Today -100: February 4, 1916: I recognize no Collector

The Canadian Parliament Building in Ottawa is on fire. Naturally everyone thinks it was caused by a bomb. A German bomb. It wasn’t. The chief Liberal whip Frederick Forsyth Pardee is missing (he’s fine), several MPs were burned, and some of the building’s workers are dead.

Newport News, Virginia: All of the SS Appam’s crew and passengers have now left the ship, despite objections by their German captors and by the British ship’s owners, who would have preferred their employees to maintain a presence on the ship to support their claim that it doesn’t belong to the Germans because they brought it to a neutral port. My favorite moment: Lt Berg, in command of the German prize crew, asks the British vice consul, who wants to board, by whose authority he comes. “By that of the United States Collector of Customs.” “I recognize no Collector.”

Some of the British sailors aboard the Appam were from other ships attacked by the Möwe. One of them, First Engineer Gow of the Dromonby, has now survived three close encounters with the Germans, having previously been on two ships that were sunk. “I’ve had almost enough of this business of trying to make a living on the seas.”

Also on board the Appam: someone’s pet leopard, which he’s trying to get returned to him.

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Today -100: February 3, 1916: Of child labor and Philippines independence

The House passes a bill to ban interstate shipping of products produced by child labor (that is, children under 14 in factories, 16 in mines, or 16 if they work at night or more than 8 hours a day). The chief opposition comes from Southerners, since cotton mills are a major employer of minors. The Keating-Owen Act will become law, only to be overturned in 1918 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that, while the interstate commerce clause allows Congress to regulate inherently immoral products like liquor and whores, cotton is not immoral and Congress doesn’t have the power to overrule states with crappy child labor laws.

The Senate votes 41 to 41 for independence for the Philippines in 1921. VP Marshall casts the deciding vote in favor.

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Today -100: February 2, 1916: Of appams, le suffrage des morts, trains, and busy intersections

A British steamship, the SS Appam, which was captured off the coast of Africa by a German cruiser while making a run from Dakar to Liverpool and is now under the command of a small German prize crew, arrives at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where they’ve brought it because they couldn’t take it back to Germany through the British blockade. (Ah, perhaps there were only 22 Germans because they expected to be interned for the duration of the war in the US. The Appam’s crew won’t be interned because they were not combatants. International law is weird). They’re hoping the US will recognize their claim that the Appam is now an auxiliary of the German navy, subject to internment, because if it’s ruled a prize of war it will be ordered to leave, at which point the British navy could easily recapture it. In fact, the case will wend through the courts and the Supreme Court will rule in 1917 (before the US entry into the war) that belligerents had no right to just deposit spoils of war in US ports, beyond the time necessary to make them seaworthy. The Appam’s passengers include Sir Edward Meriwether, the governor of British Sierra Leone.

Britain denies that it’s secretly negotiating a separate peace with Germany. It’s funny how often one country or another has to deny having any interest in peace.

Right-wing French journalist Maurice Barrès calls for votes for women. Actually, he calls for widows and mothers of dead soldiers to get the vote to represent them, which he calls “le suffrage des morts.”

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In Grinnell, Iowa, Woodrow Wilson stops his train from backing over five girls.

Supposedly, one of the Montenegrin generals who signed the surrender has been assassinated.

The Fifth Avenue Association claims that the intersection of 5th Ave and 42nd Street in NYC is the busiest highway crossing in the world, surpassing Charing Cross in London. They counted 1,149 vehicles going south in a one-hour period (in the afternoon). The Association says that 92% of 5th Ave’s vehicles are now motorized as opposed to horse-propelled.

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Today -100: February 1, 1916: Loyalty is first

The Packard Motor Car Company announces that in future only American citizens (or foreigners who are in the process of applying for citizenship) will receive promotions to positions of responsibility and trust. “Loyalty is first” is the Packard motto.

At one of his “preparedness” talks, in Chicago, Woodrow Wilson says the army currently “is not large enough even for the ordinary duties of peace.” The navy is great, though.

The number of automobiles in New York City has increased to 60,000 from 40,000 in the previous registration year.

