Today -100: February 25, 1911: Of civil wars, racial/religious exclusion, trouser skirts, Le Juif Déserteur, and the Lusitania

Peace negotiations over the Honduran civil war are taking place on board the US warship Tacoma. The elected president Miguel Davila offered to resign in the interests of peace, if rebel former president Gen. Bonilla, who Davila correctly accuses of being an agent of the United Fruit Company, also withdraws as candidate for the post. So a temporary president might be appointed by... American special representative Thomas Dawson.

The Senate takes a break from making sure that Japanese laborers will continue to be excluded from the US under the new treaty with Japan (now ratified) to consider a resolution in favor of abrogating the 1832 treaty with Russia because of its exclusion of American citizens who are Jewish.

Parisian men have expressed their disapproval of the new fashion of trouser-skirts (trousers skirt, the NYT calls them) by mobbing and throwing eggs at women seen wearing them. French newspapers have been printing medical opinions for and against the style.

The fight over Henri Bernstein’s play “Après Mois” continues in Paris. Last night the police had to storm one of the theatre’s boxes, which had been barricaded from the inside by five Camelots du Roi in possession of car horns. When the Camelots were ejected, there were cries of “Down with the Jews” from their compatriots. That was during the first act. The second act was marked by the release of a flock of doves. Bernstein has written to Prime Minister Briand asking that the president of the Camelots, Lucien Lacour, be temporarily released from prison so that he and Bernstein can duel. Lacour is serving a sentence for slapping the same Prime Minister Briand (Lacour was elected president of the Camelots while in prison in honor of that act).

“The Cunarder Lusitania arrived late yesterday afternoon after one of the roughest voyage [sic] across the Atlantic she ever has experienced.” But not the roughest she will ever experience.

Today -100: February 24, 1911: Of Teddy and the women, Japanese exclusion, and Le Juif Déserteur

In Chicago, Theodore Roosevelt announces his support for women’s suffrage.

The Tafties reassure California that even under the new treaty with Japan, there won’t be any Japanese immigration, because Japan itself will continue to restrict emigration. Some Californian politicians are not reassured, though Gov. Hiram Johnson says, “California wants exclusion. President Taft says we will get it. That is enough for me.”

Members of the monarchist (and more or less proto-fascist) Camelots du Roi have been disrupting performances of Henri Bernstein’s play “Après Mois” at the Comédie-Française in Paris with shouts, car horns, whistles, etc. Everyone’s a critic. Actually, their problem is less with the content of the play than with Bernstein’s Jewishness and his desertion from the military as a young man. Newspapers have been attacking each other over the play, and many duel challenges have been issued, including several to and from Bernstein.

Guess who wants to start a war with Libya? No, go on, guess.

John McCain & Joe Lieberman, who you will be scared to hear are in the middle of a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, issued a statement about Libya yesterday, calling for “a no-fly zone to stop the Qaddafi regime’s use of airpower to attack Libyan civilians.” Obviously such a thing could only be enforced by a military force ready and willing to shoot down Libyan planes.

Today -100: February 23, 1911: Of annexation, and danger to our citizens, to our industrial development, and to our civilization1

The Canadian Parliament declares unanimously that Canada should not be annexed by the United States.

The California state senate unanimously demands that the US Senate reject the new US-Japanese treaty, calling the omission of a provision allowing the US to exclude Japanese immigrants “fraught with so much danger to our citizens, to our industrial development, and to our civilization.” The new governor, progressive Hiram Johnson, refuses to comment: “I don’t desire to discuss it.” Wimp.

Not to be confused with Ram Dass

“Pourmecoffee” on Twitter: “Rahm Emanuel wins Chicago Mayor. You may know him from previous job, trying to please Olympia Snowe and Joe Lieberman.”

So winning the votes of corpses is not a new experience for him.

