Today -100: July 5, 1921: Wine was served

An anti-Prohibition parade marches up 5th Avenue in New York, yes, on the Fourth of July. 20,000 marchers, the NYT says, which is smaller than was expected; the Anti-Saloon League did its own count, and says 14,922. Mayor Hylan watched the parade while having an ice cream soda. Banners included the slogans “Prohibition took sunshine from our homes and put moonshine in,” “We are citizens, not inmates. Which are you?”, “Russia went dry in 1919; went mad in 1921. How rational do you feel yourself?”, “Only a mother could love a prohibitionist’s face,” “Tyranny in the name of righteousness is the basest of all tyranny,” “Greenwich Village wants drinks,” “The rich have it. Why not the poor?” One marcher carries a reproduction of da Vinci’s The Last Supper with the caption “Wine was served.” 

Later in the day, 5th Ave sees another parade, sponsored by the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic. Hylan observes that one too.

Ivanoe Bonomi forms a government in Italy.

Italian Fascists respond to the killing of one of their members by Communists in Grosseto, Tuscany with a military-type attack on the town, killing 16.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 4, 1921: Here’s Johnny

Headline of the Day -100:  

Happy 4th!

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Today -100: July 3, 1921: Peace, ain’t it grand

Between rounds of golf, Harding signs the Congressional joint declaration ending the war with Germany and Austria. He accidentally dripped some ink on it, which is probably one of those metaphor things.

Dempsey wins, which is enough about that.

Wait, no it isn’t. Some people from the International Reform Bureau, whatever that is, attend the match in order to attempt to get the winner arrested for assault and battery. However the cops won’t do it without a warrant, even though the chief of police personally witnessed the assault, and they can’t find a judge to issue one.

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Today -100: July 2, 1921: I know the people do not want me to go

The Senate passes the resolution declaring the Great War over, 38-19. Some Democrats complain that this means the US will have to give back all the German property it seized during the war.

The lawyers for Sacco and Vanzetti, on trial for murder, insist that all evidence that they have a reputation for being peaceful and law-abiding be stricken from the record. The jury is told to disregard anything they’ve heard along those lines (a couple of cops from Vanzetti’s town and a couple of Sacco’s former employers so testified).

Attorney General Harry Daugherty says he won’t attend the Dempsey-Carpentier fight because he “had too much respect for the opinion of people who disapprove of prize fights and of whom I must be a sort of unofficial representative.” Gov. Wilson Sproul of Pennsylvania also won’t be there, saying he’s never been to a prizefight and wouldn’t know what was going on and “I know the people do not want me to go.” J.P. Morgan says he won’t go because he disapproves, not because of the boxing, but for some other reason he doesn’t care to disclose (he’s commenting because he was accidentally included on a list of attendees).

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Today -100: July 1, 1921: Chuckles the Judge

Headline of the Day -100:  

In the morning, Pres. Harding nominates former Pres. William Howard Taft to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, and the Senate confirms him by the afternoon, with 4 no votes (William Borah, Hiram Johnson, Robert La Follette, all Republicans, and George Watson, D of Georgia). Borah says Taft hasn’t practiced law in 30 years and at 63 is just 7 years from the legal age of incompetence. Harding didn’t even inform Taft before sending the nomination to the Senate, but Taft’s been panting for a seat on the Court for...  decades, really and everyone pretty much knew he was getting it.

The British release Sinn Féin Vice President Arthur Griffith and other SF MPs from prison so they can take part in the London conference (although de Valera has yet to accept).

The NYT requests people not call their offices for updates during the Dempsey-Carpentier fight.

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Getting new blog posts by email

Google is killing that Feedburner function sometime in July, because reasons. I've added a new get-posts-by-email thing in the column to the right, from something called follow.it. If you want to continue/start getting posts in your inbox, enter your email address there.

