Today -100: March 20, 1921: Get ya paper!

A “young negro,” which I’m guessing means a teenager, is lynched in Water Valley, Mississippi.

Paper-sellers for Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent are warned by Detroit police to stop yelling out anti-Semitic quotes from the paper.

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Today -100: March 19, 1921: Now I want a dirigible

The government is going to publish the names of 160,000 draft dodgers and possibly prosecute them.

The commander of military headquarters (I guess for Ireland as a whole?) and the divisional commissioner of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Limerick send condolences on the murder of the city’s mayor. The Corporation responds, fuck you, you did it. Which they totally did.

The British government is giving away ten dirigibles, two of them seized from Germany, for free to anyone who wants them.

Russia, the Ukraine, and Poland sign a peace treaty. Poland gains land. Everyone agrees to refrain from propaganda against each other.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: March 18, 1921: Humane death is the best kind of death. Or is it?

The Kronstadt rebels are defeated. Before the survivors scurry over the Finnish border, they blow up a couple of warships.

The Nevada Legislature passes a Humane Death Bill to introduce the gas chamber, although it will take several years before it is put into (humane) practice.

There are, inevitably, IRA reprisals for the execution of Thomas Whelan on Monday. A constable is killed and another wounded.

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Today -100: March 17, 1921: Of fickle blondes and cunning Orientals

Britain and Russia sign a trade treaty. It includes a cease-fire in the propaganda wars, with Russia specifically promising not to undermine British colonial rule in Asia.

Justice William Morris of NYC Municipal Court 1st District rules that a trial he is officiating will have a jury of 3 men and 3 women, but no blondes; “The blondes are fickle.” Then he dragooned 3 brunette women from the spectators.

The NYT profiles Soghomon Tehlirian, the Armenian who assassinated Talaat Pasha. Does it use the phrase “Oriental cunning”? Of course it does. How could it not?

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Today -100: March 16, 1921: This has nothing to do with you

Former Ottoman Grand Vizier (1917-8) Talaat Pasha, one of the leaders most responsible for the Armenian Genocide, is assassinated by an Armenian on the streets of Berlin. Seized by passersby, he tells the police, “We are both foreigners. This has nothing to do with you.” Talaat was a fugitive from international and Turkish justice, living under false names and hunted by British Intelligence.

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The Austrian Anti-Semitic Congress calls a world anti-Semitic congress for Budapest in the fall and creates a central bureau to connect anti-Semitic groups throughout the world. Resolutions call on the government to expel all alien Jews by the end of the month and to restrict the number of Jews in secondary night schools to their proportion of the population.

Gustav von Kahr, prime minister of Bavaria, tells the Bavarian legislature that the royalists have been conspiring to overthrow him and create chaos in order to produce a groundswell of popular opinion to bring back the Wittelsbach royal family.

There are 9,211,295 automobiles in the US. New York state alone has more registered cars than the whole US did in 1910.

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Today -100: March 15, 1921: I reared him to die for Ireland

The Brits execute six IRA men convicted by military courts-martial.  Many thousands of Dubliners gather at Mountjoy Prison, and all businesses are closed for several hours. The mother of one of them, Patrick Doyle, says “I am proud to have reared so good a boy and prouder still I reared him to die for Ireland.” Doyle’s widow collapses; today she will also bury one of their twins, born a couple of weeks ago.

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Today -100: March 14, 1921: What Austrians resent

A mob in Versailles, Kentucky lynches a black man accused of murder.

Former kaiser Wilhelm self-publishes a book, just for a few friends only at present, about how the whole world ganged up on Germany and the Great War wasn’t Germany’s fault.

The Austrian Anti-Semitic Association holds a mass meeting in Vienna, followed by some broken windows and Jew-beatings, as was the custom, but it was still early in the evening when this report was filed.

