Today -100: December 7, 1913: Of floggings, deluxe apartments in the sky, the suggestion, gratification, and education of sexual emotion, and shooting Ulstermen

Delaware whips three more prisoners, all of them black. This is in addition to prison sentences, not instead of, if I haven’t mentioned that before. I hadn’t realized the public were allowed to witness these punishments (except women, who are barred by prison officials, although there is no law against them spectating).

New York City, not surprisingly, has the most expensive apartment in the world, renting for $25,000 a year, in the new 15-apartment, 12-story building at 998 Fifth Ave, which is still around and still kinda pricey. 998, as it is known, was built by Jackie Kennedy’s grandfather. For $25,000 in 1913 you get an entire floor and 25 rooms. And the fireplaces all work, the NYT hastens to point out. Residents include Sen. Elihu Root (rumor is he was given a reduced rate as part of an attempt to lure millionaires from mansion-living to super-luxury-apartment-living, a new concept), as well as a Winthrop and a Guggenheim, former Vice President and former NY governor Levi Morton, and the aptonymed Watson Bradley Dickerman, a former president of the NY Stock Exchange.

Bernard Shaw and the Bishop of Kensington are having a flame war in the letter columns of the London Times over the issue of theatre censorship. Says Shaw, “a Bishop who goes into a theatre and declares that the performances there must not suggest sexual emotion is in the position of a playwright going into a church and declaring that the services there must not suggest religious emotion. The suggestion, gratification, and education of sexual emotion is one of the main uses and glories of the theatre. It shares that function with all the fine arts.”

A scientist discovers that it’s possible to use x-rays to read sealed letters. And the NSA is born!

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson denies trying to persuade the army to refuse orders. “Nobody would blame the army for shooting upon Ulstermen.”

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Today -100: December 6, 1913: Of gun-running, blacklists, amnesties, and grippe

Britain bans arms importing into Ireland by royal proclamation. It won’t affect hunting weapons, because of course it won’t. Will this order be enforced more vigorously against Irish Nationalists than against Ulster Loyalists? What do you think?

If you need a hint: the secretary of war demanded the resignation of a major of the Horse Guards, the son of a viscount, because of his membership in the Ulster Volunteers, the group pledged to fight the army in the event of Home Rule. But several other officers threatened to resign, so he was allowed to remain.

Judge Loring of the Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that it’s legal for companies to combine to blacklist workers who participated in a strike.

The kaiser orders the transfer of the regiment that’s been causing so much friction (to say nothing of head injuries) in Zabern, Alsace, in a grudging surrender to the Reichstag.

Cuba finally passes the amnesty bill for the negro rebellion which was previously halted by objections (and the customary threats of military intervention) from the United States after amnesty for corrupt politicians was snuck into the bill. The new version includes amnesty for corruption politicians.

Woodrow Wilson has a case of grippe. Or grip, depending on which newspaper you read.

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Today -100: December 5, 1913: Of beautifully gowned anti-suffragists, firing squads, arrests at sea, and lack of confidence

Anti-suffrage women descend on Washington D.C. to lobby against the creation of a permanent suffrage committee in Congress. They are, the NYT feels impelled to inform us, “beautifully gowned.” Also present: Everett Pepperrell Wheeler of the “Man Suffrage Association,” who says “clenched fists,” such as Anna Howard Shaw waved yesterday, “mean fight.... but if [men] are challenged to fight this movement there will be blows to give as well as blows to take.” The first rule of Suffrage Fight Club is you do not talk about Suffrage Fight Club.

The United States will assist the Dominican Republic in organizing elections. The US ambassador “has already notified the restless and turbulent elements in Santo Domingo that the long period of revolutionary disturbances must cease”.

Mexican Federal Col. Exiquio Barbosa survives a mass execution by firing squad, plays dead, and escapes.

You know who would really be helpful in resolving the Mexican revolution? Former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz. Well, that’s what current Mexican dictator Huerta thinks, for some reason, and he’s placed the 83-year-old exile on the army’s active list and will try to force him to return from France. This could all be a rumor, though, and Díaz plans to stay where he is.

