Today -100: August 7, 1920: Of street car strikes, Irish crimes, and frooks

Denver police and/or armed strikebreakers open fire on striking street car workers who were advancing on the car barns, killing 3. The city is now being patrolled by tanks with machine guns. The American Legion is also patrolling.

The British Parliament passes the Irish Crimes Bill 206-18, after a walkout by Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs. An amendment to limit the imposition of courts-martial to one year is rejected.

Dorothy Frooks, lawyer and suffragist orator since the age of 11, announces that she will run for Congress from the 27th district of New York. I don’t think she does, although she will in the ‘30s, but this is a good excuse to link to her 1997 obit.

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Today -100: August 6, 1920: Of revengeful spirits, prohibition, ethnic cleansings, hysterical womanhood, and duels

Germany says it will refuse the Entente permission to send troops through Germany to help Poland against Russia. The Times of London  falsely reports that Russia and Germany signed a secret treaty before Russia began its offensive.

In the debate on the Irish Crimes Bill, which would replace civilian juries with military courts-martial in disturbed areas, Irish Secretary Sir Hamar Greenwood says they would not operate “in a revengeful spirit.” So that’s okay then. In the debate, former PM H.H. Asquith calls for giving Ireland dominion status, like Canada & Australia. In response, Lloyd George asks if he’d allow Ireland an army and a navy or give it control over its own ports and says that during the war current Sinn Féin leaders had an arrangement with Germany to “attack us at the moment of our greatest peril.”

Maryland Attorney General Alexander Armstrong says cops can’t make raids or arrests under the (federal) Volstead Act.

A large mob takes over the town of West Frankfort, Illinois, disarming the police, taking over the phone and telegraph lines, beating up people, and possibly killing a photographer trying to take pictures. They order all Sicilian residents, as well as the mayor and all the cops, to leave the town within 24 hours. It’s unclear from the story who the mob consists of, but they arrived by cars, so not locals. This was all precipitated by the discovery in the woods of two dead boys who had claimed to know things about a series of robberies. Several men arrested for the crime were spirited out of the jail before they could be lynched.

Human weathervane Warren Harding decides he will help push Tennessee to ratify the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, sending telegrams to Republican leaders, which is the very least he could do.

Charles Ponzi says he’s about to launch a $100 million world-wide project, and he expects the public to be investing $5 million a day by next week. Mass. Gov. Coolidge approves funds for a state inquiry into Ponzi’s scheme.

In a letter to the NYT,  the leaders of the Alabama Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage are so disgusted by the two parties’ positions on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment that they “demand” that the men of the South not vote for president this year. Blah blah blah weakened temporizing manhood blah blah hysterical womanhood. Susan B. herself “stirred the fanatical fury that put us under the rule of former slaves,” so yeah there’s racism too. “‘The Solid South’ is the white man’s Government, the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Uruguay legalizes duels, if approved by a court of honor.

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Today -100: August 5, 1920: Of councils of foreign powers, cables, and generals

From his front porch in Marion, Ohio (the only place he intends to campaign until October, following McKinley’s strategy – he even has McKinley’s flagpole), Warren G. Harding gives a speech referring to the League of Nations as “a council of foreign powers [which] shall summon the sons of this republic to war anywhere in the world.”

Pres. Wilson orders a British ship laying a West Union telegraph cable into Miami harbor without US permission in order to connect Miami to Barbados and then to Brazil to be blocked by destroyers, by force if necessary.

Mexico Pres. Adolfo de la Huerta fires all the generals in his cabinet except the minister of war, making them ambassadors.

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Today -100: August 4, 1920: Of armistices, magistrates, absent doctors, and smiling ponzis

Russia breaks off armistice talks with Poland, opting to try to capture Warsaw instead. It seems likely this will happen.

132 Irish magistrates have resigned recently, they say in protest, the British say because of Sinn Féin terrorism. After Protestant Belfast workers’ expulsion of Catholics from jobs in the shipyards and elsewhere, the South of Ireland is preparing to boycott goods from Belfast and Sinn Féin has warned bakers not to send bread to Belfast. SF also bans Irish people emigrating without its permission.

