Today -100: November 2, 1921: Insolence?

Lloyd George, who has had to cancel his trip to the Washington Conference to deal with Ireland, thinks the Irish conference could be saved if the Northern Ireland administration graciously gives up Catholic-majority counties Tyrone and Fermanagh. Like that’s a thing that could happen.

Italy and Russia sign a trade agreement.

The Senate creates a special committee to investigate allegations made by Sen. Thomas Watson (D-Georgia) yesterday that lots of US soldiers, white ones he hastens to clarify, were executed by the Army during the Great War without court-martial and that officers often shot enlisted men for “insolence.” James Wadsworth (R-NY) challenges Watson to prove his claims – what we’ve got so far is that Watson has a photo of a gallows which he claims was taken in France and people have told him at least 21 soldiers were hanged on (from?) it in a single day – but Watson refuses to do so before the Military Affairs Committee, thus the special committee. During this back and forth, Watson adds new claims to those he made yesterday: officers “made courtesans of too many of the nurses,” soldiers had no shoes, wounded soldiers were left to die in ditches, etc. Secretary of War John Weeks says the War Department is only “aware” of 10 American soldiers hanged in France (6 for rape, 1 for murder & intent to commit rape, 3 for murder and rape).

Headline of the Day -100:  

This is another protest against the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, according to a note left at the scene. Also, it was probably a grenade rather than a bomb and the consul, I guess, nudged it with his foot and walked on before it went off, so this wasn’t the action-movie sequence the headline suggests.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 1, 1921: That’s how you lost America

The British Parliament gives a vote of confidence in Lloyd George’s Irish policy, by a vote of 439-43. The vote of censure was proposed by Unionist “die hards.” Rupert Gwynne  (C-Eastbourne), seconding, declaimed “Our empire was built on considering justice and right, not on considering the opinion of other people,” to which T.P. O’Connor interjected, “That’s how you lost America.” Of course the vote is about a conference (currently between sessions) whose doings are mostly unknown to the members of Parliament, you know, the people about to vote about those doings. Lloyd George says closed-door conferences are the only ones in which you can do business. He says yes, he’s negotiating with killers and, worse, people who are not loyal to the king, but that’s who the Irish people elected. He says the issue in this vote is whether Britain should drop the negotiations, crush the rebellion, and impose terms. But it is “a question of cost.” Winning a guerilla war is tough, he says, reminding the House of the Boer War.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 31, 1921: Of bailiffs and bribes

One thing former emperor/king Charles again refuses to abdicate. They’re sending the archbishop who crowned him to ask him again. It also seems he failed to pay for that private plane that took him from Switzerland to Hungary. The bailiffs have shown up.

Prohibition investigator Howard Kiroack rejects the offer of a $25,000 bribe to drop an investigation of a big booze guy in New York. Kiroack doesn’t go to the meet and arrest the briber, because there’s never been a conviction for bribery of dry agents, he says, so why bother.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 30, 1921: Of recalls, snow insurance, and Jack the Clipper

The people of North Dakota vote to recall Gov. Lynn Frazier as well as the state attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture and labor. The new governor will be independent Ragnvald Nestos. This is the first recall of a governor in the US (with, I have to say, not much interest from the NYT).

Yugoslavs have been wondering for more than two months if their new king Alexander would ever show up in Yugoslavia, but he’s finally left the lights of Paris. The rumor is spreading, possibly from Alex’s people, that he wasn’t really laid up all this time with appendicitis but with wounds from an assassination attempt in June. Not true.

D.W. Griffith, filming “The Two Orphans,” or “Orphans of the Storm” as it will be called on release, takes out a $25,000 insurance policy against there not being sufficient snowfall while he’s filming. I smell a publicity stunt.

Marjorie Haws of Westwood, New Jersey, 17, sets off a panic by claiming that a man knocked her unconscious and cut her hair. In fact, according to an investigation by the district attorney, her story (“pure bunk”) was concocted to cover up her getting her hair bobbed against her parents’ wishes. The young women of Westwood may now feel safe.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 29, 1921: Of abdications and bunk

The Allies tell Hungary that unless Charles abdicates, they won’t oppose the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) invading. But Charles doesn’t wanna. They keep politely asking him, but haven’t turned up the pressure by, say, erecting a guillotine outside the monastery they’ve got him stashed in, and there’s no provision in Hungarian law for deposing a king.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 28, 1921: Of strikes, censures, fatal germs, ethnic cleansings, and duels

The railroad strike is off. The unions blame the successful propaganda of the roads convincing the American public that the strike would have been against the government (the Railroad Labor Board) instead of the railroad companies.

