Today -100: August 14, 1916: Of commissions, encouraging tours, and serums, sera, screw it, serums

Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward White tells Justice Brandeis not to serve on the Mexican-American commission as Pres. Wilson wants. Although justices have often served on commissions in the past, White thinks this is inappropriate and anyway no one asked him to do it.

Headline of the Day -100:

New York City polio death toll = 1,393. But Dr. Abraham Zingher is busily at work taking blood from polio survivors to create a (completely useless) serum.

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Today -100: August 13, 1916: When Germans are outlawed, only outlaws will be Germans

25,000 more National Guards are ordered to the Mexican border. Not sure why.

Headline of the Day -100:

Henry Ford is working on plans to sell his cars through garages, reducing costs so that he can price cars for as little as $250. He hopes to manufacture 1 million cars next year. (This article is right above an ad for the Cole 8 – “swift as a swallow – and as silent” – for $1,595.)

When it was thought that the US would occupy Juarez, Carranza officials handed out rifles to Juarezihoovians. Now they’ve demanded their return, threatening those who fail to comply with execution.

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Today -100: August 12, 1916: Of burials, dead students, and censorship

Headline of the Day -100:

The National Woman’s Party will work in the 12 suffrage states to defeat Woodrow Wilson in November because he opposes the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Of the 38,160 German university students who were in the army last winter, 3,650 are now dead. On the plus side, there are more female university students now.

The US State Department passes on to the British Foreign Office the complaints of American reporters in Germany that their reports home, which go through London, are being censored. Lord Robert Cecil responds that the censorship is perfectly justified because “often things appear in these dispatches that are apt to create a false impression, and we take the liberty, for military reasons, of stopping them going through.” Military reasons, huh? It’s rare for someone to admit that censorship is not just about keeping information from the enemy (which is obviously not the case for information coming from the enemy), but to massage and shape the news. Anyway, another official says, German reports keep exaggerating Allied losses on the Somme, and it would be tedious to have to keep issuing corrections.

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Today -100: August 11, 1916: Death in Venice

Austria bombs Venice, because they’re philistines.

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Today -100: August 10, 1916: Of red crosses, polio, suspicious Norwegians, and censors

Germany says it will retaliate against British interference with supplies shipped from the US to the German Red Cross by seizing Red Cross supplies at sea. Swell.

New York City polio death toll = 1,260. The 1916-17 public school year, due to start on September 11, will be postponed.

Jersey City police arrest two Norwegians for being “suspicious persons,” which is evidently a crime in New Jersey, where if somebody isn’t a suspicious person that’s pretty suspicious. I’m guessing these are the two “Austro-Hungarians” they were talking about a couple of days ago. The police search their rooms and find drawings of a submarine, marked as accepted by the Chief of the Submarine Department, which doesn’t exist, so I gather they’re gullible would-be spies and someone sold them fake plans.

The British have loosened military censorship since the start of the Battle of the Somme. Including pictures.

There is increasing agitation in Denmark against the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States. On general principles and because it was for so little money (although some in the US are grumbling that the islands are costing five times as much per acre as the Panama Canal territory.

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Today -100: August 9, 1916: The men who do these stunts are not the kind who are too proud to fight

Germany claims there was a major food riot in Petrograd last month in which 28 people were killed. Possible.

Theodore Roosevelt adds his support to the federal women’s suffrage constitutional amendment. So does Hughes’s wife Antoinette, who doesn’t really help the cause by saying that she has plenty of views but doesn’t like to talk about them and anyway “I accept Mr. Hughes’s opinion as my own.”

Hughes expresses those opinions in a speech in which he says he’d “stop this pork business” and fill his administration with people chosen for their competence even if not giving out spoils hurts him politically (he’s made untrue charges in recent days that Wilson forced out the director of the census and the superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey to replace them with spoilsmen) (I know; exciting election stuff, huh? Still, for one shining moment the career path of one Otto Hilgard Tittmann became a national political issue, so there’s that.) He also slips in a reference to brothels, which I was not expecting: “You couldn’t get a protective measure [tariff] out of a Democrat Congress sectionally organized any more than you could get a revival meeting out of a disorderly house.”

