Today -100: April 12, 1913: Of hunger strikes, rag-tags, and sailors

Day 9 of Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike. Holloway Prison officials are not forcibly feeding her – they don’t dare – but instead try to tempt her with much nicer food than the usual prison fare. Steak, chops, custard pudding, cocoa...

Suffragettes set fire to the grandstand of the cricket grounds at Tunbridge Wells. And break the windows of a Daily Standard editor. And are destroying fire alarms in London. Among other things. Oh, and one of them phoned the king on his private phone number. He hung up.

Misleading Headline of the Day -100: “Industrial Workers Quit.” Actually, IWW organizers fled from a posse organized by the Grand Junction, Colorado city government following a mass meeting demanding that the sheriff drive the Wobblies out of town. The LAT’s headline is “I.W.W. Rag-Tag Shoved Along.”

Three American sailors are killed in Guaymas, Mexico, possibly by the police chief, while they were drunkenly partying on shore leave.

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Today -100: April 11, 1913: Of train crashes, sherlocks, and blockades

A train is wrecked in Mexico, killing 20, because the passengers, afraid of rebels, insisted that the train speed up.

Name of the Day -100: Pres. Wilson appoints as postmaster for Baltimore one Sherlock Swann.

The Powers are now blockading Montenegro’s coast.

This won’t be in the papers, but the Cabinet discussed plans to segregate federal workers. There was no opposition.

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Today -100: April 10, 1913: Bye bye Montenegro?

Pres. Wilson refuses to interfere with a bill being considered by the California Legislature to ban Japanese people owning property (state’s rights, you know; if the feds stopped racial discrimination in one state, who knows where it would all end).

Montenegro is threatening that if the Great Powers use force to prevent it annexing land the Powers want for an Albanian state, King Nicholas will abdicate and Montenegro will merge with Serbia.

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Wherein Obama approvingly utters a phrase that embodies much that is wrong with America

Last week: “There doesn’t have to be a conflict between protecting our citizens and protecting our Second Amendment rights. I’ve got stacks of letters in my office from proud gun owners...”

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Today -100: April 9, 1913: Votes for women and damn the consequences

Pres. Wilson reads his address to Congress on tariffs in person, the “address from the throne,” and the republic does not end. Yet.

Oh, tariffs. Yeah, he wants them reduced.

China’s first-ever Parliament opens. The NYT notes that members are “nearly all dressed in European fashion”.

News of Emmeline Pankhurst’s health deteriorating in prison as she hunger strikes (but is not forcibly fed) is greeted with an attempt to blow up Dudley Castle. Painted on one of the castle’s cannons: Votes for women and damn the consequences.

Also, mail boxes. They’re destroying lots of mail.

Not six months after the last referendum on women’s suffrage in Michigan, there’s another one, and while the one last November was defeated very narrowly (and somewhat suspiciously), this time it’s losing much more decisively, with the Brewers’ Association offering cash prizes for high No votes.

A woman is elected mayor of Tyro, Kansas and women are also elected to a majority of town council.

That (still) unnamed US senator accused of attacking a married woman, who the US attorney refused to prosecute? The woman’s husband has sent a copy of her affidavit to every member of the Senate. Here’s a brief extract: “We first conversed for some time about patronage and the Senator began to make improper advances, and I reprimanded him and he apologized.” Hot stuff.

The 17th amendment, for the popular election of sex pests, sorry, US senators, is ratified by the 36th state, so it will be officially ratified just as soon as the states that have ratified actually send in their official notifications, which only 22 have.

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Today -100: April 8, 1913: Of borders and addresses from the throne

Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, says there would have been a Europe-wide war if the Powers hadn’t agreed on the borders for Albania.

Some members of Congress are opposing Wilson’s plan to address Congress in person because who does he think he is, the king or something?

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Homicidal intent

The London Sunday Times reports that British soldiers are being given classes in body language: “The troops are being taught how subtle gestures, eye signals and changes to body posture can indicate that a ‘green-on-blue’ attack is imminent. Even the way an individual swings his arm or the direction his feet are pointing can provide a clue that he is hiding a gun. Troops are being told that three or more suspicious body language ‘cues’ may indicate ‘homicidal intent’.”

Afghans might be forgiven for thinking that nothing indicates “homicidal intent” so much as occupation forces being taught that they can and should shoot natives who look at them funny.

