Today -100: July 13, 1914: Of supremes, boynes, fires, no vote no rent, rubber balls, and lynchings

Supreme Court Justice Horace Harmon Lurton dies. There’s some talk of Wilson picking Taft to replace him, which isn’t entirely ridiculous, although (spoiler alert) it won’t happen: Lurton himself was a Democrat nominated by a Republican president, Taft.

July 12 comes off in Northern Ireland without the usual brawling, presumably because everyone’s armed this year.

British suffragette militants have set fire to a railway station near Leicester and attempted to blow up the Church of St John the Evangelist (there’s more than one way to evangelize, I guess).

Sylvia Pankhurst, working in the East End of London, advocates “no vote, no rent.”

Olive Walker, a Dundee suffragette, throws a small rubber ball into the royal carriage in Edinburgh, with a message about forcible feeding attached to it. It lands in Queen Mary’s lap.

Women in Kansas are failing to register to vote, and no one knows why.

A black woman is lynched in Elloree, South Carolina. She had killed a 12-year-old girl.

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Today -100: July 12, 1914: If it be not peace with honour, well then it must be war with honour

Sir Edward Carson tells a meeting of the Central Antrim Volunteers, “If it be not peace with honour, well then it must be war with honour, because there is no alternative.” In fact, despite the typically fiery rhetoric, Carson is relatively calm compared to some of his Unionist compatriots, who want to force the issue by starting a riot, which the army would then decline to suppress, forcing the government to resign and call new elections. Yup, that’s a plan.

A stream of Huerta loyalists are leaving Mexico, not fleeing the imminent collapse of his regime, oh no, they’ve been assigned very important jobs. Esteva Ruiz, for example, the acting foreign minister until yesterday, will be going to Europe to try to raise money for the junta and then on a tour of the ABC countries to thank them for their mediation services. And I’m sure Gen. Maass and the others also have vital work of an unspecified nature out of the country.

Rumor (?) of the Day -100: Huerta has 230 people, mostly government officials, executed.

Austria ends its ban on the Canadian Pacific Railway recruiting emigrants, evidently feeling it won’t need so big an army after all (incidentally, of the European powers, Austria’s military is the second smallest on a per capita basis, after Italy).

Pastor Korber of Zenen, Switzerland is fined for using abusive language, specifically calling his congregation a “miserable band of pigs.”

The memorial meeting for the anarchists who died in that bomb explosion is held in Union Square. The police had banned any parade and ordered that the urns not be displayed. Some fiery speeches are given, with some flat-out saying that dynamite is the answer to society’s problems, while others claim the anarchists were actually murdered by agents of John D. Rockefeller.

In addition to taking the fingerprints of suspects, Berlin police are now x-raying their hands, because they think they can be used for identification purposes.

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Today -100: July 11, 1914: Of aerial espionage, the law of flight, heckled bankers, and eyres

The US begins its first ever prosecution for aerial espionage, of the men responsible for an article in The Sunset Magazine entitled “Can the Panama Canal Be Destroyed from the Air?” featuring pictures of Canal fortifications. The article notes that from the position where their plane took the photos, an enemy plane could drop bombs which would take out the massive gun that protects the Canal. The authors say they had permission to take the photos.

The German government is politely asking banks to keep 10% of their deposits on hand in cash, in case of war. Not that they’re expecting a war. Just, you know, in case.

Huerta fills some of the vacancies in his government, most notably, because he will now become president if Huerta resigns, Chief Justice Francisco Carbajal, a sympathizer with the rebels, is named foreign minister. Rumors say this appointment was approved by Carranza and the United States.

Carranza rejects the invitation of the ABC mediators to send delegates to negotiate a provisional president with Huerta’s delegates.

US Secretary of War Garrison orders a war correspondent, Fred Boalt, deported from Mexico for sending out sensational and untrue dispatches. Boalt accused a US ensign (not named but with enough details to be identifiable) of shooting prisoners “while escaping,” following the familiar Mexican custom of “the law of flight.” The Navy says it didn’t happen.

British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey rumbles at China for refusing to agree on a border between Tibet and British India.

Grey also says that Britain’s ever-increasing military spending is not his fault. He did his darnedest to get foreign countries (he means Germany) to agree to limitations, but they just resented the suggestion.

Boy, this story seems like there almost has to be more to it given, you know, subsequent events: “The Russian minister to Servia, N. Hartwig, died suddenly today while conversing with the Austrian Minister at the Austrian Legation.” (Indeed theories of poisoning will spread, and his daughter inspected the scene and took away the cigarettes he’d been smoking for analysis, but the dude was known to have a heart condition; he just happened to drop dead literally in the middle of explaining to the Austrian ambassador how Serbia wasn’t behind the assassinations in Sarajevo.)

The Boston Post, in an editorial entitled “The Heckled Bankers,” says that the Senate Banking Committee daring to call in Wilson’s nominees to the Federal Reserve Board and even “cross-questioning him as if he were suspected of a crime”, is “taking the very course that will result in making men of the highest grade unwilling to accept appointments to the board.” Remember that Wilson’s entire cabinet was approved in a day without any questioning.

