Today -100: October 31, 1913: Of ritual murder, slimy pulitzers, and possums

The Kiev ritual murder trial continues, with a debate between doctors over “whether there were 13 or 14 wounds in the boy Yushinsky’s left temple, the number 13 having apparently a Cabalistic significance.” The court decides not to show the dead boy’s actual scalp to the jury. Further medical testimony “described the difference in the Russian and Jewish methods of slaughtering animals.”

Tammany candidate for NY mayor Edward McCall has been making a big deal about Fusionist candidate John Purroy Mitchell’s supposed connections to Ralph Pulitzer and his New York World, talking about Pulitzer much more than about his actual opponent. He says that if he ever meets “this slimy Pulitzer,” “if I ever get my hands on him, I’ll make him wish he never had been born.” That’s a former justice of the state Supreme Court speaking.

Headline of the Day -100: “President Gets a ’Possum.” A live one, one assumes. “‘I am an old slave time darkey,’ wrote ‘Joe’ Farrow of McFarlan, N.C., the sender. ‘I heard that some one sent you a sweet potato the other day. Here is an opossum to go with it.’” I wonder if anyone sends Obama opossums.

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Today -100: October 30, 1913: Of coal wars, ritual murder, and forcible resistance

Striking Colorado coal miners burn a mine office of the Southwestern Fuel Company (and the post office which shared the building, after looting the mail) in Aguilar. The Colo. National Guard gives mine guards and strikers 24 hours to surrender their arms, like that’s gonna happen.

Two doctors testify for Mendel Beilis in the Kiev ritual murder trial. One of them is a Dr. Pavlov, I think possibly the salivating-dogs Dr. Pavlov. It would help if the New York Times USED FUCKING FIRST NAMES, EVER.

Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Tory Party, addresses a meeting alongside self-proclaimed One True Tsar of All the Ulsters Sir Edward Carson. Bonar Law says the Tories will support Ulster, even to the extent of forcible resistance to Home Rule.

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Today -100: October 29, 1913: Of defunct skyscrapers, coal wars, new navies, segregation, and mad kings

Standard Oil plans to tear down the Tower Building on Broadway, which when it was built in 1889 was the tallest building in lower New York (11 stories) and the first true skyscraper, built on a steel-skeleton frame. It’s not falling down or anything, it’s just too expensive to operate and its tax bill is too high. I’m not sure what replaced it, but there’s a rather ugly 37-story building which was finished in 1927 there now.

The governor of Colorado declares a state of insurrection and imposes martial law on the Ludlow-Berwind area, ordering the whole state militia into the area to disarm both sides in the coal war. They proceed to not disarm mine guards, who I might add have a machine gun. The strike is over a month old and the NYT says there have been 28 killed, and lots of property damage, dynamite being so readily at hand in the area. Today a mine guard is shot dead after he shot a striker in the leg. Some of the strikers are Greeks who fought in the Balkan Wars.

New Zealand decides to have a navy, just like Australia, and to stop subsidizing the British Navy, after Britain broke the deal to station two cruisers of a certain size in NZ waters, sending two smaller ones, amusingly named the Psyche and the Pyramus.

The LA Times has an article on segregation in federal government offices under Wilson, which it says is increasing but uneven. Black employees in the dead letter office of the Post Office Dept now sit “in one corner of a room screened off from the general public by lockers. It is explained that the lockers were so placed to improve the ventilation, but no explanation is made of the fact that only colored employees are working behind the screen.” Black employees in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing now have a “lunchroom, lavatory and toilet room all in one” but the Post Office Dept provides no lunchroom for black employees, “the argument being that as there are no separate negro restaurants in Washington, the government is not bound to provide one.”

Bavaria is finally going to dethrone Mad King Otto.

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Observation of the Day

Darrell Issa looks like he talks into his shoe. I don’t mean he looks like Maxwell Smart; I just mean he looks like he talks into his shoe.

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A lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view

British Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement about The Guardian’s ongoing Edward Snowden leaks.

He called on The Guardian to “demonstrate some social responsibility,” by which he meant obey orders and shut the fuck up.

He warned against a “lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view” of the dangers of leaks, by which he meant failing to obey orders and shut the fuck up.

He said that up until now, “The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be,” by which he meant telling them to obey orders and shut the fuck up.

