Today -100: November 16, 1916: Of eight hours, progressives, controlled food, and dictated labor

Railroad companies, acting in collusion as was the custom, file identical lawsuits in various federal courts to stop the Adamson Eight-Hour Act from going into effect.

The Progressive Party in the Russian Duma withdraws from the majority coalition.

Britain will get  a Food Controller. “Boil that some more, it still has some taste” is a thing he’ll say, probably.

Germany, which already had a food dictator, will now also get a labor dictator, Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Groener. He’ll be able to draft civilians into jobs, though only male civilians (physically unfit for the military, too old for the military).

Germany is also getting Polish workers, sent by the puppet Polish National Provisional Government, because nothing says Polish independence like slave labor in Germany.

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Today -100: November 15, 1916: Of censuses and middlemen

The German occupation authorities in Belgium are taking a census of all unemployed people, presumably in preparation for forcibly removing them to Germany to work.

Woodrow Wilson blames high food prices on middlemen.

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Today -100: November 14, 1916: Put that bloody cigarette out!

The author H.H. Munro (Saki) is shot dead by a German sniper. I’ve been reading his short stories lately. Clever and amusing use of language; his character “Reginald” is like the bastard son of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest by Saki’s fellow homosexualist Oscar Wilde. Munro’s last words were reportedly “Put that bloody cigarette out!”, addressed, rather too late, to a fellow soldier who was attracting the attention of the sniper. Munro was 45, and yes he was above the age limit to have volunteered for the trenches, but volunteer he did.

The Russian Duma reopens. Alexander Kerensky calls the government “cowards” and “hired assassins” under the control of “the contemptible Grishka Rasputin” and demands that they be removed. Kadet (Constitutional Democratic) Party leader Pavel Milyukov lists many failures of the government, asking over and over “Is this stupidity or treason?” Boris Stürmer and the rest of the government walk out (I’m not sure at what point in the proceedings they did so). Milyukov then sensibly retreats to the British Embassy to hide out until the February Revolution. The the government starts censoring Duma speeches.

Margaret Sanger reopens her birth control clinic.

Dr. Percival Lowell, the astronomer who proved that there is life on Mars, dies of mysterious ray-gun wounds a stroke.

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Today -100: November 13, 1916: I won’t discuss pipe dreams

Theodore Roosevelt refuses to answer questions about running for president in 1920: “I won’t discuss pipe dreams.”

The American Union Against Militarism attributes Wilson’s reelection to “the fighting pacifist sentiment in the United States.”

Under Allied pressure, Greek King Constantine agrees to let military officers and government officials resign and join Venizelos’s self-declared provisional government.

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Today -100: November 12, 1916: A blessing both for the workers and the nation

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline/Douchebag of the Day -100:  

“I have ordered measures to encourage the voluntary going of unemployed Belgian laborers to Germany and to evacuate the congenitally idle who refuse suitable work at good wages,” says the governor-general who’s been systematically looting Belgium’s raw materials and factories for two years now while diverting its power supplies and railroads but who seems to think unemployment is entirely the fault of the British because everything is always entirely the fault of the British. He says the deportations are “a blessing both for the workers and the nation.”

The German kaiser and the nearly dead Austro-Hungarian emperor issue a proclamation to the Poles of the occupied Polish bits of Russia saying they’re totally a country although for the time being we’ll “keep the administration of your new State still in our hands,” but bit by bit we’ll give you new institutions. “Of these the Polish Army is the most important.” Of course it is.

It’s almost like this whole “restoration of Poland” thing is a ploy to get Poles to fight for Germany and Austria. They’ve already set up a “Polish Legion.”

Herman Bernstein, editor of The American Hebrew worries about the treatment of the 3 million Jews in a new Poland, as well he might.

Speaking of shiny new nation-states, the Arabs – well, some Arabs – declare a Kingdom of Arabia. They’ve asked for US recognition, but the US has no idea who they are or how to get in touch with them.

For the first time, the Electoral College will include women, three of them, all from California.

An anti-war meeting in Cardiff, Wales, at which future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald is one of the principal speakers, is broken up by some pro-war types including another Labour MP, Charles Butt Stanton, the jackass elected to Keir Hardie’s seat after he died. When questions are asked in Parliament,  Stanton says that “they threaten us in Merthyr with another of their pro-German meetings, and... we will not tolerate it, whatever the consequences”. The home secretary will say that Cardiff’s constable asked him to ban the meeting under the Defence of the Realm Acts, but he declined to do so.

