Today -100: October 14, 1913: Of raids, warships, and prohibition

Police raid a suffrage meeting to arrest Sylvia Pankhurst, who is rescued by her East End followers. East Enders don’t fuck around, yo.

Secretary of State Bryan asks Huerta not to kill those arrested deputies, please.

Germany thinks about the Mexican coup and decides that what the situation really requires is the presence of a German warship.

The Arkansas Supreme Court allows a prohibition bill to take effect in January. Liquor licenses may only be granted in any community if there is a petition signed by the majority of all white adults.

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Today -100: October 13, 1913: Ireland must remain a nation

Last week -100, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill suggested excluding Northern Ireland from Home Rule. Leader of the Irish Nationalists John Redmond says no, Ireland must remain a nation.

I see the NYT is still referring to Huerta as the “provisional president” of Mexico, even though he’s no longer pretending that he intends to hold elections and happily step aside.

The Kiev ritual murder trial is going badly for the prosecution, with witness after witness (including police witnesses) showing astonishingly faulty memories, and some admitting to having been told what to say by the police. Even the anti-Semitic newspapers are making fun of the case.

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Today -100: October 12, 1913: Of Volturnos, dictators, new kings, new archipelagos, and tangos

The steamship Volturno, sailing from Rotterdam to Canada, bringing emigrants from Russia, Poland, etc, catches fire in the mid-Atlantic. 125 die but wireless distress calls brings ships which rescue 521 after several hours of being prevented from doing so by a storm, which also smashed some of the lifeboats against the ship (although lack of training of the crew was also responsible). The captain was the last off the ship, along with his dog Jack. The Volturno was regulated by the British, who didn’t require hand fire extinguishers, so there weren’t any.

Huerta dissolves the Mexican Congress. He says this will restore peace and prevent anarchy, so yay.

Suffragists mob King George and Queen Mary as they arrive at a music hall, shouting “Women are being tortured in prison!”

Prince William Frederick of Wied accepts the job of king of Albania.

Russian Arctic explorers have discovered a body of land as large as Greenland (it really isn’t). They name it Emperor Nicholas II Land (the Soviets will imaginatively rename it Severnaya Zemlya, or Northern Land.)

Headline of the Day -100: “Boston Bans the Tango.” A cop and a matron will be stationed in every public dance hall to prevent the dance, by order of Mayor John Fitzgerald (JFK’s grandfather). The turkey trot is also banned, and youths under 17.

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Today -100: October 11, 1913: Of coups within coups, deformed and mutilated manhoods, and dynamite

In Mexico, Sen. Belisaro Dominguez disappears or, to phrase it more accurately, is disappeared, after making a speech critical of Huerta. Members of the Chamber of Deputies sign a resolution warning Huerta about that and threatening to move out of Mexico City. So he sends soldiers into the Chamber to arrest 110 of them.

Federal troops in Mexico lose Torreon to the rebels (Pancho Villa’s forces).

Alton Parker concludes his speech against NY Gov. William Sulzer in his impeachment trial. Parker says there is no limitation on what might constitute a cause for impeachment (including non-criminal acts and acts before Sulzer took office) and that it is up to the High Court of Impeachment to decide. I’m getting flashbacks to the Clinton impeachment.

Oh, dear, now I’m reading Alton’s speech and REALLY getting Clinton impeachment flashbacks: “Stripped to his quaking flesh, he stands now naked before this tribunal, without a rag of his attempted vindication clinging to his deformed and mutilated manhood.”

Woodrow Wilson touches a button on his desk to detonate 8 tons of dynamite to blow up a dike in the Panama Canal. It blowed up real good.

A Kiev newspaper, an anti-Semitic newspaper yet, is suppressed for saying that the “blood ritual murder” trial is bullshit.

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Today -100: October 10, 1913: Of opium, bullfights, roads, plague rats, hunger-strikers, impeachments and blood libels

Britain plans to establish an opium monopoly in Hong Kong, to facilitate ending the trade, supposedly.