But, he says, they have “gone on and printed further material which is damaging,” by which he meant failed to obey orders and shut the fuck up, so he may have to resort to injunctions and D notices to get them to obey orders and shut the fuck up.

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State interest

The federal judge who blocked some of the Texas anti-abortion law doesn’t seem to have addressed the state’s claim that there is a state interest in “protecting fetal life” in cases where the mother wants to terminate it.

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Today -100: October 28, 1913: Of holidays, ritual murder, amnesty, home rule within home rule, Wackes, hairpins and krazy kats

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan endorses Winston Churchill’s proposal of a “naval holiday,” as long as, you know, everyone else is also doing it.

The trial of Mendel Beilis continues in Kiev. Another day of “testimony,” mostly hearsay from Catholic and Orthodox priests about the Jewish practice of ritual murder. Days can go by without Beilis’s name even being mentioned, as the prosecutors put the entire Jewish race on trial.

Tammany candidate for NYC mayor (I’d say Democratic candidate, but Tammany is more realistic) Edward McCall demanded that John Hennessy (who worked for Sulzer as a graft investigator) put the charges he’s making against McCall (buying his seat on the state Supreme Court with money he got from a police inspector, acting as Boss Murphy’s messenger boy to former Gov. Sulzer, etc) in writing so he could sue him (the former justice has heard of libel laws but not slander laws, I guess). Hennessy does, and now McCall says he, er, won’t sue, and he doesn’t want anyone to mention “that creature”’s name in front of him again.

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech: “the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.” This is being taken to mean that the US will invade Mexico to “restore order,” but won’t stay there or, you know, annex anything.

First Mexican dictator Huerta tried to keep presidential rival Felix Díaz out of the country during the election, then he ordered him to leave Vera Cruz for Mexico City. Díaz rather sensibly resigned from the army rather than comply and has now asked for protection from the Americans and is safely lodged on a battleship.

Britain’s Liberal government has been suggesting flexibility on Ulster, but not exclusion from Home Rule. More like home rule within home rule, with Northern Ireland having control over its own education, police, etc.

In Saverne, Alsace (or Zabern, Elsaß if you prefer), one of two German-speaking provinces of France acquired by Germany in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, a Lt. Gunther Freiherr von Forstner tells one of his unruly soldiers to stop fighting other soldiers in the barracks but if he got into a scuffle with the locals – who Forstner refers to as “Wackes,” a derisive term for Alsatians – he could shoot them, in which case Forstner would pay 10 marks each. When this story gets out, it will not go over especially well.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Hatpin is Fatal.” Mrs. Josephine Karmuenisk, wife of a saloon-keeper in South Chicago, stabs a hold-up man behind the ear.

The cartoon Krazy Kat premiers in Hearst’s New York Evening Journal.

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Today -100: October 27, 1913: What if they gave an election and no one voted?

Headline of the Day -100: “MEXICO VOTES; NOBODY ELECTED.” The constitution requires 1/3 of the voters to vote for the results to be valid and nowhere near that many participated in the farce. So Huerta will stay in power while he arranges another farce-election (farcection?). Huerta announces an increase in the size of the military from 90,000 to 150,000.

A 12-hour gun battle is waged between striking coal miners, deputy sheriffs and mine guards in Ludlow, Colorado. Gov. Elias Ammons calls in the National Guard. More will be heard from Ludlow.

After a suspiciously long delay, Tammany candidate for mayor of New York City Edward McCall and “Boss” Charles Murphy both deny that McCall paid Murphy for his seat on the state Supreme Court. McCall threatens to sue every newspaper that publishes the charges.

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Today -100: October 26, 1913: Of baby prohibitionists, nations stained by blood, and zeppelin trust

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union is holding a world congress (its first) in Brooklyn. Someone brought their 10-month-old baby and dedicated him to a life of total abstinence. I didn’t know you could do that. The congress passed a resolution asking the general convention of the Episcopal Church to replace its communion wine with grape juice.

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech in Mobile saying that every nation in the Western Hemisphere should not be “stained by blood or supported by anything but the consent of the governed,” adding, “Hey, did you get that I was subtly referring to Mexico there?”

Headline of the Day -100: “German Trust in Zeppelins Shaken.”