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Today -100: June 30, 1921: We need to know the whereabouts of these people

Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig rejects Éamon de Valera’s request for a meeting (which de V initially sent to a different Unionist politician named Sir James Craig).

The Dáil Éireann authorizes reprisals against British reprisals. A house for a house.

The House of Representatives votes 330-4 for the Borah Amendment in favor of calling naval limitation negotiations with Britain and Japan.

Winston Churchill’s mother Jennie, aka Lady Randolph Churchill, dies. The story is on page 12, which is odd since her leg being amputated was front-page news earlier this month.

The Cuban Senate votes against women’s suffrage. 

US Secretary of Labor James Davis wants to track immigrants, “not to regulate him, but to help him, to teach him, and encourage him. We need to know the whereabouts of these people, if it is only to protect them from the insidious poison of Red propaganda.”

A Lake County, Illinois jury takes 20 hours to convict a hotel owner of violating Prohibition law, because that’s how long it took for them to consume the evidence, 3 quarts of whiskey and 1 of port.

No, I’m not going to read the op-ed about how vivisection is “vindicated.”

I thought we’d heard the opinion of every person on earth about the Dempsey-Carpentier match, but... George Bernard Shaw thinks Carpentier will win.

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Today -100: June 29, 1921: Ultra-modern, to say the least

Éamon de Valera resonds to Lloyd George’s call to confer in London, saying he will need to consult with... “the political minority” or Ireland, i.e., the Unionists. He also says no lasting peace can be achieved if LG insists on dividing Ireland and rejecting “the principle of national self-determination.” De Valera also writes to Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig and other Unionist leaders proposing talks with them.

West Virginia Gov. Ephraim Morgan orders the sheriff of Mingo County to draft 130 men (or accept volunteers) for 60 days to fight the miners. WV has no National Guard.

An address to the National Social Conference describes how a man was once cured of hysterical blindness by the Industrial Commission of New York by letting him remain with the woman he was living with in bigamy after leaving his “unkind” wife. A delegate to the conference says of the address, “It was ultra-modern, to say the least.” The person who gave the address was Frances Perkins.

Sports Headline of the Day -100:  

The NYT won’t shut up about the upcoming Dempsey-Carpentier fight, and evidently neither will professors at the Sorbonne.

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Today -100: June 28, 1921: Of beer and low confidence

The House of Representatives votes 250-93 to ban doctors prescribing beer and to restrict prescriptions for liquor to one pint every 10 days.

Giovanni Giolitti resigns as Italian prime minister after receiving only a marginal vote of confidence (234-200) on his foreign policy.

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Today -100: June 27, 1921: War in three years

Éamon de Valera has received the invitation from Lloyd George, although it appeared in the newspapers before the letter reached him. I’m just curious what address they mailed it to. De Valera will consult with the Dáil Éireann before deciding whether accept, possibly with conditions, and definitely with some associates, preferably ones the British will have to release from prison to attend. Ulster PM Sir James Craig is also mulling it over, and may insist on his own pre-conditions, like no consideration of an Irish republic.

The Upper Silesia crisis has been declared over, with both German and Polish forces agreeing to withdraw.

At the annual convention of Spiritualists at the Waldorf-Astoria, clairvoyant John Slater calls for an amendment to the Constitution to protect mediums from prosecution (in 1930 Slater will win in court after a clergyman has him charged for making predictions, which was illegal under Michigan law). He complains that rich Spiritualists don’t donate much to the cause, because Spiritualism “takes away the fear of Hell and they are no longer afraid to die rich.”

Trotsky supposedly told the 3rd congress of the Communist International that the US and Britain would be in a naval war by 1924.