French President Raymond Poincaré is visiting Spain. They scheduled a bullfight in his honor, but he said fuck no, he likes animals.

Nebraska has two of those everyone-work-on-the-roads-for-free days.

Headline of the Day -100: “Plague Rat Dooms a Building.” A rat with bubonic plague is caught in the Old Seattle Hotel, which is ordered demolished.

British Home Secretary Reginald McKenna orders the resumption of forcible feeding of imprisoned suffragettes. The Cat & Mouse Act was supposed to end that by releasing hunger-strikers for a bit to recover and then putting them back in prison (the last part the government has been doing at its discretion, because it would rather intimidate suffragettes into “behaving” than make martyrs out of them), but McKenna has decided that those convicted of arson should not be released.

The former judge acting as NY Gov. Sulzer’s attorney in his impeachment trial tells the High Court of Impeachment (which consists of the state senate plus high court judges) to shit or get off the can on the issue of whether a public servant can be impeached for acts that took place before he held office: “If that can be done in the present instance, then this court could convict the governor of the state and remove him from office because he stole cherries when a boy or spat on the sidewalk when a man.” He also argues that the law requiring the reporting of campaign expenses applies only to money expended, not donations received, and anyway no affidavit or oath is required, so no perjury was committed.

Speaking for the prosecution, Alton Parker, former chief judge of the NY Supreme Court and the 1904 Democratic candidate for president, says that Sulzer can indeed be impeached for the cherry thing, although I can’t say he makes much of a case for it. He also says of Sulzer blaming the incomplete campaign donation statements on a subordinate, “if Sarecky’s morals were bad and his business methods questionable, we must remember that he got all his moral and business training as an attaché of Mr. Sulzer’s office.” Wow, that is some crappy lawyering, Judge Parker. The prosecution is also doing a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose thing with Sulzer’s (laughable) claim that the donations he didn’t report were personal rather than campaign contributions: the prosecution case is that if that’s true, Sulzer is guilty of larceny because the donors would have assumed their money was going to the campaign.

700 Hungarian rabbis sign a declaration that Jews don’t use blood for religious purposes and send it (the declaration, not blood) to the court in Kiev currently trying Mendel Beilis.

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Today -100: October 9, 1913: Of battleships, impeachments, and dead princesses

Woodrow Wilson wants to build three new battleships, but is having trouble with the big steel firms: Bethlehem and Midvale Steel companies are refusing to compete with each other, offering identical bids. So the government may have to build its own armor-plate factory.

NY Gov. Sulzer’s lawyers in his impeachment trial end the defense case without the governor testifying. Neither did his wife, who he’s been blaming for diverting campaign funds into stock speculations, although not so much during the actual case. He’s been implying that while he didn’t want to be such a cad as to put his wife on the stand, she was totally responsible.

It seems Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach did not commit suicide because she was forbidden from marrying a Jew, but out of guilt for running over and killing a girl the month before (her chauffeur was just acquitted, and wasn’t it delightful of the royals to let him stand trial for it when she was driving?).

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I’ve been willing to compromise my entire political career

Today Obama held a press conference.

He starts by saying he told Boehner “that I am happy to talk with him and other Republicans about anything -- not just issues I think are important but also issues that they think are important.” Or, to put it more plainly: I don’t think the issues they think are important are actually important.

“Think about it this way, the American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs.” I’m pretty sure Mitt Romney referred to his employees’ wages as ransom.

“You don’t get a chance to call your bank and say I’m not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox.” I think it would be hilarious if everybody in America with a mortgage tested this proposition tomorrow.

“In the same way, members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs.” Sometimes I think Obama’s just stopped paying attention.

“No American president would deal with a foreign leader like this.” Ask Iran and Cuba about this, to name just two.

“Either my chief of staff or I have had serious conversations on the budget with Republicans more than 20 times since March.” Define serious.

