Today -100: July 26, 1913: No one can destroy William Sulzer except William Sulzer himself

Wisconsin passes legislation for eugenic marriages – requiring health certificates – and for the sterilization of criminals, lunatics, epileptics and the feeble-minded. What could go wrong?

Peru’s former president (1908-12) Augusto Leguia and his son are arrested after shots are fired from his house at a mob attacking it.

NY Gov. Sulzer claims that his political enemies in Tammany Hall are literally plotting to kill him, and has hired private detectives to guard him. He says that Boss Murphy told him that he had driven governors McClellan and Dix out of public life and would do the same to him. Replied Sulzer, “No one can destroy William Sulzer except William Sulzer himself.” Ain’t it the truth.

Headline of the Day -100: “Duel Over Turkey Trot.” In Germany, between an Army general and a lt. colonel after the latter rebuked the former for allowing his daughter to dance the turkey trot, which the colonel thought unsuitable. Naturally, the general challenged him to a duel to the death, during which he stabbed him in the head with a sword, as was the custom.

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The language of the information fascists at the Bradley Manning trial

Prosecutor Ashden Fein calls Manning an “information anarchist,” because he knows that combines two things the military hates: anarchists and information.

Also says Manning had a “general evil intent,” which I believe is the name of one of the bad guys in the GI Joe cartoon.

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Today -100: July 25, 1913: Of massacres, plural voting, and the Piccadilly Flat

Bulgaria is complaining to every European power which will listen that Turkey violated the Treaty of London, which ended the First Balkan War, by attacking Bulgaria. It also complains of Turkish massacres. The Turks say they only invaded because of Bulgarian massacres.

The British House of Lords votes down the bill abolishing plural voting (one person being able to vote several times, based on owning property in multiple constituencies or having university degrees).

There’s a minor scandal going on in Britain. The police raided a brothel in Piccadilly (the door was answered by a woman in a sexy nurse costume), arrested the madame, Queenie Gerald, and then made very sure that her papers naming her clients, rumored to include numerous members of Parliament, disappeared. For her silence, Gerald got a suspiciously light sentence. Suffragists will make a meal of this case for many months to come (and Labour MP Keir Hardie will publish a pamphlet). In The Suffragette of this date, Christabel Pankhurst explains that prostitution is the fault of “the Anti-Suffrage theory of life.... Anti-Suffragists see in woman, sex and nothing more.” She mentions that the Piccadilly Flat saw all sorts of practices and, um, instruments (whips, she means whips). The magistrate who oversaw this case (and barred the public from his court) will show much less leniency to suffragettes that appear before him.

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I apologize in advance

Obama gave a speech on the economy today. This is how Anthony Weiner heard it:

“Blah blah blah.”

“And we love Dick. (Applause.)”

“Blah blah blah.”

“But -- and here’s the big ‘but’”

“Blah blah blah.”

“very essence of America -- that idea that if you work hard you can make it here.”

“Blah blah blah.”

“Washington has taken its eye off the ball.”

“Blah blah blah.”

“We’ve got to stand up for women’s rights. (Applause.)”

“Blah blah blah.”

“But I will not allow gridlock, or inaction, or willful indifference to get in our way. (Applause.)”

“Blah blah blah.”

“Where I can’t act on my own and Congress isn’t cooperating, I’ll pick up the phone”

“Blah blah blah.”

“I’ll call anybody who can help -- and enlist them in our efforts.”

“Blah blah blah.”

“Lincoln was all about building stuff”

“Blah blah blah.”

Wait, what? Lincoln was all about what?

“Blah blah blah.”

“unrealistic bubbles”

“Blah blah blah.”

“if you’re willing to work hard and discipline yourself and defer gratification, you can make it, too.” (Weiner likes the making it too part, not so much the deferring gratification part).

“Blah blah blah.”

“we’ve got to be open to new ways of doing things.”

“Blah blah blah.”

“I’m laying out my ideas to give the middle class a better shot.”

“Blah blah blah.”

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Today -100: July 24, 1913: Of dog tax schisms, fires, and toy pistols

Surreal Headline of the Day -100: “DOG TAX CAUSES SCHISM.; 1,400 Hamburgers Secede from State Church to Avoid Paying It.” Hamburgers meaning residents of Hamburg, of course. Evidently there’s a proposal to support the church through a tax on dogs...?

