Today -100: November 8, 1919: Of Palmer Raids, egg stamping, assassinations, and monocles

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Palmer Raids™ begin, in NYC, Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, Jackson... Scores are held for deportation as “criminal anarchists.” The NYPD prevents a meeting of the Communist Labor Party to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The Russian People’s House is raided by NYPD under federal orders and 200 arrested, some badly beaten; those with US citizenship are released.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Thomas Brewster, the chair of the Coal Operators' Scale Committee, says the coal strike is being financed by Lenin and Trotsky.

Hugo Haase, leader of the German Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), dies a month after being assassinated by one Johann Voss who Haase, a lawyer, was prosecuting for extortion.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: November 7, 1919: Of superior rights, lady pilots, and ransoms

The federal government will ask a federal judge to order UMW officials, who are already under injunction not to direct the coal strike, to call off that strike. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer says there are some callings so important that “the right to strike in those cases must be subordinated to the superior right of the public to enjoy uninterrupted service.” He also suggests that the public respond to the higher cost of living not by strikes, but by spending less and saving more, wearing old clothes, that sort of thing, the sort of helpful life advice the rich like to dispense to the poor. Secretary of Labor William Wilson was against going the injunction route, but was overruled in Cabinet.

The Aero Club, which is organizing an around-the-world aerial derby for next summer, with a prize of $1 million, says women pilots (the word elegant if sexist word aviatrix hasn’t been coined yet) may enter.

The State Department says that William Jenkins, the consular agent kidnapped – or possibly “kidnapped” – in Mexico will have to reimburse the ransom paid for him; the US won’t pressure Mexico to pay it unless some negligence by it can be found.

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Today -100: November 6, 1919: Of women’s suffrage, intercourse with enemy troops, justice *cough* in Arkansas, and direct defiance or opposition to the government

Maine ratifies the federal women’s suffrage Amendment. 19 down, 17 to go.

Supposedly Pres. Wilson is pleased that Calvin Coolidge won re-election as governor of Massachusetts, because the D. had supported the Boston police strike.

The IRA orders women in Ireland not to consort with British soldiers – “intercourse with enemy troops” as they phrase it. One has had her hair cut off in punishment. And men are ordered not to drink in pubs that serve soldiers.

37 more black men are sentenced for participation in the Elaine, Arkansas race riots, and zero whites. We’re up to 11 death sentences. The trials for the 11 were super-short.

A federal judge dealing with citizenship applications rejects those of 5 striking coal miners (4 of them veterans of the late war), saying they are striking “in direct defiance or opposition to the government.”

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Today -100: November 5, 1919: There is nothing like the stubbornness of the American men in such matters, is there?

Today -10 years ago, I wrote the first of these posts.

Calvin Coolidge easily wins re-election as governor of Massachusetts, helped by his hardline stance against the Boston police strike. Coolidge attributes his victory to “all who have supported the great cause of the supremacy of the law.”

Rep. Fiorello La Guardia (R) is elected president of the NYC Board of Alderman. Tammany Hall has been slaughtered this election.

Although Socialists have been gradually disappearing from US elected offices, Lackawanna, New York elects John Gibbons mayor, defeating an incumbent backed by both the D & R parties, evidently because he banned strike meetings.

Samuel Gompers explains that striking coal miners just want more regular employment than they’ve been getting, but owners don’t want the miners working full-time because the price of coal would soon come down. He also points out that the restraining order barring the United Mine Workers’ leaders from directing the strike also means they can’t negotiate an end to it.

Supposedly, Soviet Russia bans babies being given Christian names. Henceforth, they will be... numbered.

The NYT has been covering Nancy Astor’s parliamentary campaigning every day, because she knows how to give good quote. She is asked by AP whether women will get a better reception in British politics than in the US; the Virginia-born Lady Astor says “There is nothing like the stubbornness of the American men in such matters, is there?” She says she is willing to abide by Commons rules banning hats. Thanks, AP, for the penetrating questions on the important issues of the day. To be fair, a lot of what she’s doing in response to electors’ questions sounds like evasion, like telling a woman who asked about old-age pensions that she was too young & pretty to worry about that. She offers fortune cookie slogans like “You cannot say the world is at peace unless we ourselves are at peace.”

Incidentally, the Liberal candidate running against her, Isaac Foot, was the father of future Labour Party leader Michael Foot, and of Dingle Foot, future solicitor-general and famous possessor of the name “Dingle Foot.”