Woodrow Wilson’s doctor goes on vacation, leaving him with no doctor in attendance for the first time in nearly a year, because he’s just sooooo recovered (although the NYT says he looks much older than his age. Rude).

Headline of the Day -100:

Ponzi says he still has “mountains of money” to pay any claims.

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Today -100: August 3, 1920: You can only be free if I am free

Two men steal a plane in Maywood, Illinois, fly it four miles away and strip it for parts, and now I’m wondering whether this was the first plane theft.

Romania tells Russia to get its troops off Romanian territory or face the might of Romania.

A Chicago jury convicts William Bross Lloyd and 19 other members of the Communist Labor Party for conspiracy to overthrow the US government.  Their lawyer, Clarence Darrow (Lloyd is rich and can afford the best), had told the jury, “You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” The prosecutor recited the Star-Spangled Banner.

At the Universal Negro Improvement Association convention, Marcus Garvey announces that he’s sent a message of greeting to de Valera, saying Ireland should be free just like Africa should. Garvey says “We are the descendants of a suffering people. We are the descendants of a people determined to suffer no longer.” “The other races have countries of their own and it is time for the 400,000,000 negroes to claim Africa for themselves.” Garvey’s followers are addressing him as “Your Majesty.”

In New York, two chauffeurs (which probably means cabbies) are convicted for disorderly conduct for driving along streets, asking women to join them in their automobiles. One is fined, one sent to jail for 20 days; the judge calls them “auto lizards.”

Lloyd George introduces the Irish Crimes Bill (aka the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920) to try Sinn Féiners by military courts-martial rather than civilian juries.

A mob in Center, Texas lynches a black man who supposedly confessed to the murder of a white woman.

Charlie Chaplin’s first wife, actress Mildred Harris, who he married when she was 16 less than 2 years ago, files for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty.

Charles Ponzi’s former publicity agent W.H. McMaster writes about Ponzi’s scheme in the morning paper, leading to another run on the company. Ponzi pays off the runners, and tells reporters that he has twice as many assets as obligations. He says McMaster doesn’t know the ins and outs of his business because “Nobody knows my business except myself. Nobody knows just what I have been doing, and nobody can say that I haven’t sent and received money from Europe during the last week or more.” The federal auditor says he hasn’t found any violations of the law, so far.

Percy Sholto Douglas, the 10th Marquess of Queensberry (not 9th, NYT), brother of Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas), dies in South Africa. He was in the military and the navy, a gold prospector in Australia, and a reporter and cowboy in the US, among other things.

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Today -100: August 2, 1920: Of red armies, communist parties, and universal negroes

The Red Army is 75 miles from Warsaw. France really wants Britain to join it in issuing a threat of war to Russia if it doesn’t knock it off, but Lloyd George is not keen on the idea.

Britain holds a convention to form a Communist Party.

Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association also has a convention, in Harlem, although proceedings will move to Madison Square Garden. Delegates from all over the world will draw up a bill of rights for the negro peoples of the world and elect a “President of Africa, a leader for the negro people of America and a leader for the negro people of the world.”

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Today -100: August 1, 1920: Of red armies, schemes, and sheep

Trotsky orders the Red Army to capture Warsaw before the start of armistice talks. Russia has postponed those talks twice.

Now that the run on his scheme is over, Charles Ponzi is thinking about going into politics.

Woodrow Wilson is going to sell off the White House sheep, 48 of whom have been employed keeping the grass cut.

Harding gives his first speech to pilgrims to his front porch in Marion, Ohio. It’s... quite boring.

Did I choose not to read a story entitled “Poison Gas for Whales”? Yes I did.

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Today -100: July 31, 1920: Of armistices, schemes, death-defying escapes, practically impossible wars, and law-abiding citizens

The Allies tell Poland that they won’t accept any armistice deal between it and Russia that entails the dismemberment of Poland, or a change in Poland’s form of government, or a border less favorable to Poland than the one Lloyd George drew on a map. Hungary has asked permission to reform its army and attack Russia. Hungary may be planning to ally with Latvia, Finland and Romania to go to war with Russia.