NY Gov. William Sulzer blames yesterday -100’s factory fire in Binghamton on Tammany’s Boss Murphy, who he says is responsible for the Legislature’s failure to act on his nominees for State Labor commissioner.

A one-time Prohibition Party candidate for mayor of Minneapolis pleads guilty to a charge of horse-stealing. He blames the booze.

The Vatican’s Swiss Guards are in a state of mutiny.

Headline of the Day -100: “Toy Pistol Scares M.P.’s.” A male suffragist fires a blank (from a real pistol, not a toy one, Mr. Headline Writer) in the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Commons.

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Today -100: July 23, 1913: Of state churches, the interests of negroes, coercing Mexico, banana protests, fires in factories, fires in prisons, barber riots, and perpetual motion

The House of Lords votes down the bill to disestablish the Anglican Church in Wales (i.e., they voted for antidisestablishmentarianism) until the issue is submitted to the judgment of the country in an election, because surely the next general election will turn on precisely this issue.

Pres. Wilson responds to a letter from Gaston Villard, chair of the NAACP, admitting that he plans to segregate government offices, “with the idea,” he writes, “that friction, or rather discontent and uneasiness which had prevailed in many departments would hereby be removed. It is as far as possible from being a movement against Negroes” but “in their interest.” So that’s okay then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Senate Talks of Coercing Mexico.” The US Senate discusses the Mexico situation, with many senators calling for military intervention, as was the custom. Purely to protect American citizens, of course. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico)’s resolution says that American citizens have the right to American protection for their lives AND PROPERTY anywhere in the world. In the House, William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray (D-Oklahoma) (who has to use that Alfalfa Bill thing to distinguish himself from Rep. William F. Murray of Massachusetts) introduces a resolution requiring the president to subdue Mexico militarily.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “To Voice Banana Protest.” A delegation from Jamaica arrives to protest a duty being placed on bananas. See, wasn’t that disappointing? I’m sure we can all think of much more interesting banana protests.

50 mostly young female factory workers die in a fire in the Binghamton Clothing Company (later reports say 40, but as the only list of employees also burned up, the true number is not known). Although survivors blame the lack of adequate escape routes, the owners blame it on the state-mandated post-Triangle Shirtwaist Fire fire procedures: the girls were so used to fire drills that they ignored the fire alarms.

Scary Headline of the Day -100: “Men Roar in Cells as Sing Sing Burns.” Started in the prison factories. No one killed, no one escaped.

There is a barber riot in Harlem in connection with a strike called by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Barbers’ Union. I’m not sure I’d feel safe having my hair cut by anyone calling themself a “Wobbly.”

An Italian invents a perpetual motion machine. It runs on the “caloric energy of the air,” which is totally a really thing. A later article describes the machine: “it consists essentially of a system of closed cup-shaped vessels containing a substance which vaporizes with extreme facility, and revolving, partly in air and partly in water, makes the machine work through successive vaporizations and condensations of the substance inside.”

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Today -100: July 22, 1913: Of arrests, roads, and Swiss guards

The Metropolitan Police again arrest Emmeline Pankhurst when she attempts to address a meeting. The crowd try to protect her, attacking the police with hatpins and teeth, but to no avail. Her daughter Sylvia, also out on a Cat & Mouse license, gives a speech in a hall in Bromley and escapes the police – East End women know how to put up a more robust resistance. In Birmingham, windows are broken at the Grand Hotel, where Prime Minister Asquith was addressing the Chamber of Commerce, and the fire brigade is called.

Oh, he was serious. Missouri Gov. Elliot Major issues a proclamation calling for a general suspension of business on August 20 & 21 so that every able-bodied male can engage in free road-maintenance work (women should do the catering and cheerleading).

The pope orders that his own Swiss Guard be disarmed, after repeated revolts.

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Today -100: July 21, 1913: Of reliable automobiles, bloomer girls, and protectorates

The Auto Club holds its 9th annual Reliability Tour, a 1,300-mile road trip, taking a mere seven days, to see how often they break down. The winners are the Hupmobiles, the Krit, the Metzes, and the Locomobile, which were totally real names of automobiles, which is one way in which 1913 was way cooler than 2013.

Sports News of the Day -100: “Four thousand angry fans surged on the diamond in the old Union League baseball park this afternoon when they learned that the ‘Bloomer Girls,’ who were playing against a team of young men, were not girls.”