Edith Cowan is elected to  the Western Australia Legislative Assembly, the first woman member of an Ozzie parliament, defeating, in fact, the attorney general who introduced the legislation to allow women members. Cowan was a suffrage activist and promoted various social reforms for women. Interestingly, her father was executed when she was 15 for killing her step-mother.

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Today -100: March 13, 1921: What Denmark wants

The Harding Administration’s policy will be to protect all US rights, interests and equities gained during the Great War by right of conquest, even without a treaty conferring those rights. What this means, besides objections to Japan’s League of Nations mandate over the Yap Islands, is unclear.

The US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service claims to have discovered a liquid poison so strong that 3 drops, dropped, say, from an airplane via a nozzle, will kill a person. So a plane carrying 2 tons of it could clear an area 100 feet X 7 miles.

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Today -100: March 12, 1921: Of split infinitives, refugees, race riots, and laddie boys

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A letter from Pres. Harding to Adm. Benson calls on him “to immediately advise”.

8,600 Iroquois in Ontario are trying to arrange for asylum in the US to escape an order requiring them to take Canadian citizenship.

There’s a “race riot” in Springfield, Ohio following several days of tumult after an unknown black man allegedly assaulted a white girl, so they’ve been hassling every black man, one of whom shoots a cop trying to frisk him. 14 black people are shot and I guess just the one white cop. A white man is arrested while scattering dynamite in a negro district – to blow out stumps, he says.

Enrico Caruso is eating solid food.

Since the papers have been running stories about Warren Harding’s dog Laddie Boy – He brings Warren G’s newspapers! A negro messenger has been named unofficial Master of the Hounds! – here’s a picture, from Laddie Boy’s... Wikipedia page.

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Today -100: March 11, 1921: Of leprosaria, curfews, medicines, cabinets, and disorderly conduct

Massachusetts closes its leper colony on an island in Buzzards Bay, sending its 13 prisoners to the federal leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana. 

The IRA posts notices of a “curfew” for soldiers and police, warning that any of them found on the streets after 10pm are liable to be shot.

One of former Attorney Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer’s last acts was to say that there are no limits on the amount of beer that can be prescribed by doctors. NYC breweries say they’re quite ready to supply the market for medicinal brewskies. There are 4,500 doctors in NYC with authority to write alcohol prescriptions.

Lenin blames the Kronstadt rebellion on France and Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and says it will be crushed in a few days. He does admit having made mistakes: trying to restore industry too quickly, problems in distribution of food.

800 Russian soldiers are said to have drowned trying to cross the ice to reach Kronstadt when the Kronstadthoovians, predictably, shelled the ice. The incident happened, not sure about the death toll.

“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” will open next month in New York. It’s described by the NYT as “the first photoplay built on the idea of cubism”.

Elsie Fisher makes a bet with friends that she can dress in men’s clothes and walk from West 90th St to 66th without being detected. She is detected, and a crowd starts following her until she is arrested for “disorderly conduct.”

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Today -100: March 10, 1921: British subjects are not for sale

Assassinated Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato will be made a duke, posthumously. Evidently the police guard for Dato’s auto were on bicycles; the assassins were on a motorcycle.

Rep. Horace Towner, chair of the House Committee on Insular Affairs, writes to Pres. Antonio Barceló of the Puerto Rican Senate warning against pro-independence propaganda, which just makes it harder for PR’s friends in the States to help them and anyway they’ll never get it.

Wow, the Bolsheviks have fallen, again, all fleeing Petrograd as the Kronstadt rebels capture the city. I never see the NYT apologize for getting these stories wrong. Another version is that Trotsky is still in Petrograd, making a last stand in the Peter & Paul Fortress.

Speaking about the suggestion that Britain sell its West Indian colonies to the US to cover its war debt, the Prince of Wales says “British subjects are not for sale.” To which the people of Jamaica, Barbados etc say, “You mean not lately.”

Headline of the Day -100:  “Caruso Tries to Sit Up.” I commented a while ago about the obsessive coverage of certain people’s health.