British police succeed in arresting Emmeline Pankhurst by boarding her trans-Atlantic ship before it reached port in Plymouth, where a bodyguard was waiting to protect her. The suffragettes had their own boat to remove Mrs P before her ship reached dock, but two navy ships were deployed to block it, which seems like an awful lot of trouble. She begins a hunger and thirst strike.

The Reichstag passes a resolution of lack of confidence in Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg by a vote of 293-54, over the bad relations between the army and the people in Zabern, Alsace. This is constitutionally irrelevant, since cabinet officials are responsible to the kaiser rather than to the Reichstag.

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Today -100: December 4, 1913: Of sabre dictatorships, cunning plans, Christmas in Mexico City, sea fights, and mustaches

The German Reichstag is debating the poor relations between the army and the people in annexed Alsace, which some are now calling “sabre dictatorship.” Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg gave the Reichstag “a lengthy dissertation on philology with a view to proving that the word ‘wackes’ used by Lieut. Baron von Forstner was not nearly so insulting as people thought.” The war minister blamed the press and the “systematically organized provocation” against the army, and reminded the deputies that without the army “there would not be a stone in its place in Germany to-day”.

The US House passes a bill allowing the president to organize volunteer military forces whenever a war is imminent (such as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War), but with enlistment being for the duration of the war rather than for short terms.

Nicaragua’s former president José Zelaya is released from the Tombs. His lawyers are still saying that it’s conditional on him leaving the country for Spain on the next ship, but Zelaya says there are no conditions, and the assistant US attorney backs him. Don’t know what’s going on here.

Mexican Pres. Huerta says the rebels weren’t actually successful when they captured Juarez, Victoria, and Culiacan. Rather, the government evacuated all those cities (and more) as part of a clever plan of campaign.

Gen. Mercado has just fled Chihuahua, presumably another part of this awesome plan, after sending a peace commission to Pancho Villa as a ruse to give himself time to escape. Since the Federal troops hadn’t been paid in weeks, the locals in Chihuahua were very happy to see them go.

Villa says he’ll be in Mexico City by Christmas.

Headline of the Day -100: “May Be Sea Fight for Mrs. Pankhurst.” Emmeline Pankhurst is on her way back to England, and there will be a race between her supporters trying to spirit her away from her ship before it docks and police trying to arrest her (she’s out of Holloway Prison on a Cat and Mouse Act license).

Hirsute Headline of the Day -100: “Kaiser Decrees Mustaches.” He is dismayed that army officers have taken to shaving off their mustaches, thereby “Americanizing” their faces.

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Today -100: December 3, 1913: Of states of the union, watchful waiting, surrenders, sleeping gas, and royal trains

Woodrow Wilson’s first State of the Union address (in fact the first SOTU speech to use the phrase, which the annual address would now be called) calls for binding presidential primaries; full territorial government and railroads to be built and run by the government in Alaska; credits for farmers; workmen’s compensation, and other elements of the Progressive program. The remaining adherents of the Progressive Party are wondering whether it still has a role. He even calls for “social justice,” one of Theodore Roosevelt’s old phrases. And for “ultimate independence” for the Philippines.

One thing he didn’t mention: women’s suffrage.

Wilson predicted the future with astonishing accuracy: “The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world, and many happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing cordiality and sense of community of interest among the nations, foreshadowing an age of settled peace and good will.” Phew.

“There is but one cloud upon our horizon,” the meteorologist-in-chief remarked: “There can be no certain prospect of peace in America until General Huerta has surrendered his usurped authority in Mexico”. “Mexico has no Government. The attempt to maintain one at the City of Mexico has broken down, and a mere military despotism has been set up which has hardly more than the semblance of national authority. It originated in the usurpation of Victoriano Huerta, who, after a brief attempt to play the part of constitutional President, has at last cast aside even the pretense of legal right and declared himself dictator.” But he reassured Congress that “the collapse is not far away. We shall not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting.”