Berlin police release those Serbian students, who evidently weren’t conspiring to assassinate the kaiser after all.

The self-proclaimed Ulster Provisional Government holds its first meeting. “Nothing sensational developed,” says the NYT, which is not easily impressed by treason.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “DANISH REFORM WINS.; Erections to Upper House Assure Amendment of Constitution.” Is that what they’re calling it now.

Germany is expelling Danes from Schleswig-Holstein. Mostly domestic servants and farm workers employed by ethnic Danes. They’re being told they can either go to work for German families or leave the country within 8 days.

Headline of the Day -100 or chapter title from a 19th-century English novel?: “Severn Eyre Dies at Eyre Hall.”

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Today -100: July 10, 1914: Of trusts, Guadalajara, parasitical titled idlers, prison riots, and dwarfs and lamb thyroids

German authorities announce that they received an anonymous warning last April that a Serbian-Slavonic secret committee planned to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm. Which they ignored. But now they’re been conducting raids on Serbian students in Berlin.

Sir Edward Carson goes to Belfast to inaugurate the self-styled Ulster Provisional Government. They have a Constitution and everything. It begins “Our claim is simply to hold the Province of Ulster in trust for the United Kingdom.” The (Liberal) Daily Chronicle notes that reporters from the Tory papers are wandering the Ulster countryside “on the lookout for a civil war” and being spoon-fed alarmist stories by the Orange organizations. “It may be mentioned as an indication of Lord Northcliffe’s keen business ability that The Daily Mail is running a campaign designed to attract English visitors to North of Ireland Summer resorts and golf courses concurrently with its exploitation of political news from Ulster.”

Carranza is still collecting the views of his generals on whether to parlay with Huerta’s representatives. Villa votes no.

The rebels capture Guadalajara after defeating a larger Federal force. 5,000 soldiers and a lot of artillery are captured with minimal losses on the rebel side.

Rep. Stanley Bowdle (D-Ohio) introduces a bill to impose a 25% tax on the incomes of Americans who marry titled foreigners. His gender-specific concern is for females from rich families who marry “parasitical titled idlers.” For these women, he says, “American ideals, American simplicity, and American patriotism are but mere words.” If he was so concerned with American patriotism, he might have introduced a bill allowing American women who marry foreign men to keep their American citizenship, but no.

The Senate Banking and Currency Committee rejects one of Wilson’s choices for Federal Reserve Board, Thomas Jones, a banker involved with the Zinc Trust and also a director of the Harvester Trust, which was sued/is being sued (?) by the federal government. Another nominee, Paul Warburg, has withdrawn his name in the face of hostility, despite Wilson begging him to reconsider.

A riot breaks out in the penitentiary at Blackwell’s Island (today called Roosevelt Island, under the Queensboro Bridge), and a little fire in its brush factory. “The catcalls and curses could be heard in Manhattan.” Ringleaders (including IWW activist Frank Tannenbaum, who organized a sympathy strike for prisoners who were punished for excessive celebration of the 4th of July) will be put on bread and water – meaning a single slice of bread a day and a similarly limited amount of water. Tomorrow the NYT will blame the unrest on the appointment in January of a woman, Katherine Davis, as Commissioner of the Department of Correction: “surely no decent man can believe that it is right for a woman, however ‘advanced’ in ideas she may be, to be placed in contact with that horrible mob of besotted, degenerate, utterly vicious outcasts.” They could be reacting to her refusal to allow reporters to go to the island and her accusation that newspaper investigations of prisons inflamed the prisoners: “The prisoners got the idea that they were just as good as their keepers”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Dwarf Grows By Science.” They’re using lamb thyroid glands. How they’re using them, it doesn’t say and I don’t really want to know.

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Today -100: July 9, 1914: Of conspiracies, Rabbie Burns, pacifications, and sailors

Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested again, and several WSPU leaders are put on trial for conspiracy “maliciously to commit damage and injury and to spoil certain real and personal property of the liege subjects of our lord the King.” They refuse to plead and keep yelling until they’re removed from the court.

Two suffragettes attempt to blow up the cottage where Robert Burns was born, but are foiled by a night watchman. One of the suffragettes is arrested. In court she is “very violent and loquacious.”

Mexican Foreign Minister Ruiz reports in person to the Mexican Congress on the Niagara negotiations, announcing for the first time that Huerta is willing to resign in the interests of peace. He presents it as a surrender to the United States rather than to the Constitutionalists, but will require a deal with the latter, at which point he will announce that “pacification” is complete, declare victory and go home (or, more likely, into exile. He knows what happens to political losers in Mexico). The other victory he is declaring is that the composition of the next government will be decided by negotiations between Mexicans instead of being imposed by the US(he’s pretending the rebels will give him that sort of recognition, which they won’t).

The juiciest of today’s false rumors from Mexico: Pancho Villa has been assassinated by a woman.

Zapata is offering his support to Carranza – in exchange for his men being allowed to keep every landed estate they’ve captured.

The Democratic, Republican and Progressive parties of Idaho all support prohibition. There will be a referendum in 1916.

The House of Lords votes to exclude Northern Ireland from the Home Rule Bill.

