Today -100: October 16, 1921: Of strikes, governors, passports, and corsets

A big railroad strike is called for the 30th after railroad companies announce an additional 10% wage reduction following a 12% reduction approved by the Railroad Labor Board in July. The strike will include mail trains.

Taking office as governor of the colonial Philippines, Gen. Leonard Wood says “There must be no turning backward in the Christian faith,” which he thanks the Spanish imperialists for imbuing in the Filipinos. Also, he thinks the Philippines should have a common language. Which should be English. 

Senate Republicans aren’t sure they have the votes to ratify the peace treaty with Germany, especially with the late Philander Knox’s seat vacant and increasing opposition led by Woodrow Wilson, so they may postpone the vote until they can pressure Penn. Gov. William Sproul to quickly replace Knox (Sproul denies a rumor that he’ll resign as governor to take the seat himself).

At the Washington conference, the French may propose abolishing passports.

Ad of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 15, 1921: Of non-reapportionment and deeds

The House of Representatives rejects a bill to increase the number of Representatives, as part of reapportionment, to 460. It also rejects a plan for reapportionment that would keep the membership at 435 and another plan, from George Tinkham (R-Mass.), to reduce it to 425 and to base reapportionment on the number of registered voters rather than total population, thus reducing the representation of Southern states that disfranchise black people.

In Texas in January, a woman sold (or at least transferred “ownership” of) her 3-month old baby to another woman. When that woman moved to Florida, she went to the court house to have the deed registered. They’re pretty sure – but not entirely sure – that the whole thing is illegal.

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Today -100: October 14, 1921: Of persecutions, bitter injustices, hard-faced Balkan peasants, and leaks

A New York team wins the World Series.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Testifying before the House committee, Imperial Wizard, to give him his full title, William Simmons calls on God to “forgive those who have persecuted the Klan” and then dramatically collapses. He says the Klan is not anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish or anti-negro or anti-foreign, although all these people are banned from membership (well, “any Jew who can subscribe to the tenets of the Christian religion can get in”). He graciously asserts that if Harding resigned and the people proclaimed Simmons absolute monarch, he would refuse.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth decries the “bitter injustice” of the League of Nations division of Upper Silesia: “As long as there is German history the separation of these German cities in Upper Silesia will be felt as a colossal injustice.” (Plus, one might add, 43 of its 67 coal mines). The cities, Beuthen, Königshütte and Kattowitz, he points out, all voted strongly to join Germany rather than Poland. He thought he had an agreement with Britain on Upper Silesia and only accepted the Allied ultimatum on that basis, and doesn’t see how his government can now survive (which is a shift from the rumor that it would resign).

A large demonstration of the unemployed march on Whitehall and are violently attacked by police, as was the custom.

The Bulgarian government that got Bulgaria into World War I is put on trial.  The special court includes 7 real judges and 12 special judges described as “hard-faced Balkan peasants with only one collar among the lot.”

The Irish delegates to the Ireland conference complain about leaks to the press, according to a, well, you know, leak to the press.

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Today -100: October 13, 1921: A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire

Sen. Philander Knox, former attorney general under McKinley and Roosevelt and secretary of state under Taft, dies of apoplexy, as was the custom.

William Simmons, founder and imperial hood-meister of the modern Klan, defends his organization before a House committee. He says there is no room in the Klan for those who take the law into their own hands and “We have been charged with everything from the wave of high prices to the sweeping march of the boll weevil.”

Detroit bans a planned KKK Thanksgiving Day parade.

The German government threatens to resign if the League of Nations decision on Upper Silesia is, as rumor has it, to divide it between Poland and Germany.

The British and Irish delegations to the Ireland conference both bring lists of breaches of the truce by the other side. In an interview Michael Collins says he’s an optimist; “A man would need to be an optimist to hold up the British Empire.”

Margaret Sanger plans to open birth control clinics in Southern states which haven’t gotten around to making them illegal.

Dr. E. Stillman Bailey proselytizes for the beneficial effects of radium. Why, radium miners in Colorado were immune to the Spanish Flu and never get gout. He likes to give radium tablets to his patients, especially old people, and swears by the results. If you’re wondering what Bailey eventually died of: apoplexy. It was the custom.

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Today -100: October 12, 1921: Of lynchings, milk, unsavory organizations, and people with too many children and too little imagination

A lynch mob in Leesburg, Texas burn 19-year-old Wylie McNeeley, a black man accused of assaulting a presumably white 8-year-old girl, at the stake. Hundreds of people watch.

Harding says of the forthcoming disarmament conference that it’s “hard to imagine justifications” for conflict between peoples on opposite sides of the Pacific (i.e., the US and Japan).

The British-Irish talks begin, with little leaking from them. We do know that the British complained that Sinn Féin courts in Dublin are fining milkmen who sell adulterated milk. One can only imagine Michael Collins across the table from Winston Churchill. I count at least two on the Sinn Féin side who will meet violent deaths within a year or so.

There’s a civil war beginning in China, the NYT reports, in a two-paragraph story on the bottom of page 14.

Nothing interesting in the first day of Congressional hearings into the Ku Klux Klan (except a lovely typo in the NYT Index).

Elsewhere, the New York City Board of Aldermen calls the Klan an “unsavory organization.” And someone tries to shoot Elizabeth Tyler, who evidently survived the old morals charges arrest problem to become head of the Woman’s Department of the KKK.

The federal prohibition director says the cost of prohibition enforcement in the last fiscal year was $6,250,095.43, but penalties, taxes etc brought in $2,152,000 plus seized property worth nearly $11 million, and of course bribes.

Highland Park, Michigan, which already fired married women municipal employees, bans the hiring of new unmarried women.

A.B. Burgess, a black Georgian, has 32 children by 3 wives, including 7 sets of twins and 2 sets of triplets. After a while, he just ran out of names, having two Sallies and two Willies (stop it!), so he didn’t bother naming the most recent twins, and they picked their own names when they started school (the article does not enlighten us on those names).

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Today -100: October 11, 1921: Of expensive lawyers, boycotts, and balloons

Atlanta lawyer W.H. Terrell sues the Ku Klux Klan for $100,000 for his services as general council until he quit a year ago. He demands the Klan produce all its minutes, rules, financial records, etc. Terrell is a member of the Atlanta Board of Education. 

To dramatize his proposed boycott of foreign products, Gandhi burns a large pile of imported clothing.

Harry Fox leaps from a burning balloon (ok, just the guide rope was burning; maybe he over-reacted?) over Point Pleasant, West Virginia, although his parachute was also on fire. It functions most but not all of the 1,500 feet down and he lands on some sand with just some broken ribs. He says he’ll continue flying. His father and brother have both died in separate airplane accidents.

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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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