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Today -100: June 26, 1921: Every imaginable sacrifice

The (presumably all-white) grand jury investigating the Tulsa race war indicts the chief of police, John Gustafson, and some other cops. Not actually for the race war, but for failure to enforce prohibition and firearm laws and to suppress vice, and something about stolen cars. Other than that, the grand jury report blames black people for the race war, I mean it puts ALL of the blame on them, because of course it fucking does. See, it started because blacks showed up armed at the court house to prevent a lynching, but, see, all those white people milling around the court house didn’t intend anything of the kind, they were just there for, I don’t know, cotton candy or something. The grand jury finds the underlying cause to be the spread of “racial equality” doctrine among blacks.

Georgia Gov. Hugh Dorsey, on his last day in office, says there have been 58 lynchings during his 4 years in office and in most cases there was no effort to bring members of the lynch mob to justice. He has suggestions about reforms that could deal with this, including a state-level constabulary and grand jury. Incoming governor Thomas Hardwick’s inaugural message responds to that and to the recent federal investigations of peonage in Georgia, saying the white farmer “has made every imaginable sacrifice to help the negro,” presumably not counting the white farmer who murdered all those black people on his plantation. Hardwick says “the indictment of the whole State and all of its people for mistreating the black race is an unspeakable slander upon our State and her people”.

Greece declines the Allies’ offer to mediate an end to their war with Turkish nationalists.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George asks Éamon de Valera to come to London, with a plus one, for a conference with the British government and Northern Irish Prime Minister Sir James Craig “to explore to the utmost the possibility of a settlement.” Under the threat of martial law being declared and a major increase in military occupation on... wait for it.... July the 12th.

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Today -100: June 25, 1921: Live and never die

De Valera really was arrested and released, as confirmed by Sinn Féin. 

D.D. Murphy, leader of the black cult Live and Never Die, is shot dead by the Atlantic City police after a shoot-out.

A train containing some of King George’s escort for the opening of the Ulster Parliament earlier this week, the Tenth Hussars, is derailed by an IRA mine, killing 3 soldiers and a guard. 2 IRA are shot dead as are a bunch of injured horses.

In the Italian parliament, new deputy Benito Mussolini talks about annexing the Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland.

Assholes of the Day -100:  Whoever keep breaking into Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan’s house in Forest Hills and stealing stuff.

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Today -100: June 24, 1921: Of jackasses, final phases, and professional labor leaders

Rear Adm. William Sims gave a speech a couple of weeks ago in London, which everyone has been going on (and on and on) about ever since, in which he called American supporters of Sinn Féin jackasses, among other things (although he claims he’s been misquoted). He arrived back in the US yesterday, recalled so he can explain himself. There’s a heavy police presence at the port of New York to prevent him being mobbed.

Supposedly, the police finally capture Éamon de Valera, more or less accidentally in County Dublin, and then... let him go.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood tells a group of Crown forces (presumably cops + soldiers) that the final phase of the struggle in Ireland is beginning. He says the Crown forces have no quarrel with the Irish people but wish to rescue them from the criminal minority which holds life cheaply and is opposed to civilization.

Future vice president Charles G. Dawes arrives in Washington to take up the post of director of the Budget Bureau, which Harding created. He complains loudly and bitterly that Congress hasn’t given him enough funding to properly fulfill what he sees as his task, which is to examine every penny of government expenditure and make cuts so that taxes on his fellow businessmen can be reduced. Disdaining having to “take his chances” on whatever civil servants are assigned to him, he wants to invite businessmen to come to Washington to advise him (without compensation) for four months.

T.H. Watkins, president of the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Company, says he won’t be dealing with the United Mine Workers union anymore, because employers now understand their responsibility, so there’s no need anymore for “the professional labor leader.”

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Today -100: June 23, 1921: Stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation

Headline of the Day -100:  

And if there are two things the Irish are famously good at, it’s forgiving and forgetting.

The king thinks the model for “self-government” paving the way for healing division is... South Africa.

French Royalists have been getting into street fights. Members of the Camelots du Roi, for example, beat up a Latin Quarter café singer who sang a song which “somewhat reflected upon the private character” of Joan of Arc.