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Today -100: October 25, 1913: Of Catholic voting and miners

The Vatican’s lifting of the ban on Italians voting that’s been in place since the unification of Italy isn’t unconditional; they can only vote if the “right” sort of candidate is running in their district. The Vatican also bans Clerical candidates from forming a Catholic bloc in parliament for whose actions it might be held responsible.

As work continues to remove bodies from the Dawson, New Mexico mine explosion, the town’s mayor, acting on the request of Phelps, Dodge, deports United Mine Worker officials.

189 striking copper miners are arrested in Calumet, Mich. for violating an injunction against picketing.

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Today -100: October 24, 1913: Of vetoes, coal mines, withering militancy, and plague rats

Anthony Comstock, head of the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice and puritan wannabe, applies for warrants to arrest sellers of the British newspaper The Suffragette (one of the issues which discusses venereal disease and its relationship to women’s rights). Local suffragists head off possible prosecution by saying they’ll sell the remaining issues out west.

Woodrow Wilson issues his first veto, of a Congressional joint resolution to reinstate a West Point cadet who flunked out, and issues his first proclamation, designating Nov. 27 as Thanksgiving Day.

Tammany candidate for mayor of New York Edward McCall refuses to answer accusations that he paid Boss Murphy $35,000 for his nomination to the state Supreme Court.

Speakers of Esperanto protest the ritual murder trial in Kiev, because why not.

Another coal mine explosion, this one in Dawson, New Mexico. 261 dead, of whom 238 not yet recovered.

Huerta still claims not to be seeking election to the presidency, although he’s been trying to expel candidate Felix Díaz from the country (candidates for the presidency have to be on Mexican soil at the time of the election).

The Wilson administration blames Britain for Mexican dictator Huerta’s supposed new lease on life (the new British ambassador presented his credentials the day after the coup). Coincidentally, Britain is seeking a concession to build an oil pipeline in Mexico.

The Bishop of Winchester appeals to militant suffragists and the government for a “Truce of God” entailing the end of militancy, an amnesty and a suffrage bill or referendum. Even the non-militant leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett tells him where to stuff his Truce of God. Annie Kenney of the Women’s Social and Political Union replies in a letter the London Times didn’t print, saying that while the bishop claimed that if the vote was won by militant methods its benefits would be impaired, suffragettes “believe that if women get the vote by militancy, which means both fighting and self-sacrifice, it will bring with it a special blessing and a special power.”

In other pompous-British-male-lectures-suffragists news, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George tells a deputation from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies that militancy has “ruined” this Parliament as far as women’s suffrage is concerned, although he thinks the spirit of militancy is “withering.” In other words, he met with the non-militant suffragists and the only thing he talked about was militancy. Meanwhile, the withering militants set fire to the Bristol University Sports Pavilion. Bristol students will return the favor tomorrow against the furniture of the Bristol WSPU office.

Headline of the Day -100: “War on Plague Rats.” Seattle would like to point out that although it has many rats with bubonic plague, there has been no case among humans in six years.

Blind Senator Thomas Gore is being sued for (sexual) assault and slander.

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Today -100: October 23, 1913: Of land, Maderos, and lynchings

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George says that the Liberal government plans to establish a Ministry of Lands with the power to seize uncultivated land, regulate conditions and pay for farm laborers, and promote emigration from the towns to the land. Nothing will come of this, and it’s hard to believe Lloyd George thought anything would.

Two of the late Mexican President Madero’s brothers have been captured by the regime. We’ll see if they live longer than the last Madero brothers arrested by Huerta.

A negro is lynched in Monroe, Louisiana, for making an insulting remark to a white woman.

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Today -100: October 22, 1913: We know now the joy of battle, a joy men long kept from us

Headline of the Day -100: “Chihuahua in Danger.” The state, not the yappy dog, of course. By Pancho Villa. Villa is also ordering the cotton crop harvested for sale in the United States.

An indictment against Tom Watson, the Populist Party candidate for president in 1904, for sending improper material through the mails, is dismissed because the government was relying on extracts from an article in Watson’s magazine rather than the entire article. The judge says that under that tactic, the Bible could be prosecuted. The article “purport[ed] to embody questions asked by Catholic clergymen in the confessional,” in other words typical sensationalistic anti-Catholic propaganda of the period (since his Populist days, Watson had veered towards espousing many and various bigotries).