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Today -100: November 4, 1919: As wet as the Atlantic Ocean

Six negroes are sentenced to death for last month’s race riot (or whatever it was) in Elaine, Arkansas. A lot more blacks than whites were killed, but indictments have mostly fallen on blacks, you’ll be surprised to hear.

The Supreme Council of the Entente once again orders Romania to remove its troops from Hungary. One could be forgiven for thinking that their main concern is that they can’t wrap up the Peace Conference and go home until Hungary signs a peace treaty, which it can’t do that without having a proper government, which it can’t form while under occupation. Meanwhile, Romania denies that it has annexed Bessarabia. Rather, it says, Bessarabia annexed it by holding a referendum, so whaddaya gonna do?

Today -100 is election day in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, which I have neglected here despite the fact that the Republican candidate rejoices in the name Newton Bugbee. Newton Bugbee will lose to Edward Irving Edwards, who in 3 years will run for the US Senate and defeat Joseph Frelinghuysen, which sounds like a name Jerry Lewis would say. Edwards wins in part because he promised to use the state machinery to obstruct prohibition and make Jersey “as wet as the Atlantic Ocean.” Which is quite wet. Bugbee calls that position “nullification of the Constitution.” Another issue between the parties in New Jersey is the federal women’s suffrage Amendment, which NJ has yet to ratify. Republicans support a referendum, D’s want the Legislature to just ratify it.

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Today -100: November 3, 1919: Of profiteering, fires, and leather

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer pretends that the government isn’t siding with coal companies against miners by declaring that the government will come down on any company trying to take advantage of the situation by profiteering. Sure it will. Sure it will.

Former soldiers burn down the Germania Hall in Stanton, Nebraska (a heavily German area) after a German group holds a Halloween party there. The (non-German) fire dept takes its sweet time getting to the fire.

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

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Today -100: November 2, 1919: Of suffrage, dry raids, and too many toes

California ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment. 17 states down, 19 to go.

H. W. Mager, head of Internal Revenue Agents (i.e., revenooers), says there will be no more “spectacular” raids on saloons, presumably in response to that Wild West-style shoot-em-up on West 42nd in NYC a few days ago. Instead, agents will go undercover to collect information, and subpoenas will be issued.

Russian Minister of War Leon Trotsky declares Petrograd saved from the threat of capture by White forces.

Peter Dieptro was injured by a pipe falling on his toe while working for a contractor in Syracuse. Thing is, it was the 6th toe on that foot, so there was objection that he didn’t deserve compensation because he’s only entitled to 5 toes per foot (he has 6 on the other foot as well) (and a couple of extra fingers), and if he’d had the right number of toes he wouldn’t even have been injured. However, it is decided that compensation law doesn’t discriminate against polydactyls.

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Today -100: November 1, 1919: Of ethnic cleansing, injunctions, questions of national dignity and sentiment

A mob in Corbin, Kentucky rounds up all but the most elderly blacks in the town and drives them out, on train and foot. One is killed.

A federal court issues an injunction against UMW officials directing a coal strike. In other words, the right to strike is not officially under attack, just the right for it to be organized by leaders. So that’s the end of that. Or....
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1919/11/01/118174703.pdf

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti complains that the Allies do not recognize that Fiume holds for Italy not an economic value, “but a moral value, being a question of national dignity and sentiment.” In Fiume, Poet-Aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio announces elections on the 16th for Fiume’s delegate to the Italian Chamber of Deputies – Fiume is, of course, not a part of Italy, that’s the whole point. He also names Commander Luigi Rizzo as chief of Fiume’s sea forces.

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Today -100: October 31, 1919: Of sickbeds, deportations, and ratifications

Pres. Wilson supposedly received the attorney general to talk about the coal strike, the first time he’s seen a cabinet official in a month.

He also sees the Belgian royal family.

Oklahoma Governor James Robertson sends a telegram to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer asking him to deport any aliens who join the coal strike.

Japan ratifies the peace treaty.

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Today -100: October 30, 1919: Of illegal strikes, prohibition in New York, kidnappings, and enemies of the peoples

Pres. Wilson’s doctors announce that they will stop issuing daily bulletins about his health because it is so improved.

The coal miners’ unions are disregarding Pres. Wilson (or whomever)’s plea to postpone their strike. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer says the strike is illegal under wartime laws.

The federal government’s first effort to enforce in New York City the Wartime National Prohibition Enforcement Act that passed over Wilson (or whomever)’s veto is a raid on a saloon on West 42nd, in which 2 people are shot by revenooers. One of them was a passerby on the street, hit in the leg.