The American Federation of Labor convention passes a resolution of sympathy for the Irish, but Samuel Gompers prevents a motion for a boycott of English goods being attached.

Crime in Paris has increased so much, supposedly, that cops are now ordered to carry guns during the day.

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Today -100: June 22, 1921: Of banning Asians, banning Communists, and burning castles

The American Federation of Labor’s convention officially supports the exclusion of all Orientals from the United States. There is a fight in the convention over a proposal to boycott Britain over its policy in Ireland.

The Prussian minister of interior bans Communists from office in Prussia, down to the village level.

The Earl of Bandon, who is a former deputy lieutenant of County Cork and, of course, a Unionist, is kidnapped by the IRA, who also burn down his Castle Bernard.

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Today -100: June 21, 1921: Of sewers, smoking, lynchings, and vamps

In preparation for the visit of the king and queen to Belfast, police are inspecting the sewers for bombs, as was the custom.

Rep. Paul Johnson (D-Miss.) introduces a bill to criminalize smoking by women in the District of Columbia.

A mob near Jackson, Mississippi, lynches a young black convict who, while a trustie (sorry, spell-check: that’s how it was spelled in 1921), is alleged to have attacked a white woman.

Theda Bara is to marry director Charles Brabin.

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Today -100: June 20, 1921: Kings on the move

Britain, France and Italy try to persuade Greece to end its war with the Turkish nationalists, offering their “mediation” services. They’re hoping that Greece being forced to back down will also force King Constantine (currently visiting the front in Smyrna) out of power.

Everyone seems pretty sure former Austro-Hungarian emperor Charles will make another attempt to enter Hungary and become king on August 20th.

King George is going to Belfast Wednesday to open the Ulster Parliament, and a few rules for Belfasthoovians have been issued: no one can use their roof without a permit, saloons will have to close, etc etc.

Oh good, an innovation in lynching (McCormick, South Carolina): 

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Today -100: June 19, 1921: Of admissions, kluxers, dances, and newsies

Headline of the Day -100:  

2,000 idiots are inducted into the Ku Klux Klan near Cincinnati. 

Wellesley College expels four students for the crime of attending a townie dance without a chaperone. The dance was a reception to announce the engagement of one of the students. The father of one of the women says they have much livelier dances in Chicago. I don’t doubt it.

Harding refuses to grant D.C. public employees a half-day on Saturdays.

Automobiling etiquette is very important. So when former secretary of state Robert Lansing’s car (unclear if he or a chauffeur is driving it) knocks down a 12-year-old newsboy, tearing his pants and scattering his papers, Lansing graciously gives him two whole dollars to make good the damages, and speeds off.

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Today -100: June 18, 1921: Human

“The Reichstag is growing human,” begins a NYT article about a fist fight between Communist deputy Hermann Remmele and a nationalist (DNVP?) deputy named Mittlemann, who had agreed with another deputy who said Communists aren’t Germans and should all be killed. A general tumult ensues for several hours.

Sinn Feiners (presumably) destroy railroad signal boxes, wires, and signal cabins in London suburbs.

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Today -100: June 17, 1921: We’ll keep an eye on the men too

Supposedly, Bolshevism has “broken out” in the Polish forces in Upper Silesia.

A white mob in Autreyville, Georgia burn several houses and a negro church, presumably because they were pissed off that last week they failed to lynch a black man accused of killing a white girl last week (they will lynch him on Saturday, after he’s brought back to town for trial, a trial which seems to have been as fast, with a verdict as inevitable, as was the custom).

Ironic Headline of the Day -100:  

Chicago Beach Superintendant William Burkhardt, who last year told women bathers “Let your conscience be your guide” about bathing costumes, announces that they didn’t have a conscience and so he’s imposing rules: knickers to within 4 inches above the knees and skirts two inches below that, and one-quarter sleeves. “We’ll keep an eye on the men too,” he says.

There are no laws in the US (state or federal) preventing people flying unsafe airplanes.

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