Today -100: July 7, 1912: Of party realignments and mock ducks

Roosevelt plans for his Progressive Party (which I’m already beginning to see referred to sometimes as the Bull Moose Party) to run a full slate of candidates in NY, including judges.

There had been some talk of the Progressives running a Democrat for vice president in order to appeal to progressives in both parties, but the Democrats’ nomination of Wilson, a progressive, has taken the steam out of that idea.

And in California, Gov. Hiram Johnson explains that that state’s confusing laws are such that the Republican electors on the November ballot will be Progressives and there will be no Taft electors on the ballot unless each elector gets a petition signed by 11,000 qualified voters who hadn’t voted in the primaries.

Name of the Day -100: Mock Duck, head of a Chinese tong.

Today -100: July 6, 1912: Of free trade, a couple of emperors just chillin’, and lynchings

Theodore Roosevelt needs to distinguish his positions from those of the other Progressive in the race, Woodrow Wilson, and so is attacking him as being a supporter of free trade, which TR says would destroy farmers. He says the way to bring down the high cost of living is to control the trusts (the beef trust and whatnot).

Kaiser Bill and Tsar Nicky are meeting, as the former tries to coax the latter away from Russia’s military alliance with France.

A black man, John Williams, is lynched near Plummerville, Ark. A fight broke out at a “negroes’ picnic,” and Williams killed a “special deputy,” one of a posse sent to stop the fight (feels like there’s more going on here than is explained in the story).

Negro boxer Jack Johnson won another championship bout, and an army of cops goes into black neighborhoods in Chicago to prevent blacks celebrating the victory.

Today -100: July 5, 1912: Of unsatisfactory negroes, flags, and worms

White women in Savannah, Georgia are planning to replace all their “lazy and unsatisfactory negroes” with white servants imported from the Netherlands.

An IWW speaker is sentenced in Los Angeles to 40 days for “defiling and reviling and placing the American flag in contempt”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Worms Block a Train.” In Georgia. So many of them are crushed crossing the tracks that they grease the train’s wheels.

Today -100: July 4, 1912: Of sticking governors and unsticking governors

Woodrow Wilson won’t resign as governor of New Jersey while he runs for president, since that would mean a Republican taking over from him. Woody says he hasn’t read the party platform yet, and is rather surprised to hear that it limits him to one term in office.

The realignment within the Republican party goes on city by city and state by state, at too local a level to be covered here. In some places, Progressive Parties are being formed, in others, like California, Roosevelt supporters control the Republican Party. (The South Dakota Republican state convention, which just met, refuses to endorse Taft and elects 5 pro-Roosevelt electors). Some of the people Roosevelt had expected to follow him out of the Republican party are balking, while others, such as Mich. Gov. Chase Osborn, one of the governors who signed that letter months ago asking TR to challenge Taft, are suggesting that Progressive Republicans can vote for Wilson in good conscience because “The real Republican party has no candidate this year.” Osborn sees “no necessity for a new political party.” Roosevelt responds, “I didn’t think that Osborn would stick, anyway,” adding something not at all insulting about Osborn and Missouri Gov. Hadley’s lack of backbone.

The governor of Baja California forbids the San Diego and Southeastern Railway from running an excursion train which members of the Red Caps, an organization of black porters from Santa Fe, and their families were planning to take to Tijuana for an outing. He was afraid it was a cover for an invading private army of filibusters.

Today -100: July 3, 1912: Of Wilson, vile and malicious slanders, and mustache monopolies

Woodrow Wilson is nominated on the 46th ballot.

Champ Clark, who is not at all bitter, says he lost “solely through the vile and malicious slanders” of Bryan.

Incidentally, in 1917 Clark, still Speaker of the House, opposed entry into World War I. Had he become president, which he might so easily have done, history would have been rather different.

Indiana Gov. Thomas Marshall is nominated for vice president.

The NYT seems happy with Wilson, saying the party “escapes the thralldom of little men and ignoble leaders.” Wilson doesn’t owe his nomination to Wall Street or Bryan. And what they really like is that as a Progressive, he’ll take the wind out of Roosevelt’s sails.

The Democratic platform blames unequal distribution of wealth on the high Republican tariff; calls for a ban on corporations contributing to election campaigns and a limit on donations by individuals; a constitutional amendment for a single-term presidency; opposes American imperialism as “an inexcusable blunder which has involved us in enormous expense, brought us weakness instead of strength, and laid our nation open to the charge of abandonment of the fundamental doctrine of self-government,” and calls for the Philippines to be given independence.