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Today -100: March 9, 1921: The Allies are only creating fresh embarrassments for themselves

Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato is assassinated. The three assassins escape on a motorcycle with a sidecar, which may not be a first in assassination history, but I can’t think of an earlier example off the top of my head. Spain has had so much upheaval recently that it’s not clear which group wanted Dato dead (Catalan anarchists, as it will turn out).

Germany is calm about the occupation of Rhine cities. German newspapers think Allied penalties on Germany will fail to pay and they’ll be forced to negotiate more reasonable terms. Chancellor Constantin Fehrenbach says “The Allies are only creating fresh embarrassments for themselves.” Pres. Ebert says Allied demands are “impossible of fulfillment. Not only ourselves but our children and grandchildren would have become the work-slaves of our adversaries by our signature. ... We must not and cannot comply with it. Our honor and self-respect forbid it.” He says the occupation violates the Versailles Treaty but Germany is “defenseless” to resist. Communists are calling for a general strike, but unions refuse. France preempts repeats of German complaints by declaring that none of the new occupation troops will be black or colonial.

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Today -100: March 8, 1921: Aroused

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France will occupy Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Ruhrort. The Germans “would do well to remember that France has become aroused.” Germany will appeal against the sanctions to the League of Nations. 

The Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote upholds Postmaster General Burleson’s 1917 ban of Victor Berger’s Milwaukee Leader from the US mails, a ban still in effect. Justice John Clarke in his majority opinion says the paper could have been reinstated if it had “mend[ed] its ways”; also something about the US protecting itself against such “insidious foes.” Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting, see the actions of Burleson as a threat to free speech, which no kidding.

The rebel sailors in Kronstadt and the Soviet army in Petrograd are exchanging shellfire.

Costa Rica complies with the US demand that it withdraw its troops.

Secretary of State Hughes is pissed that newspapers printed, correctly, that he sent identical notes to Panama and Costa Rica and in future wants them to only report things officially authorized by the State Dept.

There’s been a lot of ferment over the recent “Horror on the Rhine” meeting in Madison Square Garden which I neglected to cover, in which objections were made to France using black colonial soldiers in the occupation of the Rhine. The meeting also featured protests against British violence in Ireland. Anyway, the American Legion calls for NYC Mayor John Hylan to be removed for office by the state Legislature for allowing “pro-German meetings while this country still is in a state of war with the Central Powers.”  Does it actually have the power to do that? Similar meetings planned in other cities including Philadelphia have been banned.

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More Dr Seuss than limerick, really. Not only Sinn Féin Mayor George Clancy, but former Limerick mayor Michael O’Callaghan as well are shot dead in their respective homes/beds by Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliary death squads, probably in retaliation for the ambush of Brig. Gen. Cumming. Clancy’s wife is shot defending him. Clancy dies while members of the household are afraid to venture out in search of medical aid because of the curfew.

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Today -100: March 7, 1921: Of fomented disorder and exaggerated sex plays

Pres. Harding fails to attend religious services on his first Sunday in office. But no golf either, since he doesn’t believe in playing golf on Sunday.

The NYT sees the exit of Woodrow Wilson from the White House as a signal to tell all the tales it’s been keeping to itself about his health, for example that he was unconscious for a week and that the Cabinet discussed replacing him with Vice President Whatsisname.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and others are arrested in Philadelphia to stop them holding a meeting. The charges are “organizing and originating a radical movement contrary to the laws of the state,” “possessing seditious literature” and “fomenting disorder.”

The National Association of the Moving Picture Industry agrees on a self-censorship plan. It will ban films that are “exaggerated sex plays,” that make virtue odious and vice attractive, offend religious beliefs, weaken the authority of the law, or “instruct the morally feeble in methods of committing crime”.

Germany makes another offer to the Allies, slightly increasing reparations. An offer a couple of days ago to provide German labor to rebuild the war zone in France was instantly rejected.

