrong.

Gaynor is the only New York mayor ever assassinated, before or since.

(The NYT had an article on the Gaynor assassination yesterday. Thanks for the spoiler, dudes.)

Two strikebreakers hired by the Central Vermont Railroad who were arrested for rioting in Connecticut turn out to be sons of prominent Pennsylvania lawyers, one of them a D.A., who “went into strikebreaking for the sake of adventure”. Naturally they were released without trial.

At least it saves on thank you notes

The groom at a wedding in Turkey shoots an automatic weapon into the air, as is traditional, loses control of the automatic weapon, accidentally shoots and kills his father and two aunts.

My question is: does he still get to keep their wedding presents?

Today -100: August 9, 1910: Of Catholics in Iberia and vacations

The Vatican sends a telegram to the anti-government Catholic forces in Spain welcoming their “magnificent sentiments of unshaken Christian fidelity.”

The Vatican is also on the verge of rupture with Portugal. The Archbishop of Braga suppressed a Franciscan newspaper without asking the permission of the government, which saw this as interference in Portuguese internal affairs and reversed it by a royal decree. A “bitter campaign” against the government ensued. The government also plans to introduce civil registration of births, deaths and marriages, which would threaten one major source of income for priests, who are not happy.

NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor, the NYT says, is about to sail to Europe for a month’s vacation.

Spoiler alert: no he won’t.

Today -100: August 8, 1910: Of trolleys, oaths, primaries, and for once a non-lynching

In Spain, an anti-government demonstration in San Sebastian is called off by direct order of the Vatican, though there were some incidents. At one point a group of the Catholics shouted “Death to Spain! Long live the Pope!” Death to Spain? According to the NYT’s easily amused Spanish correspondent, “Many amusing incidents occurred. Priests leading trudging bands of peasants took to their heels when they found the city in the possession of the military”, leaving the peasants to be fed by the soldiers before they were sent on their way. In Ceuta a priest pronounced an anathema against the government.

A trolleyman strike in Columbus, now several days in. I haven’t been following it very closely like I did the one in Philadelphia, but it’s got the same attacks on trolleys with fire and stones and dynamite. Not sure if scabs are running over children every day like they did in Philly. One trolley was emptied out and “set free at a good speed,” crashing into another car. Both cars were then set on fire. Sounds like a party.

In other strike news, in Winnipeg, “Twenty strikebreakers for the Canadian Northern car shops who refused to take the oath of allegiance to King George were deported to St. Paul to-day.”

Sen. Simon Guggenheim (R-Colo.) responds to accusations that he bought his seat by bribing members of the Legislature and that he was starting to do the same for 1912, and to an attempt by Democrats to enact a direct primary law, by saying that if he does run for reelection, he will seek the endorsement of Republican voters by a direct vote.

In Evergreen, Alabama, the arrival of troops prevented a lynching of two black men.

Today -100: August 7, 1910: Of scared presidents and Mexican chestnuts

An international syndicate will loan $1.5 million to Liberia, on the condition that the United States appoint officials to take charge of its customs duties and taxation. France, which has its own colonies in West Africa, is not happy.

The NYT is not impressed with Taft’s electioneering, saying that the mere fact that he felt the need to issue a statement setting out the reasons why Republicans supporting his administration should be elected to Congress shows that he is “a little scared.” In fact, the “regulars” have lost control of the Republican party conventions in several states, including Iowa and Kansas, to the “insurgents.” The Times thinks that “in the light of the deep disaffection manifested in his own party it would have been safer, as it clearly would have been more dignified, to maintain a self-respectful silence as to the political situation. Perhaps that would have required a more self-poised and a stronger nature than Mr. Taft’s, but his friends would have done well to advise him to assume a virtue though he had it not.” Ouch.

An article on Mexico in the NYT magazine section has the subtle title “How We Pull Diaz’s Chestnuts Out of the Fire.” Evidently the US has been arresting Mexican liberals on the US side of the border on trumped-up charges and detaining them without trial.

Today -100: August 6, 1910: Of railroad accidents and bribery

1,100 people were killed and 21,232 injured on steam railways in the US in the first quarter of 1910, a large increase over 1909. Plus 19 dead and 669 on electric railroads. And I think that’s only counting passengers and employees, not people who got run over.

The NYT has an hour-long “chat” with Vice President Sherman, who categorically denies having anything to do with the people who tried to bribe Sen. Gore. Sherman thinks Gore treated him unfairly. Jake Hamon, the alleged bribe-offerer, also denies the charge. The House nvestigating committee will not be calling Sherman.

Annoyingly, there is no Wikipedia entry for Hamon, who, it seems, was not seriously inconvenienced by these charges, remaining a prominent oil man and Republican fixer, one of the people behind the presidential campaign of Warren Harding. In 1920, Hamon was looking forward to taking a cabinet position under Harding when he was mysteriously shot. Before he died (6 days later) he said that he was cleaning a gun and it went off, but he was not believed and his lover was later tried for murder and acquitted.

A religious institution

There’s a lot of confusion about what precisely marriage is in the American legal system. Jim DeMint, condemning the Prop. 8 ruling: “Today’s wrongful court decision is another attempt to impose a secular immorality on the American people who keep voting to preserve traditional marriage.... Marriage is a religious institution that was codified into law to protect it. ... If our marriage laws are valueless, they will become meaningless.” Clearly we need to ban not just gays from marrying, but also atheists. And, say, Jim, what about inter-faith marriages, should those be banned too?

Today -100: August 5, 1910: Of electric poles, bomb-throwing aeroplanes, bribery, and unintelligent policemen

Kinky Headline of the Day -100: “Electric Pole Kills Pleasure Seeker.”

