Today -100: October 10, 1921: Of marches, duties, and fatal shaving brushes

Pacifist groups will be banned from organized labor’s Armistice Day celebrations at Madison Square Garden.

Speaking of celebrations, a parade in Cincinnati for the Holy Name Society is marked by no fewer than three marchers dropping dead of heart attacks.

In advance of the Washington Conference on Disarmament, French PM Aristide Briand says “no country more than France has the duty to remain armed so long as her security is not assured.”

The Central American Federation of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is now a thing.

Ways In Which You Could Die in 1921 Which You’re a Lot less Likely to Now: anthrax-infected shaving brushes.

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Today -100: October 9, 1921: Of arms, lunarian foliage, and textbook propriety

Babe Ruth has an infected arm and drops out of the World Series. Anyway, the game is rained out. 15 men with badges who may or may not have been real prohibition agents try to get into the game without paying, and after a long argument are refused, to the delight of others in line. The federal prohibition director says none of his agents were tasked with inspecting the World Series for prohibition violations. This World Series is the first broadcast by radio, on KDKA, Pittsburgh’s news leader.

Harvard Astronomy Prof. William H. Pickering says there is life on the Moon. There are crops growing in craters, he says. And he found them with a 50-year-old crappy telescope; imagine what he could find with a better one. In the past Pickering discovered two of the moons of Saturn, one of which, Phoebe, is actually real.

There are 82 known Saturnian moons now, by the way, many with cool names, some with no names at all, which is sad.

NYPD Patrolman Lovitt saves two black men being attacked by a mob after an attack on a presumably white 12-year-old girl (there’ s no evidence the two men had anything to do with it). The cop has to pull his gun to extricate the men from the mob and get them to the relative safety of a police station, although if any of the mob want to find them again, the NYT helpfully provides their addresses.

The New York City school district creates a committee to check whether history textbooks “contain matter either in derogation or in disparagement of the accomplishments of American heroes, and questioning the sincerity of the aims and ideals of the founders of the Republic, and to those who have guided its destinies.” The chair of the committee says it’s not about whether the statements were true “but whether propriety would be observed if they were included in them.”

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Today -100: October 8, 1921: Of fatties and non-lynchings

Fatty Arbuckle is arrested by the feds for having possession of liquor at That Party.

A lynch mob drives from Fort Worth to Dallas to lynch a black man who stuck up a party, but they give up and go home instead.

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Today -100: October 7, 1921: Of individualism, rewards, charters, and a good deal of Jolson

Headline of the Day -100:  

The New Economic Policy (NEP). Also, “full evening dress is now not uncommon among the opera-goers.”

The German government issues warrants for the leaders of the March 1920 Kapp Putsch, including Wolfgang Kapp. There’s a reward of 50,000 marks, which is the equivalent of some money. I think all eight men fled the country. Still, what took so long?

West Virginia Secretary of State Houston Young refuses to issue a charter to the state Ku Klux Klan. 

I’d almost forgotten about Fiume. A Prof. Riccardo Zanella is elected president of the independent state of Fiume by the Constitutional Assembly. He was a professor of bookkeeping. He is opposed by the Fascists, who want Fiume annexed by Italy.

Alexander Woollcott reviews the premiere of Al Jolson’s new show Bombo. “[T]here is a good deal of Jolson,” he says. Woollcott spoils some of the jokes, to no great loss if you ask me. Maybe it’s the way he told ‘em. Of the songs, he mentions the proffer of “another Mammy song,” but fails to mention the new songs “California, Here I Come,” “April Showers,” and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goo’ Bye!” Woollcott also fails to say anything about the plot, in which Jolson plays a slave of Columbus. In black face, of course.

 

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Today -100: October 6, 1921: Of sepoys and extraditions

Gandhi et al issue a manifesto calling on Indians in the Indian Army or working for the colonial government to quit.

Indiana Gov. Warren McCray refuses to extradite David Robb, a United Mine Workers organizer, to West Virginia, saying he could not get a fair trial there. McCray also points out that Robb was actually deported from West Virginia, so he is not a fugitive from justice and no backsies.

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Today -100: October 5, 1921: Of stunt fliers and any necessary force

Professional stunt flier Madeline Davis, 23, stunts her last fly, attempting to jump from a moving automobile onto a moving aeroplane. She grabs the rope ladder but loses her grip.

San Antonio’s police chief and sheriff say they will stop a planned KKK parade with “any necessary force,” and six district judges call on grand juries to investigate masked bands, you know, not just the KKK but all the other ones (there are no other ones).

The United Mine Workers’ union bans Kluxers from membership.

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Today -100: October 4, 1921: Of regulated households

Juan Huyke is appointed commissioner of education for Puerto Rico, the first actual Puerto Rican in the role under US occupation. English will be taught in schools equally with Spanish.

