Today -100: November 15, 1921: Of submarines, mutts and jeffs, Americans and other white people, music hall turns, and smiles

At the Washington Conference, Britain wants submarines outlawed. Or at least sharply limited.

The Supreme Court rules that syndicated cartoonist Bud Fisher rather than the Hearst newspaper chain’s publishers owns the characters Mutt and Jeff.

Gen. Eli Cole of the Marine Corps tells a Senate committee how in 1917 the Marines coerced the Haitian president into dissolving the Constituent Assembly. He says martial law will be necessary as long as the US is occupying Haiti (Spoiler Alert: until 1934) because “venal” Haitian courts would allow Haitians to kill “Americans and other white people” with impunity.

French serial killer Henri Landru, now in the second week of his trial, has signed a contract to give monologues in a music hall (if acquitted, of course) for 2,500 francs a week, which is the equivalent of some money. A reporter covering the trial for a Toulouse newspaper left the courtroom, saying it was driving him crazy, and then shot himself.

The Cherokee are suing Texas in the US Supreme Court, claiming 1 million acres in East Texas acknowledged to be theirs by the 1822 treaty with the Republic of Texas.

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Today -100: November 14, 1921: Of birth control, mutineers, and Fascists

NY police halt Margaret Sanger’s birth control meeting and arrest her, along with Mary Winsor. The order to ban the meeting came from a police commissioner before a single word was spoken. The subject of the meeting: “Birth Control: Is It Moral?” Sanger says she believes the “influence of the Catholic Church” was behind the ban. And she’s right. The archbishop called the cops on her. The charges will be dismissed tomorrow.

Paris’s 20th Arrondissement votes a plurality for Monsieur Badina, currently serving a prison sentence for the 1919 Black Sea mutiny, to the municipal council. This is the second Black Sea mutineer in a row elected to the council (André Marty’s election was annulled). There will have to be a run-off since he fell shy of an outright majority.

The Italian government seems to be persuading delegates to the Fascist congress to leave Rome, which is still under more or less general strike.

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Today -100: November 13, 1921: We have no sordid ends to serve

The Washington Conference begins. Harding welcomes the delegates “with unselfish hands.” His hands, not theirs: “We harbor no fears, we have no sordid ends to serve. We suspect no enemy. We contemplate or apprehend no conquest.”

The US puts forward proposals for the disarmament conference: a 10-year pause in navy ship-building, with the US immediately scrapping 30 capital ships, Britain 19, and Japan 17, leaving them with 18, 22 and 10 respectively. New capital ships in the future to be limited in size (which certainly has nothing to do with US ships having to be small enough to go through the Panama Canal, perish the thought). The US would have to get rid of quite a few destroyers, presumably selling them off, so the naval arms race would might not be stopped so much as transferred to, say, South America. There’s no provision for naval aircraft, since commercial aircraft can fairly easily be converted to military use. 

Walther Nernst wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on thermochemistry – not for his work on poison gas during the war.

Japanese Finance Minister Baron Takahashi Korekiyo is named prime minister following the assassination of Hara Takashi last week.

Margaret Sanger announces the opening this Wednesday of a birth control clinic in NYC, the first such clinic in the US.

Russian Minister of War Leon Trotsky says Poland is preparing to attack Russia again.

The Landru trial: Henri Desiré Landru is questioned about entries in his notebook showing that when he took one of his many fiances to the country – the last time she was ever seen – he bought a round-trip ticket for himself but a one-way ticket for her. There’s nothing worse than a cheap-ass serial killer.

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Today -100: November 12, 1921: #CancelCulture1921

Gandhi calls for a meeting in Lahore to remove the statue of 1860s Viceroy Lord Lawrence. 

The Northern Irish government rejects Lloyd George’s proposals, especially the idea of an All-Ireland Parliament, and refuses to even discuss them with the British government. They’ll be putting forward their own proposal. Lloyd George has prorogued Parliament so that he doesn’t have to answer any questions about Ireland. The speaker of the Ulster Senate, the Marquess of Dufferin, says “Ulstermen would hang on to Ulster with their teeth, hands and toes; they owe this duty to the dead.”

In Baltimore, veterans drop out of an Armistice Day parade before it reaches the reviewing stand, and later turn their backs on Mayor William Broening, to protest his refusal to ban a disarmament meeting.

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Today -100: November 11, 1921: People’s private lives are no concern, either of justice or the police

They do the Unknown Soldier thing in the Capitol.

The NYT thinks Northern Ireland can’t possibly refuse to help the British government come to a deal on Ireland. Man, they do not know Ulster at all, do they?

Henri Landru, French serial killer extraordinaire, refuses to relate to the court his no doubt perfectly reasonable account of his relations with all those women who mysteriously disappeared. “I had business dealings with these women. Beyond that their affairs do not concern me. People’s private lives are no concern, either of justice or the police.” He does give the court a lesson on feminine psychology, explaining why all those women whose furniture he sold after they disappeared had told people that they were going off to marry him: they didn’t want to admit that they were selling their furniture because of financial difficulties, so they just told people they were engaged to him.

Anatole France is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. I will admit to never having read anything by him.

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Today -100: November 10, 1921: Of socialists, anti-fascist strikes, various phases of birth control, and overstuffed leather chairs

Socialists did badly in the NY elections, losing all their seats in the state Assembly and the NYC Board of Aldermen.

Railway and electrical light workers in Rome go on strike to protest a Fascist convention being held in the city, although some smartass asked how the Fascists are supposed to leave with no trains running.

The American Birth Control League is formed, with Margaret Sanger president. There will be a free public meeting, at which “various phases of birth control will be discussed,” according to an ad in the NYT. Sanger has a new book, Woman and the New Race, whose contents, the ad says, “cannot be fully described here.”