Alarming Headline of the Day -100: “A Bomb-Throwing Aeroplane; C.B. Harmon to Try It Out at Garden City on Sunday.”

A civil war may have started in Spain, in Navarre and the Basque country.

The blind Sen. Thomas Gore of Oklahoma (Gore Vidal’s grandfather) testifies to the House committee investigating his accusation that a bribe was offered him to stop opposing a scheme to manipulate the sale of Indian lands to generate enormous fees. Gore says that the guy who offered him the bribe said that Vice President James Sherman was involved.

NYC Mayor Gaynor tells reporters what he learned by visiting the Night Court yesterday: “What I saw convinced me that the only necessity for the night court is for the prompt discharge of persons stupidly or unjustly arrested by stupid or vicious policemen”. Indeed, some of those he saw were, he claims, arrested to extort money. Children were arrested for playing, men for quarreling who should simply have been separated, men for talking “in a loud and boisterous manner,” several people for drinking out of a can. Gaynor repeatedly calls the police who made such arrests “stupid” or “unintelligent.” The night after Gaynor’s visit, there were a lot fewer cases brought to the night court.

14 - 8 = 2

The Republicans were already talking about revising the 14th Amendment to make “anchor babies” stateless; Judge Walker’s decision striking down Prop. 8 will no doubt make them move to repeal it outright.

Walker based his decision on both the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which should make it harder to overturn.

The pro-Prop. 8 side based most of their argument on the supposed superiority of heterosexual marriage in the raising of children (which would also be an argument for declaring every man and woman who produce a child automatically married, whether they want to be or not – I’m looking at you, Bristol and Levi!). This argument is not only homophobic but also sexist, since it assumes that men and women possess different and innate qualities from each other. It is not said often enough, but most homophobia contains strong elements of sexism.

Today -100: August 4, 1910: Of boycotts, night courts, and booze in Texas

A boycott of American goods and merchants is announced in Canton in response to the ill-treatment of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, specifically the new detention sheds on Angel Island.

NYC Mayor Gaynor makes a surprise visit to the Night Court, and discovers to his great displeasure that his order abolishing plainclothes cops has been simply ignored. Throughout the evening Gaynor intervenes to question various cops about their arrests (for example that of a boy playing in the street with a rubber ball), making everyone quite nervous. He spots one prisoner, arrested for drunkenness, sporting a big bruise on his forehead from the arresting cop’s club. Questioned by Gaynor, the cop admits having clubbed him, but denies that the bruise came from that.

Texas Governor Thomas Campbell asks the Legislature for a law banning saloons within 10 miles of a school.

Today -100: August 3, 1910: Of fan boys, lynch fines, coachmen, and grandfather clauses

Tice Shea of Belvidere, NJ, met Teddy Roosevelt on a back road and shook his hand. He was so excited (Shea, not Roosevelt) that he ran 2½ miles to tell his friends, but dropped unconscious just as he got into town. It took doctors four hours to bring him around.

Evidently Ohio’s anti-lynching law requires counties to pay a $5,000 fine for every fatal lynching. The gears are in motion for Licking County to cough up for the lynching of anti-saloon detective Etherington last month.

Headline of the Day -100: “Coachman Elected Over Millionaire.” The coachman, William Warren, was elected to the Manhasset, Long Island school board, defeating Stephen H. Mason, taxicab millionaire and the owner of a local estate. Warren was supported by Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of Lord Fauntleroy. He ran on the basis of being a father, pointing out that Mason and the other rich men on the board had no children.

The Oklahoma voters vote for fewer Oklahoma voters, specifically “illiterate” negro voters. The amendment to the state’s constitution (which is itself less than 3 years old) adds a literacy test for voters, along with a grandfather clause exempting from having to take the test anyone whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1866 or were soldiers or lived in a foreign country. This amendment would be struck down by the Supreme Court in 1915, though Oklahoma kept trying variations. The NYT, which gives a scant one paragraph to this amendment at the end of a story about the primary elections and doesn’t report further in later editions, mentions that the Legislature changed the rules to make adoption of the amendment more likely. In fact what they did is put “For the amendment” in small print on the ballot; anyone who failed to scratch those words out with a pencil (which some precincts failed to provide) was deemed to have voted in favor.

Incidentally, the voting age in OK was 18.

A home to us

Original caption: “Salmah M Saleh (front), 52, Firjen Saleh (C), 44, and Paidi, 58, immure themselves in the soil during a protest at a slum area in Jakarta, Indonesia. At least five resident staged a protest to urge the government not to move their houses by force.”


“Well, when I say ‘house,’ it was only a hole in the ground, but it was a house to us.”

Blocked

The United Arab Emirates blocks some of the features of BlackBerrys (is that really how the plural is spelled? That’s how the WaPo spells it. BlackBerries? BlacksBerry?). The feature which transforms owners of BlackBerriae into total dicks – still enabled.

Today -100: August 1, 1910: Of Crippen

Dr. Crippen has been caught, along with his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, on the SS Montrose just before it docked in Quebec. The captain became suspicious, mostly because Le Neve was disguised as a boy, and sent a wireless telegram to the British authorities – the first use of wireless communication to capture a suspect. Crippen will be returned to Britain for trial for the murder of his wife.



By the way, Chief Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard (Dew of the Yard!), who arrested Crippen, read him his rights.

(DNA evidence is now raising questions about the identity of the remains found in Crippen’s basement. The best explanations seem to be 1) something went wrong with a 100-year-old specimen, such as mis-labelling, 2) Crippen was performing abortions, one went wrong and he disposed of the evidence.)