A story some American sailors arrested whilst on shore-leave in Havana and released on the request of the US ambassador ends with this sentence: “The sailors have been the best behaved lot who ever visited Havana.”

Didn’t the US just invade Mexico for doing the same thing?

Friday is World War I day on Turner Classic Movies, starting at 3 a.m. PST. I’d recommend everything after 5 p.m.: Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Big Parade, Westfront 1918. Oo, and the next movie is Kameradschaft, which isn’t WW1, but still good.

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Double your flavor, double your fun

Perusing the Guardian website, I see that Tian Tian, the giant panda at the Edinburgh Zoo, may be pregnant, and that Abdullah Abdullah is considering forming a parallel Afghan government. Which leads to one inescapable conclusion:

The double name thing is cuter on a panda than on a politician.

Also, if there had been a mix-up at the Edinburgh Zoo and Abdullah Abdullah had been artificially inseminated and Tian Tian formed a parallel Afghan government, the world would be a better place.

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Today -100: July 8, 1914: No citizen has a right to rebuke another citizen by subjecting him to ridicule or insult

The Manchester Guardian editorializes that forcible feeding is a form of torture and that Home Secretary McKenna’s defenses of it make that clear. In other words, it’s being used as a deterrent and not as a means of preserving the life of hunger-strikers.

NYC’s Board of Aldermen bans parades on 5th Avenue or Broadway, except on Sundays and holidays, but grandfathers in groups that have been parading more than 10 years (in other words, this is intended to allow the police to ban parades by women suffragists or Wobblies, and will be used against the latter tomorrow).

Frederick and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, expelled from the Women’s Social and Political Union last year, have formed their own suffrage group, the United Suffragists, which will be “politically militant,” whatever that means (I don’t think they know, and intervening events will prevent us finding out).

The Pethick-Lawrences, by the way, are one of those feminist couples that joined their last names together. My personal favorite example of that from this period is Francis and Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington.

In other intra-mural-squabble news, commissions representing Generals Villa and Carranza have met and supposedly sorted out their differences. Also, Federal forces are fighting mutinying soldiers near Vera Cruz.

Rumors again have Huerta’s family fleeing the country.

Pres. Wilson finally accepts the resignation of ambassador to Greece and Montenegro George Fred Williams, who claimed to have resigned a couple of weeks ago in order to be able to denounce Prince William of Albania and by extension the European powers who back him. He sent his resignation by mail, but it never arrived, so he was asked to do it again by telegraph. Now Wilson has to apologize to everyone in Europe because Williams was still ambassador while he was making insulting speeches. The Balkans are so troublesome.

The NY Health Commissioner refuses a permit to delay the burial of the bodies of the three anarchists blown up by their own bomb at 1626 Lexington Avenue so they can headline a parade Saturday.

Judge Crain of General Sessions upholds Upton Sinclair’s conviction for disorderly conduct for participating in the “Free Silence” picket line in front of Rockefeller Jr’s offices. One would have thought that silent picketing is the very opposite of disorderly conduct, but Judge Crain says “No citizen has a right to rebuke another citizen by subjecting him to ridicule or insult.” Evidently bringing Rockefeller’s connection to the Ludlow Massacre to public attention hurts his fee-fees and is therefore illegal. The NYT agrees with the decision, saying that the direct consequence of the picketing was the 1626 Lexington Avenue bomb.

Speaking of the Rockefellers, it’s John D.’s 75th birthday, but thanks to those kill-joy Wobblies and their bombs, he’ll be foregoing any major celebration. Also, his organist is on vacation, because John D. Rockefeller totally has an organist.

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Today -100: July 7, 1914: Of smuggling, sillimen, and kissing weddings

200,000 rounds of ammunition are smuggled into County Down for the Ulster Volunteers. Funny how that keeps happening.

There’s a strike at the British government’s Woolwich Arsenal, the chief provider of guns for the military.

The Mexican Constitutionalists court-martial the British vice consul at Zacatecas, George St. Clair Douglas, on charges of assisting the Federales. He is released. Still don’t know what that’s all about.

Name of the Day -100: John Silliman, the envoy of the United States to the Mexican rebels, who says he will ask them not to kill Huerta after they capture him. Silly man.

Suffragettes throw leaflets at King George and Queen Mary at the Edinburgh train station, from the balcony of the house opposite.

Headline of the Day -100: “BURNS NEGRO TO DEATH.; Just a Joke, Says White Man, Who Set Goslee Afire.” Alcohol was involved.

Wedding Headlines of the Day -100: 1) “WEDDING BY KISSING UPHELD; ‘Diamond Gus’ Hall’s Wife Gets Separation and Alimony.” Diamond Gus being some sort of Wall Street type who likes to wear diamonds on his suspenders, garters, lapels, etc and even carries around handfuls of loose diamonds in his pockets, but is cheap enough to try to get out of paying alimony. The court awards her $7,200 a year.
2) “TO WED IF SHE HAS NO FITS.; Fiance’s Family Will Watch Bride-Elect Constantly for a Month.”

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Today -100: July 6, 1914: Of devil’s work, conspicuous silence, the vortex of anarchy, and mock elections

In St Paul’s Cathedral, the Bishop of London calls suffragette militancy “devil’s work.”

