Today -100: June 8, 1920: Of enthusiasm, prohibition, negro martyrs, and anti-Semitism

In Chicago a day before the opening of the Republican convention, Sen. Harry New of Indiana puts his finger on it:  “there is little real enthusiasm for any candidate”. The whole field is made up of Bidens.

Ruling on several cases, the Supreme Court unanimously upholds the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. It says prohibition applies even to liquors produced before it was adopted. Also, Congress gets to decide what constitutes “intoxicating,” not the states.

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Well, which of us hasn’t been fatigued by the beatification of negro martyrs? That shit’s just fatiguing.

Posters appear in Vienna calling for the expulsion of non-Austrian Jews from the country, and all Jews from the army.

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Today -100: June 7, 1920: Nobody is talking Harding in Chicago

With the British due to hold talks with a Russian envoy about resuming economic relations, France, which wants a much harder line against the Soviets, claims to have foiled a Russian plot to start revolution throughout Europe on May Day. They have the proof in Trotsky’s own handwriting, says Le Matin. And naturally, this is all funded with jewels taken from Russian churches.

According to the NYT, “Nobody is talking Harding in Chicago.”

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Today -100: June 6, 1920: Of candidates, political expediency, aliens, and spinsters

The Republican presidential nomination is

In the lead: Gen. Leonard Wood, Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden, Sen. Hiram Johnson of California, and Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio, in that order, with dark horses including Gov. William Sproul of Pennsylvania, former Supreme Court Justice and former NY governor Charles Evans Hughes, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler, Gov. John Calvin Coolidge Jr. of Massachusetts, former Food Tsar Herbert Hoover, and Senators Philander Knox of Pennsylvania, Miles Poindexter of Washington, and Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin. It’s “taken for granted that Harding, [Ohio’s] favorite son, is already out of the contest”.

Congress adjourns for six months. Wilson accuses it of having failed to work for the public welfare, saying it was instead motivated by “political expediency.” He points to its failure to do anything about the cost of living, railroads, the merchant marine, and of course, peace. A lot of bills are left hanging by the adjournment, including the Soldier Bonus and the budget.

One thing Congress did complete: a bill allowing deportation of aliens for simple membership in (or giving money to) any organization advocating sabotage, destruction of property, or revolution, such as the Communist Party, Communist Labor Party, or IWW. Also: aliens who write stuff advocating those things, or distribute such literature.

Having already passed a tax on bachelors, the French National Assembly is considering a tax on spinsters.

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Today -100: June 5, 1920: Of mayo, pickets, and not banned in Boston

The White House denies rumors that Wilson is to undergo an operation – by the Mayo brothers, no less.

With the Republican National Convention imminent, no one knows whether it will name Johnson, Wood, or Lowden as its presidential candidate.

Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party will picket the Republican convention, blaming the R’s for the delay in ratification of the federal women’s suffrage Amendment.

A French airplane sets the record for longest continuous flight, more than 24 hours.

Someone “in a position to know the President’s views” tells the NYT that Woodrow Wilson has no preference for Democratic presidential candidate. In fact, Wilson still hasn’t said whether he’d accept the nomination for a third time if he was, you know, asked nicely.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill says there are 40 tanks and 28 aeroplanes stationed in Ireland.

Hungary signs its peace treaty.

Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge vetoes a bill establishing movie censorship, saying it violates federal rules on interstate commerce and eliminates jury trials. The House votes to override.

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Today -100: June 4, 1920: Of beeckmans, segregation, and war laws

Rhode Island Gov. R. Livingston Beeckman, which is the most Republican-Rhode-Island-Governor name imaginable, in Chicago for the Republican National Convention, complains that the Republican senators plan to take complete control over the convention. Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee Virgil Hinshaw, which is the most Chairman-of-the-Prohibition-National-Committee name imaginable, wants to question the candidates about prohibition.

For the first time the two parties’ conventions will have “electrical sound amplifying devices,” courtesy of Ma Bell.