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Today -100: January 31, 1916: Of air duels, trapped Jews, micawbers, canals, and lepers and canaries

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An article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger written by William Bullitt (who would be FDR’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and France) blames the collapse of Henry Ford’s peace mission on Rosika Schwimmer’s autocratic attempts to dictate to the disparate group.

The NYT suggests that Brandeis was nominated so he could be the deciding vote in several anti-trust cases scheduled to reach the Supreme Court.

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You don’t get many literary insults in politics these days. “A policy of milk and water in one nation,” TR says, “encourages a policy of blood and iron in another nation.”

A Woman’s Congress in Yucatan demands the vote for women in Mexico. Which they will get. In 1953.

There has been some discussion in the NYT letters page about the “canals” of Mars, following a report from Lowell Observatory claiming to have spotted vegetation sprouting alongside the canals. But, ask the letters, are the canals mere optical illusions? How could they, simply as an engineering feat, have been expanded as rapidly as astronomer Percival Lowell observed? Today, 

Waldemar Kaempffert of Scientific American, a supporter of the existence of canals on Mars, points out that in Mars’ lower gravity, a Martian canal-digger could haul as much dirt as an elephant on Earth. 

Magdalena McLean, a 17-year-old Jersey City girl, is ordered confined in a hospital because of leprosy. Which she actually prefers to being locked up in one room by her parents, as she has been since her symptoms appeared 5 years ago. The mayor visited her and sent her some canaries.

Ad of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: January 30, 1916: The world is on fire and there is tinder everywhere

Belgium protests the doubling of Germany’s punitive taxes on it.

Woodrow Wilson, giving a Preparedness speech in Cleveland, says that everyone who comes to the White House say they are counting on him to keep the US out of war and in the next breath say that they’re counting on him to maintain the honor of the United States. But, he asks, “Have you reflected that a time might come when I could not do both?” “The world is on fire and there is tinder everywhere. ... The whole influence of passion is abroad in the world, and it is not strange that men are red in such circumstances.” Thus the need to be prepared militarily. “Congress cannot know what to do unless the nation knows what to do. That is the reason I have come to you. Doo bee doo bee doo.” He may not have actually said the last bit.

Senators are moving away from the initial hostility many of them expressed for Supreme Court nominee Louis Brandeis. But questions remain. One progressive Republican wants to know Brandeis’s attitude toward the federal control of water power sites. The Senate Judiciary Committee asks the White House for the usual list of people who recommended Brandeis, only to be told that there is no such list.

Rube Goldberg, the most popular cartoonist in the US, now earns 50,000 a year from his cartoons alone, the most popular being “Boob McNutt,” which is also his porn name. He also makes movies. Not porn movies. Although a Rube Goldberg porno might be... interesting.

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Today -100: January 29, 1916: A radical upon the bench of the Supreme Court is not easily imaginable

Woodrow Wilson nominates Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, much to everyone’s surprise and some people’s horror. Brandeis is known as something of an economic radical, believing in the regulation of corporations. He had several discussions with Wilson on the subject in 1912. His most recent book is Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It. He also supports a “living law,” responsive to changes in society. And of course he’s a Jew and there’s never been one of those on the Court before.

The NYT is hostile to Brandeis because he believes in social justice and shit, and the Court is no place for people who believe in things: “A radical upon the bench of the Supreme Court is not easily imaginable.”

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Today -100: January 28, 1916: We can no longer be a provincial nation

The NYT has a gossipy piece on the supposed new heads of German intelligence in the US, replacing the departed von Papen and Boy-Ed. It doesn’t name the new guys, but gives lots of little clues: one is an officer of the same rank as von Papen but in a different branch, one is “almost as well known” as the former spies, and the two “often gather at a certain restaurant not far from Times Square. The restaurant was recently opened and is run by a foreigner, who came to this country from France – although he is not a Frenchman – several months ago.”

Woodrow Wilson gives the first speech on his tour for his preparedness plans. “We can no longer be a provincial nation,” he says.

