Today -100: September 13, 1920: Of ballot slackers, Fiume Day, and asymmetricity

Phrase of the Day -100: 

Some random pastor says some shit. My interest here is the phrase “ballot slacker,” which I haven’t come across before.

Fiume’s poet-aviator-duce d’Annunzio is holding an American steamer ransom for a “loan” from the Italian government of 200 million lire, which is the equivalent of some money. By the way, “duce,” which the NYT is translating as “commander,” is indeed the title he has given himself.

There’s a “Fiume Day” celebration for the anniversary of d’Annunzio’s occupation of the city at the City College Stadium in New York. Caruso sings.

A committee on recreation and rural health finds that farm kids are asymmetrical. 

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Today -100: September 12, 1920: Of non-issues and ponzis

Cox says prohibition is not an issue.

Charles Ponzi is finally indicted, on 68 counts.

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Today -100: September 11, 1920: America has not failed and will not fail the American negro

A cop is killed in Tullow in County Carlow, Ireland, so the cops shoot up the town and burn buildings in retaliation. Must be some more of that law n’ order Lloyd George is preserving by keeping Lord Mayor MacSwiney in prison.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Gabriele d’Annunzio, poet, aviator, and now head of state (duce) of the Italian Regency of Quarnero takes the oath, on a balcony, as was the custom: “I swear on this sacred banner of youth, on this relic of heroic blood, and on my soul” etc. (never let a poet write his own oath of office). He asks the crowd if the new constitution is okay with them, and that’s evidently enough to ratify it.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“America has not failed and will not fail the American negro,” he says to a delegation of black people, whose response to that assertion is not recorded. Harding’s black cook comes out to watch. Does the NYT condescendingly employ dialect in quoting her? What do you think?

Cox opposes cash bonuses for Great War veterans, but does support assisting them to become home-owners.

The election board in a ward in Long Branch, New Jersey resigns en masse rather than go home to home to ask women voters questions they’d be “proverbially disinclined to answer” (I assume they think women won’t divulge their age).

Sacco and Vanzetti are charged with robbery and murder.

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Today -100: September 10, 1920: Of regencies, delanos, and babes

Gabriele d’Annunzio, responding to mysterious “private news from Paris,” declares Fiume independent 3 days earlier than planned. The Fiume National Council, not agreeing with the poet-aviator’s constitution or his declaration of independence, resigns.

FDR’s uncle William Delano IV, a coal tycoon and horse fancier, is killed when his horse panics and runs in front of a train.

Incidentally, he was the son of William Delano II. There was, briefly, a William Delano III, 4’s brother. Giving a child the same name as a sibling who died in childhood used to be a thing. FDR and Eleanor had two Franklin Juniors.

Gamblers spread a false rumor that Babe Ruth is injured.

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Today -100: September 9, 1920: Of earthquakes, lords mayor, and libel

Hundreds die in earthquakes in Italy, mostly in Tuscany. Towns and villages destroyed.

Lloyd George accuses Terence MacSwiney of having been involved in the assassination of cops. He says MacSwiney’s predecessor as lord mayor of Cork was murdered for not going along with IRA plans; he definitely knows that MacCurtain was killed by a police death squad.

The New Jersey Assembly votes 25 to 12 to ask for MacSwiney’s release.

Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson sues Lt. Gov. John Oglesby for libel for letters he sent to soldiers attacking Thompson’s patriotism and saying he attended seditious meetings.

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Today -100: September 8, 1920: Of canes, walls, regencies, and fires

Headline of the Day -100: 

The British government will pay Catholics ousted from jobs in Belfast by Protestant violence. They will get the same unemployment pay as unemployed former military men.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Not in a Cask of Amontillado way, he’s actually building it himself out of logs he cuts so no one can see or photograph him cutting logs, which as we know is his favorite pastime. 

Poet-Aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio will declare Fiume (and some surrounding territory and islands) independent on Sunday. It will be called the “Italian Regency of Carnaro.” The regency thing means that the new country is being held in trust until such time as Italy agrees to annex it. D’Annunzio is supplying the state with a constitution that allows for a temporary dictator.

A Chicago grand jury will investigate whether gamblers fixed a baseball game between the Cubs and Phillies last week.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Why? What does he know?

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Today -100: September 7, 1920: Of trade-offs, drys, and sick men in sick rooms

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George supposedly said that he’d release Terence MacSwiney and the other hunger strikers if he received a promise that attacks on police in Ireland would stop.

William Jennings Bryan’s sole aim this November is to elect strong prohibitionists to Congress, enough so they could impeach a president who doesn’t adequately enforce the 18th Amendment. He thinks women voters will support this goal.

Democratic presidential nominee James Cox is visiting west of the Mississippi for the first time. He complains about Republicans attacking Woodrow Wilson, “a sick man in his sick-room.” At the Minnesota state fair, he meets Capt. John Smith, a Chippewa Indian who claims to be 132 years old and to remember when Washington was president.

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Today -100: September 6, 1920: Of covers of mayoral courts, presidents, and tanks

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George rejects NYC Mayor Hylan’s plea for the release of his fellow lord mayor, Terence MacSwiney, saying he can’t interfere with the course of justice and law. Well, he did impose military courts on Ireland, including the one that sentenced MacSwiney, does that count as interfering with the course of justice and law? that probably doesn’t count, because reasons. The British Labour Party has also asked for MacSwiney’s release. The government responds that MacSwiney was “actively conducting the affairs of a rebel organisation under the cover of a Mayoral court,” and so could perfectly legitimately have been just taken out and shot. It also points out that since MacS’s arrest, a lot of cops have been assassinated in Ireland.

There are also 11 hunger-strikers in Cork Gaol, now on the 26th day of their strike, which the NYT notes is “a record for Irish political prisoners.”

Gen. Álvaro Obregón is elected president of Mexico.

Factories in Milan are on strike. The strikers have tanks. The article, sadly, does not explain how it is that they came to have tanks. It’s probably a funny story too.

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Today -100: September 5, 1920: This campaign is for America

Harding denies targeting any appeal towards German voters: “This campaign is for America.”

The Tennessee State Senate passes, but the House rejects, a bill for poll taxes for women voters.

Most states will let women vote in November without requiring further legislation, but Mississippi’s attorney general says the four-month registration period stands. Georgia’s AG, in contrast, says that women can vote there even without registration, since they hadn’t had a reasonable opportunity to register. He says registration facilitates the vote, it is not a qualification for voting.

France splits Lebanon from Syria, the territory they’re running as a League of Nations mandate. Standard imperial divide and conquer stuff.

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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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