Headline of the Day -100: “WANTS MUSTACHE MONOPOLY.” James Hazen Hyde, millionaire former insurance tycoon, fired sailors with facial hair on his rented yacht so he’d be the only one.

Today -100: July 2, 1912: Still waiting for the white smoke

The Democratic Convention has now held 42 ballots. Wilson took the lead on the 30th ballot and by the end of the day leads Clark 494 to 430 (104 for Underwood, 27 for Harmon), although he lost some votes on the last two ballots. He probably would have won by now, but delegates don’t want it to look like Bryan’s stunt tactics achieved anything.

The House passes a resolution expressing its confidence in the patriotism, honor & integrity of Speaker Clark.

The US battleships in Cuban waters are being recalled, as the Cubans have crushed the negro revolt and killed its leader. Hurrah?

Shit I was meaning to get back to

In that Obama fundraising email I mentioned a few days ago, he said “We can be outspent and still win -- but we can’t be outspent 10 to 1 and still win.” Er, why the hell not?

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In the dissent in the Obamacare case, the right-wing justices argued that young people didn’t need the health-insurance mandate: “the health care ‘market’ that is the object of the Individual Mandate not only includes but principally consists of goods and services that the young people primarily affected by the Mandate do not purchase. They are quite simply not participants in that market”. Sure they are, because even if they do not get sick a good 40% or so of them avail themselves of contraceptives. The four justices, all being male and Catholic, seem to have forgotten about that.

Also, what’s up with the quotes around market?

Today -100: July 1, 1912: Of bosses and ninety wax figures

Yesterday was Sunday and a day off for the Democratic Convention, which of course means a day for horse-trading and faux outrage.

Champ Clark says he’s confident of being nominated, but then so does Oscar Underwood.

Clark also denies having made a deal with the devil (i.e., Wall Street), and demands that Bryan either prove the charge or retract it. Bryan responds that he’s actually accusing Clark of failing to act while his lieutenants make the deal with the devil or at least with Boss Murphy and the “ninety wax figures [the NY delegation] which Mr. Murphy under the unit rule uses to carry out the will of the predatory interests.” Bryan suggests that either Wilson or Clark would be acceptable if they promised to rely only on the Progressive vote and forgo NY’s 90 delegates. He also names several other people who would be perfectly acceptable to him.

William Randolph Hearst accuses Bryan of being a boss.

Today -100: June 30, 1912: Of colossal impudence

The Democratic convention today was long, hot and (according to the LA Times) smelly. Also inconclusive. 14 more ballots were held today, for a total of 26. Champ Clark lost votes on each ballot after the 15th, 90 votes over the course of the day, dropping to 463½. Wilson gained 50, to 407½. 725½ are required. Gov. Harmon of Ohio (29) drops out. Clark’s people suggest that Wilson would make a good veep for Clark; Wilson’s people think not. Clark’s people also suggest another solution to the deadlock: every candidate except for Clark should withdraw.

Drama was provided by William Jennings Bryan, because that’s what he’s there for, when he asked to explain to the convention his shift from Clark to Wilson and more or less said that he will bolt the Democratic Party if its presidential candidate wins the nomination with the support of the 90 votes of the New York delegation, which he says is controlled by Wall Street and Boss Murphy, which it is, and therefore “does not represent the intelligence, the virtue, the democracy or the patriotism of the ninety men who are here”.

Part of the problem in getting a nominee is that under party rules each delegation must vote as a bloc. So the many Wilson supporters among those 90 NY delegates have to vote for Clark.

Headline of the Day -100: “William J. Bryan a Man of Colossal Impudence.”

The editor of the German Anti-Semitic Party’s newspaper has been convicted for slandering the Jewish religion and sentenced to one week in prison.

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt is facing a primary challenger who is bringing up the large number of pardons Colquitt has issued. Colquitt responds by noting that most of those pardons were of young men who had left farms for the city and been led astray. Let’s see if you can spot what else he wants to highlight about the pardonees: “Out of the men I have pardoned some 225 of them were young white men who were serving their first terms in prison for their first offenses against the law, young white men who were without means for defense, young white men etc”.