“So even after all that, the Democrats in the Senate still passed a budget that effectively reflects Republican priorities at Republican budget levels just to keep the government open, and the House Republicans couldn’t do that either.” Obama’s not even looking for a negotiating partner anymore, he’s looking for someone to accept his surrender, and he can’t even find that. Wait, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

“Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb, a weapon too horrible to use. It would disrupt markets, it would undermine the world’s confidence in America as the bedrock of the global economy...” I guess my stock portfolio isn’t big enough to consider disrupted stock markets just as bad as thermonuclear war.

“the way we got to this point was one thing and one thing only, and that was Republican obsession with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying health care to millions of people. That law ironically is moving forward.” More Americans will have access to ironic health care than ever before!

“And when I hear people trying to downplay the consequences of that, I think that’s really irresponsible. And I’m happy to talk to any of them individually and walk them through exactly why it’s irresponsible.” Wow, the president will personally explain to me how irresponsible I am, sign me up, said no one ever.

“So -- so a lot of the strategies that people have talked about -- well, the president can roll out a big coin and -- or, you know, he can -- he can resort to some other constitutional measure -- what people ignore is that ultimately what matters is, what do the people who are buying Treasury bills think?” In case you were wondering who really runs the country.

“I have flaws. Michelle will tell you. One of them is not that I’m unwilling to compromise. I’ve been willing to compromise my entire political career.” That sentence can be read two ways, both of them correct.

Asked if the capture/kidnap (capnap?) of Abu Anas al-Libi in Libya followed international law, he somehow failed to answer.

“I was at a small business the other day and talking to a bunch of workers, and I said, you know, when you’re at the plant and you’re in the middle of your job, do you ever say to your boss, you know what, unless I get a raise right now and more vacation pay, I’m going to just shut down the plant; I’m not going to just walk off the job, I’m going to break the equipment -- I said, how do you think that would go?” And they said, ha ha, thanks for reminding us that organized unionism has been destroyed in this country.

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Today -100: October 8, 1913: Of race riots and forgotten property

Race riot in Romeo, Illinois after blacks attack the jail to release a woman jailed for drunkenness. The leader is shot dead. “Two households, both alike in dignity,” indeed. (The NYT is using the town’s old name; it changed its name to Romeoville when its sister town Juliet – isn’t that adorable? – changed its to Joliet).

Headline of the Day -100: “Buys Property, Forgets It.” A Mr. E.R. Wood of Philadelphia paid $3,800 for a property in 1887, and forgot all about it, as one does. It was taken over by squatters and eventually bought for $100 by a couple who are now awarded ownership.

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Today -100: October 7, 1913: I am going to give them my body and they can do anything they like with it

The impeachment trial of NY Gov. William Sulzer continues. From the opening remarks of his counsel: “The respondent is a plain, affable man, easy to approach, and a man who, until the year 1913, never made enemies. ... He never kept books of account or records of his transactions. He is exceedingly careless and unmethodical. Details are something to which he is almost a stranger.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Russia May Want Another Pogrom.” The Manchester Guardian suggests that the prosecution of a Jew, Mendel Beilis, in Kiev for the supposed ritual murder of a Christian teenager (who was very probably actually killed by a criminal gang who thought he was a snitch) is being deliberately conducted and publicized in such a way as to foment hatred of Jews.

Yuan Shih-kai is elected president of China by the Chinese Parliament.

Francis Burton Harrison, the new governor-general of the Philippines, arrives in Manila and makes a speech proclaiming Woodrow Wilson’s policy of “ultimate independence” for the Philippines (he neglects to provide a date for that ultimate independence). The number of natives in the appointive upper house of the Philippine Congress will be increased to a majority.

The Metropolitan Police raid a Women’s Social and Political Union meeting in order to arrest Annie Kenney, who was out on a Cat and Mouse Act license. Resistance was strong but futile. After the cops left, the meeting resumed and they auctioned off hats that had been knocked off the heads of cops (the one from a chief inspector went to an American for $25). Flora Drummond, referring to forcible-feeding and NOT TO ANYTHING ELSE, said, “This week I am going to give them my body and they can do anything they like with it.”