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They (the Congressional Union) “force” him to do so by showing up without an appointment at the Waldorf and refusing to go away until they see him. He tells them, “It may be, ladies, that my mind works slowly.” Yes it may, it really may. “I have always felt that those things were most solidly built that were built piece by piece,” i.e., state by state. One of the suffragists points out that he isn’t pushing preparedness on a state-by-state basis.

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Today -100: January 27, 1916: I would totally see a movie called Monks vs. Pirates

Montenegro seems to have surrendered again. They’ll keep doing it until they get it right.

The British Parliament votes not to expand the blockade of Germany after Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey suggests that they might not want to piss off neutral nations like the US.

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“All the monasteries on the holy mountain were fortified in the Middle Ages in order to resist pirates.”

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Today -100: January 26, 1916: Of German reactions, German princes, the German language, and champs

The US and Germany are still negotiating over the Lusitania. The US is insisting that Germany admit that the attack was illegal, which would entail legal liability for the Americans killed. Germany wants to pretend it is settling with the US out of the goodness of its Teutonic heart, as an act of grace, rather than as a matter of legal right.

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Wow! How do they?

Oh.

Germany is trying to negotiate a separate peace with Serbia, promising it more territory and the thing it must surely have wanted all along, a German prince on its throne (Wilhelm’s second son, Eitel Friedrich).

Germany asks its new ally Bulgaria to make German classes compulsory for all schoolchildren.

A Champ Clark Presidential Campaign Committee appears in New York City although Clark, the Democratic Speaker of the House, is not running against Wilson. Almost the entire committee seem to be German-Americans...

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Today -100: January 25, 1916: Outfokkering the Fokkers

In seeming response to the US’s demands on Carranza regarding the train attack, Mexican Gen. Gabriel Gavira, commandant of the garrison at Juarez, presents the US military with a demand for the punishment of a US soldier who wounded a Mexican civilian. Mexico also wants American cattle thieves arrested.

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Austria says it has captured Scutari, Albania.

A meeting at Carnegie Hall endorses the creation of a Jewish Congress (the American Jewish Congress, est. 1918) to demand equal rights for Jews, especially in Europe after the war, and to represent Jews at the peace conference. Says chairman Louis Brandeis, “The Jewish problem can be solved only as the problem of the whole Jewish people.” Note that this is what Brandeis is doing publicly in the period between the death of Justice Lamar and the nomination of his successor.

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Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, performing Sheherazade and Afternoon of a Faun at the Met. After the staging of the latter is altered slightly to meet Chief Magistrate McAdoo’s demands, Diaghilev proclaims, “America is saved!”

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Today -100: January 24, 1916: There is no good in being up in the air alone

Dublin police raid the house of Countess Constance Markievicz, the suffragette and Irish nationalist (she married into the Polish title) who in 1918 will be the first woman elected to Parliament, although she will not take her seat. Um, spoiler alert. The police seize a printing press they claim was used to print pro-German literature.

There’s a colorful parliamentary by-election campaign in the Mile End district of London. With the general election postponed, this is about all there is for gauging British public opinion. The contest is between Warwick Brookes and Pemberton Billing, two men with four very English last names between them. Billing is running as an independent on a platform of stopping the zeppelin bombings of London. He makes his speeches from an airplane towed around behind an automobile. Another campaigning innovation: showing movies of himself flying planes. Billing’s been involved in various aviation-related business ventures for years and just resigned from the Royal Naval Air Service to run for Parliament, saying “There is no good in being up in the air alone. I must get into Parliament and impress upon it the necessity of more equipment.” He won’t get in this time but will soon. He will also be responsible for the first appearance of the word “clitoris” in the London Times; check back in two years for more on that.

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Today -100: January 23, 1916: Of terse houses

Thomas Edison evidently never told the Navy about the danger of his battery causing a hydrogen explosion on a submarine. Still, Edison’s people (represented at the hearing by Chief Engineer Miller Hutchison, inventor of both the hearing aid and the car horn) blame the commander of the E-2 sub, which did, in fact, explode, for failing to keep the blowers on at full speed while the batteries were being discharged.