More fun and games in Zabern, Alsace: Baron von Forstner, the arrogant boy-lieutenant who started all the fuss with the local Alsatians, decided to chase down some men who jeered the German soldiers as they passed. He caught only a lame shoemaker, who he hit on the head with the sharp bit of his saber.

Seven of Huerta’s generals in the north announce plans to surrender or switch sides or something (they say they’re surrendering, but at the same time they’re fleeing towards the American border as fast as they can), in a proclamation citing the important principle that they haven’t been paid.

Oil companies in Mexico have stopped supplying oil to the National Railways. Oil is mostly produced in the northern regions now held by rebels, whom the companies are unwilling to risk angering.

Pancho Villa’s chief of staff is arrested in El Paso on a complaint from Villa that he had embezzled rebel funds.

In US District Court in Phoenix, all cases against Texas and Arizona firms for smuggling weapons to the Mexican rebels are dismissed.

Saxony, Germany is developing a sleeping gas: “It is said that the gas from a single bomb has thrown several hundred men into a deep sleep lasting seven or eight hours.”

The teamsters’ strike in Indianapolis, the one that caused Mayor Shank to resign because he couldn’t avert it, is on. And we’ve got what the NYT optimistically calls its “first fatality,” a 19-year-old negro elevator operator shot by special officers “in a riot resulting from an attempt to move an ice wagon.” Don’t know who these “special officers” who are being sworn in are, but there’s also a “Citizens’ Cavalry.” The teamsters are calling for a general strike and for unions to withdraw their funds from local banks.

The government of French Prime Minister Louis Barthou falls after 8 months in office. Barthou himself will fall in a different way in 1934 as fatal collateral damage during the assassination of the king of Yugoslavia. Oh, and while the real cause of the fall of the Barthou government was the instability of multi-party democracy under the Third Republic, the vote the government lost was for tax-deductibility for the latest government loan to build up the army against Germany.

Headline of the Day -100: “May Look at Royal Train.” The German (Prussian?) Ministry of Railways issues an order that RR employees (gates-keepers, porters, etc) must stand at attention when a royal train passes.

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Today -100: December 2, 1913: Of Mexican thrills, exiles, smothered bandits, and flying churchills

Lead sentence of the Day -100: “President Huerta gave the people of the capital a thrill to-day by another of his periodical disappearances.” As always happens, rumors quickly spread that he had fled. Unfortunately, he came back.

The US, Nicaragua and deposed president José Zelaya come to an agreement: he will go back into exile in Barcelona. In other words, the US & Nicaragua leveraged the latter’s request for his extradition to force him back into exile across the Atlantic.

It is just coming out now that the United States almost invaded Mexico back in June. Rebels were being unpleasant to American citizens in Piedras Negras and were threatening to attack the consulate. Secretary of State Bryan wrote to Secretary of War Garrison asking that a force be held ready to cross the border if the consul asked for it. Someone talked to rebel leader Carranza, who settled the situation down. So why the leak now, six months later? Possibly the Wilson Admin needs to demonstrate that he is capable of being tough and getting results, now that Huerta has ignored Wilson’s demands with impunity.

Headline of the Day -100: “SEAL UP UTAH MINE TO SMOTHER BANDIT; Tons of Dynamite in Shaft Where Lopez Is Trapped Amid Deadly Gases. 200 ARMED MEN ON GUARD. Deputies at Every Entrance with Orders to Shoot Down the Desperado on Sight.” Ralph Lopez, Mexican bandit, killed a miner, a chief of police and no fewer than four deputies. The deadly gases, by the way, are actually being pumped into the mine by the authorities (wet gunpowder, sulphur, coal tar, formaldehyde, black oil, etc).

The Paterson strike fails to get going.

The NYT chides William Jennings Bryan for the fact that his old paper The Commoner, now run by his brother, accepts ads for quack medicines.

Winston Churchill becomes the first cabinet minister of any country to fly an airplane. Not fly in an airplane as a passenger, but actually steer it. Take-off and landing were handled by the commander of the British Naval Flying Corps, Capt. Gilbert V. Wildman-Lushington, possessor of the most English name in all Christendom, although not for long. Three days later Wildman-Lushington died in a plane crash.

