Today -100: January 13, 1921: Of kluxers, prohibition, and reminders of monarchical days

The NYPD have been searching for signs of the Ku Klux Klan in the city for two weeks, but have found none.

The government of Georges Leygues in France falls after less than four months, by a humiliating 463-125 vote in the National Assembly, which thinks he’s not hard enough on the Germans in the ongoing negotiations over indemnities. Leygues was essentially ousted by President Alexandre Millerand, who thinks that the president of the Third Republic should have more power, and the prime minister less. He’s pushing for a tame puppet PM, Charles Dumont. 

New NY Gov. Nathan Miller wants the state and local governments to start enforcing Prohibition.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The minister of interior says monocles are an “affectation and a reminder of the monarchical days.”

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Today -100: January 12, 1921: Of deportations, surrenders, and class antagonism

The State Dept asks the Labor Dept to deport Cork Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan, presumably before he has a chance to testify to the Committee of 100.

The Austrian government announces that it gives up, it doesn’t have the resources to continue, and on the 15th will turn over power to the Reparations Commission, whether it wants it or not.

NYC Mayor John Hylan writes the police commissioner, asking him to keep the Ku Klux Klan out of the city: “there is no room in this city for any group which runs counter to law and order and tends to create class antagonism.” The Klan has recently announced plans to expand into the northeast.

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Today -100: January 11, 1921: Of no-frills inaugurations, blondes in sunglasses, affections of the throat, and climbing Everest

The US withdraws from the Council of Ambassadors, starting with a meeting next week to discuss German disarmament and reparations.

Harding wants his inauguration to feature no extravagance. No parade, no ball, nothing but sex with his mistress in every room of the White House, as was the custom.

Dr. R.C. Augustine, president of the American Optometric Association, advises that if your blonde wife or girlfriend is too temperamental, put dark glasses on her. “Blondes are not adapted to this climate. The glaring sunlight irritates their nerves.”

De Valera surfaces, back in Ireland as everyone suspected, to deny British charges that the Irish conspired with Germany in 1918. He says documents displayed in a government White Paper purporting to be written by him are obvious forgeries.

Gabriele d’Annunzio is still in Fiume, busily writing up a report to the Italian Parliament, which didn’t ask for one. He plans a holiday on the Riviera, “in the hope of obtaining relief from an affection of the throat caused by delivering speeches.” I assume that’s a a mistake, but if there’s one thing the poet-aviator-loser suffers from, it’s an affection of the throat. Most of his legionaires have left Fiume, but 550 want to stay because they are engaged to local women.

French Senate elections (it’s like the US Senate, 1/3 of the seats are contested every 3 years for 9-year terms) resulted in a triumph for moderates and a loss for extreme right and left candidates. None of the candidates of the new Communist Party (PCF) won.

Some British people announce plans to climb Mt. Everest. They have permission from the Tibetan government. It’s gonna take a lot of recon work just to figure out paths to get to the mountain.

Edmund Hillary is one and a half years old.

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Today -100: January 10, 1921: Of plots, resignations, and hunger strikes

A meeting between British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Sinn Féin emissary Father O’Flanaghan does not go well. LG insists on the Irish accepting the Home Rule Law. In fact, Sinn Féin is now reconsidering plans to boycott the devolved Irish parliament and instead stand in the elections, inevitably winning most of the seats, and then refusing to take those seats.

Police supposedly capture a Sinn Féin plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament with what sound like RPGs, which hadn’t actually been invented yet.

Warren Harding formally resigns as US senator, effective on the 15th, when a new, Republican, governor of Ohio can appoint his replacement.

OK, I’ve been resisting this story, but there’s a woman in Illinois, Mrs Sadie Harrington of Danville, Illinois, who is on the 41st day of a fast aimed at forcing her husband to convert to the Church of God, give up his poultry business, and become a preacher. He seems pretty adamant about not doing those things.

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Today -100: January 9, 1921: We will go to the limit to keep them out

Newly elected Davenport, Iowa Mayor C.L. Barewald quits the Socialist Party and orders the police to rid the town of Wobblies and radicals: “Load up the riot guns for immediate use and give them a reception with hot lead. We don’t want any Reds here, and we will go to the limit to keep them out.”

There’s an op-ed piece in the NYT about India’s new viceroy, Chief Justice Lord Reading, and the new agitation, “far stronger and more menacing” than previous ones, led by Gandhi, “half saint, half agitator,” who is calling for non-cooperation with local elections and boycott of British goods.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Well, that’s a humorous image...

Well that took a turn, didn’t it?

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Today -100: January 8, 1921: Of evictions

A “committee” of the American Legion, Chamber of Commerce, and assholes in general in Brownsville, Texas meet the train of a Japanese man arriving to take up his farm land, and tell him to fuck off within 48 hours or else. What I want to know is how they always know what train Japanese will be arriving on?