The number of Charles Ponzi’s investors wanting their money back seems to have dwindled. The feds will now join the state of Massachusetts in auditing his books, but Ponzi says the secret whereby he made his money will not be discovered that way.

Gen. Cuthbert Henry Tindall Lucas escapes from the Sinn Féin, who kidnapped him in Ireland a month ago. A two-hour gunfight between SFers and some soldiers who picked Lucas up (he ran across a patrol after removing the bars on his window and fleeing into the night) leaves two of the soldiers dead, which is why you shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers. Lucas says he has no complaints about his treatment; he was even allowed to go fishing.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, meeting Unionist members of the Houses of Commons and Lords, suggests, contra Sir Edward Carson’s latest theory, that “we should make a mistake if we came to the conclusion that the Sinn Féin is purely a Bolshevist conspiracy against Great Britain.”

Okuma Shigenobu, the former prime minister of Japan, says a war between Japan and the US is practically impossible.

Negro Edgar Caldwell, an army sergeant, is hanged, publicly, in Anniston, Alabama for the murder of a street car conductor who, with a motorman, attacked Caldwell for sitting in the white section (it’s a pretty clear case of justified self-defense) (I couldn’t find out whether he was in uniform). He gives a speech to the crowd on the dangers of whisky, cigarettes, and... carrying firearms. Unusually, this death sentence took two years to be carried out. The NAACP (which often focused on lynchings and legal lynchings like this against returning black veterans) became involved and the case went up to the Alabama and US Supreme Courts; at one point Pres. Wilson asked for a postponement in order for the Justice Dept to investigate (the state of Alabama naturally ignored him).

A character from two of my earliest Today -100 posts re-emerges. Arthur Everton, hypnotist extraordinaire, is arrested by Dry agents with $6,000 worth of liquor in his Newark apartment, which is located above a saloon. “When asked why he did not work a spell on the agents, Everton replied: ‘I wouldn’t do that. I am a law-abiding citizen.’” We first came across Everton in 1909, when a man died while under his hypnotic spell during a show. Still one of my favorite stories.

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Today -100: July 30, 1920: Ethics do not interest me any more than it interests bankers

Ponzi is still returning investors’ money, but says he will soon open an office in New York City because there is still $30 or 40 million to be squeezed from the postal reply coupon scheme, which is definitely a real thing, and there are “difficulties” in New England now. Ponzi says, “I am in the business to make money. Ethics do not interest me any more than it interests bankers.” He makes his profits by the method he uses to cash the coupons, but that method is a secret; “Let the United States find it out if they can.”

The article mentions a rival of Ponzi, the Old Colony Foreign Exchange Company, which also offers a 50% profit in 45 days and is also under investigation. Its president, Charles Brightwell, says it does also trade in postal coupons, but mostly achieves its fabulous return by dealing in “foreign goods.” “He did not care to say what the goods are”. Yeah, this is another, to coin a phrase, Ponzi scheme, and Brightwell’s going down too.

Gen. Ludendorff offers the British to raise an army of 1.5 million to fight Russia in exchange for the return of Posen and the Polish Corridor.

Belgian soldiers demanding a bonus invade the Chamber of Deputies and break stuff.

The Daily News (London) objects to the ban on whistling in Guam imposed by US Gov. William Gilmer: “Not even in Soviet Russia, with its countless limitations, has any human being ever been denied the joyous right of whistling to his heart’s content.” Gilmer really did ban whistling. Also racial inter-marriage, but that was overturned by the Navy (by Franklin Roosevelt, in fact). Gilmer was actually removed from his post earlier this month.

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Today -100: July 29, 1920: Of syndicates of money sharks, mayors, femijurors, departures, and telestereography

Charles Ponzi puts a sign outside his offices warning his investors against “syndicates of money sharks” attempting to buy up his notes cheap. “I shall pay everything in full.” He buys hotdogs and coffee for those standing on line to get their money back, which seems to have persuaded many of them not to ask for their money back.