Congress cheaped out on funding for the Washington disarmament conference ($200,000), so “There will be no overstuffed leather chairs or mahogany desks and bookcases.”

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Today -100: November 9, 1921: Of mayors, pacifist bombs, and bluebeards

NYC elections: Mayor John Hylan is easily re-elected, and other Tammany candidates sweep almost every local and state election. Hylan spends most of his victory speech complaining about newspapers that opposed him, as is the custom. He even names the papers he claims violated “the standards of honest journalism, the ordinary standards of decency and a proper regard for the fair name of the city,” and ranks nine of them by the order of the degree to which they violated those standards, starting with the New York Tribune. The NYT is #6. He blames the New York World for his wife’s nervous indigestion.

On NY state ballot measures, voters rejected hiring preferences in the civil service for veterans and increasing legislators’ salaries, while establishing children’s courts and courts of domestic relations, and imposing a literacy test for voting.

Kentucky election results: at least 10 dead.

A Senate resolution asks that the Washington Conference on disarmament be open to the press.

Another gunfight between Fascists and Communists in Italy, near Novi. A Communist Deputy, Francesco Misiano, is shot twice.

Unclear on the Concept: 

Serial killer Henri Landru defends himself in court. Asked why he repeatedly advertised for a wife, he says it was to meet the class of person who might have furniture to sell.

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Today -100: November 8, 1921: Of monuments and mistaken executions

The French village of Varangéville returns a war monument they’d ordered after spotting the words “Made in Germany.”

A former Marine lieutenant explains to a Senate Committee that a black prisoner in Haiti was executed by mistake following orders from a now conveniently dead captain. How does such a mistake happen? Well, the unnamed Haitian was black, if that’s any help.

I hadn’t realized the US Marines had the authority to execute Haitians.

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Today -100: November 7, 1921: As few as is necessary

The Bishop of Exeter says “I pray and hope that as few Irish as is necessary will be killed to uphold the British Empire.”

The All-India Congress Committee adopts Gandhi’s resolution for civil disobedience, including complete non-cooperation and tax resistance.

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Another in the ongoing award-winning series Everything in Russia is Fucked, Probably. See also (a few days ago), Russian Children Living Feral in the Woods.

The Hungarian National Assembly votes to dethrone Charles and the Hapsburg dynasty. All participants in his königputsch, except the leaders, are pardoned.

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Today -100: November 6, 1921: Of orgies of corruption, exiles, and bluebeards

The Senate is working on a tax bill. It rejects 38-28 a proposal to keep the excess-profits tax and use it for a veterans’ bonus.

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This is the NYC mayoral race. Lawyer Samuel Untermyer warns that if John Hylan is re-elected, the brakes will come off, leading to the aforementioned orgies of corruption. Also public transit fares will increase. He accuses Hylan and his minions of smearing Republican/Coalition candidate Henry Curran as a friend of Henry Ford and an anti-semite.

A Macy’s ad says the store will be closed until noon on election day so its employees can vote. And Saks will open a less generous hour and a half late.

As former emperor/king Charles & consort Zita head into exile, we hear, I think for the first time, that Zita is pregnant with their 8th child.

The trial of Henri Landru for the murders of 11 women (11 of, no doubt, many) begins tomorrow and France is very excited; “vaudevilles and cabarets resounded with Landru jokes and songs.” Sadly, we are not given examples of these serial-killer jokes.

The government of Bermuda decides to retain its ban on automobiles.

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Today -100: November 5, 1921: What did Lafayette ever do to you?

Japan’s Prime Minister (since 1918) Hara Takashi is stabbed to death with a sword, no less, at Tokyo Station by someone misidentified by the NYT as a Korean “fanatic.” In fact he’s not Korean but a right-wing Japanese fanatic. Hara was a Christian. And a commoner, the first commoner PM.

The Senate votes to create that committee to investigate the charge by Thomas Watson (D-Georgia) that lots of soldiers were executed during the war without trial, and his other claims. Watson says he won’t cooperate, in a speech in which he defies the Senate to expel him and insults the Marquis de Lafayette (you know, from the Revolutionary War) for some reason.

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Today -100: November 4, 1921: No use crying

All sorts of mayhem in the strike by New York City milk drivers against the distributers’ attempt to break their union; trucks attacked, trucks hijacked, scabs beaten. The streets run white with milk.

Foreigners have been rushing in to Germany to buy shit at dirt-cheap prices thanks to the collapse of the mark, and Germans are not best pleased at the resulting shortages in shops. German customs officials have been ordered to seize these exchange-rate bargains for evading export rules.

Two Socialists who were elected to the NYC Board of Aldermen in 1919, Algernon Leo and Edward Cassidy, are finally permitted to take their seats. Timothy Sullivan, who has been sitting in Cassidy’s seat for nearly two years, voted to unseat himself and will donate the salary he’s been drawing to a charity of Cassidy’s choosing.

The Hungarian government submits a bill removing the Hapsburg dynasty’s rights to the Hungarian throne and postponing the election of a new king. The Little Entente are not happy with the idea of an election, since Hungarians might vote for a Hapsburg. The Allies are making arrangements to exile Charles and Zita to the Portuguese colony of Madeira in the North Atlantic.

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Today -100: November 3, 1921: Of glowworms, plebiscites, and Asian exclusion

Former Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles is on his way out of Hungary, prisoner on the British gunboat Glowworm, which will take him down the Danube to the Black Sea and then... er, the Allies are still working that out.

The British Cabinet reportedly has sent a letter to Northern Irish PM Sir James Craig asking him to allow a plebiscite in the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh over whether they’d like to join the South.

The British Columbia Legislature passes a resolution calling for a complete ban on Asian immigration.

Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow is published sometime this month. Oh well, everyone’s first novel can’t be great.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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