We’ve previously come across Miroslav Sichynsky, a Ukrainian/Ruthenian who assassinated the Austrian governor of Galicia, Count Potocki, in 1908, escaped prison and lived for a while under an assumed name in the US. The US decided last year not to deport him, ruling that the assassination was a political crime rather than a criminal one. Now he’s suing French-Ukrainian writer George Raffalovich (aka Bedwin Sands) for libel for calling him a murderer, when he is clearly an assassin, and to call him a murderer implies moral turpitude. Sichynsky’s lawyer says a US jury can now decide for the first time whether assassination is murder. I have no idea what happened to this lawsuit.

Headline of the Day -100:

Theodore Roosevelt attending a cowboy show at Sheepshead Bay, of which he says “It will make people better Americans to see it. The men who do these stunts are not the kind who are too proud to fight.” But “I don’t think it’s right for the girls to ride those horses. It makes me feel uncomfortable and a little bit aroused.” I may have added the last five words.

The Senate passes the child labor bill, 52-12. 10 of the 12 were Southern Democrats.

A Mrs. Johanna Thompson of East Orange, New Jersey, who feared being buried alive, made provision in her will that someone lift the lid on her coffin every day for 40 days after her death. Which was in April. She’s still dead. Actually, it would violate health laws to open the lid, but the designated coffin-peeper did look at the outside of the casket every day and collected $200 for the service.

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Today -100: August 8, 1916: Beware of well-dressed Austro-Hungarians

Police now think that the fire that set off the high explosives on those barges that blew out windows all over Manhattan on the 30th was set on purpose by two “well-dressed Austro-Hungarians.”

Sen. Lee Overman (D-North Carolina) argues against the proposed anti-child labor bill, saying that states which don’t regulate child labor at all, like North Carolina, have much better behaved children.

The National Council of French Socialists votes to sever relations with German socialists.

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Today -100: August 7, 1916: Of lords-lieutenantses and progressives

Since Lloyd George’s Home Rule plan seems to have collapsed, in part because he gave different versions of it to each side, Asquith reappoints Baron Wimborne as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, an antiquated post that was supposed to be abolished.

The Democrats claim that many Progressives, especially on the West Coast, will be supporting Woodrow Wilson in November.

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Today -100: August 6, 1916: Of polio and weather

NYC Health Commissioner Haven Emerson complained that no doctors had responded to his urgent appeal for volunteers to help with the polio outbreak, but Dr. Rebecca Teichman says that she tried and was told there was “no room” for women doctors.

There have been an unusual number of storms in the Atlantic and the English Channel and Mediterranean this summer, indeed the weather has been bad all over Europe, and captains and officers of liners making the crossing think they know why: it’s all the artillery being fired across Europe. That’s just science.

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Today -100: August 5, 1916: Of fines, scythes, polio, and guardsmen

Brussels refuses to pay the 5 million mark fine imposed by the occupation authority after Brusselites celebrated the Belgian national holiday. The acting burgomaster says that patriotic sentiment is not illegal.

Kaiser Wilhelm does a photo op (I’m not going to bother looking for the photos) of himself helping reap the harvest, “wielding a scythe in the rye fields with the muscular expertness of a peasant.” Willy had only one working arm, so I call bullshit. The food dictator, Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe, says the crisis is over and cities are actually complaining that they’re receiving way more potatoes than they can actually eat. Again I call bullshit: Germans can eat a lot of potatoes. I mean A LOT of potatoes. I mean ALL the potatoes.

The New York City polio death toll breaks 1,000.

Alexander Emerson of Boston, a member of the Massachusetts militia, refused to take the oath of the National Guard when the state militias were federalized for the Mexican emergency, and was jailed. A judge says he was within his rights and orders him released.