Rear Admiral William Southerland has reached the mandatory retirement age of 62; he is the last remaining member of the active service to have served during the Civil War, presumably before his voice broke.

A Dr. Daniel Martin notes that Theodore Roosevelt has expressed opinions on pretty much everything but “is conspicuously silent on the subject of prohibition”.

The NYT says that the IWW bomb explosion at 1626 Lexington proves that “Whatever may first draw weak men and women into the vortex of anarchy, there is no doubt that, once in, murder becomes a part of their creed.” (Related: Headline of the Day -100: “Find Berg’s Body in Bomb Wreckage. Head and Feet Blown Off and the Trunk Pinned to the Wall by a Pile of Debris.” Front page, above the fold. Wow.)

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand left his children only $400,000, so some of his castles may have to be sold off.

The NAACP will challenge Louisville, Kentucky’s new law establishing racial segregation in housing.

Mexican elections. The NYT correspondent checks out the polling booths in Mexico City and finds that almost no one has shown up. The largest parties (Catholics, Liberals) boycotted, or at least failed to put up any candidates.

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Today -100: July 5, 1914: Of state funerals, distrust, bombs, ice, girl-men, and plaster

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie’s funeral is a small affair, presumably because of some combination of security concerns and the emperor being too old and feeble to deal with a larger one. 120 or so pissed-off non-invited nobles decide to march in the funeral procession, whether they were invited or not. Those among them holding court offices threaten to resign if they’re stopped, so it was thought best not to arrest them. Some of them were angry at the way the Habsburgs always treated Sophie on account of her only being Czech nobility. Beyond the whole morganatic marriage thing, she wasn’t allowed to eat at the same table with her husband at state dinners, and other minor slights. Emperor Franz Josef writes to the prime ministers of Austria and Hungary: “the fanaticism of a small band of misguided men cannot shake the sacred ties that bind me to my people. ... For 65 years I have shared with my people joy and sorrow, mindful, even in the gloomiest hours, of my high duties and my responsibility for the destinies of the millions for whom I am answerable to the Almighty.” That comes darn close to the Divine Right of Kings.

The late archduke, in his military role, was behind an ongoing attempt to railroad (so to speak) an American employee of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who is being charged with promoting desertion from the Austro-Hungarian army (that is, emigration by ordinary Austrian men to Canada).

Headline of the Day -100: “Germany Distrusts Russia.”

Futurist Headline of the Day -100: “Futurist Leader Angry. British Public Stupid and Hostile, Marinetti Declares.”

Mexico is holding presidential elections, which everybody knows can’t be held in enough districts to meet the requirements of the constitution. It is thought that Huerta is using it as an excuse to name someone else (Pedro Lascurain) as president, allowing him to step down with some pretense of honor and then leave very quickly for Europe.

Yale Latin-American history professor Hiram Bingham (and was there ever a more Yale-professor-y name than Hiram Bingham? I think not), the guy who recently discovered Machu Picchu, says in his new book, “The Monroe Doctrine, an Obsolete Shibboleth,” that the Doctrine should be dropped in favor of an alliance between the US and the ABC countries, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, to protect (i.e., invade) the weaker countries in the Western Hemisphere, and stop them from being “Orientalized.” He’s horrified that Brazil and Argentina, rather than developing the enlightened racism of California, have been welcoming Japanese farmers. In 1924, Prof. Bingham will be elected governor of Connecticut in November and US senator in December.

A bomb being prepared by some IWW members to kill John D. Rockefeller Jr. explodes prematurely in a NYC tenement building, killing 4 (3 Wobblies and the girlfriend of one of them) and injuring 20.



Striking ice-wagon drivers in St. Louis fight scabs.

The Cherokee nation is legally dissolved.
 
 Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Milwaukee’s Girl-Man.” Following a recent Supreme Court decision defining common law marriage, the creditors of Mamie White are suing Ralph Kerwinelo, saying that by posing as her husband, Ralph assumed the legal liabilities of a husband, even though Ralph is actually a woman whose real name is Cora Anderson. Cora/Ralph is also being sued by the creditors of Dorothy Kleinowski, who she recently married (real, not common law) under Wisconsin’s new eugenic marriage law, which failed to specify gender.



Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan turns down the offer of a famous sculptor to make a life mask of him or, as the LA Times puts it, “Refuses to Allow Mouth to Be Closed By Plaster.”

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Today -100: July 4, 1914: Of vice consuls, idle children, more plane crashes, chamberlains, fusions, and stabbed mayors

The Mexican rebels arrest the British vice consul at Zacatecas, George St. Clair Douglas, for allegedly assisting the federales.

Headline of the Day -100: “Law Makes Children Idle.” In response to the New Jersey law requiring the silk factories of Paterson, NJ not to employ children under 16 more than 8 hours a day, the mills fire 500 of those children out of fear that older employees might demand the same hours.

A couple of French, and one Dutch, military aviators are killed in two separate accidents. One of the French ones is a Corp. Gabriel Godefroy, which seems like a very French-military-aviator sort of name.

Figures from the first income tax returns show that 19.1% of the federal income and corporate taxes came from one New York City internal revenue district, the one including Wall Street. New York state residents are paying 44% of the nation’s individual income taxes.