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Responsibly and judiciously

Secretary of War Chuck Hagel: “If we refuse to lead, something, someone will fill the vacuum. The next great power may not use its power as responsibly or judiciously as America has used its power over the decades since World War II.”

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Today -100: April 7, 1913: Of blockades, socialists, and jaywalkers

Although warships from Austria, Italy, Britain, France and Germany are blockading one of its ports, Montenegro refuses to give up its siege of Scutari, which the Powers want to go to Albania.

Woodrow Wilson plans to address Congress in person, something no president has done since Jefferson, to ask for tariff revision.

In Mondak, Montana, a negro is lynched (hanged, shot, burned). Later, authorities return his body to the jail for burial. Later still, someone breaks in to the jail, drags the corpse to the river and dumps it in.

Socialist candidates do badly in Berkeley municipal elections, except for a Mrs. Elvira Deals, who is elected to the school board.

Woodrow Wilson jaywalks, and the NYT (front page) is ON IT!

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Today -100: April 6, 1913: Of dirigibles, wild women, and freaks

Oo, mysterious: an unnamed US senator is accused of “a criminal assault on a married woman,” but the US attorney refuses to prosecute.

The French parliament will be called back into session early, so it can authorize the purchase of more dirigibles for the military, to keep up with the Germans.

Headline of the Day -100: “‘Wild Women’ Burn and Smash for Vote.” The first retaliations for the imprisonment of Emmeline Pankhurst: the grandstand of Ayr racetrack is burned and the flower beds in Armstrong Park, Newcastle are “devastated.” Guards are now protecting various country houses and the Shakespeare memorials in Stratford.

The Sunday NY Times Magazine section has an article (with pictures) on Barnum & Bailey’s freaks.

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Today -100: April 5, 1913: Of zetas and zeppelins

The British authorities are more than a little worried about how WSPU suffragettes will respond to Emmeline Pankhurst’s prison sentence. Kidnappings? Assassinations? There’s already been some property damage: bombs on empty railroad cars, an empty house burned. Some of it maybe even by suffragettes.

Montenegro, still refusing to join the peace, is being blockaded by ships of all the Great Powers except Russia. King Nicholas says that acquiring the fertile agricultural lands of the Zeta Valley (as opposed to the “barren mountains” of Montenegro) “is a matter of life or death” for Montenegro, adding that he’s heard Zeta girls are totally easy.

German newspapers say that the crew of the Zeppelin 4 should have blown it (and themselves) up rather than land it in France.

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We don’t want the smoking gun to be bellicose statements, or something

The State Dept on why it was totally necessary to practice in the skies over South Korea for bombing North Korea and stationing new weapons in SK: “When you have a country that is making the kind of bellicose statements and taking the kind of steps that they have, you have to take it seriously and you have to take steps to defend the US and its allies.” We are deploying the latest in anti-bellicose-statement technology.

The Guardian says that the US gov asked China to order North Korea to tone down its rhetoric. That’s an awful lot of work to deal with the clear and present danger posed by rhetoric.

Speaking of rhetoric, NK denounced the joint US-SK “madcap war exercises.” They’re clearly looking forward to the MASH reboot as much as I am.

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Today -100: April 4, 1913: Of artificial excitement and hysterical enthusiasm, dirigibles, and peanuts

Emmeline Pankhurst’s trial concludes. She refuses to call witnesses but does make a speech. She notes that she is pleading not guilty, despite having pointedly taken responsibility for the attempt to destroy Lloyd George’s country home, because the indictment said that she had “wickedly and maliciously” incited the act. Before the judge can stop her, she slips in a mention of an unnamed judge who was found dead in a brothel. She adds that she looks upon herself as a prisoner of war, under no moral obligation to accept her sentence, and that she plans to hunger strike and get out in time to speak at a meeting at the Albert Hall next week. The jury finds her guilty, with a recommendation for mercy, which the Dickensianly named Justice Lush ignores, sentencing her to 3 years.

The Standard (UK) says that the “artificial excitement and hysterical enthusiasm of militant meetings” causes “decent girls and married women” to “make criminals of themselves, [be] sent to jail, and go through hunger strikes and consequent degradation. It is useless to pretend that contact with the criminal law and experiences of prison can be otherwise than prejudicial to female modesty. Womanliness is a decent flower that cannot long survive the atmosphere of rowdyism which Mrs. Pankhurst has done so much to create.”