The RNC passes a motion that no delegations be seated in the future if elected at places (hotels etc) in the South from which blacks are banned.

The House of Representatives votes 343-3 to repeal most war laws. Not included: food and fuel control acts, which R’s like because they can be used against strikes. R’s claim it’s actually about punishing profiteering.

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Today -100: June 3, 1920: Of grammar, keeping abreast of the world, and prescriptions

Pres. Wilson vetoes a bill criminalizing the transporting across state lines of licentious movies because it has bad grammar (which turns out to be a clerk mistakenly putting the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the wrong place. The House corrects and re-passes it.

A Senate committee has been investigating campaign spending in the Republican primary, and some candidates, notably Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden, whose campaign paid delegates to the national convention large sums without any stipulation about how they were to spend it, are seeing their campaigns tank as their spending practices are revealed. Which upends the plans of the Republican Old Guard to use Lowden to undercut the Wood & Johnson campaigns.

Wall Street betting odds favor Johnson 6:5, with both Wood & Lowden at 3:1. On the Democratic side, William Gibbs McAdoo is favored 8:5, followed by Edward Edwards, the New Jersey governor so nice they named him twice.

At the NAACP conference in Atlanta, W.E.B. DuBois (whose first initial the NYT gives as N) calls for black people in the South to be given the vote “if the South wishes to be abreast of the world”. I can’t imagine where he’d get the idea that the South wants to be abreast of the world.  When the conference ends, delegates going north will be provided special Pullman cars in which Jim Crow rules will not be enforced.

Hubert Howard, federal Prohibition Director for Illinois, says that since prohibition went into effect, Chicago doctors have issued 300,000 spurious prescriptions for liquor (out of 500,000). Conditions evidently requiring alcoholic treatment include: fainting, insomnia, stomach ache, toothache, headache, runny nose, lumbago, menstrual cramps, bronchitis, ptomaine poisoning, gastritis, gaseous eructations, hay fever, asthma, grip, and of course, alcoholism. The usual prescription is for one ounce three times daily.

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Today -100: June 2, 1920: Of expert treatment and artificial stimulation, ratifications, and daring raids

A week before the Republican national convention, Sen. Warren G. Harding’s campaign, which was considered moribund, is picking up again, the beneficiary “expert treatment and artificial stimulation” from party elders using him in order to stop Gen. Leonard Wood, and definitely not because they intend to make him president. The plan is to keep Wood from winning for several ballots, in part by depriving him of the votes of delegates from Ohio, Harding’s home state, and then choosing the candidate behind closed doors.

Even though the Ohio State Constitution says that the state can only ratify federal Amendments after a popular referendum, the US Supreme Court rules that the Legislature’s ratification of the 18th Amendment was final, despite prohibition losing in the subsequent referendum last November.

That ruling also means that Ohio’s ratification of the women’s suffrage Amendment stands.

Sinn Féiners raid a military barracks, in central Dublin no less, take 25 soldiers captive, make off with a whole bunch of weapons and ammo, and melt into a cheering crowd.

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Today -100: June 1, 1920: Of provisional presidents and quaint Memorial Day traditions

Mexican Provisional President Adolfo de la Huerta, just appointed and already suffering from appendicitis, pledges that any candidates in the upcoming elections won’t be killed, probably.

Sen. Albert Fall (R[acist dickhead]-New Mexico)’s Foreign Affairs sub-committee demands that the new Mexican government be made to sign a new treaty and rewrite its Constitution to safeguard the property and lives and property of Americans living in Mexico (i.e., oil companies). American citizens should be exempted from the rules regarding land and mineral ownership, religious activities and schools that mere Mexicans have to abide by and not be subject to summary expulsion from the country like every other non-Mexican. Failing that, the committee recommends sending troops to “open and maintain open every line of communication between the City of Mexico and every seaport and border port in Mexico.” It also expresses concern about the number of Japanese in Mexico without, near as I can tell, explaining its problem with them.