The Michigan Supreme Court rules that a husband is legally responsible if his wife makes and sells home brew in their home because the “husband is the head of the family and has the right at common law to regulate his household”.

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Today -100: October 3, 1921: Of assassinations, internees, councillors, and crashes

Two more Italian MPs are shot, one (Socialist) assassinated, presumably by Fascists, in Bari, the other (Fascist) when police open fire at a banned Fascist march in Modena. Some cops disobey the orders to shoot.

Sinn Féin would like the British to release the 4,000 interned without charge, please and thank you.

In Paris, Communists celebrate (and by celebrate I mean break a few windows, as was the custom) the election to the Paris Municipal Council of André Marty, who is serving a long sentence for his role, whatever that was, in the Black Sea Fleet mutiny at Sebastopol in 1919.

King Alexander of Yugoslavia, who is in Paris and is supposed to be too ill to return to his homeland, while driving his car on the Champs-Élysées crashes into the car of the Italian ambassador, because only people with titles are allowed to drive on the Champs-Élysées, I assume.

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Today -100: October 2, 1921: Oh, that’s the problem?

A sheriff’s posse and a KKK parade in Lorena, Texas get into a gunfight. The sheriff is shot twice and several others are wounded.

The French Ministry of Justice says duelists will be prosecuted because “the war has cost us too much blood.”

Some rich American wants to find an apartment for the winter in Paris. 9 rooms, 2 baths, price no object. So he hires a plane and drops 100,000 cards over the city, because he’s never heard of a classified ad.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Chicago Police will stop using stool pigeons, the Grand Jury says.

Betting on the World Series is underway. Gimme a sawbuck on New York.

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Today -100: October 1, 1921: Of harsh dictations, bibles in schools, and merry parties

Éamon de Valera accepts Lloyd George’s invitation to talks.

The German Reichstag ratifies the peace treaty with the US. A Communist deputy calls it “the harsh dictation of the New York Stock Exchange.” Only the Communists vote no, but some right-wing deputies leave the chamber without casting a vote.

István Friedrich, former Prime Minister of Hungary in 1919, declares West Hungary, which is supposed to go back to Austria, an independent republic.

Church groups plan a test case to get the Supreme Court to rule on whether the Bible can be excluded from public schools. They’ll focus on Washington State, which has such a ban. The Presbyterian Synod of Washington says the Declaration of Independence is a covenant between God and the US, so children have to study the Bible to understand that covenant, that’s just science.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“It was a merry party, but there was no liquor.”

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Today -100: September 30, 1921: Obnoxious

New York Gov. Nathan Miller accuses Police Commissioner Richard Enright of violating constitutional rights in his enforcement of Prohibition, which he calls an “obnoxious law” being enforced in such a way as to make it more obnoxious.

Lloyd George invites Sinn Féin leaders to a conference on October 11th, “with a view to ascertaining how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire may best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.” He will meet with them as “spokesmen of the people you represent,” which is vague as hell, but hopefully can allow for a meeting without LG having to recognize them as representatives of an Irish Republic and without their having to give up their understanding of themselves as just that.

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Today -100: September 29, 1921: Hit ‘em with a pie, Fatty

Police Judge Sylvain Lazarus (!) rules that Fatty Arbuckle can be released on bail, because the evidence doesn’t support a charge greater than manslaughter. Lazarus says “This is an important case. We are not trying Roscoe Arbuckle alone. We are not trying the screen celebrity who has given joy and pleasure to all the world. Actually, in a large sense, we are trying ourselves. We are trying our present-day morals, our present-day social conditions, our present-day looseness of thought and lack of social balance. ... We need not speak of bacchanalianism, or saturnalianism, or sybaritism, or any of the terms of the ancient days. We are supposed to live and breathe and have our being in a better and more advanced age.” One with thesauruses. He blames the St. Francis Hotel management for not stopping the “orgy.” On his release, Arbuckle is greeted by women shouting “Hurrah for Fatty,” “Good for you, Fatty,” and “Hit ‘em with a pie, Fatty.” Fatty is going home to Los Angeles, presumably in his custom-made $26,000 car which the authorities were talking about seizing if it could be proved he’d had alcohol in it when he drove to San Francisco for the orgy. (Update: he takes the train.)

There’s been a lot of fuss recently about Russia supposedly executing members of its relief committee. Russia denies it.

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Today -100: September 28, 1921: Don’t worry, eventually someone drinks it

Two are killed in fights between Italian Fascists and Socialists near Mola di Bari, where socialist deputy Giuseppe di Vagno was murdered earlier this month.

The lawyer for a black man on trial in Muskogee, Oklahoma for theft of livestock asks prospective jurors whether they’re Klan members. 3 admit membership. The judge says he won’t allow the question in the future.

A federal grand jury of the Chicago PD hears of gangs of cops “confiscating” whisky shipments, then selling them off, then demanding protection money from the people they sold them to, then raiding them anyway, seizing the whisky again, then selling it again....