Today -100: June 29, 1912: Of nominations and shaking prime ministers

On the Democratic Convention’s 10th ballot, there is finally some movement, with Champ Clark increasing his lead, with 556 votes to Wilson’s 350½, with Underwood & Harmon hanging in somewhere in the 100s. It would all have been over by now, with Clark the winner, but nomination requires 2/3 of the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: “Woman Shakes Asquith.” The prime minister meets a suffragette. Who shakes him. She is thrown downstairs, as is the custom.

What the Framers knew

Verily John Roberts says, “The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing.”

Today -100: June 28, 1912: There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians

An attempt by Champ Clark supporters to pack the Democratic convention (they printed their own admission tickets) and rush his nomination through fails. They are now trying to bribe Boss Murphy of Tammany into throwing his minions behind Clark. But Murphy and the right wing of the party in general are scared shitless that if they knock Woodrow Wilson out of the race, his backers will join in a push for William Jennings Bryan, their worst nightmare. Bryan wasn’t even running in the primaries, but suddenly, here he is. Again.

Bryan makes a fiery speech introducing a resolution that “we hereby declare ourselves opposed to the nomination of any candidate for president who is the representative of or under any obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class.” He accuses those millionaires of trying to buy the Democratic nomination. The resolution further demands the withdrawal of any delegates representing those interests. This provoked outrage, with Virginia (Ryan’s a VA delegate) invoking state’s rights. Bryan withdrew that part of the resolution.

Bryan reports on his speech in his syndicated newspaper coverage: “But when I called the country’s attention to the fact that we had in the convention two men who are politically sexless, who have no god but money, and who do not hesitate to use political power for their own enrichment, I at once became ‘a disturber of peace’ and an ‘enemy of the Democratic party.’” “There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians.”

The resolution passes 889 (899?) to 196, because it’s just easier to give Bryan this one than have him storming out like Roosevelt. Bryan claims that the resolution’s passage makes clear that the convention is entirely a Progressive one.

Portugal says it will allow Jews to settle in Portuguese Angola and establish a self-governing Zionist colony.

A German Zeppelin flies nine hours from Hamburg to the North Sea and back, purportedly to demonstrate that it’s possible to use airships to bomb London if the need should ever, you know, arise.

16 have died from bubonic plague in Puerto Rico.

Yesterday, the NYT complained that British suffragette hunger-striking is making it impossible to keep them in prison. A letter today helpfully suggests deporting them to Borneo (similar letters can be found in the London Times).

Today -100: June 27, 1912: Of platforms, lynchings, bandanas, and hens

The Democratic convention decides to reverse the usual order of things and nominate the presidential and vice-presidential candidates before adopting a platform.

Taft says he deplores lynching and thinks those who do it should be punished. This in response to the woman being lynched in Georgia, where authorities have already said they aren’t going to punish anyone.

The new Progressive Party has purchased 28,000 red bandanas to be distributed to supporters. I guess the Rough Riders wore them at San Juan Hill.

Headline of the Day -100: “TAFT’S CADDY A SUICIDE; Guy Hurdle Had Been Scolded for Trading a Hen for a Watch.” The 13-year-old Guy Hurdle, for such was his name, hanged himself. No word on what became of the hen. I fear the worst.

Outspent

Just got an email from Barack Obama, because we’re close like that, and he’s worried about a dangerous trend in American politics: “I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.” Oh, please, Mr. President, tell us what we can do to reverse this awful situation, why Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if an incumbent president had a campaign chest of anything less than a billion dollars.

If you contribute, you are entered into a drawing for a “grassroots dinner” with the Obamas. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Today -100: June 26, 1912: Of conventions, marines, club women, lynchings, and bathing suits

Former South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Ira Jones tries to punch Gov. Blease after Blease says that his vote on the Court against a Jim Crow law was a vote for white women to be forced to ride in the same railroad carriage as “big negro bucks and wenches.” “That’s a lie,” yelled Jones, and went for him.

The Democratic Convention votes for Alton Parker over William Jennings Bryan for temporary chairman, 579 to 510. Parker gives the conservative keynote speech Bryan didn’t want to happen. Bryan reviews it in his syndicated reporting thusly: “People will not remain in a large hall unless they know what is being said, and Judge Parker’s speech was written in the language of Wall street. Only 200 or 300 of the delegates could understand it, and the committee was so busy oiling the machine that it had neglected to provide an interpreter to translate the speech into the every day language of Democrats.”