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Today -100: December 1, 1913: And the Fatherland has only one

A week ago the Russians arrested and handed over to the Turks a man they’d told Russia was a common or garden-variety murderer. Turned out, he was one of the alleged conspirators behind the assassination of the Grand Vizier in June and had been sentenced to death in his absence. Russia feels it was tricked and demands he be released because it was a political crime. Instead, he “committed suicide.”

Lord Willoughby de Broke sends out a circular, marked “strictly confidential,” to rich landowners calling on them to enroll young men, preferably with military experience, to fight the British Amy over Home Rule.

Punch, December 3:

A Nation of Fire-eaters.
Peaceful Tuton: “Himmel! They have all those armies! And the Fatherland has only one.”

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Today -100: November 30, 1913: Of sabers in Zabern (almost poetical), and socialist senators

More anti-German-military sentiment is expressed in Zabern, Alsace. It started when some schoolboys jeered a group of army officers which included the lieutenant who told his men it was okay to shoot Alsatians. A crowd collected, troops from the barracks appeared, with drums and fixed bayonets and everything, and started arresting anyone they found on the streets, including two judges on their way home from court. These Alsatians were held overnight in the barracks’ basement, then turned over to the civil court, which promptly released them. “A number of young Lieutenants of the Ninety-ninth Infantry were seen to-day pursuing with drawn swords a youth who had shouted an insult to a man who was singing the German national anthem.”

In Flensburg, Schleswig, another part of the German Empire added by conquest, polar explorer Roald Amundsen has been forbidden from giving a lecture in Norwegian (which the Danish residents could presumably follow).

Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III has been getting along fairly well with the Socialists these days. He gives a cabinet post to a Socialist who in 1900 shouted “Death to the King” in parliament, referring to VE3’s father, who was assassinated three months later. The king has also named Socialists to the Senate for the first time, three of them.

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Today -100: November 29, 1913: Of Mazalan, land swaps, strikes, and ear-boxing

The Mexican Constitutionalist rebels capture Mazatlan. Next stop: Chihuahua.

Not able to tap European money markets, Dictator Huerta may require banks to give him a forced loan.

Huerta also plans to go after every newspaper that reported the fall of Victoria. He hasn’t publicly admitted losing Juarez either.

Gen. Antonio Rábago, the military governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, commits suicide after losing the capital, Victoria, to the rebels.

Oh, and now Mexico has yellow fever, because of course it does.

Denmark is proposing a land swap: Germany would give Schleswig-Holstein (captured in the 1864 war) back to it, Denmark would give Greenland to the United States, the US would give Mindanao to Denmark, which would give it to Germany.

Indianapolis Mayor Samuel Shank met with the leaders of various unions and demanded a promise that there would be no more strikes during his period in office. They said no, so he has resigned. That’ll show them. (A detail I’d missed about the strike: the mayor had objected to cops being used to protect scabs. 31 cops refused orders to do so and were prosecuted, but were acquitted.)

The General Electric strike in Schenectady is over. Workers will work part-time rather than be laid off, and the two union organizers who were fired will be re-hired.

A German lawyer boxes the ears of an army lieutenant who he found in the company of his stenographer, and there was a duel, and... But here’s my point: no one boxes anyone’s ears anymore. Or do they? what is boxing someone’s ears, exactly?

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Today -100: November 28, 1913: Of lost turkeys, passive resistance, “clergywomen,” Lewis guns, snuff, and eugenic marriages

Headline of the Day -100: “Shipwrecked Men Lose Their Turkey.” The steamship Christopher arrives in Brooklyn, carrying six seamen rescued from the schooner Brookline, which was wrecked off Barbados. The ones who “lose their turkey” are five whose citizenship papers were lost in the mishap and were not permitted to land and thus went without Thanksgiving dinner.

“Lose their turkey” would be a good euphemism for something. Suggestions in comments.

A league is formed
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FA0B17F7355F13738DDDA10A94D9415B838DF1D3
in China to prevent the adoption of Confucianism as the state religion.