Salt Lake City Mayor Edmund Bock resigns after being caught embezzling, which actually dates back years to when he was city auditor. He’s 32 (or so).  In 3 years he will be accidentally shot dead while duck hunting, as is the custom.

Pancho Villa surrenders, and will retire to his ranch. 600 of his men will get 6 months (12 months?) back pay from the government.  The government says it will protect his life (but not well enough).

Women sit on a British jury for the first time, in the Bristol Quarter Sessions, although at the end of the first day two ask to be excused because they have children, which is granted.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Invited to depart.”

Invention of the Day -100:  

The inventor thinks telestereography (which the Times spells wrong) will be mostly used for sending financial documents, pictures of wanted criminals, and the like. The picture in this instance was of a little girl, which, well, yeah.

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Today -100: July 28, 1920: Of plumbs and conferences

Gov. Coolidge is officially notified of his nomination to the veepship. In his acceptance speech, which spends a lot of time on the need to repress sedition, he calls Harding “wise enough to seek counsel,” which sounds to some like he’s saying sure Harding is dumb but he’s got me to set him straight, much like in 2000 when Bush supporters said sure he’s dumb but he’s surrounded by proper adults like... Cheney and Rumsfeld. The notification takes place at the two-family house in Northampton, Massachusetts, half of which he rents. The doctor who rents the other half, who’s called “Doc” Plumb because of course he is, is plumb tired of people mistaking him for Cal and insisting on shaking his hand. He’s also annoyed that he pays $1 a month more than the governor.

Russia might, after all, be willing to participate in a conference with the Allies, as Lloyd George suggested, after previously insisting on simple bilateral talks with Poland to end their war. But Russia’s response to LG doesn’t even mention Poland, talking instead about working out the differences between Russia and the big powers and, implicitly, their recognition of the Soviet government. France is being less than helpful, as is the custom, with PM Alexandre Millerand insisting that the US should also take part and saying he doesn’t want to talk to the Bolsheviks about anything except Poland.

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Today -100: July 27, 1920: Of Ponzi schemes, Mannix!, and macaroni

Headline of the Day -100:

This seems to be the NYT’s first mention of Ponzi, following an exposé in the Boston Post yesterday, just two days after a puff piece in the same paper. Charles Ponzi’s scam, the Securities Exchange Company, promised to increase investment in it by 50% in 45 days by exploiting currency differences between the US and Italy. The Post demonstrated that the total number of international postal reply coupons in circulation was a fraction of the number necessary for the profits Ponzi was claiming. The district attorney suggested, and Ponzi agreed, to stop accepting new investors until an auditor is brought in to see that everything’s kosher.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George will ban Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne from England (and definitely from Ireland), because of his speeches advocating Irish and indeed Australian independence.

Police and firemen prevent a lynching in... New York City, stopping a mob attacking a driver who’d run over someone.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 26, 1920: Normal

For a change of pace, the good people of Fayetteville, West Virginia lynch a white man, William Bennet Jr (well, admittedly I’m assuming he’s white, because his father was a judge), who was convicted of murdering his wife after pleading guilty.

In Newport, County Tipperary, a woman’s hair is cut off as punishment for “keeping company” with a cop. In retaliation, police and soldiers burn the houses of suspected Sinn Féiners. In Belfast, the death toll from factional fighting is up to 17. There are some disturbances in Derry, “but the training of machine guns on the disturbed streets brought the situation back to normal.”

H.L. Mencken pens an editorial in today’s Baltimore Sun. It’s famous for the last paragraph, but is worth reproducing at greater length:

It seems to be quite impossible for any wholly literate man to pump up any genuine enthusiasm for either of them [Harding and Cox]. Each, of course, is praised lavishly by the professional politicians of his own party, and compared to Lincoln, Jefferson and Cleveland by the surviving hacks of the party press, but in the middle ground, among men who care less for party success than for the national dignity, there is a gone feeling in the stomach, with shooting pains down the legs. The Liberals, in particular, seem to be suffering badly. They discover that Harding is simply a third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner, and that Cox is no more than a provincial David Harum [a character in the novel by Edward Noyes Westcott of the same name] with a gift for bamboozling the boobs. 

