Today -100: February 20, 1921: Free hands are the best kind of hands

Charles Evans Hughes, former NY governor + former Supreme Court justice + failed 1916 candidate for president, accepts Harding’s offer to be secretary of state. Harding says that only Hughes will speak for the State Department, or, as the NYT phrases it, he will have a “free hand.”

Many Mexicans believe that US oil companies are funding rebellion in Tampico and Tuxpan, possibly to provoke a US invasion, occupation and possible annexation of the oil-fields areas.

The US State Dept conducted an actual investigation into German claims that black French colonial troops on the Rhine were raping their women. Gen. Henry Allen’s report says French colonial troops are, as a general rule, “quite orderly and well-behaved.” And some of the German women... less so.

The US Senate votes 62-2 to restrict immigration to 3% of the number of people from each country who were in the US in 1910, if I’m understanding this correctly. How it deals with European countries that didn’t exist in 1910 or are much smaller or larger than before the war is unclear. Canada, Mexico and South America are exempt, and Asiatics are still barred. The decision to reduce the number from the proposed 5% was probably helped by the recent spread of typhus in Italy and Yugoslavia. Also, Bolshevism!

Thomas Pope, the postmaster in Greenville, South Carolina, challenges President-elect Harding to a game of golf to determine if he gets to keep his job. Harding replies that he’s too crap a golfer to make it the basis for appointments, although history suggests he might have done better if he had.

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Today -100: February 19, 1921: Of dastardly crimes, the nature and temperament of women, and horsey lèse-majesté

The National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul’s radical women’s suffrage organization, is dissolved, and in its place a new body is formed, called... the National Woman’s Party. Its goal: to fight for the removal of the legal disabilities of women. Soon, this will take the form of 80+ years of advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment. Proposals to work instead for world disarmament fail. 

The grand jury investigating the Wall Street bombing of last September comes to a conclusion: It was “a dastardly crime.”

British troops close off 20 blocks of Dublin with barbed wire and conduct house-to-house searches for IRAers. It will take 3 days, during which time no mail or newspapers will be allowed in. 

The French Senate refuses to remove from the section of Civil Code on marriage “The husband owes protection to his wife. The wife owes obedience to her husband.” The Commission appointed to consider the proposal said it would be contrary to good order, dangerous to family life, and “contrary to nature and the temperament of women.”

France is trying to get Poland and Czechoslovakia to form an alliance to work against not only possible German resurgence but the spread of Bolshevism. France would also like to get Romania to join. Slight problem: the Poles and Czechs do not get along. At all.

Britain’s Prince Henry is kicked in the head by a horse. But he’s a royal so you can’t tell the difference. He later became governor-general of Australia. Henry, not the horse.

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Today -100: February 18, 1921: You poor fish

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A performance in Vienna of Arthur Schnitzler’s 20-year-old play Reigen (La Ronde) is disrupted by 500 hooligans, mostly students, who beat up theater-goers and turn on the fire hose.

Petrograd residents are reportedly being forced to go to Communist plays, or pay a fine.

The German Foreign Office denies France’s insistence that it has pulled non-white soldiers from the Rhineland.

Mrs. Bridget Rupple of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania is tried as a common scold. She likes to greet her neighbors, “You poor fish.”

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Today -100: February 17, 1921: These things are done because it is your will that they should be done

A lynch mob in Athens, Georgia burns a black man at the stake.

Arkansas Gov. Thomas McRae vetoes a repeal of the law against cigarettes.

There’s a proposal before the Idaho Legislature to split the state in two. It’s not clear what seething resentment exists between the Northern and Southern Idahoovians. Probably something about the baked potato setting on microwave ovens.

North Dakota can’t find any banks or investment companies to sell its state bonds. I think this is bankers trying to blackmail the ruling party, the Non-Partisan League, into abandoning its policies.

Éamon de Valera writes a letter to all British MPs accusing British troops of waging war on the Irish people “contrary to all the rules of civilised warfare.” He enumerates the war crimes, telling the MPs, “These things are done because it is your will that they should be done. If you willed otherwise they would cease. It is you, not your troops, who are primarily responsible.”

The IRA are destroying bridges and roads in County Cork to slow down military trucks so they can be more easily ambushed.