On April Fool’s, there was a French newspaper hoax about a German dirigible overflying France. Now, it’s actually happened. The Zeppelin IV lands, on the military parade grounds at Lunéville. It got lost and blown off course. Or so its crew says. After a search of the airship for spy stuff (and a nice chance for the French to do some industrial espionage of their own) and an investigation, the airship and its crew are released. 600 locals wrote their names on it as well as Vive la France and other, less printable, comments.

Headline of the Day -100: “Peanuts Start Vice Hunt.” The Illinois Senate Vice Commission investigates an incident in which some immigrant girls (nationality unstated) traveling to Chicago stopped to buy a packet of peanuts and missed their train, leading others in their group to claim they must have been forcibly removed from the train by white slavers. By the time the train reached Chicago, the story was that two men had enticed 20 girls into their grips. Hilarity ensued.

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Today -100: April 3, 1913: Of suffrage, cats & mice, colon fires, and chairs

The lower house of the Connecticut Legislature rejects women’s suffrage, 150-74.

Emmeline Pankhurst is on trial for inciting persons unknown to place an explosive in Lloyd George’s future country house. The sole evidence presented against her is her speeches at public meetings. Mrs. Pankhurst, acting as her own attorney, complains that the police reports of her speeches are inaccurate – and ungrammatical.

The British government’s Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Bill (aka The Cat and Mouse Bill), giving the home secretary the power to release hunger-striking prisoners without having to commute their sentence, giving them time to recover under whatever restrictions he feels like putting on them, and then putting them back in prison to resume their sentence, is debated in Parliament. Home Secretary Reginald McKenna warns MPs against “attaching too much credence to the accounts which are being given as to the terrible tortures which are endured in prison under the system of forcible feeding.” He notes that “publicity is the keynote of this [suffrage] propaganda, and as part of publicity the prisoners who have been sent to prison for committing various offences, such as window breaking, attempted arson, and other offences, have adopted the hunger strike in the hopes of enlisting the sympathy of the outside public.” So while he claims the Cat & Mouse Bill is necessary to enforce the law, he makes clear that his real goal is to prevent suffragettes gaining publicity and making the government look bad. The bill passes its first stages.

The London Times applauds the Cat and Mouse Bill: “a hunger strike on the proposed terms will lose most of its charms, since it will neither offer a chance of martyrdom, nor make a picturesque appeal to sentiment, nor evade the decreed punishment.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Panic in Colon Fire.” A movie theatre in Colon in the Panama Canal Zone.

Former President Taft now holds a chair at Yale Law School. Actually, the chair he was given at his first faculty meeting was too small to accommodate his ample bottom. Finally, they found an appropriate chair from the Midnight Club, a chair built for two people to sit in.

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Today -100: April 2, 1913: Of sieges, elevator operators, zeppelins, and aerial suicide

The Bulgarian Army claims that the capture of Adrianople was achieved at the cost of ten or eleven thousand Bulgarian casualties and 1,200 Serbians, and that the Serbians are wusses.

The Ottoman Empire agrees to the Powers’ proposed terms for a peace. Montenegro does not.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, after finding an elevator operator in the State Dept building well after his 8-hour day was over, changes the rule that operators must remain as long as the secretary of state is there.

A newspaper in Rheims, France, publishes a story about a German zeppelin cruising over several French forts before losing its propellers and landing near Rheims fortress. A crowd went to check it out and possibly, you know, lynch the German crew, but... April Fools! No German invasion... this time.

This may be another aeronautic first [update after reading to the end of the article: no, it’s not]: a Russian army pilot commits suicide by crashing his plane. His suicide note claims that he was the victim of many intrigues. Mysterious.

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Today -100: April 1, 1913: Of Morgans

J.P. Morgan dies, so that’s it for getting any other news out of the NYT today. He may have been worth less than $100,000,000. Loser.

Big Bill Haywood of the IWW (the Wobblies) is sentenced to six months’ hard labor for causing an unlawful assemblage, i.e., a strike meeting in Paterson, NJ. The sentence will be overturned later in the week.

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Today -100: March 31, 1913: Or pee on it

King Constantine of Greece will go to Salonika and stay there until peace is declared, in order to assert Greece’s claim to the region against Bulgaria’s. Some countries just plant a flag.

We’ve run into The Other Winston Churchill before, the American novelist who is not actually related to the British one. Woodrow Wilson is buying The Other Winston Churchill’s estate near Windsor, Vermont as a summer home.

