Today -100: September 4, 1920: Of herrings, einsteins, and twins

Citing John Herring, editor of a Long Island German newspaper, the NYT says German-Americans are supporting Harding because of his opposition to the League of Nations and support for a separate peace with Germany.

So far 12,750 people have filed unpaid notes against Charles Ponzi. It looks like they’ll get back less than 30¢ on the dollar.

The Swiss are trying to lure Albert Einstein away from Berlin, where he’s been getting anti-Semitic abuse lately.

The Cornet family of Montilgnon, France sold their twin boys for $14. They blame the high cost of living. The kiddies were bought (one died at some point afterwards) by a woman who wanted to pass them off as having been fathered by 1) the husband she was in the process of divorcing, to extract a larger separation allowance, and 2) her rich lover, to extract a settlement.

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Today -100: September 3, 1920: Of enthnographic borders, real Americans, raids, carefully planned anarchy, and plain people

Poland refuses the US’s request that it not attack Russia across the ethnographic border established by the Peace Conference between Russia and Poland. In other words, it won’t promise not to try to seize territory.

Warren Harding has been complaining that his front-porch campaign has made him miss his beloved baseball games, so the owners of the Chicago Cubs bring them to Marion for an exhibition game. Harding tells the team he likes baseball “just like every other real American.” And he’s also for “team play” in government.

Sinn Féin fighters raid an RAF base near Dublin and steal a bunch of military documents including the military plan for Ireland, as well as the current code and cipher.

Sir Hamar Greenwood, Chief Secretary for Ireland, says appeals for clemency for Terence MacSwiney will be ignored: “None of the mercy which some seek to invoke for the lord mayor was shown the eighty policemen who have lost their lives in Ireland.” He says the current rebellion is the work of a small body of men who are trying “by carefully planned anarchy” to impose independence on the 80% of Irish people who don’t want it.

Carefully planned anarchy is the worst kind of anarchy.

What to Watch: D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East (“A Simple Story of Plain People”), starring Lillian Gish, premieres. Honestly, not an especially good movie – structural problems, shoehorned-in unfunny comic relief – but Gish is good

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Today -100: September 2, 1920: A devil of a fix

The Tennessee State Senate refuses by a 17 to 8 vote to follow the lower house in attempting to reverse ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Harding refuses to discuss Cox’s charges of a Republican slush fund: “I haven’t noticed any signs of alarm in the country that it is being bought for the presidency.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Transcontinental air mail is supposed to start up next week.

Richard Harron, the star of 220 films at age 27, including many D.W. Griffith films including Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Hearts of the World, “accidentally” shoots himself in his hotel room. He calls the front desk for help, saying “I’m in a devil of a fix, I’ve shot myself.” No one says “devil of a fix” anymore. Anyway, Harron is arrested in his hospital bed in Bellevue and if he survives (he won’t) he’ll be charged for not having a license for the gun with which he shot himself. This picture of him is from the 1913 Griffith short “The Yaqui Cur.”

What to Watch: “Genuine: The Tragedy of a Vampire,” directed by Robert Wiene, whose previous film was “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,” premieres in Berlin. Haven’t seen it myself. What seems to be the only full-length version on YouTube is pretty low quality.

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Today -100: September 1, 1920: Of take-backs, innate modesty, party-poopers, and suspended actresses

The runaway members of the Tennessee House of Representatives have returned from Alabama and force a vote to expunge the record of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The House votes 47 to 24, with 20 not present, The vote is legally meaningless, since the US Constitution makes no provision for “backsies.” In 1870 the NY Legislature attempted to take back its ratification of the 15th Amendment.

Gov. Cox has pointed out that the Republican platform showed no pride in the US having won the war. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. responds that that’s because it’s “not in good taste to praise your own achievements” (he also says it was Republicans that fought the war). The NYT comments that “It is well known that the innate modesty of that [Republican] party has always prevented it from mentioning its part in either the Civil War or the Spanish War. And boasting has ever been peculiarly abhorrent to a Roosevelt. Furthermore, the Republicans at Chicago were so absorbed in denouncing that they had no time or strength left for commending anybody – not even our soldiers. The great task of the platform was to bury, not to praise.”

Armed men raid a fancy-dress ball in Dublin, for the purpose of ordering British military officers out, as Irish people are not supposed to be consorting with the army of occupation. They also order ladies out who they think are dressed too scantily.