These verdicts, it seems to me, are substantially just. No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man. Any State in the Union, at least above the Potomac, could produce a thousand men quite as good, and many States could produce a thousand a great deal better. Harding, intellectually, seems to be merely a benign blank – a decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity perhaps comparable to the late Harrington, of Maryland [the last governor]. Cox is quicker of wit, but a good deal less honest. He belongs to the cunning type; there is a touch of the shyster in him. His chicaneries in the matter of prohibition, both during the convention and since, show the kink in his mind. He is willing to do anything to cadge votes, and he includes in that anything the ready sacrifices of his good faith, of the national welfare, and of the hopes and confidence of those who honestly support him. Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction. Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man of honor. 

...The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes-to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay no burden of examination upon the mind. 

It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. ... 

It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one’s meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki. 

In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. There is room for two sorts of them – first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox. 

Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy – the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental – men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins [No idea who that is, sorry], it is easy. 

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre – the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. 

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

“Moron,” by the way, was a recently coined word, not yet widely used. At a congressional hearing on immigration in April a witness had to explain (and spell) the term for a congressman unfamiliar with it.

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Today -100: July 25, 1920: Of cease-fires, police riots, and lightning

Russia agrees to, and begins, the cease-fire that Poland asked for.

Lenin tells the Third International that the world economic crisis and the failure of the League of Nations to unite the capitalist countries is contributing to Communism. The International votes to call for a boycott of Poland.

Police and soldiers attack the town of Kilmalloch, County Limerick, shooting up the town, beating people up, breaking windows, and setting fires, as was the custom.

There’s a weird amount of lightning news in today’s paper. Lightning kills a baseball player in Georgia, two threshers in Missouri, and a bunch of cows in Orange County, New York. A thunder and lightning storm causes New Yorkers to collectively lose 15 million hours of sleep. On the other hand, a lightning bolt hits an oil well in Olean, NY that had previously not been producing and ignited a gas pocket, indicating the presence of crude oil.

Christian X of Denmark falls off a horse.

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Today -100: July 24, 1920: Of armistices, pogroms, and riots

Poland begs Russia for an armistice.

The Polish prime minister (the article doesn’t name him and Poland just changed PMs, so I’m guessing the old one, Grabski) meets with Jewish leaders to ask for their support. They suggest he stop the pogroms and the anti-Semitism.

More rioting (and looting) in Belfast. Orange clubs plan to organize patrols to “assist” the military and police. The army uses machine guns. The UK cabinet is divided over how to deal with Ireland. Lloyd George is willing to give it everything except a republic, while the Tories, naturally, want martial law and a military response.

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Today -100: July 23, 1920: Be Americans first to all the world

William Jennings Bryan declines the Prohibition Party presidential nomination. He says he is not willing to sever connections with the Democratic Party, although he’s not sure if he’ll vote for Cox. So the convention nominates Aaron Watkins instead. Like Cox and Harding, he’s from Ohio. The Anti-Saloon League won’t endorse any presidential candidate.

In his acceptance speech, Warren G. Harding promises peace by a simple Congressional declaration. Key phrases: “Preserved nationality.” “Stabilize and strive for normalcy.” “Be Americans first to all the world.” There isn’t a lot of the trademark Harding alliteration, though he does “promise the prevention of unreasonable profits.” He calls for federal laws against lynching.

Harding meets a delegation from the National Woman’s Party and expresses his “ernest desire” for ratification of the federal women’s suffrage Amendment. They say that’s not good enough.

Rioting in Belfast.

Headline of the Day -100:

The chief secretary for Ireland, Sir Hamar Greenwood, for whom every problem, and indeed every Irish person, is a nail, tells Parliament that he’ll be asking for new laws to stop funds going to republican local councils and to set up new tribunals to replace courts (and the jury system).