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Today -100: September 27, 1921: Of eugenics and assassinations

Speakers at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in New York, support birth control. But they say college-educated women should pop out more babies.

Assassination attempt on Polish Pres. Józef Pilsudski. 3 shots fired, Count Grabowski hit in the leg. Pilsudski drops him off at the hospital and proceeds to the theater as planned. No word on what play he was so determined to see.

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Today -100: September 26, 1921: Of assassination attempts, bombs, officer-bootleggers, and duels

In the Hungarian National Assembly, a former army lieutenant takes five shots at former foreign minister of Austria-Hungary Gyula Andrássy and former president of the National Assembly Dr. Rakovsky. Neither is hit. The lieutenant, Ibraham Kover, “gave evidences of insanity,” but the police don’t buy it, claiming he’s part of a widespread conspiracy to kill monarchists trying to restore Emperor Charles.

In other Hungary news, the country tells the Allies that it is unable to get Hungarian insurgents out of Burgenland, the territory assigned to Austria. Austria thinks this is part of the plot to restore the former emperor.

Sinn Féiners and Orangemen throw bombs at each other on the streets of Belfast, as was the custom. There are also looters and snipers.

Greece thinks it’s doing well in its war with the Turkish nationalists, and plans to annex part of Anatolia.

Chicago Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris says half the city’s cops are bootleggers. The feds are investigating the force. Fitzmorris says prohibition enforcement in Chicago is a joke.

France will prosecute two duelists, the Count de Poret and Camille la Farge, as well as their seconds. They started off with pistols in a Paris park, each shooting and missing twice. They then moved on to swords, both taking several wounds over an hour and a half. The cause of the duel is unknown.

Premiering today: Rudolph Valentino in Camille, starring Alla Nazimova.

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Today -100: September 25, 1921: Of kluxers, tainted aliens, and tarzans

Headline of the Day -100:  

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke resigns, taking his aide/girlfriend Mrs Elizabeth Tyler with him. The police records of their 1919 arrest on morals charge seem to have mysteriously disappeared. (Cute “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” ref in that headline, btw).

Headline of the Day -100:  

17-year-old John Weismuller, the future Tarzan, breaks the world 100-yard swimming record.

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Today -100: September 24, 1921: Of women MPs

Margaret Wintringham wins a by-election in Lincolnshire, becoming the third woman ever elected to the British House of Commons, the 2nd to take her seat. And unlike the Countess Markievicz (Irish) and Lady Astor (American), she’s properly British. She is the widow of Thomas Wintringham, the previous MP for the seat. She’s a Liberal and a prohibition activist.

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Today -100: September 23, 1921: Of peace treaties and furtive kluxers

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) plans to lead opposition to Harding’s peace treaty with Germany, as he did against the League of Nations. He’s especially worried that the US will appoint reps to the reparations committee and other Allied commissions established by the Versailles Treaty. He wants at least Senate approval of such reps.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty may summon Ku Klux Klan leaders to Washington for interrogation. He says the US doesn’t need organizations to help enforce the law.

Missouri Gov. Arthur Hyde condemns the Klan as “furtive” and says the Masons are not involved with it.

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Today -100: September 22, 1921: Look out if you do not heed these signs

Diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia resume; a German ambassador arrives in Moscow.

NY Mayor John Hylan issues a proclamation, which he sends to businessmen, merchants, and shopkeepers, accusing “hate-crazed newspaper publishers” of attacking New York (i.e., reporting on violent police attacks on unemployed people) and advertising the city as “a paradise for criminals.” He demands that newspapers publish his proclamation in full without editing it (he puts edit in scare quotes).

Ku Klux Klan Imperial Kleagle E.Y. Clarke and Mrs Elizabeth Tyler, the people effectively running the Klan since Imperial Wizard William Simmons disappeared into a bottle, resign after revelations about their arrest in 1919 on morals charges, but Simmons hasn’t yet accepted.

300 Klansmen parade through Shawnee, Oklahoma. They ensure that the local newspaper cover it by kidnapping the editor, as was the custom. The parade’s banners warn joy-riders and adulterers and lawyers, and say “Don’t follow us; it’s not safe,” “We’ll be back; be careful and be a man,” “Look out if you do not heed these signs,” “We have your taw,” “You can’t eat grub your wife made by washing.” No idea what the last two mean. Anyone?

Headline of the Day -100:  

I can think of one.

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Today -100: September 21, 1921: Of commercialized race hatred

Britain accuses Russia of going back on its promise not to conspire against the British in India and Afghanistan. The charges include some minor conspiring but are mostly about propaganda.

The NAACP asks Pres. Harding for an investigation of the KKK, possibly followed by legislation against “commercialized race hatred.” Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty plans to consider maybe possibly doing something about the Klan.

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