France and Belgium drop the idea of a mutual-defense treaty because of a cabinet crisis in Belgium. There will instead be a less formal non-binding military agreement.

Babe Ruth is suing to prevent the commercial showing of films of him playing baseball, citing the... Civil Rights Act?  The defendants say he is a public figure, just like the president, so he’s news. (He will lose.)

Actress Emily Marceau testifies against Metro Film Corp director Smythe Addison, who is charged with disorderly conduct. She had previously #MeToo’ed him and he retaliated during filming. She was hoisted on wire for a stunt scene involving fire and while she was suspended in the air he called a lunch break and went off with the crew for 2½ hours.

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Today -100: August 31, 1920: The people want a leader, not a syndicate presidency

More sectarian violence in Belfast. And armed men burn down the country residence of Jospeh Pike, the deputy lieutenant of County Cork, after allowing the servants to take their possessions and leave.

In Indianapolis, FDR says Harding would be run by the “Senate cabal.” He says “The people want a leader, not a syndicate presidency.”

An Oklahoma City mob lynch a black man, Claude Chandler, who was part of a shootout during a raid on a moonshine still in which his father and two cops were killed.

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Today -100: August 30, 1920: It will be better for my country if I am not

More fighting in Belfast Saturday, 11 dead. “The greatest of bitterness was displayed during the fighting.”

The imprisoned, hunger-striking Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney (whose name the NYT finally spells correctly), who is about to die at any moment (no he’s not, he’s only on Day 17), tells his sister, “I am convinced I will not be released. It will be better for my country if I am not.”

William Anderson of the Anti-Saloon League warns NYC Mayor John Hylan that he will ask Gov. Smith to remove him from office if he doesn’t start cracking down on booze.

A Tulsa mob of 2,000 lynches a 19-year-old alleged murderer. His race is not specified in the article.

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Today -100: August 29, 1920: Of racial entities, looting, holy water, and why Berlin can’t have nice things

Warren Harding suggests that, instead of a League of Nations, what is needed is an “Association of Nations” with an international court with “teeth.” He says the League’s failure to stop the Russo-Polish war proves that it’s past restoration. He and Cox have both made pro-Irish statements this week, Cox saying “The League of Nations does not abridge the right of any racial entity to determine its own destiny” and Harding that the Irish “have as good a right to seek their political freedom as we had in 1773, and have the same right to develop eminence under the inspiration of nationality as we held for ourselves.”

More “law and order” in Ireland: Cameron Highlander troops loot stores in Queenstown (County Cork) allegedly owned by Sinn Féiners.

Terence MacSwiney, the lord mayor of Cork hunger-striking in Brixton Prison, refuses to take pastilles of holy water from Lourdes, in case they contain nourishment or, I don’t know, magic. A hunger strike’s a hunger strike. Everyone thinks he’ll die momentarily, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how long it takes people to starve to death.

The authorities have been trying to track down Charles Ponzi’s agents, who seem to include a Boston Police Department lieutenant, 5 inspectors and a bunch of patrolmen. They may have thought this was a legitimate business.

The president of the American Baseball League says players can’t boycott Yankee pitcher Carl Mays just because he killed that guy with a baseball.

Albert Einstein is thinking about leaving Berlin after several public lectures attack the theory of relativity on the basis that it can’t be right because Einstein’s a Jew.

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Today -100: August 28, 1920: Vulgar salesmanship is the worst kind

The NYT seems disappointed that Gov. Cox’s “proof” of the $15 million Republican slush fund is more an aspirational list of quotas for state and local branches, and even more disappointed that the Republican documents are “pervaded by the tone of the most vulgar ‘salesmanship.’”

Tickets for D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East, which opens next week, will cost as much as $10 (orchestra seats) at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre.

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Today -100: August 27, 1920: Ratification complete

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby proclaims the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Suffragists wanted a big ceremony in front of movie cameras, but he just signed it at his home, without any women present, possibly in his underwear.

The anti-suffrage speaker of the Tennessee House, Seth Walker, telegrams Colby, insisting that Tennessee really didn’t ratify because there wasn’t a proper quorum when a motion to reconsider was rejected (because 31 Antis fled the state), so Gov. Roberts was wrong to certify ratification.