At a Memorial Day event in Liscomb, Iowa, veterans firing a salute accidentally shoot 42 members of the crowd.

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Today -100: May 31, 1920: Of fools and socks

Ahead of its general election, Germany is rife with rumors of coups by nationalists, communists, or both. Chancellor Hermann Müller says Germany must show “that she has had enough of war for all eternity, and that no fool, crowned or uncrowned, shall drag Germany into a war of revenge.”

Coney Island bathing suit censors, out in force this Memorial Day weekend, go after women wearing socks and men wearing one-piece bathing suits, because too sexy for 1920, I guess.

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Today -100: May 30, 1920: What the Well-Dressed Opera-Goer and Presidential Candidate Are Wearing

US Attorney Annette Adams is nominated to be assistant attorney general. She will be the first woman assistant attorney general, the highest federal office occupied by a woman so far.

The House of Representatives passes a bonus bill for veterans through an extraordinary suspension of the rules to limit debate, so much of the argument was about that. Robert Evans (R-Neb.) says “It is an outrage that 425 members are only eunuchs in the harem of the Steering and Rules Committee.” Most of the funding would come through various taxes on Wall Street and tobacco. Vets could choose one of the following: cash, or a 20-year bond, or vocational training, or farm or loan aid, or land settlement. The cash would be $1.25 per day of service overseas or $1 at home, to a max of $625. The bill is expected to die in the Senate.

Pres. Wilson commutes the sentence of Kate Richards O’Hare, who was convicted under the Espionage Act for opposing the war.

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Tomas Masaryk is chosen as president of Czechoslovakia by the country’s first elected parliament. During the proceedings, ethnic German deputies (think Sudetenland) complain that the Speaker spoke Czech rather than German. They later storm out.

The Indian National Congress has its own commission on the Amritsar Massacre, including Gandhi, which issues its own report. It suggests that the actions of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lt. Gov. of the Punjab, invited violence to justify a violent crackdown. It distances the actions of the Indian mob from Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement. It describes the massacre as “a calculated piece of inhumanity unparalleled in its ferocity.”

The NYT continues to push John W. Davis for the Democratic nomination for president. It thinks he’d be a really strong candidate. Ambassador Davis will have a chance to prove them woefully wrong, but not just yet. The Times also suggests that the Republicans, who “boast that they are the party of intelligence” (cough), not nominate Hiram Johnson; it does not suggest an alternative candidate.

News that Hungary will sign the peace treaty has supposedly led to many suicides being fished out of the Danube. And the army may refuse to evacuate territories as required by the treaty.

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Today -100: May 29, 1920: Of sentimental idealism, women’s suffrage, and Willy’s new suit

The House fails to override Pres. Wilson’s veto of the Knox Resolution to end the war. Stephen Porter (R-Penn.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, accuses Wilson of attempting , in his veto message, to lead the American people “into the underbrush of sentimental idealism, which is beautiful and attractive in theory, but is extremely dangerous in these days.” D’s point out that if the R’s were really so concerned with repealing wartime regulations, they could just do that.

Women’s suffrage Amendment ratification dies in the Delaware Legislature.

Former czar Wilhelm II has taken up tailoring as a hobby, because why not.

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Today -100: May 28, 1920: Of ineffacable stains

Pres. Wilson vetoes the Knox resolution to end the war. He says it would ignore the moral obligations which the US assumed when it went to war and would “place ineffacable stains on the gallantry and honor of the United States.” He says “The resolution seeks to establish peace with the German Empire without exacting from the German Government any action by way of setting right the infinite wrongs which it did to the peoples whom it attacked,” nor would it reduce armaments or establish freedom of the seas. The US would be announcing its unwillingness to assume “responsibilities with regard to the freedom of nations or the sacredness of international obligation or the safety of independent peoples.” “Have we sacrificed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans and ruined the lives of thousands of others and brought upon thousands of American families an unhappiness that can never end for purposes which we do not now care to sate or take further steps to attain?” I think that’s a trick question.

