Today -100: October 23, 1921: Of kingly coups, assassinations, and resignations

Former Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles is back in Hungary, arriving in disputed West Hungary by plane from his Swiss exile (reportedly his first ever ride in an aeroplane), in his second attempt this year to become King of All the Hungaries. He’s gathering supportive troops.

There’s a lot of tut-tutting in England about de Valera’s letter to the pope. I’m beginning to wonder if Lloyd George would actually prefer the discussions with Sinn Féin to fail so he can hold a general election on the subject of rejecting Irish independence and keep his rickety coalition together a little longer.

50 Irish political prisoners in Cork go on hunger strike.

Bulgarian Minister of War Alexander Dimitrov is assassinated, along with his chauffeur and a couple of others.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth and his cabinet resign, precipitated by Upper Silesia and the dramatic fall of the mark.

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Today -100: October 22, 1921: Of strikes, grenades, and lawbreakers

The Railroad Labor Board orders unions not to strike until after a conference it’s calling and then after any other delay it can think of.

Someone throws a grenade during a Paris meeting called by the Communists to protest the prospective execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. No dead, 20+ injured. Cops on horses prevent the meeting’s audience marching on the American Embassy.

A mob seizes 2 black “boys” from jail in Pilot Point, Texas and flogs them. A notice to the local paper signed “K.K.K.” says “Yes, we did it. This should be a warning to all loafers and lawbreakers.” Possibly they don’t understand that people who kidnap and assault other people are themselves lawbreakers.

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Today -100: October 21, 1921: Of excess public functionaries, churlishness, lynch laws, and what’s the moon fucking doing now?

Portuguese Prime Minister António Granjo and former president António Machado Santos are assassinated (along with others) during the coup. One item on the program of the coup regime, along with reducing the deficit and suchlike, is “deal with the problem of the excess of public functionaries.”

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De Valera is sure His Holiness won’t be mislead by the “ambiguities” of King George’s recent missive to the Vatican into believing that the Irish people owe allegiance to the king. The Times of London says the letter is “unmannerly to the point of churlishness,” which is a very Times reproach.

Cambridge University’s Senate again refuses to allow women limited membership in the university, as male undergrads outside chant “We won’t have women.” They celebrate their victory according to the customs of asshole Oxbridge undergrads with an attack on women-only Newnham College, ramming its gates (not a metaphor).

The House Judiciary Committee favorably reports out an anti-lynching bill, with penalties of 5 years to life for any participant in a lethal lynch mob, and 5 years or a fine for officials whose neglect of duty allows a lynching to occur. Also, the county in which a lynching took place would be liable to pay $10,000 to the families of lynch victims.

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Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik premieres.

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Today -100: October 20, 1921: Of coups, perfume bombs, and lynch mobs

Military coup in Portugal.

Germany threaten an economic boycott of the parts of Upper Silesia granted to Poland.

A bomb (actually a grenade) is sent to US Ambassador to France Myron Herrick, in the guise of a package from “a well-known perfumery house,” but it only injures his English valet, who luxuriates in the very English-valet name Blanchard. Blanchard recognized the sound from his wartime service and hurls it into the bathroom. The police won’t let the ambassador into the crime scene to get his evening clothes, so the bomb inconveniences him by forcing him to go out to play bridge in the same clothes he’s been wearing all day. The French police suspect the Communists, who have been sending letters to Herrick about Sacco and Vanzetti. 

Police thwart a lynch mob in Vineland, NJ, getting confessed alliterative negro child-slayer Louis Lively to safety, which is nice of them considering he shot a cop who tried to capture him.

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Today -100: October 19, 1921: Peace, peace, and another peace, ain’t it grand

The Senate ratifies the peace treaty with Germany, 66-20. The treaty with Austria gets the same vote, that with Hungary is ratified by 66 to 17. Borah (R-Idaho) denounces the treaties as a secret plot to force the US into the League of Nations, somehow, eventually.

The German mark continues to drop dramatically in value. The Berlin Bourse will close every day this week except Thursday.

Former king of Bavaria Ludwig III dies. Contrary to the NYT obit, his wife did not die the same day he abdicated (nor did he properly abdicate).

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Today -100: October 18, 1921: It is not anti anything but wrong

In his last day of testimony to the House, Imperial Wizard William Simmons accuses the New York World of planning to have one of its employees tarred & feathered and blame it on the Klan. He again says the KKK isn’t anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, or anti-negro; “It is not anti anything but wrong.” The House committee seems to have decided not to proceed with its investigation, leaving it up to the Justice Department.

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Today -100: October 17, 1921: Boys and their toys

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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.

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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.

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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

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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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