When Honduras and El Salvador found out that the US was trying to negotiate a protectorate-type arrangement with Nicaragua, they were livid. Secretary of State Bryan hilariously failed to understand that their objection was to Yankee imperialism and to the wrecking of the possibility of a Central American Federation; he thought they just felt left out, so he tried to assuage them by offering similar arrangements to them. They told him to fuck off.

Turkish troops have retaken Adrianople, lost so humiliatingly during the First Balkan War.

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Today -100: July 20, 1913: Of censorship, poisoned hatpins, the draft, protectorates, and fake suffragettes

After a deputy of the Russian Duma attacks the government’s anti-Jewish policies, the Tsar’s Imperial Council bans the Duma discussing any subject not put before it by the government.

Seattle Mayor George Cotterill bans The Seattle Times, which he blames for yesterday’s riot. He says it garbled its report of the speech by Navy Secretary Daniels, causing the sailors to think they had permission to attack Wobblies and Socialists. However a judge issues an injunction and the paper prints as normal (he also reverses the mayor’s order to saloons not to open). Rear Admiral Alfred Reynolds refuses a request by city authorities to restrict shore leave.

Portland, Oregon ordered lesbian IWW activist Dr. Marie Equi to leave the state after she gave a free-speech speech. She didn’t, so they charge her with inciting a riot and assault with a deadly weapon, to wit a hatpin. She had threatened to stab any cop who tried to arrest her with a hatpin dipped in poison. She did scratch a cop, but evidently neglected the poison.

The French Parliament votes to expand mandatory military service from two years to three.

Secretary of State Bryan informs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of his plans to turn Nicaragua into a protectorate, presumably to keep the neighborhood of the Panama Canal “stable.” Bryan is proposing a new draft of the treaty which the Taft administration began negotiating: Nicaragua gets a large loan and the US gets a veto over Nicaragua declaring war on anyone, or signing treaties, “That the United States should have the right to intervene at any time to preserve Nicaraguan independence, or to protect life or property,” 99-year-year leases on naval bases, and dibs on building a canal.

British Chancellor David Lloyd George and Attorney General Rufus Isaacs were enjoying the weekend as guests at a country estate, all very Downton Abbeyish. They were out playing golf when suddenly three women dressed in WSPU colors approached them. They looked around in alarm for the detective bodyguards all cabinet ministers now have to keep disorderly women away from them, but they were nowhere to be seen. One brandished a suffragette flag at Lloyd George, who cowered until he realized that the women were his and Isaacs’ wives and their hostess, playing a little practical joke. LG was not amused.

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That’s how our system works

Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House press room to talk about Trayvon Martin. On a Friday afternoon.

HE WENT TO LAW SCHOOL, YOU KNOW: “And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.” If that sentence seems like part of it is missing, that’s because he couldn’t really say, “And once the jury’s spoken, we have to respect that” or “And once the jury’s spoken, justice has been done,” or any other platitude suggesting that Florida possesses a just and fair and equal legal system. That’s how our system works, he shrugs.

AND IF MITT ROMNEY’S BILLION-DOLLAR TIME-MACHINE PROJECT EVER PAYS OFF.... “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

He said that most African-American men have experienced being followed in stores, people locking their car doors when he approaches, women in elevators being nervous etc. Notably, he doesn’t indicate any race for these people scared of black men.

He explains that black people are “looking at this issue” through the prism of their experiences of racism (a word he uses just once in this speech) and their knowledge of past racial disparities. In other words, he’s explaining to white people how black people think.

UNDERSTANDABLE: “I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests...” “Understandable” is to expressing support what “I’m sorry you were offended” is to apologies. “...and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent.” Sounds like he’s talking about a particularly difficult poo.

He wants “the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.” I’m sorry, but I find the balancing act he’s trying to perform here very amusing. He just can’t bring himself to say that the system has deserved the mistrust that “sometimes currently exists” toward it, but why else would training be required?

Similarly, he talks later about “helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society” without quite saying that at the present time they aren’t, just that they feel that way.

Then he criticized the Stand Your Ground law, and asks hypothetically, “I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.” This is just strange. Obama, a black man, is saying: but what if the scary black guy had a gun, huh? huh? didn’t think about that, did you?

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Happy Captive Nations Festapalooza 2013!