Rep. Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) points out an interview during the war in which Wilson was unconcerned with the freedom of the seas. Longworth asks “did the same man who gave the interview write the message?”, which I take to be suggesting not so subtly that someone else wrote the veto message. And while someone else (Mrs Wilson comes to mind) might easily have done so, it sounds very much like Wilson’s sentiments.

Canada puts in a rather belated claim for reparations from Germany of $1,871,000,000. Evidently it expects Germany to pay the whole cost of the war against it as well as $30 million for the explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax harbor in 1917 after it bumped another ship, which Canada is still pretending was a German plot of some kind.

Republican party leaders intend to keep the issue of prohibition out of the national convention.

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Today -100: May 27, 1920: Of generals and minimum wages

Rodolfo Herrera, the Mexican general in charge of the siege of Carranza’s camp, is arrested for questioning about the latter’s death. Herrera insists Carranza committed suicide.

The Senate kills a bill for a $3 a day minimum wage for government employees.

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Today -100: May 26, 1920: Of Jim Crow conventions, massacres, 2.75% beer, married teachers, and general soreness

300 black delegates to the Texas Republican Convention quit it and hold their own convention after some are refused credentials by, you know, racists. So yet another state will send two competing delegations to the national convention in Chicago, although both will evidently support Gen. Wood. Oh, and the black delegates are led by a banker from Fort Worth known as “Gooseneck” Bill McDonald, the first black millionaire in Texas.

The commission led by Lord Hunter into “unrest” in India, including last year’s Amritsar Massacre, issues two reports, one from the 5 British members, one from the 3 Indian members. The two reports disagree on whether the anti-European attitude of the natives developed before or after the massacre, but agree that the soldiers needed to shoot into the crowd, though maybe not for quite that long. They also differ over whether the protests constituted “open rebellion” and whether martial law was necessary. Even the British members think Dyer’s order for Indians to crawl if they wanted to cross a particular street where a British woman had been assaulted was a bad move.

The feds say they will ignore the NY law authorizing 2.75% beer and prosecute those who sell it.

The New York Board of Education rescinds the 1903 rule barring married women teachers being hired or promoted.

French President Paul Deschanel is recovering from falling out of his train. According to his doctors, “There is general soreness, but no nervousness.”

Same.

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Today -100: May 25, 1920: It may surprise you, but I am Deschanel, president of the Republic

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To be fair to that railroad trackwalker, Paul Deschanel may well have been crazy. So the president of France falls out of the window of the moving presidential train. He walks, in his pj’s, to the nearest town, coming across that sceptical trackwalker along the way. He claims to have fallen out of the window of his carriage when trying to open it, but there are... questions. PM Millerand tells the NYT correspondent that Deschanel is “sound physically and mentally.” That he felt impelled to add that “and mentally” is not a good sign.

Pres. Wilson asks Congress to give him the power to accept the mandate over Armenia. He doesn’t actually think this might happen, does he?

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The New York Legislature passes a bill for 2.75% beer, which it defines as non-intoxicating, and Gov. Al Smith signs it. The beer can be drunk in restaurants but only with meals.

A Swiss newspaper reports that various Russian nobles and officers say the Czar and his family escaped and are living quietly in Japan.

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Today -100: May 24, 1920: Of non-wars, wiping out unrest, and putschists

Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of British troops in Ireland, says there is not a state of war in Ireland, as he floods the country with soldiers, who he says are just there to support the police, like the Irish people are not doing because of terrorism.

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It turns out it’s: cooperation and harmonization of capital and labor. Gosh, why did no one think of this before?

A bunch of German officers, including former head of the Admiralty Adm. von Trotha, are fired because of their participation in the Kapp Putsch. Shouldn’t that have happened, like, two months ago? 