The Cleveland police claim to have uncovered a nationwide bomb plot conspiracy, part of a planned anarchist uprising.

Mexico arrests the lawyer of William Jenkins, the US consular agent who was kidnapped by bandits and released after a ransom of $150,000 was paid. Mexico says the lawyer was complicit in the kidnapping. It also thinks that Jenkins faked the whole thing to create an international incident or just for the money (he was in debt for... just under $150,000).

William Randolph Hearst fails to show up at Carnegie Hall to debate Gov. Al Smith, so Smith makes a speech calling Hearst a “character assassin” and, um, an “enemy of the people.” He accuses the Hearst papers of distorting the truth, but doesn’t use the phrase fake news.

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Today -100: October 29, 1919: Of semi-sitting positions, prohibition, lynchings, women on benches, and pussyfoot candidates

The latest White House bulletin announces that Pres. Wilson now takes his meals in a semi-sitting position. And the nation rejoices.

The Senate also overrides Wilson’s veto of the Wartime National Prohibition Enforcement Bill, 65-20. So the US will be dry until the ratification of the peace treaty, and then dry again once the 18th Amendment kicks in, if it hasn’t already.

A lynch mob murders a black man near Monticello, Georgia. Eugene Hamilton had been tried and convicted for shooting a white man.

Elections in Fiume for the local council are won by supporters of annexation of Fiume by Italy, if only because no one else was allowed to run and because the bridge to the Croatian quarter was closed.

Headline That’s More Interesting Than It Sounds of the Day -100: 

Jean Hortense Norris, the first woman magistrate in New York City, in the Women’s Day Court. She will eventually be removed for various forms of corruption and misconduct, including appearing in ads for Fleischmann’s Yeast in her judicial robes.

Headline of the Day -100:  

British slang for prohibitionist, named for the stealth prohibitionist campaign of a visiting organizer from the US’s Anti-Saloon League.

Lord Rothermere suggests selling Britain’s colonies in the West Indies to the US to pay off some of the war debt. West Indians are not amused.

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Today -100: October 28, 1919: Of satisfaction in the company of crooked politicians, prohibition, provocative opera, and hog islands

William Randolph Hearst declines Gov. Al Smith’s challenge for a debate (a group, possibly Tammany-connected, had even booked Carnegie Hall for the debate). He says he won’t meet Smith “publicly, privately, politically, or socially” because he finds “no satisfaction in the company of crooked politicians.”

Pres. Wilson (or whomever) vetoes the Wartime National Prohibition Enforcement Bill, which does what it says on the box (yes there’s still a war on, technically). Wilson (or whomever, although this does reflect his pre-stroke thinking) says there isn’t a need for it anymore. The veto is then overridden by the House, 176-55. The drys sneakily rush it through in a single day while many wets are elsewhere.

NY Supreme Court Justice Giegerich rules that Mayor Hylan can ban opera sung in German until a peace treaty is ratified, calling the productions a “provocation.” The Star Opera Company argued that people doing a legal thing should be protected from people trying to stop them by doing illegal things, but the judge thinks otherwise.

Headline or Possibly Children’s Book of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: October 27, 1919: There can be no compromise with anarchy

The latest White House bulletin: “The President has had a very good day.”

Sen. Miles Poindexter (R-Washington) announces his candidacy for president. Jeez, 1920, we could have had a President Poindexter. On the other hand, his platform, which is itself a bit of a novelty, is mostly about how he hates Bolsheviks, Socialists, Anarchists, and unions. “There can be no compromise with anarchy,” he says. He calls the threatened railroad strike “government by terror for the benefit of a special class.”

6 members of Sinn Féin, including elected members of Parliament Pierce Beasley and Austin Stack – and how are those names not totally made up? – escape from Manchester Prison, in broad daylight, using a rope ladder.

Headline or Possibly Title of a Short Story in a Pulp Magazine of the Day -100: 

“Desonna was convicted by a jury... after sensational testimony had been given by Kittie Irving, a pretty girl, from Virginia.”

Speaking of girls from Virginia, Lady Astor accepts the Plymouth Conservatives’ offer to run in the parliamentary seat her husband was removed from when he succeeded his father in the House of Lords – which he is not at all happy about, and is consulting lawyers about whether he can renounce the seat and stay in the Commons (a law will allow this in 1963).

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Today -100: October 26, 1919: Of strikes, kidnappings, and sugar

The latest White House bulletin: “President Wilson is slowly gaining in strength.” The doctors have decided to reduce these bulletins from twice a day to once.