Joseph Chamberlain, an MP and former mayor of Birmingham and the most important British politician of the late 19th century who never became a prime minister, dies at 77. Both his sons (each of whose mothers died in childbirth) would lead the Conservative Party. Not at the same time, obviously.

Theodore Roosevelt resigns as a contributing editor of The Outlook in order to devote all his time to politics, including an unlikely plan to unite Progressives and dissident Republicans behind a fusion candidate for governor of New York who would be an independent (that is, non-Tammany) Democrat who could somehow unite these disparate forces. Or possibly a unicorn. (Update: oh, another article says that one name put forward as a possible Fusion Unicorn Party candidate is Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt.)

The Mexican rebels’ alternative currency is printed in the US. The rebel junta files suit in a US federal court, trying to prevent express companies delivering any of this money to Villa instead of Carranza.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “Miner Stabs Butte Mayor.” Well, it’s disappointing mostly because it doesn’t say where the Butte mayor was stabbed and I was hoping it was the Butte mayor’s butt, because I’m twelve. The mayor shoots the miner, who later dies. The dispute was over the mayor’s refusal to deport a reporter for a Finnish-language newspaper which sided with the Western Federation of Miners. Before he died, the miner said that the mayor shot him before he stabbed the mayor).

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Today -100: July 3, 1914: Of funerals, faulty poisons, pardons, and freak vegetables

No foreign royalty will be attending the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s funeral, presumably for security reasons.

Today Princip admits he was part of a larger plot after all. He’s rather annoyed at the guys who didn’t throw their bombs. Also, every one of the conspirators had a bottle of poison they were supposed to drink. I seem to recall that one did, but it didn’t work, because someone got cheap and didn’t buy the, you know, good poison.

A petition of 350,000 women calling for women’s suffrage is received by the Swedish parliament.

The governor of Alabama pardons Frank Williams, a negro convicted of stealing 50¢, after Williams has served only 20 years out of his 50-year sentence.

Huerta denies having sent his family out of Mexico City.

The Netherlands names a date for the next Peace Conference: June 1, 1915.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “VERSATILE NEGRO PREACHER.: Uses Freak Vegetables to Paint a Moral and Illustrate the Power of God.” Didn’t read the article; I thought it better if we all just imagine how freak vegetables paint a moral and illustrate the power of God.

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Today -100: July 2, 1914: There are still people who feel and think as I do!

More anti-Serb rioting in Bosnia.

Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): “Prinzip Exults in His Guilt.” Gavrilo Princip tells a court that after reading anarchist literature, he’d become convinced that there was no finer calling than to be an assassin. He lies that he had nothing to do with the other plots that day; when he heard the bomb go off, “I exclaimed, ‘There are still people who feel and think as I do!’ This strengthened my resolve still further.”

The bill to amend the Home Rule Bill has reached the House of Lords, although the Home Rule Bill still hasn’t passed the Lords. The Tories intend to pass some version of the amending bill, but not the bill it amends. I guess that makes sense to Lord Lansdowne, leader of the Unionist Party in the Lords, who thinks the maneuver could create a breathing space that might prevent a civil war.

Leopold Wölfling, eldest son of Ferdinand IV, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who renounced his title as Archduke of Austria in 1902 in order to marry, and who was then banished from Austria, taking Swiss citizenship, is being sued by his now ex-wife for an increase in her alimony from $80 a month to $200. He tells the court that she was originally a servant (actually, she was a prostitute) and “ought to be content to live in that station of life.” He divorced her after she joined a vegetarian nudist colony.

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Today -100: July 1, 1914: The most idealistic men get into the worst messes

Here’s a surprise: anti-Serb demonstrations in Vienna.

Franz Ferdinand was insured for $12 million, Sophie for $6 million. You don’t think of royalty as needing life insurance.

Princip and Čabrinović will be tried in civilian rather than military courts, meaning that the maximum sentence Čabrinović can receive is 5-10 years for attempted murder, and Princip could get as little as 10 because he’s under-aged (19).

The Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean mediators at the Niagara conference declare the conference ended. There might be talks between the Mexican sides, but Carranza is stalling (or quite properly consulting with all his generals, depending on how you look at it).

Rumors in Mexico today: 1) Huerta has sent his family out of the country. 2) Huerta has been assassinated.

Two Ulster Volunteers were stopped by police and their names taken down because they were walking down the street (Belfast, I think) in full uniform and carrying arms. So the Volunteers will respond by having all their members walk around with rifles.

West Virginia’s prohibition law goes into effect and the last saloon closes. A lot of liquor was consumed in the last few days. A lot. It’s an unusually tough law in that mere possession of liquor, which might have been legally purchased in the past, is now prima facie evidence of unlawful intent. The loss of revenue (a state saloon license was $1,000, a Wheeling license another $300) will damage state and local finances badly, and West VA is already facing the prospect that the Supreme Court will decide it owes a share of Virginia’s state debt at the time it seceded. There is also a lot of vacant real estate now, most of the saloons not having been able to rent or sell out to other businesses.