A revolutionary from tents

Libya’s leader, Muammar Qocksucker (sometimes spelled Ghocksucker, Khacksukker, etc etc), went on tv to proclaim that he will “die a martyr” and “fight until the last drop of my blood.” A couple of days ago his son promised to “fight to the last bullet.” If only the last drop of the “colonel’s” blood leaked out as the last bullet thudded into his body, this could still have a happy ending.


In fact, he insisted that he hadn’t ordered “one bullet to be fired” yet, but “when I do, everything will burn.” So we have that to look forward to.


He declared himself “a fighter, a revolutionary from tents”. “Muammar is leader of the revolution until the end of time,” he predicted, and called on the people of Libya to come out and beat up the protesters.

He denounced protesters as “cockroaches,” “rats” and “mercenaries” “serving the devil,” as inspired by “bearded men” and as being “drug-fuelled, drunken and duped” (not necessarily in that order). He said, “Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution” (he personally wrote Libya’s official thesaurus). If only he had stopped after the first four words.

Today -100: February 22, 1911: Of peers, dancing in Flushing, the black line, and running over dogs

British Tory Party leader Balfour says he will consent to removing the House of Lords’ veto power only if any measure of Irish Home Rule is submitted to a popular referendum.

Irish Nationalist MPs will boycott George V’s coronation ceremonies.

The Taft admin has sprung a proposed treaty with Japan on a Senate that evidently didn’t know it was being negotiated. It’s much like the expiring 1894 treaty but leaves out the provision requiring Japan to accept American racial exclusion laws. The Tafties want it ratified quickly, hoping the Californian delegation won’t provoke the usual racist agitation while the lucrative 1915 Pacific-Panama Exposition can still be taken away from San Francisco.

The Flushing Association (an organization of the hoity toity of Flushing)(which would be a great name for a rock band) calls on the Board of Education to eliminate dancing in public schools. It’s not the dancing they object to per se, it’s that black and white pupils might be required to dance... together.

But how do you determine that all-important question, who is white and who is black? “In an endeavor to determine scientifically the race of a child, staff physicians at Johns Hopkins Hospital to-day made an examination of Luella Loftridge, an eleven-year-old girl, who is trying to obtain her freedom from a negro institution in which she has been confined for nearly seven years. The examination, it was said, did not settle the question, and the lawyers for the girl declared that there would be no cessation of the fight for her release. ... The physical characteristics by which physicians are said to be able to detect the presence of negro blood, but which are held by some authorities to be utterly valueless, played a large part in the examination. The main point to be settled – one that has been the subject of unlimited debate for decades – is what can really be considered the line of demarkation between a white person and a negro. In the present case it was stated that all the accepted tests for the presence of negro blood, save one, had failed. That one is the presence of a black line across one of the girl’s fingernails”. Neither Google nor the NYT index shed any light on the subsequent fate of Luella Loftridge.

Playwright Henri Bernstein asked the leading actress in his play “Après Mois” in the Comédie-Française in Paris to wear a trousers skirt. This set off a scandal at the public dress rehearsal (spoiler alert: not the last scandal associated with this performance – keep watching this spot!). The American ambassador was heard to exclaim, “Gee whiz!” The offending garment will no longer be displayed.

A letter to the editor from guest publication The Car in Britain, written by George Bernard Shaw, entering a discussion in that periodical on what to do when one runs over a dog (I’m folding in a follow-up later in the March 15th issue)(um, the squeamish might stop reading at this point). GBS says that he has been in a car, driven by himself or his chauffeur, on 13 occasions when it has killed a dog. In one incident, his driver ran over the dog of an 8-year-old girl. They stopped, but “When the begoggled monster who had just killed her dog approached her, possibly with the intention of continuing his fell work, she went into screaming hysterics”. So he suggests that the most tactful thing to do is “withdraw as rapidly as possible”, although he does confine that advice to dogs: “On the whole, when you kill a human being, stop.” He disagrees with those authors of letters to The Car who point out “that the motorist who runs away loses an opportunity of demonstrating that he is a gentleman, and thereby defeats the main purpose for which, in the opinion of many respectable Englishmen, the universe was created.”