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Today -100: October 6, 1913: Of radium monopolies and tax loopholes

A company is being formed which will attempt to establish a world-wide monopoly over radium called European Radium, Limited. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand has something to do with it, which seems like the basis for a good conspiracy theory, sort of a post-steampunky thing.

Woodrow Wilson is exempt from the new income tax (as are federal court judges), because the Constitution forbids reducing their salaries. The tax will therefore only apply to future presidents and judges.

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Today -100: October 5, 1913: Of arson, car accidents, and darkness in Prussia

I guess the British suffragette militancy truce is over: the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Mary Richardson sets fire to an unoccupied house owned by the chancellor of the Diocese of London.

President Wilson’s car hits a kid on a bicycle. The Navy’s assistant surgeon, Wilson’s personal physician, was in the car, so the kid (his age isn’t given) got medical attention, and they drove him to the hospital. Wilson promised to replace his bike.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Police Decide When It’s Dark.” “The mere fact that it may happen still to be daylight in defiance of police orders is of no importance.” That’s the ruling of the Prussian Supreme Court in the case of a wagon-owner who was driving without a lantern 30 minutes after sunset, which is when the Prussian police have decreed that it is dark even if it isn’t. Germans, huh?

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Today -100: October 4, 1913: Of bosses, cannibals & radium, undesirable aliens, and tariffs

Woodrow Wilson’s secretary Joseph Tumulty denies that he is now the Democratic Boss of New Jersey (a newspaper claimed that he tried to impose a choice for state chairman on the NJ Democratic Party).

Cannibals in Papua New Guinea kill an American mineralogist who was searching for radium. I just like the combination in one story of cannibals and radium.

The secretary of labor allows Marie Lloyd and her fella into the country.

The Underwood-Simmons Tariff Bill becomes law. It reduces average tariffs from 37% to 27%, exempts many products altogether, and does various other tariff-billy things.

Oh, and introduces a federal income tax.

Theodore Roosevelt is off to South America for six months.

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Today -100: October 3, 1913: Of undesirable aliens, ether, duels, happy families, and fathers

Immigration authorities at Ellis Island order the deportation of famous English music-hall singer Marie Lloyd, who arrived to do a US tour, as well as her... companion... jockey Bernard Dillon, when they discover that the two are not married. To be continued...

How They Died 100 Years Ago: Sir Frederick Williams, 4th baronet of Tregullow, dies from an overdose of ether, which is popular in Paris as a recreational drug.

How They Didn’t Die 100 Years Ago: Rouzier d’Orcières fights his 173rd duel. Loses, actually, with a couple of slashes to his wrist and forearm.

British suffragist Eva Ward writes to the NYT about Sir Almroth Wright’s book The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage, which explains how the women’s suffrage derives from hysteria (he’s a doctor, you know). It seems Wright’s wife Jane is prominent in several women’s suffrage societies, and gives every female college graduate a leather-bound copy of John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women. Almroth and Jane do not live together any more.

Rep. J. Hampton Moore (R-PA) proposes that the first Sunday in June be designated Father’s Day. Presumably he needed some new ties.

Moore has eight children, if you were wondering.

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Today -100: October 2, 1913: Of woman suffrage’s destructive course, telegraph lines, destroyed romantic illusions, and hobo kings

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson marry. I predict a long and weird marriage.

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage says that if suffragists can prove to them (by December, for some reason) that a majority of women want the vote, it will “withdraw its opposition, albeit sorrowfully, and allow woman suffrage to roll on its destructive course.” It doesn’t explain how this support is to be demonstrated.

Woodrow Wilson plans to introduce legislation for a federal takeover of the telegraph lines and perhaps of inter-state phone lines as well.

