Today -100: August 13, 1920: In a year, all Europe will be Bolshevist

Charles Popnzi is arrested for using the mails to defraud, after failing to provide evidence that he had the $4 million in assets he claims he has. The federal auditor calls him “hopelessly insolvent,” which is the worst kind of insolvent. Letters from investors are still coming in, but the estimate is that 40,000 of them gave Ponzi between $15 and 20 million. The Post Office says he never dealt in those international reply coupons.

Reportedly, Russia’s peace terms for Poland include a clause that Poland’s workers be armed. I’m guessing they don’t really. France advises Poland not to accept the peace terms, Britain advises the opposite.

Franklin Roosevelt says Poland could have been saved if only the US had joined the League of Nations, the “moral force” scaring off the Russians without a single soldier needing to be sent.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Russian War Minister Leon Trotsky predicts “In a year, all Europe will be Bolshevist.”

Speaking of poles, six members of Roald Amundsen’s ill-fated North Pole expedition quit, leaving him with too few crew to continue. He may hire Eskimoes.

Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos is shot at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris by two royalist Greek ex-soldiers who aren’t very good shots, missing him 6 times but hitting him in the left shoulder and right thigh.

Warren G. Harding favors tariffs to protect California lemons against cheap Sicilian lemons.

The Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, and ten associates are arrested by British soldiers. The previous lord mayor was killed by a British death squad a few months ago.

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Today -100: August 12, 1920: Society owes me a chance to redeem my past

France recognizes the White “South Russian Government” of Gen. Pyotr Wrangel, “taking into consideration the military success and strengthening of the Government of General Wrangel,” which, yeah, no. The Soviet government had asked the allies to get Wrangel to surrender, and this is France’s response. France will send a high commissioner (ambassador).

Charles Ponzi admits having been to prison, once in Canada for, he says, taking the blame for his persecuted employer (it was for forging a check), and once in the US for smuggling Italian immigrants into the US, but he says “Society owes me a chance to redeem my past” (and how’s that redemption going, Carlo?). Authorities close the Hanover Trust Company, in which he bought a one-quarter share.

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Today -100: August 11, 1920: Of peace terms, patriot-poets, and actors

The terms issued by Russia to Poland include shrinking the Polish army, handing over arms – quite similar to the terms the Allies imposed on Germany, really – but nothing about turning Poland into a communist workers’ paradise or drastically altering its borders. Lloyd George tells Parliament that the initial Polish attack on Russia was not justified, and Russia is justified in imposing certain conditions, but not in erasing Polish national existence.

To add insult to injury, Poland won’t be able to participate in the Olympics because of the war.

The US is trying poet Fabio Fiallo by court-martial in the US-occupied Dominican Republic. He could be executed for failing to comply with US censorship (a pro-independence article, I believe).

Actor James O’Neill dies, and the NYT’s theatre page misspells his name, which he would NOT have appreciated, and gets his age wrong, which he would. He is most famous for playing the Count of Monte Cristo for decades; he wanted to move on to other roles but the public insisted, as his son Eugene will portray in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. There’s a 1913 film version of his Monte Cristo, which I can’t find online although it is not lost.

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Today -100: August 10, 1920: We oppose a mere period of coma in our national life

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the recently resigned Assistant Secretary of the Navy, accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president in Hyde Park, NY from “the largest front porch which has yet appeared in the campaign”. He says Harding’s message is “We are tired of progress, we want to get back to where we were before, to go about our own business, to restore normal conditions – I mean conditions of normalcy.” Oo, making fun of Harding’s favorite non-word.

And what do the Democrats oppose? “Our  opposition is to the things which once existed, in order that they may never return. We oppose money in politics. We oppose the private control of national finances. We oppose the treatment of human beings as commodities, we oppose the saloon-bossed city, we oppose starvation wages, we oppose rule by groups or cliques. In the same way we oppose a mere period of coma in our national life.”

Lloyd George has decided not to go to war with Russia to defend Poland, quite yet. This may be because the labor movement has made it very clear it will use strike and other action to prevent it. French Gen. Maxime Weygand offers to take command of the Polish Army (which is what he thought was going to happen when he went to Poland last month). They say no thank you. The Polish government is retreating from Warsaw.

The Massachusetts state bank commissioner orders Charles Ponzi’s bank to stop honoring his checks, since he is overdrawn (which he denies). Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen says there is no evidence that the vast sums Ponzi says he is sending to, and receiving from, Europe actually exist.

The Evening Standard (London) claims that Sinn Féin has a $500,000 slush fund to influence the US presidential election, and a further $1 million to work for US recognition of the Irish Republic. Irish President De Valera admits to having funds for the latter but denies trying to buy himself a US president.

Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix’s ship arrives off the Irish coast, and he is taken off it by a freaking destroyer, one of several deployed for the purpose, so that he won’t set foot on Irish soil. Mannix says the government “are putting me to a little inconvenience, but are making themselves very silly.” The Lord Mayor of Dublin says the action shows the government “are in a state of nervous prostration.”

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Today -100: August 9, 1920: Of blockades, brain stuff, and bicycling eggs

British Prime Minister Lloyd George asks Russia for a 10-day truce with Poland. Russia says no. France and Britain are talking about re-establishing the blockade of Russia.

French President Paul Deschanel has cerebral anemia.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: August 8, 1920: The house of civilization is to be put in order

Gov. Charles Cox gives his acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination, endorsing US entry into the League of Nations: “The house of civilization is to be put in order. The supreme issue of the century is before us, and the nation that halts and delays is playing with fire.” He is strongly against making a separate peace with Germany, as Harding wants. “We are in a time which calls for straight thinking, straight talking and straight acting.” He doesn’t explain what times don’t call for these things.

The Sunday NYT Magazine tells us that Harding is a baseball fan who played first base on the Marion team, and that Cox likes horseback riding, hunting and fishing.

Tennessee Gov. Albert Roberts finally calls a special session of the Legislature to vote on women’s suffrage. Including a poll tax provision, in case you laughingly thought Tennessee would allow black women to vote.

The “race war” in West Frankfort, Illinois against Italians continues, despite the occupation of the town by State Guards with machine guns. A mob attacks a house and kills a man.

Under the deal for Pancho Villa’s surrender, he will get a large estate and the government will pay 50 of his followers to act as guards.

Charles Ponzi says his new Charles Ponzi Company will open tomorrow. “Some of [my managers] may be arrested, but I doubt it.” He expects investors to give $10 or 20 million in the first couple of weeks, with no other security than his word. “My clients must have faith in me. I’m going through.” He plans to buy Shipping Board vessels. He’s ignoring Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen’s request that he come in for an interview because he is too busy to “bother” with it.

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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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