Scolding of the Day

Hillary Clinton to Libya: “Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed.”

There are days when I think that every public figure is just as batshit insane as Glenn Beck, or at least morally insane, but some of them are just capable of hiding it better. I suspect Hillary has two large blackboards in her office, on one of which there is a list of acceptable bloodshed and on the other a list of unacceptable bloodshed.

Headline of the Day

Back after 2½ days of internet outage. Fucking Earthlink.

But my call is very important to them.

They even asked me to take a survey about the assistance their support associate had just given me.

Without, of course, having actually ever connected me with a support associate.

Fucking Earthlink.

Anyhoo, the Headline of the Day, from the Guardian: “Women Still Face Glass Ceiling.” Maybe they’d achieve more job advancement if they weren’t lying down all the time (facing glass ceiling, geddit?).

Today -100: February 21, 1911: Of beggars, the vote in Mexico, plague, Mormon heretics, and pushing the button

The NYPD has been cracking down on beggars, and the NYT is pleased: “Street beggars are almost always impostors. ... Beggars should be driven from the streets and kept away from all public places. ... Street beggars are undesirable persons.” Don’t know what the Times’s deal is here; maybe the newspaper of choice for the homeless to sleep under was the New York Evening Journal.

Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco Madero is evidently considering introducing an educational qualification for the franchise.

The Chinese government is, under threat from Russia and Japan, finally taking action to combat a major outbreak of bubonic plague (which many Chinese think was deliberately introduced by Russia). Villages in the affected region have been ordered to burn their dead. Garbage is being collected.

The Mormon Church’s Board of Education summons three Brigham Young University professors (in biology, psychology and education) to answer charges of being “modernists” and heretics. Their crime: applying higher criticism to the Old Testament. They are expected to be fired.

Very high tech: President Taft will open the Elks’ carnival in Honolulu by pushing a button in the White House that will send an electrical current all the way to Hawaii, lighting up a clock.

Today -100: February 20, 1911: Of Prussian plumber-peers

Harry Plate, a plumber, is the first artisan ever raised to a life peerage in the Prussian House of Lords. Enjoy it while you can, Harry.

Today -100: February 19, 1911: Of Jack London, E.M. Forster, and the bath tub men

The district attorney in New Orleans indicts Manuel Bonilla, the former president of Honduras who is attempting to overthrow its current government, and his American mercenary general Lee Christmas, on a charge of attempting to smuggle weapons from the US.

There’s a report (or possibly just a rumor) that Jack London has been arrested on the Mexican border for violations of the neutrality laws.

The Sunday book review section rather fails to connect with E.M. Forster’s Howards End, and concludes, “Mr. Forster’s métier would seem to be conventional comedy. ... But he evinces neither power nor inclination to come to grips with any vital human problem.”

The anti-trust case against the “Bath Tub Trust” continues to produce amusing headlines: “Bath Tub Men Seek Immunity.” For crimes against rubber duckies, one imagines.

Today -100: February 18, 1911: Of train theft, fine dining, racial covenants, and royal standup

Those Wobblies are forced off the train they hijacked. Only made it as far as Ashland, Ore.

Headline of the Day -100: “Taft to Dine Classmates.” Er, that doesn’t mean Taft will eat his classmates, does it? Does it?

Black people are annoyed at a judge on the District Supreme Court (which I guess is the court with jurisdiction over D.C.) who, when sentencing a black purse-snatcher, said “From the viewpoint of the white women of the National capital, it is not to be tolerated that a colored man should dare to put his hand on one of them, and a man of your color who lays hands on a white woman will not be tolerated if I can help it.”