A judge grants an injunction against Morgan College (now Morgan State University, a historically black college) from building a settlement in the Mount Washington suburb of Baltimore or, more specifically, from moving in any negroes (except as servants, of course).

A Canadian man kills himself in New York because, according to his diary, “Bernard Shaw has destroyed all my sentiments and romantic illusions”. Yup, Shaw’ll do that.

At the American Road Congress, a man announces himself as the Hobo King of America and asks to be seated as a delegate because “who is more interested in good roads than hoboes?” They seat him, because after all he is the Hobo King of America (C. Jeff Davis, President of the International Itinerant Workers’ Union).

President/King Davis wants you not to confuse hoboes with tramps, “who disgrace our profession.”

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Today -100: October 1, 1913: A night at the theatre

The University of Berlin will no longer allow students from Russia. Currently its medical school has a large number of Russian Jewish students because Jews can practice medicine in Russia but aren’t allowed to study medicine there.

King Nicholas of Montenegro has written a play, “The Siege of Scutari,” which opens in Cettinje in front of an audience some of whom evidently don’t know the difference between a play and real life and had to be dissuaded from killing actors playing Turks.

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I’ll have a chance to obviously speak more to this

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived at the White House yet again to give Obama his marching orders.

Obama: “I commended him for entering into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinian Authority”. Because nothing says “good faith” like Netanyahu pretending to negotiate with the PA.

“And we have a limited amount of time to achieve that goal [a two-state solution], and I appreciate the Prime Minister’s courage in being willing to step forward on behalf of that goal.” He doesn’t explain why time is so limited. If that’s not referring to the expansion of settlement activity that Netanyahu refuses to halt, then I can’t think what it refers to, in which case I don’t know why he’s praising Bibi’s “courage.”

Obama says we’ll be “consulting very closely” with Israel over the Syrian civil war, because of possible “spillover effects,” which is a great way of sabotaging the rebels.

“So we will continue to work with the Egyptian government, although urging them and pushing them in a direction that is more inclusive and that meets the basic goals of those who originally sought for more freedom and more democracy in that country.” Can you have “more” democracy without having actual, you know, democracy? Because I’m pretty sure the “basic goals” were actual freedom and actual democracy, not “just a little bit more freedom and democracy than we had under a fucking military dictatorship.”

Obama seems to have picked up an obvious verbal tic: “these are hectic times, and nowhere is that more true, obviously, than in the Middle East”; “discussing how we can resolve what has been, obviously, one of the biggest challenges for a very long time in the region”; “Obviously, we have a broad set of strategic concerns in Syria”; “Chemical weapons inside of Syria obviously have threatened Syrian civilians”; “And we had an opportunity, obviously, to discuss Iran”; “And I’ll have a chance to obviously speak more to this.”

“In all of this, our unshakeable bond with the Israeli people is stronger than ever.” Obviously not including any Palestinians who happen not to have been driven out of Israel. Our bond with the Palestinian people is very shakeable indeed.

Netanyahu: “I know that you know and the American people know that there is no better ally -- more reliable, more stable, more democratic -- other than Israel in a very raw, dangerous place.” Of course Israel’s policy, and to a large extent the US’s, is to ensure that other Middle East countries are unstable, undemocratic, or both.

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Today -100: September 30, 1913: Of derailed trains, race riots, and peace, ain’t it grand

A train is derailed somewhere between Baku and Batum (which doesn’t narrow it down much) in the Russian Empire because “brigands” tore up the rails for some reason. 40 dead.

In Harriston, Mississippi, scene of that race riot yesterday (death toll 11), today 2,000 blacks are forced to pass by the coffins of the two young black men lynched yesterday. “This had a remarkably quieting effect on the negro population.”

Turkey and Bulgaria sign a peace treaty ending, I guess, the last Balkan War but one.

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Today -100: September 29, 1913: Of insulted flags, elections, and boys

Chinese Gen. Chang Hsun accedes to Japan’s ultimatum and personally goes to apologize at the Japanese consulate in Nanjing for the insult to the Japanese flag (and the deaths of some Japanese people), averting the threatened military occupation. For now.