The House of Representatives votes 203-113 to expel Thomas Blanton (D-Texas) for inserting naughty words in the Congressional Record, where they might be read by children – CHILDREN!  That vote is shy of the 2/3 needed. They then censure him, 293-0. After the censure is read to him, Blanton runs out of the chamber, faints in the corridor, and makes his way to his office weeping.

Sen. Pat Harrison (D-Miss.) worries that Harding’s speech yesterday encouraging, as he sees it, negroes to seek political equality “is a blow to the white civilization of this country that will take years to combat.” It would allow the black man to become president or hold a cabinet position. (I just had to look this up: the first black man to hold a cabinet position was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Robert Weaver in 1966, and the first black man to become president was someone called Barack Hussein Obama – that can’t be right, can it?). And Sen. Thomas Watson (D-Georgia) complains that Harding “should go down in the South and plant there fatal germs in the minds of the black race.” Other racist senators chimed in as well, but I’m sick of typing out their words.

A day after cops kill two black men in Enid, Oklahoma, a parade of autos carrying hooded Klansmen politely suggests that all black people leave the town.

Ettore Ciccotti, wrongly identified in the NYT as a communist editor, loses a sword duel with Benito Mussolini, or really the duel is called after more than an hour because Ciccotti is too poorly to continue.

The German government grudgingly accepts the division of Upper Silesia. Poland already has.

Hungarian PM Count István Bethlen says Charles must abdicate. He calls the attempt to seize the throne a “putsch” and says the Chuckster cannot be trusted.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 27, 1921: All true negroes are against social equality

In Birmingham, Alabama, Pres. Harding tells a “great audience of whites and colored people” that blacks are entitled to full economic and political rights, but not to social equality, dear god no not social equality, because there will never be racial amalgamation in the US due to “a fundamental, eternal and inescapable difference.” “The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man.” He says the black man should be permitted to vote when he is fit to vote and the white man deprived of his vote when he is unfit, whatever that means, but the line got applause from the blacks in the audience and silence from the whites. He praises Lothrop Stoddard’s book The Rising Tide of Color, or to give it its full title, which Harding does not, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. He says the key is education, but he doesn’t want people, black or white, educated “into something they are not fitted to be,” which seems to mean training black people to be doctors or lawyers rather than manual laborers. The new immigration limits will soon “force us back upon our older population to find people to do the simpler, physically harder manual tasks,” so the South should treat black men better to prevent them being drawn North and West.

Also, Harding says, all white Southerners shouldn’t vote in a bloc for Democrats and all blacks shouldn’t vote in a bloc for Republicans. The latter should be easier after this godawful speech. And the Virginia Republican candidate for governor Henry Anderson (selected by a lily-white convention) saying that since whites own everything, they will continue to run the government without black assistance.

Marcus Garvey sends Harding a telegram congratulating him on the speech, saying “All true negroes are against social equality, believing that all races should develop on their own social lines.”

Feds claim there’s a radical plot for a nationwide bombing spree in the 3 days before Halloween in retaliation for Sacco & Vanzetti’s conviction or to prevent a death sentence or something.

Joseph Wirth’s new cabinet is approved by the Reichstag. Where his last was called the Cabinet of Fulfilment, this one is the Cabinet of a Predicament. Not sure who assigns these names.

US soldiers occupying the Rhine will soon be removed, and they’re not happy about it. The drop in value of the mark means they’ve been living like kings, plus the, you know, 4¢ beer.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 26, 1921: Of failed coups, strikes, business man’s cabinets, bats, and dirty, dirty words

Former emperor/king Charles accepts the Hungarian government’s terms of surrender, renouncing the throne for himself and his son (Update: No, he hasn’t). They’re stashing him in an abbey until the Allies decide what to do with him – Switzerland says he can’t come back and his entourage have to leave the country. There are stories that he tried to commit suicide, only to be dissuaded by former empress/queen Zita, which is the sort of thing the super-dramatic Hapsburgs would do but is also the sort of rumor that gets spread about them. I don’t think it’s true.