More by Bryan: “The smoke of battle has cleared away, and the country is now able to look upon the amazing spectacle of a national convention controlled by a national committee, that committee controlled by a subcommittee of 16, the sub-committee controlled by a group of eight men, these men controlled by Boss Murphy and Boss Murphy controlled by Thomas Fortune Ryan. Probably never before in the history of the country have we seen two men attending a national convention and pulling the strings in the open view of the public.”

The US Marines Taft sent to Cuba have been exchanging gunfire with the negro rebels.

The 11th biennial convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs is meeting, or, as the NYT headline puts it, “CLUB WOMEN MEET.; Thousands Make San Francisco Pavilion Attractive by Their Gowns.”

A rare lynching of a black woman, Annie Beshdale, a maid who supposedly stabbed her mistress to death (which is the sort of thing that white Southerners found especially worrying) in Pinehurst, Georgia. Authorities will make no effort to find the culprits, although they used automobiles, which were identified. She was hanged, and her body shot up.

Venice, California is considering a new bathing suit ordinance. Women would be required to wear bathing suits of “suitable heavy material which will not cling to the person,” with a skirt at least 14 inches below the waist and a neckline at most 2 inches below the shoulder. Men’s bathing suits must have skirts reaching the knee.

The pissant dissents

Earlier in the day, I read and wrote up most of Scalia’s dissent in Arizona v. United States (pdf, Scalia begins on p.30), but before finishing I had to go out to feed some ducks and perform other important tasks like that, while the Interwebs tore it to pieces, so by now probably none of this is new to you. But what the hell.

He puts a lot of emphasis on states being “sovereign,” which my dictionary defines as “possessing supreme or ultimate power.” I’m pretty sure Arizona isn’t that. Anyway, being sovereign, it has “the power to exclude.” He quotes “Emer de Vattel’s seminal 1758 treatise on the Law of Nations” to support that. Again, though, Arizona is not actually a nation (it is a mental state brought on by too much time in the sun without a hat). Then he quotes I R. Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (1854), except, again, international law doesn’t grant Arizona the right to ban people or any other rights because Arizona isn’t actually a nation. I don’t know how this has escaped Scalia’s notice.

Actually, there’s a linguistic clue that he hasn’t: at several points he talks about Arizona “protecting its borders.” Plural. Thing is, it has borders, plural, with other states of These Here United States but only one, singular, international border. It can’t “protect” the former (although, as the resident of one of the states bordering Arizona, I gotta say to Jerry Brown: Build the danged fence!).

He notes that states in the 19th century passed laws restricting entry of convicted criminals, indigents, people with contagious diseases and freed slaves. Those are the precedents he cites, because he’s Tony Fucking Scalia. And presumably, since he’s citing these as positive precedents for his position on Arizona’s law, he believes that it’s okay for states to pass such laws again. If we now see a spate of Southern states passing laws banning entry by free negroes from other states, we’ll know who to blame.

Actually, he says that the federal government has not pre-empted the power of the states to exclude, that is, to decide on their own what foreigners to allow into their states.

He criticizes Obama’s recent decision not to deport certain illegal immigrants who came as children and says that the states are free to arrest and imprison those people themselves, because of their awesome sovereignty.

There’s some racist immigrant-fear-mongering that could not be more out of place in a Supreme Court opinion, including an accusation that Obama “leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants” and puts the states “at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws”. Obama has tied Arizona to the railroad tracks and is twirling his mustache while waiting for the Messkin hordes to have their way with her. Scalia says that Arizona’s “citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants”. They may or may not feel themselves “under siege,” but they’re not.

He concludes, “If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.” Okay, let’s.

Today -100: June 25, 1912: Of assassins, temporary speakers, and wotherspoons

Headline of the Day -100: “Blease Fears Assassins.” South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease says that followers of Ira Jones, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who is running against Blease for governor, have threatened to kill him. At a meeting last week, police had to break up a near-fight between the governor and the judge, and Blease has threatened that if Jones again “insults me personally, I shall hold him strictly to account off the platform when no others will be in danger,” which I take to be a promise to challenge him to a duel.

The Democratic convention has two women delegates, Mrs. Hutton of Washington and Mrs. Pilzer of Colorado (the latter is Champ Clark’s sister-in-law).

The fight over the temporary speakership of the Democratic Convention continues. Alton Parker is confirmed in the role by the DNC and there will be a floor fight over it. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except Bryan made it one. Bryan says if he can’t find a progressive candidate to run against Parker, he’ll do it himself. Parker, by the way, is attorney for AFL President Samuel Gompers, but wasn’t in court today when Gompers was sentenced to one year for contempt of the (highly contemptible) DC district court, which had issued an injunction against an AFL boycott.