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Scream and desperate efforts

With North Korea saying that it’s now in a state of war with South Korea, it seems like it’s time to start casting the role of Hawkeye for the MASH reboot. Suggestions in comments, please.

Actually, brainstorm...: Nathan Fillion as Hawkeye, Alan Tudyk as Trapper, Gina Torres as Hotlips, Adam Baldwin as Frank Burns, Ron Glass as Col. Potter, Jewel Staite as Radar, Sean Maher as Father Mulcahey and Summer Glau as Klinger (who has no trouble getting a Section 8)...

But I digress.

So just what is North Korea saying?

The service personnel and people of the DPRK [North Korea] have turned out as one in the sacred war for annihilating the enemy, their hearts burning with towering hatred and resentment...

Did I mention this is a statement by the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea?

.... at the U.S. imperialists and south Korean group of traitors going reckless in their moves to destroy the symbol of the supreme dignity of the DPRK, not content with staging war exercises against the north. ...

Terrified by the toughest measures taken by the DPRK recently, the south Korean puppet group is letting loose a spate of invectives...

Worst. Episode of the Muppet Show. Ever.

These are scream and desperate efforts of those frightened by the invincible might of the DPRK winning victory after victory with all the service personnel and people united close around the brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu [that would be Kim Il-sung, you know, the first dictator] in single mind and their high spirit to annihilate the enemies.

The puppet group seems to have lost the ability of discerning the situation being stupefied with amazement. ...

The puppet group is sadly mistaken if it thinks it can hurt even a bit the unbreakable single-minded unity and the image of the dignified DPRK in which all service personnel and people have formed a harmonious whole with their leader.

Kinky.

The DPRK’s army and people are compelled to take notice of the ever stepped-up anti-DPRK invectives by the puppet group instigated by the venomous swish of skirt of the owner of the inner room of Chongwadae.

They mean South Korean President Park Geun-hye. To be fair, I hear the swish of skirt really is quite venomous.

The group of traitors pointing their fingers at the sky will never be able to evade punishment.

Because it’s not polite to point.

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Today -100: March 30, 1913: Of riddles, dirigibles, governors overboard, segregation and more riddles

Headline of the Day -100: “Mayor Riddle Arrested.” The Riddler became the mayor of Gotham City and... Actually the mayor of Atlantic City, pinched for procuring false testimony. The prequel to Boardwalk Empire, I guess.

The German Navy plans its own fleet of aircraft, in addition to the army’s fleet of aircraft, because everyone wants their own fleet of aircraft. They plan to spend $12½ million over five years (1914-18), mostly on dirigibles.

Huerta’s forces seize the governor of Sinaloa, put him on a ship to send him for trial in Mexico City, whereupon he “falls overboard,” as was the custom.

The LAT reports an alleged plot to divide Mexico, with the northern states joining the United States.

There has been some discussion recently of “segregation” in various legislatures (California, NY, Colorado) and in the letter pages of the Times. “Segregation” here meaning forcing prostitutes into red-light districts. One such measure just failed in the Colorado Legislature. The NYT explains how it happened:

Mrs. Agnes Riddle [the first Republican woman CO state senator, elected 1911] attacked it on the ground that “fallen men should be segregated the same as fallen women.”

Representative Biles announced his willingness to insert a section providing for her suggestion.

“But there would be no men left,” objected Mrs. Riddle. [She may actually have said that there would be no men left IN THE LEGISLATURE, but I’m not sure how trustworthy my info is]

The House burst into laughter, which lasted ten minutes. Just before the roll call on the bill, Mrs. Riddle arose and said:

“Let him among you who is without sin cast the first vote.”

No one voted.

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Today -100: March 29, 1913: Shafted!

The Ohio state militia is shooting looters in drowned Dayton.

King Ferdinand of Bulgaria accepts the sword of the commander of the fortress of Adrianople. When was the last time a surrender involved a sword?

Serbs are claiming that it was their artillery and their troops that took Adrianople, but the Bulgarian commander says Serb operations were “purely demonstrative.”

NY Supreme Court Justice Henry Bischoff falls down an elevator shaft to his death. He was on his way to his chambers on the 13th floor, which just goes to show. The elevator operator seems to have panicked and started the car moving before the shaft door was closed. 83 people were killed in elevator accidents in 1912 in Manhattan alone. Bischoff’s death could have been stopped by an automatic locking device (elevator doesn’t move when doors are open), but real estate interests have thwarted proposed legislation to require them. Remember, elevators don’t kill people, people kill people.

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