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Today -100: February 16, 1921: Of improving situations, mustard gas, and stunt appendectomies

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament that the situation in Ireland is improving and that he won’t publish the report into the burning of Cork, although he claims 7 Black and Tans have been fired.

Bank robbers blow open the vault of the Farmers and Merchants’ Bank of Utica, Michigan, only to be hit by mustard gas that had been installed 10 days before as a security measure.

Dr. Evan Kane operates on himself, removing his own appendix, to prove the operation can be done under local anesthesia. Or that’s why he says he did it, but two years ago he amputated one of his fingers, so I suspect it’s some sort of fetish thing.

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Today -100: February 15, 1921: Of big navies, perfect girls, dingles, and Trobach’s monster

The House of Representatives votes to continue the Navy’s massive ship-building program begun in 1916. Amendments to postpone until after the international disarmament conference Harding says he’ll call are defeated.

How Marriages Were Arranged in 1921:

The British blockade Dingle Peninsula. Which sounds like a sex thing.

Otto Trobach, a chef in Chicago, asks the sheriff for a gland from the corpse of the next man hanged in Cook County, to be transplanted into his body to bring back his youth, which was stolen from him by an accident, he says.

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Today -100: February 14, 1921: Of premiers, fires, and rounds

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood remarked that Irish Nationalist MP (i.e., a moderate) Joseph Devlin might become the First Premier of the Ulster Parliament. Devlin replies that it’s All-Ireland or nothing.

There have been fires at numerous factories and businesses in Manchester and throughout Lancashire. IRA? Manchester Chief Constable Sir Robert Peacock (!) thinks so.

Arthur Schnitzler’s 20-year-old play Reigen (La Ronde) is not only offending Nazis in Munich, but also the Minister of Interior in Austria, who orders performances halted. The province of Vienna objects to this interference by the federal government, leading to a heated discussion in Parliament. Socialists see reactionary Catholicism in the ban, Christian Socialists see secularism gone mad in the play.

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Today -100: February 13, 1921: And if that’s not how you celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday, I don’t know how you do celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday

Britain keeps privately asking the US to forgive its wartime debt.

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As was the custom.

A black man accused of assaulting an old white woman in Ocala, Florida is hanged by a lynch mob, after they have the woman identify him.

300 IRAers attack the police barracks in Drimoleague, County Cork. The military arrive and force the town’s entire male population to repair the damage at gunpoint, because there’s nothing like forced labor to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling towards the Union.

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Stanley. His name was Stanley. How hard is that, scientists?

Blondes are out in Paris this season, brunettes are in.

What to Watch: the pre-release of Buried Treasure, with Marion Davies, “The greatest picture drama of reincarnation ever shown” with “a vivid sea battle with pirates”.

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Today -100: February 12, 1921: Better than a pail of warm spit

Harding’s presidential pay will be $75,000 a year, the same as Wilson’s (although he’ll have to pay income tax, which Wilson did not). However Congress raises the vice president’s pay from $12,000 to $15,000 for Coolidge. These days, the president gets $400k and the veep $235,000.

The NYPD raid a dance at the Odd Fellows Hall, arresting 600 (!) for indecent dancing or spectating at said dancing. Two cops acquired tickets through some sneaky means to the private event.

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Today -100: February 11, 1921: There will be less talk and more thinking afterwards

A large meeting of Irish moderates in Dublin rejects the Irish Home Rule Act.

A large IRA force is moving on the delightfully named County Cork town of Skibbereen,. A preliminary raid is led by someone who claims, “I am Michael Collins, the killed and much-wanted man.”

Edward Brislane, due to be hanged Friday in Chicago, wants it to be public, in Grant Park. He thinks most supporters of capital punishment couldn’t stick it out, but “there will be less talk and more thinking afterwards.”

The US marines who attacked a Nicaraguan newspaper’s offices are arrested by the US military authorities. 

Warren G. Harding, who has already had to abandon one houseboat when he got it mired in the mud, has a fishing trip ruined by a black cat eating all the bait. Seems like enough metaphors for one vacation.