Wilson’s emissary, Col. House (who is not a real colonel) (or a real house), is in Europe. He holds a very informative press conference in Paris. Will he see any French statesmen? “Probably.” Will he see any German ones when he visits Berlin? “I hope so.” Has he noticed any change in public sentiment in Britain or France since his last visit? “I cannot say.”

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Today -100: January 22, 1916: There seems to have been a studied attempt to do everything in an unpleasant manner

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So effective power in Montenegro has shifted to Gen. Martinovitch.

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“There seems to have been a studied attempt to do everything in an unpleasant manner.”

Carranza announces plans to move the capital from Mexico City to Dolores Hidalgo, which they’ll bulldoze and rebuild in grand style, as befits... nah, it’ll never happen.

Pancho Villa supposedly has taken time out from his busy schedule of fleeing government troops to get married again, bigamously.

5 negroes are seized from jail in Sylvester, Georgia by 40 or 50 men and lynched. The lynchers tricked their way into the jail by bringing a tied-up negro (a random black guy they grabbed off the street? unclear) and saying they wanted to put their prisoner in jail. Also unclear is whether the lynched men had anything other than skin color in common with the man the mob had intended to kill, a suspect in the murder of a sheriff. He was not actually in the jail, the sheriff having moved him as a precaution against just such an event. But he didn’t take the precaution of not opening the door of the jail to random groups of strangers with tied-up negroes.

A newly built Mormon church in Buck Valley, Pennsylvania is dynamited.

Yuan Shikai postpones his coronation as emperor of China because of the uprisings against him.

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Today -100: January 21, 1916: And I, a queen, could do nothing to help you

The Montenegro-Austria war is back on. In fact, Montenegro is now denying that it was ever formally negotiating for peace. The Montenegrin government is now in Albania.

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“And I, a queen, could do nothing to help you!” she reportedly exclaimed before the swoon. Such a drama, um, queen.

The House Military Affairs Committee is discussing whether New York and San Francisco are vulnerable to bombardment from enemy ships. Gen. Weaver, Chief of Coast Artillery, says those cities need artillery, but he would, wouldn’t he?

At an anti-war meeting in Washington DC, Oswald Villard (William Lloyd Garrison’s grandson) says that Woodrow Wilson’s newfound support of military preparedness is based on nothing more than boosting his popularity for re-election. The meeting is sponsored by the, swear to God, Anti-Preparedness Committee.

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Today -100: January 20, 1916: They have deliberately thrown away every advantage they ever had of Greek sympathy

Montenegro pulls out of surrender talks with Austria over the latter’s unacceptable terms. King Nikola is going into exile in Italy. It’ll be a few days before the Austrian terms are made public. They include complete disarmament of everyone in Montenegro, conscription of all men 16 to 50 into the Austrian army, and surrender of the Serbian soldiers who escaped into Montenegro.

King Constantine of Greece again sends for an Associated Press reporter, to complain about Allied treatment of his country in occupying territory, blowing up the Demir-Hissar Bridge, etc. He says the only rationale for occupying Corfu was to house Serbian troops Italy was unwilling to take because of fear of cholera. “They have deliberately thrown away every advantage they ever had of Greek sympathy.” He says he thinks the war will end in a draw.

Fresh off removing the ban on mixed-race boxing, the NY State Athletic Commission is asked to ban non-Irish boxers adopting Irish names.

Woodrow Wilson will soon tour the country making speeches in support of his (military) preparedness plans. William Jennings Bryan announces he will stump against the plans, possibly trailing Wilson on his itinerary.

Carranza declares Pancho Villa (and others) outlaws; any citizen is empowered to kill them “without any formality of the law.” In Mexico, I think this means the firing squad don’t have to wear tuxedos.

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Today -100: January 19, 1916: The Charlie nickel

King Nikola of Montenegro hands his sword to German Gen. Herlees. Not all of the army is following the king’s surrender, though, and a couple of Montenegrin generals have joined the Serbs. Nikola doesn’t know it yet, but he’s done as king.