Japan and Brazil come to a trade arrangement which will include settling 5,000 Japanese a year in Brazil to work on the coffee plantations (and elsewhere, but mostly coffee). Many thousands of Japanese will emigrate to Brazil and Peru and be treated as second-class citizens for decades to come. Fun fact: during World War II the US got Peru to forcibly send many of its Japanese citizens to the US where they were interned alongside Japanese-Americans (and pressured Brazil to establish its own internment program). When the US compensated former internees in the 1980s, it excluded this group because they were “illegal aliens.” 

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Today -100: November 11, 1916: Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot? Make up your mind

There will be no Nobel peace prize this year. Can’t think why.

Congresswoman-elect Jeannette Rankin says “I knew the women would stand by me.” The NYT informs us that “Miss Rankin makes her own clothes and hats, and she is also an excellent cook.”

As a war measure, evening dress is now banned from Paris opera houses.

While Charles Evans Hughes isn’t ready to concede the election, he is telling his supporters to stop making accusations of election fraud.

The LAT continues to blame Governor/Senator-elect Hiram Johnson for Hughes’ defeat in California, suggesting that since Johnson won his election by 200,000 votes and “his political machine has elected enough of its mercenaries to assure the control of the next Legislature,” it isn’t possible for a fellow Republican to lose for president in the state without some sort of ballot fraud, and there should be a recount. The paper thinks that the deal that “regular” Republicans made to support Johnson if Progressives supported Hughes was somehow binding on the electorate. It also claims that the Johnson machine used RNC money to support Wilson, as recounted in this article.

I especially like the little “Iscariot.”

The LAT also has an editorial.

They’re sure the indignation over this treachery will rebound on Johnson at some point.

Hiram Johnson will continue as US senator from California until his death in 1945.

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Today -100: November 10, 1916: Politics has not been purified

The NYT says that Wilson has won California, North Dakota and New Mexico, and therefore the presidency. By their count, if he hadn’t done so well in San Francisco, with a very strong female and Progressive vote, he would have lost the election. And if Hughes had just gone to shake Hiram Johnson’s hand when they were in the same damn hotel... The LA Times says Wilson got the women’s vote because he “kept us out of war,” although the LAT being the LAT...

Mrs. Arthur Dodge, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, says that the election results prove that sex solidarity is a myth. “The woman in politics and the woman trying to get into politics have contributed nothing to politics, but increased election costs, more expensive and spectacular stunts, more bitter partisanship and bigger bluffs than the men have made. The dignity, power, and status of woman in public life have not been elevated. Politics has not been purified.”

It is certainly true that suffrage states, largely in the West, went for Wilson rather than Hughes, even though the suffrage organizations mostly supported Hughes.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that after the war Germany would accept an international league to enforce the peace. By which he means an organization to prevent “aggressive coalitions” aimed at Germany.

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I dunno

I stop blogging about current events and look what you people do.

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Today -100: November 9, 1916: That’s the Chicago way

The presidential election results are not in. Wilson goes golfing, Hughes goes driving. People are still placing bets.

After all that fuss about which candidate the German-American “hyphenate” vote was supporting, and all the accusations of pandering back and forth, it seems that the German vote was pretty evenly divided.

The feds arrested a bunch of people in Chicago on election day for selling their votes, but are now releasing them because evidently that’s not illegal.

Canada makes it illegal for anyone to have a copy of one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, which have not been friendly to the Allies and have said embarrassing things about British rule in Ireland. The papers have already been banned from using the mails and telegraph cables in Britain and France.

Belgium protests what it says is Germany’s forcible deportation last month of 15,000 Belgian men to work in Germany. In cattle cars, no less. France is also protesting about the removal of civilians from cities in occupied northern France for forced farm labor. Because this happened in April, Germany says that France is only protesting now to stir up hatred for the Germans. Way to grab the moral high ground, Germany. It also puts the blame, as always, on the British blockade, which necessitated slave labor, obvs.

It’ll take a while to make the papers, but there is a massive explosion today at the Russian port of Archangel, the main entry of Allied military supplies to Russia. Several ships are destroyed as well as much of the port and a couple of barracks, killing upwards of 650 men. The Germans will claim to have accomplished this by a u-boat hitting the steamer Baron Driesen, while the commercial attaché of the Russian Embassy in the US will claim that it was a bomb placed on a ship in New York to cover up thefts on the docks, but you don’t really need to look for sinister explanations for munitions ships blowing up.

Well, you don’t need to, but it is good clean fun.

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Today -100: November 8, 1916: Election results

Headline of the Day -100:

In truth, the presidential race is too close to call. Indeed, Hughes won’t concede for two weeks. 