New York’s Boylan Act, strictly regulating prescriptions for opium, morphine, and heroin, goes into effect. It requires the prescriptions for those drugs to be written on official numbered forms. Which the Health Dept forgot to distribute. Obamacare, amiright?

Congress finally votes to give the vice president and the Speaker of the House automobiles.

Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): “Wilson Dodges Suffrage.” Woodrow Wilson meets 500 women at the White House to discuss women’s suffrage. He says it has nothing to do with him and they should go bother the states. He opposes a federal constitutional amendment, and even if he didn’t, he says he couldn’t press Congress for one because it wasn’t mentioned in the last Democratic platform. Rheta Childe Dorr points out that his current position on Panama Canal tolls is the reverse of that in the platform. “This argument produced little effect upon the President.” After several sharp questions from Mrs. Dorr (who has spent a lot of time in the company of Mrs. Pankhurst and just ghost-wrote her memoirs), Wilson says it’s not “proper” for him to submit to questioning and ends the meeting rather abruptly. Anna Howard Shaw of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association will write a letter to Wilson repudiating the delegation, which was sent by the Congressional Union: “We greatly deplore any act in the name of woman suffrage which mars the dignity, lawfulness and patriotism” of the campaign.

Theodore Roosevelt gives a speech to the Progressive Party in Pittsburgh in which he attacks Wilson relentlessly, mostly on tariffs and the anti-trust bill, but refrains from criticizing the Republican Party, keeping his options open for a reunion. He says Wilson’s New Freedom is “merely the exceedingly old freedom which permits each man to cut his neighbor’s throat.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, visiting the US, also has a few words about Wilson: “President Wilson is a fine fellow, but it seems singular, doesn’t it, that the most idealistic men get into the worst messes, like this Mexican affair.” No shit, Sherlock.

It seems radium is not the only miracle drug. A Dr. Voronoff demonstrates to the Academy of Medicine in Paris that he cured a 14-year-old “cretin” by grafting a baboon’s thyroid gland onto his neck.

From Punch (click for larger):

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Today -100: June 30, 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand is still dead

The NYT thinks that Austrian reactions to the assassinations yesterday “are likely further to embitter the relations” between Austria and Serbia, and with Serbia’s protector Russia.

The Bosnian (still a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) Diet convenes to express sorrow at the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Four Serb deputies show up not wearing dark suits (not sure if that includes the president of the Serbian group, who is arrested for inciting the people to sedition).

Someone throws a bomb in Sarajevo, injuring one person slightly, but it sets off an anti-Serb demonstration. Serb homes and businesses are damaged and looted by Croats and Muslims who presumably didn’t really care so much about the archduke and more about fucking with the Serbs. In the afternoon, martial law is declared.

Russian newspapers have been saying some not very nice things about the late Archduke F.F.

The new heir to the Austrian throne is the 26-year-old Archduke Karl Franz Josef, grandnephew of the emperor, which is considered a bit young (Emperor Franz Josef was only 18 when he ascended to the throne, but that was 65 years ago). Also, his career has been military rather than royal, so everyone’s hoping the dottering emperor hangs on for a few more years. Karl F.J. is married to Princess Zita of Parma, and suddenly I’m hungry for Italian food for some reason.

A 20% increase in bread prices in Madrid leads to a good old-fashioned bread riot.

Many of Huerta’s soldiers are deserting for the more lucrative career of pillaging.

Rebels claim to have proof that Huerta is planning to lease large swathes of Baja California to form Japanese colonies.

Pancho Villa may have extorted from Carranza complete control of the rebel military but, it turns out, Carranza kept the ammunition, so Villa has to abandon plans to expand his campaign in the south.

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Today -100: June 29, 1914: Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s 83-year-old Kaiser Franz Josef I and heir to his throne, is assassinated in Sarajevo in a somewhat inept plot that only worked because someone drove down the wrong street. The first two assassins along the route fail to act at all. A third, 19-year-old Nedeljko Čabrinović, throws a hand grenade at the open-topped car containing Franz Ferdinand, his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie (that means her children would not be in the line of succession because she was a mere Czech), the governor of the Bosnian province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Oskar Potiorek, and a colonel. But the archduke swats it away (or it bounces off the car, depending on whose version you believe) and it explodes behind his car, only hurting a few insignificant non-royals. The archduke then orders his car to stop while they figure out what had just happened, but the plotters weren’t prepared for such a boneheaded move.

When he arrives at his destination he interrupts the mayor of Sarajevo’s welcoming speech to exclaim, “It is perfectly outrageous! We have come to Sarajevo on a visit and have had a bomb thrown at us!” Then he graciously allows the mayor to continue his speech, not at all awkwardly, while he mentally composes a scathing Yelp review. Afterwards, Franz F. decides to go to the hospital to visit the bystanders injured by the grenade. When someone suggests this might be dangerous, Potiorek retorts, “Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?”, totally ignoring the city’s motto.



Still, Potiorek decides that after the bomb incident they should take an alternate route. But he forgets to tell the driver. The route they did take took them right alongside a café where Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old member of the conspiracy, was either sitting gloomily, thinking he’d lost his chance, or standing outside attentively (the NYT is full of contradictory details). “Hey, that’s the very car I was looking for!” he said, probably, and emptied his pistol into it, killing FF and Sophie (he said at his trial that the he was aiming at Potiorek, not Sophie). It was their 14th wedding anniversary.