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Today -100: August 4, 1916: Of hangings, progressives, busts, and zeppelins

Roger Casement’s last words: I die for my country. Not very original. He converted to Catholicism in prison. The government is now claiming to have evidence, which conveniently came too late to be introduced at Casement’s trial, that he had arranged with Germany to use the Irish POWs he recruited against the British Army in Egypt.

Progressive Party leaders meet and decide not to recall their convention to name a new presidential candidate to replace Roosevelt, who declined the nomination of the last one. Instead they’ll, if I understand this correctly, run John Parker for vice president in 9 states with no presidential candidate in the hopes that he’ll get enough electoral votes to have leverage if the election is really close. The conference decides against expelling the party National Committee members who have endorsed Charles Evans Hughes.

Austrians (and Hungarians) are not pleased by the appointment by Germany of Paul von Hindenburg as commander of the eastern front. He sets to work replacing Austrian generals with German ones.

The German occupation authority in Belgium fines a Brussels committee which put on a sculpture exhibit at which spectators so objected to a bust of Kaiser Wilhelm that it had to be removed.

Zeppelins returning from bombing England now routinely violate the airspace of neutral Netherlands, which is not happy about it.

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Today -100: August 3, 1916: Of golf and polio, hangings, and peace meetings

New York City polio death toll = 937. But now, polio has GONE TOO FAR.

Roger Casement is hanged. The British are now claiming as a reason his death sentence wasn’t commuted that when he was recruiting among Irish POWs, some of those who didn’t cooperate were mistreated by their German guards and two were killed. The timing of this story is kind of suspicious, the public version of the sliming of his reputation based on his sex life that they’ve been doing behind the scenes.

Headline of the Day -100:

That word, “peace,” I do not think it means what you think it means.

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Today -100: August 2, 1916: Has it really been two years already?

The Great War is entering its Terrible Twos. Kaiser Wilhelm says the second year of the war was a year of glory for Germany, just like the first year, and every year. “Like the memory of our dead heroes,” he informs all the prospective dead heroes, “your fame also will endure through all time.” French President Raymond Poincaré says “The nations who have let loose that stupendous catastrophe have not yet completely expiated their act. But justice is on the way.” British War Secretary David Lloyd George says “we are forcing [the enemy] to evacuate step by step the countries he has profaned and ravaged.” Gen. Douglas Haig says “This third year of the war will bring the deserved punishment to Germany.”

The commercial submarine Deutschland leaves port in Baltimore with a cargo of rubber, nickel and maybe gold, making a break for the high seas.

Charles Evans Hughes does support the federal women’s suffrage amendment after all, though he carefully notes that this is his personal view, not the Republican Party’s. It’s just the most efficient way to remove the subject from political discussion and get back to ignoring women.

New York City polio death toll = 896. 55 yesterday. Health Commissioner Haven Emerson appeals to the public for $15,000 for braces and leg supports for the newly crippled (the equipment costs an average of $15). They’re expecting 2,000 children with some degree of paralysis.

Headline of the Day -100:

No, no it’s rock, paper, SCISSORS.

The Senate fails to impose prohibition on the District of Columbia.

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Today -100: August 1, 1916: America first and America efficient

Charles Evans Hughes finally makes his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for president, in Carnegie Hall (I guess it’s so late because he’s been practicing). Evidently he’s in favor of Americanism, which he defines as an undivided love of country and a goal of “America first and America efficient,” whatever that might mean. Much of the speech is devoted to criticizing Wilson’s Mexican policies, which he thinks went wrong when Wilson failed to recognize coup leader/murderer Huerta. He seems to want to make attacks on Wilson about Mexico a major part of his campaign without saying much about what he would do. The foreign policy stuff could have been ghost-written by Roosevelt: “I stand for the unflinching maintenance of American rights on land and sea” etc. (Complete text).