Obama issued a proclamation for Captive Nations Week 2013. So even stupid little symbolic Cold War relics like this one, which dates from 1959 when the “captive nations” were the Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union, don’t go away. The proclamation fails to name any of the current captive nations. It does say that “too many people still labor in the darkness of tyranny and oppression,” fails to say how many is just the right number. The population of Egypt, the country which he’s still not willing to admit had a coup, is more than 80 million, if that’s any help.

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Today -100: July 19, 1913: Of atrocities and battles in Seattle

The NYT assesses yesterday’s Greek claims of Bulgarian atrocities, and just isn’t sure which racial stereotype it wants to go with. On the one hand, the Greeks “have never been noted for slavish adherence to veracity,” but on the other, “the ethnic origin of the Bulgarians... lend[s] something of credibility to the accusations,” although, the paper adds, the Turks are also to blame for anything that might have happened, since having been subjects of the Ottoman Empire for so long was “a dreadfully effective training in the art of emphasizing victory and lessening future opposition by wholesale massacre, made more impressive by ingenious torture.” In the end, the Times judiciously decides on “a suspension of judgment as to just how much more barbarous the Bulgarians are than their neighbors.”

Seattle Mayor George Cotterill has come under some criticism for not banning IWW street-corner speakers (as long as they don’t block traffic or display a red flag). Anyway, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who is in town, made a speech praising the mayor of Boston for cracking down on lefties, adding that anyone who believes in the red flag should be driven out of the country. Daniels may not even have known that this was a local controversy and was just giving his standard red-baiting speech. The next day, 500 marines and sailors, with several thousand locals, attacked the headquarters of the Socialist Party and the IWW hall, burning furniture and destroying newspapers.

Mexican dictator Huerta sends Felix Díaz, his competitor for the office of president (should there ever be elections), to Japan as special ambassador, because Huerta is subtle like that.

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Today -100: July 18, 1913: Everywhere the Bulgarian has passed one sees only blood, dishonor, and ruin

King Constantine of Greece telegraphs to the NYT a report of atrocities – “horrors such as human history has never before recorded” – committed by the Bulgarians. For example, “Women and Girls Outraged and Then Burned in a Mosque to the Music of Bagpipes,” which is just adding insult to injury, really.

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Today -100: July 17, 1913: Of confederacies, slit skirts, and rude awakenings

Several southern Chinese provinces are preparing to declare independence and form a Southern Chinese Confederacy. The Chinese government blames Japan.

In Richmond (state not specified), a Miss Blossom Browning, which sounds like the name of the heroine in a 1920s short story, is fined $25 and ordered to leave town for appearing in a slit skirt.

Headline of the Day -100: “FREIGHT CAR IN HER ROOM.; Girl Rudely Awakened When Train Crashes Into House.”

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Today -100: July 16, 1913: The solution of the whole matter lies within cold water

Headline of the Day -100: “Georgia Votes for Bacon.” That would be Augustus O. Bacon, the first US senator elected by popular vote after the ratification of the 17th Amendment.

Mmm, Bacon.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan defends going on the lecture circuit for “part of my vacation.” The tour is six weeks: how long a vacation did secretaries of state get back then? He says he’s unwilling to eat into the (rather large) nest egg he’s built up “as a protection against old age.” Sen. Bristow (R-Kansas) suggests that if Bryan served pure spring water instead of “this nauseating grape juice,” he could live within his means. “The solution of the whole matter lies within cold water.”

The LAT reports that Speaker of the House Champ Clark also does the circuit for money when Congress is not in session.

Congress hastily passes a law to force arbitration and avert a major railroad strike.

The British House of Lords votes down Irish Home Rule, although since it no longer has veto power that amounts to a short delay only (unless some major international conflagration intervenes). Tory leaders in the Lords suggested that they needed to be convinced of public support for Home Rule by a referendum, only to add the next day that they would still reserve the right to amend the bill out of all recognition (“remove the blemishes and undesirable features by which it is characterized”). Prime Minister Asquith responds to this generous offer by announcing plans for a bill to abolish the House of Lords in the next session.

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Today -100: July 15, 1913: Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice

Theodore Roosevelt, who’s been awfully quiet lately, by his standards, plans to cross the Grand Canyon by mule, then hunt bears and mountain lions. Or possibly hunt mule and cross the Grand Canyon by bear, because he’s Teddy Fucking Roosevelt and that’s how he rolls!