Brig. Gen. Cumming is killed in an IRA ambush in West Cork.

Panama rejects the border with Costa Rica assigned by arbitrator Chief Justice Edward White of the US, saying that White exceeded his authority and set an arbitrary line, thus showing he hadn’t studied the question sufficiently.

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Today -100: March 6, 1921: Of wars, lightning rods, and horsemen

The Harding administration sends notes to Costa Rica and Panama ordering them to stop their war (which Costa Rica seems to be winning at the moment) at once, at once I say! The US pretext for ordering Latin American countries around is the US’s authority to protect the Panama Canal. The Wilson admin had already sent a cruiser to protect the United Fruit Company’s property, as was the custom.

Burglars steal Notre Dame Cathedral’s lightning rods (for the platinum) and copper from, I assume, its roof.

On his first night as president, Harding and the Duchess attend a theatre performance of Sinbad, starring Al Jolson in (sigh) blackface.

They could have gone to see The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, starring Rudolph Valentino in his break-through role, directed by Rex Ingram. An anti-war World War I movie. Haven’t seen it.

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Today -100: March 5, 1921: Of rumble and bumble

Warren Harding is now the 29th president of the United States. His inaugural address (delivered via loudspeaker, a first I believe) is described by the NYT as confirming “the popular impression of him as a man who makes no pretense of uncommon wisdom or force,” while H. L. Mencken reviews it thusly: “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” I dunno, H.L., the phrase “we must strive for normalcy to reach stability” is surely as fine an example of presidential oratory as we’ve had. Mencken does admit that the speech is not intended to be read but to be heard and that it might appeal to you “if you are the sort of man who goes to political meetings, which is to say, if you are the sort of man that Dr. Harding is used to talking to, which is to say, if you are a jackass.”

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Movie cameras are not allowed to film Wilson’s slow, painful walk to the car, and he gives up on his plans to stay through the ceremony.

The NYT says:  “Whatever opinion history may eventually record of Mr. Harding’s abilities and accomplishments, there is no doubt that as he came down the steps amid a burst of hearty cheering by the crowd he looked every inch a President.” Well, give him an inch... and he’ll still suck. He kisses the bible after taking the oath. Is that a thing other presidents have done?

Harding’s cabinet choices are confirmed. All of them. Just like that. The only delay comes when Harding names Albert Fall to be interior secretary before Fall has resigned the Senate. Which he does, at which point the rest of the Senate starts yelling “Get out” and “You are no longer one of us” at him, because they’re all overgrown frat boys.

On his way out the door, Wilson pocket-vetoes the immigration restriction bill, and regular-vetoes the Emergency Tariff Bill and the Army Bill reducing the army to 156,666.

Italian Fascists burn Labor Bureaus in Siena and Empoli. “Those responsible for the Empoli fire said it was set in protest against the violence of the Communists.” Fascists are not big on irony.

Sean MacSwiney, brother of deceased Lord Mayor of Cork Terence, is sentenced to 15 years for waging war against the Crown and having arms and explosives.

The Allies suggested that an international commission look into the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Smyrna and Thrace. Greece says no.

A 20-year-old sailor, the alliterative Harold Hammond, does indeed have a woman in every port. A wife, in fact, 14 of them. He interspersed abandoning wives with going AWOL, first from the army, then the navy.

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Today -100: March 4, 1921: Of Haavaard, Wilson & Colby, negotiating with murderers, tariffs!, and princesss

Harvard University’s finances are not doing well, so it’s forced to raise tuition to $250 a year, $300 for the medical school.

Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby will form a law firm, which is a little puzzling since Wilson hasn’t practiced law in decades and wasn’t very good at it and also, you know, stroke. He’s evidently talking about arguing before the Supreme Court.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament he’s willing to meet Irish representatives but not murderers. Asked whether Boers with whom the government meets (or met? it’s unclear if Devlin means now or at the end of the Boer War) didn’t do the same things as the Irish, LG says the Boers wore uniforms.