The California State Senate votes 29-0 to ask the federal government to make no treaty with Japan which affects the state’s racist land laws or which allows Japanese to be naturalized. (The Assembly will concur, also unanimously.)

The 7th District Municipal Court of NYC has frequently blocked landlord requests for evictions. Their response: they serve an eviction notice on the 7th District Municipal Court.

Speaking of evictions, Poet-Aviator-Squatter Gabriele d’Annunzio is evidently refusing to leave Fiume, at least until after he writes a history of his Fiumian adventure. 

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Today -100: January 7, 1921: This everlasting standing on one’s guard spoils a man

The feds discover 1,000 forged permits for whisky, millions of gallons of which were transferred from distilleries and warehouses to New York City.

Newark follows Chicago in banning movies that show crimes.

Calvin Coolidge’s two years as governor of Massachusetts end. That’s two terms, because they elected governors every single year. They’re going to two years now. His successor is Channing Harris Cox, as Massachusetts-governor a name as you could ask for. At Cox’s inauguration, some of the music is... German.

Two Japanese families arrive in Harlingen, Texas intending to farm land they’d bought, only to be met at the train station by “a committee of citizens” to tell them that they will not be staying. This is not the first time this has happened this week. The American Legion is lobbying for legislation to ban Asians from the Rio Grande Valley.

Warren G. Harding is promoted to grand poobah, or something, in the Masons. He tells them how sad he is now that he’s president-elect: “There is an aloofness of his friends, and this is one of the sad things. ... I have found already that intrigue and untruth must be guarded against. One must ever be on his guard. This everlasting standing on one’s guard spoils a man.”

Harding’s been getting push-back within his party on some of his preferences for office. And Charles Evans Hughes won’t even respond to offers of Secretary of State.

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Today -100: January 6, 1921: The fat lady will sing

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly invites Irish President Éamon de Valera to London for talks. However, LG’s insistence that Ireland will not be allowed to secede and that Northern Ireland must be given separate treatment means that de Valera going to London would mean he accepted those preconditions, and that ain’t gonna happen.

According to the Daily Sketch, a police raid turned up Sinn Féin plans, with maps and everything, to blow up the part of the Tower of London with the crown jewels.

The local military general orders the destruction of five houses in Meelin, County Cork, after an ambush of a military patrol.

German music is played in Paris for the first time since the war, Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Paris Opera. There are no protests. It was a lot longer after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War before anyone attempted to play German music in Paris (also Wagner), and it did not go well.

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Today -100: January 5, 1921: Of censorship, effeminate fools, martial law, and stowaways

Chicago Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris orders censors to ban any film showing a crime being committed, even if the criminal winds up behind bars.

The Public Morals Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church announces a campaign to stop the “contemptuous treatment of Protestant ministers by some cartoonists, writers and actors.” In movies and plays, they say, “the Protestant minister is seldom represented except as an effeminate fool.” The effeminate fools would like this to stop.

Martial law in Ireland is extended to four more counties: Clare, Waterford, Wexford, and Kilkenny.

Sinn Féin issues a list of Irish people assassinated by the British in 1920. 175 young men, 6 women, 12 children, 10 men over 60. Of these, 9 were killed during armed conflicts, 36 while prisoners, 69 in their homes, and 98 by indiscriminate firing (such as today, after a bomb explodes under some police on Parnell Bridge in Cork, and the cops randomly machine-gun nearby houses).

Cork Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan and Peter MacSwiney, brother of the late lord mayor, arrive in the US to testify to the unofficial Villard Committee investigating Irish stuff. They arrived as stowaways, as was the custom. Actually MacSwiney didn’t have to, but the British wouldn’t have allowed the lord mayor to come and MacSwiney chose to keep O’Callaghan company. The lord mayor will be tied up in red tape for a while since he arrived without a passport.

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Today -100: January 4, 1921: Of boycotts, capitols, gas bombs, and delicious marines

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that unions are not immune under the Clayton Act from prosecution for secondary boycotts.

Pres. Wilson’s veto of a Congressional joint resolution ordering him to revive the War Finance Corporation to subsidize foreign exports is overridden, easily.

Reports of the violence of the Great Fiumo-Italian War of 1920-1 were over-stated, as the final death count seems to be about 18 on each side.

West Virginia’s capitol burns down.

The Chicago Police Department will be getting gas bombs.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 3, 1921: Of whole foreign policies, balloons, harmonium taxes, poet-aviator-theatre-producers, reprisals, and moose & dynamite

“France starts the New Year with the resolution to make Germany pay and make Germany disarm. The whole foreign policy of her Government will be shaped by those considerations.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German chancellor 1909-17, dies.