Headline of the Day -100: “Mrs. Pankhurst Appears, Escapes.” British suffragettes are playing their Mice roles to the hilt. When out of prison on license while recuperating from hunger strikes, they’ve been attempting to give speeches, as Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney just did, and Sylvia Pankhurst did a couple of days ago, without being recaptured by the police and sent back to prison. Mrs. Pankhurst says, “Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice.” The police raid (and are attacked by the audience), Kenney was caught, Mrs. P was not (Update: Actually, according to the LAT, she was. She got into a cab but was followed by a detective and arrested). The WSPU has been auctioning off Cat & Mouse licenses.

The US has sent two more warships to Vera Cruz, making four total. “This gives umbrage to the better class of Mexicans.”

An article on whether William Jennings Bryan can actually be expected to live on his salary mentions that one cabinet secretary who managed to do so was James Wilson, who I haven’t particularly noticed before but he was secretary of agriculture for 16 straight years under the McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft administrations (but he was a widower and lived in an apartment hotel). Cabinet secretaries evidently spend up to $20,000 a year (on a $12,000 salary) to keep up appearances and entertain. However, Bryan doesn’t serve booze, so he saves about $2,500 a year. As secretary of state, he is entitled to carriages and horses and the services of an official coachman.

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Today -100: July 14, 1913: Of moonlighting and creating the millennium with the ballot

William Jennings Bryan is skipping out on his day job to go back on the lecture circuit for six weeks. He’s still secretary of state, but he needs the extra money, he says. He will be paid $12,000 by the Chautauqua bureaus, equal to his annual government salary.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York State Anti-Suffrage Association (not to be confused with the contemporaneous painter Alice Brown Chittenden), has been investigating conditions in California since the establishment of women’s suffrage there, and she is appalled. The Legislature is now dedicating itself to “creating the millennium with the ballot and regardless of the staggering cost” (I hereby nominate that for the new state motto). School teachers and old people are to be given pensions, children will not be taken away from their parents because of poverty; the state is also wasting money by appointing inspectors for orphans, establishing an Industrial Accident Commission, etc.

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Today -100: July 13, 1913: Of pogroms, monsters in human form, Yankee go home, and poets laureate

Police in Kiev are conducting house-to-house searches for Jews and expelling them from the city.

King Constantine of Greece vows to “wreak vengeance” for alleged atrocities by Bulgarian “monsters in human form.”

Turkey will join in the fun, sending troops to attempt to recapture territory it lost to the Bulgarians in the last Balkan War.

The NYT reports on the front page a baseless rumor that King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has been assassinated and that a revolution is beginning. Sofia has only itself to blame for the spread of wild rumors, since it shut down all the newspapers.

The US ambassador to Mexico complains about anti-American demonstrations, so the Huerta Junta helpfully
bans all demonstrations.

The new poet laureate of Great Britain is Robert Bridges, who pretty much no one is familiar with. Some grumble that it should have been Rudyard Kipling, others consider Kipling too gauche.

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Today -100: July 12, 1913: Of overstimulated linemen, crazy lepers, the people’s fruit, and wanton and futile demonstrations

Headline of the Day -100: “Supposed Dead Man On Telegraph Pole An Overstimulated Lineman.” Someone spotted him and called the fire department, which spread out a net and climbed the poll before they realized that he was not an electrocuted corpse but was, in fact, snoring. Alcohol may have been involved.

Headline of the Day -100 (yeah, yeah, two headlines of the day, live with it): “Early, The Leper, Goes Crazy.”

The NYT appeals to the Senate not to put a tariff on the banana, the “people’s fruit.”

The governor of Oregon shows up at an IWW meeting outside a fruit-packing plant and, after hearing a strike leader say that the plant would be closed, got up on the soap box and said that the plant would be protected by all the resources of the state.

A male supporter of women’s suffrage, in what the London Times calls “another wanton and futile demonstration,” fires a toy pistol in the gallery of the House of Commons. Hilarity ensues.

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Today -100: July 11, 1913: Of Balkan wars and martyrs to x-ray

Romania, which was not a participant in the First Balkan War, joins the war against Bulgaria.

Leo Frank’s lawyers have found a man who confessed to the murder of Mary Phagan (and believed by historians to be the real killer). So that settles that.

Headline of the Day -100: “Dies a Martyr to X-Ray.” Burton Baker of the Baker X-Ray Tube Company.

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