Russia accedes to Britain’s demand that it drop from its peace terms for Poland the creation of people’s militias. Foreign Minister Georgy Tchitcherin points out that Britain obviously believes that all workers are Bolsheviks, “a point of view [which] will undoubtedly be welcomed by those who look foeward to spreading Bolshevism in Great Britain.”

Sing Sing executes its first cripple, a man with a wooden leg. Also a black man who I’m guessing is not the first one executed at Sing Sing.

Sinn Féin appoints Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, who was the leading Irish women’s suffrage activist and is widow of Frank, who was extra-judicially executed during the Easter Rising, to the Supreme Court of Ireland. Nothing will come of this.

More sectarian rioting in Belfast, with sniping at soldiers, arson, looting, armored cars firing machine guns, the usual. It began with false rumors that Nationalists stoned children leaving a school.

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Today -100: August 26, 1920: Of injunctions, statues, hunger strikers, and gunboats

DC Supreme Court Judge Frederick Siddons refuses to issue an injunction against the 19th Amendment being declared ratified. The antis will now appeal to the District Court of Appeals, but if the governor of Tennessee’s notification of ratification arrives (by registered mail) before that Court can hear the case, the secretary of state can certify it and that’ll be it.

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, says women should not create their own political party but join the D’s or R’s.

Pilgrims are pouring into Templemore, Ireland, which  has one of those weeping holy statues that can miraculously cure people, so that’s nice.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George responds, dickishly, to a message from the sister of hunger-striking imprisoned Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney: “It is with profound regret that I hear of the pain inflicted upon you by the determination of your brother to starve himself. It is impossible for the Government to make an exception in his case. Were they to do so it would break down the administration of the law in the United Kingdom, for all prisoners would claim the same privilege.” I assume she will respond questioning the “administration” of “law” by jury-less military courts-martial and subsequent deportation to English prisons. LG is also pointing out that the only use MacSwiney could have had for possessing the police cipher was to help in the campaign of killing police. One might point out, again, that it was a police hit squad that murdered MacSwiney’s predecessor as lord mayor.

The US sends a gunboat to Honduras to protect American interests against possible revolutionary movements in Honduras and Guatemala.

Poland rejects most of Russia’s peace terms. Actually, all but one out of 15, and the one (for Polish disarmament) with an addendum: only if you do too.

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Today -100: August 25, 1920: I am prepared to believe that he knows nothing about a lot of things that are going on around him

Warren G. Harding is refusing to campaign at the Ohio State Fair being held only 50 miles from his front porch, because Cox and the Prohibition Party candidate will both be there. His campaign wanted to have a tent where they’d just play phonograph records of his speeches, but the manager of the Fair told them it’s the candidate in person or nothing.

Arthur Balfour, on behalf of the British Government, sends a note to Russia asking whether it’s true that it’s changed its peace terms for Poland to include land nationalization and a Polish Red Guard, and he expects an answer by Friday dammit!

The Times of London claims that Trotsky secretly visited Germany and made a deal to buy ammunition for use in the Warsaw campaign, but too late. Naturally, he paid using the crown jewels.

The convention of the National Association of Masters of Dancing develops new dance steps including the Cat Step, Camel Walk, Chic Walk, Fox Trot Artistique and the Triangle One Step. Dance them all today.

The chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court sets aside a restraining order preventing the governor certifying the Legislature’s ratification of the 19th Amendment. So he certifies it. Now the “American Constitutional League” says it will ask the DC Circuit Court to stop Secretary of State Colby certifying (the last step in the process).

There’s still an obstacle to women voting in this year’s election in some states: early registration deadlines. Maryland would need to call a special session of the Legislature to extend its reg period, which ends two days from now.

The Harding and Cox campaigns are shouting back and forth about Cox’s assertion that there’s a $15 million Republican slush fund. Cox offers to provide evidence to a Senate sub-committee and responds to Harding’s claim to know nothing of such a fund, “I am prepared to believe that he knows nothing about a lot of things that are going on around him.”

It’s funny because it’s true.

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Today -100: August 24, 1920: Of ethnographic limits, Mexican Protestants, and Jewish seats

The US informs Poland that it won’t support any military action by Polish troops beyond the “ethnographic limits of Poland.” Poland promises to behave.