Despite all the talk about how Wilson isn’t allowed to do much work and his doctors aren’t letting him look at a prohibition enforcement bill, he magically revives enough to issue a statement about a possible coal strike. He’s against it.

The AFL says if Congress includes an anti-strike provision in the pending railroad bill, there will be a general strike.

The US demands that Mexico secure the release of a consular agent, William Jenkins, who has been kidnapped by bandits. It wants Mexico to pay the ransom ($150,000) itself if necessary.

The fighting near Petrograd continues. Latest rumor: all of Trotsky’s staff has been captured while Trotsky himself fled clinging to the side of a railroad car. Whoever started this story may have mistaken Trotsky for Buster Keaton. Trotsky’s the one with the mustache, guys.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: October 25, 1919: A good day

The latest White House bulletin: “The President has had a good day.” Good for him.

Supposedly, former kaiser Wilhelm “recently went through the solemn ceremony of loading his revolver in the presence of members of his family... and declared that the day the Entente demanded his extradition from the Dutch Government he would shoot himself.”

A House committee decides that Victor Berger, the elected Socialist congressman from Wisconsin’s 5th district, shouldn’t be allowed to take his seat because he was “disloyal” during the war.

Sen. Kenneth McKellar (D-Tennessee) introduces a bill to establish a penal colony for anarchists on some island in the Philippines.

Police and protesters clash, as was the custom, outside a New York City performance of Die Fledermaus.

The Industrial Conference ends after the withdrawals of the representatives of labor, capital, and the public, in that order, over the last couple of days. The chair of the employers’ group accuses labor of “showing a poor spirit of sportsmanship.” The American Federation of Labor will call its own conference of organized labor to consider the future of industrial relations.

A military intelligence officer testifies to the Senate Labor and Education Committee about radical propaganda in Gary, Indiana, much of which the military seems to have confiscated, which can’t possibly be legal. Lt. Donald van Buren warns darkly about the number of foreigners in Gary and the presence of many copies of the “Red Bible.” Van Buren is pissed that the US can’t simply deport Bolsheviks and IWW members.

Two Finns are convicted under NY’s law against “criminal anarchy,” for... writing articles. The law was passed in 1902 in reaction to the McKinley assassination, but has never been used before. They will be sentenced to terms of 4 to 8 years by a judge who tells them their writings were just as much treason as if they had actually organized an army to attack the government.

The Plymouth Tory party asks Nancy Astor to contest her husband’s former seat.

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Today -100: October 24, 1919: Maternal

The British government loses a vote in Parliament, which might normally lead to it having to resign, but the vote was on whether aliens can have pilotage certificates, so c’mon. Earl Curzon of Kedleston and Arthur Balfour swap jobs, the former becoming foreign secretary and the latter Lord President of the Council.

France claims to have uncovered a German plot. It says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid 500,000 francs for Alsace-Lorraine independence activity. The French are arresting and deporting Germans in the province.

Mother Jones gives a fiery speech in Gary, Indiana, suggesting steel strikers hang scabs from telegraph polls.

Senate Republicans are thinking up still more reservations they can wrap arond the neck of the peace treaty, including one to exclude from League of Nations jurisdiction anything involving the “vital interests and national honor” of the United States.

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Today -100: October 23, 1919: A comfortable day

The latest White House bulletin: “The President has had a comfortable day.”

Labor Secretary William Wilson finally reads Pres. Wilson’s letter to the industrial conference in a last-ditch effort to keep the conference going – “At a time when the nations of the world are endeavoring to find a way to avoid international war, are we to confess that there is no method to be found for carrying on industry except in the spirit and with the very method of war?” So the labor reps, led by Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, having failed to get any agreement on the right of collective bargaining, walk out.

A temporary injunction is issued against NYC Mayor John Hylan’s order banning German opera at the Lexington Opera House. Albert Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann is performed, despite the occasional egg thrown at the singers and the occasional gas bomb. Outside, soldiers and sailors (this may mean former soldiers and sailors) try to capture an army truck to aid in their protest, only to be attacked by mounted police; one sailor may die.

Headline of the Day -100: 

He thinks the League of Nation’s “prestige” can stop them, whenever the US stops dithering about and helps start it.

Senate Republicans agree on 10 “reservations” to pretty much every important provision of the Peace Treaty, limiting the US’s obligations under the League of Nations to whatever it feels like doing, and requiring 3 of the 4 Allies to agree to those reservations.

Oxford is thinking about admitting women and maybe even giving them degrees.

Pope Benedict calls for Catholic women to form a league against indecent fashion.