Emmeline Pankhurst speaks at Madison Square Garden. She defended using the US as a piggy bank for her wing of the British suffrage movement: “Why should I not come here. What helps women in England helps women all over the world. It is not necessary for women in the United States to be militant. Perhaps one reason is that we are doing the work for them. We are proud to do that work. We know now the joy of battle, a joy men long kept from us.”

Death of the Day -100: Gen. Samuel J. Crawford, Indian Fighter. The third governor of Kansas, he resigned in 1869 to go kill some Indians.

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Today -100: October 21, 1913: It will be Gaffney or war

Emmeline Pankhurst is allowed to enter the US after Pres. Wilson’s personal intervention.

Britain’s new Lord Chief Justice is Sir Rufus Isaacs, a Jew. The NYT declares anti-Semitism over in Britain. That’s nice.

The Progressive Party nominates ousted Gov. William Sulzer for next month’s election to the NY Assembly for the 6th district (which is in New York City). He has evidently been asked to run, in writing, by more than half the registered voters in the district. The Republican candidate will drop out and support him. Sulzer will also, immediately after election day, begin a lecture tour at $1,000 per lecture.

And Sulzer does, finally, have lots to say. He says that “Boss” Charles Murphy offered him money early in his term, and later threatened him when he wouldn’t appoint Murphy’s nominee as commissioner of highways (“It will be Gaffney or war,” Murphy allegedly told him). Every day, Murphy sent some emissary (Sulzer pointedly names Edward McCall, Tammany’s candidate for NY mayor) to make demands and threaten consequences.

Women from colored women’s clubs in Los Angeles complain to the Police Commission about the city’s color line. They say black people are charged 25¢ to 50¢ at some movie theaters where the regular price is 5¢ or 10¢ and are similarly over-charged at bars. The Police Commission said their only recourse was to file civil suits.

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Today -100: October 20, 1913: Of moral turpitude

Mexican rebels blow up a troop train, killing 46.

Woodrow Wilson is personally looking into whether Emmeline Pankhurst should be deported. In the meantime, hearings will examine the extent of the militant suffrage movement in Britain and whether Mrs P’s crimes were political, in which case she cannot be excluded unless moral turpitude is involved (suffragists have been pointing out that for decades Irish former political prisoners have been allowed into the US unimpeded). Mrs P supposedly says that if deported she’ll start hunger-striking and be dead within 24 hours. I say supposedly because the next day she denied having said any such thing but the NYT story had her alleged words in quotation marks. It is a puzzlement.

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Today -100: October 19, 1913: Of misdirections of human energies, moral turpitude, bloody foundation stones, new languages, and angry Frenchmen

British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill proposes a one-year “naval holiday” with Germany, in which both countries would stop building battleships (Germany plans two in that period, Britain four). Churchill figures every other country on earth would follow suit. He says the arms race is a “serious misdirection of human energies.”

Austria presents Serbia with an ultimatum to remove its troops from Albania within 8 days.

British suffragist leader Emmeline Pankhurst arrives in New York, but is held by immigration authorities and ordered deported on grounds of “moral turpitude.” She will appeal.

Former US ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson, proving once again why Pres. Wilson was right to fire his ass, says that Huerta’s government is just as legal as Roosevelt’s was when he became president after McKinley’s assassination. Which would be true if Roosevelt had ordered McKinley’s assassination.

There have been protests in Russia against the ongoing ritual murder trial of Mendel Beilis in Kiev, with strikes, protests signed by students, etc. Prosecution witnesses have fallen apart on the stand, some accusing the police of pressuring them to lie. Beilis has plenty of witnesses that he was at work at the time of the murder, but still the trial drags on. Today, for example, “Another rumor, that some of Yushinsky’s blood was used in connection with the laying of the foundation stone of the Old Age Home, was shown to be groundless by the testimony of Mark Zaiteff, one of the proprietors of the brick works, who produced proof that the ceremony took place several days before the murder.”

Linguistic Headline of the Day -100: “Norway to Adopt an Entirely New Language.” Landsmål. You don’t want to know.

Dog-Bites-Man Headline of the Day -100: “Germans Anger French.” By celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig.