Name of the Day -100: newly promoted Major General William Wallace Wotherspoon.

British suffragist leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence are released from prison one month into their 9-month sentences as a result of their hunger strike (other prisoners are being forcibly fed, Pankhurst was not).

The Newsroom

Aaron Sorkin misses Murrow & Cronkite. But you know who his new show made me miss?

Lou

Rossi

Billie

Charlie

Mrs. Pynchon

Animal


That said, Edward R. Murrow’s attempted interview of Harpo Marx was fucking hilarious.

Today -100: June 24, 1912: Of chairmen, prison riots, and Bedelia the Bear

Leading Democratic presidential candidates Gov. Woodrow Wilson & Speaker of the House Champ Clark are failing to take William Jennings Bryan’s bait in his crusade against Alton Parker being named the Democratic Convention’s temporary chairman. Bryan sees it as part of a sinister plot to give the “reactionaries” control of the convention and of the nomination (given the role Root performed as chair at the R. convention, he might have a point).

The Washington state Socialist Party nominates Anna Malley for governor, with more than 5,000 ballots returned.

The warden of San Quentin blames a recent revolt there, in which one convict was shot, on... wait for it... women voters, who have been advocating reform of the prison.

A bear escapes on Coney Island and goes to the beach. Bedelia the bear goes to the beach. Sounds like a not very good children’s book.

Today -100: June 23, 1912: Your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit

Right before the Republican convention was scheduled to vote on the presidential nomination, Henry Allen of Kansas read out a statement from Theodore Roosevelt which said that since the RNC had, “by the so-called steam-roller methods, and with scandalous disregard of every principle of elementary honesty and decency,” stolen delegates and “substitute[d] a dishonest for an honest majority,” making “the convention in no proper sense any longer a Republican convention representing the real Republican party. Therefore I hope the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the convention. I do not release any delegate from his honorable obligation to vote for me if he votes at all, but under the actual conditions I hope that he will not vote at all. ... Any man nominated by the convention as now constituted would be merely the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable to any man to accept the convention’s nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds, and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds.” Allen continued (I’m not sure if this is still TR’s statement), “we decided that your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit.” “You accuse us of being radical. Gentlemen, let me tell you that no radical in the ranks of radicalism ever did so radical a thing as to come to a national convention of the great Republican party and secure through fraud the nomination of a man that they know could not be elected.”

Taft was officially and alliteratively nominated by Ohio’s ex-Lt. Gov. Warren G. Harding: “I have heard men arrogate to themselves the title of ‘Progressive Republicans,’ seemingly forgetting that progression is the first essential to Republican fellowship... Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed.” Taft is in fact “the greatest Progressive of his time,” said Harding, to the accompaniment of “hisses, hoots, groans, and boos”. Later in the speech Harding accused TR of “pap rather than patriotism” and elevated Taft to the “party pantheon.”

Almost 1/3 of the delegates abstained from voting (including 20 of the 22 from California). Taft won the nomination by a narrow majority (561). 107 of the Roosevelt delegates felt honor-bound to honor their instructions or primary voters and vote for TR, but most (344) sat on their hands. The convention then re-nominated James Schoolcraft Sherman as VP, the first time a sitting VP had been re-nominated in 80 years, even though Sherman was dying of Bright’s disease and everyone knew it (Spoiler alert: he will die just before the election).

A platform is adopted.

Taft gives the NYT a statement that his, um, victory means the constitution has been saved. Evidently he sees this as purely a defeat of the idea of judicial recall. “All over this country patriotic people to-night are breathing more freely, that a most serious menace to our republican institutions has been averted.”

Roosevelt delegates hold a rump convention and nominate Roosevelt for president. He accepts, but says he’d step aside if the new party, once it is organized and holds a proper convention, decides to choose someone else, like that could happen. A lot of speeches use the phrase “Thou Shalt Not Steal” and the most popular word is “fraudulent.” The convention will meet again tomorrow. Says Gov. Hiram Johnson, “I know it is Sunday, but our work is holy work.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Hamburg Has a Talking Cat.”

Allegedly, an anarchist tries to poison King Victor Emmanuel of Italy’s trout. The cook tasted the dish and dropped dead.

The US Secret Service plans to adopt guns that fire gas that blinds and chokes people.