British Prime Minister Asquith has decided not to exclude Northern Ireland from Irish Home Rule after all.

The Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, comes out in support of the passive resistance campaign of Indians in Natal, South Africa against the pass laws. The violence against Indian protesters in South Africa was beginning to rouse anti-imperial feelings in India. Hardinge took this position without clearing it with London, which was not best pleased.

Mexican government troops retreat from Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas. “It is reported here that the rebels carried away trainloads of loot and many women.”

Headline Scare Quotes of the Day -100: “TO ADMIT "CLERGYWOMEN."; Synod of Canton of Neuchatel Decides in Favor of Innovation.”

“Wonderful” Headline of the Day -100: “A Wonderful New Gun.” The Lewis Automatic Machine Gun. It can fire 800 rounds a minute. Swell.

The North Dakota Supreme Court upholds the state’s ban on snuff.

Colorado’s Gov. Elias Ammons hosts a meeting of coal mine owners and the leaders of the striking miners. No agreement is reached, and the owners’ seeming willingness to relent on issues relating to company stores, checks on coal weight (miners being paid per pound), etc leaves the governor with the impression that the miners were being unreasonable because the only thing the owners were adamant against considering was recognition of the union. The governor will now tilt increasingly toward the owners, leading inexorably (spoiler alert) to the Ludlow Massacre.

The LAT summarizes states’ eugenics laws. Pennsylvania, for example, requires applicants for marriage licenses to swear that they are not imbeciles. In 3 states a marriage is invalid if one of the parties is drunk. In Delaware the child of a person who was insane before the child was born cannot marry. In Utah, epileptic women may marry only after the age of 45. Marriages of people with VD are illegal in just 5 states.

A Mrs. L. Brackett Bishop of Chicago plans to adopt 15 babies from 15 different races (this is the early-20th-century definition of race, so it includes a German, a Scandinavian, an Irish, and several South American types as well as black, Amerindian, Malay, Chinese and Japanese).

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Today -100: November 27, 1913: Of pardons, plagues, luggage, peace conferences, and breach of promise

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease pardons and paroles 100 convicts for Thanksgiving, including 56 convicted murderers. Two days later one of them, who had served 3 years for murder, shoots a man. Another of the killers issued a pardon turned out to have already escaped from a chain gang two months ago.

There’s a bubonic plague outbreak in Ecuador’s rural regions, which the government is trying to hush up.

Ousted Nicaraguan president José Zelaya is arrested in a New York hotel. Evidently didn’t flee to Canada after all. And man he sucks as a fugitive: when you flee from one hotel because the cops are on the way, you don’t forward your luggage to another hotel.

The third international Peace Conference might have to be postponed from 1915 until 1916 or 1917. No rush, guys.

Jennie Carter of Wakefield, Massachusetts, sues the estate of Frank Sherburne for breach of promise of marriage. He broke their engagement by committing suicide. Tacky, Jennie, tacky.

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Today -100: November 26, 1913: Of wireless, espionage bureaux, obedient wives, and full and disgraceful retreats

For the first time, train passengers (on the Lackawanna Railroad) are able to read the current news, delivered by wireless radio (or Wi-Choo, as it was called)(well, as it should have been called). “To think we didn’t have it for the World Series,” said one passenger.

Switzerland uncovers “an extensive and cleverly organized international military espionage bureau” in Geneva run by a French ex-army captain, Larguier. Larguier has been ordered to leave the country and now must decide, depending on which of Switzerland’s four borders he exits by, which country will have the privilege of arresting him.

Jessie Woodrow Wilson, the president’s daughter (aka “the hot one”), marries Francis Bowes Sayre, a lawyer, in the White House. She actually insisted on including the word “obedient” in her vows.

The Mexican rebels are besieging Tuxpan, a town important to the oil industry. Rebels are demanding that (foreign) oil companies pay taxes to them and not to the Huerta regime. In Juarez, Pancho Villa says “The Federals are in full and disgraceful retreat.” And they are. Villa’s men are executing captured Federales.