Motoring Headline of the Day -100: “Cyclist Falls on Coffin.” Unfortunate motorcycle rider crashes a funeral procession.

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Today -100: October 18, 1913: I have lost my office, but I have kept my self-respect

The High Court of Impeachment acquits NY Gov. Sulzer of the remaining charges, then votes 43-12 to remove him from office, but votes unanimously not to ban him from holding government positions (elected or appointive) in the future, and indeed Progressives are already talking about nominating him for Congress or the state Assembly.

Sulzer issues a statement calling the impeachment trial “a farce, political lynching, the consummation of a deep-laid political conspiracy to oust me from office. ... The well-settled rules of evidence were thrown to the winds. A horse-thief, in frontier days, would have received a squarer deal.” He goes on to say that Boss Murphy of Tammany ordered the impeachment and controlled the court: “he was the judge and the jury, the prosecutor and the bailiff.”

Acting Gov. Martin Glynn, sworn in as the new governor, says he will not be a factionist. Phew. The NYT effusively describes him as “not devoid of independence” from Tammany.

The zeppelin L II, undergoing trials to determine if it should be the flagship of the German aerial navy, explodes over the city of Johannisthal near Berlin, killing 28 in the biggest aviation disaster to date. Not a good year for German airships: The Navy’s L I was destroyed by a storm last month, breaking in half and killing 15. And the day after that an army zeppelin dragged two of the soldiers holding its lines into the air; they died when they let go.

The last officer who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade (1854) dies at 81. His name was Sir George Orby Wombwell, because of course it was.

The Mexican cabinet “won’t let” Huerta resign, which is of course all he ever really wanted to do.

In the US Congress, Rep. Isaac Ruth Sherwood (D-Ohio) says a consortium of nations should establish a military protectorate over Mexico.

The Austrian Army is complaining about the shortage of recruits from the Polish regions of the Empire, which they attribute to emigration of young men to work on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Headline of the Day -100: “WHAT DOES MARS WANT?” A Swiss astronomer thinks Mars is signaling the Earth with blue lights. The NYT thinks that “with regard to governing ourselves intelligently, regulating our lives in accordance with well-established facts, obeying natural laws, settling trivial disputes without bloodshed, we can tell them nothing that a people so old and wise as the Martians must be do not know already.”

Actually, Mars only wanted a little sexting.

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Today -100: October 17, 1913: Of impeachments and the tango

NY Gov. William Sulzer is convicted by the High Court of Impeachment of falsifying campaign finance reports and threatening witnesses before the Legislature’s investigative committee, but acquitted of bribing witnesses and posting pictures of his junk on Twitter. Votes on other charges will follow.

Headline of the Day -100: “Chicago to Investigate the Tango.”

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Today -100: October 16, 1913: Of royal benevolence and Zulu football

The news is all about princes today.

Royal wedding: Prince Arthur of Connaught marries Alexandra, Duchess of Fife. Artie, the first royal to attend Eton, was Waldorf Astor’s fag. The couple will help the families of those colliers killed in Wales by exhibiting their wedding presents to the public to raise funds. It is literally the least they could do.

Prince Madikane Quandiyane Cele of the Zulus says American football is too brutal.

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Today -100: October 15, 1913: Of coal mines, coups, the rule of the sea, and bones of persons tortured to death by Jews

439 coal miners die in a mine explosion and fire in Senhenydd, Wales, as is the custom. Most of the bodies won’t be recovered. One woman is waiting for word about her husband, four sons and three brothers.

Huerta still plans to hold elections on the 26th in whatever parts of Mexico he controls and with whatever parts of the government he controls. Sure he does. Anyhoo, the US informs him that it won’t recognize the results of those elections. Huerta says the deputies he arrested will be tried for treason. And that he will be taking charge of the interior, finance and war ministries.

Gandhi begins his first act of large-scale civil disobedience. He gathers Indian supporters in Natal province, South Africa, to march to the border with Transvaal province and cross it in violation of the race-based pass laws.

Headline of the Day -100: “Women Not First.” On the fiery Volturno, the “women and children first” rule was not observed.

In the Kiev ritual murder trial, a former Jew, now a monk, testifies that sure, Jews torture Christian children all the time. “If the bowels of the earth opened up one would discover many bones of persons tortured to death by Jews.”

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