But of course we know better than the Times, because we are magical gods from the future. Wilson actually got 49% of the popular vote and Hughes 46%. Eugene Debs is for once not running for president, so there’s a weaker Socialist vote than usual, 3% for Allan Benson. Wilson loses the entire North East except for New Hampshire, which he wins by 52 votes. He fails to win New Jersey, where he was governor. Hughes does very well in the Midwest, but Wilson takes Ohio. Wilson is strong in the South, of course, and the West and, decisively for this election, wins California, barely. Hughes will for the rest of his life blame that loss on that one time he was in the same hotel as Gov. Hiram Johnson and failed to go say hello. Wilson will wind up with 277 electoral votes to Hughes’s 254.

House of Representatives: R’s gain 20 seats, to 216. D’s lose 16 seats, to 214, but there are 3 Progressives, one Socialist (Meyer London of NY) and 1 Prohibitionist (Charles Randall of California), which in practice will mean a shaky working majority for the D’s.

Senate: R’s gain 2 seats, but D’s still hold a 54-42 majority.

California’s Progressive governor Hiram Johnson is elected to the US Senate, easily defeating George S. Patton, the father of the face-slapping general. Patton is a Democrat but is to the right of Johnson on most issues.

New York Governor Charles Whitman (R) is reelected. Republican Walter E. Edge is elected governor of New Jersey. His campaign manager was none other than “Nucky” Johnson, sort of played by Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire. John Cornwell is elected governor of West Virginia, the only Democrat elected to statewide office. Thomas Campbell (R) is elected governor of Arizona – or is he? More on that later.

State referenda:

Women’s suffrage is defeated in South Dakota by 52% of the voters and in West Virginia by 72%.

Florida voters reject a constitutional amendment aimed at eliminating the few remaining black voters by restricting voting to those who could pass a literacy test (including being able to “interpret” as well as read the constitution) and who own $500 in property, with a grandfather clause exempting those whose ancestors could vote in 1867, before the 15th Amendment. This was placed on the ballot by the state legislature before last year’s Supreme Court ruling invalidating Oklahoma’s grandfather clause.

Oregon voters narrowly reject a measure to remove the clauses in the state constitution discriminating against voting by negroes and mulattoes. These provisions will be removed from the constitution (also the one against “chinamen”) by a referendum in 1927.

Oregon also rejects a measure banning compulsory vaccination.

The Single Tax (on land, excluding buildings) loses in California 69% to 31%. As does prohibition, by 55%. San Francisco bans picketing.

Arizona voters pass the strongest form of prohibition in the nation, making it illegal even to possess alcohol. They abolish the death penalty by a very narrow majority, but fail to abolish the state senate.

Prohibition passes in Idaho by 72%, Nebraska by 55%, South Dakota by 55%, Montana by 58%, and Michigan. It fails in California by 55% and Maryland by 65%. North Dakota passes a measure defining bootlegging; so that’s actually a legal term. Oregon bans the importation of booze from outside the state. The majority of states are now dry. Typically, cities vote against prohibition, rural areas for it.

Women in Illinois vote for president for the first time. Jane Addams says “I believe that every voting woman in Chicago is feeling moved and thrilled by the experience”. Since women in Illinois have the right to vote for some offices but not others, there are separate ballots so we have something we don’t in any other state: a breakdown by sex of how women voted for president. Not much different from men, as it happens (Hughes easily wins the state, even Chicago). This leads the NYT to write a dickish editorial about how this proves that there’s no reason for women’s suffrage. It also prints a letter from Everett Pepperrell Wheeler, one-time failed candidate for governor of New York, about how it’s only fair to leave women’s suffrage to the states. Indeed, he says, the one time the federal government tried to intervene in the suffrage (the 15th Amendment), “It is now agreed by both whites and blacks that this was a great mistake and that it would have been far better to leave the regulation of this subject to each Southern State.”

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Today -100: November 7, 1916: Serene

Today is election day, and the final betting on the presidential race is at even money. Edward Doheny, the oil baron who will be deeply involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, is said to have bet upwards of $200,000 on Wilson at 8 to 10.