According to the NYT, Princip and Čabrinović “expressed themselves to the police in the most cynical fashion about their crimes.” I’m telling ya, these kids today -100. Both are from Herzegovina, which was annexed by Austria (officially) in 1908 along with Bosnia. The two assassins are singing like canaries, or boasting like, um, peacocks.



The NYT is already reporting (correctly) that the bombs were supplied by Serbia, I think because Čabrinović admitted it.

Censorship is clamped down so quickly in Sarajevo by the Austrian authorities that the first news of the assassination to reach Budapest, which is after all one of the capitals of the Dual Monarchy, comes via Belgrade.

Headlines of the Day -100: 1) “Paris Press Fears War.” “Several journals express the fear that the consequences will be sufficiently serious again to plunge the Balkans, if not Europe, into a conflict.”
2) “Tragedy May Alter Politics of Europe.” Ya think?

A Mrs. Alma Vetsera Hayne pops up in New York claiming to be the daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress the Baroness Maria Vetsera (played by Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux in Mayerling or – dear God why – by Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve in the remake), who committed suicide together in 1889, and that therefore her son is now the true heir to the Austrian throne. Presumably a con artist or fabulist, but her personal history is so dysfunctional, she’d fit in perfectly with the Habsburgs. One incident: the LA Times mentions a Canadian who was on his way to marry her a few years back (although she was already married) when his father had him arrested: “The young man was put in an asylum to effect a reconciliation with his wife.”

At a banquet in Monterrey, Venustiano Carranza says that the US is taking a dictatorial attitude toward Mexico. He rejects any foreign interference in Mexico’s internal affairs. Elsewhere, Constitutionalists are denying a story in the New York Herald that the rebel movement is financed by American businessmen like financier Henry Clay Pierce (who has big oil and railroad interests in Mexico).

The Dominican Republic: a US gunboat fires at government batteries which are bombarding rebel-held Puerta Plata. It was okay when they were just killing rebels, but damaging US-owned property is right out of bounds.

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Today -100: June 28, 1914: The blood of the murdered is on his head

After a fact-finding visit to Albania, George Fred Williams, the US ambassador to Greece and Montenegro, resigns so he can freely speak out against Prince William of Albania, who “has no more right than I have in Albania, and the blood of the murdered is on his head.” He thinks there is currently no real government in Albania, or rather five of them (the 6 Great Powers, the commission controlling civil government, Dutch soldiers controlling military government, the prince, and the powerless Cabinet). He says the prince’s government “has shown skill and success in one respect only: It has been able to prevail upon the various religious and racial forces of Albania to set upon each other with murderous purpose.” Williams wants Albania to have a decentralized cantonal system, like Switzerland’s. Just remove the foreign warships and withdraw the foreign armies and Albania “will not be a menace to the peace of the Balkans. If they be allowed a trial nobody but themselves can be harmed should they fail in self-government.”

France is selling off some islands near Corsica it isn’t using any more. French newspapers are worried Italy might buy them.

A case of bubonic plague is discovered in New Orleans, as was the custom.

The Russian government has been working with (presumably bribing) the British press to shore up the alliance between the two countries. Which might explain why four London papers recently defended Russia’s anti-Semitic policies in similar terms, explaining that restrictions on Jewish residence are merely to protect Russian peasants from Jewish peddling, liquor dealing and usury.

How They Died 100 Years Ago: A Mrs. A.H. Miller of Woodcliff Heights, New Jersey buys a goose and heads home on her horse-drawn wagon. As they’re crossing a bridge the goose honks, the horse panics and breaks through the guard rail. Mrs. Miller, the horse, the wagon, and the goose all go into the reservoir. Mrs. Miller and the horse drown, the goose is unharmed.... for now.

Theodore Roosevelt is suffering from, ahem, jungle fever.

In November, Arizona voters will face a large number of propositions, including ones to ban employers asking prospective employees about criminal records; ban mines employing more than 20% non-Americans; establish mothers’ and old-peoples’ pensions; and abolish the State Senate.

English suffragist Margaret Stockman of Hampstead has written a will disinheriting her son in favor of her daughter unless there is women’s suffrage when the will goes into effect.

Headline of the Day -100: “Knock King’s Hat Askew.” This time the suffragettes have gone TOO FAR!

You can argue about the effectiveness of those sort of militant tactics, but at least they get noticed. An A.P. report in the LA Times today -100 is entitled “Many Women of English Nobility Have Affiliated With New Women’s Organization in London.” The “new” National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was in fact founded in 1897, and it united local groups some of which dated back to the 1860s. It’s also the largest suffrage group in Britain, but the A.P. has apparently never heard of it before because its members only holds meetings, petitions, supports Labour candidates, etc and don’t burn anything down.

In the US, suffragists from the 10 women’s suffrage states go to Washington to talk to members of congress and others. Speaker Champ Clark tells them women’s suffrage is as “inevitable as the rising of tomorrow’s sun” (one of the lobbyists is his daughter Genevieve). Vice President Marshall says his wife won’t let him support women’s suffrage. William Jennings Bryan ran into an elevator when he saw the suffragists coming.