General elections are called for Italy, under a new election law doubling the electorate to nearly universal male suffrage, including illiterates if they have served in the army or are over 30. So, illiterates, but no women (until after World War II). Deputies, previously unpaid, will now receive a salary. The Catholic Church will allow Catholics to vote for the first time (not that the ban ever stopped many people).

You can kinda tell when the NYT used local stringers for its stories from the South, as in this one, datelined Harriston, Mississippi: “A reign of murder, started early this morning by two negro boys who were crazed by cocaine, developed into a race riot which ended only after three white men, four negro men, and a negro woman had been killed, a score of persons wounded, and the two boys lynched.” They were 20 and 18, if you’re wondering what constitutes a “boy.” If the story is to be believed, the Walter and Will Jones did go on quite a shooting rampage before the mob got hold of them.

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Today -100: September 28, 1913: Peace in Mexico is impossible until one party or the other has been exterminated

Democrats in the Tennessee Legislature successfully filibuster the anti-alcohol bills, and the special session ends.

11,000 Ulster Volunteers march in Belfast, as is the custom, to demonstrate their 1) loyalty to, and 2) willingness to go to war with, the British government. They carry dummy rifles, because carrying real firearms without a license would be illegal. So they’re threatening civil war but won’t break the Firearms Acts.

The response of the British government so far to all this has been confined to a threat not to send mail to any post offices run by a rebel Ulster government.

The NYT thinks “the whole Ulster situation is a species of political bluff,” as proven by the fact that the Ulster Volunteers are not concealing their preparations for civil war. Another interpretation is that they don’t have to conceal them, because there are no consequences. The Times complacently predicts that Home Rule will go into effect “with no serious disturbance.”

Mexican rebel leader and (spoiler alert) future president Venustiano Carranza warns that anyone elected president in the elections Huerta plans to hold next month will be considered a traitor, and if rebels capture him they’ll try him under an 1862 law allowing for the summary execution of traitors without trial, like the Emperor Maximilian (so I guess he would be tried without trial). “Peace in Mexico,” Carranza says, “is impossible until one party or the other has been exterminated.” (Little-known historical fact: Carranza was a Dalek).

Negroes in Tuscon are boycotting the separate-but-equal schools. Not because they’re segregated schools, the LAT claims, but because they want better segregated schools.

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Today -100: September 27, 1913: Do as I shall: deny it

Headline of the Day -100: “Lynched Negro, Condemned Deed.” Some Mississippians lynched a negro accused of attacking a farmer’s wife but “Opinion was divided as to the guilt of the negro, and at a mass meeting held later resolutions were adopted in condemnation of the lynching.” Sentence first, verdict after, as the Red Queen said.

Loopy Headline of the Day -100: “DOUBLE LOOP BY PEGOUD.” The French aviator is just showing off now.

Turkey and Greece seem to be threatening to start a third Balkan War. And Greece is letting Serbian troops use its railways in their fight with Albania. “The Belgrade newspapers urge the complete extermination of the Albanians,” as is the custom.

At the impeachment trial of NY Gov. Sulzer, several of his donors have testified, convincing no one, that their donations had been to Sulzer personally rather than to his campaign (thus Sulzer’s failure to report them as required by law). Today, ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau is recalled, and testifies that before his first appearance, Sulzer called him up and asked him to say that his $1,000 donation was purely personal. Duncan Peck, who was appointed state superintendent of public works by the previous administration, contributed $500 to Sulzer, not at all connected to his retaining his job. He too now says that Sulzer told him, “Do as I shall: deny it.”

The Huerta Junta in Mexico asks deposed dictator Porfirio Díaz to return from exile, maybe to head up the War College. Also, Huerta declares that the revolution is suppressed, except for occupying the rebellious northern states (which seems a fairly big “except for”) and elections can go ahead.

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