In a story I haven’t bothered covering, a US Navy balloon went missing after leaving Long Island, with three on board, on December 13th. There’s been a lot of fuss since then. Surprisingly, it turns up, in Canada with the balloonists (I refuse to call them aeronauts) safe and sound in Moose Factory, Ontario (I believe these days Moose Factory just assembles the finished moose from parts manufactured in China. Globalization, eh?).

Parisians are now being taxed if they own a piano (or a harmonium or an organ; I guess harpsichords are tax-free) or keep a servant.

Italy refuses to let d’Annunzio leave Fiume at the head of his legionaries. He is expected to travel to Rome, give all his wartime medals to the king, then go to Paris to write his memoirs and become a theatrical producer (when has he ever been anything else?). This may all be bullshit.

An attack on a police patrol at Midleton, County Cork leads, as was the custom, to reprisals. The local brigade major issues a proclamation that houses near the ambush will be destroyed, “as the inhabitants were bound to have known of the ambush and attack and that they neglected to give any information either to the military or police authorities.” They’re given an hour before their houses were burned, and allowed to take valuables but not furniture. In the future, the proclamation says, anyone who doesn’t “do their utmost” to prevent attacks “will be liable to be confiscated or destroyed.” So this is an official policy of reprisal, the thing they used to say was just the actions of a few troops/Black and Tans/police.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“The mule was unhurt.”

The man not so much.

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Today -100: January 2, 1921: That damned elusive Pimpernel

Éamon de Valera is definitely back in Ireland, probably. Maybe.

Householders in Ireland are ordered to post on their doors a list of all residents, which isn’t ominous at all.

Michigan State Pen is going to “cure” criminals through brain surgery. That should go well.

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Today -100: January 1, 1921: 1921, bitches!

Fiume accepts the terms Italy imposes on it, including giving back all the munitions stolen from the Italian military and the departure of any “legionaries” not native to Fiume.

Harding will break tradition and use an automobile in his inaugural parade instead of a carriage. Jackson rode a horse, because of course he did.

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Today -100: December 31, 1920: Don’t know when he’ll be back again

Headline of the Day -100:  

Actually, he hasn’t, yet. Where will he go when he does leave? Possibly to Ireland, possibly to South America, possibly to a palace in Venice. He’s given up his powers to a council and is not part of the negotiations of the terms of surrender.

The House Census Committee discusses negro voting rights in the South, and by “discuss” I mean Southern congresscritters yell at NAACP witnesses who talk about violence committed against blacks during last month’s election. Samuel Brinson (D-NC) explains that the “intelligent negroes” in his district agree with the whites that ignorant negroes should be stopped from voting for the safety of the country. At the end of the hearing, a photographer comes in to take a group picture, but Southern-fried members refuse to be photographed with black people in the background, so they go into executive session to take the picture.

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Today -100: December 30, 1920: I regret that death has once again passed me by

Fiume surrenders after a last stand involving sniping, concealed machine guns, and hand grenades. Poet-Aviator d’Annunzio issues a proclamation saying that he had offered his life for Italy “hundreds of times smilingly in my war, but it is not worth while to throw it away in the service of a people who could not be distracted even for a moment from their Christmas greediness while we were assassinated by their government.” In that proclamation or possibly a different one, he says “I regret that death has once again passed me by, thus prolonging my shame of being an Italian.” I believe the takeaway here is that he hates Italy and Christmas. 

A federal judge rules that whisky confiscated in Philadelphia shall be distributed among hospitals at $3 a gallon.

The deadline issued under martial law for everyone in Ireland to turn in weapons has expired, and, surprisingly, no one has turned in weapons.

The French  Socialist Party splits after the majority votes to join the Third Internationale.

Woodrow Wilson turns down an offer from a newspaper syndicate of $150,000 for his first post-presidency article. He says no article is worth that much.

Blog posts are totally worth that much, and there’s a PayPal link right on this page. Just saying.

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Today -100: December 29, 1920: Work or eviction

Italian troops now occupy half of Fiume. Talks are going on and a temporary suspension of – I think not fighting, just the Italians bombarding Fiume – agreed upon.

47 federal Prohibition agents in New York City are fired. Some of them have been buying cars and diamonds lately.

Former Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon has set a record for membership in the House at nearly 44 years. John Dingell’s 59 years is the current record, and his were consecutive, where Cannon lost a couple of times. He was first elected to the House in 1872. He’s hoping to reach 53 years to beat Gladstone’s record in Parliament. He won’t.

The Circuit Court in Pikeville, Kentucky, allows the Auburn Coal Corporation to evict 27 families of striking miners from their company homes. Work or eviction, the company says.