Dozens of houses and businesses and a boot factory supposedly owned by Irish Nationalists in Lisburn, near Belfast, are burned down by Unionists in retaliation for the assassination of Inspector Swanzy, and employees are being told to sign a pledge that they are not in Sinn Féin and are loyal to king and country.

The bishop of Aguas Calientes and Leon calls for Mexicans to oppose the spread of Protestantism. Priests should demand that children at first communion promise never to read Protestant propaganda, and to avoid the English language, which is just a Trojan horse for Protestantism.

The Committee of Jewish Delegations will campaign for a special Jewish seat in the League of Nations.

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Today -100: August 23, 1920: Of retaliations, bullfights, masculine deeds and feminine words, and jewel collectors

The Times of London thinks Britain will shortly recognize Egypt’s independence.

A Royal Irish Constabulary inspector, Oswald Swanzy, believed (correctly) to have been behind the murder of Cork’s Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain in March, is killed by an IRA hit squad by order of Michael Collins, as he leaves church in Lisburn, an Orange town near Belfast to which he was transferred for his safety. A constable who was with Swanzy is also killed, and two other cops wounded. Inspector Swanzy is killed (with MacCurtain’s own personal gun) in front of his family; to be fair, so was MacCurtain. Naturally, a pogrom against the Catholic residents of Lisburn ensues. The incident was one of several attacks on police in the last few days.

Democrats in Ohio are worried that a recent influx of blacks from the South is intended to affect the vote in Ohio, of something.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Staten Island detectives believe that a bootlegger killed Saturday was murdered by two dirty Federal prohibition agents to prevent him squealing on them for reselling confiscated whisky after he was arrested. The dry agents pressured a saloon-keeper to pay his bail so they could get at him.

Suffragists in Maryland want the state motto, Fatti Maschii, Parole Feminine (Deeds are Masculine, Words Feminine), changed. That’s old Italian, by the way, not Latin. It’s still the motto in 2020, although the state now claims it means “Strong deeds, gentle words.”

Prison authorities shut down the Sing Sing Bulletin after it featured an article by a famous bigamist that began “A good wife is a jewel. I have been a jewel collector.”

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Today -100: August 22, 1920: Of escaping representatives, hunger strikes, and whistling

A judge issues a restraining order against the governor and other officials of Tennessee certifying the ratification of the 19th Amendment because of a provision in the state constitution that we know violates the US Constitution. Meanwhile 30 Anti House members flee the state to prevent a quorum (this is sort of a Tennessee tradition; the state was without US senators for two years in the 1840s because of a walkout that included future president Andrew Johnson). Suffragists say the state rules on quorum don’t apply on this federal matter.

Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, now in an English prison where he is hunger-striking until his demand that the New York Times spell his fucking name right, or at least spells it the same wrong way twice in a row, is met, is told by Home Secretary Edward Shortt that he won’t be released and won’t be force-fed either.

What To Watch, Except You Can’t Because It’s Another Lost Movie: The Untamed, starring Tom Mix, at the Capitol Theatre. Advertised as “A Startling Tale of Three Strange Comrades of the Wild – A Man, A Horse and a Dog.”  Mix plays “Whistling Dan.” “His whistling was like the magic of wild things, the cry of the banshee, weird, soft and beautiful – that’s why people loved him, feared him and called him ‘Whistling Dan.’”

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Today -100: August 21, 1920: Of oaths, socialists, and gunfights

Charles Ponzi, still in jail because he can’t raise bail, admits to bankruptcy and takes the bankrupt’s oath, whatever that is. His investors are FINALLY beginning to realize that they’re screwed.

The 5 Socialist members of the New York State Assembly who were expelled last spring are re-nominated by their respective county committees.

A fight between the town marshal and a deputy sheriff of Irvine, Kentucky over who gets to take in a bootlegger prisoner turns into a gunfight, leaving two cops dead and another cop and the bootlegger wounded.

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Today -100: August 20, 1920: Of bribery, arms-less armies, and welcomed women

A Tennessee grand jury opens an investigation into whether bribes affected the Legislature’s vote to ratify the 19th Amendment, specifically the vote of Harry Burn, the 24-year-old representing McKinn County. The only influence brought on young Harry was a letter from his mother telling him to be “a good boy” and vote for ratification (“help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification”, she wrote, whatever that meant).

Woodrow Wilson is back to his old weight, the White House says. And he likes cowboy movies. Of course he does.