Tacked on at the end, Hughes says he supports women’s suffrage (but does not explicitly support a federal constitutional amendment) (or indeed oppose one). He doesn’t actually say he thinks it’s a good idea. Rather, he says it’s inevitable, so the pragmatic course is just to get it over with: “Opposition may delay, but in my judgment cannot defeat, this movement. Nor can I see any advantages in the delay which can possibly offset the disadvantages which are necessarily incident to the continued agitation. Facts should be squarely met. We shall have a constantly intensified effort and a distinctly feminist movement constantly perfecting its organization to the subversion of normal political issues. We shall have a struggle increasing in bitterness, which I believe to be inimical to our welfare.”

“Subversion of normal political issues”!

Forest fires in Ontario, Canada wipe out Matheson and other nearby towns. More than 200 are killed. This is why you shouldn’t set fires to clear land.

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Today -100: July 31, 1916: Are you a victim to optimism?

King Christian of Denmark thanks two schoolboys who saved him from drowning when his sailboat capsized. How do you reward schoolboys (whose age is not given)? Cigarette cases, of course.

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t of the Day -100:

The US sends Britain a note of protest over its blacklisting of some US companies under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which the note says is “inevitably and essentially inconsistent with the rights of the citizens of all nations not involved in the war.” Indeed, it is “inconsistent with that true justice, sincere amity, and impartial fairness which should characterize the dealing of friendly Governments with one another.”

DuPont is refusing to take any blame for the massive explosions yesterday, saying that once the munitions leave their factory, they’re someone else’s responsibility.

A new issue of the trench newspaper The Wipers Times (this issue called The Somme-Times) is out.

There was a young girl of the Somme,
 Who sat on a number five bomb,
   She thought ‘twas a dud ‘un,
 But it went off sudden–
 Her exit she made with aplomb!

---

To Minnie [As in the “moaning minnie,” the German trench mortars, Minenwerfer]

In days gone by some aeons ago
That name my youthful pulses stirred,
I thrilled whe’er she whispered low
Ran to her when her voice I heard.

Ah Minnie! how our feelings change,
For now I hear your voice with dread,
And hasten to get out of range
Ere you me on the landscape spread.

Your lightest whisper makes me thrill,
Your presence makes me hide my head,
Your voice can make me hasten still–
But ‘tis away from you instead.

You fickle jade! you traitorous minx!
We once exchanged love’s old sweet tales
Now where effulgent star-shell winks
Your raucous screech my ear assails.

No place is sacred, I declare,
Your manners most immodest are,
You force your blatant presence where
Maidens should be particular.

You uninvited do intrude,
You force an entrance to my couch,
Though if I’ve warning you’re about
I’ll not be there, for that I’ll vouch.

Name once most loved of all your sex,
Now hated with a loathing great,
When next my harassed soul you vex
You’ll get some back at any rate.

---

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Today -100: July 30, 1916: Of barge bangs, streetcar strikes, and wooden legs

Barges filled with high explosives blow up in New York Harbor in a series of explosions, probably started by a fire, in the middle of the night. They’re heard throughout much of the city and New Jersey and made more audible to many by the sudden absence of windows, thousands of them (the New York Plate Glass Insurance Company is fuuuuucked.) There’s also a lot of damage on Ellis Island.

In a street-car strike in Manhattan, thousands of strikers and others just enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon, attacking cars on the 3rd Avenue line and fighting cops, as was the custom.

There’s also a garment workers’ strike in the city. 200 Wobblies attack the offices of an Italian-language newspaper, Il Progresso Italo-Americano, which refused to give them space to call for the release of Carlo Tresca and other Wobblies charged with murder in Minnesota (Tresca, at least, will be released after being held 9 months without trial).

Frank Doring, an employee of an artificial limb factory in Massachusetts, was detained by British authorities whilst en route to France to establish a factory to manufacture wooden legs for wounded soldiers, when they discovered that he has German parents. They held him several weeks as a suspected spy before deporting him back to the US, where he commits suicide to draw attention to Britain being mean to him.