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Today -100: December 28, 1920: Of fine deaths, malicious injuries, deportations, broken atoms, and blums

Italian forces push back d’Annunzio’s legionaries to within a mile of the center of Fiume and capture the railroad station and the Public Gardens. The town is under bombardment. The ships that defected to Fiume from the Italian Navy are being sunk. The poet-aviator has 4 bridges blown up and roads mined.. He clearly intends to bring Fiume down in rubble on the invaders’ heads, so it’s all very dramatic. One Paris newspaper says, “A poet is having men killed in order to have a fine death for himself.” Repeating his wartime feat, d’Annunzio drops leaflets from his plane on Italian troops asking they desert.

The British Parliament passes a law making local Irish councils responsible for paying compensation for IRA “malicious injuries” as a priority over all other budgetary items. The IRA responds by demanding that rate collectors either resign or hand over their collections.

Preliminary talks flounder immediately when the British demand that all IRA weapons be handed over as a condition of any truce.

Rep. Julius Kahn (R for Racist-CA) says Japan can be satisfied by California passing a law banning all foreigners, not just Asiatics, from owning land. In exchange, Japan would ban all its citizens from emigrating to the US. I think I detect a big ol’ racist loophole, which the NYT does not point out: Asians are barred from ever becoming citizens of the US, but other immigrants (Kahn, for example, came from Germany) can.

Mariane Duszak arrived from Poland with her 3 children aged 5 to 7 to join her husband, but she fails her literacy test and they’ll be deported, after the kids get out of the hospital for measles, because of that immigration law passed over Wilson’s veto.

German engineer Willi von Unruh has invented a device that can break up the atom. He’s demonstrated it in his house, and been offered £1 million if it can be removed and tested, but he refused. Anyway, he’s in jail now, and it’s beginning to look like his wooden box with copper plates can’t actually split the atom after all.

The Allies are considering how to deal with Germany’s refusal/inability to disarm right-wing paramilitary groups in Bavaria, preeminent among them the Einwohnerwehr (“Citizens’ Defence”). The French previously ignored the growth of the groups because they hoped Catholic Bavaria could be split from Germany, possibly by a wooden box with copper plates, but now realize that Bavarian right-wingers want to restore the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria and then impose it on Germany as a whole.

The French Socialist Congress is debating Lenin’s conditions for joining the Communist Internationale. Léon Blum wants to stay out and remain plain ol’ Socialists. This is the first mention I’ve noticed in the NYT of the future prime minister, so hi Léon!

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Today -100: December 27, 1920: Of monks, dishwashing, lynchings, and celibacy

Edward “Monk” Eastman, possible real name William Delaney, who was leader of the Eastman Gang in NYC until he went to prison in 1904, a petty criminal after his release from prison, then a soldier in the Great War (for which Gov. Al Smith restored his citizenship), then a petty criminal again, is killed in a fight over the division of bootlegging profits, shot by one of his gang who was also a prohibition agent (which is not known yet). In 1903 Tammany Hall decided to end the gang war between the Eastman Gang and the Five Points Gang by having Eastman and Paul Kelly have a boxing match, which came to a draw after 2 hours.

Contrary to predictions in the press, Calvin Coolidge did NOT wash the dishes after Christmas dinner.

A black man who killed a cop in Jonesboro, Arkansas during a raid on a game of dice is taken from jail and lynched.

Pope Benedict says the Church will never change the requirement of celibacy for priests.

Romania decides not to intern those Jewish refugees.

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Today -100: December 26, 1920: This loafing, thieving and prowling around has got to stop

Japanese Foreign Minister Count Uchida tells the Diet that a new US-Japanese treaty will probably abrogate California’s racist land laws.

Klan members wander around Columbus, Georgia, handing out circulars warning “Undesirables, both white and black, we are after you. We know you! Take warning! This loafing, thieving and prowling around has got to stop. Ku Klux.” 

A movie is shown to the inmates of Sing Sing’s death row and, because the NYT does NOT know how to write a human-interest story, we don’t know what film it was.

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Today -100: December 25, 1920: We have spoken and written too much

Woodrow Wilson orders US military rule in Santo Domingo to be relaxed. The proclamation refers to the “friendly purposes of the United States in the employment... of its military force” in the DR. So it was friendly 4 years ago and now it’s relaxed. A commission of “representative” Dominicans will be appointed to come up with an election and rewrite the constitution. With an American veto, of course.

Poet-Aviator-Duce d’Annunzio is issuing increasingly desperate-sounding proclamations to the people of Fiume: “We have spoken and written too much. If our words are not made good we shall lose our honor, having already lost all else. There is but one duty – resist.”

BREAKING NEWS OF THE DAY -100:

President-Elect Harding issues a normal human greeting: “Like every normal human being I wish everybody a very merry Christmas.”

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