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Today -100: May 23, 1920: Of dead Carranzas, borders, and mahogany commodes

Mexican President-On-The-Lam Venustiano Carranza is dead. To this day we don’t know whether he was killed or killed himself. Either way, his camp was surrounded and he was done. Obregón, who would have preferred to see Carranza either on trial or in exile, will attempt to blame the general in command of the forces besieging Carranza for not bringing him in alive.

Pres. Wilson accepts the San Remo conference’s request that he arbitrate the Turkey-Armenia border. He was also asked to accept the League of Nations mandate for Armenia, but hasn’t answered one way or the other.

The Anderson Galleries of New York City auction off a bunch of the former kaiser Wilhelm’s shit – chairs, clocks, draperies, cigarette boxes, and so on – seized from his many palaces by his many creditors. The gallery says the goods went for about 50% more than if they’d come from some rando. A mahogany commode that presumably once touched the emperor’s actual pale bottom fetched $1,100. I wonder where it is today.

The governor of Georgia and the mayor of Atlanta invite the NAACP to hold its convention in that city. Is it a trap? It’s probably a trap.

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Today -100: May 22, 1920: Of ending wars, acts of savagery, cabinets, and the world’s enigma

The House of Representatives passes the Knox Resolution declaring the war over, unchanged from the Senate version already passed, in order to get it vetoed in time for the Republican Convention. The R’s have shifted their rationale a bit, saying this is needed to end all those wartime measures, especially the ones giving unusual powers to the executive branch. D’s retort that they could have just repealed those measures if they didn’t also want an election issue.

German Foreign Minister Adolph Koestler tells the Reichstag that Germany will complain to the League of Nations about the alleged acts of “savagery” by black French soldiers in the Ruhr.

In Italy, Francesco Nitti forms a new cabinet, his third in the last year, another attempt at a broad coalition with Catholics and liberals and whatnot. The government is trying to demobilize the army, but officers are refusing to be demobilized. I didn’t know it worked like that.

The Dearborn Independent publishes the first of owner Henry Ford’s series of editorials “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” a loose adaptation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “The Jew is the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that center rule the world, though not until he has undergone an assault by the united nations of mankind.”

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Today -100: May 21, 1920: Of anti-imperialism, hostage-taking, and dabbling in politics

Sir Edward Carson tells Parliament that the disorders in Ireland are being directed from New York by people who aren’t really interested in Ireland but in destroying the British Empire.

Dock workers in Dublin are refusing to unload munitions being sent for the military, and dock workers in London are now refusing to load them.

Hearing that Russia is detaining Americans, the US asks Austria to hold on to communists who fled Hungary after the fall of Béla Kun.

Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore warns women: “You rule the home, the husband and the children, and should not attempt to dabble in politics. If you try to rule over two kingdoms, you will surely lose both of them.”

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Today -100: May 20, 1920: Of Matewan massacres, ignored hoovers, and dear old pals of mine

12 men are killed on the streets of Matewan, West Virginia in a gun battle between coal miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, whose “detectives” arrived to evict strikers them from their company homes and tried to arrest Police Chief Sid Hatfield with a fake warrant. Shooting started, by whom is not clear. 7 detectives are dead, and Mayor Cabell Testerman. For further details, I refer you to John Sayles’s movie Matewan.

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith vetoes several anti-Socialist bills, including ones establishing loyalty tests for teachers, barring socialists from the ballot and from appointive state offices, and creating a secret police bureau to investigate criminal anarchy.

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Rude.

The first entertainment radio broadcast, on Marconi-owned station XWA (Experimental Wireless Apparatus) in Montreal, plays records (“Dear Old Pal of Mine”) and has live singing by Dorothy Lutton (“Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” and “Merrily Shall I Live” and others. It can barely be heard in Montreal, but reaches the meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in Ottawa. Ottawa broadcasts some ditties back to Montreal.

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