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Today -100: October 22, 1919: Of industrial conferences, war crimes, and the sound of German gutturals

The industrial conference is not going well. All proposals for collective bargaining and for arbitration of the steel strike are voted down. I’ll spare you the details, but the employers’ representatives are being total dicks. Which should mean the conference ends in disarray but it’s saved, for now, by a letter which Pres. Wilson totally wrote himself to Secretary of Labor William Wilson. Sec. Wilson doesn’t read it out, but makes it known that the letter exists and he’ll deploy the 600-word missive if anyone steps out of line.

Pres. Wilson, we are told, wrote (dictated) that letter against the advice of his doctors, and is now totally tired out (I assume the letter was actually written by First Lady Edith Wilson).

The French are demanding that 600 Germans be tried for war crimes, including Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria,

accused of being the first army commander to use poison gas. Rupey says he will never surrender.

The French claim to have foiled a plot for an uprising in Alsace on November 9th, timed to coincide with a Communist uprising in Germany.

NY Mayor John Hylan bans the Star Opera Company’s performance of German opera, so the theatre was dark last night. The company appeals to the state Supreme Court, where the city argues that the ban is proper because the peace treaty hasn’t been signed. The performance was to have been Albert Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann, a comic opera. The American Legion Weekly says “it might be said simply that we do not like the sound of German gutturals. The trouble with German opera in German is that our mind hears not the theme so much as the shrieks of the Lusitania’s dying. Its measured cadences picture not tender human emotions, but a firing squad marching at the goose step upon defenseless women and children. If it conjures up sequestered sylvan glades, we see lying thereon the moaning victims of poison gas.” Everyone’s a critic.

The NYT says the Germans have only themselves to blame for the hatred brought on by their “obstinate defiance of American opinion” in trying to sing in German.

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Today -100: October 21, 1919: A better day than usual

The latest White House bulletin: “The President has had a better day than usual.” Bills are passing into law without a presidential signature.

Elbert Gary, chairman of US Steel (and the man for whom Gary, Indiana is named) tells the presidential Industrial Conference to stay out of the steel strike. He doesn’t want arbitration, compromise, or anything else. He doesn’t really say what he does want, but “industrial war” would seem to cover it.

Headline of the Day -100:

Funny, yesterday they were supposed to have already captured it. Now they’re approaching, but 8 miles away. Kronstadt has also been reported to have surrendered, several times.

The Star Opera Company performs some German opera – selections from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger – despite a large “threatening crowd” outside the Lexington Theatre in Manhattan (including many from the American Legion and other ex-soldiers) and despite Mayor John Hylan having made it clear he didn’t want the show to go on. The company’s lawyer told them the mayor doesn’t actually have the right to ban opera. What’s the point of being mayor if you can’t ban opera? Hylan can’t get in touch with the city’s lawyer to find out if he has that power or not, so the police are forced to protect the performance against a crowd that throws chunks of masonry and cue balls at them. Lawyer Max Steuer (last seen here defending the owners of the Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire) says the protests are being got up by the Met to crush a competing opera company and the ex-soldiers are unwitting pawns. The NYT’s music critic thinks the performances sucked.

Lady Nancy Astor might be asked to run to fill the parliamentary seat her husband has vacated as he ascends to the Lords (Nancy, by the way, is American).

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Today -100: October 20, 1919: Of falls, indigestion, longshoremen, Americanized peace, and Astors

Headline of the Day -100: 

And if they keep reporting it and wishing reeeeally hard...

Headline of the Day -100:  

Dr. Grayson says the president is “holding his own.” Wow, did a tasteless joke just occur to me.

No, not that joke. More tasteless.

New York Mayor John Hylan asks the federal government not to send troops to replace striking longshoremen at the Port of New York.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge says the peace treaty won’t be ratified without reservations to “Americanize” it. And senators are coming up with new reservations, including preventing the US from accepting a League of Nations mandate (Armenia, say) without Congressional approval. Which doesn’t seem unreasonable. Also, rejection of any ruling by the International Labor Council on immigration (i.e., the US’s racist immigration policy). There is also a proposal for the US to bring the issue of Irish independence before the League of Nations. 

Three French army officers who during the war wrote for the German-published Gazette des Ardennes are sentenced to death. 7 non-military writers get sentences of 5 to 7 years.

The American-born but British-naturalized Viscount Astor dies. He will be succeeded in the Lords by his son Waldorf Astor, who will therefore be removed from his House of Commons seat representing Plymouth (very much against his will, but them’s the rules). Whoever will they find to replace him?

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