Headline of the Day -100:

Cardinal James Gibbons, not the arboreal anthropoid apes. A rumor is being spread that when he met the cardinal last year, Pres. Wilson called him “Mr. Gibbons.” This is denied by presidential secretary Tumulty, by a monsignor, and by Cardinal Gibbons himself. Mr. Bobo, a gibbon in the Bronx Zoo, also denies that Pres. Wilson called him by anything other than his proper title.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: November 6, 1916: Poland has been given back to Western civilization

Germany and Austria proclaim the restoration of Poland, or at least the parts of Poland held by Russia since 1815, as a nation. They still plan to hold on to the parts of Poland they grabbed during the Partition, although Austria is talking about “autonomy” for Galicia. And not now, of course, after the war. Also there’ll be a king to be named later, presumably a lesser Hohenzollern or Habsburg, and borders also to be determined later. But right now there’ll be a “Polish Legion,” if any Poles care to volunteer to fight for the Teutonic powers. According to the (German) Overseas News Agency, “The Poles are free from Russian oppression; no more to be trodden under the heels of the Cossack. ... Poland has been given back to Western civilization.” So that’ll be nice.

Headline of the Day -100:

Arriving to help a shingle-weavers’ strike (evidently shingles are woven, or used to be). During the strike, Sheriff Donald McRae decided to expel all IWW members from Everett. The IWW decided to fight for free speech, arrived by ship and were met by Sheriff McRae and the same mob of vigilantes that had been terrorizing strikers. A shoot-out ensues, with most of the guns fired by the vigilantes. At least 5 Wobblies are killed, and 2 of the deputized vigilantes (possibly accidentally by fellow deputies – there was a certain amount of alcohol involved). The IWW’s Thomas Tracy will be tried for murder but acquitted. 73 other Wobblies will be held for months and then released without trial after Tracy’s acquittal

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Today -100: November 5, 1916: The Republican Party offers the people masters

Charles Evans Hughes gives his final speech before the election, in Madison Square Garden, and he gives his audience what he knows they want: tariffs! He warns of economic disaster if American industry is not protected from a European resurgence after the war.

Woodrow Wilson responds that the industries that used to have the highest tariff protections paid the lowest wages and had the worst working conditions. He says employers are trying to coerce their workers to vote Republican. “The Republican Party offers the people masters. We offer them comrades and leaders.”

All the news about the possible election of the first woman member of Congress that’s fit to print, apparently:

In general, NYT coverage of elections other than the presidential has been just abysmal this year.

Update: Oops, there’s more: 

I should explain the Congressman (sic) at Large thing. You know how reapportionment is supposed to work? Well, sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Montana gained a second member of Congress after the 1910 census, but for the 3 elections since then the Legislature hasn’t bothered to divide the state into two congressional districts, so both seats are at-large and voters will have two votes. This is confusing for the parties, which don’t really know how to strategize for that sort of election campaign rather than a straight two-person fight. Disarray among the D’s, a national upsurge in Republican sentiment, and the votes of women (granted in Montana in 1914), will assist Rankin in winning this election. Or maybe Montana voters have the same red-hair fixation as the NYT. 

Incidentally, Rankin’s hair was actually light brown.

Rankin was a long-time activist for women’s suffrage. She told the Montana Legislature in 1911 (the first time a woman had ever addressed that body): “It is beautiful and right that a mother should nurse her child through typhoid fever, but it is also beautiful and right that she should have a voice in regulating the milk supply from which typhoid resulted.”

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Today -100: November 4, 1916: Of uniforms and betting

There will be an inspection, or more accurately a count, of uniforms of the New Jersey National Guard. Someone got upset that girls were seen wearing the uniforms on Halloween and wants to find out how they got them.

The betting odds remain 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

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Today -100: November 3, 1916: I am appealing to all good citizens to save the country from ruin

Greece’s King Constantine orders the army to fight Venizelos’s forces, which are now being openly backed by the Allies.

Charles Evans Hughes denies that it is unpatriotic to discuss foreign policy, especially when Wilson’s sucks so hard.

Theodore Roosevelt tells a Cleveland rally, “I am here in no partisan sense. I am appealing to all good citizens to save the country from ruin.”

The betting odds are still 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

The State Dept says that Americans who take an oath of allegiance to a foreign state, i.e. join their militaries, are automatically expatriated. It is denying passports to Americans going to Europe to fight.

It’s also asking the French to rename its American Aviation Corps (Escadrille Américaine), which was created earlier this year. France will change the name to the Lafayette Escadrille.

Hirohito is installed as Crown Prince of Japan and heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. He gets a sacred sword and everything. And he’s now a captain in the army and a lieutenant in the navy. He’s 15.

The Berlin authorities are eliminating all but two types of sausage. And before you ask, they are blood sausage and liverwurst.

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Today -100: November 2, 1916: So far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit

Woodrow Wilson complains about (unnamed) people who use foreign policy for political advantage. You know: people who criticize him. Doesn’t like that at all. “Variety of opinion among ourselves there may be... but so far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit.” He refers to people who “make play with the loss of the lives of American citizens even in order that they may create a domestic political advantage,” presumably meaning the recent sinking of the British steamship Marina, in which 6 American members of the crew died.