British papers are peddling the story that Nikola always had a secret deal with Austria, and that if Italy had sent troops to rescue Montenegro, they’d have been marching into a trap. Italian papers are likewise pointing out that shipments of food and munitions Italy had sent Montenegro were left on the dock, as if the Montenegrens knew they weren’t really going to be fighting Austria.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: the NYT publishes a report from Berlin, and a denial of that report from London, that Britain and France have issued an ultimatum to Greece to expel Central Power ambassadors within 48 hours.

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A couple of Pancho Villa’s lieutenants (or generals, as the case may be) are publicly executed in Juarez and their corpses displayed at the train station, as was the custom. They will also go on a posthumous roadtrip and be publicly displayed in Chihuahua. This is necessary, Carranza’s people say, to convince the US that they’d really caught and killed Gen. José Rodriguez, the man they claim was responsible for the train massacre.

A young woman believed to be an escaped novice from St. Joseph’s Convent in Philadelphia is arrested in Baltimore, on the convent’s request. Not sure what grounds there are to arrest a 23-year-old adult woman for leaving a convent.

Vending machine and telephone and nickelodeon and subway interests are trying to stop the sale of nickel-shaped coins, sold for a penny each, that can be used in their machines. The fake coins were supposedly intended as novelty items – they have an elastic cord, so you give it to someone, then it whips back to you, ZOINK!, hours of hilarity – and were only subsequently discovered to have more nefarious purposes.

Oh, the face on the coins? Charlie Chaplin.

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Today -100: January 18, 1916: Of surrenders, conscription, and rubber

OK, this time Montenegro definitely surrenders.

Or does it?

The British Parliament, working on the conscription bill, rejects moves to include Ireland. Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond says using force would endanger Ireland’s loyalty, as demonstrated by the success of recruiting in Ireland (he doesn’t mention that that’s true only in Northern Ireland). This argument applies throughout the United Kingdom, surely?

Also rejected: an attempt to include married men. However, the only marriages which will count are those performed before November 2, the day Asquith promised not to conscript married men.

A plot to smuggle raw rubber from the United States to Germany on board passenger ships using women as rubber mules ends with 3 Germans and an American pleading guilty and paying fines.

There was recently a bit of fuss (which I didn’t mention here) over an Italian merchant ship, the Verdi, which arrived in New York harbor armed with cannon, and was permitted to leave port in the same condition. Now Austria says that any armed ships will be sunk by its submarines without warning.

The US wants Carranza’s army to hunt down the train massacrers, but not enough to let them cross through US territory to Chihuahua.

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Today -100: January 17, 1916: Of boxing and profiteering

The New York State Athletic Commission had the NY deputy attorney general investigate whether its rule banning mixed boxing matches between white and black boxers was constitutional. He says it isn’t, so they’ll have to rescind the rule.

Germany plans to impose a special tax on war profits – after the war.

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Today -100: January 16, 1916: Of surrenders, batteries, outlaws, and peaceniks

Montenegro denies having surrendered.

A US Navy submarine explodes at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, killing 4. The Navy thinks it’s the fault of Thomas Edison, or at least of his battery, which emits hydrogen but supposedly not in enough quantity to do this sort of damage when it ignites and explodes. The Edison battery was supposed to be safer than those using chlorine, which have killed quite a few sailors over the years.

Carranza says the men responsible for the slaughter of 17 Americans during a train robbery will be declared outlaws, which means anyone can shoot them on sight and collect a bounty.

Speaking of outlaws, Emmeline Pankhurst arrives in the US and, just like on her last visit in 1913, is stopped at Ellis Island because of her criminal record. In 1913, Pres. Wilson intervened. Immigration officials say that’s not a precedent. They’ll let her in anyway after a bit more harrumphing. She’s here to appeal for relief funds for Serbia and is accompanied by the former Serbian foreign minister. Asked about women’s suffrage, she says British women are now so busy making munitions and bandages and whatnot that there’s no time to think of political problems.

Most of Henry Ford’s peace party is now coming home. They didn’t bring about peace.

A Mormon colony in Chihuahua, where the train massacre occurred, refuses to leave Mexico, “where they still have property.” And multiple wives, but the NYT doesn’t mention that part for some reason.

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