Wilson vetoes a bill to greatly increase tariffs. The House fails to override.

Poland, Hungary, and Romania sign an alliance against Russia.

The Russian military has reportedly crushed the Kronstadt rebellion.

Harding’s stuff starts arriving at the White House, including the all-important presidential golf clubs.

Russian Princess Catherine Radziwell gives a lecture at the Hotel Astor about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose forgery by the Czarist secret service she’d personally witnessed. Someone in the audience questions whether she’s a real Disney princess and how she can deny that Jews murdered czars.

Obit of the Day -100: Gen. Auguste Mercier, the French minister of war who helped railroad Dreyfus, at 87.

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Today -100: March 3, 1921: The only asset of Germany today is the working hour of the German workmen

The House and Senate compromise on reducing the size of the Army to 156,666.

Former speaker of the House James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark dies. The NYT has been tracking his health’s ups and downs in detail for days in a way it would never do now. Also Enrico Caruso’s. It says something about the period, but I’m not sure what.

The German government denies having any other counter-proposal to offer on reparations: “The only asset of Germany today... is the working hour of the German workmen, and it is no good our professing to be willing to pay more than the German workmen can produce. ... Remember this: If you kill the willingness of the German workmen to work, the whole of your proposals, whatever they may be, will go into the cellar.” The Allies are threatening dire consequences if a better answer is not forthcoming, such as occupying Hamburg, separating the left bank of the Rhine from Germany, seizing customs, etc. France is moving long-range guns to within shooting distance of Essen.

Ramsay MacDonald fails to get back into Parliament in a by-election in Woolwich, losing to a Captain Gee. Gee got a Victoria Cross during the war; MacDonald opposed the war.

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Today -100: March 2, 1921: Of dead ex-kings, armies, counters-proposal, ex-congresscritters, and thank you Jews

King Nikola I of Montenegro, who was made redundant when Montenegro was absorbed into Yugoslavia when it was created (he did not abdicate and continued to claim to be king of the country that no longer existed), dies in exile in France. He reigned for 50 years as prince before taking the title of king as an anniversary present to himself, and then was king for 8.

Panama’s Assembly meets to consider, among other things, authorizing Pres. Belisario Porras to raise an army, which really should  have been sorted out before he declared war on Costa Rica.

Germany makes a counter-proposal on reparations, a fixed sum of 50 billion in gold marks, which is the equivalent of some... wait, the NYT says that’s $7.5b... in exchange for Germany retaining Upper Silesia and restoration of the exports it needs to earn the money for reparations. This is instantly rejected by the Allies.

For reasons that are unclear to me, Congress ousts the Alaska Territory’s non-voting representative, George Grigsby (D), in favor of James Wickersham (R) for the remainder of the 66th Congress. Which is 3 days. For which he’ll be paid $7,000 per day. I assume that’s the sum for the entire period since the 1918 election.

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Today -100: March 1, 1921: What sort of holidays do Irish schoolboys go on, anyway?

Panama captures the entire Costa Rican force that invaded Coto province. Panamanian Pres. Belisario Porras says something about Coto being valueless land and a war over it would be absurd, which is odd since he did declare war. Some Panamanians want him to resign; they attack the presidential palace, which is now being protected by US soldiers. The US sends notes to both governments asking them to please knock it off.

More rumors from Russia: the Communists overthrown in Petrograd, Trotsky is in hiding...

British soldiers are attacked in Cork, at least 5 killed.

Also in Cork, 6 men sentenced by courts-martial are executed. 5 were charged with an ambush on Crown forces, one for simple possession of a gun and ammunition. Canon O’Sullivan says the men went to their deaths “like school boys on a holiday.”

A Porter, Indiana train wreck results in at most 37 dead. The coroner corrects his earlier announcement that it was more than 40, which he made before he put all the body parts back together.

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