The Poles are driving back the Russian army. At the peace talks, Poland rejects the Soviet demand that it’s army be disarmed.

Headline of the Day -100:

I’ll bet he does, I’ll bet he does.

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Today -100: August 19, 1920: The civilization of the world is saved

The Polish army turns back the Russian siege of Warsaw. Everyone is very surprised.

The Tennessee House of Representatives votes 50-46 in favor of the federal women’s suffrage Amendment (an earlier vote to table was lost by a single vote). This should be the end of the ratification process but it isn’t because there may (Spoiler Alert: will) be a vote on rescinding the ratification, and then possibly a legal challenge under the Tennessee Constitution.

Presidential candidate Gov. James Cox praises the ratification: “The civilization of the world is saved. The mothers of America will stay the hand of war and repudiate those who traffic with a great principle.”

Alice Paul, the chairman of the National Woman’s Party, says “The victory of women today completes the political democracy of America and enfranchises half the people of a great nation.”

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Today -100: August 18, 1920: Of sieges, suffrage, Ponzi, and rats, but I repeat myself

The Russians fail to encircle Warsaw. They lose communications and become spread out, allowing Polish troops, some of whom got to the front on double-decker buses, to break their lines.

The North Carolina Senate votes 25-23 to postpone any consideration of women’s suffrage until the 1921 session. So ratification of the 19th Amendment is now entirely in the hands of the Tennessee Legislature, where things are getting a little heated.

Charles Ponzi says that he’s the real victim here, as many people altered the notes they held with him, changing $100 to $1,000, that sort of thing, and that’s why the government auditors found those discrepancies in his liabilities.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: August 17, 1920: Of reversals, secret ciphers, warships, lynchings, child soldiers, and deadly baseballs

Warren G. Harding says a Republican victory in November would result in a “complete reversal” of Wilson’s foreign policy, although he refuses to give any details. When asked about Poland, he says he hasn’t read a newspaper today, and only the president and secretary of state really know what’s going on in the world. Harding is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, is sentenced by a military court-martial for possession of the secret police cipher (I assume that means a police cipher which is secret, not the cipher of the secret police), and of having a document likely to cause disaffection, namely the resolution of the Cork Corporation pledging allegiance to the Dáil Éireann, and of making a seditious speech. He told the court that the trial was illegal and anyone taking part in it is liable to arrest under the laws of the Irish Republic. He also tells says he will set his own term of imprisonment through hunger strike and “shall be free, alive or dead, within a month.” He doesn’t understand how long it actually takes to starve to death.

British soldiers seize a man named Patrick Lynch from his home, I think in Dublin, and kill him, which is a bit on the nose if you ask me.

The US is sending warships to Danzig. To protect US citizens and their interests, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels says, though some suspicious souls suspect a broader intervention into the Russian-Polish war.

A lynch mob seize a suspected child murderer after setting fire to the town hall and the jail to get at him. But he makes a little speech about how only a degenerate would do such a thing and they decide to let the legal process run its course. Which is how lynch mobs work in Canada (specifically St Catharines, Ontario).

A 15-year-old appears in Brooklyn Children’s Court, charged with shooting craps. He is released when it comes out that he’s a World War I veteran, having enlisted at 13.

Ray Chapman, the Cleveland Indians’ shortstop, is hit in the head in the fifth inning by a pitch from Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. He’s not dead yet, but will be, the first and only Major League Baseball fatality.

The Indians win the game, if you were wondering. 4-3.

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Today -100: August 16, 1920: Of speed traps, loop the loops, hunger strikes, and financial dementia

Constables from Jacksontown, Ohio attempt to arrest Gov. Cox and his four-automobile campaign group for speeding, but he refuses their order to turn around and go to court immediately. The cops follow on motorcycles trying to get the cars to pull over for a while, but content themselves with taking down their license numbers. Jacksontown is a known speed-trap, but it might have been a Republican plot to embarrass the governor.

“Girl flier” Louise Brownell sets a loop-the-loop record, flipping her plane 87 times. The previous record was 25.

Cork’s Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney and his fellow political prisoners go on hunger strike.

A lot of wild rumors lately about Soviet plans to team up with Germany, possibly after instigating a revolution there, to invade France, then Britain, then the world, then Mars.

Charles Ponzi’s legal defense may be “financial dementia.”

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