Sen. James Phelan (D-California) explains that his earlier comparison between negroes in the South and Japanese in the West simply meant that both are race problems because they are unassimilable. Also the Japanese breed like rabbits, so California could become “an Oriental colony tributary to an alien government.” 

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Today -100: February 10, 1921: Dog bites finger

US Marines raid a newspaper in Nicaragua that said some bad things about marines (we are not informed what those bad things were), and destroy its presses.

NYC Special Assistant District Attorney Charles Whitman (presumably not the former DA and governor of that name)(a later article says it is that Charles Whitman, but I’m not sure) is investigating whether the NYPD is covering up murders. There were 679 murders in 1920 in NY County, for which there were 78 indictments and one (1) conviction for first-degree murder (plus 7 for second-degree and 28, if I’m reading the blurred numbers correctly, for manslaughter). Some of the 679 were suicides. Poor police work led to a lot of murder cases being plead out, one for a conviction for assault. Also, only 9 car thieves were sent to jail. And some cops are filling booze orders for restaurants and saloons.

France says it has no remaining black troops occupying the Rhine, though Germans have been whining about them endlessly. There are some Moroccans, who the NYT carefully explains “are not black men but are Moors” and “As a rule they are very well behaved.” There are also some Malagasy, who are used as officers’ servants because colonialism.

In Munich, the Nationalist Party and the Nationalist Labor Party (which is the NYT’s translation of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Nazi for short) are refusing to comply with the Entente demand for disarmament. The NYT describes the Nationalist Labor Party as consisting “mainly of former officers, students disguised as workmen and unemployed who are hired with money furnished by royalists. They wear large red badges emblazoned with the swastika, which has become the emblem of anti-foreign sentiment”. They recently disrupted a performance of Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen (La Ronde) since “theatre audiences are thought to consist largely of war profiteers and other drones” and they think the play is immoral.

President Harding will have a pet alligator. No word yet on its name. Or gender. I’m thinking Daisy in either case.

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Today -100: February 9, 1921: Oh I knew I was forgetting something

The German government sternly tells Bavaria to comply with Allied demands on disarmament or face French occupation.

Learning that British soldiers would be on a train in West Donegal, IRAers roll boulders onto the track around a curve. The train hits it and derails, but no one is hurt.

OK, this time Prince Kropotkin really is dead.

 

There’s a mutiny in the Russian fleet at Kronstadt.

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Eventually, after some discussion about whether the death warrant is still valid, the governor will just commute his sentence.

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Today -100: February 8, 1921: Of armies and unions

The Senate votes 67-1 to override Wilson’s veto of the joint resolution instructing the War Department to end army recruiting until its size is reduced to 175,000 from its current 280,000. The House voted to override a couple of days ago.

Lenin complains in an article in Pravda entitled “The Communist Party in a Crisis” that unions are endangering the communist state by trying to win material benefit for their members.

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Today -100: February 7, 1921: Of extreme eugenics, angoras, and hostages

A committee of the Connecticut Legislature is considering putting hopelessly insane people to death.

The Japanese Diet is considering a bill to remove the ban on women going to political meetings or joining political organizations. A petition in favor of the bill, signed by thousands of women, is presented, saying the measure is necessary to make women better wives and mothers.

Atatürk says he’ll move the capital of Turkey from Constantinople to Angora, as Ankara was called in the West, but there’s no song about that, is there?

Sinn Féin MP William Sears, editor of the Enniscorthy Echo, is used as a hostage, chained to a military truck as it drives through Dublin.

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Today -100: February 6, 1921: Of armies, smoking, and bad luck

The House votes 271-16 to override Wilson’s veto of the joint resolution instructing the War Department to end army recruiting until its size is reduced to 175,000 from its current 280,000. The War Dept wanted 500,000.

Kitty O’Shea, widow of Charles Stewart Parnell, dies.

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The Senate kills a measure to ban smoking in all executive branch offices. There is some discussion first about whether chewing tobacco should be included.

What to Watch: French comedian Max Linder’s Seven Years Bad Luck.

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Today -100: February 5, 1921: Of strongholds, the battle of the Dimitrioses, mandates, and disarmament

Poet/playwright/fantasy author Lord Dunsany is court-martialed for possessing shotguns and ammunition, and is fined £25. Dunsany claims to be loyal to the Crown, having fought in the Boer and Great wars, and Dunsany Castle “was built as a stronghold to safeguard the power of the Crown.”