91 property owners on W 136th Street in NYC, calling themselves the Harlem Real Estate Protective Association, file a covenant in the Hall of Records that none of them will rent or sell to black people (including mulattos, quadroons, or octoroons) for the next 15 years. Tenants will even be restricted from employing more than one servant who is negro, mulatto etc. Somehow this covenant is supposed to be constitutional (and legally binding) because it carefully states that they have nothing against people occupying their premises solely on account of their race, but just want to keep rents up (by keeping blacks out). They claim that colored tenants are being deliberately brought in as part of a real estate speculation/blackmail scheme.

Headline of the Day -100: “LAUGH AT KAISER’S JOKES.; Agricultural Congress Ripples with Merriment as He Talks Farming.” Jokes by Kaiser Wilhelm about farming! Well known as the height of humor -100. Tell us, tell us! Unfortunately... the NYT doesn’t relate a single one of the jokes. I has a sad.

Behind the Curveball

The Guardian: “Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.”

Because you didn’t ask.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

It all makes sense now

Archeologists prove that ancient Britons were in fact zombies.

Wait. Pale, grayish skin, bad teeth, silly walks, steak and kidney pies, Margaret Thatcher...

Today -100: February 17, 1911: Of reciprocity, bribery, and train theft

Although Secretary of State Knox denied yesterday that the reciprocity treaty with Canada has anything to do with annexing Canada, Rep. William Bennet (R-NY), an opponent of the measure, introduces a spoiling resolution, intended to embarrass the Canadians or something, calling for Taft to begin negotiations with Great Britain on the annexation of Canada by the US.

A former NY state senator turned lobbyist Frank Gardner is being tried for bribing State Sen. Otto Foelker in 1908 to vote against bills banning racetrack gambling (he was brought from his sickbed after an appendectomy and carried in to vote on a stretcher, and the bill was defeated by one vote). Foelker, now a member of Congress, is the chief witness against Gardner and was cross-examined today. His honesty came into question. For example, he took the Regents’ Examination in his late 20s as a prerequisite for being admitted to the bar. The exam was given in the Grand Central Palace. Which entrance did he use? 42nd street. There is no such entrance. “Parlez-vous Français?” Not so much, although he scored 100% in his French exam. He scored 95% in logarithms and 98% in syntax, although on the stand he could not even define either term. In other words, he paid someone to take the test for him, someone currently in jail for taking tests for people. Foelker says the man was just his tutor. Gardner will be acquitted and Foelker’s political career is over.

A bunch of Industrial Workers of the World in Washington state, intending to go to Fresno to “attempt to enforce their alleged right to speak on the streets” (the NYT doesn’t explain what that’s about) steal a train from Southern Pacific. Wobblies were so fucking cool.

Today -100: February 16, 1911: Why English-speaking people are exactly like bees

Mexican Gen. Navarro declares Juarez under martial law, shutting down all businesses, “including saloons and keno games.”

Secretary of State Philander Knox denies that the reciprocity treaty with Canada is a first step towards absorbing Canada into the US: “It is an ethnological fact that political units of the English-speaking people never lose their autonomy. Like bees, they give off their swarms, who set up for themselves independently, but they do not make political combinations among themselves.”

That’s a trick question, right?

At a press conference, his first of 2011, Obama, asked, “If we’re cutting infant formula to poor kids, is that who we are as a people?”

Caption contest

“So it’s just us presidents here – or ‘president’s,’ as the punctuation morons at CNN will probably put it – you can tell me: how many times did you drop Junior on his head as a baby? It had to be at least six, right?”

Today -100: February 15, 1911: Of Juarez and lukewarm water

Mexican federale Gen. Navarro arrives in Juarez with reinforcements (about 1,000 soldiers) from Chihuahua, unopposed by the insurrectos, who seem to be planning to leave Navarro isolated and bottled up in Juarez while they operate freely in the large area of the country he just left undefended. Now, if he tries to move his forces back south, they can easily block him by burning railroad bridges. Nevertheless, the NYT declares for something like the twentieth time that the Mexican Revolution is probably now “a closed incident.”

Johns Hopkins is evidently now using lukewarm water as anaesthesia for most appendectomies.