The Railroad Labor Board asks the railroads to postpone their request for a second double-digit wage reduction, in the interests of averting a strike. The railroads say no. Conflicts between various unions make the strike actually look increasingly less likely, but various governors are preparing to use troops to keep the trains moving, and 700 Harvard students volunteer to man the roads as scabs (Columbia will refuse to let its students do the same, or at least will penalize them for missed classes).

Joseph Wirth, who resigned as German chancellor Saturday, is chosen to be chancellor again and form a “business man’s” cabinet.

“Bat” Masterson dies. The last of the Olde West gunfighters, sheriff of Dodge City, etc., but more recently a sports writer and editor, he dies at his desk at the Morning Telegraph in NYC at 67.

The House of Representatives is outraged at something Thomas Blanton (D-Texas) slipped into the Congressional Record, a purported conversation between a union and a non-union printer for the Record – Blanton hates hates hates unions – and they’re considering expelling him altogether. They don’t like him anyway because he keeps demanding roll call votes and calling other congresscritters liars. They vote 313-1 to expunge whatever the offending matter was. The NYT certainly won’t tell us what it was, but we are assured it is so filthy it could not legally be sent through the mails.  And here’s some of it, exactly as it was printed: “G__d D___n your black heart, you ought to have it torn out of you, you u____ s_____ of a b_____. You and the Public Printer has no sense. You k_____ his a____ and he is a d_____d fool for letting you do it.” (I can’t figure out what the U-word is).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 25, 1921: Of beer, königputsches, pardons, and lynchings

Since the Senate failed to pass a bill banning beer, the IRS is forced to draw up  rules for medicinal beer (technically, the prescribing of beer has been legal but without these regulations it couldn’t be done). No more than 2½ gallons of beer, or 2 quarts of wine can be prescribed at one time. Doctors are not permitted to prescribe booze for themselves. (Only 9 states permit prescribing beer, though: California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin).

The Hungarian authorities arrest former emperor Charles and Mrs. former emperor Zita 40 miles from Budapest. The details are somewhat unclear, thanks to Hungarian censorship. It sounds like a couple of hundred of the soldiers who defected to Charles were killed in clashes and more of the army stayed loyal to the government than the Carlists expected (they’d anticipated marching triumphantly into Budapest unopposed, their path strewn with flowers). So the army was able to surround them, forcing a surrender and some ignominious fleeing. The Allies demand that Charles be deposed as king (the government’s position has been that he is actually king but that circumstances prevent him ruling at present), which they didn’t demand even after Charles’ last coup attempt last Spring.

To celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III pardons, among others, Fascists who attacked Socialists (and vice versa, but we know who the aggressors mostly were) and legionaries who supported Fiume’s independence against Italy.

A black man is seized by a lynch mob at the railroad station in Fairfax, South Carolina, where a sheriff who had arrested him for murdering a white farmer was trying to get him to Columbia “for safekeeping.” The mob shoots him and burns the body, possibly post-mortem, possibly not.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 24, 1921: Inevitable and final catastrophes are the worst kind of catastrophe

The forces supporting former emperor Charles’s coup attempt in Hungary send government forces fleeing in their first encounter. The Horthy government reassures the Allies that the monarchy will not be restored – at this time – and that Charles will be forced to leave the country. It declares martial law and calls on the people to “restrain the royalists and plotters who are plunging Hungary into inevitable and final catastrophe.” The NYT is full of unverified rumors: the Horthy government has fallen; Charles is already in Budapest; Czechoslovakia is about to invade; Yugoslavia is about to invade; Romania is about to invade...

Paris police & troops again prevent Communists from protesting the Sacco & Vanzetti convictions at the US Embassy.

The Workers’ League, a radical-communist group running candidates in the NYC elections, complains about their meetings being broken up by cops and Socialists, accusing the latter of resorting to “capitalistic violence.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

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.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik premieres.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.