Dimitrios Rallis resigns as Greek prime minister after a fight with his Minister of War Dimitrios Gounaris over which one would go to the London conference, that argument being a proxy for the larger one over whether to go to war with the Turkish Nationalists.

Mary Ellen Smith, a suffragist who won her dead husband’s seat in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly in 1918 (slogan: “Women and Children First”), is given what may be the first appointment of a woman to cabinet office in the world, certainly the first in the British Empire, as minister without portfolio.

The League of Nations finally makes public the terms for the British mandate over Palestine, 2 months after they’re submitted. The British government “view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” while safeguarding the civil and religious rights of everybody. Aaaaannd...

Harding will call an international disarmament conference.  Meanwhile admirals and generals are talking up the importance of battleships, oh and they’d like some aircraft carriers too, please and thank you.

There is unrest in Japanese-occupied Formosa. Taiwanese nationalist Rin Kendo, which sounds like a Star Wars name, says Formosans have come to the conclusion that Japan is attempting to enslave them.

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Today -100: February 4, 1921: Who’s a special session? YOU’RE a special session

Pres. Wilson calls a special session of the Senate, at Harding’s request, for inauguration day, to start approving Harding’s nominees.

The IRA claims to have sunk a British submarine two weeks ago, with a loss of 57 hands, using an “electrically controlled projectile.” Actually the K class was a pretty crappy sub, and it probably just sank. It was never recovered.

500 or so IRAers ambush Crown forces near Rosscarberry, County Cork. The latter seem to have gotten the better of it.

Police and army trucks now carry chained hostages.

Attacks on police in Dublin have become very frequent.

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Today -100: February 3, 1921: Why does Europe make all this fuss over an outlaw?

The Coolidges will spend his veepship living in a hotel, the same one Vice President Whatsisname currently uses.

Scientific American’s $5,000 Will Someone Please Explain Einstein’s Theory to US? prize is won by one L. Bolton of the British Patent Office.

The Clonfin Ambush: in County Longford, Ireland, the IRA explodes a mine – this is considered for some reason to be more or less the first ever “IED” – under two military trucks crossing a bridge. They ten fire on the trucks, starting a two-hour firefight before the cops surrender. The IRA fighters escape with a shit-ton of weapons and ammo, but only after tending to the British wounded.

The Austrian government is demanding that former Emperor Carl return the crown jewels. He’s refusing.

King Constantine of Greece says there will be no negotiations with the Turkish Nationalists: “I do not recognize Mustapha Kemal [Atatürk] as a person worthy to be dealt with. Why does Europe make all this fuss over an outlaw? Mustapha Kemal is only a big bluff – a big bubble – and we could blow him off the map as we would blow a fly off a table.” SPOILER ALERT: No they can’t. Connie says the Greek army has beaten the Turks every time they’ve fought, which is not the case.

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Today -100: February 2, 1921: Of nights at the theatre, pardons, finite universes, and the 20th degree of North Latitude

Woodrow Wilson goes to the theatre for the first time since what the NYT calls his “breakdown,” because evidently we’re just ignoring that everyone knows it was a stroke. What drew him to the theatre? John Drinkwater’s “Abraham Lincoln,” and yes that’s kind of weird.

Hearing that Wilson has refused to pardon him, Eugene Debs says it’s Wilson, not he, who needs a pardon.

Albert Einstein thinks the universe is finite.

The German government says it will reject the Entente’s reparations terms as going beyond the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

Former Louisiana Governor Ruffin Pleasant has a suggestion for the upcoming state Constitutional Convention: deny suffrage rights to anyone coming from south of the 20th degree of North Latitude, an area which “is credited with none of the civilization of the world.”

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Today -100: February 1, 1921: Of pardons, plots, and rejuvenated women

Woodrow Wilson rejects Attorney Gen. Palmer’s recommendation to pardon Eugene Debs.

Nationalists (fascists?) in Florence, Italy claim to have uncovered, while they were looting a newspaper office before burning it, proof of a Communist plan for a national uprising on Feb. 3rd.

The Communists are alleged, as was the custom, to be planning a general European rising on May Day.

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