14,000 General Electric employees go on strike in Schenectady after two union organizers are fired. Presumably they wanted to get the strike in while they still had a sympathetic Socialist mayor, George Lunn (his term expires at the end of the year).

NYC has police phone boxes (which are not bigger on the inside) for cops on the beat to call their precinct houses, but precincts have no way of contacting patrolling officers. But now, the 23rd Precinct will experiment with signal boxes on fixed posts, which during the day will ring until a cop answers and at night will flash a green light.

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Today -100: November 25, 1913: Of Juarez, provisional detentions, and missing parks commissioners

The Mexican Army starts a big military operation to retake Juarez. Pancho Villa is trying to capture Gen. José y Salazar alive, so he can execute him.

The US attorney general issues a warrant for the former president of Nicaragua, José Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup that the Taft administration and the United Fruit Company supported, for the execution of two American mercenaries caught laying mines to blow up government ships. Zelaya heard the news and quickly vacated his rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria for parts unknown. (Update: the next day, the NYT reported rumors that Zelaya was now in Canada, and it now claimed that the warrant was actually for a “provisional detention” while waiting for an extradition request from Nicaragua for the killing of two entirely different people.)

NYC Parks Commissioner Charles Stover went on vacation well over a month ago and then vanished, although he did send checks covering all his outstanding bills. His friends are claiming it’s probably amnesia caused by a blow to the head or grief over the death of Mayor Gaynor, and they have lobbied Pathé to show his picture in their weekly newsreel, which plays in 10,000 movie houses.

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Today -100: November 24, 1913: Of POWs, rubber horrors, and horse’s heads

Bulgaria claims that Greece is refusing to release prisoners of war from the Balkan Wars.

Headline of the Day -100: “Rubber Horrors Stir British Press.” The treatment of workers on rubber plantations in Brazil.

How They Died 100 Years Ago: Headline: “DIES OF FRIGHT IN AUTO.; Car Hits Wagon and Horse's Head Brushes Mrs. Walker's Face.” Just 34, too.

US Army Chief of Staff Major Gen. Leonard Wood falls off his horse.

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Today -100: November 23, 1913: Banned in Chicago

Just 50 years until my coverage of the Kennedy assassination, in which I will reveal the true extent of the conspiracy.

Pancho Villa dynamites two Federal troop trains on their way to Juarez, as was the custom.

The National Council of Women holds a screening of movies which were banned in Chicago after being passed in NY. For example, there was “The Old Swimming Hole,” which featured black children splashing about in the water without bathing suits, and a film with a woman toe-dancing, whatever that is, and a film of Filipino children eating what’s evidently dog. Others featured criminal acts, and you wouldn’t want to teach youths how to commit crimes.

Impeached-and-ousted NY Gov. Sulzer starts his lecture tour with a talk entitled “The Treason of Tammany,” with a small audience, which doesn’t bode well for his finances (I was never clear what happened to all those campaign donations that made their way into his personal accounts; he couldn’t have gambled it all away on the stock market).

For those keeping score, in the football season just finished there were 14 deaths and 175 injuries. 2 of those killed were college players, one of whom, Edward Morrissey of St. Ambrose, died from blood poisoning after his leg was broken. Football was dangerous, but so was early 20th-century medicine.

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Don’t mess with Texas, it’s already enough of a mess

Wednesday the NYT ran a story on p.A15 on how Dallas’s hate-filled political culture before the Kennedy assassination has changed in 50 years.

Aaaand right next to it is a story about the Supreme Court allowing the Texas abortion law to stand.

Just saying.

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Today -100: November 22, 1913: Of offended multitudes, chalk, and imps

New Year’s Day receptions at the White House were kind of a thing, “the one chance of the year,” the LA Times says, “for all people, irrespective of race, religion or color, to see the inside of the executive mansion, and to shake hands with the President.” Theodore Roosevelt set a record by shaking 8,510 people’s hands. Wilson, however, is calling off this hallowed tradition for 1914, in part because he plans on taking a vacation, in part because he doesn’t want to spend several days afterwards with his hand in a bucket of ice. Or, as the LA Times headline puts it, “Wilson Offends the Multitude.”