Prince Humbert (age 10), starting on his career in the Italian Navy, faints while watching a bullfight (for some reason watching a bullfight is part of his training for the navy). The queen wants him returned home but the king says, “My son must not be a muff.”

The commander of Germany’s 15th Army Corps wants to ban beer evenings paid for out of the canteen surplus. He thinks the soldiers would appreciate much more some non-alcoholic beverages and an excursion to a battlefield.

That theory will be tested soon.

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Today -100: June 27, 1914: Of volunteers, old cars, plane crashes, races, moose herds, and bribery

Some private citizens in Vienna are raising a volunteer army to fight for Prince William of Albania. However, they’re recruiting from amongst reservists in the Austrian Army, so they probably won’t be allowed to go.

Congress again refuses to buy a new car for the vice president, who drives a 1909 model, which Rep. James Mann (R-Ill.) calls “a sight to fill any decent American citizen with chagrin.” (The NYT suggests he take the trolley.)

Two more German military aviators die in one incident, and one in another incident. Wait for the war, guys. There’ll be plenty of pointless death to go around.

Mexican Revolution Headlines of the Day -100: “Villa Chasing His Beaten Foes” (The capture of Zacatecas is followed by a precipitate retreat by the federales).
2) “Rebel Leaders Race for Mexico City.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Moose Herd Has Colonel Cornered.” The NYT thinks Theodore Roosevelt is being backed into running for governor against his will, after he rejected the idea of the Progressive Party nominating NYC District Attorney Charles Whitman, the probable Republican candidate.

The Progressive candidate for governor of Colorado, Edward Costigan, says mine owners offered him $50,000 to support a candidate (whom he does not name, but who is sitting in that very room as he gives his speech) for US senate.

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Today -100: June 26, 1914: Of unjust and obnoxious discrimination, verboten signs, butchers, bathtubs, and fires

The State Department took ten months to respond to Japan’s complaint about California’s racist alien land law (“unjust and obnoxious discrimination”). Bryan insists that the law isn’t racist but wholly economic. Japan responds, Yeah right.

Lord Brassey is briefly arrested in Kiel as a suspected spy, as he sailed his yacht’s dinghy a little too close to the imperial dockyard. Brassey notes, “There was no ‘Verboten’ sign, which is seldom failing in Germany”.

Brassey is in town for Kiel Week, which is some sort of German Navy thing. Kaiser Wilhelm visits the British ship the King George V; while on board he was nominally in supreme command of the British fleet, in which he is an admiral, and has the uniform to prove it (dude collected uniforms). There are 4 British dreadnoughts and 3 cruisers participating in Kiel Week. Nice to see the British and German navies getting along so well.

One of the men killed during the capture of Zacatecas is Col. Rodolfo “The Butcher” Fierro, the man who killed William Benton, the Scottish rancher about whom there was so much fuss.

Pancho Villa has a $1,000 porcelain bathtub shipped to him from Chicago to Juarez. With a gold-plated rubber ducky, I’m assuming.

Bank examiners investigating the failure of ousted US Sen. William Lorimer’s La Salle Street Bank discover that former Sen. Thomas Paynter (D-Kentucky), who voted to allow Lorimer to retain his seat, and indeed was on the committee investigating the bribery charges against Lorimer, had a $40,000 loan from Lorimer’s bank.

The Prince of Wales is now so worried about the possibility of meeting a militant suffragette that when he sees two women coming towards him while he’s at the beach, he dives into the water and swims away.

Salem, Massachusetts is hit by a large fire, caused by witchcraft, probably.

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Today -100: June 25, 1914: Merely the belated payment of blackmail with an apology to the blackmailers

Pancho Villa’s army captures Zacatecas.

At the Niagara conference, the US and Huerta delegates sign a protocol. The US waives any war indemnity “or other international satisfaction” (i.e., the stupid 21-gun salute) from Mexico, but plans to continue occupying Vera Cruz until there’s a new government. The Huerta and Carranza representatives will negotiate with each other informally.

Theodore Roosevelt is back in the US, and while still refusing to run for governor of New York, he has a few thoughts he’d like to share on national issues. He denounces the proposed treaty with Colombia for paying it $25 million in compensation for TR’s theft of Panama from it, which he calls “merely the belated payment of blackmail with an apology to the blackmailers” (he uses the word blackmail a lot. I mean, a lot.) The foreign policy of Wilson and Bryan, he says in his best John McCain mode, has made the US “a figure of fun in the international world.”

Serbia’s King Peter seems to have fled Belgrade “on account of difficulties with army officers” (and claiming ill health) and named his son regent (no jokes about Regent being a girl’s name).

A federal district judge overturns Iowa’s law providing for the compulsory sterilization of men twice convicted of crimes.

At the funeral of the nine Austrian military aviators killed in the dirigible vs. plane incident, 20 airplanes fly a guard of honor and astonishingly, none of them crash.

And German aviator Gustav Basser flies for 18 hours and 10 minutes without landing, a record, and one which will last nearly to the end of the week.

New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel accidentally shoots former NY State Senator William H. Reynolds, at least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

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