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Today -100: July 22, 1920: Welease Bwyan!

The Prohibition Party national convention nominates William Jennings Bryan for president by acclaim. Bryan had already made it clear that he doesn’t want it. Billy Sunday had also rejected the nomination, saying he’s satisfied with Harding.

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Today -100: July 21, 1920: He must know the nation

Franklin Roosevelt criticizes Harding’s front-porch approach to campaigning, calling it un-democratic. “[I]t is just as important for the candidates to get in touch with the United States as it is for voters to have a chance to see and hear them. No man having the viewpoint merely of Ohio, or Massachusetts, or New York, is fitted to be president or vice president. He must know the nation.” And hey, guess who’s already visited all 48 states?

The Olympic Committee refuses to let Ireland participate as a separate nation. Irish athletes refuse to compete under the British flag.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford are mobbed when visiting the Paris Central Markets (Les Halles, I presume). “Mary was rescued by three hefty butchers, who shoved her into a meat cage and locked the door to keep the crowd from her.” Sure.... rescued....  And to prove that life in the 1920s really was exactly as depicted in the movies of the period: “A fat woman dressed in green silk stumbled and fell into a crate of eggs.”

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Today -100: July 20, 1920: Of cork night terrors, non-lynchings, and slappeys

Russia responds to Britain’s offer to facilitate peace talks between Poland and Russia by telling the Brits, who for some reason they don’t consider neutral arbiters, to butt out.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Also in Cork, of 296 jurors called for the Court of Assizes, only 12 show up after Sinn Féin orders them not to attend the “English court.”

Those National Guard machine-gunners sent to Graham, North Carolina to prevent a lynching actually open fire on a lynch mob, killing one and wounding two. Wow.

What Not To See:

Based on Cohen’s short stories in the Saturday Evening Post about bumbling black detective Florian Slappey, it is “distinctly a negro comedy for white folks”.  “The cast is scrupulously defined on the program as ‘the white players,’ lest there be any mistake about it.”

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Today -100: July 19, 1920: You are in sight, so prepare

Cox & Roosevelt meet Woodrow Wilson at the White House. Cox promises WW to fully carry out Wilson’s promises about the League of Nations. Wilson also issues a statement, saying he & Cox are “absolutely at one” on the League. Cox says he was “most agreeably surprised” at how well Wilson was.

Former prince Joachim, the youngest (29) son of former kaiser Wilhelm, commits suicide. He was divorced and broke, possibly because of his gambling. The official line is that he was suffering from “a fit of excessive dementia,” which is the worst kind of dementia. I’d forgotten that early in the war Wilhelm named him king of Lithuania, which never took. He also composed marches, including “With God for King and Country,” which I’m sure is a real toe-tapper, or goose-stepper or something. The Hohenzollerns want to cover up the nature of his death, but the authorities refuse to cooperate.

Col. Gerald Smyth, a divisional commissioner of the Royal Irish Constabulary, is shot dead by an IRA hit squad in the Cork & County Club. Last month he told constables to shoot anyone with their hands in their pockets or who otherwise looked suspicious – “You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped and you are bound to get the right persons sometimes. The more you shoot the better I will like you” – the majority of cops then resigned. According to one account, one of the gunmen said “Were not your orders to shoot at sight? Well, you are in sight, so prepare.”

Eugene Debs, imprisoned Socialist Party candidate for president, is refusing to be interviewed by reporters, for some reason.

Jack Dempsey says he is willing, after all, to box a black boxer, if there’s a public demand for it. He blames the previous statement that he wouldn’t on his manager. He explains: “I need the money.”

North Carolina Gov. Thomas Bickett sends a National Guard machine gun company to the town of Graham to protect 3 black prisoners from potential lynch mobs, with orders to “shoot and shoot straight” if necessary. Wikipedia says Graham was the site of a Klan lynching of one Wyatt Outlaw, the first black town commissioner and constable, in 1870.

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