The odds being offered on the election are now 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

Headline of the Day -100:

Yes, food. Britain will require that all food for British and Canadian POWs in Germany go through England so it can be checked for secret messages. The delay involved means that foods likely to spoil can no longer be sent. This censorship does not apply to officers, only NCOs and privates.

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Today -100: November 1, 1916: Of race favoritism, dimes, and twiddles

A Republican National Publicity Committee ad in today’s NYT:

Headline of the Day -100:  

This doesn’t refer to blacks, who are discriminated against in the segregated army, but to Jews. The problem arises from Cavalry Capt. Le Roy Eltinge’s book Psychology of War (1915), which says of the Jew: “For centuries he has been without a country. He doesn’t know what patriotism means. ... He has not been a soldier for over 2,000 years. ... The soldier’s lot is hard physical work. This the Jew despises. He does not have any of the qualities of a good soldier”. The War Dept orders him to delete all direct references to Jews, so that bit is changed to: “Another large proportion of our population is made up from those who, through they have no particular home on the earth from which to inherit their ideas, have peculiarities of physique and of mind that make them foreign in tastes and mental attitudes to all other classes of our population.” Evidently that’s not offensive because it doesn’t spell out the people to whom it’s obviously referring.

Can’t help but notice that the paragraph preceding that one is about the negro: “By association we know something of what he will do, but as we think with a different kind of brain we do not perceive the why of his acts. In other words, we will not be able to get the best out of him as a soldier because we do not understand how to touch the mainsprings of his character.” Eltinge also elaborates on the respective martial characteristics of the southern European and Anglo-Saxon races.

The new 10¢ coin, the Mercury dime, is out. People are lining up at the Sub-Treasury office and speculators are paying high prices for them because they might be recalled to be replaced because these have the designer’s initials, which the Treasury considers impermissible advertising. To be honest, the only reason I’m including this story is to mention that the Chief Clerk of the Sub-Treasury office in New York is named Wesley S. Twiddle.

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Today -100: October 31, 1916: Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak

Erich Ludendorff, head of the German army, pooh poohs the vast Russian army: “Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak. Who objects against fate ought better to object against himself. A firm will commands fate. There is no blind fate.” Worst... fortune cookie fortunes... ever. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg adds that France is “exterminating lives by their method of fighting. All their tenacity will be of no avail, for in the end there will be none of them left.”

Woodrow Wilson denies that there was ever any proposed “postscript” to his note to Germany about the Lusitania, telling them to ignore its warnings.

The British say that German flying ace Oswald Boelcke was shot down by a Brit. He wasn’t.

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Today -100: October 30, 1916: Aces high, then not so high

The killingest German flying ace Oswald Boelcke dies after a collision with another German plane the day after downing his 40th Allied plane. He was 25.

Charles Evans Hughes puts out a statement of “My Conception of the Presidency.” A lot of it is about preparing for the trade war that will inevitably follow the end of the European war. He wants to wage this war with tariffs and government cooperation with business, while the Wilson administration, he says, treats “the business men of this country as though they were suspicious characters. ... In four years it has put this country further on the road to class war than has been accomplished in a generation before.”

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Today -100: October 29, 1916: Proud mothers of a nation of heroes or mothers of a race of degenerates?

Australian voters reject a referendum proposal to bring in conscription, despite the government, in a Texas-level attempt at voter suppression, authorizing polling officers to question young male voters about whether they’d registered for the possible draft like they were supposed to do. Before the vote, Prime Minister Billy Hughes says that Germany would never dare put issues like this to the vote, and notes that Australian women are voting – “Will the women of Australia be the proud mothers of a nation of heroes, or stand dishonored as the mothers of a race of degenerates?” The latter, evidently. Hughes’s Labor Party is so divided on the issue that in a couple of weeks it will expel him.

With the US presidential race well into the traditional last-minute-sliming stage, Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge are accusing Woodrow Wilson of appending a postscript to one of his notes to Germany about the Lusitania telling them not to take its strong anti-Lusitania-sinking language seriously. According to the story, he had to delete it because members of the Cabinet threatened to resign.

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

Louis Marshall Ream, heir to the Ream millions, had his marriage to a chorus girl annulled, but she gets a NY Supreme Court justice to un-annul it.

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

A horse, as it happens. A horse named Bondage. Bondage was ridden by Ball and beat Tragedy at the Potomac Handicap. There are probably less pleasant ways to arrange the words “bondage,” “ball,” “handicap” and “tragedy” in a sentence.

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