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Today -100: July 29, 1916: Of fryatts, morgans, clemencies, and opium

Germany executes Charles Algernon Fryatt, a ferry captain for the British Great Eastern Railway. In March 1915 he attempted to ram a u-boat with his ferry. Last month the ferry was captured and Fryatt court-martialed by a German naval court (which they say they can do, rather than treat him as a prisoner of war, because he is not a member of the British military, even though at the time u-boats were attacking merchant ships without warning). Although Fryatt had destroyed his ship’s papers as it was being captured, he had gold watches he’d been given for that incident and an earlier one when he’d out-run a u-boat, and the watches were inscribed with the details.

France complains that 25,000 French people in German-occupied northern France, including girls as young as 16, have been forcibly transported to other regions to work in the fields.

The transfer tax appraisal of J.P. Morgan, who died in 1913, is filed, and the NYT helpfully lists everything he owned and its value ($78 million total).

The US Senate passes a resolution calling for clemency by the British government for Irish political prisoners, i.e., not to execute Roger Casement. The State Department mysteriously takes four days to pass it along to the British government, presenting it one hour after Casement’s execution.

All lawsuits resulting from the sinking of the Titanic in US courts are settled, for $665,000.

Britain bans imports of cocaine and opium.

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Today -100: July 28, 1916: Rasputin lives!

I hadn’t noticed that the May 12th story that Rasputin had been assassinated had not been corrected. It is now. The Russian newspapers that reported it have been fined.

Samuel Gompers claims that the American Federation of Labor’s influence is what prevented US war with Mexico.

The San Francisco police arrest 6 in the bomb attack on the preparedness parade. If they’ve got the right people, it had nothing to do with preparedness but was intended to kill street car union leaders who had resisted calls for a strike.

When New York City teachers are absent, their pay is deposited in the pension fund. If they have a legitimate excuse, like illness or a death in the family, it’s supposed to be paid back to them. But for the last two years, the Board of Superintendents has failed to do that, because they decided that the pension fund needed the money.

Germany, eager to counter the reaction to its execution of Nurse Edith Cavell, points to a French military court condemning a woman to death as a spy, the infelicitously named Felice Pfaat. I haven’t been able to find any details of her alleged crimes, but she will be executed next month.

There’s a gun battle in North Dakota between IWW members and non-members. Something about harvest work.

There were 2,445,664 registered automobiles and other motorized vehicles in the US in 1915, one for every 44 people. Iowa had the most, proportionately, at 1 per 16, Alabama the least at 1 per 200.

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Today -100: July 27, 1916: You bet your life I am

Charles Evans Hughes, asked if he favored preparedness, says “You bet your life I am,” scandalizing the NYT with his use of slang.

The Morning Post (London) endorses what it claims was the plan of the late Lord Kitchener to ban Germans from immigrating to Britain, naturalizing, or even becoming a shareholder of a British company for 21 years after the end of the war.

Evidently when Britain abolished public executions (1868), it only did so for murderers. So Sir Roger Casement’s execution might be legally required to be public.

The Irish Nationalists send a deputation to Asquith asking for Casement to be reprieved headed by someone named Arthur Lynch (MP for West Clare).

Actually, his name aside, Lynch is kind of perfect for this. He fought in the Boer War. On the Boer side. It was right after that that he was elected to Parliament. When he returned to the UK to take his seat, he was arrested, tried for treason, and sentenced to death. A year later he was let out of prison, then pardoned, then re-elected. During World War I, he raised an Irish battalion just as he had during the Boer War, although this time on the British side, and was made a colonel, the same rank the Boers gave him.

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Today -100: July 26, 1916: It is your especial privilege to fight against the English

Kaiser Wilhelm goes to the Somme front and tells soldiers “It is your especial privilege to fight against the English,” who “led us to believe they were our friends when they were actually plotting our destruction.” And while he’s there...

Although I’m not sure that calling for victory following “continuance of the struggle until Germany’s enemies are conquered” really counts as a “peace sermon.”

The Germans fine the city of Brussels 5 million marks for celebrating the Belgian national festival.

New York City skyscrapers will henceforth be restricted in height to 2½ times the width of their frontage.

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