Lucy Burns is fined $1 for chalking “Votes for women” on the sidewalks outside the White House. “America’s first militant,” the LA Times calls her.

British suffragettes allegedly burn a lumber yard; in alleged retaliation a suffrage office in Oxford is wrecked and all its furniture and pamphlets and whatnot thrown into the street, as was the custom.

The IWW is trying to start another textiles strike in Paterson, NJ, demanding a nine-hour day.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Human Body Full of Imps.” According to Dr. James J. Hyslop, “one of the foremost psychic authorities in the world.” Oh, and there are good imps and bad imps.

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Today -100: November 21, 1913: Long live the defender of our national dignity!

Huerta opens the new Congress, even though the US told him not to. He is greeted by a cheer of “Long live the defender of our national dignity!” The Catholic Party boycotts the opening. Huerta’s staff wore side arms (does that include guns here, or just swords?), which is illegal in the House. Huerta explained that he’s got everything under control and that he had to dissolve the old Congress because they were all traitors.

The two brothers of Mexico’s late Pres. Madero, arrested and then let out on bail, have taken refuge in the American consulate. Gen. Maas demands their return.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels says that the US army currently has 17 airplanes, and 24 aviators (spoiler alert: two will die in a crash next week), while the Navy has 4 hydroplanes and 3 flying boats. He wants more. He says aviation will limit the duration and scope of wars.

Rep. Robert Thomas (D-KY) pleads with Congress, which has been in session an unusually long time, to adjourn so he can collect his mileage allowance to pay off his creditors.

In one of her speeches in New York, Emmeline Pankhurst said that white slavery is “more awful” than negro slavery ever was.

While the Kiev ritual murder trial was going on, Jacob Adler was performing a play of the story in New York, which he amended every day as events unfolded.

The Vatican says the tango is an immoral dance, forbidden to Catholics.

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Today -100: November 20, 1913: Of moral suasion, and firing squads

Headline of the Day -100: “Huerta Scoffs at America’s ‘Moral Suasion.’” He thinks Woodrow Wilson’s threats and demands are a bluff. For good reason.

Huerta orders the arrest of a Supreme Court judge for “giving out false information,” evidently information about who did or did not capture some town.

Constitutionalist leader Gen. Venustiano Carranza breaks off talks with Wilson’s envoy, journalist William Bayard Hale, until the US recognizes the rebels as the legitimate government of Mexico. Near as I can tell, Hale came with demands that the Constitutionalists stop fighting the government and submit to an election (during a civil war? organized by whom?) and demanded personal negotiations with Carranza and only with Carranza. Carranza wants US recognition but not a set of high-handed (and unfeasible) demands. Wilson wants to aid the rebels, I think, but also wants to call the shots, and the news about Pancho Villa executing prisoners of war in Juarez isn’t helping anything either. The US will now go back to passively watching events.

The LAT says that Pancho Villa has telegraphed Carranza that only a dozen men were executed in Juarez. So that’s okay then.

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Today -100: November 19, 1913: Of blockades, badgers and towers, and slashing critics

Secretary of State Bryan denies that the US plans to blockade Mexican ports. People are beginning to wonder if the Wilson Administration has any plans to enforce the demands and ultimata it keeps making.

Name of the Day -100: Rear Admiral Badger.

The New Jersey Supreme Court invalidates a law for the sterilization of criminals, the feeble-minded and, in this particular case, epileptics.

Oh, spoke too soon: New Name of the Day -100: Charlemagne Tower III, whose wife is suing his father, Charlemagne Tower II, the former US ambassador to Austria, Russia, and Germany, for $200,000 for alienating III’s affections.

Soldiers are being sent to coerce the Navajos into giving up eight horse-thieves currently hiding out on Beautiful Mountain, New Mexico.

Headline of the Day -100: “Critics Slash Shaw Play.” I’m absolutely not going to read that article, because I prefer to imagine that critics were feverishly churning out Major Barbara/Mrs. Warren slash fic.

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